ACROSS
1. GO WEST – a slightly odd one to start with, I thought, involving two unrelated rather offbeat word pictures: one, the direction you would be taking if you were to go back from Japan to London (not to the US – or HK, for that matter), and the other, the direction we are all taking on our life journey (‘go west’ means to die as well as to be disastrously lost, hence ‘join the majority’). All a bit Nietzschean for first thing of a Monday morning, in a Monty Python kind of way.
4. OLIGARCH – anagram* of RICH GIRL follows O; a slightly ‘out of left field’ feel to this one too, or is it just me?
10. TOP-FLIGHT – down to earth with a bump?
11. RECAP – ACE in PR all reversed.
12. PERFORMING ARTS – ‘rock music and stage shows, say’; PARTS around ER + FORMING.
14. NIGHT – [k]NIGHT; see ‘piece’ (or ‘man’), think chess.
16. NURSEMAID – I AM SURE* in N and D. Another crypticky one; another question mark (up to four now).
18. GROSGRAIN – ‘A heavy ribbed fabric, typically of silk or rayon’; GROS[s] + GRAIN. I couldn’t get anything meaning ‘repulsive’ in 13 minutes from the GRO** I had written down, which means either I have lived a very sheltered life or I am plain dumb. Watch out for this French interloper’s bastardised scion, ‘grogram’.
20. ANKLE – [r]ANKLE.
21. TAKE THE BISCUIT – snaffle, indeed – a word we should have more of; a double definition.
25. ARIEL – ARI[s]E + L; I’ve read The Tempest, but, if I’m being honest, I couldn’t really make head or tail of it, and always forget who or even what sex (if any) Caliban, Prospero and Ariel are. One of my blind spots, I guess – like having a decent sense of direction, and yet never knowing which way to turn when I get out of Brent Cross Shopping Centre.
26. LOUNGE BAR – LUNGE around O + BAR.
27. DOMINION – DO + MINION (it’s nice to see ‘supporter’ clued by something other than bra, tee or fan – plus, ‘minion’ is another word we don’t get enough of).
28. WINNER – ‘one succeeds’; W[ith] + INNER. My knowledge of darts does not extend much beyond a few Sid Waddellisms (‘There’s only one word for that: “Magic darts!”’), but cursory research suggests that the tiny circle in the middle of the board is referred to as the ‘inner bull’ by some. So, if you take a sip of your pint of lager and tell your mate that you’re going to ‘try an inner’, I reckon that could mean you’re essaying the shot that gets you 50 points. I may have missed the board entirely, in which case just sit back and enjoy Mel and Griff (not to mention, Rowan as Sid).
DOWNS
1. GET-UP-AND-GO – another double definition to get us started on the downs.
2. WIPER – W[ide] + PIER (‘supporter’) with its ‘I’ moved up. ‘Wiper’ is another word we can’t have too much of, ’though I’m not fond of ‘wipes’ as in ‘wet wipes’.
3. SELL-OUT – O in TULLES reversed; now I don’t mind this type of clue a bit, where knowledge of the dodgy French fabric is completely unnecessary to the incorrigible biffer.
5. LET ON – ‘reveal’; another multi-word biff-job. In case you have energy left after the darts clue, it’s ‘singleton’ without its ‘sing’.
6. GERMANE – ‘relevant’; and another prime candidate for biffery; it’s GE[a]R + MANE (as in ‘shock’ of hair).
7. RACETRACK – I was onto this quicker than you can say ‘the Cesarewitch’, but ran out of letters when I’d got as far as ‘RACECOURS’: RACE (‘folk’) + TRACK (‘song’).
8. HYPE – the outside letters of first H[orribl]Y then P[ueril]E.
9. EGOMANIA – this clue is far too long to read, so had to be biffed; for the record, it’s GO in NAME reversed + I + A[dmit].
13. ADVENTURE – VENT in A DURER.
15. GLOBALISM – GO SMALL I* around (‘blown apart by’) B[ig].
17. RUNABOUT – RUN + A + BOUT.
19. GREMLIN – ‘one sabotages’; G + REIN around ML (‘millilitre’).
20. ASSEGAI – (I dedicate this one to Keriothe.) ‘Spear’; I (‘one’) + AGES (‘gets on’) + SA (‘sex appeal’ = ‘it’) all reversed. I know less about assegais than I do about The Tempest, but I think that helps when you do crosswords.
22. HELLO – I thought this was rather cunning, even if the crossers rather gave it away. ‘Surprised response’ (think Leslie Phillips when confronted with a buxom lass); HEL[d] + L[ong] + O[verdue].
23. URBAN – This self-referentialism is a bit Guardianesque for my taste. At least we can thank our lucky stars that the Thunderer’s setters are anonymous, so we can’t get those Puck/Boatman/Arachne references in another setter’s puzzle that remind me of ‘60 Minutes Plus’ episodes devoted to a journalist talking about the life of another journalist. Rant over. Back to the clue – it’s [o]UR (‘nothing overlooked in the Times’s’, i.e. ‘our’) + BAN (‘exclusion’). The literal is ‘of the city’.
24. HAND – also rather cunning (not to mention, a bit conciser than average) and I think my favourite. ‘Audience response’; H[appy] + AND (‘with’).
Pretty normal Monday otherwise. Thanks setter and U.
I don’t know the name Leslie Phillips but I’m sure I’m thinking of the right person, based on your description. Couldn’t be anyone else.
Edited at 2016-02-22 06:16 am (UTC)
So WIPERs are accessories? Essential here, today, where we just had 10mm of rain. Very strange for February.
Really liked the Queen clue and glad to see rock music included as an art.
In the SW the three answers starting with G proved impenetrable, as did DOMINION. 24dn was going to be H/EAR though without a definition that worked (so easy to imagine having been faced with 4ac in the same puzzle), but I managed to resist bunging it in and deciphered 25ac eventually which provided a checker that put me on the right track.
Thanks for the dedication, ulaca. I did groan at it/SA of course but the ASSEGAI (or ASSAGAI, if the setter is feeling particularly sadistic) is positively commonplace.
Edited at 2016-02-22 08:15 am (UTC)
Persevere with “The Tempest”, Ulaca. Just regard it as Shakespeare’s valedictory to the stage with Prospero as the bard himself. I once saw a production with Ariel played by a young actress as a wistful androgenous being that was an absolutely brilliant interpretation.
Oh, and back to the puzzle: I struggled with this, taking the best part of an hour. I put it down to the fact it’s Monday morning.
Actually, the last play I remember enjoying was the school production of Rosencrantz and Guilderstern with Philip Franks and James Craven back in 72. I think seeing Pinter’s No Man’s Land 4 or 5 years later scarred me for life.
Accidental probably but 8D is prescient I’m sure of the next 4 months as we are bombarded with looney propaganda about the UK-EU relationship. Where can I hide?
Otherwise this was an easy solve for me.
Query die/go west as “join the majority”? I mean, I’ve just worked out that it can’t be a reference to our common lot as such: 100% is not a majority, surely. But didn’t some chap work out that there were more people living now than have ever lived, which would make dying joining a minority, wouldn’t it?
I really enjoyed this. Some interesting vocab without getting too obscure. I felt inexplicably confident about GROSGRAIN. COD to the spear.
I biffed a fair few and didn’t really understand GO WEST.
I did the puzzle too quickly to notice anything to quibble about.
I see from my paper that Tony Sever is a winner for the Saturday crossword which I found impossible (26,334) -congratulations. David
G _ O _ G _ A _ N
You have ‘fabric’ and ‘wood’ as a choice of definitions, and ‘mostly repulsive’ must be part of the cryptic. Glancing at the crossers, with the possible definitions floating in your head, you should be able to see ‘grain’. That means that ‘fabric’ must be the definition, and you only have to make a plausible guess at ‘mostly repulsive’.
With practice, you will be able to get words you don’t know from the cryptics.
As others have said, you need to keep plugging away. Once you’ve completed your 10,000 hours like the rest of us (me, anyway), you’ll almost certainly find you can finish correctly more often than not.
Re 18a, I had most of the checkers but I got stuck on Ghastly = Repulsive; so a fabric starting with Ghas…In fact no fabrics starting with G occurred to me.
Will keep trying. David
No problem with ‘grosgrain’ as Mrs C has a textile fetish, and managed to parse everything, though I thought that the ‘definition’ in 4a was a bit weak.
I had never heard of GROSGRAIN, and it sounds like a suspicious mish-mash of French and English, but got it from the wordplay. I think I also had in mind “Lincoln greyne” (or “graine” – spelling had yet to congeal in the days of Robin Hood [or Hode, or Hod – ditto]).
Like Andy, I dwelt for a while over HELLO – I’d have said that it was a fairly modern invention, distinct from the “hallo!” or “hullo!” of surprise.
ASSEGAI came to me by second-class post from a distant backwater of what I laughingly refer to as my memory. If pressed and without the benefit of the clue, I’d have said it was a tribe, and been wrong.
Oddly, the thing that held me up the longest was WINNER. I got it almost on sight, but it took a long time before the penny dropped and I parsed it with enough confidence to put it in.
(*I’m not that unfit; it’s just quite a large cabinet.)
Admittedly it’s nearly 10 years since GROSGRAIN last appeared in the daily cryptic, but it showed up last year in Jumbo No. 1140 (28 March).
I came perilously close to bunging in SOLD-OUT, but it didn’t feel quite right so (unlike verlaine) I checked the wordplay. (Phew!)
I typed in PERFORMANCE ART to start with since I come across more of that than PERFORMING ARTS these days. At least that meant I didn’t even think of PERFORMING ACTS.