As I say, on the vocab front 20ac, 23ac, 25ac, 9dn… all fine words but I do feel they turn up in crossword puzzles a lot, or maybe it just feels like they do? I’m sure I’ve seen 20ac in a crossword before, but never in real life. On the wordplay front there were perhaps a few too many biffables; I was confident entering 12ac, 25ac, 3dn, 15dn while saving any actual parsing for later. 8dn feels like a chestnut by now and I think 18dn has been the “old city” in a clue in quite recent memory. I’ve been doing too many crossword puzzles, haven’t I? It’s changed me and possibly not for the better.
LOI 14dn I think, perhaps because it didn’t feel like an obvious “sweet” to me. COD to 3dn, perhaps because it might have been the D.G. who commissioned squeezy-bottle-spaceship sci-fi show Blake’s 7 back in the 70s, and which I thought for a while this puzzle could have been a tribute to, with words like 11ac (the aforementioned ship), 1ac (the last episode), and 1dn (most of the other episodes.) Of course setters are a lofty and literary bunch and are more likely to relax with William than Roj Blake. I’d totally watch a “Dirty Dozen in Space” with a crew of ill-assorted Romantic poets, if any directors general happen to be reading this.
So many thanks setter for a good ‘un! I’ flying out to Amsterdam at dawn tomorrow, till Thursday, so might be less omnipresent here for a while. Never set foot outside Schiphol before, so if any of you fine people have recommendations for things to do while I’m there, I’m all ears…
Across
1 Peppered with bullets, fell with audible groan (4,4)
MOWN DOWN – DOWN [fell, in the “fell-walking” sense of the world], with homophone of MOAN
5 Pick clubs and hearts over diamonds (6)
CHOICE – C [clubs] and H [hearts] + O [over] + ICE [diamonds]
10 Top cop having risen in service, free of imperfection
SUPER – UP [risen] in SER{vice}
11 Saviour, I muse, holding book in both hands (9)
LIBERATOR – I ERATO holding B, in L R [left and right = both hands]
12 One’s doing a turn before tea in island theatre (5,4)
MUSIC HALL – I’S reversed before CHA, in MULL
13 Attack enemy leader after a breather (5)
LUNGE – E{nemy} after LUNG
14 Mostly imbibe sort of wine that’s sweet (7)
SUCROSE – SUC{k} + ROSÉ
16 Males dressed formally for such a meeting? (6)
SUMMIT – M M [males] wearing a SUIT, semi-&lit
18 I work in medical institution in old city (6)
SAIGON – I GO in SAN
20 Supplier of breakfast buffet sent outside about lunchtime? (7)
BACONER – BAR sent outside C ONE [i.e. 1 p.m.]
22 It helps mountaineer no end on way back (5)
PITON – NO TIP reversed
23 Thrashing is not a bad form of punishment (9)
BASTINADO – (IS NOT A BAD*)
25 Answer question posh French female artist put about painting technique (9)
AQUARELLE – A Q U [answer | question | posh] + ELLE R.A. reversed
26 Corrupt cartel losing capital after a while (5)
LATER – ({c}ARTEL*)
27 Woman doing a twirl in ballet shoes (6)
STELLA – hidden reversed in {b}ALLET S{hoes}
28 Drew back, having dashed across island (8)
FLINCHED = FLED, across INCH
Down
1 Confusion, note, with Henry stopping tennis shot (4-4)
MISH-MASH – MI, with H stopping SMASH
2 Cleans socks son initially removed (5)
WIPES – {s}WIPES
3 TV boss recording late broadcast with extremely rude content (8-7)
DIRECTOR-GENERAL – (RECORDING LATE*), with R{ud}E content
4 Expert such as Hadrian, hero of the Scots (7)
WALLACE – Hadrian was a dab hand at building walls: hence a WALL ACE
6 Ancient coat carried during troubles by an aristocratic leader (6,9)
HAROLD MACMILLAN – OLD MAC carried by HARM ILL by AN
7 Trendy joint incorporates, oddly, this design (9)
INTENTION – IN TENON incorporates T{h}I{s}
8 Source of income apprentice’s first lacking (6)
EARNER – {l}EARNER
9 Mark replaced roubles? Not right (6)
OBELUS – ({r}OUBLES*)
15 Singer wanted peripheral sections cut during church service (9)
CHANTEUSE – {w}ANTE{d} during CH USE
17 A small room this paper’s editor made bullet-proof? (8)
ARMOURED – A RM + OUR ED
19 Steal gold coin bishop preserved (6)
NOBBLE – NOBLE, B preserved
20 First half of book by fantastic writer (7)
BOSWELL – BO{ok} by SWELL
21 Small fruit and some asparagus? (6)
SPEARS – S PEARS
24 Character initially dug out of a hole (5)
AITCH – A {d}ITCH. (H is also the initial letter of hole!)
baconer is not a word I remember coming across before. It sounds like a City Livery company, or perhaps a trade union.. Amalgamated baconers and egg-fryers, anyone?
Edited at 2016-08-19 09:01 am (UTC)
Never thought of Macmillan as aristocratic – just an out of touch toff. 1964 was first election I could vote in and the very aristocratic cadaver lookalike Douglas-Home ensured that I voted for Harold Wilson!
Q “Can you not make me look better than I do, on televison?”
A “No.”
Q “Why not?”
A “Because you have a head like a skull.”
Q “Doesn’t everyone have a head like a skull?”
A “No.”
“So that was that..”
So at least he was aware, Jim!
Harold MacMillan was certainly an aristocrat in his own eyes, albeit in nobody else’s ..
Edited at 2016-08-19 10:14 am (UTC)
V, if you are all ears I would avoid the Van Gogh Museum.
You see, we do notice…
Edited at 2016-08-19 11:30 am (UTC)
Quite tickled by the replacement of Orac with “the disembodied brain of Jeremy Bentham”.
The clue for BASTINADO was pretty good I thought.
Thanks setter and Verlaine. Have a good weekend everyone.
MacMillan an aristo? Do me a favour: his mom was an American socialite (Trump would have her locked up/shot for such lefty tendencies) and Great Granddad a crofter. I completely missed the parsing, too.
I never suspected Macmillan until the end, expecting some sort of medieval character, Harold Battleaxe or somebody along those lines.
V, you have a mental typo at 8 down, where you have put the parsing for the answer.
LOI 1dn MISH MASH for a Friday not too bad at 35 mins.
A lot of old chestnuts on the ‘grill’ – 25ac AQUARELLE, 23ac BASTINADO, 15dn CHANTEUSE and 9dn OBELUS.
Nice to see SUPER MAC get a mention – his marriage wasn’t too happy. He worked with Eden for many years and later against him.
horryd Shanghai
And for 25ac, the parsing looks to me like A Q [= question] U [= posh] (elle RA)rev., for otherwise how can we account for the U, which Verlaine has said is part of qu = question, but in that case what is ‘posh’ doing? And anyway since ‘question’ = either Q or QU, why has the setter bothered with ‘posh’? It could perfectly well have been omitted.
Edited at 2016-08-19 12:54 pm (UTC)
V, by my reckoning the definition for SUCROSE is “that’s sweet” rather than just sweet.
The parsing of aquarelle puzzled me, as I didn’t entertain the notion of reversing ELLE to get ELLE which left me with AR but nothing to suggest that it went in the middle.
I nearly biffed SHEILA for the woman at number 27 but even though I’m no Wayne sleep I concluded that there probably weren’t ballet shoes called ALIEHS.
Edited at 2016-08-19 12:20 pm (UTC)
Amsterdam? I remember a very good bar near the Westermarkt called ‘t Smalle.
Enjoy Amsterdam, I am too old to remember the ‘interesting’ things I used to do there, but you shouldn’t be idle for long.
Thanks for evoking memories of the Corona man. My favourite was the cream soda, although heaven knows what it was actually made of ………..
HAROLD MACMILLAN went in quickly enough after I’d eventually realised that “ancient coat” perhaps didn’t refer to a coat of arms and the first word wasn’t necessarily HERALD. I wasn’t too worried about “aristocratic”; perhaps being created Earl of Stockton is sufficient qualification?
I think Anne Frank’s house is the most moving place I’ve ever been in. That was about 35 years ago though, so maybe things have changed. Worth considering though.