FOIs 9ac but there wasn’t much plain sailing to be had after that. 17ac took way too long for our collective of bleary sots, as we argued and argued over whether it was definitely going to be word beginning with THEO-. The intersection of 2dn and 11ac seemed really quite obscure – I remembered both the French satirist Boileau as a footnote to my study of Moliere for French A-level, and the “leaning condensers” which weren’t in fact called that from chemistry lessons of a similar vintage, but Sandy in particular was vocal in his incredulity about LIEBIG being a word. None of us could see a word related to stone in _A___U_T, and I’m afraid to say, with 20 minutes on the clock already, an executive decision was made to look at possibilities in Crossword Solver so that we could spend less time starting at a hot laptop and more on drinking cool beer. Leaving the Malaysian province completely unknown to any of us the LOI; very straightforward given the wordplay and the final K, but before then there had been a lot of discussion over whether it could possibly be PARTE?
There was general agreement at the end that the brilliant 7dn was our COD, but there was a lot of very creative and lateral cluing on offer here. When even the double definitions make you think “gosh, that’s very clever” then you are onto a good thing: round of applause to the setter. How nice of management to usher us into the new Club format and its unfamiliar controls gently, with some lighter fare to help us find our bearings. Or not, as the case may be!
Across
1 Reserve a bike, mostly for certain type of sport (7)
SUBAQUA – SUB A QUA{d} [reserve | a | bike, “mostly”]
5 Medical graduate saving lives after fitting initiation (7)
BAPTISM – BM [medical graduate] “saving” IS [lives] after APT [fitting]
9 Hardline rep slammed flirtatious male (11)
PHILANDERER – (HARDLINE REP*) [“slammed”]
10 Those who advocate further decoration (3)
BAR – double def. Is it a “further decoration” because a single heraldic bar is a fess, and bars proper appear more multiply? Thanks to those who pointed out the correct explanation – a bar is added to a medal for repeated acts of heroism.
11 Old chemist’s invention of considerable importance (6)
LIEBIG – LIE BIG [invention | of considerable importance]
12 Track around entrance to park by pool becoming stony?
BANKRUPT – RUT [track] around P{ark} by BANK [pool]
14 Land in one piece to perform Mass (6,7)
UNITED KINGDOM – UNITED KING DO M [in one | piece | to perform | mass]
17 Religious texts construed as a hint, no less (13)
THESSALONIANS – (AS A HINT NO LESS*) [“construed”]
21 Home occupied by politician before becoming spoiled (8)
PAMPERED – PAD [home] “occupied by” MP ERE [politician | before]
23 From right and left, cheers popular hit (6)
ATTAIN – AT TA [“from right and left”, cheers] + IN [popular]
25 Regularly eclipsed in fast conditions (3)
IFS – I{n} F{a}S{t}
26 Physics master from staff in boarding school: German (11)
SCHRODINGER – ROD IN [staff | in] “boarding” SCH GER [school | German]
27 Glasses you returned with article in jug (7)
EYEWEAR – reverse of YE [you “returned”] + A [article] in EWER [jug]
28 Leaves producer assisting with censorship? (3,4)
FIG TREE – cryptic definition. A fig tree produces fig leaves which conceal the shame of nudes in classical art.
Down
1 Yield with grace (6)
SUPPLY – double def
2 Author of Brewer’s simple guide in two languages? (7)
BOILEAU – to make tea, boil water; or BOIL EAU in Franglais.
3 Survives the heat, perhaps, but also weakens (9)
QUALIFIES – double def
4 What opera fans want to see first hand? (4)
AIDA – if a hand is an AID, “first hand” could be AID A.
5 Loud criticism something that prevents torture (10)
BARRACKING – BAR RACKING [something that prevents | torture]
6 Asian state’s king wearing crown (5)
PERAK – R [king] “wearing” PEAK [crown]
7 Hip hop’s coming home! (7)
INBOUND – IN BOUND [hip | hop]
8 Tread water maybe initially when flood rescue needed? (4,4)
MARK TIME – M{aybe} + ARK TIME [“when flood rescue needed”]
13 There will be manoeuvring to oust one leader (10)
BELLWETHER – (THERE W{i}LL BE*) [“manoeuvring”]
15 Close call after finding that principal has left (4,5)
NEAR THING – {u}NEARTHING [finding “that principal has left”]
16 Dear old man getting upset in a moment (2,1,5)
AT A PRICE – reverse of PA [old man “getting upset”] in A TRICE [a | moment]
18 Seems an unusual way to come together (2,5)
EN MASSE – (SEEMS AN*) [“unusual”]
19 Shock spread over time (7)
STAGGER – double def
20 False regret follows quest, commonly (6)
UNTRUE – RUE [regret] follows ‘UNT [quest, “commonly”]
22 Female care is left to the top nurses (5)
ELSIE – hidden reversed in {car}E IS LE{ft}
24 Mistake to leave without finishing (4)
GOOF – GO OF{f} [to leave, “without finishing”]
After about 20 minutes I was missing BOILEAU, LIEBIG, BANKRUPT and PERAK. And it stayed that way. All very fair, and very clever. Just too much for me. Congrats to anyone who finished it.
Totally agree with the Gramercy Posse — 7d INBOUND is a terrific clue
Edited at 2017-08-04 06:52 am (UTC)
But as that would be a complete and utter lie, I won’t.
Suffice to say when I checked the stats before solving and saw Verlaine on the leaderboard at 21 minutes I nearly gave up and ran away.
Somehow 31 minutes still leaves me 6th at this stage. Biggest holdups were the unknown BOILEAU and the chemist, although the biblical reference went straight in.
I still prefer the treeware solve I think, back to printing next week
Had the same blanks as Sotira (BOILEAU, LIEBIG, PERAK, BANKRUPT) plus MARK TIME, and had the same unparsed as Jack (NEAR THING, STAGGER). Thanks for sorting it all out, V…
PERAK is probably familiar to those who live there, but if Ross and Cromarty is regarded as a bit obscure, then this state’s practically opaque.
BOILEAU is terribly clever, but it’s not often a poet is referred to as an author, which he had to be to make the clue work. I’m tempted to call “foul” on that basis. A not-well-known poet not clued as such belongs in the late lamented TLS, and even then might get a tut.
Still, at least the new site’s working now.
The crossword was a different affair. Very tricky, but clever. However the NW was beyond me: the combo of Liebig, Boileau, and even Subaqua were never going in.
Oh well – it is Friday. Thanks setter and V.
Edited at 2017-08-04 07:54 am (UTC)
I’ve got round my eyesight problems by copying-and-pasting the grid and clues (separately) into Word, and enlarging and printing from there, but I still resent having to do so!
Edited at 2017-08-04 06:58 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-08-04 08:41 am (UTC)
In 12a, is bank = pool in the sense of pooling resources?
Thank heavens that the setter balanced Boileau (not a name that springs readily to mind even if you read French at university, as I did) with Liebig and Schrodinger or we would have had the Sage of Dorset fulminating about obscure literary references.
A game of 2 halves, methinks, the south went in fairly rapidly, but the north proved impossible for me, without my Crossword Puzzle Help
[I’m going to keep saying this at every opportunity because I know we’re not alone and it seems like a particularly egregious ‘teething problem’.]
We were sorry on two counts: first that the SNITCH hasn’t figured out the new format, because today’s puzzle would make particularly interesting input for the Friday data set; and second that the be-kind-to-the-sleeping-neighbours policy at Pete’s meant last-call for outside tables was at 11.
Now that the New York team has practiced on Verlaine we think we know how to entertain visitors. You can test this by letting us know when you come to town.
(And a final note: I ran this through the spell check before posting – LiveJournal does not believe that Boileau, Perak, or Liebig are real words.)
Edited at 2017-08-04 11:50 am (UTC)
I suppose I was the only person who thought first of “bollocking” at 5 down?
What a week! The migration, a TLS-lite, and now a non-Jumbo GK Jumbo. Whatever will they think of next?
Edited at 2017-08-04 10:55 am (UTC)
Is that still the case with the new site – before I sign up and find it isn’t the case?
Today – too hard. Entire NW corner. Couldn’t see SUPPLY, or AID as hand, never heard of Liebig, refuse to believe there’s any such thing as subaqua sports. Thought immediately of BOILEAU, but it just doesn’t sound like a real french name in the same way that rousseau, moreau, prdeaux, thoreaux, etc etc do.
If I was horryd I’d be grumpy.
Great stuff, and 7dn is wonderful.
Sadly another twenty minutes this evening didn’t yield anything. At least it was nice to find when I came here that my troublesome triple of 2d, 11a and 6d (where I’d fixated on “K” being the king; not helpful) had also caused some of our most experienced crew some problems too, and that I wasn’t just being dozy.
All three were entirely unknown to me. I have actually got LIEBIG written down in the margin of the puzzle, so there’s that, but it didn’t help with the author as I was thinking of brewing beer rather than brewing tea, and even if I’d thought of brewing tea I doubt I’d have got *there*… Goodness.
Still, got the rest right, and generally knew why. Knew BAR as a second medal from Blackadder, of all places—the head of the flying corps in series 4 is “Air Chief Marshall Sir Hugh Massingburg-Massingburg, VC, DFC and bar.”
agrees with me that Schrodinger’s cat is not 100% dead and 100% alive; it’s no different from anything else that we don’t know about because we have no access to knowledge about it. Maybe the cat does.
PERAK was my first of the downs (from my old stamp collection), but I’d completed the whole bottom half before getting anything else up top, apart from a tentative AIDA, which I couldn’t parse convincingly, so thanks for explanation.
Edited at 2017-08-04 11:25 pm (UTC)