But then again, the Victorian novel in 1dn may not have made a big splash stateside, having been reviewed thus the New York Times: “There is that kind of quiet, commonplace, everyday joking in it which we are to suppose is highly satisfactory to our cousins across the water … Our way of manufacturing fun is different.” Is a remake with Steve Carell in the title role in order? And there are a couple of clues in the early across numbers which go full classical by requiring knowledge of Latin. All in all I can see why they scheduled this potpourri for a Friday, as it does seem well-constructed to please a Verlaine, thanks setter! (Your blogger did NOT know the scientific 28ac, but the wordplay here was fairly generous, plus no cricketing terms anywhere in the puzzle.)
COD to 3dn for being a crossword clue about crossword clues (Verlaines love self-reflexivity), chestnut-wood spoons to the at 25ac and 29ac which seems to turn up often enough that you can almost put it straight in from “Syrian”. FOI 10ac, LOI 4dn after I’d finally worked out what needed to go into DEED at 1ac, and got the starting F, after which it was a write-in. How did yourselves fare today?
ACROSS
1 Questioned the thing done, with brusque interrupting (9)
DEBRIEFED – DEED [the thing done], with BRIEF [brusque] “interrupting”
6 Profess intention to oust idiot from class (5)
CLAIM – CL{ass->AIM}
9 Apart, ut infra (7)
ASUNDER – AS UNDER being the literal translation of “ut infra”
10 Classical law: I study a range of terminology (7)
LEXICON – LEX I CON [classical law | I | study]
11 Troublemaker, unknown quantity, one no longer at school (3)
YOB – Y OB [unknown quantity | old boy, i.e. one no longer at school]
12 After war he and I sadly not the best of friends? (4-7)
FAIR-WEATHER – (AFTER WAR HE I*) [“sadly”]
14 Stick around at home, like a sort of pet? (6)
CANINE – CANE [stick] around IN [at home]
15 President getting perturbed spoke incoherently (8)
PRATTLED – P [President] getting RATTLED [perturbed]
17 Country inn, outside which is an historical object (8)
REPUBLIC – PUB [inn], outside which is RELIC [an historical object]
19 Second Indian dish may make one run! (6)
SCURRY – S CURRY [second | Indian dish]
22 Question from gangster’s follower about destination, making ready? (11)
WHEREWITHAL – a rather laborious definition of the unlikely question WHERE WITH AL (Capone)?
23 Like some wine from these cellars (3)
SEC – hidden in {the}SE C{ellars}
25 Selection of words in pamphlet once (7)
EXTRACT – EX-TRACT [pamphlet once]
27 European fixer about to accommodate a set (7)
LATVIAN – NAIL reversed [fixed “about”] “to accommodate” A TV [a | set]
28 There’s nothing about sort of current needed for nuclear research device (5)
LINAC – NIL reversed [nothing “about”] + AC [sort of current]. A “linear accelerator”, which I DNK, but now I do!
29 Syrian in a location behind barrier (9)
DAMASCENE – A SCENE [a | location] behind DAM [barrier]
DOWN
1 Nobody wrote one in the nineteenth century (5)
DIARY – cryptic definition referring to George & Weedon Grossmith’s comic novel first serialised in the late 1880s, very popular in the early c20th and, I assume, almost never read by the youth of today. TLS <3
2 Rose as a reactionary in America (7)
BOURBON – a quite obscure double def, on both sides! President Grover Cleveland was apparently the archetypal Bourbon Democrat.
3 Like word very hard to clue one put in “banned” file originally (11)
INDEFINABLE – I [one] put in (BANNED FILE*) [“original”]
4 Much beer less than completely admirable — get upset inside (6)
FIRKIN – FIN{e} [“less than completely” admirable], IRK [get upset] inside
5 Nice English will keep rules and regulations in US location (8)
DELAWARE – DEAR E [nice | English] will keep LAW [rules and regulations]
6 One directing eight or ten joining firm (3)
COX – X [ten] joining CO [firm]
7 Everyone gets to eat salmon and drink at celebration? (7)
ALCOHOL – ALL [everyone] “gets to eat” COHO [salmon]
8 Assistant in a fascist party cleared in a month (3,6)
MAN FRIDAY – A NF RID [a | fascist party | cleared] in MAY [a month]
13 Communicates a rustic tale animatedly (11)
ARTICULATES – (A RUSTIC TALE*) [“animatedly”]
14 Exercise in gym that could make Walter ache, losing head (9)
CARTWHEEL – (WALTER {a}CHE*) [“that could make…”]
16 Struggled to hold note: a chant ultimately spoiled (8)
VITIATED – VIED [struggled] “to hold” TI A {chan}T
18 City break with awful smell around, not good (7)
PRESTON – REST [break] with PON{g} around
20 On street this person’s becoming rebellious (7)
RESTIVE – RE ST I’VE [on | street | this person has]
21 Affection half veiled in phoney greeting (6)
SHALOM – LO{ve} in SHAM [phoney]
24 Story of competition with someone really good knocked out (5)
CONTE – CONTE{st}
25 Vehicle, about to get submerged in part of turning circle? (3)
ARC – {C->}AR with the C [about] sinking to the bottom
I occasionally drink a Bourbon called “Five Roses,” and I’m beginning to wonder whether there is a deliberate pun in there somewhere
Edited at 2017-12-01 08:30 am (UTC)
2dn is a bit of an abomination really: a DD in which both Ds are indeed rather obscure. I got it from the association with Four Roses and a vague notion that this could easily be a word for a reactionary in the US, coined by Lafayette perhaps. Oh, and the checkers of course. Mostly the checkers actually.
Edited at 2017-12-01 09:07 am (UTC)
With a clue like this I always think ‘what is the point?’
O yes, the crossword. it isn’t Bourbon that takes the biscuit but ‘Linac’ and ‘Coho’. Good grief, just when I am mastering Nineteenth century fiction, I am expected to know particle accelerators and esoteric fish!
Mostly I liked: Scurry (that’s more my level), and COD to 6ac for the clever construction.
Thanks polymath setter and V.
Coho is something of a crossword commonplace. That’s certainly the only reason I know it. In any event with ALC_H_L and ‘drink at celebration’ in the clue you don’t really need to.
Edited at 2017-12-01 09:04 am (UTC)
I always associate 2dn BOURBONs with biscuits. My LOI. A Bourbon Democrat should be a cocktail, Two measures of ‘Five Roses’, curacao, lime juice and champagne perhaps. Mr. myrtilus please shake one? No Gin!
Breakfast – a parafino sherry for Dec 1 first day of winter!; poached eggs on rye – with banana and yoghurt to follow. JBMC.
This puzzle took me an hour but wasn’t quite as chewy as some Friday Fare.
FOI 1dn Diary – I recommend the book – ‘ilarious especially young Lupin! Mr. Polly from the same stable.
COD 8dn COX short and sweet
WOD FIVE ROSES
Thank-you Lord Verlaine – when can we please have your proper avatar back – it has the required authority now that mohn2 is in the ascendancy!
Edited at 2017-12-01 09:15 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-12-01 11:03 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-12-01 05:28 pm (UTC)
I bunged in BOURBON without knowing either route to the answer yet there are two others, at least, that I would have known. Still it was the only word I could think of that fitted. My other unknown, LINAC, came from wordplay.
Edited at 2017-12-01 09:37 am (UTC)
About 45mins, ending with VITIATED. Could so easily have been ‘vimiated’.
P.S. As always, the most animated and divisive discussion in the pub after the Competition was the question of whether “AL=gangster” should continue to be a thing. My own view is that a man whose heyday was nearly a century ago should have gone the way of the wretched Beerbohm Tree, but as I say, other views are available and strongly held.
Edited at 2017-12-01 10:45 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-12-01 12:21 pm (UTC)
Edited at 2017-12-01 10:53 am (UTC)
Talking of which, I thought I knew LINAC from a recent outing here and confidently threw it in, but it seems not to have come up before. Was there a similarly named scientific thingy in a recent puzzle (and I think in a similar part of the grid)?
Entertaining puzzle and blog. Thanks to all concerned with either.
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
LIDAR, also five letters, was new to me when it appeared on 17 September. Could this be the word you’re thinking of? Not that it’s ‘nuclear’!
M.
Edited at 2017-12-01 05:59 pm (UTC)
Breakfast, porridge and fruit as yesterday(fruit = banana, red grapes and blueberries, so horryd doesn’t fret) but with Colombian coffee rather than L’or classique.
Really very easy for a Friday – but I suppose I will get a tough one on Monday.
Like everyone else, despite living in the US I’d never heard of BOURBON (well, in these contexts) but I have no expectation that I would know a rose so any likely name works for me. But that made the last few clues in the top left a delay at the end. FIRKIN was not obvious until I had the F. BOURBON was not obvious without the B. I was semi-convinced 1A contained CURT for brusque. Then something clicked and they all went in in a few seconds.
Speaking of “self-reflexivity,” a puzzle elsewhere has META as an answer and a friend griped that it is “the latest annoying buzzword.” But I rather like it.
Edited at 2017-12-01 08:49 pm (UTC)
BOURBON went in with no understanding of why (which is unusual, because I normally know exactly why Bourbon is going in). VITIATED is one of those words I know, but have never really known the meaning of, so it was nice to have the word and its meaning put together for me. CONTE was a complete NHO, but I managed to get it by trimming the edges off “raconteur” to make it fit in the hole. Incidentally, Google’s dictionary provides a definition of CONTE and also an audio of the pronunciation – the latter is quite startling.
LOI was DEBRIEFED, because for a long time I inaccountably had “undefinable” at 3d and was struggling to convince myself that “descurted” was a word.
And as a Preston North End supporter I was delighted to see the relatively new city included. At first I thought of Pyongyang but happily that did not fit. David
PS question for Verlaine -was that a panda in your previous avatar?
Or am I?
DNF after quick romp to first 30.
New words/phrases to me: LINAC, COHO & UT INFRA were solvable but indicated the bar was set high for verbal novelty.
Then with 2D & 14A left to do, the word BLUEBOY suggested itself. Actually BLUE BOY *is* the name of a rose, and I thought BLUE = conservative (in UK) BOY = “good old boy” maybe that’s a thing: biff.
How about 14A? It’s not hard but I had picked it up the wrong way to think pet = sulking, so a sort of pet = CRYING. IN = “at home” obviously. And what’s CRYG: well I don’t know but the question mark “clearly” indicates that something loose is happening, and in a universe in which LINAC & COHO are words, why not CRYG, so it’s worth a biff.
I particularly liked the clues for ASUNDER & INDEFINABLE: they are the kind that makes me want to solve the crossword because I must find the answers.
I needed to learn that sometimes in a Lego clue, the ingredients are applied as is, without finding a synonym or example. So no need for me to be the idiot ass hunting for a replacement for “class”.
But mentioning some things I enjoyed hopefully gives me a paragraph’s licence to moan 🙂 2D is not cryptic: it’s just double obscure general knowledge. And collision with the illegal question mark in 14A, gave me a DNF. Why is question mark illegal here? Because it’s a reserved term indicating looseness of clue. If “like a sort of pet” is loose, then so is “like word very hard to clue”, which is unquestioned. Putting a misleading question mark in an exact clue is “CRYING ‘wolf'” (= CANINE haha). It’s not even necessary for the surface.
If I was still in my pet 🙂 I would only award 30/32 to the setter 🙂 but I find I can manage the full 32/32 thanks to setter, blogger and commenters.