I find myself without much else to say (but I’ll try to be more present in the comments today than last week). But there’s definitely time to nominate my Clue of the Day, which is definitely 4dn, with its nicely invisible definition part combined with fun wordplay. Ta setter!
ACROSS
1 Regret spoken jibe, something muttered on stage (7)
RHUBARB – homophone of RUE [regret “spoken”] + BARB [jibe]
5 Sell ingredients for jam? (7)
TRAFFIC – double def, one quirky
9 To buck up rogue, cane ordered (9)
ENCOURAGE – (ROGUE CANE*) [“ordered”]
10 Trojan “hippy”? (5)
ILIAC – v quirky double def, playing on ILIUM being an alternative for both the ancient city of Troy and the hip bone
11 Proposed form of extreme devolution rejected after losing a vote (5)
MOVED – DEVO M{ax} [extreme devolution, “rejected”, after losing A X]
12 Fool picks up insult implying inability to do so? (5-4)
CLOTH-EARS – CLOT HEARS [fool | picks up]
14 Lag repeatedly to raise time he’s held (5,2,3,4)
BRING UP THE REAR – BRING UP + REAR [repeatedly (i.e. twice), to raise], holding T HE [time | he]
17 Live stream business news (7,7)
CURRENT AFFAIRS – CURRENT [live stream] + AFFAIRS [business]
21 Container to serve tea; I’ll be after beginning to read leaves (9)
POTPOURRI – POT [container] + POUR [to serve tea] + I after R{ead}
23 Independent solicitor’s first to prosecute children (5)
ISSUE – I [independent] + S{olicitor} + SUE [prosecute]
24 Unfortunate person missing point in gag (5)
RETCH – {w}RETCH [unfortunate person, “missing point” (of the compass)]
25 Purging heretic, a habitual response (9)
CATHARTIC – CATHAR [heretic] + TIC [a habitual response]
26 Police officers transferred for challenge to orthodoxy (7)
DISSENT – D.I.S SENT [police officers | transferred]
27 Get back in swing, ticker turning over regularly (2-5)
RE-ELECT – REEL [swing] + T{i}C{k}E{r} reversed
DOWN
1 Spacious, from what we hear, but cold (6)
RHEUMY – homophone of ROOMY [spacious, “from what we hear”]
2 Expose chap entering sprint moving right to the end
UNCOVER – COVE [chap] entering {R->}UN [sprint, “moving R to the end”]
3 Much like a cakewalk, but smaller and quicker? (9)
ABUNDANCE – a bun is smaller than a cake, a dance is quicker than a walk
4 Accountant who might check one’s pulse? (4,7)
BEAN COUNTER – playing on the different meanings of pulse
5 Note to include zero as digit (3)
TOE – TE [note] to include O [zero]
6 A contemptuous exclamation — silly! (5)
APISH – A PISH [a | contemptuous exclamation]
7 Lot controlling sails etc for ship (7)
FRIGATE – FATE [lot] “controlling” RIG [sails etc]
8 Confident male squirmed oddly (8)
COCKSURE – COCK [male] + odd letters of S{q}U{i}R{m}E{d}
13 Not in formal dress in Balmoral, perhaps, queen is not working (3,2,6)
OUT OF KILTER – OUT OF KILT [not in formal dress in (Scotland)] + ER [queen]
15 Time to get to station, perhaps — detectives are being brought up to scratch (9)
ERADICATE – E.T.A. CID ARE [time to get to station, perhaps | detectives | are] all reversed
16 Distressed dept. sec. having run in with staff (8)
SCEPTRED – (DEPT SEC*) [“distressed”] having R [run] in
18 Turns to stare rudely (7)
ROTATES – (TO STARE*) [“rudely”]
19 Run out to catch a glimpse of incoming Times competition winner’s prize? (7)
ROSETTE – RO [run out] + SEE [to catch a glimpse of] with T T [(two) Times] incoming
20 Top secret operations going to be sent up in a bit of rhyming verse (6)
TERCET – T{op s}ECRET, subtracting OPS, reversed
22 Yellow mineral found around western half of Chad (5)
OCHRE – ORE [mineral] found around CH{ad} [western (= leftmost) half only]
25 Unionists boosted share (3)
CUT – TUC [unionists] upside down
Lord Verlaine with little to say!? NQR
Friday was the easiest of the week, well for me.
Still 42 minutes isn’t too clever.
FOI 5dn TOE
LOI 20dn TERCET DNK
COD 25ac CATHARTIC (BEAN COUNTER a bit predictable)
WOD 1ac RHUBARB RHUBARB RHUBARB (only found once at market in Shanghai in twenty years!)
I was heading for well sub 20 mins and then hit the wall on the DNK 20dn. Hepcat was the only word I knew that fitted and couldn’t see the Ops thing. Doh!
MERs today at the I=Independent (not sure of this abbreviation and the ‘first’ doesn’t really cover it).
And the dangling ‘a’s in 25ac and 20dn, but we’ve discussed these before and we live with them.
Thanks setter and V.
Edited at 2018-05-04 07:19 am (UTC)
Edited at 2018-05-04 08:18 am (UTC)
Edited at 2018-05-04 08:47 am (UTC)
Is it a D(emocrat), R(epublican), I(ndependent) thing? Does that exist?
Edited at 2018-05-04 08:54 am (UTC)
But anyway Chambers has I = Independent without reference to context and, unlike Collins online, doesn’t mention anything about it being an Americanism, so I think we just have to accept that’s what the setter intended if my theory about ‘first’ doesn’t cut the proverbial yellow stuff.
We are then left with the alleged convention that setters are not supposed to be allowed free rein of every single-letter abbreviation in Chambers and there was at one time believed to be a shortish list of those deemed acceptable, and as I don’t recall ‘I’ = Independent coming up before I’d be surprised if it was amongst them.
But I believe we’ve had two changes of Crossword Editor since then, so who knows what the current policy is?
Edited at 2018-05-04 09:24 am (UTC)
When I’m over in May’June I will attempted to pop into Harrods for a jar of the Gin & Lime Marmalade!
(a) I is alleged to abbreviate Independent, not Independence. But no matter, you could have cited IBA=Independent Broadcasting Authority. I would have cross-examined to ask “So, does B=Broadcasting?”
(b) The unparalleled Gin&Lime seems only to be available from Northallerton itself – not even from Lewis and Cooper online.
Edited at 2018-05-04 12:39 pm (UTC)
As for the ‘I’ I am left with agreeing with the setter!
fyi – ‘II’ was foreign office abb. for Indian Independence – just one letter off!
With regard to the “I” – it is nearly 9 hours since I invited examples of individual examples and none has been provided. I have to conclude it isn’t an abbreviation that anyone uses (even if it is in Collins) or, more likely, no one cares.
Edited at 2018-05-04 08:50 am (UTC)
Very gentle elsewhere.
I liked the BEAN clue, too, v. Can’t have too many pulse jokes
Mueller: Do you know the difference between a lentil and a chickpea?
Trump: Well, I wouldn’t have paid a $1000 dollars to watch a lentil.
With apologies.
COD 3d Abundance.
Verlaine, can I ask why you are drinking Gin & Tonic at 7AM?
Almost half of my 14:50 was spent in the SE corner, where the topical COD RE-ELECT held me up while I reconsidered ERADICATE. Thanks to Verlaine for parsing that one, where I was grimly trying to use “era” as time, and finally biffed the answer.
As I live in Trafford, maybe “re-elect” isn’t so apt, since the Conservatives lost overall control, and have one seat less than Labour – the Greens hold the balance of power here now.
FOI ENCOURAGE
LOI the vaguely remembered TERCET
Also biffed MOVED having never heard of DEVO MAX.
WOD CLOTH EARS, one of my late father’s pet forms of address when I was in one of my frequent daydreams.
Though much easier than those earlier in the week, this puzzle had some very good clues, I thought. COD to ABUNDANCE. But other contenders were TRAFFIC, TERCET (ingenious — neat distractors) or POTPOURRI.
Fun puzzle. Thanks, too, for the blog.
Liked the humour especially 5a Cod.
Last week, I was listening to Frank Sinatra’s September of My Years, an album he recorded around his 50th birthday, of songs which muse on growing older. I thought at the time that The Man in the Looking Glass must be one of a very small number of popular songs which ask the question “How’s your sacro-iliac?”.
Edited at 2018-05-04 10:15 am (UTC)
Fingers very much crossed for 10ac. In the end I just bunged in the only word I could think of that fitted the checkers. I wasn’t sure about the bony meaning (isn’t it something to do with the small intestine?) and had no idea about the other meaning. An irritating little clue in an otherwise fun puzzle.
> I’m fairly sure the intestine word is ILEUM…
> …but I’m also fairly sure that ILIAC is also a word that could easily mean something bone-related…
[two minutes alphabet-trawling]
> …I can’t think of anything else.
Edited at 2018-05-04 09:59 am (UTC)
Having had many osteopath appointments for lower back pain I knew about the sacro-iliac joint so no problem there. Not sure I’ve encountered potpourri as a single word before (always thought of it as hyphenated) but never mind.
A smile at the cakewalk, and another at BEAN COUNTER – been using that with the accountants for years so a write in from definition and enumeration.
Couple of minutes spent – like others – spotting TERCET at the end, and a question mark over “is TRAFFIC plural – wouldn’t it just be a singular ingredient?”
Edited at 2018-05-04 10:32 am (UTC)
Cathars well-known to me – apparently my wife was one in a past life.
Edited at 2018-05-04 10:37 am (UTC)
For ILIAC (my LOI) I eventually figured it must be something to do with the Iliad, allowing me to cast aside INIAC and other such attempts. TERCET was an excellent clue for an obscure word, possibly my favourite of the day.
Yes, I wondered about the speech-marks for “hippy”… I guess it’s groanworthy enough that the setter or editor erred on the side of caution.
Cold gin with cold water (no ice) is a fine drink V and thanks for the blog.
I was trying for the longest time to get the obvious answer MOVED out of the wordplay, where there is a temporary illusion of a possible backward hidden word. That DEVO MAX is a thing, and not a compilation by the band who gave us “Mongoloid,” is news to me.
Enjoyed this. David
PS if you want to try something harder,have a look at today’s QC from Wurm.