ACROSS
1 Rival’s back-to-back works (4)
OPPO – OP [work] twice, one facing forwards, one backwards. Not quite sure how an oppo (opposite number?) is a rival, when it’s usually a mate, but there wasn’t much room for doubt. A friendly rival perhaps?
4 Excursionist not falling over things in the dark? (3,7)
DAY TRIPPER – if you aren’t TRIPPING [falling over things] in the dark, presumably you’re doing it by DAY.
9 Demanding key allowing smooth access? Yet denying entry to soldiers? (4-6)
HARD-BOILED – HARD B OILED [demanding | key | allowing smooth access]. Soldiers as in pieces of toast on soft-boiled egg duty.
10 Knight grabbing a coat casually (4)
DAUB – DUB [knight] “grabbing” A. LOI, taking ages as I was slightly fixated on GARB.
11 Burn lots of paper by side of road (6)
STREAM – REAM [lots of paper] by side of ST [road]. Burn as in a small watercourse.
12 Resident publisher holding minor volume with a set of books (8)
OCCUPANT – O.U.P. [publisher, from the best university town] “holding” CC [minor, as in small, volume] with A NT [a | set of (holy) books]
14 With no touching allowed, display flesh (4)
VEAL – {re}VEAL [display, minus RE = touching]
15 Conservative altered the ballot boxes: one’s providing teatime coverage? (10)
TABLECLOTH – C [Conservative], “boxed” by (THE BALLOT*) [“altered”]
17 Complete a facility for scrap (2,4,4)
DO AWAY WITH – DO [complete] + A WAY WITH [a facility for]
20 Partners with hands empty poet lamented (4)
WEPT – W + E [partners with (bridge) hands] + P{oe}T
21 Fear musical genres haven’t succeeded (4,4)
BLUE FUNK – BLUE{s} + FUNK [two musical genres, minus S = succeeded]
23 Old bit of gym and some games area (6)
PESETA – P.E. [gym] + SET [some games] + A [area]
24 No oil painting of Burghley’s oddly extant: the opposite (4)
UGLY – {b}U{r}G{h}L{e}Y, with the even letters, not the odd ones, extant
25 Address in Bishop’s Stortford (10)
APOSTROPHE – hidden in {Bishop}'{s Stortford}. An apostrophe is also an exclamatory passage in a speech or poem addressed to a person or thing.
26 King of Troy under horse after collapsing (5,5)
HENRY TUDOR – (TROY UNDER H*) [“collapsing”]. I took ages trying to anagram “under horse” into some legendary ancestor of Priam’s, perhaps the sweaty-sounding HERNE SUDOR.
27 Possible alternative to barrel bomb (4)
TANK – either a container for liquids, or to flop miserably.
DOWN
2 Lark about to fly initially hit a pole sadly (4,3,4)
PLAY THE FOOL – (TO FLY H{it} A POLE*) [“sadly”]
3 Society member getting rum down with pained expression (9)
ODDFELLOW – ODD [rum] + FELL [down] with OW! [pained expression]. An 18th century London, and subsequently American, secret society.
4 Drudge ultimately destined to roam haphazardly … (7)
DOORMAT – {destine}D + (TO ROAM*) [“haphazardly”]
5 … or reliable person on staff seizing a path to fortune (6,5,4)
YELLOW BRICK ROAD – YELLOW [or, as in gold] + BRICK [reliable person] + ROD [staff] “seizing” A
6 Root in the end for a rising hero (7)
RADICLE – {fo}R A + reversed EL CID [hero]
7 Milan outfit quietly training players (5)
PRADA – P [quietly] + RADA [training players, i.e. trainee actors]
8 Raised swelling is to explode (5)
REBUT – reversed TUBER [swelling]. Explode as in “explode a myth”.
13 Greatly inferior to what an unrepaired bike tube has? (3,1,5,2)
NOT A PATCH ON – double definition, one slightly more forced than the other!
16 Resort typically ranked bottom? (9)
LOWESTOFT – or LOWEST, OFT suggesting [typically ranked bottom]
18 Warning as unknown circle replaces ME state’s king (3,4)
YOU WAIT – take KUWAIT [M(iddle)E(ast) state] and replace its K [king] with Y O [unknown | circle]
19 New PE shirt fitting below the waist (7)
HIPSTER – (PE SHIRT*) [“new”]. As in “hipster jeans”.
21 Gesture of respect for auditor’s branch (5)
BOUGH – homophone of BOW [gesture of respect]
22 Horseman once going over national hunt fences (5)
UHLAN – fenced in reversed by {natio}NAL HU{nt}. An obscurish word for a Polish cavalryman, but fortunately the cryptic doesn’t leave much room for doubt!
Not sure I’d have pieced together the root, but I should’ve seen the APOSTROPHE, especially as it came up a few times in Great Expectations, which I recently read for the first time, and especially as I’d actually thought of it starting APOST…, but mostly because it might have something to do with bishops. D’oh!
Never quite got to grips with this one, finding quite a few clues fairly impenetrable, especially the unknown secret society in 3d. Well, I suppose if I’d heard of them, they wouldn’t be doing a very good job of keeping secret… Nonetheless, enjoyed the HARD-BOILED 9a and the &littishness of 27a.
Edited at 2019-03-08 07:32 am (UTC)
Edited at 2019-03-08 07:39 am (UTC)
I was surprised to learn that a BLUE FUNK is a state of fear rather than depression, but I suspect it’s not the first time I’ve been surprised to learn that here.
Have to agree with our blogger — the thwarted soldiers are a delight.
And as per boltonwanderer, LOI DAUB after a doubtful REBUT. I didn’t get the ‘explode’ definition until seeing Verlaine’s explanation above.
Started well enough but I struggled to make progress after the first 15 minutes. I stuck at it though and thought I’d got over the line OK in 38:04. But two wrong and one typo. PEEL for VEAL, BLUE PUNK for BLUE FUNK and TANL for TANK.
Lots to like. A three way tie for COD. The amusing HARD BOILED and the cleverly disguised, UHLAN and HENRY TUDOR.
FOI 14ac VEAL I thought it was that easy!!
LOI 6dn REBUT I thought it was silly!
COD 25ac APOSTROPHE and certainly not the excruciatingly IKEAN 26ac HENRY TUDOR pah!
WOD 16dn LOWESTOFT for family reasons.
I much enjoyed Aston Villa’s brace – BLUE PUNK but not his fat-fingered TANL (Club Monthlyland! Lord Verlaine?)
Edited at 2019-03-08 09:56 am (UTC)
I think of OPPO as my ‘opposite number’ — but presumably many people think of an ‘opponent’. And a blue funk is a panic.
Thanks for your blog, V.
O anonymous setter, thanks for a great puzzle.
Edited at 2019-03-08 05:21 pm (UTC)
Kipling wrote of it too, as it was Britain’s largest submarine base in WWI, and bombed by Zeppelins.
V : I note you took “ages” working on HENRY TUDOR. How long is “ages” in the context of a sub-10 minute solve ?
Chambers gives OPPO only as “opposite number”, so rival seems fine, but like others on here I would only use it to describe a colleague, usually in a two person outfit.
I thought 22D was a nice reminder for next week’s Cheltenham Festival.
FOI OPPO
LOI APOSTROPHE
COD HARD-BOILED
TIME 10:39
If LV&Co take ten minutes to complete a puzzle that’s about twenty seconds to read, digest and process each clue, and then enter each answer.
If LV&Co gets down to five minutes, and add the odd biff, they will be at ten seconds per clue for this process.
Those with fat fingers on an iPad may require a tad longer.
Those in the finals have to finish three puzzles in one hour; that’s roughly a consistent 40 seconds per clue over an hour. Plenty of time.
(Mere mortals need at least 1 minute per clue to get to the finish line in thirty minutes.)
Tomorrow, take two print-outs of the grid – fill the first one in as per normal. This should take you anything from five minutes to an hour.
When you are done, simply copy one’s answers onto the second empty grid –
setting a stop watch or timer, whatever. Write quickly then note the time. (This assumes that only tree-ware is allowed at the Finals)
I did it recently and managed just under a leisurely three and a half minutes. At that speed, under normal circumstances, would make one eligible to win the Championship: except you already know the answers! (Cheating not allowed)
In the Verlaine World one can simultaneously read, digest, process and enter. And they all know how to spell everything, including minuscule!
I was at a final in Piccadilly many years ago when a young man (from Stockport?) finished and hurriedly walked off in around 3.40 mins.
However, he did not qualify as he forgot to put the middle letter in a three letter word down at the bottom right. The world’s greatest ever DNF!
I wish I could say, “I know that because I was that sailor.”….but I can’t.
I’m,like most of us, simply mortal.
Edited at 2019-03-08 01:43 pm (UTC)
Hence why I only scraped into the top 50 in my prelim last year.
And yes – the championship crosswords are 30 clues each
And no – neither was I that sailor.(too young…..)
Collins defines OPPO as ‘a counterpart in another organisation’, which is the way I’ve always used it. Such a person may be a rival in some circumstances and a collaborator in others.
25ac breaks the usual containment rule that you aren’t allowed extra words: from a wordplay point of view ‘Stortford’ is redundant. Of course Bishop’s Stortford is a lexical unit but it still struck me as a bit odd.
Add me to the list of people trying to construct an unknown figure from antiquity from (UNDER HORSE)*.
That “rule” applies to clues where the answer is “hidden” in a series of letters. All this clue is saying in that there is an apostrophe in Bishop’s Stortford.
FGBP
Anyway I don’t really mind it but it just struck me as odd.
Sometimes one can overanalyse these things 🙂
My crossword karma has been boosted by discovering that I won the prize for last Saturday’s 15×15, so now I get to go out with my vouchers and see what it is that WH Smith’s sell these days apart from huge chocolate bars.
Don’t get me going!
Some obscure definitions and answers today but all very fair and nothing too troubling. If I take Verlaine’s “nine and a half minutes” at utter face value, can I claim a rare triumph with my 9m 29.6s (by my stopwatch)?
🙂
The remaining 9 or 10 took me 9 minutes, around a minute each.
Go figure.
I put it all down to the previous evening writing a poem for a good friend who was leaving work for pastures new. Obviously drained my lexical pool/puddle somewhat.