I’ve expatiated more than usual in the clue-parsings so I’ll keep the preamble brief for once! My thanks to the setter for a great Bertrand (if I may be permitted to coin a CRS?)
ACROSS
1 On which knives may be drawn in both Lancashire and Yorkshire? (11)
CHEESEBOARD – we begin with a cryptic def, nothing to do with the Wars of the Roses, Lancashire and Yorkshire here being two types of cheese, succumbing to the diner’s eager cuts.
7 Pulse of boy after being knocked over (3)
DAL – LAD reversed. My FOI.
9 Lug case left by old president (5-4)
SHELL-LIKE. SHELL L by IKE [case | left | old president]. “A word in your shell-like”, as our American friends probably have never heard anyone say.
10 Loot regularly hidden by idiot Egyptian resident? (5)
NILOT – L{o}O{t} “hidden” by NIT
11 Contribution towards ultra-cheap passage (7)
TRACHEA – hidden in {ul}TRA-CHEA{p}
12 Poor Muslim is on diesel — hospital needed (7)
DERVISH – IS on DERV, with an added H. Do all dervishes have to whirl or is that just an option for them?
13 Secret initially suppressed in public (5)
OVERT – {c}OVERT with its block knocked off.
15 Persistent girl stuffing shelled crustacean (9)
OBSTINATE – TINA “stuffing” {l}OBSTE{r}, which is a nice wordplay spot by the setter.
17 £25 includes charges for returning minute new handle? (9)
PSEUDONYM – PONY [twenty-five nicker] “includes” reversed DUES [charges] + M
19 Board’s strategy number eleven? (5)
PLANK – ENID, the other other day, left me wise to this clue’s game. “PLAN K” would be strategy number eleven in an alphabetised list, and probably rubbish, if it came From Outer Space.
20 Regulars in shore leave getting blotto in port (2,5)
LE HAVRE – ({s}H{o}R{e} LEAVE*) [“getting blotto”]
22 Bound dictionary with half-ruined contents (7)
OBLIGED – OED [dictionary] “containing” BLIG{hted}. LOI, on a prayer, as I didn’t see how BLIG was half-ruined until just now, in fact.
24 Senior Cockney grabbed that girl (5)
ELDER – or ‘ELD ‘ER, back in Laandon Taan.
25 Upped sticks in ground by unopened house (9)
EMIGRATED – GRATED [ground] by {s}EMI
27 Pooh’s chum moving his tail down (3)
LOW – I think of Pooh’s chum as WOL but in fact it is OWL who must move his “tail” to make a word for what Eeyore usually is. Confusing!
28 Girls gee you up flagrantly (11)
EGREGIOUSLY – (GIRLS GEE YOU*) [“up”]
DOWN
1 A function that begins explanation informally? (3)
COS – as in COSINE, double def with ‘COS as in BECAUSE.
2 Servants in attendance extremely upset, as behind procedure? (5)
ENEMA – MEN [servants] in A{ttendanc}E, the whole reverse. A procedure enacted upon one’s bum, posterior or derriere.
3 Kind husband has brooded about one coming down on the head at Eton once? (4,3)
SILK HAT – ILK H [kind | husband] has SAT [brooded] “about”. The toffs are back in power for the foreseeable, I hear, so it’s silk hats all round I guess. My icon cannot help but approve.
4 Musical gear having trouble within a short radius? (9)
BRIGADOON – RIG + ADO [gear | trouble] within BON{e}. Again this had to be the answer, but I only just worked out that it was a bony radius I was looking for; my initial sluggish thought process only extended as far as BOUND, to which BON{d} was probably close enough.
5 Correct interpretation of noon? (5)
AMEND – noon is, pun-tastically, A.M. END (and P.M. START)
6 Old coins from revolutionary republic found in improvised explosive device (7)
DENARII – IRAN [republic] found in IED, the whole reversed. But you didn’t really need to bother working any of that out given the crossers and the “old coins” definition.
7 First Buddhist artist to capture a creature, reportedly (5,4)
DALAI LAMA – DALI [artist] “to capture” A, + homophone of LLAMA in some pronunciations.
8 Minor issue not admitted during working hours (8,3)
LATCHKEY KID – a nice cryptic def. Latchkey kids have to let themselves in while the ‘rents are at work.
11 Promote lie when spinning large media illusion (6-5)
TROMPE-L’OEIL – (PROMOTE LIE*) [“spinning”] + L. I’m listening to the Pixies album Trompe le Monde right now in this clue’s honour.
14 War paint certainly used in English borders — a form of woad (3,6)
EYE SHADOW – YES [certainly], “bordered” by E{nglis}H + (WOAD*) [“a form of…”]. I didn’t bother to parse this when I saw the first word must be E_E, frankly.
16 Gossiping fool with zero vitality (9)
SHMOOZING – SHMO + O ZING [fool | zero | vitality]. I feel like I might have seen a clue very like this one recently? It would have been harder if I hadn’t, especially as I would spell both SCHMOOZE and SCHMO with a “C” personally.
18 Differ over making unlimited contribution to sad song (7)
DIVERGE – {o}VE{r} “contributing” to DIRGE
19 Port or beer in school dance with a twist at the end (7)
PALERMO – ALE [beer] in PROM [school dance], but “twisted at the end” into PRMO.
21 King Edward fencing short, timid eastern ruler (5)
EMEER – ER [King Edward] “fencing” MEE{k} [“short” timid]. Not a word you see often, except in crosswords, where it should spring to mind quite readily with a bit of experience.
23 Mum has to dress up some gloomy youth? (5)
GOTHS – SH + TOG [mum | to dress], all reversed. My early-90s self feels personally attacked by this clue.
26 Tory hard-liner is dirty, having lost it after split (3)
DRY – D{i}R{t}Y, losing IT, but non-consecutively. As opposed to WETS, who will presumably have been purged along with the non-silk hats now that Bostin Boris reigns supreme!
I’ve always liked the word EGREGIOUSLY for some reason and prefer to see my children as persistent rather than OBSTINATE (and, no, I have no idea where they get that trait from…).
Thanks, V, for the early and informative blog. And to the setter for a crossword up my alley.
According to my normal authoritative sources (aka Wikipedia) dervishes do not, however, need to whirl but can attain an ecstatic state in other ways.
It is important to understand the difference between a schmo, a shmo, and a shmoo – I would suggest careful research, if you don’t want to bother biffing the obvious answer.
Edited at 2020-01-04 04:47 am (UTC)
Didn’t know the French phrase (unlike the French port), despite attempting to pick up arty stuff when reading Powell’s Dance to Music of Time and Ruskin’s Modern Painters.
He did the same thing in his real autobiography – evidently, in his world, women and children took second place to meetings with literary eccentrics in London pubs.
Not sure about ‘brooded / sat’.
MER at Yorkshire as a cheese because as far as I’m aware it doesn’t exist as such (unlike Lancashire), although there are of course many fine cheeses such as Wensleydale that come from the county.
Edited at 2020-01-03 06:18 am (UTC)
* that said, you don’t have to visit too many Yorkshire shops & markets to find “Yorkshire” just about everything, including tea, curry, beetroot, relish etc. etc.
Yorkshire Tea is better known, but not to my taste!(from the Pontefract Plantations).. I adore rhubarb which is off the menu these days in Shangers.
75 mins and DNF as I daftly, rather then deftly, popped in NULOT at 10ac! Owch!
FOI 7ac DAL
LOI 2dn ENEMA
COD 11dn TROMPE L’OEIL NB the works of Richard Chopping on the original Bond books.
WOD 8dn LATCHKEY KID – I wasn’t one
Edited at 2020-01-03 08:08 pm (UTC)
I particularly liked the surface for the well hidden TRACHEA but COD has to go to ENEMA for being defined as ‘behind procedure’. Oo-er missus!
MER at ‘Yorkshire’ for cheese.
As v says the recent appearance of, and discussion about, DIN E helped me with PLAN K.
I have never associated DERVISHes with poverty but then like others I’ve never associated them with anything other than whirling.
Edited at 2020-01-03 11:59 am (UTC)
Edited at 2020-01-03 10:20 am (UTC)
Finally, back at the start, I worked out that 1d wasn’t EXP and what a SILK HAT must be, saw the CHEESEBOARD from Lancashire alone, and got BRIGADOON surprisingly quickly, possibly from a discussion of The Waterboys during the party season. LOI AMEND, where I just biffed it and didn’t spot the parsing before I came here…
Not exactly the triumphant return to solving after the holidays I’d hoped for, at least it wasn’t a DNF! Hope everyone had a good break.
I liked LATCHKEY KID, ‘some gloomy youth’ and the ‘behind procedure?’. Ha-ha.
There’s a famous picture of “toffs and toughs” to illustrate the silk hat thing, though I believe they’re Harrovians, not Etonians. Probably now replaced in the public consciousness by the Moggy.
I thought the whole point about LATCHKEY KIDS was that their latch key granted admission to the home while parents were working, though of course the chatterati disapproved.
SHMOOZING was my last in: for a long time, my fool was a simp, creating the almost credible art of elevated gossiping to be known as simposing, even better with a Y.
Yorkshire’s pudding, terrier, tea or pig, but cheese? Hm.
Edited at 2020-01-03 08:54 pm (UTC)
Brigadoon gets an honourable mention by Gareth in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. “It’s Brigadoon! It’s Bloody Brigadoon!”
COD: LATCHKEY KID.
Edited at 2020-01-03 11:00 am (UTC)
Of cheeses and schmoozing, I’ve already commented earlier. I knew NILOTIC, so cutting off the end was natural enough.
I also didn’t know the abbreviation IED, but parsed DENARII and GOTHS afterwards.
FOI DAL
LOI GOTHS
COD ENEMA
TIME 13:32
On the plus side I was faster than I might previously have been at starting to think of foreign words when confronted with the unlikely L?E?L.
First definition of ‘schmooze’ in Collins is ‘to chat or gossip’. In Chambers it’s ‘to gossip, to chat in a friendly or intimate manner’.
Edited at 2020-01-03 05:44 pm (UTC)
I was also slightly thrown by SHMOOZING and EMEER, neither of which I’d’ve spelled that way. Frankly, I think it’s high time we wrote a strongly-worded letter to all these other nations and asked them to decide on one spelling and then stick to it. Poppadoms, djinns and doners (as in kebabs) are all in urgent need of the application of British Standards.