All of the surfaces are perfect and to be honest this a virtuoso piece of setting across the board, with several clues that go above and beyond the normal levels of originality in their devices – this is Monthly Club Special level stuff. Bravo, nameless perpetrator, bravo. Plus as a lifelong Doctor Who fan, even despite recent provocations, 28ac as well as the TARDIS noise at 18dn tickled me pink. Best puzzle of the year for me so far I think and I’ll make almost all the clues by joint COD, apart from maybe 17ac which is a bit of an oldie and therefore somewhat self-descriptive.
Over to you lot then, what did you think?
ACROSS
1 Sets out with currency that’s been converted? (8)
EXPOUNDS – or, EX-POUNDS, as (British) currency that has been converted into something else, may be.
5 Pimp linking minister to a parliamentarian (6)
REVAMP – REV [minister] linked to A MP
10 Twice a year kid meets old cameraman (9)
PAPARAZZO – P.A. [a year, x2] + RAZZ [kid] meets O. FOI.
11 Back in Normandy: a Hungarian composer (5)
HAYDN – hidden reversed in {norma}NDY A H{ungarian}
12 First light sees one charmed by swan (4)
LEDA – L.E.D. A could be “first light”, in the same way that L.E.D. B would be “second light”, yes? One charmed by a swan that was actually Zeus, in Greek myth, that is.
13 Possible place for setter’s cryptic legend on back of book (3-6)
DOG-KENNEL – (LEGEND ON {boo}K*)
15 Mormon wandering in valley briefly finds place of rest (6,4)
COMMON ROOM – (MORMON*) in COOM{b}
17 Dodgy moment, not the first (4)
IFFY – {j}IFFY
19 Colour dry clothing with it (4)
TINT – TT [dry] “clothing” IN [with it]
20 Sudden change for American humorist into small red jumper (10)
SWITCHEROO – WIT [humorist] into S CHE ROO [small | red | jumper]
22 Was glitchy volume increased on a good day? (9)
HICCUPPED – CC [= cubic centimetre = volume] UPPED, on HI! [a good day (to you)]
24 Always apparently packing an extra five in a single square container (4)
EWER – EVER is always. Its second square contains a V or five – if you squished another V into that square it might look like more like EWER than EVER!
26 Logo for channel that is reversing its polarity? (5)
IDENT – ID EST, its S{outh} flipping to N{orth}.
27 Rude Finns could make enemies (9)
UNFRIENDS – (RUDE FINNS*). Though everyone knows that the actual, real-world usage of this word is as in “snubs on Facebook”.
28 Feisty female to play Doctor Who, at last, enters (6)
TOMBOY – TOY [to play], entered by MB {who}O. The Jodie Whittaker era is… not yet good, but it’s better than last year, so that’s something!
29 True stories about river fronts producing algae (8)
SARGASSO – SO [true], “fronted” by SAGAS “about” R
DOWN
1 Finally, time is up, by clock (4)
ESPY – {tim}E {i}S {u}P {b}Y
2 Sweet Dot given fresh flower (10,5)
PEPPERMINT CREAM – PEPPER [dot], given MINT [fresh] + CREAM [flower (as in, the best of)]
3 Madness, having uranium near each child (8)
UNREASON – U NR EA SON [uranium | near | each | child]
4 Dropped off note and final letter (5)
DOZED – DO [note] and ZED
6 Did second check in English dictionary (6)
ECHOED – CH in E O.E.D.
7 Summons requesting company to go to court? (6,3,6)
ANYONE FOR TENNIS – cryptic def, simply a tennis court rather than a legal one.
8 Fine strike that’s spotted in football field (7,3)
PENALTY BOX – PENALTY [fine] + BOX [strike]. I assume the penalty box is spotted because it has a penalty spot? But my grasp of the beautiful game is notoriously shaky.
9 See books covering county’s missing years? (4-4)
LONG-LOST – LO N.T. “covering” GLOS. LOI
14 Repeatedly cold, this most unconventionally fine shower! (6,4)
SCOTCH MIST – (C C THIS MOST*) [“unconventionally”]
16 Fixing undiluted drink, suddenly left, upset (8)
RAWLPLUG – RAW [undiluted] + reversed GULP L [drink suddenly | left]. This unusual and deceptively defined word took me AGES to crack.
18 Moan endlessly about tablets for hearing and breathing problem? (8)
WHEEZING – WHING{e} “about” a homophone of E’S [tablets (which’re good, according to The Shamen)]
21 Neat, I agree (4,2)
JUST SO – double def
23 Government department do: couple in the end have left (5)
DEFRA – DEFRA{ud} [do], minus its last two letters. What did my American compatriots made of this rather parochial reference to the British Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs?
25 Capital letters, initially and finally, turning up in ciphers (4)
OSLO – L{etter}S, reversed inside O O [(two) ciphers]
But I’d already given up and used an aid to find RAWLPLUG. RAWLPLUG?! Rawly?!
Never heard of PEPPERMINT CREAM, tried …PATTY, …CANDY…, even …CANES.
IDENT? I dent git it.
“Enemies” is a funky definition for UNFRIENDS; “makes enemies” would make more sense, with the answer as a verb, but then “makes” would be doing double duty.
Liked the rest of it well enough.
Edited at 2020-02-14 04:51 am (UTC)
I was very pleased to get through this in exactly an hour with almost everything understood (see above) but lack of detailed knowledge of soccer let me down as I never brought PENALTY BOX to mind. I knew the term ‘penalty spot’ but a) it wouldn’t fit, and b) ‘spotted’ was in the clue, so I settled for the nearest equivalent and went for PENALTY DOT, since ‘dot’ is absolutely fine for ‘strike’ in the sense of ‘hit’. I was focused on the actual placing of the ball rather than the wider area in front of a goal, but unfortunately my solution doesn’t seem to exist.
DK RAZZ but my guess that it could mean ‘kid’ in the sense of ‘tease’ turned out to be correct. DK SARGASSO as algae but knew of the Sargasso Sea so bunged it in and hoped for the best.
The most satisfying moments were understanding how EWER worked and remembering LEDA and her swan. I’m sure she has come up here very recently but searching revealed nothing later than December 2018.
The newly formed DEFRA was part of my remit for a while when I worked for the Civil Service, so no problems with that one.
Edited at 2020-02-14 06:15 am (UTC)
Edited at 2020-02-14 06:19 am (UTC)
pimp – make (a thing, esp. a car) more showy or impressive. Freq. foll. by up, out. slang. E21.
Edited at 2020-02-14 06:28 am (UTC)
Still, I am quite chuffed. Yesterday I successfully completed the cryptic in under 3 Verlaines. Today, with one error, it was just about 3 Verlaines. My norm is a minimum of 5 Vs.
There’s been some discussion recently about product placement in the cryptic and today we have RAWLPLUG which is a trademark.
Many explanations to thank Verlaine for; among them were TOMBOY, PEPPERMINT CREAM, SWITCHEROO and DEFRA. With SWITCHEROO, I saw ‘American humourist’ and tried to fit Thurber in there somewhere!
No real COD as there were so many good ones, as Verlaine has said but I’ll go for EWER because it fooled me.
You could “trick out” your ride instead but I’m not sure tricks are that much classier than pimps.
I was actually pleased to complete as much as I did correctly with RAWLPLUG and LONG LOST in particular holding me up. Thanks to the setter for a great puzzle and Verlaine for helping to make sense of it.
I do get Leda confused with Leto I have to say.
Enjoyed this all the way through, from FOI 5a REVAMP (personally I was a fan of Pimp My Ride take-off website “Pimp That Snack”, which produced such things as Twiglets the size of a French stick) to LOI 26 IDENT, which took me longer as I was thinking the polarity switch was probably L to R or vice versa; the reality was actually more sensible.
COD 24a EWER, with 4d DOZED in second place. WOD IFFY. Glad I know that I don’t know how to spell PAPARAZZO so followed the WP. Lots to enjoy along the way. Thanks to V. for explaining a couple of bits of parsing I couldn’t see at the time, like the SO of SARGASSO…
Edited at 2020-02-14 08:26 am (UTC)
Edited at 2020-02-14 08:35 am (UTC)
I remember peppermint cream: absurdly sweet, yucky and expensive.
Would have been twenty minutes 🙁
Thanks Verlaine and setter.
I seem to recall people (out there, not here, I should stress) getting huffy about “unfriend” being a word when Facebook made it popular, and being politely schooled by the Susie Dents of this world, so that was a usage which came back to me readily enough. And I’ve never seen an episode of ‘Pimp My Ride’, but knew the phrase, so it’s clearly achieved some sort of cultural resonance. Also, I don’t necessarily want all my puzzles to be self-consciously modern and down with the kids, but it’s refreshing to be at the opposite end of the spectrum to a world where TREE=actor…
THanks v.
In the case of DEFRA I was fairly confident it must be the answer, but I couldn’t think of a DEFRA?? meaning ‘do’. For SARGASSO I had no idea it was algae – I’ve only come across the Wide Sargasso Sea, and ‘come across’ is generous there – and convinced myself that ‘true stories’ = BIOGS, with ‘bio’ a promising start for a word defining algae.
I was also an EXER, which now I understand it is a great clue.
Oh dear!
P.S. In your intro Verlaine you mean 17A not D.
I spent several minutes at the end trying to justify SARGASSO: I didn’t know it was a type of seaweed and the wordplay is fiendish. Very satisfying to finally figure it out and enter the answer with complete confidence. There was a lot of that in this puzzle.
Bravo and thanks to the setter!
Edited at 2020-02-14 01:01 pm (UTC)
PENALTY BOX, RAWLPLUG, DEFRA, ANYONE FOR TENNIS (Jolly hockey sticks etc) and Fry’s PEPERMINT CREAMs (A National indulgence – now from Cadbury?) or even Bendick’s if you have the dosh! They have or had the Royal Warrant for Peppermint Creams!
I was home in about 50 mins RAWLPLUG and all. A long time since I got to grips with one of them!
FOI 11ac HAYDN
LOI 1dn ESPY
COD 10ac PARARAZZO but not difficult
WOD 16dn RAWLPLUG
Is Basil Brush dead!?
Edited at 2020-02-14 01:21 pm (UTC)
A certain song by Cream might help a little….
Do you remember Fry’s ‘Five Boys’ (Wow!), Orange Creams and the Green (Spearmint?) Peppermint Cream as well – I can’t remember what the latter were called. Loved ’em all and Bertie Bassett’s Allsorts. Crunchies….
Rawlings Brothers, a small plumbing and electrical engineering company, was founded in 1887 in London. In 1910, the company was awarded a contract by the British Museum, which required them to unobtrusively fix electrical fittings to the museum walls. The contract led to the invention and patenting of the world’s first wall plug, which became a standard solution for attaching things to walls.
Edited at 2020-02-14 04:38 pm (UTC)
I didn’t know LEDA (guessed it was someone in Swan Lake) or RAZZ.
In 2d does mint = fresh in the sense of mint condition (rather than toothpaste-speak)?
Kudos to the setter.
Quite a few clues came quickly,including REVAMP as we used to watch Pimp My Ride when the children were at home. I really struggled with 8d and rejected Penalty Box as it is marked by lines; only the penalty spot is a spot. I had Penalty Hit (possibly a hockey term) and then wondered where the football fitted (unless Spotted = Seen).
And of course I had EVER.
David
Tricky puzzle, but fun.
Thanks to V for also unravelling SIX other clues that left me on Planet Zog. Not my cup of tea.
8D – Penalty Box. But it is surely called the Penalty Area by most soccer players? The smaller rectangle right in front of the goal is I think sometimes called the Six Yard Box, and is what the coach is referring to when he screams from the touchline “Get it in the box!”. But I have not heard the larger 18 yard rectangle called a box.
Cedric
Some official guidelines. ‘Within each penalty box is a smaller rectangular box that extends 6 yards out from the goal line.’
I played for Stockport Co. My uncle for York City FC.
Are you outside your area!?
Edited at 2020-02-14 04:53 pm (UTC)
Only 3 years in Cheshire/Manchester. I’m a Yellow Belly who worked in London from 1970-1996.
Also you will hear the expression ‘a box to box player’ –
Notable examples of ‘box-to-box MIDFIELDERS’ are Roy Keene Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard, Antonio Conte, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Yaya Touré, Arturo Vidal, Patrick Vieira, Radja Nainggolan, Daniele De Rossi, and Aaron Ramsey.
Having said that this was undoubtedly a beast and the editor scheduled it on a Friday so 🤷.
Edited at 2020-02-14 06:50 pm (UTC)
He does keep forgetting to tell us when Championship Qualifiers are being featured – and today he allowed RAWLPLUG to plug their wares! Whatever next!?