ACROSS
1 Tree house in Italy needs a lot of care inside (7)
CASCARA – CASA needs CAR{e} inside. A North American buckthorn with laxative bark
5 Some backed cappuccino, some tea (5)
CUPPA – hidden reversed in {c}APPUC{cino}
9 Tea popular in several hotels? (5)
CHAIN – CHA IN [tea | popular]
10 See tsar perhaps cut by old upper-class — tough (9)
LABORIOUS – LA BORIS (Godunov?) “cut” by O U
11 Swell chaps replacing us in a month (7)
AUGMENT – AUG{us->MEN}T
12 At sea, repeat securing unknown yachtsman’s harness (7)
TRAPEZE – (REPEAT*) “securing” Z
13 I go in and start, somehow (10)
INSTIGATOR – (I GO IN + START*), &lit
15 Pasta shell abandoned by Russian wolfhound (4)
ORZO – {b}ORZO{i}
18 Puts on commercials on the radio (4)
ADDS – homophone of ADDS
20 Queen, regularly uneasy, thrilling as knights sought the Grail? (10)
QUESTINGLY – Q + U{n}E{a}S{y} + TINGLY
23 American native with a soft-soled shoe (7)
CREEPER – CREE [American native] with PER [a]. Gonna bet I’m not the only person who submitted this assuming that a “creeper” was just some kind of American bird
24 Note brave men with hearts dropping in remote islands (7)
FAEROES – FA + {h}EROES
25 Terribly nice mass, one inspired by Jesus? (9)
MESSIANIC – (NICE MASS*) “inspiring” I. Or possibly just (NICE MASS I*)
26 Wood resin running short (5)
BALSA – BALSA{m}
27 A divine cut in America is antelope (5)
ADDAX – A DD AX [a | divine | cut, in America]
28 Country set right after early euro trouble (7)
ECUADOR – R after ECU ADO
DOWN
1 Seaweed in lettuce? That will cause a stink (4,3)
COAL GAS – ALGA in COS
2 Plain type of hospital shoots up (8)
SANSERIF – SAN + reversed FIRES
3 Issue of voting system abandoned by British (5)
ALLOT – {b}ALLOT
4 Keenly targeting goal but I aim so badly (9)
AMBITIOUS – (BUT I AIM SO*)
5 Motor on old office machine used for meeting in town (6)
CARFAX – CAR on FAX. Easier for Old Oxonians who remember Carfax Cross from their college days
6 Developer surrounding unit with buttress (7)
PIONEER – PIER “surrounding” ONE
7 Way through area on Java? (5)
AISLE – A on ISLE
8 Nervous complaint: spies twitch it has introduced (8)
SCIATICA – CIA TIC, “introduced” into S.A. [it]
14 To the very end of August in Paris managed empty café (1,8)
A OUTRANCE – AOUT + RAN + C{af}E
16 Like a long journey? Yes, and so must get moving (8)
ODYSSEAN – (YES AND SO*)
17 I have grub, regularly entering red channel (5,3)
RIVER BED – I’VE {g}R{u}B, “entering” RED
19 Directed to drop advert put on clothing (7)
DRESSED – {ad}DRESSED
21 Small iceberg, one getting bigger outside loch (7)
GROWLER – GROWER “outside” L
22 Serious offence outside public house by puzzler (6)
SPHINX – SIN outside P.H. + X [by]
23 Butterfly order with no northern distribution initially (5)
COMMA – COMMA{n}{d}
24 Cape songbird down by new university (5)
FICHU – FI{n}CH + U. This is a cape as in a lacy thing worn by women covering the neck and throat
Was held up for a bit by GODAX for ADDAX and ARSTE for AISLE, otherwise no real head-scratchers.
Edited at 2021-01-15 12:55 am (UTC)
Congrats to setter on his/her milestone and thanks to verlaine
Edited at 2021-01-15 01:50 am (UTC)
Edited at 2021-01-15 09:37 am (UTC)
Either side of the FOUR there is CD, Roman numerals for 400.
All good crossword fun.
I loved this puzzle and was going to write a longer comment but just posting this for now.
Don
I think at 2D “type” needs to be underlined. SANSERIF is a “plain type(face)”
Edited at 2021-01-15 02:01 am (UTC)
I liked Cuppa and Sphinx.
My principal Carfax association is the eponymous chippie, still there I hope.
Thanks v, and setter.
Here in the US, Carfax means something entirely different – you could Google it, although since our distinguished blogger is now living here, he may have run across it.
A complex puzzle which a few clues belong in the IKEA wharehouse such as 21dn RIVER BED and 28ac ECUADOR
21dn Growler a small lettuce!? Anyone?
FOI 4db AMBITIOUS
(LOI) 14ac A OUTRANCE!!
COD 23dn COMMA without mention of punctuation, or yellow
WOD 24dn FICHU
Remember The Grauniad’s Island of San Serife?
Given that there were so many unknowns here I did rather well to come within two letters of completing the grid correctly. The unknowns were TRAPEZE as the yachtsman’s harness, ADDAX, A OUTRANCE (not very fair to require knowledge of French for both definition and wordplay), QUESTINGLY (!) and FICHU. But the one that did for me was ORZO where I NHO the pasta and would never in a million years have thought of {b}ORZO{i}from the definition ‘Russian wolfhound’.
Mystified by “see = LA” which I had to come here for, and wonder why I have never met it before in 55 years of solving cryptic puzzles. I see it’s in Chambers printed edition (not the free online version), and Collins on-line via Webster’s who state that it’s American English. Elsewhere Collins has LA as an interjection of surprise but does not mention ‘see’.
Edited at 2021-01-15 07:22 am (UTC)
CASCARA, ORZO, ADDAX, CARFAX, A OUTRANCE, COMMA and FICHU.
At least I had heard of CARFAX. There’s one in Horsham in Sussex.
And I also knew of Borzoi because we used to see a couple who bred Borzois whenever they walked their dogs around the grounds of a chateau in France at the same time as we walked ours.
No real COD. LOI was FICHU
Thanks verlaine and setter.
After 30 mins I had three left – the three that were impossible for me.
The setter wins.
Thanks, and V.
Great puzzle, all the unknowns, and there were a few, all gettable from the word play, here’s to the next hundred. Thanks V for the blog.
I loved this puzzle, because I love deducing unknown or unfamiliar (I did actually know most of them) words from wordplay. I didn’t find this one particularly hard, but I did need the wordplay for almost all the clues.
That said I have sympathy for anyone who hadn’t heard of ORZO because I’m certain I wouldn’t have deduced the answer from the dog. Other than that I thought the wordplay was fair.
So thank you very much setter and congratulations on the milestone.
Edited at 2021-01-15 11:04 am (UTC)
Edited at 2021-01-15 09:54 am (UTC)
Otherwise, some unheard-of words: FICHU, GROWLER (as iceberg), ADDAX, A OUTRANCE, but for each, the parsing was generous.
Was in Oxford back in August when we could all still move about freely, so CARFAX still relatively fresh in mind.
Lots of tricky vocab here that I didn’t know, so I was fortunate just to have one word wrong. CASCARA, A OUTRANCE, CREEPER, FICHU, GROWELER, CARFAX & ADDAX – just to prove that there are still more antelopes out there in crosswordland.
15m 37s with the error. Proper Friday stuff. Congrats to the setter on reaching 100!
I had a (post submit) slightly different parse for ECUADOR. I took it to be CURE=set right after putting E for euro at the beginning (early) containing ADO=trouble. It just about works I think.
I think I’ve seen SANSERIF as one word and a paucity of Ss before. But don’t quote me.
As for LA for see(!), I’d have thought that was pretty common, though I’d assumed it was with the French connection.
LOI: 15A: ORZO
I submitted thinking convincing myself that 1A would be CASSAVA (same reason as others before me). I have never heard of CASCARA, ADDAX or FICHU – so 3 incomplete/incorrect (6 pink squares). I struggled for a while trying to shoehorn KELP into COS, was unsure of both CARFAX (even though I’ve been up the tower in Oxford), and SANSERIF (as a single word) but trusted the wordplay.
Thank you, verlaine and the setter.
Not sure why DD means divine – is that Doctor of Divinity or Domini Deus?
(Designated Driver, apparently!).
Edited at 2021-01-15 12:35 pm (UTC)
Wasn’t too sure about the pasta shell. Is Borzoi perhaps capable of being spelt Borzoy?
Thanks setter and blogger- are you still stuck in the US or back to safer climes?
Excellent puzzle. Congratulations to setter and thanks to blogger
Considered all the traps before rejecting them ( cassava, cassata, loborious, audax et al ) and Carfax only known from its previous appearance in one of these puzzles. LOI FICHU.
I was expecting the green dream to hit the Friday buffers- but it didn’t ! 33’18”
There was lots I didn’t know and got wrong. CASTENA at 1a with Tend for Care. And many more.
I did not get FICHU and did not know that meaning; c’est fichu sums up my performance.
David
ADDAX I knew at the age of 5 from my precious book of mammals which I read every night. Still have it!
I thought this was an absolute cracker of a puzzle, and my only unknowns were TRAPEZE in a non-circus context, and A OUTRANCE (fortunately what’s left of my French vocabulary still extends to the calendar !)
Here’s to another DC puzzles to get the setter to the big M !
FOI CASCARA ( not in my CUPPA thanks !)
LOI LABORIOUS
COD ECUADOR
TIME 9:38
I filled in a bunch without crossers first and was thinking I was in for a fast solve, but nooooo… In retrospect, it seemed like there had been good handful of previous unknowns I had to construct from wordplay, but truly unknown were only CASCARA, ADDAX and that particular sense of TRAPEZE. Felt accomplished to finish, but missed the Nina (as always).
Edited at 2021-01-16 07:51 pm (UTC)
But I’m now a paranoid vetter
As I’m sure you have heard
A tree CREEPER’s a bird
So for five hundred try to do better!!!