This is rather harder than your average Monday, my time of 31:50, however, being inflated by some careless biffing at 1 down.
We have a bit of a weird clue at 20 down, but the biggest talking point is likely to be a couple of even odder clues at 13 across and 4 down, where an obscure term is seeking an even obscurer companion.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Problems exist over European exchange programme (7) |
| ERASMUS -reversal of SUMS (problems) ARE (exist); the Erasmus Programme (‘EuRopean Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students’) is an EU student exchange programme established in 1987 | |
| 5 | One holding a person’s hat by peak (6) |
| CAPTOR – CAP (hat) TOR (peak) | |
| 8 | Is girl able to take out competitor? (9) |
| CANDIDATE – CAN DI DATE (a fellow?); DATE = take out | |
| 9 | Complain doctor’s consuming alcohol (5) |
| GRUMP – RUM in GP; GRUMP can be a verb as well as a noun | |
| 11 | Fraud succeeded with one pair of unknowns (5) |
| SWIZZ – S (succeeded) W (with) 1 (one) ZZ (two mathematical unknowns) | |
| 12 | A large youth taking pint round for singer (9) |
| BALLADEER – A L LAD in BEER | |
| 13 | Your associate has perhaps initially put back bract (8) |
| PHYLLARY – reversal (put back) of YR (your) ALLY H[as] P[erhaps]; a bract (and thus a phyllary too) is ‘a specialized leaf, usually smaller than the foliage leaves, with a single flower or inflorescence growing in its axil’; all clear then… | |
| 15 | What to get after nine assembly toys for young one? (6) |
| KITTEN – I think the idea is that if you’ve already worked on nine, let’s say, Meccano kits, AKA ‘assembly toys’, then the next one will be ‘kit ten’; like all jokes, it loses a bit when you have to explain it. Unless, I suppose, it wasn’t very funny in the first place… | |
| 17 | Dilapidated horse-drawn carriage carrying two bishops (6) |
| SHABBY – BB in SHAY | |
| 19 | Crustacean caught with light line by angler, perhaps (8) |
| CRAYFISH – C (caught) RAY (light line) FISH (angler, perhaps); the angler, or anglerfish, or angler fish, lives at the bottom of the sea pondering issues such as why it has been given not only one confusing and rather dull name, but three of them | |
| 22 | Feature of Berg’s music composed almost in A (9) |
| ATONALISM – anagram* of ALMOST IN A; there are those who prefer Berg to, say, Rossini. I am not numbered among them | |
| 23 | Be anxious having wife in residence (5) |
| SWEAT – W in SEAT; ‘she was sweating over her exam results’ | |
| 24 | Mushroom used in kitchen Okinawa-style (5) |
| ENOKI – hidden; definitely sounds Japanesey enough for one of their mushrooms. I’m in a bit of a 50s/60s Japanese film mode at the moment: the 9-hour epic Human Condition trilogy is rather extraordinary in terms of the scalpel it takes to Japanese barbarism before, during and after WWII. | |
| 25 | Picture accepting a temperature disturbance for the country? (9) |
| PATRIOTIC – A T RIOT in PIC | |
| 26 | Day in NY? Yes, fantastic city (6) |
| SYDNEY -D in NY YES* | |
| 27 | Painter of heavenly figure (7) |
| RAPHAEL – double definition referencing the sublime Italian painter (1483-1520) and the archangel (sharing duties with Michael and Gabriel) | |
| DOWN | |
| 1 | Extra for packet? More than enough soup without seconds (6,7) |
| EXCESS POSTAGE – EXCESS (more than enough) S (seconds) in POTAGE (soup); excess postage is essentially the payment due from the addressee when insufficient stamps have been put on a letter or packet. I put first ‘excess luggage’, then ‘excess baggage’, each of which, unlike ‘excess postage’, has its own entry in Collins. | |
| 2 | Man in suit failing to start Yankee’s guaranteed payment (7) |
| ANNUITY – []AN [i]N [s]UIT Y (Yankee) | |
| 3 | Principal Zulu city (5) |
| MAINZ – MAIN Z; a place nearly always preceded by ‘Frankfurt und’; edit: or not! Actually, I was thinking of Frankfurt am Main, referencing the river on which the city is situated. I will continue not to Google everything (because I think it’s more fun) and occasionally I must pay the price! | |
| 4 | Dingy loos set up in Spitzbergen (8) |
| SVALBARD – reversal of DRAB (dingy) LAVS (loos); two names of a little known Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. | |
| 5 | Look up in native American language (6) |
| CREOLE -reversal of LO in CREE (native American) | |
| 6 | Fighting spirit of dog can upset it over years (9) |
| PUGNACITY -PUG (dog) reversal of CAN IT (from the clue) Y (years) | |
| 7 | Wealthy work fast after university (7) |
| OPULENT – OP U LENT (a period of fasting) | |
| 10 | Mum or dad morally correct raising Henry with qualifications (13) |
| PARENTHETICAL -PARENT (mum or dad) ET[h]ICAL (‘raising Henry’ indicates that the H has to go – just about); of course, the other, more prosaic, parsing, would be that the H in ETHICAL is moved up the target word a couple of spaces… | |
| 14 | One keeping books in balance fled having concealed one (9) |
| LIBRARIAN – LIBRA (balance) I in RAN (fled) | |
| 16 | Key runs under professional test champion (8) |
| PROMOTER – PRO (professional) MOT (test) TE (key) R (runs); ‘I wondered when you were going to notice that, Wilson!’: my third deliberate mistake of the blog is in making TE a key, when it is in fact something we have with with jam and bread. The key is obviously E, in which Mendelssohn famously wrote his Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Okay, okay – I Googled that.) | |
| 18 | Excuse a page on science (7) |
| APOLOGY – A P (page) OLOGY (a slang expression for a scientific or pseudo-scientific pursuit) | |
| 20 | Sloth in tree mostly climbing with another likewise (7) |
| INERTIA -I think this is how this works: IN reversal of TRE[e] (tree mostly climbing) reversal of AI, AKA the pale-throated sloth (‘another’ needs to refer to sloth and ‘likewise’ to climbing); if I’ve got this right, I can’t say I’m this clue’s biggest fan | |
| 21 | Small hint? Absolutely (6) |
| SIMPLY – S (small) IMPLY (hint) | |
| 23 | Be mean with male interrupting dance (5) |
| SKIMP – M in SKIP | |
No problems with Svalbard as I’ve been there but dnf on Phyllary and Sydney. Good puzzle though.
Well, I too found it a tad unfair, considering the use of (to me) most unheard of words like ERASMUS (the scheme), PHYLLARY (despite doing A-level Biology and knowing bract ) and SVALBARD. So a DNF for me, but all correct despite those clues. Oh and having log-forgotten the use of SWIZZ for fraud (playground usage?). Liked PARENTHETICAL ( because it was easy to deduce!) and ditto with BALLADEER ( my FOI). CAPTOR also deserves a mention, and INERTIA, with the vaguely remembered Ai sloth. Hope for more fun tomorrow.
If I wanted to learn something ide read a book. I enjoy the pleasure of solving something fair and square. You can forget that with this crap if your a mere mortal