A pleasant workout with a nice balance of wordplay types. I solved it quite quickly but then faced creating my first blog from the “new improved” format. The new style may suit on-phone solvers but it certainly doesn’t suit me – an unnecessary and retrograde step in my opinion. Also the format no longer allows bloggers like me to use a javascript to create a ready-to-use blog template. It took me an hour or more of faffing about with old blogs, cut and paste, and re-typing from scratch, to produce this, and I’m still not 100% satisfied with the formatting. Hopefully someone will re-write the java, else I might lose the will to continue after 12 years of Wednesdays.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
Across
1 Stone dry in middle of deep lab drawer (7)
PIPETTE – PIP (stone), TT (dry) inside [d]EE[p]. Is a pipette a smaller version of your blogger?
5 Career police officers returned for drink (7)
SIDECAR – all reversed, RACE (career) DI’S police officers).
9 Register regulars in cohort on river catching cold (9)
CHRONICLE – C[o]H[o]R[t] O[n], NILE with C inserted.
10 Divine food articles with one reflecting on end of veganism (5)
MANNA – AN, AN reversed, on end of veganisM.
11 Navy paper general inscribes (3)
FLEET – FT (the pink paper) with General LEE inserted.
12 100 per cent of lotion’s lost in distribution (9)
ALLOTMENT – ALL (100%), OINTMENT with IN removed.
13 Dire prospects affected group’s solidarity (6,2,5)
ESPRIT DE CORPS – (DIRE PROSPECTS)*.
17 Aristocrat bored by withdrawn assistant medic (13)
PAEDIATRICIAN – PATRICIAN with AIDE reversed inserted.
21 Different females keeping record dated in pen (9)
SHEEPFOLD – SHE, F (different females), insert EP (that record again) add OLD = dated.
24 Enthral experienced scientific institute member? (5)
RIVET – an RI VET could be an old member of the Royal Institution.
25 Vessel on lake is broad and slow (5)
LARGO – L[ake], ARGO Jason’s vessel.
26 Quarter of spruce trees flourished (9)
TRIMESTER – TRIM = spruce, (TREES)*.
27 Outstanding second romance colonist devours (7)
SALIENT – S (second) ANT (colonist), insert LIE for romance. How does lie equal romance? Both fiction?
28 Cook close to breaking sieve (7)
GRIDDLE – [breakin]G. RIDDLE = sieve.
Down
1 Still reward nurses Charlie provided (6)
PACIFY – PAY (reward) has C, IF inserted.
2 Keep going over part of Sister Eve’s repertoire (9)
PERSEVERE – reversed hidden word.
3 Worn item of leather crowning king spinning toy (4,3)
TANK TOP – TAN (leather, beat), K, TOP a spinning toy.
4 Reminder backing musician needs piano for service (9)
EUCHARIST – CUE reversed, HAR[p]IST.
5 Term read labouriously letter by letter (5)
SPELL – double definition.
6 Show of protest jerk makes popular (7)
DEMOTIC – DEMO (show of protest) TIC (jerk).
7 Craft store’s focus is encapsulated by wicker (5)
CANOE – CANE (wicker) with O the “focus” of store inserted.
8 Assessed spin of wheels manufactured at Dorset (4,4)
ROAD TEST – anagram of AT DORSET.
14 Snake tailing delta fish reducing in number (9)
DWINDLING – D (delta) WIND (snake) LING (fish).
15 Did up tank Feds uncovered south of city (9)
RENOVATED – RENO (a city in USA) VAT (tank) [f]ED[s].
16 New split within diocese about Paulinian missives? (8)
EPISTLES – SEE (diocese) reversed = EES, insert (SPLIT)*. I don’t see why there’s a query mark.
18 Get better unscripted comedy on tablet (7)
IMPROVE- well, IMPROV can mean unscripted comedy, perhaps, and E is our tablet. I messed about with IMPROVISE altered in some way, but it isn’t that.
19 National Rail is struggling to save energy (7)
ISRAELI – (RAIL IS)* with E inserted.
20 Deprive Soviet periodically fed by sailor (6)
STARVE – S[o]V[i]E[t with TAR for sailor inserted..
22 Opposing players finally offer to school recruit (5)
ENROL – E, N (opposing players at bridge) R O L ending letters of offer to school.
23 Composition and the like written up in books (5)
OCTET – ETC (and the like) reversed = CTE, inside OT = books.
28.20
Felt I was a bit slow to some of this but so what. Some very nice clues (SIDECAR my favourite). Thanks Pip and setter.
It took me some time to get into this one -initially I had but three answers. ESPRIT DE CORPS opened things up nicely though. I realised DE was the only combination of two letters that made sense, which made the answer a write-in. SHEEPFOLD was also fairly quick to occur to me. My last area was at the top, with ALLOTMENT, SPELL, SIDECAR, CANOE and EUCHARIST very slow to come. Of course I thought of SPELL right at the start, but failed to see the connection with term. So a full set of quick and 15×15 this week so far, but often unable to comment due to Error 500.
31.25 Quicker than the last two days but it felt harder with much tricky parsing. I never figured out the EN in ENROL. Thanks piquet.
All done in 33 minutes. Not my favourite kind of puzzle as too many of the answers were biffed while the parsing remained elusive. I am looking at you, EUCHARIST, RIVET, and RENOVATED. MER at ROMANCE = LIE, but I see dictionarial authority has been quoted to support this.
FOI – MANNA
LOI – PIPETTE
COD – ISRAELI, for the misdirection
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
More importantly, my mother (see above).
Found this a bit of a slog with some rather laboured clueing. Hope tomorrow’s is more satisfying.
40:40 Only filled in a couple on first pass through the acrosses and thought it was going to be really tough, but proved a steady solve thence.
34:30
I took ages on 17a, since I assumed the aristocrat would be a PEER – I forgot about PATRICIAN.
COD ALLOTMENT.
LOI EUCHARIST.
Thanks piquet and setter
Woohoo, a rare finish and 21:38 to boot. Couldn’t parse RIVET though, and assumed there was a river Ile. There are so many rivers, after all.
Many thanks Piquet, and comradely sympathy for the demise of our JavaScript template 😢
It’s tomorrow for most of you as I write but thought I’d check in with my (not much) progress with the Big Guy. Not enough time for this yesterday or today and had to leave both of them about 70% done. Really enjoyed quite a few of the clues, favorite was EUCHARIST, and also, looking at the blogs, thought “oh I never would have thought of that”. Like old times with the QC.
Thanks setters and bloggers.
Started off badly by not having a clue about 1a : thought I was looking for a gemstone, so wildly off the game there. Then heartened by getting CHRONICLE by strict adherence to the wordplay, as well as MANNA. Never fathomed the medic, and having DECLINING instead of DWINDLING for an age didn’t help. Had to lookup the SHEEPFOLD, the medic and the lab equipment. But enjoyed the challenge.