It took me 23.21 of rather piecemeal, butterfly solving, though I also didn’t submit until I was confident that all was safely gathered in. Here’s how the plot unravelled
Across
1 ROBUST Strong
Half of RO(om) and BUST for broken. a gentle start
4 PINCHING theft
N(ew) and CHIN as a (facial) feature contained within a PIG. Yes, I did try to make RUSTLING fit the wordplay.
10 COCHINEAL Colouring
It’s the one I can name because it’s delightfully still made from the body and eggs of the cochineal insect, which appeals to the schoolboy in me. Our setter helps us with the spelling by saying it’s COAL (a sort of black) round CHINE, A cut of meat.
11 STAIR this part of the case
A homophone which really does sound like: STARE for look. I thought the use of “case” on its own was perfectly fair.
12 PAS dance movement
A PAS is a step or series of steps especially in ballet. I think its just knock the end of PAS(t), because not quite finished usually means just that, but I also thought PASSÉE might just be possible.
13 FRANCOPHONE Having a particular language
In this case, French. The distance of history allows us (me anyway) to laugh out loud at the telephone for communicating with the former Spanish dictator. 913 761 500 is the current number of his official residence, the Palacio Real De El Pardo, should you wish to try. Mucha mierda!
14 MALAWI state
Young girl is MAID, knock the end of and wrap around LAW for rule for “The Warm Heart of Africa”
16 PRICKLE spine
A slightly flesh creepy clue (needles have that effect on me). Last of lumbar just gives R, and PICKLE is the difficulty it “punctures”.
19 LIE DOWN to rest
An assembly of LIED (song in German) and own for have.
20 ROTATE turn
RE is crossword (and Latin from in re, in the matter of) for about, and you insert a peeled (p)OTAT(o)
22 DISINCLINED Not keen
Which could also mean, English being the gloriously malleable language that it is, to “take the incline out of” or set upright, just as the setter says.
25 ICE sweet!
Regularly sourced from InChEs
26 EMOTE Show feelings
I loved the notion of an ETOME, adding weight to an essentially ethereal publication
27 SLINGBACK footwear
If you contemptuously refuse something, you might sling it back.
28 SOLITUDE in this, they miss the company
TU, Trades Union, are the workers, except when they’re not. Insert into SOLID for firm and add a final E from (retir)E
29 COME IN Enter
H(usband) and W(ife) go AWOL from CHOW MEIN
Down
1 RECIPE formula
E(uropean) inside a rearrangement of PRICE.
2 BACKSPACE key
Here’s the cricket one. What does a cricket captain do if he doesn’t trust the spin (bowlers)? Why, he backs pace.
3 STIFF Formal, body
So a double definition
5 IN LOCO PARENTIS Teacher may be…
An anagram af the delightful APRICOTS ONLINE
6 CASHPOINT pay here
Though I would have thought it’s more likely get cash out here. Divide the clue carefully, it’s a (new) letter mix of SHOP I with CAN’T for “am unable to” surrounding
7 IMAGO Fully developed adult
The final (pre squish) form of (usually) an insect. If I have my computing right, bits are either 1 or 0. they embrace a MAG or publication
8 GARDENER Domestic
In Shakespeare’s As You Like IT the scene is set in the Forest of Arden, where a G(ood) forester might be a G(ood) ARDEN-ER. Oooh suit yourself.
9 RENATIONALISED Given new ownership
My LOI, because I wanted to be sure of that first letter. RATIONALISED for “made more efficient” and EN(d) retained near the beginning.
15 ADORNMENT Trimming
R(oyal) N(avy) MEN (personnel) get into A DOT
17 KITTIWAKE Winger
Appeared a mere 16 days ago in 25905, so those of you who had to look it up then have a simple test of how quickly memory fades. This time the KIT is clued with gear, the TI with it turned up and the WAKE with wash.
18 GLADDENS cheers!
Lost time trying to remember Gaelic toasts like slàinte, without conspicuous success. It’s not a toast. Add ADD to the GLENS.
21 WELKIN Heavens
I don’t think I’ve come across this outside Christmas carols and folk songs, and always in the context of making the welkin ring, making a lot of cheerful noise. The wordplay gives it to the unacquainted with a simple WIN around ELK, though I dare say you could try some other large animals.
23 SPOIL Earth dumped round top of pit
A neat little &lit. The wordplay version gives SOIL for earth around the top of P(it)
24 DOGGO so as not to be seen
Please move gives DO GO, which is placed round the G at the back of staginG.
I was amused by the ‘francophone’, it sounds like something M1 would have rigged up in Gibraltar during the war.
Worst of all, I needed all those checkers in place to get the cricket reference. Of all the areas in which I lack knowledge, cricket is where I lack the least. And this clue actually required a rudimentary knowledge of the game! Put it down to a bad day.
As for captains who don’t trust spinners, don’t get me started. And it’s getting worse with big bats, small boundaries, top edges going for six, mutter, mutter….I said not to get me started.
Well played setter and blogger. Solver, not so much.
It’s either one thing or another….
I raised an eyebrow at CASHPOINT as a place where money is spent, rather than acquired – surely you pay at a cash desk, I thought, possibly with money you’ve taken out of a cashpoint. It came as no surprise to find that Chambers backs up both meanings where other dictionaries don’t.
Fortunately for the cricket reference I read an article only last week on different styles of bowling following another clue which referred to spin as being slow, something I hadn’t known previously. And the week before I watched Simon Callow’s “Life of Shakespeare” which mentioned the forest of Arden near Stratford so that was in my mind too. STAIR was my last one to fall.
Of course in the days of Warne and McGrath, the decision to trust spin or back pace came down to whether you wanted to finish in time to play nine holes or eighteen.
Z8, if you haven’t come across WELKIN outside the contexts you mention it can only have been through a conscious effort to avoid Shakespeare. One example sticks in my mind on account of having to learn it for a school play many years ago:
I may not be remembering all of that accurately.
Edited at 2014-10-16 08:50 am (UTC)
Enter a Messenger]
Thou comest to use thy tongue; thy story quickly.
Messenger Gracious my lord,
I should report that which I say I saw,
But know not how to do it.
MACBETH Well, say, sir.
Messenger As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look’d toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.
MACBETH Liar and slave!
Messenger Let me endure your wrath, if’t be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.
MACBETH Should have gone to Specsavers.
Google throws up examples of WELKIN in The Tempest, MSND, Love’s Labours Lost, Titus Andronicus, Henry IV Part II, Twelfth Night… so I’m sure you must have heard it before. Not that there’s any particular reason to remember it.
Edited at 2014-10-16 10:43 am (UTC)
From Stratford’s river’d bourne engendered
With all his wonted inventation had
The bloody word new-born delivered
Tho’ learned Chambers doth the Bard impugn
With taking it to mean cerulean
Those scholars with much lore encumbered
Do find it buried in great Chaucer’s verse
And more do stake a claim for Beowulf.
Yet may that be, but now it is retriev’d
From dark obscurity by darker arts
Of English-loving cruciverbalists
Make us its fame resound to make again
The heav’ns ring with gladdest approbation
Lest those of greater ignorance possess’d
Should think it means collectin’ little shells.
Have not these many years here witnessed
Upon this Russian online message-board,
Fresh-minted by the sage of Biddlecombe,
That crossword-lovers all across the world,
Frustrated, may the answers that they seek
Here find, and how the wordplay works withal,
Enjoins me to enquire whether perhaps
Thou art having a bit of a slow day?
Of my involuntary indolence
Though there be many calls upon my time
‘Tis true enough I have known quicker days
Oh, lest I seem appreciationless
Your well-match’d lines likewise show Bardliness
Tis time we had some Faerie Queene instead – Ed
While flashing beames do daze his feeble eyen,
He leaves the welkin way most beaten plaine,
And rapt with whirling wheeles, inflames the skyen,
With fire not made to burne, but fairely for to shyne.
Canto IV Stanza IX
N’oserais-je imiter que dans le frêle espoir
D’apprendre un peu plus de son vocabulaire
Plus apte pour Mephisto que ce de Baudelaire.
Je quitte librement le champ avant que je suis obligé d’essayer Haïkus en hébreu.
The surreal image of Mr. Chips getting his fruit online tickled me, as did the couple with their noodles.
These Shakespeare recollections are all very well but it is probably best to go to the Bard himself, courtesy of Beyond the Fringe. The King is speaking
Get thee to Gloucester, Essex. Do thee to Wessex, Exeter.
Fair Albany to Somerset must eke his route.
And Scroop, do you to Westmoreland, where shall bold York
Enrouted now for Lancaster, with forces of our Uncle Rutland,
Enjoin his standard with sweet Norfolk’s host.
Fair Sussex, get thee to Warwicksbourne,
And there, with frowning purpose, tell our plan
To Bedford’s tilted ear, that he shall press
With most insensate speed
And join his warlike effort to bold Dorset’s side.
I most royally shall now to bed,
To sleep off all the nonsense I’ve just said….
Edited at 2014-10-16 10:42 am (UTC)
To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature’s second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There’s the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The law’s delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i’ the adage, Is sicklied o’er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o’er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery—go!
After an hour, I had two gaps, where I bunged in backstage and gladness. Both unparsed. Both wrong. Oh well. WELKIN unknown, but gettable from wp.
Good puzzle, good blog. Thanks to both setter and blogger.
Having no more than half in after 40 minutes I was reasonably pleased with coming close after about another half hour.
Welkin the only unknown. Having “done” only Antony & Cleo and Troilus and Cressida at length I think I can be forgiven. Likewise at 8 I relied on having heard of the real forest of Arden.
LOI for me was spoil. COD I think to “come in” from a pretty solid bunch.
On a separate issue, I have been sorely tempted to take the offer, oft repeated in the dead tree version, of taking up a digital subscription and benefitting from an included gift of an I-pad mini. When I called yesterday and pressed with the particular question does the tablet version download the crossword, I was finally told an emphatic “No!”.
The puzzles are some of the major (but not only) reasons why I buy a copy every day, enjoying the 15 x 15 on the train so I don’t have to struggle with turning the pages. If the crossword is only available when on-line, no good for me, as no WiFi on my line. Can anyone else comment?
Edited at 2014-10-16 01:35 pm (UTC)
I have the digital subscription and get the crossword on my Android tablet each day. I have also tried using an ipad as I think I might switch to one and I can confirm I also downloaded the crossword there.
Just seen Pootle’s answer, couldn’t agree more.
£21.67 per month including access to Times website and Crossword Club. Can highly recommend.
Only had a vague recall of Welkin. Mrs K had to confirm the existence of the shoe; is that using aids? Loved the forester and the Spanish phone call. Well done Mr Setter!
In my case, the technicality was that I was completely stumped by half a dozen of the clues.
Once again I raise my hat to the setter.
Likewise. I am happy to raise your hat to the setter.
Edited at 2014-10-16 09:37 pm (UTC)
On peut se tutoyer, non? We can tu, right?
Bien sûr! Of course!
Un bac français, ça aide parfois A French tank, it helps sometimes.
Mais cette Google traduire, c’est de temps en temps un peu d’un cochon n’est ce pas?
Would you like to come to my place, bouncy bouncy?
Ton poème était super!
Nihil obstat- and cheers!
Very enjoyable crossword though. I couldn’t parse the computer part of ‘imago’, but was confident that the answer had to be that. (Having said that, I’ve come a cropper on that basis more than once).