You’d have thought that a setter’s determination to cram as many Zeds as possible into the grid would, once twigged, help with the solving, and it did, to an extent, as the odds on a clue containing a Zed were quite high. 5ac a case in point. But this was no quick solve for me, taking a tad over 26 minutes, and no-one (so far) is a whole lot quicker. To the setter’s additional credit, the arrangements for getting all those Zeds in don’t force odd or unknown words, though the “short letter” might be a rarity and there’s no way to get to 24d if you don’t know it (on edit, yes there is).
* I counted so you don’t have to. Felt like more, though.
* I counted so you don’t have to. Felt like more, though.
Here’s my take on the solving, with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS.
Across
1 Whisky one’s missing? Nearly all love wine and soda (8)
SPRITZER Whisky is an example of SPIRIT, knock out a I (one) and ad ZER(o) for most of love, as in tennis.
5 Whistling device (6)
WHEEZE Double definition, noise form a congested chest, maybe, and the sort of plot device that Jeeves came up with to extricate Bertie from the mire, often described as jolly good.
10 Sailor also called for port (5)
OSAKA Tried to fit a Z in, but OZ is not a sailor and OS (ordinary seaman) is. Also Known As…
11 County girl with unknown double cocktail (5,4)
BUCKS FIZZ Orange juice and fizzy wine made from county BUCKS, girl FI and two “unknown” Zeds
12 Senseless bringing doctor in if I doze off (9)
ZOMBIFIED Doctor here is MB, and the rest is supplied by the letters of IF I DOZE “off”
13 It might be something polar bear misses at first (5)
TOTEM Polar here is “like a pole”, but not in the sense of “the end of an axis”. Maybe debatable, but this is Crosswordland. Bear is TOTE, misses at first is, of course, M.
14 As female maybe avoiding relations that are unpopular, outspoken (7)
NUNLIKE (That) are unpopular roughly translates to “none like” which you need to say out loud.
16 Lowers cape, heading off to fight (6)
CATTLE C for Cape, ATTLE from fight with the front B missing.
18 We agree with that policeman’s reforms (6)
AMENDS AMEN, Hebrew for, um, “we agree with that”, plus a Detective Sergeant.
20 State regularly backed Maoist law on rich (7)
CROATIA A rather impressive reverse every other letter hCiR nO wAl TsIoAm
22 Highland track crossed by crowd going the wrong way (5)
TYROL Right, no arguments over Y or I today. R(ailwa)Y in LOT (crowd) all reversed.
23 See that wallaby jumps across with appropriate bounds? (9)
ALLOWABLY A rather unlikely looking source of anagram fodder nevertheless “jumps” and arranges itself across (around, here) LO for see.
25 Caught in trap, live, outside in fruit tree (9)
NECTARINE Trap is NET, insert C(aught), live is ARE (Hancock, anyone?) and is placed outside IN
26 Girl’s new top: ace for going about! (5)
LINDA Top LID and A go about N(ew)
27 In a jacket that’s too short (6)
ABLAZE When a fire is “in” its burning. A short jacket is A BLAZE(r)
28 US film producer does prison flogging — audio version (8)
SELZNICK Sounds like (radio version) SELLS NICK.
Down
1 Dropping off pair with hands bleeding (8)
SNOOZING I like “pair with hands” for bridge partners South and North. OOZING for bleeding is just a bit yucky.
2 Concrete mass in field (5)
REALM As in scientific field. Concrete REAL and M(ass)
3 Music played at Ritz — and Oz jail (11,4)
TRADITIONAL JAZZ Anagram “played” of AT RITZ AND OZ JAIL
4 Very black time I had in middle of Greece’s recession (3-4)
EBB TIDE That soft, ruboutable pencil your holding right now is a BB, then T(ime) I (ha)d all within the middle of GrEEce
6 Dance tantalizes with nothing exotic (10,5)
HESITATION WALTZ An anagram “exotic” of TANTALIZES WITH plus O, nothing.
7 Short letter recalled gym has been made available for hire (9)
EPISTOLET and yes, it’s a real word. Gym, PE is “recalled”, then a straight translation of the rest of the clue: IS TO LET.
8 Frenzy merely shows one used to get a reaction (6)
ENZYME The “hidden” du jour. FrENZY MErely
9 One grabbed twice by bisexual tart (6)
ACIDIC Oooer. I (one) appears in two locations in AC/DC, swings both ways, doubles the chance of a date on a Friday night.
15 Figured men should support miners (9)
NUMERICAL I suppose figured = having numbers. The one time mighty National Union of Miners (betrayed by Scargill/smashed by Thatcher) is supported by ERIC and AL, two gentlemen
17 Slothful water carrier who fell lifting tool (4,4)
LAZY JACK Does a system of ropes constitute a tool? Chambers has “a jack constructed of compound levers pivoted together”, but Google has nothing of the sort. Slothful LAZY, JACK the post traumatic stress disorder victim allegedly healed with a combination of acetic acid and one of Julie Andrews’ favourite things minus the string and the packages.
19 Sons each bearing something refreshing (3,3)
SEA AIR S(ons) EA(ch) amd AIR for bearing. “as I walked along the boulevard with an independent air”
20 King’s maybe a merry one, crossing stage (7)
COLLEGE A merry king is COLE, insert LEG for stage (think Tour de France)
21 Lines of volunteers land faraway in it (6)
STANZA Volunteers, the TA, NZ the “land far away” (unless you live there) both contained within S(ex) A(ppeal) or IT.
STANZA Volunteers, the TA, NZ the “land far away” (unless you live there) both contained within S(ex) A(ppeal) or IT.
24 Spot on head of Indian (5)
BINDI Is pretty much what it says in this almost not cryptic clue. But it is also BIND (spot, as in of bother) and head of I(ndian). A smart & lit that fooled me into thinking there was no cryptic.
On edit: Oh! Just seen it’s from King Lear.
Edited at 2017-04-13 02:01 am (UTC)
Also would have got STANZA more quickly if it said “nearby” instead of “faraway”.
Very interesting puzzle, and nice to see the setter paying homage to the Thursday blogger. Well done both of them.
An excellent puzzle that reminded me of Dean’s style in some ways although the clues are longer than he usually sets these days.
Spotting the Zs around the edges helped me get to the answer at 5ac, otherwise I may still have been looking for it. I sort of see BIND (spot), I{ndian} [head] now although I’d never have thought of it without reverse engineering, but I still think the clue lets down an otherwise superb puzzle as it could almost have appeared without alteration in a GK puzzle, so clearly was it asking what the spot is called.
Solving the QC before coming to this helped with 27ac, and 12ac to a lesser extent.
Edited at 2017-04-13 04:16 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-04-13 09:58 am (UTC)
Yesterday’s dietician debacle put me on guard and I didn’t write in BINDI until I’d made sense of the clue. Didn’t BINDI come up not so long ago?
Last in the mind-bending NUNLIKE.
COD … ACIDIC — genius clue
At least I got the unknown producer; glad he wasn’t CELZNICK, which seems to be a common alternative. (I barely know the names of film producers whose films I’ve actually seen…)
Last night it was great to put faces to a few names. Good fun.
LOI 23a to just creep in the hour mark, mainly as I thought the anagram was WALLABY and AE (bounds of “allowable”) with “see” as the straight clue.
Shame one of the answers wasn’t IZZARD.
Edited at 2017-04-13 08:38 am (UTC)
I took about 55mins. I loved the polar bear. But spent ages trying to add ‘men’ to NUM. Who’d have thought that all I needed was our old friends Eric and Al?
Many thanks to the setter – who has shown that we have no need to fear the whoreson Zed.
All good fun so well done setter and blogger
It really was great fun to solve though, apart from perhaps five minutes about half-way through when I really thought I wasn’t going to get any further.
Very nice to catch up and meet a few new people yesterday.
Edited at 2017-04-13 08:08 am (UTC)
Excellent puzzle and I had the same experience as many of thinking “oh! lots of z’s! well this should be easy now” followed by “argh! this isn’t easy at all”. Well played, setter, well played.
Compliments to setter and blogger.
For 25a why does live = ARE?
COD acidic,
to Bon Scott:
Are you AC or DC?
“Neither, I’m the flash in the middle”!
ARE for “lives” I hadn’t seen before, and I can’t quite get my head round it. Sadly the Hancock reference does nothing to enlighten me. Also IN for “ablaze” was new to me and I can almost guarantee I’ll have forgotten all about it by the time it turns up again.
Overall though, I’m blown away by the quality, and still marvelling at the skill required to get all those zeds in so naturally around the outside. Just brilliant.
Edited at 2017-04-13 12:49 pm (UTC)
1st definition of BE in Chanbers is to live, so you/they/we are = you/they/we live.
Great puzzle, was determined to finish, but alas, it beat me! NUNLIKE, SELZNICK and the JACK bit of 17dn remained unsolved after an hour or so. I’ll add my appreciation to the skills of both setter and blogger. Many thanks!
The Zs certainly helped me with the dance without which I would have struggled with the unknown producer. I also had to trust that BINDI was the name of the spot, based on a loose connection to my go-to vegetable in curry houses.
COD to ACIDIC.
Speaking of quartets, I like to think Z was indeed getting a shout-out here. Verlaine has had one and I’ve had a couple so now it’s Sotira’s turn as the 4th member of our TLS blogging crew. I’d been wondering how the setter would handle Zabadak and had been idly playing with a combo of Balzac and zabaglione…24.35
I’m glad those who gathered together last night seem to have had a good time.
I biffed HESITATION WALTZ. I seem to remember being taught something with that name many years ago, but it must have been at best a cut-down version of the delightful version danced by Tim Lamm and Paula Harrison on YouTube.
I’d never heard of LAZY JACK, but at least the wordplay (and the need for a Z) made the answer pretty certain.
I see several other solvers have used the word “fun” for this puzzle, and that was the first word I thought of to describe it too. I raise my hat to the setter.
COD 9dn ACIDIC. WOD 12ac ZOMBIFIED which describes me perfectly.
Edited at 2017-04-14 07:40 am (UTC)