Solving time: 34 minutes
An enjoyable puzzle, with many clues not very difficult but still of high quality. Some of the wordplay was interesting and inventive with some variations on traditional devices, but there’s one answer (15dn) that gave me terrible trouble when I came to parse it for the blog.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
| 1 | Country song about surrounding country (7) |
| ROMANIA | |
| AIR (song) reversed [about] containing [surrounding] OMAN (country) | |
| 5 | After reflection, get a repository to store work (7) |
| OPERATE | |
| Reversed and hidden [after reflection… to store] in {g}ET A REPO{sitory] | |
| 9 | Women’s interests unfortunately blocked by male in parliament (11) |
| WESTMINSTER | |
| W (women), then anagram [unfortunately] of INTERESTS containing [blocked by] M (male). In news and current affairs reports Westminster and parliament are often interchangeable. | |
| 10 | Put away jumper having removed two coats (3) |
| EAT | |
| {sw}EAT{er} (jumper) [having removed two coats]. A nice variation on the standard ‘top-and-tail’ device. | |
| 11 | Singer breaks rules (6) |
| REIGNS | |
| Anagram [breaks] of SINGER | |
| 12 | Regularly targeted by FA, Roberto Mancini originally managed Forest (4,4) |
| TREE FARM | |
| T{a}R{g}E{t}E{d} [regularly], FA, R{oberto} + M{ancini} [originally]. ‘Managed’ in the definition is adjectival. The surface relies on references to football, a subject on which I know very little, but for those in a similar position: FA = Football Association, Roberto Mancini is an Italian former player turned manager, and Forest = Nottingham Forest Football Club. Mancini never managed Forest but did run Manchester City FC for a while. | |
| 14 | Tense optimist’s view? (6,7) |
| FUTURE PERFECT | |
| A cryptic hint supports the literal | |
| 17 | What fraud investigators aim to do for proceedings in court (6,7) |
| SQUASH RACKETS | |
| Ditto, but this time the cryptic element is stronger | |
| 21 | African natives fight unruly Goths (8) |
| WARTHOGS | |
| WAR (fight), anagram [unruly] of GOTHS | |
| 23 | Draw lots, briefly, to follow leader in Denmark (6) |
| DOODLE | |
| D{enmark} [leader in…], OODLE{s} (lots) [briefly] | |
| 25 | Charm bird removing clothing (3) |
| OBI | |
| {r}OBI{n} (bird) [removing clothing]. Nothing to do with the sash worn with a Japanese kimono, but an alternative spelling of ‘obeah’, a charm or amulet used in a kind of witchcraft that originated in Africa and is practised by some people in the Caribbean. A traditional ‘top-and-tail’ clue this time. | |
| 26 | Lad snooping around toxic chemical storage facility (6,5) |
| POISON GLAND | |
| Anagram [around] of LAD SNOOPING. A gland in some fish and amphibians that secretes venomous material. I didn’t know the term. | |
| 27 | Soon, entrepreneur on vacation will meet presidential adviser, once head of government (7) |
| ERELONG | |
| E{ntrepreneu}R [on vacation], ELON (presidential adviser, once – Musk), G{overnment} [head of…]. Our second living person today. | |
| 28 | He puts people out with article on kinky sex (7) |
| SANDMAN | |
| S AND M (kinky sex}, AN (indefinite article). In Germanic and Scandinavian folklore the Sandman brings sleep and dreams by sprinkling sand or dust in people’s eyes. I heard him mentioned in American songs in my childhood, so the legends must have travelled. | |
| Down |
|
| 1 | More sensitive, overturned Duke’s compensation (6) |
| REWARD | |
| RAW-ER (more sensitive) reversed [overturned], D (duke) | |
| 2 | Mother supported by arthritic dog (7) |
| MASTIFF | |
| MA (mother), STIFF (arthritic) | |
| 3 | Suggests friendless Billy drinks at home (9) |
| NOMINATES | |
| NO MATES (friendless Billy) contains [drinks] IN (at home). ‘Billy no mates’ is British slang for a person with no friends. There’s no Billy as such; it’s just a generic name. | |
| 4 | Outbreak in London borough announced locally (4) |
| ACNE | |
| Aural wordplay [announced locally]: “{H}ackney” (London Borough). Hackney is in East London where they drop their haitches don’t-yer-know, and ‘locally’ indicates that’s what’s going on here. As some of you may be eating breakfast I won’t expand on how acne = outbreak. | |
| 5 | Go faster than stalling bikers when half-cut in far-off place (5,5) |
| OUTER SPACE | |
| OUTPACE (go faster than) containing [stalling] {bik}ERS [half-cut]. A deep slice off one end this time. | |
| 6 | Centre of Great Lake is scary (5) |
| EERIE | |
| {gr}E{at} [centre of…], ERIE (lake) | |
| 7 | Wonderful gallery is overhead (7) |
| ACETATE | |
| ACE (wonderful), TATE (gallery). Acetates and overheads are both terms for the pictures or images placed on the plates of overhead projectors. | |
| 8 | Judge ties up partner (8) |
| ESTIMATE | |
| Anagram [up] of TIES, then MATE (partner) | |
| 13 | Discontinuing accomplished mischief-making? (10) |
| PROROGUING | |
| PRO (accomplished – professional), ROGUING (mischief-making). A term heard most commonly here when Parliament is prorogued, i.e. the parliamentary session is cut short. It differs from dissolution in that MPs retain their seats and it does not automatically lead to a general election. | |
| 15 | Republican drops in on President for collection of pipes? (4,5) |
| REED ORGAN | |
| Bearing in mind that this is a Down clue: In RE (on) + ERDOĞAN (President of Turkey), R (Republican) drops to make RE + EDORGAN. I was able to biff this once a few checkers were in place, which was fortunate as I’ve not heard of the Turkish leader so I could never have constructed the answer from wordplay alone. It didn’t help that President Reagan was so nearly there! This is the third living person reference in today’s puzzle, two of whom I’ve never heard of and one I wish I hadn’t. [Edit for late-comers and for the archive: It has been pointed out correctly in the comments below that a REED-ORGAN, as its name implies, uses reeds to produce sound and doesn’t contain any pipes.] | |
| 16 | In general, answer was recalled with difficulty (2,1,5) |
| AS A WHOLE | |
| A (answer), then WAS reversed [recalled], HOLE (difficulty). I’d have thought ‘on the whole’ was ‘in general’ and AS A WHOLE something a little different, but perhaps that’s just me. | |
| 18 | Universal acclaim for lift (7) |
| UPRAISE | |
| U (universal), PRAISE (acclaim) | |
| 19 | Weapon is flipping expensive on 5th of November (7) |
| SIDEARM | |
| IS reversed [flipping], DEAR (expensive), {Nove}M{ber} [5th of…] | |
| 20 | Lean on body part (6) |
| TENDON | |
| TEND (lean – be inclined), ON | |
| 22 | Large animal in river (5) |
| HIPPO | |
| HIP (in – fashionable), PO (river) | |
| 24 | Manager is stud (4) |
| BOSS | |
| Two meanings, e.g. a stud on the centre of a shield is called a boss | |
DNF. I don’t know why I entered PRISON GUARD for POISON GLAND. I may never know.
I’d been diligent the entire rest of the puzzle. PROROGUING came up from the memory banks intact. All was good. I double checked everything, even caught a typo elsewhere. Yet there was PRISON GUARD. I don’t even remember entering the letters. And of course when I read the clue it had to be POISON GLAND – what idiot would put PRISON GUARD? I must have entered a fugue state, that’s it. Only explanation …
I was another PRISON GUARD for quite a long time but for a change my cursory look at the w/p suggested a re-think might be needed…
Another Reagan unable to parse Reed Organ. Proroguing only known from Boris who thought he could shut down parliament and rule by imperial Fiat. Poison glands well known here in the land of the cane toad. Last 2 in squash rackets and proroguing slowed things down, but I’d rate it quick and enjoyable. Quite liked HIPPO even if others didn’t.
My thanks to jackkt and setter.
I found this tricky in parts. I wasn’t quick.
5a Operate, took forever, LOI. Not sure what the problem was, it isn’t hard but I am bad at hiddens.
12a Tree Farm; I thought it Green Paint but it is in Wiktionary so good enough for me to add to Cheating Machine. I know nothing about footie but didn’t need to.
27a Erelong. Special commendation for shoehorning in Mr Musk.
28a Sandman, HHO but well forgotten by now.
15d Reed Organ biffed. I tried to get Ronald Reagan in there somehow and failed. Never thought of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, now added to CM, but without the funny accent. DNK the G is silent, thanks Kevin Gregg. I rather think the BBC has missed that.
38 minutes. Really liked this one, especially ‘poison gland’. LOI was ‘as a whole’. Didn’t parse ‘reed organ’, but noticed ‘regan’ and ‘president’ were in the mix, so stuck it in regardless.
Don’t like ‘up’ as an anagram indicator.
17:00 – though mystified by several clues – mostly as discussed by others – plus a persistent misreading of overhead in the ACETATE clue as overheard.
Roddy Forman years ago said that he’d used ‘on’ as an anagram indicator and had managed to get it past an editor. ‘Up’ is obvious in comparison.
No major problems, although I toyed with Reagan for too long. Had largely forgotten about the ACETATE and the SANDMAN. 36 minutes.
Leaving aside the tricky parsing, I hesitated on 15d because reed organs don’t actually have pipes. The sound is produce by reeds and not pipes! Think of a harmonium, for example.
That’s a very good point, and I was watching a delightful video on the subject on YouTube only yesterday that discussed that very thing, so I should have picked up on it! One of the advantages of reed-organs is that, unlike pipe-organs, technically they never need tuning.
17:38. Some very nice clues.
REED ORGAN, NOMINATES and WARTHOGS my favourites.
Rather like the QC, I found this pretty straightforward today finishing in 27.45. I was pretty sure REED ORGAN was correct, so didn’t lose any sleep, or time for that matter, in parsing it. A good bit of parsing by Jackkt, as I couldn’t do so, struggling to get REAGAN out of my head. My only other slight hold up was at the end where I couldn’t get an answer to 1dn, caused entirely by the fact that I’d biffed ARMENIA for 1ac. ARIA for ‘song’ was enough for me to be mislead, but after parsing it properly ROMANIA and finally REWARD slotted into place.
New PB today of 67 minutes, so close to hitting that hour target, though with a good number of answers not parsed – ROMANIA (hadn’t come across ‘air’ as music), OUTER SPACE, ERELONG, HIPPO and SIDEARM (was looking for some relation between M and the date). Also didn’t know OBI as a charm, though figured that from O_I and ‘robin’. Thanks Jack and setter!
Bravo! (I find clues like OBI quite difficult to parse sometimes, but thankfully knew of the charm from crosswords past)
Reed organ doesn’t have pipes, surely??
Quite right. See AgileJames’s post above and my reply to him, just added.
Congrats. OBI won’t detain you in years to come after you’ve scribed it into a puzzle for the umpteenth time!
I was on the wavelength with this one, and completed in 19 minutes. It semed more like the QC to me. Like AndyPandy I made a brief excursion to Armenia at 1ac but soon got back on track. Apart from that, no issues, except that I share the MER at the meaning of AS A WHOLE, already referred to by others.
FOI – TREE FARM
LOI – TENDON
COD – SANDMAN
Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.
39 mins. All parsed OK although wasn’t familiar with that definition of ACETATE. SIDEARM made its second appearance in two days! Like others was sidetracked by Reagan before remembering Erdogan; and the lack of pipes in a REED ORGAN didn’t even occur to me. Never seen ERELONG as one word before – or ‘up’ as an anagram indicator.
42 mins for the first crossie I’ve managed to finish in a few weeks as I’m gadding around Europe and the UK. Haven’t really had the chance to sit down at length and concentrate, which I need to do these days.
Enjoyed this one and particularly some of the interesting comments above. Good fun.
I liked TREE FARM & SQUASH RAQUETS best.
Thanks Jack and setter.
About 13 minutes, several of them spent trying to get PRISON GUARD out of my head – I could see it didn’t remotely parse but it stopped me thinking of anything else for a while. Glad to see I wasn’t the only one. Thanks jackkt for the parsing of REED ORGAN – I know of the Turkish president but he didn’t come to mind.
40 minutes. I also missed the Erdogan in Reed Organ – and I used to live in Turkey.
Nice puzzle- my COD to Erelong.
Nice and easy today, after a spate of stinkers. FOI OPERATE and LOI ACNE with total solving time of 15:10. I don’t see the problem with AS A WHOLE and ‘Mr SANDMAN’ and ‘enter SANDMAN’ both ‘slap’, as the youth of today would put it. I enjoyed the crude cluing a la Private Eye, my COD.
31mins for the solve. Most of that went in very nicely and was left trying to figure out PROROGUING and ERELONG (NHO) for the 8mins. The end of PROROGUING really seemed like it needed -GOING. Everything parsed – one or two afterwards.
Good puzzle for me. Thanks to Jackkt for the blog and to the setter.
Am I going crazy? How does REED ORGAN work from the clue? His name is Erdogan not Erdogan, and it’s only nine letters.
If I’m reading the parsing above correctly wouldn’t R (Rep) dropping in on (ie entering) RE + ERDOGAN give REER DORGAN? Which is ten letters and also not a thing… Please someone help!
On = RE, then the R falls two places in ERDOGAN (so that becomes EDORGAN).
reed organ clue. surely the one thing about a reed organ that’s interesting is that it hasn’t got pipes
Thanks, Ian. I appreciate there were probably too many comments to read through by this evening, but this had been covered several times already. I have now added a note to my comment in the blog to clarify the point for further visitors and the archive.
COD SQUASH RACKETS
Eventually managed to move from Reagan to Erdogan to parse REED ORGAN having biffed it early on
As a whole thought this a satisfying puzzle and finished in 27 mins
ğ in Turkish (g with an upside-down hat) is generally silent — as in ‘değil’ meaning ‘not’. There is a separate letter ‘g’, but that is not in Erdoğan. I knew my Turkish degree, under the guidance of the splendid Professor Geoffrey Lewis, would come in handy one day. (Watch out also for the letter ‘c’ which is pronounced ‘j’.) A pedant might argue that the clue at 15 d is faulty because the president’s name does not actually contain a letter ‘g’, as in ORGAN. I think the rest of us would tell the pedant to shut up. 18’05”.
Well, don’t ever tell me that wavelength isn’t a thing! After LindsayO mentioned in the Quickie blog that the 15×15 was quite approachable, I thought I was in for a relatively easy time, only to find it’s a stinker! Yet everyone here disagrees, so I can only put it down to a completely different mindset to all of you. (No other female comments yet apparently – is that of any significance?) Having finished, laboriously, after a second session, with the totally unparseable ACETATE, I had recourse to a dictionary to explain the link to overhead. I did parse everything else, including ERELONG and REED ORGAN, though it still took me too long, put off by the incorrect reference to pipes. TREE FARM, SQUASH RACKETS, DOODLE, OUTER SPACE and even WESTMINSTER held me up for ages, despite none of them being terribly difficult. Oh well, tomorrow’s another day…
My best effort for a long while, but had to look up SQUASH RACKETS, as I didn’t connect the QU as is usual! ( Also running out of time – lots of other life to be lived). Enjoyed the freshness of some of the cluing ( the idea of professional roguing being a bit strange, and I knew the word but not its meaning. No excuse really.). HIPPO very neat, but BOSS a bit QC. And for some reason I couldn’t recall Hackney for the outbreak ( even though my school was in Hackney Wick – but then we certainly didn’t drop our aitches!). COD POISON GLAND. But a lot of other fun stuff.