Thank you to Puck. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Rudyard Kipling and some of his works are featured.
Across
8 Post that supports article probing loud and aggressive speech (8)
BALUSTER : A(a grammatical article) contained in(probing) BLUSTER(loud and aggressive speech, but with little effect).
9 Something eaten by 26, at first reluctantly imitating another rodent (6)
NUTRIA : NUT(something eaten by a squirrel/answer to 26 across) + 1st letters, respectively, of(at first) “reluctantly imitating another“.
Defn: Also called a coypu.
10 A better man than I am, nudging cryptically about 1st April (5,3)
GUNGA DIN : Anagram of(… cryptically) NUDGING containing(about) 1st letter of(1st) “April“.
Defn: The person refered to in the final line “You’re a better man than I am, …” in our featured writer’s poem, “Gunga Din”.
11 Wife initially trimmed plain bit of sister’s outfit (6)
WIMPLE : W(abbrev. for “wife”) + “simple”(plain/no-frills) minus its 1st letter(initially trimmed).
Defn: …/habit.
12 A strange pursuit involved getting soaked more than is normal? (15)
SUPERSATURATING : Anagram of(… involved) A STRANGE PURSUIT.
15 Theme: books and some poetry by male (5)
MOTIF : [OT(abbrev. for the Old Testament, a collection of books in the Bible) + IF(another poem by Kiplig)] placed after(by) M(abbrev. for “male”).
16 One out of the 2 just starting baked potato (5)
BALOO : 1st letter of(just starting) “baked” + ALOO(potato, frequently feature in Indian cuisine, say).
Defn: …, that is, the answer to 2 down.
20 Me, foolish? OK, with LP mistaken for a book (4,2,5,4)
PUCK OF POOK’S HILL : PUCK(me/the setter using the self-referential pronoun) + anagram of(… mistaken) [FOOLISH? OK plus(with) LP].
Defn: … by our writer Kipling, containing a collection of short fantasy stories.
21 Tastelessly loud and insolent supporters, extremely surly (6)
BRASSY : BRAS(brassieres/supporters for the feminine breasts) + 1st and last letters of(extremely) “surly“.
23 Old PM touring a land, drunk on the road hither? (8)
MANDALAY : MAY(Theresa, UK Prime Minister not too long ago) containing(touring) anagram of(…, drunk) A LAND.
Defn: The place mentioned in a line, “On the road to …”, from another Kipling poem, of the same name.
25 Jazz style shows lack of clarity, with fiddle missing (6)
FUSION : “confusion”(lack of clarity/bafflement) minus(with … missing) “con”(a fiddle/a swindle).
26 English country gent bites tail off rather large rodent (8)
SQUIRREL : SQUIRE(an English country gentleman/one who owns and lives in an estate in the countryside) containing(bites) last letter of(tail off) “rather” + L(abbrev. for “large”).
Down
1 Bland stuff a pub’s cooked — left with little hesitation (7)
PABULUM : Anagram of(…’s cooked) A PUB + L(abbrev. for “left”) plus(with) UM(an expression signifying a little hesitation on the speaker’s part.)
Defn: Bland intellectual matter, entertainment, etc.
2 Film article dropped by little woman ingesting fluff when cycling? All right (6,4)
JUNGLE BOOK : JO(short for Josephine March, one of the sisters, the main characters in the book “Little Women”) containing(ingesting) BUNGLE(fluff/fail to perform something successfully or well) with its 1st letter put to last(when cycling) + OK(Okay/all right).
Defn: The title of a film, based on a collection of Kipling’s short stories, minus its definite article.
3 Sort of poker 10 removed from drawing room? (4)
STUD : [“I”(Roman numeral for “1”) + O(letter representing 0/nothing)] deleted from(removed from) “studio”(room where an artist paints/draws, hence which could be called/? a “drawing room”).
4 Stone from a ring, replaced before the centre’s fallen out (7)
GRANITE : Anagram of(…, replaced) A RING plus(before) “the” minus its middle letter(centre’s fallen out).
5 Reply rudely? It’s in shrew’s nature (6,4)
ANSWER BACK : A reverse clue. Reversal of(… BACK) ANSWER is hidden in(It’s in) “shrew’s nature“.
6 Check if baseball team turned up (4)
STEM : Reversal of(… turned up, in a down clue) METS(nickname for the New York Mets baseball team).
Defn: …/to stop, say, an influx or outflux.
7 Linesman having a little nap? (7)
KIPLING : KIP(a nap/a brief sleep) + -LING(suffix used to form a diminutive/a word that conveys the smallness/littleness of the named object or quality, as in “duckling”).
Defn: …/a man writing lines of verse, specifically, Rudyard, our featured poet.
13 Cooking fish in prison — one with new governor at its head (4-6)
STIR-FRYING : FRY(young/newly hatched fish) contained in(in) [STIR(slang for prison) + I(Roman numeral for “one”) plus(with) N(abbrev. for “new” + 1st letter of(… at its head) “governor“].
Defn: … technique originally from China.
14 Cocaine and heroin? Me? I’m a mythical creature (5,5)
TOOTH FAIRY : TOOT(a quantity of inhaled powdered cocaine) plus(and) H(slang for heroin) + FAIRY(an example of which/? in English folklore is Puck/the setter, using the self-referential pronoun).
17 Quick! Hot spicy food going cold — out of bed! (5,2)
HURRY UP! : H(abbrev. for “hot”) + “curry”(spicy/hot food) minus(going) “c”(abbrev. for “cold”) + UP(out of bed/risen from sleep).
18 Sailor sitting in first class in Taiwan once (7)
FORMOSA : OS(abbrev. for “ordinary seaman”, a sailor of the lowest rank in the Royal Navy) contained in(sitting in) [FORM A](the first form/class in school, ahead of Forms B, C, etc.).
19 Fish consumed in Belvoir regularly (7)
BLOATER : ATE(consumed by mouth) contained in(in) 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th letters of(… regularly) “Belvoir“.
22 Quickly read second novel (4)
SKIM : S(abbrev. for “second”, in time notation) + KIM(a novel by Kipling).
24 Playing 25? Not if you’ve common sense (4)
NOUS : Anagram of(Playing) [“fusion”(answer to 25 across) minus(Not) “if“].
Thanks Puck and scchua
I saw the theme for once, and it even helped (with BALOO, for instance). I didn’t parse JUNGLE BOOK (odd that it’s defined as “film”, when it was a book much earlier) or TOOTH FAIRY. I got FUSION from NOUS + IF, rather than from its clue.
Somehow I didn’t particularly enjoy the solve.
Thanks for the blog – and the parsing of jungle book and formosa. doh.
What a wonderful puzzle – lots of great clues. Managed to guess / half-remember PUCK OF POOKS HILL and FORMOSA. Many thanks to Puck and scchua.
Had an unparsed TOPIC instead of MOTIF at 15ac. Doh.
I also saw the theme rather early on which unfortunately made some clues (jungle book, gunga din and some others) write-ins either from the definition, enumeration or a crosser or two. That with some rather odd surfaces (e.g. for “puck of pook’s hill”) put this in the class of puzzles where the adherence to the theme somewhat detracts from rather than adds to the admiration.
CotD has to be “answer back” for a lovely example of the reverse clue and the nod to the animals in the puzzle.
“supersaturation” should be noted as a cryptic definition and wordplay – the word does not mean anything like what the underlined words say, in fact the opposite – a supersaturated solution actually has less solvent (e.g water) in it than can sustain the dissolved material. So the definition is punning on the word, not a definition at all.
Many thanks scchua for the very colourful blog, and Puck for the puckish puzzle.
I’m going to have a little nipick with “kipling” as well. “-ling” as a suffix works for creatures and people, but for objects and ideas shouldn’t it be “-let”?
Apart from the mongoose and Mowgli, the only character I remember is the sausage tree who said “Bosh!” which by some quirk had me in absolute stitches as a child. Hence 20ac was a guess from crossers and Baloo, loi, needed the list of characters, although after the event aloo looked vaguely familiar, from a prior cw maybe. (Does it mean potato, or a dish with potato, and other stuff, in?) Otherwise quite a gentle stroll and quite fun, amid mourning for events in the real ‘garden’. Thanks both.
Do you like Kipling? I don’t know, I’ve never kippled.
Good fun from Puck: a nice, if fleeting, distraction from the grim prospects we now face. GUNGA DIN and [S]KIM were my way in to the theme, which quickly led me to PUCK OF POOK’S HILL and others. Now back to reality…
Isn’t 6d Stalky?
I’ll get etc.
Thanks Puck, scchua
Another excellent puzzle, solved while half my attention was watching events unfolding elsewhere. Last one in was 9A, which I had never heard of, but Mr G then confirmed. I loved the clue for 7D (which was next to last), and had no quibble with it when it finally dawned.
Enjoyed this, having recently read Puck of Pook’s Hill. And I wonder what the going rate for the Tooth Fairy is these days? Used to be a sixpence, swaddled up in tissue under the pillow once the tooth had been swapped for it…
Technically a dnf for me as I ran out of time with NUTRIA and bunged in NUTKIN – that other well-known rodent.
A lovely puzzle with a pleasing theme appearing both in clues and answers.
A relief from the horrors of the election and the (even more) horrific price of Christmas trees this year.
Hey-ho, nice weekend, all.
Enjoyed this more than the news. But I found some consolation in the opening lines of Kipling’s IF:
“If you can keep your head when all about you,
Are losing theirs”
I think I found this tougher than some (I often do with Puck). I spotted the theme which helped but generally it was a slow solve, and I had to come here to clarify some parsing. Last to fall was the NW with baluster and pabulum. Favourites for me were answer back, Kipling and stir frying. Thanks to Puck for the challenge and scchua for clarifying the parsing.
No problem as a solve, but there were some where I entered the solution and worked out the word-play after. KIPLING was, ironically, the last in, because I had, in a splap-dash way, written SUPERSATURATION instead of SUPERSATURATING. With this grid, I was expecting, but didn’t get, a NINA.
What a nice evening I had, with some pleasant last bits this morning. Thoroughly enjoyed this, thanks to Puck and to scchua for some non-parsings I was stuck with.
John Wells @4 — I had TOPIC too last night, but when the check button nixed it this morning MOTIF came to mind.
I read the Jungle Book the summer I was eight, and still remember it vividly. Even so, BALOO was LOI.
Oh, and — wouldn’t SUPERSATURATION mean “getting soaked” rather than “soaking”?
Sorry, I meant SUPERSATURATING. That’s why SUPERSATURATION, though not parsing, fits the clue better.
Thanks scchua for parsing of (con)fusion and thanks Puck for excellent puzzle.
(I also think supersaturation is a neater word )
Very good. Just right for the dilettante. Unlike Tuesday and Wednesday which could only be fully enjoyed by grandmasters or people with inordinate amounts of time to kill.
However can someone explain how ‘by’ in 15 ac signifies ‘placed after’
… by = next to = placed after (sort of) …
Hard to use a word like enjoy this morning, but this one did cheer me a little
Thanks to Puck and scchua
I had difficulties with 1D, in that I’ve always thought that “pablum” was the bland stuff while “pabulum” meant nutrition of any sort.
For some reason I spotted “Puck of Pooks Hill” more or less on sight, and that led me straight into the theme. So the crossword was a quick solve for me, although I had to come here for a couple of parsings (2D and 14D).
Needed a pick me up after the political gut punch last night, and this was excellent. Rudyard Kipling was my mum’s favourite writer, while Joseph Conrad (who featured in a puzzle a few weeks ago) was my dad’s, so there was a symmetry to this, that no one in the world other than me will appreciate!
Using former PM Theresa MAY caused a moment’s deja vu after yesterday’s tour de force. I miss the Maybot more than I thought I would. BALOO is one of my favourite Disney characters, but ANSWER BACK was favourite clue.
NUTRIA was new. Everything in the puzzle was fair. Everything else is unfair.
Thanks to Puck and scchua for customary excellence.
IF, just if…
Loved it. FOI was 10 ac followed quickly by 15 ac, which kind of gave the game away early.
Some contrived clues/complicated parsings, I thought, for example – 3 ac, and didn’t 6 ac require too much non-local GK? Though I did enjoy 16 ac, which required familiarity with Asian food, perhaps, so I shouldn’t complain….
New learning: TOOT as a druggy term…. not even in my misspent youth did I come across this…. and 1 dn
Some clever constructions. 8 ac impressed me though, looking back, I can’ remember why particularly.
Many thanks, Puck & scchua
grantinfreo@7: ALOO (or ALU) means “potato” in both Urdu and Bengali (of which Sylheti is best regarded as a dialect). Hence the misunderstanding when Sylheti cooks tried to recreate Goan vindaloo, and mistook the Portuguese word for “garlic” for the similar sounding word for spud in their own native tongue
Goujeers @ 26
A friend of mine decided to convert to Islam, but he had trouble remembering the phrase “Allah hu Akbar” (God is great). Instead he came out with “Aloo ha Akbar” – much to the amusement of his (mainly Pakistani) Moslem friends – “Potato is great???????” 🙂
Cleverly clued and all fair, although with a couple of un-Puckish constructions. I’m not among those who object to ‘1st April’ as a clue for A, but ‘the first of April’ would have been cleaner and just as good for the surface. I also thought that ‘going cold’ was a clumsy way to indicate the subtraction of a C. In case this comes across as overly negative, I should say that otherwise I liked it a lot. Thanks to Puck and scchua.
Unfortunately 23a has some relevance to the day. A couple of years ago the successor to the PM in the clue bizarrely demonstrated his skills as foreign secretary by reciting the referenced poem in a Buddhist temple in Myanmar.
Thanks to Puck and Scchua.
My FOI was GUNGA DIN, which made me get the Kipling theme. Also had TOPIC at 15ac, what a shame, my only error. Fave clue ANSWER BACK.
Got the theme which is pretty good for me. I have read rather a lot of Kipling which,given his connection to British Imperialism,is perhaps rather odd given my politics. I didn’t enjoy the election which should not surprise anyone! Five years of Johnson. Makes you weep!
Anyway the puzzle rather cheered me up. I did like ANSWER BACK, BALUSTER and FORMOSA. WIMPLE was FOI.
Thanks Puck.
Friday the thirteenth, indeed!
Ruddy ‘ard? Not at all. A very enjoyable puzzle from Puck, with nothing too tricky except the parsing of JUNGLE BOOK, which I got eventually, and ANSWER BACK, which I entered without seeing how it worked. Beautifully blogged as well – thanks to Puck and scchua.
Trismegistus @27: That’s very funny – perhaps the Spud-U-Like chain could re-position themselves to appeal more to the Muslim community by renaming themselves Aloo hu Akbar.
And IF in 24d of course helped.
‘when the Rudyards cease from Kipling, and the Haggards Ride no more’.
Goujeers@26, ta for the aloo info, handy if it turns up again.
I started very late, but I’m glad I got into this. I spotted the theme with Jungle Book and I thought it was very nicely spread across the puzzle without taking it over.
My particular favourites were the two clues with ‘me’ in them, one referencing ‘Puck’ and the other ‘Fairy’. 16a BALOO was hard. I don’t know what ‘just’ was doing in that clue, or ‘if’ in 6d STEM for that matter.
Thanks to Puck and scchua.
Re SUPERSATURATING, the definition could be read as “getting soaked (,) more (solute) than is normal”. A bit Yoda-ish perhaps.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where the article was dropped in jungle book! didn’t think of the definition! And possibly i’ve always just said ‘jungle book’, eek. Many thanks scchua and puck.
I felt this puzzle was easy – my only snags were my inability to parse JUNGLE BOOK and not knowing that Pook thing – but who cares? For the first time ever I spotted the (obvious) theme and it actually helped me finish the puzzle! Without it, I never would have gotten KIPLING himself. I liked the potato clue personally because otherwise I would still be trying to force Balew into the Baloo spot.
“Fearful were they that honest a Jedi might contrversially tell Evil Empire the history of and Darth Vader his crimes”. (Yoda, reporting in Private Eye No 1507)
Late to the party. Thanks for the illuminating blog sschua and to Puck for an entertaining wrestle.
Just came on to admire ANSWER BACK – loved the surface.
Any bachelor who has eaten a lot of microwave meals (guilty) will be familiar with Aloo Gobi.
Still a crossword newbie, having been wrestling with the cryptics for less than a year. Today was my first Puck seen to completion, so super pleased with myself and still going around with a huge grin. Even managed to spot the theme early on, which helped immensely and made 15ac my favourite (and loi)
I failed to solve BALOO & MOTIF, and could not parse 2d, 4d.
New for me were NUTRIA, PABULUM.
My favourite was answer back.
Thanks Puck and scchua.
Didn’t get MOTIF, it was a toss up between TOPIC and BORIS (given his penchant for Kipling).
Second grid this month (at least) violating the unwritten 50% rule (1d, for instance). See also Sil van den Hoek’s comment: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/12/02/guardian-cryptic-27993-by-chifonie/#comment-399423
I enjoyed it too. All came together after getting Puck of Pook’s Hill. Liked the double reference to his name in 14d and here. Hadnt heard of toot for cocaine, but had to be tooth. Just couldnt parse Jungle Book.
Don’t get why ‘cycling’ means moving the first letter of a word to the end.