A classic from Goliath.
Brilliant fun, excellent surfaces, with a few of Goliath’s trademark ‘lift and separate’ devices. Many thanks to the setter.
ACROSS
1. Profession of one into endemic outbreak (8)
MEDICINE
I (one) into ENDEMIC* (*outbreak)
5. Evil wicked sailor (6)
SINBAD
SIN (evil) + BAD (wicked)
9. Editor backing one engaged in opposition (8)
DEFIANCE
ED< (editor, <backing) + FIANCE (one engaged)
10. Design primarily thin metal probe (6)
STYLET
STYLE (design) + T[hin] (primarily)
12. Large river parasite (5)
LOUSE
13. Ultimately broke, funny people must take on money matters (9)
ECONOMICS
[brok]E (ultimately) + (COMICS (funny people) must take ON)
14. Keeps soup ingredients (6)
STOCKS
16. Nothing beats this old city: capital of Turkmenistan (3,4)
THE BEST
THEBES (old city) + T[urkmenistan] (capital of)
19. You and I would sound bells for such an occasion (7)
WEDDING
WE’D (you and I would) + DING (sound bells)
21. Tom’s number one wine-tasting note (3,3)
CAT PEE
23. Where youngsters may be, run back all episodes (9)
NURSERIES
RUN< (<back) + SERIES (all episodes)
25, 25 Down. A couple of other things said before bedtime (5,5)
NIGHT NIGHT
THING* THING* (a couple of THINGs* (*other))
26. Quintessential writer with a pointed shape (6)
ICONIC
I (writer) + CONIC (with a pointed shape)
27. 16, 1 across afterwards admits this is foul (8)
LAUGHTER
LATER (afterwards) admits UGH (this is foul)
The solutions from 16 and 1 across read THE BEST MEDICINE
28. Adage that Yang is failing and its opposite is in decline (6)
SAYING
(YANG IS)* (*failing) and YIN (yang’s opposite) is in SAG (decline)
Two clues!
29. State of knowledge cut back before bank holiday ends (8)
KENTUCKY
KEN (knowledge) + CUT< (<back) before [ban]K [holida]Y (ends)
DOWN
1. Seldom struck poses (6)
MODELS
2. Error indeed having failed an obligation (9)
DEFAULTED
3. Greek philosopher needs no outside help to find this box (5)
CRATE
[so]CRATE[s] (Greek philosopher, needs no outside SOS (help))
4. Sunrise over cryptic clue’s central element (7)
NUCLEUS
SUN< (<rise) over CLUE* (*cryptic)
6. Recluse is home and dry to welcome traveller (9)
INTROVERT
IN (home) + (TT (dry, teetotal) to welcome ROVER (traveller))
7. Most of seafood served in a bowl (5)
BALTI
BALTI[c] (seafood, most of)
8. Instead, sat up with record stores (8)
DATASETS
11. Value one’s life talent, initially showing some potential (4)
VOLT
V[alue] O[ne’s] L[ife] T[alent]
15. Conran’s first interior design set standard (9)
CRITERION
C[onran] (‘s first) + INTERIOR* (*design)
17. Finally vote Green: different movement, full of vigour (9)
ENERGETIC
([vot]E (finally) GREEN)* (*different) + TIC (movement)
18. Decade left in knots (8)
TWENTIES
WENT (left) in TIES (knots)
20. Network sending up brief threnody (4)
GRID
DIRG[e]< (threnody, brief, <sending up)
21. Fall of lawsuit involving rogue (7)
CASCADE
CASE (lawsuit) involving CAD (rogue)
22. Set theory ignoring the ground floor (6)
STOREY
(SET [the]ORY)* (ignoring THE, *ground)
24. Commodious jumper? That’s surprising! (5)
ROOMY
ROO (jumper) + MY (that’s surprising)
I reckon BALTI is another ‘lift and separate’ clue with ‘food served in a bowl’ as definition.
That couldn’t be the answer to 21a, could it? It was. I must say, I’ve never encountered it in oenological circles. My favourite for a dud wine is probably “Has a certain robustness that demands attention.”
I’m still not a fan of “up” as an anagrind (8d) but I should probably stop complaining by now.
Concur with Hovis. Seafood should become “sea, food”.
Good fun, and just the right difficulty level.
I must have a similar sense of humour to Goliath, as I enjoy (most of) his clues immensely. Plus, I find he can be quite inventive.
MEDICINE was FOI and a beauty, and MODELS (next one in) was pretty good too, while THE BEST was just that. And who could not love CAT PEE (indeed, I have a very good friend Tom who has a fabulous cellar). I could have ticked many more.
I thank Goliath for the learning opportunity in STYLET and BALTI, and thank Oriel for showing me how to parse TWENTIES.
Thanks to Goliath for a great puzzle and to Oriel for an impressive blog
A splendid puzzle from Goliath which, happily, falls on a public holiday so I could savour it at leisure. It was full of tricks and verve – including those ‘fission’ type clues, for instance.
In no particular order, my picks were WEDDING, MEDICINE, NIGHT NIGHT, TWENTIES, MODELS, (concise), CRATE (for expunging SOS) and for professional reasons, CRITERION (got to love a clue referencing the Conrans). Also, agree with Hovis re sea/food.
I saw a bird nina too and wondered if it was deliberate or if, indeed, there is some theme going on?
Hearty thanks to Goliath and Oriel
Somehow, it took a long time for the penny to drop on 21A, despite me being the staff of two cats.
Thanks for the blog , usual set of stunning clues , agree with Muffin@1 making three fission clues in total . For NUCLEUS I had the definition as central element .
I will just pick STOREY out of many for the flowing wordplay and a reference to the foundational issues in set theory .
VOLT has a very vague definition , just about okay for a crossword .
I couldn’t agree more with with Oriel’s introduction and Martyn and Diane’s opening sentences @3 and 4. There’s no better way to start the day than with a puzzle from Goliath.
A delightful romp from start to finish. With difficulty, I’ve pruned my list of favourites to the combination of LAUGHTER THE BEST MEDICINE, SINBAD (I’ve seen it before but many won’t have and some classics easily bear recycling), DEFIANCE (one engaged), ECONOMICS (for making it funny), the whimsical WEDDING, SAYING (for the BOGOF), CRATE, for my favourite Greek philosopher, INTROVERT for ‘home and dry’ and BALTI for ‘most of sea food’, CRITERION and ENERGETIC.
I have to confess to not having completely finished: the NE combination of DATASETS and STYLET (Goliath is much more familiar with this than I am) beat me.
Huge thanks, as ever, to Goliath for the fun and Oriel for a superblog.
A terrific puzzle. So many great clues that I find it hard to pick a favourite, but I will go for the LAUGHTER THE BEST MEDICINE trio.
I too struggled with BALTI and DATASETS but got them through guesswork. My downfall was LAUGHTER for which I made a wild guess at “gangster”. I have an idea that this idea of laughter being the best medicine cropped up in a recent puzzle where it was a NHO for me. By today I had forgotten it until I saw the blog. Thanks to all.
DATASETS was a nice lift and separate, aside from the IN which I don’t think quite works.
And from experience it’s normally cat’s pee not cat pee.
Just being picky again, it’s the medical profession, not the medicine profession.
A most enjoyable puzzle but I would be grateful if someone could explain to me what “lift and separate” means in connection with crosswords
Beak @12
I can’t do better than refer your query, as I always do when this question comes up, to this excellent crossword site
https://www.crosswordunclued.com/
– an absolute mine of information on everything to do with crosswords, including some interesting in-depth interviews with well known crossword personalities, including Brendan, Arachne and our former Administrator, Gaufrid. It takes a bit of navigating, because there’s so much stuff but it’s well worth it. Search for ‘lift and separate’.
Beak @12 – here’s a more direct link: https://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/12/lift-and-separate.html
Gnomad@11 but MEDICINE is the profession, like The Law or The Church.
Beak @12. I think ‘lift and separate’ may well mean different things to different people. Perhaps Diane’s use of ‘fission’ is preferable. I think I first saw Roz use this. Some people refer to Playtex but this often leads to even further confusion. The idea here is that certain words need to be split for the wordplay. So, in 7d, ‘seafood’ becomes ‘sea, food’; in 2d, ‘indeed’ becomes ‘in deed’; and in 8d ‘instead’ becomes ‘in stead’.
Me@6 , sorry Hovis , wrong bakery product , I meant Hovis@1.
L&S was originally coined for two words already separate so I never saw the point .
I had used Playtex and Gossard for many years in my crossword diary before using them on here , I like to annotate using as few words as possible so they were very succint .
People complained , especially Guardian blogs , so I switched to fission and fusion . Fusion is much rarer . I have several other diary terms which I do not use on here .
These lift and separate clues seem to be Goliath’s signature. As much as I try, I am afraid I cannot bring myself to like them.
Hovis @16
After flogging this poor moribund horse for as long as folk have been asking what ‘lift and separate’ means, this is a hill I’m prepared to die on. The post to which I’ve given the links is dated December 2010 and cites a blog of a Times puzzle (23496) from January 2007, which I have finally tracked down. https://timesforthetimes.co.uk/23496-lift-separate
(I don’t know why I didn’t search for it long ago.) It has served well for all those years.
I have also just discovered that ‘lift and separate’ is listed in Wiktionary.
Considering how long this has gone on, I’d like to say that this is my last word but I can’t trust myself! I’ll just say now that I shall continue to use this expression until my last comment / blog. 😉
Roz @17 – your comment appeared while I was typing. I don’t understand your ‘L&S was originally coined for two words already separate so I never saw the point.’
I appreciate and respect your aversion to following links, so I’ll quote directly from shuchi’s crosswordunclued:
“Not all clues let us detect their structure so readily. Some create a joint so compelling between definition and wordplay, it takes an act of supreme will for the solver to pry them apart. This is popularly called “lift and separate”.
Here are a few clues that require the “lift and separate” treatment, for you to admire and solve:
FT13571 (Aardvark): Aching to cook and eat Welsh rabbit (7) C_____G
Times 24702: Odin’s son has a mark on map to denote treasure chest (6) T_____
FT 13541 (Alberich): Location for Santa Maria’s centre reached outward (6) G_O___
FT 13558 (Loroso): One found at back of strip club in India (5) L____ ”
I’m going to watch the tennis now. 😉
Martyn @19 – you’ll see from the examples in my post above that the still much-missed Alberich and another of my favourites, Anax / Loroso, were also aficionados of ‘lift and separate’. 😉
Surely there is nothing unusual about “lift and separate” clues? All that Mark Goodliffe was describing in the Times for the Times blog is, in effect, the situation where the dividing line between wordplay and definition appears between adjacent words that, for the purposes of the surface reading, form a compound noun.
The clues Eileen cites above are all fair, unlike the sort of tripe Goliath/Philistine regularly produces, such as the clue here for BALTI which, for its wordplay, requires a single word to be split (here “seafood” into “sea” and “food”) without giving any indication that that needs to be done.
Bagpuss @21 – in the examples above, not so much a compound noun as a well-known phrase: welsh rabbit; treasure chest; Santa Maria; strip club.
I was hoping to keep out of this discussion, but can hold my peace no longer. As noted especially by Hovis@16, the term “lift and separate” was originally used for one purpose that should be entirely uncontroversial, as in the examples quoted by Eileen. However, it has been applied to the device used by Goliath (at least) four times in this puzzle (2dn, 4dn, 7dn, 8dn), and this is a device that I for one cannot regard as reasonable. I try to avoid the expression “lift and separate” and use the expression “unsignalled splitting of a clue word”, which may be less concise, but actually says what is going on. The essence of my objection is the “unsignalled” part. I can see no logical distinction between unsignalled splitting of a clue word and any of the following clues, which I have made up for the purpose of discussion:
English pebbles (7)
Washing leaves pebbles (7)
Pebbles fractured leg bone (7)
Seasiders have interesting nights gathering lovely elliptical pebbles (7)
If you would be happy with all of those, then you are at least being logically consistent and I have no quarrel with you. There is room in crossword land for a variety of different opinions. I will simply say that I would not like to solve crosswords in which all of these unsignalled devices were allowed.
Over the years, Goliath has produced a number of puzzles without resorting to the ghastly device used today. My pleasure in those has been unalloyed, and I continue to solve his puzzles in the hope that he will one day produce another puzzle which I can enjoy completely, rather than just in the larger part.
1ac: Further to Peter@15, Collins 2023 p 1221 has medicine 4 the practice or profession of medicine: he’s in medicine.
There is but one rule in crossword land – the setter sets and the solver solves. Many thanks to Goliath and Oriel, and all the other commenters. I had a good, medicinal laugh at the audacity of sea food. Datasets involved the application of a much dented tea tray.
Without wanting to get dragged into further discussion, in 7dn we immediately read ‘seafood’ as ‘sea food’ without noticing the lack of a space; OTOH it took a while for the penny to drop about ‘instead’ in 8dn.
As for 21ac we remember coming across a wine several years ago which was actually named Cat’s Pee on a Gooseberry Bush; no doubt it’s no longer on the market but we won’t reveal its country of origin.
Nice crossword, anyway. Thanks, Goliath and Oriel.
Thanks Goliath for demonstrating once again that LAUGHTER is the best MEDICINE. Lots of entertaining clues including SINBAD, DEFIANCE, WEDDING, BALTI, VOLT, and STOREY. If I were to revise a clue it would be CAT PEE; I would replace ‘wine tasting’ with ‘beer tasting’. I’ve been to countless tastings of both; I never heard CAT PEE mentioned with wine but if beer has citra or simcoe hops I’ve heard folks say ‘this beer smells like cat piss’. BTW, they drink it anyway 😆 Thanks Oriel for the blog.
Tony Santucci @27 – Ha!
I had entered CAT PEE, guessed from the clue, without bothering to look it up but you’ve led me to do so and now I find online:
“Cat’s pee: Describes a sour, foul scent similar to cat urine. One of the buzzwords for aromas in Sauvignon Blanc, this scent is also caused by Brettanomyces. Crisp: Refers to high-acid, typically cool-climate white wines. … ”
… and here I sit, ,a glass of my current go-to tipple (as I think it was in York), in hand. I think I’ll follow your BTW ‘folks’. 🙂
Eileen @28: Enjoy!
I read all the comments and was about to share that my Kiwi wine friends, including a vineyard owner, will often refer to notes of sauvignon blanc as cat pee…but then Eileen beat me to it at the final moment.
Goliath’s really good isn’t he. Loved this, despite the stress unfolding on the TV.
Thanks Goliath and Oriel.
Tony and Martin
🙂
Almost completed, defeated by NE corner. STYLET is new to me, and it didn’t help that I had DEPOSITS for 8d. I liked SINBAD, after several minutes toying with AB, salt and tar, it just popped into my mind.
I must seek out the old Sinbad movies from the late 40’s and 50’s that I watched as a child on Saturday morning TV.