Imogen fills the mid-week slot, with a generally straightforward puzzle …
… apart from a couple of (for me) unknown words at 15 and 17dn, gettable from the clues. The perimeter clues were a great help, especially the anagrams at 1ac, 1dn and 7dn, the last of which went straight in, from the enumeration and the clear definition, but the surfaces were very neat.
Thanks to Imogen for the puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Sort of tour with topless models (7-4)
WHISTLE-STOP
An anagram (models) of WITH TOPLESS
9 Scrounger, one claiming to pocket pounds (7)
BLAGGER
BAGGER (one claiming) round L (pounds)
10 Prison visitor’s not a Charlie (7)
CHAPLIN
CHAPL[a]IN (prison visitor) minus a – we need to take the ‘s as indicating ‘has’
11 Receiving a blow isn’t a disaster for French islanders (9)
TAHITIANS
An anagram (disaster) of ISN’T A round A HIT (a blow)
12 Sort of sexual transport? (5)
METRO
Double definition
13 Obsessive fiddler died for love (4)
NERD
NER[o] (the emperor who allegedly fiddled while Rome burned) with the o (love) replaced by D (died)
14 Grand veteran one imprisons: she got several tastes of porridge (10)
GOLDILOCKS
G (grand) + OLD (veteran) + I (one) + LOCKS (imprisons – this really needs to be followed by ‘up’)
16 Party almost sounded scornful of the modern state? (10)
HOOTENANNY
HOOTE[d] (almost sounded scornful) + NANNY (of the modern state?)
19 Lump fish circling loch (4)
CLOD
COD (fish) round L (loch)
20 Nasty accusation given attention by NCO (5)
SMEAR
SM (Sergeant Major – NCO) + EAR (attention)
21 I’m calling up troops to fight and phone round island reserve to start with (9)
MOBILISER
MOBILE (phone) round IS (island) + R[eserve]
23 Planner not so sensible, squashing resistance (7)
DRAFTER
DAFTER (not so sensible) round R (resistance)
24 Arthur’s Seat visited by large number (7)
CAMELOT
CAME (visited) + LOT (large number) – Arthur’s Seat is a peak in Edinburgh and Camelot is the seat of the legendary King Arthur
25 Come to bed and behave inappropriately? (5,6)
TOUCH BOTTOM
Double definition
Down
1 Orchestrate a few changes in such a bulletin (7,8)
WEATHER FORECAST
An anagram (changes) of ORCHESTRATE A FEW
2 Block entered back to front
INGOT
GOT IN (entered) back to front
3 Fuss about fleet meeting a storm (7)
TORNADO
TO-DO (fuss) round RN – Royal Navy – fleet) + A
4 Old Charlie in employment allowed to leave (7)
EXCUSED
EX (old) + C (Charlie – NATO alphabet) + USED (in employment)
5 Arms met awkwardly, cradling large hampers (8)
TRAMMELS
An anagram (awkwardly) of ARMS MET round L (large)
6 Sort of prisoner left us: may travel for safety abroad (9,6)
POLITICAL ASYLUM
POLITICAL (sort of prisoner) + an anagram (travel) of L (left) US MAY
7 Obstinate: hide when given new form mistress (1,3,2,3,4)
A BIT ON THE SIDE
An anagram (when given new form) of OBSTINATE HIDE
8 Without thought, home team slotting into right tempo (13)
INCONSIDERATE
IN (home) + SIDE (team) in CON(servative) (right) + RATE (tempo)
15 Two Labour leaders set to sack head of union for business grouping (8)
KEIRETSU
KEIR (Hardie and Starmer – strictly, the name of two Labour leaders, Hardie and Starmer, the former the namesake of the latter) + an anagram (to sack) of SET + U(nion) – for a Japanese term for a business grouping see here
17 Cabinet selectively calm IRA hotheads (7)
ALMIRAH
Hidden in cALM IRA Hotheads
18 Opera company puts on ‘A Caribbean Rising’ (7)
NABUCCO
CO (company) after (puts on?) a reversal (rising) of CUBAN (Caribbean) – the ‘a’ in the clue seems superfluous and the construction is rather clunky but the surface is lovely
22 Bound in leather, instruction from the top university (5)
LIMIT
Initial letters (from the top) of Leather Instruction) + MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology – university)
Apart from the obvious 15d and 17d, I hadn’t heard of TOUCH BOTTOM as “come to bed” before (and Chambers didn’t help).
Pretty good otherwise.
Lots too enjoy and I made steady progress. 15dn was LOI and held me up until I realised who the two labour leaders were. Even then I seemed to have an obscure Japanese word I’d never heard of. Just wondered if the definition in 22dn should be bind rather than bound? I’m sure others will explain. Thanks Imogen and Eileen.
Thankfully I got the two long anagrams for 1d and 7d which gave me the first letter of WHISTLE-STOP which I immediately guessed though I couldn’t parse it.
Having those three was a great help as I slowly (very) worked my way though with help from a word finder. Quite a lot I got from the description and crossers and then parsed – like GOLDILOCKS which I would never have managed to work out from the word play on its own (and which I liked once I got it).
Liked CHAPLIN, NERD, CAMALOT which I thought were neat clues.
Not heard of KEIRETSU or ALMIRAH.
I do find Imogen’s puzzles difficult.
Thanks Imogen and Eileen (needed your help as several were unparsed)
A Sergeant Major is a WO (Warrant Officer) not an NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer).
Tim C @1, I read it as come to the bed of the ocean, therefore touch bottom.
I had the same thought initially JerryG@2 but then convinced myself that bound was the noun as in “upper limit”
Thanks Imogen & Eileen. I found much to like here – not Imogen at his most difficult but all felt well polished. TOUCH BOTTOM made me laugh out loud. I also particularly liked the neatness of NERD and CHAPLIN.
Imogen’s “sort of” clues always catch me out, so WHISTLE STOP took ages (but came quickly one I twigged it was an anagram) and METRO was my last in, along with a big self-administered head slap.
JerryG @5 – exactly how I read it. Thought it was a lovely cryptic definition.
I was ready to moan about TORNADO as I had TORN (fleet) with ADO, which really didn’t work at all. Thanks for putting me straight Eileen.
As above two jorums today as I suspect most others will report too.
Tim C. Think of reaching the bottom of the sea
Thanks Imogen and Eileen
Thank you Imogen & Eileen, I enjoyed this very much. The top half, at least, went in quite smoothly, then struggled with 15d.
Thank you too for being considerate and showing us the TOP, BOTTOM & two SIDEs!
Thanks JerryG@5. Yes I can sort of see (sea?) that. Chambers just had “to reach the lowest point” so it seemed a bit obscure.
@1 I interpreted it literally as reaching the (river-) bed, hence touching bottom.
Like others, I didn’t know ALMIRAH (which I should have got from the clue, but didn’t) or KEIRETSU (which I don’t think I’d ever have worked out). Favourite I think was NERD. Agree with JerryG about TOUCH BOTTOM.
Thanks Imogen and Eileen
15 and 17 unknown to me too – 17 so unknown that I took ages to spot the hidden!
Favourites WHISTLE STOP and NERD (apparently Nero wasn’t even in Rome when it burned, but I suppose the phrase might be meant metaphorically).
There’s a much more obvious definition for TOUCH BOTTOM he could have used – “come to lowest ebb” or similar.
Same here JerryG @5: I agree with Eileen that the perimeter clues made this easier than it might have been. GOLDILOCKS was a tap-in whilst ALMIRAH and KEIRETSU were gettable. Liked CHAPLIN, CAMELOT, METRO and MOBILISER amongst others.
Ta Imogen & Eileen
muffin @14 – the phrase relates to Nero’s corrupt self-interest while the city went to ruin, not literal burning.
He wasn’t a violinist either
Putting ARMOIRE for ALMIRAH didn’t help, so a little cheating needed to finish off.
Thanks Eileen and Imogen for a mostly kinder puzzle
widdersbel @16
I thought it was probably something like that, though the city did literally burn while he was in charge as well.
[Further thoughts on Nero… I thought I’d better double-check because I know my memory is unreliable… it seems some sources suggest he did play the cithara while Rome was literally on fire. I suppose it’s possible my history teacher was suggesting this was a metaphor for his reign as a whole. I’ll shut up now, I’m sure others are more knowledgeable about this than me]
muffin @14 and widdersbel @16 and 17 – several more snippets re Nero (which I thought of including in the blog) here
Such a contrast for me this morning between the generous, gettable long anagrams at the top of the puzzle and some of the solutions that I found to be quite obscure in my GK at the BOTTOM. NABUCCO, ALMIRAH, and indeed TOUCH BOTTOM, and finally the one that defeated me, KEIRETSU. I notice that we had another mistress in the clueing this week dropping in at 7 down, too. Years ago we had a family dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback bitch with the breed name of Mistress of Manscross. She was always known by her pet name of Folly….
Lots to enjoy today, despite the gnarly ending. Thanks to Imogen and Eileen…
widdersbel @20 – not claiming to be more knowledgeable: you posted while I was (slowly) typing. 😉
[Thanks Eileen @21]
wynsum @10 well-spotted.
Thanks Eileen!
On the easy side for Imogen but I failed KEIRETSU – never heard of this before. I might have got it if the clue was of Labour leader, not two Labour leaders… Was there another Keir apart from Keir Starmer? Oh, I see – Keir Hardie (found via google).
Liked NERD.
16ac – excellent surface: “Party almost sounded scornful of the modern state?” but I could not parse my answer apart from NANNY = modern state.
New for me: ALMIRAH = cabinet.
Thanks, both.
Lots to like here, with some excellent clues – the anagrams are all good. I did find the clues very variable in difficulty – some were write-ins and others far more hard to crack. ALMIRAH was somewhere in the mental lumber room (and helpfully hidden in plain sight) but KEIRETSU was unknown to me. I didn’t have the patience to work it out and resorted to wordsearch. This seems to violate the principle of easy clue for difficult word, though to be fair it’s not an easy word to clue! Shared given names rather than surnames added an extra level of complexity for me, but perhaps I’m just being obtuse. Certainly I spotted the parsing as soon as I found the solution.
TOUCH BOTTOM was my COTD 🙂
Many thanks to Imogen and Eileen
What’s happened to 6d?
Eileen, you appear to have skipped 6d: POLITICAL ASYLUM
It’s on the way! I don’t know how that happened.
I think the G in @14 stands for grand rather than gold.
My apologies for the omission – amended now.
Willbar @32 – you’re quite right, of course: that was a careless error, which I’ll fix now.
Just the same as Eileen.
Cryptics are my go to now i’ve discovered this. I have a go at the Guardian then when i’ve had enough i come here. I managed to get 12 clues on my own today. A record for me
Well done, Clive @36 – onward and upward! 🙂
Some nice anagrams, but KEIRETSU was beyond me (and two different word searches). The image of a political leader partying away while the city burns seems ever current. I was surprised to realise that Tahiti is still French.
Thanks for the blog, Imogen puzzles have been quite tricky recently so this was a bit of a disappointment, far too many long entries given away far too easily .
Very enjoyable and thanks to Imogen and to the estimable Eileen (to whom thanks for parsing SMEAR).
A BIT ON THE SIDE brought me back (spoiler alert) to the blog of Pan’s puzzle on Monday wherein I suggested (BLT) that one of the definitions was inaccurate. Quod dixi dixi.
This seemed to be midway between am Imogen and a Vulcan which made it an enjoyable stroll withy a device o l;ocate 15d
Thanks Imo and Eileen (“I and I”)
As is often said here, obscurity is in the eye of the beholder, and I have seen plenty over the years. But having lived 12 years in Tokyo, 15dn KEIRETSU is very familiar to me. It didn’t make the clue a write-in however as the other Keir is obscure to me so I could make no sense of that part of the wordplay. But solved from the definition alone and then looked up Keir. Is that a reverse jorum?
I always have to work hard with Imogen and today was no exception. But well worth the effort.
Thanks Imogen and Eileen.
I happened to be reading about the SM title yesterday. Apparently (way back) some became known as Sergeant Major General. Then this happened, per Wikipedia:
“Over time, the term sergeant was dropped from both titles, giving rise to the modern ranks of major and major general.”
Who knew? I never understood the various multi-term ranks, or who outranked who, and this doesn’t really help that much, but is part of the picture anyway.
Well I eventually guessed KEIRETSU but I don’t think it’s fair. As Eileen implies, ‘two Labour leaders’ should really lead to KEIRS, which is how I started constructing the answer (once I had some crossers). ‘Head of union’ was always likely to be U, so that left me with a two-letter gap to fill with whatever ‘set to sack’ was supposed to indicate. Or maybe ‘set to’ was just a positional indicator, and I was looking for a two-letter equivalent of ‘sack’??
I finally stumbled on the ‘anagram of SET’ idea, but thought ‘That only works if the cluing for KEIR is dodgy’. But after a whole morning being unable to think of any better alternative, despite repeatedly coming back to the puzzle, I bunged in KEIRETSU without much hope of its being correct. To find it is correct is a bit disappointing to be honest. Sloppy cluing for a word no one’s likely to have heard of (apart from those who have lived in Tokyo! – just seen KLColin @42) is surely infra Imogen.
Sorry for the grumpiness. I did like NABUCCO – here’s my earworm for today.
Thanks Imogen and Eileen, and wynsum @10 for spotting the TOP, BOTTOM and two SIDES, and copmus @41 for the two-Bob sign-off. 😉
My beloved Crouch End sister just now mentioned the Labour leader during a long WhatsApp, and I went Ding, that’s the other Labour leader besides Hardie, after whom Mr Starmer was of course named. D’oh and D’oh. Nice puzzle Vulcogen (I pinched that) and ta Eileen.
Thanks Imogen. Favourites were CHAPLIN, NERD (nice surface), HOOTENANNY, and INGOT (neat trick). Like others I had no chance with KEIRETSU and I only guessed ALMIRAH and NABUCCO from the wordplay. Thanks Eileen for filling in my parsing gaps.
@4
A warrant officer has a warrant, not a commission, and is therefore a non-commissioned officer, although the forces will often refer to ‘NCOs and Warrant Officers’
As a lover of pinting on the past, 25 was very important!
in not on!
This was great fun , helped immensely by the kind clueing for 1a, 1d and 7d.
Lots of fun along the way esp TOUCH BOTTOM, METRO, NERD and NABUCCO.
The two unusual words at 15d and 17d were fairly clued although I resorted to guessing the former.
Many thanks Imogen and Eileen
[Officer Crabtree @48/49: I hoop your pile didn’t get stock in the buttom 😉 ]
I’m with essexboy @44 re keiretsu. Should we be expected to know Japanese words? What next, Farsi?
I think KEIRETSU was just a case of the setter getting trapped because of the U in TOUCH BOTTOM and needing that for the mini theme.
The clue though could have been much fairer, just starting with Labour leader would have helped considerably.
Like others, I only got KEIRETSU with my old fallback, lists on Wikipedia (this time of Labour leaders); noting that the current one and first one were both named Keir, and as I already had the -ETSU, there it was. I’d heard of the thing, but had forgotten the term.
There’s been a rash of Japanese cuisine terms turning up in American crosswords lately. Keeping my unagi straight from my enoki has gotten to be a pain. Of course every Japanese word ends with a vowel or an N–even loan words are respelled to make that happen–and there basically aren’t any consonant clusters, so throwing in some Japanese is a good way of soaking up some vowels. But the problem is where to draw the line. Umami and sushi are good English now, and even sashimi and udon, but can you say the same about KEIRETSU? Not so sure about that.
Today’s New Britishism For Me was BLAGGER (my LOI today). It’s not even in the online Webster’s, which usually does okay with British terms (labeling them as such). (Again, for people who think I’m carping, that’s totally not it–I’m learning.)
mrpenney @54
“Blag” usually takes an object – for example “can i blag a cigarette?”
You can always substitute “scrounge”
Roz@53 that’s probably it, but he could have added “in Japan”.
Dr. W @57 – Labour leader set to sack head of union for Japanese business grouping.
A very obscure word requires more help, I only knew it because I am always reading Murakami.
Roz @58
I like it, but would “change” be better than “sack”?
Muffin @59 , I was trying to retain as much of the original as possible but “change” would make it so much better.
Thanks Roz
‘Aspiring PM set to destroy union leader’, reveals Japanese business group (?)
Nice, eb!
Thanks muffin. Only took me all day to compose one clue! 🙂
Eileen, and anyone else who might be interested, re the surface of 18d, there is in fact an opera about Toussaint L’Ouverture. See this Wikipedia entry on the eponymous hero:
“In 1977 the opera Toussaint by David Blake was produced by English National Opera at the Coliseum Theatre in London, starring Neil Howlett in the title role.[151]”
I think I almost went to see it (before I became interested in opera) but the run was brought to an abrupt end by “industrial action”.
Thanks for the blog and to Imogen for the puzzle, a lot of which I found quite hard.
Clearly, I’ve yet to master the art of inserting hyperlinks!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture
essexboy @62 – very nice, although if I’m being picky, ‘set to destroy’ has the same flaw as Imogen’s original ‘set to sack’ (should be ‘set to be destroyed’/’set to be sacked’ for the grammar, no?).
Would ‘Aspiring PM set about union leader…’ work, perhaps? (Suggestive of things getting out of hand at the Labour Party conference after too many glasses of cheap Argentinean Malbec.)
me @14
…though when the Drury Lane theatre caught fire, it’s owner was found drinking wine and watching it burn down. R.B. Sheridan was famously reported to have said: “A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.”
its! smacked wrist. The date was 1809.
Good one widdersbel @69. (Keir Starmer channelling his inner Prescott?)
Alternatively,
‘Aspiring PM set to be dismembered by union leader’, reveals Japanese business group
Brilliant, eb, I think you’ve nailed it!
Metro, 12 across, how is this a double definition?
Alauda @74
I wasn’t impressed by this one, but I think it refers to the “trendy” expression “metrosexual” – not entirely sure what it means!
metrosexual was/is an americanism I think. It refers to men (often single) who live an large metropolitan areas where an interested in art, cooking, stylish clothes, etc. is considered “normal” for cis males whereas these same traits might be considered evidence of non-cis orientation in less “sophisticated” locales.
As you might guess from my hemming and hawing and using parentheses this sort of definition has become a bit outdated these days. I don’t hear the term used that often now.
A good crossie apart from the much discussed Japanese group, which I never would have got in a month of Sundays (despite knowing about both Keirs). Thanks, Eileen and (except for that) Imogen.
atp @76 – First used in 1994 according to both the OED and Merriam-Webster. Does feel slightly dated now.
Trying to keep to the original clue with added suggestions from Dr, W and Muffin.
Labour leader set to change head of union for Japanese business grouping.
EB@72 is much better but not such a faithful rendition of the original.
Roz – that sounds depressingly like a description of something that would actually happen in real life. Solid as a clue though.
I got a bit stuck with this one. Tiredness?
Didn’t know KEIRETSU or ALMIRAH.
Thanks for explanations.
Late thanks Eileen – and wynsum@10 for the extra spot.
Also enjoyed the discussion of alt clueing to KEIRETSU. For once I am setting myself against Essexboy (but thanks for remarks on Thai pronunciation the other day) as I think of dismemberment as involving loss of extremeties rather than rearrangement, unless it is in a particularly grim horror film maybe. But the various suggestions here work better than the original I think, and are fairer.
I have got into the habit of avoiding Imogen’s puzzles as I find them too hard to finish in any reasonable time but this was very enjoyable until the last couple held me up for ages, despite knowing KEIRETSU through work and ALMIRAH being very fair as a hidden word.
NERD brought a wry smile, thanks Imogen.