Thank you to Budmo. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1. Rubber bird I replaced by middle of May (9)
SANDPAPER : “sandpiper”(a small wading bird) with “I” replacing(replaced by) middle letter of(middle of) “May”.
6. Best comedian with shaved head (5)
CREAM : “scream”(a comedian/a funny person) minus its 1st letter(with shaved head).
9. Right bores enthusiastic about prelude (5)
INTRO : R(abbrev.”right”) contained in(bores) INTO(enthusiastic about/having strong interest in).
Answer: Short for “introduction”.
10. Piquant quality of Moroccan dishes including new spices, primarily (9)
TANGINESS : [ TAGINES(Moroccan dishes of slow-cooked meat stew) containing(including) N(abbrev. for “new”) ] + 1st letter of(…, primarily) “spices”.
Very apt surface, describing the quality of and the ingredients in the dishes.
11. Autobiography shows charm (3)
OBI : Hidden in(… shows) “Autobiography”.
Defn: …/amulet used in a witchcraft originally from Africa, and practised by some in the Caribbean.
12, 15, 23. Mere end-of-year claptrap at work, or a good way to reward staff? (11-7,3)
PERFORMANCE RELATED PAY : Anagram of(… at work) MERE END-OF-YEAR CLAPTRAP.
An apt surface, stating the possible alternatives at year-end pay reviews.
14. Medley of writing, perhaps, in distant past (7)
FARRAGO : R(in children’s education, of the three Rs, one/perhaps is writing, the other two being reading and arithmetic) contained in(in) [ FAR(distant/a long way off) + AGO(past/once before) ].
Defn: …/a mixture.
15. See 12
16. Fish arrive in bays? (7)
GARLAND : GAR(a fish with a long slender body) + LAND(to arrive/come down, from, say, an elevated position).
Answer: A …/crown made from bay/laurel tree leaves.
19. Laboured like some circus performers? (7)
STILTED : Double defn: 1st: Without a smooth or natural flow, describing, say, speech; and 2nd: …, in this case the stilt walkers.
22. Annual ritual rearranging ten car seats (6,5)
SECRET SANTA : Anagram of(rearranging) TEN CAR SEATS.
Answer: A Christmas tradition where each person in a group gives a present to another anonymously.
23. See 12
24. Former revolutionary with brief question for Treasury department (9)
EXCHEQUER : EX-(prefix denoting once/former) + CHE(Guevara, Argentinian revolutionary) plus(with) “query”(question) minus its last letter(brief …).
26. Overturned tennis umpire’s call for Don (3,2)
PUT ON : Reversal of(Overturned) [NOT UP](a ruling/call from a tennis umpire when a player hits a ball after it has bounced more than once on the court.
Defn: …/to wear.
27. Make stick shelter (5)
LODGE : Double defn: 1st: …/fix firmly in a tight space; and 2nd: …/a house or hut in the country.
28. One in women’s underwear going to the right restaurant (9)
BRASSERIE : I(Roman numeral for “one”) in BRASSIERE(women’s underwear) moving 2 positions to the right(going to the right).
Down
1. Maybe Joey to leave motor racing track unexpectedly (4-3)
SPIN-OFF : [SPIN OFF](to lose control of one’s racing car causing it to leave the track unexpectedly in a spin).
Answer: An example of which/maybe is “Joey”, the TV series spun off from the earlier “Friends”.
2. Gossip about one being more smart (7)
NATTIER : NATTER(to talk casually about trivial things/gossip) containing(about) I(Roman numeral for “one”).
Defn: …/more stylish.
3. Vietnamese soup’s super when condensed, essentially – it reacts with proteins (11)
PHOSPHATASE : PHO(Vietnamese noodle soup)’S + PHAT(slang for “excellent”/super) + AS(when/at that moment) + middle letter of(…, essentially) “condensed”.
Answer: An enzyme that catalyses reactions involving proteins..
4. Marsupial droppings covering car with roof removed (7)
POTOROO : POO(excrement/droppings) containing(covering) “motor”(motorised vehicle/car) minus its 1st letter(with roof removed, in a down clue).
5. Managed two-thirds of schedule, showing animosity (7)
RANCOUR : RAN(managed/led, say, an organisation) + 1st 4 out of 6 letters of(two-thirds of) “course”(a planned series of events/a schedule).
6. Short, elegant letter from Athens (3)
CHI : Last letter deleted from(Short) “chic”(elegant/smart).
Defn: A letter/character in the language of Athens, Greece.
7. Jules, possibly, probing alien hypothetical communication infrastructure (7)
EVERNET : VERNE(a person’s surname, an example of whom/possibly is Jules Verne, French author) contained in(probing) ET(abbrev. for “extra-terrestrial”, an alien originating from outside Earth).
Answer: A hypothetical advanced version of the internet/communication infrastructure into which, besides computers, all domestic and industrial devices are permanently connected.
8. In error, dispatch young woman with object (7)
MISSEND : MISS(a young woman) plus(with) END(the purpose of doing something/an object).
Defn: To dispatch/send something or someone to the wrong person or place.
13. Having many locations, University claims millions put off (11)
MULTICAMPUS : Anagram of(… off) [ U(abbrev. for “University”) + CLAIMS + M(abbrev. for “millions”) + PUT ].
16. She wrote request to block setter, 50 (7)
GASKELL : ASK(to seek/request) contained in(to block) GEL(a jelly-like liquid that sets/thickens into a solid form) + L(Roman numeral for 50).
Answer: Elizabeth …, English novelist.
17. Swimmer cut my back (4,3)
ROCK COD : Reversal of(… back) [ DOCK(to cut short the tail of, say, an animal) + COR!(like “my!”, an expression of surprise) ].
An example:
18. Methodist urban housing muddle (7)
DISTURB : Hidden in(… housing) “Methodist urban”.
Defn: …/to disarrange.
19. Performed song on the counter for drink (7)
SANGRIA : SANG(produced/performed a tune with one’s voice) + reversal of(… on the counter) AIR(a simple tune/song).
Answer: A cold Spanish drink made from red wine, fruit juice, carbonated water and other ingredients.
20. Better assistant is trendy sort with time for husband (7)
TIPSTER : “hipster”(someone who follows the latest fashions/a trendy sort) with “T”(abbrev. for “time”) replacing(for) “h”(abbrev. for “husband”).
Defn: …, ie. one who gives a better/gambler information as to who or what to bet on.
21. Senior member cooked nurses bread in Japan (7)
DOYENNE : DONE(describing food that is completely cooked and ready to eat) containing(nurses) YEN(the Japanese unit of money/bread in slang).
Defn: …/a grand dame in a specified field, profession or group.
25. A number going naked the day before (3)
EVE : “seven”(a number) minus its 1st and last letters(going naked).
What an enjoyable puzzle, which was a slow burner in the top half but was helped by a more accessible bottom. I could have ticked every clue but I especially enjoyed SANDPIPER, TANGINESS, PRP, FARRAGO, SPIN OFF, PHOSPHATASE, EVERNET, ROCK COD, MULTICAMPUS and TIPSTER. Super end to a good week.
Ta Budmo & scchua.
No probs with this Friday puzzle at all – straight forward clueing throughout.
Favourite was rubber meaning sandpaper – I’m always tripped up by words ending in -er!
Wasn’t sure on PHAT for super, but it is in Collins.
Was there perhaps a US flavour to this? Rock Cod (nho) is apparently a Pacific fish, evernet (also nho) is apparently a recent US usage, for example.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard “not up” as a tennis call, but I hardly ever watch tennis apart from wimbledon so maybe it’s not used there. Multicampus was also unfamiliar.
Performance related pay was a clever anagram; I would argue it’s not a good way to reward employees (because it tends to reward those good at self-promotion) but it did have a question mark.
I had LODGE as a triple def (make/lodge a complaint, stick/lodge as in ‘put’ and shelter/lodge) but I suppose it could be double or triple. Stumped by PHOSPHATASE but the rest I thought was fair and very enjoyable.
So pleased to see Mrs GASKELL get a mention. One of my favourite writers, I love North and South particularly.
Managed everything except PHOSPHATASE, where I couldn’t get beyond PHOS-. EVERNET is pretty obscure. It’s unknown to Chambers and Wikipedia, and in many years of teaching and managing networks (before retiring) I have only a faint recollection of ever having heard it, though the cluing was clear.
I agree with Redrodney @4 that LODGE was a triple. I solved it on that basis. ( I like a triple!)
There were some new words today, but it was a fair challenge.
Other likes included SANDPAPER, TANGINESS and PUT ON.
Joey was not a terrible show. I wonder how many people remember it?
Thanks Budmo and Scchua.
This felt rather a strange solve for me today. In that I didn’t find it particularly difficult to fill the grid, but afterwards found myself with quite a few solutions that I hadn’t come across before or that I wasn’t entirely sure of as to their precise meaning. All of FARRAGO, PHOSPHATASE, POTOROO, EVERNET, ROCK COD, MULTICAMPUS, SECRET SANTA and that spelling of DOYENNE. Quite a list.
Lovely illustrations from Scchua as ever…
Thanks Budmo and scchua
Several words I hadn’t heard of. I did know PHOSPHATASE but didn’t get beyond PHO- in the parsing (as didn’t poc @6).
With the crossers, 16a was obviously GURNARD….until I “checked”, and it wasn’t!
Everything going well, and even the unknowns were fairly clued, but had to reveal 3d with only two letters missing, due to the ludicrous (imho) PHAT. Wasn’t there a fairer way to clue this obscure word?
Otherwise a nice tough Friday. Thanks both.
Muffin @9 I also plonked in gurnard and tried to parse it for a while to no avail.
Martin @11 and Muffin @9 — I also got tripped up on 16A, but I plunked in “garaged”, as in “in bays”. Thanks Budmo and scchua.
I have cooked GAR fish, having spotted it one Saturday in my local fish market. It was pleasant but not really worth a repeat visit, and I don’t think I saw it again. I was not, therefore, tempted to go down the gurnard route. I was also mindful of Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Garden’:
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays;
And their incessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree, …
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the GARLANDs of repose.
Pleasant crossword with a variety of different types of clues. I was another who BIFD gurnard at the beginning. I liked the good anagram for PERFORMANCE-RELATED PAY, the GAR LAND, the MULTICAMPUS university, and the DOYENNE cooking nurses bread in Japan. A tip for the future – many enzymes end in -ASE.
Thanks Budmo and scchua.
…me too tempted by GURNARD at first. Quite possibly because it’s a surname that features way back in my family history. And also because I have recently been to the place of that name on the Isle of Wight, looking for genealogy clues of my own…
I found this tough as usual on a Friday but the excellent long anagram got me started. I knew pho soup but phat phelt unphair. Having guessed SPIN OFF, I needed google to enlighten me on a TV show nho.
Just in case I’m not the only one who didn’t find this the fun easy solve that everyone else appears to have done, you are not alone. If it is just me, then I’m going to give up doing crosswords. Too many whiskey tango foxtrot moments again.
Alastair @16
Yes, Friends was very well known even over here, but the Joey spin-off much less so.
Crispy @17
I’m with you in not particuarly enjoying it. I don’t like solutions like the long one here that seem to fill in half the grid!
FOI WITTIER at 2d. Oops! So I had quite a bit of trouble in the NE and generally didn’t find this an easy solve–you’re not alone Crispy@17! Also once the final O in 4d came, I wasted some time trying to fit something into GUANO. SPIN-OFF was LOI even though that’s American.
ravenrider@3, this USian had never heard of them either. ROCK COD was my, er, CoD anyway for the smooth surface and elegant wordplay. EVERNET was clear from the wordplay, at least.
Thanks Budmo and scchua!
Enjoyable. I agree with #3 ravenrider. Performance related pay is not a good way of rewarding staff. Encourages target seeking rather than quality and a whole load of other unintended consequences. It’s one of the many attempts to reduce management to stats. I was defeated by phat which I’d never heard before as well as not having heard of the enzyme. Potoroo is a lovely word for a very obscure animal.
Thanks for the blog , good set of clues and a very friendly grid .
TANGINESS very neat and I liked STILTED from the circus .
Phat turns up quite often , very out of fashion now .
TIPSTER a well-disguised definition although hipsters are sexy jeans not boring men with beards who breed their own quinoa burgers .
I was booking a stay at the The Gurnard’s Head just last night – what a coincidence I thought. Until I realised it didn’t parse
PRP was a great anagram and there were some interesting synonyms; sandpaper, scream etc.
I’d never heard of the EVERNET but I don’t feel setters should have to limit themselves to words in my vocabulary 🙂
Cheers B&S
Crispy@17: definitely not easy, and a bit of a curate’s egg as far as fun was concerned.
NHO OBI, bays in this sense, PHOS-whatever, POTOROO, EVERNET (despite 40 years spent in enterprise IT), Mrs. GASKELL, nor MULTICAMPUS.
Also GAR, but given my ignorance of flora and fauna that might well be just me. OTOH, never having heard of “gurnard” seems to have been a blessing in disguise.
Diverse medley of vocabulary here – fortunately the constructions were fairly easy to disentangle (FARRAGO is far more pejorative than just ‘medley’, surely?). I liked the long anagram.
Chambers defines PHOSPHATASE very accurately as ‘An enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of phosphate esters’. There isn’t just one, but a whole family of them with different substrates, not all of which are proteins, so Budmo’s definition is off-beam. I don’t think this is the most recondite word in the puzzle as it’s common in a medical context – anyone who has submitted a blood sample for analysis may have had their level of alkaline phosphatase tested.
Thanks to Budmo and scchua
Also, re. EVERNET, may I say that the idea of a network to which “all domestic and industrial devices are permanently connected” sounds like an utter dystopia. Not only would it be a security nightmare (even worse than the current poor state of affairs), it’s an open door to companies deliberately disabling your fridge unless you pay a subscription, or accidentally disabling your fridge because of some bungled “upgrade”. It’s also going to mean advertising everywhere — some owners of “smart” fridges are suddenly finding that the display is now showing ads — and your microwave oven listening in on your conversations (as some TVs apparently already do).
Crispy@17 I thought some of it was obscure and difficult, but there will always be lots of people who seem to find everything easy. I’m sure they don’t mean to boast or dishearten others. Well, most of them! A curate’s egg in terms of enjoyment for me.
I didn’t mean to make it look like this was easy. I enjoyed it, but it was pretty tough. I’m only one poster, but maybe that redresses the balance a little?
ravenruder@3 is right about the “not up” call requiring slightly more than casual familiarity with tennis. However, after struggling with dozens cricket terms over the years, I’ll take te occasional gimme.
No, Crispy@17, you were not alone. As many people have already said: lots of wtf’s and nho’s: PHOSPHATASE (already obscure enough to me without being clued by PHAT), EVERNET, ROCK COD, OBI, MULTICAMPUS, the NOT UP tennis call… I didn’t mind the lateral thinking required to identify writing as one of the three Rs, or Joey as a spinoff (I wasted ages trying to fit ROO into that, and GURNARD into GARLAND), and PERFORMANCE RELATED PAY was a splendid anagram. But I can’t say I enjoyed it: glad some of you did.
Enjoyed this especially the cracking anagram for PRP. Had to use checkers for PHOSPHATASE though.
You don’t need an umpire for NOT UP. In casual play, players call the score, faults, lets etc. themselves (who else is there to do it?) So when the ball bounces more than once before being hit, someone (often the player committing the fault) will call it, either by “NOT UP!” or “DOUBLE BOUNCE!”.
I really enjoyed this one. Loved the long anagram to get started.
As a former biologist it should have taken me less time to get PHOSPHATASE, but as Protase@24 says, the definition wasn’t quite accurate, so my knowledge may have been more a hindrance than a help. And having biffed GARAGED for 16A didn’t help.
Phat is relatively commonly used by young people nowadays, AFAIK – though not being young myself, I’m not certain how current it is. I’m glad to see setters educating solvers in newer words of African American origin, rather than relying so much on British slang from many decades ago.
Excellent crossword. Just right (for me). Not too hard, not too simple. Very good, thanks.
Amazing how long I looked at ‘MISSEND’ before realising it was ‘mis-send’. A word that feels like it should be hyphenated but dictionary says shouldn’t be.
19d I stuck in SANGRIA without parsing, as I’d taken ‘performed song’ to be ‘SANG’, so missed the reversal of AIR.
1a. Along the same lines, one I did earlier (years ago, actually), as they used to say on Blue Peter-
A type of bird I take out for a bit of rough as favoured by Aussie cricketers.
I enjoyed this, possibly because the seemingly endless lists of other people’s nhos were in fact my hos, with the exception of phosphatase.
Phat pronounced fat another useless piece of information, but goggling turned up https://phet.colorado.edu as second link so most happy.
Thanks to those of you who had similar feelings to me. Gladys @29 summed it up perfectly.
Martin @27. I wasn’t having a go at anyone – I’m glad that lots of others enjoyed this. It’s just that when you come here and the first comments are all saying how wonderful it was, it can be intimidating to say you feel differently, so I just wanted to see if anyone else out there felt the same, or whether it was just me.
This feeling I have of a different experience to others is happening too often at the moment.
FWIW, PHAT is actually no longer commonly used, at least in the States. Probably so twenty or even thirty years ago…but as my kids often remind me, by the time young peoples’ slang terms show up in puzzles, they’re not actually using them and think it’s funny that oldsters think it’s still “hip” to do so.
Liked PRP, though for whatever reason I was holding onto MERITED for the middle piece for too long. GARLAND threw me, until the desired meaning of “bays” dropped. Liked BRASSERIE, EXCHEQUER, GASKELL (with the clue’s neat misdirection for “setter”), TIPSTER and TANGINESS. Thanks to Budmo and scchua for the Friday workout.
I liked this one despite the stumbles over the enzyme and marsupial. I can’t understand the whinging about slightly unusual words/phrases while homophones which are horrible are better tolerated. This is a cryptic and not the NYT. Many times, it is easy to work out (e.g. put on). Yes PHAT for super is not obvious. Also a good opporunity to google and read about Gaskell or potoroo. After all, how else would you know words like adit or rya exist 🙂
If you haven’t heard of phat and you haven’t heard of phosphatase, you’re phuck…
Roz @21 Thank you. Made me laugh. Succinct. Enjoy the weekend.
Winston Smith@35: Well I enjoyed it….
I didn’t think you were Crispy @38. I was just attempting to show a bit of empathy 😊
A hearty bowl of soup, but with some unexpectedly crunchy croutons hiding below the surface.
I didn’t recall “not up”, but then I agree with Marina Hyde about tennis. In fact about many sports, come to that.
Thanks all.
EVERNET sounds like what I heard referred to as the Internet Of Things (IoT) for at least the twenty years of my working life. If it differs, thank goodness I no longer need to pretend to know what the difference is.
I share Anna’s view (at 5) of Elizabeth Gaskell, my favourite Victorian novelist. Besides N&S, I highly recommend Wives and Daughters and Cranford (and all her others, of course). She had a wonderful sense of time and place.
I also share Roz’s view (at 21) of hipsters. We have a very good vegetarian restaurant in our neighbourhood but it seems to attract the hipster crowd, and you could cut the smugness with a knife.
I got 14a FARRAGO thanks to Flanders and Swann’s At the Drop of a Hat (An After Dinner Farrago).
Thanks Budmo and scchua for the colourful fun.
Crispy, muffin @17, 18 and Gladys@29 : I felt relieved when I saw your comments here. I found this a real slog, I’m not sure why; got to the end with a good few checks and didn’t terribly enjoy the experience. I did remember ‘not up’ from Wimbledon tournaments of the past but it does not seem to happen now. EVERNET was a new one on me as well despite being a bit of a fan of the IoT back in the day when it wasn’t something to be scared of.
Failed on PHOSPHATASE and GARLAND. In the latter I got no further than ‘bays?’ being potentially horses, and one such was called Brigadier GERRARD, a very famous and brilliant champion in the early 70s. He really was a bay, too! I didn’t write it in, but it did stop me thinking of laurel wreaths.
I got the beginning and the end of 3d, but I’m hopeless at remembering obscurities from one crossword to another, so I had no idea that PHAT would be a synonym for ‘super’. Smashing!
Thanks for the puzzle and the blog. And thanks to fellow non-completers for owning up! 😁
I seem to be the only one who got stuck on 22. It was obviously EASTER something but couldn’t do anything with SCANT. Oh well.
Winston Smith @35 Not that many years ago. One of them is still playing, though not the poor novice they got to do the dirty work.
Tim Sanders @41 Exactly.
I’m with those found this pretty tough going, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I don’t see the triple definition in 27a like Redrodney @4, but I did parse it as overlapping, thinking of a beaver LODGE as a “stick shelter”.
I’d heard of Mrs GASKELL but only as a name. NHO 7d but the clue was pretty clear. I did think of _gurnard_ for 16a because it had appeared in a clue elsewhere recently, but rejected it. OTOH I guessed SKID OFF at 1d—NHO the sitcom. (Saw a couple of _Friends_ episodes but didn’t find it very funny, with unsympathetic characters.) Like stellawtwo @50 I thought the first word of 22a might be _Easter_ for quite a while, until it was contradicted by 17d. I didn’t get the first two words of 12a/15a until I had all the crossers, although I’d decided it must be some kind of PAY early on.