It’s Fed in the Prize slot …
— which promises a treat – and I was very glad of the extra blogging time to sort out some tricky parsing, which I might well not have seen in time if it had been a weekday puzzle.
It’s my habit to work through the clues in order but the two long across clues, which suggested anagrams (‘high’ and ‘spilled’) seduced me, so I tackled them first and thus got off to a good start. (11ac had extra delights in store – see below.)
It was a most enjoyable solve, as expected. As well as the brilliant combination of 11 and 12ac, I ticked, among others, ACERBIC (a neat use of two companies), INHALER (I like those ‘unwrapping’ clues), MISINFORM (an intriguing story), CALLED OFF (a slightly different ‘lower’), MELANCHOLIA (I don’t remember seeing this ‘First Lady’ before – Bravo!) and SKEW-WHIFF, because I like that expression and use it a lot.
Many thanks to Fed for a lot of fun.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Regularly putting out germiest mince – it’ll make you sick (6)
EMETIC
Alternate letters (regularly putting out) of gErMiEsT mInCe
5 Greek river carp (6)
GROUSE
GR (Greek) + OUSE (river)
8 Get wind of court procedure that is void after one leaves (7)
MISTRAL
MISTR[i]AL (court procedure that is void) minus i (one) – I liked the construction of this clue but I’m not quite sure of how to indicate the definition here: (we get?) MISTRAL (wind) from (of?) …
9 Writer joining electronics firm, Sharp (7)
ACERBIC
ACER (electronics firm) + BIC (writer) – clever: Sharp is another electronics company
11 Keep online costs high and make profit (4,4,7)
LINE ONE’S POCKETS
An excellent anagram (high) of KEEP ONLINE COSTS
12 Number 10 on table … and 11 (4)
NEON
My last entry: I originally saw Number 10 as N IO but that got me nowhere, until ‘on table’ leapt out and I checked that NEON is tenth on the periodic table – but …11? I spotted that NEON was contained in liNE ONe’s pockets but it took a bit more pondering to see that the definition of 12ac was, in fact, the whole answer to 11ac: LINE ONE’S POCKETS: NEON is ‘pocketed by’ [li]NE ON[e] – so not just an excellent anagram but a brilliant combination of clues, which went straight to the top of my podium
13 Controlling gang I’ve put on ship (10i)
POSSESSIVE
POSSE (gang) + SS (ship) + I’VE
17 Person lacking an identity – if that is right, it changes the atmosphere (10)
HUMIDIFIER
HUM[an] (person minus an) + ID (identity) + IF + IE (that is) + R (right)
18 Book is framing American prejudice (4)
BIAS
B (book) + IS round (framing) A (American)
20 I want gin I spilled on toilet attendants? (6-2-7)
LADIES-IN-WAITING
LADIES (toilet) + an anagram (spilled) of I WANT GIN I
23 Sorting trade discount essentially for particular style (3,4)
ART DECO
An anagram (sorting) of TRADE + [dis]CO[unt]
24 Find that clerk unwrapping everything to get medical device (7)
INHALER
Inside letters (unwrapping everything) of fINd [t]HA[t] [c]LER[k]
25 Somewhat attractive (6)
PRETTY
Double definition – an old favourite
26 Attempts to get a yes on vacation (6)
FORAYS
FOR (to get – as in shopping for) + A Y[e]S
Down
2 Is due to receive millions following Mike’s bluff (9)
MISINFORM
M (Mike – NATO alphabet) + IS + IN FOR (due to receive) + M (millions)
3 Swimmer needs to dry back (6)
TURBOT
A reversal (back) of TO + BRUT (dry)
4 Perhaps lower fences were in front of abandoned … (6,3)
CALLED OFF
CALF (a little ‘lower’) round (fences) LED (were in front) + OF
5 … roads – oddly doctor engages clutch (5)
GRASP
GP (doctor) round odd letters of RoAdS
6 Public describing cabinet – mostly dull (8)
OVERCAST
OVERT (public) round CAS[e] (cabinet, mostly; I thought of book case but wasn’t entirely happy, then found, in Chambers, for ‘cabinet’: the outer case housing a radio, television, etc.
7 Dark horses kept together wanting support ultimately (5)
SABLE
S[t]ABLE (horses kept together) minus [suppor]T
8 Sadness of first lady catching her only lad, 15, breaking in (11)
MELANCHOLIA
MELANIA (Trump – first lady: arguably should have been capitalised but I enjoyed it, as an innovative change from Eve) round first letters (INITIALLY – answer to 15dn) of Catching Her Only Lad
10 Actress cooked sauce up – it’s sweet (6,5)
CASTER SUGAR
An anagram (cooked) of ACTRESS + a reversal (up, in a down clue) of RAGU (sauce)
14 What about two weeks on board small boat is awry? (4-5)
SKEW-WHIFF
EH (what) round WW (two weeks) in SKIFF (small boat)
15 One-nil: Italy after playing first (9)
INITIALLY
I (one) + an anagram (after playing) of NIL ITALY
16 Plug books including present for fan (8)
ADHERENT
AD (plug) + NT (New Testament – books) round (about) HERE (present)
19 Hesitate seeing detective on the run (6)
DITHER
DI (Detective Inspector) + THE + R (run)
21 Try to discourage – maybe does without half of it (5)
DETER
DEER (maybe does – that old trick!) round half of [i]T)
22 Finally comedy club opens offering humour of a kind (5)
IRONY
IRON ( golf club) + [comed]Y
Comment #1
Didn’t finish as just couldn’t get 12ac.
Favourites were: POSSESSIVE, HUMIDIFIER, SKEW WHIFF
Thanks Fed and Eileen
11 & 12 ac (LINE ONE’S POCKETS and NEON) were clues of the month for me, just superb. Thank you Fed and Eileen
Same as Fiona@2: NEON was just too clever for me.
Comment #5
Lovely stuff as always. Fed’s the setter I share most wavelength with and indeed I found the puzzle breezy, and classy. I was required to ponder longer over my LOIs NEON and MISINFORM; great fun untangling both, and an almost identical experience in doing so as Eileen, whose cryptic parse for the latter seems spot on to me. I do enjoy clues in which the definition is couched in instruction rather than just appearing standalone as is the norm.
As for the former – the wonderful NEON – I wonder whether Fed spotted the envelope potential of POCKETS in the L M P phrase, and then fortuitously the existence of something useful such as NEON in the prospective fodder, and only then designed the grid around it in order to bring No 10 and No 11 as political misdirections into play. I imagine our setters hearing or using these phrases in the supermarket or whatever, and thinking, Aha! Pockets… there’s potential there!
Tx both
[This is an edit of my previous comment; looks like I exhausted the edit time and ended up posting twice. Feel free to delete my earlier comment, Eileen, and sorry for the mess!]
AP @6 – done. 😉
Tried to make neon out of two ones, like [o]ne on[e], instead of working with the [li]ne on[es] that was already there. Hey ho. But agree, lots fun, ta Fed and Eileen. Now time for caffeine and a dance with Paul.
I thought this was quite easy for a prize, although I had to think about neon quite a bit before I saw how it worked. Yes, a brilliant clue – you don’t often have a second clue in the grid. I NHO skew-whiff, but the cryptic is very explicit. I thought it was castor sugar, but I was once again rescued by the cryptic.
Thanks for the blog , clues from Fed have got shorter and better , this was top quality . CALLED OFF and SKEW-WHIFF just two examples of deceptive flowing wordplay without a letter wasted .
NEON very cleverly done but personally I would have preferred “on table” removed . A very rare element on Earth but fairly abundant in the sun and outer planets , it is just five helium nuclei so common in supernova explosions .
Vinyl1@9 , castor sugar is still used in the UK but caster sugar the more common term now .
At auctions the old sugar-shakers are called castors or muffineers .
Like AP, I am tuned into Fed and found this delightfully breezy. Like Eileen, I realised NEON was the solution from the periodic table and could see it in 11A but it took me just a moment to nail down the parsing.
I like Fed because of the intricacy and amusement and because I can normally meet the challenge with zero assistance, not even Google. I’m fine with Budmo’s offering yesterday or whatever Paul’s dished up today, but just being able to stare, solve and scribble is a joy.
I agree with Eileen’s choice. I also like the word mistral, that I associate with Pagnol, who I mentioned on Thursday.
Thanks Fed and Eileen.
The two long anagrams were a great way in to this, and I grinned at LADIES-IN-WAITING. NEON was almost my LOI; I realised it was a word that would fit, saw it in LINE ONE’S POCKETS, and only then thought of atomic numbers (and me with a physics background…). I did like the appearance of the rarely-seen First Lady. My LOI was TURBOT – sometimes I seem to need to know an answer is right before I can see the wordplay, and there aren’t that many six-lettered fist starting with T, but only after I reluctantly wrote it in at the very end did I spot the ‘brut’ in it. Very enjoyable, thanks Fed, and thanks for the blog, Eileen.
Like many, I had NEON as my LOI, and had to research the Table. Roz@10, I felt some reference to the chemistry was reasonable, though I would say it is in table.
In my kitchen, the SUGAR is labelled CASTER, which makes more sense, as to apply sugar to food in a shaker (see Roz@11) is to cast it on. But the dictionaries allow both, and Chambers puts castor first.
Thanks, Eileen. I needed your help to understand 21d, though I should recognise the old trick with ‘does’ by now. And thanks to Fed.
So glad I persisted with what turned out to be an enjoyable puzzle – I threw in the towel a couple of times but was intrigued enough to pick it up again. I particularly liked the use of links to other clues to solve MELANCHOLIA and NEON which I filled in without fully understanding why. I put in CALLED OFF but again without a clear idea why – I’d got the lower link to cattle but then missed the jump to calf as a little lower! Thanks Eileen for the clarifying the points I missed and to Fed for an enjoyable workout.
There was so much to admire in this setting.
Like others I only spotted the second, hidden definition of NEON some time later. I thought that DETER was pretty fresh in particular.
Cheers all.
Many thanks, Fed. Getting on your wavelength. Compact clues help so much. Thanks, Eileen, for parsing CALLED OFF for me. Neat that Roz’s science is at Number 10 today.
Greatly enjoyed. Very smart cluing, as has been observed by Eileen and others.
I was away last weekend and couldn’t pick up my paper from the local shop until Wednesday. Glad I found the time to work on this top class puzzle and finished it in bed last night!
Thanks both. Only got to this last night, but really enjoyed it, especially NEON – marvelous.
Tackled this while relaxing on seaside break to celebrate my wife’s 80th. birthday. Some of the parsing eluded me, at least at first (missing Bridgesong!) but completed it over the weekend. Some lovely clueing, particular favs NEON, SKEW-WHIFF, and of course 11.
Thanks Eileen for elucidation and insights and to Fed for great puzzle.
Thank you, Fed and Eileen. This was a great fun.
I am only on the way to full cryptics, so I was delighted when I finished this (after three sittings).
It took me a while to work out 12 and 11, but now 11&12 is my favorite. Yes, I was misdirected and tried to find sugar on table for a while…
Also, couldn’t parse 4D.
Thanks for the joy!
Thanks for the overnight Antipodean / Transatlantic / insomniac comments – glad you all enjoyed it.
I’ve used a fair amount of CASTER (as it says on the packet) SUGAR this week, making cakes for a Fairtrade Fortnight event; pace both Collins and Chambers, which give both as interchangeable in all their applications, ‘castor’ to me means the little wheels that make it easier to move furniture – or Pollux’s twin. (The E was checked, anyway.)
AP @6 – an interesting observation: I always enjoy ‘trousers’ used in a similar way.
Good to hear from you, Timon @20. Enjoy the rest of your break – and congratulations and many happy returns to Mrs T.
LunaLo 21 – congratulations to you, too!
[Is anyone else intermittently getting ‘Service unavailable’?]
I felt more in tune with Fed than previously, perhaps getting used to some of his devices. Or maybe they were less well hidden than usual. Some very friendly definitions also helped – ‘sadness’ at 8d, ‘humour of a kind’ at 22 – and the only real hold up was NEON. I reckon I’d still be staring at it now if Fed had followed someone’s suggestion of leaving ‘on table’ out of the clue!
Thanks to Fed and Eileen.
A really enjoyable solve with carefully crafted clues of exceptional quality. And I did not even manage to fully parse NEON. The two long horizontal clues were very well done and I particularly liked the class divide association of LADIES-IN- WAITING with toilet attendants. Also enjoyed HUMIDIFIER, CALLED OFF and DETER. Thanks to the equally inimitable Fed and Eileen
I could not parse 4d; the CHOL bit of 8d; 21d.
I sort of parsed 11 and 12ac but Eileen explained it better for me!
Great crossword, NEON my last entry and so clever. I like Fed — not outrageously difficult but not a breeze. I always know that I’m in for a fair fight. I liked ACERBIC but didn’t realise Acer is a company. Thanks to Fed and Eileen.
Sjshart@14 , I agree that the table reference is reasonable but without it the clue is neater and harder and it is a Prize puzzle .
MikeS @27
Easy for me – my last laptop was an ACER. 😉
Eileen @22 thank you 🙂
Good clues and enjoyable solve, although I failed to notice NEON in the 11 instruction and couldn’t parse CALLED OFF. I liked the MISTRAL wind in court procedure, the actress with her CASTER SUGAR, the ADHERENT fan, and the does that DETER. On seeing GROUSE, I, of course, thought of the pub sign on a low beam: Duck or Grouse.
Thanks Fed and Eileen.
Am I the only one who was caught for a while, having P……S for the third part of 11a and seeing that the anagram had all the required letters for PENNIES?
Hard to un-see but later crossers put me right.
Thanks to Fed for a fun puzzle and to Eileen
Thanks Fed and Eileen. Started with INITIALLY and finished with NEON at a steady but not fast solving speed. Very enjoyable. I did the PENNIES thing also, VicTim @32. I wasn’t completely convinced by FOR=TO GET but it’s growing on me, after Eileen’s explanation.
MISTRAL comes from the same root as maestro, and more or less means “masterly”. This was indeed a masterly puzzle, as well as its elucidation. Thanks Fed and Eileen!
I only had 3 left after last Saturday, but I always forget to follow up, so I’ve just finished with HUMIDIFIER, MISINFORM and NEON in that order. I thought that it was within LIES, NEON, but Eileen’s explanation is spot on, (incidentally I think you’re missing an ‘s’ in the brackets for the parsing). LADIES IN WAITING, POSSESSIVE, MELANCHOLIA and SKEW WHIFF were my favourites amongst a lot of brilliant clues.
Ta Fed & Eileen.
Eileen @23 – yes, I was definitely getting service unavailable as I was trying to load the Quick Cryptic blog.
I really enjoy Fed’s puzzles and found this one really enjoyable last week. Lots to enjoy here.
Thank you to Fed and Eileen.
There’s a kind of double bluff with Fed. When the first lady is not Even, you half expect the little lower not to be a calf. A great puzzle.
Fine puzzle from Fed, as always. What entertaining surfaces and smooth wordplay! Stumped by 12a NEON, so bunged in NOON as a wild guess, and missed completing the puzzle by one letter! Yes, an impressive clue
Otherwise fine. Favourites 17a HUMIDIFIER (thoroughly misdirecting surface), 20a LADIES-IN-WAITING (funny), 25a PRETTY (a classic?), 8d MELANCHOLIA (“first lady” double bluff), 22d IRONY (“comedy club”), and many others
Thank you Eileen and Fed — the perfect pair
Thanks Fed and Eileen
Very nice puzzle, with NEON special, but I wish that the Guardian would declare its crossword a Trump-free zone (and the rest of the paper too?).
Everybody’s said all the good stuff, so I needn’t repeat it. Delightful puzzle. I’ve never heard of the ACER company, though I certainly have of BIC, so I biffed that one in.
Roz!10 — helium nuclei? supernova? Yes,ten protons would give you neon, but the rest …?
Thanks Fed and Eileen.
Presumably ACER was named after the maple?
Perfect timing .
Valentine @40 , larger star fuse heavier in their hotter cores mainly ny adding Helium nuclei 4He2 ( can’t do the proper notation ) .
Three make Carbon 12C6 , add one for Oxygen 16O8 , one more for Neon
Too slow to re-edit . heavier nuclei . ny=by .
Well done Mig@38 , started a much better week for you . Watch out for elements , numbers or “table” or He , As , I etc starting a clue .
I has proton number 53 so maybe the next Pangakupu .
Thanks Roz42@42 — yes, a better week than the last two! Even hit 58 (base 14) a few times for even more wins 🙂
Couldn’t make sense of “table”. Hmmm…could it be T? I’ll be on guard next time…
I been too late some days , busy time for me and also have got new Mermaids to train in this glorious weather .
An adventurous setter could use TBE or AL .
AlanC@35 look out for the newest element 119 Kprangerium
Roz @45: I believe it has an extremely long half-life.
AlanC@46 it is the first element in Period 8 so will always be bottom of the table .
Like Mig@38, I missed 12a NEON – a brilliant clue but too subtle for my pretty dull (22/6) brain. I agree with others that it and 11a together qualify for clue of the month.
I also especially liked 20a LADIES-IN-WAITING, not only for the construction but for the clever incidental double duty of ‘toilet’ in the clue. One of the duties of a lady-in-waiting is to attend to her mistress’s toilet. (And I don’t mean emptying her chamber pot.)
Thanks Fed and Eileen for the fun puzzle and engaging blog.
Cellomaniac @48
🙂