A very pleasant start to the morning. Thank you Chalmie.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | DEPUTISE | Some in the audience sit up, edgily backing substitute (8) |
| found reversed (backing) inside (some in the…) audiencE SIT UP EDgily | ||
| 5 | STASIS | Time in army unit is a constant equilibrium (6) |
| T (time) inside SAS (army unit) IS | ||
| 9 | OUTSMART | Where French prostitute entertains Sergeant-Major Fox (8) |
| OU (where, French) TART (prostitute) contains (entertains) SM (sergeant-major) | ||
| 10 | CUPRIC | Copper’s trophy the last in order, I see (6) |
| CUP (trophy) then ordeR (the last letter in) and I C (see, name of the letter C) | ||
| 12 | PARKS | Places to play piano on ships (5) |
| P (piano) on ARKS (ships) | ||
| 13 | NOOSPHERE | Back shortly with priest present for Teilhard de Chardin’s human intelligence and memory (9) |
| SOON (shortly) reversed (back) with P (priest) then HERE (present) | ||
| 14 | UNDIES | Pants and comes back to life? (6) |
| UN-DIES (comes back to life) | ||
| 16 | NOTEPAD | A top-end collection of papers stuck together (7) |
| anagram (collection) of A TOP-END | ||
| 18 | LET IT GO | Decide not to punish bird seen among bricks (3,2,2) |
| TIT (bird) inside LEGO (bricks) | ||
| 20 | BARROW | Start buying weapon for Clyde? (6) |
| Buying (starting letter) then ARROW (weapon) – Clyde Barrow perhaps, he of Bonnie and Clyde fame | ||
| 22 | REED STOPS | Pressed to repair organ parts (4,5) |
| anagram (repair) of PRESSED TO | ||
| 23 | FLOWN | Force 50 have escaped (5) |
| F (force) L (fifty) and OWN (have) | ||
| 24 | NOOKIE | Without authorisation? That’s it! (6) |
| NO (without) OK (authorisation) and IE (that is) | ||
| 25 | BOTULISM | Bus to Lima nearly crashes, which makes people sick (8) |
| anagram (crashes) of BUS TO LIMa | ||
| 26 | TOFFEE | Sweet scent of feeding bottles (6) |
| found inside (bottled by) scenT OF FEEding | ||
| 27 | INTERVAL | Break in travel at sea (8) |
| anagram (at sea) of IN TRAVEL | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DROOPS | Track down uprising in Wilts (6) |
| SPOOR (track) D (down) all reversed (uprising) | ||
| 2 | PETER AND THE WOLF | 7’s work helped town after disaster (5,3,3,4) |
| anagram (disaster) of HELPED TOWN AFTER – by Prokofiev | ||
| 3 | TIMPS | 2’s gunfire ends around noon (5) |
| TIPS (ends) contains M (meridiem, noon) – abbreviated form of timpani | ||
| 4 | STRINGS | 2’s hero has stone jewellery (7) |
| ST (stone) and RINGS (jewellery) | ||
| 6 | TRUMPETER | Swan necessary for 2’s hunters (9) |
| in Peter and the Wolf the hunters’ theme is played by the woodwind and trumpet sections | ||
| 7 | SERGEI PROKOFIEV | Forgive porkies spread about European composer (6,9) |
| anagram (spread) contains (about) E (European) | ||
| 8 | SUCCEEDS | Among fancied teams, university cricket club does well (8) |
| SEEDS (fancied teams) contains (among…is…) U (university) CC (cricket club) | ||
| 11 | HORN | 2’s villain with no hair after losing head (4) |
| sHORN (with no hair) missing first letter (losing head) – the Wolf is represented by the French horns | ||
| 15 | INTESTINE | Under evaluation at home, electronic digestion mechanism (9) |
| IN TEST (under evaluation) IN (at home) E (electronic) | ||
| 17 | CLARINET | New article about 2’s cat (8) |
| anagram (about) of N (new) and ARTICLE | ||
| 19 | OBOE | Empty award for 2’s duck (4) |
| an OBE with O (nothing) inside is an empty award | ||
| 20 | BASSOON | Fool in favour of 2’s grandfather (7) |
| ASS (fool) inside BOON (favour) | ||
| 21 | ANIMAL | Cat is one writer’s obsessed about (6) |
| I’M (the writer’s) inside (with…about) ANAL (obsessed) | ||
| 23 | FLUTE | Oddly fill up the bird in 2 (5) |
| every other letter (oddly) of FiLlUp ThE | ||
Didn’t know “trumpeter” was a swan.
Thought 11d couldn’t be SLAP 🙂
Thanks all.
What fun! Chalmie must have whooped with pleasure when he discovered the near-anagram ‘forgive porkies’. Thanks, Chalmie, for lighting up a dreich Wednesday morning, and PeeDee for your explication.
Thanks to Chalmie and PeeDee. Great fun. I did not remember all the instruments, but the cluing was enough. For TIMPS the shortened term was new to me as was M-meridian for noon – and my LOI was NOOSPHERE.
Lots of fun — thanks Chalmie. OUTSMART was probably my favorite clue of the week. Unfamiliar with TIMPS. Thanks for the blog PeeDee.
Last in was 3d. I knew the instruments were drums, so I realised it must be timps from the crossers, but didn’t know the abbreviation. It seems just about everything can be shortened these days. I remember bins just a little while ago.
Must admit to looking up Teilhard rather than solving the clue.
Thanks everyone. I didn’t whoop with delight at “forgive porkies”. It was when I discovered that TIMPS was a valid abbreviation and I could therefore get all the instruments in.
Crosswords with multiple references to other clues can sometimes be daunting but not this one; there aren’t too many well-known composers with 9-letter surnames and 7dn was obviously anagrammatic; and the enumeration of 3dn soon gave the game away. We were familiar too with the instrumentation, having played the work on the car stereo many times while ferrying grandchildren around.
But there was plenty more to enjoy; we liked DEPUTISE and OUTSMART. NOOSPHERE was good too; a new word to us but easily got from wordplay and crossers then confirmed in Chambers.
Thanks, Chalmie and PeeDee
Many thanks to both. Much more enjoyable than the Guardian offering today.
Um, PeeDee you have missed the P = priest from your 13a explanation.
So I did, thank you Mystogre. Fixed now.
Thanks Chalmie and PeeDee
Entertaining ride from Chalmie with this one that still took a bit longer than normal to finish. Got the long theme clue at 3d quite early on after seeing FLUTE – remembered that there were different instruments for different characters but had forgotten from my Form 1 Music what they were and had to work each of them out again. The left hand side filled in quickly enough but found the right hand side more difficult, not helped by not remembering the composer. He was my third to last in followed by NOTEPAD (don’t know why that relatively simple anagram took so long to see) and the unknown NOOSPHERE the last one in.
Chuckled at both UNDIES and NOOKIE as they went in. Initially tried to fit BONNIE in at 20a until the R crosser and then ARROW brought me his surname.