All very pleasant and what we usually expect on a Wednesday — a fairly gentle but not totally easy crossword with some nice clues. It seems to be perfectly sound (I’m quite happy with the possible nounal anagram indicator in one of the clues).
Definitions in darkred, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
Is there a Nina? The fact that checking is always at least 50% suggests to me that there isn’t one, but Phi manages both regularly. But I suspect there is no Nina one and am waiting to be told that in fact there is an obvious one.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | STAY IN BED | “Don’t get up yet,” Sinbad ordered (4,2,3) |
| (yet Sinbad)* | ||
| 6 | JAWED | Talked for a day with German agreement (5) |
| ja [German for yes] Wed. | ||
| 9 | ALPHA | A mountain area in France (5) |
| alp ha — the ha [hectare] is the area (a measure presumably is used in France — at any rate the metric system was espoused by the French Revolutionaries) — at first all I could think of was Alph, the sacred river in Kubla Khan, but that didn’t work of course | ||
| 10 | RIGHTEOUS | Arranging is tougher for singing brothers (9) |
| *(is tougher) — ref. The Righteous Brothers | ||
| 11 | PERFECTION | A homeless virus possibly the ideal (10) |
| per {in}fection — per = a — I got this but the wrong way: thought it was ‘perfect ion’; my scientific knowledge is loose enough to think that could possibly be a way of describing a homeless virus, but I wasn’t very confident | ||
| 12 | ZEAL | Diligence essential to NZ’s expansion (4) |
| Hidden in New ZEALand, the expansion of NZ | ||
| 14 | PEANUTS | Vegetable hit back in strip cartoon (7) |
| pea (stun)rev. | ||
| 15 | EGOISTS | Self-absorbed characters in El Salvador find lead! (7) |
| E(go 1st)S | ||
| 17 | TREATED | Handled Irish politician keeping engineers worried (7) |
| T(RE ate)D — a TD is the Irish equivalent of an MP | ||
| 19 | WICKETS | We stick around, which fielding sides want (7) |
| (We stick)* — Alchemi showing (to my approval) more interest in cricket than the Indy crossword game of choice | ||
| 20 | ONCE | A number caught inside in the past (4) |
| on(c)e | ||
| 22 | UNFAIRNESS | Injustice fires a nun’s storm (10) |
| (fires a nun’s)* | ||
| 25 | EXPECTING | Former setter finally getting pregnant (9) |
| ex- pectin {gettin}g | ||
| 26 | AGATE | Jewel, one of 19? (5) |
| a gate — which is a type of wicket (19ac) — but if the clue says ‘one of 19’ how do we know whether it is 19ac or 19dn, and this doubt makes one think it’s not a reference to either of them, but a word for someone who is just moving out of the teenage years, or something like that — but one can’t complain because it’s easier than getting river = Nile rather than Exe or Tay or one of many more, but usually we are told if it’s across or down | ||
| 27 | MASON | Perry maybe with plum as one ingredient (5) |
| Hidden in pluM AS ONe — ref Perry Mason, a fictional character who may not be well-known nowadays? I’m not sure if young people are aware of him — it seems that something has only a few days ago appeared in the USA | ||
| 28 | STEINBECK | Author could make 10 be sick (9) |
| (ten be sick)* — one looks for an anagram of righteous (10ac) until the checkers make that impossible | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | SWAMP | Did butterfly possibly start to pollute wetland? (5) |
| swam p{ollute} — swam = did butterfly possibly | ||
| 2 | ASPARTAME | It’s sweet that a fight gets under control (9) |
| a spar tame — aspartame is a sweetener with plenty of side-effects | ||
| 3 | INADEQUATE | Not enough in a sample of dust to match with (10) |
| in a d{ust} equate — an unusual way of indicating the first letter of [a sample of], but quite OK. One often sees ‘a bit of’ doing the same thing. Some would say that if it’s a bit or a sample why is it the first letter, but whether or not this is justified it’s become conventional to expect just that. | ||
| 4 | BERATES | Carpets are best beaten (7) |
| (are best)* | ||
| 5 | DOGGONE | Pet left annoying American (7) |
| dog gone — a word expressing great disapproval that you hear in Westerns and things like that | ||
| 6 | JETE | Ballet move from the fifth plane (4) |
| Not jet A, jet B, jet C, or jet D but jet E | ||
| 7 | WROTE | What 28 did with rubbish ultimately futile (5) |
| w rot {futil}e — Steinbeck (28ac) wrote, as a whole generation of children nowadays knows from Of Mice and Men, good but not as good as The Grapes of Wrath | ||
| 8 | DISCLOSES | Reveals record, comes second? (9) |
| disc loses [so doesn’t win and possibly comes second] | ||
| 13 | FOR CERTAIN | Definitely compel downfall – about time! (3,7) |
| force r(t)ain | ||
| 14 | PETROLEUM | Let me pour liquid mineral (9) |
| (Let me pour)* — petroleum is not the first mineral to come to mind, but evidently it is one | ||
| 16 | STEVENAGE | Town put together around square (9) |
| st(even)age — put together = stage [as in stage a play] and even = square [not 4, 9, 16, 25 etc as so often] | ||
| 18 | DANDIES | Policeman stops Europeans being snappy dressers (7) |
| Dan(DI)es — the policeman seems nowadays to be more often a Detective Inspector than a Police Constable | ||
| 19 | WRANGLE | Debate extremes of weather with fish (7) |
| w{eathe}r angle | ||
| 21 | CAPES | Chasubles, perhaps for 100 primates (5) |
| C apes | ||
| 23 | SLEEK | Glossy small vegetable (5) |
| s leek | ||
| 24 | ICON | Star newspaper to read (4) |
| I con — the newspaper The I is increasingly it seems making an appearance in crosswords, because it provides the setter with a neat way of clueing the single letter i | ||
Nina – maybe. Pangram – definitely.
On the issue of 26a, I think it is standard that it is not necessary to indicate across or down provided that an across clue is referencing another across clue (or similar with downs). Should only use this convention if the surface requires it, as is the case here. Also, I would say that a wicket is a type of gate rather than vice versa.
Thanks for this, John. One clue still escapes me, however. I can’t understand the “ate” in 17a to represent worried. I did learn about TD for Irish MP so thanks again. My favourite was 25a as I kept looking for a word for Alchemi rather than pectin as the setter. Thanks to Alchemi, too.
This pangram was great fun and very much at the easier end of Alchemi’s range.
I was always told that if the same clue number applied to an across clue and a down clue then the setter should specify which when cross-referencing. However there isn’t a rule book so I suppose in the end it’s up to whatever the editor rules is OK.
JETE was my favourite out of lots of excellent clues.
Many thanks to Alchemi and to John.
Very good. I had to check a word list for 2D ‘aspartame’, as I’d never heard of it. Clare @3, ‘ate’ can mean ‘worried’, as in ‘What’s eating you?” Thanks Alchemi and John.
Thanks John and all.
Those of you quibbling about 26a appear not to have noticed that there is a question mark following the “19”.
Thanks, Tatrasman. It all becomes clear…..
We too had to use a wordfinder for ASPARTAME – and for ALPHA, our last one in; we were barking up completely the wrong tree there thinking the definition was either ‘area in France’ or simply somewhere ‘in France’. Otherwise it was all reasonably straightforward and spotting the possibility of a pangram helped with STEVENAGE (which confirmed the pangram). A toss-up for CoD between PERFECTION and EGOISTS.
Thanks, Alchemi and John.
Came unstuck over the parsing of 15&17a and they still took a while with the explanations in front of me!
DOGGONE made me laugh and my favourite was EXPECTING.
Thanks to Alchemi and also to John – particularly for the help with my parsing problems.
By some strange coincidence, I was watching the new Perry Mason series whilst doing this. (Sky TV are showing it a day after the US showings. Episode 2 this week.)
I had no trouble with 2dn, it was 3dn that I required a word search for, and even then I couldn’t parse it. Thanks for the explanation.
And 24dn I thought must be SCAN but I couldn’t parse it. Just didn’t see that one at all.