Maize is always very good and this was no exception, although perhaps it was gentler than usual. It was still not all that easy though, and there were plenty of nice clues.
Definitions in deeppink, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
With all the unches round the outside you’d think there was a message in them, but nothing I can see. My discoveries are limited to the fact that X appears often, and after a while I realised that they all appear along the diagonals, making a large letter X.
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | EXHALE | Cross punched into a heel designed to let air out (6) |
| x in (a heel)* | ||
| 9 | APOPLEXY | Love splitting tree with axes in fury (8) |
| ap(0)ple xy — the tree is an apple tree, the axes are “ax-ees”, the coordinate axes in maths | ||
| 10 | COEXISTENT | Living together in company with sixteen? Extraordinarily tense (10) |
| co. (sixteen)* t | ||
| 11 | X-RAY | Whiskey chaser and a penetrating look (1-3) |
| In the NATO alphabet, X-ray follows Whiskey; X-ray eyes | ||
| 12 | MUSK OXEN | Ex-monk moved to take in us long-haired creatures (4,4) |
| us in (Ex-monk)* | ||
| 15 | XANADU | ‘During sex …’ an adult person from Porlock interrupted its description (6) |
| Hidden in seX AN ADUlt — In Coleridge’s Kubla Khan he was describing Xanadu, possibly under the effects of opium, when ‘a person from Porlock’ arrived to interrupt him. | ||
| 16 | MERC | One who’s paid in military emergency requiring cool heads (4) |
| m{ilitary} e{mergency} r{equiring} c{ool} — a mercenary | ||
| 17 | TEXAS | State vote held in Assam and Darjeeling? (5) |
| X in teas | ||
| 18 | RUTH | Book that’s brutal, no less (4) |
| Ruth{less}, a book of the Old Testament | ||
| 20 | EGG BOX | For example British beef is a source of protein (3,3) |
| eg GB ox | ||
| 22 | SEXUALLY | Using hands, man goes for it to show how babies are made (8) |
| manually with man being replaced by sex [it] | ||
| 24 | FLEX | Line of little dots on the radio (4) |
| “flecks” — cord | ||
| 25 | COMPLEXITY | Agree to accept ‘Leave’ with difficulty (10) |
| compl(exit)y — when ‘with’ is used as a link-word, if it must (and not everyone likes it to be used in this way), then surely it should apply to the wordplay, not the definition? I suppose it can be justified by the excellent surface. | ||
| 28 | EXCRETED | Passed by holidaymaker’s island going into East Germany (8) |
| E (x Crete) D — and here we have ‘by’ doing much the same as ‘with’ in the preceding clue, and it’s in a better order [no, it’s not like the previous clue: by = x, part of the wordplay; obvious and a silly mistake, thanks Hovis for pointing that out] | ||
| 29 | ICE AXE | Reserve short test to go over mountaineering equipment (3,3) |
| ice (exa{m})rev. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | EXPOSURE | Lack of shelter as river pours turbulently inside (8) |
| (pours)* in Exe | ||
| 2 | MANX | Unknown player first produced by Ramsey? (4) |
| x with man first — nothing to do with Sir Alf, but referencing Ramsey on the Isle of Man | ||
| 3 | WESSEX | Region of Welsh county (6) |
| W Essex | ||
| 4 | NAME | Title and last word back to front (4) |
| amen with its back (n) moved to the front | ||
| 5 | CONTEXTS | Learn scripts in appropriate surroundings (8) |
| con texts | ||
| 6 | ALEXANDRIA | Robotic voice describing new nadir for African city (10) |
| The robotic voice is Alexa, the personal assistant, and this surrounds *(nadir) | ||
| 7 | EXPAND | Play regularly after times in goal increase (6) |
| e(x p{l}a{y})nd | ||
| 13 | KICK BOXERS | They fight footballers around penalty area (4,6) |
| kick(box)ers — to define footballers as kickers is perhaps to denigrate them: apart from kicking the ball some do kick their opponents mercilessly perhaps, but not all do; and there are other kickers apart from footballers, such as makers of certain shoes, and practitioners of some martial arts | ||
| 14 | NEXUS | Crossed lines in nearly new American network (5) |
| x [crossed lines] in (ne{w} US) | ||
| 17 | TOXICITY | An amount of poison directed at team, Guardiola’s team (8) |
| to XI City — ‘to’ = ‘directed at’ — Pep Guardiola is the manager of Manchester City | ||
| 19 | TELETEXT | Allow former partner to engage in offensive old way of spreading news (8) |
| te(let ex)t — referring to the Tet offensive in the Vietnam war | ||
| 21 | GALAXY | Large plane happy to circle Californian airport (6) |
| You’d think it’s just a CD, but no, there is more: it’s ga(LAX)y — LAX is the code for the airport at Los Angeles — the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is a large plane | ||
| 23 | XYLOID | Woody‘s laughing face accepting oily mixture (6) |
| XD accepting [surrounding] (oily)* — xyloid means resembling wood, or woody — XD is the laughing face emoticon. Apparently. | ||
| 26 | MODE | Fashion these domed shelters upside down (4) |
| Hidden reversed in thesE DOMed, the inclusion indicated by ‘shelters’ | ||
| 27 | X-MEN | Film series in ten pieces (1-3) |
| x men — x = ten, men = pieces as in chess | ||
I liked seeing that all the X’s were on the diagonals to make one big X when I had a look at the completed grid. I didn’t know the ‘person from Porlock’ part of the wordplay for 15a, though the answer was clear enough, and incorrectly guessed ‘xyloic’ for 23d, having no idea about the ‘laughing face’ reference. (That’s enough clues about emoticons – Ed. Please).
Fact I’ve learnt today: it’s ‘whiskey’, not ‘whisky’, in the NATO alphabet.
Thanks to Maize and John
I really enjoyed this Xword!!!!!
What fun to have the big X as the endgame along the diagonals.
Even though I loved solving all the X clues, my favourite was actually one of the four four-letter words, all very symmetrically placed, 18a RUTH.
Thanks for your explanations of a few tricky parses, John, and thanks of course to Maize for all the kisses!
Beautiful! Saw X’s in most answers, apart from the symmetrically placed NAME, RUTH, MERC & MODE but only spotted the diagonals after completion.
I don’t have a problem with the use of “with” as a link word in 25a. Also, “by” in 28a is not similar – it is part of the wordplay representing the X. XYLOID was new to me.
Thanks to Maize and John.
This was a lot of fun with some great cluing, achieved with no obscurities in spite of the constraints of the strategically placed Xs.
I have an odd habit of starting in the middle of any puzzle with two central intersecting five letter answers. As soon as I wrote in TEXAS as my first answer, the central X struck me immediately as a potential feature, helping enormously with the solve. ProXimal, one of the Telegraph setters, frequently produces near-pangrams missing only the X. Now we know where all his Xs went to!
My only very minor qualm is that GB means Britain not British. However, even though it is not given in either Chambers or Collins, in fairness you could refer to the British Team as the GB team.
Many thanks and well done to Maize, and thanks too to John.
RD @4. Yes, I think you have to parse “GB OX” as British beef and cannot split this into two parts.
I suspected an ‘Xword puzzle’ in three entries, which was a great help with the rest of it. Very clever, though mostly easy, apart from Xyloid, which I had to look up. Thanks Maize and John.
Thanks, John, for a good blog.
I did, of course, notice the plethora of Xs in the across clues but missed the diagonals: I’m never good at spotting those.
I knew I was in for a treat from the first two or three ingenious clues but when I got to the sublime 15ac it went straight into my little book of classic clues (and then there was a faint whiff of Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome at the end in 26n).
Splendid stuff – huge thanks, Maize.
I remember reading the praise for an earlier puzzle by Maize, and when I was tipped off about this one this morning I felt had to try it.
A very well-crafted puzzle, I thought. I guessed the X’s were coming after solving my first three clues, and that helped a little with a few clues later on. XANADU was an excellent clue, and I also liked RUTH – my last one in, surprisingly, when all I had to do was fill in my sister’s name.
I ‘got’ everything, I think, except the XD of XYLOID, so thanks to John for that.
And thanks to Maize for a super puzzle.
Same story here. Thought XANADU was a delight, as was TELETEXT. Failing to spot the big X was my undoing for those four four-letter clues as I had assumed (rightly, up to that point) that *every* answer contained an X, hence I was a bit stumped by MODE and the other three fizzled out.
I also had XYLOIC but unsatisfactorily… I see now, thanks John and Maize 😛
Saw what was going on after only 3 entries, so unfortunately it made for a very quick and easy solve. Didn’t know the XD emoticon meant laughing face.
Another here who didn’t know the required emoticon and I also missed the framework constructed by all those ‘x’s. Not to worry, I still found this a very enjoyable puzzle with its plethora of kisses.
Favourite was probably 6d – both daughters have ‘her’ controlling much of their day-to-day living, couldn’t stand it myself!
Thanks to Maize for an enjoyable solve and thanks also to John for the review.
As all commenters have already said, this was a superb puzzle.
I started off thinking all across clues would have an X in them until I convinced myself MERC had to be right so thought perhaps all down clues would have an X.
But then, once NAME had to be the right answer I assumed the opposite 4 letter clues would also not have an X which helped a lot.
My top favourite though has to be the brilliantly topical first class surface of 25 across .
Thanks to all.
What a great crossword. A nicely x-ecuted theme, and so much cleverness on show across the clues. I really liked “whisky chaser” and was tickled to see the XD emoticon reference. So many crosswords use obscure 20th-century slang that it’s nice to see some obscurities from the 21st! Thanks to Maize and John for drawing my attention to the big X formed by the little ones.
Very enjoyable and satisfying. We saw there was somehting going on with X’s after the first few acrosses and wondered if the downs were going to feature Y’s (thinking of X and Y axes of a graph) until we found plenty of X’s in the downs too – but we failed to spot the diagonals.
We knew 23dn had to be ‘xyloi_’ so checked in Chambers to get XYLOID, but didn’t know the emoticon code.
Dificult to nominate a CoD with so many eXcellent clues but it just has to be XANADU.
Thanks, Maize and John.
I thiught of XYLOIC first but a C is a downward facing mouth and as it couldn’t be a right parenthesis it had to be XYLOID.
Emoticons do sort of make sense when you know how they work 🙂
Thanks to John for the blog and Maize for the usual brilliant offering – your puzzles always leave me smiling.
The little yellow face above was input by me as a colon, a dash and a right parenthesis (just so you know)
Thanks to John and also for the generous comments.
This one was inspired by Dutch’s puzzle with a W of W’s a year or so ago. I remember also a quincunx of X’s from Crosophile, and a theme of H’s on a grid with 4 black H’s from Phi, but I wonder Serpent or others have played with similar ideas before now?