Tried a couple new things here: (1) I made it big (well, medium); and, (2) I revised clues that weren't working (crazy concept, I know). Hopefully the effort pays off, enjoy!
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1A: She’s one of two; [cha]INS (“characters...after the midway point”) in TWISTER 7A: Friend; B-U-D homophone of “beauty” (“stunner”) when “speedreading aloud” 8A: some leaves; [-tee]NAGER (“loses shirt”) in O[hi]O (“borders”) backwards 9A: German region; BLACK (“dark”) + FOR + E[arly] S[ummer] T[ime] 10A: a soft and sweet component; MARS (“God of war”) + ALL (“everyone”) in WHOM* (“strangely”) 13A: Lawn care machine; ROT AREA (“compost pile?”) reversed 14A: Pound; RAMPANT (“out of control”) - (“forgetting”) PANT (“what dogs do in heat”) 16A: bit of green on top, maybe; heads of S[even] S[potted] S[alamanders] in GRATIN (“shallow dish”) with A 1D: Key; TAB[le] 2D: Country; homophone (“on the radio”) for INDIE (“music from a small label”) and YUH (“Ariana Grande’s noise”) 3D: Supply of shots(?); SOT (“drunk”) reversed after STOCK (“canned” i.e. boilerplate) PHO (“soup”) 4D: Ancient vegetarian who had plates; (RAGOUT SUES)* (“fishy”) + S[ervers] 5D: duck; [luk]E + VADER - (“put aside”) [diffe]R[ences] (“essentially”) 6D: Prostrate oneself before; homophone (“the preaching of”) COW + TAO 9D: complain; DEMO (“song”) becomes BEMO (“first part taken down a few keys” i.e. key of D down to B) + capital letters (“big contingents”?) from A[ustin] and N[ashville] 11D: more exquisite; RRR (“2022 Indian action film” - if you haven’t seen it I’m sorry: for the tough clue, & that you haven’t had the delightful experience) with second R unabbreviated (“expanded”) to ARE 12D: Early stage; [p]LA[y] around (“features”) A + RV 15D: troops; [e]NEM[y] in reverse
Nice puzzle, very clean surfaces and some really nice subversive indicators! Definitely on the tough side; I’d say 13A, 14A, 3D and 9D are very difficult. I really like a lot of them, highlights for me are 1A, 4D and 12D.
Some quibbles/suggestions: 7A: I think I like the idea, but in practice I found this unsolvable, plus the homophone really doesn’t work in my accent. 9A: Nothing grammatically wrong here — just many setters find it stronger/more satisfying to break up words of the charade differently to the answer. 10A: Not convinced by the definition, a MARSHMALLOW is definitely soft and sweet, but what is it a component of? 13A: Not familiar with this as a lawn care tool, maybe because lawn care is much less of a big deal here in the UK ahah 14A: Love the surface and nothing wrong with the construction, but having a subtraction of more letters than the final answer is really tough to solve. 2D: Like the surface, but I don’t buy “yuh” as [Ariana Grande’s noise]. 9D: I don’t buy “demo” as [First part of a song], I think [Early version of song] would make just as much surface sense and is more precise and solvable. [Big contingents] is a really fun way to clue the capital letters! 11D: Why does R expanded give ARE? Because they’re homophones? Because R is a texting abbreviation for ARE? I knew the film and got the answer from the definition but I still don’t buy the wordplay.
Everything else I think is fair and I really like the surfaces across the board. Nice one!
Thanks for solving & quibbling! To respond to a few:
I did end up rewriting a lot of clues wholesale in the revision process and I was this close to scrapping 7A. It may be debatable if the homophone really works in any accent lol. 9A: I had never heard that before, but that makes sense. I had a really hard time coming up with a clue for that one. 10A: Fair point, I think I had "component" as a synonym for "ingredient" that made the surface cleaner, but yeah, it doesn't share the same connotation of food 13A: Yeah, unfortunately, I actually currently work in lawn care (and live in the US) so I am very familiar 9D: The intended parse for this has DEMO ("song"), with D ("first part of song") changing to B ("taken down a few keys"). Not sure if something like [Song, with the first part taken down a few keys...] is a fairer way to clue this. Looking at it now, I don't know if the way "song" is introduced in the clue is valid in cryptic clues or not?
Thanks again, this type of feedback is really helpful for me as I'm learning to write better clues, so I appreciate you taking the time to respond!
Ahh, I see, I misparsed 9D. I’m not wholly convinced that ‘song’ is enough for DEMO, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that without some kind of qualifier. Maybe my preferred version of the clue would be something like [Early version of song has its intro taken down a few keys, big contingents…], but it does turn a bit into word soup ahah. I think the way you have it is grammatically fine (in terms of the wordplay), assuming [song]=DEMO, but it is trickier to parse than if you had [‘Something clueing DEMO’ ‘take the first letter and change it’…]
Very glad to give feedback, looking forward to seeing more!
7A: Friend; B-U-D homophone of “beauty” (“stunner”) when “speedreading aloud”
8A: some leaves; [-tee]NAGER (“loses shirt”) in O[hi]O (“borders”) backwards
9A: German region; BLACK (“dark”) + FOR + E[arly] S[ummer] T[ime]
10A: a soft and sweet component; MARS (“God of war”) + ALL (“everyone”) in WHOM* (“strangely”)
13A: Lawn care machine; ROT AREA (“compost pile?”) reversed
14A: Pound; RAMPANT (“out of control”) - (“forgetting”) PANT (“what dogs do in heat”)
16A: bit of green on top, maybe; heads of S[even] S[potted] S[alamanders] in GRATIN (“shallow dish”) with A
1D: Key; TAB[le]
2D: Country; homophone (“on the radio”) for INDIE (“music from a small label”) and YUH (“Ariana Grande’s noise”)
3D: Supply of shots(?); SOT (“drunk”) reversed after STOCK (“canned” i.e. boilerplate) PHO (“soup”)
4D: Ancient vegetarian who had plates; (RAGOUT SUES)* (“fishy”) + S[ervers]
5D: duck; [luk]E + VADER - (“put aside”) [diffe]R[ences] (“essentially”)
6D: Prostrate oneself before; homophone (“the preaching of”) COW + TAO
9D: complain; DEMO (“song”) becomes BEMO (“first part taken down a few keys” i.e. key of D down to B) + capital letters (“big contingents”?) from A[ustin] and N[ashville]
11D: more exquisite; RRR (“2022 Indian action film” - if you haven’t seen it I’m sorry: for the tough clue, & that you haven’t had the delightful experience) with second R unabbreviated (“expanded”) to ARE
12D: Early stage; [p]LA[y] around (“features”) A + RV
15D: troops; [e]NEM[y] in reverse
7A: I think I like the idea, but in practice I found this unsolvable, plus the homophone really doesn’t work in my accent.
9A: Nothing grammatically wrong here — just many setters find it stronger/more satisfying to break up words of the charade differently to the answer.
10A: Not convinced by the definition, a MARSHMALLOW is definitely soft and sweet, but what is it a component of?
13A: Not familiar with this as a lawn care tool, maybe because lawn care is much less of a big deal here in the UK ahah
14A: Love the surface and nothing wrong with the construction, but having a subtraction of more letters than the final answer is really tough to solve.
2D: Like the surface, but I don’t buy “yuh” as [Ariana Grande’s noise].
9D: I don’t buy “demo” as [First part of a song], I think [Early version of song] would make just as much surface sense and is more precise and solvable. [Big contingents] is a really fun way to clue the capital letters!
11D: Why does R expanded give ARE? Because they’re homophones? Because R is a texting abbreviation for ARE? I knew the film and got the answer from the definition but I still don’t buy the wordplay.
I did end up rewriting a lot of clues wholesale in the revision process and I was this close to scrapping 7A. It may be debatable if the homophone really works in any accent lol.
9A: I had never heard that before, but that makes sense. I had a really hard time coming up with a clue for that one.
10A: Fair point, I think I had "component" as a synonym for "ingredient" that made the surface cleaner, but yeah, it doesn't share the same connotation of food
13A: Yeah, unfortunately, I actually currently work in lawn care (and live in the US) so I am very familiar
9D: The intended parse for this has DEMO ("song"), with D ("first part of song") changing to B ("taken down a few keys"). Not sure if something like [Song, with the first part taken down a few keys...] is a fairer way to clue this. Looking at it now, I don't know if the way "song" is introduced in the clue is valid in cryptic clues or not?
Thanks again, this type of feedback is really helpful for me as I'm learning to write better clues, so I appreciate you taking the time to respond!