Five-Clue Cryptic (#3362)
4/5 was my first one attempted but last one in; it clearly had to be an anagram, but I could only think of SEARCH SWEET, which meant nothing to me. So I started with 1d, which appeared to be a homophone; I correctly guessed PHASE IN even though the homophone (FEY SIN) didn't work for me, since I pronounce "phase" identically to "faze". (Does anyone pronounce it like "face", as the clue suggests?)
The wading bird in 2d couldn't be a HERON, so it had to be an EGRET, leading to REGRETS. Another bird in 3d, which was explicitly "hiding" in "Mr Edwin Gagiano" (a South African actor I'd never heard of), and so had to be REDWING. (How often do we see "hiding" to indicate a hidden answer? Perhaps the compiler was being deliberately kind today.) 6a was the fairly well-worn charade of IN-TENT, and now I had all the crossers to solve the anagram at 4/5: CHEESE STRAW. Oddly satisfying.
Concise (#3362)
A very groanworthy pun along the top line today: I assumed it was "injudicious", but it required considerable imagination to get it! No real issues arising from the clues. I noticed for the first time that JANUARY is one of only two months with seven letters (the other being OCTOBER), and I was pleased to see CAVA appear in a crossword, as I drink enough of the stuff. (Cheaper, better produced and nicer-tasting than that Italian upstart Prosecco.)
Codeword (#3040)
The letters given were H, I and W, which didn't really suggest anything; the pattern down the left-hand side, with two H's separated by a single letter, was a bit puzzling. I tentatively assumed that 26 must be E, from which followed IDEALLY and HEADLINE, and then CATCHPHRASE for the left-hand column, leading to the completed grid.
Cryptic by Serpent (#3298)
Rated at three stars by jonofwales, with which I'd agree. There was a theme, but as usual I didn't get it, even though it was written out explicitly at 17a (and even flagged up with "across entries" in the clue; duh!). Yes, the Across entries, apart from 17a itself, are all collective nouns, a fact which appeared to have helped almost no one to solve the puzzle. Hardly anyone actually uses most collective nouns of course; the bulk of them appear to exist purely for the purpose of general knowledge quizzes and puzzles like this one, and I'm convinced they're mostly made up. For all I know, some of the Down answers could be collective nouns as well: how about a CAROUSEL of caterpillars? A CASTLE of hermit crabs? A VENDETTA of alpacas? They're at least as plausible as any of the "official" ones.
Ignoring the theme, it was a good puzzle with some enjoyable clues. My favourite was definitely 15d, which brought a grin to my face; other notable ones were 28a, 4d, 5d, 6d (clever anagram), 18d and 19d (though whether non-pianists would get that one straight off I have my doubts). I had some difficulties with the supposed homophone at 1d, as for me ACETIC is "a-see-tick" whereas "ascetic" is "a-set-tick"; however the Concise Oxford gives the latter pronunciation as an alternative for ACETIC. It's fair to say that I'd have got the clue a lot sooner if I'd appreciated this.
At comment #2 on Fifteensquared, Sil van den Hoek says "I think it was a pity that ‘requirement’ and ‘requisite’ are so close (in 16d)". They're actually cognates, both derived from Latin requirere "search for", requisitus being the past participle. I have similar misgivings about using definitions that are etymologically related, although I can't give a firm reason why; is the answer just a bit too obvious perhaps? No rules broken, but it just seemed a bit unsatisfactory.
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