Evangelists Like You (Puzzle No. 3,259)

This week's installment of Word Salad is about getting started in the cryptic pastime.  Hot and Trazom authored a primer on clue types and how to solve them shortly after they were appointed to their present office.  But there's more needed to get a novice over the hump and to a successful solving (or partial solving) of their first puzzle.  It helps to have a few obvious clues to use as a starting point: and it's important for constructors to spread those easy ones around the grid instead of placing them randomly and leaving one quadrant with no reasonable way in.

The Word Salad post explains the tactics of finding those clues, and of finding the essential parts of the clue: the definition, the indicator, and the wordplay.  It's the same thing I experienced when I taught physics to x-ray technologist students.  I found that many of my students were actually decent at math, but they froze up when confronted with a word problem since they didn't know where to start.  So I developed a couple of lectures where we would learn to disassemble one of those problems and make it into an equation problem like they had seen in their previous math classes.  For most of the students, the tools they got from those lectures were enough to overcome their math anxiety.

Now you who are experienced solvers and do that clue dissection without a second thought ought to read that post and apply it to a few of the clues in the next puzzle you solve.  I suggest this so you can  see and explain what you're doing, become a teacher yourself, and bring a few friends into the hobby like I did last week.  I sent an e-mail to the fencers who were watching me solve last weekend, pointing them to a few good starting points (including Kegler's beginner puzzles: there's a special place in heaven for constructors who are willing to create puzzles that are easy and not just puzzles that show off their wit and their knowledge of obscure words).  With many of us shut in for a few days due to the storm (which passed right over us, but fortunately spared us any flash floods or power outages), it was an ideal time to do something quiet and peaceful like solving a cryptic.  I'll let you know how they made out next time I see them.  

In the early days of Apple Computer, they had a job title called "Software Evangelist."  This person's mission was to convince programmers to write software for the Macintosh, and to act as their advocate within the company.  Guy Kawasaki thrived in this role so much that he wrote several great books about the concept of evangelism and what it could mean to people who might never have darkened a church door, but have some cause or another they believe passionately in.

You are one of those people, since you've gotten to the point of solving harder puzzles like the ones in The Nation, and reading a blog about it.  Here's your Great Commission: go forth and tell the smart people you know that cryptics stretch your language skills to make you a better writer, plus they're more entertaining than ordinary crosswords.  Share your successes with us.

After all that, I have to say that this is not a puzzle you want to hand to a novice solver, especially after you've given a tutorial in parsing and solving a clue.  There are a few clues here that definitely bend the rules.  Hot and Trazom warned us about this a few weeks ago, noting that sometimes the most satisfying results come from bending the rules.  There's a visual pun, a couple of exclamation points (which do follow the rules), a cross reference, and a unique creation in 1a.  You'll get the grid filled in, without too much head-scratching but don't shortchange yourself by skipping the wordplay.

Link to puzzle: http://www.thenation.com/article/170930/puzzle-no-3259

Hozom's comments: see above

Degree of difficulty: hard.  More cultural references than usual, so it's likely you'll need to check one or more of your answers online.  Hints if you need them--use the comments

Political content: 7d

Solution and annotation posted below the fold.

Legend: "*" anagram; "~" sounds like; "<" letters reversed; "( )" letters inserted; "_" or lower case: letters deleted; "†" explicit in the clue, “^” first letter or letters, “{“ relocated letter or letters

Across

1a	*CATCH AS CATCH CAN	“Using every element as needed” means that we anagram *SNATCH, repeating the letters as many times as necessary.
9a	E(YES)TRAIN	YES (“indeed”) contained in (“riding in”) E TRAIN (“subway on the west side of Manhattan”) The E runs up 8th Avenue, on the same tracks as the A and C.
10a	ELFIN	EL FIN (Spanish for “the end”)
11a	*DECIMAL POINT	*“I’M A PENCIL DOT” (anagram indicated by “remarkably”) Exclamation point since “I’m a pencil dot” also functions as the definition.
13a	(M)_OBSTERS	LOBSTERS (“ten-legged creatures”).  Change the “L” (roman numeral 50) to “M” (roman numeral 1,000), a factor of 20 increase
14a	_RANCH	_b_RANCH (“part of a government”), omission of “B” indicated by “Bush originally left”)
16a	CA(RI)B	CAB (“taxi”) containing (“circling”) RI (“Rhode Island”)
18a	*MONA LISA	*SOMALIAN (anagram indicated by “marred”)
21a	ORGAN RECITAL	Pun
24a	RING | O	RING + O Both of these are common cryptic references to a circle, albeit used in a different way.  “Circles” in the clue is plural because you are going to use two of them to construct the answer.
25a	*ANIMOSITY	*IS NO AMITY Exclamation point since “is no amity” also functions as the definition.
26a	WILL | I AM | FRIED | KIN	WILL (“testament”) + I AM (†) + FRIED (“completely worn out”) + KIN (“family”) William Friedkin directed The Exorcist and The French Connection

Down

1d	_CLEW_	bicy_CLE W_eek (hidden word indicated by “excerpt from”) I’m going to quibble about this one, because there’s no indicator for the homonym
2d	THE  | E	THE (†) + ^E^xcerpt (first letter indicated by “initially”)
3d	<HO< | *T SEAT	<OH< (“Ohio”, reversal indicated by “on the rebound”) + *STATE (anagram indicated by “struggling”)
4d	SPA | <NIARD<	<DRAIN< (“pipe”, reversal indicated by “lifted”) following (“under”) SPA (“spring”)
5d	ANNU(A)L	ANNUL (“erase”) containing (“outside of”) A (†) “annul” is the term railroads use for a cancelled train: there were a lot of those last week.
6d	CHE APER	Pun: CHE (“revolutionary”) + APER (“imitator”)
7d	COFFIN | NAIL	COFFIN (William Sloane Coffin, pastor of Riverside Church and founder/leader of several left wing organizations) + NAIL (“brad”)
8d	*NINIOTCHKA	*CHANT OINK (cross-reference to 22d, anagram indicated by “experimental”)
12d	ABO | RIG(IN)A | L	ABO (“blood types”) + IN (†) contained by (†) RIGA (†) + L^atvia (first letter indicated by “capital”)
13d	MI | C(ROB)REW	MI (“Michigan”) + CREW (“gang”) containing (“hanging around”) ROB (“to steal”)
15d	<_MODIFIER_<	<sati_RE IF I’D OM_itted< (reversal indicated by “rejected”, hidden word indicated by “part of”)
17d	BO(N J)O | VI	BOO (“show disapproval of”) VI (“Violet”: nickname) containing (“around”) NJ (“New Jersey”)
19d	ABALONE	Visual pun: “a B alone”
20d	B(<ECAL<)M_	BM_w (†, omission of last letter indicated by “mostly”) containing (with … “thorough it”) <LACE< (“string”, reversal indicated by “back”)
22d	O^ | INK	O_minous (†, first letter indicated by “beginning”) + INK (“sign” [verb])
23d	CY | _AN	CY (“Young”: Cy Young, baseball player) + m_AN (“man”, omission of first letter indicated by “losing face”)