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My first experience with Crucible, and I find him heavy going. Can you help me with parsing the following.

15d Fooled by absorbing Resistance story (4,5) Hard Times. Hard Times appears to be a book by Dickens about the oppressed. So how does that come from "Fooled by absorbing"?

17d The other 17 perhaps, stand up to striker at St Andrews. (8)
Answer Club Face.
The other 17 may be a reference to 17a Sort of bun that's different dunked in tea - Chelsea
Club Face is acceptable as a striker at St Andrews (just) but how does that come from the word play?

18d Fixed up porciini provided in Corsica originally (8)
Answer Specific ????
Google tells me specific relates to a specie. So porcini are mushrooms or fungi. Nothing in this works for me.

Is litter lout an English term. I have not heard of it .

Also am very unimpressed with book as definitions for 1dand 8d and its inclusion as an apparent theme in title without the i.

Any guidance on this parsing will be appreciated.

Jabiru

HAD is fooled, "absorbing" Resistance (R in electricty), "by" is TIMES in arithmetic

Chelsea is a football CLUB, FACE is stand up to
"porcini" is the Italian word for CEPS, backwards gives SPEC, then IF IC

If you are going to take up the Guardian crosswords, you will this site very useful.

http://www.fifteensquared.net/

Yes, LITTER LOUT is a common English term.

This has all the answers, parsings, and discussion:

http://www.fifteensquared.net/2017/01/17/guardian-27096-crucible/

Thank you Chrise

I occasionally dip my toes into the Guardian crosswords. I find Rufus to be good, but feel I should be stretching myself. Hence my experiment with Crucible. I will have to try harder, but I hope the direction you have given me will help me. Mostly I work on Stickler - the Australian setter. He produces a good puzzle every week. But I need a change now and again and sometimes I have spare time to look further afield.

Cheers

Jabiru