A pleasant enough challenge, not much tougher than a Monday offering I thought; with nothing I couldn’t explain. Twenty minutes all told.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics
| Across | |
| 1 | Undesirable trade for jam-maker? (7) |
| TRAFFIC – cryptic double definition. | |
| 5 | What peer has, back from old country with retro-style fashion (7) |
| DUKEDOM – D (back of old) UK, MODE reversed. | |
| 9 | Going over part of Glinka score (3) |
| NIL – hidden reversed, as in a football score. | |
| 10 | Close case of burglary, with judge stopping disrespect by low criminal (5,2,4) |
| CHEEK BY JOWL – CHEEK (disrespect) (LOW)* = low criminal, with B(urglar)Y, J(udge) inserted. | |
| 11 | Beginner admitting learner is to have difficulties (8) |
| FLOUNDER – insert L into FOUNDER. | |
| 12 | Fatter? One’s cut out food here (6) |
| LARDER – take the I out of LARDIER= fatter. | |
| 15 | Advanced slowly, for the most part (4) |
| LENT – mostly LENTO. | |
| 16 | With sitar periodically playing sing out forte (6,4) |
| STRONG SUIT – STR (S i T a R periodically) then (SING OUT)*. | |
| 18 | Check energy in sweet food (4,6) |
| STEM GINGER – STEM = check, hold back; GINGER = energy, pep. | |
| 19 | Gnome eating large salad (4) |
| SLAW – SAW (gnome, saying) insert L. Coleslaw, one of the most inedible and revolting foods known to man, IMO. | |
| 22 | Feign problem in sea, swimming (6) |
| ASSUME – SUM in (SEA)*. | |
| 23 | Relieve pressure with everything consumed by me (8) |
| PALLIATE – P, ALL I ATE = consumed by me. Not a word I’d seen but obvious from the more common palliative (care). | |
| 25 | Inexperienced footballer is tender of course (11) |
| GREENKEEPER – GREEN = inexperienced, KEEPER = goalkeeper. Chap in charge of golf course maintenance. | |
| 27 | Evasive sort of scoundrel losing face (3) |
| EEL – scoundrel = HEEL, loses its H. Eels are slippery, so evasive I presume. | |
| 28 | Dismiss site in Yorkshire Dales with no beers (3-4) |
| RED-CARD – REDCAR is a town in Yorkshire, D(ales) = no beers. | |
| 29 | Name of Parisian in hat drinking tea, we hear (7) |
| ENTITLE – EN (French for IN) TILE (hat) with T (sounds like tea) inserted. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Appreciative, after leaving hotel, for some fuel (7) |
| TANKFUL – THANKFUL loses H for hotel. | |
| 2 | Cricketers in a game bagging a couple of fifties (3-8) |
| ALL-ROUNDERS – A, ROUNDERS (game) insert LL (two fifties). Cricketers who both bat and bowl well. | |
| 3 | City plugging financial resource that’s productive (6) |
| FECUND – EC (City of London) inside FUND (financial resource). | |
| 4 | Temperate miner wanting clothing for his daughter? (10) |
| CLEMENTINE – CLEMENT (temperate as in the weather), INE (mINEr unclothed). As in the American lament Oh My Darling Clementine. I only know the rude version. | |
| 5 | Day you will invest a thousand in bank (4) |
| DYKE – D(ay), YE (you) with K (1000) inserted. | |
| 6 | Cardinal left ship somewhere in Florida (3,5) |
| KEY LARGO – KEY (cardinal) L(eft) ARGO (legendary ship). | |
| 7 | Report of outstanding au pair (3) |
| DUO – sounds like “DUE, AU”. | |
| 8 | Spy desert rodent (4,3) |
| MOLE RAT – MOLE = spy, RAT = desert. | |
| 13 | Clad in jacket, a low-down participant in espionage (6,5) |
| DOUBLE AGENT – DOUBLET (sort of jacket) has A, GEN (low-down) inserted. | |
| 14 | Say more than enough after turning over of king (3,7) |
| FOR EXAMPLE – AMPLE (more than enough) after OF reversed then REX = king. | |
| 17 | Narcissist’s failing badly in a game to hold onto ball (8) |
| EGOMANIA – (IN A GAME)* with O (ball) inserted. | |
| 18 | Many fleeing country with ill-gotten gains act confidently (7) |
| SWAGGER – SWAG (ill-gotten gains) GER(MANY). | |
| 20 | Thrilled comment about priest’s riding trick (7) |
| WHEELIE – WHEE ! I’m thrilled, with the usual priest ELI inserted. | |
| 21 | A little bloomer from news source without knowledge (6) |
| FLORET – FT (Financial Times) with LORE inserted. | |
| 24 | Interpret article penned by Marx or Engels? (4) |
| READ – RED (as Marx and Engels) with A inserted. | |
| 26 | Tip, either one from Eve, Norman and David (3) |
| END – either the first or last letters of each of EvE, NormaN, DaviD. | |
I thought this was tough, especially with CLEMENTINE and STEM GINGER crossing. The intersecting SWAGGER and RED-CARD may also cause problems, especially to non-football fans. 42 minutes.
17:36
As Pip says, not much different from a Monday. DNK ALL-ROUNDER as a cricket term. Biffed DUKEDOM, CHEEK BY JOWL (from the C, Y), and EGOMANIA, parsed post-submission. It was nice to see ‘energy’ as something other than E. FLORET was my LOI; it took me a while to see how it worked. I liked SWAGGER.
15:13
Clearly on the wavelength for me, with one of my top-10 times. So, I liked it and was surprised not to see a lower SNITCH rating. I did biff SWAGGER with most of the crossers in place. Thanks, Pip, for the as-usual-excellent blog.
I have a pair of sandals called All-Rounders, parent company the excellent Mephisto, sounded like it could be cricket.
LOI GREENKEEPER.
I had biffed secret agent, which held me back for quite a while. Then I got into a bit of trouble, trying to make all-counties work, thinking of county cricket. But I realized it must be stem ginger, erased everything, and saw the answer at once. The other hard part of the wheelie/slaw crossing, but just following the instructions once again proved useful.
The clue for Clementine was pretty clever, leading to an answer that was not at all what I expected.
Time: 41 minutes
Way off the wavelength… found it very tough, continually not seeing the correct synonyms.
COD to duo for the au pair.
40 minutes. Several clues like SWAGGER and FOR EXAMPLE only half parsed and I was stuck at the end on CLEMENTINE, my COD; I’m probably the last person to know, but I didn’t realise the song was considered a parody. Other highlights were the surface for LARDER and the parsing of DOUBLE AGENT
Pip – if you don’t like coleslaw, this clue may apply to you:
I’ve had enough of salad – but this means I’m bound to get some! (4,3)
Thanks to setter and Pip
So far the blogger and commenters seem to be divided into two camps with regard to the level of difficulty, and I’m with ulaca and isla in finding it hard.
I struggled to get a foothold, eventually finding one in the SW quarter where I started to make good progress, but almost everywhere else in the grid I had problems and at one point about 25 minutes in, I was on the verge of giving up for the night and coming back to it fresh this morning. Getting CHEEK BY JOWL at just the tight moment prevented that and gradually things picked up again and the end was in sight.
45 minutes.
45m 07.
I’m in the ‘not-too-hard’ basket but I must have spent 15-20mins on PALLIATE.
However I thought there were some very clever clues. I particularly liked EEL, RED CARD, CLEMENTINE and DUO.
Thanks, Pip!
Usual time. Liked CLEMENTINE.
A game of two halves – 5 or 6 minutes for the top half, then a crawl to crack the bottom half. SLAW was my LOI as I had no idea what the gnome was all about. Didn’t parse RED CARD which took an age to come to me once the two Ds were in place (and it’s horrible anyway: a noun being used as a verb – I hate it just as I do when my nephews and niece, upset again at my having missed some important event, claim to have ‘texted’ me about it). Anyway, just shy of 45 minutes today, almost all spent in the nether regions.
And if a dog should tree a squirrel, a boxer floor his opponent, or a kind soul house a refugee—if anyone so much as butters their bread or sugars their tea… you must be in agony.
You make a fair point, Sir! Still don’t like folks redcarding people or texting me about it, but maybe give me a couple of decades and I’ll get used to it.
Don’t worry, by then there’ll be a whole new collection of verbed nouns (to borrow Jerry’s expression below) for you to get annoyed about!
“There ain’t no noun that can’t be verbed..” (anon)
Verbing weirds language.
14:21. I found this of about average difficulty, though I was totally stumped for a short while when I reached my last entry, DUO. I thought I was looking for a word that sounded like due and meant “au pair” and was close to concluding that I needed an obscure strangely spelled word. Then eventually the penny dropped. Lovely clue.
I was there, too. A friend of a friend here is a doula (from Greek doule “female slave” apparently) and I was wondering if it was some variation on that.
42 minutes, so in the ‘hard’ camp. It was a puzzle I took ages to get started. LOI STEM GINGER. COD to GREENKEEPER. Fortunately, as well as singing it at primary school, CLEMENTINE came back to me from sources as diverse as Huckleberry Hound and Bobby Darin. Thank you Pip and setter.
Wavelength day for me, 12′ 03″.
CLEMENTINE in quickly (I only know the original, with the word ‘forty-niner’ commemorating the Gold Rush). EEL and SLAW last in. Thought ‘score’ for NIL was weak.
Thanks Pip and setter.
90% easy then stopped in my tracks by the palliate/floret crossing. I really wanted 1a to be ‘jarring’!
Thanks for another excellent blog.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, thank you setter. Slightly harder than average for me at just over forty minutes, with lots of satisfying solves relishing the clever wordplay and good surfaces – COD to DUO, which defied all efforts for ages.
15 minutes, quick by my standards. Didn’t know the CLEMENTINE reference but the clueing helped, and likewise STEM GINGER was clear enough despite ginger=energy being new to me. Didn’t fully parse DUKEDOM either. Very enjoyable stuff – thanks setter and blogger.
FOI Nil
LOI Dyke
COD Au pair
33 mins. Found this harder than yesterday. Puzzled over DUO and DUKEDOM for the longest time, and CHEEK BY JOWL was thereby also delayed.
Liked FLORET and TANKFUL. And FECUND is just a lovely word.
12:24
My time suggests this was easier than average but while solving I was conscious that I was making correct connections / assumptions straight away so I can understand that others might have struggled.
Nice puzzle.
16:15. If hard is “well done” and easy is “blue” then I found this to be “medium rare”.
COD: DUO.
Not too hard, I thought, but noticebly more so than Monday’s.
Some neat clues, loved Clementine.
Unlike our esteemed blogger I also love coleslaw, preferably when made by me.
46 minutes which looked like being far less, when most of the LHS went in easily. But the clue for 5ac was annoying: A ‘DUKEDOM’ shouldn’t be defined as ‘what peer has’, but as ‘what some peers have’, or ‘what peer may have’, or some such; this clue held me up for a long time and I missed the excellent DUO for a while. It didn’t help that I’d never heard of a MOLE RAT. Nor that at first I very stupidly put in San Diego, not KEY LARGO, based on the O, its being in the USA, and the enumeration, so the top R corner was unnecessarily slow to fall.
7:47. This seems to have been a wavelength puzzle, by which I don’t mean any sort of mystical woo thing, just that some people find it hard and others find it easy, for no obviously identifiable reason.
I also dislike coleslaw, but my wife loves it. Fortunately this is one difference in preference that is very easily addressed.
Very good. That’s how I like my coleslaw too.
11:04, and yes, in the camp where I found this much tougher than the time alone suggests – I realised pretty quickly that I needed to dismantle the clues and not make assumptions, the “lift and separate” in au pair being the best example. Nice work.
I found the top half relatively easy, then slowed right down for the bottom. The SLAW/WHEELIE crossing took some time to tease out. I think of coleslaw, rather than the Americanised (?) slaw and then wouldn’t exactly think of it as a salad, though technically it is, of course, and quite delicious imho, Pip and Keriothe. But my last two in, 21D and 29A took forever to work out. Even then, I bifd both, with a MER for T sounds like tea, which it doesn’t in the word ‘entitle’ – that would be pronounced ‘entiteele’! I never did parse FLORET – I failed to find a word for news source missing ‘gen’ and couldn’t see beyond that. Liked CLEMENTINE a lot – I only know the straight version that my father used to sing us on car journeys.
Lift and separate also applies to bits of wordplay so the homophone of “tea” is there to give us the letter T but doesn’t have to sound like that in the answer.
A major eyebrow raise by seeing the ugly word “onto” in 17 down. Standards are slipping.
27:47, which by my standards seems to put me in the “wavelength” camp. Struggled to get much on the first pass of across clues but the top half came together with ALL-ROUNDER, CLEMENTINE and KEY LARGO coming readily to mind. I found the bottom left quite tough, mainly because I failed to parse SWAGGER for a long time. Had to think very hard to find the right place for my LOI RED-CARD.
Overall a fun puzzle I thought, nothing too technical but quite playful with PALLIATE and LARDER raising a bit of a smile. DUO made me feel a little queasy for some reason – something about “au pair” being separated into wordplay and definition, particularly as “au” doesn’t make sense on its own. But I think it’s fair enough on reflection. CDs often leave me cold but I quite liked TRAFFIC – I suppose it’s not truly a CD, more a sneaky DD.
Thanks S&P.
I certainly found this harder than the last two days’ puzzles. I did start off quickly, with half a dozen answers entered in the first few minutes (FOI TRAFFIC), but thereafter I elevened a bit. Even when I thought I had the correct answer it took up to a minute to see how to parse the clue. In the NE, DYKE, DUO and CHEEK BY JOWL were my last entries. In the SW, SWAGGER and STEM GINGER. I’m not sure why I took so long to see either of those.
37 minutes
24:55 I found this quite tough and thoroughly enjoyed it, though I did think “Evasive sort” for EEL seemed a bit thin.
CLEMENTINE and CHEEK BY JOWL the pick of the bunch for me. I knew the latter from the excellent theatre company of that name.
Thanks to Pip and the setter
24:36. Fairly MOR in terms of difficulty with some nice touches to keep the interest up. Liked GREENKEEPER, though I think we have seen the tender device quite recently.
A strange mixture of those that found it tough and those that were on the wavelength. I was in the latter camp finishing in a creditable (for me) time of 31.16. My only mistake was initially to spell CLEMENTINE with a middle A, but this was soon corrected when FLOUNDER was solved.
Enjoyable crossword, my LOI ENTITLE
34:40. A good time, putting me with those who found it easier, although I somehow felt I was doing unusually well with a hard puzzle. I didn’t like NIL defined as a (football) score and wondered if there might be more to it (to do with scoring out, say) but no. I enjoyed the rest, including FOR EXAMPLE, WHEELIE, FLORET and DUO
Two things: didn’t know Clementine from the song was a miner’s daughter, so that clue goes way up in my estimation. The only miner’s daughter I know is Loretta Lynn, and only because one of my pet dogs was named after her.
And is stem ginger sweet? I find it kind of sharp and spicy, but sweet is not something I would ever use to describe it. Except of course when it’s glacé, with many kilograms of added sugar.
And. the other second one.. I like coleslaw.
I found some of this easy and some very tricky. The top half went in with little effort, but I was held up by SLAW/WHEELIE/EEL/ENTITLE and SWAGGER/STEM GINGER/RED CARD. TANKFUL and TRAFFIC went in first soon followed by CLEMENTINE, which I liked a lot. SLAW was LOI. I like coleslaw, especially with cheese in it. DUO took a while too. 25:48. Thanks setter and Pip.
Cheese in coleslaw? Interesting concept- I suppose I should try it someday when feeling adventurous. Is it in creamy or vinegary version of coleslaw?
Creamy usually. You’ll find it in all the supermarkets as Cheesy coleslaw or similar.
About 20 mins
Nice puzzle – no dramas.
Thanks, pip.
Never heard of Key Largo. But I knew Key West and Mar-a-lago (where top secret documents are stored) so eventually arrived at the right destination.
“Across the north and south to Key Largo, love for sale” (Sade, “Smooth Operator”, 1984)
“Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go?” (Beach Boys, “Kokomo”, 1988)
29:52
I’m with Normo in that the top half flew in, followed by a much chewier bottom half.
Looking at the blog, realised that I’d missed a considerable amount of parsing and bunged several answers in from definition, sometimes with help from spacing. Really should be more appreciative of the setter’s efforts!
I was in the hard camp for this, making really heavy weather of it. NHO Mole rat, and was slow on Slaw. Liked Clementine and Cheek by jowl. In fact liked the whole crossword after it was done but not while doing it. I’m off to do yesterday’s 15×15 now, which looks easier on the Snitch.
Days like this are where I rely on this community – finished in 22:41 with everything crossed as I did not understand floret, entitle or traffic. Thanks so much for the parsing.
COD to swagger for me.
Thanks P and setter
Little bit Mondayish, but at 29 mins, quite a few holdups. Unfortunately the last letter I typed in was a typo…. I was so convinced that the WHEELIE clue was about horse riding that I started thinking about how you could do that on a horse.
Quite a tough one, but some lovely clues, with cleverly disguised surfaces. LOI was STEM GINGER.
Pleased to get an all correct finish- avoided the OWL club today
Thanks to Pip and Setter
I loved this crossword. Some very inventive ways of making lovely surface readings, and misleading places to break the clue between literal and wordplay. But I fell at the last fence (trying a wheelie maybe) when I didn’t know PALLIATE but I thought MALLEATE was a word. Which it is, although it means to beat thin, so not lessen the more general sense. I convinced myself it fitted the wordplay (“all” in “me” and then “ate”) but by that point I’d forgotten I knew it started with a P.
“forte” in the clue for 16A is an interesting word. In the sense of the clue it is pronounced like fort, since it is from the French word for strong. But people consider you uneducated if you don’t pronounce it fort-ay, from the Italian word for loud, which is not how it arrived in English.
15:02. I really enjoyed this and have half a dozen ticks of appreciation on my paper copy. I’m in neither the “Mondayish” nor “quite hard” camps finishing in a little under an average time for me, with FLORET my LOI just because it was the last one left to solve. No particular hold up, but I had to pause and work out the wordplay for a few. COD to “…Oh my darling CLEMENTINE” with the clue’s clever reference to the ’49er Dad. Thanks Pip and setter.
Judging from the times of my usual cohort, I am behind the pack on 28’37”. End of day solve, maybe. Very much enjoyed it though, especially DUO which was my POI. CHEEK BY JOWL LOI, the definition so cunningly hidden. KEY LARGO is also a great Bogart film, about a hotel, a hurricane and a load of gangsters.
I enjoyed this puzzle, which for me was in the middle ground between easy and difficult. Finished in 25 minutes which is about my average. No beefs.
FOI – TRAFFIC
LOI – CLEMENTINE
COD – STRONG SUIT, not really difficult but still quite clever, I thought.
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
16:54 for me early evening. So, average difficulty I guess in my book. Not a steady solve with the last few clues in the NE corner falling like dominoes, only once I cracked 10 ac “cheek by jowl” . This had been hampered by my having put in some letters in the wrong order earlier for some reason within 4d “clementine” my COD incidentally.
Plenty of fine clueing, an enjoyable solve.
Thanks to setter and Pip for an informative blog.
I trundled through this one quite steadily. I thought it was a nice puzzle, although I was lucky enough to be sitting on the beach in the glorious sunshine with a stem ginger ice cream yesterday so perhaps that helped me tune in quicker. Thanks for the blog.
27.42.
5a and 5 and 7d held me up the most, as DUKEDOM just wouldn’t appear, and I convinced myself that TWO was the answer to 7d (well, it means pair and outstanding, as in OTT, no?) and by thinking that day was the definition for 5d.
However, appreciated the cleverness of 1a and 4d (both entered with some confidence) with the lovely FECUND helping me into CHEEK BY JOWL – probably my COD. Also held up by forgetting football terminology, so had GREEN?????? for too long a time. NHO PALLIATE, but should have worked it out; enjoyed STEM GINGER (though I don’t normally), and WHEELIE for the fun. SLAW I can take or leave.