The curse of the Times crossword club certainly strikes again – no online puzzle and I left home before the papers landed on the doormat, so had to buy a paper at the station. This started off even slower than last Wednesday’s puzzle, with only one across answer on the first look through. 23, 20 and 11 were the last few to go in. Some novel vocabulary including a couple of fairly tricky place names, but all well-clued save the odd quibble. 19 is my COD but there are plenty of other candidates.
Added later … It now turns out that the puzzle is a tribute to at least some of our original team of Times for the Times bloggers – see the comments.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | PAN(O.R.)AMA – it’s those men = ‘other ranks’ (i.e. not officers) again |
| 9 | GOO,D.=departs,WILL (verb) = leave |
| 10 | SRI LANKA – lank=limp in airs rev. |
| 11 | SNIP(PET)S – duck = pet = familiar form of address. I was very tempted by SMIDGENS=small portions, but didn’t fall into that trap |
| 12 | S.,E.,A(ORANGE)S – new word for me, but it was fairly clear that the real problem was finding the right fruit. |
| 14 | MIN.,I – “A series of ticks” is good for ‘minute’. |
| 15 | AT,L.A.,N.T.,A ref. the Olympic Games of 1984 (or 1932) and 1996. |
| 17 | B,LOGGER – logger = ‘saw employer’ is more good stuff, and unsurprisingly this clue raised a laugh here |
| 22 | FA(ISALABA = (A.B.,alas I) rev.)D – had SALA scribbled next to the clue from the off but needed checking letters to confirm the right kind of sailor and finish this off. |
| 23 | B=book,IND(W=wife)EED – a clever clue but maybe just a bit too clever – is ‘strangler’ really a fair def? Not sure. In combination with “smothering wife, certainly” for the containment, this is very difficult, good as the surface reading is. |
| 25 | E(X=ten,P=page)LICIT |
| 26 | HO(WITZ=”wits”)ER (hoer=hero*) – very good unless you’re a despiser of non-word homophones, which I’m not. |
| 27 | SANT=ants*,IAGO=character – would have been nice to find an adjective that could describe Iago (in Shakespeare’s Othello) and the character of the ancient city in the clue. But that’s me being ignorant – there is an extra clue here, as Iago is, I’m pretty sure, described as an “ancient” – whether this is the ‘elder’ or ‘ensign’ meaning, I don’t know. I guess I’ve reached the limits of what you can learn about the play by listening to Verdi’s version without knowing Italian well enough to understand much. |
| Down | |
| 2 | ACRE FEET – Fe in create* – today’s Times xwd factoid: apparently an acre foot is the volume of water equivalent to an acre at a depth of one foot (43,560 cubic feet). Sounds useful for insurance assessors these days. |
| 3 | O.K.,LA(HO.)MA – Lama as in Dalai, Panchen, etc. Latest entry in the contest to find ways to clue Oklahoma, or is this just a coincidence? |
| 5 | AGA SAGA – hidden word. “A popular novel in a semi-rural middle class setting” says Chambers – Agas being posh modern-day versions of kitchen ranges. More background in this Guardian article, which makes me wonder when we’ll have ‘bonkbuster’ in the Times xwd. |
| 6 | TONIC SOL-FA – (cast of lion)* – this took a long time even as a musical mafioso. (It’s “Do, re, mi” as in the Sound of Music song) |
| 7 | HI(R)E,LING – surface referring to Paul Macartney and Heather Mills? |
| 8 | C(LASSIE)R – tony = US informal for posh |
| 15 | AUTOBAHN = (about an, h.=hour)* |
| 16 | LI(LONG=marathon (adj.),W.)E |
| 18 | G,R.A.,FFITI=(tiff I) rev. |
| 19 | ENA=girl,BLING=cheap jewellery |
| 20 | BI(D(ea)D)ERS – in doubtful taste but clever stuff |
| 24 | SPUN – the doctors here are those of spin. |
Music: A summer holiday memory – the opening chorus of Otello, sung with gusto by the Black Sea Fleet ensemble, accompanied by a stage band including an accordion or two. Followed by Desdemona’s Ave Maria – on the previous holiday, a choir singing trip to Italy, our Royal Academy soloist Meeta Raval stole the show with this. If she gets to be famous, you read it here first.
I wonder if this is a cunning plot to make us buy the printed version.
Or could be just incompetence I suppose. It can’t be that hard for somebody to make it part of their job to check early doors that the new crossword has gone on OK.
I’m rather hoping to hear that as with last Wednesday’s puzzle, this provided some problems for the experts, but perhaps they are a lot better at geographical names than I am.
I have a number possible quibbles at the moment but I shall save these until I’ve read the blog as I expect most of them are ill-founded.
17A is my COD.
Unfortunately I was too busy thinking ON/OFF/LEG for the cricket side at 10A that I didn’t consider it might be the name of a country until I had all the checking letters in place, and the final A from AGA SAGA was a long time coming.
Some of the NE corner took ages too as I convinced myself that 9A was GOODNESS derived somehow from GOOINESS if such a word exists, until I solved 8D. I also fell into the elephant trap mentioned by Peter at 11A so I ended with one wrong answer today.
I wonder if I’d have fared any better if I’d had my usual 5:30 A.M. run at it.
I emailed them about it at 7.30, but no doubt they haven’t got round to checking the emails yet.
What I find amazing is that they charge so much for it, but can’t be bothered even to make sure that the main puzzle is there each day.
And yes, I know, I’ll have to stop moaning.
Anyway… Another very nice puzzle and the “saw employer” element at 17A makes it my COD, but there are many to choose from.
My sole uncertainty was 24D – SPUN or SPAN?
I’m pretty confident that spun is right except if you want to be archaic, as in “When Adam delved, and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” – one of those phrases understood by very few, not including me until I read the explanation here – scroll down to the last couple of responses. And while Googling for it, I find that one of my local churches has a picture of them doing so.
Edited at 2007-11-28 12:59 pm (UTC)
Douglas
I very nearly nommed this as COD!
In my opinion, “flashy”, or maybe “cheap-looking”, jewellery, is a more accurate definiton.
Smiffy
Tongue-in-cheek, but I’d be more upset if reference was made to “rap musicians”. In my experience rappers generally nick someone else’s music and overlay it with a stream of meaningless gibberish.
The answer to 17ac should give a big hint…
Edited at 2007-11-28 09:38 pm (UTC)
I think I can see five of our original team of seven:
In 1/9A, Magoo – panoraMA GOOdwill
Then in 10, Ilan – srI LANka
At 20D ‘Bidders’ might mean me (and getting Biddlecombe into answers would be hard).
TAL/BIN/HO is in the beginnings of 21/23/26
and GRAF/EN ditto, 18 and 19D
The others in the original rotation of seven bloggers – linxit and foggyweb – I can’t find, though I’m half expecting to be told they’re there in knight’s tours or something like that.
And thanks! – Whoever you are.
Even more apologies to Foggyweb, who I just couldn’t fit in – nothing personal! next time 🙂
Most unexpected and a rare treat. Good gridding effort, and I loved LILONGWE as an entry, which I eventually got from the wordplay…
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to solve this puzzle at all due to excessive pressure at work and a party that night, so didn’t find out about until now (Saturday morning).
Anyway, treacherous puzzle! A few guesses that proved correct, ie 22a and 16d. Kicking myself for taking so long with ‘Sri Lanka’ given they’ve just been here!
I thought 26 a good clue but will give my COD to 17.
Please explain the wordplay.
tick can mean a second, like on a clock, so a series of ticks = min attached to one = i
Took me a moment, though as an Australian, I should have gotten tick as a unit of time.
Didn’t have a prayer for ‘bindweed’.
Only the 3 “easies” left out of this cracker:
21a Go after missing head’s lecture (4)
(S) TALK
4d Relative vAlUe, NoT preserving the right of every couple (4)
A U N T. An ingenious way of cluing alternate letters.
13d Agent making for unlikely setting in winter (10)
ANTIFREEZE. Top cryptic definition. Is this a chestnut or something?