Across
1 FETTLE Condition, almost always fine, produced by the odd (actually even) letters of sTaLl inserted into FETE for “gala”.
4 SWADDLE Insert the first letter of Wear into SADDLE “seat”. Prince George first appeared for the camera swaddled.
9 UTTER Your worker in tailoring is a cutter. Ignore the C(old) and you have your synonym for unqualified, as in “an utter
failure”
10 COME OFF IT You come off drugs when you stop taking them, I is “current” in physics and crossword clues T
is temperature ditto.
11 DIANETICS L Ron Hubbard’s deliberately invented science/religion, the core of Scientology. Lisa Marie Presley, Neil Gaiman
and Charles Manson are among those who have tried it and found it wanting.
12 TACKY Turn back your kitty CAT, empty KilkennY, and you display poor taste.
13 ICKY And in another clue for sticky, this time codenamed “nasty”, the last piece of worK is framed by ICY “cold”.
14 AVOCATIONS, a “good spot” anagram of Nova Scotia, for what you’re doing now. Stop it and get on with your work.
18 GOOD FOR YOU A rather facile double definition. Perhaps “may be” could be better rendered as “is” in this context.
20 VITA Miss Sackville West was a poet, author, gardener and sometime lover of Virginia Wolff. JC would have used “vita” to
mean life.
23 VOTER Insert TO in REV(erend) and reverse the lot for your X man.
24 HUSBANDED I’m not sure why I stumbled on this one. It’s just US (American) BAND (players) in (s)HED (cast – think reptile
skins and remove the intro). The whole means “used sparingly”.
25 NILE GREEN A rather wishy washy shade, made up by mixing the letters of engineer with L(eft)
26 PROMO Among other possibilities, a promotional video created for the even letters of sPaRrOw leading the M(edical)
O(fficer). Another clue that unaccountably held me up.
27 LINCTUS The Quebequois allegedly speak French, so their “you” gives you TU: stick that into Lincolnshire rather than
Massachusetts for cough medicine.
28 UNISON Singing without harmony, S(on) inserted into UNION for “marriage”
Down
1 FOUNDLING The last letter of grueL inserted into FOUNDING for a child typically found with a sad note on the doorstep.
2 TITLARK The Meadow Pipit’s or two birds for the price of one. Most of TITL(e) over Noah’s floating zoo.
3 LARGER I.e. “more stout” Take the D(aughter) out of LARDER and replace it with a G(ood)
4 SAMOS Your triangular snack is a samosa (and not nacho as I first thought). Pythagoras was born on most of it, the isle of
Samos. Take the setter’s word for it.
5 APOSTATE Anagram of “a teapot’s” to produce an apostate, such as Lisa Marie Presley, Neil Gaiman and Charles Manson
from a Scientologist’s point of view.
6 DE FACTO The definition is just “Really” (Daniel) DEFOe is the author who is shortened and enclosing ACT for.”play”
7 ENTRY Posh people (g(ENTRY) lose their first letter in the vestibule.
8 ACHIEVER Defined as “a successful one”, built from A CH(urch), the first letter in Italy, and EVER for “always”
15 CROSSING As in a boat passage. CROWS sans W(ith) SING for chorus.
16 STAND DOWN A partnership in cricket is a stand, machinery that’s not working is down, the whole meaning “withdraw”
17 AFFRIGHT Not, I would think, that old a word for “scare”, FR for “father” is inserted into A FIGHT for “a battle”
19 ORTOLAN Perhaps today’s lesser known bird. Build it form O(ther) R(anks) “men”, TO “closed” (expect complaints – we think
here it means “nearly closed”) and L(oca) A(rea) N(etwork)
21 INDOORS Two definitions, “at home” and doors by which one is supposed to go in, not out.
22 HAPPEN Means perhaps, or maybe in some northern (England) dialects. Took me forever. It’s not a place name.
23 VENAL Here means open to bribery, the heart of diNed with VEAL round it
24 HEELS Sounds a lot like heals, here means cads or bounders. I was thinking too much of bacon. That sort of curing.
As often, I thought this was going to be easy when I whipped through one corner, only to get totally stuck in the rest of the puzzle. The SE was the worst, particularly annoying because I had thought of and rejected ‘unison’. I also had a strong urge to put ‘lobby’ in 7, but fortunately could not justify it.
Time, abysmal, answers, all correct.
About 25 years ago I spent a wonderful Easter on Samos. I remember being quite awed by the Tunnel of Eupalinos, which at the time was just sort of lying there unmarked and largely ignored (except by the goats who were using one opening for shade). That may all have changed a bit by now.
On edit: I’ve just remembered that it was on Samos that Easter that I solved my first Times crossword, mainly because storms were stopping the ferries coming over and I ran out of reading material. After reading my one newspaper cover to cover a couple of times, I finally had no choice but to tackle the ‘weird’ crossword. I forget exactly how many days it took… Σιγά σιγά.
Edited at 2013-10-17 02:07 am (UTC)
Not a happy morning. More sort of TACKY and ICKY. And I had to explain to a dear guest about how they “cook” ortolans in France. Don’t go there if you’re a twitcher or a dying French President.
Edited at 2013-10-17 05:48 am (UTC)
Was 100% on paper – then a check letter typo gave me two errors after I’d had to type the whole thing for a third time because The Times site kept timing out (not responding message on top of screen), and I had to close/reopen the link, ending up back to a blank grid each time.
Has anyone else had a similar connection problem?
My other on-line links are OK.
On edit: I just went back to the club site, and found to my surprise that my score did make the leaderboard at last (27:26). Rosselliot must have had the same problem I did, as the leaderboard shows him with 4 successively longer times!
Edited at 2013-10-17 03:35 am (UTC)
And that one letter was the M in PROMO, where I had ‘provo’, which I couldn’t parse, and I guess isn’t a real word anyway…
Other than that, it took about 50 mins… would have been quicker were it not for my LOI, HAPPEN, which took a lot of head-scratching.
Several from wp: DIANETICS, AVOCATIONS, TITLARK. DNK: STAND (cricket ref)
Couldn’t parse COME OFF IT, so thanks for that, and all the other notes and links.
Since I only ever met 22ac, spoken, on TV shows such as Coronation Street, it never occurred to me that it carried an ‘H’. 40 minutes.
March 1968, arriving at Mossley, then in Lancashire (on the borders of W.Yorks and Cheshire) as a brand new straight from public school bobby and enquiring of an elderly local if I had reached my destination, his response was “Happen as like it were, lad”. Being affeart (as in 17dn) to ask him what he meant,I continued on hoping for the best. I later learned it to mean any variation of ‘might ‘ave’, ‘maybe’or even ‘the chances are that you have’.
Helped today by possessing almost all the required knowledge. The one exception was AVOCATIONS. I had to write out the letters to be sure of the anagram.
I was held up in the SE where it took me a while to see HAPPEN because I was another who was trying to think of a northern place name that fitted ???P?N. I was then able to get HUSBANDED and my LOI, CROSSING. I wasn’t 100% sure of AVOCATIONS but it was the most likely solution from the anagram fodder.
Nice surface on 26ac, making me think of Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice. Sneaky Lincolnshire at 27ac, tough on our cousins across the pond. TITLARK obscure (to me) but clear from wordplay. Wondered how TOTTY worked at 7dn before the penny dropped …
Aye, a reet good one, happen. GOOD FOR YOU, setter (apart from that single clue, which was awful)!
Same problem as others wi’ 22, despite living oop North. 20 were nearly Vida but I stopped missen just in time.
Nowt else to say.
I’ve noticed that the incomparable Magoo seems to vanish from the leader boards for a few weeks before every Championships. Does he stop solving crosswords? Does he go into monkish retreat? Or does he decamp, Federer-like, to a training camp in the Dubai desert to train with his entourage?
I think we should be told (well, I think I should because happen I’m right nosy).
But I may be wrong about that.
Dianetics from wordplay and Happen from definition and checkers.
I had question marks beside Entry and Indoors so thanks Z for explaining those.
Am away tomorrow and won’t be able to comment so would like to wish all competitors the best of luck in Saturday’s Championship.
I knew ORTOLAN from the film “Gigi”, though as I remember it, she is instructed by her aunt to cut them in half before eating them bones and all.
Didn’t know Sackville-West and didn’t like the clue. No real standout clues today
John Mck
Edited at 2013-10-17 05:02 pm (UTC)
“Stand down” was a bit of a stab in the dark, since I know nothing about cricket except that it’s supposed to be a game played by gentlemen with odd-shaped balls. Or is that golf?
I also agonised over “titlark” – it’s the sort of word that would have stuck in my mind if I’d heard it before, so I doubted its existence.
Quiet night in A&E. The locals here seem quite well organised, and save all of their bingeing and brawling for Friday and Saturday nights so they can make a proper job of it. Still, it’s early yet.
Edited at 2013-10-17 10:11 pm (UTC)
As a Yorkshireman I had no problem with HAPPEN = “perhaps”, though HAPPEN = “chance” took slightly longer to justify.
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My good completion time tonight, without aids, makes up somewhat for not knowing what day it was yesterday – senility approaches, but some grey cells holding out.
George Clements
George
Finished in 26:50 with one error – with the _A_K crossers wrote HAWK in for the bird, deduced (wrongly) that a TITHE was a right, saw the vessel must be ARK and ended up with the lesser-known TITHARK – very embarrassing.
Rob
Also knew DIANETICS. Repo Man, a quirky movie from the 80s full of sly visual jokes, showed a stand of paperback books at a supermarket checkout: DIURETICS, by Elroy Hubbard.