28114 Thursday, 21 October 2021 Ballet tricky

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, I struggled my way through this one, taking 33.39 with answers scattered all over the place, trying (and failing) to parse as I went so I could look you all in the face and explain myself. It’s all done now, but it took some doing.
I expect to find solvers with Nervererdovs turning up today, especially perhaps those lacking Latin and Greek, Eng Lit and Geography in their collection of O-levels. But I can’t fault (and I occasionally enthusiastically applaud) the cluing which is by turns deceptive especially for the seasoned solver, witty and inventive, and kind where it needs to be (mostly). So yes, a struggle, but rather an enjoyable one. Couldn’t help noticing two ballets!
Below is my working, with clues, definitions and SOLUTIONS.

Across
1 Build hotel by Yankee Stadium’s entrance? Irritation all round (8)
PHYSIQUE H(otel) Y (NATO Yankee) and S at the entrance to Stadium with PIQUE for irritation “all round”, which for once is not a reversal indicator but a placement indicator. Well, it confused me.
5 Failure overtakes our team again? (6)
LAPSUS Often enough, “overtakes” might be an inclusion indicator, but it’s not here. Just LAPS US for overtakes “our team”. Lapsus is, as you might guess, Latin, and found in phrases such as lapsus calami, a slip of the pen, and lapsus linguae, a slip of the tongue.
9 Peninsula in America — gas found within thousand kilometre area (9)
KAMCHATKA One of my earlier entries, which for some reason occurred to me despite not being part of America: it’s on Russia’s eastern edge. I then worked out the construction: AMerica contributes its first two letters, gas is CHAT, thousand and Kilometre provide the two surrounding Ks and A(rea) finishes.
11 Once yours truly’s heading inside, nearly everyone heads there (5)
THINE Separate yours and truly or you end up with me. Our old version of your’s is produced by the first letters (heads there) of Truly’s Heading Inside, Nearly Everyone.
12 Lock where key may be found a hindrance (7)
RINGLET I don’t know about you, but my key (and others) is found on a RING. LET is hindrance. “Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.“
13 China of the future, maybe, appeared a friend of America (7)
ROSEBUD It probably helps if you know China Rose is a thing, “Rosa chinensis, a shrub rose, ancestor of many cultivated varieties” (Chambers). Google disagrees and says China Rose is a variety of hibiscus and not a rose as such. Take your pick. The wordplay’s easier: appeared is ROSE, and friend of America is BUD.
14 Recent order he dispatched for type of hat? (5-8)
THREE-CORNERED Right, lets have a decent anagram (dispatched) of RECENT ORDER HE. Manuel de Falla wrote an entire ballet about one.
16 Understood fellow had one position to complete (2,3,8)
GO THE DISTANCE Understood: GOT, fellow had: HE’D, one: I, position: STANCE. Respace (though of course you don’t have to)
20 Betting with gold creating stir abroad, once (7)
SPANDAU SP (Starting Price) for betting, with: AND (not just a filler), gold: AU. Home to Nazi war criminal Rudolph Hess until he died in 1987, when it was demolished. “Stir” is one of  the many slang terms for prison.
21 Blended whiskey to crack open as roast’s cooked? (7)
INWOVEN W (NATO Whiskey) cracks (is inserted into) the way a roast is cooked, IN OVEN.
23 Letter abroad recalled very different times (5)
OMEGA I meant to go back and check this one, but only just now did so. AGE and MO are very different times, are they not? Reverse (recalled).
24 Price of flat, one brother’s acquired (4,5)
EVEN MONEY Price (as in a Starting Price above). Flat is EVEN, ONE is in plain sight, and you’re meant to see brother as an exclamation similar to MY, which “acquires” ONE
25 Vital Geordie heads for Fleet Street? (6)
NEEDED Geordie indicated the N(orth) E(ast), Newcastle-ish and you then have two ED(itor)s, from the days when the press occupied Fleet Street
26 Man in charge and boy inside: equal before the law? (8)
ISONOMIC Man gives you I(sle) O(f) M(an). Put SON for boy inside and end with I(n) C(harge). Didn’t know the word, but ISO- is common enough for equal, and nomos is Greek for law, so entered with relative confidence.
Down
1 The usual sandwiches put out with a spicy snack (6)
PAKORA PAR for the usual with KO for put out sandwiched, and A in plain sight. Yummy fried potato/vegetable and gram flour confections.
2 Country having long border where you find it (5)
YEMEN Interesting grammar. Long gives YEN, bordering ME for Middle East, where indeed it is.
3 Breather? Gas fitter needs one at the start (7)
INHALER The gas is N(itrogen) with HALER for fitter (more fit). I (one) is indeed needed at the start
4 A competent note-taker will be fresh! (2-2-3-6)
UP-TO-THE-MINUTE So a competent note-taker will be UP TO  (the task of taking) THE MINUTE.
6 One with craft capsizing in ocean as it rains (7)
ARTISAN  A reverse (capsizing) hidden in oceaN AS IT RAins.
7 Poet, second Graves, maybe, eclipsing Smart (9)
SWINBURNE Algernon Charles, satirised by G&S in Patience. Graves is not Robert, but the wine. So we have S(econd) WINE eclipsing (for which read enclosing) BURN for smart.
8 Substitute pops note with flyer inside ladder (8)
STEPDADS My POI, which I just couldn’t make head or tail of for ages. It’s D (pick one from 7) for note plus AD for flyer inside STEPS for ladder.
10 Maybe fighter’s fitness trainer who is unusually small (13)
AIRWORTHINESS Another I’ve only just parsed, though it’s only an anagram (unusually) of TRAINER WHO IS plus S(mall)
14 Time to take in film, ensconced in Peg’s sofa (4-1-4)
TÊTE-À-TÊTE (Accents optional) an S shaped sofa designed for intimate conversation &c. T(ime) plus EAT for take in plus ET for the film of unrivalled usefulness to setters, al “ensconced” inn TEE for Peg.
15 Urge to behave amorously that’s taken up at breakfast? (3,5)
EGG SPOON EGG for urge, plus SPOON for the type of amorous behaviour undertaken by the light of the silvery moon.
17 Willing to support objective when mate approaches? (7)
ENDGAME The last few moves in chess. GAME for willing “supports” END for objective.
18 Reporter from NSW wrestling with name (7)
NEWSMAN An anagram (wrestling) of NSW plus NAME
19 Working together with popular broadcast’s founder? (2,4)
IN SYNC IN is popular, and then we have a soundslike (broadcast’s) SINK for founder, spelt with a Y and a C
22 What makes ham have harmful ingredient! (5)
VENOM So to get have from ham you have VE and NO M. There’s clever!

89 comments on “28114 Thursday, 21 October 2021 Ballet tricky”

  1. Absolutely bang on wavelength for this all the way through, which doesn’t happen often. Except for VENOM which solved itself with the checking letters (thanks for the parse Z I doubt if I’d have got it). Early indoctrination with Lear’s limericks produced KAMCHATKA quite quickly – there was an old man of Kamchatka who possessed a remarkably fat cur. The accompanying illustration is very unPC. Excellent workout. 20.22
  2. Luckily I had a day off today so was able to invest nearly two hours on this, but still couldn’t get LAPSUS, SWINBURNE, or ROSEBUD. I was relieved to get AIRWORTHINESS in the end, having misled myself with FEATHERWEIGHT for a long time and for no good reason. Similarly had SAMOSA for 1dn for a long time (SAMS are sandwiches aren’t they? Somewhere?) but it couldn’t survive once the excellent KAMCHATKA went in.

    Great fun – didn’t notice the time passing which is always a good sign.

    FOI: IN SYNC
    LOI: STEPDADS

    David

  3. After grinding to a halt a little more than halfway through, from nowhere, KAMCHATKA came to mind — somewhere on the west of North America perhaps if my memories of playing Risk were anything to go by — I was wrong, it was the east coast of Russia, but it was the breakthrough I needed to finish the NW corner……

    …..which really only left the NE. With two of the three downs in place (SWINBURNE recalled from my long list of crossword poets — it does come in useful sometimes), cheated through looking up whether LAPSUS was actually a word — bl*&dy Latin!!

    LOI STEPDADs once ladder = steps hoved into view.

    Nice meaty grid — I enjoyed this one.

    1. Checking a word assembled from the clue doesn’t strike me as a cheat when it’s NHO. Looking up in dictionaries is surely allowed. Trawling for words that fit – that’s a cheat in my book.

      David

      1. When people (including me) talk about ‘cheating’ it’s often by reference to the Times Crossword Championship, where dictionaries aren’t allowed. Beyond that though there is of course no such thing: it’s a crossword puzzle, do as you please!
  4. I only knew of the jockey so it had to be guessed as I didn’t get the cryptic either. LOI LAPSUS which was very clever, as was VENOM.
  5. DNF, gave up after the hour. Too many unknowns for me; LAPSUS, KAMCHATKA, PAKORA, and ISONOMIC. Way off the wavelength today. Thought of VENOM but couldn’t see why it was an Ingredient. An ingredient of what? Oh well, roll on Friday.

    Thanks Z for the explanations.

  6. Enjoyable until it was impossible.

    5 uncompleted clues: NHO lapsus (despite studying classics), kamchatka (never played Risk), pakora. Should have got physique had the hys but couldn’t make sense of it. No idea for yemen. Of the completed clues, couldn’t parse rosebud, spandau (what had ‘spand’ to do with betting?), venom.
    COD to substitute dads. Also liked the separation of yours and truly.
    Thanks to the setter for the workout and to our esteemed blogger for making sense of it all.

  7. A fine workout. I felt I was biffing a lot of these but having checked the blog it was probably only the sneaky VENOM that I didn’t at least partially parse. Wasn’t too confident about the peninsular but the wordplay left few alternatives. Good stuff.
  9. …I needed to use aids to get LAPSUS and ISONOMIC. I gave up on Catholicism a few years ago. Does that make me a LAPSUS’d Catholic?
    Thank you, Z, especially for VENOM. That was a hard one. Thanks also for OMEGA, YEMEN, EVEN MONEY and SPANDAU.
    FOI: KAMCHATKA
    LOI: STEPDADS/LAPSUS
    COD: AIRWORTHINESS
  10. Great fun had, many thanks to setter. Some brilliant deviosity. I’m delighted at the very high Snitch. Yesterday it was designated as ‘easier’ and I was only five minutes quicker then than I am today! Lapsus appears in French a lot, meaning slip of the tongue or Freudian slip. Pakora I had to guess. Came close to putting Trial and Soledade for my last answers, but thankfully paused for sufficient thought.
  12. ‘Tremendously difficult but also tremendously pointless.’ Indeed – you’ve never really joined in the TfTT or added much in way of pleasure to others. ‘The Mephisto’ beckons. Farewell.

  13. Tremendously difficult but also tremendously pointless. The thing has less than 170 entries and it’s 1030 in the evening.

    Imagine trying to solve this in the old days on the 730 from Epsom to Waterloo without a dictionary. I doubt even Reggie Perrin would have been able to congratulate himself on this one. This was just an exercise in gratuitous elitism-or rather not gratuitous, since some of we mugs were asked to pay over £40 a month for this all-too-frequent nonsense.

    Egg spoons and Lapsus indeed! Rosebud, tête-à-tête. . .I mean, just what is the setter thinking? Which demographic are they appealing to? It’s all very well contributors on here going all soppy about the ‘quality’ of the clues-some of them are indeed quite good(ish)-but I think we’re all being blind as to whom this type of crossword actually satisfies? Which, outside of this forum is a tiny minority I’d suggest. And for an organ with a circulation of over 400,000 that could be read as pretty damning. I was going to say this was mephisto standard, but this was far harder than any mephisto I’ve tackled. And I won that once. I got nowhere with this, and there will have been hundreds like me.

    There’s a place for this sort of crossword but not as the daily offering. By all means let’s have a difficult crossword, but let’s not double down with the obscure Latin and gardening, and the elitism eh? And let’s have the difficult one in the right place in the paper, with the right titling so that solvers know from the start what they are taking on. Otherwise some of us are unwittingly wasting our time. Personally I’d suggest it replace the Chambers love-in mephisto which is dying a slow death. Either that, or have it as the prize offering in the ST. (Mr Grumpy)

    1. You really are very grumpy indeed, aren’t you.
      Everything doesn’t have to be easy all the time.
    2. Though I grumble a bit sometimes about this clue or that (Latin and plants are particular bugbears of mine), I like the variation in styles and difficulty from one day to the next — and in truth, I have learned many things, new words, definitions and have read up on many words which I don’t know much about. There is always a reliable level of quality which the Times crossword maintains, and which TfTT followers seem to appreciate. Reputation is sometimes acquired through many years of quality, attracting many of us who enjoy the challenge.

      You, Mr. Grumpy, are welcome to have a stab or not, as you please, welcome to view your opinions as you wish, but I doubt that much will change — why would it when there are so many of us that are happy for the Times crossword to persist in its long-established form?

      Edited at 2021-10-21 11:13 pm (UTC)

    3. You’re welcome to make your points, but since you mention things being in the right place, I think you’d be far better off posting your concerns in the Times Crossword forum or sending them directly to the editors. Even if a substantial number of people here were to agree with you (and I see no evidence of that) nobody at TfTT is in a position to do anything about it.
  14. I worked this one quarter by quarter: SE, NE, SW, and then, painfully, after AIRWORTHINESS, the NW.
  15. Couldn’t disagree more with Mr Grumpy. His comments remind me of those appearing on a much less distinguished forum when Dean Meyer started setting the Sunday Times cryptic. Much moaning and chunnering about his clues.
    I loved him! Yes, frustrating at times but I am an infinitely better solver due to DM. The wit and elegance, particularly the anagrams, continue to delight. DNF today due to Lapsus but really enjoyed the contest. Those light bulb moments (Stepdads – Yes!) make the struggle all the more enjoyable.

    Many thanks to Z for his always edifying and erudite blog. Comment is free but this is one of the few Times sites where exchanges are witty and full of bonhomie. Long may it remain that way.

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