I’m not quite sure what to say about this. Early indications, and my careful, blog aware, time of 13.46 suggests that it’s not in the Tricky Thursday category. A large number of the clues are of the first/last/either end letter type, such that I almost wore out my [] keys and relaxed my convention occasionally for variety’s sake. It’s mostly pretty prosaic stuff, the sort of stuff that might encourage first tentative steps from the Shallow End. OK, we’ve got a couple of philosopher chappies and a writer, and a Prime Minister from (my oath, can it really be?) 70 years ago, but hey, Bill and Ted knew one of them! There’s a delicious word from pre-metric days to brighten things up. Right at the end there’s an almost apologetic bit of wordplay which might sum up the feelings of those who like meatier fare, but it’s perfectly workmanlike, and most should find it doable, so that can’t be bad.
Definitions underlined in italics. Most, but not quite all excluded letters are indicated by [] and I’ve included some experimental acronyms which I hope will be informative
| Across | |
| 1 | Order check on empty surgery (6) |
| SYSTEM – Remove the contents of S[urger]Y and add STEM, check (as in stem the tide), to them, however tempted you may be to do it the other way round. | |
| 4 | Extremely clever, my boss — I owe him (8) |
| CREDITOR – Oh my, now remove the contents of C[leve]R and add to EDITOR, the setter’s boss who let this repetitive bit of cluing through. | |
| 10 | Eventful game for the most part, with English heading for defeat (9) |
| CHEQUERED – I guess such a career is eventful. CHEQUERS, the game shortened by removing the S, then add E[nglish] and the first letter of Defeat | |
| 11 | Move back to accommodate old novelist (5) |
| WOOLF – Don’t be afraid (it might be Leonard, Virginia’s hubby, also a novelist). Reverse FLOW for move and accommodate O[ld] | |
| 12 | Contraction initially impacting German debt adversely (11) |
| ABRIDGEMENT – An anagram (adversely) of GERMAN DEBT plus the first letter of Impacting. | |
| 14 | Close relation lives on benefits in the end (3) |
| SIS – I think I should introduce FLO and LLO to the lexicon. This one’s LLO benefitS to which you add IS for lives. | |
| 15 | Reporter’s in contact with source on the way from France (2,5) |
| EN ROUTE – An aural charade (reporter’s) of ON, in contact with, and ROOT, source. | |
| 17 | Nation somehow “discontented”, PM concludes (6) |
| SWEDEN – And perhaps in concert with 1 and 4 above RTCO (dis-content-ed) SomehoW, and add EDEN, PM brought down by the Suez crisis of 1956. | |
| 19 | Republican party winning everything in race (6) |
| GALLOP – For once, it’s not R[epublican], but its other abbreviation, the Grand Old Party which “wins” ALL for everything. Race as in speed along, not Grand National. | |
| 21 | Millions in favour of trade union backing case for election (7) |
| FORTUNE – FOR, in favour of, T[rade] U[nion], then RTCO ElectioN and reverse (backing, case) | |
| 23 | Character seen in first part of book? (3) |
| CHI – One of the Greek ones. CH[apter] I might be the first part of a book. | |
| 24 | Resolve differences: exonerate sole successor in hearing (5,3,3) |
| CLEAR THE AIR – Another aural charade (in hearing) of THE HEIR, sole successor, to follow CLEAR for exonerate. | |
| 26 | African native being ironic, you say? I disagree (5) |
| RHINO – And another aural charade (you say), this time of being ironic, or WRY, followed by NO for I disagree. | |
| 27 | Dish his wife tries out (5,4) |
| IRISH STEW – An anagram (out) of HIS W[ife] TRIES | |
| 29 | Underworld boss losing millions in stock exchange crash perhaps (8) |
| DISASTER – DIS is both the nether regions and their overlord, Pluto, but in this case you need the boss to produce MASTER , from which your remove M[illions] | |
| 30 | Obsequious southern host entertaining maiden (6) |
| SMARMY – S[outhern] ARMY for host with M[aiden] included. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Judges thus arresting conservative thinker (8) |
| SOCRATES – A little liberty taken with the word order here. Thus, SO, judges, RATES takes in C[onservative] | |
| 2 | Husband trapped by waters beginning to rise is cut off (5) |
| SHEAR – H[usband] inside SEA for waters and FLO Rise. | |
| 3 | Wingless Madagascan creature — it can’t fly (3) |
| EMU – The Madagascan creature is a LEMUR. This time RTCO and promote them to be your answer. | |
| 5 | Correct groom once again (7) |
| REDRESS – To groom is (more or less) to DRESS. Again: RE- | |
| 6 | Sensible review of time on death row? (4-2-5) |
| DOWN-TO-EARTH – An anagram (review) of T[ime] ON DEATH ROW. Neat. | |
| 7 | Last of atheist philosopher’s articles for union (9) |
| TROUSSEAU – LLO atheisT and ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques, proto-woke Swiss philosopher. The definition references the stuff put aside for a bride. | |
| 8 | Turn down official employment (6) |
| REFUSE – The official is the REF, employment is USE | |
| 9 | Setting for Oedipus Rex film announced (6) |
| GREECE – Fortunately you don’t have to know Oedipus’ whereabouts with any precision. a sound charade (announced) of GREASE. It’s a word, it’s got groove, it’s got meaning, it’s a musical. | |
| 13 | Two kisses signifying a betrayal? (6-5) |
| DOUBLE-CROSS – XX | |
| 16 | Facts about island’s earliest broadcast (9) |
| REALITIES – an anagram (broadcast, not this time a “we hear”) of I[sland’s] EARLIEST. | |
| 18 | A hothead, one sadly falling abroad (8) |
| TEARAWAY – I so wanted this to be something like a volcano, but we make do with a rather more ho-hum answer. One sadly falling is a TEAR, and abroad gives us AWAY. | |
| 20 | Pressure on television channel to be in charge (7) |
| PRESIDE – P[ressure] RE, on, SIDE television. When we only had BBC and ITV, “what’s on the other side?” prompted the duty switcher to get up and change channels. | |
| 21 | Boozy capacity of female briefly irritating (6) |
| FIRKIN – 9 brewed gallons, or a quarter of a barrel, or what you claimed to have said when your mum thought she heard something ruder. F[emale] plus IRKING, irritating, cut short (briefly). | |
| 22 | Panic-stricken broadcast drops middle section (6) |
| SCARED – Broadcast is SCATTERED. RTCO the middle bit. | |
| 25 | Make modifications to ’arness (5) |
| ALTER – A HALTER is part of a harness. Do unto the former what the clue does to the latter. | |
| 28 | Fringe uninspiring? On the contrary (3) |
| HEM – The reverse (in the contrary) of HEM is MEH which indicates indifference or uninspiredness. | |
Some clues looked harder than they turned out to be. (I was looking at the latest Mephisto just before…) Went pretty quickly once I got started. SCARED seemed to have the most adventurous clue. But not sure I’d ever heard of FIRKIN… though it’s probable… Last one in when I remembered the UK “side” for “TV channel.”
“Cash for the noggins and the piggins and the firkins” from “The Music Man” is how I know it; no idea why it’s stuck in my mind for 70 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ9U4Cbb4wg
I’m always reminded of the parody SAT math question, where the answer is in firkins per fortnight.
Reminded of a don who, if units were not defined, would ask if they were milli-firkins per lunar year.
The VMS operating system fo the Digital Equipment serles of VAX computer had a parameter (presumably inserted by somebody British partially as a joke) measured in micro-fortnights. This is very close to a second.
In the days before the internet, I used to have a book of physical constants – a very dull tome enlivened by the inclusion of a figure for “the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight”
One of the streets in a new estate on an old brewery site near me was named Kilderkin Avenue after the 18 gallon cask but the more popular cask size was overlooked, not surprisingly.
FIRKIN was a memory-jogger. First back to childhood reading of C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle which mentions a “firkin of good wine”. Then more recently to a story (prompted by Z’s comment) told by Frank Muir of an Irish friend ordering 4 quenelles de brochet in a restaurant.
I only knew it from the popular pub chain.
Around 70 minutes. Nice puzzle. Got held up by the font reading ‘amess for ‘arness. Please can the font be changed for printing out crosswords. I have had this problem several times previously. Liked TROUSSEAU, WOOLF, SWEDEN, FORTUNE, SOCRATES. Spent a while on LOI FIRKIN not seeing the tricky definition.
Thanks Z
15:33
Certainly not tricky. I surprised myself by remembering ‘side’. Didn’t care for 22d.
I found this one just a bit more difficult, and there were some things I didn’t know – couldn’t parse preside, for instance, but that had to be it. I wanted to put Oedipus in Thebes, but not so according to the crossers. I thought the Socrates clue was simply wrong, it could easily have been thus judges arresting conservative thinker, without losing any of its literal meaning.
Time: 24:17
You just have to take it as a phrase rather than separate wordplay elements. ‘Judges thus’ is perfectly synonymous with ‘so rates’.
Thanks, Z. I liked Hem/Meh, but not as much as I like FLO, LLO, and RTCO
34 minutes with GREECE as my LOI. EN ROUTE delayed me.
Re 1D, sight nuance I think is that JUDGES THUS needs to be taken together to mean SO RATES. Thanks blogger and setter.
Good point. We spend so much time lifting and separating when we solve that we sometimes forget it’s not compulsory.
I replied to vinyl before I’d seen your comment – great minds!
There was for a while a popular pub chain in the UK called FIRKIN, all of whose pubs’ names, I think, were the Something and Firkin. I think the Fleece and Firkin in Bristol—now just The Fleece—was my most frequented, though I also spent time in the Footplate and Firkin in Swindon.
Anyway, I had most of the required knowledge, with even LOI TROUSSEAU ringing a marital bell once I’d thought of it, so though I never built up solid momentum I still finished in 33 minutes. I found the anagrams hard today, for some reason.
I recall a pub somewhere in the UK or Ireland in the late ’80s called the Phoenix and Firkin. They sold t-shirts with the slogan: ‘f ‘e nicks my pint I’ll firkin thump ‘im.
Not exactly highbrow stuff but it obviously stuck in my mind!
Now just The Phoenix, the pub is above Denmark Hill station in south London. Just across the road from the Salvation Army HQ.
Yes that’s how I know the word. They were brew pubs, often making the beer on the premises. The chain was sold to one of the big corporate pub conglomerates and the concept and then brand gradually discontinued.
I used to go to The Fox and Firkin, in Lewisham. I think that was the first one in the chain.
I think the first was actually the Goose and Firkin, in Borough. It opened while I was working at the LEB fifty yards away, and provided an introduction to this young whippersnapper to the delights of real ale – and 46 years later I still maintain it’s the best thing ever made by humans.
Nice crossword, very enjoyable 24 minutes.
Ah, yes, you’re correct. I’ve got a “Goose & Firkin” badge stashed away somewhere.
In a former life I was landlord of the Fowl and Firkin in Coventry. The swift rise and even swifter demise of the brand sums up the weirdness and short-term thinking which you often get in the large pubcos…
Yes, they had some interesting names – I recall Philomath and Firkin in Harrow mostly, where the Dogbolter was very popular/lethal, but also aware of the Fornax and Firkin, Filibuster and Firkin, and the Frothfinders and Firkin…
16:15. I made fairly good progress on this until becoming becalmed in the SW corner, where the setter led me nicely to several misparsings, e.g. “Underworld boss losing millions” = EPHISTO, maybe? Maybe not.
I’m with vinyl on SOCRATES, particularly now I see as he has pointed out, the surface is still fine if you reverse the order of the first two words.
Edit: Just seen The Caffeine Kid’s explanation. Good point, well made!
11:00 for a steady solve. I agonised over the choice between PHI and PSI before (doh) thinking of CHI. That led me to my LOI SCARED, which I actually thought was pretty good.
Thanks setter and Z. And thanks Caffeine Kid for resolving the slight qualm I felt (but ignored) over SOCRATES.
32 mins and another relatively straightforward puzzle. A lot of inclusions/exclusions as has been mentioned. Z, I love the idea of FLO etc…
LOI SCARED as I too had bunged in PHI without really reading the clue.
I liked DOUBLE-CROSS.
Thanks Z and setter
… love is not love
Which Alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
(Sonnet 116, Shakespeare)
25 mins pre-brekker. Very gentle. I liked it.
Ta setter and Z.
38 minutes with LOI an overthought GREECE, which wasn’t the word. That was after battering the SW into submission. COD to FIRKIN, a word I knew. This puzzle left me doubting myself and the answer on a few occasions, which I suppose is a good thing, although it didn’t feel it at the time.Thank you Z and setter.
19:20* (*2 x typos again! ENU and GRRECE)
No excuses but annoying all the same.
Otherwise nothing to scare the horses. I laboured over FORTUNE (I was thinking M in FOR something or other but I couldn’t get it to work). PRESIDE also took longer than it should.
Although on the easier side there were some nice clues within (FIRKIN, DISASTER, GALLOP etc).
Thanks to both.
Another 80:20 morning – I did most of it at a fair clip then got rather stuck in the SE corner, eventually limping home in 24:08. FOI CREDITOR; LOI TEARAWAY; COD TROUSSEAU
Thanks both
About 15 minutes, with FIRKIN the only unknown, though I hesitated over 15a as for some reason I thought it could have been ‘on route’, despite the wordplay making it fairly clear – SOCRATES eventually resolved it.
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Emu
LOI Firkin
COD Trousseau
13:47. I enjoyed this, especially RHINO, TEARAWAY and EMU. Thank-you Z and setter.
Failed with a guessed GALLUP. Its not how I would spell it but Up = winning and NHO GOP.
Also not heard of Rousseau on account of him missing from the Monty Python song. No probs with Socrates of course.
Took an age trying to remember which part of Greece Oedipus was king of.
Otherwise an enjoyable 32 mins.
COD DOUBLE CROSS
LOI PRESIDE
Thanks both
36:29
Can anyone tell me what RTCO means. Thanks 🙂
Thank you, Z.
Remove The Centre Of
according to Zs new lexicography.
Great, thank you, RdP. I’d never seen it before.
27:47, with LOI SHEAR. I was held up by having biffed CONQUERED for 10a, thinking that conkers (an eventful game) could perhaps have an alternative spelling with a qu instead of k.
I biffed PRESIDE, but assumed RESIDE was some obscure TV channel that I had not encountered.
Monty Python came in handy for spotting the “lovely little thinker”.
Thanks Z and setter
14.02
I enjoyed this. Take the point on the first/last letters but many of the surfaces were smooth and the w/p teasing but not over-complicated.
Liked CREDITOR and IRISH STEW which both told nice stories.
Thanks Z and setter
30:39 – all fine until the SW… I had somehow gone for PSI rather than CHI, which really held me up. I did find some of the cluing repetitive but overall quite a good mix of topics and vocab. thanks both!
I initially had the same, which I parsed as P1 (page 1) with (s)een in the middle.
Steady 20m but fell into the 25ac trap by reading this as ‘amess’, wondering if it was something to do with cricket! We seem to have had a run of only moderate difficulty puzzles and wonder if a real stinker lies round the corner.
There’s a bad Times just around the corner, as Noel Coward nearly sang…
This felt trickier than the last few days, though SNITCH says not. Still finished in 32 mins, though unaccountably held up for about 10 of those by the not-terribly-hard SWEDEN. Liked CHI.
9.00 on the dot, without having parsed SCARED as I was looking for a single letter to remove. Didn’t know FIRKIN but was fairly confident with the wordplay.
I didn’t notice the similar wordplay for the first two acrosses, as if I solve 1A, I’ll go for that corner first rather than work through each across answer.
Thanks both.
An astonishing 16:30. A personal best. Had most trouble with CHEQUERED, SMARMY (distracted at first by MARY=host?) and SCARED. Enjoyed TEARAWAY and PRESIDE. Enjoyed the whole puzzle, of course
A very enjoyable puzzle, though I biffed SCARED .
FOI CREDITOR
LOI GREECE
COD CLEAR THE AIR
TIME 10:54
A very rapid for me 8:25. One of those rare puzzles where the answers just kept leaping off the page. Strange really because I had made a bit of a dog’s breakfast of the Telegraph earlier.
So far the SNITCH has this as one of the easiest weeks for some time – we may be due another Friday tester tomorrow.
4a Creditor. I must have been on autopilot – no brain. I got CleveR ED and I, and wondered where the TOR came from. Doh!
21d Firkin. Reminds me of the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood (SPEW; they used a strange font on the badge). There was a Firkin branch which reckoned to drink a firkin every time they met. That meant about a gallon each!
22d Scared. Never found the Scattered bit.
28d Hem, I thought this very weak, but now I’ve read the blog COD!
18 mins. Is it just me, but describing someone as a thinker is a bit weird? Because we all do it, don’t we?
SCARED and CHI biffed at the end, didn’t get either of them.
All very straightforward and I seemed to be heading for a “good” time until the top L corner was a problem. It irritated me that the setter told us that ‘en route’ is a French expression (although I should have thought it was almost naturalised by now) yet didn’t bother to tell us that chequers is a US game. Or at least a US term for the game of draughts. SOCRATES rather a problem: I was looking for S……O or SICC…. or SCO….. for a long time. 48 minutes eventually.
Wil, Collins has the alternative name for draughts under British English.
Yes but it says that it’s US and Canadian, under both ‘Draught’ and ‘Draughts’. Also it refers to checkers, not chequers. My point was that the setter hadn’t bothered to tell us that checkers (or chequers, as was in the clue) was an American version.
Wil, we’re both referring to Collins entries but coming at it from different directions. My starting point was looking up ‘chequers’ as derived from the clue (‘game for the most part’ which gives us CHEQUER). The only entry in Collins under ‘chequers’ (all lower case) is:
chequers
in British English
noun
(functioning as singular) another name for draughts
Collins English Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers.
In my view this validates the clue as set.
Looking under ‘draughts’ there are references to the American game ‘checkers’ but the clue doesn’t actually need to lead us down that path as it can take us to the British English spelling of the alternative British English name.
Notwithstanding all that, ‘Chequered’ doesn’t mean ‘eventful’.
It does according to Chambers.
09:32
My first sub 10 minute score since joining the SNITCH.
COD: DOWN TO EARTH
9:34. Another breezeblock for me today, although neither the breeze nor the block were as acute as yesterday. I had all but 2 done in about 8 minutes, and then I needed another minute and a half for CHEQUERED and GREECE. I put myself off by trying to remember exactly where Oedipus lived. I saw the play on stage very recently which somehow added stress because I felt I really ought to remember.
From EMU to SIS in 19:25. Should’ve seen SIS much earlier, but was blindsided by the wordplay. TROUSSEAU was POI. FIRKIN and FORTUNE were the main holdups to arriving at those last 2. Thanks setter and Z.
17 minutes for me, so I actually wish I’d concentrated harder since I might have been able to get a PB. Nothing I found notably hard (I knew FIRKIN which it seems many people do not). My only MER was with SMARMY where I was mentally inserting the wrong M and so wondering why MARY was a host (a host of Jesus…that seemed a bit of a stretch).
DNF an otherwise straightforward puzzle because even with an alphabet trawl I could not see FIRKIN. Now that I see it I’ve heard of the word and had a vague idea it was something to do with brewing, but had no idea it was a measure of capacity. The cryptic wasn’t very helpful -there are many more common synonyms for irritating than irking – including of course irksome.
I found this difficult to get started on. Had 6 clues before I had to scrape the ice off the car, in order to go to the gym.
After some exercise and coffee, I solved it slowly and steadily, never really being on the wavelength. It felt. Slightly old fashioned Times puzzle, possibly set by a Classics Don.
The SW corner took longest. I eventually worked out how SCARED worked, and bunged in DISASTER with crossed fingers. Never heard of DIS.
Thanks for the blog. If tomorrow’s puzzle is as good and as well constructed as last Friday’s, then we are in for a treat.
Breezy does it, after a few stodgy days on easy-snitched puzzles.
LOI WOOLF.
11:42
25 minutes. LOI was Chi where I assumed there must be a book titled Chi…..
I never thought of Ch1.
My COD to Sweden.
15:40
Could have been a rare sub 15’ but for GREECE not beginning with A or B! Got to G and there it was, although I confess I had no idea where OR was set.
FOI CREDITOR
COD ABRIDGEMENT
Thanks all
12:02, loads of which was attributable to becoming fixated on SPARED as the answer to 22dn (SPREAD with the RE dropped down the word seemed fine as wordplay, but try as I might, I couldn’t make it mean anything like “panic-stricken” so fortunately I held back from writing it in). PHI also seemed a bit weak as PHIlippians, much as setters love obscure books of the Bible, so I needed a better alternative there as well. Got there in the end.
16 mins for as straightforward a top to bottom solve as we’ve had in a while. It seems to have been a straightforward week so far. Friday tomorrow – eek!
Had a go on a cold day and plodded through, with help, in 70 minutes. How so many of you belt through these puzzles in under 15-20 minutes continues to amaze me!! Cap duly doffed.
I wouldn’t be able to fill in the grid in that time even if I already knew the answers! 27 minutes, slow and steady.
14.50 but I just couldn’t work out firkin and in desperation put Formic in! Not my finest hour.
Thx setter and blogger.
29.31. A bit slow but Ingot there in the end.
47 minutes, all of it easy (and somewhat boring but with sometimes surprising direct definitions) except for FIRKIN and TEARAWAY, my LOI, which did take an alphabet crawl and a few minutes of thought. Although FIRKIN is not really a word I know, it is at least a word which almost rang a bell once I thought of it, so I did get it right.
The old trick with the Q got me through this in the end – I was alphabet trawling the missing gaps in 10a when I remembered the adage of putting a Q before a U if the word doesn’t come to mind, and there, suddenly, was a game I’d heard of! I was another who didn’t parse HEM and think it’s very good now I’ve read the blog. This was relatively gentle, as most above have said, but I enjoyed it, while thinking all the while that there would be some comment about the number of deletions by commenters, if not by the blogger. Had a head scratch before remembering GOP. LOI was PRESIDE, where it took forever to think of a channel for -I-E, since I was fairly convinced PREFIVE wasn’t a word.
Nothing of substance to add to previous comments. Was happy to get through this in 26 minutes after a shaky start.
FOI – CREDITOR
LOI – CHI
COD – SWEDEN
Thanks to Zabadak and other contributors.
I know I live in France so maybe am not one to judge, but I’m not sure even before I came here that I ever pronounched the EN in EN ROUTE as ON. No biggy. 29’00” all up, which feels like a poor time. But much enjoyed.
35.03 I was too busy to get to this yesterday. I found this trickier than the previous couple of days and couldn’t parse EN ROUTE, HEM and LOI DISASTER. Thanks Z.