I’ve generally been running slow this week, and today provided no let-up in the lethargy, though I completed in 24.24 with no clue in particular causing extended puzzling, apart from struggling with the parsing (and more the definition) of one.
We have an innovative use of Roman numerals and a date in Arabic ones, the latter maybe causing confusion across the pond, where the format is unaccountably different. Otherwise, I particularly appreciated the taking nut, and eventually managed to enjoy the whole affair.
Definitions underlined in italics, [Square brackets] indicate excluded letters.
| Across | |
| 1 | Igor trained on piano, a Russian speciality (5) |
| PIROG – At least the wordplay is clear enough: an anagram (trained) of IGOR tacked on to P[iano]. There are numerous variations in spelling, style and nationality of this fried bun (in Russia пирог). I’m more familiar with Polish pirogi, boiled savoury dumplings. | |
| 4 | Periodically green couple use less energy after 1/12 (9) |
| DECIDUOUS – That 1/12 suggested something to do with (say) dozenth, but it’s a date, DEC[ember] 1, followed by DUO, couple and USE without the E[nergy]. | |
| 9 | Large tasteless house from 1900 redeveloped as “old” inn (9) |
| MCMANSION – Last (and only previous) time we had this in a daily (a year ago) I suggested Mar-a-Lago might qualify as an example, but apparently McMansions tend to be smaller and in taste-free estate developments. Whatever, it’s clever wordplay: 1900 delivers MCM and the rest is an anagram (redeveloped) of AS OLD INN | |
| 10 | Bed for homeless surfer? Right, up to a point (2,3) |
| SO FAR – Sofa surfing is a thing, bedding down temporarily in mates’ places while otherwise of no fixed abode. SOFA takes R[ight] | |
| 11 | Celebrity touching this minute kitten’s tail (6) |
| RENOWN – Touching gives (concerning, about) RE, this minute is NOW, add the “tail” of [kitte]N. | |
| 12 | Coastal road that’s lovely, with a small market (8) |
| CORNICHE – Take “that’s lovely” as an exclamation and translate it to COR, add NICHE for small market, such as (perhaps!) this very exercise. | |
| 14 | Taking nut, fix IKEA lamp to cabin’s exterior (12) |
| KLEPTOMANIAC – As in a nut who takes things. An anagram (fix, though I didn’t fully work it out when solving) of IKEA LAMP TO and the outside letters of C[abi]N | |
| 17 | Course’s marker showing skill in smart job (8,4) |
| STARTING POST – ART for skill within STING for smart and POST from job. | |
| 20 | Almost right, racket shortened as mid-winter approaches? (6,2) |
| CLOSED IN – I think (I was struggling!) the definition references such phrases as “the nights are drawing in”. Almost right is CLOSE (but no cigar!) and racket is DIN. | |
| 21 | Petrifying woman alarmed US Airbnb hosts (6) |
| MEDUSA – The Gorgon from the Perseus story with a rather unique serpentine hairstyle: one look turns her victims to stone. Hidden (thank goodness!) in alarMED US Airbnb | |
| 23 | Two eating butter sent back fine Japanese dishes (5) |
| IMARI – More roman numerals, II for two containing RAM for butter (a beast that buts) reversed (sent back). Chambers gives “a type of Japanese porcelain, richly decorated in red, green and blue”. | |
| 24 | Without any price, free of charge (9) |
| EXONERATE – Better “free from charge”, perhaps. I think the wordplay is EX ONE from without any and RATE for price. Ex dividend, for example, means without dividend. | |
| 25 | Heavenly secretary tormented sad liar (9) |
| PARADISAL – Secretary is PA, add an anagram (tormented) of SAD LIAR. | |
| 26 | Shirt without buttons nursery cleared out is extra small (5) |
| TEENY – A TEE shirt has no buttons, and if you clear out the word N[urser]Y you get the remaining letters. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Oxford college set up member in Strasbourg out of funds (8) |
| PEMBROKE – M[ember of the] E[uropean] P[arliament] reversed (set up) plus BROKE for out of funds. Perhaps someone here can be persuaded to reminisce about their time there. | |
| 2 | What’s left except for a souvenir? (8) |
| REMINDER – What’s left is the REMAINDER. Remove the A | |
| 3 | Long story forgotten, including its twist? (4,4,3,4) |
| GONE WITH THE WIND – The first edition ran to 418,053 words and 1,037 pages. so I guess it qualifies, Forgotten is GONE, and then including its twist gives WITH THE WIND (long I) | |
| 4 | Platform helps with AI being delayed (4) |
| DAIS – Helps are AIDS, drop the AI down below the D. | |
| 5 | Prisoner thought the experience was hell! (8,2) |
| CONFOUND IT – Prisoner is CON, thought the experience more or less directly gives FOUND IT, for the exclamation. | |
| 6 | Getting free delighted fish in dark twisted net (15) |
| DISENTANGLEMENT – Delight is SENT, fish (the activity) is ANGLE, together placed in DIM for dark and a mix (twisted) of NET to finish. | |
| 7 | Staff shop for booze which Charlie cracks open (6) |
| OFFICE – Chambers’ 13th definition “a group of staff occupying such a place” will have to do. The colloquial shop for booze is rendered colloquially as OFFIE (off licence). Insert C for Charlie. | |
| 8 | Ice starts to trouble experienced brothers on the climb (6) |
| SORBET – The first letters of T[rouble] E[xperienced] plus BROS for brothers all reversed (on the climb) | |
| 13 | Small planet full of holes dug for extracting slime (10) |
| SMARMINESS – S[mall} MARS (the planet) contains MINES, holes dug for extracting. | |
| 15 | Settle report of explosion you heard recently (8) |
| POPULATE – Report of explosion POP, U, same as hearing “you” and recently gives LATE. | |
| 16 | Homeless shelters buy up military art (8) |
| STRATEGY – STRAY for homeless (like feral cats) gives space to GET for buy reversed (up). Fresh from strategists yesterday. | |
| 18 | Be careful with bread sons pinch into shape (6) |
| SCRIMP – Bread in the sense of money. S[ons] plus CRIMP for pinch into shape. | |
| 19 | Sexy character’s promises likely to come to nothing (3,3) |
| HOT AIR – Sexy give HOT, character gives AIR | |
| 22 | Sound from butchered birds is horrible (4) |
| FOUL – FOWL is an acceptable plural matching butchered birds, and sounds like our answer. I suspect this is causing errors on the leaderboard. | |
NHO of PIROG but not hard to figure out with the checkers. Didn’t parse DISENTANGLEMENT except for the angle and net part so thanks for that. Liked KLEPTOMANIAC for ‘taking nut’. GONE WITH THE WIND a write in but the wordplay is very tricky and doesn’t work for me. Liked SMARMINESS for slime. SORBET came up recently on the 11th in a quickie. Thought DECIDUOUS was very good but couldn’t figure out how 1/12 equalled DECI until I read the blog, duh. COD to SCRIMP.
Thanks Z.
30.49. At 17ac I had STARTING LINE (as in, what’s my line?) for a while which made the relevant downs tricky. Generally an enjoyable and challenging solve but at some points (eg CONFOUND IT, COR!NICHE, OFFICE) I was not SENT. Thanks Z.
From Song to Woody:
Here’s to Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too
And to all the good people that travelled with you
Here’s to the hearts and the hands of the men
That come with the dust and are GONE WITH THE WIND
I was on the wavelength, and knew all the UK stuff – Pembroke College, the offie, the 1/12. Well, I am a bit of an Anglophile. As I was solving office, I was thinking of what UK solvers might make of a packie, which is current slang in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
The puzzle was eminently biffable, once you manage to pick out the literals, and I only parsed about half the clues when solving. I see coastal road and write in corniche without reading the rest of the clue – that’s got to be it.
Time: 25:41
1st hit on google gave Pakistani which is a tabu word in UK. Package store was down the list, and I would NOT have got there based on knowledge, I would have needed context to guess.
Racial slur = Paki.
Package store = packie.
Interestingly, I get entirely different results in Google. The AI summary is all about package stores, as is the first page of results.
You can read this amusing discussion in Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1hdf6n8/to_the_person_that_implied_i_was_racist_for/
Yes, amusing, thanks.
I had noticed the different spelling but couldn’t remember the tabu one – Paki or Paky.
TBH about 40 years ago I hadn’t noticed it was racist, and got a bad look when I used it, so I remembered that!
47 minutes. NHO PIROG, an anagram that could have gone one of two ways but for once I picked the the right one. I may have been influenced by thinking of ‘pirogue’ which comes up regularly on Countdown although it’s a canoe and has nothing to do with Russian fried buns.
I didn’t know IMARI despite previous appearances here.
I missed the niceties of wordplay re SO FAR.
No time but anyway I was flummoxed by the Nho and LOI, pie. Unfair IMHO as ok, you have P-R-G and OI. Which way do you jump? I went the wrong way !
I liked KLEPTOMANIAC.
Thanks Z and setter.
I tested my guess on the check function, don’t tell anybody…
Your secret is safe with me!
So it was (underlined) an ‘elephant in the room’! I also have found it an excellent way of improving my skill.
Same here, thinking PORIG might be porridge!
18:50 WOE
Sloppy solving of 20ac; saw ‘approaches’ so put in CLOSES IN, with only a split-second wondering about SIN. Didn’t understand how SO FAR worked, never having heard of sofa surfing. Biffed DECIDUOUS from the D, never parsed. I liked ‘taking nut’.
I thought it would be an 8-letter anagram enclosing EN. Looks like I’ve done too many Mephistos!
8.31, once I’d realised I wasn’t being asked to shorten (‘almost’) a word for ‘right’ so could parse CLOSED IN. There’s a pierogi restaurant on our street, although they don’t really cater for vegetarians. Glad I knew that given my record with guesses, and I’d probably have decided it was some sort of porridge.
I liked ‘taking nut’, but as I had the K when I reached it, it was a write-in.
Thanks both, and I enjoyed the blog title!
Big DNF. I discovered that I’m dyslexic with words like DAIS which made the NHO MCMANSION impossible to get.
I really dislike foreign words clued as anagrams so PIROG was a guess.
Not so lucky with 23ac: anybody else put ITAPI?
14:29. I thought this was a lovely puzzle with some fun wordplay, and I especially liked the definition ‘Taking nut’. Took a while for the penny to drop that 9ac really could start with MCM.
I have one query/quibble though – surely when the nights close in they lengthen rather than shorten? The days don’t close in. So wouldn’t ‘Almost right, racket lengthened as mid-winter approaches?’ be a more precise clue?
Good point!
Days get shorter, though, and there is no mention of night in the clue itself.
I was thinking they could have clued it as fashionable furniture – around here, every piece of old junk is advertised as MCM.
I’m another who had STARTING LINE which caused a lot of trouble at the end until I reconsidered. Once I put in POST, the POPULATE and STRATEGY fell into place. I’ve never heard of PIROG but I have heard of PIROGI so I assumed it was a derivative of that so I managed to put the O and I in the right places. Some clever stuff. I, too, had a MER at EXONERATE as “free of charge” but I couldn’t fit any other word so I ran with it.
20:53 but happy to admit that instead of tossing the PIROG / PORIG coin I looked it up. Always thought pirogs were for poling down the bayou.
“Taking nut”. Lol.
Thanks setter and Z.
24:52
I never quite trusted the MCM for 1900 so I took ages to get McMansion, I was ridiculously slow at getting PEMBROKE, and I ummed and ahhhed over the unknown PIROG but it sounded better than the other possibility.
I liked KLEPTOMANIAC, albeit it was obvious once you had the K.
I enjoyed that one from start to finish, nothing too difficult but some nice misdirection and mix of GK.
Thanks to both.
Had to guess both PIROG and IMARI, I’m too [insert word here] to check or look things up, and save that for Mephisto or Azed. EXONERATE LOI, with its five vowel crossers. Liked KLEPTOMANIAC.
15’58”, thanks z and setter.
43 minutes, with a false start at the STARTING LINE, not seeing the POST there until POPULATE put me right. LOI was STRATEGY. Like the General from yesterday, I never learn. COD to DECIDUOUS. I checked PIROG. Decent puzzle apart from that. Thank you Z and setter.
A fail in 44 minutes. Couldn’t see ‘shortened’ as part of the def in 20a so unconfidently entered CLOSER IN. At least I didn’t have to look up the order of the I and the O in 1a for which, yes, as per galspray’s post, the canoe did cross my mind.
9:52. Steady solve, no dramas. I don’t think I’ve ever seen PIROG before but I’m familiar with pirogi (or pierogi, or perogi) so I just assumed it was a variant, which it is (the Russian comes from the Polish, according to OED).
I panicked briefly thinking that 14ac was going to be some obscure variant of the macadamia nut or some such, before the penny dropped. ‘Taking nut’ is very Dean Mayerish.
Not a variant, just the singular.
PIROG is Russian. Pirogi (plural pirogi or pirogis) is Polish.
Enjoyable except for PIROG which I guessed right so not sour grapes to cry unfair. Arcane GK as an aid to the solve is all part of the fun but to be impossible without either that GK or a coin toss is not.
Otherwise this was a fine and satisfying 35 min puzzle. Like others I enjoyed KLEPTOMANIAC even though I didnt spot it immediately and had to work hard for the reward.
Thanks both.
In the setter’s defence, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish common knowledge from things you happen to know. If you had asked me this morning whether pirogi qualified as ‘normal’ GK, I’d have said yes. Clearly not!
Misled? in 20a by ‘approaches’ to enter ‘closes’ and NHO MCMANSION.
Failed again.
1a NHO Pirog, guessed Porgi, possibly influenced by Bess, which delayed Gone With The Wind.
6d Disentanglement biffed. Never assembled all the items, esp sent=delight.
Cheated on LOI 9a McMansion, which I put into Cheating Machine a while ago when it came up before. I have both (9) and (2,7) enumerations, plus plurals. Because I cheated I missed the cleverness of MCM at the time.
PORIG and a careless LOI, FOWL. Drat!
26 minutes, steady work, no problems, ending with the “taking nut” which was very good.
Nice crossword, though I DNF after 23mins, after not seeing STRATEGY (d’oh!) and putting CLOSES IN with a shrug. Despite all the help on this forum, I still can’t parse CLOSED IN meaning “shortened [or lengthened] as mid-winter approaches”. I just don’t get it! Must be getting old, mutter mutter.
Super stuff otherwise, and like others, guessed the NHO PIROG.
You and me both. I had to leave it as a smudged explanation based on an association. Someone’s going to elucidate here for sure.
Collins defines ‘close in’ as ‘(of days) to become shorter with the approach of winter’. Can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone say this myself but it certainly explains the words in the clue!
I think I’ve heard people (or maybe just my Mum) saying, around November time usually, “well, the nights are really closing in” (as if it is a surprise year after year). However, I’ve never heard anybody say something like “The nights have closed in now” when we get to the middle of December. It seems like a reasonable construction to me though.
With apologies to anybody from Oz or NZ for my shamelessly Northern Hemispherical bias.
I think we’ve all heard the same thing but when the nights are closing in they are getting longer! The clue here (and the Collins definition) refers to days closing in.
I honestly think this may be one of those cases we discussed the other day where they put in something deliberately wrong to catch out copycats.
Ah, right, I see what you mean. Yes, you’re right, I’ve only ever heard about nights closing in.
So are you suggesting the Collins entry might be a Mountweazel? (I heard that word on a quiz program recently, I think it was the Chase)
At 1ac the only checker I had was P, and it was obviously P + an anagram of Igor, so after a brief flirtation with PROGI I looked it up. At 5dn ‘found it’ didn’t come to mind easily. Another STARTING line, which slowed me down. And in 24ac the ‘any price’ part was a bit muddy and I thought it should be ‘a particular price’. MCMANSION nho although it must have been ho since it appeared a year ago (Z the blog should say an anagram of AS O INN). In 20ac I thought there would be some word ‘sing’ possibly, which was a racket, and I had the definition wrong. liked 4ac. 48 minutes.
23 but with a blooper at CLOSES(D) IN. I can just about see the correct parsing now if I focus on it, but the point was lost in the heat of solving.
Two goes needed.
– NHO PIROG and was lucky that I guessed the vowels correctly
– Didn’t parse MCMANSION but eventually remembered it from a previous crossword
– NHO IMARI but that was easier to construct from wordplay
– Didn’t parse STRATEGY
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Dais
LOI Pirog
COD Kleptomaniac
42:34. Very cool puzzle – I hadn’t seen quite a few words there before – MCMANSION was one, PIROG another (though I think PIROGI is a sort of Polish dumpling) – LOI IMARI was another. Was trying to work out whether ITAFI of IPATI was a word!
I enjoyed this but unfortunately thought I had vaguely heard of PIRGO. That slowed me down quite a bit I think because it was finally getting GONE WITH THE WIND that pretty much unlocked this puzzle for me and then it went pretty fast.
Thanks setter and blogger
Enjoyable puzzle, all done over a pinta in 31 minutes. NHO McMANSION, but worked it out from the clueing. Also NHO some of the exotic food, but IMARI was gettable from the clueing and PIROG looked a better bet than PORIG. Managed SORBET without so much trouble. Dunno why Oxford was favoured in 1dn, when Cambridge would have served just as well.
FOI – CORNICHE
LOI – CLOSED IN
COD – KLEPTOMANIAC
Thanks to Zabadak and other contributors.
DNF got PIROG the wrong way round, with five other clues left to do. Running short of time, so hit the reveal button.
I managed to solve KLEPTOMANIAC and IMARI, but EXONERATE and MCMANSION eluded me.
I don’t seem to do well on Thursday puzzles!
Thanks Z and setter.
20 minutes, but guessed incorrectly for the Russian bun having wondered like others whether it was some variation of porridge.. Not my favourite clue, but at least I’ve learnt something.
Never heard of McMansion, but loved it when I saw it.
Thanks Z and Setter.
16:49
I checked for the existence of both unknowns PIROG and IMARI before inking them in – with all checkers in place and a good idea of what should fill the unches. Everything else was pretty fair – I liked McMANSION, DECIDUOUS and SMARMINESS
Thanks Z and setter
37’00”
Good early pace compensated for the lack of turn of foot later.
With fewer than half the number of entries the Snitchmeister collated on Tuesday, it’s my guess that there’s a lot of undigested porig stuck in many disgruntled throats. The use of Igor is neat, but could it not have been manipulated in such a way to avoid the ever so irritating coin toss.
The East Anglian Pembroke, mentioned above, houses Wren’s first foray into architecture, when he considered it just a sideline; he didn’t turn out too shabby as a mere hobbyist.
Otherwise great fun; thank you setter and Z – I think I’ve got your beef patios and I’m pondering how to torture Igor into shape.
Glad to complete that although I had to win two coin flips on the Japanese and Russian dishes.
Really struggled with the right hand side of this although once EXONERATE fell it went in a bit more smoothly. EX ONE producing a groan from me.
DISENTANGLEMENT was in as a maybe for a while as I could only parse the DIM and ENT components. Again, thanks for the explanation in the blog.
Last one in was aptly CONFOUND IT.
Favourite clue was KLEPTOMANIAC although it had a greatly reduced difficulty by having the K in the crossing letters.
I was a Classics undergraduate at Pembroke fifty years ago. It is a much richer, and more intellectually ambitious college now than it was then (and no longer offers Classics, which is a disgrace). It was where Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and most of LOTR in his spare time as Professor of Anglo-Saxon.
We used to do the Grauniad crossword then – then as now it was generally a lot simpler than the Times. There is another Pembroke College at Cambridge but obviously the Oxford version is the one that any competent setter would prefer.
I was at Pembroke 1965-1968. Well aware of Pembroke Cambridge, played them at cricket once. As for Tolkien, I used to attend lectures given by his son Christopher.
Like many others, wrote CLOSES IN, still don’t get the parsing. My grandparents owned some IMARI plates, now in the possession of my sister.
I also had CLOSES IN for “approaches”, but knew that I hadn’t understood fully. CON FOUND IT gave me the most trouble.
Talking of MEPHISTO, I’ve won a prize twice in the last 3 months, and last week they included my setter’s pseudonym in the grid. Thank you Robert Teuton.
DNF, PORIG and CLOSER IN doing it for me (thinking “din” was shortened). Didn’t think much of either clue tbh, the first requiring a guess if you don’t know it, the second not quite working for me. Enjoyed the taking nut though and the bad-taste-house remembered from previously.
Thanks Zabadak and setter
Pleased and surprised to do this in just under 20 minutes on my phone on the train back from Glasgow. A really enjoyable puzzle, happy to share the consensus view of KLEPTOMANIAC as COD.
Thanks Z and setter.
I picked FAT not RAM for my butter but guessed correctly on PIROG
An enjoyable distraction – not especially happy with CLOSED IN, although I can see why it (sort of) works for the clue. For what (very) little it’s worth, the Polish (and, in my opinion, superior) version of the Russian PIROG are PIEROGI (with the PIE pronounced as in the French pied a terre)
44:08
PIROG and IMARI both NHO.
I am familiar with Pembroke college Cambridge, but took a while to twig that Oxford has one too.
LOI was EXONERATE.
Thanks Z and setter
24.59 WOE
Another CLOSES IN. Sloppy (again).
Felt sluggish for a long time but they all came in a rush at the end.
Liked MCMANSION. Knew PIROGI so the variant wasn’t an issue.
Just short of the hour mark at 58.33, but in the end a DNF because of PORIG. Whenever I have a choice, I always seem to choose the wrong option; most annoying”
26’14”, and a lingering feeling that the cluing of CLOSED IN doesn’t feel all that tight. The guff about mid-winter all seems like too many words, and, even if I let that pass, I’m not sure that the present tense ‘approaches’ sits well with the past tense ‘shortened’ in the clue or CLOSED in the solution. Maybe I’m over-thinking it. NHO MCMANSION, but I liked the cluing there, even if I don’t expect ever to need the word itself.
47 minutes, but all correctly parsed. NHO IMARI or McMANSION but guessed them from wordplay. I too think of the nights, rather than the days, closing in as mid-winter approaches, and am not sure that the present tense ‘approaches’ works – unless ‘shortened’ is taken to be an adjective, and that wouldn’t really accord with the solution!
25:32 very pleased with this but put CLOSES IN trying to match the tense of the clue. Aaargh! If the setter had used ‘approached’ then CLOSED would sit better. Loved KLEPTOMANIAC and CORNICHE!
22 mins but having recognised the latin clue put in mim rather than mcm. Drat! Like the blogger , I recall this solution from an earlier puzzle and I didn’t get it then either. Perhaps third time lucky?
Had vague memory of seeing Buckwheat Pirogi on the menu of a Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge in the late 70’s. Helped many years later with one across. Like everyone else, I loved TAKING NUT. Was MEDUSA a woman? Female, certainly. But doesn’t WOMAN imply human? She was a monster, with snake for hair, no? 21’48”. Good fun.