I’d like to think that the high proportion (so far) of single error entries indicates that we have a clue that is capable of sustaining more than one answer, the sort where if you get one you don’t see the need to imagine another. So my respectable 21.43 is besmirched by a pink. The rest of the puzzle is OK, though it’s clearly producing some longer times.
Definitions are in underlined italics, and [square brackets] indicate cut or excluded letters.
| Across | |
| 1 | Bell tower flowers enthralling relative (9) |
| CAMPANILE – As in Pisa’s tower. Seasoned solvers will know that flowers are rivers, in this example CAM and NILE. They enthral or contain PA, a relative. | |
| 6 | Plunder smuggled in barrel firstly sent to port (5) |
| RIFLE – Hidden (smuggled) and reversed (sent to port/left) in barrEL FIRstly. | |
| 9 | Fruit cut with the other end (5) |
| LIMIT – The shortened fruit is LIM[e] and both “the other” and “IT” are euphemisms for, you know, thingy, know what I mean? | |
| 10 | Deal with press adopting electronic coverage for features? (4,5) |
| FACE CREAM – Deal with is FACE, press gives CRAM into which E[lectronic] is inserted. | |
| 11 | Region stores ballast periodically dropped in huge lake (4,3) |
| ARAL SEA – Well, it used to be, but is now largely dried up. The alternate letters of bAlLaSt are stored in AREA for region. | |
| 12 | Muscle head attached to middle of ant’s hind-body (7) |
| ABDOMEN – Muscle is AB, head is DOME and the middle of ant is N. | |
| 13 | Romantic New Age books main inventory holds (14) |
| SENTIMENTALIST – N[ew] TIME from age, plus the N[ew] T[estament] books contained in main: SEA, inventory: LIST. | |
| 17 | Stresses about Omani MP changing sides? (14) |
| ACCOMPANIMENTS – I think this is sides as in side dishes. Stresses: ACCENTS takes in an anagram (changing) of OMANI MP. | |
| 21 | Crowd turmoil with fellow knocked out by clubs (7) |
| CLUTTER – is what I entered, CLUSTER is probably the “correct” answer. FLUSTER for turmoil has its F[ellow] replaced by C[lubs]. With neck stuck out, I’m claiming FLUTTER is at least as good for turmoil as FLUSTER, and CLUTTER at least as good for crowd. Chambers agrees, and gives “to crowd together” for clutter. | |
| 23 | Charlie once more forgetting name for weapon (7) |
| ASSAGAI – Charlie is an ASS, followed up by AGAIN for once more without its N[ame]. | |
| 25 | Comic seen bending metal (9) |
| MANGANESE – MANGA is the Japanese style of comic, the paper sort. An anagram (bending) of SEEN concludes. | |
| 26 | Retired while visiting fine American city (5) |
| OSAKA -While is AS which is reversed (retired) before insertion into OK (fine) A[merican]. | |
| 27 | Passage from service after hollow invocation (5) |
| INLET – Service is, when in tennis it clips the net, a LET. Hollowed out I[nvocatio]N precedes. | |
| 28 | Draw articles on cover of Utopian novel (9) |
| UNSHEATHE – The articles are A and THE, the cover of U[topia]N gives the U and N and the novel is Rider Haggard’s (and the setter’s favourite) SHE. Assemble in acceptable order. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Cave in wooded area sheltering everybody climbing (8) |
| COLLAPSE – Wooded area is COPSE. insert a reverse (climbing) ALL for everybody. | |
| 2 | Masters chased by another reptile (5) |
| MAMBA – I think MA for Masters (Master of Arts) is fine and the other is an MBA (Master of Business Administration). | |
| 3 | Cycling sailor is (I reckon) very high (9) |
| ALTISSIMO – Sailor is is translated to SALT IS, which is then cycled by moving the first S to the end. Then add I[n] M[y] O[pinion], I reckon. | |
| 4 | Rooms close to pipe under home become gas-filled (7) |
| INFLATE – In a FLAT there are rooms, add the last of [pip]E and attach to IN for home. | |
| 5 | Delight papa lacking in taste (7) |
| ENCHANT – Taste is PENCHANT, remove the NATO Papa. | |
| 6 | River fish, first to dive to the bottom, moved quickly (5) |
| RACED – R[iver] plus DACE for fish with its D[ive] moved to the bottom. | |
| 7 | Person in lodge adapted for seamen (9) |
| FREEMASON – An anagram (adapted) of FOR SEAMEN | |
| 8 | Creature highly exposed on burrow (6) |
| ERMINE – The best I can do for this is assume VERY for highly and then denude it of its V and Y. Burrow gives you MINE. | |
| 14 | Wheeling city gull catches wind like an owl? (9) |
| NOCTURNAL – A reversed (wheeling) LA (the city) and CON (to gull) contains TURN for wind. | |
| 15 | Rock setter’s stuffing in case 1 (9) |
| LIMESTONE – The setter is |
|
| 16 | Quote couple after site receives new order (8) |
| ESTIMATE – An anagram (new order) of SITE precedes MATE for (to) couple. | |
| 18 | Upstart from Standard snubbed Evening Star (7) |
| PARVENU – Standard is PAR, and the Evening Star is VENUS, snubbed, or shortened. | |
| 19 | Grooms had food stored by partners (7) |
| NEATENS – N[orth] and S[outh] are bridge partners. If I have had food I have EATEN. Store one in the other | |
| 20 | Fiddle & Piano with one seafood option (6) |
| SCAMPI – Fiddle is SCAM, add P[iano] and I (one) | |
| 22 | Channel originally cancelled feature (5) |
| TRAIT – A channel is a STRAIT, “cancel” its first letter | |
| 24 | Transplant large number south of key (5) |
| GRAFT – Chambers says RAFT for a large number is chiefly N American. Whatever, it goes after the key of G. | |
I solved this one pretty slowly – when I saw ASSAGAI I thought there might be some other funny spellings going on and was done in 16:34 and stunned to see that I was in third place and that a lot of the usual early solvers had an error. The only word that came to mind was CLUSTER, so I dodged that one. I was wondering if it was people putting in ASSEGAI that caused the errors.
I couldn’t parse anything, but solved it anyway. I never would have considered clutter, because that does not mean crowd, whereas cluster does. I did parse the two long ones in the middle, and I relied on the cryptic for assagai. Campanile gave a lot of trouble, but once I got the checkers I could biff it.
Time: 36:17
But CLUTTER does mean crowd: Chambers gives that as the first meaning of the verb form. If ever you’d seen my cluttered attic, you’d see it overcrowded with useless junk!
DNF. Agree with the blogger re 21ac. CLUSTER / FLUSTER is better than CLUTTER / FLUTTER, but the latter is close enough for us unwary solvers.
I won’t be lodging a protest though as there’s no excuse for my other atrocity. Even as I entered ARAB SEA I was thinking “funny I could have sworn it was ARABIAN”. Looking at the clue might have helped.
Still learning how to do these things. Thanks Z and setter.
I made exactly the same error 😊
I thought this was a tough, quality puzzle and was quite chuffed to finish it, OK I cheated on ALTISSIMO of which I have NH and whose parsing is as convoluted as parsing gets. Mind you it had a few mates today, with NOCTURNAL getting a special mention in that category. Did anyone else try to make an anagram of ‘comic seen’ for the metal at 25ac? I eventually got LOI CLUSTER but it all took a while, with distractions and interruptions I’d guess 45-50. Thanks Z, a much-appreciated blog today.
From Sugar Baby:
The ladies down in Darktown, they’re doing the Darktown strut
You always got to be prepared but, you never know for what
There ain’t no LIMIT to the amount of trouble women bring
Love is pleasing, love is teasing, love’s not an evil thing
44:48, slow slow slow. I had to grind out every answer. I felt there were many rare abbreviations, which is not a feature of a puzzle that delights me, if I’m being honest.
34 minutes including 3 or 4 spent on parsing ALTISSIMO which I had biffed with confidence and could have moved on straightaway. Sadly I’m another who succumbed to CLUTTER/FLUTTER which seemed to parse well enough so there was no reason to look for alternatives.
MANGA was unknown but the metal had gone in from checkers.
Also caught by cluster. In 15, isn’t it I’M in LEST rather than ME?
Indeed it is!
Reasonably quick DNF having parsed CLUSTER while also considering clutter but didnt parse it, thoughIagree with Z. But then sort of half-parsed OMAHA for a US city (“aha” as fine anyone???) and didn’t look further… I have a tee time to meet!
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
Fancy not too tickled by this, but possibly I was not generally all that well-disposed toward it having been given a pasting by The Ambiguous One, as described by Zabs and others.
And, wot no Ella?
55 minutes with ALTISSIMO as a biff and ASSAGAI put in despite my total conviction it was spelt with an E. ACCOMPANIMENTS, LOI, just fitted. Fortunately, I never thought of Clutter. COD to CAMPANILE, as I saw it straightaway, unlike most of the other clues. Thank you Z and setter.
A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
The Cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
(Mariana, Tennyson)
30 mins pre-brekker, spending too long looking for the ‘flowers’ in 1ac (Doh!).
And wondering about ‘highly exposed’=ER, and ‘snubbed’.
Lucky I saw Fluster first.
Ta setter and Z.
I’m all a-flutter, and wish to appeal re CLUTTER.
A few convoluted parsings which I didn’t even try to do. And ASSAGAI is spelt wrongly.
Dnf in 19′.
Thanks z and setter.
85m 43s
Another one who agrees with Z regarding CLUTTER/FLUTTER. The C-word was what I put.
Thanks also, Z, for ERMINE.
Finished slowly with 2 errors, CLUTTER and OMAHA biffed for OSAKA. Lots of biffing with no idea of the parsing. I would think CLUTTER and CLUSTER are crowd equivalents and SOED defines the turmoil sense of FLUSTER in terms of FLUTTER as “Flurry, flutter, agitation; a confused or agitated state”. FLUTTER is defined as “(A state of) tremulous excitement or agitation”.
Thanks Z.
That was a good one. Another DNF but after 35 mins of enjoyable brain workout.
My pink was a stupid ARTISSIMO where I started with ART as Tar cycled and never accounted for the extra S. More patience required.
Failed to spot the chestnut “flowers” in CAMPANILE or the ER in ERMINE so thanks for those.
COD to MANGANESE but there was plenty to choose from. Thanks both.
44 minutes though I felt I was taking longer than necessary and it wasnt that hard.
I knew how assagai worked but still wrote in assegai on autopilot and luckily noticed later!
CLUTTER never occurred to me and I wrote in CLUSTER without a thought, personally I associate clutter with a mess rather than a crowd
Thanks for the explanation for ALTISSIMO I had forgotten salt for sailor. That was my penultimate one in and then LOI was SENTIMENTALIST
Thanks setter and blogger
24:49* (CLUTTER)
That was my last clue and as soon as I saw CLUTTER I confidently typed it in only to be disappointed with my 4th pink of the week.
Otherwise ASSAGAI and ALTISSIMO were the only unknowns but they were fairly clued. I slowed myself on the second of those by stupidly entering LEMON without the slightest of thought.
A good challenge so thanks to both, and hopefully I’ll break my duck tomorrow.
Slow would be an understatement for this although I think I got my tactics wrong. Had trouble getting the two long horizontal middle words although when I did put the effort into working through the wordplay they smoothly revealed themselves.
Lots slowed me down.
NHO CAMPANILE but thankfully picked the correct rivers.
Is it LEMON or LIMES? No it’s LIMIT
What is the anagram of ‘seen metal’ I need for comic? I would have been better off just going through the periodic table. To be fair the clue didn’t hint at anagramming both words.
NHO ASSAGAI but thankfully the crossers were friendly.
Can you UNSHEATHE something? Well I can’t think of anything better.
I’ve started to learn a lot of musical terms from crosswords, the next part is to remember what they actually mean.
LOI PARVENU which I drew somewhere from the back of my mind.
FOI: COLLAPSE
LOI: PARVENU
COD: OSAKA
I think I liked this as it pushed me to my limits but wouldn’t want one like that every day.
“I’ve started to learn a lot of musical terms from crosswords, the next part is to remember what they actually mean.”
They’re all Italian words, so if you’ve got any Latin many are almost identical.
18:01 thankfully seeing CLUSTER immediately and giving it no more thought. A two-paced solve, with the top third straight in and the rest ground out bit by bit. Both the long across answers were semi-biffs, but parsed in full after the event.
Back in the day ASSAGAI was a bit of a chestnut but I can’t remember seeing it anywhere for a while. Is it time for our old friend Beerbohm Tree to come out of retirement?
Gave up after 40 mins. Didn’t help that I rushed to put in lemon instead of limit- for some reason I convinced myself that it was something about swapping melon for lemon. Not my finest moment.
That completely screwed any chance of getting altissimo. Put in Omaha for the city, which I assumed was an American one. I ignored the fact that Osaka has been a fave on here before.
Completely baffled by unsheathe, never occurred to me to think of that sort of draw.
Never mind, go again tomorrow.
I did the lemon/melon thing too. Eventually removed it for Altissimo.
I’m on Team Z for clutter.
Thanks, Z.
Put me down for CLUTTER. Bah humbug! 31,10 WOE. Thanks setter and Z.
I didn’t get on with this one and DNF.
1a Campanile COD, easy to biff, then the 2 rivers and Pa hit me!
6a Rifle, biffed, missed the hidden AGAIN.
13a Sentimentalist biffed not a chance of parsing.
21a Clutter, I too thought of cluster. Eventually I got cross and left it blank.
23a Cheating Machine has both assXgais so I correctly picked the a from agai(n). The A spelling must have happened before or it would not be in CM. *** On edit, no both were in the original taken from Mirriam Webster, so obv Miriam can’t spell any better than I can.
25a Manganese, forgot about the HHO Manga so I biffed it.
26a Couldn’t decide between Osaka and an unparsable Omaha, and left it blank. Actually it is quite a good clue but I had lost interest by then.
Thanks Zabadak & setter.
27:15 but…
…as for others, 21d CLUTTER = 1 pink square.
On the Crossword Club leaderboard, I am currently joint 38th out of 109 entries, so more or less two-thirds of entries have a pink square for a valid answer, which surely isn’t right.
Answers should always be completely unambiguous – here we have two answers which fit the bill more or less equally. I doubt that either setter or editor intended for that to happen, in which case, a recount is requested, and all those with CLUTTER should have their pink squares expunged.
Thanks G and setter
I think CLUSTER (which I didn’t think of) is a slightly better fit, but both can be defended. This happened a couple of weeks ago with the infamous GROAN/GROWN, and unfortunately the Times has no way to manually expunge pink squares in such cases.
As it’s quite understandable that neither setter nor editor might notice an ambiguity in the setting/checking process, the lack of ability to ‘make it good’ after the fact makes for quite a risky system, and could do with fixing.
Pondered over clutter vs cluster and eventually picked the wrong one ..
OK otherwise though not keen on exposed highly > ER.
NOR AM I! (the er bit).
42 -also opted for the more logical CLUSTER, but needed a long time to untangle this tricky offering and got very bogged down in the NE.
38.13 WOE
Never got stuck but slowed down a lot, thinking for example that the clue for TRAIT started with a C. Also struggled with CLUTTER so delighted when I finally inserted it. Shame it was wrong.
Thanks Z and Setter
Two goes needed.
– Took ages to see that RIFLE was a hidden
– Went for CLUSTER rather than CLUTTER
– ASSAGAI rang a bell, probably from previous crosswords
– Like LindsayO above, I tried to find an anagram of ‘comic seen’ before working out MANGANESE
– Didn’t parse ALTISSIMO
– Biffed NOCTURNAL
– For PARVENU, took a long time to remember that in crosswords, ‘snubbed’ can mean ‘remove a letter’
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Campanile
LOI Altissimo
COD Unsheathe
Nearly 20 minutes plus CLUTTER so not a good day.
Made even worse by my fingers not being able to type ACCOMPANIMENTS and getting the I and A the wrong way round.
D’oh.
45 mins but with an error for CHUNTER – which I thought was a good definition for crowd turmoil, but I knew wasn’t a good fit for the wordplay… I agree with others that this was harder than it needed to be, and an alright puzzle rather than a very enjoyable one. thanks both!
Took me quite a time but I limped to the finish uncluttered.
Another CLUTTER.
I wrote down cluster and clutter and opted for the wrong one.. Otherwise, a good puzzle, COD to UNSHEATHE.
Thanks Z and setter.
Successfully getting through a hard struggle is satisfying – very happy to have considered nothing but CLUSTER. Took ages but very enjoyable. Loi ALTISSIMO as I’d bunged in LEMON (I know – it doesn’t work) for 9ac and had to backtrack. Thanks for an entertaining blog.
I was off to a flyer when CAMPANILE and COLLAPSE came instantly to mind but then a dreadful sequence of errors (all detailed above) and uncertainties.
DNF in an unconscionable time.
I worked through this one slowly but steadily, during the working day. I had real issues with some of the clues, particularly ACCOMPANIMENTS (although I usually struggle on long anagrams), ALTISSIMO (ditto on musical terms), OSAKA, NEATENS and UNSHEATHE. Can’t really give any explanation as to why, had heard of all of them. I too thought ASSAGAI was ASSEGAI, but the wordplay only worked with the former spelling so I, correctly, chanced it.
Nice puzzle I thought. Thanks setter and blogger.
Pinked it with Assegai. Otherwise ok, maybe 30 mins.
The Aral Sea is recovering now I understand, though nowhere near its original dimensions.
DNF. Another CLUTTER here, but otherwise all correct, although I couldn’t see why ER was “highly exposed” or how ALTISSIMO worked. I didn’t enjoy this as much as I might have as a number of the surfaces seem rather clunky and convoluted, but maybe I just lack the imagination to appreciate them.
40 minutes but with two errors: yes, Clutter instead of Cluster and, less excusably, Tract instead of Trait.
I was thinking Extract minus the original Ex – I know it makes little sense – I put it down to time pressure!
Didn’t parse Ermine.
Some very nice clues including Parvenu, Nocturnal, Altissimo, Manganese.
Another CLUTTERer here – glad to know I’m not alone 🙂
I liked LindsayO’s comment: this required a lot of very very intricate assembly, and many of the assembly bits and many of the answers were clued with, well, high precision and higher misdirection. In half the clues I could see what most of the pieces were but not how to assemble them into any word which looked like the answer, and in the other half I could see the answer but not so much what the bits to get to it might be.
I’ll add that I don’t do well at ‘drop the first letter’ or ‘drop the last letter’ of a word I need to think up from its synonym. Case in point: vERy which needed both.
I think the device which asks you to come up with a synonym before adjusting is rare, and pushing it. Doing the same before anagramming is (I believe) not permitted.
I’m a bit surprised by your first sentence, Z, but perhaps I have misunderstood? I’ve just been working on a Jumbo blog and out of interest I counted 18 examples of synonyms that needed to be adjusted by removing letters. I’ve never really thought about it before, but surely it’s common practice? You’re quite right about indirect anagrams though – a definite no-no.
Your interpretation of the anagramming rule is what I thought too. It’s definitely legal to drop first, last, or sometimes middle letters, just I have a hard time with the two steps needed to get to answers with it; it’s not the way my brain works. I guess the newish cycling thing, which I think is clever, falls somewhere between ‘drop the tail letter’ and an indirect anagram; I can see why some people don’t like them.
Today’s had Lim(e), (F)luster or (F)lutter – choose your poison, agai(N), (P)enchant, Venu(s), (S)trait, then both ‘Salt is’ and ‘Dace’ which were cycled, in addition to (V)er(y). It seemed like a lot, and I was a little surprised that Myrtilus didn’t comment on the first/last letter fiend.
It may be a small difference. We’re used to “think of a word and drop its first or last letter”, and the frequent “take the middle of this word” or “gut this word” where the word is in plain sight, but [v]ER[y] is an extra step, I think.
It’s definitely not without precedent – earlier this year, we had: Rich, released from Further Education, revolutionised capacity (5) I’ve seen other examples, if not here then elsewhere, although they don’t come readily to mind.
There’s only so far you can push it, of course. Asking us to find the first, last, or middle letter of a synonym would just be a slog. But taking the first, last, or outer letters off seems entirely fair game – you have more of the remaining word in the answer, so can have much more certainty. Granted in this case it’s as little remaining as possible, but ‘very’ is at least a common word.
A bit of a slog. I finished in 49 minutes, but this included CLUTTER at 21ac, as the alternative never occurred to me and I thought, as did our leader, that this filled the bill. NHO ASSAGAI spelt in this way but the clueing left no choice. Fortunately avoided the bear traps with LIMIT (after a false start with LEMON) and OSAKA. Perhaps I made this more difficult than it was, but it did not fill my heart with joy.
FOI – MAMBA
LOI – ALTISSIMO
COD – CAMPANILE
Thanks to Zabadak and other contributors.
Late to start this and even later to finish. I had to wait hours for a delivery and refused to give up. My slowest ever sucessful Times 15×15 at two hours fifteen minutes and pleased as punch.
Regardless of the ambiguity neither FLUSTER nor FLUTTER are at the same level of TURMOIL. The SNUB device, an unnecessary DROPPED in 11a. NEATENS for GROOMS is a bit loose. ER. And ‘become gas-filled should be INFLATED.
Apart from all that it was ok.
“Dropped” provides a more plausible surface reading.
And INFLATE is fine for “become gas-filled” as in “turn on the pump and watch the balloon become gas-filled / inflate”.
On turmoil, I’m inclined to agree, though “oh, Mr D’Arcy, my heart is all a-flutter” might suggest a low level of turmoil. More
than “well, I’m flustered”, which is another reason I was OK with FLUTTER.
I went the right way on CLUSTER and never thought of CLUTTER. But I still got a pink square by putting in a careless SENTIMENTALISM which makes no sense with the wordplay. I liked MANGANESE (immediately followed by OSAKA so I wondered if there was a Japanese Ninja of some sort but apparently not).
Not my type of crossword: hard going throughout, and that with several look-ups. CAMPANILE came straight to mind, but unable to parse; didn’t think of the other type of flowers. Long anagrams also my stumbling block – can stare at them for ages without any light bulbs popping. On the other hand I did like the device for vERy = highly exposed, and I thought we’d left ASSAGAIs behind a decade ago! Bit of a slog, otherwise.