My 22.36 suggests, accurately, that I found this quite chewy, even if, with the exception of one abomination, I didn’t stumble over any words not found in my crossword lexicography. There was the hint of a theme cropping up in places, and I suspect our setter knew it was my turn today because I was almost undone by what looked like a possible Tottenham reference. I rather liked the amusing hose between the sheets and oval filled at lunchtime.
Definitions underlined in italics, with [square brackets] indicating excluded or unwanted letters.
| Across | |
| 1 | Injury from kick aimed at player after three from Messi (8) |
| TRESPASS – First of several sport-themed clues, this one pushing us in the direction of a football answer, which it’s not. Chambers clarifies the connection between definition and answer: “any injury to another’s person or property”. A kick aimed at a player is a PASS and since Lionel Messi is Argentinian, his “three” is (un, dos) TRES. | |
| 5 | Large section of church died apostate (6) |
| LAPSED – Forget denominational prejudice, this is just L[arge] APSE for section of church and D[ied] | |
| 10 | With alien agitators on planet, show who’s boss (4,3,8) |
| WEAR THE TROUSERS – Alien agitators are ET ROUSERS, placed on W[ith] planet EARTH. Respace. | |
| 11 | Cautious states led by king during revolt (4-6) |
| RISK-AVERSE – States gives AVERS, put K[ing] on the front, enclose all in RISE from revolt. | |
| 13 | Feature of cathedral music, probably also of the choir (4) |
| ECHO – St Pauls, for example, has 9 a second acoustic, and most cathedrals are sufficiently cavernous. Our answer is hidden in thE CHOir | |
| 15 | Team not finishing wine by itself (7) |
| SQUARED – Definition is an abridged form of multiplied by itself. Team not finishing gives SQUA[d] and the wine needed is RED. I nearly came a cropper by having the team not finishing as SPUR[s] plus RED, but couldn’t make the result mean any form of “by itself”. | |
| 17 | Comic error putting half human on British throne (7) |
| BLOOPER – A throne can be facetiously a LOO, with B[ritish] on one end and PER[son], half a human, on the other. | |
| 18 | Judges again pardon separating parents (7) |
| REHEARS – Pardon(?) is EH? set withing the verb form of parents, REARS. | |
| 19 | Twisted tootsie sounded OK (5-2) |
| RIGHT-OH – Tootsie is either a foot or a toe, in our case twisted tootsie is WRY TOE, sound it out. | |
| 21 | Use machine to raise papa out of bed, taking minutes (4) |
| PUMP – NATO Papa, UP for out of bed, insert M[inutes]. | |
| 22 | Batter on fish is rubbish (10) |
| CODSWALLOP – To batter is to WALLOP, placed on COD’S, the fish [i]S | |
| 25 | Tea MP arranged with lieutenant with two more to come (15) |
| ANTEPENULTIMATE – The word before the word before the last word. An anagram (arranged) of TEA MP and LIEUTENANT. Feel free to take my word for it! | |
| 27 | Biologist’s woolly article boring near the end (6) |
| LANATE – Chambers qualifies it as a word from botany, a bit of generosity from our setter, though I tried to make my initial answer a botanist of note, such as (nearly) Lamarck. AN, the article, is drilled into LATE, near the end. | |
| 28 | Hose between the sheets in Spooner’s aforementioned crate (8) |
| BEDSOCKS – Spooner might have essayed SAID BOX | |
| Down | |
| 1 | For puzzling last word, missing first letter (7) |
| TOWARDS – As in the train is for London. An anagram (puzzling) of LAST WORD, striking the L. | |
| 2 | Time can be found reversing (3) |
| ERA – Can be found really needs a plural subject to work: letters can be found/ARE in this word. Reverse ARE. | |
| 3 | Oval filled at lunchtime, maybe pair batted incredibly (5,5) |
| PITTA BREAD – A cryptic hint of a definition, created by an anagram (incredibly) of PAIR BATTED. Just not cricket, then. | |
| 4 | Fat root spliced in case of subsidence (5) |
| SWEDE – I still think fat is not especially helpful to indicate this plump, well rounded root vegetable (rutebaga to my US friends). Splice gives you WED, inserted into S[ubsidenc]E (case of). | |
| 6 | Connect with answer yet? (4) |
| ABUT – A[nswer] and BUT for yet. Succinct, yet/but understandable. | |
| 7 | Setting up funds, visit Washington, a friend having cased it (4,7) |
| SEED CAPITAL – SEE from visit, Washington is DC, and A PAL for a friend takes in IT. | |
| 8 | Very scratched from stumble across dancer in club (7) |
| DISCOER – Ugh! Only dictionary definitions are found on Google, with no examples being found in the wild. V[ery] removed unwillingly from DISCOVER for stumble across. | |
| 9 | A bit of woodwork irritated lawyers (8) |
| CROSSBAR – Occasionally hit even by Messi. Irritated, CROSS, lawyers (the) BAR | |
| 12 | Small point about retaining unpopular player performing badly for City (11) |
| SOUTHAMPTON – More not quite footie. S[mall] P[oin]T ON for about placed round unpopular: OUT, (theatrical) player performing badly: HAM. | |
| 14 | Be useful too, nag ordered girl (3,2,5) |
| NOT GO AMISS – An anagram (ordered) of TOO NAG plus MISS for girl. | |
| 16 | Mud on ground covering island, time to get off (8) |
| DISMOUNT – An anagram (ground) of MUD ON with IS[land] inserted and T[ime] added. | |
| 18 | Archangel’s censure upset Jacob’s wife (7) |
| RAPHAEL – Censure is RAP, Jacob’s first wife (from the days when God was apparently more relaxed about bigamy) is LEAH, who needs to be upset, as she was indeed by Jacobs preference for his second wife, the younger and prettier Rachel. | |
| 20 | Unlucky fellow rid of cold? Not so (7) |
| HAPLESS – Fellow is CHAP, from which C[old] is expunged. Not so (I think) gives your LESS. | |
| 23 | Only five parts to decode (5) |
| SOLVE – SOLE for only is parted by V for five | |
| 24 | Gentle hits reflected fight that’s not serious (4) |
| SPAT – Gentle hits are TAPS, to be reversed. | |
| 26 | Middle section of walk is circular part (3) |
| ARC – The middle three letters of mARCh | |
I thought this was really good fun. CROSSBAR for a bit of woodwork, brilliant. Fell for the same trap as our blogger thinking Spurs was the team not finishing. Liked RIGHT-OH, which always reminds me of the first chapter of Brideshead Revisited.
Charles Ryder to his corporal: Jones, when you’ve done that go and sort out some hay for the bedding for the men.
Corporal: Right-Oh Sir.
Ryder: And corporal, stop saying Right-Oh.
Corporal: Oh, Right-Oh Sir!
BEDSOCKS gets my COD from a long list of possibles including SOUTHAMPTON, TRESPASS, DISCOER, PITTA BREAD and more.
Thanks Z and setter.
I made rather a mess of this, putting in four wrong answers: taps, right on, stere, and bloomer. I corrected them one by one, as I saw they would not do. I got antepenultimate without muct difficulty, since it’s one of the three places an accent can fall in a Greek word, so that knocked out taps. I was thinking right on didn’t really sound like wry toe, biffed seed capital, and was left with 4 down. I had just erased it when I got a timely hint from Jeremy, and finished the puzzle. I’m not counting it as a DNF, since he did not tell me the answer, but just caused me to look at the clue differently – bingo!
If you want to know how I parsed bloomer, it was half a merman, I swear.
Time: 49:47
Ditto taps. Still works for me, just wrong.
43 minutes as far as I went but this was a DNF because I failed on the unknown LANATE. The reason I was unable to work it out was an error at 24dn where I had put SPAR (RAPS reversed) which had seemed a reasonable answer at the time although I now see that SPAT is better.
Also better is Z’s parsing of CODSWALLOP employing the apostrophe S. My version made use of the the Countdown rule (as discussed here very recently) which allows the pluralisation of mass nouns for items that one might order in a restaurant – “Two CODS please”.
55 minutes. On the limit of my solving ability and I was relieved to stumble over the line. LANATE an NHO and mainly entered via “lanolin”. I wasn’t totally convinced by SWEDE for ‘Fat root’ either; anyway it sounds better than “rutabaga”. Gabriel was the only ‘Archangel’ I was familiar with and Jacob’s wives are a complete mystery so 18d went in from the checked letters.
I liked the bizarre surface for WEAR THE TROUSERS. I agree DISCOER is a bit of a shocker and being in Collins and Chambers doesn’t make it any better.
I felt I wasn’t on form with this but reading the comments and blog maybe it was a trickier one.
The top half anagrams were amongst the last in which is usually a sign my brain isn’t at full function. I also must have read the SWEDE clue 50 times but my brain kept reading ‘sliced’.
TRES was in within seconds of starting but just couldn’t put the rest together.
I think that’s the sign of a good puzzle though, challenging but you wondered why afterwards.
I was probably saved on this by having read ANTEPENULTIMATE yesterday which meant the bottom filled out quite quickly which gave me the motivation to go on.
Liked WEAR THE TROUSERS and CROSSBAR.
Thanks blogger even if I did manage to fully parse today.
Battled hard, was delighted to remember Jacob’s wife, but ran out of steam after an hour, still missing LANATE, HAPLESS and RIGHT-OH. COD to SQUARED. A bit too tough for me. Thank you Z and setter.
36:46
I thought this was excellent. More or less solved it in reverse having drawn a blank till I reached CODSWALLOP and SOLVE, then steadily worked my upwards, spending the longest time finishing off the Northwest. I agree about DISCOER and the fat SWEDE but these are more than made up for elsewhere. Favourites were SQUARED, RIGHT-OH and WEAR THE TROUSERS.
Thanks to Zabadak and the setter
Made three errors, Rachael as an anagram of archangel with NG removed, and wife of Jacob, failed to parse til the end. Could not arrive at Pump as a result, messed in with camp, for no apparent reason, and Lanate was a word I should have known, from lanolin, but no! Loved some of the others tho, really enjoyed my crossword hour! Thx, Cx
Just under half an hour.
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown LANATE
– Didn’t know that wed can mean spliced for SWEDE
– Was on the verge of putting DISCOUNT for 16d, thinking ‘get off’ could mean ‘get money off’, until I saw what the ‘ground’ in the clue was doing and got DISMOUNT
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Echo
LOI Lanate
COD Squared
12:21. I really enjoyed this one, lots of clever and amusing stuff.
Jacob did indeed prefer Rachel. He had contracted with her father to marry Rachel, agreeing to work for seven years to ‘earn’ her (those were the times). After seven years the father, Laban, reneged on the deal, and gave his elder daughter Leah instead. So Jacob worked for another seven years to win Rachel.
I had no idea Messi was Argentine, assumed he was French.
Many excellent clues today: SQUARED, PITTA BREAD, SWEDE (LOI). Like others, got LANATE via lanolin.
15’09”, thanks z and setter.
Wow! … that was a toughie for me and a ‘DNF’ … I totally gave up after 30mins and looked up the solution. Strange how I just cant get into the same wave-length of some setters and it was so today. Nonetheless a good puzzle!
At the time I checked the snitch it was at 125 which indicates a hard one and I aint looking forward to Fridays usually very hard crossword with confidence.
35:11. A good one and luckily I seemed to be on the wavelength, except 25ac where I saw straight away what was needed but had to write in PENULTIMATE leaving the first four squares blank, my brain just refusing to supply them until much later. I liked RIGHT-OH and PITTA BREAD
Hoo-flipping-ray (theres a word for that construct which I’ve forgotten already) for a finish, albeit in 43 mins.
I actually found most of that easyish and enjoyable. Slightly held up by entering RIGHT HO (as in Jeeves) but mostly by taking nearly 15 mins over SWEDE. And I like SWEDE, esp mashed with carrot.
COD: ANTEPENULTIMATE
Least liked DISCOER which is just a clumsy mess of a word.
Thanks to Zabadak and setter.
Tmesis.
Yes! Though that always looks like a typo, to me..
Tme tmoo.
DNF.
Fell into the Spurs trap. Lanate from laine (Fr.), lana (Sp.).
Thanks, Z.
United will probably fall into a Spurs trap next week.
🙂
1 hour-ish DNF due to LANATE (NHO but could have worked it out), ECHO (gave up just as I was thinking ‘huh, there hasn’t been a hidden yet’, before proceeding not to follow up on that thought at all), and DISCOVER, which was well within reach but I was too annoyed by LANATE at that stage.
Nice puzzle, appreciated the sort-of theme. Feel I could have done it, and much quicker as well, had I been on better form. ‘Could-a would-a should-a’s aside, my COD goes to SQUARED, because I thought ‘by itself’ was very neat.
DNF – Didn’t know LANATE so it didn’t matter that I had SPAR instead of SPAT. But it still feels unfortunate that both answers fit the same clue AND the checker is part of an uncommon answer.
Did all but three (TRESPASS, SWEDE and DISCOER) in 24 mins but had to look up the last three answers. PITTA BREAD was the FOI and I toyed with the idea of ‘thespian’ for 1A and ‘obese’ for 4D but thought better of it (and the answers wouldn’t have fitted together anyway).
Oh dear! I made too many errors and failed to finish. I had put in RIGHT-HO not -OH so couldn’t see 20d. I put in Rachael, guessing she was Jacob’s wife (not really knowing who Jacob was). I invented a biologist called LINATE who was something like LINNAEUS, didn’t know LANATE meant woolly although I knew the French word for wool. I too tried to justify SPUR-RED for a long time until “by itself” dropped the penny. But the rest was good, and I am disappointed I fell short on this one. Glad it was not a Wednesday.
Another failure on the NHO LANATE. Guessed LINATE. Also beaten by PUMP, which wasn’t difficult. The rest was largely good/fun, though I hate DISCOER and NOT GO AMISS is so far removed from its only actual usage (‘wouldn’t go amiss’) that it rather grated.
19:30 – nearly did the Spurs thing then thought better of it. Ditto LANATE, where LINT was the woolly stuff, etc and Linate was, as above, my biologist briefly pretending to be Linnaeus. You get the picture. Good fun anyway.
Excellent puzzle, but I didn’t help myself by thinking “is it SPAR or RAPS?” I plumped for the latter and then invented “lanose”, only escaping from the pit I’d dug when ANTEPENULTIMATE came to the rescue.
FOI WEAR THE TROUSERS
LOI SQUARED
COD BEDSOCKS (I love a Spoonerism)
TIME 16:52
Enjoyed this one, some neat clues I thought and good surfaces.
And antepenultimate, one of my favourite words..
Have some Madeira m’dear (which probably couldn’t be performed now).
Yes! (to both)
Some very good stuff here and it took me 58 minutes. Went wrong because I was another with bloomer at 17ac, yes another thought of merman! The check button, and not my realising it, which I should have done, saved me here. And at 1ac the equation of trespass and injury seemed pretty thin, but I suppose Chambers does justify it. Never understood until coming here why squared = by itself in 15ac.
Thanks Zabadak & setter.
1a Trespass. I thought Messi (I’d forgotten his given name) must be Spanish, but that didn’t matter. I’m not a footie fan.
15a Squared. If I hadn’t read the title of the blog (before looking at same) I would have spent longer on this one. Clever clue.
17a Blooper, was foxed by this. I usually notice loos and johns and cans but this time I didn’t, so biffed. Score 1 to setter.
19a Right Oh. I put this as right ho which prevented me getting 20d. Both versions were in Cheating Machine.
25a Antepenultimate, biffed, entered as I was still reading the clue, just eyeballed the anagrist and moved on.
COD 28a Bedsocks. Don’t usually like Spooner clues.
27a NHO Lanate, cheated to confirm that it was lan-something as in lanolin, something woolly. Not a word I will be employing in the wild.
4d Swede, didn’t notice I had missed this clue so DNF. It would have taken me a while to suss it out as I wouldn’t at first join fat and root.
18d Raphael. Cheated by researching Jacob’s wives. Didn’t really need to cheat, but as an atheist I need to dip into the stories occasionally to keep my hand in.
20d Hapless. As this began with O from 19a the only thing that fit was Orpheus who was after all somewhat unlucky. So was I.
Oh dear, a bad day.
I on the other hand will make a point of using lanate, next available opportunity. I concede it may be some time ..
Ho ho!
DNF
Don’t really enjoy teasing out answers that don’t obviously fit the definition – TRESPASS. RAPHAEL as an archangel was a bit specialist GK- I was fixated on RACHEL being something to do with it. Similarly, I had RIGHT-HO for ages, which led me to thinking of ORPHEUS as the unlucky one, but obvs couldn’t work out the parsing. No idea what LANATE means. Oh, and it would all have been moot anyway as I can’t spell ANTEPENULTIMATE…
My favourite was DISCOER.
Thanks Z and setter
28:14
Terrific puzzle, thanks setter and Z.
LOI 1a, as so often is.
COD SQUARED, but many other contenders.
17:30 so definitely the trickiest of the week so far, with lots to like.
Jacob’s wife turned out to be a real person not a sheep and LANATE was a NHO but trust the wordplay moment. DISCOER is a horrible word but according to the Chambers app the only one that fits the checkers.
Thought I was going great guns but could not see why I had not completed on 25 mins. Fell into “spurred” for “squared“ trap. Convinced myself that spurred meant doing something to a bit of wood that left a bit on its own but as usual just self-deluded.
Wry toe and back to the grindstone
Can’t reconcile not so and less….not so much….? what am I missing?
Aids & Google got me 95% there.
Liked the wry toes and said boxes Joe Tokes!!
Thanks Z and setter
It’s not so bad after all = it’s less bad after all
oh yes it’s not so difficult then
Started off with ERA and PITTA BREAD and then the struggle began. Never got totally stuck, but made heavy weather in places. SEED CAPITAL was laboriously constructed from the bottom up. ANTEPENULTIMATE and WEAR THE TROUSERS were a big help when they arrived. RISK AVERSE and TOWARDS brought the top half to completion, leaving BEDSOCKS, ARC and finally, after much cogitation, LANATE to finish the job. 32:33. Thanks setter and Z.
Five short – including LANATE, DISCOER and NOT GO AMISS (which as GideAndre says, grated a little once I’d seen the answer in the blog) – after 50 mins, when the bell went signalling pub time.
Enjoyed what I did manage to complete, thanks setter and Z. COD PITTA BREAD, probably.
I enjoyed this and managed to invent the NHO LANATE correctly as my LOI. I never thought of SPURS, so I missed that trap. DISCOER has to be the most ugly word we’ve had recently. 41 mins which seems not bad seeing some other people’s times. I was bemused for a moment at RAPHAEL wondering if Jacob’s wife could be spelled RACHAEL before realizing it was the first wife I was looking for. Even though I’m not a football fan, even I knew Messi was Argentinian and so spoke Spanish. Fun crossword.
Another SPURRED here, just chucked it in without thinking too hard. Otherwise was quite pleased with my effort. ANTEPENULTIMATE answer was ANTEPENULTIMATE, followed by BEDSOCKS and ARC.
I struggled through this one in 33 mins with no great enjoyment. The ‘[multiplied] by’ device came up in The Guardian earlier in the week and I wasn’t keen on it then and am still not. Took ages to parse SOUTHAMPTON, but it was the only 11-letter city I could think of beginning with an S. It’s my birthplace, which gives me the right to describe it as a blot on the south coast only rivaled by Portsmouth. NHO LANATE, but it could be nothing else. As to DISCOER, I am completely with our blogger. Overall, a bit of a raspberry for this one, I’m afraid, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time, as is well-known.
Took far too long over this, but got all the parsing correct. LOI SQUARED – like others I thought initially of ‘them up the road’, as they are termed by the Arsenal fraternity, but couldn’t make the parsing work. This did indeed seem very football-themed – and, for me, COD TRESPASS.
I started this too late last night to have enough energy for it, and my putting in TAPS for SPAT is one thing that made it look even harder than it turned out to be. Finally got to it again and enjoyed many aha! moments.
Virtually identical to Jackkt’s post earlier on, where I threw in the towel after fifty minutes, having spent the last ten minutes trying to solve 27ac only to discover I was wasting my time because SPAR was incorrect. Little chance of realising there was a better alternative when LANATE was unknown o me.
Had SPAR for a while, but couldn’t find anything to fit the woolly clue so luckily saw the error. A useful LAN- word in English is LANUGO, which is the down on unborn babies. Like BY ITSELF for SQUARED. 25’51” all up.
I liked it a lot, possibly with the excetion of Discoer. Thanks setter. You too, Z.
37.15
Late entry. Struggled in the SW at the end only able to think of Gabriel but when RAPHAEL hove into view LANATE and PUMP arrived followed by BEDSOCKS. The combo of LEAH and the archangel was tough but much to like here.
Anyone else put Right-ho for 19ac and therefore make 20dn undo-able?
That and nho LANATE brought on a dnf – interesting puzzle though.
I’m catching up on old crosswords after a busy month and just wanted to say what a brilliant one this was; initially daunting but all fair in the end. Clues like ‘only five parts to decode’ are so smooth they leave nothing for the solver to hang onto. SQUARED/ by itself also delightful.
Thanks setter and Z for the fun blog.