I got through in 19.18 without too many holdups, aside from looking out for additions to the three clues which formed a sort of theme for the puzzle. I put in the cricketer at 4d without demur, thinking I’d look him up later and wondering why our setter would deliberately annoy the non-cricket savvy solvers. See below for my Damascus road moment when I realised stupid comes in many forms. I’ve left it in for your entertainment. A decent workout, I thought, laced with wit and deception.
Definitions underlined in italics, dismissed letters in [],and varieties of flannel throughout.
| Across | |
| 1 | Conservative following unpleasant persons’ pathetic tale (3,5) |
| SOB STORY – An unpleasant person is an S.O.B. (I’m not sure I’m allowed to type it in full!). Add the possessive ‘S and follow it with a Conservative TORY’ | |
| 5 | Old country manufactured spare parts to accommodate India (6) |
| PERSIA – A verbose anagram indication, manufacture parts (of) SPARE and insert I[ndia] | |
| 10 | Love in pleasing Bible entry developed for novel (7,2,6) |
| GOODBYE TO BERLIN – Written by 16d and the inspiration for 23a – I’ll let you know if I spot any other connections. So we have love: O contained in pleasing: GOOD and an anagram (developed) of BIBLE ENTRY | |
| 11 | Plug connected to earth in top universities (7) |
| ACADEME – A plug is an AD[vert] which links to E[arth] and is contained in ACME, which you know is top or best because of Wile E. Coyote. | |
| 12 | Sound point preceding two more (7) |
| NARROWS – One version of a sound or inlet or strait, though some are -um- wider. The point N[orth] precedes ARROW and S[outh]. Arguably two ARROWS would also do. | |
| 13 | Endless dread in ship: seamen were in dazed state (3,5) |
| SAW STARS – Dread is AWE, cut the E. Place in SS for ship and add TARS for seamen. | |
| 15 | Grouse hearts Graves perhaps consumes (5) |
| WHINE – Graves is a specific WINE. Ingest, from a deck of cards H[earts] | |
| 18 | Spirits not initially present: some here perhaps! (5) |
| HADES – Spirits, particularly of the underworld, are SHADES. Absent their first letter. Arguably there is an &littish flavour to this clue. | |
| 20 | Drunk aunt stops woman quaffing black and tan (8) |
| SUNBATHE – A matryoshka clue, B[lack] inside an anagram (drunken) of AUNT, inside SHE who must be obeyed… | |
| 23 | Carriage about to stop at nightclub (7) |
| CABARET – For carriage read CAB, follow with RE for about “stopping” AT. | |
| 25 | Right character feeding bird in treeless plain (7) |
| PRAIRIE – R[ight] plus AIR for character inside [mag]PIE for bird. | |
| 26 | He’s one advertisement for sister to hold over (8,7) |
| PERSONAL PRONOUN – Chambers marks PERSONAL for advertisement as an American usage: whatever, it’s then PRO (for) a NUN (sister) holding O[ver]. | |
| 27 | Wife leaving order is notorious (6) |
| ARRANT – Always puts me in mind of Henry V’s Fluellen: “Kill the poys and the luggage! ’tis expressly against the law of arms: ’tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offer’t; in your conscience, now, is it not?”. We just remove the W[ife] from WARRANT for order. | |
| 28 | Immature king has it in for campaigner (8) |
| CRUSADER – …and here’s good old S[ex] A[ppeal] standing in for “it” contained in a CRUDE, immature R[ex] or king. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Exceptional clue? (6) |
| SIGNAL – Two definitions. | |
| 2 | Risk to health — bachelor, one with nothing to say, tentatively? (9) |
| BIOHAZARD – B[achelor] and I (one) and O (nothing) and HAZARD for say tentatively, such as I’m prepared to do for this blog. | |
| 3 | Battels misused for MDMA consignment? (7) |
| TABLETS – An anagram (misused) of BATTELS. In Oxford colleges (and others among academe) battels are accounts rendered by kitchens and butteries (sic) for provisions, which sort of makes sense of the wording. MDMA is the drug Ecstasy. | |
| 4 | Former Kent player always around to save English (5) |
| REEVE – I am genuinely mystified by this. Not by the wordplay: that’s just EVER (always) reversed with an E[nglish] chucked in. But I’ve been through the entire list of everyone who ever played for Kent, and there’s no Reeve, ever. Dermot Reeve played for Sussex, Warwickshire and Somerset, and for England, mostly in ODI’s. Oh b****r, I’ve just realised. It’s Clark Kent, isn’t it! And Christopher Reeve. Well, I’ve had so much fun typing up that righteous indignation stuff I’m leaving it in. Enjoy! | |
| 6 | See file under B — something pencilled in? (7) |
| EYEBROW – Not on my face, it isn’t . But see gives EYE, then place ROW for file (rank and…) under B. | |
| 7 | Saint in Lisbon quaffing fifty-five shots (5) |
| SALVO – SAO for saint may be the only Portuguese you know, but throw in the Roman fifty five, LV. | |
| 8 | Chant, somehow anguished, hard to be ignored (5,3) |
| AGNUS DEI – Remove the letters of hard from ANGUISHED, then anagram (somehow) what remains. | |
| 9 | Idiot keeping in with G&S activities (6-2) |
| GOINGS-ON – Idiot is GOON, insert IN and G and S. | |
| 14 | French friend beheaded one possessed by Devil (8) |
| ALSATIAN – Messed around with AMI for too long. It’s [p]AL plus the devil, SATAN possessing I (one). Not the German Shepherd, but the person from Alsace, French region sometimes owned by Germany. | |
| 16 | Writer is with crowd outside court (9) |
| ISHERWOOD – Christopher, author of 10a. IS plus HERD for crowd surrounding WOO for court. | |
| 17 | Plant elegant parrot devours quietly (8) |
| CHICKPEA – Your elegant parrot is a CHIC KEA. Insert P for quietly. | |
| 19 | Loris butchered at home: delicious meat (7) |
| SIRLOIN – An anagram (butchered) of LORIS plus IN for at home. | |
| 21 | Strong women almost stagger working with spades (7) |
| AMAZONS – AMAZE for stagger with the E missing, ON for working (my computer is on) and S[pades], more from the deck of cards | |
| 22 | Take furtive look round a new tower at Pisa? (6) |
| LEANER – Is a LEER a furtive look? Chambers allows, so OK. Insert A N[ew]. I didn’t realise the Tower was especially skinny…. | |
| 24 | Wooden ships damaged by this tidal wave on river (5) |
| BORER – Any burrowing creature that makes holes in wood. A BORE is a tidal wave (especially on the Severn), add the R[iver] | |
| 25 | Musician Philip seen with his missus? (5) |
| PIPER – So I think this works with our former royal couple, Philip reduced to PIP and ER his wife and sovereign. | |
I parsed 5A as the letters of spare were to be anagrammed (manufactured) plus parted by the letter i (India). I enjoyed this clue.
Or to quibble slightly, the anagram PERSA parts (splits) in order to accommodate (to allow in) the I.
I failed miserably on this, just couldn’t see what was going on with many of the clues. NHO GOODBYE TO BERLIN and couldn’t see the anagrist. Likewise ISHERWOOD. Didn’t know ‘shades’ for spirits. I managed AGNUS DEI after some juggling with the anagrist. A few write-ins such as SALVO, PERSIA, PRAIRIE, REEVE (missed the Clark bit too), SOB STORY, SUNBATHE and others but altogether too difficult for me today. COD to AMAZONS.
Thanks Z and setter.
DNF
I didn’t get BIOHAZARD, partly because I bunged in HOSTS instead of HADES, and true to form, forgot to go back and see if it actually worked. And even though I had TO BERLIN, and ISHERWOOD,I had to look it up to get GOODBYE. Got the rest, but after ages.
I had HOSTS too, which slowed me down on BIOHAZARD. Once I saw that, I started typing it in, before being mystified as to why BIOHAZARDS didn’t fit. The penny dropped a moment later.
This caused my DNF, so confident was I that “hosts” worked.
I also started with HOSTS. I couldn’t see how the definition worked but then I couldn’t explain ‘spirits’ for SHADES either.
53 minutes over two sessions as I was stuck overnight and decided to resume in the morning.
I was pleased to spot the ‘Kent player’ device as I’ve never seen any of the films in question right through, but I took an interest in one of them (maybe the first) because the square outside Milton Keynes station was used for filming and one morning I had to walk through the dressed location as I crossed to my office.
I also spotted the ISHEROOD theme although I failed fully to parse CABARET. Isherwood’s books set in the Weimar era are brilliant and well worth reading (or re-reading). They are Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939) sometimes published together as The Berlin Stories. The adaptations for stage and film (Van Druten’s I Am a Camera and the musical Cabaret) don’t really do them justice, although it can’t be denied they brought the writings to the attention of a huge audience worldwide.
I didn’t know the Portuguese for saint and actually found Sao quite hard to verify as it doesn’t appear as a standalone entry in any of the usual sources. Google Translate said ‘Sao’ in Portuguese means ‘they are’ (?) and the Portuguese for ‘saint’ is ‘santa’ (feminine) or ‘santo’ (masculine). My AI assistant offered ‘santo’ and only after a supplementary prompt from me in which I mentioned ‘sao’ did it reluctantly explain “São is used before names of saints that start with a consonant (except ‘H’)”. The knowledge of foreign languages we need to have seems to be expanding.
I worked it out from São Paulo.
são is the 3d person plural of ser ‘to be’, hence ‘they are’.
Thanks. I have literally no knowledge of Spanish other than that gleaned from The Cisco Kid and subsequent Westerns.
Spanish and Portuguese are very different! Speaking the former in Lisbon will not win you any friends.
Films very seldom do books justice, imo. But Cabaret, although different to the book in its approach, is nevertheless a fine effort. Joel Gray is unforgettable.
(another Sao Paulo here)
Oh yes, the film is very good despite completely changing the character of Sally Bowles who is rather central to the story, but I understand that was necessary to make it a vehicle for Liza Minnelli and raise and recoup the investment. It’s also somewhat different from the stage musical which was a little more faithful to the books. I’ve seen several productions, the best being directed by Sam Mendes at the Donmar in 1993 with Alan Cummings (before he was famous) as Emcee. I still don’t like the Pineapple song though, so it was a bonus when that didn’t make it to the film.
I’d never seen Cabaret and knew nothing of what it was about but had always wanted to see it. About 10 years ago I found a DVD of it and bought it. I have to say that it’s one of the darkest films I’ve ever seen with the theme of the upcoming war in the background and the inclusion of the German youth singing in a setting that looked like something from The Sound of Music but with a very different message. I agree that Joel Gray was brilliant as the MC.
About the same time I also managed to secure a mint-condition copy of the soundtrack on vinyl and the quality is first-class. The ‘Money’ track in particular is super but the whole album is great. Unfortunately, I can’t listen to the track ‘Tomorrow Belongs To Me’, too dark.
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band covered the song in an album of the same name in the 70s. Great Band albeit an acquired taste! This was before the song was adopted by far right groups even though it was written by two Jewish composers for the stage play.
No, a far right group adopted the song before the war, allegedly 🙂
Not a fan of musicals personally but Cabaret made quite an impression on 14 year old me. I agree the setting of Tomorrow Belongs To Me is one of the most sinister things I’ve ever seen on film
As Gerry says the SAHB version is superb, one of the first gigs I ever saw was SAHB supporting Slade. Alex performing Framed is one of my unforgettable live experiences more than 50 years on. He also famously sprayed Vambo Rools across a Yes Roger Dean backdrop because they wouldn’t let him use his own.
And one final fun fact courtesy of the Mark Lewisohn book, the Beatles once shared a bill with an early Alex Harvey band before they were famous.
15:13. I was thankful to be able to biff a few today where I either didn’t have the GK or didn’t spot the cryptic. REEVE was one such, where I thought it was somehow referencing an old magistrate. SALVO was another, though with hindsight having visited Lisbon and Porto last year I must have seen SAO. I finally finished with GOODBYE TO BERLIN which I didn’t know, and hadn’t fully parsed. After I realised the first word was GOODBYE I just guessed Berlin. Lucky to make it through unscathed!
Me too, re REEVE. I thought Kent player, ie one who performed on the road to Canterbury… okay it’s a bit of a stretch
47 minutes, both helped and hindered by my knowledge. For example, knowing that FUNERAL IN BERLIN is a Len Deighton novel was actively unhelpful. Knowing that St Vincent is patron saint of Lisbon (Bristol’s St Vincent’s Rocks are named after him, apparently following the installation of a shrine there by Portuguese sailors) was merely distracting. Knowing ISHERWOOD only for Mr Norris Changes Trains: slightly helpful, but I never connected him with 10a.
One very helpful thing was doing the puzzle on paper, which let me write in HOSTS very lightly indeed at 10a so unlike Kevin I managed to ignore the misbegotten S when searching for the BIOHAZARD, luckily, and then successfully correct it to HADES to finish.
I thought the Kent player might somehow be a reference to the Reeve in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. In he went without further consideration of how exactly this might parse. Luckily it didn’t matter.
I was held up , like others above, by having HOSTS until BIOHAZARD made it impossible. I also had GRIPE instead of WHINE for much of the time – surely RIP had to be something to do with the graves reference? NHO graves as a wine.
Staggered across the line in 40+ minutes
If you like red wine you have a treat in store!
I stumbled to REEVE via the same fortuitous path!
I also saw Reeve as a Chaucer pilgrim, as they were heading for Canterbury in Kent.
Wonderful PDM when ISHERWOOD fell, but it was still after submission that I linked CABARET. I did wonder if we had a Guardian-type theme puzzle, but didn’t find any others.
Thanks for REEVE, I knew he played for Warwickshire and eventually assumed something to do with the Canterbury Tales, as above. Also had HOSTS originally, also had Len Deighton in mind. And no idea re ACADEME.
19’28”, thanks z and setter.
22.30
Excellent fun! NHO GOODBYE TO BERLIN, my cultural level being more funereal.
LOI BIOHAZARD
COD REEVE
Despite ISHERWOOD going straight in from “Writer is” I took forever to spot the novel which I was sure had to be TROUBLE something. After ruling out CEYLON I finally arrived at BERLIN for my PDM. Didn’t parse it though or spot the CABARET connection.
Just under 40 mins for a good tough puzzle, thanks both.
I was thinking at one point is there a novel called Trouble in Ceylon? Perhaps there should be 😊
17:40
A tricky one with lots of bits being inserted into other stuff. As usual the theme passed me by and I momentarily wondered if Dermot Reeve had actually played for Kent as I wrote in the obvious answer. A bit too subtle for me that one!
47 minutes. Having got Isherwood early, I should have thought of GOODBYE TO BERLIN, read in the sixties, sooner. As a result, CABARET was another late arrival. LOI was BORER, not understood but biffed from the impressive Severn moving wall of water. COD to FOI SOB STORY, seen straightaway. An easier puzzle to start than finish. Being more of a cricket than superman fan, I got Reeve first via an erroneous Dermot too. Thank you Z and setter.
Some tricky clues here .. failed to parse academe or Reeve, surely my cod. Nho Dermot, which no doubt helped.
I hoped for more from the Isherwood theme, but can’t see anything else.
Full of nice things, and not particularly difficult IMO for a Thursday, I managed to polish this one off in 35.
The REEVE clue is fiendish: the wordplay leads to the answer unequivocally, but I wasn’t sure even then.
As for ISHERWOOD, I pretend to myself I’ve read the Berlin stuff, but actually I’ve only ever bothered with watching Cabaret. As someone said, Joel Gray is superbly creepy.
Many thanks Zab.
The books are very direct in their style and make for an easy read.
Didn’t see the KENT connection. Very good. Didn’t see the CABARET connection either. LOI NARROWS. 24’14” all up.
I am somewhat abashed at the times recorded above, because I struggled with this (about an hour in total, there were interruptions) and was relieved just to finish it correctly. Many thanks to Z for explaining many of those that I hesitantly entered from definition and could not parse. Like CRUSADER, for instance. By my reckoning (others will obviously disagree) we had a comparatively straightforward puzzle on Monday followed by three toughies, with the notorious Friday offering yet to come. Yikes!
From Tombstone Blues:
The king of the Philistines his soldiers to save
Puts jawbones on their tombstones and flatters their graves
Puts the pied PIPERs in prison and fattens the slaves
Then sends them out to the jungle
It’s why I never post my times .. don’t want you to become terminally depressed 🙂
And, times are SO unimportant
Well that’s kind of you Jerry! But I am fairly resilient and bounced back today (Monday) with a near PB. I agree the times don’t matter that much, I often take the scenic route for an enjoyable leisurely solve, but the blog site IS called Times for the Times…
I didn’t post yesterday as it was my worst performance for months with only half the grid done before I threw in the towel. Back to form today with a not speedy, not slow (for me) completion of 37 mins.
Made the same mistakes as others. I had HOSTS in for far too long, was convinced AMI had to be beheaded for the start of a synonym for devil.
Didn’t think too long about the Kent cricketer assuming it was someone I hadn’t heard of. I like to think I would have got the Superman reference if I had put the brain power into it.
A few I didn’t quite get HADES, NARROWS, WHINE etc but the word play or definition was kind. Cheers for clearing them up!
COD EYEBROWS
Cheers blogger and setter
Off to a racing start with SOB STORY and PERSIA. Having minimal knowledge of which cricketer plays for which team, I shoved in REEVE without a thought. Now that Z has brought the correct parsing to our attention, I think it’s a superb clue! I didn’t know the ISHERWOOD books, but once I had TO BERLIN, together with REEVE and TABLETS, GOODBYE seemed the obvious choice. At that point I discarded my unparsed, biffed BACTERIUM and assembled BIOHAZARD. Smiled at CHICKPEA and LEANER. LOI was SAW STARS. 20:53. Thanks setter and Z.
I too had BACTERIUM to begin with – that hesitancy looked so much like an UM!
That was my rationale too!
I made very heavy weather of this, but in my defence :
1. I’ve never seen a Superman film, nor have I read one of the comics since 1960. Not my genre guv.
2. CABARET was in quite early, so by the time I eventually worked out the novel it was a distant memory – hence I never saw the link, and the author went in last.
3. I had “hosts” at 18A for ages, and actually rejected BIOHAZARD until it couldn’t be anything else.
4. “it” couldn’t possibly be “SA” so soon after its last intrusion could it? Oh damn, it is!
5. It’s over 60 years since I was a choirboy, and as a born again atheist the “Lamb of God” was more of a lost sheep.
6. I eventually biffed ALSATIAN and await the RSPCA dropping by.
Aside from all that, I didn’t need reminding that SIRLOIN is delicious, but dentally I have “Pam Ayers Syndrome” and it’s off the menu.
FOI PERSIA
LOI I SHERWOOD
COD CHICKPEA
TIME 23:13
LOL
Like some others I had confidently written in ” hosts” and sort of half parsed it to the extent that I didn’t revisit it. Instead I looked blankly at Bio-whatsits until I gave up. Otherwise I had done pretty well. I did get the Isherwood/Cabaret connection but not the link to the novel which I’d misremembered as the Deighton book.
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
Time: ages.
Got through it, but it took a while.
Thanks, Z.
Had no trouble with 4d; the moment I see ‘Kent’ in a cryptic I assume it’s Clark Kent/Superman, so it was my FOI. The rest of this was just the right side of difficult, though I wasted a very long time on NARROWS and ALSATIAN. Just couldn’t let go of the ‘ami’ misdirection.
34:13
Got to admit, my first thought for 4d was Dermot REEVE – and wondered how others might feel about a relatively obscure (apologies Dermot if you’re reading this) cricketer, and presumably still with us, being included in the Times Crossword. Didn’t know that he hadn’t played for Kent. In retrospect, a very good clue. Absolutely no idea about ISHERWOOD’s output, but with all checkers in, managed to piece together BERLIN from the anagrist, and guessed the rest – also no idea that CABARET was related. Finest moment for me of this puzzle was landing on ALSATIAN, though I failed to parse other than as a ‘French friend’ i.e. man’s best friend.
Thanks Z and setter
😅
Cabaret is my favourite film of all time, so nice to see this homage to it (and its sources). I’ve seen stage versions with Will Young in Manchester and the current show in London, and seen the film … many times. It contains the best line in cinema:
“So do you still think you can control them?”
The bar scene for “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” was perfect (and also perfectly parodied in Spitting Image).
Yes, Joel Gray is good, but so too are all the other actors (and particularly Michael York). The film does a better job of explaining how dictatorships come about than any other work of art.
Obviously all the above is just my opinion; I just got so excited seeing my favourite crossword reference my favourite film!
PS Great crossword too!
Michael York seemed like a wet lettuce to me. Amazed he ever managed to get as far from mummy as Berlin..
But in Michael York’s defence no one can pull off “wet lettuce” roles as well as he does. My favourite would be his aristocratic fop in Accident alongside Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker. And in The Riddle of the Sands he actually develops from a “wet lettuce” at the outset to the resolute
foiler of a German invasion of England by the climax!
I made heavy weather of this. I thought I’d done well to finish a real toughie without aids, but on reviewing comments here it probably wasn’t as hard as I made it. I had most of the GK, being very familiar with Cabaret (seen it several times). I’ve never read the books it was based on but knew the names and am familiar with Isherwood through his connexions with Auden, Hockney etc. I thought “notorious” for ARRANT and “furtive look” for leer were both a stretch, but defensible. I was actually helped by ignorance in the case of REEVE: I didn’t see the superman connection but I couldn’t name a single Kent cricketer so it was easy to assume there was one called Reeve.
DNF
Just couldn’t see the HAZARD bit of BIOHAZARD nor the connecting ACADEME (acme for top (when there are so many other synonyms) has done for me before). And of course SHADES for spirits. I must confess to having to squint very hard to see that. Easy with the middle D but hard if you are stuck on BIO.
Not a wonderful performance all round struggling to put the book together and generally being quite tardy.
SAW STARS was good.
Thanks Z and setter
44:24. That was a fun one – pretty tough though. I know nothing of Isherwood but now I suppose I’ll give them a shot. are those the best of his books?- happy for any recommendations!
I loved the Kent / Reeve rant … I was going down the same route, thinking it was all rather specialist knowledge… until the penny finally plummeted.
a real treat today. thanks!
I think all of Isherwood’s early works are semiautobiographical and the Berlin books I mentioned above are the best of them. They read more like memoirs and are inhabited by memorable characters with fictional names but mostly based on real people or amalgams of several.
I hadn’t seen your suggestions above – now have and thanks!
Two goes needed.
– Didn’t see how a sob was an unpleasant person, as it never occurred to me that it was an abbreviation
– Not familiar with GOODBYE TO BERLIN and really struggled to work out which bits were the anagrist, even after I’d got pleasing=good
– Hadn’t heard of Graves red wine, but the checkers made clear it had to be WHINE
– Didn’t know shades are spirits of the underworld so HADES went in with a shrug
– Can’t recall seeing the word ‘battels’ before but the cluing for TABLETS was kind
– Managed to spot which kind of Kent was needed to get REEVE
– Invented CHICAPPE for 17d, and only corrected to CHICKPEA once I got ARRANT
– Tried to justify Philip GLASS for 25d, thinking that at a stretch ‘missus’ could give ‘lass’, before CRUSADER ruled that out
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Leaner
LOI Chickpea
COD Eyebrow
40 mins. I have written this comment three times and deleted it three times. But I am still perturbed. How does French = ALSATIAN? French what? French person maybe or French wine possibly, but just French? I don’t get it. Maybe we’ll see « English « soon and the answer could be Lancastrian or Kentish or Cornish for instance. Bah.
Thanks Z and setter (apart from the above!)
Yes, I agree it’s mildly vexing…. but just about fair IMO. We regularly have US state residents clued as ‘Americans’ (had one last week, I seem to recall) and nobody is unduly perturbed.
I’m more troubled by the insistence that an Alsatian person is French. If you’re from Alsace there’s a good bet you feel more, or at least equally, German…
Maybe but whatever you feel, where do your taxes go?
If you’re French you’re avoiding most of them
Trust me, things have changed !
Thing is, though, “American” can mean an American, but “French” tout court is never used to refer to a French person. “She’s a French” you never hear.
Thank you.
32 – A bit harder than usual but with no particular quibbles. The Isherwood/GtB/Cabaret nexus was clever – but not particularly helpful in the end.
Haven’t read either Goodbye to B nor Cabaret, though I have read All the Conspirators, a minor effort. Nice to see Graves mentioned in the clues, wasn’t Robert Graves a friend of Isherwood?
Hosts for Hades ruined it for me, DNF.
“A woeful ballad, made to his mistress’s eyebrow’ (All the World’s a Stage)
This took me around an hour and a half! I persevered and finished all correct, so it was time well spent, I would say.
Excellent, challenging puzzle – my COD to Chickpea with its NZ parrot.
Off the wavelength to the point that seeing the Clark Kent reference was about my only victory. One up to the setter.
13:57. Tricky one. NHO the novel, so missed the theme obviously. Also never seen the musical. I did spot the Superman reference.
It/SA, grumble grumble…
Battels cover not just food and drink (kitchen and buttery, the latter from bouteillerie as is butler) but room rent, ie the whole package.
FOI SOB STORY
LOI SUNBATHE
COD CHICKPEA
About 30 minutes in two bites, before breakfast and after tea.
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
Well I finished it but some poor definitions here I thought, LEANER as a noun is desperate, FRENCH for a specific region, EYE for SEE (instead of look). I’m not in love with SOB and DELICIOUS in 19d seems like a personal opinion. Not my favourite puzzle of late!
I was also distracted by the whole Dermot Reeve farago.
Done quite slowly on the way back from Eastbourne (brain dulled by watching hours of whizzing tennis balls). Took me two stabs with a pause to change trains at East Croydon, probably 45 minutes in total. Was baffled by the Dermot Reeve reference – surely not such a lesser cricketer of history, and didn’t he play for lots of counties but not Kent – when eventually the penny dropped, what a good clue.
The Isherwood book was a very distant memory, almost a guess. As “Rosé de” says, the French clue was nonsense. OK, Alsace is in France, but an Alsatian is a German shepherd? A French what?
34 minutes and I don’t feel quite so stupid now looking at the other times here!
Once I got Goodbye to Berlin and Cabaret I got Isherwood immediately ( I had already wondered about -WOO-)
The one that really slowed me down though was ALSATIAN which took a good 5 minutes at the end. I had the clue completely wrongly parsed and was looking for AMI or MI etc etc and it was only an alphabet trawl that got to L and then suddenly seeing SAT-I-AN that finally got me there.
That was a really clever and enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks setter and blogger
I started this too late, so took it to bed and finished it in the morning. Even though I completed it, I did not really enjoy it. There were too many clues where I had to biff the answer and then work back to see that they really fitted the clueing. And, as already noted, there were several where we seemed to be sailing close to the wind. PERSONAL = advertisement? CRUDE = immature? AGNUS DEI = chant? LEER = furtive look (I would have said the opposite!)? ALSATIAN = French? And. GOOD = pleasant, in 10ac. I just thought there were rather too many of these MER clues. I fell into the cricketing trap with Dermot REEVE, remembering he was a much-travelled player and wrongly assuming Kent was one of his resting places. And I thought that ER in the final part of 25dn was ‘ER, the Cockney missus, rather than a slightly disrespectful reference to the late HM. Grump now over.
FOI – SOB STORY
LOI – BORER
COD – ISHERWOOD
Thanks to Zabadak and other contributors.
34.50 very late to the party but no time to do it yesterday. Pretty tricky I thought with a lot of time spent on alsatian( another becalmed by trying to work out why ami wasn’t in the frame), sunbathe and crusader.
Enjoyed it though. On to Friday puzzle next.