A much appreciated puzzle completed (mostly parsed) in 23.12, which seems to be about par for me on blogging Thursdays. A lot of great surfaces inviting (possibly controversial) commentary, and as far as I can find out (it’s hard to search) a first entry for the (made in China) Red Hat. I particularly liked the clue using the extended version of a punctuation mark: easy to miss.
Definitions underlined in italics, exclusions and deletions in []
| Across | |
| 1 | Only entering to be tossed out (8) |
| OBSOLETE – Only is SOLE, to be entered into an anagram (tossed) of TO BE. Out as in out of date/use. | |
| 6 | Deeply cracked Conservative Lord receives bungs (6) |
| CHASMY – Not and adjective that trips easily off the tongue, or out of the wordplay. C[onservative] and MY for Lord (as an exclamation). Then, I think, HAS for receives bungs it up. Nominations for the literal character risk litigation. | |
| 9 | West Ham’s unable to decide about the German substitute’s deal (13) |
| UNDERSTANDING – West ‘Am is yet another way of indicating the missing H, in this case off [H]UNG for undecided (jury, election). Insert DER, the, in German, and STAND-IN substituting for -um- substitute. West Ham did decide to sign Niclas Füllkrug of Borussia Dortmund for £27m in 2024 on a 4 year deal. | |
| 10 | Shamed when dancing — what’s that called? (2,4) |
| EM DASH – ← That short one is an en dash, the one in the clues is our entry, and an anagram (dancing) of SHAMED | |
| 11 | White queen that is shy (8) |
| RIESLING – Queen is R, add IE for that is and SLING for shy. | |
| 13 | Where Kent reports assembled men returning briefly from European country (10) |
| METROPOLIS – Fool me once, shame on you… Kent is Clark, not county. I was so pleased with myself for not being fooled twice, I forgot to parse, but it’s MET for assembled, OR for men, reversed, and POLIS[h] from European country “briefly”. | |
| 15 | Musical duo with terrible acting (4) |
| WHAM – George Michael and the other one. W[ith] plus HAM for terrible acting. | |
| 16 | No ordinary people rejected this dodgy dealer (4) |
| SPIV – VIPS backwards. | |
| 18 | Note old lady securing make-up with capital backing (10) |
| MEMORANDUM – MUM, the universal old lady, takes in (genetic) make-up DNA and ROME, the capital, both backwards. | |
| 21 | I agree to try capturing flightless bird (4,4) |
| HEAR HEAR – To try is to HEAR, insert RHEA, the flightless bird. | |
| 22 | Hoping to get in the club by going round back entrance (6) |
| BROODY – BY surrounds DOOR for entrance backwards. | |
| 23 | Predictive text taking time might put across daughter’s irritation (7,6) |
| ITCHING POWDER – The I CHING is the ancient Chinese divination text. Insert T[ime], follow with POWER for might around D[aughter]. | |
| 25 | Demonstrate anger about opening to Deadpool 4 (6) |
| REDDEN – RE for about, opening for Deadpool D and DEN for a version of 4d earth. Marvel still haven’t decided whether there will be a fourth in the franchise. | |
| 26 | Future bishop welcomed by academic mostly wearing drag (8) |
| TOMORROW – R[ight] R[everend] bishop inside most of MOO[t] for academic inside TOW for drag. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | How delightful paring rind in cheese from Aston? (7) |
| BRUMMIE – If you don’t know Aston is part of Birmingham you might struggle here. “How delightful” translates to YUMMY which needs to have its outer skin pared off before being inserted into the cheese BRIE | |
| 3 | Land Rover I’m reassembling in Mississippi (3,3,5) |
| OLD MAN RIVER – An anagram (reassembling) of LAND ROVER I’M for the song from Showboat rendered by Paul Robeson. The literal perhaps suggests the much Trumpeted deal done with the UK to limit US tariffs. | |
| 4 | Sorry to wrap gift for our home (5) |
| EARTH – EH for sorry (you mean pardon!) with ART for gift enclosed. | |
| 5 | Charm of canal where ecstasy is exchanged for heroin (7) |
| ENTHRAL – Of canal leads you to ENTERAL, then you change the second E[cstasy] to H[eroin]. | |
| 6 | Talk about revolutionary leader beheaded for Edward? (9) |
| CONFESSOR – Edward, King of England before the ill-fated Harold. CONFER for talk enclosing a reversed and decapitated [b]OSS for leader. | |
| 7 | Angers China mounting incomplete screening method (3) |
| AMI – Angers asks you for the French version of CRS china plate -mate. It’s also the reverse (mounting) of IMA[x], a cinematic ultra wide screening system. | |
| 8 | Political slogan putting medical speciality in shade (7) |
| MAGENTA – It had to come: MAGA encloses ENT, ear nose and throat the medical speciality. | |
| 12 | Widespread rules control a wand or deregulate cloaks (3,3,5) |
| LAW AND ORDER – Hidden in controL A WAND OR DERegulate. | |
| 14 | Old Italian Mass held by church leader — one who’s from Scotland? (9) |
| POMPEIIAN – M[ass] within POPE (definitely a church leader!) plus I (one) and IAN, who’s from Scotland. | |
| 17 | Board under pressure to exercise authority (7) |
| PRESIDE – Board as a verb leads to RESIDE. Place under P[ressure] | |
| 19 | Millions are ruing what regularly struck best mate? (2,5) |
| MR RIGHT – M[illions] then the alternate letters of aRe RuInG wHaT. | |
| 20 | Release missing duck — it follows bear (7) |
| UNDERGO – UNDO for release without its O (zero, duck) and ERGO for it follows, therefore. | |
| 22 | Open book to appear threatening (5) |
| BLOOM – Open as a verb. B[ook] plus LOOM, appear threatening. | |
| 24 | Scoundrel’s magic word to remove a piece of underwear — twice! (3) |
| CAD – Abracadabra without two renditions of A BRA. Saucy. | |
Thank you, Z, I needed a lot of that. Most of my answers were reverse engineered; not very many I could have come to starting from the wordplay.
23:22 Whoof, what a workout. I see it pushed Verlaine over the 10-minute mark, so not one for the faint-hearted.
All rather brilliant though, fun to solve and even moreso to parse. So many clues worthy of mention, but I especially appreciated the setter’s effort in seeing HEAR HEAR from a completely different angle.
Thanks setter and thanks Z, they should pay you double for parsing this one.
I, unusually, didn’t have the patience to finish this. So we’re dealing with words like “enteral,” eh? I don’t think I would ever have thought of CHASMY (for real?!). I had MAGENTA but a presumably trauma-induced blind spot about MAGA.
Like Guy, I gave up on this one (at least overnight) for lack of progress and I also share his discomfort in having to deal with words such as ‘enteral’ and CHASMY in the process.
My total solving time over two sessions was in the region of 85 minutes. I wonder if we shill have a rare easy Friday by way of compensation.
Ha-ha!
DNF after a long time. I thought of the French city but couldn’t put ‘Angers’ and ‘China’ together and mucked up CONFESSOR, having CONFESS for ‘Talk’ and then putting in an unparsed ER for the final two letters, even though it looked wrong. Same thoughts as Jack about tomorrow.
DOD (Dictionary Of the Day) to the ODE / Oxford Dictionaries Premium for not including CHASMY.
I felt lucky to finish this eventually. CHASMY was one of those words that may or may not exist, but not a lot of doubt as to its meaning if it does. ENERAL taken on faith (the spellchecker here does not like it) but I suppose ENTERITIS is inflammation of it. LOI was REDDEN, very confusing since I’d looked and thought 4 was ENTHRAL which didn’t lead to DEN. It was only when I came here to see how it worked I discovered 4 was EARTH not ENTHRAL.
I got CONFESSOR but with CONFESS for talk leaving OR (or RO) as a revolutionary leader beheaded. I just assumed there was one I couldn’t think of, which, of coiurse, there was not.
The clue has “West Ham” (not “West ’Am”), which indicates the H, but I don’t see any removal indicator.
It’a Cockney indicator like ‘Bow’, with West Ham being part of east London where they allegedly all drop aitches.
Oh, right. The H in “West Ham” was distracting me. It’s the H in HUNG, as pronounced by someone within earshot of Bow Bells, not the H in Ham, that is relevant.
The setter’s attempt to ring the changes on Bow and EastEnders etc. Also relevant to the surface is that West Ham is likely to refer as much to the local football team as to the place itself and that accounts for Z’s supplementary comment.
This is the longest I’ve ever stared at a crossword, and I finally submitted at 1h13 with trepidation, only to be met with a single wrong letter – API for AMI. Nooooooooo! I was thinking of ‘application programming interface’ for a screening method. More irritating is that I’d also thought of IMAX. Thank you for pointing out that Angers is in France which I fatally failed to spot.
This was a true odyssey which is also making me slightly late for work. Still, gave it my best! CHASMY – insane! Couldn’t believe the I Ching making an appearance, or the cleverness of some of the other clues.
Similar experience, with LOI 7d ANI being the automatic number identification used to screen calls, as a backward hidden in China. Unfortunately it left the Angers part unaccounted for. As soon as I saw the pink square I realised what the answer should be.
I loved the workout; 40minutes of great penny-drop moments. Could Friday be any more testing than this? I hope so.
Wow, another one to add to MRI and API!
Comprehensively defeated by this one, but I was delighted by the clues for ’em dash’ and ‘cad’. Chambers only has Pompeian with one i, but two appears elsewhere on the web so I guess it’s legit.
Got about 90% there. A misspelt REISLING caused trouble for CONFESSOR, and I had UNDERSTUDYING for “substitutes deal”, and MRI for “screening method”. That last one was for me completely impossible, “ami” is not really a known word for me, and “angers” is not a place in France I have heard of. I was at the British Film Institute yesterday, but still didn’t think of IMAX.
CHASMY? Is that seriously a word? And who else banged in TRIDENTINE for “old Latin mass” before finding out it didn’t fit.
COD METROPOLIS
This was tough but appreciated some very clever clues finished in 1 hr 9 mins without succumbing to external help though sorely tempted.
So many traps and surprises
COD MR RIGHT on basis it is difficult to disguise „regularly“ clues but this one did.
Using boss for leader in CONFESSOR when you are looking for the first letter of a word instead. Thinking assembled has to be an anagrind rather than simply MET in METROPOLIS . All good
22.25
Indeed, an excellent workout!
I think we had Lois Lane recently, so Clark Kent redresses the balance. Quite a tour d’horizon, geographically from Brum to Mississippi, Angers to Pompeii, and temporally from WHAM to SPIV.
LOI CHASMY
COD EM DASH
About 65 but missed AMI, so DNF. I thought this was really tough, even though many of the clues were quite brilliant. Some less so (I’m looking at you, CHASMY). Thanks for the blog Z, very much needed today.
From Tomorrow Is A Long Time:
If today was not an endless highway
If tonight was not a crooked trail
If TOMORROW wasn’t such a long time
Then lonesome would mean nothing to me at all
Stopped after 40′ without METROPOLIS / POMPEIIAN, although I had Superman (fixated on the Daily Planet newsroom) and IAN. Wouldn’t have submitted anyway due to the doubt re CHASMY. An excellent puzzle.
Could I please be the first to point out that West Ham and Aston Villa play in the same colours? Couldn’t find Burnley though.
Thanks z and setter.
Some good fortune here that I went to school in Aston for 7 years as I didn’t have a clue about the parsing of BRUMMIE.
Spotted the Clark Kent reference straight away and then wondered how I could use Daily Planet to come up with a country. The penny dropped as letters revealed themselves.
Couldn’t see the parsing for TOMORROW but what else fits there?
AMI (defeated for too long by an old) trickwas last one in which alongside ITCHING POWDER and CHASMY accounted for the majority of my time.
COD: BROODY
Edit: Just to say I thought this was a really good puzzle.
I thought it was The Globe but just checked and thats Spiderman. Luckily it didn’t matter
Same here regarding Metropolis and Batman’s Gotham distracting me. Someone needs to call my fourth grade teacher and tell her I’ll be sorry later in life if I don’t spend more time reading comics on the sly and stamping facts into my head
An hour and change for this beast.
LOI was CHASMY – had to come here to parse it. AMI was also late as I forgot the Angers = French signifier.
Also didn’t parse REDDEN fully so thanks Z.
COD: BRUMMIE
DNF. Having biffed TOMORROW, the CHASMY/MAGENTA crosser was beyond me. I’ve never heard of the first and I’m pleased to say that I didn’t think of MAGA. The bootleg Idiot Wind (my favourite version) helped me throw the I Ching to get Itching Powder. And COD to OLD MAN RIVER of course. I used to love the short programmes of Paul Robeson that BBC Radio used to have back in the day. A bit too difficult a puzzle for me. Thank you Z and setter.
Wow! 51 mins but I enjoyed it immensely. Had all the GK for once if not all the obscure vocab.
I had talk = CONFESS and biffed the OR, BRUMMIE entirely from Aston and NHO Enteral but otherwise all parsed I think.
LOI AMI from IMAX before twigging the Angers ruse. Again.
FOI OLD MAN RIVER followed by my COD METROPOLIS otherwise not sure how I would have got a foothold.
Many thanks to Zabadak and setter.
71 mins.
Glad to get through it and complete correctly. Tricky stuff.
Thanks, Z.
22:45
A few answers obvious some time before the complex wordplay was unpicked and one day I will remember the Clark Kent device. CHASMY is a daft word and an odd choice given there are perfectly good alternatives for the C-A-M- pattern.
chacma a baboon
chammy I wouldn’t use this. Alternative to shammy (leather)
charms
chasms
chasmy Just added to Cheating Machine in honour of this Xword. I wouldn’t use it.
claims
clammy
Funny, as an Australian a chamois is a chammie, there is no possible way you could spell it starting with an S. A quirk of language. (Or of lasagne, as my spell-checker wanted.)
Now I think of it the C is more believeable than the S and IE and Y are pretty well equal. Actually I always say “chamois.”
From the sublime to the ridiculous.
I trust this is not the type of challenge that most solvers find entertaining or want to see.
We got eight (8) answers before pulling stumps. Have not looked at all postings yet.
Gratitude and kudos to Zabadak.
Looking at the posts will show you that many posters – including some who didn’t finish – found this to be an excellent puzzle. Why would your view be the universal one?
Yes, I have noticed . . . and not unexpected. Perhaps ‘trust’ should have been ‘hope’.
After 40 mins I was missing AMI, MAGENTA and the infamous CHASMY in the NE corner. Had to use aids for CHASMY, then the other two fell into place… but I’d never have got it if I’d stared at it for a century. As others have noted, it’s a silly word and a totally unnecessary one – and wasn’t clued as generously as it needed to be IMHO. TOMORROW very difficult, and I only guessed it after I had all the crossers. Had no idea what was going on with ITCHING, but POWDER made it easy to biff.
Probably missing something obvious but how is ‘gift’ a definition for ‘art’ in 4dn?
Adroitness, aptitude, facility to be able to do something.
Thanks. Gift as in talent. I was too wedded to the surface meaning!
A real battle, not helped by the fact I’m solving on my phone this week, which is disorienting. Lots of tricky parsings, and a few (ITCHING POWDER and UNDERSTANDING) that I just didn’t twig, but thoroughly enjoyable.
Thanks both.
DNF. Spotted some of the tricks but not nearly enough. Saw 7d Ami that Angers might be the French city, but never thought of IMAX. Oh well, I hope Friday is easier.
DNF
I huffed and puffed but I eventually gave up on the unknown CHASMY and rather than guess I cheated and submitted off leaderboard. Otherwise I was well off wavelength and struggled throughout.
Much to admire about this one though, so thanks to the setter and to Zabadack for filling in the blanks.
Pleased to complete this given a few DNFs last week, although I became aware looking at the blog that there were a couple I hadn’t got round to fully parsing (MEMORANDUM and CONFESSOR). I found it tough and although I don’t time myself it would have taken around double my average time.
About 70 mins. Totally bamboozled and found this a real ordeal. A few clues which I thought were great but only after solving.
Metropolis, pompeiian and tomorrow. Hated chasmy on so many levels and entered in desperation.
Will now look at the snitch.
Too good for me. DNF.
I did get EMDASH which shows that I’m not yet too old to learn and retain, I suppose. Entered CHASMY without conviction. AVI rather than AMI drove in the final nail.
Thanks to Zabadak and setter.
OMG, chasmy, brummie, redden, em-dash all defeated me, was trying to work planet into where Kent reports (Daily Planet, no?) and was embarrassed to miss Pompeiian, after all what other old Italian is there? Hours wasted, gave up without finishing but enjoyed myself! Thx Cx
Finished in multiple sittings, so no time – at least not one I would admit to. Lots of difficulties everywhere and plenty of head-scratching in post-solve parsing, including UNDERSTANDING which, if not too clever for its own good, is certainly too clever for me.
A bit of a slog with a desperate ANI LOI for a pink square after 58,23. (It’s reversed, ie mounting in Angers chINA after all). IMAX never crossed my mind. Irritating after all the previous effort. Didn’t parse BRUMMIE or CONFESSOR. Took an age to get CHASMY. Parsed might across daughter but NHO I CHING. WOE is me. Thanks setter and Z.
I found this pretty testing, but made steady progress and ended up pleased with my time of 18.56. Particularly so when I checked the SNITCH! Everything parsed except BRUMMIE, which I bunged in hopefully, knowing the Aston in Brum. So, many thanks, Z, for the elucidation.
I’d agree with others about CHASMY as a word. 24dn probably my favourite clue.
About 45’
LOI REDDEN as the P D’d about 4.
Great puzzle. Glad BRUMMIE and the POWDER were so clearly the answers as I would never have parsed them.
Thanks all
Two goes needed
– Took a while to parse UNDERSTANDING even once I’d got it
– Had to assume METROPOLIS was referencing Superman (superhero movies aren’t my thing)
– Trusted the wordplay for BROODY as I’m not familiar with that meaning of ‘in the club’
– Didn’t understand the ITCHING part of ITCHING POWDER as I didn’t know / had forgotten what exactly the I Ching is
– Saw the Angers trick early on but then took ages to think of Imax to justify AMI
A tough but fun puzzle. Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Wham
LOI Redden
COD Understanding
No MERs over Andrew Ridgeley and the other one’s duo actually being called “Wham!” ?
Agreed. It’s from this blog that I found out the old musical is called Oklahoma! with the exclamation mark, which is always missing when it’s an answer, causing MERs. Side-note: age 15 or so I was in love with Louise, who was a very talented singer starring in the school play Oklahoma!, but not at all in love with me. Later she became an opera singer. The other 15-year-old lead was Kerry Armstrong who became a famous aussie actor.
I parsed CONFESSOR as ‘confess’ + ‘(y)or’ where ‘roy’ is an obsolete term for ‘king’ or a shortening of ‘Rob Roy’ , either way it could be thought of as meaning ‘leader’. The ‘confer’ explanation is admittedly more convincing and satisfying though.
DNF, too clever for me. I did like EM DASH.
Ta Z and well done for finishing.
52:26
Managed to finish within the hour (Snitch currently 190!!) so quite pleased with that, but I missed so much!
LOI CHASMY – bunged in with a shrug, having assumed the unparsed MAGENTA was correct
UNDERSTANDING – Didn’t see the West Ham reference as meaning ‘UNG – very amusing
METROPOLIS – thought of Daily Planet quite early, but needed three checkers to think of the answer
WHAM – the pop group should of course be spelt with an ! (but not required in a crossword)
MEMORANDUM – failed to fully parse as thought the RAND was somehow the capital
REDDEN – took a while to see DEN = EARTH!
BRUMMIE – my Mum’s mum was born in Aston in 1897 – never met her though as she died in 1941
CONFESSOR – pencilled in to help with the somewhat-emptier top half – could see CONFER but didn’t get where the SSO came from
AMI – thought of the French friend, but didn’t know what screen was being referred to
MAGENTA – as detailed above, failed to parse – bunged in from last three checkers
UNDERGO – the parsing for this totally passed me by
Thanks Z and setter
Wow this was a struggle but suddenly the top half went in – with a few crossed fingers on chasmy, ami and redden. 39 minutes plus change.
Thanks for the blog Z – some of these I could not parse – Angers as the town in France passed me by altogether and the dead pool 4 reference back to 4 down also escaped me.
Thx setter – brilliant puzzle.
Not the easiest. As hard as any of the difficult Fridays that we now seem to have as a matter of course. I hate to think what we’re in for tomorrow. It was all sound so far as I could see, but the definitions/allusions were pretty distant in some cases I thought, for example old = obsolete or hoping to get in the club = broody.
Embarrassing to give my exact time. The timer said over 3 hours, but at one point I forgot to switch it off for about 40 minutes. And I was using fully-fledged aids.
Still much better than me, whichever measure you use!
Found some of these clues very clunky and didn’t enjoy it all – bit of a chore all round.
Roll on tomorrow.
All completed. All green. Far from completely parsed. No time recorded as it was tackled in two sessions, but it was a very long one indeed. If this is an attempt to appeal to a younger generation, then they are welcome to it. When setters resort to words such as ‘chasmy’, I think that it’s time to review my commitment to The Times crossword.
Totally agree – it’s a word I doubt has ever been written down or used in any normal context.
Despite CHASMY being valid I tend to agree. It’s not as if the setter was boxed into a corner and needed a get-out as he could have gone for CHASMS instead.
Very much a reverse-engineering effort, guessing answers and seeing if they could possibly parse.
Failed to parse AMI, still unaccustomed to brand names like Imax. Didn’t know ENTERAL, but it had to be. LOI chasmy, which can’t possibly be a word; guessed, parsed and entered after quite a few minutes.
Mostly a fantastic puzzle with great clues, but for me chasmy wasn’t great.
After 90 minutes, I threw in the towel with Chasmy & Ami missing.
Despite that, I thought this was a brilliant puzzle with numerous superb clues. Hard to choose a favourite from so many, but I’ll give my COD to marvellous hidden Law And Order.
Never thought of Angers being a French town – kicking myself now but hope I might remember that trick next time.
Many thanks for the blog.
I certainly would have been stumped if the last time this came up I hadn’t been very stern with myself to remember that both NICE and ANGERS play the same trick. Good luck next time…!
Don’t forget Nancy.
33.23
My experience was that as this is Thursday, not Friday, I rather assumed I was just being a bit slow for much of this, which – combined with putting in and taking out ENTHRAL several times and rather hitting and hoping for a couple of the others meant that this wasn’t quite as enjoyable as normal. But – I hasten to add – this was down to me not the setter or puzzle which was excellent and had some fine stuff in it (WHAM for example). Just fewer canals next time, please!
Thanks Zabadak and setter
DNF couldn’t get that M of AMI. Angers the place of course!!! Damn damn damn. Though the IMAX aspect was also beyond me.
Apart from that, I had already slowed myself down a lot by putting QU-AILING for the supposed white queen at 11ac and then being stubbornly slow to think it might be wrong.
I thought REDDEN was particularly clever, among many well turned clues.
Great puzzle which I enjoyed a lot, well apart from 7dn 😉
Thanks setter and Zabadak
“…He just keeps rollin’ along”. Well, I’m glad there was an easy (er) entry to this difficult puzzle, by all accounts, otherwise I’d never have started! So my excuse today is time constraints – the cats are staring me down – and the fact that most clues that I actually got had to be reverse engineered after the fact, so no PDMs for me today. Apart from EM -DASH, which I’d not heard of, but assumed from the clue. Most definitions well hidden, and the local knowledge required for 2d a bridge too far. “White queen” and “back door” especially crafty. Well done those who made it: I salute you.