22.20: I don’t think this was anywhere near as tricky as I made it, but I do have some excuses, such as tackling a brutal Broteas TLS crossword immediately before the midnight hour and a rather trying day with a bus that refused my custom and a train that didn’t go where it was supposed to.
Still there were a decent number of rather good anagrams, to make up for the artist at 21d which took me an age to pin down, and a couple of iffy definitions.
Definitions underlined in italics, everything else helped out with [] and elegant (sometimes) phrasing.
| Across | |
| 1 | Standard car coat (5) |
| PARKA – Standard is PAR (for the course) and the car, I assume is product placement for Ford’s sub-compact KA. | |
| 4 | Record numbers peer at back of tower (4,5) |
| KEEP COUNT – Verb style. The peer is a COUNT, coming in behind KEEP for tower. I lost time because KEEP is peek backwards, and then the clue doesn’t work. | |
| 9 | Hasty notes about using non-slip footwear (9) |
| ROUGHSHOD – Hasty gives ROUGH, and dohs, notes backwards, completes with SHOD | |
| 10 | Complete lunatic, off his head (5) |
| UTTER – A [N]UTTER decapitated. | |
| 11 | I give a hand, at the outset specifying highest standards (6) |
| IDEALS – I DEAL giving a hand at cards, plus S[pecifying] at the outset. | |
| 12 | Chief not involved in modern industry (8) |
| INFOTECH – An anagram (involved) of CHIEF NOT. | |
| 14 | What reduces exposure to UV round area better? (5,5) |
| OZONE LAYER – Round is O, area is ZONE, and then better as somone who lays a bet gives LAYER. Ozone chicken is not a thing. | |
| 16 | Above patronising theatre performance (4) |
| ATOP – Patronising is AT, and that sort of theatre performance is an OP. | |
| 19 | In the past year turned to a system of exercises (4) |
| YOGA – In the past is AGO, add y[ear] and reverse (turned). | |
| 20 | Diesel adds different way to experience horse-power (10) |
| SIDESADDLE – Another anagram (different) of DIESEL ADDS with a mildly whimsical definition. | |
| 22 | Bread agency delivered pancake mixture (8) |
| CIABATTA – The agency is the CIA, followed by what sounds like (as delivered) BATTER for pancake mixture. | |
| 23 | Woman’s appeal about to make an impact (6) |
| STELLA – SA short for (sex) appeal surrounding TELL for make an impact. | |
| 26 | Tough only child (5) |
| BUTCH – Only: BUT plus CH[ild] | |
| 27 | A piece of drapery cushioning husband’s heavy fall (9) |
| AVALANCHE – A piece of drapery is A VALANCE, which “cushions”, surrounds H[usband] | |
| 28 | Officer in scrap cut just above the chest (9) |
| DECOLLETE – A low cut neckline designed to both reveal and conceal. The officer is a COL[onel] contained in DELETE for scrap. | |
| 29 | Exhausted writer nursed by good man (5) |
| SPENT – Writer is PEN, enclose in ST for good man. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Clergyman bored by the author’s unknown meanness (9) |
| PARSIMONY – This time “the author’s” gives I’M, to be positioned within PARSON for clergyman, with Y for unknown added. | |
| 2 | French wine: dissolute type drinking gallons (5) |
| ROUGE – Dissolute type ROUÉ, insert G[allons] | |
| 3 | War hero in Far East regularly catching cold (8) |
| ACHILLES – The even letters of fAr EaSt with CHILL for cold inserted. | |
| 4 | Decisive punch, extremely harmful, is cause of black eye (4) |
| KOHL – Dark make-up, from a decisive punch KO and the extremes of H[armfu]L | |
| 5 | In hairy situation finally get in a rage (10) |
| ENDANGERED – I think this must work as finally: END and (get) in a rage ANGERED | |
| 6 | Revolution supported by what may offer entitlement (6) |
| COUPON – Revolution is COUP, and supported by simply gives ON. | |
| 7 | Tea turned out to be free of additives (9) |
| UNTREATED – An anagram (out) of TEA TURNED. | |
| 8 | Almost broken chain is light to carry (5) |
| TORCH – I think broken must be represented by TORN, from which you cut the end and add CH[ain] | |
| 13 | Official publication I run in government (10) |
| MAGISTRATE – Publication is MAG, add I then R[un] in STATE for government. | |
| 15 | Wildly revelling, so tragic I collapsed (9) |
| ORGIASTIC – Another anagram (collapsed) of SO TRAGIC I. | |
| 17 | Popular stop where almost everyone gets on (9) |
| PREVALENT – This is PREVENT for stop with AL[l] for almost everyone included. | |
| 18 | They fly in for summer having entered a race from far away (8) |
| MARTIANS – MARTINS, like swallows, are summer visitors. Enter the extra A. | |
| 21 | Painter perhaps turned into almost complete artist (6) |
| WARHOL – Our painter is the perennial RA, here reversed (turned) and inserted in an incomplete WHOL[e] | |
| 22 | Copper base raised somewhat (5) |
| CUBED – I.e. raised to the power of three. CU for copper (Cu for pedants!) and BED for base. | |
| 24 | Ill-gotten gains Hercules stores up (5) |
| LUCRE – Hidden and reversed in hERCULes | |
| 25 | Vegetable for example not used in keg beer (4) |
| KALE – knock of the e.g. from Keg and add ALE for beer. | |
DNF. I failed to get COUPON, for some reason. Every bit of the clue was just too oblique and couldn’t find a way in. Nothing wrong with the clue, just me being dim. Perhaps I shouldn’t attempt to solve in the evening after a couple of G&Ts and half a bottle of wine. I’ll be back in Blighty soon so the opportunity won’t present itself.
MER (where M is for ‘massive’) at the wordplay in 18dn, which just does not work at all AFAIC.
My sympathies for your bus travails, z. Infuriating.
I really like this one, it was very precisely clued, and if you follow the cryptic you get the answer. That was good, because we don’t have a Ka in the US, and Kohl’s is a chain of discount stores, so I had to use a little imagination. I actually liked the clue for Martians, and thought it perfectly acceptable.
Time: 37:28
Persevered with this one to finish in 49:53. CUBED/DECOLLETE held me up the longest, had been playing with NECK_____ for a while after twigging that it had something to do with dress cuts, before realising that didn’t make sense for something so revealing. ‘Decolletage’ then surfaced in memory. Been doing the 15×15 for two years now and still very far from good times on the harder puzzles; chastening but will keep going.
Wasn’t too happy with ‘tell’ for ‘make an impact’ but I’m probably missing something. INFOTECH not as modern as I was first thinking – NANOTECH or thereabouts. Was lucky to twig that a COUPON ‘may offer entitlement’ – difficult, as Keriothe said, but a nice definition. Chuckled at Ka – didn’t they go out 20 years ago?
Thank you Zabadak and setter.
Collins has: tell – have an impact, effect or strain. Cobuild adds: If an unpleasant or tiring experience begins to tell, it begins to have a serious effect.
Fair enough, thanks! I think might be a NHO for me, except maybe in the form ‘telling’ as an attributive adjective – if that can be called the same sense (which it probably can’t). Wiktionary has a few examples, such as “But England’s superior fitness told in the second half, with Delon Armitage, Manu Tuilagi and Chris Ashton (two) going over for tries to secure a bonus-point win.”
I have good news and bad news .. the bad news is that I’ve been doing the daily cryptic since the mid 1960s, (sixty years!) and I still have far from good times on the hard puzzles.
The good news is that I do always get there in the end, and have long since given up worrying about times. I do them for 30mins and if it isn’t finished, put it to one side and come back later when somehow, everything seems to fall into place.
To me, Kas seem like yesterday 🙂
Thanks Jerry – I am very happy to hear this is unlikely to be a passing interest.
My downfall, mentally, was a good wine. A lot of a good wine.
My downfall, cryptically (and consequently), was not seeing a way in to about a third of the clues.
My solution was to cheat left right and center.
My enjoyment was post-cheating de-crypting.
The enjoyment would have been more complete if I’d properly sovled the clues, but even solving the cryptic was fun.
thanks, z, nice blog.
‘Sovled’ is my new favourite word for what happens when you try to do a crossword when tipsy. It certainly describes what I was up to.
I love the conflation of sozzled and solved
😂
Or when you try to post a comment whilst tipsy. Two stones, one bird.
That’s pisting, something quite different 😉
Just under the half hour for this. Fortunately, COUPON came to me relatively quickly. Finished up with the ‘race’ from outer space. Liked that clue a lot.
Liked this!
LOI CIABATTA (narrowly avoiding CHAPATTI).
I am going to beat LindsayO to a Dylan reference (there’s still at least one more left for him):
With a time-rusted compass blade
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
SIDESADDLE on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden
Don’t ask me what it means! Ha
I thought of that quote too. Dylan’s lyrics are still burned into my brain from college, more than 50 years ago. Of course, we didn’t have anything after 1972.
Hah. There are lots of great post-1972 Dylan songs!
Was mostly solo on this one and was looking forward to a PB time that could be published without undue shame, then came to a screaming halt (but got there eventually). Nothing really unfair here just variations in trickery – eg. some very direct like 5d ENDANGERED.
Rather liked 20ac SIDESADDLE where I think ‘different’ is also useful for the meaning to give the proper sense. Also liked 29ac SPENT for economy.
Some stretchy elements here and there but not really enough to ruin the feel.
How does AT come from ‘patronising’, and OP for theatre performance?
Thank you setter and Zabadak.
I suppose if you are at the races, you are patronising the races (as an event). And an op is an operation, as performed in the operating theatre.
OK. Yes, that sort of operation. Should have seen that. Thank U.
I had all but 5 answers within my target half-hour but the remainder (all in the lower half) gave me trouble. I solved two of them eventually (STELLA and BUTCH) but as 55 minutes approached I gave up and used aids just to get the grid filled. Even then I got one of them wrong.
The answers that beat me were WARHOL, DECOLLETE and MARTIANS – Z, there’s no underline in the blog for WARHOL. I think the unnecessary presence of ‘perhaps’ in the clue was what threw me. Also ‘painter’ and ‘artist’ can have the same meaning so that I couldn’t decide which might be the definition and which was part of the wordplay, a point that only became clear once I knew what the answer was.
The only word I could think of to fit the checkers at 18d was LAOTIANS but although they are undoubtedly ‘from far away’ I wasn’t sure of describing them as a race and they didn’t fit anything else in the clue .
I had no chance of constructing with DECOLLETE from wordplay alone. Although I have met the word previously I am vague as to its meaning and it’s not spelt the way I would have imagined with one L and two Ts.
I liked this puzzle but for me it was tough going, I was pleased to be all correct in just under 50. It took a while to get started and LOsI MARTIANS, STELLA, ATOP and COUPON only arrived after much time staring glumly at the grid awaiting inspiration. Thanks for the blog Z, especially for explaining COUPON, ACHILLES and ENDANGERED. But…um…Ross Conway? Is that something that everyone but me gets?
Hey Guy, nice get on SIDESADDLE, I’ll see your Gates of Eden and raise you a Love Minus Zero/No Limit (or were you temporarily liking Achilles?):
My love she speaks like silence
Without IDEALS or violence
She doesn’t have to say she’s faithful
Yet she’s true, like ice, like fire
Russ Conway: check the link in SIDESADDLE.
Ah, thank you Z. Between you and Guy we now have a Russ Conway v Bob Dylan title fight over SIDESADDLE. It’s a coin toss for me…
Russ Conway DSM. He led a fascinating life.
It was ACHILLES that leapt out at me, but “without ideals or violence” is one of my all-time favorite Dylan phrases.
Thought this was first-rate. Many answers had to be chiseled out letter by letter. All perfectly clued. CIABATTA LOI because I didn’t grasp the significance of “delivered” for some time.
Thanks to Zabadak and the setter
Well, not listed in my Chambers as an anagrind, but it looked like it should be and the answer fitted the rest of the clue.
It’s not an anagrind, it’s a homophone indicator, as in the way an actor speaks/delivers a line, I think.
That’s how I read it, eventually.
Sorry, I did mean homophone – some sort of mental shift – but either way it’s not listed. Not that it matters, because this one made a lot more sense than some that are listed
You have a list of homophones? Bin it! … They are clever these setters, and will always have one more homophone or anagrind than your list ..
34 mins. This was just on the fun side of tricky, with several items that had me scratching my head for the longest time before the penny dropped (LOI MARTIANS and CUBED). STELLA also had me flummoxed for longer than it should have. Glad to have made it over the line really. COD to CIABATTA. Thanks setter and blogger
44 minutes with LOI DECOLLETE. What with WONDERBRA recently, I’m not sure doing this crossword is suitable for so early in the morning. I’ve got Russ Conway playing Sidesaddle as an ear worm for once and not Dylan. (Memories of the Billy Cotton Band Show have never left me and I’m sure Alan Breeze would happily have sung Gates of Eden if asked.) COD to MARTIANS in a very enjoyable, quite tough puzzle. Thank you Z and setter.
Not to mention 15d which took an inordinate amount of time. Clearly not doing enough.
31.05. Two notches up on the previous three offerings? Thought I was going to fail until prevalent came into my head. Another who found Warhol difficult, not helped by seeing the almost complete artist as Hal(s).
Warhol would be my COD.
53 minutes. Slow going, not helped by having Jack’s version of spelling DECOLLETE which did me for MAGISTRATE, and then as for keriothe, COUPON (my LOI) initially appeared unsolvable until I thought of what turned out to be the correct sense of ‘entitlement’. I was also uncertain of the spelling of CIABATTA which made WARHOL difficult. Glad to finish in under an hour for what I thought was a very Thursdayish puzzle.
Got it done in an hour or so but needed some aids to get me there. MAGISTRATE and WARHOL needed the Chambers Crossword Dictionary.
Only vaguely heard of DECOLLETE But know it as DÉCOLLETAGE.
Never knew ch=chain, and “almost broken” could be just about anything. Eventually twigged the definition was “light to carry” not just “carry”. This led to the LOI INFOTECH, which may be a modern industry, but that’s a phrase from the 90s.
As well as ch=chain, which I can believe from old survey records, when might I come across ch=child? And the answer is not “in Collins”.
COD CIABATTA
Just under 50 minutes and without aids or error. I was about to cheat on STELLA but suddenly saw the tell. Pleased to encounter the extraterrestrials but is it really legitimate to describe them as a race? Also shared doubts raised above regarding the use of obsolete small car models but I suppose the name was unusual and the model popular. Saw SIDESADDLE early on but to my surprise it failed to evoke the late Russ Conway – notable for a winning smile and a missing digit. Trying to avoid the wormhole of other successful popular pianists of the era, Joe Mr Piano Henderson, Mrs Mills, Lucy Atwell???
Enough of that!
Thanks to setter for a very enjoyable challenge and to zabadak.
Winifred Atwell! Mabel Lucie Attwell was a British illustrator and comics artist known for her nostalgic drawings of chubby, cute children.
Her sister?
Two Ts and one.
Ah yes.
40 minutes.
– Didn’t parse the ‘shod’ part of ROUGHSHOD
– For some bizarre reason (and despite being a big fan of the Russ Conway song) I decided to put in SADDLESIDE rather than SIDESADDLE, which slowed me down for quite a while
– Relied on the wordplay for KOHL
– Even with all the checkers, took ages to get MARTIANS and WARHOL – no problem as far as I’m concerned with the ‘having entered a’ part of the former clue
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Parka
LOI Warhol
COD Sidesaddle
Spent at least five minutes on STELLA / MARTIANS.
First one in was PARKA, which could have used an Egyptian spirit and avoided the product placement (and we had a mention of Ford yesterday).
Missed the theatre ‘OP’, thought it was short for ‘opera’.
18’36”, thanks z and setter.
Tricky but fun. Saw the 7dn anagram right away: DENATURED. Which held up the NE till I revisited it. Looking it up later I see it’s more like the opposite: adding additives.
KA known from 2006 Mondiale, Ford must have been a major sponsor and KAs were advertised ad nauseam. I watched it in Texas… can’t imagine they would sell a single KA in Texas.
Never knew what ROUGHSHOD meant, never heard it used except “ride roughshod over”.
COUPON, WARHOL and MARTIANS last in, having also tried to parse LAOTIANS. COD to CUBED.
More importantly perhaps, doesn’t it only apply to horses cf ‘footwear’ ?
38 mins. Distinctly tricky, had to work for it but rewarding. Still dont understand the ON in COUPON. EDIT: Ahh, got it!
Was convinced we were after a SHOE at 9a and that the hairy situation was going to refer to beards or barbers or even chests given recent trends.
COD: CUBED. Thanks both.
Russ Conway ! I was thinking David Bowie myself
Thought this was quite hard, and was simply pleased to finish it. The MARTIANS/STELLA nexus took the last 20 mins of my 45-min solving time. Had no idea what was going on with the former, and the latter went in with hesitation. I really don’t like proper names in crosswords.
Very good crossword where I had to think hard to complete it. Was pleased to have remembered DÉCOLLETÉ from somewhere. STELLA was my last in with MARTIANS my POI. Couple of times I thought I might be beaten by this but got there in the end. Thanks to blogger and setter.
I feel bruised and battered after that one! Got there in the end, but I didn’t think I was going to. Loads of gaps in the SW and SE until ATOP arrived and led to PREVALENT. Then MAGISTRATE gave a way in to DECOLLETE, after which I saw CUBED and threw a desperate WARHOL in without parsing it. ROUGE was FOI. 27:49. Thanks setter and Z.
36:13
Better than some recent Thursdays. Whether or not 18d is considered a good clue seems to depend on whether you know that MARTINS fly in for summer – I didn’t, therefore it was not my favourite clue. I have to admit that having completed the QC, while adding my comments to the blog, I saw the title of the 15×15 blog which mentioned Russ Conway, which, if you know anything at all about his music, leads you quite easily to his two UK number 1s (SIDE SADDLE and Roulette), and consequently I was on the look out for those words. I liked OZONE LAYER and DÉCOLLETÉ.
Thanks Z and setter
Our rule here is that answers from the puzzle are not allowed in titles, but it’s certainly possible that a title might give you an idea about how to solve one of the clues. I try to make my own titles as obscure as possible – more difficult than the clue.
I thought most of this was pretty easy but there were a few clues that took a bit more time, including CIABATTA (I tried to get CHAPATTI to fit the cryptic) and ROUGHSHOD (I was familiar with the expression “ride roughshod” but not the original meaning. I actually saw ROUGHSHOD quickly but couldn’t altogether convince myself it fitted the clue). The Springsteen clue for today though (tougher than the rest) was MARTIAN. I have only the haziest idea of which birds are or aren’t summer visitors and I had to do an alphabet trawl before the penny dropped.
“Springsteen clue”
Excellent! 👏🏻
22:45 – reasonably swift, though LOI WARHOL took some dredging. I have gone through life thinking ROUGHSHOD had something to do with worn-out footwear and cannot find a picture of a roughshod horseshoe to match Chambers’ rather alarming description, so I suppose the practice is more or less defunct now.
Thoroughly enjoyed this and seemed to be on the wavelength – solved in 24:50. Loved the surface for Kohl but enjoyed everything in this, nice precise cluing.
Thx Z and setter
Well, Grumpy,I agree with you heartily on this one! I breezed through all but the SE corner, where I could not justify MARTIANS as a race, ( but actually couldn’t come up with martins being summer visitors, having left the UK in 1966). So was very surprised to come here and find that many of you far more erudite solvers than I found it tough. C’est la vie, as the French have never said.
The top half went in fairly rapidly, but the bottom half caused me problems. I invented a new word to cover ‘wildly revelling’ with ORGASITIC, but getting CIABATTA put me on the right track. I thought I’d finished in 52.47 with MARTIANS being my LOI, only to discover the dreaded one wrong letter for an answer. I’d biffed DECOLLEGE for 28ac relying on a distant memory of the word, and forgot to return to parse it. Grrrrr…
About 45′, following on the theme of “heavy heads” after my first night on holiday…
Initially couldn’t get “dough” out of the reckoning for 22ac given the references to bread/pancake mixture. Needed crossers to finally dismiss it. Also almost left in the wrongly spelt IDEALy until I had a double take.
I liked MARTIANS, though I did spend time wondering which part of the clue was the definition. Russ Conway is a very early TV memory for me, but I do remember the missing digit.
Really enjoyed the puzzle. Thanks Zabadak and setter.