18 minutes precisely, taking time to make sure I’d correctly interpreted the wordplay, which varied between the bizarre and the really quite easy.
A couple of celebrities put in an appearance, one living, one not, both (probably) well enough known to qualify for inclusion. I gained the impression that our setter was aiming for a record number of first/last/middle/outer letter inclusions and exclusions, but that might be just me. There is an excellent &lit.
Definitions underlined in italics, and I (mostly) show deletions and unused letters with []. Everything else should explain itself.
| Across | |
| 1 | Monotonous speaker curtailed by “Cor blimey, naked bird” (6,6) |
| DRONGO SHRIKE – Bet you didn’t know drongo is a Madagascan word, and the bird is any of 20 or so types scattered all over Africa and Asia. The “shrike” bit appears to identify the birds as shrike-like. The wordplay is almost as much fun. Monotonous speaker, DRONE is curtailed (lose the E), cor gives rise to GOSH and then blimey translates to CRIKEY, which you denude of its outer letters. | |
| 8 | State of motion, ultimately, in a tiny particle spinning (7) |
| MONTANA – The last letter (ultimately) of motioN inside AN ATOM, a tiny particle, reversed (spinning). | |
| 9 | Acting to prevent illness, colonist provided essential pieces of alum (7) |
| ANTIFLU – Colonist: ANT, provided: IF, and the essential, middle letters of aLUm | |
| 11 | Source of anger studied then overlooked, reportedly (3,4) |
| RED MIST – Aural wordplay (reportedly): studied “READ” and overlooked “MISSED”. | |
| 12 | Drunk happiest when son scratched inscription (7) |
| EPITAPH – Remove S[on] from HAPPIEST and anagram (drunk). | |
| 13 | Singer Vincent claiming head of investment lamped servant? (5) |
| GENIE – Cute definition. The required singer is GENE Vincent, insert first of Investment | |
| 14 | Cut Jack up in disgust in assessment (9) |
| APPRAISAL – Jack up (ignore the capital) is RAISE, cut the end off and insert in APPAL from disgust. | |
| 16 | Immediately name boring American “Pierce” (2,1,6) |
| AT A GLANCE – Name is TAG, which bores its way into A[merican] LANCE, not Pierce the name (again ignore the capital) but pierce the action. | |
| 19 | Glimpse location for audition (5) |
| SIGHT – Aural wordplay (for audition) of “SITE”, location. | |
| 21 | Strip of land is so close for naturism breaks (7) |
| ISTHMUS – IS in plain sight, then THUS for so, into which the last of naturisM breaks. | |
| 23 | Rest of America always entertained by partner (7) |
| LAYOVER – Equivalent on this side to stopover. AY for always is embraced by LOVER for partner. | |
| 24 | Blessed, perhaps in retirement, one receives zero capital (7) |
| NAIROBI – BRIAN Blessed is hinted at. Reverse (in retirement), add I, one, and insert O, zero. | |
| 25 | Allure of love affair started by girl on vacation (7) |
| GLAMOUR – Girl on vacation gives GL, love affair is AMOUR. | |
| 26 | Check clothing for second venture? (12) |
| REINVESTMENT – REIN for check and VESTMENT for clothing. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Clamour to support nude dancing in New Zealand city (7) |
| DUNEDIN – From the Gaelic for Edinburgh, apparently. DIN for clamour under and anagram (dancing) of NUDE. | |
| 2 | Like precious stone from old friend in Eton, originally (7) |
| OPALINE – O[ld] friend: PAL IN Eton’s first letter (originally) | |
| 3 | Method to transfer power damaged great source of water (4,5) |
| GEAR TRAIN – An anagram (damaged) of GREAT plus RAIN as source of water. | |
| 4 | Criticise some Tesla technicians (5) |
| SLATE – Hidden in TeSLA TEchnicians | |
| 5 | Wine box is upside-down, but not cold (7) |
| RETSINA – The box is a CANISTER, turned upside-down with its C[old] missing. | |
| 6 | Dresses Kelvin behind a northern station’s entrance (7) |
| KAFTANS – K[elvin] plus AFT for for behind, then A N[orthern] and the first of Station. | |
| 7 | Way to conceive of painting More novel (12) |
| IMPREGNATION – An anagram (novel) of PAINTING MORE | |
| 10 | They restore plush fitting? (12) |
| UPHOLSTERERS – &lit. An anagram (fitting, as in shaking in a fit) of RESTORE PLUSH. | |
| 15 | Official stopping trouble before departure (9) |
| PREFLIGHT – Official is REF, plugging a gap in PLIGHT for trouble. | |
| 17 | Endure starting late journey with legs apart (7) |
| ASTRIDE – Endure gives LAST, but the L is a late non-arrival. Journey is RIDE. | |
| 18 | Satirise a politician interrupting simpleton (7) |
| LAMPOON – A simpleton is a LOON, insert A MP for a politician. | |
| 19 | Yellow, after spilling guts in emergency? It’s possibly a nasty infection (7) |
| SPYWARE – Remove the “guts” from Y[ello]W and insert into SPARE, which for now I’ll count as an emergency inasmuch as a spare tyre is an emergency replacement. | |
| 20 | Stop working, as setter’s restricted by painful condition (4,3) |
| GIVE OUT – One of the versions of setter’s is I’VE. Insert into the painful condition of GOUT. | |
| 22 | Diet energy gunk (5) |
| SLIME – SLIM for diet plus E[nergy]. | |
I thought this was going to be like several recent Thursdays, i.e. nigh on impossible (for me), but I gathered momentum after a slow start to finish in 25:06, which slotted into number 7 on my all time list. I found this puzzle, overall, more to my style liking – that is to say lots of “technical” clues that could be deconstructed and fitted together to make the answer (I seem to be good at those) and lighter on “cryptic” (or “whimsical”) definitions, which my brain finds it very hard to compute.
I actually failed to spot the anagram, and therefore the &lit, in 10d. I had a few crossers and just thought it was a pretty poor cryptic / whimsical definition. So thanks for that.
My LOI was the DRONGO SHRIKE. I knew SHRIKE was a bird, I suspected that DRONGO might be (I have heard it used as a mild insult in such cultural beacons as Neighbours, Home and Away & Prisoner) and I was able to parse it before submission so felt it had to be correct.
Overall, I liked this a lot (is that obvious?)
37 minutes but alas no such thing as a DRONGO STRIKE. I could see parts of the word play but just tried to guess the blanks once I was losing interest. Not heard of the shrike let alone its varieties.
Three fails in a row but all by one or two so maybe I shouldn’t be too disheartened as my times have been good (for me) if you exclude the disproportionate time spent on the incorrect entries.
COD to SPYWARE
Thanks blogger and setter
Around 36 minutes allowing for interruptions. As a birder (not a twitcher, please, that being a rather derogatory term for those clocking up rareties), I knew both SHRIKE and DRONGO were birds, though not together until the parsing penny dropped. NHO GEAR TRAIN didn’t help matters. Blessed and Brian passed me by so thanks Z. Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon anyone? And knew Gene Vincent from Ian Dury’s classic Sweet Gene Vincent.
I’d forgotten that track, just listened again, lovely…
Funnily enough only yesterday his live version turned up on my shuffle. Superb. Blue jean baby.
20:02 and although I’d never heard of a “Drongo” Shrike, it had to be. LOI was actually the spyware which took a minute or so to cotton on to.
Thanks setter and blogger
PS Interesting so many people don’t know about shrikes, as in the UK at least they are quite common. Where I grew up in Norfolk, they are called “butcher birds”
Shrikes are the subject of a diversionary ‘lecture’ being given by Donald Pleasance in a scene in The Great Escape in which a billet full of amateur forgers are working on false identity papers under the noses of their guards. It’s bound to be on TV on Boxing Day if you’ve not already seen it a couple of dozen times.
Saw 1 across and nearly gave up on the spot, but persevered and in the end got everything apart from….1across. After yesterday’s Morris dancing, I’ve come to the conclusion that the setters are deliberately inserting one almost impossible clue to thwart us- certainly working in my case.
26:56 but DNF
NHO GEAR TRAIN nor DRONGO SHRIKE (even though I looked up a page on SHRIKEs https://avibirds.com/types-of-shrikes/ which details 32 species, DRONGO is not mentioned).
Thanks Z
I also looked for something that would fit once I realised I couldn’t finish without an aid. Seems its not a shrike at all but a drongo that acts similarly to a shrike.
DNF, failing on the NHO DRONGO SHRIKE. I’d actually guessed the answer and almost entirely parsed it: I saw DRONE as the monotonous speaker and RIKE as the middle of crikey. I thought it had to be SHRIKE (which I knew was a bird). But I didn’t separate cor and blimey so had cor blimey = crikey. Which gave me DRON– SHRIKE. DRONGO occurred but seemed a bit unlikely and I didn’t see GOSH. So I got pretty close but for me it’s an overly convoluted cryptic for such an obscure bird.
Didn’t much care for SPYWARE, although I grudgingly accepted that ‘emergency’ might, in one very particular (and almost never used) case be a synonym of ‘spare’. DRONGO SHRIKE was my LOI and I knew of both bird types, though not that the two words could be combined in this way, but I couldn’t parse it at all, so thanks to our blogger for the help with that. 24’25” according to the timer in the app which, after several weeks of assuring me that I had completed the puzzle in 0’0”, is now giving readings which are far more credible.
Sorry Setter but I didn’t really enjoy this very much. As people have mentioned, spare and emergency are not synonymous to me. The red mist is surely the reaction to anger, not the cause of it.
I am not really a fan of exclamations such as cor, blimey, crikey, gadzooks et cetera. I haven’t tended to use them for at least 50 years. Dealing with the cor blimey element of the clue requires several steps.
Firstly separating them. Then thinking of an alternative word for blimey, and then undressing it.
Three steps for just one part of a somewhat obscure clue.
All credit to upholsterers however.
Agree- time to update expressions of surprise, I think.
On DRONGO SHRIKE: it’s not easy to find exactly that bird in the archives. Google lists a few dictionary examples, but close to the top of the results is this blog. Hm.
27:08. V enjoyable. Would have posted more by my first attempt was taken down by the 500
Putting ‘Tripoli’ instead of NAIROBI made IMPREGNATION impossible to get for too long. I failed to get GEAR TRAIN, SPYWARE and ASTRIDE and I half-parsed and guessed the NHO ‘DRONGO SHRIKE’
26.02 I was pleased to finish that. SPYWARE and ANTIFLU were tricky. I’ve heard of DRONGOs and SHRIKEs but not the combination. And my spell-checker doesn’t like any of them. Thanks Zabadak.
Thanks to you Zabadak, whose help I needed and the setter of course. Overall a mix of easy and hard, but inventive and therefore fun.
1a Drongo Shrike biffed. Cor blimey how did you work that out Z? Could not believe it existed so had to look it up so DNF then. Drongos are drongos and exotic, shrikes are different and available in UK. That being said there is such a thing as a drongo shrike, so all is well then.
24a Nairobi. Thought for a while that the blessed Brian might be from the Life Of Brian. No, fooled by the lower case, did know Fancy from Z-cars etc.
COD 1d Dunedin for the nude dancing.
19d Spyware. Spare=emergency is a bit of a stretch, but.
3d Gear train; whilst I know what one is it does not seem to me a wording to expect in the dictionary so is a tad Green Paintish. And engineers try to keep them short (2 members for pref) to save on power. If they want to move power over a distance they will 100% favour a roller chain, on both cost and efficiency.
We shouldn’t forget that as well as Brian B, Gene V (NHO, but remember Be-Bop-a-Lula) we also had More, Thomas presumably, in 7d, so 3 celebrities.
20 minutes for all bar two – then another 10 minutes to get Layover and Spyware. Ay = always and Spare = emergency took a long while to work out.
I enjoyed this puzzle.
Today I learnt that the Aussie term ‘drongo’ meaning an idiot derives from an unsuccessful racehorse of that name in the 1920s. The bird itself is pretty smart. It mimics alarm calls of various species, causing them to run away and abandon their food, which it eats.
Enjoyable puzzle which took me about 45 minutes, including having to change trains and then having to change seats to avoid drongos playing music on their phones.
The fourth success of my maiden voyage week, coming in just under my average, and cutoff time, at 48:44. Most of it was not so hard, but never heard of the bird, constructed it from wordplay, and pleased not to see a pink square. Not sure I’ve ever seen ANTIFLU before either, maybe that’s equivalent to US antiviral. GEAR TRAIN held me up too, I’m hopeless at machinery.
Thanks setter and Zabadak.
Failed after approximately 50 enjoyable minutes on my LOI when I unfortunately put in DRONGO STRIKE as the bird. I failed to parse it not surprisingly, but I really should have remembered that a SHRIKE is a bird.
I’d heard of DRONGO and I’d heard of SHRIKE, but never of the two together. The parsing took a while. For a view of Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps in action (also Little Richard), see the film The Girl Can’t Help It. Marvellous stuff. And another shout here for the Ian Dury tribute song. Happy with my 17’04”.
I couldn’t find DRONGO SHRIKE in Chambers on my phone when I did a search with some letters missing, but it was there when I looked for it under ‘Lookup’. But it was hyphenated. The Search fails if it’s hyphenated and you don’t put the hyphen in.
I think that is tough.
I have a cheating machine and I have succeeded in ignoring the space/hyphen issue, but have not (yet) managed to avoid the no-gap-at-all, so where it is an option I put in both the single word and the phrase. Not 100% satisfactory, but if in doubt I can search the multi-word list by just adding an M in a box and leaving the same search. Results are always there but it gives a few extras as well, as in where the multi-word may be longer but all the letters are in the right place in the search.
You prob didn’t want all that!
First pass on the across clues yielded very little, fortunately the down clues (including gear train) were much more aligned with my train of thought. NHO the bird and couldn’t parse it but I knew a Shrike and could see Drone and Gosh so went with it. LOI SPYWARE for same reason as many: didn’t really get Spare.
Not sure having to find alternates for three words, messing about with two out of the three then stitching them together to make an obscure solution makes a great clue (1 a)?
And seeing as canisters tend to be cylindrical, describing them as boxes seems a bit iffy.
Managed this all without aids, so it must have been easy!
Held up here by not knowing the bird ( got as far as DRONGO SH…) or the American for rest-stop, and confidently writing in RED FLAG ( surely more of a source of anger, than mist?), and also NHO GEAR TRAIN. But enjoyable ride, nevertheless. COD UPHOSTERERS for the good anagram.