Time: 25:52, which seems like a long time , but I think, for me at least, the complexities of this one demanded much head scratching and careful pondering.
One curiosity, which you’ll see often enough commented on in my exposition, is that the Times’ preference for Collins Dictionary over Chambers, which is favoured for the Listener and Mephisto, is very marked, though for the most part not a problem unless, like me, your electronic dictionary is the latter.
You’ll see the reasoning for one clue in particular took ages to coalesce, and I have decided to leave my initial puzzlement intact to show how long it can take for the penny to hit the deck.
I have definitions underlined in italics, excluded letters in [square brackets] and other stuff as it comes.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Left-leaning material used by writer on power (4) |
| PINK – So not full on communist, then. Writer’s INK is tacked on to P[ower] | |
| 3 | They plan school education regulations; Republican pushed back (10) |
| SCHEDULERS – School education regulations become SCH[ool] ED[ucation] RULES. Push them together and send the R towards the back end. | |
| 9 | One very in favour of medium protein variant (7) |
| ISOFORM – I (one), SO for very, in favour of: FOR and M[edium]. Not in Chambers, but Collins has “any of several forms of the same protein, derived either from the same gene or from different genes, each of which is similar in function to the others”. I reasoned it worked the same way as isotope, and couldn’t see any indication that it was not a thing. | |
| 11 | You and I start to believe church engaged in online discussion (7) |
| WEBCHAT – You and I make WE, start to B[elieve] plus CH[urch] and AT instead of engaged in. | |
| 12 | Missing company boss is at personal risk (2,4,3,4) |
| ON ONES OWN HEAD – Missing company, one is ON ONE’S OWN. Boss is the HEAD. More familiar as “on your own head be it”, so if there’s anything wrong in the blog I have no-one to blame but myself. | |
| 14 | Poet’s reimagined Italian sauce (5) |
| PESTO – Reimagined is an unusual anagram indicator. The sauce is, grazie al cielo, a familiar one. | |
| 15 | Revolutionary metallic solar screens swing to and fro (9) |
| OSCILLATE – Brilliantly reversed hidden (revolutionary…screens) in mETALIC SOlar. The definition was kind. | |
| 17 | Drunk welcoming former serviceman with little post on social media (4-5) |
| LIVE-TWEET – Another where Collins beats Chambers. Drunk is LIT as in a famous inebriated commentary on the BBC. Introduce VET for former serviceman and WEE for little. I lost time because I thought drunk had to be SOT. | |
| 19 | Musical instrument from India adopted by George Harrison, for example (5) |
| SITAR – Pretty close to an &lit since the whole is an accurate statement. Harrison learned sitar under Ravi Shankar’s tuition, and played it on Norwegian Wood and Within You Without You. The clue also works as STAR (which GH undoubtedly was) with I[ndia] inserted. | |
| 21 | Something to reduce friction, irritation and suffering (6,7) |
| NEEDLE BEARING – I need to get a new Chambers! Irritation produces NEEDLE and suffering gives BEARING. | |
| 24 | Pizza from California region (7) |
| CALZONE – The folded over one. Easily derived from CAL[ifornia] ZONE/region. | |
| 25 | Lacking care, like pack prior to game (7) |
| UNDEALT – Yet another where Collins is more in favour for this meaning. Fortunately, the state of a pack of cards before a game is obvious. | |
| 26 | Closely examine artist’s muse’s backside in shock (10) |
| SCANDALISE – Who hasn’t? Closely examine is SCAN, the artist’s is Salvador DALIS and the back side of muse is E. ¡Caramba! | |
| 27 | Twisted facts and figures slightly (1,3) |
| A TAD – DATA, or facts and figures, reversed (twisted). | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Means to devalue company’s reason for producing fewer Teletubbies? (6,4) |
| POISON PILL – I’m not sure I get this. The definition is a straight precis of business practice when fighting off, say, a takeover bid. “The” Pill is responsible for lowering rates of reproduction. But why poison and why Teletubbies? Enlightenment, please… has dawned. Tinky Winky and Dipsy are male, and Laa-Laa and Po are female, and whatever they get up to in private has limited results because “Po is on pill”. Innocence shattered. | |
| 2 | American right-wingers in Colorado blocking gas supply’s introduction (3-4) |
| NEO-CONS – The standard abbreviation for Colorado is CO. Use it to block NEON, the gas, and add the first letter of Supply. | |
| 4 | Gold toilet covers for officer in command (9) |
| COMMODORE – Not one of the usual plethora of toilets, but COMMODE, with OR for gold inserted. | |
| 5 | King of Northumbria drank alcohol when cycling (5) |
| EDWIN – Drank alcohol is WINED. Start the word at the E instead, which is what cycling does. | |
| 6 | Rack and ruin of Bermudan stall (8,5) |
| UMBRELLA STAND – A fine anagram (ruin of) BERMUDAN STALL. Thinking of the instrument of torture didn’t help. | |
| 7 | Chained up spiny anteater (7) |
| ECHIDNA – Again a generous definition (could have been just “animal”) helps find the anagram (up) of CHAINED. | |
| 8 | Son had food glut (4) |
| SATE – S[on] ATE. Glut as a verb. | |
| 10 | Keep principal male in a certain commercial’s final shot? (3,3,3,4) |
| ONE FOR THE ROAD – Keep is FORT, principal male is HERO, tied together and inserted into ONE (a certain) AD for commercial. | |
| 13 | Divided Easter egg supply with daughter (10) |
| SEGREGATED – An anagram (supply, in a supple way) of EASTER EGG and D[aughter]. | |
| 16 | Rhythmic music from, say, Liverpool and Birmingham football club? (4,5) |
| CITY BLUES – Collins again triumphs. Liverpool provides the example of a CITY, and Birmingham F C are known as the BLUES, a fact of which I was unaware. | |
| 18 | How group of geese fly over plain (7) |
| VANILLA – Try reading it in reverse (over). All in a V, the typical and efficient formation of geese | |
| 20 | Journey on craft made in three sections (7) |
| TRIPART – TRIP for journey, ART for craft. Not in Chambers without the -ITE, and Collins has the grace to say it’s rare. | |
| 22 | Scottish geologist’s large cry (5) |
| LYELL – Charles, not too difficult to extrapolate from L[arge] YELL. Significant player, with Darwin, in extending the understood age of Earth from 6,000 years to billions. | |
| 23 | Numbers is a book of the Bible (4) |
| ACTS – Numbers as in acts performed on stage. | |
Took a longish time, but certainly not a vanilla puzzle. Po is on pill was simply brilliant! Echidnas are relatively often seen in my neck of the woods, so it went in quickly. I wasted some time looking for the potential pangram after CALZONE gave a Z.
35mins
Too good for me but appreciate the brilliance of some of the clues. Being in OZ, ECHIDNA fell immediately but POISON PILL was never going to come as I didn’t know the business related meaning and know nothing of the Teletubbies. A lot of my answers came from checkers and definitions, especially NEEDLE BEARING where I initially had it as an anagram of ‘irritation and’ with suffering as the anagrind . SCANDALISE from the wordplay. Saw the hidden OSCILLATE quickly. The SITAR clue was clever. Wasn’t sure if UNDEALT was a word or not but the checkers seemed to suggest it was. EDWIN came eventually but ‘cycling’ clues always leave me stumped. The COD for me has to be VANILLA for the reversed ‘all in a v’, but for a while I thought it had to be something like ‘skein’, which is the same meaning.
Thanks Z and setter.
Just the same experience for me, I’m afraid, especially in regard to lack of knowledge of Teletubbies and/or company business, and thinking that skein had to be part of the answer to 18d. Also NHO ISOFORM, NEO-CONS, nor NEEDLE BEARING . So not a happy result all up! But: have to concede, POISON PILL and VANILLA were brilliant.
Started before bed last night, finished before my golf game, all in about 40′ which maybe should have been shorter (not particularly sharp after midnight and a few reds).
Knew the business meaning of POISON PILL but couldn’t remember the tubby names, though I’d never have parsed it anyway. LYELL was NHO but obvious with checkers as was ISOFORM and I’ve never heard of “CITY” BLUES.
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
POISON PILL is one of my favourite clues in a long time. Superb.
A quick (for me) time of about 35 mins. Hadn’t any idea about either 1d or 21ac but with all the checkers i entered and 🤞🤞- agree about 1d – brilliant clue – I wonder how many people “got it”?
24:36 with a handful of clues accounting for most that time.
Really enjoyed this one, one of the best in a while for me. At the risk of repeating other commenters POISON PILL was brilliant. Also liked VANILLA.
The unheard of LYELL was last in not helped by the L for large being at both ends. Couldn’t think of a cry so in went my best and correct guess for the geologist.
Also I am not a huge football fan but I appreciated my team, Birmingham City, getting a mention.
All was parsed today but still enjoyed the blog. Thanks setter and Zabadak.
I don’t remember seeing “up” on it’s own as an angram indicator before.
Most financiers would say that the point of a Poison Pill is to increase the value of a company — the device makes it prohibitively costly for a buyer to complete an unsolicited acquisition at a price which the seller believes is too low. The acquiror can only get the pill removed, and the sale completed, by negotiating a higher price with the seller.
The point of a poison pill is to prevent the sale of the company by making it uneconomic for any buyer. It’s a tactic deployed by incumbent (and most likely incompetent) management teams to protect their own position and interests at the cost of their own shareholders.
If you google site:timesforthetimes.co.uk and “up as an anagram indicator,” you’ll get a full page of results.
And the first one I clicked on turned up a discussion about this, which eventually gets around to explaining it, and which opens with one Paul_in_London asking, “Jack, have we ever had “up” for an anagrind before?”
That’s 29300, from just a few months ago, August 5.
At least I’m consistent. I don’t completely disagree with its use, there is enough of a connotative connection to get from here to there, but I don’t like it much.
Thanks, Guy
Yet another tricky one .. our blogger displays a far greater knowledge of the tubbies than I can muster. I disliked that clue in part for the reason in the post above from Paul, and partly because I dislike the Teletubbies. Being brought up on mush like that, is probably what has got us into the mess we’re in today.. where’s Bagpuss when he’s really needed? Thomas the tank engine?
SITAR is a semi &lit at best since although the definition could be the whole clue, the wordplay is only half of it. Still a neat clue.
Not to mention Postman Pat and Fireman Sam. Properly fleshed-out characters..I still say, “Now who needs the Fire Service,” when the home phone rings.
16’58”, with LOI the brilliant POISON PILL, me being unfamiliar with the term, but knowing the names of the Teletubbies.
Thanks z and setter
50 minutes. My five years based at Shirley in South Birmingham meant that I did think of their Blues alongside Everton and Chelsea. I wouldn’t know a NEEDLE BEARING if one poked me in the eye. OSCILLATE was a great hidden. POISON PILL was so brilliant that it should be COD but I’m giving that to UMBRELLA STAND for its elegance. LOI was LIVE TWEET. Sitar wasn’t a great clue with the straight reading giving the answer without the cryptic. But a good, tough puzzle. Thank you Z and setter.
Just under half an hour.
– Had to trust that an ISOFORM is a protein variant
– Took a while to get LIVE-TWEET and SCANDALISE because in both cases I didn’t realise the definition was a verb rather than a noun
– Not really familiar with a NEEDLE BEARING but got there from wordplay
– POISON PILL was a great two-stage penny-drop moment (if such a thing can exist), as I worked out ‘Po is on’ first and then saw what the missing letters in P_L_ had to be… absolutely ingenious cluing
– NHO Charles LYELL, but again the cluing helped
A great puzzle. Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Pesto
LOI + COD Poison pill
Except that a poison pill doesn’t necessarily devalue a company? Depends if you’re talking intrinsic value or market cap.
11:28. Excellent puzzle. POISON PILL is glorious. I also like seeing newfangled terms like LIVE TWEET.
35 mins. Tough but rewarding.
POISON PILL was indeed fantastic. I have a way of remembering which colour Teletubby is which. Po is red.
Remembered Very = SO today, would have been useful yesterday.
Thanks both.
DNF. Defeated by the crossing NEEDLE BEARING and CITY BLUES, with POISON PILL, another NHO, being little more than a guess. Too good for me today.
59:31
Just squeaked in under the hour. Another difficult puzzle.
Thanks, Z.
All been said above. Brilliant stuff. I vaguely knew PO was one of the TTs and the financial thing, but ISOFORM was new to me – probably coined since I was a chemist at uni. VANILLA was one the best clues ever, and LOVE-TWEET was a guess as I don’t do the socials. An hour, in three bits and 2 coffees.
Defeated by CITY BLUES in a tad over the half hour. POISON PILL AND LIVE TWEET were outstanding clues! A biffed ISOTOPE held up COMMODORE for a while. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and Z.
My thanks to Zabadak and setter.
DNF, too good for me.
9a NHO Isoform.
12a In ones own head was wrong. Cheated to get On ditto.
17a Live Tweet. Guessed Tweet, cheated for Live.
24a NHO Calzone, cheated.
1d Poison Pill, OMG!
6d Umbrella stand. Guessed the Stand and the rest of the anagrist was a doddle.
10d One for the road; only thing that fitted. I hadn’t a clue how it worked.
16d City Blues. Not a clue. Can’t find any reference to any music either so pretty obscure then.
18d Vanilla, saw we needed a V and biffed it.
20d Tripart, NHO but guessable, added to Cheating Machine. Rare indeed.
22d Lyell NHO, added to CM.
Many nice clues but I found it hard to finish. Whenever I used Chambers to confirm that xxx really was a word, just one that I didn’t know, it was missing, so Collins on my phone might be wise. POISON PILL and VANILLA excellent. 44 minutes.
The Collins app is unfortunately so ad-ridden it’s hardly usable, at least if you don’t pay.
35 mins, but POISON PILL submitted in ignorance of either meaning. I suppose it could have been a PRISON PILL. Also NHO NEEDLE BEARING.
Mostly easy, a bit curates eggish.
Having been away for over a month I am still decidedly ring-rusty. Defeated by a couple here.
The ‘oscillate’ answer reminded me of a long-forgotten palindrome: “Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas”. Anyone who’s ever tried uncovering a new one of decent length will know how tricky they are. The best I’ve ever managed is “To lap eels, I sleep a lot”. I definitely uncovered it myself but I’m probably not the first to have done so.
DNF
Some crosswords/setters are just too clever for their own good. Too many linking answers which didn’t make sense to me, so lost interest:
NHO:
ISOFORM – was thinking PROFORM (one very in favour might be PRO FOR?) as I have no idea about proteins and their variants
LIVE TWEET – saw the WEE so presumed TWEET, but never used the app, so don’t know what a LIVE TWEET is compared to say a not-LIVE TWEET
POISON PILL – because I didn’t get ISOFORM or LIVE TWEET, and not knowing the definition, didn’t have enough crossers to make any sense of this (though did assume the Teletubby in question would be PO)
NEEDLE BEARING – don’t know what this is, and probably needed…
…CITY BLUES to have any chance with the second word. Never heard of CITY BLUES as a form of rhythmic music
LYELL – without the leading L, impossible if you’ve never heard of him
Thanks Z
Splendid stuff, particularly the adventurous but prudent Po, though finally defeated by the NHO bearing and the rhythmic music in a very enjoyable 42 minutes.
POISON PILL was absolute genius, made perfect by the fact that Po is one of the two female teletubbies. I like having more modern stuff in like LIVE TWEET too. Oh, and VANILLA was very clever.
27 mins with CITY BLUES falling at the end, after having CITY BEATS for the longest time.
POISON PILL might be the funniest clue in quite some time, and I also really liked VANILLA’s parsing. Definitely a pleasure to solve.
I did solve this one, but only by putting in the obvious answers with a shrug of the shoulders. Poison pill? Must be it. Undealt? oh, OK, whatever. Isoform? Well, isoprom didn’t quite work out. Lyell? A likely enough Scottish surname. City blues? Seems reasonable.
It’s amazing how powerful enlightened guessing can be.
Time: 43:24
8:49. Liked the Teletubbies and geese clues. A few educated guesses as per Vinyl above.
I had the BLUES but my alphabet trawl failed to turn up CITY, so I went with CATS, figuring that maybe a Liverpudlian team of some sort had that nickname, and that cat’s blues might be thing.
Too tough for me. 4 left after an hour of slog.
Well done our blogger, chapeau.
Beaten all ends up by UNDEALT – that meaning is new to me, at least without the ‘with’ – and the NHOs NEEDLE BEARING (I had the ‘bearing’, at least, but only know ‘wheel’ and ‘ball’) and ISOFORM. Irritated that I saw POISON PILL from parsing but not VANILLA. Ah well. Tomorrow’s another day.
Oh wait, it’s Friday.
For some reason this made me live up to my nom de plume today, very grumpy. Hated Poison Pill as I don’t know any of the teletubbies and could not bring the business practice to mind. Not knowing the teletubby in question I thought it was a reference to fitness and was obsessed by PRO FIT something for ages until I got isoform and then had nothing. NHO needle bearing or Lyell and despite my love of the blues have never heard the term city blues.- urban, Memphis, delta, Chicago, never city.
I did think Vanilla was brilliant – was trying all sorts of inav words until I saw the flip.
A rare harrumph from me today but thx z and setter
25.16
Totally breezeblocked on the tough ones for what seemed an age but VANILLA unlocked things.
POISON PILL was both the worst (incomprehensible and bunged in from checkers at the end) clue this year…but also the funniest. Bravo setter (and thanks Z).
Ps VANILLA was superb as well. Only got it as I tried to make something of a V but now I see the explanation..,
I obviously had a sheltered childhood as most of the above comments suggests an intimate knowledge of the Teletubbies. I haven’t, so was screwed from the start . Agree though that Vanilla was brilliant.
I found this of medium difficulty. On the first pass I only got a couple of across clues and 4 or 5 downs. But I never got stuck scratching my head for long and the long ones went in quite quickly, which always helps. Loved OSCILLATE, NHO UNDEALT in that sense, NHO ISOFORM and NEEDLE BEARING but in both cases the cryptic, and crossers, gave it away. I dragged POISON PILL from somewhere, because of the crossers and dimly remembered it was some sort of corporate strategy but had absolutely no idea about the parsing, so thanks for that.
For me, this type of puzzle is spot on, not too easy, barely any write-ins (for me), had to think about a fair few of the clues but all the obscurities were clued to be accessible. Thoroughly enjoyed. Thanks to the setter and thanks Z, particularly for the POISON PILL parsing. I managed to finish this in 36:31.
Did not finish and did not enjoy. Too many neologisms and terms I had not encountered. In my experience, caged bearings with small rollers are called needle roller bearings, but, perhaps, they are called just needle bearings elsewhere.
I concede that several of the clues were very clever.
I consider myself lucky to have failed on only two solutions, but a great deal of guesswork was involved.
31:49. As others, thought POISON PILL was phenomenal, and quite hard to get! But I’ve been smiling about it since I parsed it a few hours ago. it would have been a great crossword even without that legendary effort, thanks both.
The only way the TELETUBBIES clue could make sense was if it involved one of their names. Unfortunately I couldn’t think of any of them, so had to wait to get the crossers then make a stab. Felt pretty confident about POISON PILL but unusually could parse neither the cryptic nor the definition . See it now. Chortle chortle. Must remember Bazzock’s palindrome: Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. Straw! No! Too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts. That’s mine (courtesy of house master Bop Gover, in case you’re reading, Tom). Tough puzzle finished in 30’44”. I expect I’ll have a poor WITCH. My average is worsening. Thanks to all.
50 minutes, but at least I finished without mistakes. SITAR annoyed me no end because although the answer was clear, I couldn’t see the wordplay (so not &lit, but just lit for me, although I am not lit in the other sense it was used today). With Z’s explanation it’s a fine clue. I couldn’t really appreciate the POISON PILL, knowing less than nothing about the Teletubbies and certainly not their names, but it is brilliant. That said, my COD would be VANILLA.
52 minutes. Quite a few NHOs all of which I was quite confident of because of crossers/wordplay. I thought SITAR was a GK clue until I read the blog. I thought POISON PILL and VANILLA very clever.
I’ve been a life long blues fan and I’ve neve heard of City Blues as a genre. Worried that I might have missed some recent development I checked several web lists of blues genres. None of them listed the term. Please enlighten me on this one.
Collins, today’s goto word factory, has it as an alternative to Urban Blues, though I found an a compilation album on Spotify of “City Blues”, which at least suggests it’s a thing.