Time: 12:36, by some distance my quickest of the week though it may be the clues just fell nicely for me. The artsy bits should be reasonably well known to regular solvers, though you may find you’ve been pronouncing a couple of poet names wrong all these years.
I’m showing definitions underlined in bold italics this time round, and use [] to cordon off unwanted letters.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | American kills leader abandoning upper-class people (4) |
| OFFS – Upper class people are TOFFS (unless you are one, of course!). Take away the leading T for an American synonym for “kills”. | |
| 4 | Insect infesting rubbish endlessly fed to dog (10) |
| COCKCHAFER – Keep the rubbish away from the definition. It provides CHAF[f] when endless, which is fed to a COCKER spaniel dog. Cockchafers are a serious crop pest. | |
| 9 | Ancient folk tale incorrectly recalled in parts (10) |
| CINDERELLA – According to Wiki, it really is ancient, the story tracing its origins back to a hetaera named Rhodopis, “Rosy Cheeks” once a slave companion to Aesop, so around the 6th century BCE. The letters IN part an anagram (incorrectly) of RECALLED. | |
| 10 | Savagely attack Frost’s first narrative poem (4) |
| FLAY – F[rost] – his first – attached to LAY, that sort of poem. | |
| 11 | Always interrupting fluent movement (3,3) |
| GAY LIB – Many years ago I produced a theological refection on the burgeoning Gay Liberation movement in Bristol, though I don’t think you’ll see the abbreviated version often. AY for always contained in GLIB for fluent. | |
| 12 | Most here ailing? (4,4) |
| REST HOME – An anagram (ailing) of MOST HERE. A laconic and economical &lit. | |
| 14 | He composed letter after a bit of work (4) |
| BERG – Alban, composer of (mostly) 12-tone music, more Radio 3 than Classic FM. Nice touch here: the letter after A is B, followed by ERG, “The CGS unit of work, equal to 10−7 joules”, which doesn’t sound like much. | |
| 15 | Worry defender in America doesn’t give enough? (10) |
| UNDERFEEDS – An anagram (worried) of DEFENDER contained in the US of America. | |
| 17 | Police officer under pressure made to look worn (10) |
| DISTRESSED – D[etective] I[nspector] for the police officer, who, being under pressure is STRESSED. Jeans with frayed holes in the knees at inflated prices. | |
| 20 | Ice mass sheared away a little lower? (4) |
| CALF – When a glacier or an iceberg breaks a lump off, it calves, the result being quaintly described as a young bovine | |
| 21 | Marriage promise at some other time for admirer (8) |
| IDOLATER – “I DO” LATER, fortunately forcing the E spelling. | |
| 23 | Troops in support for Nelson at Trafalgar? (6) |
| COLUMN – Referring to the iconic centrepiece in Trafalgar Square celebrating our greatest naval hero. | |
| 24 | Small amount for you in Paris sent back (4) |
| IOTA – I think this is a direct translation into French of “for you” which would be À TOI, reversed (sent back). | |
| 25 | See rook kept by wacky cybernaut (10) |
| CANTERBURY – Soon to be presided over by Dame Sarah Mullally, her installation as Archbishop being in 3 weeks’ time. Here represented by R[ook] in an anagram (wacky) of CYBERNAUT. | |
| 26 | Wesleyans denatured alcohol opened by poet (10) |
| METHODISTS – Initially part of the Church of England noted for a methodical approach to Christian piety and living, separating after the death of the pioneering John Wesley in the late 18th century. Denatured alcohol is METHS, and an ODIST poet is contained therein. | |
| 27 | Characters regularly seen in rougher industrial area (4) |
| RUHR – The odd letters of RoUgHeR. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Gear in Providence right in order for marine flyer (7,4) |
| FRIGATE BIRD – RIG for gear in FATE for Providence, then R[ight] in BID for order. | |
| 3 | Incidental illustration second one to please greatly (9) |
| SIDELIGHT – S[econd] I (one) plus DELIGHT for please greatly. | |
| 4 | Tundra dwellers you found beneath a ridge in county (7) |
| CARIBOU – A North American variant of reindeer. Stacked in a down clue, we have A RIB or ridge in CO[unty] with [yo]U at the bottom. | |
| 5 | US race trouble starts suddenly in city there? (8,7) |
| COLORADO SPRINGS – Race in American English becomes COLOR (discuss?). ADO comes from trouble. Starts suddenly is SPRINGS. Not withstanding our clue, a 2019 survey found Colorado Springs one of 2 highly integrated cities in the US. | |
| 6 | Relatively common boy necking a sherry regularly (7) |
| COARSER – There should be a ! after boy to facilitate changing it to COR! but we’ll let that pass. Our genteel setter prefers to infill with A and then follow with the alternate letters (regularly) ShErRy, rather than succumbing to the – um – coarser possibility. | |
| 7 | Write up extract from manuscript (5) |
| FOLIO – I think this is intended to be the reverse of OIL OF (cloves, for example) for extract. | |
| 8 | What poets often do that Keats and Yeats don’t? (5) |
| RHYME – Despite their similar spelling, the names Keats and Yeats don’t rhyme. | |
| 13 | Mother initially cradled him, ruined in Eliot’s work (11) |
| MIDDLEMARCH – An anagram (ruined) of CRADLED HIM after the first letter of Mother. That’s George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans. | |
| 16 | Old bore’s spoken for well-known brand (9) |
| EXCALIBUR – Brand is an alternative for sword. Here we have EX for old, and aural wordplay of calibre, as in 12-bore. | |
| 18 | Lured in — temperature cool in butt (7) |
| ENTICED – T[emperature] plus ICE for cool (verbal version) contained in END for butt. Let’s say that’s a cigarette end. | |
| 19 | Hero elevated in Scotland knows devil (7) |
| DICKENS – The hero El CID is reversed (elevated) and Scottish KENS for knows produces a minced form of devil. | |
| 21 | Man following instinctive desires in style (5) |
| IDIOM – So that’s the Isle Of Man after ID, Freud’s unconscious psychological drives which we modify in polite society via the ego and superego. | |
| 22 | Group round court extremely elegant (5) |
| OCTET – Round O, C[our]T and E[legan]t extremes. | |
I can’t comment on the puzzle because The Australian won’t have it for about another five weeks. However, as cricket is a perennial topic, if people haven’t come across it, I thought you would enjoy this wonderful “catch of the summer” at the BBL match here in Adelaide on Tuesday night, a one-handed catch by a spectator carrying two beers in his other hand. The joy!
https://www.tiktok.com/@bigbash/video/7592207024239201557
Brill!
Quite enjoyed this despite not finishing. I couldn’t see or work out the wordplay for COCKCHAFER and couldn’t see CARIBOU. Some nice clues here I thought, especially liked the RHYME after noticing both Yeats and Keats have the same ending. We had SIDELIGHT recently too so that went in after a few checkers were available. Also liked the clue for COLUMN with the ‘support for Nelson at Trafalgar’, very nifty. Biffed DICKENS after seeing ‘kens’ but never knew the hero. Thought COLORADO SPRINGS was also very good. Biffed FRIGATE BIRD but the only part I parsed was ‘rig’. COD to the very clever reversed ‘oil of’ for FOLIO, took a while for the penny to drop, I thought of oil of Olay.
Thanks Z and setter.
I couldn’t quite see the wordplay for FOLIO, though it was the obvious answer, so thanks for that.
“Color” for “race” does seem odd for this Yank; it was “colored” in the Jim Crow—aka apartheid—era.
Was pleased to get the NHO (if memory serves) FRIGATE BIRD from the wordplay.
I wonder how many times someone could pronounce “Yeats” or “Keats” incorrectly without being corrected…
What is now called “gayness” may be a fraught topic for biblical scholarship. I’ve heard rumors about David and Jonathan.
Not a good time to have to see ICE again. A day that will live in infamy.
Although I’m an Aussie, I was delighted by Bethell’s innings and Jacks’s bamboozling dismissal of Sandpaper Smith. Kudos to the SCG groundsman for the best wicket of the series.
25′
I knew FOI CALF, but wouldn’t have remembered it were it not for ‘lower’. It took me a while–two whiles, in fact–to figure out X BIRD & X SPRINGS. More whiles were spent trying to remember the names of Irish and British counties at 4d (the U finally ended that while), and trying to account for the ID of IDIOM. Biffed MIDDLEMARCH from the M, parsed post-submission. I liked FOLIO.
45 minutes. I had completely forgotten about calf and icebergs until it came up in another puzzle recently – maybe elsewhere – so I was lucky with that one today. My parsing of FOLIO wasn’t quite complete have only got as far as ‘extract’ = OIL.
COD for me was 8d for RHYME. FOLIO was also very clever. Dyslexia got the better of me and I had to look up the spelling of EXCALIBUR with the homophone not giving away whether it was ‘er’ or ‘ur’ at the end. Mildly miffed at being expected to know ‘À TOI’ in French after spending a while trying to figure out how I could do something with ‘tu’ or ‘vous’.
Happy to finish 42:08. Thanks Setter and Zabadak.
Prepare to be even more miffed when you find it isn’t even the correct translation, which would be POUR TOI.
I was on the wavelength for this one and solved steadily with no hold ups and all the required GK.
Re ERG: my old chemistry teacher used to joke that it was the energy used by one fly doing one push up. He claimed that in Paris there was a standard fly and when that fly did one push up, it used exactly one erg.
Thanks, Z, for the blog and to the setter.
Connoisseurs of French bandes dessinées may recall that one of the exploits of Superdupont – “Opération Camembert” – involved the International Standard Camembert, kept in a vault in Paris alongside the kilogram and the meter.
19.05 with LOI gay lib. Guessed caribou mercifully which helped. Needed convincing by Cinderella. Didn’t know the story was so old.
Pleased to finish in one sitting. I did my first year university Physics in cgs before the world moved on, so I’m always on the look-out for ergs. CALF was somewhere very recently. COD to RHYME. Nice puzzle. Thank you Z and setter.
I did O level in cgs and A level in MKS so I’m a bit younger than you. At Uni one lecturer said “we are on MKS now but I only do poundels so you’ll have to convert it yourself.”
When will this bloody country work out if we are metric or Imperial???!
At heart, I’m a foot-pound-second man. What’s wrong with poundals per acre for pressure?
My favourite unit I’ve come across is a measure of fluid flow: acre-feet per year. One of those approximates to 2.35 l/s. It is used in water management for reservoirs, irrigation and planning new town water supply.
Quite liked this. I struggled to parse Dickens, not noticing old Cid, and had a MER at the French A toi and also at Erg, which is a CGS unit not SI, though apparently still in occasional use.
Caribou is an Americanism for reindeer.
See also moose and elk. I learned only recently that grizzly bears are in the same category – i.e. animals whose name depends on where they are found. I always thought they were a distinct species but they are just brown bears in particular places.
re erg, why is anyone restricted to SI units? We are unsyurprised by feet etc.
Because it is a scientific measurement, and science works on the metric SI system.
Rather like our blogger, I felt I was on the wavelength for this and was surprised to find myself with my fastest time of the week. I’ll happily take 19 minutes on any Thursday. I enjoyed the well-known brand, the written up extract, the working composer and the incorrectly recalled folk tale. Slightly surprised to encounter the quartet of double unches in the grid.
Thanks setter and blogger
DNF Defeated by DICKENS which was poor on my part. I am irked by setters capitalizing simply to misdirect as in Providence in 2dn when it has nothing to do with the city in RI. It detracts from the ingenuity of using a word at the beginning of a sentence to introduce doubt into the solver’s mind whether the noun is proper or not. Otherwise an enjoyable puzzle with a few NHOs that I was happy to work out from wordplay.
Me too. It is basically a lie, and I don’t like it.
I complain about it occasionally but I get told off, on the grounds that there must be a sentence somewhere that starts with that word, so it’s OK. If that makes sense to you, it doesn’t to me.
Glad I’m not alone. I’ll remain curmudgeonly about it but I doubt we’ll change the world.
I did a lot of biffing, cleared it in 11:45, then found I had a typo. COD GAY LIB.
WOE after 35 mins. 2 actually, one just a typo but also EXCALIBeR which was a coin-toss E/U. U looked wrong somehow.
I found that very tough to get a foothold on but a few crossers led to much biffing and acceleration on the home straight.
LOI FOLIO just guesswork. COD to BERG. Thanks to setter and Zabadak.
Just checked and I am still rock bottom of the leaderboard. I think that’s a first.
I too enjoyed this one, thought it was going to be a slow solve then galloped through in 15 minutes. Plenty of biffing and parsing afterwards. COLORADO part was a guess. FOLIO and IOTA I liked. @Jerry why a MER at that?
I’ve tried repeatedly to like Alban Berg’s music but it’s hard work. Bartók is hard enough for me. Thanks Z.
A MER because A TOI doesn’t mean FOR YOU.
DNF, foolishly convincing myself that a BAY LOB might be a move in something like American football, and that blob might somehow mean fluent. No excuses for making such a pig’s ear of a not particularly difficult clue. Otherwise I had no problems with an averagely difficult but more than averagely likeable puzzle.
Minor point but is it not ‘extract’ is OIL and ‘from’ is OF. Not necessarily OIL OF as a phrase is meant
That’s what I thought when solving, and it works OK I think, but I prefer z8’s reading. ‘Extract’ on its own is a bit vague for OIL.
34:08 but missing GAY LIB. Really should have got it in hindsight but my brain convinced me it was an NHO ballet move. COKCHAFER, FRIGATE BIRDS and a far from certain DICKENS being the clues that caused the most trouble.
COD COLORADO SPRINGS with RHYME also worth a mention.
Thanks blogger (it needed a read today) and setter
I was struggling a bit, but I had to take a one hour break for another event. When I returned, everything was immediately obvious – Cinderella, sidelight, Colorado Springs went right in, and then there was just mopping up. Distresses was my LOI – no P after all.
Time: 24:54
23:26 – elegant and nicely engineered puzzle where everything slotted into place with a satisfying click.
11:48. In some ways this was similar to yesterday’s but I enjoyed it. Not sure I can explain this: probably more to do with my own inconsistencies of fatigue and mood than the setters.
In 6ac boy is to COR as boy! Is to COR!, so if you put a ! in the wordplay you’d logically have to put one in the grid, which would be tricky.
I think that if we read it as ‘color ado’ = ‘US race trouble’ rather than as two separate parts it makes more sense. All went in unusually smoothly, a bit of a holdup on my LOI COARSER, missing boy! = boy. 41 minutes. Did we not have calve yesterday?
Struggled to get started. RHYME was FOI with FLAY following. Then I hopped around the grid gradually getting enough letter to make some biffs and reverse engineer them. Hard going. Eventually finished with UNDERFEEDS. Liked COLORADO SPRINGS. 35:22. Thanks setter and Z.
19.25
Initially posited ICES at 1a which clearly didn’t parse. And COARSER delayed me at the end even with all the checkers. Remembering COCKCHAFER unlocked things for me – might have struggled to fill the middle but in otherwise. Overall, a nice one.
Very enjoyable blog (and impressive time) and thanks to the setter of course.
This one took me 20 mins, the only holdup having been a minute or two trying to remember any T S Eliot poems with 11-letter titles. I’ve seen ‘boy’ = COR a couple of times recently. My favourite two clues, because of their neatness, were to REST HOME and FOLIO. Thank you to Setter and Zabadak.
The new Archbishop is not being installed in 3 weeks’ time. That is only the legal confirmation of her new role. The installation is not till March.
Loved the Keats/Yates clue. Struggled with FRIGATE BIRD, OFFS and FOLIO.
“Dickens” for “devil”, as in “What the Dickens” is older than you may think. It appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor eg. I know that because Dickens is my surname.
Some good clues today, maybe 20 mins or so.
Under target at 39.44 but with a spelling mistake. I annoyingly spelt EXCALIBUR ending in ER, which now looks so wrong, but I didn’t give it a second thought at the time. OFFS, CINDERELLA and CALF were put in without knowing the appropriate definitions.
28:22
A few unknowns (FRIGATE BIRD, sword = brand, DICKENS as devil, needed convincing that I wasn’t imagining the existence of COLORADO SPRINGS), a few moments of enlightenment (oh, that’s what a COCKCHAFER is), and a few not sure how that one is parsed (FOLIO, BERG – didn’t think of B as ‘letter after a’, very good). An easier Thursday and sneaked in under my 30 minute target for a Snitch of 90.
Thanks Z and setter
Beaten by GAY LIB. Heard of the women’s variety, obv, but this one is/was new to me. Should have got it, given the clueing, but hey. Had CRASSER for COARSER, though obv it didn’t work. The rest seemed just about the right kind of mix; challenging, in parts, but fair.
DNF. Very much not on the wavelength today, beaten by COARSER (I forgot that meaning of ‘boy’) and UNDERFEEDS, which doesn’t seem to have troubled many others – I was convinced ‘worry’ was the definition so never considered that it might be an anagrind.
– Got the ‘erg’ part of BERG but didn’t see how to get the B
– Trusted the wordplay for FRIGATE BIRD
– Likewise trusted that there’s a place called COLORADO SPRINGS (agree with Wil Ransome above about reading ‘US race trouble’ together to give ‘color ado’)
– Hadn’t a clue how FOLIO worked
– Didn’t know the sword meaning of ‘brand’ as used in EXCALIBUR
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
COD Colorado Springs
55:36. Brain in slow gear still – post COVID fug perhaps? Took a really long time to get the last three CINDERELLA, COARSER and COLORADO SPRINGS. very much enjoyed this – thought BERG was a cracker, as was GAY LIB.
DNF in 14:21. I spelled EXCALIBUR with an ER at the end.
UNDERFEEDS, my LOI, required an alphabet trawl to find and much puzzlement to parse.
Thanks Z and setter
All correct apart from not knowing the spelling of CARIBOU- I was toying with a Y In the middle but went for A, thinking that RAB may have been a ridge. So the OWL club today and my perfect week ends here!
I’ll hope for better solving luck next week!
55 minutes, but I rather liked this, with clever clues needing to be carefully read. My COD would be FOLIO, where, incidentally, the “OIL OF” written up corresponds not to “extract”, but to the noun phrase “extract from …” in the clue. I also liked the B as “letter after a” in BERG.
Nice to finish after yesterday, when I gave up fairly early on, being well off wavelength. Some nice PDMs, such as COCKCHAFER, SIDELIGHT and GAY LIB. I bifd BERG but it took ages to parse and I forgot to parse FOLIO, but at least all the GK was there.