Time: 18:27. I regret not taking more time to properly savour this one, because as I wrote up the blog, it became increasingly apparent that this was a delicious set of clues, for which the setter expended time not just tacking wordplay onto definitions but making each clue a miniature work of art. As an experiment, try throwing these clues at Google’s AI and see the valiant, desperate-to-please comments it comes up with – I’ve given an example at 14ac. AI is fooled every time!
The definitions underlined in bold italics, and my explanations use [] to indicate excluded letters, along with other stuff.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Protective cover from university book penned by Mr Fitzgerald? (8) |
| UMBRELLA – Some deft lift and separate work required here. Start with U[niversity], then enclose (pen) B[ook] with MR, and add the definitely not Mr ELLA Fitzgerald. | |
| 5 | Tough bird with clipped wings back from vet (6) |
| STRICT – One of those where I find it difficult to get to the answer from the wordplay. You need a bird with both ends of the word removed, in this case an [o]STRIC[h] and the last letter of veT. | |
| 9 | Appreciate cuddling new puppy involves mid-morning tussle (4-4) |
| DING-DONG – DIG for appreciates has N[ew] inserted, than DOG for puppy has the middle of [mor]N[ing] inserted. | |
| 10 | Aims to get hammered, gulping second cocktail (6) |
| MIMOSA – An anagram (hammered) of AIMS “gulps” MO for second. What Americans call a Bucks Fizz – wish they were making their mind up! | |
| 12 | Carbon in atmosphere brought about by energy plant (5) |
| ERICA – The standard C for carbon contained by a reversed (brought about) AIR all added to E[nergy] | |
| 13 | Support for opener that takes catch? (9) |
| DOORFRAME – I think this is just a cryptic hint dressed up to look like a cricket reference. A door is an opener with (usually) some sort of catch to keep it closed. | |
| 14 | Repetitive band churning out the same material? (8,4) |
| CONVEYOR BELT – And I think this is another cryptic hind this time dressed up to look like a reference to, shall we say, Status Quo*. What a production line is/does.
*I threw the clue at Google’s AI, and it came up with AC/DC, Dragonforce, Rancid, and Slayer. Each to his own. |
|
| 18 | Unusually rude about parking next to building (12) |
| SURPRISINGLY – Parsed after submission. Rude is SURLY, encompassing P[arking] and RISING as equivalent to building, perhaps best taken as in music building in intensity. | |
| 21 | Delighted (with) arrangement of straw, a bear retires (4-1-4) |
| COCK-A-HOOP – The more familiar haystack is replaced by a hayCOCK. Winnie is the bear that is reversed (retires) to give HOOP. | |
| 23 | Musical piece regularly felt subdued (5) |
| ÉTUDE – Alternate letters (regularly) of fElT sUbDuEd. | |
| 24 | In Spain, what comes after work? Answer’s unclear (6) |
| OPAQUE – We have Manuel to thank for knowing what Spanish is for – um -what. It’s ¿QUE? After OP for work and A[nswer] it produces our entry. | |
| 25 | Old basilica no longer minted coins (8) |
| OSTMARKS – Cute. O[ld] is added to ST MARKS, the magnificent structure, inside and out, in Venice. Ost(east)marks were currency in East Germany. | |
| 26 | Cutting encircles boundaries of granite quarry (6) |
| TARGET – TART for cutting (a sharp taste) around the first and last of G[ranit]E | |
| 27 | Military might consider holding a prisoner attached to Resistance (3,5) |
| SEA POWER – Consider gives SEE, into which you place A P[risoner] O[f] W[ar], to which assembly you add the helpfully capitalised R[esistance]. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | In France, one pegs out lingerie? (6) |
| UNDIES – A beautifully evoked image of a French street scene. In France, of course one is UN. In the UK, pegs out is DIES. | |
| 2 | Criminal, overcome by temptation, first to nab diamonds (6) |
| BANDIT – First letter of N[ab] and D[iamonds] are taken into BAIT for temptation. Another example where the word order is deceptive. | |
| 3 | Botch an overdue attempt (9) |
| ENDEAVOUR – An anagram (botch) of AN OVERDUE. | |
| 4 | Entering name, put down 4 into 501 — boy grasps one way to solve it (4,8) |
| LONG DIVISION – So. Put down is LOG. Insert N[ame]. Switch to Roman, and put IV into DI. Your boy, a SON, takes in I (one). The definition refers back to the 4/501 sum. 125 and a bit, of course. | |
| 6 | The bags I failed to open — one rustles? (5) |
| THIEF – The reference is to a cattle thief. THE grabs an I, and to open Failed you need an F. | |
| 7 | Removed papers, keeping notes in order (8) |
| ISOLATED – Papers are/is ID, into which you insert SO LA TE, inspired by Julie Andrews. | |
| 8 | Picked up skill with pen, capturing very English caricature (8) |
| TRAVESTY – Skill gives ART, which is reversed (picked up). A pen is a STY. Between the two place V[ery] E[nglish]. Caricature and travesty meet via burlesque in Chambers. | |
| 11 | Bobby Kennedy’s final meeting with former European publishing operation? (4-3-5) |
| COPY-AND-PASTE – Bobby is what British people used to call P.C. Dixon of Dock Green and his ilk, so COP will do. The final letter of Kennedy is Y. With needs to be converted to AND. Former becomes PAST, and E[uropean] is standard in a crossword. | |
| 15 | Mountain guide’s tale following conclusion of film — gather round (6,3) |
| RELIEF MAP – Didn’t properly parse this before submission, taken by the elegance of the definition. But it’s LIE for tale, F[ollowing], the last letter of filM, and REAP for gather going round all of that. | |
| 16 | Mentally unsettle treacherous spy chief, exposed (5,3) |
| PSYCH OUT – An anagram (treacherous) of SPY, CH[ief] and OUT from exposed. Where’s M when you need her? | |
| 17 | Arrives, grabbing tea behind motorway rest facility (8) |
| ARMCHAIR – ARR[ives] takes in CHAI, Indian tea, itself tacked on to M[otorway]. | |
| 19 | Retreat from rough edge that hurts! (6) |
| BURROW – A rough edge, such as on cut metal, is a BURR. OW! That hurts! | |
| 20 | Yes, given shake-up within country, many leaving in spring (6) |
| GEYSER – An anagram (given shake up) of YES within GERMANY, the country, minus its MANY. | |
| 22 | Something used in pool to check temperature is crucial (5) |
| ACUTE – The game of pool is tricky without A CUE. It checks, takes in T[emperature]. | |
Soundly beaten again. Couldn’t see CONVEYOR BELT, STRICT or RELIEF MAP. Knew it had to be COCK-A-HOOP but didn’t know ‘haycock’. Also missed PSYCH OUT and the NHO OSTMARKS. Thought UMBRELLA was very good. DOORFRAME went in with a shrug. Liked the convoluted LONG DIVISION. Saw TRAVESTY but didn’t know it could mean ‘caricature’.
Thanks Z and setter.
I thought this was especially tough but managed to finish after an enjoyably frustrating (or frustratingly enjoyable?) morning! Thanks Z (though I think your explanation of 4d might be 501/4 rather than 4/501?) & setter
I tried for ages to put a line over the 501 so it looked like a classic long division sum, but my technical skill fell woefully short. I’d be grateful if you could imagine it!
Imagining away but can’t imagine how to turn 4/501 into more than a hundred, Z!
When I was in school, a long division sum was represented by 4|501 or 4/501 with a line going over the top of the 501. Has Maths changed that much?
Yes but it has to be 501/4 not 4/501 to amount to over 100 .. (sighs, mutters about young people today)
I think z might mean 4) 501 with a line over the top
I’ll have one more go. I fully agree that 501 divided by 4 has to be represented by 501/4, 501÷4 and so on. But when long division was a thing in Margaret Wix JMI, we would say it as 4 (or 4s) into 501, and write it with some variation of a line between the 4 and the 501 with a connected line over the 501. Tradition is important!
Mrs Smithson in infants never told me about that .. SHE said that “/” means “divided by.” Simple as that. Are you saying Mrs Smithson was wrong?!
Nothing in my Mech.eng degree said different .. the ) rings a bell but you didn’t use one of those …
Perhaps you’ll remember that when we were scrawling things in our exercise books with pens dipped into ink wells, the chances of anything consistently looking like ), / or | were iffy I the extreme!
Speak for yourself! A calligrapher, me, and I still have the inkwell pens to prove it.. Mrs Smithson would have settled for nothing less.
Sorry for lateness, re 29518 of April 16. 4 down.
Surely the 4 into 501 could have been: IV into DI where 500 is Roman D, which gives one DIVI?
LONG DIVISION
Yes. As the blog actually says!
Beaten here as well, but plenty of entertaining clueing and some positive vocabulary growth. Frustrating to hit the hinting buttons but a fair and well-constructed challenge.
I didn’t think I was going to finish this but I got there in the end. I knew how PSYCH OUT worked but I couldn’t think of PSYCH (and I was trying to get the obvious M in there somehow). LONG DIVISION would have been even better if “4 into 501” actually required long division as opposed to normal division. There were some very clever clues here, although you pretty much had to get the answer and then see if the wordplay fitted—you were never going to get most clues by assembling the wordplay For example, in SURPRISINGLY you would not go to RISING from building, although once you have the answer it fits fine.
It’s many years since I’ve actually done long division – it’s why God created calculators, of course. But here’s the thing. A site called geekforgeeks dot org has a page on maths/long-division-worksheets where the very first example given is “divide 452 by 4” almost uncannily close to our example. While I agree that I wouldn’t – didn’t – work out 4/501 by the Method, it clearly can be done that way!
Excellent summary of why we lesser solvers find some of the more challenging puzzles particularly difficult, as it ends up being a guessing game.
Tough but fair and most enjoyable. One hour exactly.
This was not the toughie I thought it was, but I had a hard time getting started – like, five answers after 20 minutes? As I got more crossing letters, I sped up – long division, yes, conveyor belt, ding dong. Ostmark was a mystery for a long time, and I was sure space out was the answer for 16 – sp + ace + out. Then I got surprisingly and had to rethink.
Time: 70:13
What a gem of a puzzle, like Z I appreciated much of the elegant clueing post-solve. I did it in 41.10 which was much quicker than I expected after taking an age to get going. Very helpful blog, sorely needed today. I had no idea about COCK-A-HOOP, COPY-AND-PASTE, the catch part of DOORFRAME and a couple of others, so thank you Z.
From All Along The Watchtower:
There must be some way outta here, said the Joker to the THIEF
There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Business men they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line, know what any of it is worth
Even though it’s His Bobness I can’t read that without immediately thinking of Jimi.
Know what Bob said? That was always Jimi’s song, I just wrote it…
It really was.. and he got paid, every time Jimi played it or a record was sold!
Reminded of Dolly Parton saying that “I Will Always Love You” became Whitney’s song. And paid for Dollywood, all on its own … what a woman! Payback, for refusing to give up the rights to Elvis.
Even though Jimi garbled a line of the lyrics. I’m sure you know this, but for the record: Instead of “None of them along the line know what any of it is worth,” Hendrix sang, “None will level on the line, nobody offered his word.”
Aha! So THAT’S what he’s saying!
I blamed my slow solve entirely on distraction, but the danged CDs puzzled me for a long time and I threw in DING-DONG without fully parsing.
21’37”, slow but steady. Liked RELIEF MAP and DING-DONG.
LONG DIVISION fell quickly, although the question is not solved by such, as Paul above points out.
Thanks z and setter.
Defeated by 3 when I threw in the towel just after 30 mins. PSYCH OUT, SURPRISINGLY and RELIEF MAP
Setter 2 Astonvilla1
COD: PSYCH OUT
Half an hour.
– Took ages to realise we needed to separate Mr and Fitzgerald to get UMBRELLA
– Needed to go on a bird trawl to get ostrich in order to then figure out STRICT
– Got DOORFRAME without seeing how the ‘catch’ part of the clue fitted
– Didn’t know (hay)cock as an arrangement of straw for COCK-A-HOOP
– Spent too long trying to fit Sherpa into 15d before the checkers forced a rethink
A tough but wonderful puzzle. Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Undies
LOI Ostmarks
CODs Copy-and-paste / Relief map
31:45 for some reason I found this hard to get started on getting to ETUDE before anything was put in. Raced through the SW corner and worked my way out of there the grid opening up when the two long downs fell.
Was glad to see Mr Fitzgerald thinking we were going to get someone other than Ella but I was soon corrected.
Last one in OSTMARKS which I didn’t really consider the parsing of but after reading the blog gets COD.
Thanks blogger and setter.
‘Surprisingly’ was surprisingly difficult for me even with all checkers bar crucial first letter. Wasted time looking for an anagram of ‘rude’ so not picking the definition. Clever cluing throughout.
tku setter and Z; took 55 min with some checking along the way; loved
“umbrella” and “copy and paste”… like a couple of others it took me quite a while to get started, i sat on 5 answers after 25 mins, but it came together
A bit of a curate’s egg, this puzzle. While there were some truly excellent clues – SEA POWER and ISOLATED in particular – there were a few that didn’t hold up to grammatical scrutiny, chiefly OPAQUE and THIEF. In the former, the linking device “‘s” (standing for “is”) clashes with the other main verb “comes”, which needed to take the participle form “coming”. In the latter clue, once again the verb “bags” needed to be the participle “bagging”, otherwise a preposition would be required between “I” and “failed”. The wordplay as it stands can only lead to THIFE.
Disagree about thief. It says “I in THE, then F(ailed).” Perfect.
Also disagree about opaque. It says “QUE comes after OP and A.” Admittedly you have to supply your own “and,” but it worked for me.
Think yourself lucky you didn’t do the crossword in the 1960s or 70s!
The OPAQUE clue as written contains two incompatible main verbs – it’s the equivalent of saying eg “The man enters Tesco pushes a trolley”, which is clearly wrong. Either “enters” needs to be “entering” or “pushes” needs to be “pushing” for the sentence to make sense.
As for the THIEF clue, the wordplay would be fine if it actually implied “I in THE, then F(ailed)”, but it doesn’t. The grammar of the wordplay leads one to expect THE to bag both the I and F, which is unfairly misleading. It’s an example of what the Clue Clinic terms a ‘plonker’: https://clueclinic.com/index.php/the-setting-room/#Glossary. A crossword clue should ultimately say what it means, and this one patently doesn’t.
OPAQUE (24ac) contains neither of the words enter or push.
No need to reply. Take my words or not, as you please.
The logical distillation of the above exchange seems to be as follows:
[1] RJH asserts that a clue should say what it means (true).
[2] JW says that, in the clue in question “admittedly you have to supply your own
‘and'”, which has the logical equivalent “the clue doesn’t say what it means!”
The aside re “enter” and “push” is obviously tongue-in-cheek diversionary
sophistry.
Thus JW actually agrees with RJH’s assertion but doesn’t seem to be aware of it and so is effectively starting a fight in an empty room. No need to reply 😉
75 mins.
Very tricky but I got there in the end.
Thanks, Z.
49 mins. Started OK but slowed to a crawl in the SE ending with OSTMARKS after a struggle with RELIEF MAP and BURROW. Several un/semi-parsed incl. SURPRISINGLY, COCK and some rather oblique CDs.
A satisfying tussle though, lots of good wordplay.
COD ARMCHAIR reminding me of “In my Chair” by the much maligned Status Quo.
Thanks to Zabadak and setter.
I biffed 3 or 4, but all parsings were quickly sorted out. At my age, a RELIEF MAP is a town plan highlighting public conveniences…..
FOI MIMOSA
LOI OSTMARKS
COD CONVEYOR BELT
TIME 10:05
“town plan highlighting public conveniences….” That’s a lulu!
They will probably be closed, though .. 🙁
Perth, where I live, if ever you’re there: The Great Dunny Hunt
I thought this really was a top quality puzzle, fair and precise clues that nicely misdirected without being too contrived or contorted. Many thanks! COD = OSTMARKS, narrowly ahead of COPY-AND-PASTE, UMBRELLA and RELIEF MAP.
Had FURLOW for BURROW for a long time, which had me searching for non-existent basilicas at 25 across. Tough challenge. 33’36”
Wow – too difficult for me with only about three quarters solved before throwing in the towel.
If I can’t parse it I leave it blank so things like “long division” went unentered. Must admit knowing an answer; jotting it down; and spending several minutes trying (and failing!) to unravel it all means the clue ain’t for me.
Some great clues though and “isolated” was very good as was “ding-dong”.
Many thanks to our blogger for the explanations and to our setter for a great challenge today.
My thanks to Zabadak and setter.
Hard, DNF. Good puzzle though.
18a Surprisingly, biffed.
DNF, 11d Copy and Paste was to clever for me, even with all the crossers.
17d Armchair, not that it matters but I parsed it as CHA inside M1.
20d Geyser. I thought spring was an unhelpful def, but the wordplay was clear.
13:28. A superbly chewy puzzle which would have been spoiled for me by the CONVEYER/CONVEYOR ambiguity if I hadn’t picked the right one by sheer luck. According to Collins the E version is American. The Oxfords have ‘conveyer’ but only allow for the O version when it’s attached to ‘belt’. 🤷🏻♂️
26.02 – a good result for me, where the SNITCH is over 100. I saw a lot of this quite quickly, and was then left puzzling over DOORFRAME, SURPRISINGLY and PSYCH OUT for a few minutes.
For PSYCH OUT I initially entered CATCH OUT (cat = treacherous spy, like rat? No.) That made SURPRISINGLY impossible so I removed it, and they fell together.
NHO OSTMARKS but the checkers were generous, and the clue pretty fair.
I really enjoyed it – what a great set of clues.
I’m confused by LONG DIVISION. The definition is ‘way to solve it’ and that doesn’t seem to me to be adequate — I can’t see that ‘it’ refers to anything but the answer. I know that one could solve 4 into 501 by long division, but to say that it’s the way to solve it dosn’t seem right. The fact that nobody has made this point suggests that I’m missing something.
At 17dn I was sure that the setter had made a mistake because the I seemed superfluous. Silly of me, only remembering char and cha and forgetting chai. At 5ac for a while I wondered how parrot = tough — [s]parro[w]. 13ac seemed a remarkably feeble CD.
Very good. Most of it in without too much trouble, but held up at the end for a long time by RELIEF MAP, which then gave the last 2 in OSTMARKS and CONVEYOR BELT. Never seen “conveyer”, fortunately. COD to Ostmarks.
Another very enjoyable puzzle. I started off with UNDIES, and then tackled 4d by inserting IV into DI as instructed. LONG DIVISION dutifully popped into view. Loved ISOLATED and COPY AND PASTE. In the SE corner, OSTMARKS ad RELIEF MAP took quite a while, as did the SEA part of 27a. The SW held me up with SURPRISINGLY taking a surprisingly long time to surface, but finally allowing me to see LOI, PSYCH OUT. 24:17. Thanks setter and Z.
24 mins which is good for me. I have a mental block over D and L roman numerals. I have them on a card in my lounge. I suppose thats a cheat. Thanks setter and blogger for a nice workout
Straw is NOT hay !
You’re right, of course, but it looks a bit like floccinaucinihilipilification!
Indeed, hay is not straw. Hay is dried grasses or legumes grown for livestock feed, rich in nutrients. Straw is the leftover stalks from cereal crops, low in nutrition, and mainly used for bedding or mulch. Paglia e fieno is one of our favourite Italian dishes, made with egg fettuccine for the straw (paglia), and spinach fettuccine for the hay (fieno). Very different!
Amazingly I finished this more or less under my own steam and on and off only took the first part of day! Was left with STRICT and ISOLATED. Wrongly parsed the bird with clipped wings as IR backwards which helped while being totally wrong. Of course couldn’t figure the vet then.
Thank you setter and blogger for the parse!
The last five clues doubled my time to exactly 38:00, with over ten at the end on SURPRISINGLY and PSYCH OUT. That can sometimes feel like a drag (it happens to me often enough!) but much less so today as all the clues felt so fairly (and well) put together. I did have CONVEYER BELT, with the -OR not even occurring to me, but the ambiguity outlined by keriothe is more than enough to make me feel fully vindicated. Excellent stuff – many thanks to setter and Z.
After a slow start I was pleased to finish in 26 mins (3 mins quicker than yesterday). No unheard-ofs or opaque wordplay. Good clues, though I flinched slightly at ‘Military might’ = SEA POWER in 27A; coming from a naval family, ‘military’ to me refers to soldiers and armies, not sailors or navies. First in was BURROW and last (after a couple of minutes thought) RELIEF MAP. Favourite 3 clues: to STRICT, MIMOSA and UNDIES. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
Great puzzle, too good for me. I thought 1ac was going to be a reference to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, what with mr Fitzgerald and UB from University Books, but it didn’t work, thanks to UNDIES. Pity, my favourite poem. Several brilliant clues. Congrats to setter.
I agree with you. As a teenager I used to sing Liza Lehmann’s setting of Myself when Young, along with my late father, accompanied by my stepmother on the piano. That verse always brought to mind myself vainly seeking help in trying to understand a particularly esoteric Times crossword clue.
47:36. I found it very hard going. I put it down for a while and the last few popped in fairly easily. LOI OSTMARKS. Phenomenal cluing but you really have to work for the answers!
I really enjoyed this one taking a relatively speedy 34.46 to complete it. Quite a few clues had to be methodically constructed from the cryptic direction, but I had the confidence to know that all answers were right having correctly parsed all but one. ARMCHAIR was the one I couldn’t quite parse, taking CHA for tea and failing to see where the cryptic was failing to explain how to wrap it in the M1. Another clue that held me up a little was 1ac where I was sure F Scott must figure in the answer.
Late to the party … sheer idleness.
But, wasn’t this good? Been a fine week so far. I particularly liked Mr Fitzgerald, which led me a fine dance, and also 7dn – I can never see a reference to that sort of note, without breaking into song. I could have been Julie Andrews’ understudy. “So, a needle pulling threaaaad …”
In a slightly discordant note, “COCK” does not = arrangement of straw. OK, Collins claims it does, but it really shouldn’t.
Nevertheless a fine crossword and a fine blog, thank you both!
ODO says a COCK can be straw too. Chambers doesn’t but does allow dung!
I spent too long trying to work in some combination of FScott which at no time made any sense..in the end the answer came and the penny dropped.
Would not describe my experience with this puzzle as “COCK-A-HOOP”, whatever the heck that means…definitely cocked my head a few times staring at blank spaces in the grid…
A few gorgeous clues (and surfaces) mixed in among some very head-scratching wordplay. 33:49 altogether.
Just means elated, nowadays, but see the OED:
“Apparently: to turn the tap on a cask so that the liquor flows freely. Hence: to drink unstintingly; to drink and make merry. “
Another nice puzzle.
No problem with the long division, and even though I read engineering I still write division out in the Z-preferred divisor, vertical slash, dividend with the dividend covered with a horizontal line. I got to do that a number of times this week, as taxes were due yesterday and many annoying tax-prep worksheets require dividing this by that.
32:05
Forgotten about haycocks though answer was clear. Last few in were OSTMARKS and RELIEF MAP.
Thanks Z and setter
A few biffs, didn’t parse the COCK part and didn’t really like the cryptics on CONVEYOR BELT and DOORFRAME.
A good 50 mins after a long day but enjoyable and happy to get through it.
Thanks Zabadak and setter
Tried this with a lot of patience and diligence wanted to give up. Did as I couldn’t do 1a&1d, 5a, 10a, 13a. 2d, 6d(felt embarrassed after seeing the parsing above) , 7d and 11d.
Thanks for the above. 👍🏾
I thought I’d try AI too so I threw 14ac at Chat GPT. This is what it came up with:
“The answer is Groundhog Day (8,4).
Definition: “Repetitive” → Groundhog Day is commonly used to describe something that repeats over and over (from the film Groundhog Day).
Wordplay (cryptic):
“band” → hog (a “hog band” is a type of bluegrass group)
“churning” → ground (as in grinding/churning)
“the same material?” → day (a homophone of “dye,” i.e., material/color)
It’s a slightly whimsical construction, but “Groundhog Day” neatly captures the idea of repetition.”
Clearly AI has a way to go.
22.07
I looked at the clue for LONG DIVISION and thought we were in for slightly wordy convoluted clues. My bad – this was excellent fare with many smooth and amusing surfaces, enjoyed at leisure in our esteemed blogger’s write up. Particularly liked OSTMARKS Thanks Z and setter.
LONG DIVISION confused me for a long time. I thought the 501 was a jeans reference. Although it’ll always make me think of Brian Lara.
Tricky but fair overall today, I enjoyed it.
Finally gave up missing the PSYCH from 16d and the NHO OSTMARKS which meant that I also didn’t work out BURROW (although I wasn’t familiar with that meaning of BURR).
Struggled to get going although FOI was 1d UNDIES but very pleased to have cracked most of the clues when I thought I was unlikely to get very far.
Some very nice clues – liked UMBRELLA, LONG DIVISION and TRAVESTY and particularly COPY-AND-PASTE which was very neat.
Thanks to the setter for a good challenge – and to the blogger and everyone else who chips in with their comments on this useful resource.
DNF, beaten by MIMOSA, partly because NHO, but mostly because I wrote THEIF for 6d (sigh).
Failed on 7 (I think) – definitely gone downhill this week, but this one did feel a bit harder at least, and there was a time not too long ago when I wouldn’t been nearly as successful. Practice, practice, learn, learn….. Several really difficult wordplays which make me despair of ever being “ biff free”. How I was meant to decide on an ostrich as the bird to be clipped eludes me – definitely biffed that one. NHO Mimosa ( except as a rather nice shrub), or haycock ( though that one was fairly obvious IMHO). Can’t convince myself acute and crucial are synonyms , whatever learned tomes say, also conveyor belts don’t necessarily carry repetitive things ( think Generation Game – sorry). End of whinge.
Thanks to setter and blogger. Anticipating Friday with trepidation….
Fell three short, with RELIEF MAP, PSYCH OUT and SURPRISINGLY.
Very tough but enjoyable nonetheless.
Thanks Z and Setter.