Time: 22:10. A relatively gentle Thursday puzzle in which my main delays were created by the two long across clues, both of which I read badly and fluffed the definitions.
Secondary holdups came from the setter zeroing in on my geriatric spelling weaknesses, which substitute an A where and O should be: it happened twice! The sauce was also taxing, because I thought it was something to do with French butter and tried to insert a U somewhere along the way.
I show definitions underlined in bold italics, excluded letters in [], and hope the rest explains itself.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Where trial is broadcast and heard (6) |
| CAUGHT – A trial takes place in a “court”, which when broadcast sounds like our answer, which I have done rather better since getting my new hearing aids. | |
| 4 | Haul iron spades into street fight (8) |
| SLUGFEST – Haul is LUG, and iron is FE (Fe for purists). Place both into ST[reet]. “A match or struggle, characterized by heavy blows.” | |
| 10 | Missing start, stadium track is making a comeback (9) |
| RENASCENT – Don’t be put off buy trying to spell it as a variation on Renaissance. It’s an ARENA with its start missing and SCENT as in a track followed by bloodhounds and such. | |
| 11 | Blade whirling either way (5) |
| ROTOR – Either way indicates you’re looking for a palindrome. | |
| 12 | Misbehaving bachelor admitted to perfect pattern (11) |
| HERRINGBONE – Struggle city here! But go for ERRING for misbehaving, add B[achelor] and place the ensemble into HONE, which is perfect as a verb, accent on second syllable. I lost time trying to work some variation on epitome, model or paragon, emphasising the need to separate in the right places. | |
| 14 | Dictator’s due tribute? (3) |
| ODE – Another “heard” clue. When taking dictation be careful how you spell “owed”. | |
| 15 | Lie about uranium remnants (7) |
| RESIDUE – RESIDE stands in for lie, and encloses U for uranium. | |
| 17 | Piece retreating to capture another? (6) |
| NUGGET – A piece, especially in gangster slang, is a GUN. Reverse it, and add GET for capture. Another refers back to piece, but offers a more prosaic meaning. | |
| 19 | Fare from Scotland has bags regularly going astray (6) |
| HAGGIS – I’ll do the wordplay so you don’t have to. It’s HAS taking in a mix (astray) of the odd letters of GoInG. Cue debate about indirect anagrams, but did you honestly think it was going to be anything else? | |
| 21 | Country bread keeps American in California (7) |
| CROATIA – The type of bread you need is ROTI, into which you insert A[merica], before inserting the ensemble into CA[lifornia] | |
| 23 | Plump duck served with pint (3) |
| OPT – Plump as a verb. Duck is its usual O from cricket, and PT as a standard abbreviation for pint. | |
| 24 | Bridge pile replaced earlier chain (11) |
| ARCHIPELAGO – I’ll parse this now. It’s ARCH for bridge, an anagram (replaced) of PILE and AGO from earlier. | |
| 26 | Ice is one ingredient of the mojito (5) |
| EMOJI – Hidden in thE MOJIto. Pick any one of these:🧊🥶🍦🍧🍨❄️, probably the first one in a mojito. | |
| 27 | Produce aisle losing length to stock new sauce (9) |
| BÉARNAISE – A spelling test. Produce is a pretty good synonym for BEAR once you get the spelling right, AISLE loses its L[ength] and the two bits “stock” or enclose N[ew]. | |
| 29 | Shaping of tiny tree which never ends (8) |
| ETERNITY – At last a straight anagram (shaping) of TINY TREE. | |
| 30 | Tip to finish level one on a video game? (6) |
| PLAYER – The syntax it a bit odd, but to finish tip you need a P. Level and LAYER are close enough. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Group of commuters race after Mark cycling (8) |
| CARSHARE – Cycle the letters of SCAR, mark, to get CARS, add HARE for race. | |
| 2 | Rounded section of Sumatran lumpfish is bony? (5) |
| ULNAR – The hidden is reversed (rounded) this time in SumatRAN LUmpfish. Adjective relating to the larger of the forearm bones. | |
| 3 | Suffers fools (3) |
| HAS – Two definitions: he has a cold, he has us all with his trickery. | |
| 5 | Eating tons, managed personal disappointment (7) |
| LETDOWN – Managed give rise to LED, which consumes T[ons] and is followed by OWN for personal. | |
| 6 | Men anger god arousing figure in bed? (6,5) |
| GARDEN GNOME – An anagram (arousing) of MEN ANGER GOD and a cutesy definition. | |
| 7 | Sociable former footballer stops not drinking (9) |
| EXTROVERT – Former is EX, your footballer plays for Blackburn or Bristol (or Melchester for comic book lovers) and is a ROVER. Bracket ROVER with TT for teetotal, not drinking. | |
| 8 | Nearly shot island bird (6) |
| TURKEY – Shot is TURN, from which you delete the last letter. Island is KEY, as in Florida Keys. | |
| 9 | Measure sides as a whole? (6) |
| LEAGUE – A variable measure of distance. A number of sporting sides together also form a league | |
| 13 | Anger happening to bore people (11) |
| INDIGNATION – I think this works best if happening and to bore are taken together, to produce IN DIG. People give NATION. | |
| 16 | Change to hammers automated building (5,4) |
| SMART HOME – An anagram (change) of TO HAMMERS. | |
| 18 | Person demonstrating regret to billions when overthrown (8) |
| SABOTEUR – Regret RUE, TO, B[illions] when AS, all reversed (overthrown). | |
| 20 | Old brass boat capsized under fire (7) |
| SACKBUT – That is old brass instrument. A TUB or boat reversed below SACK for fire. | |
| 21 | Cold capital by peak (6) |
| CLIMAX – C[old], the capital of Peru, LIMA, and don’t miss the by to give X. | |
| 22 | Beginners in croquet often take this stick (6) |
| COHERE – The first letters of Croquet and Often, then the instruction “take this” translates to a more peremptory HERE. | |
| 25 | A US campus meets variable goodwill (5) |
| AMITY – Out setter avoids arguments over whether MIT is an American university or not by defining it as A campus (the A is part of the wordplay).The variable is Y. | |
| 28 | Queue up endlessly for nothing (3) |
| NIL – The sort of queue you want is a LINE, from which you remove the end and then reverse (up in a down clue). | |
Missed 1 down since Mark with a capital is M. If it had simply been mark I could have solved it. In 1 across I missed CAUGHT as heard.
I got EMOJI but how does “Ice is one” become an emoji?
See Zabadak’s explanation in the blog.
I was slow and got the wrong end of the stick on many clues – e.g. I thought you had to know something about croquet. Is 6 a German something? It’s carpool in the US – what might it be in the UK? Is the island Tiree? Haggis must be it, but why? Well, after stumbling along for a while, I managed to get going, ending up with sackbut, turkey, and league.
Time: 53:53
I think 18dn is a ‘semi-&lit’ clue?
Liked this a lot and managed to finish with the exception of CLIMAX and kicked myself for not seeing the X=By. SACKBUT came to me but what it was I had no idea. SMART HOME took an age to figure out from the anagrist. BEARNAISE went in from the checkers. Liked SABOTEUR which provided ARCHIPELAGO but managed to bung in an ‘e’ where the ‘I’ should be. PLAYER was my LOI and took a while to see the unusual parsing. SLUGFEST started out for me as ‘dragfest’, but of course it didn’t parse until I saw what was going on. Liked NUGGET and assumed the ‘other piece’ was a news article or similar. Lovely puzzle for a Thursday.
Thanks Z and setter.
Awfully slow. A few quick ones, like ULNAR, EMOJI, & AMITY, but mainly like pulling teeth. It took me ages, for instance, to think of the right __AISE sauce, or to think of KEY. LEAGUE was my LOI (after HERRINGBONE & CARSHARE), and I couldn’t parse it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anagram like that in HAGGIS, and I rather liked it. It’s not a taboo indirect anagram, is it? The anagrist is all there. Is a SABOTEUR a person demonstrating? I suppose the original saboteurs were, but. COD to COHERE.
53 minutes, so very slow, but I mostly enjoyed this.
I struggled to justify INDIGNATION and still think the wordplay is a bit of a stretch.
I don’t get the definition of SABOTEUR as ‘demonstrating’ and acting as a saboteur seem far removed from each other in the world of protest. Or is it perhaps a reflection of modern times that the dictionaries haven’t yet caught up with?
For some reason I thought the sauce was spelt Bernaise, so that clue took a bit of unravelling.
Didn’t know ‘ice’ as an EMOJI but I spotted the hidden word and was not delayed on that one.
The indignation wordplay worked fine for me once I read “happening” as “popular”, hence “in”
Yep
I mention above that I think the clue to SABOTEUR is semi-&lit ie the whole clue is meant to be read as definition, not just first two words. Although even so it remains a rather strained definition.
24:23 on a puzzle I’m frankly very happy to finish with no errors. Technically NHO “carshare” although it makes sense once properly parsed. HERRINGBONE×LEAGUE was the last pair to fall into place. OPT as “plump” is gibberish but couldn’t have been any other answer. Great puzzle overall!
Sabotage is direct action, a form of protest, hence a demonstration. It can, of course, have more than merely symbolic impact.
I hesitated over my LOI LEAGUE and was distracted by thinking RACE was cycling around RAHS before finally seeing SCAR. CAUGHT is not at all how I pronounce “court.”
I didn’t really get the SABOTEUR def myself, I’m sure people carrying out actual sabotage in, say, the resistance would not appreciate being lumped in with a bunch of self-righteous kids with a banner and a megaphone. In Aussie rules football there is an actual on-field position of rover, which I happily accepted as the wp until I remembered this puzzle’s country of origin. 32.09, all good, thank you Z.
From Please, Mrs Henry:
I can drink like a fish, I can crawl like a snake
I can bite like a TURKEY, I can slam like a drake
Please Mrs Henry, Mrs Henry please
I’m down on my knees
I am offended by your dismissive comment, which I will refrain from further characterizing, regarding protest marchers.
Whoa! I wasn’t referring to ALL protest marchers, I had in mind an annoying local demo involving school kids some months ago whose cause I forget, and contrasting them with people blowing up bridges etc in wartime. But come to think of it there are plenty of protests marchers I will readily dismiss, such as those in Melbourne this year demonstrating against immigration, led by Nazis…
Yes, and then there are old believers in democracy and human right like me, recently seen among the banners and megaphones in midtown NYC.
44 minutes. This one continued the sequence of the puzzles gradually getting harder since Monday. I started off well but then hit some heavy weather with NUGGET (I was thinking of a chess ‘piece’), CROATIA, SABOTEUR and especially HERRINGBONE. I was left with _E_G_E at 9d at the end and was about to throw in the towel when LEAGUE materialised from somewhere.
Favourite was the graphic surface for SLUGFEST.
No time as many interruptions. I enjoyed it though, but I was held up by last 2 in CARSHARE & LEAGUE. clever stuff.
I liked HERRINGBONE & GARDEN GNOME.
Thanks Z and setter.
Done in an hour, but needed a couple of aids for the last two : TURKEY and CLIMAX. I had CHILLY(cold) , C+HILLY( peak) which works pretty well. I am sure C=capital is in some dictionary (VC = Venture Capital). This rogue L led to my sauce looking like MILANAISE.
NHO SACKBUT, or RENASCENT where I had the RENA pencilled in for a long time, trying to jam some kind of renaissance in there.
HAGGIS parsing was tough(ok, impossible) but definition and crossers were gentle.
I thought PLAY ER was a semi &lit, being some unknown instruction or cheat
COD LEAGUE
I made the same mistake for a time with CHILLY, which left me wondering implausibly if BOLOGNAISE could be written without the G. It is silent after all…
12:13. I liked this one: I found I had to engage with the wordplay for almost every clue.
I don’t understand the clue for SABOTEUR. ‘One demonstrating’ doesn’t seem even close as a definition and it doesn’t work as a semi-&Lit either.
Maybe then definition is just ‘Person’ and the rest of the clue is the cryptic. Ie the word ‘saboteur’ cryptically demonstrates ‘regret to billions when overthrown’. Still a strain though.
To me that’s more than a strain – it’s gibberish! I remain baffled by the clue.
Replace ‘Person’ by ‘Wrecker’ and the clue is unexceptionable (if too easy).
Collins online has the first suggested synonym for SABOTEUR as “demonstrator”. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/saboteur
It also gives ‘hooligan’ – I rest my case!
I reckon it’s just about acceptable – I didn’t raise an eyebrow when I worked out the answer, although I did have to work from wordplay as I agree the definition is ambitious. It’s quite hard to think of another definition which isn’t just a complete giveaway though.
Too oblique for me. You have to both assume a particular type of saboteur and then apply a loose definition to that to encapsulate other stuff they might get up to. However I assume that was the intent.
I, too, struggled at first with the definition of SABOTEUR and then hunt saboteurs came to mind. Whilst some do take to direct action, I think demonstrating noisily at the scene of a hunt is very much part of the MO. I found this trickier than our blogger but got on the wavelength eventually with all done in 26 minutes which I will happily take on a Thursday. Faves inc OPT, BEARNAISE, ETERNITY, CARSHARE, EXTROVERT, CLIMAX and COHERE.
Thanks to setter and blogger
Hunt saboteurs sabotage hunts. They might also demonstrate but it’s not the same activity.
20 minutes.
– Seeing BEARNAISE will always make me think of Baldrick’s filet mignon in sauce Bearnaise (and what it really was)
– Can’t figure out the intended surface reading of the clue for SMART HOME
– Same query as others over SABOTEUR
– Glad I’m not the only one who considered CHILLY for 21d, and also glad that I held off on putting it in as it would have stymied BEARNAISE
Thanks Zabadak and setter.
FOI Caught
LOI League
COD Cohere
I don’t fully get the surface reading either, but I think it’s meant to have building as a verb, as in “the new hammers have automated the building process.”
30 mins. Thought at the time I was being slow but reading our blogger maybe it was deceptively tough. Interesting and enjoyable though.
BEARNAISE only HO from Blackadder as per ChrisLutton above.
AMITY seems like a missed opportunity for a Jaws reference.
I believe GARDEN GNOMEs are being allowed at Chelsea this year.
COD to SLUGFEST but not in my lettuces please.
Thanks to setter and Zabadak, nice emoji-ing.
I too questioned « a person demonstrating » as a definition of saboteur, but then the term « hunt saboteurs » came to mind, used to describe demonstrators at a fox hunt.
28:53. I agree with Keriothe – even when you had conceived of an answer, it was necessary to go through the word play.
I thought this was perfect. Above median difficulty, probably around mean difficulty. Nothing hugely obscure, just clever.
In retrospect, I feel I should have been quicker as I was on the right track for most clues relatively quickly, but the setter threw up enough doubt and distraction to prevent me seeing the answer. A good example is CARSHARE, where I saw the definition straight away and even thought of SCAR=MARK -> CARS, but still took a while to get there. Another is HAGGIS, where the doubts about parsing kept me guessing for minutes.
LOI was LEAGUE.
29.58 with LOI league. Agree about the long clues, I was convinced that the pattern was part of the clue not the answer which was unfortunate. Same as others with saboteurs but when you followed the instructions, it couldn’t be anything else.
Really enjoyed the puzzle, even if I was a bit slow.
Just under thirty one minutes, but I screwed up with SLOGFEST where, in deciding between that and SLUGFEST, I misparsed HAUL as SLOG instead of putting LUG inside S—FEST. Careless! HERRINGBONE, LEAGUE and CARSHARE were last 3 in. Thanks setter and Z.
My thanks to Zabadak and setter.
Mainly easy until it wasn’t.
4a Slugfest, I was surprised to find this in the Times.
12a Herringbone, needed all the crossers, then PDM.
19a CNP Haggis.
8d CNP Turkey, thankyou Zabadak.
37:33 I liked this a lot. Enjoyed the occasional struggle to fit the wordplay to the “obvious” answer”.
CARSHARE and SABOTEUR both took a long time but COD is HERRINGBONE (if you see what I mean).
Thanks to Zabadak and to the setter
“Person demonstrating” for SABOTEUR is nonsense, of course. But at least the wordplay was clear. I was oddly on the wavelength throughout and finished all but LEAGUE in 23 mins. Only another half an hour later, the penny dropped.
34:01, with all parsed except TURKEY. Took me a while after reading the blog to twig how “turn” and “shot” are synonymous, but I assume it’s in the sense of “Can I have a go / a turn / a shot?”.
Thank you for the blog!
14:23. Nice puzzle.
COD: Herringbone
Thanks to Z and our setter
Nothing too terrible here, although I became stuck in the top left corner and used a mild aid to get LEAGUE, which allowed me to finish. But all my slowness was the result of my incompetence and it was a fair cop. I think a SABOTEUR = person demonstrating is OK; not perhaps fitting all the definition but enough. Needless to say my time was nothing like that of the first three days of this week. I suspect we are on the path to something tough tomorrow.
Was convinced for 30a that ‘tip to finish….game’ had to be Cluedo . Oh well….
My slowest time this week – 18 mins. It’s been a freak week for me with an aggregate time for the four puzzles of 61 mins. I’m sure my comeuppance will come tomorrow. HERRINGBONE held me up at the end until I thought ‘perfect’ might = HONE. Not heard of SMART HOME, what is it? Thanks Blogger for explaining the wordplay to HAGGIS and EMOJI (a rather feeble definition, my device has hundreds of different emojis). Still not happy about IN DIG = ‘happening to bore’ (13D) and does RESIDE = lie (15A)? But I think a paint pot flinger, definitely a SABOTEUR, is also a’Person demonstrating’. First in was CAUGHT, last LEAGUE. Favourite three clues: to NUGGET (surface reading suggested chess), HAS (v neat) and COHERE (I liked ‘take this’ = HERE). Thank you Blogger and Setter.
Clues should not rely on S E English pronounciation. Court sounds quite different from caught, both in having a ‘r’ among all the folk I know, and in the ‘ou’ needing a different lip shape from ‘au’. My second last one in!!!
24:13
I enjoyed this a lot. Puzzles with unusual (but not too far out) words within ones compass can delight, such as SLUGFEST, CARSHARE , RENASCENT and SACKBUT. I guess if progress had been stilted rather than smooth, I might have seen this differently. Finally left staring at HERRINGBONE without the G checker, which was necessary to have any hope with LEAGUE – the alphatrawl was fairly swift, seeing the answer as soon as I alighted on L.
Thanks Z and setter