This setter definitely likes question marks. I counted eight of them. He/she also likes double definitions (four). Overall, I’d have to say this is pretty straightforward. I made life hard by shoving in an errant entry, so ended well over par with a time of 22:45.
Expect some fast times.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Copper pot briefly bugs artist (6,9) |
| POLICE CONSTABLE – PO |
|
| 9 | Rank in karate that can’t be built upon? (5,4) |
| GREEN BELT – double definition (DD) | |
| 10 | Cash raised for eavesdroppers (5) |
| BREAD – sounds like ‘bred’ (as in born and bred) | |
| 11 | Consider appropriate charges to return it (3,3) |
| SEE FIT – FEES reversed IT | |
| 12 | Shrink admits lie exposed colleague (2-6) |
| CO-WORKER – |
|
| 13 | Ghosts from mouth of Styx facing the underworld (6) |
| SHADES – S~ HADES | |
| 15 | Tender bond breaks curse (8) |
| BANKNOTE – KNOT in BANE (‘Noise is the bane of my life’) | |
| 18 | Stop way of making subtitle subtle? (3,2,3) |
| CUT IT OUT – remove IT from SUBT |
|
| 19 | Recompense guys covered in spots? (6) |
| AMENDS – MEN in ADS (advertising spots, then) | |
| 21 | Boomers upset about king’s headwear (8) |
| SOMBRERO – R in anagram* of BOOMERS | |
| 23 | Functional uniform with expensive fur (6) |
| USABLE – U SABLE | |
| 26 | Unfashionable hairstyle is better (5) |
| OUTDO – OUT DO | |
| 27 | Attractive to banish Democrat ready to get in (9) |
| ELECTABLE – |
|
| 28 | Legendary mariner astonished Blair at sea (6,3,6) |
| SINBAD THE SAILOR -ASTONISHED BLAIR*; Sinbad’s seven voyages were a late addition to the Thousand and One Nights, as many of the best known parts were | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Horse uses gap to run free (7) |
| PEGASUS – USES GAP* | |
| 2 | Belgian city’s feudal lord (5) |
| LIEGE – DD | |
| 3 | Good to leave body in North America, perhaps (9) |
| CONTINENT – CONTIN |
|
| 4 | Head expelling one who does coursework? (4) |
| CHEF – CH |
|
| 5 | Imaginary number confused Latino (8) |
| NOTIONAL – NO LATINO* | |
| 6 | Bill with two zeroes added not acceptable (5) |
| TABOO – TAB OO | |
| 7 | Piece-by-piece analysis of failure (9) |
| BREAKDOWN – DD | |
| 8 | Drones bombing base from the back (7) |
| ENDORSE – DRONES* |
|
| 14 | Robot with gold fruit back from kitchen (9) |
| AUTOMATON – AU TOMATO |
|
| 16 | Position papers? (4,5) |
| KAMA SUTRA – cryptic definition; very nice | |
| 17 | Fanatic torn admitting iodine is something nourishing (8) |
| NUTRIENT – NUT I (iodine) in RENT (torn) | |
| 18 | Conventions area within airport? (7) |
| CUSTOMS – DD | |
| 20 | Clip featuring live female animal (3-4) |
| SHE-BEAR – BE in SHEAR; so not ROE DEER, then… | |
| 22 | Red curio Jack smuggles (5) |
| RIOJA – hidden | |
| 24 | Youngster left Stairway to Heaven here? (5) |
| BABEL – BABE L; referencing the famous tower in Genesis, with a nod to Led Zeppelin | |
| 25 | Menagerie evacuated twice for something viral? (4) |
| MEME – M~E M~E; a meme can be something other than something that is found on social media – hence the ? | |
No problems today.
The Kama Sutra is much more than a list of sex positions. Here in the west it is consistently misrepresented. The original translation by Richard Burton has been widely criticised.
“No-one would have believed in the last years of the 19th century that human affairs were being watched …”
Eh?
Any puzzle I can do in 12 minutes is at the extreme end of the easy to difficult scale. That said there were a few gems like KAMA SUTRA.
Thanks U and setter.
Well, thats a great start to the week, not! So convinced was I that ROE-DEER was right, I came completely unstuck on 19ac, and gave up.
I enjoyed the two long clues which both went straight in.
Thanks U and setter.
21:11
Going great guns until the last few, winding up with one of the slowest times and worst WITCHes so far. Biffed a few, and never did parse CONTINENT. What Jerry said about KAMA SUTRA; but I’ll still give it my COD.
14:07 I was in unfamiliar territory with single digit minutes on the clock and only BANKNOTE, AMENDS and KAMA SUTRA to go but struggled for a sprint finish. Just not on wavelength with the cryptic definition today but obvious once the K was checked.
A straightforward solve with two very generous 15 letter clues.
COD SHE-BEAR
Thanks blogger and setter
As others have, I zipped through this. LOI BANKNOTE, COD to the KAMA SUTRA. Thank you U and setter.
12:47, with about 5 minutes staring in increasing desperation at 15ac. I just couldn’t make head or tail of any part of the clue. Eventually KNOT for ‘bond’ occurred to me and that was that.
It may not do it justice but the clue for KAMA SUTRA is still excellent.
13.51, hesitating over AMENDS because of the odd equivalent “spots” and over MEME because I was looking for a word for menagerie with two or four letters taken out.
E for base is a commonplace (perhaps more in Mephisto and the like): from Chambers “the base of the natural system of logarithms (see Napierian) (mathematics).”
For a CD, KAMA SUTRA was amusing, even if we’ve misunderstood it all these years and it’s really about stamp collecting.
Please permit me a silly question. When inserting a quote, does the full stop come after or before the closing inverted commas? See above.
In British English, the convention is, for complete sentences quoted, to place the full stop inside the closing quotation mark; for fragments, to place it outside. So, outside, in your example.
Of course, for British English the typical convention is also to use single quotation marks!
I just edited a book, and this came up.
7:25 which seems quicker than it should have been, and a comfortable 15:20 inside my target. An excellent set of clues I thought.
Thanks setter and U.
About 10 minutes
– Started writing SERGEANT for the second word of 1a before realising it wasn’t long enough and correcting to POLICE CONSTABLE (doubly silly, as of course the artist’s name is Sargent)
– Needed all the checkers before I could work out CO-WORKER
– Not entirely sure how ghosts=SHADES
– Wanted 20d to be SHE-WOLF before the checkers pushed me towards SHE-BEAR
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Usable
LOI Co-worker
COD Sombrero
I did exactly the same at 1ac, thinking SERGEANT, a misspelling of the American portrait artist that didn’t fill the spaces available.
Easy cryptic day today, though I fat-fingered a typo in the QC to blot my copybook. Under 11 mins for both puzzles.
PB here, though I didn’t quite parse everything as I was going along. First time I’ve added to my top 10 times in well over a year, so perhaps cerebral atrophy isn’t setting in quite as quickly as I thought. LOI BABEL. COD KAMA SUTRA.
7:05
Yes, I was 4 minutes something for the Quickie and typoed out.
Crikey! That was a breeze!
14:49, but what could it have been if BANKNOTE hadn’t been there to foil me for the last few minutes?
I put in “PUT IT OUT” rather than “CUT IT OUT”, which was the first speed bump. Then stared at BANKNOTE for a while. Tender is such a tricky word, since it has so many distinct meanings (offer, kind/gentle, sore, small boat etc.). I didn’t think of tender in terms of money until the very last minute. Otherwise, pretty straight forward, and the whole thing was very enjoyable. KAMA SUTRA was my COD.
15a also frustrated me- just couldn’t get ‘backbone ‘out of my brain
20 minutes. Felt as though I should have been quicker on this not very difficult puzzle. The CONSTABLE bit of 1a only went in with checked letters – like ChrisLutton above I had thought of and rejected SERGEANT first – and I never had a good run of consecutive write-ins at any time.
Yes, I liked KAMA SUTRA too and found AMENDS the most difficult one today.
14:17. Thought I was on for my first ever sub-10 so QC-like was it but the SE held a few proper 15×15 clues. Quite a fun QC though, thanks both.
Despite me being logged in, this post is making me enter my name + email. Anyone else had that? EDIT: Working now.
Yes. I have found chrome to work much better than Safari on iOS for this.
Loved this one, 17.38 and impressed by the ones that took me longest: BANKNOTE, MEME and KAMA SUTRA. Thanks Ulaca, and from my days as a sub I’m on your side regarding where the punctuation goes within quotes. As for the possessive apostrophe, it appears to me that these days most of the English-speaking world has been reduced to guessing.
From Idiot Wind:
Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they’d CUT IT OUT quick, but when they will I can only guess
They say I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can’t help it if I’m lucky
With the World Cup upon us at the moment, it behooves me to point out that Dylan wrote Idiot Wind as a commentary on the poor officiating in the 1962 World Cup clash between Italy and Chile. As detailed in this article, which I might have mentioned before.
Unfortunately, in these days of fake news and believe what you like, this story may have hold on the popular imagination – maybe show it to POTUS?
Margaret Thatcher once told the story of ‘Two Little Boys’, obviously believing it to be true,.
From LIEGE to BANKNOTE in 17:14. I was held up for a while in both the NE and the SE. Hesitated over ADS for spots, but shrugged and stuck it in. Relieved to see all green. Thanks setter and U.
28 minutes with time lost at the end as nearly always on two intersecting answers, KAMA SUTRA and AMENDS.
35:14 Needed an aid at the end for BANKNOTE, crossword dictionary reminded me that curse=bane.
Also tried POLICE SERGEANT because Sir Malcolm Sergeant was an artist. 3 mistakes right there: he’s a composer not an artist , doesn’t spell his name that way and it’s one letter short.
Couldn’t parse ENDORSE, COWORKER or BREAD but was lucky that they all worked.
Another ROE DEER, but not happy as I couldn’t parse. Always surprises me that there is no common vernacular for she-bear, she-wolf. After research I found that
Proto-Indo-European speakers believed that if you spoke the “true name” of a dangerous predator out loud, you would magically summon it. So they referred to wolves and bears indirectly.
COD CUT IT OUT
19:19, with BANKNOTE LOI, and CONTINENT unparsed.
Thanks U and setter
24.34
Just couldn’t see a word to fit S___A not helped by mightily struggling with the delectable ELECTABLE. Eventually that one fell to an alpha trawl and BANKNOTE brought up the rear once the K appeared. Goodness knows how long those three took. Nice puzzle and thanks for the blog.
12:43
Steamed through this very enjoyable puzzle, but held up at the final hurdle by AMENDS (focusing on the definition rather than the spots gave me the answer) and BANKNOTE – again eventually from definition.
Thanks U and setter
11’07”, slightly delayed by LOI BANKNOTE.
Loved the KAMA SUTRA clue.
Thanks ulaca and setter.
21.45 Biffed BANKNOTE in the end so thanks for the parsing
Whizzed through this but got a bit bogged down with my last three or four. I needed the T of ELECTABLE to make KAMA SUTRA obvious, and finished up with AMENDS which I had thought of originally, but was a bit uncomfortable with the parsing. A pleasing 23.43 to start the week.
Like others found it very easy, but last 3 in slowed me down considerably. In order: KAMA SUTRA, which gave me the M for AMENDS, but still needed an alphabet trawl for BANKNOTE.
COD KAMA SUTRA even if it is wrong, in an entertaining puzzle.
Not too difficult – 27 minutes. Began at SW corner and worked up. Never did parse Kama Sutra, or Banknote. FOI Sombrero, LOI Amends. COD GREENBELT and CUSTOMS. Thanks to blogger and setter.
The left-hand side and more seemed so easy that I thought I was going to have a record time, but some of the clues on the RHS held me back and eventually I was around my average time. There seems to be almost universal acclaim for KAMA SUTRA, but I’m less keen. Very clever and amusing no doubt, but papers? And I found ads = spots rather hard to see in AMENDS.
Went well until I hit the SE corner. Eventually twigged AMENDS, BANKNOTE KAMA SUTRA and MEME, surprised they were all ok. Earlier tried PoLICE SERGEANT (John Singer S), but not enough letters. 25 mins.
Strolled through this nice puzzle in 16 mins. No unheard-ofs; thanks Blogger for explaining how ‘spots’ = ADS (19A), I’d never have guessed! First in was PEGASUS and last CONTINENT. My favourite four clues: to POLICE CONSTABLE, OUTDO, CHEF and (notwithstanding some of the above comments) KAMA SUTRA. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
18:17 Short and sweet. I’m another who dithered about Singer Sargent. I liked BANKNOTE and KAMA SUTRA ( I always thought it was spelt Karma)
Thanks to Ulaca and the setter
I think my first ever solo daily in under 30 minutes (29:57!) — including taking 7 minutes to spot BANKNOTE rather than BACKBONE which was all I could see for quite some time!
Would have been a big pb of under half an hour, but I just couldn’t see BANKNOTE and had to give up and check the answer in the end.
I was already happy with my 3rd fastest ever time on the QC, but I bettered that with my 2nd fastest here!
FOI POLICE CONSTABLE
LOI/COD BANKNOTE
TIME 3:52
Wow!
Enjoyable puzzle and not too hard. I was held up by LOI Banknote. I could not get SORE for Tender out of my head.
Also slow on MEME and KAMA SUTRA; but overall fairly quick for me and I’m glad I tried this excellent puzzle. Lots of great clues.
David
About 9 for this nice Monday puzzle, slight holdups on AMENDS and BANKNOTE for the same reasons as others.
OFF TOPIC: Does anyone know if the Listen with Others archive has been deleted? I know it’s moved to Fifteensquared but the old blogs were still available until recently – useful when doing old ones as I sometimes do. The link on this site now takes you to a Canadian wellness page!
On for a PB, but just couldn’t see BANKNOTE. Blast!
Gave up as the club portal kept automatically deleting my entries and the newspaper portal wipes the grid each time I stop to do something else. As no one else is complaining, I suppose it is my equipment. Will try again tomorrow and if not resolved, start troubleshooting.
Harrumph.
This fault seems to happen to me on some days. If I leave the puzzle unfinished, and do other things, then when I come back to the Times App, some of the clues I’ve solved will be missing.
19:40. Nice puzzle. I didn’t find it as easy as most here seem to have done.
COD: BANKNOTE
Thanks to ulaca and our setter.
12:34, LOI was BANKNOTE and probably the COD for that!
Mostly straightforward, but held up for a long time by KAMA SUTRA and BANKNOTE.
A nice start to the week.
Thanks blogger and setter
22:41 for the solve with last five mins of that spent alphatrawling CONTINGENT and trying to avoid putting in confident. Everything parsed although wasn’t entirely sure whether “ads”=spots but blog confirms. Nice puzzle; thanks to blogger and setter
Thanks for a good puzzle and blog. Its not your fault I was being dense for 30 minutes. One of those Mondays for me.
13.50 . Nice warm up for tougher tests to come.
22 minutes including the proofread, probably a PB for me, and, yes, it was very easy. BANKNOTE held me up a bit and was my LOI, but nothing else did. I seem to be almost alone in not having liked KAMA SUTRA (as a clue reducing it to its juicy bits). But a comfortable start to the week.