A rather curious puzzle, the shorter clues were more of a struggle than the longer ones. I found it irritating and enjoyable at the same time, if that’s possible.
EDIT late in the day, as I’ve been travelling to cold and snowy Norfolk; I wasn’t aware that this was a semi-final TCC puzzle until I read the comments below. My online version wasn’t so marked.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | What obsessive polisher would do, endlessly, for US city? (7) |
| BUFFALO – such a polisher would BUFF A LO[t]. | |
| 5 | Fancying a nibble, like a kiss? (7) |
| PECKISH – double definition. | |
| 9 | Cross Irish river, date swimming on it (9) |
| IRRITATED – IR[ish], R[iver], IT, (DATE)*. | |
| 10 | Alexander and Alexander, say? (5) |
| POPES – Well, there have been nine popes called Alexander, and then there’s Alexander Pope the poet. But I needed the checking letters to make it obvious who we were talking about. | |
| 11 | Flying back on time in summer, dropping from the sky? (5) |
| GUANO – Reversed (“flying back”), ON, AUG (time in summer). Guano certainly drops on my car from the sky. | |
| 12 | Forge with great speed sealing iron chest, initially (9) |
| FABRICATE – a FAB RATE would be a great speed, insert I[ron], C[hest]. | |
| 14 | Thus mum keeps her wool not wholly for knitting, in a way (7,2,5) |
| SOMEHOW OR OTHER – SO (thus), MOTHER (mum), insert (HER WOO[L])*. | |
| 17 | A stone’s throw from pond life? (5,3,6) |
| DUCKS AND DRAKES – I had to guess this without fully understanding it until I looked it up. Although I had heard of a game called ducks and drakes I didn’t know what it was. Apparently it is the practice of skimming stones across a pond or still water. So the answer is a sort of double definition. | |
| 21 | Mark is accompanying Elizabeth, pioneer (9) |
| COLONISER – COLON (punctuation mark), IS ER (Elizabeth Regina). | |
| 23 | Use lead on excitable dinosaur going the wrong way (5) |
| EXERT – reverse T-REX E[xcitable]. I thought of the dinosaur first and worked it back to the definition. | |
| 24 | He abandons the lady of the family for tease (5) |
| TAUNT – T[he], AUNT. | |
| 25 | Sets down a drink, American port (9) |
| PENSACOLA – PENS (sets down) A COLA. City in Florida near the Alabama border. | |
| 26 | American hawk pursues Republican pacifist (7) |
| RUSSELL – R (Republican), US, SELL (hawk). Bertrand Russell was a famous pacifist and ban-the-bomb campaigner as well as being a noted philosopher. For a while I was imagining an “ussell” was some kind of American raptor until the more obvious explanation arrived. My favourite Russell quote is perhaps relevant today: “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” |
|
| 27 | Breather following girl’s massive uphill challenge (7) |
| EVEREST – EVE, REST = breather. Phew! | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Rest used in snooker game (6) |
| BRIDGE – double definition. In snooker, which I can play badly, you use your fingers to form a “bridge” or rest to run the cue along. And bridge is of course the best card game in the world. Even better than poker. | |
| 2 | Long way back after run — that’s very chaotic (7) |
| FARRAGO – FAR (long), R( run), AGO (way back). | |
| 3 | Novel she ’as out? That’s about right! (9) |
| AUTHORESS – (SHE AS OUT )* with R inserted. | |
| 4 | A no-no, like whacked kangaroo? (3,2,6) |
| OUT OF BOUNDS – a whacked kangaroo is too tired to bound along, I guess. | |
| 5 | Flat cushion (3) |
| PAD – double definition. | |
| 6 | Island is cold most of spring month (5) |
| CAPRI – C[old], APRI[L]. | |
| 7 | Charge dime after peeling fruit (7) |
| IMPEACH – [d]IM[e], PEACH a fruit. Seen this before, I think. | |
| 8 | Others, lamentably, extremely drunk in pub (8) |
| HOSTELRY – (OTHERS L Y)*, the L Y being lamentably extremely. | |
| 13 | Juicy thing in family house (5,6) |
| BLOOD ORANGE – BLOOD = family, ORANGE as in the House of. | |
| 15 | Person embracing prayer, bully typically (2,7) |
| ON AVERAGE – ONE (person) “embraces” AVE (a prayer), RAG (bully). | |
| 16 | Drawer opened by a teacher (8) |
| EDUCATOR – once I realise it had to begin with AD or ED, I saw EDUCATOR and decided EDUCTOR (without the A) sounded a like word for someone or something that “draws”. | |
| 18 | Business lowers flag (7) |
| COLOURS – CO, LOURS. Collins says lour is an alternative spelling of lower. | |
| 19 | The old thus stopping before monstrous carbuncle (7) |
| EYESORE – YE (the, old), SO (thus), inserted into ERE (before. | |
| 20 | Channel showing one filling pastries after a turnover? (6) |
| STRAIT – TARTS with I inserted, reversed. | |
| 22 | Salt in ravioli, but never penne, ultimately (5) |
| NITRE – well, nitre is an old name for potassium nitrate, a salt. It’s the last letters of iN raviolI buT neveR pennE. | |
| 25 | Old fruit, whitish when cut (3) |
| PAL – PAL[e]. My LOI. Faced with P?L, I eventually accepted that an “old fruit” was a Jeeves-like expression for a pal. Like old bean, perhaps. | |
I really struggled with his and needed 52 minutes to complete the grid. There were long periods of hiatus. Several times when I eventually managed to find one of the longer answers I thought it might open up the grid and I would suddenly race to a conclusion, but it simply didn’t happen and my struggles resumed.
Vague definitions like ‘US city’ and ‘American port’ were unhelpful. And the Alexander device. I also wondered whether ‘Elizabeth’ in a clue is sufficient to indicate ER without a reference to royalty even in the surface reading.
A bridge in snooker is actually a rest that you lay the cue on, not your fingers!
29 minutes. Liked this, especially 1a, 10a, 1d, 3d. Not a lot on the first pass, then things began to fall steadily. PENSACOLA has a very American twang to it.
The problem with the Russell quotation is that the wrong lot tend to think of themselves as wise, typically, ‘me and my like-minded friends.’ Of course, any group of people who like to label others as ‘morons and liars’ are ruled out from the start.
The two problems with the Russell quotation are 1) he seems never to have said it (it paraphrases something he wrote in an essay in 1931: ‘The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt’) and 2) Yeats got there first.
“The good lack all conviction while the evil are filled with passionate intensity” W.B. Yeats, I think.
Succincter
Yes that’s what I meant. ‘Worst’, not ‘evil’.
Quite a common problem with quotations, I guess.
Indeed. At least – unlike, in most cases, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Albert Einstein et al – he actually wrote something like it!
23:47
A slow start–FOI 4d, already–but picked up speed eventually. LOI RUSSELL: like Pip I wondered if there was some hawk I didn’t know of. If the clue had said ‘philosopher’ instead of ‘pacifist’ I would have been a lot quicker to solve. Peoria, Kalamazoo, now PENSACOLA; easy enough for American moi, but. I won’t be surprised if there are some complaints.
I’d have no problem with KALAMAZOO – the title of a 1942 Glenn Miller song by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren. It even came with spelling instructions!
And there was the kalamazoo business systems equipment, with its particular stationery, before the PC wiped that sort of thing out.
Like piquet I was 9-acrossed by a number of devices like fab rate, old fruit, eductor, the Alexander thing, the ER reference…I won’t go on. Otherwise I enjoyed it and finished in 34.01, helped by a number of longer answers that seemed to fall into place without much help from me. LOI EXERT was a total guess, I tentatively filled in the E-E-T checkers and found I had finished! Bravo! And now I know why.
From Love Minus Zero/No Limit:
The BRIDGE at midnight trembles
The country doctor rambles
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring
The wind howls like a hammer
The night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing
A favourite song of its type. I first came to know it on a recording by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band and tend to prefer that to any other version, although for once Dylan himself turned out an excellent performance.
Never ever be, just couldn’t be, anyone else but Bob.
There is also the country-flavored performance by Joan Baez on Any Day Now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJfd1KebQV4
Our latest champ puzzle. I had vaguely heard of ducks and drakes, but didn’t know what was going on, and relieved to find EDUCTOR is a word. The reversed T-REX was lovely.
PENSACOLA has appeared somewhere – maybe not in the Times – in the last year, so stuck with me. At least it wasn’t an anagram!
I suppose if you can induct you could educt?
25 mins, agree with blogger. Equal parts fun and annoying. A crossword, basically! 🙂
About 90 minutes. I agree with Jack about vague definitions. 4A to me is a useless clue since the answer can only be derived from the crossers, not from the clue itself. I think 3D is an unsatisfying clue since the answer AUTHORESS is derived from the anagram and I cannot see how the clue in any way defines the answer. I delayed putting it in because of this.
Thanks Piquet
4 Down? I guess the definition at 3dn is supposed to be covered by the first 4 words although Pip has underlined the whole clue and may well be right as far as I’m concerned. One for the clue police perhaps, but I’m scarpering before they arrive!
I read 4dn as &Lit, if only because the whole thing is wordplay. If you read the whole thing as the definition it obviously has extraneous elements but that’s quite common.
4dn was my first in (I did start with the downs!)
My first, too; but I started with the acrosses.
So I wasn’t the only one who found 3D unsatisfactory. In the end it was my LOI after two or three minutes of staring, which makes my overall 21 mins far from unsatisfactory, to me at least.
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.
(Essay on Criticism, A Pope)
25 mins pre-brekker and I enjoyed it, although I thought some of the surfaces needed work.
Ta setter and Pip.
49 hard-fought minutes with LOI COLONISER. COD to BLOOD ORANGE for restoring my confidence about halfway through. I liked GUANO too once I had all the crossers but that’s not the word I would usually use! My memory of Bertrand Russell isn’t of a man assailed by doubt either. A tough puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
True, although Russell did say: “I would never die for my beliefs, because they might be wrong”
It was only when I finished this that I recognised it as a semi-final puzzle I had solved before. I thought my solving time of 9:58 was rather quick given the SNITCH rating! I liked the &lit AUTHORESS. Thanks Pip and setter.
Yeah, what John said – I twigged about 3 quarters of the way through then forgot to hold the timer so submitted with a neutrino-like (for me) sub-7-minute time – definitely took me longer than that on the day!
Relieved I’m not the only one who didn’t immediately recognise this as a Championship puzzle! Though slightly embarrassed now by the celebratory dance I did after finishing in 10:54 (about half my usual time). I fear senility beckons…
I agree with piquet that this was a somewhat curious presentation. I rather liked the kangaroo, but then realised I’d also liked it when it appeared in the DT a few years ago! There were a couple more inviting contempt via familiarity in my view, but at least they gave me a foothold. 27 minutes .
As Amoeba has said, this is (I think) from the semi-final of this year’s Championship, although – unlike on previous Wednesdays – there is nothing to indicate this, at least in the online Crossword Club version. I had forgotten that today was the day that the Championship puzzles are ‘shared’ and picked off a few vaguely familiar clues until, after a couple of minutes, I read 10 Across and, realising I had previously attempted this (not as a semi-finalist, I hasten to add), I abandoned further progress.
Also 52 mins and ditto what Jack said. Very tough in places. Thank goodness for the easier clues.
Held up in the SW with last three in, COLOURS, (DNK LOURS), TAUNT & RUSSELL, a pure guess.
I liked the returning dinosaur.
Thanks pip and setter. PS competition puzzle not marked on my copy.
DNF as I extend my stay in OWL Club with a silly ‘puckish’ rather than PECKISH. I more or less ignored ‘nibble’ in the clue, thought of puckering up, and moved on. Gah.
– Didn’t know that skimming stones is also known as DUCKS AND DRAKES
– Took me far too long to get BRIDGE, as I didn’t read ‘rest used in snooker’ together
– Had to assume an eductor is something that draws for EDUCATOR
– Had heard of PENSACOLA, but it’s a very hard clue to get for anyone who hasn’t
– Didn’t know that RUSSELL was a pacifist, but knew him as a philosopher so it seemed a reasonable inferral
Thanks piquet and setter.
COD Russell
Took a while to get going with 5D (PAD) the FOI, 18D (COLOURS) the LOI and the top half completed before the bottom, for a time of 27:55
Less than 10 mins off-leaderboard today, probably 15 mins plus on the day (I was 43 minutes for all 3 in the semi-final). I only twigged that I’d solved this before when I got to the kangaroo clue but it’s definitely one of the championship puzzles.
11a Guano.
Oh the seagulls they fly high, immobile
Oh the seagulls they fly high and they s**t right in your eye
It’s a good job cows can’t fly, immobile.
22d Nitre. LOI. Never parsed it.
23a I too liked the T-Rex going the wrong way. It was the only dinosaur short enough to consider.
In Mobile. If I had the wings of a sparrow ….
Steady solve, but not v quick today. Presumably one by our US setter.
62 mins. 3 quarters in about 35 mins but held up by a mental block in the NW corner. Could not get past SPIDER for the rest (it is also a form of Solitaire) and it was finally twigging Buff = Polish that was the key. I’ve even been to Buffalo. Doh!
Excellent puzzle, poor solver.
i did exactly the same – Spider … (types eye rolling emoji)
Since I squeezed in under 20 minutes, I’d have been OK with this in competition, though whether the panic/adrenaline of knowing it was one of those would have slowed me down we’ll never know.
I did slow down in the bottom right corner weirdly knowing I had to do something with TARTS in 20d but failing to see what. The number of possible “prayers” beginning with A in 15d, and how bully fitted in also muddied things: sometimes you can know too much.
Hardly worth mentioning, but in snooker a bridge is a kind of rest but with long legs to stand over a ball, usually in my case causing the cue to skid uselessly over the top of the white. (See also spider, from rv1 above)
Haven’t heard “old fruit” since seeing it memorably in Asterix in Britain
I rather enjoyed this, under no pressure, with a special appreciation of the Uxbridge PECKISH.
I’m so glad you posted that about BRIDGE rest, Z, because I was intending to say something similar in my early post but when I looked on various sites for ‘bridge rest’ the references (and illustrations) were mostly to what I might call a ‘spider rest’, the type with an arch but with an extended arm on the front. I never mixed in illustrious snooker-playing circles but enjoyed the odd game with pals of similarly limited standard over a pint or two, and I was beginning to wonder if we had been using the wrong terminology for all those years.
I played snooker to quite a high standard when I was younger, playing quite a few of the top pros in games with a referee presiding. On the unfortunate occasion when such a rest was required it was always the spider that was asked for. I’m pretty sure you would have received a blank stare asking for the bridge rest. As far as we were concerned, the bridge is the formation of your hand placed on the table to support the cue when playing the shot. Even the pros hate using the spider, with the possible exception of Mark Williams.
79 minutes. I couldn’t get going with this and was just happy to finish, with PAL my unconfident LOI; I’m not surprised to hear it was a semi-final puzzle. Favourite was FARRAGO, the name of my alma mater’s student rag, which was making its (give or take) annual appearance here.
Drat – I had mistyped AUTHORESS, making SOMEHOW OR OTHER difficult. I did spot that, but failed to properly re-type the whole of AUTHORESS, giving me an ugly AUTHOREES. I’d done OK too, with a quicker than average time on a harder than average puzzle.
Guessed DUCKS and DRAKES, LOI was EXERT, which I biffed and then saw the reversed dinosaur. Right in my Goldilocks zone – hard, but not too hard.
18:38
Quite a test of American geography: I managed BUFFALO as given the checkers there seemed no plausible alternative but apparently the port of PENSASODA is too small to appear in any atlas.
🙂
30′ with a long break in between which, as usual, helped. Like Piquet, I’d heard of DUCKS AND DRAKES without knowing what game it was. GUANO was fun and I enjoyed PENSACOLA, though if asked I’d have spelt it with an “i”. With my FOI being IRRITATED, I had the “i” crosser for 1dn, so I couldn’t get “spider” out of my head – but could see no cryptic in the answer. Enjoyable, thanks Piquet and setter.
Not easy and I struggled on, for once finishing a long one without having to use aids, 58 minutes. The NITRE clue worried me slightly, because when I looked it up afterwards in Chambers it was said to be saltpetre, which so far as I could see isn’t a salt. But Collins makes it clear that it’s OK. PENSACOLA was a bit slow to come because for a long time I was expecting the drink to be a pint or a pinta. RUSSELL is perhaps remembered more for his Aldermaston marches than for his work as a philosopher, which seems rather absurd.
12:35 – I found this very easy for some unaccountable reason. AUTHORESS is one of those gendered words, like actress, that female authors are apt to consider rather demeaning these days.
33 mins but for a typo. Found this tough going. In the end, my LOI ON AVERAGE was because I couldn’t separate BULLY TYPICALLY. Also could only think of CHICAGO for ages.
There is no rest called a bridge in snooker. We have spider, swan-necked spider, half-butt and long rest.
Don’t you make a bridge with your hand?
Thanks, that certainly seems to support what I found online earlier (see my posting above) but I take heart from this entry in the Shorter Oxford which confirms that my pals and I (and Zabadak) didn’t imagine that ‘bridge’ meaning a rest is or was used enough to make it into a reputable English dictionary:
bridge – Billiards & Snooker etc. The support for the cue formed by the hand or at the end of a rest; occasionally, a rest . L19.
Collins, ODE and Chambers all have the same definition.
Yes, they all mention the bridge formed by the hand, but SOED is the only place I found referencing a rest i.e. an implement. Or have I missed something?
Collins: a cue rest with a notched end for shots beyond normal reach
ODE: a long stick with a frame at the end which is used to support a cue for a difficult shot.
Chambers: a support for a snooker cue
Many thanks. I’ve found them all now. A visit to Specsavers may be overdue!
A DNF at 36.48 when I resorted to aids to find the port.
Not a great start.
A confident FOI Spider for 1dn, followed by an equally confident Mat for 5dn
Another championship puzzle without any indication on the club site, and another that I had completely forgotten, to the extent that it took me almost as long as the first time.
The (only) thing I always remember about RUSSELL is his teapot, which I’ve always found a useful thought experiment.
Rather relieved to find that this was a Championship puzzle, after I limped home in 32′, in two chunks.
I had to work out PENSACOLA, was fixated on ‘spider’, and AUTHORESS took an unaccountably long time.
Thanks pip and setter.
Just over the hour mark for me, and then with a wrong answer at 10ac as I had totally failed to pick up the papal allusion and plumped instead for some fictional Greek PAPAS. It would have taken me less time if I had cracked one or other of the long across clues more quickly. SOMEHOW OR OTHER is a bit green-paintish to me, and I had not heard before of the pond life also being a stone-throwing game. We all learn something every day.
FOI – PECKISH
LOI – EXERT
COD – OUT OF BOUNDS
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
When I saw that this was a semi-final puzzle I braced myself for a non completion. 29.45 minutes later I am amazed to say that I completed with all correctly parsed as I went. As Victor Meldrew would say ‘I don’t believe it!’ My only real problem was with my LOI 25ac, where I was sorely tempted to write in PONDAROSA (I know, misspelt!), before coming to my senses, and a distant bell rang for somewhere called PENSACOLA.
PS the reference to Alexander & Alexander is curious. The name hasn’t existed since the company was acquired by Aon in 1996.
I’m pretty sure I must have had this thought on Championship day but I still managed to forget the clue.
I raced through the top half of this one then ground to a halt in the bottom half. EYESORE, EXERT, EVEREST and STRAIT sat in isolation until COLOURS, NITRE and BLOOD ORANGES emerged from the mist. DUCKS AND DRAKES then kick started the hobble to the finish line, with PAL LOI. 25:04. Thanks setter and Pip.
I actually did very well, rattling through nearly all in 30 mins. Held up by GUANO and AUTHORESS, where I resorted to aids.
Liked EXERT. NHO EDUCTION.
51:51. I had thought – from what people were saying at the time – that the Championship puzzles were all surprisingly easy. Not for me! This one was tough, especially PENSACOLA, FARRAGO, SOMEHOW OR OTHER, etc. A good one though. I did like PECKISH.
PS The Snitch is at 103, so not especially tough at all
SNITCH now down to 93 which I think may be skewed low as a lot of people presumably some of whom are reference solvers seem to have done this puzzle previously at the championships?
35:41
Found this tough going. “Irritating and enjoyable at the same time” sums it up nicely, with SOMEHOW OR OTHER and RUSSELL being good examples of the difference. The latter was COD for me.
Thanks to Pip and the setter
I found this a middle-grade puzzle, with enough easy clues to get started, but enough hard ones not to finish quickly. Clues like peckish and Everest went right in, but I had a lot of trouble with guano and, strangely, taunt. Of course, I know all the US cities that might come up.
Time: 30:55
8.22. Straightforward enough for me. The spate of American cities continues.
41 mins. Like others, I was delayed by the erroneous spider assumption, in the hope that there might be a game called “spider”, but once I’d sorted that out, having failed to parse a hazarded “Erato”, “guano” dropped from the sky. Had never heard of Pensacola – got it purely through the wordplay.
Much earlier today than our usual late night solve and perhaps it shows. Relative to the Snitch, 33:23 is pretty fast for us and it we found it an enjoyable run through. On the other hand we may also be getting better, having set a PB of less than 21 minutes yesterday, including a (luckily correct) ‘**********’. Thanks all.
Censored by admin in case someone is doing the puzzles in the wrong order!
Sorry about that, but you never know. If the puzzle were from 3 or 4 days ago, I would have let it pass.
Got off to a very slow start – almost nothing in upper quadrants but bottom half came together and the top half slowly, then quickly (after peckish and buffalo suddenly came). Having done the 3 qualifiers in 59 mins and now at 40 mins for the two semis I’m beginning to think I might have been a top 100 finisher this year. Of course could I do it on a wet Tuesday night in Stoke as the saying goes. Other years when the championship puzzles have been published I’ve been way off the pace so this year might have been my only chance of a decent result😊
Thx pip and setter.
38.03. I just could not get into a stride with this puzzle and found the surfaces of a number of the clues nonsensical and somewhat irritating. Having solved the Picaroon puzzle in the Grauniad, this was rather like ‘after the Lord Mayor’s Show’.
30:32
Enjoyable puzzle where I was a bit slow on the uptake at times e.g. what would go with OR OTHER took longer than it should have. Failed to parse on average. Finally left with EDUCATOR, COLONISER, COLOURS and a shrug for RUSSELL – didn’t know who was being referred to here as a pacifist…
Thanks P and setter
Enjoyable but slow solve. Easier top half, and SW corner proved difficult. However all correct and understood at the end.
I liked the EXERT clue.
Thanks Piquet for the blog.
Surprised to find this was a champs puzzle since I finished it! Admittedly 32:52 isn’t going to have the great and the good quaking in their boots, but hey.
Jolly good fun. COD to LOI BLOOD ORANGE. Many thanks PK.
64 minutes. I had a similar experience to rv1. Much of my time was spent in the NW distracted by a spider. The last ten minutes went on BRIDGE. Which is a regular in these crosswords so I was being very dense. Also when I failed to parse NITRE. DUCKS AND DRAKES was a mystery too. Thanks piquet.
Just finished at second sitting totalling 62 mins. I’m quite proud of that as I found a lot of this very tough albeit DUCKS AND DRAKES was a write-in giving me a good start across the middle.
LOU was COLOURS and POI GUANO to which I also award COD.
Somewhat exhausted as now a good 18 hours since I sat down to the QCC. Going to retire and enjoy reading the blog and comments.