Another one has begun; hopefully I’ll manage to stay the course for my eleventh year of blogging. This puzzle has us off to a good start, although I did find a few of the definitions a stretch. I liked the busy policeman and the late night electioneering. And fourteen-letter anagrams are always fun.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Hard to avoid in merciless villain’s garment? (5-7) |
| HABIT-FORMING – HABIT FOR MING could be a garment for Ming the Merciless, of Flash Gordon fame. | |
| 9 | Cheer health organisation work (5) |
| WHOOP – WHO (World Health Org.), OP (works). | |
| 10 | Outlaw in long distance run, I gather (5,4) |
| FRIAR TUCK -insert R, I, into FAR (long distance), TUCK = gather. | |
| 11 | Tend with cine reels to be needing some censorship? (8) |
| INDECENT – (TEND CINE)*. | |
| 12 | Diver coming out with pants just too short (6) |
| PUFFIN – “puffing” could be “coming out with pants”, drop the G. | |
| 13 | Leave those with possessions to retain large share (2,6) |
| GO HALVES – GO (leave), HAVES (those with possessions), insert L for large. | |
| 15 | Subject of wartime graffiti: one line in city recalled (6) |
| KILROY – YORK reversed with I L inserted. I remembered the drawing and phrase but didn’t know its origins (American and obscure) so read it up on Wikipedia, along with Mr Chad. | |
| 17 | Shiny metal chain, see (6) |
| CHROME – CH[ain], ROME the holy see. | |
| 18 | Florist primarily is trailing fashionable shop window item? (8) |
| FLAGSHIP – F[lorist], LAGS (trails), HIP (fashionable). Got it from the wordplay, but thought it an odd definition. | |
| 20 | Confine to broadcast as a series (2,4) |
| IN TURN – sounds like “INTERN”. | |
| 21 | Busy checking progress of the career-minded? (5,3) |
| SPEED COP – “busy” being slang for a policeman, a slightly amusing cryptic definition. | |
| 24 | Relative disquiet at EU grant (5-4) |
| GREAT-AUNT – (AT EU GRANT)*. | |
| 25 | Get used to another union backing demos (5) |
| INURE – hidden reversed. | |
| 26 | A sweet little boy, I keep mum and dad’s score! (6,6) |
| DANISH PASTRY – DAN (little boy), I, SH! (keep quiet), PA’S, TRY = score. I don’t think of Danish pastries as sweets, but I suppose they’re not savouries, so I can live with it. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Physicist’s important piece bearing fruit (7) |
| HAWKING – HAW (fruit of Hawthorn), KING (important piece). | |
| 2 | Increasingly cruel to older British, appallingly (14) |
| BLOODTHIRSTIER – (TO OLDER BRITISH)*. Nice anagram. I saw the “blood” bit and an ending in “er” and then the middle part. | |
| 3 | Subject and object of the selectors, briefly (5) |
| TOPIC – the object of the selectors is “to pic[k]”. | |
| 4 | Miscreant dying perhaps to open present (8) |
| OFFENDER – OFFER (present) with END inserted. Seen this, or similar variations, before. | |
| 5 | Miss artificially produced sounds (4) |
| MAID – sounds like MADE = artificially produced. | |
| 6 | Training series that’s raised a genius with figures (9) |
| NURTURING – RUN (series) reversed = NUR, then TURING as in Alan. | |
| 7 | Determined to catch late night election procedure — but failing? (3,3,3,5) |
| OUT FOR THE COUNT – double definition, one prosaic. | |
| 8 | Spare space, as we see it, outside pub (6) |
| SKINNY – SKY (space as we see it) insert INN = pub. | |
| 14 | Gentle creature on motorbike races a scooter (9) |
| LAMBRETTA – LAMB (gentle creature), RE (on) TT (motorbike races in IOM), A. I fell off the back of one of these a few times in the mid sixties. It would have been safer if my Mum had let me have my own one. | |
| 16 | Pilot quietly longing for somewhere to trade, unofficially (8) |
| FLYPITCH – FLY (pilot, as verb), P (quietly), ITCH (longing). I wasn’t fully familiar with the term but guessed it as “flytip” is a similar expression for unofficially dumping. | |
| 17 | Bow Church concealing the sounds of its bells (6) |
| CRINGE – RING inside CE for church. A stretchy definition? | |
| 19 | Exercising power every twelve months, briefly becoming irritable (7) |
| PEPPERY – PEP (power), PER Y[ear]. This and FLAGSHIP were my LOsI. | |
| 22 | Engaged in the writer’s revolutionary musical (5) |
| EVITA – when I see “musical” in a crossword I think HAIR or EVITA then decode. AT = engaged in, I’VE = the writer’s, all reversed. | |
| 23 | Mount Juif Errant (4) |
| FUJI – anagram of JUIF. Juif Errant, The Wandering Jew, a novel by Eugène Sue, if you’re interested. | |
Around 70 minutes. Enjoyable but tricky. FOI FUJI Got in NW then SE corners quickly but slowed by NE and finally SW corners. LOI CRINGE Found FRIAR TUCK difficult as there didn’t appear to be a containment indicator for R and I. I read run I gather as I in RUN or RUIN. Finally I realised it was “in”.
Thanks Piquet
42m 16s
Some nice clues there. I particularly liked SPEED COP and HABIT FORMING .
I agree with Pip that 18ac was a little odd. I think of a FLAGSHIP store, not the items in it.
Re 14d, I was was a Vespa man myself.
Agree about 22d: it’s either got to be EVITA or Hair.
Surprised to see Verlaine take over 10mins for this!
Thanks, Pip, and HNY!
Had the same reservations about the definitions for FLAGSHIP and CRINGE. On the other hand, it’s nice to learn two new words by deciphering wordplay, ax was the case with FLYPITCH and (as far as I can recall) LAMBRETTA.
40 minutes.
FORMING was my LOI as I couldn’t parse it, not knowing of the merciless villain. I also missed the parsing of FRIAR TUCK.
Like others I looked twice at ‘shop window item / FLAGSHIP’ but I found this in SOED which seems to cover it: flagship – something considered a leader or superior example of its kind; spec. the major product, model, etc., in a company’s range. I imagine ‘shop window’ in this context can be figurative, just as ‘flagship’ can be.
Or literal, in the sense that a shop would be likely to put its FLAGSHIP product in the window.
24’21”, nice puzzle. I was struggling in the NE for quite a while, until KILROY came to me – I had been fixated on chad and wot no as ways in.
Thanks pip and setter, and Happy New Year to all.
34 minutes, LOI FLYPITCH with fingers crossed. COD to KILROY for having been here, should auld acquaintance be forgot. A decent start to the year. Thank you Pip and setter.
A sluggish 34.25 , not surprisingly after a long night of celebration. LOI flypitch which was new to me at least. Really well put together puzzle I thought . Liked peppery when I finally twigged.
I like piquet’s “I did find a few of the definitions a stretch.” Nice to start the New Year with a previously unknown definition of “few”. SHOP WINDOW was the obvious “stretch”: my linguistic elastic very nearly went “ping” with the strain. Add CRINGE and DANISH, and perhaps “failing” for OUT… It took me a while to get from pilot to fly, until I took it as a verb, though a character in Independence Day does say “I’m pilot, I’m fly”. “Hard to avoid” is another stretch, though HABIT FOR MING was genius.
But then including two of the all-time greats, HAWKING and TURING will delight most of us, and the pleasure of untangling the tortuous FRIAR TUCK certainly gave me a warm glow.
Happy New Year, everyone! And on to the Jumbo and even the MCS!
I was helped by doing the Grauniad first today for pilot = fly. Always amused by the coincidence of similar clues or answers appearing on the same day.
23:44 for this tricky number. I too was not allowed by my mother to have a 14a but bought one and restored it fifty years later in a belated act of defiance. I still have it as you can see from my new profile pic.
Very enjoyable struggle dragged out to 58 mins by the SE corner.
COD to SPEED COP with its very English Busy=cop leading to a NHO Americanism.
Loved the Ming reference, the 2 scientists and the scooter which I first heard of via the band of that name.
LOI FLYPITCH or PEPPERY
Liked this one, a witty and fairly gentle start to the New Year.
Just for a second I thought the RE in 14dn was a reference to a Royal Enfield motorbike ..
Nice to see Hawking and Turing, although I tend to think of them as media personalities as much as actual scientists. This is of course very unfair to both, and particularly to Turing who probably was a genius.
A little Turing story: at Bletchley Park he joined the local Home Guard detachment, because he fancied learning to shoot a rifle. He was much less keen on exercises and drills and consistenly failed to appear for them. This exasperated the brass hats and eventually they sent the regional commander, a retired general, to remonstrate with him. He could not be moved and eventually the general lost his temper:
“You do realise I can have you court-martialled for this?”
“No, actually you can’t.”
“Yes I can. You signed a contract that says I can, when you joined up.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Well they went off and checked, and they found that when he signed the contract, he had carefully ruled a line through all the bits of it he didn’t agree with, which nobody had noticed. So there was nothing they could do…
13:13. I agree, some stretchy definitions, with some good stuff here as well. Nice start to the year.
I DNF in 27:18 because I put LEMURETTA for the scooter brand, without noticing that the R was doing double duty in LEMUR and RE. NHO LAMBRETTA of course. Also NHO FLYPITCHING but was fairly confident in that one.
Thanks setter and blogger.
Also thanks and a very happy new year to everyone who makes the effort to participate in this little community.
40 minutes. No complaints if the puzzles for the rest of the year maintain this standard; enough to challenge without being frustratingly difficult. I couldn’t parse HABIT-FORMING and had NHO FLYPITCH. Favourite bit was the appearance together of TURING (I enjoyed JerryW’s story) and HAWKING.
18a Flagship. Odd def, but I do remember that when Harrods was part of a group of stores it was invariably described as the “flagship Knightsbridge store” or somesuch, as others said above.
6d Nurturing biffed; didn’t see Alan Turing. Doh!
14d Lambretta. My Aunty Doff gave me her well used example as my 16th birthday present. I was of course delighted, but soon found it wasn’t fast enough so removed the windscreen which helped about 5 mph. But the answer was to pass the test then get a motorbike, an AJS 750.
16d Flypitch. Not in Cheating Machine (added), nor is it in Wiktionary which surprised me. Is in online Chambers.
19d Peppery. I thought it was exercising (PE), P(ower) and PER Y(ear). I guess it works both ways.
agreed – think this is the correct parsing, otherwise what is Exercising doing?
After a little absence as a result of travel, end-of-year festivities and a mighty MCG Test match that went the full five days, I was happy to finish this in 30.28. Same reservations as others at various points and thanks to PK for explaining several, including the Friar and HABIT FORMING. Ming the merciless? Crikey. Happy New Year to all.
From (to the surprise of probably nobody) Like A Rolling Stone:
You used to ride on the CHROME horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discovered that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal
How does it feel….
Nothing insightful to add: just a thank you to all the solvers and contributors who never fail to educate and entertain.
Happy New Year.
13:17. I liked this one. Some of the definitions are a touch stretchy but nothing to breaking point AFAIC.
Happy new year and best wishes for 2025 to everyone here.
26:50 – found this tricky, particularly trying to bludgeon the cryptic for 18ac to justify fish-shop, but it was never going to happen. I quite liked Ming’s habit.
An enjoyable puzzle which I started on TOPIC. SPEED COP made me smile, as did PUFFIN and KILROY. I’m in York as I type. BLOODTHIRSTIEST was a useful early entry and led to the excellent HABIT FORMING. NURTURING was LOI. 26:20. Thanks setter and Pip.
14:11, so nothing for a SPEED COP to worry about, but an enjoyable solve. Never come across the FLYPITCH but it made sense for reasons expressed above (I’m picturing a man in a camel-hair coat flogging dodgy perfume).
FLYPITCH is where an unlicensed trader would sell their wares. Del boy in Only Fools and Horses was a flypitcher
Generally pretty slow progress (64 minutes) although nothing was all that difficult and I had no problems after seeing how they worked. I entered EVITA with a shrug, thinking that it was hidden in some word like ‘nominative’ reversed, although that wouldn’t have been sound. And hiddens never in my experience use the end letters of a word. Meant to return to it but forgot.
There were some genuine surprises as clues occurred to me and were post-parsed correctly. I don’t do much biffing normally, but with the –B-T – habit occurred to me – until then I’d been looking for a garment as the answer. Vaguely aware of MING, but not in context as Ming the Merciless – I liked this even more on seeing the blog. FRIAR TUCK was also a PDM after going through buck, luck and duck. No idea about KILROY, though I’ve seen it on graffiti, but York was a gimme with the Y-R. I parsed PEPPERY as did Andy Fisher, with PE, then P, then PER Y, which I think makes more sense. MER with Danish – it’s sweet, but not ‘a sweet’, since it’s neither a bonbon nor a dessert. Still, it was one of the first in. Liked SPEED COP and GO HALVES. LOI FLYPITCH, with all but the first and third letters in place and after an alphabet trawl.
This was just a little tough, and I had to use the cryptics heavily. In flagship and flypitch, the wordplay works beautifully, but the literals – who knows? This technique made speed cop tough, of course, but I eventually saw it.
Time: 42:11
I saw 19D as PE (exercising) P(power) PER Y (per year)
Sorry, I hadn’t seen similar comment by others.
I looked up flagship in Chambers, and I’m still wondering how legit that def really is.
Otherwise okay I thought. 21 minutes ish.
Way outside my league. Couldn’t resist Biffing “outlaw (5,4)”. How could that not be ROBIN HOOD?
I found the eastern half a lot more testing than the western, but still came home in 35 minutes. Agree with Andy F and others about the parsing of 19dn, and I too had hesitations about a Danish pastry being a sweet. From my memory of pubs when I was old enough to visit them Kilroy was still alive and kicking after the war.
FOI – WHOOP
LOI – SPEED COP
COD – NURTURING
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
21.25, which I think was down to the setter’s trickiness rather than overindulgence last night. I needed to rely on the cryptic more than usual, but lots to enjoy as the various pennies eventually dropped. The merciless emperor was my pick, along with ‘coming out with pants’.
Thanks both.
16:17, though I was well into the New Year’s Eve celebrations when I started. Fun puzzle, tricky but excellent wordplay. Needed the wordplay for FLYPITCH, LAMBRETTA and DANISH PASTRY. Really liked HABIT-FORMING.
I liked it; the combination of tricky cryptics and not the most obvious defintions meant I didn’t feel I could trust a lot of my crossers.
Happy New Year to the group.
55’15”
Asleep in the stalls, one-paced thereafter …
… but got there in under an hour with all parsed, which seemed the only reasonable target when the rest of the field were out of sight. Flora Poste’s getaway vehicle slowed me down, as intended I suppose.
Many thanks to the setters, bloggers and contributors here for keeping me so royally amused over the the last year, and best wishes to all for the coming one, especially our new editor (please keep the bar high for the inclusion of the extant).
Thanks too to Pip and today’s setter for putting me in my place with such panache.
Like others I got FLAGSHIP easily from the wordplay but didn’t really understand the definition, and FLYPITCH was easy enough despite being a word I NHO. Nice start to the year. Also NHO Ming the Merciless. I think of Danish pastries as breakfast dishes, but they unarguably contain sugar so are sweet. 45 minutes while also watching a documentary, so maybe 30 minutes if I’d really focused.
I failed on MAID. Over thought it as an anagram of Miss- thinking MSIS was some sort of sound system. Couldn’t see how INURE worked- very clever.
Loved DANISH PASTRY and LAMBRETTA
Technical DNF due to fat fingers on LAMBRETaA and took 45:51 to get that far because of fully 20 minutes staring at _P_E_ C_P.
Clearly I’m in a minority here because others think this is a good clue but for me it’s one of those “why do I bother?” ones. I don’t think it remotely works.
SPEED CAP. Well, it had to be didn’t it? Nooooooo. An egregious error ruining an otherwise very happy 45 minutes or so. Many thanks.
50 minutes for about 60% of this, then another 20 to finish it when I came back after 2 hours. On the second session I could biff most of the clues which had evaded me during the first session, including FRIAR TUCK, NURTURING , BLOODTHIRSTIER and KILROY (good grief!). So a fun 70 minutes in all, the more so because I found the definitions and answers very strange in parts but managed to solve them in the end.
– Share Zabadak’s view that ‘hard to avoid’=HABIT-FORMING is a stretch, as much as the wordplay is very clever
– Had no idea about the wartime KILROY reference so that one went in on wordplay alone
– Nearly fell into the ‘speed cap’ trap before thinking of SPEED COP
– Not familiar with FLYPITCH but got there from wordplay
Thanks piquet and setter.
FOI Fuji
LOI Maid
COD Out for the count
50:27. I found this tricky to finalise. I thought SPEED COP was pretty clever. thank you both.
25.02. Like RobR, it took me a while to get Chad out of my brain.
All went well until ploughing the wrong field at 1ac. Napoleon is a boot, so was it foot-mark or boot-mark? Had to refer to the blog at that point to set me straight.
Thanks to the setter for an entertaining puzzle.