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. | |
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.
Class puzzle (especially including two great minds in Hawking and Turing) with some lovely PDMs (HABIT-FORMING – ‘tho I’ve never heard of Ming, KILROY – who turned up everywhere, and SPEED COP – as I realised immediately we were looking for a policeman). Thoroughly enjoyed, even though I had to look up OFFENDER and MAID.