All cryptic crosswords involve some degree of word play and letter manipulation, but I did find this one quite clunky and ‘assembly-heavy’ and not especially entertaining. Lacking in wit, perhaps. Or perhaps I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it. 30 minutes.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | To supervise a lab possibly requires procedure around computers, etc (3-3) |
| PET-SIT – STEP (procedure) reversed, IT = computers etc. I’d have thought a step was one part of a procedure, but it seems not in this case. | |
| 5 | Tie is boring and the opposite of cool? (4,4) |
| DEAD HEAT – DEAD at a stretch can mean boring? And HEAT the opposite of cool. Or is there more to this? | |
| 9 | Distinct width always once needed for restricted stretch of road (8) |
| CLEARWAY – CLEAR = distinct, W[idth], AY = always. Do they have clearways abroad, or is it just a British thing? They have ‘no stopping’ road signs in France but they don’t call them clearways, obvs. | |
| 10 | Odd bits of data about very long show (6) |
| DEPICT -D[a]T[a] around EPIC = very long. | |
| 11 | A crony of popular comedian Henry (2,4) |
| IN WITH – IN = popular, WIT = comedian, H[enry]. | |
| 12 | Strong drink that in Spain is full of iron (8) |
| ESPRESSO – well, my schoolboy Spanish remembers ESO means ‘that’, insert PRESS = iron. I suppose an espresso is a concentrated coffee, so could be called a ‘strong drink’ although for me it’s just a regular drink. | |
| 14 | Gormley principally does this reshaping work with metal (12) |
| GOLDSMITHERY – this rather clumsy word is made from an anagram – (GORMLEY D THIS)*, the D from ‘principally does’. I think Mr Gormley work with rusty iron, not gold, but no doubt he could do so. | |
| 17 | New money from abroad to encourage theatre operator? (12) |
| NEUROSURGEON – N[ew], EUROS, URGE ON = encourage. | |
| 20 | Elite players failing to finish meal (5,3) |
| CREAM TEA – CREAM = elite (took me ages to see this), TEA[m]. | |
| 22 | Ancient city not quite superior to all others (6) |
| THEBES – almost THE BES[t]. | |
| 23 | What may be left behind back of store, say (6) |
| ESTATE – [stor]E, STATE = say. | |
| 25 | Overturned river barge contains head of rotting fish (8) |
| MACKEREL – CAM (river in Cambridge) reversed = MAC, KEEL (barge) insert R[otting]. | |
| 26 | Compact cupboard holding second-hand equipment primarily (5-3) |
| CLOSE-SET – CLOSET (cupboard) has S E the initial letters of ‘second-hand equipment’ inserted. I thought a closet was different from a cupboard, you don’t put clothes in a cupboard, but maybe in USA it’s the same? | |
| 27 | Cuban female maybe retiring in Milan, Italy (6) |
| LATINA – hidden reversed. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Cockney restoring part of their city (6) |
| EALING – it’s [H]EALING, innit. As in West London. | |
| 3 | Abandoned garage isn’t a place soldiers may gather (7,4) |
| STAGING AREA – (GARAGE ISNT A)*. I didn’t know this was a place soldiers gathered, having never been a military type, but I guessed it once I had AREA spotted. | |
| 4 | Have hospital completely housed in extremely tasteless civic buildings (4,5) |
| TOWN HALLS – insert OWN H ALL (have hospital completely) into T[asteles]S. | |
| 5 | Alternately, dirty, intense, and ultimately hilarious feature of some humour (7) |
| DRYNESS –DiRtY iNtEnSe, add [hilariou]S. | |
| 6 | Make sense of publicity trick, mostly (3,2) |
| ADD UP – AD (publicity), DUP[e]. | |
| 7 | Fashionable joint (3) |
| HIP – DD. | |
| 8 | Fancy crest adopted by one unspecified family (8) |
| ANCESTRY – ANY with (CREST)* inserted. | |
| 13 | Improvement seen by re-working the middle of Dennis the Menace (11) |
| ENHANCEMENT – (NN THE MENACE)*, the NN from [de]NN[is]. | |
| 15 | Name nearly added to short film I like (9) |
| IDENTICAL – IDENT (a short film), I CAL[l] = I name, nearly. | |
| 16 | Endless force involved in substantial counter-attack (8) |
| REPRISAL – PRIS[e] = force, inside REAL = substantial. | |
| 18 | Let back in to study somewhere in Cambridge (7) |
| READMIT – READ (study at uni), M.I.T. (the one in Massachusetts). | |
| 19 | Lower limits of difference, on average (6) |
| DEMEAN – D[ifferenc]E, MEAN = average. | |
| 21 | Pegs securing the bottom of particular boxes? (5) |
| TREES – TEES (pegs as in golf) has R the end of particular inserted. Trees as in box trees / hedges. | |
| 24 | Donkey jacket belonging to aimless son (3) |
| ASS – A S the ‘jacket’ of A[imles]S, S[on]. | |
34 minutes. No queries.
Exactly the same for me.
Very successful start to the day for me – Somali brekkie AND finished the 15×15 before heading out to work on time! Found this one pretty easy, spotting numerous correct solutions from the crossers before solving. However, I needed alpha trawls on parts of IN WITH and LOI DEAD HEAT to complete. Time reminded me of a favourite oldie …(in the year) 25:25.
10:38, with a couple of minutes at the end puzzling over 21dn. Oh that kind of box!
Zager and Evans get a nod from me every now and then also, there are a lot of x5x5 dates/times to choose from! I enjoyed this and got it done in 30.53. I think conjuring ENHANCEMENT from Dennis the Menace may well be clue of the year…
From Positively 4th Street (we’re in A Complete Unknown territory again):
I know the reason that you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd you’re IN WITH
Do you take me for such a fool to think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don’t know to begin with
(whatever that means…)
34m 12s so, as is often the case, a very similar time to Jack.
Only two items to note:
– Didn’t know ESO means ‘that’ in Spanish
– Didn’t know IDENT is a short film.
Thanks, Pip.
It isn’t really, or rather not exclusively.
They can be computer generated and are more often simply logos with moving parts.
19:36
What Pip said: not especially entertaining, lacking in wit. And rather leaning on the same wordplay: failing to finish/not quite superior/trick, mostly; extremely tasteless/limits of difference/jacket belonging to aimless … DNK CLEARWAY or IDENT.
10:42. EALING’s popular at the moment! This clue appeared last Thursday: “Cockney recovering part of capital”.
Around 40 minutes but did not get PET-SIT with all the crossers.
Thanks Piquet
19:51
Slow start, but picked up speed once a few checkers scattered around the board. Thought about DRAW HEAT for a while before coming up with DEAD HEAT (thinking of moody teenagers at local youth club, “It’s DEAD in ‘ere, innit”). Wasn’t sure about CLOSE-SET though the wordplay pointed that way.
Thanks P and setter
Is it me or have other people noticed how increasingly more foreign words are creeping into these puzzles? In the days of yore this used to be confined to the articles: UN, DER, LE etc, and perhaps a few numbers thrown in, but it seems you have to have a much wider linguistic knowledge nowadays, the latest being (unknown to me) ESO. So nowadays we need to have a smattering of French, German, Italian and Spanish. And languages was never my strong point.
Er … were your English any good? (Sorry!)
Yes. It’s wrong and completely unnecessary.
Dnf, 13’11” but with TIERS (boxes as in a theatre?, ties for pegs)
Ni at all about GOLDSMITHERY.
Thanks pip and setter.
I had TIERS too!
Me too!
Liked Dennis the Menace (I have always liked Dennis the Menace) but agree with Piquet this was a little less than lyrical. Yesterday I was misled all over the shop, and the more entertained for it. This one had a here-are-your-instructions feel to it. Had a bit of trouble with PET-SIT but all done in 25.
DNF, defeated by DEAD HEAT and TREES. For the former I couldn’t get past tie=draw and eventually put ‘draw heat’, even though that left ‘boring’ completely unaccounted for, thinking that ‘cool’ might be being used as a verb. For the latter I thought the same as RobR and put in ‘tiers’.
– Not familiar with CLEARWAY so relied on the wordplay
– Didn’t figure out what the anagrist was for GOLDSMITHERY, as I thought ‘principally’ meant we needed just the G from Gormley
Thanks piquet and setter.
COD Neurosurgeon
42 mins with a couple of cheeky checks.
Wanted Hepping to be a word so EPPING would work for a part of London.
NHO IDENT or ESO (that one is tough on non-Spanish speakers)
LOI ESTATE where I tried gamely to get L (left) in there. Is GOLDSMITHERY really a word? I didn’t see the anagram, so tried -ING and -AGE.
As an Epping Forest lad I can assure you it’s still in Essex
11:22. No alarms. A bit slow to get going, e.g. trying to make 1A DOG-SIT, but the downs came easily enough. LOI IDENTICAL. Thanks Pip and setter.
7.11
No issues or particular hold-ups, despite starting off with DOG-SIT. For some reason I quite like the word GOLDSMITHERY! Never heard of a CLEARWAY, but then I don’t drive.
I didn’t know ESO (‘esta’ more familiar for some reason), but no problem with basic terms of major European languages popping up occasionally when, as here, the rest of the clue is accessible.
Thanks both.
I also began with DOG-SIT – but that was soon corrected. All done in just over 13 mins. However there were two errors. TIERS and SEATING AREA.
From EALING to REPRISAL in 21:59. Liked NEUROSURGEON. Thanks setter and Pip.
Might as well come straight out with it: as I entered TIERS at 21d, reasoning that’s what rows of boxes in a theatre are, and my pension is tied/pegged to the cost of living, I didn’t see the need to revisit. Harumph. Otherwise 13.18 for this rather bland example.
Dogsitting two dogs at the moment so no time to offer. COD to NEUROSURGEON. GOLDSMITHERY indeed. That’s what crosswordery does to you. I quite enjoyed this. Thank you Pip and setter.
DNF 14a Goldsmithery. Didn’t see the anagram and biffed Goldsmithing, an acceptable word unlike “ery”, but it forced 8d to be Accusing which is rubbish.
12a DNK Eso=that in Spanish, but didn’t need to.
13d Enhancement. Special prize for making Dennis the Menace work here.
15d Identical. I don’t think an ident is a short film. It is however the name of that irritating logo at the top of your screen when watching certain channels.
16d Reprisal. I don’t like either prise=force nor real=substantial, but I’ll let it go.
18d Readmit COD.
24d Ass. I couldn’t parse this one. Thanks Piquet.
I wasn’t aware of ‘ident’ as a short film either but having looked it up it makes sense.
From SOED: spec. a short sequence shown on television between programmes to identify the channel. So for decades BBC One had the spinning globe in various guises before it made way for more elaborate things. And C4 had the 4 symbol that deconstructed and constructed itself. BBC Two once had a 2 on wheels that made squeaking noises IIRC.
Oh yes, and I suppose that ident overlaps in meaning with the one I mentioned. OK, setter walks.
TIERS here. Was it wrong or just not quite as good as TREES?
The problem for me is that it’s at least possible, on the definitions and parsing that I indicated. Since the “correct” answer didn’t occur to me (I did think of TEES but of course TEERS isn’t a word!), I felt no need to choose between two alternatives. I regard this as an example of looseness in crossword setting which (unfairly?) adds to my stock of errors.
Under competition conditions, I would have appealed it, but in the more normal run of things it’s just tough.
I think it’s actually a better solution, though I didn’t see it. But I’m not a golfer: maybe ‘pegs’ and ‘tees’ are interchangeable for them. I got to TREES more or less by chance, having had my own boxes decimated by an invasive caterpillar last summer. Alas, they were beyond hope and their remains have now been removed.
34 mins, half of it spent scratching my head over CREAM TEA and TREES. Apparently Box can grow up to 12m tall, though I’ve never seen it as anything other than a low hedge or ornamental border.
Varieties vary. 😌
DNF I entered GILTSMITHERY, thinking that the sculptor works with baser metals. Everything else correct.
NHO STAGING AREA
Not much else to say.
Thanks Piquet and Setter
Went wrong early with Dog Sit (biffed I confess) which stopped me from seeing Ealing for some time, ‘smithery’ was also a long struggle and was LOI. COD to 4D for me.
The setter seems to have been given a hard time. Most of this, I thought, was perfectly acceptable, even in places rather good. 33 minutes, eventually putting in GOLDSMITHERY without understanding and being congratulated. It took me some time to see that Gormley and not just G was involved in the anagram. I always thought an ident was one of those things like the rotating globe etc that you get at the beginning of the BBC News, so in a sense a short film.
Agreed. This was a perfectly fine puzzle with the usual helping of wit, as far as I was concerned. “Enhancement” was brilliant.
I thought our blogger sounded somewhat jaded.
My quickest time for a while at 18.38 where I was clearly on the setters wavelength. I got a reasonable number of the across clues on first read, but I solved all but two of the down clues at first sight, and the extra crossers enabled me to sort out the missing across answers. My LOI was ESTATE, and this took me a while to get, although in retrospect it should have been relatively straightforward.
21:40 – some harsh judgements here on what struck me as a perfectly serviceable, if unmemorable, daily. I share the misgivings about the increasing use of foreign words that don’t appear in any English dictionary. Definite and indefinite articles in the main continental European languages seem fair enough, but is it reasonable to expect English speakers to know the demonstratives and their multiple variations too?
No problems, 22:32, LOI was IN WITH after spending a minute or so trying to think of a comedian called Harry, other than Harry Worth (showing my age there!)
Thanks setter and blogger
PS I’m another who doesn’t know Spanish
I guess you could have had Harry Secombe – wasn’t he one of the goons. Definitely before my time. Alternatively just gone with the Henry in the clue and plumped for Lenny.
Agree with our blogger that this was not the most entertaining of crosswords. I found it a bit of a struggle, especially in the NW corner, having got off to a bad start with DOG-SIT, until I was forced to correct it to the NHO PET-SIT. Last answer was put in after 44 minutes. It then turned out to be a DNF as I too had TIERS at 21dn. CLEARWAY reminded me of a play by that name which I saw in London some years ago. The curtain went up to reveal a lay-by off a main road, covered in rubbish. It drew a long round of applause from the audience. Said it all really.
FOI – TOWN HALLS
LOI – CLEARWAY
COD – NEUROSURGEON
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
Foiled by inattentively bunging in DOG-SIT (no wonder I couldn’t get EALING, despite remembering last Thursday’s effort). Being a fairly good Spanish speaker I should’ve seen the ESO component but couldn’t get past trying to work QUE into the wordplay.
For solvers’ and setters’ info: ESTO=this thing here, ESO=that thing there, AQUEL=that thing even further away than ‘that one there’
LOI “TIERS” done for me. Like others didn’t really enjoy this offering. GOLDSMITHERY definitely an odd word. “That” in Spanish is a bit esoteric (geddit?) though I did know it.
Never parsed MACKEREL.
Thanks pip and setter.
I too had TIERS. It’s very rare when I get one wrong that I’d defend it, but I think it’s a plausible answer. The definition BOXES certainly works, so it’s just a question of whether TIES and PEGS are synonyms.
Disgruntled!
In economic circles, I’d say they are synonymous: for example ‘the Hong Kong dollar is pegged (or tied) to the US dollar at a rate of HK$7.80 = US$1’.
14.30 which is about as fast as I get, but a misparsed 15 down, having seen IDENTI as being from “Name nearly”, and supposing CAL to be a shortened title for one of the setter’s favourite films.
Failed at PET-SIT, though probably shouldn’t have, just didn’t persevere having thought I’d already finished. Agree not the wittiest puzzle, but at last a clue that utilises my Spanish rather than my almost non-existent French. Thanks Piquet and setter. (..and I agree tiers should be acceptable).
About average difficulty for me but with two errors, falling into the same traps as others with DRAW HEAT and TIERS. In both cases I thought the correct answers, although preferable, were a stretch and the wrong ones just about plausible.
I’ve done it again – went with Great Tea which I hoped was some sort of High Tea. Never thought of Cream Tea – is Cream Tea a meal?
Didn’t parse Identical – I assumed there was a film called Cal, with Ident being “name”.
I did like Neurosurgeon.
50 minutes with that one error.
I considered ‘great tea’ and ‘tiers’ and even ‘tries’ and ‘tires’ before realising what the actual answers were and how they worked and it seems I’m not alone.
I would personally say that ‘eso’ is vastly less obscure than ‘estaminet’ which we’ve had multiple times here. I did have to cheat to get 9A, 23A and 16D (though I really should’ve got 9A in particular)
53:51. it was heavy going for me today too. got very bogged down in the SW corner. wasn’t too sure about the ESPRESSO clue but it seemed to fit so in it went. thank you both
24.05 WOE
Another TIERS; another who saw little to complain about (sorry Pip!) with GOLDSMITHERY rather good.
Well I did say it might just have been the mood I was in, seems this one divided people, some agreeing with me and some seeing nothing to moan about. Thanks for the feedback. One of the problems with blogging is, people expect you to say something when there’s not much to say.
About 20 mins. Can’t be any more specific as I forgot to start the timer doh…
LOI ancestry having found the NE corner tricky.
ESO wasn’t a problem for me, though I do feel it may be pushing the language thing a little far. I finished in 15’09” only to discover yet ANOTHER pink mistype! Grr. They’re happening too regularly and my wife thinks I’m losing grip.
57mins with two corrected. STAGING-AREA corrected from SeAtING as I never got to grips with what the clue was doing and just never thought of “abandon” as an anagrind. Then LOI TREES corrected from TIERS as per others. Couldn’t parse boxes=trees when I had done it; and likewise wasn’t sure of where the O in ESPRESSO came from as never learned any Spanish beyond the basic yes/no/the. My daughter, on the other hand, has listed it on her CV as having “Native level fluency” after studying it at university and having visited almost all regions of Spain
Another TIERS here. I also biffed DOG-SIT and only spotted the mistake after inventing a hundred places in London along the lines of ‘Owling’.
As EALING was the first one I got (well, I am a Londoner!) I didn’t fall into the dog-sit trap – although it seemed so plausible that I even wondered whether Ealing could be wrong until I decided there was definitely no such word as SGOD. 48 mins – but that included parsing IDENTICAL which I’d already biffed.
All correct, but another who initially bifd DOG-SIT and had to rethink as per Witwoud. TREES went straight in, but spent ages on my LOI, ESTATE, where I simply couldn’t see what the setter was getting at. IDENTICAL was likewise tricky to get and then to parse. Puzzle seems perfectly OK to me – not thrilling, but nothing unreasonable or unknown, except the odd GOLDSMITHERY, where it took some time to work out what the anagrist was.
DNF. Didn’t see the anagram in GOLDSMITHERY, so went for GOLDSMITHING which prevented me from seeing ANCESTRY.
I know hardly any Spanish but recalled ESO from an old pop song, Eso beso (ooh that kiss!)
I got it from the intro to the 1970’s Legend of Xanadu, by the awkwardly named band Dave Dee, Dozy, Mick & Tich. But cheated by double checking with spouse, who, is still learning basic Spanish despite our visit being over 9 months ago.