Another fine Wednesday outing, with one definition I didn’t know but guessed, and one elephant trap which held me up at the end. I liked the “Clement Attlee” surface at 4d.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Saxophonist’s case holds long instrument (6) |
| SPINET – PINE (long) inside S[axophonis]T. | |
| 5 | Contemplate statisticians surrounded by booze (8) |
| CONSIDER – ONS (Office for National Statistics in UK) inside CIDER. | |
| 9 | Somebody’s grandfather clock? (3-5) |
| BIG-TIMER – I had gone wrong here when left with an impossible P*L*N**R for 2d, my LOI, as I had put in OLD-TIMER as a cryptic for grandfather clock. But it’s not that, it’s a double definition of sorts, one being a “somebody” like a Big Shot, one a large clock. | |
| 10 | Water jump(6) |
| SPRING – double definition. | |
| 11 | Secretly, Brahms and Liszt are manic (2,6) |
| IN CAMERA – (ARE MANIC)*. Do we approve of the CRS for p*ssed = inebriated, as our anagrind? | |
| 12 | Killing time with prince on isle, half-cut (6) |
| LETHAL – [is]LE, T[ime], HAL as in Prince Hal. | |
| 13 | Cocaine, cannabis and fruitcake (8) |
| CRACKPOT – crack being a form of cocaine and pot being cannabis. | |
| 15 | Part of fingerprint found in Star Chamber (4) |
| ARCH – hidden word. | |
| 17 | Diplomat devoid of love and desire (4) |
| ENVY – ENVOY loses his O. | |
| 19 | Epicurean academic stopping robbery (8) |
| HEDONIST – DON inside HEIST. I like to think I am one such. | |
| 20 | Start to roll joint and cause annoyance (6) |
| RANKLE – R[oll], ANKLE a joint. | |
| 21 | Grown weaker, ladies perhaps need exercises (8) |
| LOOSENED – LOOS – ladies perhaps, (NEED)*. | |
| 22 | Conference match bringing in two thousand (6) |
| SUMMIT – MM inside SUIT = match. | |
| 23 | Split always follows scorn (8) |
| DISSEVER – DISS = scorn, EVER = always. | |
| 24 | Peter out smuggling dope back in refuse (8) |
| ABNEGATE – GEN (dope) reversed inside ABATE = peter out. | |
| 25 | Frivolous people voting for vacuous treaty (6) |
| YEASTY – YEAS as opposed to NOES, T[reat]Y. I didn’t know this meaning of yeasty but it is #4 in Collins listing – “insubstantial or frivolous”. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Perturbed at first, I ignore naughty lingerie (8) |
| PEIGNOIR -my LOI, as mentioned above, and seen once I had corrected 2d; P[erturbed], (I IGNORE)*. It is a kind of see-through robe, apparently; Mrs piquet definitely does not have one. | |
| 3 | Bird originally nested under r*.oof (8) |
| NUTHATCH – N[ested], U[nder], THATCH = roof. | |
| 4 | Clement Attlee regularly supporting constitution (9) |
| TEMPERATE – TEMPER = constitution, A[t]T[l]E[e]. Nice surface. | |
| 5 | Ken crawled along rocks for it (6,9) |
| CARNAL KNOWLEDGE – (KEN CRAWLED ALONG)*. | |
| 6 | Wise chief exchanging pounds for power (7) |
| SAPIENT – SALIENT (chief) swaps L for P. | |
| 7 | Thriller writer’s novel The Dingo (8) |
| DEIGHTON – (THE DINGO)*. As in Len Deighton, of “Harry Palmer” fame, who is alive today and 96 as I write this. | |
| 8 | State of royals is good, in truth (8) |
| REGALITY – G for good inside REALITY. | |
| 14 | Alarmingly hard-left sermon containing common sense (9) |
| OMINOUSLY – HOMILY = sermon, the H has left, insert NOUS = common sense; OMI(NOUS)LY. | |
| 15 | American doctor picked up more fresh, delicious food (8) |
| AMBROSIA – A for American, MB for doctor, ROSIA sounds like rosier = fresher. | |
| 16 | Nickname of international banker caught in scam (8) |
| COGNOMEN – GNOME (a Swiss banker) inside CON a scam. | |
| 17 | Found naked, lying around with artist and the like (2,6) |
| ET CETERA – I biffed this and deduced the wordplay later; RA (artist) follows [d]ETECTE[d] reversed, where detected = found and naked means remove the outer letters. Fortunately, you didn’t need to work that out. | |
| 18 | Extremely virile tough guys, tense and passionate (8) |
| VEHEMENT – V[irile], HE MEN = tough guys, T for tense. | |
| 19 | Hesitant husband becoming leader in Icelandic parliament (7) |
| HALTING – I knew the Icelandic parliament is called the ALTHING so it was easy to move the H to the front. | |
33 minutes, missing my target half-hour because like Pip I had written in OLD-TIMER at 9ac. This wasn’t helped by not knowing PEIGNOIR, but I worked out it was an anagram clue and the answer could not contain the L-checker proved by OLD-TIMER. BIG-TIMER is not an expression I’m aware of, but it had to be.
Other unknowns were the acronym ONS , the required meaning of YEASTY and I missed the parsing of ETCETERA.
9:30. I had an inauspicious start, beginning with SACHET at 1A. I didn’t get the definition, but I thought it had to be with “long” in ST. I then saw PEIGNOIR straight away which put paid to SACHET, but then OLD TIMER had me removing my PEIGNOIR, as it were.
Eventually everything resolved itself until I got back to the something-TIMER for which I thought BIG TIMER but couldn’t think why until finally the penny dropped.
had exactly this start too – couldn’t quite work out why it should be SACHET though! and I stuck with OLD TIMER for ages which definitely held me up…
A lot went in quite quickly but several parts held me up.
I had every type of TIMER (OLD, EGG,ONE) apart from the one that was needed, the bong finally sounding in my head after far too long.
NHO PEIGNOIR – all the gowns in this house are towel and covered in what ever the pop culture reference was at the relevant Christmas.
COGNOMEN and ABNEGATE known but rather inefficiently stored in the brain.
YEASTY I didn’t know in that particular context.
DEIGHTON was a punt but it turns out I have read his books from my post solve Googling. I think being clued as spy writer it would have clicked sooner.
Tricky, the double unches were in the worst possible words but I am just happy to get 3/3 this week.
COD: NUTHATCH
Cheers blogger and setter
There were some real challenges here and I was pleased to get it done in 29.52. I’m another victim of the OLD TIMER trap, and when old turned out to be wrong I wondered if a POP TIMER was a thing. The Brahms and Liszt device, never before seen by me, made me laugh so I guess that’s a thumbs up. Found the 24ac image of Ken crawling along rocks in search of sex crimes vaguely creepy. Thanks piquet, I had to spend some time post-solve figuring out ET CETERA but got there in the end.
From Shelter from the Storm:
In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation and they gave me a LETHAL dose
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn
Come in, she said, I’ll give you
Shelter from the storm
[Off-topic: I don’t want to make too much of this – it’s no big deal – but you may be interested in doing today’s Guardian puzzle by Philistine].
[Although it’s interesting to note there is a flaw in the key answer to the puzzle – as pointed out in a comment on fifteensquared by Ilan Caron who was one of TFtT’s founder bloggers]
[Thanks. Needless to say, the flaw didn’t register with me. If he does the puzzle, I’m sure Lindsay will be on to it straight away!]
[Nice to know that Ilan is still around and contributing. I wonder why he doesn’t post here.]
Hello all, I’m not a Grauniadiste so am in need of elucidation…but thanks for thinking of me!
We can’t give details here today because others may not have tackled the puzzle yet, but if you want to have a go, the Grauniad puzzle is available free on this direct link to it.
If you just want to find out what we’re talking about you can do so at fifteensquared here. Scroll down to the blog 29,694 by Philistine and Ilan’s comment in the discussion.
20:27
Fairly quick but there was plenty I missed along the way:
BIG-TIMER – like others, had OLD-TIMER until PEIGNOIR put paid to that. First came across PEIGNOIR in my teens reading the rather fruity Irving Wallace’s The Prize…
LETHAL – didn’t quite see how this was constructed, other than the Prince…
OMINOUSLY – couldn’t see anything apart from NOUS
ABNEGATE – looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definition
YEASTY – didn’t know that meaning of Frivolous
SAPIENT – it fit – saw SALIENT as well but wasn’t entirely sure of the definitions
HALTING – didn’t know the Icelandic parliament
Quite enjoyed though, BIG-TIMER excepted.
Many thanks for breaking it all down PK and to the setter for an enjoyable challenge
Same here with ABNEGATE. I wondered how it meant peter out and why abate meant refuse…
45:23.
Was going quite well until we got stuck on 16d where I’d NHO Gnome for bankers, and 2d where we’d also gone for Old-Timer for 9a and spent ages trying to understand how the clue wasn’t an anagram.
Another dnf, not knowing the Icelandic Parliament. What on earth is a BIG-TIMER?
Liked OMINOUSLY.
Thanks pip and setter.
19:13
“Same here” to just about everything said above: DNK YEASTY, put in OLD-TIMER, DNK ONS but inferred it. Puzzled at first about Brahms & Liszt, which I’d learned from its earlier appearance; I think it’s OK here as an anagram indicator. Here; just this once. Didn’t (couldn’t) parse ET CETERA. I’m grateful to the setter for specifying ‘thriller’ at 7d; just ‘writer’ would have taken me a lot longer, but DEIGHTON came to mind immediately (I’ve never read any of his stuff). Liked ‘hard-left’, liked Clement, was impressed by (Ken crawled along).
30 minutes. I thought I did pretty well to get uncommon (to me) words like ABNEGATE, DISSEVER, YEASTY (really?), PEIGNOIR, REGALITY and COGNOMEN but it seems others didn’t find this too hard as the NITCH is currently only at 79. Some parsing post-solve but I never could work out CONSIDER, not knowing ONS for ‘statisticians’.
Our two composer friends were seen fulfilling the same function only yesterday in the FT puzzle by Bobcat and it seems OK to me.
17:43* (2 x errors – OLD-TIMER and utter nonsense for 2D)
Unlike piquet I wrote in OLD-TIMER on first reading and never once questioned it. In fact I didn’t even read the clue again. I knew 2D was an anagram of P+I+IGNORE but I thought that the I could be a lower case L, and with a shrug I came up with POLINGER. Not my finest work but is using I for l ever valid? I thought it quite clever at the time and I know this is a standard trick for anti-plagiarism. If it isn’t valid then can someone explain why as it seems to me a good piece of misdirection.
Otherwise a really enjoyable solve so thanks to both.
Around 35 minutes. FOI SPINET and then BIG TIMER. Knew PEIGNOIR. COGNOMEN and NUTHATCH. I found it fairly straightforward and had no holdups. One of those days where I knew everything. Most I could parse at the time but needed the blog for several.
Thanks Piquet
After yesterday’s triumph, today’s disaster, of course.
Gave up after 29 minutes, the last five of which I had stared blankly at 9ac after an alphabet trawl came up empty. Kicking myself now, of course.
To take some positives out of today’s game (sorry): I knew PEIGNOIR and COGNOMEN but not sure why, relied on the parsing for DISSEVER and YEASTY and successfully resisted the temptation to insist that SPINET needed another N.
Thanks to setter and piquet.
After years of patient improvement I got to the point of finishing these most days and thought I’d start paying attention to the time and joining this conversation. Back to the drawing board I think with yet another DNF.
Could not match OLD TIMER with PEIGNOIR nor make anything of COGNOMEN. Others took an age: DISSEVER, ABNEGATE, YEASTY and I finally gave up on 45 mins or so.
I did enjoy CARNAL KNOWLEDGE if memory serves.
Thanks for explaining so well as usual.
“I did enjoy CARNAL KNOWLEDGE if memory serves.” Might one ask which of you wore the peignoir?
LOL. Now thats an image that will be hard to unimagine, thanks.
DNF, defeated by BIG-TIMER, which in turn scuppered PEIGNOIR (though I probably wouldn’t have got it anyway). I’ve heard of someone making the big time, and of someone being big-time, but I’ve never heard of someone being a big-timer.
– Like Pootle above, thought of SACHET for 1a but thankfully held off until NUTHATCH set me straight to get SPINET
– Didn’t know that YEASTY can mean frivolous
– Assumed 4d would begin with ‘tum’ for constitution until the checkers pointed me towards TEMPERATE
– Can’t think of a situation where I personally would equate rosier with fresher as required for AMBROSIA, but I’m sure the dictionaries support it
Thanks piquet and setter.
COD Ominously (liked the ‘hard-left meaning remove the H’ device – have we had it before?)
Like others, biffed a few that I couldn’t parse, notably COGNOMEN (NHO ‘gnome’ in that sense) and ET CETERA (which I’d never have worked out – thanks for the explanation). NHO YEASTY but it fitted the wordplay. Liked OMINOUSLY, VEHEMENT and LOOSENED. 42 mins.
39:42 LOI REGALITY
A poor spelling of PIGNOIRE led to EGG TIMER as nothing else fitted. A cheeky check showed the problem.
Didn’t understand the parsing of OMINOUSLY, but saw that NOUS was in there. I had “hard left” as HL.
Couldn’t quite remember Iceland parliament, was confused with Athling, the Saxon name for a prince.
If “sever” means cut, then why do we need “dis-sever”? Sounds like reattaching.
COD CRACKPOT
26m 42s
As Pip says, Len DEIGHTON is now 96. It’ll be a very sad day when he dies. I fell in love with his works after seeing the film of The Ipcress File back in 1964. Since then I’ve read all his works of fiction bar one and a couple of his non-fiction works. We are fortunate, though in that we have Mick Herron to continue the good work with his ‘Slow Horses’ series of spy novels.
Martin, I agree about Deighton and Herron.
I sent my first draft of my fifth in the Michaela ‘Mike’ Kingdom spy series off to the publishers yesterday. I have a long way to go.
You’ve just reminded me, David, to ask my local library to get copies of three of your other books, “The tip of the Iceberg”, “This is not a Pipe” and “The Violin and the Candlestick”.
That would be wonderful, thanks
I hope the book The Ipcress File is better than the film which I saw for the first time recently.
11.44, but probably won’t count as I corrected an answer the wrong way.
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE was excellent.
The 1960s film of The Ipcress File missed out some of the action in the book. My very favourite spy novel is another in that early “Harry Palmer” series of novels: “Horse Under Water”. Unfortunately it was never made into a film.
13:31 with a good chunk of that sorting out the OLD TIMER mess. Some interesting vocab but nothing too obscure. Oh and I hate this grid.
45 mins.
Tricky puzzle with some NHOs or long-forgottens: yeasty, dissever, cognomen. Glad to get through it.
Thanks, p.
Thank you piquet & setter.
9a Big timer. As Merlin above, I too plumped for a wrong ‘un, Egg Timer ‘cos I can’t spell 2d PegNOIRe. Note extra E and unused I. Couldn’t parse EggT either. I am aware of “the big time” but not of “big timer.”
11a In camera, yes this one approves of the Brahms & Liszt anagrind.
17a Envy. We’ve had envoy/envy recently but I couldn’t think of the right diplomat for ages.
23a NHO Dissever, but easy to guess.
25a Yeasty DNK that meaning.
6d Sapient, I stupidly put salient although I knew fine well to swap the L for a P. Delayed 10a Spring.
16d Cognomen, missed the Zurich gnomes.
Good puzzle, I liked it.
31:31. Found the last few PEIGNOIR, LETHAL quite hard, but the rest fitted in easily enough. some experience required to see through the surface of Clement Attlee. had to biff a couple like NUTHATCH. but lovely puzzle overall. thanks!
17.47, not entering BIG TIMER until I couldn’t think of anything else and settled for an appeal to VAR if necessary. CARNAL KNOWLEDGE delivers a strange surface in the context: I hope Ken found the peignoir clad nymphet of his dreams after his arduous approach along the Giant’s Causeway. Makes swimming the Hellespont look like a relaxing pre-nooky bath.
It took me a while to work out why I didn’t need to find the bits of Brahms and Liszt that anagrammed (manic) to IN CAMERA. Nihil obstat.
23:09. I really enjoyed this. Lovely surfaces and elegant wordplay. Deceptively tricky but fair with nothing too obscure or unsolveable.
COD: OMINOUSLY (hard-left 😀).
13:23, glad to see I am in good company in being undone by OLD-TIMER. It took a while to unpick the NW corner after deciding that 2dn couldn’t actually be an anagram with that incontrovertible ‘L’ in the mix…
I think this just demonstrates that the Snitch is not necessarily a reliable indicator of difficulty. I would rather have a Friday type crossword than something like this that is just inaccessible to anybody that hasn’t been doing these for years. I would think anybody who knows what the Icelandic parliament is has either visited Iceland or lived a very odd life.
I rarely look there, but my understanding is that the Snitch is based on solving times so it favours those with an extensive GK and grasp of Crosswordese who aim for speed, but I don’t think not knowing the odd thing renders a puzzle such as this inaccessible to solvers with less experience.
I agree your example at 8dn would be pretty much a write-in for those who happened to know the name of Icelandic parliament and that would contribute to an easy Snitch rating, but others like me who didn’t have that knowledge could still solve the clue by waiting for some checkers and looking for another way in, then Hesitant = HALTING wasn’t hard to find. I later looked up the parliament, and I have met it before and forgotten it, but that didn’t prevent me completing the grid in a reasonable time for me
Agreed. Per SNITCH this is apparently the same as yesterday in terms of difficulty, yet today took nearly 3 times longer and needed help on some. OLD-TIMER was a killer, until then PEIGNOIR looked more complex. SNITCH can only apply to the x% top solvers, for amateurs like me the same SNITCH could be wildly different in terms of solving it. Fair enough as it is what it is (and no doubt the experts will be scoffing at this!) but SNITCH can be taken only as a high level guide to whether ok, reasonable, hard or brutal….. in general! I always check it but when it like 120+ then its going to be very hard.
Or just remembers irrelevant facts.. the Althing is said to be the world’s oldest parliament.
Clue in the name, I suppose.
Not saying I haven’t lived an odd life, mind you..
21 mins. I thought the parliament was an ALTHING so that must be elsewhere. Nothing to add, I made all the mistakes everyone else made!
It is, but you raise the H to get HALTING, meaning hesitant.
👏
8:35, with a couple of minutes at the end struggling to think of COGNOMEN. That was one of a number of things in here that were only vaguely familiar, but fortunately for me there was nothing I didn’t know at all. This meaning of YEASTY came up in an archaic form (yesty) in a recent Mephisto and although I didn’t remember it consciously it rang enough of a bell to help.
Good to see Len DEIGHTON. I discovered his work recently and very quickly devoured almost all of it on Audiobook. The books are perfectly suited to the medium and the Bernard Samson trilogy of trilogies is particularly good.
All the same problems as listed above, but I had to use aids for COGNOMEN (forgotten), which I would have got had I remembered the Swiss bankers, rather than trying to recall a river that ran through more than one country! Also had forgotten the Althing. YEASTY unknown, but makes sense, as it does cause froth in baking.
16.42
This one suited me better than yesterday’s poor effort, either knowing the trickier words or deducing them (DISSEVER). On reading the blog and going over the clues I wholeheartedly agree with Aston Villa. Lots of wit and some cracking surfaces. Thank you setter and the usual great blog from Mr Piquet
A different experience, found it mostly straightforward. Thought SACHET immediately but it wasn’t an instrument, SPINET came nanoseconds later. Didn’t think OLD-TIMER until after I had PEIGNOIR, known from the French countess in the hotel in “Day of the Jackal” – Forsyth not Deighton, whose books I love. Though I thought the trilogy Game, Set and Match was fine by itself, didn’t need to be rewritten twice more. Six wasted books! Almost as bad as Star Wars. Didn’t know he was still alive, was ready to look up when he died.
A few entries I thought, “That’s not a real word” – REGNALITY, DISSEVER, the Icelandic parliament . Did know COGNOME(n) from Italian. Couldn’t parse ET CETERA.
The mental picture of the clue for carnal knowledge makes it COD.
SPINET was FOI, followed by PEIGNOIR, which I remembered from The Wedding Party episode of FAWLTY TOWERS, where Mme Peignoir flirted with Basil. I also remembered YEASTY from a puzzle from a while ago. As I was sure about 2d, I didn’t put OLD infront of TIMER, but left it until the end, when I saw BIG with a loud clang as Big Wig came to mind and I saw the double definition. Apart from that the NE gave me most trouble. REGALITY eventually opened that corner up. 29:51. Thanks setter and Pip.
Played by A.A. Gill’s mother
Indeed!
I’m another who messed up due to (NHO) BIG-TIMER. Not in the BRB as far as I can see, but in Collins, unfortunately for me, as it has scuppered my beef with it. 45 minutes all told.
Now off to read The Dingo, rather than my usual Beano.
Thanks piquet.
Slow to see the ‘it’ in the long down clue, and was a bit vague about the Icelandic parliament, only knowing the right letters in some order, so had no probem with the answer. Otherwise there were no major problems, only general slowness, and I finished in 41 minutes. 24ac’s parsing defeated me: I thought the definition was peter out, and that refuse somehow meant abate, both of which were rather odd it seemed. And like many was slow to see BIG-TIMER and could hardly believe such a word existed.
On doggy daycare duties again today so a late arrival. 35 minutes as a DNF, having spent the last ten failing to sort out the BIG TIMER, PEIGNOIR crosser. I couldn’t see past OLD TIMER, despite knowing that the anagram fodder for naughty lingerie had no l. I’ve never heard of the item in question. One of my sons was in Zurich last week or else I’d have struggled on coGNOMEn too. COD to OMINOUSLY. A good puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter
26:15
A very good puzzle. Another OLD Timer here until the L stopped me getting my LOI PEIGNOIR. Didn’t know that meaning of YEASTY and imagine one would get some odd looks if one used it. Didn’t know that meaning of TEMPER either.
Re 19a – from D.J Enright’s “Injury Time” :
“A paper in the north of England ran an advertisement on its lonely-hearts page which ran ‘Professional man, head on a stick, seeks similar woman.’ When readers asked what freakish practice or rare condition was encoded in head on a stick, it emerged that a secretary in the office had taken the message over the phone, and what the man had intended was ‘hedonistic’”
Thanks to Pip and the setter.
Amusing 😅
Like others defeated by the PEIGNOIR and BIG TIMER crossers. At one time even wondered if EGG TIMER was a possibility with a G in the equation. Forty five enjoyable minutes slightly spoiled by my inability to finish.
I had all but 9ac in 15 minutes (having initially had OLD TIMER but then PEIGNOIR killed that)
I spent another 5 minutes or so alphabet trawling before giving up. I see I’m not alone in never having heard that expression. I might have guessed it if I’d taken more time I think.
Thanks setter and blogger
I didn’t know how to spell Peignoir, but I thought I did, and that led to some slowness in the upper left. My education for today was the CRS. Thanks, pip
15:30 — what everyone else said about “BIG TIMER”. Didn’t see the anagram fodder for IN CAMERA, but it went in without too much thought anyway.
Went for BIGTIMER in the end expecting it to be wrong, a failure to lift and separate. Kicking myself as I had asked myself why, if OLDTIMER was the answer, the clue needed “Somebody’s”.
44 minutes. I also started with OLD-TIMER. At the 30 minute mark I’d solved everything else and I spent the next 14 trying to think of a better answer than BIG-TIMER, which I never did parse. Thanks piquet.
Oops – almost forgot to post. Since peignoir was my FOI, I had little doubt that it wasn’t old-timer. The question was, then, what is it? I’ll admit it took me a while to come up with big-timer as my LOI.
Time: 23:14
I got off to a slow start with this, but persevered and eventually just had two left to solve; DISSEVER went in purely from wordplay, although I was hesitant because I don’t think I have ever encountered the word and it looked unlikely to me that there could be such a word. However, I fell at the last, LETHAL, because I assumed that “killing time” was the definition, not that “time” was part of the wordplay, and I never lost that thought; stupid really, as it’s one of the more straightforward clues in the puzzle.
At least I didn’t fall into the OLD TIMER trap, mainly because PEIGNOIR went straight in. It took me quite a while to spot BIG (TIMER was obvious from the checkers), and I think that “somebody” as a synonym for “big timer” is a bit of a stretch.
I hadn’t heard of the “frivolous” meaning for “YEASTY”, but got from the wordplay.
All in all, an enjoyable challenge: shame about LETHAL, but that was entirely my own fault.
Mostly enjoyable, though a DNF as I was looking for a river rather than the required banker and COGNOMEN is a NHO so would probably never have come. I’ve also NHO BIG TIMER, but it was all that would fit, so it went in with a shrug. And, now I think of it, the same applies to YEASTY. FWIW, I’ve no objection to ‘Brahms and Liszt’ as used here.
Sorry but OLD-TIMER is a much more satisfactory answer to the clue than BIG-TIMER, which is in neither Chambers nor the Concise OED. I’m calling that out as a setter’s howler.
BIG-TIMER is in Collins. And Thesaurus.com (though not Dictionary.com).
Plus “old-timer” doesn’t mean “somebody”, it doesn’t really mean “grandfather clock” nor does it contain any letters from the crossing anagram.
I think accusing the setter of a “howler” might be projection.
DNF. I started well and cruised along fairly quickly. I was held up in the SW but eventually cleared Al the hurdles apart from 16dn. I could not see my way through the clue, and given the available letters I had to plump between CINNAMON and CHINAMAN. The latter won as it was least the name or nickname of an international (or at least a national). When I came here for enlightenment I had a MER on COGNOMEN because for me it was part of a Roman name rather than a nickname. But the dictionaries have spoken so I can’t complain (much). But despite the DNF I enjoyed it, including the now almost obligatory lavatorial reference.
FOI – SPINET
LOI – n/a
COD – CARNAL KNOWLEDGE
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
Aaaaaaaaargh! 16 Down! I got the CON bit, and at one point got the GNOME, but never at the same time.
Bother.
Sadly DNF as I fell into the “Old Timer” trap. Peignoir is a word I know, but I was fatally put off by my answer to 9ac!
24 minutes, but gave up on the parsing of ET CETERA, which I really should have worked out. DISSEVER was a new one on me. I agree with the earlier comment that it must surely mean the reverse of “sever”, but then we have inflammable and flammable, which as far as I know mean the same as each other -although no doubt someone scientific will correct me on that. Nice puzzle, loved CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, and indeed the comments on it above!
PEIGNOIR no problem. Kim Kardash was wearing one when she was robbed in her Paris hotel. I was slowed at the end by the parliament. I had HELSING stuck in my mind as a Scandi-assembly. Probably thinking of HELSINGFORS which is another name for HELSINKI. Got there in the end. 21’37”, so dragging down my average ever so slightly.