42:15
Very clever clues and well-hidden definitions made this a stand-out puzzle for me. I am a bit disappointed with my time, since there is more than usual scientific vocabulary (which I like) and I think I found it harder than the setter intended. I got nowhere in the top half to begin with, and having broken in to the bottom half, never really got flowing. Not helped by a silly typo in 16dn, my second-to-LOI was 28ac, followed swiftly by the BIFD 24dn (which I will now try to parse).
I’ll certainly check the SNITCH later, and watch Simon’s video solve, to confirm that this was indeed a belter deserving of a better solver.
Pre-publish edit: 18ac was also not fully understood by yours truly while solving, turned out to be harder for me to understand than 24dn, and still may not be parsed by the time you get that far…
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | Cardinal, no Saint, needing drink (6) |
| THIRTY – THIRsTY (needing drink) without the ‘s’ (no saint). Cardinal meaning any whole number, I think. | |
| 4 | Plant’s beginning to hold strike with fear for marine plant (7) |
| SEAWEED – SEED (plant’s beginning) containing (to hold) AWE (strike with fear). | |
| 9 | Knock back roll filled with cold ham? (5) |
| ACTOR – ROTA (roll) reversed (knock back) containing (filled with) C (cold). | |
| 10 | In the trunk area, red blazer is snug, restricting one in everything (4,5) |
| TAIL LIGHT – TIGHT (snug), containing (restricting) all of I (one) in ALL (everything). What a definition, which managed to lead me down many garden paths (last letter, ‘a’, containment, etc.). | |
| 11 | Home sewer burst in an unidentified location (9) |
| SOMEWHERE – anagram of (burst) HOME SEWER. Easy but lovely surface. | |
| 12 | Scored opening runs into covers (5) |
| INTRO – R (runs) which INTO contains (covers). | |
| 13 | Like to ogle cut sandwiches and a piece of cake (4) |
| EASY – AS (like) which EYe (to ogle) missing its last (cut) contains (sandwiches). Brutally good. | |
| 14 | Traditional gear was in the van — the person driving starts off jerkily (10) |
| LEDERHOSEN – LED (was in the van(guard)) + an anagram of (jerkily) tHE and pERSON missing their first letters (driving starts off). Beautifully good. | |
| 18 | My photo turned out grainier with a mobile imaging technique (10) |
| TOMOGRAPHY – anagram of (mobile) MY PHOTO with first and last of (turned out) GranieR and A. I could see MYPHOTO*, but finding the rest of the fodder took longer than I would care to admit! | |
| 20 | Mathematical expressions only half written down in class (4) |
| FORM – half of FORMulas (mathematical expressions). | |
| 23 | Entrance to house new for one delivering gift? (5) |
| DONOR – DOOR (entrance) containing (to house) N (new). | |
| 24 | Mass evacuation following company disturbance (9) |
| COMMOTION – M (mass) + MOTION (evacuation), all after (following) CO (company). Is this meant to be scatological, or is there a meaning I’ve missed? | |
| 25 | Film buff’s second contender to collect for example Oscar (9) |
| MOVIEGOER – MO (moment, second) + VIER (contender), containing (to collect) EG (for example) and O (oscar). | |
| 26 | Computer modeller and designer (5) |
| QUANT – double definition, the second unknown to me. 1) Quantitative Analyst, 2) Mary Quant, quite recently deceased, fashion designer. | |
| 27 | South African nurses nitpick on emptying small potty (7) |
| BONKERS – BOER (South African) containing (nurses) NitpicK (first and last, on emptying), then S (small). | |
| 28 | Riot in court compound is initiated by judge (6) |
| JESTER – ESTER (compound) after (in initiated by) J (judge). Easier when you’re not staring at _E_T_N for some reason. You are spoiling us now, setter. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Short-term tenant in trouble with IRS (9) |
| TRANSIENT – anagram of (in trouble) TENANT with IRS. | |
| 2 | What acts as a connection is time — hours add up (7) |
| ISTHMUS – IS + T (time) + H (hours) + reversal of (up) SUM (add). Connecting two pieces of land. | |
| 3 | Cast can read out loud (6) |
| THROWN – sounds like (read aloud) “throne” (toilet, can). | |
| 4 | Inside measurement is key for collar (5) |
| SEIZE – put E (key) inside SIZE (measurement). Foolishly, I spelt this one wrongly at first, too. | |
| 5 | Exhausted learner coming in to land very well (3,5) |
| ALL RIGHT – first and last of (exhausted) LearneR contained in (coming in) ALIGHT (to land). | |
| 6 | Female workers implicated in Watergate scandal (7) |
| ERGATES – hidden in watERGATE Scandal. I had considered this might be a hidden answer, but dismissed it on the grounds of it not feeling like a word, and if it were, the unexciting only-one-letter-from-the-second-bit-ness. A female worker ant that I will now commit to memory (ha!). | |
| 7 | Extremist papers served up the same thing (5) |
| DITTO – OTT (over the top, extremist) + ID (papers), all reversed (served up). | |
| 8 | Court in support over proposed US constitutional amendment and the like (2,6) |
| ET CETERA – CT (court) in TEE (support), all reversed (over), then ERA (Equal Rights Amendment, proposed US constitutional amendment, NHO). | |
| 15 | One quickly passes on first show of Edinburgh fringe after parking takes an age (8) |
| EPHEMERA – first letter (first show) of Edinburgh + HEM (fringe) after P (parking) + ERA (an age). | |
| 16 | One proposing to get married in a prominent landmark south of New Orleans initially (9) |
| NOMINATOR – M (married) + IN + A + TOR (prominent landmark), all beneath (south of) the first letters of (initially) New and Orleans. | |
| 17 | Distress caused by brief violent behaviour one evening (8) |
| AGGRIEVE – AGGRo (violent behaviour) minus it’s last letter (brief) + I (one) + EVE (evening). | |
| 19 | It could drive many people mad missing out on promotion, challenging in vain (7) |
| MINIVAN – Mad after deleting (missing out on) ‘ad’ (promotion), then an anagram of (challenging) IN VAIN. | |
| 21 | This could cause rustiness in old worker, say, after eleven days (7) |
| OXIDANT – O (old), with ANT (worker say) after XI (eleven) + D (days). | |
| 22 | Force European to stand in for a year in an English resort (6) |
| TORQUE – Swap in E (European) for A Y (a year) in TORQUay (an English resort). | |
| 23 | Contrary lad concluding early medical discharge (5) |
| DEMOB – reverse all of (contrary) BOy (lad) without its last (concluding early) and MED (medical). | |
| 24 | Put out daughter’s head of cabbage in rubbish (5) |
| CROSS – the ‘d’ (daughter) in dROSS (rubbish) is (instead) the first letter (head) of Cabbage. | |
61 minutes for this, which I found to be the hardest of the week by some distance.
I had started rather well in the NW but then I began to struggle and nearly every clue involved difficulty of one sort or another. Around 40 minutes in I had solved all but the SW corner but that was completely empty and I took what seemed like forever to get a foothold and make progress.
NHO TOMOGRAPHY and was delighted to construct it from wordplay after a major tussle. NHO ERGATES. LEDERHOSEN turned up in a Guardian puzzle very recently, so that was a bonus. Biffed ET CETERA but gave up trying to parse it as I knew I wouldn’t know the US amendment. Also gave up on the wordplay for MINIVAN as I’d spent ages trying to make ‘omnibus’, ‘minibus’ and ‘minicab’ work. CROSS was my LOI. Several other clues went unparsed because I was just pleased to finish.
Not a good day.
A CT scan is “computed tomography” so I’m pretty sure you must have heard the word at some point.
Thanks. I may have heard it but it didn’t register as ‘CT scan’ is all I need to know what’s being discussed.
Could you share a link for the video solve please? Would be fun to watch- thanks!
It won’t be up until a bit later. It is on the “cracking the cryptic” channel that is mostly sudoku these days.
Here it is:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8MVgvsOvrtk
I think ERGATES was my only unknown, although since it was hidden there wasn’t ltoo much risk of spelling it wrong. I made the mistake of putting the totally unjustifiable MINIBUS in for a time before realizing BONKERS would not fit and seeing the error of my ways. But all green in the end.
31.59, ending a slightly strange week in which, for me at least, Monday was the toughest and the rest were reasonably straightforward. Although, on reflection, today’s had some fiendish wordplay which I got around by biffing like there was no tomorrow. Only when I read William’s excellent blog was I able to appreciate all the craftiness and subtlety. All up a great challenge which I was relieved to finish, giving me an all-green week – except in the quickie, for which I blame Dawn French.
From When The Deal Goes Down:
I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard a deafening noise, I felt TRANSIENT joys
I know they are not what they seem
DNF. Thought this was very good but too good for me. I managed to find most of what I think were the tricky ones. Knew ISTHMUS and TOMOGRAPHY. Missed what should have been some of the easier ones, JESTER, DONOR, TORQUE. Thought the switch in DROSS/CROSS was quite clever. Very enjoyable.
Thanks WJS and setter.
17:05
A nice puzzle. I was a bit concerned about my last two (TORQUE and QUANT) until I thought “What about a Q?” and it unravelled from there. I now suspect a pangram, though I’ve not double-checked – certainly the rarer letters are all present and correct.
ERGATES was new to me, and despite the suspicious-looking ‘Watergate’, I needed all the crossers to spot it.
Thanks both.
15.10
Indeed a pangram! A tremendous mixture of clue types, with some splendid surfaces (though we seem to be getting more lavatorial recently). Vaguely remembered ERGATES and the computer meaning of QUANT.
COD MOVIEGOER
LOI SEIZE
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
(Poem in October, Dylan Thomas)
30 mins mid-brekker. I liked it, but with a couple of MERs: deciding Ephemera was the singular mayfly, wondering about ‘challenging’ as an anagram indicator, and puzzling over ERA.
Ta setter and W
I was surprised that a setter or editor would expect many people to know the ERA. Especially when the much better known NOLA, often referred to just as NO, was felt to need a “take only the first letters” instruction for non-North Americans.
I enjoyed this, and also I think for me it was the easiest of the week as I finished in 22:42. NHO Ergates and I have to admit googling it before putting the final letter in, just to make sure! My last two in were Quant and then LOI Torque, it was lucky I thought of Mary Quant just looking at that —A-T as I don’t think I’d have thought of Torquay in a hurry otherwise.
Thanks setter and blogger
NHO ERGATES. I’m not sure hiding such a recondite answer helped as much as a charade for example could have, but the rest of this went in without much ado.
18:58. I continued my theme of the week by getting stuck at the end for an inordinate amount of time. Today I struggled to come up with QUANT and TORQUE, partly through not giving Q enough consideration on my several alphabet trawls.
Elsewhere I was particularly bemused by DONOR, thinking that DOOR was obviously “Entrance to house” and wondering how the N got inside! I think that reflects the art of good setting.
21’22”, a steady solve. Dnk QUANT (computers) or ERGATES.
I must be getting more conservative (very small c) as I get older – creeping Americanisms (MOVIEGOER, TAIL LIGHT) and scatology (escaped from the Guardian?) vex me.
I liked TORQUE and CROSS.
Thanks william and setter.
Not a setter who uses two words where five will do! Ten clues with a word count of ten or more made it seem more like parsing War and Peace at times. Some cleverly disguised definitions but overall a bit stodgy for my taste.
Yes, I had the same feeling. Definitely one of those puzzles where you think of the answer and then retrospectively work out the parsing.
Another year older and still no wiser. 58 minutes with LOI TOMOGRAPHY, whatever that may be. I took ERGATES on trust too. I had a MINIVAN in my youth, but the clue sounded more like a description of last football season for Wanderers, which I didn’t need to be reminded of. I did though of trunk meaning boot, with TAIL LIGHT needing all crossers. COD to the court JESTER. Good puzzle. Thank you William and setter.
Happy Birthday
Threw the towel in over what turned out to be NHO TOMOGRAPHY. Also knew ERGATES was a word, but had no idea what they were, and had to come here to parse SEAWEED and SEIZE. I simply don’t see how a MINIVAN could “drive many people”. It only has two seats. A minibus, on the other hand…..
I was also left with what turned out to be DEMOB/BONKERS after 15 minutes or so.
I notice that my criticism of Monday’s puzzle (which I stand by) has been removed. I wasn’t aware we had censorship in place. However, there is no criticism of this puzzle from me – I simply wasn’t up to the challenge.
It was amazing how many could sit in the back in the days before seat belts. The more the better, or else they slid around. And there are eleven in a football team
A MINIVAN is (among other things) what’s also known as a ‘people carrier’, a car with three rows of seats.
That’s a minibus.
The modern incarnation of a minivan is any small van with two seats and access to the storage area from the front and rear.
The actual minivan that I grew up with in the early 70s was actually a Mini in the standard olive green. I used to sit on the battery cover which was located just in front of the off-side rear wheel arch. We used to fit most of our boy’s football team in it though, albeit not ‘seated’ in the conventional sense.
No it isn’t. The archetypal example of this kind of vehicle when I was growing up was the Renault Espace. We used to call them people carriers but they are undoubtedly also commonly referred to as minivans. A minibus is a very different thing.
Your thing was also a minivan, of course. Words often have multiple meanings!
65% complete, not bad, and got several of the tough ones. Tried TYPOGRAPHY and TOPOGRAPHY by not checking the MYPHOTO anagram carefully enough.
ERGATES never looked like a word to me. NHO ESTER.
COD TAIL LIGHT
My first full solve in many a day. The wordy clues proved fairly straightforward instruction on examination.
Thanks both.
DNF, NHO 6d Ergate, not in Cheating Machine either. Now added.
8d Et Cetera, NHO 100 year-old Equal Rights Amendment, which must be quite arcane even in USA; ERA isn’t in Wiktionary with that meaning. In Wiki we are given:
“Politics and government
Electricity Regulatory Authority, of the Government of Uganda
Electronic Records Archives, of the United States National Archives and Records Administration
Environment and Resources Authority, a government agency of Malta
European Radical Alliance, a defunct political group in the European Parliament
European Union Agency for Railways
Excellence in Research for Australia, a research assessment initiative of the Australian Government
Legislation
Education Reform Act (disambiguation), or specifically
Education Reform Act 1988 of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Kentucky Education Reform Act
Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993
Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 of the United States Congress
Employee Rights Act, proposed legislation in the United States Congress
Employment Relations Act 2000 of the Parliament of New Zealand
Employment Rights Act 1996, of the Parliament of the United Kingdom
Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed, but unratified, amendment to the United States Constitution
State equal rights amendments, similar laws passed in various U.S. states”
16d Nominator BIFD.
24d I put Dross rather than Cross, which delayed me.
15:12. I wasn’t so keen on this. Very wordy clues and rather convoluted wordplay. In many cases I didn’t bother to untangle it all, and it was usually possible just to biff the answers. Some clever stuff though, no doubt.
63:52
Not a great fan of this but got through it in the end.
Thanks, w.
24.27, so clearly this was no breeze. I didn’t get round to parsing ETC, which may be just as well because the Equal Rights Amendment would not have occurred, as indeed it hasn’t to much of America, it seems. Mary QUANT I know, being a Boomer, but not the modeler, being, as it seems, just ignorant of such things. I didn’t help myself entering TOPOGRAPHY, my excuse being that so many of the clues were so complex that parsing became a rather sketchy affair. I then wondered whether a PANIVIN was a thing like a charabanc.
ERGATES is interesting, isn’t it? While most sources give it as a plural, Chambers prefers it as a singular, directly from the Greek and pronounced ur-g’-tees. The plural would be ergatai. I knew the word pronounced as you would expect, but with not a clue as to the meaning beyond maybe some sort of fungus. Similar considerations on EPHEMERA, where it can be a singular mayfly, but for everything else the singular is ephemeron, though I’d never use it.
Rather too complex to be fun, but it’s interesting to see the setter signs off as a BONKERS JESTER. Mots justes.
32.07. Not a result I expected after getting to virtually the end of the across clues before getting a single clue. Went back to the beginning and seaweed finally gave me a start. The corner then gradually grew till I finished with bonkers, having just about held my nerve and not put in the very appealing bananas!
Lots of really clever clues I thought. Ephemera, tail light and lederhosen to the fore.
Very much enjoyed this . Thanks setter and blogger.
Quite hard. Got really held up with the southern corners. Had to take a significant break as I was getting nowhere. Came back refreshed and finally cracked it. FOI TRANSIENT then ISTHMUS, SOMEWHERE, ACTOR and THIRTY. Liked TAIL LIGHT, LEDERHOSEN and COMMOTION. LOI BONKERS
Thanks William
Gave up on the 45 min mark with a third of the answers missing. Kind of glad I did, because the NHO ERGATES would have baffled me for an eon. Might have seen the rest in time, but I don’t have it to spare.
45:58 with 23a unparsed – I assumed it was DONOR on the first pass but for some reason I couldn’t get “entrance to house”(n) out of my head and change it to “entrance”(n) to house(v)!
I read 24a the same way as you – yuk, but thanks for the blog.
Got there in a tad over 30 minutes, but spoiled it with a careless THRONE overwriting SOMEnHERE for 2 errors. Drat! Not my day today after a careless error in the QC too. FOI, THIRTY, LOI QUANT. TYPOGRAPHY changed to TOMOGRAPHY after MINIVAN arrived. NHO ERGATES! DEMOB, BONKERS and CROSS held things up for a while. Thanks setter and William.
DNF, bamboozled by the SW most of which I just couldn’t understand. Still don’t. Maybe I just don’t want to.
Not enjoyable.
Thanks William for the hard graft.
Very difficult. It took me 83 minutes after using lots of aids and still not understanding 18ac, 8dn, 23dn, 24dn — I had to come here to see how they worked, and really they were easy enough. I’m beginning to believe that such a thing as wavelength might exist, having for years thought that it was nonsense. Some clues were far too long in my opinion. One can be pretty sure this isn’t a Dean Mayer puzzle.
To me ‘wavelength’ is just a convenient shortcut for the idea that the comparative difficulty of puzzles is different for different people, i.e. you might find puzzle X easier than puzzle Y, while I find puzzle Y easier. In that narrow sense it exists as a matter of objective fact!
Dean Mayer no longer compiles for The Times, although I get your point. I have to disagree on the clues being too long though. An excellent puzzle with deception galore. Took me a little less than 45 minutes – last Friday’s took me much longer! My favourites were BONKERS, EASY and TAIL LIGHT, with the rest of the field right on their tails.
32m – more than the usual number going in unparsed; I just didn’t have the patience to untangle them
DNF and did not enjoy the verbose, tortuous phrasing of many clues, and with no fewer than 7 of them containing Americanisms or American references, my unenjoyment was compounded.