As Monday as you can get, really. Perhaps a PB or two in the offing?
I got up close and personal with a juvenile 5 across (Hong Kong’s second largest ‘bird of prey’) a couple of years ago, when it flew into the glass panel that acted as a balustrade on the balcony of our former place in Cheung Chau. Unlike the sparrows and pigeons that were too insubstantial to survive the experience, the beautiful goshawk remained alive, but immobile, overnight. When I went up in the morning to see how he was (having provided him with some water the evening before), he was in exactly the same position I had left him in – essentially sitting. I approached him very slowly, channelling my inner Attenborough, when all of a sudden he upped and offed.
14:38
| Across | |
| 1 | Arrangement of two things in time and space (6) |
| TANDEM – T AND EM (think EN and EM in printing) | |
| 5 | Cor blimey — large ducks and birds of prey (8) |
| GOSHAWKS – GOSH (cor) |
|
| 9 | Perfectly suited to pursue love with dream rogue (6-4) |
| TAILOR-MADE – TAIL (pursue) O (love=nil) anagram* of DREAM | |
| 10 | In the morning, young lady initially radical (4) |
| AMYL – AM Y~ L~ | |
| 11 | Get hanky out suppressing cheers (5,3) |
| THANK YOU – hidden | |
| 12 | Penny most recently mentioned missing first sales talk (6) |
| PATTER – P |
|
| 13 | Pass a drink (4) |
| COLA – COL A | |
| 15 | Vindication of motoring group checking Volkswagen Golf GTI’s rear end (8) |
| APOLOGIA – POLO (Volkswagen) G (golf) ~I (last letter of GTI) in AA (motoring group); my last car was a GTI. Sadly, I never loved it as much as my old Toyota Echo…Or, my appallingly unreliable Mazda 929. | |
| 18 | Cheapest accommodation beginning to stoke anger at St Andrews? (8) |
| STEERAGE – S (S~) TEE RAGE (what you might get if you top one into the Swilken Burn) | |
| 19 | Nose is running for ages (4) |
| EONS – NOSE* | |
| 21 | Not as much need, essentially, to get tenant (6) |
| LESSEE – LESS ~EE~ | |
| 23 | Contemptuous comment about first bits of unwarranted nudity in The Shining? (8) |
| SUNLIGHT – U~ N~ in SLIGHT | |
| 25 | African country’s correspondence with Liberal forwarded (4) |
| MALI – MAIL (postal correspondence) with the L brought forward | |
| 26 | Party central welcoming girls on vacation with Duke — it’s a mess (4,6) |
| DOGS DINNER – G~S D in DO INNER | |
| 27 | Sailor’s view more pleasing to the eye according to report (8) |
| SEAFARER – SEA (sounds like see) FARER (sounds like fairer) | |
| 28 | Really close to horse tails? (4,2) |
| EVER SO – ~E VERSO (the side of a coin opposite to the obverse; also called the reverse) | |
| Down | |
| 2 | America’s top bishop remains humble (5) |
| ABASH – A~ B ASH | |
| 3 | Describe in detail European river rising during romantic encounter (9) |
| DELINEATE – reversal of E (European) NILE in DATE | |
| 4 | Torture McFly perhaps with number one from Razorlight (6) |
| MARTYR – MARTY (Marty McFly was played by Michael Fox in ‘Back to the Future’, if I remember aright) R~; I would have thought martyring involved a bit more than torturing, but perhaps it’s in a dictionary somewhere | |
| 5 | Old woman argues with adult, drunk — that’s sweet (10,5) |
| GRANULATED SUGAR – GRAN + ARGUES ADULT* | |
| 6 | Farm worker cultivated posh hedges endlessly (8) |
| SHEEPDOG – POSH |
|
| 7 | Separately answer, then catch up (5) |
| APART – A TRAP (catch) reversed | |
| 8 | Essential article covering north-east is revolutionary regarding economic philosophy (9) |
| KEYNESIAN -NE IS reversed in KEY (essential) AN (article) | |
| 14 | Corrupt Greek character enthralled by bare ass (2,3,4) |
| ON THE TAKE – THETA in |
|
| 16 | Former guards live to pass on adherence to rules (9) |
| OBEDIENCE – BE DIE in ONCE | |
| 17 | Schedule repair of adrenal cortex, to start with (8) |
| CALENDAR -ADRENAL C~* | |
| 20 | Tense as joke degree regularly ignored (2,4) |
| ON EDGE – ONE (joke, as in ‘Have you heard the one about the intellectual Australian?’) D |
|
| 22 | Female corresponds about corpse (5) |
| STIFF – reversal of F FITS (corresponds=matches=fits) | |
| 24 | Goes round, but not with despicable people (5) |
| HEELS – |
|
34 minutes. I wasn’t happy with AWKS in GOSHAWKS at 5ac and a quick reference to the dictionaries revealed that AWK doesn’t exist other than as a programming language. Eventually I worked out the parsing:
GOSH (cor), {l}AWKS (blimey) [large, ducks – l, avoids]. ‘Lawks’ and ‘cor’ are both interjections expressing surprise or dismay, as are ‘gosh and ‘blimey’. ‘Lawks’ is derived from ‘Lord’ and is often found in the longer interjections ‘Lawks a mussy’ / ‘Lawks a mercy’ from ‘Lord have mercy’.
I didn’t know the McFly reference at 4dn although I saw the film on its first release. MARTYR can be used figuratively to mean torment or torture e.g. ‘Don’t martyr yourself over it’.
Thanks, jack for parsing (L)AWKS. I was about to complain about the clue in an otherwise enjoyable crossword. GOSHAWKS is very clever.
Good spot!
POI 5a Goshawk. I was unaware that the seabird could be spelt awk, and Wiktionary does not say that on the awk page – obsolete awkward etc is all it says, but the auk page has awk as an alternative, so I have added awk & awks to the Cheating Machine.
28a Ever So. Oh, verso, thank you ulaca.
4d Martyr, perhaps the setter was thinking of “I am a martyr to my rheumatism.”
6d Sheepdog, both ends of hedges are cut off.
I couldn’t find AWK as an alternative to AUK in any of the source dictionaries used by The Times. But as far as the clue is concerned it doesn’t make any difference since the auk however it is spelt is not a duck; it’s a sea bird. And with the exception of the extinct Great Auk it’s not particularly large either.
Right, thanks for that. I missed the “lawks” bit altogether. One or more auks were once considered to be ducks, but no longer. I know nothing about Linnean classification, nor TBH about auks. I’m quite happy with my biff, even if I didn’t know I was biffing at the time : -)
Magic!
Both ‘posh’ and ‘hedges’ need to be endless for the 6d anagram to work.
I took it as hedges without *either* end, so POSH ~EDGE~ but yes, could be either.
Thanks both. I chose Amoeba’s, but only cos I’d have written it that way if I’d seen it in the first place.
5.48, Monday indeed, but a fun one, with ON THE TAKE making me smile.
Thanks both, and Jack for sorting out GOSHAWKS.
I’m still struggling with the parsing of GOSHAWKS but I’ll take Jack’s word for it. 24.07 for me, a nice puzzle for a Monday. Thanks Ulaca. The reference to Marty McFly makes me wonder whether the indiscriminate slashing of public service infrastructure will see parts of the US looking like the dystopian nightmare overseen by the brutish oligarch gambling supremo Biff Tanner. Back to the Future indeed.
From Blind Willie McTell:
Seen the arrow on the door post, sayin’ this land is condemned
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem
Well I travelled through East Texas, where many MARTYRs fell
And I know no one can sing the blues like
Blind Willie McTell
I posted a link to this on my Facebook page on 23rd July last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPVNVy9pq28
OMG that is so terrifyingly prescient, right down to Biff’s hair. When I made that reference to Marty McFly I had not fully remembered how violently awful Hill Valley had become, so thank you John, what an amazing clip. Wow, 40 years ago. Back to the Future.
The writer confirmed he had actually based Biff Tannen on him …
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/23/back-to-the-future-writer-bad-guy-biff-was-based-on-donald-trump
Jeez! I’m guessing he’s a bit nervous now!
34 minutes with the AWKS in GOSHAWKS unaccounted for. MARTYR to mean TORMENT wasn’t made any easier by happening on MCFLY the pop band ( lead singer Danny Jones a Bolton Wanderer) before MARTY. COD to STIFF. Thank you U and setter.
13:31. I thought awk might be an alternative spelling for auk and “I didn’t know an awk was a type of large duck” at 5A. Thanks Jackkt for sorting that out. I liked THANK-YOU and EONS. Thanks Ulaca and setter.
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand;
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.
(The Martyr, Herman Melville)
25 mins pre-breaker. Lawks, I took a while pondering awks. Ta Jack.
Bare ass=onke seemed a bit cheeky.
Ta setter and U
🙂
It didn’t seem remotely Mondayish, and my 7:27 was ruined by a biffed “on the make”.
Yes, the famous George Carmen QC quote came to mind
8:50
Pretty straightforward Mondayer, with a helpfully biffable long answer down the centre.
22d reminded me of the old record label slogan, “If it ain’t Stiff…”
COD GOSHAWKS
LOI TANDEM
Pleasant start to the week. Finished error free in a good time (for me). Particularly gratified to see gosh and lawks almost immediately.
13 mins, had assumed that awks was an alternative spelling for auks, and they might have been a species of duck? Apparently they belong to Alcidae, though, a bird family unto itself.
35 mins with last few trying to work out how MARTYR worked. Never did get it really, so thanks U and Jack for the explanation.
I liked ON THE TAKE;
Ta U and setter.
Just under 15 minutes.
– Didn’t understand how GOSHAWK worked at all
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown AMYL
– Not familiar with the term verso for tails, but EVER SO had to be
– Thought there might be an anagram in 4d, but with only one letter that could conceivably be used as a vowel I eventually rethought and realised which McFly the clue was referring to
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Abash
LOI + COD Goshawks
25 minutes. I admit to not taking the trouble to work out the parsing of GOSHAWKS but it fitted the definition and some of the wordplay so in it went. I just about put in EVEN SO at 28a, but I had some doubts and remembered VERSO before submitting. We’ve had it several times before and it’s in the right places but I’m still not a big fan of ONE for ‘joke’. I did like the TEE RAGE at 8a.
I’m not sure if it counts as ninja turtling, but AMYL Nitrate was a lead character in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. Turns out that was the bright spot in my 17 minute crawl through this “as Monday as you can get” puzzle. I made a mental note to revisit my EVEN SO (really?) at 28a but didn’t: still wish I could claim venso means something. I misread THANK YOU as an anagram, wondering why either get or supressing was an indicator.
To make me seem a bit less of a failure, I did sort out GOSHAWKS just as Jack did, and avoided ON THE MAKE.
My Ninja Turtle was Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.
I’m glad I wasn’t alone in frowning over THANK YOU. I should have bunged it in a bit more quickly: the frowning time took me to 15’30”, a fraction outside my PB. Oh, well … the consolation is that, for the first time this year, I’ve been able to do the crossword while taking tea in my conservatory – pleasantly warm in the spring and autumn sunshine, fridge-like in the winter and hotter than the sun itself come summertime. And the downside: it’s hard to deny that the grass really does need cutting.
6:44. Like some others I just assumed AWK was a variant of auk and that it might well be a large duck. I say ‘assumed’, but the thought was at best half-formed: I just bunged in the obvious answer and moved on.
Rather uncharacteristically I actually paused to check the wordplay at 14dn so was able to correct my biffed ON THE MAKE.
23:34. Needed the crossers to spell KEYNESIAN. I know mess = dogs dinner, but I will never unlearn my inner conviction that the dog’s breakfast is a mess and the dog’s dinner is all dressed up. It’s a brilliant clue for TANDEM
21:45. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out my LOI STEERAGE, which I only fully parsed after submitting. A very welcome gentle start to the week.
16:11. Tricky enough but fair.
COD: GOSHAWKS
17:06 – nice start to the week.
Another in the “not particularly Mondayish” camp.
Got through it, but I think this was a wavelength puzzle by which I mean I didn’t find it all that easy, but others obviously did :).
LOI WHEELS.
14:34
First ever sub-20. Nothing that was too troubling. LOI TANDEM only as I was fixated on the wrong bit being the literal.
Big thumbs up for the ‘The Back to the Future’ reference.
Thanks for the explanation of GOSHAWKS. Thankfully, it was pretty straight forward from the crossers and literal.
As an economist it’s always a pleasure to see a reference to my trade!
Top Monday stuff. Very enjoyable.
10:04 Nice puzzle. Thanks for blogging through the tears U.
Early days yet…
21:40 – One of those that felt easier than the time suggests it was. I would have enjoyed GOSHAWKS if I had had the patience to unpick it. Congrats to anyone that did.
18:57 but…
Thought I was on for 20+ but it all came good at the end, though to my horror, I’d managed make a DOGS EINNER of 26a/20d by typing ON EEDE. Double pink square – how tedious!
Enjoyed the rest, though missed that FOI THANK YOU was a hidden – I had it as an anagram with the unlikely ‘Get’ as the indicator. Took rather longer than I might have landing on GRANULATED. Liked SEAFARER.
Thanks U and setter
I was assisted with 5a by a line from a Steeleye Span song (well it’s actually traditional, King Henry) I sang on a Zoom session last night, “And when he’s slain his gay goshawks it made his heart full sore, for she’s eaten up both flesh and bone, left nothing but feathers bare.” One of those happy coincidences! FOI was AMYL. Like Lindsay0, I immediately thought of Back to the Future and Hill Valley under Biff Tannen when I read the clue for 4d. APOLOGIA and SHEEPDOG were last 2 in. 18:34. Thanks setter and U.
I was very silly with 11ac, thinking that ‘suppressing’ was an anagram indicator (??) and that ‘Get’ at the start was simply there for the reading, and missing the hidden. Nice to see the setter observing what I pedantically want: that ‘arse’ is the UK English word and ‘ass’ the American English one. And that, as here, in UK English an ass is not an arse but a donkey. But it probably won’t be long (indeed many would say that the time has already arrived) before UK English usage allows ‘ass’ in the way I dislike. 38 minutes.
I briefly considered putting in goshauks, knowing that awks is NOT an alternate spelling of auks, but I decided to biff the obvious answer. On the take was a brilliant clue, and I did parse it to make sure my biff was correct. So was T and em, another one where you take a familiar expression and twist it. I didn’t think it was that easy, but I was entertained.
Time: 24:38
I put GOSHAWKS in with confidence, having recently read the wonderful ‘H is for Hawk’.
Delayed in NW by MARTYR and TANDEM, I can’t see how MARTYR = Torture at all.
13’46”, thanks ulaca and setter.
Very enjoyable 23 mins (though MARTYR was a shrug, as I knew nothing about McFly) – ON THE TAKE made me smile. Nice crossword.
Mondayish, 20 minutes, without spending time on the finer points of the ducks and seabirds, or the donkey on the take, the others were parsed when solving. I liked KEYNESIAN and APOLOGIA. Thanks ulaca.
30:50
Saw the GOSH in GOSHAWKS, and moved on without thinking too hard about where the AWKS came from.
TANDEM and MARYR were my last two in.
I was far too speciesist when running through agricultural jobs to see SHEEPDOG until the checkers made it the only option.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
I was quite pleased to get Goshawks early on, even though I was unsure about the large duck. . . Struggled lower down with the Apologia/Obedience pairing, but managed to parse both in the end. It may well be ‘Monday(ish)’, but I’m still at the happy with a finish stage. Invariant
25 minutes with one error – Even So.
Glad to see I’m not the only one.
I thought this was a really enjoyable puzzle, although I didn’t see what was going on with the Awks in Goshawks.
Late to this having encountered plenty of “tee-rage” this morning. Biffed the “awks” in 5ac but DNF after I couldn’t make much sense of 28ac and “even so” came to me and stuck. Otherwise it was fairly Mondayish. Nice call out to Amyl Nitrate earier, who ended her time as a veterinary nurse and had her obit in the Times.
Not really Mondayish, but some lovely clues. Did enjoy and parse GOSH AWKS, assuming lawks was involved, but it was the obvious answer. LOI MARTYR, where McFly, as a barely heard of boy band, had me totally confused let alone what I was supposed to do with it. Liked TAILOR MADE and STEERAGE.
I would’ve finished in 27:18 if it wasn’t for the fact I joined the ‘even so’ club (and, of course, the OWL club). More tuesdayish than mondayish perhaps, not too hard overall.
Enjoyed this, but didn’t parse GOSHAWKS and made a careless error with an Even so, instead of EVER SO.
TANDEM was a terrific clue, as was ON THE TAKE.
Thanks Ulaca and Setter
Monday for some, Tuesday for others, Wednesday morning 3am for me! After an hour remembered the band were named after the film character. At Least I got it out.
35’10”
Good early pace for about the first three furlongs, woefully one-paced thereafter.
The setter scattered sufficient seeds of doubt to make me change legs far too often, but I did manage to cleave cor and blimey in hindsight; was “Lawks Jeeves!” a Woosterism ?
Marty Mcfly seemed feasibly ludicrous as an alliterative moniker for a fictional Scottish whatnot. Having given up Sci-Fi many moons ago, I pictured him as a half-cut DI that a Morse or Geordie might have looked up in a seedy, sixties Soho dive.
Good Monday fun; thank you setter and Ulaca.
20:42 (with a couple of stupid typos but I dont count them)
I had a burst of speed at the start and the end, with a slow patch in the middle. It was getting the GRAN of Granulated sugar that suddenly kicked me off again.
I also had no idea an awk was a duck.
But overall an enjoyable unstressful puzzle to start the week
Thanks setter and blogger
21 minutes, which is good for me, but with a stupid ON THE MAKE. Fun puzzle, just right for a Monday.
This took me longer than it should have, and certainly longer than I would expect on a Monday, but all parsed OK. I knew straight away that 5A would somehow involve the word “lawks”! A very entertaining puzzle.
Lawks a lawdy! We went through a period of assigning the names of birds of prey as the code names for our company acquisitions, and Project Goshawk was a really nice little score! Just dropped in like that.
Enjoyable smooth solve in an average time with no major hold ups. Surprised there aren’t more raised eyebrows though at one = joke. Would have been a bit quicker if I hadn’t indulged myself by listening to “The first time …” in tribute to Roberta Flack. What a vocal performance!
The eyebrow-raising would be on a Roger Moore level, since it happens so often.
I know I’m late but I’m on a different schedule these days. I had a similar experience with a goshawk on the UES of NYC a few years ago. They do occasionally build a nest on the upper crags of apt. buildings. Plenty of smaller birds and rodents to feed on. I woke on a wretched cold pouring wet morning and there was this hunched bedraggled shape perched on the a/c right outside one of our windows. When I came to my senses I thought – you’re awfully big for a pigeon so I lay and watched it for a bit and then it turned its head and I saw what it was. I took some pix but the light and conditions were bad and I didn’t want to use a flash. Made some tea and came back wondering if I really wanted it to nest there. 5 minutes later off it flapped.