Solving time: 23 minutes, which is well within my target half-hour. The answers went in easily enough but some wordplay was missing until I came to write the blog.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
| 1 | Distressed husband inquires about Liberal surrender (10) |
| RELINQUISH | |
| Anagram [distressed] of H (husband) + INQUIRES containing [about] L (Liberal) | |
| 6 | City’s first to abandon support for Bank of Scotland (4) |
| BRAE | |
| BRA{c}E (support) [city’s first to abandon]. In Scottish English, a steep bank or hillside. | |
| 10 | Naval officer celebrated defending west following hostilities (4-3) |
| POST-WAR | |
| PO (naval officer – Petty Officer), then STAR (celebrated) containing [defending] W (west) | |
| 11 | Constituent’s got teeth into first minor role (3,4) |
| BIT PART | |
| BIT (got teeth into), PART (constituent). ‘First’ is a juxtaposition indicator. | |
| 12 | Time to replace female in flawed investigative role (9) |
| DETECTIVE | |
| DE{f}ECTIVE (flawed) becomes DETECTIVE when T (time) replaces f (female) | |
| 13 | Lout rounds on upper-class Brit (5) |
| YAHOO | |
| YAH (upper-class Brit), OO (rounds). Yah = yes when used in representations of British upper-class speech, e.g. “We can go right now, ok, yah”. From that, in British slang ‘yah’ can mean an upper-class person. | |
| 14 | Man of the cloth shot at table, I hear (5) |
| CANON | |
| Aural wordplay (I hear): “cannon” (shot at a billiards or snooker table). A cannon is a stroke in which the cue ball strikes two balls successively. | |
| 15 | Hangers-on left without whiskey today (9) |
| ENTOURAGE | |
| {w}ENT (left) [without whiskey] OUR AGE (today) | |
| 17 | Election official hosting party briefly — she’s off to foreign parts (9) |
| TRAVELLER | |
| TELLER (election official) containing [hosting] RAV{e} (party) [briefly] | |
| 20 | Ignore fool on vacation abroad (5) |
| FLOUT | |
| F{oo}L [on vacation], OUT (abroad) | |
| 21 | Earlier I fled, carrying weapon (5) |
| RIFLE | |
| Hidden in [carrying] {earli}R I FLE{d} | |
| 23 | Pull Danes out completely (3,4,2) |
| ALL ENDS UP | |
| Anagram [out] of PULL DANES. I checked it’s in Collins. | |
| 25 | Accra poorly placed as capital (7) |
| CARACAS | |
| Anagram [poorly placed] of ACCRA, then AS | |
| 26 | A right lot of wets reportedly in charge (7) |
| ARRAIGN | |
| A, R (right), then aural wordplay [reportedly] “rain{s}” (wets) [lot of…] / RAIGN. Tricky goings on here which took me ages to spot. The surface reading refers to ‘Wets’ as Conservative politicians with liberal tendencies. I can’t remember now which PM labelled them this, but it may have been Mrs T. | |
| 27 | Goes back to well (4) |
| SEEP | |
| PEES (goes) reversed [back]. A liquid may well / seep. | |
| 28 | Final part of scene omitted from terribly sentimental episode (10) |
| INSTALMENT | |
| Anagram [terribly] of SENTIM{e}NTAL [final part of scene omitted] | |
| Down |
|
| 1 | Express first to run article on slump being over (5) |
| RAPID | |
| R{un} [first to…], A (article), then DIP (slump) reversed [being over] | |
| 2 | Reconstruction of US–Italian boat that sank (9) |
| LUSITANIA | |
| Anagram [reconstruction of] US ITALIAN. The sinking of the passenger liner by a German U-boat in 1915 played a part in gathering support for the USA to enter the war, which happened in 1917. |
|
| 3 | Press here for further information? (4,10) |
| NEWS CONFERENCE | |
| Cryptic definition | |
| 4 | State of university weightlifter announced (7) |
| UKRAINE | |
| U (university), then aural wordplay [announced] KRAINE / “crane” (weightlifter) | |
| 5 | Hidden meaning of message from Times staffer? (7) |
| SUBTEXT | |
| SUB (Times staffer – subeditor), TEXT (message) | |
| 7 | Contact that woman about checking account (5) |
| REACH | |
| HER (that woman) reversed [about] containing [checking] AC (account) | |
| 8 | Sociable former leftie welcoming vicar from down under (9) |
| EXTROVERT | |
| EX (former), TROT (leftie) containing [welcoming] REV (vicar) reversed [from down under] | |
| 9 | This won’t end well, as undertaker might put it (3,4,7) |
| IT’S YOUR FUNERAL | |
| A cryptic hint supports the clue to the well-known saying | |
| 14 | Falls that may affect your vision? (9) |
| CATARACTS | |
| Cryptic. Only last Wednesday in the QC we had Water feature that blocks one’s view? (8) | |
| 16 | Biography of a setter? It’s not much fun (1,4,4) |
| A DOG’S LIFE | |
| A cryptic hint leads us to another well-known saying | |
| 18 | Raised current trouble with offspring’s affair (7) |
| LIAISON | |
| I (current) + AIL (trouble) reversed [raised], SON (offspring) | |
| 19 | It’s dependent on soldier getting hold of £1 (7) |
| RELIANT | |
| RE (on) + ANT (soldier) containing [getting hold of] L I (£1). L as in £sd – pounds shillings and pence. | |
| 22 | Enemy capturing retreating king’s army (5) |
| FORCE | |
| FOE (enemy) containing [capturing] CR (king – Charles Rex) reversed [retreating] | |
| 24 | Wine producer’s drink? There’s nothing in it (5) |
| PINOT | |
| PINT (drink) containing O (there’s nothing in it) | |
8:38, pretty slick solve though I had to think through the alphabet to see ENTOURAGE.
Most went in reasonably smoothly until I hit the NE corner. I ground to a halt and I took ages to finish. NHO SUBTEXT being hidden meaning. NHO Yah as upper-class Brit. BRAE was clever definition as I knew brae as a Scottish word. Took a long while to see ENTOURAGE as hangers-on as I expected an ending in S and this flowed on to getting EXTROVERT.
Thanks Jack
Put in yobbo as a biff before seeing YAHOO. NHO of yah. Didn’t know a teller was also an election official but it made sense. Wets confused me in ARRAIGN. For SEEP I thought of eyes welling up. Liked IT’S YOUR FUNERAL which took me a while to see until I got FLOUT. Missing the apostrophe in ‘it’s’ Jack in the answer. CATARACT was a gimme as you said, we had it last week in the quickie. Put in A Dog’s Tale for some reason instead of Life. COD to ALL ENDS UP just because it stumped me for some time.
More like this, please.
Thanks Jack and setter.
Apostrophe added. Thanks. This is an interesting point, Q, as the answers are created automatically using a script and taken directly from the answers as they appear in the completed grid online. That is to say they will never contain apostrophes unless the blogger chooses to insert them manually.
I can’t speak for other bloggers, but until today I have never thought about this, however when preparing the blog it struck me that A DOGS LIFE needed an apostrophe so I inserted one manually, but I didn’t notice the same applied to ITS YOUR FUNERAL and I let that one go. Maybe the inconsistency made it more noticeable and that’s why you spotted it. I find it hard to believe in all my years of blogging I can’t recall the subject coming up before!
That is interesting. It means you also have to add hyphens — as in POST-WAR.
I don’t think it was the result of a comparison to A DOG’S LIFE, I just tend to pick up on these things, especially its/it’s.
No, the hyphens insert themselves, maybe by taking the enumeration in the clue into account. Perhaps one of the techies who worked on the script can explain more.
On reflection I don’t know how common it is for IT’S or apostrophes in general to appear in answers, and it’s not something easy to search in the archive without bringing up loads of irrelevant hits. Maybe not very often. An obvious example might be ONE’S, but as we know almost without exception this is replaced by YOUR in phrases and sayings. I’d surmise it’s very rare to have two examples in the same grid, as today.
Hyphens appear in the grid. I never add apostrophes to answers, because that’s not how they appear in the grid, just as I never change the answers to lower-case!
Interesting. I only solve on paper and have never seen what the crossword looked like via the club. Just looked and I see it has the hyphens as well as the word breaks. Pity the print setting from there doesn’t include them. I’ll have to continue putting in my own dots and hyphens. Thanks K
Thanks to K for reminding me that hyphens can appear in the grid online, however this is only if you access via the Crossword Club. You don’t get them in the online newspaper, and whatever the means of access you don’t get them if you print.
I always use the online newspaper when I apply the script but even though I never see hyphens on the screen they are picked up for the answer in the blog.
Thanks. Interesting that the hyphens are somehow embedded in the code even when they don’t appear in the grid. The inconsistent treatment is curious.
I think the coding was always there but the appearance onscreen in the Club was an amendment tacked on as an afterthought having gone live and wasn’t followed through to all platforms. I’d have sworn there were emboldened word-dividers online at one stage around that time but I can’t see them in any version now.
I seem to remember that The Spectator barred puzzle use to say “two words; one apostrophe”. I don’t get the magazine anymore, so don’t know if they still have that convention.
Hard to believe that I’ve worked these puzzles for so many years and yet rhis is my first encounter with YAH as an upper-crust Brit, but that’s my distinct impression.
That gave me IT’S YOUR FUNERAL… which gave me a laugh.
I don’t think that anybody on this side of the pond has encountered YAH as a noun either.
It’s a bit dated now but YAH was reasonably common in the days when Sloane Rangers were a thing. OED has citations from the Times, Guardian and Independent but the most recent is 2001.
Getting towards PB territory at 14.48, so I’d have to say this was on the easier side even though it took me a while to build momentum. L2I were UKRAINE (clearly I wasn’t concentrating enough) and SEEP (pees backward, ha ha). Liked IT’S YOUR FUNERAL and A DOG’S LIFE, those poor old setters. Thanks Jack, same probably goes for bloggers…
From Mr Tambourine Man:
Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted REACH of crazy sorrow
Yes to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Stunning poetry.
I was on for a PB but it took me 5 minutes to see SEEP so it wasn’t to be.
A lot of insert first, parse later for this which helped with the good time. Rather apt that RAPID was first in. Either it was very biffable or I was just lucky with guessing synonyms. It nearly back fired when seeing lout, Brit and rounds made me enter an incorrect YOBBO but a rethink soon had it corrected.
FOI: RAPID
LOI: SEEP
COD: NEWS CONFERENCE
Thanks blogger and setter
I started with YOBBO, too, but R_A_B looked too unlikely.
It was my first thought as well.
Biffed POST-WAR,, BIT PART, ENTOURAGE, parsed post-submission; biffed RELINQUISH, didn’t parse it. Biffed YAHOO, finally sort of vaguely recalled YAH. DNK TELLER, ALL ENDS UP, didn’t understand the table reference. All in all, a difficult, unsatisfying solve.
10:43. I spent a disproportionate amount of time on my last 3 – SUBTEXT, BRAE and SEEP. I really wasn’t confident on the latter, only being able to think of well as in “well up with tears” and thinking that I couldn’t replace well with seep there. I think that was just a bad example to think of as looking up “well” post solve I see it’s pretty much synonymous with seep.
Interesting, my Chambers is a little old, but it doesn’t equate seek with well. Various sources suggest seepage requires an element of percolation, movement of liquid through something. In contrast, well suggests that the liquid is rising, quite a different idea I think.
That was as per my thinking.
5.04, a PB, which is nice after yesterday.
Thanks both.
15 minutes. Not many problems though had fingers crossed for SEEP for the ‘well’ def. Didn’t know the YAH colloquialism but it wasn’t hard to work out once the crossing H was in place. Favourite was IT’S YOUR FUNERAL.
Ive seen seep referring to a desert water source.
Loved this gentle outing, and the cheerful blog.
34 mins, held up a bit on LOI SEEP, otherwise pretty straightforward. Some nice meaty anagrams along the way.
I liked IT’S YOUR FUNERAL and, of course, PINOT.
Thanks Jack and setter.
21 minutes with LOI SEEP. COD to IT’S YOUR FUNERAL. A DOG’S LIFE and ENTOURAGE were good too. Decent enough puzzle.Thank you Jack and setter.
‘A lot of wets’ eh? Well, if you say so.
I did rather enjoy this one nonetheless, where a couple of gimmes (such as the chestnutty dog’s life) provided some fill to get me started.
I think I liked YAH-OO best, while the RIFLE clue reminded me of that poor chap who once set for The Guardian, Fidelio. 32 minutes today.
9.05
Once again I was looking for pangrammatic answers after my FOI RELINQUISH, but no such luck.
Seeing DETECTIVE and CANON together reminded me of Frank, but he was Cannon.
Nice choice of pronoun for 17ac.
LOI and COD UKRAINE
John. Sorry, but you posted something in a foreign language that I didn’t know the meaning of or its significance so I have removed it.
6:05. All very straightforward.
14:06*
I’m neither a typist nor spellchecker but I sure do like the colour pink. 2 mishaps today, no excuses, on to tomorrow.
Thanks to both.
DNF. didn’t get the state, bunged in UPRAISE as I couldn’t think of anything else that fitted. otherwise lovely puzzle.
Me too! (and Ukraine should have been front of mind!)
Enjoyable but rather too easy again. I hope we get a stiffer test in the next few days. Held up at the end by ‘seep’ for a few mins. Not too happy about ‘wets’ being synonymous with ‘rain’ though, but maybe I am missing something.
28.47 of which about a third was spent preparing porridge so not too tricky. BRAE was a wrongly parsed fluke, I assumed it was that old chestnut support = BRA and removing one letter from EC (City). Another example of the setter taking much more care than the solver. Thanks both.
Another sub 30 minute solve for me so, by definition, an easy one.
I too have NHO YAH as meaning a toff but had to be.
SEEP left me feeling somewhat dissatisfied but now enlightened by the discussion above.
BRAE went straight in thanks to Burns’ ‘bonnie banks and braes’.
Thanks to a kindly setter and jackkt.
10:23. Like occasional above I didn’t car for rain = “lot of wets”. I’m another who had NHO YAH for Upper Class, so hesitated over YAHOO. LOI UKRAINE held me up a bit too. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
23.50. Was going like a train for the first 10 minutes and then stuck for ages on seep, entourage and Ukraine.
26:05
No dramas – nice puzzle.
Thanks, jack.
Another sub 20′ finished before bed last night. Would have been a PB had I not had to enter trawl mode for the NE and SW corners. SEEP eventually elicited a smile but BRAE came a little harder (I’m Scottish but always just think of BRAE as a steep hill rather than a bank…), parsed initially as Inverleith and then saw the alternative parsing. Thanks Jack and setter
Just occurred to me: Why does Burns say ‘Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon’ if a brae is a bank?
Maybe the bank in that context is a river bank?
Just under 20 minutes.
– Like Inverleith above, once I thought of BRAE I tried to parse it using support=bra, but eventually I realised that brace was the support we needed
– Again like others, put YOBBO for 13a before REACH set me straight. Yah=upper-class Brit was new to me
– Didn’t see what ‘at table’ was doing in CANON so thanks for the explanation
– Failed to parse ENTOURAGE beyond the ‘ent’ bit, and for some reason thought there might be a French term ‘ou rage’ meaning fashionable, i.e. current, i.e. today… it’s a good job we don’t have to show our working
Thanks Jack and setter.
FOI A dog’s life
LOI Brae
COD News conference
24 mins. Thats more like it. Easyish but plenty of fun.
Liked the use of She for TRAVELLER. Why She, is it meaningful? No, just why not. Good.
Thanks to both
Quick today, and straightforward except YAHoo went in with a shrug and also a mer at seep = well.
If my blood seeps out, that is one thing; if it starts to well, that’s a whole different ballgame…
7:24 perilously close to PB territory (if only I could remember what my PB is).
I can only say it’s obviously a lot less than mine
13.48, with the last one SEEP taking a while with a trawl through then alphabet. “Goes” and “well” have a lot of possibilities between them, but I refrain from claiming that it’s impossible to pee backwards, and urge readers not to try to prove me wrong.
32:48 Am I the only person on the planet that took over 30 minutes?
No, I took 34 but I’m always slow, and do I care ? No. My argument is that I get get better value than the speedsters! 🙂
When Mrs T was adamant about her policies she used to call (privately, I imagine) the Conservatives who opposed these, no doubt as Jack says those with liberal tendencies, as ‘wets’. So the surface required this rather stretched usage of rains = most of wets, which in itself I didn’t like. And I hope we’re not getting into a lot of clues that repeat goes = pees, as we have done before. ENTOURAGE entered without understanding but it was my last one in and I couldn’t check it until afterwards, which took a minute or two. 29 minutes.
And Mrs Thatcher once commented admiringly that Conrad Black’s far-right positions made her feel in comparison “positively wet”.
DNF failed on the SEEP and ENTOURAGE, but I have other things to be getting on with, so pressed reveal. That led to a GROAN/GROWN.
I see the later of version of yesterday’s 26ac is now unambiguous, so I’m counting yesterday’s as a successful solve.
Thanks Jack and Setter. I liked ITS YOUR FUNERAL
About 20 minutes for this. I was tempted too by YOBBO but REACH killed that off. My LOI was SEEP, I seldom remember the lavatorial meaning of “go”, which crops up often enough.
I enjoyed this puzzle but DNF. 27a Seep did not occur to me and I decided I couldn’t be bothered to cheat and simply gave up. Pity really, I would have enjoyed that in a schoolboyish way.
6a Brae took a while as well.
13a Yahoo, I paused for a moment about yah=upper class, but decided it was fine.
Thanks Jack & setter.
23.28
Inexplicably couldnt see RELINQUISH and UKRAINE for yonks. SEEP and BRAE more understandably delayed me at the end.
Wasn’t mad about SEEP, though saw it quite quickly. Beaten by ARRAIGN, which though I had all the crossers wasted 15 mins of my life before I threw in the towel.
14:40 – speedy in spite of the NHO yah. SEEP was LOI; the cryptic device is overdue for retirement now, though I still take an age to see it each time.
18:27
NHO YAH for upper-class Brit, though have heard plenty of ‘OK, yah’ conversations. Perhaps it’s only upper-class Brits that have referred to themselves as ‘YAHs’? Didn’t work for me though.
‘lot of wets’ for ‘rain’ worked OK I thought.
Thanks Jack and setter
12;28 but with a typo at RIFLR/CONFERRNCE. Drat and double drat! Thanks setter and Jack.
Rattled through this until I got held up for ages on 27a as so many words would fit and none of them immediately summoned up either ‘goes’ or ‘well’ Felt a bit that the setter was taking the p***.
Whenever nothing else works for “go” it must be lavatorial.
35.13 WOE. ARREIGN was making me queasy. The pink square explained why. SEEP took five minutes at the end. I’ve managed to misspell, typo or simply fail at both QCs, both Concises and both 15x15s this week. A new record! Thanks Jack.
This was a bit of a biff-fest, unusually for me. Almost all the left side went in very quickly, though the right-hand was much harder to break into, apart from BRAE, FOI. Didn’t really understand YAHOO, or parse the latter part of ENTOURAGE and made problems for myself by trying to make 26a all one word, since ‘pull Danes’ doesn’t arrange itself into one word! I think ‘a lot of wet’ equates to rain, but not the plural. UKRAINE, unaccountably, was LOI.
25 minutes. Enjoyed this puzzle. CODs Brae and Entourage.
I thought Flout meant disobey rather than ignore, but doubtless I’m incorrect.
Another (after yesterday’s) fast time for me at 16:41. YAH was odd (as others have said), SEEP made me giggle because I’m a child, FUNERAL made me smile. Very much enjoyed!
Thanks, J and setter.
Must remember the lavatorial meaning of “go”.
SEEP and BRAE were the only real hold ups today, SNITCH tells me I was around par for the difficulty.
11:48
A fairly swift solve until I got to my last three, and it took me over ten minutes to get ENTOURAGE, SEEP and finally UKRAINE. I eventually staggered across the line in 31.08, cross with myself for not seeing UKRAINE sooner. It’s not as if it isn’t at the forefront of my mind at present.
This went well until SEEP, my LOI. First, I couldn’t see it with the unhelpful checkers, and I think of seeping as a liquid going down and welling as a liquid coming up. So does Chambers. So I kept looking for an alternative but could not find one so shrugged and was pleased I was all green.
Had a go at this today and managed to do about half, so with a few guesses I continued and got to within 4 clues of completing, so with more guesses and using the check word tab I got there in the end. Cheating a bit I know, but very satisfying for a QC only guy!
32:39 for the solve. About four mins to alphatrawl to SEEP at the end and before that held up by BRAE, REACH, YAHOO in the NE. Initial first pass of clues took 15mins and wasn’t wonderful but did get the four Downs on the left (RAPID, CATARACTS, LUSITANIA, FORCE) which then set me up to gradually work my way across.