DNF-ish. I streamed my sad solve here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2405158485.
The fun began at about the twenty-four minute mark, when I had one clue left. I had the correct answer in about a minute later, but with no way to verify it, I just piddled around until vinyl told me I’d had it right.
| Across | |
| 1 | One replacing heads in hierarchy drastically scaled back (5) |
| HYDRA – hidden in HIERARCHY DRASTICALLY | |
| 4 | Hurts hip making contact with panels (8) |
| INJURIES – IN + JURIES | |
| 8 | Song opener recalled in study, lavatory and shed (3,3,4,4) |
| DYE KEN JOHN PEEL – KEY reversed in DEN + JOHN + PEEL | |
| 10 | Did transport lobby finish off road? (9) |
| ENTRANCED – ENTRANCE + {roa}D | |
| 11 | Work in kitchen? / Say no more! (3,2) |
| DRY UP – double definition
I didn’t know the second one, but it reminded me of how I told my dad to “take a walk” the other day, and he thought I was telling him off! |
|
| 12 | In disagreement when accepting Fleet Street offer? (2,4) |
| AT ODDS – AS around TODD
Sweeney TODD, the demon barber of Fleet Street. (‘Offer’ as in ‘one who offs’.) What a great clue! |
|
| 14 | Son in sports car calls for middle gear (1-7) |
| G-STRINGS – S in GT + RINGS | |
| 17 | Special preserve of former prince in time married (5,3) |
| EXTRA JAM – EX + RAJA in T+M | |
| 18 | What can be missed, contained briefly here? One’s light? (6) |
| BUSHEL – cryptic definition
This is the one that did me in, although to my credit I could see that BUSHEL was the only word that fit. It’s a reference to a biblical saying, to “hide one’s light under a bushel”, meaning to not speak immodestly about one’s talents and abilities. |
|
| 20 | Returned case carrying yellow flag (5) |
| DROOP – POD around OR (yellow), reversed | |
| 22 | Levels of nonsense drop off, alas, only at the end (9) |
| BULLDOZES – BULL + DOZE + {ala}S | |
| 24 | Drew pair of spectacles on bird — a crow (4-1-6-3) |
| COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO – DOODLED + OO after COCK + A | |
| 25 | Baskerville maybe kind and brave (4-4) |
| TYPE-FACE – TYPE + FACE | |
| 26 | I don’t like that about remote place (5) |
| YUKON – YUK + ON | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Obscure end eg Dina had? (6,6) |
| HIDDEN AGENDA – anagram of END EG DINA HAD
That dastardly Dina and her hidden agendas. |
|
| 2 | Was hanging out drawers at first on damp clothes line (5) |
| DWELT – D{rawers} + WET (damp) around (clothes) L | |
| 3 | Unexpectedly kiss lad near a girl (9) |
| ALEXANDRA – anagram of X (kiss) LAD NEAR A | |
| 4 | Hype up travelling by plane involving great speed (6) |
| INJECT – IN JET around C (great speed)
(The speed of light.) |
|
| 5 | Judge I deceived lives close to devout religious campaigner (8) |
| JIHADIST – J + I + HAD + IS + {devou}T | |
| 6 | Blame papers: Express, particularly? (5) |
| RAPID – RAP ID | |
| 7 | All the day before Rosemary extremely on edge (5,4) |
| EVERY INCH – EVE + R{osemar}Y + INCH | |
| 9 | One used to stir from one’s laptop so rarely (7,5) |
| APOSTLE SPOON – anagram of ONE’S LAPTOP SO
I thought this might be something interesting, but it’s a spoon. |
|
| 13 | Alternatively, however, perform unknown numbers in straight line? (9) |
| ORTHODOXY – OR + THO + DO + X Y (unknown numbers) | |
| 15 | Men rising presumably no longer hold back in dance (9) |
| ROUNDELAY – OR (men) reversed + UNDELAY (presumably no longer hold back) | |
| 16 | Eccentric chap primarily inducing anxious state (8) |
| CAMBODIA – CAM (eccentric) + BOD + first letters of INDUCING ANXIOUS | |
| 19 | Answer nothing in court cases around recess (6) |
| ALCOVE – A + LOVE (nothing in court) around (cases) C (around) | |
| 21 | After games, lay out English tea (5) |
| PEKOE – PE + KO (lay out) + E | |
| 23 | Priest having a party in the middle of blitzkrieg (5) |
| ZADOK – A DO in {blit}ZK{rieg} | |
Didn’t know the biblical saying in 18a. I took it as BUS as in ‘what can be missed’ and HEL(d), contained shortly, and the literal as ‘here?, one’s light’.
Thought this was a fine crossword, even though I missed BULLDOZES, ROUNDELAY and DWELT. Liked the two long acrosses when they finally came. ZADOK the priest gets a regular workout at home when I feel in the mood for it. PEKOE held out for a while as I thought it was spelled ‘pecoe’. Liked ORTHODOXY. COD to G-STRINGS.
Thanks Jeremy.
Around 80 minutes of hard slow going but in retrospect it seems easier after getting the parsing. Took a while to get 8ac. KEN JOHN PEEL part but first word was difficult. Problem was I got a bit stuck on DWELT. I had the D and WET but couldn’t see the word. Looked at BUSHEL a number of times before the light under the bushel came to me. Got stuck for a while with DESSERT instead of APOSTLE until I I finally confirmed the crossers.
Thanks Jeremy
I also found this tough and needed a few minutes over an hour to complete it, but having said that, I enjoyed it a lot for the inventiveness in many of the clues.
One of the main hold-ups was self-inflicted because, having worked out EVERY at 7dn from wordplay, I got it into my head that the enumeration was (9) rather that (5,4) and the only fit I could find was EVERYONES which of course I couldn’t parse.
BUSHEL was my LOI, initially biffed from the biblical saying but later I spotted the BUS HEL{d} wordplay as mentioned by Q above.
I remember a discussion about EXTRA JAM here some years ago in the course of which I researched the jars in my local TESCO and found that many of the jams were labelled as such. I also note to my distress that went so far as to consult EU regulations as applied to the use of the term!
DRY (possibly with UP) is theatre jargon for forgetting one’s lines, so no problem there, and I knew ZADOK from Handel’s magnificent coronation anthem Zadok The Priest .
A rare COD from me: AT ODDS.
A bit over an hour; tough sledding the whole way. NHO EXTRA JAM, APOSTLE SPOON, dnk ROUNDELAY was also a dance. DNK the barber was on Fleet Street, and had no idea what TODD was doing in the clue. Biffed COCK-A-etc. from ‘spectacles’ and enumeration, never parsed it. Got JOHN PEEL from the H and enumeration. No pink squares, but a poor showing.
16.40, pleased to be all green having trusted my construction for the song. All very fair. Never heard of ‘extra jam’ and slightly surprised to find it in Chambers.
I know the Biblical phrase, but didn’t see the wordplay – Quadrophenia’s right. “Bus” for “what can be missed” is on the wrong side of cute for me though.
Thanks both.
46 minutes. One of those puzzles in which looking for the pangram hindered rather than helped. I was left with _U_H_L at 18a as my last in and with only the Q missing for a pangram I spent several minutes trying to think of a word beginning with QU before I saw what the clue was getting at.
A satisfying Friday puzzle to solve. I liked the song references to D’YE KEN JOHN PEEL and ZADOK The Priest and the hound that wasn’t in TYPE-FACE.
7:27, on the wavelength for a Friday. A couple of biffs. Had to take the song on trust from the wordplay. No quibbles really, thought this was a good workout.
19:19. A stiff test of every weapon in the solver’s armoury. COD to AT ODDS.
Bravo setter and thanks Jeremy.
34 minutes. Thank you Q for not hiding your light under a. bushel when mine wasn’t shining. Is EXTRA JAM a thing? I’m probably better not knowing. COD to ORTHODOXY. Thank you Jeremy and setter.
According The Jam and Similar Products (England) Regulations 2003, “extra jam” is defined as:
A mixture, brought to a suitable gelled consistency, of—
sugars, the unconcentrated pulp of one or more kinds of fruit and water, or
in the case of rosehip extra jam or seedless raspberry, blackberry, blackcurrant, blueberry or redcurrant extra jam, of sugars, the unconcentrated purée of that fruit, or a mixture of the unconcentrated pulp and purée of that fruit, and water,
but the following fruits may not be used mixed with others in the manufacture of extra jam: apples, pears, clingstone plums, melons, watermelons, grapes, pumpkins, cucumbers and tomatoes.
The quantity of fruit pulp or fruit purée or both used for every 1000 grams of the finished product being not less than—
(i)
350 grams in the case of redcurrants, blackcurrants, rosehips, rowanberries, sea buckthorns or quinces,
(ii)
250 grams in the case of ginger,
(iii)
230 grams in the case of cashew apples,
(iv)
80 grams in the case of passion fruit,
(v)
450 grams in the case of any other fruit.
So, “extra jam” is just jam…
I have to admit I might have stared at this clue forever and not solved it, having never heard of “extra jam”, despite eating a lot of jam as a child; perhaps we were too poor for “extra jam”. I’m still struggling to believe that there is such a thing and, if there is, somebody should have thought of a better name for it.
The truth is I didn’t really try to solve this crossword, just went through the clues once and filled in the obvious ones, but I could see that it wasn’t my cup of pekoe and found something else to do.
Last in ROUNDELAY, COD to BUSHEL.
41:36
I am glad I persevered with this puzzle.
An APOSTLE SPOON is not just a spoon, but a piece of silverware with an image or moulding of an apostle or saint on its handle.
The long song title made me think of the schoolboy rude version, where one puts as many (mildly) rude words in as known when eleven years old. (The last line is ‘and he’s still on the horn in the morning’).
EXTRA JAM (nho) is a nonsensical word construction, fruit does not equal jam.
i love listening to ZADOK the Priest, having also sung it in choirs, and can still come in at the right moment.
32′, thanks jeremy and setter.
Well yes, APOSTLE means apostle, SPOON means spoon. I just meant, if I told you there was something called a “buffalo spoon” and it was a spoon with a picture of a buffalo on it, you might think it wasn’t worth adding the nomenclature…
Apostle spoons are collected and are collectable…..
“Apostle spoons” is in Chambers, with a mention that they were often a baptismal gift.
Buffalo (and bison) spoons aren’t in Chambers.
Threw in the towel on the hour with only a third filled in. Too tough for me.
21:48. That was a struggle. D’YE KEN JOHN PEEL took a while to see even when I had the JOHN. Some great clues, though. I loved the “Fleet Street offer” and BULLDOZES in particular. Thank you Jeremy and setter.
Got off to the worst start by putting a wrong answer in within seconds. Got my mythology mixed up and put in SYLLA after seeing it backwards in drasticALLY Scaled. It wasn’t until I worked my way back up that I realised that it was both not spelt correctly or matched the definition.
It is an absolute miracle I got all green on that. Had to work my way in from the south when I got very little on the first pass.
A lot of NHOs: APOSTLE SPOON, EXTRA JAM,…JOHN PEEL (LOI and far from confident), PEKOE (I really need to brush up on my food and drink)
BUSHEL went in only because it was the only word I could think of that fitted. ENTRANCED I didn’t understand but it had a lobby in it and was in the quick cryptic recently. CAMBODIA I had only parsed the IA. A few more went in that I wasn’t 100% on.
G-STRINGS was FOI, not sure what that says about my mind.
Slow, even by the slow solvers standards but quite pleased to get a finish on that. Although the slow time helped as I went back and fully parsed my answers and corrected a genuine misspelling of ROUNDELAY before submitting.
Pleased to see others had trouble with this.
COD: BULLDOZES
The unknown song defeated me. It looks slightly more likely if it is in fact D’YE KEN as Bletchleyreject points out. How does KEY/opener work please?
A key opens a door!
Of course. Thank you. Now I need to look up what the damned song is?
It’s actually a great tune, a folk song from Cumbria, though apparently not Anon, I’ve discovered, as it was written by John Woodcock Graves, in celebration of his friend John Peel, who was an English fox hunter. You’ll almost certainly have heard the tune.
From Cumberland.
Things that held me up:
Thinking the anagram at 1d was HIDDEN DANGER (it nearly is!)
As a consequence entering a desperate DE NADA instead of AT ODDS
Failing to see that HYDRA was lurking in the clue and trying all sorts of gymnastics to justify it
Not connecting INCH with edge
Sherlocking Baskerville fruitlessly
And finally: kyboshing my 27.11 with a rather esoteric ZADIK (which turns out not to be a variant spelling) even though I’d twigged that a party is A DO
Ah well. Maybe this week’s Listener will be doable, which last week’s wasn’t.
Tough but alot more enjoyable than some this week. 57 mins of proper crossword fun.
Same holdups as everyone else. Knew the BUSHEL saying but did not fully parse.
Don’t like D’YE as a single 3 letter word. I always object to that but this example grates more than usually.
Excellent puzzle, thanks both
It has always seemed a bit arbitrary that hyphens are given in the numeration but not apostrophes in the Times. Of course, I understand that it might just be too easy otherwise, since apostrophes usually only separate one or two letters. (Or zero!)
Definitely on the wavelength for this one! HYDRA went straight in. Made good progress down the LHS. Slowed a bit with the SE until G-STRINGS, YUKON and COCK A DOODLE DOO led to ROUNDELAY. Then was held up at the end by BUSHEL and the FACE part of 25a, which was LOI. Remembered hiding light under said BUSHEL then saw the parsing. 23:43. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
Started off hard, briefly, then lots went fast in the upper section, then I “dried up” somewhat.
18a Bushel. I missed the BUS and the HELd. DNK it was a biblical expression, so thanks for that Jeremy.
Found 17a Extra Jam in Cheating Machine, to my surprise as I was inclined to biff it at that point, then dimly remembered a discussion about it in this blog. Then parsed it.
Cheated for 24a Cock-a-doo…. Never parsed.
23d Zadok recognised from the title of the anthem, DNK the biblical original.
Thanks Jeremy & setter.
A set of APOSTLE SPOONS is an important feature of the story in the 3rd part of the Raj Quartet (The Towers of Silence) both in the book and in the tv adaptation Jewel in the Crown. with Peggy Ashcroft.
That Mildred Layton was so cruel to poor Barbie.
Ah yes! One of my favourite series. Peggy gets treated terribly!
Tough but fair. Completed in something over 40 minutes at the Gare du Nord. Zadok will forever remind me of Clifton College chapel in the mid -70s and the irascible but brilliant music head of music David Pettit. Got slightly sidetracked thinking there might be such a thing as SPATOLE SPOONS. SPATOLE of course meaning shaped like a spatula. Many thanks
40:55, with BUSHEL my LOI. The musical Godspell contains the following appalling rhyme for bushel:
You are the light of the world
But if that light is under a bushel,
It’s lost something kind of crucial.
Thanks Jeremy and setter
31.49 with the last 10 trying to work out g strings, roundelay, every inch and apostle spoon. G strings gave me the s in the spoon which I was sure began sp until then the last two fell into place. Forgot to add bushel which was my LOI.
Enjoyed this puzzle a lot and pleasantly surprised we weren’t submitted to a 216 snitcher.
13:34. Nicely tricky one. NHO the APOSTLE SPOON.
I remember the previous discussion about EXTRA JAM. I was aware of the concept from the French equivalent (‘confiture extra’), which is much more prominently displayed on the jars. I suspect that the nonsensical construction noted by RobR above comes from the fact that it is a straight translation from French.
This site is very glitchy today. I keep getting a 500 server error message. Is this just me?
Thanks for that re jam
I started with an error then there was a delay loading this blog, so not just you.
No, you’re not alone. I mentioned it to johniterred late last night as it may help with feedback to wordpress.
30 mins. Felt in the flow with this until the end, when I discovered I’d misread the anagram and typed SPATULA SPOON. That mostly sorted things out, with BUSHEL my LOI
Hard. Had forgotten EXTRA JAM since last appearance, but discussions above reminded me. Previously-NHO John Peel remembered from last time it was NHO. BUSHEL guessed, didn’t see the obvious BUS HEL{d} parsing. Who is Dina? No idea, so another guess, but it couldn’t be anything else. Otherwise forgot to parse inject/hype up and the alcove answer, but very much enjoyed it.
COD to AT ODDS, for the demon barber artfully hidden.
I got nowhere on the first pass, but then a few pennies began to drop and I finished, rather to my surprise, in 39 minutes. A fairly strenuous Friday exercise, but the effort was worth it, with some clever clues.
FOI – AT ODDS
LOI – EXTRA JAM
COD – AT ODDS
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors.
12:37
I absolutely loved this. More like this please ed.
Like others BUSHEL was LOI from definition, and the feeling I was missing some clever wordplay.
I’m intrigued as to whether Jeremy met John Peel, Zadok the Priest, Sweeney Todd, a Jihadist or an apostle with a spoon.
Enjoyed this one, 21 minutes, ending with CAMBODIA as I was racking brains for a word meaning anxious state. Which was daft, as I needed the A from anxious. I liked BUSHEL and ‘middle gear.’.
Not so tough a Friday as some recently, but still fairly hard, 50 minutes. For the meaning of DRY UP I had the probably 50s-twee sense of ‘shut up’. Dry up for shut up is not really used nowadays I think. Jack’s theatrical sense is much more like it. I liked the Fleet Street offer (which I missed at first) and the misdirection of ‘heads’ in 1ac.
Good puzzle, though (a quibble): I didn’t much like ‘All’ as a definition for EVERY INCH. For me the latter means ‘completely’ as in ‘every inch a king’.
I think it’s meant in its more literal sense, as in a Ukrainian saying, ‘As for our land, we’re going to fight for every inch of it.’
That’s fair enough. I hadn’t thought of that usage, so I shall willingly retract my quibble! Thanks.
I’m with you. In an otherwise great puzzle, this clue felt weak to me. 8A, however, excuses everything. A DNF for me, with ROUNDELAY and ORTHODOXY failing to surface.
They were the two I failed on.
43:18. Really quite tricky – quite a few biffs to get me over the line, and a few NHOs as well. was really struggling with the song until I got the last crosser (the J) and then it was fairly easy.
Nearly went for Y-FRONTS instead of G-STRINGS … NHO APOSTLE SPOON, or EXTRA JAM. I completely failed to parse the Demon Barber…
Cracking puzzle!
A few sneaky checks (DWELT, EXTRA JAM, EVERY INCH) and a couple of reveals (BUSHEL, PEKOE) along the way but much enjoyed. Would never have been able to even attempt this not so long ago. The song went in straight away once I had JOHN in place. Needed the blog to appreciate the brilliance of AT ODDS after the fact – thanks Jeremy. NHO APOSTLE SPOON and didn’t know cam=eccentric in CAMBODIA and still unsure about this. Thanks all.
See Collins:
Cam: a slider or roller attached to a rotating shaft to give a particular type of reciprocating motion to a part in contact with its profile
Eccentric: a device for converting rotary motion to reciprocating motion
Just over 16 minutes for this quirky and very enjoyable offering. I could not get a foothold in the top, so resorted to plan B and the SE corner where I saw YUKON and ZADON immediately and worked from there.
I know EXTRA JAM and its very precise meaning thanks to my years in the food industry, which included a stint marketing tea, so PEKOE was a gimme too. Sometimes the GK falls your way, sometimes it doesn’t…
Tough I thought. No time as done in two sittings. Several unparsed which have all been mentioned, so thanks Jeremy for the hard yards. LOI BUSHEL took a while to work out.
I liked COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO.
I don’t think anyone has mentioned the amazing amount of question marks in this crossie? I counted 9. Must be a record., and completely rocked my concentration.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
35:28
Made decent progress until the last half-dozen which were a considerable step up. That includes figuring out the song opener of which I had never heard, though vaguely familiar with that John Peel as well as the rather better-known radio DJ. Last six then were solved in this order:
ALCOVE (already had the O and E checkers)
BULLDOZES (had the B, Z and S checkers – ALCOVE added the L)
ROUNDELAY – wasn’t sure about this, but the last three checkers pointed this way
G-STRINGS – had been trying S in a COUPE to no avail
EVERY INCH – had worked out EVERY but needed the N to spot the second word
BUSHEL – had thought of this when I had only the L, but the clue seemed somewhat convoluted to commit, but nowhere left to go once all checkers in place.
Thanks Jeremy (and Vinyl!) and setter
16.05, my best this week. More biffs than you could shake a stick at, so I found much of the parsing quite enlightening.
Was surprised to encounter John Peel. “The sound of his horn woke me from my bed” etc.
AT ODDS was good. As were several others.
Forgot to restart my watch after a break at 19 minutes and probably took around 30 in the end. Lovely puzzle.
Too good for me.
Reading the blog was very enlightening.
DNF
Excellent puzzle: tough without being a grind. LOI was John Peel, which I did ken, mostly from the version of it that the king’s huntsman sings in The Sword in the Stone when he’s foisted upon Sir Ector.
50 minutes on the train to London, including a change at Ipswich and an embarrassingly long hunt for my ticket.
26.28 DNF
Got the harder ones (even knew the Peel song) but committed two horrible mombles, thinking I was looking for something more obscure. Even accounting for a sore throat, ORTHOLOGY simply ignored the w/p whilst ROUNDALLY had some logic but was the more idiotic as I knew the correct word.
Pitched at a vg level for a Friday I thought
Thanks Jeremy and Setter
Two goes needed either side of a trip out.
– Didn’t know the song D’YE KEN JOHN PEEL but parsed the first three words of it before hesitating over peel=shed (not sure why now)
– Biffed BUSHEL once I had the checkers, but I like Quadrophenia’s parsing
– Vaguely remembered APOSTLE SPOON, probably from one of these crosswords
– Relied on wordplay for the unknown ROUNDELAY
– Didn’t see how ALCOVE worked
– NHO PEKOE tea so again relied on the wordplay
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
FOI Type-face
LOI D’ye Ken John Peel
COD Bulldozes
52’15”
Very testing going, one-paced throughout.
However, managed to jusify all of it, despite being more than a little weary after 12 rounds with Vlad.
Thanks to all the setters this week; I’ve been remiss with posts due to PM appointments and its been a fine crop of puzzles.
Thank you Jeremy and bravo setter for this cracker.
Is Dina someone known for intrigue, or is the supposed &lit; really just a clue where “end” is doing double duty?
OH DEAR. No light nor even the smallest glow to be seen from under our bushel if it is to emanate from our 15 x 15 performance.
Very early days on this platform for us – found this very hard.
NHO DYE KEN JOHN PEEL, ROUNDELAY…. couldn’t marry INJURIES with HURTS… noun v verb?
We can only hope that as with the QC, we will, in time, look back and smile happily at the fact of improvement. Then again, it’s a given – no way but up.
Learnt a great deal, as always, from the blog – both in technique and in GK.
Thank you all.
Best puzzle this week with a massive cheer for COD AT ODDS. I’m astonished that people found this harder than Wednesday or Thursday’s offerings, which somewhat depressed me with their difficulty. Got 1d straight away, which helped with HYDRA, though I didn’t see the hidden when I solved it. As for CAMBODIA, I thought of cam as soon as I saw eccentric, which means I’ve learnt a lot from crosswords, as it was a NHO originally. But one’s vocabulary increases with every unknown. LOI was G-STRINGS – I’m never very good with car types, or anything mechanical, to be honest. Only slight MER was with BUSHEL, which had to be, as an all-in-one definition, but although clever, seemed rather contrived. I got the biblical definition, and the parsing, but it didn’t really work for me. However, more from this setter, please!
Nigh on impossible.
I’ll have to stick with the quick cryptics if this is considered fair in the regular cryptic.
Got half of it done with help from chambers and after 90 minutes had to google the rest of the clues and still couldn’t parse most of them.
Very dejecting.
Please don’t give up. This was a workout for those still adjusting to lateral thinking and word association.
It takes experience to recognise the style and conventions of a Times puzzle, for me half the fun is finding from the blog why I was barking up the wrong tree, enhanced by the occasional great pun in the clues.
Indeed I find it hard to solve other puzzles which use different anagram indicators etc.
Sorry you feel discouraged, but I’d like to encourage you to persevere. I remember a time when not finishing a puzzle was the norm! I’m glad I kept plugging away.
But there are still days when get stuck like you and I just take my lumps and move on. I would suggest that you set a time limit for yourself and embrace it. It’s not worth spending that much time on a puzzle, and you’d probably be better served by looking up some (or all) answers and learning what you can learn for the next time.
Too good for me: lots of aids use to bring forth the seemingly impossible ones, and then I couldn’t parse. However, I did count several that I got ‘autonomously’ as pluses, and I knew all the GK ( except for the type-face!). Bit of a pleasant struggle overall, with COD being the reference to our demon barber.