Time taken: 13:25
I am the first recorded completion for today and the puzzle has been out there for nearly half an hour, so I’m going to call this one a Tricky Thursday! I thought it was going to be worse, as my first read through the acrosses yielded only two complete answers and a few partial answers. A first pass of the downs gave me a decent start on the top, but I had to think hard about a lot of these. I don’t think there’s anything too obscure, but the wordplay is clever and consistent.
How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Drunk returned drink — even shot (4-2) |
| TOSS-UP – SOT(drunk) reversed, and then SUP(drink). Was anyone else hoping the first part of this was SIP reversed? | |
| 5 | Prove ineffective, as would Shackleton’s Endurance ultimately? (3,2,3) |
| CUT NO ICE – double definition, the second based on the fateful Antarctic voyage | |
| 9 | A loner wasted money from recording artist (8) |
| LEONARDO – anagram of A,LONER, then sounds like DOUGH(money) | |
| 10 | Disgrace taking my place, we hear? (6) |
| INFAMY – homophone for IN FOR ME. I might call whirled ploy on this one, I wouldn’t pronounce it this way | |
| 11 | Skin on rump of animals for butcher (6) |
| SLAYER – LAYER(skin) after the last letter in animalS | |
| 12 | Keen stud would be at home here? (8) |
| PIERCING – cryptic definition based on a stud earring | |
| 14 | Asian leader once in magazine introduced to Asian daughter, Hello! (6,6) |
| INDIRA GANDHI – RAG(magazine) inside INDIAN(Asian), D(daughter), HI(hello) | |
| 17 | Lords according to Commons, say, befuddling paternal echo! (7,5) |
| ANOTHER PLACE – anagram of PATERNAL,ECHO – wasn’t familiar with the phrase, but not too difficult to work out when I wrote all the letters down | |
| 20 | Two kings first to uncork fine wine (5,3) |
| GRAND CRU – I liked this trick by the setter, the two kings are GR AND CR, then the first letter of Uncork | |
| 22 | Delegate with foot rolled over puppy? (6) |
| YAPPER – REP(delegate) and PAY(foot, pay for) all reversed | |
| 23 | Main course in Pakistan, cold (6) |
| BALTIC – BALTI(course in Pakistan), C(cold) – my first in | |
| 25 | Appear to smuggle whiskey into school, for example (4,1,3) |
| SHOW A LEG – W(whiskey) inside SHOAL(school of fish) and EG(for example) | |
| 26 | Model goes in to fill centre of banner for advertiser (4,4) |
| NEON SIGN – anagram of GOES,IN inside the middle letters of baNNer | |
| 27 | Hypothesis way removed from the narrative (6) |
| THEORY – remove ST(way) from THE, STORY(narrative). Another trick we don’t see often | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Playwright — everyone else better then? (6) |
| O’NEILL – if there is ONE ILL, presumably everyone else is better, for the playwright Eugene (The Iceman Cometh) | |
| 3 | Old fighter reportedly happy, on having bagged record (5,6) |
| SONNY LISTON – sounds like SUNNY and ON containing LIST(record). Fighter I knew from the stories of his fights with Ali in the 60s. | |
| 4 | Bird not entirely free, first two released from cage (9) |
| PARTRIDGE – PART(not entirely), RID(free) and the last two letters of caGE | |
| 5 | Tomahawk for Chinook, say? (7) |
| CHOPPER – two definitions, one an axe and the other a helicopter | |
| 6 | Fine material poet served up (5) |
| TOILE – reversal of T.S. ELIOT(poet) | |
| 7 | Rotten part of climbing scaffold (3) |
| OFF – hidden reversed in scaFFOld | |
| 8 | Socialist leader crushed by Conservative country and American people (8) |
| COMANCHE – CHE(Socialist leader) under C(Conservative), OMAN(country) | |
| 13 | Think about criminal model (11) |
| CONTEMPLATE – CON(criminal), TEMPLATE(model) | |
| 15 | Money racket lands leader of opposition in jug (5,4) |
| GRAVY BOAT – GRAVY(money) and BAT(racket) containing the first letter of Opposition | |
| 16 | Hike with it over ridge (8) |
| INCREASE – IN(with it) over CREASE(ridge) | |
| 18 | Chicken soup cooked wrong (7) |
| POUSSIN – anagram of SOUP, then SIN(wrong) | |
| 19 | Soldiers after deal for shooter? (6) |
| METEOR – OR(soldiers) after METE(deal out) – shooting star | |
| 21 | Oxygen fed to just over three hundred bacteria (5) |
| COCCI – O(oxygen) inside CCCI(just over three hundred in Roman numerals) | |
| 24 | Seen empty, food container (3) |
| TIN -SEEN empty would be SN, which is the chemical symbol for TIN | |
Comparing to yesterday (easy-ish can be good fun), proof positive that very tricky can also be very good fun. I liked the clear cluing and the well-hidden definitions, though I would have called a pup a Yipper. An early memory was using an early TV to watch Liston (who might be hard to get if you didn’t know him) beat Floyd Patterson. Thx setter, and GH
Do you ever sleep?
Sleep when you die.
Nearly all the early commenters are in the US evening or the Australian morning.
40:47
A technical DNF, as I looked up LISTON–I’d (finally) recalled him as Lipton, and couldn’t see how that parsed. I had other time-consuming memory problems: couldn’t remember XX ICE, couldn’t remember Gandhi’s first name, couldn’t remember O’NEILL. I did at least remember POUSSIN,, which I DNK when it appeared here recently. Definitely a tricky one today, and very enjoyable. COD to LEONARDO.
Finished in around two hours using aids. Not many easy clues. Too many hard clues together. Remembered Sonny Liston as fight where he got knocked out by Ali in the first round with a punch nobody saw land.
Thanks G
He was Cassius Clay then
But only for the next two weeks
My error – he changed his name two weeks after the first fight.
Liked this a lot but failed three or four and had to look up the answers. TOSS-UP went straight in and everything else after that was a bit of a slog with the exception of a few gimmes, such as CHOPPER, NEON SIGN, GRAND CRU and COMANCHE. Some I found gettable from the wordplay pretty easily such as COCCI, PARTRIDGE, and INDIRA GANDHI when I saw the ‘Hi’ for hello at the end. Figured out ANOTHER PLACE from the anagrist but it was a NHO. SONNY LISTON was well known to me but he was one of the fighters that wouldn’t come to me when trying to remember the early ones. Didn’t see the ‘stud’ connection in PIERCING so looked it up. TOILE appears every now and then as a reversal of Eliot, so that was a write in. All in all, good fun.
Thanks George and setter.
Well, I managed to finish, but only because of foolish persistence. I did know another place, but couldn’t remember it, along with some other things like the Chinook helicopter and the Eliot/toile chestnut. Really, not too swift. I struggled quite a while with the brilliant show a leg, not seeing how shoa- could be the beginning of a word; then I saw it. Meteor was actually my LOI; can you put -or after e? Yes, you can!
Time: 68:08
41 minutes to get within two answers of finishing. I was completely stumped by a playwright to fit the checkers O???L?, caught out (not for the fist time) by not considering the possibility of the name featuring an apostrophe. Having used aids to find O’NEILL I was then able to solve the intersecting LEONARDO but still didn’t see the wordplay and as my LOI I didn’t spend a long time thinking about it .
Beautiful puzzle. Did it on paper as laptop in for repair. About 13 minutes. Nice to see the Big Ugly Bear at 3 dn.
Tough puzzle, finished a little under 50 but with no real idea what was going on with several I guessed in the SE, including the unknown SHOW A LEG, YAPPER and GRAVY BOAT. So thank you G. I liked the way polar opposites SONNY L and LEONARDO intersected, and wondered for a while whether George Orwell had written any plays.
From Idiot Wind:
Someone’s got it INFAMY, they’re planting….oops, sorry
From Floater (Too Much To Ask):
Romeo said to Juliet, You got a poor complexion
It doesn’t give your appearance a very youthful touch.
Juliet said back to Romeo
Why don’t you shove OFF if it bothers you that much?
Comforting to see that I am not alone in finishing up a technical DNF in 50 minutes.
Fairly clued but devious, I really struggled with YAPPER, GRAVY BOAT and ONEILL but at least one chicken came home to roost and SONNY LISTON brought back memories.
Thanks to setter and glh.
Finally finished after being convinced I was stuck on six or so: O’NEILL, LEONARDO, PIERCING, NEON SIGN, GRAVY BOAT and YAPPER.
Wasn’t too sure about GRAVY = money, and got there only by imagined allusion to ‘gravy train’.
23’34”, thanks george and setter.
No-one’s got it in for me, I’m on a good run.24 minutes with LOI Yapper after I’d stumbled on GRAVY BOAT. I don’t know what’s going right, apart from it won’t last. Nice puzzle. Thank you George and setter.
Nice puzzle, thanks all, and there was I trying to think of rivers in Pakistan for far too long.
I am familiar with ‘the other place’ in that meaning, but had never heard ‘another place’. Is it really a set phrase?
https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/another-place/
Well there we are then! Thanks.
8:50. Obviously very much on the wavelength today, I breezed through this without noticing any particular difficulty and without any major hold-ups.
Technical DNF as I had to use aids for YAPPER, SHOW A LEG and GRAVY BOAT.
I was going well till I got to that SE corner.
A DNF, first one of the week. Just couldn’t see ONEILL and it took me a minute to understand once I hit reveal. I also had DEFAME instead of INFAMY, I had some logic but in hindsight it was a bit of a stretch. I think I was just enticed by the crossers. This blocked TOILE so three off in the end.
Strange to think only a few months ago it was a big achievement for me to finish the main crossword but now I feel a bit gutted every time I fail.
COD: SONNY LISTON
I had defame for about 10 minutes, before deciding it wouldn’t do. Once I erased it, I saw toile instantly.
32 minutes. It was fortunate that I remembered SONNY LISTON so I was able to get an early foothold in the NW. The rest then went in steadily though I relied on crossing letters for many. LOI was PIERCING which I parsed as a double def, with the second (‘stud would be at home here?’) a cryptic one, although it also works as a cryptic def.
Agree on PIERCING.
Difficult. Beaten only by the NHO O’NEILL, but frankly relieved to have done so well.
POI 10a Infamy. I’ll never forget Kenneth Williams crying “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me.”
22a Yapper, DNF here. 27a Neon sign, ditto.
24d Tin. COD.
Started with TOSS UP and made fairly rapid progress in the top half, apart from the artist and the playright. A biffed ORWELL delayed LEONARDO until the very end. Eventually saw the latter and revised to O’NEILL. LOI was TIN when I saw how the “empty seen” worked. I’d been wondering how to choose between TIN and TUN. Sadly I crashed and burned with SUNNY LISTON. Drat and double drat!! 28,33 WOE. Thanks setter and George.
31 mins mightily held up by YAPPER and GRAVY BOAT. In particular I interpreted the GRAVY BOAT clue totally the wrong way round. Jug can mean so many things in a crossword.
COD INFAMY, just for the Kenneth Williams gag!
71:05
Got through it, but it was tricky. Seeing a few technical DNFs today; are there different categories for DNF? I liked the tin clue – very clever.
Thanks, g.
I was held up by carelessly putting in SNIPER at 19 down, rationalising it as SNIP =(good) deal, ER (similar to RE and OR) seeming a plausible abbreviation for soldier and the whole thing meaning shooter. That meant that YAPPER, whose parsing I didn’t see, wouldn’t fit. Once the penny dropped I was pleased to finish a challenging puzzle in only a little more than my usual time.
Tricky, had a break to go and eat dinner before coming back and wiping off the top left. Knew Sonny Liston but he was late in. 2LOI O’Neill, wrongly parsed as zero kneel before me without a homophone indicator. I’d thought of him immediately, second clue looked at after toss-up, but loath to put him in unparsed. Last one in the engineer, anatomist and inventor Leonardo, remembering he sculpted and painted a bit, too. Also couldn’t parse Sn = tin, just didn’t think of it. Nice puzzle, just the right level of difficulty.
Liked CONTEMPLATE.
Found this quite straightforward, it felt UK centric for once, what with Kenneth Williams and all. Nho cocci but only a little leap from eg streptococci.. good stuff.
Funny, it felt a little North American to me, with two AmerInd tribes (one also a US helicopter), dough and gravy for rhino, O’Neill, and Liston.
DNF witb YAPPER,PIERCING and GRAVY BOAT missing when I gave up on the hour.
Several pauses for interruptions but not sure I’d have completed it anyway. Tough.
Thanks for explaining as usual.
COD to the INFAMY homophone. Carry On like that please.
38 – Vaguely remembered SONNY LISTON, though I thought it was Lister at first, but most of the awkwardness was in the region of the YAPPER/GRAVY intersection. Good stuff
DNF in 45
Totally off the wavelength here, really struggling to think of synonyms and then words to fill blanks even when all the checkers were in place (here’s looking at you PIERCING).
Two errors GRAND BOAT and ORWELL meant YAPPER and LEONARDO weren’t possible. Of the first pair latter went in and out. It had to be didn’t it? (Except for the minor complaint that there’s probably no such playwright) The former was obviously wrong in retrospect but I was so sure the puppy had to start DEP I was blindsided.
It’s amazing what nonsense you can convince yourself of if you think you are facing a beast. This was more puppylike…!
Thanks all
Had to take several bites at this one, almost finished it as I polished off my lunch – deciding that ORWELL wasn’t right for 2d, allowing LEONARDO to fit in nicely. Unfortunately ONEILL wasn’t forthc0ming – 59:19 DNF
I also originally had “SNIPER” for 19d so was held up on “YAPPER”. DNF with “ONEILL”.
Good start and then a struggle, finishing in just over 40′. PIERCING and GRAVY BOAT took quite some time
Spent what seemed a very long night seeing The Iceman at the Almeida with Kevin Spacey. The wooden bench seating didn’t help. Enjoyed SONNY LISTON, and remember the Clay/Ali fight as a very young boy. Thanks George and setter.
Did seem tricky, and I felt pretty clever to get through as quickly as I did, especially at the very late hour at which it was worked. Guess I was in a hurry to go to sleep! The lack of obscurities was appreciated.
Would have been about 20 min, but spelled SONNY as SUNNY in my haste.
Some excellent clues, couldn’t parse TIN, so thanks for explanation.
Pretty tough’ started this morning and finished this afternoon, golf in between, but just couldn’t get O’NEILL, despite having considered it early on. I really don’t like these clues with the ‘s in them!
Needless to say I did like GRAND CRU. A nice ROMANÉE CONTI anyone?
Thanks G and setter.
🙋🏻♂️
Excellent crossword. No dramas and nothing too obscure.
FOI TOSS-UP
LOI O’NEILL
COD to GRAND CRU which just pips the excellent TIN.
Thanks setter and GH.
DNF for me today – defeated by NHO yapper, which made gravy boat unattainable for me as I did not really see what was going on there. Have we had delegate clued as rep before, I can’t recall it and therefore missed it completely.
Overall an excellent and very fair, difficult puzzle. Thx G and setter
DNF
– Was completely thrown by the ‘from recording’ in the clue for LEONARDO – I missed that it was indicating a homophone and was trying to fit LP/EP in, so even though I saw the anagrist I didn’t get it
– Got ANOTHER PLACE without knowing that it’s a term
– Didn’t know ONEILL the playwright, though I eventually saw what the clue was getting at
– NHO SONNY LISTON, and even though I figured out the surname from the wordplay I failed to see happy=sunny
– Eventually pieced together the unknown COMANCHE from wordplay, after finally realising that ‘Socialist leader’ wasn’t giving S
– Had no idea what was going on with TIN, so as far as I knew it could have been TUN
Thanks glh and setter.
COD Poussin
I believe balti is a pan (a cooking vessel, not originally a serving dish), and the ‘dish’ or meal named after it originated in Birmingham, not Pakistan.
Absolutely right. I was never going to get BALTIC from this incorrect clue. The setter has even tried to be clever by specifying Pakistan rather than India, but has failed completely.
DNF. Took a while to realise my sniper should have been meteor. But didn’t make any difference as the best I could see for puppy was dapper. Never got near gravy boat as a result and piercing passed me by. Personally, I think shrill is nearer to piercing than keen and stud at home in piercing? Not convinced.
I got through most of this in 34 minutes but was then held up in the SE corner, which required another 18 minutes to resolve. But I enjoyed this a lot, even if some of the clues took a while to unravel. NHO COCCI but the clueing was fairly kind, and ANOTHER PLACE held no terrors for someone who had to read Hansard routinely in a previous job. Thanks for the parsing of 24dn, which escaped me.
FOI – GRAND CRU
LOI – YAPPER
COD – O’NEILL
Thanks to george and other contributors.
52:28. I found that very tricky. particularly the playwright as I know only two or three names and this wasn’t one of them. I thought GRAVY BOAT was very clever.
Over the hour and with one silly error “Cut To Ice”.
Very nice puzzle nevertheless.
My COD “Grand Cru”.
LOI Yapper, unsurprisingly.
A DNF for me, and I drew stumps after about an hour after grinding to a halt with about half a dozen to get. I had little chance of finishing anyway as I had PRESSING for PIERCING at 12ac, and a desperate ORWELL instead of ONEILL for 2dn. If I’d thought of LEONARDO perhaps I may have solved the latter. Put TIN in but couldn’t parse it.
1 hour 20m. 2 wrong – Sonny ListEn (!) and Flayer. d;oh…. bit of help in north west corner needed too. 198 out of 206 on leaderboard…. only way is up!
DNF
Put in nipper instead of yapper so never got gravy boat. Convinced myself wrongly that pin could be foot (stretching leg a bit too far)
FOI OFF
COD PIERCING
I found that VERY hard taking well over an hour. LOI O’Neill and I see I wasn’t the only one to find that clue hard, it was the apostrophe I think that made it so hard to spot.
Great puzzle and I like the challenge but one puzzle a week like that is enough 😉
Thanks setter and blogger
Not for the first time, the setters’ blithe identity of a racket with a bat meant parsing the GRAVY BOAT (jug?!!) was problematic. Surely a racket has strings (badminton, squash, tennis) which a bat lacks (Table tennis, cricket)? Just one of the many obliquenesses faced today which extended my (split) time to 36.48, and no real confidence on submission. A rather fraught experience.
Saw quite early on that this was no picnic, and consequently resorted to aids too early. FOI THEORY, as very easy to spot; LOI NEON SIGN, as I persisted in trying to make model the definition instead of an anagram indicator (D’oh!) So too hard for me today, not helped by my negative attitude to it straight off the blocks. Liked CUT NO ICE and the chestnut TOILE particularly.