Good morning, and we have an interesting puzzle from Dangle today, I think only his third for us. His first was definitely stiff, but this one – while no walk in the park – is in my view a good QC, chewy but eminently doable.
There are lots of anagrams, but only one hidden and no DDs, so perhaps the only minor criticism one might make is a slight lack of variety in the clue types. But on the other hand at least two clues sent me down detailed internet wormholes, which was both enjoyable and informative. If you have time, do look at the link to the Chinese equivalent of the Russian nested dolls – they are amazing.
All in the puzzle took me 15:10, though rather longer to nail down the last few parsings for the blog. How did everyone else get on?
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, and strike-through-text shows deletions.
| Across | |
| 1 | Hares not running, in the main (5,3) |
| NORTH SEA – (hares not)*, with the anagram indicator being “running”.
“Main” for sea is common in Crosswordland, and many of us will possibly think here of the Spanish Main. One pictures galleons sailing across it, bringing the treasures of the New World back to Spain and being harried by dastardly pirates, brigands, British privateers etc. Actually, that appears to be a misconstruction: the Spanish Main was short for “Spanish Mainland”, the Spanish territories of Central America and the northern coast of South America that are by the Caribbean coast, and differentiated from the Spanish islands offshore and actually in the Caribbean. So the galleons were sailing from the Spanish Main not on it. “Main sea”, on the other hand, was a nautical term in the era of sailing ships specifically referring to the vast open expanse of the ocean, distinct from territorial waters or smaller bodies of water like bays or gulfs, and thus an area where large sailing ships could run free without worrying about obstacles, land masses, shallows etc. It was this that was shortened to “the Main” and gave Crosswordland its favourite synonym for the sea. |
|
| 5 | Twice following one wading bird (4) |
| IBIS – BIS (twice, from the French) after I (one).
After last Saturday’s crossword, in which Juji gave us a couple of more detailed definitions than was perhaps necessary, Dangle here says “wading bird” where “bird” would have been technically enough – even if a touch tough. Do I detect a gentle word from our crossword editor to setters asking them for fuller and so less challenging definitions in the QC? |
|
| 8 | Add shot of drink, excited (3,2) |
| TOT UP – TOT (shot of drink) + UP (excited).
Up = excited is common enough in Crosswordland and I doubt many of us will have a problem with it, but I’m struggling to find it in Collins or indeed any other online dictionary or thesaurus. The best I can come up with is “I’m up for it / I’m excited by it”. |
|
| 9 | I follow ship’s financial officer around university (7) |
| PURSUER – PURSER (ship’s financial officer) surrounding U (university). An interesting case where the definition is clearly a verb form and the answer clearly a noun, but if I am a pursuer I am presumably pursuing and therefore following someone. | |
| 11 | Passionate and angry about lump in festive treat (3,5,3) |
| HOT CROSS BUN – HOT (passionate) + CROSS (angry) + BUN (nub, ie lump, reversed, ie “about”). A little late for HCBs this year, with Easter 2 weeks ago, but these days I gather they are available almost year-round.
Did anyone else start by reading the clue as asking us to find words for passionate and angry surrounding a word for lump? Oh, just me then … |
|
| 13 | Intense dislike of headwear colour (6) |
| HATRED – HAT (headwear) + RED (colour). | |
| 14 | Can small elf cut Christmas decoration? (6) |
| TINSEL – A three part construction clue, made up of TIN (can) + S (small) + EL (elf “cut”, ie with last letter deleted). And for once the question mark is more to give sense to the surface than direction to the wordplay. | |
| 17 | Regeneration of canine’s ears after surgery (11) |
| RENAISSANCE – (canine’s ears)*, with the anagram indicator being “after surgery”. | |
| 20 | Drink on me is of highest quality (7) |
| SUPREME – SUP (drink) + RE (on) + ME (from the clue). | |
| 21 | Groan about musical instrument (5) |
| ORGAN – (groan)*, with the anagram indicator being “about”. | |
| 22 | Many hours in stupor, reportedly (4) |
| DAYS – Sounds like DAZE (stupor), with the homophone indicator being “reportedly”. | |
| 23 | Remove garments from relative, including hot pants (8) |
| UNCLOTHE – UNCLE (relative) including OTH (an anagram of hot, the anagram indicator being “pants”). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Set up public school for me? (4) |
| NOTE – Trigger alert as Crosswordland’s favourite school (indeed one might almost think its only school) reappears – the wordplay is ETON (public school) reversed (“set up”), and the definition is Me the note, as in Do Re Me. I don’t think I’ve seen Me in the wordplay giving Note as the answer before – it is nearly always the other way round, with Note in the clue giving Me in the answer.
Once again Dangle has given us a fuller hint in the clue than is strictly necessary, as Eton is often/usually clued as just “school” not “public school” (and please don’t ask me why the same institution can be called both a public school and a private school …). It is all perhaps a little odd anyway as it resolutely calls itself not a school at all but a College. |
|
| 2 | Fantasy author stripped device with teeth (7) |
| RATCHET – |
|
| 3 | Suggest these physio exercises (11) |
| HYPOTHESISE – (these physio)*, with the anagram indicator being “exercises”. | |
| 4 | Former partner left ship (6) |
| EXPORT – EX (former partner) + PORT (left). Not perhaps the most obvious definition linking but the connection between to export and to ship something indicates where Dangle is heading on this one. | |
| 6 | Promotional material from Britpop band opening for Beyoncé (5) |
| BLURB – BLUR (possibly the only Britpop band I have heard of) + B (opening, ie first letter, of Beyoncé). | |
| 7 | Check odd nurses left (8) |
| STRANGLE – STRANGE (odd) including L (left), with the inclusion indicator being “nurses”. | |
| 10 | Lass on lurid broadcast — she’s full of herself? (7,4) |
| RUSSIAN DOLL – (lass on lurid)*, with the anagram indicator being “broadcast”.
My LOI, and a quirky definition from Dangle for us, as the classic Russian or Matryoshka doll (Russian: матрёшка) is a set of identical wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside another, so literally each doll is full of itself. The first Russian nested doll set was made in 1890, and it is not clear where the inspiration for the idea came from – possibly China, where nested carved puzzle balls can reach extraordinary levels of depth and complexity, with up to 40 layers. Marvel at them here. |
|
| 12 | Together, sang notes simultaneously, taking exercise (8) |
| CHORUSED – CHORD (notes simultaneously), including (“taking”) USE (exercise). I biffed this and then found it possibly the most difficult of all today’s clues to work out the parsing. | |
| 15 | Cunning time to follow Santa’s transport (7) |
| SLEIGHT – SLEIGH (Santa’s transport) + T (time, “to follow”, ie coming after). | |
| 16 | One resembling Daisy Donovan’s ending at the back (6) |
| ASTERN – ASTER (one resembling Daisy) + N (DonovaN‘s ending, ie last letter). Daisies are part of the Asteraceae family, commonly known as the aster family, so asters and daisies are related plants, perhaps one could term them “floral cousins”. And they do indeed look quite like each other.
Dangle has given us a very neat “lift-and-separate” here, as the clue has nothing to do with the British actress and TV presenter Daisy Donovan (b.1973). Possibly just as well, as I suspect she is not entirely a household name for those outside the UK (or indeed some of us in it). |
|
| 18 | Before party on vacation, sleep in baby’s outfit (5) |
| NAPPY – NAP (sleep) + PY (PartY “on vacation”, ie with inner letters removed). Slight MER at a nappy being termed a baby’s “outfit” – my youngest grandson still wears nappies but his mother, who dresses him exquisitely and extremely smartly, would be appalled to think of them as an outfit! | |
| 19 | Wanted to conceal advance payment (4) |
| ANTE – A hidden, in wANTEd, with the hidden indicator being the straightforward “to conceal”. And our only hidden of the day. | |
I found this one reasonable, and was off to a good start with North Sea. Having never heard of (or not remembering) Terry Pratchett, I biffed ratchet without hesitation. Chorused and Russian doll gave a little trouble, but I ended up with strangler. I thought it was some sort of anagram, but then realized that strangler fit the letter pattern, so without really seeing it I put it in and stopped the clock. Then I saw it.
Time: 8:25
10 minutes. Yes, CHORUSED needed extra time for parsing. NHO Daisy Donovan but the answer had jumped out at me so I never got as far as thinking about the surface reading and wondering about the capital D for Daisy.
14:54. I seem to be struggling lately and this was no exception. Quite a few answers went in leaving me struggling with the parsing. Especially NOTE. The backward school was easy enough and I recognised ME as a note but it did not click as the answer. I was distracted by TE (in the word NOTE) also being a note (ME = NO TE?) and E is a note (ME = NOT E?). No wonder I’ve been struggling.
Thank you Dangle for today’s workout and thank you Cedric for the stylish blog. I did enjoy the slow reveal that you had never heard of Daisy Donovan
Tricky, yet I managed all but STRANGLED, which eluded me. Needed the blog to parse ASTERN, as I had biffed it from the definition.
Pi ❤️
Assumed Bis from Latin, NHO Daisy Donovan, nor that a daisy was an Aster, so biffed ASTERN but very familiar with Pratchett (RIP). Tried odd combination of SRN (nurse) with TAG (check), L, but as I couldn’t find E reverted to Strange with L. How to make things harder than necessary! Quote knotty in parts, but enjoyable and all done and dusted in sub 30 mins. COD RENAISSANCE.
Thank you Cedric for the link to Chinese nested balls. I recently purchased a set of 10 porcelain nested bowls, thrown by a young Korean potter, Jaejun Lee, the smallest being less than 1cm, each one perfectly exquisite.
(As I can’t post a link, I’ve changed my profile picture for illustration).
Thanks Dangle
Thanks for the pointer to Jaejun Lee. I’ve just googled him, and as you say, quite exquisite art. I’ll start saving my pennies…
Should you see a piece of his work, be sure to run your finger across the bottom of the piece, it’s the smoothest silky surface. You may need a magnifying glass to read his signature on the piece!
I found this relatively straightforward, maybe because my anagram hat was firmly in place, with just the LOI STRANGLE and the parsing of CHORUSED causing hold ups.
Finished in 6.33 with COD to RUSSIAN DOLLS.
Thanks to Cedric for the very interesting blog and Dangle for the puzzle.
Private Eye’s Cyclops often uses UP for excited, Cedric – I’ll leave it there. I found this straightforward (almost a write-in, indeed) but enjoyable, with some nice clues. Thanks, Dangle
Thanks also Cedric not only for the blog, but also the link to the Chinese balls – absolutely extraordinary!
This took me ages, for some reason. Admittedly I was slightly distracted but taking around 15 minutes to get to 3 clues remaining, 2d, 7d and 23ac seemed excessive. First I spotted STRANGLE (nice clue), then took an age to progress any further, finally spotting that I had typoed NOT CROSS BUN. That gave me RATCHET and then finally I spotted UNCLOTHE (2 more nice clues IMHO). Not sure why it took so long but I thought it was overall a very nice QC with a good mix of obvious stuff to get you going and some slightly more obscure stuff.
I also spent a long time in the middle trying to parse CHORUSED, which I couldn’t in the end so thanks for that, Cedric. My issue was using too much of the clue, “Together sang notes” or “Together sang notes simultaneously” into what I thought was the definition. And yes, Cedric, I did fall into that same trap in 11ac for a while.
First 3 in were NOTE, RATCHET and HYPOTHESIS, then things flowed smoothly from the NORTH SEA. LOI was UNCLOTHE. 6:13. Thanks Dangle and Cedric. Nice blog!
Off at a gallop and was already thinking of PB territory. Then got held up by RUSSIAN DOLL which needed a pen and paper even once the checkers were in. SW corner then held me up because Id made my own word up HYPOTHESIES which meant the crosser was wrong for SUPREME. On realising my mistake they dropped in easy enough. Thanks for the blog Cedric I too could not parse my LOI CHORUSED. All green in 10:45 and a pretty decent puzzle overall.
15:20
LOI ANTE and CHORUSED
Held up by looking for anagram of RUSSIAN DOLL, and unable to get REINCARNATE out of my mind. Also thought that “twice following? = FF for RUFF, is that a wading bird?
PS Loved the Chinese puzzle balls link.
Another member of the 15:20 club! But 1 error. Was convinced given the checking letters that Santa must ride a SLEDGE, and that cunning must therefore be SLEDGET.
Also struggled with RUSSIAN DOLL potential anagram.
4:34. Like others, I found CHORUSED tricky to parse. LOI STRANGLE. Thanks Dangle for the puzzle and Cedric for the comprehensive blog and link to the article on Chinese puzzle balls. Marvellous, indeed.
Similar experience to the above. Raced along with plenty of straightforward clues and then spent some time working out STRANGLE, ASTERN and UNCLOTHE.
Enjoyed the challenge, learning experience and Cedric’s informative blog.
COD to Russian Doll.
A good puzzle from Dangle. Not easy but a big improvement on yesterday’s for me. I managed most of it very quickly and then decelerated sharply. I hesitated over NOTE (because I didn’t see Me as a note (thanks Cedric). I was slow with RATCHET and needed crossers (even though I enjoy Terry P’s books and his name surfaced fleetingly). The one that really held me up (and tipped me into the SCC while I pratted about) was CHORUSED. Thanks again, Cedric.
9:50 but without parsing CHORUSED – thanks to Cedric for the explanation and also the link to the Chinese balls.
Was looking at at a PB of sub 10 minutes until I, too, was STRANGLE’d. 18.28 completion. Thanks to both Dangle and Cedric for their fine work and my consequent new interest in Chinese balls.
Nine – happy with that.
I question the use of pants as an anagram indicator. I guess it’s from the 1990s slang use of the word meaning rubbish.
Public school / private school / generic term fee paying school, spiritual enlightenment including VAT, play on TV with John Duttine in the 1980s iirc
Terry Pratchett went to Wycombe Technical School as did Heston Blumenthal, but is was known as John Hampden Grammar School in his days. Same town as the RGS and Wycombe Abbey but to be fair not in the same league. Served me well enough though.
To Serve Them All My Days from the novel by RF Delderfield. Very good indeed.
Enjoyable QC if tricky in parts. Same trap as Cedric for 11A. Biffed NOTE and CHORUSED. Excellent blog, thank you Cedric, particularly re the Spanish Main.
8.31, with the website playing up, as usual. I found the puzzle a bit odd.
Very quick on top half then slowed down a bit. After biffing CHORUSED, RENAISSANCE appeared. PDM/COD RUSSIAN DOLL. LOI ASTERN.
Definite GROAN about organ and slow on UNCLOTHE.
Liked HOT CROSS BUN, NAPPY, TINSEL, and PURSUER, among others.
Thanks vm, Cedric. Nowadays we talk about Independent as opposed to State schools, innit? NHO Daisy D, by the way.
7.33
Couldn’t see the DOLL for yonks ditto CHORUSED. Nice puzzle; great blog
Found this much gentler than of late. Only delay was unsuccessful parsing of CHORUSED – many thanks for sorting this out Cedric – I’d failed to lift and separate ‘together sang’ and ‘notes’. Wasn’t entirely sure that bis meant twice but IBIS seemed to fit the checkers. COD RUSSIAN DOLL – loved the surface 😆 Thanks Dangle and Cedric. A very enjoyable coffee time.
“Public schools” were originally so called because they were open to the paying public: that is, admission was open to anyone who could afford it, by contrast with closed “private” schools (where admission was restricted by reference to defined criteria, like membership of a Guild, or religious group, or local area).
Fat-fingered HHPOTHESISE, even though I remember typing it with particular care, and not spotted by cursory proof-glance. What a chump. So DPS and 08:46 but WOE arrgghh.
Many thanks Dangle and Cedric, jolly good blog.
24.37 after a very speedy start, a PB looked on the cards. THEN stopped in tracks for way too many minutes, by ASTERN, UNCLOTHE, STRANGLE.
CHORUSED went in, though not parsed.
SLEIGHT also went in as per instruction, however, not able to come up with a sentence where it was interchangeable with cunning?
COD Russian Doll. Fabulous clue.
For us, a mixed offering but one we have again learned from nonetheless….and yearned from – the ceramic offerings. Also fabulous.
Thanks to Dangle and to Cedric
21:18 for the solve. Had six to do at nine mins and just hit a wall. Couldn’t think of the wading bird and “bis=twice” is outrageous clueing for a QC. That blocked any chance of STRANGLE as I was also stuck on RATCHET / HOT CROSS BUN. Down in the SW – CHORUSED was a nightmare clue and SUPREME couldn’t get albeit I wasn’t helping by having putting an unhappy HYPOTHESIes.
Thanks to Cedric for the blog. I wasn’t sure NUB=about BUN, didn’t know the BIS and NHO ANTE as advance payment. Thanks to Dangle for the enjoyable BLURB,HATRED, TINSEL, RUSSIAN-DOLL clues but really I felt like I have to be doing the 15×15 regularly to unravel the last parts of this.
PS took a quick look back at DANGLE’s previous two puzzles which had RANGE and ESTRANGE and today we have STRANGLE. Not sure if there’s an intentional sort of theme going on.
I enjoyed this. It felt like one of the easier QC this week, even if I did make a daft error in 19D.
COD Russian Doll.
Thanks Cedric and Dangle.
This was a tough QC for me, a decisive non-QC. Thanks as ever to our blogger for the great parsing – such as those for Russian Dolls, Chorused and more.
Also, with all the hacking going around in our retailers, did the Quick Snitch get hacked? Hard to believe today’s score is marked easier than yesterday.
11:29. Very entertaining blog, Cedric- I had no idea how to parse CHORUSED. An easy way to remember bis=twice is to think of biscuit’s etymology-from Latin through French “twice(bis) cooked(cuit)”.
Really helpful way to remember. Many thanks
Thanks! It might actually stick this time.
8.50 Mostly straightforward. I had all the GK but still failed to parse RATCHET. STRANGLE and CHORUSED were the last two. The Chinese balls are remarkable. Thanks Cedric and Dangle.
I made surprisingly good progress until my final pair of clues (27-28 minutes at that point), but didn’t make it across the line until around the 41-minute mark. Those two (blocking) clues were CHORUSED and SUPREME, which was my LOI.
Many thanks to Cedric and Dangle.
This felt tricky at the time but I managed an on-par 14:57. Needed the blog to point me towards the parsing of IBIS and CHORUSED (though with hindsight I should have managed the latter). I don’t normally nominate a COD but I liked UNCLOTHE very much, so today I’ll make an exception!
Thank you for the very informative blog!
Hard but fair. RUSSIAN DOLL, ASTERN didn’t come easily, and top easier than below, but all good. Excellent blog. If I can find some ivory substitute I fancy doing some, they are amazing. Come for the parsings, leave with the carvings.
9:53
I liked HOT CROSS BUN, but a slight disagreement about it being a “festive” treat. It is actually that strange anomaly, a treat specific to a fast day, not to a feast day. Quite how Good Friday, which qualifies as a fast under three different rules in the book of common prayer, ended up with a specific form of food is an interesting question.
Thanks Cedric and Dangle
Three different rules… I was interested, so looked it up. The rules I found are (1) it’s in Lent (2) it’s a Friday, but what’s the third?
You are right, they are the only two in the book of common prayer. I was confusing it with the rules in the Alternative Service Book 1980, which listed days of discipline and self denial as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, all other weekdays in Lent, and all Fridays in the year (with exceptions). So that’s still only two, since the second rule contains the word “other”.
Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up!
Although hot cross buns originally and traditionally appeared on Good Friday (not, as today, for weeks and weeks beforehand!), I believe they marked not the fast day of Good Friday but the end of Lent (Good Friday is not strictly part of Lent, the last day of which is the Thursday before Easter). Bakers were therefore able to use ingredients which were forbidden in Lent such as sugar and butter, making them a special treat for the end of the fasting period. And because the bakers could not bake them the night before (as most bread was baked), as that would still have been in Lent, they were baked early in the morning and sold still hot from the oven. Hence the Hot in Hot Cross Buns.
Thanks for this. I had often wondered about origins of hot cross buns.
I had always assumed the end of Lent was on Easter Day, though I once attended an Easter Saturday evening service in a Catholic chaplaincy, where we were served whisky after the service on the basis that Lent had finished at sunset on Easter Saturday.
6:36
Fairly comfortable solve against erstwhile nightmare setter Dangle. Slightly slowed by trying to enter ASTERN in the wrong windows, and bunging DAZE in at 22a. Didn’t know BIS, but the answer was obvious. Not entirely sure about STRANGLE for ‘check’ but it fit the wordplay and checkers.
Thanks Cedric for the blog, and to Dangle for the puzzle
Worked through steadily in 24:10, although not without a couple of biffs. Please can we ban ETON from future puzzles?
Tsk. It’s a well known fact that legend says that if ETON doesn’t appear at least once every ten days, The Times Puzzle section will explode in a cloud of question marks and never be seen again. They just can’t risk it…
DNF, with STRANGLE and ASTERN stumping me. Let myself down with not thinking of Terry Pratchett for 2d quicker! Lots of good clues, enjoyed CHORUSED and RUSSIAN DOLL. Thank you for the blog 😊
DNF
NHO Daisy Donovan, nor Aster so drew a blank on ASTERN. Things were made even worse by misspelling RENAISSANCE with SC rather than SS in the middle.
Took about 26 minutes of hard work anyway.
13:26. Did not remember “bis” for “twice” and never quite parsed CHORUSED, despite spotting CHORD in there. My COD goes to the beautifully simple HATRED.
Thanks to Dangle and Cedric.
Very slow for me for no apparent reason. Cant understand the moans about IBIS, how many wading birds do you know of?, and the BI drops out from e.g. bicycle, binary and binoculars quite happily even if you haven’t heard of the bird.
Relieved to see the correct parsing of 11A, I had lump = bun in the oven, not very politically correct.
😂
Dnf…
29 mins, but then found I’d spelt “Pursuer” as “Persuer” which was frustrating based on the time spent doing it.
Overall, a good challenge from Dangle, with some neat clues.
FOI – 8ac “Tot Up”
LOI – 9ac “Persuer” (spelt incorrectly)
COD – 2dn “Ratchett” – purely for the fantasy author reference.
Thanks as usual!
Saturday is the only day I get a time as I do the QC on my phone instead of on paper. I’m not actually keen on it because I feel a need to press on as fast as possible, and the stress can slow me up. But today I was happy with my time of 24 minutes. I agree with Cedric that it was chewy in places but doable.
I’m sure we all know to shout “bis” rather than “encore” after excellent performances on French stages.
Can anyone help me understand Check definition working for STRANGLE. Got it with checkers and even understood the wordplay but still don’t get the link to eachother for the definition.
A fair warning to all newbies,steer clear from cryptic crosswords!!It is a highly addictive,frustrating time pass which one can become obsessed with.To date no studies have proven its benefits.Take care.