Time taken: 12:55, but at least I got everything correct, having fallen into two extremely obvious traps earlier in the week.
I approached this one tired and only one martini in, so I wasn’t expecting to be lightning but practically nothing leaped out at me in a first read through from the clues and it really was a hunt and peck through the grid. Compared to early solvers I think I can be justified in calling this one Tricky Thursday, but at least there were no obvious traps set for me to fall into. Well at least none that I fell into.
How did you do?
| Across | |
| 1 | Fighting drained divorcees with joint custody (8) |
| WARDSHIP – WAR(fighting), the external letters of DivorceeS, then HIP(joint) | |
| 6 | Eg brilliant Arab abridged Talmudic text (6) |
| GEMARA – GEM(brilliant as a noun can mean a gemstone), then ARAB minus the last letter | |
| 9 | Good work to improve image of tech department (6) |
| PROFIT – the image of tech department could be the PR OF IT | |
| 10 | Academic opens early novel that can’t be written over (4-4) |
| READ-ONLY – DON(academic) inside an anagram of EARLY | |
| 11 | Passable tune piper’s son interrupts on the violin (4,2,8) |
| FAIR TO MIDDLING – AIR(tune) and TOM(Tom the piper’s son) inside FIDDLING(on the violin) | |
| 13 | This on road’s verges being cut? (4) |
| TREE – STREET(road) with the external letters removed | |
| 15 | English bully arrived and overturned Ireland’s green champion (3-7) |
| ECO-WARRIOR – E(English), COW(bully), ARR(arrived) and then a reversal of ROI(Republic of Ireland) | |
| 17 | Don’t eat then run — intake likely to rise (4,6) |
| FAST STREAM – FAST(don’t eat) and STREAM(run) | |
| 19 | Tender like husband after Francesca’s heart (4) |
| CASH – AS(like), H(husband) after the middle letter in franCesca | |
| 20 | Remarkable feat left eight men so shattered (5,9) |
| QUITE SOMETHING – QUIT(left) then an anagram of EIGHT,MEN,SO | |
| 23 | Spooner’s dreadful quartet escape in heated situation (4,4) |
| FIRE DOOR – Spoonerism of DIRE FOUR(dreadful quartet) | |
| 24 | 25 per cent off duke’s inferior brand (6) |
| MARQUE – remove the last quarter from MARQUESS(duke’s inferior) | |
| 25 | Mass begun by male or female bell-ringer, sometimes (6) |
| SEXTON – TON(mass) after SEX(male or female) | |
| 26 | Mischief-maker turned saintly to prepare for smack (6,2) |
| PUCKER UP – PUCK(mischief-maker) then PURE(saintly) reversed | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Tube attached to pump coming up through that road (5) |
| AORTA – hidden reversed in thAT ROAd | |
| 3 | Stay outside in desperate agitation (9) |
| DEFERMENT – the exterior letters in DesperatE, then FERMENT(agitation) | |
| 4 | Hail Tesla driven by club (3) |
| HIT – HI(hail), T(Tesla, the unit) | |
| 5 | Columnar entry helping mostly with entry of cents (7) |
| PORTICO – PORTION(helping) minus the last letter containing C(cents) | |
| 6 | Napoleonic forces, God help us, within range at sea (6,5) |
| GRANDE ARMEE -DEAR ME(God help us) inside an anagram of RANGE. Had to trust the wordplay here. | |
| 7 | Root vegetable I threaten to pull up (5) |
| MOOLI – I and LOOM(threaten to pull) all reversed. Possibly an escapee from Mephistoland here, I don’t recall MOOLI in a daily. | |
| 8 | Scrupulous engineers likely to start action without it? (9) |
| RELIGIOUS – RE(engineers) then LITIGIOUS(likely to start action) minus IT | |
| 12 | Very high, as lower jumping got? (4,3,4) |
| OVER THE MOON -double definition, the second one referring to Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon… | |
| 14 | Nearly influence sound of group singing Get Back (9) |
| REACQUIRE – remove the last letter of REACH(influence), then a homophone of CHOIR(group singing) | |
| 16 | Chaser o’er ground? (9) |
| RACEHORSE – anagram of CHASER,O’ER | |
| 18 | Full collection of awards saw boost to confidence (3-4) |
| EGO-TRIP – EGOT(a full collection of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award) and a RIP saw | |
| 21 | Still popular, Marc Bolan’s band briefly making comeback (5) |
| INERT – IN(popular) and T-REX(Marc Bolan’s band) reversed minus the last letter. Marc Bolan died in 1977 so this band might be a little new-fangled for the Times | |
| 22 | From report, immediately feel sorry for tiny country (5) |
| NAURU – homophone of NOW(immediately) and RUE(feel sorry for) | |
| 24 | Coat with supernatural powers saving US soldier (3) |
| MAC – MAGIC(with supernatural powers) minus GI(US soldier) | |
DNF FOI OVER THE MOON followed by FAIR TO MIDDLING. Then slowed to a crawl and ended with answers missing everywhere.
Thanks G
How is “intake likely to rise” a FAST STREAM?
What does STREE(road) mean?
FAST STREAM is not in Collins but it is in Chambers – people who are hired to be promoted quickly, think of FAST TRACKING someone.
I left the T off of STREET initially. Bit of a weird clue, but if there was a TREE on the verges of a STREET it would probably get cut.
The FAST STREAM clue may refer to schools. They have a new intake each academic year and in some schools pupils are divided into a fast stream and a slower one according to their perceived ability based on entrance exam results. No doubt things have changed, but in my school each year had an A and B stream. Further along in the process there was an Alpha stream for the brightest pupils to skip a year and work towards taking their O-Levels a year early.
The civil service fast stream is what came to mind for me – graduates expected to progress relatively quickly into senior positions.
I suffered from being in the fast stream at school. We had to take O levels a year early, which meant we had no games lessons and I never studied any science subjects.
Easily the trickiest of the week so far, and really QUITE SOMETHING.
NHO MOOLI. LOI TREE!
I didn’t parse GRANDE ARMÉE, just forgot to, DEAR ME.
Yesterday took me 48 minutes and today only 18, so for me this wasn’t the trickiest of the week. Must be a wavelength thing.
Thanks! Much like yesterday, had to give up in an irritating cloud of failure at 37′, missing four answers: PROFIT, TREE, SEXTON, DEFERMENT.
PROFIT and SEXTON could have been gotten with more staring (I had CREDIT which always looked shaky); TREE and DEFERMENT I don’t think I was getting today with any amount.
Having said all that, I was pleased to get a few unlikely-looking answers such as FAST STREAM, GEMARA (known to me somehow), MOOLI and (eventually) WARDSHIP. Here’s hoping for a better Friday!
[In case anyone is interested, mooli is apparently identical with the more familiar daikon, which you may know as one of the two main strip-form lightly pickled vegetables, along with carrot, in Vietnamese bánh mì.]
Mooli in Urdu means a radish, which is a root vegetable .
I didn’t find this easy at all and spent 73 minutes on it including two uses of aids, one clue unsolved (even with aids), and a wrong answer.
I used ‘reveal’ to get the second word at 6dn having assumed the first had to be GRANDE. The number of clues requiring more than elementary knowledge of foreign languages, particularly French, seems to have increased recently.
The other reveal was REACQUIRE where the surface led me to expect something to do with pop music that I wouldn’t know if I stared at it all day, so I cut my losses – unnecessarily as it turned out.
My error was putting CREDIT at 9ac although I was unable to parse it. I had considered PROFIT at one time but was unable to parse that either so it didn’t go in and I forgot about it. CREDIT gave me an incorrect checker at 3dn so I was unable to solve that one.
GEMARA was from wordplay alone. NHO it and this is its first appearance here.
Not too hard. The ones I NHO were GEMARA and MOOLI. I too put CREDIT in at 3a (based on “cred” as image) but when 3d proved impossible I rethought. I parsed PROFIT as PR=”work to improve image” OF=”of” and IT. But are PROFIT and “good” synonyms? Luckily I knew the big Parisian boulevard going up to the Arc de Triomphe called Avenue de la Grande Armée so I put that in without parsing.
I looked at it as what good/profit is there in doing something.
Stayed with this one for a couple of hours on and off, because what was being revealed was interesting. Got there complete and correct with just a couple of queries for which a visit here was needed. Challenging for sure.
Lots to appreciate here: Liked 25ac SEXTON (guess why), and the clever PUCKER UP 26ac particularly for the use of ‘smack’. Also the very cryptic 12d OVER THE MOON. Even the spoonerism 23ac. 22d NAURU somewhat depended on pronunciation and where you were from – but very clever. Also FAIR TO MIDDLING 11ac because of the interesting combination.
Had to look up the ‘napoleonic forces’ 6d as did not think DEAR ME for ‘god help us’. Was not sure about 16d RACEHORSE, but could see how it worked.
Thought the clue for 17ac FAST STREAM might be referring to speed of watercourse rise – though with my background I probably would.
Apologies for any crossings with other posters.
Credit to setter and glh (shaken not stirred?)
I think I was bang on the wavelength for this one, with 32 minutes being my second-quickest of the week so far. I’d even heard of a MOOLI. Ocado sell them, but I’ve only seen them up-close-and-personal in a nearby Chinese supermarket. Would never have spotted the parsing for EGO-TRIP. Nearly invented a MORTON instead of a SEXTON but REACQUIRE put me right.
Well EGOT did appear here recently, but I had to look it up to check parsing.
Answer selected from crossers and meaning.
I did vaguely recognise it when I came here for the parsing, but I’ve never seen it in “real life” and crossword-only words—especially ones that aren’t actual words!—take me much longer to get in my head, it seems.
Just over 30 minutes but used up a slice of luck with the first vowel in NAURU a wild guess- I have no idea how to pronounce it! Otherwise a steady solve with nothing particularly memorable coming to mind.
Good grief, that was tough. I got all but SEXTON in about 40 and pulled the plug, mystified as to exactly how I got as a far as I did. The mystification deepened when G’s blog revealed the full complexity of some of these clues. A terrific puzzle although much of the gk, foreign language expertise, knowledge of the Talmud etc etc eluded me.
From Girl From The North Country:
Well if you’re travelling in the north country fair
Where the winds HIT heavy on the borderline
Remember me to one who lives there
She once was a true love of mine
I only got sexton from a memory of a little ditty ending “ they went and told the sexton and the sexton tolled the bell”. Thomas Hood , Faithless Sally Brown ( just looked it up).
The last line looks very similar to one from Scarborough Fair (S&G).
(LindsayO post)
Steady solve this, which I thought roughly as hard as yesterday’s.
Nho gemara, otherwise no unknowns. We have mooli occasionally, they are basically just a huge radish.
re 10ac, there is an old Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert invents WOM, write-only memory. When asked what you would ever use it for he says “Conservative party manifestos?”
Anyone brought up on the songs of Rambling Syd Rumpo will be all too familiar with the MOOLI!
Good thing Rambling Syd isn’t setting crosswords. Don’t know how he would define “moulies” apart from advice to keep your hands off them (an injunction I have mostly followed).
The joke where I worked out of university – an avionics company – was that WOM is what aircraft black boxes need if the airframe designers and the pilots did their jobs properly.
DNF but found it mostly straightforward with all but 2 done in about 25 mins. Added GEMARA without much hope before finally giving up on TREE after nearly 40. V. vague clue, still don’t like it now I see the answer.
The rest was good fun, liked the nursery rhyme Tom and cow, EGOT and Pointless chestnut NAURU and pretty much everything. Even the Spoonerism. And we even grow MOOLI. Thanks glh and setter.
30 mins all parsed. I didn’t find this as tricky as yesterday, tbh. FAIR TO MIDDLING and OVER THE MOON were quite generous centre clues and allowed me to work my outwards at a leisurely pace.
GEMARA and MOOLI were both NHO for me, so I may have got lucky there. COD for PROFIT which seemed quite original to my eyes. Thanks blogger and setter – this week has been a corker so far!
21.10
Two attempted &lits: COD RACEHORSE worked, LOI TREE didn’t.
30.20. Excellent puzzle I thought, though that might be due to my punt on tree proving correct. Is that just literal or is there more to it? I’ll scroll up to find the answer.
Makes up for opting for gas power rather than poker yesterday.
65 minutes. Another slow one after yesterday. Thank goodness for the crossing Q supplied by QUITE SOMETHING (I find those partial anagram clues hard) which helped unlock the SW. Even so I was stuck with _R_E for 13a at the end and only put in TREE as a non-cryptic answer to the whole clue, missing the wordplay. EGO-TRIP was another for which the parsing defeated me. GEMARA was an NHO and entered unconfidently, so overall I was surprised to see no pink squares.
Favourite was the FAST STREAM def.
Another hard day, finally completed in 31’48”.
Really liked QUITE SOMETHING and SEXTON. Was stuck for a long time on REACQUIRE. MOOLI and GEMARA nho.
LOI was TREE, eventually parsed.
(Incidentally, I’ve had to change my Times subscription, and my club records have gone, and my name changed compulsorily to rob.rolfe42)
Thanks george and setter.
DNF, defeated by TREE (I invented ERGE, thinking vERGEs).
– Relied on wordplay for GEMARA and MOOLI
– Didn’t fully parse QUITE SOMETHING (thought it was going to be an anagram of ‘left eight men so’ until the Q arrived at the start)
– Biffed GRANDE ARMEE
Thanks glh and setter.
COD Grande Armee
28:52
Just about got there in the end. I relied on the cryptic for the unknowns MOOLI and GEMARA, and my appalling grasp of French almost resulted in ARMIE rather than ARMEE. Otherwise I took a while to get a hold of this entertaining solve so I was just glad to complete the grid.
Thanks to both.
32:40. distinctly better than earlier in the week. could it be something to do with being by myself on the TGV and not having the children screaming at each other in the background? correlation is not causation…
very enjoyable puzzle, from FOI AORTA to LOI SEXTON. Was worried about NHO GEMARA, and had only vaguely heard of GRANDE ARMÉE. DEFERMENT was a very nice clue as it had two nine letter anagram fodder / indicators, neither of which were actually the case.
thanks both!
49 minutes with LOI MARQUE, a word that’s never really reached my vocabulary. COD to PUCKER UP. REACQUIRE gave me QUITE SOMETHING. Pointless gave me NAURU. Not as tough as yesterday, mercifully.Thank you George and setter.
DNF. Got some hard ones, (TREE, GRANDE ARMEE) missed some easy ones (FAST STREAM) Spent way too long on the anagram LEFT EIGHT MEN SO, so missed the Q which might have helped. Also GEMARA and MOOLI were both NHO, and were tough as they intersected.
That EGOT was pretty obscure. I see John Gielgud, Whoopi Goldberg and Elton John are on the list.
COD FAIR TO MIDDLING
26:50 having bunged in PROFIT and TREE to finish without being able to parse either. I should have remembered EGOT as we had it recently, but didn’t so EGO-TRIP remained unparsed too. NHO GEMARA and GRANDE ARMEE is a bit of a stretch for an English crossword. COD to FAIR TO MIDDLING. Thanks George and setter.
For me, definitely harder than the one I blogged yesterday. I had to guess GEMARA and took an age to get the SE corner with MARQUE, MAC and PUCKER although NAURU was a write-in. Still don’t quite understand FAST STREAM although I did write it in. Some good stuff, 45 minutes in two sessions with a thirty minute pause.
24:15 but LOI was a bung-in and hope. There seemed to be a lot of letter deleting going on.
My thanks to glh and setter.
This was too hard for me, DNF, tricky Thursday. Quite a few unsolved, and some more unparsed. But I did enjoy the ones I could unravel such as 6d Grande Armee. It took a while to parse! Then there were ones such as 13a Tree where I thought of the answer, parsed it, and decided it was too easy to be right. With a crosser it would have gone in, but. NHO 7d Mooli. 18d Ego trip, NHO EGOT. NHO 5a Gemara. I could have sworn I searched for that but missed it. So I must have had a typo on the Cheating Machine; how sad is that?
27.20, the biggest issue being TREE, which for most of my time I had as a confident (and arguably better) CURB, which, although it’s primarily a US spelling, fits both the verges of the road and the cut bits. Terrible clue.
I wasn’t too happy with “male or female” to clue SEX either, but by then I was in rumpy mode. Good work for PROFIT was a bit iffy too.
After yesterday’s QUITE SOMETHING, this one struggled to reach FAIR TO MIDDLING.
Guessed Mooli, but failed Gemara (poor RE), was unable to find Profit, so had credit which messed everything up! Deferment was therefore impossible to get, was using an anagram of desperate which failed badly. Also failed Grande armee, but Enjoyed Aorta, quite something, sexton etc. All in all was pretty good fun, thanks all! Cx
I had to rely on wordplay for the NHO GEMARA and MOOLI, otherwise from WARDSHIP to TREE, over which I dithered for quite a while, in 37:10. Spent ages trying to de-anagramise “left eight men so” until REACQUIRE arrived. Got the RIP saw, but didn’t know EGOT, so relied on definition. APOI, PROFIT and POI DEFERMENT also took ages. Spotted OVER THE MOON as soon as I read the clue. Smiled when DEAR ME surfaced. Thanks setter and George.
Very nice crossword which for the most part I solved quite efficiently by my standards, knowing things like EGOT and GRANDE ARMEE, but then came to a dead stop. I even pressed reveal for DEFERMENT and was immediately horrified by how easy it was. 9ac PROFIT I rejected but it just about works I suppose. I had crop tentatively instead of TREE since cut = crop, but it didn’t parse at all thank goodness. NAURU held me up because I couldn’t remember the name from all my Pointless watching and had Nairu (nigh = immediately …), so MARQUE was only solved when I saw what it really was. 66 minutes, with a few aids, including looking up GEMARA.
19.32
FAIR TO MIDDLING is an expression my family used a lot. Otherwise, the v clear w/p meant this was more up my street than recent travails.
Thanks Setter/George