We haven’t had many puzzles from Juji, who appears in the “gentle/medium” bracket of the setters’ difficulty league. I found this one a stiffish test, though, and it pushed me well over average at 12:35. A couple of cracking hiddens, quite a few “remove the [first/last] [central] letters” devices, and some ingenious definitions made this a thoroughly enjoyable work-out; hope you enjoyed it too.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Not very great shopping centre is in outskirts of Slough (8) |
| SMALLISH – MALL [shopping centre] + IS [is] inside [in] SH [outskirts of Slough]. I didn’t find that easy at all, thinking that “shopping centre” was going to be PP or OPPI, and needed checkers. | |
| 5 | Develop good argument (4) |
| GROW – G [good] + ROW [argument]. | |
| 8 | Run no further, regularly missing path (5) |
| ROUTE – R [run] + every other letter [regularly missing] of “no further”. | |
| 9 | Tight-fitting garment was first donned by old sailor (7) |
| LEOTARD – LED [was first] going outside [donned by] O [old] TAR [sailor]. Easier to solve than parse! | |
| 11 | Finally restore the ancient organ (3) |
| EYE – E [finally restore] + YE [the ancient, i.e. an outdated form of “the”]. | |
| 12 | So entertained by act here for evening (9) |
| THEREFORE – this is the first of two very good hiddens, inside [entertained by] “act here for evening”. Bravo! | |
| 13 | Cheers monarch is receiving (6) |
| TAKING – TA [cheers] + KING [monarch]. Not the most obvious of synonyms but well supported by the usual sources – Collins e.g. gives for “take” the following: “to receive or accept into a relationship with oneself”; “to receive or obtain by regular payment”; “to receive or react to in a specified way”; “to receive into the body” and others. | |
| 15 | Had success in test — that’s given (6) |
| PASSED – double definition. I suppose something that’s “passed” is “given”. | |
| 18 | Noted date suspect set off (9) |
| DETONATED – anagram [suspect] of “noted date”. | |
| 19 | Strike old boy back with power (3) |
| BOP – “old boy” is OB, reverse it [back] and add P for “power”. | |
| 20 | I’m surprised, overwhelmed by expenditure for presenting duo (2-5) |
| CO-HOSTS – OH [I’m surprised] inside [overwhelmed by] COSTS [expenditure]. There are lots of little phrases for “I’m surprised” (my, gosh, gee, coo, wow, OMG etc) and I couldn’t conjure up “costs” either, so I waited for checkers. | |
| 21 | One dodging certain fare, say, aboard transport (5) |
| VEGAN -EG [say] inside [aboard] VAN [transport]. Very good definition, COD from me! But no cod for the vegan, natch. | |
| 22 | Go astray by end of corporate function (4) |
| SINE – SIN [go astray] + E [end of corporate]. “A function that in a circle centred at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system is the ratio of the ordinate of a point on the circumference to the radius of the circle”. In case you’d forgotten. I just used to press the button on my calculator. | |
| 23 | Cook reposes with second coffee (8) |
| ESPRESSO – anagram [cook] of “reposes” + S [second]. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Snake enters dilapidated housing quietly (7) |
| SERPENT – anagram [dilapidated] of “enters” containing [housing] P [quietly, musical notation]. | |
| 2 | Delight American showed in games boundlessly (5) |
| AMUSE – American is A, obviously, following our debate last week. Except today it isn’t – it’s US, going inside [showed in] AME [games boundlessly, i.e. “games” without its first and last letters]. | |
| 3 | Officers fib, you said, before number of soldiers (11) |
| LIEUTENANTS – LIE [fib] + U [you said] in front of [before] TEN ANTS [number of soldiers]. Excellent. | |
| 4 | I must replace area of tray made of metal (6) |
| SILVER – my LOI. I could see that we were supposed to substitute an I for an A [I must replace area] in a word meaning “tray” but I couldn’t think of “salver” until I had the checkers. | |
| 6 | Concerned about a child’s motives (7) |
| REASONS – RE [about] + A [a] + SONS [child’s, silent apostrophe]. | |
| 7 | Unite opposing sides in graduate club (5) |
| WEDGE – WED [unite] + GE [opposing sides in graduate]. “Golf: a club with a face angle of more than 50°, used for bunker shots (sand wedge) or pitch shots (pitching wedge)”. This gave me no end of trouble because I had the definition at the wrong end and was working on the basis of some combination of bridge opponents/the usual abbreviations for “graduate”/C for club. An impressive forest of the wrong trees to bark up. | |
| 10 | Six deliveries a vendor arranged repeatedly (4,3,4) |
| OVER AND OVER – OVER [six deliveries, cricket] + an anagram [arranged] of “a vendor”. | |
| 14 | Equipment that man installed in empty common room (7) |
| KITCHEN – KIT [equipment] + HE [that man] going inside [installed in] CN [empty common, i.e. C |
|
| 16 | Cursorily read old papers in retirement, consuming some beer (3,4) |
| DIP INTO – “old” is O; “papers” is ID (worth remembering that one, because it comes up quite a bit). Reverse those elements [in retirement] and you have DIO. Then insert [consuming] PINT [some beer]. | |
| 17 | Equilibrium not entirely lost as I swerved (6) |
| STASIS – our second excellent hidden, inside “lost as I swerved”. I was fooled into thinking that this was an anagram [swerved] of “los” [not entirely lost] and “as I”. Done like a kipper! | |
| 18 | Stink after gutting fish all around harbourside (5) |
| DOCKS – talking of kippers … SK = “stink after gutting”, i.e. S |
|
| 19 | Upset, cry about conclusions of you being fake (5) |
| BOGUS – another reversal clue, indicated by “upset” (this being down clue). SOB [cry] goes around [about] U and G [conclusions of you being], all reversed. | |
Biffed ROUTE & SERPENT, parsed post-submission. THEREFORE was fairly transparent; at least, I spotted it immediately, which seldom happens. 7:51
I thought this was a classy and intelligent crossword with some cracking clues (eg LEOTARD, WEDGE, VEGAN, DIP INTO) and a couple of exceptional hiddens which I actually got. 10.40 for me which I thought was pretty good for an enjoyably challenging puzzle. Thanks Juji and Templar.
5:08 with more biffs than usual. In fact this was one of those days where the biffage rate was too high for comfort – I was fully expecting a pink square or two. SILVER was one of the few harder wordplays which I parsed fully at the time, no doubt due to having pondered the Silver Solver Salver and the improbability of ever meeting the conditions for one yesterday. Thanks Templar and Juji.
I managed to solve this one, but the answers did not come quickly. There were some write-in answers to get started, but the clues to docks, wedge, and silver were pretty tough. I didn’t even bother parsing serpent – that has to be it!
Time: 10:59
13 minutes, so a bit on the slow side, but the clues were mostly fine. My only MER was over ‘given / PASSED’ at 15ac which I see our blogger also had some doubts about. It’s more than week now since I solved a QC within 10 minutes, including two that were 20+.
Thought I’d followed the instuctions for SILVER but ‘salver’ still seems to have made it into the grid, so a pink square. I thought I’d saved myself by spotting THEREFORE having previously used the ‘so’ in the clue to justify in ‘threesome’ – though I wasn’t 100% on why that was an evening or where all the other letters came from. I worked hard to LIEUTENANTS and DOCKS. Good one! My failure took the best part of 13 minutes – I’d been pleased with myself on submiting.
13:51 for an enjoyable tussle. FOI 1ac SMALLISH, a good one, followed by lots more good ones. I was OK with passed/given; if you pass the port you give it to the chap next to you, I believe. I liked WEDGE, KITCHEN, BOGUS… COD VEGAN, WOD BOP. Thanks to Juji and Templar
17 minutes. A good QC which took longer than it should have, mainly because the hiddens stayed hidden for too long. LEOTARD and WEDGE, for which I had the same problems as Templar, also took some working out and in the end I was just happy to have avoided the SCC.
COD to THEREFORE.
Thanks to Templar and Juji
I must have been on that elusive wavelength because I found this to be of average difficulty.
My biggest hold up was with the parsing of WEDGE where I wanted west and east to be opposing sides and then I couldn’t make head or tail of what ‘edg’ was doing.
Started with SMALLISH and finished with ROUTE in 7.24 with COD to VEGAN.
Thanks to Templar and Juji
17:24 today. Serpent co-hosts route to dock explains why I found this one difficult to navigate and ended up in the drink.
Great clues, lovely surfaces excellent blog.
Ta T&J
11:26 for the solve. Bit of a muddled solve as immediately saw SMALL- but couldn’t figure out how an H on the end would make a word. So then tabbed onto GROW and started trying to do the Downs.
It’s a puzzle where I began to bif things as the checkers went in – SERPENT, LIEUTENANTS, DOCKS – without parsing them. But also some like OVER-AND-OVER and SILVER where I did build the answer. The clarity of the instructions for SILVER are excellent.
LOI was WEDGE which despite all my years of playing golf didn’t spring to mind after seeing club and thinking of driver, irons, putter, niblick … sigh.
COD to VEGAN. And two hiddens covering four words although THEREFORE was the slightly more impressive.
Thanks to Templar and Juji
12.59 – definitely a lot of evacuations. LOI and COD the very well disguised THEREFORE. Thanks setter and Templar.
Doing very well until breeze blocked by DOCKS, SINE.
Missed that THEREFORE was a hidden until the blog – took too long to parse WEDGE –
COD LIEUTENANTS, runner up OVER AND OVER.
Thank you Juji and Templar
6:00. Nice puzzle. I took a little while at the end to get DOCKS having stupidly persisted in trying to get DECKS work and earlier tried SMARTISH for 1A. I need more coffee! I liked VEGAN best. Thanks Juji and Templar.
18 mins…
Very enjoyable puzzle with some excellent clues that took a bit of unravelling to parse. Didn’t get much in the top half on the first pass, but luckily it got slightly easier further down the grid. For a while, I thought 18dn “Docks” had something to do with removing letters from “Haddock”.
FOI – 13ac “Taking”
LOI – 18dn “Docks”
COD – 21ac “Vegan”
Thanks as usual!
I found this very tricky, taking 17:04 for the solve. It was at least all green, but not all parsed as I did not see how DOCKS worked, and biffed THEREFORE once I had all the checkers. A very good hidden!
I’m not sure where you got the definition for Sine from, Templar! I used to consider myself a mathematician (50 years ago I even got an MA in the subject) and I had to think hard what it was saying. A classic case of “you need to know the answer to have any chance of understanding the explanation”.
Many thanks for the blog.
I think that it is definition b from Collins. I too needed to think hard before convincing myself that it is in fact equivalent to the usual definition of opposite over hypotenuse, which Collins has as definition a.
Correct – rather childishly, I opted for definition b because of its obscurity!
🤣🤣🤣
As the saying goes, “Some People Have Curly Black Hair Through Perpetual Brushing”. Sine = Perpendicular/Hypotenuse, Cosine = Base/Hypotenuse, Tangent = Perpendicular/Base. Learnt at my mother’s knee 70+ years ago and saw me through many an exam.
We were taught the mythical island of Sohcahtoa. Sine: opposite over hypotenuse; Cosine: adjacent over… etc. That’s stuck with me since my teens.
I’m an outlier, I like the circle def best! Just visually easier for me, at least if you use a unit circle.
10:38
A fast start, then held up by the NE corner. With WEDGE I fell into exactly the same traps as Templar. I needed all the checkers before I finally saw the hidden THEREFORE. COD to DOCKS.
Thanks Templar and Juji
Must have been in the groove for this one. From SMALLISH to STASIS in 6:21. Only DOCKS held me up for any length of time. Thanks Juji and Templar.
As I started to read the introduction to Templar’s customarily entertaining blog, I was thinking Hiddens, what hiddens? . . . which neatly explains why I couldn’t parse two of the answers today. I would still have missed out on a sub-20, but would hopefully have been a fair bit closer than the 24mins it took to work through Juji’s teasers, especially as Smallish and Grow were top line write-ins. After that, no real hold ups, though the parsing of Wedge took some time to see, as did that of Docks. CoD, in quite a strong field, to Kitchen for the smooth surface.
My thanks to Juji and Templar. Invariant
I thought this was a really excellent puzzle with some clever clueing, so well done Juji. I finished outside target at 10.58, which surprised me a little as I felt it was faster than that, but the clock doesn’t lie! As usual I failed to spot the hidden in THEREFORE before I eventually found it after writing in the answer. DOCKS I didn’t manage to parse before I stopped the clock, but it had to be the answer so I was happy enough. It still took me the best part of a minute post finish before I saw how it worked.
6:30
Didn’t parse either LOI THEREFORE or DOCKS whilst in flight, the latter being my favourite clue once I realised how it worked. I had similar thoughts to others about given = PASSED, but justified it early on, using checkers to confirm (as far as it is possible to do so).
Thanks Templar and Juji
34:23
The first three crossers went straight in followed by another four or so. Thought I was going to do well – oh dear.
I was going to argue that WEDGE isn’t a club but then read Templar’s blog, d’oh!
Took a long time to see the unparsed DOCKS which gave me SINE. Took way too long to see THEREFORE.
For some strange reason I read 16d as (2,5) and had – -/PINTO thinking it was something I’d NHO.
Penny dropped which revealed LOI PASSED.
(I’m going to put it down to my cold! 😉)
COD: VEGAN
Thanks to Juji and Templar
Thanks to Templar I now understand why various parts of my completed grid actually work. Saw STASIS but THEREFORE went in with a bit of a shrug. WEDGE had to be but I was trying to get some kind of West/East parsing to work, but had to accept that the club was enough to let me move on. DOCKS I did parse, but only after a lot of head scratching.
A challenging and enjoyable puzzle, lots of clever stuff.
My thanks to (NHO) Juji and Templar. I found it very clever and so took longer than usual, but all gettable.
10d Over and over. I got lost here and thought that the second over was hinted at somehow, forgetting we had already been given 6 deliveries. DOH!
18d Docks. Thought of that, partially parsed, moved on, then found just now I had left it blank. Grrr!
Another friendly one from Juji, to whom thanks for an enjoyable puzzle. All went in steadily, LOI SINE. Couldn’t quite see club = WEDGE, or how DOCKS worked, so thank you, Templar.
I found this rather challenging, resorting to a few biffs and minutes spent pondering before seeing the light. CO-HOSTS, WEDGE, SINE, DOCKS the main culprits.
A definite DNF. Many biffed. Not on the wavelength at all.
Not a good week for me so far.
Missed the hidden yet again.
Thanks for the very useful blog.
19:50, but with one pink square : SALVER for SILVER. I had wondered if a NACKEL was a type of tray.
I thought “opposing sides” was going to be WE, then HOL (house of lords) for “graduate club” (not a bad definition of the Upper House), for WHOLE=unite.
LOI the somewhat easy PASSED.
21 minutes, so a good day for me. Slightly miffed that I didn’t escape from the SCC …. but only slightly.
My first three in, SMALLISH, GROW and SERPENT gave me eight starting letters – an opportunity not to be missed. Most of the top half then went in quickly, but the bottom half put up more resistance. DIP INTO was my LOI.
Many thanks to Templar and Juji.
8.02
Slow start but biffage quotient increased with a few checkers. Liked SMALLISH VEGAN and DOCKS.
Thanks Templar/Juji