Another reasonably gentle, enjoyable Wednesday, which took me fifteen minutes and then a few more to make sure I’d parsed everything for the blog. Lewis Carroll’s lesser known works and obscure board games might be a stretch for some, but the wordplay is generous. No hidden words today. I liked “rose water”.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | A large bay or a roomy one? (6) |
| ALCOVE – A, L[arge], COVE = bay. | |
| 4 | Special importance of piano in arrangement of Messiah (8) |
| EMPHASIS – P in (MESSIAH)*. | |
| 10 | Not unusual to secure college fellowship (9) |
| COMMUNION – UNI (college) inside COMMON = not unusual. | |
| 11 | Flap as clumsy oaf falls into lake after lake (5) |
| LAPEL – L[ake], APE, L[ake]. A bit harsh on apes, generally, I thought. | |
| 12 | Resort mail, unwanted mostly (3) |
| SPA – SPA[M]. | |
| 13 | Your position located: success! (5,3,3) |
| THERE YOU ARE – double definition. | |
| 14 | Run through offer that is something players of course want (6) |
| BIRDIE – BID (offer) I.E. (that is), insert R. A golf thing. | |
| 16 | Take the air, on going in to swim (7) |
| BREATHE – BATHE = swim, insert RE = on, about. | |
| 19 | One wise man is heard in long periods (3,4) |
| ICE AGES – I (one), sounds like SAGE IS (wise man is) | |
| 20 | Wrong people close to you are understood (4,2) |
| SINK IN – SIN (wrong), KIN (people close to you). The syntax seemed odd here, but I think it works e.g. “the facts are understood / the facts sink in”. | |
| 22 | Liberal rector opens part of abbey (5,6) |
| POETS CORNER – (RECTOR OPENS)*, as in Westminster Abbey. | |
| 25 | I say “Love” (3) |
| EGO – E.G. (say), O (love). | |
| 26 | One’s holding in stomach around teacher (5) |
| SWAMI – all reversed, I’S (one’s) with MAW inserted. | |
| 27 | At first rub over with brine, not a perfume (4,5) |
| ROSE WATER – R[ub], O[ver], SEA WATER (brine) loses (not) A. | |
| 28 | Regularly ties up thick boxes to distribute (8) |
| DISPENSE – [t]I[e]S[u]P ->ISP, inside DENSE = thick. | |
| 29 | Nastily scornful, like a creature hunted in fits? (6) |
| SNARKY – As a Lewis Carroll aficionado, this was a write-in for me, although I do find The Hunting of the Snark a bit weird. The poem was subtitled An Agony, in eight Fits. It’s worth a go, just for the equally weird illustrations by Henry Holiday. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | What solicitor does: bill charges (6) |
| ACCOST – AC (bill) COST (charges). | |
| 2 | Thoroughly search local, not initially confrontational (9) |
| COMBATIVE – COMB (thoroughly search), [N]ATIVE. | |
| 3 | Boast unit has avoided 50 per cent in tax (5) |
| VAUNT – UN[it] inside VAT (value added tax). | |
| 5 | Kinsmen use boys to run underhand dealings (6,8) |
| MONKEY BUSINESS – (KINSMEN USE BOYS)*. | |
| 6 | Shortly permitted to stuff bird, as there may be a party tonight? (9) |
| HALLOWEEN – ALLOWE[d] inside HEN a bird. | |
| 7 | Seafood I cooked with peas (5) |
| SEPIA – (I PEAS)*. Another name for a cuttlefish, or squid ink. | |
| 8 | Joined and served in the army, having lost heart (8) |
| SOLDERED – SOLDIERED loses its heart, viz. I. | |
| 9 | What might be played in saloon car shared by baseball team? (4,4,6) |
| NINE MENS MORRIS – well, even I know there are nine men in a baseball team, because they have nine innings (inningses?), and a Morris is an old British car marque. It’s a board game for two players, apparently dating back to Roman times, I’ve never tried to play it. | |
| 15 | Gives diet out relating to processing of food (9) |
| DIGESTIVE – (GIVES DIET)*. | |
| 17 | Several months sewing border into canopy (9) |
| TRIMESTER – RIM (border) inside TESTER. A tester is a canopy over a bed. | |
| 18 | Inclined to scorn attitude taken by daughter (8) |
| DISPOSED – DIS (to scorn), POSE (attitude), D[aughter]. | |
| 21 | Ancient city blessed hosts on a regular basis (6) |
| HOURLY – UR inside HOLY. | |
| 23 | One dumped manuscript containing answer papers (5) |
| EXAMS – EX (one dumped), MS (manuscript) insert A for answer. | |
| 24 | Horse circling wide tree (5) |
| ROWAN – W inside ROAN. | |
30 minutes with the last five on NINE MEN’S MORRIS, which I only vaguely remembered from a previous puzzle. Being a mere stripling of 52, I barely remember Morris cars, either, but at least I only needed to know the rough size of a baseball team to choose between NINE and FIVE…
20:08 Similar but different to Matt. I spent the last ten minutes looking at the clue and the checkers until thinking “you know what, NINE MEN’S MORRIS would sort of work except that there’s clearly no such thing”. So I allowed myself the luxury of a google search and blow me down, there it was.
All good otherwise and it helped that POETS CORNER appeared somewhere recently.
Thanks Pip and setter.
I had to cheat for my LOI, never having heard of NINE MEN’S MORRIS—which is in Chambers, though not Collins or Dictionary.com.
11:32. I did much of this at what felt like PB pace then slowed considerably, mostly in the SW corner. Like others I finished with NINE MENS MORRIS which rang a vague bell, though if you’d asked me what it was I’d have probably guessed something to do with Morris Dancing.
Pleased with a sub 30 minute time on this one. Nine Men’s Morris was COD for me, but I didn’t know Sepia could be anything other than the ink and colour and had to look up why Snarky and Tester were justified.
DNF, would never have got NINE MENS MORRIS in a month of TRIMESTERS (did Morris only make saloon cars? Erm no, so I seem to have wasted time wondering where “saloon” came into this). To be fair I’d already biffed an unparsed DISPErSE. SNARKY went in needing all crossers, knowing the book title but not the “fits” reference. One of those where I raced off from the start only to crash and burn approaching the final bend.
Thanks Piquet and setter
I think it’s “played in saloon” for the game and just”Morris” for the car. A lift and separate, I think.
Interesting… my Oxford says a saloon car has no partition between driver & passengers. No other qualification.
My Chambers says a saloon car is enclosed but not an estate or sports car or coupe.
At school the maintenance man had a Morris Minor estate with external polished wooden framework.
At uni a colleague had a Morris Minor; his party trick was to pop the bonnet and start it (without key in ignition) by reversing a diode or fuse or something unlikely.
A taxicab has a partition between pax and driver – does that mean it isn’t a saloon?
I had a 1964 Morris mini (actually it was mum’s) and my party trick was to open the window with a 12″ ruler and hang the wrong keyring on the back of the ignition switch, then hit the big button on the floor that started the engine.
An alternative to hanging the keyring was to pop the bonnet and move the horn live wire to the coil. Then (on later models without the Big Button on the floor) you could press the solenoid override on the starter switch with the same effect. But the horn no longer worked. That worked on Dad’s mini countryman, 1965.
31 minutes with NINE MEN’S MORRIS requiring 5 minutes to itself at the end plus whatever time I’d spent on it whilst solving the rest of the puzzle.
Didn’t know SEPIA as seafood or what ‘fits’ had to do with The Snark.
Quick today but nho sepia as seafood – is it? Anyone ever eaten a cuttlefish? I haven’t.
Otoh, I have played nine men’s morris, in my long ago youth. And learnt to drive on a Morris.
I’ve eaten cuttlefish – it is called squid in all the restaurants I wot of. Often cooked in its own ink or sepia. OTOH the bone part that parrots sharpen their beaks on is always called cuttlefish.
Oh, OK, I have always thought of them as separate. Which technically they are, apparently, though not to a restaurateur perhaps..
They are different and they are sold as different in Spain – calamares or sepia. But we tend only to sell calamari, or squid, in the UK.
Ah, sorry about that; they are not exactly the same thing as you both point out.
It is also true that the fish we eat is often described using terms the marine biologist would contest, but that doesn’t excuse my misinformation.
Don’t beat yourself up.. I think we’ve both learnt something today 🙂
No problems with this. I always thought MAW was the mouth/gullet but learnt today that it can mean stomach as well.
Me too!
The ancient game defeated me, and I gave up at about 40. Thanks to pk for explaining that along with SEPIA, DISPOSED and what a tester was. When I lived in London in the 70s my first car was a 1964 ex-Sainsbury’s Morris van (so saloon was no help here). A ’64 wagon, an oldie but not so much a goodie as a heap of…
From She Belongs To Me:
Bow down to her on Sunday, salute her when her birthday comes
Bow down to her on Sunday, salute her when her birthday comes
For HALLOWEEN give her a trumpet and for Christmas, buy her a drum
Oh dear. Hubris. First error resulting from carelessness: misread baseball for basketball and reduced the morris men to five in consequence. Second, biffing DiSPERSED after the briefest scan of the clue. Always disliked SNARKY whenever I have come across the word, very ugly, would be sorry to see it gain currency here. My uncle had some connection to a Morris dealership and I remember journeys to Wales in a succession of Oxfords. Solid, sensible saloons.
Thanks as ever to setter and piquet.
41 minutes with LOI NINE MENS MORRIS, which I assumed was one of the Cloggies’ routines.. I wasn’t sure how many were in a baseball team but the crossers said it was five or nine and five didn’t seem enough. We had a Morris 8 series E as a family, but to call it a saloon would be pushing it. Which we quite often had to. Snarky was penultimate, the crossers just about giving me the idea. COD to THERE YOU ARE. Good puzzle but hard to finish. Thank you Pip and setter.
33:21 Another good solve, no aids.
Knew Nine Men’s Morris, had a set as a kid. Sort of like a very simple Go.
Never heard MAW for Stomach, I thought it was just mouth.
Almost put in DISPERSE.
DNF, defeated by the unknown NINE MENS MORRIS – I got as far as thinking the first word would be NINE based on how many players there are in a baseball team, but no further.
– Didn’t know that maw means stomach but remembered SWAMI
– Also didn’t understand the ‘fits’ part of SNARKY
– SEPIA went in with a shrug as I didn’t know the seafood meaning
– Didn’t know tester as a canopy, but TRIMESTER had to be
Thanks piquet and setter.
COD Poets Corner
16:25 for a middle-of-the-road solve relative to my target of 15′. Possibly sped a bit by what I believe are two clues that appeared recently in weekend puzzles (maybe prize so I won’t mention). No crazy vocab with the large exception (for me) of NINE MENS MORRIS, which I enjoyed working out from wordplay. Great to see a baseball appearance! SEPIA also NHO as seafood, only as a colour (and may have dimly believed it had something to do with squid ink). Poets’ Corner not to be confused with Speakers’ Corner, as nobody here probably needs to be reminded.
Thanks piquet and setter!
[edit: by the way, sorry if I’m being an idiot here, but between Gerry Murphy’s comment and piquet’s non-inclusion of the ‘in saloon’ part in the def – I assumed it was a pub game played in pub saloons, and hence part of the def. Not the case?]
That’s right. Lift and separate.
Apologies, entered my comment above before I saw yours.
Cheers!
54 minutes. Another slow one with the NHO and unlikely looking NINE MENS MORRIS being my excuse this time; like galspray I thought it just couldn’t be and the lack of pink squares after submitting was a surprise. At least I (just) remembered the relevant sense of SEPIA and as for some others changed DISPERSE to DISPENSE when I took the trouble to look at the parsing.
I didn’t get it straight away but COD to THERE YOU ARE.
27 minutes for all but NINE MENS MORRIS. Spent ten minutes on it before hitting reveal. I could not even come up with a good guess. Something completely new to me, even a Google on the subject didn’t ring any bells. Turns out I also had GNARLY instead of SNARKY, my substandard literature knowledge letting me down again.
SWAMI also new to me but assembled it from the wordplay.
Liked the POETS CORNER anagram
Thanks blogger and setter.
Where is “reveal” now? Thanks in advance.
I use the Crosswordclub site which is still the same. I checked on the iPhone app and it is on the drop down menu when you click the tick symbol in the top right corner. It maybe different on other devices.
Thank you!
Knew NINE MEN’S MORRIS as one of those wooden games you can buy in knickknack or NT shops. Never played it though.
Delayed in NW having banged in ‘bridge’ (for BIRDIE) without considering the whole clue.
Otherwise fine, a few Error 500s apart.
17’03”, thanks pip and setter.
Fell at the last with unknown NINE MENS MORRIS beating me finally. Stared at it for an age and figured it is likely to start with five or nine, but still couldn’t get it. At least I now know how many players there are in a baseball team! Shame because I enjoyed the rest.
I liked BIRDIE, hope I get one tomorrow!
Thanks pip and setter.
33 mins about 10 of which on the NHO board game having to guess the no. of players and dimly remember cars from childhood. “Saloon” was unnecessarily mean. Played in a Saloon? Saloon car on a train while we are in America? Imagine how grumpy I’d have been if I’d had a typo after all that.
On a more positive note I enjoyed the rest of it, esp SNARKY and THERE YOU ARE. Thanks setter and piquet.
From other comments it appears it is “played in saloon”
DNF after 45 minutes, 25 of which were battling with 9dn. I got as far as FIVE MENS (should have thought a baseball team was probably more than that!) but could not get MORRIS, though with hindsight it was guessable. I was thinking of five card stud and suchlike. NHO nine mens morris, of course.
Thanks as always setter and blogger
16:42 with nearly half of that spent on SNARKY and NINE MENS MORRIS, both easy if you know them. I guessed SNARKY from the checkers and the game must have been lurking in the dusty recesses of my brain somewhere.
15.20. My Morris was a slightly posher 1300, still with an astonishing appetite for rust and with an increasingly dodgy gearbox. It got stolen from Bristol’s counts louse carpark on the eve of the Birmingham pub bombings, whence it was retrieved the next day. Probably just a coincidence, but the TWOCer did well to get it that far.
The rest of this crossword was amusing enough, SNARKY allowing that brief frisson of knowing enough to understand why “fits”. Last in was SINK IN, mostly because I couldn’t get SING IT out of the way. DISPERSE was only narrowly avoided.
1d had to be ACCOSTS didn’t it? Why didn’t that fit?
13:17
Surprised that so many seem not to have known/remembered NINE MEN’S MORRIS – thought if you were of a certain age, you would remember the board (though just as easy on paper) – bunged in from numeration. That one alone gave plenty of useful letters.
I didn’t know the SNARK/fits reference – I recall the poem and that Mike Batt staged a concert/play out of it (starring John Hurt, Roger Daltrey, Justin Hayward, Deniece Williams, Captain Sensible, Julian Lennon, Midge Ure, and Billy Connolly, with Batt conducting the London Symphony Orchestra) – nor that SEPIA was anything more than squid ink.
Thanks P and setter
Didn’t get Nine Men’s Morris – I even had ‘nine men’s’ written in, but couldn’t think of a sport that fit the last word. Otherwise a nice puzzle
Thank you piquet and setter.
Quite easy I thought.
26a Swami. Like sawbill and Merlin DNK this meaning of Maw; I only knew the mouth part.
29a Snarky. Was a bit surprised to meet this word, very slangy IMO.
1d Accost. I wondered if any legal eagles had ever been prosecuted for soliciting….
5d Monkey business. Does this setter have something against primates (see 11a?)
7d Sepia. Def 4 in Wiktionary says: “(archaic, countable) A cuttlefish. [from 16th c.]” So a slight MER.
9d Nine Mens Morris HHO but didn’t know what it was until I looked it up. I too thought it might have something to do with the Cloggies (an everyday story of dancing folk.) DNK there are 9 people in a baseball team so that made it a bit slow for me.
From ALCOVE to DISPENSE in 18:47. I biffed DISPERSE from checkers, then parsed the clue properly and changed the R to an N. Knew the Snark, had heard of the game (and have had various Morris cars and vans, in fact I learned to drive in an ex GPO Morris 36cwt light diesel with no synchromesh). SEPIA as seafood was unknown, but the alternative arrangements of the letters were discarded. A biffed PIERCE at 14a held up DIGESTIVE for a while. Thanks setter and Pip.
20 mins DNF
Rarely moan but really didn’t like NINE MENS MORRIS. There are a lot of cars and (to be fair slightly fewer) things that could relate to baseball. Even so, my impression is that you either knew the answer so in it went; or you didn’t and weren’t able to get it from the w/p.
Otherwise liked it particularly the neat EGO
I did actually get this from wordplay (sorry!) but I agree with your comment, particularly as MORRIS is not a current brand of saloons and has not been for forty years! Some indication of this would have been a bit fairer.
I did A Midsummer Night’s Dream for O level and hated it, but one of the few things I remember is “The Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud” so that clue was no problem. Where I spent my last few minutes until resorting to an electronic filler was in the HOURLY clue, where I was fixated on ‘on a regular basis’ being part of the wordplay and indicating odd letters or similar. 40 minutes.
Titania’s complaints about the weather ( including the remark about the Nine Men’s Morris) suggest that it is an outdoor game.