My first blog since a bunch of geeks decided to mess up the Times puzzles just for the hell of it The Times introduced its wonderful new format for the puzzles section, with the unfortunate side-effect that our trusty blogging template doesn’t work any more. Some bloggers seem to have found ways round this but I’m not technically adept and so I’ve had to do it manually, which has been rather time-consuming; please forgive resulting rough edges. I hope it’s clear enough. Definitions are underlined in bold as usual.
Nice puzzle from Mara. Nine full or partial anagrams; some very neat surfaces; a few gimmes. I don’t have a time, though – once I started solving in the new format I also started worrying about how I was going to produce the blog, and so while solving started messing around with the PDF version and other things I won’t bore you with, then dipping back in and out of the puzzle. I’d say slightly on the easy side of average.
Across
8 Tell on nobleman (7) – RECOUNT RE [on] + COUNT [nobleman].
9 It’s sweet, sweetie! (5) – HONEY Looking for a term of endearment which could also be described as something “sweet” I hesitated between “honey” and “sugar” and so solved 7d in order to get the last letter.
10 Do very little about river debris (5) – DROSS DOSS [do very little] going round [about] R [river]. I can’t find a dictionary which uses the actual word “debris” when defining “dross”, but they all contain some variant on “rubbish” or “refuse” so I guess that’s close enough. I needed the checkers, though. DROSS originated as a word for the scum formed on molten metal.
11 Fast Show (7) – EXPRESS Double definition. You either see a DD straight away or you draw a blank and wait for checkers; the latter applied here for me.
12 International student ultimately failed maths etc (4,5) – TEST MATCH Anagram [failed] of “maths etc” with T [student ultimately].
14 Rubbish, this and that originally (3) – TAT First letters [originally] of “this and that”.
16 Mug in short dress (3) – ROB Mugging is one form of robbery; others are available. The wordplay is “robe” [dress – probably best understood as the verb “to robe/dress”] without its last letter [short].
18 Source of money in construction of china pots (9) – CASHPOINT Anagram [construction] of “china pots”.
21 Are bus tours covering large country? (7) – BELARUS Anagram [tours, i.e. “moves around”] of “are bus” around [covering] L [large].
22 Sent back wine and one cold drink (5) – CIDER RED for “wine”; I for “one”; C for “cold”. Reverse it all [sent back]. Don’t do what I did and think it’s only “wine” that’s reversed, then stare at DERIC and wonder what sort of drink that is.
23 Spotless vessel into which French article is put (5) – CLEAN CAN [vessel] with LE inside it [into which French article is put]. Not POUNT then.
24 Country where a note is played (7) – ESTONIA Anagram [played] of “a note is”.
Down
1 Lender’s case for investment breaking new record (8) – CREDITOR “Case of investment” means IT (being the first and last letters of “investment”). That goes inside [breaking] an anagram of “record” [new record]. I think that this should have been clued as a definition by example, since a CREDITOR is simply a person or entity to whom money is owed: they might be a “lender”, therefore, but they might equally be a supplier of goods or services.
2 A burden, clue unlike this? (6) – ACROSS We all have our crosses/burdens to bear. It’s a down clue, not an across clue, geddit?
3 Outbuildings shut when dilapidated (4) – HUTS Anagram [dilapidated] of “shut”. They don’t get much easier than that, folks.
4 Fancy treats stopped (2,4) – AT REST A slightly tougher anagram [fancy] of “treats”.
5 Butcher and hack get a move on! (4,4) – CHOP CHOP “Butcher” is chop, “hack” is chop.
6 Eat whimsically, by the sound of it? (6) – INGEST Aural wordplay [by the sound of it] with “in jest” [whimsically].
7 Buds on potatoes — might these be peeled? (4) – EYES Definition with a cryptic hint (“keep your eyes peeled”).
13 Coat on a compound of iron in tubes (8) – MACARONI MAC [coat] + A [on a] + an anagram [compound] of iron. Ah, that sort of tube. A very satisfying solve and COD from me.
15 Trail out after disruption in class (8) – TUTORIAL Anagram [after disruption] of “trail out”.
17 Bovine male and alien shot (6) – BULLET BULL [bovine male] + ET [alien]. “Bullet” is one of the many meanings of “shot”, as in “not worth powder and shot”.
19 Nurse of some patients is terrified (6) – SISTER Hidden [some] inside “patients is terrified“. Nurses were originally called “sister” because they were nuns; the term has been phased out in Scotland but still seems to be used in England.
20 I eat after I order, primarily (6) – IODINE Oh the sneaky, sneaky trick of using a symbol from the periodic table as a definition; see also “He” cluing “helium”. You rotter, Mara. DINE is “eat”; that comes after I [I] and O [order primarily].
21 Bill, male (4) – BUCK Double definition. My LOI, since although BUCK for “male” came to mind pretty quickly, I couldn’t see why it also meant “bill”. Eventually I bethought myself of a dollar bill.
22 Lovely slice, last of cake (4) – CUTE CUT [slice] + E [last of cake].
I did not find this easy, even though as an experienced solver I am wise to the iodine trick. I couldn’t see the obvious Belarus and ingest for quite a while, and bullet and eyes should have come quicker.
Bloggers should rest assured that the tech team here at TftT is working on the problem raised by the new format.
Time: 10:00
The Seventh Cavalry to the rescue!
I positively detest the new format on tablet presumably same on iPhone.
Actually the puzzle was quite irritating.
Can the tech team also increase the size of the puzzle, please, so that the full width can be viewed on mobile phone screens?
4:59. I agree that ‘tubes’ was a good def for MACARONI. No parsing difficulties today except that I briefly had BULL for BUCK, thinking of a papal bull. But the checker put paid to that. Thanks all.
11.33. I negotiated IODINE and eventually saw how bill = BUCK, but didn’t know doss for do very little. I’m sure there were sound reasons for reformatting everything but I’m struggling to see what we’ve gained. Thanks to Mara and Templar.
Well, I’m never going to be allowed back into Somerset after having to leave CIDER to the end. In my defence my time in the county’s drinks industry centred on perry. The ‘champagne sparkling’ one from Shepton Mallet. But it was BUCK that I had to leave to the very end, wondering if ‘the buck stops here’ might refer to payment and that’s what bills demand. Didn’t convince me either but in it went. Acrosses were hard – nothing for me until TAT at 14a, that’s five clues tackled and passed over. Ended up with four on the first pass. Good one and a good blog too, thanks for doing it manually – CIDER came via ‘deric’ for me too. All green in 14.56.
I found this rather tricky but enjoyable none the less. Special thanks to Templar for struggling with the new format to produce an excellent blog! 16.01
14 minutes. There were three clues I needed to return to after the clock had stopped to clarify parsing or definition. Bill / BUCK was one, and I’m still not entirely convinced by it since the explanation in the blog would involve one if not two unsignalled Americanisms.
Buck for male deer is 💯 not an Americanism: both male fallow and male roe are called “bucks” in Britain. And the males of other animals too: Collins lists “goat, hare, kangaroo, rabbit, and reindeer”.
Bill for buck is obviously transatlantic and is marked in Collins British section as such – “ 8. US and Canadian a piece of paper money; note”.
Apologies for not expressing my thoughts clearly. I meant ‘bill’ as definition and ‘buck’ as answer both refer to matters American. No query about ‘male / buck”. I hadn’t checked what the dictionary entries are, but if Collins sees fit to mention the US and Canada in their definition it doesn’t seem unreasonable to hope that the setter might have hinted at it too.
Oh I see, sorry. Yes, a hint would have been nice! But I thought it was fair enough.
Why do people complain about Americanisms when it comes to things like bill/buck.
“That’ll be 5 Bills/Bucks”. No problem.
Then they fail to mention the Eurocentric “Count” for nobleman?
We don’t have Counts in the UK.
Fine if you’re in America, but I have never referred to bank notes as bills in my life. As for Counts, we have Countesses and the terminology is all part of European culture anyway. The UK was in Europe the last time I looked.
Thank you, Jack – I completely agree. With a US indicator it would be fair game.
I agree.
Slower than the blog suggests we should have been. ‘Honey? Cute? Buck? -flavour of other side of the pond?
DNF with IODINE …. new to us but we will not be caught again! And thank you for the He(lium) pointer.
As for the new format? From where we sit, have to say, thus far, for us only pain not gain- we thought we were perhaps alone in that. Relieved to hear others find it a little tricky, too.
So – enjoyable puzzle, great blog. COD MACARONI
Watch out for As, too: arsenic.
Thank you! : )
Unlike Templar I thought this was anything but on the easy side of average.
I struggled from the off with only TAT to show from my first pass of the across clues. If I’d started on the down clues or perhaps dodged around the grid I may have quickened up, but in general I thought it was tough. My time of 12.39 was a lot better than I thought it was going to be at one time, but in fairness to the setter all clues are gettable and pretty well constructed I would say.
Nicely pitched from Mara. All green in 8.24. LOI was IODINE – what else could it be. Persevered with the parsing prior to submission and then the penny dropped.
Cheers for blog Templar.
9:27. Not too many problems and would have been quicker if CREDITOR hadn’t held me up as LOI. Like Lindsay, DOSS as a verb was new to me. I liked MACARONI for ‘tubes’ too.
Thanks to Templar for taking the trouble to publish the blog despite the loss of the template and to Mara
I made swift progress through this until getting bogged down in the SE corner for no apparent reason. I’ve seen the I/IODINE thing before but it still took me an age before the penny dropped and got hit by an attack of anagram blindness (missed the fact it was one) for TUTORIAL.
Started with RECOUNT and finished with IODINE in a bang average 8.17 with COD to MACARONI.
Thanks to Mara for the enjoyable puzzle and Templar for battling through the technical issues to produce an excellent blog.
33:48 (average: 37, target: 34) but with one pink square today.
I found this to be quite a strange puzzle. The answers came in fits and starts and I felt on shaky ground the whole time. I was always second guessing myself and not quite able to commit to answers or wordplay in many cases. I felt thoroughly misdirected and smiled a lot as I resolved the difficulties.
I’d seen IODINE before in a comment here on one of the blogs where someone was pointing out some cryptic one letter synonyms so that came eventually. Can’t find that now, but many thanks to the commenter. I did think it might have been Templar themself.
I kept going back to 1D throughout the whole puzzle only to find that I’d put ACCOUNT instead of RECOUNT (probably because we had the former on Saturday). 1D was my LOI.
My pink square was, predictably, in INGEST where I had just failed to properly process both the clue and the spelling leaving the J there. Annoyingly that was one of the few which I got as soon as I looked at the clue.
Thanks Templar for the fine blog and for putting up with the difficulties of the new format and thanks to Mara for what I thought was a quite tricky but fair QC puzzle.
Enjoyable, though I was held up by IODINE (clever) and AT REST. 18.45.
Pi ❤️
Is 9A one of the worst clues of all time? Somehow both easy and ambiguous, and its not really a double definition since there is so much overlap between the 2.
Well, I put in SUGAR initially so there was an ambiguity that only emerged later. I liked the clue.
I did too.
I enjoyed this, finishing in 10:56, but with no idea at all about how the clue for IODINE worked. I shall remember that trick of element symbols; as well as I for Iodine there are around 10 other 1-letter ones and dozens of usable 2-letter ones to go with the standard crossword fare of Au/gold, Ag/silver and Cu/copper. I hope setters don’t take this too far though; for example Mo is a useful pair of letters but cluing it as Molybdenum would be a toughie!
That apart, no real hold-ups, though I was slow to realised that “compound of” in MACARONI was an anagram indicator. I’m sure others are familiar with it but it was new to me.
Many thanks Templar for the blog and I share your dismay that the blogging template is a victim of the “new and improved” formatting. Hopefully only temporarily though, as Vinyl1 indicates – good news indeed if so.
From Independent cryptic 11,452 by Tees on 26/06/2023:
Mo’s meaning – at first – men doubly misinterpreted (10)
That, right there, is one I would never have got
I enjoyed this so thanks Mara and Templar. Lots to enjoy certainly. I’m not keen though on clues that require US understanding. I’m subscribing to the UK not the NY Times!
Hear, hear!
A very slow start for me. I managed a bit more speed given the (few) ‘sitters’ and found the anagrams easy. I was sure I was heading for a 20+ time and yet the NW suddenly opened and I filled in the remaining gaps to finish in 18.50.
I join the posters who had a problem with IODINE – it came to mind quickly for me but it was my last one in because I couldn’t parse it. Thanks, Templar, for showing me the way. A sneaky clue and a dodge that I hope will lodge in my memory.
COD MACARONI.
Thanks, both.
I enjoyed your opening, Templar. So many things these days are changed just for the sake of change, it seems. The downsides can outweigh the benefits for old farts like me. I even still use the ‘Classic’ format for The Times online before keeping updated during the day with the newer alternative.
16:55 for the solve. Should have been about five mins faster but had bunged in an unparsed acCOUNT which blocked CREDITOR while also struggling with ROB and TUTORIAL.
Certainly didn’t feel it was easy when only EXPRESS and TAT went in from the first nine across clues but from there onwards answers went in more freely. Providing just enough checkers for the remainder. Some very nice surfaces in particular for AT-REST, EYES and HUT which is my COD.
Thanks to M.A.T. – special thanks for having to sort the blog out without the usual technical shortcuts
Close race but I just pulled this one out!
I demand a recount!
Haha, right, good luck with that!
Pleased to finish this QC by Mara. 30mins but used check x1 on my LOI IODINE. A clever trick which I will endeavour to remember.
Thanks both , and especially to Templar for battling with the blog formatting.
(Perhaps next time the Times app is changed they could have Tftt prior warning?)
Enjoyed Mara’s puzzle with several PDMs. Interesting how SISTER has evolved, now just meaning the senior nurse in charge of a ward, although more often termed Ward Manager which covers both male and female staff. Thanks Templar for the great blog in spite of the difficulties.
10:03
I liked the IODINE clue. Less keen on 9a.
LOI was INGEST.
Thanks Templar and Mara
Biffed BUCK and IODINE and saw MACARONI late on to finish in 19:11. Well done Templar for overcoming the problems!
I find that the new format is a problem for me, not just the bloggers. It seems to be working off AI, it wants to answer the clues for me, putting in letters I’m sure I didn’t type, taking me down instead of across etc, and on completion tells me I’ve mispelt an answer I KNOW I entered correctly. HELP !
Hello Keith. I think your problem is probably that the “skip filled squares” function is enabled by default. That means that when you type a word, if you have already got any crossing letters the grid will ignore those and move onto the next square, so that the letters appear in the wrong places.
To fix this click on the cogwheel symbol top right, look down the list for the “skip filled squares” option, and turn it off.
You need to turn off the “Skip Filled Squares” option in the settings.
All the way down to Test Match before I put pen to paper, but the down clues seemed much more friendly. As usual, the crossers then made the impossible ones less so. Towards the end I even managed a short canter, but then loi Ingest added another couple of minutes after joining the SCC queue. I agree with Templar (bravo, by the way, for persevering with the blog) that Macaroni deserves CoD, but Iodine ran it pretty close. Invariant
PS As a paper solver, I’m thankfully unaffected by the crossword changes. If only I could say the same about the on-line Sudoku grids 🙄
They really are awful, I can’t be bothered with them now
15:24 couldn’t ingest iodine cider for ages, was slow to appreciate honey yet QTPi.
Ta TAM
9:33, but it would have been much quicker if I hadn’t been so reluctant to press “submit” while struggling (and failing) to make sense of BUCK. Thank you Mara, and thank you Templar for battling through
Very difficult. Couldn’t get started, eventually FOI ESTONIA. There comes a point when you have to just give up – after two hours and several far-fetched PDMs but still not the faintest idea of the mug or the investment’s new record, I turn to our friend Templar, thank you for putting me out of my pain.
Oh since I’m feeling grumpy, I’ll add that Bill = BUCK is exclusively US and has no place in a UK crossword.
And Canada. And Australia. And New Zealand.
I am very sorry that the Kipling quote upset you, Martinu, it was intended as a light hearted aside! I have removed it.
It was included only as a response to your criticism of the puzzle to the effect that an American (or Australian etc etc) word like buck “has no place in a UK crossword”. I don’t agree with that: the English language is spoken in many countries other than England and to my mind this great, world-famous crossword is enriched by occasionally including usages from other parts of the Anglosphere.
Thank you, Templar – accepted. I’ve accordingly removed mine too. I won’t press the matter by answering the remainder of your comment – which I see has also disappeared. Let’s just say “best wishes” and look forward to next week. Have a good weekend.
I agree.
I am put firmly in my place. I don’t think I’m thick-skinned enough for this blog!
10:35
Bottom half held up until I cracked CASHPOINT.
COD IODINE, with what must be the shortest definition ever.
From HUTS to TUTORIAL in 8:25. Took a while to see what was going on with the latter. Thanks MAra and Templar. Commiserations on the Blog difficulties.
11:35. a stodgy solve, brain not very sharp perhaps after a disrupted night …