I needed 60 minutes for all but one answer which beat me. A good mix of clues relying perhaps a little too much on insertions, or is my use of the caret sign making me more conscious of this device, I wonder? Following on from my recent milestone of 350 QCs, this is my 750th blog of a Weekday Cryptic.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I now use a Caret sign ⁁ to indicate an insertion point in containment clues. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Staff penning sheep work with knotted rope (7) |
| MACRAME – MAC⁁E (staff) containing [penning] RAM (sheep) | |
| 5 | Marine, excellent in sea, fabulous swimmer (7) |
| MERMAID – RM (Royal Marine) + AI (excellent) contained by [in] ME⁁D (sea) | |
| 9 | Fellow about to lift favourite manipulative performer (9) |
| PUPPETEER – P⁁EER (fellow) containing [about] UP (lift) + PET (favourite) | |
| 10 | Wife’s time in dukedom wasting years (5) |
| DUTCH – T (time) contained by [in] DU⁁CH{y} (dukedom) [wasting years] | |
| 11 | Writer very naughty boy involved in Fourth Estate in France? (13) |
| CHATEAUBRIAND – BRIAN (very naughty boy) contained by [involved in] CHATEAU ⁁ D (Fourth Estate in France). As opposed to Château A, B or C. I think the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian was referenced in a clue here very recently. | |
| 13 | Stubborn alumnus expected to harbour traitor (8) |
| OBDURATE – OB (alumnus – Old Boy), DU⁁E (expected) containing [to harbour] RAT (traitor) | |
| 15 | Repeated phrase from siren, not quiet (6) |
| MANTRA – MANTRA{p} (siren) (not quiet). And at last after 6 clues I don’t have to reach for the caret sign! | |
| 17 | Subtlety one’s sacrificed in trial (6) |
| NUANCE – NU{is}ANCE (trial) [one’s – I’s – sacrificed]. Collins: trial – an annoying or frustrating person or thing. | |
| 19 | Where one batter differs from another for example? (8) |
| INSTANCE – IN STANCE (where one batter differs from another). How they stand at the wicket. | |
| 22 | Pressure to vote here — help win it corruptly (5-4,4) |
| THREE-LINE WHIP – Anagram [corruptly] of HERE HELP WIN IT. Collins: a three-line whip is a situation where the MPs in a political party are ordered to attend parliament and vote in a particular way on a particular issue. | |
| 25 | Enjoyable time when filling sandwich (5) |
| BLAST – AS (when) contained by [filling] BL⁁T (sandwich – bacon, lettuce & tomato). The caret is back on the clipboard! | |
| 26 | Claim fool replaces former partner in strenuous work (9) |
| ASSERTION – (ex)ERTION (strenuous work) becomes ASSERTION when ASS (fool) replaces ex (former partner) | |
| 27 | Goddess missing knight, having no sex games (7) |
| EUTERPE – {n}EUTER (having no sex) [missing knight], PE (games). The Muse of poetry and music. This was the clue that did for me. Euterpe has come up before but I didn’t recognise the name and then struggled to see the wordplay, so I’m not sure I’d ever have solved it without using aids. | |
| 28 | Provoked Scots hooligan was in van around east (7) |
| NEEDLED – NE⁁D (Scots hooligan) + LED (was in van) containing [around] E (east) | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Daughter thrown from motorbike to sulk (4) |
| MOPE – MOPE{d} (motorbike) [daughter – d –thrown] | |
| 2 | Head across pond — caught parrot fish (4,3) |
| CAPE COD – C (caught), APE (parrot), COD (fish). A peninsula in Massachusetts on the Atlantic Ocean. | |
| 3 | Sober group securing reduced payment for venue (5) |
| ARENA – A⁁A (sober group – Alcoholics Anonymous) containing [securing] REN{t} (reduced payment) | |
| 4 | Canines still within limits to explore the ground (8) |
| EYETEETH – YET (still) contained by [within] E⁁E (limits to explore), then anagram [ground] of THE. As in “I’d give my eyeteeth for something or other”. | |
| 5 | Bodies taken here from doctor, loveless rascal (6) |
| MORGUE – MO (doctor), R{o}GUE (rascal) [loveless] | |
| 6 | Communist brute devouring right winger (9) |
| REDBREAST – RED (communist), B⁁EAST (brute) containing [devouring] R (right) | |
| 7 | Pull a vehicle up in race series with Tesla (7) |
| ATTRACT – A, then CAR (vehicle) + T (Tesla) contained by [in] T⁁T (race series) all reversed [up] | |
| 8 | Drained Henry late to mount in action (10) |
| DEHYDRATED – H (Henry), + TARDY (late) reversed [to mount] contained by [in] DE⁁ED (action) | |
| 12 | Cook burned a lot — no square meals here? (5,5) |
| ROUND TABLE – Anagram [cook] of BURNED A LOT | |
| 14 | See revolutionary men box ears regularly (9) |
| ROCHESTER – OR (men) reversed [revolutionary], CHEST (box), E{a}R{s} [regularly]. A cathedral town in Kent. | |
| 16 | Author with Irish name (8) |
| ANDERSEN – AND (with), ERSE (Irish), N (name). Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). | |
| 18 | Treat by reviving old memories of production of Cabaret (7) |
| ABREACT – Anagram [production] of CABARET. Not a word I knew so I need all the checkers before I was able to unravel it. I think only its derivative ‘abreaction’ has appeared here before. | |
| 20 | French milk double entendre recalled about marriage (7) |
| NUPTIAL – LAIT (French milk) + PUN (double entendre) reversed [recalled] | |
| 21 | Harry Maguire leaving United an illusion (6) |
| MIRAGE – Anagram [harry] of MAG{u}IRE [leaving United] | |
| 23 | Crowd in road earth mover crosses (5) |
| HORDE – HO⁁E (earth mover) contains [crosses] RD (road) | |
| 24 | Muslim festival involving new Celtic goddess (4) |
| ENID – E⁁ID (Muslim festival) containing [involving] N (new) | |
Going fine until the end with two remaining, the NHO EUTERPEE and the NHO ABREACT. But I managed to get both from wordplay. Surprisingly, with the checkers, ABREACT is the only order of letters that makes anything that us plausible. Took me a moment at CHATEAUBRIAND to realize BRIAN was the very naughty boy although I didn’t really need it since there was only one word that would fit (although I didn’t know him as a writer, just a steak). Also did not know ENID as a Celtic goddess, which is surprising since my mother’s name was ENID. Times was 28 minutes with at least 2 or 3 spend on those last two unknown words.
17:04
Never parsed MERMAID (didn’t think of RM), and couldn’t account for the D in CHATEAUBRIAND. DNK ENID the goddess. I ‘knew’ ABREACT as a term from Freud (or from Brill), but had no idea what it meant. Didn’t we have EUTERPE fairly recently? A change from Erato. DNK NED.
Caught a breeze, the wavelength, or whatever… Everything went swimmingly and flowed fairly smoothly over even the bits of somewhat surprising vocabulary like ABREACT and EUTERPE (so nice to see a muse besides Erato take a bow). CHATEAUBRIAND took me a ridiculously long time to parse, long after entering it. LOI was ANDERSEN.
Though the term is sometimes applied in describing the name, I have been unable to find any real source for ENID as a goddess, rather than merely a mythological character in Arthurian (as Enide) and Welsh (as Enid) romance…
It seems like I alternated solving from the cryptic and biffing. Biffed: Chateaubriand, mermaid, puppeteer, needled, Cape Cod, dehydrated, Rochester, eyeteeth, nuptial, Three Line Whip. From the cryptic: macrame, mantra, Enid, mirage, abreact, morgue, Andersen, attract, redbreast, Round Table, instance, Dutch.
I did pretty well until I came to the SW. I was thinking nicety, but couldn’t parse it, but then nuance popped into my head, and I could parse it. The starting A gave abreact, showing that butty couldn’t be right. Ironically, I had thought of BLT twenty minutes before, but didn’t think that would be in a UK puzzle. That gave Rochester as an obvious answer. I was left with the goddess, and I had to use every trick in the solver’s book to tease her out. Well a Greek goddess might start with EU-, and then I saw neuter without the N and the game was up. Getting your mind to interact between the letters you have and elements of the cryptic is a key to solving difficult clues.
Time: 37:50
After over 90 minutes got everything correct. I filled in the bottom of the puzzle reasonably quickly. Took ages to put in CHATEAUBRIAND as I only knew the steak and I thought it was too long for a surname of a writer and I was missing too many crossers. I eventually put it in and this allowed me to complete the top of the puzzle. I needed the blog for a lot of the parsing.
Thanks Jack
For a lot of the solve I thought I was heading for a comfortable sub-10, but somehow DNF’d after 27:26.
Scuppered predictably in the SW. Eventually decided (as per Paul) that ABREACT was the only option but was still unable to unravel EUTERPE. Probably should have got it from the wordplay, if not from having listened to Mythos twice. In the end I reached for the Chambers, only to be punished for my sins by having a fat-fingered MORGUR slip through the checking process.
Tough finish for a Monday (I know it’s Tuesday but we had a day off yesterday). Thanks Jack and setter.
Was headed for a sub-16 solve until the goddess undid me, so put me down for another DNF. As others have said the unknown ABREACT was the only plausible construction from those letters, and thanks Jack for explaining what was happening with CHATEAUBRIAND. The fourth estate = chateau D. Ha!
From Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues:
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, and it’s Easter time too
And gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs when you’re down on Rue MORGUE Avenue
They got some hungry women there and they’ll really make a mess out of you
27 minutes. I’d NHO ENID as a ‘Celtic goddess’ and turns out I didn’t really know ABREACT, thinking it meant to fly into a rage with little provocation. My LOI was EUTERPE which I’ve only ever seen clued as one of the Muses and not as a ‘Goddess’. CHATEAUBRIAND and DEHYDRATED both went in semi-parsed and even if it was an anagram, thank goodness for the enumeration for THREE-LINE WHIP. Favourite was our feathered friend the REDBREAST as an unlikely ‘Communist brute’.
In the Times paper today (p6 )there is an amazing photo of two Robins fighting each other over territory.
Well I never. Red in tooth and claw indeed! Thanks.
13:14. Quite tricky, and I didn’t help myself by putting HOARD at 23dn. I understood the clue perfectly but somehow in my semi-conscious mind the earth-moving HOE became a HOD and my fingers did the rest. That made 28ac difficult, and then I got held up by the same clues as everyone else in the SW. Knew the word ABREACT but not what it meant.
ROCHESTER is the second-oldest bishopric in England, but no longer a city.
Sorry, I forgot to congratulate and thank our blogger on his 750th Times 15×15 blog and for his 1,100 blogs overall – a mighty effort!
👏🎉🥂🍾🎊🙌
22:52 with ABREACT, EUTERPE and the unknown steak/author CHATEAUBRIAND accounting for a disproportionate amount of time. Otherwise it was one of those puzzle where I seemed to get every other answer quickly giving me enough checking letters to stumble over the line.
Enjoyed CHATEAUBRIAND. I saw the CHATEAU D trick then was trying to think of a word for very naughty boy, with my brain bringing up Brian, sniggering to itself, before realising that atleast fitted and sounded plausible.
Seems fortuitous timing for the THREE-LINE WHIP clue today.
Thanks blogger and setter
Just over an hour to fail on NHO Euterpe. Just couldn’t see the wordplay. Also NHO Abreact but once I had the checkers it was the only combination of letters that seemed to fit.
Thanks Jack and setter.
Steady solve, no problems .. nho the goddess Enid, or ABREACT, but it didn’t matter.
Nice to see Euterpe again, memorising the Muses, the Fates and the Furies always a worthwhile thing. I have seen most of the Muses at one time or another, but not all, I don’t recollect seeing Polyhymnia or Urania yet, setter!
Jackkt you have a superfluous U in Chauteau..
Ta.
terpsichore doesn’t appear often!
You might be surprised. a search of TfTT produces no less than 17 hits – not necessarily all answers, mind, but a number are.
16.51, would have been a very rare sub 15 minutes had I not been held up by ANDERSEN, my LOI and not on the face of it a particularly tricky clue. CHATEAUBRIAND was a wonderful writer; biffed ABREACT and EUTERPE but parsed the rest.
Thanks Jack (for this blog and all the others) and thanks setter.
Also took ages on ANDERSEN.
Liked the Harry Maguire clue.
Congratulations on the milestones, jackkt.
All done in 40 minutes. Didn’t know author CHATEAUBRIAND, but it was the only thing which fitted, especially once BRIAN was obvious. Knew ABREACT as one of the easy anagrams of CABARET (along with BEARCAT and CAT BEAR). Happy to spot EUTERPE. First one in was THREE-LINE WHIP, last one in was MANTRA.
Half an hour, with the last 10 minutes of that spent on the tricky ABREACT/EUTERPE crossing.
– Had to trust the wordplay for MACRAME
– Didn’t know CHATEAUBRIAND was a writer
– Not familiar with EUTERPE, but eventually got there from wordplay once it occurred to me that the definition might be at the start of the clue rather than at the end
– Also hadn’t heard of ABREACT, but it was all that would fit with the checkers and sounded plausible
– Never knew that ENID was a Celtic goddess
Thanks Jack and setter.
FOI Dutch
LOI Euterpe
COD Three-line whip
Well, normal service resumed today with the last two, you know the ones, flummoxing me. Didn’t know either if them and couldn’t work it out either. Shame because the rest had gone in quite quickly.
I liked the ROUND TABLE.
Congrats and thanks to Jackkt on the 750. No mean feat.
DNF, EUTERPE did for me and I could only guess at ABREACT and failed to parse CHATEAUBRIAND. No smiles but it filled the morning ferry nicely. Thanks for the blog!
30:31. I managed to finish this without aids (albeit I did check ABREACT before submitting), in a not-abysmal time.
There is so much I have never heard of here that I’m pleased to have finished at all. MACRAME, EYETEETH, EUTERPE, ABREACT, ENID, CHATEAUBRIAND and NED are all completely new to me. Trust the cryptic was the order of the day.
Some of the cryptic was, however, difficult. For ROCHESTER, I saw CHE = revolutionary and moved on!
COD to CHATEAUBRIAND, not parsed in flight.
I’m astonished that the snitch is not higher though, given the illustrious names here who DNF.
DNFs don’t contribute to the snitch, so often puzzles that seem particularly tricky have low SNITCHs because it only consider finishers. It also can’t separate out quick “lucky” all-corrects from quick expert solvers (he says, thankfully…. CHATEAUBRIAND, I’m looking at you….)
I think in this particular case we have a puzzle that is not especially difficult overall, but with a couple of clues (ABREACT and more particularly EUTERPE) that are either fairly straightforward (if you have the right knowledge) or close to impossible (if you don’t).
Agreed. I’ve pondered on this very much – I find the SNITCH project very interesting.
The difficulty of a puzzle manifests in three ways: speed of solve; error-rate in solve; successful solve rate. SNITCH catches only the first of these. Website average score captures the first and second but not all of the third (i.e. those who give up and do not submit). Taking (for example) the 100th time on the leaderboard after a set period of time, as compared to the long-term average, captures all three, but has the great disadvantage that isn’t available ‘live’.
The other issue as I see it with SNITCH is the limitation to scores in the top 100. This means it is biased down (particularly later in the day), because someone with a lower personal NITCH is more likely to be in the top 100 and so contribute to the SNITCH, and vice versa.
It would be very good if the times simply published the full leaderboard – I wonder why they don’t? Then the SNITCH could incorporate all three elements.
The score for puzzles with errors is also of limited value because the choice of how much you ‘penalise’ an incorrect entry is completely arbitrary.
41mins but I needed Jack to decipher some of the more abstruse answers. Thanks Jack.
Just under 20 mins. Was going to open with “750! Wow” but don’t want SNITCH picking that up.
While there were a few clues much trickier than anything yesterday I found it more on my wavelength overall. LOI the only NHO ABREACT.
Enjoyed BRIAN but still didn’t get CHATEAU D.
MERMAID vg but COD to T-LW, very timely.
Enjoyed this, thanks setter and jackkt.
11:48. I remembered we’d had BRIAN as “very naughty boy” recently. Like Kensoghost I only knew the resulting word as a cut of beef and, like others, DNK ABREACT but the checkers and anagram left no doubt. I liked “Harry Maguire”. Thanks Jackkt and setter an congratulations, Jackkt on the awesome blogging milestones.
What JerryW said, good puzzle, steady solve, NHO ENID as a goddess but knew EUTERPE and worked out ABREACT from anagram fodder. CHATEAU BRIAN D was clever and in early.
15.14, with a minimal break. Took me a while to work out the anagram for ABREACT, and it might have been useful to have known what it meant. Us crossworders tend to have a lengthy catalogue of Scrabble/Countdown words that score points but come with no meaning attached.
Wiki does (just about) acknowledge ENID as a Celtic Goddess, without much information on her role in the otherwise extensive pantheon.
When I was very young, I played the boyhood Hans Christian in the school play to my sister as his mother. A memory which has not resurfaced in 70 years: how on earth does that work?
Congratulations to Jack on an impressive milestone and on the enduring creation of the ⁁, which others of us, I’m sure, will use once we work out how to do it!
Many thanks for your kind comments, Z, but whilst I think it’s true to say that I was the first to indicate insertion points, until very recently I was doing so by means of the omega sign. Other bloggers then experimented with variations on the caret and a couple of weeks ago I decided to follow their example.
If I wanted (unlikely) to pop in a ⁁, I would just copy and paste. Like I just did there.
However, the html code is… [ampersand hashtag 8257 semi-colon]:
⁁
There are other ways
https://www.hotsymbol.com/symbol/caret-insertion-point
Apols for pedantry.
22 ac needs ‘Here’ as part of the anagram fodder.
Otherwise, thanks for great blog.
Thanks. Now amended.
Thank goodness I gave up after 10 minutes in trying to solve the 18d/27a nightmare. Always maddening when you are defeated by words you have never come across in your life.
My thanks to jackkt (congrats on the 750) and setter.
Mainly easy with a few mills bombs in there.
11a The steak is named after the writer.
27a Euterpe, MER she isn’t a goddess but a muse. Mum & Dad were both of godly status, but that isn’t enough.
28a Needled, DNK Ned=hooligan. I expect I said that last time.
7d Attract. I thought as I was biffing it that the setter was referencing the US CART races, (wiki “Championship Auto Racing Teams, a now-defunct sanctioning body for American open-wheel car racing”) but no, it was the IoM Tourist Trophy.
16d Andersen biffed.
17d NHO Abreact.
20d Nuptial, LOI, COD.
24d Enid, as Guy du Sable and others, I could not find her as a goddess in Wiki. She was in as the long suffering wife of one of the round table knights, but that’s not enough for me.
Wiki says the muses are goddesses. More broadly aren’t the offspring of gods and goddesses automatically gods? The existence of ‘demi-god’ as a concept sort of implies it but I have no particular knowledge of the technicalities!
It is enough! Anyone, both of whose parents were deities, is a deity.
OK then it is enough, but it does not feel natural to me.
OTOH, I suppose you can’t call her anything else, such as mortal, human, animal, whatever. Thanks for the update, both.
Congratulations on your milestones Jack. Quite an achievement! I started this puzzle with MOPE and finished with a BLAST after assembling ABREACT as seemingly the only way to arrange the letters. Knew the joint of beef if not the writer and spotted the naughty boy straight away. An enjoyable puzzle. 22:43. Thanks setter and Jack.
Like many sailed through most of it. Chateaubriand as a non-steak came up in the past year or two. Macrame well known – suspect there’s a generational thing for the surprising (for me) number who don’t know it. ABREACT heard of though meaning unknown, but with crossers and anagram fodder it had to be. EUTERPE maybe heard-of, but after a few minutes I teased it out of the wordplay as LOI.
I remember first finding Peter B’s site about 15 years ago, and reading his requirements for competing for the championship: memorise Furies, Fates and Muses; the 20 brightest stars; etc. I never did – never going to compete for the championship – but nevertheless I looked at his lists.
I’m surprised no one has read Chateaubriand. He is an amusing writer, and not difficult if you are learning French.
28 mins, but as most of you, defeated by EUTERPE. At least i managed ABREACT and CHATEAUBRIAND, although I had no idea he was a writer.
12:19 – sub 10 with just EUTERPE – which I recognised (barely) as soon as I looked at the other end of the clue for the cryptic – to go. Having it intersect the NHO ABREACT was just mean.
Congratulations and perpetual thanks to Jackkt for 750 days of enlightenment.
Amazed, having read the comments so far, to have finished in 13 mins, a very fast time for me. When I put MACRAME (not a word I’ve often met) in at once, I felt the omens were good. ABREACT I knew was a word and was clearly an anag of CABARET; I had no idea ENID was a Celtic goddess; a puzzle I solved on Sunday (possibly Mephisto) had EYE-TOOTH = canine. First in was MACRAME and last ASSERTION. Of numerous witty clues my favourite four were to MANTRA, BLAST, ROUND TABLE and ANDERSEN. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
23:00
Four left in the SW at 15 minutes but took a further 8 mins to finish the job. The top half more or less wrote itself in, though I didn’t know CHATEAUBRIAND as anything other than a lump of meat. The SE was fairly plain sailing as well – though didn’t know NED as a Scots hooligan, nor ENID as a celtic goddess. Of the four remaining, I figured out EUTERPE first – don’t know how I knew the name but PE and {n}EUTER went together well. ROCHESTER fell next – used to spend a lot of time there with an early girlfriend, but had forgotten it is a see. That gave BLAST when I realised that the sandwich was a BLT – certainly Pret A Manger used to sell them back in the early noughties. And finally, the horrible ABREACT which I built with the remaining letters – I bet no-one on Earth uses this word.
Thanks Jack (congrats on the milestone) and setter
16:12 for me – lots of folks struggling with ABREACT, but I had a much tougher time piecing ROCHESTER together. That crossing with EUTERPE and ANDERSEN/NEEDLED took me the final five minutes alone. Really fun puzzle, despite not being able to fully parse everything.
Pleased to have finished this in one session after lunch. LOI ABREACT after biffing NUANCE ( thanks for the parsing).
Weirdly I found EUTERPE quite easy to work out; perhaps because of a recent appearance in a puzzle.
I’m another who liked the Harry Maguire clue, particularly as, in the paper, the puzzle appears just below the report on the Man U game last night. I watched the highlights earlier and Maguire played well; a career resurrected.
David
I confess I didn’t know Harry Maguire was a real person – even though his (googled) CV is impressive. I’m more into cricket, athletics and tennis than football. I add MIRAGE’s clue to my list of favourite clues of the day.
Same experience as our blogger – to whom congratulations and thanks for all your much appreciated work. I managed to work through a fair few unknowns but EUTERPE was a step too far.
28 mins. Thought Harry Maguire was an appropriately malcoordinated clue while I never heard ‘ned’ used in my Scottish childhood – to us a bed would hav been an English football hooligan. Thanks setter, all good fun.
You should watch a few episodes of Chewing the Fat – they even had a regular skit of the news being interpreted for the neds!
No time to report as I’ve been solving and watching the snooker world championships at the same time. At a guess I’d say it was a sixty minute solve, but I fell at the last with, yep you’ve guessed it, EUTERPE. The cryptic clueing gave the solver a chance of getting it, but it eluded me. I have actually come across the fact that EUTERPE was one of the muses, so had I managed to unravel the clue I would have been sure it was correct.
I ninja-turtled Euterpe as I’ve never forgotten it as the name of a parrot in a book I once read – but I can’t remember the book 🙁
A good challenge all completed bar “abreact”/”Euterpe” (very much unknown); “macrame” (which rings a small bell); and “eyeteeth” and “nuance” which I could have maybe got with more time.
Not sure “ned” or “dutch” are words I have ever heard/said but maybe well known in another time.
Thanks Jack for the excellent blog and congrats for reaching such an impressive milestone. Cheers to our setter today, too.
A lucky guessing day. 27 minutes. ABREACT was just a BIFF. NHO CHATEAUBRIAND as a writer. EUTERPE only known to me from crossword land. Oh well, at least no typos to complete the embarrassment.
Thanks to setter and especially to jackkt.
DNF with MACRAME and EUTERPE unsolved.
I liked the life of Brian clue, and I managed to get ABREACT from the dusty cellar of my knowledge of psychology or psychiatry (dim and distant past).
Thanks for the milestone blog Jack, and thanks setter.
EUTERPE and ABREACT were both rather tentatively entered, although I was pretty sure. Likewise ENID, whose qualities escaped me. To my surprise two sub-30 days in a row — can’t last. Congratulations to Jack on his blogging milestones.
30 m but guessed abreact and eyeteeth took ages,largely to thinking for too long that still was even.
38:35. some challenging vocab there – but always well clued, and with wit and a good variety of subject matters. Hadn’t seen BLT as sandwich before but I liked it.
Congratulations Jack!! What a shift.
Delighted to be in your distinguished company by failing on EUTERPE. 20 mins for the rest.
Goes without saying, almost, that I failed at the last not being able to biff EUTERPE.
FOI DUTCH
POI ABREACT
COD EYETEETH
Steady progress over 48 mins, but put Onid for Enid out of ignorance, so technical DNF. Enjoyable near-solve. Many thanks and many congratulations to blogger!
I thought this was superb and chuckled all the way through the 35 minutes it took me. Even the unknowns (ABREACT, EUTERPE and the THREE-LINE WHIP) yielded easily from the wordplay, and the Fourth Estate in France or Head across pond (and the like) were absolutely delightful. Lots of clever misdirection in the clues — just plain fun.
25:19 with my last two in being ABREACT and EUTERPE. The latter is also my COD.
Thanks Jack and setter