Time: 48 minutes. Very enjoyable. A good mix of complex clues and easy ones.
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 | Old soldier volunteers to guard object in long conflict (8) |
| VENDETTA – V⁁ET (old soldier) + TA (volunteers – Territorial Army) containing [to guard] END (object) | |
| 6 | Notice a mechanism emitting energy (6) |
| ADVICE – A, D{e}VICE (mechanism) [emitting energy] | |
| 9 | Tattoos hearts amid fruits — these give a wavy edging (7,6) |
| PINKING SHEARS – INKINGS (tattoos) + H (hearts) contained by [amid] P⁁EARS (fruits) | |
| 10 | Spirit of divine vengeance enveloping island (6) |
| WRAITH – WRA⁁TH (divine vengeance) containing [enveloping] I (island). As in ‘the wrath of God’. | |
| 11 | A uniform half-dozen balls returned one run or bye (2,6) |
| AU REVOIR – A, U (uniform – NATO), then OVER (half-dozen balls – cricket) reversed [returned], I (one), R (run) | |
| 13 | What depends on current movement when India overwrites European court’s verdict? (10) |
| CONVICTION – CONVeCTION (what depends on current movement) becomes CONVICTION (court’s verdict) when India (I – NATO) overwrites European (E) | |
| 15 | Change egg supplier when the first is off (4) |
| VARY – {o}VARY (egg supplier) [when the first is off] | |
| 16 | Sailor’s back in working port in Scotland (4) |
| OBAN – AB (sailor) reversed [back] contained by [in] O⁁N (working) | |
| 18 | Monsieur remains to fire fashionable people in society (10) |
| MEMBERSHIP – M (monsieur), EMBERS (remains to fire), HIP (fashionable) | |
| 21 | Admit one is drunk in control (8) |
| DOMINATE – Anagram [drunk] of ADMIT ONE | |
| 22 | Reserve power in bodybuilder’s exhausted muscle (6) |
| BICEPS – ICE (reserve) + P (power) contained by [in] B{odybuilder’}S [exhausted] | |
| 23 | I am quiet over story about a pharaoh’s fate? (13) |
| MUMMIFICATION – I’M (I am) + MUM (quiet) reversed [over] FIC⁁TION (story) containing [about] A | |
| 25 | Cross groom initially interrupting his partner (6) |
| BRIDGE – G{room} [initially] contained by [interrupting] BRID⁁E (his partner) | |
| 26 | Man captures sea eagle around South Island (8) |
| GUERNSEY – GU⁁Y (man) contains [captures] ERN⁁E (sea eagle) itself containing [around] S (South) | |
| Down |
|
|---|---|
| 2 | Seaport winding ropes are made from this (7) |
| ESPARTO – Anagram [winding] of SEAPORT. A coarse type of grass. | |
| 3 | Opera put on originally in Avignon bombed (3,8) |
| DON GIOVANNI – DON (put on), then anagram [bombed] of I{n} [originally] +AVIGNON | |
| 4 | Piece of chicken slightly tainted, under temperature (5) |
| THIGH – T (temperature), HIGH (slightly tainted – e.g. meat) | |
| 5 | Ah, Fagin is out for foreign currency (7) |
| AFGHANI – Anagram [out] of AH FAGIN | |
| 6 | Close attachment present in whirling dance (9) |
| ADHERENCE – HERE (present) contained by [in] anagram [whirling] of DANCE | |
| 7 | Through exam, having avoided third (3) |
| VIA – VI{v}A (exam) [having avoided third]. Oral rather than written and short for viva voce. | |
| 8 | Money handler hiding shillings in notebook (7) |
| CASHIER – CA⁁HIER (notebook) containing [hiding] S (shillings). NHO of ‘cahier’ being used in English but fortunately I remembered it from French lessons at school. Anyway, all the usual sources list it. | |
| 12 | What shows inner workings of six over six division (11) |
| VIVISECTION – VI (six), VI (six), SECTION (division). The practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research. | |
| 14 | What’s used to ring hill fort above a river (9) |
| CAMPANILE – CAMP (hill fort), A, NILE (a river). A bell tower, usually standing free. | |
| 17 | Loaf of bread rose? (7) |
| BLOOMER – Two meanings, a type of loaf / any plant such as a rose that blooms. | |
| 19 | Assembly of certain vase broken by overturning support (7) |
| MEETING – M⁁ING (certain vase) containing [broken by] TEE (support) reversed [overturning] | |
| 20 | I’m nearly sent electronic message to have an effect (7) |
| IMPINGE – I’M, PINGE{d} (sent electronic message) [nearly] | |
| 22 | Poet billions associated with Windermere? (5) |
| BLAKE – B (billions), LAKE (Windermere). William, who wrote the words of the hymn Jerusalem. | |
| 24 | Update government ministry (3) |
| MOD – Two meanings, A mod (modification) is a change e.g. to computer game or computer / Ministry of Defence. | |
Another pretty friendly offering to follow on from Monday’s. Luckily, I knew of PINKING SHEARS otherwise I think I would have found the parsing difficult. I assumed the opera at 3d would have ‘PO’ as part of the anagrist (put on originally) and wondered where the ‘d’ was from before seeing the light. Bit of a mer at IMPINGE as I was under the impression a ping was a single sound rather than a message, but I suppose you could ping an IP address and receive a message back. NHO cahier for notebook, but CASHIER it had to be. Very enjoyable and COD to GUERNSEY.
Thanks Jack and setter.
It’s more direct than that: ‘to contact (someone) by sending a message to an electronic device’ (Collins). ‘Let me just ping Dave to find out where he is’.
Thanks. I looked it up later and saw a similar example. Didn’t know it but learning all the time.
My seamstress mom had PINKING SHEARS—
I hadn’t thought of them for years!
Biffed MUMMIFICATION with just first M and final I.
Don’t know how I knew ESPARTO.
36.44
Another one whose mother had pinking shears.
NHO cahier for a notebook.
I knew CAHIER, but only in French!
Yes. French vocabulary learnt early on because it was the French word for the ‘jotter’ needed for each of our school academic subjects.
My mother too! I remember being fascinating by them and their name. She was making dresses. I suppose the number of mums recalled shows how much more common making your own clothes used to be than now.
I found several here to be quite challenging but pressed on to finish in about 38. Had no idea how some of these worked but Jack helped me out. Looking back there are many clever clues here, including MEETING, ADVICE and the aforementioned shears.
From Red River Shore:
I sat by her side and for a while I tried
To make that girl my wife
She gave me her best ADVICE when she said
Go home and lead a quiet life
Well I been to the East and I been to the West
I been out where the black winds roar
Somehow I never got that far
With the girl from the Red River shore
DNF. NHO Cahier but biffed with crossers and similarly constructed ESPARTO.
However for some reason I could not bring WRAITH to mind, its not that difficult but I’d convinced myself island would = “is” and there was no coming back from that…
Thanks Jack and setter
Another straightforward one today.
I knew cashier, but only as a word in French. My daughter used to buy them when we went to France, because they were different to English ones.
Mrs W possesses pinking shears.
Clairefontaine notebooks! They were lovely and I used to stock up on them on trips to France too. They were the only cheapish notebooks where fountain pen ink didn’t feather into the paper.
17:37 Not quite as friendly as yesterday but still fairly straightforward.
Another one with fond memories of the vaguely recalled PINKING SHEARS and turning the old Christmas cards into next years Christmas tags with my mother.
Bit slow getting WRAITH, MEMBERSHIP and CAMPANILE although they didn’t seem particularly more difficult than the rest.
COD GUERNSEY
Thanks blogger and setter
24.15 with no serious delays, a pleasing start to the day.
FOI PINKING SHEARS
LOI ADVICE
COD GUERNSEY
Thanks Jack and setter
9.20
Another fairly straightforward one, only one BIFD (MUMMIFICATION).
A few HMHB references (BLAKE, WRAITH and OBAN).
LOI DOMINATE
COD AU REVOIR
24 minutes. Biffed BICEPS as it seemed the only possibility- thanks to our blogger for enlightenment. My late wife introduced me to the mystery of PINKING SHEARS which, for some reason, seem unforgettable despite never coming across them again. All clues apart from the aforementioned musculature, very parseable for me. Most enjoyable week so far.
Thanks to kindly setter and jackkt.
7:21. Another straightforward one.
My mum had PINKING SHEARS but I only learned what they were called when I came across them in a crossword.
23 minutes. As for our blogger and several commenters, thanks to my Mum for PINKING SHEARS and to schoolboy French lessons for the CAHIER in 8d. ESPARTO was the only other (semi-) obscurity and I didn’t know CAMP for specifically a ‘hill fort’; at least in the versions of the standard reference works I have, this sense is only given as Archaeology British English in the ODE/Oxford Dictionaries for “An enclosed or fortified prehistoric site, especially an Iron Age hill fort”.
Thanks to Jack and setter
24:05 I liked this a lot and I thought there were some witty surfaces. The two fairly straightforward long ones got me off to a good start. I’m another who has mum to thank for PINKING SHEARS and I’d heard of, but never read, CAHIERs du Cinema. I needed Jack to explain BICEPS.
Thanks to Jack and the setter
48 mins with 2/3rds done quite quickly then a few clues in the middle which held me up, including, CONVICTION, MEMBERSHIP & LOI, CAMPANILE. No probs with PINKING SHEARS, having worked for a while in my youth in the schmutter business!
Avignon is 28K from me, fun to see that. Also AU REVOIR & CA(S)HIER all adding to the French touch.
I liked VARY & MUMMIFICATION best.
Thanks Jack and setter.
53:12
Held up by reserve=BACKUP, which made IMPINGE impossible. LOI MEMBERSHIP .
NHO ESPARTO , went for the gym club Esporta.
Quite tricky. LOI WRAITH. CASHIER a biff, with 1961 O Level French letting me down. I’ve heard of PINKING SHEARS but couldn’t have told you if they are used in sewing or castration. COD to MUMMIFICATION. Thank you Jack and setter.
both if you’re of a mind to…
Like many here, I learned CAHIER at school – and like some of those, I promptly forgot it again so I struggled to explain the answer that clearly fitted. Fortunately I am aware of PINKING SHEARS – I might have found parsing that a little trickier, otherwise. An anagram for the nho ESPARTO is tough – I think I checked ‘esporta’ in Chambers and it pushed back with ‘are you sure you don’t mean Esparto?’
20 minutes all told with last entries being the interlinked IMPINGE and BICEPS where I spent too long thinking the ‘reserve’ was going to be BACK.
Thanks to setter and blogger
15 minutes
– Only dimly remembered WRAITH as a spirit and ESPARTO as something ropes are made from
– Not familiar with the slightly tainted sense of high as used for THIGH
– NHO cahier, but CASHIER had to be
– Wasn’t sure why the ‘camp’ in CAMPANILE was clued as ‘hill fort’ – thanks BletchleyReject above
Thanks Jack and setter.
FOI Via
LOI Impinge
COD Vendetta
17:24. Similar to yesterday, in fact I was on course to beat that but a handful of clues pushed the time up. NHO CAHIER/ESPARTO and held up by originally biffing ADVERT for LOI ADVICE.
As well as the colloquial use ping is a technical term for sending a minimal message to test the round trip time and reliability of a network.
Thanks to jackkt and setter.
13’10”, similar comments to others. Tidying recently, came across PINKING SHEARS which had belonged to in-laws. DON GIOVANNI reverse engineered. MEMBERSHIP inexplicably LOI.
Thanks jack and setter.
24:21 – guessed on ESPARTO, but pretty much no other option. VHO PINKING SHEERS. Spent a long time on MEMBERSHIP (not MASHESSHIN then??). I thought it was lots of fun.
21.31. A lot of Vs in the top half made me think we had a rare thematic puzzle of sorts, but that didn’t help solving the bottom.
Like everyone else, PINKING SHEARS and CAHIER evoked childhood memories, the latter being one of the few French words my early lessons lodged in the mind. Not much use even in France.
Loughton Camp in Epping Forest was a help, though, when CAMPANILE, my last in after MEMBERSHIP, emerged: St John’s Epping has one, technically, as the family putting up most of the money in the early 1900s build insisted on a clock tower on the High Street at the “wrong” end of the Church.
I had IMPOSTE initially, which I could argue for, but it messed up the Pharaoh’s (w)rap, so had to go.
Ah yes. Loughton Camp reminds me of my blessed childhood in Epping Forest. Fabulous days.
As I remember, it’s a little further on into the forest from The Gravels pond which had the tree with the iron rungs on its trunk so you could climb it?
Or was that Top Ponds?
As children we were a bit bemused that it was called a camp, blissfully unaware of the intervening 3000 years. Our ‘camps’ at several locations were obviously MUCH better-usually a vast holly bush which had a convenient large invisible space in the middle of it.
It’s more than possible that the descendents of the twigloos my grandkids and I built around Connaught Water still provide respectable camping.
We used to walk home to Loughton from Chingford golf course via Connaught Water and the Queen Elizabeth hunting lodge.
It was a bit much after 18 holes, and still carrying our clubs. But somehow we did it.
Several clues gave problems and I was fairly slow, but afterwards they were pretty obvious, except that I’d never heard of MOD as an abbreviation for modification, and camp = hill fort seems a bit unnecessary: there must be plenty of other more mainstream senses of camp. I was sure 19dn’s definition was ‘Assembly of certain’. No doubt what the setter wanted, but …
Straightforward for a Tuesday, 20 minutes, FOI PINKING SHEARS, LOI MEETING.
18:13
No real issues, just some bits missed or never heard of:
PINKING SHEARS – thought early on that this was right, so pencilled in and confirmed checkers with crossing answers, but didn’t understand the parsing until coming here
WRAITH – LOI which I thought was tricky without the H checker
BICEPS – didn’t get the parsing for this either – was thinking it would be BR rather than BS surrounding something
ESPARTO – think I have only heard of this in these parts
THIGH – took some convincing that HIGH = slightly tainted, but it was the more likely answer than TWING
CASHIER – didn’t know of the notebook, but the checkers were enough to settle on the answer
Thanks Jack and setter
I couldn’t have told you what a cahier was, but somehow the word seemed familiar -Mephisto perhaps?
I was held up at the end with my LOI which I parsed , then parsed again, before deciding the sense of the surface didn’t lead towards convection as the answer.
FOI VENDETTA
LOI CONVICTION
COD DON GIOVANNI
TIME 7:44
16:15 – the opera went in as soon as I saw the words “put on”. My ignorance of opera in general saved me from having to consider the apparently large number of alternatives also beginning with Don.
Tussled with various parts of this, and found it a bit trickier than the snitch suggested, coming home in 22:18 (had a typo with GUERNSET, but I’m just going to ignore that). The notebook perhaps vaguely remembered, the rope material either unknown or forgotten. Good puzzle – thanks setter and Jack.
If I ever knew CAHIER, I’d forgotten it, so wasted a minute trying to parse a biffed CASHIER. Knew PINKING SHEARS, but not sure why. Like Z, I had IMPOSTE until Mummy told me otherwise. ESPARTO was also dragged from the depths, but needed the crossers. However, all of my efforts crumbled to nought with 13a where I read current and ECT (European Court) in the clue and carelessly biffed CONVeCTION. Drat! Twenty two minutes and five seconds WOE. Thanks setter and Jack.
43.25. Convection vs conviction lost me a good 5 mins 🤨
Like others I thought this was pretty straightforward . Slight mer at MOD = update. As a guitar player I’m very familiar with MOD as an abbreviation for modification, some of my guitars are indeed modded. But in this context mods are not usually updates, they’re changing one or more of a model’s standard specs to conform with a player’s personal preferences. So in my mind a MOD could be an update but normally isn’t.
15:19 – but one error. Convection instead of conviction.
COD – BRIDGE
Thanks to jack and our setter.
A good puzzle with clear wordplay – 16 mins, including a brief struggle with MEMBERSHIP, GUERNSEY and MEETING. I don’t recall knowing PINKING SHEARS: my mother was an expert knitter, but pinking shears were not in her armoury. First in was VENDETTA and last GUERNSEY. Favourite four clues: to VENDETTA, VARY, AFGHANI and CAMPANILE. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
My phone started misbehaving mid-solve, deleting each letter when I put in the next one. Turning it off and on did not fix it. Switching from the Crossword Club section to the direct crossword, I encountered no problem there. Any expert advice on how to fix the issue would be appreciated.
If you’re using a web browser then clearing cookies and site data often fixes this kind of thing. If you’re using an app I don’t know.
Thanks. I tried clearing the Apps cache, but that did not fix it. Wednesdays crossword works normally, so only a temporary glitch.
I get this on the iPad almost every time. Very frustrating.
Clear history?
You can’t clear history in the Times App
No. On the ipad
Finished at an even paced 38.25 with all correct but two unparsed. My ‘O’ Level French didn’t cover CAHIER as far as I can remember (although in fairness it’s well over 60 years since I sat it), and I couldn’t parse CONVICTION, although perhaps I should of on seeing how it was put together.
Cor Blimey! two sub 15s in a row (14:20). I foresee a big come down in the next few days.
Biffed Cashier and changed Convection to Conviction after a reread of the clue.
Add me to the list of those who had Mum to thank for Pinking Shears (yes the good ol’ Christmas card to tag conversion).🙂
Thanks for the blog, Jack and explaining CASHIER, which I couldn’t parse.
I also had to check the dictionary for ESPARTO, but I built PINKING SHEARS from the wordplay.
MEMBERSHIP was LOI. I was convinced it was an anagram of M REMAINS TO (“fire”) , and some sort of Italian -tio ending word.
Thank you setter.
Didn’t follow instructions and put CONVECTION. Apart from that error I thought it very similar in difficulty to yesterday’s offering, but no complaints from me.
FOI AU REVOIR
LOI BICEPS
COD GUERNSEY
DNF in 26.31 with CONVECTION. Which is a shame because I really enjoyed that one. FOI PINKING SHEARS, ESPARTO NHO, LOI GUERNSEY. Thanks Jack.
I had a pop at the 15×15 yesterday so thought I’d take a look at today’s. I managed eight on Monday and 20 today.
Kicking myself that I missed a couple as I was half way there but couldn’t work out the other half.
I’ll try not to be a nuisance 🙂
Cadbury CAMP is an Iron Age hill fort near Bristol. The top half of this went in very quickly, but the bottom I found harder and I eventually came in at 19’34”, which I guess is a bit behind the pace. MUMMIFICATION should have been obvious, but I was fixated on words beginning IMP. Many thanks.
I found this a fair puzzle, apart from NHO ESPARTO ( which I had to guess as the correct ordering of the obvious anagrist), or erne for a sea eagle ( which fortunately could be worked around). Also guessed at AFGHANI – again an obvious anagram, with no other credible solutions. No other obscurities thank goodness.
Thanks to setter and blogger
Another one whose mum had pinking shears. It caused me today to wonder why they are so called – Wikipedia suggests it’s because the cut resembles the shape of the Dianthus or pink flower.
Dad on the other hand had cars with pinking engines. Next one to look up.