Hello again. I liked this one, not too hard but a bit more chewy than the last couple of days. It has some very neat clues and the unknowns were gettable ones. What did you think?
I’m really enjoying my midweek location, a sweetspot poised half way between the easygoing start to the week and its more challenging end. Recently I have had some crosswords, like this one, that it has been a privilege to blog.
I use the standard conventions like underlining the definition, CD for cryptic definition, DD for a double one, *(anargam) and so forth. Nho = “not heard of” and in case of need the Glossary is always handy
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | In one of the media, encourage northern English author (8) |
| TURGENEV – URGE (encourage) + N(orthern) + E(nglish), all in TV, a medium. I gave up on Russian literature – altogether too depressing – long before getting to Ivan Turgenev. He is however something of a TfTT regular – I count no less than 13 previous appearances in the daily cryptic. | |
| 5 | Mouth essentially held in vice-like grip, to stop speaking (4,2) |
| CLAM UP – (mo)U(th) in CLAMP, a vice-like grip. | |
| 9 | Thought modern car misrepresented clutches (8) |
| BELIEVED – EV (a modern car, although there are quite old ones too, much earlier than internal combustion) in BELIED, misrepresented. As in “Jerry’s gormless appearance belied his towering intellect.” | |
| 10 | Past obstruction, get a move on, boatman (6) |
| BARGEE – BAR (obstruction) + GEE, get a move on.. I would have said “Up” was a necessary component of gee up, but Collins disagrees. | |
| 12 | Confusingly arranged, your dog leads at home: feeble excuse in the end (12) |
| LABYRINTHINE – LAB (dog) + Y(ou)R + IN (at home) + THIN (feeble) + (excus)E. I liked this clue, a bit labyrinthine in itself.. though perhaps not the most convincing surface reading. | |
| 15 | Get to spread the Word without pressure (5) |
| REACH – (p)REACH. | |
| 16 | Heading off trouble sensible — or else! (9) |
| OTHERWISE – (b)OTHER (trouble, heading off) + WISE, sensible. | |
| 18 | First couple leaving lover with bad flu is worrying (9) |
| STRESSFUL – (mi)STRESS + *(FLU). So not what I first thought, would you Adam & Eve it? | |
| 19 | Well back after tea for dog’s dinner (5) |
| CHAOS – CHA (tea) + SO (well) rev. So = well, as in “Jerry was always so/well chilled.” | |
| 20 | Nice table prepared outside pub, going back for celebration (12) |
| BICENTENNIAL – INN (pub), rev. in *(NICE TABLE). | |
| 24 | Public official’s new seal (6) |
| NOTARY – N(ew) + OTARY, which I discover from Collins is a seal that has ears. Well earlobes, I suppose, the other seals aren’t actually deaf. Like most (I am guessing), I had never heard of them, but it had to be.. still and all it was my LOI. Notary is short for Notary Public, so the clue is helpful to that extent, at least. | |
| 25 | Potter joined golf club (8) |
| WEDGWOOD – WED (joined) + G(olf, NATO letter g) + WOOD, a golf club. I wonder if the setter thought about trying to get WEDG(e) in there, to reference a second club.. | |
| 26 | He loves hurting lives in distressing report’s conclusion (6) |
| SADIST – IS (lives) in SAD + (repor)T | |
| 27 | Entertainment cut short by personal disappointment (8) |
| COMEDOWN – COMED(y), entertainment cut short, + OWN, personal. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | One sounding very low raised an objection (4) |
| TUBA – A BUT (an objection) rev. I know nothing about music, but I understand that the tuba is used as the bass part of the brass section of an orchestra. | |
| 2 | Repent accepting lawyer’s initial decision (4) |
| RULE – L(awyer) in RUE, to repent or regret. | |
| 3 | Heard one strikes some hairs on head (9) |
| EYELASHES – EYE, sounds like “I” + LASHES, strikes. | |
| 4 | Regularly each soft one collapsed (5,2,5) |
| EVERY SO OFTEN – EVERY (each) + *(SOFT ONE) | |
| 6 | In case, keeping article as small as possible (5) |
| LEAST – A (article) in LEST, in case, as in “lest/in case we forget.” | |
| 7 | Endlessly exaggerate importance of one animal in hymn (10) |
| MAGNIFICAT – MAGNIF(y) (exaggerate, endless) + I CAT, one animal. I knew the word, but not much more. Apparently, it is a canticle. I did wonder just for a moment, what a magnifidog or a magnificow might sound like. | |
| 8 | Pass ahead of radical to stop escapee running (10) |
| PREDECEASE – RED (a radical) in *(ESCAPEE). We used to just die, but nowadays we pass. Still, better than the Victorian idea of “Fell asleep,” I suppose. | |
| 11 | I made David look after single church, covered in confusion (12) |
| MICHELANGELO – I CH (single church) in MELANGE (confusion) + LO, look. Another very neat clue. Collins defines melange as “A mixture; confusion.” I’m sure I don’t need to mention that Michelangelo produced David. The Wiki article is interesting, because I hadn’t really appreciated just what a groundbreaking work that was. | |
| 13 | Frightening sight under the skull to thwart doctor (10) |
| CROSSBONES – CROSS (thwart) BONES (doctor, see Startrek). Another good clue, I’m loving that definition: skull and crossbones, geddit? | |
| 14 | Falsely made up bacteria swarming in food eaten out (10) |
| FABRICATED – *(BACTERIA) inside F(oo)D, food “eaten out.” | |
| 17 | Shape of park complicated matter (9) |
| RECTANGLE – REC (park) + TANGLE, a complicated matter. | |
| 21 | Spies any number of chests (5) |
| NARKS – N ARKS, any number of arks/chests. The word nark is derived from a Hindi word nāk, meaning nose. And was brought here from India, by Romany gypsies. | |
| 22 | Start to look for hotel in part of London by oneself (4) |
| SOLO – SOHO, a part of london, with the H(otel) replaced by L(ook) | |
| 23 | University lecturer is a bit of a dish? (4) |
| UDON – U(ni) + DON, a lecturer. I didn’t know udon, a kind of Japanese noodle apparently, but I was quite happy to write it in. It is important to be able to solve clues to words you don’t know, since it happens to all of us. Sometimes you just have to go with the wordplay. | |
Yes, this one is very nice. My LOI was BELIEVED, only because “EV” for “modern car” didn’t occur to me for the longest time. I know from long experience that BELIED is a word often misused.
Turgenev was my FOI, and I thought the puzzle might be a bit difficult. I didn’t get very far for a while, just picking off a few of the easier ones. It was nice to get a second chance to spell Michelangelo – this time correctly. Fortunately, udon is a staple of the Asian fusion restaurants around here, and I knew otary as well, so I had all the elements I needed. I suspect some solvers will biff Soho without reading the clue carefully.
Time: 24:42
22:54 but
once again I overlooked a typo. I knew MAGNIFICAT from Vivaldi’s canticle. Is a RULE a decision? Ruling, yes, but rule? ‘A bit’ seemed superfluous in 23d: udon is a dish; it’s served in a broth not eaten by itself, but still. I liked LABYRINTHINE.
RULE as “decision” seems to be covered in Collins by
11. law
an order by a court or judge
Whenever I’ve encountered udon it’s referred to a particular type of noodle that is an ingredient in various dishes. Like spaghetti.
53 minutes. I found myself working upwards across the grid SE to NW, which is always something of a handicap, and the layout generally didn’t favour my usual solving techniques. NHO UDON or OTARY but got through it all eventually.
Great crossword. Only unknowns were BARGEE and OTARY, but the rest of the clue left little doubt that these were actually words. I have eaten UDON so that was not a problem for me. I used to be in the school chapel choir so I have sung a MAGNIFICAT. I liked the definition of CROSSBONES too. Not time since I we had people over this evening and I was doing the crossword while preparing dishes. Well, it was 1hr 9 minutes so I would guess around 30 minutes of actual solving.
Only one (an unparsed CLAM UP) on the first pass of the acrosses, but picked up from there.
I’m currently reading (in translation) Turgenev’s Torrents of Spring. It starts off upbeat enough but one just knows that the wheels are about to come off.
23:30
Ventnor can do that to you.
29.27 but cheated via the check function to get CROSSBONES, and only then did I realise what was going on with the clue. Clever! Well done to Jerry for explaining NOTARY (it had to be), FABRICATED (FD = food eaten out doh!) and STRESSFUL, and for doing the hard work to figure out MICHELANGELO while the rest of us just biffed it.
From Mr Tambourine Man:
Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted REACH of crazy sorrow
I’ve always loved this lyric – astonishing command of imagery and rhythm.
I love this verse, the next lines that start ‘yes to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free’ are similarly astonishing. I remember back then my mum being drawn out of the kitchen to ask who wrote such beautiful words…
I found this quite tricky, the NW corner, and especially LABYRINTHINE, taking several mins – 23 mins. No unheard-ofs; thanks Blogger for explaining BELIEVED. RULE: in the real non-dictionary world legal decisions, in England and Wales at least, are rulings not rules (I was in the law). First in was UDON and last LABYRINTHINE. My favourite clue was to WEDGWOOD. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
16:11. So on wavelength that it’s hard to be objective about the merits of this one. It was only the ummming over submitting NHO OTARY at LOI that pushed me over 15. Quite a few seemed recently familiar.
LABYRINTHINE was. COD CROSSBONES. Thanks to Jerry and setter.
From TURGENEV to PREDECEASE in 18:45. Took a while to see the parsing of STRESSFUL. Didn’t know otary, so biffed NOTARY from definition and crossers. Liked WEDGWOOD. Saw 1CH, but didn’t bother parsing the rest of our erstwhile painter. Somehow UDON rang a bell. An enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Jerry.
Got it done, but needed plenty of aids to close out Nw, with the NHO Turgenev.
Had PROF for my university lecture, as in PROFiteroles (bit of a dish)
COD CROSSBONES
40 minutes but with a pink’un. NHO UDON so plumped for ADON. As I only associate Dons with either Spanish gentlemen, dressing or university lecturers, I treated the u as surplus to requirements. Was worried about BICENTENNIAL until I saw that the pub was going back. Overall a very enjoyable puzzle even if I was doomed to fail. COD CROSSBONES!
Thanks to setter and Jerry.
16.15
A fun crossword for midweek, after a couple of perhaps too easy ones. Not STRESSFUL; OTHERWISE.
COD PREDECEASE
LOI TUBA
20 minutes or so
– Didn’t know otary, but NOTARY had to be
– Biffed MICHELANGELO once I had the O at the end
– Hampered myself by putting PENTANGLE for 17d, until OTHERWISE forced a rethink to RECTANGLE
– Trusted the wordplay for the unknown UDON
Thanks Jerry and setter.
FOI Least
LOI Turgenev
COD Wedgwood
Took longer than the last two but that’s three in a row. LOI LABYRINTHINE. COD to the MAGNIFICAT, taking me back to those glorious teenage years of Evensong so brilliantly sung about by Lonnie Donegan in Putting on the Style. Cette sauce de haut qualité gave me mélange. Enjoyable. Thank you Jerry and setter.
Three interruptions during this solve (one of those mornings) but it was probably around the 25-30 minute mark. Much chewier than the last two days.
Felt like one of those I would have been better off just biffing. My first thoughts were often right but I was just not seeing the parsing (BELIEVED, FABRICATED etc).
MAGNIFICAT remembered from crosswords past which rather helpfully, in the weird way my brain works, along the lines of a ‘magnificent cat’.
MICHELANGELO is coming up a lot lately.
COD WEDGWOOD
Thanks blogger and setter.
43.41
Very enjoyable solve.
Thanks, Jerry.
14’47”, no issues apart from the two nhos in otary and UDON.
MAGNIFICAT, anima mea dominum.
Thanks jerry and setter.
17.16. Super crossword, achieving that feat of making you think you were being clever solving a difficult set of clues while actually providing very helpful ones. RULE my last in, needing the well packaged TURGENEV to get the R, and realising it was a really simple clue.
STRESSFUL was slow to arrive: I have a bit of a blind when asked to take two letters off the start of a word.
I knew OTARY, or so I thought, thinking it was a waxy sort of seal, but sometimes you get lucky. The cluing for LABYRINTHINE made me believe I could actually spell the word.
Credit to a special setter, and thanks to Jerry for a cheerful and appreciative blog.
52:49! No idea what went so wrong here. Just couldn’t think at all. Got there in the end (though had to confirm the NHO ‘otary’ along the way). Quite a lot of NHO or only VHO, and a lot of LABYRINTHINE cluing, but I can’t really complain about anything except my dull-wittedness this morning.
I liked this one, thought it was quite chewy but had some splendid clues; jerry’s remarks made me nostalgic for my 12 years of Wednesdays before jerry and dvynys took up the reins. 1a was first in, although I’ve never read him; the David chap was next, OTARY was unknown but had to be, but I thought WEDGWOOD and PREDECEASE were the best of a good lot. 25 minutes. Nice blog jerry.
As I recall I blogged Wednesdays before you, as well as after.. with mctext, who I think you took over from. Harder work, in those days!
30.04
A bit off the pace it seems; not sure why other than needing a good 5 minutes to crack my final two: MAGNIFICAT and BARGEE. Agree this was another excellent puzzle in which CROSSBONES was my fave. Thanks setter and Jerry.
11:32. Quite tricky this, very enjoyable.
We were in Florence a few years ago and thought rather casually that it would be quite nice to go and see MICHELANGELO’s David. We found enormous queues, snaking through the streets, of people who had all booked their slot to see it weeks in advance. So we had a nice lunch instead.
I have been several times in December. Crowds are minimal, you can spend as long as you like wandering around at your ease and gazing at what must surely be one of the greatest works of art humankind has created.
We were there at the end of September, so I was a bit surprised at how busy it was.
31:39
Not bad for a Snitch of 96 (target 33 mins). I have a collection of TURGENEV’s short stories waiting on the shelf to be selected – maybe this reminder will push it up the queue a little. Didn’t know OTARY and always struggle with hymns, so needed the pencilled in BARGEE (thought I’d heard of it) for the G checker which gave up MAGNIFICAT and consequently, my LOI, the labyrinthine LABYRINTHINE. I preferred the clues for WEDGWOOD and CROSSBONES far more…
Thanks Jerry and setter
Relieved to finish this – I’ve had a bad run of DNFs, with just one or two answers missing. Nice change to know all the words bar ‘otary’, but with crossers NOTARY had to be right. FOI was PREDECEASE, which in retrospect was one of the harder answers. Liked MAGNIFICAT and CROSSBONES.
About 35′. Slow start and I initially found it chewy but once completed I’m not sure why… But better than my fail on the easier puzzle yesterday!
As hinted by Jerry, I immediately tried to enter WEDGeWOOD until I ran out of space and thought again. Enjoyed CROSSBONES and PREDECEASED but forgot to go back and parse MICHELANGELO, which I wrote in. NHO “otary” but had to be, and made for a very good surface reading.
Thanks Jerry and setter
22:36. I’d not heard of OTARY before so was pleased to avoid a pink square there.
COD: MICHELANGELO
Thanks to Jerry and our setter.
29 mins. Not too LABYRINTHINE today, I knew OTARY from Scrabble but as is usual with Scrabble I had no idea what it meant
In case keriothe hits the same problem with the queue for David some time in the future:
We calculated, when we visited, that the queue was over 1.5hrs long so went to a cloister on the other side of the road, which was also on the pre-booking system. No queue there, so we asked when the first slot for David might be. Paying Euro 1 extra, we crossed back over the road for immediate entry. The statue is so much more impressive seen through smug eyes.
I didn’t know UDON and otary but they were pretty obvious. The skull and CROSSBONES utterly deceived me, very good clue. Perhaps I’d have been OK if cross = thwart had come to mind. MER at the time over rule = decision, but we have to live with what the dictionaries say I suppose.
UDON and OTARY are both familiar to serious Scrabble players. UDON is both a front hook for DON and a rear hook for UDO. OTARY gives rise to the seven-letter plural OTARIES and the seven-letter adjective OTARINE, both frequently occurring bonus words because of their common letters.
Didn’t we have MAGNIFICAT in a Friday cryptic a few weeks back? I recall Simon Anthony coming up with this answer in one of the Solving the Cryptic Masterclass videos on YouTube.
I was another to find this very approachable, finishing up in a brisk 14:42. Remembered my LOI MAGNIFICAT from its recent appearance: I’d forgotten what it was, of course, but had remembered my surprise that it wasn’t in fact some Disney film, which I suppose is just about adequate for cryptic crossword solving. Lovely blog as well, with a chuckle at the BELIED quote – thanks both.
Very much enjoyed teasing this one out and parsing it – the only serious holdup being LOI LABYRINTHINE, which took me almost as long as the rest of the puzzle! I gave up on trying to parse it and just stared at it until I found a word that fitted, then reverse parsed it. I might have known the ubiquitous lab would get in there, and would have saved much time. I did check otary after putting it in, but certainly knew Turgenev and udon noodles.
About 14min. Lovely puzzle. I did know OTARY, probably from Mephisto. Liked CROSSBONES.
The only obscurity was the bizarre BARGEE, so I’m surprised that various other answers are people’s NHO but tricky all the same. I shamefully failed to get MAGNIFICAT despite being a chorister.
Has anyone pointed out that OTARIE is French for sea-lion? Different from seals because they have visible ears (otarion = ear-lobe in Greek). Also did anyone else nearly put in PADDLE for 10 across? P for Past; and ADDLE … meaning … errr … obstruction (???!!!). The whole being a command to a boatman to get a move on. Held me up for a bit on MAGNIFICAT. All in at 24’38”.
30.41 I couldn’t parse STRESSED, OTARY was new and I spent a while wondering if a BARHIE was a boatman. Thanks Jerry.
33:33
LOI was CROSSBONES.
Thanks Jerry and setter
I failed to get TURGENEV and COMEDOWN, but managed everything else. It felt tricky, but wordplay was very clear. I biffed NOTARY, but have never heard of otary.
I feel I have been educated today.
Thanks Jerry and Setter
I am surprised by “every so often” = ‘regularly’. Doesn’t the phrase suggests ‘occasional’ or ‘irregularly’?
The phrase is in Collins, and defined thus:
“If something happens every so often, it happens regularly, but with fairly long intervals between each occasion.”