Time: 42:27
It is a very busy exam season for my students, so there was no guarantee I’d be in the frame of mind to tackle or gain much enjoyment from this one. Then (inexplicably) held up by 1ac and 3dn, along with several other outstanding and misleading clues, I got the fear! Eventually got into it and, I’m please to report, appreciated every minute. I had no idea (and still don’t) about what is going on at 8dn, but I feel sure it’s clever. Have a lovely weekend all.
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Summon British judge when denied right (6) |
| BECKON – B (British) + rECKON (judge) minus the (when denied) ‘r’ (right). | |
| 4 | Service area cut down extensively (8) |
| MASSACRE – MASS (service) + ACRE (area). | |
| 10 | Where louse develops, surely? (5) |
| INNIT – “in nit” is where a louse develops, and the definition is the colloquial interjection familiar to any and all UK teachers. | |
| 11 | Heat from Iraqi fuel supply (9) |
| QUALIFIER – anagram of (supply) IRAQI FUEL. | |
| 12 | Good new genetic material collected by intelligent race (5,8) |
| GRAND NATIONAL – G (good), then N (new) and DNA (genetic material) contained (collected) by RATIONAL (intelligent). | |
| 15 | Utter profanity my head regularly bleeps out (9) |
| BLASPHEME – anagram of (out) BLEEPS with regular letters from My HeAd. | |
| 17 | Dear boy turned queer I think in the end (5) |
| KIDDO – ODD (queer) + I + last letter of (in the end) thinK, all reversed (turned). | |
| 18 | German and you heard too much (5) |
| UNDUE – UND (German for ‘and’) then a homophone of “you”. | |
| 20 | Incomplete ballot is read differently in opposing camps (9) |
| POLARISED – all but the last of (incomplete) POLl (ballot), then an anagram of (differently) IS READ. | |
| 22 | Attractive body sheriff sometimes employs ironing trousers (13) |
| PREPOSSESSING – POSSE (body sheriff sometimes employs) which PRESSING (ironing) contains (trousers). | |
| 25 | Trees come down on meadow, one after another (9) |
| LEYLANDII – LAND (come down) on LEY (meadow), then I and I (one after another). | |
| 27 | Spinner running through tail at Headingley (5) |
| LATHE – hidden in (running through) taiL AT HEadingley. | |
| 28 | American always on X, man of accomplishment? (8) |
| ACHIEVER – A (American), then EVER (always) on CHI (Greek letter X). | |
| 29 | Almost nobody on vessel for preserving Nelson’s arm? (6) |
| CANNON – all but the last of (almost) NONe (nobody), on CAN (vessel for preserving). The arm(ament) of Admiral Nelson? | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Produce boring article, but with nothing out of place (5,5) |
| BRING ABOUT – BORING + A (article) + BUT, with the letter ‘O’ in a different place. | |
| 2 | Work is authorised to repeated cheers (7) |
| CANTATA – CAN (is authorised to) + TA (cheers) and TA (repeated). | |
| 3 | Wilson’s educational project, maybe Heath unveiled (5) |
| OUTED – OU (The Open University, Harold Wilson’s educational project) + TED (maybe Heath). | |
| 5 | Ditch at first hidden I see now (3) |
| AHA – hA-HA (ditch) missing its first (at first hidden). | |
| 6 | Wind resistance cut by fastening sail (9) |
| SPINNAKER – SNAKE (wind) + R (resistance) containing (cut by) PIN (fastener). | |
| 7 | Very leisurely climbing last month, bagging modest peak (7) |
| CHILLED – reversal of (climbing) DEC (December, last month of year) containing (bagging) HILL (modest peak). | |
| 8 | Get out of your office? (4) |
| EARN – maybe just a cryptic definition? As in, what you get out of your position/job/office? | |
| 9 | Flattest part of pitch, until tackle (6,2,2) |
| SQUARE UP TO – SQUARE (flattest part of cricket |
|
| 13 | Impractical doctor elicits aid (10) |
| IDEALISTIC – anagram of (doctor) ELICIT AID. | |
| 14 | Words misinterpreted on say, BA opening Macron’s case (10) |
| MONDEGREEN – ON + DEGREE (say, BA), all contained by (opening) the first and last (case) of MacroN. | |
| 16 | Pay for each item European put in pastry box (5,4) |
| PIECE RATE – E (European) contained by (put in) PIE (pastry) and CRATE (box). | |
| 19 | Tidy chap fiddled with a misplaced pair of pictures (7) |
| DIPTYCH – anagram of (fiddled with) TIDY CHaP, missing the ‘a’ (with ‘a’ misplaced). | |
| 21 | Small hand warmer in beau’s grip? (7) |
| SMITTEN – S (small) + MITTEN (hand warmer). | |
| 23 | Recalled seeing that 50 per cent of girls dance (5) |
| SALSA – reversal of (recalled) AS (seeing that) with half of LASses (girls). | |
| 24 | Legal statement bound back-to-front? (4) |
| PLEA – LEAP (bound) with the last letter (back) moved to the front. | |
| 26 | Long day interminable if unoccupied (3) |
| DIE – D (day) + the first and last of (if unoccupied) InterminablE. | |
Nice end to the (working) week. I did like the ironing trousers clue.
I think 8dn is just a cd? Your salary, what you EARN, is what you get out of your job/office. If there is more to it I didn’t spot it.
Blaspheme is an anagram of My HeAd and bleeps, methinks.
Also, the ballot is a poll note a pole.
I had to come here for the parsing of spinnaker thinking spin was wind leaving nake as a fastening that I had never hear of! Thank you, William and setter.
Ah yes – errors fixed – thanks.
And, of course “note” is not.
20’49”, pretty miraculous after my first pass of the acrosses yielded nothing at all. Got started with CANTATA. Loved MONDEGREEN and LEYLANDII. Good to see the OU mentioned, I am a three-time graduate.
Agree with Glen re BLASPHEME, anagram of every other letter of My HeAd and BLEEPS.
Not sure about EARN, why office?
Thanks william and setter.
Re:9d. In cricket, the pitch is part of the square, not the other way around. The square is part of the field of play
Well I am learning today! Thanks
I would say the opposite: the whole thing is the pitch. The flat bit in the middle is the square. “A pitch is an area of ground that is marked out and used for playing a game such as football, cricket, or hockey. ” (Collins)
The field of play is a synonym for pitch, usually denoting the part inside the boundary rope.
I’m sorry, but Collins is incorrect about cricket. I’m a qualified umpire who used to teach the Laws of Cricket to other umpires, so I had to know the difference. The pitch is something specific-22 yards long in adult cricket- and is not synonymous with the field of play
There seems to be a discrepancy between the technical term and the term in common usage. Not a particularly unusual thing!
It’s more common for people to confuse the pitch with the wicket
2 Errors: 1 typo in POLoRISED + a parsing failure for UNDiE in about 35 mins. Felt I made harder work of this than it really was but enjoyed it very much, proper Friday fare.
NHO MONDEGREEN. Disliked EARN, too vague.
Liked INNIT and OUTED but COD: BRING ABOUT, nice PDM. Thanks to william and setter.
About 40 minutes I think but I forgot to turn off timer while otherwise engaged. Biffed MONDEGREEN early on but retired it until crossers convinced me. Spent too long searching wardrobe for some exotic trousers but found nothing PREPOSSESSING until I had a rethink. Had reservations about CANTATA as ‘authorised to’ didn’t evoke can to me but hey-ho.
Fridays seem to be losing their terror, to me at least.
Thanks to setter and William.
39:50 which is pretty much Monday and Tuesday’s time combined. Not sure if this was difficult because there was a lot of ‘of course!’ when answers did come. Slowed down as well by spelling LEYLANDII starting Lea and the invented Quailfire providing heat. Got it stuck in my head it ended fire. Sounds quite a cruel and inefficient way to heat.
Didn’t know DIPTYCH but the definition rang a bell so I feel it has come up somewhere recently.
The setter clearly has not played on some of the pitches I did during my cricket years.
Liked quite a bit in this and it was a smooth if slow solve with only EARN requiring a long stare at the end. Thankfully I put in the right answer if only half-heartedly.
Thanks blogger and setter.
Three missing, the forgotten MONDEGREEN, the loosely- clued EARN and “the you should have got that”KIDDO. I was off to a bad start, thinking that 10a was an anagram of LOUSE and confidently entering SEOUL. It took a CANTATA to persuade me otherwise. COD to those oversized weeds, LEYLANDII. Thank you William and setter.
About 25 minutes
– Biffed BLASPHEME once I had enough checkers
– Understood the ‘pressing’ part of PREPOSSESSING, but missed that we needed to read ‘body sheriff sometimes employs’ together to get the ‘posse’ part
– Tried to justify ACHILLES for 28a before the E from PIECE RATE forced a rethink to get ACHIEVER
– Biffed BRING ABOUT from the checkers and the enumeration
– Didn’t understand OUTED as I had no idea the Open University was a Harold Wilson project
– Biffed MONDEGREEN once I had enough checkers
Thanks William and setter
FOI Qualifier
LOI Achiever
COD Lathe
23.50 I’m well chilled, innit, kiddo?! Enjoyed this challenge, though, deciding there was nothing better than EARN as my last in and mildly relieved to see none of it turned pink.
Lady MONDEGREEN was a welcome visitor, though I had to get EG (say) and British Airways out of my parsing process before justifying her existence.
A real blast from the early 70’s for those of us for whom that’s still recent, though I had forgotten it was Harold who kicked off the OU.
Fine clues throughout. I can ta, ta for the blog, as well.
48 minutes. I raced (for me) through the LH and much of the SE but ground to a halt with only AHA, QUALIFIER and NATIONAL in the NE. My solving time was then extended and almost doubled as I attempted to fill in the blanks. MONDEGREEN was my LOI, entirely from wordplay as, if I ever knew the word, I had forgotten it.
DNF – couldn’t get MASSACRE and couldn’t get EARN. EARN seems a pretty weak, nothing-y clue to me. When I saw it here I though ‘meh’, not ‘of course!’. Should have got MASSACRE, but just wasn’t seeing it. Annoying as I had done most of this relatively quickly (about 25 minutes). I knew MONDEGREEN from a dictionary game I once played. I thought it was excellent, with the exception of EARN.
I also failed on MASSACRE / EARN.
I might have guessed EARN if I’d got MASSACRE, but sadly it beat me. On its own merits, I think the clue for EARN very poor.
The rest of this was challenging but fun.
Got it done in an hour. Just one aid need for POI MASSACRE, as wasn’t really sure about AHA.
No NHOs which is rare for a Friday,
COD MONDEGREEN
Does anyone have a personal MONDEGREEN ?
Looking forward to tomorrow, should be able to make it.
53:31, and an errorless grid. Agree about earn, not the greatest of clues. A bottom up solve which made it a longer one. But it’s a Friday so just happy to finish… Looking forward to seeing how Simon Anthony deals with it (I see Mark took only 6 minutes!)
32.36
Got there eventually. NHO MONDEGREEN but constructed. Lots to like but EARN just doesn’t work for me. Like Zabadak bunged in at the end with no confidence it was correct. Thanks setter/William.
From INNIT to CANNON in 32:42, with a lot of leaping around the grid and lots of assembling from wordplay. Pleased to get the unknown MONDEGREEN. Needed the blog to understand why NAKE wasn’t the fastener in 6d. A biffed DIORAMA held up the SW for a while, until IDEALISTIC begat LEYLANDII. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and William.
29:16
Pretty happy with this, considering the Snitch is currently 113 (target time 41m30s) – started quickly down the LHS, came to a bit of a pause, then picked up again as answers started to materialise on the right. Heard of MONDEGREEN but couldn’t have said what it was. 8d (EARN) was a bit of an odd clue.
Thanks William and setter
I was heading for a good time, as I biffed grand national and saw prepossessed very quickly. Square up to was unknown, but the crossing letters were very useful. I biffed leylandii and mondegreen without hesitation, and most of the other fell pretty easily. I was left with massacre and earn, which unfortunately took nearly twenty minutes. I was about to give up when I discarded the various branches of military service and considered religious services instead – aha! Once massacre went in, earn was the obvious answer.
Time: 46:01
A mondegreen is I think strictly a misinterpretation of the words in a song, but I’d sooner it applied to any misinterpretation, as the compiler of a list I once copied down (The Wigan pen club/The Wig and Pen Club) apparently agreed. EARN was a rare unsatisfactory clue, there no doubt because the setter felt that a CD somewhere in the crossword was necessary. Not the usual (?) Friday torture, but excellent.
Another DNF with EARN: after a couple of minutes of staring blankly I entered ECRU at the 25 minute mark because it was a word that fitted whose meaning I had forgotten… I think the vaguely office-related word I was confusing it with was ESCRITOIRE (which I had presumably subconsciously ruled out for reasons other than being unparsable). Top notch puzzle – thanks setter and William.
It seems a lot of you don’t read the Times before tackling the crossword- there’s an article on Page 9 which explains the derivation of MONDEGREEN and cites Hendrix’s Purple Haze (kiss the sky/guy ).
That was a big help, but undone in the end by the pathetic clue at 8d.
27.45 and very enjoyable but I did resort to looking up mondegreen. Whoever invented that word must have been a servant of Satan. Though in fairness it was helpfully clued- if you didn’t get side tracked by aviation.
DNF MASSACRE, EARN and the NHO MONDEGREEN all beat me, on the hour. (Mde owsyerfather is even highlighted as unrecognised in my box here!)
Otherwise a good work out. I liked GRAND NATIONAL, QUALIFIER & KIDDO.
Thanks william and setter.Now for some light relief with the quickie, hopefully!
There could be so many better ways to clue EARN, or EARL, ECRU, EHRU, EIRE, EORL, ERRS, ETRE, EURO and EYRE.
41 minutes. Just like yesterday, slow to get started, then helped by a few such as IDEALISTIC and ACHIEVER. MONDEGREEN went in from checked letters before being properly parsed. Not confident about EARN but it sort of made sense as a cryptic def and I couldn’t think of a better answer.
Middling level difficulty for a Friday puzzle and happy to finish.