12:34. It was probably just me, but I found this of above average difficulty, despite the lack of anything really obscure.
I started off well but soon came to a halt. At 10d I was blocked first by identifying the def, then by the dreaded _A_E. I just couldn’t see the ‘origin’s story?’ at 5d despite the helpful anagram and enumeration.
Pedro has also included a little something extra – I can’t link it into a theme but perhaps I’m missing something.
An enjoyable puzzle with a mix of easier clues and some which certainly made me think.
Thanks to Pedro
Definitions underlined in bold, letters in wordplay not appearing in answer and deletions indicated by strikethrough, insertion point indicated by tilde ∼.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Well-turned-out fir tree (6) |
| SPRUCE – Double definition | |
| 4 | Burning a book ahead of rest (6) |
| ABLAZE – A (‘a’) B (‘book’) then (‘ahead of’) LAZE (‘rest’) | |
| 8 | Threatening behaviour in the past limiting King George (5) |
| AGGRO – AG∼O (‘in the past’) containing (‘limiting’) GR (‘King George’)
GR for “Georgius Rex”. |
|
| 9 | Drinking, losing head, embracing (7) |
| HUGGING – Yes, CHUG is in Collins for “to drink (a liquid) quickly or greedily”. Sounds like a Barry McKenzie-ism to me but the OED has it as “colloquial (originally US)”. |
|
| 10 | Bird of prey seen in low light (3) |
| OWL – Hidden (‘seen in’) |
|
| 11 | To recap, total is invested in horse (9) |
| SUMMARISE – SUM (‘total’) then IS (‘is’) contained in (‘invested in’) MAR∼E (‘horse’) | |
| 12 | French composer on time for journey (6) |
| TRAVEL – RAVEL (‘French composer’) following (in an across clue) (‘on’) T (‘time’)
Maurice Ravel, famous for Bolero et al. |
|
| 13 | Medium period of time at clubs in US city (6) |
| AGENCY – AGE (‘period of time’) then C (‘clubs’) contained in (‘in’) N∼Y (‘US city’)
A means of doing something – through the medium / agency of … |
|
| 16 | Confront the clergy? It helps to have a clean look (4,5) |
| FACE CLOTH – FACE (‘Confront’) CLOTH (‘the clergy?’)
“A man of the cloth” = a clergyman Slightly cryptic or at least not obvious definition |
|
| 18 | Blue stand, with regular pieces missing (3) |
| SAD – S |
|
| 19 | Aluminium, carbon and helium linked to my former quest for gold? (7) |
| ALCHEMY –AL (‘Aluminium’) C (‘carbon’) HE (‘helium’) MY (‘my’)
We weren’t even asked to plumb the depths of our memory for the symbol for lead, which is commonly associated with alchemy. |
|
| 20 | Stage production to start without new artist (5) |
| OPERA – OPE RA for “Royal Academician”, the favourite artist for both setters and solvers. |
|
| 22 | Pass drinks in middle of speech (6) |
| ELAPSE – LAPS (‘drinks’) contained in (‘in’) |
|
| 23 | Bizarre story about European shellfish (6) |
| OYSTER – Anagram (‘Bizarre’) of STORY containing (‘about’) E (‘European’) | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Where to find aquatic mammal mainly (3) |
| SEA – SEA I liked the ‘mainly’ as the subtraction indicator which also whimsically refers back to the sea or ocean. |
|
| 2 | Symbolic items regarding festivity involving capital of Italy (7) |
| REGALIA – RE (‘regarding’) GAL∼A (‘festivity’) containing (‘involving’) I (‘capital of Italy’)
‘Capital’ indicating either the first letter of the word ‘Italy’ or the letter in the word which is capitalised. |
|
| 3 | MPs angry over booze found around northern church (5-8) |
| CROSS-BENCHERS – CROSS (‘angry’) BE∼ERS (‘booze’) containing (‘around’) N (‘northern’) CH (‘church’)
A member of parliament who is independent of any political party. Not a 10a this time. |
|
| 5 | Going by the bar, getting drunk’s origin story? (3,4,6) |
| BIG BANG THEORY – Anagram (‘getting drunk’) of GOING BY THE BAR
All too obvious now. |
|
| 6 | Liberal put in excellent assertion of innocence (5) |
| ALIBI – LIB (‘Liberal’) contained in (‘put in’) A∼I (‘excellent’)
I think of an alibi more as a claim of being elsewhere at the time eg a crime was committed, or as an excuse but I suppose ‘assertion of innocence’ amounts to the same thing. |
|
| 7 | Success at golf: finally one may be considered keen (5-4) |
| EAGLE-EYED – EAGLE (‘Success at golf’) |
|
| 9 | House cartoon father left unfinished (4) |
| HOME – HOME Of The Simpsons fame. This was another that stumped me, both in identifying the definition and in trying to fit in L for ‘left’ somewhere. |
|
| 10 | Old description of fruit shortage? Not entirely (3-2-4) |
| OUT-OF-DATE – OUT OF DATE I have a feeling there’s a better parsing here, but if so I can’t think what it is. |
|
| 14 | Seat now broken? Don’t worry about it (2,5) |
| NO SWEAT – Anagram (‘broken’) of SEAT NOW | |
| 15 | Young guy involving daughter in organisation (4) |
| BODY – BO∼Y (‘Young guy’) containing (‘involving’) D (‘daughter’) | |
| 17 | Firm outer covering yielding last source of powder (5) |
| COCOA – CO (‘Firm’) COA The ‘firm outer covering’ is indeed just like a cocoa pod. |
|
| 21 | Manner reasonable, but not fine (3) |
| AIR – |
|
8 minutes for me, so almost exactly twice the time I took yesterday. I had the same parsing as you for OUT-OF-DATE. I knew CHUGGING so that didn’t hold me up.
6:46
Biffed a few–OPERA, REGALIA, BIG BANG, EAGLE-EYED, COCOA, parsing post-submission. Also biffed HOME, but never figured out how it worked.
You are not wrong, it was a bit hard. There was a lot of novel wordplay, although I put in cross-benchers as a likely answer without examining the clue too closely. I did like eagle-eyed, but had to double back to see how it worked.
Time: 9:58
16 minutes. LOI was HUGGING, which had to be although I have never heard of ‘chugging’ meaning ‘drinking’. I know it only as a portmanteau word. ODE: derogatory, informal British English – the action or practice of approaching passersby in the street to solicit donations to a particular charity. It’s derived from ‘charity mugging’.
‘Chug’ is short for ‘chugalug’. ODE dates it to the 1980s, but I remember it from my student days in the 60s (Collins gives 1955-60 for ‘chug-a-lug’). I note that all the corpus examples from ODE are American English.
I was clearly in tune with Pedro here with a 7:29 finish. CROSS-BENCHERS puzzled me for a bit – the term almost always refers to members of the House of Lords who have no party allegiance, but I suppose technically members of the HoL are “members of Parliament”. Medium for AGENCY also took a while to see. Several quirky clues made me smile, and all in all a most enjoyable puzzle.
Many thanks BR for the blog.