11:23, which is pretty good for me on an Izetti.
Lots of great surfaces which read completely naturally, and a great one at 13d. But the two cryptics didn’t quite work for me today.
Across
| 8 | Proper tea arranged for archbishop (7) |
| PRIMATE – PRIM (Proper) + (TEA)*
An archbishop is a primate — the senior bishop of a region, a new one was just installed last week in Canterbury, and was given her title of Primate of All England. |
|
| 9 | Superior meal in the evening without a starter (5) |
| UPPER – {s}UPPER
As in the UPPER Classes. |
|
| 10 | Golf attendant, bad guy, starts to diddle you (5) |
| CADDY – CAD (bad guy) + D{iddle} Y{ou}
The standard spelling in Golf (and those guys are sticklers for rules) is Caddie. This spelling is for tea. |
|
| 11 | House mother finally catches insects (7) |
| HORNETS – HO{use} + {mothe}R + NETS (catches)
HO is the official abbreviation for house, (H is for Hotel). You don’t often see HO, because houses look either like odd derivatives of Westward Ho!, Heave Ho!, or something a rapper might say. |
|
| 12 | Quiet relaxation before performing in city (7) |
| PRESTON – P (quiet) + REST (relaxation) + ON (performing)
ON=performing is common in crosswords, and is justified by the theatre expression “She is ON tonight.” |
|
| 14 | Correct this writer in margin (5) |
| EMEND – ME (this writer) contained in E^ND (margin)
AMEND/EMEND sound similar, the difference lies in whether you are fixing an error or making a change. You amend a constitution, but you emend a typo. |
|
| 15 | Something that could get one carried away (5) |
| SEDAN – Cryptic clue
The excellently-named Sir Saunders Duncombe patented the sedan chair in London in 1634. It was a little booth carried on two poles, and kept the upper classes out of the dirt. In 1911 the Speedwell Motor Co. in Ohio used the name to describe a fully enclosed car body, an innovation at the time. |
|
| 17 | Learner enthralled by puzzle-maker — one ensconced in new territory? (7) |
| SETTLER – L{earner} contained in SETT^ER (puzzle-maker)
Izetti being humble here, not using a self-reference for Setter. |
|
| 19 | Add to workers in month, having let us go (7) |
| AUGMENT – MEN (workers) contained in AUG{us}T | |
| 20 | Outfit needed by the Spanish star (5) |
| RIGEL – RIG (outfit) + EL (“the” in Spanish)
Rigel is the brightest star in Orion. I asked my AI what were the most famous stars, it came up with 1. The Sun, 2. Sirius, 3. Polaris, 4. Betelgeuse, 5. Alpha Centauri, 6. Vega, 7. RIGEL, 8. Antares |
|
| 22 | Smallest line with particular direction (5) |
| LEAST – L{ine} + EAST (a particular direction) | |
| 23 | Strange quality that fifteen will show (7) |
| ODDNESS – Cryptic clue
I mean 15 is an odd number, is that it? A Rugby Union team is pretty weird when they start grabbing each other by the shorts. |
Down
| 1 | Eastern picture — a large-scale film? (4) |
| EPIC – E{astern} + PIC{ture} | |
| 2 | Sort of coloured garment restricted you once (3-3) |
| TIE-DYE – TIED (restricted) + YE (“you” once, in Olde English) | |
| 3 | Woman and boy ending in Torquay (4) |
| LADY – LAD (boy) + {torqua}Y | |
| 4 | Fantastic cash in no time, with introduction of a movement abandoning manual processes (13) |
| MECHANISATION – (CASH IN NO TIME)* including an extra A
At first I was looking at words with MACHINE in them, and also an extra M (introduction of Movement). So Something like MACHINE-ISM |
|
| 5 | Greek character on river eating one nourishing substance (8) |
| NUTRIENT – NU (Greek character) + TR^ENT (river) containing I(one) | |
| 6 | Domain that has no edges (6) |
| SPHERE – Cryptic clue
A sphere has no edges. Um, that’s it. |
|
| 7 | Salvation Army limited by less sophisticated evangelist (8) |
| CRUSADER – SA contained in CRU^DER (less sophisticated)
I’m not sure how much evangelising those 12th century knights were doing in the Levant. I mean, when they captured a city, they didn’t exactly sit them all down and have an Alpha Course. |
|
| 12 | Dad’s dark colour or fair? (8) |
| PASSABLE – PA’S (Dads) + SABLE (dark colour)
Sable (black) one of those colours that exists in heraldry and nowhere else, like Gules and Or. I found this one hard, it was my LOI, I couldn’t get Pastel (fair) out of my mind. |
|
| 13 | Toilet surmounted by brown lines (8) |
| TANGENTS – GENTS (toilets) preceded by TAN (brown)
Best surface today! |
|
| 16 | Party attire that is folded over (3-3) |
| DOG-EAR – DO (party) + GEAR (attire)
This is the noun, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard. the adjective “dog-eared” is more common. |
|
| 18 | Made a note of unusual old egg (6) |
| LOGGED – (OLD EGG)* | |
| 20 | Impolite daughter getting in Parisian’s way (4) |
| RUDE – D{aughter} contained in RU^E (street in Paris/France) | |
| 21 | Girl in glasses (4) |
| LASS – Hidden in glasses |
16:21 Couldn’t do gear in a sphere or a sedan…
Ta MAI
10 minutes but with one error as the best I could come up with at 16dn was DOG TAG bunged in with fingers crossed but not much hope really. Like Merlin, I never heard of DOG-EAR as a noun, only in the term “dog-eared”.
I assumed I was missing something re ODDNESS but the simple explanation in the blog seems to cover it.
That’s oddness I’m first to post… can’t work out how Brisbane time made that happen. Ho Hun off for some Moreton Bay Bugs. 😋
11.07
Long pause over DOG EAR and SEDAN. In retrospect I think they’re fine though at the time I thought “carry away” could include a plane or other conveyance.
Thanks Izetti/Merlin.
Surprised to find others fared so much better, I found this really tough both in clueing and in required vocabulary. Struggled over the line in 20.16 – and still missed a typo in TIi DYE. Once SEDAN wasn’t stretcher I was out of alternatives and dimly putting ‘inner’ (like temples I figured with no great conviction) when the checker from SUPER would have help mightily with NUTRIENT (really must properly learn the greek alphabet) where the definition couldn’t have been clearer. Not all green and trying to take the positives from a tough morning!
12:49 and all green, but having finished it I have returned to my bedroom to check which side of the bed I got out of today, because unlike everyone else I really did not like this puzzle. Given the general approval for it, it must be my fault not Izetti’s, but CADDY is just not how golf spells it, SEDAN is IMO a poor clue (there are huge numbers of things that “could get one carried away”), ODDNESS is also weak, CRUSADER for evangelist would have the whole Muslim world up in arms, I’ve not met DOG-EAR as a noun, only dog-eared as an adjective, and End for Margin in EMEND is not a close link in my view.
Izetti is a very experienced setter and I am a not very experienced solver, so we’ll score this one as a Statherby fail and move swiftly on. Many thanks Merlin for the blog.
A nice romp for us to a pretty fast 14.04. One of those days where almost every clue fell at the first look, albeit taking a good few seconds to unravel.
Yes, typed in caddi, ran out of letters then read the rest of the clue.
COD to Do Gear, always makes me smile when setters find clever ways to split multiple words into a different enumeration.
On a side note, we start our day with the concise followed by the QC and once again there is an answer duplicated in the two puzzles [hope this isn’t a spoiler]. This seems to happen quite often. Do any of our stattos have the data to say how often I wonder?
Thanks Izetti and Merlin
A slow 19 minutes. The cryptic clues / hints for ODDNESS and my LOI were my downfall, though by luck I managed to get SEDAN without much trouble.
The surface for TANGENTS was more than yucky enough to be my COD.
Thanks to Merlin and Izetti
An interesting mixture of responses to the difficulty of this puzzle and I fall in ‘found it hard’ group, particularly the SW and SPHERE.
As usual with Izetti, everything was fairly clued but cryptic definitions seem to be either very straightforward or fiendishly tricky depending on wavelength and today they fell into the latter category.
Started with PRIMATE and finished with COD TANGENTS in 10.20.
Thanks to Merlin and Izetti