| Across |
| 1 |
Gathered sandwich condiment, you might say (8) |
|
MUSTERED – sounds like ‘Mustard’. ‘Buttered’ also fits the crossers but makes no sense. |
| 6 |
Church area, not left to pass into disuse (4) |
|
APSE – LAPSE minus L for left |
| 8 |
Her love’s a lifesaver? (4) |
|
HERO – HER + O (love, i.e zero) |
| 9 |
Artist Mondrian hiding fish in circular graphic (3,5) |
|
PIE CHART – PIET Mondrian, with CHAR inside. I biffed this one. |
| 10 |
Putting out a lot for life, almost in charge (8) |
|
PROLIFIC – PRO (for) + LIF (almost ‘life’) + IC (in charge) |
| 12 |
Drive essential to surgery (4) |
|
URGE – hidden word: sURGEry |
| 13 |
Slender and extremely greasy whatchamacallit (6) |
|
THINGY -THIN + G[reas]Y |
| 15 |
Absorb hot joke on the radio (6) |
|
INGEST – IN (hot) + GEST (sounds like ‘jest’) |
| 17 |
That was careless, dropping first of rings (4) |
|
OOPS – [H]OOPS. Or indeed [L]OOPS |
| 19 |
Find fault with a short story writer in a Japanese city (8) |
|
NAGASAKI – NAG + A + SAKI, aka Hector Hugh Monro 1870-1916, satirist of Edwardian society and full-on war hero |
| 21 |
Therefore assist the setter, no matter what (2,4,2) |
|
SO HELP ME – self-explanatory |
| 23 |
Put down US city driver’s licence, say (4) |
|
LAID – LA + ID |
| 24 |
Touched soft material (4) |
|
FELT – double definition |
| 25 |
Twelve men onto one, somehow (8) |
|
NOONTIME – Anagram (‘somehow’) of MEN ONTO I |
Just achieved target with 19:43. FOI -HERO, LOI – LAID (which I took far too long over). COD – FRYING PAN. I too like Spoonerisms, and got it with only one checking letter (the P) as I thought kitchen ware had to be pan, and then “frying” came to mind pretty quickly. Penultimate one in was OOPS, reassuring to note that I wasn’t the only one to struggle with that.
Taken into the SCC by Beck today, but not unhappy after being reminded by 1a of the following story. Whilst at Dartmouth (Britannia Royal Naval College), I attended a lecture by the Master At Arms (commonly addressed as Master). Meetings in the RN are called musters. A cadet (from one of our Middle Eastern allies) was missing, and in response to questions about his whereabouts, some wag at the back of the class uttered the memorable line, “Mustapha must’ve missed the muster Master”. Thanks both!
‘The Muster’ is also used for the arrival of all the troops during the opening part of the annual Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.
8:51 but I managed to trip over my fingers and entered ATCHUNG, rendering my PIE CCART invalid too. Drat. Thanks Beck and Excurarist.
My first DNF for a while, as I guessed AiSE instead of APSE. Irked by the wording in the clue, as it was unnecessarily obtuse/awkward for a QC. I also toyed with bUtTERED before seeing MUSTERED and agonised over the word ‘up’ in 6d. Time = 30 minutes, but my mistake at 6a renders that worthless.
In summary: fun at times, but spoilt by a couple of clues.
Thanks to Beck and Excurarist.
9:15 WOE. After a couple of very poor showings, I was happy to finish this today. Then I discovered that I’d bunged a D in the middle of E-O – I think I was trying to put DR in there. It’s been a testing week crossword-wise.
I thought there were some tricky clues while I was solving, but on looking back, I can’t quite see why I made such heavy weather of some of them – TROLL, LAID, NOONTIME and PROLIFIC in particular. It took a while to work out what was going on with ACHTUNG – as others have said, the ‘up’ seemed odd.
As an art fan, I had no problems with Piet Mondrian, but as I did that one, I thought I bet there will be some comments – Saki too! So PIE-CHART and NAGASAKI got ticks. I also liked UNEARTH and MUSTERED.
Although I’m not a fan of Spoonerisms, we have seen a couple of entertaining ones recently, and the PRYING FAN made me chuckle – I imagine there probably are rather a lot them IRL 😅
FOI Apse LOI Noontime COD Oops (we’ve seen similar before but I liked this version)
Thanks Beck and Excurarist
Add me to the DNF because could not get OOPS. I tried to remove an O from LOOSE (careless) to get LOSS but it didn’t work in any way.
Yes, my first thought was loose too, as it has two O’s and if you take one away you get another valid word lose. Fortunately then I moved on!
Managed to get through this despite my lack of GK. Maybe I got out the wrong side of bed but for me there were none of those smiley penny drop moments today.
Like others put in BUTTERED even though it didn’t make sense.
Thanks Excurarist I never knew that about EMO, and thanks Beck for the workout.
I didn’t know about MO being a medic, so flubbed EMO along with NOONTIME and SPLIT. The rest of it seemed to go quite smoothly, though. Thank you for the blog!
DR, MO (medical officer), GP (general practitioner), MD* , MB seems to be the common abbreviations. The latter we saw just yesterday!
And then of course, doctor can sometimes be an anagrind i.e. anagram indicator
* I am reminded by Chabudoo’s post below.
10.37 Quickest of the week. DRENCHING was biffed. I was tempted by EDM (Electronic Dance Music) but the doctor was upside down. Like LindsayO I was nearly done in under 7 minutes with OOPS but also OZONE remaining. The pennies dropped eventually. Thanks to Excurarist and Beck.
Oxford University offer a medical doctorate course that awards the letters DM. Better not tell the setters, though.
Thought I was just slow again after another long day in the hills (the Southern Upland Way is terrific!) so quietly relieved to read the comments above! Misery loves company …
All said already, but I vehemently disagree with the Spooner Haters – I love seeing his name appear, that sort of lateral thinking challenge with a grin at the end of it is exactly what I love in a puzzle.
All done in 12:25 for a Pretty Poor Day. Fun work out.
Many thanks Beck and Excurarist.
Templar
Well at least it wasn’t an Izetti!
Another tough day. I almost fell into the BUTTERED trap, and that one, together with OOPS, took ages to solve.
I agree with the criticisms of APSE that some commenters have made. This went beyond misdirection and Prof’s suggested alternative is much better.
As usual, I made some stupid errors. Failed to see HERO on the first pass and got it into my head that 11dn was 3,6 rather than 6,3. That will teach me not to rush.
Five completions this week. I’ve had a week away from the clock, but my performances have been mediocre. Think I’ll give the Crossword Championship a miss this year🤣🤣🤣
Thanks to Excurarist for the blog and best wishes to everyone for a great weekend.
PS Enjoyed the Quintagram very much today, but still find it challenging
19 mins…
Late one tonight on the train back from London to the north, but an enjoyable offering from Beck.
I didn’t think there was anything too hard, although I had a little struggle with 17ac “Oops” and wasn’t too enamoured with 25ac “Noontime” as a clue.
FOI – 7dn “Shrug”
LOI – 17ac “Oops”
COD – 1ac “Mustered”
Thanks as usual!
We enjoyed this one and finished it. Must have been on the right wavelength and luckily knew all the GK needed. I particularly love Saki stories, always have, maybe I am drawn to the dark side! Also knew Piet Mondrian. Enjoyed oops and achtung and generally ‘got’ what was going on. Which is a nice, if unusual, situation for us!!