Despite the attentions of three needy dogs and a tetchy cat (not Pumpa) I managed to get through that quite briskly, so this was Joker in benign mood. As usual the funny man has given us a lovely mix of clues, some slightly elliptical definitions and a lot of fun. 06:33 here; how was it for you?
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 7 | Irritate girl and boy, losing head (5) |
| ANNOY – ANN is the girl, then take away the first letter (“losing head”) from bOY. | |
| 8 | Bravery of print media about Oscar Wilde at the beginning (7) |
| PROWESS – PRESS = “print media”, which goes around (“about”) OW for the first two letters (“at the beginning”) of Oscar Wilde. Altogether now:
“Have some madeira, m’dear, Flanders & Swann there using “prowess” in the first Collins sense (“superior skill or ability”); Joker means it in the second sense (“bravery or fearlessness, especially in battle”). |
|
| 10 | Inactivity at home I rate terrible (7) |
| INERTIA – IN for “at home” + an anagram (“terrible”) of “I rate”. | |
| 11 | Magazine company must introduce colour at the outset (5) |
| COMIC – CO for “company” + the first letters (“at the outset”) of “Must Introduce Colour”. | |
| 12 | An opinion about Daniel’s evasion (9) |
| AVOIDANCE – my LOI; I couldn’t conjure up A VOICE for “an opinion”, but that was what was needed. That goes around (“about”) DAN. Please don’t use “evasion” as a synonym for AVOIDANCE when marshalling your tax affairs; HMRC does not think that they are the same thing. | |
| 14 | Number, note, new (3) |
| TEN -my brain is so conditioned by crosswords that I assumed the “number” was going to be an anaesthetic. It wasn’t, it was just a number. TE is the note (“do-re-me-so-fa-la-te” – unless the setter needs “mi” or “ti”, of course), N for “new”. | |
| 15 | Regularly pursue advantage (3) |
| USE – every other letter (“regularly”) of “pursue”. I was so unsure of “advantage” as a definition for USE that I counted the letters more than once, but of course it’s in Collins – sense 11 – “usefulness; advantage – it’s of no use to complain”. | |
| 16 | Legally qualified European held in contempt unfortunately (9) |
| COMPETENT – E for “European” inside an anagram (“unfortunately”) of “contempt”. Chambers has “legally capable” as sense 3. A bit marginal but I suppose it works: competent to drive/legally qualified to drive, though I have known people who were one but not the other. | |
| 18 | Deduce subordinate has abandoned one old Romeo (5) |
| INFER – INFERior without (“abandoned”) the IOR (“one old Romeo”). | |
| 20 | Strop made by part of fractious harp ensemble (7) |
| SHARPEN – sneaky; here we need the verb to strop (to sharpen a blade) rather than the more familiar noun. It’s a hidden word, inside “fractious harp ensemble”. | |
| 22 | Kitchen device rotates for cooking (7) |
| TOASTER – anagram (“for cooking”) of “rotates”. | |
| 23 | Tea with fashionable set (5) |
| CHAIN – CHA for “tea” + IN for “fashionable”. [On edit: there have been several queries this morning about why “chain” = “set”. My own thinking was immediately to equate a “chain” of hotels (or pubs, or shops or whatever) with a “set” of hotels. The first definition for “set” as a noun in Chambers is “a group of related people or things”, which seems close enough for me.] | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Who might ridicule heartless Costa Rica sightseer losing ring (12) |
| CARICATURIST – this was where I started, lured by the prospect of all those lovely first letters. CA = “heartless Costa” + RICA + ToURIST (“sightseer losing ring”). | |
| 2 | Pet alone upset graceful creature (8) |
| ANTELOPE – anagram (“upset”) of “pet alone”. They’re not all graceful – the kudu and the hartebeest are like bricklayers in a ballet class. (No offence to any passing brickies; I’m sure that your battement tendu is amazing.) | |
| 3 | Growth of some juicy strawberries (4) |
| CYST – hidden inside (“some”) “juicy strawberries”. | |
| 4 | Muscle injury from run in country round Madrid (6) |
| SPRAIN – the “country round Madrid” is SPAIN; stick an R for “run” in there. | |
| 5 | What’s used to build clubs on Mediterranean island (8) |
| CONCRETE – C for “clubs” (bridge notation) + ON + Majorca – no – Minorca – no – Ibiza – no – Rhodes – no – Malta – no – CRETE! Phew, finally. | |
| 6 | Appear to notice Mike (4) |
| SEEM – SEE = “to notice” + M (“Mike”, NATO alphabet). | |
| 9 | Unsurpassed moment: much weight borne by one (6,2,4) |
| SECOND TO NONE – SECOND = “moment”; TON = “much weight”; that goes above (“borne by”) ONE. I am currently reading a history of my second son’s regiment the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards – “Second to None” is their motto and the title of the book. | |
| 13 | Trim redcoat going around with energy (8) |
| DECORATE – anagram (“going around”) of “redcoat” with E for “energy”. To trim is to adorn or decorate (eg “fur-trimmed”). | |
| 14 | Article with favourable presentation about a player (8) |
| THESPIAN – THE = “article”; SPIN = “favourable presentation”; goes around (“about”) A. Ah, that sort of “player”. | |
| 17 | Like Scrooge giving away pounds and suffering (6) |
| MISERY – Ebenezer Scrooge was famously miserly. Remove the L (“giving away pounds”) and MISERY appears. I liked this a lot and it got COD from me, because before the Spirits visited him Scrooge would have suffered terribly if he’d given away pounds. | |
| 19 | Plant yielding fibre that’s primarily fine and soft (4) |
| FLAX – F = “primarily fine” + LAX for “soft”. Not only can the fibres of FLAX be turned into thread and woven into linen (which is indeed “fine and soft”, very good Joker) but its seeds make linseed oil and it has beautiful blue flowers to boot. Splendid plant, splendid clue. | |
| 21 | Cunning structure of wedge-shaped stones (4) |
| ARCH – a double definition to end us off, the second one mercifully obvious. | |
7.05, a fun puzzle though some of the definitions threw me, which is probably the point. I always think of INFER as meaning to hint or suggest, and did not know that def for PROWESS. Other curiosities included use = advantage, voice = opinion and trim = decorate though I’m sure they’re all correct in a strict definitional sense even if they’re not used much. Or ever. Does the term ‘legally capable’ suggest that COMPETENT has its own meaning inside a court or somewhere similar? I’m sure we have lawyers here who can tell us. Thank you Joker and Templar.
‘imply’ means to hint or suggest; ‘infer’ is to deduce from what was said. The speaker/writer implies; the hearer/reader infers. But ‘infer’ is often (alas) used to mean ‘imply’: 20% of the examples in the British National Corpus are of that sort.
13:40!
I thought TEN was a hidden and just couldn’t work out the wordplay at all.
AVOIDANCE was also my LOI. I didn’t know that meaning of COMPETENT or PROWRESS.
Agreed. Got TEN for the wrong reason….
Well, annoy went right in, but I was a little slow on some of them. I couldn’t see comic at first, and needed all the crossing letters for caricaturist. I also wanted to put roaster for the longest time, despite having only one T. I finished up by biffing infer.
Time: 7:08
6.34
Drat! One second behind our esteemed blogger, and I didn’t have any dogs to contend with (just a ginger Tom). Great fun and fairly clued. I normally have one or two head scratching moments with Joker, but not this time.
10 minutes. ARCH, USE and COMPETENT all slowed me a little.
5:45, which exactly equals my personal best.
I liked CARICATURIST which I got by exactly following the instructions. INFER/Imply are definitely land mines for me. Standards are slipping, The Times has “disinterested”, in their headline about Emma Raducanu today, when of course they mean “uninterested” (was subsequently fixed, to be fair)
MISERY COD
Well done Merlin, it must be something in the air…
Well, yes. Our new drinking buddy, aphis, just celebrated ANZAC day by posting a time shorter than this mornings two minutes silence.
Good grief!
🔥🔥🔥
🔥
Congratulations
Congrats Merlin! The Australian air must be doing you good.
Hmmm…the SOED has the following entry for disinterested
disinterested dɪsˈɪnt(ə)rɪstɪd ♫ adjective. E17.
1 Not interested, unconcerned, uninterested. E17.
2 Not influenced by one’s own advantage; impartial, free from personal interest. M17.
It goes on to say that although it is the first recorded meaning and is commonly used, sense 1 is often regarded as incorrect.
I had firmly drilled into me by my old English teacher that the sense 2 is correct and that sense 1 is incorrect but I am happy to bow to the fact that language evolves and, given that sense 1 is reportedly the first recorded usage, perhaps one might say that standards are returning.
This pair of words seems to swap meanings every hundred years or so. We are now in a period of transition.
Well well. I did not know that and am now better informed, thank you! Collins says:
disinterested
in British English
ADJECTIVE
1. free from bias or partiality; objective
2. not interested
USAGE
Many people consider that the use of disinterested to mean not interested is incorrect and that uninterested should be used.
in American English
ADJECTIVE
1. not influenced by personal interest or selfish motives; impartial; unbiased
2. uninterested; indifferent – this usage, a revival of an obsolete meaning, is objected to by some.
I didn’t scale Merlin’s heights but I’m pretty happy with my 8 minute solve. SECOND TO NONE didn’t come easily and it cost me more time by making me go back to SHARPEN again to check the first N in none. Managed to pass over the clue for FLAX when going through the downs and it was missing that F that made INFER LOI. Good one.
I was listening to some Flanders & Swan recently, not having done so for decades – my father was a great fan. It struck me that a song about an older man getting a young girl drunk and bedding her whilst she was unable to make her escape might not be seen in quite the same light, or as quite as funny, these days. Even if she did wake “with a smile on her lips”.
Anyhow, my prowess was clearly enhanced by waking at 3a.m, unprompted by any alcoholic consumption, and doing the QC to fill the time until sleep might return. I was pleased to work out 1D quickly, and thence the rest of the clues well within SCC qualifying time.
At first I thought ‘maybe he said,’young girl’ when he meant ‘young woman’
And I looked up the song and nope, poor lass is 17 years old 😭. And the man wasn’t just older, he was *old* and *vile*. Wasn’t even an innuendo about how maybe she secretly wanted it (it meaning sex, Merlin) , it’s a full on song about rape! Woweeeeee.
That song is older than my mum.
You are spot on Tina
That song is pretty well as old as I am and I remember being nauseated by it forty years ago when I first heard it sung at village revue by a rather lecherous and bearded old goat who thought he was being clever.
It isn’t a nice song, it never was a nice song, and I am embarrassed that my parents’ generation ever thought it was funny.
I recently reread The Darling Buds of May and its sequels, and got more and more uncomfortable reading about Pop Larkin’s ‘seductions’. Having first read them 40+ years ago, I’d forgotten what they were like. Quite extraordinary that anyone ever thought he was heroic, and not surprising that modern tv adaptations ignore that aspect of the stories.
That duo was wonderfully parodied by Armstrong and Miller as Brabbins & Fyffe. I recall one of their songs involved 15 year old girls. It cut to the BBC vertical rainbow and wine glass hum.
I’d like to think it showed how far we’ve come but I suspect that sketch would now be cancelled. J
Completely agree with you Templar, a really fun puzzle with some very clever clues. We also got caricaturist quickly which was a great help to one our top 5 times of 18.45. Would have been quicker but for the time we spent admiring clues like COD misery and toaster.
The only answer we can’t get is why chain = set, although I believe set is the word in English with the most definitions so I guess it’s in there somewhere!
Thanks VM Joker and Templar for the great blog, we’re sad not to be seeing you at The George 🙁
I guess a chain of something is a group of something… Like a chain of islands, a chain of hotels
And a set is definitely a group of something
8 minutes. Not too many problems though I just biffed CARICATURIST as my LOI. I appreciated the discussion above re INFER and “imply” as I’m guilty of using the words interchangeably. I liked MISERY and the ‘Kitchen device’ not being one of those which ‘rotates for cooking’.
Thanks to Joker and the eminently COMPETENT Templar
This was a nice QC and worthy its name. I came in All Green in a heady 12 minutes so Sir will be pleased and doubtless let me back into the classroom with the others today. Nothing really held me up, other than Mrs ITTT grumpily descending the stairs rather earlier than usual to complain about the birdsong waking her up and thus depriving me of my usual 90 minutes or so of peace and quiet before our day begins.
There were no real stand out clues for me, but CARICATURIST went in straight away, (mercifully), CONCRETE was my LOI and I think I’d choose ANTELOPE as my favourite, only because I used to love watching them outside my classroom window when I taught in Kenya’s Rift Valley and always thought them amazing animals.
Many thanks to Joker and Temps.
Like some others I wasn’t sure about the meanings of Prowess (which to me means skill or competence not bravery) or Competent (which, to complete the circle, I use to mean skilful or with prowess not merely waving a certificate), but the one I don’t get at all is Chain = Set. It must be obvious as our blogger makes no comment, but it ain’t to me …
But these queries did not spoil a fun puzzle which I completed in a rapid 7 minutes. On a bit of a run at the moment – fourth quick time of the week – which is no doubt the cue for a stinker tomorrow.
Many thanks Templar for the blog
Cedric
I considered “CHAIN = set” in the context of retail. If a business operates a number of stores they are clearly a set of such establishments, but we refer to them as “chain stores”.
I think it’s from cycling and it’s nice to see a sport other than cricket, Tennis, RU, football referenced. From a cycling retail website: “The chainset is part of a bicycle drivetrain that connects your chain to the cassette at the rear of the bicycle. Attached to the chainset are of course your pedals” I see that chainset is UK – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crankset it’s a crankset over the pond
Sorry – I just thought of “a chain of hotels/stores/pubs” and saw that as a reasonable synonym for “set”. I’ll add a note up top.
A bit slow to get going but once I’d tuned in I had no major problems. I was another who learnt new meanings of PROWESS and USE.
Started with ANNOY and finished with FLAX in 7.11.
Thanks to Templar
I was with Cedric on PROWESS, which went in with a shrug on the second pass. I thought I was going to struggle, barely half of the across answers going in first time, but the down clues proved more tractable. I biffed INFER, THESPIAN, and CARICATURIST, but parsed them OK afterwards.
FOI INERTIA
LOI DECORATE
COD FLAX
TIME 4:27
The quickest completion I can remember at 8.01. I usually do on paper so easy to get distracted and have no time but in a hurry to finish breakfast and get to work today
6:35 for what I consider to be at the higher quality end of quickies. Thanks Joker.
PROWESS, CONTEMPT and CHAIN all good ones and can’t see any bad ones to be honest. I enjoyed too, in an odd manner, the discovery of CYST in a juicy strawberry. That can’t be right…it was.
Thanks Templar too for the fine blog
Have to admit, when I saw “cyst” in the juicy strawberries it kind of made me gip.
“Gip” – You’ve re-introduced me to a word I haven’t heard/used for a few decades! I had to dig deep to remind myself that I’d used it myself in the 80s. But that’s exactly how I felt when I typed in the answer
I think with that meaning it has to be spelt ‘gyp’. Both spellings have various meanings but they only coincide in the sense of swindle or cheat.
I think when I used it myself it was only in speech and the spelling of it wouldn’t have crossed my mind but it’s good to know for future reference in case needed for theses puzzles – Thank you.
To be honest, I was thinking of “gip” with a hard “g” (as in a slight throat convulsion). I always thought “gyp” was pronounced “jip” and referred to an ailment of some kind.
However, I may be completely wrong on both counts.
9:32
I saw CHAIN from the wordplay straight away, but hesitated to put it in because I couldn’t see how it meant set. Thanks for the various explanations above on how this could work.
COD CARICATURIST
Thanks Templar and Joker
4:49. I didn’t help myself by writing SHARPEN in the space for 22A, which I didn’t spot until I got to CARICATURIST. LOI CONCRETE, which has a rather good related surface. Nice puzzle and nice blog. Thanks Joker and Templar.
Finished! Some of the definitions seem far-fetched but they’re all in the dictionary so fair enough. Thank you, Joker, for a friendly one today.
The alcohol-free run of faster times continues, albeit a little slower than the first three days of the week. Mind you, I didn’t notice last week’s times were any quicker than normal, so maybe the setters have just taken their foot off the gas this week. Noting some quick times for folk above.
CARICATURIST was LOI, and MISERLY COD.
Thanks all round to Joker and our silken blogger.
4:24
6:26
A fine QC indeed.
LOI AVOIDANCE after my first three checkers would have permitted an anagram of AN OPINION, which stick in my head for too long.
Thanks Joker and Templar
Agree with Martinu, fairly friendly today. As others have said thought TEN was a hidden. Laughed when I saw the blog because hiddens are my weakness and today I spotted one that wasn’t intended 😆 Didn’t know strop=sharpen. Another to wonder about CHAIN=set but I understand now. Needed all the checkers for AVOIDANCE. ANNOY was LOI (thought it was going to be harder than it was). Liked building up CARICATURIST but COD to MISERY for excellent surface. Nice puzzle. Thanks Joker and Templar.
8:18 – I have previously said Joker is my favourite setter as usually quick times, fun clues and rarely a NHO. Once again, he came through on all three. Rereading clues postsolve, I just felt many of them were fantastic – the construction of CARICATURIST, SPRAIN, CONCRETE, SECOND-TO-NONE among others.
He seemed to mix it up perfectly that just as I was beginning to look at a blank area and wonder; an anagram, chestnut or hidden would keep things going.
Photo finish-I’ve looked from several different angles but 2 seconds is still two seconds!
Maybe when the doping tests come back, they’ll discover who the dope is 🤪
I agree. Our time would have been quicker but for our enjoyment at rereading several clues to marvel at how clever they were!
ANNOY was FOI, followed by PROWESS, which was from wordplay as I didn’t know that meaning either. COMIC and AVOIDANCE didn’t appear on my first pass, and I managed to avoid parsing the latter as I didn’t spot voice. CARICATURIST went in from definition and crossers. LOI was COMPETENT. 5:43. Thanks Joker and Templar.
I spent some time wondering about prowess=bravery, use=advantage and chain=set, but they had to be right so I eventually put them in. Also I couldn’t parse INFER but again it had to be right. I eventually wound up taking 20 minutes – a bit on the slow side for a puzzle that others seem to have found straightforward.
FOI – 8ac PROWESS
LOI – 19dn FLAX
COD – 3dn CYST
Thanks to Joker and to Templar for the much needed blog
Fairly straightforward by the Jokers standard today, although there were quite a few clues, particularly the across clues, that I didn’t get on the first pass. Under target at 8.34, so a good week so far. Have we got a toughie coming up to finish the week I wonder?
7:24
Mostly fine, but then breeze-blocked towards the end by CARICATURIST plus three of those hanging off it, and FLAX – not helped by work interruptions :-). Once I’d seen AVOIDANCE, the block was unblocked and the finish came quickly.
Nice to read about those of you that met up in Oz.
Thanks Joker and Templar
11.37 A fairly average time for me. I struggled to parse COMIC and then CONCRETE was LOI. Thanks Templar and Joker.
Lovely puzzle. All the acrosses bar two went in on the first pass leading to my first sub 20m in a long time.
With regards to FLAX my Mother told me that in Ireland the smell of flax fields was overpowering when it was harvested and laid out for the soft parts to rot away leaving the fibres to be used for linen.
Thanks Joker and Templar
Lovely insight into another time
Wonderful glimpse, the sense of smell is so evocative!
At a local historical museum they grow a small amount of flax and process it into cloth, I’ll have to ask them about this.
5.02
All said. Thanks for the puzzle and blog Joker and Templar
24:35, so around average for me.
Nice puzzle.
An enjoyable puzzle, finished in one sitting.
Please don’t rotate your TOASTER for cooking though.
Thanks Joker and Templar.
Another one cup-of-coffee puzzle. LIO AVOIDANCE, COD SHARPEN my grandfather used a leather strop to sharpen his cut-throat razor. I hadn’t realised that PROWESS could refer to bravery, always assumed that it could be used to refer to greatness in any skill.
My unexpected run of form (three consecutive SCC escapes) well and truly hit the buffers today. I reached the two-to-go point after just 16 minutes, but that was when my luck ran out. CONCRETE then delayed me by 5 minutes and AVOIDANCE took a further 11 minutes to come to mind. By then, I was on the verge of giving up.
Total time = 32 minutes, which is about average for me. Not bad, but my dreamlike state was shattered.
Thanks to Joker and Templar.
I’ve just commented that I thought I’ve been on a decent run for a while as well. I have a feeling I’ve tempted fate and it will all come crashing down fairly soon.
8:20 CARICATURIST was COD for me. I hesitated over set/ CHAIN but figured a CHAIN of events was close enough to a set of events.
I enjoyed this one even though I struggled with a few of clues, needing Pumpa’s help with 12a.
When I hear the word “chain” my first thought is always the measure of distance used on the railways. Not sure why as I’m no anorak. 🤣
Pumpa was pleased to hear that he wasn’t the one being described as tetchy. I was offered another cat the other day, a polydactyl, but I had to decline as there’s no way Pumpa would tolerate another cat in the house. I have a few that sometimes venture into the house via the open back door. Pumpa is always quick to send them on their way.
21:24
My verdict: 👍
Pumpa’s verdict: 🐾
Unusual for me to solve before lunchtime, but a wait before my Covid-booster at noon got me started, so I finished… A smattering of the Across was followed by a slew of Down and that gave enough checkers to give confidence to those I had missed on the first pass. Frankly, I enjoy Flanders & Swann too much to be bothered about their tongue-in-cheek old rogue (must have been c1960 anyway when we all enjoyed their witty satirical songs and humour more freely).
FOI 10a Inertia
LOI 19d Flax
COD 9d Second-to-None.
Thanks to Joker for a benign puzzle and to our blogger too.
16:23 for a rather quick solve by my standards.
A notably clever and amusing set of clues indeed. CARICATURIST went in first, rewarding my bit of pondering with lots of first letters. So the whole left side nearly wrote itself in. But I was surprised at escaping the Club because although CHAIN and COMIC were clear from the wordplay, I had to convince myself they fit the definitions. And conversely, like others, I found TEN immediately but could only parse it as a hidden without an indicator!
Loved MISERY but I award COD to PROWESS. Well, I also loved the fractious harp ensemble.
Thanks Joker for the outstanding puzzle and Templar for the entertaining blog.
I rather agree with Andrew Turner, but yes it is bad I suppose. I absolve myself from guilt, because I never found this one funny, unlike so much of their output.
In a YouTube video he uses the word “finesse” instead of “prowess”. But that doesn’t get Mick Flann off the hook.
Just outside the top 100 on the leaderboard in a time of 7:09 so I guess a lot of solvers found this easy. My only major hold up was 1d so I’m thinking I could have been quite a lot quicker with all those first letter checkers in play.
13 mins…
I thought this was nice and straight forward, although I did wonder about a few definitions: 15ac “Use”, 20ac “Sharpen” and 16ac “Competent” come to mind. Loved the wordplay on 17dn “Misery”, although of course it wasn’t until later in the story that he started giving away his pounds.
Could be speaking far too soon, but seem to be on a decent run for once.
FOI – 7ac “Annoy”
LOI – 21dn “Arch”
COD – 1dn “Caricature”
Thanks as usual!
I’ve generally been whizzing through them and completing for the past month. Fastest Mon-Thurs ever this week.
But looking at who has set what, we’ve only had one Teazel and no Orpheus in April. So I’d expect we’ll see one from each of them in the next few days. They are both stiff tests for me.
New PB here of 7:20, the last 1:20 of which were spent on FLAX. Also, managed to record the solve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahfC4tnen7Y
⚡
1 min. Over target, couldn’t equate CHAIN with set, not a bad week so far
We found that a little tricky in places. CARICATURIST and CONCRETE were our POI and LOI. Same difficulties as many with the rather less common meanings, esp. chain / set. Squeaked in perhaps a little faster than par at 12:01. Definitely no cigar but enjoyable nonetheless. Thanks, Templar and Joker.
Couldn’t get a hold at first but after solving an anagram or two, it fell into place. CARICATURIST helped after PDM, ditto SECOND to NONE.
FLAX seemed easy. Liked CONCRETE (having listed a few islands), MISERY.
Didn’t know that meaning of STROP and had to think about CHAIN and USE.
MER *again* about ARCH = cunning. NOT in my dictionaries.
Thanks vm, Templar.
Solved steadily with a couple that needed thinking about: CHAIN & AVOIDANCE. A neat puzzle.
10:27 here, pleasingly under my target. I mislaid my anagram hat, so my L3I were ANTELOPE, DECORATE and COMPETENT, all of which I spotted as anagrams and left for later.
Thanks to Joker & Templar.
Got the two long edge clues quickly which helped a speedy-ish 8:32 solve. FLAX was loi – took some time to work out the ‘lax’ bit. Thanks for an interesting blog.
Steady solve. Parsed TEN as note and new didn’t notice it was also hidden. Got sidetracked by remembering my Granddad’s leather strop hanging next to the fire grate ready to sharpen his cut throat razor.
Thanks Joker and Templar.
Flax was grown in this part of Suffolk in the mid-nineteenth century and the mill in which it was processed is now our home. The stalks were left in water for a week or so, in ‘retting tanks’, until the soft pulp (animal fodder) and the fibres (sailcloth) could be separated. Remnants of the tanks are still in our grounds. The flax industry was displaced by cotton manufacturing in the 1870s.
Lovely, fun puzzle. I still listen to and admire Flanders and Swann – and the whole point of Madeira m’dear is that the vile old lecher is thwarted! The glorious syllepsis is “She made no reply, up her mind and a dash for the door”. Autre temps, I know, but the song is a gem.
Not thwarted: “…she woke up in bed… with a beard in her ear hole which tickled and said, have some Madeira… “. Poor taste.
Maybe, but it’s a cautionary tale, not an endorsement, as made clear earlier in the lyric. As for poor taste, I wonder what the sophisticated Flanders and Swann would have made of what passes for so-called humour these days!
21/24.
Almost there again Ian. Keep going 👍