They’re all going a bit bonkers for the living people thing now, aren’t they? Hey ho, I suppose it’ll settle down. But given the possibilities that have now opened up, how odd that they’ve all hit on one Britpop band!
Tricky grid, lovely puzzle, some really witty clues. Cracking fun, thanks Mr Piggy. I thought that that was a little harder than the average Oink, and I suspect that one answer may turn out to be an NHO for some solvers. Let’s see! Regulation 08:36 for me; hope it went well for you.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 7 | Delight as first of penthouses let (6) |
| PLEASE – P for “first of penthouses” + LEASE for “let”. The verb to delight/please is what we needed here. | |
| 8 | Penniless knight defeated (6) |
| BROKEN – BROKE = “penniless”, N for “knight” (chess notation). I had this the wrong way round for a while, thinking it started with N followed by a word for “defeated”. | |
| 9 | Hope coppers finally arrest criminal (8) |
| PROSPECT – this is a very well hidden anagram (blogger code for “I completely failed to spot it”). The anagram indicator is “criminal” and the anagram fodder is “coppers” + T, the last letter of “arrest” (“finally arrest”). Well played Oink, you did me all ends up there! LOI. | |
| 10 | Knock back lager and fall over (4) |
| SLIP – “pilsner” is a type of lager, often shortened to “pils”; reverse pils (“knock back lager”) and voila. The name originates in the Czech city of Plzeň, anglicised as Pilsen, where in the 1840s Josef Groll (a Bavarian hired to run a new brewery) came up with a winning recipe using Saaz hops. It took Europe by storm. | |
| 11 | Determined to find cheap accommodation here? (6) |
| INTENT – “determined” as in being INTENT on something. If you live in a tent you could be said to be in “cheap accommodation”, though the price of some of the fancier geodesic tents these days is astonishing. | |
| 13 | Picky Chinese diner spotted in Co-op and Asda? (5) |
| PANDA – oh I did like this definition. Very good indeed and COD from me. It’s hidden (“spotted in”) inside “Co-op and Asda”. I don’t know why we make all this effort to save pandas, because if you decide only to eat something which your body isn’t really adapted to digest and then be a difficult eater anyway, you fully deserve to go extinct. | |
| 14 | Second person said to be a sheep? (3) |
| EWE – sounds like (“said to be”) “you” (grammatically the “second person”). Ye Olde Chestnutte. | |
| 15 | Committee fed up, one might say (5) |
| BOARD – sounds like (“one might say”) “bored”. | |
| 17 | Never-ending Oriental festival (6) |
| EASTER – EASTER[n]. | |
| 19 | A precious stone returned? That’s great! (4) |
| MEGA – A GEM backwards. We suddenly keep getting MEGA, too. Breadman used it in QC 2772, Jalna used it in QC 2759 … they’re all at it. Do you think the setters regard this as latest slang? Scenes in the Setters’ Common Room: “I say Breaders old chap, what do you think the youngsters say instead of ‘spiffing’ these days?” “I once saw a film in the 1990s where they said ‘mega’ a lot, try that.” | |
| 20 | Horribly garbled English in European capital (8) |
| BELGRADE – Anagram (“horribly”) of “garbled” + E for English. Having started with the downs, fortunately I had the checkers in place by the time I got to this. | |
| 22 | Comparatively ill-considered option for your breakfast plate? (6) |
| RASHER – aaaaaaaaaaaand here it is, the piggy clue. Excellent, I do love a running joke. Double definition – deciding to jump out of the window instead of using the stairs (for example) would usually be the RASHER thing to do, and you might have a RASHER with your egg. | |
| 23 | A rest for Ronnie O’Sullivan? (6) |
| SPIDER – if you listen carefully you may hear the faint echo of howls of outrage in Australia, the US and elsewhere. Ronnie “the Rocket” O’Sullivan is a living person and in my book he definitely passes the “famous enough to be included?” test, because he’s one of the greatest snooker players of all time. But then I am aware of snooker, and I have to accept that it’s a sport with a more limited global (or even national) reach than, say, football. So not everyone will know him. But the real issue here is having to know not only (a) who he is and what he plays, but also (b) that snooker players sometimes use a thing called a “rest” to balance their cue on (if the cue ball is in an awkward spot which they can’t comfortably reach with their cue hand) and (c) that one particular (rather rarely used) type of such “rest” is called … a SPIDER. Sense 9 in Collins: “billiards, snooker: a rest having long legs, used to raise the cue above the height of the ball”. I play pool and snooker and in fact I actually own a SPIDER but even so it took me a wee while to crack it because there’s no wordplay to guide you. Good luck if you had to trawl this – there are apparently 72 words that fit S-I-E-. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Obscure Britpop band (4) |
| BLUR – what, again? These words escaped me as I solved this clue and they cost me several minutes as I had to explain to Mrs Templar what I was on about. (Which was this: Biggy 28953 (26 June, 6d) – “Racier English Britpop band covers (5)” QC 2768 (Wurm, 30 August, 20d) – “Obscure band that rivalled Oasis (4)”; QC 2766 (Jimmy, 9 September, 19d) – “Promotional material Britpop band put on book (5)”.) Do you think this is another “Scenes From the Setters’ Common Room” thing? “I say chaps, does anyone know a popular rhythm combo more recent than The Beatles?” After a lot of umming and erring someone shouted out that their grandson liked Blur and they all wrote it down. | |
| 2 | Girl’s story involving donkey (6) |
| LASSIE – a “story” is a LIE and inside it (“involving”) we have an ASS. | |
| 3 | Disconsolate daughter expelled (8) |
| DEJECTED – D for “daughter” + EJECTED for “expelled”. | |
| 4 | A chance to help (4) |
| ABET – A + BET. Bet isn’t a square-on synonym for “chance” but it’s close enough for me. | |
| 5 | Relative caught in fiasco US instigated (6) |
| COUSIN – hidden (“caught in”) inside “fiasco US instigated”. | |
| 6 | Think date and time must be wrong (8) |
| MEDITATE – anagram (“must be wrong”) of “date” and “time”, Lovely, elegant clue. | |
| 12 | Aristocrat with millions invested in Lebanon unfortunately (8) |
| NOBLEMAN – anagram (“unfortunately”) of M for “millions” and “Lebanon”. | |
| 13 | Unrivalled description of House of Lords when empty? (8) |
| PEERLESS – double definition-ish, the second one being more of a cracker joke. If there was no-one in the House of Lords it would be peer-less, ho ho. | |
| 16 | Native American quickly concealing husband (6) |
| APACHE – quick, a Native American tribe including H … Sioux no … Navajo no … Cherokee is too long … aarrghh … APACHE! I knew that watching all those Westerns as a boy would come in handy one day. APACE (“quickly”) with H for “husband” inside (“concealing”). | |
| 18 | Anxiety of son on Eurostar? (6) |
| STRAIN – S for “son” + “TRAIN” for “Eurostar?”, the question-mark indicating that this is a definition by example. | |
| 20 | Writer of biography introducing Republican (4) |
| BIRO – BIO for “biography” (a bit weak, perhaps) including (“introducing”) R for “Republican”. “Who invented the ballpoint pen?” is a classic pub quiz trick question, because the answer is not László Bíró but John Loud, an American lawyer/inventor. Loud’s version was too clumsy, however, and it flopped. Bíró was a Hungarian journalist who wanted a pen filled with the ink used to print his newspaper, because it didn’t smudge. But it was too sticky for a pen, so he enlisted the help of his brother (a dentist and chemist) to reformulate it. The brothers patented the pen in 1938 but as Jews they had to flee Hungary; in 1943 they ended up in Argentina (supposedly after the Argentinian President spotted Bíró using an unusual pen at a hotel in Yugoslavia … honestly there’s a film here) where commercial success ensued. | |
| 21 | German article about Google’s latest browser (4) |
| DEER – DER is German for “the” (“German article”) and it goes around (“about”) E for the last letter of “Google” (“Google’s latest”). DEER feed by browsing on vegetation and so a DEER is a “browser”; cunning misdirection. | |
I must have spent a good five minutes trying unsuccessfully to parse loi Prospect (PCs + rope + t broke far too many rules). I needed an alpha-trawl to get even that far, having first bounced an unlikely Crescent. Oink certainly gave us quite a few little teasers along the way (looking especially at you, Broken), but Spider was more or less a write-in, once Bridge didn’t fit the crossers.
No window seats left, but I can re-read Templar’s excellent blog for entertainment. CoD to Meditate for the surface, with Dejected a close second. Invariant
DNF. Very fast then stuck on three. Needed CCD hint for PROSPECT (tried wrong anagrist) APACHE, and failed on SPIDER, biffing Slider. NHO Ronnie O’Sullivan, as I always switch channels when snooker appears. I do think it is rather a niche sport, so objections sustained, imo.
I did like DEJECTED, BIRO, RASHER(had not noticed setter!), PANDA, DEER, among others.
Rather a fuss about EWE above🙂
Thanks for great blog, Templar.
Finished correctly in 56 minutes. Very happy with that because this puzzle was quite tough.
Miserable failure yesterday, though. Apparently I cannot now spell Chekhov correctly. At least not when it matters. So I did not get Sahara, etc.
N.B. re today :
“1 Across : Obscure Britpop band (4) BLUR”
I know that”obscure” is meant to mislead but BLUR must be the most famous crossword band of all time . So perhaps the word obscure is ironic !
“23 Across : A rest for Ronnie O’Sullivan? (6) SPIDER” . From now on Ronnie will be known as ‘Spiderman’.
PROSPECT caught me out and I thought snooker support was a bridge
There is a bridge, but there’s also a spider.
And a rest. Too much kit.
Dnf…
Having a string of these this week – especially on the final clue. This time it was 9ac “Prospect” that eluded to me. I was trying to work out an anagram of “arrest”, but the rest wouldn’t fit and it didn’t occur to me that the anagrist would be so far away from the anagrind.
FOI – 4dn “Abet”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 13ac “Panda”
Thanks as usual!
I’m not sure that the anagrind is far away … the anagrist is made up of COPPERS + T … it just happens that in the solution the T is at the end. At least, that’s my post DNF rationalisation of it.
No time as done over 2 sittings, but around 12m.
No problems except for prospect and LOI biro (not bard!).
COD peerless/nobleman.
Did living people appear previously in the wordplay, e.g. Dog in Cilla Black (when she was alive) or as the anagrist?
6:28
Lovely puzzle and blog. Thanks Oink and Templar.
LOI for me was LASSIE – not a word I’d use for any girl I know., but like most, the hold up was PROSPECT.
9.51 It took me a couple of minutes after I’d finished to realise that LOI PROSPECT was an anagram. BELGRADE took a moment too. With a couple of checkers I got SPIDER immediately but I thought I must be missing something because it’s insoluble without them. Thanks Templar and Oink.
15:20 for a Quite Reasonable Day. But only if you consider it Not Cheating that I looked up Ronnie O’Sullivan and snooker equipment. As an American novice not playing competitively, I consider it fair; after all, I consumed significant time doing that. But by the book it’s a DNF. Anyhow, I enjoyed the puzzle, solved or not!
At this rate I’m going to have to break down and actually listen to That Band haha. Or not.
Me too on PROSPECT, took forever to see it was an anagram, though it dropped in as soon as I did.
Thanks Oink. Great, great blog today, Templar. “I say, Breaders…” 😂😂😂😂😂
PS: the commenters today are giving me a much-needed lesson in British culture. “Had me kippered”, “not much cop”, Suede the band. Thanks!
I agree. You could say that “cheating” is the wrong word; we are not in a competition where it would be cheating, we are amusing ourselves with a challenge in the paper. No such thing as cheating applies.
BLUR was one of our early ones in and ‘comments’ were already inevitable. We are both snooker fans and sometimes players so SPIDER went in pretty quickly (after a swift realisation that the perhaps more obvious ‘cushion’ has too many letters) by which point our sympathies lay with those across the pond in particular: less so with the antipodeans – Neil Robertson is quite well known himself. As for others LOI PROSPECT was surprisingly slow in coming (titter ye not Ted Lowe fans). All done in a somewhat faster than average 11:15. Thanks to Oink for the satisfying puzzle (COD DEER for me) and to Templar for the amusing blog.
15:26, but a technical DNF after using aids for my L2I, PROSPECT and DEJECTED. Those two had not succumbed to an alphabet crawl and I was nowhere near parsing the wordplay. Well played Oink.
Thanks to Oink and to Templar: I love the Setters’ Common Room!
I like the Setter’s common room too; keep it up Templar!
COD 21d Deer, Chrome didn’t fit.
Managed to put you in for 14a and bored for 15a, until the penny dropped. Enjoyable puzzle as usual from Oink.
Really nice puzzle. Stuck for a while on not remembering ‘criminal’ as an anagrind until the pdm. Guessed 23a had a snooker connection from the Ronnie art of the clue. Love always getting an answer or two connected to Oink.
Thanks Oink and Templar
12:00 dead. I normally read the comments before I add my own, but in this case I’m going to hazard a reasonably confident guess that there are a fair few complaints about SPIDER. I’ve watched snooker for decades (and played it incompetently), and it still took me a minute and was my LOI. Seems a bit arcane for an answer that can’t be assembled from the wordplay.
Thank you for the very entertaining blog! I do enjoy the idea of a room full of aged compilers desperately seizing upon the single modern-ish thing that any of them have ever heard of.
DNF
All going well with 2 left at 13 minutes but the took ages to see PROSPECT, I had the parsing all wrong and ran aground on DEJECTED where I was putting the D for daughter at the end.
No problem with the snooker question. I once played an exhibition match against the second person to score a 147, Rex Williams. Gosh, that’s going back a while! I lost.
BLUR again! Three times in a week or so. I trust they once played at ETON.
I put SPIKER for SPIDER (vague memory) and failed on PROSPECT, which was convoluted in my view. So DNF. But lots of fun on the way. I thought RASHER was the Oink tag, but BOARd is a good one. SCC for me (if they’ll let me in…)
Nice puzzle, brilliant blog. Thanks setter and Templar.
Struggled with this, but got home in 37’26. Saw SPIDER late on and then guessed DEER, finally seeing the “browser” link. Phew. Fed up now with BLUR and MEGA.
Templar – just a thought but you have QC 2799 in your title for the blog. I think it was 2779 and it might be worth resetting it for future reference searches?
Cedric
Oh gosh, thanks Cedric. What a twit. On a train right now but will sort this evening.
DNF, but then I never do. Feeling reassured that several experts here also DNF, so feeling in good company!
Late finish today
NHO Ronnie O’Sullivan but The Gentleman had. Neither of us had heard of a SPIDER but once we realised BRIDGE wouldn’t do we worked it out.
The never-ending Oriental festival caught the rest of the family out, so I could feel smug about that one.
Some fun clues, especially the description of the House of Lords when empty – do go and eat in their dining room on the rare occasions when the House is empty and it’s open to the public!
Thanks Templar and Oink.
7:17. Not too much to worry about here. I liked PANDA best (I think even for the QC Oink could have left out the word Chinese from the clue which would have been more fun). thanks both!
30 minutes
An abysmal performance, largely due to spending well over 10 minutes on PROSPECT. Not an easy clue, but should have seen it sooner.
Need 34 mins or less tomorrow to achieve target. Not overly optimistic, but then again I never am. I’ve had too many bad Fridays to expect a good result.
Finished big crossword in 80 mins. Like wading through treacle.
Steady solve- about half an hour. Initially thought the Ronnie O’Sullivan clue was a cockney dropped “H” clue, but too much time wasted watching the snooker meant it was relatively easy for me.
A pleasant dessert course after a hardish 15×15 today (for me anyway).
Many thanks to blogger and setter
Fail due to Prospect. But a great puzzle. Thanks Templar and Oink