I enjoyed this one a lot. All done in 14:42, just a smidge below my average time, so I’ll put this one squarely in the “medium difficulty” bucket.
There were two pieces of general knowledge that were new to me: the bicycle and the butterfly, but both were generously clued and the enumerations were helpful. I particularly noticed the near-total absence of the “first letter of” and “last letter of” style of cluing, which made the surfaces very smooth, I thought.
My FOI was MOCK, LOI was RESIDE, and my COD award goes to BALLERINA.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, anagram fodder indicated like (this)*.
| Across | |
| 1 | Run around quickly in small sort of van (7) |
| SCAMPER – S for small + CAMPER (van). | |
| 5 | An exam to treat with contempt? (4) |
| MOCK – Double definition.
For those outside the UK, “mock” exams are dry runs that students take in the run-up to the actual exams. If memory serves, we took our mock O and A levels in December, with the real exams the following June. |
|
| 7 | Giant bird with a name (5) |
| TITAN – TIT (bird), A, N for name. | |
| 8 | What insects may have done as south got hotter (7) |
| SWARMED – S for South, WARMED (got hotter). | |
| 10 | Run smartly back for tack (3) |
| PIN – NIP (run smartly), reversed [back].
This took me longer than it should have done. |
|
| 11 | Commissioned exactly what’s required and was sure of success (3,2,4) |
| HAD IT MADE – Another double definition. | |
| 13 | Students receiving substantial amount of storage in the cloud (6) |
| NIMBUS – NUS (National Union of Students) including [receiving] IMB for 1 megabyte (substantial amount of storage). | |
| 14 | Came across bricklayer’s tool and how to use it? (6) |
| METHOD – MET (came across) HOD (bricklayer’s tool).
If I recall correctly, there was a discussion here recently in which a bricklayer was quoted as never having come across a hod in his entire career. |
|
| 17 | Book all-Ireland ace dancer (9) |
| BALLERINA – B for book, ALL, ERIN (Ireland), A (Ace).
A four-part IKEA clue in five words. Very nice. |
|
| 19 | Number required to constitute company? (3) |
| TWO – A cryptic definition, referring to the saying “two’s company, three’s a crowd”. | |
| 20 | Girls following grand spectacles (7) |
| GLASSES – G for grand, LASSES (girls).
If you look up “G abbreviation” you get plenty of hits, but I can’t recall ever seeing this in real life. |
|
| 22 | Undercover police operation hurt a little (5) |
| STING – A third double definition. | |
| 23 | Carry on, but glance back (4) |
| KEEP – PEEK (glance), reversed [back].
“Keep” can replace “Carry on” in “Carry on doing that”. |
|
| 24 | Remove perfume? That’s a comedown (7) |
| DESCENT – descent, with “de” as in defang. Ho ho ho. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Boxer possibly trained to do this sort of bicycle (3,2,3,3) |
| SIT UP AND BEG – our fourth double definition.
The first definition refers to a dog, the second is a type of bicycle, which was news to me. |
|
| 2 | Not many misused “bad” for “good”, for example (7) |
| ANTONYM – (NOT MANY)* | |
| 3 | Quietly show excitement about old luxury flat (9) |
| PENTHOUSE – P (quietly, from music) + ENTHUSE (show excitement) including [about] O (old). | |
| 4 | Live on edge (6) |
| RESIDE – RE (on, as in email reply subject lines) + SIDE (edge).
I initially had this as BESIDE, parsed as “to be” = “to live” + the on SIDE from cricket, but the definition wasn’t quite right, and then the R of SCAMPER turned up to push the penny off the ledge. |
|
| 5 | Samoans corralling flightless bird (3) |
| MOA – hidden in |
|
| 6 | In deep sleep, minute butterfly (5) |
| COMMA – M for minute (as in HH:MM:SS) in COMA (deep sleep).
I pencilled this in from the wordplay, and then all three of the crossers came, so it had to be correct. But I’d never heard of the comma butterfly before today, so that’s two things I’ve learned. |
|
| 9 | Never fear a battleship (11) |
| DREADNOUGHT – dread nought – never fear.
Barely cryptic, since this is precisely where the word “dreadnought” comes from. There have been several ships in the Royal Navy called HMS Dreadnought, but the one that gave its name to the class of ships was the one launched in 1906. So says Wikipedia, and who am I to argue? |
|
| 12 | Ordinary people, those fools (3,6) |
| THE MASSES – THEM ASSES (those fools)
Slightly ungrammatical, but fun. |
|
| 15 | Emergency resource in hotel is out of order (7) |
| HOTLINE – (IN HOTEL)* | |
| 16 | Prejudiced bishop cast aside (6) |
| BIASED – B for bishop (from chess notation) + (aside)*. | |
| 18 | Contract to rent meadows with house at the rear (5) |
| LEASE – LEAS (meadows), with the last letter of |
|
| 21 | Cat shortly coming up to drink (3) |
| SUP – PUS |
|
7.32
Late entry after another day’s walking in the Austrian Alps and a bit sluggish, but loved THE MASSES.
Thanks Doofers/Teazel
I plodded through this in about 11 minutes, but got 1d wrong by putting in SCARPER even though I couldn’t really parse it. For some reason, I didn’t really engage with the puzzle – I can’t say why, just one of those (them) things! I wonder if I focused to much on solving and not enough on the wordplay – I missed a lot of the subtleties, unlike yesterday’s clue for COST, which, although pretty obvious, had me laughing out loud. But having read everything through for a second time, I have found much more to enjoy.
I couldn’t completely parse NIMBUS, so until Doofers’s explanation, it was a bit lost on me. But I like it a lot in retrospect, and a couple of the simplest ones – TWO and MOA – also got ticks. Going against the grain here, but I wasn’t keen on THE MASSES – even allowing for lifting and separating, I found it a bit clunky.
FOI Titan LOI Had it made COD Nimbus
Thanks Teazel and Doofers
Held up somewhat by using the wrong anagrist at 15dn but held up mostly by being completely off the wavelength. I must have fallen neatly into every trap set by Teazel. I knew the bike, the butterfly and the battleship and also the poetic alternative name for Ireland so I can’t use obscure vocabulary as an excuse. It took me 29 minutes all told, just beating my self-imposed cut off time of 30 minutes.
FOI – 22ac STING
LOI – 14ac METHOD
COD – 12dn THE MASSES
Thanks to Teazel and Doofers.
26.43 DNF. The bicycle went straight in but then I struggled. HOTLINE, METHOD and ANTONYM all seriously delayed me. I eventually gave up with 1a remaining and biffed SCARPER, at which point the answer became obvious. Thanks Doofers and Teazel.
10:37 is on the faster side for us. Nothing too difficult – we had TEST for MOCK to start with but MOA soon put paid to that. When I was little more than a nipper I delivered groceries from the local shop on a SIT UP AND BEG so no problem there. Couldn’t fully parse BALLERINA so thank you, Doofers, and thanks too to Teazel.
HAD IT MADE, COMMA and NIMBUS the main stumbling blocks, but a reasonable time (for me) of 20:44 to complete.
Teazel my nemesis is back! Of course, doing cryptics while suffering the effects of a shingles vax might not be the best strategy, but that’s probably just an excuse. 24:20 to finish. Didn’t recognize MOCK for “exam”; sCAMPER eluded me for a long time as I searched my memory for weird British slang, oops; NUS (NIMBUS) not a thing here, likewise the COMMA butterfly; but the most unlikely one had to be SIT UP AND BEG. Apparently what one now calls a bicycle for a sensible person.
Liked THEM ASSES and BALLERINA best.
Thanks to Teazel and Doof.
Enjoyed a few like “The masses”, “Comma”, “Mock” but not “Sit up and beg” which didn’t have any maths, science or even good linguistics in the clue.