| 1 |
Tasteless stuff by current film-maker (4) |
|
TATI – TAT + I (I is the symbol for electrical current, in case anyone didn’t know) |
| 2 |
Hover in quiet to first-class Asian city (8) |
|
SHANGHAI – HANG (hover) inside SH (quiet) + AI (first-class) |
| 3 |
Adores holding first of annual bloomers? (6) |
|
LOAVES – LOVES with A for annual inserted. This came up recently and it was clear that quite a lot of people didn’t know that a bloomer is a type of loaf. |
| 4 |
Code of silence newcomer tackles somewhat (6) |
|
OMERTA – hidden word |
| 5 |
Secure part of Barnet? (4) |
|
LOCK – double definition, the second being cockney rhyming slang: Barnet Fair = Hair |
| 6 |
Deserter playing truant holds firm (8) |
|
TURNCOAT – Anagram (‘playing’) of TRUANT with CO inserted |
| 11 |
Worked out child finally gave in study (8) |
|
REASONED – SON (child) + E (last letter of GAVE) inside READ |
| 13 |
Love nightlife in London primarily (3) |
|
NIL – acronym |
| 14 |
Testing second electronic device with Heather (8) |
|
SAMPLING – S + AMP + LING (another name for common heather). Ling is a super important crossword word |
| 16 |
Most ancient poem contains line on saint (6) |
|
OLDEST – ODE with L inserted + ST |
| 17 |
Oddball yelped intensely (6) |
|
DEEPLY – Anagram (‘oddball’) of YELPED |
| 19 |
Cover over open-air swimming-pool (4) |
|
LIDO – LID + O |
| 21 |
Perhaps a fixture at Burns Night, Anne helps regularly (4) |
|
NEEP – Alternate letters of aNnE hElPs. Scottish word for turnip, traditionally served with ‘tatties’ on 25th January, which is the day that everyone pretends haggis is edible. |
7:11
Pretty straightforward, although it took a moment to recall NEEP. (Curarist, you forgot to indicate the wordplay.)
Whoops – fixed, thanks
And neeps are swedes, not turnips!
And in my experience the word is usually seen in the plural only. Which held me up for a moment. But I assume one can have a singular neep.
They are 100% turnips. Tur-neeps. Collins: “neep
in British English
(niːp IPA Pronunciation Guide)
noun
British a dialect name for a turnip”
Chambers: “neep noun, Scots a turnip.
ETYMOLOGY: 15c as Scots neip; Anglo-Saxon næp: from Latin napus.”
[On further research I’m now totally confused. I may have been calling a turnip all my life what other people call a swede. See here https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/jan/25/neeps-swede-or-turnip ]
Turnips v swedes – an ongoing discussion 😅 MrB, who is a Geordie, always called those yellow / orange root veg turnips, but wasn’t even aware of the white things with pink tops. Whereas I, soft southerner as I am, called the orange ones swedes and the others turnips. Mind you, I can’t stand actual turnips, whereas swedes are rather nice, especially mashed with lots of butter and nutmeg, which I guess is neeps 😋
This has turned my world upside down. As an Anglo-Scot, I’ve always known that the orange things are turnips. Now it turns out that everyone else calls them swedes. I need a lie down.
It’s a confusing world 😅 But no-one’s wrong. Having done some research, it would seem that the full name for the orange ones are Swedish turnips, swedes for short. But turnips in the north of England and always neeps in Scotland. They’re rutabaga in the US, which has a Swedish root (sorry). I’m sure we could also make some sort of pun about a different sort of orange American, but turnip seems a bit mild 😂
The things we end up discussing on a Sunday morning!
Happy new year, Penny!
I’m with you re swedes and turnips, although I don’t mind the latter. I hadn’t thought of using nutmeg, but it sounds a good idea and will give it a try. However, I always add plenty of freshly ground black pepper to make it nice and fiery. It’s also good mashed with potato and (maybe also) with some soured cream or strong grated cheddar. Yum!
Sounds good to me – maybe I’ll do that with the swede in my fridge today. It’s certainly the right sort of weather for a dish like that 😋 Maybe with a vege haggis – sacrilege I know, but I prefer it to the real thing!
Nothing too testing but I biffed WASHROOM meaning to go back and double check it… so two pink squares for me today.
Thanks to Curarist for the blog and Breadman for the excellent puzzle.
Humph. TATI eluded us for over 5 minutes – then the PD with an ‘oh, of course!’ clang.
Knew Erica for Heather (wonder how those two names happened?) though not Ling. Do now. Thank you.
Another who initially biffed WASHROOM .
Lovely crossword, simply not on the ball this morning. Perhaps we’ll improve later in the year : )
10:00 just missed a rare sub ten. Reasoned Deeply, in fact took an age, to see Tati wasn’t a Badi. Enjoyed Sign over and my COD which put me in mind of the IMHO brilliant Guy Garvey lyric:
There’s a hole in my neighbourhood down which of late I cannot help but fall.
TaCAB
I had exactly the same thought – an absolutely terrific song! And a very good album too 😊
12:47, with last two minutes spent on SHANGHAI. I spent ages looking for a flower in 3d before remembering my loaf types.
Thanks Curarist and Breadman
6.12
Looks like quite a few WASHROOMS looking at the leaderboard. Does the Breadman always give us a loafish reference a la Oink?
When the Breadman crosswords started to roll* out, it did seem possible that he was doing an Oink. I remember cottage [loaf] and pumpernickel and other bakery items in the early ones. But it never gelled. Just a combination of coincidence and wishful thinking on our part, I guess. Today, he is just teasing us.
*Roll. Did you see what I did there?
9 minutes again, making 5 consecutive sub-10s this week! Can I sweep the board tomorrow, I wonder?
An enjoyable puzzle and a sub-15 time for me (by a few seconds) all parsed. Not on a par with past times but a welcome relief after my Izetti and Jalna disasters this week.
Thanks to Breadman for an interesting and accessible QC with some clever clues and to Curarist for a good blog.
I’m an odd one out here as I found this difficult, taking 31:05 to struggle home. Just couldn’t figure out a number of clues without an alphabet crawl. Clearly I am way off Breadman’s wavelength, but all solutions clear thanks to the blog.
6:54
Slightly faster than my Breadman average (7:41), though was off to a modest start with four acrosses from the first pass. Marginally better on the downs, with some checkers in place of course. Saw the LOAVES = bloomers trick right off the bat, but slower with SAMPLING and SHANGHAI.
Thanks Curarist and Breadman
Crumbs! 2026 is not going easily for me so far, gridwise, I’ve had slow – even for me – solves every day this year…. How long can I blame the very late night partying?
Stumbled and hacked through Izetti yesterday whilst others clearly found it a cakewalk, and today was mostly fine but SNAPSHOT had me perplexed for ages, and for the BATHROOM I assumed the middle of Richmond was at either end of the whole word, giving me H…ROOM. The blindingly obvious somehow didn’t occur to me for some time.
A belated HNY to all, I resolve to solve better. Like all my resolutions, it is late, and won’t be kept!
DNF TATI, oh dear. I did not know ‘I’ was the symbol for electrical current. And I needed a hint for ARCH.
Otherwise, yes, a reasonably fast solve. FOI OF LATE. Liked BATHROOM, MARIGOLD, SNAPSHOT but not keen on taste of NEEPs. We had TURNCOAT recently.
Was quite slow on SHANGHAI, despite having a c. 1930s photo of the Bund.
Thanks vm, Curarist. Haggis not edible, imo.
While I agree that most of this was quite straightforward, there were a few trickier clues that I feel will make this a challenge for some to complete, most notably TATI. I am slightly amused that the blog explains the reasonably well-known I = current, without mentioning who or what TATI is/was. Having looked him up, I find that Jaques Tati was a French actor and film maker who died in 1982. Well, now I know, but I’m not at all surprised I hadn’t heard of him. Thankfully I couldn’t think of anything better that fit the checkers, so after 22:51 I shoved TAT for tasteless (it’s usually clued as rubbish, I thought) in and hoped for the best. I had considered DAL, but thought it would be a bit harsh to describe the Indian lentil dish as tasteless, and wasn’t sure that Dali would have been described as a film maker. The other unknown for me was OMERTA, but as that was a hidden it wasn’t a problem. Anyway, always good to learn something new, so thanks Curarist and Breadman.
Tati was a wonderful film director, who made very funny films starring himself as the hapless Monsieur Hulot. Recommended.
So true!
Chaplin died before Tati, yet I hope (!) his name is familiar to most. Anyhow Tati is crosswordland’s favorite filmmaker because of brevity. But also his films are brilliant, hilarious, and require no knowledge of French to appreciate. Mon oncle is my favorite.
Dali collaborated on a number of films. He designed the famous dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound.
I always loved Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and ‘forced’ all my kids to watch it (wasn’t my finest moment but..)
I suspect that Mr Bean was influenced by him.
I was another who went over the pond for 9ac and initially put in WASHROOM. After completing the rest of the puzzle I decided to go back to it to parse it, and of course couldn’t; so the extra thirty or so seconds devoted to getting BATHROOM was worth it. My eventual finishing time was nicely under target at 8.15.
DNF. I had washroom instead of bathroom and TATI only vaguely heard of and I probably wouldn’t have got it if I had stared at it for another 10 minutes. All the rest done in 19 minutes, so not that straightforward (SNAPSHOT took some digging out even with the crossers). 100% record of DNFs in 2026 so far – things can only get better.
FOI – 4ac OF LATE
LOI – DNF
COD – 3dn LOAVES
thx to Breadman and Curarist
From OF LATE to SALINGER in 6:42. Enjoyable puzzle needing some thought in places. Thanks Breadman and Curarist.
I too biffed WASHROOM and only corrected it when I checked the grid, so a technical DNF, I suppose. Still, a very enjoyable crossword, albeit I tended to biff first then parse. 17.09, which is a relief after recent struggles. Thank you Breadman.
Another New Year’s resolution bites the dust. I wasn’t happy with Washroom but biffed it and failed to return to it.
LOI TURNCOAT which held me up a while.
11 minutes with one error.
Nice QC. COD to DWELLING.
David
I didn’t find it easy. Perhaps I just wasn’t on wavelength today. I didn’t know OMERTA but could work that out from the many checkers. I also guessed TATI although he was unknown to me. I particularly struggled with ARCH and REASONED my LOsI. 9:38 Thanks Curarist
I parsed six in 20 minutes. I was thinking Slessenger for some reason. I biffed the OF and parsed the SNAP and the ST for the last two letters of 16d.
Need to up my game…
19:36, did not find that easy peasy at all.
REASONED LOI.
Is it a coincidence that NEEP and TATI are the first and last down solutions and are symmetrically opposite? I can’t find any other Ninas though.
Talking of haggis I love it and don’t only eat it on Burns Night. And I’m not even Scottish!
A belated HNY to all.
Thanks for the Neep and Tati connection. It passed me by. Well spotted.
Same here!
Good spot! But I wonder why the crossword team didn’t save it for Burns Night – that would have been most appropriate 😅
Guessed Tati and didnt know the us author also didnt spot that 17 was an anagram and didnt get arch from rogueish, so pretty poor all round. Thanks to Breadman and Curarist. Incidentally neep in Scotland is what we call swede not what we call turnip.
A very pleasant 16min solve, with just loi and CoD Shanghai preventing a sub-15. I was looking for a Phon* Asian city for quite some time before the pdm. Snapshot was another that initially seemed tricky before becoming (more) obvious.
I have to say I’m slightly surprised at the number of eminent solvers who ended up with washroom at 7ac. I mean, what do they call their room with a bath in it? Invariant
Agreed!
Fairly straightforward until the 2 downs on the left hand side. Never heard of Tati, and the wordplay for Reasoned was quite hard.
Wasn’t able to access the blog all day yesterday – got the dreaded ‘429 too many requests’ – baffling – anyone else?
Lovely QC. Took a while to see that oddball was an anagram indicator after biffing DEEPLY. Really liked SNAPSHOT and SIGN OVER. May thanks both.
That happened to me for some hours on the 31st. Agree, baffling.
🤯 Thanks
Yes. I have been getting it again, intermittently, for days. 🙄😠
So have I!
Excellent puzzle, and lovely to start the year (at least!) on 100% (paperboy off yesterday) – thanks, Breadman. Only vaguely HO NEEP but wordplay was clear. Thanks for education, Curarist (but is Ham correcting you?).
Cf. Rob above; those were my L2I.
My dictionary has neep = Scots for turnip, but whenever someone tries to make me eat haggis it comes with mashed swede, so I’m not going to argue
Thanks! Nor will I … can’t abide either, but the other day we found haggis served (hotel breakfast, I think) and found it quite interesting, even tasty. Maybe that’s the secret: eschew the usual accompaniments? Similarly I dislike stuffing and apple sauce, but love turkey and roast pork.
Yes, it is mashed swede, but if you tweak it with a little nutmeg, ginger and cream it’s really tasty – to me anyway. (I’m not Scottish, and Scots might well disapprove!)
No especial problems today, we had all the GK, though were a little slow to build momentum – perhaps too much time spent failing to see BATHROOM and ESCORT before moving on. All done in 9:50 though so fair to say it was on the gentler side. Thanks, Breadman and Curarist.
12:36 so not so easy peezy for meezy. I was splashing about merrily until I bumped into LOCK and SNAPSHOT. Also for some reason I never see “club” = “bat” until a post-biff parse, which made BATHROOM my last one in (I had HA_HROOM haha). I had to guess at NEEP which I think is new to me.
A fun time in spite of my bruised shins.
Thanks to Breadman and Curarist.
9.08 Nice to see TATI. LOI REASONED, which took a minute to winkle out. Thanks Curarist and Breadman.
19:10
Not sure what’s up but couldn’t access the blog earlier, too many bad requests apparently.
Held up by wanting to put DALI instead of TATI for the film maker and then LOI REASONED where, for no real reason, I failed to see child = son for a couple of minutes.
14 mins…
Fairly straightforward, but I wouldn’t call it easy-peasy. The NW corner was fairly elusive to start with and it took a while to get a foothold. Main hold up overall was my LOI 1dn “Tati”.
FOI – 5dn “Lock”
LOI – 1dn “Tati”
COD – 12ac “Snapshot”
Thanks as usual!
As well as Hamfatter and Aftermath being anagrams of each other there is also Alignment and Lamenting. These are as well as the Dehydrate/ Adhere + dty clue
7.33. Happy New Year to everyone.
13 minutes
Joining lots of others in the washroom today – feeble attempt at parsing was that there must be a club in Richmond calling itself the WAs – Whisperers Anonymous? Anyway, all the rest done and dusted in 15 minutes, the Barnet Fair giving up its lock and the lid going on the pool promptly. The famous film Mr Hulot’s Holidays was shot at a lovely French beach called La Plaine sur Mer and visitors are greeted by a life-size statue of Jacques Tati alias M. Hulot!
14:20 here with everything parsed. For me, this means it was a touch easier than average, without being a pushover. Liked BATHROOM and SNAPSHOT the most today.
Thanks to Breadman and Curarist.
DNF in around 15 minutes for me – turns out that Papi isn’t a film maker after all! I didn’t even really question it much, though NHO Tati either so I’d probably have stuck with it anyway. Oh well, perhaps it will stick around in the mind hovel for next time.
Thank you for the blog!
Another who didn’t find this easy peasy. I never seem to be quite on Breadman’s wavelength and was happy to be trundling along nicely and anticipating an unexpectedly decent time, then the brakes came on and I was totally floored by a few on the extreme LH side. There was nothing hard about ARCH and REASONED but my brain wouldn’t go there and as for TATI…yes I’ve heard the name but had totally forgotten him. So, well entrenched in the SCC today. Enjoying afternoon tea since it’s a tad late in the day.
Coming to this late in the day, and all solved in 9:46. Not familiar with the singular NEEP – I’ve only ever seen it as a plural – but it wasn’t hard to get from the wordplay. SALINGER another matter: only vaguely recalled from some dim and distant part of my memory. and put in with fingers crossed. This time I was OK, but I’m not the greatest fan of names as anagrams, because if you don’t know the name you cannot construct it – in this case, SiLaNGER would have been equally plausible.
Many thanks Curarist for the blog.
I read The Catcher in the Rye in my youth and find myself picking it off the shelf every few years and re-reading it.
Late solve after slipping and sliding all over a hill in the snow and then stacking the logpile. 08:25, COD MARIGOLD, Undistinguished Day.
Many thanks Curarist and Breadperson.
A nice easy QC for the start of the year (I couldn’t find a copy of The Times yesterday as most shops were shut.)
Just to be clear the vegetable we call a turnip (or neep) in Scotland is a swede elsewhere. The Gaelic word is sneap so perhaps that’s the connection?
Although it’s hardly a staple food, haggis is very tasty – excellent as an accompaniment to roast chicken.
Happy New Year to you all!
All done and dusted with no complaints 😊 I found it to be nicely straightforward.
8:04 FOI Of late LOI Reason COD Snapshot
Many thanks Breadman and Curarist
I had the same ‘too many requests’ note yesterday too, and couldn’t get onto read let alone comment.
25 minutes after finding myself sloping down the RHS before getting back to where I started.
Loved M. Hulot. “Trafic” was great. I wonder if it is still amusing today.
Thanks Breadman and Curarist