ParkSolve time: 35:30. Brisk run, slow-ish solve.
After a run of Jokers I have a Jalna to blog today. It didn’t feel all that difficult but it did take longer than usual for a Quickie.
The puzzle was light on anagrams, with plenty of hiddens, homophones and “first or last letter” type clues. All very fair and very enjoyable I thought. How did you find it?
(In the clues, definitions are underlined and anagram indicators are in bold italics. In the explanations (ABC)* indicates an anagram of abc. Deletions and other devices are indicated accordingly, I hope).
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Amendment to peace talks comes off (5,5) |
| TAKES PLACE – (PEACE TALKS)*
“comes off” = “takes place”? Discuss. |
|
| 8 | Widen out thoroughfare cutting through Scottish mountain (7) |
| BROADEN – ROAD (thoroughfare) “cutting through” BEN (Scottish mountain) | |
| 9 | Big range of Italian desserts (5) |
| ANDES – Hidden in (of) ItaliAN DESerts
A mountain range I’d love to see in real life. Chimbarazo, Cotapaxi… |
|
| 10 | I’m leaving, primarily to avoid those annoyances (2-2) |
| TA-TA – First letters of (primarily) To Avoid Those Annoyances | |
| 11 | Doctor taking aim at overturning long-standing feud (8) |
| VENDETTA – VET (doctor) “taking” END (aim) + TA [at reversed (overturning)] | |
| 13 | Embarrassing public spectacle witnessed in an auditorium (5) |
| SCENE – Homophone (in a auditorium) of SEEN (witnessed) | |
| 14 | Key worker in theatres, running around (5) |
| NURSE – &lit. Reverse hidden (in…around) in theatrES RUNning | |
| 16 | Current minister is spot on (8) |
| ACCURATE – AC (current) + CURATE (minister) | |
| 17 | Unknown number covered by terrible group of musicians (4) |
| BAND – N (unknown number) “covered by” BAD (terrible) | |
| 20 | Join last bit of swimming in pool (5) |
| MERGE – G (last bit of swimminG) in MERE (pool) | |
| 21 | Lots here fighting outside university (7) |
| AUCTION – ACTION (fighting) “outside” U (university)
“Lots” being the items up for auction. |
|
| 22 | Relative from America entertained by energetic dancing (5-5) |
| GREAT-NIECE – A (America) “entertained by” (ENERGETIC)* | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Land close to Egypt? Yeah, right! (5) |
| TIBET – T [last letter of (close to) EgypT] + I BET (yeah, right!)
For “I bet” to equate to “yeah, right” I think it needs to be delivered sarcastically. |
|
| 2 | What tennis umpires should do to be well-informed? (4,3,5) |
| KNOW THE SCORE – Double definition | |
| 3 | Team expressed despair audibly (4) |
| SIDE – Homophone (audibly) of SIGHED (expressed despair) | |
| 4 | Type of support embedded in Artificial Intelligence (6) |
| LINTEL – Hidden (embedded) in artificiaL INTELligence | |
| 5 | Grip seals put on building panels (8) |
| CLADDING – CLING (grip) “seals” ADD (put on) | |
| 6 | Concocted adroit lies, ie to introduce bias into reporting (12) |
| EDITORIALISE – (ADROIT LIES IE)* | |
| 7 | Steer clear of outer edges of enormous headland (6) |
| ESCAPE – ES (“outer edges” of EnormouS) + CAPE (headland) | |
| 12 | The art without frame must be reproduced, I agree (4,4) |
| HEAR HEAR – HEAR [tHE ARt without the first and last letters (without frame)] repeated (must be reproduced) | |
| 13 | Sycophantic sergeant-major leading troops (6) |
| SMARMY – SM (sergeant-major) “leading” ARMY (troops) | |
| 15 | A fruity pastry’s upside-down layers (6) |
| STRATA – [A + TARTS (fruity pastry’s)] reversed (upside-down) | |
| 18 | At first, does anyone neatly catch every ball? (5) |
| DANCE – First letters of (at first) Does Anyone Neatly Catch Every | |
| 19 | Revered figure in crown periodically (4) |
| ICON – Alternate letters (periodically) of In CrOwN | |
5:55
No problem with ‘comes off’=takes place (When Wegg asks Mr. Venus when his wedding is to come off, Venus angrily replies that he doesn’t want his wedding referred to as if it were a boxing match.). I biffed VENDETTA; just couldn’t see how it worked, until after I submitted.
I didn’t have much difficulty, but I didn’t parse many of the clues. I opened with take place, and then blundered by putting in know the ropes – do tennis courts have ropes? Answers like vendetta and hear hear were just biffed. I ended up with Tibet, which I couldn’t see for quite a while.
Time: 8:15
I blundered by putting in “ call the shots” – fits tennis better, but equally wrong !
DNF as I failed on CLADDING and TIBET (glad to see I wasn’t alone struggling with that one, vinyl1!). The parsing of VENDETTA eluded me too. No doubt I’d have got there with all of this if I’d been blogging and determined to struggled on regardless but I was well over my target time (15 minutes) and simply wanted to move my day on.
A 10:48 completion, but far from all parsed first time round, and some slightly unusual indicators I think too – “of” for a hidden in ANDES, for example, and “seals” for an inclusion in the clue for CLADDING both new to me. And what has Jalna got against editors and their editorials – calling them adroit lies and biased to boot. A bit harsh!
Many thanks Galspray for the blog, and a good weekend to all.
13:26 without Tibet. DNF.
A pleasant and steady solve with no real dramas.
Started with TAKES PLACE (which works for me) and finished with CLADDING in 7.03.
Thanks to Galspray and Jalna
6:30. I thought this was above average difficulty, but not really hard.
I put in KEEP THE SCORE at first, which slowed me down on BROADEN, which I thought of immediately but didn’t fit. That eventually led to TIBET. CLADDING NPIF, thanks for the explanation.
Enjoyable puzzle.
14:11 but felt slightly more tricky. As usual Jalna had me dotting all over the place, missing the hiddens at 9a & 4d on the first pass, while VENDETTA, CLADDING & STRATA had to be written in to for the penny to drop. Stared for ages at LOI HEAR HEAR until I remembered to just look at the end of the clue for the definition!
COD to 6a for the anagrist! Thanks Jalna & Galspray and happy weekend all.
Don’t know why I didn’t get TIBET. Overthinking the obvious? Otherwise all OK, though I had to jump about a bit. Biffed VENDETTA.
COD ACCURATE. Also liked AUCTION, KNOW THE SCORE and ESCAPE, among others. MER at EDITORIALISE !
Thanks vm, Galspray.
Might be some confusion here.
“Editorialising” isn’t what editors do in editorials. It’s the increasingly prevalent practice of reporters injecting their opinions into what should be a relating of facts.
Thanks for explanation.
12:45 which is very quick for me. I was just on the wavelength, unlike yesterday…
DNF
Couldn’t parse VENDETTA which made me uneasy with some clues on the RHS. Didn’t see “seals” as a positional indicator in CLADDING, stuck with CLAMP and CLASP for “grip”.
Forgot that “theatre” nearly always means “operating theatre”, so missed NURSES.
I actually though APROPI might be some plural of “apropos” which meant “type”. (Prop=support inside AI). Just off the pace today. Even spent ages trying to get tennis words in like “let”, “serve”, “break” but the answer wasn’t tennis related.
PS I’m having WordPress problems on both my Ios devices, with both Safari and Chrome. I enter my ID and password, get the wordpress banner saying “Hi Merlin”, but when I click on the actual blog, from the contents page I get silently signed off. Anyone else seen this? (This entry had to be made on my laptop)
I had the same issue but it seems to be resolved now.
24:20 – struggled with the parsing of quite a few, but finally succeeded. Not easy at all. LOI STRATA.
Lots of biffing and needed help parsing CLADDING and VENDETTA, TIBET took ages.
No time as solved whilst packing to go on holiday but much enjoyed anyway.
Thanks Jalna and Galspray
A tough end to a demanding week for me (only Wurm saved me from the high teens/DNFs). I jumped around and gradually built up the grid until I hit the buffers with VENDETTA, CLADDING which were bifd after an age. I only sorted out the NW corner when TAKES PLACE emerged and gave me the K of KNOW. This led to BROADEN (BEN came from somewhere and I saw the light), TIBET (nice) and my LOI KNOW THE RULES.
I was looking forward to a quick-ish, satisfying end to the week. Fat chance. At least I managed to finish but I was in the SCC (24 minutes).
Jalna included some nice clues (including ANDES, STRATA, ACCURATE) but ended a week to forget with the feeling that I must be losing my marbles.
5.31
Some biffing helped though needed to peer at the grist for my LOI EDITORIALISE.
Thanks Galspray and Jalna.