A puzzle that I found of medium difficulty from Teazel. A mixture of write-ins (SAMPLE, KEEP, KITE, OZONE, GALA) with some slightly trickier ones, particularly the odd-looking JACKKNIFED meant that this took me 14:47, with perhaps the last 5 minutes spent on my last two, ATTAIN and CHEW.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough.
| Across | |
| 1 | Sailor, stabbed, doubled over (10) |
| JACKKNIFED – JACK (sailor) + KNIFED (stabbed).
I thought this looked most peculiar as a single word. But my SOED has “jackknife” as a verb as a top-level entry, so I guess it’s kosher. The “doubled-over” meaning refers to when an articulated lorry has a mishap which ends up with the pulling part pointing in almost the opposite direction to the pulled part. |
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| 8 | Shortly put down one chapter in colloquial speech (7) |
| DEMOTIC – DEMOT |
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| 9 | Basket maker more comfy out of cold (5) |
| OSIER – Baskets are made of osiers, so an osier is a “basket maker” in much the same way as a brick could be a “wall maker”. I’m struggling to come up with a real-life example of “X is made of Y, so Y is an X maker”, though. |
|
| 10 | Prepare to swallow a red wine at the start (4) |
| CHEW – CHE (Guevara, communist: red) + W My LOI and COD: seeing “swallow” next to “red wine” meant that it took me forever to separate the “red” from the “wine at the start”. |
|
| 11 | Set of bells in collar, moving (8) |
| CARILLON – Anagram (moving) of IN COLLAR.
I think I dredged this up from The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers. An excellent book. But a very unusual word. |
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| 13 | Get thanks when opening a can (6) |
| ATTAIN – TA (thanks) inside [opening] A TIN (a can).
I’m struggling to find an example where “opening” means “inside”, although I’m sure I’ve seen it before in Crosswordland. |
|
| 14 | Son makes big strides skiing here (6) |
| SLOPES – S for son (as in Who’s Who entries: “s. of Lord and Lady Wossname…” + LOPES (makes big strides). | |
| 17 | Regular staff, one looking after cattle (8) |
| STOCKMAN – STOCK (normal, regular) + MAN (staff, as a verb). | |
| 19 | A convict returning for festival (4) |
| GALA – A LAG (a convict) reversed [returning]. | |
| 21 | Female at Hebridean isle? (5) |
| FIONA – F for female + IONA (Hebridean isle).
“Female” appears to be doing double duty here, being both the definition and part of the wordplay.Perhaps the question mark is there to show us that Teazel knows he’s being a bit naughty? I wondered whether there was perhaps another island called Fiona, to make “isle” the definition, but came up blank on a Google search, despite this rather wonderful map of Denmark from 1634: the caption has dropped an “I” from “Fionia”, the title that actually appears on the map. |
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| 22 | Simulated pressure on nurse (7) |
| PRETEND – P (pressure) + RE (about, on) + TEND (nurse).
I had a moment of “but ‘PRE’ isn’t a valid abbreviation for pressure”, until the penny dropped about ‘RE’ and the harrumphing subsided. |
|
| 23 | Part of simple sum in school exam (6-4) |
| ELEVEN-PLUS – “Eleven plus three” (or any other number) is a simple sum, so “eleven plus” is “part of a simple sum”.
The “school exam” refers to a test given to children at age 11 or 12 to determine where they will go for secondary education. It was compulsory for all in the past (my parents took it) and survives – at least in spirit – in the entrance examinations for some grammar schools. |
|
| Down | |
| 2 | Support for limb motionless initially in seizure (7) |
| ARMREST – M |
|
| 3 | Bird of prey child has on a string (4) |
| KITE – double definition. | |
| 4 | By the sound of it, swallowed a delicious drink (6) |
| NECTAR – Homophone clue [by the sound of it]. With a willing mind, I can just about say that NECTAR sounds a bit like “necked a” (‘swallowed a’, in horrible slang). | |
| 5 | Briefly run up to a series of boats (8) |
| FLOTILLA – FLO I was much more confident of the parsing of TILL before I wrote it down. |
|
| 6 | Bore strict training (5) |
| DRILL – Another double definition. | |
| 7 | Best seats here, but a thousand can’t sit down? (10) |
| GRANDSTAND – GRAND (thousand) + STAND (what you do if you can’t sit down.) | |
| 8 | Remove restrictions from disc, safely reformatted (10) |
| DECLASSIFY – Anagram [reformatted] of DISC SAFELY. | |
| 12 | Steal identity, an informal one (8) |
| NICKNAME – NICK (steal) + NAME (identity). | |
| 15 | In large level area place a meal for all to see (7) |
| PLATEAU – PL for place + A + TEA (meal) + U (for all to see, film ranking).
I think the “In” at the start of the clue is just filler for the surface reading. |
|
| 16 | Specimen, small, more than adequate (6) |
| SAMPLE – S (small) + AMPLE (more than adequate). | |
| 18 | Toxic gas over region (5) |
| OZONE – O (over, from cricket) + ZONE (region). | |
| 20 | Secretly look up to find castle tower (4) |
| KEEP – PEEK (secretly look), reversed [up, since this is a down clue]. | |
20ish mins before resorting to blog for Demotic and Carillon. Lot of school days remembered here 11+ and my first crush, Fiona.
Seemed to be on Teazel’s wavelength which is a mite unusual
No carillons in 9 tailors but a really good peal.
That way bells are more appealing than in a carillion.
DNF
Worst for a long time. Which is annoying as most of this seemed ok. Unfortunately NHO OSIER and worse was to come in the SW where I failed with STOCKMAN and NICKNAME. Threw in the towel at 30 minutes.
For me, hard but doable (just) so I must be progressing given some of the comments above. CARILLON was easy coming from Loughborough where there is one n the park. Also unhappy (medically) with arrest = seizure. Arrests happen to the heart, seizures happen in the brain. Time as ever well into the SCC.
A fellow Loughburian – or whatever we call ourselves 😅
I didn’t get going until halfway down the down clues but eventually made it over the finishing line. Stupidly didn’t even see KITE until nearly the end.
24 minutes
Dreadful start with lowest ever total on first pass. Gradual improvement thereafter, but the damage was done.
I’m dissatisfied because, as Vinyl1 so rightly says, GALA, OZONE and SAMPLE were beginner clues, and I didn’t get any of them immediately. I did my usual headless chicken routine instead of thinking calmly and rationally.
Great blog, thanks 👍
9:34. I didn’t sit down to do this till about 8.15 this evening – far too late for my brain – so I’m afraid I didn’t parse everything! But I’m more than happy with this as I find Teazel very tricky sometimes 😊
FOI Kite LOI Armrest COD Carillon – I liked this clue anyway, but as we have one in our town park, it really couldn’t be any other!
Thanks Teazel and Doofers for another great blog
14 minutes, definitely hardish for a QC I’d say
Thanks everyone