One that I found harder than most, despite there being a fair sprinkling of easy clues. (Anagram of ARM, anyone?) I finished in 19:08, over my 15:00 target, but not by too much.
One word that formed part of an answer (AGIO) was completely unknown to me, but the clue as a whole seemed fair since the definition was clear. My LOI by about a minute was UPSTARTS, and it was my last one parsed by about an hour: I left it blank on the first pass through this blog and light only dawned when I went back to it for the third time.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough.
| Across | |
| 8 | Editor, after fish, got settled (7) |
| PERCHED – ED (editor) after PERCH (fish).
The E and the D were the first two letters into my grid. |
|
| 9 | Fool endlessly gaining marks for natural expression (5) |
| IDIOM – IDIO Thats M for marks as in DM for Deutschmarks. I held myself up by wanting there to be two Ms in the answer. |
|
| 10 | Ready on time? Nonsense! (5) |
| TRIPE – RIPE (ready) on T for time.
Sadly, the, um, final T was the third letter into my grid. Ho hum. |
|
| 11 | Individual joining hospital department with complaint (7) |
| ENTRANT – ENT (ear, nose and throat, a hospital department) + RANT (complaint). | |
| 12 | Felt sorry about queen greeted rudely around start of tour (9) |
| REGRETTED – R (regina – queen) + anagram [rudely] of GREETED around T [start of tour].
Quite a lot going on in this clue. |
|
| 14 | Damage dislocated arm (3) |
| MAR – anagram [dislocated] of ARM.
This one balances the last one. |
|
| 16 | Concession soon offended popular leaders (3) |
| SOP – first letters [leaders] of Soon Offended Popular. | |
| 18 | Force in iron club (9) |
| PRESSGANG – PRESS (iron) + GANG (club).
I was stuck on golf clubs and coshes. Didn’t think of the “group of people” meaning of “club” at all and needed an alphabet trawl to complete PRESS_A_G. |
|
| 21 | Arriviste ruffled up raven (7) |
| PARVENU – Anagram [ruffled] of UP RAVEN. | |
| 22 | Multitude first seen getting closer (5) |
| SWARM – first letter of Seen + WARM (getting closer).
WARM for “getting closer” is a reference to the parlour game where an object is hidden, and the seeker is given clues to how close they are by temperature, warmer being closer. A quick Google search tells me that among many other names, this game can be called “Hot Boiled Beans” and is referred to as such by Dickens. So there you go. |
|
| 23 | Butcher’s singular appearance? (5) |
| LOOKS – LOOK (Butcher’s) + S for singular.
Cockney Rhyming Slang: “butcher’s hook” = look. |
|
| 24 | High spirits of extremely deprived relations (7) |
| ELATION – |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Arrogant folks open up in fortunate times (8) |
| UPSTARTS – START (open up) in UPS (fortunate times).
I didn’t parse this one at all until just now, and it took me a long time to do so. But now I’ve done so, I like it a lot. |
|
| 2 | Testing out in court (6) |
| TRYING – I think this is a double definition, the first sense as in to “try a lock”, the second as in to “try a case”. But I think it can also work as just a straightforward, barely cryptic definition of what a law court does. | |
| 3 | Being old-fashioned, you, to an extent, loathe electricity (4) |
| THEE – Hidden in [to an extent] My misplaced T from 10 across made this harder than it should have been. |
|
| 4 | Most unusual contribution to a mood destroyed (6) |
| ODDEST – Hidden in [contribution to] |
|
| 5 | Side trip at sea in turbulent waters (8) |
| RIPTIDES – Anagram [at sea] of SIDE TRIP.
A minor quibble here: rip tides (more correctly, rip currents) are not always turbulent. One of the dangerous things about them is that they can be hard to see. |
|
| 6 | Deprive of weapons, minutes after chaotic raids (6) |
| DISARM – M (minutes) after an anagram [chaotic] of RAIDS. | |
| 7 | Obscenity turns stomachs (4) |
| SMUT – TUMS (stomachs) backwards [turns]. | |
| 13 | Strong drink sees pros in meltdown (8) |
| ESPRESSO – Anagram [in meltdown] of SEES PROS. | |
| 15 | Large number of men diet, taking heart in fasting (8) |
| REGIMENT – REGIMEN (diet) + the middle letter of [heart in] |
|
| 17 | Trot out standard rubbish (6) |
| PARROT – PAR (standard), ROT (rubbish). | |
| 19 | Releases former partner, united with Des (6) |
| EXUDES – EX (former partner), U (United, as in Man. U.), DES (as in, er, Des). | |
| 20 | Commercial currency exchange is slow (6) |
| ADAGIO – AD (commercial) + AGIO (currency exchange).
AD came quickly, but I’d never heard of the word AGIO before. Looking it up now, its first meaning is the percentage charged when exchanging money between currencies, its second – annotated in my SOED with loosely – is “money-changing”. |
|
| 21 | About to cut off 50 voting (4) |
| POLL – LOP (to cut off), reversed [about] + L (50 in Roman numerals). | |
| 22 | Attempt crazy return (4) |
| STAB – BATS (crazy) backwards [return]. | |
Easier than yesterday’s. I put Trials for 2D which held me up until I realised 10A was Tripe. LOI Upstarts took ages.
Is 7d strictly speaking unfair? Solution (in the absence of a checker) could equally correctly be ‘TUMS’ – so isn’t the clue insoluble without a checker? Am I just being a pedant, or have I missed something? I agree with many that this was a difficult QC – but thanks anyway!
Among the total pig’s breakfast I made of this (hence nothing else from me today) I thought the same. ‘Obscenity turns’ seems to point grammatically towards ‘stomachs’ as the definition (ie SMUT ‘turns’ to form TUMS). SMUT being derived from ‘turns stomachs’ seems clumsy – and to me ungrammatical in ways I can’t quite define. But I guess it’s just you and me as no one else seems to have commented 🙂
This question comes up a lot in discussions here. Purists take the view that perfect clues should have only one possible solution when read in isolation. Others (including myself) are more pragmatic. Because crossword puzzles by their very nature consist of intersecting answers that need to be fitted together it’s not unreasonable to be expected occasionally to take into account the context within the grid when deciding between two options.
Thanks Jack – now you point it out, it’s kinda obvious. These are ‘crosswords’, so solving like some sort of simultaneous equation for words is perfectly valid. Still learning 🙂
Another DNF. Going to blame wife stealing my special crossword pen. The offending missing answer was Looks. Biffed many without parsing. Thanks Doofs and Lupa
27 minutes
My usual pathetic display of ignorance, capped off by taking 10 mins to get UPSTARTS.
It never gets any better.
Thanks for the blog.
PS Spent 90 mins on big crossword and got 19/28. Utterly dismal. The gap between where I want to be and where I am is immense and I see no way of improving.
Found this one quite tough but finished after a long time trying to get UPSTART. Put it in but couldn’t parse, thankfully the blog did it for me!
Thanks Lupa and Doofs
7:00. Not sure why it took me so long. I took a while to parse POLL, but don’t remember other hold-ups. No problem with ADAGIO, Like Jackkt I remember seeing the signs in Europe when travelling many moons ago. I liked SWARM, but like Busman didn’t like DES as a direct element in the wordplay or TRYING meaning “in court”. Thanks Lupa and Doofers.