Good morning, and we have a fine puzzle from Izetti today which I found entertaining, elegant and towards the easier end of his range. There is one answer I did not know and had to check after completion in order to write the blog, but it would not be a true Izetti puzzle if my vocabulary was not expanded by at least one word.
There is an interesting trick in the very last clue which I have not seen before, as the habit (or perhaps in this case one should say ’abit) of some residents of East London of dropping their Hs, which crossword setters are so fond of making use of, is here signalled not by any mention of East London or Cockneys but by a reference to another H-less word. ’Opefully you didn’t find the wordplay too ’ard to spot.
There is also one bit of British slang which may not be widely known outside Twickers, but all the rest should be well within most people’s range, and the wordplay is as always with Izetti fair and precise. I took 9:46 on this one and I suspect there will be a good number of other people posting fast times. Let us know in the comments below!
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, and strike-through-text shows deletions.
| Across | |
| 1 | Hoping to gain, lay out trendy underwear (6) |
| INVEST – IN (trendy) + VEST (underwear). The wordplay here is straightforward, and my bigger decision was what exactly to label as the definition. Financial investing usually requires the initial laying out of money, so one could have “lay out” on its own as the definition – “lay out” and “invest” are not only close synonyms but also the same part of speech, and the fact that the definition would then be in the middle of the clue, while not common, is we are reminded fully allowed. But I have gone for all of the first 5 words of the clue as the definition, as investing and laying out of money is in most cases done with the hope of gain. | |
| 4 | Violent lashes creating trouble (6) |
| HASSLE – (lashes)*, with the anagram indicator being “violent”. | |
| 8 | Key match has editor turning to drink (7) |
| DECIDER – DE (ED, ie editor, reversed, ie “turning”) + CIDER (a drink). A sporting contest or match that determines the result of a title or competition, for example the 5th test in a cricket series tied at 2-2, or the 7th game in baseball’s World Series with the series at 3-3, is certainly a key match, as it decides the outcome. | |
| 10 | Fruit soft and chubby (5) |
| PLUMP – PLUM (fruit) + P (soft, as in music). I’m sure we had this quite recently, and it may even be a chestnut. | |
| 11 | Get bigger with added pounds and grumble noisily (5) |
| GROWL – GROW (get bigger) + L (pounds). | |
| 12 | Place across street for insects (7) |
| LOCUSTS – LOCUS (place) containing (ie “across”) ST (street). | |
| 13 | Good person left in game — one making progress slowly? (9) |
| STRUGGLER – ST (good person, ie saint) + RUGGER (game) containing L (left).
I note briefly in passing that Izetti has used ST in two consecutive clues, and found two different wordplays for it. But the more interesting – and perhaps for some people more confusing – element here is the word Rugger. Rugger is a British slang word and corruption of the word Rugby (as in the game rugby union – though it is never used for rugby league); the habit of changing the end of words and adding -er appears to have been an affectation of Oxford undergraduates in the last part of the 19th century, with the word Soccer being another example of its use. It could reach ridiculous levels: some of my older British readers may recall when it was considered clever to call a WPB (waste paper basket) the “wagger pagger baggers”. The habit is now I think largely outdated and carries hints of eliteness (if not other-worldliness), but it lives on in small bastions of traditionalism; for example the former England test cricket player and now TV and radio commentator Jonathan Agnew rejoices in the on-air nickname of Aggers. (Note for those baffled by the reference to Twickers in my introduction – this is exactly the same slang method used on Twickenham, the home of English Rugby. And the word Twickers carries exactly the same overtones of old-fashioned eliteness as rugger does.) |
|
| 17 | Danger in chancy operation offering meat (7) |
| BRISKET – RISK (danger) inside (“in”) BET (chancy operation), with brisket being a cut of meat. | |
| 19 | Maybe a Glaswegian’s course (5) |
| ASCOT – A (from the clue) + SCOT (Glaswegian), with the reference being to Ascot racecourse and the Maybe in the clue indicating a DBE. | |
| 20 | Ornamentation found in wide corridor (5) |
| DECOR – A hidden, in wiDE CORridor. | |
| 21 | Kind to carry son in downward journey (7) |
| DESCENT – DECENT (kind) containing (“carrying”) S (son). | |
| 22 | Frenzied female, awfully mean, with a daughter (6) |
| MAENAD – (mean)*, the anagram indicator being “awfully” + A D (a daughter).
This was my LOI, and not a word I knew. But once I had the checkers the wordplay leads pretty unavoidably to the answer. A maenad was a female follower or devotee of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and intoxicating drink; their name comes from the Greek μαίνομαι (maínomai, “to rave, to be mad”) and the maenads were traditionally associated with divine possession and frenzied rites. I think we can assume they rather enjoyed drinking their god’s main product! |
|
| 23 | New university attracting silly nudes (6) |
| UNUSED – U (university) + (nudes)*, the anagram indicator being “silly”. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Architect Jones includes a bit of dark colour (6) |
| INDIGO – INIGO (a reference to Inigo Jones, see below) including D (a bit of, ie the first letter of, dark). A fine “lift-and-separate” here: indigo is often a rich dark colour, but we have to separate dark, which is part of the wordplay not part of the definition.
Inigo Jones (1573-1652) was the first significant English architect of the early modern era. He introduced the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to England, and created both single buildings and whole townscapes, the design of Covent Garden in central London being among his best known and most enduring creations. |
|
| 2 | Nasty cleric involved in spurious type of reasoning (7,6) |
| VICIOUS CIRCLE – VICIOUS (nasty) + (cleric)*, with the anagram indicator being “involved”.
A slight hesitation here initially, as I would consider a vicious circle to be just a state of affairs in which events feed back on each other and get steadily and unavoidably worse, rather than a type of reasoning per se, spurious or otherwise. But I see that Collins has as a subsidiary meaning of vicious circle “a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is inferred from premises the truth of which cannot be established independently of that conclusion”. Which is certainly a spurious type of reasoning, so although I would call such reasoning a circular argument not a vicious circle, Collins has Izetti’s back. |
|
| 3 | Worker with horses less happy about foal’s backside (7) |
| SADDLER – SADDER (less happy) containing (ie “about”) L (foal’s backside, ie last letter). | |
| 5 | Jelly with a distinctive flavour mostly (5) |
| ASPIC – A (from the clue) + SPIC (most of the word spice, ie “flavour mostly”). | |
| 6 | Put an end to dubious practices in sport (6,7) |
| SQUASH RACKETS – SQUASH (put an end to) + RACKETS (dubious practices). The full name of the game more usually just called Squash.
Interesting, and I think quite unusual, to see a two word answer built up in this way, with each component word clued with its own separate and complete wordplay. |
|
| 7 | Reveal truth about former model (6) |
| EXPOSE – EX (former) + POSE (model, in the verb sense of the word).
It could be argued that the definition is simply “reveal truth”, leaving the word about with not much to do. There was some debate earlier in the week about redundant words in clues, and how much setters could be allowed to include words simply to make the surface make sense. I suspect views may differ on this one, but I felt that both to avoid the argument and actually because it made a better synonym for the answer, I would include the “about” in the definition. |
|
| 9 | Put down leader, get excited (9) |
| RELEGATED – (leader get)*, with the anagram indicator being “excited”.
Down as in “sent to a lower position or league”, and I think I would more naturally say “go down”, which my football team seems perennially to be in danger of doing, rather than “put down”, which has more the sense of terminating something’s life (and maybe what the team deserves for all the pain it gives its supporters!). But the meaning is clear and the synonym is probably close enough. |
|
| 14 | I am sick, upset, over relation in naughty relationship (7) |
| LIAISON – LIA I (I ail, ie I am sick, all reversed, ie “upset”) + SON (relation). A very clever surface, with “over” both indicating that LIAI is above SON, this being a down clue, and meaning “about”, as in “I am upset about / I am upset over”. | |
| 15 | In the same place I stay overlooking Malta’s capital (6) |
| IBIDEM – I BIDE (I stay) + M (Malta’s capital, ie first letter of Malta – and as it happens, the only capital letter in the word as it is written here).
Ibidem is the Latin word for “in the same place”, so a very straightforward clue, even if the word is not widely used, and classical scholars will have had no problem here. Most of the rest of us will be much more familiar with its abbreviation ibid, used repeatedly in footnotes and references in learned papers and the like to refer one back to a previous reference. |
|
| 16 | Said to have begun losing heart (6) |
| STATED – STARTED (to have begun) with the R, the middle letter or heart, deleted. | |
| 18 | Monk ultimately ’urt, meeting a religious destiny (5) |
| KARMA – K (monk “ultimately”, ie the last letter of) + ARM (ie harm or hurt; if one says ’urt for hurt, one presumably also says ’arm for harm) + A (“meeting a”). I tend to think of Karma more as one’s fate rather than one’s destiny, but if it is true that “we are all on a journey”, the two could be considered the same. | |
I always learn so much from these blogs, Cedric! I didn’t know the actual word ibid was shortening – we don’t really get taught Latin at school here, or rather I was heavily into the maths and sciences anyway.
I didn’t know the architect. But even if I i did I would have dnf because I biffed ‘STRAGGLER’ without parsing it.
I did like the ‘urt part of the KARMA clue!
I had the same MER as Cedric at VICIOUS CIRCLE; Collins’s definition sounds to me like begging the question. And I’d say ‘about’ is part of the definition in EXPOSE; one doesn’t just expose, one exposes something, and one similarly reveals the truth about something. I was very slow in getting my last ones in, STRUGGLER, SADDLER, DECIDER. 9:13
I had considered that ‘reveal’ gave expose and the rest of the clue ‘truth about former model’ was an exposé.
A nice puzzle, where I found a number of easy answers, then had to work for the rest. Fortunately, I knew rugger, but both vicious circle and squash rackets held me up. Since I work from the cryptic, vicious circle didn’t bother me. Squash rackets was my LOI, as I was looking for sport in the sense of wear, a regular cryptic trick, but not so.
Time: 10:07
Twickers was my home town and I played rugger at school. Never thought of it as slang – it was just what the game was called.
I think the comment about 15d shows just how out of touch blog solvers can be with normal people.
Didn’t enjoy this particularly, NHO SQUASH RACKETS as the name of the sports so disregarded RACKETS as an option. Likewise I had NHO Inigo Jones (fortunately the answer was biffable). I will need to add 400 year old architects to my QC study list….
I wish the times app would display the setter somewhere so you know what you are in for from the beginning
Think Izettis are more for seasoned 15×15 players looking for a mild challenge rather than for relative newbies trying to learn cryptics
Maybe one day I’ll finish one 🙂 sadly didn’t go to a school with classics or Latin on the timetable 😉
If the device or computer you are solving on is connected to a printer, just click the 3 bars to the right of the timer and select print. This will bring up a pdf of the puzzle and you can see the setter’s name at the top.
Thank you for the tip!
As a hardened QC solver who rarely attempts the 15×15, I think Izetti is a very fair intro to more thought provoking clues. The parsing is reliably precise and even when he ties me in knots, when the light eventually dawns it is very satisfying, and I can see how I was fairly beguiled.
No disrespect meant to Izetti as I can tell many relish their fiendishness 🙂
Yes, it is satisfying when you do crack a toughie. But also a source of frustration if you struggle on one for some time only to find the answer is obscure Latin or Greek
But not everything is for everyone and that’s fine 🙂
It is particularly satisfying when, as today, I can solve a clue by following the parsing, not knowing the word in the answer. And Izetti is often like that, you don’t need to know the word if you follow the clue carefully.
10 minutes.
I waited for all the checkers before committing to MAENAD. It rang the vaguest of bells, but TBH my mind wandered easily at school when we were being taught all that stuff as I never found it remotely interesting. Most of what I know on the subject now I have picked up from crosswords.
14:11, with LOI VICIOUS CIRCLE, held up by an improperly spelt MENEAD, a word I knew, and spelt it the way it is pronounced. I agree, that a Vicious Circle is not a form of reasoning.
Never knew IBIDEM, guessable but tough for a QC.
Other er words: breaker (breakfast), champers (champagne), fresher. Use any others and sound like a tosser.
😂😂😂😂
I think champers could be a bit tosserish. I can’t think of good examples but journos call people eg Gazzer – without the final ‘s’.
Following his death in 1994, Private Eye published a cartoon of Johnston arriving at the gates of heaven with the greeting “Morning, Godders”.
Good one!
Isn’t blogger Doofenschmirtz sometimes referred to here as Doofers?
I am! I’ll offer a counter-example to Cedric’s “old-fashioned eliteness”: when my mid-twenties American daughter saw that, her reaction was “They call you Doofers! That’s SO cute!” IIRC, it was adopted mostly to save people keystrokes, but with a conscious nod in the direction of Test Mast Special.
Nice top to bottom solve which didn’t put up much resistance, although I had to trust the wordplay for LOI IBIDEM, which I thought was an NHO but ‘ibid’ does ring a vague bell. No problem with MAENADS having studied Euripides’ The Bacchae at university (in English I hasten to add).
Finished in 5.53
Thanks to Cedric for the excellent blog.
The Bacchae was the play read in second-year Greek at my school, following a semester of Homer.
All done in 27 but with the SW mostly empty had a quick google to see if manead was really a word and it helpfully gave us maenad. That unlocked the rest then took a bit longer to find squash even though we already had rackets, d’oh.
Clever clueing from The Don as ever, thanks, and thought brisket the best.
Thanks Cedric for all of the info.
Phew, finished all correct with a bit of a struggle. Biffed MAENAD, and vaguely remembered IBIDEM finally, after forgetting ibid was an abbreviation
FOI INDIGO, then pottered slowly about the grid solving here and there. Liked PLUMP, BRISKET, ASCOT (PDM). A late solve was SQUASH RACKETS.
Thanks vm, Cedric.
I didn’t find this easy, but just came in under target at 9.56. Sadly my run of typos continued with LUCUSTS. Drat! If I hadn’t re-read the wordplay I’d have been a straggler at 13a. Thanks Izetti and Cedric.
I toyed with straggler as well.
9.19
Had the GK (Jones Maenad and Ibidem) but for some reason was v slow to see the CIRCLE wanting it to start VACUOUS. Don’t ask. Currently in warmer climes so will blame a combo of holiday brain fade and squinting in the sun whilst poking at the phone.
Great blog Cedric as always
Dnf…
Poor end to a poor week. Oddly, I guessed “Maenad” based on the wordplay, but dnk “Ibidem” and put “Abodem” instead. There st went in steadily over 25 mins.
FOI – 4ac “Hassle”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 17ac “Brisket”
Thanks as usual!
I like “Abodem”! It looks like the name of some inhabitant of Milton’s Pandemonium.
9:05 but…
…bunged in an unparsed STRAGGLER rather than STRUGGLER – I was wondering what on earth the game could be!
It was only at about three quarters of the way through that I remembered this was meant to be a QC.
Very informative and interesting blog Cedric, and thanks to Izetti for the puzzle
That well-known game ragger 😉
Probably something known only to a secret Eton elite
As a half-Classicist I found that moderately straightforward but my 07:15 was alas a DNF thanks to a fat-fingered SQAUSH, thus earning myself 2 x DPS and a day of self-reproach. Sigh. Off to walk the dogs in the lovely sunshine to cheer myself up!
Excellent blog, thank you Cedders and Izetti.
I walked the dogs too early to benefit from the sunshine. Seems you have caught my fat finger disease!
I’m going to stop relying to your posts, you’re obviously infectious. Oh darn …
Love it when Cedric does the blog, eloquently and entertainingly explained. Can you do it full-time every day?
Most kind of you! But I fear other readers, let alone my fellow bloggers, might find that not altogether a good thing.
Just a question for anyone : is this Saturday cryptic only available digitally – or is it in the printed copy ?
It’s in the newspaper.
I can’t see the QC in the paper paper. I always print off Saturday’s.
Ah, apologies. When I replied to the earlier comment I missed that it was referring to the QC as opposed to the 15×15, and it’s true the QC is only available on-line. We have to be grateful that we have it at all after years of campaigning, but it seems rather odd that in all the acreage of newsprint on a Saturday they haven’t managed to find a small corner for the QC by now.
Thanks, jackkt.
As a (non-rich) pensioner I cannot afford to subscribe to the digital Times as well as buying the Newspaper seven days a week. I will be writing to the editor
about this. Having worked in I.T. for many years I like to escape from the
screen occasionally.
The tokens I buy cover the cost of the newspaper and a digital sub. Can’t remember cost but cheaper than cash, obviously.
Have you looked at the subscription options? I get the printed paper (6 days a week) with a voucher and digital access as well. It’s cheaper than paying the cover price if you buy every day.
I found this quite easy, taking 8:32
Nothing to add really
Have a nice w/e everyone!
24:57
The left side was a struggle. Held up for last five mins by the IBIDEM / MAENAD pairings. Not appropriate for QC-level especially when the former is clued with “I stay” = “I bide”. Izetti should know better. MER at VICIOUS CIRCLE and what the “lay out” part of INVEST was doing, I have no idea.
Could have been a decent puzzle as I enjoyed many of the clues on the right side.
Back to parkrun for first time in a while so a combined QCpr of 48:06 🏃♂️
Good you’re back to parkrunning! I seem to have pretty well halved your solving time today thanks to MAENAD and IBIDEM being quickly recalled. Agree with you about VICIOUS CIRCLE-enjoy the weekend.
Thanks CO – you’ve had some decent times this week on tougher puzzles.
Back to parkrunning as I joined a gym on Monday and have shuffled my training week around. Friday is now pretty much a rest day (just a 1.1 mile easy run!) so the legs are fresh for parkrunday. Hoping to rebuild some of the muscle I have lost since I was last in a gym 15 years ago …
9:09, so I agree this is one of Izetti’s easier offerings.
NHO MAENAD, but OK to construct from the wordplay.
After a lifetime in radiation physics, I had to make an effort to stop my fingers typing KERMA.
Thanks Cedric and Izetti
I finished in 25 minutes, but my hopeless guess of KuRtA instead of KARMA (I had no idea where this clue was going) meant I suffered my 5th DNF in six days. I have never before done so badly in a single week, even when I first started in June 2020. Whilst I solved IBIDEM and MAENAD today, I have come to realise that this game is not really aimed at the likes of me, so I will now disappear for a period.
Many thanks to Izetti and Cedric today, and to all of the setters and bloggers over the past 4+ years. Good luck to all!
This is not at all like you, SRC, so I hope the sunshine will prompt a rethink, as you would be sorely missed. Invariant
Sorry you are feeling dispirited, but if you winkled out those two clues there is nothing wrong with your capability overall, as your previous results show; you’ve just had a few rough days. A break may help you reset, but don’t be put off for too long, I am sure I won’t be the only person who will miss your posts.
You will be much missed if you don’t change your mind.
When I stumbled on TFtT I was desperately looking for explanations of the answers I had biffed. So happy to find them, and at the same time amazed that the time-to-solve mattered to anyone. Now of course I’ve been sucked in to the local culture and preen myself on “better” times and hang my head a bit after “worse” ones. But I try to maintain enough detachment to enjoy the puzzle no matter what. An unexpected benefit is that it becomes an exercise in emotional as well as mental agility.
I’ve enjoyed your company and hope you’ll be back!
If you read our history in About This Site, you will see that TftT originated as a blog for competitive elite solvers, long before the Quickie was thought of. In the beginning, it was just Peter and a few friends, and they never expected it would expand to the size and scope it has today.
Yes, the history is pretty interesting to read! The whole notion of an elite solver was foreign to me then. I had never paid any attention to the competitive side of crossword solving.
Hoping the period is a short one.
I commiserate with you Mr Random. I have been fortunate enough to up my solving this past year with a variety of puzzles from various newspaper but think I would otherwise be struggling. Unfortunately many of the recent puzzles just seem to have a sting in the tail.
I’ve found this the hardest week so far and I’ve been doing these for quite a few years now. Although I don’t really care about time taken I’ve definitely been significantly slower this week. I don’t really mind because I just assume the puzzles are more challenging rather than thinking I’m getting worse 😂😂😂
I always enjoy reading your comments but sadly it’s not about me – I guess it’s about whether you still enjoy the process of solving, whether you finish quickly, slowly, or DNF…
Don’t go, Random. The SSC members need you.
As others have said, don’t be disheartened. It’s only a crossword, and this week has been a tough one.
It’s certainly been a grim old week, and I do think that the difficulty calibration at QC HQ sometimes goes wonky. Anyway, I hope you return sooner or later, and that you enjoy your break in the meantime.
Don’t stay away, for long, please, Mr Random. Your comments are always interesting and reflective.
A grim week for me too! This is my third DNF out of this week’s six crosswords. Stupidly put Ibiden instead of Ibidem, despite understanding the wordplay, and thus thought 22A was Naemad instead of Maenad, both these words being equally likely in my view. The good thing is that the probability of having a better week next week is very high.
Hope to see you back after a short break.
I have only just finished this puzzle but with quite a bit of help and once again exceeding the self imposed 40m cutoff.
I thought Don gave us quite a testing end to the week, so I was a bit surprised to read the intro to Cedrics blog. I suspect the SW corner will be the undoing of many, and it was only when I spotted ‘I bide’ that the full version of ibid revealed itself, thereby allowing a reasonable guess at nho Maenad (I already had Circle and Karma). Squash Rackets still took ages, because the 19ac Chestnut was stubbornly still on the tree. CoD to 14d, Liaison. Invariant
I found this quite gentle. 12.12 is good for me and I was happy with 31.17 for my ParkRun. But Cedric I was surprised by your comment about Soccer. How do you get from Association to Soccer? They don’t sound at all alike?
I am guessing Association Football became Asoccer Footer became Soccer. To my knowledge no other language has a word anything like soccer for the game.
Into the SCC but enjoyed Izetti’s puzzle as ever. He hits my sweet spot of hard but fair, just the right amount of pencil chewing before the PDMs.
Back to normal with a solving time of 16:27, distinctly slowed down by references to sports (for all I know, maybe ragger is a sport somewhere in the English-speaking world haha). I always especially enjoy Izetti’s puzzles. Particular favorites today were INVEST, PLUMP and GROWL, which made a fun pair, and the unsettling BRISKET. NHO SQUASH RACKETS as a name for the sport, which caused a lot of head scratching over that clue.
As an American of a certain age, I’m irresistibly reminded of George W. Bush by the word DECIDER.
I much enjoyed our blogger’s exposition of the cultural significance of the -er suffix slang! Is it well understood what determines whether the suffix is -er or -ers? Agnew -> Aggers and Twickenham -> Twickers but Rugby -> rugger, wagger pagger baggers, etc.
The maenads tore Orpheus to bits, I seem to remember. And his head floated down the river, singing. Ewwww.
Thanks to Izetti and Cedric!
…singing, “I Ain’t Got No Body…”?
🤣
The original game was “rackets”, which is still played in a few English public schools. It’s completely lunatic, basically like squash played with a golf ball in a marble box. Because it was so mad, it was tamed down by using a rubber ball which “squashed” on impact instead of killing you. So instead of “rackets” it was “squash rackets”.
As to “soccer” … in the early C19 all the major English public schools had their own version of a game which they all called “football”. But each school had developed its own local rules and so the games were very different. The one played by Tonbridge, for example had the notorious Rule 13: “Anyone running with the ball may be collared, charged, hacked over or tripped up”. The game was so violent that other schools became less and less keen to visit, and by 1869 the school decided that it had to adopt one of three other sets of rules then gaining popularity: Harrow Football, Rugby Football or Association Football. Association Football was usually abbreviated to Assoc. Football … and from “Assoc” to “soccer” is a short jump!
Great info, thanks! I had no idea about the completely mad rackets game. Sometimes it seems as if English public schools were devised to subject boys to the absolute maddest version of everything!
Yet again one letter wrong which I Struggled to get. Someone who proceeds slowly can be known as a Straggler but of course there is no such game as Ragger so careless error but I can’t always parse every clue!
A testing challenge for me which took about 50 minutes. Needed to check Ibidem and Maenad but with checkers in place couldn’t be much else.
Thanks Izetti and Cedric – I knew I’d gone wrong when Cedric mentioned Twickers slang!!
I do like Izetti’s puzzles although this one took me a rather long time and included a couple of NHOs (IBIDEM, MAENAD). The two long ones actually took me the longest to solve (VICIOUS CIRCLE, SQUASH RACKETS) although I have no idea why. VHO the architect but couldn’t have told you he was an architect! Luckily INDIGO was biffable. Great blog Cedric. Thanks all.
Slightly slow, took an age to see LOI SQUASH RACKETS, and I’d entered DELEGATED instead of RELEGATED – I’m blaming my new keyboard for being too small – and that held up the obvious DECIDER.
7:57
I would have thought that Inigo Jones’ most famous building was The Banqueting House on Whitehall (well worth a short visit – it’s basically one room with an extraordinary ceiling). Famous in particular for being where Charles I was executed – he exited one of the windows onto the scaffold.
I named one of my sons Inigo. He gets called Ini by his friend, probably better than Inners!
10:47, but I never spotted the game in 13ac, but STRAGGLER fitted the definition so nicely. Ah well, on to next week.
25:13, five minutes of which was spent on LOI SQUASH RACKETS. Ho hum.
Thank you for a very informative blog!
Dear Izetti yet again my nemesis! Looking forward to English words in O Tempora! now I know the rules 😄. Got tied up by LIAISON as it feels like a double extraction; first you have to think of the alternative expression and then you need to manipulate it further. I found that a mental step too far today. RACKETS is another of those terrifying public school games like real tennis and the Eton Wall game best avoided. Thank you Cedric and of course the all-conquering Izetti.
Having to reverse (upset in this down clue) a word that is only hinted at is not uncommon, so you will need to keep that little trick in mind. However, you will never have to shuffle the letters of a word that doesn’t appear in the clue. This can be very useful if the missing word is just part of a longer anagram.
Great tip, many thanks. I shall keep sharpening that reluctant pencil 🙂
34:13
Complete guesswork for the last 2, IBEDEM and MAENAD. NHO either of them.
I think “Put down” can be used in the sense of “Man U were put down by Denis Law in 1974”, meaning it was his action that caused their relegation (or demotion). So I don’t think there is anything wrong with the definition in the clue.
13.59 Very late to this. Quite challenging even though I had the GK. SQUASH RACKETS and HASSLE were the last two. Thanks Cedric and Izetti.
Another solver who is a day behind. Izetti is probably my favourite setter because of the precious employed in the clues. This helps solving by using the cryptic. Ibid I knew, but Ibidem was buried deep although obviously clued. Also Maenad was very deep but rang a faint bell from 60 years ago! But COD must be Squash Rackets! Now to catch up with the Sunday puzzle!
Struggled in SW corner, but recalled IBIDEM . Had to look up MEAN + A + D to find the NHO MAENAD. Agree that VICIOUS CIRCLE is hardly a spurious type of reasoning.