An interesting puzzle from Breadman this morning – I usually find his puzzles challenging and this one was no exception, with some of the clues definitely well to the harder end of the QC spectrum. On the other hand there are some very straightforward clues, so I can’t help feeling we have a slightly unbalanced mix here.
Overall, and despite the few write-ins, I found it something of a struggle, and I am mildly surprised that the clock stopped at only 14:29. Of course that’s only my view, and others may have been much more on Breadman’s wavelength, so how did everyone else get on?
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, ~ marks insertion points and strike-through-text shows deletions.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Unearth a tax adopted by former chief executive originally (8) |
| EXCAVATE
EX (former) + C~E (Chief Executive, taking the initial letters as indicated by “originally”), containing (indicated by “adopted”) A VAT (a tax). A complex construction clue to kick us off, and I needed most of the checkers to pin it down. |
|
| 5 | Encourage a risky venture (4) |
| ABET
A (from the clue) + BET (risky venture). |
|
| 9 | Little jerk pinching a French item of clothing (5) |
| TUNIC
T~IC (tick, a jerk or obnoxious person (as in “he’s a right tick”), with the deletion of the last letter given by “little”) with UN (a in French) inserted, the insertion indicator being “pinching”. This was not too hard to biff once I had the checkers, and the -UN- is clearly signalled by the wordplay, but deriving the TIC part took me rather longer and I am still not really 100% confident I’ve unravelled it correctly. An alternative might be tic as a facial twitch or little jerk; the first part of this is I think fair enough, but the link from that to little jerk is perhaps a bit more of a stretch. Take your pick … |
|
| 10 | Doctor backed A & E nursing very loud animal (7) |
| GIRAFFE
GIR (rig, ie doctor, reversed, given by “backed”) + A~E (ie A&E) including (“nursing”) FF (musical notation for very loud). Breadman thoroughly misled me here into thinking of a medical doctor with the talk of A&E – for those outside the UK this is the British abbreviation for “Accident and Emergency”, more commonly known in the rest of the world as the “Emergency Room” part of a hospital. So I tried to reverse DR, MO and various other standard crosswordland doctors before the penny dropped. |
|
| 11 | Silvery-grey tree (3) |
| ASH
A DD, with a small amount of deception as ashes are not noticeably a silvery-grey colour – unlike silver birches for example. |
|
| 12 | Exactly where spectacles might be resting (2,3,4) |
| ON THE NOSE
A nice cryptic definition, as spectacles do indeed rest on one’s nose. |
|
| 13 | Drop it when shaky and lethargic (6) |
| TORPID
(drop it)*, the anagram indicator being “when shaky”. |
|
| 15 | Vocalise, keeping time, melody ultimately tight (6) |
| STINGY
S~ING (vocalise), with T (time) included, the inclusion indicator being “keeping”, + Y (melodY “ultimately”, ie last letter). |
|
| 17 | Former wife in St Helier drunk (9) |
| ERSTWHILE
(St Helier)*, the anagram indicator being “drunk”, including (given by “in”) W (wife). |
|
| 19 | Group in Nicosia leaves (3) |
| COS
A hidden, in niCOSia, and the whole referring to a cos lettuce. I have not seen “group” as a hidden indicator before; I presume it is group as in “a group of letters from”. |
|
| 20 | Repeatedly talk about old seafaring weapon (7) |
| HARPOON
HARP O~N (repeatedly talk) including O (old), the inclusion indicator being the simple “about”. One has to lift and separate old and seafaring weapon, as old is part of the wordplay not part of the definition, though in fact the heyday of harpoons was during the era of commercial whaling, so “old seafaring weapon” is quite apposite. The phrase “harp on” has a surprisingly long history; it is a shortening of “harp on the same string”, meaning “to play the same note over and over again”, and was first recorded in the early 16th century. |
|
| 21 | Nana reduced masculine form of language (5) |
| IDIOM
IDIO (idiot, or nana, “reduced”, ie with the last letter deleted) + M (masculine). Nana, a British slang term for someone who is crazy, is derived from the phrase “go bananas”, meaning go mad. But where the phrase go bananas comes from is less clear; the internet suggests a number of possibilities, none of which sounds to me wholly convincing. |
|
| 22 | Supped regularly alongside unknown UK river (4) |
| SPEY
SPE (SuPpEd regularly, ie every other letter) + Y (unknown). Another nice lift-and-separate, as the Spey is not an “unknown UK river” at all; in fact for anyone who likes whisky, it is probably the most famous river in Scotland. |
|
| 23 | Sort of music expert with good, solid support (4,4) |
| PROG ROCK
PRO (expert) + G (good) + ROCK (solid support). This was my LOI and took me an age, even with all the checkers. Rock for solid support is not the most obvious of links, but I think the key here is the saying “He is my rock” for one’s most reliable supporter or the person one depends on most. |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | One who goes in hospital department to harangue (7) |
| ENTRANT
ENT (hospital department, standing for Ear, Nose and Throat) + RANT (harangue). |
|
| 2 | Piece of cake cold in church (5) |
| CINCH
C (cold) + IN (from the clue) + CH (church). |
|
| 3 | Comedienne Hazel perhaps supporting Queen once (8,4) |
| VICTORIA WOOD
WOOD (hazel, perhaps – a DBE) underneath or following (“supporting”, as this is a down clue) VICTORIA (queen once). Victoria Wood (1953-2016) might perhaps be slightly obscure GK for those outside the UK. She was an English actress, musician, screenwriter, and director who wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades, but it was her hugely successful live stand-up comedy act that won her the most fame and the largest following. She died of cancer at the comparatively young age of 62. |
|
| 4 | Closely fought chasing game for children outside in heat (5) |
| TIGHT
TIG (chasing game for children) + HT (“outside in”, ie first and last letters of, HeaT). Another clue which was easy enough to biff once I had some checkers (there are not many words that go T-G-T), but where I struggled at first to understand the wordplay. In particular “Outside in” for outside of is perhaps a little tortuous, but the wording is I think chosen to make the surface run more smoothly. I’m never sure how much leeway setters are allowed in the use of filler words to make the surfaces actually readable, but in this case it seems fair enough. |
|
| 6 | Polish round and round new mug (7) |
| BUFFOON
BUFF (polish) + O (round) + O (a second round) + N (new). |
|
| 7 | Article about that place (5) |
| THERE
THE (article) + RE (about). |
|
| 8 | Navigational sport involved entire region (12) |
| ORIENTEERING
(entire region)*, with the anagram indicator being “involved”. |
|
| 14 | Delay delivery of book (7) |
| RESERVE
I think this must be a DD, as there is no other form of wordplay I can see, but it is another clue where I struggled to fully understand it. Book is clearly a synonym of reserve, but the link from “delay delivery” to reserve seems to me less than obvious, and the best I can come up with is when you buy something and ask the shop to set it aside for you to collect or them to deliver later. |
|
| 16 | Chat involving quiet old lady’s head covering (7) |
| YASHMAK
YA~K (chat) with SH (quiet) + MA (old lady) inserted into it, the insertion indicator being “involving”. But a double MER from me, as to clue ma as “old lady” seems a bit odd, and a yashmak is not so much a head covering, which suggests a hat on top of the head to me, as a face covering, a type of veil worn by some Muslim women to cover their faces in public. |
|
| 17 | Moral significance of pet hospice (5) |
| ETHOS
A hidden, in pET HOSpice. “Significance of” is not the most obvious hidden indicator I’ve ever met. |
|
| 18 | Private champion’s heading off (5) |
| INNER
WINNER (champion) with the first letter deleted (“heading off”). |
|
| 19 | OK dropping off Native American cotton cloth (5) |
| CHINO
CHINOOK (Native American, specifically a member of any one of the tribes of the Pacific Northwest of the USA who spoke the Chinookan language), with the OK deleted (“dropping off”). Chino is the name of a cotton twill fabric, typically khaki-coloured. The word is now far more often met in the plural as chinos, casual cotton trousers that get their name because they were originally made out of chino cloth. |
|
I dnf this having never heard of a Yashmak but having googled it, it looks like the thing I Dream of Jeannie wears. I agree, calling it a head covering isn’t.. Wrong but it’s not right either.
I guessed Victoria Wood was a person, it admittedly sounds like the name for a British drag queen.
I enjoyed On the Nose!
Oh no, don’t put such a thought in my head Tina 😱 Victoria Wood’s comedy was funny, whimsical, bittersweet, musical, and so much more, but definitely not drag! Oh, and very British! She did tour in Australia back in the 90s, probably when you were a babe in arms 😊
Medium difficulty I thought. CHINO took me a while to remember the Native American but knew it had to be. Bit of a mer at HARPOON as I’m sure the weapon itself is not a seafarer, rather a weapon used by a seafarer. YASHMAK came to me immediately from ‘yak’ and ‘ma’ but assumed it was the head covering, now know better. Same thought re RESERVE and the nearest I could guess was maybe to reserve judgement, hence delay ‘delivery’. Took a while to get the meaning of ‘leaves’ for COS, initially thinking it had to be tea, the usual meaning of leaves. Saw the hidden ETHOS but don’t get the anagrind ‘significance’. Don’t think I’ve heard of VICTORIA WOOD but the wordplay was kind.
Thank you Cedric for your usual entertaining and informative blog.
I found this tough but quite pleasant. Filled most of the grid slowly but never getting stuck, then spent ages trying to figure out the SE corner (for a while I tried to justify SONG GEEK for a “sort of music expert”). 26min in the end (with a couple of googlings required).
I was able to reach VICTORIA WOOD’s name in my mental database via a review of one of the Fifty Shades films, of all things. I remember the critic argued that the film was more Victoria Wood than Victoria’s Secrets, a line that I found quite amusing.
YASHMAK, SPEY, and “nana” meaning “idiot” were new to me.
(First time commenting, by the way, after first getting into cryptics some months ago and lurking here for some time. Hello all.)
Welcome Luis and well done on the crossword.
Hello! 90% of the little I know has been gleaned from here. Teaches, amuses, consoles and more. Welcome.
👋
Welcome!
Welcome, Luis.
Hello and welcome!
Greetings! Always great to see a new poster
Sounds like you’re off to a very good start 😊
Hello Luís!
Greetings! Welcome to the party 🎉
Greetings Luis. Well done
ODE s.v. ‘reserve’: 3 refrain from delivering (a judgement or decision) without due consideration or evidence
‘Old lady’ is used frequently here to get MA; hardly problematic, as ‘mother’ is one meaning of ‘old lady’; see e.g. ODE s.v. ‘old lady’
4:34. I was irritated here because I could have been v snappy, but delayed for nearly a minute on RESERVE, feeling that it just didn’t work. In the end I hit the button with trepidation. Glad to see others had the same issue – ingenious read by Quadro on reserving judgement, though.
Great to see prog rock get a mention. As someone who wasn’t there, I will never be able to truly understand the visceral hatred that cooler kids of the era apparently felt for it. Instead, I get to enjoy listening to gems like Bill Bruford’s two albums with Holdsworth with none of the guilt!
‘Tig’ is one of those games that has many regional variants and is used in dialect mapping. We just used to call it ‘it’.
Thanks for the rich blog, Cedric! I feel that TIC = small jerk; no need for the rare TICK. Great puzzle, too.
That’s how I parsed TIC as well.
Same here.
Great share 🙂 You’ve almost tempted me to find out who on earth Bill Bruford is…
Drummer with Yes and King Crimson among others, so quite influential. SRC and MrB will have views I’m sure 😅
Great drummer! Must read his autobiography one day, I hear it’s good.
Best clue I’ve ever seen, here. Fortunately, it didn’t trip me up.
Yes! Bet Wurm’s happy…
TIG welding is also a thing, but I don’t think the setters are likely to know this.
I found this harder than the Quitch (currently 101) would indicate with similar hold ups to other commenters.
Started with EXCAVATE and finished with STINGY in 9.46.
Thanks to Breadman for the work out and Cedric for your usual excellent blog
DNF – PROG was our undoing…. with a desperate flourish (and no chance of success) I tossed in FROG, as the idea of such a genre appealed… people hopping about and all that.
Like others, willingly misled and looked for the wrong sort of doctor (10A GIRAFFE), and 17A (ERSTWHILE) confidently started with EX for former, took a while to have the PDM.
NHO TIG.. we had TAG, nor VICTORIA WOOD, NANA for idiot nor the River Spey.
Have now!
Thank you Breadman for a good work out Cedric Statherby for your usual lovely blog.
Love the idea of Frog Rock…bring it on!
Johnny Hallyday perhaps?
😁
Paul McCartney at his best? https://youtu.be/gVfaf43W9cM
Thank you SO much for this video link! Brought flashes of a childlike happiness – that delicious flavour of delight without strings, without complications – simply standing alone. Just nice for no reason at all which is reason enough. Happy Saturday and more to you : )
Yes, I automatically thought of Macca 🐸🎶
Oh frog rock, what a great idea! So much better than the actual thing (my apologies to fans).
I hesitated over RESERVE but then decided that it was a second tennis delivery hence a re-serve. Also quite happy with TIC as a ‘little jerk.’
22:56 which is quite quick for me with the bottom half, particularly the SE, giving the most problems.
Thanks Breadman and Cedric
Apart from a slight hesitation about nana = idiot, I must have been on Breadman’s wavelength as I found this quite straightforward. I also think the definition of TIC as a little jerk is fine. On that subject I heartily recommend I Swear. It’s an outstanding film. Thanks Breadman and Cedric.
From EXCAVATE to STINGY in 9:22. Thanks Breadman and Cedric.
8:23. I found this Breadman puzzle less tricky than some of his other offerings. I did wonder about the first def for RESERVE though, eventually opting for the example given by Quadrophenia and the dictionary def as quoted by Kevin.
Maybe not very exciting but I liked the appearances of ‘tight’ and TIGHT, in different senses, as both def and answer.
Thanks to Cedric and Breadman
8:53 for the solve. Redemption after the last Breadman puzzle with its aga-saga gave me my fastest ever QC quit at eleven mins!
Hmm, got through it and while I liked some clues (ENTRANT, EXCAVATE, THERE) I was left feeling uncomfortable with others. NHO TIG as a children’s game only tag and like Cedric struggling with the RESERVE double definition, wondering if it might even be a triple I don’t understand.
Happy thoughts to Mr Random who I know enjoys a bit of orienteering and prog rock so this is a puzzle designed for him. I wonder how he will fare.
Thanks to Cedric for the blog and to Breadman for the challenge. Off to run some 7min mile repeats in place of parkrun.
Two wonderful clues for me. Well remembered, LP!
16:21, slightly outside my target time and felt that I had to work for it, so yes a little on the tougher side for me.
Help needed to parse IDIOM and while I now understand I don’t really like it, though I don’t know why. It just seems so ugly somehow.
Liked YASHMAK and I needed the Y in order to get STINGY as, despite seeing what was happening, my brain refused to make a word.
COD to GIRAFFE for sending me down the medical doctor rabbit hole.
Thanks to Breadman and Cedric
Loved this one, 9 in my first accross pass , which is excelllent for me, and then steady progress. Only hold ups were 19d where I got the answer quickly but could not parse it for ages, and 1d where the T at the end threw me and I was looking for “one who goes” embedded in ENT meaning a harangue. Thanks to Breadman and Cedric.
I enjoyed this. Most of the clues were straightforward but I forgot all about chino.
Lots to like. COD PROG ROCK.
Also liked the happy memories of Victoria Wood’s work. She would not have been happy to be described as a comedienne, though. She was a comedian.
Thanks to both.
The question of whether to use a feminine version of a word is a complete minefield, and of course even worse in languages with gendered words generally, and adjectives that have to have the same gender form as the noun they are qualifying. Spare a thought for the current prime minster of Iceland, a woman called Kristrún Frostadóttir: the Icelandic for prime minister is forsætisráðherra, a masculine noun, so the correct way to refer to her is “He” – as in “The PM will arrive at 12.30 and he will …”.
One language which has this easy is Georgian, which as well as a wholly unique script (their word for their language is written ქართული), has no gender in their grammar at all – not even he or she, so everyone is the equivalent of “it”. Mind you, given their words for mother and father – mother is დედა, deda and father is მამა, mama – it is perhaps understandable that they abandoned gender in the language completely if they get their mamas and papas that muddled!
Gosh, good knowledge of Georgian
And excellent Unicode skills
Mum, dad…they’re all the same nowadays aren’t they (runs for cover…)
Love the language lore here! Georgian has not only the amusing deda and mama, but bichi for boy and gogo for girl, rather counterintuitively. If I remember right. What a wonderful country.
Interesting, Cedric. Thank you.
Solving on my phone today in a noisy coffee shop (awful). Somewhat fat-fingered and muzzy-brained as a result. Held up by IDIOM (COD for the tortured misdirection) and the parsing of GIRAFFE. Also biffed a very ugly ‘enterer’ before ASH made me reassess. Interesting to read about the origins of ‘harp on’. Thanks Cedric and Breadman.
Interested to see the discussion on TIC, with a clear consensus for the little jerk or twitch parsing. I asked higher authority, aka Mrs S, to solve and parse the clue and she too went for that parsing “although tic is far from the first synonym for jerk I would think of in real life”. As for tick as an unlikeable person, her verdict was “Like it – in fact I think it’s better. But it is hardly a common meaning of tick, very much niche slang, so I doubt that’s what the setter had in mind”.
Maybe we have an interesting example of a clue that can be parsed in two totally different ways to reach the same correct answer.
I wasn’t on planet Breadman and I doubt many were. Thanks Cedric for making sense of the many ridiculous (for a quickie) clues. Nana for brits is a grandmother – never heard of that other use. A buffoon is a fool – a mug is someone who is easily fooled – not the same thing! Some good clues though
Maybe you are too young but we used to say ‘a proper nana’ meaning an idiot. As in My Old Man’s a Dustman lyrics.
ah I’d forgotten that I was reading it as my granddaughter says it
nana in that song was short for banana wasn’t it
I don’t hear it these days
Is 73 young ? 23 in my head 🙂
Dnf…
All going well, with a near completion after 15 mins, and then I hit the SE corner. I put “Yashock” for 16dn (having never heard of it), but was stumped by 21ac “Idiom” – the use of “Nana” for “idiot” somewhat out of kilter with the of the rest of the puzzle. I couldn’t get “Cherokee” out of my head for 19dn which also didn’t help.
FOI – 1ac “Excavate”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 10ac “Giraffe”
Thanks as usual!
5:27 so about an average time for me. LOI HARPOON, but only because it was the last I revisited. I misremembered the word at 14D as PASHMAK at first, which of course doesn’t parse, but STINGY rescued me. Thank-you Breadman and Cedric.
Seem to have lost my comment but I enjoyed the puzzle. DNF x1 as NHO PROG ROCK. No problem otherwise.
Thanks for blog.
11:03. Felt tough, and not everything parsed TBH. LOI RESERVE (not a great DD in my opinion).
Nana=idiot was tough. Who says that these days?
Got a bit confused between YASHMAK and Yarmulke, and tried to combine them. One is a female Muslim face covering and the other is a male Jewish skull covering. So I guess I was pretty confused.
TIG is highly regional. We used TIC growing up in Manchester, and that could have been used nicely in the TUNIC clue. See below for more on this.
On wavelength for 05:51 and an Excellent Day. Judgment reserved/a reserved manner meant that I had no problem with 14d. Struggled to get past “Cherokee” for a while but the helicopter rescued me.
Many thanks Cedric and Breaders.
Speedy
Thanks. Contrast with the concise, which I abandoned after 12 mins with several still missing!
It was a toughie today, I had to look a couple up.
Variations in the UK for the name of the children’s game commonly known as “tag”:
Tag: Predominant in the South of England.
Tig: Common in the North of England and parts of Cornwall.
It: Used in the Home Counties and specific regions like Devon.
Tick: Historically used in some areas, like Wolverhampton.
Other variations: Such as “tip” in North Wales, “tap” in Portsmouth, “tuggy” in Newcastle, and “dobby” in Nottingham.
I grew up in Cheshire, and it was definitely TIC.
Yes, definitely Tag but biffed the answer.
Also Cheshire – TICK or TICK-A-NICK for me.
Tig, in Northern Ireland, too.
Very much on wavelength today, finishing in 7:38.
I went with the tic=little jerk parsing, and did not see the option of tick.
LOI was CHINO
Thanks Cedric and Breadman
5.12
What a great puzzle; blog and posts. Lovely to see.
ORIENTEERING was vg
Thanks all
VICTORIA WOOD – still so very much missed. We’ve been rewatching Dinnerladies and it is still hilarious, as well as very touching, although I’m not sure it would get made these days. She was absolutely brilliant.
I found this relatively easy and it was only my LOI that slowed me down – I don’t even know why. The only clue I couldn’t parse was IDIOM – despite discussing Nana (grandmother) and Nana (nitwit) with Steel City a while back 😅
PROG ROCK – one for SRC and MrB to Focus on 😉 I also liked ERSTWHILE and ORIENTEERING.
About 9:30 – I’m not entirely sure as I couldn’t get my pen to start
FOI Giraffe LOI Entrant COD Prog rock
Thanks Breadman and Cedric
Ah! I see what you did there, Penny. Yes, I did Focus on that clue. It was the Genesis of my tour around the lower half of the grid.
YES, I thought it would ‘ELP remind us of our date in May 😂
They’ll start by renaming it to Midday Supervisors
7.52 Mostly on the wavelength today. The SE was a bit more challenging and I never did parse LOI RESERVE. Thanks Cedric and Breadman.
Not on the wavelength but a reasonable fair puzzle. Hard but we need some of those
14:19 a rare QTB (Quicker than blogger)
Didn’t have the ethos to harpoon giraffe with Chino Yashak. Recommend King Crimson btw
Ta CAB