This one took me 15:39, a touch over my average time, but as I came to write the blog I couldn’t put my finger on anything in particular that held me up. I guess some days are just slower than others.
To my shame, I missed the two gimmes on the top row until I had crossers. I spotted how 1ac worked quickly, but then the only four-letter president I could bring to mind was Taft. Good grief.
My first one today was ADDLE, where I had a MER at D for Date that still hasn’t gone down, and my last one was PHASE, once I eventually stopped trying to shoe-horn in an “F” for “loudly”.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, anagram fodder indicated like (this)*.
| Across | |
| 1 | In the morning ex-president put together attack (6) |
| AMBUSH – A.M. (in the morning) + BUSH (pick either of the US presidents). | |
| 4 | Spa season (6) |
| SPRING – A double definition. | |
| 8 | Socialist accepting flag is no long working (7) |
| RETIRED – RED (socialist) including [accepting] TIRE (flag). | |
| 10 | Muddle two dates in beer (5) |
| ADDLE – DD (two dates(?)) in ALE (beer)
I’m struggling to find a usage where D means date. Anyone? |
|
| 11 | Moved through water with one religious leader (5) |
| SWAMI – SWAM (moved through water) + I (one). | |
| 12 | Intervenes as returning favourites offend (5,2) |
| STEPS IN – PETS (favourites), reversed [returning] + SIN (offend, as a verb). | |
| 13 | Part of vicar’s garb involved coral and gold (3,6) |
| DOG COLLAR – (coral gold)*
And there I was trying to bring all the names of the vestments to mind, but it’s easier than I thought. |
|
| 17 | Power likely to be flexible (7) |
| PLIABLE – P (power) + LIABLE (likely)
Liable and likely aren’t quite synonyms in my book: something that’s “likely” to cause an accident is more dangerous than something that is “liable” to cause an accident. But it’s close enough. |
|
| 19 | Copper snapped old measure (5) |
| CUBIT – CU (chemical symbol for copper) + BIT (snapped).
Ancient measure of length, equal to the length of a forearm. |
|
| 20 | Transparent top covers middle of saucer (5) |
| LUCID – LID (top) is around (covers) the middle two letters of A lucid explanation is easy to understand. Transparent works for me as a near-enough synonym. |
|
| 21 | Time permit is justifiable (7) |
| TENABLE – T for time + ENABLE (permit). | |
| 22 | Exterior of seemingly staunch organisation (6) |
| SYSTEM – Outer two letters [exterior] of S Today I learned that what I thought I knew about the difference between “staunch” (as in “staunch ally”) and “stanch” (as in “stanch the flow of blood from a cut”) is completely undermined by having “staunch” as an alternative spelling of “stanch”. Humph. |
|
| 23 | Extorts prison officers (6) |
| SCREWS – Double definition.
I’m happy to say that I don’t move in the circles where I would know if this is still the term for prison officers. It summons up Porridge for me. |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Once more a villein upset Henry (6) |
| AFRESH – A [in the clue] + SERF (villein) reversed [upset] + H for Henry.
H is the symbol for the SI unit the “henry”, which measures electrical inductance. |
|
| 2 | Relocate cabins despite assortment of things (4,3,6) |
| BITS AND PIECES – (cabins despite)* | |
| 3 | Classifying gold gathered in police operation (7) |
| SORTING – OR (gold, from heraldry) inside [gathered in] STING (police operation).
“Gold” is almost always “OR” or “AU”. |
|
| 5 | Worry loudly for period (5) |
| PHASE – Homonym clue, indicated by “loudly”. Sounds like “faze”, which can mean “worry”.
This felt very familiar, so I checked: I had the same word clued in the same way two blogs ago, on November 5th. |
|
| 6 | Unspeakable barb I’d silence roughly (13) |
| INDESCRIBABLE – (barb I’d silence)* | |
| 7 | Politicians start to glean rising expression of contempt (6) |
| GREENS – First letter [start to] G |
|
| 9 | Attractive person on East Street is untrustworthy (9) |
| DISHONEST – DISH (attractive person) ON [in the clue] E (east) ST (street).
Does anyone actually say “dish” for “attractive person” these days? |
|
| 14 | Having little to say as the French swindle leaders of international committee (7) |
| LACONIC – LA [“the” in French], CON (swindle), first letters [leaders] of I |
|
| 15 | Overturns items for lighting candles (6) |
| SPILLS – A third double definition | |
| 16 | Parents taking minute for rest (6) |
| OTHERS – This one sent me completely the wrong way: I was looking to add M into a 5-letter word for parents and get something that meant “have a lie down”. Great PDM when it finally clicked, “oh, rest as in remainder. Of course.”. |
|
| 18 | Ordered to accept good mark (5) |
| BADGE – BADE (ordered) including G for good. | |
9:53. I was not pleased to have spent about 4 minutes on OTHERS. I don’t know how I feel about ‘taking’ for ‘taking away’, but there you have it.
Me too. It’s not ‘taking’ for ‘taking away’ that’s the issue, for me, but the fact the the parents/mothers are the subject in this sentence, so they should be doing the taking away from something else, rather than having something taken away from them (by us, the solver). The only poor clue in an otherwise fun puzzle imho.
agree – might have been fairer if it had been ‘the rest’
Glad others felt this a less than satisfying clue. It was my LOI and needed a word search, as I could not make much sense of the wordplay. I still can’t tbh.
I worked this one rapidly until I got stuck on both phase and others – the dreaded double breezeblock! Fortunately, I was able to wiggle out of it quickly.
Time: 7:04
I only knew STAUNCH and hadn’t ever heard ‘stanch’. After a quick look-up the sources tell me that stanch is the archaic version.
Mostly straightforward but it took me a while to come up with AFRESH as I was ignorant of the meaning of ‘villein’, although it is ringing a bell. Bit tough for a quickie IMO. No problem with (M)OTHERS as we’ve had similar wordplay before. Same mer as the blogger re ‘d’ for date, and thought ‘days’ would have been clearer. Whenever I see ‘items’ and ‘overturned’ in a clue I think of things*=nights, which delayed me getting SPILLS for a while.
Thanks D and setter.
7:33
OTHERS was my LOI; like Doof, I had the wrong rest in mind. Someone refers to another character as a dish in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, which isn’t that long ago. I didn’t have a MER over DD, but I can’t think of any example of D=date other than DOB ‘date of birth’.
You get DD MM YYYY… on forms, but obviously that’s doubled up.
I thought that “D” is short for “day”, not “date”, the whole thing, “DD MM YYYY” being the date, made up of day, month and year.
DOB = date of birth
22 minutes, and I was another who eventually entered the grid with ADDLE. By then I was so relieved to get started that I didn’t notice the problem with D / date. If there is one. It seems to follow so naturally that I can’t believe we’ve not had it before. If I had noticed I’d probably have justified it by citing DOB although the argument over one-letter abbreviations that only appear in longer ones or acronyms has never been resolved to my satisfaction.
I lost time over OTHERS because online solving had somehow got me to overwrite what had been a correct checker and it took me a while to notice.
My LOI was AFRESH. If the compromises of online solving had allowed me a larger typeface for the clues I would have noticed the spelling ‘villein’ rather than reading it as ‘villain’ and I’d. have been on to the answer much sooner.
Incidentally, with so much time on my hands at the moment and having already solved both The Times cryptics yesterday I decided to tackle The Guardian puzzle online for the first time ever. I must admit how user-friendly I found it by comparison with The Times. The main advantage was having a standard browser floating keypad that I could move at will to any part of the screen, and this meant there was room for the puzzle screen to display the whole grid all the time and the clues in a type size that was kind on ageing eyes.
Interesting that you like The Guardian crossword format – I solve a few puzzles over there online and on my phone. Never enjoy phone solving as it is all very fiddly but a useful alternative.
My personal dislike of The Guardian online is there’s no facility to quickly tab between clues so, if you are getting answers, you are gradually pushed to the right and down the grid. With The Times you can tab using the Enter key or simply cursor off the right side and come back on the left; or from the bottom to the top.
I guess its swings and roundabouts and almost impossible to come up with a format that everyone would like
Many thanks for responding. It may vary depending on the device and how one accesses, as your experience seems very different from mine, and not one I recognise.
I’m not using a phone, but a tablet with a 11″ screen. Also I’m accessing via a web browser (Safari, I think) rather than an installed app. I like the way the Guardian puzzle and clues display requiring minimal scrolling and the fact there is a floating keypad I can drag around is handy. Unlike The Times where the keypad is fixed beneath the grid so that I have to keep scrolling to use it, meanwhile losing sight of part of the grid, and often the bit I am trying to type in!
I also like that the default setting for entering words in the grid doesn’t hop over letters already in place, so I type in the whole word and not just the missing letters. This is not the way one solves on paper but I find it easier to keep track of what I’m doing on line. I believe the the Times can do this too if one changes a setting but it’s not the default and I haven’t found how to do it.
If all goes as planned I shall be back to solving on paper from Saturday and I shall be much happier.
Yes, I’m just using a Windows desktop with Brave browser and keyboard / mouse.
With The Times, I see a Cogwheel icon under which there is a “Skip over filled letters” toggleswitch.
Somehow I’ve even messed up paper solving with occasional “typo” by writing the wrong letter in the wrong place – brain going faster than pen!
Similar solve to vinyl, taking a minute longer. Two tough clues.
8:26. Exactly the same experience with OTHERS as Jeremy – very frustrating. As Quadrophenia points out, we have had similar wordplay for the same answer before so no excuses. At least I did happen to remember PHASE from last month. Favourite was SCREWS, like Doofers for the Porridge reminder.
Thanks to Alex and Doofers
Add me to the list of people tripped up by AFRESH and OTHERS, with the later adding a good seven minutes as I also tried to add in a ‘m’.
What could have been a rare sub-10 turned into a fortunate SCC escape at 19:28.
I did also have to look up SWAMI and SPILLS to check their definitions. Clearly I have a gap in my knowledge around religion and lighting fires.
Luckily, burning at the stake has gone out of fashion 😉
Excellent, especially since I’ve just seen The Passion of Joan of Arc.
All but two on the first pass of acrosses and a pb seemed a certainty, especially when I wasn’t much slower on the downs. But the final four made me work very hard indeed: AFRESH, SPILLS (NHO the candle bit), PHASE and OTHERS more than doubled my time to 11.28. All green though!
Well remembered Doofers, we did have PHASE a month ago – looks like I struggled with it then as well.
Steady going today with similar hold ups to others at the end – PHASE, OTHERS and SPILLS (NHO the second definition).
Finished in 7.04.
Thanks to Doofers and Alex.
Very similar experience to others. Raced through this until PHASE and then OTHERS in particular added several minutes taking my time to 21.17.
Would you classify more than one mother as ‘parents?’ I suppose you could but it threw me.
Thanks Alex and Doofers.
12 minutes exactly. Held up by OTHERS of course but LOI PHASE which I didn’t remember from last month. BITS AND PIECES, by the Dave Clark Five, is today’s earworm.
Thanks to Doofers and Alex
Weirdly “Bits and Pieces” was an answer to another crossword I did yesterday, but the clue referred to a 1964 record and I literally had know idea what it was talking about. Was that released then?
Yes. 1964. Here’s a link to watch if you want to know what boy bands looked like in the old days. Bits and Pieces.
OTHERS did for me too. But I also got bogged down in the SW, where only LUCID came quickly. I need coffee.
Stumbled home in 07:52 for a Befogged Day. Many thanks Alex and Doof.
12:01
14:49 Others lucid phase confused me too.
Ta DAA
DNF today. Biffed Budge in lieu of BADGE
Didn’t initially equate BADGE with mark, though at last I see it… Badge of honour.
OTHERS second to last.
NHO Spills in context of igniting/lighting nor villein. Now better educated : )
Thank you Alex for a good workout and Doofenschmirtz for the friendly blog.
8:41
Very similar experience to many others. Raced through the across clues apart from CUBIT and SYSTEM, then a steady solve through the downs, held up at the end by PHASE and OTHERS.
Thanks Doofers and Alex
A steady solve for me today. OTHERS my LOI also, as misled into looking for a different type of rest. Originally had MER at D = date, but accept it in DOB, so fair enough. Thanks Doofers and Alex.
As for many others – I was very slow to see OTHERS, PHASE, BADGE, and my LOI AFRESH. ADDLE was one of my first in but, apart from that, my experience was very similar to that of jackkt (including my time).
I never find Alex’s puzzles to be easy but I don’t know why. There are lots of good clues but he manages a different perspective on many words that unsettles me.
Anyway, thanks to Alex and Doofers.
17:39 – quite a decent time for me, despite struggling a bit to see PHASE, OTHERS and BADGE. A couple of others biffed – AFRESH and SYSTEM.
I’d barely gone over the 3 minute mark when I reached my LOI, and (m)OTHERS have already said enough on that. It certainly stopped my gallop (but only to a brisk trot).
FOI AMBUSH
LOI OTHERS
COD PLIABLE
TIME 3:45
12:24 for the solve. Second half of that on AFRESH, SPILLS (fingers crossed), OTHERS, PHASE. Those all seemed tough for their own reasons.
While I can see a connection – I couldn’t quite see why bit/snapped are interchangeable. Are we talking losing our temper or eating here?
Thanks to Doofers and Alex
A crocodile might snap and bite you?
Ah yes – thanks – so the eating thing! I didn’t think of it from an animal perspective
Waiter! Get me a crocodile sandwich…..and make it snappy!
Have you been opening the Christmas crackers early Phil?
NHO Villein which to my fading attention I took to be ‘villain’ and only when that didn’t make sense I looked more carefully and after a quick Google was enlightened and Serf revealed itself. Plodded on to get to LOI OTHERS which was not forthcoming and after a total of 26 mins to get to a finish, I hit the reveal button. DNF.
Like Kapietro, I am now desperately struggling to rid myself of the intrusive earworm, I’m in pieces, bits and pieces, and doing all I can to refrain from marching up and down. Ugh. Incidentally, my spell checker insists on changing ‘Kapietro’ to ‘Katies trousers’.
Thanks Doofers and Alex.
Shouldn’t ’Katies trousers’ contain an apostrophe?
it’s none of our business what katies trousers contain
I agree. It’s bad enough having to deal with an earworm.
😁
I was on Alex’s wavelength today finishing in 6.05. It would have been nearer the five minute mark if it hadn’t been for time taken in solving OTHERS, and for sorting out my final two 1ac and 1dn where I was trying to fit good old ABE Lincoln into the picture.
Joining the throng who were held up by PHASE and OTHERS, which pushed a potentially very speedy solve out to 9:44. Otherwise no issues, nice puzzle.
Many thanks Doofers for the blog.
3:52. All but TENABLE and OTHERS on my first run through the clues – held up at the end by OTHERS. I never noticed the problem with D for ‘date’. Curiously it is the first definition in the list for the abbreviations in Chambers but doesn’t appear in ODE or Collins. Thanks Alex for the neat puzzle and Doofers for the blog.
I just came across D for “Date” in another puzzle published today. As mentioned in my earlier comment I think it’s commonplace. Your info about the Chambers entry was useful as it supports the argument.
I have no problem with ‘date’, although will mention that Chambers organises its abbreviations alphabetically 😉
16 minutes today with the last 3 spent on…..yes, you’ve guessed it – OTHERS. I never managed to parse this, thinking that I was supposed to add an ‘m’ not take one away. Everything else parsed and enjoyed.
FOI – 1ac AMBUSH
LOI – 16dn OTHERS
COD – 9dn DISHONEST
Thanks to Alex and Doofers
A great start, with AMBUSH and SPRING going straight in, was followed by something between a canter and a gallop around the grid until I arrived at my last four at around the 18-19 minutes mark. However, my hopes of a sprint finish and a day out of the SCC were well and truly dashed by DISHONEST, STEPS IN, PHASE and (my LOI) OTHERS. These four clues combined to double my time, more-or-less, to a total of 35 minutes.
My alphabet trawl at 5d took a stupidly long time as, whilst PHASE appeared among the 16 words I found, I just couldn’t see why it was the solution. Grrrrr!
Many thanks to Doofers and Alex.
Needed a hint from CCD for OTHERS, so DNF. POI PHASE. Also slow on AFRESH and GREENS. Knew SPILLS.
I started well with AMBUSH and all the long ones, so speedy at first but faded in the final furlong, following SRC’s metaphor.
Liked CUBIT, SWAMI, DISHONEST, & LACONIC.
Thanks vm, Doofers.
5.11 WOE
A careless STEPS ON. Would certainly have been phased by PHASE if I hadn’t seen the device before. Ditto OTHERS which was also my LOI but I think we had a similar use of “taking” in the main fare recently which confused me there, but I remembered the idea. Liked AFRESH which was tricky.
Thanks Doofers and Alex.
I raced through the top half then got bogged down. Biffing TAPERS for 15d didn’t help, but PLIABLE put me on the right track. Like others, I got bogged down again by LOI, OTHERS. 7:57. Thanks Alex and Doofers.
An above average 17:49 for me, and you can probably guess at this point which two I struggled with.
Thank you for the blog!
Around 30 mins. OTHERS and PHASE took a long time.
Tx to Doofers and Alex
After yesterday’s dog’s dinner – solving on my phone whist on a train and with inadequate general knowledge – I was hoping for redemption today. Sadly it wasn’t to be. After battling through the same difficulties as other solvers I finally threw in the towel at 15 minutes with OTHERS still outstanding.
My thanks to Alex and Doofenschmirtz.
Not too hard, and clever.
17a Pliable; I too twitched at liable=likely but it is widely used that way IMO.
22a System, NHO stanch, so not confused here like our esteemed blogger.
7d Greens, COD as it doesn’t look readable in reverse, very clever.
16d (M)Others LOI as I too was using the wrong meaning of “rest.”
A very quick start saw all the across answers apart from Tenable safely put to bed. With nearly all the crossers in place, I thought the downs would be a cinch, but Phase, Dishonest (where I took ‘on’ to be a placement indicator rather than, er, on) and loi Others (!) all took ages, and left me scrambling for any sort of seat.
I didn’t register a problem with d by itself for date, but now you’ve mentioned it Doofs, it does look odd. I also tried (R no long)* at 8ac, before deciding long(er) was a typo. Not my best effort. Invariant
It may have worked better with “Days” rather than “Dates” – as “DD” is a standard abbreviation, at least within spreadsheets, for signifying dates.
11 minutes
👏
Thank you!
16 today. All parsed none BFD.
I knew villein / serf but still didn’t get afresh, and like others was trying to force an F into 5d.
Thanks D and A
19 mins…
On the harder side I thought. I initially put “Mother” for 16dn, but then realised it didn’t quite fit with the plural. With regards to 1dn “Afresh”, I just assumed “H” was a standard abbreviation for Henry (as in the King) – upon reflection I’m probably wrong.
FOI – 1ac “Ambush”
LOI – 1dn “Afresh”
COD – 14dn “Laconic”
Thanks as usual!
Like OTHERS here I was slowed down by this clue……but not my much. My LOI was PHASE. Now I know the meaning of villein my COD is AFRESH which I biffed. 6:06 Thanks Doofers
10:39 – the last few took an age finishing up with LOI PHASE. the whole puzzle on the trickier side I think. now off to have a crack at the special one…
also am I allowed to quibble about the clue for PHASE? the homophone indicator isn’t necessary – phase is given as an alternative spelling for faze in Chambers.
A possible origin of D= day:
In Stephen Ambrose’s D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II, he
writes,
Time magazine reported on June 12 [1944] that “as far as the U.S. Army can determine,
the first use of D for Day, H for Hour was in Field Order No. 8, of the First Army, A.E.F.,
issued on Sept. 20, 1918, which read, ‘The First Army will attack at H-Hour on D-Day
with the object of forcing the evacuation of the St. Mihiel salient.’” (p. 491)
In other words, the D in D-Day merely stands for Day. This coded designation was
used for the day of any important invasion or military operation. For military planners
(and later historians), the days before and after a D-Day were indicated using plus and
minus signs: D-4 meant four days before a D-Day, while D+7 meant seven days after a
D-Day.
But there seem to be many other explanations of what this particular D means.
I biffed SPILLS and AFRESH – thanks for the explanations D. Otherwise my usual steady plod around the grid. I didn’t have a problem with the clue for OTHERS (nice surface reading) and it went straight in. LOI PHASE. Many thanks Alex.
5:39
More or less top to bottom on the acrosses – missed only LUCID and TENABLE – which gave plenty of fodder for the downs. Still took a second look to see INDESCRIBABLE. Finally left with SPILLS – I’d forgotten the candle reference – and LOI PHASE which seems to have caused bother generally. Noted that the NE corner has SPRING GREENS, but didn’t spot anything else which might contribute to a nina.
Thanks Doofers and Alex
20:16 and heavy weather indeed, where’s my coffee? Besides being unable to see “taking” as “taking away”, I was blind to the in-fact-probably-usual meaning of “rest” and had to do an alphabet trawl for 16d OTHER. As a double indignity, on 5d PHASE, I got stuck on “f” for loudly until I reasoned my way out of it. Those two were my frustrations today, and the rest was pretty entertaining. I liked INDESCRIBABLE best.
Thanks Alex and Doof.
Somehow submitted my comment unintentionally. I do read everyone’s comments; it’s nice to see I have company on PHASE and MOTHERS.
Enjoyed cracking these slightly sideways clues, though it took me longer than I’d like (17.57). Held up by AFRESH and OTHERS.
6.50 OTHERS was fine but LOI PHASE took a little while. I didn’t remember its recent appearance. Thanks Doofers and Alex.
Steady plod round over several sessions. Couldn’t parse others and didnt get phase, I wouldn’t mind that as the clue is fair, but to hear we had it a month ago – AAAAARGHHH! (quick check on the Nov 5th QC – I biffed it from “new moon possibly” and never read the rest). Nice one though, thanks Alex and Doofs.
BTW – I commented on yesterdays at about 10:30 pm and my comments showed for a while, but then dissappeared when I reloaded the site. I have checked this comment and it is working fine.
Your comments yesterday are on page 2 of the blog. When there are lots of comments they spill over to a second page. You need to click on the link that says “Newer comments” to get there. You should by now have seen chabuduo’s comment saying this last night. I still don’t know though why they should come and go, and not just stay put where they are
Not an easy one for me. Storing instead of SORTING did not help. Bunged Across for AFRESH. Might have got RETIRED but sunk by wrong crosser. And PHASE not done and a bit bewildering. Tomorrow is tomorrow.
Late to this after golf – a nice day in the London area.
Was nearly finished in 12 minutes (about my average) but needed another 4 minutes to get OTHERS.
Probably enough said already about that clue.
David