DNF. I struggled mightily with this, and eventually gave up. My main problem was with 8dn, where I just couldn’t make head or tail of any part of the clue. There were four or five others where I was struggling at that point but if I wasn’t going to finish anyway it didn’t seem worth the effort. After solving I eventually worked out what was going on with 8dn by looking up ‘train’ and finding a new (to me) meaning of the word, and that allowed me to unpick the very devious wordplay and slightly oblique definition.
No complaints though. This was all perfectly fair, just very difficult, and as usual with Dean a lot of it is excellent. How did you get on?
Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, deletions like this, anagram indicators are in italics.
| Across | |
| 1 | Volunteers to carry pen for one African native |
| TSWANA – T(SWAN)A. As in Botswana. | |
| 5 | Bear hugs are left over for bear |
| TOLERATE – TOTE (bear) containing a reversal of ARE, L. | |
| 9 | Rider in hunt cutting a rein to pieces |
| EQUESTRIAN – (A REIN)* containing QUEST. | |
| 10 | State area in heart of Monmouthshire |
| UTAH – A in |
|
| 11 | Game makes you get cross |
| CONTRACT BRIDGE – CONTRACT (get, as in an illness), BRIDGE (cross). | |
| 12 | Mother ship in service |
| MASS – MA, SS. | |
| 14 | Agency guys opening trendy bar |
| INSTRUMENT – IN, STRU(MEN)T. | |
| 16 | If you step on it you may break it |
| SPEED LIMIT – CD. | |
| 18 | Arkwright leads in new Open All Hours |
| NOAH – first letters of ‘New Open All hours’. The second recent appearance of ‘arkwright’ for NOAH. Particularly clever in this case because Arkwright is the name of the shopkeeper in the referenced sitcom. | |
| 20 | Others may not be so far from altruistic |
| SELF-INTERESTED – I can see a definition but I don’t understand the rest of this clue. Help gratefully received. | |
| 23 | Can of sauce |
| MAYO – MAY (can), O’. | |
| 24 | I wouldn’t dilute spirit having put on weight |
| THINK AGAIN – THIN, KA, GAIN. ‘(In ancient Egypt) an attendant spirit supposedly dwelling as a vital force in a person or statue’ (Collins). | |
| 25 | Hector’s boast about partner |
| BALLYRAG – B(ALLY)RAG. I’m not sure if I’ve come across this word before. It seemed vaguely familiar. | |
| 26 | Gives in return |
| YIELDS – DD. I struggle a bit with singular ‘return’ for plural YIELDS here. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Tree ring not quite in profusion |
| SEQUOIA – SE(QUOI |
|
| 3 | A fellow spy |
| AGENT – A GENT. | |
| 4 | Concrete walling a flooded valley – risky? |
| ACTUARIAL – ACTUA(RIA)L. RIA for a flooded valley is a word I learned from doing Mephisto. You don’t often see it in normal cryptics. The definition here is cryptic: the job of an actuary is to assess risk, so ‘actuarial’ means ‘related to risk’, and hence (whimsically) ‘risky’. | |
| 5 | Approaching 40 mph, losing power is right, yet not prepared |
| THIRTY-SOMETHING – (M |
|
| 6 | Ship’s delay — not good |
| LINER – LIN |
|
| 7 | Deliverer of ammunition to crew |
| ROUNDSMAN – ROUNDS, MAN. | |
| 8 | Order parts for Parisian from market |
| TRADE IN – one of the definitions of TRAIN in Collins is ‘proper order or course’. So ‘order’ gives TRAIN, which then ‘parts for’ (i.e. splits to allow in) DE (from in French). A rather unusual meaning of an everyday word and some very tricky wordplay. The definition does not relate to ‘trading in’ a second-hand car, as I initially thought, but to ‘trading in’ (i.e. buying, selling and therefore marketing) a commodity or similar. Phew! | |
| 13 | We too sell liquid abrasive |
| STEEL WOOL – (WE TOO SELL)*. | |
| 15 | Enter UK – re-entry free? |
| RETURN KEY – (UK RE-ENTRY)*. | |
| 17 | It is put in lasagna, say |
| PASSATA – PAS(SA)TA. Our old friend ‘it’ for SA (sex appeal). &Lit. A very clever clue which works because lasagna is both the type of pasta and dish from which it is made. | |
| 19 | Crow, eg, flying in dream |
| AMERIND – (IN DREAM). | |
| 21 | Bury FC in Italian league |
| INTER – the (not very) cryptic hint referring to INTER Milan of course. | |
| 22 | Smooth transition of house guests |
| SEGUE – contained in ‘house guests’. | |
I too had question marks against 8d and 20ac, but also 14ac. Can INSTRUMENT really be synonymous with AGENCY? I can’t think of a sentence where one could be substituted by the other. Maybe someone can give me an example?
Collins has for INSTRUMENT, “an important factor or agency in something,” but in the example, her evidence was an instrument in his arrest, substituting “agency” might seem a bit off…
Chambers gives instrumentality as a direct equivalent to agency.
But if agency is the direct equivalent to instrumentality wouldn’t that make agent equivalent to instrument?
Indeed and they do share that meaning for certain uses: an agent of change; an instrument of change.
I did solve this, but it was not easy. I never heard of passata and ballyrag, but the cryptics were kind. I also just followed the cryptic for trade in, but didn’t really get the literal. I nearly biffed a different African before seeing Tswana, and I definitely biffed sequoia where I has no idea what was going on.
So all correct, but no time noted, not sure why.
Passata is strained tomato sauce. In one of those weird coincidences, I bought a jar of it this morning.
It’s also the base for tomato puree or paste, the difference being just varying amounts of drying, traditionally done on large tables in the sun.
I struggled with this or ran out of time (I forget) and when I pulled up the puzzle to see how I did before reading the blog, I found I had about ten clues missing. It took me about 5 minutes to finish, even replacing the two sauces I’d never heard of (PASTITA and TINO, which both fit the wordplay perfectly) with two I had (PASSATA and MAYO). So got there in the end with a time of approximately 170 hours!
Seemed tough, but I ran into real trouble only at the end, in the NW, where I, in desperation, had put in a wrong answer for the unknown African, which kept me from getting SEQUOIA, so I finally cheated for those two. Which I can freely admit now, thanks to K! 😉
DNF
Some comfort to see that K didn’t finish either. I couldn’t get MAYO or PASSATA. I don’t think I’d ever have got MAYO, but I’m not sure why I didn’t get PASSATA (DNK), having tried inserting ‘it’ and ‘sa’ into ‘pasta’. I knew ‘bullyrag’, and ODE says ‘also ballyrag’. I took 20ac as meaning that others than oneself may not be so interested in one as one is; but I didn’t give it much thought. I parsed TRADE-IN as K indicates, while wondering about train=order.
I had all but four answers in 30 minutes. Two them (MAYO and PASSATA) came to me eventually but I have no record of how much later. TSWANA I looked up and the S-checker it suppli8ed brought SEQUOIA to mind to complete the grid. . NHO TSWANA although I knew their country.
The arrival of PASSATA at 17dn forced me to rethink BULLYRAG at 25ac, a word I knew, whereas its alternative version, BALLYRAG, came as news to me. Strange, because Bullyrag has never appeared here before whereas as BALLYRAG came up once in 2008 when I queried the parsing but not the word itself.
NOAH is an exceptional clue as our blogger explains.
For SELF INTERESTED, I took ‘Others may not be so …’ to mean that only I can be self-interested, others may not be. No idea if this is what was intended.
But anyone can be self-interested! Of course if they are then their interest is in themselves, not in me, but the clue doesn’t really suggest that. I’m stumped.
Dean’s notes just say CD. I’m understanding it as saying that other people may be less interested in you than you are.
What a brute- Dean pushing some words to the very edge of their meaning.
Enjoyed this, but DNF: 23a I thought of Mayo but didn’t put it in as I was being a bit thick (and picky I suppose.)
25a NHO Ballyrag; cheated to find this word.
8d Trade In, not sure how I biffed this; I surely did not understand what keriothe has now told us.
progressed quite well but got stuck on instrument, trade in and actuarial among others. too clever for me
Wonderful, as always for Dean. Of course it was hard, but I finished in 47 minutes, whereas I often take over an hour for puzzles of similar difficulty. MAYO was my LOI, when I finally read “can” correctly and realized MAYO might be considered to be a sauce. Strangely, TSWANA was my FOI, right at the beginning, when “pen” gave away that there might be a swan in it. I have never seen BALLYRAG before and mistakenly assumed there must be some unknown actor or poet or whatever named Hector Ballyrag, but of course the wordplay was very helpful. My favourite clue is the bear hug one (5ac), but I rather liked SPEED LIMIT and THIRTY SOMETHING as well, especially as I understood what the clues were getting at right away. Fun puzzle.
I didn’t mention it but I absolutely don’t think that MAYO is a sauce. Chamber’s defines it as such though so 🤷🏻♂️
I didn’t find this any harder than an average Dean, coming home in 40 minutes, finishing with TSWANA.
THIRTY-SOMETHING really tickled me for some reason.