11:50. A fun one this, a really good set of witty and entertaining clues. 20dn in particular made me chuckle.
How did you get on?
Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, deletions like this, anagram indicators are in italics.
| Across | |
| 1 | What the blessed may get — some model children |
| TISSUE – the Ford Model T, ISSUE. Blessed because you’ve just sneezed. | |
| 5 | Cloth rep ruined this woman in Bow, I heard |
| RECTOR – sounds like “wrecked ‘er”. | |
| 9 | Is clue I do askew or very pleasing to you? |
| DELICIOUS – (IS CLUE I DO)*. | |
| 10 | Load of work abandoned by head of government |
| RAFT – |
|
| 11 | Attractive sort of old lady … good catch |
| MAGNET – MA, G, NET. | |
| 12 | One observing old knight striking person |
| ONLOOKER – O, N, LOOKER. I can never quite get used to N for the knight in chess, but K is obviously already taken! | |
| 14 | Limited company with new penalty by Democrat |
| CONFINED – CO, N, FINE, D. | |
| 16 | Having gone the wrong way, be morally corrupt |
| EVIL – reversal of LIVE (be). | |
| 18 | Lawyers to welcome key Russian representative |
| BEAR – B(E)AR. ‘Representative’ here used as something which represents, or symbolises. This is a bit loose or whimsical I think, because while you might say that the BEAR is representative of Russia, I don’t think you’d normally say that it is a representative of Russia. | |
| 19 | Church in Calais I renovated with bishop |
| BASILICA – B, (CALAIS I)*. | |
| 21 | US trainer admitting bit of ice is extra-slippery |
| SNEAKIER – SNEAK(I |
|
| 22 | Men reversing cherry-hued Sierra and Fiats |
| ORDERS – OR, reversal of RED, S. | |
| 24 | Track one and two released by the Sweet |
| CUTE – CUT (track, in the musical sense), |
|
| 26 | Quiet type based for a long time in Lincoln? |
| PRESIDENT – P, RESIDENT. | |
| 27 | 100 per cent of B and A, perhaps, but not L |
| BETTER – B, |
|
| 28 | Numbers broken into by wildly keen Drifters? |
| NOMADS – NO(MAD)S. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | I can do inane dances in a wet patch of earth |
| INDIAN OCEAN – (I CAN DO INANE)*. I thought this clue was faulty when I solved it, but I have discovered to my surprise that the name of our planet does not necessarily have to be capitalised. | |
| 3 | Family member taking on a large Barnet business? |
| SALON – S(A, L)ON. | |
| 4 | Going out snorting whiff of cocaine is stimulating |
| EXCITING – EX(C |
|
| 5 | Standard Downing Street stocktake |
| RUSTLE – RU(ST)LE. ‘Downing’ as in ‘drinking’. Very clever. | |
| 6 | Material in my work upset official, perhaps |
| CORPOREAL – COR, reversal of OP, REAL. I’m not sure but I think the intended sense here is that a football shirt (for example) which is not ‘official’ might be called a fake. | |
| 7 | Upper-class sort going topless is not on |
| OFF – |
|
| 8 | Unregulated bond-holders wild about a Republican |
| NO HOLDS BARRED – (BOND HOLDERS)* containing A R. | |
| 13 | Gutted after kicking dearest vice |
| EVISCERATED – (DEAREST VICE)*. | |
| 15 | Company men bringing in a bit of trade for Sky |
| FIRMAMENT – FIRM(A) MEN, T |
|
| 17 | European schoolboy gains foremost of scholarships |
| ESTONIAN – E(S |
|
| 20 | Help to turn around a crap keeper in America |
| DIAPER – reversal of AID, PER (a). Great definition! | |
| 23 | Ideal way to get up with energy in the morning |
| DREAM – reversal (up) of DR, E, AM. | |
| 25 | Exercise in American English |
| USE – US, E. | |
DNF at 35′
I could make nothing of 24ac and 27ac. I too thought that ‘earth’ should be capitalized, although capitalizing it here would weaken the clue seriously. I think I would use ‘Earth’ when it’s a name, like ‘Mars’, but ‘earth’ when it’s a common noun, like ‘the earth’, but ODE and Collins simply say ‘sometimes E, sometimes e’. (All of ODE’s corpus examples have ‘the Earth’; their one invented example has ‘earth’.) You don’t have to be from Bow to pronounce ‘wrecked her’ like ‘rector’; that’s how we all pronounce it in normal speech. I loved ‘crap keeper in America’, and RUSTLE.
The reason for Bow is the missing H in “her”. I don’t think every English speaker would drop it.
I was aware of the reason for Bow; my point was that h is dropped (in normal speech, as I said) across dialects. Although certainly Cockneys would drop it, and there’s nothing wrong with the clue; if anything, it’s a bit too helpful, perhaps.
I couldn’t think of anything better than BETTER for 27a. So in it went, fully expecting the pink squares of death. I could parse it, but wasn’t 100% convinced by the definition. One can recover from an illness to be ‘better’ but still not be tip-top 100% fighting fit.
17 mins
Fifth definition of BETTER in Collins is “fully recovered in health.”
I’ve heard it used like that all my American life too—though Merriam-Webster doesn’t have it.
DNF since I could not get CUTE. I was going to go back later and take another look but I never did. I didn’t think twice about the Russian bear, nor earth not being capitalised. Some great clues, and annoying not to finish.
Completely defeated by 27a. I went down the rat hole of thinking this was a reference to Roman numerals. A and B are not hence 100% of the time LETTERS. L is sometimes a numeral. The “maybe” admits the obscure possiblity of mediaeval Roman numerals where A is 50 or 500 and B is 300, but no longer in use.
Feeling or not feeling 100% are well-known UK-isms. Why didn’t I think of that? I’m definitely not 100% this morning having had flu and covid jabs yesterday.
In 24 CUT is also a reference to a land track as in “cut across” or “cut through”.
Medieval numerals will never be used in an ST blocked cryptic that I edit, as they are Chambers-only dictionary content. OK occasionally in Mephisto -see comments on a recent John Grimshaw puzzle.
“Record” (probably as a verb) should be in a list of “cut” meanings. (No time to check as away soon)
Liked this and found parts quite tricky. I never usually finish the Sunday cryptic and this was no exception, failing on CORPOREAL, not seeing real for official. Weirdly, BETTER was a write-in after seeing the wordplay immediately, along with DIAPER (crazy good), RUSTLE for stocktake and saw the sneeze component in TISSUE. Took a while to see SNEAKER for trainer (duh) and thought of RECTOR but assumed we were looking for something beginning with ‘H’.
Thanks K and setter and can someone unravel “any color as long as it’s 18-1239.”
It links 1ac and 22ac. Try googling the number.
Thanks. The red ones go faster anyway.
As with others, totally defeated by 24ac and 27ac after 30 minutes.
Ah well, here’s to the next time.
Bear and Russia: Collins on representative has “person or thing representing another”. Not clear whether they meant that both words needed to be “person” or “thing” so I think we can take a mild liberty …
46 minutes. Missed the passing of CUT in CUTE.
Great crossword but spoilt for me by 27a ; ‘better’ cannot mean that I am now 100% fit surely – it means that I am not as bad as I was, on the way to recovery etc..
I was reminded of one of my favorite couplets from “The Stuffed Owl”:
Across the wires the gloomy message came:
“He is not better: he is much the same.”
–an unfortunately unknown university poet ‘On the Recovery of the Prince of Wales’, I’m not sure which
[on edit] Apparently the perpetrator was Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate (succeeding Tennyson, yet), on the illness of Edward VII
You are perfectly correct logically, but setters go by dictionaries and dictionaries reflect usage which may no longer align with original meanings. Under ‘better’ the Oxfords have ‘partly or fully recovered from illness’; Chambers has ‘completely recovered from illness etc’; and Collins has ‘fully recovered in health’.
Indeed. In questions of language logic rarely comes into it!
Surely though we don’t need dictionaries to tell us that this is a common usage. If someone says ‘I was ill last week but now I’m better’, they clearly don’t just mean that their health has improved somewhat, they mean that they have recovered completely.
That’s all very well but rather misses the point that I was replying to a poster who didn’t know that meaning. Just saying I knew it and it’s common usage doesn’t tell him anything other than my opinion, whereas referring to dictionaries demonstrates that the definition in the clue is perfectly valid.
Well yes and I was partly replying to the original commenter, because I struggle to believe that any native UK speaker wouldn’t recognise this usage.
I notice that Collins UK gives 2 meanings for ‘better’, a) improved (as with David above), and b) fully recovered (as with you, k); while Collins US just has (a). I think I would probably use, and interpret, “I’m feeling better” as (a), but see Guy above.
Would you then interpret “I’m feeling much better” as indicating less than full recovery?
Yes. ‘I’m feeling better’ is a comparative statement. ‘I am better’ is an absolute one.
Oddly the introduction of ‘much’ makes the statement comparative even in the second sentence, so that ‘I was ill but now I’m much better’ is a weaker statement than ‘I was ill but now I’m better’.
Bizarre but so true – one for Very British Problems methinks
17.20, and would have been quicker if I hadn’t spent time trying to justify TUNE – any sweets giving **tune? Thought not. I did manage to work out BETTER, though I thought it was a bit mean to code letter as “A, perhaps”. I mean it is, of course, but so are 25 others.
I’d argue that the ‘fairness’ (or whatever you want to call it) of DBEs is driven more by how readily the example evokes the category than the number of examples in that category. ‘Old Macdonald, say’ gets you to the answer much more readily than ‘Barry, say’, and there are millions more farmers than there are Bee Gees!
Finished eventually with Mr Ego as a joint effort, but not terribly impressed with BETTER either, still less with CUTE; both seemed contrived, but they appeared to be the only options. I did like DIAPER a lot, however.
DNF with BETTER, RECTOR (doh), DIAPER and PRESIDENT eluding me. Very enjoyable and feel I am making steady if slow progress. Didn’t have a particular issue with BETTER when explained, but would not necessarily have got there on my own. Many thanks for the much-needed blog and comments.
24.30
Very late entry but more or less keeping up on my travels.
Loved this once I got a few to get me properly going. Worked out BETTER but CUTE was LOI and unparsed.
RUSTLE was IMHO an absolute cracker
Thanks clever setter and the usual enjoyable comments and thoughts from our blogger
Rattled through the LHS of this, thinking “This cannot be Sunday!” as I rarely have such smooth sailing on this day of the week. (Although FIRMAMENT held me up for a while). Didn’t get the subtleties of BEAR, CUTE or BETTER either, which meant this was a puzzle of two halves for me, from the write-ins to the too-hard. But still very pleased to feel that I was at least competing with the grown-ups, in a very reasonable time too. Loved TISSUE, RUSTLE and DIAPER especially.
This had some very tricky clues, in my opinion – 1-across, 5-down, 22-across, and, of course, 24-across, on which I very nearly gave up, having considered TUNE and JUBE before realising ‘Track’ could be ‘cut’ (‘He tracked/cut through the snow,’ perhaps). Glad to have finished, and heartened by the similar experiences in these posts. Thanks to setter and blogger. Much enlightenment!
Thanks David and keriothe
Finished most of this last weekend when published (here), but was stumped with both 24a and 27a for most of the week. Finally derived BETTER from the word play and convinced myself that it must be correct without really being 100% :). Bounced around between TUBE (railway track), JUBE (sweet), TUNE (track) before eventually and thankfully landing on CUTE on Friday.
It seems that the ESTONIAN / ETONIAN trick has come up several times over recent puzzles that I have done – strange how that happens. Lots of other lovely clues and very pleased to get this one correctly completed in the end. And now on to this week’s challenge.