20:56. A tricky one from Robert this week. I don’t remember any clue or group of clues giving me a particular problem, it was just challenging throughout. Good stuff.
The Sunday Times was marking the hundredth anniversary of the first crossword over the weekend, and there are a number of acknowledgements of that in this puzzle. There was also a handful of past puzzles from the 30s, 50s and 70s on the club site, which I confess I have not tackled. I started the one from the 50s but lost patience with it. I’m very much in favour of the clearer and more logical modern style!
Definitions are underlined, anagrams indicated like (TIHS)*, deletions like this, anagram indicators are in italics.
| Across | |
| 1 | Prize winner, finally official |
| TREASURER – TREASURE, |
|
| 6 | Hybrid Ford put out |
| CROSS – triple definition. | |
| 9 | Save a singer from massacre |
| BUT – BUT |
|
| 10 | Poem by a Northern diner, drunk on beer |
| ALEXANDRINE – ALE, X (by), A, N, (DINER)*. Hmm. An ALEXANDRINE is not, as far as I know, a poem, it’s a line of a particular kind of verse (with six feet or 12 syllables), or an adjective describing verse written in ALEXANDRINES. | |
| 11 | Tie-wearing British like us, with The Times |
| STABLEMATE – STA(B)LEMATE. The Times being the STABLEMATE of the Sunday Times. | |
| 12 | Founder of a little business in Kent |
| SINK – contained in ‘business in Kent’. | |
| 14 | Surrey, one-handed, casually making a century |
| ONE HUNDRED YEARS – (SURREY ONE-HANDED)*. | |
| 17 | What could make nettin’ and post to frame goals |
| LETTERS OF INTENT – the LETTERS OF INTENT make NETTIN if you make an anagram of them. | |
| 19 | Wife worried about large insect |
| WETA – W, reversal of ATE. Unknown to me, solved from wordplay. | |
| 20 | Maximum measure of digital protection? |
| THIMBLEFUL – CD. | |
| 24 | Silly brawl with old biker about Aussie singer |
| ROCKWARBLER – ROCKER containing (BRAWL)*. | |
| 25 | One’s seen in ponds, close to the banks in fact |
| EFT – |
|
| 26 | Weapon’s initial thrust forward produces angry talk |
| WORDS – SWORD with S |
|
| 27 | Extremely noteworthy cryptic with a recent anniversary |
| CENTENARY – (N |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Tortilla stuffed with beans, regularly lacking sauce |
| TABASCO – TA(B |
|
| 2 | Wide player of little consequence |
| EXTRA – DD, one of which is an unindicated definition by example [clutches pearls]. | |
| 3 | A sullen art, playing a comedian |
| STAN LAUREL – (A SULLEN ART)*. | |
| 4 | Output of a cold, curious, absorbing man |
| RHEUM – R(HE)UM. | |
| 5 | Meat cooked in pan with grouse |
| ROAST BEEF – ROAST (pan), BEEF (grouse). | |
| 6 | When caught, children surrender |
| CEDE – sounds like ‘seed’. | |
| 7 | Elaborate about peeled figs I found |
| ORIGINATE – OR( |
|
| 8 | Being overheard is unnerving for leaders |
| SHEIKHS – sounds like ‘shakes’. | |
| 13 | Anger badly managed on the whole |
| BY AND LARGE – (ANGER BADLY)*. | |
| 15 | Vehicle, say, in dash from the South |
| ESTATE CAR – STATE in a reversal of RACE. | |
| 16 | Feeling uneasy, one visits Dr Psycho anyhow |
| DYSPHORIC – I in (DR PSYCHO)*. | |
| 17 | Part of the ear heard noise unrefined |
| LOWBROW – homophone of ‘lobe’, ROW. | |
| 18 | Opening rejected by play’s author |
| TOLSTOY – reversal of SLOT, TOY. | |
| 21 | Something fruity produced by male. Musk? |
| MELON – M, ELON. Personally I’d prefer not to be reminded of this person’s existence as I solve my Sunday crossword! | |
| 22 | Frequency with which a philosopher brought up a goddess |
| FREYA – F, reversal of AYER. A. J. Ayer, a leading proponent of logical positivism, whatever that is. | |
| 23 | Vessels blowing bass hooters? |
| OWLS – |
|
45:32; I found this tricky, too. And like Keriothe, I found the clues generally difficult across the board. DNK the bird or the bug. I couldn’t figure out STABLEMATE, just biffed it, evidently from checkers alone. I don’t remember seeing a problem with ALEXANDRINE, probably just assumed a poem in alexandrines could be called an alexandrine.
A tricky, but achievable puzzle for me. Please just tell me I’m not the only one who first found a triple definition for JUGS in 23d!
LOL, as I believe some people say. Good thing the U won’t work.
86m 35s. Hard and I had to use aids on THIMBLEFUL.
I liked LETTERS OF INTENT.
Nice to see the WETA, quite large insects endemic to NZ, getting a mention.
Thanks, keriothe.
I looked it up after, and don’t see anything nice to see.
Fortunately, I’ve never come across any in the wild!
Usually find Robert ‘s puzzles a little less challenging than Dean’s but this was very much an exception . Very difficult , with 11a impenetrable even with all the crossers.
I suppose there may have been a one-line poem or two. A more serious objection is that ALEXANDRINE is the feminine adjectival form of the noun, ALEXANDRIN (well, not really. That’s only in French!).
I started the puzzle of my birth year 1955 but lost interest after the second or third not remotely cryptic clue.
I needed 55 minutes for this. My NHOs were ALEXANDRINE as something to do with poetry, WETA and ROCKWARBLER, and I failed to understand BUT{cher}.
I tried the latest of the three vintage puzzles last week and found it quite easy. I recently attempted some early weekday puzzles from the new Times collection so knew what to expect of the early ones and didn’t bother with them this time.
– Took ages to decide on the right vowel for BUT, and even then I had no idea how it worked
– Didn’t know ALEXANDRINE as a poem
– Didn’t parse LETTERS OF INTENT
– Relied on the wordplay to get WETA and ROCKWARBLER
– Didn’t know Ayer the philosopher for FREYA
Thanks keriothe and Robert.
FOI Cross
LOI Sheikhs
COD Dysphoric
This took all of a 3 hour flight to Istanbul. No access to cheating machines of course.
9a But, biffed. Didn’t think either of butcher nor Cher.
10a Alexandrine, biffed, looked up later and found it IS a verse form. Well well. I’ve heard of what I thought was the Alexandrine Quartet, which I now see is the Alexandria Q, anyway I was advised not to read it, so I didn’t.
11a Stablemate – contender for COD.
12a Sink; took an age to see the hidden.
14a One H Ys, surprised to see “One” in the clue & answer.
17a Letters Of I, another contender for COD.
19a Weta, NHO. Confirmed later. Abstruse or what? I’ve never been to NZ (unfortunately) and even the locals don’t see it often, if I believe what I see above.
20a Thimbleful, another contender for COD.
24a Rockwarbler, NHO, another antipodean abstrusity eh? Like “abstrusity”.
8d Sheikhs LOI I think. Took forever.
NHO 16d Dysphoric AFAIK.
22d Freya, had to be but NHO A J Ayer, and he isn’t in the Python song. Unforgiveable!
I seem to have hit the same probems as nearly everyone.
Advised not to read Alexandria Quartet? Have to disagree!
I agree to disagree – beautiful writing
Oh well, I’ll give it a whirl then. The critics loved it.
Thanks Robert and keriothe
Found this one very tough, taking just under an hour to complete it with more than usual amount of help to get the more obscure answers and parsing sorted. Still missed how STABLEMATE worked apart from the fact that the ST and Times are both owned by News Corp – thought ‘like us and The Times’ was a neat way of putting that.
A lot of other clever clues made for an enjoyable solve that finished in the SW corner with ESTATE CAR (with a slightly different way of clueing it), WORDS (where I did get held up with that ‘forward’ command for the S) and LOWBROW the last one in.
No hope here: saw the proverbial writing on the wall after the first MER look-up. NHO ALEXANDRINE, ROCKWARBLER (despite residing in Oz for 58 years), WETA or FREYA. Too impatient to give it the attention it deserved, but on another day? Had the two long acrosses, and a mere thimbleful of others, and gave it away. Oh and I’m with K on not being reminded of Musk!