Several of these kept me guessing a while. There were three unknowns, from the worlds of sports, entomology and botany—the last being the one I was stuck on the longest. It was anticlimactic to end on such a dry word, but at least it gave me a title for this post. Nothing here to complain about—actually, like Br’er Rabbit, I’m quite at home in a briar patch.
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Drink breaks announced when drunk? (8) |
| SCHNAPPS “snaps” |
|
| 5 | Hedges, as seen around abyss? (6) |
| AVOIDS A(VOID)S |
|
| 10 | Works as a spy (5) |
| PLANT DD (Providing the secret key to 9) |
|
| 11 | Car seat is adapted for internal flight (9) |
| STAIRCASE (Car seat is)* With a sly definition |
|
| 12 | Prevail upon to spread after zero crowding (14) |
| OVERPOPULATION O, “zero” + (Prevail upon to)* |
|
| 13 | Great instrument, short of parts (10) |
| THUNDERING TH(UNDER)ING Collins has as the eighth definition for THING “a device, means, or instrument.” |
|
| 15 | Market square (4) |
| FAIR DD, noun and adjective |
|
| 18 | Astonish in topless dress (4) |
| ROCK |
|
| 19 | The sticks, I suggest, to deliver (10) |
| HINTERLAND HINTER, “I suggest” + LAND, “deliver” Collins has as the last (seventeenth) definition for LAND “informal | to deliver (a blow).” |
|
| 21 | Save Shard after winning concession (10,4) |
| BARGAINING CHIP BAR, “Save” + GAINING, “winning” + CHIP, “[s]hard” Deceptive capitalization to suggest the tallest building in the UK |
|
| 24 | George in paradise, almost cutting a great deal (9) |
| AUTOPILOT A (UTOPI |
|
| 25 | Teenager astride exercise bike (5) |
| MOPED MO(PE)D |
|
| 26 | Doctor gets food in (6) |
| MODISH M(edical) O(fficer), “Doctor” + DISH, “food” Two clues in a row using MOD, with related but different meanings |
|
| 27 | Eye cast over this month’s Irish players (8) |
| LEINSTER LE(INST)ER INST is an abbreviation for “instant” that in formal correspondence means the current month; used postpositively, as in “a letter of the 7th instant.” |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | Advocate drink after drink (9) |
| SUPPORTER SUP + PORTER, “drink” as verb and then noun ,, |
|
| 2 | What’s up with greeting cast? (5) |
| HEAVE EH<=“up” + AVE, “greeting” |
|
| 3 | A hint to enter junction? The opposite (8) |
| ANTIPODE AN(TIP)ODE |
|
| 4 | Dove, perhaps, but not swallow (4,10) |
| PAST PARTICIPLE CD |
|
| 6 | In truth, so full of it (6) |
| VERITY VER(IT)Y A bit odd to have one word preceding the definition, but it happens. |
|
| 7 | Paramour soon gets a sailor put up (9) |
| INAMORATA IN A MO + A TAR<=“put up” |
|
| 8 | Killed a lot of Americans (4) |
| SLEW DD, the second sense being more common on this side of the pond |
|
| 9 | 10 still in the race, running (7,7) |
| CARLINE THISTLE (still in the race)* “a plant of the genus Carlina” (Merriam-Webster) “Middle French carline, from Old Italian carlina, probably irregular from cardo thistle, from Late Latin cardus, from Latin carduus” So the name etymologically means “thistle thistle.” |
|
| 14 | Virgin turned off when drinking tea (9) |
| UNCHARTED (turned)* swallows CHA, “tea” |
|
| 16 | Leaf pest taking a rest under rose (3,6) |
| RED SPIDER RED, “rose” + SPIDER, “a rest” in snooker and such games |
|
| 17 | Out of work, play with new guide (8) |
| DRAGOMAN DRA(GO)MA + N(ew) “A dragoman was an interpreter, translator, and official guide between Turkish-, Arabic-, and Persian-speaking countries and polities of the Middle East and European embassies, consulates, vice-consulates and trading posts. A dragoman had to have a knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and European languages.” (Wikipedia) The word itself fittingly passed thru many translations, coming to English from French, where it was derived from an Italian word derived from a Greek word derived from an Arabic word derived from an Aramaic word “of Akkadian origin” (Collins). |
|
| 20 | Because about to open mouth, feasts (6) |
| AGAPES A(GAPE)S Communal meals in the early Christian church, love feasts, from the Greek agapē love The second clue using AS as a container, with a different sense this time |
|
| 22 | Native Americans heading for Texas get lost (3,2) |
| HOP IT HOPI + T |
|
| 23 | Affectionate wife given outfit (4) |
| WARM W(ife) + ARM, “outfit” as a verb |
|
I liked the puzzle as a whole, and UNCHARTED and PAST PARTICIPLE in particular, but the plant was a step too far for me (as it seems to have been for Guy too). Fine if you’ve heard of it, but even with thistle fairly likely, the first part ultimately had to be guessed. Did it cross the editor’s mind to ask for something other than an anagram?
DNK the thistle, and Michael R has a point. I assume I had most of the checkers in before trying to solve, and looked it up to make sure. DNK RED SPIDER, and discovered that it’s not a spider but a mite, the (red) spider mite.I liked THUNDERING, MODISH, RED SPIDER, ANTIPODE, COD to BARGAINING CHIP.
I do think 9d is an excellent surface though, especially with ’10’ suggesting a runner’s number, so I can see it would be tough to discard. Just slightly loaded against the solver, unfortunately.
I have to wonder whether this was a term known to our setter before he wound up with those lights to fill…
I didn’t finish this last weekend and then forgot about it. So I came back to it before I read this blog and managed to finish (luckily getting the letters in the NHO plant in the correct places) and dragging up DRAGOMAN from somewhere with no idea what it meant. AGAPES seemed vaguely familiar, and I’m sure it must have come up before.
So my time….158 hours and 15 minutes!
96m 47s
That counts as one of the most difficult of Anax’s puzzles I’ve ever come across.
I had to use ‘aids’ for DRAGOMAN and AGAPES. I had barely heard of the former and never of the latter.
Thanks, also, Guy, for so many others: (deep breath), THUNDERING, FAIR, HINTERLAND, BARGAINING CHIP, MOPED, MODISH, LEINSTER and WARM.
Re CARLINE THISTLE, I know Partick Thistle (‘The Jags’!) from the Saturday afternoon reading of the Scottish football results (but can’t tell you where in Scotland they hail from) but not the plant.
Living in the ‘Antipodes’, I should have got 3d sooner than I did.
Pleased with myself for 4d. Clues like PAST PARTICIPLE often fox me.
Thanks again, Guy.
A Racline thistle or a Carline thistle? I guessed correctly. It sounded better- Partick Thistle and Caledonian Thistle being things I’d heard of perhaps?
PAST PARTICIPLE was a wonderfully misdirectional clue with the two birds acting as red herrings.
I liked George the autopilot best of all, having been befuddled by this in a previous appearance. It seems a very dated term to me, conjuring up images of second world Lancasters. Is it still used today?
38mins
I had so many queries whilst solving (all later resolved) that I was surprised to finish this at all, but at 1hr 11 minutes it was a slow business.
I thought for an obscure expression CARLINE THISTLE might have benefited from a slightly more generous definition than the cross-referenced ‘plant’, but having read the entry in Collins I’m not sure how it could have been made much more helpful. I’m usually the first to complain about obscurities clued as anagrams but as such things go I didn’t think this was too bad as, with ‘plant’ in mind and a couple of checkers in place, THISTLE was pretty obvious and the remaining anagrist didn’t offer many options – again with a checker or two. As the thistle is a symbol of Scotland I wondered if CARLINE might have something to do with a king from the House of Stuart, some of whom were called Charles and used ‘Carolus’ in their royal ciphers, but this turned out not to be so.
I still struggle with the equivalence of THING and INSTRUMENT. Can anyone give an example sentence?
When I solved this, I thought of the WW2 Gracie Fields song:
I’m the girl that makes the thing
That drills the hole, that holes the ring
That drives the rod, that turns the knob
That works the thing-ummy-bob
…but I’m not sure that’s particularly convincing!
I think the definition in Collins doesn’t necessarily mean a physical “device, means, or instrument”, but rather a “means by which something is effected or done”.
So, I though of the end of Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act 2:
The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
I believe the sense (but of course not the poetry!) would be retained if you swapped “instrument” for “thing” there. [Hamlet arranges to have a “play within the play” staged, and study Claudius’s reaction.]
And I think in a more modern context, you could imagine some political/economic commentary saying something like: “A targeted consumption tax can be a very effective instrument (/thing), that the government should not discount as an option”.
Got through this successfully but could not parse DRAGOMAN. Thanks for explaining that ‘out of’ = ‘outside of’.
18:37. Good stuff. AGAPES and DRAGOMAN were vaguely familiar but I wouldn’t have been able to define them for you. NHO the plant but it was readily constructible from the anagrist.
Being a Dean Mayer, I was prepared for tricky. A very slow open up after determined study, but got there in the end, despite holding myself up with an unparseable THUNDEROUS. I knew the Christian meaning of AGAPE, though hadn’t realised the ‘feast’ significance. CARLINE was not exactly a guess – it more or less had to be once THISTLE was in place, and RED SPIDER seemed likely as it parsed and fitted the checkers. LOI the clever 27a, where INST was my salvation, as I’d never have got the answer from the definition, or guessed LE—-ER. NHO DRAGOMAN.
An hour and ten minutes, with the thistle and the guide unknown, but well worth it. Slightly taken aback by ANTIPODE in the singular, not knowingly seen before.
Corymbia must be right that GEORGE is now dated. On a previous appearance we were told by someone here that his son (who flies planes) calls it “the autopilot”. And although there are various theories about the origins of GEORGE, there can only be one theory about the origins of the name in the film Airplane! where he is called Otto
Thanks! I loved Airplane! but misremembered the dummy as George.
Can’t find my crossword, but it would seem DNF as Cheating Machine did not have Carline Thistle in it until I added it just now, and I don’t remember any thistles.
I have a MER on 20d Agapes. Wiktionary (and Chambers, and my 1979 Collins) don’t have AGAPES. Under agape it has first the adjective, then:
“agape (countable and uncountable, plural agapae or agapai)
(uncountable, Christianity) The love of God for mankind, or the benevolent love of Christians for others.
Synonym: charity
(uncountable) Spiritual, altruistic, beneficial love which wills good for others.
(countable) A love feast, especially one held in the early Christian Church in connection with the Eucharist.”
If The Times is going to use the Anglicised version then I need to have it there. I have solved this before, and I already added the -s and the Greek plurals to the C.M. on 2 occasions in the past. Agape would have been there anyway as the adjective.
COD 22d Hop It.
The current (online) Collins doesn’t say anything about the plural, which I take to mean that it is to be treated as a normal noun. Same with ODE. One of the citations in OED (from 2010) is ‘agapes were banquets in which the tables groaned with food’. So the anglicised version seems to have become the standard.
Dean Mayer, so lots (58 minutes) of fun despite (or because of) the many obscurities. My only objection would be to the anagram in 9dn, although it seems that everyone who like me didn’t know the plant found CARLINE more likely than RACLINE (that would be too French, somehow). It’s great to learn lots of new (meanings of) words and do so successfully (although I always thought George was Peppa’s little brother).
A difficult one this week, with the solving time measured using a calendar rather than a stopwatch. Nonetheless enjoyable, particularly 7D, where many of my generation may recall the immortal words of Flanders and Swan:
“My inamorata adjusted her garter”
which in turn evoke the vision of ballet dancing hippos in Fantasia.
Had to cheat to get the last one in, dragoman, which I still couldn’t parse.
I’m counting my solving time in days – 9 to be precise as I started on Tuesday!
Still pleased to have solved a Dean Mayer.
Biffed Carline, and needed Guy’s explanations for 24a and 27a. A lot of fun and I’m glad I persevered.
Wish I had, but I didn’t, persevere: realised early on that I was outwitted here and took to revealing a few ( just to get going you understand). Although I already had the NE corner filled ( minus 9d of course), and went completely off track by thinking the second word there may be “theatre” and that 10 was the title of a play that was “still running”. lol. It never occurred to me to link it to 10a. COD to the delicious SCHNAPPS.
Leinster would have been a challenge if inst hadn’t appeared so recently. Biffed Carline from crossers.
A great workout, much thanks.
Thanks Dean and Guy
Found this one pretty tough – taking a tick over two hours across three sessions on the Saturday that it was published here. Needed to consult internet helpmuch more than usual during the exercise, especially a word fit app which I try to avoid. I think that not being able to solve the long clues of the grid until quite late plus having a few wrong early entries in the NW corner certainly didn’t help.
Anyway, it was good to persist and get there in the end. Still hadn’t properly parsed BARGAINING CHIP and THUNDERING after seeing the blog.
Finished with that THUNDERING, HINTERLAND and DRAGOMAN (which was a word that I had seen before but really didn’t know its meaning).
A bit late, I know, but I puzzled over 9D then forgot about it. I got the anagram CARLINE THISTLE but couldn’t, and still can’t, understand its link with the definer 10. Am I thick?! Would welcome an explanation!
Got it – I see now that it links to 10 across – duh!
A THISTLE is a PLANT.