I found this, comme toujours, brilliant—and its menu suggestion mouth-watering. I could certainly go fer a MUSHROOM OMELETTE, as an ENTREE at either a French restaurant (where that would be an appetizer, which makes perfect linguistic sense) or an American one (where the term would mean, somewhat oddly but more promisingly, a main course).
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Rodent attack by the sound of it (6) |
| GOPHER “go for” |
|
| 4 | Snowball opportunity on something slushy (8) |
| MUSHROOM MUSH, “something slushy” + ROOM, “opportunity” |
|
| 9 | Very small pure silver blocks (6) |
| MEAGRE ME(AG)RE |
|
| 10 | Romantic notions as bullet points? (8) |
| IDEALIST IDEA LIST |
|
| 12 | Sleeping companion in bed ate dry crackers (5,4) |
| TEDDY BEAR (bed ate dry)* |
|
| 13 | A dictator’s feeble ruse (5) |
| FEINT “faint” |
|
| 14 | Published piece works best with guile (12) |
| OUTMANOEUVRE OUT, “published” + MAN, “piece” (as in chess, say) + OEUVRE, “works” |
|
| 18 | Perfect pet making genius move (12) |
| MASTERSTROKE MASTER, “Perfect” + STROKE, “pet” |
|
| 21 | Empty t{in an e}ngineer carries (5) |
| INANE Hidden |
|
| 22 | His unit measures speed merchants, flying (5,4) |
| ERNST MACH (merchants)* We had “transonic” in a recent weekday puzzle. You’ll find it also on the Wikipedia page about the Mach number, which is the local (i.e., in a particular medium) speed (flow velocity) of sound and the benchmark for the measurement of speed. |
|
| 24 | Old stuff of note found in an endless search (8) |
| ANTIQUES AN + TI, “note” + QUES |
|
| 25 | Run beginning in late summer (6) |
| LADDER L |
|
| 26 | Dish the Spanish must slice to mete out (8) |
| OMELETTE (to mete)* cut into by EL, “the [in] Spanish” |
|
| 27 | English racecourse lacking a current course (6) |
| ENTREE E(nglish) + |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | Stick point shaped for sharpness (8) |
| GUMPTION GUM, “stick” + (point)* |
|
| 2 | Tails of sheep, all vets praise (8) |
| PLAUDITS |
|
| 3 | In advance, close to the leader’s left (5) |
| EARLY |
|
| 5 | Subordinate to present suggestion (12) |
| UNDERCURRENT UNDER, “subordinate” + CURRENT, “present” |
|
| 6 | Lead followed by maiden recklessly (9) |
| HEADFIRST HEAD, “Lead” + FIRST, “maiden” |
|
| 7 | Underworld chief’s huge bloomer (6) |
| OSIRIS OS, oversize, “huge” + IRIS, “bloomer” |
|
| 8 | Convert’s thanks accepted in silence (6) |
| MUTATE MU(TA)TE |
|
| 11 | Not sporting trousers here? (5,3,4) Sounds like fun! |
| BELOW THE BELT With a literal interpretation of the idiom, for a cryptic hint |
|
| 15 | Dancers’ movement or horses circling finally evoke what for Degas? (9) |
| ARABESQUE ARAB(E)S + QUE (“what” in French, so for Degas) |
|
| 16 | Graduate brought in to study disease protection (8) |
| POMANDER PO(MA)NDER “a mixture of aromatic substances in a sachet or an orange, formerly carried as scent or as a protection against disease” (Collins) |
|
| 17 | Deep, gravelly voiced swimmer (3,5) |
| SEA HORSE SEA, the “deep” + “hoarse” |
|
| 19 | Uplifting part f{or a gif}ted baritone (6) |
| FIGARO Reverse hidden The character from the plays of Pierre Beaumarchais is a booming male voice in operas by Rossini and Mozart. |
|
| 20 | Keep replacing sulphur as temperature lowers (6) |
| CATTLE CASTLE (“Keep”) with T(emperature) instead of S(ulphur) |
|
| 23 | Writer’s article appearing in duplicate (5) |
| TWAIN TW(A)IN The great Samuel L. Clemens |
|
You know it’s going to be difficult when ERNST MACH is first to emerge after 6 minutes. Very challenging, but great fun wrestling with this for the best part of an hour. PLAUDITS to the setter.
An entree might be the main course in Trumpistan, but not this antipodean part of the Anglosphere where it is definitely a starter.
Hah! Glad to learn that!
I’ll correct.
BTW, there are much more… savory ways to refer to the United States.
Thank you for the reminder about the Robert Price pun. And that it often runs as one single phrase along the top and bottom across clues.
19d. I think of Figaro as the eponymous Barber of Seville in Rossini’s opera. Where he enters singing the famous “Largo al factotum”, about how busy and in demand he is:
Everyone asks for me. Everyone wants me:
Women, boys, the elderly, girls.
Here this wig; quickly this beard;
Here this bleeding, quickly this note;
“Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” etc.
Rossini’s Figaro is a baritone part.
There’s a slightly complicated history, but the Mozart role is normally classified as bass-baritone.
Well, I’ll have to do another edit then. I must confess to knowing very little about opera, and that the reason I singled out the eponymous Mozart work The Marriage of… must be because one of Figaro’s lines there is the origin of the motto of the French right-wing newspaper Le Figaro, to wit: “Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n’est point d’éloge flatteur” (“Without the freedom to criticise, there is no flattering praise”).
Didn’t know the first name of ERNST MACH but it wasn’t hard to figure out once ‘mach’ was removed from the anagrist. Saw LADDER from run straight off. Took ages to see BELOW THE BELT thinking initially ‘trousers’ must be a containment indicator. Liked ARABESQUE and saw what the sneaky Degas was doing in the clue.
Thanks Guy and setter.
I like the puzzle – there were a lot of clever clues. My chief problem was managing to spell outmanoeuvre, since oeuvre has never managed to sink into my brain. Fortunately, I had heard of everything, even Aintree, which I needed for my LOI.
Time: 40:12
One of Robert’s tougher ones I thought. Not heard the word GUMPTION for a long time and that was one of the 4 which defeated me. Liked FIGARO- expertly hidden.
Nice to break the top 100!
Interesting to see that Collins includes the ‘disease protection’ element of POMANDER, which seems to be left out of Chambers (which I tend to rely on).
20:43. I felt I was making heavy weather of this, but I enjoyed it. MER at ‘sharpness’ for GUMPTION, not a meaning I recognise.
I had a mushroom omelette for breakfast on Thursday, and very nice it was too.
Same MER for GUMPTION (‘initiative’ says ODE, and so says I), a word I associate with Miss Metcalf, high school French teacher who often accused us of lacking it.
It’s a word my mother used, and which I always found funny. Collins online has the sense of “shrewdness in practical matters” only from a US dictionary and marked as “obsolete”—though “common sense” in the same listing is not marked as such in British English, no more than is “resourcefulness,” which is close. The word comes from Scots dialect and seems (there’s a question mark) to be derived from a Middle English word for “attention”—gome—with a “playful Latinate suffix.”
To me it means something like courage and resourcefulness. Somebody can be stupid and lacking in common sense and still have gumption.
“Resourcefulness” is in Collins’s first British definition, right along with “common sense.” I don’t think of a resourceful person as being completely stupid. But the second definition there, “initiative or courage,” implies no particular know-how (and belies, incidentally and irrelevantly, the apparent origin of the word in one meaning “attention”). Another American definition matches how I’ve thought of it in the past: “courage; spunk; guts.”
I was suprised that OED’s take is “shrewdness” and “mother wit”, and didn’t mention the stick-to-it-ivness sense that I am familiar with.
A stunning puzzle, as usual, from RP, and yes, a tad more difficult than most of his, but so rewarding. The surfaces are so good – 15d’s ARABESQUE, and ‘Not sporting trousers here’, to say nothing of the wonderful hidden in FIGARO. Nothing unknown except the guessed at ERNST MACH, which being an anagram, was eminently solvable, having heard of mach speed. Oh, and the fact that OSIRIS was an underworld god…
My thanks to Robert Price and Guy du Sable.
19d Figaro reminded me to have another look on youtube at the flash mob “Johannes Dunz sings Rossini’s ‘Largo al factotum’ at an airport”, fantastic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB_pZmmyTiE&t=23s
1d Gumption was one of my Mum’s favourite words. Usually I was lacking it.
7d Osiris reminded me of Hitachi’s crazy implementation of Unix on a mainframe, just daft. We didn’t sell a single copy. As it was free (apart from maintenance of course) that shows you how useful it was. Amdahl managed to get a few people to use their Unix, UTS, but they were on the scene YEARS before we got Osiris. If IBM got anyone to use their mainframe Unix, AIX, I don’t remember, but certainly very few in UK.
DNF, defeated by POMANDER (I guessed the wrong type of graduate and put POBANDER) and CATTLE, where I never got beyond CASTLE.
– Never heard of ERNST MACH, and didn’t know that Mach speed came from the name of a person
– Same MER as others above over that meaning of GUMPTION
Thanks Guy and Robert.
COD Sea horse
18.16
Another peerless puzzle from perfect Price. ERNST MACH really was exceptional imho. And thanks Guy too of course.
I get that if you’ve done it a week ago it’s started to fade from memory (I always do them a week in arrears) but I just wish more folks took the opportunity to compliment this setter.
Thanks, Guy. I liked Ladder.
Enjoyed this as always with RP. Beaten by OUTMANOEUVRE though, which seemed appropriate!
Defeated, yea, OUTMANOEUVERED, by this perfect puzzle by Dean. Thrown by the long down at 11, where my first thought (and it fit) was WEARS THE KILT – which is how the die-hard Scot refers to sporting this garment. Besides, couldn’t think of the GOPHER, and this meaning of GUMPTION was not one I recognised ( always associated it with being ‘ballsy’!). So, a bad start, just saved by my TEDDY BEAR and my IDEALIST..( love it!). Also having CASTLE as the definition of ‘keep’ and missing the lowers part. FIGARO was a good hidden ( loved the airport happening); and I think MUSHROOM OMELETTE sounds like a great idea for lunch today. However, Setter 1, Solver 0.
This one was by Robert Price. He’s been giving us connected clues like that lately.
Thanks Robert and Guy
Was celebrating a milestone birthday up in our lovely Yarra Valley wine-making region last week and only got to start this one on the following Monday. Still it took all of the week to finally nail the last few clues – ENTREE (took ages to negotiate from Aintree), LADDER (so easy once gotten) and POMANDER (not heard of it and took an age to piece together the charade to make it).
Some lovely clues – BELOW THE BELT was exceptional after seeing the gap between ‘sporting’ and ‘trousers’, as mentioned by others the deftly reverse hidden FIGARO and the construction of ARABESQUE.
Took just under the two hours across the week to finish – but it was well worth the effort !! I always enjoy looking for the top / bottom nina after I do finish.