Solving time: 8:49
Reasonably pleased with this time for a puzzle with a lot of unfamiliar words and meanings. MASSÉ and TILLER=shoot I simply did not know. And AMERCE, CATALPA and OBEAH are not part of my everyday vocabulary. On the other hand the big straightforward anagrams at 3, 12, 18 helped.
I am a bit rushed this morning, and so I have not attempted the pie chart analysis. Perhaps later. (Happy to say that Peter has done the analysis below and in the face of other comments is going to consult on topic headings separately.)
Across
1 | IAMB – I tried to justify “element” defining IAMB, before I realised that this was an &lit. But that was only once I realised that the William Butler here was Mr Yeats. |
9 | CO-STAR(re)D |
11 | CAT ALP A |
13 | O B(E)AH! |
14 | TESS & ELLA & TION, TION being INTO* |
21 | AD + M.I.T. |
22 | ESCALATOR – I didn’t put this in straight away, because I couldn’t see what was American about it. The answer is that “story” is an American spelling of “storey” |
24 | MAR + CON + I |
25 | AP + PROVE, AP being PA(rev) – and the definition being OK(v) |
26 | PRESS A GENT |
27 | STUN(t) |
Down
1 | INCH + O(r)ATE |
2 | MASSÉ + USE – I did not know that a massé was a way of hitting a billiard or snooker ball |
4 | EIDER, being (RED + I.E.)(all rev) |
5 | RO(CHE)STER – nice change from Ely for “see”. I suppose there must be lots of other bishoprics available |
6 | BUTTON ON (th)E SLIP – trying to solve from the definition only I was going to leave the middle word (ONE’S or YOUR) till later, then spotted that the wordplay gave the answer. I think actually the Times (unlike other crosswords) always uses ONE’S. (Peter has shown below that I am simply wrong in this, quoting a “your” just last month) |
7 | TILL + ER – I find that “tiller” can mean “shoot” in the botanical sense |
10 | ABBREVIATIONS – it took me too long to see that BBC and ITV are given merely as examples |
15 | LEAV(EN)ING, EN being the first letters of “each novelist”. Odd definition, but “raising agent” would have been too obvious and would have been a poor surface |
16 | SEA T + R + OUT |
19 | WARM-UP – it took me a while to realise that this definition was cryptic, but of course heats are part of the competition, not preliminaries |
20 | A MERCE(r) |
23 | CH(A)IN(a) – ie CHINA with the A relocated |
I found this quite a tricky one. Started slowly with a few of the shorter words scattered throughout but it only really began to come together once I had cracked the long ones at 6, 10, 14 and 18. When I had completed the grid I had 10 clues not fully explained although I was pretty sure the answers were correct.
If I ever knew them, I had forgotten that “masse” is a snooker-shot and “Costard” is a Shakespearean clown so 2 and 9 went on my list to check. At 1ac “element” seemed an odd definition then I realised that it wasn’t. I didn’t recognise “confused” as a definition of “inchoate” until I looked it up later. At 7 I have a feeling that “tiller” meaning “shoot” has come up here recently and I promptly forgot it. 11,13 and 20 I dredged up from the recesses of my mind using the wordplay but I couldn’t have said what they mean without having seen the definition part of the clue.
All in all I thought this was a pretty good test and I have no real complaints.
COD for me is 22 though I’ve a feeling I have seen something similar before.
Rishi
Sorry for the flurry of messages. I will try to restrain myself in the future.
But I’d agree that 20dn is grist to the Levellers’ mill, given that it involves two relative archaisms on the way to a fairly obscure legal term.
A bit mean, that.
Another very tough Thursday puzzle (are they always the hardest?), and, yes, a lot of relatively obscure vocabulary, but with a rich crop of devious clues and some belting good surfaces. Too many clues worthy of a mention in despatches, so I’d single out 9 COSTARD and 15 LEAVENING. 6dn is almost brilliant – I think there’s a memorable clue in there somewhere.
Oh, about 32 minutes, but blown out of the water by my mistake at 20dn.
The penny drop moment made 14 a COD contender but I’d previously ticked 5 (hooray – “revolutionary” not used!) and I’ll stick with that.
All of which is a pity, as elsewhere there were a lot of clever clues, like 14 and 22, the latter of which gets my nod for COD.
My quickest time this week. Only problems were in the SE corner. Got myself in a bit of a pickle with 15 / 22 / 23… Also spent too long trying to look up OREOT and OTEAT for 13 (that’s two days in a row we’ve had unusual synonyms for ‘rubbish’). Thought 14 was a tad obscure…
COD perhaps 1, 10 or 18.
1A was OK once I recalled that the Butler who wrote Erewhon was Samuel. Of the obscurities, CATALPA was probably the worst for me, and tiller as a shoot felt only slightly more familiar. Amerce comes up in barred-grid puzzles because of its high ‘friendly letter’ content.
I beg to differ with Richard about ONES and YOUR – we had SET YOUR HEART ON in 23,876 on 1st April, for example. I’m about 98% sure I could find a few other YOURs given enough time.
A couple of nifty resources:
Anglican dioceses in England – 43 of the possibilities for ‘see’.
Shakespeare characters – ignore the ‘A-K’ in the heading – there are ‘first letter’ links near the top for the whole alphabet.
A pie analysis:
Edited at 2008-05-15 01:23 pm (UTC)
Tom B.
I think experience of bar crosswords like Mephisto helped with this one both because some of the vocab crops up from time to time and because they make you disect clues and look for cunning definitions.
Peter, I’ve been thinking about these trivial pusuit categories and I don’t think they suit the objective. The analysis could be helpful but first it has to be more meaningful. Jimbo.
literature
visual arts
music
sports
botany
zoology
‘pure’ sciences
history
law
geography
I don’t think things like ‘leisure’ and ‘entertainment’ are much of a concern since they tend to come under ‘common knowledge’ and are so broad as to be almost meaningless.
I thought this difficult, with some exceedingly obscure definitions (eg tiller = shoot) and words, such as “amerce”, though I’m fairly sure that one has come up before. Brilliant effort by richardvg to have managed a time of 8:49. Close to an hour for me. 22 ac has to be my COD because of the quirky definition and the nice play on the American spelling of “storey”.
Michael H
I liked 22 across, though.
There are just the 5 “easies” not in the blog:
3a Rogues treating (port as beer)* (10)
REPROBATES
12a Dreadful (boor never)* subdued (9)
OVERBORNE
18a Drunk (denigrates me)* resulting in quarrel (12)
DISAGREEMENT
8d Bandage the man’s given after hit (6)
SWAT HE
17d Fish making (tongues) wag – whoppe(r)* finally caught (8)
STU R GEON