This took me about 45 minutes. I found the left side quite easy but became bogged down on the right with rather too many answers arrived at from one part of the clue without understanding the other. I think some of the references may make it the hardest of the week for some solvers.
In two cases At 3dn one needs specialist knowledge from two different segments of the pie in order to work out or explain the answer.
Across |
1 |
WHARFINGER – WH(ARF)INGER – ARF being FRA (rev) meaning a monk or friar, hence “brother”. A wharfinger is the owner of a wharf apparently. A new word to me. |
6 |
AS IS – AS(1)S |
10 |
LULU – Sounds like “loo loo”. Lulu is an unfinished opera by Alban Berg. A lavatory is sometimes referred to as “the smallest room”. |
12 |
SQUASH LADDER – Squash, as in the fruit drink. In olden days a glimpse of stocking might reveal a ladder, also known as, principally in the US, a run. |
15 |
ONSLAUGHT – ON,S(LAUGH)T |
17 |
HIRAM – Sounds like “hire ’em”. Hiram was King of Tyre who was responsible for the first temple in Jerusalem. I didn’t know this. |
18 |
GREAT – G(R)EAT Nor did I know that Beowulf was a Geat, a member of a North German tribe of which I had also not heard. |
19 |
APRIL FOOL – Is this &lit with no other way to the answer? If so, it seems a rather feeble one. |
20 |
ELECTRIC HARE – ELECT,RICHAR(d Nixon),E – As used in greyhound racing, I believe. |
25 |
GUILLOTINE – GUIL(LO(T)IN)E The answer was easy enough but it took me a bit longer to spot the construction. |
26 |
WHET – W(THE)* – Edge (vb) = sharpen, as does whet |
|
Down |
1 |
WOMB – MOW (rev) + B(aby) – Cradle = womb = place of origin or nurture? I sort of see it. |
2 |
AIDE – IDEA with the A moved to the front. |
3 |
FOUR QUARTETS – Put in to annoy some solvers, I suspect, but not me. Beethoven wrote three string quartets dedicated to Count Rasoumovsky. TS Eliot wrote the four poems of that name. |
4 |
NERVA – NERV(e),A – Another Roman Emperor I didn’t know for sure |
5 |
EARTHSTAR – (THAT’S RARE)* – Another guess. It’s a fungus apparently. |
7 |
SOUNDPROOF – SOUND,PROOF |
11 |
BACHELORHOOD – BACHELOR,HOOD |
13 |
LONGFELLOW – LO(N)G,FELLOW – US poet probably most famous for his Hiawatha. |
14 |
ASSEVERATE – AS,SEVER(A,T)E – To state solemnly or emphatically. Of course I knew what it meant! |
21 |
HALVA – Hidden. A Middle Eastern sweet made of sesame flour and honey, |
22 |
DIRE – DI(R)E |
23 |
LENS – It took me a long time to see through this one. The checking letters weren’t much help. |
Category |
Pie ChartScore |
Clues |
Religion |
0 |
|
Literature |
1 |
3 (Four Quartets) |
Music |
2 |
10 (Lulu), 3 (Three Rasoumovsky Quartets) |
Visual Arts |
0 |
|
Popular Culture |
0 |
|
Sport & Games |
0 |
|
Natural World |
1 |
5 (Earthstar) |
Science & Tech |
0 |
|
Geography |
2 |
8 (City of London/Square Mile), 23 (Lens) |
History |
3 |
17 (Hiram), 18 (Geats), 4 (Nerva) |
Other |
0 |
|
Total |
9 |
|
I wouldn’t count the Beowulf clue as a two-pointer – {Beowulf = a Geat} is one fact for me. Whether Beowulf was literature, opera or a heavy metal band doesn’t actually matter. 3D does count double, though knowing one of the quartet counts would be enough to solve the clue. (And deducing that it’s N quartets gets you to a FOUR/FIVE/NINE choice.)
New things for me: wharfinger, Geat. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Nerva before, and have done a bit of fungus foraging in the past so remembered earthstar. I think Hiram has been around as a crossword choice as long as Eli, though less often.
Lulu is no. 84 on that list of Operas, so much harder than ‘Cav’. I don’t think we’ve yet had Wozzeck, the one Berg finished.
11D is two meanings rather than a charade, I think. It gave me pause for thought, but I decided that as hood is not gown, and bachelor is not ‘status symbol’, “bachelor hood” must mean a particular hood on an academic gown. Not a phrase in the official dictionaries, but Googling finds examples.
I put in ‘Four Quartets’, ‘Nerva’, and ‘great’ almost immediately.
I was wondering why I didn’t see you guys in first-year Anglo-Saxon at Yale Grad School. In the second half of that course, we parsed every syllable of Beowulf. A Geat, a Half-Dane, a Finn, a Jute….all those speakers of Ingvaeonic Germanic dialects hanging around northwest Europe, waiting to invade England.
I laboured to the end of this in c.25 mins, not knowing 1A or the quartets/Rasoumovsky. Nerva’s not exactly the best-known emperor, either.
Tom B.
I realise I’m at risk of having to don the dunce’s cap for the second day in a row , but I can’t for the life of me see how BACHELORHOOD works.
Regulations relating to Academic Costume
2. The gown of the holder of an Undergraduate Certificate shall be made of black stuff to the pattern of the gown of the Oxford Bachelor of Arts; no hood shall be worn.
4. The gown of a Bachelor shall be made of black stuff to the pattern of the gown for the Oxford Bachelor of Arts.
So basically if you’ve graduated you can wear a hood and your gown is made out of tarmac or Guinness.
I wouldn’t blame Mr Penguin for throwing a few darts at this – some of the references were very obscure – but the whole thing was pretty much made up for by 7 SOUNDPROOF; I agree with Jim – my COD nom for today.
I couldn’t get into this at all. A couple of sittings and I suppose it took about 40 minutes, with one mistake. I guessed “Hyrum” for 17a which, as it turns out, wasn’t a totally inappropriate shot in the dark since Hyrum Smith was older brother to Joseph and an early leader of the Latter Day Saints.
There are a couple of really good clues in here, but overall I thought it a lot less than great. Quite a few cumbersome constructions – heavily punctuated and with a laboured feel to them. I know it’s a matter of taste, but I like my crossword clues to read like English, not like crossword clues. Most of these couldn’t be anything but. I feel this sort of stuff belongs in a barred puzzle.
9a MEDIUM RARE, 10a LULU and 19a APRIL FOOL are just lame, as is 12a SQUASH LADDER. I’m still hoping someone’s going to make some sense of 11d BACHELORHOOD.
And I’m going to put myself in the stocks and wait for the rotten fruit: I don’t like 7d SOUNDPROOF simply because ‘avoiding’ as a synonym of ‘preventing’ is plain clumsy.
Other than that, I thought it was great.
All of which meant a slow time of around 40 minutes with a fair bit of assistance from t’internet.
Not a great puzzle for me, really, favourite clues were 15a and 7d.
Like others I have difficulty with 11 dn, and not only because I initially entered SPINSTERHOOD, which fitted the definition and had the right number of letters, sharing six of them with the correct answer (though it made no cryptic sense at all). The academic cryptic reading offered in earlier comments doesn’t seem to me to work properly either because the hood which some universities require those receiving a BA degree to wear is a bachelor’s hood (cf master’s hood) and not a bachelor hood. Unsatisfactory.
25 ac is my COD nomination.
SQUASH LADDER I got finally from the (friendly enough) wordplay but it’s not in my dicts that I can see.
But I got there in the end.
On a Sunday, I will happily sit down with the Azed for an hour or two, and prepare to learn three or four new words, with outside help if necessary. During the week I find it jarring when I’m expected to know WHARFINGER or who Count Rasoumovsky, and, most of all, the Geats were.
Of course it could just be that my definition of unfair knowledge is “things I don’t know”…
MY COD – Guillotine.
It’s SQUARE MILE, another name for the City of London
pleasant look = SMILE
queen = QU
unfinished district = ARE(a)
Welcoming is the containment indicator here.
There are 5 “easies”:
9a Spiritualist’s choice not to be grilled to much (6,4)
MEDIUM RARE
24a Sort of year’s circuit: June finally enters (4)
L E AP
27a Without esteem, in any case (10)
REGARDLESS
8d City’s pleasant look, welcoming Queen to unfinished district (6,4)
S QU ARE(A) MILE
16d In (gutter, Id a)* strange feeling of obligation (9)
GRATITUDE