Solving time : 22 minutes. A tale of two halves, the bottom half took me very little time, and I was left with a mostly empty top half. Some guesswork here that I had to look up before starting the blog. My hunch is some will find this amazingly easy, and some will be like me and get frustrated about half-way through.
My COD nod would go to the neat little clue at 11
Across | |
---|---|
1 | CLEMATIS: M in CLEAT,IS. One of the last to go in, guessed from wordplay, it’s a climbing liana I now come to find out |
9 | UNEASILY: double definition, one slightly cryptic |
10 | BOLT,ON: another guess from wordplay, it’s near Manchester, which I guess makes it northish |
11 | TIMES,WITCH(=sounds like WHICH): nice surface for the clue. My parents live and die by time switches, if you want to rob their house, just look for lights going on and off at regular intervals |
13 | MURPHY(=potato),SLAW(=salad) |
17 | DUOPOLY: OP,O in DULY. There’s a word you don’t see everyday |
20 | MARK,E,TABLE: nice construction, took me a while to see MARK=notice |
23 | SCRUTINEER: C in (RETURNS,I,E). One who checks that election rules are followed, a job I wouldn’t like to have in Zimbabwe |
26 | LANCELOT: LO in LANCET – guessed from definition and came back to verify that a LANCET is a tall narrow window |
27 | S,EDITION: lovely word, covertly inciting people to rise against authority |
 | |
Down | |
2 | LEONARDO: (A,LORD,ONE)* – this took me far longer than it should, I was looking for a surname, but it’s Da Vinci chap |
4 | TAN,T,A,MOUNT: another sweet construction |
5 | SUMMARY: hmmmm… now I’m having second-thoughts here. I’m taking this to read as SUMMERY reportedly, and the definition being brief. Parsing experts, your opinion please… |
6 | ZEUS: (SUEZ)<= – my last entry and I pored over it for a while, all the way through the alphabet in fact |
8 | BY,THE,WAY (sounds like BUY THE WHEY) |
14 | HOUSE-PROUD: guessed the two parts of the cryptic definition, haven’t come up against this hyphenated word before |
16 | C,AM,I,SOLE: a ladies undershirt usually covering the whole midriff. I made it sound unsexy! |
18 | LIBRETT,O: LIBRETT being (BRITTLE)*, and the book being the word to a play or an opera |
21 | RA,RING |
I raced through this in about 10 mins heading for a PB but I stupidly put “on the way” instead of “by the way” which meant it took me 5 or 10 minutes to fail to get “uneasily” before I did a re-check of the crossing clues and realized my error. Most frustrating.
Tom B.
Then I came here, rather pleased with myself, and found I probably have 5dn wrong having written SUMMARY. I doubt I would have made that mistake on a more difficult day but I was on a roll when I solved it and racing through at speed.
5D: I’m firmly in the SUMMERY camp, although looking out of the window in central London I shouldn’t be.
COD to the prepared salad at 13A, but I can’t seem to find it on Ocado….
I encountered CAMISOLE on two occasions recently, both good ones. I tried writing my own (down) clue and came up with “Scot hoisted one and only one underwear(8)”. Is this passable?
There was some cracking stuff in here. Loved “potato salad” in 13A and the well-worked C+RETURNS I.E. anag at 23A. My COD nom is 1A as it brought back happy memories of when I did more rock climbing than crosswording.
A quick time for me too, just putting the pen down before the clock ticked 6 minutes.
“A, reportedly, B” means ‘reportedly A but actually B’.
“A, reportedly B” means ‘A although reported as B’
As a subjunctive clause in our instance you can’t separate ‘reportedly’ from ‘brief’. So it must be ‘reportedly brief’ => sounds like brief.
[On the other hand, I’ve always assumed that punctuation and rules of grammar are ignored in a cryptic clue. In which case we’re back to “it’s ambiguous”.]
— Vijay
I didn’t think twice about 5; I took the placing of the comma as a steer towards SUMMERY as the answer, though I agree there’s ambiguity. The wordplay for 10 is surely BOLT-ON, not BOLT + ON, justifying “Like” as an indication of adjectival form (which BOLT on its own would not), though oddly enough ‘bolt-on’ is not in COD. I liked the effective simplicity of 27, though I wasn’t convinced by the rather loose definition in 14. Nice puzzle on the whole.
a) the answer is meant to be SUMMERY because of the comma.
b) As Peter says, it’s a mistake, because plainly there is an equally good case to be made for either answer.
Like a spell of good weather, reportedly, brief
could be either SUMMERY or SUMMARY, that implies that ‘Like a spell of good weather, reportedly’ is an adequate homophone indicator. I agree, but I don’t understand why the second comma is then necessary (or desirable) for SUMMARY to be an allowable answer. I prefer definitions not to be highlighted by punctuation or link-words, if this can be avoided.
Tom B.
Unlike GLH I got clematis from the defintion and checking letters (and also as I planted a couple in the garden last month for the first time)
A few easier ones made for a quick start and 26 was last to go in.13 brought a smile. 9.55 today
JohnPMarshall
PS I didn’t come across anybody called MacDuff during my 21 hour stay North of the border.
Clive Tooth
There are 9 “easies” in this one:
12a Dagger seen as knight turned on king (4)
K RIS
16a After arrest, promises to pay in full (7)
COP IOUS
22a Scrape back of Blarney stone (4)
RUB Y. SCRAPE = RUB? Meh.
25a After operation I swallowed painkiller (6)
OP I ATE
3d Small bit of wood that remains after starting fire (10)
MATCHSTICK
7d Weapon from gunsho P I STOL e (6)
PISTOL
15d For whom dismantling (state is par)*? (10)
SEPARATIST
19d Expresses opposition in articles (7)
OBJECTS
24d Run slowly, in vain (4)
IDLE