An interesting 30 minutes. Lots of space filled in very quickly, but a dreadfully drawn-out death thanks in large part to a couple of words with checking letters that weren’t giving too much away. One of those where I was left thinking that it seemed easier than the clock says it turned out to be; which I think must be to the credit of the setter. Q0-E7-D7
| Across |
| 1 |
SAPPED – last one in: I spent ages thinking it must be SAD containing something, and trying to fit in a meal or a river before realising it’s the Oxford-established “modern Greats” course of P(olitics) P(hilosophy) & E(conomics). The list of graduates includes many Parliamentarians who must have missed the tutorial where they discussed the morality of fiddling your expenses. I also toyed with the possibility that it was NAPPED – (AND)* round PPE – but while an exhausted person might take a nap, napped doesn’t = exhausted. |
| 9 |
REFRACTORY – REF + ACTOR in R(ailwa)Y |
| 11 |
SHERLOCK – E(A)RL in SHOCK. Not sure I like the familiarity of first name only, but it’s hardly one which could cause confusion over which Sherlock was meant. I’ve always thought that if it wasn’t anachronistic, I could quite easily see Holmes devoting himself to a three-pipe Mephisto. |
| 12 |
POPLAR – POP(U)LAR is a part of East London which has been popular in clues of this sort since time immemorial. |
| 13 |
IBID – “I BID” (for a lot at auction) – from the Latin ibidem, meaning, quite literally, “in the same place”; generally used in footnotes and other textual references |
| 15 |
NICENESS – NICENE + S(aint)S; not sure I could have named very many more creeds other than this one. |
| 18 |
LONE WOLF – (FELLOWNO)* This must have been used before, but I liked it. |
| 21 |
VILLON – VI + LL + ON is a very simple clue structure, possibly to compensate for the obscurity of the subject of it. Though he did write “Ou sont les neiges d’antan”…even if nobody ever knows that it was him. |
| 26 |
OPEN SESAME – (POEMASSEEN)* very neat, of course, because the origin of the phrase was the 1,001 Nights, or something very similar, which involved translation in the non-crossword sense. |
| 27 |
FLINDERS – L(ake) in FINDERS, who are of course, Keepers; the man without whom we might be playing for the Ashes against Terra Australis. |
| 28 |
ELYTRA – rev in p(ARTYLE)ader; I didn’t know this term but deduced its existence fairly confidently once I had the Y. |
| |
| Down |
| 2 |
ALEPH – ALE + P(ublic) H(ouse): the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, of which Beth is the second. I think it’s generally agreed that all Greek letters are fair game in The Times, but I’m not sure how many more Hebrew ones would be considered in a clue other than those two: YOD rings a bell, but I may be wrong. |
| 4 |
DOCTOR – double def., to Spike a drink (does it get the capital mid-sentence because Doctor would? Fine by me), and, as short for Sawbones, an old nickname for a medical man. As one of many little asides, however, the new Star Trek film offers an alternative explanation of how Dr McCoy became known as “Bones” to Captain Kirk. |
| 5 |
STOCKING FILLERS – good definition which had me convinced these pins were the “sticking” kind for a good while… |
| 6 |
FLYSPECK – (SPY)* in FLECK |
| 8 |
REHEARSAL – HEARS in REAL: “show trial” is another very good definition in my book. |
| 16 |
NEW JERSEY – you buy a new jersey, you extend your wardrobe: I started out looking for “press”, which is a common synonym when there’s a wardrobe in the clue. |
| 20 |
PARSEE – “close to tears” is excellently misleading, it’s the end of tears, of course, and thus S in PAREE. While there are lots of cultural references to “Gay Paree” from the 1920s onward, I can’t find a definitive explanation of how the phrase began. |
| 22 |
LAY ON – as in “lay on” dinner and as in “Lay on, Macduff, And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!'” |
ELYTRA and ALEPH seem to make periodic appearances in Mephisto (ALEPH just recently).
I remember wading through Villon’s “Testament” at university (“En trentieme an de mon age…” etc) but absolutely nothing about the work. But I do recall that in “Archy and Mehitabel”, Mehitabel takes up with a disreputable Apache of a tom-cat in Paris who turns out to be the reincarnation of Villon.
I got there in the end without aids but would have needed them to explain some of the clues, 1a for example, and I didn’t really know ELYTRA or VILLON.
Last in were DOCTOR, having finally cracked 9a and obtained the last checking letter, and PARSEE.
A good testing puzzle but I think if I had books to hand I might have been tempted to confirm some of my guesses whilst still solving in order to reduce the options for the intersecting clues.
Luckily I got S-FILLER quite quickly from the S of SOFTWARE and the K of SHERLOCK. APP is quite a well known abbreviation I think for the politics course. I knew ELYTRA and ALEPH from Mephisto but not the Macbeth quote nor FLYSPECK which I derived from wordplay and the F?Y checking letters.
I particularly like LONE WOLF and OPEN SESAME
Missing (with my answers/guesses or blanks)
5ac software
10ac echo (weird ist letter sequence?)
19ac wall (w = with?)
23ac leave off
25ac I spy (why I spy?)
3dn ?
7dn whelp
14dn?
17dn round one
24dn femur
5ac SOFTWARE: “plastic” is a slightly dubious but not uncommon anagram indicator.
10ac ECHO: “Trace” is the definition, “call” gives HO and EC are the “heads of Eton College”.
19ac WALL: yes, “with” abbreviates to W; Collins defines WALL as “(Mountaineering) a vertical or almost vertical smooth rock face”.
23ac LEAVE OFF: “holiday” is LEAVE (the noun), and the definition is “Quit” (as in “Quit complaining”).
25ac I-SPY: “One’s” gives I (Roman numeral) + ‘S, and “artless party” gives P[art]Y.
3dn PARTRIDGE (to be read as plural, as in game birds): the definition is “Game”, “not all” gives PART, and a RIDGE is high ground.
7dn WHELP: “wonderful at first” = W.
14dn BIODIESEL: anagram of “beside oil”.
17dn ROUND ONE: one’s armour should be “round [or around or about] one”.
24dn FEMUR: FE is “iron”, RUM is “odd” (dated slang), and “flipping” indicates reversal.
The last to go in was NICENIST (15ac), a wrong guess. I couldn’t justify the second NI, but thought it must somehow be a saint. Having seen the answer, I wish to register a complaint: what the Flinders was “This” doing there? Pretty much the only thing that “this” can refer to in a clue is the answer. The only exceptions I can think of are contextual references (“this country”, “this language”, “this type of clue”, “this person”), but “This creed” obviously doesn’t yield NICENE on contextual grounds.
Clues of the Day: 9ac (REFRACTORY), 16dn (NEW JERSEY), 20dn (PARSEE).
I’d agree with REFRACTORY as COD, one of my last to go in.
And I wouldn’t say “this creed” defines “Nicene”, any more than “this republic” defines “banana”.
Edited at 2009-05-12 03:57 pm (UTC)
As the rest of the clues seem good enough to raise no objections, I think some “forgiveness of sins” is in order for a single transgression.
As for Sherlock, this is a general slang term for a detective, and not just a reference to a particular character.
I found this puzzle quite enjoyable, doing it on and off over a couple of hours. Last in was ‘sapped’, which I had wanted to put in for a long time but didn’t understand until I read the blog.
I was also misled by ‘this’ creed. ELYTRA was a new word and I though REFRACTORY was somewhere where telescopes were kept.
Tom B.
I even tried everybody’s kind advice on trial and error on individual letters, checking the checked letters, etc etc, but in this case I think it was just a hard slog. VILLON I never heard of so it went last as a matter of “it had to be” – had previously had VILIAR (rail backwards) VIRYDE, VIFRRY, and VIRFRY as possibilities…..
Spike is a common name for a dog. This perhaps obvious fact wasn’t clear from your comment.