Solving time 20 minutes
A straightforward enough puzzle with some good wordplays but lacking any clever or really misleading definitions. The old sailing ship may not be so well known but other than that it’s common vocabulary.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | PETER,PAN – safe=PETER; hammer=criticize strongly=PAN (Torres first performance at The Bridge?); |
9 | AIREDALE – (p)AIRED-sounds like “ail”; |
10 | GULP – cake (of tobacco)=PLUG then reverse it; reaction to Torres transfer perhaps; |
11 | ROLLING,STOCK – loaded=drunk=ROLLING; animals=STOCK; |
13 | PASSED – (spades)*; bridge terminology; |
14 | INDIAMAN – IN-DIAMAN(te); a merchant ship used on the East Indian trade routes; |
15 | SECTION – SEC(re)TION; |
16 | JOINTER – (in jet or)*; a type of woodworking plane; |
20 | ALHAMBRA – A-L(H)AM-BRA; supporter=BRA; end of match=H; strike=LAM; amazing palace at Granada, Spain; |
22 | THEBAN – (conten)T-HE-BAN; high explosive=HE; |
23 | STINKING,RICH – STINKING-RI-CH; high=rotting=STINKING; church=CH; religious instruction=RI; overpaid footballers? |
25 | IONA – A-NO-I all reversed; number=NO; island=I; |
26 | OVERSEER – O-(severe)*-R; |
27 | SET,ASIDE – SET-A-SIDE; ready=SET; 1st XI=A-SIDE; |
Down | |
2 | EQUIPAGE – E(QU)I-PAGE; that’s=IE; a carriage; |
3 | EXPRESS,TRAIN – EX(PRESS)TRA-IN; crowd=PRESS; more=EXTRA; popular=IN; |
4 | PALLADIO – P(ALL)AD-I-O; place to live=PAD; Andrea Palladio 1508-1580 very famous Venecian architect; |
5 | NAMIBIA – I-MAN reversed-BIA(s); |
6 | BRIGID – B(RIG)ID; Celtic name; |
7 | TACO – TA-CO(ok); (territorial) army=TA; Mexican pancake with a meat filling; |
8 | RECKONER – two meanings; used to add up striker’s wages; |
12 | TRAINEESHIPS – (in Paris these)*; |
15 | SNAPSHOT – or SNAP-SHOT; striker=over paid, over valued, footballer employed to score goals and sulk (mentioning no names); |
17 | OUTRIGHT – sounds like “out write” (you are allowed to groan); |
18 | EXAMINED – EX-A(MINE)D; old=EX; bill=advertisement=AD; |
19 | BANGERS – (old) crate=old car=BANGER; |
21 | BLIMEY – B-LIMEY; book=B; the definition is “my”; corruption of old oath “God blind me”; reaction to Torres transfer down the Old Kent Road; |
24 | IDEA – hidden (m)-I-(d)-D-(l)-E-(m)-A-(n); |
Now for the puzzle. 41 minutes and sold the dummy by several very smooth surfaces. Read ’em: only 4dn sounds a bit “crosswordy”. Sabine used to say she could avoid looking at the surfaces altogether. Wish I had that Zen-like capacity and, as one-who-would-dare-to-set, I tend to admire from afar. Model puzzle in that respect.
Accordingly, the “Palace supporter” (!) — not mentionable re football Jimbo? — gets my COD if only because it’s the first non-muffled-titter rehearsal of “supporter” => BRA I’ve seen recently. (A genuine lift-and-separate!)
Vocab: there may also be passes on ‘Palladio’ and ‘equipage’ (in this sense). The fact that the latter does in fact have attendants is yet another example of the tip-top surfaces today.
Edited at 2011-02-08 09:29 am (UTC)
Apart from this, I thought this was a true challenge, and I think Jimbo’s time is impressive – I got to the position above in about 25 minutes. Excellent surfaces and misdirections, lots of the sort of humour that makes the Times a joy, and for me, loaded with PDM’s.
CoD could go anywhere: PASSED for simplicity, perhaps, but today for me, STINKING RICH for the delicious High Church.
This is a puzzle that will sort the sheep from the goats. I found it really difficult.
INDIAMAN, JOINTER and PALLADIO were unknown to me, but I was slowed down as much by what I thought were some very cunning clues. I don’t tend to notice surfaces as I solve but I got fooled time and again. The NW was last to fall, and although I could see that GULP and SECTION must be the answers I couldn’t for the life of me work out why. I never did see why plug = cake.
Before that I was held up for ages in the SE trying to find a word meaning “most prolific” or “most prolific writer” ending IEST for 17dn (WORDIEST was an early conjecture) and to fit an O and N (citizen finally) into 22ac.
I wonder if anyone else did what I did and started confidently writing APPRENTICESHIP in at 12dn after one glance at the anagram fodder.
Quality stuff, thanks setter.
What I was trying to say was that this puzzle is very difficult in a way the real sheep (like Jimbo) will not even notice while we goats struggle.
Challenging, to say the least.
Mea culpa – in yesterday’s puzzle some incubus made me put an O in reptilian, utterly fail to see it, and compound the error by complaining about the scoring… First grandchild arriving overnight – an excuse with very limited shelf life. Very sorry for the fuss and compliments to the setter – lovely clue. And thanks for the undeserved kind responses.
caught napping by BLIMEY which gets my cod
Similarly with SNAPSHOT: I still can’t see why snap should mean striker. So toyed with HEADSHOT and once doubt set in, what began as a very straightforward solve took forever.
Thanks to Jimbo for the explanation of SECTION: that was another one that gave rise to doubts.
Quite a few neat, concise clues; particularly liked BLIMEY. So any shortcomings were all mine and I shall dispel my grumpiness by listening to Tarrega’s Recuerdos de la ALHAMBRA.
My excuse is that I’m not a fan of Mexican food, but I won’t dwell on that just in case the Mexican Ambassador’s reading this.
So call me a goat (I’ve been called worse). As pointed out above, goats are a whole lot smarter than sheep, even if their likely response to a Times crossword would be to eat it. Come to think of it, that’s a more sensible response that spending half an hour trying to solve it.
Sheep or goat, I’m about to admit I was done in by a different clue.
JOINTER was a not a word I knew, but looked right and I pressed submit before I had worked out the wordplay on SECTION.
As my dad is very fond of saying to me, grandchildren are fantastic – kids you can give back!
Like Sotira I was looking for an F to subtract from something in 7 but only twigged that it was a case of subtracting OK when running through a mental menu of foreign muck. Thankfully taco was in with the starters.
I liked blimey, rolling stock and Peter Pan. I’m surprised I haven’t come across play safe used like that before
The good news is that in doing penance for this sin of ignorance and sloppiness I discovered some really cool stuff.
Other than the SE, the puzzle was not that hard. I had heard of ‘Alhambra’ from the Spanish record label, and ‘indiaman’ from 18th century history.