Solving time: 80 minutes
I suppose it’s inevitable that we will sometimes get a harder one on a Monday, but I would have fancied something a little easier after coming home tired from golf. However, I did chose to go golfing on a blogging day – the weather was so beautiful I could not resist. So it was 7:24 EDT when I set forth, and I banged the last one in at exactly 8:44.
Music: De Falla, Three-Cornered Hat/Turina, Sinfonia Sevillana, Argenta/ONDE
Across | |
---|---|
1 | BACKLASH, BAC(SALK backwards)H. I understood the clue well enough, but could not think of German composer of the right length. Bach is to far, er, back.. |
5 | LIMBER, LIMB + E[xpenses] R[ejected]. Very simple and very hard for me, I spent ages trying to justify ‘nimble’. The setter had me thinking too obliquely. |
10 | FEVER TREE, F(EVER + T[ulip])REE, Having no idea what ‘acacia’, means is a distinct disadvantage, but eventually the cryptic spoke to me. |
11 | CORFU, hidden backwards in [pr]UFROC[k], You could waste hours reversing various garments. |
12 | GNUS, G[ood] N[ational] U[nion of] S[tudents]. No gnus is good gnus! |
13 | FLEETWOOD, FLEET + WOOD, where the Fleet is a river that ran where Fleet Street is now, and a wood is a golf club that is made of graphite and titanium. No allusion to the Caddy or the group, probably because Mick is still alive. |
15 | PERCUSSIVE, anagram of RESCUE VIPS, with a well-hidden literal. |
17 | BELL, as in Alexander Graham. Simple, obvious, and one of my last in. |
19 | Omitted, my first in. |
20 | REASONABLY, anagram of ORLEANS BAY. This classic lift and separate I did manage to spot. |
22 | CUT IT FINE, anagram of FIT IN inside CUTE. One of the easier clues in this one. |
24 | PAIL, PA(I)L. For a long time I hesitated between ‘pair’, which fits the literal, and ‘pain’ which fits the cryptic. Then I tried the alphabet a got it. |
26 | AMOUR, sounds like A MOOR. I was afraid this could also be ‘amore’, so I had to keep an open mind. |
27 | IVY LEAGUE, [l]IVY + LEAGUE, where the literal is only ‘universities’, but seeing ‘class’ makes it easier to jump to the answer. |
28 | EVENLY, E(VEN)LY. I keep forgetting an archdeacon is a Ven, and not a RR or a DD, which slowed me down considerably on this one. |
29 | STRESSED, DESSERTS backwards. The urge to think this must begin with ‘p’ is very strong. |
Down | |
1 | BUFF, double definition which I didn’t see until I had both crossing letters. |
2 | COVENTRY PATMORE, COVENTRY + PA + T[hirty] + MORE. A poet? Hmmmm…..Donne, Blake, Stevens, anyone? |
3 | LARKSPUR, LARKS + PUR[e]. At last, a flower I am familiar with. Any difficulty is in the form, which is plural in sense without a plural ending. |
4 | Omitted, a rather frequently-used clue. |
6 | INCITE, sounds like IN SIGHT, another one where I had the wrong end of the stick, thinking ‘prompt’ was the literal. |
7 | BURN ONE”S BRIDGES, BURN(ONE)S + BRIDGES. I have blogged both these poets before, so anyone who knows it is my night should be expecting them to turn up again! |
8 | ROUNDELAYS, anagram of SOUND + EARLY. I was a bit worried when I got the ‘y’, then realized there was an ‘s’. |
9 | RESERVES RE + SEVRES backwards, not too tough. |
14 | APPRECIATE, double definition, another generous gift from the setter. |
16 | SPECIFIC, SPEC + IF + I C[old]. The use of ‘specific’ as a noun to indicate a drug for a particular disease is rather old-fashioned. |
18 | ONE PIECE, double definition. |
21 | STEROL, S[ober] T[hen} + LORE backwards. I didn’t see that I also had to use the first letter of ‘then’ for the longest time. |
23 | EGYPT, [el]EGY + PT. I didn’t see this until I had all the checkers, and even then stared at it for ten minutes before seeing the obvious. Very clever use of ‘part’. |
25 | LEAD, double definition. |
… never head of Patmore — who famously divorced his wife when she took to wearing his surname on her T-shirt — so lots of difficulty in that area, particularly the Ven. and the alcohol. And had to scratch my head over ‘seconds’ = MORE until the penny dropped.
Ditto one of the other poets, Cavafy; and the fine porcelain. So, all up, a troubled but eventually rewarding solve with lots of ‘hats off’ moments.
As quite often, I solved after getting in from a night at the symphony. Sibelius tonight (Adele Anthony playing the violin concerto rather wonderfully, plus the 2nd symphony). A contrast with the other night when Grieg caused me to notch up a record 5 incorrect answers on the club site in a time so poor that I had to slap a superinjunction on it.
Conclusion:
Sibelius – crossword friendly.
Grieg – crossword kryptonite.
Last in: STRESSED, which I wasn’t.
One in Montreal too, I think.
This took a while, particularly 9d and 23d…did some looking up. Very satisfying
to complete this toughie.
Thanks, vinyl1, for a good blog; I would never have resolved wordplay for EGYPT in particular.
I hope the Bank Holiday explains this being very hard for a Monday and we shall have lighter fare this Friday.
90 minutes with some use of aids.
Other educational note: now I know rondelay is spelt with a U, and Acacia is a) a tree (not a bush or shrub) and b) either causes or cures fever. I did know LARKSPUR.
I took time out trying to justify SPECIFIC, because I thought it was a dd with some unnecessary extra words (“provided with one cold”)
CoD to AMOUR when the penny dropped. Next time, I’m hoping for something about Desdemona.
I urge solvers not to be put off by words they haven’t previously met; it makes clues harder but not necessarily very much harder..
Have you competed at Cheltenham? I think your times (apart perhaps from today’s 😉 could be good enough to put you into the final.
25 minutes to solve thanks to good, clear wordplay. As Jerry says (and as we have bothed blogged on the Club Monthly Puzzle) you don’t need to know words if the wordplay is good enough.
Truely amazed that people have not heard of Jonas Salk and his polio vaccine. Polio was a real killer when I was a child and I well remember both the death of a friend and receiving the injection one day at school
OK, agreed. But then there’s the reverse: cf. 23 down where we know the word “Egypt” but the wordplay is (as you note) akin to the first word of 29ac. And, I’m not sure that all of the wordplay in last month’s (or indeed in this months’s) Club Special was/is that fabulous either. We could take ’em apart over a pint if I were a bit closer.
🙁
Tough but fair puzzle, with lots of unknowns. I managed it all from wordplay though, with the exception of EGYPT, which I got purely on the basis of checking letters and the word “where”. Thanks to vinyl1 for the explanation.
Compliments to the setter. Speaking of Black Betty, COD to REASONABLY, as elegant an anagram as you’ll see.
I thought the clues were good, on the whole, in spite of the obscurities. I liked ‘spring’ for FREE in 10, seconds for MORE in 2. All diverting stuff.
ACACIA is familiar to all Australians (as LARKSPUR seems to be to the British commenters) but still had never heard of a FEVER TREE.
Was very pleased to get an all-correct, albeit in an hour and a half.
This was one (EGYPT was another) that I got before I got the wordplay.
Like many who have offered comments on the subject, I remember polio vaccines. Perhaps it’s my memory playing tricks but I remember the needles used as being huge…and terrifying for a young chap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Fleetwood