Solving time:38 minutes
This puzzle might have been quite easy for some, but for me it involved deducing a complicated compound word I had never heard of before from the cryptic. That, and not seeing another cryptic properly, slowed me down at the end.
Music: Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherezade, Kondrashin/Concertgebouw
Across | |
---|---|
1 | BACKCOMB. BACK + CO MB. I solved this from the cryptic, and only then realized in what sense ‘tease’ was meant. Hasty solvers might guess at ‘backbite’ or ‘backchat’, neither of which fit the cryptic. |
5 | OBOIST, OB(O[ld])I(S[entence])T. A player who certainly has plenty to do in tonight’s music, particularly at the beginning of the second movement. |
9 | OBITUARY, cryptic definition, but I wasn’t fooled for long. |
10 | PLACID, PLA(C[eilidh])ID, also a lake in upstate New York. |
12 | METAPHYSICIAN, MET A PHYSICIAN, where detailed knowledge of Edward Jenner’s life and accomplishments is only a hindrance. |
15 | TRACT, sounds like TRACKED. My last in, one that gave me great difficulty because I did not take the cryptic to indicate the whole phrase ‘found after search, say’. A ‘tract’ is probably a part of some sort of body in some sense in some dictionary somewhere. |
16 | ORIGINATE, anagram of GRIN I inside anagram of A TOE. |
17 | COSMOLOGY, CO’S + anagram of GLOOMY. |
19 | CHIMP, CHI from 2 across + MP, a clue in which an ape and a politician are closely joined. |
20 | UNCONDITIONAL, UN + CONDITION + AL, which is Alabama (Alaska is AK). |
22 | LEEWAY, WEE backwards in LAY. The literal is well-hidden in ‘play’, and the song is not ‘lied’, and ‘yaw’ backwards has nothing to do with it. |
23 | FINALIST, F IN A LIST. |
25 | BETIDE, B([ex]ET[er])IDE. A easily clued word with an easily hidden literal. |
26 | TYROLEAN, TYRO, LEAN. A clever clue that I found amusing. |
Down | |
1 | BROOMSTICK, cryptic definition. I thought of Hank Williams’ song ‘Nobody’s Lonesome for Me’. |
2 | Omitted! |
3 | CRUMPET, CRU(MP)ET, where MP is ‘mezzo piano’, presumably. You don’t often see a cruet nowadays, but they used to be common in cheap restaurants. |
4 | MERRY-GO-ROUND, MERRY + anagram of GOOD RUN. Most solvers will just put in the answer from the enumeration. |
6 | BELLINI, triple cryptic definition. Vincenzo Bellini was the composer, Giovanni, Jacopo, Gentile or Filippo Bellini was the painter. |
7 | INCANTATION, INCAN + TATI + O[verblow]N. I would like to thank my internet buddy ‘guiller’ in audiokarma.org, for being such a Tati fan that he uses pics from Tati’s films for his avatar – otherwise, I never would have heard of him. |
8 | TIDY, double definition, as in a tidy sum of money. |
11 | NIMINY-PIMINY. 1 MIN backwards + NY, PI MI + NY. This is the one that I had never heard of, and had to build up from the cryptic. I got the ‘piminy’ part first, and realized this was probably a rhyming expression, ruling out ‘mitiny-piminy’. It did take me quite a while to get it. |
13 | TRANSLUCENT, anagram of CUT LANTERNS, a starter clue for most solvers. |
14 | NEAPOLITAN, anagram of TO AN ALPINE. The trick is seeing that it is an anagram, which did take me a while. |
18 | Omitted, another hoary chestnut. |
19 | CHICAGO, C(HIC)A + GO, where ‘about’ = ‘ca’, since ‘turn’ must indicate ‘go’, and not ‘a go’. |
21 | CLUB, double definition. Mine is a 12-degree Ping Rapture 2, which actually worked fairly well today. |
24 | IRE, [e]IRE. Just about the easiest possible letter removal clue. |
The inventor in 6dn is BELL (… in 1); though I did write BERN (…in 1) at first!
The Greek equivalents are ‘houtos’ and ‘ekeinos’, but I’m not expecting to see them any time soon.
I thought I knew most of Hank Williams’ output (I even know his Luke the Drifter stuff) but either the one mentioned in the blog has passed me by or I’m one step closer to senility than I had realised.
I don’t care if she come riding in on a broom….
I wouldn’t care if she came riding in on a broom” ….
…so sang Hank Williams.
Darryl
Francesca da Rimini
Niminy-piminy
Je ne sais quoi young man.
And Byron evidently summed up Leigh Hunt’s ‘Story of Rimini’ thus:
O crimini!
What a nimini-pimini
Story of Rimini!
28 minutes; like Jackkt, I could have saved time by giving TRACT a chance when I first thought of it; ditto for CHICAGO, which I abandoned for a hopeless spell with Cartago.
NIMINY-PIMINY went straight in: I remembered the struggle the last time.
I had METAPHYSICIST for a while, having never heard of Jenner. “Tyro” was new to me. I was also convinced 19dn was going to be a “classical city” until I had all the checkers.
No real problems today, except for the ridiculous-sounding NIMINY-PIMINY, which seemed to take an age at the end.
I’d not heard of TYRO before, but it had to be that.
Cod: LEEWAY, for the well disguised definition.
Stuart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJWHpDqC_-E
I also wondered what, apart from giving a semblance of surface to a rather contrived footie clue, “from” was doing in 16. Kick off clearly means originate, but unless it’s developed an adjectival form recently, “from kick off” doesn’t: that would be original, I think.
Otherwise a cut above an “Easy Monday”, with CoD to CHICAGO and a mention (just to show I can appreciate the odd CD) to OBITUARY – wry smile time.
I also wondered at first how “on” became “in” in 23ac, but that was just me being dense.
COED: A major passage in the body…
Collins: a) A system of organs, glands or other tissues that has a particular function. b) A bundle of nerve fibres…
OK, the T_A_T doesn’t give anything else that matches the wordplay, but part of body? Heart, arm, hair, anything like that. Digestive tract, glandular system, okay. Tract on its own?
COED Tract: A major passage in the body… Yep, OK, but suppose we took the key word “passage”. Is that a “part of body”? Again, not unless it’s qualified with an adjective, though I’m not sure I want to do that!
I think you’re right but on the other hand the clue didn’t give me much trouble once I had T_A_T, so if we’re being pragmatic (why on earth would we do that?) it seems OK to me.
Darryl
Enigma
Like others struggled with TRACT but recalled the silly long one from previous exposure.
Goodness me. After folk not knowing the father of modern physics today we have people not knowing the father of immunology. The guy invented vaccination by studying small pox – just give a moments thought to how many lives he has saved – including your own.
I thought the CDs at 9ac and 1dn were a bit weak, and to put an exclam at the end (as in 1dn) doesn’t make it a better one. If we must have these wretched things — and The Times is increasingly having them it seems — then at least please can we have good ones.
Very uncomfortable with ‘From kick off’ = ‘originate’ in 16ac, but as said above it’s just about OK if you read it as ‘From a word meaning ‘kick off’, you get …’
I still thought the wordplay made it a close contestant for CoD, but it lost out in the semis.