19:01 on the Club timer. My initial reaction: after yesterday’s almost non-existent challenge, something much more substantial and challenging. I shall wait to see if other people had a similar experience of what seems to me a classical grid, with everything in alternate rows and columns, i.e. some quite gettable long clues giving a good start, a handful of other very straightforward solutions, but after that, plenty of thinking required to fill in various corners. All in all, an enjoyable puzzle.
Across |
1 |
WING CHAIR – WING(=annex) + [I in CHAR]. |
6 |
CHARM – C + HARM. |
9 |
PUT ONES FOOT DOWN – double/metaphorical def. |
10 |
ROUTER – Reboot + OUTER. |
11 |
ASBESTOS – [BEST(=worst – isn’t English wonderful?),0] in ASS. |
13 |
BEHIND BARS – double/metaphorical def. |
14 |
DOPE – i.e. DO some P.E. |
16 |
CHOP – CHOP=reduce drastically; twice, i.e. CHOP CHOP=hurry up. |
17 |
VIDEO NASTY – Dracula in (SAYIVENOT)*. This answer took me back to my youth at the dawn of the domestic VHS, when a moral panic swept the land inspired by a number of violent films released on video without proper certification. Looking at the list of titles, I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen any of them, then or since, which I like to attribute to my good taste in cinema rather than any squeamishness. |
19 |
STOPOVER – (POTS)rev. + OVER(=on) |
20 |
SHINTO – HINT in SO. |
23 |
AS KEEN AS MUSTARD – (SENSEDKAMASUTRA)*. Nice anagram. |
24 |
HATCH – not sure I’ve seen this before; we often have double definitions, and occasional triple definitions, but this is a quintuple definition! First ever? |
25 |
ENDLESSLY – HERo MANy becomes HER MAN without the ends. |
|
Down |
1 |
WIPER – WIG (presumably?) + PER(=for every). |
2 |
NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT – cryptic def. |
3 |
CANTEENS – TEEN in CANS(studio slang for headphones). |
4 |
ALSO – reversed hidden in nO SLAves. |
5 |
ROOD SCREEN – (ONERECORDS)*. |
6 |
CUTTER – double def. |
7 |
A MONTH OF SUNDAYS – (NOT)* in (HAYDNSFAMOUS)*. Another nice bit of anagramming. |
8 |
MONASTERY – OppositioN in MASTERY. |
12 |
OBLITERATE – OB(old boy) + LITERATE. |
13 |
BACKSLASH – BACK(=”second”) + SLASH(“very much lower” as a verb, as one might do with prices in a sale, say). How familiar you are with the backslash symbol (it’s over there, just to the left of your Z) may well depend on how deeply you’ve probed into the file directories in your computer in the past… |
15 |
UNCHASTE – Horse in (NUTCASE)*. |
18 |
JOSEPH – EP in JOSH. |
21 |
ODDLY – tOlDaDeLaY. |
22 |
AMID – A.M.(morning) I.D.(papers). |
Had both 9ac and 13ac as straight double defs. Nothing cryptic about any of the four defs??
Wondered about JOSH as a noun (18dn) but the various Oxfords support it.
A fair bit of chopping, cutting and slashing in this puzzle. Perhaps trying to encourage Sri Lanka to get their 393 before the close of the final day? (Currently 3/144 at lunch.)
I also went for WIg at 1dn which I think must be right. I wondered about “house” = MONASTERY at 8dn but Chambers supports it.
24 is brilliant but I had only spotted four definitions before reading the blog and I wasn’t familiar with “hatch” (as opposed to “hatchback”) for the car.
A lively and thoroughly enjoyable puzzle helped by the long multi-word answers.
More seriously, fans of Top Gear will have heard constant (nay, tedious) references to “hot hatches”. They once described my old 3-door RAV-4 as “a cross between a hot hatch and a tractor”.
Edited at 2012-12-18 03:46 am (UTC)
Since an insult can be a ‘wipe’ in 18th-century slang, I jumped the gun a bit on 1 down and put in the right answer for the wrong reason without thinking too much.
I had supposed that 24 was only a triple: ‘opening car’, ‘contrived to emerge’, and ‘shade’. It is not too exact a clue.
Edited at 2012-12-18 04:24 am (UTC)
But it seems an exact clue to me:
OPENING like a hatch in a ship
CAR hot hatch
CONTRIVE hatch a plan
EMERGE like chicks
SHADE hatch like hatching, stripey lines
No time, (well several hours on the club timer) since I started it early and then came back to it hours later. I’m in Asia so the crossword appears at breakfast but unfortunately I have to do some work too!
Edited at 2012-12-18 09:14 am (UTC)
I didn’t understand HATCH, so thanks for clearing that one up Tim. I didn’t understand AMID either, and still don’t.
Edited at 2012-12-18 09:56 am (UTC)
My CHAIR was EASY to start with, again with a shrug (annex??), and I wasted time trying to get chill into it somewhere. WIPER cracked it, but that to was accompanied by a shrug, as I ran out of patience trying to think of WI?=rebuke. I suppose it has to be wig.
Good puzzle, even if the long ones didn’t challenge much, but the best clues not fully understood.
Multiple definition clues appear in Mephisto land from time to time. The larger the number of definitions the more one needs checkers to solve the clue. Here, at 24A I needed all three H-T-H to see “opening” as a definition for HATCH, then “shade” at the other end of the clue, then a full understanding.
As to the price, if it remains at the same level as my current subscription, it will be £24.99 per year.
Thanks,
Thoughtful in London
2 (also daily help) British, dated a woman who is employed to clean someone else’s house each day.
Thoughtful in London
12:38 for me. The mixture of clues I found quite easy and clues I made heavy weather of was very similar to Monday’s puzzle, but this one took me well over twice as long. I made particularly heavy weather of 13dn, convinced that the answer was going to be some piece of hardware, with BACKPLATE the obvious candidate (which I kept going back to despite continued failure to justify it).