28:08 on the Club timer. Sometimes you find yourself absolutely in tune with a puzzle, and can hardly write the answers in fast enough; other times you realise you’re just not on the setter’s wavelength, and everything’s a struggle. Today was one of the latter, ending with me staring blankly at the 4dn / 10ac interchange for what seemed like a very long time. Even allowing for the tendency to take longer over blog puzzles, the net result is that I felt vaguely unsatisfied, but as always I can’t put my finger precisely on why one crossword should click when another one simply doesn’t.
On reflection after blogging, this doesn’t seem like anything really out of the ordinary: no gimme, but not a real monster either. Was it more tricky than I first thought, or was I just making heavy weather of an averagely difficult challenge? As always, I await the judgement of others…
Across | |
---|---|
1 |
SUPPLIANT – SUP(=drink) + [1 in PLAN] +T |
6 |
PETRI – PETRI |
9 |
GROAT – O |
10 |
RINGTONES – (STORINGNE |
11 |
YOU NEVER CAN TELL – (EVENTUALLYONCER |
13 | PLEASING – PLEA(=prayer) + SING(=hymn). |
14 |
SAMPLE – PL |
16 |
TRAVEL – V |
18 | FORGET IT – FORGE(=fabricate) TIT. i.e. the canonical epistle from St Paul to Titus |
21 | NOTWITHSTANDING – WITHSTAND in NOTING. |
23 | INDECORUM – COR in (NUDEIM)*. |
25 | ACTON – (NOT CA.)rev. The statesman is now most famous for his often-quoted (or misquoted, or vaguely papraphrased) epigram “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” |
26 |
SCOLD – S |
27 | BARTENDER – [A RT.] in BENDER &lit. |
Down | |
1 | SAGGY – G.G. in SAY. |
2 | PROTUBERANT – PRO(=expert) + TUBE(transport system) RANT(tirade). |
3 |
LATHERS – |
4 | ADRIENNE – [DR. I.E.] in (Queen) ANNE. As with 10ac, I probably feel annoyed by my long stare, but I think I’ve previously put it on record that I don’t really like definitions along the line of “Girl’s name”. |
5 | TENACE – 10+ACE; in card games, a tenace is a pair of high cards which aren’t sequential, such as Ace, Queen, or, as here, King, Jack. |
6 | PETUNIA – [TUN,1] in PEA. |
7 |
TON – TO N |
8 |
INSOLVENT – V |
12 |
EXPATRIATED – R |
13 | PUT ON AIRS – cryptic def. where AIRS=what DJs these days might call “banging tunes”. |
15 |
MORTIMER – M |
17 | EVINCED – VIN in E.C., + ED. |
19 | GUNWALE – U(=”classy”) in (WANGLE)*. |
20 |
CHERUB – |
22 | GONER – GrOwNwEaRy. |
24 | DZO – ariDZOne. Tibetan pack animal which will be familiar to anyone who knows the Scrabble words which are handy for disposing of an unwanted Z in your rack. |
Edited at 2013-01-15 01:58 am (UTC)
Edited at 2013-01-15 11:01 pm (UTC)
I think part of the problem was having so many vague definitions (Female, Flower, Scientist, English statesman) that force one to unravel the wordplay. I might have said the same about ‘Play’ at 11ac except that was my second answer to go in and I spotted it from only the Y checker and the enumeration.
Didn’t know DZO nor its (apparently) more usual spelling ZO.
Edited at 2013-01-15 02:11 am (UTC)
I agree with Tim, this was a clumsy puzzle that wrinkled the brow, although I am not able to put my finger on what was so hard. My time was about an hour, not very good even by my standards.
COD to the noble statesman, a clue that kept me guessing for quite a while, yet was simple and elegant.
Prefer Chuck Berry’s version of 11ac.
And clear COD to RINGTONES. “Mobile” marking the anagram was brilliant.
Number Ten very loudly defends ally hacking leader’s mobile (3-4)
http://discussion.guardian.co.uk/comment-permalink/16300954
Answer: fly-half
Rob
TENACE, TON and DZO all hit-and-hopes for me.
COD to TON. Would ‘trains from Euston’ be TOH, I wonder?
PUT ON AIRS took longest, partly because I didn’t detach the “be” properly, so was looking for the sartorial kind of DJ.
The flower and the scientist were tricky. Too many flowers end -ia, and not enough scientists end -i (Fermi was also my first guess).
Since I now play more Words with Friends than Scrabble, it was nice to revisit DZO, which the former doesn’t allow. Zo doesn’t work either.
Good to have a queen that wasn’t ER.
Edited at 2013-01-15 09:39 am (UTC)
DZO (and its many variants) is essential Scrabble knowledge.
The reference to John Mortimer reminds me of seeing Sir Derek Jacobi a few years back in A Voyage Round My Father, a most enjoyable performance and worth mentioning here as Sir Derek is very keen on cryptic crosswords too.
(Not my favourite topic right now.)
TENACE is a gift to bridge players who are used to calculating the odds of finessing through one. Good to see PETRI who I don’t recall appearing before. Thought RINGTONES was very good – lift and separate folks!!!
I now see I got one wrong, having entered ALTON instead of ACTON for 25 (NOT LA<).
Nice clues, particularly in the definition, proud, in 2, and the container element, berths.
Tenace rang a vague bell and a little Googlage showns it coming up in 23907 in March 2008.
What made it a tricky puzzle for me was the setter’s care in making the precise wordplay far from easy to spot.
F’rinstance, at 19 I wanted to put “classy” inside a part of a boat to get “craftily wangle”, at 8 I wanted to put “very rude” around “exhibiting”, at 25 I wanted to put E for english, then reverse a statesman to get somewhere oher than at California and at 6d it looked like you started with the large container and just put the I in the green.
Ah well, there’s always tomorrow.
Thought Bartender was a fantastic clue.
But that’s my fault, and I raise my hat to the setter for producing a puzzle so full of goodies (even though some of the clues – to TENACE, INSOLVENT and EXPATRIATED, for example – had a decidedly familiar ring about them). I particularly liked the clues to RINGTONES and MORTIMER.
On reflection, I’m being very unfair about the clue to INSOLVENT. V in INSOLENT has been used many times, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done anything like as cleverly. In fact I’m going to choose that as my COD.
Edited at 2013-01-15 10:56 pm (UTC)