Solving time : 17:27, though with one mistake. I went through the complete grid a couple of times looking for the mistake and it took me a while to find it, I had completely misparsed 6 down. I bet I’m not the only one caught by this, which may be the natural sequel to the IDOLS/ICONS kerfluffle I hit last time I blogged a daily puzzle.
Quite a bit of tricky stuff besides, and I had written in quite a few entries from definition alone, but going back through the wordplays for the blog everything seems to be in order.
so here we go…
Across | |
---|---|
1 | BEMUSES: BEM(British Empire Medal) then the ends of thE setterS with US inside |
5 | OFFERED: anagram of FEED FOR (Bull is the anagram indicator) |
9 | UPS: P |
10 | LIVE-IN LOVER: 1,VEIN(mood) in LL (middle of feLLow), then OVER(left) |
11 | FOODLESS: OODLES in F’S |
12 | SEABED: DEBATES reversed without the T |
15 | R,ASH |
16 | ROADRUNNER: BROAD without the first letter then RUNNER(shoot) |
19 | SNUB: N in SUB |
22 | THEBAN: BA in THEN |
23 | C,IN,EASTE |
25 | BASMATI RICE: anagram of (ARAB,SEMITIC) |
27 |
|
28 | EMENDED: MEN in two ED’s |
29 | GRANTEE: or GRAN TEE |
Down | |
1 | BLUFFER: double definition |
2 | MISCONSTRUE: CON(study) in MISS, TRUE |
3 | SO,LELY |
4 | SEVASTOPOL: A STOP in LOVES(digs) reversed |
5 | 0,BIT |
6 | FOLDED UP: OLD in FED UP (and not FILLED UP as I wrote in) |
7 | REV: double definition |
8 | DE,RIDER |
13 | BANANA SPLIT: BANANAS, then PL,IT |
14 | IDEALISING: I DEAL,I SING |
17 | LEGAL AID: DIAL A GEL all reversed |
18 | HA,TABLE |
20 | BREATHE: very tricky wordplay – B(book), RE(about) then EH(what)TA(some soldiers) reversed |
21 | GEN,ERA |
24 | FIND: hidden |
26 | SEE(d) |
Thanks for the parsing of BREATHE George. Had me wondering.
14dn was a good laugh though, and 8dn brought to mind the bit of (utterly inaccurate) doggerel that goes:
D’ya wanna know the creeda
Jacques Derrida?
Der ain’t no writer
And der ain’t no reader eider.
Edited at 2013-10-10 04:00 am (UTC)
Ulaca must at least have read a bit from among all “the deconstructionists” (rather than just JD) that says “ignore us” (or words to that effect), or so he claims, and he obviously didn’t ignore that bit.
After a progressive easing in level of difficulty since Saturday’s stinker, I wonder what tomorrow holds.
Edited at 2013-10-10 02:35 am (UTC)
Took about an hour for this one, finishing with SEVASTOPOL from wp.
Couldn’t parse BREATHE or BEMUSES (not heard of BEM), so thanks for explaining those two. All others ok. HATABLE looks odd; ‘hateful’ looks better so went in for a while with a ?.
COD to IDEALISING
All present and correct so the Wile E Coyote pic is just in honour of that pesky ROADRUNNER.
COD .. FOODLESS
That’s, jackkt, for your tireless work fighting the invasion of the spambots.
4dn would have been spelt “Sebastopol” in my day but fortunately I already had the V-checker in place before I got to it.
I seem to be working overtime deleting spam at the moment. One enterprising pest yesterday managed to bypass the “suspicious comment” safety net and tacked the same rubbish onto every blog this month to date.
SEABED where I was thrown by not having an S at the end for a word meaning “argues”
LEGAL AID where I got as far as DIAL A ?E? backwards but couldn’t get past DEB: I needed the cross-reference to force the penny into the slot
IDEALISING LOI and CoD: I just didn’t get the significance of “claims”. I wondered if the clue concept came from the setter’s personal experience of long hours in the chancel, and whether he had his Tex Ritter defence worked out. Incidentally, finding that link also led me to some delicious parodies – worth a look.
Dogless bigtone53. I really must get to the bottom of working this iPhone
No unknowns today other than BEM, which I sort of knew but not well enough to put the (fairly obvious) answer in without checkers.
Does 11ac work? The s in “female’s” seems to be doing double duty as the S in the answer and the shortened “has” in “has got”. Wouldn’t “females have got” be better?
14dn made me chuckle. The people on the train (about nine of whom were within six inches of me) must have thought me a bit soft.
Not sure, OTOH, that it’s much of a clue, TBH.
I was held up at the end by the crossing FOLDED UP, ROADRUNNER and IDEALISING, my LOI. I also didn’t parse BEMUSES and BREATHE so thanks for that, and thanks to Sotira for the Wile E Coyote picture. Meep meep!
Thought 18ac Horsewoman was a wonderful clue – and George has missed it out from his write up!!
The NW corner held me up longest.
All done at a steady pace with care taken over 6 where I was tempted by filled up but could’nt quite justify either WP or def.
Thankfully Sebastopol hadn’t occured to me before I had the V.
Nice puzzle all told.
ref 20D,
The word was obviously breathe, but I parsed it a completely different way.
Remembering the old Cagney gangster films, where the gang members – aka soldiers – would be told to “turn up the heat”, i.e. go and use their “heaters” (guns) to shoot someone/something. I rationalised it as an anagram (indicated by ‘about’) of ‘heater’ after the B for book.
ref the beaut at 14D and z8b8d8k asking the relevance of ‘claims’, it was a (highly successful!) dirty trick by the setter to make me spend ages trying to work out an anagram of ‘claims made’ as soon as I’d got ?d?a???i?? in – e.g. idealacism?????? Kicked myself when I twigged 29A
DNK the expression “indirect anagram”.
Perhaps overly much “lateral thinking” from my many years in mainframe operating system support.
Just have to hope that when the setters read the blog, as we know they do after the brou ha ha over “cotton picking”, that I’ve not invoked a whirlwind!
regards, Keef
have had a quick look, and will delve deeper for further edification, because Wiki has in its entry for Ximenes:-
A good cryptic clue contains three elements:
* a precise definition
* a fair subsidiary indication
* nothing else
which to my way of thinking means the setters ain’t playing by them rules!!!
e.g. the ones that had nearly everyone bogged down in yesterday’s SE
NO-ONE = no precise definition
BEST ain’t precisely PERFECT (best of a bad bunch = took the lowest acceptable)
DIVERT ain’t precisely DELIGHT (AMUSE perhaps)
But, having said that, I do honestly thank you for taking the time to point me to a lesson I obviously need to take on board.
As others have said, your heading is wrong George – it’s puzzle 25,602
Is this a cricket reference again?
I agree that “bull” seems a little dodgy.
I had to join the club here, finally, after the NY Post stopped running the puzzle. (I would never buy the idiotic rag, so had to hope a colleague would or I’d find it in the subway.)
Actually I’d say “we ate all the cakes. Me? No, I just had one”.
Very pleased that bigtone has got his dog back, I missed it: presume he/she is microchipped and could be tracked on the iPhone!
George Clements
As a tyro, so grateful for all the pointers you are kindly passing my way, I’m not going to say anything, other than – be warned…
The Setter appears to have (indirectly) entered the debate……
Times Concise 6218 today (my warm-up before tackling the Cryptic)
2D source of warmth, gun (6) check chars h?a?e?