Solving time: 48 minutes
This was a rather frustrating puzzle. Although I was, after a little thought, able to write in the correct answers, many of them came from either the cryptic or the literal, but not both. In some cases, I still don’t follow how the clue is constructed, so we may require a little audience participation tonight.
Music: Brahms, Double Concerto, Ferras/Tortelier/Kletzki
Across | |
---|---|
1 | RAINBOW, R(A + IN + B)OW, where I tried to work in ‘rely’, but this bank is just a tier. |
5 | BLISTER, B + LISTER, a particular surgeon, so lift-and-place is a must. |
9 | UNSIGHTLY, U + N(S[tudents’])IGHTLY. |
10 | COURT, C(O)URT, and not a shortened word as I first thought. |
11 | EDICT, PR, proportional representation, removed from PREDICT. A very hard cryptic to see, although the answer is obvious once you get the crossers. |
12 | HAIR SHIRT, HAIR + R[eligious] in anagram of THIS. Mentioning a ‘religious leader’ bring this sort of garment to mind, so not a good clue, IMHO. |
14 | FEEL-GOOD FACTOR, double definition, one contrived. I struggled with this, having difficulty come up with the correct synonym for ‘land-agent’, although the construction was perfectly obvious. |
17 | APPRENTICESHIP, where IN DENTURES sounds like INDENTURES and the result is a cryptic definition. |
21 | POTPOURRI, anagram of UP PRIOR TO. |
23 | MACHO, MA(CH)O, our old friend the Companion of Honour. I got it into my head this must end in ‘y’, but saw it at once as soon as I gave up that notion. |
24 | PANGA, PANG + A, a bit of a guess for me. The term for a fishing boat is derived from this African knife. |
25 | SHELL-LIKE, SHE’LL LIKE. A very obscure expression for ‘ear’ that I just put in from the cryptic. Maybe not obscure to you? |
26 | REALIST, RE + A + LI(S)E, where it is essential to separate ‘a’ from ‘shilling’. |
27 | ENDLESS, double definition, one jocular – after all, The Ring fits on only 19 LPs! |
Down | |
1 | ROUTED, R + OUTED, my first in, and probably yours too. |
2 | INSPIRE, IN S(P)IRE, where the literal is a bit loose but passable. |
3 | BAGATELLE, B(A GAT)ELLE. A 17th-century table game as well as a general term for frivolity and fun. |
4 | WITCH DOCTOR, W + ITCH + DOCTOR, such as Dr. Who. DOCTOR ‘understands women’s yen’ in the sense of ‘stands under women’s yen’. A hopelessly convoluted cryptic for an answer 99.9% of solvers will write in from the literal. |
5 | BAY, B[-o+A]Y. A very simple letter-substitution clue that still detained me a bit. |
6 | INCAS, IN CAS[e]. Another one where the literal renders the cryptic nugatory. |
7 | TOURIST, TO(UR IS)T. |
8 | ROTATORY, A TOR upside down + T + [h]O[u]R[l]Y. |
13 | INDO-CHINESE, anagram of DON + HIS NIECE. A rather dubious ethnicity, but undoubtedly justified by reference works. |
15 | ASSEMBLED A + MESS upside down + B(L)ED. |
16 | BAGPIPER, B[-i+A]G P[-a+I]PER. A rather clever letter-swapping clue, I thought. |
18 | PETUNIA, P + anagram of AUNTIE. |
19 | INCLINE, IN (C) LINE, where ‘dressed’ is the military term for ‘arranged masses of men’. |
20 |
|
22 | OMANI, [w]OMAN + I[sland]. Another cryptic I just cracked for the blog, since the literal is sufficient while solving. |
25 | SUE, double definition. |
Edited at 2013-11-25 02:58 am (UTC)
Liked the “at regular intervals” in 9ac which didn’t signal odd or even letters for a change. 17ac seems a bit odd with all those plurals in the clue and a singular in the answer.
Don’t think I’d class 14ac as a double def. There’s a cryptic (three rough synonyms) and a literal.
10ac: Foolishly??
Last of all: I must query the literal in 16dn. Din-maker?
Meantime,mwhat started with four or five easy-in easy-parse, I soon found many obvious answers I couldn’t parse. That led to sloppiness, eg, Hoop Skirts, and grinding to a halt.
No problems with SHELL-LIKE but PANGA was unknown.
Had ‘eternal’ for ENDLESS for a little while which held up the SE.
Surprised you feel SHELL-LIKE is obscure… have often heard the expression ‘a word in your shell-like…’ said in a slightly menacing cockney accent, from a film maybe?
PANGA unknown, but easily gettable.
Also, you have a typo at 26ac *just saying*
I’m no cockney, but SHELL-LIKE was familiar to me from Minder. In fact I used it just recently in a conversation with ‘er indoors.
I agree with vinyl’s comment: there was some pretty clever wordplay on display here, undermined by some pretty obvious definitions. UNSIGHTLY, WITCH DOCTOR, ASSEMBLE to name but three. The only way that slows you down is that it prompts over-hasty entry: I essayed MANLY for MACHO and, like Janie, ETERNAL for ENDLESS – in the latter case, it would stand well enough as an answer in another puzzle.
Indentures is (are) usually plural for apprenticeships, but yes, I was slightly discomforted to run out of space for the final S
I can never see POTPOURRI without thinking of Rev Ian Paisley, who apparently didn’t want any. Sorry.
Have to limit the gloating though, in light of the news about Trott. Even we nasty Aussies wish him a full and speedy recovery.
Agree with z8 about the cricket, especially as Trott is on his way home.
Bagpipes are OK outdoors. Memories of playing the 18th at Turnberry on a balmy summer evening with a piper on the terrace, magnificent.
Agree on the cricket front with bigtone and z8, and IMO M Clarke should be fined 100% not 20%, but liked the Spurs result, being an Arsenalite.
Probably should consider fining the stump mike operator though!
(I had the idea that a ‘pan-paper’ would be bulky, being all-inclusive: dunno why the right solution didn’t come to mind – perhaps the INCAS were to blame.)
I must have been very much on the setter’s wavelength because I found this to be the proverbial top-to-bottom solve, although I do admit that I only saw the wordplay for EDICT post-solve.
I didn’t like the definition at 10ac. Courting (like flirting) is only foolish when it’s with disaster: the foolishness is in the combination. But it’s in Collins so my disagreement is with them, rather than the setter.
I didn’t understand 4dn at all, so thanks for the explanation. I convinced myself that the construction involved a homophone for “which”, so I was never going to see it.
I couldn’t help noticing a somewhat ruder alternative for the wordplay in 12ac.
Edited at 2013-11-25 11:03 am (UTC)
Edited at 2013-11-25 11:13 am (UTC)
I wasn’t keen on 16 since there are two articles, each to be replaced by one, which is not indicated by the clue. I spent some time wondering why bag paper was bulky.
Mind you, as a third and final “also”, I’m another who was feeling lucky as they went about today’s puzzle: having initially tried and failed to buy Monty Python tickets, which apparently sold out in 45 seconds, I thought that was it, until the 02 website offered me an alternative date, and revealed four extra shows, so it seems I have got in after all.
Edited at 2013-11-25 12:48 pm (UTC)
Result on MPFC tix Tim!
Cheers
CG
Some very nice surfaces. HAIR SHIRT my favourite (I liked it for the same reason vinyl1 didn’t!).
BOREAS was my LOI, as I didn’t know the word; “Borealis” (as in the famed aurora) convinced my linguistically bereft brain that “Boreas” was a plausible name for something northern. PANGA was also a bit of a stab in the proverbial – one of those words I thought I knew, but wasn’t sure how I knew. In contrast, many of the others just wrote themselves in, with the parsing coming later.
16d held me up for a while, due to the use of the word “musician”, which clearly has a meaning other than that to which I am used.
And for once (I think) I find myself not the last to post here. This is by virtue of my being in Malaya (or “Malaysia”, as they will insist on being called now), which has had the good sense to adopt a timezone eight hours ahead of my usual one. As a national policy, it’s a stunningly smart move – you only have to look at the advantage we Brits enjoy by being constantly five or six hours ahead of the US to appreciate why. By the same token, the accumulation of 4 minutes per day, over the millennia, explains why Cambridge got so very far ahead of Cardiff before the imposition of country-wide GMT.
My only quibble is “APPRENTICESHIP” being clued as “In dentures”. Surely “indentures” would correspond to the plural (apprenticeships), as would the “They are…”? Or am I missing somethings?
By the way, why don’t you try the 3 Sodukos on the way home like I do?
Edited at 2013-11-25 08:31 pm (UTC)
Geoffrey