I enjoyed this puzzle, even down to deriving from wordplay a couple of unknown words. 25 minutes to solve.
There is a wide range of GK today with the sound effects possibly being unknown to many – makes a welcome change from obscure literature – and the tree may not be on everybody’s radar. There’s only one really weak offering and that’s the cryptic definition. I can’t say that this type of clue is improving under the new editor – if anything the reverse is coming to pass
Across | |
---|---|
1 | FADDIST – F(ADD-IS)T; FT=Financial Times; people with hula hoops in my youth; |
5 | DEODAR – DE(DO reversed)AR; make=DO; Himalayan cedar much favoured by Indian poets – you knew that, surely!; |
8 | ADULATORY – A-DUL(l)-A-TORY; OTT hero worship, hence “full of puff”; |
9 | TIMED – DEMIT reversed; time is “the enemy”; |
11 | BALLY – B-ALLY; B=book; blooming=mild expletive=BALLY; |
12 | STONECROP – OR=Ordinary Ranks surrounds NEC inside STOP; Russian dolls clue; NEC=National Exhibition Centre; |
13 | REDOLENT – RE(DO)LENT; something that brings back memories – booze?; |
15 | SORREL – SOR(R)E-L; copper-red shade of chestnut horse; |
17 | ALLOTS – (b)ALLOTS; |
19 | MAN-EATER – MANE-A-TER(ror); loveless woman; |
22 | TITCHIEST – T(ITCH-I)EST; current Speaker of the House who may know all about 19A; |
23 | STIFF – two meanings, the second slang for a corpse; |
24 | DRUID – D(RUI(n))D; Stonehenge and all that; |
25 | DESUETUDE – D(E-SUET)UDE; E from (th)E; a legal term for inactivity apparently; |
26 | TENNER – sounds like Pavarotti; a ten pound note; |
27 | SOLVENT – SOLVE-NT; solvent abuse is for example glue sniffing; |
Down | |
1 | FLABBERGASTED – (badger+tb+as+felt-t)*; reaction to first telephone link from UK to Europe 18th March 1890; |
2 | DOUBLED – DOUBLE-D as in (we)DD(ing); |
3 | ITALY – hidden (m)I(s)T-(v)A(l)L(e)Y; Naples, where Vesuvius erupted 18th March 1944; |
4 | THOUSAND – THOU-SAND; 1,000 is 10 cubed; |
5 | DAYTON – DAY-TON; technological centre in Ohio; |
6 | ON,THE,NOSE – two obvious meanings; |
7 | ADMIRER – AD-MIRE-R(otating); |
10 | DOPPLER,EFFECT – (old pet creep)* surrounds FF; apparent lowering of a sound as a moving object like a train approaches and then passes a stationary listner, named after man who explained the effect – Christian Doppler in 1842; |
14 | LATCHED,ON – LAT(CH)E-DON; CH=Companion of Honour; what Rudolf Diesel did – he was born 18th March 1858; |
16 | BAPTISTS – what can one say?; |
18 | LETTUCE – LE(TT-UC)E; UC from (m)UC(h); what some 1A eat to excess in fad diets; |
20 | TRIBUTE – TRI(BUT)E(s); today to the Tolpuddle Martyrs sentenced in Dorchester 18th March 1834; |
21 | FENDER – F-ENDER; F=following; |
23 | SWELL – S(un)-WELL; US reaction to founding of American Express 18th March 1850; |
I think 16dn is BAPTISTS, btw.
I found this tough but chipped away at it and nearly solved and parsed within the hour. But at 50 minutes with DES?E?UDE worked out at 25ac I gave up and resorted to aids as I knew I didn’t know the word. I was trying for a word meaning ‘fat’ to fit S?E? but ‘suet’ never occurred to me.
I gather you care much for 16dn, Jim, and I tend to agree with you as there’s no alternative way into it.
Edited at 2014-03-18 08:23 am (UTC)
Just to lower the tone a bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Nw5tDNWo4
Edited at 2014-03-18 10:23 am (UTC)
The CD at 16dn should have been, in Jimbo-speak, “kicked into the long grass”.
Oh dear… I hesitated between DEODAR and deotar, and ended up putting neither in as they both seemed so unlikely…
Also had problems in the SE: put in surge at 23dn, which made DESUETUDE and SOLVENT ungettable. I did think that surge may be wrong,and wondered if a pike was some sort of water feature, but had a mental block preventing me from getting the (now obvious) answer.
Couldn’t parse DOUBLED, dnk STONECROP, DAYTON, so thanks for those.
The LH side fell very quickly, but I then got bogged down on the RH side before finally limping over the finishing line in just over an hour. On this occasion I happened to know “desuetude” (meaning “inactive” in the sense of having “fallen into disuse”) and the other potential obscurities, which is always a help. Thanks to Jimbo for parsing STONECROP.
Overall, an excellent puzzle (I particularly liked TIMED), but I agree that BAPTISTS is feeble.
I got almost nowhere today. I kept getting sucked into the surface meaning and probably should have come back to it later. I console myself with the fact that I had correctly discriminated the definition from wordplay in quite a few even if I hadn’t solved them. I think doing the quickie regularly must be helping.
I thought THOUSAND was superb. It appealed to the mathematician in me.
It just means someone or something that brings something to an end (to a close).
* it isn’t in my iPod Chambers.
Not in my COD either (unless implicit in one of their senses) but is in the on-line Collins. Only other use of it I’ve come across is East Ender which of course is a different sense entirely.
I might have had more of a chance if I were able to stop thinking of the proximity sense of closer 😀
Anyone willing to share any mental tricks to avoid getting sucked into the surface meaning of a clue word intended by the setter?
Also, once you’ve got a few answers in the puzzle you’ll have an idea of how crafty the setter is, which can give you an indication of just how misleading the remaining surfaces are likely to be. Dean Mayer, one of the Sunday Times trio (and in the Indy today under his Anax byline), is a master of this, so when I’m solving his puzzles I pretty much know from the off that little will be as it seems.
The particular case of ENDER, though, is a bit special because, like penfold says, it’s not a word that anyone would use. Must admit I didn’t solve the clue by making the link between closer and ENDER – from checkers and other bits of the wordplay, I figured it must be FE__ER and FENDER then came to mind.
BAPTISTS are in my personal heritage, so it was an instant fill for me, and in response to Jim’s “what can one say?” – in my experience “rather too much”. I agree there’s no way into it if you don’t know, and FANTASTS might even be an alternative filling of the chequers. CACTUSES probably isn’t. To anyone in the circle, “totally immersed” is a key part of the shared language, but wouldn’t have anything like the same resonance for anyone else.
I was hoping 1ac would have something to do with hawks (“hobby”) and was slightly disappointed when it didn’t. STONECROP I thought was a bird, which shows I’ve forgotten what I learned last time it was in in 25176.
DEODAR dragged from memory my LOI.
Thanks for the excellent dateline stuff, Jim.
Out of curiosity, Jimbo, in your GK totals do you count plants in a separate horticulture category, or as part of botany do they fall under science?
I thought some of the padding was misleading like parking in 12 and something little in 24.
Deodar took me ages and it shouldn’t have: my grandfather was named after the tree!!
As a Baptist I agree 16d is weak as water, but the Times still comes up with the goods now and again. Last Saturday’s was simply delicious, loved every minute of it.
Nairobi Wallah
Off to do the QC now, and I know what at least one of the answers is going to be ………..
Edited at 2014-03-18 09:10 pm (UTC)
Nice puzzle. And I’ve absolutely no objection to 16dn.
I’m one of today’s DNFs. I felt lazy giving up on this one, but having seen the answers there’s no way I’d have got DEODAR, which I’d never heard of and which I’d have guessed was a character from Star Wars. And DESUETUDE – no chance; it’s one of those words that probably failed to make the shortlist when my memory was discarding unneeded and obscure items. But enough of my blaterations.
I’m still puzzled by DAYTON. Most Ohioans probably are too, but specifically I don’t see how “ton”=”fashion”.
Nice to see DOPPLER EFFECT making an appearance. There’s a limerick about Herr Doppler, which I would tell you if (a) it weren’t obscene and (b) I could remember it. The analogue of the Doppler effect for light is redshift, and the redshift of distant galaxies is how Edwin Hubble deduced that the universe is expanding which, extrapolating backwards, leads to the Big Bang.
Enjoyed FLABBERGASTED, and fascinated to note from our blogger’s comment that we now have a telephone link to Europe. It must be very reassuring for them. Appreciated BALLY too – it’s one of those words that cannot be used convincingly by anyone without five generations of English blood in their veins.
No particularly entertaining injuries today – the general public seem to lose interest around the mid-week lull. We did, however, have one surprising non-injury. A builder had fallen about 25ft onto the pavement, and his only problem was a cracked mobile phone. Don’t try this at home.
ton M18.
[ORIGIN French from Latin tonus tone noun.]
1 The fashion, the vogue; fashionableness, style. M18.
2 Fashionable people collectively; the fashionable world. Treated as sing. or pl. M18.
It’s worth remembering as it comes up a lot.