15:52 on the Club timer. It’s always hard to tell if you’ve been especially fast or slow at this time of night (currently 2nd of only 4 solvers, so not much to give a comparison), but that time felt about right for a nice solve, with some well-disguised definitions and always elegant surfaces. One of those puzzles where an early Q and Z made me half-look for a pangram, but the V and X never showed up. Required general knowledge along the usual lines: a songbird, some music, the Bible, and a little bit of (Irish) politics, ladies and gentlemen.
Across |
1 |
ALLOCATE – (CO.)rev. in ALL, ATE. |
5 |
OPAQUE – Old, P.A., QUE(“that” in French). |
10 |
DUNNO – Name x 2 in DUO. |
11 |
NEFARIOUS – (ResistanceNOUSEIFA)*. |
12 |
TAOISEACH – TAOISM, EACH. The Prime Minister out to the West, as in Ireland; literally “the chief”. Watch out also for the deputy PM, the Tánaiste. |
13 |
OGLER – lOnGcLuEoR. |
14 |
OFFLOAD – (FOOLDAFT)*. |
16 |
NEARBY – NEAR(“stingy”), BY(“times”). Given our continuing economic travails, perhaps this could replace “You’ve never had it so good” as the motto for future governments. |
18 |
SELDOM – Disease in (MOLES)rev. “Plants” as in the moles placed by an intelligence service. |
20 |
CAPITAL – CAP(as in the verb, “better”), ITALy. |
22 |
OLDIE – SOLDIER minus his first and last letters. Not sure how far back in the history of cinema you have to go for a film to be officially an “oldie”, but the forties would certainly do it. |
23 |
BAMBOOZLE – Book, (MA)rev., Left in BOOZE. |
25 |
LEASTWAYS – [ST., WAY] in LEAS. |
26 |
OPINE – 0, PINE. |
27 |
THEORY – (EH?)rev. in TORY. Since puzzles are prepared well in advance of publication, this must be coincidence, and in no way a comment on the second home arrangements of any particular MP whose expenses may be currently under scrutiny in the press… |
28 |
BOUNDERS – UNDER in (SOB)rev. |
|
Down |
1 |
ADDITION – ADDICTION minus the Cape. |
2 |
LINGO – Large, IN, GO. |
3 |
CROSSWORD SETTER – SET in (WORSTRECORDS)* with the unusually brief – and self-referential – definition “me”. |
4 |
TANKARD – ANKARA, the old city minus its concluding A, inside T.D., the Irish equivalent of M.P. Short for Teachta Dála. |
6 |
PERSONAL PRONOUN – ON O.R.(“about men”, as in the Other Ranks) inside PERSONAL (“offensive”) PUN; and another tiny definition – “us, possibly” for a long clue. |
7 |
QUODLIBET – (QUITEBOLD)*. |
8 |
ENSURE – Republican in ENSUE. |
9 |
AFGHAN – GrowtH inside A FAN. |
15 |
FIELDFARE – FIELD(“competition”), FARE(“manage”). |
17 |
BLUENESS – BLUE(“unhappy”), NESS(“point”). |
19 |
MOB CAP – (COMB)*, (PA)rev. If you picture the traditional Victorian serving-wench, this is probably the sort of headwear she’d be wearing. Not that I spend my time imagining Victorian serving-wenches, honest. |
20 |
COMES TO – COME(“show up”) on STOP minus the Pressure; initially hard-to-spot definition in “makes”, as in “adds up to”. |
21 |
JOB LOT – where one sort of JOB LOT might be the characters in that particular book of the Old Testament. |
24 |
ZAIRE – Z(mathematical unknown), [1 in (ERA)rev.] “Once” because this is the former name of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. |
Fooled again (or 23ed) by the TD abbreviation and by “what” = EH. Drat!
PS: tomorrow’s blog will be up later than usual as I won’t get home until mid-morning. Apologies in advance.
Edited at 2014-04-08 01:19 am (UTC)
Edited at 2014-04-08 01:19 am (UTC)
I too was a little surprised that Ankara should be described as old, but Wikipedia has ‘a very old city with various Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman archaeological sites’.
Lots of very good stuff, but my COD goes to COMES TO for its well-hidden literal just ahead of my last in BOUNDERS – such a fine, British word in a rolled-up umbrella kind of way.
And thanks to the setter for the clueing of the Irish PM – I might actually be able to remember how to spell it now. FIELDFARE also from the cryptic. Kudos to Topical for an excellent time.
Edited at 2014-04-08 03:12 am (UTC)
All done bar two in about 30mins, and then another 5 or so for JOB LOT and THEORY. After the slangy DUNNO, I confidently had in ‘bog ofs’ (unparsed…) until LEASTWAYS put paid to that theory.
DNK QUODLIBET, but managed to get the remaining letters in the right places, and I couldn’t parse TANKARD or PERSONAL PRONOUN, putting them in from the definitions, so thanks for explaining those two.
So probably about 25 minutes actual solving, an awful lot of them in the SW, not helped by imaginative completions of PERSONAL ? including REMARKS (“about men”, quite clever I thought) and SERVICES, which I suppose could be a sort of double entendre if Kenneth Williams says it.
Thanks to setter for guiding us through the Gaelic and helpfully showing us what QUODLIBET means- knew the word, couldn’t previously have defined it.
Credit to the setter for being absolutely precise in formulating the clue to AFGHAN – from somewhere… Though my nephew, familiar with the place in his role as a TA captain, always refers to the country itself as Afghan.
Good one, lots of cunning. CoD to anything in that SW region. Except BLUENESS. Could have been anything-ness.
And congrats to Tim for untangling the ones I left tangled, and for an excellent time.
Edited at 2014-04-08 07:10 am (UTC)
I don’t recall MOB CAP appearing before with its roots back in the French Revolution – a good clue. But surely the best must be THEORY with its highly topical Maria problem connotations, however accidental
Nothing to add to above comments, really. Another vote of thanks to the setter for the aide-mémoire for spelling TAOISEACH, and for a top-notch puzzle generally.
Early on I thought of TAOIS to start 12A but disregarded it thinking there can’t be a word beginning like that but realised later it was TAOISEACH (isn’t it pronounced something like teashop?).
I’d like to add my thanks to the setter for the aide-memoire for the spelling of TAOISEACH.
Enjoyed the succinct definitions at 3 and 6, and applaud anyone who managed to get FIELDFARE from the wordplay alone.
By the way, when did crossword compilers become crossword setters? I’m not complaining, just interested. Is there a technical difference I’m unaware of? Perhaps “setter” is the type of word cruciverbalists find more interesting, with its many different possible meanings.
Yes, at least according to 21dn in No. 25,739: “Comfy seat for the solver, might you say? (6)” (20 March this year).
FOI Allocate, LOI Blueness.
Thanks Tim for explaining Tankard, Personal Pronoun and Nearby.
Got the unlikely-looking Quodlibet from wordplay.
At last, FIELDFARE, a bird I’d heard of! And I think we got off lightly with JOB and LOT – “book characters”, methinks, gives a staggering range of possibilities. Let’s hear it for Ahaziah, Athaliah, Amaziah, Uzziah, Hezekiah, Jeconiah, Zedekiah …
I thought that Ankara was old because it has more things in it that are old than most other cities have. Possibly.
Knew quodlibet because it comes in the Goldberg Variations.
Another very enjoyable puzzle.
I don’t get it either. Would someone be kind enough ……
Thanks.
Please help.
How is stingy = near?
I read the blog daily but rarely post. Thanks to all for their expertise and inciteful and often witty blogs.
Barry J
I see that we have the awful captcha back.
It’s a straightforward synonym. Near is an old fashioned term for miserliness.
Is it just me, or has the Times cryptic moved up a gear or two in the last couple of weeks?
I’d never heard of MOB CAP, and wasn’t convinced even after I’d put it in. And as for TAOISEACH, well, I got it from the wordplay but I remain deeply skeptical over the inclusion of obscure foreign words. If there isn’t a decent English word for something, it’s probably not important. That philosophy got me through anatomy, and I stand by it.
Accident of the Day: all I can say is that it involved a ball-point pen, and I’m having the X-ray framed.