Solving time: Untimed, but not easy
Part of the reason is that I recently heard of the “passing” of a dear friend and neighbour. And, as a fellow Scouser, I have to sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” at his funeral on Friday. Imagine! So I’ll give the answers I have; and leave some of the parsings to my TfT mates.
We have bad days? No?
Alec
Across
1. WELSH HARP. Well sharp? But then what?
6. MACAW. MA (old lady) with L (large) taken from “claw” (talon).
9. ON ANOTHER PLANET. O (old) NAN (granny); OTT (exaggerated) around HER PLANE.
10. POKIER. PIER (seaside attraction) inc OK (fair).
11. SKITTLED. SKI (runner) & TITLED (named) minus I/1
13. CON,FIGURED.
14. DIVA. A VID{eo} reversed.
16. NULL. Bits of “locaL hospitaL yoU gleaN” in reverse. (I don’t want to think about hospitals right now.)
17. UZBEKISTAN. Anagram of “bunk-size” inc TA.
19. AS LONG AS. Not sure about this. The last AS is “A Second”. And the def is “provided”. Need help.
See Ulaca’s comment.
20. CEREAL. “C{rat}E”, REAL (concrete).
23. SIGN OF THE ZODIAC. Anagram: good citizen has F (fine).
24. SATIE. SA (sex appeal), TIE (couple, verb).
25. RAZOR EDGE. No idea at all!
See Ulaca’s comment. But (with Jim) I’m still not sure this works.
Down
1. WHOOP. W (wide), HOOP (wheel).
2. LEAD KINDLY LIGHT. LAD (boy) inc E (English) & KINDLY LIGHT (polite request to settle).
3. HOOKED IN. HOOK is the pirate. Then I’m lost again.
= HOOKED IT. See Ulaca’s comment.
4. ASHY. A (area) & SHY (throw).
5. PARK KEEPER. PARK (put on ice), KEEPER (our sportsperson).
6. MULCTS. Horrible word. Included reversed.
7. CANDLE IN THE WIND. Charade. Another funereal song.
8. WITHDRAWN. WIT (comedian), H, DRAWN.
12. QUIZ,MASTER. “Pump” = quiz (verb).
13. CANVASSES. CAN, V, ASSES{s}.
15.FIRE DOOR. I, REDO, in FOR.
18. IN JOKE.Go figure this CD.
21. LUCRE. {h}ercul{e} reversed.
22. METZ. Hom for the MET’s.
Today I need a crossword blog like a hole in the head. And my neurosurgeon says I do actually need one!
On edit – sorry Ulaca, you were there first!
Edited at 2014-04-09 06:52 am (UTC)
Sympathies to McT – I’m present at a lot of funerals, and the playing or singing of already-poignant music is desperately difficult. Maybe it should be gently banned. Lead Kindly Light turns up occasionally, too. I’ll be thinking of you on Friday with much sympathy.
I didn’t know the hymn so guessed “lead lonely light” which meant I could only fit PILFER for 10A and wondered why LF meant fair.
Total mess.
Parsing (these would normally be a walk in the park for you):
3d: HOOKED IT (Hook + Edit – ‘version that’s been amended’)
19a: AS LONG AS (literal: ‘provided’; AS LONG (‘with matching extension’) + A + S[econd])
25a is quite cunning, a ‘sounds-like’ clue: RAZ (‘raise’ – gather together, rally), OR EDGE (‘a reg’ – [car] registration)
Edited at 2014-04-09 09:13 am (UTC)
MULCT is indeed an ugly word to describe an ugly action. HOOKED IT is, I assume, American slang, as I had never heard of it…
I managed to invent a new hymn at 2d, ‘Come kindly light’ before seeing the, um, light. We have had a very evangelical last few days of it!
For what it’s worth I would have been unable to blog some of this with any confidence and I had a wrong answer at 3dn (hooked on) which led me to ‘convoluted’ as the only word that fitted the checkers at 13ac. Of course I’d no idea why that would be the answer, and on another day I would have persevered until I found an alternative, but I already had 1ac only partly understood and 25ac was completely beyond me so I decided to give up on it.
I got through about half the puzzle without any problems and then hit a brick wall and struggled over every remaining clue.
For the record I think 18 down has to have a hyphen and certainly Collins agrees with me.
I didn’t like this one but I’ll be interested in what others think.
PS: This may demonstrate that I’m losing the plot, but have bloggers with ‘maintainer’ rights always been able to see an ‘Edit Entry’ option on other bloggers’ threads? I thought it was only visible on one’s own. It doesn’t actually give edit rights as far as I can see as, once in there, everything is greyed out. I only noticed it today when I went to edit my comment on another thread and clicked the wrong Edit link. I find it hard to believe I’d never have done that before in the past 7 years if the option had been there.
Edited at 2014-04-09 07:17 am (UTC)
My sympathies, Alec.
Not my cup of tea this puzzle. I had to get every checker in place and then work to derive answers to both 2D and 7D. The hymn I’ve never heard of and the funeral song I recall but wouldn’t have readily thought of it. Not convinced 25A really works – again needed the R.Z.R to guess the answer.
30 minute slog with gritted teeth as far as I was concerned
Thanks for the help on parsing and the blog – really helpful as I take up this great hobby:)
malcj
Sympathies McT.
Edited at 2014-04-09 08:59 am (UTC)
IN-JOKE was my LOI after CONFIGURED, both of which I really struggled to see. I found the NW difficult to complete because I didn’t know the WELSH HARP and I was only able to tease it out from the wordplay after I got PARK KEEPER (slow to see the definition). I may have come across HOOKED IT before but if I have I’ve forgotten about it, and that was another answer that took me a long time to see even though “Hook” was obviously going to be the pirate once I’d solved 1ac. RAZOR EDGE had gone in unparsed earlier in the solve once I had all the checkers, although now that I have seen the “raise a reg” homophone I don’t think it is too bad a clue.
I managed to finish, but came to grief at 3D where, like paulmci and joekobi, I “hoofed it” rather than HOOKED IT. I heard of “slinging one’s hook” but didn’t know “to hook it” as meaning more or less the same thing. If I do say so myself, I thought my parsing of the wrong answer was quite ingenious: HOOK (the pirate) on EDIT is amended to become HOOF. It almost seems to work just as well!
I agree with Jimbo and others that 25A (RAZOR EDGE) doesn’t work properly, and where is the definition at 6A (MACAW)?
Edited at 2014-04-09 10:48 am (UTC)
Edited at 2014-04-09 10:33 am (UTC)
http://www.unionstation.org/realpirates/the-pirate-crew.php
on board.I wonder how often this Swede will appear on our plates.
How does one join this forum ?
The forum is open to all, but if you open an account with Live Journal you will be able to register a user-name, set up an avatar user-pic and also edit your comments after posting if you spot spelling errors or other mistakes – that’s as long as nobody has tacked a Reply message onto yours.
To sign up there is a Create Account button at the top of this page. It’s free unless you want additional services but I doubt any of the regulars here pay anything so you won’t need that.
Edited at 2014-04-09 12:59 pm (UTC)
http://www.unionstation.org/realpirates/the-pirate-crew.php
Lead Kindly Light was written by Cardinal Newman and is a lovely hymn.
Nairobi Wallah
Nairobi Wallah
… and that one error was at 22dn, where I had ‘lenz’ (my LOI), thinking that was the name for the Austrian city. I had no idea about the US opera company.
I took an eternity on this one, keeping coming back to it through the day. Lots went in with a shrug, without fully understanding the wordplay (RAZOR EDGE, WELSH HARP), or knowing the literal (SATIE, MULCTS).
In fact I still don’t really understand how WELSH HARP works.
Instrument (WELSH HARP) useful for cutting with front removed (s+HARP) by default. Why does WELSH=default? Sorry if I’m being really thick here…
Anyway, best wishes for Friday, Alec. I’m sure you weren’t blogging at your best today, but heartwarming to come here and see comments such as your ‘no idea at all!’ against 25ac!
‘Welshing’ is defaulting on bets. Chambers says for WELSH
“
To run off from a racecourse without settling or paying one’s bets (horse-racing)
(with on) to fail to pay (one’s debts, esp in gambling)
(with on) to avoid fulfilling (an obligation) or fail to keep one’s promise to (a person)”
The doors typically cannot be opened from the inside when the cab is moving or held on the footbrake. I use them pretty regularly and I have never had a problem over climbing out andpaying through the window but then I can look respectable sometimes!
Edited at 2014-04-09 03:29 pm (UTC)
18m for this. I bunged an awful lot in from definition, so missed a lot of the difficulties, but this isn’t my favourite type of puzzle.
I can’t see a problem with “raise a reg”, even if it’s a bit of a groan-inducer.
I was grateful that the hymn was unambiguously clued.
hoof it definition
tv.
to run away. : I saw them coming and hoofed it home.
Edited at 2014-04-09 04:08 pm (UTC)
I was glad to see that others found this tricky. The bottom half went in quickly, but the top had quite a few blanks when I ran out of time. I was thinking that my DNF might be due to a hangover from an overly ambitious night, and was worried that I might have to re-consider my capacity. But for now I’ll put it down to my puzzle inexperience on a toughie, and postpone the lifestyle review.
The only place I’ve heard anybody use the phrase HOOKED IT in either the UK or the US is on a golf course – where it means bend the flight of the ball from right to left for a right handed player
Had no problem at all with the “problem” clues (apart from not solving them quickly): “raise a reg” quite neat – once you see it; MACAW is “what gives the old lady large cut from talon” &lit – that clue wonderfully misleading as “Old Lady” led me to Threadneedle Street and “talon” to card games; as long = with matching extension + a + s(ec); WELSH = default + (s)HARP; METZ = European city, Met’s = “of US Opera Company”; WIT + H(ome) + “as sketch” = DRAWN.
A bit naughty to put one of the best ever hymns in the same space as one of the direst ever pop songs, but that’s crosswords!
FOI LEAD KINDLY LIGHT (Newman is one of my personal heroes), LOI DIVA. COD probably the ugly MULCTS, just for being so improbable.
What are the chances of that then?
DNF – so very DNF, in fact, that I DEGHW.
Many of the clues were chewy but fair, requiring a brain only slightly larger than I own. But several of them struck me as obscure, which I don’t enjoy – as I’ve mentioned before, I much prefer a mundane word clued in a way that makes you kick yourself when you unpack it.
Amongst my many unknowns this time were 2d (never heard of that hymn, but I suspect it’s well-known to non-heathens) and METZ. I’d also never heard of MULCTS, though I put it in; I can only assume it’s some ghastly Scots word that has somehow staggered into English.
All in all, not sure what to make of this puzzle. I didn’t enjoy it, but that may just be sour grapes. However, I see a lot of debate over some of the parsings, which to my mind is not a good sign.
A sluggish 16:55 here. I thought this was another very fine puzzle and I enjoyed it very much despite making desperately heavy weather of some straightforward clues. I’ve absolutely no complaints: everything works perfectly for me, including “raise a reg”.
Regd = associated with car (short for registered)