Solving time : 15:33, putting me at the top of the Club timer, but I suspect not for long. There’s a few that I was kicking myself for not seeing straight off, so there’s some nice setter’s craft here. It seemed at the end that it’s heavy on the general knowledge, particularly the mathematical term that was unfortunately my second last in, followed by the food additive that looks vaguely familiar now, but might have popped up once or twice before.
Tonight is the first night of the five-day Moogfest, celebrating the life and inventions of Bob Moog. So as soon as I get this finished up I’m walking in to town to catch the Pet Shop Boys… I wonder if my 43-year-old outer child likes them as much as the 15-year-old brat who was at the time learning how to do the Melbourne Age cryptic crossword.
Away we go…
Across | |
---|---|
1 | COP,IOUS: definiton “many”, which I originally thought was going to be part of the wordplay |
5 | LEHAR: H in LEAR – a composer I know better from popping up in crosswords than from any actual compositions |
9 | H,ORAL: got this from wordplay, though it makes sense |
10 | BENIGHTED: sounds like BE KNIGHTED |
11 | PROP,AN,E |
12 | ARCHERY: CHE in ‘ARRY |
13 | ANNOTATION: NOT in A,NATION |
15 | HART: R in HAT |
18 | D,ICE: two shortenings of diamonds |
20 | IMAGINABLE: 1,MALE containing GIN,AB |
23 | MANDATE: since to get MATE you would need M AND ATE |
24 | DURANGO: RANG in DUO – knew it more from being a make of car here |
25 | STERADIAN: for a while I was thinking “Is there some obscure mathematical term that is an anagram of AS WHIZZ IN?” but WHIZZ is the anagrindicator and it’s (TRAINED,AS)* |
26 | MEDIA: ME then AID reversed |
27 | SATIN: STAIN with the T and A being switched |
28 | G,HAST |
Down | |
1 | CARTOON: O in CARTON |
2 | PALO ALTO: PAL then A in (LOOT)* – surprised to see this in the Times. It’s big – it’s a satellite city of San Francisco. I have only been there once, stopped there to watch the sun set when I was driving from LA to San Francisco. Stanford is there, but not sure how well known it really is. |
3 |
|
4 | SINGALONG: got this from definition but now I see it’s LO(see) in SIN,GANG |
5 | LEGACY: EG in LACY |
6 | HE,T,A,ERA |
7 | RUDDY: R then MUDDY without the last letter of foaM |
8 | WHIP HAND: clearly this is the answer from the definition, but I can’t seem to make the wordplay work – it looks like W, then HID with P,AN inside but where does the other H come from? Edit: thanks to the crossword editor who confirmed in the comments that the word “husband” was omitted from the clue |
14 | TEMPE,RING: just realized there’s a bit of Americana going on here (a Mr. Greer offering?) – TEMPE is a valley in Arizona Edit: As noted many times in comments, TEMPE is referring to the Greek valley, of which I was unaware. I have been to Tempe, Arizona (Arizona State University is there) and I thought I remember it being in a valley just beside Phoenix. So a mild defense, but I stand corrected(ish) |
16 | TEETOTAL: (TO,LET,TEA)* |
17 | INTROMIT: M in INTROIT – INTROIT for anthem appeared here recently |
19 | CON,CERT |
21 | BONE DRY: DR in BONEY (Napoleon of the boney parts) |
22 | PA,PAIN: so called because it’s a pawpaw extract |
23 | MOSES: MOSEYS without Y |
24 | DONNA: ON in DNA |
Parsed 8dn as per George and also couldn’t find the extra H. Will be interested to hear possible solutions later on.
Deception of the day: “mountain climber” for MOSES. Much better than “Grandma”, even if that would have played more to my actual scanty GK.
* On edit, I include TEMPE under classics because I reckon it’s this one that’s intended:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_of_Tempe
Edited at 2014-04-24 02:54 am (UTC)
Edited at 2014-04-24 04:49 am (UTC)
Can’t think of anything further from the original Tempe we both refer to!
I knew I was in for trouble as soon as I saw the length of the clues.
Some of it was straightforward but there were far too many unknowns for my liking – all the ones listed in mct’s first para plus PALO ALTO, HORAL and INTROMIT.
I still don’t understand what purpose ‘characteristic’ is serving in 23.
Edited at 2014-04-24 05:32 am (UTC)
Beaten by the SW. As others have said, way too much obscure (=unknown by me) GK today.
How come we are suddenly 2,001 crosswords on?
How did 8ac get past the editor? Silly mistakes are no longer the preserve of the eccentric TLS, then.
What is a word like STERADIAN doing in a Times normal? (I did maths to A-level, and it’s still a jamais couché avec)
Since when (and how, pray?) is “whizz” an anagram indicator?
DURANGO?
PAPAIN? (OK, the wordplay’s easy but still hard to believe) Apparently, even as a supplement, it’s dodgy.
And lastly, de wossname non thingy and all that, but mountain climber = Moses?! Isaac Newton, “outdoor sleeper”? I K Brunel, “cigar smoker”?
Edited at 2014-04-24 09:33 am (UTC)
Edited at 2014-04-24 09:07 am (UTC)
I was hoping to find an explanation of the intrusive H in 8dn here.
Also flunked the “characteristic” parsing of MANDATE – nice clue.
PALO ALTO, though, should not be obscure, as it is the base, or starting point, of most of the household name IT companies.
Also stumped by the seemingly extraneous “h” in WHIP HAND.
COD probably MOSES.
Edited at 2014-04-24 12:35 pm (UTC)
Cheers
Chris.
Agree with all the remarks about unacceptable obscure words that have been made already, and have one specific question. What is the word “affectionately” doing in 21d? Isn’t it superfluous?
Odd really,I sailed through this one, admittedly missing the glitch at 8dn.
Too many “guesses” to make this enjoyable (Lehar, horal, Dorango, Hetaera etc). At times it was like trying to squeeze Maltesers out of a toothpaste tube.
Thanks for explaining everything George.
Sorry about that
Fifty lashes for the perpetrator and that should be the end of it.
“I agree that the vocab in this puzzle is at the limits of GK”
Today was very entertaining: I enjoyed COPIOUS, ARCHERY and SATIN but I was also completely stumped by STERADIAN – I just put it down to my hopelessness at maths, but it seems I am not alone.
Keep up the good work.
That was not my error I am glad to say but will get it fixed
RR
Anyway, I found this extremely hard and it took me 45 minutes. I had all but the SW done after 20m but then I didn’t solve a clue for perhaps another 15. Eventually I got SATIN (not really a difficult clue) and then after a pause the remaining clues fell quite quickly once I’d decided to bung in the unlikely-looking PAPAIN and see if that helped with the others.
Unlike many I mostly rather enjoyed the challenge of this puzzle. There are some ridiculously obscure words of course but I don’t mind that as long as they are solvable from the wordplay. The one big exception is 25, which is unsolvable if you don’t know it. I was lucky and plumped for the right answer but it was a straight toss-up with STEDARIAN. Clues like this just shouldn’t happen.
The other clue I really didn’t like was BENIGHTED, which doesn’t seem like a homophone at all to me. No-one else has mentioned it though so I assume I’m missing something.
Thanks to the editor for popping in to clear up the mystery of the lost H.
Edited at 2014-04-24 05:41 pm (UTC)
Other parts of the SW corner gave me a hard time as well. Fortunately I knew STERADIAN (my maths degree coming in useful there) but I took simply ages to get MOSES and then agonised over MANDATE. I came to the same conclusion as mctext about “characteristic”, but I’m not too keen on it, and I’m surprised to find it in a modern crossword.
What with the missing “husband” in 8dn, this was definitely not my favourite puzzle!