45 minutes for this reasonably straightforward offering. There are a few mathematical/geometrical references but nothing too arty-farty nor even any cricket as far as I can see, which is certainly a rarity. Whilst solving I invented a desert area called “Quita” but wiser thoughts prevailed when it came to blogging 3dn.
Across |
|
---|---|
1 |
DISTEMPER – STEM (stop) inside DIP (hollow), E |
6 | LEECH – LEE (shelter), CH (companion – of honour) |
9 | PROFUSE – PROF (academic), USE (value) |
10 |
PEANUTS – Anagram [dazed] of AN |
11 | HOIST – I inside HOST (present) |
12 |
TOP BANANA – OP (work) + BANA |
14 | LAG – Double definition |
15 |
BUSINESS END – BUS (transport), IN, ESSEN (German city), |
17 | GRAVEN IMAGE – RAVE (party) inside MING (dynasty) reversed, AGE (time) |
19 | PAY – YAP (chatter) reversed |
20 | RIGMAROLE – RIG (engineer), MA (degree), ROLE (job) |
22 |
TORUS – RU (sport – Rugby Union) inside TOS |
24 |
TWEETER – TWEE (affected), T |
26 | RAPPORT – RAP (charge – slang for a legal charge), PORT (connection point) |
27 | MOTOR – M (miles), O (over), TOR (hill) |
28 | CONSTRAIN – CONS (rips off), TRAIN (part of dress) |
Down |
|
1 |
DEPTH – |
2 | SHOWING – SH (quiet), OWING (due) |
3 | EQUITABLE – QUIT (desert) + A (area) inside ELBE (river) reversed |
4 | PRESTISSIMO – REST (support) + IS inside PSI (Greek letter), MO (second) |
5 |
RIP – |
6 | LLAMA – Hidden |
7 | EMULATE – EMU (Australian runner), LATE (former) |
8 | HUSBANDRY – S (society) inside HUB (focus), AN, DRY (arid) |
13 | PENTAHEDRON – Anagram of NEAR THE POND |
14 | LOGARITHM – L, anagram of MAO RIGHT |
16 | SWEET SPOT – TOP (first), E (European) inside STEWS (worries) all reversed |
18 |
AUGMENT – G |
19 | PERGOLA – ERGO (so) inside ALP (mountain) reversed |
21 | ALTER – L (large) inside ATE (put away), R (resistance) |
23 | SIT-IN – Double definition |
25 | REC – Short for “recreation ground” sounds like “wreck” (trash) |
There were a number of fine clues, including those for ‘pergola’, ‘logarithm’, ‘sweet spot’ and ‘rapport’, all of which require careful unraveling.
A very enjoyable puzzle, for all that, with special mentions in despatches for SWEET SPOT, RIGMAROLE ( RE not clued by ‘engineer’), REC and RAPPORT. My last two were the unknown PERGOLA, which followed the always forgotten TORUS.
Ooops! After an hour or so I had blanks at BUSINESS END (good clue, now I see it) and EQUITABLE, and GRAVEN IMAGE, which I was never going to get as I mis-saw the enumeration as 8,3 and was looking for something ‘age’ which meant a time. That was a bit dumb.
Not one for getting the answers from the wordplay, rather one for getting the wordplay from the answers, though from memory both the German bus and PEANUTS were exceptions. So ingenious was the cluing, though, that it was never enough just to enter from definition (once found) – you just had to stop and work out the wordplay.
Spent a while trying to picture a pentahedron before realising it was either a pyramid or a prism and couldn’t have five identical faces. The joy of maths.
RIGMAROLE for CoD partly for being an excellent word and also, as Ulaca says, not having engineer=RE.
Edited at 2014-06-13 07:39 am (UTC)
Although 1dn was obviously DEPTH once the checkers were in, I took ages to see how a 5-letter word could end in DEPT. Probably should have tried running through the alphabet.
Excellent puzzle I thought.
Very nice puzzle.
Initially I put in ALGORITHM at 14D wondering how that meant power. I should have taken the view that if it seems wrong it probably is but fortunately I saw this error quite quickly. The main things delaying the NW were having written TRP in 5D and not seeing this for ages and confusing the river with the actor Idris Elba before I’d fully parsed 3D. Together these made DISTEMPER much harder than it might have been otherwise.
25 minutes for a pleasurable puzzle that kept me thinking right the way through. As others have said both definitions and wordplays were needed – a sure sign of good clues
Meanwhile on The Times app and after yesterday’s inadvertent inclusion of the answer to the Third Qualifier, the heavy-duty solution continues. There are no answers to any of yesterday’s puzzles today. Stable-doors etc.
Like others there were quite a few that went in on def with the wordplay checked post-solve.
Clever PRESTISSIMO, also had me fixated on finding the “second S” until I remembered my O-level Greek – “phi, chi, PSI, omega”. Some nice surfaces, hiding the clue constructions, such as PENTAHEDRON and PERGOLA, my COD.
Another enjoyable solve.
PS (on edit): I wasn’t helped by reading “surrendering” in 10ac as “surrounding”, with the result that I missed an easy win with PEANUTS (which I thought of but couldn’t justify).
Edited at 2014-06-13 09:46 pm (UTC)
The 1985 (?) puzzle from yesterday (or was it Wednesday) got me wondering. There’s certainly a different flavour to older puzzles, but I wonder if they have got progressively more difficult over the 80-odd years. There’s an interesting phenomenon called the Flynn effect, whereby IQ tests have to be made harder over time, implying (on the face of it) a gradual population-averaged increase in whatever IQ tests actually measure. It would be interesting to see if a similar effect were detectable in Times puzzles, though of course this would be confounded by topical clues and by changes in the emphasis of general knowledge versus wordplay.
On the other hand, the customer profile of East Anglian A&E units argues against any gradual increase in intelligence. Today’s winner in the category of Most Foreseeable Accident was a builder who, needing a cordless screwdriver, had asked his mate to drop it down to him. His mate was forty feet up on scaffolding at the time, and it didn’t end well.
The first massive change came through the adoption of the Ximenes Crossword Rules for clue writing. Just Google that to discover McNutt and his book circa 1966 – worth a look if you are genuinely interested in these things. The Times was slower than some in adopting them but got there eventually
The second has been the move away from an arts and literature based offering towards a more balanced approach. The puzzle has come a long way in that respect but still has a little way to go in my opinion
Finally as we do these puzzles we gain in experience so that what seemed hard years ago now comes easier to us. When I started solving Ximenes in 1962 it took me most of the week. Now a Mephisto or Azed equivalet takes me about 40 minutes to an hour.
As for individual experience, yes, certainly – but my data would be taken across a range of solvers, from novice to experienced.
Ah well, another psychosocial research funding opportunity bites the dust.