Some very neat clues in here, marrying a slightly increased cryptic deviosity level from the usual with highly effective surface reading. Well done to the setter and I very much hope I will be matching wits with you and your ilk again a couple of months hence! In the meantime, I’ll also be in London the weekend after next, if anyone wants to do a preparatory recce of The George…
ACROSS
1 Doctor’s case? There’s one spare (3,2,5)
BAG OF BONES – the case of a doctor could be the BAG OF a BONES; or, more conventionally, a BAG OF BONES is a very thin person, or “one spare”.
6 Some pickle, maybe, only just opened? (4)
AJAR – A JAR could be some pickle; AJAR is, I was reliably informed as a youth, when a door is not a door.
9 Cross of bronze with ring, on backwards (7)
TANGELO – TAN [bronze] + reversed O LEG [ring | on]. A tangelo is a cross between a tangerine and a pomelo, or something like that anyway.
10 Procedure by arresting officer employing violence (7)
CUFFING – by the standards of this puzzle at least, a straightforward double definition.
12 One might be left in this list (5)
LURCH – one might be left in the LURCH, and it’s also a synonym for list.
13 Interrupting work, managed to catch one’s butterfly (6-3)
ORANGE-TIP – “interrupting” OP [work], RAN [managed] to GET I [catch | one]. My first one in, basically just from the enum and def, with much gratitude.
14 Rat to watch on grain container, one flitting about (11,4)
GRASSHOPPER MIND – GRASS [rat] + MIND [to watch] on HOPPER [grain container]
17 This hung over diner at feast — from cold sodas we laced (5,2,8)
SWORD OF DAMOCLES – totally biffed SOI. (FROM COLD SODAS WE*) [“laced”]
20 Was transformed by make-up girl from East African state (9)
SWAZILAND – (WAS*) [“transformed”] by reversed (“from East” to west) DNA LIZ [(genetic) make-up | girl]. I tried SWAHILIAN for size for a few seconds but it had the problem of being nonsense.
21 Tip of twenty-five pounds: a pony? (5)
EQUID – {twenty-fiv}E + QUID [pounds]. Definition by example.
23 Jubilant cry, finding track in earth? (5,2)
GLORY BE – RY [track] in GLOBE [earth?]. Neither TALLY HO or GIDDY UP fit the bill, but third time lucky.
24 Material of gold, not initially cut into strip abroad (7)
ORGANZA – OR [gold] + N{ot} “cut into” GAZA [strip, abroad]
25 Some retired female’s particular niche (4)
APSE – hidden reversed in {femal}E’S PA{rticular}
26 Like one who’s still available, but not off-the-shelf (10)
SPINSTERLY – cryptic def. A spinster is unmarried (still available), but “on the shelf”.
DOWN
1 Propane perhaps but not a nerve agent, however (6-3)
BOTTLE-GAS – Propane comes in bottles but the owner of a thesaurus might expect a “bottle”-gas to be a “nerve” agent. Wrongly alas!
2 One who’s passed on answer abandoning approach (5)
GONER – GO NE{a}R [approach, removing its A for answer]. LOI, submitted with 90% certainly from the crossers, with just a small twinge of DEVONPORT-style mounting panic.
3 Lively old person tied up holds part of a chain? (5,2,1,5)
FRESH AS A DAISY – reversed SERF [old person tied] + HAS A DAISY [holds part of a chain]
4 Drink sadly not coming with starter (7)
OLOROSO – {d}OLOROSO [sadly], minus its “starter”
5 Take in French lesson, quiet for final seconds (7)
ENCLASP – EN [in (French)] + CLAS{s->P} [replace the final S (seconds) of CLASS (lesson) with P (quiet)]
7 It can’t be left alone (5,4)
JOINT WILL – cryptic def. One leaves a will, but one cannot leave a joint will on one’s own.
8 A clue to short lass’s build (3,2)
RIG UP – cryptically, GIR{l} is a “short lass”, and could be indicated by RIG UP. My first thought was BIG UP but this proved yet another non-starter.
11 Person on rowing team cut by blade? (6,2,5)
FIGURE OF EIGHT – an EIGHT is a rowing team and a person is a FIGURE. The blade here is an ice skate I think, and not as I initially fondly imagined a musketeer’s swishing rapier.
15 Old woman, behold, in a sense peculiar (9)
ANOMALOUS – MA LO [old woman | behold!] in A NOUS [a | sense]
16 Kids ready to demolish something with dates in (4,5)
DESK DIARY – (KIDS READY*) [“to demolish”]
18 Dreadful earful preceding Penny’s sudden outburst (5-2)
FLARE-UP – (EARFUL*) [“dreadful”] preceding P [penny]
19 Not known for accepting military decoration, etc (3,2,2)
AND SO ON – ANON [not known], for “accepting” DSO [military decoration]
20 Letter making case for Sophocles? (5)
SIGMA – As every classicist kno, sigma is the Greek letter that begins and ends the name “Sophocles”
22 Like part of arm of satellite, left to drop (5)
ULNAR – take LUNAR [of satellite], and “drop” its L [left] down a couple of notches.
My first guess for 8 dn was Tess providing “set up”.
Edited at 2019-09-27 06:41 am (UTC)
I had no idea how hard this would have been to anyone with fewer distractions today, but it did take me a while and I was glad to see Verlaine’s evaluation.
The hold up was SWAZILAND, which couldn’t obviously be anything else but I was missing an X (and, as it happens, a V) for the pangram, which also looked likely. I got the LIZ in the end but not the DNA, (for which, thanks) and decided I had enough to avoid pink squares.
Likewise, I missed and did not check the SERF bit of 3d, but that really couldn’t have been anything else.
Pleasant semi-tough puzzle helped by lots of multi-word answers.
35 mins then another few parsing the DNA LIZ bit.
I loved this one (like yesterday’s). Mostly I liked: Equid and COD to Fresh as a Daisy.
Thanks setter and V.
FIGURE OF EIGHT was the one I didn’t exactly understand (or at all) but the skating idea makes sense. I had ended up thinking more Zorro than Torvill and Dean.
Favourite moment the penny-drop for EQUID.
Cheers, jet-setting V and the setter
No doubt that will get sorted but thanks, Verlaine particularly for GONER, RIG UP and FRESH AS A DAISY.
With SWAZILAND, I gave serious thought to both SWAZINAND and SWATINAND as the country is also called ESWATINI now.
Perhaps “helping to” indeed would have been better
The Editor
– Nila Palin
20d is what Captain Scarlet would say to his mother….
Of course a spinster, or a bachelor, may have chosen not to be ‘available’.
Thanks verlaine and setter
BOTTLE-GAS seems to have escaped from a Guardian crossword.
Edited at 2019-09-27 05:49 pm (UTC)
Super puzzle, and I managed to complete it in fits and starts in a hospital car park during a day of visiting. If I’d have sat down for the usual 45 minute session in the evening I doubt I’d have finished it. (Currently targeting the 2035 Championships.)
– Nila Palin
2. Book train tickets for £39.10
3. Book two nights in cheap hotel for £93.50
4. Take 25 minutes over puzzle, confirming my fears that a 20 minute target wasn’t achievable.
5. Come to blog to confirm I’ve probably just wasted £132.60. At least I don’t need to pay for my annual ritual humiliation this year.
Apart from the 25% overtime, I’d never heard of GRASSHOPPER MIND, nor the spurious “bird” that was my downfall.
I only read half of the clue before entering SWORD OF DAMOCLES, which I parsed later. I was less successful with my other three biffs (SWAZILAND, FRESH AS A DAISY, and SIGMA), so my thanks to Verlaine for those.
FOI AJAR
LOI BOTTLE-GAS (not impressed)
COD JOINT WILL
I think I might consciously try to qualify for Group B (or even C), since I’m not realistically a candidate for the Final, and I might just get that wasted money back !
I am, too, excited about the Championship.
I would love to meet the many people on this site who compete (I am patently not one of them).
So I intend to meet you all in the pub during the afternoon.
This will also cost £132.60 (Just for alcohol I hope).
David
I had to split this into two halves across a morning meeting, and the first half hour saw me do about as well I as I did with yesterday’s puzzle. However, the meeting clearly woke me up as I only needed 48m in total to get this one wrong 😀 I enjoyed it a lot more than yesterday’s, regardless!
Actually did all but NE in the required time, but the JOINT WILL and AJAR foxed me, and I never did understand RIG UP till I got here. It must be my BUTTERFLY MIND…
Edit to say there were some very good clues here, especially for BAG OF BONES and SWAZILAND.
Edited at 2019-09-27 12:27 pm (UTC)
Being clever there did not stop me from leaving Stroke Of Eight in for far too long. A long word with many correct crossers can be a nightmare.
Edited at 2019-09-27 03:47 pm (UTC)
1) Given not all of us can hope to compete with Magoo, the Grand final was always a legitimate target and a nice yardstick to aim for. This has now gone. Zero chance of making the top 3, and it would seem in the new format only “31,32,33,61,62,63” (i know those wont be the actuals) are interesting.
2) Completely agree with other comments about gaming. Given the inaccessibility of top 3, there must be serious consideration to aiming for group C to make a target or reason in the semi-final.
3) not entirely clear on timings, seems like a lot to fit into the same time span usually used. Four hour long sittings in total plus breaks, and whilst it will only apply to three people, three separate lots of adrenaline and attention to detail may be just a bit too much for some ages!
I wonder if anyone else can give some insight as to the logic behind this, and perhaps point out what I have missed. Looking at above, I wonder if people had only clocked the date and not studied the format.
1) In previous years, there were two preliminary rounds and a further round which produced three prize winnners at the end. It’s exactly the same this year except there is a brief extra round at the end to settle the order of those three prize winners (rather than just handing out the prizes straight away). The chances of making the top three are unchanged from previous years, and making the Semi-Final would represent the same achievement as reaching the Grand Final in previous years.
What has changed, however, is that you now have a much better chance of being able to get through the preliminaries to the next round (and thus tackle more puzzles). And there are also more (and better) prizes, which surely can only ever be a good thing.
2) For me, the point of competing in the Championship is to challenge yourself against other solvers, try your very best and to see where you rank in the end. If you come out with a prize, then that’s a bonus. I can’t really see why you would go to the trouble of attending if your express purpose is to underperform in order to game one of the lesser prizes.
There are a couple of other factors to consider. All the Group A solvers and the top 20 Group B solvers will be guaranteed their places the following year. So there is a definite additional incentive to qualify for Group A above Group B and Group B above Group C.
Attempting to game the system would be very risky. It would only take one genuine mistake to mean that deliberately underperforming results in missing out on the Semi-final entirely. And you wouldn’t even have the consolation of knowing that you’d at least tried your best.
3) The Grand Final only involves one puzzle, so considering the speed of the top solvers, the difference in the required time between previous years and this year is negligible.
Hope that all make sense.
Best wishes,
David
I can see all of your logic. I guess it is more of a personal thing for me, as I have turned up each year for the last ten with the aim to “make the final”, and now that this is no longer there, I have nothing really to target.
I am sure that in years to come I will look back and wonder what all the (my) fuss was about !
In fact, we could have justifiably continued to use the term “Grand Final” instead of “Semi-Final” and then something like “Championship playoff” for the mini-round to settle the top three. Maybe something to ponder for next year…
I had assumed that all 90 were competing with each other in a single Semi, with the groupings only pertinent to allocation of prizes.
If the first case is the one, will there be three separate areas of the room, with three sets of invigilators to assess the time order of finishers?
Invigilation and assessment of order isn’t really any more difficult than usual in this system. Each solver’s grouping will be identified in the scorer’s spreadsheet, so we will record the order in the usual way and then the spreadsheet can simply be filtered by grouping.
If you have no idea which of the finishers you are competing directly with this then becomes impossible.
That said, you could still partition the three groups within the room whilst using a single list and that would allow the solvers to identify who they are competing against.
FOI Apse
Flare-up was SOI appropriately 😊
No probs with Swaziland, and I liked Orange-tip.
A big fat DNF!
My first pass yielded only one answer (ORANGE TIP – there are many of them on a walk I take regularly, so it was an easy one), followed by very slow progress that filled me with qualms about the gettability of some of the answers. Was 9ac going to be some obscure heraldic symbol? And, if so, what is “bronze” in heraldese? Did I know any long words containing “silo” for 14ac? Could I recall any fabrics other than denim and chintz for 24ac?
Eventually, the grid reached that tipping point where it looked more filled than empty (or at least more fillable than hopeless), and then the last few came all in a flurry of wavelengthening.
So, I am finally up to date, crosswordwise. Deciding not to believe in Mondays may have been a mistake, as I’ve spent most of the week catching up. On the plus side, though (and apropos nothing at all), I have a weekend of destruction to look forward to, having hired a variety of extremely dangerous-looking equipment from a tool-hire place. Two-stroke engines, pneumatics, caterpillar treads, hydraulics and big pointy things. It’s me versus a brick-bult garage and a concrete slab, and I have the bigger guns.
I ordered the Times Quick Cryptic Book 1 and one of the Daily Mail’s (I think.) I tried but gave up. They were just too hard. For some reason I came back to them again and again. Soon I found this very helpful, encouraging site. Lo and behold, I’m pretty good now. I used to scribble DNF at the top of each page, but now I scribble <10m most of the time. Crosswordland-specific words and usages and abbreviations weren’t as hard to figure out as the cricket, Cockney, rivers, and fauna terms, but I am working on it. I still don’t care for the Daily Mail cryptics!
Recently I took the plunge and bought my first 15×15 book and I feel I’m back to square one. I’m making slow progress, but there are just some that I cannot get. I average about 6 missed clues per puzzle, half of which are, personally, ungettable. But I soldier on, and it’s a lot of fun. Fun too is learning all the crosswordland terms: anagrist, anagrind, etc.
I just wanted to thank all the bloggers and the commenters. I don’t think many Americans my age are into cryptics but it’s become quite the little hobby and it would be a lot less fun if this website didn’t clue me into the answers and parsings of my ungettables.
Sorry for the life story. Thanks!
PuzzledDaily
PuzzledDaily