Times 27,749: A Fool And Its Cheeses Are Soon Partaken Of

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well this was tasty, tasty, very very tasty. A Friday smorgasbord of proper Timesy vocab and some truly superb constructions, a number of which I only fully appreciated in the post-solve write-up. In the heat of the solving I was most taken with 6dn and its “constituent of soap” definition, but 1ac is a belter now that its full intricacies have become apparent.

Full marks to the setter for this nutritious and substantial puzzle. Delicious without being at all fattening!

ACROSS
1 One serving cooked meal: it’s eaten very warm (6,6)
MAITRE D’HOTEL – (MEAL IT*) [“cooked”] has “eaten” RED HOT [very warm]!

9 Hard nuts cracked by unknown group of stars (5)
HYDRA – (HARD*) [“nuts”] “cracked” by Y [the unknown that isn’t X or Z]

10 Company at sea drink a nutritious substance (9)
COLOSTRUM – CO LOST RUM [company | at sea | drink]

11 Bit of smoke’s back in top piece of lab kit (4-4)
TEST-TUBE – BUTT’S [bit of smoke’s] is reversed in TEE [top]

12 Return of banknote, which may be in Leicester, say (6)
RENNET – TENNER [banknote] reversed. Leicester as in, a cheese.

13 Show competitors where to fly a kite? (8)
AIRFIELD – AIR [show] + FIELD [competitors] = where to fly a kite as in a plane.

15 Ideal sample of medicine, decoction from the east (6)
EDENIC – hidden reversed in {medi}CINE DE{coction}

17 This person’s about to enter a shade abrasive (6)
PUMICE – reversed I’M [this person is] to “enter” PUCE [a shade]

18 Hostility’s accepted if not a sin (8)
ENORMITY – ENMITY [hostility] has “accepted” OR [if not..]

20 Getting mobile, men are to call another way (6)
RENAME – (MEN ARE*) [“getting mobile”]

21 Material from the web, or feasible plan to keep a lot back (8)
GOSSAMER – GOER [feasible plan] to “keep” reversed MASS [a lot]. Web as in spiderweb, not the internet.

24 Maybe crude part in hissy fit? I’m not sure (9)
PETROLEUM – ROLE [part] in PET UM [hissy fit | I’m not sure]

25 Note wheels by motorway (5)
MINIM – MINI [wheels, as in car] by M [motorway]. I am slightly embarrassed to admit how long I just spent trying to work out how “nim” could be a slang word for a vehicle.

26 What may pick up fool with no work, feeling pressure to return (12)
DESSERTSPOON – reverse all of NO OP STRESSED [no | work | feeling pressure]. Fool as in the fruit pudding.

DOWN
1 Sage Derby, say, swallowed by lady with issue (7)
MAHATMA – HAT [Derby, e.g.] “swallowed” by MAMA [lady with issue = children]

2 Overly broad daughter is cutting finger (14)
INDISCRIMINATE – D(aughter) IS, “cutting” INCRIMINATE [finger]

3 Tear a strip off a piece of meat (5)
ROAST – double def, the first as in “to criticise harshly”

4 Try to avoid payment for amphibian (8)
DUCKBILL – or try to avoid payment by DUCKing the BILL

5 Socially, oddly withdrawn and unctuous (4)
OILY – {s}O{c}I{a}L{l}Y

6 Constituent of soap tablet, equally gentle (4,5)
EAST ENDER – E AS TENDER [tablet | equally | gentle]

7 Spanish edict sister spies me breaking soon (14)
PRONUNCIAMENTO – NUN CIA ME “breaking” PRONTO

8 Repeat my words over a kind of medicine (6)
EMETIC – reverse the phrase “CITE ME” [repeat my words]

14 Put out half of modest income, sadly (9)
INCOMMODE – (MOD{est} INCOME*) [“sadly”]

16 Playing well, accompanying Queen’s singer? (8)
INFORMER – IN FORM [playing well] + E.R.

17 Flourish every year, getting hit hard (6)
PARAPH – P.A. + RAP H. A flourish beneath one’s signature… I’ve been doing one of these for decades and never knew it had a name!

19 Vehicle lifted pieces for workers on track (7)
YARDMEN – reversed DRAY + MEN [(chess) pieces]

22 Island nation’s losing a part of Greece (5)
SAMOS – SAMO{a}’S, losing its A

23 Head from German city, going north, not east (4)
NESS – reversed {e}SSEN

103 comments on “Times 27,749: A Fool And Its Cheeses Are Soon Partaken Of”

  1. Well, if there were such a thing as a wavelength, I wasn’t anywhere near it, but I did finish. I biffed 1ac once–late in the proceedings–I thought of French and saw where to put the HOT; parsed the whole thing post-submission. DNK COLOSTRUM, PARAPH, but the wordplay was kind. The DUCKBILL an amphibian? Amphibious, maybe, but. I slowed myself down at various points, e.g. thinking of YM or EM but not MI in PUMICE, or like Verlaine, worrying about NIM. But the real time-waster was LOI AIRFIELD, where once I got MAHATMA I had the AIR, but thought the word ended in S, and somehow managed to skip F the first time around in an alphabet trawl. Liked MAITRE D’, DESSERTSPOON (although I’d have made two words of it), EAST ENDER among others.
    1. I thought the same but Collins to the rescue: ‘another word for amphibious’. Edit: although actually that’s just as an adjective so doesn’t really work. Hmm.
      And I see this has all been done already below. I should read all the comments first!

      Edited at 2020-08-21 11:20 am (UTC)

  2. Me too… very hard. Know Maitre’D, but not what comes after it, pencilled in house. No. First try at 7dn was anon holding nun cia, annunciamation or something? No. NHO paraph, edenic, colostrum, Samos… we seem to be straying into Mephisto-land again? Or am I just ignorant, as usual? In the end all parsed except LOI emetic, BIFD in desperation.
    A really good, challenging puzzle.
  3. And good to see enormity being a sin, rather than a big thing 😉 Enjoyed that Leicester was a cheese but Sage Derby wasn’t. Really liked duckbill as an amphibian, rather than a marsupial (it isn’t) or monotreme, which is a dead giveaway: echidna or platypus, not echidna. Lots to like in this puzzle.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 02:52 am (UTC)

  4. A stiff challenge, but successfully negotiated. Couldn’t parse MINIM…. got fixated on the M1 motorway wheeling around N for note, so thanks to Verlaine for sorting it out. Like Kevin wondered whether a platypus was strictly an amphibian.
    Paraph was new to me, and a nice flourish for LOI. 36’13”

  5. 78 minutes, so pretty much off the radar. Very enjoyable stuff, with the unknowns (eventually) gettable and the cunning knowns proving just as hard to untangle.

    If Germany was merely a crossword land, then Essen would be its capital and Trier its Munich.

  6. … and was glad to finish in under 55 minutes. As for others, I liked it when PARAPH, MINIM, DESSERTSPOON and AIRFILED finally fell into place. And a MER at DUCKBILL, where the equivalence (of the noun form) doesn’t seem to quite work.
    1. Every day you learn something new… amphibian (noun) has a gilled, underwater larval stage and a four-legged land-based adult stage. That rules out Platypii. As an adjective it works, living in land and water; but the clue cannot work like that, an adjective clueing a noun. So like the setter, I got it wrong.
      1. Is there an adjective ‘amphibian’? And is the platypus any more amphibious than the otter?
        1. I think this is just a loose sense of “amphibian”, an animal that lives both on land and in the water, rather than a strict technical one. Works for me on that basis.
          1. Yes, it passed my ultimate test, i.e. I didn’t have any doubt that this was the right answer when the penny dropped. Thanks for the blog!
        2. There is an adjective amphibian which perfectly describes the platypus, but in my universe the grammar of cryptic clues must match: you can’t define a noun with an adjective.
          I’d go with Verlaine’s loose definition of amphibian, which some dictionaries allow – it’s in my Oxford, but not my Chambers.
  7. Glad I was feeling fairly awake this morning, as this took me 58 minutes as it was. In a dopey mood I might have given up. Enjoyable, with several new words for me, all fairly clued. FOI 5d OILY LOI 1a MAITRE D’HOTEL. Joint COD 6d EAST ENDER and 26a DESSERTSPOON for their definitions.
  8. 22 mins with yoghurt, granola, nectarine.
    Well I’m amazed. After struggling over the last two days, which others seemed to enjoy, I breezed through this and others seem to have struggled. I’m starting to believe in the ‘wavelength’ theory.
    Obviously I had to pick my way carefully through the Pronunciamento and the NHO Paraph.
    Thanks setter and V.
    1. It’s quite clear that the correlation between general solving skill and individual puzzle difficulty is far from perfect. We need a word to describe this phenomenon and ‘wavelength’ does the job even if it’s a bit silly with it’s slightly woo implications. Can you think of a better one?
      1. Do we need a word for this? So far as I’ve ever been able to tell, ‘on the wavelength’=solved quickly. Why is Schwartz batting so poorly? He’s in a slump. Why is McGee winning so often? He’s on a roll. Why did it take me over 40 minutes to solve this puzzle? I wasn’t on the setter’s wavelength.
        1. I suppose we don’t need a word (we never really do, the French seem to cope without a word for ‘shallow’) but ‘I solved this puzzle relatively quickly compared to other solvers, adjusting for our respective average solving speeds’ is a bit of a mouthful.
          1. Is that what on/off the wavelength means? What’s always irritated me about the expression is that it seems to be intended as offering an explanation, when in fact it does no such thing; hence my slump/on a roll examples.
            1. That’s the way I use it. If I do a puzzle in 10 minutes I will consider I was ‘on the wavelength’ if everyone else says it was really hard. The WITCH is a numerical measure of this. It doesn’t explain anything, it just describes a phenomenon that is actually extremely hard (indeed largely impossible) to explain.

              Edited at 2020-08-21 01:23 pm (UTC)

              1. “Superficiel” is perfect for “shallow” in most senses. And if in referring to the depth of a stream, swimming pool or body of water one might prefer two words, “peu profond(e),” I have found this citation: “Finalement, le canal devint superficiel est n’est plus navigable.”

                1. The crucial phrase there is ‘in most senses’.
                  When French people want to say ‘shallow’ in a physical sense they usually say ‘peu profond’. This isn’t a problem! Just an interesting support to counter the notion that we ‘need’ particular words, really.

                  Edited at 2020-08-21 11:34 pm (UTC)

                  1. Yes, that’s why I added it.
                    I can’t correct my mistyping, since you replied. The first “est” should be “et,” of course.
                    1. Of course.
                      I finally got a chance to watch Biden’s speech. Wonderful stuff, I can’t help feeling hopeful.
                      P.S. I love ‘devint’ in that sentence. A construction that a minority of French people would even understand, much less be able to use, these days I suspect. Language moves on!

                      Edited at 2020-08-22 12:15 am (UTC)

                      1. I’m hopeful too. The contrast between Biden and Trump (and their respective families) is stark. I’m an incurable optimist, but I don’t see how Trump can win again.
                        1. By cheating. It’s his avowed intention, and DeJoy has already done most of the work.

                          Edited at 2020-08-22 12:21 am (UTC)

                        2. Voter suppression. Destroying the post office (you added to your comment while I was replying). But there’s significant grassroots and congressional action on all those fronts. The trouble for the Dems in 2016 was complacency.

                          Edited at 2020-08-22 12:25 am (UTC)

                        3. God I hope you’re right. This is an extraordinarily consequential election: if Trump wins, American democracy (as flawed* as it already is) will be finished.
                          *substitute for a less polite word
                        4. Another problem in 2016, much as I hate to admit it, was the candidate. I’m a Hillary fan but America is not ready for a woman president. I’m an even bigger Elizabeth Warren fan but I think the Dems made the right choice of candidate.

                          Edited at 2020-08-22 12:31 am (UTC)

                        5. Hillary was complacent.

                          I am not a Hillary fan, though of course I voted for her, and I blame her more than any resistance on the part of the American populace to vote for a woman.

                          It was frightening to see her (to not see her) not deign to give a press conference for six long months (while Trump dominated the airwaves), and to know that she had not campaigned once in any of the three swing states that Trump won by very thin margins.

                          She assumed Trump would self-destruct. And yet her ads were mainly about Trump rather than putting forth a positive message about her proposed policies.

                          Hillary, like so many Democrats who blithely sat at home on Election Day, and even like some people of both parties who voted for Trump but merely as a protest (sound familiar?), did not sufficiently believe that a Trump win was in the realm of possibility.

                          It’s different this time.

                          Edited at 2020-08-22 12:56 am (UTC)

                        6. I think your analysis of Hillary is absolutely spot on. To be fair the idea that the American people would fall for Trump seemed preposterous at the time so a ‘let him blow himself up’ strategy seemed sensible. It still amazes me that such a transparent fraud has such a following: that’s the power of propaganda I guess.
                          Biden is definitely not making the same mistake.

                          Edited at 2020-08-22 01:05 am (UTC)

  9. 19:07. Nice chewy Friday fare. LOI DESSERTSPOON – great clue …provided by the MAITRE D’HOTEL, perhaps – another one. NHO PARAPH or COLOSTRUM, but they had to be the answers. All very filling if not that easily digestible, Thanks V and setter.
  10. Just to add to the confusion, the Sukhoi Su-34 is apparently known as the DUCKBILL, but probably doesn’t go very well under the water.
    I took 33 minutes over this, which didn’t give me enough time to work out whether platypuses are amphibians. I was too busy constructing the Spanish word from ANON for soon, CIA MEN for spies and of course the NUN. I nearly got there before answering the phone in Italian prompted a rethink.
    PARAPH is weird, is it not? Looks like it derives from Greek like other pretentious words for ordinary things but I gather it’s more French.
    I got twisted into a pretzel by everything in the bottom left, even wondering whether MARTMEN might be railway workers. My variations on “singer” (16) included baritones and such, mellifluous birds and, in desperation, sewing machines. That bit of Greece that starts with an I(sland) and finishes with a country minus A. And of course trying to remember what that thing in a website that produces a map was (21).
    Got there in the end, and rather liked its cleverness.

    Stray thought: wouldn’t life be so much easier if apostrophes were included in the numeration?

    1. Well and truly twisted – those clues are in the bottom right. (or was that deliberate?)
  11. I struggled. It wasn’t a good start to the day to find our canvas gazebo, lazily left up yesterday, blowing round the garden. Then, having rescued that, I was told by daughter that she had an internet one-to-one with her personal trainer, and her puppy was all mine for the next hour. So this was attempted with a ten week old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel doing her best impression of Taz of Tasmania behind, in front of and on me. I didn’t know or get PARAPH and also missed out on DESSERTSPOON, which I might eventually have stumbled on. I did construct PRONUNCIAMENTO, which I have never heard of but have to make COD. I certainly wasn’t ready for the Spanish Inquisition. DNF after a turbulent hour. Thank you V and setter.
  12. A nod and elbow bump to the victorious setter. 67 minutes and several answers checked with aids. Many aha moments and wry smiles, especially the soap constituent (I am now an expert on home made soap following that wild goose chase) and the dessert spoon. Brilliant. Thanks V for the revelations of several wing-and-prayer entries. A proper Friday, and no mistake Mr ‘Udson (voiced by Mrs Bridges).
  13. Well, I gave up after 1hr 30 and came here for sanctuary. Safe in the knowledge that V will have all the answers to my questions. Same as many above with lots of NHOs, clues misunderstood and a number biffed without really working out what the clue was about. 1 ac being a classic example. Well and truly beaten. Well done setter, and thanks V for the blog.
  14. Won’t be doing the crossword for a week as I am in Spain (only 8 of us on an A320 with 4 stewardesses yesterday). Came here to read V’s blog. Great crossword. COD to the spoons.
    1. Ha, takes me back to the good old days when I used to go business class to Madrid once a week, Dan Air Silver Service, just me and two stewardesses… such a shame they went under 🙂
  15. Best puzzle of the week by far. Tough but fair and a sense of achievement to finish it.

    Whilst the setter cites the Spanish pedigree of PRONUNCIAMENTO the most famous must surely be De Gaulle’s broadcast in 1940 urging civilian disobedience against Vichy France

  16. Full marks to the setter. Consistently tough but oh so many wonderful DOH moments. Adored East Ender, maitre D, the fool-lifting dessert spoon etc etc. Thanks to the setter for making my day!
  17. Cheesy not cheesy, some great (grate?) stuff here. It’s not very often I go past 20, but very happy to finish this one. Class act, thanks and respect to setter and V.
  18. THis must have suited my warped brain as I currently have a NITCH of 108 translating to a WITCH of 72.

    My only real problem was with ENORMITY where I was trying to put IF in a word for hostility to get something that’s not a sin. I’m probably not the only one.

    I was willing to trust the wordplay on PARAPH (and I suppose on EDENIC to a degree). Some clever stuff, particularly the spoon. Thanks all round.

    Colostrum remembered from the early years of parenthood. Either from a book or ante-natal classes.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 08:15 am (UTC)

    2. Yes, that’s something you’d tend to remember from that stage in your life. Good time Penfold.
      1. Particularly if it’s the first indication of birth complications that will result in life-long disability. A word I will never forget.
    3. Colostrum is a word that will almost certainly come up at some point if you do a lot of quizzes; and/or vernix and lanugo.
  19. Very hard going for me, so nearly completed without aids after three sessions, the first lasting nearly an hour.

    In the end I got all the hard ones but came a cropper on the oh-so-easy 12ac where I had written AIR-I-L- and knew the ‘kite’ reference but didn’t have enough fuel left in the tank to concentrate for another few minutes to spot the obvious FIELD, so I reached for my handy tablet.

    There were far too many unknowns for one puzzle and in particular I didn’t appreciate the Spanish edict which I suspect those who knew of it biffed it probably without even reading the rest of the clue, but those like me who didn’t know it had an uphill struggle constructing it from wordplay.

  20. Actually managed five seconds off my current average time so must have been on the wavelength. NHO PARAPH, PRONUNCIAMENTO or EDENIC but was sure of the last two, at least.

    COD: MAHATMA for Sage Derby

    Yesterday’s answer: the elephant shrew is named after the largest and smallest land mammals, but is neither an elephant nor a shrew.

    Today’s question: Loch Ness is the largest body of freshwater in the UK by volume. What is second? (Crossword clue rather than just the answer, please!)

    2. Your question reminds me of a quiz I attended a couple of years ago where one of the questions was ‘what is the largest lake in the world?’ There was an immediate chorus of ‘by volume or surface area?’ which I thought indicated a pretty healthy geek contingent in the room.
  21. To cap off a week of poor performances, I misread 15a and entered ODENIC instead of EDENIC – I just assumed that, like several other words today, it was unknown to me. Eden didn’t even cross my mind. 10m 30s with that error.

    RED HOT in 1a was a great find; I also liked the use of ‘finger’ in INDISCRIMINATE and the definition for DESSERTSPOON. A nice puzzle. I hope to be on better form next week!

    1. Good showing in the OQL second friendly on Wednesday by the way! I hope you will continue to join us for the quizzing…
  22. OILY was my FOI, followed by MAHATMA and TEST TUBE. RENNET followed, but then the struggle began.Knew COLOSTRUM from watching the Yorkshire Vet and other animal tales, but PARAPH was new to me, as was EDENIC and PRONUNCIAMENTO, although the latter was easy enough to construct. AIRFIELD took a while, but my last 2 in were DESSERTSPOON and SAMOS. 41:25, so quite happy with that. Thanks setter and V.
  23. 30’36, found it less tough than some others this week. Colostrum was about 95% unknown but wrote itself in after a time. Just about knew paraph. Always satisfying to get there without the dictionary, which I outlaw for solving anyway. Good to see the soap mentioned – my drug of choice. Can’t wait to see them get back on set again. joekobi
  24. An extreme form of curates egg for me. Some clues were write ins which led me to think it might be an easy Friday. Couldn’t decide between PARAPH and PARAPT, seeing as hit can mean past or present. Neither seemed likely.
    DESSERTSPOON held up by typing SAMOA, which took up a goodly part of my time, as did ENORMITY see comment above.
  25. ….without my carelessness making it tougher still. I decided that in 7D “soon = anon” so wrote in “annuncia” and “on” in the last two squares.

    Then I loused up 19D, deciding that “vehicle lifted” was a reverse of “van”. I bunged in “navvies”.

    Obviously I was then totally bemired, and couldn’t solve most of the across clues heading east. NHO COLOSTRUM or EDENIC, and that was a further complication.

    In the end I was left with 18A/19D, and tried vainly for some time to catch a “tram” instead of awaiting the arrival of the “dray” (a beer was becoming more appealing by the minute).

    At least I eventually fell over the line.

    FOI HYDRA
    LOI ENORMITY
    COD MAHATMA
    TIME 25:15

    2. I almost bunged in NAVVIES too. Thinking about it with that clue alone my decision to admire the scenery as I solved probably sped me up rather than slowing me down.
  26. One of the NBC network correspondents covering the Democratic convention this week referred to the ENORMITY of Obama’s speech and I assumed she wasn’t talking about what the current POTUS thought of it. QE1 has about the best PARAPH of all and that tied in nicely with Leicester in 12a. Pippin of a puzzle and I managed a brisk(ish) 23 on the dot.
  27. 20:13. An absolutely magnificent puzzle. When I realised how good it was I slowed myself down a bit to make sure I understood and appreciated everything but I needed the wordplay for most of these clues (always a mark of quality) so it didn’t make a lot of difference. Too many delightful eureka moments to mention.
    Slight MERs at DUCKBILL (not really an amphibian) and Leicester (not really a cheese) but nowhere near enough to spoil the fun.
    Thank you and brava/o setter.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 11:39 am (UTC)

    1. cheesewiki (it really is a thing) says “Red Leicester, sometimes called Leicester, is an English cheese…”.

      Edited at 2020-08-21 03:26 pm (UTC)

      1. Sorry I was just being facetious. I regard Red Leicester as an abomination. Of course even if it’s not cheese (which it isn’t) it indisputably contains rennet so it doesn’t really make sense!
        I actually bought some ‘high quality’ aged artisanal Red Leicester from Neal’s Yard Dairy recently to see if it would change my mind about the stuff. It didn’t.

        Edited at 2020-08-21 04:02 pm (UTC)

        1. Ah. I didn’t appreciate the subtlety of your criticism. And I’ll bet you know a cheese joke about Red Leicester. (I still liked the clue).
          1. I don’t actually. Will have to try and make one up.
            Lockdown has been catastrophic for small-scale cheese producers, who sell most of their produce to restaurants. One of my favourite cheeses in the world (a goat cheese called Innis Brick) has gone forever: the producer couldn’t survive. I have been doing my bit by subscribing to a monthly selection that Neal’s Yard have been delivering. At the moment I have Kirkham’s Lancashire, Isle of Mull Cheddar and Tunworth in the fridge. They are all absolutely superb and there is even less excuse than ever to be eating Red Leicester!
            1. If you think Red Leicester isn’t a cheese you should see some of the vegan substitutes I have in my diet!
              2. Cheese: one of the reasons I could never be a vegan. Other reasons include all other dairy products, eggs and meat. Other than that I think I’d be fine.

                Edited at 2020-08-21 04:43 pm (UTC)

                1. As someone once said, if the good Lord wanted us to be vegans, how come He made animals out of meat?
    1. Ha, yes. Rather than being thrown to his doom though the quizmaster quite cleverly turned it into a two-pointer.

      Edited at 2020-08-21 11:52 am (UTC)

  29. I was on the wavelength for this, quickly realising that this was far too hard for me so came here.
    I got TEST TUBE but couldn’t parse it.I gave up after NAVVIES was clearly wrong. I am reminded of a joke about horses: What is the difference between a cavalry charger and a dray horse? A a cavalry charger darts in the fray and a dray horse … (think Spooner).

    Edited at 2020-08-21 02:20 pm (UTC)

  30. 36.13 and very pleased to finish. An excellent puzzle to end the week I thought. COD for me was a toss up between indiscriminate and pronunciamento. Tough but both gettable, in the case of the latter despite having NHO it.

    Same applies to paraph and I would have included colostrum but for some reason it came to me unprompted. Working to a conclusion on this one makes up for the stupid mistakes committed earlier in the week!

  31. A very challenging end to the week and, like others, I was relieved to finally struggle over the line – in my case in just over 45 minutes.
    I learned several new words today – EDENIC, MAHATMA, EMETIC, PARAPH and PRONUNCIAMENTO – but just about managed to get them from the definitions and checkers in place.
    There were some quite straightforward ones – ROAST, OILY, RENNET and RENAME which gave me the inspiration to continue.
    COD goes to MAITRE D’HOTEL for its clever construction and the satisfaction of working it out.
    Thanks to the setter and to V for putting me out of my misery on the tough ones.
  32. I liked East Enders and Rennet.
    I couldn’t get Airedale as the show competitor or Parade as a flourish out of my mind. Two up to the setter.
    I learnt whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, so quavers and Minims usually throw me, but the clue today was very clear.
    We had Yardmen a couple months ago with a similar clue, and I tried Navvies then, so (with unwarranted smugness) I wasn’t fooled this time.
    Thanks Verlaine. Special thanks setter and ed.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 03:31 pm (UTC)

  33. Similar experience to others. Good tough puzzle, worked through while watching cricket, pleased to cross the finish line. PARAPH unknown but fro wordplay. Didn’t parse the SPOON or fully parse TEST TUBE (I now see a TEE is a top like a shirt). DRAYMEN was my LOI not really understood though.
    Nice to have 2 Greek islands Hydra and Samos.
    Good time Olivia!
    Well blogged V.
  34. I can’t any reference to a goer being a feasible plan. Is it an acceptable term just not in my vocabulary? Jeffrey
    1. Lexico: ‘a project likely to succeed’
      if the business is a goer, the entrepreneur moves on
      1. Not to be confused with, “your wife, she’s a bit of a goer, know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink”, I hope…
  35. 49:22. Phew! A tough workout with many nice touches. Feeling pleased with myself for seeing it through to the finish.
  36. I persevered and completed the grid in around 90 mins but with a few pink squares. A little too tough for me but no complaints. Thanks setter and V for the ever enjoyable blog
  37. This took me about 3 hours (with a nap in-between!). I won’t talk about wavelengths – got there in the end although had to check that “Paraph” was correct as NHO. My own signature has a paraph – for all these years, I never knew.
  38. I was delighted to grind this one out, which I actually finished, and which was easier for me than Wednesday’s (which I didn’t quite finish), both of which were much much easier than Thursday’s puzzle. (For this American, the SNITCH is often inaccurate…)

    A lovely end to a challenging week!

  39. 1 hour 24 minutes with a few breaks, but an absolutely delightful puzzle, worth every minute. Very witty and misleading clues. The only one which really gave me pause was PRONUNCIAMENTO, since the Spanish word would have an extra I in it, i.e., PRONUNCIAMIENTO (the British English dictionary in my Oxford subscription actually gives this as the etymology, but in English the second I is missing and of course it wouldn’t have fit the word length nor the wordplay). Thank you, setter, for a delightful evening solve.
  40. I’m glad I stuck it out and finished today without aids. Pretty sure I’ve never come across COLOSTRUM before, and it took a minute to remember PARAPH.
  41. The candidate was complacent.
    I am not a Hillary fan (though I voted for her, bien sûr), and it was frightening (despite the polls) to see her—to not see her—seeing no need to give a press conference for six long month (while Trump dominated the airwaves) and neglecting to campaign even just once in the three swing states she wound up losing by such a thin margin.
    She assumed Trump would self-destruct—and yet her ads were mainly about Trump and not her own program.
    She, like so many Democrats who blithely sat at home on Election Day, and even like some people of both parties who voted for Trump but did it merely as a “protest vote,” thought there was no chance in hell Trump could win.
    Everyone is singing a different tune this year.
  42. Well that was a lovely challenge! LOI was pronunciamento which is now my favourite word.
    Never heard of paraph before and I’m sure I will have forgotten it by the next time it comes round.

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