I would have come close to a PB with this puzzle, until I was slowed down by the 23d and 26a crossers, and 21a which required all the alternate letters in place before I saw what was needed. Two long anagrams can get you off to a fast start. I was a little uncomfortable with the definition at 21a.
EDIT: it seems I was lucky, or just on particularly good form, as most people below found this hard! It’s unusual for me to be speedier than most, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.
EDIT: it seems I was lucky, or just on particularly good form, as most people below found this hard! It’s unusual for me to be speedier than most, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.
| Across | |
| 1 | Fortunate I am on horse: no fun here on bike? (12) |
| COBBLESTONES – COB (kind of horse) BLEST (fortunate) ONES (I am, one’s). | |
| 9 | Chinese switch positions in capital (5) |
| HANOI – HAN for Chinese, O and I for off and on positions. | |
| 10 | Grasping toff has a heart of gold? (5,4) |
| MEANS WELL – MEAN (grasping) SWELL (toff). | |
| 11 | Driving competitively, squeezing teammate into roundabout, perhaps (8) |
| RALLYING – ALLY (teammate) inside RING = roundabout perhaps. | |
| 12 | Firm resistance: read all about it (6) |
| STURDY – R for resistance inside STUDY = read. | |
| 13 | Your extremely evil master’s twisted jesting (8) |
| DROLLERY – All reversed (twisting): YR (your) EL (ends of EviL) LORD (master). | |
| 15 | To be ranked worse than F went down badly (6) |
| GRATED – if you’re G RATED you’re worse than F. | |
| 17 | Perhaps designer garments last for one season — gets darker clothes (6) |
| DENIMS – E N the last letters of one season, inside DIMS = gets darker. | |
| 18 | Won’t share: had to drink initially enormous amount of alcohol (8) |
| HOGSHEAD – If you HOG sometning you’re not keen to share it; so HOGS = won’t share, HAD has E = initially enormous, inserted. A hogshead is a big barrel, its actual volume seems to depend on whether it is for wine, beer, or spirits. 54 gallons for beer, 63 for wine, usually. | |
| 20 | Memory returning, fool is in confused state (6) |
| MORASS – ROM (read only memory) reversed, ASS = fool. | |
| 21 | Frenchman’s duck, caught by a favourite opener (8) |
| APERIENT – a bit obtuse and my LOI. A PET = a favourite, insert RIEN which means nothing in French. An aperient is a laxative, hence an “opener” of a sort. | |
| 24 | Old browser I rejected as you are texting way ahead (9) |
| STEGOSAUR – ST (way, ahead meaning first part of the answer); EGO (I), SA (rejected as) UR (you are in text language). | |
| 25 | Having got bigger reaction to bad joke perhaps when broadcast (5) |
| GROWN – sounds like GROAN = reaction to bad joke. | |
| 26 | Going through endlessly harsh part of mountain, note it took its toll (6,6) |
| SEVERN BRIDGE – SEVER(E) = endlessly harsh, RIDGE = part of mountain, N.B. = note is inserted (“going through”). I had the bridge bit a while before seeing which bridge we were talking about. The first Severn Bridge was a toll bridge from its opening in 1966 to 2018 when it became “free to enter Wales”. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Girl in school stuck with another (7) |
| COHERED – HER (girl) inside CO-ED (school). | |
| 2 | Having burned oneself very badly, an anxious case (6,2,6) |
| BUNDLE OF NERVES – (BURNED ONESELF V)*. | |
| 3 | Neglect to send out Times: they haven’t taken orders (5) |
| LAITY – LAXITY = neglect, remove the X = times. | |
| 4 | House not ever needed as college (8) |
| SEMINARY – SEMI (semi-detached house) NARY meaning never a one. | |
| 5 | Female avoiding wife’s state (4) |
| OMAN – WOMAN loses W for wife. | |
| 6 | Do they spread the cost of a superficial education? (4,5) |
| EASY TERMS – witty cryptic definition. | |
| 7 | Shy contender, he turned out founder of a dynasty (5,3,6) |
| HENRY THE SECOND – (SHY CONTENDER HE)*. First king of the House of Plantagenet, 1154 to 1189. | |
| 8 | You being laid in earth was excessively sickening (6) |
| CLOYED – YE = you inside CLOD = earth. | |
| 14 | Rock and roll single gripping me (9) |
| LIMESTONE – LIST (roll) ONE (single) has ME inserted. | |
| 16 | Composer’s astonishing feat, in captivating monarch (8) |
| COUPERIN – COUP =astonishing feat, ER = monarch, IN. French baroque composer, François Couperin. | |
| 17 | Prosecutor not to reveal being a silk (6) |
| DAMASK – DA (district attorney) MASK (not to reveal). | |
| 19 | Period of relaxation having taking a knock largely with alien invasion (7) |
| DETENTE – DENTE(D) = taken a knock largely, insert ET the usual ‘alien’. | |
| 22 | I hear you pulled up some more gorse (5) |
| ROGER – hidden reversed as above. | |
| 23 | Worry as distinct period of change announced (4) |
| FAZE – sounds like “phase” = distinct period of change. Collins gives FAZE: to disconcert, worry, disturb. I suspect many people use the word in this sense meaning worry thinking it is spelt ‘phase’. | |
On edit: Glad to see I was not alone in finding this hard. I wondered about the past tense at 26ac, and a little research revealed that tolls on the SEVERN BRIDGE were abolished in December 2018.
Edited at 2021-06-09 04:56 am (UTC)
I guess I’m not sure why I found this puzzle so hard… exhausted perhaps by some long days with the kids. But in any case, glad to have finished!
Attempted to post this on the puzzle page, but it didn’t work — that whole website just seems to get worse and worse
Oh yes and the puzzle itself was hard — almost half an hour here
Just as well I’m not on Twitter, as just about every tweet I would ever have penned would now be the subject of hand-wringing and opprobrium…
Given our blogger’s comments, it will be interesting to see how the SNITCH ends up – nothing there so far.
FOI 6dn EASY TERMS – on the never-never
(LOI) 18ac APERIENT – suppository in France – for all the good it did…….
COD 22dn ROGER that!
WOD 1ac COBBLESTONES – blest was a blessed nuisance as are the cobbles to the bikers in the TdF.
Neither did I parse 9ac HANOI – O and I? I’ve just read all about it on Wikipedia since 2015 – who knew? They don’t have it HANOI – yet!
Edited at 2021-06-09 04:11 am (UTC)
Edited at 2021-06-09 05:18 am (UTC)
Big gaps after 30 mins, mostly due to not getting CobBlestOnes or the too hard Couperin/Aperient crossers.
In Edinburgh, the cyclists seem to have conquered the difficulties presented by cobblestones. They ride on the pavements.
Thanks setter and Pip.
Liked HANOI. I haven’t seen the O/I device for on-off before.
Though I found a lot of this difficult, my main hold up was the COUPERIN/APERIENT crossers. I’d thought of COUPERIN as a possibility but then couldn’t come up with anything for APERIENT for an age. I spent a long time toying with French names and thinking about the French for duck until finally rien came to me and it fell into place. To reuse the old Only Fools and Horses joke this clue was canard!
And good luck with the move!
COD to the well-constructed STEGOSAUR. LOI FAZE.
29′ 58″, thanks pip and setter.
The Han Chinese trace a common ancestry to the Huaxia, the initial confederation of agricultural tribes living along the Yellow River.
There are about 1.4 billion people who speak chinese languages.
Andyf
Last few in were MEANS WELL / CLOYED / STURDY and then the STEGOSAUR / COUPERIN (NHO) / APERIENT (knew the word but not what it means – thought it might be to do with aperitif!) leaving my LOI FAZE which I was pleased to get.
Edited at 2021-06-09 10:17 am (UTC)
I didn’t know APERIENT and the wordplay was trickyish so fingers crossed there.
The last time I crossed the (newer) Severn Bridge I had to pay, which tells me that it was longer ago than I thought. Tempus whatsit.
Pedant’s corner: puzzles with numbers starting 27 constitute the 28th millenium.
Edited at 2021-06-09 08:01 am (UTC)
Andyf
I agree with Lou Weed. In the clue for 19d it should read ‘taken’ not ‘taking.
As for COBBLESTONES. If anyone wants to see what “no fun here on bike” looks like, watch the video “A Sunday in Hell”, the story of the 1976 Paris-Roubaix one-day classic cycle race, one of the five “Monuments”. The race itself is known generally as “The H e l l of the North”.
As the SNITCH wasn’t working, I looked at the opening of Pip’s review as a guide before starting and thought it would be a stroll.
But like others, I found this just too tricky to finish; the wordplay was difficult and the vocab was just a slight step above the norm making it difficult to get some easy inroads.
On another point, how does one get added to the SNITCH poll? Having practiced pretty hard for a few months, although I’m still much better at the easier ones, I reckon my par time is in the 20-25 minute range so would be good to monitor that properly going forward.
Check the “About” tab on the SNITCH home page.
I am a member of the Crossword Club but I don’t think my times have ever come up on SNITCH. I presume I need to be added to a list somewhere so that my details are added in.
Presume starstruck has all the answers but will leave him to move house this weekend first!
This was nicely crafted – difficult to build up momentum, as others have commented, because most of the clues required some thought, with very few dropping in quickly.
A few to choose from for COD, but the best for me were COBBLESTONES (great breakdown) & HANOI.
Large sections of Poitiers are cobblestoned which makes cycling an “interesting” experience.
Thanks to Pip and the setter.
Right down to the dreaded _A_E at 23, this was (for me) a nightmare puzzle, with almost every clue sneering at me for an incompetent fool.
COBBLESTONES unparsed apart from the horse, and bikers should try pushing a wheelchair over the surface before complaining.
HANOI because it fits.
APPERIENT laboriously constructed from WP, French duck gets nul points.
DENIMS designer garments? Most of them not even probably!
DROLLERY. Didn’t much like twisted as a reversal indicator. Perhaps that’s just the influence of general discontent.
And so on and so forth. Fine example of what we mean by wavelength: Pip on one end of the spectrum (congratulations!), most everyone else on the other.
Edited at 2021-06-09 10:49 am (UTC)
Edited at 2021-06-09 10:15 am (UTC)