Not a quick solve by my standards at 25.20, and I seemed to rove over various discrete bits of the puzzle without any methodical joining. One clue, 6d, defied proper resolution during the session, though afterwards I decided it was really quite cleverly misleading. Towards the bottom end of the puzzle there are some fairly stretchy definitions, and a rather endearing tendency to forestall any complaints about words perceived as antique or poetic even when Chambers doesn’t think so. A couple of clues where individual letters are raised or lowered are good to see. I rather liked this one, no obscurities that I noticed, and enough garden path diversions to offer a decent challenge.
Definitions underlined in italics, Solutions in BOLD CAPITALS
| Across | |
| 1 | Cowed and bust after getting a fine (6) |
| AFRAID – A F(ine) followed by RAID for bust as in a police drugs bust | |
| 5 | Aussie native is to evade payment (8) |
| DUCKBILL -The platypus, natch, though duckbill does on its own. Evade is DUCK, and payment (requested) is BILL | |
| 9 | Whip a ferret through underground passage (8) |
| CATACOMB – Whip gives you CAT (as in -o’-nine-tails) and ferret through and COMB are decent equivalents. You also need the A. | |
| 10 | Concerned with growth on bank charge (6) |
| ONRUSH – Concerned with is not RE but ON, and growth on (river) bank gives you the RUSH. Lift and separate the tempting bank charge. | |
| 11 | Quality of hawk or cuckoo, e.g., soaring across sierra (10) |
| AGGRESSION – Not particularly the bird, more the hawk as opposed to dove in politics. And our first anagram (cuckoo) of EG SOARING including NATO Sierra, S | |
| 13 | Escape in little jumper that’s picked up (4) |
| FLEE – A homophone (picked up), the little jumper being a flea | |
| 14 | What nanny may say, with maiden in royal address (4) |
| MAAM – A nanny (goat) might say MAA, and you then add a M(aiden) Ma’am is how we commoners are expected to address Her Maj given the chance. | |
| 15 | Measure frill worn by Lucinda periodically (5,5) |
| FLUID OUNCE – One of the many Imperial Units that us Brits are now allowed to use again freed from the tyranny of the dastardly continentals with their so-called metric system. It’s 1⁄20 of a Pint, equivalent to 28.413ml: how much simpler is that?! Ah, the wordplay? Frill is FLOUNCE with the odd letters of LUcInDa inserted (worn by) | |
| 18 | Support upright character in equine posture (10) |
| ASSISTANCE – An (the) upright character is I, placed in(side) ASS for equine and STANCE for posture. | |
| 20 | For Henri I, queen makes taunt (4) |
| JEER – OK, that’s not Henri the First, it’s for Henri (any old French person) I (first person pronoun) So it’s JE, here with Her Maj ER tagged on. | |
| 21 | Old boat The Beagle could make this sound (4) |
| BARK – An old word for boat (cf barque) though I’d venture it’s more poetic than old. The Beagle is obviously, despite capitalisation, not the Darwin bark but the Snoopy type dog. | |
| 23 | Train wrongly, I notice, carrying gold coin on motorway (10) |
| MISEDUCATE – I notice is I SEE, which carries DUCAT for gold coin. Place the assembly on M1 for motorway. | |
| 25 | Old red drunkard punched by jockey (6) |
| SOVIET – SOT for drunkard is “punched” or penetrated by VIE for jockey as in for position. | |
| 26 | Time invested in a viable criminal case (8) |
| ABLATIVE – One of those cases we learned about when we started Latin, as in mensa, by with or from the table. An anagram (criminal) of A VIABLE plus T(ime) | |
| 28 | Following people inside with joint leader (8) |
| FLAGSHIP – Like the late, but unlamented Moskva of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, now functioning as a glorious submarine. F(ollowing) plus people inside (ie prisoners) LAGS and HIP for joint. | |
| 29 | Stop marks getting scrubbed from part of chair (6) |
| ARREST – Part of a chair is an ARMREST. Scrub (remove) the M(arks) | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Girl upset with a fan’s informal language (9) |
| FRANGLAIS – La GIRL est attachée á A FAN’S and est upsettée comme un might diser, ou anagramitisé pour le jolie language Anglo Frenchish. Merci Miles Beresford Kington! | |
| 3 | Manage to peel stuff, which could make an ingredient eating dinner (7) |
| ANAGRAM – MANAGE is “peeled” to produce ANAG, and stuff is RAM. The last two pairs of words in the clue are a rather good example of the genre | |
| 4 | Ape astride back of au pair (3) |
| DUO – Ape, as in copy or mimic, is DO, and the back of au is U. The first is astride the second. Another deceptive lift and separate. | |
| 5 | Capital area between India and China to the north (5) |
| DUBAI – Capital (and most of) of the Emirate of Dubai. You have I(ndia) (NATO again) and BUD for China/mate (Cockney rhyming slang) with A(rea) inserted in between, and the whole assembly reversed, indicated by “to the North” in a down clue. | |
| 6 | Cape put on e.g., Elizabeth I, about to admit ruler (7,4) |
| CROWNED HEAD – Took a while to work out the wordplay, the royal Liz and the rest of the clue artfully designed to confuse. What you need to know about Elizabeth I is that she was rather fetchingly a REDHEAD. Put C(ape) on the front and insert OWN for admit. | |
| 7 | Time went quickly, it’s reported in complaint (4,3) |
| BIRD FLU – One of the many words for time spent inside by lags (vide supra 28) is BIRD, add a homophone (it’s reported) of flew. | |
| 8 | Lock’s opening with key? It’s for stocking material (5) |
| LISLE – Lock’s opening is L, and key (as in the Florida version) is ISLE | |
| 12 | Peter and Tilly’s outside wedding is light (6,5) |
| SAFETY MATCH – Peter is slang for (among several other disparate things) a SAFE. TillY’s outside is TY, and wedding is MATCH. | |
| 16 | Cricket score you heard raised, which retains The Ashes? (3) |
| URN – A nicely themed clue. A cricket score is a RUN. The you heard is a U, which is raised by one letter. | |
| 17 | Mobile service keeps unlimited data for admen? (9) |
| CREATIVES – An adjective turned willy-nilly into a noun. An anagram (mobile) of SERVICE includes dATa with the “limits” removed. | |
| 19 | Joining up, with lieutenant initially dropping hint (7) |
| INKLING – So that’s LINKING for joining up with the initial L of lieutenant dropped a few spaces. | |
| 20 | Means of lifting pitch or rating (4,3) |
| JACK TAR – Means of lifting: JACK, pitch: TAR. rating as a seaperson | |
| 22 | Single sound of bell’s ring, in the main (5) |
| ATOLL – Another cute lift and separate. Single sound of a bell is A TOLL. Main as in sea | |
| 24 | A lot of fishy food generating terror (5) |
| SCAMP – Stretching things a bit to call SCAMPI fishy food: it’s bits of large form of prawn. And stretching things to call a SCAMP (most of the aforementioned “fishy” food) a terror, more an endearingly mischievous child. But heigh ho. | |
| 27 | Franco-English articles in the field of poetry (3) |
| LEA – More Franglais, in a way. The French article is LE, and the English one A. Together a poetic (and perfectly normal) word for field. Perhaps the most famous poetic Lea is Linden
|
|
24:31, but yet once again I overlooked a typo (FLAGSHUP). I biffed CROWNED HEAD, parsing post-submission, once I remembered Elizabeth’s hair. Never seen CREATIVES used as a noun (I gather it’s mainly used in ad agencies–Z, you forgot the underline), and with luck I never will. An enjoyable puzzle, except for the typo part.
I enjoyed this crossword but found it very tricky in parts. missed 8dn and guessed both 3dn and 6dn. COD was 5a. Thanks.
Had a difficult time missing quite a few. Admired JEER, URN, ANAGRAM ,BIRDFLU and DUCKBILL among the ones I solved . Enjoyed the blog because there was so much I needed to learn. And thanks for link to beautiful Vaughan Williams piece! Inspired me to seek out an old favourite, Oxford Elegy.
I thought this might be an easy one as I entered the first answer on sight, but was soon disillusioned. There’s a lot of quirky stuff here. Anagram, ablative, inkling and arrest were particularly good, while scamp was pushing it a little. Creatives reminded me of someone, just a bit.
Time: 32 minutes.
26:21, but didn’t submit as I had too many I was unsure of. I’m very thankful to z for sorting them out for me. I’m particularly impressed that you could parse the clue for ANAGRAM, which I couldn’t make heads or tails of! (Not to mention CROWNED HEAD.)
Yet another 50 minute solve mainly held up by 15ac FLUID OUNCE and 25ac SOVIET. Bah!
FOI 4dn DUO
LOI 3dn ANAGRAM! The exemplar was rather tortured!
COD 5dn BIRD FLU
WOD 17dn CREATIVES – those, like myself, who reside in the creative department of an advertising agency. They can be either copywriters or art directors. Everyone is way under 50. “Although financially highly rewarding, it’s a terrible job – but someone has to do it!” Ben Langdon
Thought of you when I saw ‘CREATIVES’…
43 minutes. Bunged in CROWNED HEAD without making the effort to parse it and don’t think I would have been able to work it out. I was going to criticise DUCKBILL for not being specific enough but “It’s in… (take your pick)” for “platypus” so can’t complain. Variations on the theme have appeared before, but I liked ANAGRAM and the ‘ring, in the main’ def for ATOLL.
41 minutes of enjoyable solving.
I feel I had a deprived childhood as I don’t remember ever being told that goats go MAA! nor have I spent enough time in close proximity to them to experience this for myself. You’d need a slightly extended conversation with HMQ to get as far as calling her MA’AM as the first time you address her you are expected to say “Your Majesty” and only after that say “Ma’am”.
Isn’t there a scene in the film ‘The Queen’ where a courtier is escorting Tony and Cherie Blair into ‘the presence’ and along the way he says something like: “It’s ma’am as in charm and not ma’am as in Spam”?
I don’t know about The Queen, but the pronunciation is certainly as described.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Charm/spam – I thought it was the other way round Martin – not that it matters because I’m very unlikely to meet HM. The one I remember is Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect telling her underlings emphatically not to call her MA’AM because she’s not the b—-y queen.
Apparently when Helen Mirren was being presented to the Queen, HM remarked: “I suppose you think you ought to be doing this!”
Me too for other way round, Ma’am!
I remember that, too, Olivia!
Helen Mirren used to be my own private pin-up. There was a time, particularly in the 1980s, when you could mention her name and people would respond with ‘who?’ Then, along came Prime Suspect and she became incredibly popular.
That’s interesting, just watched The King’s speech and the Queen says it is Ma’am as in ham not Ma’am as in palm.
I’m perfectly happy to stand corrected and the official Royal website (would you believe it exists?) confirms this: On presentation to The Queen, the correct formal address is ‘Your Majesty’ and subsequently ‘Ma’am,’ pronounced with a short ‘a,’ as in ‘jam’.
However I have reservations and suspect that this may have been revised over the years, as older sources suggest otherwise. We have been reminded by archive film footage shown over the Jubilee of how the Royal accent has changed as HMQ has dumbed down in an attempt to appeal more to the masses. She used to speak really poorsh!
Since it’s a contraction of ‘madam’, in which both a’s are short, I’ll accept that, in pronouncing it like the first syllable of marmalade, I’ve probably been wrong throughout my life. However, since I’m with Olivia in being pretty certain never to have to worry about meeting Her Maj, I won’t be losing any sleep over it.
As a Western Australian I take my cues from the famous local carpet salesman, Dennis Lillee. After a slightly unexpected victory in a test in 4 days (1972?) the Australian team had celebrated with a beer or two. As you do. But that day they were also pencilled in to meet the queen after the end of play. Lillee shook her hand briskly and said, “Gidday, how’yer goin?” Works for me, better than ma’am.
Thought this one was pretty clever. Been a good week, so far…
I had meant to go back to fully parse CROWNED HEAD, but forgot. My late mom was and my brother and my only niece are redheads. Apparently, their numbers are decreasing. There should be a program to encourage intermarriage that would keep the gene alive.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen a LEA
outside of (quaint, old) poesy.
(And these things, too, of course—
a diff’rent shade of horse)
I was a redhead as a child, and hated it. (According to my mother, when I was 3 or so, and yet another lady gushingly asked me where I got that lovely red hair, I told her it was a wig.) Not to mention the obligatory freckled face. I was always grateful that my eyebrows at least were black.
‘Holding back the Years’?
That gives me an image of Mick Hucknall doing The Times crosswords….
I believe there are lots of redheads on the west coast of Ireland!
On the wavelength again today, it seems, mostly straight top-to-bottom and finishing in 19 minutes, though both ASSISTANCE and SOVIET gave me trouble, for some reason. I’m rather pushed for time in my mornings at the moment, otherwise I might prefer to take these a bit slower and parse a bit more; instead I have to come here to notice such nice features as the ANAGRAM in 3d, so thanks to our bloggers for all the hard work!
27 minutes with LOI CROWNED HEAD. COD to JEER and BIRD FLU jointly. I’ve always pronounced LISLE as LYLE (as in Tate and) for the stocking material but should it have been LEAL? Decent puzzle. Thank you Z and setter.
Scottish Lisle (cotton) thread has been ‘mercerised’, a process divined by one John Mercer in 1844.
M&S Italian cotton socks are so comfy and airy, but no longer available here in Shanghai, when their dozen stores were closed a couple of years ago.
77m 10s
There were lots of very clever clues but I object to both 5ac and 5d:
For the ‘Aussie Native’ it’s ‘Duckbilled Platypus’ or just platypus, not ‘duckbill’.
For the capital, the capital of the UAE is Abu Dhabi not Dubai. The latter might be the capital of one of the emirates but that’s two sloppy clues in my book.
On the plus side: ONRUSH, JEER, FLAGSHIP, ANAGRAM and CROWNED HEAD. I normally fail to see the ‘anagram’ type of clue so to get that pleased me.
Nice of Meldrew/Horryd to get a mention with CREATIVE!
LOI: FRANGLAIS
Chambers has: “duckˈbill noun – A platypus”
Thanks, but can’t I have an ‘harrumph’ in peace?! 😀
I apologise for breaching your peace. Harrumph away!
😃
When I first learned about the critter it was called a “duck-billed platypus”. That is a long time ago….
I had a favourite Scrooge McDuck comicbook in my childhood involving Scrooge and Donald -plus Huey, Dewey and Louie of course – on an exciting adventure to track down a priceless “platinum platypus”. Kind of The Maltese Falcon meets Raiders of the Lost Ark. As there was no internet then I had to go to dictionaries and encyclopedias to discover what the heck platinum and platypus were.
13:03. I felt firmly on the wavelength today, I think managing to parse everything as I went, including the very clever ANAGRAM. I did waste a little time trying to think of the French for queen for the JEER clue. I still couldn’t think of it post solve so resorted to looking it up – it’s “reine”. I’m not sure I knew it, or at least I’ve never made the observation that a Pizza Express “La Reine” was such a royal dish.
20:54. I’ve been feeling very much on-wavelength recently so was probably due the opposite, and here it is. I found this really hard, struggling again and again to see the cunning wordplay and occasionally rather oblique (but all perfectly fair IMO) definitions. I’m not sure I can honestly say I enjoyed it but it’s undoubtedly a first-rate puzzle. I always like it when the difficulty derives from cunning misdirection rather than obscurity, and this was very much the case this morning: in fact there was nothing I didn’t know, which is unusual.
I have been badly caught out several times by the clue form at 3dn. Perhaps I’m finally getting wise to it.
I liked this despite a slowish time of 48 min
Several clever clues 12d 20d 3d
Never heard of creatives Seems apt for people who sell stuff you don’t need
Ayup Mate!
You must be rather vulnerable to creative persuasion! How many cars/bras/cigars did you buy that you did not need? Caveat emptor!
I’ve often thought of the commercials I’ve liked that have nonetheless not moved me to purchase the product: some old (1960s?) Alka-Seltzer ads come to mind; not only had (have) I never had an Alka-Seltzer, at the time I had no idea what one would use them for.
“Plink plink fizzzzzz!” Those are the ads I remember, anyway. And probably one of the reasons I still keep a stock of them in the cupboard ready to help the occasional hangover…
Good for you, Kevin. Brilliant ‘spots’. Alka-Seltzer from DDB New York – for hangovers! You probably don’t drink so much!?
I seem to remember two series, but all I can come up with is the ‘I can’t believe I ate the whole thing’ spot. I can’t imagine US TV commercials dealing with hangovers, though; it was indigestion. At the time I had no idea what indigestion was like (or hangover, for that matter).
The advert I remember best was for Kiwi Shoe Polish. Back in the sixties, I was watching Bamber Grassgroin asking the questions on University Challenge. The first one I got right was in the interval. “Which pair of shoes is the seven guinea pair?” fired out from the telly. Quick as a flash, I fired back, “Neither. It was Kiwi that made the difference.”
I was told by a friend’s dad – who was in advertising and working for a car company at the time – that the objective of advertising (for them at least) was not to get people to buy their cars. They were much more concerned with making people who had bought the cars feel good about it, so they’d be more likely to buy another one.
I was a great fan of the Hamlet ads, but they were never my first choice cigar (Old Port for the record). Nor would I be persuaded to drink Guinness any more since they stopped producing the proper bottle-conditioned product. These days I press the mute button (or fast forward on a recording). Good advertising is art. There’s precious little of it in evidence these days.
Phil, in the mid-seventies, with Paul Weiland, I wrote several Hamlet ads – ‘Football Pools’ starring Brian Glover; ‘Fallen Cowboy’ for John Junkin as St. Peter; ‘Star Wars Robot’ and ‘Car Wash’. Later as Group Head/CD we would select four scripts to be sent to the client per quarter. Other teams did some brilliant work: my favourite was ‘Wimbledon Tennis’ which featured John Bluthal in a neck brace. Casting was everything!
Cue music!
Lord K. That is known as brand building and is an important part of the car business in particular. That is TV’s and ‘Sunday Times’ colour sups. role.
B/W press ads tackle the selling/price/mpg factors head on. Trade press is also essential.
I found this very difficult, finishing in well over the hour after more than once giving up and using electronic aids. So I was surprised to see the SNITCH so low, and many people finishing in perfectly reasonable times. On looking at it I could see that there was no reason for it as the clues were really not too hard at all in retrospect. I blame my golf trip, which took a lot out of me in my old age, and hope to get back to better things soon.
A very nice puzzle, where I got off to a quick start and thought I might be in record territory before slowing in the
second half. BARK meant nothing to be as a boat, and I was expecting ARK to cover that, but it couldn’t be anything else so I went for it.
6m 21s with CROWNED HEAD the LOI, a phrase I didn’t really realise existed.
41:49. A nice one. I liked JEER and FLUID OUNCE. I didn’t like BARK at 21ac but BARQUE didn’t fit so it has to be. Glad to learn how to tell the sheep from the goats: one goes BAA, the other goes MAA. COD FLAGSHIP
Nice one. Like Mauefw i thought it was “ark” and went chasing after the B until I recalled the Shakespeare sonnet (marriage of true minds)- which includes “the star to every wandering bark”. Then we got DUCAT in the very next clue which was neat. Took a while to twig the ANAGRAM and the CROWNED HEAD but both were good but my favourite was the FLAGSHIP. 21.17
from “Iolanthe”:
[Iolanthe to her son, and Phyllis’s betrothed, Strephon]
When tempests wreck thy bark,
And all is drear and dark,
If thou shouldst need an Ark,
I’ll give thee one!
Phyllis. (speaking aside to Lord Tolloller)
What was that?
Lord Tolloller. (aside to Phyllis)
I heard the minx remark,
She’d meet him after dark,
Inside St. James’s Park,
And give him one!
I started off quickly with AFRAID and made good progress in the NW, but then got bogged down and had to wander round the grid looking for easy pickings. Eventually it all came together and last 2 in were INKLING and BARK. I parsed CROWNED HEAD post solve. 28:02. Thanks setter and Z.
26:40 – felt like average difficulty though I missed what was going on with CROWNED HEAD and a few others. Some nice moments including the ANAGRAM clue, though the device itself is slightly hackneyed.
I rather enjoyed this, despite being held up in the SE by BARK, SOVIET, FLAGSHIP (COD) and ATOLL. 46 mins.
Z, I love your comment for FRANGLAIS, but surely it should be « on might dire (or dit)? Diser definitely doesn’t exist. Give us frogs half a chance:-)
I also liked FLUID OUNCE and CROWNED HEAD once the penny dropped re the red head.
Thanks Z and setter. Been a good week so far.
Je suis heureux de stand correcté! Cette Franglais n’est pas as facile qu’il premier appears. To almost quote Terence Rattigan, it would seem quelquefois j’ai des idées au dessus de ma gare.
Et oui! Pour les grenouilles, je donne cheerfulment une demi-chance!
Merci infiniment😎
En FRANGLAIS, je deteste les oiseaux
Ils sont toujours mal. They can go.
A DUCKBILL’s not a bird
Despite what you’ve heard
Le nom est tres malapropos
Mon cher Astro c’est vrai
Les birds are souvent cités
C’est un pain dans le cul
Suis complètement avec vous
A few less I would félicité
😂😂😂
16:10, an enjoyable challenge. One of those where I found myself apparently stumped more than once, but realised everything was all there when you looked in the right place. Went down a rabbit hole by putting in CHAT, because a Frenchman might refer to a cat that way, if you take that meaning of “queen”; but I felt as I wrote it that it seemed a bit of a stretch, even for a loose modern lexicon which might class giving someone chat as taunting them…
I’m alternating this week between completing in a reasonable time and getting nowhere. Today was the latter. I’ll say no more about it but add my MER.
Dubai is not a capital. The country is the UAE of which Abu Dhabi is the capital. Dubai is an Emirate within the UAE. There is no ‘Dubai’ which is the capital of ‘Dubai’. It is one place. End of rant.
Thanks (through gritted teeth) to the setter and unreserved thanks to our blogger for enlightenment.
I wondered about Dubai, and did research. The Infallible source of all things unquestionably true that is Wiki gives: “The Emirate of Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates. It is considered the most populous emirate of the UAE.
The capital of the emirate is the eponymous city, Dubai.”
I’m in two minds about this one. Dubai is undoubtedly the capital of Dubai, but generally (conventionally?) in these things capitals are the capitals of countries. I wouldn’t expect to see Sacramento or Albany clued like this, for instance.
I’d have to disagree with you there. Without having any concrete examples to quote, I’m sure I’ve seen US state capitals such as Sacramento, or more likely Albany, clued as “capital” in a Times crossword.
That’s from memory; I might be completely wrong.
I don’t think so. I did do a cursory search (for exactly those two) and didn’t find any examples of them being clued this way. Usually ‘US city’ or similar. My search was far from comprehensive so happy to be proven wrong!
You’re probably right, but… I’m sure I’ve seen US state capitals clued as capital. Give me a day or two on go-ogle, too late at night at the moment.Chose Albany and Sacramento as the most likely, the other would be Austin – slightly unexpected capitals of major states.
I thought so too, Isla, but then I wondered if perhaps the definition was ‘state capital’. They certainly come up as answers because a number of them have quite obscure names.
Here we are, I just found this in #27678 30 May 2020 blogged by Bruce:
Stay in Bordeaux for example? Capital! (5,5)
BATON ROUGE – to BAT ON is to stay in at cricket. Bordeaux wine is red, or ROUGE. The answer is the capital of Louisiana.
I stand corrected, thank you!
I did say I was in two minds about it and I’m glad to say this makes up my mind, the clue is fine.
Another thing to say about this is that on the Peter Biddlecombe test (paraphrasing, can you solve it? If so, chill out) you might object to, say, Olympia on grounds of obscurity, but Dubai as the capital of Dubai is pretty darned non-obscure.
Indeed it does. Could it be wrong? For the city of Dubai to be the capital, there must be part of Dubai which is not the city. While there is certainly plenty of desert, I’m not aware of any administrative or governmental entity other than Dubai.
Sacramento and Albany are cities which are the capitals of States. In Dubai, there is no distinction between the city and the Emirate.
Wiki says the city is the capital of the emirate, which ‘is made up of various other municipalities and villages’.
22’33” on a TER train to Cosne-sur-Loire. Thank you whoever invented personal hotspots. Very much enjoyed three and four down. Inkling brings to mind JRR Tolkein.
Enjoyable crossword which was going very nicely until I got very stuck on LOI SOVIET, -knew SOT was on the outside but took ages to get the VIE bit- enjoyed CROWNED HEAD, and thanks for unscrambling the anagram stuff in 3d
Thanks too to the setter.
DNF after an hour. NHO of LISLE, which I couldn’t figure out from wordplay, and AFRAID also remained unsolved. Many far harder clues in here, so kicking myself for not getting the latter.
Liked FLAGSHIP, ATOLL and SCAMP, which I was lucky to see early.
I was pleased to finish I inside my target time at 41.15, particularly as I thought it was on the tougher side. I was delayed in the ne corner by deciding it could be KABUL as the capital (as there was a case geographically for it possibly), linked in with KANGAROO as the Australian native. Like others didn’t parse 6dn although it seemed the obvious answer. LOI was SOVIET where I toyed with MAOIST as a possibility for far too long. Really good crossword, so thanks to the setter and to Z for putting me right on 6dn.
29 mins. BARK got entered then deleted at least twice. The old red was my LOI.
Can’t remember being as stuck as this for a long time and when I read Z’s excellent blog I really wonder why. Anagram and the ass stance completely befuddled me and I’ve never heard of a goat going maa – that was never in old Mac Donald’s farm surely? Add in a missed franglais despite in my teenage years avidly devouring Mr Kington’s Punch offerings. Tomorrow is another day – thanks Z and setter
“The night was drear and dark,
Our poor deluded bark,
Till next day
There she lay
In the Bay of Biscay-o”
A song we used to sing in our so-called music lessons at Altrincham Grammar School – just really 45 minutes of larking about under the mis-control of poor old Bruno, who should have been long retired.
I enjoyed this one, and although I took longer than my SNITCH average I wasn’t disappointed to do so.
FOI AFRAID (cue false idea of a cakewalk)
LOI ATOLL (parsed afterwards, as was CROWNED HEAD)
COD SOVIET (saw SOT quickly, but not VIE)
TIME 12:35
48:24
Mostly OK, but some long pauses waiting for inspiration. Pleasing PDMs at times (ANAGRAM and MAAM, but mostly JEER which fell into place before I’d worked out JACK TAR), though I failed to parse CROWNED HEAD (could see C and OWN but nowt else), ASSISTANCE (got the STANCE bit) and URN (doh!).
DUCKBILL was a bit of a shrugged “Oh really?” moment and spent far too long on ABLATIVE (not that I could give you an example having learned only church Latin), but I liked FLUID OUNCE and MISEDUCATE.
The ablative for mensa is fine, but the vocative makes you sound a right wally. I believe the stock noun in French lycées used to be rosa.
17.37. A satisfying work out.
1 hr 25 min to solve this absolutely delightful puzzle, full of brilliantly misleading clues (and not, as is so often the case, brilliantly obscure answers). My particular favourites were JEER and ANAGRAM, but just about every other definition had me racing off in the wrong direction at first. By far the best offering in a long time. Thank you, setter, for a very enjoyable, though exhausting, solve.
Loved it, but the U in the middle of FLUID I determined early on had to belong to ROUND…Ho Hum . ( Didn’t twig the FL-OUNCE for frill either!). Also MER at VIE =JOCKEY – so no hope with SOVIET. Stuck with it though, as very enjoyable, even though DNF.