A somewhat literary flavour to today’s challenge, which took around twenty minutes to solve and a few more to fully parse. I spent time thinking about whether I understood 12d, or had I missed the point. No doubt you will set me right if needs be.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of Abc. Anagrinds in italics.
| Across | |
| 1 | Poor whiskey strained (8) |
| WRETCHED -W for whisky (or Irish whiskey), RETCHED meaning strained. | |
| 6 | Bachelor, one savouring of scandal — but not this crime? (6) |
| BIGAMY – B, for bachelor, I for one, GAMY meaning scandalous. | |
| 9 | Unconvincing sort of reasoning by judges in official bulletin (5,8) |
| COURT CIRCULAR – COURT where judges lurk, after CIRCULAR reasoning. A bit strange. | |
| 10 | Tom informally watched you (6) |
| SAWYER – Tom as in the Mark Twain work, The Adventures of… “Saw yer” being informal for watched you. | |
| 11 | State’s job not finished with excessive enthusiasm (8) |
| TASMANIA – TAS(K) for job not finished, MANIA = with excessive enthusiasm. | |
| 13 | Shut up in one way before being put in the earth (10) |
| CLOISTERED – insert I ST (one way) ERE (before) into CLOD = earth. | |
| 15 | To swim said to be the alternative to this depression (4) |
| SINK – sink or swim being a common metaphor for stark alternatives. | |
| 16 | Foreign priest moves infant’s head back (4) |
| ABBÉ – BABE = infant, move the first B back to later in the word. | |
| 18 | Said “Repent!” to reform street walker (10) |
| PEDESTRIAN – (SAID REPENT)*. | |
| 21 | Kitchen worker’s opportunity to return pieces of advice (8) |
| TURNSPIT – TURN = opportunity, TIPS reversed. | |
| 22 | German book by an author from Scotland (6) |
| BUCHAN -BUCH German for book, AN. | |
| 23 | Foolishly touches the cat: take out the flannel (3,2,3,5) |
| CUT TO THE CHASE -(TOUCHES THE CAT)*. | |
| 25 | A crust to eat — old woman digests it, on reflection (6) |
| GRATIN – your GRAN has IT reversed inside. | |
| 26 | Change properties of article, clamping set of teeth round (8) |
| DENATURE – DENTURE (set of teeth) has A inserted. A nice chemistry word. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Little island that could stun the world? (7) |
| ROCKALL -it could ROCK ALL, shock everybody. For our foreign friends, it’s an uninhabitable lump of granite about 100 feet across, way off in the North Atlantic, notable for being territory disputed between UK and Ireland. | |
| 3 | Had nice duty to broadcast, as historian (11) |
| THUCYDIDEAN – (HAD NICE DUTY)*; relating to Thucydides the chap who wrote up the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. | |
| 4 | One that can’t stand half-hearted party host (5) |
| HATER – The Hatter (often wrongly called the Mad Hatter) hosted the tea party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; he loses one of his Ts in the middle. The chapter in the book is called “A Mad Tea Party” but the term “mad as a hatter” pre-dates the book. [Sorry, I’m a Lewis Carroll junkie]. | |
| 5 | Paper towel covers tramp (7) |
| DRIFTER – the FT, London’s Financial Times, is inside DRIER for towel. | |
| 6 | Rears footballers, entertaining team (9) |
| BACKSIDES – BACKS (footballers) with SIDE inside. | |
| 7 | It fixes stage up (3) |
| GEL – LEG = stage, reversed. | |
| 8 | Offa for one was stirring cream in (7) |
| MERCIAN – (CREAM IN)*. | |
| 12 | Steal from the Prado? Not a Goya, certainly (8,3) |
| ABSTRACT ART – I was looking for more from this, but all I can see is that the Prado is an Art Museum / Gallery so if you steal from it you’re abstracting art. And Goya didn’t do abstracts. | |
| 14 | Extra for mortgage raised in review of platoon (3-2,4) |
| TOP-UP LOAN – UP (raised) inside (PLATOON)*. | |
| 17 | Delivery for doorman (7) |
| BOUNCER – double definition, bouncer as in a cricket delivery. | |
| 19 | Day-long, reeds regularly dropped into the sea (7) |
| DITCHED – D (day) ITCH (long) ED (alternate letters of rEeDs). | |
| 20 | Colleague in gold rush at first an enthusiast (7) |
| AMATEUR -MATE = colleague, inside AU (gold) plus R = rush at first. Can’t you have an enthusiastic professional? Like Matt Fitzpatrick? | |
| 22 | Lack of a taxi upset philosopher (5) |
| BACON – All reversed, NO CAB. | |
| 24 | Short skirt brings disapproving expression (3) |
| TUT – TUTU is short. | |
Gave up after 70 minutes without solving TURNSPIT or CLOISTERED. For the latter I couldn’t get “inter” out of my head for “put in the earth”. Pleased to get TOP-UP LOAN just from wordplay and didn’t know “retch” as “strain”. Amused by BACKSIDES, BIGAMY, BOUNCER and SINK. Also pleased to be reminded of Offa the Mercian ( and his Dyke). Luckily read a long article on ROCKALL once and it stuck. COD to ABSTRACT ART. Thanks for parsing of HATER plus much else in blog.
38 minutes. As I remember it, there are a lot of paintings by Goya in the Prado so I suppose that’s what our setter is getting at for 12d.
I was moderately enthusiastic about this one. Didn’t know TURNSPIT but could work it out and was only able to see the correct sense of ‘flannel’ at 23a from the anagram fodder and enumeration. I recognised ROCKALL from at least one previous appearance, which prompted some discussion about the Shipping Forecast in the accompanying blog. I liked ‘Tom’ SAWYER.
39:07, yelling at myself to get DRIFTER and TASMANIA. Sometimes one has to belch oneself into action.
Retch oneself, today, I’m sure
Fairly light winds for a Wednesday. Done and dusted in 32 minutes. Was this an’Oink’ with 22dn Mr. BACON?
FOI 7dn GEL which led immediately to 4ac BIGAMY.
LOI 13ac CLOISTERED – much as myself, recently!
COD 17dn BOUNCER – in cricket the ball does bounce, Guy!
WOD 3dn THUCYDIDEAN
2dn ROCKALL also means ‘nothing’ in UK!
Jeremy re-your time, nice to see the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan get a shout.
18:17
Started off slow (FOI SINK), but picked up speed. LOI GRATIN took me some time, as for some reason GRAN just didn’t occur to me, and I couldn’t get past bread for ‘crust’. Fortunately, ROCKALL has appeared here before. DNK TOP-UP LOAN. Biffed CUT TO THE CHASE–an expression I do not like–from the T and C, parsed post-submission. I liked PEDESTRIAN, although the space between ‘street’ and ‘walker’ was a big hint.
Well, I found it hard. Or just way off the wavelength, even with only one unknown: that meaning of gamy. Two: also the spelling of Thucydidean, needed all the crossers. Enjoyed it nevertheless, lots of neat wordplay and left-field definitions always makes me happy.
Liked abstract art even having to guess Goya featured in the Prado, and wasn’t abstract.
COD to Tasmani a- it’s only a few thousand ks from here but was 2LOI.
Last one was TASMANIA, though (in my case) it is just across a shortish strait of water from here. Also befuddled by the locations of I and Y in Thucydides.
Popular TV presenter Andi Peters also provides an anagram of PEDESTRIAN.
Nice! Eric Clapton and narcoleptic is my favourite though.
Not so nice- Spiro Agnew, anyone?
The clean version: Grow a spine
😊
Or BRITNEY SPEARS and PRESBYTERIANS.
For a classicist, I had a heck of a time working out Thucydidean. Used to like reading him, too.
Hi Tom, A couple of years ago I read an article in the NZ version of “The Listener” which contained an interview with Laura Clarke, the UK High Commissioner in NZ. She said one thing that impressed her about the man she came to marry was that he had read Thucydides!
30 minutes on the nail but with one wrong answer, two letters transposed in the unknown THUCYDIDEAN (has usual mutter about such words being set as anagrams etc) which is apparently making its first appearance in the TfTT era. The historian himself came up once before as an answer in #27720 in July 2020, also clued as an anagram — I didn’t comment on that puzzle so I don’t know what I thought about it — but the blogger had the same problem as I did today and ended by looking him up. His name was also mentioned in a clue in #28131 last November but that was only to indicate the answer would be the name of a Greek letter. I don’t count appearances in Mephisto and TLS puzzles as I never attempt them. Finally on this, I think the underline in today’s blog should be extended to include ‘as’.
Other than that, I enjoyed this a lot and was pleased to be reminded of the F&S song ROCKALL at 1dn. The song appears to have been the source of the alternative meaning ‘nothing’ referred to above, playing on the similarity to ‘f*** all’.
Only problem was CLOISTERED, my LOI, since I was so confident it would end …INTERED that I’d filled in the letters. Actually, with British spelling, that is not even right. It was only when I blanked out the squares again that I saw the (then) obvious CLOISTERED and how it worked. I guess the precise spelling of THUCYDIDEAN was also a problem, needing to carefully see what letters were left to fill them in.
After some recent DNFs I was pleased to complete this in half an hour. Thanks all.
Starting at the top and in fairly short order having to re-start at the bottom it took me 43 minutes to make my answers all meet in the middle, and I count myself fairly lucky that I managed it. My lack of basic German didn’t help, and I also didn’t know “gamy”, but apart from that I had all the requisite knowledge, including knowing at least Thucydides’ name from somewhere, if not anything else about him. FOI 1a WRETCHED LOI 22a BUCHAN, just after finally working out what kind of art we were dealing with. I’ve never made it to the Prado…
Mostly had the same problems as others along the way; in particular it was laboriously working out the ISTERE bit of CLOISTERED that got my mind away from “interred” and got me started off again after running aground about halfway through.
I felt on fire today and was home in 16 minutes. LOI GRATIN. I liked the ABSTRACT ART, loved the outrageous SAWYER but I have to give COD to ROCKALL. I was of course then hoping for Malin and Hebrides, but I really enjoyed this even so. Thank you Pip and setter.
30:45
NHO Thucydidean, and spent several minutes juggling the letters to see what sounded most plausible. Got lucky. I’m with Jack about this sort of clue; it’s not good practice.
Thanks, pip.
12:47. Fun puzzle. I see the point about THUCYDIDEAN but with the helpful checking letters you can’t really go wrong.
Well I managed to! I wonder if you’re assuming that solvers will know the word but not necessarily how to spell it, in which case I’d agree with your statement, but to those who don’t know it or have no particular knowledge of Greek names and their formation it’s a different matter.
Faced with T?U?Y?I?E?N and the letters HCDDA to place I decided the H would almost certainly be second and A last but one, and that turned out to be correct, but as for the rest of it? My theory was that the ending -CEAN might be likely so I went with that and placed the Ds into the two remaining slots. If one doesn’t know the word I can’t see how one can be expected to determine that THUDYDICEAN is any less likely than the given answer, so even having applied as much logic as I could bring to bear it still came down to a guess which on this occasion proved to be incorrect.
Sorry I misunderstood your point: I didn’t read it properly and somehow got the impression you’d sorted it out with the checkers, so yes I was assuming you’d know of Thucydides. Absent that knowledge it’s clearly tricky but I would argue he’s within the bounds of reasonable GK.
One person’s ‘reasonable GK’ is of course another’s esoteric head-scratcher. As a classicist I saw the Thucydides anagram pretty quickly, but I’ve frequently NHO things that others hereabouts claim (and that may be a key word) to know.
I try to be philosophical. ‘Go placidly’ etc. Some you win, some you lose.
Indeed, it’s always subjective. My view is based purely on the fact that I’m not remotely a classicist but have heard of him, which is hardly scientific.
I’ve no argument with that, but it doesn’t detract from my original point that those who know it will know it, and others facing this sort of clue, and left with no way to the answer other than anagrist and checkers will be left to deduce as best they can, and ultimately they’ll be guessing.
If the answer had been the historian himself, Thucydides, then those who didn’t know of him might have stood a better chance at deduction as Greek names ending -DES are not unknown (Archimedes etc), but in this case we are expected to go beyond that and come up with a word derived from his name. And one that has never before appeared in a Times puzzle, at least in the TfTT era. It’s hardly general knowledge!
Yes fair point. But if you have heard of the historian then the word is easily derivable from his name and the anagrist, so the question is just whether we should consider him to be GK. He does seem to have caused quite a few problems among this reasonably knowledgeable group, judging by the comments.
Thucydides came immediately to mind, but I had RATES CIRCULAR (this is a thing) crossing, so was laboring for too long under a misconception that it couldn’t be him.
Plus the “of” in the clue almost always means “ian” “ean” or “..ic”
13:19. DNK THUCYDIDEAN, of course, but the remaining letters had to go where they did between the checkers. LOI TASMANIA as I was looking for excessive enthusiasm. I liked ABSTRACT ART and PEDESTRIAN most. Thank-you Pip and setter.
48m 18s
You are correct about 12d, ABSTRACT ART, Pip. And thanks for DITCHED, ABBE, BIGAMY and COURT CIRCULAR. Altogether this felt to me like a setter we either haven’t seen before or one who has been away.
I also agree about 20d AMATEUR, Pip, but I guess you can have an ‘amateur historian’, one who is enthusiastic about writing histories but is not a professional in the field. I’m thinking of Len Deighton who has written a couple of histories of aspects of WWII.
LOI: WRETCHED (started with ‘scotched’), ROCKALL (an old work colleague had a phrase which referred to nothing as ‘four-fifths of Rockall), CLOISTERED.
COD HATER and ABSTRACT ART. I’ve been to some of the great art museums of Europe but not the Prado.
Martin – I am writing about Den Deighton presently. Rather than a historian, he is an ‘alternative historian’. SS GB is described as a novel.
I like reading alternate histories. Lots of food for thought if they’re well written. “Pavane” by Keith Roberts is one of my favourites – what woul have happened if Spain had triumphed with the Armada. Worth a try….
Thanks, Ann. I’ll see if my local library can get it.
I’ve just replied to ‘Meldrew’ about Len Deighton. I’ve long felt that his best novels were his ‘what-if?’ books: “Horse Under Water”, “XPD” and “SS-GB”.
With the Armada, perhaps Britain’s national dish might have been paella? 😀
That’s very interesting! Are you writing a biography? I would be interested in that.
I started reading his books back in the mid-60s after I had seen the film of “The Ipcress File”. I’ve since read all his novels except “Violent Ward”. My very favourite is “Horse Under Water” while my other ‘podium finishers’ are “XPD” and “SS-GB”. (Yes, I know “SS-GB” is fiction). In other words, novels which have an element of ‘what-if?’ about them. I’ve also read “Fighter” and “Blood, Tears and Folly” of his non-fiction. Not read any of his cook books.
In much the same way I’m disappointed that, of his ‘Karla’ novels, Le Carré’s “The Honourable Schoolboy” was never filmed, I’m disappointed that “Horse” never made the screen.
Meanwhile….thanks to the “Slow Horses” series on Apple TV+, I have discovered the spy novels of Mick Herron. I feel his dialogue makes him the Len Deighton de nos jours.
Off the wavelength, but finally got there in 55 mins. Like others, wasted way too long obsessed by spellings of interred and intered and looking for ways to make them work. LOI SINK, which also delayed me absurdly. Liked DENATURE, ABBE and BUCHAN.
Bit of a rollercoaster week so far, after yesterday’s fast and efficient completion …DNF 49m.
After getting WRETCHED straight away, my solving and mood deteriorated badly .
– Early on I biffed PROSTITUTE for “street walker” because the P and S were correct, At least this got fixed
– Incorrectly took shorT SKirt as a hidden expression of disapproval
– Spent an age and got pretty irritated with the 3d anagram
But my biggest fail today was failing to get COURT from “judges”, which I really should know by now. Added to the learning list.
W is for NATO phonetic alphabet Whiskey
I agree with others about 3dn, shouldn’t have been done. Eventually it fell, but only because I knew the historian and could eventually, although not without some difficulty, work out what was needed. But if I hadn’t known him (although perhaps it’s GK that we should have) I’d have been pretty lost. Borderline. 47 minutes.
Very TLS so no complaints from me. ROCKALL was paired with Shannon in the long ago shipping forecasts. In 12d I paused to consider “Austrian” art (was there such a thing?) but BUCHAN took care of that. Usual brief brain freeze when I see football and team in the same clue. I vaguely remember that hatters had a reputation for madness caused by the chemicals used in their craft. 19.43
None of them particularly to my taste, but Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka were all Austrian.
Yes I thought of Klimt, who I do like. Forgot the other two.
‘Viennese School’
32:33
Didn’t get anything on first pass until CUT TO THE CHASE. Filled out the bottom (except for GRATIN which came much later) then reached into top half. Bits and pieces joined up gradually until was left with ROCKALL, CLOISTERED and TASMANIA solved in that order, the last of these after perhaps five minutes – had been thinking it would end IC.
18:59 which surprised me as I was quite daunted after the first run through. No problem with THUCYDIDEAN: if it’s a historian and has lots of letters, it’s either him or Herodotus.
I needed to come here to have HATER explained as I thought it required some sort of letter-juggling in “half-hearted”. COD GRATIN.
Thanks to Pip and the setter.
18:39. The usual letter jigsaw with the historian and rather too long to see the obvious ABBE. Quite a few unparsed at the end (COURT CIRCULAR, BIGAMY, HATER) but all simple enough on reflection – as usual.
Well I didn’t finish this at all, but only feel bad about not getting GRATIN. This I missed because I had shorT SKirt providing TSK instead of TUT from tutu. I would point out, as a costumier, that my view is that a tutu is not so much a short skirt, as a ballet outfit that sticks out sideways from the hip, not down. Ah well.
Finished in about 45 minutes (nodded off in the middle) but found like Jack I had opted for the wrong order of letters in the virtually unpronounceable historian at 3dn. I too find it rather exasperating to be left with rather too many potential combinations of letters, when your general knowledge doesn’t help you. Other than this minor moan, I enjoyed the crossword.
35 mins. As above I saw TSK which made sense, but the K didn’t work, all I could see was BROKEN which didn’t make sense. As many others I had heard of Thucydy what’s it, but no idea how to spell him. LOI DRIFTER, couldn’t get the cryptic.
Pleased to finish this enjoyable puzzle with all correct and parsed. Stopped timing at 48 minutes with sawyer and cloistered remaining. Had seen the answer to 13ac for some time but couldn’t work out how to parse it until the clod dropped.
For those who don’t know him, let me recommend Thucydides. I re-read him (in translation) during the first lockdown when I was doing a tour of plague literature. There is a vivid description of a plague in Athens during the war which T himself caught and survived. On a cheerier note, avoiding all the military history which is tedious, his comments on politics are still amazingly current. Among many other topics he talks about behaviour during revolutionary periods when: “any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action.” There is much more plus arguments for democracy, discussions of morality in international affairs, the power of fake news and the disastrous impact on the home country of a hubristic military campaign. Good stuff.
Thanks to the setter and Pip.
Very interesting- will try to find some Thucydides and give it a go- I think my son has a few-The Peloponnesian War maybe?
That’s his only work (as far as is known). The Penguin edition is fine.
Yes, my son has that – looking forward to getting into it-thanks for pointing me in this direction!
Regarding anagram names – Bolton Wanderer will have heard of the infamous Neil Warnock. Commonly known as Colin..
😂
23.10. I found this a bit trickier than average.
30.08 with considerable trouble along the way. Chief among the causes was Thucydidean which I rushed to fill as Thucydides and then took ages to commit to ean as the ending.
Other problem children were Sawyer- very smart clue- ditched, top up plan and the very resistant cloistered which was my LOI.
A very enjoyable puzzle so thanks setter and blogger.
Goya? Oh, boya!
A late painting by Francisco Goya, never meant to be sold and given a figurative title only after his death, has sometimes been put forward as the first abstract painting (though abstraction is not utterly absent from the earliest cave art).
https://watchmepaint.blogspot.com/2017/09/what-about-goya.html…
33 minutes and fortunately proofread. Has any one heard of the historian THUDYCIDES? Upon proofreading I decided I hadn’t either and put in the right answer instead and yes, I have seen this name before and the correct spelling rang a louder bell. Otherwise, I can corroborate that solving this started slowly (my FOI was SAWYER) put picked up speed later. COURT CIRCULAR was indeed a strange clue, but one I rather liked.