Time taken: 13:46. I found this one difficult, though I may have not been on the setter’s wavelength, as the other early solvers thus far have registered slick times.
The grid is a pangram (and seeing that possibility may help in quicker solving) and has some tricky anagrams. How did you do?
Away we go…
| Across | |
| 1 | Waterlogged planet hastily evacuated (6) |
| MARSHY – MARS(planey) and the exterior letters of HastilY | |
| 4 | Excess number of balls to knock off (8) |
| OVERKILL – OVER(number of balls in cricket), KILL(knock off) | |
| 10 | Isolationist, cross, reversed plan for buying a single award (9) |
| XENOPHOBE – X(cross) then a reversal of HP(hire purchase, plan for buying) and ONE(a single), then OBE(award) | |
| 11 | Dissatisfied agent not yet retired? (3,2) |
| FED UP – FED(FBI agent), UP(not yet retired) | |
| 12 | Coy dean forking out when judgment’s announced (3,2,9) |
| DAY OF RECKONING – anagram of COY,DEAN,FORKING | |
| 14 | Celebration in bar over (5) |
| REVEL – LEVER(bar) reversed | |
| 16 | Fifty reunited in resort for a spell (9) |
| INTERLUDE – anagram of L(fifty) and REUNITED | |
| 18 | Underwear is itching, gents admitted (4,5) |
| LONG JOHNS – LONGS(is itching) containing JOHN(gents – toilet in the USA) | |
| 20 | Calm suspicion, avoiding railway lines (5) |
| QUELL – QUERY(suspicion) minus RY(railway) then L,L(lines) | |
| 21 | Used a variety of methods, as one knowing the ropes? (4,3,7) |
| RANG THE CHANGES – double definition, the second referring to change-ringing | |
| 25 | Old soldier cutting old tree (5) |
| OSIER – O(old) then SOLDIER minus OLD | |
| 26 | Boldness offending Democrat in party (7-2) |
| DERRING-DO – ERRING(offending), D(Democrat) inside DO(party) | |
| 27 | Designate nucleus of wrong particle (8) |
| ELECTRON – ELECT(designate) and the middle letters of wRONg | |
| 28 | Picked up key for pretty small hole (6) |
| EYELET – sounds like ISLET(key) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Team capsizing in sea persist in questioning course (5,5) |
| MIXED GRILL – XI(team) reversed inside MED(sea) then GRILL(persist in questioning) | |
| 2 | African currency, Yankee wanting it (5) |
| RANDY – RAND(South African currency) then Y(Yankee) | |
| 3 | Encouraging exercise reduced fun in vacation (7) |
| HOPEFUL – PE(exercise) and FUn missing the last letter inside HOL(vacation) | |
| 5 | Jersey veterinary’s first pet (1-4) |
| V-NECK – first letter of Veterinary and NECK(pet) | |
| 6 | Crude worker‘s penalty after touching manager’s bottom (7) |
| REFINER – FINE(penalty) after RE(touching) and then the last letter of manageR | |
| 7 | Independent enterprise cancelling head’s contract (9) |
| INDENTURE – IND(independent), then VENTURE(enterprise) missing the first letter | |
| 8 | Blunder moving along southern borders (4) |
| LIPS – SLIP(blunder) with the S(southern) moving | |
| 9 | Shot of how it ends badly, not having succeeded (4,4) |
| DONE WITH – anagram of HOW,IT,ENDS minus S(succeeded). This was my last in | |
| 13 | Disparages, as barmaid with spirit does? (5,5) |
| SELLS SHORT – a barmaid SELLS SHORTS(spirits) | |
| 15 | Deface an old penny displayed in case (9) |
| VANDALISE – AN and D(old penny) inside VALISE(case) | |
| 17 | Following trial, comedian’s still on TV (4,4) |
| TEST CARD – after TEST(trial), CARD(comedian) | |
| 19 | Stimulate early leftist to maintain steady progress (7) |
| JOGTROT – JOG(stimulate) and TROT(early leftist) | |
| 20 | Toffs landed in dock (7) |
| QUALITY – LIT(landed) inside QUAY(dock) | |
| 22 | Water treatment centre a must-have for lengthy drought (5) |
| HYDRO – hidden inside lengtHY DROught | |
| 23 | Russian novelist‘s work diary written up (5) |
| GOGOL – GO(work), then LOG(diary) reversed | |
| 24 | Trickle from English river audible (4) |
| OOZE – sounds like the river OUSE | |
19:16, but for some reason I put in MIXED DRILL: never really tried to parse the clue is what it is. In fact, I biffed a few without really checking, but luckily was right: V-NECK, EYELET, XENOPHOBE. I liked QUELL, where RY (‘line’) is removed and ‘lines’ (LL) inserted. Shouldn’t the underline for 9d extend to ‘of’?
Really tough for me to finish, and it didn’t help I had dogtrot for quite a while. I was completely wrong about the parsing of overkill, thinking the literal was knock off and the answer would be something like overturn. I biffed osier, then erased it because I couldn’t see how the cryptic worked, and then saw it much later. Ooze was my last one in, as I wasn’t sure whether English stood for E or meant an actual English river.
Time: 47 minutes.
Same with OVERKILL; had OVERTURN at first, didn’t parse it right until the very end.
24 minutes. No major hold-ups though I biffed a few like XENOPHOBE and DAY OF RECKONING. Yesterday’s GET SHOT OF was still in mind for DONE WITH and the pangram, with that shared first letter Q , helped with QUELL (I liked the ‘avoiding railway lines’ bit too) and QUALITY, my last couple in. Favourite was the surface for LONG JOHNS.
A lotta fun, this one. My LOI was OSIER (after OOZE), and I find that clue absolutely brilliant, of course. I mean, it really fooled me! Ha. (Some days it doesn’t take that much…)
I agree with Kevin about “shot of“—which we just had… when I thought “shut of” would make more sense, but I learned, and here it is again, to reinforce the lesson . Coincidence?
I thought this was going to be easy, sailing through most of it with plenty of time to spare to achieve my half-hour target, but then I hit a wall with three clues unsolved.
DONE WITH was the first to fall after another 5 minutes but the intersecting JOGTROT and OSIER baffled me for much longer and by the time I had cracked them I had 44 minutes on the clock. With checkers in place JOG was obvious for ‘stimulate’ but the ‘early leftist’ wouldn’t come to mind. At 25 I spent ages trying to justify OLIVE as the tree and OSIER only revealed itself once the R-checker provided by TROT had arrived.
Any problem with the L of the INTERLUDE anagram being clued indirectly? (Re your complaint about the LF of the BULLY OFF anagram from yesterday)
I wondered the same, having only just caught up with yesterday’s puzzle.
TBH I hadn’t noticed it, but on reflection it seems okay to me as it’s a single letter that’s an everyday abbreviation so it doesn’t seem much of a stretch. LF for ‘low frequency’ is an abbreviation I didn’t know, and expecting solvers to come up with it and then split the two letters in a jumble with other anagrist seemed a bit much. As things worked out the answer was easy to spot from definition, checkers and other anagrist so it was only after solving the clue that I was left wondering where the extra L and F came from. As mentioned originally I am now used to this sort of clue in The Guardian but I was under the impression that Times setters were advised against the practice.
I was another who had OSIER early and couldn’t see how the wordplay worked, and then clicked. But I was held up for ages at the end by OOZE, not least because I didn’t know how the river was pronounced and thought it was ow-z. But got there in the end.
Very similar experience to Jack’s, with the unknown JOGTROT only going in after I’d finally thought of OOZE and banished thoughts of olives to come up with OSIER. I then went back to DONE WITH to finish off, appropriately. Along the way I also gave myself problems by thinking that SELLS SHORT was going to be POURS SCORN. Still, I was quite fast until the sticky spots and finished in 36 minutes.
Two short again at the hour mark. That river just wouldn’t flow, I was left with MOLE, only river that fitted. “mol” is a unit of measure, though not really a trickle, on E. I also looked at homophonic rivers, SOAR/SORE was the best I could come up with.
Missed the missing “hidden” for HYDRO, again.
COD SELLS SHORT
Dee/D.. Forth/Fourth, Severn/seven. Wye/why. Taw/tore. Axe/acts maybe?
Though perhaps you meant ones that fit the crossers 🙂
26 minutes, held up at the end first by OVERKILL and then by LOI LIPS where I wanted to put in LAPS but couldn’t get it to work. I’ve never heard toffs described as quality before. No wonder those Etonians walk with such a swagger. COD to MIXED GRILL in memory of when my teeth were better.Enjoyably tricky. Thank you George and setter.
The quality, I think was the usual phrase; I’m surprised you didn’t know it. ODE sv ‘quality’ ‘1) [treated as pl.] ((archaic)) people of high social standing.’ My impression is that it was only used by the non-toffs, and I imagine it was used with a certain amount of irony,
I have a vague memory of some businesses advertising themselves as, for example, ‘tailors to the quality’.
At some point (which would take me too long to find), my favourite toff, Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, tells us that Jeeves generally ‘oozes off when what one might call the quality arrive’. I forgive Bertie every time I read it, though I find it a dreadful expression and one which, if any living person were to use it in my hearing, might provoke an uncharacteristic, and possibly physical, response.
It won’t surprise you BW and Kevin when I say that QUALITY in that sense crops up in Georgette Heyer’s oeuvre! In fact one of the novels is entitled Lady Of Quality.
Somehow I’ve always assumed that everyone in Heyer is of the quality.
31:31
Didn’t know this archaic meaning of ‘quality’. Interesting puzzle.
Thanks, g.
I’m now rather long in the tooth
4 Across took me back to my youth
And that Motorhead track
With a huge Marshall stack
So loud it was raising the roof
I’m sure many will be surprised to learn they had a song that wasn’t Ace of Spades 😉
Reminds me of when I saw them at Donington in 1986. Someone nearby in the crowd kept shouting out for “Overkill!”. My brother looked at me and shouted “They’ve already played it!” Well, it was ear-splittingly loud…
10:16. Much the same as others, I finished with JOGTROT then OSIER, having only thought of olive until JOGTROT went in. I’d thought of JOG and TROT some time before I actually decided to put them together.
The koala tea of Mersey is not strained
Nice crossword, good degree of chewiness, nice surfaces, pangram, etc.
Eyebrow flicker at toffs=quality and the 50/reunited anagrist.
Poor Royal Academician caught parking badly (4)
Thanks setter and G.
Are you having a bit of a CARP at the indirect anagrams?
Extremely sloppy English cryptic? You are correct (3)
Nice pun Myrtilus – although I have a feeling I’ve seen it before. Re QUALITY, see my (inevitable) response to Kevin and BW supra.
27min for a good time for me
NHO jog trot and like many others I enjoyed quell
LAPS LOI, which was wrong. Otherwise 16′ 48″.
Good to see TEST CARD, which could replace most of the 300 channels I seem to have subscribed to.
Thanks George and setter.
44m 11s
Quite a few question marks on the parsing so, thank you Vinyl for: INDENTURE, XENOPHOBE, (One of about 16 or 17 words I have to describe #45) QUELL, EYELET and OSIER.
FOI: MARSHY
LOI: LIPS/OVERKILL
COD: RANG THE CHANGES.
Er, today’s blogger is George….
Oh, dear! The effects of ageing! By the time I scrolled down from the top, I’d obviously forgotten who had written the blog! And I’m only 75!
Got off to a quick start with MARSHY and RANDY, then came the DAY OF RECKONING. Was then HOPEFUL of a speedy solve, but the NW yielded no more until much later. OSIER and JOGTROT delayed the SW despite having the J from LONG JOHNS. Finally returning to the NW I enjoyed a MIXED GRILL, biffed XENOPHOBE from the crossers and spotted the anagrist for LOI, DONE WITH. 18:26. Thanks setter and GEORGE.
34 mins and same final pair as others. Is it just me, or are our setters obsessed with khasis at the moment? I had OVERTURN for a while which held me up in the NE.
I enjoyed the long clues and MIXED GRILL.
Thanks g and setter.
Stuck at the end, wanting it to be OLIVE and not happy with JOGTROT as a word. Otherwise a tough but fair challenge; liked QUELL and QUALITY once I saw what was going on. A name like GOGOL was just made for crosswords.
17:03
COD: Quell. Nicely disguised. Calm as an adjective in the wordplay and a verb as the definition.
19:10 Good fun Sometimes they all just seem to line up nicely. I liked QUELL, OSIER and RANDY. I think QUALITY is ok as long as it said with withering contempt.
“Divided by a common language”
Private Eye once had a press cutting from ( I think) an American newspaper comic strip.
A couple are sitting talking in a bar:
He: “Happy Julie? ”
She “Ecstatically Randy!”
Thanks to George and the setter.
It’s a down clue so is ‘along’ appropriate in 8dn? And why is a trot an early leftist? Trotsky was an early leftist, but the word ‘trot’ doesn’t only apply to leftists of times gone by, does it? Otherwise a nice crossword. 30 minutes.
Couldn’t agree more on both. Trotsky was 4 years-old when Marx died, and 16 when Engels died. It’s loose.
Very good one. I was well on wavelength except for a couple of clues. I’d completely forgotten about TEST CARDs but the cluing was generous. And I simply couldn’t make sense of the middle of XENOPHOBE – HPONE looked hopeless until I remembered the never-never. 16.52
Enjoyed this. Interrupted a few times but about 45 mins in all. Thought 2d and 6d would not have been out of place in Private Eye!
Liked this, pretty quick. Never even tried to parse XENOPHOBE, once the X arrived.
Held up at the end by having stupidly got the idea that 16ac was (4,5) which made it much harder..
7:42, but I accidentally submitted without leaderboard so you’ll have to take my word for it. I don’t remember seeing JOGTROT (which only Chambers has as one word) before, but fortunately I had the J from JOHNS so wasn’t tempted by DOGTROT.
I’m not sure where I’ve come across QUALITY for toffs before. Georgette Heyer or Wodehouse, perhaps? Edit: I started writing this before Olivia had commented above, that will be it!
I’ve come across ‘the quality’ frequently, though I couldn’t tell you where, but it wasn’t Heyer, who I’ve never read. And I very much doubt it was Wodehouse.
It’s once in the Wodehouse chronicles of Jeeves and Wooster (see my post above, which, with apologies, I wrote before getting this far down).
07:11, which makes me think of Bill and Ted, meaning they have replaced Austin Powers as my filmic ear-worm after solving 2 down (“oh behave!”). Everything fell into place very nicely, and the pangram was especially helpful – getting a J or a Q or an X or V in a particular place really narrows down the options for the crossing words. Good fun.
21:29. 1ac and 1d went in on sight then I hit a wall for an uncomfortable few minutes. Thought we might be in for a stinker, but in the end only JOGTROT gave any trouble; it seemed a very unlikely combination of crossers.
As per our esteemed blogger, I found this a struggle. 24.10 with a good 5 mins of that spent in the SE corner. Wasn’t helped by convincing myself that the second part of 13 dn was shots and that the dock in 20 dn was a pier.
Just in time, I recognised lit for land and all became clear. Quell, eyelet and sells short whizzed in.
Thanks setter for a tricky, for me, puzzle and blogger for explaining all.
Fared a lot better in this than I did in QC, crossing the line in 42.40. The last five minutes or so were spent like everyone else it seems, sorting out the JOGTROT/OSIER crosser. It didn’t help that I initially fell into the old trap and put in OUSE at 24dn.
Stuck at the end because I had OLIVE (unparsed but nothing better). Had I known JOGTROT I might have got there.
Otherwise correct and enjoyed. Liked MIXED GRILL and a number of others.
10:54 late this afternoon.
I thought this had a slightly risque feel to it – perhaps this setter also composes for the Grauniad? I seemed to be right on wavelength which is a tad disconcerting.
FOI 1 ac ” marshy” then a steady solve until LOI 9 d ” done with” where the anagram took a little while to crack.
Particularly liked 22 d “hydro”, a neat variation on the hidden clue which I saw through quickly for once, 20 ac ” quell” and 18 ac ” long johns”.
Thanks to George and setter
15:16. Nice one. Completed with a Campari and soda after returning from a pleasant day walking c 10 miles on the Angles way to Beccles and then back along the River Waveney. I managed to biff HYDRO without spotting the hidden. Like others, I was thinking DOGTROT for 19D before the J from LONG JOHNS got me the right, but unknown, JOGTROT. The need for healthy eating made me try to make 1D MIXED SALAD, but the R from REVEL got me to the meaty answer. LOI the clever DONE WITH. Thank-you George and setter.
13d wrong. Biffed in WELLY SPoRT- otherwise all correct!
Close but no cigar
14’03” No real problems, though I was delayed by pencilling in SPORT for the bottom of 13d. I must have been thinking of spoil-sport.
It’s a Pangram, but not a Supergram, where all the letters are shared in two words. In this case, the letters B, W and Z are used in only one word.
15.53. I cantered through this puzzle without much difficulty, everything just sort of fell into place.
12’00”
Thought I was going to get a really fast time after whacking in 7 answers inside a minute in the NW, but then settled into a steady rhythm until JOGTROT and OSIER. Like others here, I’d thought of the latter earlier, but didn’t twig (ho ho!) the parsing until I was sure it had to be right, given the three crossers.
Loved the double lines in 20 Across: quelle surprise!
Anyone else puzzled by LIPS for ‘borders’ in 8 down?
Late to finish this- was too busy yesterday. OSIER LOI once JOGTROT came to mind and confirmed olive was indeed wrong. Didn’t know QUALITY = toffs
Thanks blogger and setter
After yesterday’s debacle I thought this one was going to be a doddle , having entered 1a on sight, but alas it was all downhill from there on! Some good PDMs though – LONG JOHNS ( reminiscent of a John Wayne movie), DERRING-DO ( surprised younger solvers had heard of this), and QUALITY (ditto). Altogether a fair test, but I was stymied by a handful (LIPS, SELLS SHORT, and second half of 1d.)