29:03
On a scale of Monday to Friday, I’d put this on a high Wednesday. Unusually for me, I really liked the double/cryptic definitions today; they were somehow guessable, tricky, and funny at the same time.
LOsI were 4dn (unknown word and villainous wordplay), then 13dn (which took at least 5 minutes, and I still didn’t parse it until seconds before posting).
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | Cleric keeps company with shrewd colleague (10) |
| ARCHDEACON – DEAN (cleric) containing CO (company), with ARCH (shrewd). Self-referential definition – the answer is a colleague of a Dean. Could have done with a question mark IMO. | |
| 6 | Part company with surgery led by GP? (4) |
| DROP – OP (surgery) after DR (GP). | |
| 9 | Liable to produce spoilers maybe from popular record about film (10) |
| INDISCREET – IN (popular) + DISC (record) + RE (about) + ET (film). | |
| 10 | Words expressed with venom (4) |
| SPAT – cryptic/double definition? Spat = quarrel = (have) words. | |
| 12 | Ill-timed, immoderate needs succeeded for king (12) |
| UNSEASONABLE – UNrEASONABLE (immoderate) with S (succeeded) in place of R (king). | |
| 15 | Walk then run, being in a frenzied state (5,4) |
| MARCH HARE – MARCH + HARE. Being = creature. | |
| 17 | Test case for tribunal involves revolutionary aspect (5) |
| TRIAL – case for TribunaL, containing reversal of AIR (aspect). | |
| 18 | Large plant finishes off reactor to allow extra production (5) |
| ROWAN – final letters from reactoR tO alloW extrA productioN. | |
| 19 | Children’s home forever faced by endless changes (9) |
| ORPHANAGE – AN AGE (forever) after (faced with) mORPHs (changes, “end-less”). | |
| 20 | Male characters in The Devils spread confusion (12) |
| DISHEVELMENT – MEN (male characters) in an anagram (spread) of THE DEVILS. | |
| 24 | Close listener follows note (4) |
| NEAR – EAR (listener) after N (note). | |
| 25 | Writer set out to capture live animal (10) |
| WILDEBEEST – WILDE (Oscar, writer) + anagram of SET, containing BE (live). | |
| 26 | Square divisible by two (4) |
| EVEN – double definition. | |
| 27 | Poll‘s official objective hedged by expressions of doubt (10) |
| REFERENDUM – REF (official), then END (objective) surrounded (hedged) by ER and UM (expressions of doubt). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Passionate, vocal woman who leads uprising (4) |
| AVID – DIVA (vocal woman who leads) reversed. | |
| 2 | Start to cause trouble about final piece of work (4) |
| CODA – first letter of Cause, then reversal of ADO (trouble). | |
| 3 | Left with no illusions after he sent candid snaps (12) |
| DISENCHANTED – anagram of (…snaps) HE SENT CANDID. | |
| 4 | Cycling bore gets fit (5) |
| AGREE – EAGRE (a tidal bore) cycling (i.e. first letter moves to the end). | |
| 5 | Fail to rise to the occasion when one should? (9) |
| OVERSLEEP – cryptic definition. | |
| 7 | Leaders of right-wing establishment host US counterpart (10) |
| REPUBLICAN – first letters of Right-wing and Establishment, then PUBLICAN (host). Another self-referential ‘definition’. | |
| 8 | Having prominent corporation with pounds in bank misrepresented (10) |
| POTBELLIED – L (pounds), in POT (bank) + BELIED (misrepresented). | |
| 11 | A banal tune — it swings like The Impossible Dream? (12) |
| UNATTAINABLE – anagram of (…swings) A BANAL TUNE IT. | |
| 13 | Base of lower lip harbours what appears to be rash (10) |
| IMPRUDENCE – last letter (base) of loweR, that IMPUDENCE (lip) contains (harbours). | |
| 14 | Swims at speed in shallow area with access to facilities (5,5) |
| CRAWL SPACE – CRAWLS (swims) + PACE (speed). Kudos for a 6-word, somewhat technical, definition. | |
| 16 | Pay for issue brought up previously (2,3,4) |
| AT ONE TIME – ATONE (pay for), then EMIT (issue) reversed. | |
| 21 | What features in chironomid genetically? (5) |
| MIDGE – semi-&lit, hidden in chironoMID GEnetically. Chironomids are a family of non-biting midges. More kudos to our setter for a clever clue that probably took more effort to set than to solve. COD. | |
| 22 | Small drop in attendance initially disrupting teacher’s course (4) |
| BEAD – first letter of Attendance, in BED (BEd, Bachelor of Education, teacher’s course). | |
| 23 | Staunch supporter of green growth? (4) |
| STEM – double definition. | |
18:03
I’m a little surprised at my time given the general level of opinion here about the difficulty. I’m not saying I found it easy but CRAWL SPACE was the only one that made me pause for any length of time. I was lucky with AGREE; I’d never heard of an EAGRE but vaguely remembered something abut auger drill bits and somehow managed to mis-parse this into the correct answer.
COD MIDGE but I’m delighted to have learnt about MAMILs and FOMBOLs
Thanks to William and the setter.
1 Across. The cleric is dean which has a co in it. Preceded by arch.
All done and dusted, apart from -r-w-space. I tried brown space in my hurry to finish. Don’t think I’ve ever seen dishevelment before. Thanks to setter and blogger.
33:51
Managed to bash my way through this one with five unparsed at the finish, though managed to parse two of them before coming here:
UNSEASONABLE – from definition so thankfully didn’t get caught in the r/s mix-up
REPUBLICAN – missed the host=PUBLICAN bit
IMPRUDENCE – was thinking Base=RUDE so couldn’t twig how the rest worked
Solved POTBELLIED and ORPHANAGE before reading William’s blog.
16:05. I seem to have been fairly on the wavelength for this one given the times and experiences of other solvers. An enjoyable tussle. Dishevelment, at one time and orphanages held out the longest but cracked them eventually.
42 minutes, not especially hard imo (remembering I’m not the speediest solver anyway!) but at 12ac I wasted a lot of time looking for a word with k in it that I could switch for an s, forgetting that king can be r.
Thanks setter and blogger
Steve
I felt “agree” was rather too close to an indirect anagram for my liking.
37.07 . Always pleased to finish a Friday and makes up for missing arid and trappists on Wednesday. Bit of a slog today and yesterday but enjoyed both challenges.
Felt more Friday-ish than Wednesday-ish here. I liked At One Time. Thanks, wmjs & setter
Just over an hour, with a break before getting ARCHDEACON and AVID. It was not easy, but I didn’t find the difficulties very clever nor very pleasant. AGREE was biffed, as was IMPRUDENCE at first, but for that I eventually understood the wordplay. But there were many gratuitious obscurities (there must be other ways to get the ORPH in ORPHANAGE, for example) and lots of reuse of clue ideas from previous days (ARCH for shrewd or knowing, for example) which made some things easier than they should have been. Not my favourite puzzle.
I’m with Keriothe on this one. I rarely give up, but was left with 1 and 9A and 1,2 and 4D and just couldn’t get a purchase on that corner. I immediately thought of EAGRE but was trying to reverse it and having only the final E didn’t help. The others were equally baffling, which was a shame because the rest of the crossword was eminently solvable and parseable, except for 13D.
No time because I fell asleep. A bit of a slog, NHO CRAWL SPACE, quite a few times I was working on the wrong literal (eg POTBELLIED). Liked REPUBLICAN when I finally got it, clever clue.
As per Cracking the Cryptic, this was Jason Crampton’s (aka Serpent in the Independent) debut as a Times setter.
As above rely to Keriothe.