A gentle Wednesday this week, with a couple of entries from the urban dictionary and three tolerable homophones. No need to know where the lush places in Kyrgyzstan are. 15 minutes.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Supply funds for vessel (8) |
| STOCKPOT – STOCK = supply, keep a stock of; POT = funds. | |
| 6 | Genuine Polish saint (6) |
| HONEST – HONE = polish, ST for saint. | |
| 9 | Country united in reversal of basic principles (4) |
| CUBA – ABC being “basic principles”, reverse and insert U. | |
| 10 | Sometimes a lack of staff as a consequence? (3,3,4) |
| NOW AND THEN – NO WAND being a lack of a staff, THEN = as a consequence. | |
| 11 | Piece of meat and celery, perhaps, feeding couple in the Far East? (10) |
| CHOPSTICKS – CHOP a piece of meat, and STICKS of celery. You need a pair to eat with them. | |
| 13 | Lush part of rural Kyrgyzstan (4) |
| ALKY – hidden as above, lush as in alcoholic. | |
| 14 | Cow eating cow, perhaps: roughly speaking, is its mate able to? (8) |
| CANNIBAL – sounds (rather) like “CAN A BULL?” | |
| 16 | Old swimmer lassoing a bovine (6) |
| OAFISH – O[ld], FISH = swimmer, insert A. Collins meaning 2. gives bovine = stupid. | |
| 18 | Poetry in very old language succeeded (6) |
| VERSES – V[ery], ERSE an old language, S[ucceeded]. | |
| 20 | Bar I dropped thrown out (8) |
| BANISHED – BAN (bar) I, SHED (dropped). | |
| 22 | Wine having seen better days removed from case (4) |
| ASTI – PAST IT loses its first and last letters. | |
| 24 | Measure has brought the enemy into focus (10) |
| CENTIMETRE – TIME, the old enemy, inside CENTRE meaning focus. | |
| 26 | Italian tide with Latino turned (10) |
| NEAPOLITAN – NEAP a low tide, (LATINO)*. | |
| 28 | Head cut off in photograph, laugh (4) |
| HOOT – SHOOT losing S. | |
| 29 | Level of tale told to audience (6) |
| STOREY – homophone for STORY. | |
| 30 | Squirrel away, turning up with nuts as diet (3,5) |
| PUT ASIDE – PU (turning up), (AS DIET)*. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Bit mean, to make contact! (5,4) |
| TOUCH BASE – TOUCH = bit, as in “that’s a touch …”, BASE = mean. | |
| 3 | One screw securing another, gripping device (7) |
| CRAMPON – CON with RAMP inside. Here both mean “screw” as in swindle. | |
| 4 | Wine kitty keeps at home (5) |
| PINOT – IN inside POT. Pinot grapes make pinot wine. | |
| 5 | Draw what informally comes up (3) |
| TOW – WOT (what informally) reversed. | |
| 6 | Farm employees not working easily (5,4) |
| HANDS DOWN – HANDS for farm workers, DOWN for not working e.g. that machine is down. | |
| 7 | 49 per cent? 100 per cent! (3,4) |
| NOT HALF – double definition. | |
| 8 | Spot Italian meat (5) |
| SPECK – double definition, the second being a type of Italian cured ham. | |
| 12 | Approximately year lost by African slave on island (7) |
| CALIBAN – CA (approx.) LIB[Y]AN. Caliban was Prospero’s slave in THE TEMPEST. | |
| 15 | Close to gagging when I cry, first of all (9) |
| BASICALLY – BY (close to) “gags” i.e. includes, AS I CALL = when I cry. | |
| 17 | Steel shackles put on, that’s an obscenity! (9) |
| SWEARWORD – SWORD (steel) with WEAR (put on) inserted. | |
| 19 | Item of footwear, one treading on banana skin? (7) |
| SLIPPER – slightly cryptic second definition. | |
| 21 | Witnesses inhaling the fumes (7) |
| SEETHES – SEES (witnesses as a verb) with THE inside. | |
| 23 | Pick up coin, did you say? (5) |
| SCENT – sounds like CENT a coin. | |
| 25 | Tavern needs vermouth, don’t you agree? (5) |
| INNIT – INN and IT (Italian vermouth). Essex speak, innit. | |
| 27 | Bonus clue (3) |
| TIP – double definition. | |
42:48. I don’t seem to be quite alone in finding this one tricky. I thought of the “screw” on a boat and had PROP pencilled in where RAMP needed to go. And in BASICALLY I spotted ASIC – AS I C(ry), where the C is CRY first of all – which just left me stranded. I enjoyed the homophone
I thought perhaps the homophone in 14 ac. was “Can ‘e nibble”?
Many thanks to setter and blogger
35 minutes, but with one wrong at 8d. I entered STEAK with little thought, since there one or two others whose wordplay escaped me (e.g. ASTI), and I didn’t go back to it.I thought the clue to CANNIBAL was awful. “roughly’ seems to excuse about anything. There were some good surfaces in the clues to STOCKPOT, ASTI, PUT ASIDE.
9:47. Steady. I enjoy terrible homophones and puns (Paul McKenna’s Mephisto ones are always wonderfully awful) so I liked CANNIBAL.
You generally TOUCH BASE after you’ve circled back, of course. I hate this business jargon, and it’s constantly evolving in newly ghastly ways. A recent trend is for people to speak for a few minutes and then say ‘I’ll pause there’. You never heard this a few years ago and now I hear it about five times a day. The same is true of ‘the long pole in the tent’, an expression that doesn’t even make any sense.
Had a little self-side bet that you wouldn’t let TOUCH BASE by without a mention 🙂 Circle back is excruciating but the horrible thing is I end up hearing myself say the same things. Never heard of the pole thing but it will be like movies in the Seventies – they’ll find their way to the sticks soon enough.
I know, it can be hard to resist when you’re surrounded by it.
‘Long pole in the tent’ is an old military expression that originally referred to something very important in a project, as the long central pole holding up a tent is important. That makes perfect sense, but now it always refers to the element of a project that is going to take the longest time, and hence define the overall duration of the whole project. That makes no sense at all.
15:16 – thought the cannibal clue was pushing its luck a bit too far, but since we all got there in the end perhaps not.
Truly a red letter day – faster than Verlaine on both puzzles for the first time!
A little slow to start, but then built up a head of steam, finding time only to grimace at the truly terrible clue for CANNIBAL before finishing with a biffed CRAMPON (thanks as ever Pip)
FOI ALKY
LOI CRAMPON
COD CALIBAN
TIME 6:59
Well done. Now the trick is to keep your sprinting spikes sharp until the Championships
44mins, and another with L2I CRAMPON and CUBA. So much wine early in the morning gave me a thirst! I felt nice 1er Cru coming on, but ended up with a nice Luberon Rosé for lunch. Well, someone has to.
CALIBAN (DNK) worked out from wp after all checkers were in and looked up post solve.
I liked CHOPSTICKS and SLIPPER.
Thanks pip and setter.
25 mins held up due to the fact this was not a veggie-friendly puzzle. Fraid I had to come here to confirm if it was STEAK or SPECK.
24.55. No real problems but crampon was troublesome until I got Cuba . A misfire with touch type also produced a pause but reboot allowed for cannibal, basically and centimetre ( the last dawning with the recognition of time as the old enemy) .
Thx setter and blogger.
If you have ever been skiing in Austria you will surely have eaten speck mit ei – ham and eggs.
Richard
A gentle and enjoyable stroll, completed in 19 minutes. I was another one who found a nibble in 14ac, but enjoyed the clue anyway. I felt I was down on the street with the kids with INNIT and WOT, but we have to accept this is how languages develop.
FOI – ALKY
LOI – CANNIBAL
COD – CANNIBAL
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
65 minutes. Slow, I’m still blaming the heat. All parsed except for BASICALLY. CRAMPON and CUBA were the last two. I did enjoy CANNIBAL but POT providing the P in both STOCKPOT and PINOT seemed a bit lame. Thanks to piquet.
18.19
Excellent puzzle for me. Neat, tidy and with sone humour. Worked bottom up ending in the NW.
Thanks Pip and setter
Add me to the list of people who bunged in STEAK, even though the parsing didn’t work at all. Other than that, done in 45:42.
20’13”
Kept up early pace.
Enjoyed this.
Thank you Pip and setter.
18’13” A day late. Luckily avoided the STEAK trap. Also almost put in STANDPOT which would have worked. The CANNIBAL homophone is indefensible.
Strange how solvers are sharply divided by those who enjoy “dodgy” homophones, and those who find them (as above “indefensible” and excruciating). I actually find they lend a little lightheartedness to the sometimes over-serious interaction with the puzzles. That said – I didn’t do all that well on this one, until I looked up a couple of answers, got the drift, and from then on found it a biff-fest, with, happily for me, crossers being helpful in so doing. Does the panel think that, given the slide into Essex-speak, we will end up with phonetics as the basis of our language?