Time: 22 minutes
Music: Brahms, Violin Concerto, Perlman/Giulini
This was not a terribly difficult puzzle, although some of the cryptics were obscure. Since I had decided to solve the puzzle as fast as possible, I pushed ahead. Obvious answers were entered without parsing, so I had quite a few biffs by the end of my solve – these are noted in italic type.
My plan was also to do the blog as fast as possible, but I was delayed by having type in all the answers, since the Times newspaper site is stuck on Sunday. Oh, well…..
| Across | |
| 1 | Dog in New Jersey, one attached to army HQ (7) |
| BASENJI – BASE + NJ + I, a bit of a chestnut. | |
| 5 | Small tree father brought back, inspired by member’s support (7) |
| SAPLING – S(PA backwards)LING. | |
| 9 | Month amphibious troops originally introduced Dutch soldiers (9) |
| THERMIDOR – THE R.M + I[ntroduced] + D + OR. | |
| 10 | Soft rock prince found in the Kent area (5) |
| SHALE – S(HAL)E. | |
| 11 | Odyssey of pair keeping 1987 car before one race (13) |
| PEREGRINATION – P(E-REG)R + I + NATION. | |
| 13 | Protractedly taken in about northern form of writing (8) |
| LONGHAND – LONG HA(N)D. | |
| 15 | Restrained introduction to history in class (6) |
| CHASTE – C(H)ASTE, a bit of a chestnut. | |
| 17 | Conclusion: pig, frog and bulldog all do it (6) |
| ENDING – END IN G, of course. | |
| 19 | Walker’s extremely smart luxury car (8) |
| STROLLER – S[mar]T + ROLLER. | |
| 22 | Acquisitive individual tucking into my food, a former crooner (5-8) |
| MONEY-GRUBBING – M(ONE)Y + GRUB + BING. | |
| 25 | Retired fellow at home in cattle-raising country (5) |
| NIGER – REG + IN. An African industry that has recently faced difficult conditions. | |
| 26 | Deficit which can possibly lead to lengthy cold spell? (9) |
| SHORTFALL – SHORT FALL, followed presumably by a long winter. | |
| 27 | Better thus to pen extremely leisurely song (7) |
| CALYPSO – CA(L[eisurel]Y)P + SO | |
| 28 | Twelve new rings Andy distributed (7) |
| NOONDAY – N + OO + anagram of ANDY. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Black Aussie truck in Scottish island (4) |
| BUTE – B + UTE, an island well-know because of the 18th-century PM. | |
| 2 | Become more inclined to visit writer penning tango (7) |
| STEEPEN – S(T)EE + PEN. | |
| 3 | Rugby fellow going over part of Belgium (5) |
| NAMUR – RU MAN backwards – where Uncle Toby saw action. | |
| 4 | Needy girl kept by funky bloke (8) |
| INDIGENT – IN (DI) GENT. I’m not sure if funky usually means fashionable. | |
| 5 | Foul reportedly observed by police officer and daughter (6) |
| SORDID – SOR, sounds like saw in some dialects + D.I. + D. | |
| 6 | Nut cooking chips at Vigo regularly (9) |
| PISTACHIO – Anagram of CHIPS AT + [v]I[g]O. | |
| 7 | Wine a woman briefly describes at last in slanting script (7) |
| ITALICS – IT + ALIC[e] + [describe]S. | |
| 8 | Misguidedly get near her tropical tree (9) |
| GREENHEART – Anagram of GET NEAR HER. The enumeration is wrong, which caused trouble for the script that generates blog skeletons. | |
| 12 | Like some senior councillors raving under tree (10) |
| ALDERMANIC – ALDER + MANIC, the third semi-chestnut. | |
| 14 | Polish gang set up attractive lure for victims (9) |
| HONEYTRAP – |
|
| 16 | Intractable objections raised principally by old sailors (8) |
| STUBBORN – BUTS upside-down + B[y] O[ld] R.N. | |
| 18 | Abandoned Legoland, heading off for the Lifford area (7) |
| DONEGAL -Anagram of EGOLAND. I had no idea where Lifford is, but it does sound Irish. | |
| 20 | Young chap carrying goods, a right dawdler! (7) |
| LAGGARD – LA(G,G + A +R)D. | |
| 21 | Art work little Albert’s left in the open air (6) |
| FRESCO – [al] FRESCO. | |
| 23 | Knowledgeable about getting hold of Rachmaninoff’s first prelude (5) |
| INTRO – INT(R[acmaninoff])O | |
| 24 | Carry on adopting Oscar’s ruse (4) |
| PLOY – PL(O)Y. | |
15.13
Never heard of the odd ALDERMANIC but in it went. Amazingly managed to avoid the GRUB/GRAB thing by – falls down in astonishment – properly parsing it despite not knowingly knowing the former version.
Lifford is in Co Donegal, near Strabane in Co Derry
I believe that Greenheart is a wood denser than water, so doesn’t float. Possibly the only such wood, I’m not sure.
I’m annoyed that the crossword still isn’t getting the editing it deserves, despite accuracy being vital in the cryptic. So GREENHEART never an option for me… Also miffed at the assumption that we’d all remember ( or even care about) car regos- surely just a maley thing? And why does the paper have 1987 when you’ve all been talking about 1967? That aside, didn’t have too much trouble here, but a lot of biffing helped. Knew BASENJI, but not THERMIDOR ( which sounds very unlikely for the -even French – name of a month. Tempted to misspell PEREGRINATION, but looked it up, and NHO the ugly ALDERMANIC ( and hope never to again). Apart from these grumbles, happy to complete, despite having no time, as obsessed with watching the Donald Trump trials in between solving…