This was another tricky Monday, I thought. A bit of heretical religious stuff (can you believe people used to live in times where you could be thrown in jail or worse just for disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy?), a bit of mountebankery, a bit of literature, a bit of opera…not to mention good old(en?) MIT.
31:07
| Across | |
| 1 | Religious rebel showing a refusal to accept suggestion (8) |
| ANTIPOPE – TIP in A NOPE (refusal) | |
| 5 | Papa recalled row about opening of clothes drawer (6) |
| PENCIL – P (Papa in NATO alphabet) C (opening of C |
|
| 9 | Collapse after losing one marathon? (3) |
| RUN – RU |
|
| 10 | Unpleasant odour circulating? Only odour is on the way out (11) |
| OBSOLESCENT – BO (body odour) reversed SOLE (only) SCENT (odour) | |
| 12 | A bumpy approach to one’s way of thinking? (10) |
| PHRENOLOGY – cryptic definition; phooey involving the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits. Give me strength… | |
| 13 | Popular account brought back ancient language (4) |
| INCA – IN AC reversed; the language also known as Quechua | |
| 15 | Old man and old woman receiving large then small quantity of blood (6) |
| PLASMA – L then S in PA and MA; the fluid part of blood, as opposed to the corpuscles | |
| 16 | Impressive archer getting middle of rings (7) |
| TELLING – TELL (William) |
|
| 18 | Composer put out missing opening in capital of Italy (7) |
| ROSSINI – |
|
| 20 | I’m quiet — is he primarily mischievous? (6) |
| IMPISH – I’M P IS (from the clue again) H (initial letter of H |
|
| 23 | A, B, C, D, F or G? (4) |
| NOTE – NOT E among all these other notes | |
| 24 | Vocalist in boy group’s initial worry (10) |
| SONGSTRESS – SON G (G |
|
| 26 | Fail to understand consumerist in action (11) |
| MISCONSTRUE – anagram* of CONSUMERIST | |
| 27 | Apostle lacking universal example of friendship (3) |
| PAL – PA |
|
| 28 | One entertaining the mature trifle? Wow! (3,3) |
| TOY BOY – TOY (trifle, as in ‘Don’t toy/trifle with my emotions!’) BOY (as in ‘Boy/Wow! Is that a crime now too?!’) | |
| 29 | Mother leading plot in a European novel (4,4) |
| ADAM BEDE – DAM (mother) BED (plot) in A (from the clue) E (European); George Eliot’s first novel, featuring honest yokels and aristocratic bounders | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Unexpected power in a classification of wine (6) |
| ABRUPT – P in A BRUT | |
| 2 | A lot of birdsong around close part of plant (7) |
| TENDRIL – END in TRIL |
|
| 3 | Favouring Christian philosopher’s prediction (10) |
| PROGNOSTIC – PRO GNOSTIC; a Gnostic believed in arcane knowledge revealed only to a select few. I wonder if Keir Starmer would be one… | |
| 4 | Mean-spirited American blocking medicine, hatred swamping love (13) |
| PUSILLANIMOUS – US in PILL O in ANIMUS; I had a wretched time assembling this word. I must remember that ‘pusillus’ means ‘very small’ in Latin, thus ‘small-minded.’ | |
| 6 | Simple question to get out of rough? (4) |
| EASY – |
|
| 7 | Islands stocking dyestuff for Indian city (7) |
| CHENNAI – HENNA in CI (Channel Islands); we will know that the name change has really taken effect when we are offerd ‘Chicken Chennai’ in Indian restaurants. | |
| 8 | Greatly upset about husband’s aversion to any action? (8) |
| LETHARGY – H in GREATLY* | |
| 11 | “Delicately flavoured” identified as description for dips? (5-8) |
| LIGHT-FINGERED – LIGHT (delicately flavoured) FINGERED (identified – by the police, if/when they’re in solving crime mode); ‘dips’ here are pickpockets | |
| 14 | Fielders leading colleagues restricting runs in follow-on? (10) |
| SLIPSTREAM -SLIPS (cricketing fielders) R (runs) in TEAM (colleagues); is ‘follow-on’ accurate? If you slipstream someone, you follow them closely; but ‘follow-on’? | |
| 17 | Studies I should leave US institute to conduct (8) |
| TRANSMIT – TRA |
|
| 19 | Answer fits awkwardly into speech (7) |
| SATISFY – FITS* in SAY (as in ‘Bruce has had his say, let Caitlyn have hers’); my last in | |
| 21 | Expensive policy not popular for part of church (7) |
| STEEPLE – STEEP (expensive) L |
|
| 22 | Operatic heroine is historic, not new (6) |
| ISOLDE – IS OLDE |
|
| 25 | Prepare celebration for old-fashioned person (4) |
| DODO – DO (do the vegetables) DO (‘We’re having a do on the 17th’) | |
My first post. I do not usually finish, but completed today’s puzzle in about an hour. I have much enjoyed this site and the various posts, which has helped me to get the hang of how th corsswords work, so now ready for faster times in future. FOI – 20 across. LOI – 25 Down. COD – 23 across, though I got it quickly, I am still smiling.
Well done!
Excellent. I always post my solving times when I finish the puzzle just so that I can compare with other regulars who are round about my moderate competence level, but the time is not as important as gaining satisfaction from the challenge of a well compiled crossword. Best wishes.
Unlike Martin L I usually finish (well done) but this time it was with many biffs and in 90 mins. The slowest sucessful one for me ever. British Gas even arrived while I was waiting: that long.
33:35
A game of two halves for me. I had all the right side of the grid complete with only OBS and SO leaking into the left.
TOY BOY was a nice PDM, then LOI DODO.
Fine challenge, thanks setter and Ulaca.
Well virtually everyone has stated this was a toughie, but for some reason I found it relatively straightforward, finishing in 27.57. I guess I was totally tuned in to the setter (unlikely), or just got lucky (much more likely). PHRENOLOGY was my LOI, and this held me up for a while. I particularly liked the TOY BOY clue, which was another that delayed me a little.
On another day, I’d have given up on this one, because after a few immediate write ins, I bogged down for a while. But having more time on my hands than I usually do, I persevered and completed in an hour or so. I see from the comments above that a opinion is split on whether it was harder than the usual Monday offering or not; I thought it was.
I was pleased to finish it, and could see that some of the clues were quite clever, but I didn’t really enjoy it; for me, some of the “synonyms” in the clues were too much of a stretch and some of the clues contained spurious verbiage simply so that the clue read something like a sentence:
“Quantity of blood” = PLASMA; not really – plasma is not blood, it is a component of blood, and “quantity” is neither here nor there.
“Example of friendship” = PAL; an example of a friend maybe, but of friendship?
“Follow on”= “SLIPSTREAM”; No, not remotely: “Follow”, yes; “follow on”, no.
For me, “impressive” for “TELLING” and “fail to understand” for “MISCONSTRUE” were too approximate (I do have a problem with thinking of words as having very precise meanings, which does me no service when doing crosswords); and “Prepare” = “do”? Meh!
No problems, but surprised at the use of pusillanimous meaning mean-spirited. I’d always considered it to mean cowardly, or excessively timid. On the move, no access to dictionaries, so I can’t check this.
22’47” on Paris return commute. Pretty straightforward . Loi DODO. Narrowly avoided BOZO. Many thanks
There’s a long history of people being arrested and even imprisoned on trumped-up charges, even for terrorism, in the so-called ‘free world’ including here in the UK. Look at what happened to Julian Assange and Craig Murray. Recently Sarah Wilkinson, Richard Barnard and Richard Medhurst have been arrested with not a peep of protest from the pusillanimous authoritarian Starmer!
Labour won, life goes on, get over it.
36:06. Quite tricky and thought I was going to get stuck a few times. LOI was PUSILLANIMOUS, and I immediately thought of the Rutles song Another Day where it features in the chorus. That’s the only time I’ve ever knowingly come across it in the wild…
I got quite worried about the operatic female, could have been just about anything, but ISOLDE was generously clued, so it turned out ok. Unlike the opera.
thanks both!
can’t believe gls did this in just over 6 minutes takes me that long just to read the clues
it was nice to see PHRENOLOGY. It reminded me of a time many decades ago, when my mother proudly announced she had solved ‘He reads the headlines. (12)’, from The Times. The answer was of course PHRENOLOGIST. I had remembered it all my life for this very moment!
Thanks both.
Undone by PHRENOLOGY and a new word at 1d: APROSE (which I quite like ). ANTIPOPE v good
Pusillanimous coined, I suppose, in contrast to magnanimous- one of Jimmy Porter’s favourite words for Alison’s mother, if I remember my A-Level Osborne…
26:06
Not the most straightforward Monday ever, but fairly so, with some fun and entertaining clues. Pleased to puzzle out the slightly chewier offerings, needing all checkers to work out PUSILLANIMOUS.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
Yes definitely chewier than normal for a Monday, and my need to catch a bus in my now non-driving phase of my life meant that I was somewhat unfocused and looked up a few of the longer answers rather than giving them the attention they deserved. A pity, as I think it was very good, with a good mixture of ‘street talk’ and more literate words, a chestnut or two, and some humour. Really liked the clue for PHRENOLOGY, DNK ANTIPOPE as a word, didn’t parse ROSSINI nor PUSILLANIMOUS ( time-poor!).