Another medium level Wednesday, and for once I can parse all the clues without asking for your assistance. I liked the anagram clue at 8d best.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Probe deep mental impression (5) |
| SOUND – double definition. | |
| 4 | Inexperienced hack receives key preliminary report (9) |
| NEWSFLASH – NEW (inexperienced), SLASH (hack), insert F a music key. | |
| 9 | Romance relies on this go-between (9) |
| MIDDLEMAN – MAN is in the middle of romance. | |
| 10 | Stock ending for rude joke (5) |
| EQUIP – end of rudE, QUIP = joke. | |
| 11 | Do well dividing four-fifths of one plus two by four (6) |
| THRIVE – one plus two is three, four-fifths of that is THRE, insert IV = four. | |
| 12 | Fox to live a more feral life (8) |
| BEWILDER – to be wilder being to live a more feral life. | |
| 14 | Doctor is averse initially to making bold claims (9) |
| ASSERTIVE – (IS AVERSE T)*, the T from To. | |
| 16 | Piece for example about unpleasant material (5) |
| GUNGE – GUN (piece, weapon), EG reversed (for example, about). | |
| 17 | Insist sports must involve cycling (5) |
| SWEAR – WEARS = sports, cycle the S to the beginning. | |
| 19 | What puts off cleaner using hoover finally for good? (9) |
| DETERRENT – DETERGENT changes the G (good) for R (end of hoover). | |
| 21 | Certified examination having had daughter take it (8) |
| ATTESTED – ATE (had) D (daughter) with TEST inserted. | |
| 22 | Start of appeal proceedings affecting particular chambers (6) |
| ATRIAL – A[ppeal], TRIAL proceedings. Chambers as in the heart. | |
| 25 | Unspecified number subtracted from lower number (5) |
| ETHER – NETHER loses its N. | |
| 26 | Charge of French writer diminished Italian poet (9) |
| DEPENDANT – DE (of in French), PEN (writer), DANT[E]. | |
| 27 | Respect to cast is only shown under exceptional circumstances (3-6) |
| TOP-SECRET – (RESPECT TO)*. | |
| 28 | Polish author overwhelmed by death (5) |
| EMEND – ME (the author of this) with END (death) around it. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | We recalled published, unused books lacking complete clarity (15) |
| SEMITRANSPARENT – Entered and then parsed afterwards. TIMES (“we”) reversed = SEMIT, RAN = published, SPARE = unused, NT those books. | |
| 2 | Subject to EU articles (5) |
| UNDER – UN and DER being articles in French and German. | |
| 3 | Take away something vital, say (7) |
| DELIVER – if you de-livered someone, you’d have removed something vital. | |
| 4 | Insensitive note carefully hiding doubtful statement (4) |
| NUMB – N.B. (nota bene, note), insert UM a doubtful statement. | |
| 5 | Shrink still regularly used other material (10) |
| WINCEYETTE – WINCE (shrink), YET (still), oThEr. I knew of this soft cotton material as Mrs P (now 80) has sported nighties made of it for some years now, referred to as “my winceys”. Apparently winceyette ( used from 1922) is a diminutive of wincey, itself a material, but the etymlogy of wincey is unclear. | |
| 6 | Cast admitting exhausted ensemble is a sensation (7) |
| FEELING – FLING (cast, throw), with E[nsembl]E inserted. | |
| 7 | Exuberant quality of a social event providing cake? (9) |
| ABUNDANCE – A BUN DANCE could certainly provide cakes and buns to eat. | |
| 8 | Struggled to find inspiration and livened the party up (15) |
| HYPERVENTILATED – (LIVENED THE PARTY)*. Great anagram. | |
| 13 | Psychic underground worker filled with sense of foreboding (4-6) |
| MIND-READER – MINER, underground worker, with DREAD inserted. | |
| 15 | Was set terribly hard work here? (9) |
| SWEATSHOP – (WAS SET)*, H[ard], OP = work. | |
| 18 | Book somewhere to watch big game perhaps (7) |
| RESERVE – double definition. | |
| 20 | Train elite unit erecting climbing frames (7) |
| RETINUE – hidden reversed as above. | |
| 23 | Senseless way in which space and time end (5) |
| INANE – both space and time end IN AN E. | |
| 24 | Stick helpful pieces of advice up (4) |
| SPIT – TIPS reversed. | |
34 minutes for this pleasant puzzle. Half a MER at ‘insist / SWEAR’ at 17ac , but that was all.
There’s a new TV drama series about a crossword setter turned detective starting this evening. My QC comment gives more details if anyone’s interested.
Ran out of time but an excellent crossword. SWEATSHOP, HYPERVENTILATED, ASSERTIVE … so many great clues. Thanks setter and Pip.
As I was doing this a thought flashed through my mind: imagine being the poor sod on blogging duty who had to explain all the parsings. But here is piquet proclaiming that he needed no assistance, so well done and much appreciated. I got through it in a satisfactory 27.54 but I had a long list of queries which have now been answered. Like slash = hack, like wince = shrink, like we are The Times, like how MIDDLEMAN, ETHER and THRIVE worked (not to mention the impenetrable SEMITRANSPARENT). All up a terrific puzzle I thought.
From A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall:
I heard the SOUND of the thunder, it roared out a warning
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazing
Heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
I failed to finish this but what I managed I thought was really good. Started off thinking it was going to be difficult but I found the wordplay very helpful and clever. Thought MIDDLEMAN was excellent but failed to see that MAN was the centre of romance. Remembered ‘The Go-Between’, an excellent movie with Alan Bates and Julie Christie. NHO WINCEYETTE.
Thanks piquet and setter.
I agree about ‘The Go-Between’! And with haunting music by Michel Legrand. That was the first film I ever saw on a plane.
Mine was The Goodbye Girl in 1977 en route to New Zealand. It’s amazing how you can remember these things.
It was an incredibly exciting experience at the time.
Yes, it was, wasn’t it. Alas, I don’t remember “The Goodbye Girl”!
Chariots of Fire on a Freddie Laker plane to New York, 1979.
Ah! Freddie Laker! Those were the days!
You must have been going back to the future, as the film wasn’t released until 1981!
DNF. Normal service resumed. In hindsight I have vaguely heard of WINCEYETTE, but only from previous puzzles, and instead I invented WANEEVENTE. It does parse, even if it clearly doesn’t exist…
Elsewhere I had MANGE instead of GUNGE for a while, so just not at the races today.
Thanks both.
I biffed HYPERVENTILATION and never checked the anagram; but is hyperventilating struggling to inhale? Seems rather far from the dictionary (ODE, Collins) definition. It took me a very long time to parse SEMITRANSPARENT, MIDDLEMAN, and especially GUNGE, where all I could think of with those checkers was GENRE or even less likely GENIE . My LOI. I liked ETHER; if one is going to haul out the ‘number’ warhorse, this was the time to do it. All in all a great puzzle.
I’m no doctor, but doesn’t a person who is hyperventilating fill the lungs but not vent them properly before attempting a refill? It’s not, at least as I understand it, a struggle to inhale, but rather the reverse – a struggle to exhale – and the result is a fight to inspire, i.e. to extract more oxygen from the impoverished air which gets retained in the lungs. If I have that right, I think 8D must be my COD. Is there, perhaps, a doctor in the house?
Whatever the answer to the above, I thought this was a super crossword which I was happy to solve, fully-parsed for a change, in 31 mins.
(A Doctor writes…)
Hyperventilation is a excessive physical response to low blood oxygen levels and therefore could in theory be described as a “struggle” (i.e. increased effort) “to find inspiration”. The big problems with hyperventilation are that prolonged it can lead to exhaustion, and that one loses carbon dioxide which affects the acid balance of the body.
Air-trapping (what you’re describing) can be an effect of conditions such as asthma and chronic lung disease can lead to chronically hyperexpanded lungs.
So the clue is as reasonable as any cryptic clue ever is!
Oli
Thank you, Doc. I suppose as ever with these technical cryptic clues, and as you suggest, near enough is good enough. Good job I’m no doctor though.
NHO GUNGE!
The second definition of SOUND puts an end to the old question about whether a tree falling in a forest with no one around (not even animals…) makes one.
LOI WINCEYETTE, which I must have seen at least once before. (Here, where else?)
15.55
Excellent stuff, especially the anagram to HYPERVENTILATED, which I admit I didn’t spot. I agree the definition is slightly misleading – perhaps something to do with artificial respiration could have worked?
LOI SOUND
COD SWEATSHOP – I do enjoy an & lit.
Had only six answers after 30 mins, so gave up. Not on the wavelength with this one at all.
47 minutes, so a long way off the pace today. Some clever clueing, but a couple of mers. As already pointed out, does hyperventilated mean struggling to breathe in? Is abundance the same as exuberance? Exuberance can be an abundance of energy, but not sure they’re interchangeable.
Finally, in what sense does spit mean the same as stick?
Collins for SPIT: ‘pointed rod on which meat is skewered and roasted before or over an open fire’
Spit would be the rod on which meat is skewered.
I don’t see exuberant=abundance either.
See Collins for exuberant: ‘growing luxuriantly or in profusion’
46 minutes with LOI SEMITRANSPARENT, which I want to hyphenate. In a Lancashire winter and in the days of just one coal fire in the house, which was my job to relight in the morning, WINCEYETTE sheets were much appreciated. And here we are with spellcheck not knowing about them. The past is a foreign country indeed. Great novel, beautiful film. Tough puzzle, though. Thank yoou Pip and setter.
Agree about the film, John, and with haunting music by Michel Legrand. The first film I ever saw on a plane.
Thanks, I see your point. Still can’t help thinking that while a spit could be a pointed rod which could be a stick, is a spit a stick? Possibly.
33:16
Some slight discomfort with SOUND = mental impression? Not sure how one would substitute for the other.
Bunged in HYPERVENTILATED from checkers without checking the anagrist. WINCEYETTE came to me in a flash. Struggled to see EMEND and RETINUE at the end.
Thanks P and setter
I am surprised no-one else has raised that yet. I don’t see it either.
I assumed it was something along the lines of “I don’t like the sound of that…”
Regardless, mental impression is the 4th def for SOUND in Chambers.
Sounds OK to me…..
11:05
I thought that was marvellous, clever and witty, challenging but a puzzle where I was able to spot what was going on quite quickly and bag a WITCH (so far) of 69. Like Pip I thought HYPERVENTILATED was the pick of the clues.
I’ve heard of WINCEYETTE but would probably have struggled to spell it if asked.
Half an hour.
– Pieced together WINCEYETTE from wordplay, though I’m sure it’s come up here before and I’d simply forgotten it
– Didn’t bother figuring out the maths for THRIVE
– Only parsed SEMITRANSPARENT after I’d entered it
– Same MER as Koppite re ABUNDANCE
– Needed the checkers before I figured out GUNGE – I always forget piece=gun
A tough but enjoyable solve. Thanks piquet and setter.
FOI Under
LOI Gunge
COD Newsflash
Around 80 minutes. I found it rather hard with all the long words with few phrases First in TOP-SECRET and MIND READER. Liked SEMITRANSPARENT which I was able to parse, MIDDLE MAN, DEPENDANT, NEWSFLASH.
12:01. Tricky one, but highly enjoyable. WINCEYETTE has come up a couple of times before, the last time in 2022 with a very similar clue. It’s a memorable word.
Um, er, is it? [scratches head]
Memorable (ˈmɛmərəbəl) adjective: describing a word I somehow remembered from last time it came up
Now that rings a bell.
35 mins.
Good puzzle. LOI assertive.
Thanks, p.
This excellent puzzle kept me on my toes throughout, with my COD being SLOI.
FOI THRIVE
LOI GUNGE
COD WINCEYETTE
TIME 12:13
Steady solve, no nhos. Like BW, winceyette sheets were appreciated in my Sheffield youth.. having two older siblings meant I was spared the fire-relighting duty though.
I just took 31:20, I was quite slow to start on this one but then got in the swing and at 29 minutes had only 5dn to go. I got the WINCE part at 29:30 so still had 30 seconds to beat the half hour, but I just couldn’t get there. Pencilling in the TE from OTHER at the end and then seeing YET made me realise WINCEYETTE is one of those words you vaguely recognise when you see it, but would never think of unaided.
Anyway I especially liked the MIDDLEMAN clue and luckily wasn’t biffing too much so remembered to change the G of DETERGENT to an R.
Thanks setter and blogger
9a Middleman, biffed, I was wondering how to get from A (mAn) to romance. Doh!
12a Bewilder LOI, PDM, COD.
16a Gunge added to Cheating Machine. Was surprised at its absence.
28a Emend, forgot to write it in so DNF. Was half way thru parsing it when I went somewhere else. Bother!
1d Semitr…, didn’t parse.
34.55 . Having gone most of the way down the across clues was beginning to generate a cold sweat. Utter humiliation loomed but then I got deterrent and I started to progress bit by bit.
I thought this a very well constructed crossword which was a real sporting challenge. No obscure words or contemporary culture allusions. Didn’t parse emend, concluding there must be an author named Emen who I’d never encountered and almost mucked up gunge by thinking the answer was genre! Hey ho.
Thanks setter for a really enjoyable half an hour plus and blogger of course.
52m 57s so just about my long-term average solving time. I really enjoyed that. There were many clever clues. I guess my favourite is MIDDLEMAN. Seems we are getting more ‘cycling’ clues like 17ac.
I was initially flummoxed by SPIT for stick but then remembered what happens at barbecues.
Nice to be reminded of that lovely film and book, ‘The Go-Between’ where the past is a foreign country.
Thank you, Pip.
You weren’t one of the producers, were you? 🙂
Ha! Alas, no! The film just made a real impression on me as did LP Hartley’s aphorism about the past.
I can’t quite recall how but the green suit worn by the eponymous boy in the film ended up in our school props department and was worn in the school revue.
I really enjoyed this with some beautifully elegant cluing, for example the surface to the top secret anagram. I knew ether had to be the number but I could not identify the source ruminant so thanks for that, also for unpicking 1 down – can’t remember seeing times clued as we before.
Very happy to get home in under 22 mins – thx p and setter
Well, that was fun, with the setter trying out most, if not all, of the quirkier clue types: cycling, letter substitution, number games, Uxbridge (DE-LIVER!), reverse cryptic (roMANce) and some left-field, but possible definitions to keep us on out toes and provoke MERs. And there’s surely a triple definition at 1a: probe, deep, and mental impression are all in my Chambers at 3/2, 2/7 and 1/4 respectively.
I had no issue with 8d: surely someone who is hyperventilating is struggling to breathe properly? And it seems that exuberance has a wider range of meaning than just being very cheerful: Chambers again: overflowing, lavish, and (gosh!) abounding are all listed. As for SPIT/stick, has anyone else thought of swordsmanship, where in both instances it’s a verb?
Clearly (I hope) I enjoyed this one, not least because of the variety (let me numb-er the ways). It took me 20.33, which seems about right for this level of craftsmanship.
I thought 1a was a triple definition too.
20:40 – clever and difficult, though today’s QC took me almost as long so perhaps I am just not on anybody’s wavelength.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of Sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Macbeth)
Late to the party today due to crosswordus-interruptus for a dental appointment.
I see several above have sought to justify Spit=Stick, Exuberant quality=Abundance and Mental impression=Sound. Thank you for your strenuous efforts on this.
Ta setter and Pip.
A few of the same MERs as have been mentioned — stick = spit, abundance = exuberant quality, sound = mental impression, etc, but they all seem to be justifiable, just. The absence of brackets in the THRIVE clue (although of course crossword setters don’t use them and leave the solver to guess at their existence) made me get stuck on 8.8. 53 minutes with aids to find MIDDLEMAN.
39 mins so definitely on the hard side for me. Like others, had to come here to get the cryptics, notably DELIVER and MIDDLEMAN.
From THRIVE to EMEND in 27:55. Some tricky stuff but very enjoyable. WINCEYETTE reminded me of Billy Connolly’s gentle ribbing of Wincey Willis in his An Audience with Billy Connolly show, which also included the Incontinence Knickers sketch. Didn’t bother to fully parse 1d after spotting SPARE NT. Also just bunged in 8d from definition and crossers. Thanks setter and Pip.
33’00”
Conditions to suit and got a clear run.
Bewildered by the Snitchmeister’s rating; I must have been on the wavelength, and old enough to have a mother who was rarely not in winceyette.
Great puzzle; thanks to setter and Pip.
24:21 with a typo.
I thought this was excellent. even with ABUNDANCE = exuberance. Took me all but one of the crossers before I got SEMITRANSPARENT and all of them to get LOI WINCEYETTE (those candy coloured sheets of childhood…or was that flannelette?). I also thought SOUND was a treble definition
How SPIT became SPOT between typing it and sending it will forever be a mystery.
Thanks to Pip and the setter, and to Jack for the Ludwig tip.
I remember winceyette nightwear from my childhood. Also remember Wincey Willis.
LOI WINCEYETTE which I just about recalled from last time. What did the crossword-fanatic say when his foie gras was inedible? This liver’s dire. A bit puzzled by SOUND = MENTAL IMPRESSION. 24’11”
Like Myrtilus, late to the party. My excuse is the slightly more pleasant, invited out for lunch! Most clues filled in this morning but ground to a halt in the NE and put aside. Replenished with some fine St Joseph blanc, followed by a Crozes-Hermitage red I returned. NEWSFLASH popped up and the rest fell into play.
Same MERs as already mentioned and pretty tricky.
I liked MIDDLEMAN.
Thanks pip and setter.
36.55
Tough for me. Could hardly get anything for 15 minutes but once I got some toe-holds managed to proceed fairly steadily.
As our excellent bloggers says the HYPER clue had a superb anagram – bravo
LOI GUNGE where like Kevin I struggled to see beyond GENIE and GENRE
20’21”, no issues. Thanks pip and setter.
Found v difficult – very sparse grid after first parse, and not much of a scooby what was going on. I went away and did something else instead and came back to it – found a few toeholds and checkers and made steady progress.
EMEND LOI.
Submitted without leaderboard after 2:22:32! But more like 35-40 mins.
I thought 1a might be a triple definition. Probe already seems to mean sound…and couldn’t a deep (sea) be a sound?
Chambers suggests deep/sound sleep, though I also initially went the maritime route.
DNF. Could not see WINCEYETTE, even though I have heard of the fabric.
78:31 – again heavy weather with this (on a bit of a roll of it for the last few days).
nice puzzle – some tricky parts which kept me guessing.
thanks P and setter!
Very tough. I always get a bit depressed when I cannot solve any of the across clues on the first pass. Emerged victorious after 56 minutes, and on checking back I could not see why I had found it so difficult. No serious issues so it must just be me. Looking forward to Ludwig later this evening.
FOI – UNDER
LOI – GUNGE
COD – BEWILDER (even if it is a bit of a chestnut)
Thanks to piquet and other contributors.
24.37. I think that I could have been faster had I concentrated more. Had no idea how to parse ‘thrive’ but the answer was pretty obvious.
Sadly DNF because this was a really clever puzzle, only WINCEYETTE defeated me. Thanks for the blog.
Gave up this evening after several visits to try and solve it. Not my wavelength. Some very clever clues here though.
A learning experience!
Several queries here about SOUND defined as mental impression. I think this references the koan ‘if a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound’. The idea I believe is that sound is an internalised perception of external air vibrations caused by movement, so it is just a mental impression of an otherwise silent but still real enough external event.