Time taken: 23:48. I was interrupted for a few minutes in the middle of that, but I think I needed the interruption. I stuggled mightily with this!
What got me with this one is that even the anagrams are unusual, even though I usually do the puzzle just on the online site, I filled almost a page of paper with scribbles trying to decipher the anagrams.
How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Leader of risky venture dismissed for embezzlement (10) |
| PECULATION – remove the first letter of SPECULATION(risky venture) | |
| 6 | Insanely brief response to morning meeting proposal? (4) |
| AMOK – The response to a morning meeting might be A.M. OK | |
| 9 | Women’s hen party reorganised to include Mike and Daphne, perhaps (5,5) |
| WATER NYMPH – W(women), then an anagram of HEN,PARTY containing M(Mike). | |
| 10 | Livid initially after fling (4) |
| ASHY – first letter of After, then SHY(fling) | |
| 12 | Proclamation of expert male spies on religious books from the east (14) |
| PRONUNCIAMENTO – PRO(expert) then CIA MEN(male spies) after NUN(religious), then OT(religious books) reversed | |
| 14 | Bounder knocked back ale with approval (6) |
| REEBOK – BEER(ale) reversed, and OK(approval) | |
| 15 | One grieving and smarting over argument with king (8) |
| SORROWER – SORE(smarting) surrounding ROW(argument), then R(king) | |
| 17 | Anxious, moving back home for cushy job (8) |
| SINECURE – INSECURE(anxious) with IN moved down a place. This clue has attracted a bit of controversy in the comments, “down” was a poor choice of word, at the time I was thinking of “moving down the street”. I think it is fine – IN is moved towards the back of the word. | |
| 19 | Active selfish protester finally ousted by the French (6) |
| NIMBLE – NIMBY(selfish protester) with the last letter replaced by LE(“the” in French) | |
| 22 | Snow-white polar bear Eric and he almost shot (14) |
| IRREPROACHABLE – anagram of POLAR, BEAR, ERIC and He minus the last letter | |
| 24 | Impressive electronic photograph (4) |
| EPIC – E(electronic) PIC(photograph) | |
| 25 | Headstrong imp quaffed cans (4-6) |
| SELF-WILLED – ELF(imp) inside SWILLED(quaffed) | |
| 26 | Long to swap husband for new recruit (4) |
| SIGN – SIGH(long) with H(husband) replaced by N(new) | |
| 27 | Has first birthday in flat or apartment (10) |
| MAISONETTE – IS ONE(has first birthday) inside MATTE(flat) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Dupe old man with hint of nonchalance (4) |
| PAWN – PA(old man), W(with) and the first letter of Nonchalance | |
| 2 | Erotica stunted and corrupted European cabal (7) |
| COTERIE – anagram of EROTICa minus the last letter, then E(European) | |
| 3 | Suffering narcolepsy, go for help with diagnosis (12) |
| LARYNGOSCOPE – anagram of NARCOLEPSY,GO | |
| 4 | Troublesome element of peasantry in Germany (6) |
| TRYING – hidden inside peasanTRY IN Germany | |
| 5 | Inviting punishment by touching French bread with tips of oily fingers (2,4,2) |
| ON PAIN OF – ON(touching), PAIN(“bread” in French), and the first letters of Oily Fingers | |
| 7 | Are unaware Military Intelligence experts cocked up (7) |
| MISKNOW – MI(Military Intelligence) then WONKS(experts) reversed | |
| 8 | Typist is principal paying guest (10) |
| KEYBOARDER – KEY(principal), BOARDER(paying guest) | |
| 11 | Working at a monitor is paying off (12) |
| AMORTISATION – anagram of AT,A,MONITOR,IS | |
| 13 | High spirits following danger (10) |
| FRISKINESS – F(following), RISKINESS(danger) | |
| 16 | Ditching goods and trading positions, Greta Garbo gardens (8) |
| ARBORETA – anagram of gRETA,gARBO minus both Gs(goods). As pointed out in comments, it is more clever than a mere anagram, you switch relative positions of RETA and ARBO | |
| 18 | Canary sings endlessly, rattling cage (7) |
| NARKING – NARK(canary, informer), then the interior letters of sINGs | |
| 20 | Slug eating black part of plant (7) |
| BULBLET – BULLET(slug) containing B(black) | |
| 21 | Traces of wear in small areas of shirt (6) |
| SCUFFS – S(small), CUFFS(areas of shirt) | |
| 23 | Half-cut male following urges while away (4) |
| IDLE – half of maLE following ID(urges). This is a particularly great clue for misdirection, I was looking for a term for half-cut or drunk for ages! | |
About 60 minutes with lots of interruptions. Tricky but enjoyable. FOI WATER NYMPH followed by ON PAIN OF and PAWN. Liked KEYBOARDER, SORROWER, SELF-WILLED and PRONUNCIAMENTO.
Thanks G
As is my wont, I stared at the PAWN / PECULATION crossing for an eternity before giving up. Thanks for the parsings…. didn’t know NUN = religious.
Rather, it seems I didn’t know ‘religious’ in the noun form.
I first looked at this in a state of distraction, and increasing hunger, put it aside to eat and make my postprandial Irish coffee. Before going at it again, I saw George’s intro, and thought, Uh-oh! But then I got AMORTISATION in a flash and the rest wasn’t a slog at all, but quite entertaining, and with some unexpected and even unknown (BULBLET) words that I was happy to see pretty quickly. LOI NARKING.
Mighty relieved to find that others struggled, as I needed 70 minutes to work my way through this jungle of strange words, meanings and definitions.
PRONUNCIAMENTO? Really? But that was where the wordplay took me, although I was dubious of ‘religious / NUN’.
It seems that ‘livid’ doesn’t mean what I thought, apparently ‘tinged with bluish grey’, whereas I’d always pictured it as red and angry-looking, far from ASHY.
I thought the same about ‘livid’. Presumably this is just confusion with the ‘angry’ meaning, as you say, and possibly a bit of leakage from ‘vivid’.
Lividity is the blueish-grey state of the skin on a cadaver.
Thank you… I think 😉
(This is actually very helpful)
Re ASHY. Me too. I assembled it from wordplay but didn’t put it in until I had no alternative.
That was a real work-out, I was thankful to cross the line in 44.21. I was thrown by some of the defs (AMOK, ASHY, NARKING, MISKNOW) and even with G’s help some of the wordplay (at PRONUNCIAMENTO, for instance, and MAISONETTE) is tough to figure out. TRYING came first (a benign little hidden, what a relief) and the birthday apartment brought up the rear. In Australia a lot of people are not huge fans of conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton, but earlier this week he used the word ‘amortised’ with reference to the massive cost of his proposed nuclear energy program. That gave me 11dn without too much trouble, so I won’t hear a bad word about the bloke.
From Tryin’ to get to Heaven:
The air is getting hotter, there’s a rumbling in the skies
I’ve been wading through the high muddy water, with the heat rising in my eyes
Every day your memory grows dimmer, it doesn’t haunt me like it did before
I’ve been walking through the middle of nowhere
TRYING to get to heaven before they close the door
George, in 16d I think that it is not an anagram but RETA and ARBO ‘trade positions’.
In fact, 16d is one example of why I didn’t enjoy this crossword much. Clever but meaningless surface.
I really liked this clue because the device is somewhat original.
Me too
Me, too!
41:14 Relieved other people found this on the hard side too as I thought I had made a bit of a meal of it.
Thanks setter and blogger
19:48, relieved to finish with PRONUNCIAMENTO, once I’d worked out how it parsed & decided that religious might mean NUN. NARKING / SIGN held me up a bit too.
I’ve come across PECULATION before, clued very similarly, and knew I’d come across it as soon as I read the clue, but couldn’t at all think of it until I had some crossers.
Perfectly good clue, but MISKNOW is a horrid word.
Thanks both.
O his nimble finger, his gnarled grip!
Leagues, leagues of seamanship
Slumber in these forsaken
Bones…
(The Loss of the Eurydice, GM Hopkins)
30 mins mis-brekker. Lots to like, but some not to.
Had a MER at nun=religious, but what do I know.
And surely the IN in Insecure moves forward (admittedly toward the back of the word). I know we have discussed this before. Anyway, I spent a while looking for a word meaning Anxious where the IN actually moves backwards to make Sinecure. Securine?
Ta setter and G
I too felt the IN moved forward, then thought maybe it was heading towards the back of the word and looked forward to what the blog might say. As it happened, G describes the IN as moving DOWN a place, so what would I know?!
I decided that ‘back home’ must indicate IN (a dialect thing, perhaps), and IN simply moves in a direction to be determined by the solver.
In these puzzles ‘home’ is just about always IN and I reckon ‘moving back’ is as explicit a direction as we’ll get. It’s just that some of us felt it was being moved forward…
I did not pause to think about the direction, but now that it has been mentioned…it seems odd that you can move something forward towards the back of a word.
47+ minutes, so on the difficult side for me.
I agree. I can’t see what all the fuss is?
There are plenty of worse things about this crossword than having to pursue an argument essentially saying that ‘back’ doesn’t mean ‘back’.
‘Not seeing the wood for the trees’ springs to mind.
56.08
I found this really tough but well worth the effort. MISKNOW and ASHY both new to me and I needed George to explain the NUN. Lots of fun all round.
Thanks to George and the setter.
29’49” for this monster, wondering why the NUN in the proclamation wasn’t clued. I obviously misknew.
Thanks george and setter.
Liked this, but it did have its tricky moments. A mer at ashy = livid, nun = religious, but apparently Collins knows better than I do.
Joint cod: the singing canary and Greta Garbo…
35:50. A real struggle this one with FRISKINESS, SIGN and NARKING taking at least an extra 10 minutes at the end after inching my way through the rest of the puzzle. A good challenge! Thanks George and setter.
ARBORETA is a brilliant find. As for the surface, I read it as Garbo turning away from material things such as her stock portfolio.
It turns out the same trick was used in Times crossword 24,219 (https://www.thetimes.com/puzzleclub/crosswordclub/puzzles/crossword/24576 – I don’t know why the URL number doesn’t match.)
Another DNF. Beaten by NARKING, AMOK, MISKNOW and SORROWER – didn’t even the know the latter two were words. DNK ASHY, but it fitted the clue so whatever. Too tricky for me today.
There were some hard anagrams there, especially the surgical instrument. I carelessly put PRONONCIAMENTO, having assumed OT were “religious books” and not seeing where the NON came from (I didn’t know either speling, nor a few others like PECULATION). So one pink square but that seemed like an achievement under the circumstances. I was confused by moving the IN and so I put in INSECURE before FRISKINESS disabused me of that idea.
74m 07s
I was pleased to see that my time was almost the same as Jack’s, as it often is.
Thank you George, particularly for PRONUNCIAMENTO.
LOI: FRISKINESS and KEYBOARDER
COD: ARBORETA. I liked that cluing device.
Late to the ball today on doggy daycare duties and then abandoned ship after three quarters of an hour with NARKING and BULBLET missing. ASHY was in with a shrug. Sadly the REEBOK is now the Tough Sheet.This was too good for me. Thank you George and setter.
The frustration – having completed the whole thing in 30m or so, and feeling pretty smug, only to find that I had got NARC and NARK confused.
62 mins but I was determined to finish. I generated lots of false trails such as thinking slug was related to the garden pest, then pellet instead of bullet to name but two. Other hold ups with friskiness, narking etc.
Still, well worth the effort. Thanks setter and blogger. Hoping for an easier Friday!
Pity I didn’t count the number of Ys in the anagram fodder for the ‘SCOPE, but otherwise managed to get through this in just under 20 minutes. No particular issue with religious=NUN, but some with the oddities NARKING, MISKNOW and BULBLET, which seem to be made up especially for the crossword.
15:20, which counts as pretty on-wavelength for this beast. I enjoyed it very much.
Count me among those confused by ‘livid’ and ‘religious’. In 12ac I took ‘religious books’ to be indicating OT, which left the NUN worryingly unaccounted for.
Tricky indeed, DNF; came here for 6a Amok, now COD although I don’t like the 4 letter lights when they are hard, and 28d Idle.
POI 10a Ashy I thought it was an antonym of livid. Wiktionary has def 3, livid=so angry as to go pale. Well I never!
12a Pronunciamento I couldn’t parse the nun in the middle. DOH!
15a Sorrower, was unaware it is a word.
17a Sinecure; was unable to decide between that and insecure until I got 13d.
Couldn’t parse several; 27a, Maisonette, 7d Misknow (was unsure it was a word).
COD2 16d Arboreta.
Lividity is a term in pathology to describe the ashy grey colour of the skin on a cadaver. When time of death isn’t known, the onset and the progress of lividity helps to narrow it down.
34.10m – entertaining but tough. PRONUNCIAMENTO was my LOI when nothing else would fit, although I couldn’t see a convincing explanation for the nun until coming here. You live and learn (and no doubt forget again).
Wow – that was tough. Incredibly difficult anagrams, peculiar words and wordplay where every word counts. I’d NHO the proclamation but was all that could fit the checkers and could never figure out what NUN was doing in there so thx very much for the explanation. I had a bit of a MER at misknow as are unaware and it’s a bit of a clunky word anyway but as with all other clues the wordplay was very generous.
For some reason I felt that acne was a good answer for recruit and that held me up in the SW for some time.
Staggered home in 53 plus change and delighted to do so.
Thx G and setter
All finished in about 45 minutes but couldn’t parse MAISONETTE so thank you glh.
NHO MISKNOW but it had to be. Found it challenging to say the least but very enjoyable. Shouldn’t the bounder at 14ac be RHEBOK? Unless you’re Dutch or Afrikaans, of course.
I dunno but my dictionary allows reebok as well as rhebok AND rhebuck.
39 mins, tough but fair. Took a while for NHO PRONUNCIAMENTO (spell check has heard of it!) mainly because I couldn’t work out how a NUN could be male. LOI NARKING, just didn’t know that meaning for canary.
DNF NARKING, NIMBLE (doh), BULBLET and needed help with parsing of MAISONETTE, and the nun part of PRONUNCIAMENTO. Didn’t know ‘wonks’ = experts and NHO PECULATION. Judging by the comments so far this was rather tricky so I’m delighted to have got as far as I did. Thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. Thanks so much for the blog.
Two goes needed to solve this very tough puzzle.
– Couldn’t have told you what PECULATION means
– Not the biggest fan of AMOK, though I’m not really sure why
– ASHY meaning ‘livid’ was new to me
– Didn’t know that ‘religious’ can mean ‘nun’ for PRONUNCIAMENTO
– Had forgotten that REEBOK isn’t just a sports brand
– Wasn’t sure about PAWN because I missed the with=w part of the clue, and assumed that ‘paw’ can be one of the many colloquial terms for father
– Unfamiliar with ‘Id’ as ‘urges’, so IDLE went in with little confidence
Thanks George and setter.
FOI Epic
LOI Idle
COD Arboreta
Too tough for me, but as a retired anaesthetist, it was good to get LARYNGOSCOPE, and ARBORETA went straight in, as we have two of the finest in the Cotswolds: Westonbirt and Batsford.
Hoping to get a decent, but not fearsome puzzle tomorrow.
It was obvious that this was going to be very difficult so the aids were used fairly early, but they didn’t help a lot except with the long anagrams, which were unusually difficult I thought, so I still took 89 minutes. Chambers doesn’t have BULBLET, although it’s in Collins. At 17ac it seemed wrong: surely if ‘in’ moves back then it goes to the left; I’m never comfortable with this, or with the words ‘front’ and ‘back’ for a word, seeing the word as something like a train on the x-axis starting at the origin, so that its front is at what people seem to call the back. Connected with this, at 5dn I don’t see the tips of oily fingers as o and f but as y and s.
45:09. A splendid puzzle needing a lot of hard work. I had to construct the NHO LARYNGOSCOPE carefully from the anagrist, fooled at first by assuming it ended …OSCOPY. DNK religious as a noun, or SORROWER, or MISKNOW and I hope I soon get back to misknowing that one. It’s amazing how Greta Garbo transposes into ARBORETA – well spotted, setter. And livid! Who knew? I liked AMOK
That rattled the old grey matter and shook it about a bit! AMOK went in first, but I couldn’t quite believe where 10a was leading me, so left ASHY until crossers were in and nothing else would fit. I always associated livid with bright red, who knew it’s actually dark grey! The original black look I suppose. PRONUNCIAMENTO didn’t go fully in until I’d managed to lift and separate religious and books, which made it my POI. MISKNOW! Who knew? Forsooth! Needed SORROWER to get that one. AMORTISATION and IDLE took a while. Was unsure which way to shift the IN in 17a, so put in SINECURE but was prepared to have to change it to INSECURE until FRISKINESS arrived. Liked MAISONETTE. LOI was NIMBLE. 32:41, which seems respectable under the circumstances. Thanks setter and George.
42:41
Very hard to get into, then after a while a splurge of unrelated answers went in, which was as far as I got reaching the elusive wavelength. The rest completed bit by bit with little cohesion. Mostly enjoyed though there were one or two answers that left a little to be desired
Thanks G and setter
Gave up in an hour with four not done. I dont mind monster words as such but if they all intersect it makes it very hard for SCC members like me. Need warning “SCC members go to quicky”
SCC?
see glossary! “Slow coach club”
Yes, pretty enjoyable and completed in 35 minutes. However, a few naughty clues: 1 dn – to call the last letter of pawn (n) a hint of nonchalance is rather stretching the point; 7 dn – ‘misknow’ is a weird word and is not found in the OED, even as a derivative of ‘know’; 8dn – ‘keyboarder’ is not in common usage by any means, but I was surprised to find it in the OED as a derivative of ‘keyboard’, so fair enough I suppose! By the way, I am fascinated to see that the early bird solvers submit their input at around 2 am GMT; do they get out of bed in the middle of the night to get their Times in an all night newsagent? are they in a different time zone? do they work at all hours in Times offices? Who knows the answer?
Many of us are in other countries or time zones, I am on the Eastern side of the USA, so I try to get my blog done within an hour of the puzzle coming out which is 8pm for me and 1am in Timesland. We set this site to London time, not our individual time.
I suspect a lot of the really quick times on the leaderboard (the neutrinos) come in after the blog is published. I’ve noticed a few times posting, going back about an hour later to check if my assessment that the puzzle is tricky is true (I’m often one of the first times on the board) and see that the 2-minute brigade have come in and done their work.
The puzzle goes live at midnight London time, which means that in most weeks we in the Eastern USA get it at 7 (five hours difference). But for two weeks after New York clocks are changed for daylight savings time (spring forward!), until London changes its own clocks, the puzzle goes live here in NYC at 8. On the last Sunday in October, London clocks fall back an hour, but US clocks don’t for another week (November 3, this year), so for that week, we again don’t get the puzzle until 8… until we change 8 back to 7.
AI Update. Ross from Crossword Genius completed all but 4 clues, it parsed almost all of them, and biffed a couple. The ones it struggled with were 26a 6a 7d and 21s (SCUFFS!, which I thought was dead easy with three checkers). I taught it how to figure out the other 4. It didn’t know the construction of swapping one letter for another (SIGH to SIGN), and it didn’t have a clue about AMOK.
Very good puzzle, but tough – after more than one hour, I resorted to aids for Peculation and Narking – then, of course, I felt I should have persevered.
37:56, so a tricky one, NHO PRONUNCIAMENTO was LOI
Thought I’d done brilliantly at 21’47”, but undone by LARYNGOSCOPY, sted -SCOPE. Loved the crossword up to the point of discovering my howler!
Tough but fair, all done in 65 minutes. I don’t often find a puzzle which contains so many unknown words (unknown to me, that is) (PRONUNCIAMENTO, SORROWER, MISKNOW, KEYBOARDER, BULBLET). This meant the NE corner took an age to resolve, though all were there for the finding. Bring on Friday.
FOI – REEBOK
LOI – AMOK
COD – MAISONETTE.
Thanks to george and other contributors.
64:15 or thereabouts. Very hard indeed, with some fiendish words. I wonder if there is a trick to seeing words like MISKNOW… I don’t seem to have got there yet! thanks both.
Time off the scale as I went to bed part way through and failed to stop the timer. Like others, I found this very tough and was pleased to find that my unparsed answers were correct. I’ve never encountered ‘ashy’ in the sense of livid, and some other definitions almost threw me.