Time: 44:26
Music, Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Kempff
Yes, the cryptics were not too bad, but the literals could be something else. I had to put on my Mephisto hat on to finish this one, but since this is not Mephisto I couldn’t use Chambers to confirm my guesses. Solvers will either love this puzzle or hate it.
I did make good progress in the bottom half, and had that part completed in about 11 minutes. But some of the clues in the other hemisphere took a considerable amount of time, and I spent my last 15 minutes on just my final three.
| 1 | Proud leader in the Levant? (8) |
| EMBOSSED – E M(BOSS)ED. Proud meaning raised above the surface is the very last definition in Chambers, and might not be found in other dictionaries. | |
| 9 | Reserve hotel, needing flower in cool environment (8) |
| ICEHOUSE – ICE + H + OUSE. | |
| 10 | Barnaby periodically comes to Berkshire village (4) |
| BRAY – B[a]R[n]A[b]Y, home of the famous Vicar. | |
| 11 | Governess around isle was a wine producer (12) |
| MADEMOISELLE – MADE MO(I)SELLE, not the first word you would think of for governess, but reasonable. | |
| 13 | Sweetheart knocked back vermouth in second cocktail (6) |
| MOJITO – M(JO backwards + IT)O. JO for sweetheart is popular in Mephisto. | |
| 14 | Show the four holding hands with model (8) |
| NEWSCAST – N + E + W + S + CAST, where the four holding hands are bridge players. | |
| 15 | Landmass created by Greek god and goddess (7) |
| PANGAEA – PAN + GAEA. I got into trouble by putting the Greek spelling, but then saw that the Latin transliteration was required. | |
| 16 | Always in drawing room, going away different (7) |
| SEVERAL – S(EVER)AL[on]. It took me a while to see why going equals on, but think of a machine in operation. | |
| 20 | Earliest vampire bats seen by lake (8) |
| PRIMEVAL – Anagram of VAMPIRE + L. | |
| 22 | French fish giving up a small something found in fugu? (6) |
| POISON – POIS[s]ON. The French vocabulary required for these puzzles seems to be expanding – I hope that don’t start this with German. | |
| 23 | Basic facts: Bond in tussle with sultan before thugs cleared out (4,3,5) |
| NUTS AND BOLTS – Anagram of BOND and SULTAN before T[hug]S. | |
| 25 | Marked for deportation in African country? (4) |
| TOGO – Double definition. In the US, this would be the equivalent of takeaway. | |
| 26 | Ace business publication with energy slowing in the end (5,3) |
| AFTER ALL – A +FT +E + RALL, i.e. rallentando, another touch of Mephisto, but fortunately easily biffable. | |
| 27 | Guide southern sailor following sound of albatross? (8) |
| LODESTAR – Sounds like LOAD + S TAR. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | A gaseous element held inside mum brings forward (8) |
| MARADONA – M(A RADON)A – aha, that kind of forward. The final A had me guessing for a while. | |
| 3 | Athletic event: come prepared with a gymslip (7,5) |
| OLYMPIC GAMES – Anagram of COME and GYMSLIP. | |
| 4 | Unhealthy group transgressed we hear — and see! (8) |
| SYNDROME – Sounds like SINNED + ROME, the Apostolic See. | |
| 5 | One to beat clubs in bid for sports field (7) |
| DIAMOND – Double definition – in bridge bidding, one diamond beats one club. | |
| 6 | Soldiers struggle with critical examination (6) |
| REVIEW – RE + VIE + W. Critical not in the sense of important, but rather intense. | |
| 7 | Yank to succeed in forming relationship? (4) |
| PULL – Double definition, the second British slang I did not know. | |
| 8 | Pleased with corrections accepting wit’s final column (8) |
| PEDESTAL – Anagram of PLEASED around [wi]T. I had a hard time forgetting pilaster, which is obviously not the answer. | |
| 12 | Book from town near Manchester is about a group on the rise (12) |
| ECCLESIASTES – ECCLES + I(S)A + SET upside-down. Saved by the Goon Show! | |
| 15 | Crow after lemonade, then home for macaroni? (8) |
| POPINJAY – POP + IN + JAY. Lemonade would not be considered pop in the US, as a non-carbonated drink. Both the crow and the jay are members of the Corvidae family. Stuck a feather in his hat, and called it…. | |
| 17 | Former partner went to collect learners sent down (8) |
| EXPELLED – EX + PE(LL)ED. | |
| 18 | Defence of Post Office record one’s put in two answers (8) |
| APOLOGIA – A(P.O. + LOG + I)A. | |
| 19 | Outdated proposal of law used for the Met? (3,4) |
| OLD BILL – OLD + BILL. | |
| 21 | One causing damage in V&A close to fanatical (6) |
| VANDAL – V AND A + [fanatica]L. | |
| 24 | Extremely good but never quiet: is that Gobbi? (4) |
| TITO – TI[p]TO[p]. I biffed this one, but those who have never heard of Tito Gobbi may have a rough time. | |
Didn’t feel much like a Monday to me. I’m somewhere between the loved it or hated it camps. There seemed to be quite a few very tricky clues that fitted into the difficult category, for me anyway. Rallentando! Not so biffable for me. NHO Tito Gobbi. Didn’t know a jay was in the crow family. COD MARADONA.
Thanks V and setter.
Peter Ustinov was sent to a music professor in Rome for singing lessons to prepare for his role as Nero. He recalled afterwards (often)…
“He delivered to me the pith of his first year’s singing course in a single lesson: “Always, as I tell Gobbi, always breathe with the forehead.”
Recently read ‘Dear Me’ and recall the anecdote fondly. In subsequent lessons the teacher told him to “think with the diaphragm” and “sing with the eye”!
38:18, including some time spent asleep. I had most of the bottom half done before the top, with 1ac my LOI. I knew ‘proud’ from ‘proud flesh’, but didn7Tknow it could apply to fabric. DNK PULL. I typed in PANGAIA at first, but ‘I’ seemed an unlikely terminal for 4d, and changed it to E. Not a typical Monday. I liked EMBOSSED & NEWSCAST.
The general level of difficulty here is more than we might expect on a Monday so I was quite pleased to get within two letters of finishing it with only one use of the dictionary to look up a word in a clue that I didn’t happen to know, namely ‘fugu’.
But I was destined not to complete the grid without one full resort to aids because 15ac PANGAEA is our old friend, an obscurity clued by another obscurity. PAN as the Greek god was obvious because of checkers but GAEA and PANGAEA were beyond my ken and unguessable.
Before today, PANGAEA has appeared here in two Mephisto puzzles, one Jumbo before I started solving them regularly, and one 15×15 in June 2019 when the wordplay was more user-friendly: Slate, sliver turning up on each ancient landmass. I probably needed all the checkers to help me but evidently it didn’t trouble me unduly as I wrote a long comment that day without mentioning the clue.
Fortunately I knew TITO Gobbi so that answer was a write-in, but I didn’t fathom the wordplay for some time after the event. EMBOSSED, MARADONA (only one N came as a surprise, but then I don’t read about football), MOJITO, SYNDROME and DIAMOND all took me a long time.
Other than the one clue that beat me, I think I quite enjoyed this in a strange, masochistic sort of way.
NHO Tito Gobbi so that was put in without any confidence. I did know PANGAEA but no idea who GAEA was but assumed it must be. I took REVIEW to simply be a review by a critic (like a theatre review) so a “critical examination” but not usually an intense one. I rhink of proud meaning above the surface as common everyday usage, not obscure, such as a nail being proud of the surface. Even though I sometimes play bridge, the clubs/diamond thing went right over my head, but living in the US with those checkers I just bunged DIAMOND in without a second thought.
Around 65 minutes. Bottom was reasonably straightforward but the top was much harder. I put in MADEMOISELLE with no idea how it fitted the clue. NHO BRAY and put it in anyway. Really need the blog to understand how a lot of the clues work.
Thank U.
I managed this in 29:04 so just inside the half hour. Also NHO Tito Gobbi, I thought of Toto first (top-top) and then changed it to Tito when I thought of tiptop. LOI was EMBOSSED. I had all but that and the NE corner at 20 minutes or so, but found those last few tricky, looking at them now I’m not sure why but it’s always like that with hindsight!
Thanks setter and blogger
43 minutes and all correct despite what might be a record 11 question marks in the margins. I think the hardest bit was spelling PANGAEA, especially as I know the goddess via James Lovelock’s preferred spelling, which I’d guess is how most people hear about her these days.
I enjoyed the vampire bats but the jury is out on some of the others.
For me this was the hardest puzzle in quite a while. No time because of many interruptions, but I’d guess about an hour. Happy just to finish this challenging beast with its tangential definitions and weird vocab. I’m looking at you JO (??), and RALLENTANDRO, and TITO GOBBI. Thanks vinyl, a toughie to blog but you seemed to manage without any trouble.
From Idiot Wind:
Even you, yesterday, you had to ask me where it was at
I couldn’t believe AFTER ALL these years, you didn’t know me any better than that
Sweet lady
Yeah, man, the literals! “Gobbi”?! “Unhealthy group”! I couldn’t see that until after EMBOSSED. The relevant definition for “proud,” BTW, is also in Collins and in Merriam-Webster, which tags it as British and gives the example “a proud design.”
9:22
NHO Tito Gobbi, BRAY, that spelling of GAEA, or RALL, and probably one or two others. Too much shrugging for it to have been really satisfying, although there were some nice clues, particularly the vampire bats.
Thanks both.
17.00
Tricky, but fairly lovable.
“The four holding hands” and “struggle with” held me up in the NE corner for quite a while, but no complaints.
My brother lives near Eccles, and we refer to goings-on there as Ecclesiastical.
LOI NEWSCAST
LOL EXPELLED
COD SYNDROME
There’s a time to every purpose under heaven. 32 minutes in fact, with LOI TITO. I just about had the knowledge but opera singers were deep in the recesses. Lemonade was certainly a fizzy drink when the Corona man was in our street bringing the pop, even if I did prefer Dandelion and Burdock. COD to ECCLESIASTES. Do you know, Eccles? Yes, I know Eccles. I did enjoy this puzzle. Thank you V and setter.
A time to search and a time to give up. Me and almost everyone else today on the French clue in the Quickie.
A surprising 38:48 because it felt much longer with periods spent just staring blankly at the grid. I’m sure we’ve had JO from time to time in non-Mephisto puzzles, but it’s a tricky one to search for. Like Paul above, I’m surprised if “raised above the surface” is an obscure meaning of “proud”.
Generally, I was OK with most of the GK, but it was still hard to pin things down. I had most trouble with the second part of PANGAEA and with my LOI MARADONA where, even when I had finally constructed it, the penny took a while to drop. I liked SYNDROME best, helped considerably by having seen the Holy See here recently.
I liked Jackkt’s comment that this was enjoyable in a strange, masochistic sort of way
I knew “jo” because it is a useful Scrabble word and because of the Burns poem: “John Anderson my jo, John”.
Yes. Thanks. It’s what I remember. Every time Jo/sweetheart appears in the crossword, Burns gets a name check in the blog comments. I’ve tried to focus my search and I’ve found three of these appearances recently:
Saturday cryptic 28950 June 2024 – Scots sweetheart
Cryptic Jumbo 1605 March 2023 – Scottish dear
Weekday cryptic 28204 May 2022 – Sweetheart
Well. What else is there to do on a Monday
SYNDROME reminds me of something i was told as a child, that the message sent back to the foreign office when the British took the Indian province of Sindh in 1843 contained a single word – ‘Peccavi’ (I have sinned).
Gave up at 55 mins with unknown PANGAEA unsolved. NHO Gaea either. Spent ages on mental athletics for MADEMOISELLE looking for a grape variety with 12 letters stating with M! Hmmm.
As has been mentioned the top half was particularly unyielding. Didn’t really enjoy this. I need a gentle start to the week these days!
Thanks vinyl for the hard graft, and setter, I suppose. Grrrr.
Couldn’t do this, nho Gobbi, don’t drink cocktails or do the Mephisto. Enjoyable though, although I was so unsure of some answers I was never going to submit.
Thanks vinyl and setter.
11:43. I liked OLYMPIC GAMES and the vampire bats. DNK the 3rd meaning of albatross as a load so LODESTAR went in with a shrug. I remembered TITO Gobbi, but not what he was famous for – my LOI. Thanks Vinyl and setter.
27:22
Note to self, Mondays are not necessarily easy and this one was a case in point.
I always struggle to spell MOJITO for some reason and the JO for sweetheart helped me not. Otherwise GAEA was unknown but I found PANGAEA lounging in my brain somewhere, ROME took a while to tag onto SYND, POPINJAY was constructed from the cryptic, ECCLESIASTES needed the checkers, and I was slow to get NEWSCAST and TITO.
Relieved to have finished, albeit with EMBOSSED unparsed.
Thanks to both.
14:33. That was tough, and I got badly stuck at the end with MOJITO and SYNDROME unsolved. I liked it, largely because I happened to have all the required knowledge. I was a bit thrown by the unfamiliar spelling of Gaia though.
BRAY is probably better known for its restaurants than its vicar these days.
19.23 DNF
Stuck in the NW but finally saw EMBOSSED then the sneaky forward.
Incredibly three separate typos but there was one genuine error where I hazarded TOTO being two TOPS without the Ps
Not easy and I was a fail but I liked it
DNF
Gave up after 45 minutes. The bottom half was challenging but enjoyable. I started going around in ever decreasing circles after that. Thinking GAEA was spelt GAIA and MOJITO was spelt MOHITO didn’t help. MARADONA, EMBOSSED and NEWSCAST were too good for me. Still, it’s a learning process.
Thanks to vinyl and the setter.
I thought I was losing my moJO today after failing the Quickie (that French clue!) and struggling early on. Took a necessary break after around six clues, and regained a modicum of composure finishing in 17.20. Gobbi was a write in – my vintage, I suppose, plus the butt of the more erudite schoolboy jokes. Didn’t get Mlle from the definition, despite being familiar with Mallory Towers (tiens! zut alors!), but the wordplay meant I didn’t misspell it. At least God had a hand in prompting one of the answers.
22 mins, par for a Monday I thought. No idea if I got it right because the internet in this cafe is a bit dire. Another one trying to put GAIA until SYNDROME put me right.
Not sure if a NEWSCAST is a show, but I suppose so….
Much difficulty here, and eventually I used some aids. Several words/spellings/meanings that I was only very vaguely familiar with. Missed the N-E-W-S as the four holding hands in NEWSCAST, couldn’t see why going = on in 16ac, didn’t see albatross = load in LODESTAR, failed to see that a DIAMOND beat clubs in bridge, and various other incompetencies. I thought it was a bit odd to call the OLYMPIC GAMES an event, when it’s really a whole lot of events. But I suppose thought of as a whole it’s an event. 54 minutes.
DNF. Finished all of SW, then SE, which gave me VERY little north of the equator, just 10a Bray and 3d Olypmics and 12d Eccles. Then used aids to get 11a Mademoiselle. Came here for 1a Embossed and 9a Icehouse then used aids on and off to finish. Phew!
Hard work throughout. Never thought about rallentando in 26a After all, (should have done I have a cheat sheet of musical words) and was unfamiliar with Jo as a sweetheart in 13a Mojito, so looked her up. What has Load/lode to do with albatrosses in 27a?
2d Maradona, hate footie but even I have heard of HIM, and also Tito Gobbi although he didn’t spring to mind.
Not my idea of a regular Monday, but I enjoyed the challenge.
I too would like to know why “albatrosses”. For some reason I am thinking of “eagles” in golf, but that is simply desperation.
Albatross and load are both words for a burden.
Thank you keriothe.
Is that the metaphorical burden, deriving I presume from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?
Yes exactly.
Thanks!
DNF. Easy until it wasn’t. Tito came from wordplay, not GK. The NW corner got me with EMBOSSED, which I should have seen, with SYNDROME and MOJITO not coming to me (notwithstanding my wife is Jo and she is my sweetheart!!). Can never spell MADEMOISELLE so had a few attempts here before finalising with crossers. Nice puzzle, thanks Vinyl and setter
DNF – some quite tough cluing compounded by definitions on the obscure side, but after finally hit the rocks at TITO.
DNF – put Toto instead of Tito, but not that bothered, as I was bound to fail on one or other of the shrugworthy obscurities.
Thanks, v.
19:43
Enjoyable when you finish successfully, even if you didn’t understand everything. Several gaps as follows:
JO = sweetheart? Where does that derive from?
GAEA- Only familiar with the GAIA spelling but fortunately knew how to spell the supercontinent.
AFTER ALL – didn’t parse RALL tho have seen it here somewhere before
LODESTAR – Albatross = load? Something to do with The Ancient Mariner?
NHO TITO Gobbi
BRAY more familiar as the home of more than one Michelin-starred restaurant…
Thanks V and setter
JO is a Scottish word, derived from ‘joy’.
Thanks. Didnae have a clue.
Cf. “John Anderson, My Jo” by Burns.
Never heard of it and I come from up there
Are you familiar with the original version of Auld Lang Syne? It originally went: “For auld lang syne, my jo” not “my dear”.
Two goes needed but got there in the end.
– NHO BRAY so relied on the wordplay – was it a reference to DCI Barnaby from Midsomer Murders?
– Didn’t know that MADEMOISELLE can mean governess
– Had to trust that Jo can mean sweetheart for MOJITO
– Knew PANGAEA but not the goddess
– Didn’t parse the ‘sal’ bit of SEVERAL
– Didn’t know what fugu is so needed the checkers and wordplay to get POISON
– ‘Unhealthy group’ seems an odd definition for SYNDROME
– Went on a mental odyssey around the towns in the Greater Manchester area before thinking of Eccles and getting ECCLESIASTES
– POPINJAY went in from checkers alone
– Feel that ‘sent out’ would have been a better literal than ‘sent down’ for EXPELLED
– NHO TITO Gobbi but got it from wordplay
Very tough for a Monday. Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Old Bill
LOI Icehouse
COD Lodestar
I think the definition in 4dn is a reference to an unhealthy group of symptoms. It’s a bit oblique!
To send down is to expel from a university.
Oh yes, I always forget how down (and up) can be used in a university sense. Thanks!
A bit of a battle. Got there in the end, but needed SYNDROME to correct PANGAIA. NEWSCAST was a very late arrival (APOI), and still left me struggling with LOI, DIAMOND, which, although I had managed to lift and separate the definition, didn’t know the intricacies of Bridge and couldn’t make the leap until POI, EMBOSSED, arrived. Could have managed without this level of obscurity on a Monday morning, especially after the French debacle in the QC. 32:43. Thanks setter (I think) and Vinyl.
46 minutes, so an outlying Monday.
More of these, please, Ed!
I enjoyed this because (unusually!) I was able to finish a difficult crossword in a reasonable time. Not very Mondayish, though. Must look up that French clue in the Qickie.
6 down.
North west got me stumped so gave up. Still only understand the parsing of mojito whilst reading the explanation!
Now I see; Gin and It must be g and vermouth NHOT
It = Italy, Vermouth, Information Technology, sex appeal, the very thing….and a note of the scale in reverse!
Popping in to say I rather liked this, if anything *because* of the nice definitions dotted about. Best of these for me is Proud, with the clue offering a particularly pleasing misdirection, so earning my COD laurels.
I can see why some might not fancy this as a week-starter, but it is a puzzle of superior quality in my opinion. 22 minutes here, for those who care about speed.
Thanks Vinyl1 and setter.
It’s very strange. Whenever I struggle with one, you all say it was straightforward. You are all saying that this one was hard and it took me 12 minutes.
Knew most of the GK but needed blog for some of the parsings. Completed with help of three reveals (LOI EMBOSSED, SEVERAL, TITO which I knew but didn’t solve, doh), plus a Google search (POPINJAY). Liked SYNDROME and MARADONA. Really enjoyed tackling this one. Thanks for the blog. Had no idea how MOHITO, TITO or SEVERAL worked.
On edit, or even MOJITO! 😂
I hated it!
I spent a while puzzling over 1a. But once the penny dropped the rest flowed quite easily, though not particularly quickly. No problem with Tito Gobbi – I discovered opera in my teens when he was a superstar. 32 minutes
This felt average to me until I reach the upper-left corner. Finally got everything but could not understand EMBOSSED and PULL for the life of me. Is “E MED” supposed to be, like, east of the Mediterranean? or Middle East? That seems absurd to me but of course everything seems absurd when you don’t know it.
Fortunately I knew the requisite meaning of ‘proud’, UMBO being one of the first crossword-ese words I ever learned.
SEVERAL also threw me (I knew the definition from Sweeney Todd, which has the line ‘we go our several ways’), because it would have to be SALON and I couldn’t convince myself of ON = ‘going’. (Your example set me straight, vinyl.)
‘The Levant’ is ‘The Eastern Mediterranean (and its shores)’, hence E/ MED. I liked that a lot.
DNF. Failed on the ‘syndrome’/’Pangaea’ crossers. Hate is a very strong term, but I certainly did not like it, and, with a stinker in the Grauniad this morning, not a happy crosswording day. Hopefully, the quizzy evening on BBC2 will improve my grumpy mood.
Yes, it seems like both papers have either discarded Easy Monday, or redefined hard!
DNF with TOTO, plus a careless MADAMOISELLE.
Too many wilful obscurities for a Monday, I thought.
Exactly the same errors here ☹️
21.58. A good workout and another example of a Monday puzzle not as easy as they used to be. Biggest problem for me was a very troublesome top right quadrant which took around 8 minutes to unwind.
Didn’t get the parsing of diamond( apart from baseball) and embossed unless the Levant is E Med( iterranean)?
Failed on the SYNDROME (not necessarily unhealthy, more a collection of clinical characteristics) and MOJITO, and I got PANGAEA spelt as PANGEYA, so not very happy.
Not the best start to the week.
Very hard with clues giving up their secrets slowly after a rush on the bottom half. I assumed TITO immediately, but struggled to parse it until the crossers were in and the penny dropped. In the end, I had to use crossword solver aids for DIAMOND, as I didn’t know the rules of bridge (though I could have guessed!) and EMBOSSED, which I couldn’t think of despite considering that sense of proud, but I did understand the parsing of all of them, though MARADONA took far too long to see and was a facepalm moment.
The usual Times’ failing of inconsistency across the grid. The bottom half was a virtual write-in, so I don’t see the point of the wilful obscurities in the top half? There must be plenty who simply gave up?
Thought I’d finished after more than 1 hour, but I’m another who assumed Toto rather than Tito. Pretty obscure. Not Mondayish at all.
How are “reserve” and “ice” equivalent?
As a description of a cold personality – not the first meaning of each word, probably nearer the last.