Time: 25:37
Music: Albion Country Band, No Roses
This was a mixed bag. There were quite a few write-ins and chestnuts, yes, but answers like Bacup, tesseract, and mangold proved a bit more challenging. I even stumbled around with formalism before realizing you have to keep the apostrophe-S . Of course, once you have all the answers, it seems very simple and obvious, the mark of a tidy puzzle.
And you? Probably much faster – Bacup, that’s a write-in.
| Across | |
| 1 | African country’s limited by class system rigidly applied (9) |
| FORMALISM -FOR(MALI’S)M. | |
| 6 | Bill enters inn, rolling over in northern town (5) |
| BACUP – B(A/C)UP, where the surrounding letters are PUB backwards. Since I did not know the town, I had to guess where the vowels go. | |
| 9 | Ezra’s personal claim comes with “Shut up!” (7) |
| IMPOUND – I’M POUND! One of his less controversial statements….. | |
| 10 | She’s pale, really going backwards — this being evident? (7) |
| RELAPSE – Backwards hidden in [sh]E’S PALE R[eally]. A bit of a semi &lit. | |
| 11 | Time in the morning old man appears in US city (5) |
| TAMPA – T + A.M. + PA. | |
| 13 | Bone, one attached to head, showing glossy quality (9) |
| SHININESS – SHIN + I + NESS. | |
| 14 | Noise always reveals criminal (9) |
| RACKETEER – RACKET + E’ER. | |
| 16 | The female driver’s first in ditch (4) |
| SHED – SHE + D[river]. | |
| 18 | A bit firm, having got implanted? (4) |
| COIN – COIN. CO + IN. | |
| 19 | Somehow recast set into 4D figure (9) |
| TESSERACT – Anagram of recast set. The problem here is knowing the word. I did check the answer to 4 Down, too. | |
| 22 | Like wren given food, eating at this place (9) |
| FEATHERED – FE(AT HERE)D. | |
| 24 | Woman being different, I gathered (5) |
| ELSIE – ELS(I)E. | |
| 25 | Priest coming to holy mount, cutting bit of speech short (7) |
| ELISION – ELI + SION, not a town in Switzerland this time. | |
| 26 | Fellow gets top award for vegetable (7) |
| MANGOLD – MAN + GOLD, as in the Olympics. | |
| 28 | Minor damage from fire one’s left to go out (5) |
| SINGE – SING[l]E. | |
| 29 | Dubious socialite brought before a board (9) |
| DEBATABLE – DEB + A TABLE. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Healthier, having swallowed right bit of food (7) |
| FRITTER – F(R)ITTER. | |
| 2 | A revolutionary agent here (3) |
| REP – PER upside-down. | |
| 3 | Article penned by mature editor is greatly praised (8) |
| ADULATED – ADUL(A)T ED. | |
| 4 | River in which to find religious types (hard to miss) (5) |
| INDUS – [h]INDUS, a chestnut. | |
| 5 | Festival diagrams organised, with involvement of rector initially (5,4) |
| MARDI GRAS – Anagram of DIAGRAMS + R[ector]. | |
| 6 | Description of sea food, cooked then cold (6) |
| BALTIC – BALTI + C. If you thought cold was the literal, you still got the answer, right? | |
| 7 | Officer is in charge of venomous types (11) |
| COPPERHEADS – COPPER HEADS, for a US snake or a Confederate sympathiser. | |
| 8 | Happy prisoner’s first to get let out (7) |
| PLEASED – P[risoner] + LEASED. | |
| 12 | Plot devised by Greek character in mother country (11) |
| MACHINATION – MA (CHI) NATION. | |
| 15 | See person so nobly seated? (9) |
| ENTHRONED – A cryptic definition, referring to a bishop in his cathedral. | |
| 17 | Belt tune out — an aid to digestion! (5,3) |
| BETEL NUT – Anagram of BELT TUNE. | |
| 18 | A hundred presents in boxes (7) |
| COFFERS – C + OFFERS. | |
| 20 | Lever altered, readjusted (7) |
| TREADLE – Anagram of ALTERED. | |
| 21 | Pursuit around India in carriage (6) |
| CHAISE – CHA(I)SE. | |
| 23 | After protest see bishop leaving service (5) |
| DEMOB – DEMO + B. | |
| 27 | Getting up, little brother to turn round (3) |
| ORB – BRO upside-down. | |
Same same regarding the unknowns, I eventually got TESSERACT when I remembered tessera is Greek for four. Before that I was trying to do something with tetra and getting nowhere. 22.19 for me, nice puzzle, thanks vinyl.
From Simple Twist of Fate:
A saxophone someplace far off played
As she was walking by the arcade
As the light bust through a beat-up shade where he was waking up,
She dropped a COIN into the cup
Of a blind man at the gate
And forgot about a simple twist of fate
Love your regular Bob lyrics btw ✔️
Thank you D, my pleasure
I was interested to read an article about Bob Dylan in the Sunday Times yesterday that mentioned how extensively he is still touring at the age of 83. Impressive!
It’s called the never-ending tour, it seems he meant it! (Until, of course, the inevitable…)
At The Royal Albert Hall 12-14 November.
Oh! I read that as a response to Lindsay’s: Until, of course, the inevitable…
If something happens at the RAH we’ll all feel responsible now.
Was certain we’d have the lines in Desolation Row about Ezra Pound and TS Eliot today. Not to be … (and to be fair Pound wasn’t an answer just part of the wordplay)
It was a toss-up…
Saw FEATHERED pretty quickly and saw HERE for ‘this place’ but managed to miss the ‘AT’ in the clue and wondered how ‘feated’ meant ‘given food’. Duh! ORB was a bit confusing as I wondered which was the reversal indicator at first, ‘getting up’ or ‘to turn’, as I thought ORB was more a sphere than just something round, but I think we’ve had this discussion before. Nice start to the week. COD to IMPOUND.
Thanks V and setter.
Vinyl, many of the definition underlines are missing and there’s a D missing in [h]INUS.
I completed this in 30 minutes with 4 answers in the NW segment being the last to fall.
Elsewhere I had guessed TESSERACT as the most likely answer once all the checkers were in place. It has appeared here only once before in a puzzle blogged by me 12 years ago but of course there wasn’t even a chance that I would have remembered it from then.
No doubt someone will insist it can only be read one way, but I wasn’t at all convinced of REP rather than PER at 2dn until a checker resolved the issue.
MANGOLD appeared in a Jumbo in 2022 and was also referenced without actually appearing in a clue to GOLD in a 15×15 last year.
I reckon 2dn definitely can go either way.
Agreed. The checking letters resolve the ambiguity, which is fine by me but I know that others will disagree.
It doesn’t bother me either but I mentioned it as a source of delay. Actually now I think of it again I resolved the issue when 1dn went in, as 1ac beginning F?P seemed unlikely.
Sorry, there was a problem in the middle, and I had to start over with a bit of cut-and-paste.
21.35
Also had PER for a while and generally probably made heavier weather of this than I needed to, getting a bit bogged down in the SW thinking the easy COFFERS started with an A. TESSERACT LOI as the likeliest (only?) word from the checkers.
Thanks Setter and Vinyl (fantastic album you were listening to there)
Just under an hour. Nice puzzle. FOI COPPERHEADS LOI FORMALISM
Thanks Vinyl
11.38
I didn’t really get on with this – some of the clues read quite oddly (e.g. ‘here’ in REP, ‘to turn’ in ORB).
Never heard of MANGOLD, but my dictionary tells me it’s another name for mangelwurzel. So that’s that cleared up!
Thanks both.
10:30. I was aided by having a vague awareness of the more unusual words. I’m not sure where I’ve heard of MANGOLD or BACUP but they rang a bell. I do wonder whether BACUP has been clued by use of its likeness to “back up” before. Possibly it just sounds like it should be! I got TESSERACT straight away thinking that it was the title of a Margaret Atwood novel but post-solve research tells me I was thinking of The Testaments and I was confusing it with the Alex Garland novel The Tesseract which I have read but about which I remember nothing beyond the title.
How about: “King leaving reinforcements in Lancashire town (5)” (from 28286 in 2022)
It turns out Bacup has been seen here at least 5 times before ..
If you want a book for tesseract, it’s A Wrinkle in Time.
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman–
I have detested you long enough.
(A Pact, Ezra Pound)
25 mins pre-brekker. Neatish and tidyish. Luckily I know the nuts, snakes and 4D cube.
Ta setter and V.
BACUP Borough once sold my team their goalkeeper – in nearly 70 years of watching us only one has been more inept than he.
Unknown words clued as an anagram are a pet hate of mine – especially when they don’t include “unusual” letters. That was only one reason why I didn’t garner much enjoyment from this puzzle.
FOI BACUP
LOI TESSERACT
COD RELAPSE
TIME 9:34
Straightforward stuff. 26 mins. FOI BACUP, LOI ADULATED.
Liked MANGOLD, a beet for cattlefeed. One half of Mangold Wurzle which gave the name to the West Country’s very own folk superstars : The Wurzles.
I am a cider drinker, I drinks it all of the day.
Eat your heart out Bob Dylan.
I gotta brand new combine ‘arvester
About 10 minutes.
– Dimly remembered MANGOLD from somewhere, maybe a previous crossword
– Couldn’t have told you exactly what a TESSERACT is
– Assumed COPPERHEADS are snakes
– Didn’t know that a BETEL NUT can help digestion
Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Impound
LOI Adulated
COD Pleased
45 mins. The North went flying in and I thought » oh goodie, a quickie today »! But no, got bogged down in the South, esp the SW, with last 4, COIN, FEATHERED, COFFERS & ELISION finally worked out.
Definitely a few NHO/DNKs today, BACUP, TESSERACT, MANGOLD & ELISION among them.
COD BALTIC.
Thanks V and setter.
48.03 for me which I will take having nearly thrown in the towel. There were two or three in the SE corner that had NHO but the cluing was fair and they were gettable from wordplay.
LOI and COD : BALTIC
Quick, but enjoyable.
Bacup is a rather lovely little town, (“one of the best preserved mill towns in England” according to Wiki) as well as something of a regular here; this its sixth appearance, last time out being 29 Nov last year.
Thought I’d be doing well with an early and quick solve, but couldn’t just see COIN. Alphabet trawls revealed about a dozen possibles, CO was definitely a contender, but just didn’t see bit=coin. Had to guess, and went with CHIP.
GRR. After getting TESSERACT and MANGOLD, this was a poor finish.
Thanks for the blog. As someone who often struggles with GK such as modern composers, I was so pleased to see TESSERACT make an appearance. I love the idea that even though you can’t envisage a 4D figure, you can make a 3D plan for it. And that 3D plan can itself be unraveled into a 2D plan just as a cube can.
Southwest probably the hardest; I really pondered a while before 19a Coin emerged from the gloom, and 28a Singe was hard too. Solved 27d Orb by accident, the clue caught my eye while I was still in the NW having just started. I just had to write it in then and there.
Lots of variations on mangle-wurzle were absent from the Cheating Machine; added.
Like Merlin I lost time with COIN, considering CHIP, CLIP and CLIO among other alphabet spaghettis until deciding I could justify COIN and if it was wrong I’d be grumpy all day. Took my time to 15.43, everything else going in smoothly enough. Ninja Turtled TESSERACT from Loki and the Avenger universe.
ORB still puzzles me a bit: Chambers tells me its verb form means “surround (archaic)”
or “form into an orb”, so I suppose it’s the latter, but when solving it wasn’t an easy transition.
Collins has ‘to move in an orbit’ but only in the American dictionary and qualified as ‘rare’!
But OED has ‘transitive. To carry in an orb; to cause to move in an orb or orbit; to trace (an orbit).’
31 mins, held up by TESSERACT, which I had never come across and tried several variations until I was convinced it couldn’t be anything else. Also wasted about 5 mins because I confidently wrote in ELISE for 24ac – which is a perfectly valid answer but wrong. Took way too long searching for venomous things ending in I……
16:15, I had a brief pause of a minute or two in the NE corner, then I got the Copperhead which got me moving again. BACUP I have heard of but I needed the C of copperhead and B of Baltic to get it. LOI was ADULATED which I had got stuck on and left till the end.
Thanks setter and blogger
31 minutes, no great problems but held up by rep/per, which could perfectly well have been either and I put the wrong one in, also Elise (as in Fur Elise) which I happily wrote in without noticing ELSIE. And I wasn’t all that keen on ORB, where round = orb was a problem, which I gather has been discussed before, but it also seemed to have two reversal indicators, rather odd.
19:16
Slow start on the acrosses but built out from the SE corner. Some stuff I didn’t see:
TESSERACT – heard the word before but didn’t know what it was – entered from S,E and second T checker
ELSIE – ELISE would also have fitted both the definition and wordplay, but less likely that 7d would finish with an I
ELISION – NHO but a reasonable guess from wordplay
MANGOLD – only heard of mangelwurzel
Thanks V and setter
7:37. Not difficult today but I slowed myself down by putting in VNTHRONED and failing to notice the error for far too long.
Like z8 I Ninja-Turtled TESSERACT from Marvel. A whole range of cultural references that I only know because I happen to have kids of the right age. COPPERHEADS on the other hand I know of because of studying American history, which is a sort of reverse-Ninja-Turtle I suppose.
19:05 – nothing particularly tricky but not particularly fast either. I missed the episcopal angle of ENTHRONED and the DD of the clue, and COIN held me up at the end. Found myself in a google rabbit hole looking up TESSERACT post-solve, but I can’t say I am much wiser.
DNF I put in TESSECART and then got stuck on the COIN and COFFERS intersection (and IMPOUND, thinking it was a biblical reference for Ezra).
Another bad start to the week. I seem to find Mondays an easy day to slip up.
I finished in a quickish time for me in 28.47, but unfortunately decided TESSECART looked more likely than TESSERACT, so an annoying DNF. For me it was a puzzle of two halves, the right hand side was completed in its entirety first, and working from the bottom to the top the left hand side completed the job.
20 minutes exactly with COIN last in. BACUP an unknown, it assembled itself.
27:04. Happy to get in under the half-hour. As a hobby mathematician I found TESSERACT easy, but BACUP was a new one for me and had to guess. A nice start to the week having been unable to take a proper look at the weekend offerings.
Thanks both!
5:36. Good start to the week. Knew TESSERACT as a prog metal band. Heard of BACUP but couldn’t tell you where it is.
Vaguely heard of MANGOLD but I couldn’t tell you more.
Around par for me, though it felt a lot harder than it was. One of those where once I’d got the solution, I couldn’t think what had taken me so long. Didn’t really get COIN, but explanations above have helped.
LOI was ELSIE.
16:08
FOI was REP. Not sure what is the purpose of “here” in the clue unless it’s to indicate an Engish usage. Prisoner’s first in the clue for 8d allowed me to posit pub for the establishment in 6a and pop BACUP in. Didn’t take too long to see COIN once MACHINATION was in place. TESSERACT was LOI. 22:49. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
15:14
So a fast time,for me. Am I the only one to get Tesseract from Doctor Who?🤔
37:42. all OK, eventually. Fingers crossed for TESSERACT. I liked COIN which somehow took me by surprise
37’20”
Slightly spooked by a rather odd object closing stages …
… but not beaten by it! Very enjoyable; not least for the excuse to get out Cundy and Rollett: Mathematical Models (2nd Ed.) pp 159-160 Fig. 211 (e) and (f).
Thank you setter and Vinyl.
COIN LOI after trying almost every other option. This was the least worst for me.
Otherwise enjoyed the puzzle which provided some challenges.
David
20:56. Tricky enough for a Monday.
COD: BALTIC.
21:48 finishing with the NHO TESSERACT. Like others, I had tried to fit INDUS into this until the checkers prevented it.
COD to IMPOUND.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
Went down rabbit holes on three clues so took me an hour for a reasonably easy day. Mesopotamia half worked!
I was also looking for a country, decided Mesopotamia isn’t one and tried Micronesia which, of course, rather rattled around in the eleven-square light. It dawned on me eventually. All done, with fingers crossed re TESSERACT, in 25’30”.
23 minutes, thought it pretty straightforward. I had a feeling that someone would mention “A Wrinkle in Time”, which I read as a child, and indeed vinyl did!
I couldn’t justify the word “here” being in the clue at 2d unless the answer was Rep. I also can’t justify not being able to pull Bacup, Mangold, or Tesseract up quickly, but that’s between me and my memory. thanks, setter
NHO TESSERACT, but that wasn’t my last in, which was ADULATED, because I was equating mature with old. POI was FORMALISM, not a word I would have said I understood the meaning of, and hampered by having PER instead of REP at 2d. Once I revisited that the NW corner almost flew in. In 12d I saw the country as CHINA, which made parsing the clue a bit of a problem with TION for Greek character, but light eventually dawned! Liked FEATHERED and IMPOUND, disliked COIN and TESSERACT, which was just a guessing game.
Guessed TESSERACT; remembered BACUP from previous puzzle. Rest pretty straightforward. 15’03”
33 minutes, with no problems but BACUP (glad it wasn’t BUCAP). I also had to rename ELISE before I could enter COPPERHEADS. In Germany, MANGOLD seems to be Swiss chard, but I believe (i.e. Wikipedia leads me to believe) that mangelwurzel is not quite the same vegetable, though they are closely related. My sister-in-law grows the German Mangold in her garden and we are inundated with it every autumn and winter. It’s quite good occasionally, but not all the time.
Sluggish unfinished solve during lunch but the last eight clues fell in a couple of minutes this evening. Had just come back from a long run so perhaps the fresh air helped loosen the brain cells. Just over the 30 mins in total so around par for me. Tried REP and LAUDATED (!) and another slightly ludicrous answer for another clue but sorted it all out in the end. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
19.56. Thanks setter and blogger.
A gentle Monday offering, all done in 27 minutes just before lights out. I was not confident about TESSERACT but bunged it in anyway. At 18ac COIN was the least worst option for me too.
FOI – IMPOUND
LOI – COIN
COD – no award.
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.
60:57 when I finally corrected coin from chin, my loi. Simple clue but I somehow discounted CO earlier in the puzzle and then when I finally got coffers, next reconsidered it and ended up thinking it was something to do with chin implants. NHO elision, bacup. On the other hand, tesseract know but tried to do something with tetra- due to tetrahedrons being triangular pyramids
RHS fairly flew in ( with the exception of BACUP, which looked very unlikely for the name of a town!), but the NHO FORMALISM held me up in the NW, even after I got the FRITTER. Also NHO TESSERACT, so looked that up, which undoubtedly helped me with the down clues. However, I’m improving, but a way to go yet! CODs to SHININESS and IMPOUND.