DNF in 64:22
A struggle from start to finish. I think I would have enjoyed the convoluted and wordy nature of the clues more had it been a non-blogging day and I could have spent some time over it in the pub later.
Several clues took far too many minutes to parse once entered, I resorted to a couple of dictionary checks along the way (inc. 21ac), my LOI (14ac) was not understood until writing the blog, and I still got one wrong (12ac). Ho hum.
Definitions underlined.
Across | |
1 | Rocket engine with discoloration in charger? (9) |
SUSTAINER – STAIN (discoloration) contained by SUER (one who charges, charger). Why the US spelling? | |
6 | Nark’s pressing question into the scoring of more ecstasy (5) |
PIQUE – Q (question) has been pressed into PIU (‘more’ in music notation, scoring) plus E (ecstasy). | |
9 | Fruit and a lot of cereal in a jar (7) |
APRICOT – RICe (a lot of cereal) in A POT (jar). | |
10 | Greens arrested without a shred of evidence (7) |
COLLARD – COLLAReD (arrested) minus the first letter (a shred) of evidence. As my (British-American) family prepares for Thanksgiving, this was easy, since ‘collard greens’ has become a bit of a favourite. Otherwise NHO. | |
11 | Tartan Army held back by copper dispersing a party in Cardiff (5,5) |
PLAID CYMRU – PLAID (tartan), then aRMY reversed and contained in (held back by) CU (copper), minus the ‘a’. | |
12 | Store Tesco’s opening in Berkshire perhaps (4) |
STEW – I hope this is an error (or paper town, perhaps), because I can’t understand it. I had T in SOW for STOW… | |
14 | Affected by a tinge of nostalgia in middle of poem (5) |
TWEEN – TWEE (affected) + the first (a tinge) of Nostalgia. Poetically, in the middle. | |
15 | Very obvious line penned by gag writer with only one good set (4,5) |
WRIT LARGE – L (line) contained (penned) by an anagram of (set) gAG WRITER missing a ‘g’ (with only one good). | |
16 | Exhausted trooper in a seat like this? (9) |
ASTRADDLE – first and last of (exhausted) TroopeR, contained by A SADDLE (seat). | |
18 | Charlie wearing a lush cravat (5) |
ASCOT – C (Charlie) contained by A + SOT (drunk, lush). A sort of necktie. | |
20 | Brief exercise involving Navy vessels (4) |
URNS – USe (exercise) minus the last (brief), containing RN (Royal Navy). | |
21 | Scottish writer’s terror on hearing what lies deep below (10) |
BARYSPHERE – sounds like (on hearing) “Barrie’s fear” (Scottish writer’s terror). An interior layer of the Earth, deep below the 2dn). | |
25 | Steps required for returning chimney in Glasgow area (7) |
FORMULA – FOR + LUM (Scots for chimney, in Glasgow) reversed + A (area). | |
26 | Maker of all my sandwiches put away on launch of restaurant (7) |
CREATOR – COR (my), contains all of EAT (put away) after (on) first of Restaurant). | |
27 | Bachelor parking large car outside dance (5) |
LIMBO – B (bachelor) contained by LIMO (large car). | |
28 | Pedal spring obtained from cycling centre to the west of Derby? (9) |
ENTRECHAT – ENTRE-C (centre cycling, a tame version of our setters’ new favourite toy), before HAT (Derby?). A ballet move/step. |
Down | |
1 | Small instrument pitched too high (5) |
SHARP – S (small) + HARP (instrument). | |
2 | Outside water sports champion? (7) |
SURFACE – SURF ACE (water sports champion?). | |
3 | Western missing out on Oscar after head of Academy noted exception (10) |
ACCIDENTAL – oCCIDENTAL (western) missing its ‘o’ (Oscar), after the first letter of Academy. | |
4 | Out to lunch in New York eating sandwich with no crust (5) |
NUTTY – bUTTy (sandwich) missing its outermost letters (with no crust), contained by NY (New York). | |
5 | Returning from break in the middle of jury service (9) |
RECURSIVE – anagram of (break in) the central letters of jURy with SERVICE. | |
6 | Hide large treasure boxes (4) |
PELT – L (large) that PET (treasure) contains (boxes). | |
7 | Parquet floor’s finish getting damaged on shifting piano a fraction (7) |
QUARTER – anagram of (getting damaged) pARQUET + last of flooR, after removing (shifting) the ‘p’ (piano). | |
8 | Conclude ultimately that women supply dowry? (9) |
ENDOWMENT – END (conclude), then an anagram of (supply) the last of (ultimately) thaT + WOMEN. | |
13 | Priest’s backing change and still preaching about it (10) |
ALTARPIECE – sounds like (preaching about it) “alter” (change) and “peace” (still). Fantastic original homophone indicator, IMV, and a standout clue. | |
14 | Cut up leaf to brew this amount? (9) |
TEACUPFUL – anagram of (to brew) CUT UP LEAF. | |
15 | Alert wife understanding waves from pram? (4-5) |
WIDE-AWAKE – W (wife) + IDEA (understanding) + WAKE (waves from pram (a sort of barge)). | |
17 | Fit cap of tiny brown liquor bottle (7) |
TANTRUM – first (cap) of Tiny, which TAN (brown) and RUM (liquor) contain (bottle). | |
19 | Wild cat — he twice spotted one in the Serengeti (7) |
CHEETAH – anagram of (wild) CAT + HE + HE. | |
22 | Check on board capsized river boat (5) |
YACHT – CH (check) contained by (on board) reversal of (capsized) TAY (river). | |
23 | Soreness when pulling off a river wader (5) |
EGRET – rEGRET (soreness) removing (pulling off) one letter ‘r’ (a river). | |
24 | Tip a fraction of a pound following our short drink (4) |
OUZO – reversal of (tip) OZ (ounce, a fraction of a pound), after OUr (short). |
I agree that 12ac must be ‘stow’. I also agree with you that much of the pleasure of parsing was diluted by the abstruseness of the clues. Your blog much appreciated, nonetheless.
Yes, this was a struggle for me too and after an hour I reverted to aids to finish it off.
In fact I only only needed to reveal three answers, the main one being RECURSIVE which might have been possible had I noticed the clue was indicating an anagram, but I failed to do so. With that in place, the C-checker it provided enabled me to work out COLLARD, a word I vaguely recognised from its one and only previous appearance here in October 2023.
The second reveal was BARYSPHERE from which I was only missing B and R. This word is appearing for the first time and needless to say I never heard of it.
The final reveal was TWEEN, a word I had considered but was unable to justify it either from wordplay or definition, so it was just a word that fitted the checkers.
STEW is obviously an error as evidenced by all the solvers known to me of the 33 completions at the Club site so far each having one ‘mistake’ . Amazingly two others have no mistakes but I suspect these are cheats.
I had no idea what was going on with ‘pram’ in the WIDE AWAKE clue.
Not so enamoured with ALTARPIECE defined as “priest’s backing” as it rather depends where he is.
An altarpiece is described in dictionary defs as above and behind the altar. In many churches, that would put it on the wall under the east window. In churches with a centrally placed altar, I doubt that an altarpiece would be part of the design.
(I’ve emailed a couple of people about STOW so I would expect the solution to be updated in the places where it can be.)
The priest’s behind rather depends on the level of churchmanship. In some higher versions, the priest stands facing the altar ( and the altarpiece) with his back to the congregation. One Anglican I attended moved its altar away from the east wall so that the priest could stand behind the altar facing the congregation, which of course means I had no difficulty with the clue.
The words “priest’s backing” in the clue surely mean that (from the view of the congregation) the altarpiece is behind the priest. Which it is whatever way he faces, unless he’s on the far side of it. Before I sent my comment, I also looked at pictures of altarpieces at https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/altarpiece.html?sortBy=relevant – not all 317 pages, but the first few. I couldn’t see a single one that could conceivably be in front of a priest who was inside the church.
Peace be with you, Peter! Now if it were an iconostasis….
We were stumped as well ref the pram, but Collins tells us it’s a light tender with a wide bottom, so would leave waves as it was bustling about.
I managed to finish, I think, but it took an hour and 22 minutes, so I hope that “STOW” is right, too… Along the way were quite a few unknowns and a fair few where even with the answers I couldn’t figure out how all the wordplay worked, so thanks for the explanations.
Given that I didn’t know SUSTAINER engine, “pui”, COLLARD, BARYSPHERE, that an ENTRECHAT could be known as a pedal spring or that meaning of “pram”, I think I did pretty well to get to the end of this one!
Pretty sure ‘pedal spring’ is just an invention (and an infuriatingly clever one!) of the setter.
STOW is certainly the right answer. However, I also plumped for DAVYSPHERE after a rather lengthy and arduous struggle with the rest of the puzzle, on the basis that DAVY is probably the surname of some Scottish writer (it wasn’t clear how much of the answer was to be a homophone) and Davy Jones’ locker is the bottom of the sea. JM Barrie would be some way down my list of Scottish writers!
Thanks both.
Snap
Me too. I checked later and there is indeed Elspeth Mary Davie (née Dryer) (20 March 1918 – 14 November 1995) who was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, painter, and art teacher.
About 90 minutes with STOW since I agree that STEW is clearly wrong since it does not mean store and sew is related to sewing and is not related to Berkshire or pigs.
Middle stump is “between” the leg and off stumps so middle poetically is ‘TWEEN
I believe CHEETAH should be “spotted one in the Serengeti” since it is a spotted cat.
Thanks William
At least the STOW/STEW error is showing up the neutrinos in the Snitch. As of 8:50 there are no correct submissions.
Sorry I’m being really slow today (sick) but can you please explain how it shows up the neutrinos?
One way to artificially get a good time is to press “Reveal” on one device, then type the answers into the Club on a different device, for a very fast time. People who do this won’t know that STEW is a misprint. So it’s fair to assume that low scores without errors have probably done this.
Thank you all! I was familiar with the neutrinos, just not how today’s error would reveal them!
At the risk of being sued for libel, a neutrino is a term we use for people who solve the puzzle on paper (in this case using aids or the check feature on the non-club version) then speed type the answers to enter a spurious super-quick time.
you might get investigated for a non criminal hate incident…
I thought you had to insult a police horse to get one of those.
Apparently, some of them just solve on paper and type their answers to check their solutions.
DNF. Had the top half finished pretty quickly but then slowed to a crawl and gave up after half an hour with chunks left unfinished. My careless ‘RECURRENT’ didn’t help. Dreadful day, with a misspelling in the QC and a DNF in the concise.
I wonder if they’ll correct STOW before Simon Anthony makes his video?
Couldn’t do this in my 30′ allowance, so with six remaining looked up some answers, but still couldn’t finish – could have put in RECURSIVE (but why?); ALTARPIECE, SUSTAINER, ASTRADDLE beyond me. And ‘pram’? – belongs in a puzzle where aids are expected to be used.
Thanks william and setter.
51:39 (with STOW)
A long struggle with the STOW ‘error’ at the end.
Enjoyed CREATOR. Did not understand ‘pram’ and wasted ages thinking about ‘baby alarm’ and similar.
Best weekend wishes to everyone
Thank you, william_j_s and the setter
Could not get collard (had never heard of it)… and recursive was a guess. This puzzle was well beyond my pay-grade!
I actually got 15 down because the baby would be wide awake if it was waving from the pram!
Enjoyed this, nice meaty Friday offering.
Nho pram = boat. Didn’t really understand recursive either, still don’t in fact. I would have said it meant repeating not returning. Oh well.
RECURSIVE is listed under ‘recursion’ in Collins, defined as returning or running back.
I seem to remember that the definition for “recursion” in the New Hacker’s Dictionary was “see ‘recursion'”.
Exactly 🙂
Just completed (23:13) and STOW still showing as wrong.
Didn’t parse WIDE-AWAKE despite knowing that pram is a type of boat (although I think it is a small rowing dinghy rather than a barge). COLLARD and RECURSIVE were my last two. NHO BARYSPHERE but obvious once you think of the right writer.
Thanks william and setter.
24:56 with STOW of course. Wow! That was chewy! DNK SUSTAINER as a rocket and didn’t see SUER as a charger, so held off putting that in until I got the last checker from RECURSIVE. Also DNK “pram” for boat. LOI BARYSPHERE required a second trawl through the alphabet to find. Some great clues. I liked CREATOR, TEACUPFUL and CHEETAH and ALTARPEICE raised a smile when I final parsed it, but COD to the clever QUARTER. Thanks William and setter.
21:47 Almost identical comments. Extremely tough, even for a Friday, but all fair and above board, even the unknown dinghy. I’m surprised (and pleased) that there are so few moans about cycling today. COD to ALTARPIECE, with ENTRECHAT a close second. BTW, what is the Cheating Machine that some people have referred to?
DNF. Retired hurt.
Very wise. I went through at least three helmets!
There is (or was some years ago) a type of small dinghy known as a pram dinghy.
51:41 and was very annoyed when it came up with a red square on STOW after all that work.
My last 3 in were BARYSPHERE (I‘ve heard of a bathysphere but NHO barysphere), ALTARPIECE which I get but „preaching“ for „sounds like“ seemed a stretch, and LOI RECURSIVE, I had the UR from the middle of jury but didn‘t realise it was an anagram for ages. Yacht was very cunningly clued too. Didn‘t know a sustainer was a rocket. Collard had to be dragged from my memory.
Phew
Thanks setter and blogger
47 minutes. STOW now being shown as correct on the Club site. A real vocab. builder with SUSTAINER as a ‘Rocket’, ENTRECHAT and my LOI BARYSPHERE all new and ALTARPIECE and AWAKE unparsed. Favourites were ASTRADDLE and QUARTER. Hard but not too bad for a Friday.
DNF, and cheated big time. NHO 21a Barisphere and it not in Cheating Machine, so came here for that, now added. Quite a few unparsed, 5d Recursive, 28a Entrechat for instance. Several just had to be such as 25a Formula, 14a Tween, but I disliked them so much I nearly didn’t put them in.
Oh well, another tricky Friday.
DNF. Stomped off in a sulk. Submitted off leaderboard with 5 incomplete It did accept STOW though so thats obviously been fixed now.
Another RECURRENT because to me RECURSIVE means self-referencing or defined in terms of itself.
I have seen the word ‘Retorsive’ with the meaning of ‘self-referencing or defined in terms of itself’ (nice definition BTW). Retorsive logic – My example: why is knowledge good? Because you are asking the question. Retorsive logic.
I don’t understand the fuss about STOW. The clue is plain enough in my (Scottish) print edition: “Store Tesco’s opening in Berkshire perhaps.” Was there a typo in the on-line version?
The clue was correct online but the revealed answer was STEW, so STOW counted as an error.
I’m quite pleased with my 28.39 for this one, now thankfully marked Orl Korrect. Of course had no idea what pram was doing in 15d, but coincidentally it answers a query I had on a recent TLS clue: “Greek king’s boat or other vehicle carrying one from Rome (5)”. I still query the Greek bit. Like others, I took an age to realise that RECURSIVE was an anagram, and I wrote it and RECURRENT in several times before forehead slapping time. Much the same applies to WRIT LARGE. SUSTAINER as a rocket engine was new to me, doubted not least because rocket engines tend to be of limited duration.
I lost time expecting to have J and X to complete the quartet.
And on a last note (sic) it was good to see SHARP in to continue yesterday’s controversy. With that still in mind, I cheerfully interpreted “pitched too high” as steep, precipitous, so SHARP was obvious.
Yes Priam was Trojan afaik…
What a challenge! Finally submitted via the leaderboard after 93 minutes after twigging ALTARPIECE. My penultimate BARYSPHERE also took an age, but then so did the whole thing.
Let the SNITCH take the hindmost!
39:00
Enhjoyed this a lot although admittedly flying blind for quite a lot of the time – pram? suer? piu?
A proper Friday puzzle.
Thanks to the setter and to William for the very helpful blog.
DNF. Tried batysphere. NHO barysphere, so it was all I could come up with. Got everything else. Yes, it’s stow, of course. Pram and sustainer were also new to me. I can’t see why wide awake is clued as being hyphenated. It’s only hyphenated when used as an attributive adjective. This put me off entering the correct answer for a long time.
Thanks, w.
The hyphenated form is fine, as the word ‘alert’ is, as it were, disembodied in Crosswordland, and therefore may be interpreted (by the setter and then us) as having been given an attributive function. Hope that makes sense.
The fact that ‘wife’ is part of the wordplay is entirely irrelevant.
Too hard for me. Gave up at 45 mins missing half the answers. Glad I did. NHO ENTRECHAT and BARYSPHERE and wouldn’t have got the others(pram wake? lum? soreness=regret?). Disturbed to find that even my confident STOW wasn’t right, apparently.
There might have been a Scot named Batty, so guessed there existed an alternative spelling of bathyscape. Otherwise complete (with STOW), but a couple unparsed.
Difficult.
Got some of the tricky stuff, but by no means all. BARYSPHERE, ALTARPIECE, RECURSIVE, ASTRADDLE were all too rich for my blood.
It’s been a tricky week all round.
DNF
26:08
Done later in the morning so STOW has been “marked” as correct.
Personal NITCH of 190 which is one of my 10 highest since I started keeping tabs 4 years ago.
ALTARPIECE and BARYSPHERE held me up at the end. For the latter I thought of the unrelated BATHYSPHERE which got me thinking it might begin with B and that led me to BARRIE / BARY although I don’t know the word.
Of course this was quite a struggle. I made very slow but steady progress but eventually used aids to at least finish (63 minutes). It seemed there were some real stretches here: suer = charger, steps required = FORMULA, the gratuitously unnecessary parking in 27ac (‘with’ would do, or possibly even ‘bachelor’s’), RECURSIVE = returning (not according to Chambers, apparently), ‘preaching about it’ as a homophone indicator. And I’d never heard of a sustainer or collard and was pretty vague about several others (pedal spring = ENTRECHAT, but I suppose it’s peedle rather than peddal; BARYSPHERE). But some great clues as well.
Thanks for the peedle thing. The correct parsing had gone right over my head.
Perhaps William could make the adjectival use of ‘pedal’ explicit.
Please can you explain the significance of Peedle? I am assuming that pedal spring simply means springing from the foot rather than a specific ballet move? Thanks.
Yes, sorry, “peedle” is a phonetic way of representing adjectival “pedal” as opposed to nominal “peddle”, AKA “pedal!”
While I was doing the crossword, I dumbly thought that an ENTRECHAT was a type of spring found on a bicycle!
Wil’s “peedle” put me right.
Now I have it. Many thanks.
I remembered ‘recursive’ and ‘recursion’ from maths. It is about predicting a number from a series of numbers: the example I found on-line was about a flight of stairs. If you start on step 1 and energetically leap up two steps at a time you quite quickly get to step 3, and then step 5, and so on, the point being that you need to know the starting point and an increment. If I knew how to do it I would put a Wikipedia link here as it seems to have attracted a lot of comment. Used in computing I understand.
I belatedly realised that if you went upstairs like this it would be ‘pedal springing’…!
Too clever, too hard, too far above my pay grade. At the hour I surrendered, with TWEEN, BARYSPHERE and ALTARPIECE unsolved. A lot of very crafty clueing, and while I might say it was too crafty those who finished would say it was tough but fair. Even so there are some that I still can’t figure out. Thank you William, tough day to blog.
From A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall:
I saw a black branch with blood that kept dripping
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleeding
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and SHARP swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard…
Out of my depth on this one, and retired hurt after an hour with about 60% complete. Having run through the answers I’m glad I stopped when I did, as I’m sure I wouldn’t have completed.
41m – suitably stinky for Friday, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, and perhaps more than others. No problem with STOW (solving on paper) or BARYSPHERE though the cleverly misleading ALTARPIECE had me scratching my head until the last.
Could only finish by using aids and only fully parsed by reading this blog. COD creator
Thanks as always
I forgot to mention I knew COLLARD greens from the excellent Hidden Figures, served in a Church picnic. Strange how some things stick!
37:45. The hardest I can remember, and I got completely stuck for nearly 20 minutes with 4 or 5 to go but was determined to grind it out.
A mixture of the delightfully creative (pedal spring!) and the infuriatingly abstruse.
15:37. Solved in the afternoon so missed the STOW incident. BARYSPHERE dredged up from somewhere near it. A tough Friday puzzle.
Bah humbug, not even close. Congrats to anyone who managed to finish this devil. I shall keep my comments to myself for fear of being arrested or, worse still, chucked off this site.
Thanks William for the hard graft.
DNF, defeated by the unknown BARYSPHERE (I put ‘dalysphere’, hoping there might be a renowned author from north of the border called Daly).
– Didn’t know that a SUSTAINER is a rocket engine.
– Needed the wordplay for the unknown COLLARD
– Worked out ENTRECHAT without knowing what it was
– Took a very long time to get WIDE-AWAKE, ALTARPIECE and WRIT LARGE – the clue for the latter in particular sent me barking up multiple wrong trees
– Didn’t parse TANTRUM as I missed the ‘bottle’ containment indicator.
Very tough. Thanks William and setter.
COD Plaid Cymru
Pleased to have done this in the afternoon as I would have been very annoyed to get pulled up on stow after that struggle. Pleased to finish at all with multiple NHOs – sustainer, entrechat, barysphere, piu.
Completed in 49:50. COD to the devious altarpiece (LOI). The altarpiece barysphere crossing was a bugger.
Thx William and setter.
PS – surely more people have heard of Ed Sheeran than ballet steps, musical scoring instructions and geological layers or is that just the circles I move in😊
48.02 after a dictionary check for BARYSPHERE and COLLARD, with a couple half-parsed.
Well, nowhere near close. And I had STOW as well. Some fiendish, but very elegant devices, but so hard.
I recommend today’s QC for some gentle therapy.
Tried it this morning (while the error was still unfixed) and gave up after 60′ with 5 unfilled, plus FORTUNA wrong for FORMULA. Much later came to see the SNITCH at 165 and Simon’s intro – never thought I’d be happy to have got to within 6 answers of finishing after an hour and then give up, but there you go!
Also played with both RECURRING and RECURRENT but didn’t think of RECURSIVE.
It seems I didn’t find this as hard as some others. Really enjoyed it—and am glad I never submit my answers!
That was hard but I got there without aids. I had a couple of clues left before I gave up and went to bed (SUSTAINER and SURFACE) and immediately solved the next morning. So STOW was fixed by the time I submitted. NHO BARYSPHERE but somehow I managed to think of Peter Pan Barrie. I had no idea about pram but I assumed it must be a boat of some sort. Some very convoluted wordplay and beautiful surface readings.
38:34
Hard to finish off with some wilful obscurities that were difficult to tease out. Mainly in the SE corner with both ASTRADDLE and RECURSIVE tricky on top. Even more difficult as several crossed each other. STOW problem resolved by the time I’d finished.
Thanks William for the Herculean effort
I solved this on paper while travelling. Glad I didn’t see the SNITCH until I’d finished. That would have put my off attempting it. COD Barysphere. NHO pram.
Just under an hour for this monster. Not seen ‘set’ as an anagram indicator before, so not surprised I missed the anagram. Also would have helped to have seen the RECURSIVE anagram as well. Not often I miss 2 anagrams,
Horrendous!
DNF
Got it as soon as I came to the blog for 1a, but 2, 5 and 10 defeated me without the NHO rocket engine. Scottish chimneys belong in Mephisto/Listener land IMHO, where reference is not frowned upon. At least I gave up before Keriothe had finished, which is a first.
Loved COD ENTRECHAT.
Thanks all.