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). | |
About 55 minutes, but, of course, the clock didn’t stop because ‘stow’ was shown as an error. I’ve just clicked the reveal grid button and it is still showing a pink square for the vowel. Badly done Times website, badly done.
71:13. What a tough puzzle – I am quite pleased with the time though! it was weird about the typo – I looked first thing and there were some well known solvers getting it wrong. as someone remarked earlier – it’s good to show up the neutrinos…
great puzzle – it’s been quite a tough week all said and done!
After one hour and a half, I was stuck with C_L_A_D and, at that point, resorted to aids for the NHO Collard. Frustrating. Not keen on Shred of evidence= e (I was convinced DNA would be in there somewhere). I am just annoyed with myself, really.
Apart from that, great puzzle.
Excellent puzzle. As the masses, I struggled w sustainer, altarpiece, recursive and writ large but isn’t that the point?? Pulling solutions out of the brain like Dumbledore using his wand to pull a memory for the pensieve, I love this! Thx Cx
Did this in two tranches so can’t give a time. But it was quite a long time. Very tough indeed – despaired at one point – but parsed ok although hadn’t heard of pram in this context. I always do it on paper so at least the misleading ‘stew’ didn’t arise for me!
No stewing here because I also still do the analogue crossword but ultimately defeated by ASTRADDLE and I could only guess that PIU was a musical term. I still can’t see how STILL (an adjective in the peaceful sense) and PEACE (a mass noun in the sense of stillness) can ever be synonyms but otherwise no grumbles. Thanks for the blog!
‘Still’ as a noun can mean quiet or calm (as nouns) and so can ‘peace’ (have just consulted Chambers!), so I suppose they are sort of synonyms, albeit arguably at one remove.
I had Stow as well . Berkshire is clearly a pig reference.. sew makes no sense
Glad to see that everyone found this hard, so my time of 1 hour 3 minutes is not too bad. And I did have everything right, despite not knowing BARYSPHERE (although that seemed, from vague memories, to be the most likely choice) and ENTRECHAT . Some really excellent clues in this and I did not find it frustrating. After all, it’s Friday. “Greens arrested without a shred of evidence” is a superb surface reading, even if the wordplay is not tricky. I also liked W IDEA WAKE.
I found this close to impenetrable in places but persevered for 55 minutes or so before using aids for OUZO (should have got that one) and to confirm my unparsed RECURSIVE. Got to SUSTAINER by assuming STAIN was contained by the unknown rocket engine SUER (a modified SCUD perhaps) and the definition was charger, something that sustains batteries! That allowed me to get LOI, COLLARD. I’d managed to parse everything else apart from not quite understanding WIDE AWAKE (NHO pram=barge) and WRIT LARGE. I submitted off leaderboard as I’d used aids, but then found to my chagrin that DAVYSPHERE was wrong. Like Amoeba I’d assumed it was to do with Davy Jones Locker, and there is an Elspeth Davie who was a Scottish writer. In a puzzle full of obscurities, what’s one more? STOW had been fixed by the time I did the puzzle, so at least that one didn’t raise my blood pressure! 56:57 WOE. Can do without this level of wilful obscurity. SET to indicate an anagram, forsooth! Thanks William. A valiant effort.
71:13. not sure why it’s not recording properly? didn’t seem to yesterday either. sorry not a proper comment this is more of a testing testing 1.2.3…
71:13 … testing testing 1.2.3.. wondering why this hasn’t been recording for me but possibly wasn’t logged in properly. . great puzzle, thanks both!
Are you sorted now? It occurs to me – and this may not be anything to do with it – that you might not be seeing your own comments because they are on page 2. Posts up to about 6:00 pm are on page 1; later comments on page 2
Kept thinking I would come back and finish this one, but no. About half a dozen left after more than an hour. After reading the blog I thought there were a couple I might have got on a better day but I would never have finished it.
An interesting experience though. Many thanks for the blog – a splendid achievement – and thanks too to the setter
47.10 in two goes. Felt like it should have been an easier solve but I kept getting stuck, especially in the bottom half.
Astraddle finally gave me hope and I saw the anagram for recursive. COD definitely Barysphere.
Agree with others about stow, stew makes no sense at all.
Didn’t have time today (yesterday now) to have a stab at this and just came here to see the clues and solutions.
I can safely say that I wouldn’t have completed it anyway – in fact I would probably have got cross and thrown it down in a huff.
Very tough, even for a Friday. Bad decision by me to take it to bed as a nightcap, as I still had half of it to complete by the time I fell asleep. I had to invoke the aid of Mrs U for SUSTAINER and COLLARD. Never been that keen on puzzles where you spend more time on construing the parsing than on deciding the answers.
FOI – LIMBO
LOI – ASTRADDLE
COD – ALTARPIECE
Thanks to william and other contributors.
Generally horrible and I couldn’t complete it.
What is the problem with STOW? To STOW away is to store something and is made up of the first letter in Tesco inserted into the SOW of a BERKSHIRE pig. Admittedly the only way I got there was by anticipating the setters’ penchant for incorporating a geographic name which is also a breed of some farm animal or other.
I’m not sure why you ask about STOW as nobody here has suggested it’s incorrect, and the parsing you have suggested has been put forward by several others and accepted by all. The Times website had the answer as STEW early in the day – obviously an error – but they have since corrected it.
1A What US spelling? It’s not “discolouration”!
52’20” in three goes over several days. Tough.
Ouch! Yes, a monster all right. I filled in the ones I could reasonably parse ( despite not knowing the words), but SUSTAINER was beyond me (NHO), so was RECURSIVE and ENTRECHAT (pedal spring?). I also had CYMU CYPRU for too long . Glad to have remembered the auld Scottish farewell :”Lang Mae yer Lum Reek!” -which of course means “long May your chimney smoke”🥴 But apart from that I was pretty clueless on the whole, except that I did manage to think that a pram must be some kind of boat with a wide berth (close enough). Setter: please come back on a Friday far, far away.