Time taken: 14:19.
I enjoyed this, but it was a struggle! There’s a lot of arcane knowledge here, Orwell-derived terms, an area of London I only remember from a cheesy movie, music, flowers and a character from Fawlty Towers!
On the other hand, this is my first completion this week, having managed to bung in silly typos on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so I’m relieved to see the all-green grid.
How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Will’s gift follows Lorraine’s from official body (8) |
| DELEGACY – LEGACY(what you might get from a will) after DE(“from” in French) | |
| 5 | FC Espanyol’s wingers or chap from Barcelona? (6) |
| MANUEL – MAN U(FC, football club), then the external letters in EspanyoL. Que? | |
| 9 | I appreciate that golf game (3) |
| TAG – TA(I appreciate that), G(golf) | |
| 10 | Problem for schools is forgiven, oddly? Hard to stop it (11) |
| OVERFISHING – anagram of IS,FORGIVEN containing H(hard) | |
| 12 | Upfront in struggling with pros and cons here (4,6) |
| OPEN PRISON – OPEN(upfront), then an anagram of IN and PROS | |
| 13 | A number in West Side Story save its opening song (4) |
| ARIA – The number in West Side Story is MARIA, remove the first letter | |
| 15 | Area with great resources but not one sign of McDonald’s (6) |
| ARCHES – A(area) and RICHES(great resources) minus I(one) | |
| 16 | Playmaker during sports day showed contempt (7) |
| PSHAWED – George Bernard SHAW(playmaker) inside PE(sports), D(day) | |
| 18 | Knight shot on horse in Italian battle (7) |
| MARENGO – N(knight in chess), GO(shot) after MARE(horse) | |
| 20 | Misfortunes always in poetry? Too right! (3,3) |
| ILL SAY – ILLS(misfortunes) and AY(always in poetry) | |
| 23 | Number ones from Simple Minds, say, after Rolling Stones (4) |
| GEMS – first letters in Simple, Minds and EG(say) all reversed | |
| 24 | Kid’s caught with booze in part of music practice (5,5) |
| MINOR SCALE – MINOR’S(kid’s), C(caught) and ALE(booze) | |
| 26 | Capital area healthy nurses can gate-crash on vacation (7,4) |
| NOTTING HILL – NOT ILL(healthy) containing TIN(can) and the external letters of Gate-crasH | |
| 27 | India isn’t seen in state that surprises me (3) |
| OHO – remove I(india) from the state of OHIO | |
| 28 | Cutting funding from the west, I see Liberal making bloomer (6) |
| DAHLIA – AID(funding) reversed containing AH(I see), L(liberal) | |
| 29 | Gave off energy, keeping Anne’s successor in pain (8) |
| AGGRIEVE – anagram of GAVE, then E(energy) containing GRI(George Rex Imperator – King George I, successor to Queen Anne). Got this from the definition and worked out the wordplay for the blog. There’s comments that this should be GR and I separately, apologies to my long gone namesake king. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Unwanted, half-hearted, pitiable Edward’s upset (2,4) |
| DE TROP – POOR(pitiable) missing one of the middle letters, and TED(Edward) all reversed | |
| 2 | Little drained river filled by good hose? (7) |
| LEGWEAR – the exterior letters of LittlE, and WEAR(river) containing G(good) | |
| 3 | Shocking pink ought to get blocked by Head of Rugby making uniform decisions (10) |
| GROUPTHINK – anagram of PINK, OUGHT containing the first letter in Rugby | |
| 4 | Councillor corrects officer, with call for analysis before making advance (6,7) |
| CREDIT SCORING – CR(councillor), EDITS(corrects), CO(officer) and RING(call) | |
| 6 | Slip out of large alcove (4) |
| APSE – LAPSE(slip) minus L(large) | |
| 7 | Unusually long feature film’s rating dispute entertaining writer? (7) |
| UNIBROW – U(film’s rating), and ROW(dispute) containing NIB(writer) | |
| 8 | People kept inside houses pull up those making slow progress (8) |
| LAGGARDS – LAGS(people kept inside) containing DRAG(pull) reversed | |
| 11 | Complaint affecting consumer goods — opinion broadcast loudly at first (4,9) |
| FOOD POISONING – anagram of GOODS,OPINION after F(loudly) | |
| 14 | Merchant ship carrying boulders periodically (10) |
| WHOLESALER – WHALER(ship) containing alternating letters in bOuLdErS | |
| 17 | Fancied precious metal parts one dug up (8) |
| IMAGINED – AG(silver, precious metal) inside I(one), MINED(dug up) | |
| 19 | Gag about parent sporting tie lacking originality (7) |
| REMATCH – RETCH(gag) surrounding MA(parent) | |
| 21 | Allied countries in a French article in France, say (7) |
| ANATOLE – NATO(allied countries) inside A, LE(French article). Referring to the writer of Thais, ANATOLE France | |
| 22 | Favour European up to now (6) |
| BEFORE – BE FOR(favour), E(European) | |
| 25 | Note gets repeated in soprano’s part (4) |
| MIMI – MI(note) repeated. Referring to the soprano character in La Boheme | |
Got there in the end. Took way too long on GROUPTHINK to give up on my conviction that it must end -ING which made it impossible to find any reasonable way to put in the other letters among the crossers. The definition “make uniform decisions” didn’t help much (by the way, this needs underlining in the blog post). I didn’t know of ANATOLE France so I just assumed ANATOLE must be some obscure, probably ancient, name for France. I needed GROUPTHINK to get my LOI DELEGACY, not least because this is a plausible word that I don’t think I can have seen before. I liked MANUEL although the moment I saw “chap from Barcelona” he was the first person I thought of (the only other Barcelonians I know are Gaudi and Miro).
71:37 – I found that really tricky, but was able to get through it without resorting to aids which I’m happy with. I quite liked UNIBROW and PSHAWED. I only know Marengo from the Warhorses of Letters series… thanks both!
39.13 but what a great puzzle. Lots of challenges but not impenetrable. Liked Manuel- even though it should have been one of the easier clues, open prison, arches, aggrieved, credit scoring and rematch but COD was pshawed.
Thanks setter and blogger.
41.49 so hardish. Accidentally redoing yesterday’s, I persisted to see how long it would take if I was a much better solver – 7.53. Clearly I need to be a faster typist as well.
19:43, one of my faster times as of late. Getting to this puzzle late, but I’m glad I went back for it.
I love how wavelength is a thing. I could tell as I was working through the grid, wow, this is right up my alley. Wrote my college entrance essay on Anatole France, have played for many a Bohème rehearsal, not to mention West Side Story, etc etc. The ROP of DE TROP was a delicate affair, and I couldn’t parse IMAGINED. But again, if these things come to you, you pretty much know they have to be right. (If you know TROP is a French word, or even better, what it means.)
Where wavelength comes in is, if these things don’t come to you, it can be very hard to put them together. Yes, POOR is a synonym for ‘wretched’, but who’s to say how long it will take you to find it.
Thanks glh for the blog!
I looked up a couple just to get started and “off on the right foot”, and stupidly couldn’t get Miguel out of my mind for 5a ( without parsing fully, of course). But apart from these, I fancied I did ok, with DE TROP, LEGWEAR, LAGGARDS and OPEN PRISON all going in without too much head-scratching. ARIA no problem, as WSS my favourite musical; and GROUPTHINK and ARCHES derived with PDMs solely from wordplay. Also very happy to work out the sly I’LL SAY, but others like GEMS, IMAGINED and NOTTING HILL simply biffed. Vaguely heard of ANATOLE France, but had forgotten the name of Napoleon’s horse (again) . Overall, very satisfied to have had a fighting chance of completing a high-snitch-rating puzzle.