Time: 62:15
Music: Bartok, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Reiner/CSO
This puzzle had one brilliant clue after another. Unfortunately, that does not make for easy solving, and I was not really at my best. The mechanical methods you can use to solve an easy Quickie have to go out the window here.
At the end, I was left with the crossing of resent and shouty, which used up the final 25 minutes. I suspected how resent worked, and tried putting an N in various places and trawling the alphabet until I got it. Then what would fit for my LOI? Snorty and snooty see like possible candidates, but they seem too mild for the literal. It certainly would have been a lot easier to decide if I had seen the cryptic while solving.
Well, I certainly hope everyone did better than I.
Across | |
1 | Poor, cutting short stag party (4,2) |
HARD UP – HAR[t] + D.U.P. | |
5 | Judges restricted choice of dessert? (8) |
JUSTICES – JUST ICES. Brilliant. | |
9 | Type of solid fish almost, not about to be caught (8) |
PLATONIC – PLA(NOT backwards)IC[e]. A tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, or icosahedron – if you didn’t know that, you’ll have to use the cryptic. | |
10 | Poorly dressed apparently in old kingdom (6) |
ARAGON – A RAG ON. | |
11 | Conspiracy of silence breaks at Rome (6) |
OMERTA – Anagram of AT ROME. | |
12 | Person taking in hospital bible, showing proper demeanour (8) |
BEHAVING – BE(H, A.V.)ING. | |
14 | Street musician after endless wild party more annoyed to secure no date (5,7) |
ORGAN GRINDER – ORG[y] ANGRI(ND)ER. | |
17 | Organise meat to be cooked for unconventional household (6,1,5) |
MENAGE A TROIS – Anagram of ORGANISE MEAT. A write-in from the literal and enumeration, one of the few kind clues. | |
20 | A boy always safe with cooking equipment (5,3) |
PETER PAN – PETER + PAN. Here in the CT, it’s an long-distance bus company, so the idea was fresh in my mind from my Friday night drive home behind a bus that did not want me to pass it. | |
22 | Joint freer after manipulation, if energy put in (6) |
REEFER – Anagram of FREER + E, another easy one. | |
23 | Agency arresting scoundrel, a chirpy type (6) |
CICADA – CI(CAD)A. | |
25 | Radio is crook (8) |
RECEIVER – Double definition. | |
26 | Choice includes a base metal or precious one (8) |
PLATINUM – PL(A TIN)UM. | |
27 | Nervous, holding forth in loud, aggressive manner (6) |
SHOUTY – SH(OUT)Y. I just could not see the cryptic as I solved, and put this in very reluctantly as a cryptic definition. I would say shy is a bit of a stretch for nervous. |
Down | |
2 | Given assurance, from public library order in a book (6) |
APLOMB – A(P.L. + O.M)B. A clever but difficult clue until you get some crossers. | |
3 | Decline appointment, keeping outside but dropping by (11) |
DETERIORATE – D(E[x]TERIOR)ATE, probably a biff for most solvers. | |
4 | Confine confusion in magic diagram (9) |
PENTANGLE – PEN + TANGLE. | |
5 | Revolutionary task acquiring current home (7) |
JACOBIN – J(A/C)OB + IN. | |
6 | Secret police having initially hunted for one secret store (5) |
STASH – STAS(-i,+H[unted]). | |
7 | Woman, Verdi heroine who loses her head (3) |
IDA – [a]IDA – better know your Verdi operas! | |
8 | Proclaimed aim to cuddle cat (8) |
ENOUNCED – EN(OUNCE)D. | |
13 | Sadly unloved, me: is no one ever to be in my arms? (5,2,4) |
VENUS DE MILO – Anagram of UNLOVED, ME: IS. The enumeration should be helpful. | |
15 | With no end of space, looks for oil that may be on one’s estates (4,5) |
ROOF RACKS – ROO[m] + FRACKS. As an experienced solver, I just knew estates were going to turn out to be cars. | |
16 | Corps put up for such corrective treatment (8) |
REMEDIAL – R.E.M.E. + LAID upside-down. | |
18 | Puzzle as small irritant’s overthrown sheep (7) |
TANGRAM – GNAT upside-down + RAM. To be solved at the beach! | |
19 | Object to name having to be changed around (6) |
RESENT – RESE(N)T. The only weak clue; reset does not mean to be changed. The editor should have taken out the ‘to be’, IMO. | |
21 | Twist flipped over new cocktail ingredient (5) |
PRAWN – WARP upside-down + N. | |
24 | Back in first part of post-lunch period (3) |
AFT – AFT[ernoon]. |
Yes, a meaty crossword that had me stumped in parts. I knew 27a SHOUTY had to be as I had shy for nervous but couldn’t parse ‘out’ for forth. PETER PAN for ‘a boy always’ was very clever. RECEIVER for radio and crook, brilliant. JACOBIN was a fail even though I could see what was going on with job I just couldn’t see it. ROOF RACKS, brilliant again for the misdirection of estates. VENUS DE MILO another stand out. NHO ENOUNCED. Too many great clues to mention but COD to DETERIORATE.
Thanks V and setter.
Gave up after an hour, only just half completed.
Should I stop wasting £2.80 or could Crosswords be graded like Sudoko?
Got it after about 2 hours. The NE corner took nearly half the time. It kept me looking at other clues to check for correctness. For some reason I accidentally ended OMERTA with an O causing major problems until corrected. LOI ENOUNCED.
Thanks Vinyll
Oh, gee, I found this not very difficult. Of course, I was in no hurry, as I don’t keep track of my time, but there was nothing that hung me up long. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting, though!
The second definition of RESET in Merriam-Webster is “to change the reading of often to zero,” whereas Collins has “to restore (a gauge, dial, etc) to zero.” Both my eyebrows, FWIW, remained level. But Vinyl is right: “to be” is unnecessary—I missed that nuance on my first read. (RESET can mean “having been changed,” however.) Certainly, the Obama administration’s 2009 “Russian reset” was meant to signal change. The “Reset” button with which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was, alas, itself in need of change, as the Cyrillic letters on it actually said “Overload.”
I was pleased to be all green since I had a couple of clues I was not sure about. My last two where SHOUTY and RESENT, like others I’m sure. I was pretty sure SHOUTY was right although SHY for nervous and OUT for forth both seemed a stretch, as was RESET for change. I think the definition at VENUS DE MILO is “no one ever to be in my arms” since she has none. Tough for a Monday.
At 49 minutes I found this tricky but not particularly hard. Most of my difficulties were concentrated in the NW and SE segments.
I was unaware of the required meaning of PLATONIC . RESENT and SHOUTY came very late to the party. TANGRAM seemed unfamiliar but it has come up a few times before in the regular puzzles. I’m not sure I would have seen it in its Jumbo appearances.
The definition of PETER PAN was clever and very well disguised.
I’m having a problem seeing ‘shy / nervous’ as a stretch (as mentioned by two people). It’s in my thesaurus and the Chamber’s crossword dictionary. Collins online mentions ‘nervous’ twice in its Cobuild entry for ‘shy’ and in its English definition of ‘shy’ it has ‘timid’, ‘wary’ and ‘easily frightened’, any of which can easily stand for ‘nervous’.
DNF
Gave up on, yes, RESENT & SHOUTY. I don’t see resent (a feeling)=object to (a [verbal] action). And I never would have come up with ‘shouty’; I would have denied that it exists before I looked it up. So I’m not too bothered by my DNF. I liked ‘a boy always’; I’m glad I’d learned ‘peter’ here recently. It was nice to see someone other than Che clued by ‘revolutionary’.
I don’t think a smidge under 40 mins was too bad for this one, with several question marks now explained (thanks V!)
I’m glad I saw SHOUTY in the end, as I was having no luck for the _E_E__ crosser until the T showed up and even then it took a good few minutes and various alphabet runs.
I made a set of TANGRAM pieces in CDT at school, so that brought back some memories.
My thanks to our esteemed blogger for the cryptic element of 1A, which was the only thing I failed to see in 37 minutes.
Thanks too to the setter for an interesting challenge, which, it appears, had many of us pausing for breath in the SE corner.
Merry Christmas everyone.
39 minutes. I thought I would be the only one to be held up by RESENT but obviously not. Still, I did get SHOUTY earlier on so had that final T which didn’t help as much as it should have. Doing the alphabet trawls just showed how many possibilities there are for the dreaded _E_E_T combination and being the only unsolved clue didn’t help.
I liked the defs for PETER PAN and VENUS DE MILO. Despite having made cardboard models of them for Year 7 maths, I’d forgotten (if I ever knew) the term PLATONIC solids.
18.45
I’ll join those objecting to RESENT: neither part of the clue really works.
On the other hand, I liked JUSTICES, PLATONIC, ORGAN GRINDER and ROOF RACKS.
52 minutes.An excellent puzzle apart perhaps from RESENT which was more than a bit of a stretch. LOI was the unknown TANGRAM. COD to ROOF RACKS. Thank you V and setter. I’ve certainly heard SHOUTY applied to noisy vocalists.
About 25 minutes.
– Wasn’t 100% sure about APLOMB at first, despite having parsed it, until I remembered that the definition doesn’t always have to be at the very beginning or end of the clue
– For 8d, I went through various words featuring ‘ounce’ – announced, pronounced, denounced – before realising that it had to be ENOUNCED, which I can’t recall seeing before
– Needed all the checkers to get ROOF RACKS
– NHO TANGRAM but it sounded plausible
– Had the same MER over RESENT as others, and I also held myself up by assuming the answer would be an anagram of ‘to name’ until RECEIVER prompted a rethink
Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Peter Pan
LOI + COD Roof racks
DNF. I actually found this pretty easy until the end. After 5 minutes trying and failing to think of a word meaning ‘to be changed’ that would fit either _E_ET or _EE_T I gave up. I still can’t think of one.
I found this straightforward and a bit surprised at some of the other comments. Shy=nervous seems ok to me and reset=change does too. Don’t film/pop stars have an “image reset” etc etc?
As did our government two weeks ago, according to them.
Agreed, reset = “change” is fine, as is reset = “changed”; but reset is a transitive verb and so reset = “to be changed” is not fine. I agree with vinyl, take the superfluous “to be” out and the clue works; in its current form it doesn’t quite work and that is why it held so many people up.
I hold my hands up to being a linguistic/grammatical pedant.
Re trans./ intrans. How about “If no motion is detected for 30 minutes, the meter will reset.”
One error in just under 20 mins. I lazily plumped for AVALON even though it made no sense. Silly when I’d worked hard to get the rest right.
Me too!
😀
I very nearly did that too. Avalon was the first thing I thought of (I blame Roxy Music), but I did stop to parse it before I wrote it in and couldn’t see how it worked; then Aragon popped into my head and very obviously did work, so in it went.
Ok interesting, when many of the experts found this hard but I finished in just under 23 minutes, which by my standards is a good time. The only clue that I remember holding me up was the „public library order“ which I thought would be „sh“ and was actually „plom“. I enjoyed this puzzle. LOI ARAGON, ha ha.
Thanks setter and blogger
47 mins held up by poor vocab. NHO JACOBIN, ENOUNCE, TANGRAM.
Had MOERTA for a while before trying a different combi and OMERTA rang a bell.
Otherwise most enjoyably tough. I enjoy the puns like JUSTICES and several multi-word phrase answers which are always a way in on a tricky day.
FOI IDA
LOI APLOMB unparsed
COD PRAWN which tickled me for some reason
14.14, and pleased to be all green in quite a challenging, but entertaining, puzzle. I agree with JerryW about ‘shy’ and ‘reset’ being fine, although on another day RESENT could have easily taken me much longer/gone in unparsed. And I agree ‘to be’ is a bit out of place.
Thanks both.
Came here to say I struggled, for a Monday – so, pleasantly surprised, not that it’s healthy to compare oneself with others.
Memory of ‘As pants the hart for cooling streams’ helped (took me decades to understand this); as did memory of ‘Take Three Girls’, theme by PENTANGLE.
A tetrahedron and an octahedron were walking down the road holding hands. ‘Are you an item?’, someone asked. ‘No, we’re just….’.
COD to PETER PAN. Inevitably, RESENT / SHOUTY LOsI, although I use the word SHOUTY quite a lot, when I RESENT the loudest voices getting their way.
So, 14’14” today.
Thanks vinyl and setter.
Perhaps my standards of precision are becoming too low, because I didn’t have the qualms that many seem to have had over this. Reset = changed seemed OK, but now I look at it reset is more of an equivalent to ‘changed’ than to ‘to be changed’. It looked as if both 17ac and 13dn were going to be French expressions, which they just were. My LOI was DETERIORATE, which I entered without understanding, intending to parse it, but the success thing flashed up. However, I did parse it soon afterwards, very good. 43 minutes.
I have to agree that the “To be” is superfluous in that clue.. but I don’t like to encourage the pedants so I didn’t mention it 🙂
(And for the avoidance of doubt, I confess that I am (we are?) one sometimes .. all part of the fun, innit?)
Very enjoyable, with a nice mix of difficulty. I don’t time myself, but it took somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes, at least 10 of which at the end were spent puzzling over 19 down, RESENT. I agree with vinyl, the clue doesn’t work unless you take out “to be”. Also agree with him about SHOUTY, that “nervous” is a bit of a stretch as a synonym for shy; I biffed it really from the ‘S’ and ‘O’ checkers that I had and the “in loud, aggressive manner” definition, but, once biffed, I was happy that it parsed – unlike RESENT…
Those minor gripes aside, this was fun, so thanks to the setter and to Vinyl
69:44
Not an average Monday.
Thanks, v.
Hard going with RESENT my LOI too. Lots of great clues here, Peter Pan, justices being just a couple. Enjoyed it. Thanks to the setter and blogger.
No MERs re the SE corner, but then I’m just the Organ Grinder’s monkey….
I have actually seen an organ grinder, complete with monkey, in Thirsk. Barrel Organ Phil, he was called.
It seemed to me that the monkey was the star
33:30 – Glad I wasn’t alone in finding this tough, in spite of the rewards on the way. LOI – by a lengthy margin – was RESENT, which I can see the objections to but was too relieved to overthink once the penny clunked home.
After a mighty struggle I managed to get SHOUTY, RESENT and LOI, RECEIVER, only to find that my biffed, unparsed AVALON was wrong. Drat! 35;40 WOE. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
On edit: was anyone else distracted by ROOD RILLS flowing through their estate?
Yes, ‘rood rills’ was my first thought too before I eventually thought of the right answer.
Too many crossers to be anything other than roof racks, but certainly a MER at FRACKS for “looks for oil”. Fracking is long after they have found it, when they’re trying to get it out of the ground.
27.20 in the end but I almost got a headache trying to work the last few out. Shouty and resent were excellent, enounced was an unfamiliar word but I loved justices and guessed platonic- which was beautifully formed.
Good puzzle and much enjoyed.
I had to double-check the day – I’m on vacation at the moment and thought it was a Friday. Came nowhere close to finishing in the 50 minutes or so between dinner and slumber-time, and, because of the vacation mood, I really don’t care. Well done to all who made it to the finish: having the benefit of the blog, I admit it was really a fine puzzle, so thanks to the setter as well. In fact, thanks to all the setters, to our super team of bright-sparks for their ever-entertaining blogs, to all the contributors who make this an enjoyable and polite corner of the web and to the site designers and managers who make it all possible. I’m unlikely to turn up now until after Christmas, so, to all who celebrate it and to those who don’t, merry Christmas, and I’ll see you on the other side.
Hear, hear.
About 20+ mins. Receiver and resent took at least 10 mins of that. NHO ENOUNCE, but what else could it be. COD ROOF RACKS.
DNF. But less of a disaster for me than today’s QC.
What I did do I enjoyed.
Thanks for blog
26:42
Very enjoyable I thought, although I confess L2I HARD UP and RESENT went in unparsed.
Thanks all.
Some really good clues, VENUS DE MILO, PETER PAN and JUSTICES my particular favourites. Managed to get round in a shade under 17 minutes. Thanks V and setter.
8:03. Slightly trickier than usual for a Monday but I didn’t think anything of it until I saw the comments here. SHOUTY and RESENT went straight in. I’ll look forward to struggling tomorrow with everyone else saying it’s a doddle…
Tough, with about half an hour each on RESENT and SHOUTY.
After last week’s DNFs, I was worried that the trend would continue, but I slowly reeled it in, admiring the setter’s handiwork as I went.
An enjoyable start to the Christmas week.
Many thanks to blogger and setter.
When what first looked to be the chestnut of all chestnuts – trifles at 5a (tries = judges, desserts) – didn’t parse and didn’t fit the letter count, I realized we were going to be in for more than the just usual Monday fun. And we were. Thx setter, Ed, and vinyl
33’00”
Good early pace, but all out closing stages.
A rather old school feel to this, which I liked a lot. All parsed and no unknowns, thanks to a schoolboy pastime of constructing platonic solids, usually as the insides of their spiky regular cousins.
Growing up in rural Herefordshire, a prawn cocktail was the only one available, apart from a G&T, at the nearest local, The White Hart, which also helped.
All very elegant and challenging; thank you setter and Vinyl.
Hard but enjoyable for me. Took ages to see omerta as I have before today associate that with somewhere south of Rome
37 mins
Stared at AVALON for ages before deciding I didn’t like it then a trawl gave me ARAGON. Phew!
My clock, on my finishing correctly, said 59:25, and of course like everyone else I RESENT “SHOUTY”, but I did get them right in the end. RECEIVER took me incredibly long, too. I liked PETER PAN, safe with kitchen equipment, and ROOF RACKS, But REEFER is really very dated, isn’t it? Not a very Mondayish puzzle, but most of it was fun (am I being a curate?).
A late solve for us but we were clearly on the wavelength here as our 26:27, relative to the Snitch, is well ahead of our curve. FOI HARD UP. LOI a biffed ROOF RACKS. Thanks to all.
35:33, and very pleased to finish with a correct set of answers. ABLOMB was my LOI.
NHO ENOUNCED, but the appearance of our old friend the ounce made that one gettable.
COD to PETER PAN.
Thanks vinyl and setter
Too many difficulties here with cleverly hidden definitions for me to thoroughly enjoy it, but what I managed without cheating I did enjoy. Could not see why HARD UP was correct, but had to be; NHO PLATONIC solids, nor ENOUNCES as a word, but so many LOLs that all was forgiven – JUSTICES, PETER PAN, ROOF RACKS, etc. I have to accept SHOUTY as a description, as it perfectly describes one of our Village residents here. COD REEFER for memories of happy days.