A bit of a naturalist’s puzzle, this one, good fun and nothing to scare those equines. Three hidden word answers, not the usual one, and some neat anagrams. 20 minutes.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Animals no end of a nuisance (4) |
| APES – A, PES[t] | |
| 4 | Dropping in Nana, Barrie’s first dog, for surgery (10) |
| ABANDONING – (IN NANA B DOG)*, the B from Barrie. | |
| 9 | Appears to admit verses’ decency (10) |
| SEEMLINESS – LINES (verses) inside SEEMS (appears). | |
| 10 | Border in London Fields? (4) |
| EDGE – I assume this is &lit, a cockney version of HEDGE. | |
| 11 | Beside the water, a second lizard (6) |
| MOLOCH -MO (a second), LOCH (water). It’s a rather nasty looking Australian lizard. I had to check it existed, having decided it must be so from wordplay. | |
| 12 | Puritan clubs fish (8) |
| IRONSIDE – IRONS (golf clubs), IDE a fish. | |
| 14 | Ready to tear back from office (4) |
| RIPE – ready to eat, perhaps. RIP = tear, [offic]E. | |
| 15 | Scullion cleaned out a special potty in slow motion (6,4) |
| SNAILS PACE -S[cullio]N, (A SPECIAL)*. | |
| 17 | Struggle to catch film titles, like Miss Saigon? (10) |
| VIETNAMESE – VIE = struggle, insert ET (film) NAMES (titles). | |
| 20 | Pot eventually gets everyone high (4) |
| TALL – [po]T, ALL = everyone. | |
| 21 | About to be affected by a loveless taunt that’s unbecoming (5,3) |
| INFRA DIG – IN FOR A DIG would be about the be affected by a taunt, remove the O = “loveless”. Short for infra dignitatem, Latin for below (one’s) dignity. | |
| 23 | One is set on starter of avocado in runny paste (6) |
| TAHINI – A[vocado] inside THIN = runny, add I = one. | |
| 24 | Vessel departs, in what manner? (4) |
| DHOW – D[eparts], HOW = in what manner? | |
| 25 | Substantial fare from route taken by ocean liner? (4,6) |
| MAIN COURSE – double definition, one prosaic. | |
| 26 | Flower in a hole, again at its limits like that (10) |
| AGAPANTHUS – A, GAP (hole), A[gai]N, THUS = like that. | |
| 27 | Losing head, blowing motor race (4) |
| INDY – [W]INDY. Abbr. for Indianapolis car races. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Against, say, pressure connected with job (11) |
| PREPOSITION – P for pressure, RE (connected with) POSITION = job. | |
| 3 | Dropping off three characters in succession in channel (9) |
| SOMNOLENT – SOLENT (channel between Southampton area and the Isle of Wight), insert O N M three consecutive letters of the alphabet (in reverse order, but it doesn’t say so!) EDIT I see if you start with the M not the first O they don’t need reversing. | |
| 4 | Comes down as dawn breaks (7) |
| ALIGHTS – AS with LIGHT inserted. | |
| 5 | Anglicans hire me to translate this speech (8,7) |
| AMERICAN ENGLISH – (ANGLICANS HIRE ME)*. | |
| 6 | Strip of French ground around Left Bank in Paris (7) |
| DESPOIL – DE (of, French) SOIL (ground), insert P (the left “bank” = letter, of Paris). | |
| 7 | Somewhat cylindrical little creature (5) |
| INDRI – hidden word, it’s a large lemur, I’d heard of it. | |
| 8 | Diver trapped by icebergs moving northwards (5) |
| GREBE – hidden, reversed. | |
| 13 | Part of digestive system is in fact now free of foreign bodies (11) |
| DECOLONISED – COLON IS all inside in DEED = in fact. | |
| 16 | Touch a lip to smear oil (9) |
| PATCHOULI – (TOUCH A LIP)*. That smelly hippy stuff. | |
| 18 | Sailor and cook joining employees in corporation (7) |
| ABDOMEN – AB (sailor) DO (cook) MEN (employees). Makes a change from using TUM at least. | |
| 19 | Attracts several taking part in apprenticeship (7) |
| ENTICES – another hidden word. | |
| 21 | God bringing rain, and where it may go cyclically (5) |
| INDRA – Hindu God of the weather. cycle the DRA to the front, rain goes down the drain. | |
| 22 | Areas for discussion about large section of Life on Earth (5) |
| FLORA – FORA (Latin plural of forum) has L inserted. | |
Considering there were several NHOs in the mix I think my 25.54 was due more to good luck than anything else. Thanks to Nelson for explaining EDGE and telling me what INDRI, INDRA and MOLOCH (a local lizard, apparently, new to me) were all about. Overall an enjoyable puzzle.
From You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go:
I’ll look for you in old Honolula, San Francisco, Ashtabula
You’re gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the TALL grass, in the ones I love
You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go
PS: On edit I just noticed I was first to comment here and in the QC blog. So, you know, woot!!!
18.12 WOE
Couldn’t spell PATCHOULI. Sloppy. Liked VIETNAMESE. MOLOCH last in after some head scratching. Thanks Pip
Was ok but I put COMELINESS instead of seemliness which was a distraction for a bit. Comes instead of seems worked but I guess meaning not quite right.
Fairly gentle puzzle for a Wednesday before what I assume will be a tricky Thursday. Liked ABDOMEN and DECOLONISED but didn’t understand deed/fact. Also didn’t understand the spoil part of DESPOIL so thanks for that, should have seen it. I cycled the IN in drain rather than the DRA but they both work. NHO of INFRA DIG and is it really a common Latin expression?
Thanks P.
With 3d, MNO are in order already so no reversal is needed (which anyway would be OMN).
Pleased to finish this in a decent time.
Took me almost 40′; I wasn’t very alert this morning (or any morning, for that matter). I guessed that EDGE was Cockney, but is there a London Fields in the East end? NHO the lizard, but knew the god, so no problem. DNK the flower either, or TAHINI. Finally figured out where SPOIL comes from, after submitting. No problem with SOMNOLENT as Deezzaa says; you have to use the first O for SO[mno]LENT.
Yes, there is a London Fields, Kevin and it’s in Hackney in East London. It’s also the title of a novel by Martin Amis.
I’ve lived near London all my life, studied and worked there for a while, but I never heard of London Fields.
It’s also a railway station near Hackney. I remember noticing it (having read the novel) after being diverted through it on one of many interminable journeys home from Liverpool Street…
Thanks, Martin. I Googled LF after coming here, and found nothing but references to the Amis novel (I didn’t look very hard).
51m 04s
Never mind yer daily Dylan, try a soupçon of Stanley:
‘There were one great big lion called Wallace.
His nose was all covered in scars.
He lay in a SOMNOLENT posture
With the side of ‘is face on the bars….”
Thanks, Pip.
No, I didn’t see a stick with an ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle in A Complete Unknown. Just think what damage Pete Seeger could have done with that.
Ha!!
15.39, a little slow to get started, then became quite stuck on ALIGHTS and MOLOCH at the end (there’s no ‘hore’ lizard to justify ASHORE, it turns out). Never heard of the lizard, but got there via the god once I had the H – two articles to ignore in one clue, huh.
Thanks both.
32:50
Didn’t twig how VIETNAMESE was constructed, and had to check for the existence of 26a (had entered A_A_ANTHUS with a tentative GAP in the…. er, GAP) before committing to the submit. Even saw the ‘EDGE dig at us Londoners! We don’t all drop our aitches, innit?
Thanks P and setter
Run out of time and have to run. Got in a pickle putting Comeliness (was it just me?) – and I still don’t get Edge. Why would Hedge=Fields?
An ‘edge is the “border” of a field, or of fields, I suppose.
As previously stated, London Fields is a place in East London and a station on the way to White Hart Lane, where I was once wont to visit. Wouldn’t bother now…
I think I get your idea that it is a sort of &Lit now. Straight reading, the borders are edges: wordplay reading, they are ’edges. Unusual, but it sort of works.
For what (very little of course) it’s worth, I don’t think it can really be called an &Lit because the definition is just ‘border’. It’s a kind of reverse-semi-&Lit: in a ‘conventional’ semi-&Lit the whole clue is the definition but only part of it is the wordplay. Here the whole clue is the wordplay but only part of it is the definition. Very unusual but why not?
It wasn’t just you. I also had it which did for me in the NE. Bah.
Couldn’t get the flower…..
MOLOCH worked out from the Canaanite god. Liked SOMNOLENT.
Thanks pip and setter.
46 minutes. I only knew LOI MOLOCH as a word from the Old Testament. I think he was a bad thing. I took a while to get into this one and never felt on top of it. COD to SOMNOLENT although coming up with AGAPANTHUS was a triumphant moment. Thank you Pip and setter.
Moloch was certainly a bad thing according to the writers of the Old Testament. But they had a habit of demonising other gods and races. Eg., apparently the Philistines were quite a civilised, skilled, and artistic people.
Easy again, with MOLOCH and AGAPANTHUS the NHOs.
Don’t think EDGE is &lit: def is border, cryptic is hEDGE via the haspiration route.
Thx piquet and setter.
Tahina for tahini. I think it works pretty much the same. Interested in the views of others
Wiktionary:
Noun
tahina (countable and uncountable, plural tahinas)
Alternative form of tahini
But unfortunately the clue does give you an I (one) but one is not usually an A.
I’ve not come across that spelling, but ‘one’ can be A in some puzzles (I think it works especially if you stress it for contrast to having ‘many’ of something – “Are you drunk?” “I’ve had *a* drink”).
I don’t think I’ve seen it in the Times, but have some sympathy for Bruce here!
Yes, and so do I.
Nho the moloch lizard. It’s better known here as a thorny devil.
26:22
Oh it’s that little guy, an inoffensive little reptile deemed moloch horridus because of its horns and generally unattractive appearance. I think this animal has copped a bad rap.
39:51
Good puzzle – enjoyed it.
Thanks, p.
I thought I had finished in 48 minutes but later realised I had left 11ac unfinished and used aids as I had simply no idea what it might be. MOLOCH has come up twice in regular Times crosswords in the TfTT era, clued as a god on both occasions.
There were too many unknowns in the grid for the comfort of this particular equine.
Found this challenging, but was lucky to see SOMNOLENT and SEEMLINESS early by pure chance, which got me off to a good start. No idea what was going on with INDRA, but guessed it must be the required word. PREPOSITION took the longest time.
A satisfying if very slow 55 mins in 2 distinct halves.
I raced through most in under 30 mins wondering why the average time was so high only to hit a wall in the NW.
Had a vague idea MOLOCH was a mythical monster so maybe a lizard. Wrong but it worked and provided the crossers to finish.
FOI ABANDONING
LOI PREPOSITION
Nice puzzle and not beyond my GK for once, thanks both.
DNF. I had a very confident COMELINESS at 9ac, with a less confident PROPOSITION as in “against” in a debate. Ended there. STEGODONT didn’t look likely for “dropping off”.
For the Editor’s pseudonym, check Magpie online puzzle magazine.
Exactly the same here! I suppose comeliness isn’t quite decency…but it seemed damned near. Less justification for proposition..
DNF. Struggled in the NW after entering comeliness (I now count 2 of us). Then, since SOMNOLENT had to be correct, I eventually found SEEMLINESS; but by that time I was so out of it I couldn’t make sense of _I_E and no amount of alphabet trawl was going to help. Revealed the answer to find a perfectly straightforward clue and solution. Thanks Piquet and setter.
Edit, make that 3
10a Edge, biffed. Oh, hEDGE. Thanks piquet.
11a Moloch. I would like to say NHO but really I usually mean I have forgotten about. How about HFA? I could have sworn that I looked up the lizard (not the god) before, so I thought it must have happened before.
27a LOI Indy. Doh, missed it last time too.
6d Despoil P biffed, thanks again piquet.
Well, I’m going to come clean and admit I early on took this as a puzzle to savour, and still “only” took 20.09. Every single clue in this thing is an accomplished gem – I knew that from the immaculate JM Barrie infused ABANDONING. I was enjoying it so much I laughed out loud when I realised what was going on in PREPOSITION and even when I spotted the (temporarily Scottish?) lizard. London Fields is part of what makes Hackney “London’s Greenest Borough”, and from memory it does ‘ave an ‘edge or two.
If you biffed your way through this, I highly recommend going through the clues again to see how Times clues should be written.
I liked the suggestion that the CofE might have a necessary role in translating “English” from the other side of the Pond. Cue suggestions, please, for what we should rename AMERICAN ENGLISH in retaliation for the unilateral declaration on the Gulf of Mexico.
APES and PREPOSITION got me off to a useful quick start, and provided the key to RIPE and VIETNAMESE in short order. Things slowed down after that, though not to a SNAIL’S PACE. I had the ANTHUS long before A GAP appeared. A biffed, and unlikely from the start, KOMODO was ejected by ALIGHTS, with MOLOCH eventually LOI. It took a 3 letter alpha trawl to get stent or strait for channel out of my head, but SOMNOLENT duly arrived leading to SEEMLINESS. Had no idea what was going on with 10a, but EDGE looked like all that would fit. 20:57. Thanks setter and Pip.
My least liked clues involve corporation for things abdominal. Just getting it off ny chest to cover for an appaling fail-to-solve.
Very uncomfortable with fields = EDGE in 10ac, and I really should have worked out MOLOCH from wordplay, since it was clearly MO…. , but I couldn’t think of the water despite having the checkers. Not that I knew a MOLOCH was a lizard. 49 minutes.
I also failed on MOLOCH, Wil. I didn’t know the word, and the wordplay was flawed by the superfluous ‘a’ – a pet hate of mine and some others around here although I don’t think anyone else has mentioned it today. ‘A second’ is ‘a mo’ (as in ‘Wait a mo!’) not ‘mo.’
The way I justify this to myself is thinking of MO as one example of [word meaning ‘second’], of which there are several. So MO is one ‘second’, INSTANT is another. ‘Two seconds’ might indicate MOMO.
A very generous reading, but point taken. My point was that for such an obscure word the presence of ‘a’ led to a problem constructing the answer by other means.
I was just about to mention it when I reached your comment.
I mentioned (a bit obliquely, easily missed) that this clue had both an unnecessary ‘a’ and an unnecessary ‘the’. I agree with you – and quite rare in the Times, I think.
Another DNF, done for by a load of MOLOCHS (NHO)and COMELINESS at 9ac. The NE remained stubbornly unsolved.
I give up. I’m going home. Oh, I am at home. Drat.
Thanks pip for the hard graft.
41m – way off the beat, with a determination to insist on MOLOCK blocking ALIGHTS for a good 10 minutes while I had a quantum moment (the train of thought took every possible route to arrive at the point of greatest probability – though rather more slowly than the real thing).
48 minutes. Slow, but with MOLOCH and INDRA unknowns and others like SEEMLINESS which took some working out, I was satisfied to have finished.
I presume the appearance of INDRI, INDRA and INDY in the same puzzle was coincidental; no Mrs Gandhi to make up a modified quadrella.
Two goes needed.
– Had no idea how EDGE worked
– Knew MOLOCH as some kind of creature (biblical or otherwise) so was happy to trust it’s a lizard
– Didn’t parse INFRA DIG, and to be honest have never been 100% sure what it means
– Only saw how TAHINI worked after I’d put it in
– Relieved to see I’m not the only one who put COMELINESS, and it was only once I realised 2d had to be PREPOSITION that I had a rethink
– NHO INDRI but the wordplay was kind
Thanks piquet and setter.
FOI Dhow
LOI Ripe
COD Vietnamese
I also wondered if I’d missed a Nina built around the In-ies. I didn’t know Moloch the lizard, and was too tired to figure the wordplay out. My aids weren’t too tired, though. It’s worth saying that in my playbook the only thing scarrier than a plant is a 10 letter plant.
10:44. I liked this one a lot. It helped that I coincidentally happened to know all the slightly obscure words. Even the plant.
I found this extremely tricky. Started it during a half-hour break at work, assuming I’d finish it during that time, but no – had to pick it up again during the next break, so I’ve no idea how long it actually took, although if done without a break it would almost certainly have taken me a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. Thought “edge” a bit loose. Wasted a lot of time trying to make 14ac into “dime”, thinking of eyes dim with tears! But once I’d realised that “ready” is not always a synonym for cash, I finally came up with “ripe”.
Done on Paris commuter train in 17’09”, a time which seems pretty good. Afterglow by Small Faces on the headphones. All is well.
Milton, in Paradise Lost, describes Moloch as a “horrid king, besmear’d with blood”.
Started well, but dnf.
Really enjoyed this inventive effort.
No probs with Moloch, but comeliness was obviously right, so took a bit of unravelling once somnolent arrived.
Wasn’t over the moon about the ‘edge. And I forgive the mention of my pet hate around these parts, American English.
DNF found it a struggle, and failed on SEEMLINESS for decency (archaic synonym in C).
The liberalisation of the hidden clue count seems to be well and truly here.
A DNF for me. Not being able to see beyond the incorrect COMELINESS made most of the left side of the grid impenetrable for me. Came to read the comments just to see if others had. Very glad to see I wasn’t the only one.
I also DNF’d the last two Wednesdays it’s obviously just not my day.
62.13. took an age to get started and then really held up at the end by ALIGHTS and MOLOCH. quite a few tricky words but this must be one of those wavelength days! thank you both.
50 minutes, but I liked this a lot. Most of the clues required careful thinking to solve (and turned out not to work the way I was expecting them to), but none of them were impossible. I think SOMNOLENT would be my COD.
Can we please stop using the expression ‘nothing to scare the horses’ . My horses are easily frightened and as with this puzzle, find it quite a struggle.
34 mins. Have to confess I found this tough. Quite a collection of well crafted clues. The top lines were almost my undoing but gradually picked them off- somnolent, preposition etc with my LOI Moloch which I thought was a demon.
Early problem with putting in dish until I worked out it was a different kind of vessel. COD for me was somnolent.
Thanks setter and blogger.
62 minutes, with several words I didn‘t know. Obviously it wasn‘t objectively hard, since I see most people raced through it, but I found it hard today.
Didn’t finish it: didn’t like it. Nuff said.
Same here. Too many NHO in the answers and the clues and some of the wordplay was too tricksy for me (my fault I guess). I gave up with about half of it not done.
The one that annoyed me most, even though I did get it, was INFRA DIG; I could see where the DIG came from (taunt), but not the INFRA, not at all; so “in for a dig” = “about to be affected by a taunt”. Really?