I couldn’t compete this one without some guesswork and subsequent research to check. Maybe it’s because I’m from a scientific background and don’t much like poetry so know little or nothing about it, but the references in this one were rather obscure, I suspect, to many of our solvers. I also had MERs at parsing 22a and 25a although the answers were clear enough. Add a dodgy spelling at 23d and you have a puzzle solved. Can’t say I enjoyed this one much.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Possibly question our ersatz gemstone (4,6) |
| ROSE QUARTZ – (Q OUR ERSATZ)*. | |
| 6 | Box mostly surplus to requirements (4) |
| SPAR – SPAR[E]. | |
| 9 | Flog prisoner in cruel castle regularly (10) |
| FLAGELLATE – LAG (prisoner) inside FELL (cruel) then cAsTlE. | |
| 10 | Broadcast live in the morning (4) |
| BEAM – BE (live) A.M. in the morning. | |
| 12 | Group of poets with half of Dante’s inspiration and creation (4,10) |
| BEAT GENERATION – apparently Dante’s inspiration (and love at first sight, when he was 12) was one BEAT[rice] Portinari, which of course was news to me. GENERATION = creation. And the group of poets of which Allan Ginsberg was the only one I’d heard of, was known as this. I see Kerouac was also in this band, I’d heard of him too. Is this the TLS crossword? | |
| 14 | Dinosaur ultimately with a power to run? (6) |
| RAPTOR – [dinosau]R, A, P[ower], TO, R[un]. Odd sort of clue where you need the R of the definition for the answer. | |
| 15 | What some do to the wheel? Check where the air goes (8) |
| REINVENT – REIN = check, VENT = where the air goes, or comes in. They may try to reinvent it, but it’s already been invented, so “some” don’t actually do it. | |
| 17 | Traveller a long way away in south at all times (8) |
| SEAFARER – S[outh], E’ER (ever, at all times, poetic), with A FAR inserted. | |
| 19 | Sweet, tailless dogs were trained by this man (6) |
| PAVLOV – PAVLOV[A] loses the tail. Ivan Pavlov won a Nobel Prize in 1904 for studying dogs and their digestive systems. | |
| 22 | Area coldest, close against part of leg (8,6) |
| ACHILLES TENDON – A[rea], CHILL[i]EST, END (close) ON (against]. Is chillest a word meaning coldest, or if it’s more correctly chilliest, how does the i disappear? Or is it a verb form, I chill, thou chillest, he chills? But cold isn’t a verb, is it. | |
| 24 | What comes before the final house? (4) |
| SEMI – DD. | |
| 25 | Building in city to secure housing plan that’s had backing (5,5) |
| TOWER BLOCK – TO LOCK = to secure, insert BREW reversed. Which means brew must mean plan in this case, but it’s not a synonym I was aware of. I suppose you could ‘brew up’ a scheme. Eyebrows raised here. | |
| 26 | Disrespectful rough dismissing Conservative (4) |
| RUDE – [C]RUDE. | |
| 27 | Keep talking about poet’s end? This one’s was tragic (10) |
| CHATTERTON – Keep talking = CHATTER ON, insert the T from end of poet. Apparently Thomas Chatterton was a poet who topped himself at 17, by taking arsenic, so that was tragic. I’d never heard of him. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Split first part of the tree up (4) |
| RIFT – T[he], FIR, all “up” = reversed. | |
| 2 | Something fishy in second completed reshuffle (5-2) |
| SHAKE-UP – HAKE (a fish) inside S (second), UP (completed). | |
| 3 | A noble’s quite revolutionary? It’s doubtful (12) |
| QUESTIONABLE – (A NOBLES QUITE)*. | |
| 4 | Delayed, putting off day to get joined in marriage (6) |
| ALLIED – [D]ALLIED. | |
| 5 | Final character of garment badly treated? (8) |
| TATTERED – T (end of garment), (TREATED)*. I don’t know what the proper term is for a clue where the definition is an anagram to lead to the answer, but somebody will. | |
| 7 | Be in charge and live under pressure (7) |
| PRESIDE – P = pressure, RESIDE = live. | |
| 8 | Contemplative Persian poet born here (10) |
| RUMINATIVE – What’s with all these poets? Does the setter know I know nothing about poets? Apparently Jalal Al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a 13c Persian / Sufi poet. Add NATIVE (born here) to RUMI. | |
| 11 | Leading place to eat outside a home is sustainable (12) |
| MAINTAINABLE – MAIN (leading) TABLE (place to eat), insert A, IN (home). | |
| 13 | Who’s got well within lock and key, right? (10) |
| TRESPASSER – TRESS (lock of hair), E (key) R (right), insert SPA = well. | |
| 16 | He tangled with the mob, a monstrous thing (8) |
| BEHEMOTH – (HE THE MOB)*. | |
| 18 | After a fake, news chief is red-faced (7) |
| ASHAMED – A, SHAM (fake), ED (editor). | |
| 20 | Concern when oaf takes in nothing very well (7) |
| LOOKOUT – LOUT (oaf), insert O, OK (nothing, very well). As in “It’s your lookout / concern” perhaps. | |
| 21 | Way mastic perhaps is worked into stone (6) |
| STREET -TREE (mastic) is inside ST (stone). A mastic is a type of tree, as well as the name of the resin it yields. | |
| 23 | Image of no king one put up (4) |
| IKON – NO K I reversed. Apparently an alternative spelling of icon, I’d never seen it, and it’s the German for icon so maybe borrowed. | |
Only 21 minutes, but with far too many guesses and parsings not understood to take much pleasure from my solving time.
NHO CHATTERTON or RUMI, mastic as a TREE, IKON with a K.
BREW as ‘plan’ was a mystery too, but Pip’s explanation seems okay if a bit of a stretch.
I’m pretty sure I’ve come across CHILLEST in literature or poetry although at this moment I haven’t found support for it in a dictionary.
UPDATE: I’ve now checked all the usual source dictionaries and sites such as OneLook but without success. The only place that actually lists CHILLEST is Wiktionary, but that’s in the archaic verbal sense which wouldn’t apply at 22ac. The possible get-out for the setter may be in a convention Susie Dent often refers to on Countdown i.e. comparatives and superlatives of one-syllable adjectives can be formed according to standard rules of grammar by adding -ER or -EST and the word so constructed does not have to be listed in a dictionary in order to be valid.
27:42 but like piquet and jackkt I found this pretty hard going, even though I do as it happens know enough about poetry to give me CHATTERTON, RUMINATIVE and BEAT GENERATION straight away. TRESPASSER, RAPTOR and MAINTAINABLE should stand in the corner with a pointed hat on.
No time because I had to come and go several times but I’d guess around 40. There was a lot of obscurity here. I still don’t get TRESPASSER and I was confused by BEAT GENERATION. Kerouac was indeed a leading light, except he wasn’t a poet so that threw me somewhat. Thank you piquet, I share your reservations.
From Positively Fourth St:
You see me on the STREET, you always act surprised
You say How are you, good luck, but you don’t mean it
When you know as well as me you’d rather see me paralysed
Why don’t you just come out once and scream it?
Possibly my favourite Dylan song
I disagree, Lindsay, Jack Kerouac wrote a lot of poetry- Mexico City Blues, San Francisco Blues, Book of Haikus and much more.
Well sure, but overwhelmingly he’s known as a novelist and On The Road is sometimes referred to as the Bible of the Beat Generation and is probably the best-known work by any of the Beats. And it’s a novel, which is why ‘group of poets’ kind of threw me…
Yes, point taken!
My first attempt was POST MODERNISTS, which fitted but I wasn’t exactly sure it was a category of poets…it’s just that the first T was in the right place!
10.05
A nice mid-weeker, which I thought might be a pangram after getting FOI 1ac but turned out not to be. There seemed to be more &lits than is usually considered acceptable here, but I quite like them.
Earworm of the day: Richard Hell’s ‘Blank Generation’.
COD ROSE QUARTZ
LOI MAINTAINABLE
Never thought I’d see Richard Hell get a mention in a Times cryptic
Crossword blog. Now have to give my vinyl a spin
Raptors are a group of running dinosaurs so I think it’s supposed to be an and-lit. Didn’t know beat generation so wrongly guessed Next Generation. I like Trespasser now I understand it.
39 minutes, but I’m so tired this morning I drifted back to sleep before I could get through either my espresso or this puzzle, so perhaps I’d’ve been quicker on another day.
I had almost all the same problems with the poets, but not only was CHATTERTON a Bristol boy whose tragic story I already knew but I also saw two biographies of him on the shelf in the Local Interest section of Bristol Central Library just last night.
I wonder if the preface to the Omar Khayyam I bought the other day mentions Rumi? Must get around to reading it…
I’m much more positive about this clever puzzle, possibly because it fitted my GK. ‘The Death of CHATTERTON’ is a famous painting and Peter Ackroyd wrote a book of that name. RAPTOR as dinosaur well-known from Jurassic Park. BEAT GENERATION -is it that obscure? Couldn’t have told you BEATrice’s surname, but absorbed this in Florence, where tourists are entertained by performance artists reciting the Divine Comedy.
Did have to take RUMI as a poet on trust. And sadly thought immediately of alternative wordplay for FLAGELLATE, more suited to the Guardian.
About 18′, thanks pip and setter
I also have been thinking about schoolboy humour clues for FLAGELLATE.
I also didn’t really get on with this, maybe because of the unfortunate repetition between various clues/answers (creation/generation, contemplative/ruminative, sustainable/maintainable).
In any case I ended up with a silly error. Not knowing my Persian poets, that part was of no use whatsoever to me. I thought of REMINISCE before RUMINATE and convinced myself REMINATIVE might be one of those odd wordforms that sometimes appear. No complaints about that though; I’ve been due one!
Thanks both.
23:42
No, this didn’t really float my boat either.
Failed to (fully) parse:
9a FELL = cruel
12a BEAT – think most of us would struggle to know too much about Dante, let alone the name of his inspiration
22a Same thoughts about CHILLEST
25a No idea!
21d TREE = mastic
NHO:
8d RUMI = Persian poet
27a CHATTERTON
Thanks P and setter
26 very enjoyable minutes, despite one or two gaps in knowledge (RUMI, ROSE QUARTZ). COD to BEAT GENERATION, coming as it did with memories of Ginsberg’s beard and reading Kerouac, trying to be hip. And failing. The great Clive James referred to the psychology students who salivated whenever Pavlov’s dogs were mentioned. I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Good puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
Burgum, I thank thee, thou hast let me see
That Bristol has impress’d her stamp on thee,
(Chatterton’s Will)
20 mins with brekker. I liked it and I don’t mind ones which test a bit of general knowledge, whether that be literature, science, history, etc.
My MER was plan=brew, and my cross was at the over-contrived Trespasser.
Nice one.
Ta setter and Pip
11.49 This was right up my 21d STREET, although NHO Mastic as tree, and that was my LOI. 1 /
15 minutes.
– Didn’t know ROSE QUARTZ but got it once I figured out the anagrist (and the Q from QUESTIONABLE helped)
– Hadn’t heard of Dante’s inspiration but knew the BEAT GENERATION poets
– Initially put HOME for 24a, thinking of the home straight in a race, before TRESPASSER forced a rethink to SEMI
– Missed the wordplay in TATTERED, and thought it was just a slightly weak CD
– Add me to the list of people who didn’t know Rumi the poet for RUMINATIVE
– Not familiar with the mastic tree, but the wordplay was kind
– Put ICON at first for 23d, thinking CI could mean Charles I, before TOWER BLOCK set me straight
Thanks piquet and setter.
FOI Raptor
LOI Semi
COD Ashamed
9:47. Tough crowd here today, I thought this was a delightful puzzle.
The potential gaps in GK were all fairly signalled by the setter. IKON for example required a Mephisto-ish leap of faith, but in the end we were left with little doubt.
Thanks setter and Pip.
I’m almost positive I learned the word (meaning picture of Jesus or such) as IKON and only started seeing ICON later in life.
Yes, icon tends to be associated with celebrity.
24 mins with similar feelings on the poetry. At least the unknowns were all fairly clued but some of it was a little clumsy.
Thanks for explaining BEATrice and Mastic = tree.
I got TRESPASSER from the construction but still dont understand the Who bit.
COD to PAVLOV which reminded me of a John Finnemore sketch. Clever Pavlova.
Thanks both
Nor me. How does who=trespasser? My only missing answer, which I couldn’t see even with every other letter filled in.
It’s an &lit, isn’t it? Someone who has (unlawfully) intruded on an area under lock and key is a trespasser, no?
Thanks. Don’t like it though, I think it needs some indication of that unlawfulness.
Yet another DNF. This is getting to be a rather worrying habit. What done for me was RUMINATION as a guess therefore giving me no chance with PAVLOV. Never heard of him either, for that matter.
I agree totally with the comments of our blogger. Some very loose clues and extremely esoteric knowledge required. Not fun, which, at the end of the day is the object of solving these puzzles, no?
Thanks pip for working it all out.
Do Pavlov’s dogs not ring a bell?
Nope, ‘fraid not. Never ‘erd of ’em. Clearly a hole in my GK (along with many others)!
I think they respond to one.
I asked a librarian if she had a book about Pavlov’s dog and Schrödinger’s cat. She said it rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was there or not.
😁
LOL
They do not ring a bell, they drool.
…when they hear the bell ring (even if food isn’t forthcoming). Our Labrador drools whether or not there’s a bell.
15:18
An odd mix of easy clues and silly stuff. If I want to do a TLS crossword I’ll do a TLS crossword, thanks.
I nearly went for BEAT FEDERATION but eventually figured out the creation part of the answer if not the other bit.
DNF drawing a blank at reinvent, which wasn’t that hard, but staring at it for 10 minutes wasn’t the best use of my time. Same issues as other commentators, quite a few very easy clues but mostly biffing the rest without fully parsing (BEAT, RUMI, FELL). NHO the 17yo poet but the parsing was easy. Thanks Piquet and setter.
41 minutes. Many of the same comments and unknowns as others though I remembered CHATTERTON from previous appearances and I liked the &lits. I might have been sunk had it not been for that precious checked Q for 1a and 3d which at least gave me a start for what I found quite a hard puzzle.
How does “Who’s” = TRESPASSER?
I guess he just sneaked under the fence uninvited.
I have to say I thought TRESPASSER was one of the naffest clues of the year so far, but I rather enjoyed the rest, even if all the arty stuff didn’t slow some of the sciency types down much. 21:52
There are many decent translations of Dante around. Each part is pretty short, and very different in tone: Inferno has lots of score-settling, Purgatory (my favourite) is moving, while Paradise is ethereal.
NHO any of the poets except Dante who wasn’t in the Beat Generation AFAIK : -) and deffo NHO the object of his passion.
Fun though. 1a Rose Quartz rings a bell, I think from an earlier Times Xword.
I spent a long time trying to understand 13d. How does TRESPASSER = Who or Who’s and how does PAS (which I was inserting) = well?
A DNF by two words. Couldn’t see beyond the incorrect ICON which made TOWER BLOCK impossible. Assumed it was a proper noun for a tower I didn’t know and hit reveal. A bit gutting but I had never come across the IKON spelling before so I was probably never going to get it.
Thanks for the blog 🙂 a couple were only partially parsed.
Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you. Rumi, ‘We Are Three’
It’s always good to come here after completing the daily impossible challenge, in company with people who simply share the passion, without RUDEness and negativity, unlike almost anywhere else on the web.
I took near enough 24 minutes over this one, remembering BEATrice only when I stuck the rest of it in, having previously wondered how half of Helen worked. Kind of the setter to give us 2/3 of MAINTAINABLE and 3/5 of RUMINATIVE, not so kind to make ICON and IKON equally possible. It’s only a couple of weeks since the feast day of Charles the Martyr.
Let’s be charitable, then, and say this was a quirky puzzle with some unlikely GK and some decent attempts at &lits. Which I rather enjoyed.
I liked your third sentence Zabadak…
You’re very welcome!
But the wordplay for IKON is quite definite – No K 1 backwards
CI was also a king
I thought he was CR and is now CRI.
Wasn’t he “that man of blood”?
Well, first one all correct this week. No silly mistakes. I had to cross my fingers for the poet, and didn’t understand how BEAT GENERATION worked.
Yes, it felt a little bit loose, but just happy with a completion.
Thanks Pip and Setter.
13:23. Very enjoyable puzzle.
COD and LOI: REINVENT
I think REINVENT was my COD too in retrospect. Cor blimey that one had me going!
9:06. I thought this a bit of a mixed bag. I liked the literary references, all of which seemed fairly clued to me, but there were some clunky elements. Like Ameoba I noticed the repetitions in clue and answer, and the clue for TRESPASSER is a bit of a train wreck. But I enjoyed it.
Unknowns: ROSE QUARTZ, Beatrice’s relationship to Dante, Rumi.
I first became aware of CHATTERTON because of the Peter Ackroyd book. I may even have read it at some point.
Finished but took too long and made mistakes.
Why did I put ‘next generation’ when I think they were a pop group and I was familiar with Ginsberg et al?
NHO Chatterton but biffed it.
I should have done better.
I seem to be the only one to fail on Whitterton, being too clever for my own good.
I believe we call this a moral victory. Huzzah!
29 mins
Got stuck on TRESPASSER for the longest time till I saw the &lit.
For some reason PAVLOV also wouldn’t come to me even though I twigged it was a trainer of mutts I was searching for not a chiropodist. I think I avoided putting RUMINATIVE due to its sharing a suffix with the definition, but I suppose that shows what a crossword snob I’ve become these days!
16:25 – thought RUMI was a bit of a stretch in a daily, but good luck engineering a clue round KHAYYAM, the only Persian poet I have heard of.
Put the NW on the back burner after putting in the UP at 2d and RAPTOR. Had more luck in the NE as SPAR and BEAM gave me PRESIDE and allowed my to speculate that 8d might be RUMNINATING, without a clue as to the parsing. Persian poets forsooth! That held me up at the end with PAVLOV, until I revisited 8d and decided it ended with IVE. I wasn’t thrown by IKON, as it’s the spelling used in the Orthodox churches. Dante’s inspiration went over my head by a nautical mile, so I had to rely on instinct for BEAT GENERATION. TRESPASSER was held up by a biffed WAYFARER, but I eventually saw the error of my WAY. Didn’t know the young poet, but I dutifully stuck a T into CHATTER ON. Whilst ruminating on 8d, 13d and 19a, I popped back to the NW and 9 acrossed it into submission. 30:43. Thanks setter and Pip.
23.05 with LOI maintainable having thought the first letter must be T. Beat generation came as a flash of inspiration.
Other potentially tricky clues were flagellate until I convinced myself there was no letter pick from cruel as well as castle. I assumed fell referred to speed so that’s something new from today.
COD to reinvent. Thx setter and blogger .
24:02
I’m not sure how I got RUMINATIVE, but I thought the poet was Omar and that he hailed from a town called Rumi. The BEAT GENERATION (beatniks) was not a group of poets, or even writers, although it included some. I only parsed it post-submission, but it gets my COD. CHATTERTON was much admired by Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and others, but he does manage to get included in The Stuffed Owl for e.g.
With laureated chaplets deck the tomb,
The blood-stained tomb where Smith and comfort lie.
Failed with hotel block instead of tower block. Found this puzzle tedious and unenjoyable.
Beaten by the Beat Generation. Knew Chatterton from my French studies (Vigny wrote a play about him).
Enjoyed this apart from the obscure Dante reference.
15.13 WOE
Thought to begin with the note was SO and forget to double check the parsing so ended up with a mombled TRESPASSOR (ouch) for another (sigh) pink square.
Otherwise helped like Gothick knowing the Chatterton story/building but surprised the GENERATION not universally known.
Liked it albeit with no standouts, though WERB was iffy.
Having BEAM in place immediately suggested RUMINATIVE and the Persian poet rang a bell. I wasn’t aware of CHATTERTON, but it seemed the most likely construction. I also took forever over LOI, BEAT GEN. I’m certainly aware of them, but the crossers were unhelpful – there are some 85 variations of – E- T to go through and I’d separated Dante and inspiration, so never thought of Beatrice until BEAT came to mind. At least it supported the worryingly vague TATTERED. Some very convoluted clueing going on, so I was glad to finish correctly.
I solved this pretty easily, because I biffed most of the answers, and didn’t examine the cryptics I used too deeply. My literary knowledge was helpful, as I knew all the poets except Rumi, but I just biffed ruminative as a likely answer starting with R _ M. I have also heard of that book by Robert Martin Adams, IKON: John Milton and the Modern Critics, which is highly likely to be known to this sort of setter.
Time: 21:14
43:17. I started off with a few write-ins in the NW corner, then slowed to a dismal pace. Basically all doable but it was a bit of a slog. I’m not sure we should really be expected to know C13th Iranian poets?
25 minutes with LOI Street which I didn’t understand until coming here.
Managed to get the poets ok despite only having a vague recollection thereof.
Achilles Tendon was easy because I’ve had a lot of trouble with mine over the years!
I thoroughly recommened 40 rules of love by Elif Sharak which is an absorbing story centred around Rumi. (Indeed anything by her is worth reading).
Like piquet I didn’t really go a bundle on this, but respect to those who did. Same mers and misses as those who also had mers and misses.
Did I like anything? I have to say not, really, but struggled through anyway in 40.
Also with scant knowledge of poets got all but Beat Generation, and I should have had that. Thank my Persian friends that take evening classes for Rumi! Good fun and not too long for me! 45. Thanks, best, Carolyn
One person’s NHO is another’s well known. Today I was the knowall. Happens about once a week.
“I though of Chatterton, the marvellous boy/ The sleepless soul who perished in his pride”
(Wordsworth-Resolution and Independence. Later parodied by Lewis Carroll).
COD REINVENT.
24 mins. Although I know about poetry, I had never heard of this Rumi bozo.
23.18. I completed both this puzzle and the Grauniad today, but only because I was too cussed to admit defeat. Neither puzzle was my cup of tea. Oh for a Picaroon.
It’s too late to add anything new, really. Except that I knew all the poetic references, including Rumi!
Rather surprised that Beatrice is obscure to some.
My pet dog is called Rumi. Technically a pet bitch as she’s a she, the justification for my mum choosing the name was that ‘Rumi’ can also be a Japanese girl’s name but the male Persian poet was the inspiration. NHO CHATTERTON though, nor did I know that mastic is a type of tree. Easy enough and enjoyable crossword – it’s always good to learn new things and I completed it fairly quickly (21:41).