Morning, everyone. Lots to enjoy in this little offering out there today. Nothing too difficult, nothing needing a good rub in the groin area, just one of those puzzles that some people will finish in twenny tuu minutes, others in less than twenny tuu minutes and yet others in more than twenny tuu minutes. There may also be people of course who don’t get round to finishing it at all, but that’s cricket.
All in all, a pretty marvellous effort in the cruciverbal arena.
15:36
| Across | |
| 1 | Liquid food originally consumed on river at Amiens (8) |
| CONSOMME – C ON SOMME | |
| 5 | Practical joker hiding small gemstone (6) |
| JASPER – S in JAPER | |
| 9 | Member of royal family embracing love endlessly in field? (8) |
| PROVINCE – |
|
| 10 | How is domination showing sound judgement? (6) |
| WISDOM – hidden | |
| 12 | Stop say leaving Hebridean island (5) |
| COLON – COLON |
|
| 13 | Irish Protestant’s rank in Arabian sultanate (9) |
| ORANGEMAN – RANGE (rank [vb], as in ‘He is ranged among the greats’) in OMAN | |
| 14 | Passion for dance born unexpectedly in a male alto (12) |
| BALLETOMANIA – B (born) anagram* of IN A MALE ALTO | |
| 18 | Violent robber faced with affectionate type’s confusion (6-6) |
| HUGGER-MUGGER – HUGGER (affectionate type) on MUGGER (violent robber) | |
| 21 | Lightweight fabric: part of army issue, it’s said (9) |
| PARAMATTA – PARA (part of army – apparently, para can mean an airborne unit as well as a member of such a unit) MATTA (sounds like matter); not to be confused with Parramatta, about 15 miles west of Sydney. When I passed through in 1978, I saw dozens of used car dealerships. When I used to do Richie Benaud as part of my after-dinner act at sports clubs, I gave him a wife, Raelene, from Parramatta, largely because you can say Parramatta in a particularly Richie-esque way. Quite extraordinary that. On edit: PARAMATTA the fabric is named after the place in Oz – it just lost an R. The place name is a corruption of the Darug appellation Baramada or Burramatta, which means eel place. There is a Parramatta Eels rugby league club. | |
| 23 | Graze, except around entrance to holding (5) |
| SHAVE – H~ in SAVE (except, as in ‘All came save Richie – extraordinary that’) | |
| 24 | Take in, as a joke, so to speak (6) |
| INGEST – sounds like in jest | |
| 25 | Attractive porcelain introduced by daily (8) |
| CHARMING – CHAR (daily, that is, cleaning lady) MING (China ware) | |
| 26 | String-player’s catalogue, including youthful recordings to begin with (6) |
| LYRIST – Y~ R~ (initial letters of words 5 & 6) in LIST (catalogue) | |
| 27 | Dowdy char, possibly, possessing strange power (8) |
| FRUMPISH – RUM (strange) P (power) in FISH (char, possibly); only a pedant would call a woman frumpish, no? Incidentally, I’ve never heard/seen either used to describe a man, though I’ve heard women use it of other women. From the Dutch word meaning ‘wrinkled’ originally. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Male bird swallowing extremely primitive Russian coin (6) |
| COPECK – P~E in COCK | |
| 2 | New dog failing to start pasta strip (6) |
| NOODLE – N |
|
| 3 | Determine position of old gallery containing nothing from France (9) |
| ORIENTATE – RIEN (non, je ne regret rien…) in O TATE | |
| 4 | Odd crime, to claim localised atmospheric conditions (12) |
| MICROCLIMATE – CRIME TO CLAIM* | |
| 6 | Copying narrow brooch in silver case (5) |
| APING – PIN in AG | |
| 7 | Bar ignores the writer’s feature on building (8) |
| PEDIMENT – |
|
| 8 | Italian home entertaining a native of Bucharest, perhaps (8) |
| ROMANIAN – ROMAN (Italian) A in IN (home entertaining a, i.e., put the letter A in the word IN) | |
| 11 | Map-maker and former president in possession of round plot (12) |
| CARTOGRAPHER – O GRAPH in CARTER (peanut farmer turned POTUS, famous for the words ‘I believe’, delivered with a smile and a Southern twang); on PLOT meaning GRAPH, the closest I can get is this definition in Collins: ‘a plan, map, diagram, or other graphic representation, as of land, a building, etc’ | |
| 15 | Great conductor crossing lake, initially missing whirlpool (9) |
| MAELSTROM – L in MAESTRO then M~; in Hong Kong, anyone who can hold a baton for 90 minutes without dropping it is called a maestro | |
| 16 | Sales assistant, unusually posh, left gear set up (8) |
| SHOPGIRL – POSH* reversal of L RIG | |
| 17 | Seaweed product a fish used repeatedly (4-4) |
| AGAR-AGAR – A GAR followed by A GAR; seven species of gar are still extant in eastern North America and in the Caribbean. Predominantly found in freshwater, members of one species are sometimes found in the sea. Apparently, they also hitch rides in sewers when the mood takes them. | |
| 19 | Island’s greeting welcomed by French film director (6) |
| TAHITI – HI in TATI; if you are interested in watching one Tati film, check Playtime out. | |
| 20 | Dimension one may measure in the fall? (6) |
| LENGTH – I have to confess to not getting this; the best I can do is to note that if something falls, it will typically cover a measurable distance, or length. On edit (there’s already an interesting discussion below): Collins (online entry 36 for ‘fall’) has ‘the distance that something falls’, which covers it, I think. On re-edit: then again, to measure one’s length is a phrase meaning to fall (never heard of it), so that’s what the setter must be getting at. | |
| 22 | Lawgiver primarily educated in Stirling? (5) |
| MOSES – E~ in MOSS (Stirling Moss was a charismatic racing driver of the 1950s and 60s, who never won the F1 world drivers championship) | |
11:15
Lots of unusual words but generously clued.
Thanks ulaca and setter.
This one was easy until it wasn’t. DNF, NHO 21a Paramatta cheated, 27a Frumpish. I was put off by having biffed height rather than length for 20d. Not that height is wrong, just that it doesn’t fit with frumpish. Doh!
NHO 12a Colonsay.
COD 13a Orangeman.
14a Balletomania, HHO balletomane but not mania.
22d Moses. It’s a while since Sir Stirling Moss came to ones lips. It would be Sir Lewis Hamilton now. Sir Stirling was said to be the fastest driver never to be World Champion.
The only way LENGTH works is due to the equivalence between ‘a length of hair’ and ‘a fall of hair’. The phrase ‘the fall of her hair’ is not equivalent to ‘the length of her hair’ and waterfalls, cascades and river systems have both length and height (unless a ‘plunge waterfall’ is being referred to, as it only has a height). ‘To length’ is an obsolete equivalent of ‘to lengthen’ but I fail to see how that can mean ‘to fall’ or ‘to fall over’ and I can find no examples anywhere of people referring to the ‘fall’ of a curtain or blind in any context where ‘fall’ could be substituted with ‘length’ (as has been said previously, ‘drop’ is a better synonym).
There is a phrase to measure ones length (on the ground) meaning to fall or be knocked down. E.g. a boxer measured his length on the canvas.
I simply took it as “to measure one’s length” when falling flat on one’s face. As a dyspraxic, that’s been a not uncommon occurrence for me.
A PB at 9:24, finally cracked the 10′ mark albeit on a very low SNITCHer. Judging by comments I was lucky that Paramatta came to mind so quickly (although I didn’t trust myself to put it in until a bit later); is it an NRL/AFL/RU team maybe? [edit: looked up, NRL] Can’t think where else would have heard it. I convinced myself that ‘3 Para’ sounded army-ish enough, so that para could work for a unit and not just an individual.
I am celebrating with a moderately priced bottle of wine (it’s late enough here). Enjoyed the cricket references, and the puzzle.
Congrats 👍
Thanks!!
11:08
Pleased to finish quickly but some guessing going on. Some thoughts:
JASPER – with _A___R, not sure how I dredged up JAPER before JASPER, but that’s how it worked out
COLON – not great on Scottish islands and had forgotten COLONSAY, have holidayed on Mull before so it was possibly in the back of my mind, but easy answer with all checkers in place
BALLETOMANIA – not sure I’ve heard the term before, but taking BALLET out of the mix, left me with six letters to unjumble
HUGGER-MUGGER – it’s been here before but I’d forgotten what it meant
PARAMATTA – with all checkers, entered with a shrug. I’ve heard of neither the place, nor the material
PEDIMENT – dragged out of the memory banks, though not sure why it was in there in the first place
LENGTH – had HEIGHT at first, but corrected by FRUMPISH. Didn’t get this, was thinking ‘curtains’ but think Jack’s old Scottish term for ‘fall’ is better
Thanks U and setter
Very jolly. Knowing someone wha had attended PARAMATTA High School helped.
No problem with AGAR AGAR or HUGGER MUGGER. Took COLON on trust and LENGTH “had to be”.
A nice start to the week. Thanks to Ulaca and the setter.
NHO PARAMATTA, but the parsing was comparatively friendly. No problems otherwise.
FOI WISDOM
LOI PEDIMENT
COD INGEST
TIME 6:10
Had no problem with LENGTH because the old expression about ‘measuring one’s length’ was well-known (from my father). Since it has been explained by so many previous contributors I’m surprised that it is still being challenged. I feel for anyone outside of Oz as regards PARAMATTA, it caused me no probs because the missing letters just fell into place but you had to be in the know I think. A nice puzzle and a speedy (15.25) solve, thanks Ulaca.
From When the Deal Goes Down:
In the still of the night, in the world’s ancient light
Where WISDOM grows up in strife
My bewildering brain, toils in vain
Through the darkness on the pathways of life
Each invisible prayer is like a cloud in the air
Tomorrow keeps turning around
We live and we die, we know not why
But I’ll be with you when the deal goes down
about 10 mins.
I knew Hugger-mugger from Hamlet: Polinius was killed accidentally by Hamlet, and “we have done but greenly/In hugger-mugger to inter him”, meaning it has been done in secret, without the ceremony which should have attended the burying of such an important person.
A Descent into the Maelstrom is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which a man describes how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool.
From the Department of Classic References: I knew “measure his length in the sand” from the Illiad. I cannot remember who did so measure, who did him to cause said measuring, or which translation, but the phrase stuck with me. Thanks for the Hamlet reference.
Pretty straightforward for me. Even with a question mark against LENGTH, not being entirely sure of the parsing, I had no trouble working down the grid from top to bottom, unlike my usually scattergun approach, going for the low-hanging fruit to give me crossers. I left just the unknown material until the end, but luckily, years of seeing PARA in crossword references to soldiers gave me enough confidence to enter PARAMATTA. Nor have I heard anyone say LYRIST, but the clueing suggested nothing else. I have to say, this is the first time a 15×15 has taken me less time than the Quickie.
Unlike anyone else I think, I put CASPER unfortunately so am kicking myself now that everything else was fine.
FOI WISDOM
LOI PARAMATTA
COD MICROCLIMATE
If it’s any consolation, I had CASPER too. My only hesitation was that, without the wordplay, I would have spelled it CASPAR. I thought it was a semi-precious stone, but it doesn’t seem to be
A pleasant Monday offering, all done in 16 minutes, probably a PB. It would have been quicker but for a struggle to find something to add to PARA in 22 ac. Eventually I settled for MATTA which luckily for me was a good choice. I was nearly led astray by HEIGHT at 20 dn, until FRUMPISH put me right.
FOI – JASPER
LOI – PARAMATTA
COD – MOSES
Thanks to ulaca and other contributors.
Well this was fun despite a DNF due to not believing that PARAMATTA was a fabric (and I’d never pronounce Matter like that…) hence not getting the M for MOSES (and Stirling Moss is a bit before my time!)
Wasn’t sure about COPECK (thought it started with a K) but once that was resolved the rest of that corner fell in quickly. And I thought COLON was quite obvious 😀
Thanks again to setter and blogger.
Paramatta got me three and out: fabric; Australian geography; bad homynyms.
Otherwise, cluing consume to give the c in consomme; take ‘in’ to clue ‘in’ gest; and having char appear twice in close proximity even if one was a fish and similar made things go pretty quickly
Flew through this today taking parramatta on trust so 13:40 to complete. Not much to comment on the crossword today but what a tremendous, entertaining and informative blog.
Thx U and setter
I’m another who thought height made more sense for 20D. No clue where I’d heard of Paramatta fabric before but I dragged it up from somewhere.
Pleased with a PB of 10:43 (okay, so it’s the first I’ve ever finished but that makes it a PB by definition!) Thanks to setter and ulaca.
Mildly interesting coincidence of MICROCLIMATE and ORANGEMAN returning after only two or three weeks, the latter with a very similar clue.
12 mins, should have been quicker if I hadn’t dithered over PEDIMENT, forgetting about IMPEDIMENT.
Well now third time under ten mins; enjoyed this. Thanks to setter and blogger( for explaining why i was right on two clues i biffed)
37 mins. NHO PARAMATTA but, as so often, wordplay came to the rescue. Didn’t really understand LENGTH.
A DNF for me, defeated like a few others by PARAMATTA. The synonym of matter for issue unfortunately never occurred to me, and I ended up with a not very hopeful PARAMETRA. I was also stuck in the Ballroom rather than attending the Ballet at one time before the crosser with CARTOGRAPHER set me on the right path. A pretty quick (for me) 21.14, but of course with an error.
55+mins for a fail. While I got PARAMATTA probably because I was thinking of the suburb; couldn’t get to NHO PEDIMENT, put league instead of LENGTH which left me dumping some rubbish in for FRUMPISH as I forgot the fish. The NW was a huge struggle as I don’t know my Russian coins, food&drink, Hebridean islands or advanced French. Add in having to cross fingers for AGAR-AGAR, HUGGER-MUGGER and eke out BALLETOMANIA – it wasn’t an enjoyable puzzle given it was trailed as approachable over on the QC page. Anyway thanks to blogger
Would have been one of only a handful of sub-50 times for me, but like others was stumped by PARAMATTA. I didn’t think of matter = issue and instead thought that maybe a mother might mother/issue a child and hence went for PARAMUTHA. Oh well.
12.52
Nothing to add. Delayed by PARAMATTA but it eventually came. Excellent, fun puzzle (save for LENGTH which had too many scratching heads, but we can’t all be perfect!)
Thanks Ulaca and setter
At 18:04 we were just 10s off our PB of last December. The NHO PARAMATTA went in from wordplay and checkers and we never understood LENGTH. Interesting discussion on that though we’re with Jackt in using ‘drop’ to refer to curtain length. LOI PEDIMENT which was dredged up from distant memory (over 50 years ago atbschool I think, description of the Parthenon!). Thanks, all.
26:12
Like nearly everyone else I got the NHO PARAMATTA from the wordplay. MICROCLIMATE was my LOI.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
New PB and my first under an hour, coming in at 55 minutes – mostly parsed, just missing FRUMPISH, HUGGER-MUGGER and MOSES (and, as it turned out, having the wrong parsing for LENGTH – I took it to be of the various dimensions, it was the only one starting with a letter in ‘fall’). PARAMATTER, COLONSAY, COPECK and JASPER were all new to me but the parsings were friendly, to one degree or another. Thanks Ulaca!
29.05. I haven’t been on form lately and this was no exception… glad at least to finish this one under the half hour, everything else recently has been too hard!
Really enjoyed this, as I was well underway without any cheating, going back to fill in the lovely CONSOMMÉ after crossers reminded me of the river at Amiens. Then quickly down, with no problem with HUGGER-MUGGER or AGAR-AGAR, but although I’m now an Aussie, couldn’t come up with PARAMATTA, as I know it as a town and sounds very unlikely as a material! That held me up for MOSES, as I’d forgotten poor old Stirling, and HEIGHT was my other reckless write-in , to try and make a record finish for me. No prize here, but a pat on the head for a good try.