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 |
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| 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 – |
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| 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) | |
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.