Music: Dvorak, Symphony #7, Davis/Concertgebouw
Time: 19:38
I did not find this particularly difficult, at least to solve. The problem was getting the puzzle, since the Crossword Club is unable to provide it. Fortunately, it eventually appeared in the online newspaper and I was able to print off a copy. Having put a new toner cartridge in my printer, I am now able to read the clues more easily, which may also have helped my solve.
As for the actual puzzle, it was typical Monday fare, with some good clues but nothing too obscure. I biffed a fair number of answers, such as iron age, acquaint, adolescent, provender, Martinmas, and rigmarole, but I confirmed with the cryptic in every case.
Due to the problems over at the Crossword Club, the SNITCH will have to get its solving times from those posted in this blog. Currently, of course, nothing is available.
| Across | |
| 1 | What schoolkids enjoy Romeo and Juliet season? (8) |
| PLAYTIME – PLAY + TIME, simple cryptic hint. | |
| 5 | Brave and fortunate in pursuit of power (6) |
| PLUCKY – P + LUCKY, a bit of a chestnut. | |
| 8 | Old Catholic is a malevolent creature (3) |
| ORC – O + R.C. | |
| 9 | Theatre backing variety in debased production (10) |
| PERVERSION – REP backwards + VERSION. | |
| 10 | Like a TV series is copied for broadcasting (8) |
| EPISODIC – Anagram of IS COPIED. | |
| 11 | Impersonate fancy don (6) |
| ASSUME – A very fine triple definition. | |
| 12 | Animals always found on delta (4) |
| DEER – D + EER. | |
| 14 | Second important bit (10) |
| SMATTERING – S + MATTERING. | |
| 17 | One directing acts of Wagner? (10) |
| RINGMASTER – RING + MASTER, another cryptic hint. | |
| 20 | Maiden butting in to make a knight foolish (4) |
| DUMB – DU(M)B. | |
| 23 | Second bag containing one jigsaw picture? (6) |
| MOSAIC – MO + SA(I)C. | |
| 24 | Make familiar account oddly unfamiliar (8) |
| ACQUAINT – A/C + QUAINT. | |
| 25 | Youngster’s inclination to accept benefit (10) |
| ADOLESCENT – A(DOLE)SCENT. | |
| 26 | Father whipping son in anger (3) |
| IRE – [s]IRE. | |
| 27 | Religious dissent unknown by present society (6) |
| HERESY – HERE + S + Y. | |
| 28 | Gosh! Nimrod’s playing — one follows instinctively (8) |
| MYRMIDON – MY + anagram of NIMROD. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Demonstrated rise of tomato-like food (9) |
| PROVENDER – PROVEN + RED upside-down. | |
| 2 | Records where bees go following middle of month (7) |
| ARCHIVE – [m]ARC[h] + HIVE. | |
| 3 | Make cautious progress in mostly excellent English (6) |
| TIPTOE – TIP-TO[p] + E. | |
| 4 | Queen can appear in Mother’s Day celebrated in church (9) |
| MARTINMAS – MA(R,TIN)MA’S. | |
| 5 | Couple obese after one’s shifted rich dessert (7) |
| PARFAIT – PAIR, FAT with the I moved up. | |
| 6 | Upper-class United dinners suffering vandalism will be not covered (9) |
| UNINSURED – Anagram of U + U + DINNERS. | |
| 7 | Family member coming over, name’s Nike, not European at all (7) |
| KINSMAN – Anagram of NAM[e]’S NIK[e]. | |
| 13 | Hit soldier raised in position — a complicated procedure (9) |
| RIGMAROLE – R(RAM GI upside-down)OLE. | |
| 15 | Unfaithfulness every former queen’s shown during trial (9) |
| TREACHERY – TR(EACH E.R.)Y. | |
| 16 | Attempt to gamble on small new broker? (2-7) |
| GO-BETWEEN – GO + BET + WEE + N. | |
| 18 | For instance, a seaweed thrown up some time ago (4,3) |
| IRON AGE – E.G. A NORI upside-down. | |
| 19 | Shooting protester, not male, before end of rally (7) |
| ARCHERY – [m]ARCHER + [rall]Y. | |
| 21 | One university heartlessly sacked (7) |
| UNIFIED – UNI + FI[r]ED. | |
| 22 | Mike’s after running scout convention (6) |
| CUSTOM – Anagram of SCOUT + M. | |
DNF due to MERTINMAS for MARTINMAS, otherwise would have been a satisfying 10:33. It wasn’t due to rushing as I was staring at it for a minute. I now realise that ‘mother’ is MAMA rather than just MA, and I hadn’t accounted for the other M in my reading anyway. That’s my leaderboard aspirations banjaxed for another month.
MYRMIDON is a nice word which was mainly familiar to me from the game Oblivion (it’s one of the arena ranks), and perhaps once or twice from Homer, although I’ve only read the Odyssey, not the Iliad, which is apparently where they feature more prominently.
Thank you Vinyl1 and setter.
I have to admit that I knew of Myrmidons from the film Troy! So, I knew the word if not how to spell it.
This was on the gentler side, but I think still a bit more of a challenge than some of the easy Mondays we used to see. The only unknown for me was the seaweed, but the answer was obvious so it had to be NORI.
45”. Muddled up my seaweeds. There’s Aonori as well so had an extra a and o but it was clearly Iron Age. Incidentally I access the crossword using my IPhone paying £5 monthly for the Lite version. I called them when the subscription price increased and they ‘enlitened’ me to this option if that helps anyone?
27 minutes. All fairly straightforward. MYRMIDON entered because it fitted, I’d heard of it, and the wordplay gave it, but I couldn’t have told you what it meant. Also a bit vague about nori, but thought that IRON AGE was what it was.
16:58
Decent start to the week with a gentle Snitch at 66 which would give me a target of 18 minutes. A few notes:
ACQUAINT – LOI, had to rely on the ‘If U then Q’ rule, to think of the answer
MYRMIDON – During the solve, I was thinking that must be that dance from The Nutcracker, but that’s Mirlitons, so goodness knows how I know this answer.
IRON AGE – never heard of NORI = seaweed
MARTINMAS – dragged up from somewhere, but parsed successfully
Thanks V and setter
19:20 – gentle enough to count as a normal Monday following a particularly tough week. Was familiar with MYRMIDON after much immersion in various versions of the Achilles saga, but the definition threw me a little. No doubt the instinctive bit has some lexicographic justification somewhere but it doesn’t immediately spring to mind as an essential quality.
Quick today, no problems.
Worried about how many have not heard of Myrmidons. What is happening to education in this country?!
There weren’t any copies of the Iliad around in Blaydon Comprehensive in the 70s so I don’t think that’s a modern change😊
You sure? Did it not have a school library? Mine did, but that was back in the educated 1960s 🙂
Yes it did, I certainly don’t recall a classical Greek section. And somehow on my weekly visits to the local municipal library I did not tend to browse those shelves either.
I did try reading the Iliad once after enjoying the Odyssey (wrong order, I know) but got bogged down in the lists of who was there with how many men and gave up.
Nowadays I would simply skip those bits but I was rather a linear thinker in my youth. Maybe try again.
13:35 accessed successfully from the club site so now gutted to find that my current position 27 on the leaderboard is a falsehood😊 Sort of knew the word myrmidon but wouldn’t have known its spelling so wordplay very helpful there. Also never heard of Martinmas which I was determined was going to be Michaelmas but it wouldn’t fit. Liked the modified reverse hidden clue for kinsman, not a device I recall seeing before.
Thx V and setter
Must have loaded this after the problem was sorted. For some reason PERVERSION wouldn’t come. LOI. Otherwise v Mondayish. 14 mins
This would have been a quick time despite having to do it on my phone (I can’t stand the other crossword interface) but I opted for MYRMODIN for some reason. The correct answer looks more like a word.
COD: PERVERSION
Thanks blogger and setter
MYRMIDON remembered from my 15 minuts of fame as a contestant on Treasure Hunt. It was the name of a ship in Liverpool docks to which we had to direct Anneka in her helicopter.
22 minutes. Bit weird not to be able to get the online version – don’t know why this is so hard for them to sort! Lovely puzzle with some interesting words (MYRMIDON which I had thought was a type of gladiator, but that turns out to be a MURMILLO).
23:32
No problem accessing the club page at 11.20 here in France (UTC+01:00).
Reasonably straightforward but PROVENDER, MYRMIDON and PARFAIT all made me pause. Always confuse the latter with the description of the “gentle knight”.
Thanks to Vinyl and the setter
I found it slightly trickier than a standard Monday, and it took me fully a minute to see my LOI, though it really shouldn’t have.
FOI PLUCKY
LOI PERVERSION
COD DUMB
TIME 10:20
About 45 minutes in total – 30 minutes to do all but four clues, then a cup of tea for refreshment, followed by the final 15 minutes with LOI Acquaint where I was trying to use the odd letters from Account. Does Quaint mean oddly familiar?
NHO Nori, but it was clearly going to be Iron Age . Enjoyable puzzle.
Not a Monday stroll in the park by any means but pleasantly challenging. Held up mostly by ACQUAINT – like others here, ‘oddly unfamiliar’ isn’t quite what the word suggests in my opinion.
I thought it was slightly trickier than Vinyl judged it, with a couple of unknowns – MYRMIDON – the classics were not my strong suit and I only did Latin for a couple of years, not Greek – and NORI. Both were solvable from the cryptic, however, and it was other problems that held me up. I missed the triple def of ASSUME, until biffing it, had a MER at ‘quaint’ meaning oddly unfamiliar and was toying with CANDLEMAS before I thought of MARTINMAS, less familiar, and realising mother’s was MA MAS, not MAS. LOI ADOLESCENT, having convinced myself inclination was BENT.
Standard Monday puzzle, and none the worse for that. Achilles and his Myrmidons were a nasty bunch.
As far as I’m concerned this was the easiest for some time, with a swift (for me) finishing time of 17.08. Maybe I was just on the setters wavelength, but most answers came to me pretty quickly with only PROVENDER and PLAYTIME delaying me to any great extent. It was fingers crossed as far as MYRMIDON was concerned, and I was relieved to find it was right.
7:40. I’m in Canada so the club site problems had been fixed by the time I got to this. No problems with the puzzle, but a couple of MERs at ‘oddly unfamiliar’ and ‘instinctively’.
I knew MYRMIDON but couldn’t remember what it meant (so checked after it all went green). As with today’s QC, I felt a PB slipped through the fingers. This is because I completed this in 26:55 (PB is 17 or so), but that included a major interruption from a colleague, which I’m sure amounted to more than 10 minutes. Ah well, I’ll never know.
Very frustrating as I solved correctly and without typos today but as I had to use the non-club portal, my answers were wiped as soon as I closed the page as is usually the case unless I use the club link, no doubt a local system failing – if not pilot error.
The only answers that delayed me were IRE which I biffed as I could see no alternative, MYRMIDON which I had to convince myself I had heard of in some unknown context and IRON AGE where, again I thought I had encountered the seaweed before somewhere.
Thanks to setter and vinyl1.
23:51
MARTINMAS has resulted in my having “The Wife of Ushers Well” stuck as an earworm.
PERVERSION was my LOI.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
Always dissappointed not to finish especially when flying all the way to 28 ac. Memo to self “biff and hope”.
Didn’t do as well as I should have, considering this was a Monday puzzle: had the same number of mistakes as usual (not telling!) NHO MYRMIDON (had forgotten MY for GOSH!) but understood that an anagram of Nimrod was needed; and completely stuffed up the SW corner by triumphantly entering RICHARDSON (thinking the actor / composer relationship?). Liked SMATTERING (we’ve had it a couple of times recently) and ACQUAINT.