Time: 20:44
Music: Freddie Hubbard, Red Clay.
I thought his puzzle was going to give trouble, so I picked off some of the easier clues to get started. The setter offers some novel constructions, and is definitely fond of removing letters from words. I definitely found it quite enjoyable.
| Across | |
| 1 | Put foot down after Charlie humiliated (9) |
| CHASTENED – C + HASTENED, put foot down as in stepped on the gas. | |
| 9 | Issue returning underwriter had (7) |
| EMANATE – NAME backwards + ATE. A name in the sense of a Lloyd’s underwriter. | |
| 10 | E from Indonesia perhaps (7) |
| EASTERN – Double definition, my LOI where I tried all sorts of tricks before seeing the obvious. | |
| 11 | Silence writer making one envious at first (5) |
| QUELL – QU(-i,+E)LL, a simple letter-substitution clue. | |
| 12 | Correspondents gathering in Shanghai (5-4) |
| PRESS GANG – A jocular cryptic hint. | |
| 13 | Listing showing signs of recovery, they say (7) |
| HEELING – Sounds list HEALING. | |
| 15 | Note Jean-Paul Sartre’s bed set on fire again (5) |
| RELIT – RE + LIT, with more knowledge of French than usual required. | |
| 17 | Call impostor briefly (5) |
| PHONE – PHONE[y]. | |
| 18 | Bones from carcass lying around (5) |
| SACRA – Backwards hidden in [c]ARCAS[s]. | |
| 19 | Brassed off agent in court (3,2) |
| FED UP – FED (a US agent) + UP. | |
| 20 | New way to the top beginning to emerge (7) |
| NASCENT – N + ASCENT. | |
| 23 | Spooner’s nosy follower, one employed in the kitchen (6,3) |
| FRYING PAN – Spoonerism of PRYING FAN. | |
| 25 | Philosopher in bar called out (5) |
| LOCKE – Sounds like LOCK. | |
| 27 | Trend in Great Depression ruined Democrat: millions lost (3,4) |
| ART DECO – Anagram of DEMOCRAT – M. | |
| 28 | First section nearly all one-sided (7) |
| PARTIAL – PART I + AL[l]. | |
| 29 | Cleaner put off man of good birth (9) |
| DETERGENT – DETER + GENT, a chestnut. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Sinister fellow turning up in empty city (6) |
| CREEPY – C(PEER upside-down)Y. | |
| 2 | I mess about, remarkably sober (10) |
| ABSTEMIOUS – Anagram of I MESS ABOUT. | |
| 3 | Nurse almost guaranteed prize (8) |
| TREASURE – TREA[t] + SURE. | |
| 4 | Hitman in Japan hiding here? (5) |
| NINJA – Hidden in [hitma]N IN JA[pan]. | |
| 5 | Pleased something done about one of The Sun’s offerings (9) |
| DELIGHTED – DE(LIGHT)ED. | |
| 6 | Nothing must be removed from ornate old boat (6) |
| BARQUE – BAR[o]QUE. | |
| 7 | Lawsuit covering investigation (4) |
| CASE – Triple definition. | |
| 8 | Disorganised paralegal overlooking a complaint (8) |
| PELLAGRA – Anagram of PARALEGAL – A. | |
| 14 | MP in election unusually short (10) |
| INCOMPLETE – MP in an anagam of ELECTION. | |
| 16 | Withdrew from competition? Strange (4-5) |
| LEFT FIELD – LEFT + FIELD, in entirely different senses. An Americanism for those in Tunbridge Wells who wish to write a letter to the puzzles editor. | |
| 17 | Woman waiting ages to run off after author (8) |
| PENELOPE – PEN + ELOPE, where the definition describes the wife of Odysseus. | |
| 18 | Misguided Republican steps in, one not in union (8) |
| SPINSTER – R in anagram of STEPS IN. | |
| 21 | Shutter closed when sleeping (6) |
| EYELID – A cryptic definition. | |
| 22 | Where you might find mule travelling thus? (2,4) |
| ON FOOT – Referring to the MULE you wear. | |
| 24 | Poet turning tail, cause of ferment? (5) |
| YEAST – YEATS with a twist in the last two letters. | |
| 26 | Sculptor losing heart in capital (4) |
| CARO – CA[i]RO. Never heard of him, but the cryptic is pretty explicit. | |
I don’t think I’ve ever heard LEFT FIELD (with a hyphen, in Chambers) used all by itself to mean “strange.” Virtually always (are there variations?) it’s “out of left field.” (The title of my friends Joshua and Henri’s regular offering of cryptic puzzles via Patreon—a title they embrace in all its senses.)
SECOND TRY
24:38
Like Guy, I’ve never come across LEFT-FIELD. I was quite slow on this one. QUELL (and hence BARQUE) was a long time coming, and I only parsed it, and EMANATE, after submitting. NHO CARO, and I needed the checkers to think of Cairo.
36 minutes with 10 of those spent on my last few in the NE segment: BARQUE, QUILL, CASE and PELLAGRA. And I could have saved myself another minute or two had I written in EASTERN when I first considered it, but it seemed such a feeble clue I didn’t believe it, so I waited until checkers made it inevitable. I still think it’s a feeble clue though.
I had no problem with LEFT-FIELD despite being unware of its origins in baseball, if that’s where it comes from. CARO was taken on trust and I ignored ‘waiting ages’ re PENELOPE, just assuming (correctly) it was a reference I wouldn’t know.
EASTERN is ridiculous. Hardly a double definition when the first word—er, letter—is just an abbreviation for what’s defined by example in the rest of the clue.
Agree!
CARO was my LOI since I NHO him. I assumed he was a contemporary of Michelangelo or something, but he is English and only died a few years ago. Before I had checkers I was tempted by MOoRE. I’ve also never heard of LEFT FIELD on its own but that didn’t hold me up. For EASTERN, I wasted time trying to justify ASTERN as “from” before realizing I was just being too complicated. I knew who PENELOPE was and why she waited ages. Nice Mondayish offering.
33.58, which I thought was OK seeing I DNK CARO, PELLAGRA or NAME in that sense, was puzzled by lock/bar and jagged BARQUE by just getting lucky. Thanks v.
From Make You Feel My Love:
When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your CASE
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love
For your Bob Dylan, I’ll raise you Tom Lehrer (RIP).
From “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie”:
“… I’ll go back to the Swanee
Where PELLAGRA makes you scrawny
And the honeysuckle clutters up the vine
I really am a fixin’
To go home and start a mixin’
Down below that Mason-Dixon Line…”
That’s quite…niche! If anyone’s going to get a word like pellagra into a song, it’s Tom. Or it was Tom…
Same comments as most everyone else. 23:59
Kind of liked EASTERN. Rather left-field.
Nyah, right down the middle.
23 minutes. EASTERN went in with a shrug. I was happy to see the crossing Q which helped me get QUELL. NHO the ‘Sculptor’ and having done only a perfunctory alphabet and capital trawl, I wasn’t very confident on pressing the Submit button. I liked the journalists meeting together in China.
About 25′. Should have been quicker but held up in NE corner where EMANATE wouldn’t come quickly, and I needed it to decide between the VHO pallegra/PELLAGRA. CARO also faintly familiar, but I too thought was much older, so maybe actually a NHO. I pencilled in EASTERN to begin with not expecting it to survive, but it did. Thanks Vinyl and setter.
Quick, as befits a monday. No unknowns but pellagra only vaguely and could not describe symptoms…
Was unclear what art deco and the great depression had to do with each other. Just a matter of timing? Seems a bit left-field, which Americanism did not bother me much.
13.10
No great problems apart from the NHO sculptor. Seeing J and Q in the top half made me wonder if we were in for a pangram (single only, after Friday’s double), but no such luck.
Starting the count-down to next month’s Championship, hopefully with some improvement in times (for The Times).
COD ABSTEMIOUS
LOI CARO
38 mins a chunk of which was spent in the NE like others. QUELL was the key that finally unLOCKEd the door. I agree with the comments above, some very strange clues.
PELLAGRA and the waiting PENELOPE both unknown.
I liked FRYING PAN.
Thanks V and setter.
18:50 but I submitted off-grid for some reason.
No major problems encountered but I took a best guess for the unknown PELLAGRA, the other unknown CARO took far too long to see, and I ummed and ahhed about EMANATE as the Lloyds connection didn’t occur to me.
An entertaining solve so thanks to both.
51:28
Needed two aids, one to look up PELLAGRA, as I guessed PALLEGRA which made LOI EMANATE impossible. Spent a lot of time in that one, could not think of a word for “underwriter”, forgot the whole Lloyds thing.
Other hint needed was a list of 4/5 letter sculptors. Only one I thought of was RODIN, for a capital of ROIN, clue works either way. Managed to get LOCKE without needing another list, then got the C and CARO.
Also held up by putting YEATS in, which blocked the easy chestnut DETERGENT.
Bed=lit, sure I knew it, but how many are we expected to know?
COD PRESS GANG
I had Moore => More for ages
bed =lit would be well known to many from wagon lit=sleeping car . Orient Express and all that.
Caro is written into my cheating dictionary, so must have appeared before.
the easy Monday rule doesn’t quite apply
thanks to setter and blogger.
DNF. Gave up on 30 mins with the NHO CARO missing. Finally dredged LOCKE before twigging lock = bar works as a verb and guessed the remaining letters of NHO PELLAGRA.
A mixed bag, slow to start, fun in parts, ended weakly. Thanks both.
51 minutes with LOI CARO. I too was tempted by MO(O)RE before John Locke closed that down empirically. DNK PELLAGRA, the best arrangement of the letters I could come up with. I knew LEFT FIELD, and had always assumed it came from baseball. Not sure if it’s the leg or the off side though. A good challenge. Thank you V and setter.
DNF in 32 minutes, just could not get CARO. I suppose I should have realised Cairo. I did the rest in 25 minutes or so and thought it had some clever cluing, but not getting this Caro thing has annoyed me now 😉
Thanks setter and blogger
14.04
Some minutes at the end on CARO even with the checkers. Knew PELLAGRA, for sure only from these things. Liked FRYING PAN
Thanks Vinyl/setter
14.00, after putting in a less-than-confident CARO. “He was lauded as the greatest British sculptor of his generation” apparently. Very pleased for him. Like others, I also stumbled through the NE sector, despite being fine with PELLAGRA, and it was only when the Q emerged that I made progress, tackling the nightmare of ?A?E with anxiety, relieved by the triple definition, which limited options.
27:34 with FOI SACRA and LOI EYELID. NHO CARO and VHO PELLAGRA COD to FRYING PAN but I have no issues with the LEFT-FIELD or ART DECO
As someone from Tunbridge Wells , I’m pleased to report no issues here with left -field: that was the least of my problems.
Defeated in the end by the sculptor and I’m ashamed to say, EYELID.
20.08. Good loosener for the challenges ahead. Got really tangled up in the NE corner and I thought for a while I wasn’t going to crack it. I’d thought about quill earlier but had to go back and work it out. Once I got that barque followed easily, I didn’t do myself any favours by thinking the clue referred to an anagram of ornate plus and mins O.
LOI emanate.
No very great problems except that lock = bar didn’t establish itself at once, and was slow to understand DE(LIGHT)ED, indeed I’ve only just done so. 31 minutes.
As it was for others, the NE was the sticking point. Baffled by QUELL until I read vinyl’s blog and I didn’t think much of EASTERN. No problem with LEFT FIELD. I liked CARO, CHASTENED and ON FOOT.
It’s hard to believe but according to his Wikipedia entry “From his first years in the École normale, Sartre was one of its fiercest pranksters.” I suppose he would have had to take his bed being regularly set on fire as part of the general fun.
Thanks to vinyl and the setter
35:43 but had to Google sculptor and only knew of John Locke because some time ago I mis-Amazoned a book if his thinking he was a lighter author.
Ta Vinyl and setter
6:56. No problems today, in spite of the unknowns PELLAGRA and CARO. PELLAGRA did ring a faint bell, perhaps a trace of its last appearance here in 2019!
PRESS GANG started the proceedings. Most of the NW followed although EASTERN and TREASURE had question marks about their provenance until the crossers confirmed them. LOCKE presented himself unsteadily while I tried to equate lock and bar. I suppose you can bar/lock a door. The sculptor eluded me and I headed up to tussle with the NE where PELLAGRA tinkled a faint bell before EMANATE provided a second crosser for the elusive BARQUE which gave me QUILL. That left the sculptor who finally stumbled precariously from CA(i)RO. 17:28. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
18:05 – mostly quick until the philosopher and today’s capital city/nho artist slowed me down. Generally on the tricky side, I thought.
14 minutes, ending with CARO assuming it was Cairo less I. Nice for a Monday. No issues with LEFT FIELD and agree with jerryW about ART DECO.
Starting the week with a fail. I just couldn’t get the order of the unheard of PELLAGRA right.
LOCKE was my first thought but not convinced by bar/lock. Reading the comments here it seems acceptable but still a small grumble from me. Not helped by the unheard of CARO checking the middle letter.
COD PARTIAL
Thanks blogger (a lot I parsed but I wasn’t convinced with my workings) and setter
21:30
Fairly smooth solve, though not heard of either PELLAGRA nor CARO. CASE bunged in early but wasn’t 100% so glad to see the QUELL trick to confirm it. Liked PRESS-GANG and PENELOPE.
Thanks V and setter
I’m relatively new .. can ‘E’ be ‘Eastern’ or just ‘East’? .. if the latter then rather than a double definition is the clue referring to the ‘E’ in Indonesia being on the east side of the word?
I wondered that, but astern means behind or at the back not slightly to the right of centre, at least in my way of thinking. I’m of the opinion it’s just a really poor clue.
DNF, defeated by LOCKE (I went through a few philosophers but not him) and CARO (I didn’t know the sculptor, and without the C the only capital I got round to on my world trawl before I gave up was Bern).
– Didn’t know that sense of ‘name’ as used in EMANATE
– Had no idea that ‘Shanghai’ can be a verb meaning PRESS GANG
– NHO PELLAGRA but it was the only realistic option with the checkers in place
– Trusted the (kind) wordplay for PENELOPE as I didn’t know who was being referred to
– Didn’t know mule as a shoe, so ON FOOT went in with shrug
Thanks vinyl and setter.
COD Press gang
DNF, defeated by the unknown CARO, and despite an alphabet trawl, being unable to come up with a convincing answer or a capital (city or money). Not helped by being unable to tell which way around the definition was! Otherwise a fun crossword, bar the EASTERN referred to above.
Got there in the end, but needed a couple of Google cheats on the way through for the unknown complaint and sculptor. Those obviously helped with what would otherwise have been a pair of fairly tricky corners. Gave up trying to parse 24d once Tsaey made no sense – I’m still a novice at this game. Invariant
From a puzzle by Bluth in the weekend i :
“One who was said to resent living in the shadow of their famous dim-witted beast – poor Melania”
(1,1,5)
Like it…!
Well, it seems like the sculptor Anthony CARO could just as appropriately be named NHO CARO. Robert Caro, the American biographer, was known for his voluminously detailed writings. I got through the first two volumes of his Lyndon Johnson work but ran out of time (life is short) to continue with the last three. The adjective Caroesque was coined to describe his verbose writing style. At Princeton the Caro rule was put into effect capping the length of doctoral theses after his 235 page effort on Hemingway and Existentialism pushed the limits of his examiners’ stamina.
I managed this in 56mins but used aids for a couple of clues in NW.
Unlike others my nho was BARQUE. Name for underwriter was also new ro me.
CARO was my FOI, fully parsed. I like his work.
An enjoyable cryptic. Thanks to vinyl and setter.
33 minutes, of which the last 10 were devoted to an alphabet trawl to make sure my LOI really had to be CARO. The rest was fairly easy, but I hope the Caro rule won’t be referenced in a future puzzle (one never knows). QUELL was actually my FOI. I liked the FRYING PAN, too. It was a fun puzzle..
22’09” with no major hiccups. LOI PELLAGRA, but with checkers it could be nothing else.
About 35 minutes till I got to my last three in the ne corner, and approx another 13 required before BARQUE gave me QUELL and finally the elusive anagram PELLAGRA. 48.14 minutes well spent on an enjoyable puzzle.
This puzzle did indeed give me trouble (but why did our blogger think it would?), adding to my string of DNFs. But only by one clue, the NHO CARO. And really, I should have guessed it but got hold of the wrong end of the clue and couldn’t let go. I think I was tired from struggles elsewhere in the grid. Why should CASE have been so difficult? I had to trawl for it. A neat clue. QUELL also took a long time after I got infatuated with STILL, making the rather straightforward BARQUE impossible.
Thanks setter and vinyl.
I thought this a fair test for a Monday and had no quibbles, except perhaps a MER at the clueing for EASTERN. And it is the first time I have seen ART DECO linked with the Great – or indeed any – Depression. No time as I tackled it in several bites while sitting in various waiting rooms at a local Health Centre, but around 45 minutes in all.
FOI – PRESS-GANG
LOI – CARO
COD – FRYING PAN
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.
‘Bones from stripped carcass returned’
Hahahaha, all good but could not get the idea that 10ac had to be Epstein out of my head! Thought there was a joke i didn’t get, or ref I didn’t know about Indonesia! Srsly took an hour over it, great fun, thanks all, Cx
Well! Found the great bulk of this such a serious doddle that I thought “you lot” ( and I use the phrase with respect ) would all be saying how it should never have strayed from the Quickie! Just shows how differently we see these puzzles. Started off at a gallop, and had half done in a few minutes; then only slowed a little to finish off the remainder with the exception of CARO (NHO, and couldn’t come up with the required capital). So, there you have it: haven’t done one this fast in a couple of years. COD FRYING PAN.