| 1 |
Awe maybe after short time for cruel god (6) |
|
MOLOCH – MO + LOCH. Yes, there is a Loch Awe; I’m surprised no one has used it before. |
| 4 |
Make an error in space excursion? (4,2) |
|
TRIP UP – Double definition, one from the Uxbridge. |
| 10 |
Bits of holy text in old city guarded by special force (5) |
|
SURAS – S(UR)AS. The Sumerians have deployed the Special Air Services to obtain verses of the Koran. It’s complicated. |
| 11 |
A new atomiser for perfume (9) |
|
AROMATISE – A + anagram of ATOMISER, with perfume as a verb. |
| 12 |
Language of the old man approaching John in greeting (7) |
|
PAHLAVI – PA + H(LAV)I. One of the Middle Persian dialects. |
| 13 |
Self-important politician in middle of room probing matter (7) |
|
POMPOUS – P([r]O(MP)O[m])US. A busy cryptic that many solvers will just biff. |
| 14 |
Attempt again diminished performer — one holding something back in theatre? (9) |
|
RETRACTOR – RETR[y] + ACTOR. Experienced solvers are always suspicious when the word theatre appears, and here their suspicions are justified. |
| 16 |
Couple pinning medic, an idiot (5) |
|
DUMBO – DU(MB)O. Or a flying elephant, which would give the answer away. |
| 18 |
Demonstrate quietly, wander here and there (5) |
|
PROVE – P + ROVE, an escapee from the Quickie. |
| 20 |
Seal fibre somehow in sculptural feature (3-6) |
|
BAS-RELIEF – Anagram of SEAL FIBRE, which many will biff from the enumeration. |
| 22 |
Permits variable amount of money to be loaned (7) |
|
IMPREST – Anagram of PERMITS. A rather obscure business term, which many solvers will just conjure up from the anagram letters. |
| 24 |
Be right, holding rugger is for the heavy physical type (7) |
|
BRUISER – B(R.U. IS)E + R. |
| 25 |
Cut hole in material that’s affected by the sun outside? (9) |
|
TREPANNED – T(REP)ANNED. |
| 26 |
Commercial link-up that is needing external money (3-2) |
|
TIE-IN – T(I.E.)IN. |
| 27 |
Son conveniently near to provide drink (6) |
|
SHANDY – S + HANDY. |
| 28 |
Regional potato dish containing rodent (6) |
|
PRATIE – P(RAT)IE. The Irish equivalent of tattie. |
Not my cup of tea, or maybe too many words just outside what I can reasonably be expected to remember after a wine infested meal. Thanks, vinyl (and, you are missing a R in Herald)
The NW did for me. Didn’t know that there is a Lock Awe for MOLOCH. I knew I was looking for a surgical instrument for RETRACTOR but couldn’t bring it to mind, should have seen the wordplay though. PAHLAVI was from wordplay but a NHO. Knew PRATIE but the wordplay was simple too. Liked TREPANNED, which made me think of ‘need that like a hole in the head’. IMPREST was vaguely familiar. BRUISER was an assembly clue along with BOSPORUS. MAINSHEET came after writing in ‘main’ from the anagrist. Liked the two long downs, PRESS CONFERENCE was fairly easy but took me a while to twig to MISAPPROPRIATES, which is my COD. Not a Monday crossword IMO.
Thanks V and setter.
Gave up after Moloch larghetto Suras and Phalavi Clues are hard enough without words beyond most peoples vocabulary Pompous is right
Not for me, sorry, setter.
Sawbill
I must have seen PRATIE somewhere before.
LOI PAHLAVI.
Around 40 minutes where knew all the answers but many where I did not know the word meaning. Knew MOLOCH, PAHLAVI, SURA, PIETA vaguely as words, then others less vaguely. Remembered some from previous Times Cryptics . Tomorrow I probably won’t know any.
Thanks V and setter
MOLOCH has occurred before, once as a child-devouring god and twice as an ugly Australian lizard like the mountain devil or the thorny devil.
36.18 officially, but I wandered off a few times so in reality a bit closer to the half hour. Which is, TBH, considerably better than I expected when the early part of this solve was quite the struggle. Many unknowns included the loch, SURAS, IMPREST and BOSPORUS spelt like that. A sparkling wine that wasn’t Asti? Humph! As far as I’m concerned cava is spelt kava and is a mildly narcotic, non-sparkling and rather disgusting mud-coloured concoction supped from communal bowls in the South Pacific. But I enjoyed the challenge, thanks V.
From John Wesley Harding:
All across the telegraph, his name it did resound
But no charge held against him could they PROVE
And there was no man around who could track or chain him down
He was never known to make a foolish move
Really enjoyed the concert in Brighton on Friday night. Just a couple of minutes short of two hours, mainly the Rough and Rowdy Ways songs, with a smattering of earlier stuff, played with a full-on blues band. His voice was terrific. If it’s the last time, I’ll die happy.
Lucky bastard! Can’t imagine him ever coming down to Australia again.
Well played BW. I’ve had that ‘if it’s the last time’ feeling after every concert for 20+ years, but here we are. But as Isla says, getting back to Oz might be a bridge too far, we’ll have to see!
26:27. I didn’t know SURAS, PAHLAVI or PHILO, all of which went in with varying degrees of confidence from wordplay. I remembered Loch Awe which is on the way to Oban and the Triumph HERALD, mainly from repeats of “Heartbeat”.
I’m glad I didn’t have to explain the parsing of PHILO. After looking at it post-solve, I came up with clue-as-definition plus the PHI + LO wordplay and the ‘half of his field is cut!’ as a cryptic hint; I doubt that’s correct though.
Thanks to vinyl and setter
For non-double-duty, I think the definition must be Greek, then wordplay of PHI LO, then another lot of wordplay. NHO, so LOI from the PHI/LO wordplay and crossers.
Definitely not Monday-ish!
Been to Loch Awe, vaguely heard of pratie, suras and Pahlavi .. but nho Philo. Still, got there.
Had many dealings with imprest accounts over the years, but only as incidental expense accounts, not as anything to do with loans.
Nice to see a Triumph Herald. Maybe even a Vitesse next time?!
22.18 gross of breakfast interruptions, I must have been on the wavelength today. There survives a crackly Edwardian recording of the Irish baritone Harry Plunket Greene (1865-1936) singing the folk song “The Garden where the Praties grow”, and I have driven along the shores of Loch Awe.
FOI MOLOCH
LOI BODE
COD PAHLAVI
Thanks V and setter
I went with pahcani for the language!
So did I until I looked it up and found it absent.
so did I
Pahlavi maybe heard of. Incorrectly guessed it was etymological basis for “palaver” to confirm its existence. Palaver actually Portuguese they say.
Another PAHCANI here
I thought of the ex Shah, Reva Pahlavi, so bunged it in.
I sympathise with Glen, as although I went for PAHLAVI I was very close to going for PAHCANI, especially as “John” and “can” are both US English, I think. I may just have been thinking of Pali, an unrelated language, as far as I know.
Apart from that, 55 minutes for me, slowed by unknowns like PRATIE but sped by knowing oddities like IMPREST, a system used by the law firm I work for to pay claims on behalf of insurance companies.
I was very surprised by PHILO as a double cryptic. I don’t think I have ever seen a clue before without a literal. Is this the new norm?
I think you have to read the whole thing as the definition. So it’s an &Lit but with the unusual distinction of having two sets of wordplay. Why not I guess!
I can’t believe I finished this, and in 45 minutes. I got PAHLAVI from the old SHAH. An imprest system for small expenditure was common early in my career, not that it was immediately recognisable from this definition. Being a physicist, I’m better at the religious stuff than the medical, and retractor came from a misremembered protractor. I had heard of PRATIES. Thank you V and setter. A good tough puzzle.
Me too on the old Shah who seemed to bring bad luck wherever he went.
I haven’t been here for a while. I got out of the habit. But I feel like commenting on this one. On the face of it, the clues are fair and do-able and not too tough. It took me about 25 mins during brekker.
But I had several eyebrow raising moments:
Assuming Awe is a loch
Seeing matter=pus while eating brekker
Seeing “that is”=ie being used twice in the same crossword
I am a Yorkshireman who has lived in Scotland for ten years and never heard pratie=potato
Philo isn’t a whole word, is it?
Yes I remember Triumph Heralds, but from forty years ago.
Pahlavi? Nuff said
The pratie is apparently Irish, rather than Scottish
PHILO is a name.
Yes as in Philo Vance, American fictional detective, but not very helpful here.
He was a philosopher of the first century AD, a Jew writing in Greek.
37 mins. LOI a guess: Lav vs Can which proved correct. Way too much obscurity to be enjoyed exactly but a grim satisfaction in getting over the line.
Checking out the Snitch trends page: https://times.xwdsnitch.link/solving_averages
suggests a consistent Mon-Fri pattern for many years though with an increasing Friday difficulty lately. Of course, it does not include DNFs. Great piece of data presentation though.
Thanks vinyl, setter and starstruck.
Very interesting. Past editors have maintained that there was no conscious effort to increase the difficulty of the puzzles over the course of the week, so I wondered if there was some other effect at work (increasing fatigue over the course of the work week? Thursday evenings in the pub?!) However this data confirms the very clear impression I’ve had lately that the policy has changed and Jason is saving stinkers for Friday. Of course this might just be a question of setter rotation.
Great data.The pattern is fully consistent for the last three years. No way that can be a fluke. Perhaps it is we solvers who affect it to some extent, perhaps it is us who are fatigued by Friday.
Yes I agree, but I also think that it would be quite a difficult thing to pull off deliberately: the gradation is too subtle. In the more recent data though it’s clear that they’ve just decided to make Friday Stinker Day!
I thought Mick had said, in one of his recent C-Club emails, that Jason was deliberately trying to introduce an easier to harder week.
I saw that too, but I can’t remember where. I thought it might have been someone reporting something Jason had said at a gathering: the Championship perhaps or more likely the summer get-together at the George?
Mick Hodgkins’ Times Puzzles newsletter from Nov 8
Times crossword editor Jason Crampton replies: “I do try to select easier puzzles for Monday and Tuesday, with more difficult puzzles scheduled towards the end of the week. I usually select what I think is the best of the week’s puzzles for Saturday, so the difficulty of these puzzles will vary considerably more than on other days.”
Thanks. That’s it. We also have a response to a complaint that one Friday puzzle was way too hard, in the newsletter dated 9 August:
Times crossword editor Jason Crampton responds that although we do aim to publish more challenging puzzles on a Friday, this one may have overstepped the mark. “I believe all setters aim to compile puzzles that are doable, but perhaps not all setters interpret doable in the same way,” Jason observes, adding that he is encouraging some of our more ferocious setters to dial it down a little [my italics]
Ah, yes. I remember that puzzle. Jason’s “This one may have overstepped the mark” could be used in a puzzle clue as “patently true statement regarding crosswords”.
Done in 1 hour 3 mins. Needed several aids to jolt my brain for synonyms. Eg ROVE and CAVA. I was slow on 1d which held me up.
NHO PAHLAVI (tempted with Pahcani there), and tried to make Punjabi work, but recalled that was the Shahs name. Other NHOs PRATIE, MOLOCH, IMPREST, PHILO, MAINSHEET
Always though Bosporus was spelt and pronounced Bosphorus.
I don’t understand the REP in TREPANNED, it just means “material”?
COD PRESS CONFERENCE
Rep is a bit like corduroy, so yes, a material.
10:35, with a couple of minutes at the end trying and failing to come up with something better than PRATIE. In the end I just went with it, fully expecting to see pink squares.
Lots of odd stuff in here, as others have noted. I still don’t see how ‘material’ means APPROPRIATE.
I took it as deriving from the language of trials, where a material witness, or material evidence, is appropriate or germane to the case.
Hmm. Seems loose to me.
Yet it worked for me…
Yes. A bit loose.
21:03. Too many obscurities for me. I spent a couple of minutes at the the end trying to find an alternative to the unknown PRATIE and eventually put it in with a shrug and looked it up to see if it was a word. Also DNK SURAS, PAHLAVI or PHILO. I liked PRESS CONFERENCE, though. Relieved to complete all correct without aids. Thanks Vinyl and setter.
Says the Club Monthly blogger!!
I found that my years of blogging the Club Monthly have made me more or less immune to the whole “I don’t know the word so I can’t solve the clue” idea ..
Ah yes. But I expect to make liberal use of aids for the MCS, and to avoid them for the daily 15×15.
More of a chore than a pleasure, but eventually crawled over the line, bruised but unbloodied. Have driven past Loch Awe many times en route to the Oban ferry terminal. It has a pumped storage Hydroelectric power plant which has the potential to provide a black start capability to the National Grid.. From RANI to BODE in 29:46. Thanks setter and Vinyl. I also think the puzzles are getting harder in general, leaving aside the now customary Friday stinker.
OK but most dynamic generating capacity can do that, including nuclear and gas. Not the case though for solar or wind, which is increasingly becoming an issue for the grid..
As I recall it, few power stations had the natural ability to restart without any power whatsoever from the Grid. Even a hydro station might need power to open the intake gates. Diesel generators, not always reliable starters themselves, gave way to stand alone gas turbines during my CEGB career to fulfil this role, not that we ever faced the need for a total black start.
14.55, so not so tough, but I’ll confess part way through the opening quarter I thought I’d opened a Monthly Special by mistake. It’s the sort of crossword where, if you’re lucky (or perhaps a seasoned Monthly competitor) you can pull up the words from a rather murky pool. Just as well the two long ones were normal fare. For reference, this week’s Mephisto has a considerably less arcane vocabulary (bar a couple of specials).
Mildly disappointed that we had Phi and Beta but no Kappa.
Pahcani was the obvious choice for solvers who had never heard of this dialect, as John is an American usage. A seriously flawed clue: an obscurity rendered by a choice between lav, bog, loo and can, with the latter self-evidently the correct option as indicated by the word John. As it happens, the evidence in favour of can was so strong that I never even considered other choices, and if I had, I would still have rejected them in favour of can. If you didn’t already know the obscurity, you were sunk, as the clue’s wordplay is flawed.
Thanks, v.
MOLOCH, PAHLAVI, BOSPORUS with that spelling, RETRACTOR, PHILO, IMPREST, PRATIE. Never do I seem to have looked up so many words in the dictionary to confirm that their meanings really were what I suspected. But all the wordplay was OK, so the clues were fair. 39 minutes.
Well I liked it, 18 minutes and thinking it was good Monday fare. I knew IMPREST and MOLOCH and the LOCH AWE part, which helped, but had to guess SURAS from wordplay, not being an Islamist expert. The long down clues went in early, which helped the speed. PHILO was clever clueing.
My thanks to vinyl1 and setter.
Quite tricky, very for a Monday.
1a Moloch, NHO Loch Awe AFAIK so biffed.
12a Pahlavi, I remember the late Shah of Persia (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) being a Pahlavi but DNK it is a language.
28a Pratie, NHO, biffed.
6d Philo, missed half of the clue, never thought of Philo(sophy).
9d Bosp(h)orus, DNK the H is optional.
23d Pieta, there are many Pietas.
Ah yes, perhaps that’s where I’d vaguely heard of PAHLAVI from.
13’05”, with LOI the nho PRATIE.
Knew PAHLAVI, now recall that the PAHLAVI CROWN is part of the Shah’s crown jewels. Was reading about PHILO yesterday, studying.
No idea at all about IMPREST.
Thanks vinyl and setter.
Just under an hour but completed. Seemed very unmondayish to me. I don’t think I’ve had so many NHOs on a Monday puzzle before. To make it more annoying some of the obscurities I knew the alternate spellings for.
If this was a Friday I would feel pleased I ground out a toughie relying on the wordplay. Maybe I should judge my performance by that standard.
Of the clues I fully understood I thought there were some clever tricks but a lot only half parsed. Atleast the blog got a good read.
Thanks blogger and setter.
Dnf. One error. MOLOCH. Never hear of MOLOCH nor Loch Awe.
18:10 – so not too far off the norm in terms of time, if not brain wattage, although with some lucky near-misses. PRATIEs from the eponymous John McCormack song – which features on a Joyce audiobook; PAHLAVI not familiar at all, and the alternatives avoided purely by chance; REP vaguely remembered as some type of cloth; SURAS a fairly confident guess; and of course the puzzlingly unclassifiable PHILO clue. Ace workout.
45′ or thereabouts for a difficult Monday. Dredged a few up. Knew AWE. Didn’t know PRATIE though wordplay helped. PAHLAVI from the Shah’s family name rather than the language, so I made the assumption it was linked. BOSPORUS came once I saw “brus(h)” but never seen that spelling. PHILO or “psilo”? I went with the NHO former as it made a modicum of sense. Thanks Vinyl and setter.
I knew praties from “Galway Bay”, by Bing Crosby et al:
“For the breezes blowing o’er the seas from Ireland
Are perfum’d by the heather as they blow
And the women in the uplands diggin’ praties
Speak a language that the strangers do not know”
Doing OK but put pahcani in for pahlavi. Struggled with Bosporus , mainly due to never having seen it spelt without an h.
Two goes needed.
– Slowed myself down by putting CURIA instead of SURAS, with CIA as the special force – I was thinking of the Roman Curia and therefore that it might be a holy text too
– I’m glad ‘can’ never occurred to me when looking at 12a, as otherwise I might have gone for PAHCANI rather than PAHLAVI
– Not familiar with IMPREST or PRATIE, but the cluing and checkers made them clear
Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Press conference
LOI Rani
COD Emerald
19.27
Tough for a Monday but … I really liked it, notwithstanding (actually because of) the obscurities. As long as the w/p is clear I don’t mind a NHO or two (or the six here, though PAHLAVI recognised from the Shah’s name). MOLOCH was the only one that I wasn’t confident of.
Thanks Ulaca/setter
Tired, lots of unknowns, but nevertheless breezed through unhindered. Not the usual outcome in the circumstances.
Australian TV commercial from the 1970s, for (Smith’s?) potato chips (crisps): Two people arguing “It’s the praties”, “It’s the cooking”, very annoying. So knew praties… surprised that I do and so many of Ireland’s neighbours don’t. Surprised I had the patience to watch such awful ads.
5 dn saw MED as the cure and wondered about the knight. NHO 6 dn I couldn’t parse at all.
Overall OK, but no standout COD.
Med was how I got the answer. It was only when I came to do the blog that I could not account for the knight, and thought again.
34:47
Didn’t get the first couple of acrosses, then for some reason my eye alighted on 7d which immediately gave PRESS CONFERENCE. Within five or six minutes, I had filled in more or less all of the RHS, except for 28a.
The LHS was far trickier, was very gradually pieced together. Some disappointment at the number of unknowns – PRATIE, PAHLAVI, SURAS, IMPREST which were all guesses, some entered more confidently than others, and didn’t know how RETRACTOR linked to ‘theatre’ – MOLOCH was dragged up from somewhere, once thought of, I kind of recalled there is perhaps a Loch Awe.
Thanks V and setter
Well I rather enjoyed this with time on my hands on a wet Monday.
Several unknowns derived correctly and only one wrong- I plumped for MOLICK in the end rejecting MOLOCH which sounded very very vaguely familiar and several others.
I have been watching Paul Murton touring Scotland’s lochs; I haven’t seen the Awe one yet.
I think the rain has just stopped, so off out.
David
PS something to watch on iPlayer
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06kfnt1/player
I must confess that I Ninja Turtled MOLOCH from the eponymous episode of Blake’s 7 (Series C, ep 11); apparently he’s also put in an appearance of sorts in Stargate SG-1, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural and Sleepy Hollow, so it clearly pays to be a fan of genre TV if you want to solve today’s puzzle!
Ah, Blake’s Seven, now you’re talking. They don’t make them like that any more …
Luckily they didn’t make too many episodes like Moloch at the time, either.
Around 10 minutes, so reasonably Mondayish for me. Luckily I had at least vaguely heard of the unusual words. Surprised so many had NHO Pahlavi, at least as a name – or maybe just didn’t make the connection? Like others, would have spelt the Turkish waterway with an H. COD PHILO for its unusual construction.
It should not have an H – it is from βοῦς + πόρος, a cattle ford. While φόρος does exist, it doesn’t have the right meaning.
Finished in a reasonable time of 38.42 but with two errors. It seems I am not alone in putting in PAHCANI as the language, which to me sounds as plausible as PAHLAVI if you hadn’t heard of it. My other error was MOLOCI instead of MOLOCH. I did consider the right answer, but mention of a cruel god swayed me to go for a misspelt LOCI as an alternative to LOKI, who may perhaps have been considered more mischievous than cruel.
Defeated today, Moloch is impossible if you know neither the god or the loch. NHO larghetto, pratie, Pahlavi, retractor, philosopher though I managed philo, pratie and Pahlavi from the wordplay. NHO rep as material so although I wanted to put trepanned for a long time I was trying to find an alternative. Never seen that spelling of Bosporus.
As Fred Trueman was wont to say of hapless batsmen, it were too good for thee, son.
Thx Vinyl and setter
Quite a struggle for a Monday but managed to get there with a fair amount of biffing.
My dad was a great admirer of Count John McCormack so I was familiar with The Garden where the Praties Grow. Don’t see why I should suffer alone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JScrL4bpJ9c
Thanks to Vinyl and the setter
This one was annoying for all the reasons stated above. I find that if 1 across doesn’t come quickly, it’s a bad omen and my ignorance of a loch called Awe meant I spent ages trying to think of synonyms or other applications for the word .
Grrr..
I knew PRATIE from the extremely catchy Dubliners song ‘Goodbye Muirsheen Durkin’ but I still fail to think of it, so a DNF. I didn’t know that particular meaning of IMPREST and NHO ‘Loch Awe’. Slightly in the tricky side for a Monday (though maybe not by recent standards)
This took me forever to complete but I was pleased to fail by only two: PAHLAVI (I had palhavi) and the NHO PRATIE. Hadn’t fully appreciated PHILO. Needed the blog for other parsings too. Many thanks.
About 20 mins, knew a lot of the funny words. In the Civil Service an imprest was an advance to cover eg travel expenses, had plenty of those.
From Milton’s Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity:
And sullen Moloch, fled
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals’ ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance around the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.
I’d heard of imprest but couldn’t remember where from, I do know! (6 years in the CS in the 80s)
Surprised so many were unaware of REP = Cloth. I’m sure it used to be a very common clue device. Maybe I’m just getting maudlin in me old age?
Well, you might be, but meantime you are quite right about REP…
One hour (45 minutes, break to refresh, 15 minutes). Didn’t know what was going on with Trepanned but it had to be. Also had to be Imprest. Luckily, I’ve been to Loch Awe (50 years ago). Not an easy Monday by any stretch.
Pretty straightforward. Only unknown word was SURAS, but the clue was easy. Happy to finish in a tad over 30 minutes.
I realised early on that this wasn’t typical Monday fare, and had only about 4 clues before work, so in fact Mr Ego and I set to it this evening as a joint effort and managed to complete it successfully. NHO PAHLAVI, IMPREST, PRATIE, SURAS or the spelling of BOSPORUS. However, we got there, somehow, despite initially thinking of PAHCANI as an alternative. The long clues certainly helped, and the NW corner was last to fall, once I’d abandoned SF for special force. I knew 3d had to have either Asti or Cava, and CASSAVA sorted out SURAS and RETRACTOR as well as MOLOCH, which I’d heard of but couldn’t recall. Only then did the implication of Awe dawn on me – a most beautiful loch and certainly ‘awe-inspiring’.
29 mins. I did indeed have to conjure up IMPREST and PRATIE but also PAHLAVI and SURAS so quite a chewy Monday for me. The loch I knew, although I can see that being a sticking point for many. COD to PHILO.
Agree this was a bit more testing than the average Monday exercise. All done in 44 minutes, though looking back over it I might have managed it in five or ten minutes less, as I did not find any of the clues outlandishly impenetrable, as sometimes happens.
FOI – POMPOUS
LOI – BODE
COD – PHILO
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.