Time: 31:30
Music: Mozart, Piano Sonatas, Peter Serkin
Hi, everyone, I’m sitting in for Jackkt tonight, or this morning if you’re in the UK.
This puzzle was an odd mixture of very easy clues, and a few that leave the solver scratching his head – did he really mean that? Many solvers will just biff the obvious answer and move on, never seeing the true brilliance of weightless, altitude, and intermix. Other clues may go just a bit to far – what do you think?
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | At floating point with what one is for nine? (10) |
| WEIGHTLESS – W + EIGHT LESS. I like this, it has just the right amount of innovation. | |
| 7 | Scare involving hospital food (4) |
| CHOW – C(H)OW. | |
| 9 | Wood lots used to pen a farm animal (8) |
| MAHOGANY – M(A HOG)ANY. | |
| 10 | Folly of Lucan on the run years (6) |
| LUNACY – Anagram of LUCAN + Y. | |
| 11 | Small savoury item not available in wrap (6) |
| CANAPE – CA(N/A)PE. My LOI, which I couldn’t see for quite a while as the checking letters were not very useful. | |
| 13 | Mingle at the end of third university year? (8) |
| INTERMIX – IN TERM IX, as there are three terms in the English academic year. | |
| 14 | On record, a great number PTO with little time? (8,4) |
| PLATINUM DISC – PLATINUM + DISC. PT is the chemical symbol for platinum, and O is a disc. I interpret ‘with little time’ to mean PTO is to be taken as shorthand, but other suggestions are invited. | |
| 17 | Operating simple navigation aid (7,5) |
| RUNNING LIGHT – RUNNING + LIGHT, where the light version doesn’t have all the bells and whistles. | |
| 20 | Protective coating quickly added to vehicle (8) |
| CARAPACE – CAR + APACE. | |
| 21 | Wizard I introduced to class (6) |
| GENIUS – GEN(I)US. | |
| 22 | Walk in short trousers (6) |
| STRIDE – STRIDE[rs], not a very good clue. If I were the editor, I would have said try again. | |
| 23 | Height of liberty the French reversed? (8) |
| ALTITUDE – LATITUDE with the first two letters reversed. | |
| 25 | Celtic deity British fled (4) |
| BRAN – B + RAN. | |
| 26 | Composed universal air letter for reading material (10) |
| LITERATURE – Anagram of U AIR LETTER. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Long period before fur is fit for removal (8) |
| ERASABLE – ERA + SABLE. | |
| 3 | Move round something sticky (3) |
| GOO – GO + O. | |
| 4 | Guy drinks, it’s said (5) |
| TEASE – Sounds like TEAS, with guy as a verb. | |
| 5 | See India in total state of happiness (7) |
| ELYSIUM – ELY + S(I)UM. | |
| 6 | Very angry about Liberal schism (9) |
| SPLITTING – SP(L)ITTING. | |
| 7 | Decrease in Conservative pull (11) |
| CONTRACTION – CON + TRACTION. | |
| 8 | Nasty creature concealed in bloom (6) |
| ORCHID – ORC + HID, a bit of a chestnut. | |
| 12 | Change title, eliminating page difference (11) |
| ALTERCATION – ALTER CA[p]TION. | |
| 15 | Note lone pair turned out to be unrivalled (9) |
| NONPAREIL – N + anagram of LONE PAIR. | |
| 16 | Joint ought to be finally rare on top (8) |
| SHOULDER – SHOULD + [b]E + R[are]. | |
| 18 | Crude new weapon brought up in one court (7) |
| INEXACT – I (N, AXE upside-down) CT. | |
| 19 | Trade uncovered with tons in rupees (6) |
| BARTER – BAR(T)E + R. | |
| 21 | Predator good at getting men (5) |
| GATOR – G + AT + OR. | |
| 24 | Add to the start of troubles (3) |
| TOT – TO + T[roubles]. | |
Enjoyed this, but never got to the bottom of INTERMIX. Figured it was a Brit thing, though…
Collins online says STRIDEs are “trousers,” Australian slang.
(I wonder why your column gets misaligned after “Down.” But on my end the script results did that until I substituted a couple lines of code [close-body, open-body] for the transition from Across to Down.)
Re misalignment. The across and down clues are in separate tables with automatic column sizing. The clue numbers are in the first column and the clues/explanations are in the second. The across clues have some long explanations so their column is wide and the across numbers column is as small as possible. The down explanations are all short so the down numbers column spreads out a bit. Thus they don’t align. This could be solved by putting all the clues in one table.
Yes, I have been replacing the closing of one table and opening of a new one with a /body tag and then a new “body.”
You might as well just delete the across table closing tag and the down table opening tag.
Thanks, vinyl, for filling in. I can confirm that “strides” can be trousers in Australia, so I had no problem with the clue.
I was generally on the wavelength for this one, so enjoyed it.
[And you should get someone competent to write a script that formats things properly ;-).]
Woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep so had a bash at the crossword. 27:41 fully parsed, which is good for me. Top half took 22 of those minutes.
I took “with little time” in 14ac to mean read it as PtO.
I didn’t think about PTO—just realized I biffed that. To my fellow News Guild members, it means Paid Time Off, which is in Merriam-Webster (all-American) but not in Collins.
I think you’re over complicating it. PTO with little time becomes PtO. Pt is Platinum, O is disc.
I didn’t say I parsed it like that. I didn’t parse it but biffed.
The only other thing PTO meant to me was Please Turn Over.
I like your interpretation, but sorry setter, if that’s what you meant, I don’t much like the clue!
I liked most of it a lot. INTERMIX is delightful, although it feels like we’ve seen the device before. PTO is a bit much, I think.
I thought PtO was really clever!
Opted for ‘Brun’ over BRAN, on the basis he might have been consort to Hilde – or something like that.
Another with the NE causing problems. The bottom half went in easy enough along with the right side but couldn’t see what was going on with WEIGHTLESS. Some nice clues I thought but took an age to figure out the parsing for PLATINUM DISC but twigged eventually. Liked LUNACY and INEXACT. I took the RUNNING LIGHT to be the port and starboard (red and green) light on vessels as they are known as navigation lights or running lights.
Thanks V and setter.
Never did figure out the PTO parsing but at least I had no problems with STRIDEs. Really enjoyed this puzzle. 27.20, held up for longer than was reasonable by CHOW. Thanks V.
From Like a Rolling Stone:
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his SHOULDER a Siamese cat
Ain’t it sad when you discovered that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal?
How does it feel…
It must have been all the rage at one time. From Ride a White Swan:
Take a black cat and sit it on your SHOULDER
And in the morning you’ll know all you know, oh
Can one consider PTO to mean – power take off from the agricultural implement?
Indeed. My garden tractor has a PTO for attachments..
46:16, clean solve, clean not aid was verifying the NHO BRAN.
When the ancient Brits prayed to their god and nothing happened, they shrugged and said “Bran flakes”.
I got both INTERMIX and WEIGHTLESS from word play first. Both brilliant clues.
Put ALTERNATION first, then tried title = captain fot a misspelt ALTERCATIAN. Got there in the end. But never did parse PLATINUM DISC, the PTO is clever, but “with little time” doesn’t seem to help unpack it.
When I listed my pet peeves last week “guy” wasn’t on the list as I hadn’t seen it for a bit and I thought setters had mercifully retired it, as it is as dated as “pi”.
Where might I come across R=rare? In a stamp catalog? On a steak menu ? And please don’t say “in Collins”
LOI BARTER, tough alphabet trawl, so many words fit those checkers, the “with tons in” was simpler than expected , and I thought “rupees” would be 2 Rs.
Are you referring to ‘rare’ in the clue for ‘shoulder’? It’s just the top of rare, so ‘rare on top’ = ‘r’.
Oh yes, I thought “on top” was a positional indicator for a Down clue.
I had ALTERNATION as well. Trouble is I didn’t get there in the end. Humph.
A steady solve, no undue problems though I struggled to parse 23ac ALTITUDE.
I thought the platinum disc clue was very clever … PtO is what it is. I would underline both parts of the clue as it is a DD.
Dunno where I got BRAN from. Game of Thrones, possibly ..
Really enjoyed this, though it took me 48m to finish, slow all the way through but never actually stuck. INTERMIX and WEIGHTLESS were my favourites, but now I’ve had “PtO” pointed out it might join the list.
Handily for me the Welsh character BRAN in Susan Cooper’s The Grey King, last of her The Dark Is Rising sequence, is named for the Celtic deity. Also. Of course, Fields of the Nephilim’s Elizium might be my favourite goth rock album of all time..
26 minutes with LOI RUNNING LIGHT. Didn’t know BRAN but the cryptic was kind. COD to PLATINUM DISC and WEIGHTLESS jointly. Enjoyable. Thank you V and setter.
Agreed … clues of the day were for PLATINUM DISC and WEIGHTLESS.
26:21. This was a near perfect easier puzzle for me. Most definitely not QC, challenging enough yet never a slog. Luckily I knew BRAN but was slow to spot See = Ely as usual.
Loads of clever stuff esp PtO. Nice one setter and thanks to vinyl.
I read a similar comment on Ely not coming to mind just yesterday, so it was the first thing I thought of today. proof that reading the blog is helpful as well as amusing.
About 25 minutes.
– Had no idea how PLATINUM DISC worked
– Same with ALTITUDE, as I missed liberty=latitude
– Didn’t see that LITERATURE was an anagram
– Failed to fully parse SHOULDER, despite it being relatively straightforward
Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Tot
LOI Stride
COD Intermix
15:29. I found this much easier than the SNITCH would suggest, must just be on the wavelength. I think we’ve had INTERMIX clued almost exactly the same before, so didn’t hesitate to bung it in.
I thought WEIGHTLESS was going to be impossible to parse for a while but it was in fact very gettable once I had a couple of checkers.
INTERMIX did seem very familiar. It appeared in July (thanks to the Search feature here) with, as you say, essentially the same clue.
Yup, enjoyed this. All done and dusted in 37 mins. Some great clues as have been mentioned, WEGHTLESS, INTERMIX, & the unparsed PLATINUM DISC (ta vinyl).
As my daughter lives in Oz, no probs with STRIDEs. My tractor also has a PTO, however I read it here as please turn over, and didn’t see the Pt reference.
Thanks V and setter.
20.36
Never felt entirely on the wavelength but never got stuck and as crossers appeared, as did answers.
That TERM thing has indeed appeared before; I missed it then, and I missed it here but biffed correctly; ditto PLATINUM DISC but what else could it be? I did like the parsing though.
Thanks Vinyl/setter.
22:15
Run vs ran in an obscurity – same faulty wordplay as yesterday. I got it right this time, but it was another coin-toss. Should have been picked up imho. A couple of shaky surface readings (10 and 14).
Thanks, v.
9:09. No majors problems today, mostly parsing as I went for a change. I liked WEIGHTLESS and INTERMIX of course.
The Pt-O device is clever but whatever you think PTO stands for the surface reading is gibberish!
I agree. And I still don’t see where ‘with a little time’ fits in?
I didn’t know ‘NA’ could be ‘not available’ as well as ‘not applicable’, NHO BRAN. INEXACT was the LOI but only because I couldn’t read my own handwriting and thought it ended with a ‘y’. BARTER was POI and probably objectively the most difficult. I can’t say I’m convinced by the definition of PLATINUM DISC but enjoyable and not-too-tricky overall. Done in 23:59.
Yes I meant to say that the definition doesn’t mak sense. A PLATINUM DISC is a record that sells a lot of copies: how you get that from ‘on record, a great number’ I have no idea.
Mm, as you say, the surface reading is rubbish, but I thought a ‘great number’ might reference a ‘great song’ ie one that sells a huge amount of records…
Ah yes maybe. I think of PLATINUM DISCs as albums, but perhaps they can be singles too.
13.52, slowing enough to make sense of the splendid WEIGHTLESS, Pt DISC and INTERMIX, and to see if I could come up with a viable alternative to BRAN. The early Celtic period must have been a rough age.
An Australian cobber of mine “whacked of his strides” when when we unexpectedly found ourselves on a naturist beach in Hel, to the north of Gdansk. The word has stuck with me over nearly 50 years. Useful today.
On WEIGHTLESS, I also lost time because 1(a) was directly above 9(a), which would also have led to an innovative clue.
🙂 Excellent…
31:32 with a last minute change of CHOP to CHOW. Never did work out BARTER (trying to uncover a word), INTERMIX or PLATINUM DISC (which I assumed was a CD that went over my head).
Generally on wavelength for this but a misspelling of NONPARIEL made the SW corner particularly difficult.
COD WEIGHTLESS
Thanks blogger and setter.
No harder than yesterday’s I thought, in fact a bit quicker, 17 minutes. I did like PTO / PtO, TERM IX and especially W EIGHT LESS. MAHOGANY and ELYSIUM were my LOI.
My thanks to vinyl1 and setter.
Pretty easy with a few tricky ones such as…
1a Weightless. Looked to be that but parsing took what felt like an age.
10a Lunacy, really easy but took an age. Not quite sure about lunacy=folly, but it is OK.
14a Platinum Disc. There is no industry standard for this, possibly because our US cousins would spell it DISK. So they are officially called other things like awards. I could claim “green paint” but that would be unkind.
22a Stride. as mentioned above stride is short for strides, Australian for trousers.
23a Altitude biffed, thanks vinyl1.
It struck me that several of the surfaces here were pretty meaningless/feeble/at any rate unsatisfactory. What do ‘Wood lots used to pen a farm animal’, or ‘Folly of Lucan on the run years’, or ‘On record, a great number PTO with little time’, or ‘Change title, eliminating page difference’, or no doubt a few others, mean? And the PTO clue seems very poor: even if you accept that the first five words mean something (which is highly questionable) how do the last three words add anything? If they were omitted the clue would at least parse. 44 minutes.
But surely, the ‘little time’ indicating a small T is what indicated Platinum, as the second letter in the periodic table is never a capital – Na, Ag etc.
Yes but the clue has PTO so that can be read as PtO, PTo, etc by convention.
I agree. Another example is the WEIGHTLESS clue, ‘At floating point with what one is for nine?’ I can’t make much sense of that.
And yet for several of us, WEIGHTLESS is COD… funny old world, eh?
Each to their own, perhaps.
Of course. What does it mean, though? ‘At floating point with what one is for nine.’ It is enigmatic, to say the least.
I rather agree. And the surface of 1ac makes no sense to me unless it’s just that it’s very late and my brain is failing …
But I enjoyed the solve so thanks setter.
I finally twigged the clever parsing of ALTITUDE before reading the blog, but completely missed PLATINUM DISC, given that my knowledge of the periodic table is sketchy to say the least! However, all finished and correct, with a quick change from unparseable ALTERNATION to ALTERCATION! As Vinyl says, some tricky working out involved occasionally, but clever. Liked WEIGHTLESS, CARAPACE and INTERMIX.
24:30
Didn’t get the subtleties of PLATINUM DISC (would not have known that Pt was the chemical symbol), and didn’t see what was going on with SHOULDER. I have no idea what a RUNNING LIGHT is, but it seemed a bit of a weak answer. As for our blogger, I didn’t see CANAPE for some while. I did like INTERMIX, and ALTERCATION which held out for a long time. LOI was INEXACT once the E made the answer more obvious.
Thanks V and setter
From GOO to INEXACT in 22:22. Didn’t parse PLATINUM DISC. Enjoyable puzzle. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
27.16 without my usual typo. I have to get a new phone, so hope a bigger display will reduce my typo tendency. On PLATINUM DISC, I was got as far as thinking that 70 is a great number of years to be married, put that on the record and thought no further.
18.15 with the most taxing weightless, mahogany and especially goo. Otherwise pretty fair. Had to guess Branwho I will now look up.
In other news, off to New York for a few days. Any suggestions for reasonable places to eat not far from 57th E and 6th Av.
All offerings gratefully received.
The Beach Cafe on 2nd Ave and 70th St. was our local eatery for decades. Real neighborhood joint. The burgers are very good and the menus are reliable any time of day. We always ordered a plate of fried zucchini with our drinks while we made our choices.
For something more upscale but still not completely unreasonable there is an excellent brasserie called Orsay on Lexington and 75th St.
These aren’t tourist places – they’re in the heart of a residential area. Enjoy!
Got in under target (just) at 44.37, with everything solved and parsed with the exception of PLATINUM DISC. Having read the various interpretations I feel it was lacking somewhat as a decent clue.
About 30′ post golf. Agree with some of the comments regarding the surface readings being a bit clunky. Certainly a mixture of pretty straightforward clues and some difficult ones; so I was never quite sure what I was looking for, resulting in me overthinking some of the easier ones. NHO RUNNING LIGHT, couldn’t parse INTERMIX or PTO. Enjoyed WEIGHTLESS wordplay if not the definition.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
You suggest “striders” for trousers of which I have never heard. But in the 70’s we adopted the Australian “strides”, which I think makes it a better clue. Barry Humphries of Dame Edna fame, had an earlier alter ego called Barry McKenzie, whose modus operandi involved much vomiting and urinating – all pretty revolting, but as teenage boys we loved it! He also introduced us to the word “strides”.
No time, as I did it in between chatting at our monthly crossword club, but no great dramas. PLATINUM DISC had to be but took an age to parse, eventually came to the Pt O conclusion. Now it’s been pointed out, I agree some of the surfaces are rather dodgy. COD to WEIGHTLESS, which made me laugh when I got it.
29.24 Not especially quick but I was pleased to finish after mucking up the other two crosswords today. NHO BRAN. STRIDE and PLATINUM DISC were biffed. LOI INEXACT. I liked WEIGHTLESS and INTERMIX. Thanks vinyl1.
Agree with Andy Green: STRIDES entered English humorous usage some years ago. Wouldn’t use it with my wife or children, would use it with my friends. Finished in 16’14” so no great difficulties, though PLATINUM DISC went in unparsed. See it now. Very good. Wasn’t there a BRAN in Game of Thrones, the crippled boy who was half crow or something? That helped me believe the name could also belong to a Celtic god. We have definitely had the TERM IX trick before, a year or two back. Many thanks.
Late on parade with this one, as I was too busy to tackle it yesterday. Despite the innovative clues I quite enjoyed it, as it progressed from being almost impossible to really not that difficult. All done, admittedly with some biffing, in 36 minutes. Never had a hope of parsing PLATINUM DISC as I gave up science at O level, but was pleased to unscramble WEIGHTLESS and INTERMIX. NHO BRAN, but it had to be right.
FOI – GOO
LOI – RUNNING LIGHT
COD – INTERMIX
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.
14A PLATINUM DISC As “Pt O” defines the whole phrase, why put “with little time”, and “a great number” in the clue? PTO means “please turn over” (O.E.D. , 1821), so let’s “turn over” or re-arrange MINUTE and make it little by removal of E : TINUM. “PL” could be turned over as well, and be “LP”, or “record”.
PL (LP record) + A (a) + IT (great, as in ‘The It Girl’) + NUM (number) + please turn over CD (another record) and S (a second, a little time) ; no I.
I have no idea about INTERMIX. The third University year in the US is called the “junior year” ; one third of the year is a TERM. So why have “IN” and “IX”? It doesn’t say “one third” in the clue. In the end I put “MIX” at the end for “mingle”, and then “INTER” for “at the end”, or “bury”, as in “interment”. Or is it IN TERM (two words) for “University year”, and MIX mingled at the end of TERM?
No more posts until I’ve had more experience.
We used STRIDES back in London when I lived there, and the term is also used in Oz now I live here. I’ve never considered it Oz-centric…