I thought I’d made a decent fist of this, only to find that I was nearly three times over target. What this presages for the upcoming day-night Ashes Test in Brisbane is barely worth thinking about.
Am I the only person to find the controversy about using a pink ball a bit bemusing? The way England play, a white ball would be most apt, so pink is a fitting compromise. The real question is, will an English batsman use his feet when playing the swinging ball, even if he’s 6 feet 5 inches tall?
24:05
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | In which to wrap cold fish skin? (9) |
| CLINGFILM – assemble C LING FILM | |
| 6 | Raw meat changing hands (5) |
| FRESH – FLESH with the L replaced by R | |
| 9 | A lot of water gathering in cheap AC if I connect (7) |
| PACIFIC – hidden | |
| 10 | Classical scholar — shocking ignorance? No, no! (7) |
| GRECIAN – anagram* of IG |
|
| 11 | One ceremonially necked sloe gin periodically (3) |
| LEI – |
|
| 12 | See the country in its entirety? (7,4) |
| VATICAN CITY – crypticky double definition (DD) | |
| 14 | Meaty dish leads to really agonising joint pain (6) |
| RAGOUT – R~ A~ GOUT | |
| 15 | Challengingly pitched battle on river (8) |
| FALSETTO – SET-TO on FAL | |
| 17 | Girl embarrassed over admitting anything (8) |
| DAUGHTER – AUGHT in RED reversed | |
| 19 | At sea, giant recovery vessel brought back toy boy (6) |
| KRAKEN – ARK reversed KEN (Barbie’s paramour) | |
| 22 | Italian team secured; could Spurs be like this? (11) |
| INTERLOCKED – INTER[nazionale] LOCKED | |
| 23 | Best toy (3) |
| TOP – DD | |
| 25 | Fagin criminally acquiring hard American currency (7) |
| AFGHANI – H A in FAGIN* | |
| 27 | Mass stress evacuating a small city (7) |
| MEMPHIS – M EMPHA |
|
| 28 | Bit of info okay for Russian corporation (5) |
| DATUM – DA (Yes in Russian) TUM (crossword word for stomach) | |
| 29 | Train Issy Bailey, back to entertain old country (9) |
| ABYSSINIA – reverse hidden | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Copper penny placed on the Spanish assayer’s bowl (5) |
| CUPEL – CU P EL; unknown word of the day: ‘a small, shallow, porous cup used in assaying gold, silver, etc. | |
| 2 | Moving slowly, using hoist when shipping whiskey (7) |
| INCHING – |
|
| 3 | Roughly, fiver ought to cover Charlie’s prezzie? (4,7) |
| GIFT VOUCHER – C in FIVER OUGHT* | |
| 4 | Provoke enlightenment when giving speech (6) |
| INCITE – sounds like insight | |
| 5 | Wizard chap entertaining US soldier and spies (8) |
| MAGICIAN – GI CIA in MAN | |
| 6 | Charge iron-clad terminal of electrode (3) |
| FEE – ~E in FE | |
| 7 | For the select few, English literature is translated into German (7) |
| ELITIST – E LIT IST (German for ”is’) | |
| 8 | Holiday cash antipodean yob received from Spooner (9) |
| HONEYMOON – swap the first letters of MONEY HOON, then go to the dictionary to find that a ‘hoon’ is indeed an Australian hooligan. So, quite a common word, I guess. | |
| 13 | Fiddle, perhaps, a recurrent problem for seer (11) |
| NOSTRADAMUS – NO STRAD (FIDDLE, PERHAPS: I think what the setter is getting at is that a Stradivarius is not something one would usually refer to as a ‘fiddle’, even if STRAD is indeed sometimes clued as a fiddle) A SUM reversed (recurrent); I needed all of the cryptic to avoid falling for ‘Nostrodamus’, which has happened in the past. | |
| 14 | Bloody cut of beef as well as symbol of order (3,6) |
| RED RIBAND – RED RIB AND; ‘Red Riband’ is the popular name for Most Honourable Order of the Bath, and a constituent part thereof | |
| 16 | Plant acorn I’ve cultivated (8) |
| VERONICA – ACORN IVE* | |
| 18 | Angry, in an excited state and tense (7) |
| UPTIGHT – Collins tells us that UPTIGHT can mean both ‘tense’ and ‘angry’; since ‘up’ can’t mean ‘angry’, we are left with the parsing of the clue as shown (UP TIGHT) | |
| 20 | Army recruiter leaving the old Queen room (7) |
| KITCHEN – KITCHEN |
|
| 21 | Spare agent takes on work by Kipling (6) |
| SKIMPY – KIM in SPY | |
| 24 | Adolescent infatuation over a Turkish title (5) |
| PASHA – PASH A; I’d never heard of the slang term, but it’s pretty obvious – crass, even | |
| 26 | Mad after uncovering weapon (3) |
| ARM – |
|
Can’t believe I’m first in! Pretty quick 28 mins so not too testing. LOI FALSETTO which took a bit of working out.
I liked KRAKEN & ABYSSINIA.
Thanks U and setter.
PS. No idea about pink balls, sounds most peculiar, but then I don’t really follow cricket, more of a tennis man.
I felt this was a lot harder than the average times suggest… For ages couldn’t see CLINGFILM, nor KRAKEN in the SE. I forgot to use my normal rule which is if you can’t see the word fairly quickly it’s because it’s a compound noun or from another language… NHO CUPEL either, and there were a couple of choices there if you didn’t know the word – DIDEL seemed plausible at one point!
4:29. Nice clues, and not too taxing for Monday.
The “pash” from PASHA was one of the trickier solutions from a previous finals puzzle?
Thanks U and setter
Unbelievable time- what are you doing for the rest of the day?
13.00
Quite geographical today – simple enough, should’ve been quicker.
Didn’t parse KRAKEN fully but still got it as LOI.
COD FALSETTO
A bit of a struggle for 37 minutes. Not sure why as all the parsing looks straightforward on reflection but then that’s the joy of hindsight.
I shall not be watching the match even from behind the sofa but I’m sure England will continue driving (airily) more nails into the coffin of Test cricket.
Harrumph. E
11:30. CUPEL, HOON and RED RIBAND were my unknowns for the day. I mistakenly separated “Challengingly pitched battle” after the first word rather than the second, which delayed me for a bit. Nice start to the week. Thank-you Ulaca and setter.
25 minutes.
– Had no idea what INTERLOCKED spurs might be – I see now they’re a geographical feature
– Relied on wordplay for the unknown CUPEL
– NHO hoon as an Australian yob, but HONEYMOON had to be
– Had absolutely no idea how NOSTRADAMUS worked
– Took a while to get SKIMPY as I assumed the Kipling work would be If
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Lei
LOI Nostradamus
COD Vatican City
Ah, thats what the Spurs are. Thanks.
An annoying fail. Even with the reverse hidden letters in plain sight, a sylly ABYSSYNIA. I didn’t know what the ‘Fiddle, perhaps’ was doing in NOSTRADAMUS; very good.
Favourite was the Philby-esque SKIMPY.
[I wouldn’t be too despondent about your chances in the upcoming Test; it must be our turn for a meltdown this time, whatever the colour of the ball].
I wish that were the case (actually, in a way I don’t) but England play paint-by-numbers cricket, while Australia (usually) play the situation – not to mention, each ball on its merits.
18:26 but I agree that it was deceptively tricky in places.
Same NHO as JohnInterred plus I still don’t understand Spurs being INTERLOCKED and needed Ulaca to explain the parsing of FALSETTO. I assumed UPTIGHT was a triple defn. Biffing was required.
Liked VATICAN CITY which makes a change from Ely and the use of Aught.
Thanks to Ulaca and setter.
I’ve tried to link to the relevant wikipedia article but for some reason the site won’t let me (not acceptable, it tells me!) but if you google ‘interlocking spurs’ you will find it.
13’09”, I was careful this morning, following the nho CUPEL. Could argue over cluing of NOSTRADAMUS (why ‘no’ ?). Also nho LOI RED RIBAND, having only heard of the blue one for fastest liner. It’s Monday, too many nhos.
It’ll only be a matter of time (in Crawley’s case about three balls) before the top four or five waft at a fifth-stump ball. There’s only ever been one pink ball Test in England, something to do with twilight. But I do hope the series is kept alive.
Thanks ulaca and setter.
Thanks ulaca and setter.
A “fiddle” is a non-posh violin so “no Strad”.
This had been going really well but I already had an error (INTERHOOKED instead of INTERLOCKED) when I finally became stuck after 28 minutes with MEMPHIS, FALSETTO and NOSTRADAMUS missing from the grid. I adjourned for breakfast hoping that might bring inspiration, but it didn’t so eventually I revealed the first letter of 15ac and thought of FALSETTO immediately. The checker provided gave me the seer and the US city was then plain to see.
Not a satisfactory solve taken overall but the first 25 minutes felt good.
28 minutes. 4 minutes on the top half (excluding FALSETTO), 24 minutes on the bottom. It felt like two different setters.
As others I struggled with NOSTRADAMUS and FALSETTO neither of which I understood until I read the blog. FALSETTO I fell into trying to anagram ‘battle on’ with an assumption it ended ETTO when the penny dropped. Quite lucky to get a finish here.
Have crosswords been lying to me all this time? Is a Strad not a fiddle or is the word fiddle not illustrious enough for such an instrument?
COD VATICAN CITY
Thanks blogger and setter.
Quick today, as befits Monday.
So, one day a Strad is a fiddle, the next it isn’t. Make your minds up, setters!
LOI MEMPHIS, struggled with the crossers a bit.
Nho HOONs
Jerry please see my reply post to you under Club Monthly – PK
10:53. Mostly a steady solve but then I got completely stuck at the end with three to solve. Eventually the city MEMPHIS occurred to me which gave me NOSTRADAMUS from the checkers and finally FALSETTO.
A few unknowns today (interlocking spurs, CUPEL, hoon, RED RIBAND) but none of them caused me much trouble.
I read 12ac as a CD, mostly because ‘the country in its entirety’ is, in isolation, an odd definition.
You’re probably right. It was a toss-up between the two!
13.05. First in a dubious CUPEL from the wordplay, then straight through until lower half answers where I got the first part, but not the second – RED-, INTER-, UP-. Pace Ulaca (cheers, by the way!), if RED RIBAND is a popular name for the Order of the Bath, he must know an elite population. But we live and learn! I ended up with INTERLOCKED not as some description of Spurs (currently indescribable!) but as what happened to spurs to trip up Roy Rogers and co. Thanks to Chris L for the geophysical explanation – I must have walked a couple of those on Tenerife.
Also held up by assuming the Kipling work was If. But I was OK with, and amused by “no fiddle” for Strad, even if the latter is itself a slangish term for the Cremona workshop.
Maybe just over 30′ having had an interruption. The NHO CUPEL was easy enough, but I looked at LOI GRECIAN for a long time, my mind set on a particular scholar. In the end biffed without parsing, but easy now. NOSTRADAMUS only half parsed with strad making it obvious. I’d assumed INTERLOCKED had something to do with gears, didn’t know the geographical reference.
Thanks Ulaca and setter.
My thanks to ulaca and setter.
Well for a Monday I made quite heavy weather of this, but got there.
19a Kraken; I failed to notice that Ken was a particular toy, but never mind. There are few words Kra??? so I just whacked him in.
22a Interlocked; I DNK that Inter is a shortened version of the team, but. Also DNK that interlocking spurs are a geological feature.
1d NHO Cupel, the instructions were clear but I left blank until all 3 crossers were in. There is quite a lot about cupellation in wiki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupellation#Cupels
2d (w)Inching; I made this easy one into hard work by trying to add (w)Hen to a word like lift. Doh!
8d Honeymoon, NHO Hoon as an Oz insult. Looked it up.
14d Red Riband; I was unable to confirm that this was to do with an order so shrugged and moved on. Blue Riband was easy to find but nothing to do with orders.
26d Arm, barmy didn’t occur to me for an age.
I assumed INTER was Inter Milan and thought that the interlocking spurs referred to the riding things and was some sort of heraldic device!
18 mins – CUPEL unknown, of course, and a bit of time squandered going through the many synonyms for secured – locked, hooked, forked, docked – to describe a possible description of entirely the wrong sort of spur. Thanks for the explanation.
15 mins, held up at the end by FALSETTO. It’s annoying when you discover that you’ve not yet seen a simple clue like PACIFIC when you’ve already got the letters for it.
Why it happens that sometimes all is pretty straightforward and at others it is a bit laborious goodness knows. This doesn’t seem to have a lot of connection with how hard the clues are. I found much of this rather tricky and had the same NHOs as many others had, also some constructions seemed quite cunning (VATICAN CITY, MEMPHIS (btw there is an extra A in the blog), HONEYMOON, NOSTRADAMUS) and I fully expected the SNITCH to be well into the hundreds. No. 49 minutes.
Quick, no holdups. No idea about CUPEL, or why NO was in the Strad clue, and especially no idea how a hoon could be a yob – the dictionaries haven’t caught up with current usage, it seems. Hoon nowadays is a (typically young, male,) fast and dangerous, showing-off car driver. All the states have passed “Hoon Laws” that allow police to confiscate and keep the cars of such drivers. Highest profile offender, exiting the Grand Prix circuit in Melbourne (2010? dictionaries >15 years out of date) and spinning his rear tyres at the urging of some onlookers, was Lewis Hamilton. Had his luxurious free-issue AMG Mercedes confiscated, and was charged and issued a summons. Unusual for rich and powerful people to actually have the law applied to them – not going to even suggest racial profiling…
Did like KRAKEN, the clue seemed impenetrable at first, and the well-hidden ABYSSINIA.
It looks like I’m the only one who has heard of cupel, and it was my FOI after I failed to see clingfilm and tried the downs. This time, I did see the backwards hidden, but on the other hand I got as far as cling- and couldn’t remember what the other bit was. I wasted a lot of time trying to work in ocker, only to discover that down under, they required numerous slang terms for undesirable individuals.
Time: 22:58
Snap on cling???? It’s clingwrap here, so went back to the clue to see if wrap fit the wordplay only to find ‘wrap’ in the clue. Ooops.
16:23
I had seen the Snitch (64) before starting the puzzle so was expecting something on the easier side, and indeed got off to a briskish start – better on the downs than acrosses though. About 50% done in 8 minutes, then a few minutes of very little. But after RED RIBAND (only heard of the Blue one) went in, the floodgates opened, and I finished all but the SE corner, where I spotted MEMPHIS from its first and last checkers, which gave KITCHEN, KRAKEN, NOSTRADAMUS (unparsed) and finally FALSETTO.
Didn’t know HOON either.
Thanks U and setter
Not oo difficut with some clever cluing. I liked NOSTRADAMUS, HONEYMOON and VATICAN CITY. Annoyingly, I had worked out that it must be CUPEL rather than COPEL but still managed to type in the former.
Thanks to Ulaca and the setter
I was hoping for a gentle start to the week but was sadly disappointed. FALSETTO and CUPEL held me up and thank goodness the seer was biffable as I would not have parsed this in a month of Mondays.
Strange one, a lot of easy write-ins and a handful of oddities. NHO CUPEL, hoon, or INTERLOCKING spurs, although all prompted guesses that turned out to be right. The construction of the clue for FALSETTO felt as though it had been imported from a much more challenging puzzle, although with the checking letters in place in didn’t hold me up long.
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the absymal sea,
His ancient, dreamless uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth……
…there hath he lain for ages, and will lie….
(Tennyson).
Ignore John Wyndham’s silly SF effort, The Kraken Wakes.
Excellent start to the week. Maybe 25 mins?
27.24
I thought this was much harder than the snitch even though CUPEL (NHO) was straight in. Struggled with the same three at the end as Keriothe, and was quite pleased in the end to have thought of FAL. The definition there and in a couple of other places did fox me. Well played setter and thanks Ulaca.
30:39. Very enjoyable, and I thought I was doing a harder puzzle than the snitch now reveals. LOIs HONEYMOON then FALSETTO. A COD shortlist of KRAKEN, FALSETTO and CLINGFILM
It took me a long time to get going on this, with no across clues saved on the first pass. But once I had started I made reasonable progress and finished in 37 minutes. NHO CUPEL or AFGHANI as currency, but they were reasonable punts from the clueing. And I only found GRECIAN after I had most of the crossers in, despite being one myself in a previous life. An enjoyable exercise. Wil Ransome has pointed out the dittography in the blog for MEMPHIS.
FOI – MAGICIAN
LOI – FALSETTO
COD – DATUM
Thanks to ulaca and other contributors.
I made hard work of this and managed an error which I spotted just after pressing submit. NOSTRODAMUS.
COD: FALSETTO
Thanks ulaca and our setter.
Nice puzzle, which I nearly completed. But the unknown RED RIBAND stopped me, along with the excellent FALSETTO.
The Aussies do seem to have a lot of slang for rebels. Goes back to Ned Kelly.
COD VATICAN CITY
Never heard of the RED RIBAND, and I was too sleepy when I finished to remember to look it up. Or CUPEL, for that matter. Didn’t understand KITCHENER either! I liked “NO STRAD.”
Pretty straightforward as far as I was concerned finishing in 23.13. That included about two minutes or so finding the solution to my last two in HONEYMOON and finally FALSETTO. A few unknowns were CUPEL and RED RIBAND, along with a HOON for an antipodean yob.
45 minutes so I seem to be slow – but I have had a couple of drinks (Christmas season is approaching).
I thought this a nice puzzle with my favourites being Falsetto, Daughter and Magician.
Quite a gentle solve, with unknown CUPEL held up until I’d confirmed whether it was a P or a D in the centre. Worked around the grid in no particular order, finishing with NOSTRADAMUS and FALSETTO crossers, which did hold me up for a while. I bifd and post parsed the former and spent some time going through all the rivers I could think of, while suspecting it was a musical clue, until Set To occurred to me. Strange how such a minor river in the great scheme of things can become more prominent than the Rhine or the Danube in crossword-land. (Well, I know why, of course…) Hoon was unknown, but didn’t hold me up for long, nor did RED RIBAND once I’d got the significance of ‘as well as’… Nice and easy after last week’s Wed to Fri marathons.
29 minutes, but didn’t understand the definition part of INTERLOCKED until it was explained. Also missed the Barbie reference in KRAKEN. NHO CUPEL but it was an easy clue.
24 minutes with one error, a biffed NOSTRODAMUS. GRECIAN and FALSETTO were also biffed and I didn’t know CUPEL. Thanks ulaca.
16.30 with LOI falsetto, a jolly clue. Honeymoon took a while, dnk the Aussie word. Thought about okker for quite a while. A decent start to the week.
Started dozing off by fire mid-solve, causing time to suffer. Last three were KITCHEN, KRAKEN and MEMPHIS. None was particularly hard but they gave me grief. 24’57”.
Plodded through in my usual fashion, taking 59 minutes. Maybe my intellect was spurred enough to finish the southeast corner (KITCHEN, KRAKEN, and MEMPHIS) at last by the prospect of hitting my one-hour limit. Loved GRECIAN and VATICAN CITY. CUPEL the most compellingly clued NHO I’ve encountered yet.
Thanks setter and ulaca.
8:39 which was apparently about one-third of my target time.
Pink-ball Tests are great for the attendees, but it turns out it’s the only one of the series I won’t be attending.
I’ve come across cupels at Sovereign Hill (recreated gold field town) and my hometown has more than its share of hoons.
DNF as I thought the river was at the end of the musical term rather than the beginning, which is a pity as I know of the Fal as Jack Aubrey’s local. I should have done an alphabet trawl.
thanks to setter and blogger
Got stuck with the only word I could think to for ?R?K?N was broken So obviously couldn’t parse. As most, NHO CUPEL, but it had to be, or RED RIBAND. Didn’t find MEMPHIS easily either (isn’t the truncated word here EMPHASISE? So don’t understand the EMPHIS). Other than those, fairly plain sailing, with HOON being used by we Melbourne locals to describe particularly yobs who do wheelies in their souped-up, beat up cars. Liked INTERLOCKED, but assumed there existed a logo of interlocking spurs to denote something heraldic possibly. Good time, but not all correct.