Time taken: 14:53. I struggled with this one!
I hope everyone got a chance to try the celebration puzzle which is currently pinned to the top of the page. I worked on clues for some of the more obscure, Mephistoish words in the grid, and it was a lot of fun to contribute to, and big props to vinyl1 and johninterred for putting it together and editing the clues.
I found it hard to come to grips with today’s puzzle. Everything makes sense, there’s some odd phrases and a few references that might not be well known, but I don’t know if it was me starting tired and only one glass of wine in, or just that this is truly a tricky Thursday. How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Bite head off tiger in shocker (6) |
| TASTER – first letter of Tiger inside TASER (shocker) | |
| 4 | Case of effectiveness by a cool hero (8) |
| ACHILLES – the external letters of EffectivenesS next to A, CHILL (cool) | |
| 10 | Garbage by night light? (9) |
| MOONSHINE – double definition. Collins confirms “foolish talk or thought” which can equate to garbage. | |
| 11 | Waste collector out to lunch (5) |
| POTTY – another double definition, the waste being human in origin | |
| 12 | A concern at the end of the day? (6,8) |
| SUNSET INDUSTRY – cryptic definition. Not a phrase I’m familiar with, I had INDUSTRY in long before figuring SUNSET. A business that hold little future promise | |
| 14 | Problematically, where worms found from Cuzco? (5) |
| INCAN – reference to “a can of worms”, so the problematic worms are IN CAN | |
| 16 | Mean spirit wildly booing, with exhausted bull held by horns at first (9) |
| HOBGOBLIN – anagram of BOOING containing the external letters of BulL. Put the first letter of Horns at the front | |
| 18 | American players’ association in Panama City (9) |
| COLORADAN – RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, player’s association) inside COLON (a city in Panama) | |
| 20 | Authority keeps mum? (3-2) |
| SAY SO – keeps mum could be SAYS O | |
| 21 | Official house for native of the tropics? (8,6) |
| MANDARIN ORANGE – MANDARIN (official) and the house of ORANGE | |
| 25 | Fashionable needs of French mission (5) |
| ALAMO – A LA MODE (fashionable) minus DE (of, in Frenc) | |
| 26 | Stew pan ending on floor, serve one sandwiches (9) |
| POTPOURRI – POT (pan) then the last letter in flooR inside POUR (serve) I (one) | |
| 27 | More in ground interred! (8) |
| TRENDIER – anagram of INTERRED | |
| 28 | Separate northern river (6) |
| SEVERN – SEVER (separate), then N (northern) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | What will activate journalist who’s a bad speller? (4,6) |
| TIME SWITCH – the journalist who is a bad speller could be a TIMES WITCH | |
| 2 | Pressure breaking sharpish utensil (5) |
| SPOON – P (pressure) inside SOON (sharpish, in a timely fashion) | |
| 3 | Earnest strains from One Direction? (7) |
| EASTERN – anagram of EARNEST | |
| 5 | Native American leader of different faith (5) |
| CREED – CREE (native American) and the first letter of Different | |
| 6 | Paint gone in one second (7) |
| IMPASTO – PAST (gone) inside I (one), MO (second) | |
| 7 | Subsequently, are United outside the box? (9) |
| LATERALLY – LATER (subsequently), ALLY (are united). Think of thinking. | |
| 8 | Staple of vegan diet, say, cooked with a bit of oil (4) |
| SOYA – anagram of SAY containing the first letter of Oil | |
| 9 | Had an angle perhaps about popular ancient history? (8) |
| FINISHED – FISHED (had an angle, perhaps) surrounding IN (popular) | |
| 13 | Asian in river and swimming in sea (10) |
| INDONESIAN – IN, the river DON, and an anagram of IN,SEA | |
| 15 | Storing charge, battery unit before a storm (9) |
| CELLARAGE – CELL (battery unit) then A, RAGE (storm) | |
| 17 | Bill in tangle, undoing nets (8) |
| BANKNOTE – KNOT (tangle) inside BANE (undoing) – my last in | |
| 19 | Chestnut tree? (7) |
| REDWOOD – double definition as chestnut is a RED WOOD | |
| 20 | One’s tight corset initially goes in or goes out (7) |
| SCROOGE – first letter of Corset inside an anagram of OR,GOES | |
| 22 | Penny under are you in foreign cash? (5) |
| RUPEE – PEE (P, penny, spend one) under RU (are you) | |
| 23 | Angel in heaven, you suffer less heartache, ultimately (5) |
| NURSE – last letters of heaveN, yoU, suffeR, lesS, heartachE | |
| 24 | Topping gone, burning cakes while in oven (4) |
| OAST – remove the first letter from HOT (burning) then insert AS (while) | |
Hard, hard, hard. I was just about to give up when I saw finished. I had Colombian instead of Coloradan for along time, even though I had thought of Beerbohm Tree’s creation – go figure!
Time: 62:51
33:36. I got all but a handful of clues in 18 minutes, but the left half of the puzzle had some real beasts. By the time I finished, I’d put in many words with a shrug, and had no idea if they were correct. Turned out they were, but I think I just got lucky.
‘Sunrise industry’ is a familiar concept … something worth investing in! So a ‘sunset industry’ could be the opposite.
‘Banknote’ a difficult solve even with all checkers. ‘Undoing’ now archaic meaning for ‘bane’, interesting example of word degradation over time.
It seems only the American chestnut is a red wood. I was vainly looking for the ‘cliche’ sense.
‘Coloradan’ also difficult for those of us whose geography is very weak so thinking rather of hats or canals.
34:45
I started off pretty fast, but the last four or five were a long time coming (POI COLORADAN, LOI BANKNOTE). I got OAST by deleting T from ‘toast’; it doesn’t work, but I didn’t notice. A mortifying brain freeze at 21ac: I had the ORANGE and the R, couldn’t for the life of me think of anything besides blood and Seville; finally looked it up. I liked BANKNOTE, ALAMO for its surface (although ‘mission’ always means Alamo), and SCROOGE ditto.
Are HOBGOBLINs mean? Mischievous, yes, but mean? Not Robin Goodfellow, anyway.
Ditto re (t) OAST. Much easier than faffing about with a substitution if one doesn’t have to blog the puzzle!
I was perfectly happy with [T]OAST, even if my morning toast is usually bread. Burning cakes are definitely toast! A case of a setter being slightly too clever!
And now for something completely different… I removed the R from ROAST. And thought there was one too many significant words in the clue.
Having read the comments and noted the times reported so far my 48 minutes doesn’t seem too bad an effort. And more to the point I actually enjoyed the puzzle as the answers gradually fell into place. Many of the clues turned out to be much more straightforward than they had seemed on first reading.
I missed a couple bits of wordplay e.g. COLON as the Panama city, and admit to having looked up the NHO ‘Cuzco’ to find out what it referred to.
30.55
Tricky, but at least I didn’t have to biff any this time.
No, HOBGOBLINs aren’t all mean, nor are all WITCHes bad.
LOI COLORADAN
COD ALAMO
15.58. Tricky, but a goody. I was stuck at several parts of the grid, with BANKNOTE needing a flash of inspiration even with crossers, and reading the clue for TRENDIER with the right emphasis eventually unlocked the SW corner. The unknown SUNSET INDUSTRY was my LOI – I was thankful that SUNBED INDUSTRY didn’t prove too hard to dislodge from my thinking.
48 mins. Slow going. LOI BANKNOTE, NHO Colon.
Some rather stretchy definitions ruled out much biffing so the wordplay had to be painstakingly unpicked.
COD TRENDIER, More in was very neat deception.
Thanks setter, glh and all the bloggers. The special puzzle was obviously a lot of work to put together. It was also a reminder of how long I have been coming here, since the days when completing was rare and TftT was more tutor than peer group. Great job.
40:01. Scrooge and Banknote were slow to pay out. Good to see our trendier blogger John Interred getting a mention.
CODs: INCAN and TIME SWITCH
Thanks to glh and our setter.
18:09. Something close to half my time was spent completely stuck on four clues: MOONSHINE, SUNSET INDUSTRY, COLORADAN, TIME SWITCH. Once I spotted MOONSHINE for ‘garbage’ the rest fell quickly.
SUNRISE INDUSTRY appeared in a puzzle in 2022 (28281) and I commented ‘we’ve certainly had SUNSET INDUSTRY before so this was easy to deduce’. However a search doesn’t reveal any other examples. I’m sure that I learned the phrase from a crossword, perhaps it wasn’t the Times. Edit: it looks like my comment was just wrong, the term SUNRISE INDUSTRY has appeared several times over the years (including in a couple of puzzles that I blogged) but not SUNSET.
MER at ‘association’ for RADA, which I considered early but initially dismissed as a possibility.
Three-quarters went in quickly; the last quarter took an age. I was stuck on the REDWOOD, COLORADAN, CELLARAGE, MANDARIN, BANKNOTE nexus. Luckily it was a nexus, so getting one helped with the others. As I have often found, once you get it into your head that a clue is tough, you tend to overlook straightforward solutions. I was scouring my mind for obscure types of ORANGE, and convincing myself that PANAMA’s other city was the answer to 18ac, or an American football team. Tough but a lot of fun and I 9d on 39’27”.
Thank you – this describes my solve so closely there’s little need to repeat it!
40 mins – tricky Thursday indeed! In the end they all went in steadily but slowly, although I picked up a lot of new vocab on the way, not knowing Cuzco, the correct meaning of OAST, CELLARAGE or SUNSET INDUSTRY. I had INDUSTRY for ages but couldn’t work out what the first bit was getting at. I did like POTTY, SAY-SO and ALAMO. Glad to make it to the end. Thanks blogger and setter!
26’05”, tough today. Had no idea about REDWOOD. Liked TIME SWITCH, INCAN, and COLORADAN, though like keriothe agree RADA is not an association, but a training establishment.
RUPEE was pretty obvious, but I don’t think the clue works. In the UK no-one says ‘penny’ any more, in any case a penny would be a ‘d’ – one new (1971) pence would be a ‘p’ pronounced pee. George’s mention of ‘spend a’ doesn’t work similarly, as it’s not indicated. Allusions yes, but not precise.
Thanks george and setter.
Collins gives PEE as a British word for ‘penny’… in the American dictionary. Make of that what you will!
I just thought it was P, the abbreviation for penny, pronounced.
I would always say ‘pence’, and although a lot of people say ‘p’, I hadn’t noticed it was everyone. I would say ‘penny’ too but admittedly it doesn’t come up in the singular very often these days.
To me, the clue makes more sense if you take ‘penny’ to mean pee (as in ‘spend a penny’), even if unsupported by a dictionary, than for ‘pee’ to be a phonetic spelling of P as in penny, even if someone put it in the dictionary. If you were going to expand ‘P’ beyond 1 letter, why wouldn’t you write ‘pence’?
Found this very tricky compared to the rest of the week so far. Not really sure why, although COLORADAN and CELLARAGE had me stuck for some time at the end. I didn’t think I knew any Panamanian cities apart from the obvious one, until I got it, and then as so often happens I remembered that maybe I have heard of this place after all.
Enjoyed this one, perhaps a bit harder than average but not much, at least by some recent standards .. I found our own effort much harder!
Found the SW the hardest bit, but it fell into place once I got the mandarin part of mandarin orange..
I started off quickly enough, but got well bogged down after completing around half the puzzle. After that it was like extracting teeth! Spotting MANDARIN helped with the LHS, leading to CELLARAGE, COLORADAN and INCAN. REDWOOD took forever to spot too. I eventually realised ORANGE was a house, doh! SCROOGE followed, then LOI, BANKNOTE, arrived after more neuron bashing. 40:40. Thanks setter and George.
34.16. I made the mistake of glimpsing George’s headline before starting and went into tricky solve mode, which made many of the clues seem tougher that they were. Mind you, I do think “native of the tropics” is a terrible definition – mine come from Tesco’s.
I read REDWOOD as an &lit with Chestnut for RED and tree for WOOD, and “Chestnut tree” getting a question mark since a REDWOOD is a tree which is kind chestnut in colour.
This one was beyond my skills, I got about 2/3rds done before throwing in the towel. I did enjoy TIME SWITCH but I thought the Penny for Pee in RUPEE was questionable, since I can’t think of any time you’d write penny like that? Although I doubtless someone has somewhere so it can probably be justified.
Very tough. Two sittings so probably close to an hour. Felt like one of those super tough ones that pop up on a Friday.
Heard of sunrise industry but had to hope the opposite was SUNSET INDUSTRY.
COD INCAN
Thanks blogger and setter
36:25 but…
…bunged in CELLARATE rather than CELLARAGE – shrug.
Like others, I struggled with the LHS and particularly the SW corner. Think SUNSET INDUSTRY has been seen around these parts before though took a long time to think of it. TIME SWITCH gave INCAN and, eventually, COLORADAN, which in turn, led to BANKNOTE and the other shrug-inducing REDWOOD.
ALAMO, TRENDIER and my incorrect CELLARATE finished the puzzle.
I thought SCROOGE was clever.
Thanks G and setter
31 minutes. I didn’t find this easy, but managed without too many hold ups, admittedly skimping on the parsing of a few such as RUPEE. COD to the misdirection in the wordplay for CELLARAGE.
58 – just squeaking under the hour with about half of that spent in the SW where pretty well everything stumped me.
Gave up on the hour with the SW corner missing five answers. Don’t think I’d have got COLORADAN if I’d had a month of Sundays. I actually tried to make it work, in desperation (having tried all the American states and countries beginning with ‘C’) but couldn’t see any possible parsing. IQ just not up to the job. D’Oh.
6:23. Not so tricky for me today. Heard of sunrise/SUNSET INDUSTRY recently. Bunged in RUPEE without any issue with penny in the sense of “spend a penny” but not entirely happy now. Not the best clue. Wasn’t happy with the extra word “cakes” for OAST in my parsing as I went with [t]oast like others above so had to have fingers crossed for that one as the LOI before submitting.
Flying high Mon-Wed and now crashing to earth . Several clues impenetrable
Evidently a wavelengthy one for me which made a welcome change. My only holdup was POTPOURRI=stew. You really wouldn’t want to eat either of the ones I have, but I now see that was the original meaning.
I’m not sure I’d want to eat something called ‘rotten pot’ in any case!
DNF after multiple goes, beaten by MOONSHINE (didn’t know its garbage meaning), ALAMO, TIME SWITCH (I bunged in TRIP SWITCH) and REDWOOD (I thought 25a was unlikely to end in O for some reason, so I plumped for REDHEAD).
Thanks glh and setter.
COD Trendier
38.15 with a typo
Crikey. Did this much later than usual and thought I was just being slow-witted but the hold-ups were tough. Twigging RADA unblocked everything at the end but I really was wondering whether I would end up 3 or 4 short, not able to rid my brain of DINNER INDUSTRY and struggling with the second word of TIME even though I had the right sense of “spell”.
Well blogged George and thanks setter
It took me 1 hour 10 minutes and I’m glad I didn’t give up after an hour with three clues left undone — patience and resolve paid off. I liked the puzzle despite (or actually because of) the very very tricky clues, but what really gave me the most pleasure after finishing was reading the blog and seeing that as in my case, almost everyone’s LOI was BANKNOTE. What a superb clue.
Just under the hour. LOI COLORADAN. The only word that fitted and they are Americans. Had to come here to find out why…
Tough, with a few recalcitrant holdouts at the end. LOI Mandarin Orange, expecting an animal – oops. Excellent cluing in a great puzzle, much enjoyed.