Quite a few of the answers to this set of clues seem to have popped up in recent days – maybe here, maybe in The Guardian. Apart from that, this is a puzzle of pretty much average Monday difficulty. How fast you go depends to some extent on whether 1 across is a write-in. Did you study maps as a child? Are you into voodoo?
19:18
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Turbulent ocean trip up around far side of major capital (4-2-6) |
| PORT-AU-PRINCE – |
|
| 8 | Open boxes at the front all contain ham (7) |
| OVERACT – A~ C~ in OVERT | |
| 9 | Certain Antipodeans in Paris also sense regularly being overlooked (7) |
| AUSSIES – AUSSI (French for ‘also’) |
|
| 11 | Rise of work involving routines? (5-2) |
| STAND-UP – double definition, the second referring to comedians. Is it only me, or has stand-up become tame and boring in the last ten years or so? | |
| 12 | Illegal activity in key London district (7) |
| DEALING – D EALING | |
| 13 | Marketing gimmick that is canned? (3-2) |
| TIE-IN – IE (id est) in TIN (canned!!); is all publicity material related to a product a gimmick? What about a tie-in for Times crosswords? Would they incur the setter’s ire? Discuss. | |
| 14 | Additional information is about ecstasy (9) |
| SIDELIGHT – IS reversed DELIGHT; sidelight, as in , ‘her book provides interesting sidelights on her views of the #Me Too movement’ | |
| 16 | Delicious fresh salami cut by family member (9) |
| AMBROSIAL – BRO in SALAMI*; certainly, a decent creamed rice | |
| 19 | Clubs suffer defeat in the ballpark? (5) |
| CLOSE – C LOSE | |
| 21 | Greenville’s most impressive breakfast possibly is in N Eastern St (7) |
| NEATEST – EAT (to breakfast) in N E ST; Greenville is a city in South Carolina; allegedly, then, denizens of the good ol’ US of A use the word ‘neat’ to mean ‘good’. All I can say is that, when I visited my mother’s family in New Zealand for the first time in 1977, everyone was saying things were ‘real neat-aye,’ with an alarmingly ascending intonation. | |
| 23 | Current legislator wasn’t honest, as suggested (7) |
| IMPLIED – I (current) MP LIED | |
| 24 | Intern bored by editor finally to leave Express? (7) |
| DETRAIN – R ( |
|
| 25 | Something free of charge in new German sci-fi franchise (7) |
| NEUTRON – NEU (‘new,’ in German) TRON | |
| 26 | Support for each number expressing “good for you” (6,6) |
| SECOND PERSON – SECOND (support) PER SON |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Upper-crust folks look mature (7) |
| PEERAGE – PEER AGE | |
| 2 | Managed to bring on board staff from part of Africa (7) |
| RWANDAN – WAND in RAN | |
| 3 | Recommendation to split an Italian bubbly and appetisers (9) |
| ANTIPASTI – TIP in AN ASTI | |
| 4 | Type of cloth placed beneath piano (5) |
| PLAID – P before LAID | |
| 5 | Set up popular booth at farmers’ market? (7) |
| INSTALL – IN STALL; I’m not quite sure of the significance of ‘farmers’. Is the setter playing on words, a stall being a place for a horse, cow etc.? | |
| 6 | Cap requires waterproofing by the sounds of it (7) |
| CEILING – sounds like ‘sealing’ | |
| 7 | Doing business externally, the auditor’s forced to what extent? (5-7) |
| HOUSE-TRAINED – sounds like ‘how strained?’ | |
| 10 | Musician’s skill in this grade sadly lacking, ultimately (5-7) |
| SIGHT-READING – IN THIS GRADE* |
|
| 15 | Casual relationship beginning to destroy marriage (9) |
| DALLIANCE – D~ ALLAINCE | |
| 17 | Somebody very close to you catching a spider? (7) |
| BEASTIE – A in BESTIE; not my favourite word. I very nearly put in ‘beautie’, as I couldn’t see anything else that fitted. | |
| 18 | Old ass sent up Herb (7) |
| OREGANO – O ONAGER reversed; the good old ONAGER is getting his first outing for quite a while | |
| 19 | Poor excuses from police officers getting dismissed (3-4) |
| COP-OUTS – OUT in COPS | |
| 20 | Character just after small parts (7) |
| OMICRON – MICRO (small) in ON (just after – as in, ‘on hearing the news, he burst into tears’) | |
| 22 | Firm word of denial upset senior journalist (5) |
| TONED – NOT reversed ED | |
50 minutes. Yes, I thought at one stage that I’d printed an old but recent puzzle.
Is there a literary reference for spider / BEASTIE? Whilst solving I thought it was from Burns, but on reflection I think that was a mouse.
Yes it was a mouse (‘wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie’), but the Scottish use of BEASTIE to refer to an animal predates that reference, so it’s not something he coined. Collins defines BEASTIE as an insect but OED says any ‘small invertebrate’ and one of the citations refers specifically to ticks so it seems arachnids are OK!
19.50
Slightly above average I thought, or maybe I was slightly below.
Can’t think of a literary reference for spider/BEASTIE, but Flanders & Swann included ‘The Spider’ (in the Bath) in their Bestiary.
PORT AU PRINCE always reminds me of The Beach Boys’ ‘Kokomo’, which rhymes it with “I wanna catch a glimpse”.
LOI OMICRON
COD HOUSE-TRAINED
“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night good Lord deliver us” – old prayer!
the alternative version is “from Hull, Hell and Halifax”
I very much agree with our blogger’s observation about 1a. I was not an inveterate map studier so I’m not sure why PORT-AU-PRINCE was lodged in the memory banks – but it was. I was held up a bit at the end with BEASTIE – I’ve encountered Itsy Bitsy Spider but no literary spider beastie. There it is in the BRB, however, and yes it does feel like a Scots term. I’m another who’d nominate HOUSE-TRAINED as COTD. Reasonably pleased with my 16 minutes.
Thanks to setter and blogger
10a: The anagrist is IN THIS GRADE, then the last letter of LACKING.
Thank you. I’ve deleted my garbage.
46 min. I thought this was a bit harder than most Mondays. I spent far too long trying to fit HORSE TRADING into 7dn.
Frankie, I did the same thing! HORSE TRADING betrayed me too, and I ended up at the exact same overall solve time.
About 20 minutes.
– Didn’t parse AUSSIES
– Not familiar with SIDELIGHT as additional information, but it parsed and sounded perfectly plausible
– Had to assume that Greenville is somewhere in the USA for NEATEST
– Took a while to think of the right meaning of ‘intern’ to get DETRAIN
– Misparsed NEUTRON: I thought N was giving ‘new’, and came here ready to query how ‘German’ could equate to EU
– Tried to justify HORSE-TRADING for 7d before the other meaning of doing business occurred to me
– Agree with dcrooks above about the anagrist for SIGHT-READING
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Close
LOI Neatest
COD Overact
Not quick, 39 mins, held up by last three in NEATEST, BEASTIE & TONED.
I agree with dcrooks re the parsing of 10ac.
Quite enjoyable though. I liked the 4 long clues and PORT-AU-PRINCE was a write-in.
Thanks U and setter.
24 minutes. Happened to see 1a quickly thanks to the enumeration and this helped with the rest for which I didn’t have any major problems. Having seen HOUSE-TRAINED and SECOND PERSON elsewhere recently also helped so I found this a respite from some puzzles over the last few days, particularly those on Boxing Day. TONED for ‘firm’ appealed as my LOI; only in my dreams I’m afraid.
35 mins. The RHS went in like a QC in about 8 mins but had a complete brain fog down the left with each clue wrestled from the depths painfully.
Just me I think. Lovely generous start with PORT AU PRINCE. Thanks to Ulaca and setter.
13’33”. PORT-AU-PRINCE straight in. No idea at the time how HOUSE-TRAINED or OMICRON worked. Still shellshocked by 26 Dec Guardian, so nice to be back to nearly normal.
Thanks ulaca and setter.
No time for this, partly because I was called away, but also because it would be embarrassing! Just couldn’t see, though my fluey haze, things like CEILING, and forgot the Times’ curious obsession with “going places” – we had another version in yesterday’s monster, though if you’re HOUSE TRAINED, that’s where you don’t “go”.
BEASTIE is an odd one, isn’t it. It’s so Burns’ mouse it’s not readily connected to spiders, though I suppose “from ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties” might point in that direction.
Cheers Ulaca- though “thrashing” by the AUSSIES received a bit of a setback at the MCG, no?
DNF
Crashed and burned. I was stuck on BEASTIE and OMICRON but seeing as I’d already managed to convince myself that HORSE TRADING worked and I’d misread GREENVILLE as GRENVILLE, this hardly mattered.
Ah well “At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay”. I’ll settle for the sofa and reading my Maigret.
Thanks to Ulaca and the setter
30 minutes for a crossword that I enjoyed. At 1ac the (4, 2, 6) rather gives it away, especially when you know what letters will be in the answer. Never having heard the ‘Doing business externally’ definition at 7dn before I very much liked this. But this often happens: one sees some people extolling clues which are chestnuts to others. I’m happy with aussi for also and neu for new, but that’s because I did a bit of French and German at school. Should everyone know this?
Romped along until only had 7d and 21a to do. Ground to a halt, convinced 7d was something trading, horse? house? And NHO Greenville so thought it was a made up place with ECO implications of some sort. Even if it is an obscure USA city I’m not impressed with NEATEST as a US synonym for most impressive, how do I know Americans say that? Breakfast as a verb for eat? When I did see the “doing business” toilet idea, which was clever, I’d lost the will to go on. Grumpy today.
19:36 for a sub-20 solve which is an achievement, albeit becoming more common, for me. PORT-AU-PRINCE was a write in from the enumeration if that supports the blogger’s theory.
Biggest hold up here was the NEATEST, AMBROSIAL and BEASTIE crossing answers which was probably about half my time. Surprised to find NEATEST in that context was an Americanism. It’s certainly found its way to the UK.
Liked the simplicity of DEALING and SIDELIGHT.
Thanks blogger and setter.
About 30′. NEAT for impressive is so common I don’t think of it as American, though I assume it is. 1ac as a write-in helped, and a few fell from there. Never heard of SIDELIGHT in that sense and I enjoyed NEUTRON albeit not realising Tron is a “franchise” now.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
No idea how long it took me to bodge my way through this one, after immediately writing in PORT AU PRINCE, as I forgot to turn off the timer while doing other stuff. But overall, a disaster – culminating in a decision that RWANDAN did not really merit the second U!
No other errors but a long and winding road towards what, once the correct answer had finally been sighted, seemed quite straightforward solutions.
Thanks to setter and ulaca.
PEERAGE was FOI and handed me PORT OF PRINCE, which was eventually corrected by a helping of ANTIPASTI. The LHS resisted longest, with HOUSE TRAINED (ha ha) providing confirmation of NEATEST and precipitating DETRAIN, which allowed me to concentrate for some time on LOI, BEASTIE. Elsewhere in the grid, CEILING and AUSSIES took a while! 24:52. Thanks setter and U.
27.59 so a bit laboured.
“I used to sing in a choir until they worked out where the noise was coming from”
COD HOUSE-TRAINED
Thanks U and setter
Saw “Capital” and the enumeration, and Daar-Es-Salaam popped up without a nanosecond of thought. Apologies to Dar Es Salaam. Checking the anagrist, it took 10 or 15 seconds to get Port au Prince. Few other problems until the last 3. Idly decided there must be a Greenville somewhere in USA, but that Grenville was some random UK celebrity I’d never heard of: Joyce Greenville (pronounced Grenfell, wikipedia tells me) sprang to mind as vaguely heard of. House-trained was an excellent penny-drop moment. LOI overact, after correcting the misspelled RWNADAN. Not too hard, but quite enjoyable. COD to house-trained.
Ha, I’m glad I wasn’t alone! From the enumeration it just had to be DAAR-ES-SALAAM so in it went! Fortunately 1dn PEERAGE was a gimme so it didn’t hold me up.
11:36 helped by seeing 1ac straightaway.
COD: AMBROSIAL.
Thanks to ulaca and our setter.
This nice puzzle took me 21 mins. PORT-AU-PRINCE went straight in, not because of any wide geographical knowledge, but because I had read a certain James Bond novel in my teens in which Haiti featured and it left a lasting impression. My favourite clue was to HOUSE-TRAINED – very witty. And I thought the clue to DETRAIN was ingeniously tortuous. Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
I, too, biffed, Daar-Es-Salaam, even thought it is not spelled correctly, is not a capital, and has nothing to do with the cryptic. Well, it does fit! This set my solve back a bit, but seeing antipasti caused me to erase it. I also biffed sight-reading, which did turn out to be correct. I found house-trained rather elusive, even though I had considered the correct possible meaning of doing business. So not exactly a speedy solve of a Monday puzzle.
Time: 26:40
I was also tricked by the possibility of ‘horse trading’ and though I did know ‘Greenville’ was in NC,US it’s not really an Americanism anymore. ‘Neat’ seems to have gone from being US slang in the 70s to global slang in the 80s and now it’s simply dated (nowadays people seem to have progressed from ‘neat’ to ‘cool’ to ‘safe/sound’ to the more modern ‘calm’, at least among the English youth). I had ‘eat’ as a noun, a slang way of saying ‘meal’ or ‘dining experience’ of which ‘breakfast’ is a possible synonym on certain occasions but the verb idea of ‘to eat = to breakfast’ is perhaps slightly superior and more convincing. Not too hard overall though and I had about 5 left, mainly in the SW corner, after around 18 mins.
Small point perhaps but EAT is indicated by ‘breakfast, possibly’. Indicated definition by example!
22.15
Felt quite sluggish here as well, not seeing, оr more accurately not remembering,
PORT AU PRINCE even with quite a few checkers. HOUSE TRAINED was also a late entry but it caused a smile when it arrived.
Thanks Ulaca and Setter.
Didn’t really like this one. Altho’ I got SIDELIGHT , I’ve never seen this word in that context and it doesn’t feel right. Also, with NEATEST, the Americanism grates somewhat.
I did like AMBROSIAL and COP-OUTS however.
This took me a long time as I was stuck in the SW.
HORSE TRADING at 7d led to long looks at other clues using the wrong letters.
And could not see the point of Greenville.
Anyway LOI BEASTIE after House-Trained (good clue) and NEATEST.
COD just to SECOND PERSON.
David
Foi Port-au-Prince went straight in, but that was the false dawn of my attempt at a ‘quick’ solve. A prolonged teeth pulling session followed, mostly because I always try to parse as I go, and frankly some of the parsings today were well above my pay grade. Nho Greenville, nor Onager for that matter, and loi House Trained was more of a ‘it fits and I can’t be bothered anymore’ solve. Having said that, I did very much enjoy the Detrain pdm, so that gets my CoD vote. Invariant
15:24, with a delay caused by my dog jumping on my lap and causing me to spill coffee all over my computer, the work surface and the floor. Somehow I didn’t have the presence of mind to stop the timer!
Deja vu indeed – I solved this puzzle and yesterday’s in quick succession so was struck by the similarity. I won’t say more than that while yesterday’s puzzle is embargoed. Something very similar happened last week.
Look on the bright side. It’s nice to be still loved by someone in the family towards the end of the holiday period.
22:31, with HOUSE-TRAINED and OVERACT my last two in.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
Perhaps these words will be heard by none and wander around lonely as clouds in the ether – however, as QC doers, once a week we try the C…. and here we are – what fun. We are hopeless. however the blog was an absolute joy. Amusing, enlightening and more.
Happy New Year to any and all…if none hear these wishes, they will wander out there, full of joy and hope nonetheless.
Onward to 2026…
you’ll be read by dinosaurs like me who solve on the treeware version of the Australian, this puzzle was printed 33 days after it appeared in the Times.
I agree this was a fun puzzle, despite being defeated by house trained. COD for me was detrain, but of course 9a deserves an oi, oi, oi! as do the setter and blogger .
Hello down there!! : ) Rather nice having voices and keyboards all over the globe…and in the ether..
Aw, shucks. Thanks so much. Made my day.
Ah finally! See there’s another voice like mine, in the ether and down under, solving (or not!) the TftT about a month late and on paper…Big Halloo 😎 to Eladnq!! I try to comment every day on this crossword and blog, in the knowledge that no-one would care to revisit this site over a month later – how wrong could I be. So, I shall “tread carefully, lest I tread on your ?” from now on. As to the crossword, I found it harder than I expected after 1a went straight in from enumeration, and certain words were new to me in their contexts (SIDELIGHT, DETRAIN, NEATEST) resulting in the lower half holding me up significantly. I did like, however, “doing business eternally”, and of course AUSSIES. Fun crossword.
Just making a third from down under who tackles these puzzles around a month later in the hard copy of the Australian.Often beaten by a few so always delighted to complete 100%.Always find the blog fascinating and informative.