A fairly simple puzzle, but one where the bookending across clues need a bit of thinking through, if you want to get the parsing.
20:20
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Father is back — foul, debauched man grabbing southern explorer (3,7,5) |
| SIR FRANCIS DRAKE – most will just biff this, but, for the record: FR IS reversed S (southern) in RANCID (foul) RAKE (debauched man) | |
| 9 | Appeared reckless before Yankee not wanting to be shot (6-3) |
| CAMERA-SHY – CAME RASH Y | |
| 10 | Snake right next to tree (5) |
| RACER – R ACER; non-venomous American snake | |
| 11 | Person relaying prophecy heading off in boat (6) |
| ORACLE – |
|
| 12 | Learning chemistry, leaving short of content about compound (8) |
| GLYCEROL – |
|
| 13 | Epitaph by an admirable person from Australia (6) |
| RIPPER – R.I.P. PER (by); pretty much all Australians, then | |
| 15 | Forcefully seizing king, entering on horseback with guards (8) |
| USURPING – R in UP in USING (with) | |
| 18 | Adjusting giant nut carelessly (8) |
| ATTUNING – anagram* of GIANT NUT | |
| 19 | Somewhat hope nuptials become more lively (4,2) |
| OPEN UP – hidden | |
| 21 | Violent downpours knocking out uranium plant (8) |
| SNOWDROP – DOWNPO |
|
| 23 | One who loves trouble starts to rewatch Easy Rider (6) |
| ADORER – ADO R~ E~ R~ | |
| 26 | Capital account raid ignored by papers (5) |
| ACCRA – ACC RA |
|
| 27 | Assistance to get off horse? (9) |
| METHADONE – a very nice cryptic definition; my last in | |
| 28 | Revolutionary capitalised in expanding part of UK (8,7) |
| NORTHERN IRELAND – another biff…but, for the record, take ‘in’, reverse (revolutionary) and capitalise it to NI, then expand it! | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Help gullible chap to be heard (7) |
| SUCCOUR – sounds like ‘sucker’; cropping up a fair bit of late | |
| 2 | Dance graduate supporting group periodically (5) |
| RUMBA – |
|
| 3 | Ruler and a rogue clergyman (5,4) |
| RURAL DEAN – RULER AND A* | |
| 4 | Just robbed of house and home (4) |
| NEST – |
|
| 5 | The author had time to welcome flipping daft poet (8) |
| IDYLLIST – SILLY (daft) reversed in I’D (the author had) T | |
| 6 | Physicist cut dreadful article on speed of light (5) |
| DIRAC – DIR |
|
| 7 | Instrument one cooler chain stocks (9) |
| ACCORDION – I (one) in AC (cooler) CORDON (chain) | |
| 8 | US lawman left university, ultimately inventing anti-listening device (7) |
| EARPLUG – EARP (Wyatt) L U ~G; smart hearing protection device | |
| 14 | Stunted cyberbully roughly put into standard police vehicle (6,3) |
| PATROL CAR – TROL |
|
| 16 | Reject authority of pirate due to wind (9) |
| REPUDIATE – PIRATE DUE* | |
| 17 | Singer due to receive millions here stripped (8) |
| INFORMER – IN FOR (due) M |
|
| 18 | Don’t booze with sailors — you shouldn’t have contents of pint (7) |
| ABSTAIN – ABS TA |
|
| 20 | Warn of combining wine and Pernod on a regular basis (7) |
| PORTEND – PORT |
|
| 22 | Diamonds ground without resistance in the end (5) |
| DEATH – D EA |
|
| 24 | Sent up character drinking orange juice and wine (5) |
| RIOJA – OJ in AIR (character) reversed | |
| 25 | European travel company’s case (4) |
| ETUI – E TUI | |
3/4 of the grid went in easily enough, but with 25 minutes on the clock I ground to a halt with several answers missing in the NE segment. Finding them extended my solving time to 38 minutes.
IDYLLIST, DIRAC, ACCORDION (where my first thought had been ALPENHORN), RACER (as a snake), GLYCEROL and USURPING were the ones in question, but they fell into place as each solution added a checker or two to help with the remainder.
Elsewhere I missed the parsing of ETUI as I didn’t known the travel company, but the sewing case appeared in another puzzle within the past week and it was fresh in my mind.
19.07, my LOI was METHADONE for which I can thank my love of Iceberg Slim as a youth. One of his best quotes still rings true today: “Why did Justice really always wear a blindfold? I knew now. It was because [she] had dollar signs for eyeballs”
Up to my eyeballs in above-average trickiness for this Monday, but in the end it all went in nicely. COD to NORTHERN IRELAND although I also appreciated GLYCEROL.
This is the second or third time I’ve seen ETUI. I have it in my list of words I will only ever need when doing crosswords, which I review then mostly forget about twice a year. Thanks ulaca and setter!
I’m guessing you don’t belong to a sewing circle, then?
All shipshape and Bristol fashion until I got to the SE corner, where I entered TUMI, assuming there was a tribe in the Arctic of that name and misremembering the travel company. This stymied me for an age. Etuis I suspect exist these days only in crosswordland.
16.25
A bit trickier than the usual Monday fare, but manageable. I did indeed biff Sir Francis, who appeared as an answer on a TV quiz last week. Was that recent appearance of ETUI in the Guardian’s Trumpton-themed puzzle, perhaps?
LOI USURPING
COD PATROL CAR
44 mins with L4I DIRAC, GLYCEROL, METHADONE & INFORMER taking a while to see.
Like Jack, most of this went in very quickly, until it didn’t.
I liked the explorer and our wine of preference these days, RIOJA, it seems.
Thanks Ulaca and setter.
Another with METHADONE last in, very good cryptic. One complete misparse, overthinking and combining POR* (P
eRnOd) with TENT for wine. Nonplussed after having to overwrite the final letter, but left it in. Tricky parsing throughout, made you think, nice puzzle. Lucky to have heard of TUI. COD to Sir Frank.RIPPER and RACER were both solved from the cryptic and crossers, with the definition not really known. LOI was METHADONE. I may have spent three years in the company of Howard Marks in the Clarendon, but I’m still an innocent abroad when it comes to drugs. COD to Paul DIRAC. If we’d had the internet then, would I have understood quartum field theory better? Probably not. A good Monday puzzle. Thank you U and setter.
The spelling is very Internet though, BW 😉
Yep, I don’t know my Rs from other possibilities.
36.08, slow for a Monday but some really nice clues (and a couple of rather contrived words – IDYLLIST, ADORER).
FOI ACCRA
LOI USURPING
COD METHADONE
Thanks U and setter
Decided to have a go at a week day and Monday as good as any? Found this enjoyable with a couple of caveats, but would not call it easy.
Liked 9ac CAMERA SHY and 5d IDYLLIST for cleverness. Also 4d NEST for simplicity with style.
Thought 15ac USURPING, 28ac NORTHERN IRELAND and 7d ACCORDION a bit of stretch for various reasons, once parsing explained.
Did not know much about 12ac GLYCEROL and grateful to blogger for parsing.
Had to look up 3d RURAL DEAN to feed from anagram, and to confirm 6d DIRAC which had already parsed from clue.
Also despite the generous attribution on Australia/Invasion Day, not convinced that 13ac RIPPER applies to persons (or anything really these days in Oz).
Thank you Ulaca and setter.
Just under half an hour.
– Only parsed SIR FRANCIS DRAKE and NORTHERN IRELAND some time after putting them in
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown (or forgotten) RACER
– ‘Compound’ was not a particularly helpful definition for GLYCEROL
– NHO DIRAC
– Took ages to parse ACCORDION even after I’d thought of it and got some of the checkers
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Attuning
LOI Dirac
COD Abstain
Yet another WOE after 34 mins. That was a Monday stinker esp Last Few In: GLYCEROL, METHADONE and the NHO ETUI. It didn’t help biffing ELECTRUM at first.
NI unparsed and ACCORDIaN not parsed enough.
While I did have the drugs GK I would say clueing METHADONE as a CD was a bit mean.
Overall hard work but an interesting challenge. Thanks Ulaca and setter.
12:24. I seem to have been a bit off the wavelength for this one. No particular problems, just slow this morning I guess.
DIRAC appears here fairly regularly, u. The last time was a puzzle I blogged in December 2024 and you hadn’t heard of him then either.
There’s always next time.
DNF, couldn’t get METHADONE, not being that familiar with drug slang. Thought it was some play like “quit a mare”.
Had to look up ETUI, I knew there was a case that had come it before that ended in an I.
Also did know either the tree or the snake for RACER, so that was a guess.
Is CY supposed to be a an abbreviation for Chemistry, or is the “short of content” device applying to the two previous words?
Couldn’t parse NORTHERN IRELAND, or ACCORDION.
I read it as both words short of content.
I think you must be right. My search for CY as an abbreviation for chemistry never really convinced me. Needs to be Chem.
I parsed RIPPER every so slightly differently with ‘by’ as juxtaposition and ‘an’ giving me PER as in ’50p an apple’.
This did feel trickier in parts than many Monday puzzles but a reasonable handful of easy ones gave sufficient crossers for everything else to go in. GLYCEROL my LOI with all the crossers and I needed the blog for the parse – doh! As for equating ‘due’ and IN FOR, ‘we’re in for/due some rain today’ works for me.
Thanks to setter and blogger
Enjoyed this, nice to spend a few minutes in the harbour before heading out into the choppier waters expected later in the week .. with a full gale on Friday no doubt.
For 11ac I considered OASTER and OLLIER before settling on ORACLE.
Nice to see Paul Dirac get a mention. Those who haven’t heard of him should look him up. A Nobel Laureate, of whom Stephen Hawking stated that “Dirac has done more than anyone this century, with the exception of Einstein, to advance physics and change our picture of the universe.”
About 25′. Started off thinking this was very Mondayish esp after the simple 1ac. Got a bit tougher in the middle.
Enjoyed LOI METHADONE after an alphabet trawl on the 4th letter and realising the horse in question. Shame I think about NORTHERN IRELAND which is a neat clue (I didn’t get it..) but such an easy biff. Well pitched puzzle I thought.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
18.25, trying to make sure everything parsed, so I did work out SIR FRANCIS. I stumbled over SNOWDROP before realising it was a depleted anagram, but was pleased to work out both IDYLLIST and GLYCEROL, both quality clues. You’ll all be pleased to know I gave up trying to parse METHODONE, though some wordplay would have been helpful for deciding whether it was O or A in the middle. A similar problem (for me) on ACCORDIO(A?)N, especially because it was the one I couldn’t parse, thinking “one” accounted for the A at the start and never seeing the -um- link between chain and CORDON.
11:32. GLYCEROL was LOI on a wing and a prayer, not understanding wordplay at all. Had a couple of off weeks with cryptics, feeling like I can’t finish them any more. TGIM!
My thanks to ulaca and setter.
Tricky, but got there with a wee bit of cheating.
1a Sir Francis. Delayed for a while by biffing Scott rather than Drake, thinking it might have been the Southern Explorer, (Robert) Falcon, not Francis. I thought that was hard to parse, and I didn’t.
27a Methadone, needed all the crossers, then I was rather surprised by what is essentially a GK question. Is it still used? I seem to remember in Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs he thought it ineffective.
6d Dirac, HHO but only in Xwords. We didn’t do much Quantum Physics at A-level, and at University it was thought that Engineers wouldn’t need it.
25d Etui, Xword-only. Surprised at use of TUI the Coy.
13:15. I see I failed to go back and parse ACCORDION which I’d biffed. GLYCEROL and USURPING my last two in. Thanks U and setter.
An enjoyable puzzle which I solved in a tad over twenty two minutes, but with a typo, ANSTAIN. Drat and double drat! Thanks setter and U.
Why do we hear at athletics meetings ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, or is it ‘United Kingdom and Northern Ireland’? My knowledge of exactly what constitutes us is a bit thin, but this does suggest to me that Northern Ireland is not part of the UK, which seems odd. So is 28ac sound?
A fairly simple puzzle, as Ulaca says. But not really all that simple, only simple in comparison with what has been the norm recently. after all the SNITCH is 80, or at least it was when I last looked.
At 1ac U says ‘most will just biff this’. Most?
It’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Good stuff, 25 minutes, was going to write about DIRAC but @jerryw already said it. NI was clever.
39:20 for a time more in line to a tough midweek puzzle. Just don’t think my mind was at it’s sharpest today.
Not seeing GLYCEROL for my LOI and whilst I biffed ACCORDION from a few checking letters I was missing the (in hindsight straightforward) parsing for ACCORDIAN which made me doubt one of the checking letters.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE and NORTHERN IRELAND filled in from checking letters but I did like the second one once I saw how the clue worked.
Vaguely heard of RACER and RIPPER just enough not to doubt them.
COD to METHADONE which I am pleased reading the comments to have got from just the M.
Thanks blogger and setter.
29 minutes. I didn’t know a RURAL DEAN as a ‘clergyman’ or a RACER as a sort of ‘snake’ so together with some difficult parsing I found this quite a challenge. Took a while to work it out but the original wordplay for NORTHERN IRELAND was my favourite today.
24:09
Plenty missed in this biff-fest:
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE – clue too convoluted to spend much time parsing – saw the RAKE and bunged it in from enumeration
RACER – assumed there was a snake of this variety
ORACLE – one of my last six in, but got there eventually
GLYCEROL – 3rd last in. I’m no chemist
USURPING – LOI – too hung up on RIDING until IDYLLIST went in
NORTHERN IRELAND – this bothered me – the answer was obvious, but only parsed after completion, and before coming here
IDYLLIST – was trying to think of a poet’s name, scales fell from eyes once I’d pencilled in GLYCEROL
ETUI – seen before in these parts, nowhere else. Though I’ve been on a TUI holiday before, it took a long time to recall
DIRAC – vaguely heard of, but if you’d have told me he was a composer, I would have believed you
ACCORDION – no clue at all about what was going on here – bunged in from first and last checkers
Thanks U and setter
This one took me 15 mins, my fastest solve in a long time. My first one in was METHADONE – a lucky hunch. DIRAC I got from the wordplay. My favourite clue was to SNOWDROP. Nice puzzle. Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
A very quick (for me) 20 mins, but I have to admit many of them biffed, and came here for the parsing. METHADONE made me smile, as did the clue.
Thanks setter and Ulaca!
36.54 so not so simple for me. Had to look up the symbol for the speed of light and struggled with glycerol , amongst others. COD Methadone.
Looking on the bright side , that’s one correct this week which was my sum total for all last week.
I first heard of racer snakes watching the David Attenborough sequence where as a pack they pursue iguana hatchlings to the sea. Vicariously quite scary.
I think the definition for ‘in for’ is ‘due to receive’ rather than just ‘due’.
I found this tricky for a Monday, and failed to parse several biffs. NHO RIPPER for an Aussie or the snake though biffed both. I like PostMark’s parsing for it RIPPER. Knew Dirac as I did a Physics degree. Someone above seemed to think METHADONE was ‘drug slang’, but not at all. It’s a recognised treatment for addiction. Failed in ETUI
Re: the debate about N.I. above, does anyone recall that rather grand rubric in the old passports — “Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty … yadda yadda … without let or hindrance … yadda yadda …”. Wonderful stuff. Didn’t the same page in the passport refer to ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’?
I believe that the person above meant that in the clue, horse for heroin was drug slang.
Glycerol was too tricky for me – either to identify as a random compound (a definition word which rattles me as much as “plant” does) or to parse. Everything else fell into line at a pace consistent with television sports playing in the background.
I did not find it so easy. While I could biff Sir Francis Drake and Northern Ireland, clues like glycerol and methadone were a little tough. I was left with the plant, and spent a while trying to think of violent downpours that I could remove a U from. I finally saw how the clue worked, and then snowdrop became obvious.
Time: 33:49
‘ a fairly simple puzzle ‘ ? Not for me it wasn’t . OK most of it strightforward , but DIRAC and GLYCEROL screwed me.
METHADONE crossed with ETUI was hopeless for me; rest of the puzzle went in reasonably enough.
27 mins – but two typos.
Nice crossword. I enjoyed NI, ACCORDION and CAMERA SHY but COD goes to METHADONE.
Thanks to place and our setter.