Time taken: 20:21
I probably should have called in a sub for today. I had what I thought was going to be a small procedure yesterday and it has turned into a lot of pain, a slow recovery and a daze of painkillers. Add to that my computer being back for repairs for some Windows 11 bug that won’t let it boot up and me using a borrowed computer that took me enough tries to log on that I was put in a 20-minute penalty box by this site.
I thought near the end this might be a pangram (which helped me get 25 across) but there is no V.
Looking at early times I feel confident that this is Tricky Thursday and amazed that I managed to get through it at all under the circumstances. How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Justification OK for uprising (11) |
| GROUNDSWELL – GROUNDS (justification), WELL (OK, like I am not) | |
| 7 | What’s unknown on heads in France and England? (3) |
| FEZ – an all-in-one: Z (unknown) on the first letters of France and England | |
| 9 | Fabric missing hem, lower flag (9) |
| TRICOLOUR – TRICOT (a dress fabric) minus the last letter, then LOUR (lower) | |
| 10 | Block surrounding opening to exterior part of Cape Town property (5) |
| STOEP – STOP (block) surrounding the first letter of Exterior. A term paying us a visit from Mephistoland | |
| 11 | Accessory in relationship cut (3,4) |
| TIE CLIP – TIE (relationship), CLIP (cut) | |
| 12 | Fancy gear associated with leaders in administration primarily? (7) |
| REGALIA – REGAL (associated with leaders) then the first letters of In Administration. As pointed out in several comments, though I think my parsing is valid, the intention was another all-in-one, an anagram of GEAR then the first letters of Leaders In Administration | |
| 13 | Return setter’s first exceptional puzzle (5) |
| REBUS – reversal of the first letter of Setter then UBER (exceptional) | |
| 15 | Sauce label off, pretty much (4,5) |
| JUST ABOUT – JUS (sauce), TAB (label), OUT (off) | |
| 17 | Get upset with partner wearing fleece (4,1,4) |
| SHED A TEAR – DATE (partner) inside SHEAR (fleece) | |
| 19 | Honest family takes up crime in the end (5) |
| CLEAN – CLAN (family) containing the last letter of crimE | |
| 20 | Darling rejected by girl — gaffe! (7) |
| MISSTEP – PET (darling) reversed after MISS (girl) | |
| 22 | Hair in mixer? (7) |
| WHISKER – double definition | |
| 24 | Idea in force, briefly (5) |
| THEME – THE MET (force) minus the last letter | |
| 25 | Search patrols aren’t more odd, compared to others (9) |
| QUAINTEST – QUEST (search) containing AIN’T (aren’t). My second-last in, thinking that for the pangram there had to be a Q and V somewhere, found the Q | |
| 27 | She abandons one currency before backing — another? (3) |
| LEK – remove SHE from SHEKEL (currency) and reverse | |
| 28 | Signal file fascinating political speaker? (11) |
| SPELLBINDER – SPELL (signal, as in spell out your doom), then BINDER (file) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Pick up sheep that’s rolled over (3) |
| GET – TEG (sheep) reversed | |
| 2 | Leather releasing hydrogen compound (5) |
| OXIDE – OX HIDE (leather) minus H (hydrogen) | |
| 3 | Edible strands rarely working when 1000 cut up (7) |
| NOODLES – SELDOM (rarely) and ON (working) minus M (1000), all reversed | |
| 4 | Top sandwich in America (6,3) |
| SLOPPY JOE – double definition. In the UK, it is a loose jumper, in the USA, it is a hot sandwich with ground meat and sauce | |
| 5 | Fluff stuck inside upright freezer or refrigerator (5) |
| ERROR – hidden reversed inside freezeR OR REfrigerator | |
| 6 | Italian food, while in wrap, irrelevant (7) |
| LASAGNA – AS (while) inside LAG (wrap a pipe with insulating material) then N/A (irrelevant) | |
| 7 | Free pay, easy! (9) |
| FOOTLOOSE – FOOT (pay for), LOOSE (easy) | |
| 8 | Fly: fly quicker shielding wings on extension (3,8) |
| ZIP FASTENER – ZIP (fly) then FASTER (quicker) surrounding the external letters of ExtensioN | |
| 11 | Whale, spirit heard in powerful music (6,5) |
| THRASH METAL – THRASH (whale or beat) then a homophone of METTLE (spirit) | |
| 14 | Complains tree is cut (9) |
| BEEFSTEAK – BEEFS (complains), then TEAK (tree) | |
| 16 | Wind blast, absurd (9) |
| SCREWBALL – SCREW (wind), then BALL (blast, fun event) | |
| 18 | Player with cavil originally splitting a hair (7) |
| ACTRESS – first letter of Cavil inside A, TRESS (hair) | |
| 19 | Jersey etc wrapped round new hat in red (7) |
| CHIANTI – CI (Channel Islands, Jersey etc) surrounding an anagram of HAT,IN | |
| 21 | Ill-feeling cut short card game (5) |
| PIQUE – PIQUET (card game) minus the last letter | |
| 23 | Mould close to moisture in rising damp (5) |
| KNEAD – last letter of moisturE inside DANK (damp) reversed | |
| 26 | Sea dog, animal sailing north (3) |
| TAR – RAT (animal) reversed | |
I agree this was tricky, and I took a long time to get going. I got zip fastener early on, but the other long answers were tough. I needed all the crossers to come up with groundswell and spellbinder. Even then, I didn’t have any of the four long ones in the middle that tie the puzzle together.
I would suggest another parsing for regalia – anagram of gear, plus the first letters of leaders in administration. That would make it &lit number two.
Time: 40:57
That’s how I parsed REGALIA too.
Ditto.
And me
And I don’t think “associated with leaders” equates at all to REGAL, which is more specific.
Too good again for me today. Probably managed about 60% of it before resorting to aids. Was pleased to see the parsing of NOODLES pretty quickly along with BEEFSTEAK, which provided some checkers. Bunged in THRASH for whale but NHO the music. I also parsed REGALIA as Vinyl above. Biffed SLOPPY JOE but I think I’ve heard of it somewhere.
Thanks George and setter.
Gosh that was hard. I was pleased just to finish in 52 but that doesn’t reflect the many occasions where I ‘resorted to aids’ (ie cheated) to make sense of impenetrable clues. I’m looking at LASAGNA, QUAINTEST and THRASH METAL in particular, but they had mates. A proper challenge, thanks George. Oh I’m with Vinyl too on REGALIA.
From I Shall Be Free:
Well the funniest woman I ever seen
Was the great-granddaughter of Mr CLEAN
She takes about fifteen baths a day
Wants me to grow a moustache on my face
She’s insane…
That was a blast! I did start slowly but soon quickened to a steady pace. When I dredged up TEG, I had the G and S so GROUNDSWELL from the definition, parsed as I wrote it in. There were a bunch like that. I enjoyed the wordplay anyway.
72 minutes. Always disappointing to take over an hour but I found this hard and it was some consolation to have completed it without errors. Several unparsed and STOEP only vaguely recognised, without knowing its meaning, as a South Africa term.
Lots of clues to like – as usual I’ll go for the two &lits as my favourites.
Thanks to George for doing the blog under such difficult circumstances – sorry to hear about your trials and tribulations and hope you (and your computer) are now on the mend.
80 minutes, but after the hour had passed I used aids 4 or 5 times to look up synonyms and something to go with THRASH at 11dn. I don’t recall ever coming across that meaning of whale before, and I’m thankful I have never knowingly heard any of the music being defined.
QUAINTEST, KNEAD and SCREWBALL were others that required some assistance. I probably should have persevered with all of them but I had run out of steam by that point. NHO TRICOT or STOEP but that didn’t delay me.
24:53 which felt like I was punching above my weight on this one. I see that it pushed Verlaine over the 13-minute mark so it’s safe to say that it was harder than a cat’s head.
Great puzzle though, with a number of clues that seemed totally impenetrable until they weren’t.
Thanks setter and thanks especially to George for going above and beyond.
Good crossword this, not easy but 15ac doable. Managed it without a 20ac. No unknowns, even the powerful music rang a vague bell.
I parsed REGALIA the same as Vinyl. Re the FEZ, evidently our setter is not a fan of Tommy Cooper..
To be fair to the setter Tommy hasn’t donned the fez for nearly 42 years!
That can’t possibly be right.. I saw him on the telly just the other night!
Oof! That was a bit of a struggle with time coming in around the 35 minute mark. SLOPPY JOE nho in either sense and TRICOT also nho making LOI, TRICOLOUR, tricky until all the crossers were in place. Add to that the fact I couldn’t see why ‘political’ was in the def for SPELLBINDER – have we had one in recent times who meets that correct definition? Faves inc FEZ, REGALIA which I parsed as others above, REBUS, JUST ABOUT, OXIDE and SCREWBALL.
Thanks to setter and blogger
THRASH METAL, SPELLBINDER and BEEFSTEAK were still missing when I abandoned ship in the SW, with a biffed REBUS unvalidated. Tricky Thursday indeed. I got SLOPPY JOE only from the American part of the clue, but even then I thought it was a pizza. Thank you George for battling through your travails, and setter for this beast.
21:26. I was relieved to finish this, ending with SHED A TEAR, without getting too stuck. DNK the fabric or the UK meaning of the messy US sandwich. Lots to enjoy – particularly FEZ (my FOI), the &lit REGALIA (which I parsed as Vinyl did) and ZIP FASTENER. No problem with STOEP as we had one when I lived in South Africa as a boy. Thanks George for the blog (I hope you recover quickly) and setter for the entertaining challenge.
Over 50 minutes with aids, so I’m going to relieve my frustrations with a couple of gripes.
FEZ could also be FEY – the latter can mean the mysterious or unknown.
SPELLBINDER – why specifically a political speaker? I would put Billy Graham and (having heard him often) the historian Richard Cobb in that category.
Thanks and good wishes George; congratulations setter, you were too good for me today.
I wondered about SPELLBINDER as well, but alongside the more expansive definition, Chambers says:
An orator, usu political or evangelical, who holds his or her audience spellbound
I don’t think FEY works. If the clue is &Lit then the the whole thing is the definition and the ‘heads in France and England’ part is nonsense. If it’s not &Lit then ‘unknown’ is the definition and there is nothing in the wordplay to indicate the Y.
DNF. Gave up on the hour with 73% done and not enjoying enough to come back later. Out of my league.
What I did manage was a slog and so far off wavelength it might have been from a different publication (or planet) though they all look reasonable now I see them explained, just too clever for me.
Thanks to setter and George, I’m always impressed by a solve like this even under ideal circs.
Crikey, that was tough but a DNF in the end as I too resorted to aids for the NHO THRASH METAL, and SCREWBALL. L3I PIQUE, QUAINTEST & CHIANTI all took an age to see. For some odd reason recently i have failed to see “red” as a wine on several occasions.
I liked ZIP FASTENER & JUST ABOUT.
Thanks glh and setter.
DNF Started using aids after about 40 minutes but then decided I wasn’t really enjoying this puzzle at all. “Its not you it’s me”. I did like ZIP FASTENER
Thanks to George and the setter,
37.29. There, I’ve admitted it! I think the problem with this puzzle is that our setter, as s/he is entitled to, made all the definitions and elements of wordplay as oblique as possible, possibly by going through the dictionary definitions and selecting only those which are at the bottom of the list. I’ll offer THRASH METTLE as an example, where both words are distant cousins to their clue words, and “powerful music” could be anything.
I’m surprised it wasn’t a pangram: when the Q appeared after the LEK I worked on the assumption that it was, and began to move a bit quicker with such as FEZ (another far distant definition), JUST ABOUT and OXIDE.
How you managed this with all the odds stacked against you is a mystery, George. Reminds me of the Pratchett episode where Fred Colon, Carrot Ironfoundersson and Nobby Nobbs make a bow shot as difficult as possible on the basis that “it’s a million to one chance, but it might just work”. Swift recovery for you and your kit!
A very astute analysis of the cluing strategy. Possibly more fun to set than solve.
Wonder whether AI was involved?
I have occasionally thrown crossword clues at AI, making sure Artie knows it’s a crossword clue. So far the responses have been unimpressive, lacking the kind of mental gymnastics that are maybe our main reason for doing cryptics: perhaps AI ia still too logical for its own good.
Been in and around sheep farming for 30 years and never heard of a ‘teg’. Laughed and gave up instantly.
The teg is found in the crossword, not on the farm!
Yes indeed. I know a toughie when I see one, and this clue at 1dn gave the game away instantly. I walk when I know I’m beaten (or at least, when I know I’d only finish the damn thing as night is falling).
From TEG to CHIANTI in 60:19 although I did fruitlessly look up types of whale (whale = thrash!! Really???) before TIE CLIP led me to THRASH. METAL had been in for a while but couldn’t get it with only the R from REBUS to work with. SHED A TEAR arrived after SLOPPY JOE, which came as a result of me checking Google to see if SLURPY JOE was a thing, after dismissing SLEEPY JOE. SCREWBALL eventuall cleared the way for SPELLBINDER after which LOI CHIANTI arrived with a deep sigh. Bloody hard work with no real sense of achievement. Thanks George. Hope you feel better soon.
In America we might say “to wail on” meaning “to thrash” or “to bludgeon” but we don’t spell it “whale” so I was flummoxed by that clue (and several others… not my best showing, but a relief to see others encountering similar difficulties)
17:57. Tough indeed. I enjoyed this one though, it often required close attention to the wordplay.
A couple of things I didn’t understand: the ‘tricot’ part of 9ac and the ‘whale’ part of 11dn.
Add me to the apparently long list of Brits who only knew the US meaning of SLOPPY JOE.
Sorry to hear of your travails, George, hope you’re feeling better very soon.
Abandoned with 4 in top LH corner unfinished . NHO SLOPPY JOE (had the Joe part in) as a jumper or a sandwich. NHO of THRASH METAL although had METAL for mettle in. Thrash means whale? Had PUT in at 1a (TUP reversed) so never saw GROUND although had pencilled in SWELL. No real complaints once I read the blog, so well done, George, under adverse circs.
37:12
Got to 72% and wondered how on earth I could finish this, but incredibly, these things somehow come together. Some notes:
TRICOLOUR – one of my last four in – pencilled in from the first and last checker and tentative middle checker – got the LOUR part, but no idea about the fabric
STOEP – easy to fill in from wordplay and checkers, perhaps heard of before, but didn’t know what it was
REGALIA – parsed same way as Vinyl
QUAINTEST – only got this once the Q arrived
THRASH METAL – from four checkers and the definition, completely failed to parse
NOODLES – had this pencilled in early on, but could not see how it worked
SLOPPY JOE – I’ve heard of a Sloppy Joe pizza, but neither of the definitions/allusions here – only bunged in when it was completely clear
LASAGNA – I’m never entirely sure whether the last letter should be an A or an E, so the parsing helped considerably here
CHIANTI – not CRIMSON then…
Thanks G and setter
Too hard for me after yesterdays almost easy for a Times Crossword that is. Thanks for blogging in such grim circumstances.
My thanks to glh and setter.
Well I wish you well glh. I took forever over this, and some of them were ugh.
9a Tricolour biffed, NHO Tricot nor do I know lour=lower – oh yes I do!
15a Just about biffed.
1d Get. Teg suddenly came to me, improving on Put (tup=ram). FOI after rubbing out Put.
3d Noodles, very clever. COD.
4d Sloppy J, DNK the sandwich… do I?
11d Thrash Metal, cheated. As it is in Cheating Machine and I know nothing of music it must have come up before. Saw the metal/mettle bit but was a bit foxed by whale.
16d Screwball. I thought “balls=blast” was a bit rude for the Times, and I was right, it is.
26d Tar 2OI.
We go from one of the lowest snitches for a Wednesday to one of the highest for a Thursday. Can we have some consistency please.
1:08 – difficult but worthwhile. No quibbles with any of the vocabulary or the cluing – including FEZ, which I thought neatly incorporated a pertinent, if somewhat questionable, cryptic definition into the wordplay. First-rate cluing throughout.
I assume 68 minutes, and not 1 minute 8 seconds!
Alas yes, sloppy of me. I look forward to taking top slot on the Snitch as the most brazen of neutrinos – the only crossword league table I have any chance of leading!
50 mins.
Tricky. Glad to get through it.
Thanks, g. Get well soon.
39.00
Though it wasn’t quite a pangram (no V), the suspicion that it might be led me to the X in OX(H)IDE.
The wordplay for SCREWBALL was, well, absurd.
Surprisingly, only one actual BIFD, my LOI LEK.
COD JUST ABOUT.
42:22
Although I think this is very difficult, I did really enjoy it. There are a few NHOs in the wordplay but fewer, or none, in the answers. I find that much the better way round. I think the only NHO answer is LEK, though it makes sense, and once you see how the clue works it is the only option.
So the difficulty derived primarily from guile not knowledge, and that’s the way I like it.
COD to FEZ.
DNF after two attempts, beaten by WHISKER and KNEAD.
– Didn’t know tricot the dress fabric in TRICOLOUR
– Had to trust the wordplay for the unknown STOEP
– Never heard of SLOPPY JOE as a top
– Was glad of the cluing for LASAGNA, as otherwise I would have put an E rather than an A at the end
– Like many others it seems, didn’t know whale=thrash for THRASH METAL
Thanks setter and glh (and best wishes for your recovery!)
COD Shed a tear
13 mins yesterday, 62 mins today! I dread tomorrow. Very tough but very good. Didn’t know SLOPPY JOEs were American sandwiches, but my mother used to knit them. I surmised the unknown to me THRASH METAL was heavier heavy metal. Thanks , Blogger (get well soon), for explaining 9A. I had great difficulty with SHED A TEAR, WHISKER, SCREWBALL and CHIANTI and only slightly less with GROUNDSWELL, TIE CLIP and GET (I liked vinyl1’s comment about TEG, above). First in was TAR and last SHED A TEAR. My favourite clue (out of many excellent ones) was to FEZ. Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
Got there in about 50′ with a break for golf and walking daughters dogs.
Once I got a foothold there was a lot of biffing before parsing. Hence REGALIA was parsed as per George and similarly THRASH METAL made sense only when I saw the answer.
I knew SLOPPY JOE from the top, not the sandwich though there is a Sloppy Guiseppe pizza so it made sense.
Glad to get through it.
Thanks George and setter
Busy day so I completed this off and on so no time to report. Hard to gauge the difficulty when I do that but this seemed difficult but I am struggling to pinpoint which clues I thought were particularly tricky.
The expected pangram helped me get QUAINTEST and PIQUE but for the last three in I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out where the V went.
Don’t know either definition of SLOPPY JOE but knew it existed as a phrase.
Didn’t know the Albanian currency but Shekel was only thing I could think of that fitted the wordplay.
COD ZIP FASTENER
Thanks blogger and setter
Went through all the clues twice and didn’t get a single one. Having read this blog there wasn’t any where I kicked myself for not getting.
After over two months of putting in daily effort I’m thinking perhaps I should take up something a little easier such as brain surgery or rocket science…
While I was able to complete about 2/3 of the puzzle, I was similarly discouraged by this one… and considered throwing in the towel on the whole hobby.
But let us redouble our efforts! We can persevere and climb this cyclopean cryptic ziggurat together! 💪
Well I’m about a month in and was similarly flummoxed 😀 tomorrow is another day and another grid
There is a pretty tough learning curve to these! If you’re new to the whole thing I’d start with the Quick Cryptic, then the early-week 15x15s to build your confidence (and knowledge). There’s no shame in admitting defeat and looking up the parsing for the future 😊
Pick rocket science!! 😀
Thanks for the blog… Why does Tep come after miss?
Darling (pet) rejected (backwards)
Thanks but darling is mentioned first so you’d think tepmiss?… Obviously that doesn’t make sense but the wordplay suggests it?
If there’s no explicit indicator of which bit comes first (and simply being first in the clue isn’t an explicit indicator), then they could be either way round. If you say that object A is “by” object B, you’re not specifying that A is to the left of B, or that B is to the left of A – you’re merely saying that they’re next to each other.
One of the zillion things to remember when tackling these puzzles!
Thought I was going to have to grind this out over two hours, but things picked up after 30 minutes and I finished on 45’42”. Once I had the METAL , the top bit had to be THRASH – but I never worked out how. That meaning of WHALE is new to me. Funnily enough, I always thought SLOPPY JOEs were bottoms, not tops. It’s what I call my grubby sweat-pants. A good workout. Thanks.
Too hard for me, not sure I’ve seen so few anagrams before. Managed to get all the top half of the grid done (although I didn’t know if it was GUT, GIT or GET). But struggled witht the bottom half.
I knew Sloppy Joe as a sandwhich, but couldn’t work out what on earth ‘top’ was doing there. Have never heard of it as a jumper.