I made a bit of a meal of this, sitting there with the third highest WITCH, just behind the mighty Verlaine. Great minds and all that?
38:36
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Burns may have consumed this witch, finally saving lives (6) |
| HAGGIS – HAG ~G IS | |
| 5 | Harsh criticism set back support group involving several families (8) |
| DIATRIBE – AID reversed TRIBE | |
| 9 | Trap chaotic protest on pitch (7,3) |
| LOBSTER POT – LOB (pitch) anagram* of PROTEST | |
| 10 | Head and Shoulders not working? (4) |
| BUST – double definition (DD), and a beauty too | |
| 11 | Bully office worker’s latest pen-pal? (8) |
| COWRITER – COW RITE (office – as in religious service/rite) ~R | |
| 12 | Tiny character entering square promptly (2,4) |
| ON TIME – TIM (from A Christmas Carol) in ONE (the square of one) | |
| 13 | Bottom’s strange head from Puck (4) |
| RUMP – RUM P~ | |
| 15 | Sucker very shortly left with nothing (8) |
| MOSQUITO – MOS |
|
| 18 | Perform universal blessing holding pound coin (8) |
| DOUBLOON – DO U L in BOON | |
| 19 | Ran around back of tropical valley (4) |
| DELL – |
|
| 21 | Wine and beer mostly for entrance (6) |
| PORTAL – PORT AL |
|
| 23 | Fresh parmesan for old warrior (8) |
| SPEARMAN – PARMESAN* | |
| 25 | Chimp initially leaving to scale branch (4) |
| LIMB – |
|
| 26 | Party’s most amusing person ultimately the GOAT? (10) |
| HOOTENANNY – HOOT (most amusing person) |
|
| 27 | Go across empty supermarket, dizzy after finishing off cider (8) |
| STRADDLE – S~T |
|
| 28 | Mountaineering kit in sack on rocks (3,3) |
| ICE AXE – ICE (rocks, diamonds) AXE (sack, dismiss) | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Fuss over skin of buffalo in dish from the Philippines (5) |
| ADOBO – ADO B~O; the national dish of the Philippines, no less – meat or fish cooked in soy sauce, vinegar, garlic and black pepper, with a bay leaf thrown in for luck (and maybe a bit of sugar) | |
| 3 | Listening device set up to capture a tantrum in eatery (9) |
| GASTROPUB – A STROP in BUG reversed | |
| 4 | Rest during the day inside messiest apartment (6) |
| SIESTA – much beloved by Spaniards, for whom 9.30pm is an unearthly hour to have dinner | |
| 5 | Go with guys and rent Downing Street shop (10,5) |
| DEPARTMENT STORE – DEPART MEN ST in TORE (rent downing, i.e. consuming, ST) | |
| 6 | Share out bananas in highbrow cinema (8) |
| ARTHOUSE – SHARE OUT* | |
| 7 | Provide counterargument to objection introduced by engineers (5) |
| REBUT – RE BUT | |
| 8 | Perhaps lead guitar heard on rock music (4,5) |
| BASE METAL – sounds like BASS METAL (rock music) | |
| 14 | You impose keeping record for one with alien beliefs (9) |
| UFOLOGIST – U LOG in FOIST; silly word for a silly person | |
| 16 | Attempt pass on the wrong side? (9) |
| UNDERTAKE – DD, the second a motoring allusion | |
| 17 | Hammer home excessively large drop? (8) |
| TOOLSHED – TOO L SHED (drop leaves) | |
| 20 | Arab second in line after enemy messed up (6) |
| YEMENI – ENEMY* |
|
| 22 | Part of pin starts to topple if bowling in alley (5) |
| TIBIA – initial letters of the final five words | |
| 24 | Queen on social media platform is appropriate (5) |
| ANNEX – ANNE X; annex/appropriate as a verb; I’m off to Taiwan next month, trusting it will not have been annexed by then | |
Liked this one, fairly straightforward I thought although I didn’t understand 10ac before coming here .. I had “boss” which doesn’t work. So thanks setter, and Ulaca.
35 minutes, like Jerry I put “boss” at 10ac, thinking of OS = out of service = not working. A good 1 ac for an Edinburgh based solver.
Thanks U and setter.
Nice puzzle, about 40′ though should have been less. Some quick entries followed by trickier wordplay. Spent far too long on last two, TOOLSHED & HOOTENANNY being misdirected by the clueing. COWRITER was also nicely devious.
Thanks Ulaca and setter
36 minutes, happily plumping for ADOBO rather than ABODO at 2d; perhaps I’ve seen it before and my unconscious mind swayed me the right way. I also went for BUST rather than BOSS, not sure what that says about my unconscious!
13:49. I parsed 8D as BASE sounds like BASS (guitar) + METAL (rock music), not that it matters. I was held up by 4 in the end for a couple of minutes or so – 11A which I thought should have a hyphen, 19A where I puzzled over how DALE could be right for too long (which if course it wasn’t), 17D – a nicely deceptive definition and 26A – why is GOAT in capital letters? Thanks setter and Ulaca. Update: I see on checking that G.O.A.T is an acronym of Greatest Of All Time. I never knew that.
Actually, that what’s I meant, but the spare style gives rise to a certain ambiguity.
I parsed 8dn the same way. I also agree with you about 11ac, but Collins does not!
Well, that makes three of us.
16:20 but with time wasted not accepting that the second word in LOBSTER POT could be anything but pit and the second part of TOOLSHED after identifying the definition.
My mouse hovered over submit before revisiting the BIFF’d DALE and correcting it to DELL.
COD UFOLOGIST
Thanks blogger and setter
No problems for once, apart from ADOBO or ABODO. I picked well. If we get another HOOT soon, I’m going to start saying it again. LOI and COD TOOLSHED. A good way to start the week. Thank you U and setter.
5:49. Clearly on the wavelength this morning.
53 enjoyable minutes. NHO ADOBO making it’s first appearance here today if one excludes a Mephisto 11 years ago. Toyed with ICE BAG at 28ac before AXE occurred to me.
25 minutes or so.
– Wasn’t 100% sure DOUBLOON was right, but it parsed and sounded plausible
– Trusted the wordplay for the unknown ADOBO
– Took a long time to see that ‘Hammer’ and ‘home’ were not supposed to be separated to get TOOLSHED
Thanks ulaca and setter.
FOI Rebut
LOI Hootenanny
COD Toolshed (liked the definition)
38 mins with LOI HOOTENANNY, thank you and good evening JOOLS HOLLAND! Some very good clues which, for me anyway, made it toughish for a Monday.
Took a while to get started, F2I ON TIME & ARTHOUSE but then the rest went in fairly quickly, with a few hold-ups in the middle. I too looked at ICE BAG until I saw ANNEX. I liked TOOLSHED.
Thanks U and setter.
17:55 – and happy with that given the handful of difficult clues (COWRITER, TOOLSHED, UFOLOGIST, ADOBO).
TOOLSHED took me a couple of minutes to see – I twigged by getting hammer = tool, which led me to the definition and the rest.
I really enjoyed this.
Started with HAGGIS and made good progress. Was held up by last 3, DEPARTMENT STORE, TOOLSHED and HOOTENANNY. 18:45. Thanks setter and U.
22.02, but I had an interruption. Lucky to avoid DALE, which was my last space: having the [tropica]L already in place was the mean bit. HOOTENANNY needed all the checkers before light dawned. I assume it’s not just Jules Holland’s “New Year” (early December) music fest.
30 mins of which 10(!) on the TOOLSHED/HOOTENANNY crossing.
Excellent puzzle, approachable but lots of neat ways to trip up the unwary. Glad it wasn’t just me.
Enjoyed … all of it really. Thanks Ulaca and setter.
30:11. I thought this was very good but quite tough. Not tough for most of you here! I need to sharpen up. Maybe eat some spinach.
Last three in were ANNEX, HOOTENANNY and TOOLSHED.
COD: TOOLSHED
Thanks to ulaca and our setter.
22:56 Good fun and no real problems after I got the crossing S in BUST.
Needed Ulaca to parse HAGGIS as I took “witch finally” to mean H leaving me with AGGIS for “saving lives” which was tricky.
COD DEPARTMENT STORE
Thanks to Ulaca and the setter.
My thanks to blogger and setter.
Good puzzle.
12a On time biffed. thanks.
a nice start to the week. NHO UFOLOGIST
14″58″, ICE AXE not parsed, and didn’t know what was happening with LIMB, isn’t ‘chimp’ unnecessary?
Thanks ulaca and setter.
I’d have expected one of the sharp people who are faster than me to notice that in 19ac (DELL) there isn’t anything ‘in’ anything else and that it’s ‘(led)rev. l’, so long as you can accept that led = ran (I can’t see how); but unless I’ve misseed it nobody has. And I’m fairly uncomfortable with addle = dizzy in 27ac, although it is supported by dictionaries. Generally a nice crossword and I enjoyed it. If I could be sure when solving The Times crossword that we aren’t going to get definitions by example (so that in 17dn TOOL???? isn’t going to be some kind of tool) then ‘Hammer home’ would have been easier to see — that’s my excuse anyway — but a very nice definition.
To lead a business is to run it. I agree with your parsing.
37:00. a bit of a meal for me too. finished off with HOOTENANNY and TOOLSHED which I thought was very clever.
Raced through with little trouble, until completely bamboozled by Hootenanny. I’ve heard it, but no way I could get it, eventually gave up. Really enjoyed lots of the offbeat bits: hammer home, Head and Shoulders, mosquito (mistakenly parsed mos = more than 1 mo our usual short time), ice axe, base metal, undertake. Loved it. Have a Filipino colleague who brought in a big dish of chicken adobo one day.