Time taken: 17:19. There’s a few quicker times than me in, but also a few with errors, so I’m claiming this one to be Tricky Thursday
I thought I was going to have to admit defeat with the odd set of letters in 8 down staring at me for a good five minutes. Something to do with STRIPTEASE? A name of an actor? It came together from the inside out, trying to fit THESP near the bottom and remembering a friend from University who was obsessed with the place the dance is named after. Thanks, Peter T – your time is now!
How did you get along?
| Across | |
| 1 | Rather poor physician taking on nothing concerning (8) |
| MEDIOCRE – MEDIC (physician) containing O (nothing), then RE (concerning) | |
| 5 | Politician within reason banning European students here? (6) |
| CAMPUS – MP (politician) inside CAUSE (reason) minus E (European) | |
| 9 | Boundary cryptically predicted (8) |
| FORETOLD – a cricket boundary is a FOUR, so cryptically that could be FORE TOLD | |
| 10 | Trace liberator after one’s been freed (6) |
| SAVOUR – SAVIOUR (liberator) minus I (one) | |
| 12 | Short and torrid novel, one by Dickens (6,6) |
| LITTLE DORRIT – LITTLE (short) and an anagram of TORRID. Funny clue, since it is around 900 pages in the paperback edition. | |
| 15 | Leaving a note, admitting being in debt (5) |
| OWING – remove one N (note) from OWNING (admitting) | |
| 16 | Old US rosé, sadly lacking in bouquet (9) |
| ODOURLESS – anagram of OLD,US,ROSE | |
| 18 | Conjectures or inferences primarily filling papers? (9) |
| THEORISES – OR and the first letter of Inferences inside THESES (papers) | |
| 19 | Chopped garlic? (5) |
| CLOVE – double definition | |
| 20 | How person might get bigger council house? (12) |
| BODYBUILDING – BODY (council), BUILDING (house) | |
| 24 | More than one bank deposit opened by Tesla? (6) |
| LEVEES – LEES (deposit) containing EV (Tesla makes electric cars) | |
| 25 | Term used regularly by offensive patriot (4,4) |
| TRUE BLUE – alternating letters in TeRm UsEd, then BLUE (offensive) | |
| 26 | One checking returning officer’s in legal position (6) |
| ONSIDE – ONE containing DI’S (officer’s) reversed | |
| 27 | Charming Mediterranean island bar with American backing (8) |
| ADORABLE – ELBA (Mediterranean island), ROD (bar) and A (American) all reversed | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Miss cake that’s evidently unfashionable (4) |
| MUFF – MUFFIN (cake) that isn’t IN | |
| 2 | Jazz up feature of blouse? (4) |
| DART – TRAD jazz reversed. Got this from wordplay, it’s a name for an inside pleat | |
| 3 | Set off in pursuit of Oxford University boat (9) |
| OUTRIGGER – TRIGGER (set off) after OU (Oxford University) | |
| 4 | Ménage à trois potentially upset hotel in Paris (12) |
| RELATIONSHIP – anagram of HOTEL,IN,PARIS | |
| 6 | Mission to Malaysia tipping hosts (5) |
| ALAMO – hidden reversed in tO MALAysia | |
| 7 | Renovated pier covered by new port or landlord? (10) |
| PROPRIETOR – anagram of PIER inside an anagram of PORT,OR | |
| 8 | Actor casually dropping ecstasy during random dance (10) |
| STRATHSPEY – THESP (actor, casually) with the E (ecstasy) at the bottom inside STRAY (random) | |
| 11 | Conservative entering lodge with socialist thought again (12) |
| RECONSIDERED – CON (conservative) inside RESIDE (lodge), then RED (socialist) | |
| 13 | Mushroom left ring after ring after ring (10) |
| PORTOBELLO – PORT (left), then O (ring) after O(ring) and BELL (ring) | |
| 14 | Trumpeter is mild, save when on a bender (5,5) |
| MILES DAVIS – anagram of IS,MILD,SAVE | |
| 17 | One entertaining soldiers on table putting down uniform (9) |
| RACONTEUR – RA (soldiers) on top of COUNTER (table) with the U (uniform) moved down a few spaces | |
| 21 | Staple two books together? (5) |
| BREAD – B and READ are both books | |
| 22 | Odd selection in call up by the Barbarians? (4) |
| CLUB – alternating letters in CaLl UpBy – an invitation rugby club. There are imitators everywhere including one in North Carolina | |
| 23 | Part of glacier yet to climb (4) |
| NEVE – EVEN (yet) reversed | |
Quite a workout for me, although I managed to finish with all but the NHO STRATHSPEY, MEDIOCRE and NEVE Thought mediocre would end in ‘ore’. Some clever clues, liked BREAD and RELATIONSHIP but on the whole just hard work. CLOVE took too long to see as I thought we were looking for a name for garlic. RECONSIDERED was a write-in and probably for everyone else too. Liked the ring, rIng, ring for PORTOBELLO. FORETOLD and RACONTEUR also clever. Liked ‘mission’ for ALAMO.
Thanks G and setter.
Horrible. STRATHSPEY belongs in Mephistos and Monthly Club Specials. A couple of entertaining clues in here but too much arcane vocab to enjoy the end product.
Agreed metagloria. I struggled and DNF. Much too complex and imho some clues poorly or even erroneously defined. MUFF? And why is a menage a trois the specific definition of a relationship? NHO STRATHSPEY, other than as the name of a p&o liner, or NEVE, and although Ive heard of the Alamo, I didn’t know it was a mission. Too American for me – did NOT enjoy, but thanks to glh for the blog.
Completely agree. Not up to Times’ standard.
Yet another where it’s 90% okayish with a few shrugs, and the remainder on a different level entirely.
I found this quite easy until it suddenly wasn’t and I was left with a missing word in every quarter. Eventually I lost patience and resorted to aids.
I don’t recall meeting NEVE before and the wordplay isn’t particularly helpful so I doubt I would ever have come up with that, but I was annoyed with myself for missing STRATHSPEY as I know a bit about traditional Scottish dances have often watched them on YT.
Was quite enjoying this until nearly finished, when I had to cheat for STRATHSPEY. Was frustrated by being unable to parse the nevertheless unmistakable FORETOLD.
Luckily remembered Strathspey from previous puzzles, but it was late in. Last 2 BODYBUILDING, and BREAD which I’d pencilled in but couldn’t justify READ as book. Perhaps: it was a good read.
Like FORETOLD, MEDIOCRE and PORTOBELLO. Nearly spelled LEVEES with an I, fortunately parsed it and corrected it after writing it in.
Strathspey got me too – very obscure (NHO) and the cluing was impossible to work around – in truth, a bit irritating given the rest of the crossword was fairly easy
22.25
Happened to know STRATHSPEY, but the tricky wordplay meant it was still my LOI.
Nice to see MILES DAVIS and LITTLE DORRIT in the same puzzle.
COD OUTRIGGER.
23:16, but with ONSIDB somehow.
Very difficult, with the difficulty coming largely from hard-to-spot definitions. For me this resulted in a mixture of constructing answers from wordplay (which is the most satisfying sort of solving) and just coming up with a word that would fit the checkers and reverse-engineering (which isn’t). All in all I found this one very satisfying but I certainly wouldn’t want them like this every day.
I didn’t know DART in this sense. NEVE rings a vague bell, probably from Mephisto. I did know the dance, fortunately, so was able to spot as soon as I considered THESP.
One blank, one wrong, one hour.
Struggled mightily with STRATHSPEY. Didn’t get an actor, or a dance or a synonym for casually even from my Crossword Dictionary, tough clue. I thought of BREAD=staple, but couldn’t see read=book. Went with BLEND instead.
I was sure NEVE was going to be a reversed hidden, another NHO. NHO LEES, so that was a good guess. Spent too long on BODYBUILDING which I thought was going to be a straight cryptic.
CLOVE is one of the rare words which has two completely opposite meanings, through the accidental merging of two distinct Old English roots: clifian (meaning to stick or cling to) and clēofan (meaning to split or separate). It happened again with the similar “Clip” which both means to cut off (hedge clippers) or bring together (paper clip). Same deal, the accidental merging of two historic roots: the Old English clyppan(meaning to attach or hold together) and the Old Norse klippa (meaning to cut or shear apart).
I love these etymological coincidences. One I learned recently is that, in many European languages including English, the words for ‘eight’ and ‘night’ are similar (huit/nuit, acht/nacht etc). This is completely coincidental, the words coming from four separate roots, two in Latin languages and two completely unrelated ones in Germanic languages.
Another who failed on STRATHSPEY & NEVE. Very annoying as i remembered the dance from an ancient crossword once I saw the answer. Drat.
Pretty difficult today with only a few gimmes and a lot of working out to do.
Thanks g and tricky setter.
I persevered with this for ages but still came up short, missing STRATHSPEY and NEVE. I didn’t know what a LEVEE was until the New Orleans flood, but that eventually fell into place. COD to PORTOBELLO. DART went in with a shrug, wondering if women darts players kept their arrows in the top pockets of their blouses. A toughie. Thank you George and setter
I didn’t know what a LEVEE was until I started listening to Led Zeppelin.
I remember that someone drove their Chevy to one once, but it was dry…
Good point! I may have heard that before the Zeppelin song – no idea!
I didn’t know what a levee was when Don Maclean released American Pie and there was no Google then to ask.
I was there on another occasion waiting for the Robert E. Lee. It was simply great, mate!
WOE after 37 mins. I didn’t find that too bad overall. Much of the time came at the end on SAVOUR + wrestling with STRATHSPEY but trusting the wordplay for the THSPE part worked. My pink was in rEVE, NHO NEVE but should have thought around that a bit more. My error count is rising this week.
CODs to FORETOLD and PORTOBELLO (not an A in the middle).
Tricky but entertaining, thanks setter and glh.
My thanks to glh and setter.
DNF in NE, so I would term it pretty tricky Thursday.
18a Theorises, CNP because I forgot about theses and was trying to do something with theories. Doh.
4d Relationship. I wasted a lot of time trying to make an anagram of menage a trois.
13d NHO Portobello, added to Cheating Machine.
23a Neve. Was in CM, but I NHO. Cheated.
21.31, easy until it became impossible with the STRATHSPEY. And if I’d read rv1 before finishing, I might have avoided the plausible, but obviously wrong from the given rings, PORTABELLO, which look wrong too, now I’ve written it across. I grudgingly liked BODYBUILDING, nearly as clever as I thought it as going to be.
I decided predicted was doing double duty for FORETOLD, as I can’t see where the TOLD bit comes from otherwise.
LEVEES took a long time given that Tesla is always T. And just as well I’ve got jazz friends, or MILES DAVIS would have tried to be some sort of swan. Or elephant.
Sorry I didn’t see your comment before sending mine.
Not sure if I’m getting the wrong end of the stick here but TOLD is a homophone indicator.
I liked the succinct cryptic in BODYBUILDING. Both ‘council’ and ‘house’ are definitions by example indicated by the ‘?’
Like others I needed all the checkers to see STRATHSPEY.
Time 89:07, with STRATHSPEY as LOI. No further comment necessary except sorry for (temporarily) messing up the SNITCH!
DNF in about 40.
Couldn’t think of STRAY for random nor THESP for the actor. Maybe should have got one of them. Otherwise a little sluggish though I thought MUFF FORETOLD and DART in the NW were quite hard. BODYBUILDER was vg.
Thanks George and setter.
One thing I’ve learnt from this, is never attempt a ‘tricky thursday’ whilst on the phone to HMRC.
What was I thinking of!
You mean they answered? Wonders never cease!
Although I could only complete about three quarters of this I really enjoyed the challenge.
Had jotted down”muff”, “foretold” and “onside” but as I couldn’t fully get my head around them they remained unentered.
Pleased to get “neve” and ticks for “clove”, “relationship”, “Alamo” and “portobello”.
Today’s spin of the thesaurus is “savour” being trace which I can’t get to.
Thanks for the very helpful blog and to our setter for a fun tussle.
I wondered about that but Collins gives ‘a slight but distinctive quality or trace’. New to me!
Often heard in constructions like this: “The octopus was tender and tangy, with a savour of the sea.”
Thanks both – not sure an obvious connection that I would have ever made but Guy’s example makes sense.
Well, >fairly< often…..😎
Enjoyed this despite it taking over an hour and not being able to get the miss or the dance.
COD foretold
27:15 – STRATHSPEY went in as soon as the crossers fixed the location of the unpromising thsp, but BREAD gave the most trouble. I just couldn’t see read as a book, though I suppose it is – at least until ONSIDE made it inevitable.
The NW seemed a tad impenetrable so I moved east and got CAMPUS and ALAMO as building blocks. Spotted PROPRIETOR, but keyed it in as PROPRIETER, which really held up LOI, CLOVE until I spotted my mistake. after considering thesp for actor, I was able to come up with STRATHSPEY without too much ado. Did a lot of squinting to try and find a hidden for POI, NEVE, but it wasn’t to be. MILES DAVIS was a big help ousting thoughts of T for Tesla at 24a. A sudden inspiration made me put BUILDING in 20a once BREAD had arrived, then the penny dropped and BODY was duly prefixed. PORTOBELLO was then constructed as instructed once port was subsituted for one of the lefts. Back in the sparsely populated NW where the boat, menage and DORRIT’s qualifier sat alone, FORETOLD emerged from the mist, then MUFF, DART and MEDIOCRE fell into place and I went back to ponder NEVE and CLOVE. 30:47. Thanks setter and George.
Lots of pretty hard clues I thought and still don’t understand how read = book in 21dn. OK you read a book; is book a verb here? Blue = offensive (25ac)? Only to some I should have thought. I struggled through and enjoyed much of it.
It’s a noun, usually seen as “a good read” = a good book. Took me a while to see it!
I sort of shrugged about this but I think it’s a bit naughty. The phrase ‘a good read’ refers to the activity not the object. Will we see ‘listen’ to define ‘song’, or ‘eating’ to define ‘food’?
It’s definitely a blurry distinction, but if someone asked me “Any good reads recently?” I would take that to be mean the object rather than the activity. The OED does say: “An act of reading or perusing written matter; a spell of reading. Hence, something for reading (usually with modifying word, as good, bad, etc., indicating its value as a source of entertainment or information)”, but then all the quotes it gives lean much more to the activity sense.
Nobody would ever say ‘have you read any good reads lately?’, which I think highlights the distinction.
Well no! But you could extend that principle to make lots of valid things sound a bit daft: ‘have you danced any good dances lately?’. I would take the question ‘have you come across any good reads lately?’ as both perfectly “correct” and fairly unambiguously referring to the actual books.
Yes, that’s a good example – I’m convinced!
Chambers has read as a noun defined by “Reading-matter”. But I agree, it was my LOI as I was not convinced.
There’s a website goodreads.com. Participants can contribute book reviews and recommendations.
A curate’s egg for me: loved bits like the chopped garlic and bodybuilding; very much not a fan of some obscure dance clued obscurely. Also unaware of SAVOUR, in that sense, but I doubt the R-checker would have helped much. Also missed NEVE. And a few unparsed. So thoroughly beaten! About 25 mins to get to the staring blankly stage, plus thankfully only another 10 before throwing in the towel.
DNF, again. This time I think it would have been impossible for me to finish though. STRATHSPEY is a complete NHO, and the wordplay is deeply obscure. The other I failed on was NEVE, where I had REVE (ever is just as good a synonym for yet), and I didn’t know the real word.
NHO MILES DAVIS being a trumpeter, nor LEVEES like that, nor DART meaning hem, but I managed to get all of those. I did really enjoy many clues, but for me this was a bit too obscure on the GK front to be a really great puzzle. When I’m 64, presumably I’ll know enough from decades of practice to be able to finish this kind of puzzle. Somewhat disheartened.
Also this looks to me a good example of where the SNITCH is underestimating the difficulty. There are a lot of DNFs and aids in the comments, yet SNITCH only 118. I think it was more like 140+.
DNF, defeated by the unknown STRATHSPEY (which I was convinced would end in -step).
– Got FORETOLD with no idea how it worked
– Didn’t know that meaning of SAVOUR
– Had to trust that lees is a deposit to get LEVEES
– Not familiar with that meaning of DART
– Relied on the wordplay to get NEVE
Tough stuff. Thanks glh and setter.
COD Miles Davis
It was a tricky DNF and I didn’t know STRATHSPEY but I know ‘dart’ from my General Studies GCSE exam and ‘levee’ was first encountered in American Pie long before the New Orleans incident. An enjoyable one, thanks to the setter and blogger!
I found this very hard going and after c 30 mins I turned off the clock with the NW corner pretty bare, but after a 15 mins or so break I managed to finish it quite quickly, so c 40 mins. The only answer I wasn’t sure about was NEVE, a word I vaguely remembered as having something to do with mountains etc (I wasn’t sure about ‘yet’ = EVEN). There were no unheard-ofs; thank you Blogger for explaining STRATHSPEY’s wordplay. First in was ODOURLESS and last MEDIOCRE. My favourite three clues: to MEDIOCRE, CLOVE and OUTRIGGER. A rather brilliant puzzle, I thought. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
Didn’t enjoy this one bit for many of the reasons stated above. STRATHSPEY is a joke. Sometimes when you are a couple of answers short, you kick your self when you see the solution. The only person I want to kick today is the setter!
Why is Strathspey a “joke”? Depends on whether you’ve ever been Scottish dancing….
I enjoyed this tester which I finished in 52.18, only to discover that I had fallen at the last with REVE for NEVE at 23dn. This is particularly galling as I have the vaguest recollection of the word from my A Level Geography lessons. As this was a little over 60 years ago I’ll forgive myself the lapse in memory. With all the checkers in place, I thought of the heard of word STRATHSPEY that fitted, and reverse engineered the parsing.
Some great stuff here. Congrats to setter for spotting that RELATIONSHIP was an anagram of HOTEL IN PARIS.
Tam o’Shanter’s witches and warlocks were performing “hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys and reels”.
In Waugh’s “Scoop”, William Boot visits Harrods in order to buy tropical equipment. He asks for cleft sticks. “Certainly sir” says the assistant, “would you like them ready cloven, or shall we cleave some for you?”
But I fell at the last fence, NHO NEVE.
As with others failed on STRATHSPEY.
Could not parse FORETOLD which seems obvious now it’s explained. Dont think I have seen a reverse homophone before.
NEVE only other NHO but it had to be right.
An enjoyable puzzle despite the failure.
Thanks blogger and setter.
Gave up five short, so a DNF today.
I failed on the dance and the NW corner. DART was unknown, and Trad is one example of a jazz form, so a little unfair. I should have got MEDIOCRE.
I liked the PORTOBELLO clue. They always seem to available in our local supermarket. I think we had Lions mane recently. Maybe we’ll get Ceps and Chestnuts soon!
This is what I regard as a classic Thursday puzzle- difficult and slightly loose- whereas Friday’s are usually difficult and rigorous.
Thank you George and Setter
Enjoyed this, on the wavelength perhaps. I was going to say nothing obscure, but so far as Strathspey is concerned I seem to be in a minority. Bit surprised… but i have been to the Braemar Games, and been made to sit through Brigadoon. Strictly speaking a Strathspey is a type of dance, like a reel, not a dance as such.
I also liked the mushroom, magic..
Am I the only person who thought 15 was GOING ? Still think it works.
I agree wth the consensus that STRATHSPEY (the clue) is horrible but there were plenty here I should have got and failed to. I guessed NEVE from the French and was happy to finally go and find out what staple foods and paper fasteners have to do with each other. I take it on trust that people who know about TRAD JAZZ sometimes just call it TRAD. Thanks for the blog!
Well this just goes to show how much your GK helps – I’ve visited the ALAMO and obviously I knew STRATHSPEY once I had a couple of the crossers. I really struggled getting going but eventually completed more than expected. Struggled to work out both 1ac and 1d and NHO NEVE but thought a lot of clues were clever and fair. Loved ONSIDE and ADORABLE and the nifty anagram for the Ménage à trois.
Agree that “Read” for “book” is a bit iffy – but having guessed the correct meaning of “staple” so it fell in place quickly.
Thanks again to setter and all contributors.
38.24 done in a couple of sessions. Pretty tough I thought. My last few took forever-levees, onside,bread( dough!) and finally strathspey which was an inspired guess based on not very much .