Solving Time: This took me 35 minutes. It seems well on the harder side of average to me, (again – was it something I said?!) and includes some nifty vocab, as well as several quite tricky clues. Still I could find nothing wrong with it, inventive clueing and well up to the usual high standard I think. I had some trouble getting started, and eventually solved it bottom up since 30ac went straight in and so, a bit to my own suprise, did 26ac. So the bottom half went in OK but the top took longer to sort out
cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”
ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online
Across | |
---|---|
1 | eclipsed – crop = CLIP in *(SEED), and not crop as in corn etc as I first thought. |
6 |
poplin – L( |
9 | duct – avoided = “DUCKED.” Is a duct what duct tape is for? |
10 | lacustrine – *(ITS UNCLEAR). One of my last in, because I hadn’t met the word before and also because although I suspected an anagram, I wrongly made “its unclear” to be 9 letters not the 10 required.. |
11 |
Stravinsky – V( |
13 | dirt – secret society = TRIAD, with the A removed and rev. |
14 | scandium – *(AND MUSIC). I hope we all got this OK, as Jimbo would wish? Scandium is not a rare element in nature but the refined metal is rare (just a few kg produced per year) and is used mainly in aluminium alloys. |
16 |
optics – ( |
18 | Gallic – brass = nerve = GALL + zInC. |
20 | titaness – cITy and AN in novel heroine = TESS. The Titans ruled earth before being overthrown by the Olympian gods in the Titanomachy |
22 |
knew – K( |
24 | brandy snap – mark = BRAND + girl = PANSY, rev. Presumably pansy is meant in the sense of girlie, as in little Lord Fauntleroy, or the unforgettable Basil Fotherington-Thomas in How To be Topp |
26 | bijouterie – sail = JIB rev., + in the open = OUT, + lake = ERIE. I can see this clue causing some trouble and I thought myself lucky to have the answer pop up from somewhere, straight off |
28 | exit – team = XI in ET, French for and and thus a conjunction, or “joiner” |
29 |
leaner – LEA( |
30 | no matter – rOMe in NATTER. |
Down | |
2 |
crustacea – King Charles = CR + ( |
3 | in train – arrived at = IN + school = TRAIN. Awkward because it wasn’t clear what the def. was, and “in” in that sense didn’t come to mind easily. |
4 |
salmi – SALM( |
5 |
doc – trick = con = DO + C( |
6 | pussyfoot – willow = PUSSY + foundation = FOOT. I am no expert on trees but I had heard of that kind. No sniggering at the back there.. |
7 | peridot – awful = DIRE rev. in grass = marijuana = POT. |
8 |
inner – function = ( |
12 | Sumatra – scripture = SUTRA with scholar = MA in. “Sanskrit” rather than “Buddhist” would have been more accurate, since more sutras are Hindu than are Buddhist, eg the Kama Sutra… |
15 | incubator – IN CUBA + TO + R. Don’t get me started on Guantanamo Bay. Two wrongs seldom make a right |
17 | cast aside – players = CAST + whisper = ASIDE. |
19 | lowdown – dd |
21 |
nascent – ( |
23 |
naive – Indigenous = NATIVE with the T( |
25 | dream – drug = E in drink = DRAM. Where would setters be, without their E? |
27 | ran – tRANsit, the def. being “was a scooter.” |
COD .. NASCENT.
I had to wait for the solution to establish that my mistake yesterday was LAUDAMUN. I don’t know how many times I looked at that clue in my grid but couldn’t see the error. Late-onset dyslexia?
the dreaded double-word.
It’s probably significant that all three are down answers.
But I persevered, and triumphantly entered ‘duct’ as my LOI. Now back to yesterdays for another go at the bottom right.
BTW, have we abandoned Peter’s rule of no answers in the titles? I never really liked that anyway, but others may differ. No pussyfooting, I say….or hum.
I really struggled with this puzzle and for the third time this week I was unable to finish without resort to aids. Never heard of LACUSTERINE, BIJOUTERIE, SCANDIUM and many of the definitions (“stone”, “musician” “dish”) were too vague to solve without working out the wordplay so that slowed things up. Like the blogger I was unable to get started at the top so I worked from the bottom up which is always like battling against the tide.
Edited at 2013-08-21 01:27 am (UTC)
I haven’t seen a BRANDY SNAP in over 40 years, but they used to be the item de luxe when I was a lad. Do they still make them? I really need to know this.
Much the same experience as Jerry: bottom half in quite quickly but stuck in the north for ages. Bogged down like a lacustrine crustacean.
Query to Jerry: are we now allowed to include answers in our titles? I seem to remember an agreement about not doing so, inaugurated by Sotira I think??
And those of us who access the site from here:
http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/2013/08/
for example, would appreciate not seeing an answer in the title. Was that the reason?
Edited at 2013-08-21 05:45 am (UTC)
Rob
Held up a little by putting CREAM in at 5 down (MARC up with E in it, which seemed a reasonable try for what ‘spiked’ might mean). And trying to put PTIN in the middle of what turned out to be SCANDIUM was remarkably useless but very plausible.
LOI DUCT which took me an embarrassingly long time to get. It is so annoying when the last answer just won’t come to mind.
LACUSTRINE, SCANDIUM and SALMI were unknown/forgotten, though the first was derivable form Latin (sort of) and SALMI looks as if it’s got the less forgettable salmagundi in its genetic make-up. Wiki rather severely warns against confusing SCANDIUM with Scandinavium. As if I would.
LOWDOWN was nearly LOWBORN (a better synonym for base, if you ask me) but I couldn’t squeeze “data” into the mix.
CoD to BIJOUTERIE for being a step by step instruction to a word I surprised myself by knowing.
So nothing to do with Salmagundi.
Edited at 2013-08-21 10:02 am (UTC)
Edited at 2013-08-21 11:52 am (UTC)
Of course this caveat applies more than equally to the pronouncements of celebrity chefs.
I had fewer problems with this than others have experienced and made steady progress top to bottom to finish in 25 minutes – not bad after a long absence. I rather enjoyed the puzzle, particularly deriving unknown answers such as BIJOUTERIE and SALMI
I shall now enjoy myself looking back over the blog for the last 2 weeks
The interesting thing is how few real moans there are these days. I remember a couple of years ago keeping track whilst on holiday of clues that I thought bloggers would create a fuss over and there were quite a few. This time the overall standard of the puzzle looks to have been very high.
Didn’t know Salmi, Lacustrine or Peridot. Should gave got Stravinksy (I had the Stra- bit), Scandium (like paulmcl I was trying to fit ‘tin’ in there somewhere), Poplin and Eclipsed (for which I had both parts of the wordplay!).
(I was too late to comment on yesterday’s puzzle at the time but was chuffed to almost complete it without aids. I had one mistake – a wrong guess at Mallaime for the unknown poet)
Edited at 2013-08-21 09:47 am (UTC)
I also solved from the bottom up and I was held up the most in the NW corner. Although I’d thought that King Charles was probably going to be “CR” I didn’t see ECLIPSED or CRUSTACEA for way too long. SALMI only went in from the wordplay after I decided that I couldn’t parse “petri” or “balti”, LACUSTRINE was dredged from a dark recess of my mind, SCANDIUM went in after I finally saw that I’d been reading the clue the wrong way (P + *METALIN with the definition a type of music), and DUCT was my LOI.
And finally, welcome back Jimbo.
George Clements
> 1ac is clearly some kind of cereal crop in SE????ED. Actually the 6th letter must be B, because even though I can’t figure out why 4dn has to be BALTI
> 10ac is clearly an anagram of “unclear if” and L
> 14ac is clearly P and then an anagram of “metal in”
> 1dn looks like it should be CRUSTACEAN but that doesn’t fit the wordplay. Blimey, what other biological classification do crabs come under?
> Oh god, I don’t know any varieties of willow… oh, I do!
> Oh god, I don’t know any varieties of Buddhist scripture… oh, I do!
I sorted it all out in the end, and I don’t think a single clue went in without complete or near-complete understanding of the wordplay. This is very unusual for me and in my view a sign of a very high quality puzzle.
Edited at 2013-08-21 10:04 am (UTC)
A full hour to solve.
Chris.
Apologies for failing to do so on Monday, and getting a totally unmerited leader-board position.
Another bottom-upper here, with Bijouterie an early one, which with Gallic, Exit & Lacustrine meant I dusted my French off – a Bijouterie is a jewellers shop.
Last one in 3D, not a usage I recall.
Completed on paper in good time for me – then dented the ego after all the hard work with an idiot typo.
Well hacked off.
LACUSTRINE is a word I learned from having to look it up (which is the best way to remember it)- it appears in the second paragraph of Conrad’s “Falk”. (English was Conrad’s third language so I bet he had to look it up as well.)
Edited at 2013-08-22 03:33 am (UTC)