… at least I hope it is, since I am writing this blog up in advance, having done the crossword on the day. I did complete all the three crosswords in Prelim. 1 (as a guest) – almost, but not quite, inside the hour. It took me about 1hr 10m in all, of which this one perhaps 25 mins. Since the Prelim 2 crosswords were significantly harder, and the finals were harder still, this tells me all I need to know about the prospect of entering the competition next year..
However this is not in fact a particularly hard crossword; and in the privacy of your own armchair, with a nice glass of 5ac, should not take you too long.
cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”
ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online
Across |
|
---|---|
1 |
clanger – CL |
5 |
Chablis – drink = CHA + BLIS |
9 | signature – GIS rev., + NATURE. That totally illegible thing that is supposed to tell people who you are.. |
10 | Donne – “done,” and of course not “don.” |
11 |
Arras – ARRA |
12 | Ezra Pound – Ezra, a book of the Hebrew bible, + POUND |
14 | ran out of petrol – a cd, I suppose |
17 | hedges ones bets – *(OBSESSED GENT HE). However hedging one’s bets does not so much “reduce the chance of losing,” as to mitigate the consequences of losing. The original bet still stands. |
21 | dead march – another clue I struggled with, slightly. A dead march is a piece of music suitable for a funeral, so far so good.. but why would a wintry March be dead? More likely the opposite, surely? Snow, gales.. maybe I’m missing something |
23 | riser – king = R + IS + queen = ER |
24 |
ogham – O |
25 |
bee-eaters – BEE |
26 | DR + A GOON.. meaning a cavalier, in the sense of a horse rider. |
27 |
Tuscany – abroad you = TU, + survey = SCAN, + |
Down |
|
1 |
casbah – BA |
2 | Algeria – *(ELGAR) + very good = A1, rev. |
3 | Gladstone – the old age concerned being the stone one.. |
4 |
Rouge et Noir – *(ERRONEOUS GIT) without the S |
5 |
cue – “q” |
6 | add up – A DD UP.. a doctor of divinity at university |
7 | languor – *(GUANO) in two hands = L + R |
8 |
steadily – S |
13 |
refreshment – new intake = FRESHMEN in about = RE + T |
15 | ember days – *(SAD MY BEER). Ember days being fasting days in some christian liturgies |
16 | shedload – HE’D + LO in grave = SAD |
18 |
drachma – CH |
19 | tessera – TESS + ERA, Tess being Tess Durbeyfield/D’Urberville. I wish I liked Thomas Hardy’s books more than I do |
20 | frisky – F + RISKY |
22 | mambo – doctor = MB in MAO. I knew mambo only as a dance I would never do – one of many – but it has a surprising number of other meanings too |
25 |
bin – BIN |
Not with a Chablis though, Jerry, just a coffee. And no need to apologise re dissing the cheap Chardonnays you get from us in the UK. We keep the good ones for ourselves!
Had a look at the gambling version of Rouge et Noir. Hoyles has the fabulous instruction: “The dealer shuffles together six 52-card packs”. (Much the same info on Jerry’s Wiki link.) Imagine shuffling 312 cards by hand — which I guess they don’t.
Friday will be the anniversary of the death of 12ac in 1972. Next to his obit in The Times (?) was a cartoon showing Anthony Barber (Chancellor) on the roof of a high building looking like he’s about to jump. On the street below, a news ad reading “POUND DIES”. Ted Heath is looking up at Barber saying “Don’t worry, it’s just some old poet”.
Edited at 2013-10-30 01:05 am (UTC)
Congratulations to Jerry on his predictive skills and to McT for managing to do the crossword even before it appeared. As if I wasn’t feeling humbled enough…
Edited at 2013-10-30 01:21 am (UTC)
I think the idea behind a ‘dead March’ is simply that of a late spring.
I am always slow on these more difficult puzzles, with a time over an hour, but I do get there eventually. All correct, but not fast enough to qualify for anything but the booby prize.
ESRA instead of EZRA.
mea culpa! Should have double checked.
So thank you Mr M!
Sadly, one error though – misspelling Donne as Dunne.
FOI hedges ones bets and LOI steadily.
Needed the wordplay to get casbah and rouge et noir and had a lucky guess with ogham.
Thought bin and bee-eaters were particularly good.
With two poets and dear old Tess but no scientific content it lacks balance. Is 14A even cryptic? I agree with Jerry that the definition in 17A is not quite right and what on earth is 17A all about?
25 somewhat unsatisfactory minutes to solve
As for the SW corner, better draw a veil. The principal problem was that “shedload” absolutely refused to show itself and, like others, I only knew “mambo” as a dance.
As Jerry says, this was quite doable under home conditions but a shedload of trouble on the day of.
Edited at 2013-10-30 09:46 am (UTC)
Ah well, there’s always next year.
I think a “wintry” March would be “dead” actually. A windy one would be a sign we were on our way to spring, surely.
RR
Like Sue I was unsure about the spelling of LANGUOR and waited until I’d solved 12ac before I completed the answer. In the SW I knew OGHAM from the definition so was never tempted by “ophod”, and although I didn’t know the required meaning of MAMBO it was far more likely than “mamoo”. ROUGE ET NOIR was my LOI.
When I came back to it with very little of the hour left I fell into the ophod/madro “trap” which eventually left me in 34th place with all puzzles done in the hour (just) and 2 errors.
I’m pretty sure I’ve encountered both madra and ophod in Wodehouse…
Most aunts have the power to make a nephew squirm from a range of about twenty paces I’d say. Aunt Agatha, being a madra, or voodoo woman if you will, can cause this particular n to s from fully fifty miles.
~~~~
“I can’t read this Jeeves, it’s all squiggly,” I complained, brushing toast crumbs from my dressing gown.
“Indeed Sir, it has been written in ophod”
“Oh what Jeeves?”
“Ophod, sir, an ancient Celtic script.”
“Celtic eh? What the devil is that wretch Spode up to, passing secret messages written in ancient scripts? Tell me Jeeves, can you read ophod?”
“Regrettably not, sir, but I know a man who can.”
“Then what are you waiting for Jeeves? Bring this ophod-reader to me at once…
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/stage/theatre/article3907797.ece
I was surprised Jerry thought the second prelim was harder though – I timed myself on them when I finally had a chance to look at them a couple of days later, and finished all three in just over half an hour. Mind you, most of the “big guns” were in that half, so I probably wouldn’t have qualified anyway.
I don’t agree with the grumbles about this puzzle. I think 14 is fine as a CD, and to hedge ones bets does reduce the chances of losing overall. And I fail to see why the absence of a scientist should mean the puzzle lacks balance. On top of the literary figures there’s a politician and a musician; looks balanced enough to me.
I agree with others in questioning whether DEAD MARCH really conveys the sense of “a prolonged wintry period”. For a long time I had SLOW MARCH, which seems to me to fit the meaning rather better.
LOI OGHAM: although I’d dredged the word up out of dim memory, I couldn’t parse it (which, for me, means I didn’t finish). Gam=school? Always thought it was leg. Conversely school=pod. So pod=gam! Never mind, learnt something new …
George Clements
Since when has “ran out of petrol” been a sufficiently distinctive phrase to warrant being in a crossword? Should we also expect to see “made some toast”, “bought new socks” or “fed the goldfish” in future crosswords? Or is “Ran out of petrol” the title of an obscure Ealing comedy or something? Still, these are all rhetorical questions, and there’s no point in them, is there?
Spent a lot of time on 9ac, which I was convinced was “ARCHETYPE”: R(oyal) A(rtillery) ‘revolutionary’ = AR; CHE (Guevara) also a revolutionary soldier; then “TYPE” for “kind”. I actually prefer my answer and parsing (especially the two “revolutionary soldiers”), but it made a mess of the NW corner.
“Ogham” was a bit of a guess, and was dredged up from the bowels of my memory only when I’d got all the crossing words in. Actually, I guess memory has no bowels, and one can’t dredge from bowels anyway, which explains why it took so long. “Ember days” was new to me, but inevitable.
21ac (“dead march”) was also new to me, and I fretted over it because I didn’t (and still don’t) see how “dead” can mean “prolonged” by any stretch of the imagination. I have encountered many people who were decidedly the former, and who were definitely not the latter.
Tonight’s game of “slip all the answers into conversation” has defeated me (it now being past midnight). You would be astonished at how little the word “bee-eaters” finds a natural use late at night in A&E. I did tell one patient that their stomach upset was probably just a touch of viral algeria, but “casbah”, “ogham” and “drachma” were stubbornly unslipinnable.
I suspected SHEDLOAD but had no explanation … and a few others without a complete explanation.
I am ashamed that as an ex-beekeeper I missed BEE EATERS. 🙁
I should have know OGHAM. But GAM? A new word learned.
Rob