Solving time: 41 minutes.
I had problems parsing several clues when solving but hope that I have resolved all the queries whilst writing the blog.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
| 1 | Meeting class outside university (5) |
| FORUM | |
| FORM (class) containing [outside] U (university) | |
| 4 | Luxurious City bar is demolished (9) |
| SYBARITIC | |
| Anagram [demolished] of CITY BAR IS. I knew the word but wasn’t quite sure of the spelling as the ‘Y’ and first ‘I’ were unchecked and might have been swapped. Fortunately I picked the right way. | |
| 9 | Arsenic? Sure to suss out (9) |
| ASCERTAIN | |
| AS (arsenic), CERTAIN (sure) | |
| 10 | Change mind about cross person that’s annoying (5) |
| VEXER | |
| VEER (change mind) containing [about] X (cross). One thinks of ‘veer’ as changing direction rather than one’s mind, but I suppose it works figuratively. | |
| 11 | Infected doubter dismissing Covid initially (6) |
| SEPTIC | |
| S{c}EPTIC (doubter) [dismissing C{ovid} initially] | |
| 12 | Staff go moving around back of theatre not visible to audience (8) |
| OFFSTAGE | |
| Anagram [moving around] of STAFF GO, then{theatr}E [back] | |
| 14 | Trainee programme opened up by Institution of Civil Engineers (10) |
| APPRENTICE | |
| APP (programme), RENT (opened up – torn), ICE (Institution of Civil Engineers) | |
| 16 | Riddle mostly over hospital for doctors and nurses perhaps? (4) |
| FISH | |
| SIF{t} (riddle – sieve) [mostly] reversed [over], then H (hospital). I was baffled by the definition but have come up with ‘nurse shark’ and ‘doctor fish’. The first is familiar but the latter is not, however Wiki advises it’s actually called the red garra and it’s used in spa treatments where it feeds off the dead skin of humans. Yuk! If there’s another explanation, please let me know. | |
| 19 | Crossing over a period of days (4) |
| FORD | |
| FOR (over a period of), D (days) | |
| 20 | Reviewed the cooling of human culture (10) |
| ETHNOLOGIC | |
| Anagram [reviewed] of THE COOLING | |
| 22 | Book (classical) virtuoso pianist (8) |
| LIBERACE | |
| LIBER (book (classical) – Latin), ACE (virtuoso). Władziu Valentino Liberace (1919 –1987), who was said to have cried all the way to the bank but later bought the bank. | |
| 23 | Corrupt chamber is concerning (6) |
| POISON | |
| PO (chamber pot), IS, ON (concerning). Collins confirms ‘chamber’ as a valid shortening of ‘chamber pot’. | |
| 26 | Raft beginning to sink in Welsh lake (5) |
| BALSA | |
| S{ink} [beginning] contained by [in] BALA (Welsh lake). I knew the light wood from model aeroplanes but not that it can also mean a light raft. | |
| 27 | A university eleven complain bitterly over unknown supporter (9) |
| AUXILIARY | |
| A, U (university), XI (eleven), then RAIL (complain bitterly) reversed [over], Y (unknown) | |
| 28 | One showing some French skill in beginnings of “cogito ergo sum”? (9) |
| DESCARTES | |
| DES (some, in French), then ART (skill) contained by C{ogito} + E{rgo} + S{um} [beginnings of…] | |
| 29 | Press down? Nothing’s left to peruse (5) |
| TREAD | |
| T{o} [nothing’s left], READ (peruse) | |
| Down |
|
| 1 | Draw attention to workers that will keep up standards (9) |
| FLAGSTAFF | |
| FLAG (draw attention to), STAFF (workers) | |
| 2 | Step right up and go over (5) |
| RECAP | |
| PACE (step) + R (right) reversed [up] | |
| 3 | Ordered, trim and neat for strict disciplinarian (8) |
| MARTINET | |
| Anagram [ordered] of TRIM NEAT | |
| 4 | Literary poet showing lots of ostentation (4) |
| SWAN | |
| SWAN{k} (ostentation) [lots of]. My AI assistant advises: The nickname “The Swan of Avon” for William Shakespeare originated with Ben Jonson, a contemporary playwright. It appeared in a poem Jonson wrote as a tribute to Shakespeare, which was published in the First Folio collection of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. | |
| 5 | Charitable payment to the sick reduced to small coin (10) |
| BENEFICENT | |
| BENEFI{t} (payment to the sick) [reduced], CENT (small coin) | |
| 6 | Delight in artist with power over hearts (6) |
| RAVISH | |
| RA (artist), VIS (power), H (hearts). NHO ‘vis’ meaning ‘power’, but apparently it comes from Latin. On the definition, I found this in Collins eventually: ravish – to give great delight to; but every other meaning had unpleasant overtones so I wasn’t entirely happy with it. I wanted the answer to be RELISH (delight in) but already had the V-checker so that wasn’t going to work. | |
| 7 | Tons cutting outside income contributing to government revenue (9) |
| TAXPAYING | |
| T (tons), AXING (cutting) containing [outside] PAY (income) | |
| 8 | Pioneer studying radiation remedy involving iodine (5) |
| CURIE | |
| CURE (remedy) containing [involving] I (iodine) | |
| 13 | Utter guile — the art of politicians (10) |
| STATECRAFT | |
| STATE (utter), CRAFT (guile). Not these days! | |
| 15 | Plane curves from airborne fighter with missiles in South America (9) |
| PARABOLAS | |
| PARA (airborne fighter), BOLAS (missiles in South America). Bolas – a missile consisting of balls connected by a strong cord, which is thrown to entangle the legs of a quarry. | |
| 17 | Chap is after part of London common (9) |
| HACKNEYED | |
| HACKNEY (part of London), ED (chap). The origin of this meaning worn out through overuse is disputed but may have something to do with tired horses. | |
| 18 | Deluge came down as many matches are played (8) |
| FLOODLIT | |
| FLOOD (deluge), LIT (came down – landed) | |
| 21 | Mistakes noted during Canberra talks (6) |
| ERRATA | |
| Hidden [noted during] {Canb}ERRA TA{lks} | |
| 22 | Like one’s brain’s evolutionary design at the front? (5) |
| LOBED | |
| L{ike} + O{ne’s} + B{rain’s} + E{volutionary} + D{esign} [at the front] | |
| 24 | Sudden inundation’s well over western parts of Tewkesbury (5) |
| SPATE | |
| SPA (well), TE{wkesbury} [western parts] | |
| 25 | Spotted deer unknown in Asia, mostly running (4) |
| AXIS | |
| X (unknown) contained by [in] anagram [running] of ASI{a} [mostly]. NHO this, but it’s a white-spotted deer of southern Asia more properly called the chital or cheetal. | |
Last two in were SWAN and FISH, entered with fingers crossed as I was unconvinced by my parsing. Similarly RAVISH, though what else would fit 6d? (V1 power – like V8 with only one cylinder? Some reference to V1 doodlebug?) Fully expected pink squares for these – but got one for a typo in the ostentatious pianist instead!
24mijns
Vis is Latin for power (think plural — vires, as in ultra vires)
Just like Corymbia, my last two were, and in the same order, SWAN and FISH, which seemed very hard. The rest of this hadn’t prepared me for that, and these two took a while! Had never heard of another four-letter word either, AXIS, by that definition—but it’s certainly a fresh way to clue that letter sequence.
I knew BALA as a Welsh lake because I lived for a few, very memorable, years in Pennsylvania, where there is a place named Bala Cynwyd.
Enjoyable. Same thoughts re Relish and Ravish.
Thanks setter and jackkt
T(-O) READ
It’s O that means “nothing,” missing here.
Thanks Guy. I saw it just after I posted.
I had no clue what was going on with PARABOLAS, but this was a sciency word I sort of knew, so in it went.
The Liberace biopic, ‘Behind the Candelabra’, is well worth a watch for the bravura performances from Matt Damon and, especially, Michael Douglas. Indicative of modern tastes, perhaps, it never got a theatrical release in the USA.
35 minutes.
I thought this was quite tricky, and I really had to work the cryptics. I completely misparsed spate, but my answer was the right one.
Jackkt doesn’t have to worry about the fish; doctor is defined in Chambers as a fish, the sea surgeon.
Time: 24 minutes
20:23. Spent five or six minutes on SWAN at the end. Eventually thought of swank although I couldn’t think of a poet named Swan. Turns out I was right!
Also slightly bewildered by FISH, RAVISH and AXIS but there didn’t seem to be any alternatives.
Thanks Jack and setter.
The accusative VIM is better known in English, if you accept the etymology.
12:01. Lots of tricky words in this, which had me pausing to think on numerous occasions. All fair and gettable though, I thought.
Jonson’s reference to Shakespeare (who he knew personally and worked with) is one of the many, many things Shakespeare conspiracists have to explain away. That’s nothing, though: Oxfordians can explain to you with a straight face how Edward de Vere managed to write Macbeth when he was dead.
DNF – gave up on the poet.
I parsed 9a, ASCERTAIN, as an anagram of ARSENIC + TA for “sure”.
FISH 16a still baffles me. I parsed it as FIS{k} + H, with “fisk” meaning to pepper (or riddle) something with questions. But the doctors and nurses were surplus to my requirements.
RAVISH can be innocent enough in modern usage: think “You look ravishing”.
This parsing of ASCERTAIN is missing an anagram indicator.
To ‘fisk’ is to refute the points in a newspaper article one by one (after the journalist Robert Fisk, whose output was particularly susceptible to such treatment), which is not quite the same thing. This interpretation also fails to account for ‘over’.
My understanding was that “fisking” was coined, as Robert F.’s Wikipedia page has it, “to describe his method” of “line-by-line rebuttal,” not that Fisk was a prime candidate for having his own work so dissected. A Wikipedia “Talk” page, though, features a claim that Andrew Sullivan (ugh!) coined the term in describing Fisk’s account of being beaten up on one occasion by locals where he was reporting from. If Sullivan did rebut Fisk’s story line-by-line, it seems more logical for that to be called “Sullivaning” (as inelegant as that sounds), but it seems that there weren’t many facts to rebut there, the original story being an account more of Fisk’s own complex reaction to the experience.
Interesting: ODE supports my version. In the absence of definitive proof I will agree with you and Wikipedia, if only on the basis that being on the same side of any argument as Sullivan makes me queasy.
I have a bafflingly bad record on 50:50 guesses – and that continued here, with the perfectly parsable and perfectly plausible IXAS.
I’d decided to grumble about this before finishing the puzzle, regardless of whether I was right (and it’s doubly annoying I was wrong, as I’m sure not everyone will believe me). If you don’t know your types of deer, which I don’t think is fair to expect from a solver, you’re reduced to a guess – and it’s not a crossword staple either. Humbug!
Thanks both.
Nice rant!
A fail. I eventually managed to get some of the difficult ones like FISH and RAVISH but failed on SWAN for which I bunged in SWAG even though it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the ‘Literary poet’. Quite a few DNF’S on the club site leaderboard so looks like I wasn’t the only one to find this hard.
Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set, …
(The Fish, WB Yeats)
25 mins mid-brekker, mostly agonising over Ravish, Vexer, Taxpaying, Fish.
Vis, Veer (really?), I thought it would end …axing (doh) and Fish is terrible.
Ta setter and J
If you’re interested in Ravishing, try Yeats’ Leda and the Swan
DNF. Gave up on -I-H and bunged in WITH clearly not understanding the clue at all. Bah.
Some good stuff though, I liked FLAGSTAFF & APPRENTICE.
Thanks Jack and setter.
51 minutes with last two the unknown ETHNOLOGIC and then FLOODLIT. AXIS, RAVISH and VEXER were all put in without conviction. I knew the Swan of Avon. It was my job as a lad to riddle the ashes through the fire grate into the ashpan, and then make the fire, so eventually I constructed FISH without bothering about the doctors or nurses. COD to DESCARTES, remembering the explanation given many years ago by either Frank Muir or Denis Norden on My Word as to why the cakes couldn’t be eaten until the end of the party. “I think they’re for one a.m.” A tricky puzzle with a couple of obscurities but enjoyable enough because I got them. Thank you Jack and setter.
OK on the SIFTing and (grate) RIDDLing but also, after much pondering and help from a stronger mind, on ‘therefore I am’. Thanks.
Shaw was my best guess at the poet, which is not the first description I would use for Shakespeare. I agree with the grumbles at the obscure deer clued by (partial) anagram, even though I guessed correctly. Fish was also wilfully obscure. Otherwise a fine puzzle.
Flew through the first 90%, stumbled on FISH, eventually solved, then gave up without SWAN after 20′.
Thanks jack and setter.
I finished in 22:06 having been completely baffled by several of the clues even though I was pretty sure of the answers, notably
POISON why PO was chamber
FISH for doctors and nurses
AXIS for a deer
It was really annoying somehow to have these total obscurities in what was otherwise a very easy puzzle
Thanks setter and especially thanks Jack for researching that stuff
14:40 but one wrong – I had an unparsed SHAW for the poet even though I knew of him only as a playwright which I failed to go back to at the end. I don’t think I’d have got SWAN if I’d tried harder. Lots of obscurities here but I loved the clue for DESCARTES. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
DNF, defeated by SWAN and AXIS (I put Shaw and Ixas respectively).
No idea how FISH meant doctors and nurses but got the answer from the wordplay; didn’t know that SYBARITIC means luxurious; didn’t know po=chamber for POISON; didn’t see how TREAD worked; and didn’t know vis=power for RAVISH.
Thanks setter and blogger.
COD Apprentice
Definition of PO (as in loo) is ‘chamber pot’. The only allusion I could draw
38:18 but with not 1 but 3 typos!
I found this a tricky one, and I was just glad to finish and I pressed submit without even a cursory glance of the grid. More fool me as to my knowledge ETTHOLOGIC, TRESD and BENEFICEHT do not belong in the English language.
So much for Tuesdays being the new Mondays. Maybe Wednesdays?
Thanks to both.
Walked away when I got to the veer=change mind clue. Knew my blood pressure wouldn’t cope.
This was only a stiff challenge with the tetragrams, especially FISH and SWAN. I spent a long time musing on what the difference was between a poet and a literary poet. There are poets called Swan, according to Wiki: US Jon who qualifies for the Times and UK Michael who doesn’t, but this is not the TLS so we’re not expected to have to use Wiki. So the Avon Lad it had to be. Once I, at last, managed to switch from SIEVE to SIFT I got the FISH easily enough and recalled at least the shark.
LIBERACE was another slow arrival, looking for a classical, virtuoso pianist (shades of the TLS again) but could only think of Paderewski and Rubenstein, neither of which could be squeezed in. Liber scriptus proferetor.
So a brisk solve extended to a 23.05 solve, with BENEFACENT ( I started with benefaction) spotted and corrected seconds before submission.
I was going along swimmingly by my standards and then came to an utter block on BENEFICENT (couldn’t get beneficial out of my head, even looked up to see if there was a coin called a cial) and couldn’t think of TAXPAYING even though it was pretty obvious (hung up on taxtaking), couldn’t think of the part of London, slow with FISH, failed to see that ETHNOLOGIC was an anagram, so a sub-30 minute solve became a 47-minute solve with some aids. Silly, because nothing was all that difficult.
DNF
Couldn’t get past all the obscurities.
Thanks, jack.
DNF, 16a, pISH! Don’t want to finish if clues are that riddled/strained/sifted. 19a FORD was indirect enough, but acceptable. 23a POISON I do connect chamber with pot I suppose, but Po adds abstruseness.
26a the only BALSA raft I knew was the Kon-Tiki, but I see it is allowed (Wiktionary says esp Pacific coast of South America, as Kon-Tiki). I remember (dimly) lake Bala from an earlier outing here.
28a POI “Rene DESCARTES was a drunken fart, I drink therefore I am”, Python’s song, and a clever clue.
4d SWANk, another very indirect allusion. I can’t find SWAN=POET anywhere (except as jackkt found it; I didn’t.) However “swan of avon” redirects to William Shakespeare on Wiki, but without giving any explanation.
6d RAVISH, didn’t believe it so cheated by coming here. Pish again! However vis, pl vires is familiar in Ultra Vires, so I maybe should have known it? I see in Wiktionary it says of VIM “Possibly from Latin vim, accusative singular of vīs (“force, power, strength;…”
15d had heard of (para) BOLAS in that sense, but it is pretty niche. I am very unsure why we spent so much time on Argentina in O level Geog.
25d Didn’t find AXIS=deer, but it is in Wiktionary, (plural axises added to Cheating Machine). By that time (LOI) I just bunged it in without care as to whether right or not, as 16a was still blank.
SWAN and FISH finally slouched their way into the front of my brain long after I had finished and stopped timing. I can just about swallow the latter, so to speak, but the SWAN reference seems a mental convolution too far to be entirely fair.
I nearly finished this in good time but FISH and SWAN were unsolvable to me, and the options were too numerous. Definitely a curates egg!
DNF, due to spelling error in benificent.
Last two in were FISH and SWAN – the last with considerable doubt, not knowing any poets of that name, and unaware of Johnson’s description of Shakespeare.
I did that, too (the spelling error, but the rest as well). Nice to have company.
Another FISH and SWAN DNF here. Otherwise, a really nice crossword.
40:58 with one wrong. DNK SWAN and I didn’t think of swank, so wrote in SHAW expecting the pink squares. I liked FISH, accepting “doctors and nurses” too readily perhaps, given their obscurity. I had the dead skin on my feet nibbled by fish in a lake in Greece once; it was quite an enjoyable experience, nothing yuk about it.
At 1dn at first I had FLAGPOLES where “workers” gave me POLES. That’s a bit cheeky, I thought, as I wrote it in. It didn’t last long once the crossers started coming
Just over 20m today which is quick for me on a tricky puzzle, helped by knowing some of the obscurities, such as SWAN and FISH and correctly guessing AXIS. Thank you, Jack, for the explanations and setter for the challenges.
Spent ages at the end on TAXTAKING, which I eventually replaced with TAXPAYING when I managed to parse it, FISH, which I eventually solved, and 4d for which I could only come up with SHAW before getting fed up and submitting expecting the pink squares. What I didn’t expect was an extra pink square for my typo in BENIFICENT. Hey ho! 32:50 with 2 errors. Thanks setter(I think) and Jack.
09:27
Very happy with that given the accumulated crossed fingers and delays associated with SWAN (who I assumed was an actual poet), FISH (didn’t occur to me to question the definition too closely) and AXIS (which rang only the vaguest of bells). (Also, like John, typed in BENIFICENT at first but was more disciplined than usual and spotted the mistake for once.)
I didn’t enjoy this, but in part I put that down to not being in the best of moods for whatever reason.
I was another who went for Ixas, didn’t know vis, didn’t know the fish, didn’t see the swan. I knew it had to be Vexer, but that just annoyed me, so I refused to put it in! Has anyone ever said “he’s a vexer“?, if so I will write it out 100 times.
As for Po, I know this as a chamber pot, but not as a chamber. Clearly the answer was poison, but I’d be pleased to know which reference has po on its own meaning chamber.
Collins sense 9: ‘short for chamberpot’
I also dimly recall going to the PO, as a child…
Two thirds of this went in pretty quickly, but I slowed dramatically for the rest to finish in 42.45. Unfortunately I discovered two answers were wrong. I predictably zigged where I should have zagged by putting in IXAS, chiefly on the basis it sounded more plausible than AXIS. I also failed on the poet, debating whether to put in SHAW which I couldn’t parse, or SPAR[kle] which I could. I opted for the latter, and wasn’t the least surprised to find it was wrong.
25:31
Bunged in six of the first seven acrosses off the bat and thought we were heading for a quick one today, however some clues proved to be chewier- SWAN, FISH, RAVISH and VEXER each had their pen-chewing moments, though I did like HACKNEYED a lot.
Thanks Jack and setter
DNF
Agree with every push and MER above. Not the best.
SHAW and WISH.
Thanks Jack.
Seems a shame to make my debut comment on the 15×15 blog about a DNF, but it seems I’m in good company. Similarly it was SWAN and FISH, both possibilities that occurred but didn’t fancy going all green without understanding, so content with some red squares after an hour. Thanks Jack for untangling some doctors, nurses, and bard epithets I have never come across.
This annoyed me a bit but I accept the odd vexer type rubbish. It must be amazingly difficult to set chalanging, fair, well parsed, elegant, intelectually satisfying etc erc etc crossword puzzles day in day out.
I would draw the line at verisimiltuder
STATECRAFT was The Times Polygon word at the weekend.
I found this tough. Gave up after 35 mins with fish completely eluding me. There were some others that were annoyingly troublesome as well- most particularly axis. I’ve a tually seen a Chittal in the wild but never heard of it referred to as an axis before, so a lucky punt.
Ravish was another late entrant having always assumed P stood for power and only convinced when I realised vexer would then fit at 10ac. Guessed Swan but not impressed by it.
All in all a frustrating experience. I’ll now go and kick the cat.
DNF. I was another defeated by SWAN and FISH, although I got AXIS with no trouble despiate never having heard of it (as a deer). I didn’t know VIS but put RAVISH in anyway. I didn’t know PO as a word for a chamber since chambers and chamber pots seem…well…different. This crossword was a mixture of easy, obscure, and a few very obscure.
DNF on SWAN and FISH. Guessed AXIS. Enjoyed the rest of it. Thanks Jack.
Bit of a MER for 5 down – where the definition and the cryptic have the same root. Like everyone else I was foxed by the wee’uns: SWAN, FISH and AXIS. Annoyingly I saw FISH early on but couldn’t work out the cryptic. I even had SIF for most of RIDDLE, but it didn’t occur to me to turn it round. SWAN finally fell, to make a time of 35’17”. And after ten minutes I’d thought I was heading for a quick end. Thanks to setter and blogger.
Definitely a qualifier (in a very large field) for the worst crossword of the year so far. The brilliant Descartes clue is completely wasted in this nonsense.
DNF after 30 giving up on those two. So ditto ditto ditto everyone’s comments.
Some nice clues but not those two
This was a very strange puzzle, which I would have finished correctly in 37 minutes were it not for my misspelling of BENiFICENT, perhaps suggested by the way I tend to pronounce BENEFI(T) but annoying and inexcusable nonetheless. I did, to my surprise, get the hard bits like SWAN and FISH, solely from the wordplay, and the vaguely remembered SYBARITIC. What bothers me about the hard bits is not that they are hard, but that they are a bit like the odd grain of sand in a salad. After one across clue after another went in immediately on first reading, this seemed like a very, very easy puzzle indeed, until suddenly it wasn’t. These bits are jarring and just don’t fit in, so it’s the style that bothers me a lot, not the quality of individual clues.
DNF
Couldn’t figure out FISH and only come up with SHAW as a literary figure, but that didn’t parse and he was a playwright. (Had opted for AXIS but it was not known to me).
Thanks to jackkt and the setter
On granddad duty in USA so took some printed crosswords. Just finished this (in the DFW lounge on the way home) and came to your blog for some enlightenment on how some of it worked. FYI I was on holiday many decades ago in Corfu where the hire-by-the-day self drive motor boat was advertised as a way to ‘ravish your senses’ with views of the coastline. We were ravished as advertised (and made it to a restaurant only accessible from the sea for lunch). Thanks for an interesting and entertaining blog.