Solving time: 54 minutes
I found this hard work but enjoyable and very inventive in places . Some of the blog was quite hard to write too.
Following an email I wrote to Mick Hodgkin a couple of weeks ago about an experiment he’d tried using AI to solve cryptic clues, I got a mention in last Saturday’s Times Puzzles Newsletter. Here’s the link if anyone’s interested. It’s in the Puzzle Talk section about half way down.
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 | Squirm with embarrassment initially about Republican (6) |
WRITHE | |
WITH + E {mbarrassment} [initially] containing [about] R (Republican) | |
5 | What goes over goalie’s head annoyed pub (8) |
CROSSBAR | |
CROSS (annoyed), BAR (pub) | |
9 | Fetish involving India and its martial art (3-5) |
JIU-JITSU | |
JUJU (fetish) containing [involving] I (India – phonetic alphabet) and separately ITS. I think it’s a little unusual for separate insertions not to be indicated as such in the wording of the clue. SOED: juju – a charm, amulet, fetish, or idol of some W. African peoples. |
|
10 | Noah’s craft finally disappeared in a desert for its resting place (6) |
ARARAT | |
AR{k} (Noah’s craft) [finally disappeared] contained by [ in] A + RAT (desert). According to the Bible, Noah’s Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat now located in modern-day Turkey. | |
11 | Optimist that is swallowing what’s periodically in tabloid (8) |
IDEALIST | |
ID EST (that is) containing [swallowing] {t}A{b}L{o}I{d} [periodically] | |
12 | What’s upset Lakeland, losing a lake town there (6) |
KENDAL | |
Anagram [upset] of L{a}KE{l}AND [losing a lake]. Separate deletions this time (cf. 9ac)! Kendal is a town in the vicinity of Lakeland, officially called the Lake District National Park. It’s famous for its mint cake. | |
13 | Expedition as made by river in London? (8) |
ALACRITY | |
À LA (as made by – in the style of ), then R (river) contained by [in] CITY (London?) | |
15 | Gemstone’s old, needing polish put back (4) |
OPAL | |
O (old), then LAP (polish) reversed [put back]. SOED: lap – polish with a lap – a rotating disc for cutting or polishing gems or metal. The answer was obvious but I needed to look up ‘lap’ afterwards to understand the wordplay. | |
17 | More than one cyclone runs out of force (4) |
LOWS | |
{f}LOWS (runs) [out of force – f]. Collins: low (meteorology) – an atmospheric low-pressure system; cyclone. Another clue that gave me problems. | |
19 | Is meal, no, for cooking? (8) |
SEMOLINA | |
Anagram [for cooking] of IS MEAL NO. ‘Is meal, no’ because semolina is not classified as meal as its made from wheat which meal is not. ‘For cooking?’ because semolina would usually be cooked prior to serving. I was getting nowhere with this until the checkers forced me to consider the anagram. Collins put me on to wheat not being meal. | |
20 | Coat woody plant after removing bark? (6) |
REEFER | |
{t}REE FER{n} (woody plant) [removing bark]. Another troublesome one. I suspected ‘reefer’ (a coat worn by sailors) quite early on and realised I’d need to find letters to go at either end, but I was unable to make sense of the wordplay until I used aids post-completion. I had overlooked the possibility of a two word expression. | |
21 | Such as semicolon, dash and closing parenthesis come into play (8) |
EMOTICON | |
Anagram [play] of COME INTO. If you write the said punctuation marks you get ; – ) an example of an emoticon aka a smiley. Note: I’ve inserted spaces to prevent WordPress turning it into an emoji like so 😉 |
|
22 | Biblical figure, one involved with Leah and Jacob primarily (6) |
ELIJAH | |
Anagram [involved] of I (one) LEAH J{acob} [primarily] | |
23 | The Spanish isle and Gibraltar the French appropriate (8) |
ELIGIBLE | |
EL (‘the’ Spanish), I (isle), GIB (Gibraltar – informally), LE (‘the’ French) | |
24 | Perhaps copper worker is after material (8) |
SERGEANT | |
SERGE (material), ANT (worker). ‘Copper’ is a police officer who be a sergeant. | |
25 | Match ends of telomere in germ cell (6) |
GAMETE | |
GAME (match), T{elomer}E [ends of]. In my attempt to find the answers I made this far more complicated than it was. A telomere is defined as ‘either of the ends of a chromosome’, which fits rather nicely with the wording of the clue. |
Down | |
2 | Work to support two gods denying a fall from heaven? (8) |
RAINDROP | |
RA + INDR{a} (two gods) [denying ‘a’], OP (work) | |
3 | What’s erected at regularly-visited Jumna by prince? (3,5) |
TAJ MAHAL | |
AT reversed [erected], J{u}M{n}A [regularly-visited], HAL (prince, at least according to Shakespeare). I’ve underlined most of the clue as I’m not sure what the definition is. The Taj Mahal was erected at Agra which stands on the River Jumna and it’s certainly regularly visited. I don’t think the prince is part of it. | |
4 | Free additional note with one hundred invested (9) |
EXTRICATE | |
EXTRA (additional) + TE (note) containing [with…] I (one) + C (hundred) […invested] | |
5 | Pushback from result of bad shop fitting? (15) |
COUNTERMOVEMENT | |
A cryptic hint suggests COUNTER MOVEMENT | |
6 | Witchcraft is unfortunate outside church (7) |
SORCERY | |
SORRY (unfortunate – e.g. a sorry state of affairs) containing [outside] CE (church) | |
7 | Composer gets over a setting of part of War and Peace (8) |
BORODINO | |
BORODIN (composer), O (over). The battle of Borodino is a central theme in Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. | |
8 | Hardhearted laws succeeded — around half of them (8) |
RUTHLESS | |
RULES (laws) + S (succeeded) containing [around] TH{em} [half] | |
14 | Rear seal for making garments (9) |
TAILORING | |
TAIL (rear), O-RING (seal – e.g. a washer) | |
15 | Old poem, for instance source of Home Thoughts, from Abroad? (8) |
OVERSEAS | |
O (old), VERSE (poem), AS (for instance). The definition refers to the title of a poem by Robert Browning that begins: Oh, to be in England Now that April’s there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now! |
|
16 | What’s in decanter I ordered earlier? (8) |
ANTERIOR | |
Hidden [in] {dec}ANTER I OR{dered} | |
17 | US city can regularly dig some use of old-world language (8) |
LATINISM | |
LA (US city), TIN (can), {d}I{g} S{o}M{e} [regularly] | |
18 | Long wait around where some have crashed when travelling? (5-3) |
WAGON-LIT | |
Anagram [around] LONG WAIT. I took forever to see what was going on here. This is a sleeping car on a train, so where people can ‘crash’. | |
19 | Leak part of cross-reference (7) |
SEEPAGE | |
SEE PAGE (part of cross-reference). Only ‘part’ because it would normally be followed by a page number. |
Around 75 minutes. Very tricky when biffing words that look right. Got a number all wrong and had to rethink them. FOI GAMETE LOI RUTHLESS. Put in WAGON-LIT which I had NHO and looked crazy. Liked BORODINO, JIU-JITSU, WRITHE, CROSSBAR, EMOTICON. Very enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks Jack for the parsing.
For TAJ MAHAL possibly “what” is the definition and the rest is the wordplay.
Yeah, not very easy. LOI KENDAL, strictly from wordplay. But yes, it was fun. SEE PAGE indeed! I liked WAGON-LIT because it’s French. I didn’t know or remember the title of the famous Browning poem but the rest of the clue was clear enough. Took a while to remember BORODIN; I really should read War and Peace one day.
Pretty sure TAJ MAHAL is, or wants to be, an &lit. It was built by a prince (cum emperor) to entomb and memorialize a departed wife, or “consort,” Mumtaz Mahal.
I wondered about prince but ruled it out as I couldn’t find anything to associate that title with the guy who built TAJ MAHAL. He seems to be described only as Emperor or Shah. I suppose he’d have been a prince prior to that.
Well, I don’t know another title that could have clued HAL.
Definition 4 in Collins is “any sovereign; monarch.” The builder of the Taj was a son of the previous emperor (he took extreme measures to eliminate all rivals to the throne), but of course he was emperor when he ordered that the mausoleum be built (she must’ve been quite a dame!).
You may need rather more than one day to read “War and Peace”. Mind you, it only took me 20 minutes before giving up at around page 30…..
You managed about 25 pages more than I did .. no great fan of Russian literature generally. Too depressing.
I don’t think I ever got beyond “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes”, rather like overhearing a conversation on the bus where you haven’t a clue what is being discussed.
It’s a semi-&Lit. As KensoGhost points out the definition is, technically ‘what’, although of course the whole clue is also the definition. This is a standard structure for a semi-&Lit. You can tell it’s that and not a full-fat &Lit because the word ‘what’ doesn’t contribute to the wordplay. I think we’re just supposed to overlook the prince/emperor thing!
Of course. I sometimes call these “wannabe” &lits. They always seem impossible to accurately notate by our conventions, as “What” or some such is really no sort of definition on its own.
Yes, the notation was my concern rather than wanting to classify the clue. I’ve more or less given up on mentioning &lit and semi-&lit in my blogs because of the discussions that inevitably ensue that I don’t really want to be party to. But what to underline is sometimes a problem. If I’d underlined ‘what’ today I don’t think that would have been very helpful to our newer solvers so in this example I decided on underlining all the words I could relate to the answer. I omitted ‘by prince’ because the person who commissioned the Taj Mahal was no longer a prince at the time.
But definition 4 in Collins for “prince” makes that irrelevant.
Yes they’re curious beasts. I think of them as having two definitions: a technical or structural one, which is a definition purely because it is not part of the wordplay (in this case ‘what’) and a semantic one which is always (as here) the whole clue.
If you can read War and Peace in one day then you have my admiration!😀
Ha. I meant, of course, “someday”: at some indefinite time in the future.
You should: it’s wonderful. Don’t listen to the h8ers!
I thought there were some really good clues in this, especially EMOTICON, ELIGIBLE and ALACRITY. I failed to see LOWS, not knowing the cyclonic meaning and not helped by the strange and NHO WAGON-LIT. Shuddered when I saw COAT again after yesterday’s quick cryptic but saw REEFER and tree fern quickly. Had no idea what was going on with OVERSEAS, knowing it had to be O + VERSE but couldn’t account for the AS. OPAL seems to be a bit overused of late.
Thanks Jack and setter.
This was a biff-fest for me – I didn’t parse half of them. It seems like there were a lot of extra words in the clues, which I ignored. However, I did see tree fern and I do know what a ju-ju is. I was wondering about counterargument for a bit, but semolina put an end to that. My biggest problem was biffing lots, which does mean more than one, but when I couldn’t get 18 I erased the T. I saw wagon-lit at once, but couldn’t parse it. However, I did finish, and felt content to leave the parsing to tonight’s blogger.
Time: 28 minutes
Very much suited to my GK and (lack of) technique. All done in 20:57. COUNTER-whatnot proved the biggest holdup. Unsurprisingly, since it’s so weak.
37.59, a better time than I expected and due more to good luck than good management. I had a list of eight that I was unable to parse post-solve without Jack’s help, including REEFER, OPAL, RAINDROP…I won’t go on. It took an age to get COUNTERMOVEMENT and also EMOTICON, and now (thanks again Jack) I find it’s an anagram. All up a terrific puzzle I thought, with many crafty touches.
From Subterranean Homesick Blues:
Keep a clean nose, watch the plain clothes
You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind bLOWS…
(OK, OK, I got nuthin’…)
DNF. Excellent puzzle but too hard for me. The left-hand side went in rapidly despite a minor kerfuffle with a misspelt JUI-JITSU but the right side had me heading for the forty-minute mark.
Couldn’t get the bottom half of COUNTERMOVEMENT and took much longer than I should have over LATINISM, GAMETE, EMOTICON, TAILORING, LOWS and WAGON-LIT. All great clues though, especially EMOTICON where it never crossed my mind to look for an anagram.
The one that eventually did for me was BORODINO as I lacked both the required bits of GK. I’ll get it next time. Thanks setter and Jack.
It’s not an excellent puzzle if it’s too hard to be solved
42 minutes, all told, with a couple of bits not that fully parsed along the way. Finished off with OVERSEAS, where the Browning reference passed me by. I wonder how often I’ve thought, “oh, yes, I should read War and Peace” before immediately forgetting about it again…
Got it, in 42 mins, good going for me.
Some great clues like EMOTICON (but word is already dated, as is concept of construction out of separate characters). Also liked ALACRITY which I got quickly following a discussion in the QC blog today.
NHO INDRA, but saw Op, leading to Drop, and built the clue up from the bottom.
I visited the TAJ MAHAL last week, so I’m quite up to date on Mughals. Although my guide was keener on cricket.
LOI REEFER
13:55. I was close to joining galspray with a DNF thinking I probably didn’t know the composer and I certainly didn’t know the War and Peace reference. However BORODIN rang a vague bell and BORODINO sounded plausible so I threw caution to the wind, shoved it in and submitted fully expecting to see pink squares. Thus finishing with all correct was a pleasant surprise.
32:13, LOI was REEFER which was pretty much a biff though (honestly!!) I was wondering if there was such a thing as a tree fern when I put in in. I was thinking I’d been quite slow, so I’m relieved to see I’m not the only one to have found this on the hard side.
Thanks setter and Jack
31:31. Some good tricky stuff. LOI SEEPAGE, which I really liked, and I liked TAILORING too
Didn’t have a Scooby about the composer and I’ve never read War and Peace, so that was that. BERGDINO was my invented word. Particularly nasty to have that double unch there, not that it would have rescued me.
Thanks both.
29 minutes with COD SEEPAGE. I liked BORODINO too, but I’m not sure that moment of triumph fully compensated for the many hours I took over War and Peace in the bedsit years. The book did prove to be a handy replacement when one of the legs on the bed broke though. LOI was of course EMOTICON, one of the many modern inventions I regret. Excellent puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
28:06
FOI: SORCERY
LOI: WAGON-LIT
Struggled on REEFER and for a long while I had BORODINA until I saw LOWS. Submitted answer with fingers crossed for unknown LOI based on wordplay.
Thank you, jackkt and the setter
I rather staggered through this. I’d never seen ju-jitsu spelt with that extra I before, I never actually solved LOWS as all the lights were conveniently filled by other answers – as was the case with OPAL which I initially refused to enter because I didn’t know “lap = polish”. I had no idea about GAMETE, but saw the parsing quickly enough, and I shamelessly biffed my LOI.
FOI CROSSBAR
LOI EMOTICON
COD SEEPAGE
TIME 13:34
25′, so comments about level of difficulty surprised me as, for once, I seemed to have much of the GK and was on “wavelength”. Maybe that just means I didn’t (or couldn’t!) overthink it. Like Vinyl I had LOtS for a while, wondering what the missing letter might be, before WAGON-LIT came to me (and to be honest I knew Wagonlit from the travel company rather than the sleeper coach of orient express fame). Enjoyed it, thanks Jackkt and setter.
50 mins and definitely on the tougher side. Had the COUNTER in early but took an age to see the MOVEMENT bit. When the penny dropped EMOTICON, my LOI sprung out. DNK GAMETE but worked it out from the wp.
I knew the composer but there were some very hard clues which have been mentioned above.
Thanks Jack and setter. PS, I liked your bit on AI.
Managed to fly through this today. I’m another who has read War and Peace all the way through – I remember almost nothing – apart from the Battle of BORODINO.
LOWS LOI, unparsed. The intricacies of the clue for SEMOLINA passed me by, too many bad memories.
14’42”, thanks jack and setter.
Quick today, but I enjoyed this.
Borodino was a very serious battle .. a quarter of a million combatants and around 70,000 killed. A total not beaten until WWI.
I shudder whenever I see the word “semolina.”
No idea what Collins is on about, since wheatmeal is definitely a thing, eg:
https://afrobuy.co.uk/products/honeywell-whole-wheat-meal or
https://www.soothills.co.uk/products/large-wheatmeal
33m 10s
The 1970s TV serialisation of War & Peace was my first sighting of Anthony Hopkins. He played Pierre Bezukhov.
COD to EMOTICON.
Thanks, Jack for IDEALIST and OVERSEAS and well done on your mention in Mick Hodgkin’s piece
About half an hour.
– Had heard of Borodin, but mainly because of the Borodin Quartet rather than for his works as a composer, and was happy to trust that BORODINO was a setting for War and Peace
– Not familiar with REEFER as a coat so it went in with fingers crossed that I’d parsed it correctly from tree fern
– Didn’t know that a juju can be a fetish for JIU-JITSU
– Only dimly aware that ARARAT was where Noah’s Ark is said to have ended up;
– Completely misparsed LOWS, thinking we needed to take R for runs out of a word meaning force (luckily we didn’t need to parse it at all)
– Didn’t know the god Indra, but RAINDROP had to be
– God the wordplay for OVERSEAS without knowing the poem being referenced
– Took absolutely ages to see that ANTERIOR was a hidden
Thanks Jack and setter.
FOI Gamete
LOI Reefer
COD Wagon-Lit
Many thanks for explaining emoticon. A huge benefit of this blog is that one learns something almost every day.
32.53. I found the puzzle very satisfying and was pleased that the Genetal Knowledge required was within my diminishing range.
Would that be genital knowlege for 25a Gamete ; -)?
: – D
11.25
Tremendous! I considered several CODs including SEEPAGE, BORODINO, OVERSEAS and KENDAL, but WAGON-LIT’s “crashed when travelling” got it over the line.
LOI REEFER
LOL (literally) EMOTICON
Beaten by REEFER (NHO), KENDAL and BORODINO – and furious about the latter, because it was a super clue and I should have got it. Otherwise quite straightforward.
I struggled through this in 26.29 but was scuppered by my inability to solve 17a and my lack of knowledge of War and Peace. I knew Borodin, but put him over A (composer gets over A, sneaky misdirection Ref!), thus finishing with 2 errors (LAWS). Thanks setter and Jack.
23.09, with a lot of time draining away at the OVERSEAS/REFFER intersection. I knew I didn’t stand a chance of getting REEFER without the initial letter (“woody plant – aargh!) and it’s surely unfortunate that ODYSSEUS fits with echoes in the wordplay. I won’t initiate the argument that a reefer is a coat, not a jacket…
I’m OK with TAJ MAHAL being a full, and rather good &lit: “prince” covers a wide range of the high and mighty, and Shah Jahan (“King of the World”) is surely no exception.
Lots to like in this one, even if you didn’t have to solve two of the clues.
So you’re agreeing with the clue over reefer being a coat? Or did you mean the other way round? I admit I had only ever heard of ‘reefer (or reefing) jacket’ and was preparing to challenge the definition until I looked it up in Collins and the first I found was ‘coat’. Further down in Collins and in other dictionaries I found ‘coat or jacket’.
I put that the wrong way round, didn’t I!
23:06
Fast start, slowed a bit, then picked up towards the end – needed all checkers for 7d, had heard of BORODIN but not the location in W+P, but seemed a likely possibility. I didn’t get the AS in OVERSEAS while in flight, and puzzled over 21a for a minute or so before the pdm and then LOI TAILORING.
Thanks for the entertainment, setter, and for the enlightening blog Jack
51:26
Tricky. Had to stare at Borodino for ages before it cracked.
Thanks, jack.
I too was grateful for SEMOLINA (first time I’ve said that) preventing me from considering the plausible COUNTERARGUMENT for too long. The southeast corner held me up for ages. EMOTICON is an excellent clue, “come into play” sounding so natural as to conceal the anagram. I also had the unparsed LOTS in mind, making the barely-heard-of WAGON-LIT even harder. I knew I was looking for a traveller’s rest of some sort, but even after I got LOWS I wasn’t sure it was an anagram.
17a (f)Lows – never worked that one out, I was trying to remove an “r”, thank you jackkt. 20a (T)reeFer(n), ditto.
12a Kendal nearly defeated me, but when I saw the clever anagram I was stunned.
7d Borodino, DNK W&P included it but had heard of the battle & composer so in it went.
15d Overseas from wp only; knew “Oh to be in England now that April’s there” but not its author, title nor any more words. Ignorance rules!
No problems with this one, 25 minutes, until I got to the last clue, R*E*E* where I had to do a word search to find the jacket. Which I then remembered. I liked WAGON LIT best. When bored in hospital in Bordeaux for 3 weeks, a few years ago, I managed to listen to the whole audiobook of War & Peace and read all of Anna Karenina. W&P was a surprisingly good story, but Anna was hard work. Not something to do when you’ve got better things to do.
This separate inclusion that Jackkt draws attention to in the JIU-JITSU clue is to my mind perfectly fair, although I agree that it’s unusual: the separateness is indeed usually signposted. I think the separate deletions thing (12ac) is something else: one “can” delete letters if they appear in order in the longer word. Never understood why. 42 minutes, slow to see the WAGON-LIT anagram and the ANTERIOR hidden.
19:39
No real problems today and I had most of the necessary GK.
I’m aware of the battle of BORODINO so then went in straightaway even if the composer was an unknown, and EMOTICON was a write-in before I saw the anagram. LOTS went in with a shrug before I corrected it when I saw the anagram for the unknown WAGON LIT. Unlike some others I have no issues with COUNTERMOVEMENT.
A return to some sort of form after a poor end to last week.
Thanks to both.
Really enjoyed this one although I admit to revealing LOWS (not a clue!). Everything else was just about my capability and GK (Borodin was a write in from ‘composer’ but didn’t know BORODINO from War and Peace). Couldn’t parse SEEPAGE and I’ve NHO WAGON-LIT. LOI EMOTICON was also COD as I was fooled for so long before the penny finally dropped. Thanks for the blog – excellent and essential.
23:05 – held up at the end by EMOTICON, which I thought was a great clue even before coming here and learning it was also an anagram, and SEEPAGE, with its satisfying penny-drop moment. A couple of quick cryptic difficulty clues kept things rolling along.
I found this tough and nearly gave in a couple of times. All eventually done in 29 mins with one letter wrong. BORODINA/LAWS.
COD: SEEPAGE
Me too!
I could only guess at INDRA and BORODINO but well clued. JIU-JITSU confused me only in that I’m used to a different spelling. A tidy puzzle. Thanks for the blog!
33’25”
Fortunate to get a clear run, stayed on well …
… and a Nitch in the nineties with all parsed; tree fern came to me whilst I was pondering the punctuation. Kendal Kake they can keep; I nibbled a proffered fragment once and decided to stick to my paraffin-burner-cooked hearty breakfast when wandering in that vicinity.
The Browning was one of the first poems we had to learn and then reproduce on paper; from a tally of ten or fifteen points or so one point was deducted for each error, and a negative score was rewarded with a beating. It did wonders for our powers of recall.
Lots to like here; many thanks to the setter and Jack.
36:56 – I got rather stuck on EMOTICON (too many letters for WINKY or for EMOJI), REEFER and SEEPAGE for some reason. I think REEFER was quite a hard one, as NHO it as a jacket and woody plant could be loads of things. A bit of general knowledge to keep things interesting is very welcome – more of that please. BORODIN is definitely not one of the composers that leaps out at me … I must give him a listen! Thanks very much to the setter and Jack!
Borodin wrote the opera ‘Prince Igor’ which begat the Polovtsian Dances, which begat the future hit ‘Stranger in Paradise’, and the show ‘Kismet’. For some strange reason the two ‘writers’ of the show were allowed to muscle in on the credits in spite of the fact that that particular song was a straight lift from the original.
Very interesting! I put Borodin on shuffle yesterday to see what came up. a good 50% of the tracks involved the Polovtsian Dances. I do enjoy the rather tangled links that the crossword sends one down sometimes!
For me this was a very clever and enjoyable puzzle. It took me a while to get started, but once I found my rhythm progress was reasonably swift. All done in 34 minutes, not much above my average. Like others I was stuck with LOTS at 17ac until WAGON-LIT emerged to show me the error of my ways. No problem with 9ac or 3dn, which both seemed fair clues to me.
FOI – SORCERY
LOI – SEEPAGE
COD – SERGEANT
Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.
Very much enjoyed today’s offering, thank you, setter. Thought EMOTICON was brilliant!
Also enjoyed the informative blog, many thanks, jacktt.
Just a quick reference back to yesterday’s crossword and the answer to 8d STRETCHERS. Mr SR and I agreed yesterday that never had we encountered that to mean “lies”.
Well, blow me down! I was re-reading “Three Men in a Boat” today (last read in my teens mumblety-something years ago) when I happened upon the following:
“He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter’s evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through…”
How nice to encounter a crossword word in the wild!
That’s interesting, SR. During yesterday’s discussion I noticed this under STRETCHER in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary:
7 An exaggeration; a lie. arch. slang. L17.
J. K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat: The customary stretchers about the wonderful things we had done.
I very nearly posted it but I wondered to myself if anybody still reads JKJ these days.
I got that clue wrong yesterday and put in ‘scratcher’ instead (Scottish slang meaning ‘bed’). Of course it doesn’t work as an answer as it’s a less perfect synonym of ‘litter’ than STRETCHER and ‘scratcher’ doesn’t mean ‘lie’ but stretcher=lie is a NHO.
Ah! I’d heard of “scratcher” as Irish slang in Marian Keyes books.
I still have my copy of Jerome’s classic, and read it for the fourth or fifth time a couple of years ago. I had a letter published in the Times on the subject of its omission from a list of great comic books just a few years ago. It elicited a positive response from the then Brexit minister, Lord Frost.
Gosh! That’s pretty impressive.
Amazed it wasn’t included – I’m constantly chuckling at it.
And now you know 🙂
My father introduced me to him and also to Conan Doyle.
I’m ever grateful.
DNF defeated by REEFER, EMOTICON, TAILORING, SEEPAGE. I found the top half much more approachable. BORODINO I remembered from the most recent TV version of W and P. Far bloodier than Waterloo, must have been absolutely horrific.
Very tricky in spots, and I too noted the separated insertions and deletions into and out of Ju Ju and Lakeland. I smiled at Seepage. thansk, jack
14:57. Tricky.
MER at the separated insertions.
Didn’t know that a JUJU could be called a ‘fetish’, or this meaning of ‘lap’.
I have heard of Borodin, and the Battle of BORODINO, and I’ve read War and Peace, so I obviously think the clue’s completely fair.
28.22
Really struggled with the second bit of the COUNTER thing and EMOTICON/WAGON LIT until I took my own advice for once and thought “could these be anagrams?”. Bingo though EMOTICON was biffed. I was lucky enough to vaguely remember BORODINO
Tough stuff
22:51
Good puzzle. Jack’s blog made me realise that SEMOLINA was a better clue than I first thought. I liked EMOTICON, WAGON LIT and SEEPAGE.
I would be really grateful if someone could write a book about a Spanish knight on a horse fighting his way across Russia to kill a whale. It would save me a lot of time.
Thaks to Jack and the setter.
Late to start this and pleased at 28 mins: good for me. Would have been pb and sub 20 but for 5 d not being counterargument and for misreading 8d as halfhearted.
My six-penneth… Anna Karenina best book ever writen, War and Peace not so good.
Had an hour (or two) to spare this evening so decided to try my hand at an average (100 Snitch) puzzle – a step up from yesterday. I had no real difficulty for the first 3/4 and started to wonder why it had been assessed quite so high. My last half dozen or so soon made that obvious. The Reefer/Seepage and Tailoring/Latinish/Wagon Lit groupings took nearly as long as the all the others, but definitely produced a satisfied feeling when loi Lows completed the grid. Invariant