Solving time: 33 minutes with two letters misplaced in my bête noire, an obscure foreign answer clued as an anagram; I’m looking at you 15dn! Other than that, there were a few unknowns constructable from wordplay and some really easy clues that might not have been out of place in a Quick cryptic, so all in all a good mix apart from the one aforementioned.
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 | Water fern sick wife found in dockland area (8) |
| PILLWORT | |
| ILL (sick) + W (wife) contained by [found in] PORT (dockland area). NHO this making its TfTT debut today, but the wordplay was clear once I had a checker in place. | |
| 5 | Item left in car with sloping back (6) |
| COUPLE | |
| L (left) contained by [in] COUPÉ (car with sloping back) | |
| 9 | Male US attorney with place in a Buddhist centre (8) |
| MANDALAY | |
| MAN (man), DA (US attorney), LAY (place). Mandalay is a major centre of Buddhism in Myanmar (Burma). | |
| 10 | Man on board thrown by deals regularly backfiring (6) |
| CASTLE | |
| CAST (thrown), then {d}E{a}L{s} [regularly] reversed [backfiring]. Yes, we know about rooks and that it’s now considered inappropriate to class all chess pieces as men… | |
| 12 | He made violins in the morning, very early! (5) |
| AMATI | |
| AM (in the morning) AT 1 (very early). Any one of five members of the family of Italian violin makers who lived at Cremona from about 1538 to 1740. | |
| 13 | Succulence mostly just in ices somehow (9) |
| JUICINESS | |
| Anagram [somehow] of JUS{t} [mostly] IN ICES | |
| 14 | Study post covering extremely useful discussion (12) |
| CONSULTATION | |
| CON (study) + STATION (post) containing [covering] U{sefu}L [extremely] | |
| 18 | Street trader’s period plugging a type of eel containing bone (12) |
| COSTERMONGER | |
| TERM (period) contained by [plugging] CONGER (a type of eel) itself containing OS (bone). A rarely-sighted double parcel / containment clue in a Times puzzle! I’ve learned today that ‘os’ is the singular of the more familiar ‘ossa’ meaning ‘bones’. | |
| 21 | Thus act, so to speak, getting sweet wine (9) |
| SAUTERNES | |
| Aural wordplay [so to speak]: SAUTERNES / “so” (thus) + “turn” (act). I’m not fluent in French but I believe the second S is silent. | |
| 23 | Prudish people principally dress in fine clothes (5) |
| PRIMP | |
| PRIM (prudish), P{eople} [principally]. I’ve always thought ‘primping’ more to do with personal grooming than clothes although they would inevitably be involved, but in Collins the first English definition of primp is ‘dress (oneself), especially in fine clothes’. Personal grooming seems to be confined to the American entries. | |
| 24 | Old rover loses right to supply narcotic drug (6) |
| OPIATE | |
| O (old), PI{r}ATE (rover) [loses right] | |
| 25 | Gizmos daughters obtain in Indiana port (8) |
| GADGETRY | |
| D (daughters) + GET (obtain) contained by [in] GARY (Indiana port] | |
| 26 | Retired American chap exuding sweetness (6) |
| SUGARY | |
| US (American) reversed [retired], GARY (chap). Gary x 2 in consecutive clues! I hope our evening contributor Gary sees this. | |
| 27 | With support large Yankee becomes sly and treacherous (8) |
| WEASELLY | |
| W (with), EASEL (support), L (large), Y (Yankee – NATO alphabet). Not the same spelling as the Harry Potter character we were treated to in last Wednesday’s Quick Cryptic. | |
| Down |
|
| 1 | Woman taking step to identify plains (6) |
| PAMPAS | |
| PAM (woman), PAS (step in ballet) | |
| 2 | Article in seagoing vessel having one dimension (6) |
| LINEAR | |
| A (article) contained by [in] LINER (seagoing vessel) | |
| 3 | Sport, one not a little tedious (9) |
| WEARISOME | |
| WEAR (sport), I (one), SOME (not a little) | |
| 4 | Further tweaking involving impartial fellows badly rated externally (12) |
| READJUSTMENT | |
| Anagram [badly] of RATED containing [externally] JUST (impartial) + MEN (fellows) | |
| 6 | Asian bloke arrested by call to attention (5) |
| OMANI | |
| MAN (bloke) contained [arrested] by OI! (call to attention) | |
| 7 | Pitiful way it turns up in City district (8) |
| PATHETIC | |
| PATH (way), then IT reversed [turns up] contained by [in] EC (City district of London – East Central) | |
| 8 | Service, say, involving archdeacon and offspring (8) |
| EVENSONG | |
| EG (say – for example) containing [involving] VEN (archdeacon) + SON (offspring) | |
| 11 | Old fish market’s scandal over presentation of accounts? (12) |
| BILLINGSGATE | |
| BILLINGS (presentation of accounts), GATE (scandal, after Watergate) | |
| 15 | Pa’s a rogue, appalling the High Court? (9) |
| AREOPAGUS | |
| Anagram [appalling] of PA’S A ROGUE. This came down to a coin-toss which I lost when I transposed the O and the second A. I have an aversion to clues like this in which unless one happens to know an obscure foreign word there is no alternative path to the correct answer. Here’s the entry in Collins:
1.a. the hill to the northwest of the Acropolis in Athens This has come up here three times over the years, most recently 6 years ago. I didn’t know it on any occasion. |
|
| 16 | Southern explorer in charge of vessels finally going north — cutters (8) |
| SCISSORS | |
| S (southern) + ROSS (explorer – Sir James Clark Ross) + IC (in charge of) + {vessel}S [finally], reversed [going north] | |
| 17 | Arrogant fool with high-class china (8) |
| ASSUMING | |
| ASS (fool), U (high-class), MING (china) | |
| 19 | Beam, seeing part of Carousel in telecast (6) |
| LINTEL | |
| Hidden in [part of] {Carouse}L IN TEL{ecast} | |
| 20 | Mole crossing railway line with agility (6) |
| SPRYLY | |
| SPY (mole) containing [crossing] RY (railway) + L (line) | |
| 22 | Husbandless woman in compound (5) |
| ESTER | |
| {h}ESTER or EST{h}ER (woman) [husbandless]. In chemistry, any of several organic compounds. | |
I come across the French aréopage in Le Canard enchaîné occasionally, so that wasn’t a problem. I worked this one right after doing yesterday’s. They were both fine puzzles, and I don’t mind that they were on the easy side.
I managed to guess right on the totally unknown AEROPAGUS so I managed to be all green. Never heard of PILLWORT either, but easily gettable. I shared your hate of obscure words where you have several possible solutions from the anagram fodder. It is annoying when that is the only thing wrong in your solution (although I was fine today).
Not if you spelled it like that! (Which is exactly what I did)
Luckily I didn’t, but I couldn’t remember how it was spelled when I typed the comment!
Liked this. COD to AREOPAGUS. Sorry, Jack!
17:23
Out of curiosity, what makes AREOPAGUS COD for you?
A) It was the seat of government in the cradle of democracy, B) it was likely to slow down the Bletchley Parkers.
And it added a hit of spice to an otherwise rather bland (but agreeable) puzzle.
συμφωνώ και επαυξάνω!
19:00
DNK PILLWORT, but as Jack says. DNK, I realized, that a coupé has a sloping back. And all I knew of MANDALAY was that’s where the flotilla was. Biffed COSTERMONGER, parsed post-submission. One man’s obscurity is another man’s GK, but I can sympathise with Jack on AREOPAGUS. I knew it mainly from Areopagitica, Milton’s defense of freedom of expression. “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. ”
Flotilla? I woulda said Mandalay is in the middle of the country, hundreds of kilometres from the sea. And indeed it is. Maybe the flotilla was sailed up the river for a few hundred Ks? Or maybe it’s a vague remembery of a song, as I have: “On the roads to Mandalay” where roads are sea-routes, so you thought Mandalay was on the sea?
Edit: And having googled: it’s a poem, not a song, and there is a flotilla there. Sorry, for doubting you!
Mandalay is on the Irrawaddy which even that far upstream is a great river, very wide if shallow in places.
“On the road to Mandalay” is one of the rhyming couplets in Ian Dury & The Blockheads Hit me with your Rhythm Stick
Interesting that we have two GARYs today in consecutive clues, 25a &26a, one for the Indiana port and one for the man’s name. I thought this was similar in solving to yesterday but I had never heard of AMATI and failed to see the AT1 even with A?A?I, and AREOPAGUS. I liked PILLWORT, another NHO but the wordplay was kind. COSTERMONGER took a while as I was convinced the eel was spelled CONGA, getting my fish and dances mixed up. Thanks for explaining the silent ‘S’ in SAUTERNES as I was wondering where the last ‘S’ came from.
Thanks Jack and setter.
Just under 60 minutes. The choice in 15 down is easy since as far as I know there are no words which end in -POGUS. Including PAGUS I found 12 words using -PAGUS ie AREOPAGUS, CEPHALOPAGUS, CEPHALOTHORACOPAGUS, CRANIOPAGUS, HARPAGUS, ISCHIOPAGUS, OMPHALOPAGUS, PAGUS, PYGOPAGUS, RACHIPAGUS, THORACOPAGUS, XIPHOPAGUS. Wiktionary lists -PAGUS as an English suffix but not -POGUS.
Thanks Jack
Thanks for the tip about the suffix, but since I never heard of any of the examples quoted I’m unlikely to remember it.
Not to mention Mr. Snuffleupagus (or asparagus, which is what I relied on).
If your case for non-obscurity consists of listing a lot of words which even Chambers considers too obscure for inclusion, it may not be as watertight as you think!
Oesophagus is less obscure!
However, I knew Areopagus from Acts 17 where it gets three mentions – it was the venue for the apostle Paul debating with the philosophers of Athens.
This went from impossible to easy in just five minutes. At first I was getting nothing, then I was biffing the long ones. I saw Areopagus at once, for the same reason as Kevin. The Billingsgate clue we have seen before, and Gary is just about the only port in Indiana. I ended up on pampas, which was impenetrable when I began but obvious when I finished.
Time: 16:42
18.38. Had all but four in under 12 but could not get WEARISOME and MANDALAY at the top and PRIMP and the court (LOI, guessed) at the bottom. I was standing on that hill in Athens a few months ago but it didn’t come to me now. Thanks Jack for unravelling the biffed COSTERMONGER and SCISSORS (one of my favourite words, who was the genius who decided to spell it like that?) As Quadrophenia observes, having consecutive Garys is quite something. All I know about Mandalay is that there’s a road to it. Nobody ever sang about the road to Gary Indiana.
From Lenny Bruce:
Lenny Bruce is dead but he didn’t commit any crime
He just had the insight to rip off the lid before its time
I rode with him in a taxi once
Only for a mile and a half, seemed like it took a COUPLE of months
[Which inadvertently makes it sound like Lenny was kind of WEARISOME…]
Maybe not but there’s this, and a zombie short called the Long Road to Gary from 2005. Might not be Indiana, mind
Ha! I should make clear that when I said that I obviously didn’t actually know. Long Road to Gary, where the sun comes up like thunder…sounds good!
Michael Jackson might have sung about the road to Gary. I seem to recall that’s where he was born.
Guess Bob and Lenny were just stoned…
12:28. I felt the same as Jack about AREOPAGUS. However, I just thought “sod it” and looked it up. It turns out my personal solving rules are flexible!
22:24, but with one wrong – one of the unknowns – but not AREOPAGUS, where I managed to arrange all the letters successfully. No, it was the easy one PILLWORT, where I had PALLWORT – a confusion of ail and ill perhaps – but how 7dn is that.
On edit at 7:43 am – I meant to say I wanted 5ac to be ANGLIA for the car with sloping back: the old Ford Anglia whose rear window sloped the “wrong” way
9.25
I agree with Jack about AREOPAGUS. I guessed it (based on asparagus, I think, although possibly a very vague bell rang regarding Milton, as above), which isn’t the most satisfying end to a good puzzle.
Thanks both.
Finished in 17:54 with no problems. I was a little slow at the end to get OMANI and LOI COUPLE. Another day when I took almost as long on the QC as on the main puzzle.
Thanks Jack and setter
22′ with a biff on LOI AREOPAGUS, sensing that “pagus” was the correct suffix.. but happy to sign your petition regarding this type of clue! PILLWORT easily constructed but NHO, and the rest quite straightforward and nicely put together. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
Did the hard work, especially AREOPAGUS, but bombed on GADGETRY. Is this the place from which Mr. Cooper took his name?
Thanks jack and setter.
Referring to yesterday Rob, I’m glad you enjoyed it and I envy you because the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour never got to Oz. Tip of the hat to Jimmy Reed…
I am another member of the IDAS – the “I Dislike Areopagus Society”! Just over 15 minutes but I cheated to check the monstrous Greek anagram.
24 minutes with LOI PRIMP following SPRYLY. I didn’t know PILLWORT but there was no choice. I remembered St Paul’s sermon at the AREOPAGUS. The two Garys were unfortunate. Is that why Match of the Day is letting him go? Expecting us to know the port was a stretch already. But I knew enough, so I liked this one. Thank you Jack and setter.
At last all those Bible study sessions have paid off!
30 mins so on the easier side. Needless to say, LOI, the NHO, AREOPAGUS. Luckily, left with the four letters AROU I guessed correctly, for once.
I used to own a Ford Anglia once though it was the estate version so the rear window went the right way! I rebuilt the engine to 1600 and gave it 5 1/2 J tyres. Looked like Grandad’s car, but went like the clappers!
I liked, and do like, SAUTERNES, my favourite being Ch Rieussec. You are right Jack, the second S is silent.
Very enjoyable.
Thanks Jack and setter.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull Opiate to the drains
(Ode to a Nightingale, Keats)
25 mins pre-brekker, with all the easy stuff done quickly and the tricky ones more slowly. Pillwort was gettable, Amati rang a bell, and I wasn’t Court out by the Areo.
Ta setter and J
This took me a minute or two to get into but was a steady solve after that. LOI was spryly, not a word I ever expect to use in conversation.. but no probs with the Areopagus. Even if I didn’t know the word, areapogus would look pretty weird to me.
Castle = rook always sets my teeth on edge.
I’m with you on the castle=rook! If it had been defined as a move on a board I suppose it might be too easy??
DNF, a return to OWL Club with ‘Amadi’ rather than AMATI – I didn’t know the violin maker, and I thought ‘very early’ was giving the year AD 1 rather than a time of day.
– NHO PILLWORT but the cluing was helpful
– Didn’t know ‘os’ as ‘bone’ for COSTERMONGER
– Remember finding it weirdly amusing when I found out there’s a place in the US called Gary and it has stuck with me, which helped a lot with getting GADGETRY
– Guessed AREOPAGUS correctly
– Couldn’t have told you that a LINTEL is a beam, but again the cluing was kind
Thanks Jack and setter.
COD Billingsgate
I only got it because « os » is French for bone!
AREOPAGUS remembered as a thing but I couldn’t have told you what it was. PILLWORT entered and taken on trust that there was such a plant. Otherwise no problems at all. A rare excursion under 20 minutes, 18. We’ve had people moaning about CASTLE before, but they’re always told that it’s in the dictionaries so there.
Yes, long ago there was a retired colonel contributor who went into meltdown whenever ‘castle’ came up. I understand the chess purist POV to some extent, but what’s never been explained to me (perhaps it will happen today!) is why, if ‘castle’ is not a valid name for the piece, is there an official move in the game called ‘to castle / castling’?
And why isn’t shaped like a bird?
Castle is indeed a valid name for the piece. Regular players always say rook though, abbreviation R, this is just jargon, to help identify proper players from tyros .. I’m sure other sports/games have similar jargon.
A sort of chess U and non-U.
Yes I’ve often wondered about that. Perhaps it does at least explain why people (proper players or tyros) never call a knight a horse. There’s no move called horsing.
I think young children learning chess often say horse (or horsy).
11.45, with vague memory of AREOPAGUS (and Gary Indiana, the Village Voice art critic). I’ve never thought of OMAN as being in Asia, but I suppose it is.
Biffed COSTERMONGER and READJUSTMENT.
LOI COUPLE
COD SAUTERNES.
As far as anagrams obscurities are concerned AREOPAGUS has got to be the most obscure in any crossword ever set!
Please don’t lets start a competition!
Challenge accepted. How about TERGIVERSATOR, NAHUATL, SHANTUNG, or NOSFERATU? All have been clued by anagrams in the Times this year. And I got them all wrong, among others.
I really like to solve the whole crossword without any help, in common with many on here I assume. So it’s really frustrating to be beaten by an anagram I couldn’t do anything about. I did everything I could, wrote out all the permutations, picked the best-looking one, but it was about 1 of 4 this time, nothing other than luck that could have prevented the pink square.
Shantung is similarly obscure tbh
It always comes back to that old cliche about one person’s obscurity being another’s GK. I have no problem with shantung (a type of silk) or Nosferatu, but the other two that Hipponym mentions were quite impossible for me! I got the letter salad in the right order today, but it was very much an semi-educated guess 😅
I suggest you check out my latest Mephisto blog, where I explained answers such as XIPHISTERNUM, YNAMBU, KGOTLA, VEADAR, and XYLOBALSAMUM.
But at least solvers who aspire to solve Mephisto know what they’re likely to find.
Found the TfTT website in about 2007 or 2008 when googling all possible anagram combinations of some musical instrument that wasn’t in any single dictionary, paper or online. But was in google! About 9 letters, think it started with N. Would take too long to find it, but it was seriously obscure to be not in dictionaries.
Occasionally dip into old puzzles, and there was one from the 1990s where the solution was so obscure they didn’t even write a clue for it! That’s certainly the winner, for me.
No, that would be one of the many that tripped me up.
19.23 but one wrong: vowels misplaced in ‘areopagus’. Nice to know I’m not alone, though I really should have remembered the Milton.
6.50. Guessed AREOPAGUS. Thought the double Gary was clumsy.
11.26 WOE
Yes that one but no complaints as should have gone back to it and paused to re-think. Shame, as that would have been a decent time for me.
Otherwise liked it, as words like PILLWORT could be fairly confidently worked out from the w/p even if a NHO
Thanks setter and Jackkt
So it wasn’t DILLWEED, of which I’d heard, though why a deed would be a dock area I couldn’t fathom. So I tried PILLWEED, wondering how dock areas provided yet another euphemism for this crossword’s occasional obsession with micturition. Got it right in the end, but probably explains why my time was a couple of minutes longer than yesterday.
Rather liked the Oliver! feel to this one, with BILLINGSGATE crossing with COSTERMONGER. If only Fagin’s first name had been Gary!
On “obscure foreign words”, I had three goes at getting SAUTERNES right. There’s an issue when OFWs are clued by “aural wordplay”, too!
Two thirds done before I went to the gym. Finished the rest afterwards very quickly, with the NW corner holding me up.
As far as AREOPAGUS is concerned, I can only say, thank goodness for barred puzzles, as I have seen it before.
Lovely puzzle. Thanks for the blog Jack.
16:45. I was pleased and relieved to have guessed correctly with AREOPAGUS – even changing from AREAPOGUS a little before submitting. But I agree it’s not a fair clue for those of us without the GK. I also put in an extra bit of effort to successfully find PILLWORT, initially tempted by the area of PARK that a Dockland might encompass.
COD: COUPLÉ (ITÉM).
Guessed the correct placement of the remaining letters to get LOI AREOPAGUS.
Otherwise, nice straightforward puzzle so I thought, and I redeemed myself slightly after flailing around on a supposedly easy puzzle yesterday!
13:06
9:40. I agree about the anagrammed obscurity. I was fortunate in that I happened to remember it from past puzzles, but less fortunate in that I also misremembered it, and my AEROPAGUS got in the way of the COSTERMONGER for a minute or two.
I rather enjoyed the appearance of two quite different GARYs.
Yes, I’m looking forward to getting a couple of SHARONS.
Or perhaps even three: Tate, Ariel, fruit!
surely one of the Sharons would have to be alive!
Yes in the spirit of the new rules perhaps we should have Osbourne!
What about Fluffy Dice Sharon?
1a NHO Pillwort. Needed all the checkers. Abstruse IMHO, but then I have to admit I know few plants.
POI 9a Mandalay is the one the Myanmar govt haven’t renamed yet. “An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ‘crost the Bay!…” (Kipling.)
POI 21a Sauternes; rip-offs are available spelled Sauterne to avoid getting sued.
27a Weaselly. I see from the dictionary that this may have 1 or 2 Ls. Ron Weasley added to Cheating Machine. Didn’t bother with the twins.
15d Areopagus. HHO, but of course had forgotten about. TBH I used the C.M. anagram feature to get this, so no problem with the spelling.
Double-checked AEROPAGUS and revealed LOI GADGETRY, otherwise this fairly gentle puzzle felt about my level 😄 Liked BILLINGSGATE. Thanks all.
23:22
LOI CASTLE, delayed by forgetting that a rook can also be called a castle.
NHO AREOPAGUS, but it fitted the letters.
COD to COUPLE.
Thanks Jack and setter
Yes 2 x Gary and 2 x just for the J.
Rook is from the old Persian “rukh” – chariot.
surely one of the Sharons would have to be alive
Dave
Well spotted re J. And the rook in French is “la tour” and “der turm” in German
30:41 – I too had to guess at 15d as my LOI, but got luckier than our blogger! Didn’t know PILLWORT but it seemed highly plausible. Had been wondering if MILLWALL was anywhere near the docklands, but I didn’t think it was and couldn’t justify it anyway. A steady solve without any major holdups.
18:03 but…
…cheated with AREOPAGUS – when you have all of the checkers and the anagrist and you still can’t see it, look it up – no idea either what it is, nor about Greek suffixes.
GARY is the only place in Indiana that sprung to my mind – where Michael Jackson and his family sprung from.
Thanks Jack and setter
jackkt
Castle/castling involves putting the king into safety (his castle), surrounded by a wall of pawns and a tower. A rook is used but it is wrong to call that piece a castle, even if the rook looks like many castles in North Wales.
I’m still not convinced that ‘castle’ can be altogether ‘wrong’ although it may not be the preferred name amongst English-speaking afficionados of the game. The name in many other European languages refers to the castle-like appearance of the piece.
For example the following, all meaning ‘tower’:
French: Tour
German: Turm
Spanish: Torre
Italian: Torre
Portuguese: Torre
Polish: Wieża
Dutch: Toren
Finnish: Torni
Swedish: Torn
Danish: Tårn
It isn’t wrong. Gauche perhaps, but not wrong.
When I was young, the “rook” was always the “castle” – I didn’t know it by it’s proper name until I was older and started to do the odd chess puzzle.
Since it is not at all unusual to call the piece a “castle” (where else does the term “castling” come from), I don’t see anything wrong with the clue/answer at all.
Thee isn’t anything wrong, as several of us have been at pains to point out. If you call a rook a castle every chessplayer will know exactly what you mean, just as if you call a napkin a serviette, that will be understood as well ..
18 mins. Held up by biffing STEPSONS without knowing why, so when 5a didn’t work I re-examined it. AREOPAGUS VHO. (Vaguely heard of) Will use that from now on!
13:30 – AREOPAGUS came to mind having just listened to Stephen Fry reading his Odyssey – not quite as lofty as Milton, but did the trick.
Somehow got it out but found it clunky. Funny how some days it just seems not to be so satisfying and not sure just why.
35 mins for me. Pleased with that. Couple of NHO. Double Garyed!
WEASELLY looked odd to me either a double L and 25A held me up as a I was looking for DD given the pluralisation.
LOI: PRIMP
COD: COUPLE
17:34 today, so must have been on the easy side. I’m very pleased if I get in in under 30 minutes. DNN Areopagus but fortunately made the right choice.
AMATI was FOI followed by LINEAR and PAMPAS. Then a steady solve with LOI the unknown AREOPAGUS, which I had to guess at. PAGUS seemed more likely than POGUS, and so it came to pass! 16:42. Thanks setter and Jack.
Why is it with an unknown anagrammed word that I almost always make the wrong decision when deciding what letters go where? There seem to be a lot of solvers who had never heard of AREOPAGUS, but I seem to be the only one to put in AREAPOGUS. Very frustrating particularly as I sailed through the rest of it in a speedy (for me) 21.48.
Interesting question. Areapogus looks quite wrong to me; but I don’t know why.
A gentle puzzle, all done in 23 minutes. Held up for a time in the SE corner and the ___Y_Y word, but eventually it all fell into place. Once every ten years or so some knowledge of ancient Athenian history comes in handy, so 15dn was not a problem.
FOI – CASTLE
LOI – SPRYLY
COD – COUPLE
Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.
At first glance this looked hard. But having got my first two clues ( 13a and 4d), it wasn’t.
I derived the NHO PILLWORT fairly easily. And I guessed AREOPAGUS correctly; NHO it either.
LOI SPRYLY having gone with SPORTY first time through; I thought Spot = Mole worked; GADGETRY forced a correction.
One session and easily under an hour.
David