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. | |
Fun and quick for me (40m)! Guessed areopagus correctly which took a mo but had no idea what it was, thx for the heads up!
31.28 DNF with exactly the same error as Jack. Libby Purves quoted (and named) the Areopagitica in her column yesterday so I have no excuse. I enjoyed SPRYLY. As I assembled the answer it looked more and more unlikely, until it wasn’t. Thanks Jack.
DNF
All three vowels misplaced for me. Liked most of it and was heading for a decent time, although the NW held me up before I had to permutate the vowels to their wrong places. Looking forward to ‘OAP’s argue terribly ………’ in the future and will get it wrong again I expect.
Thanks all.
14:09 having struggled a bit with AREOPAGUS and spent far too long dredging up PORT to go around ILL W at 1 across. Poor show on my part.
Thanks to compiler & blogger
40:08. it felt very slow compared to yesterday’s which just flew in by comparison. as with others had no idea about AREOPAGUS but it seemed the only logical answer. Thank you Jack and setter!
I share our blogger’s discomfort about clueing obscure foreign words only as anagrams, but this time I guessed correctly. 19’30” for a full house, which is on the quicker side for me so I guess the rest of the grid was relatively easy.
17’27”. No great difficulty. AREOPAGUS a familiar word for some reason – ancient Greek history or St. Paul or the French aréopage. BILLINGSGATE a bit of a chestnut, no? Also, any clue that begins OLD FISH MARKET … and has 12 letters is not going to be long in the solve. Many thanks.
I managed to guess the Greek one correctly, I even wondered to myself if it was connected to the Parthenon. I could see that (LOnI) was obviously a French sweet wine but couldn’t bring myself to remember it. Partly, I’m sure, because I can’t stand sweet wines, I never remember their names despite seeing them before. So I just couldn’t be bothered and pressed the reveal button, hence Last One (not) In.
A very easy 26 minutes and actually, I found much of it rather boring. Strangely, I managed to enter PILLWORT from wordplay right away, though I had never heard of it. The only two clues which gave me any trouble at all were AMATI and AREOPAGUS, both unknowns, but where there is more than one possible choice I seem to have very good intuition about which choice is more likely to be correct. Like one other solver, for 12ac I had AMADI at first (with AD 1 being “very early”), but it just didn’t look right, so I eventually saw the AT 1 possibility and plumped for that. And AREOPAGUS was clearly going to be an anagram — if I don’t see those right away, I just enter all the letters in some order and adjust it as I solve the crossers. After that, the correct ending was very vaguely remembered and the correct ordering seemed much more likely than any alternative.
FOI BILLINGSGATE so I didn’t think I was going to be able to do this one but all’s well including my best guess for LOI AREOPAGUS. So I’m a happy bunny.
15.10 with a bit of bother in the SE before finally latching on to spryly and primp. A few contestants for COD but I’m going for Ron weaselly.
Thx setter and blogger.
I really enjoyed this puzzle. Just for once I arrived at nearly all the answers by analysing the wordplay in the clues rather than biffing a word suggested by the clue as a whole and then seeing whether it parsed.
LOI was AREOPAGUS; although not in my active vocabulary, and if someone had asked me what AREOPAGUS meant I wouldn’t have had a clue, I must have seen it at some point in the past because it instantly felt right once I had written it in – and, of course, nothing else made sense given the checkers and the anagrist.
55 mins for a DNF as didn’t know sauternes and while I considered it, discounted it because I didn’t realise it has a silent S. Went for some spelling of SO-SCENES which is not really any better. And of course didn’t quite get AREaPoGUS
17’00”
In an almighty rush to get to post in time, flew out of the stalls and somehow kept going.
Having overslept, I had a forty-five minute route march, rather than a two-minute ferry crossing (no ferries Mondays or Tuesdays during the winter), to get to my couple of rubbers of Bridge. Got there with twenty-five minutes on the pub terrace, but after seventeen and a half the heavens opened causing extensive smudges.
All parsed but PILLWORT and the court were taken on trust.
Will try the same method next week; it’ll never work.
Thank you Jack and setter; sub 20s are treasured rarities these days.
Similar experience to David1 above: once I got going (past the PILLWORT hump!) I fairly flew through this, apart from he dreaded anagram and the unknown AMATI ( which I should have worked out from wordplay). GK helped with the rest, and sticking to the rules, mainly identifying the definition first. Lots of lovely clues, including COUPLE, SAUTERNES, SCISSORS and GADGETRY, even though I NHO Gary, Indiana.