I am standing in for Piquet today, and will be blogging every alternate Wednesday, for a while. Fortunately, a fairly benign offering to start things off with. No unknowns, tidy surface readings, a good effort I thought.
I use the standard conventions like underlining the definition, CD for cryptic definition, DD for a double one, *(anargam) and so forth. Nho = “not heard of” and in case of need the Glossary is always handy
| Across | |
| 1 | Unacceptable behaviour of naughty pupils (3,4) |
| BAD FORM – a DD, the second a jocular one. I hope. | |
| 5 | Builder of bridges in hostel for dossers (7) |
| TELFORD – hidden, as above. Thomas Telford, one of the great engineers. Amongst many other projects he built a road viaduct across the Loose valley, just a mile from where I live. Built it around 1828, and still in use today. | |
| 9 | Crossing middle of hall, led by tango dancers (9) |
| TRAVERSAL – T (tango, NATO alphabet) + RAVERS, dancers, + (h)AL(l) | |
| 10 | Second pet clipped in repeated pattern (5) |
| MOTIF – MO (a second) + TIF(f), a pet | |
| 11 | Workers’ movement wasted inordinate sum (5,8) |
| TRADE UNIONISM – *(INORDINATE SUM) | |
| 13 | Regularly spurned fiancé’s kiss, bold and clumsy (8) |
| INEXPERT – (f)I(a)N(c)E + X + PERT, bold | |
| 15 | Cases of urban resistance suggest trouble (6) |
| UNREST – U(rba)N + R(esistanc)E + S(ugges)T | |
| 17 | Former leading lady posed with unknown substitute (6) |
| ERSATZ – ER, (our late queen) + SAT (posed) + Z, an unknown. German for false, the opposite of ECHT, real. | |
| 19 | Rabble crushing arthropod’s shell and tail (8) |
| SHADOWER – A(rthropo)D in SHOWER, a rabble | |
| 22 | Chicanery in spades, with repeated string-pulling? (5,8) |
| SHARP PRACTICE – S(pades) + HARP PRACTICE, ie pulling strings | |
| 25 | Audibly slap Italian painter (5) |
| LIPPI – LIPP, sounds like lip, + I(talian). But why lip = slap is not clear to me. Several Italian Renaissence painters were called Lippi.
On edit: Lippi sounds like “Lippy,” short for lipstick, see comments! |
|
| 26 | Doctor and a colleague checking one’s ready for theatre (9) |
| DRAMATISE – DR + I’S in MATE, a colleague | |
| 27 | Quiet because eating seconds of blancmange and jelly (7) |
| SILENCE – (b)L(ancmange) + (j)E(lly), in SINCE, because | |
| 28 | Spy on me, travelling in Bolivia and Colombia? (7) |
| EPONYMS – *(SPY ON ME). An eponym is a word derived from someone’s name. In this case the someones would be Simon Bolivar and Christopher Columbus. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Wound some quiet Iberians up (4) |
| BITE – a reverse hidden, as above. What (eg) mosquitos do. | |
| 2 | One conscripted after cycling into Delaware (7) |
| DRAFTEE – RAFTE (after, cycling) in DE, Delaware. See cycling in the glossary, if unclear. | |
| 3 | Building work is on time (5) |
| OPERA – OP (work) + ERA. Slightly terse definition, I thought. | |
| 4 | Gathers wrong military intelligence on cutters (8) |
| MISHEARS – MI + SHEARS, cutters. | |
| 5 | Gift of story books (6) |
| TALENT – TALE (story) + NT, books, ie the new testament. | |
| 6 | Mocked and hit setter in school (9) |
| LAMPOONED – LAM (hit) + ONE, our setter, in POD, school | |
| 7 | Not a member of away team (7) |
| OUTSIDE – OUT (away) + SIDE (team) | |
| 8 | Injurious to reputation of someone brilliant and loving (10) |
| DEFAMATORY – DEF (brilliant, apparently) + AMATORY, loving. Def, a slang hip-hop term according to Collins. | |
| 12 | Indigestion remedy averts ills abroad (5,5) |
| LIVER SALTS – *(AVERTS ILLS). Not a medicine I’ve ever used. Andrews little liver pills, rings a vague bell | |
| 14 | Quietly point out dodgy financial contract (3,6) |
| PUT OPTION – P (quietly) + *(POINT OUT). | |
| 16 | Hunting of cheetahs condemned (3,5) |
| THE CHASE – *(CHEETAHS) | |
| 18 | Trophy wife fell at last for surgeon’s knife (7) |
| SCALPEL – SCALP (trophy) + (wif)E (fel)L | |
| 20 | Climbing tree, foul inside and full of beetles (7) |
| WEEVILY – EVIL (foul) inside YEW rev. Hornblower used to tap his ship’s biscuits on the table before eating them, to dislodge the weevils… | |
| 21 | Show resentment while supporting brother (6) |
| BRIDLE – BR(other) + IDLE, while as in while away time. | |
| 23 | Idealised representation of Shakespearean villain gripping millions (5) |
| IMAGO – M in IAGO, the baddie in Othello. | |
| 24 | Movie stars both turned out to be trouble (4) |
| MESS – M(ovi)E S(tar)S. | |
I think Lippy is short for lipstick
Very much on the wavelength with this. No holdups except taking half an hour to get a readable printout. Slap is the theatre name for makeup so just a homophone (audibly) of lippy (lipstick) with Italian painter being the definition. COD to MISHEARS.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
27 minutes with one error LAPPI for LIPPI as I didn’t know the painter and I missed the lipstick / slap reference. NHO PUT OPTION.
I hated every minute of my solve as the new grid and font size are so tiny. I suppose I shall have to resort to copy-and-pasting into Word and increasing the size there. So much for progress!
Cannot find the way to put in word breaks.
Probably depends what hardware you’re using. On my iPad, clicking on the cog-wheel at top right then scrolling to the bottom of the menu offers a toggle-switch to turn word-breaks on or off.
I use a Mac, and log in via the CClub – it’s at (I’ve put spaces in so it will print)
https: // www . thetimes . com / puzzleclub / crosswordclub /
There is a gear in the top right of the puzzle, and the word break setting is in the pop-up
DNF
34′, but couldn’t figure out MESS. No idea about ‘slap’, not knowing ‘lippy’–ta Bruce. I believe ERSATZ is German for ‘substitute’, although it’s come to mean ‘fake’ in English.
Morning Jerry. 12:15 for me. Pretty straightforward. Don’t think I knew TELFORD, but I hope he was able to tighten up that valley for you.
I’m probably the only one here who never stopped to think about the naming of Colombia and Bolivia so that was my piece of learning for today.
Finished with thirty seconds or so of panic over LIPPI until the penny dropped.
Blitzed through the first 3/4 at really *way*-below PB pace, only to be completely flummoxed by LIVER SALTS and INEXPERT. Seconds turned to minutes, which turned to 15 minutes.
No holdups for me. I even saw “lippy” even though I’d never heard of LIPPI, so I was confident at that one. Couldn’t see how the wordplay worked for BAMBOOZLE at a glance so I decided to come back to it later but forgot. Telford’s most famous bridge is probably the one to Anglesey, the world’s first suspension bridge, also still in use I think.
I’m assuming BAMBOOZLE is an autocorrected LAMPOONED. Otherwise that’s a lot of pinks!
Indeed! I did put the right answer in and I was all green, but had a senior moment when typing my comment.
I biffed Lippi thanks to Browning, but couldn’t see why – then I considered the possible meanings of slap – aha! I had only vaguely heard of Telford, but I’m tired of missing hiddens, so in he went.
Time: 37:10
I’m a full-time computer programmer, so generally not scared of the paperless option, but one of the reasons I like to print out the crossword is to get *away* from computers for a while, and relax on my sofa with a distraction-free pen and paper rather than staring at a screen.
I did enjoy the crossword this morning, but I was definitely hampered by the tiny text and even tinier grid which made the solve a lot more of a chore. I don’t have my time to share as I was so annoyed by the quality of the printout that I forgot to start my timer!
Same here and only started solving online after retiring.
If the Club version changes to that new version I was planning to revert to paper but it sounds like even that is broken.
You can fiddle with the scaling to alter the text size, but not too much or the puzzle starts falling over the edge!
Faced with this problem at midnight last night, I found it easiest to copy and paste into a word document to get everything into a manageable size…
26:11. Struggled a bit to see BRIDLE and LIPPI. Eventually got there and thought the latter was quite neat. The rest of the puzzle went in fairly easily until the SE corner where I found the wordplay tougher.
The Crossword Club seems to be missing from the website and the app today… ain’t technology marvellous!
19:22*
I’ve taken to doing the Quick Crossword as a warm-up of late and I duly worked my way through it and as usual submitted off grid as I don’t try to do it quickly and I allow myself to get distracted. I thought it was a bit harder today and I was surprised it took me the best part of 20 minutes. It was only when I clicked on the full puzzle that I realised my error.
No problems today, aside from not being totally sure how DEFAMATORY worked and only remembering LIPPI when I saw the cryptic.
Thanks to both.
Agree no crossword clue, very annoying, and a tiny grid and clues once I’d finally worked out how to print it by sending myself an email), all of which ruined the enjoyment.
Guessed LIPPI &MESS, luckily.
Bievenue Jerry, ta for the blog.
This took me longer than it should have. Held up by BRIDLE and WEEVILY, though very much liked the latter when I saw it. Not mad about ‘pert’ for ‘bold’, but at least the answer was obvious.
9.20
Bit of a canter-through, only held up by MESS at the end. I liked “Former leading lady” for ER.
WEEVILY reminded me of the scene in ‘Master and Commander’ where Jack Aubrey advises Maturin to choose the lesser of two.
COD SHARP PRACTICE
LOI MESS
One of Jack Aubrey’s best – and he remembered the punchline.
Whizzed through this until the last two in the SE. I spent a couple of minutes on EPONYMS, and only then did I see WEEVILY. 15 minutes. COD to SHARP PRACTICE. Today’s ear worm, Gracie Fields taking her harp to a party and nobody asking her to play. Thank you Jerry and setter.
Complete, no aids, time about 45 mins.
LOI LIPPI a total guess. MOTIF not understood as NHO Tiff=pet. I thought MOTET was just as likely, same patterns repeat throughout the piece.
First came across ERSATZ in The Colditz Story where the POWs complained about the Ersatz coffee.
My Primary School was named after Thomas TELFORD. Same idea as Brunel University.
OPERA=building seems pretty unfair. And setter=one not very obvious, unless the setter is the King.
The Venn diagram of people who know about LIVER SALTS and use the slang DEF must be vanishingly small.
COD EPONYMS
Yes I like to think I’m VENNerable these days. I know (but don’t use) DEF and from early childhood recall Andrews LIVER SALTS from my parents’ bathroom cupboard where they came in tablet form. I’d no idea what they were for but found that if you put one in water the result was a nice fizzy drink.
Well, fizzy anyway!
I’ve just realised from what you said that I never parsed DEFAMATORY. But like Olivia, I was keen on Andrews Liver Salts in water as a child – the only fizzy drink we had access to, as I wasn’t allowed my great aunt’s Lucozade!
If the bottom’s falling out of your world take Andrews, and let the world fall out of your bottom …
About 15 minutes.
– Completely missed that TELFORD was a hidden
– Have heard of Marcello LIPPI the football manager, so assumed there was a painter of that name too
– NHO PUT OPTION but it was the only realistic option with the checkers in place
Thanks Jerry and setter.
FOI Bite
LOI Liver salts
COD Dramatise
25 mins is a decent time for me but it felt like quite hard work, not on this setters wavelength. Thanks Jerry and setter.
P.S. The usual Club option was missing on the puzzles page at time of writing but one can be found in the list of links in the page footer.
44:50 was held up by TRAVERSAL, ERSATZ and MESS but time is good by my standards.
Straight down the middle of the fairway in 24.39. Needed Jerry’s help to understand EPONYMS (I mean, who knew?) and the ER part of ERSATZ. I knew Fra Filippo Lippi but thought slap was greasepaint, so that took a while. LOsI BRIDLE and MESS.
From Gates of Eden:
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths OUTSIDE the Gates of Eden
MESS – ‘turned out’ is a bit of a stretch to indicate first and last letters only.
BRIDLE – clue would actually have been improved in accuracy by inserting ‘away’ after ‘while’. I don’t think ‘while’ on its own indicates ‘idle’.
Yes, I thought that was not great.
Agreed about ‘idle’ = ‘while’.
12’43” in tiny font. Agree re terse OPERA. Knew ERSATZ from WW2 stories of ersatz coffee being burnt acorns. LIPPI LOI.
Thanks jerry and setter, and all those working on the sites.
11:22. No dramas. LOI ERSATZ. I was slightly taken aback for the vague definition for OPERA, but I see it is OK. I’m another who doesn’t like the small print format. Thanks Jerry and setter.
Can anyone help me with TIFF = PET?
They both mean a spat, a minor quarrel …
thanks – never heard pet in that context before
Chambers has ” 2. a display of irritation, a pet, a huff” under tiff^1
New to me as well
That meaning of PET is one I only see in crosswordland.
You would see plenty of it in historical fiction, eg G Heyer.
13.28
Also liked WEEVILY, both for the word, and the same evocation of that marvellous series of books. (Maybe it is time for a re-read).
Solved on the normal puzzle site rather than the Club page and (as mentioned on the QC blog) I find it much quicker but sympathies for everyone struggling with the changes.
40 mins.
Entertaining puzzle.
Thanks, Jerry.
I’m another who is not impressed by the smaller grid and the tiny font size. It was alright before so why change it?
15.52 A straight through solve held up by MESS at the end, convinced the movie was ET and the stars something else. “Turned out” as an emptying indicator is perfectly OK, but I think might be an innovation.
My grandfather used to mix Andrews Liver Salts into orange squash for us kids as ersatz fizzy orange. Cheap, cheerful and probably harmless!
Sorry Z Replied above before reading the rest of the comments. Similar Andrews experience.
One error (LAPPI) after a slow stagger over the line struggling with the SE corner. The word WEEVILY just not coming to mind despite spotting the climbing tree early. Struggled with SHARP PRACTICE thinking it had to be something PLUCKING before BRIDLE fell.
I have found this the hardest of the week so far which seems to go against the consensus.
Biffed in SCALPEL as well before removing it thinking the literal wouldn’t be that kind. Scalp=trophy finally clicked though.
COD to DRAMATISE
Thanks blogger and setter
Similar experience: struggled all the way through this – definitely not on the setter’s wavelength. Quite a few lookups, but they didn’t help much. Think I’m distracted, as this is my worst performance in months.
An unusually fast solve, 26 minutes, with no problems really.
Shall not be posting for a day or two while I change computers.
Thanks to JerryW and setter.
POI 5a (Thomas) Telford, aka “The colossus of roads” ho ho! He is not responsible for the bridge at Ironbridge just down the road from the eponymous (see 28a) Telford; he “observed that it was grossly over-designed for its function, and many of the component parts were poorly cast.” (Wikipedia). However IMHO it is pretty, and dramatic.
19a Shadower. The much missed Rotter, late of this parish, had Terry Thomas, who was always calling rabbles showers, as his avatar.
25a Lippi biffed. I was unable to make the link to lipstick.
6d Lampooned. I was delayed a while by misparsing it as Lamped (hit) with an inexplicable OON for setter in school. Doh.
20d Weevily. Hornblower may have tapped his biscuits; others were just pleased to get a bit of extra protein.
23d Imago. I recognised the word (insects) but wasn’t sure of the other def.
24d Mess biffed. Thanks for the parsing JerryW.
From BITE to DRAMATISE in 17:19. As an avid watcher of narrowboat Vlogs, I find TELFORD’s name cropping up repeatedly, as the Vloggers travel under or over his constructions. Needed the W from SHADOWER before WEEVILY hove into view. Also found OPERA for building a bit vague. Thanks setter and Jerry.
SIZE OF GRID AND CLUES
I know others have commented but the change to the size of the printed version is completely unusable and ruined my morning’s usual enjoyment. PLEASE can this be rectified and go back to what it was?
With a magnifying glass I managed to complete this pleasant offering in about 18m.
20 minutes. A good one to get back on track after yesterday. I remembered Fra Filippo LIPPI from when we “did” the Renaissance at school and the “stage make-up” sense of ‘slap’ from previous outings. Like several others, a MER at the ‘Building’ def for OPERA. Needed all checked letters for my LOI SHADOWER. Took a while to get, but I liked EPONYMS for ‘Bolivia and Colombia?’
14:10 – not much to report except to add my protest to the change in size. I hope and assume it is a temporary glitch since there is no apparent reason for squashing it into the top half of the page (negligible saving on ink perhaps).
17:02
Swift and mainly OK, though thought MESS was a bit meh! Everything else parsed – OPERA = building was not my favourite either.
Thanks Jerry and setter
I had typed some comments but was then confronted by the dreaded Error 500 message when I tried to post them, and I just can’t be bothered to try again.
If you click on the back button when you get Error 500 when submitting a comment, it will take you back to the previous page complete with the comment box filled with whatever you had typed.
It may take you back, it doesn’t work for me!
If you reload the page you get there eventually. I copy comments for peace of mind, but haven’t actually lost one yet ..
I don’t like the Times app for doing the puzzle online(*) so normally email the link for the puzzle from the Times app on my iPad, then print out a hard copy from another machine. This didn’t work today – what appeared in the email wasn’t a link. I managed to access the puzzle from another machine and printed it out but the grid was much too small. I hope this will be fixed.
(*) this is not simple a case of preferring a hard copy. I happily do The Guardian puzzle online, but it’s a much better app. A change to a similar one by The Times would be very welcome but what we seem to have had instead is change for its own sake, making things worse rather than better. The killer sudoko app is notably worse.
As for the puzzle itself, I thought it was pretty straighforward, about as easy as I’ve seen on a day that isn’t a Monday.
Bit disappointed when I saw the snitch for this one having failed to complete so far this week – still, happy to have finished it even if it is too easy for some.
Had to attend a drivers awareness course early today (again..). Got there unreasonably early and found to my astonishment that I had this finished before the course started, so about 18′, very quick for me. Extra marks for doing it on the new layout too.
Much of it very QC. Enjoyed LIPPI having never heard of the composer. Thanks Jerry and setter.
Raced through this until MESS held me up by several minutes. Eponyms was ingenious.
25 minutes for everything but the painter – never heard of him and entered Loppi so a DNF.
I have just been up to Snowdonia – following Telford’s road, parallel to Telford’s canal and approaching Telford’s famous bridge – even passing through the town of Telford. Of course, the Romans got there first.
Just under 18 minutes here.Really liked WEEVILY and learned that a tiff and a huff can be synonymous!
The easiest one of the week, a fun solve at 22:17 and with everything apart from MOTIF parsed and knowing all the required GK. That’s even with some daft holdups (putting ‘bad look’ instead of BAD FORM’, ‘outcast’ instead of OUTSIDE and considering ‘weviley’ for far too long before remembering the correct spelling and seeing that I needed ‘evil’ not ‘vile’ in the middle of the word).
22.43 with LOI lampooned. Thought the school might be coed which didn’t create many options. In the end banged in lampooned because it fit.
thanks Jerry for the excellent explanations. I find it irritating when the setter employs such abstruse usage of words , such as tiff for pet, which, given how many of us have never heard of it, indicates the rather unnecessary obscurity. And Opera for Building?
To be fair, as I mention above, ‘pet’ is quite prevalent in historical novels and literature generally. While I have no problem with words like that or many other references to the Arts and flora and fauna, I frequently have difficulty with legal phrases, business terms, scientific terms, IT and philosophers. We can’t all be experts in every field. However, through solving crosswords, often things I’ve never come across, like PUT OPTION, and new (to me) definitions, like IMAGO, I have increased my knowledge base in those areas in which I am deficient in the most entertaining way. Unless both wordplay and answer are totally obscure, what is the problem? I would quickly tire of crosswords if I gained nothing from them but a speedily filled-in grid.
The easiest of the week so far, though the most annoying owing to the printout. I was held up by putting in OFFSIDE rather then OUTSIDE, which made MOTIF problematical. LOI ERSATZ after finally considering Z rather than the more usual Y as my unknown, and then twigging the ‘former leading lady’. NHO PUT OPTION. Loved WEEVILLY!
Just crept in under target at 44.48, but held up for quite a while sorting out SHADOWER and WEEVILY. Fortunately I’d heard of LIPPI otherwise I would have struggled to get it. Even so the slang term for lipstick never occurred to me in spite of thinking of slap as potentially makeup.
22:41
Slight hold up at the end where I could not see MESS, since I was looking for the name of a film.
Biffed LAMPOONED, but couldn’t parse it. I’ve see “setter” mean “me” or “I”, but never previously “one”.
EPONYMS was my favourite clue.
Thanks Jerry and setter
If it hadn’t been for a stupid typo, OPEEA for OPERA, this would have been my first ever sub 10 minute time! And not only sub 10 minutes but 7:53, so that’s SO ANNOYING. Really the only one that held me up was my LOI the NHO LIPPI and even that only held me up for maybe 20 seconds. So either I was really on fire today, or on the setter’s wavelength, or something. When I wrote LIPPI in I was very confident, but it turned out to be overconfidence 🙁 Still if I’ve done it once, I can do it again…
Thanks setter and blogger