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. | |
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
One or two dubious clues for me but glad to complete for the first time this week.
FOI TRADE UNIONISM
LOI LIPPI (a lucky guess)
COD WEEVILY
How interesting. The Loose Viaduct, built by Mr Telford is also just one mile from where I live!
As above reply to Staticman1