Time: 23.49
This was the first of the Semi-Final puzzles at the Championship, but was much gentler than at least two of the Qualifiers. There is plenty of tight, neat cluing and no obscurities, taking us from Paris to Canada with stops in Poland and the Balkans along the way.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Relative is taken aback by gaudy jewellery (7) |
| SIBLING – Reversal of IS + BLING.
An easy one to get us going. |
|
| 5 | Working on front of mirror’s reflection (6) |
| MUSING – M + USING.
“Operate” is in the dictionary for ‘work”, and “operate” = “use” but I’m having to squint quite hard to think of a sentence in which “working” and “using” can be transposed with no change of the meaning. |
|
| 8 | Standard of college concerning queen’s subordinate (5,4) |
| UNION JACK – UNI + ON + JACK.
The queen comes after the jack in a pack of cards. |
|
| 9 | Menial worker returns carrying one side dish (5) |
| FRIES – Reversal of SERF around I. | |
| 11 | Council erroneously holds back artefact (5) |
| RELIC – Reverse hidden. | |
| 12 | Fair in centre of city interrupting calm (9) |
| EQUITABLE – IT inside EQUABLE. | |
| 13 | Flower with head of carpel removed is flatter (6,2) |
| BUTTER UP – BUTTERCUP with the C removed. | |
| 15 | Go round Paris, starting with entrance to Louvre (6) |
| SPIRAL – (PARIS*) [starting] + L. | |
| 17 | European secures leading choice (6) |
| SUPERB – UP in SERB. | |
| 19 | Do without king and church? Fantastic! (3-5) |
| TOP-NOTCH – TOPKNOT without K + CH.
“Do” as an informal word for a hairstyle. |
|
| 22 | Colluding secretly with South American before riots (2,7) |
| IN CAHOOTS – INCA + HOOTS. | |
| 23 | Capital melody penned by company (5) |
| CAIRO – AIR inside CO. | |
| 24 | Relish got us excited (5) |
| GUSTO – (GOTUS*). | |
| 25 | Let-down in Canada — MPs quibble (4,5) |
| DAMP SQUIB – Hidden. | |
| 26 | Area accessible to the public seen regularly (6) |
| COMMON – Double definition. | |
| 27 | Creature unfortunately erred eating honey periodically (3,4) |
| ROE DEER – (ERRED*) outside the O and E from honey. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Criticising nerds is routine for soldiers? (6-7) |
| SQUARE-BASHING – Double definition with one jocular.
Is someone who is a “square” (boring, traditional) quite the same as a nerd (socially inept) or for that matter a geek (obsessively enthusiastic)? I couldn’t possibly say. |
|
| 2 | Book reviewer’s conclusion — it illuminated some works in English (4,3) |
| BRIT LIT – B + R [conclusion of reviewer] + IT + LIT.
Is BRIT LIT actually a thing or just two abbreviations put together? |
|
| 3 | Bond kind of sarcastic after offing Goldfinger, finally? (5) |
| IONIC – I(R)ONIC.
I am not 100% sure whether the definition here is BOND or BOND KIND. The latter is a bit clunky but the former doesn’t seem to be a synonym of IONIC. My hesitation isn’t helped by SARCASTIC not being the same as IRONIC. Anyway, the answer and wordplay are clear. I had a James Bond clue in the last puzzle I blogged a fortnight ago. This is another good one. |
|
| 4 | Appreciative with jar mostly whole (8) |
| GRATEFUL – GRATE + FUL(L). | |
| 5 | Foundation perhaps complete(4-2) |
| MAKE-UP – Double definition. | |
| 6 | Joiner’s feint pays off (6,3) |
| SAFETY PIN – (FEINTPAYS*). | |
| 7 | Establishment deploying Polish to perfectly execute blockade? (4,3) |
| NAIL BAR – NAIL [perfectly execute] + BAR. | |
| 10 | Pilot carrying key atomic weapon — on this? (7,6) |
| STEALTH BOMBER – STEER (pilot) around ALT + H BOMB. | |
| 14 | Spineless individual spoiled the marrow (9) |
| EARTHWORM – (THEMARROW*). | |
| 16 | Client dated study site of ancient civilization (8) |
| CONSUMER – CON + SUMER.
“Dated” is needed for the surface and presumably is intended to indicate that CON for study is an archaic use, though not something we normally see when CON in this sense comes up. Wiki tells me that Sumer is the earliest known civilisations, located in southern Mesopotamia and emerging between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Our friend UR was one of the Sumerian city states |
|
| 18 | He painted image like so (7) |
| PICASSO – PIC AS SO. | |
| 20 | Josh entertained by song for official (7) |
| TRIBUNE – RIB inside TUNE. | |
| 21 | Lord to get into line (6) |
| CORDON – COR (Lord!)+ DON (to get into).
My last one in and needing some serious attention even with the checkers. |
|
| 23 | Class given role in a podcast (5) |
| CASTE – homophone [in a podcast] of CAST (given role). | |
35:41
Finished all of the grid except for 1d and 2d in about 25 mins. Never heard of either of them. An enjoyable test and agree, not too difficult for a semi-final puzzle.
Very enjoyable after two DNFs. Managed to see most of the answers from the definitions and the wordplay was very kind also. TOP-NOTCH was the only clue I failed to parse, so thanks D. Took me a while to parse CONSUMER but twigged eventually to ‘Con’ for dated study and Sumer had to be the Sumerian’s home. COD to STEALTH BOMBER.
Thanks D and setter.
IONIC is indeed a kind of bond, and irony can be sarcastic—Collins for “irony”: “1. the humorous or mildly sarcastic use of words to imply the opposite of what they normally mean.”
I always think of sarcasm as irony with intent.
29:55 No errors, no aids.
“Starting” is an odd (and devious) anagram indicator, but in the sense of start= jolt I suppose. NHO BRIT LIT, but there’s “chick lit” and “Brit pop”. Nice to see acknowledgement that “con” is dated, but crikey, that also applies to dozens of the conventions we see around here.
At least we haven’t seen dear old Beerbohm Tree for a while.
Don’t give them ideas!
My pet peeves are Pi, Gen, U, It, SA.
Yes, missing him, Ellen Terry etc
Delighted to finish in 32:30 given it was a semi-final worthy puzzle (even if, apparently, an easy one!). Biffed cordon hoping I was right but needed the blog to see the parsing. Everything else my own unaided work, which is rare!
30:40 Thought I was in for around 15 mins when I got off to a flying start. LOI CORDON was a bit of a forehead slapping moment. NHO BRIT LIT but was pretty clear from the word play.
Thanks for the GK re Sumer.
39.08 on the train into London. This the only one of the Championship puzzles I have been able to complete. Not sure sarcastic = ironic though. I can forgive Alanis Morrisette for taking liberties but somewhat ironic for Times crossword to do so.
Blame Collins: “the humorous or mildly sarcastic use of words”
Sarcasm is a subset of irony, so perhaps the question mark at the end of the clue is intended to indicate a definition by example.
22:24 Done on the Central Line. Very neat puzzle, and fairly gettable. Definitely on the wavelength even though my brain is telling me it’s full of fluff today.
the route to IONIC made me think of the inevitable Blackadder quote …. “Yes, it’s like goldy and bronzy only it’s made out of iron.”
41 mins and not too tricky considering it is competition standard. LOI TOP-NOTCH held me up and wasn’t parsed. BRIT, LIT an odd word but it had to be.
I liked IN CAHOOTS & DAMP SQUIBB.
Thanks D and setter.
I didn’t attempt any of the semi-final puzzles on the day (or afterwards, even though non-qualifiers were given them along with the semi-finalists), so I did this blissfully unaware that it was a championship puzzle.
I managed it in 15:56, which would have given me more time to be tortured by John Henderson’s offering – if the second puzzle was reasonably accessible.
I had forgotten that it’s Wednesday, and completed this in 10’20” obviously relaxed.
We have square for nerd in another broadsheet recently, I didn’t like it then either.
Nho BRIT LIT, although the wordplay was clear. The phrase defies any literary criticism interpretation I’ve ever seen, someone explain please.
Thanks dvynys and setter.
From Wiktionary:
“Alternative forms
Britlit
Noun
Brit Lit (uncountable)
(school slang) British literature, especially as a class taken in high school.”
19:21 but with a rather inexplicable UNION MARK. Was expecting another grilling but just seemed on wavelength with this setter (stupid error ignored). Bit gutted as wanted to at least do one puzzle from the finals in under 20 minutes.
Really enjoyed this one. One where the clues look tough at first but with a bit of thinking I don’t think there was anything that was outrageously difficult in there.
Many good clues in this but favourite to TOP NOTCH.
Thanks blogger and setter.
5.01. Forgot this was a championship puzzle. Easier than the first round. Good clueing but nothing too taxing. NHO BRIT LIT but couldn’t be anything else.
Rattled through this, blithely unaware of its competition status. It must have come as a welcome relief after those qualifiers.
This setter has clearly read Collins, which supports all the slightly unusual meanings, except NERD and SQUARE are not synonymous in any way that I can see.
Failed to parse TOP-NOTCH. Didn’t matter ..
39 minutes, with LOI CORDON. TOP-NOTCH was at best half-parsed. A competition puzzle too. It’s as well I’ve not finished the others or I’ll be getting delusions of adequacy. COD to IN CAHOOTS. I remember the SUMERIANS from first year grammar school history. Ignoring the previous 13.8 billion years, we started early. Thank you Dvynys and setter(s).
What happened 13.4bn years ago, BW? Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old, “with an estimated uncertainty of about 50 million years.”
On edit: ah, the Big Bang. 13.82bn apparently, though some say older..
As per your edit, I was back to a pre-inflationary world.
Before my time..
I think I found this relatively straightforward on the day apart from CORDON which I didn’t get until the hour was up and I’d handed in my paper.
7:30 today with some (admittedly fading) familiarity.
24 minutes. I wondered about BRIT LIT as a thing too and had no idea of the parsing of TOP NOTCH. Otherwise not too difficult, helped by not remembering it was a Championship semi-final puzzle which probably would have spooked me. Favourite was STEALTH BOMBER.
About half an hour, with at least 10 minutes of that spent staring at 21d. I eventually bunged in CORDON with no idea how it worked, as I forgot ‘Lord’ as an expression of surprise.
– Agree with the quibble over using=working for MUSING
– Had heard of Sumerians without realising they would be from a place called Sumer
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
FOI Relic
LOI Cordon
COD Nail bar
21:36 and only denied a sub 20 by a stubborn CORDON.
Staggered to learn here that it was a semi-final puzzle. Did they decide to cull as many as possible in the first round then reward the survivors?
Agree with your Nerd query. NHO BRIT LIT. Another COD for the Bomber.
Thanks to Dvynys and setter.
As you will discover in the next couple of weeks they were lulling us into a false sense of security!
Are notifications working? Not had one for the above keriothe reply.
Also I tried to fill out a Contact form to ask this but it failed with a reCaptcha error. Didn’t even see a Captcha.
14.35, so I could have been a contender! That said CORDON took an age – I consider “lord” isn’t equivalent to COR without a ! I didn’t see that DAMP SQUIB was a hidden, and wondered what Canada was doing there. TOP NOTCH I completely forgot to parse. And I submit COMMON is too easy: I spent time trying to think of a word meaning accessible to the public with SeEn or sEeN tacked on to mean area.
Collins online has BRIT LIT as “esp current fashionable writing” and goodreads dot com has “Popular Classic Brit Lit Books: Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë….”Somebody thinks it’s a thing!
I like Dvynys’ way of raising contentious issues – it makes us think about smudges we might otherwise take for granted or gloss over.
Same experience as @jerry, whizzed along while under pressure to go out with Mrs P and not realising it was a champ semi puzzle. I thought it was easier than all three of the first round puzzles. A MER at IONIC which (as jerry says) is one sort of bond, and BRIT LIT as a thing. At first I put in CHIC LIT but then saw the BLING of 1a. 15 minutes.
Second person who’s raised the point, to my surprise. If you saw FLOWER in the clue and the answer was ASTER, would you have a MER? Aster is one type of flower. If you saw tree in the clue and the answer was ASH, would you have a MER? Ash is one type of tree. I see BOND in the clue, and the answer is one type of bond, and… no problems. Admittedly ASH and ASTER are nouns, while IONIC is an adjective, but even so… no problems.
But Aster and Ash are stand-alone, while Ionic meaning bond is not stand-alone. Which is why, I thought, the “kind” was there.
Re work and use, Collins (23) has: ‘If you work a machine or piece of equipment, you use or control it.’ Example: ‘Many adults still depend on their children to work the computer.’
My thanks to Dvynys and setter.
As Champ puzzles go, doable, but not a breeze.
1a FOI Sibling.
6a LOI Musing.
19a Top Notch biffed.
2d NHO Brit Lit.
3d Ionic. I wasn’t sure about Ionic Bonding but we have had that as an answer sometime as it is in Cheating Machine.
10d Stealth Bomber, only half-parsed here, missed the H-bomb somehow. Belated COD.
23a Caste misparsed. I never remember that “in a podcast” is a homophone indicator. Blast!
Had a peek at this before going to bed last night and a few came straight away so I continued and finished just sub 20′, which is good for me. Must have been pretty straightforward for the competitors and though I’ve never heard of BRIT-LIT (and hopefully never do again…) wordplay was forgiving.
Thanks Dyvnys and setter
I managed to do about three-quarters of this before realising that I had done it before. It was the easiest puzzle of the day, if I remember rightly, but I never got CORDON. I thought at the time that ‘get into’ for DON was a bit loose but it’s undeniably true that I can’t get into my morning suit trousers any more.
This was surprisingly approachable for a Championship puzzle. I saw from a comment on the QC blog that it was a semi final offering before I began. Got off to a great start with SIBLING and SAFETY PIN going straight in. It was then an enjoyable romp to LOI, CONSUMER. 16:02. Thanks setter and Dvynys.
I was unaware of this one’s Championship connection, not that it would have made much difference. It all seemed fairly easy but then I saw that I had a long list of clues where the parsing needed explanation, most of which have been explained here and are easy enough really. SPIRAL I thought was just wrong until the blog pointed out that ‘starting’ is the anagram indicator. Well OK I suppose, but I’ve never seen it before and it does seem a bit weak and I bet lots of people solved it unsoundly. The obvious anagram indicator is ’round’. 32 minutes.
19:20 – nothing too difficult in the end but tight clueing made it seem harder than it was. As always, checkers came progressively to the rescue as I worked down the grid.
Saw that this was a championship puzzle and started with a heavy heart. Finished in 25 minutes and thought it had more of a ‘ Monday feel’.
‘Bling’, ‘make up’ and ‘nail bar’ had a feminine bias, I thought. Still, makes a change from ‘bra’ as ‘ supporter’ …where are the jock straps , trusses and boxes….?
I liked BUTTER UP and SPIRAL.
Somewhere I saw a list of the setters for each of the crosswords, but forget where. At least one was (identifying as) female ..
Unlike for the first round, I didn’t see any info above the puzzle saying this was in the championship, so that and the 70-odd on the snitch set up a gentle solve of 16:55. A couple of minutes at the end for the COMMON-CORDON pairing, the former being greatly helped by pencilling in _ O _ M E N (sEeN regularly). Sounds like it will be interesting to compare this with the next couple of Wednesdays..
15:07
Forgot it was Wednesday, so didn’t notice that this was a semi-final puzzle (wasn’t there on the day). I found this very accessible, with answers coming thick and fairly fast initially. Slowed down a trifle towards the end, finishing with the two requiring most thought – COMMON and CORDON. Sumer recalled from first form history.
Thanks D and setter
Much easier than the three qualifiers, sibling and square bashing giving a great lead in. All but Superb completed in 19:30 then another 3 minutes taken on that – but at least that’s 29 points in the semi😊
This D and setter
20% of my total time spent on my LOI, where I resorted to two mental alpha trawls before I saw it. Spent too long trying to shoehorn in “LD” to represent Lord.
This is reputedly the “easy” semifinal puzzle, but when I was a regular finalist back in the day it would have been rated as medium to difficult.
FOI RELIC
LOI CORDON
COD IN CAHOOTS
TIME 12:24
Pre warned that this was a semi final puzzle, I expected a tough workout and probably a DNF. In the event it was quite benign, even to the extent that I found it a good deal easier than today’s QC, crossing the line in 26.15. At least two minutes of this were spent on my LOI, yes you’ve guessed it CORDON, which although I got right was the only one I failed to parse. On seeing the explanation I’m a little disappointed I didn’t parse it – Cor Blimey!
Completed this in less than 12 minutes and it was only when I came here that I discovered it was one of the semi-final puzzles.
As someone who failed to make it that far on the day, I have to say I found this far easier than any of the three qualifiers. Though CORDON, my LOI, was a tricky one…
Gave up around 40mins with MUSING / NAIL BAR unsolved. The latter I figured out once I had the N checker. 21/30 at the twenty min mark; reached twenty-five mins with the aforementioned two plus COMMON / CORDON to do. Parsed everything. I found this easier than the three Qualifiers
23 mins. However CORDON took an age. I also had a MER about starting being an anagram indicator
Like most commentators, I was surprised at how easy this was for a Championship puzzle. Given the comments from the second-rounders above, I’m not sure if I’m looking forward or dreading the upcoming Wednesdays
As I am going to have to blog one of them, the dreading has rather overtaken the looking forward!
Three in a row is very rare for me, and nice that it includes this Championship one. But it was relatively easy I admit.
FOI RELIC
LOI CORDON
COD NAIL BAR (just to be different)
19.24. Nice to know I would have got one right in a reasonable time. Reading the results on the day, glad I didn’t enter. Could have been undermining!
FOI SIBLING and LOI MUSING, CORDON was among my LOIs but not the last.
42 minutes with a typo. I expected pink squares for SUPERB because I failed to spot the quite obvious parse, but it was BRIR LIT that got me. Thanks Dvynys.
DNF with CORDON unsolved. Otherwise all entered and parsed correctly, though I’m unfamiliar with the term BRIT LIT.
A pleasant evening challenge; and not as tough as the QC in my opinion.
LOI CORDON which took a while but I did parse it.
David
Is the Snitch today influenced by so many people having solved this before? Just asking. I managed in 20’15”, with COMMON/CORDON holding me up at the end. They were a beastly (i.e. excellent) pair of clues. ROE DEER makes me ponder what kind of Spooner clue one could devise. Personally I think Beerbohm Tree is an amusingly named figure of theatrical history and we should keep him on as an honorary relic. He did found RADA after all. Not that obscure. Many thanks.
Since this was a semifinal puzzle, it felt comparatively easy and I was done in about 35 minutes, obviously nowhere fast enough to be competitive, but fast for me on a competition puzzle. I too found this to be one of those days when a couple of clues in the quickie held me up for ages so I finished the 15×15 faster than the supposedly “easy” one.
Well, at last I’m feeling like I’m up there “with the big boys”! Fairly flew through the whole west side of this without drawing breath ( only held up by COMMON, so DNF. Did make the mistake of entering MYSELF instead of MUSING which delayed as quick a right-hand side ( didn’t want to stop the momentum by parsing!).