Hello again. This crossword I think is the second of the crosswords used in the Championships semifinals. I thought it was a little harder than average, not surprisingly, but with some excellent clues, and a couple I had significant trouble parsing… perhaps they will come to me as I blog. What did you think?
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 | Very large one that makes you feel better (6) |
| SOLACE – SO (very) + L(arge) + ACE, one. | |
| 4 | Huge mistake whenever one enters court from the back (8) |
| TERRIFIC – ERR (mistake) IF I (whenever one) in CT, reversed. | |
| 10 | Shortened dress soldier keeps shortening (9) |
| MARGARINE – GAR(b) (shortened dress) in MARINE, a soldier (and sailor, too). Shortening, an ingredient of pastry, not a word I ever use and if I did I would be thinking of lard or other cooking fat. But it includes butter & marge too.. | |
| 11 | Back massage ends in slight pop (5) |
| BURST – RUB (massage, back, ie rev.) + S(ligh)T. | |
| 12 | Fancy a cry? (7) |
| WHIMPER – WHIM (fancy) + PER, a as in “£10 per/a head.” I would say whimpering is what you do before, or instead of crying, but Collins is quite clear: “to cry, sob, or whine softly or intermittently “ | |
| 13 | Far too much poetry in that novel (2,5) |
| TO DEATH – ODE (poetry) in *(THAT). Just reading the papers provides numerous examples of things being done to death, figuratively rather than literally.. | |
| 14 | Gang violence postponing love for very eager Romeo (5) |
| AGGRO – AGOG (very eager) + R, from NATO alphabet Romeo. Then the O is postponed, ie moved to the back.. | |
| 15 | Don’t stop stars performing? (6,2) |
| PLOUGH ON – a DD, the second one fanciful in nature. The Plough is a formation of seven stars within Ursa Major, in some countries called the Big Dipper. Am I right, Starstruck? | |
| 18 | Council property unlikely to house private hospital (4,4) |
| TOWN HALL – OWN (private, personal) + H(ospital) in TALL, unlikely. As in a tall tale.. | |
| 20 | Anvil is iron on the outside, and every other part of course (5) |
| INCUS – I(ro)N, + C(o)U(r)S(e). The incus is a bone in the middle ear that resembles an anvil. If you squint. Possibly. A little.
Tricky if you don’t know the word, but at least you do get three crossers. |
|
| 23 | One should adopt a diplomatic attitude towards facial hair (7) |
| ATTACHE – AT (towards. “He came straight AT me”) + TACHE, facial hair. I used to have one of these, before upgrading to a beard. Well I do still have it, of course, but .. | |
| 25 | Giant sounded tense (7) |
| TIGHTEN – sounds like “Titan,” today’s homophone, and not a bad one. | |
| 26 | Animated Lego, minute figure brought to life (5) |
| GOLEM – *(LEGO + M(inute)). Beings created from clay. They have a long history, but are mainly familiar to me thanks to Terry Pratchett. | |
| 27 | Pocketing a grand, trained men earn ninefold figure (9) |
| ENNEAGRAM – A G(rand) in *(MEN EARN). Brownie point if you knew this word! I didn’t, but I did know that ennéa is Greek for nine and I had heard the word ennead. | |
| 28 | Resolve so many letters for Birmingham and Manchester? (8) |
| TENACITY – How many letters? TEN A CITY. I liked this clue! | |
| 29 | Fowl transfixed by male’s tail that’s lovely? (6) |
| PEAHEN – On the one hand, a CD depicting a peahen bowled over by her mate’s wonderful tail. On the other hand, it is A HE (a male) in PEN, a female swan, a waterfowl and therefore a paid-up member of the fowl clade. The full ramifications of this clue took a while to dawn on me but now they have, I love it.
On edit: It can be the PEN, with (mal)E + AH! (that’s lovely) in it.. that makes it a full &lit, so seems a better parsing than that above.. thanks to those commenting |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | A little addition reported that’s a surprise (8) |
| SOMEWHAT – SOME (sounds like “SUM”) + WHAT, that’s a surprise, as in What?! I presume. Somewhat is more than a tad, but less than quite a lot. Somewhere around a modicum, perhaps. | |
| 2 | Sneaky man checked beneath bait after docking (7) |
| LURKING – LUR(e) (bait, docked) + KING, a (chess)man that is checked. | |
| 3 | Attempt to suppress someone who won’t talk quietly, in writing (9) |
| CLAMPDOWN – CLAM (someone who won’t talk) + P (quietly, piano) + DOWN, in writing as in “down on paper.” One of the ones I found hard to parse. | |
| 5 | Putting coat on, return work left in class (14) |
| ELECTROPLATING – ELECT (return); then OP + L(eft) in RATING, class. This last a bit iffy imo; a rating can be a classification (eg credit rating) but making it an actual class seems a stretch to me. Not in Collins, except as an Americanism.
Electroplating itself is a fascinating subject. Read here about such delights as the Haring-Blum cell, used to test throwing power .. |
|
| 6 | Fanatic offered to support member of artistic establishment (5) |
| RABID – RA (Royal academician) + BID ie offered, which of course indeed it is, although I was always taught that bid and offer prices were quite different… | |
| 7 | Miles shred old jumble (7) |
| FARRAGO – FAR (miles: “Is it far? Yes, miles”) + RAG (shred) + O(ld). | |
| 8 | Memorable speed of light yacht at sea (6) |
| CATCHY – C, or rather c, the speed of light, + *(YACHT). | |
| 9 | Change of part, hence end of troublesome limp? (3,11) |
| HIP REPLACEMENT – *(PART, HENCE, E + LIMP) the E coming from (troublesom)E. A neat @lit. | |
| 16 | Damage you’d expect to be contained by fireplace (5,4) |
| GOING RATE – GO IN (to be contained by) + GRATE, fireplace. The other one I had trouble parsing, because of using the wrong G for grate and then trying to work out where OING came from. | |
| 17 | Advanced child turned handle all at once (2,3,3) |
| AS ONE MAN – A(dvanced), as in A level perhaps, + SON (child) + NAME (handle), reversed. | |
| 19 | Bunting seen in town a lot, royalists put up (7) |
| ORTOLAN – reverse hidden, as above. Ortolan buntings are critically endangered, in part because they are a delicacy in France. Wikipedia: “The birds are caught with nets set during their autumn migratory flight to Africa. They are then kept in covered cages or boxes. They are then force-fed grain, usually millet seed, until they double their bulk. They are then suspended upside down over a container of Armagnac, and by dipping, made to drown, and then marinated in the brandy.” Hmm. | |
| 21 | Tom perhaps arrived hot, running from cold? (7) |
| CATARRH – CAT (tom, perhaps) + ARR(ived) + H. Ugh, catarrh, let’s not go there. | |
| 22 | Go in search of fun and receive something that does the trick (6) |
| GADGET – GAD (go in search of fun, a synonym of gallivant) + GET, receive. | |
| 24 | Order military chief accepts is ridiculous (5) |
| COMIC – OM (order of merit) in CIC, apparently another Americanism, we use C-in-C. | |
I dug it! Definitely a bit harder than last Wednesday’s. TENACITY made me laugh.
Around 40 minutes except for a few in the top left hand corner another hour with brain relieving breaks to get SOMEWHAT then SOLACE and the remaining couple. I kept looking for words meaning surprise.
Thanks Jerry and setter
Not easy but I finished in a little under 45. Many thanks to Jerry for explaining any number of these that had me stumped – eg WHIMPER, AGGRO and PEAHEN. Several NHOs made it a tough but rewarding solve.
From Tombstone Blues:
John the Baptist after torturing a thief, looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying Tell me great hero, but please make it brief, is there a hole for me to get sick in?
The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly, saying Death to all those who would WHIMPER and cry
Then dropping a barbell he points to the sky, saying The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken
Thanks, Jerry. You’re certainly right about the Plough and the Big Dipper both being names for the main stars in Ursa Major. But I really only know this in theory, as Ursa Major is not visible from the Southern Hemisphere.
I was glad to get through this one unscathed. Thanks, Jerry, for filling a few gaps in my parsing of the answers.
A good 50′ with great difficulty getting any traction in the NW until WHIM-PER came to mind, and even then slow progress.
Luckily I remembered to revisit “target” (..go in search of..) because I failed to parse “tar”. I’m not usually so conscientious…
Also couldn’t get “mini” out of my head for the shortened dress.
Thanks Jerry and setter
DNF. The NW totally flummoxed me. Finished the rest in about 30 mins and was feeling pleased with myself but a further 20 yielded only MARGARINE so threw the towel in.
TENACITY was great and HIP REPLACEMENT a most satisfying parse.
Never mind the final, I wouldn’t make the starting line. Thank you for explaining it all.
Well blow me down; I did this, okay one slip, more quickly than either Mon or Tuesday. Still in SCC at 22 mins. Is there a way to find South down under a la Polaris in the Northern Hemispshere?
Yes, the Southern Cross is over the S Pole.
Ta!
The South Celestial Pole is actually very hard to find if you want to get close, as there are no very bright stars nearby. (In the Northern Hemisphere Polaris is typically in the field of view of a finder scope on a decent telescope. There’s nothing like it in the same field of view in the Southern Hemisphere.) Fortunately modern telescope mounts have ways of aligning to the pole if you need it, as I do for astrophotography.
Sorry, my reply was not accurate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crux
If you look at Wiki the Southern Cross (Crux) will indicate the general area of the S Pole, but the pole is well outside the actual cross.
62 minutes. Very slow, but I found this hard and could have been even slower. Some excellent clues, particularly PEAHEN for which I didn’t see the wordplay, TENACITY and the HIP REPLACEMENT &lit. I couldn’t parse it (or it was too much of an effort to try) but I was very happy when ELECTROPLATING went in to eventually fill the grid.
8:44. On the wavelength. I assume this was the John Henderson puzzle – getting used to his style of cluing. At this rate I should have entered the championship.
I parsed 29a PEAHEN as Yoda speak for AH! (that’s lovely) in PEEN (male tail).
No, his is next week (and is tough!) – think this was by James McGaughey
With that time though, you definitely should go along to the Championship
Hah, on the wavelength in some respects but not enough to correctly deduce the setter! Let’s see how badly I fare next week.
Well done for knowing the word PEEN .. but sadly that meaning is not in Collins or Chambers, so far as I can see…
Fair enough! Made sense to me at the time.
An interesting clue in that there are at least two, possibly three, good ways to parse it, and it appears several more which aren’t perfect but are good enough to get you there.
On a random Wednesday we can take the time to appreciate that intricacy, but in the competition I doubt there was anyone who didn’t just use what first came to mind and then moved promptly along.
Failed in the SW with GADGET and TENACITY. I’m kicking myself for not seeing those. That may have been the result of the surprise at getting ORTOLAN. I’ve never related Mama’s little baby loving shortni’n bread with the excellent shortbread the King makes in his Duchy kitchen for me before. Are they related? ENNEAGRAM was constructed. Thank you Jerry and setter.
44:23
I had PEAHEN as P~EN containing E (male’s tail) and AH (that’s lovely).
All parsed OK but ENNEAGRAM unknown
Thanks J and setter
That makes more sense than my parsing.
I believe that’s the correct parsing, that’s what I had. The other parsings fall short of a true &lit, but this one does not.
Stopped after 35′ with NW undone. Should have thought beyond para and gi for soldier.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
Wow, that was hard, made good progress in the NE and Sw but nothing in the other corners.
President Mitterrand controversially ate ORTOLAN in the described manner as his last meal.
COD TENACITY
38.02, mostly because of that NW corner, where for the umpteenth time I was fooled by that A=PER convention. The other lurking clues in the area gave me plenty of aggro, with a clampdown on my solving facility and no solace in eventually finding margarine. But this was entertaining stuff, with a couple of excellent &lits and the terrific 10-a-city, which made up for not even being close to competition time.
Incidentally, I notice tomorrow’s concise is the 10,000th. I might try it for once.
I noted that the QC on Monday was 1000 X PI.
9999 got a play, today
Time over an hour. Glad to get through it. Mike’s parsing of peahen is the one I used.
Thanks, J.
My thanks to JerryW and setter.
Too hard for me, DNF, but had some fun getting a few here and there. I found some of the ones I got hard to parse too.
4a Terrific, I started with Gigantic but I couldn’t parse it and Rabid at 6d put me right.
10a Margarine, I did think of shortening as in cooking but I didn’t get marge.
13a To Death. At the time I thought this was “green painty,” but the JerryW has put me straight there.
14a Aggro. I was tempted by aggro but failed to justify it so left it blank.
27a Enneagram, NHO, added to Cheating Machine. Enneagon means the same, and that was in CM so EnneagonS delayed me. Unparseable of course.
8d Catchy FOI.
24d Comic. 2OI. DNK that CIC is an Americanism, which was helpful in this case.
I found this very enjoyable, although it took a while. Getting hip replacement and electroplating relatively quickly was quite helpful. The only unknown was incus, although enneagram had to be assembled from Greek roots. Plough on, of course, is not immediately obvious to US solvers, but the checking letters were helpful for once. Peahen was my LOI, parsed as a full &lit.
Time: 48:02
Enjoyed this despite struggling with a few at the end, which stretched me out to a tad under 40 minutes. The man checked was my first entry. LUR came a little later. AGGRO was first full entry. SOLACE was my only other contribution to the NW until much later. I had more success in the SE with INCUS and CATARRH starting me off. Later, SOMEWHAT was key to completing the NW, with WHIMPER, MARGARINE and CLAMPDOWN following in a rush.PEAHEN was LOI, and I failed to parse it. ENNEAGRAM was assembled from the wordplay, the checkers I had and the likelihood of 5d ending in ING. GOING RATE, PLOUGH ON and ELECTROPLATING preceded PEAHEN. 39:52. Pleased to finish all correct! Thanks setter and Jerry.
1h 15m – needed every minute for this which I found exceptionally tough. Almost all of the excellent clues needed parsing to be sure of the answer. My sympathies to anyone faced with this in contest conditions. LOI was ENNEAGRAM, and only when the long downs made the configuration of Es and Ns unambiguous.
I was way off the pace for this one, glad I wasn’t on blogging duty. Seemed much harder than the SF puzzle last week, to me. I had ORTOLAN and ENNEAGRAM in early on, but took an age to see the long down clues. TEN A CITY was very good, once the penny dropped. I thought SOMEWHAT was a bit dodgy. Keep up the good work, @jerry.
I assume the ORTOLAN is plucked at some point, like the “gentille alouette”, but otherwise you eat the whole thing bones and all in one mouthful. Not sure about beak and feet. Foie gras anyone? Not my cup of Bovril. Forgot this was a champs puzzle until half way along and then issued a pre-emptive pardon to self thinking it unlikely I could plough on to the end, but did finally limp across. Chapeau to all finalists.
Very hard- that’s all he wrote.
11:48. Once again I failed to notice that I’d done this before until about two-thirds of the way through. Subconscious memory (with perhaps a little help from the absence of stress) was clearly working away though because I failed to finish this one on the day. Excellent puzzle.
In financial parlance a bid is an offer to buy, and an offer is an offer to sell. The bid-offer spread is the difference between the price at which the highest bidder is offering and that at which the lowest offeror will accept a bid should a bidder match the offer.
About 45 minutes with break. This could have been tougher but I saw the two long down clues straightaway. HIP REPLACEMENT getting my COD.
NW corner proved the most difficult with this puzzle and I and only half-parsed AGGRO, PEAHEN, CLAMPDOWN and had not heard of that meaning of shortening but it had to be MARGARINE as my LOI.
I would have got just over half in the 20 minute competition par.
Thanks blogger and setter
More than a little harder than average in my opinion. When it’s a championship puzzle and the good solvers have done it before does this make any difference to the SNITCH? I’m not sure people who’ve done it before are encouraged to submit?
I struggled with this and had such a long pause in the middle that almost the whole hour could have been taken up with that pause. Eventually struggled to 108 minutes, with some aids at the end when I became utterly stuck. The HIP REPLACEMENT &lit. was excellent, I thought, as was TENACITY.
I submitted off leaderboard but I almost didn’t realise that I’d done it before!
56.32
I did all but half a dozen in something over 30 minutes but I just couldn’t see the two long ones (even with a few checkers) and came to a dead halt for an age before one came and rest followed.
HIP REPLACEMENT was good as were many others.
Thanks Jerry.
Fantastic puzzle, really enjoyed it. PEAHEN, TENACITY, LURKING, HIP REPLACEMENT superb. But I’m no chance of the finals, got about 2/3 through it in reasonable time then completely stuck. Went and walked the dogs, had dinner and cleaned up, then came back and, as is not unusual, finished it off without undue stress.
35 mins, with a whew! on pressing the completion button. Quite a few I didn’t get the parsing of, esp CLAMPDOWN, GADGET and PEAHEN. COD TENACITY
Two goes needed.
– Had no idea how MARGARINE equated to ‘shortening’, but it parsed and fitted the checkers so in it went
– Didn’t see how exactly to get ‘agog’ + ‘r’ to make AGGRO
– NHO ENNEAGRAM but it was the only plausible option with the checkers
– PEAHEN went in with a shrug as I couldn’t figure out how it worked
– Thought the anagrist for 9d was ‘part, hence end of’, but eventually I bunged in HIP REPLACEMENT as nothing else seemed likely
– Didn’t know that an ORTOLAN is a bunting, or that a bunting is a kind of bird
– Don’t agree that PLOUGH ON is a double definition – ‘Don’t stop’ is a definition, ‘stars performing’ isn’t
Thanks Jerry and setter.
FOI Comic
LOI Margarine
COD Whimper
Nice puzzle.