Time: 30:34
Off to a flying start but slowed on the right hand side. Still, easier than others we’ve had this week, and very gentle for Friday.
I believe this is my 300th blog (I started with QC5 in 2014); you’d think I ought to proofread them well enough by now, so apologies in advance for the mistakes/typos!
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Dynamism versus current inanity, leaving university (8) |
| VIVACITY – V (versus) + I (current) + VACuITY (inanity) missing the ‘u’ (university). | |
| 5 | Diver almost out of breath (6) |
| PUFFIN – all but the last of (almost) PUFFINg (out of breath). | |
| 9 | Scrap paper (3) |
| RAG – double definition. | |
| 10 | Act of removing constant cheers interrupts enjoyment (11) |
| DELECTATION – DELETION (act of removing) which C (constant) + TA (cheers) interrupts. | |
| 12 | Tire, indicating one’s leaving patriotic display (4-6) |
| FLAG-WAVING – FLAG (tire) + WAVING (indicating one’s leaving). | |
| 13 | Barely succeeded in project (4) |
| JUST – S (succeeded) in JUT (project). | |
| 15 | War leader large, in colour (6) |
| STALIN – L (large) in STAIN (colour). | |
| 16 | One allowed into cycling eliminator? (7) |
| ATHLETE – LET (allowed) in the letters of HEAT (eliminator) cycling round (HEAT > THEA > ATHE). Semi-&lit. | |
| 18 | Turn out chasing a parking permit (7) |
| APPROVE – PROVE (turn out, or show, as in “it turns out that…”) after (chasing) A + P (parking). | |
| 20 | Determined where this carnivore lurks (6) |
| ERMINE – this carnivore is found in detERMINEd. | |
| 23 | Shock, almost attacked by bee (4) |
| STUN – all but the last of (almost) STUNg (attacked by bee). | |
| 24 | When it snows perhaps burying revolutionary’s rifle (10) |
| WINCHESTER – WINTER (when it snows perhaps) containing (burying) CHE’S (revolutionary’s). | |
| 26 | Doctor’s left a person with temperature a shield against infection (8,3) |
| MOSQUITO NET – MO’S (doctor’s) + QUIT (left) + ONE (a person) + T (temperature). | |
| 27 | One student finally leaves here? (3) |
| UNI – UNIt (one) minus (leaves) the last of (finally) student. Semi-&lit, since a student might eventually leave university. | |
| 28 | Temptingly hold out diamonds with devious motive (6) |
| DANGLE – D (diamonds) + ANGLE (devious motive). | |
| 29 | Shabby state of girl in disorder (8) |
| MEANNESS – ANNE (girl) in MESS (disorder). | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Confirm uncertainty really is inhibiting (6) |
| VERIFY – IF (uncertainty) which VERY (really) is containing (inhibiting). | |
| 2 | Half in vain, perhaps Ulysses is a wanderer (7) |
| VAGRANT – half of VAin + GRANT (Ulysses S., POTUS 18). | |
| 3 | Fish take food almost on top of pond? Nonsense (10) |
| CODSWALLOP – COD (fish) + all but the last of (almost, again) SWALLOw + first (top) of Pond. | |
| 4 | Fund-raising preacher tells eg native to convert (13) |
| TELEVANGELIST – anagram of (to convert) TELLS EG NATIVE. | |
| 6 | One of fifty in uniform tipped cap? (4) |
| UTAH – U (uniform) + the reversal of (tipped) HAT (cap). One of the 50 U.S. states. | |
| 7 | Football manager with one draw and a defeat (7) |
| FAILURE – FA (Football Association, football manager) + I (one) + LURE (draw). | |
| 8 | No German announced links for ten years (8) |
| NINETIES – sounds like (announced) “nein” (‘no’, in German) + TIES (links). | |
| 11 | Getting better clubs, deceptively conceal seven (13) |
| CONVALESCENCE – C (clubs) + an anagram of (deceptively) CONCEAL SEVEN. | |
| 14 | Wine box in bedroom? (10) |
| CHAMBERTIN – a CHAMBER TIN could be a box in a bedroom. Wine from Burgundy. | |
| 17 | Released, travelled quite a distance in the van (8) |
| RANSOMED – RAN (travelled) + SOME (quite a) + the first of (in the van) Distance). | |
| 19 | He painted a little chicken (7) |
| POUSSIN – double definition (Nicolas, French painter, or the French-origin word for an immature chicken). | |
| 21 | Foreign wood carving wins British prize at last (7) |
| NETSUKE – NETS (wins) + UK (British) + last of prizE. An ornamental Japanese toggle. | |
| 22 | Drinks all day then falls down (6) |
| DRAINS – D (day) + RAINS (falls down). | |
| 25 | Fine internet address: roll up! (4) |
| FURL – F (fine) + URL (internet address). | |
Definitely on the easier side – for a Friday!
Struggled to find NETSUKE, no undue problems otherwise
Agreed. Thought this was going to be another Friday stinker and then the answers just flowed. NETSUKE was a miss even thoughI I had ‘uke’ but just couldn’t see it. Thankfully all the long ones went in straight away with only CHAMBERTIN needing a second look as it was only vaguely familiar as a wine. Thought ATHLETE was a bit sneaky with think of a synonym and then cycle it around another synonym. All good fun.
That you William and setter.
very much enjoyed this one, as the last few proved to be an interesting challenge. LOI was DRAINS as I completely failed to parse ‘Drinks All’ as the definition for an embarrassingly long time. MER at NETSUKE as they are made of lots of different things, not just wood and I’d associate them with ivory or porcelain, antler, horn etc. Maybe I’m thinking too much of ‘The Hare with the Amber Eyes’. Leaving out the word ‘wood’ would have made things clearer strangely but maybe dims the surface?
Well, that’s better! 52 mins with L2I, NETSUKE (NHO) & MEANNESS.
A mixture of pretty easy clues and a few toughies, for me. I am surprised that CHAMBERTIN, only solved near the end, took me so long to see. Great clue and I love the wine.
COD definitely CODSWALLOP. I love that word.
Thanks William and setter.
Great clue, can’t afford the wine!
I agree, a wee bit “cher” these days. Stick to Provence rosé, much better value!
31 minutes with LOI DRAINS. The SE took up several minutes at the end. I just about knew the wine. If only the cameras had rolled at the Areopagus, St Paul could have been a 4d, the thought of which makes that my COD. Enjoyable, with a sting in the tail. Thank you William and setter.
16:30. Finished in the SE corner taking a while to see NETSUKE, a word which was remembered only after solving the wordplay – not that I remembered what it meant. Some great clues. I liked UNI, RANSOMED and COD FAILURE most. Thanks William and setter.
36 minutes. Gentle for a Friday. Along with just about everyone else, NETSUKE was the one to give most trouble, mainly because I couldn’t identify the def correctly. POUSSIN and CHAMBERTIN both barely recognised but crossers and wordplay helped. Favourite was the small but perfectly formed UNI.
Thanks to William and setter
32 mins. Fun at the top esp. CODSWALLOP.
Slog at the bottom. LOIs the NHO wine and carving were a triumph for trusting the wordplay.
Good Goldilocks puzzle. Thanks william and setter.
20.30, slow to get going in the top corner but speeding up on the way through. NETSUKE fell when stopped trying to insert a B[ritish].
An odd experience with STALIN, the obvious answer given the checkers, but I kept trying to make sense of colour having omitted the T. I have no idea why I was convinced the T stood for large. The world outside today is very dull: maybe it’s catching.
17:32
The trip to Japan was all worth it just for knowing what 21d is – not sure I would have known otherwise. I found this puzzle fairly comfortable-going, homing in on the setter’s wavelength throughout, though did have a few shrugs at POUSSIN and CHAMBERTIN, both assumed to be correct.
Thanks William and setter
My thanks to william_j_s and setter.
Not too hard, for a Friday anyway. Started off thinking it would be hard then 4d Televangelist leapt out and I started to roll.
LOI and I thought not well defined 29a Meanness.
Joint CODs 7d Failure (for not requiring to know any football managers) and 22d Drains.
14d NHO (actually forgotten) Chambertin and Gevrey-Chambertin, added to Cheating Machine.
21d Netsuke only ever met in Xwords.
While you’re at it you might as well add Charmes-Chambertin, Mazis-Chambertin, Griotte-Chambertin, Ruchottes-Chambertin, Chapelle-Chambertin, Mazoyères-Chambertin, Latricières-Chambertin and Chambertin Clos de Bèze 😉
You old name-dropper, you!
🥂😀
Stone me!
DRAINS is my favourite clue for a long time, for its surface.
Tricky, but never stuck. SE, like some others, was last in. Not NETSUKE which I knew was a word, though not what it was; instead the unknown CHAMBERTIN.
Thanks all.
I think that some of the artist’s best paintings were know as Poussin Beauts.
Groan!
I found SW corner to be my problem. Failed to get mosquito net, thought i was looking for some kind of magic nut with healing properties!! Also did not get poussin, just forgot the word after rejecting pullet and poulet as having nothing to do with artists, thought it was some Hungarian artist ending in ccic which i subsequently made up having a rather poor art history knowledge. Boring teacher at school! Ha! Was good fun though! Thx all, Cx
42 minutes with an unnecessarily long time on CHAMBERTIN and MEANNESS (messiness, Ines? No, for several reasons, but I spent too long on this idea). RANSOMED should have been easy for me, but it wasn’t. Nice to avoid the dreadfully tricky Friday.
Spent a while getting moving in this one, with only RAG, JUST, STUN and FURL in the grid for quite some time. Eventually ground out some more answers, then TELEVANGELIST and CONVALESCENCE opened things up. I assembled NETSUKE from wordplay, then checked it was a thing. NE corner was last to succumb, with FAILURE LOI. 30:02. Thanks setter and William.
46 mins. The end of a disappointing week. Monday fine, Tuesday two mistakes, Wed and Thurs nowhere near but at least I finished today.
‘I forget the name of the place; I forget the name of the girl; but the wine was Chambertin’
14:16. Tricky puzzle, very enjoyable. I wondered briefly how ‘waiving’ could mean ‘indicating’: sometimes the twisted cryptic solving brain makes you miss the obvious!
Oh, so that’s (looked it up) Hilaire Belloc.
CHAMBERTIN was my LOI.
You mean “waving” (yes, I’ve started my workday).
No I mean ‘waiving’ – ‘one’s leaving’ was obviously an instruction to remove an i!
Oh, I see! Obviously! Ha
Congrats on the triple-century, William! Quite a feat, and your splendid blogs are much appreciated.
I really enjoyed this crossword, with DRAINS getting COD. NHO NETSUKE, but it was generously clued. My LOI RANSOMED took me ages at the end (not sure why), and home in 27:40.
Annoyed to have opted for Chambertan – box as a verb for tan seeming marginally more likely than box as a noun for tin – so another DNF in 18. At least I’m getting faster!!
PS your intro made me check and I found that Sunday’s was also my 300th blog, and that my first was also in 2014 – snap!
Nice one!
Congrats and thanks to you both!
46:48. Devilishly tricky (666 points) and very enjoyable. Good progress through most but seriously held up in the south-east not least because I had de-railed myself at 27ac with LSE instead of UNI (parsed as L (student) finally leaveS herE). I liked FAILURE (because, like andyf, I did not need to know any football managers) and NETSUKE
Two goes needed.
– Tried to justify VITALITY for 1a before VAGRANT pushed me towards VIVACITY
– Needed all the checkers before I realised that MEANNESS was the kind of shabby state we needed
– Was on the verge of bunging in CHICHESTER for 14d, with chest as the box, before I got the M from ERMINE (having taken ages to see the hidden) and worked out CHAMBERTIN
– NHO the painter POUSSIN
– NETSUKE was clear enough once all the checkers were in place, but not before then
Thanks William and setter.
FOI Rag
LOI Netsuke
COD Drains (liked the cleverly hidden definition)
25.15
LOI NETSUKE but really should have twigged earlier as well (to me) known from The Hare with Amber Eyes. Thing is, the UK just isn’t the same as Britain – one of the few things that really bugs me when it comes up such that I always forget the necessary latitude to be allowed in these things. Even so.
Had MIGRANT for a while which caused some head scratching in Manchester environs but a very enjoyable puzzle and happy with an all green after some recent DNFs
Fantastic achievement William (and everyone who’s been blogging away for so long, and so wonderfully).
I’m with you: UK and Britain are not synonymous.
However: I think UK = British, as in, I hold a UK/British passport.
Indeed, ‘British’ is commonly used to refer to a citizen of the UK. This is reflected in the definitions in Collins and ODE.
Try arguing that in a Belfast pub
40 mins with CHAMBERTIN my LOI after mulling over something with HAMPER in the centre. Not the chewiest of Fridays but no breeze either with NETSUKE proving something of a bramble bush. COD probably goes to ERMINE for me, as it took a while the denarius to succumb to gravity.
DNF. FOI STALIN. Unusually for me I found the Down clues the most difficult.. COD WINCHESTER, closely followed by DELECTATION. Thanks William.
This could have been hard if the literals were not obvious, which would have made biffing difficult. But simple literals like fund-raising preacher and rifle lead to obvious answers, speeding up my solve. My big problem was not being able to think of Chambertin, or indeed any synonym for bedroom. However, as a frequenter of auction rooms, netsuke was a write-in. My LOI was uni, which I saw after pondering a bit.
Time: 39:51
Found this one harder than yesterday.
Could the hive mind tell me why ‘current’ is a clue for the letter I please?
Thanks!
I is the symbol used for electric current in physics formulae. From the French for Intensity of Current.
Thank you!
Needed aids for NHO Chambertin and have heard of but couldn’t see, Netsuke. Thanks for explaining Failure and LOI Athlete.
Around 12 minutes, not entirely on the wavelength. Held up at the end in the SE, not entirely sure why in retrospect. I know NETSUKE perfectly well, mainly from these things but also the Hare with Amber Eyes, but it just wouldn’t come to mind, too fixated on putting a B in somewhere.
Congratulations to the triple centenarians.
Surprised to find an easy one on a Friday. However, I think I’m the only one so far who’d never heard of either meaning of POUSSIN. I found plenty of painters called Paulson in my trawl, but that wasn’t it.
Frustrating day for me today. Flew through all but 3 in 20 minutes but NHO chambertin and Netsuke and the wordplay was generous but I could not get there. How I missed ermine I will never know.
Thx William and setter
All going relatively well for a Friday until the NHO Netsuke, especially given I was trying to place a “B” for British somewhere within.
Bit of a meh at ERMINE, not that well hidden. Didn’t quite agree with RANSOMED = released, but works I suppose. Need to try some CHAMBERTIN it seems!
Thanks William and setter
Not sure what happened here. I was shooting through this, on course for a Friday PB, and then I suddenly forgot how to do cryptic crosswords grinding to a halt with the right-hand side. Picked it up again after work and started cruising through it again. Probably a decent time combined (for me) but won’t cont it.
COD FAILURE
Thanks blogger and setter
Completed in just under an hour. Not as quick as you folks – yet. Agree this was a lot easier than the usual Friday offering.
re 16ac, can someone please explain why/how does one = athlete?
The only reason I can think of is that “one allowed” into a “cycling eliminator” (ie a cycle race ) would have to be an “Athlete”
Took me 32’51” on Sunday evening, so not brilliant. NETSUKE was — I thought — my LOI. But then I checked and luckily spotted that I hadn’t done 6d. Took an awfully long time to get UTAH. Just couldn’t think of anything there were famously 50 of. Then thought the 50 must be an L that should go after U. In general the left side went in quickly, and the right was a struggle. Anyone seen the western WINCHESTER ’73 with Jimmy Stewart? It was jolly good, if I recall. Many thanks to setter and blogger.