Time: 36.52
I suspect that I will be below par for this puzzle, where there were plenty of gentle clues, but I got frustratingly stuck on a few at the end where I had plenty of checkers but just couldn’t bring the relevant word I was looking for to mind, nor nail the wordplay. Elsewhere, there were a few clues where the setter used what looked like w/p as part of the definition, which made them a bit tricksy. If you could quickly spot the definition and bring the relevant synonym to mind you probably did pretty well.
Overall, I liked it (all the more when writing up the blog), notwithstanding my travails. Some smooth surfaces and clever definitions, not least the three clues with musical references.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Brief press about fool blocking state (7) |
| IMPASSE – This is IMPEL without the last letter, surrounding ASS. I was certainly duped into thinking “blocking” was a containment indicator, so well played setter. | |
| 5 | Police almost get man behind bars (7) |
| COPLAND – “Almost” relates to shortening COPS, and then GET is LAND. More tricksy (but entirely fair) w/p; and another clever definition. Setter 2:0 Dvynys. | |
| 9 | Group ready to establish firm (3) |
| SET – Quadruple definition. | |
| 10 | Time Out to better The Face? (6,5) |
| BEAUTY SLEEP – Cryptic.
I didn’t know The Face was a magazine, which on reflection is pretty obvious. A very nice cryptic, I would say. Published from 1980 to 2004, The Face was relaunched in 2019. |
|
| 11 | Feeble quote about pursuing course of action (8) |
| PATHETIC – Reversal of CITE behind [pursuing] PATH. | |
| 12 | Child visiting area in work to play (6) |
| SONATA – SON + AT + A.
A gentle one, but another where I was wanting work to be OP and “play” to be an anagram indicator. |
|
| 15 | Manage to avoid ignominious score in test? (4) |
| DUCK – Double definition.
Again, this should have been easier than it was, but I was wanting something cleverer along the lines of a three letter word for “avoid” followed by a D or E. The lower case TEST put me off, but it doesn’t need to be capitalised. |
|
| 16 | Make money from openings provided by India’s small enterprises (10) |
| CAPITALISE – The idea here is that you look at the last three words of the clue and notice that one is capitalised and the second and third aren’t, so you would describe the openings as “capital I [followed by] s and e. Whether CAPITALISE is actually a synonym for making money is moot, as it means providing capital or converting into capital, which doesn’t necessarily equate to making money (investments can go up and down). Close enough though.
This clue was my nemesis, causing me to stare bleakly at the unhelpful checking letters at the end as the minutes ticked round, trying to get an IF in there; an I in there, and not understanding why the word couldn’t be something to do with financing, or monetising, or profiting. |
|
| 18 | Detail many works with passion (10) |
| ANIMATEDLY – (DETAIL MANY)*.
Great anagram and clue. Here “works” is indeed the anagrind. |
|
| 19 | Arrest suspects to populate jails (4) |
| STOP – Hidden [jails]. | |
| 22 | Managing part of machine storing means of authentication (6) |
| COPING – COG around PIN. | |
| 23 | Understood I’m allowed to embrace power (8) |
| IMPLICIT – (IM + LICIT) around P. | |
| 25 | Publicity surrounding heartless wise man had improved (11) |
| AMELIORATED – Publicity here is AD (not PR) which you put around a wise man without its middle. No, not a sage, or a guru, nor even a magi in its generic sense but specifically MELCHIOR without his middle two letters. You then have to add ATE for “had”.
Difficult w/p so if the correct synonym for “improved” immediately jumped out at you, you did better on this clue than me! |
|
| 27 | Feel bad coverage must be removed from newspaper (3) |
| AIL – MAIL without its first letter. Coverage could refer to the outside letters of a word as well, but here it is just the first/top letter. On edit: It is indeed the outer letters which should be removed from DAILY. | |
| 28 | City lent money to auditor introduced by firm (7) |
| COLOGNE – The CO bit is straightforward. “Lent money” implies a past tense of “loan” so the words here must mean a nounal phrase meaning “money that has been lent”. | |
| 29 | Football team lease empty historic ground (7) |
| CHELSEA – (LEASE HC)*.
Nice clue. Other adjectives are available for the team. |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Popular drink, by turns mild and short on taste (7) |
| INSIPID – IN + SIP + ID | |
| 2 | Savoury casserole with stewed apricots (6,5) |
| POTATO CRISP – POT [casserole] + (APRICOTS)*.
Lovely surface. SAVOURY here as a small item of food. |
|
| 3 | Give advance payment to authorise rent from tenant? (6) |
| SUBLET – SUB [give advance payment to] + LET [authorise]. | |
| 4 | Time, demonstrating commitment, wants top editor removed (10) |
| ERADICATED – ERA for time then we have DEDICATED as a synonym for “demonstrating commitment” from which you remove the first time ED appears in the word, giving you DICATED.
The “removal” indicator is – again trickily – not “removed” but “wants”. |
|
| 5 | Musical technique in 20th-century song cycles (4) |
| CATS – This must be SCAT where the first letter cycles to the end.
Another cunning bit of w/p where you need to lift and separate between “Musical” and “technique”, and where “cycles” does make a lot of sense in the surface reading. Apart from CAPITALISE, this answer together with the crossing COPLAND, caused me most difficulties. SCAT is a word I knew but, looking it up, now realise I didn’t know what it meant. Apparently, in jazz, the use of nonsense syllables and other wordless effects in singing. |
|
| 6 | History exam dealing with life in the country (8) |
| PASTORAL – PAST + ORAL. | |
| 7 | A church service making a simple point? (3) |
| ACE – A + CE.
Very nice, simple clue. |
|
| 8 | Corrupt party led by deputy (7) |
| DEPRAVE – DEP + RAVE.
Verb not adjective. |
|
| 13 | Peers across at mother’s bottom — it’s out of order! (11) |
| ARISTOCRATS – (ACROSS + AT + R + IT)*
Another sneaky example of the setter using a term (ACROSS) that normally is a synonym for A or AC or is indicating the placement of words/letters as part of w/p, in a different way (as part of the anagrist). |
|
| 14 | Qualification reduced credit for demonstrating negotiating skills (10) |
| DIPLOMATIC – DIPLOMA + TIC(K). | |
| 17 | Forbidding relative at home to wear dog’s coat (8) |
| DAUNTING – (AUNT + IN) inside the outer letters of DOG. | |
| 18 | Pre-eminent American in charge of antiquities? (7) |
| ARCHAIC – ARCH + A + IC. | |
| 20 | Joint coverage in a report carried by Press Association (7) |
| PATELLA – (A TELL [report]) inside PA.
Great definition. |
|
| 21 | Page provided guidance for one withdrawing guarantee (6) |
| PLEDGE – P + LED [provided guidance] and then a reversal of EG [for one]. | |
| 24 | Provider of notes on staff deserved to lose case (4) |
| ARNE – EARNED with the outer letters removed.
Our second composer and third musical reference. Another lovely clue with a believable, misleading surface, but possibly tough if you don’t know the composer. |
|
| 26 | Fish swim, not run (3) |
| EEL – (R)EEL. | |
I think 27 ac newspaper uncovered is (D)AIL (Y). As you say, uncovered usually means both ends
Plus, of course, the (Daily) Mail does not qualify as a newspaper!
👍
Great crossword and blog. I parsed 27 ac as d(ail)y. I really enjoyed the clue for ‘capitalise’.
28.50 (with half of that time trying to parse ERADICATED and CAPITALISE).
Lovely jubbly!
LOsI the two above.
COD COPLAND (also the two-word title of a Stallone film about DEPRAVEd cops).
It’s as well I’m no longer giving my time which was off the scale. Fortunately, I did get up early this morning. Didn’t want to be beautiful anyway. LOI CAPITALISE which as a finance man I find difficult to justify, but I can hear a sports commentator in another conrext saying that a team capitalised on an opportunity. A pretty tough puzzle with COD to POTATO CRISP, not heard for a few decades. Thank you D and setter.
Sadly I am still giving my times so I have to admit to 72 minutes for this one. I abandoned it overnight with barely half the grid completed and resumed this morning. The remaining answers had to be ground out from wordplay one at a time. I had been hoping that with one or two new answers going in the remainder would fall like dominoes, but it wasn’t to be. I did however feel a sense of achievement when I finished without resorting to aids.
25 minutes or so.
– Didn’t know The Face was a magazine but liked the CD in BEAUTY SLEEP anyway
– Couldn’t parse the clever CAPITALISE
– Agree with commenters above about the parsing of AIL
– Didn’t parse ARISTOCRATS, so needed the S from CHELSEA to make sure it wasn’t ARISTOCRACY
– Not quite sure how reel=swim as used for EEL
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
FOI Ace
LOI Capitalise
COD Copland
If you received a blow to the head you might say your head was swimming / reeling.
Yet another WOE. I now see that SONATA was not the umpteenth NHO musical term I was resigned to it being when I submitted TOTATA but I had lost the will by then. Again.
Some good bits in PATELLA, ARISTOCRATS, BEAUTY SLEEP. Removing the heart of Melchior was a bit of a stretch. Thanks both.
18:07
I found this rather dry and a bit of a chore to be honest. I biffed ARISTOCRATS and CAPITALISE to thanks for explaining those two. The second of those was too clever by half, if you ask me.
Finished just under the hour, but not a clue what was going on with CAPITALISE and the guessed ARNE and COPLAND – my musical GK is clearly well below par. Biffed ARISTOCRATS without understanding exactly what the anagrist was. Glad to finish, but can’t say I enjoyed it.
Very enjoyable. I took struggled with SONATA because I couldn’t get away from child = TOT even when it clearly didn’t in this context. I am also with the dAILy crowd.
I thought this was a terrific puzzle. Not too easy, but with nothing other than what could be called fair general knowledge required. Any difficulty arose out of ingenious cluing. COD to my LOI: CATS, very clever, great surface, not a word out of place.
43 minutes. I liked the interesting definitions with the ‘man behind bars’ at 5a being my LOI. I spent a while on the parsing of ERADICATED which I did work out eventually but I had to bung in EEL and AMELIORATED from the defs. I’ve now learnt who MELCHIOR was anyway.
Favourites were the two composers and the English translation of the famous piece of music, which is anything but ‘Feeble’, across the grid at 11a and 12a.
23.41. Some very clever cluing in this, notably CAPITAL I S E, and the use of Mel(ch)ior, though I doubt I would have spotted him if I hadn’t landed on the answer. Another bit of harmless rudery, staring at mother’s bottom to raise a smirk. Nearly enough musical references to suggest we had a theme going. By the way, you do know ARNE: he wrote Rule Britannia, though you can be forgiven for not knowing much more of his vast output.
I liked this a lot, and as Jackkt says, a sense of achievement having negotiated its intricacies.
My thanks to Dvynys and setter.
DNF, the NE was largely empty. I found this tricksy (when I got an answer.) On reading the blog I felt that it was very tricksy.
16a Capitalise, DNF, words fail me.
4d Eradicated, biffed, again tricksy parsing which I failed to do.
5d Cats, OK I saw the scat but didn’t feel that the clue explained it fully.
6d Pastoral, cheated a lot to get some crossers but I love this one.
13d Aristocrats I biffed aristocracy which delayed me somewhat.
26d Eel, does reel=swim? Oh, OK then.
Spent an hour or so doing about two thirds of it then lost the will to carry on. Not really feeling it today.
Thanks, D.
25′, seemed hard work. The COPLAND clue is particularly clever as Stewart Copeland was the drummer for the Police.
Thanks dvynys and setter.
Although the one thing you’d expect of a drummer is that he wouldn’t be behind the bars!
Great puzzle, a bit harder than usual IMO but I got there in the end in about 31 minutes. I didn’t parse CAPITALISE properly and agree with some comments above, it doesn’t really mean “making money” in a financial sense. I suppose you can capitalise on something which means making the most of it which could be money.
Too many good clues to single one out as CoD. Well blogged Dvynys.
31:05
Lots of clever misdirection.
COD: POTATO CRISP
Thanks to Dvynys and our setter.
23’01” – but I admit to looking to see if CITO was a musical notation. It isn’t. Not that it would have made any sense of the clue! Which I finally got. A dooby-dooby-diddly-die.
Many good clues here I thought. CAPITAL I defeated me (although now I like it and don’t feel that it’s too clever by half) and like some others I couldn’t parse 16ac. And I’m embarrassed to say that I missed the ARISTOCRATS anagram at 13dn — was fixated on its ending ‘ass’, a word for bottom which still grates because it isn’t arse, yes I know, I know. I thought SONATA was anything but gentle. Didn’t like scat for 20th century song at 5dn. 65 minutes, with electronic aids for my last two (5ac and 13dn) after I’d stared at them for ages.
Yes, somewhat harder than usual. I put in quite a few without understanding the cryptic – ameliorate, eradicated, aristocrats. I was left at the end with C _ T _, where I saw neither the literal nor the cryptic, but put in cats anyway as the likely answer. I do agree with the [d]ail[y] crew.
Time: 43:35
37 – with IMPASSE and ERADICATED holding out for 5 mins after everything else was done.
From INSIPID to CAPITALISE in 34:26. A bit of a toughie! Didn’t manage to parse my LOI, but at least managed not to stick in MAXIMALISE, which jumped out at me from the crossers. Liked AMELIORATE which took a while. Thanks setter and Dvynys.
DNF today. Forgot the pronunciation of COPLAND and consequently had no idea where to go on 2dn.
Otherwise no real problems, I thought the wordplay was very helpful in most cases. CAPITALISE was a BIFF, however – WP was too clever for me. Very pleased to see AMELIORATED almost instantly so it was my COD.
Thanks to setter and dvnys.
Not at the races with this one. I had to come back to it so no time to report. A few tricky ones in this but it shouldn’t have caused the difficulty it did. Music isn’t my strongest area but all three of those clues were in during the first session so can’t use that as an excuse.
AMELIORATED last one in only half parsed. I actually had man=OR so stumbled into it eventually. Not helped by being slightly unsure on ARNE and EEL.
COD POTATO CRISP
Thanks blogger and setter.
Unlike with the quick crossword, I was on the wavelength for this one today. All clues parsed, and all fair and square I thought.
Finished in the NE with Cats. For some reason it took me a little while to appreciate Ace but I smiled when I saw it.
COD to beauty sleep.
Beautiful puzzle today, absolutely loved it. Capitalise a wonder of the setters art and patella and beauty sleep not far behind. Finished in 39:08 and then wondered how it had taken so long as the answers seemed simple once the penny dropped.
Thx D and setter
Found this hard-going.
We often see ‘son’ ( as in SONATA) clued as ‘child’ and it always irritates me.
Where did those 55 mins go? I was sailing along enjoying this fine puzzle in sub-30 minute style when I ran aground in the NE corner. Having ultimately solved the puzzle, I don’t know why I made such heavy weather of it, or how I could spent 5-10 mins getting SONATA, considering I’ve played quite a few of them! My favourite three clues were to BEAUTY SLEEP, CAPITALISE and POTATO CRISP. Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
54 minutes for a puzzle I didn’t really like much. Too many clues required me to biff the answers before being able to understand the wordplay (AMELIORATED is the prime example). However, CAPITALISE is brilliant (but I didn’t know that until I read the case-sensitive explanation here!). I think the definition here should be taken as “make money from” and not just “make money”, as several people have indicated above. SET was my FOI, since the quadruple definition could hardly be missed.
An excellent puzzle that held me up a bit, but succumbed in the end. Failed to parse CAPITALISE and ANIMATEDLY – can’t believe I missed the anagram and was convinced I had to ‘de-tail’ some part of the clue to make sense! Unlike the Quickie, where I made a silly error, this one was just as enjoyable but I was a bit more careful to parse everything (apart from the two above). POTATO CRISP or perhaps BEAUTY SLEEP were my CODs. LOsI, which I really struggled with, were COPLAND and CATS, the definition of the both having escaped me for a long time.
I thought that “daily” was the newspaper that lost its coverage in 27a.
Do you not remember scatman John Dvynys? A classic 😂
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8
I did this in three sessions so no time to report, but certainly over an hour plus. My main problem was the ne corner where COPLAND and DEPRAVE eluded me for some time. Glad to get there in the end with everything parsed, a really tough challenge for me anyway.
27:31
A few correct biffs helped to speed things up here – plenty that I didn’t spot though:
SONATA – didn’t understand the ‘to play’ bit in flight, thought it was referring to a stage production, but of course, it is obvious now!
AMELIORATED – felt I had the correct answer but failed to spot MEL(CH)IOR as the wise man
AIL – Had (M)AIL rather than the better (D)AIL(Y)
EEL – Didn’t think of REEL for swim
ERADICATED – got the ERA but not the DICATED
All enjoyable though
Thanks D and setter