Hello again. I found this one about average difficulty, at least by current standards. It had about the usual number of unusual words, with a couple of clues I struggled to parse at first. But no nho’s. I did a fair amount of BIFFING and quite a lot here would have passed me by, if I weren’t blogging it!
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 | Function of aide in prisoner release (6) |
| PAROLE -PA ROLE | |
| 4 | Does the author have what it takes to keep clubs friendly? (8) |
| AMICABLE – C(lubs) in AM I ABLE | |
| 10 | Better grind out a result here? (5,6) |
| TRENT BRIDGE – *(BETTER GRIND). Wasn’t sure what to underline, this is the first of a number of clues with no definition as such, just an indirect reference. Trent Bridge, Nottingham, one of England’s nicer test cricket grounds. | |
| 11 | One within range for each record (3) |
| ALP – A (per, for each) + LP | |
| 12 | Receiving bill, face down innkeeper (7) |
| PADRONE – AD (bill) in PRONE, face down. This would have been harder if we hadn’t had PADRONE as recently as last Friday! Why anyone would ever call an innkeeper a padrone, beats me. | |
| 14 | Mass this month either side of Easter in church (7) |
| MINSTER – M(ass) + INST, this month, + E(aste)R. Does anyone still use inst or ult, or prox? | |
| 15 | Poem roughly about area belonging to university city (7,7) |
| ORLANDO FURIOSO – LAND OF U(niversity) + RIO, in OR SO, roughly. An epic poem by Ariosto, that I had vaguely heard of. You might struggle with this one, if you hadn’t! It is also the title of two operas by Vivaldi. It has come up on TfTT before, last time in 2022. | |
| 17 | Booted, finally get them sparkling, in military order (7,7) |
| KNIGHTS TEMPLAR – *((ge)T + THEM + SPARKLING). I just BIFD this, I’m afraid. According to Wikipedia the Knights Templar were disbanded in 1312! The similar order, Knights Hospitaller, fared better and is still around today, under different names. | |
| 21 | Take off tights, possibly grabbing pair at the back, and throw (7) |
| UNHORSE – (pai)R in UN HOSE, to remove tights, not that I ever have. Nor been unhorsed, come to that. Must get out more .. | |
| 22 | Citizen breaks into a run around country (7) |
| ROMANIA – OMANI is the citizen, in A R(un) reversed. | |
| 23 | A little spirit, dismissing opening batter with it (3) |
| RAM – (d)RAM, a little spirit. Another one with no clear definition, just a hint to a battering ram .. | |
| 24 | Bearing up, in case police finally call (11) |
| SHOULDERING – SHOULD (in case) + (polic)E + RING, call. There must be some situation where in case = should. How about “In case/should Mr Farage call(s), tell him I’m out.” That very nearly works… | |
| 26 | Randomly choose from Spooner’s few remaining beds (4,4) |
| CAST LOTS – LAST COTS, according to Spooner. I have learnt to love Spoonerisms, but don’t think it was easy. | |
| 27 | Fruit hard to find in foreign school (6) |
| LYCHEE – H(ard) in LYCEE, a French school roughly equivalent to a sixth form college in Britain. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Advertise vacancy where result’s already decided? (3-2,3) |
| PUT-UP JOB – A DD, the first jocular. What some call a “Cryptic hint,” perhaps. | |
| 2 | Crop warped in the ear (3) |
| RYE – sounds like “Wry.” The first definition of which in Collins is “twisted, contorted, or askew” | |
| 3 | Lower rent supported by county (3,4) |
| LET DOWN – LET (rent) and County DOWN. I spent far too long here thinking about cows. | |
| 5 | Grammar essentially a barrier, monarch for one abandoned Japanese (5,9) |
| MADAM BUTTERFLY – MA + DAM (barrier) + (Monarch) BUTTERFLY. |
|
| 6 | City’s vital energy keeping queen up (7) |
| CHENNAI – ANNE, rev. in CHI, vital energy. Chennai, once called Madras, a name that lives on now only in curry houses. | |
| 7 | The Black Horse loans out a room you’d look better to leave (6,5) |
| BEAUTY SALON – (Black) BEAUTY + *(LOANS). Black Beauty by Anna Sewell was required reading for young folk when I was one, not so much nowadays perhaps, though it is still one of the best-selling novels of all time. I remember being very affected by it, and have tried to be nice to horses ever since. | |
| 8 | No longer cheeking master? (6) |
| EXPERT – EX PERT. | |
| 9 | Dismissal from Wellington’s command? (5,2,3,4) |
| ORDER OF THE BOOT – Wellington boots, originally leather but now rubber, were indeed originated and popularised by the (1st) Duke of Wellington. | |
| 13 | Official initially dropped, only had a most unreliable Welsh linesman (5,6) |
| DYLAN THOMAS – *((o)NLY HAD A MOST). Unreliable as an anagrind? I guess. | |
| 16 | One beaten by a different sort of player in a frame of snooker (8) |
| TRIANGLE – The musical “Instrument,” and the frame used to place the red balls for a frame of snooker. | |
| 18 | Gear raised a very large stone (7) |
| GIRASOL – RIG (gear) reversed, + A SO L(arge). A type of opal. | |
| 19 | A parent myself, backing your ostentatious ceremony (7) |
| MUMMERY – MUM (a parent) + ME, myself, + YR (your) rev. | |
| 20 | Chafe over endlessly prolific set of instructions (6) |
| RUBRIC – RUB + RIC(h) | |
| 25 | Sort of mishap, map in parts missing (3) |
| ISH – (m)ISH(ap). | |
Judging by my first 5 minutes in the NW corner I thought this was going to be an easy one, but as soon as I ventured out of that zone I started struggling and began to wonder if I would ever finish. I did in the end, with 63 minutes on the clock, having used aids to help me with the second word in the title of the poem at 15ac.
My other NHO was GIRASOL but the wordplay got me to it, and a last minute revisit allowed me to correct 23ac from RUM to RAM as I realised the significance of ‘batter with it’.
As has been mentioned, it was helpful that PADRONE turned up so recently, but also that I had been reminded of ‘school / LYCEE’ when writing my explanation of LYCEUM for yesterday’s blog.
.
Just at the right level for a Wednesday in my opinion. Some laborious Ikea instructions, especially the NHO ORLANDO FURIOSO of which I was ignorant but saw ‘Orlando’ and was never going to get the rest. Never saw the anagram for KNIGHTS TEMPLAR but just bunged it in and continued. I wasn’t sure if it was Dehorse or Unhorse but RUBRIC sorted that out. Also wasn’t sure what part of the clue was the definition for the Spooner clue at 26a but put in CAST LOTS and crossed my fingers. Didn’t bother to parse DYLAN THOMAS as I don’t know any other Welsh ‘linesmen’ so in it went. PAROLE and PUT-UP JOB took longer than they should. TRIANGLE was one of my last in and initially thought the frame of snooker would be ‘SR’ for the outside letters. No problems with MADAM BUTTERFLY but the Monarch part escaped me for a while. Liked BEAUTY SALON when I eventually twigged. Didn’t know GIRASOL despite being in Oz but the wordplay led to it. COD to SHOULDERING where I was struggling to find the answer, initially thinking of ‘soldiering’ (on) for ‘bearing up’.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
As a US solver, I had no idea about Trent Bridge, but the anagram and the crossers clearly point to it. On the other hand, I had to read Orlando Furioso (in translation) in Bart Giamatti’s Spenser/Milton seminar, along with Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. I did biff most of the long answers, which seemed quite obvious once you had a few checkers. I was added by vocabulary, being able to put in girasol, mummery, and rubric without difficulty. I did really struggle with shouldering, but I eventually saw it.
Time: 43:11
37 minutes. I’d forgotten ORLANDO FURIOSO from 2022, but as some consolation did manage to remember PADRONE from last Friday. NHO MUMMERY for ‘ostentatious ceremony’ though knowing a mummer as an actor helped. ROMANIA took a bit of sorting out, especially the ‘Citizen’ bit and I was glad I resisted the temptation to put in a U, for which the wordplay wouldn’t have worked, instead of an O. I agree about the exact def for TRENT BRIDGE being hard to identify although I see what the setter is getting at. Never come across ‘cheeking’ before but ‘cheek’ as a verb is in two of the standard reference works; still not sure of the part of speech though.
I think the def for MADAME BUTTERFLY is ‘abandoned Japanese’, after which things didn’t go well for her.
I liked the whimsical ‘Wellington’s command?’ for ORDER OF THE BOOT.
POI ORDER OF THE BOOT, and it took a minute (but then I didn’t have to check it). Like yesterday, I took a break for my evening repast—after getting the NHO TRENT BRIDGE. Then biffed ORLANDO FURIOSO from just the few crossers and the definition and KNIGHTS TEMPLAR followed similarly. And MADAM BUTTERFLY too! LOI was MINSTER, just because I nearly forgot to finish it.
The clue for UNHORSE is ridiculous. “Unhose” indeed!
MUMMERY wasn’t a total mystery, as I lived for a few years in Philadelphia, home of the Mummers’ Parade.
I surrendered at about 50 and looked up the NHO poem. Now that the cryptic has been explained I can confidently assert I would never have got it. I found this hard but an absolute pleasure. I know it’s up to the Indians but I must admit I liked the sound of Madras more, and Calcutta. OK I also preferred Ceylon and Burma, which probably makes me an imperialist or something but I’m just talking about the sound and the feel of the words. One day I suspect that Canberra will revert to its original indigenous name (and spelling) which will cause a bit of grief like most words starting with Ng tend to do. Many thanks to Jerry.
From Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands:
Now you stand with your thief, you’re on his PAROLE
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul
Who among them do you think could destroy you?
And don’t stop to wonder how she can be “on” someone else’s PAROLE.
I never have (until now).
It’s surrealism. Go with the flow.
Love the Joan Baez version of this – played twice through it’s my target time for 5k on the treadmill (still 2 verses short though).
Nobody sings Dylan like Dylan, not even Joan.
PUT UP JOB, sans hyphen, is “Advertise vacancy.” It’s gotta be a cryptic hint, because you have to mentally delete the hyphen in the phrase thar fits the dictionary definition.
Never mind the hyphen, PUT UP JOB isn’t a distinct phrase meaning ‘advertise a position’, so the second part can’t be a definition.
That’s the first part, an elliptical way of saying “put a job up [on a real or virtual bulletin board]” and it’s certainly not, as such, a definition. But the phrase doesn’t even mean that with the hyphen making “put-up” a modifier. I was referring to the hyphen in the word that fits the dictionary definition, the deletion of which gives this other sense.
On the wavelength here, with all of the required knowledge allowing a lot of biffery. TRENT BRIDGE is one of the traditional English Test match grounds I’ve not been to, while ‘Orlando Furioso’ was part of my reading for my CS Lewis book, as the poem was something of a precursor to ‘The Faerie Queene’ – which was in turn treated by Lewis at length in his magnum opus, ‘English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.’
17:29
I knew TRENT BRIDGE despite having no interest in cricket, to the extent I assumed it was a football ground I’d vaguely heard of. ORLANDO FURIOSO was harder to drag up. I doubt I’m the only person here who has never read it. My LOI was ISH since I wasn’t sure it was a word but then the other 25 choices were equally unknown as words. MADAM BUTTERFLY went in with just a couple of checkers since there just are not many abandoned Japanese, let alone with that enumeration. Same for ORDER OF THE BOOT. I had never heard of GIRASOL as a stone but I know it is the French for sunflower so it seemed plausible. Actually I just realized that is tournesol.
Nice moderate crossword which went in steadily.
23.59
Had a couple of false starts in the NW; didn’t know the poem, which had to be pieced together, and like Vinyl struggled with SHOULDERING at the end. So all in all happy with the effort. Liked the Spoonerism and thought TRENT BRIDGE a brilliant clue. Great blog too.
About 22′, after careful scrutiny. Nho the poem. Got TRENT BRIDGE and have since found that it does/did indeed have a reputation for slow pitches. Nho GIRASOL, but it had to be.
Thanks jerry and setter.
Maybe ORLANDO FURIOSO was somewhere in the back of my mind as I did eventually see it some time after I’d stopped trying to fit ORLANDO FLORIDA in (it is, after all, a university city, among other things!) That took nearly as long as KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, where I’d originally assumed that “sparkling” would be the anagram indicator. Still, finished off in just under my allotted hour with MUMMERY/LYCHEE/TRIANGLE and just glad to have finished at all, really.
15.40
Fairly average (and averagely fair) with 6 biffs, including three of the long ‘uns.
Extremely vague memories of ORLANDO FURIOSO; PADRONE cropped up elsewhere recently, which helped.
LOI PAROLE
COD ORDER OF THE BOOT
After much biffing and resigned to failure, amazed to get a clean sheet in 44 minutes. No idea why ORLANDO FURIOSO should have occurred to me as I had given up on the wordplay. Previously had only associated GIRASOL with sunflowers or artichokes. Surprised by the reprise of both LYCHEES and PADRONE so soon or am I just muddled?
20:29 finishing with the unknown ORLANDO FURIOSO constructed from the wordplay. I thought the first name of the opera was spelt MADAME. It just doesn’t look right without the E. I liked TRIANGLE and AMICABLE. Thank-you Jerry and setter.
Here at last with Orlando furioso at the delay, not that I blame him. I biffed MUMMERY too. I eventually deduced GIRASOL once I replaced UNHINGE with UNHORSE. Yep, some of the definitions were hard to spot, but I quite like that, provided I do eventually. COD to MADAM BUTTERFLY. Thank you Jerry and setter.
DNF, defeated by the unknown ORLANDO FURIOSO. I worked out some of it, but I assumed that ‘university’ was giving ‘uni’ so was left with ORLANDO FUNI_SO and filled the gap with a C (can that be clued by ‘city’?) even though it looked unlikely.
– Held myself up with PAROLE by initially putting CUT DOWN for 3d, until I reconsidered what ‘rent’ in that clue might be getting at
– Nearly fell into the RUM trap for 13a before correcting to RAM
– Didn’t parse MADAM BUTTERFLY
– Never come across ‘cheeking’ as a verb before, as used in EXPERT
– Trusted the wordplay to get MUMMERY
Thanks Jerry and setter.
COD Order of the boot
10:27, WOE. I biffed a lot of this, and which you’re in that mode it’s quite easy to look at 23ac, see ‘spirit’, think RUM, and then read the rest of the clue as
dRUM. It almost works but if this were the competition I wouldn’t be appealing.LYCEEs are mostly equivalent to secondary schools, going from sixième (year 7 in modern UK terms, 1st year when I was at school) to Terminal (Year 13 or upper sixth). As distinct from a Collège, which starts as sixième and stops at seconde (Year 11 or 5th year). Simple!
10ac is just a standard semi-&Lit, where the definition is technically (in the sense ‘the bit of the clue that isn’t wordplay’) ‘a result here’ but you need the rest of the clue for it to make sense.
Like others, NHO of the poem, so although I had ORLANDO I simply didn’t bother to guess at the second word. The rest came slowly but surely, finishing (bar FURIOSO) in just under the hour. ORDER OF THE BOOT is a new one on me, at 57 yrs old. Amazing the stuff you can miss.
Defeated by the poem but I enjoyed this. Thanks for the blog.
22.36 – I’m going up by about a minute a day. A brain freeze on ORLANDO something was eventually resolved by the convoluted wordplay. Not having done a degree in English, so having read neither Beowulf or the Faerie Queene, the poem is only really known to me through the medium of crosswords.
GIRASOL turns up regularly in Countdown, though Susie usually says it’s a flower, that “turns towards the sun”.
My last in was BEAUTY SALON, like tights not a regular feature of my life. I was trying to resort the letters of B[lack] horse loans, which looked plausible.
An enjoyable crossword with wit, and a fine entertaining blog to go with it. Cheers!
Well i didn’t get on with this one at all. Took me ages to get a foothold but finally beaten by the unknown poem, which i looked up.
I liked BEAUTY SALON.
Thanks jerryW and setter.