Time: 22:11
For me, this was an excellent crossword, with smooth surfaces and some lovely definitions. A couple of off beat words, but very fairly clued.
Sports are in evidence today, with rugby; cricket; and football all getting a mention one way or another, and the Olympic Games also making an appearance.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Landlord’s enduring delay losing current legal document (7,6) |
| LETTERS PATENT – LETTER’S + PATIENT (enduring delay) minus I.
A type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state. Interestingly (to me) the opposite of letters patent are “letters close” which are personal in nature and sealed so only the recipient can read their contents. In 35 years of being a lawyer never heard of the latter and never came across the former. |
|
| 8 | Mistimed shot through slips … boundary! (4) |
| EDGE – Double definition.
As hopefully most readers know (even if their knowledge of cricket is on a par with mine of baseball), EDGE is the term for when the ball hits the edge of the bat (often going through the slip cordon to the boundary, though in the case of the recent series which dare not speak its name, more regularly ending up in the fielder’s hands). |
|
| 9 | Lentil and bean in mixture spilt over this? (5,5) |
| TABLE LINEN – (LENTIL + BEAN)* | |
| 10 | Look inside skip for thin meat slice (8) |
| ESCALOPE – LO inside ESCAPE.
I can’t think of a phrase where ESCAPE and SKIP are interchangeable but the sense of “avoid” is common to both and in the dictionaries as the second meaning of ESCAPE. |
|
| 11 | Channel swimmer crossing river (6) |
| TRENCH – TENCH outside R. | |
| 13 | Average sound reproduction perhaps with Bush player (10) |
| MIDFIELDER – MIDFI (average sound reproduction) + ELDER (bush).
I struggled to parse this, not being very familiar with MIDFI, and plenty of types of bush to choose from, but as my LOI with all the checkers, I was happy to biff it in. |
|
| 16 | Nasty person so backward (4) |
| OGRE – Reversal of ERGO.
A little harsh on Shrek perhaps. |
|
| 17 | Game introduced to an early Olympic Games? (4) |
| AGON – GO inside AN.
I found the wordplay straightforward, but didn’t know the word (though school Greek meant I was reasonably confident it was correct). In the Dictionaries it is described as a conflict between two protagonists in ancient Greece. |
|
| 18 | One concluding art with no merit should be scrapped (10) |
| TERMINATOR – (ART + NO + MERIT)*. | |
| 20 | Beat time welcoming Rugby School skipper (6) |
| TRUANT – TAN (beat) + T around RU.
Great definition. |
|
| 22 | Preservative old drunkard consumed in endless crawl (8) |
| CREOSOTE – (O + SOT) inside CREE(P). | |
| 24 | Mean American holds leases in main region (7,3) |
| BARENTS SEA – BASE (mean) + A around RENTS.
RENT can, of course, be both the payment made to use space and also a verb describing the act of doing so |
|
| 26 | Architect, male linked with a Stateside lawyer … (4) |
| ADAM – A + DA + M.
Robert Adam (1728 – 1792) was the leader of the first phase of the classical revival in England and Scotland from around 1760 to his death. Many well known constructions bear his imprint – the one I should have known (but didn’t) is Pulteney Bridge here in Bath. |
|
| 27 | … still together (2,3,4,4) |
| AT THE SAME TIME – Double definition, and a nice one. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Vegetable, gas-friendly, needs cooking (5,6) |
| LADY’S FINGER – (GASFRIENDLY)*.
Clever anagram. Also known as okra and gumbo (the latter also being the dish as well). |
|
| 2 | Foreign character’s ambassador in temperate area (5) |
| THETA – HE in (TT (temperate i.e. teetotal) + A). | |
| 3 | Keeping gun raised, erstwhile communist not inhibited (9) |
| EXTROVERT – Our erstwhile communist is an EX TROT into which we insert a reversal of REV. | |
| 4 | Perhaps Nemo’s position in minor title? (7) |
| SUBHEAD – Double definition with a cryptic limb, the Nautilus being the relevant SUB in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas. I wasn’t familiar with the literal, but easily assumed to be a subordinate title under a main headline. | |
| 5 | Completely skilled, fit guards extremely dependable (5) |
| ADEPT – APT around DE. | |
| 6 | Writer, unknown, tucks into succulent fruit on the turn (5,4) |
| EMILE ZOLA – Z inside a reversal of ALOE (succulent) + LIME.
Biffable, but this one raised a smile, with a nice spot by the setter seeing the reversal of the “succulent fruit”. |
|
| 7 | Digital process starts from theory of everything (3) |
| TOE – First letters clue.
Is the idea here that if you TOE someone then you are performing a digital process? |
|
| 12 | Move a bar close to outdoor market (3,4,4) |
| CAR BOOT SALE – (A + BAR + CLOSE + TO)*
Nice surface; neat clue. |
|
| 14 | Stern woman honoured in amusing books (9) |
| FUNDAMENT – This is DAME (woman honoured) in FUN + NT.
My POI. I was wanting termagant as a definition of “stern woman” but the correct number of letter was about all it had going for it. It meant that I puzzled how FUNDAMENT could mean “harsh” completely failing to realise that STERN here is a synonym for “rear” i.e. FUNDAMENT. Another smooth surface. |
|
| 15 | Repeat fee after European bank’s set up (9) |
| REITERATE – RATE (fee) after a reversal of E + TIER. | |
| 19 | Wrench has fixed two-wheeler (7) |
| RICKSHA – RICK (wrench) + (HAS)*.
I didn’t know this alternative spelling of rickshaw but it had to be. |
|
| 21 | Article about Italian tax demanded by church (5) |
| TITHE – THE around IT.
An escapee from the Quickie. |
|
| 23 | Mystic Laplander drinking whiskey (5) |
| SWAMI – SAMI around W. | |
| 25 | Turkish officer edges away from infidel (3) |
| AGA – (P)AGA(N). | |
I’ve no time recorded but I certainly didn’t set any records. Couldn’t explain MIDFIELDER, EXTROVERT or EDGE. Didn’t know SAMI, LETTERS PATENT or AGON.
I puzzled over EDGE a while at the end, resorted to Collins and made the wild surmise that a ball hit by the EDGE of the bat would be somehow “mistimed.”
We in the journalism trade oft spell SUBHEAD without the A.
Still on middle ground today, a steady solve.
I observe that ELDER in 13ac is a bush today, when last seen a few days ago it was a tree..
Nho AGON, slightly surprisingly for what looks a useful word for setters.
35:18
On the harder side, with some bits missed:
LETTERS PATENT – heard the term and the wordplay worked, but don’t know what it is used for
MIDFIELDER – NHO MID-FI and I thought the ELDER was a tree, but now see it can also be a shrub
AGON – NHO but the wordplay was easy enough with checkers in place
LADYS FINGER – resisted writing letters out for ages, but once I did, saw the answer almost straight away
FUNDAMENT – another here wanting it to be TERMAGANT
SUBHEAD – lazy way of writing SUBHEADING, I suppose
RICKSHA – checked the shortened form existed
EDGE – clue appreciated by this former cricketer
Thanks D and setter
23 minutes. A very fair and elegant puzzle for me. AGON was LOI as it was unfamiliar but made sense from considering antagonist and protagonist as competitors . NHO MIDFI but again seemed reasonable. COD for me was LETTERS PATENT as it set me on a quest to identify the fictional context in which I last came across it – anyone help?
Thanks to setter and dvynys.
I would’ve been a lot quicker had I not looked rather too hastily at the anagram fodder for 1d and bunged in LEAFY GREENS. NHO the singular form LADY’S FINGER, only the plural, so that too a while to see once I’d realised that TRUANT must be right. I think I’d heard of AGON from an explanation of the word protAGONist at some point, which was lucky. 50 minutes as it was, with about ten or fifteen more spent on the NW corner than was strictly necessary, in hindsight.