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.
Botanically there is no difference between a tree and a shrub/bush. Horticulturally it is partly context-dependent but in general a tree is single stemmed, a shrub is multi-stemmed. Species like Elder, Hawthorn, Hazel etc. can be grown as either. TMI? Handy ambiguity for setters.
Jerry would surely know this but others may not, that Bush is / was the trade name of a leading British manufacturer (founded 1932) of audio equipment such as radios and record players, and I suspect that had some bearing on the setter choosing it to clue ELDER today. It adds nicely to the surface reading.
Indeed, I actually possessed a Bush transistor radio in my youth. And yes, the sound reproduction was distinctly middling..
Our family radio (which eventually had a permanent home in my bedroom) was a Bush pre-war valve set with a solid wood cabinet and a big speaker. It wasn’t hi-fi as we came to know it of course, but goodness the tone was rich and warm, unlike the tinny trannies that gradually took over.
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
I don’t know if it’s lazy so much as just a diminutive, but subhead and crosshead are common enough newspaper / magazine layout terms, although I’ve never seen them spelt without their As!
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.
Was going to say A Knight’s Tale, but young Geoffrey Chaucer forged a Patent of Nobility for Heath Ledger, according to Wikipedia. Which is never wrong!
Didn’t British privateers carry letters patent? Otherwise they would be hanged by the RN.
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.
28:25 I struggled on this puzzle more than I should have in hindsight.
EDGE took longer than it should have maybe because most of mine went straight to the slip’s hands rather than the boundary line.
EMILE ZOLA just not seeing until I listed every fruit I could think of in my head.
SWAMI and Sami are words I know from crosswords but that 3rd/4th letter was escaping me.
BARENTS SEA low on the list of seas in my head but the word for leases came eventually.
“Still together” must be the clue I have seen more then any other. Thankful for the old chestnut to give me some letters.
Never seem RICKSHAw without the w at the end.
Good puzzle though with some excellent surfaces and not any over convoluted word play.
COD: LETTERS PATENT
Thanks blogger and setter
24 mins and for once no errors. Lots of trusting the wordplay on NHOs: AGON, SUBHEAD, FUNDAMENT, RICKSHA and my legal terminology GK is even worse than my music.
I thought of TOE as in “Toe the line” to make it a verb.
Another v. enjoyable challenge, high quality stuff this week. COD: CAR BOOT SALE and pun of the day to “Ex Trot”.
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
49 mins and LOI, AGON, held me up a bit. I stuggled today with some of the excellent anagrams with LADYS FINGER taking an age but finally opening up a couple of sticklers, ESCALOPE (why did that take so long to see?) and MIDFIELDER.
Tough but enjoyable today I thought. I liked CAR BOOT SALE & AT THE SAME TIME.
Thanks Dvnys and setter.
I’ve been trying and failing to get to grips with this crossword for three years. I considered just giving up but really enjoy TfTT so I’m going to carry on lurking and continue having a go. I’ve learned such a lot from the bloggers and all the comments and you seem such a nice bunch. I’m in awe of your general knowledge. Thank you all.
What a nice post 😊 As long as you enjoy yourself, that’s the main thing! I’ve been battling the 15x15s for years, and complete one once or twice a week if I’m lucky. Most frequently I’m left with just a couple to go. But never say die! Do you do the quickie?
Thank you for your kind reply! I do occasionally try the quickie. I am certainly out of my depth here but I have learned so much and as you say, never say die!
DNF thanks to LETTERS LATENT.
The perils of being a cruciverbalist (“letters latent” is “a specialized cryptic crossword puzzle format, most notably used by Azed in The Observer”). Unfortunately the phrase rang a loud enough bell (out of context) for me to think I was on to something and LATE sort of fitted the “enduring delay” part of the clue.
Rats.
Perhaps the resonance was deliberate on the part of whoever first devised/named that format (Ximenes?)
14:07. LOI the unknown LETTERS PATENT from the checkers and wordplay. DNK AGON either. Nice puzzle. COD to the clue for EDGE for it’s brilliant surface. Thanks Dvynys and setter.
36 minutes. Following the wordplay instructions paid dividends for the NHO LETTERS PATENT and SUBHEAD. LOI was FUNDAMENT for which I had trouble throwing away ‘Stern woman’ as the likely def. Good to find that I’d remembered AGON, a word only previously encountered in crosswords.
Thing I’ve learnt today is where to find the BARENTS SEA on a map.
I didn’t know that RICKSHAw could lose its W. But, as I started out as an inside forward in the fifties who became a MIDFIELDER in the sixties without changing position that much, I thought of that once I got to the bottom of FUNDAMENT. AGON was constructed more in hope than expectation, my New Testament Greek producing nothing. LOI was SUBHEAD, where I assumed a Deputy Headteacher. COD to TRUANT. Thank you D and setter.
15 minutes.
– Biffed MIDFIELDER once I had all the checkers, and would never have worked out the parsing
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown AGON
– Also had to trust that there was an architect called ADAM
– Didn’t know the FUNDAMENT meaning of ‘stern’… is it really the same as the rear?
– RICKSHA went in with no confidence at all as I didn’t know wrench=rick or that it’s an alternative spelling of rickshaw
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
FOI Toe
LOI Ricksha
COD Letters patent
Enjoyed this one except I feel a tad cheated by RICKSHA. Did not know AGON but the clue was fair. Thanks for the blog!
17.35. One LADY’S FINGER looks like a mean meal, but it went in anyway. I’m not particularly convinced by AGON as an Olympic “game”, but I suppose any form of wrestling would count, if less lethal. I was surprised that Chambers only has “the buttocks or anus” for FUNDAMENT: it feels like it should have other meanings. Stern as a definition requires a three point turn in the Thesaurus, but I got there.
Pleasant puzzle, fine informative stuff from Dvynys, thanks!
Collins is more helpful:
1. (euphemistic or facetious) the buttocks
2. the natural features of the earth’s surface, unaltered by humans
3. a base or foundation, esp of a building
4. a theory, principle, or underlying basis
.. though not sure which of those equates to stern!
I really hate unusual spellings of common words, so RICKSHA had me steaming. The wordplay at least was kind. Knew AGON, fortunately. Nothing else here to scare the horses, and finished it in 16 mins, but somehow it didn’t light my fire. EMILE ZOLA was a nice clue, though.
Nearly complete, but needed help with the LADY FINGER anagram, as never heard of it.
Also NHO AGON, and tried OGAN, with OG for Olympic Games.
COD MIDFIELDER
In addition to the alternative names noted by our blogger, lady’s fingers are also know as bhindi. I had bhindi bhaji in the Bengal Brasserie only the other week.
My thanks to Dvynys and setter.
13a Midfielder, biffed. Not a hope of parsing as NHO Midfi, and wouldn’t use it if I had heard of it. Also DNK that Elder (small tree/bush) was not the same as Alder. Did know ground elder; not a bush.
17a NHO Agon, easy to guess but I needed to check it is a thing.
3d Extrovert. DNK rev=revolver. Still not certain and it isn’t in Wiktionary.
14d COD Fundament.
19a Ricksha, DNK this spelling.
It’s REV as a verb, as in to gun/rev an engine
As also yesterday, though it felt unfamiliar to me then!
Nice crossword, lots of things I wasn’t quite sure about, which made it a little more tricky.
I think ‘digital process’ being TOE in 7d is process defined as ‘a projection or projecting part, esp on a bone’.
I assumed that midfi was a rather jokey reference to hifi, but apparently it’s really a thing. And I was very stupid with Nemo’s position, thinking that in some way he was below the head, something on a ship and forgetting that the heads are the lavatories, so he’d hardly have been below them. Otherwise fine and a nice crossword. AGON unknown to me and ogen seemed to be the only word that would fit. RICKSHA I looked up to see that it really was OK since it seemed very odd.
18:40 – the early games and the odd spelling of RICKSHA offered some resistance in an otherwise smooth and very workmanlike puzzle. I also bunged in a provisional LEAFY GREENS for no better reason than it fitted and green might mean gas/ozone layer friendly. Daft really.
I knew letters patent which set me off at a decent clip. This continued throughout until MIDFIELDER and AGON. Couldn’t parse the first and the second only arrived due to working the parsing and hoping for the best.
35′ and very enjoyable. TRUANT was a great clue. Couldn’t initially get the unparsable didgeridoo out of my head for the Bush player, but another great clue. And only from our blogger do I now see how FUNDAMENT = stern.
Had never seen rev = gun until yesterday, thankfully my memory still stretches that far… My only complaint was RICKSHA, which is a bit of a harrumph.
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
I had to take a couple of things on trust, notably the NHO Laplander, and my LOI (although there was a faint tinkle).
FOI EDGE
LOI AGON
COD TABLE LINEN
TIME 9:55
35 minutes. Biffed EDGE and SUBHEAD (still don’t really understand the clueing for the latter). Knew LETTERS PATENT because when my father renewed the family arms, which had lapsed, we were given the LP. Took some time over FUNDAMENT because I wanted to make it TERMAGANT, but of course that couldn’t be parsed! Nice puzzle.
About 45 minutes solved either side of lunch. I looked at my LOI AGON for some time without the confidence it was correct, but in it went with a shrug of the shoulders. MIDFIELDER went in with similar confidence as I failed to parse it.