Time: 20:33
Music: Chopin, Ballades, Earl Wild
Well, I did solve the puzzle, my solution is all correct, and I did have a pretty good time. The only problem is I didn’t understand several of the clues, and simply put in the most likely answer. This is a solving technique that top-level solvers are sometimes forced to use with very difficult puzzles, but this puzzle was not in fact very difficult.
There are, however, a number of place where inexperienced solvers are likely to run into trouble. For a word you don’t know, you simply have to use the cryptic to create one. For clues where the cryptic is impenetrable, try to find the literal and put in a probable answer that fits the crossers. This is how you solve the puzzle without knowing everything.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stalk member of family, following daughter after gym (8) |
| PEDUNCLE – P.E. + D + UNCLE. A word I was vaguely aware of, but the cryptic gives it to you. | |
| 5 | Spirit of former lives (6) |
| PASTIS – PAST + IS. Never heard of it. | |
| 8 | Colour intensified with less reason (4,6) |
| ROSE MADDER – ROSE + MADDER, which I suspect will give some solvers difficulty, unless they are stamp collectors. | |
| 9 | Horse raced round circuit (4) |
| ROAN – R(O)AN. | |
| 10 | Delighted nude chaps frolicking on quiet meadows (7,2,5) |
| PLEASED AS PUNCH – P + LEAS + anagram of NUDE CHAPS. Another biff for me. | |
| 11 | Ship in harbour after end of nine month mission (7) |
| EMBASSY – [nin]E + M + BA(S.S)Y. | |
| 13 | Sheepish announcement about fake drug (7) |
| ASHAMED – A(SHAM E)D. | |
| 15 | First class umpire bowled over by maiden (7) |
| PREMIUM – Anagram of UMPIRE + M. | |
| 18 | Country returned Polish and German immigrants initially (7) |
| BURUNDI – RUB backwards + UND + I[mmigrants]. | |
| 21 | Secret number deadens Len’s peculiar state of anxiety (4,3,7) |
| PINS AND NEEDLES – PIN + anagram of DEADENS LEN’S. | |
| 22 | My turn — stop talking! (4) |
| GOSH – GO + SH!. | |
| 23 | One agreed to accommodate introduction of nonstandard medium on hardware source (10) |
| IRONMONGER – I + RO(N[onstandard] M[edium] ON)GER. Roger means received, not agreed – that is wilco. | |
| 24 | Small fish, big smell (6) |
| STENCH – S + TENCH. | |
| 25 | Welsh politician with hard choice of candidates for English constituency (8) |
| ASHFIELD – AS + H + FIELD. I have no idea what the Welsh politician is doing here, it’s probably some UK thing. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Work of fiction is meaty fare (4,3) |
| PORK PIE – Double definition, referring to a CRS expression. | |
| 2 | Pretend I’m blessed with work (9) |
| DISSEMBLE – Anagram of I’M BLESSED. | |
| 3 | Sailors retreating with area lost — island’s downfall (7) |
| NEMESIS – SE[a]MEN upside-down + I’S. There’s a Moby Dick joke here somewhere. | |
| 4 | Madonna’s festival song entertaining decidedly vacuous American lawyer (4,3) |
| LADY DAY – LA(D[ecidedl]Y + D.A.)Y. Oh, that Madonna. | |
| 5 | Pairs up as arranged, giving precedence to neither (4,5) |
| PARI PASSU – Anagram of PAIRS UP AS. | |
| 6 | Plant’s no good in Middle Eastern country (7) |
| SYRINGA – SYRI(N.G.)A. | |
| 7 | Book that is about Virginia, New Hampshire and the heart of Wisconsin (7) |
| IVANHOE – I(VA, NH, [wisc]O[nsin])E. | |
| 12 | Musical play with mother leaving Christian community prone to disgust (9) |
| SQUEAMISH – [ma]SQUE + AMISH. Definitely a biff, and I struggled to parse this for the blog. | |
| 14 | My French oral’s first: record reported speech (9) |
| MONOLOGUE – MON + O[ral] + sounds like LOG. | |
| 16 | Standard backing left’s agreement (7) |
| RAPPORT – PAR upside-down + PORT. | |
| 17 | List of options greeting new violinist (7) |
| MENUHIN – MENU + HI + N. Not a problem for me, and Yehudi Menuhin did appear frequently in the UK. | |
| 18 | Irrational prohibition on an element that’s poisonous (7) |
| BANANAS – BAN + AN + AS, which is the chemical symbol for arsenic. | |
| 19 | Glibly repeat old projectionist’s lament? (4,3) |
| REEL OFF – Cryptic hint. My father was a projectionist as a teenager in the late 1930s, and the big problems were the film breaking and the very hot bulbs blowing out and having to be changed. | |
| 20 | Crumbling ruins journalist covered (7) |
| INSURED – Anagram of RUINS + ED. | |
Well, I loved this one – nothing more satisfying than completing a crossword where you simply follow the wordplay and get your answer, however unheard of it might be – I’m looking at you, PEDUNCLE. PARI PASSU was vaguely familiar enough to put the correct unches in, and opened the way to ASHAMED, discounting Baa as part of the solution… ROSE MADDER also rang a bell as a colour, though no idea where from. ASHFIELD, although no idea of the Welsh politician, could be nothing else. So I was PLEASED AS PUNCH to finish in what was probably a record time, with the conviction that everything was correct.
30:51 and though not a PB, the quickest in a long time, so it was more fun than usual. (I don’t really enjoy debating with myself how much more time to spend on one of these. Should set a hard limit and stick to it but that never happens.) I liked ROSE MADDER, which shows up in watercolor paints. Couldn’t completely parse IRONMONGER, but understood everything but “roger” so it was good enough. Same for ASHFIELD. Liked SQUEAMISH best for the satisfying resolution to my struggle.
Thanks setter and vinyl.
By and large you guys and gals are way ahead of my limiyrd abilities. But I eas puzzled why so many struggled with AS., well if you are in the UK. The Senedd has been mentioned in paper, TV and radio news items fairly often. So once one had Ashfield the only letters not covered by the rest of the word play is AS, so given that that is where Welsh polititians go it is inevitable what the S stands for. Then given that the Welsh do things in Welsh and Senedd is obviously a Welsh word then equally obviously rhe A is also going to be a Welsh word meaning something like Member. You don’t need to know that word, nor do you need to look up what Senedd members are called, because that just has to be a correct inference,