Time: 20.57
A couple of NHOs at most in this very doable puzzle, showcasing some clear, concise cluing and plenty of smooth, believable and often amusing surfaces. Long clues are not always clunky, and short clues can be mystifying, but it is notable that no clue here runs to more than eight words, reinforcing my sense that this is a setter at the top of his/her game.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Monkey better run away from roguish child (8) |
| CAPUCHIN – CAP (better as a verb) + URCHIN without an R. | |
| 5 | Move doctor taken in carriage (6) |
| GAMBIT – Our variety of doctor here is an MB which is placed within GAIT.
No problem with the synonym though in chess, GAMBIT is used with reference to an opening (such as the Queen’s Gambit; King’s Gambit; Benko Gambit) rather than a single move. |
|
| 10 | Eliot’s thought muddled about her unfinished work (2,3,10) |
| TO THE LIGHTHOUSE – (ELIOTS + THOUGHT + HE)*.
Very nice misleading surface. I’ve not read Woolf’s famous 1927 novel but learning about it, might put it on the list. |
|
| 11 | Pie cooked with kipper for refined diner (7) |
| EPICURE – An anagram of PIE plus CURE (kipper).
Another nice surface, presumably intended to be tongue in cheek… |
|
| 12 | Group discussing reassembled remains (7) |
| SEMINAR – (REMAINS)* | |
| 13 | Put pins round seat covering tailor’s frame (8) |
| STRADDLE – Our seat is SADDLE which we put around TR. Lovely definition. | |
| 15 | Ducks mobbing rook in weeds (5) |
| DRIPS – DIPS around R (rook in chess notation). I smiled at this surface as well. | |
| 18 | Mum’s bed concealing Frenchman’s necktie (5) |
| ASCOT – Frenchman is M for monsieur which we have to delete from MA’S COT.
This is a very regular visit to the shores of Crosswordland, so I thought I might investigate exactly what it is. The answer: a cravat with a distinctive knot. |
|
| 20 | Sharpness had effect splitting very fine line (8) |
| ACERBITY – If something has taken effect, one might say it has BIT and this is placed between an amalgamation of ACE (very fine) and RY (line, as in railway line). | |
| 23 | Backed leading bank as more unstable? (7) |
| POTTIER – TOP is our word for “leading”, which is reversed and added to TIER. That sort of unstable. | |
| 25 | Records reflecting desire to spend heavily (7) |
| SPLURGE – A reversal of LPS + URGE. | |
| 26 | Little evil one in poet’s pool (6,9) |
| POCKET BILLIARDS – Here we have POCKET for “little” then (ILL + I) inside BARDS.
I wasn’t familiar with this expression as a synonym for POOL, and needed plenty of checkers before grasping what was going on. |
|
| 27 | River creature found by water rat (6) |
| ROTTER – R + OTTER (creature found by water). Not difficult but a nice lift and separate, with a believable surface. | |
| 28 | Live with increasingly savage fox (8) |
| BEWILDER – BE + WILDER. Again, not difficult but a nice clue. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Small boat first to capsize say (6) |
| CUTTER – C + UTTER.
Not sure that CUTTERS are always small as such (there are plenty of smaller crafts) but its inclusion helps the surface. |
|
| 2 | Loyal Irishman in charge containing insurrection (9) |
| PATRIOTIC – PAT + IC around RIOT. | |
| 3 | Pause revolutionary scheme air industry group adopts (7) |
| CAESURA – I struggled to remember exactly what the relevant authority is, and to get “plan” out of my head for “scheme” but eventually worked out CAA (for Civil Aviation Authority) which goes around a reversal of RUSE.
The term is used for a break in music or poetry. |
|
| 4 | Compound that is entered by unlit turning (5) |
| IMIDE – IE into which we put a reversal of DIM. | |
| 6 | Embarrassed where no professional leader at News? (7) |
| ASHAMED – If you are not professional you might be an amateur, or a SHAM which is the synonym we need to give us A SHAM ED. | |
| 7 | Bear, black one shut inside chicken enclosure (5) |
| BRUIN – B for black (from pencils) and then I inside RUN for “chicken enclosure”.
The name of the bear in Reynard the Fox, but more generally a name for a bear, especially in children’s stories. |
|
| 8 | Gold secured by one believing speculator (8) |
| THEORIST – Gold is almost always OR or AU. Here it is the former which goes inside THEIST, being “one believing”. Another simple but excellent clue with us needing slightly different senses for “believing” and “speculator” to those in the surface. | |
| 9 | Henry wears tight nose peg in lethal gas (8) |
| PHOSGENE – Henry gives us H around which we place (NOSE PEG)* with “tight” the anagram indicator. A NHO but it seemed the only sensible arrangement of the letters. I rather skipped over this when solving but “tight nose peg” is really rather good. | |
| 14 | Harangue from district attorney about island race (8) |
| DIATRIBE – Another simple construction: DA around I and then TRIBE. | |
| 16 | Crossed Bury, picked up money (9) |
| INTERBRED – The INTER bit was easy. BRED (homophone of bread) caused me some delay with so many different types of money to choose from and I wasn’t sure if we were looking at a homophone or a reversal. And if that weren’t enough there are quite a few possibilities for “crossed”, of which the answer wasn’t the first to spring to mind. | |
| 17 | Musician’s grand spot close to audience in pub (8) |
| BAGPIPER – “Spot” is another word which gives you a few options. Here we needed PIP (in the context of cards or dice) which goes after G and before E (last letter of audience) all of which is contained within BAR. | |
| 19 | Galley test sheets read aloud (7) |
| TRIREME – Homophone of “try” and “ream”. | |
| 21 | The Spanish tucked into pancake and mixed drink (7) |
| BELLINI -Our knowledge of foreign languages is not too stretched by needing EL for “the” in Spanish, which we insert into BLINI.
As I am sure everyone knows, a BELLINI is a cocktail made of prosecco and peach juice, first made in Venice. |
|
| 22 | Tricky question from trustee involving labour shortage (6) |
| TEASER – If one is not labouring, one might be said to be at EASE, which we insert into TR (a valid abbreviation for trustee). | |
| 24 | Silent, songbird’s caught a cold (5) |
| TACIT -TIT around A + C. | |
| 25 | One divided by five — find an answer (5) |
| SOLVE -SOLE around V. | |
I have been enjoying this one by the pool,
With the South China Sea lapping the nearby shore.
A lovely solve
Has anyone else noticed that on an i pad if you navigate away from the puzzle and come back the clues either partially or wholly disappear?
Yes, it’s infuriating
It seems to forget a random period of solving – the timer reading, say, 20 mins reappears at 11
Very frustrating and it happens with other puzzles on the site as well.
I have this problem sometimes and when I appeal to support they usually tell me to delete cookies, update to latest version of iOS and/or the app and suchlike. It seems to work it’s been quite a while since I had the problem.
Thanks dvynys for a great blog and our setter for an enjoyable crossword. I am still struggling with ‘labour shortage’ for EASE.
Nothing gets past you Mr Sawbill! 🙂 I did squint a bit but persuaded myself it worked. Interesting to hear other thoughts.
With EASE = without (much) work?
I didn’t understand it until I read your excellent blog, at which point it all made sense and I rather liked it.
I was interrupted and lost track of time spent but I noted it was an easy solve with the exception of TEASER which I had difficult constructing from wordplay as I didn’t know ‘ trustee / TR’. Eventually I thought of it from the definition and crossed my fingers about the wordplay.
On reading the blog I didn’t remember writing CAESURA in the grid and when I checked my print-out I found I had left the unchecked letters blank and forgotten to go back to the clue.
I thought Civil Aviation Authority was CAA into which the reversed SURE was put.
Thank you and now corrected.
29:26
I’m not so keen on crosswords where there are too many unknowns – in my view, two is a stretch but three is too many for it to be completely enjoyable. If you have never heard of the word and don’t understand how it is linked to the definition, then you are relying on wordplay to conjure up CAESURA and PHOSGENE (which for all I knew, might conceivably have been GHOSPENE or PHESOEGE). IMIDE was my other unknown – perhaps more guessable, but still fairly unsatisfactory. If I, as a reasonably knowledgeable person doesn’t know these things, what chance does the more casual Times Cryptic solver have?
Apart from TEASER, where, along with others, I too struggled with the wordplay, the rest was pretty fair with some fun moments – DRIPS and STRADDLE both fell into that category.
Thanks D and setter
I think that general knowledge is defined as what you know. Phosgene was a write in for me. I am often stumped by words which appear to be well known by others, and equally am surprised when words I regard as well known are flagged as obscure.
I second that – everyone knows caesura and phosgene, right? It’s that imide that no one has heard of!
I feel your pain. I, having long ago studied chemistry, was absolutely fine with Phosgene and Imide, but understand how some would struggle with it. I was baffled by Caesura and all similar poetic or musical terms befuddle me, as do many flora and fauna.
My bar for the NHOs is not too much interlocking obscurity and generous wordplay. I believe we had both today so it worked for me.
80% done, but never recovered from mum=TACET, which left a rogue t in the BAGPIPER clue. If I’d got POCKET BILLIARDS I might have cleaned up the remaining clues, which were all in the bottom half. I only ever heard POCKET BILLIARDS as slang for something very different. Just me?
Top half went in reasonably smoothly with the NHO IMIDE, but I did know PHOSGENE. I don’t see how the cure=kipper works in EPICURE.
COD GAMBIT
Thanks Merlin. One of the definitions of kipper is to cure (as in smoke).
No, it’s not just you.
No it’s not just you- it is a very common expression ‘oop north’ to play with one’s private parts.
Yes I know that to which you refer. My French teacher used to play it.
Pocket billiards. Me too, Merlin, something very different. Leaving that aside, the need to confront the expression here today has given me the massive PDM that it has nothing to do with being miniature; it’s because there are pockets in the table!!
I was another who DNK anything other than the schoolboy slang meaning.
Add me to the sniggering list!
I was aware of the slang version to which you allude. Personally, NHO the “real” definition of POCKET BILLIARDS, but when I had all the checkers in Billiards, and I could see that fitted the latter part of the cryptic, which in turn led me to the conclusion that I needed an alternative word for Pool (the game), it was fairly obvious what it had to be.
Very enjoyable with the grid filling up smoothy until a delay in the SW. I was delighted to find that. CAESURA and IMIDE were right. LOI BAGPIPER. I did read the Virginia Woolf as an earnest young man. Can’t remember much about it. Thank you D and setter.
Enjoyable solve, a whisker under the half hour mark. Times readers of a certain age may recall the great TRIREME controversy of 1975, which started as an exchange of views in the Letters page about how fast these ships could actually travel, and stirred such interest that it led eventually to the construction of a full size replica, the Olympias.
One MER: I am (and have been for some years) a Trustee of three organisations, and not once have I come across, in the tens of thousands of pages I must have read in the course of my work, the abbreviation TR for Trustee. The authority of the setter is canonical so it must be so and I have gained a new piece of knowledge, but this tests the limits of obscurity.
Many thanks blogger and setter.
Agree, also as a long serving trustee. It is always a bit annoying when abbreviations of words occasionally appear to be somewhat random.
11:40
I enjoyed this. Many of the definitions were very clever. My only real NHO was IMIDE. I knew CAESURA was a thing, but couldn’t have told you exactly what, and must have come across PHOSGENE somewhere in the past as I had no doubts about the answer.
Thanks for explaining ASHAMED which was the only one I couldn’t parse.
Similar MERs as others re EASE and POCKET Bs.
32:10. Nice one. DNK IMIDE and I wasn’t happy with it because it seemed quite possible that there might be something better. CAESURA was one of the first words I wrote down in my list of words I perhaps ought to know if I’m ever going to be any good at this business. And I remembered it. Could not parse TEASER and still don’t get it despite our blogger’s valiant efforts
9:36. Held up for over half a minute at the end by the unknown (in that sense) POCKET BILLIARDS. Nice puzzle for which I seemed to be on the wavelength, although I was, like others, mystified by “labour shortage” = “EASE”. Thanks you Dvynys and setter.
Pocket billiards in the acceptable-in-the-drawing-room use is not uncommon in the US. Probably because billiards is so rarely played here that it is almost a synonym for pool, while snooker is virtually unknown.
20 minutes.
– Hadn’t heard of TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, but it sounded plausible and the checkers helped
– Not familiar with STRADDLE meaning ‘put pins round’
– Trusted the wordplay for the unknown IMIDE
– Had no idea how TEASER worked… ‘labour shortage’ giving ‘ease’ seems a stretch
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
FOI Bewilder
LOI + COD Phosgene
Pins as in legs…if you hadn’t twigged!
Oh, those kinds of pins – I get it now, thanks!
20:11 with minimum labour and much enjoyment. Even the few NHOs were kindly clued: it can’t be AMIDE so there must be such a thing as an IMIDE. I’m with Merlin on the PB topic.
Thanks to Dvynys and setter.
Straightforward and enjoyable, bar a MER at labour shortage = ease, as with others. Perhaps, if you squint. It’s actually the shortage that seems strange, as if it’s somehow a problem rather than something I look forward to every day but seldom achieve. Still it seems near enough.
My youth was insufficiently misspent, since I only knew the ordinary meaning of pocket billiards.
Also somehow gathered the idea that V Woolf must have popped her clogs before finishing To The Lighthouse, glad I was wrong about that.
One clue short- CAESURA- but not bad after eighteen months not solving.
I didn’t understand how TEASER and POCKET BILLIARDS worked, but in they went.
Enjoyed DRIPS and CAPUCHIN
18:52. I caused a massive problem for myself by putting in DRABS. It works perfectly well apart from the fact that a dab is not a duck – the dabchick is own variety and not a diminutive! I considered DRIPS but by then I was stuck on the ‘clothes’ meaning of ‘weeds’ and while ‘drip’ can mean (fancy) clothes in modern slang it’s never used in the plural.
Eventually I realised that 16dn simply had to start with INTER, which made me rethink 15ac completely, which in turn got me INTERBRED which finally unlocked the unknown POCKET BILLIARDS, where I had had just POCKET for about ten minutes.
In short, a bit of a disaster.
Having been suffering from a surfeit of labour in recent weeks I had no problem with EASE.
37:14
Decent puzzle despite the somewhat obscure imide and phosgene.
Thanks, D.
14.40 for an enjoyable puzzle and appreciation for an enjoyable blog. Not (intentionally) boasting but the “unknowns” weren’t for me, maybe because of prolonged exposure to this prince of entertainments.
I have a slightly different take on ASHAMED: HAM is a more convincing “no professional”, and where provides the AS.
POCKET BILLIARDS took a while – we’ve not had it before, as far as I can tell – as I had entered a smudge-parsed TESTER to scupper the final S. It took slightly less time to divine the Urban meaning when prompted by the hints dropped above.
I agree on AS HAM
28:13
I thought this was really good. Especially my COD: POCKET BILLIARDS which I thought was going to defeat me and be some miniature Mephistopheles I’d never heard of. JACKET BILLICRAG or some such obscurity.
Thanks to Dvynys and our setter.
Apparently not on the wavelength today. I don’t like CAA being a “group”. It is a regulator, not a group. IATA, ABTA, ATOL are groups, in my book. But they didn’t help, on a clue for a very obscure word which I just about knew. Other than that, it was all fair, with some really nice clues, and I was just being slow.
Now I’ve seen ASCOT twice as a tie, hopefully I’ll remember it for the next time.
My thanks to Dvynys and setter.
A couple of DNKs and a few interesting quirks.
10a To the lighthouse, HHO but only in Xwords.
POI 26a Pocket billiards. As others I thought that this meant masturbation, DNK this def.
1d Cutter, small: certainly the US Coastguard cutters I’ve seen on TV are BIG as boats go, perhaps smallish as ships go. One was involved in the arrest of a possibly Russian tanker somewhere between Iceland and UK so definitely ocean-going.
3d NHO Caesura. I needed to confirm a guess.
4d NHO Imide, ditto.
6d Ashamed; I parsed as as=where, ham =no pro, ed=editor, but either way works.
9d HHO Phosgene, I think it was used in WWI. As in Gassed by John Singer Sargent
21d Bellini I knew of only as a family of artists, but seemed possible/probable as a cocktail.
22d Teaser, was a trifle worried about it but shrugged.
In case it jogs a memory.
Lyrics from Oh! What a lovely war (Gassed last night)
“Gassed last night / And gassed the night before / Going to get gassed tonight / If we never get gassed any more / When we’re gassed we’re sick as we can be / ‘Cos phosgene and mustard gas is much too much for me”.
It does, thanks.
Wow, I didn’t find this easy at all. SW almost completely defeated me, and I gave up on the hour. Don’t think I’d have got POTTIER however long I’d stared at it. Which is a pity, because if I had, then BAGPIPER would have been more obvious. Distressed to see the Snitch is well below the level I’d normally cope with. Ah well. Another failure.
22:15
First rate. Dvynys sums it up perfectly. Concise witty cluing, the mark of a good setter.
STRADDLE and DRIPS both excellent. I’m another who thought POCKET BILLIARDS was something else. I’ve read TO THE LIGHTHOUSE and had a BELLINI. The latter is much more fun
Thanks to Dvynys and the setter.
I was blissfully unaware that there is any other meaning of POCKET BILLIARDS apart from the schoolboy slang one, so was surprised to see it here. Ease = labour shortage struck me as pretty unlikely until I was told that it was, and I was slow to see the equivalence of weed = drip. DRIPS seemed an unknown word for old clothes. But most clues seemed straightforward enough and I was towards the better end of my solving times.
‘Drip’ is actually a modern slang word for fancy clothes and jewellery.
So in the clue is it used in the Molesworth sense (Molesworth 2 is utterly wet and weedy) or in the modern slang sense? I suppose it depends on the age of the setter.
It’s the Molesworth sense. The modern slang sense is always in the singular and doesn’t appear to have made it into any of the usual dictionaries yet.
Fun puzzle all correctly completed which is a rarity.
Solved both “imide” and “phosgene” from the wordplay and have never knowingly encountered either. Trireme dredged from the memory banks.
Thanks to our blogger and setter (and have added To The Lighthouse to my list of books to get round to).
You really would not want to encounter phosgene.
16:12 – Elegant indeed. ASCOT, CAESURA and a couple of others went in without much parsing once the crossers pointed the way, and IMIDE was a fairly confident guess. TR for trustee seemed a bit slap-happy, but I see the setter had it on good authority. As others, I was not aware that PB was anything more than schoolboy slang and it isn’t in Chambers either. I imagine it is all but obsolete in normal usage, perhaps for the same reason.
No problems with this one, surprised people weren’t aware of PHOSGENE a deadly gas used in WWI. I had A MER at EASE in TEASER, as said above, and CAESURA my LOI dimly remembered although I couldn’t have told you what it meant without the clue. 20 minutes.
Workmanlike puzzle, hard to finish. LOI TEASER, but before that BAGPIPER (not a musician, for anyone who isn’t Scottish and hates the noise), and POCKET BILLIARDS proved elusive.
With Zabadak on AS HAM ED. But embarrassingly I had ST (seat covering) then the NHO RADDLE (tailor’s frame), but did see the def, and smiled. Heard of PHOSGENE, heard of CAESURA without remembering what it was, and a bit of a MER at CAA. Not a MER but a BEH at teaser, not a great clue. First ever outing for TR as trustee? And for one from a land with extensive and amusing slang for all situations, I’ve never heard either the schoolboy English slang or more proper definition of POCKET BILLIARDS, but it was guessable.
A GAMBIT is sacrificing a piece to gain tempo or other advantage, not specifically but usually in the opening. So I’d say MOVE was a reasonable definition, when you put the pawn there to be captured. It’s usually a pawn, in the opening moves – King’s Gambit, Queen’s gambit etc, but not always. Tried an &lit on it once:
Part of chess, say, but not the last part? (7)
Part of chess(say for DBE) might be a GAME BIT, but not the last part of chess = GAM
e. And gambits usually happen near the start, not near the end of chess. Rejected by the editor, but I insisted, and it was published to mass apathy, but no actual derision. Polite people, crossword commenters.Well, if you don’t like Scottish war pipes, there’s always Northumbrian smallpipes.
There are many wonderful bagpipes out there. Uilleann pipes are lovely.
Much the same experience as many above – like K, was fixated on widow’s weeds until INTER forced a rethink. Didn’t know IMIDE or PHOSGENE (though have seen O What a Lovely War). I shudder each time I see ‘compound’ in a clue, as I know I won’t have heard of it. As Kapietro said above, I didn’t realise why PB was so named – because unlike a billiards table, there are pockets! (I also knew the other meaning.) It’s obviously gone out of the lexicon now that pool has completely eclipsed billiards in popularity, thanks to colour TV. But a great puzzle, and thanks to Dvynys for the blog, which cleared up a couple of questions over parsing.
That’s snooker, no? However it must be true that the rise in popularity of that game and pool contributed to the demise of this term. Hardly anyone ever plays billiards without pockets these days (I can’t remember the last time I saw a table) so it’s rarely the relevant distinction.
snap
Something of a challenge here – especially the NW where the dnks Capuchin, Caesura and Imide all crossed. Never did work out how Teaser worked but it went in. COD to Straddle for the surface and ‘put pins round’. Very satisfying to come through unscathed.
Tough but fair, comfortably my favorite of the week to date. 21:18 for me, unaided!
I was lucky as all my biffs succeeded. never heard of IMIDE, but the clue was helpful. Dvynys parsing made me realise how lucky I’d been.
To the Lighthouse was an A-level Eng lit set text in 1964. None of us liked it much at the first reading, but it got better on re-reading. I recommend.
From CAPUCHIN to IMIDE in 30:42. I wasted ages on LOI, IMIDE as the unlit in the clue looked like unit on my screen until I magnified it more. Thanks setter and Dvynys
I did have most of the knowledge, but I suspect no one but chemists will know imide. I only know Bellini as a composer, but a cocktail is likely enough. I had no idea about the cryptic for caesura, but it’s an easy biff.
Time: 21:36
I’m not hip enough to know Drip, but the rest was smooth sailing. Like Penfold, about halfway through I noticed that a lot of the definitions were very nice.
Not that you needed to know it of course. I am hip in the sense ‘father of children who are currently teenagers’. My knowledge of children’s TV is fast becoming obsolete.
A bit like Pocket-Billiards in reverse – local use (circa 1950) would call someone a drip, but we don’t really use weedy or weed.
I share Dvynys’ view that today was an absolute masterpiece of the setters art. Teaser held me up for a full 5 minutes at the end and the combination of an obscure abbreviation and the strange use of Ease probably makes it the only clue on the weaker side today. The NHOs were generously clued I felt.
24:50, COD to either Epicure or Drips but so much to enjoy.
Thanks D and setter
A happy problem-free 15 mins over breakfast at the V&A. First one in was SOLVE and the last one PATRIOTIC. My favourite clue was to PHOSGENE. In an email this morning I came across a new (to me) word, BIOGRAPHEE (a biography’s subject), which I expect to turn up in the crossword any day now. Thank you to Setter and to Blogger.
About twenty minutes to get to my LOI 3dn, and a further five minutes realising I wasn’t going to get it. I suppose I was too blinkered thinking it had to begin with CHE to get CAESURA.
FOI SEMINAR , the stuff of quick cryptics, about 30 minutes for me. Surprised to Keriothe the speed merchant took 18+ minutes for this, I expected a minus 5 minutes for him.
I’ve heard of both ‘drip’ (clothes/jewellery that someone is ‘dripping in’ in rap/youth slang) and ‘fit’ (outfit) and VHO the old-fashioned rude meaning of POCKET BILLIARDS but I’ve also heard of the standard and original meaning and I didn’t even think of the crude sense tbh. A ‘pool hall’ originally referred to as place where people pooled their money to place bets on pocket billiards games and ‘pool’ only came to refer to the game in its own right later on. It helped that the ‘Lost in the Pond’ YT channel posted a video that I watched earlier today where the host, Lawrence, bizarrely referred to pool with the old-fashioned word ‘billiards’ (though not the more precise archaism ‘pocket billiards’) and was mocked for it in the comments where ‘pocket billiards’ got discussed.
25.50 and a high flying solve. I’m currently 30000 ft up on a Cathay Pacific flight. Must be the first time I’ve experienced a Wi-Fi on a plane that actually works.
34:13 not finding it as easy as others. Although 5 minutes of that was trying to think of something better for the ultimately correct CAESURA and TRIREME.
COD STRADDLE
Thanks blogger and setter.
Oh dear. I had Drabs and then changed to Dribs instead of Drips. Didn’t see the parsing of Teaser (TR indeed).
Good puzzle, though.
Back to long solves (an hour) but really like this one for the concise cluing. DRIPS took forever, I was pleased with myself in the end as “weedy” for a person is pretty remote from my experience and “drip” not much more familiar.
Thanks setter and Dvynys.
A rare finish accompanied by an even rarer sub 20. I’m going to buy a lottery ticket. 18:17 and much enjoyed. Many thanks D.
As above passim, I only knew the schoolboy meaning of POCKET BILLIARDS so there was a bit of a snigger as well as a huh? when I saw it had to be the answer. For me the unknown word today was IMIDE but I guessed it ok. Narrowly avoided DRABS, but when the down checker clue began BURY, I knew it had to be an INTER- word. Was on wavelength because I did this in 14’13”. Thanks to all involved.
A shocking 46 mins. All plain sailing juntil POCKET BILLIARDS (yes, I knew the slang as well) and LOI TEASER. Am also in the AS-HAM-ED school BTW.
A shocking 46 mins. All plain sailing until POCKET BILLIARDS, ha ha, and LOI TEASER. (Am also in the AS-HAM-ED school.)