I’m in a bit of rush tonight, so I wanted a quick solve. That didn’t quite work out, as I solved rapidly for a while and then got thoroughly stuck. It didn’t help that I somehow managed to write in tachination instead of machination, but I found the whole NW a bit tough. I finally discovered that 2 down was not an anagram of not cutting, by the simple method of guessing the answer. This helped quite a lot.
Time: 23:25
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Young woman on crack finally quitting: it takes spirit (4,5) |
| SHOT GLASS – SHOT + [quittin]G + LASS. | |
| 6 | Starts to stimulate idle mate with exercise (3-2) |
| SIT-UP – S[timulate] I[dle] + TUP. Othello comes to mind. | |
| 9 | Garment from Mauritius tactfully returned (7) |
| CATSUIT – Backwards hidden in [Mauri]TIUS TAC[tfully]. Is this a thing? Must be. | |
| 10 | Almost entirely crazy, disregarding current calendar (7) |
| ALMANAC – AL[l] + MAN[i]AC. | |
| 11 | English explorer is close to his dog (5) |
| SPEKE – [hi]S + PEKE. Never heard of him. | |
| 12 | Doubt about record probed by University College trustee (9) |
| FIDUCIARY – IF backwards + D(U.C.)IARY. | |
| 13 | Tearful Chinese communist’s second to be purged (5) |
| MOIST – M[a]OIST. | |
| 14 | Anyone can fake pain (9) |
| ANNOYANCE – Anagram of ANYONE CAN. | |
| 17 | Smoke from hot garlic oil (9) |
| CIGARILLO – Anagram of GARLIC OIL. | |
| 18 | Tea in mug before noon (5) |
| ASSAM – ASS + A.M. A good tea for a cold and damp day, of which we have had plenty. | |
| 19 | Retired American thanks Gypsy lover (9) |
| INAMORATA – A + TA + ROMANI, all backwards. Romani is almost certain to be a variant spelling of Romany in Chambers, so I didn’t even look. | |
| 22 | Fleet gunners drop back (5) |
| RAPID – R.A. + DIP backwards. | |
| 24 | Clothing of adolescent offspring under discussion (2,5) |
| AT ISSUE – A[dolescen]T + ISSUE. | |
| 25 | Routine supply not yet delivered (2,5) |
| IN UTERO – Anagram of ROUTINE. Surprisingly, not a chestnut. | |
| 26 | Prospective part of keynote lecture (5) |
| ELECT – Hidden in [keynot]E LECT[ure]. Elect as in president-elect. | |
| 27 | Tenor consumed by endless fondness for female attire (4,5) |
| TENT DRESS – TEN(T)DRESS[e]. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Rifles and axes (5) |
| SACKS – Double definition. | |
| 2 | Sadly not cutting flying (2,3,4) |
| ON THE WING – Anagram of NOT + HEWING. | |
| 3 | Resistance, following Asterix perhaps, regularly belittles petty tyrant (9) |
| GAULEITER – GAUL + [b]E[l]I[t]T[l]E[s] + R. A biff for me. | |
| 4 | Statute’s fatal importance misrepresented (3,2,10) |
| ACT OF PARLIAMENT – Anagram of FATAL IMPORTANCE. | |
| 5 | Enthusiastic reception of proxy governor replacing head of state (8,7) |
| STANDING OVATION – STAND-IN + (-n,+GOV)ation. A very complex substitution clue that nearly everyone will biff. | |
| 6 | Money on account for spice (5) |
| SUMAC – SUM + A/C. | |
| 7 | Secret society in China and a Pacific archipelago (5) |
| TONGA – TONG + A. | |
| 8 | Big beast, in pain, died in Barnet (9) |
| PACHYDERM – P(ACHY,D)ERM. | |
| 13 | Chum framing another for plot (9) |
| MACHINATE – MA(CHINA)TE. | |
| 15 | Shortened long canon in The Four Seasons (4-5) |
| YEAR-ROUND – YEAR[n] + ROUND, a musical canon. | |
| 16 | Reportedly understands element of chess or bridge (9) |
| NOSEPIECE – Sounds like KNOWS + PIECE. | |
| 20 | Fancies cycling away (5) |
| ASIDE – IDEAS cycling. | |
| 21 | Attack cognoscenti at intervals (5) |
| ONSET – [c]O[g]N[o]Sc]E[n]T[i]. | |
| 23 | Doctor’s surgery cuts medication (5) |
| DROPS – DR(OP)S. | |
Cigarillo was at the top of my mind because two friends were chatting about one this afternoon.
Several words I know, but “know” meaning I understand them when I see them but have a hard time dredging up; and one or two I had to squint at. I’m looking at you, “prospective”.
GAULEITER was a surprise on a Monday. I’d never heard of SPEKE, that I can recall. Same hesitation as Paul about “Prospective,” as I’ve always taken “elect” to mean something settled, not merely anticipated. However, anything can happen between a vote and a swearing-in…
42 minutes. I thought I was heading for an easy on-target (sub-30) solve but with the LH completed I turned my attention to the empty RH and found myself completely stuck for far too long. Eventually I gained a foothold and then progressed slowly to the conclusion.
NHO FIDCUCIARY or SPEKE.
My first thought at 1dn been FIRES which I’m not convinced would have been a wrong answer if the checkers hadn’t made it impossible.
I was unable to parse TENT DRESS as I couldn’t get it to work with ‘tenderest’ and I wouldn’t have thought of the French word in the absence of some sort of indicator. Collins has its usage in English as obsolete.
I was also an early FIRES but fortunately Catsuit quickly pointed out my error
24:54
Biff City: ACT OF P, STANDING O, TENT DRESS (DNK), AT ISSUE, FIDUCIARY, …INAMORATA from ROM and because it’s always ‘inamorata/o’. I’m surprised at all the NHOs for SPEKE, who identified Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile. (John Cleese mentions him in his lecture on word association: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X9Axez-mAw )
Quick today and no nho’s, must be Monday .. I knew Speke, though not much beyond the name.
I wouldn’t personally see tendresse as obsolete, which both Collins and the OED do, but I would definitely see it as a pretentious alternative to tenderness.
From —- GLASS to TENT DRESS in 21:11. GAULEITER, CATSUIT and SACKS came before SHOT. The RHS was bare, with just a few in the NE, for a while until PACHYDERM came to the rescue. FIDUCIARY followed and led to a STANDING OVATION ( biffed as predicted). Thanks setter ans Vinyl.
A nice Monday puzzle for which I found myself, fortunately, on the wavelength with a completed and parsed grid in 12 and a half minutes. Some very enjoyable surfaces in here, helped by splendid choices of indicators. TENT DRESS was the only nho and, at first, it sounded rather an insulting garment but I convinced myself it was the sort of garment some folk wear to music festivals! Wrong, but a nice idea!
SHOT GLASS, ALMANAC, MOIST, ANNOYANCE, AT ISSUE, GAULEITER and PACHYDERM all earned ticks from me today. Thanks to setter and blogger.
Yes, made famous by Mama Cass – you could look it up.
NHO quite a few here: SPEKE, TENT DRESS, SACKS for rifles, GAULEITER, PACHYDERM. However, the clues were not too opaque, so they were gettable (although slowed me down quite a bit compared to what could have been). I really enjoyed the puzzle, though.
A sub-10 to start the week, most pleasing. Knew SPEKE, Africa but not the details. GAULEITER FOI (I try an across, then if unsuccessful do the crossers). Lots of INAMORATA and INAMORATO about recently in crossword-land, maybe due to regular vowels.
9’27”, thanks vinyl and setter.
I found that tough. 22 mins is OKish for me but I was very off wavelength and slow off the mark. The 2 long downs were very welcome.
NHO Tendresse but knew the dress, NHO SPEKE, GAULTEITER or NOSEPIECE. Wondered if LOI ASIDE was going to be another final hurdle failure but got there eventually.
Interesting one, thanks Vinyl and setter.
14:45. NHO GAULEITER or TENDRESSE for LOI TENT DRESS and took ages to see how ON THE WING worked. Also held up by reading 4D as “Statue”, which didn’t help until I found what fir the checkers. Doh! I liked the two chums plotting best. Thank-you Vinyl and setter.
I also misread statue/statute and spent a while trying to fit a version of ARC DE TRIOMPHE….
Ditto!
I know from my reading about WW 2 that Goebbels was the Gauleiter of Berlin and I think that stuck in my memory from there as I just wrote it in as soon as I saw it started GAUL
Struggled to finish this in the SE. Eventually I tried YEAR-ROUND, a couple more fell into place, and I was left with only TENT DRESS, which still took longer than it should have. I vaguely knew of SPEKE as an explorer and not just as the district in south Liverpool with an airport. Above us only sky. Not that easy for a Monday. Thank you V and setter..
DNF, defeated by ASIDE as I never thought of ‘ideas’ and didn’t consider cycling more than one letter.
– Had only vaguely heard of SPEKE
– Not sure I’ve ever come across SUMAC when cooking
– Don’t often see MACHINATE as a verb
Thanks vinyl and setter.
COD In utero
35 minutes. I couldn’t get past TENDERNESS for ‘fondness’ at 27a so spent a while unsuccessfully trying to parse the barely heard of TENT DRESS at the end. I didn’t know NOSEPIECE for ‘bridge’ (of spectacles) but with crossing letters and wordplay it had to be.
Did Emma Peel wear a CATSUIT? That’s what I thought of as I bunged the answer in.
Thanks to Vinyl and setter
Yep, she wore a leather cat suit. And her role in Abelard and Heloise required her to be naked. You could see Diana without her rigg, or Mrs Peel.
I think those ungallant remarks were from the much-missed Clive James.
Very good! RIP both Diana Rigg and Clive James.
Thanks BW.
I think of a ‘tendresse’ for someone as being a rather more charming expression for a ‘crush’ on them (usually her).
Needed checkers to persuade me that the anagram of routine was not the obvious but unidiomatic ‘in route’.
Off to a quick start, including the two long clues, then ground to halt with half a dozen unanswered. In the end I gave up trying to work out 20d and just bunged in ALIKE. Bah.
Same NHOs as others, but at least they were guessable.
Thanks V and setter.
12.46, with most of the edgy words dawning quickly enough. Odd how some words stick: FIDUCIARY, for example, from Mary Poppins and the Dawes, Tomes, Mousely, Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, and the TENT DRESS (though actually a muumuu) from a episode of The Simpsons.
Nearly slipped up by producing IN ROUTE as an alternative to the usual EN-, but cleared it with crossers. The definition produced a smile.
When I was an investment manager I used to tell my clients how “tuppence, prudently invested….” could bring them “fleets of ocean greyhounds…” and other lucrative investments. Fortunately few of them took the money out to pay for birdseed.
In the US, a fiduciary is an investment manager who does not receive commissions or fees from the financial products he sells to the client, but only earns what the client pays him.
That was exactly my position.
Made hard work of that! TENT DRESS my LOI – a desperate guess given I’d NHO tendresse so debated could it be tiny dress? tank dress? – very lucky there and with a careless inamoratO until the crosser rescued me- if that had been an unchecked letter….
NHO of SPEKE either.
Certainly not easy Monday for me.
I went with Tank Dress, as in a Tank top which morphed into a dress.
About 23 minutes, would have been quicker if I’d spotted sooner the hidden anagrams at 2dn (ON THE WING) and 20dn (ASIDE). An enjoyable Monday puzzle, with a witty juxtaposition of the slinky CATSUIT and the voluminous TENT DRESS.
Thanks V and setter.
4:52. The first few acrosses went in immediately so I focused on speed with this, biffing wildly as soon as I saw something that might serve as a definition. SPEKE from wordplay though.
22:08, but one pink square for a misspelled CIGAReLLO. I really must count the letters more carefully when solving anagrams.
I knew about SPEKE and his expeditions from William Boyd’s novel “The Romantic”, and FIDUCIARY from the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank in Mary Poppins.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
1 error after 30:58.
NHO TENDRESSE, or TENT DRESS. Looked up something called a Tank dress, which is as I suspected a sleeveless dress (à la tank top). Since I didn’t equate T=tenor, it looked pretty good.
I also had DROPS as a triple def, since cuts=drops.
NHO SPEKE
That doesn’t seem to work? OP cuts DR’S, can’t really see cuts as anything but a division indicator in the wordplay.
I must be improving as I had no difficulties with this at all. Nearly went for TANK DRESS too, but couldn’t parse that. I knew of SPEKE as a Liverpool suburb (and the pre-Beatles name of their airport), so I assume he has some connection therewith.
[Posted later: ChatGPT tells us that the name of Liverpool suburb pre-dates the explorer by several hundred years, and furthermore that he has no connection whatever with it. How disappointing!]
16:32 but…
Plenty of guesswork and one cheat on this mostly gentle offering:
SPEKE – From all checkers, not sure if I’ve heard of the explorer, but from Boltonwanderer’s comments, I’m probably aware of it as a suburb of Liverpool.
FIDUCIARY – having worked in the financial sector, one comes across words like this (without necessarily knowing exactly what they mean)
INAMORATA – I couldn’t figure this one out, but with the last three checkers in place, it seemed like a reasonable guess
TENT DRESS – LOI, not a clue what this is (though having looked at some pics, it just looks like a shapeless dress – not surprised with a name like TENT, that the trend didn’t last long), nor how it was constructed (though reasonable to think that the second word would be DRESS), so had to look it up before submitting. Even if there had been a pointer to a French word, I still don’t think I would have known it.
ON THE WING – didn’t see the parsing for this, just bunged it in anyway
ASIDE – tricky, but got there eventually once I’d written the letters of IDEAS down and cycled them through
GAULEITER – NHO, but with all but the middle checker, this was buildable from wordplay
CATSUIT associated strongly with Catwoman from the Batman comic strip and brought to life by various actresses who have played her onscreen (but no definitive proof that the CATSUIT got its name from Catwoman).
Thanks V and setter
No very major problems with this. Surprised so many haven’t heard of Speke, who was I thought rather a major figure. Do cigarillos exist much nowadays? Maybe I don’t move in the right circles.
I always start at 1ac, whose surface today was superb. A smile to start. Tricky to finish, finding ASIDE, and finally the not sure I’ve heard of TENT DRESS. Clued by the definitely never heard of tendresse. Only other NHO was SPEKE, so it was a matter of teasing out the wordplay when there was no obvious guess. Not quick, but no problems.
15.00
NHO GAULEITER but the w/p was easy. NHO SPEKE either but ditto. Otherwise no hold ups. Overall: very good Monday fare I’d say. Thanks setter/Vinyl.
Just right for a Monday.
No problem with any of the rarer words here but dithered over MOIST meaning tearful.
As a teenager,I remember someone being referred to in a novel as ” a gauleiter manque” and diligently looking up both words, probably sensing that one day one of them might come in useful. And here we are. The pleasure was a little diluted by somehow managing to misspell NOSEPIECE.
Thanks to vinyl and the setter
I’ve never heard of tendresse nor tent dress, so a DNF.
I was surprised some had not heard of the word gauleiter, a nazi official, as the delightful Nigel Farage used it to describe his German counterparts in the European Parliament. Unsurprisingly, some offense was taken.
Well, I for one had heard of a TENT DRESS, though I’ve never worn one, but I had to work out FIDUCIARY from the wordplay, not having remembered the Mary Poppins reference alluded to. I’d also heard of SPEKE and GAULEITER, which helped, though both were generously clued. A typical Monday offering, I thought. The two long clues helped a lot.
Tried to post earlier but phone acting up! 26 mins BUT stupidly wrote TANGA instead of TONGA although of course knew about Tonga and the Queen thereof. Only knew of SPEKE in Liverpool context, got it from wordplay.
I had a somewhat tougher time than usual for a Monday, taking 47:52 and needing alpha trawls for GAULEITER (which my spell checker doesn’t recognize) and ASIDE. Liked YEAR ROUND and IN UTERO. Of course I was tempted by IN ROUTE but it looked so horrible I took it out. “Machination” is familiar but I never heard of MACHINATE, or SPEKE, or ROMANI. Thanks to setter and vinyl.
Not surprised by the low SNITCH count: it took me 12 mins, an astonishingly fast time for me these days. SPEKE has an obelisk in Kensington Gardens which I call ‘Speke’s spike’. ELECT is as in ‘daughter-in-law elect’ (Katisha, The Mikado). First in was SACKS and last one TENT DRESS. My favourite clues were to SHOT GLASS, SPEKE and DROPS. Thank you to Setter for good, if fleeting, fun and thank you to Blogger.
Plenty of NHO’s but didn’t stop me from biffing everything correctly. Liked ANNOYANCE clue.
FOI CATSUIT
LOI ASIDE