Time: 39 minutes including 5 minutes lost on my LOI, the unknown or forgotten boat at 10ac. Sadly I discovered when preparing the blog that I had a one-letter error at 21dn and it wasn’t a typo.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I now use a tilde sign ~ to indicate an insertion point in containment clues. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
|---|---|
| 1 | Total construction reduced to powder (4) |
| TALC – Hidden in [reduced] {to}TAL C{onstruction} | |
| 4 | Seductive invitation to advance success with woman (4-6) |
| COME-HITHER – COME (invitation to advance), HIT (success), HER (woman). Come-hither: flirtatious or sexually inviting. It’s unfortunate that the components of wordplay read as ‘come hit her’. | |
| 9 | I don’t believe you coach robbers in this? (7,3) |
| GETAWAY CAR – GETAWAY (I don’t believe you!), CAR (coach) | |
| 10 | Small boat for start of adventure (4) |
| PROA – PRO (for), A{dventure} [start of…]. It’s a sort of canoe. | |
| 11 | Barman in clubs given free clothing (6) |
| FRANCK – FRAN~K (free) containing [clothing] C (clubs). César Franck is perhaps best known for his Symphony in D minor a piece I came to love when I studied it for O- or A-level Music.. | |
| 12 | Herb returning a cheque, only half of amount (8) |
| ORIGANUM – A + GIRO (cheque) reversed [returning], NUM{ber} (amount) [only half of…] | |
| 14 | Fish beginning to acquire thought (4) |
| IDEA – IDE (fish), A{cquire} [beginning to…] | |
| 15 | A minute seaweed and partner combine (10) |
| AMALGAMATE – A, M (minute), ALGA (seaweed – singular of algae), MATE (partner) | |
| 17 | Do like senior executive: toss one diamond after another on table? (6,4) |
| FOLLOW SUIT – FOLLOW (do like), SUIT (senior executive) | |
| 20 | Scoff about withdrawing appeal for silence (4) |
| NOSH – ON (about) reversed [withdrawing], SH (appeal for silence) | |
| 21 | Big stone landed hard on a valuable one lying around (8) |
| MEGALITH – A + GEM (valuable one – ref: stone) reversed [withdrawing], LIT (landed), H (hard) | |
| 23 | Religious house overlooking crucial thing in urgent matter (6) |
| PRIORY – PRIOR{it}Y (urgent matter) [overlooking crucial thing – it] | |
| 24 | Common sense surely not useless (4) |
| NOUS – NO (surely not), US (useless) | |
| 25 | Noted suite set out following specific blueprint (3,7) |
| THE PLANETS – THE PLAN (specific blueprint), anagram [out] of SET. A suite by Gustav Holst. | |
| 26 | Taken to court to keep quiet urge prohibited (10) |
| SUPPRESSED – SU~ED (taken to court) containing [to keep] P (quiet) + PRESS (urge) | |
| 27 | Children’s author was made to turn left (4) |
| DAHL – HAD (was made to) reversed [turn], L (left) | |
| Down |
|
|---|---|
| 2 | In translation, reorder sad English poem (1,3,3,4) |
| A RED RED ROSE – Anagram [in translation] of REORDER SAD E (English). A song by Robert Burns which I only knew by its first line: My love is like a red red rose. | |
| 3 | In post after tea covering for old soldiers (5,4) |
| CHAIN MAIL – CHA (tea), IN, MAIL (post) | |
| 4 | Plant early bird among spies (7) |
| CLARKIA – LARK (early bird) contained by [among] C-IA (spies). Early bird as in the saying, ‘Up with the lark’. NHO. | |
| 5 | Consume such fine ham, prepared all alike (4,2,1,8) |
| MUCH OF A MUCHNESS – Anagram [prepared] of CONSUME SUCH F (fine) HAM | |
| 6 | Fish finger girl needs for this? (7) |
| HERRING – I’m struggling make sense of the words in the second part of the clue but I think it translates roughly as Girl needs a finger for HER RING. | |
| 7 | Flier put name to protagonist (5) |
| HERON – HERO (protagonist), N (name) | |
| 8 | Band touring almost every region (5) |
| REALM – RE~M (rock band) containing [touring] AL{l} everything [almost] | |
| 13 | Busy with score of satisfactory quality (2,2,7) |
| UP TO SCRATCH – UP TO (busy with), SCRATCH (score) | |
| 16 | Referred to people I noted wandering about (9) |
| MENTIONED – MEN (people), anagram [wandering] of I NOTED | |
| 18 | Signal extremely short period of time checks (7) |
| WHISTLE – WHI~LE (period of time) contains [checks] S{hor}T extremely | |
| 19 | Drank regularly, with Oscar for one, and fell over (7) |
| TOPPLED – TIPPLED (drank regularly) becomes TOPPLED when O (Oscar) stands in for I (one) | |
| 21 | Naughty girl, they say, wearing these? (5) |
| MINKS – Aural wordplay [they say]: “minx” (naughty girl). I was one letter out with my answer MINIS. My faulty logic was that the famous naughty girl in The Beano comic was called Minnie, but if I’d thought a little longer I’d have remembered that the title of the strip was Minnie the Minx. | |
| 22 | Odd that doctor’s admitting man with bellyache (5) |
| GRUMP – GP (doctor) containing [admitting] RUM (odd) | |
23.50 but I also missed the NHO boat. Jack I think you’re right about HERRING, a finger is needed to put it on. No particular problems today though at 25ac I did spend some time diligently working on an anagram of noted suite…
From Hurricane:
Four months later, the ghettos are in flame
Rubin’s in South America, fighting for his name
While Arthur Dexter Bradley’s still in the robbery game
And the cops are putting the screws to him, looking for somebody to blame
Remember that murder that happened in a bar?
Remember you said you saw the GETAWAY CAR?
You think you’d like to play ball with the law?
One of the very best, have you heard the banned version? On YouTube
TBH I was amazed the one that came out was allowed to be released, it pulls no punches and would never have got past UK/Oz def laws. I actually prefer the final Desire version, it has so much anarchic energy. I love it on the Rolling Thunder vid also, but then again I am kind of obsessed with Scarlet Rivera so Scarlet if by chance you’re part of this blog…
I didn’t know ORIGANUM per se – only its constituents marjoram and oregano. Naturally, CLARKIA was another unknown.
FRANCK was good, but COD to COME-HITHER, a beautifully evocative expression.
19:18
55:56, all green. Had to check the NHO ORIGANUM, PROA and CLARKIA. The K the latter opened up my LOI FRANCK, only piece of his I know is Panis Angelicus
I tried TEASE for the naughty girl, who might be wearing a T(-shirt). Both words are a bit creepy, to be honest.
Plenty I couldn’t parse, including NOSH, PRIORITY and NOUS. How is US=useless? Is that one of those military slangs?
COD FOLLOW SUIT
The OED thesaurus gives
U/S as “out of commission”
32 minutes. The wordplay helped for the NHO CLARKIA and ORIGANUM but I still wasn’t 100% confident about either. FRANCK was LOI after an unsystematic alphabet trawl.
I liked the extended definition of the ‘Naughty girl’ wearing her MINKS.
Thanks to Jack and setter
I did know the boat – I live in Asia and they are quite common in these parts. Didn’t know Origanum (couldn’t get oregano out of my mind) so had to look that one up to check. Nor Clarkia. Finally got 17a and 21d after much head-scratching. COD for me the well disguised 21a. A tick under 32 minutes.
20.10
Very enjoyable! Although I’d only got half a dozen answers after first runthrough, the wordplay in the rest looked straightforward enough to reassure me that I’d get them all in the end, perhaps with one or two biffs (which turned out to be six).
PROA (or PRAU) seems to turn up far more often in crosswords than in (my) real life.
LOI ORIGANUM
COD MINKS
“Take back your mink
Take back your pearls
What made you think
That I was one of those girls?”
(Guys and Dolls)
Same as the blogger out by one with MINIS. I was thinking of ninnies (which aren’t naughty girls so doubly wrong).
Rest otherwise went in quite smoothly in what would have been a good time for me.
NHO PROA
COD MEGALITH
Thanks blogger and setter.
45 mins with L2I CLARKIA & FRANCK, both NHOs. Pretty enjoyable on the whole, I thought. I always thought that U/S is military for un-serviceable.
I liked MUCH OF A MUCHNESS & FOLLOW SUIT best.
Thanks Jack and setter.
Finished in the SW with MINKS courtesy of Minnie. REALM for region caused a MER and I am now left in the corner losing my religion. I managed CLARKIA from the bird, disappointed it wasn’t CHOISIA from the plant. I’ve got one of those.The K eventually gave me FRANCK. COD to MUCH OF A MUCHNESS. Decent puzzle. Thank you Jàck and setter.
20:28. All very nice.
COD: HERRING
Thanks to Jack and our setter
DNF, back in OWL club with MINIS rather than MINKS (at least I’m not alone!).
– Had to trust the wordplay for the unknown PROA
– Slowed myself down by putting OREGANUM, before HERRING forced me to correct to ORIGANUM
– Initially put a silly CODA for 14a, thinking that a coda is a kind of (after)thought, until the realisation that 2d had to be A RED RED ROSE pointed me towards IDEA
– For 4d I spent far too long trying to think of ancient birds, getting nowhere further than roc, before I realised that ‘early’ was being used in a different sense and got CLARKIA
Thanks Jack and setter.
COD Grump
A careless typo left me with 2 errors: SUPRESSSED and WHISTLS. Drat! Otherwise seventeen thirteen. NHO ORIGANUM so had to assemble it from wordplay and crossers. Also trusted wordplay for PROA and CLARKIA. Thanks setter and Jack.
23:48. Great fun, had a smile on from COME HITHER to MINKS.
NHO PROA or LOI with fingers crossed FRANCK but plants and REM are very much in my sweet spot.
There were a few clues that misled me beautifully as to the definition, CHAIN MAIL perhaps the best of a very good puzzle.
Thanks Jackkt and setter.
14:41. My first thought for 14A was CODA but then I had a better IDEA. I had trouble with FRANCK as I was expecting INC in the middle, until Rabbie Burns came to the rescue. I liked GETAWAY CAR best. Thank-you JAckkt and setter.
I thoroughly enjoyed this, and was quickly on the setter’s wavelength. However, I did need to come here to properly parse TOPPLED as I’d been thinking “toped” rather than “tippled”. It was perhaps fortunate that I had HERRING in on the first pass, as I’d otherwise have gone “oreganum”.
FOI TALC
LOI FRANCK
COD CLARKIA*
TIME 8:57
* I recently ditched an attempted “Weekend Special” QC at the compiling stage because I didn’t think I could clue CLARKIA and nothing else would fit into the grid with the other answers. Now I see it…..
20.51, heavily misled by (among others) “toss one diamond after another” and struggling with the anagram of NOTED SUITE in 25, which made the second time this setter flummoxed me with references to composers. I did twig “barman” slightly sooner – my César FRANCK piece is the Organ Symphony. I like it when composers go completely over the top.
I did think this was a particularly devious setter, but then that’s what we’re here for. An enjoyable wrestle.
I also thought of ‘coda’ to begin with instead of IDEA and NHO CLARKIA, though it was the second answer I thought of after COME HITHER. All in all easy though, LOI WHISTLE and COD HERRING.
9:05. No major problems, bar a slight panic at the dreaded definition ‘plant’ at 4dn, my last in. I also considered CODA. NHO ORIGANUM but with the last three letters checked it wasn’t difficult.
I think Minnie the Minx is best forgotten in this day and age, and COME HITHER is sad in more ways than one.
Didn’t parse WHISTLE, didn’t know that was the actual title of the poem, biffed MUCH OF A MUCHNESS.
13’49” thanks jack and setter.
I seem to have had much the same experience with this very nice puzzle as Jack: I also had MINIS not MINKS at 21dn and accepted it, thinking that Mrs T with her “moaning Minnies” remark probably knew something about the naughtiness of Minnies that I didn’t, and was equally doubtful about the parsing of HERRING, which seemed rather vague.
21d
Old proverb:
Girls get minks the same way minks get minks.
28:44 with one typo
Somehow PRIOTY was typed, which screwed 13d as well. Some unknowns in FRANCK, ORIGANUM, CLARKIA – each from wordplay; PROA possibly seen in these parts before. Took ages to think of MUCH OF A MUCHNESS as I had DICE pencilled in as the second word of 17a.
Thanks Jack and setter
Nice doable puzzle. FOI COME HITHER, LOI PROA (a NHO which I had to check in Chambers, so possibly a technical DNF?). I failed to parse FOLLOW SUIT fully (I thought of the definition as being “do like”), but it had to be right.
COD FRANCK. Also liked the well-hidden TALC, WHISTLE and TOPPLED.
22.28
Remembered a plant! Forgot other things but c’est la vie. Should have got FOLLOW SUIT quicker but couldn’t see the w/p nice clue and puzzle. Thanks Jackkt/setter.
Beaten by FRANCK and MINKS, both of which I should have seen. Bah.
27:48. Got very stuck with FRANCK – otherwise a fairly easy run through.
I went down just about every blind alley described above only to be rescued by crossers time and again. Luckily I knew Proa, which would have been difficult otherwise.
I’m looking forward to knowing one otherwise difficult answer in a future Busman weekend alternate, now that it can probably be legally (setter-wise) be resussicated.
Agree with the comment re 4a .I’m sure no offence was intended but setters need to take care in the current climate. I seem to be on a run where one final clue is eluding me -in this case the wretched boat in 10a.
30′ mostly straightforward except for a long time trawling the FRANCK/ CLARKIA crossover. I knew what was required for both, but hadn’t heard of either until lark finally came to mind (couldn’t get “cock” out of my head for early bird – did I say that out loud??). ORIGANUM another NHO which I assumed to be a single oregano (doh!).
But hey I got there… thanks Jack and setter.