Time: 52:1o
A tough but very witty and enjoyable puzzle, which I struggled with due to some deviousness (setter) and ignorance (solver). I chuckled at the &lits and the definition for 8dn once the light dawned. Looking forward to reading comments for this one later today – especially on 13ac – happy weekend all.
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Passage in chorale — it motivates recurring theme (9) |
| LEITMOTIV – hidden in (passage in) choraLE IT MOTIVates. | |
| 6 | Spirits hostelry placed beside record player (5) |
| DJINN – INN (hostelry) next to DJ (record player). | |
| 9 | Fleeing Man United in official three-quarter length anorak (7) |
| REFUGEE – U (united) contained by (in) REF (official) and three quarters of GEEk (anorak). | |
| 10 | Hawker tethering large male bird (7) |
| GOBBLER – GOBBER (hawker, one who hawks/gobs/spits) containing (tethering) L (large). | |
| 11 | Nark delaying question about supply (5) |
| EQUIP – PIQUE (nark) moving back (delaying) Q (question), then reversed (about). | |
| 12 | Bachelor leaving cast to be a month away (3,2,4) |
| NOT AT HOME – anagram of (cast) TO bE A MONTH after deleting (leaving) ‘b’ (bachelor). | |
| 13 | Fiddle duo could be flat (5) |
| CONDO – CON (fiddle) + DO (ditto, duplicate). At least maybe. | |
| 14 | All told about retired seaman with harpoon? (2,7) |
| ON BALANCE – ON (about) + reversal of (retired) AB (seaman) + LANCE (harpoon). | |
| 17 | Wingless bugs fused to wood boiler (9) |
| TEAKETTLE – nETTLEs (bugs) without the first and last letters (wingless) next to TEAK (wood). | |
| 18 | Meaning of speech is beyond me at first (5) |
| MORAL – ORAL (of speech) after first of Me. | |
| 19 | Stars with capital backing promo (9) |
| ANDROMEDA – AND (with) + ROME (capital) + reversal of (backing) AD (promo). | |
| 22 | Ineffective first daughter’s left holding pound tip (5) |
| UPEND – dUD (ineffective) which the first ‘d’ (daughter) has left, containing PEN (pound). | |
| 24 | Top banana drink with more bananas (7) |
| SUPREMO – SUP (drink) + an anagram of (bananas) MORE. | |
| 25 | Music magazine on poor quality paper (7) |
| RAGTIME – TIME (magazine) on RAG (poor quality paper). | |
| 26 | Le Pen introduces distinctive manner (5) |
| STYLE – LE which STY (pen) precedes (introduces). | |
| 27 | Unqualified new craftsperson carries on first part of DIY (9) |
| DOWNRIGHT – N (new) which WRIGHT (craftsperson) contains, after DO (the first part of do-it-yourself). | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Jumbo pilot in middle row without uniform (5) |
| LARGE – middle letter from piLot + ARGuE (row) with the ‘u’ (uniform) deleted. | |
| 2 | What’s infectious to do in zeal and in fun (9) |
| INFLUENZA – anagram of (to do in) ZEAL and IN FUN. | |
| 3 | Married lad who waits up with Polish PA (9) |
| MEGAPHONE – M (married) + reversal of (up) PAGE (lad who waits), then HONE (polish). Public Address (system). | |
| 4 | Start of final death throe, done with struggle? (3,3,2,3,4) |
| THE END OF THE ROAD – anagram of (with struggle) first (start) of Final + DEATH THROE DONE. &lit. | |
| 5 | Squash game avertible when one’s lacking fancy racket (9,6) |
| VEGETABLE MARROW – anagram of (fancy) GAME AVERTiBLE (after deleting (lacking) I (one), then ROW (racket). | |
| 6 | Launch cylindrical rockets (5) |
| DEBUT – TUBED (cylindrical) reversed (it rockets). | |
| 7 | Grand little room attached to surface of ice? (5) |
| IGLOO – G (grand) + LOO (little room) on (attached) first (surface) of Ice. &lit. | |
| 8 | Impulsive conductor never promoting last quartet for cellos (5,4) |
| NERVE CELL – NEVER with the last letter moving up (promoted), then the first four letters of (quartet for) CELLos. | |
| 13 | Purging vomit has to choke gent cycling (9) |
| CATHARSIS – CAT (to vomit), then HAS containing (to choke) SIR (gent) cycling its last letter to first. NHO of ‘cat’ in this sense. | |
| 15 | Spur on person pressing cheese (9) |
| LIMBURGER – LIMB (spur) + URGER (person pressing). A cheese from the Herve. NHO. | |
| 16 | Young child tended to dash around pitch full of energy (9) |
| NURSELING – RUN (to dash) reversed (around), then SLING (pitch) containing (full of) E (energy). | |
| 20 | Groggy from knocking back the out-of-date capsule (5) |
| DOPEY – reversal of (knocking back) YE (‘the’, out-of-date) and POD (capsule). | |
| 21 | Cattle regard potential fodder (5) |
| OXEYE – OX (cattle) + EYE (regard). A wildflower that can be made into hay, familiar to me in this context following to a recent trip to Muker. | |
| 23 | Dog’s lead wound and hung out (5) |
| DWELT – first of (…’s lead) Dog + WELT (wound, pronounced “woond”). | |
80 minutes for this toughie. The answers came easily in the extreme NW with 6 clues solved on first reading, and I thought the editor may have eased things off a bit this Friday. But it wasn’t to be, and I soon became stuck, fighting for nearly every answer from then on.
I didn’t help myself by spotting the answer to 1ac whilst the puzzle was printing off, because when I came to write it in I didn’t revisit the clue and put LEITMOTIF instead of LEITMOTIV. This gave me a problem solving 5dn. If VEGETABLE MARROW had gone in early it would have opened up grid and my whole solving experience could have been very different. Although both spellings of the recurring theme are acceptable, LEITMOTIF is the preferred English spelling in Collins and the Oxfords; only Chambers gives preference to LEITMOTIV. But that’s irrelevant of course when the answer is hidden in the clue and the solver fails to read it carefully!
Really enjoyed this. 35 minutes, with a typo, which I’m blaming on the spotty internet coverage with everyone home during the long lunar new year holidays.
Once again I am just pleased to have completed this challenging crossie, which I managed in about 50. Several great clues but some of it was really hard and the cryptic for (say) CATHARSIS among others was beyond this biffer’s range. Very enjoyable, thank you William, tough day to blog.
From The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest:
Well the MORAL of this story, the moral of this song
Is simply that one should never be where one does not belong
So if you see your neighbour carrying something, help him with his load
And don’t go mistaking paradise for that home across the road
Another great puzzle. I had trouble starting and then had to set it aside for a while to gather my forces. It was easier on the second, final attack.
As I’m not keen on clues where you are asked to come up with a word and then remove bits of it to get to the solution, I have noticed that we are getting more of these recently. Today, upend and teakettle are like this. Yesterday there were four of them.
In order to solve such clues, I get the bits of the wordplay I can and then come up with a solution using the crossing letters and work back to figure out the parsing or alternatively come here for the explanation.
For me this is not satisfying. and if I wanted to guess at synonyms, I would do the concise crossword. At least there, we are given the number of letters we are looking for.
Rant over but I do not think I am alone.
Confirmed
That wasn’t easy. LOI CATHARSIS after TEAKETTLE hit me. I couldn’t get going for an embarrassing length of time until I saw the hidden LEITMOTIV. I then persevered with the two long anagrams, before replacing a tentative gosling with the distasteful GOBBLER. COD to RAGTIME. Tough but fair. Thank you William and setter.
Enjoyed this one, hard but fair and the best this week, for me.
I pride myself on my spatial awareness, but it was not up to parsing 11ac I’m afraid.
13ac is two sorts of fiddle: to con, and to do. No condos in England though, only flats… it is “US informal” according to Collins.
38.19 of which the first 12 minutes were spent in blank confusion as I couldn’t find a toehold anywhere on the cliff face. Then I finally clicked with INFLUENZA and from there much of the left hand side was assembled. Getting VEGETABLE MARROW unlocked the rest of the puzzle and I was relieved to finish in under 40 minutes.
I think the emetic sense of “cat” was mentioned here several weeks ago?
Thanks William and setter.
35 mins. Brilliant puzzle. Everything William said and more.
Proper mix of solving techniques: a bit from wordplay, a bit from definition and meet in the middle, hopefully. And not too much obscure GK. Tough but always believed I would finish.
Thanks to William and an appreciative handshake over the net to setter.
LEITMOTIV went straight in and I filled the LHS without too much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the RHS took a while longer. VEGETABLE MARROW was slow in arriving but was the key to GOBBLER and DOWNRIGHT, which led to DWELT. I had an unparsed EPEND at 22a and saw the parsing just before submitting. Didn’t parse EQUIP. GOBBLER was LOI. 35:37. Thanks setter and William.
Drat! Completed in 43 minutes but one typo produced two errors – crossing letter.
Got VEGETABLE MARROW early so accepted LEITMOTIV which (the spell check has just demonstrated to me) is surely less common than the version ending with F. CATHARSIS was LOI and a bit of BIFF TBH. STYLE I derived from the (Le) French for pen. COD and LOI DJINN.
Thanks to setter and William.
PS La Plume de Ma Tante is now ear worming me so perhaps my derivation of STYLE should be marked down!
56 minutes. A good Friday challenge without being too fiendish. Like Jack, started off OK but then became bogged down, especially by TEAKETTLE which I’d never seen as one word before, VEGETABLE MARROW and by the ‘Young child tended’ def for NURSELING. I haven’t seen CAT for ‘vomit’ for a while but remembering it helped with CATHARSIS.
A pangram to finish off the week.
Thanks to William and setter
20.39, like others, it seems, finding the top left a virtual write in and the rest more demanding. GOBBLER, apparently, like CONDO, is from the other side of the Pond, and I decided that gobber was probably from the other side of the world (like cobber) for a voluble seller of things. Didn’t think of spitting. Likewise didn’t get nETTLEs for bugs, thinking it was close enough to beetles to be the six-legged kind.
All in all, a rather lucky kind of solve which I might have struggled to blog, so congrats to william for a flawless (and entertaining) achievement.
re GOBBER: No, it’s a made-up word for this puzzle.
And a pangram into the bargain
This was very much a game of two halves for me: I finished the top half in under 10 mins, thinking I was on the wavelength; but several NHOs in the bottom half (including the bottom half of VEGETABLE MARROW) eluded me. Finished up in 38:17, meaning that the bottom half took about 3x as long.
In hindsight, having got as far as VEGETABLE + anagram of RAM, the fact that MARROW escaped me for so long is inexcusable. And if I had got it, no doubt the rest would have fallen more quickly as they were gettable with crossers, even if NHO. Overall, enjoyable, though the feeling of frustration at MARROW will live on.
16:54. Another toughie, and for me much the most enjoyable of the week. I think this is because I actually needed the wordplay for a lot of the clues – VEGETABLE MARROW most notably – which I greatly prefer as a solving mode vs ‘spot a definition and reverse-engineer’. However I’m by no means sure that getting a good night’s sleep and hence being in a receptive frame of mind isn’t at least as significant a factor in my experience.
First two acrosses straight in, cruising, but then… not much. Tough puzzle, but good. Except I’m with others on taking letters or words away to get an answer, there’s too many of them. Had a slightly different take on 13ac: a duo of fiddles, CON and DO, which I think also works. Couldn’t parse CATHARSIS, forgotten CAT in the few weeks since we saw it. And didn’t see LARGE’s parsing on entering it and forgot to go back to figure it out.
Overall I enjoyed it, thanks setter and blogger.
Too hard for me. Top half all complete, most of the bottom unsolved. Would never have got the NHOs LIMBURGER and TEAKETTLE. CATHARSIS and UPEND guessed – NHO ‘cat’ in the vomit sense. I’ve finished puzzles with a higher SNITCH than this one, so frustrating again.
TIL that it’s typically male turkeys that gobble, females usually yelp and occasionally make other vocalisations like click, purrs or gobbles apparently (though it’s apparently a myth that they never gobble, they just don’t do it as loudly or as often as the males). A tricky one today that I didn’t finish without cheating but fair.