Time: 20.26
I don’t whether this is the same setter who composed the puzzle I blogged two Wednesdays ago, but there is a similar conciseness and smoothness to the clues. One obscurity and a couple of clues which might fall into the “solve and then re-engineer” category, but plenty of gentle ones and overall I would say this was another excellent example of the setter’s art. For those who keep an eye on such things we are close to a pangram but without a Q.
Twenty minutes for me suggests it is broadly middle-of-the-road in terms of difficulty, though we’ll see how near or far from the wavelength I was when some other times come in.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Dessert wine’s disturbing repercussion (10) |
| AFTERSHOCK – Plenty of synonyms for dessert and wine to choose from in Crosswordland. Here we need AFTERS and HOCK. | |
| 6 | Characters regularly appearing in Shanghai Story (4) |
| SAGA – Gentle one to get things going in Tyneside. | |
| 9 | Report of a barbarous gathering (7) |
| ACCRUAL – There is always a homophone alert once “report” appears in a clue, and here we have another way of saying “a cruel”. | |
| 10 | Get to mislead with Republican replacing Democrat (7) |
| RECEIVE – And “replacing” alerts us to a substitution clue. R is one type of American politician which stands in for another (D) in a word for mislead (“deceive”). | |
| 12 | Doctor left a grand residence (6,4) |
| GARDEN FLAT – In one’s solving journey, once you have clocked that “doctor” can be an anagram indicator it seems to turn up a fair bit (as well all the other abbreviations and synonyms for a medical person). The anagram letters are (LEFT A GRAND) giving us a very smooth surface. | |
| 13 | Some kimono binder? (3) |
| OBI – A hidden and “All in one” clue where the clue is both wordplay and definition . | |
| 15 | Helicopter swiftly circling hospital (6) |
| APACHE – My LOI. Swiftly is APACE which goes around H for hospital. | |
| 16 | Article put out on home brewing (2,3,3) |
| IN THE AIR – I loved this one. Believable surface; no word wasted; and a nice misleading reference to brewing in the clue. The word play is THE for article and AIR for “put out” following (on) IN for “home”. | |
| 18 | Granite mixed with sulphur: it won’t react (5,3) |
| INERT GAS – “Mixed” is our anagram indicator, with GRANITE and S for sulphur comprising the anagrist. | |
| 20 | Surrounded by 500 in a film (6) |
| AMIDST – Film here isn’t our favourite ET but A MIST which goes around D as the Roman numeral for 500. | |
| 23 | Pickpocket departs with as little money as possible (3) |
| DIP – D is an accepted abbreviation for “departs” from transportation timetables to which we add 1P (one pence) as the smallest denomination of currency in the UK. Setters must have been rejoicing when the old half pence was discontinued in 1984. | |
| 24 | Magnificent: the writer’s gift-wrapped volume? (10) |
| IMPRESSIVE – “The writer’s” could be both IM and IVE. Here it is the former and is followed by the rather clever “PRESSIVE” for “gift-wrapped volume”. Well done if you saw this part of the wordplay before the definition – it is PRESSIE for “gift” which “wraps” V for volume. | |
| 26 | One cracking old joke cheers prickly sort (7) |
| OPUNTIA – My obscurity. I don’t like to make assumptions about all you wonderful folks out there but I suspect it might be an obscurity for others as well. To be fair the wordplay is very generous (I inside (cracking) O + PUN + TA) but my knowledge was so lacking I thought I was looking for some sort of beast, and not the prickly pear cactus for which OPUNTIA is the “proper” name. | |
| 27 | One from Plotinus might be unspoilt (7) |
| ANAGRAM – I’m not 100% certain which part of the clue to underline as the literal but as “Plotinus” is an ANAGRAM of “unspoilt”, the answer is clear. Reading up about Plotinus it appears that “The One” was a key part of his neoplatonic philosophy being an “utterly simple, ineffable…unknowable subsistence” (thank you Wiki) so I’ll make this another “All in one” clue. Slightly chastening that I did Greek A-Level with plenty of Plato but had never heard of this chap. | |
| 28 | What will increase circulation, rather like a senior journalist? (4) |
| EDDY – If you are like an editor, you are EDDY (geddit?). That sort of circulation. | |
| 29 | Support prior to defeat somewhat inferior (6-4) |
| SECOND-BEST – SECOND can be a synonym for “support” and likewise BEST for “defeat”. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Juliet in sober group with kiss for hero (4) |
| AJAX – “Juliet” gives us J from the NATO alphabet which goes inside AA being our “sober group”. X as our kiss rounds off the wordplay. | |
| 2 | Rapid work from man in worn coat (7) |
| TOCCATA – I was slightly puzzled by this as such types of composition probably are always pretty fast-fingered in my experience but I didn’t realise that generally that is necessary for them to be a TOCCATA. As for the wordplay, I could see we needed an anagram (worn) of “coat” around a word for “man” but CAT for the latter is most certainly crossword speak (though naturally supported by the dictionaries as a slang synonym). I like a smooth surface, so I am not complaining. | |
| 3 | Crazed dance after drinks (5,3,5) |
| ROUND THE TWIST – THE TWIST is our dance and we’ve all bought a ROUND of drinks. We’ve probably all experienced the literal as well … | |
| 4 | Disheartened Greek woman (6) |
| HELENE – Greek A-Level helping here to identify HELLENE as a Greek which you then “dishearten” by taking the middle letter (L) out. Helena was tempting but couldn’t be parsed. | |
| 5 | Horse-drawn transport and saddle for romantic writer (8) |
| CARTLAND – CART + LAND. The latter is a synonym for “saddle” in the sense of “impose”. | |
| 7 | Song about endless division in state (7) |
| ARIZONA – An endless division is ZON(E) around which goes an ARIA. | |
| 8 | Improve American energy after raising oil price (10) |
| AMELIORATE – This is AM + E + a reversal of OIL + RATE. On that basis, “after” must require you to draw breath after “American energy” and then put RATE after raising OIL. | |
| 11 | Copper on wagon tried drinking new wine to meet expectations (3,3,7) |
| CUT THE MUSTARD – This is one of a couple you will probably biff and parse post solve. MUST is “new wine” which goes inside HEARD for “tried” and follows CU + TT (teetotal = “on the wagon”). | |
| 14 | No X in Mr RM Nixon? There’s one! (10) |
| PALINDROME – I was rather slow to see this, but it’s obvious when you do that the first part of the clue is indeed a PALINDROME. | |
| 17 | Deviate from course over Channel in Eurofighter? (8) |
| WARPLANE – WARP is to “deviate from course” and LANE is a type of channel. Eurofighter is a type of fighter jet. | |
| 19 | Pass comment where animals were once held? (7) |
| EXPOUND – I guess that if you can have an EX parrot you can have an EX POUND? (With thanks to Monty Python). | |
| 21 | Seabird for example about to take different direction (7) |
| DIVERGE – DIVER + a reversal (about) of EG (for example). | |
| 22 | For something sweet, come together at Oval? (6) |
| GELATO – GEL (come together) + AT + O. We regularly have O for “round” but I am not sure I have seen “oval” providing the same letter. Arguably an O is closer to an oval than a circle. | |
| 25 | Salacious material has stomachs turning (4) |
| SMUT – A reversal of TUMS. | |
Brilliant blog
Thank you
You can delete this message (click on ‘edit’).
Brilliant blog
I liked the palindrome
Thank you
25:26 but
once again I failed to notice a typo until it was lit up in pink, as I continue my progress down the leaderboard. DNK ROUND THE TWIST, so looked it up s.v. TWIST. Or TWIWT. I knew, or thought I knew OPUNTA [sic], found out how to spell it once I realized I needed a letter. I liked IN THE AIR.
15:59 – agree with blogger about the conciseness. All Wednesday crosswords should be on a par with this – it just oozed class and wasn’t over-taxing while being very satisfying. COD to ACCRUAL!
16:22
Mostly very quick, until the last few, where it was only when looking more closely at the impenetrable 14d that I saw Nixon backwards – PALINDROME fortuitously giving the first letters of each of the remaining answers needed – APACHE, the horrible OPUNTIA (who names these things?!) and the tentative EDDY.
Thanks D and setter
I’m usually OK with plants but LOI OPUNTIA was a painful construction. POI was PALINDROME. Tricky Dicky indeed. We now live in the garden flat of an apartment block, not that that was any help. Nor was knowing that Plotinus was a philosopher who followed Plato.I went up a few blind alleys today, but that’s what makes a puzzle enjoyable, provided you get there in the end. I did. Thank you D and setter.
Very enjoyable but I used aids for 17dn thinking that I was expected to know a Eurofighter other than the Typhoon. I was missing the third checker at the time so that didn’t help. At least the A provided by the look-up enabled me to work out the unknown cactus from wordplay.
Terrific puzzle, great blog, thanks both. I was held up by OPUNTIA and APACHE and puzzled by CUT THE MUSTARD, but got there in 30 flat.
From Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You:
Is it really any wonder
The love that a stranger might RECEIVE?
You cast your spell and I went under
I find it so difficult to leave