Hello again. This crossword I thought was about average difficulty, but with a couple of clues I have had significant trouble parsing… perhaps they will come to me as I blog. What did you think?
I use the standard conventions like underlining the definition, CD for cryptic definition, DD for a double one, *(anargam) and so forth. Nho = “not heard of” and in case of need the Glossary is always handy
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Rugged old boy beset by fungal disease (6) |
| ROBUST – OB (old boy) in RUST, a fungal parasitic disease of plants. | |
| 4 | Hateful king denounced guards (8) |
| ACCURSED – R (Rex, king) | |
| 10 | State of lush fine brie typically sampled (9) |
| INEBRIETY – Hidden, as above. A cruciword. | |
| 11 | Sportsperson’s rank — first in England, right? (5) |
| ROWER – ROW (rank, tier) + E(ngland) + R(ight) | |
| 12 | Comedienne getting into costume leaves topper (6,8) |
| FRENCH DRESSING – (Dawn) FRENCH, comedienne, + DRESSING, getting into costume | |
| 14 | Pass on preference to have case of money removed (5) |
| REFER – (p)REFER(ence), ie the money encasing it is removed. | |
| 16 | Scandalmonger is one causing fight, so Spooner says (9) |
| MUCKRAKER – Spooner would allegedly say RUCKMAKER, someone causing fight. | |
| 18 | Old bits and bobs Carol’s gathering in mound (9) |
| SHILLINGS – HILL (mound) in SINGS, carols. Just a 5p piece nowadays, whose only value is nuisance value. “Bob,” a slang term for it. | |
| 20 | Piece of information backing commercial corporation (5) |
| DATUM – AD ( commercial) backing, + TUM, aka one’s corporation. | |
| 21 | Easily offended prey she invites to wrangle (14) |
| HYPERSENSITIVE – *(PREY SHE INVITES) | |
| 25 | Courage of cycling world (5) |
| HEART – EARTH (world) with the last letter “cycled” to the front, as is the fashion these days. | |
| 26 | Winged beast’s mouth biting child; reptilian creature (5,4) |
| MASON WASP – SON (child) in MAW (mouth) + ASP, a snake. Nho the mason wasp, not common in Britain, but have heard of mason bees, so not much of a stretch. | |
| 27 | Heats pan to cook game bird (8) |
| PHEASANT – *(HEATS PAN). There was a time when I belonged to a game shoot, but gave up when I worked out that each pheasant cost me about £50, one way and another. Still and all this is a very neat clue. | |
| 28 | Media story exposed newspaper boss (6) |
| EDITOR – (m)EDI(a) (s)TOR(y) | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Gunners invade protecting other ranks in tropical location (10) |
| RAINFOREST – RA (Royal Artillery, aka the Gunners) + OR, other ranks, in INFEST, invade. It seems churlish to mention that only tropical rainforest is in the tropics. Temperate rainforest is not uncommon, Even England and Wales have some. And lately, the rain to prove it.. | |
| 2 | Key part of speech written up for Mark (5) |
| BREVE – E (key of) + VERB (part of speech). It is an accent, or mark, viz: ̆ ..and not something musical, as I imagined. | |
| 3 | Tree surgeon’s third trimmer (7) |
| SPRUCER – SPRUCE (tree) + (su)R(geons). Bit of an inelegant cruciword this, I can’t believe you would see it anywhere other than in a crossword. | |
| 5 | Coldly shifting out of the ark on Delaware River (5) |
| CLYDE – This is COLDLY, with the OLD (out of the ark) removed. So CLY, + DE which I assume is an abbreviation for Delaware. Tricky! | |
| 6 | Rebel force in ancient city (7) |
| UPRISER – PRISE (force, what a peterman might do) in UR, a favourite ancient city. The site is somewhere in Iraq, I believe. Upriser, really? Thought it might be a plumbing term. | |
| 7 | Resource for one running satire involving soap family (6,3) |
| SEWING KIT – EWING, in SKIT, a satire. The Ewings, m’Lud, were a family starring in a popular, long-running US soap opera of long ago… not absolutely sure about the definition here. A resource for someone with a run in their stocking, perhaps? Perhaps I’m missing something here. [yes. Definition 33 in Collins: “Run: to sew (an article) with continuous stitches”] | |
| 8 | Cut short shady European venture (4) |
| DARE – DAR(k) shady, cut short, + E(uropean). | |
| 9 | Tender wound initially moist hardens (8) |
| HERDSMAN – *(M(oist) +HARDENS), “wound” being the anagrind. | |
| 13 | Funny gripe, remark snubbed last visitor (4,6) |
| GRIM REAPER – *(GRIPE + REMAR(k)). I liked this one! | |
| 15 | Maybe account opening once money finally gets put in — just heard back (5,4) |
| FAIRY TALE – Not hard to work out the answer, but I have really struggled to parse this. I think it is (mone)Y in FAIR (just) + TALE (sounds like TAIL, back). But I’m not that keen on the definition, if I’ve underlined the right words – a normal “account opening” would be “Once upon a time” surely. [But that means it begins Once! See Vinyl’s comment below] | |
| 17 | Homely feel of function on ship (8) |
| COSINESS – COSINE (function) + SS (ship). I was going to show off abit, by explaining what a cosine was but sadly, I find I no longer understand it.. something to do with triangles! | |
| 19 | Raised gang with genuine fabulous sailor (7) |
| LAERTES – SET (gang) + REAL (genuine), both rev. A reference, probably not to the Laertes who killed Hamlet, but the one who was Odysseus’ father, and an Argonaut to boot. | |
| 20 | Stooped and edged in rocks (7) |
| DEIGNED – *(EDGED IN). As in “The setter deigned/stooped to explain his clue to the struggling solvers.” | |
| 22 | Wrong about second name of man (5) |
| SIMON – MO (second) in SIN, a wrong. No indication as to what man, St Simon le Bon perhaps? | |
| 23 | Unsuitable to sleep with stripped covers (5) |
| INAPT – NAP (to sleep) in (w)IT(h), with stripped. | |
| 24 | Fellow from hotel wearing headgear (4) |
| CHAP – H(otel), NATO H, in CAP, headgear. A nice simple one to finish with. | |
Thanks Jerry. I managed to finish this with the exception of the parsing of FAIRY TALE, spent ten minutes looking at it and all I could see was the ‘Y’ for the end of money an just/fair. Agree it’s not an account opening but will be interested to hear other’s comments. Liked CLYDE when I twigged to old/out of the ark.
Your hint was enough for me to see how it works: the definition is maybe account opening “once”, sc. “upon a time”. There were quite a few I couldn’t parse; NHO French, had to biff sewing kit, and couldn’t remember who Laertes was.
My cousin hunts upland game birds with his Gordon Setter, which is less expensive in the US if you don’t count the cost of the dog.
Time: 40:34
Thanks V. Missed that altogether. Very neat too.
I couldn’t see what “out of the ark” was doing, though could see CLY isn’t the usual alternate-letter thing. (People who believe the story of Noah are also persuaded that it occurred less than 6,000 years ago, the age they ascribe to the earth. That really isn’t very old, in the grand scheme of things! Ha!) DE is indeed the official two-letter postal abbreviation for the state of Delaware.
Thanks, Jerry – a lovely blog as usual.
For 7D I note that Chambers has definition 17 of run as a transitive verb “To sew lightly and quickly”.
As in “running stitch”
In Collins, “to sew (an article) with continuous stitches” is sense 33 (out of 50!) for the verb “to run”. Just to top it off, there are another 36 senses for “run” as a noun.
37 minutes. A very enjoyable solve. I had no queries other than not knowing LAERTES as a sailor and MASON as a type of wasp but I was in no doubt that my answers were correct..
I could almost repeat Jack’s comment above word for word, including having the same time. I confess to just skipping over the parsing subtleties pointed out by Jerry and wouldn’t have been able to work them out anyway. Explaining what a COSINE is would defeat me too these days!
Not sure if anyone really cares, but in a right angle triangle, the COSINE of an angle is the length of the adjacent side divided by the length of the hypotenuse.
Blimey, that was dull.
Hopefully more amusingly, I wondered the other day if there was any cockney rhyming slang for “crossword”. I found none; but “cross” is apparently “boss and toss”, and “word” is “dicky bird”.
So I hope everyone enjoyed their “boss and toss dicky bird” today.
S O/H C A/H TO/A!
About 25 minutes.
– Didn’t know that rust is a fungal disease, but ROBUST had to be
– Can’t recall ever seeing INEBRIETY before, so was glad it was a hidden to get the spelling right
– Relied on the wordplay to piece together the unknown MASON WASP
– Not familiar with BREVE as that kind of mark
– Biffed CLYDE and FAIRY TALE from the checkers before I saw how they worked
– Spent ages trying to fit F into 6d before the checkers forced a rethink to get UPRISER
– Never knew that LAERTES was a sailor
A fun challenge. Thanks Jerry and setter.
FOI Chap
LOI Clyde
COD Sewing kit
Just under 20. Now we know who the Dane LAERTES was named after, more heroic than being named after a small village, I suppose.
Slightly disappointed that I missed out on the cleverness of FAIRY TALE: both the definition and the end eluded me and nothing else fitted.
Thanks Jerry: I’m delighted to see the first (?) use in the wild of cruciword: lets see how long it takes to get into Chambers.
In my mind, this is close to the perfect mid-week puzzle. Entertaining and witty (“last visitor” etc), all fair and gettable but not super-easy. LAERTES and MASON WASP the only somewhat difficult knowledge, but very gettable from crossers, which hit all the major consonants, and from the cryptic.
20:04 for me, and the only downside is having to wait till tomorrow for another one. COD to GRIM REAPER, although I thought there were multiple excellent clues.
About 45′. Panicked when the whole of the top half was empty on first scan until the fairly gentle HYPERSENSITIVE arrived, which then released much of the bottom half.
Worked upwards from there to the NE corner, which held me up until DE came to mind (I was sure about DW for Delaware!). That was a Doh moment since POI Clyde was the name of my childhood street and the river was not much more than a mile away…
Enjoyed SHILLINGS and GRIM REAPER as “last visitor”. Lucky that INEBRIETY was a hidden, never heard of it as a antonym of sobriety.
Thanks Jerry and Setter.
Best part of 45 mins. Don’t know if there is something about the puzzles this week but I feel like my solving ability has stepped back in time a couple of years.
There was wit and humour to enjoy in here but comedy is all about timing and I’m the slow one who needs the joke explaining by which time the moment has passed and all that remains is the cleverness.
Mea culpa, excellent puzzle in hindsight and blog too, thanks to Jerry and setter.
Done in two sittings, with the help of son’s dog for the second part. She hadn’t heard of LOI MASON WASP either. Polonius’s son apparently being a sailor was disconcerting also. FAIRY TALE remained unparsed. COD to FRENCH DRESSING. I’m not voting for the GRIM REAPER walking over my grave. Thank you Jerry and setter.
My thanks to JerryW and setter.
I didn’t perform well here; how could 1a take so long? ?OB??? is so easy! And 11a Rower.
Also defeated on 9d so DNF.
14a COD Refer.
26a VHO Mason Wasp but well to the back of the brain.
7d Sewing Kit biffed. Forgot about Dallas. Never ran a seam.
P.S. re 17d SOH TOA CAH
Sine O(pposite)/H(ypotenuse)
Tangent O/A(djascent)
Cosine A/H. Easy.
Also sin squared + cos sq = 1.
From BREVE to CLYDE in 27:31, with the bottom half proving less resistant than the upper reaches. Liked FRENCH DRESSING and SEWING KIT. Thanks setter and Jerry.
26:12 read with interest how people assessed the difficulty of this one. A bit of a panic from me as nothing went in for the first few minutes and then the SW completed in a few minutes which allowed me to work back towards the top quite smoothly.
SEWING KIT caused the most trouble today as I was after something perhaps of more use to Mo Farah or a CEO. JR Ewing pulled somewhere from my memory so I could atleast justify the word play if not the definition.
Slow to see the anagram for HERDSMAN but that one’s on me.
COD: GRIM REAPER
Thanks blogger and setter.
Glad to finish this in under 30 mins. But lots of bother teasing out the NHOs MASON WASP and BREVE (the musical note being the only meaning I was aware of). Chuckled at GRIM REAPER and SEWING KIT, having had hours and hours of the ghastly Dallas forced on me as a teenager. No idea of the parsing of FAIRY TALE, so thanks for that. I thought this was a model puzzle – quite tough, but always fair, and the unusual words were clued kindly.
9:26. I enjoyed the intricacies of this one until the end, when I ended up bunging in FAIRY TALE without really understanding it. I had got as far as ‘money finally’ and just=FAIR which seemed enough evidence to go on, and the clock was ticking. Now that I understand it I can’t decide if it’s a masterpiece or a train wreck. ‘Account opening once’ is pretty good, I must say.
I enjoyed the humour in this puzzle. Did not fully parse 5dn, but the choice of rivers from C_Y_E was somewhat limited. All done in 33 minutes.
FOI – ROBUST
LOI – SEWING KIT
COD – GRIM REAPER.
Thanks to Jerry and other contributors.
Somewhat like others, I started slow and began to wonder if I would make headway and then things began to fall into place. For me, in the bottom half and then I was able to work my way back up the grid and fill in the gaps. ACCURSED, thus,. becoming LOI. INEBRIETY, SHILLING, HYPERSENSITIVE, SPRUCER, HERDSMAN and GRIM REAPER my favourites. 19.43 so round about my typical time, maybe a little quicker – which surprises me as it didn’t feel that way.
Thanks to setter and blogger
Quite enjoyable with the same problems as several others: ‘running’ in the SEWING KIT clue at 7dn; mark = breve at 2dn; ‘opening once’ at 15dn, but as Jerry points out then surely it should be ‘Once’ not ‘once’: it’s hard to see how a fairy tale beginning ‘Once upon a time’ could have any words preceding that.
43:02, with LOI CLYDE. I rather enjoyed today’s offering. my initial efforts were quite slow and managed to get the last few after a break.
the mental images brought about by 12a…!
All done and parsed, mostly, though I saw the definition of 15d as Maybe account, and thought that was it. LOI was HERDSMAN, once I’d worked out it was an anagram. I liked a lot of these, particularly GRIM REAPER (I always picture Terry Pratchett’s very lovable Death character), SEWING KIT, which I suspected long before it became obvious with parsing, SHILLINGS and MASON WASP, which I had heard of and caught onto when I thought of maw rather than jaw. Not the easiest of puzzles, but fair for a Wednesday. Thanks, Jerry and setter.
Enjoyed this and the blog as ever, thanks both. Mason wasp came, de profindis, with the crossers. The stuff i know ( or half-know) from these croswwords never ceases to amaze me.
33:34 Clever stuff.
COD: Herdsman
Thanks to Jerry and our setter.
34 minutes. Thought LAERTES was a sailor in that he sailed away from Denmark (but “Hamlet” is not really a fable, so mis-parsed). LOI FAIRY TALE, parsed it in the end (within the 34 mins!). I too had thought of bees as being MASON creatures, but wasps are certainly beasts! Only knew BREVE in the musical sense (they’re quite rare; a semibreve is a “whole note”), but, having put it in, checked the internet and found the other meaning. Mis-parsed GRIM REAPER, thinking “last” was doing double duty until I read the blog, and then remembered that “snub” on its own can mean “remove last letter”. Overall, I thought this a great puzzle!
28:59
Good puzzle which revealed its answers with a pleasingly smooth regularity. Some notes:
INEBRIETY – was on the cusp of typing INEBRIATE when I saw the hidden though I’d NHO that form of the word
MASON WASP – feel I’ve heard of this recently, so entered and parsed confidently once all checkers in place
FAIRY TALE – another here that wasn’t entirely sure about ‘heard back’ = TALE, but I suppose it works
SPRUCER – took ages to see this, much longer than it should have
LAERTES – couldn’t have told you that LAERTES was a sailor…
HERDSMAN – my LOI
CLYDE – working in Glasgow for the past 12 years has come in useful at last
COSINESS – focused on SINES and wondered where the CO came from – doh!
SEWING KIT – had forgotten about the EWINGs, and that Dallas was considered a soap opera, but understood the definition to be confident with this answer
Thanks Jerry and setter