Time: 42:22
Some tricky bits, especially difficult-to-ascertain definitions, but all in all a fair Friday fight. I was slow to get going but certainly sped up as I got more checkers. Just not on this setter’s wavelength, I think.
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stingy individual used to be first to pay (4) |
| WASP – WAS (used to be) + first letter of Pay. | |
| 3 | Cook frequently repelled by religious leader’s salad? (6,4) |
| RABBIT FOOD – DO (cook) + OFT (frequently) all reversed (repelled) after RABBI (religious leader). | |
| 9 | Who doesn’t appreciate attempt to avoid usual price? (7) |
| INGRATE – ‘go’ (attempt) removed from (to avoid) goING RATE (usual price). | |
| 11 | Actor in theatre to increase performing (7) |
| SURGEON – SURGE (to increase) + ON (performing). | |
| 12 | Spooner’s excellent dance routine in pool (4,5) |
| BACK CRAWL – Spoonerism of “crack ball” (excellent dance). | |
| 13 | Saw commercial agency losing half its members (5) |
| ADAGE – AD (commercial) + AGEncy minus the second half of its letters. | |
| 14 | Prerequisite for training when making a comeback? (6,6) |
| RETURN TICKET – cryptic definition. | |
| 18 | Give up television for emergent source of entertainment? (4-2-3-3) |
| JACK-IN-THE-BOX – JACK IN (give up) + THE BOX (television). | |
| 21 | American firm runs new plant to begin with (5) |
| ACORN – A (American) + CO (company, firm) + R (runs) + N (new). | |
| 22 | Issue demanding answer for leader’s wealth (9) |
| AFFLUENCE – eFFLUENCE (issue) replacing (demanding?) A (answer) for the first letter (leader). | |
| 24 | Vulnerable individual recruited for experiment (7) |
| SUBJECT – double definition. | |
| 25 | Cadet is shaped and moulded (3-4) |
| DIE-CAST – anagram of (shaped) CADET IS. | |
| 26 | One with no chance of success is sweet? (10) |
| NONSTARTER – the opposite of a starter (non-starter?) in a restaurant could be a sweet/dessert. | |
| 27 | Acknowledgements of liabilities ignored by painstaking boss (4) |
| STUD – ‘IOUs’ (acknowledgements of liabilities) removed from (ignored by) STUDious (painstaking). | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Beat offer to host Queen singer with cracking voice? (8) |
| WHIPBIRD – WHIP (beat) + BID (offer) containing (to host) R (regina, queen). NHO this Australian bird. | |
| 2 | Judgement’s epic settlement of considerable significance (8) |
| SAGACITY – SAGA (epic) + CITY (settlement of considerable significance). | |
| 4 | Time rejected article about conflict zone (5) |
| ARENA – ERA (time) reversed (rejected) + AN (article) reversed (about). | |
| 5 | Doctor in cabal is connected to church (9) |
| BASILICAN – anagram of (doctor) IN CABAL IS. | |
| 6 | Did career supply other use cases for property? (8,5) |
| TERRACED HOUSE – RACED (did career) which an anagram of (supply) OTHER USE contains (cases). | |
| 7 | Unrequited love always behind novel (3-3) |
| ONE-WAY – O (love), then AY (always) after (behind) NEW (novel). | |
| 8 | Hopeless player joining band on keyboards (6) |
| DONKEY – hidden in (joining) banD ON KEYboard. | |
| 10 | Like particular books encapsulating author’s determination (13) |
| ASCERTAINMENT – AS (like) + CERTAIN (particular) + NT (New Testament, books), containing (encapsulating) ME (author). | |
| 15 | Look like opinion having less sense lacks depth (4,5) |
| TAKE AFTER – TAKE (opinion) + dAFTER (having less sense) minus (lacks) ‘d’ (depth). | |
| 16 | Sailor and German soldier showing up everywhere (8) |
| ABUNDANT – AB (sailor) + UND (and, German) + ANT (soldier). | |
| 17 | Better training drills ruled out (8) |
| EXCEPTED – PT (training) contained by (drills) EXCEED (better). | |
| 19 | Two members of family tree (6) |
| DAMSON – DAM and SON (two members of family). | |
| 20 | Sweet note well conveyed by blessing (6) |
| BONBON – NB (note well) contained (conveyed) by BOON (blessing). | |
| 23 | Unsatisfactory compromise that’s annoying! (5) |
| FUDGE – double definition. | |
Lots to enjoy here but I became stuck eventually and dispirited because a couple of answers went in on the biff and I was unable to see the wordplay – INGRATE was one and AFFLUENCE was another. To finish off the grid I needed aids for SUBJECT and my LOI was ASCERTAINMENT arrived at via wordplay. I don’t even recognise the word but it appeared here in a QC in 2018 and a Championship. puzzle in 2015, on both occasions without comment from me.
DNF. Looked up a few. Enjoyed JACK-IN-THE-BOX
32:18
Slow going, slower at the end, with POI ASCERTAINMENT & LOI WHIPBIRD taking bags of time. DNK WHIPBIRD, JACK IN. Biffed STUD, BONBON, parsed post-submission. I don’t much like ‘do’=cook; ‘do’ is a light verb that can mean just about anything: the burglar/painter did the bedroom, Max did the dishes, the sous-chef did the dishes, …
51:59. A bit of a tussle with some of the same words as others here. LOI the NHO WHIPBIRD. Not happy with ASCERTAINMENT, from wordplay, until I suddenly saw the required meaning of “determination” in the clue. A bit uncertain about the south-west corner, mainly because I couldn’t parse BONBON. Thank you, William, for BOON – a neat little word, rarely encountered. I still think the puzzle looks a lot more straightforward looking back at it than it did at the time. Clever Setter. Lots to like including RABBIT FOOD, SAGACITY and FUDGE
Was super fun, did not finish, failed to get fudge! And bonbon!!! To the weekend! Best . Cx
34:34 and felt I was making heavy weather of a nice, straightforward puzzle. A week in reverse after struggling with a quantifiably easy Monday.
I like to think that science and wildlife are among my strongest GK topics but the NHO WHIPBIRD following yesterdays astronomer say otherwise.
Particularly enjoyed BONBON, DONKEY and COD RETURN TICKET. Thanks William and setter.
I echo sawbills comment. Plus I’ve come back from Paris with a horrible chesty cold. Bah!
About 25 minutes. Relied on the wordplay for the unknown WHIPBIRD, but no other major issues.
Thanks William and setter.
FOI Wasp
LOI Damson
COD Jack-in-the-box
Surprised to be all correct, with LOI WHIPBIRD just bunged in to make the grid look tidy. Mind you, I must have been well more than the hour on it, not that I’m counting. COD to RETURN TICKET. Thank you William and setter.
18:24 (although with one genuine typo). I must be on wavelength as this was my quickest of the week. Only the NHO WHIPBIRD gave me any worries.
I did wonder if ‘demanding answer for leader’ was a homophone indicator so thanks for the better explanation for AFFLUENCE.
Liked the cryptic definitions and spoonerisms which is very rare for me.
COD RETURN TICKET
Quite liked this one even if did feel a bit out of kilter with the Times style.
Thanks blogger and setter.
Hmm, got there, but I can’t remember the last time so many went in on a wing and a prayer, not properly parsed.
Liked the stingy thing; not so keen on the nonstarter, what happened to the main course?! It’s called that for a reason. And havered a while over EXCEPTED vs EXPECTED, both of which fir and contain training ..
28.25
Excellent Friday fodder, only a couple biffed. It took me far too long to get the two family members for my LOI DAMSON.
I may have mentioned before that I’m not keen on Spoonerisms, but
COD BACK CRAWL was a cracker.
Yes indeed. I didn’t think initially of ‘ball’ and was trying vainly of course to work with ‘reel’.
Quite a witty clue for ‘nonstarter’ I thought. I was held up by it even with all the checkers, I think because I’d have expected a hyphen. Apparently normally hyphenated in British English but not in US according to online sources.
Did 80% but major fail in SW corner.
Liked JACK IN THE BOX
27.54, if with one interruption. My last one in was NONSTARTER, which Chambers and I have hyphenated, and of course I was looking for some sort of BONBON but could make nothing of the wordplay.
Also took me a while to get to DAMSON – it never helps when its a fruit tree. I initially tried SISKIN which echoed of arboriculture faintly, but turns out it’s a bird.
I struggled to find the division between definitions for SUBJECT, and in the end it was a bit of a FUDGE.
Wasn’t it Tony Adams who carried the nickname DONKEY until it became a sobriquet of excellence? Don’t think he was much cop on a keyboard, though.
WHIPBIRD? No, me neither.
Cheers William.
I found this very difficult, by contrast to most it seems. WHIPBIRD is a complete unknown to me, interacting with the difficult INGRATE, that itself gettable only once I got the difficult SAGACITY. I thought of whipbird a while before I decided to enter it as my LOI.
I ultimately failed, because I put NANSON, thinking that was the most likely word for a tree and not thinking of DAMSON. By that time I’d spent too long on the puzzle.
ASCERTAINMENT, BACK CRAWL (odd way of saying BACKSTROKE), ACORN, NONSTARTER and SUBJECT are all really hard clues too, I think.
So I found this a bit of a curate’s egg. I loved RABBIT FOOD (COD), SURGEON, TERRACED HOUSE, JACK-IN-THE-BOX, but didn’t like WHIPBIRD, DAMSON.
31:17 I struggled with this. Biffed INGRATE and AFFLUENCE. Not keen on NONSTARTER but thought JACK IN THE BOX and ASCERTAINMENT were excellent.
Thanks to William and the setter.
Excellent puzzle and my experience echoes many others above.
I couldn’t parse “ingrate” or “affluence”; have never heard of a “whipbird”; and I had four unsolved in the south-west which, on reflection, were all gettable but too good for me and ran over my time.
Thanks to our setter and our blogger for unravelling the trickiest elements of this.
59 minutes. Again very slow, but like yesterday there were several I’d barely heard of or that I wasn’t confident about the parsing so I was satisfied to finish in (just) under an hour. I am familiar with the WHIPBIRD whose song is well described by its name; you’ll find recordings easily enough on YouTube etc.
Thanks to William and setter
16:35
I was going to say, with tongue in cheek, that I was getting bored of these easy Friday puzzles but it seems not many found it so (my WITCH is currently 84).
Anyway, some good stuff. Thanks William for explaining INGRATE, I had no idea what was going on there.
An absolute crackerjack of a crossword, I thought, because the difficulty was there, but composed almost entirely out of everyday words. My only NHO was WHIPBIRD, but that was clued in an ideal way – I was unsure at first, but then when I twigged that ‘cracking’ was going to mean specifically sounding like a whip, I was completely sure.
42:18
Slowish and then fits and starts towards the end. Took ages to come up with RABBIT FOOD, even with the RABBIT strongly pencilled in. Other comments:
TERRACED HOUSE – I anagrammed CAREER and wondered how to get the rest of the anagrist from OTHER USE
WHIPBIRD – like so many birds, I’ve NHO
Everything else understood – enjoyed DAMSON and BONBON, and NONSTARTER was a nice pdm. LOI was DONKEY, once the scales fell from my eyes over 3ac.
Thanks William and setter
Pretty reasonable for a Friday. WHIPBIRD held me up for a while, but what else could it be? Am I alone in disliking Spooner clues?
You’re definitely not alone! For me, there are two main reasons why I dislike them:
1) If you want to use the ‘swap the first letters’ device, using Spooner is basically the only way to do it
2) If you see ‘Spooner’ in a clue, the only thing it can realistically be indicating is ‘swap the first letters’
So my heart sinks a bit when I see a Spooner clue, because I know what I need to figure out (unlike other devices, where I enjoy working out which of the various directions they can go is being used), but also because I know there are two words I need to think of, sometimes with slightly questionable homophones.
53.37- sticky indeed. Did anyone else have PAWPAW for DAMSON early on? only when I saw NONSTARTER did I see the error of my ways, but up till then I’d been slapping myself on the back for being rather clever. COD to EXCEPTED which was so hard to parse until it wasn’t 🙂
I do like Spooner clues – rather more than I like the new ‘cycling’ clues I must say. The only thing was that today I couldn’t get the phrase CACK BRAWL out my mind …
I put in PAWPAW initially but then took it out on the basis that it’s the same member of the family twice!
I used to watch My Two Dads as a nipper, though!
Imagine my distress…..
Instead of DAMSON I wondered if it might be SISKIN. (Superficially plausible, since both SIS and KIN are family-related terms)
Then I remembered that a siskin isn’t a tree, it’s one of those obscure birds that I hate so much.
The setters have clearly rotted my brain to the extent that I’m now trying to put bird names into clues which are totally unrelated.
Dementia here I come
😁
18:59. Tricky one with some really nice witty touches.
Beaten by the NHO WHIPBIRD. It fitted the wordplay, and I was going to write it in, but then had a fit of pique and thought: Why bother? It’s ultimately a guess, so it’s basically beaten me. Who am I kidding etc.
(And while we’re at it – still piqued – which of Earth’s forested regions will we be visiting next for obscure birds to clue only by the sound of their call? I can hardly wait. Reminder to self: buy that 700-page ‘Compleat World Bird Calls’ and memorise it)
Irritating, because I’d finished the rest of this in under 30 mins, which I was pleased with.
Time to roll back the years:-
We had PHEASANT and then AVOCET
And the WHIPBIRD made most of us fret
There are lots of nice words
We don’t need all these birds
The setters are twitchers, I bet
Clocked in at 37:18, being held up a good deal in the SW, with each of the last four clues having to be eked out. But ultimately gettable, unlike a dismal (and abandoned) lateish solve yesterday, so always nice to finish a puzzle after an experience like that. I did permit myself a check in Chambers mid-solve for the unlikely-and-cracking-sounding bird. Much enjoyed the mid-level Fridayishness of it – thanks setter and William.
Very witty puzzle. 36 mins; I spent far too long cracking TERRACED HOUSE. I didn’t know WHIPBIRD but the wordplay was clear. First one in was WASP and the last TERRACED HOUSE. My favourite clue was to NONSTARTER (superbly silly). Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
Took over an hour but I enjoyed it all the way. The RHS filled in before anything much in LHS. Each time I seemed to be stuck, I managed to break another clue down and on through to the end. Nonstarter was fun, dnk Whipbird but it had to be, Bonbon allowed Subject to surface. Great challenge.
A reasonable finishing time of 43.42 but with one wrong. The tree at 19 down defeated me, and I could only pin my hopes on NANSON, only to be disappointed. Why DAM didn’t occur to me I don’t know. My LOI was DONKEY where as usual I failed to spot the hidden until I thought of the word that would fit. An enjoyable puzzle.
For some reason I did not work out One Way and thought it was some kind of all in one for the novel One Day🤷♂️ generally found this difficult and had a 30 minute struggle where nothing went in followed by a rush of answers once I had Rabbit Food. SW corner so difficult not helped by the NANSIS tree that I invented. Not sure I like Nonstarter much but very much liked the puzzle overall.
Thx William and setter
37.06
Pleased to get an all correct as struggled in places, particularly the SW. BONBON was very good but not easy.
Thanks Setter and William.
Don’t have a time because I went for a haircut and left the timer running, but it’s something less than 1:37:26, so probably about an hour or so. I think this is the first Friday crossword that I’ve completed without hints where the snitch is over 100, so I’m very happy about that. Couldn’t parse AFFLUENCE but I understood the wordplay, so I should have managed better there. Oh well, all in all an excellent day.
Thank you for the blog!
Difficult, DNF as WHIPBIRD NHO. Also NHO BACK CRAWL (Backstroke to me). How does FUDGE mean ‘that’s annoying’? SAGACITY means good judgement, not just any old judgement? Too many grumbles to be enjoyable.
“Oh, fudge!”
Collins: 2. a mild exclamation of annoyance
Oh fudge. An evasion word from a word which means rather more annoying, then. Never heard of it. But thank you for the info.
I got WASP right away, and thought I was pretty clever… but had to finish the last handful after a good night’s sleep!
Done by another unknown bird.
Was definitely on the wavelength (unusually) today. 20:45. Steady solve. Nominate 18a for clue of the day. Had to guess 1d a bit but assumed it was ok. LOI Terraced House
I have a peek at the SNITCH sometimes on Friday to see if I think it’s worth my while having a go and nearly didn’t bother today so I was very pleased to complete. Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a NHO for me but I don’t let that bother me now and the clueing of WHIPBIRD was reasonable I thought.
FOI WASP
LOI SUBJECT
COD JACK-IN-THE-BOX
Done Monday in 33’43” and much enjoyed. Isn’t Troy the crossworders’ saga-city?