Time: 11.01
If Monday’s was not Mondayish, this was not very Wednesdayish, being comfortably the gentlest puzzle I have blogged. There are quite a few nice surfaces and constructions, and as with the last two Wednesdays on my watch, the wordplay is clear and concise. Here though, the literals are not particularly devious. I liked it and hope you all did too.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Following wrong order like soldiers returned from leave? (4,2,5) |
| BACK TO FRONT – A double definition of sorts and hopefully a gentle one to get everyone going. First used in the 1860s, I haven’t been able to pin down a clear etymological basis for the expression. | |
| 7 | I’m impressed by conference releasing prisoner (3) |
| WOW – POWWOW is our conference, and POW is our prisoner. Deduct one from the other and you have the answer. | |
| 9 | Church area unkempt for a long time (5,4) |
| ORGAN LOFT – Lovely clue with a smooth and believable surface. It’s always a bit tricksy when prepositions form part of the anagrist which is the case with FOR here, joined by A and LONG T in the mixer. | |
| 10 | Wanderer compos mentis in Glesga? (5) |
| NOMAD – Biffable but no less amusing for that. NO MAD is (presumably) what you would say for “not mad” in Scotland. | |
| 11 | Did you say pâté out of this world? Au contraire! (7) |
| TERRENE – A homophone of TERRINE. I am not sure I have seen the word before, but it seemed a more than likely meaning of “earthly” and so the opposite of “out of this world”. | |
| 12 | Rock singer’s learning, ready for Romania (7) |
| LORELEI – Our favourite singer on top of a rock (by the Rhine) though as she appears regularly in grids you are probably all quite familiar with her by now. What I didn’t know is that the legend arose because there was a murmuring sound created by the currents and a waterfall.
Another nice clue, we add the plural of the currency of Romania (LEI) to LORE for learning. For newbies, you will soon disregard the more usual meaning of “ready” for its slang expression meaning “money” whenever you see the word. |
|
| 13 | Cheap adhesive (5) |
| TACKY – Double definition. | |
| 15 | Alsatian? That’s poodle transformed with CGI! (6,3) |
| POLICE DOG – This one also made me smile, though the surface is a bit of nonsense really . An anagram (“transformed”) of POODLE and CGI. | |
| 17 | Uranium and fruit devoured by an android (9) |
| AUTOMATON – And you could say the same about the surface of this clue. U and TOMATO give us our filling and AN comprises the pieces of bread in this sandwich clue. | |
| 19 | Dance music on game shows (5) |
| CONGA – Hidden. | |
| 20 | Passed by valley keeping especially to the west (7) |
| ELAPSED – Our valley here is a DALE which surrounds ESP for “especially”, and which is then reversed (to the west). | |
| 22 | Gaseous element consumed in recent delivery (7) |
| NEONATE – What is needed here is a recent delivery of the baby variety. NEON gives us our gaseous element to which we add ATE for “consumed”. | |
| 24 | More mature one training at school between runs (5) |
| RIPER – Another very gentle one. Run can be R so “runs” can be RR. Into that we insert I and PE for “training at school”. | |
| 25 | Delays speaker aboard westbound train (9) |
| MORATORIA – Clever wordplay here, though again, the literal allows for a fairly easy biff once you have a few checkers. Speaker = ORATOR, which goes inside (“aboard”) a reversal (“westbound”) of AIM, in that sense of “train”. | |
| 27 | Make careless error, with which mood becomes low? (3) |
| NOD – I loved this one. A quirky clue where you need to see that MOOD becomes MOO (i.e LOW) by having NO D. | |
| 28 | Go-go dancing with elderly politician in the past (5,6) |
| LLOYD GEORGE – A great anagram (“dancing”) of GOGO and ELDERLY. From all accounts, if go-go dancing had been invented at the turn of 20th Century then LLOYD GEORGE might well have been up for such entertainment. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Bible incomplete? Voice criticism (3) |
| BOO – Bible can be BOOK from which you take off the last letter, to get the answer. | |
| 2 | Smoke starts off in garage filling vehicle (5) |
| CIGAR -The first letters of “in” and “garage” give you IG, which are then inserted into CAR as a type of vehicle. | |
| 3 | Queen once overwhelmed by strain hides here (7) |
| TANNERY – Crosswordland is replete with kings and queens of all shapes and sizes. ANNE is our chosen monarch du jour which is inside (overwhelmed) by TRY for “strain”. | |
| 4 | In which one may grow the best cannabis? (9) |
| FLOWERPOT – FLOWER can have a meaning of “the best of anything” as in “Flower of Scotland”. I was looking for an equivalent expression meaning “the worst of anything” to apply to England Rugby’s efforts at the weekend, but moving swiftly on to the matter in hand, we add POT for cannabis and arrive at a receptacle in which we might grow something. | |
| 5 | Concerning number of roach trails seen at intervals? (5) |
| OCTAL – “Interval” clue. | |
| 6 | Worker in ruse endlessly referencing Buddhist works (7) |
| TANTRIC – Ruse = TRICK from which we subtract the last letter and insert our favourite type of worker (ANT).
I started researching TANTRA but very soon realised it is an extremely dense and complicated subject. Its association with sex by the western world appears to be something of a sideshow. |
|
| 7 | Success keeps me bold, playing in tournament … (9) |
| WIMBLEDON – A “success” is a WIN into which is inserted an anagram (playing) of ME + BOLD. Nice clue… | |
| 8 | … serving for the match? (7,4) |
| WEDDING CAKE – …as is this one. A bit like “ready” for cash, whenever one sees “match” one should always be on the alert for something to do with nuptials. A fairly gentle cryptic clue but none the worse for that. | |
| 11 | Figure toned and rather developed (11) |
| TETRAHEDRON – Another nice surface with easy wordplay. “Developed” is our anagram indicator, which we apply to TONED and RATHER. | |
| 14 | Beaten about at noon, had little sleep (9) |
| CATNAPPED – CAPPED can be a synonym for “beaten” into which is placed AT (in plain sight) and N for “noon”. “Little” here in the sense of a short specific period of sleep. | |
| 16 | Listing omitting a great historic city (9) |
| LENINGRAD – Listing is LEANING from which A is omitted. RAD is a fairly modern synonym for “great”. | |
| 18 | Violent wind and low cloud right by a lake (7) |
| MISTRAL – The setter is giving us a bit more help by providing a description of the type of wind we are looking for, and MISTRAL is one of the better known, being a strong, cold, dry northwesterly wind from the Massif Central/Alps down the Rhone valley into the Mediterranean. The wordplay is MIST for “low cloud” + R + A + L. | |
| 19 | Laugh from retired officer engaged in tiresome task (7) |
| CHORTLE – LT for lieutenant is our officer which is reversed (retired) and inserted into CHORE. | |
| 21 | Duck unable to speak in Disney film? (5) |
| DUMBO -If a zero were unable to speak it would be a DUMB O. | |
| 23 | Female dismissed by more attractive maiden? (5) |
| AIRER -The wordplay was very helpful here (F taken away from FAIRER) but if I knew that MAIDEN is a type of clothes airer, it was buried deep in the cranium. My last one in. | |
| 26 | Sack poor writers in Bow for speaking out (3) |
| AXE – Poor writers are HACKS which if you are a Cockney becomes ACKS, and if you further say it out loud, becomes our answer. I am not sure I have seen a homophone and a Cockney device used on the same word, so it may be something of a rare bird. | |
32 minutes, my target time, give or take. So this week we had to wait until Wednesday for a Times puzzle at a level that until recently I’d have expected to appear any day except perhaps Friday or occasionally on a Saturday.
It wasn’t entirely straightforward for me however as I was not familiar with TANTRIC, TERRENE, ‘maiden’ as AIRER, nor the slang meaning of RAD which ODE advises was imported from North America in the late 20th century.
Also my customary practice of gaining footholds by going immediately to clues to 3-letter words proved fruitless on this occasion as I needed a checker, or sometimes two, to kick my brain into gear and solve today’s four examples.
Finally, if we’re playing puns with the Glaswegian dialect, surely the wordplay at 10ac gives us NAEMAD?
Och man, NAE means no. NO means not…
I am not familiar with nod meaning make a careless error. It is not in either of the dictionaries I have to hand. can someone enlighten me, please?
Chambers has “To make a careless mistake through inattention.”
There’s an old expression, “(even) Homer nods.”
Thanks Guy – you beat me to it. I thought the Homer expression was fairly well known, but you never quite know these things for sure.
The sixth meaning in Collins ‘to be momentarily inattentive or careless’. I didn’t know it either.
A fun crossword, I thought.
Thankyou all.
Yes, Monday’s episode AIRING late!
(Checked that definition after solving. It could be nothing else at that point.)
Quick today, and no queries or complaints. My sheffield granny used a clothes maiden.
Thinking ‘conference’ was CONFAB sent me down a completely wrong path.
20.47 and a really enjoyable puzzle. In our utility room there is a clothes AIRER, a contraption of wooden slats, ropes, pulleys and cast iron crosspieces, which is stamped with the brand name “Sheila Maid”.
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
Thanks to Golden Age SF author Jack Williamson, author of the “CeeTee” series of stories, for introducing me to the word “contraTERRENE” at an early age. The word “antimatter” was the one that stuck to the concept in the long run, though.
If only there had still been MAIDEN clothes airers aboard his spaceships I may have been a few minutes faster, but 25 minutes is pretty quick for me anyway!
7:19. Straightforward, in spite of a perfectly valid FAB and an invented TERREAN slowing me down a bit. NHO ‘maiden’.
DNF. All done in 12 mins then gave up in disgust on TERRENE, a truly awful clue in an otherwise lightweight but enjoyable QC of a puzzle. Shame.
I made a wooden maiden/airer, it is still going and has lasted a lot longer than the bought plastic coated one.
Thanks Dvynys and a “See me” to setter.
A really good puzzle apart from TERRENE, put in last when I assumed it was an alternative spelling. COD to NOMAD, but there were so many good clues. All my life, I’ve called it a clothes MAIDEN and not a horse, as did my parents and grandparents before me, and I take this clue as the ultimate endorsement. Thank you D and setter.
8:09 A bit slow to start but then sped up as the answers fell in. Like others NHO that meaning of “maiden” or NOD. Thanks Dvyys and setter.
Not surprised by the low SNITCH count: 13 mins, very fast for me. I hadn’t met AIRER = maiden before. Thank you, Blogger, for that, and for explaining CIGAR’s wordplay (which I should have cracked). First in was AXE and last FLOWERPOT. Very nice puzzle. My favourite three clues: to NOD, TANNERY and WEDDING CAKE (especially coming immediately after 7D). Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
Had WAITING GAME ready to go in at 8 down but luckily something told me it wasn’t quite right. Never parsed WOW, and had forgotten RAD means GREAT. Adored the CGI-adapted POODLE, made to resemble an ALSATIAN. Just the sort of thing CGI does so well. Never heard of the MAIDEN clothes drier. We used to have something which we called a CREEL, hanging from the ceiling. Is that the same? 14’39”. Rare early day solve for me, which I hope means I am quicker than normal.
I think an airer is called a clothes maiden in the North East, but a clothes horse in most other areas.
28 mins so pretty quick for me and very enjoyable after the toils of the last two days. Last two in MORATORIA & AIRER which went in with a shrug.
MISTRAL was easy for me as it howls with a vengeance pretty often down here. Not today though! Some nice juicy anagrams also to get stuck into.
I liked BACK TO FRONT & WIMBLEDON.
I’m lucky with the rugby as I’ve got two teams to cheer for, France and England, and one of them is usually doing well.
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
DNF, beaten by the unknown TERRENE and by putting WEDDING FARE instead of WEDDING CAKE.
– Didn’t know that meaning of NOD and had no idea how it worked
– Made a hash of the parsing for CATNAPPED, thinking it was C (about) + at + N and failing to see how the rest might work
– Also not familiar with maiden as an AIRER
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
COD Axe
49:48 all green, no aids.