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. | |
Very nice for this QC-er. Monday on Wednesday, 28:38. The write-in BACK-TO-FRONT gave me a nice boost and most of it flowed from there. I got stuck in the southeast but eventually dug everything out. Thanks setter and Twin.
30 minutes. Like others, I originally wrote “fab” for 7 across, but clearly there is no such place as Fimbledon. Hadn’t heard of maiden for AIRER. Loved NOD! (I knew it would have something to do with cows as soon as I saw it.) A very jolly puzzle.
If this is the setter giving us an easy ride after all the recent grumbles about levels of difficulty, then bring it on …
16:52
Definitely feels like Monday and Wednesday got swapped.
NHO TERRENE but made sense.
Thanks dvynys and setter
I liked the wittiness, clue after clue. Thanks, setter.
Was I the only one who saw the word ‘strains’ in 3d and jumped right to Tsarina without thinking quite hard enough?
Lovely puzzle with more than a couple of unknowns – AIRER (for unknown meaning of maiden), TERRENE, NOD. However, all there in the end, after a worryingly long time looking at LOI TERRENE and trying to figure out how to work it, and was any French involved? Especially since terrine isn’t actually the same as pate, so didn’t come to mind for some time. Sometimes, less knowledge is more helpful… All in all, I definitely felt on the setter’s wavelength and completed it more quickly than many of the trickier ‘quick’ crosswords.