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…
yer no kiddin…
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.
Had this as well.
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.
I couldn’t be more north west. Father from Bolton, mother from near Blackpool where I was born, grandparents also from Lancashire. We all called it a clothes maiden.
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
Same here on WEDDING FARE. Frustrating!
49:48 all green, no aids.
Liked the “no d” which I saw early, but never heard that meaning of NOD. And also saw TANNERY for “hides here” but had the old Queen as ER, then confused by TANNY=strain.
10:32 with more than two minutes spent hovering over my LOI TERRENE.
I had an English friend and colleague who we called Baldrick because of a more-than-passing resemblance. You never heard boo out of him in the office, but at the Christmas lunch every year he’d choose his moment, climb up on to the restaurant table and belt out “Lloyd George Knew My Father”, getting louder with every refrain.
Anyway that’s how I knew Lloyd George. Thanks Dvynys and setter. And thanks Baldrick.
I sang it this morning when I saw the clue. To the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers.
I look forward to your rendition at The George next year.
22 mins. Back in the game after a struggle and DNF yesterday
56:20 and sadly not all green. Amazingly (for me) got (and parsed) NOMAD, NOD, OCTAL and MORATORIA….and then put WEDDING DATE! Pretty sure cakes are more common at wedding breakfasts than dates. Wouldn’t have mattered, though, as I’d never heard of LORELEI, and did something silly with RO for Romania and Lolly for money. Never mind, always tomorrow.
Thanks D and setter.
13’38”, with AIRER LOI. Didn’t know TERRENE, but had to be. Also banged in FAB, causing delay.
I wonder if our setter was a fan of Bill and Ben, and their little weed?
Thanks dvynys and setter.
DNF, defeated by TERRENE but enjoyed this gentle puzzle. I thought “rock singer” was wonderful. Thanks for the blog.
I had WEDDING FARE at 8 down which works just about as well for me.
I also made this error – but I think that would be called a ‘green paint’ answer, whereas WEDDING CAKE is all fair and square, so better!
Great fun in 19:30 would be happy to see more puzzles like this.
Waited for all the checking letters before putting in TERRENE. Wasn’t sure if the Au Contraire was flipping the homophone or the definition. In hindsight the former doesn’t actually work.
Not heard of NOD or AIRER in those contexts but all fairly clued.
LORELEI has come up recently as a rock singer so that helped a lot.
Only thing that slowed me down was an incorrect WEDDING FOOD which was corrected by the kind CONGA.
COD TANNERY
Thanks blogger and setter
14.12. Excellent blog! A word with the crossword editor, though, because I rely on gradually increasing difficulty to remember which day of the week it is, and this was very Mondane. Admittedly, at the lower (MOO) end of the grid I slowed a bit: I had to replace a biffed LANCASTER with an equally unparsed LENINGRAD (daaa, daaa, da DAD DAD), struggled to justify AIRER, and dithered over AXE until I got the clever MORATORIA.
My last in was WEDDING CAKE, where the dreaded ?A?E combination put me into a spin. I considered GAME, DATE, LACE, amongst others before settling on CAKE as the most likely FARE to be served, and it turns out that’s the only entry in Chambers. I offer you a fun game to fill the rest of the day: what other possibilities can you find? I submit RAGE and WAKE.
BLUES and BRAWL. Well that’s how it often is round my way.
As said above, a Monday-ish fun puzzle. I was all done in 15 minutes except for A*E at the lower right, which took me an age to twig, I was tempted to write in ALE as sack is a drink but eventually it came.
I really enjoyed this (albeit agree it was much easier than Monday/Tuesday). I managed to fail on WEDDING CAKE. I realised this was very easy so was rushing and put wedding fare. What a plonker, literally only myself to blame.
All complete in 12:47, but WOE as above.
NHO: TERRENE, and AIRER=maiden, but there was no other option with the checkers.
Personal best for me at 25m but of course slow by comparison with others! Nevertheless, very satisfying. LOI: NOD and NHO LORELEI, but obvious from wordplay.
Congrats on the PB. And actually pretty fast by comparison to the broader population. Times on here are not exactly a random sample!
Nice to see a more approachable puzzle at last, although I had trouble with the TERRENE, TANNERY intersection as well.
More like these in the earlier part of the week would be nice. We aren’t all crossword championship puzzlers!
Remember the solver on the train to town please, Crossword Editor.
Like others I didn’t know the required meanings of maiden and NOD, but trusted the wordplay. BOO and CIGAR were first 2 in. The unknown TERRENE brought up the rear. Liked WIMBLEDON and FLOWERPOT. 17:22. Thanks setter and Dvynys.
NHO TERRENE, ‘maiden’ as AIRER or NOD, but all were fairly clued – and NOD was brilliant. The perfect crossword, I thought: challenging, but also clever/amusing, and all gettable from wordplay if the answers themselves were unknown. Bravo setter.
20′ before going to bed last night. A couple of unknown meanings such as NOD and AIRER (maiden) but easily overcome. Also had a similar headscratch to Merlin by assuming the old Queen was ER and finding a new word, TANNY (careful there…).
Some really nice surfaces in a very accessible puzzle, COD to the old PM. Thanks Dvynys and setter.
Like a number of others above, I had WEDDING FARE at 8d.
From the clue – something served at a wedding – how could you tell it is cake and not fare?
The unsatisfying but inescapable answer is that one’s in the dictionary and the other one isn’t.
9:18
I hit and hoped with NOD and TERRENE and thankfully hit on POWWOW rather than CONFAB straight away. Maiden / airer familiar enough (as clothes maiden at least) likewise tantric, thanks to Mister Sting and Trudi’s bedroom antics.
I caused a bit of an issue by trying OCTAHEDRON and wasn’t entirely sure if the wedding fare was cake or, er, fare.
Forgive me for being picky, but to me a tetrahedron is not a ‘figure’, rather a ‘solid’, or a ‘3-D figure’. A figure is 2-dimensional. Or it was when teaching maths for 20 years! I think this has irked me before.
This was a nice puzzle, taking 16m, but I made a bog-up of 27ac and put in ‘ned’, knowing it was wrong but just couldn’t figure out the (now very clear) cryptic.
I was going to say that there are some quite legendary three-dimensional “figures”, but in that sense it does seem to be specifically reserved for the human form. And you don’t often see a tetrahedron-shaped human.
Which is a long way of saying I think you’re right.
19:42. I knew the slats and pulleys device (described by Inverleith above) as a Kitchen Maid – NHO MAIDEN – but it’s close and the wordplay clearly gave AIRER.
NHO NOD in the required sense; if I had ever heard the Homer expression I would have just taken it to mean “nods off” sometimes, allowing the same outcome without requiring the different meaning. Now I know. Some impressive trickiness in a quick puzzle.
I liked WIMBLEDON and WEDDING CAKE. Not distracted at all by WEDDING FARE/PAGE/MARE/WAKE/… I like the green paint defence offered by JPTC above.
On reflection, the more I think about WEDDING PAGE the more I like it as “…serving for the match”. I nominate it as my response to Zabadak’s challenge
Very gentle and complete in less than 10 minutes, which is very unusual for me.
TERRENE was a NHO, but made a lot of sense as the probable answer, so in it went. Similarly, AIRER went in purely from wordplay and an assumption that it might somehow be a synonym for “maiden”, although I had no idea how or why. Having googled it, it seems its use is regional; dahn sarf, where I come from, we call it a clothes horse.