Time: 44:25
Plenty to chew over after the fact, since a few (especially downs) went in on checkers and without fully understanding the wordplay. By no means an all-weekender, nevertheless).
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Emergency road layer ought to put in more granite (4,8) |
| HARD SHOULDER – SHOULD (ought) contained by (to be put in) HARDER (more granite). | |
| 8 | Couple bunging old vase no longer of use (7) |
| OUTWORN – TWO (couple) contained by (bunging) O (old) and URN (vase). | |
| 9 | Approved of plug diameter on sink in Slough (7) |
| ADMIRED – AD (plug) + D (diameter) next to (on) MIRE (sink in slough). | |
| 11 | Two types of wood on European bunk (7) |
| EYEWASH – YES and ASH (two types of wood on E (English). | |
| 12 | Animal barking unless holding its lead (7) |
| SENSUAL – anagram of (barking) UNLESS containing (holding) Animal’s (it’s) first letter (lead). | |
| 13 | Music group centre to concoct etudes (5) |
| OCTET – hidden in (centre to) concOCT ETudes. | |
| 14 | Sleepy from poor sci-fi novel (9) |
| SOPORIFIC – anagram of (novel) POOR SCI-FI. | |
| 16 | Mister Joseph’s eldest brother holding most of deposit back (9) |
| NEBULISER – REUBEN (Joseph’s brother) containing (holding) all but the last of (most of) SILt (deposit), all reversed (back). | |
| 19 | Praise movie withdrawing permissive parts (5) |
| EXALT – E.T. (movie) which the reversal of (withdrawing) LAX (permissive) contains (parts). | |
| 21 | Batting failure masking century England’s opener got (7) |
| INDUCED – IN (batting) + DUD (failure), containing (masking) both C (century) and the first (opener) of England’s. | |
| 23 | Does corrupt criminal court void fines? (7) |
| INFECTS – anagram of (criminal) the first and last of (void) CourT + FINES. | |
| 24 | Plane quiet with just 50 per cent aboard winter flight (3,4) |
| SKI JUMP – SKIM (plane) and P (piano, quiet), containing (with… aboard) half of (50 per cent) JUst. | |
| 25 | Large poles separating cereal crop (3-4) |
| MAN-SIZE – N and S (poles) contained by (separating) MAIZE (cereal crop). | |
| 26 | Charge seen in mobile web app (6,6) |
| SEARCH ENGINE – anagram of (mobile) CHARGE SEEN IN. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | The short brush enters up most piping (7) |
| HOTTEST – SET-TO (brush) contained by (enters) THe minus the last (short), all reversed (up). | |
| 2 | Order to dispel mob’s former capital judgment (4,3) |
| RIOT ACT – RIO (former capital) + TACT (judgement). | |
| 3 | Odd selection of sayings encapsulating these collected works? (9) |
| SYNTHESES – every other letter from (odd collection of) SaYiNgS containing (encapsulating) THESE. | |
| 4 | Old hit for Rolling Stones (5) |
| OPALS – O (old), then SLAP (hit) reversed (rolling). | |
| 5 | Scaly river beast rearing up (7) |
| LAMINAR – R (river) + ANIMAL (beast) all reversed (rearing up). | |
| 6 | Half-worn flea collar retaining medium protection on one side (7) |
| EARMUFF – half deleted from (half-worn) flEA and RUFF (collar) containing M (medium). | |
| 7 | Bucks and more in company releases (4,8) |
| HOME COUNTIES – HOME (in) + CO (company) + UNTIES (releases). | |
| 10 | Licensed bar limits salted nuts and charcuterie (12) |
| DELICATESSEN – lICENSEd minus the first and last (bar limits) + SALTED, all anagrammed (nuts). | |
| 15 | Fruit in individual one millimetre slices (9) |
| PERSIMMON – PERSON (individual) which I (one) MM (millimetre) contains (slices). | |
| 17 | Doctor’s prime spot by blankets? (7) |
| BEDSIDE – |
|
| 18 | Professor’s one needing coat (7) |
| LACQUER – sounds like (professor’s) “lacker” (one needing). | |
| 19 | Istanbul address set up ID and iron locks in flat (7) |
| EFFENDI – reversal of (set up) ID with FE, containing (locks in) FEN (flat). The address to a man of standing in (e.g.) Istanbul. | |
| 20 | Leading writer owns record collection (7) |
| ARCHIVE – ARCH (leading) + I’VE (writer owns). | |
| 22 | American’s parking in departure area way below (5) |
| DEPTH – A (American) replaced by (is) P (parking) in DEaTH (departure). | |
Another puzzle that occupied me for a very pleasant hour. The NW corner nearly wrote itself in but I slowed down massively when I tried to establish a second foothold elsewhere.
BTW, I think the deposit in 16ac is SIL{t}.
Yes, SIL[-T].
I like these puzzles with no three- or four-letter answers.
Started out confidently enough with SOPORIFIC, LAMINAR, PERSIMMON and NEBULISER. But was hung up a long time finally in the SW (at the end was DEPTH). Still, finished it the same night!
Ah yes – makes more sense than my tired SILo – thanks both.
Got NEBULISER, but didn’t know REUBEN was brother of Joseph. Would only know REUBEN as a sandwich and from the Woodie Guthrie song about Reuben James. Live and learn …
I found that tough but fair and I got there. I had no idea who Joseph’s brother was, but I reverse engineered that it must be Reuben from the answer, but I only know that as a pastrami sandwich.
William, you have a lot of entries where you need to underline the definition: 24 and 25 across, and 5D, 15D and maybe a couple more.
I was sure I’d pressed the button, so I don’t know how that happened. Thanks for pointing it out.
Another where I missed a few but enjoyed it nonetheless. Saw what was going on with 16a ‘mister’ and thought of ‘atomiser’, which didn’t fit but thought of NEBULISER eventually but had to use aids to find Joe’s brother. Liked SYSNTHESES and EARMUFF. Bunged in DEPTH at 22d but the parsing eluded me. All the long ones came easily which helped. I initially kind of came up with my own parsing of BEDSIDE, which is Doctor’s prime spot = ‘D’ and ‘BESIDE’ = BY (blankets/covers) for a &lit.
Thanks William and setter.
I agree with your parsing of BEDSIDE
Yes that’s how I parsed it.
Aha!
Half an hour, though not all understood.
– Had to trust that Reuben was a brother of Joseph to get NEBULISER
– Didn’t parse INDUCED because I was fixated on ‘failure’ being ‘duck’ in the sense of a failure to score any runs, even though ‘batting’ and ‘failure’ were clearly separate parts of the wordplay
– Only parsed INFECTS post-submission
– Couldn’t have told you that PERSIMMON is a fruit
– Thought of LACQUER early on but couldn’t parse it for the life of me, until eventually I saw what ‘professor’s’ in the clue was doing
– Had no idea how DEPTH worked
Thanks William and setter.
FOI Soporific
LOI Opals
COD Delicatessen
WOE. It appears there’s no such animal as the lesser-spotted SENSUIL.
Damn it. Fell at the last hurdle with BEDTIME having battled for well more than the hour. Of course, bedside manner, not bedtime story. Biffed HOTTEST. COD to NEBULISER, delighted to remember REUBEN. Tough but fair . Thank you William and setter.
19:50
Similar experience to the blogger in the sense of entering answers based on def and checkers and trying to justify retrospectively. The only one I didn’t manage to parse at all was DEPTH so thanks for that. Some clever stuff, especially “licensed bar limits”, “criminal court” and “charge seen in mobile”. Decent Friday challenge.
Thanks S&B
18:57. Tough! Some of this (e.g. EARMUFF) was of the ‘spot definition then reverse-engineer wordplay’ variety that I find irritating at times, but enough of it was of the ‘construct from wordplay then eureka moment’ type for the whole experience to be thoroughly enjoyable. My last in BEDSIDE fell firmly into the latter category.
I got quite badly stuck in the SW corner. I could not for the life of me think of the word NEBULISER – a word I knew – and obviously had no idea about Reuben, who to me (like Paul) is a sandwich. Could go for one now.
DNF giving up on the hour with 3 missing. A more enjoyable fail today though.
Some of the slowness was of my own making by biffing HARD STANDING at first. Correcting that led to a flurry of action and renewed belief in an increasingly rare completion. In the end defeated by OUTWORN, NEBULISER and the HC. “Mister” was too clever for me and Reuben NHO.
Enjoyed piecing together DELICATESSEN. Thanks William and setter.
28.30
Another lovely pangram, with crossers SKI JUMP/LACQUER and ARCHIVE/MAN-SIZE doing a lot of the work.
BIFD DELICATESSEN and NEBULISER, otherwise fully parsed for a change on a Friday.
Nice to see His Majesty in front of The SEVEN SISTERS on the cover of the paper, after Saturday’s Listener dinner puzzle.
LOI BEDSIDE
COD MAN-SIZE
35 mins with one typo.
I thought this was excellent! I googled Joseph’s eldest brother to jump start me when I needed assistance to get going again.
COD: Home Counties
Thanks to William and our setter.
On form this morning, finished in 18’31”. A bit blasé, enough to put in SKI JUMP, LACQUER, DELICATESSEN and DEPTH unparsed.
Thanks william and setter.
38.00, way more than half floundering in the DEPTHs. I (eventually) worked that one out, assumed BEDSIDE was a CD (it apparently was much better than that) and I have bruised shins as a result of “LACKER” – who knew “professor” signalled “sounds like”? It would have helped immensely if I’d seen SEARCH ENGINE was an anagram. As for ARCHIVE, I’VE just didn’t occur, and I only saw EXALT after I discarded ECLAT and a few other possibilities and LAX <- dawned.
It seems that many of us had to reverse engineer from guessed entries, but I did get to NEBULISER from scraping through Joseph's brothers. Don't remember getting SIL[t] even then.
In retrospect, I don't really know why this turned into a tough Friday, but then most crosswords are easy when you now the answers.
Just nudged over 20 minutes – largely due to a stray SUNSEAL which made EARMUFF impossible, although SKI LIFT at 24 breaking 18 and 22d runs it a close second (only because I spotted it a lot sooner when LACQUER made itself known).
PERSIMMON was fine – knew it as a fruit, so just had to try to think of a fruit with IMM somewhere in the middle.
Slow week all in all – with a good few typos thrown in for good measure, so definitely a week to forget.
Forgot to mention that I briefly invented the SUNSEAL too.
37:47
I got through much of this in reasonable time but found HOME COUNTIES, NEBULISER, BEDSIDE, LACQUER and SKI JUMP took about 10 minutes.
I saw DEPTH and, broadly, that you swapped A for P, but couldn’t quite see how the instruction worked – thanks william for the explanation of ‘s.
This puzzle is about as good as they get, in my view. There is almost no very obscure knowledge. NEBULISER is a strange word but most people would I think be able to work that out without having heard of it specifically, once you spot the devious ‘Mister’ for what it is. Everything else is just clever and satisfying.
At the start it all seemed very easy and I wondered if the crossword editor had decided that he’d tortured us enough on Fridays and so put in a Monday crossword. But no, and I soon came up against a brick wall. Some of this was absolutely lovely, though, and the reason why so many of us do this crossword. 17dn BEDSIDE is a brilliant example, where it seemed a rather bland CD until it was explained. DELICATESSEN and HOME COUNTIES almost as good.
22:59 I was on wavelength with the long perimeter answers (which I always persevere with for such shaped grids) so that was a huge help in getting the more tricky ones.
Only LOI NEBULISER not parsed.
A lot of time trying to make an NHO animal from UNLESSU before the penny dropped.
COD HOME COUNTIES
After half an hour I was left with 7d and most of the SW still blank. After another twenty minutes or so I was no further forward, so I looked up Joseph’s brothers and NEBULISER (I’d already considerd silt for the deposit) materialised. The rest of the puzzle then dropeed into place with a bit more effort, with HOME COUNTIES giving the much needed PDM and metal boost. LOI was BEDSIDE. 59:25. Thanks setter and William.
Managed to complete it, but 6 answers where I couldn’t see the parsing even though I had the answers …
HOTTEST, NEBULISER, EARMUFF, DEPTH, LACQUER, SENSUAL
Still don’t understand professor = lacker.
As for SENSUAL, I saw it was an anagram of unless plus the a of animal, but where’s the definition of SENSUAL? Or is that meant to be animal, in which case animal is doing two jobs. Is that allowed?
This is professor as ‘one who speaks/says’ something. One who needs (“one needing”) is a ‘lacker’. When you say (profess) it, it’s lacquer (coat). At least, I think that’s the idea. But it beat me all ends up.
22:20 lots of biffs for a Friday, although maybe I was just on the wavelength for once. Hoping we get back to the very chewy stuff next week.
Threw in the towel on the hour with BEDSIDE and LACQUER missing. Irritated not to see the latter, unsurprised that the former eluded me. Not sure I’d have seen it if I’d stared all day. Didn’t understand EXALT or DEPTH, but at least they were obviously right.
As it’s Friday and the SNITCH count high, I was pleased with 35 mins. Held up by HOME COUNTIES until I saw I’d entered AYEWASH for EYEWASH. I thought the puzzle brilliant but some of the wordplay was way beyond me; thanks Blogger for explaining EXALT, INFECTS, HOTTEST, BEDSIDE and DEPTH. My only (minor) criticism is that I don’t think ‘Professor’s’ (in 18D) is a satisfactory homonym indicator, as it must be possible to profess in writing. NEBULISER was a gift, as I knew who Joseph’s eldest brother was, and we had a nebuliser at home for many years. First one in was PERSIMMON and last HOME COUNTIES. Favourite four clues: to SENSUAL, OPALS, DELICATESSEN and ARCHIVE. Thank you to Setter and Blogger.
24 a – Could not stop thinking that the JU was tied in with Jumbo (Jet) but clicked eventually.
Each time this week I have been defeated by just 1 quadrant and this time it was the SW.
Well, I definitely liked all the ones I both got and understood. After coming here I liked the ones I hadn’t been able to parse, and so understood ex-post. Thanks Wm.