Time: 17.11
Something below my average time suggests this was no more than medium difficulty. There are a couple of lesser known words but clued fairly I thought. In terms of style though, I give this an A+. There is plenty of concise cluing and smooth surfaces and a large dollop of wit.
Entertainment seems to be something of a theme with parties; books; television; films; singing; dancing; musicians and a show all here to divert us. Highly enjoyable, therefore. Just as long as you are not an eco warrior called Kelvin.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Colour endless in a divine English novel (4,4) |
| ADAM BEDE – “How does Jane Eyre fit the wordplay?” was my first thought. Instead we have our second favourite 4/4 crossword novel. “Devine” as a noun meaning a person skilled in divine things/theologian gives us DD (Doctor of Divinity) and the colour we need is AMBER which loses its final letter (endless). An “a” in plain sight and “E” for English completes the recipe. | |
| 9 | Maybe 501s with shirt put outside to air (8) |
| TELEVISE – Loved this. A big help if you remember what brand 501s are (LEVIS) which TEE for that sort of “shirt” surrounds. Who can forget that advert? Altogether now: “Oooh, I bet you’re wonderin’ how I knew, ’bout your plans to make me blue…” | |
| 10 | Young swimmer Henry’s widow (4) |
| PARR – Double definition. Easy if you have seen this clue before, with PARR being one of stages of a juvenile salmon. Not so easy if you don’t know the fishy thing and try to punt Anne or Jane. | |
| 11 | Chilled environment in wild for rare tiger (12) |
| REFRIGERATOR – I’m not sure this surface actually makes a lot of sense but it made me smile. A nice anagram (wild) of *(FOR RARE TIGER). | |
| 13 | Dessert timid sort swallows slowly at first (6) |
| MOUSSE – MOUSE around (swallows) S, the first letter of “slowly”. | |
| 14 | Blakey for one is to strive for creative skill (8) |
| ARTISTRY – I didn’t know who ART Blakey was but with A-T as my checking letters was able to assume that there was such a person. An important jazz musician, he is credited with keeping the jazz scene going during the changing tastes of the 1970s. To ART we add IS (in plain sight) and TRY (strive) for our definition. | |
| 15 | Nothing stops Kelvin, a debauchee, in pub activity (7) |
| KARAOKE – Not sure KARAOKE is limited to pubs in Japan but it makes a nice surface.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) determined the correct value of absolute zero as being -273.15 Celsius or -459.67 Farenheit leading to the kelvin (K) being the base unit for temperature. After K, A RAKE (a debauchee) is “stopped by” (i.e. has within it) O for “nothing”. |
|
| 16 | Adult struck — struck with shame (7) |
| ABASHED – A (adult) plus BASHED (struck). | |
| 20 | Jousting weapon returned to lake for knight (8) |
| LANCELOT – Easy to biff once you see “jousting weapon” and “knight”. “Returned to lake” is the slightly tricky bit of the w/p giving us L OT, which is added to LANCE. | |
| 22 | Spaniards here competed in scoreless draw (6) |
| OVIEDO – Another nice surface. A city in northern Spain, I first came across it from the Woody Allen film Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Hopefully OO as a “scoreless draw” in football/soccer will not cause problems for our transatlantic friends. Inside we place VIED (competed). | |
| 23 | Show without Tarzan struggling to entertain Virginia and Georgia (12) |
| EXTRAVAGANZA – “Without” can be EX as in “ex dividend”. Maybe not very common but it is there in the dictionary. *(TARZAN) then struggles to enclose VA and GA, abbreviations for two US states. Another surface which is a bit nonsensical but caused a smile here. | |
| 25 | Son leaves belt in corner (4) |
| TRAP – This is STRAP for “belt” without S for “son”. | |
| 26 | Excited seeing leg — not small — in flimsy robe (8) |
| NEGLIGEE – Maybe I was just in a good mood when doing this, but this one even managed to elicit a chuckle. “Excited” is our anagram indicator and – without the S for “small” – *(SEEING LEG) is the anagram fodder. | |
| 27 | Dance party taking place next to European capital (8) |
| RIGADOON – There are an awful lot of parties in Crosswordland to choose from, but we can normally rely on “European” being E. Not here, where RIGA is our European capital, which is next to DO ON for “party taking place”.
A lively jig-like dance for one couple. Known to me from these things. Possibly a tricky clue if you have never heard of it. |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Help mounted soldiers cutting spring migration (8) |
| DIASPORA – AID is reversed (mounted, in a down clue) then OR (ordinary ranks) comes within (cutting) SPA for “spring”. | |
| 3 | Folk performer, crafty poet leading reindeer (6,6) |
| MORRIS DANCER – I got the DANCER reference straightaway (I can never remember all the other reindeeer but didn’t need to). MORRIS was a bit later coming, biffed in fact, but then I saw that “craft-y” presumably refers to the Arts and Crafts movement of which William Morris was a towering figure. I must admit to not knowing he was a poet in addition to everything else he did, but apparently he was offered the Poet Laureateship in 1871. | |
| 4 | Nutty green apple finally prepared for cake (8) |
| ECOFREAK – Can green apples ever be nutty in taste? I’m prepared to believe it for this amusing surface, and offbeat literal, though it is rather a derogatory expression. I guess every walk of life has its reasonable folks and those at the margins.
Tricky wordplay as a preposition (FOR) is part of the fodder for the anagram (prepared) along with CAKE and the last letter of “apple”. My last one in. |
|
| 5 | Just for Latinists, this with others has to go round (7) |
| ETHICAL – I saw the HIC for “for Latinists, this” but wanted “etc” for “with others” rather than the correct ET AL | |
| 6 | Complaint NHS department’s well able to explain? (6) |
| FLUENT – FLU + ENT. Simple but neat. | |
| 7 | Duke in good health carrying spades (4) |
| FIST – Newbies will probably wonder what “duke” has to do with “fist”. Rare in normal life, it does appear from time to time in puzzles: they are indeed synonyms. If we are in good health we are FIT which goes around S (spades as in a suit in cards). | |
| 8 | Plot involving alien laser beam accidentally revealed? (8) |
| BETRAYED – Into the garden here where “plot” gives us BED, into which we put our favourite alien, ET, and RAY for “laser beam”. Obviously one can intentionally betray someone, but there is a separate sense of accidentally revealing something as well. | |
| 12 | Fools in America delinquent once hit (12) |
| ASSASSINATED – Every time I see TED for a delinquent or here “delinquent once” I think of Dorset Jimbo, a sadly late but frequent contributor to TfTT who would always object to such a connection. Here the term goes on the end of a long charade starting with two ASSes; IN (in plain sight) and A as one of the accepted abbreviations for America. | |
| 15 | Almost do away with range of knowledge on New York City (8) |
| KILKENNY – Experienced hands will immediately lift and separate between New York and City, and indeed we are transported to Ireland for the literal, which is made up of all but the last letter of KILL (do away with); KEN (range of knowledge) and NY. | |
| 17 | Bishop in argument about new Victorian poet (8) |
| BROWNING – B plus ROWING (in argument) about N. | |
| 18 | Place abnormally loaded with hidden gold (2,6) |
| EL DORADO – I guess this could be a semi &lit as well. Either way it is another good clue with smoothness and solvability. Inside (hidden) an anagram (abnormally) of *(LOADED) there is OR, the tincture gold or yellow in heraldry. | |
| 19 | Shock where old hand guzzles gallon (7) |
| STAGGER – STAGER around G for “gallon”. | |
| 21 | Irrigation of Algarve at regular intervals over time (6) |
| LAVAGE – Not a word I knew but the LAV bit is gettable (every other letter (at regular intervals) of ALGARVE) and then I guess you have to decide whether “time” is eon, era or the correct AGE. | |
| 24 | American not eating in land around Lomé (4) |
| TOGO – Slightly panicked when I saw this as I couldn’t quite remember where Lome is. It’s a good example of how important it is to “slice” the clue at the right point between wordplay and definition. Here “in” is a crucial part of the literal, as what Brits would call “takeaway” is “to go” to those Stateside.
On a visit to California once I did indeed go into a restaurant and ask if they did “takeaway”. To this day I can remember the oddness of struggling to explain what I was asking for. |
|
44 minutes but technically a DNF as I was left with 24dn outstanding and after a while I was getting nowhere so decided to look up Lomé which I’ve never heard of. I’d only been look for a nudge in the right direction but of course it gave me TOGO outright. Bit of a swizz because I’d enjoyed solving the rest of the puzzle and taken some satisfaction from working out all the other unknowns.
This flowed well after I’d errantly submitted a Quickie without filling in any spaces. Must try that again if I’m struggling. TRAP was last in after a couple of alphabet trawls.
We live opposite a karaoke bar, which goes on deep into the night. They keep the door open for some reason, which intensifies the pain. Nearly two years and yet to come across someone who isn’t flat and doesn’t shout.
Nearly a minute inside my target at 14:14
Helps to know all the world’s capital cities – for pub quizzes and similar.
23.23, only slightly delayed by trying to fit “equi” or “equa” into what was actually ETHICAL. Nice puzzle.
FOI PARR (being a salmon fisher helped)
LOI FLUENT
COD MORRIS DANCER
Thanks D and setter.
11’17”, no issues. Very pleased. Some very gettable clues with a crosser or two, and the gimme EL DORADO.
I think the technical term for 0-0 is no-score draw. There were so many in the 60s and 70s that the conditions for football pools had to be changed. (Do the Pools still exist? I can still remember my Dad’s regular numbers).
Thanks dvynys and setter.
I echo the blogger’s comments one of my favourites for a while.
24:00 bang on with 25+ minutes usually suggesting a trickier puzzle for me.
A good chunk of that trying to fit EQU into ETHICAL and TELEVISED where I had identified the wrong definition and thus wordplay. As someone who spends the majority of their life in jeans I have owned a pair of 501’s at various points in my life so I should have seen it sooner.
Many candidates for COD but will award it to ECOFREAK today.
Thanks blogger and setter.
Unfortunately another DNF the unknown ORVIEDO, then TRAP and TELEVISE all unanswered. Annoying as I know the jeans but I was looking for some kind of VOI or LI for 501. Oh well.
Otherwise quite tough but some enjoyable moments. I liked the MORRIS DANCER.
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
54:05, but I had a fat thumb DIST instead of FIST, and that delayed a correct submission- it would have been all correct with pen and paper. I thought Blakey at 14ac might have been a reference to the very mediocre sit com, “On the buses”, and the character “Blakey” at first. Thankfully not.
Enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks to Setter and Blogger.
You are not the only one to have wondered about that Blakey. Not a series I watched but I was aware of it. I suspect horribly politically incorrect – but then it was 1969-73.
20 minutes or so.
– Didn’t know PARR as a young swimmer but it seemed plausible
– Hadn’t heard of Art Blakey, but ARTISTRY had to be
– Spent a year living in OVIEDO as part of my degree so got that one very quickly
– Tend to associate DIASPORA more with the result of migration, rather than the act of migration itself
– Wasn’t aware that KILKENNY is a city
– Had to trust that LAVAGE is a word
– Didn’t know that Lomé is in TOGO
Thanks Dvynys and setter.
FOI Oviedo
LOI Fluent
COD Televise
At just under 18′ this was one of my much better times. I thought it was quite QC in many parts – not a feeling I often have – and expected some complaints from our quicker solvers!
ADAM BEDE came very quickly as a 4×4 novel and most of the other crossers flowed easily (REFRIGERATOR and LANCELOT) almost shouting at me.
Two NHOs in ECOFREAK and RIGADOON but easily constructed. Don’t see the need for “accidentally” in BETRAYED.
Thanks Dvynys and setter
I found this all remarkably easy apart from TELEVISE, which was my LOI after much head scratching. Also missing the NHO PARR, but though I figured that might be the answer I didn’t write it in because it would just have been guessing. Which I now don’t do on principle.
24 mins. Really liked this one as well. LOI was ECOFREAK after deciding that I didn’t need to rack my brain for a species of Dutch cake after all. COD to ADAM BEDE. Thanks blogger and setter!
I had no idea where Lome was, so TOGO was quite a late entry when the penny eventually dropped. PARR and DIASPORA were first 2 in, with ADAM BEDE a close third. The LHS went in quickly, but the RHS slowed me down. FLUENT and TELEVISE were last 2 in. RIGADOON was a sudden inspiration which also provided BROWNING. I was trying to associate 501s with Web Page errors for too long! Got there in due course. 21:08. Thanks setter and Dyvnys.
DNF. Mostly OK at around 25 mins but eventually conceded to lack of Latin in ETHICAL and over latinising by trying to force DIS = 501s into TELEVISED. I also failed to spot a single aspect of ASSASSINATED.
Obviously off wavelength because I found alot of this hard work. Thanks Dvynys and setter.
14.00 Agreed, especially on revision, this was a special puzzle, complimented by a special blog – many thanks. EL DORADO made it as my favourite, working both as an elegant &lit and as a “normal clue”. I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to try EQUITAL, the number of words starting Q?L being a decisive factor.
I wondered whether someone knew more than most about Banksy, whose pseudonym (?) was evoked somehow by “Blakey, for one”, and the busman was Cyril. ARTISRY went in anyway, as did OVIEDO which I thought might be Spanish for bullring. Of course, I tried DI and VOI within TELEVISE. Sometimes you get lucky.
Not quite a pangram, two days running: no J and no Q, once EQUITAL has been dismissed. I suggest JILT at 7d to complete.
“Complimented,” surely, but I bet you meant “complemented.”
I’m “sure” you’re right. Susie Dent was on about as recently as Monday, saying that the “e” version was actually invented to draw the subtle distinctions. Chambers is very sparing in its entry. It’s one of the spelling conundrums I dither over, and I thought it worked well enough in this case to be sufficiently blurry. I might know better next time, but I wouldn’t count on it!
12:57. Stuck at the end for a couple of minutes on ECOFREAK. DNK where Lomé was, but T_G_ made it easy to guess. Nice puzzle. Thanks Dvynys and setter.
Pleasant puzzle, solved while dogsitting daughter’s Cavalier King Charles. Now back home looking after son’s retriever. LOI TOGO guessed from crossers. I first learnt the expression from Bob Newhart’s button down mind and what he called Ledge Psychology. When the party was over as late teenagers, we’d put on a humorous record and chat until the small hours. “I wish, I wish, I wish in vain, that we could sit simply in that room again.” Thank you D and setter.
You should come and dog sit for us, one of ours is a cross between a cavalier and a (Nova Scotia duck-tolling) retriever so it would be more efficient.
Enjoyed this, didn’t find it difficult, 21 minutes, delayed slightly by (as others) trying to fit EQU into 5d before I saw the HIC part. I know KILKENNY is a pleasant city, known as the “Marble City”, although not a huge one (about 22,000 pop.). Nothing else much to talk about.
31m, not slowed much by my lack of knowledge. I always try to ask for takeaway rather than “to go” in an effort to keep the phrase alive but the American version seems ever-gaining in popularity over here.
LOI 16d; though I’d thought BROWNING from the start I hadn’t seen the simple ROWING rather than ROW and I didn’t want to put it in until I’d parsed it.
14:42
Pretty quick until the last three. Some notes:
ADAM BEDE – first thought was JANE EYRE, but confidently filled in once first two checkers in place
PARR – glad it comes up frequently in these puzzles
ARTISTRY – have heard of jazz drummer ART Blakey, but didn’t stop me thinking of those metal things that chippy oiks have attached to their heels (Yes, I was one once…), nor the character from On The Buses
EXTRAVAGANZA – always makes me think of Freddie Mercury, whose contribution to at least one Queen LP is described in the cover notes as ‘Vocal EXTRAVAGANZAs’
TRAP – the first of my L3I to fall
DIASPORA – so that’s what it means. I never knew.
TOGO – the second of my L2I to fall, only ‘cos my son and I made a conscious effort to remember as many capitals as we could not so long ago. Missed the US meaning of it, but yes, very clever.
MORRIS DANCER – no idea WM was a poet. However, his name is well known to me as the name of the school across the field behind our house where I grew up in South London
ECOFREAK – LOI – Needed to write out the letters to see it – like this a lot
ETHICAL – not being a Latinist, I couldn’t have told you what HIC means, but the answer was plain from all of the checkers
FIST – only know Duke = FIST from the slightly bizarre Pat Benatar song, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”
Thanks D and setter
Definitely on wave-length, plus it’s the morning , so completed in this in a very satisfactory 11’23”. Parents used to live near Kilkenny – Graignamanagh. Lovely part of the world. Oviedo in Asturias — another lovely land. Never been to Lomé . It gave its name to some convention governing world trade, I think. My ASS (AI Surreal Surface) image generation project continues. Yesterday we had a lovely pic of a middle-aged husband and wife chucking an old vase into a skip, plus a monster crocodile leaping skyward from a river. Might try today’s folk performer with reindeer. Many thanks.
16:10 – straightforward, though I arrived at ADAM BEDE by an improbable – and incorrect – assemblage of the cryptic, having some idea that St Bede was Divine rather than just Venerable, and that colour might be a euphemism for an expletive (DAMn). On reflection, I am not really sure that is worth sharing.
It’s the perfect thing to share so all of us who thought something can breathe and secretly think “not just me, then…”!
12:24
Lost a couple of minutes at the end on TRAP which I just couldn’t see. I enjoyed the Tarzan clue.
41 minutes. Slow progress but at least no guesses or unknowns. LOI TELEVISE took too long as I tried to fit in DIS and DOIS in instead of the jeans, as I see a few others did. OVIEDO entered courtesy of knowing it as Fernando Alonso’s home town. COD to the naughty but nice NEGLIGEE.
I liked this one – a good variety of wordplay and answers. I biffed Adam Bede at the outset, and then erased it because I couldn’t see the parsing. So parr was my FOI – that was obvious! I liked the Levis and the Spanish city, which I had only vaguely heard of. Ecofreak was my LOI, as I had supposed nutty was an anagram indicator and therefore cake must be the definition. Once I tried it the other way around, it was instantly obvious.
Time: 31:06
Found this a bit of a trawl with many answers needing a Google search to check the general knowledge was right.
Managed to get the likes of lavage, parr, messrs Browning/Morris/Blakey and the Togolese capital.
Thought of “Adam Bede”, but couldn’t parse it, and words like “rigadoon” are way outside my vocabulary.
A joy of these puzzles is learning new things and that box was ticked although too tough for me today.
I got this very enjoyable puzzle down to three clues very quickly. I just didn’t spot FLUENT, suffered from my dislike of jazz on ARTISTRY (Blakey only struck me as the inspector in “On the Buses”), and didn’t know where Lomé was – but the PDM made it a shoo-in for COD.
FOI ADAM BEDE
LOI/COD TOGO
TIME 7:12
22.24 – which I thought might be quite a good time but is not even in the top 100 at this stage in the day. I was very surprised, because I thought this was difficult.
Clues such as ETHICAL, DIASPORA, BROWNING, ADAM BEDE, OVIEDO, ARTISTRY, RIGADOON would make this completely inaccessible to many well-educated people I know who have not spent as long as I have trying to solve crosswords. I’m proud of myself for working them out! RIGADOON was remembered from the recent past.
ADAM BEDE is a complete NHO for me, and I had to construct it painstakingly from the various instructions and checkers. Since I did not study Latin for very long, ETHICAL was also difficult. Being a lawyer and a former philosophy student, Just = ETHICAL is also a MER for me.
Having said all that, I personally really enjoyed this.
11:18. Not really on the wavelength today, but I enjoyed it.
I didn’t know where Tomé was, that William Morris was a poet, or the word LAVAGE.
Lome!
Doh! I was obviously thinking of the capital of Logo 😉
On my first scan of the down clues, I managed just two, which was most discouraging. However, the acrosses yielded a mass of answers straight off, which opened up things considerably. I worried about “Lorne”as it appeared to be from the awful typeface, but in the end, the crossers made it obvious and it parsed beautifully. I thought immediately of Sandy when KARAOKE went in, though he hasn’t commented yet. A little trouble with the dance, which I know as a Rigaudon, but I quickly worked out there must be an Anglicised version thereof. In contrast to Twin, my LOI, ETHICAL, was from the other end – I had ET AL and couldn’t think for ages what to put in it. A great crossword, not overly hard, but full of interest and fun.
Yes, the blog went up too late for me to comment yet. The word is Japanese, of course (from kara empty + ōke, short for ōkesutora orchestra), but bars are usually where it is found wherever in the world, the famous Freddy’s being the site of my usual twice-a-month appearances with Humans Against Music (HAM). Most of our performers, I must add, are not so bad as those who have disturbed Ulaca’s repose.
“Rigaudon” is an orthographic variant of the now-standard RIGADOON (but rigodon in French) for the dance. Rigodon is also the name of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s last novel, which I read a few months ago.
Finished reading Adam Bede a fortnight ago.
So that helped.
Excellent puzzle. Not sure if ADAM BEDE is the second choice 4,4 novel -how about Moby Dick? Or does that have a hyphen?
TELEVISE was brilliant. They never used to make clues like that.
28:50 including a colossal amount of time on LOI ECOFREAK. Very nice crossword
A very steady solve, basically top to bottom, finishing with RIGADOON.
DUKE in this sense is very rarely (if ever, outside of crosswords) heard in the singular.
10 across could not be Jane, as his only wife called Jane predeceased him. His only widow was Catherine Parr!
34 mins Raced through most of this despite a snooze in the middle (par for the course these days, doesn’t help my averages…), until I had no idea what 501s were. And for some reason FLUENT wouldn’t come either.