| 1 |
Style of rap starts to generate almost overwhelming dread (7) |
|
GANGSTA – G[enerate] ANGST A[lmost]. A style not much favored by our senior blogger. |
| 2 |
Chaps in team, number climbing on Scottish island above loch lacking depth (3-11) |
|
ONE-DIMENSIONAL – MEN inside SIDE + NO upside down + IONA + L. This has got to be the most convoluted cryptic ever, at least in a daily puzzle. |
| 3 |
King and leader of armada chat in boat (5) |
|
KAYAK – K + A[rmade] + YAK. A rather small boat for such an important conference. |
| 4 |
Propose an item broadcast after drama (8) |
|
NOMINATE – NO + anagram of AN ITEM. |
| 5 |
Long stretch of trip in Europe (4) |
|
PINE – Hidden in [tri]P IN E[urope]. |
| 6 |
Destroy order, losing time after time (9) |
|
ERADICATE – ERA + DIC[t]ATE. |
| 7 |
Impure hero, sort mistakenly made head of religious community (6,8) |
|
MOTHER SUPERIOR – Anagram of IMPURE HERO, SORT. |
| 8 |
Cross in past hour, upset, then relieved (6) |
|
HYBRID – BY H upside-down, then RID. |
| 14 |
Dreadful in operation, ignoring first in command (9) |
|
DIRECTIVE – DIRE + [a]CTIVE. |
| 16 |
Area guarded by soldier perhaps on border, a thing that’s abhorred (8) |
|
ANATHEMA – AN(A)T + HEM + A. |
| 17 |
Reject racket broken by seed (6) |
|
DISOWN – DI(SOW)N. |
| 19 |
Dean set to work in part of London (4,3) |
|
EAST END – Anagram of DEAN SET. |
| 22 |
Bird that’s black and yellow, not caught (5) |
|
RAVEN – [c]RAVEN. |
| 23 |
Mere share (4) |
|
POOL – Double definition – mere as a noun, share as a verb. |
Thanks, vinyl. I think 21a is lead = STAR + an anagram (rest)* = TERS
Well, I told you I biffed everything! That includes the blog.
Thanks for the correction.
22:34 for me, but with a break in the middle to peel some apples for an apple pie, so actual solving time was less by maybe 5 minutes. So very Mondayish (and lots of biffing for me too). I couldn’t see at a glance how HYBRID worked but with checkers and “cross” it was always going to be the answer. My LOI was INSECURE, but only (I think) because I never looked at the clue until I was almost done.
Enjoyed this and didn’t mind figuring out the IKEA clues, but don’t get No=Drama in NOMINATE.
Japanese Noh drama, also spelt No.
Thank you.
Just over 20 with a couple of interruptions, so mostly quite easy but some held me up for a while. Like others I found biffs aplenty but was delayed by trying to make an anagram of ‘lead rest’ and having to do a tedious alphabet trawl before POOL appeared. I’m not fully convinced by the HYPBRID cryptic but what the heck. Thanks V.
From Love Minus Zero/No Limit:
The bridge at midnight trembles, the country doctor rambles
Bankers’ nieces seek perfection
Expecting all the gifts that wise men bring
The wind howls like a hammer, the night blows cold and rainy
My love she’s like some RAVEN
At my window with a broken wing
There is a great version by Joan Baez:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnPlCdMl_D8&list=RDMnPlCdMl_D8&start_radio=1
Nobody sings early Bob like Joan.
15:59
What Starstruck said. (I started with (leadrest)* but soon gave that up.) I biffed a bunch, parsing post-submission, except for ONE-DIMENSIONAL where I didn’t bother.
26 minutes. A pleasant confidence-builder to start the week with new hope. I didn’t know TICK as an arachnid but that was the only unknown today.
10’59”, pleasant solve. With crossers, biffed GLOCKENSPIEL, WELL-MANNERED, MOTHER SUPERIOR.
A good Monday, thanks vinyl and setter.
29 mins finishing with the convoluted WELL-MANNERED, not helped by having bunged in DIRECTION at 14d.
Can’t say I particularly enjoyed this one. No unknowns but a lot of tricksy wp.
Ta V and setter.
I biffed STARTERS. STICKING was on even shakier foundations. Otherwise, a steady solve. COD to DISOWN.
7:30. Lots of biffing today, including a careless DIRECTION, which held me up a bit at the end.
11:07. Held up for an extra minute+ at the end by LOI HYBRID, taking too long to discard the idea that the answer had an X in it having earlier tried and failed to get RELAXED to work. Thanks Vinyl and setter.
22:22 one of my fastest times.
Wasted time on the non-anagram “lead rest” which looked like very hopeful letters.
Got ONE DIMENSIONAL from bottom up seeing IONA+L and biffing from there.
So a tick has eight legs ? And there are some arachnids that aren’t spiders. New to me. As for Noh (apposite anagram of NHO) it even has a variant spelling ? Sheesh, fortunately not really needed, but glad I didn’t try to parse that one.
LOI WEARISOME.
COD HYBRID, that “cross” was well-hidden
Scorpions and mites are also arachnids.
We had Tardigrade as an answer last week. I just found out they have 8 legs but are not arachnids.
I’m familiar with tardigrades, aka water bears, from watching Octonauts when my kids were little. I also learned about siphonophores and the humuhumunukunukuapua’a!
“My friends call me….
…THE CLAW!”
I think I enjoyed Octonauts more than my kids. Sadly they often gravitated to much more irritating fare: the quite lengthy Lazy Town phase was a painful time.
I was undone by DIRECTIVE where I had DIRECTING. Same parse but that ‘in’ as a link word at the end does also produce ‘in command’ as a possible definition which would support the latter solution. Which left me with a very odd combo for what turned out to be WELL MANNERED. As I now had ‘in command’ firmly in mind, the correct solution eluded me for some time contributing to a 16 minute time that should have been quicker.
Thanks to setter and blogger
12 minutes or so.
– Didn’t know that a tick is an arachnid in STICKING
– Count me among those who thought 21a would be an anagram of ‘lead rest’ before getting STARTERS
– Tend to think of a mere as bigger than a POOL, but clearly there’s enough overlap
Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Gangsta
LOI Desert
COD Mother Superior
15:40. LOI STARTERS where I too spent ages playing with those 8 letters.
Thought of MOTHER SUPERIOR from just _O_H before reading the clue.
COD ONE DIMENSIONAL.
Thanks to vinyl and setter.
My thanks to vinyl1 and setter.
Pretty easy except for the 2 I could not see. Bother!
8d Hybrid biffed. I assumed Hr=hour so didn’t know where the id came from. Doh!
14d DirectiVE, as Rosédeprovence and others I had Direction which knackered Well Mannered. Doh.
23d Pool, could not see it and gave up.
Gutted 13:46 which would have been a podium time but a misreading of the clue and anagram fodder meant I entered STARLETS. Annoyingly it wasn’t to be corrected by the checking letters.
COD GANGSTA I concur with the surface reading.
Thanks blogger and setter.
14.48. I guess I bucked the trend, checking how the wordplay worked almost every time and stumbling round CYPHER (didn’t convert ON to RE) and WELL-, because, of the three possible endings for DIRECTI??, the wrong two dominated. POOL ended up being last in because the many variants on both mere and share necessitated both crossers. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
Congrats to everyone (including Vinyl, with thanks) who managed star times by treating this as more or less a concise.
20:52, which is poor for me on this easy puzzle (cf 22 mins on Friday!).
I completed the top half, except 7d and 8d, in 3 mins. The bottom half was slower, but partly because I had misspelled dimenTional, which made the very easy DESERT into an impossible clue. I also had DIRECTION instead of DIRECTIVE, which works pretty much equally well, but made WELL-MANNERED impossible until I saw the error.
These speed bumps aside, the real problem was HYBRID. I stared at that for more than 5 minutes, couldn’t make head or tail of it, until finally the PDd. Very frustrating, when I was on for a clear record time at an early stage.
A great Monday puzzle.
I got all but 6 answers in around 15 mins but was completely stumped by the last few, all in the SW corner. Toying with the wrong answers ‘direction’ and ‘mild mannered’ didn’t help!
11.47
Liked INSECURE and STARTERS.
Thanks Vinyl and setter.
Lots of biffing from people. I suppose it can help you to be a bit quicker but really what’s the point? Which suggests that I could be quick if I biffed, far from the case! If I’d biffed 2dn I’d have had two-DIMENSIONAL but spent ages unsuccessfully trying to make it work. Was defeated by the fact that mere was a noun in 23dn and used an aid for that.
I mean, I think you’d be right: if something is lacking only depth, that leaves two dimensions. Only a straight line is one-dimensional, surely?
The word has a figurative meaning as well as the more literal mathematical one: ‘having a single focus; narrow and superficial’ (Collins), ‘lacking depth; superficial’ (ODE).
15:40 – more biffing and less parsing than the clues normally get – at least until I hit LOI POOL, which took up far more time than it deserved.
32 minutes which is one of my fastest.
Got held up a bit in SW corner but once I understood 14d it all dropped into place. Didn’t get the reference to Japanese drama though.
Thanks Vinyl and setter.