Hello again. This crossword I thought was noticeably harder than average. Our Crossword Editor seems to have been bang on the mark lately, if the Snitch is anything to go by, grading the crosswords impressively carefully to get harder as the week goes on, so it will be interesting to see how tomorrow and Friday compare!
This one has some quite crunchy vocab, starting straight in with 1ac and 2dn, and then at least another half-dozen or so others, dotted about the grid. What did you think?
On edit: it’s also a pangram, as pointed out below. I will catch one, one day!
I use the standard conventions like underlining the definition, CD for cryptic definition, DD for a double one, *(anargam) and so forth. Nho = “not heard of” and in case of need the Glossary is always handy
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Large plant contained in small harbour (8) |
| SHADDOCK – HAD (contained) in S(mall) DOCK, harbour. I was handicapped here by having nho the word, Also had = contained, I found a little bit of a stretch, though it does work in eg “The book had/contained forty chapters.” I had heard of pomelos, but not this alternative name. The fruit is large apparently, the largest of all citrus fruit in fact, but I have no idea whether the plant itself is. | |
| 5 | A king intervening in quarrel? That’s a duty (6) |
| TARIFF – A R (rex, king) in TIFF, a quarrel. Duty, as in excise duty. | |
| 10 | Object lesson no longer enough (7) |
| EXAMPLE – EX AMPLE, enough, no longer | |
| 11 | Expose a French maiden, maybe outside front of castle (7) |
| UNCOVER – C(astle), in UN (a, in French) + OVER, possibly a wicket maiden.. Loving the surface reading! | |
| 12 | Nothing wrong with you no longer guarding energy plant (5) |
| OXEYE – E(nergy) in O (nothing) + X (wrong, as opposed to a tick) + YE, you no longer. A sort of daisy. | |
| 13 | Celebrate, embracing what’s best, yelling (9) |
| SCREAMING – CREAM (what’s best) in SING, celebrate | |
| 14 | “Skill needed in firm” — good criticism by the female who makes plans? (12) |
| CARTOGRAPHER – ART (skill) in CO (firm), + G(ood) + RAP (criticism) + HER, a female. | |
| 19 | Gratitude for what successful investment brings financially? (12) |
| APPRECIATION – A sort of DD I suppose, since successful investments appreciate in value. | |
| 22 | Choose to hold end of this when tucking into duck? (9) |
| CHOPSTICK – tricky! It is (thi)S in OPT (choose), then that into CHICK, which could be a duck I suppose although I would call that a duckling. The question mark makes it OK, just about. | |
| 25 | Behind, having secured goalless draw abroad (5) |
| AFOOT – OO, a goalless draw, in AFT, behind, nautically speaking. Though again, I would say AFT means at the stern, and ABAFT means behind. Yo ho ho, me hearties. | |
| 26 | Extreme characters and I articulate loveless feature of star’s position (7) |
| AZIMUTH – A and Z, the extreme characters, + I + M(o)UTH, to articulate with no O. You can define a star’s position with two angles, one from North (azimuth) and one from the horizontal (altitude). | |
| 27 | Feature of winter holidays only providing shelter for sleep (3,4) |
| SKI POLE – KIP (sleep) in SOLE, only. A feature of some winter holidays, definitely not mine. | |
| 28 | Smooth group of stars welcoming most of the spectators (6) |
| LEGATO – GAT(e) (spectators, mostly) in LEO, a constellation in the shape of a lion, allegedly. Legato, a musical term I had heard of but no idea what it meant. Smooth, presumably! | |
| 29 | Returning sailor joining group with chaps hiding in lowly accommodation? (8) |
| BASEMENT – AB (an able-bodied seaman) rev., + MEN in SET, a group. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Leading pair from Cumbria said goodbye (3,3) |
| SEE YOU – sounds like C U from Cumbria. | |
| 2 | A short notice this writer placed around wreath (6) |
| ANADEM – AN AD (short notice) + ME, our setter, rev. My second nho. | |
| 3 | Rob and Peter dead drunk (9) |
| DEPREDATE – *(PETER DEAD). Depredate, marked as “rare” by Collins, though depredation is rather more common perhaps. | |
| 4 | What involves four bishops in church with English saints (5) |
| CHESS – CH(urch) + E(nglish) SS, saints. A sneaky definition which I blush to admit took me a moment or two to twig despite a lifetime of playing the game. | |
| 6 | African city cricket club captured by a famous artist? (5) |
| ACCRA – CC, as in MCC, in A RA, Royal Academician, presumably a famous one. | |
| 7 | Complains, given this wasting time is out of order (8) |
| INVEIGHS – *(GIVEN THIS), less the T(ime) | |
| 8 | Hunters over a long period north and south of river (8) |
| FORAGERS – R(iver) in FOR AGES (over a long time). I have been known to forage, on occasion. Grab your wild garlic now folks, season is nearing its end. | |
| 9 | Absolutely unfashionable? Correct! (8) |
| OUTRIGHT – OUT (unfashionable) + RIGHT (correct!) | |
| 15 | Drunk, keeping out of control mostly in declining years (8) |
| TWILIGHT – WIL(d), out of control mostly, in TIGHT, drunk. | |
| 16 | Bring fragrance to some tiara with new configuration (9) |
| AROMATISE – *(SOME TIARA). I expect we’ve all aromatised at one time or another, haven’t we? | |
| 17 | Shrill sound outside hospital able to deal with every situation (5-3) |
| CATCH-ALL – H(ospital) in CATCALL, a shrill sound. | |
| 18 | Against work, projecting a false image? (8) |
| OPPOSING – OP, work, + POSING, a false image. | |
| 20 | Merry function welcomed by American bloke (6) |
| JOCOSE – COS(ine), a function, in JOE, a typical American bloke. GI Joe, for example. | |
| 21 | An ordeal restricting driver, ultimately not moving (2,4) |
| AT REST – (drive)R, in A TEST (an ordeal) | |
| 23 | Building illegally occupied most of courtyard in street (5) |
| SQUAT – QUA(d), courtyard, mostly, in ST(reet). | |
| 24 | Central feature of breakfast when hot — answer? (5) |
| KASHA – (brea)K(fast) + AS (when) + H(ot) + A(nswer). A sort of buckwheat porridge apparently, nho by me. Doesn’t sound yummy. | |
Yes, some obscure vocabulary, but this didn’t seem to faze the early solvers. Anadem was the only word I didn’t know, but if there’s a diadem there’s likely to be an anadem, and maybe a katadem as well! I did know shaddock is a word – what it is I couldn’t tell you, but the cryptic does point to it.
Time: 31:15
Yes I found this hard too and wasn’t able to finish despite managing to solve a couple of NHOs before resorting to aids for others.
The answers that did for me were ANADEM (NHO), OXEYE (knew it, but the WP was too complicated to suggest the word to me) and AZIMUTH. The ones I navigated successfully were KASHA, DEPRADATED and SHADDOCK which was more of a biff as I knew the word but was unable to account for HAD.
My favourite clue was CATCH-ALL.
17:51 – I was surprised to see the SNITCH down at 85. KASHA was a complete NHO and went in on wordplay alone. ANADEM I was more confident of due to knowing ‘diadem’, though I wouldn’t venture to guess the exact relation between the prefixes. SHADDOCK was another NHO but I thought dock leaves and ‘harbour’ = ‘dock’ had to be enough evidence. CHOPSTICK and OUTRIGHT were the big holdups for me — I need to get over the cognitive bias of assuming half-filled answers like ‘-U-RIGHT’ are likely to start with consonants.
Same NHOs as others, though did remember SHADDOCK as a word from its last appearance as a small fish, I think? Not overly held up anywhere, so reasonably fast even with the tricky vocab. Liked Chopstick, Legato and Cartographer mostly.
I’m familiar with kasha, mainly from the Jewish dish kasha varnishkes, and I figured out the wordplay pretty quickly, but it struck me as such an unlikely answer that I left it pencilled in until I confirmed the checked letters. Got quite held up by Oxeye and Chopstick, but really liked the chopstick clue once I worked it out.
Do you find pangrams such as this sometimes delve into the nether regions of the dictionary to make it work?
Agree with this. Forget the pangram. You only have to do the Codeword regularly to see how it affects the breadth of language available.
All bar the wreath in 40 minutes. Had the -em, but couldn’t piece the rest together.
“Extreme characters and I articulate loveless feature of star’s position” must be a contender for Meaningless surface of the year?
Perhaps you can work it into your next novel, Sawbill!?
‘Mike’ Kingdom loves a challenge but that might defeat even her. Maybe I could ask Jan the Dutchman?
At Our very oddball Film Society we discussed the cold, mechanical reality of celebrity worship.
Extreme characters and I articulate loveless feature of star’s position
Nice! This is Sawbill’s latest offering, in case anyone is wondering:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dutchman-Mike-Kingdom-Thrillers-Book-ebook/dp/B0G8KJ2W9S
Thanks, Jerry.
21:20 which puts this in the average difficulty category for me. Although AZIMUTH went in with a shrug.
A few other obscurities but I felt comfortable with the wordplay.
The NW was mostly blank when the rest was completed and it was a bit of a grind getting it over the line. One plant is one too many for me, but once I spotted what the ‘contained’ was doing SHADDOCK fell and that unlocked the rest of that corner.
Enjoyed a lot of the clues in this. It also felt more challlenging than my time reflects. A bit of a meh at the CD of CHOPSTICK until the blog corrected me. Two thumbs up for this one. Although agree with previous commenter about the surface for AZIMUTH but it must be a stinker of a word to clue. It looks like from the checking letters they were gridlocked into using it.
Thanks blogger and setter.
DNF, failed on LEGATO at about 45 having already been exhausted by all the other weird words mentioned above. Thanks Jerry, this was mostly enjoyable but some of the obscurities pushed the outside of the envelope.
From Subterranean Homesick Blues:
Johnny’s in the BASEMENT, mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement, thinking ’bout the government
The man in the trench coat, badge out, laid off
Says he’s got a bad cough wants to get it paid off
Look out kid…
Very tough but got it done. LOI JOCOSE aided by a missing J for a pangram.
NW corner very hard. I was stuck on CUE for 1 d, with the NHO SHADDOCK and ANADEM.
CARTOGRAPHER needed all the checkers. I had OUT at the wrong end of the OUTRIGHT clue (something like STANDOUT) which led to a -FATHER or MOTHER ending.
COD SEE YOU
35 minutes. I managed to retrieve SHADDOCK and my LOI ANADEM from somewhere but KASHA was an NHO which went in only semi-confidently from wordplay. Once I’d worked out the parsing, CHOPSTICK was my favourite and (I’m easily pleased) it was good to have the pangram.
14:05, with over 6 minutes completely stuck at the end on 3 clues. I should have spotted the cunning but really rather obviously definition for CHESS much more quickly: once I had the unknown SHADDOCK (where ‘contained’ is unkindly loose) and vaguely-known ANADEM fell quickly. NHO KASHA but the instructions were clear enough.
I would call 19ac just a common-or-garden DD. The second one is a bit convoluted but it’s a straight (i.e. non-cryptic) definition of a dictionary-defined term.
DNF, defeated by the unknown SHADDOCK and ANADEM – I bunged in a desperate SIDEDOCK (‘small harbour’?!) and DIADEM respectively.
– Didn’t know AFOOT in the ‘abroad’ sense
– Was helped with AZIMUTH by the fact that I’m currently doing a translation where it comes up a lot
– Had to trust the wordplay for the unknown KASHA
Thanks Jerry and setter.
COD Catch-all
Exactly me!
18.27, so tricky for me. As happens, not seeing 1ac until very late on slowed the whole puzzle, though I knew the word if not its meaning – fish or bird, perhaps? By the time I got there, I had all the other bits of the alphabet somewhere, so that didn’t help.
I did know KASHA, though wouldn’t have called it breakfast in the version I’ve eaten.
ANADEM, my last in, is what I’d call a semi-known: I’d risk it on Countdown but wait for Susie for enlightenment. I might otherwise have taken it for a headache.
24:50, but WOE. Really tough. Four complete NHO answers, and I got 3 right.
ANADEM did for me. I went for ASADEM (a s(hort) ad). I actually find that clue a bit unfair, because an AD is not necessarily a short notice. I think the word short is unnecessary, and therefore unfairly misleading. It made the clue a very obscure GK test.
Also NHO: SHADDOCK, KASHA and INVEIGHS.
Generally enjoyed, but I’m a bit disgruntled at what I think is an unfair clue giving me an uncrossed DPS.
Not unfair: an advertisement is a notice (Collins: “advertisement: any public notice”) and AD is (necessarily!) a shortening of it.
I’m afraid I’m not persuaded. AD=notice, without requiring the short. AD is so common as to be its own word, and does not need the instruction to shorten. If ANADEM were a more common word, or the letter was checked, I would be happy enough.
The fact that it’s not required (and I agree that it isn’t) doesn’t necessarily make it invalid. The word ‘large’ isn’t required in 1ac, for instance, but the SHADDOCK is (I’m taking this on trust) a large plant and ‘ad’ is undoubtedly an abbreviation of ‘advertisement’. This sort of thing is a common part of the setter’s armoury.
The thing that I found tricky with this clue was spotting that ‘a’ was indicating AN. To me that’s much more sneaky!
I’m not saying that ANADEM is wrongly clued or invalid, I’m saying there are two equally valid options, and the inclusion of ‘short’ where not strictly necessary points one towards ASADEM. If you don’t know the actual word, it becomes very difficult to choose. That is what I’m calling unfair. I don’t say the actual clue is wrong, I’m just upset not to be given a more than 50% chance of getting the answer right.
In other words, I’m whining because I got it wrong! But I stand by the minor criticism.
I also wasn’t mad about describing the pomelo/shaddock as a ‘large plant’. It’s a tree, or perhaps a very large shrub. When it’s already a fairly unusual botanical word, AND you’ve got ‘contained’ for ‘had’, I’d argue that throwing in this rather misleading description as well is Clue Overkill.
But hey, I’m only pissed because I didn’t get it.
Oh I see, sorry I misunderstood your point. I don’t think S is a recognised abbreviation for ‘short’ in the Times crossword, but it is in the American Collins so there is a case to be made!
Another who failed on the NHOs SHADDOCK & ANADEM. Bah humbug.
I have highlighted no less than eleven inclusion words! Not my type of gig this.
Thanks Jerry.
Definitely tricky, with a few NHO words. I had to search A*A*E* to find ANADEM and take a guess at KASHA from the wordplay. SHADDOCK was OK once I saw the DOCK part, although I too thought it was a fish. No idea how CHOPSTICK worked, but got there in the end in 22 minutes with one wordsearch as mentioned. I liked SEE YOU once the coin dropped, and CHESS.
35:28 Clever but not my type of puzzle. I find that obscure words are often the price one pays for pangrams Needed a dictionary to confirm the exsistence of KASHA and ANADEM.
I liked UNCOVER and SEE YOU.
Thanks to Jerry and the setter.
33 mins with 12(!) of those on L2I the NHO pairing of SHADDOCK / ANADEM and fully expecting 2 pinks. Otherwise I thought this was considerably easier than yesterday, NHO KASHA or INVEIGHS but both were clued kindly.
Not a fan of so much Mephistoism and even less of breeze-blockers. I don’t mind the occasional easy or a proper Friday tester but quick, quick, slow breaks my will to bother finishing. I know that’s my problem, not the setters, just a matter of taste.
CODs to AZIMUTH and CHESS.
Thanks to Jerry and setter.
Btw our wild garlic has all gone over now but we enjoyed many meals with it as a spring pesto.
Like many, beaten by the NHOs SHADDOCK AND ANADEM. Would likely have got OXEYE if I’d had the crossers from those two. The rest I found fair, though I could only half-parse CHOPSTICK.
I don’t mind unknown words provided the clueing isn’t also obtuse/tricky. ‘Contained’ = ‘had’ was a stretch too far IMHO.
My thanks to JerryW and setter.
Quite a lot of this was easy and quite a lot wasn’t. Several NHOs and a few tricks that got me more often than not. Completed only with help from Cheating Machine.
1a Shaddock. This NHO tree is according to Wiki 5–15 metres (16–50 feet) tall. So I say 50ft is “pretty large” as trees go. VHO pomelo I think.
19a Appreciation. I biffed compensation which doesn’t mean gratitude, and this held me up in the SW.
28a NHO Legato in this sense, although I used to have a piece of s/w made by this company in my portfolio. I really should have learned it then, and now I’m retired I need to eat a musical dictionary.
2d NHO Anadem. Looked up to check.
24d NHO Kasha, again checked.
Having thought that I’d largely cured my typo problem, I managed to screw up both the Concise and this one today. NHO KASHA, and tried to justify “poohstick” at 22A, before getting out of sequence while entering TWILIGHT and earning a trio of pinks. I’m more than a little disappointed, since my time of 7:23 would have put me well in on the SNITCH.
COD DEPREDATE
34:32 but…
…used aids to confirm last two in, neither of which I was aware – SHADDOCK (where I assumed DOCK from the checkers) and ANADEM (assumed AD and ME were both in there somehow). Not heard of DEPREDATE either, but with the last four checkers in, it seemed the most sensible arrangement of the available letters. I raised an eyebrow at CHICK for duck, though I liked AZIMUTH, JOCOSE and CHESS.
Thanks Jerry and setter
From CHESS to ANADEM in 28:16. Some easy some very tough! Liked SEE YOU and CHOPSTICK. Didn’t know KASHA, SHADDOCK or ANADEM. Thanks setter and Jerry.
Lots of NHO, or at any rate only vaguely HO, words here like SKI POLE which I only got from the wordplay. I didn’t like duck? for chick but don’t have a leg to stand on since both Chambers and Collins say that a chick is the young of a fowl. Didn’t like DEPREDATE as a word,
31 – with so many unknowns – at least half a dozen – I was amazed to find all correct. ANADEM was LOI and a guess based on the template of diadem. Others needed all the crossers to hazard a guess at the likely answer.
DNF in 30
Got as far as S___DOCK and __ADEM but couldn’t quite get over the finishing line.
Thanks Jerry and setter.
Finished in 48.45 with all correct and parsed, but I looked in trepidation at the blog expecting I’d got something wrong with both SHADDOCK and ANADEM, which needless to say were NHOs. As usual failed to spot the pangram which may of been of use with my LOI JOCOSE, but I fortunately managed to think of JOE without that help.
A tough challenge today checking en route that “azimuth”, “depredate”, “jocose”, “kasha” and “shaddock” all actually existed and that “afoot” is synonymous with abroad.
Didn’t understand “chopstick” fully and this then just left “legato”, which I do know, and “anadem” which I definitely don’t.
Some new things learnt today which is always welcome.
Thanks to our blogger and setter.