39:29, reflecting a very slow finish to what was otherwise a fairly normal difficulty, and truly excellent, puzzle. I was rather stuck in the upper-right corner, thanks to some particularly devious wordplay.
| Across | |
| 1 | Alternative locks king removed from hot dwelling (6) |
| WIGWAM – WIG (alternative locks) + WA{r}M | |
| 5 | Abundant crop, if spreading, smothers large island (8) |
| PROLIFIC – anagram of CROP IF around L + I | |
| 9 | Left route before wrong turning in Welsh town (8) |
| LLANELLI – L + LANE + ILL reversed | |
| 10 | Pickled eggs from the east a big hit (6) |
| STINKO – NITS reversed + K.O.
I wanted this to be LIT + OVA reversed for a long time. |
|
| 11 | Abandons currently popular ball at court (4,4) |
| DROP SHOT – DROPS + HOT | |
| 12 | Traitor briefly in charge of religion (6) |
| JUDAIC – JUDA{s} + I.C. | |
| 13 | Advertise target when putting in plumbing feature (8) |
| PLUGHOLE – PLUG + HOLE (target when putting)
Delightfully tricky. |
|
| 15 | What’s added to the pot, brewing tea around noon (4) |
| ANTE – anagram of TEA around N | |
| 17 | Last bit of craft in work, going back and forth (4) |
| POOP – OP reversed + OP | |
| 19 | Excess from Oscar on daily[,] bar tours (8) |
| LEFTOVER – F.T. (daily) + O in LEVER (bar) | |
| 20 | Petrify East German finally at the borders (6) |
| OSSIFY – OSSI (East German) + F{inall}Y | |
| 21 | Sort of lining used to be covering in bed (8) |
| WAINSCOT – WAS around IN + COT | |
| 22 | Stand experience of drug overdose (6) |
| TRIPOD – TRIP (experience of drug) + OD | |
| 23 | Dieter ultimately has trouble with eccentric means to reduce fare? (8) |
| RAILCARD – {diete}R + AIL + CARD (eccentric) | |
| 24 | Numerous staff getting on with uncertainty first (8) |
| MANIFOLD – MAN + OLD after IF (uncertainty) | |
| 25 | Official old men backing one out on the tiles? (6) |
| ROOFER – REF + O + O.R. (men) reversed | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Flipping insubstantial parts I’m going to name Olivia or Orsino? (8) |
| ILLYRIAN – AIRY (insubstantial) reversed in I’LL (I’m going to) + N
I parsed this correctly, but couldn’t think of AIRY, which is a wonderful synonym of ‘insubstantial’. |
|
| 3 | Air carrier‘s current, seemingly good plane’s outside (8) |
| WINDPIPE – WIND (current) + PI (seemingly good) + P{lan}E | |
| 4 | Tom, say, fencing off grand and small grain store (9) |
| MALTHOUSE – MALE (Tom, say) around THOU (grand) + S
Kicked myself on THOU for ‘grand’ after missing it for ages. Wanted MILLHOUSE here. |
|
| 5 | Have to block that inept reformed Communist Party (5,3,4,3) |
| PAINT THE TOWN RED – OWN (have) in THAT INEPT anagrammed + RED (Communist)
‘Party’ as a verb. Would be an even better clue if the enumeration didn’t make the answer so biffable. |
|
| 6 | Leaves uniform during service etc at sea (7) |
| LETTUCE – U in LET (service) + anagram of ETC
A let is a serve (service) in tennis where the ball hits the net and goes over. |
|
| 7 | Spanish Steps also taken in by lover on journey (8) |
| FANDANGO – AND (also) in FAN (lover) + GO (journey, as a verb) | |
| 8 | What meat cleaver might do / quickly? (4,4) |
| CHOP CHOP – double definition | |
| 14 | Chemist has nothing in cracked vials? That is right (9) |
| LAVOISIER – O in anagram of VIALS + I.E. (that is) + R | |
| 15 | A slogan about limiting consumption, basically (2,6) |
| AT BOTTOM – A + MOTTO reversed around TB (tuberculosis = consumption)
I saw immediately that ‘slogan’ = MOTTO, but discounted it immediately because I thought I couldn’t make words out of it! |
|
| 16 | Player succeeded in that specific instrument, mostly (8) |
| THESPIAN – S in THE PIAN{o} | |
| 17 | One wine or another drunk by computer company (8) |
| PROSECCO – ROSÉ in P.C. + CO. | |
| 18 | After one female goes[,] astray, it’s as expected (2,6) |
| OF COURSE – OFF COURSE, after one F is removed | |
| 19 | Cliff externally eroded with swell rising (4-3) |
| LIFT-OFF – {c}LIF{f} + TOFF | |
DNF having fallen down the same rabbit holes as others with flamenco and a fixation that 10ac (STINKO) ended in AVO.
Promising start with PROLIFIC & LLANELLI.
I too did Twelfth Night for O level, and once the name Malvolio had crossed my mind, it took a while to go back to basics.
My father’s job with the MOD moved from England to South Wales in 1972. Prospective work colleagues took him out for lunch. The talk in the pub was of an important rugby match that week. My father made a comment along the lines of ‘why on earth are the All Blacks coming to play Llanelli? ‘ . The result is legendary amongst Welsh rugby fans . Not quite sure how my father lived it down.
So sorry to hear of the death of one of the regular contributors.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
To start with, I was almost unable to get anything. I was casting around desperately till I found ANTE and then CHOP CHOP which gave me POOP. At this point I confidently asserted I would be unable to finish this one. However, bit by bit they trickled in, as I began to tune in to the setter. To my surprise, I found I’d completed NW and SE corners with sizeable gaps in the others. The NHO chemist was an exercise in probability, confirmed by the crossers. Liked PAINT THE TOWN RED a lot for its neat clueing and having an L second in 9A convinced me it also began with one. All parsed correctly except 13A, where I correctly deduced that a hole could be a target in golf, but failed to see that I was being handed it on a plate with ‘putting’. Doh! LOI THESPIAN, which annoyed me a lot, since we had THESP very recently and I was thinking of every kind of player except the theatrical kind.
Really sad to hear confirmed that Horryd has passed away. A great loss to this site. If anyone comes across any sort of obituary, I do hope they will post it here, or a link to it. I would love to have met him.
25:34, 1 error. A struggle but an entertaining one, as we always like on a Friday. Sadly, I was undone by STINKO, being another who put in STINGO, which – now I check it – is a strong bottled beer brewed by Sam Smith’s. This is doubtless why my brain made the connection, having been STINKO on STINGO at some point in the past.
Failed with my last two, STONKO and ILLDRAWN (I was never going to guess ILLYRIAN). But, for me, that’s not bad for a Friday.
Sad news about Horryd; seems quite sudden.
Sorry to hear the news about Horryd – very sad.
Nice Friday challenge! Couldn’t finish in the first session, last night.
53 minutes. It was easy at first and suddenly it wasn’t. But the harder clues were enjoyably hard, and the answers came with a satisfying click.
Struggled a bit, but finished in just under 60 minutes. Surprised by others who also seemed to struggle but quoted completion times of under 25 minutes. When I finish in <25 minutes, I feel I’ve done really well. Must get quicker.
Nice Friday job!
Sadly joining in the lamentations for Horryd and hope that someone has a route to pass on our thoughts to his family and so on?
16:39
I think my time would have been much longer if I hadn’t finally kicked my habit of having to stubbornly start in the NW corner every day. So after staring in disbelief at 1Ac and 2Dn for a couple of minutes I dropped my gaze to 15Ac ANTE and was away, quickly filling in the SW. As I felt more confident, the right half fell quickly, and when I returned to 2Dn ILLYRIAN suggested itself from Olivia and Orsino, parsed afterwards. I’m another who fell for associating Tom with “MOUSE” for far too long!
My last entry was 1Ac WIGWAM, which wasn’t half as difficult as my first glance had suggested. All goes to show, in my own case anyway, that psychology plays a big part in my solving speed. If I allow my brain to think “Oh gosh, this looks hard”, I’ll invariably trick myself into overthinking what are actually straightforward clues. So the trick is to convince myself early on that the crossword holds no fears. Of course, a couple of early fill-ins does help the process.
Since someone mentioned yesterday Verlaine would be on the US TV show Jeopardy I remembered to tune in last night and recognized him from his voice from his puzzle solves online. Anyways he won easily (around 45000 dollars I think) and will be back on tonight.
I’ve already seen tonight’s show! Matthew posted a YouTube video on Facebook.
Spoiler alert: He will be on the show again on Monday.
What a superb puzzle this was! After an hour I was still missing two entries (ILLYRIAN, eventually solved from wordplay, and JUDAIC after an alphabet trawl from ?U?AIC), but they came in 6 minutes after again sitting down to the puzzle. Hardly any straightforward clues, they all needed careful reading and staying alert. I loved the consumption = TB in AT BOTTOM (I was expecting it but couldn’t see right away where it might go), the “target when putting” in PLUGHOLE and the LETTUCE leaves, among many other things.
Completed it after an epic struggle, but had ‘Illgrown’ and ‘Millhouse’ at 2d and 4d.
Some great clues: AT BOTTOM and DROP SHOT, but a very unfriendly grid!
I remain a silver whose limit seems to be at the 115-120 SNITCH level.
All already said: very sad about Horryd.