16:45. After several tricky Fridays in a row, I finally got a breather. Athough there were still some unknowns here and wordplay was important to follow carefully, I imagine my time will be among the slower for the solvers here.
| Across | |
| 1 | Fund-raiser boarding vehicle, one alongside a restaurant (9) |
| CAFETERIA – FETE (fund-raiser) in CAR (vehicle) + I (one) + A | |
| 6 | Plant found by neat border (5) |
| OXLIP – OX (neat) + LIP (border) | |
| 9 | Scottish fine Liberal for affray (5) |
| BRAWL – BRAW (fine, splendid in Scottish) + L (liberal)
Had to semi-biff this one at the end. Certainly didn’t know BRAW and wasn’t sure of the definition of ‘affray’ but decided it had to be similar to ‘fray’. Guessed BRAWL and looked up BRAW to be sure. |
|
| 10 | Drug agent sends out missing tablet — egotist on reflection? (9) |
| NARCISSUS – NARC (drug agent) + ISSUES (sends out) – E (tablet)
A reference here to Narcissus falling in love with his reflection in a pool of water. |
|
| 11 | City set down nestles within volcanic hill (7) |
| COLOGNE – LOG (set down) in CONE (volcanic hill)
Another semi-biff. LOG was easy enough, CONE was not. |
|
| 12 | Climbing orchid poorly placed in front area (7) |
| VANILLA – ILL (poorly) in VAN (front) + A (area)
Did not know vanilla was an orchid, but I got this one from the wordplay. |
|
| 13 | America — scratch its skin to find this underworld activity? (9,5) |
| ORGANISED CRIME – {a}MERIC{a}
The reference to America made me hesitate over whether this should be spelled ORGANIZED. |
|
| 17 | Poles touring States after servant in base makes bloomer (5-4,5) |
| BLACK-EYED SUSAN – S,N (poles) around USA (States) after LACKEY (servant) in BED (base)
Got this readily from the wordplay. |
|
| 21 | Dinosaur disregarding rodent and duck shows muscle (7) |
| TRICEPS – TRICERATOPS (dinosaur) – RAT (rodent) – O (duck) | |
| 23 | Record one’s lines for occasion (7) |
| EPISODE – EP (record) + I’S (one’s) + ODE (lines) | |
| 25 | Señora Perón to chatter idly about nothing and vanish (9) |
| EVAPORATE – EVA (señora Perón) + PRATE (chatter idly) around O (nothing) | |
| 26 | Bodega finally provided source for tequila (5) |
| AGAVE – last letter of BODEGA + GAVE (provided) | |
| 27 | Compare / lighter alternative (5) |
| MATCH – double definition | |
| 28 | Fanatic to survive bracing term at sea (9) |
| EXTREMIST – EXIST (survive) around anagram of TERM | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Parisian pig swallowing a black stone (8) |
| CABOCHON – COCHON (pig, in French) around A + B (black)
This was my last in, and basically a lucky guess. I thought I’d seen COCHON on some menus, but I think I was thinking of a COCOTTE. In any case, the crossers and wordplay gave CAB _ C _ O _ . The ending -CHON seemed obvious (I now see I might have been thinking of CAPUCHON, which is a hat), which left CACHON or COCHON as the only reasonable possibilities for ‘pig’. The former sounded more like a cartridge or something, while the latter seemed like an animal. My dictionary informs me that CACHON is not a word, though CACHOT is — it’s basically a synonym for ‘oubliette’ or ‘dungeon’. Funny how one can have instincts about languages one doesn’t really speak. |
|
| 2 | Easily tempted following deceptive sort back (5) |
| FRAIL – F (following) + LIAR (deceptive sort) reversed
I don’t typically think of FRAIL in the sense of ‘weak-willed’, but it made sense. |
|
| 3 | Projecting well out of the box? (9) |
| TELEGENIC – cryptic definition | |
| 4 | Eleven run Plantagenet stronghold (7) |
| RANGERS – R (run) + ANGERS (Plantagenet stronghold)
I don’t know my European history, clearly, but apparently the city of Angers was the stronghold of the Plantagenet dynasty for many years. ‘Eleven’ gave me the reference to football, and I’d vaguely heard of RANGERS. |
|
| 5 | Initially able, drunken driver completed the course (7) |
| ARRIVED – first letter of ABLE + anagram of DRIVER | |
| 6 | One between legs — potential cause of tears? (5) |
| ONION – I (one) between ON ON (legs, in cricket) | |
| 7 | Bomb-makers here chopped sausage found in lavatories (3,6) |
| LOS ALAMOS – SALAMI (sausage) with the last letter removed (chopped) in LOOS (lavatories)
Very cute clue, but I biffed it. |
|
| 8 | Short film with old man, mathematician Blaise (6) |
| PASCAL – SCALE (film) with the last letter removed (short) next to PA (old man)
Again biffed. Chambers has that ‘scale’ is a film, as on iron being heated for forging. |
|
| 14 | Cheerfully roam, dashing to trap one skein of geese? (9) |
| GALLIVANT – GALLANT (dashing) around I (one) + V (skein of geese?)
Referring to the V formation of geese in flight. |
|
| 15 | Retire to the country, on about Tacitus being corrupt (9) |
| RUSTICATE – RE (on) around anagram of TACITUS | |
| 16 | Skin, with current, always the first to go blue (8) |
| INDECENT – RIND (skin) + RECENT (current) with the first letters removed | |
| 18 | Owner of Trollope’s diamonds cut with ease perhaps? (7) |
| EUSTACE – anagram of CUT + EASE
If I’d known Anthony Trollope’s book, The Eustace Diamonds, that might have helped! However, I was familiar with the name Eustace from the Chronicles of Narnia, which we just read as a family. |
|
| 19 | Mountain woman in the first place needs sleep (7) |
| EVEREST – EVE (woman in the first place) + REST (sleep) | |
| 20 | Burn recusant’s head in scalding vapour (6) |
| STREAM – first letter of RECUSANT in STEAM (scalding vapour)
Chiefly Scottish, but I’d heard it before. |
|
| 22 | Time to manage rearing horse (5) |
| EPOCH – COPE (manage) reversed + H (horse) | |
| 24 | Satisfactory beer should be served up for beast (5) |
| OKAPI – OK (satisfactory) + IPA (beer) reversed
The forest giraffe! |
|
22:08
The last 2-3 minutes trying to make something of 16d other than INDECENT, which I couldn’t parse to save my life. Finally biffed it, and submitted off leaderboard. EUSTACE was a gimme; I don’t think I bothered to parse it. I knew BRAW, so that was a semi-gimme. Like Jeremy, I figured that Angers loomed large in the Plantagenet legend, and I actually knew the team name. DNK CABOCHON, but I knew COCHON, so no prob.. Biffed 13ac and 17ac. Amused, briefly, by the rude surface of 6d.
This wasn’t that easy for me. LOI BRAWL, as I don’t know Scots that well. For me (unlike Kevin), EUSTACE was not a gimme. INDECENT was hard to parse, as I was distracted by seeing IN as “current.” Did not get BLACK-EYED SUSAN from the wordplay (parsed later), only from definition and crossers. There are some easy ones here, though, and I really should have thought of COCHON before I did.
I’m pretty sure I learned BRAW from the movie “Wee Geordie”, which came out in 1955; haven’t come across it since, but somehow it stuck. I got 17ac from enumeration and a couple of checkers that gave me Something-eyed Something, and I was ridiculously slow in thinking of the somethings; parsed after submitting.
I’m geordie so close enough to the border to pick these things up but braw featured heavily in the old Broons cartoon and for some reason, in my youth, there was a kind of comedy phrase in the playground “it’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the noo” – no idea where it came from😊
See BUSMAN below. I recognise that line but had no idea where it came from. I was 7.
I was at a cocktail party before solving, and after a relatively mild beer someone slipped me a glass of a very potent local IPA. However, I still put in okapi, and then erased it because I couldn’t parse it! I had read The Eustace Diamonds in my traversal of the Palliser novels – maybe Jeremy should try them next. My big problem was that stone, as I tried to think of a slang French word for someone disgusting, rather than a literal pig. I got the consonants OK, but the vowels were tough.
Time: 47 minutes
That’s very funny about the beer. I was trying to solve this after diving into an extra-large sidecar (gauging the other ingredients by the amount of juice I’d managed to squeeze out of a very juicy lemon). It took me a minute to parse that clue, too, although I thought of OKAPI immediately after OK.
Too hard for me, lacking the required general knowledge. Didn’t know cochon or cabochon, but guessed correctly. Didn’t know Angers and Plantagenets, but guessed correctly from Rangers. Didn’t know braw, but easily guessable. Cologne third last; both parts of the cryptic eluding me for ages. Failed on NHO Eustace, not recognising perhaps as an anagram indicator. Was trying to get a D in somewhere – diamonds cut. Or start it with gEMS: diamonds cut. Apart from those few felt it was on the easy side, but nevertheless enjoyable.
Lots of things I didn’t know. I was sure 11A was CALDERA although I couldn’t see the wordplay (and when I looked it up later, it turns out to be the crater itself rather than the mountain part of a volcano). LOI was EUSTACE since I’d no idea who owned Trollope’s diamond. i lived in Scotland for 7 years so no problem with BRAW, and in France for 6 years so no problem with COCHON or ANGERS. Having studied maths for 2 years “mathematician Blaise” was a write-in.
Too hard for me to finish under the hour although I’d been pleased with getting some tricky ones along the way such as BLACK-EYED SUSAN, PASCAL (not parsed) and CABOCHON. The ones that did for me were EUSTACE where I had no idea what was going on and missed it as an anagram, AGAVE (NHO or forgotten) and INDECENT.
No problems with BRAW as it features in: this traditional Scottish song.
After yesterday’s somewhat smutty puzzle I assumed similar was on offer today re the clue at 6dn. I missed the innocent parsing I’m afraid.
I was hoping someone besides me would comment on 6d; I was starting to worry that I was the only one of us with his mind in the gutter.
31 minutes. Like Kevin, I wrestled with the parsing of INDECENT, before giving up and entering it from the def; unlike him I submitted on the leaderboard, even though it wasn’t a ” proper” solve. No problems with BRAW – there’s an English sense of “brave” which is equivalent – and I semi-guessed ANGERS. Thanks yet again to “Antiques Roadshow” for CABOCHON.
“Hoots mon, it’s a BRAW bricht moonlicht nicht” (Lord Rockingham’s XI : “Hoots Mon”) which topped the UK pop charts 65 years ago!
I had to biff BLACK-EYED SUSAN, but otherwise my schoolboy French led me to CABOCHON, while the soccer team fell into place despite my sketchy knowledge of the Plantagenets. My LOI needed an alpha-trawl, but shouldn’t have done.
Certainly not easy, but I’ve had tougher Fridays.
FOI OXLIP
LOI INDECENT
COD ONION
TIME 9:40
Ah! Lord Rockingham’s XI! Happy days!
43 minutes but sadly I misremembered “cochon” as “cuchon” and came up with what seemed to be a plausible CABUCHON. It’s hard enough for me to remember some English spellings, let alone French…
Past the near meadows, over the still Stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
(Ode to a Nightingale, Keats)
30 mins mid-brekker left only ?N?E?E?T. Clearly ‘skin’ in the game is a personal ‘interest’. The first to go blue is the ‘winteriest?’ Doh! Ok, I was done up like a kipper on my LOI.
So, sour grapes time. I think Cochon is going too far, as is skein of geese, as is film=scale. Apart from that, I liked it, especially the organised crime.
Ta setter and PJ.
I think film = scale is OK… here tap-water is fluorinated chlorinated ground water, and everything gets scale on it – rusty red mineral stains (thin deposits).
Yes, that was the closest I could get. Scale as another term for limescale which dictionaries say is a ‘flaky’ deposit. Close to being what I would call a ‘film’, but no cigar.
My friend said he had just finished making a model of Everest. I asked, “Is it to scale?”
“No,” he replied, “Just for looking at.”
🙂
I’ve sent that one on to a number of friends 😁
I’ve noted it down for future use, complete with due credit.
24 minutes and all correct but with some heroic assumptions. Actually, they weren’t that heroic because I’d no alternatives. ORGANISED CRIME would have been COD if I’d parsed it. My reading of Trollope hasn’t got as far as EUSTACE, but the anagram plus crossers gave nothing else. INDECENT was the only proposal I had to mean ‘blue’. I did eventually parse a biffed BLACK-EYED SUSAN. I did get RANGERS fair and square, and this religious physicist didn’t need to wager on PASCAL, nor my actual COD LOS ALAMOS. Great stuff! Thank you Jeremy and setter.
Couple short today but still feel I’m getting close most days. Big improvement in the last few months.
I thought French for pig was “couchon” hence “cobuchon” which seemed familiar. Missed RANGERS (good clue) and INDECENT (thought it had to be -EST for some kind of superlative). NARCISSIST (nor NARCISSUS) also held me up
ORGANISED CRIME is a reverse cryptic, way too clever for me. I even looked up to see if MERIC was a competitor to the MAFIA.
COD ONION and TRICEPS
I dangerously started this with a 30 minute deadline before catching A Streetcar Named East Coburg to Carlton for lunch (Jimmy Watson’s in Lygon St for those who care). So it’s now (ahem) quite some time later and I’m fessin’ up, had no idea about EUSTACE, didn’t know ‘perhaps’ was an acceptable anagrind and so DNF in my 30. Generally liked this but thought INDECENT was a bit too tricksy. Knew cochon so CABOCHON was easily biffed as was PASCAL and the flower, and knew BURN (the other flower ho ho) from watching the golf from St Andrew’s. FRAIL means easily tempted? Uh-huh. I thought ‘volcanic hill’ = cone and ‘skein of geese’ = V were original and enjoyable and innovative, though possibly out of order for some purists. Cheers!
Oh, another local solver? I’m in Fitzroy
13:53 but one wrong. Having stared uncomprehendingly at 18D for a couple of minutes, never having read any Trollope (have I missed anything?), I bunged in ENSNARE as the only word apart from ENSLAVE that I could think that fit the crossers. NHO CABOCHON, but my schoolboy French was up to deriving it. I liked ONION. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
I’d say you’ve missed something, but chacun etc.
18.37. Eustace Diamonds courtesy of the excellent BBC serialisation of The Pallisers chronicles.
Ditto
27 minutes wrecked by a reckless EPITOME. Well, a tome consists of lines too. Great book, Eustace Diamonds. Thoroughly recommended. If you like Trollope.
DNF – another ‘interest’ here rather than INDECENT, as I thought ‘skin’ was the definition as in skin in the game and didn’t bother to see how it parsed. Particularly annoying, as I’d managed to figure out a few unknowns – EUSTACE, CABOCHON and BLACK-EYED SUSAN – from wordplay and avoided putting ‘tulip’ rather than OXLIP.
Like a few others, I’m not convinced frail=easily tempted. But otherwise a good puzzle, so thanks setter and blogger.
COD Rusticate
SOED has : frail 1 Morally weak; unable to resist temptation;
39m 59s
I thought this was fun and required a decent range of knowledge from Trollope to Triceratops via France, New Mexico and Scotland.
Thanks for the parsing of INDECENT, PlusJeremy.
19d EVEREST was QC material I thought.
CODs: ORGANISED CRIME and ONION.
23:12 including a brief interruption. Could not parse Indecent so biffed it and hoped.
COD: Organised Crime
Entertaining crossword .. liked it.
I see Jackkt’s youtube link and raise him: Lord Rockingham’s X1, a fine tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIekZvhyrsk
10:35, including a few seconds taken to Tipp-Ex out CALDERA.
As an inveterate watcher of Antiques Roadshow (veneer!) I knew CABOCHON, but not the Trollope.
10:56, with quite a lot of “not sure I really know what this means, but it’s going in from the wordplay anyway”, though not an unpleasing solve, for all my uncertainty. LOS ALAMOS was right at the front of my mind after seeing a trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer at the cinema very recently: obviously, given that they come out on the same day, the only question we have is which way round we watch the double-bill of that with Barbie.
I wasn’t sure whether to like this or not. Both long clues got parsed after submission: I’d be interested to see whether anyone got ORGANISED CRIME from the wordplay, though of course it’s very clever. The Trollope is the sort of clue I’d guess and then look up in a TLS: I didn’t watch the Pallisers, and my binge reading recently was Hardy. Perhaps I chose wrong, but if we get “owner of Hardy’s hand” in the near future, I’m laughing.
CABOCHON is one of those words I’ve never needed to spell but would have inserted a U half way through on general principles.
I’m glad others have referenced the “braw bricht moonlit nicht”: saves me doing it, though I think of it as cod Scottish rather than the real thing.
Somewhere in the Tony Hancock oeuvre he said that I think. May just be my imagination.
That’s ‘The Blood Donor’, when talking to a Scottish doctor, whose reply was ‘We’re not all Rob Roys’
Gosh, yes, it’s in The Blood Donor, which I watched (again!) on BBC4 a short time ago. “We’re not all Rob Roys you know”.
Beaten by NARCISSUS (d’oh) and RANGERS, which I don’t think I’d ever have seen (no interest in or knowledge of soccer). Otherwise this all went in quite quickly. Liked GALLIVANT and LOS ALAMOS
4d. Okay with the Plantagenet bit, but the definition should really have been ‘Bunch of tax-dodging, cheating bigots and racists.’
Celtic fan, by any chance?
Yes, but I could equally be a fan of Aberdeen, Dundee United, Hibs etc. Anyway, it’s nice to see an acknowledgment of the rules about not mentioning living entities: the original Rangers ‘died’ in 2012, when the club went into liquidation.
Hit the button at 51:37 then came rushing over here to find out what all the ‘skein of a goose’ nonsense was all about.
Glad to finish this one. LOI – EUSTACE
COD – RUSTICATE, which I certainly hope to do one day 🙂
21.58
EUSTACE diamond , CABOCHON and BLACK-EYED SUSAN all lurking in dusty corners of the mental attic for days such as this. I thought ORGANISED CRIME and RUSTICATE were both excellent. Biffed INDECENT and needed Jeremy to explain it.
No trouble with RANGERS as, when moving to France, our final choice of destination came done to either Angers or Poitiers, with the latter winning out because of better rail links.
Thnaks to Jeremy and the setter.
40 minutes, so this was quite hard, and I put in RANGERS and INDECENT from definition without fully understanding why, likewise EUSTACE which I’d never read although I like the Barchester novels. Was tempted by ELAND at 24d until it became impossible. ORGANISED CRIME was good but ONION get my CoD. Thanks plusjeremy for the explaining.
Some very easy ones and some pretty tricky ones. I’d never heard of a CABOCHON so looked it up to check. Finally INDECENT entered with a shrug because it could only be that or interest so far as I could see. To my surprise it was correct and the clock stopped at 45 minutes, but I then spent a few minutes trying to understand why it was right, eventually seeing it and liking it. ORGANISED CRIME similarly entered without understanding, the checkers making it likely, and I spent a while trying to understand that and again liking it when the penny dropped. FRAIL = easily tempted?
Wil, I posted a reply above re FRAIL = easily tempted before I saw your comment.
You might have an instinct, but I certainly didn’t! I didn’t know COCHON or CABOCHON, and in the end made up CABICRON as looking vaguely plausible. Very tough clue, I thought, but it seems that I might be in the minority. Spent a lot of time on that and on INDECENT, eventually getting the latter.
I found this very tricky. Much of the time I guessed and hoped for the best – eg RANGERS.
50 minutes.
51:04, but I had to look up the NHO EUSTACE, as I missed the anagrind instruction too. That allowed me to complete EXTREMIST and LOI, INDECENT(unparsed) only to find on submitting off leaderboard, that I’d bungled LAS ALAMOS, despite seing LOOS in the parsing. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
58:49
Squeezed in under the hour – mildly surprised that more didn’t find this trickier. I struggled to get into a lot of clues, though from being about half way at 40 minutes, things improved towards the end.
Biffing BLACK-EYED SUSAN from two checkers and educated punt at CABOCHON (on remembering what a French pig is) helped a lot – filling in ORGANISED CRIME and LOS ALAMOS – surprised CAFETERIA took me so long, didn’t remember where the Plantagenets came from (had Anjou in mind) and completely failed to parse INDECENT.
Wiki:
It is the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Anjou until the French Revolution
Twinned with Wigan of all places as I found out the last time I travelled there.
Scuppered for the first time this week, by entering INTEREST instead of indecent. I couldn’t parse it, but thought skin might be interest in that one might have some skin in the game. Oh well. EUSTACE and BLACK EYED SUSAN also biffed.
DNF
36:05. Thought I might be in for a speedy time when 1d and 1ac went in on sight, but it was not to be. One of those puzzles where the whole is unaccountably more difficult than the sum of its parts, although EUSTACE was a pure – if fairly confident – guess and INDECENT, among rather more than usual, an unparsed mystery.
Good day for me – 16:04 – top half flew in, held up by Eustace as I’ve never read Trollope and my usual delay on the flower until I had all checkers in. LOI indecent – never did parse it.
Thx Jeremy and setter..
44.01. I found this hard work in places but rewarding. Dredged cochon d’Inde from Schoolboy French to get the stone. Was up a blind alley for a long time at 11ac with the c, the l and the volcanic seemingly pointing to caldera and then for ages thinking that the eleven in 4dn referred back to it. Knew the bloomer was some sort of Susan but the rest of it took much longer to arrive. Hamlet’s ‘frailty thy name is woman’ came to mind to justify the definition at 2dn. Ignorance of Trollope was a hindrance for Eustace.
23’23”
Very fortunate to get clear run, stayed on gamely under pressure.
I delved into Plantagenet history in order to follow the BBC’s ‘The Daughter of Time’ – Josephine Tey; highly recommended. Also, along with George C., I have to thank ‘Auntie Beeb’ for Eustace.
Got spooked by the tequila, but the subconscious had done the trick when I returned to it.
Thanks to the setter and Jeremy.
I ought to celebrate with an IPA, but it’ll be tricky to find in these parts.
I’ve enjoyed reading The Daughter of Time at least three times- must track down the BBC version you mention.
It was a reading not a dramatisation; a fifteen (?) episode marathon.
I suspect it was unabridged; removing even a phrase would be worse than hiding a piece from a perfectly crafted jigsaw puzzle.
Very late today as mother-in-law aged 94 being discharged from hospital. The stress hormones must have worked as this was a sub-10′ for me.
Everything’s been said.
9’58”, thanks jeremy and setter
36 minutes and then spelt cafetAria wrong, must have been a cheesy fund-raiser…
I remembered though have never read the Eustace Diamonds, it’s been on my to read list for 40 years now!
I found that hard-ish unlike others here.
Thanks setter and blogger
I was really pleased to finish this in just under 40 minutes at 39.45, but less so when I discovered I was back to my old trick of getting one letter wrong. In this case it was CABUCHON, where I was relying on my O level French from about 60 years ago to retrieve the name for a pig. I was fairly confident I’d recalled it correctly but there you are.
A strange one for me because I found it largely straightforward until the final clue, indecent, which I spent several minutes on but just could not see. Eventually resorted to aids. As soon as I saw the list of possibles for the checkers the answer was obvious, and I had no problem parsing it either. No explanation for not being able to see blue = indecent with 4 checkers.
I usually get excited that it’s a Friday and I’m going to be challenged. Well I was, I suppose, but only because I couldn’t work out why it was INDECENT
20 mins and tx for explaining it. NHO CABOCHON but my spell checker has!
Visiting New York, so coming late to this. Really a DNF since I eventually had to look up EUSTACE. Biffed a few, including CABOCHON (never did French for some reason) and INDECENT as LOI. Parsed RANGERS quite well since I’ve always had an interest in the Plantagenets since watching A Lion in Winter as a 12 year old… however coming from the “other side” of Glasgow it was a tough one to put in!! Good fun though, my time being far too long to worry about. thanks to all.
Welcome to New York! What brings you here?
Just visiting with my wife. Came quite often pre covid for both work and breaks so first time back for a while…had hoped for better weather!!
Cabochon and cafeteria went straight in, but it was harder going after that. I remember a popular song of my early youth entitled “Pretty little black-eyed Susie”.
I enjoyed this for the first 30 minutes, filling in all the answers, but not the subsequent 14 minutes trying – and failing, like others – to parse INDECENT. I eventually just biffed it as I could think of no other solution which might be remotely correct. PASCAL and EUSTACE brought back mixed memories of mathematics and English literature. Am happy to support the recommendation to read Trollope – so much more enjoyable than Dickens.
FOI – TRICEPS
LOI – INDECENT
COD – ONION 🌰
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors.
I am surprised that, in the context of 16d, no one seems to have questioned whether “current” and “recent” are really synonymous. Surely recent events are ones which pre-date current events. My judgement may of course be coloured by the fact that 16d left me with a DNF.
DNF, as I’d never heard of the Trollope novel, and failed to clock the anagrind, despite noting the crossers were indicating an anagram of ease. Also failed on 16D (completely at a loss) and 4D, where I lacked the football and history knowledge to complete the word! Bizarrely, most of the rest of the puzzle was pretty straightforward, and I had no expectations of failing to finish… until I did! I should probably have guessed that the Trollope clue would be solvable without GK, but then it was quite surprising that ‘cochon’ featured as GK, without which I wouldn’t have got CABOCHON, a NHO for me. Rather frustrating to have to give up on the last three… but otherwise enjoyable.
24 mins so another week were the hardest puzzle for me was midweek. Got a bit becalmed over indecent but managed to realise the floral crosser ended in Susan not Susie and then it clicked, though I didn’t actually parse indecent.
Thx setter and blogger, catch up Monday.
Like others this was straightforward until I hit a wall with out the useful GK. I knew I was looking for a football team but could only think of Reading, ridiculously! Couldn’t come up with Narc or Cone although I’m sure they’re both lurking somewhere. I didn’t have the crossers to work out where my A and B were going in cochon so that was a bit frustrating for a long time. I was looking for something that meant more ‘survival’ than just ‘being’ (exist) in 28a. Didn’t know the Trollope and like others thought I was putting D in something having missed the ‘perhaps’ anagram indicator. Not my day. Moan. Moan.
Onwards…
Thanks both.