24:35, a time which reflects more confusion rather than any real difficulty. Several answers I just shrugged and went with, after a minute or two of not being able to figure the clue out.
| Across | |
| 1 | Following delay man makes US city (9) |
| FLAGSTAFF – F (following) + LAG (delay) + STAFF (man) | |
| 6 | By the sound of it, remained sober (5) |
| STAID – homophone of STAYED (remained) | |
| 9 | Egg beater or another kitchen utensil (7) |
| CHOPPER – double definition
Helicopter or… knife? |
|
| 10 | Blood group negative involves nothing sinister (7) |
| OMINOUS – O (blood group) + MINUS (negative) around O (nothing) | |
| 11 | The short temper of people in general (5) |
| THEIR – THE + IR{e} (short temper)
My first confusion was assuming the parsing was TH{e} + EIR and wondering what EIR meant. |
|
| 12 | One who assists eating English fare (9) |
| PASSENGER – PASSER (one who assists) around ENG (English) | |
| 13 | Skill of service in court (5) |
| CRAFT – RAF (service) in CT (court) | |
| 14 | Perforce, thoroughly fulfil Baker’s role in audition (9) |
| NEEDFULLY – homophone of KNEAD FULLY (thoroughly fulfil Baker’s role) | |
| 17 | Playing duet with horns, possibly aimed too low (9) |
| UNDERSHOT – anagram of DUET + HORNS | |
| 18 | Henry leaves some time in the morning for liaison (5) |
| AMOUR – remove H (Henry) from A.M. HOUR (some time in the morning) | |
| 19 | Persistent cautions deployed involving ecstasy (9) |
| TENACIOUS – anagram of CAUTIONS around E (ecstasy) | |
| 22 | Faithful without pretence (5) |
| EXACT – EX (without) ACT (pretence) | |
| 24 | Sight, or what may adversely affect it (7) |
| EYESORE – double definition | |
| 25 | With stealth, some regressive amoebae kill, eerily (3-4) |
| EEL-LIKE – hidden reversed in AMOEBAE KILL EERILY | |
| 26 | Alas, report 550 cracks (5) |
| SADLY – SAY (report) around DL (550) | |
| 27 | Finally down, wearing the tie, dressed for big birthday? (9) |
| NINETIETH – last letter of DOWN + IN (wearing) + anagram (dressed) of THE TIE | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Surface — the last labelled on an icosahedron? (5) |
| FACET – FACE T (the last [surface] labelled on an icosahedron)
The other nineteen faces being labelled FACE A, FACE B, etc. I’m a mathematician. I loved this clue. |
|
| 2 | Previously referred to a course warning delivered? (9) |
| AFORESAID – A + FORE (course warning) + SAID (delivered?) | |
| 3 | Senior officers desert rising celebrity (9) |
| SUPERSTAR – SUPERS (senior officers) + reversal of RAT (desert) | |
| 4 | Outcome for Hook is barely anything (1,4,2,3,5) |
| A DROP IN THE OCEAN – double definition
I thought the crocodile ate him. |
|
| 5 | At sea, meet storm fronts everywhere (4,4,2,5) |
| FROM STEM TO STERN – anagram (at sea) of MEET STORM FRONTS | |
| 6 | Small and large diamonds fade (5) |
| SLICE – S (small) + L (large) + ICE (diamonds)
Didn’t know this golf term. |
|
| 7 | Protracted answer leads to a more advanced state (5) |
| ALONG – A (answer) comes before (leads) LONG (protracted) | |
| 8 | One ruminating about southern Ilium — Shiva? (9) |
| DESTROYER – DEER (one ruminating) around (about) S (southern) TROY (Ilium) | |
| 13 | Legion to become more insignificant? (9) |
| COUNTLESS – COUNT LESS (become more insignificant?) | |
| 15 | Recorder reformed Fleet gaol (9) |
| FLAGEOLET – anagram (reformed) of FLEET GAOL | |
| 16 | Double volume in hurry to become a thousand (9) |
| LOOKALIKE – change V (volume) in LOOK ALIVE (hurry) into K (thousand)
Another one I couldn’t make sense of at the time. |
|
| 20 | Miles performing soaring finale (2,3) |
| NO END – ON (performing) reversed (soaring) + END (finale)
And another. |
|
| 21 | Sentimental, having conversely upset companion (5) |
| CRONY – CORNY (sentimental) with OR (conversely) reversed (upset)
And another. |
|
| 23 | Power to secure the darts matches in successive locations (5) |
| TEETH – To sEcure thE darTs matcHes (in successive locations)
And another. (Thanks to vinyl.) |
|
40:06 for me – so on the trickier end, but enjoyable.
Thanks, Jeremy (and vinyl!), for the explanations of CRONY and TEETH – these passed me by. Like you, I enjoyed FACET (worked out it had to end in T then worked backwards).
A had a MER at SLICE, since I thought that a fade was intentional and a slice was not. Chambers seems to bear this out.
I always thought it was just a question of degree. Collins says ‘to cause (a golf ball) to move with a controlled left-to-right trajectory’, which supports your view but is left-handedist!
I mainly remember it from playing golf with my dad. Unlike my brother, who got down to a handicap of 7, I was a very ordinary golfer. But I used to play with my dad on days off, as we both enjoyed it. I recall I had a terrible hook (the opposite direction to a slice). But if it happened to work out well, dad would tell me I had a good “draw” on the shot.
Beginners slice, professionals fade.
I got into trouble by biffing a slap on the wrist, figuring that since Captain Hook had a prosthetic, he wouldn’t feel it. But I was uneasy with this right from the get-go, but the P of passenger seemed to confirm it, although I didn’t like the position of the W. I finally erased the SLA- and the WRIST, and then I got chopper, confirming that my biff was wrong. It still took a while to finish.
What Jeremy doesn’t mention is that I was still in the middle of my solve when he asked me for the parsing of teeth, so I had to both solve it and parse it in order to answer his text. Usually, I can’t do either, but I saw it quite suddenly.
Time: 44 minutes
SLAP ON THE WRIST! Ha. Quite a flight of fancy there, bravo!
Too good for me today. I managed most of this but missed a few, CRONY as I failed to see the reversal of OR, EYESORE where I failed to see the negative meaning of sight, and PASSENGER thinking of food! LOOKALIKE took some time as I am more used to the term look lively, but it came eventually and gets my COD. I had FACET but didn’t know the number involved. Seemed to be a combination of gimmes, such as 6a, STAID/STAYED, and head-scratchers, 23d, TEETH (thanks, Vinyl for the parsing), but enjoyable.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
18:20
I never did figure out LOOKALIKE & TEETH, so thanks to Jeremy and Vinyl. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a TEETH-like clue before. I biffed DESTROYER from Shiva and TROY, finished the parsing post-submission. I had no idea how many sides to an icosahedron, but assumed that it matched T. We’ve had this trick before, although not with T. I noticed afterwards that FACET is also hidden in ‘surface–the’. I bunged in ON END at 20d, which of course made TENACIOUS impossible; it finally occurred to me and only then did I see my error. I’d marked FACET as my COD, but now I think I’ll give it to TEETH.
30 minutes with rather too many answers going in, as Jeremy said, with a shrug.
DNK FLAGSTAFF as a city. Didn’t actually know what ‘perforce’ means. Are eels stealthy? DNK ‘fade / SLICE’. Didn’t understand TEETH.
1dn is badly flawed as FACET was so easy as a hidden answer that it rendered the rest of the clue irrelevant.
Of the two long multi-word expressions A DROP ION THE OCEAN was a write-in with no checkers and FROM STEM TO STERN needed one checker to bring the answer to mind.
Was 1dn really that easy? It was my penultimate entry and I thought it was very clever. I know the word is contained in the clue, but there’s nothing to suggest we should look for a hidden.
Well you may have a point as I can only speak for myself, but ‘surface’ contains FACE and I know that ‘-hedron’ indicates a figure or shape with x number of faces or surfaces. Cut gemstones have surfaces or faces that are also called ‘facets’ and there’s the word FACET staring out from the clue. I think actually I spotted the hidden FACET right away and worked back from there, but I certainly didn’t need to know how many sides a icosahdron has.
Pleased to finish, but still a little puzzled. In what sense is a PASSER “one who assists”? I’d never heard of EEL-LIKE either!
On edit: d’oh … soccer, of course!
Yes, another shrug for that one. I suppose you assist by passing things to someone else, perhaps the ball in team sports, but even so…
Shrug no more! Assists have been part of football stats since 1994, although they weren’t always publicised. With the coming of the internet it became a matter of course. They are important metrics of a player’s true value and help define his optimum position.
You know I’m not a sports dude, but I took this as referring to what is called an “assist” in certain team games, as in this definition of (the noun) “assist” in Collins: “a pass or other action by a player which enables another player to score a goal.”
Think of the old PG Tips advert with the chimpanzees : “Pass the monkey wrench!”
For those afficionados of Fantasy Football (Guilty M’Lud) passer = assister works (still missed it though…)
Required plenty of cogitation indeed! I somehow suspected SLICE/fade referred to golf, but did check it. Parsed CRONY finally just before coming here. TEETH is amazing and certainly rates as COD.
Around 35 minutes. I found this quite easy for me. FOI A DROP IN THE OCEAN then FROM STEM TO STERN. This gave me crossers to quickly get in other answers. LOI CRONY
Thanks Jeremy for the parsing.
I didn’t have a clue about 1D until I noticed FACET is a hidden word in (sur)FACE T(he) and it fitted the crossers. Another like this appeared in the last 3 months.
36.39, so three days in a row in the mid-30s and I think all three have had their fair share of challenges. Like many others I was completely bewildered by some of these and thanks to Jeremy for sorting several of them out. Is the Hook in 4dn also some arcane golfing ref to match slice? Dunno. Congrats to J and anyone else who figured out FACET from the WP. As with oxbow yesterday, I fear for the future if the TEETH device – hiding the answer in randomly spaced letters in a sentence of any length – catches on.
From All Along The Watchtower (‘It was always Jimi’s song, I just wrote it’):
All ALONG the watchtower, princes kept the view
While the women came and went, barefoot servants too
Outside in the distance, a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl
Hardly randomly spaced.
Yes, I enjoyed (but did not get) the innovation.
Hi Lindsay, I simply took the hook to be a fishing reference. But the golf one looks possible for a seaside golfcourse.
1sr 2nd 3rd 4th 5th letters. Very clever indeed. Only just worked it out now.
Crony defeated me.
Aha! Thanks for explaining, nobody else has.
Jeremy did.
Just relieved to finish without pink squares after biffing a few, and having given up on the QC to boot. NHO of EEL-LIKE in the given context, and SLOI EYESORE helped me to guess at my LOI.
FOI STAID
LOI CRONY
COD AMOUR
TIME 11:02
Failed! I had AFOREHAND, which sort of works apart from the fact it doesn’t mean “previously referred to”, but quite the opposite. Still, you live and learn with the Times crossword.
I had AFOREHAND too, mainly because I neglected to read to the end of the clue and biffed it.
I thought that TEETH was excellent. I love the novel clueing device but also the surface. Phil ‘the POWER’ Taylor is the greatest darts player of all time. He won everywhere.
Was he ever referred to as just ‘Power’, though? If not the reference doesn’t really work.
Well, I’d filled everything in correctly after 37 kminutes but with several question marks, mainly answered above. COD to NEEDFULLY. I didn’t really possess all the needful today. Thank you Jeremy and setter.
12.00
The South Downs were a mixture of biffs (LOOKALIKE, CRONY, TEETH) and excellent surfaces (Phil the Power, Miles Davis), but my favourite surface was in the North Downs, FACET.
LOI CRONY
14:06. I had a couple of “Well, I suppose so” moments with ALONG EEL-LIKE and NO END, but enjoyed lots of this, including the “walking the plank” clue. LOI CHOPPER. Thank-you Jeremy and setter.
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry
(Hotspur in Henry IV, pt I)
25 enjoyable mins pre-brekker spoilt by the ‘has to be, but why’ ones: Crony, Teeth. There was no need.
Ta setter and PJ
24.58. A bit of a mixed bag with some rather iffy definitions and odd terms, such as eel-like, but also some good clues. I particularly liked 13a for its conciseness.
38:52 (but one error)
COD: 1 DOWN
I should have parsed CHOPPER, managed TEETH with much thought, and biffed CRONY. I thought I had checked thoroughly and, at the point I submitted, spotted a stupid UUDERSHOT had been missed! Fat finger, foggy-eyed Friday
All good wishes for the weekend.
Thank you, plusjeremy and the setter
Just under half an hour.
– Didn’t know FLAGSTAFF was a city
– Never heard of FROM STEM TO STERN
– Didn’t parse EXACT
– Didn’t know SLICE can mean fade
– Dredged up FLAGEOLET from somewhere
– Had no idea how TEETH worked
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
FOI Staid
LOI Crony
COD Amour
Well another DNF as I didn’t get EXACT or TEETTH. Damn.
Obviously a golfer this setter with three references to the game today, UNDERSHOT, FORE & SLICE, and I’m sure we would have had nineteenth if it had fit.
I liked NEEDFULLY.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Maybe FLAGSTAFF could be stretched to refer to golf too- the pole in the hole?
28 minutes with the last 8 of them spent on 1ac and 1dn
Once I cottoned on to 1dn, I thought it was very clever, and then FLAGSTAFF, which I’ve never heard of, became obvious. With hindsight, I’d have got there much quicker if I’d just focussed on 1 down instead of really wasting loads of time on US cities and 4 letter words for delay. I think the lesson there is that the clue that seems most obscure is often in reality the clearest to crack, if you really focus on it.
Thanks setter for a good challenge, and blogger
26:17 and I had to battle every inch of the way. Not sure I’ve heard of FROM STEM TO STERN, and I definitely haven’t heard of FLAGEOLET (though it seems I’m alone in that) which added to the challenge.
Always enjoy a new clueing device so I’ll give COD to TEETH, but I thought CRONY, EXACT and FACET were good as well.
Very enjoyable. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Didn’t know FLAGEOLET old bean? Nor I as a recorder.
23’38” today, with unease about some. Didn’t parse EXACT, didn’t bother parsing LOOKALIKE. Really loved FACET, didn’t spot the inclusion. An icosahedron has twenty faces, thirty edges and twelve vertices – I can do, and have done, a good half day on the Platonic solids.
Thanks jeremy and setter.
Btw, since Jeremy is quite right that Captain Hook was devoured by a crocodile I assume 4dn isn’t referring to him but to the hook on a fishing line, and the upper case H is simply designed to mislead. Although one might argue that if Hook makes us think of the Captain then it’s pointing us in the direction of pirates walking the plank thereby dropping in the ocean.
In at least one version of Barrie’s Pan, Hook is thrown overboard after being defeated by Peter, subsequently being devoured or chased by the crocodile. So perhaps a drop in the ocean is correct after all.
Thanks. It doesn’t surprise me that somewhere along the way Hook fell into the water but I thought it might be in one of the later adaptations of the story rather than in Barrie’s original.
Well, that needed tenacious brainwork to be sure, with some very clever cluing making for few easy entries and a time of 22.15.
I eventually got (and liked) FACE T, though I started with FRONT because I thought the egg beater started with an ovoid O. Remembering a Yogi Bear episode I had on an LP when I was about 7 got me the helicopter/chopper.
Another adjacent cryptic crossword today (which, incidentally, I thought was unusually tough), clued TEETH with the power definition, rather less taxingly hidden in the wordplay. I didn’t quite get the pattern, starting my letter counting at The rather than To.
The egg beater being a chopper came up not so long ago, otherwise I’d never have got it!
16:58, with a couple of minutes at the end trying and failing to figure out why TEETH was TEETH. Not the only one I biffed today.
About half an hour.
Very tricky – didn’t fully parse everything but got through it.
Thanks, pj.
Flageolet was neat, although strictly speaking a recorder has a thumbhole whereas a penny whistle doesn’t.
Tricky. Finished it, but lots of biffing and head scratching. Thanks for parsing TEETH and EXACT – had no clue what was going on there. I thought ‘SLICE’ was referring to a fade cut in video editing; I’ve heard ‘slice’ used in this context. But golf sounds more likely. Never really felt I had a grip on this one.
27 mins but ALONG, TEETH and EXACT had to be biffed. Am I being stupid, but I still don’t get the parsing of TEETH?
The ‘locations’ in the clue are the positions of the letters in the words ‘to secure the darts matches’. So the first ‘location’ in TO is T, the second ‘location’ in SECURE is E, the third ‘location’ in THE is E, and so on.
This was too clever for me (thanks +J!), and it didn’t help that I thought the definition was ‘power to secure’.
I’d have thought that was more ‘sequential’ than successive?
Yes possibly a bit more accurate but would spoil the surface.
29:56
Quite enjoyable but there was an awful lot that I missed:
FLAGSTAFF – never heard of it
NEEDFULLY – didn’t know what ‘perforce’ means – guess I do now
FACET – didn’t know what an icosahedron is, so the subtlety of the answer was lost on me
CRONY – from checkers and definition, failed to parse
FROM STEM TO STERN – never heard of this but guessed three of the words and filled in STEM from the remaining letters
SLICE – assumed it is a golf shot
FLAGEOLET – never heard of this as an instrument, but pencilled in as one possible resolution of the anagram
LOOKALIKE – failed to see the LOOK ALIVE element
DESTROYER – I didn’t know this, only that TROY = Ilium and I had the Y checker in place
TEETH – only got this as the answer appeared in another puzzle recently, failed to parse it here – on reflection, not bad, but Phil Taylor is known as ‘The Power’ and not just ‘Power’
Thanks Jeremy and setter
If I’d only read the clue for 2d fully instead of biffing the answer from the first, fifth and sixth words of the clue and checkers, I might not have finished with 2 pink squares for AFOREHAND. Drat! Managed to parse the rest apart from LOI, CRONY. 26.09 but….. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
Very surprised to be all green in 26.53. I broke up the grid quite early on, which doesn’t help.
Further delay was thanks to a combination of clever wordplay like TEETH, FACET (I just assumed the number of sides) and CRONY (I tried CORNY but couldn’t justify it or make EYE_R_E work, before the penny finally dropped some minutes later) and unknown defs (CHOPPER, FROM STEM TO STERN, SLICE).
Good stuff, though I can’t recommend solving in the back of a car going up the M1.
Thanks both.
PS. No we don’t!
I was pretty sure that the TEETH clue had something to do with the letters, but I couldn’t see it. Very clever. They’re not random positions: they’re successive positions. There was a Monk clue that used this idea some years ago. After I found it quite easy at the start, a few others gave me pause and I had to use aids in the end and took 61 minutes. Thinking that I’d missed a hidden until the last clue, FACET, I was annoyed with myself for missing this, but it’s only a hidden by chance: surely there is no indicator? The Face T idea missed me completely.
I agree FACET was hidden by chance, but a second glance at the clue by setter or acting editor should surely have demanded a rethink.
According to Cracking the Cryptic, this puzzle was set by Shane Shabankareh, who I thought was also the acting editor. That said, I thought that most (all?) of these puzzles were test-solved by other people too but maybe not.
Thanks. You may be right but I’ve always had the impression that only the editor test solves as a matter of course. I never had any idea what happens when the editor is the setter, and if there’s no procedure in place perhaps that was what led to the problem with 1dn today.
It may have happened in the past, but given the amount of iffy clues that we get, I doubt very much that is the case now. Yesterday’s offering being a prime example.
Time and budgetary constraints maybe.
And priorities change as well. Whereas the great cryptic crossword of old was virtually synonymous with The Times, in the digital age it doesn’t get them the clicks, or the advertising or the money. Editorially they would seemingly rather prioritise the arrest (in a foreign country) of a Z-list dancer from fifteen years ago, for some alleged abusive behaviour. Now that WILL get them the clicks.
In this full-on journalistic warfare of trying to ‘outMail’ the Mail, I’m not sure a ‘niche’ puzzles department gets much of a look-in?
About 55′ but as yesterday a few of the parsings passed me by. I took FACET as a (poor) hidden, even though I knew the number of sides in question and also dismissing the rest of the clue… Would never have parsed TEETH. NHO FROM STEM etc but worked the fodder… nor EEL LIKE for that matter. So a finish, but don’t feel particularly satisfied by it, thanks Jeremy and Setter
32.20 with fingers crossed for facet, chopper and teeth. A bit better than I did yesterday and it is a Friday.
Good weekend to all.
DNF and revealed last three (EXACT, LOOKALIKE, EEL-LIKE). Don’t think I would ever have got LOOKALIKE, but should maybe have persevered with the other two. Had to look up how many sides an icosahedron had but still didn’t understand FACET until I saw the blog. Also needed help in parsing SLICE, DESTROYER, TEETH (obviously) and CRONY. Really liked NEEDFULLY and COUNTLESS. Many thanks all. Lots of learning, again.
After yesterday’s nonsense with ‘sandwich’ , back to normality – tough but achievable with a bit of persistence.
I was pleased to finish with all correct in 46.18, particularly as there were three I couldn’t parse. FACET was the obvious answer, but now seeing the explanation I realise I had zero chance of justifying my answer. CRONY and TEETH were the others that had me scratching my head. Nevertheless pleased to finish what I thought was a tough puzzle.
Phil who? Darts? Eh? Not a clue that will pass the test of time, methinks. Did parse it, quite liking the unusual cryptic, while thinking the surface was rubbish. Oops, ignorance is not always bliss.
Also failed to parse CRONY; and LOOKALIKE, because obviously lookalive and loovalike aren’t words – I was also wanting *AK* to replace the V. One too many As in the clue, for me. Feel a bit silly there, too.
Knew Flagstaff – might have been there? Driving to Grand Canyon in 1982. As a golfer saw FADE/SLICE, but tend to think of them as substantially different, like STARSTRUCK.
Mostly enjoyable.
17.15 DNF
Another AFOREHAND. Shame, would have been a decent effort.
Personally I loved this with its varied devices. I didn’t parse them all but that has never overly bothered me (though does result in errors, see above!)
The STEM/STERM anagram was cracking and also liked TEETH (though had no idea what was going on)
Thanks Setter and Jeremy
78:52. I found this very hard, maybe enhanced by poor sleep. many of the same issues as other solvers, and biffed a couple (looking at you LOOKALIKE). I thought TEETH was a clever clue and hadn’t seen that before… thanks Jeremy and setter!
It took me 46.57 with help but enjoyable, never heatd of 25 across.
55 minutes
A long slow solve, with several barely parsed, and my LOI TEETH not understood at all before coming here.
COD to FACET
Thanks Jeremy and setter
IMHP (in my humble opinion) quite a few VWC’s (very weird clues) . Temporary compiler meltdown?
I’m another who finished this without always knowing what was going on. Good fun. About 50 minutes.
Personally, I thought Flagstaff was one of the more well known US cities, courtesy of Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones
You see amarillo,
Gallup, new mexico,
Flagstaff, arizona.
Don’t forget winona,
Kingman, barstow, san bernandino.
Won’t you get hip to this timely tip
When you make that california trip
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.
FLAGSTAFF is very famous in astronomical circles as the location of the Lowell observatory from where Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.
It’s also not far from Meteor/Barringer crater
Yes of course I’ve been there!
I got through this in 31 minutes, but it was really a DNF as I was another who biffed AFOREHAND in 2dn. Not very satisfying as there were too many clues where the parsing failed me – PASSENGER, SLICE, ALONG, TEETH. Not my favourite puzzle of the week.
FOI – CRAFT
LOI – CHOPPER
COD – FACET
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors.
Completely off the running with a time of 50’16”. CRONY and EYESORE took up half an hour at the end. Not entirely happy with either clue, but maybe I’m just disgruntled.
Mostly completed in bits and pieces over the course of a very busy Friday, but a first glance over the clues had me worried. Had to look up the faceted thingie but still didn’t see the relevance (or the hidden!). And so I wended my torturous way through the rest of the clues, only helped by the “low-hanging fruit” (STAID, A DROP etc, NEEDFULLY, NO END). The brilliance of certain clues certainly passed me by, as I didn’t know the required sporting allusions: SLICE, PASSER, POWER etc). But on reading the blog I was impressed by its overall ingenuity- so, setter 1, solver 0. in my case.