DNF. I was so absurdly off the wavelength here, there’s very little I can say. I labored to fill in as many squares as I could, but in the end, there were three clues I couldn’t get.
That the SNITCH for this puzzle is so much lower than last week’s puzzle blows my mind. That Verlaine solved this puzzle in 5 minutes explodes my mind.
| Across | |
| 1 | Detectives on Roman force thick and tenacious (6) |
| VISCID – CID on VIS (Latin for ‘force’)
I assume this shares a root with words like VISCOUS. Nevertheless, I managed to piece this one together without quite knowing what was going on. |
|
| 4 | Spotted smoked ham was in the van (8) |
| SPECKLED – SPECK (smoked ham) LED (was in the van)
VAN as in ‘head of the pack’ — think ‘vanguard’. |
|
| 9 | Notice young man secures vehicle after parking (7) |
| PLACARD – LAD around CAR after P | |
| 11 | Last of runners flash past — don’t give up (5,2) |
| STICK BY – last letter of RUNNERS + TICK BY | |
| 12 | Indian side cheers on attack that lacks depth (5) |
| RAITA – TA on RAID (attach) – D (depth) | |
| 13 | Cannonball shortly due to land (9) |
| SHOREWARD – SHO{t} (cannonball shortly) + REWARD (due)
As in, “Give them their due.” Did not solve this one. |
|
| 14 | Ship leaves once loaded (3,7) |
| TEA CLIPPER – cryptic definition
At least I think there’s nothing more here. The surface reading makes it sound like cargo is being put on a ship, which then sets out to sea. But this is a ship [which tea] leaves once loaded. Also did not solve this one. |
|
| 16 | High street business, can it work? (4) |
| SHOP – SH (can it) + OP (work)
The ? is part of the definition by example. I most certainly did not parse this while solving, but fortunately it was easy to get from the definition. |
|
| 19 | Only two-thirds of cutlery put back, oh dear (4) |
| OOPS – SPOO{ns} reversed | |
| 20 | 20C composer’s babel developed technique, all right (4,6) |
| BELA BARTOK – anagram of BABEL + ART + OK | |
| 22 | NZ city with large aviation facility that is in recession (9) |
| WHANGAREI – W (with) + HANGAR + IE (that is) reversed | |
| 23 | Celebration instead of defeat (2,3) |
| DO FOR – DO (celebration) FOR (instead of) | |
| 25 | Blood vessel opened by doctor, one showing concern for the motorist (5-2) |
| DRIVE-IN – VEIN preceded by DR + I | |
| 26 | Adult works at aerobics, desperately wanting shaped abs (7) |
| EROTICA – anagram (desperately) AT AEROBICS – anagram (shaped) of ABS | |
| 27 | Roll touching substance that’s dubious (8) |
| REGISTER – RE (touching) GIST (substance) ER (that’s dubious) | |
| 28 | Little Scottish collars its, on reflection? (6) |
| WESTIE – WEE (little Scottish) around ITS reversed
Not sure I understand the surface here… |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Tiny hole in tank terminal for that old canal boat (9) |
| VAPORETTO – PORE (tiny hole) in VAT (tank) + last letter of (terminal for) THAT + O (old) | |
| 2 | Venerable Hindu perhaps crawled over India (5) |
| SWAMI – SWAM (perhaps crawled) + I | |
| 3 | Wonky line cut by fine horse unsuited to ploughing (8) |
| INARABLE – anagram of LINE around ARAB (fine horse) | |
| 5 | Sit around drunk at four, late out of theatre (4-9) |
| POST-OPERATIVE – POSE (sit) around TOPER (drunk) AT IV (four) | |
| 6 | Conservative begins Hard Times (6) |
| CRISES – C + RISES
Did not solve this one. |
|
| 7 | Fancy something strong to drink quickly (4,1,4) |
| LIKE A SHOT – LIKE (fancy) + A SHOT (something strong to drink) | |
| 8 | Divine young woman in towel commercial (5) |
| DRYAD – DRY (towel) + AD | |
| 10 | Panic spread beginning in economy, a turbulent flight? (13) |
| DISAPPEARANCE – anagram (turbulent) of PANIC SPREAD + first letter of ECONOMY + A | |
| 15 | A bit of skin cook sliced off sounds attractive (9) |
| APPEALING – homophone of A PEELING (bit of skin cook sliced off) | |
| 17 | Sphinxlike features Oscar saw cut in step (5,4) |
| POKER FACE – O (Oscar) + KERF (saw cut) in PACE
Thankfully I was able to get this without knowing KERF. |
|
| 18 | Round of applause a little generous (8) |
| HANDSOME – HAND (round of applause) + SOME (a little) | |
| 21 | Monster logically following that capsized ship (6) |
| OGRESS – ERGO (logically following that) reversed + SS | |
| 22 | What rambler does having lost new waterproof boot (5) |
| WADER – WANDER – N | |
| 24 | Female dressing, a stone lighter (5) |
| FLINT – F + LINT (dressing)
LINT is dressing for a wound. I did not know that. |
|
As we expect, easily the hardest of the week (haven’t managed to comment for a few days, but I’ve worked them all), and quite enjoyable. My LOI was SHOREWARD, and it took a minute to disentangle “due” and “to.” I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that I hadn’t quite parsed POKER FACE (“kerf”? WTF?!).
The surface for WESTIES seems inscrutable, but it looks to me like a failed &lit, with only part of the clue fitting both wordplay and definition. Was quite hesitant on that one.
I still don’t get how EROTICA is supposed to work. Biffed. …Oh, wait! I’ve suddenly understood your explanation.
Got WHANGAREI totally from the wordplay.
I think 26ac works just as well without ‘shaped’ as ‘abs’ are placed in that order within ‘at aerobics’. So just leave out those letters (wanting) and then an anagram of the rest.
Yep. It was confusing as worded.
49 minutes of struggle before I gave up and revealed SHOREWARD and CRISES. I don’t think I would have got either however long I spent as I’d never heard of the former and didn’t understand the parsing even after the reveal. Chambers gives 34 possible answers to fit the checkers C?I?E?. I had guessed there would be a lot and there was no way at that stage I was going to alphabet-trawl through them.
The only half-sense I can make of the surface at 28 would require the addition of an apostrophe: Little Scottish collar’s its, on reflection. The apostrophe s standing for is. Its then refers to the WESTIE dog in the answer.
I did in fact solve this puzzle without aids. I do like difficult puzzles, but was pressed for time since I was interrupted by a long phone call – I did stop the timer. I was worried because I couldn’t parse speckled and didn’t parse shoreward, but they were highly likely answers. Flint was my LOI, oh, it was really is a stone lighter.
Time: 55:02
DNF Your three and another four more. Time nearly two hours but the last hour was largely fruitless as I only solved two more.
In 25A I don’t think “showing” is part of the definition. A DRIVE-IN is simply a concern or place for the motorist.
Thanks Jeremy
I think it is if you consider drive-in movies.
Didn’t even see the showing related to movies. I saw a different showing concern in that they were concerned about the motorist. You are absolutely right. It is a “showing concern”
I get taken in too often by cryptic definitions
DO FOR was rather appropriate in this crossword as it certainly did for me. Some clever stuff once the answer came but some obscurities too. KERF was known to me as the width of the cut in a piece of wood after sawing through it, but PO(KERF)ACE was kindly clued so maybe you didn’t need to know. SHOREWARD was a NHO for me. TEA CLIPPER was a write-in for me having the most famous of them all in a case in my hallway, the CUTTY SARK. It and others carried tea from china and wool from Australia. The name originates from these ships trying to ‘clip’ time off their voyage to be the fastest.
You must have a mega-mansion in Greenwich if you’ve got Cutty Sark in your hallway. 😂
Well, I knew somebody would say it.
Strangely enough I found this, while extremely hard in places, a bit easier than the previous two days, and finished in 44.53 as opposed to being somewhere around 70. A difficult puzzle to blog and I am deeply indebted to Jeremy for explaining SHOREWARD, SHOP, REGISTER and POKER FACE. My LOI was CRISES and DO FOR, FLINT and WESTIE took a while too. On SPECK, isn’t ham smoked anyway? Or is it smoked again to make speck? And do I actually care?
From Blind Wille McTell:
There’s a woman by the river
With some fine young HANDSOME man
He’s dressed up like a squire
Bootleg whiskey in his hand
There’s a chain gang on the highway
I can hear them rebels yell
And I know no-one can, sing the blues like
Blind Willie McTell
DNF
Like Jack, I couldn’t get CRISES & SHOREWARD, although I saw how they worked once I saw the answers. (I actually thought of CRISIS, for some reason, but of course could make nothing of it.) NHO the NZ city, looked it up, so this would have been a DNF anyway. (I also looked up NHO SPECK to verify its existence.) I don’t recall a clue like EROTICA, with 3 separate letters deleted. I parsed WESTIE OK, but then couldn’t find a definitiion. All in all an unsatisfactory performance on an unsatisfying puzzle.
I can’t recall if it’s new for The Times, but the EROTICA device turns up regularly in The Guardian puzzle so I took it in my stride. They would normally signal the deletions by having for example ‘wanting abs’ without trying to refine it (and failing in my view) by adding ‘shaped’. It works nicely without: anagram [desperately] of aT AREObICs [wanting abs].
These sorts of clues are pretty common in Mephisto – we’re onto them!
31:06. I was also apparently well off the wavelength with this one, so much so that my time alone pushed the SNITCH up from 117 to 124! I do wonder if that rating is slightly skewed by a number of DNFs. In the end I was just pleased to finish, crawling over the line with LOI SHOREWARD.
My three unsolved after 20-odd minutes were APPEALING, SHOREWARD and REGISTER.
Phew – 19.23 and all green. It feels like a while since I’ve successfully ground one out, and I certainly didn’t fully understand VISCID or POKER FACE. I liked DISAPPEARANCE and SHOREWARD in particular.
Thanks both.
A real mixed bag. Some clues I found delightful (OOPS, VISCID), others less so (INARABLE – really? It is mentioned three times in the OED, once in the mid 17th century, after which it lay dormant for two hundred years until it caught the fancy of Thomas Carlyle who used it twice). Eventually finished in 25.57 with CRISES LOI.
“Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land,
“This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”
(The Lotus Eaters, Tennyson)
After 35 mins pre-brekker I gave up on Shoreward, convinced it was a word I don’t know for cannonball. We had already had Kerf and Whangarei, so it was reasonable to expect a further obscurity.
Otherwise, I chewed my way through it.
Ta setter and PJ.
19.45
Tricky, with a couple of plain guesses (WHANGAREI, INARABLE) and not helped by splitting 20ac as (6,4) rather than (4,6). I used to own a brace of WESTIEs, who were both HANDSOME and APPEALING – I suspect that clue was either a misprint or a failed attempt at an &lit.
LOI REGISTER
COD POST-OPERATIVE
24:54. Rather tricky, but fun. I had 4 left after about 16 1/2 minutes and took ages to work them out, my last two being CRISES and then SHOREWARDS, both of which needed an alphabet trawl for the light to dawn. DNK KERF or the NZ city. I didn’t see how “shaped” took part in the wordplay in 26A, but the answer was clear. I liked SHOP and WESTIE. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
DNF. Hit my 1 hour limit missing CRISES which in hindsight is fairly straightforward compared to VISCID, SHOREWARD, WHANGAREI and more which I did manage to construct.
COD POST-OPERATIVE
Thanks for the blog, must be hard work on days like this
Finished! 57 minutes, the last ten on VAPORETTO and VISCID. I might have known VIS in 1961, O level year. Not now. POKER FACE a biff. I know WESTIE is a West Highland Terrier and like a Scottie but the final bit of parsing escaped me too. Another tough one. Thank you Jeremy and setter.
This one felt like taking the piss.
About an hour.
Odd puzzle.
Thanks, pj.
Another DNF. Terrible week. Mucked up the easy ones, and got nowhere the last three days.
Starting afresh next week.
Well, I have DNFd.
Some of the clue bits here were beyond my ken, which I have now remedied thanks to this blog. Notebooks at the ready for next time!
WESTIE was weird, wasn’t it. It’s the bizarre syntax that does it for me, I’m afraid. I hope the poor thing isn’t wearing its collars at the same time. There’s no westie choking in our house.
DNF. After about 32 mins I had all but SHOREWARD to solve I think. I then started to question CRISES but eventually went with it and stuck in SHORELAND. I also had a careless mistatke with WHANGEREI.
Very tough! COD: RAITA.
No SHOREWARD after 26′.
Thanks jeremy and setter.
DNF. Ditto what other DNFs have said.
Thanks Jeremy for the blog.
Although I found that very hard, taking 48 minutes, I really enjoyed it. My last 3 in were SHOREWARD, CRISES and finally FLINT, and I see 2 of those I have in common with several other people. I had SHOREWARD in my head for several minutes as a possibility before finally getting how it worked, it was CRISES and FLINT that really slowed me down at the end both taking alphabet trawls.
Many thanks setter and blogger. Great puzzle
Because I finished this (in 24.03, less than yesterday) I feel free to say this was a cracker, with brilliant clues throughout. They had to be, for me to get WHANGAREI and INARABLE, which both look as though they were made up for the crossword (sorry and all that, inhabitants of Middle Earth).
Two exceptions: TEA CLIPPER is either a dodgy CD or it’s missing something, and WESTIE needs an editor’s mark-up “makes no sense – revise”.
Two particular stand-outs: “canal boat” and POST-OP for its fine surface reading and immaculate wordplay.
I saw TEA CLIPPER as a cryptic clue and rather a good one, so I’m not sure why it may be dodgy.
Well, I got the “leaves” bit giving TEA, but struggled to make the rest of the clue work, partly, of course, because I wanted something to indicate CLIPPER. Perhaps I expected too much, or at least more than “a type of ship that used to carry tea”.
Personal taste applies?
Yes,I didn’t think it was brilliant.
35:23
Tricky – several bits I didn’t know: VIS, KERF – have heard of WHANGAREI but not sure I would have spelt correctly without the wordplay. SHOREWARD built at length from the cryptic, which, after some delay, gave LOI CRISES.
Thanks PJ and setter
22:35 – the unknowns were guessable or were not needed for solving except (for me) Bartok’s first name which, fortunately, turned out not to be Leba. I rather liked WESTIE and the clipper, the latter being a decent enough CD and the doggie seeming to be an (admittedly slightly clunky) &lit, but on a relatively easy Friday I’m happy to cut the setter some slack.
DNF. Lots unparsed 1 blank. V hard IMO.
12a Raita. Had to be but I missed that meaning of side. DOH!
DNF 13a Shoreward. Blank. Looked it up here and that gave me 6d Crises as LOI.
14a Tea Clipper, biffed. I’m still in the dark.
NHO 22a Whangarei; cheated by looking at a map of NZ, and still failed to parse it.
23a Do For. Didn’t parse.
3d Inarable. Added to Cheating Machine. I don’t believe in this word, but if setters use it….
17d Poker Face. NHO kerf=cut, as I probably said last time it showed up.
Liked this one..
Nho Whangarei, but gettable. Nho kerf but didn’t even notice it until coming here, poker face went straight in. It does actually ring a vague bell now I think of it. Like swarf.
The Westie clue is an editing error, by the look of it.
Your Māori is better than mine. I’ve been to the place and still managed to spell it wrong!
12:50 Strangely I found that much easier than yesterday’s puzzle which took me more than twice as long. I’m not quite sure why. I’d never heard of a “kerf” or (I think) WHANGAREI, but the wordplay was very kind in both cases. I biffed quite a few (EROTICA, POKER FACE, BARTOK, etc.). On the controversial clues, I thought TEA CLIPPER was a very fine cryptic definition, though the TEA bit was pretty obvious. As for the annoying yappy things, I agree the clue was a bit clumsy but it kind of works (i.e. “its” = “belonging to it” with a suppressed verb “are”), so I’ll be charitable about that one. I very much like the two short clues (SHOP and OOPS), but I think my COD is EROTICA. Thanks setter (now those are proper dogs)!
Not the best puzzle to tackle when one’s been out to the works Christmas party, followed by escaping it with some colleagues of taste and hanging out in a speakeasy until 2:30am, I have to say.
On the down side, I fell back asleep three times during the solve. On the plus side I’d wisely booked off today as holiday so could push the time out to 90 minutes to finally, finally finish with CRISES/SHOREWARD. Mostly parsed, too.
I think the &lit def at 28 seemed to work for me without anything extra, assuming a WESTIE can own more than one collar?
Strangely, VISCID I put in at once without knowing the word but imagining that it existed and was related to viscous. Lots of more than M ERs: the clue for WESTIE is all over the place; INARABLE, really!; the unnecessary ‘shaped’ in the EROTICA clue; 13ac — if ‘shortly due’ is part of the wordplay it isn’t part of the definition unless it’s an &lit, which it isn’t. Why if you’re POST-OPERATIVE are you late out of theatre; surely you’re merely out of theatre? No surprise that I took 63 minutes; actually it wouldn’t have been a surprise even if the clues had been sound.
I also don’t get WESTIE, but the others are defensible.
INARABLE – if ‘arable’ is an adjective, it stands to reason that there’s an antonym. IN- is a common prefix for those, so why not?
EROTICA – this is just down to preference. I suspect it passed everyone by that the letters ABS appear in that order in the fodder word – but equally, people would have complained were there no secondary anagram indicator
SHOREWARD – ‘shortly due’ is indeed not part of the definition, which is just ‘to land’
POST-OPERATIVE – late as in ‘recently’, not as in ‘dead’
I know that INARABLE is a word. My point was that such a word is out of place in a daily cryptic. You’re right on SHOREWARD — I missed the definition and was seeing ‘land’ as a verb. Would people really have complained if there had been no anagram indicator for abs? The letters appear in order in aerobics. For POST-OPERATIVE I felt that ‘late’ was unnecessary.
It’s late in the sense of recent.
Two goes needed, but got there in the end.
– NHO VISCID and didn’t know vis=force, so I got lucky with my guess for the first vowel (I was thinking of the Visigoths, though I’m sure that has nothing to do with it)
– Was helped with SPECKLED by knowing that the German for bacon is Speck
– TEA CLIPPER went in with a shrug
– Had vaguely heard of WHANGAREI but needed the wordplay to confirm it
– I think the clue for WESTIE just about makes sense if you imagine there’s an ‘are’ between ‘collars’ and ‘its’… still not a fan of it, mind
– Didn’t parse POST-OPERATIVE
– Took ages to get CRISES, and even once it occurred to me, it was a while before I thought of a river rising to justify begins=rises
– Thought 22d might be referring to someone rambling in the sense of banging on, so for a while considered whether there might be a ‘bagon’ waterproof boot. WHANGAREI eventually pointed me towards WADER
Tough stuff. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
FOI Dryad
LOI Shoreward
COD Shop
I got most of them, but definitely a DNF because I revealed a couple during the solve after putting them in – I needed the assurance that all the crossers they gave were actually correct. I liked the idea behind Westie and Tea Clipper a bit more than the execution, and was less keen on the idea the idea behind the reward part of Shoreward. Thx, setter, multi-thanks jeremy
I gave this 40 minutes then decided to DNF as, like our blogger, I was getting nowhere with 13ac, my LOI (or would have been, had I seen it). The only word I could see here was SCORECARD, which was clearly not right. Otherwise I managed to find the answers with a fair degree of biffing. Not my favourite puzzle of the week.
FOI – VISCID
LOI – n/a
COD – DRYAD
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors.
31.05 WTE
A couple of very careless/stupid/unnecessary errors caused by biffing answers from all the checkers w/o properly reading the clues (EXOTICA and APPEASING).
Otherwise managed to crack SHOREWARD and then CRISES at the end after finally managing to justify the canal boat.
Liked it, though am in the “TEA CLIPPER doesn’t quite work” camp.
Bad luck Jeremy – blogging Friday’s really is not the easiest but your efforts are much appreciated.
Ps listening to Simon’s blog, strikes me there are some excellent surfaces here – FLINT and SHOREWARD and DO FOR for three
Pps I get the CLIPPER clue now and like it
SWAMI, RAITA and OOPS got me started. Then VAPORETTO materialised from the Grand Canal. That led to VISCUS which rapidly morphed into VISCID. Then the struggle started. Managed to assemble the unknown WHANGAREI and got POKER FACE without knowing KERF. Liked TEA CLIPPER, but was baffled, like others, by WESTIE, despite deriving it without too much difficulty. The real hold ups came in the NE. I eventually ground out SPECKLED, STICK BY and DRYAD and was left with 13a and 6d. These two accounted for quite some time, but I managed to spot the definition in the former, and already had SHOT in mind for cannonball, so SHOREWARD emerged from the mist. CRISES then followed. 40:50 for another marathon session. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
Was quite pleased to complete this in 44 mins only to find a stray VAPARETTO. Desperately trying to justify WELLY until I got DRIVE IN and everything else slotted into place.
Some nifty biffing brought me nearly home in good time, but SHOREWARD and CRISES defeated me. Had to look up Whangarei in a list of NZ cities.
FLINT was excellent.
65′-ish
Looked half asleep in the paddock, and on the course.
However, the 65 included everything getting parsed, and just the NZ metropolis and the notch in the mug taken on trust.
Busy, so haven’t been posting this week; so thanks to setters and bloggers for five thoroughly enjoyable diversions from the 27 blasted days of Christmas (what’s wrong with the traditional dozen?) the wireless thinks there are.
I’m with Z on this one, a cracker, and thanks for your efforts Jeremy.
I’ve scrolled through the comments hoping that someone can explain the definition in 28a. The answer, WESTIE, was obvious enough. A challenge today. 40 minutes.
I think the consensus is that it’s a not-quite-there &lit, and the “it’s” is supposed to provide the self-reference.
Haven’t done The Times cryptic for a few weeks, so was pleased to finish this in exactly 39 minutes. No holdups on the way. Surprised so many commenters are raising concerns 😉
After about 50 minutes I had just two to do, yep you’ve guessed it SHOREWARD and CRISES. I gave it until the hour came and then called it a day. An enjoyable puzzle nonetheless.
I managed to finish but with a typo. Held up for ages by putting in LHANGAREI which, I think, fits the wordplay better but is not actually a city in New Zealand. That made WADER impossible to get until I reconsidered. I’d never heard of WHANGAREI, and I’m sure for people that have it is a write-in. I struggled with the last two, SHOREWARD and CRISES (I took much longer on those two than Verlaine took to do the entire puzzle!). I didn’t know VISCID but it seemed plausible given that I did now viscous and what it means. I did know KERF which helped in POKER FACE. I didn’t know SPECK was a word in English but I did know it means bacon in German, so it seemed plausible it was smoked ham too. Confused by TEA CLIPPER since I assumed leaves gave TEA and then wondered how the rest of the clue gave CLIPPER. I was pretty weak as a cryptic definition. Luckily I have been on several VAPORETTOs or that one might have been a struggle.
22.06. A fast time by my standards, but another puzzle I found unsatisfying. I thought that the clue for ‘Westie’ was awful, and words like ‘inarable’ are, in my opinion, out of place in a daily cryptic. Fortuitously, I knew ‘Whangarei’ – which my elder daughter has visited – I believe that it is pronounced something like ‘Fungaray’, but, no doubt, others will, correct me if I’m wrong. My day was rescued by an exceptionally good puzzle in the Grauniad.
I had to look up Whangarai to check there was such a place, but otherwise fully agree with you. As on Thursday, much of the wordplay in this puzzle was clever, but laborious and not at all witty. But I did like SHOP – my COD.
Well over the hour and aids were used for some.
It was gratifying, therefore, to see that as good a blogger and solver as Plus Jeremy had some issues as well.
SHOREWARD and CRISES, two crossing clues, were the main culprits.
On the other hand, as I live in NZ, I was pleased to get something of a gimme in WHANGAREI, although I’ve never been there.
Thank you, Jeremy!
57 minutes, my excuse being a seasonally lubricated day – but I suspect I would have made heavy weather of it anyway. NHO kerf, took it on trust, and got Whangarei purely from wordplay. Didn’t realise at the time the function of ‘showing’ in 25 so it’s a better clue than I had thought! Just about happy with Westie, less so with tea clipper which seemed a bit loose.
55:54, really enjoyed this tough puzzle
Yes, this was very hard, but I did manage to solve it, in 57 minutes for everything but SHOREWARD, and in another 10 minutes today I finally managed to parse that and felt confident entering it. Quite a fun puzzle (that equates to hard, fair and successful).
A real slog as shown by the fact my last 2 have only just been solved! SHOREWARD and REGISTER. Not my cup of tea really. Thanks blogger