39:50, though the time is irrelevant as the puzzle was solved casually over dinner and drinks by myself and three other (in?)famous NYC solvers, who will make themselves known if they wish. (Perhaps even photograph evidence will be supplied.)
I thought this was an absolutely spectacular puzzle, with some really creative and fooling wordplay.
| Across | |
| 1 | Surviving letter to the Corinthians that’s unknown within New Testament (6) |
| EXTANT – ETA (letter to the Corinthians) with (that has) X (unknown) in (within) NT (New Testament)
Last week’s puzzle forced me to learn that this particular letter is 7th in the Greek alphabet. |
|
| 4 | Cat chased by dogs, possibly very fast ones (8) |
| WHIPPETS – WHIP (cat) + (chased by) PETS (dogs, possibly)
A reference to ‘cat o’-nine-tails’. |
|
| 10 | Take apart a French composer (7) |
| UNRAVEL – UN (a [in] French) RAVEL (composer) | |
| 11 | Small marsupial droppings collecting round hill (7) |
| POTOROO – POO (droppings) around (collecting) O (round) TOR (hill)
My compatriot gifted me this one. I think this would be quite hard if you’ve never heard of it before, since there are many parsings possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potoroo |
|
| 12 | Take in room in hospital round (4) |
| DRAW – WARD (room in hospital) reversed (round)
Easy, I suppose, but the setter clearly intended to mislead us here. |
|
| 13 | Parisian is by mountains in Australia [in] colourful outer layer (6,4) |
| ORANGE ZEST – EST (Parisian ‘is’) + (by) RANGE (mountains) in OZ (Australia) | |
| 15 | Better half of pop song a hit [in] language of SW India (9) |
| MALAYALAM – MA (better half of pop) LAY (song) A LAM (hit)
‘Better half of pop’ is just one of many lovely phrasings from the setter. |
|
| 16 | French oil producer [having] Renault’s front end checked by dipstick (5) |
| COROT – first letter (front end) of RENAULT in (checked by) COOT (dipstick)
Beautiful definition. Thanks to my compatriot for this one as well. |
|
| 18 | First light turning ornamental cherry tree leaves red to begin with (5) |
| SUNUP – reversal of (turning) PRUNUS (ornamental cherry tree) – (leaves) first letter of (to begin with) RED | |
| 19 | Retired fireman working with a special buzzer on the wall? (5,4) |
| MASON WASP – reversal of (retired) SAM (fireman) + ON (working) + (with) A SP (special)
These build their hives in walls, on occasion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fireman_Sam |
|
| 21 | Possibly flyer’s getting new blue cape (10) |
| PROMONTORY – PROMO (possibly flyer) + (‘s getting) N (new) TORY (blue) | |
| 23 | Leave hastily [from] self-catering apartment on vacation (4) |
| SCAT – S/C (self-catering) APARTMENT with middle letters removed (on vacation)
We were all quite surprised to find S/C in the dictionary. Perhaps someone can fill us in as to the appropriate usage. |
|
| 26 | Bats vanish after entrance of knight errant (7) |
| KNAVISH – anagram of (bats) VANISH after first letter (entrance) of KNIGHT | |
| 27 | Elation about little piggy’s growth? (7) |
| TOENAIL – ELATION anagrammed (about)
This is lovely! Another one supplied by my compatriot. So good, I’m surprised it’s not a chestnut. |
|
| 28 | Worthless loco finally retired from sweet old railway (8) |
| NUGATORY – last letter of (finally) LOCO removed (retired) from NOUGAT (sweet) O (old) RY (railway) | |
| 29 | British School [of] Language in Rennes (6) |
| BRETON – BR (British) ETON (school) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | One of the horses departs after stock’s reduced (5) |
| EQUID – D (departs) after EQUIP (stock) with last letter removed (reduced) | |
| 2 | Seafarer with apostolic brief that may help him weather the storm (9) |
| TARPAULIN – TAR (seafarer) + (with) PAULINE (apostolic) without the last letter (brief) | |
| 3 | Service vehicle pulled up on side of motorway (4) |
| NAVY – VAN (vehicle) reversed (pulled up) + (on) last letter (side) of MOTORWAY | |
| 5 | Husband may put up with pony for a term (e.g. pony as horse) (7) |
| HYPONYM – H (husband) + MAY reversed (put up) with PONY instead of (for) A
Chambers has: one of a group of terms whose meanings are included in the meaning of a more general term. |
|
| 6 | Pants erupt with smell [becoming] foul (10) |
| PUTRESCENT – anagram of (pants) ERUPT + (with) SCENT (smell)
Also tricky, as there are other parsings possible (eg, anagram of PANTS SMELL). |
|
| 7 | Inaccessible place for brooding heroine touring India (5) |
| EYRIE – EYRE (heroine) around (touring) I (India)
This was one of my first in, and this definition was my first indication that the setter truly has a gift. |
|
| 8 | Baseball infielder[’s] two items of clothing (9) |
| SHORTSTOP – SHORTS TOP (two items of clothing)
Biffable (for an American, anyway) from the first word of the clue, and the final P. |
|
| 9 | Heartlessly knock down powerless friend — no longer buddy? (6) |
| FLORAL – FL{o}OR + {p}AL
Another great definition. |
|
| 14 | Person orchestrating hypnotism set to start with suspect (10) |
| SYMPHONIST – HYPNOTISM + first letter of (to start with) SET anagrammed (suspect) | |
| 15 | Scots are unaware of packages Southern Post Office delivered in error (9) |
| MISSPOKEN – MISKEN ([in] Scots: are unaware of) around (packages) S (southern) PO (post office) | |
| 17 | The knowhow to drive land yacht? (9) |
| ROADCRAFT – ROAD (land) CRAFT (yacht [? = for example])
This was my original parsing, but after the fact we looked up LAND YACHT… and it’s a thing! Hyphenated in Chambers, but I think this may qualify as a double definition, the second by example. [Follow-up: It’s appears un-hyphenated in Collins.] |
|
| 19 | Monsieur visiting his dear one who perhaps arranged their meeting (7) |
| MATCHER – M (monsieur) AT (visiting) CHER (his dear one)
I liked this one, and it would have been easier, but I felt sure that M had to be placed inside (“visiting”) CHER, with some other letters I couldn’t conjure up. |
|
| 20 | Pomeranian dog quaffing river spray (6) |
| SPRITZ – SPITZ (Pomeranian dog) around (quaffing) R (river) | |
| 22 | Primate managed to intercede in self-inflicted blunder (5) |
| ORANG – RAN (managed) in (to intercede in) OG (self-inflicted blunder [= Own Goal]) | |
| 24 | One of several sharp nails left alongside fences (5) |
| TALON – hidden (fences) in LEFT ALONGSIDE | |
| 25 | Deride junior ingesting double dose of ecstasy (4) |
| JEER – JR (junior) around (ingesting) two copies (double dose) of E (ecstasy)
Possibly the easiest clue in the puzzle! |
|
DNF, defeated by COROT and SPRITZ.
Instead of COROT, I put ‘carot’, thinking that a carrot is a kind of stick that you could dip into something like hummus, that ‘checked’ can mean removed, and that there must have been a painter called Carot (I’ve never heard of Corot or coot=dipstick). For SPRITZ, I put ‘sprute’, thinking spute might be from sputum which you can spit out or spray… the more I think about it now, the more ludicrous it gets. It was my LOI, and by that stage I was in “Whatever, I’ll just go for it” territory.
I also slowed myself down by putting ‘steed’ for 1d, thinking stock=steer. I even got as far as putting in ‘enravel’ for 10a despite knowing it didn’t really work, and it was only once I was completely stumped by having 1a as S_T_N_ that I reconsidered and got EQUID and UNRAVEL.
– Relied on the wordplay for the unknown POTOROO
– Eventually pieced together MALAYALAM, helped by finally doing whatever the opposite of lift and separate is to see what ‘Better half of pop’ was doing
– Had no idea how SUNUP worked as I’d never heard of Prunus
– Constructed the equally unfamiliar MASON WASP from wordplay
– As Jeremy noted might happen, I wasted time trying to make an anagram of ‘pants smell’ before realising it was only a partial anagram and getting PUTRESCENT
Very tough (for me at least). Thanks Jeremy and setter.
COD Floral
How Verlaine managed this in 6.24 minutes is beyond me, when most of those solvers who have fairly quick times (by my standards) took quite a while and I took 76 minutes. There were several words that had to be looked up (HYPONYM, POTOROO, SCAT, SPITZ, SPRITZ, and that mountain range in Australia that ended in V — completely fooled here) but it was a very good crossword and it was all clear enough in retrospect. I too thought there was a green paint quality to ORANGE ZEST (although if it had been lemon zest, which seems more of a pukka cookery item, it would have been OK).
Well, Mark Goodliffe is giving the Friday masterclass on YouTube, and he is cracking each clue as he reads it. Since he’s giving a class, he is going slow and explaining his thinking on each clue, but he solves each one right away. This puzzle simply crumbles under his awesome solving power.
9:25. Good workout. Made up COROT from the wordplay.
54 minutes. Excellent puzzle. Just as well I remembered MALAYALAM as I never did work out the wordplay and the parsing of TARPAULIN also stumped me. HYPONYM and MASON WASP both NHO but gettable from wordplay. The pangram was no help in solving and if anything already having the Z in ORANGE ZEST made me slower in getting SPRITZ, my POI. I think David Sullivan above has the correct intended sense of LAND YACHT as a large (usually American but can be from Europe) car. There’s a v. good Wikipedia page on the topic with pics; love that 1974 Chrysler New Yorker.
Favourite among many goodies was the ‘no longer buddy?’ def for 9d.
A DNF as I had to use aids, and inadvertently failed to fill in EQUID at all, never mind actually solve it.
Despite enjoying the challenge there are (for me) a trio of iffy definitions. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, but nonetheless…
‘First light’ is quite a bit earlier than ‘sunup’ in my book.
Surely a ‘symphonist’ does far more than merely orchestrate?
And how on Earth does ‘road’ denote ‘land’ in ROADCRAFT? The setter could have punned on the nautical sense of ‘ROAD’ (a protected anchorage) to confuse us more.
All that said, an enjoyable and impressive puzzle.
A delightful puzzle. Plenty of clever clueing, and though much of it was very testing, it was never out of reach. All done in 41 minutes, good for me for a Friday. The NHOs POTOROO, MALAYALAM, ROADCRAFT, could all be worked out from the clueing. More please.
FOI – EXTANT
LOI – HYPONYM
COD – MASON WASP
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors.
DNF, far too many aids needed (and a few reveals) to get to the end. French not my 2nd language, though I did get a few of them. Thanks team Jeremy and setter!
39.17
Left with COROT and SPRITZ at the end but got them, making the COOT assumption for the former and just a lucky guess for the latter as I’m still not sure how it = SPRAY.
“Better half of pop/song” was genius
Thanks Jeremy and setter
‘Spritz’ is a verb I associate with little devices to lightly water indoor plants using a spray. But I think you could equally have a spritz of perfume or whatnot.
Superb puzzle where the wasp defeated me xxafter 51 minutes of absorbed struggle. I had heard of a mason lamp and though I could not parse it I could find nothing else to fit the checkers. I should have realised with this setter that not a word is used without being necessary and that the with meant w.
Superb clues with very generous wordplay which meant that the unknowns potoroo and corot could be entered with confidence.
Thx Jeremy (and assistants) and setter
It makes me wonder why I bother when I grind to a halt and read the explanations of the answers. All I can say is that there are some very clever and knowledgeable people out there and you have my respect and admiration!
13:13. Great puzzle, quite difficult but I never got completely stuck. Helped by happening to have most of the knowledge. I didn’t know the wasp and wouldn’t have been able to define HYPONYM for you.
I’m unsure about ROADCRAFT. I think ‘a craft that might go on a road’ works, although it’s a bit oblique. The big American car explanation is more direct but works less well with the word ‘craft’. Oh well, the answer was clear.
Terrific puzzle, too good for me. Equid, draw and orange zest not solved after 30 mins. Toenail, corot were brilliant. I thought Orange Vest might be some obscure Tour De France award- queen of the mountains or something. Knew Malayalam through its being the longest palindrome. Hyponym a new one on me.
24:27. A lovely puzzle completed after a day of apricity (an underused word that perfectly describes today’s enjoyment) in the frosty Suffolk countryside. Last two in EQUID and EXTANT. I never noticed the pangram or I might have found the Q quicker. I loved the “better half of pop” and “oil producer” which I only understood when I liked up M Corot post-solve. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Had to look that up…
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/winter-words
Definition
: the warmth of the sun in winter
About the Word
This word provides us with evidence that even if you come up with a really great word, and tell all of your friends that they should start using it, there is a very small chance that it will catch on. Apricity appears to have entered our language in 1623, when Henry Cockeram recorded (or possibly invented) it for his dictionary The English Dictionary; or, An Interpreter of Hard English Words. Despite the fact that it is a delightful word for a delightful thing it never quite caught on, and will not be found in any modern dictionary aside from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Example
“These humicubations, the nocturnal irrorations, and the dankishness of the atmosphere, generated by a want of apricity, were extremely febrifacient.” Lorenzo Altisonant (aka Samuel Klinefelter Hoshour), Letters to Squire Pedant, 1856
Another Good Friday
No time as I solve on paper in bits and pieces. I was very pleased to get all without aids – from the excellent clues – including a few unknowns such as Equid and Hyponym. However, the final clue defeated me – I had never heard of our French artist COROT and I could not see past dipstick = CLOT rather than COOT nor from the agricultural meaning of oil producer rather than the artistic one. Doh!
As CLROT was an unlikely oil crop I gave up and consulted Jeremy et al.
Thanks to setter and the NY Solving Coven.
Finished it, but with one wrong letter, as I biffed in EERIE.
Very tough, but some lovely clues. I got MASON WASP from the wordplay, and 1d was the last in when I realised we hadn’t had a Q for the pangram.
Frustrated to be in the OWL club.
Thanks for explaining the MALAYALAM clue.
Thanks Setter!
42.13 and very pleased to finish. Some fiendish, some clever and one so glaringly obvious it was my second last in- draw, argh.
Potoroo, malayalam and mason wasp were my favourites. LOI equid.
Thanks setter and blogger- hope the hangover isn’t too bad? The weekend already looking brighter if not warmer.
DNF by a mile. Too many NHOs:EQUID, MASON WASP, MALAYALAM, POTOROO, HYPONYM,SPRITZ… to have any chance of completing more than a third of it. Disheartening.
I cannot say that I like it when there are so many pretty obscure words in one crossword. Mason Wasp…
After 48 mins of struggling, eventually defeated by COROT.
76′-ish
Started slowly and got progressively slower.
I’d surmised we might be in for a Queen Alexandra Stakes, but this turned out to be a proper Pardubická, with all of its banks ditches and stretches of ploughed field. However, got there in the end with all parsed but havered over equid; having been scotched by teasing near-pangrams in the past, I was wary, but eventually concluded that this setter would finish the job.
I’ve always admired Corot’s landscapes but wouldn’t want one on my wall; they all make me feel cold.
A very enjoyable challenge; many thanks to setter and Jeremy.
DNF
I had biffed FLIT instead of SCAT, which made ROADCRAFT impossible to see. NHO COROT, and was wondering whether CLORT was the name of a plant that could be pressed for oil.
Thanks Jeremy and setter
DNF, having spent more than an hour, and a half more on the last two – COROT and ROADCRAFT, which I was convinced was an anagram, as all the later crossers appeared to support. If I’d only thought of the possibility of oil producer being a painter, I’d have got this, as I did know Corot, although I couldn’t name any of his paintings; that might have led me to the correct/only possible answer for 17d. In my defence, I think it a poor clue, as ROAD doesn’t = land, so the clue can’t be solved purely from wordplay, unlike most of the other ‘unknowns’ which I did get, and with much satisfaction. Other than that, an excellent puzzle and thorough workout.
59 minutes. It was indeed a superb puzzle with delightfully misleading phrasings all over the place (“no longer buddy!”, for example). For PUTRESCENT, I put in the first half right away and then tried to figure out how FYING might mean “smell” (I didn’t see SCENT until the very end, for some reason). My LOIs were the wonderful EXTANT followed by EQUID, and then I needed COROT to convince my that 17 dn really would be ROADCRAFT. But I didn’t catch why he was an oil producer. At first the only dipstick I could think of was CLOT, but it’s hard to insert an R into that. COD to FLORAL, but all the rest was very very good as well.
Yesterday’s forecasts of a stinker round the corner were correct! Fell asleep at one point so can’t give a time but all correct except Malayalam which I stupidly misspelt as ‘Malayslam’ – although it’s come up before. NHO hyponym but got it from the very clever wordplay.
37.56. I don’t quite know how I got through this with all green squares, but I’ll take it. Several unknowns, but the wordplay led to the correct answers.
I know I’m a day late reacting to this. I failed with 4 clues and am still pleased. I don’t use aids so had to do some biffing on what, for me, was a really tough puzzle.
Hats off to those who complete this unaided.
45:55 fail
Entered MASON LAMP having NHO the wasp, and looked up another NHO COROT – didn’t think of COOT. ROADCRAFT wasn’t very good I thought as land yachts don’t travel on roads – David Sullivan’s comment about it being a term for a big American car, if true, is a bit disappointing – uncommon American slang in a British crossword, pah!
Thanks Jeremy and setter
COD to 16 for the misdirection , ‘oil producer’ indeed.
Biffed Clappers at 4 across made hyponym impossible. Should have rethought as an H clearly needed.
Gave up on 1 down, didn’t notice the pangram.
Thank you setter for a challenge, and blogger for much needed explications.
I’m always surprised by how many learned solvers have not heard of fabulous artists such as Corot! Unlike I p’Doh above I love having him on my wall ( not originals!). The clues that defeated me were ones I’d NHO, like MASON WASP , EQUID and HYPONYM. However, pleasantly occupied for over an hour , and had fun with it. CODs to FLORAL, MALAYALAM and COROT for their misdirection in definitions.