Quite mentally tired from working on math homework for several hours, I decided to stream myself solving here (https://www.twitch.tv/plusjeremy) to force myself awake. Just before 29 minutes, I had a guess for the last answer, but it looked absurd. I then proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes trying every other possibility, before finally looking up the answer, only to discover that my first guess was right.
| Across | |
| 1 | Heard private detective cry out for Magnum? (3,5) |
| ICE CREAM – homophone of EYE SCREAM
We have Magnum bars here. Nice surface. |
|
| 5 | Caught tenor playing musical instrument (6) |
| CORNET – anagram of C TENOR | |
| 9 | Crafts turning north, back around port (9) |
| STRANRAER – ARTS reversed + N + REAR reversed
Infuriating. |
|
| 11 | Pupil that displeases me with low grades (5) |
| TUTEE – TUT + E + E | |
| 12 | Crush Charlie and speed inside school (7) |
| SCRUNCH – C + RUN in SCH | |
| 13 | Parts of service briefly show successful periods (7) |
| TEACUPS – TEAC{h} + UPS | |
| 14 | One facilitating temporary connections in current affairs? (9,4) |
| CROCODILE CLIP – cryptic definition
I think we call these alligator clips here. Points to me for getting this despite being an American. |
|
| 16 | Following pressure, virile boy hit out in a forbidding way? (13) |
| PROHIBITIVELY – P + anagram of VIRILE BOY HIT | |
| 20 | Press dismissed resolve (4,3) |
| IRON OUT – IRON + OUT | |
| 21 | Dog wearing smile, not inclined toward being recalled (7) |
| GRIFFON – OFF (not inclined toward) reversed, in GRIN | |
| 23 | Heads off idle remarks about quotes in Arabic dialect (5) |
| IRAQI – first letters of IDLE REMARKS ABOUT QUOTES | |
| 24 | Din, daily one, semi-uncertain (9) |
| CHARIVARI – CHAR + I + VARI{able}
More points. |
|
| 25 | Attempt to keep close in (6) |
| TRENDY – TRY around END | |
| 26 | British, with the exception of Times readers, comment on expulsion? (5,3) |
| BLESS YOU – B + LESS YOU (with the exception of Times readers) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Forcefully demand where publicity should go to expose sadist (6) |
| INSIST – AD goes “in SIST” to make SADIST | |
| 2 | Dropping cover, tearaways blunder (5) |
| ERROR – {t}ERROR{s} (tearaways) | |
| 3 | Meet in Turin on base (3,4) |
| RUN INTO – anagram (base) of TURIN ON | |
| 4 | Article Cambridge’s lead historian possibly carbon dated wrongly (13) |
| ANACHRONISTIC – AN + anagram of C{ambridge} HISTORIAN + C | |
| 6 | Indignation of Republican consumed by loss of power? (7) |
| OUTRAGE – R in OUTAGE | |
| 7 | Innocent outing ruined — this’ll upset everybody, ultimately (3,6) |
| NOT GUILTY – anagram of OUTING + last letters of THIS’LL UPSET EVERYBODY | |
| 8 | Believer in divine wisdom hopes to fake death at the end (8) |
| THEOSOPH – anagram of HOPES TO + {deat}H | |
| 10 | Means to hold up a bank? (9,4) |
| RETAINING WALL – cryptic definition | |
| 14 | Brown bird eating nuts thrown over fence at the back (9) |
| CHOCOLATE – CHAT around LOCO reversed + {fenc}E | |
| 15 | One’s positive Tim’s wearing cycling top (8) |
| OPTIMIST – TIM IS in TOP, with letters cycled | |
| 17 | Setter strove to get hold of gold supplied with teeth (7) |
| IVORIED – I VIED around OR | |
| 18 | Draws forth a lot of criticism about supporting priest (7) |
| ELICITS – STIC{k} reversed under ELI | |
| 19 | Fashionable model joins university, occupying appropriate position (2,4) |
| IN SITU – IN + SIT + U | |
| 22 | Stupid criticism — end of story (5) |
| FLAKY – FLAK + {stor}Y | |
Quite hard in places, and occasionally easy.
6d Outrage. Thinking this was a repeat of yesterday’s I put in OUTAGE only to find it too short.
8d Theosoph not in Cheating Machine, added.
17d Ivoried not in CM, added.
Your CM must be getting quite big! Won’t you just end up eventually with Collins Dictionary?
Well there are 178,563 words and 32,092 phrases, so nothing like the OED, and I only want words that setters are going to use. I suppose it will eventually approach Collins if that is their go-to dictionary. I am unaware that I can buy Collins in electronic form? And I’m not going to scan every page!
I have the Chambers app on my phone and laptop, which is nothing short of a delight. If that fails, I check collinsdictionary.com.
Thanks plusjeremy. When I said I wanted it in electronic form I meant as a text file. I might be able to mine a file out of the app, but it is quite hard work doing that.
Stranraer will be very familiar to anyone that vaguely follows lower-league Scottish football, or anyone who has taken the Ferry to Larne, so this was a write-in for me! It partially makes up for all those clues involving obscure composers and poets that I struggle with.
I seem to recall that charivari was an alternative name for Punch magazine. Glad to finish a crossword on a Friday (unable to play golf today).
I thinkt I remember it retaining the name as a column in its death throes in the 1980s.
“The London Charivari” it used to say beneath the title.
28:07
With ICE CREAM, CORNET, CHOCOLATE, FLAKY – I wonder if there is a 99 theme going on here?
CROCODILE CLIP delayed me a bit, as I was convinced some kind of PLUG would be the answer; this also delayed seeing THEOSOPH.
Thanks Jeremy and setter
21:16
A very quick Friday for me. I was on-message for most of this but then struggled to get the last few with TEACUPS being the last in. CHARIVARI only known from a previous appearance, GRIFFON I think appeared recently, and I’d heard of STRANRAER only from watching the classified football results at my Nan’s in the 80’s.
A fun solve and it was nice to finish the week off on a high having struggled mightily earlier on.
Nice puzzle. Didn’t see the sADist, and still don’t see how EYE is private detective. Private Eye is, but not eye? Am I missing something?
Alligator clips in my part of the world, griffon NHO even though I like dogs, but all in vain as one wrong: tea RUNS. Back in the day the tea lady used to wheel her cart around all the offices, offering (for a price) coffee – and tea! – and sundry sticky buns etc. One of my contemporaneous friends complained that every day just before she arrived at his office, one of his more senior colleagues used to visit him and do a disgusting fart. Funny what you remember from 40 or 50 years ago.
There’s dictionary support for EYE being acceptable shorthand for PRIVATE EYE
18 – the dog came to mind faster than FLAKY, which added a good two minutes to my time. I didn’t sort out INSIST until coming here so thanks for that.
On wavelength. 14’30” or so on Dublin airport bus. Remember CHARIVARI from early music ensemble Charivari Agreable. Wasn’t it originally a banging of pans to express communal anger at a miscreant? Many thanks
Quick for me on a Friday. I wasn’t on the wavelength today with the two cryptic definitions just not clicking. Relied heavily on the crossers for them. Last one in CHARIVARI which is a word I knew but couldn’t remember what it meant. Is that a NHO?
Good start with ICE CREAM (Magnum White is my favourite coincidently) and CORNET in within seconds. I had “You scream, I scream etc) in my head for the rest of the puzzle though.
Really liked ANACHRONISTIC
Thankfully a few levels of difficulty below last weeks offering.
Didn’t understand INSIST, these reverse clues always defeat me. So thanks for the blog!
Maddening. I can’t get any sound from my speakers although they worked perfectly well before I disconnected them to have my computer repaired, so I saw but never heard Jeremy. No real problems here. Knew Stranraer from the football results but couldn’t have told you it was a port. Had some doubts about flaky = stupid, not how I use the word but no doubt the dictionaries support it. 31 minutes.
[Later: they’re working now. In desperation I rang the shop and talked to Sunil, who sorted it. Strange, because he told me to do exactly what I had done.]
12:13. I felt I was making heavy weather of this, an impression confirmed by the SNITCH. No unknowns though, just cluing that was well-designed to fool me, which is the whole point of course. So I liked it.
Several people have commented that 10dn is barely cryptic, but it was more than cryptic enough to fool me. It took me an embarrassingly long time to get away from rivers when trying to figure out the literal.
Excellent puzzle but the NHO GRIFFON defeated me. I had GRIFFIN as “being recalled” could not see where IFF or FFI had any relation to dog but had nothing else so in it went. I could never have arrived at the right answer by that wordplay even though it was completely fair. Well done setter.
Thx Jeremy
DNF, back in OWL Club with GRIFFIN rather than GRIFFON (I’ve heard of the former but not the latter, so even though it didn’t parse, in it went).
– No problem with STRANRAER thanks to knowing enough about Scottish football
– Remembered CHARIVARI from previous crosswords
– Can’t recall seeing THEOSOPH before, but it looked likely and I eventually managed to parse it
– Same doubts as Will Ransome over FLAKY – to me it means someone who’s unreliable (e.g. you arrange to meet up with them and then they cancel at the last minute or just don’t show up)
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
COD Anachronistic
My sister-in-law, from Sheffield, actually pronounces “ice-cream as “I Scream” – and cannot (or, at least refuses to) hear the difference.
I scream, You scream, We all scream for Ice Cream !
(I don’t know where Grandma H got that from.)
First weekly full house for me for some time, but today was the first day this week that my WITCH dipped under 100.
LOI was THEOSOPH after CROCODILE CLIP ousted the THEISTIC that I had biffed. Remembered CHARIVARI, assumed GRIFFON was a dog, and didn’t get INSIST, though very much like it now that Jeremy has explained it, for which thanks are offered.
15:34
I thought this comparatively easy for a Friday, all done in 36 minutes with no issues and all parsed. I was held up at 14ac; I soon saw what the setter was driving at, but got it into my head that the second word was PLUG until wiser counsels prevailed. Like Square leg, I was reminded of Punch magazine by 24ac. It was essential schoolboy reading in the distant 1960s. As I recall, each issue included a column headed Charivari, though I never had a clue what it meant then and was too idle to check. They had some excellent competitions for readers, the winning entry for one of which, on the retelling of biblical stories, started ‘Lord God, the well-known property millionaire …’ Happy days.
FOI – CORNET
LOI – TEACUPS
COD – CROCODILE CLIPS
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors – and good luck with the math.
30’00”
Finished well, but found enough traffic in the straight to not trouble the leaders.
Still, a fairly comfortable double digit Witch with all parsed, thanks to Punch, Grandma Edith (I checked too many of her pools coupons to be troubled by Stanraer) and Cambridge chapels; my thinking here was wolly, but I’ve seen so many combinations of griff-ons/-ins, wyverns, and greyhounds to convince myself that it might be a dog. Were the greyhounds something to do with the Beauforts ?
Good Friday fun; thank you setter and Jeremy. Good luck; once you’re safely Dr. J, I could do wirh some help with some troublesome projectional harmonic sets.
Very pleased to solve all bar STRANRAER and TEACUPS, both of which I should have worked out. New to me were THEOSOPH, CHARIVARI (once seen/heard never forgotten!) and the dog breed GRIFFON. Very enjoyable. Thanks for the blog and thanks to setter.
Surprised there have been no objections to flaky = stupid. I thought it meant unreliable or of a nervous disposition . It’s not complimentary but nor does it mean lacking intelligence
Everyone seems to have remembered CHARIVARI from previous crosswords except for me. As I failed to think of FLAKY for 22dn, opting in desperation for FUSSY, I ended up with the nonsensical CHARIMSEI for 24ac. As these were my last two in, a dismal failure at the final fence.
They were the two I failed on. I also added the anagram of SEMI to CHARI, and bunged in FUSSY
In trying to save time I put in unparsed GRIFFIN, d’oh.
Didn’t like TEACUPS, but it was part of a service, so it had to go in.
In spite of the fact that I KNOW when I can’t get a clue i have to start from the other end, i failed to get teacups! And Charivari, was trying to get semi into the answer! Very good time tho! Thanks Carolyn
Failed on the CHARIVARI FLAKY intersection. I had Chariesmi and Fussy. I don’t understand FLAKY being a synonym of stupid. I hope to remember CHARIVARI for future crosswords.
Thanks Jeremy and setter
Whisper it gently, but I thought this was um. . .rather good?
But don’t tell anyone else I said that. I’ll deny it. I wouldn’t want to be thought of as suddenly going all soft.