45:01. I found this hard, and if my suspicions are correct, most UK solvers will not agree with me: I had the distinct feeling that this puzzle required more UK-specific knowledge than most. (Which is quite all right, of course!) I enjoyed many of these clues — even more after I’d taken the time to parse them!
| Across | |
| 1 | What banks account for every individual (4) |
| EACH – EH (what) around (banks) AC (account) | |
| 3 | Further crimes DA laid on Irishman (3,3,4) |
| AID AND ABET – DA BET (laid) after (on) AIDAN (Irishman)
‘Further’ is a verb in the answer. |
|
| 9 | One newly risen, standard planet waning in the east (7) |
| PARVENU – PAR (standard) + VENUS (planet) without the last letter (waning in the east)
Shame on me for thinking Earth and Pluto were the only planets with five letters. |
|
| 11 | Fruit trees one foot, two feet or more? (7) |
| PAWPAWS – PAW (one foot) PAWS (two feet or more?)
I had wanted the answer to have something to do with metrical feet. And I thought “fruit trees…” would be PEAR or PLUM around I FT or something like that. The answer was much simpler than that! |
|
| 12 | Educate minors, running teaching programmes? (13) |
| DOCUMENTARIES – EDUCATE MINORS anagrammed (running) | |
| 14 | Writer returning only some of one’s Biros (5) |
| IBSEN – hidden reversed (returning only some of) ONE’S BIROS
Was held up for a bit by having written in ISBEN! |
|
| 15 | Spin gets Diane named for office (9) |
| DESIGNATE – anagram of (spin) GETS DIANE
We are looking for the adjective form of the word, as in “chairman designate”, etc. The part of speech here tripped me up for a long time! |
|
| 17 | Powerless factory mobilised human element (9) |
| LANTHANUM – PLANT (factory) – P (powerless) + anagram of (mobilised) HUMAN | |
| 19 | Large hunter chasing game lasts for one hour (5) |
| TIGER – TIG (chasing game) + last letters of (lasts for) ONE HOUR
Didn’t even come close to seeing the wordplay during my solve. |
|
| 21 | Shared understanding lumberjack’s work, receiving down payment (6,7) |
| FELLOW FEELING – FELLING (lumberjack’s work) around (receiving) LOW (down) FEE (payment) | |
| 24 | Issue chap had going behind wife’s back (7) |
| EMANATE – MAN (chap) ATE (had) after (going behind) last letter of (‘s back) WIFE | |
| 25 | After taking everything off, grand party game (7) |
| NETBALL – NET (after taking everything off) BALL (grand party)
I liked this clue very much. |
|
| 26 | Ship’s computer voided floppy in good time, twice each orbit? (4-6) |
| HALF-YEARLY – HAL (ship’s computer) + F{lopp}Y (voided) + EARLY (in good time)
Really liked this one as well. |
|
| 27 | That woman’s daughters drive together (4) |
| HERD – HER (that woman’s) D (daughters) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Spring practice in bare feet, footwear for summer? (10) |
| ESPADRILLE – SPA (spring) DRILL (practice) in {f}EE{t} (bare)
Another great one, marred only by the fact that the answer was fairly easy to see with the right checker or two. |
|
| 2 | Coach service of use during strike [in] capital (7) |
| CARACAS – CAR (coach) ACAS (service of use during strike)
I don’t know much about ACAS, but you can read about it here. |
|
| 4 | Fertiliser put on south of island wiped out reptile species (9) |
| IGUANODON – GUANO (fertiliser) DON (put on) below (south of) I (island) | |
| 5 | Most influential Davos summit has finished early (5) |
| ALPHA – ALP (Davos summit) HA{s} (finished early) | |
| 6 | Having second decision-making structure in case of dissent, the Westminster way (7,6) |
| DOWNING STREET – OWNING (having) S (second) TREE (decision-making structure) in D{issen}T (case of)
Probably a write-in for everyone but me. |
|
| 7 | Smile, and date in the audience waves from the side (4,3) |
| BEAM SEA – BEAM (smile) + (and) homophone of (in the audience) SEE (date)
It means, ‘waves from the side’. |
|
| 8 | Facial hair you shouldn’t have? Say no more (4) |
| TASH – TA (you shouldn’t have) SH (say no more)
Liked this one too! |
|
| 10 | Man on top first, change lady under him liked initially (6,7) |
| EDMUND HILLARY – anagram of (change) LADY UNDER HIM L{iked} (initially)
The first man to climb Mount Everest. The surface reading here is… spicy? |
|
| 13 | Sleep with tatty blankets left dirty and damp (10) |
| BEDRAGGLED – BED (sleep with) RAGGED (tatty) around (blankets) L (left)
Did not know BEDRAGGLED had the connotation of wetness. Things are getting moist up in here. |
|
| 16 | Tie families forged across fence in the middle (9) |
| SEMIFINAL – FAMILIES anagrammed (forged) around (across) {fe}N{ce} (in the middle)
Took me too long to see this — forgot that ‘tie’ is a match. |
|
| 18 | Tasteless, absolutely not a sausage (4,3) |
| NAFF ALL – NAFF (tasteless) ALL (absolutely)
I think I’ve parsed this right. (ALL = ‘absolutely’ isn’t 100% convincing.) This was my last in and I really had no idea what was going on, until suddenly I remembered that NAFF was a British word I’d heard before, and I knew it had to be it. |
|
| 20 | Put a funny face on ghastly card (7) |
| GRIMACE – GRIM (ghastly) ACE (card) | |
| 22 | Music[’s] what gets punk going in old age (5) |
| OPERA – P{unk} (what gets … going) in O (old) ERA (age)
Liked this one. |
|
| 23 | Drug was introduced to hospital (4) |
| METH – MET (was introduced to) H (hospital) | |
I loved this but carelessly put IGUANADON even though I know how to spell it and I know the fertilizer is GUANO. Some lovely disguised definitions and bits of wordplay making even the shortest clues tricky. Thinks like “what gets punk going” for P or “man on top first” were neat.
Some lovely clues today I thought. Loved EACH in 1a and always nice to get the first one in. AID AND ABET. took a while and eventually just put it in from the checkers and definition but didn’t know Aidan for Irishman. EDMUND HILLARY came early which was helpful with some of the acrosses, but didn’t know LANTHANUM and missed the parsing. DOWNING STREET was from the definition and didn’t parse. Really liked HAL for the ship’s computer in HALF-YEARLY. A nice crossword.
Thanks Jeremy
I also found it hard, not as hard as yesterday but still a toughie. AND after all that, I made the exact same mistake as Paul with iguanOdon, even though like him I knew it was guano. At the end just now I was really stuck on beam sea and LOI aid and abet (once i got the NHO beam sea, abet became obvious)
Anyway thanks setter for another good and challenging puzzle, and blogger
I found it quite hard and finally finished it with aids in just under two hours. I got particularly tied up with the middle 17ac, 21ac, 10dn and 16dn where I had lots of problems wit definitions and wordplay. My paper copy looks like a dog’s breakfast because of three and four times overwritten answers.
Thanks Jeremy. I needed your blog.
I too found it hard, but fortunately I had already made the iguanodon mistake on a previous attempt, so I paid attention this time. My problems were threefold: I was sure the Irishman was going to be Pat, I expected 12 across to end in -ations, and I put the word separator in the wrong place for Edmund Hillary. This lead to slow results. The UK-centric bits, like naff all and Downing Street, I did know, but not ACAS, but you don’t really need it to biff the answer. I struggled mightily with aid and abet, half yearly, and Edmund Hillary, but I eventually finished.
Time: 54:13
24:33
I think the only UK-centric DNK was NAFF ALL, but I remembered that there’s another NAFF, a euphemism for ‘fuck’, as in ‘naff off’; so ‘naff all’ here means ‘not a sausage’. I biffed several: AID AND ABET, CARACAS, HILLARY, never parsed, and ESPADRILLE, DOWNING ST, parsed post-submission. Lots of good clues, my COD maybe EACH.
I was going to query your statement about NAFF being a euphemism, but I learn to my surprise that you’re right. I always assumed ‘naff off’ was less specific, like ‘sod off’, ‘bugger off’ etc.
Princess Anne allegedly told some camera men who were following her at some horse event to naff off. I don’t think she meant they were tasteless!
“Naff off”was, I believe, invented in about 1976 for the wonderful TV sitcom ‘Porridge’ starring the incomparable Ronnie Barker as habitual criminal Norman Stanley Fletcher. Set in an all-male environment, it had to acknowledge that language in such institutions can be a bit ripe, but it also had to recognise that mid-evening BBC audiences in the 1970s were maybe not quite ready for absolute realism. The epithet ‘nerk’, as in “Mackay, the ‘screw’: charmless Scottish nerk” came from the same source, I believe. Watch it unedited on the BBC iPlayer: other stations also carry it occasionally, but always clumsily edited.
And Princess Anne certainly did use the expression. I have a memory of her doing so, and it must have been in a public speech as I’ve never met her. My memory is that she also said ‘As Fletch might have put it’, or something similar.
That’s a nice story but unfortunately the first citation for ‘naff off’ in the OED is from Billy Liar in 1959. The second citation is from Porridge!
Well, we live and learn! In my admittedly weak defence, 1959 pre-dates me by a couple of years. I’d certainly never heard it before ‘Porridge’ and it was new to my parents as well. And, to them, it was sufficiently ‘near the knuckle’ that neither of their teen-aged sons dared use it at home for many a long year after Fletch used it!
Whenever I hear these neat explanations for words I am sceptical, and the vast majority of the time they turn out to be wrong. You might call me a spoilsport but I think etymology is fascinating enough without resorting to folksy inventions! In this case though the explanation seemed quite plausible so I’m a bit disappointed it’s not true.
I think she told them to ‘naff orf’! 🙂
‘Neff orf’, surely? 😂
37 minutes. NHO BEAM SEA so there was a slight delay finding its first word.
As with the element in Shay’s QC yesterday there was a coin to be tossed when placing the unchecked anagrist at 17ac, but since the periodic table is not short of elements ending -UM there really wasn’t much doubt about it. Also like yesterday, the element is to be found in the second verse of the Tom Lehrer song. Today was its first appearance as an answer in the TfTT era.
I failed to parse AID AND ABET (my LOI) .
Jeremy’s note on the homepage made me fear the worst, so I can say I found this surprisingly easy—not that it wasn’t a challenge, but as a contrast to my expectations. Got NAFF ALL only with all the checkers. Also NHO LANTHANUM or BEAM SEA. POI DOCUMENTARIES, LOI BEDRAGGLED (a wonderful word),
Fastest Friday ever but appreciate I was tuned in on the right wavelength today.
I am a Union rep so ACAS was familiar to me but is almost certainly obscure knowledge for most of the UK and probably all the rest of the world. I got CARACAS before that so it was only used to confirm.
NHO BEAM SEA but the word play and crossers were kind.
Held up by NAFF ALL as I really wanted to take an A off something- great misdirection.
LOI and NHO IGUANODON. I hadn’t heard of the fertiliser either but figured it had to be some variation of iguana and don based on the wordplay and crossers. It was really a flip between a and o for the final vowel with not much argument for either but thankfully the coin ended the right way up.
A very enjoyable puzzle. Liked DOWNING STREET and the neat DOCUMENTARIES anagram (although it must have been done before)
Thanks setter and blogger
I reckon ACAS is reasonably well-known within the UK, if only from stories of rail strikes and so on (or at least, I know of it despite not having any particular union connection!).
And well done!
Cheers, certainly a wavelength thing today.
On reflection, I agree with you. Not many members have heard about it when I mention ACAS but that would probably be true of the many painters, plants and ports that come up. If you’re a regular reader of the Times or other paper your eyes must have come across it more than once.
yes I’d agree that many in the UK would know about ACAS.
7:19. Easier than yesterday. Thought this was well-written, liked AID AND ABET.
Similar time to yesterday, mid 40’s, and similar experience in racing along quite nicely until the last 5 or 6. BEDRAGGLED and NETBALL (very good) were slow to come and LOI (and NHO) PAWPAWS was constructed. Like Jeremy I felt we were in metric feet territory which, given I only know the famous one, I was about to give up. Didn’t parse CARACAS, not seeing ACAS, though I know it reasonably well. For some reason I assumed TASH was spelt “tache”, not sure I’ve ever seen it written down?? Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Gerry you are right. Wiktionary does have tash as well but seems to prefer tache.
Collins has both tash and tache.
Struggled with AID AND ABET (surely a tautology), and still do anagrams in my head, which meant DOCUMENTARIES and EDMUND HILLARY were late answers. Clever surfaces did their job and distracted.
21’16”, thanks jeremy and setter.
Aid and abet have distinct legal meanings and the Aiders and Abettors Act was passed in the nineteenth century (though since updated) Perhaps the comments of a former Lord Chief Justice may assist you here:
“The natural meaning of “to aid” is to “give help, support or assistance to” and it will generally although not necessarily take place at the scene of the crime. It is not necessary to prove that there was any agreement between the principal and the alleged accessory, nor is there a need to prove a causative link between the aid and the commission of the offence by the principal.
The natural meaning of “to abet” is “to incite, instigate or encourage” and this can only be committed by an accessory who is present when the crime is committed. This does imply either an express or implied agreement between the parties although there is no need to prove any causative link between what the abettor did and the commission of the offence.”
didn’t understand 2 till told, spelt 4 this time . I was average
35.24 which I was quite pleased by on a Friday but I see the Snitch is below 100. Some very nice clues – EDMUND HILLARY, TASH, NETBALL my personal picks – and while I can see a certain UK-centricity there was a counterbalancing absence of cricket references.
FOI IBSEN
LOI BEAM SEA
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
EACH was FOI. I had to hop around the grid to get anywhere, with very little dropping into place easily. CARACAS and DOCUMENTARIES opened thing up a bit. I wasted time trying to fit a deposit into FELLING until I actually saw FELLOW FEELNG and reverse engineered it. EDMUND HILLARY opened up another chunk. ALPHA and PAWPAWS were the key to finishing in the NE with BEAM SEA LOI after AID AND ABET, which I didn’t manage to parse. 31:47. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
Way off the wavelength today – was sure this must be a 120-plus SNITCH puzzle. Struggled to get traction, acquiring some sort of momentum only towards the end – anagram-solving was particularly dismal, failing to get DESIGNATE or DOCUMENTARIES until they were glaringly obvious.
Anyway, managed to get through it with 70:54 on the clock, 10 mins or so spent doing other morning activities. Thanks PJ and setter
Just under 20 minutes.
– Had to trust that Hal was the name of a computer for HALF-YEARLY as I don’t know A Space Odyssey well enough
– Didn’t see how CARACAS worked
– Not familiar with BEAM SEA so trusted the wordplay
– Biffed EDMUND HILLARY once I had a few of the checkers
An entertaining puzzle. Thanks Jeremy and setter.
FOI Each
LOI Beam sea
COD Aid and abet
41.35 with my final two aid and abet / beam sea providing lots of angst. NHO of the latter. The rest was accessible if tricky. Loved pawpaws . Good puzzle to finish the week . I don’t imagine it will be above the 200 snitch but much more enjoyable.
44m 46s
When I first looked at this, especially 5d ALPHA, I thought I was in for another stinker like the SE corner in yesterday’s cryptic but gradually the mist cleared.
I did like the mention of HAL in 26ac: “I can’t let you do that, Dave!”
Thanks Jeremy, especially for TIGER. Never heard of TIG.
My good run’s over. 52 minutes, bogged down in the NE. I know AID AND ABET as a pair but AIDAN wasn’t about to help me think of them. I’ve never heard of a BEAM SEA, although the cryptic was clear enough. Decent. puzzle which I never felt on top of. COD to PARVENU.
31 minutes. I didn’t know the ACAS in 2d and realised on reading the blog that I hadn’t parsed AID AND ABET and had missed the HAL reference at 26a. BEAM SEA was unknown but sounded plausible and wasn’t too difficult with wordplay and crossers. I was interested to read in the OED that the definition of BEDRAGGLE as a verb is “To wet (dress, skirts and the like) so that they drag or hang limp and clinging with moisture”, hence the ‘damp’ in the def I suppose.
Yes, the wordplay was a bit racy but it was good to see EDMUND HILLARY as the antipodean representative on Anzac Day.
62:09
Another tough challenge. NHO beam sea.
Thanks, pj.
Great crossword with some lovely clues – EACH, TASH, ESPADRILLE and more – and PAWPAWS made me smile when I eventually twigged it.
Got home just within my 30-min allowance – back to bramble cutting now. Sigh.
Thanks setter, and Jeremy for the splendid blog.
25.21 WOE
A careless ESPADRILLS first in.
Struggled to manoeuvre the grist for DOCUMENTARIES; could’t fully parse EACH and CARACAS and had to alpha trawl for the Irishman’s name (yes I know A is first but I’m a very bad alpha trawler). But there was enough to keep plugging away at and a lot to admire now I understand it all.
Thanks setter and Jeremy
Wheezed over the line at 52 mins, 10 mins of it taken up trying to figure out NETBALL. Some of this was very testing, I thought, but enjoyed it.
V hard in places. Some good PDMs.
3a Aid and abet. DNF. Don’t think I would ever have got this, and I didn’t have the B from Beam Sea. Cheating Machine had Head Sea in it, which would have fitted, but not Beam Sea, now added. Should have though of Beam! Drat!
12a Documentaries biffed. Didn’t see the anagram, oh dear!
21a Fellow Feeling, COD for the clever construction.
Thanks to plusjeremy & setter.
Just over the hour and another who was bogged down in the NE. Last 5 in were AID AND ABET, BEAM (I had the SEA bit) ALPHA, PAWPAWS & TASH. Pretty tough I thought.
I liked DOCUMENTARIES ( I now write all my anagrists down) EDMUND HILARY & HALF-YEARLY.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
11:25. Nice puzzle, good level of difficulty. Some of the wordplay was really tricky here, and I took a moment at the end to make sure I had sorted out a couple of them.
Don’t remember coming across LANTHANUM before. BEAM SEA rang a very vague bell. Slightly surprised to learn that dinosaurs are considered reptiles.
22:17* (2 careless errors – 1 x typo and IGUANODON spelt incorrectly)
I raced through large parts of this only to struggle getting BEAM SEA and AID AND ABET which accounted for at least the last 5 minutes. No excuses as I just couldn’t think for another word for smile.
All-in-all a fun solve so thanks to both.
Best Friday for a long time 27.00 good for me.
FOI IBSEN
COD & LOI AID AND ABET
NHO BEAM SEA
16d topical – off to see the Eagles fly on Saturday in cup semifinal