50:02. Filling in for Will this week, and was looking forward to getting clobbered by the sort of monsters he usually faces. Though I made heavy weather of it, I don’t think this puzzle was particularly hard. I would rate it average difficulty; the very slow time is thanks to my last two in, which took me about twenty-five minutes.
| Across | |
| 1 | If clue initially reads badly, strike it! (7) |
| LUCIFER – IF CLUE + first letter of (initially) READS anagrammed (badly)
I got what was going on here immediately, but had forgotten the term ‘lucifer’ for ‘match’. |
|
| 5 | Hydrogen injected into carbon, mainly to support frame (7) |
| CHASSIS – H (hydrogen) in (injected into) C (carbon) + most of (mainly) ASSIST (to support) | |
| 9 | Try to make sense of painter prettifying houses (9) |
| INTERPRET – hidden in (houses) PAINTER PRETTIFYING | |
| 10 | Bit of Scrabble on Boxing Day, Mark? (5) |
| TILDE – TILE (bit of scrabble) around (on boxing) D (day) | |
| 11 | Feeding spirit, shattered tenor had kip, missing intro to national anthem (5,3,6) |
| ZADOK THE PRIEST – anagram of (shattered) TENOR HAD KIP without (missing) first letter of (intro to) NATIONAL in (feeding) ZEST (spirit) | |
| 13 | What’s here: villains ideally? (6) |
| INSIDE – hidden in (what’s here:) VILLAINS IDEALLY
Prison is known as ‘inside’. A second hidden. |
|
| 14 | Sign me up to gain access to beauty contract (8) |
| DIMINISH – I’M IN (sign me up) in (to gain access to) DISH (beauty) | |
| 16 | I note response to where duke[’s] suffering embarrassment (2,3,3) |
| IN THE RED – I N (note) THERE (response to where) D (duke)
I didn’t get this at all until I discovered upon writing the blog that ’embarrassment’ can mean ‘difficulty in money matters’ (Chambers). |
|
| 18 | Starting to gag’s consistent with smoke (6) |
| GASPER – first letter of (starting to) GAG + (‘s) AS PER (consistent with) | |
| 21 | Sorry if this is crude way to make showman be shown? (6,2,6) |
| EXCUSE MY FRENCH – remove (EXCUSE) ‘ma’ (MY [in] FRENCH)
Since ‘showman’ – ‘ma’ = ‘shown’. Again I saw this immediately but couldn’t see how to get the answer. |
|
| 23 | Casual trade in island, American island (5) |
| IBIZA – BIZ (casual trade) in I (island) A (American) | |
| 24 | Aptly-placed lawyer[’s] battleground (9) |
| AGINCOURT – AG IN COURT (aptly-placed lawyer)
AG = Attorney General. |
|
| 25 | Short head[’s] feature of mouse? (7) |
| SHYNESS – SHY (short) NESS (head) | |
| 26 | Maximally in pain after irrational hour boomeranging (7) |
| HIPPEST – PEST (pain) after PI (irrational) H (hour) reversed (boomeranging)
Liked this definition! |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Bet core part of livelihood’s to be superseded by ChatGPT, etc (4) |
| LAID – middle letters (core part) of LIVELIHOOD replaced (‘s to be superseded) by AI (ChatGPT, etc) | |
| 2 | Accountant cycling in retirement, huffs and puffs [and] rests (7) |
| CATNAPS – CA (accountant) cycling the letters of PANTS (huffs and puffs) reversed (in retirement) | |
| 3 | It’s strange if one daughter’s not had drink after sacrifice in God’s name (3,8,4) |
| FOR GOODNESS SAKE – ODDNESS (it’s strange) if one D (daughter) is removed (‘s not had) + SAKE (drink) all after FORGO (sacrifice) | |
| 4 | It can be difficult to find equal treatment with power ceded to queen (6) |
| RARITY – PARITY (equal treatment) with P (power) replaced by (ceded to) R (queen) | |
| 5 | Peach [or] prune that is seen peeled (5-3) |
| CUTIE-PIE – CUT (prune) I.E. (that is) + SPIED (seen) with first and last letters removed (peeled) | |
| 6 | Bit of a hoo-ha derailed precautions at llama farm ultimately (1,5,2,1,6) |
| A STORM IN A TEACUP – anagram of (derailed) PRECAUTIONS AT + last letters of (ultimately) LLAMA FARM | |
| 7 | Dreadful opening piece from Italian serial composer (7) |
| SALIERI – anagram of (dreadful) first letter of (opening piece from) ITALIAN + SERIAL
Great surface reading here! |
|
| 8 | Wear this running in street? (10) |
| SWEATSHIRT – anagram of (running) WEAR THIS in ST (street) | |
| 12 | Wet blankets outside during short run (10) |
| MINISERIES – MISERIES (wet blankets) around (outside) IN (during)
So my first suspicion, that this would be something around IN, was correct. But I had no idea what sort of synonym for ‘wet blankets’ was expected — I now know that ‘misery’ is a noun meaning ‘a miserable person’. In the end, I latched onto the idea of ‘short’ signifying MINI, and although I thought it was part of the wordplay, this was enough to help me biff the answer after a long think. |
|
| 15 | Continue unchanging message, penning discrimination [and] slurs (8) |
| BESMEARS – BE (continue unchanging) SMS (message) around (penning) EAR (discrimination)
These definitions stretched my sanity. But ‘ear’ does mean ‘the faculty of distinguishing sounds’, and ‘be’ does mean to continue without change. It’s just… sigh. Another clue that took ages. |
|
| 17 | Lacy kit’s modelled in such a way? (7) |
| TACKILY – anagram of (‘s modelled) LACY KIT
I guess this means that tacks are used to keep the lacy bits on? Or does the setter mean ‘tacky’? |
|
| 19 | Vivid description [of] old Northerner having curries regularly (7) |
| PICTURE – PICT (old Northener) + (having) every other letter of (regularly) CURRIES
Glad I remembered the Picts. |
|
| 20 | Ray’s maybe aloof (6) |
| OFFISH – OF FISH (ray [maybe]’s) | |
| 22 | One piece of information [is] all I have uncovered (4) |
| STAT – ESTATE (all I have) with first and last letters removed (uncovered) | |
Nice puzzle, somewhat harder than average but I am surprised by the high SNITCH at this point (170). I tried WHISKER for 25 initially, where you can win by a short head/a whisker. Maybe intentional.
You can drill down to the details – perhaps M J Saunders fell asleep while solving.
A good argument for invoking the median solving time rather than the mean. Same applies for calculating our individual “par” times.
But as someone who remains in awe of Starstruck’s work I’m hesitant to suggest any changes.
Superb, and I expected nothing less!
That’s very interesting, I might spend the rest of my Friday arvo researching gamma distributions. Really I’m just looking for a method that makes my times look better than they actually are. Can’t be that hard!
As others have said, it’s 100% down to whether you’ve heard of Zadok the Priest or not. Otherwise you just have an anagram of TEOR HAD KIP within a four-letter word for “Spirit”, and know this is some kind of anthem. In the end I Googled “Radok the Priest” (which sounded slightly familiar) and got the answer from this. Spent well over half my time on the last 3 clues.
I was probably the only person who took ages to get SALIERI too. Memo to self: listen to more classical music.
It seems like many solvers did find this challenging, including me! But after I got up to flip the King Crimson anthology to side 4, of fish and excuse my French magically appeared – complete! I suspect Jeremy had a considerable advantage as a trained classical musician and repetiteur, which makes him highly likely to have heard of Zadok the Priest.
I was fortunate to be able to biff a storm in a teacup early on, giving many crossing letters. For goodness sake was not hard either. I did have a bad biff in hipdeep, but I eventually erased it. I didn’t see quite a few of the parsing, but no pictures on scorecards.
Time: 53:38
Up past my bedtime while emergency plumbers dealt with malfunctioning septic system. This puzzle made the time pass more easily.
Rather dated (in a good way) feel here with GASPER and LUCIFER reminding me that our parents made us sing Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag and the like on long car trips – much moaning from the back seat. ZADOK (coronation anthem) was a nice one. Thanks for the parse on BESMEAR Jeremy – I couldn’t. Good puzzle.
You have my sympathy Olivia. We had need of an emergency plumber recently. The deal was something along the lines of “you buy me a house and I’ll fix your leak”.
The term an arm and a leg came to mind galspray but yours is better.
ZADOK came up earlier this year…. I blogged him
I got lucifer from Pack Up Your Troubles too. Nice to be reminded of the (in retrospect slightly odd) 1980s primary school choir WW2 repertoire
22:26 for a bit of a tough one I thought. Needed all the checkers for the not-really-heard-of ZADOK THE PRIEST. Must keep an ear out for it next time I’m going through my collection of coronation DVDs.
Also struggled with MINISERIES (too many options for where the IN might go) and CATNAPS. Some excellent clues though, with LUCIFER, TILDE and OFFISH my favourites.
Thanks setter and Jeremy. At 17dn I vote for your second interpretation, I don’t think pins come into it.
25:59, pleased with that for a Friday. Seemed quite biffable. Took me a while to parse ‘on Boxing’, but it works. There is a theory that the Picts were Semitic speakers.
ZADOC THE PRIEST was quick to come for me once I figured out the ‘spirit/zest’ part of the clue. Biffed ‘Pardon my French’ instead of ‘Excuse’ but saw my error once TACKILY went in; I vote for it meaning ‘in a tacky way’ but whatever. Saw SALIERI and TILDE pretty quickly. AGINCOURT came after I saw ‘court’ at the end and figured out the parsing later. Liked PICTURE with the old Northener. Took core part of ‘livelihood’ in 1d to be ‘LI’ rather than the whole interior so took ages to see what was going on. A STORM IN A TEACUP almost from the enumeration alone.
Had to reveal many in this but can appreciate the clueing, just too good for me.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
I stopped the clock at 60 minutes with one answer missing and resorted to aids. The missing word was BESMEARS which I was never even close to working out so I’m glad I cut my losses.
I had been very slow to get going with only 3 answers in after 15 minutes and had been on the verge of putting it aside until the morning. The breakthrough came when I worked out LUCIFER at 1ac which gave me four first letters to build downwards from.
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE was too short for 3dn so the middle word needed a rethink, and PARDON MY FRENCH wouldn’t parse at 21ac so that needed work too. Even when I had the right answer I was unable to parse it. Jeremy deserves a medal for working that one out! My schoolboy French had long forgotten that they have words for ‘my’ other than ‘mon’.
I can hardly believe how long it took me to come up with ZADOK THE PRIEST, the magnificent anthem composed by Handel for the coronation of George II that has been played at every coronation since then and dozens of other royal occasions. It’s a real favourite of mine.
I solved FOR GOODNESS SAKE and A STORM IN A TEACUP by realising the likely solution from definition and enumeration, pencilling in the letters that were crossing letters for other clues, and accepting that if the crossing letters turned out to be correct my solution must be correct. Reading the blog I now realise that I never got round to parsing the clues.
Otherwise I thought this was a superb puzzle, just the right level of difficulty for me, plenty of ingenuity and aha moments to admire but nothing that I didn’t know or held me up for a frustratingly long time. Well done to the setter.
I found this very tricky but very satisfying. My first pass didn’t yield much, and several minutes passed at the end before the penny clattered to the floor on the quite simple SALIERI in 24.25. I had been trying to make ‘dreadful’ represent ILL, then desperately flailing for a composer fitting SILLE_I – perhaps not helped by my first, pre-checkers thought having been FELLINI).
Thanks both!
24’56”, excellent puzzle. Took far too long to see the hidden INTERPRET. Also a long time to recall ZADOK THE PRIEST, which I have sung many times, really testing my bass range. Only knew SALIERI (unparsed) from the film Amadeus. CUTIE-PIE was LOI.
Thanks jeremy and setter.
Tenors have more fun!
Very surprised to have finished this, albeit in just under an hour. Too much biffing and post-parsing (or not!) for my liking. In the end I came here for the story behind the showman (which I’d never have worked out) and MINISERIES (which I should have). Still no idea what’s going on with TACKILY… Well done Jeremy and thanks setter.
This took me a while, but I was in no hurry.
LOI the NHO ZADOK THE PRIEST.
I don’t know what “on” is doing in the clue for TILDE, except helping the surface, as “around” seems sufficient. And I am, as Jeremy was, still guessing about the definition of TACKILY.
COD EXCUSE MY FRENCH.
ZADOK THE PRIEST is a famous work sung at every Royal Coronation for the last 250 years or more.
‘TACKILY’ is the adverb, indicating that lacy garments can be shown or modelled in a cheap or gaudy way, I think.
Gathered as much about Zadok already, but didn’t realize that I must’ve seen it in an earlier puzzle.
Looked up a video of it, shot in a church, with the effigy of a bloody dying man on an ancient Roman instrument of execution. This would look very strange if we weren’t inured to it from childhood.
34 mins. After a pretty underwhelming week, I had no great expectations today. But, after an initial brick wall, I managed to lock into the wavelength and was pleased with my time.
Very clever cluing I thought and my LOI besmears fitted the pattern. Excuse my French took a while as did Zadok the Priest.
Thoroughly enjoyed this and feeling better about myself as well. What more could I ask for?
Well-beaten, about 79% complete, NW corner was mainly blank.
Saw what was going on with ZADOK THE PRIEST, and that it was only an Anthem, not a National Anthem. Tried “grit” for spirit, but couldn’t get it. It’s now very well known as the theme music to Champions League football, which is on three times a week, rather than coronations which are on three times a century.
Handel will be spinning in his grave! I hope the foundations of Westminster Abbey can withstand it.
Was feeling optimistic after getting through about three quarters of the grid without too much trouble, then slowed down markedly in the bottom half – like many others I had to use cheats to get BESMEARS. Took about 40 minutes with a pause for poached eggs.
TACKILY is I presume a nod towards the camp vulgarity of young women parading along the catwalk in flimsy undergarments.
Thanks Jeremy for illuminating parsing and thanks to the setter, in particular for MINISERIES, SALIERI and HIPPEST.
Enjoyed this, hardish but not a monster.
Early stabs at for heaven’s sake (which doesn’t even fit!) and pardon my French needed rethinking
I did struggle to parse a couple, eg besmears and catnaps, so thank you to blogger for that.
With TACKILY I think the implication is that modelling lacy kit is a tacky business, which it may or may not be.
Another Zadok fan here ..
Tack / tacking can refer to a type of stitch so I assumed that was the connection with lace-making and moved on.
33 mins and a fist pump for not getting any pinks two days in a row!
Two CODs for me – HIPPEST and OFFISH which were each very misleading in their own way. Thanks blogger and setter 🙂
75 minutes with comfort breaks.There were a couple of unparsed biffs along the way. LOI MINI-SERIES, which never looks like a proper word without the hyphen. I’ve noticed on the BBC Quiz Night that I seem to be holding my own at Mastermind and University Challenge even at this advanced age but am much worse than I was at Only Connect, where the cultural allusions now nearly all are too modern for me. Perhaps having IN THE RED as my COD and struggling with MINISERIES makes the same point. So, I hope the Times Cryptic doesn’t modernise too quickly. Thank you Jeremy and setter.
I think Mastermind has got easier but the Countdown clock goes faster than it used to.
Mastermind easier? Yes, in two ways:
The obvious one is complete giveaway questions for about the first three in the GK round.
The second is more subtle – the dropping of the chat (with John Humpries in particular) before the GK round. When I competed, I got sucked into a discussion, mostly not shown on TV, in which he gradually provoked me into a stroppy comment, immediately followed by “2 minutes on General Knowledge, starting now”. Fair treatment for politicians on Radio,4, but not for quiz contestants.
I know the feeling BW. We go to pub quizzes as a family team and I’ve gradually regressed from being the alpha contributor to the one who gets the drinks.
Last night they just sat me in a corner and gave me a nudge when they needed “The Kinks” and “Frank Sinatra”.
😂
Lol
50 mins for a most enjoyable Friday. A topsy-turvy week for me, I found Monday impenetrable but this very accessible. I like phrase answers and the 2 long downs opened everything up nicely. I even knew the composer.
Didn’t get the AG, the French ma, INSIDE = prison and LOI BESMEARS was just biff.
Particularly liked CATNAPS, MINISERIES and COD SWEATSHIRT but there were plenty more.
Thanks and bravo Jeremy and setter.
I thought this was excellent. Tough but doable. I persevered and completed in just under 44 minutes. But despite checking I made one typo! Aargh!
Favourite clues: INSIDE, GASPER, EXCUSE MY FRENCH, AGINCOURT, HIPPEST, MINISERIES, SWEATSHIRT.
COD: EXCUSE MY FRENCH. Brilliant!
Great challenge, even if I didn’t quite parse everything – once you’ve spotted EXCUSE MY FRENCH you can be happy believing it has something to do with Dawn.
ZADOK: yes indeed not least for that wonderful build up before the choir explodes into action. One of the very few conceptual art pieces that completely blew me away was Mark Wallinger’s Angel which made brilliant use of the same. Can’t say I recognise it in the Champions’ League theme!
COD to AGINCOURT, and thanks to PJ for putting in the heavy lifting needed.
Can’t resist it!
Very good!
Thanks plusjeremy and setter. I thought this was fairly difficult if biffing and totally impenetrable if parsing. So many I can’t parse. Fortunately there was a smattering of easyish ones to get me started.
11a Zadok the Priest. Well done plusjeremy I was nowhere near finding the Zest element of the anagrist. HHO but DNK it is a coronation anthem.
21a Excuse my French. Doh!
24a Agincourt. I just thought this was weak as agin=against which sort-of refers to battling legally. Never thought of the Attorney General, and DNK it was abbreviatable.
25a Shyness. Had forgot how shy=short, as in “you are 3 shy of your target.”
1d Laid. Instantly knew it was _ai_ but didn’t follow the instructions.
3d For goodness sake. That was complex; I was nowhere near.
12d Miniseries. Biffed.
15d Besmears biffed.
Overall an unsatisfactory solve as beyond my ken.
Great fun. Many of these were quickly bashed in from the definition alone – parsing took a lot longer. I’m another who had whisker for the short head .
Too many good ones to be COD but ZADOK, HIPPEST and OFFISH all made me smile.
Thanks to Jeremy and the setter.
Gotta be honest, still don’t understand EXCUSE MY FRENCH. Does it mean ‘take out the French word for ‘my’, eg ‘ma’, from ‘Showman’ to make the new word ‘shown’? If so, pretty weird.
You have it spot on. So the answer to the question “how do you make ‘showman’ into ‘shown’? is “you take out/excuse ‘ma'”. It’s been done before, though you’d not be the only one if you didn’t see the construction. Probably the majority of us failed likewise!
A bit of a battle. I had all bar 15d in around 4o minutes, but then got nowhere until I searched synonyms for slur. After seeing smear, I was able to parse BESMEARS. An unsatisfactory end to a challenging solve where I’d more or less managed to parse everything else. ZADOK THE PRIEST was the last of the 4 long expressions to emerge. FOR GOODNESS SAKE almost wrote itself in early on. 53:30. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
31:50
BESMEARS cost me at least 5 minutes in the end, and biffing PARDON MY FRENCH threw another costly spanner in the works. Lots to enjoy about this one though, and I’ll admit that I didn’t bother parsing a few of the longer clues so thanks to Jeremy for piecing it all together.
Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag
“While you’ve a Lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that’s your style!”
67 minutes. Yet again failed to finish in under an hour on a Friday. Not the beast that several others in this Friday slot have been but still difficult enough. Several unparsed with ZADOK THE PRIEST my half-parsed LOI. Of the ones I could parse, my favourites were MINISERIES and the ‘maximally in’ def for HIPPEST.
Poor old SALIERI; he’s had a bad press since “Amadeus”. I like some of his music including this piece, La Fiera di Venezia: Sinfonia .
26:10 – Lovely crossie. Puzzled over PARDON MY FRENCH long after solving and enjoyed the rewarding PDM.
I got all but BESMEARS but it took several gos, so I don’t have a time. It probably would’ve been the trickiest crossword I’ve ever completed if I did get it, close but no cigar.
Only BESMEARS and EXCUSE MY FRENCH, which defeated me in the parsing even after I’d finished, were the sort of thing we have been having recently. Otherwise I thought this was excellent, although difficult for me (75 minutes). Some clues were outstanding, like 8dn SWEATSHIRT and E. M. FRENCH. I thought CUTIE-PIE was a pretty awful word to have. The first part of ZADOK THE PRIEST is in my opinion the best, before we get the pom-pom pomp. There is a very good piece on YouTube making this very point (“That Chord Change”).
I must have been on wavelength for a rapid (for me on a Friday) 35:35.
A few I wasn’t sure on:
BESMEARS – Can BE and EAR mean that or am I just making the wordplay fit the answer? Thanks for the blog confirming I had parsed it right.
IN THE RED – Only come across it in the money sense – thanks for the explanation in the blog.
CATNAPS – I stumbled into this after seeing that nap/rest could fit at the end.
ZADOK THE PRIEST – took far too long, solved in the end by trying a K in every position and seeing if I could make any words with the remaining fodder. ZADOK does come up quite often in crosswords so no real excuse.
MINISERIES – I biffed this in the end not getting the word play at all
AGINCOURT- This is always my first thought with battlefield, I am glad it actually was for once.
COD: EXCUSE MY FRENCH
Great puzzle quite a few either got a nod, smile or giggle.
Thanks blogger and setter.
79:53 which is the slowest time in the Snitch apart from the already-singled-out M J Saunders (who may have fallen asleep). Never mind. I’m still dead chuffed to have finished.
A STORM IN A TEACUP went in very early – it may have been FOI. MINISERIES was LOI; I kept returning to it trying to get MISERIES out of my head because it didn’t fit, but it turned out to be essential.
I thought of AGIN as “against” in the sense of “next to”, where a lawyer would be aptly-placed AGIN COURT. Didn’t spot the AG. And this was one of the easy ones!
DNF, defeated by AGINCOURT (I thought of it, but didn’t know AG as an abbreviation and talked myself into believing there could have been a battle of DAINCOURT, with DA as the lawyer), which then stymied BESMEARS (thought I probably wouldn’t have got it anyway, as I was convinced ‘mud’ was involved, as in mudslinging).
– Didn’t see how INSIDE worked
– Didn’t know that money meaning of IN THE RED
– Had no idea at all how EXCUSE MY FRENCH worked – even as reverse cryptics go, it’s very tough
– Biffed FOR GOODNESS SAKE and CUTIE-PIE
Thanks Jeremy and setter
COD Tilde
Over the hour. Knew it was ?ADOK THE PRIEST, but my alphabet trawl failed me, probably because it was the last letter….
I really enjoyed this puzzle even though it took me too long and I had to resort to external sources – but only once.
Particularly liked AGINCOURT, LUCIFER (pack up your troubles) and EXCUSE MY FRENCH (which has featured recently either here or in the Telegraph).
Enough success today to keep me trying anyway.
Thanks to setter and Jeremy.
DNF in 30
Just couldn’t get the second bit of EXCUSE M[ ]. Knew it was “ma” but got no further. Clever. Even though I thought the M likely BESMEARS was a v tough clue. Last one to defeat me was OFFISH where once I’d thought of UPPISH (ray of light) nothing else would intrude.
As others have said tough but fair – ideal for a Friday
Thanks Jeremy/setter
I think a sign of a good puzzle is that the words or clues which cause difficulty are different from one of us to another. Other than Besmears, which looks like having stopped a lot of people, today’s posers seem well distributed.
I fell into the Pardon my French trap, and looked for too long for something I didn’t have the letters for in a Teapot. And I’ll confess to not being able to parse Excuse My French.
DNF. I haven’t had time for solving this week (this only seems to happen to me when I’m on holiday!) so I’ve just done four puzzles in a row, which might account for the fact that I gave up on this one with CATNAPS and BESMEARS unsolved. The former takes a device I dislike to begin with and mutilates it into something truly hideous, so I’m not remotely sorry that I didn’t persevere with it. If we must have this nonsensical ‘cycling’ concept can we at least agree not to further convolute it into such unnatural formulations? Harrumph!
I completed this after a great deal of effort, and a lot of biffing. No time, as I had completed all but two clues before a family visitation which occupied me for the next six hours, after which it took some time to get back into the mood. Can’t say I enjoyed it as there were too many answers which I was unable to parse. Best bit was Zabadak’s alternative version of the anthem! Thanks for that.
FOI – RARITY
LOI – HIPPEST
COD – OFFISH
Thanks to jeremy and other contributors.
Around 22 minutes which is slow for me, not on the wavelength today. Knew it was THE PRIEST but couldn’t for the life of me remember who, needed to write out the letters and then a long alphabet trawl. Also struggled to parse 3dn, missed the ODDNESS bit. COD to the French excuse, I rather like that device.
Hippest and stat defeated me. I still don’t really get hippest. A lot of biffing involved as well.
Spent a shocking amount of time on this, admittedly after a long and bibulous day. About two hours, but was determined to complete it and parse all the answers – which I did, apart from the ‘on’ in 10A. LOI BESMEARS.
I gave up yesterday and went back to it this morning. I was totally stuck on BESMEARS. Got there in the end for an elapsed time of 55 minutes of which over 30 were on this final clue.
Thanks (I think!) setter and blogger
PS I‘ve heard of BESMIRCH but never BESMEAR