52:18, which sadly included a fifteen-minute struggle to get the last two clues. I nearly gave up, but I’m nothing if not persistent. Quite a good and challenging puzzle, in my opinion.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Drink factory one enters, begging (9) |
| SUPPLIANT – SUP + PLANT around I | |
| 6 | Lighter selection from Tesco welcomed (4) |
| SCOW – hidden | |
| 10 | Anything you hear in Yorkshire’s inaccurate (3) |
| OUT – homophone of OWT | |
| 11 | Italian player substituted sooner given bottle to carry (6,5) |
| SOPHIA LOREN – anagram of SOONER around PHIAL | |
| 12 | Humbug, penny sweet (6) |
| PHONEY – P + HONEY | |
| 13 | Migrant alarming at the border (8) |
| MARGINAL – anagram of ALARMING | |
| 15 | Deadly unit evacuated by hospital — never mind (3,5) |
| LET ALONE – LETHAL ONE – H | |
| 16 | Large amount in account, others short (5) |
| ACRES – AC + RES{t} | |
| 18 | Did champ taking gold first complete circuits? (5) |
| ORBIT – BIT after OR | |
| 20 | Basket lost below clothes son put outside room, finally (4,4) |
| SLAM DUNK – SUNK (lost below) around LAD around M
My last one in. Thanks to Kevin for catching my erroneous parsing! |
|
| 22 | Money provided in case member bet on ace (5,3) |
| LEGAL AID – LEG + LAID next to A
Great definition. |
|
| 23 | Evil German hit interpreter, perhaps (6) |
| SINGER – SIN + GER
Another great definition. I tried HITLER and BADGER before seeing how this worked. |
|
| 26 | Study chapter that discusses basis for subsequent work (11) |
| CONTEMPLATE – C + ON (that discusses) TEMPLATE
I see now that this was quite simple, but I struggled with this one. |
|
| 27 | Yank instinctively felt repelled (3) |
| TUG – GUT reversed | |
| 28 | Discover son with decapitated cat (4) |
| SUSS – S + {p}USS | |
| 29 | Smear cologne on mate’s back, blushing (9) |
| RUBESCENT – RUB + SCENT next to {mat}E | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | So much ice cream commonly sold in small supermarket (5) |
| SCOOP – S + CO-OP | |
| 2 | This jolting the Polo? (7) |
| POTHOLE – anagram of THE POLO | |
| 3 | WI group managed farm, charging tenants (6,8) |
| LESSER ANTILLES – RAN TILL in (charging) LESSEES
Great misdirection with WI! |
|
| 4 | Lake in spring rising where glaciers have melted (4) |
| ALPS – L in SPA reversed | |
| 5 | Having three parties, suffering hosts delayed fourth for year (10) |
| TRILATERAL – TRIAL around LATE + {yea}R | |
| 7 | Examiner questioning how someone passed? (7) |
| CORONER – cryptic definition
Am I missing something? This is nearly a straight definition. |
|
| 8 | Still second behind cycling cheat (8) |
| WINDLESS – S after SWINDLE cycled | |
| 9 | Pull and haul up ropes aboard ship, being very slack? (14) |
| SLUGGARDLINESS – LUG + DRAG reversed + LINES in SS
One of the ones I thought I’d never get. My next to last in. |
|
| 14 | Proper wish maybe taking form of prayer? (10) |
| WORSHIPPER – anagram (maybe) of PROPER WISH | |
| 17 | Republican party ties do very well (2,6) |
| GO PLACES – GOP LACES | |
| 19 | History smashed Boney’s grand forces apart (7) |
| BYGONES – anagram of BONEY’S around G | |
| 21 | Close relationship warmer in bed? (7) |
| NIGHTIE – NIGH TIE | |
| 24 | Due and true correspond in sound (5) |
| RIGHT – homophone of WRITE (correspond)
Fooled by RHYME! |
|
| 25 | A little Jacob male that needs raising? (4) |
| LAMB – hidden reversed | |
Very tricky i thought. Was defeated by the south west corner
COD to Slam Dunk and Lamb…..
SLAM DUNK: You’ve got L twice, Jeremy; ‘lost below’ is SUNK.
Thank you!!
Yeah, liked this. Took a break to eat before finishing. LESSER ANTILLES was LOI, seen before parsed.
40:19
It took me forever to get LESSER ANTILLES; great misdirection indeed. To get it, I first needed to give up thinking that ‘player’ meant athlete and to see SOPHIA LOREN. Like Jeremy, I tried BADGER before SINGER. LOI SLAM DUNK.
Hardest of the week, but no complaints. A steady solve, but the last few in the SW corner had to be picked off, one by one.
Also failed to spot the anagram at 13ac for quite a while..
I liked 7dn because the deception in the surface reading was effective. Certainly not my FOI. Also some very nice use of anagrams. Clever and enjoyable puzzle.
Biffed 3 and 11, but most of the rest had to be carefully worked out. Enjoyable stuff, finishing with SLAM DUNK. If there was a clue-writing competition for this phrase, I think the setter might do okay.
23:42
53 minutes and a very enjoyable challenge. I surprised myself by constructing LESSER ANTILLES quite quickly while being much slower on the shorter ones like LET ALONE.
DNF. It was the SE that did for me. I was so confident that it was RHYME that 27a and 29a were impossible. COD to the LESSER ANTILLES. Thank you Jeremy and setter.
DNF, with a silly PLOVER rather than PHONEY (didn’t know that meaning of humbug anyway).
– Biffed SOPHIA LOREN once I had enough checkers
– Can’t recall seeing RUBESCENT before, but it parsed and looked very plausible
– Didn’t see how RIGHT worked, though I avoided the RHYME trap
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
COD Lesser Antilles
Another long haul but felt some achievement when I cracked some hard ones. Once again though I decided to call time on it as the hour passed and resorted to aids for the last three.
SLAM DUNK went in because it fitted without any idea of the definition or wordplay. I know it only from tennis when it was used to describe a particular speciality shot played by Pete Sampras.
Brilliant puzzle – amazed to finish in 26 mins. No unheard-ofs, all wordplay understood. First in was LAMB, last SLAM DUNK. Out of numerous virtuoso clues, my favourite three: to POTHOLE, LESSER ANTILLES and CORONER; and I also admired ‘Money provided in case’ = LEGAL AID in 22A. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
Gave up on the 30 min mark realising I’d need a lot more time than I have. Might have finished it, but I suspect SLUGGARDLINESS would have done for me.
21.20, prepared to come here with a few gripes only to discover I was being too hasty. Mind you, if I’d had a pink with OUT rather than OWT I would definitely complain: it felt a bit of a toss up. I thought POTHOLE was a poor CD, missing the (pretty obvious!) anagram. I got RIGHT from the two definitions, didn’t see what the rest of the clue was doing. Nearly thought LAMB was another feeble CD, until I spotted the reverse hidden lurking.
This was a well crafted Friday teaser, though, LEGAL AID and SLAM DUNK especially impressing, and the delightful image of Ms Scicolone relegated to the sidelines for Lazio was a jewel. My last was SUSS, trying lion, puma, whip, anything other than puss for cat.
About 50′ with worker interruptions. very enjoyable esp the WI misdirection. I liked SLAM DUNK and the surface for LEGAL AID. SLUGGARDLINESS constructed from wordplay. For some reason I needed an alphabet trawl for LOI and DOH!, LET ALONE.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Not as tough a battle as I was expecting, but some tricky stuff in there, SLAM DUNK being one of the tougher ones. Started off with SUPPLIANT and did reasonably well in the NW and NE, with a few gaps left to return to. LESSER ANTILLES was eventually dragged kicking and screaming from the wordplay. Liked SOPHIA LOREN. SINGER was LOI after run-ins with HITLER and HIMLER. 29:47. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
46 minutes. Getting SUPPLIANT and SCOOP early on helped. Steady but not quick after that, with a “Is it out or owt?” for 10a delaying things at the end. Another who was fooled by 24d with an initial RHYME. I liked the POTHOLE semi-&lit.
13:41. Another tricky puzzle but a much better performance from me than yesterday. Excellent puzzle.
I’m not sure that ‘evacuated by’ in 15ac (my last in) works. Can an individual ‘evacuate’ (as opposed to ‘be evacuated from’) a place? It’s not a usage I can remember hearing but Collins says it’s OK so I’ll have to take it up with them.
Merriam-Webster has that usage of “evacuate” too, which also struck me as odd the first times I came across it. What can seem awkward when it is used intransitively is that there is another meaning relating to bodily functions…
39 mins but have found Fridays a bit of an ordeal of late. LOI slam dunk.
46 – but with PHOOEY at 12ac, hooey being a type of particularly elastic toffee popular in America. If hundreds of billions of dollars worth of AI can hallucinate like a hippie on acid, I can surely hallucinate the odd item of US confectionary.
Glad I wasn’t the only one – and I wonder if a couple of the experts who had an error made the same mistake? I didn’t know HOOEY as a candy, but I (an American) figured “oh it must be some British candy I’m not familiar with” and once all the crossing letters were corroborated there was no reason to give it another thought.
Also American, Googled “hooey candy,” “hooey toffee”… came up with nothing… Oh, right… david_ch said it was his hallucination. D’oh!
Who’s to say hallucinations aren’t real?!
Descartes, for one?
37:42
Beat the Snitch (currently 123) which would have given me a target of 46m30s. After a lull around the 60% mark, rethought the pencilled HITLER as SINGER. Took a little longer to get away from the made up DUBESCENT (DUB = smear) and correct the first letter. SOPHIA LOREN followed quickly by LESSER ANTILLES. SLUGGARDLINESS gave SLAM DUNK and finally WORSHIPPER.
Thanks PJ and setter
Not the agonising Friday I’d expected after a fairly gentle week, but tricky nevertheless and very good. SLAM DUNK was hard to understand. It seemed I sort of parsed it but then discovered that it was correct. The pray-er defeated me at 14dn and I had to look here. I’ve never seen Hitler in a crossword; the apparent definition seemed the only one, but the wordplay didn’t work. At 7dn it may seem straighter in American English. Without much evidence I suspect the word ‘passed’ for ‘died’ is more widely used in US English than in UK English and may even be an import. Whatever it is the euphemism always grates on me. in any case a rather thin CD. I wasn’t sure how ‘on’ = ‘that discusses’ in 26ac.
Was not sure if this was hard or I was just off form. I had to come back to it and realised I had missed the anagrams of MARGINAL and WORSHIPPER. It went in quite smoothly after that if you ignore the rather long time on LESSER ANTILLES fixated it was LETTER something. Left the Italian Player until last figuring I had not heard of them only for the first S to make it obvious.
Glad to see some others struggled with this.
COD WINDLESS
Thanks blogger and setter
44.17
Mightily struggled with a few here but finally got there. Some fun words snd superb misdirection – WI indeed!
I was pretty sure of letter something, which turned out to be wrong. Fortunately, I biffed Sophia Loren and realized that WI did not refer to either Wisconsin or the Women’s Institute. I also had Hitler for a while – what kind of interpreter is L.E.R. Laser enabled reader? However, I finally saw the should-be-obvious nightie and corrected that corner. But slam dunk was very slow in coming, even though I had considered sunk at the 30 minutes previously.
Time: 60:24
71 mins but a rewarding struggle. Some days I give up in half that time but this was high quality fare and steadily if slowly released its PDMs so I always believed it was doable.
It did show up how much I normally rely on biffing and decent GK. I often failed to spot the right definition and was off wavelength on much of the wordplay.
The WI, SLAM DUNK, CONTEMPLATE and slacking were all masterful but then so was most of it. Great puzzle, thanks setter and Jeremy.
Just under an hour, and expected to be well beaten until the other meaning of WI became clear to me.
Came here to get the parsing of 23 and 24, which now seem crystal clear and very good clues. Lots to like here but COD to the wonderful SLUGGARDLINESS, into which I shall now slip for the rest of the weekend with any luck!
Very enjoyable puzzle, needed teasing out one by one then you wonder how you struggled. LESSER ANTILLES was brilliant – thinking this must be ladies something or other put me off track for ages.
43:42, or less than 5 magoos.
Thx William and setter
First-rate puzzle but, being careless, I had OWT to show for it at the end.
Thanks to Jeremy and the setter
OUT and owt are not homophones, certainly not in Yorkshire.
They were perfect homophones when I recently heard them in Sheffield, though the pronunciation ‘oat’ does exist among some Northerners and even some Midlanders. I think it’s a poor clue in any case though, it would work better reworded as “Anything in Yorkshire you hear’s inaccurate” rather than “Anything you hear in Yorkshire’s inaccurate”.
Hmm, your phrasing seems more ambiguous to me.
Very pleased to get to within three (RUBESCENT, SLAM DUNK and CONTEMPLATE) before throwing in the towel after an hour. Quite a few biffed then parsed, or not in the case of RIGHT (thanks plusjeremy). Very enjoyable. SCOW was new to me, as was GOP for Republican Party. Liked LAMB and NIGHTIE.
DNF being beaten by SOPHIA LOREN and SLAM DUNK. I knew SLAM DUNK in the figurative sense as a “sure thing”, but had no idea that it originally came from basketball so “basket” as a definition wasn’t likely to get me there. And I vaguely knew that Sophia Loren was a famous beauty in the 1960s, but “Italian player” was never likely to bring her to mind.
The CORONER cryptic definition is trying to make you think of academic examinations and the passing thereof.
My first time commenting here, as someone who has attempted crosswords for many years but is just getting seriously into them.
I thought this was fantastic. Solved on my lunch break with a couple of friends at work. (Well ok, we spilled slightly beyond our lunch break…)
Glad I spotted LESSER ANTILLES; needed all the checkers for that. Was fully misdirected there, as well as on several others (LEGAL AID, SINGER, SLAM DUNK, which is my COD, spring to mind).
Can anyone explain to me what “Jacob” is doing in 25d? Is it a biblical reference?
Thanks setter, and Jeremy!
Jacob is a breed of sheep.
Thanks!
Jacob’s management of sheep is a notable example of divine providence and human ingenuity. In Genesis 30:25-43, Jacob negotiates with his father-in-law Laban to take the speckled and spotted sheep as his wages. Through a combination of selective breeding and God’s blessing, Jacob’s flocks increase significantly. (Biblehub.com)
Quite a lot of clues which revealed an added richness after they were solved. My disappointment was that, after realising that the jam-making WI was the wrong reference, finding that Fast Bowlers was not the relevant group.
Just over an hour, with the LOI PHONEY which I had a complete blank on for 5-10 minutes I’m not sure. Which was really annoying as it’s probably the easiest clue…
Anyway just came here to say great puzzle, with so many clever misdirections, but without the obscurities that IMO sometimes blight the harder puzzles. Many thanks to the setter.
Nice puzzle. Same last two as J. 10 hours! (I left it open overnight, before finishing it this morning) Much to like.
Late to the party. No proper time but c. 40 mins. Loved this puzzle. LESSER ANTILLES, SLAM DUNK and LEGAL AID all brilliant.