With 9a, not crosswords! My time was 41:52, with 11 minutes spent on the aforementioned clue. I am pleased to report I put the answer together entirely from wordplay, which was true for most of this puzzle. It’s the kind of puzzle I prefer!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Refuse vessel entry to port after coast beset by snow? (4) |
| SKIP – P{ort} after SKI (coast beset by snow?)
I didn’t know this term, and kept thinking of ‘garbage scow’. |
|
| 4 | Tennis games played without eastern delegation (10) |
| ASSIGNMENT – anagram of TENNIS GAMES minus E | |
| 9 | Perhaps attempt to pick up unopened post by large tree houses (10) |
| FLIRTATION – {s}TATION next to L in FIR
This is the clue that took me 11 minutes. And I had the parsing right all along: I knew it had something to do with hitting on someone, but I was parsing it as “[unopened post by large] tree houses”, and I was looking for synonyms of ‘post’ like MAIL or SEND, as well as trees that end in -ION. Finally the word STATION came to mind and I was able to put the answer together. |
|
| 10 | Skate around east end of London[’s] Strand (4) |
| YARN – RAY reversed + {londo}N
I had the ingredients here immediately but put them together incorrectly, à la RA(N)Y. |
|
| 11 | Take in AC/DC, appearing in one minute, live (6) |
| IMBIBE – BI (AC/DC [!]) in I M BE
Oh my. This is a term I didn’t know, but now will never forget. |
|
| 12 | Exaggerated ruggedness of individual waterproof Jiffy bags (8) |
| MACHISMO – MAC (waterproof) MO (jiffy) around (bags) HIS (of individual)
I guess ‘waterproof’ is a noun? |
|
| 14 | Standing opposite to Siberian tiger cages (4) |
| ANTI – hidden in SIBERIAN TIGER | |
| 15 | Internally survey dozens in preparation [for] meeting (10) |
| RENDEZVOUS – {s}URVE{y} DOZENS anagrammed | |
| 17 | A tenor’s behind short hum in charming hymn (10) |
| MAGNIFICAT – A T after NIF{f} in MAGIC
Can never remember the synonyms for a stink. Y’all seem to have too many of them. |
|
| 20 | Fetching earth to go on crop (4) |
| CUTE – E on CUT | |
| 21 | Ice age left trace of chilly fronts (8) |
| COLDNESS – C{hilly} (left trace) before OLDNESS (age) | |
| 23 | Craft is able to make controlled descent (6) |
| ABSEIL – anagram of IS ABLE
I know this one from crosswords past. |
|
| 24 | Get rid of powerless press (4) |
| URGE – {p}URGE (powerless) | |
| 25 | Piano parts refined by small cast? (10) |
| SCULPTURED – P in CULTURED next to S
This is a very good clue, I think. |
|
| 26 | First person in family handles drug from South America (10) |
| SURINAMESE – I in SURNAMES + E
Also quite good. |
|
| 27 | Motorway staff going round place where many crash (4) |
| DORM – M ROD reversed | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Family going round capital disagree over high point (11) |
| KILIMANJARO – KIN around LIMA + JAR (disagree) + O | |
| 3 | Endless hell — a way of talking about deserts (9) |
| PERDITION – PER (a) DICTION (way of talking) deserted by C (about) | |
| 4 | Lay gilded china before king (7) |
| AMATEUR – MATE in AU (gilded china) + R | |
| 5 | Thong-like outfit perhaps represented in sumo, etc? (8,7) |
| SWIMMING COSTUME – anagram (SWIMMING) of IN SUMO ETC = COSTUME
A reverse anagram, is this called? |
|
| 6 | Worry about pound cake filling (7) |
| GANACHE – NAG reversed + ACHE (pound) | |
| 7 | Case of eggs outside by morning papers (5) |
| EXAMS – E{gg}S around X (by) AM | |
| 8 | Fly round and round [in] ballroom dance (5) |
| TANGO – GNAT reversed + O | |
| 13 | One might go to 2 or higher [in] complex enumeration (11) |
| MOUNTAINEER – anagram of ENUMERATION | |
| 16 | Police department clamps off-road vehicle (4,5) |
| VICE SQUAD – VICES QUAD | |
| 18 | Asian’s inside borders at large plant (7) |
| FREESIA – {a}SIA{n} next to FREE (at large) | |
| 19 | Public transport staff save old stamp (7) |
| TRAMPLE – TRAM + POLE – O (save old) | |
| 21 | Suit jackets left in pack (5) |
| CLUBS – L in CUBS (pack) | |
| 22 | Hang around, dropping in for a beer (5) |
| LAGER – LINGER, replacing IN with A
(Thanks, Paul!) |
|
I missed two in the NW corner, KILIMANJARO and FLIRTATION, managed to see sTATION for unopened post’ but didn’t get the definition and was stuck on a homophone of ‘try’. Also missed MAGNIFICAT. Everything else was either helpful wordplay or anagrams, and liked RENDEZVOUS and ASSIGNMENT. Thought IMBIBE very good. Thought the anagrammed MOUNTAINEER clever and assumed that ‘2’ was referring to K2. Lots to like today. COD to SURINAMESE, which I managed to spell suranamese!
Thanks PJ and setter.
DNF due to a sloppy RENDESVOUS. Can’t really complain about the spelling challenge when the letters are literally handed to you. Sigh.
17:41 would have stacked up pretty well otherwise. Very enjoyable challenge, COD to SURINAMESE.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
I sympathise. Spelling errors are a twice weekly occurrence ches moi.
A very interesting puzzle. I had been expecting a typical Friday beast but after a few moments of speed-reading the clues looking for an easy start I spotted EXAMS at 7dn and built from there one by one. As I did so I spent longer on each clue than might be my custom if the answer didn’t jump out at me and gradually the whole of the RH side including SWIMMING COSTUME but excluding 26ac, had fallen into place. As with Jeremy I was constructing answers largely from wordplay.
Unfortunately problems began when I came to tackle the LH side and apart from a few ‘gifts’ such as ANTI, IMBIBE, LAGER and URGE I became really bogged down with very little progress and the clock started running away from me.
My confidence took a blow when I eventually spotted PERDITION at 3dn and I realised my answer at 9ac was wrong. I hadn’t been completely sure of it, but PLANTATION had seemed a reasonable fit. A couldn’t think of an alternative, so eventually I gave in and used aids to find FLIRTATION and kicked myself.
That broke my hopes of an unassisted finish and I was tired by then so as the clock reached 70 minutes I also used aids for SCULPTURED and SURINAMESE to complete the grid. I had been so close to both at one time, but I didn’t know the country as South American so I was probably never going to get to it.
I certainly enjoyed this puzzle as something a bit different though.
28ac?
26ac I expect
Yes, thanks.
About 90 minutes with errors. I put PLANTATION for FLIRTATION. I didn’t get PERDITION as I was looking for a hell word to make endless. To me “coast beset by snow” was gibberish and even now it is difficult to see coast as a verb.
Needed the blog for a lot of the parsing. Thanks Jeremy.
I spent some time toying with HADE_ and DI_ before I thought of PERDITIION.
Though I’ve never done it, if I were beset by snow I’d far rather COAST gently downhill rather than either plod upwards or scream helplessly downwards.
I didn’t find this too hard unti the end when I had SURINAMESE and SCULPTURED left to work out. Luckily the husband of a friend of mine is SURINAMESE so that one fell pretty quickly, and even with all the checkers I couldn’t see a word I could fit, never mind one that meant “cast” (throw? a theatre troupe? moulding something? there are several different meanings). So all correct in the end.
In the blog at 22D (last clue), I think you mean “replacing IN with A”, not “A with IN”.
Thank you!
Off to a slow start –FOI DORM–and continued slowly; took me over an hour, not counting short bouts of unconsciousness. In several cases, I suddenly saw a word, e.g. MAGNIFICAT, SCULPTURE, from the checkers without reference to the clue, and worked back to find the wordplay. (Never did parse MAGNIFICAT; didn’t see tenor=T.) The setter is fond of (a)round/about to indicate reversal or inclusion: 10ac, 27ac, 2d, 6d, 8d. I particularly liked IMBIBE & PERDITION.
Liked this one, not too hard, for a Friday anyway.
I thought of purgatory to start with and perdition took a while to arrive. Never quite parsed 12ac but no undue problems otherwise.
Just over the hour for this beauty. Loved ‘coasts beset by snow,’ with its Bondian images of bloke with rifle slung over his back whooshing effortlessly between snow-laden crags and trees.
That was indeed… amazing.
I can’t see what ‘jackets’ is doing in 21D unless it’s part of the def?
Suit jackets = CLUBS?
I.e. the club symbols are the motifs/’jackets’ of that suit of cards? Or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
I read ‘jackets’ as a verb=put in a jacket=enclose; CLUBS (suit) envelops L in CUBS (pack [of Cub Scouts]).
I see what you mean. The clue would work OK without ‘jackets’, ie ‘Suit left in pack’:
‘Suit’ as the def with L (‘left’) contained in (‘in’) CUBS (‘pack’). The alternative parsing with ‘jackets’ indicating containment, as suggested by Kevin, would make ‘in’ as a link word. Having ‘jackets’ probably helps the surface as well.
63 minutes. Hard enough but not too hard. FLIRTATION took me out to over an hour; I went through the same options as Jeremy, as well as checking if a possible pangram would help but alas all the letters were used by then. Having a mental blank for the required sense for ‘Lay’ at 4d didn’t help and I also found PERDITION difficult. I wondered about ACHE for ‘pound’ at 6d but I guess they’re somewhat similar, if not exactly the same.
I imagine the JOG IN across the centre of the grid is coincidental.
A whisker over an hour, with aids used for a number of holdouts in the bottom half (SURINAMESE, SCULPTURED). Several notches above my pay grade but the wit and intricacy of the cluing made it very enjoyable in a rather masochistic way.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
23:51. LOI FLIRTATION. Along with PERDITION my last 2 added 3 minutes at the end. Lovely puzzle. Lots of ticks on my copy. COD to VICE SQUAD. Thank-you Jeremy and setter.
The setter is John Henderson and I claim my five pounds. I say that because
– it’s pretty hard
– there’s quite a bit of implied-‘that’/Yoda wordplay (‘Jiffy bags’, ‘tree houses’, ‘trace of chilly fronts’ etc.)
– the clues are of the highest quality
Thanks Jeremy and setter, whoever you are. We’ll find out when the Cracking the Cryptic video comes out later.
Ah well, no fiver for me! Hats off to John Guiver.
Brilliant puzzle. Perfect Friday fare to make me struggle yet, looking at the leaderboard also enough to slow the experts down.
Same time, same LOI as our blogger.
Slight quibble with FREESIA where the SIA doesn’t border (go round) the FREE, it follows it. Is next to I suppose. And ACHE is a bit of a stretch, “made my heart ache” maybe.
LOL at IMBIBE. Look out for “Half chips, half rice”.
Thanks to setter and PJ.
I felt the same on ACHE until I thought of a pounding headache.
That would be fine if ‘pounding headache’ were a pleonasm, but it isn’t!
(I don’t actually mind it, close enough for government work, but it’s more word association than synonymity)
30:45 seems about right for this one. I don’t think I got bogged down for too long on anything, but SCULPTURED, MAGNIFICAT and PERDITION gave me the most trouble. COD to the first of those, although it may be a chestnut for some? Also, I remembered how to spell ABSEIL today so that’s nice 🙂
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
31.01 on an absolutely classic connoisseur’s delight. Almost everything needed sculpting from the wordplay rather than just guessing – the subtle definitions saw to that.
So much to appreciate: PERDITION described not just as hell, but as endless hell, the use of SURNAMES and CULTURED, the complete anagram for MOUNTAINEER, the extended OLDNESS for age, even just the unobtrusive use of the alphabet entire. So many clues had that wow factor when light dawned, and so many had tempting garden paths to explore before emerging into that clearing.
A tip of the hat to the setter. Altogether now: F’reesia jolly good fellow.
DNF – well I did but only with external assistance, to which I had recourse after an hour. It is always heartening however to learn that others have fallen at the same fences. On reflection (as ever) the answers should not have defeated me – no NHOs and fair clueing. Only FREESIA was a bit iffy, I thought. I too was surprised when PERDITION ousted PLANTATION.
Thanks to setter and plusJ.
Just about an hour over 2 sessions. Quite a lot went in rather quickly but had to grind out the remaining Fridayish clues. Needed all the crossers for LOI SCULPTURED, didn’t really see ice=COLDNESS and stared at FLIRTATION for a while before the literal came to mind and I subsequently parsed it. Good fun though (IMBIBE!) and always nice to end Friday with a win.
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
Pangrammatic. No-one has mentioned this so far.
I would never have solved MAGNIFICAT, because I have never heard of it and the cryptic is highly complex and ambiguous until you know the answer.
I also couldn’t get PERDITION, though I think I would have got this with if I had the N from Magnificat. I was focused on ‘perfidies’. I also gave up on FLIRTATION, where I hadn’t seen the intended meaning, and SCULPTURED, which I should have got.
I didn’t have time to spend pushing this one beyond 50 mins so had to give up.
Despite this fairly abject failure, I was actually quite pleased to have got as many as I did. Definitely the hardest of the week. The SNITCH is under-valuing the difficulty, in my opinion, because it isn’t counting DNFs.
SKI = coast beset by snow is simply fantastic, thanks for that.
Tough but achievable and enjoyable. From ASSIGNMENT to FLIRTATION in 31:24. PERDITION was POI. SCULPTURED took a while. SWIMMING COSTUME and MAGNIFICAT were breakthrough points. Thanks setter and Jeremy.
Excellent time, John! I tend to struggle on the more technical puzzles, but today I am in good company, with the third-highest WITCH behind Verlaine and George Heard.
Quite a podium!
Thanks Hugh. Yes, it’s interesting the way some puzzles seem to suit some solvers better than others. I was also surprised by Verlaine’s and George’s times when I glanced down the SNITCH list.
39:55 but made this harder than needed to be. Was hesitant about a few answers such as CLUBS (unsure what the jacket was doing- thanks for explanations above) and held off on YARN thinking clueing ray with skate would be similar to clueing cat with tiger (is it definition by example that the bloggers call it?) but Chambers corrected me after the solve.
Repeatedly got how the clues worked wrong for example trying to put the sia around ‘at large’ for FREESIA.
Got the names part of SURINAMESE then just assumed suri must be the head of a family in some culture.
Didn’t know AC/DC for bi but seemed plausible not that other words were coming to mind.
COD SWIMIMG COSTUME
Thanks blogger and setter
43:20 – high quality cluing throughout with almost all needing to be worked through, bar MAGNIFICAT and SURINAMESE which went in unparsed once the checkers were in place.
Two goes needed.
Same quibble as rv1 above re FREESIA – I wouldn’t even say that the ‘sia’ is next to the ‘free’, as it’s a down clue. It didn’t help that I spent ages trying to justify FUCHSIA as well.
– Took far too long to see that ‘craft’ was an anagrind to get ABSEIL
– Needed all the checkers before getting SCULPTURED (was the question mark needed?)
– Had no idea how AMATEUR worked, only getting it once I’d thought of the right meaning of ‘lay’
Thanks Jeremy and setter.
FOI Urge
LOI Freesia
COD Rendezvous
See my comment below – evidently the setter realized the distinction.
18:36. Tough one! I found some of this a little bit annoying: a few of the ‘find something that fits and reverse-engineer convoluted wordplay’ variety (not sure I’d have got MAGNIFICAT if I didn’t know the word) and some looseish stuff (more word association than synonymity as I said above). But there was more than enough witty and original stuff to compensate, so overall a definite thumbs-up.
I really liked the puzzle, and would have done even better if I had followed my instincts – sometimes the first word that pops into your head is the answer. I did biff flirtation, machismo, Magnificat, and Kilimanjaro, but then I parsed them – except for machismo, which had to be right. Sculptured was my LOI, but I had thought of sculpture when I first read the clue. It is not very technically correct, because a sculpture is what the sculptor carves, but the cast is a bronze made at the foundry.
Time: 52:23
Yes this was one of the things I found a bit loose. Bronze and other casts are part of what is generally regarded as the art form ‘sculpture’, but as a verb I would have said that ‘sculpture’ has a more precise meaning distinct from ‘cast’. However Collins disagrees so we’ll have to take it up with them!
52:11 but…
Some of this was pretty hard, though there were moments of brightness amongst the clouds. MOUNTAINEER made me think of 11-letter mountains to fit 2d – KILIMANJARO was the first I thought of and it parsed perfectly. SWIMMING COSTUME also gave plenty of checkers. Where I struggled was with the unknowns – 10-letter hymn from _A___F_C_T – not a scooby so had to painstakingly piece that together and hope for the best. Similarly the PERDITION/FLIRTATION crossing had me baffled – I didn’t know what PERDITION means, so needed that final checker to have any chance – finally resorted to aids for both of these.
Thanks PJ and setter
Pretty much exactly my experience today.
I had a tactical pause (plus stuff to do) around 34 minutes with three to go: PERDITION, FLIRTATION and SCULPTURED. It didn’t work. I stared blankly for ten minutes before throwing in the towel – a fair decision, as I could have been staring for quite some time. But thoroughly enjoyed it, it was a cracker – thanks setter and Jeremy!
Definitely not for beginners or the faint hearted – very pleased to finish in 43 mins. No unheard-ofs, but I wasn’t keen on ‘pound’ = ACHE in 6D. But a great puzzle. Spent an age trying to crack SURINAMESE and CLUBS, even though I once set a puzzle with Surinam as its theme! A truly diverse country, in Paramaribo, its capital, a mosque and a synagogue are next door to each other, close to the Cathedral and a Hindu temple. First in was ASSIGNMENT and last CLUBS. Favourite five clues: to MAGNIFICAT, SURINAMESE, AMATEUR, VICE SQUAD and LAGER. Thank you Setter and Blogger.
Somewhere between 60 to 90 minutes (forgot to look at my watch when I started).
Another who confidently bunged in Plantation early on, only to be corrected by ninja turtling Perdition (from the film Road to…) and finally seeing Flirtation as my LOI. Did manage to parse them all in the end.
COD Kilimanjaro.