With apologies to those uninterested in football, I’ve found it impossible not to draw references from Sunday’s game.
I found this something of a test – not in the same league as the Italian football team – but a test nevertheless. 13 minutes ticked by until I finished with the second of the two long down clues.
Quite a few of the down clues are really very clever.
Definitions are underlined.
Across | |
1 | Annoyed with nation’s sport (5-7) |
CROSS-COUNTRY – annoyed (CROSS), nation (COUNTRY). Well, that’ll be England then. | |
8 | The French lay back for break (3-2) |
LET-UP – ‘the’ in French (LE), lay – put – backwards (TUP). After the first 30 minutes, the Italians didn’t – let-up that is. | |
9 | Is youngster up to finding restaurant? (7) |
CANTEEN – is youngester up to (CAN TEEN). The youngsters of the English team couldn’t – beat the huge Italian keeper in the shoot out. | |
10 | Letter from abroad from Charlie with greeting (3) |
CHI – Charlie (C), with greeting (HI). 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet (x). I rather stupidly toyed with hic for a while. | |
11 | Unacceptable ruling about backing up (9) |
REPUGNANT – ruling (REGNANT) around up backwards (PU). To be fair, I thought the ref did a great job with no unacceptable rulings (although I thought Sterling had a decent penalty claim). | |
13 | Backward-looking group of reporters with a bygone style (5) |
RETRO – inside the clue (a group of letters running backwards inside) rep(ORTER)s. Well hidden. Ah – the bygone style of 66. | |
14 | Miserable person, head down to go to be sick (5) |
RETCH – head or first letter down/to go/missing from miserable person w(RETCH). Quite an accurate description of me during the penalty shoot out. | |
16 | I’m nervous about being infested (9) |
VERMINOUS – anagram (about) of IM NERVOUS. And I was! | |
17 | Short paragraph’s given backing for criminal charge (3) |
RAP – short paragraph – par – backwards (RAP). Poor Gareth will take the rap for those late subs not working out as hoped. | |
19 | Practical program deliberately gave wrong answer (7) |
APPLIED – program (APP), deliberately gave wrong answer (LIED). Think applied maths. | |
21 | Not appropriate to sleep inside it (5) |
INAPT – sleep (NAP) inside it (IT). | |
22 | Girl with nipper is a mean individual (5-7) |
PENNY-PINCHER – girl (PENNY), nipper (PINCHER). |
Down | |
1 | Gut feeling commanding officer is over defeat mostly (5) |
COLIC – commanding officer (CO) on top of (over) defeat mostly (LIC)k. I suppose I’m now over the defeat (mostly) – better to lose in a final than a semi. | |
2 | Clothes shop known to have better suiting? (9) |
OUTFITTER – known (OUT), better suiting (FITTER). | |
3 | Being on top of exceptionally good job (13) |
SUPERPOSITION – exceptionally good (SUPER), job (POSITION). Well, we were, and then we weren’t. | |
4 | People regularly touchy about trophy (6) |
OCCUPY – t(O)u(C)h(Y) around trophy (CUP). A country is peopled by the group of people who live there. Regularly touchy about not having a trophy for so long – us? | |
5 | Peaceful response son earns going around (3-10) |
NON-AGGRESSION – anagram (around) of SON EARNS GOING. Peaceful=non-aggressive, does peaceful response=non-aggression? Happily the game was played in a good spirit all round. | |
6 | Regret starting running up Everest (3) |
RUE – (R)inning (U)p (E)verest. Well, plenty to rue, I suppose. | |
7 | Steal tin at church (6) |
SNATCH – tin (SN – chemical symbol), at (AT), church (CH). The Italians snatched the win at the end. | |
12 | Later consequences of getting me that far drunk (9) |
AFTERMATH – anagram (drunk) of ME THAT FAR. Maybe the less I say here the better – but Monday got off to a slow start. | |
13 | Show soldiers meat from farm animal (6) |
REVEAL – soldiers (RE), meat from farm animal (VEAL). | |
15 | Part of ship finished in stoppage (4-2) |
HOLD-UP – part of ship (HOLD), finished (UP – the game’s up). Stoppage time makes allowance for any hold-ups and is always held up on a board. | |
18 | Piper, perhaps noble, keeping time (5) |
PETER – noble (PEER) keeping time (T). Peter Piper – or Shilton or Crouch. | |
20 | A little pasty? One must get stuck into exercises (3) |
PIE – one (I) stuck into exercises (PE). Half time necessity! |
LOI: 15d. HOLD-UP
Time to Complete: 48 minutes
Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 20
Clues Answered with Aids: 4
Clues Unanswered: Nil
Wrong Answers: Nil
Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/24
Aids Used: Chambers
An early start for me as I was woken up a 3am by an ambulance pulling up outside my neighbour’s house. His 13-year-old boy had suffered a severe asthma attack. Fortunately he was improving by the time he was transported to the hospital.
No words that I had not heard of in today’s crossword, though I always thought that superposition, as a single word, was something to do with quantum physics. But getting that and non-aggression helped towards solving this enjoyable puzzle.
FOI 2dn OUTFITTER – MENSWEAR always raises a smile.
LOI 19ac APPLIED
COD 1ac CROSS COUNTRY – bad memories
WOD 22ac PENNY PINCHER
Tried panther=Nipper, but couldn’t see a girls name without an initial letter.
Didn’t get SUPERPOSITION either.
COD APPLIED
Come on tomorrow…
Diana
Thanks to Chris
I’m off for a consolatory bike ride now as the temperature in Mallorca has dipped below 30 degrees in the shade.
Edited at 2021-07-13 08:47 am (UTC)
Liked CROSS COUNTRY, CANTEEN.
oh I see, OCCUPY = fill with people. Solved, but couldn’t parse that one. Lots of the letter ‘p’.
Couldn’t parse REPUGNANT either, nor RETRO. Didn’t know SUPERPOSITION was a word but it had to be.
Thanks vm, Chris.
Edited at 2021-07-13 11:59 am (UTC)
My particular problems were my LOIs, HOLD UP and APPLIED. I only got the last one through an alphabet trawl of the second letter. Not in a million years would I have reached the answer through testing synonyms of “practical. “. Part of the issue was also that I hesitated over SUPERPOSITION, not actually believing that there was such a word.
Some great clues here, too, though. I especially liked CANTEEN and PENNY PINCHER.
Super blog, too! Thank you!
And thanks, too, to joker.
Lots of good clues, and a challenge without being too hard. HOLD UP was my LOI for some reason, and VERMINOUS my favourite.
6:55.
Edited at 2021-07-13 10:08 am (UTC)
Cedric
My school had a wood at the back of it which was regularly used for cross country (usually on the days when it was raining and the PE teacher couldn’t be bothered). Sounds a cliche, but people did hang around in there and smoke until it was time to come in.
DNK 3dn “Superposition”, and needed the checkers to finally put something in and never parsed 11ac “Repugnant”. As Merlin noted above, for a while I was thinking 22ac might have “panther” at the end, but it obviously didn’t make sense.
FOI — 1dn “Colic”
LOI — 3dn “Superposition”
COD — 18dn “Peter” — simple, but made me smile.
Thanks as usual!
FOI – 10ac CHI
LOI – 3dn SUPERPOSITION
COD – 9ac CANTEEN with an honourable mention to 22ac PENNY PINCHER
Thanks Joker and Chris.
COD 13 ac “Retro”, because I thought it was a clever variation on a “reverse hidden” clue with a nice surface too.
Thanks to Chris and Joker
Edited at 2021-07-13 10:59 am (UTC)
Wonderfully witty puzzle, sparkling with invention. And the blog made me laugh a lot, so what a fun break.
FOI CROSS COUNTRY, LOI LET-UP (I tried so hard to make “lie-in” work), COD CANTEEN, time 10:03 for 1.9K and a Decent Day.
Many thanks Joker and Chris. (Played in good spirit apart from Chiellini trying to pull Saka’s shirt off, which was definitely not Corinthian!)
Templar
Enjoy the journey, if you can withstand the g-forces.
Very nice surfaces. Thanks setter.
Amusing blog too!
All in all though a very fun puzzle – thanks Joker and Chris
My LOsI were VERMINOUS, SUPERPOSITION, REVEAL (I was alphabet-trawling ___HAM) and RETRO, but all of the longer solutions and many of the medium-length solutions required a lot of hard graft.
N.B. Mrs Random has just finished, as I write, in 35 minutes. Slightly slow for her, but like a rocket, compared to me.
Many thanks to Joker, although it seemed like torture for much of the time, and to chrisw91 for the excellent blog.
Two in particular caused me to pause. 3D Superposition is not a word I know or am ever likely to use (thank you PW and Somerandomchap for explaining it). But I followed the cluing and it had to be, so it went in. And the link peple = occupy in 4D took a bit of thought too; not the most obvious synonym for me when I was doing the puzzle but I see now that it does work just about.
Many thanks to Chris for the blog — soccer references accepted this once and much enjoyed, but not I hope a style all bloggers will feel they have to follow for ever more!
Cedric
FOI CROSS-COUNTRY
LOI HOLD-UP
COD RETRO (beautifully concealed I thought)
TIME 3:55
over the grid. But I did find some of it quite tricky, not helped by an interruption to my thought processes when Mr B came to talk about builders, so I don’t have a very accurate time – about 12 minutes I think.
FOI Cross country
LOI Superposition – it was an NHO for me too
COD – Aftermath
Finally: Penny pincher – not me, although I must admit to liking a yellow sticker in the supermarket 😂
Very enjoyable at about 40 mins which is 2x my target. I seemed on the wavelength for the long down clues but struggled mightily with some of the across especially in the SW. Thanks Joker and Chris.
FOI: LET UP
LOI: REPUGNANT
COD: CROSS COUNTRY
Loved the blog — thanks Chris