Solving time: 36 minutes
There were some easy clues in the NW corner to get me off to a confident start but I hit some problems along the way with several unknown words that had to be constructed from wordplay, and a couple of definitions I didn’t find exactly helpful. Nevertheless I enjoyed the solve.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. I usually omit all reference to positional indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
| 1 | Panelling succeeds around a small bed (8) |
| WAINSCOT | |
| WINS (succeeds) containing [around] A, COT (small bed). It’s attached to the lower part of a room wall. | |
| 6 | Depend on artist? Hardly (6) |
| RARELY | |
| RA (artist), RELY (depend) | |
| 9 | It bans a clinic under reconstruction taking in people? (13) |
| CANNIBALISTIC | |
| Anagram [under reconstruction] of IT BANS CLINIC. I’ve seen similar clues before but they never fail to raise a smile. |
|
| 10 | Shroud the woman found outside temple (6) |
| SWATHE | |
| SHE (the woman) containing [found outside] WAT (Buddhist temple) | |
| 11 | Nearly miss one car reversing, tending to obstruct (8) |
| INIMICAL | |
| LAC{k} (miss) [nearly] + I (one) + MINI (car) [reversing]. This went in as my LOI only because it was a word I recognised that fitted the checkers. I didn’t know its meaning, which hampered me, and ‘lack’ in the wordplay took ages to spot. | |
| 13 | Those actively promoting speed route for fast jumping? (10) |
| HYPERSPACE | |
| HYPERS (those actively promoting), PACE (speed). I tried without success to find a dictionary definition corresponding with the one in the clue, so I asked my AI assistant to help me out. Here’s what he said: Hyperspace is often used as a faster-than-light (FTL) method of interstellar travel in science fiction. In most works, hyperspace can be traversed – the process often known as “jumping” – through a gadget known as a “hyperdrive”. Many works rely on hyperspace as a convenient background tool enabling FTL travel necessary for the plot, with a small minority making it a central element in their storytelling. | |
| 15 | Hack chasing lead on cricket champ (4) |
| CHEW | |
| C{ricket} [lead], HEW (hack) | |
| 16 | A parliamentary session ends initially in recess (4) |
| APSE | |
| A + P{arliamentary} + S{ession} + E{nds} [initially] | |
| 18 | Friendly greeting from rural workers around Lima (10) |
| PLEASANTRY | |
| PEASANTRY (rural workers) containing [around] L (Lima – NATO alphabet) | |
| 21 | What could be part of a spray with stem gone bad (8) |
| GEMSTONE | |
| Anagram [bad] of STEM GONE. Another late entry in the grid as I had been looking for some sort of flower. |
|
| 22 | Introduction to Fritz Lang and Mabuse’s last projection (6) |
| FLANGE | |
| F{ritz} [introduction], LANG, {Mabus}E [last]. I understand Mabuse is an enemy of Batman, but Dr Mabuse is a fictional literary character created by Norbert Jacques who featured as the eponymous villain in six films directed by Fritz Lang. | |
| 23 | Reliable writer, I have written about French cinematographer (13) |
| AUTHORITATIVE | |
| AUTHOR (writer) + I’VE (I have) containing [about] TATI (French cinematographer). We’ve had Jacques Tati clued as various things over the years, most recently as a mime, but ‘cinematographer’ is a first, I think, and not strictly accurate. I checked several of his most famous films on imdb and the Cinematography credits were all to other people. | |
| 25 | Warning a tool is wasting energy (6) |
| ADVICE | |
| A, D{e}VICE (tool) [wasting energy] | |
| 26 | Type of apple no good, nearly all Asian rootstock for cooking (8) |
| GALANGAL | |
| GALA (type of apple), NG (no good), AL{l} [nearly]. I knew the word vaguely as a foodstuff, but nothing more about it. | |
| Down |
|
| 2 | North London area’s superior style (7) |
| ARCHWAY | |
| ARCH (superior), WAY (style). I know North London very well so I was disturbed when I found myself struggling to come up with this answer. And what a coincidence that it was mentioned here only last Friday by Zabadak with reference to its location being close to Islington! | |
| 3 | Chamber group with a man lacking still? (11) |
| NONETHELESS | |
| NONET (chamber group), HE (man), LESS (lacking) | |
| 4 | Rebuke clubs requiring mask (5) |
| CHIDE | |
| C (clubs), HIDE (mask) | |
| 5 | Deposed empress volunteers to ingest poison (7) |
| TSARINA | |
| TA (volunteers – Territorial Army) containing [to ingest] SARIN (poison) | |
| 6 | Algerian music numbers — southern Sahara lacks such (9) |
| RAININESS | |
| RAI (Algerian music), NINES (numbers), S (southern). I spotted that ‘rain’ had to begin the answer and then vaguely remembered seeing ‘rai’ as a type of music previously unknown to me. It appeared in a Jumbo in May clued as ‘African music’. | |
| 7 | Republican brought up to corruption (3) |
| ROT | |
| R (Republican) then TO (reversed) [brought up] | |
| 8 | See first of keels in pound going up or down on canal (7) |
| LOCKAGE | |
| LO (see), then K{eels} [first] contained by [in] CAGE (pound). As my home is near to the Grand Union Canal I saw LOCK straight away but I needed wordplay to deduce the ending. I’m not entirely sure I knew the word which means the amount of rise or fall effected by a (canal etc.) lock or series of locks (SOED). | |
| 12 | Hypocrisy accepted by one country for a spell (11) |
| INCANTATION | |
| CANT (hypocrisy) contained [accepted] by I (one) + NATION (country) | |
| 14 | Second-year student hopes room is free (9) |
| SOPHOMORE | |
| Anagram [free] of HOPES ROOM. According to SOED this was historically a second year student at Cambridge but it has fallen into disuse. These days it seems to be applied mostly in American universities and high schools. | |
| 17 | Help with homework handed over in advance (7) |
| PREPAID | |
| PREP (school homework – preparation), AID (help). I’m not sure ‘prep’ is still used in schools now but it survives in cooking. | |
| 19 | Equestrian sport is short of time when the light goes (7) |
| EVENING | |
| EVEN{t}ING (equestrian sport) [short of time] | |
| 20 | Misrepresent volume editor over a text from antiquity (3-4) |
| RIG-VEDA | |
| RIG (misrepresent), V (volume), ED (editor), A. Arrived at from wordplay and checkers. It’s one of the books of sacred knowledge of Hinduism. |
|
| 22 | Bomb around large weapon (5) |
| FLAIL | |
| FAIL (bomb – flop) containing [around] L (large). A gruesome looking medieval weapon consisting of an iron handle with a spiked club or lengths of chain attached. | |
| 24 | Nectar-seeking flier from group of Noctuidae (3) |
| TUI | |
| Hidden in [from group of] {Noc}TUI{dae}. Another word unknown to me. It’s a New Zealand bird of the honeyeater family. If anyone’s interested, noctuidae are moths. | |
8:34. The Collins definition of HYPERSPACE comes close to the one in the clue – a theoretical dimension within which conventional space-time relationship does not apply. I had a bit of a head start on this one, with GALANGAL being a component of laksa, which is delicious and SOPHOMORE being a common term in the USA. Nice puzzle.
11:31. A moderately tricky one. I knew most of the words and the things I didn’t know (the jewellery version of ‘spray’, LOCKAGE, what TUIs eat) were easy enough to infer.
BTW j you’ve got this puzzle labelled as a quick cryptic.
Since Jackkt is probably asleep, I have fixed the blog title for him – hope he doesn’t mind.
Thanks.
Certainly harder than yesterday but almost succeeded, only stopped by the simple ADVICE. NHO TUI, RIGVEDA, RAI or TATI. I thought LOCKAGE was a fee for using locks, like many -age words.
AT 6A, since a BA is a Bachelor of Arts, then I thought the “?” could allow BARELY=hardly.
I think “prep” is used at boarding schools, since there can be no “home”work for the inmates. It’s also a bit of a class marker in the Uk.
COD HYPERSPACE
LOCKAGE as a fee for going through locks is correct too and the answer might have come more easily to mind if clued as such.
I never attended a boarding school but we still referred to ‘prep’.
27:51 off leaderboard
This took some time, and some looking up things. We must have had TUI once, as I recognized it. DNK LOCKAGE took time to figure out, as did CANNIBALISTIC, when I finally twigged. I wasted time trying to think of the name of an ousted empress. DNK GALANGAL, and DNK the apple, so I checked ODE before submitting.
I did reasonably well on the ones I knew, but I definitely did not know galangal. Archway was tough too – I knew the brand of cookie, of course, but the London area rang only the vaguest of bells. Tui, Tati – they’re in Mephisto. And of course, we have plenty of sophomores in the US.
The ones I found really tough, and needed nearly twenty minutes to crack, were cannibalistic and hyperspace. I started with the correct anagram fodder for cannibalistic, but then decided that didn’t work and tried to make an anagram of A CLINIC around a word meaning people. Then I saw it. As for hyperspace, I was completely baffled by the crossing letters – there’s no word that fits this lot! Then, all of a sudden, there was.
Time: 58 minutes.
Sadly, from my point of view, the one word that fits “this lot” of letters is CYBERSPACE.
46m 28s but I put GAL I NGAL.
Tuis are lovely birds; like a largish blackbird with a white bib and very tuneful. I see them in the trees and bushes around my flat.
I liked 9ac. It put me in mind of one of Dean Mayer’s very succinct clues: ‘Likes eating (11)’: CANNIBALISM.
Thanks, Jack, particularly for HYPERSPACE.
The field above my house was devoted to GALA apples until last winter, when the trees were grubbed up and left for rewilding
After yesterday’s PB it was back to earth for me today with a CNF. I had an appointment and ran out of time with many gaps in the top half so hit ‘reveal’ to find that many of those gaps would have remained had I kept at it for a week. I’m looking at you LOCKAGE, HYPERSPACE, ARCHWAY (is that a place? NHO) and RAININESS. Grateful to jackkt for the much-needed explanations at several points.
‘Archway’ or ‘The Archway’ started as something of a local nickname with reference to a bridge built in 1813. It’s perhaps known more widely now as a station on the London Underground. The stop was originally called ‘Highgate’, then in 1939 ‘Highgate (Archway)’, and since 1947 simply ‘Archway’.
Thank you Jack, very informative. I was looking for an actual suburb name, so got nowhere!
So was I – for ages!
Had a flying start (after 1A immediately, for a change), but got distracted for a while by some “local” (US) news (tomorrow’s headlines worldwide). When I returned to this, expected a quick finish, but there were a few tougher ones here. NHO of GALANGAL or ARCHWAY, but trusted the wordplay. POI CANNIBALISTIC, LOI LOCKAGE
42 minutes. NHO RAI as a sort of music or LOCKAGE as a word but it looked likely and fitted the wordplay. I think of INIMICAL more as “hostile” rather than ‘tending to obstruct’ though I suppose they’re similar. ARCHWAY well remembered from London days and from Dick Whittington and his cat.
Thanks for the explanation of HYPERSPACE and the significance of ‘Mabuse’ at 22a.
Found this straightforward, RAI the only unknown (it shouldn’t have been, we’ve met it before) .. but it was never going to be anything else. Heard of Galangal (and familiar with Gala apples) but would not be able to describe it …
Some of us here may be aware of Mabuse der Spieler, used as an alias
Let us go then, you and I,
When the Evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
(The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, TS Eliot)
30 mins pre-brekker. Nice and chewy in parts. Didn’t know Rai, so that was tricky.
Ta setter and J.
20’04”, with the nho GALANGAL LOI.
Thanks jack and setter.
DNF
Cyberspace 🙁
Thanks, jack.
I fully expected pink squares to appear, as I’d guessed my way through most of this tricky offering. However, I got away with it, and am more than usually grateful for Jack’s excellent blog.
FOI WAINSCOT (sense of false security)
LOI LOCKAGE (NHO)
COD AUTHORITATIVE (once I got EVENING and corrected the spelling!)
TIME 11:10
46 minutes with LOI LOCKAGE. Can you stick ‘age’ after anything and make a noun? Living several miles further north, I think of ARCHWAY as a road and as the best tube station for Highgate Cemetery. COD NONETHELESS, only a day or two after NOTWITHSTANDING. That would work better with ‘nevertheless’ though. I knew the apple, which was as well as I was struggling on the root. Quite tough.Thank you Jack and setter.
DNF, another CYBERSPACE (no idea what was going on really) and had to look up the NHO RIG VEDA. Disappointing as I had worked hard on a number of tricky clues yet fell at the last. Other unknowns were RAI, SARIN, LOCKAGE and TUI but at least I worked them out.
I use to live between Highgate and Muswell Hill, and yet still took a while to see ARCHWAY. Doh.
Thanks Jack and setter.
I enjoyed this puzzle with its trickiness right until I submitted with a confident (but obviously not checked) CYBERSPACE as the speedy information highway. Pity Cybers don’t actively promote anything.
I was then brought up slightly short – and yes, I did mention ARCHWAY as the A1 through Islington – because I wrote in ARCHWAY but was apparently thinking Aldgate, only by the barest margin North London.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen WAINSCOT without the ting on the end, but it must be OK. There, I’ve mentioned it.
GEMSTONE as part of a spray went in with a bit of a shrug, RAI and TUI thanks to Mephisto, and GALANGAL thanks to the Lan Naa Thai in Epping.
Great blog from Jack!
I thought of ARCHWAY on my first pass (my brother lived there) but dismissed it as not really an area until I had some crossers. Otherwise a lot of biffing going on, similar to many others (WAINSCOT, RIG-VEDA, RAININESS where NHO RAI but had to be rain).
LOI HYPERSPACE which worked as soon as I saw it (being a bit of a Sci Fi lover), though in saying that cyberspace would also have been biffed had I thought of it first!
thanks to Jackkt and setter.
ADVICE my LOI but with SOPHOMORE entered with fingers crossed. Plenty of unknowns here to keep me on my toes. Pleased to be all correct. Thanks to setter and of course to the blogger.
Archway isn’t just a tube station: it really is an area in itself. Connected with Dick Whittington. I was slow to get this despite living nearby and often getting off at the tube stop on my way to Aldi. Lots of words that I didn’t know and just deduced from wordplay and crossers: TUI, rai, GALANGAL, also INIMICAL and HYPERSPACE in those senses. I think Beatrix Potter often talked about the WAINSCOT. Mice poking their heads through it, etc. A bit slow on 25ac because a vice is also a tool. 45 minutes.
Always difficult when one has crossing NHOs, in this case RIG VEDA and GALANGAL. From the wordplay it could have been Rig Vedo or Rig Deva, but fortunately Veda seemed more plausible.
23 mins. Only problem was TSARINA, wasn’t expecting the S there.
There were a couple of unknowns (TUI / GALANGAL) but they were gettable from the cryptic. My biggest problem was the definition of GEMSTONE. The anagram was obvious but “spray” was a connection too far for me. 30 minutes.
I thought I’d done well to finish this one in 32:31 but, like others, I had found the other word that fits those letters – cyberspace. FOI 1ac WAINSCOTT. Thanks to Zabadak for the clip. COD CANNIBALISTIC
41 minutes, after a false dawn with 1ac and 9ac going in at first sight. Held up by HYPERSPACE, RAININESS and GEMSTONE. Had vaguely heard of GALANGAL but it was fairly clear from the clueing. Like others I tend to think of ARCHWAY as a station rather than an area, and INIMICAL as something a bit stronger than obstructive, but one has to be broadminded.
FOI – WAINSCOT
LOI – HYPERSPACE
COD – no award.
Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.
Like jackkt I got off to a quick start, but was slowed by some tricky ones, especially 13a and 8d. I didn’t know LOCKAGE, nor RIG-VEDA, though VEDA was familiar.
35 minutes, but one wrong at 28a. Like somebody above I entered GALINGAL, which was pretty stupid of me because Gala apples are sold everywhere.
Never heard of them. But then since the original Granny Smiths disappeared to be replaced by the obnoxious misnomer Golden Delicious, I don’t do apples. We also had Cox’s Pippins and Russets growing in our back garden when I were a lad. They were nice and crunchy too.
Pleased to have got RIG-VEDA, TUI (the holiday firm helped) and GALANGAL but ran out of patience before HYPERSPACE, INIMICAL and SWATHE. Thanks for the blog.
Quite slow today, finishing in 44 minutes. NHO GALANGAL, LOCKAGE, or TUI. I was slow to think of SOPHOMORE too, I’ve heard the word but didn’t know what it meant.
HYPERSPACE seemed a bit dodgy to me, as a fictional device, clued as if it was real.
Thanks setter and blogger
Steve
NHO RIG VEDA, ARCHWAY, GALANGAL, LOCKAGE or TUI(except the holiday company), but managed to ferret them out along with the easier stuff in 29:19. FOI was WAINSCOT, LOI was RAININESS. Thanks setter and Jack.
DNF – had to look up INIMICAL (didn’t really know what it meant, so was always going to struggle) and RAININESS (didn’t know RAI, but the answer was guessable). Took just over 30 mins up to that point. Rest was quite tricky, but gettable after application of thought, though the NHO RIG VEDA was solved from checkers and wordplay, GALANGAL familiar to me.
29:16
NHO RIG VEDA, TUI (except for the holiday company) nor GALANGAL, but all clued generously. Hold ups in the north until I finally thought of a north London area beginning with A that wasn’t Arsenal. Everything fell into place thereafter. The only answer I didn’t parse was ADVICE – thought the tool was VICE so couldn’t work out what the D was doing.
Rod Stewart writes about growing up in ARCHWAY in his autobiography.
18:09
A bracing puzzle. TUI and RIG VEDA both new for me . Know nothing about HYPERSPACE – but what else could it be? Knew PREP as homework from reading Billy Bunter and Jennings.
Thanks to Jack and the setter.
52’25”
Smartly away but soon outpaced, finished tailed off.
WAINSCOT straight in from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, but then the going got stickier.
I very much enjoyed this, and the Archway and Fritz Lang background here.
Thank you setter, Jack et al.
14:51. I seem to have fared better than some with this puzzle. I was pleasantly surprised to avoid a pink square with RIG VEDA which I’d never heard of and I was unsure wether RIG was close enough in meaning to misrepresent.
COD: CANNABILISTIC
It isn’t remotely close enough. One is a process, the other is an outcome.
I did spell CANNIBALISTIC correctly when solving!
25 mins with LOI raininess. Seemed so obvious with all the crossers but didn’t know about rai. NHO rig veda but I did know veda. Good puzzle, nice mix and a chance to learn something new.
Thx setter and blogger.
TUI, RIG-VEDA and GALANGAL were complete unknowns worked out from wordplay, didn’t understand the spray connection with GEMSTONE, and didn’t bother to parse AUTHORITATIVE once I had enough checkers to see it. Don’t see why the clue for NONETHELESS needed a question mark.
FOI Rarely
LOI Tui
COD Apse
Galangal on sale at the wonderful Tang frères in Paris 13-eme has allowed me to complete many an eastern dish with at least a hope of authenticity. Used to live in Tufnell Park so Archway should have come quicker. For second day in a row, crossword done on paris airport trip (return today). So in fairness to self the 25 odd minutes could have come down.
Re Tati. Doesn’t being screenwriter count as filmographer? As an aside, my 90-year-old French aunt, who’s lived in France for nearly 70 years after marrying a Frenchman, was in a Tati club with fellow Tati addicts at Fashion and Design College, now part of De Montfort University, Leicester.
Well, no, because a screenwriter deals in words whilst a cinematographer (note not ‘filmographer’ in the clue) deals with images. One might argue that as a film director Tati might have involved himself in the cinematography but all his films that I checked credited two other cinematographers so I’d say it was a separate specialist skill. Anyway Tati is famous in so many areas of performance and filmmaking so why wouldn’t the setter define him by one of those?
17:57. Catching up on one I didn’t get time for on the day… I got stuck in the end in the NW corner where ARCHWAY took forever to see giving me the Y to finish with HYPERSPACE. ‘Route for fast jumping’ – lol. I remembered TUI but DNK the RIG of RIG VEDA or RAI music, but I got the right answers. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
Short of time this morning meant I ended up looking up a few obstinate ones (which I don’t think I’d have gotten given more time anyway), even though 1a went straight in, giving me false hope.
Too many unusual definitions here: INIMICAL, HYPERSPACE, GALANGAL, etc. for any pleasure to be had, and too many NHOs as well: TUI, RIG VEDA, LOCKAGE, ARCHWAY.