Hi everybody. We are always in safe hands with Trelawney, who is JUST THE TICKET (8a) for a pleasant start to the week. That made me smile, as did UTTER (3d) which is my clue of the day. Thanks Trelawney!
Definitions are underlined in the clues below. In the explanations, I generally italicise indicators unless it seems clearer not to. Where the removed letter is specified, [deletions] are in square brackets, and I’ve capitalised and emboldened letters which appear in the ANSWER. I sometimes omit link words and juxtaposition indicators if it doesn’t feel necessary to explain them. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments section.
| Across | |
| 1a | Decline to participate in operation with seller (3,3) |
| OPT OUT — OP (operation) + TOUT (seller) | |
| 4a | Level part of cricket pitch (6) |
| SQUARE — A double definition | |
| 8a | Perfect packing list for one travelling light? (4,3,6) |
| JUST THE TICKET — A fun secondary indication: you would have to be travelling very light to take JUST THE TICKET with you! | |
| 10a | Escapade with cloak ending in disaster (5) |
| CAPER — CAPE (cloak) + the last letter of (ending in) disasteR | |
| 11a | Investigation admitting large and medium difficulty (7) |
| PROBLEM — PROBE (investigation) taking in (admitting) L (large) + M (medium) | |
| 13a | Source of light amber ales going bust (5,4) |
| LASER BEAM — AMBER ALES anagrammed (going bust) | |
| 17a | Company returning to add shape (7) |
| OCTAGON — CO (company) going backwards (returning) + TAG ON (to add) | |
| 18a | Disney character’s heavenly body (5) |
| PLUTO — Two definitions | |
| 19a | Nato enquiries upended survey (13) |
| QUESTIONNAIRE — NATO ENQUIRIES anagrammed (upended) | |
| 21a | Personify the setter’s backing group (6) |
| EMBODY — ME (the setter) is reversed (backing) followed by BODY (group) | |
| 22a | River cut off by mouth of Nile (6) |
| SEVERN — SEVER (cut off) by the opening letter of (mouth of) Nile | |
| Down | |
| 1d | Protest’s goal (6) |
| OBJECT — Two definitions | |
| 2d | Aviator to cheek head of tank group moving north (4,5) |
| TEST PILOT — TO, LIP (cheek), the initial of (head of) Tank and SET (group) all reversed (moving north, in a down entry) | |
| 3d | Complete roof drainage system without roof! (5) |
| UTTER — gUTTER (roof drainage system) missing its top letter (without roof) | |
| 5d | Literary don completely repressing unknown love (7) |
| QUIXOTE — QUITE (completely) containing (repressing) X (unknown) and O (love) | |
| 6d | Rescue vessel finishes off undersea repair work (3) |
| ARK — The lasts letters of (finishes off) underseA repaiR worK | |
| 7d | Bury screen Tom broke partially (6) |
| ENTOMB — ScreEN TOM Broke partially | |
| 9d | See patron changing artificial language (9) |
| ESPERANTO — SEE PATRON anagrammed (changing) | |
| 12d | Vehicle oil US mine developed (9) |
| LIMOUSINE — OIL US MINE anagrammed (developed) | |
| 14d | Saw dish get broken (7) |
| SIGHTED — An anagram of (… broken) DISH GET | |
| 15d | Rotational force lecture on radio (6) |
| TORQUE — Sounds like (… on radio) TALK (lecture) | |
| 16d | Holy book contains introduction from erudite Asian (6) |
| KOREAN — KORAN (holy book) contains the first letter of (introduction from) Erudite | |
| 18d | Writer with extremely nice pasta (5) |
| PENNE — PEN (writer) + outer letters of (extremely) NicE | |
| 20d | Some webbing to recede (3) |
| EBB — Some wEBBing | |
I forgot to record my finishing time, but I think I found this fairly straightforward. The Q answers were my last two in.
A cricket pitch is on the square, the square is not part of the pitch. The square is part of the field.
I liked this crossword otherwise, even if I was a little distracted while solving it, a friendly puzzle for newer solvers I’d say.
Hear hear. It’s just wrong to call the square “part of the pitch”. In fact the square usually contains several pitches! (As Collins accurately points out for “square”: “6. cricket
the closely-cut area in the middle of a ground on which wickets are prepared”.)
8:56. JUST THE TICKET is my COD. Very nice. Thanks to Trelawney and thank you Kitty for the blog
As Q, J, X, Y, Z dropped in I thought it was on course for a pangram, but, alas, no F or W.
A gentle Monday, finished in 16 mins.
Thanks Trelawney and Kitty.
Great way to start the week, 14.15 is up in our top 5% I should think. When the J, Q and X turned up early we wondered if this was a pangram, but as that meant most of the tricky letters were already found, it didn’t really help. In any case it isn’t !
Just the ticket also COD here, but also liked sighted for the PDM after exhausting my list of cutting tools from the anagram
Thanks Squire and Kitty
Only four on the first pass and even then I wasn’t sure of OCTAGON. I know there aren’t many shapes beginning with OC – but I couldn’t make sense of the ‘tagon’ bit. Thanks Kitty. Downs went better and I was left with QUIXOTE and SQUARE. Thanks to David above for giving me an excuse for spending so long trying to justify ‘crease’ meaning ‘level’. All green in 11.38.
I was another crease!
From OBJECT to KOREAN in 7:21. Liked QUIXOTE and UTTER. Thanks Trelawney and Kitty.
Started with OPT OUT and finished with COD KOREAN in 6.12.
Thanks to Kitty and Trelawney
7:00 exactly, so a gentle start to the week. Some excellent anagrams which fell out quite quickly helped me along. TEST PILOT took the most unravelling/parsing; JUST THE TICKET gave the most pleasure.
Many thanks Kitty for the blog.
5:45. A little slow this morning on seeing the anagrams. LOI SQUARE. As for JUST THE TICKET, an almost identical clue appeared in Friday’s FT by Jason, but I needed the J from OBJECT to remember it. Thanks Trelawney and Kitty.
Very good puzzle but marred by the cricketing error discussed above. The square is not part of the pitch; it’s the other way round. That held me up quite a bit at the end, because I was working on trying to parse “crease” (which *is* part of the pitch) and thus “rhizome” for 5d (since it fitted and had an unknown in it!). Only when I twigged the “literary Don” (probably a chestnut but new to me and COD!) did I get LOI SQUARE.
All done in 06:18 for a Just Not Cricket Day.
Many thanks Kitty and the Squire.
I started slowly with little to see at the top and thought Trelawney had decided to give us a tough one. However, a move to the bottom started me off and it all began to make sense. Some very good clues – I liked JUST THE TICKET which opened up quite a few.
I finished in 15.23 with SQUARE (not crease, my first effort) and QUIXOTE (a poor and a very good clue, respectively).
Thanks to both. I hope the rest of the week doesn’t follow the recent upward trajectory in difficulty.
Thanks to both.
8:46
Luckily I only saw SQUARE, not crease, assumed the setter had confused pitch and ground, and carried safely on. QUIXOTE is my COD.
I biffed TEST PILOT, but failed to parse it. Thanks Kitty for making sense of it.
1 error. Suffering from having been taught Japanese history by a professor who specialised in Korean Studies, I hurriedly (and carelessly) put JOSEON for 16D and assumed Joson was a book I hadn’t heard of.
Should have known better, and couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Otherwise, 4:56. Liked the puzzle!
8:38. A pity about the apparent SQUARE slip as discussed above but otherwise v. enjoyable. I’ll admit to not bothering to parse TEST PILOT which went in from the enumeration and def. I liked QUIXOTE for ‘Literary Don’ – new to me too.
Thanks to Trelawney and Kitty
Managed this, thank you, Trelawney (wow: four Q’s!), though Mrs M came up with TORQUE (which I don’t know I’d have got) and EMBODY. Thank you, David, for explanation of NHO SQUARE. Thanks, Kitty; blog is fine but somewhere it says 8d instead of 8a.
Yes I too didn’t struggle to parse TEST PILOT, it just went in.
32:47 The first completed puzzle inside an hour.
I still don’t like square equating to level.
Last two in were 1d and 1ac
Thanks V and T
DNF SQUARE (another Crease!) and sorry I did not think of QUIXOTE. Enjoyable puzzle though not totally easy, imo. Liked JUST THE TICKET, ENTOMB, TORQUE, OPT OUT.
Thanks vm, Kitty.