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”.)
For the non cricketer the village cricket pitch is everything inside the boundary flags where spectators aren’t meant to go when a match is in progress, the square is the roped off protected area and the wickets are the prepared strips within the square. Level is horizontal as defined by a spirit level and square is 90 degrees. The only context I’ve heard square as in level is squaring a trader’s position at the end of a trading period.
I worked on the principle “All square” as in games/sets that are level.
“The pitch” has a very precise meaning in cricket, being defined by Law 6.1 – ’The pitch is a rectangular area of the ground 22 yards/20.12 m in length and 10 ft/3.05 m in width. It is bounded at either end by the bowling creases and on either side by imaginary lines, one each side of the imaginary line joining the centres of the two middle stumps, each parallel to it and 5 ft/1.52 m from it.’
It is not the same as the ground.
And did you know at a famous school when the former groundsman’s ashes were ceremoniously dusted over the square, the new groundsman chased everyone away!
Yes my cricket pedants eyebrow was raised as well. I thought of crease first but that didn’t work and I refused to put square in until Quixote confirmed it. Nice puzzle though and it’s a crossword not a cricket report😊
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!
Me too, but it couldn’t be!
And me! But obviously it’s quite the opposite to level 😅
My short stay at the crease was all too familiar. . .
🙂
😂👏
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.
Also thought about Rhizome, not knowing what it really is.
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.
For the non cricketer the village cricket pitch is everything inside the boundary flags where spectators aren’t meant to go when a match is in progress, the square is the roped off protected area and the wickets are the prepared strips within the square. Level is horizontal as defined by a spirit level and square is 90 degrees. The only context I’ve heard square as in level is squaring a trader’s position at the end of a trading period.
Agree with this. There are two cricketing meanings for pitch. Some grounds are large enough to have two games going on, next to each other- in this context ‘which pitch are we on?’ is fine.
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
On hanging a picture: “Is it square?” i.e. level.
Also scores of participants in sports etc are said to be square when they are level.
Match play golf being an example but that is “all square”.
Well done!
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.
23:21 – a bit slow after struggling at first with the across clues. Better with the downs and gradually filled in the blanks, although couldn’t parse TEST PILOT or OCTAGON and agree with the quibbles over SQUARE.
Got stuck on Korean because of the alt spelling and because I was sure there was a Z for the pangram
14:45
TYTBAS
6:11
Similar experience to Templar in that I’d bunged in CREASE at 4a, and took some while to see my mistake. I also bunged in HIT OUT at 1a which made 1d tricky – saw the mistake more quickly this time. Other than that, I didn’t have my typing trousers on this morning – almost every answer needed some correction until I’d settled into it.
Thanks Kitty and Trelawney
9:21 for me, though I googled cricketing terminology to get SQUARE so take that for what it’s worth. On the positive side, my unfamiliarity with cricket meant that I wasn’t tempted by “crease” either. Swings and roundabouts, etc.
Thank you for the blog!
DNF
Two crossers on the first pass and then 8 of the downs.
Got to 9 minutes with three left to go. Another 3 minutes gave me KOREAN but just did not associate SQUARE with cricket – though ‘cricket square’ does sound familiar.
Shame, had I the ‘Q’ I may have got QUIXOTE.
No complaints though.
FOI: LASER BEAM
LOI: DNF
COD: KOREAN
Thanks to Kitty and Trelawney
I see torque sounding like talk isn’t universal.
But this was a fair QC. Thanks Kitty and Trelawney.
Took a week off due to feeling out of sorts with the solving process, more to do with me I think than the fact that we were experiencing a run of toughies. This is a nice way to return. A not particularly speedy 12 minutes thanks to a silly amount of time wondering why crease meant level and then seeking the missing letters for a pangram.
COD to JUST THE TICKET
Thanks both.
10:33
A rogue CREASE held up the LOI QUIXOTE.
I breezed through this until I got to my last two (4a and 5d).
5d was utter gibberish to me, I simply could not work out what it was saying. I needed help to complete it. It doesn’t help that I have never heard of QUIXOTE.
4a. I wanted to put crease and indeed had it pencilled in. I have never heard of square meaning level. I just cannot see how it does.
Other than the two above I very much enjoyed this puzzle and would have got a much better scored had 4a and 5d not troubled me for so long.
First Lap: 14
Answered (no help): 22
Answered (with help): 2
DNF: Nil
Time: 26:24
I also had crease for a while but eventually sorted it out. I agree with the pitch being part of the square, not vv, but Collins has definiton 3 of square as “Straight or level”. Also had slight MER at laser beam being a source of light, the laser beam IS the light coming out of a laser, the source is the laser. Neither detracted from the enjoyment of a fine xword for me though. Thanks Trelawney and Kitty.
A very slow start for me: only 3 or 4 in first pass. But much easier on down clues. Raced along and all done in 15.21 except SQUARE and QUIXOTE, which took me almost another 3 minutes. Still, finally completed in 18.05, which is not a bad start to the week. Thank you Trelawny and Kitty.
I made heavy weather of this. I didn’t seem to be on Trelawney’s wavelength at all whereas normally I am. Couldn’t get much of a foothold on the acrosses but it started to come together with the downs. I needed QUIXOTE to get SQUARE having resisted the temptation to put in crease as I couldn’t equate the latter with level. Having said that (and not being a cricket fan) I wasn’t too impressed with the clue. 21 minutes with everything parsed except QUIXOTE.
FOI – 13ac LASER BEAM
LOI – 1ac OPT OUT
COD – 8ac JUST THE TICKET
Thanks to Trelawney and Kitty.
As a physicist, I was saved from the utter embarrassment of Torque being my loi by the simple fact that I took even longer to get Severn. Even with those two at the end, I only just missed out on a sub-15 so, for me at least, Trelawney was definitely in a kind mood today.
CoD to 5d, Quixote, one of the very few Spanish words (unrelated to alcohol) that I can spell, albeit via a simplistic Quix-ot-e pronunciation. Invariant
14.27 which in our world, is cause for happy humming (can one hum unhappily?).
Doing frighteningly well (for us) until held up for multiple minutes by QUIXOTE and ARK.
Enjoyed.
Thank you Trelawney and Kitty.
Lots of great clues here. We finished in a relatively quick 8:43 with SQUARE which we saw immediately after POI QUIXOTE (one of the aforementioned). We’re not sufficiently au fait with the precise definitions of cricketing terminology to have been put off by the clue but nevertheless we enjoyed the education from those who clearly are! COD JUST THE TICKET for the smile. Thanks, all.
DNF
Oh, that’s so annoying. All done in 13 minutes dead but found a DPS on submission having inexplicably put an O in the middle of OCTAGON.
Elsewhere no real difficulties apart from biffing SIT OUT for 1ac but soon corrected with OBJECT.
Delighted to finish correctly in 34.34 (including eating lunch) with only having to ask OH for something related to a cricket pitch with the last letter E that isn’t crease!
All but two clues solved in 20 mins. Stymied by the cricket clue which would have led to an easy solution for my other wayward clue! Much improved performance than last week. Five minute solves are out of the question because that would leave no thinking time at all!
Late getting to this today, and it seems an afternoon solve doesn’t suit me as I laboured to an 11.29 finish. My average Trelawney finish is generally well inside that, but no complaints about the puzzle that I thought was excellent. Like a few others I went down the ‘crease’ route before seeing the light. I particularly liked the crossers JUST THE TICKET and TEST PILOT.
Had to laugh at 15d because TORQUE and TALK aren’t *remotely* homophonic to me.
I was slower than normal today, finishing in 20:17. I was another who considered CREASE & RHIZOME in the top right, but neither came close to parsing. COD to JUST THE TICKET.
Thanks to Trelawney and Kitty.
Like others, CREASE held me up but everything else (save the elusive Don) went in nicely: I thought I was going to beat the 10m mark. 1d amused me and made me think of round objects (“Who is Round and why does he object?”) Thank you to one of my favourite setters and to Kitty.
We found this on the easier side, except tor 4a and 5d. Pleasant start to the week.
Opted for SQUARE without deep consideration of cricket jargon, and acknowledge precise definition doesn’t really chime with clue
7.20 1a and 1d were delayed until the end by trying to justify SIT OUT, and KOREAN took a moment. Thanks Kitty and Trelawney.
Oh dear, did see ‘Koran’ but didn’t see KOREAN, thinking I was still looking for a holy book – must read the question!
An otherwise pleasant puzzle spoiled by the dreadful misuse of cricketing terminology. I see that I am far from the first to complain about this.
Lovely puzzle. I think knowing nothing about cricket was vey helpful as I wasn’t remotely tempted by CREASE 😂 Last two in were 1d and 1a respectively. COD TORQUE – it did help that talk and torque are homophones for me of course. Liked building TEST PILOT from the bottom up. Thanks both.
22 mins, could have been quicker but chatting to Lady Vimes and neighbour started demolishing his wall @ 5pm. Can’t believe how long it took me to see my LOI Object.
Thanks Kitty and Trelawney
Dnf…
Unfortunately, I was another “Crease” – so couldn’t get 5dn “Quixote” either. In retrospect, I think that was quite a tricky clue, especially for Trelawney who tends to be one of the easier setters.
FOI – 10ac “Caper”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 8ac “Just the Ticket”
Thanks as usual!
DNF. I could copy and paste JamesEd46’s post apart from the COD. Gave up after 20 mins with all done all bar Square and The Don, and I’d spent some time trying to unpick them.
My COD was Quixote – lovely when you see it.
Thanks Trelawney and Kitty