Times Quick Cryptic No 1652 by Joker

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Introduction

16:46, which was disappointing, given that I’ve been on a roll lately with a bunch of sub-8 solves. It’s always harder when it’s your blog!

That being said, this one actually seemed quite difficult, with several tricky anagrams, and lots of juicy vocabulary. I struggled with 17 Across and 13 Down for at least 6 or 7 minutes. I had my suspicions about 17 Across but couldn’t see how it worked (and still don’t). I pulled 13 Down out of god-knows-what depths of my mind, and then tried 17 Across as a hit-and-hope. Turned out to be correct.

A fine, fine, fine puzzle.

Solutions

Across

1 Small fish always around lake (5)
ELVER – EVER around L (lake)
A young eel.
4 A lot of excellent aluminium [is] essential (6)
PRIMAL – all but the last letter of PRIME (excellent) + AL (aluminium)
This one took me a long time and I didn’t understand PRIM(E) until writing the blog.
9 Dislike destroying a particular edition (7)
VERSION – AVERSION (dislike) without A
Very sneaky. Also took me awhile.
10 Son covered in blood [in] spiny bush (5)
GORSE – S (son) inside GORE (blood)
We know this one from Winnie-the-Pooh.
11 Fabrication [of] lino is expensive to begin with (3)
LIE – first letters of LINO IS EXPENSIVE
12 Rebuilt city mess affecting an entire body (8)
SYSTEMIC – anagram of CITY MESS
15 Being evasive before holiday taking in Rhode Island (13)
PREVARICATION – PRE (before) VACATION (holiday) around R.I. (Rhode Island)
Delicious word… but isn’t the part of speech wrong?
17 Hop on foot [in] game (8)
BASEBALL – BALL (hop, as in ‘a dance’) next to BASE (foot, as in, ‘of a statue’)
This one completely eluded me. Very subtle, although completely fair. The uses of these words are completely standard and not at all esoteric.
18 Regularly crude sign (3)
CUE – every other letter in CRUDE
20 Foreign article includes falsehood (5)
ALIEN – AN (article) around LIE (falsehood)
22 Following a line sideways (7)
LATERAL – LATER (following) + A + L (line)
Couldn’t see past AFTERAL for quite some time!
23 Seaweed beginning to trap fish (6)
TANGLE – first letter of TRAP + ANGLE (fish)
‘Angle’ for ‘fish’ in pretty common in puzzles. I’m more familiar with the word ‘angler’.
24 Guard missing second way in (5)
ENTRY – SENTRY (guard) without S (second)

Down

1 Cover of English novel redesigned with purple on the outside (8)
ENVELOPE – E (English) + NOVEL anagrammed + first and last letters of PURPLE
Hands up if you tried EGGPLANT.
2 Sparkle you can see in silver vessel (5)
VERVE – hidden in SILVER VESSEL
3 Put back what can control art gallery (9)
REINSTATE – REINS (what can control) + TATE (art gallery)
5 Make fun of / newspaper (3)
RAG – double definition
6 Cocktail [made with] skill in small car (7)
MARTINI – ART (skill) in MINI (small car)
My favorite cocktail. With gin, of course.
7 Place [where] officer has ejected tenant? (4)
LIEU – LIEUTENANT (officer) without TENANT
Cute.
8 Very large inset I blame for resetting (11)
INESTIMABLE – INSET I BLAME anagrammed
Delicious word. Tough anagram.
13 European girl[’s] shoulder pad (9)
EPAULETTE – E (European) + PAULETTE (girl)
I remembered this word from god-knows-where after an alphabet trawl on the second letter. I originally thought the definition was ‘pad’. ‘Epaulette’ is a shoulder decoration, and the word is a diminuitive of the French ‘épaule’, meaning ‘shoulder’, which shares a root with ‘spatula’, believe it or not.
14 Place below Arundel, crumbling over years (8)
UNDERLAY – ARUNDEL anagrammed + Y (years)
16 Great joy [when] sister, say, dismisses Romeo (7)
ELATION – RELATION (sister, say) without R (Romeo, in the phonetic alphabet)
18 Unit caught a traitor (5)
CARAT – C (caught) + A + RAT (traitor)
A unit for measuring precious stones, that is!
19 Fine deed [in] truth (4)
FACT – F (fine) + ACT (deed)
21 Love extracting energy from river (3)
NIL – remove E (energy) from NILE (river)

72 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1652 by Joker”

  1. I found this very easy, a rare sub-5-minutes. Time for a Martini since it’s 5.15pm here in California. I wondered about PREVARICATION too, when I looked over the answers afterwards.
    1. 32+ for me. I guess us Canadians just don’t meet the Cali standards! I just had to cancel my vacation to Carlsbad, thanks to COVID
      1. Pity. The San Diego area is so great. I was down there late last year when travel was still a thing.
  2. I found this difficult, with LOI BASEBALL taking time to think of, then taking more to justify. A very nice clue. I started to type in VACILLATION until I realized I’d be short a few letters; the right answer took some time. 7:09. I don’t see a problem with PREVARICATION, although the -ing in the clue invites -ING in the solution. The two endings are widely interchangeable: his prevarication/being evasive when questioned, …

    Edited at 2020-07-08 12:55 am (UTC)

  3. Inestimable means priceless or unable to be valued, not very large, surely?
  4. Ground to a halt and had to cheat for LIEU, TANGLE and PRIMAL in the end. I had to biff BASEBALL and never did see the reasoning until reading Jeremy’s blog.
    Very hard today.
  5. Quite a lot of working out needed to today. Like Jackkt noting went in until GORSE but I ended up with what I thought was seven of the acrosses until I realised LEAPFROG didn’t belong where BASEBALL ended up – although I needed Jeremy to clear that up why it was the answer (hop for dance and then ball was too far from my lived experience to come to mind – must store for the future). INESTIMABLE took some unravelling – ended up solving from the back once I decided _ABLE was most likely – but the real problem was in the very NE where I could get PRIMAL until pen and paper came out – seeing _R_MAL written in my own handwriting suddenly made it obvious and that opened up LIEU to finish. All green, but not all parsed, in just under 20, which is OK but very low on the early leaderboard.
  6. Once again I had to try several clues before writing in my first answer (GORSE) and that tends to sap confidence, particularly when following on from a bad solving time the previous day. Anyway I got through this in 12 minutes, missing my target time by 2, so it wasn’t too bad after all.

    I wasn’t entirely sure of PRIMAL but went with it and then took a long time over my LOI at 7dn doing a fruitless alphabet trawl on L?E? and distracted by thoughts of ‘lease’ and ‘lessee’ on seeing the word ‘tenant’in the clue, thinking the answer surely had to be related somehow to one of them. Eventually the penny dropped.

    Edited at 2020-07-08 05:49 am (UTC)

  7. Difficult and over my target time at 21 mins. Had all but BASEBALL and LIEU in at 12 mins in then spent the last 9 minutes trying to get these. Would never have got “ball” as “hop”, which still seems odd to me even after reading how it works here. The clue for lieu seems like it could come up again so one to remember. Had also not heard of ELVER but I suspect this is a crossword word I should know.

    FOI: lie
    LOI and COD: lieu

  8. It’s great fun to see contributions to this blog from around the globe. Sadly it’s not yet time for a MARTINI at 09:15 in the rainy Home Counties. Since the Mayfield Two solve after lunch, maybe we can rely on them.

    That was an excellent challenge, completed in 1.6K for a Good Day. I had five acrosses unsolved after going through them all, which is many more than usual, but fortunately all the downs yielded in order and so the mopping up didn’t take too long. Parsing PRIMAL was tough and I never did parse BASEBALL. At 15ac first I wrote ION and then I re-read the clue and wrote ING, with a mental note to check when I got to 14dn … which fortunately was straightforward … so back to ION it was.

    FOI ELVER, LOI PRIMAL, COD REINSTATE. Many thanks to the two Js.

    Templar

    PS on edit – TANGLE for seaweed was pretty obscure! Wholly reliant on the wordplay.

    Edited at 2020-07-08 08:20 am (UTC)

  9. I accidentally skipped not just one but 2 clues on my first pass through and ended up putting SENTRY in 23A instead of 24, which gave me a lot of trouble with the downs. And then I tried fitting the answer to 5D into 3D. I must get better reading glasses. COD to PREVARICATION – word I liked too, Jeremy, but I think it’s a gerund. I liked BASEBALL too. 5:56.
  10. I managed to complete the !5 x 15 before this and it must have warmed me up because the this came together well in the end – except for Baseball which I put in and had to wait for the explanation. Still baffled !!! I get that a hop is a dance and I get that a ball is a dance but is a hop a ball any more than a tango or a waltz is a ball??? what am I missing please? Thanks anyway Joker and plusjeremy
    1. I didn’t have any difficulty with the parsing of baseball, perhaps because, when growing up, I often attended a village hop / dance / ball, so find the three interchangeable in that sense. From your question, I wonder if you are thinking of a hop as a specific style of dance, rather than an event?
      1. Thank you and yes I was (lindy hop ??? however it is spelt) I can see that it might be one of many terms for a dance but balls tend to be formal so it’s still a bit of a stretch for me. However it was the only slightly nasty one and it was always likely to be baseball so hey ho! Thanks again!
        1. From ‘Patience’:
          Who thinks suburban ‘hops’
          More fun than Monday ‘Pops’…
          i.e. Archibald Grosvenor would rather attend a dance than a ‘prom’ concert.
  11. Another day of rather careless errors. REINSTALL at 3d caused a big hold up. PREVARICATING at 15a seemed OK until a more detailed parsing was forced on me.
    I started very quickly with RAG and GORSE; I have often been in gorse on golf courses, it is spiny.
    It took me 15 minutes to get to my last two 17a and 13d. I was pretty sure about BALL = HOP but Install allowed Ball in two places. Was looking for something meaning PAD at 13d for a long time. The key was correcting Install and then Baseball was very clear. It still took a while to find the random girl, without the possessive.
    27:55 after all that. Off to play golf in the rain now.
    David
    1. Seeing that GORSE is the first two and last three letters of “golf course” it should possible to compile a decent cryptic clue. Enjoy your round, you may as well with the cricket rained off ☹️
  12. … I hate to be a Moaning Minnie, but I think that too much of this puzzle was really obscure. This is the second QC this week – and it’s only Wednesday – when I’ve stopped looking at my watch mid-solve because it was too depressing to record my time .

    To be fair, I was OK – slow but determined – until I got to 7 DOWN, LIEU . I got this only through an alphabet trawl – and the letter U is nearly at the end of that particular arrangement of letters. Without the marker of eg “posh ” for U or “French” for the whole word, I think this clue – in a Quick Crossword – is a Golden Raspberry.

    I’m also tempted to award a GR to TANGLE, 23 across because I think this is an overly obscure kind of seaweed to put in an entry level crossword. I got it through the wordplay but still…

    And, whilst I’m being so negative, I might as well throw in an extra layer of grumpiness at the parsing of BASEBALL, which I biffed and needed the blog to sort out. A “ball” as a “hop”? Really?

    I’m going to re-check Jackkt’s piece about the relative difficulties of the setters to see where Joker is on that because I nearly always find his puzzles trickier than the rest. I know we need a spectrum so that there’s something for everybody but I still would like to think that even the most difficult are doable, even if they take ages.

    Clues I enjoyed today included VERVE and ENVELOPE. I parsed 22 across, LATERAL, as a double definition ie “following ” a line of thought plus “sideways “.

    Sorry for the rant. Thanks, Jeremy, for the blog and thanks, too, to Joker

    1. Absolutely agree with both GRs. Found this after s bit of research which made me think Joker might lean more to the arts than this baffled scientist…
      Any large type of seaweed, especially a species of Laminaria. quotations ▲
      1849, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 10:
      Than if with thee the roaring wells / Should gulf him fathom-deep in brine; / And hands so often clasped in mine, / Should toss with tangle and with shells.
      1917, Kenneth Macleod (editor) “The Road to the Isles”, in Songs of the Hebrides:
      You’ve never smelled the tangle o’ the Isles.
      1. Thanks for this, Tim. It was with some trepidation that I saw the email which told me that there had been a response to my post. I was worried that I might have upset or angered someone. Yes, I looked up tangle seaweed, too, but I didn’t find anything as lovely as your research unearthed. Thanks for sharing it.
    2. Not to worry, you could never upset or anger me. But:
      There is in English the phrase ‘in lieu of’, no?
      I never knew of tangle until a 15×15 taught me, if I recall correctly. But:
      If you got it through the wordplay, you did what you should have ought; you solved it. Surely one of the joys of doing these puzzles is to find a word that a) you’ve never come across but b) you know from the wordplay must be right. Please, please don’t give a GR to clues like that!
      1. I absolutely agree that learning new words is both fun and helpful especially when it comes to the next time that same item comes up.I’ve learnt lots of words from the 15 X 15s eg ERNE from yesterday’s puzzle which I knew, saw and entered only as a result of encountering it in previous QCs. The problem – and perhaps this is just par for the course – is the extra minutes that doubt adds to your finishing time or even dictates whether you finish at all. I spent ages dithering over TANGLE before I put it in.
        In addition, I would respectfully add that a GR is an absolutely personal response to a clue. I found three clues today to be obscure and, to my mind, overly difficult for a crossword that has “quick” in its title descriptor.To my mind, that consitutes a GR whilst, at the same time, I totally respect your opinion that it doesn’t. You’ve been doing cryptic crosswords for such a long time and what seems difficult or overly oblique to you is very different to the way things seem to me, a person who has been attempting these crosswords for only 2 years.

        Edited at 2020-07-08 11:23 am (UTC)

        1. I think I’d also like to say that this reminds me of my Book Club. The best discussions are invariably where there is a lack of concensus about the book!
        2. No argument about GRs. But: I think I didn’t make myself clear about TANGLE. It’s not that I learned the word here; I’ve never felt the need of it, I’ll never use it or see or hear it used. What I was getting at was the joy of solving a clue from wordplay alone: You had never heard of tangle–and you, like me, probably never will again–but you used your head and worked out a solution without the help of any GK.
          By the way, although there weren’t any QC’s when I started here, my impression is that you’ve shown more progress in 2 years than I did.
  13. Should have got Rag and Gorse, oh dear, but felt exhausted by then. I liked LIEU even though I missed it.
    Started Crossword early today as rain stopped play ie no gardening , and son is using my study, but I found this very tricky. Had to look up Tangle. Pleased to get the anagrams.

    Yes, too difficult for a member of the Slowcoach Club.
    but thanks all round as ever.

  14. Tricky in places, but I eventually managed to get on a decent enough roll, even to the point of writing in Prevarication, before the inevitable hold ups over the last few – Primal (c/o a dubious Prim/correct/excellent), Lieu (pdm), Baseball (very iffy clue) and loi Version (another pdm). In the end, 25mins seemed quite reasonable, particularly as NHO Tangle seaweed. CoD to 16d Elation, which must be another chestnut but they always seem good first time round. Invariant
  15. Most of this QC went in very quickly and then there were 3 clues at the end that required a lot of cogitation and 1 clue that was biffed….BASEBALL. My guess was that foot either was a synonym for base or was somehow related to the ball of the foot. INESTIMABLE required all the checkers despite being an obvious anagram and my POI was EPAULETTE after an alphabet trawl. LOI was LIEU after another alphabet trawl. I suspect if I’d seen this type of wordplay before in a QC it would have been a write in. Thanks for the blog Jeremy and for the explanation of BASEBALL. I do have an issue with Hop = Ball. Hop is an informal dance whereas a ball is not, or am I missing something? 11 mins

    On edit. I didn’t have a problem with Tangle for seaweed. I’ve seen it before in a cryptic but perhaps not the QC.

    Edited at 2020-07-08 10:14 am (UTC)

  16. To buck the trend, I found this all fair and gettable. I was on for another quick time until LOI 7dn stopped me in my tracks. I just couldn’t ‘see what direction to think in’ until a couple of cross-eyed minutes had passed and then the mists cleared. Still managed to scrape inside 10 minutes – by 2 seconds!
  17. I took a few seconds longer than therotter and found it a strange mix of really nice clues and some toughies. DNK TANGLE – it simply had to be a fair punt once the crossers were in. My LOI was LIEU which, again, I entered simply as a fair biff and then the penny dropped when I read Jeremy’s blog – doh. I had no problem with INESTIMABLE or EPAULETTE but UNDERLAY had me fooled until I realised I had entered ‘prevaricating’ for 15a. Thanks to Joker for another brain stretch and to Jeremy for a good, honest blog, John M.
    P.S. Can someone remove the previous post? Thanks.

    Edited at 2020-07-08 10:45 am (UTC)

    1. If that user’s comments and account can be removed, why not all those others that have appeared at the end of past blogs?
      (but I’m now also quite curious about what this one might have been…)
      1. I can’t remember the detailed content but it was from a troll and nothing to do with the crossword. These boards are moderated very carefully and properly. Luckily, crosswotd blogs are not too attractive to mischief makers.
        1. There’s another one on the end of this day’s blog
          Not trolling or offensive, just inappropriate and irritating
  18. Thought this was OK although it took a while to get LIEU and BASEBALL was a guess.
  19. This was tricky in places but I’m on good form at the moment and seem to be able to work through the harder clues without too much of a hold up. TANGLE went in with a shrug based on the wordplay and I think I’ve seen the HOP/DANCE/BALL link before so I had no problem with BASEBALL. I finished in the NE with PRIMAL and LIEU in 9.24. Lots to enjoy along the way with my COD being LIEU and my WOD being INESTIMABLE.
    Thanks to Jeremy
  20. Does anyone else get the feeling that Joker saw he was near the bottom of Jack’s league table and decided to up the ante a bit? It is a sign of his skill that he has done so in his recent puzzles while still being fair, humorous and not at all obscure. I was feeling quite pleased with myself when I got 1a as my FOI, but I was brought down to Earth when only LIE went in straight away between that and 18a. It was a fairly steady solve after that but very enjoyable with a good variety of clues. I didn’t manage to parse BASEBALL as I was thinking that the ball bit referred to the foot and then couldn’t work out why base meant hop. I have no problem with hop being ball really. It doesn’t seem any more tenuous than many synonyms that crop up. I hadn’t heard of tangle meaning seaweed specifically, but I could imagine a load of seaweed being called a tangle generally so it didn’t cause a problem. Anyway, crossed the line after LOI 7d in 33:04, which is probably a bit slower than my target should be now, but I was pleased enough with. Thanks Joker and Jeremy.
    1. I very much doubt this was a response to my table as it would have been devised and set up for publication long before that – I only made it up last Monday! But whatever the case, I think we might all agree that Joker’s puzzle has set off one of the most interesting and lengthy discussions about the Quick Cryptics in a long time, and all conducted so politely. And it’s only 2pm! Many thanks to him for that.
      1. I meant that Joker might have seen that he was low down on your table last June, and then made his puzzles a little more difficult since then, with the result that he was quite near the top of your recent table.
        1. When he first started, I thought that Joker was the easiest of the setters. That has certainly not been the case over the last year or two.
  21. I started with VERVE, than ELVER and made steady progress. I had PREVARICATING until I saw UNDERLAY. No problem with TANGLE, but PRIMAL, LIEU and LOI, BASEBALL all held me up. I saw the clock ticking up to my target time as I typed BASEBALL, so took a chance and submitted without proof reading. Fortunately, all correct at 10 minutes exactly. Thanks Joker and Jeremy.
  22. 21 minutes for me for a tough day, but a very enjoyable challenge. I didn’t experience the difficulty of others with BASEBALL, TANGLE, or some other clues, but I did have to resort to an alphabet trawl for my LTI – PRIMAL and LIEU, despite once being a young Naval Lieutenant (and wearing epaulettes as a part of my uniform). ELVER was FOI, so no problem getting started, but there was some chewy stuff here to deal with. Joker beat me fair and square, so well done to him, and to Jeremy for coping with the blog.
  23. Similar to Mendesest, in that everything seemed to need working out rather than just twigging the solutions and then justifying. ELVER and TANGLE looked plausible but were not entered confidently. LOI LIEU. No problem with the anagrams but I always struggle with taking a letter away from a word. Great puzzle.

  24. Just brilliant – thank you Joker and thank you Jeremy for resolving a couple of biffs!

    Fast start allowed time for LIEU, TANGLE and BASEBALL and delighted with <21m. My target is still just to finish without errors or using wildcards in a Chambers search, so ticks on all fronts.

    FOI – ELVER; LOI – TANGLE; COD – PREVARICATION where I take all the points above but was thrilled with my fairly speedy and accurate parsing.

    A good day!

  25. ….is that trying to enter online fast enough to meet the clocked time sometimes doesn’t allow for typo checking. Today typing took 5 seconds longer than writing, and then I had an error. Really frustrating.

    I’m with gcook52 on BASEBALL. A hop is no more a ball than a bus is a train.

    Being evasive is evasion, and therefore a synonym of PREVARICATION, so no problem there.

    FOI ELVER
    LOI VERSION
    COD TANGLE
    TIME 3:03

  26. While I hope for a PB every time I start a new QC, surely most of our enjoyment comes from solving and parsing the clues? Very few of us knew Tangle, but we all seem to have got there in the end – perhaps a Silver Raspberry? 🙂
  27. Always reassuring to read that I am not alone in struggling with some clues here.
    1A Elver a new one – won’t be forgetting it, though!
    4A Didn’t know where to start with this, and answers involving synonyms (prime) I find tricky.
    23A How is Seaweed a tangle?
    15A thought ans. was prevaricating as was looking for an adjective…

    Over the months I’ve learned to prepare myself for Joker’s puzzles being more challenging, but will keep at it!

  28. Thanks – I haven’t come across that. SWMBO unlike me has heard of hop for eg a village dance but even she pulled a face at the stretch to ball
  29. ….but could almost justify one after this toughie. As usual we approached the puzzle with optimism and confidence only to find, after about 5 minutes, that we hadn’t entered any answers 😱. Eventually we got a few in the bottom half and climbed back up the grid using the checkers. So, Joker we enjoyed today’s challenge even though we took 26 minutes to finish it.

    FOI: lie
    LOI: tangle
    COD: prevarication

    Thanks to Joker and Jeremy

  30. A crossword of two halves today – some answers went in straight away and others took a bit more thought.
    Like some others, I hadn’t heard of TANGLE for seaweed and I also had to biff BASEBALL.
    I thought (r)ELATION and (a)VERSION were both clever but my COD has to be MARTINI for its simplicity (and for giving me something to look forward to later!)
    Just outside my target of 15 minutes so not a bad day again.
    Thanks to Joker and Jeremy.

    Edited at 2020-07-08 01:30 pm (UTC)

  31. As I’ve had a few sub 20 min solves recently, I tried to complete this within a max target of 30 mins. Unfortunately I didn’t. After 23 mins, I had all but 17ac and 13dn. Not sure I would have got these even after an hour. However, although there were some obscure clues/answers I did enjoy it.

    13dn “Epaulette” I have seen before and I knew roughly it was something like that, but it just wouldn’t come. Afraid I’m in agreement with Louisa Janey regarding “Hop” for “Ball” – wouldn’t have got that in a million years, let alone biffing what the game was.

    FOI – 1ac “Elver”
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 3dn “Reinstate”

    Thanks as usual.

  32. …most of this in just over 3 mins, and thought I might be on for a phil-bothering, sub 4 minute time. No fear of that though! PRIMAL, LIEU, TANGLE, and ponderously unpicking INESTIMABLE took me up to 8:05. No moans though.
  33. … with a tough but fair puzzle, an excellent blog from Jeremy that filled in the various (and alas rather numerous) holes in my parsing, and then one of the best discussions on this journal for many a day.

    I was among those who initially had -ING for 15A, and certainly among those who had not heard of 23A Tangle as a type of seaweed, though the cluing made the answer inevitable and as has been noted, half the fun is encountering new words. Puzzled also at first at 14D Underlay: underlay = place below? I know it only as an under-carpet but I see it can also be a verb.

    17 minutes in all and all green at the first submission, but quite a workout. Last 2 in were 4A Primal (not parsed before I read the blog) and then 7D Lieu (nice clue, my COD).

    Thanks again to Jeremy and all contributors to a good read today
    Cedric

  34. I only solve when I buy the newspaper and haven’t been to the shop too often in Loch Doon so only solving about twice a week. I was pleasantly pleased to find that the price has gone up to £2 (I wonder when that happened!) because it meant that I didn’t have to worry about getting and handling any change.
    Which is my way of adding something different because all of my issues were so ably covered before by everyone.
    26 minutes- no problems Epaulette or Prevarication – delighted to see Reinstate and then ages over Baseball – couldn’t parse properly – and last ones Primal then Lieu slowly dawning on me. NHO Tangle seaweed
    But finished again – always pleasing! So another good day.
    Thanks all
    John George
  35. Thought it was going to be a DNF, stuck on epaulette. So waited until I was home from work and then had another look.

    So no time, but slow.
    COD LIEU.

    1. It looks like you may be wearing a pair of epaulettes in your avatar Flashman!
  36. Interrupted this afternoon and had to finish it this evening, hence the late post. Interesting that we had done the “easy” ones before stopping, and had been staring at the chewy ones for a while, but on returning 7d went in almost straight away, and what had seemed impenetrable earlier flowed in if not easily at least relatively smoothly. As usual I agree with Louisa, no problem with an unknown word that is clearly clued, but it does take a while considering whether you are missing an alternative (especially after “tern” and “Erne”!)
    Thanks to Jeremy for the blog, I had given up trying to parse baseball.
  37. I ‘solved’ this earlier today and read the blog, but was delayed in posting…a DNF as I was wedded to 3d reinstall and that led to an error in 17a baseball. I was stuck with -A– -A– for a long time and although happy enough with crossword-land hop=ball couldn’t decide on whether it was ball—- or —-ball. In the end I opted for PallMall (which is an old game), but wrong answers… Some really chewy clues. I favoured 18d cubit rather than carat until forced to reconsider by 22a lateral. A tough one for me. I generally find Joker tricky to complete but it was fair enough. Happily Jeremy was on hand to sort me out.
  38. But only just. TANGLE caused me to scratch my head, as I couldn’t see the connection to seaweed. I couldn’t parse BASEBALL until I read the blog and LIEU was my LOI, needing an alphabet trawl followed by a facepalm as I realised how the clue worked.
  39. I don’t seem to be able to write replies, but, like therotter, was also a Lieutenant RN, so lieu and epaulette came to what remains of my mind quite readily, although “shoulder-board” is more familiar. After four years of Latin, I though “gerund” when comparing “prevarication” with “being evasive”; I could write a sentence with either preceded by a possessive pronoun. But I fouled up by biffing 17a as PALLMALL (which was a game) and 3D as REINSTALL. O me miserum! But thanks to Joker for a good workout and to plusjeremy for the enlightening blog.
    KevinS
  40. I found this very tough in quite a few places and would echo GR for a few clues! A bit depressing when yesterday’s was much the same, but I try to persevere. I still don’t really understand why “hop on foot” gives you “foot” at the front of the word in 17A but other across clues can have “on” meaning in front of. I gave up after 90 minutes with 13D, 17A and 23A all unfinished. Even looking up which part of these clues was the definition didn’t help! I think the GR comes from multiple very obscure clues in what is meant to be a quick crossword. One or two is fine, but it feels like there were too many in this! I liked 15A however, nice clue, and didn’t have any issues with 7D as I’ve seen “in lieu (place) of” often enough.

    Thanks for the blog and for all the contributions which show I am not alone in being challenged! And thanks Joker for the puzzle, I am trying to improve!

    1. It is pretty much a hard and fast rule that in Across clues ‘A on B’ = ‘BA’,

      so A: Hop (BALL) on B: foot (BASE) = BASEBALL.

      There has been the very occasional exception to this but when it’s happened in the past and been queried it has usually turned out to be an error that wasn’t picked up before publication.

      In Down clues ‘on’ simply means ‘on top of’ so ‘A on B’ = AB.

      If you want to know more about this you can read about it here if you scroll down to the third article entitled ‘Positional indicator protocol’https://jackkt.livejournal.com/

      Edited at 2020-07-08 10:20 pm (UTC)

      1. Thanks jackkt, I didn’t realise it was always the rule. I will endeavour to remember it for next time!
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