Another great puzzle from Teazel which took me 11 minutes to crack, a reasonably good time for me. I thought 14a was very cleverly disguised and award that COD, with CUSHY my WOD. I can’t give anything to the Eagles (4d). They currently sit 7th in next season’s premier league table (alphabetic sorting) and I don’t see them getting higher than that in the 22/23 season – but I hope they do – I wish them well, as I do all the smaller teams.
Thanks, Teazel, and I hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did.
Across
1 Bike on call for several nights at the opera (4,5)
RING CYCLE – RING (call) and CYCLE (bike). Referring, of course, to Richard Wagner’s epic work ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ which comprises four very big operas, hence ‘several nights at the opera’.
6 Charlie Bishop fed with old loaf (3)
COB – C{harlie) and B{ishop} containing (fed with) O{ld}. In my experience, COB for loaf is more often heard in the north of England than in the south.
8 Humility in dirty place, after a fashion (7)
MODESTY – MODE (fashion) and STY (dirty place).
9 Little pets stealing half of my footwear (5)
PUMPS – PUPS (little pets) containing M{y} (half of MY).
10 Cornered by the sea (2,3)
AT BAY – Double definition.
12 A particular church’s unusual roofing? (6)
THATCH – THAT CH{urch} (If I am indicating that church, I am pointing out a particular church).
14 Ignore foul: undeniable try (4,1,5,3)
TURN A BLIND EYE – Anagram (foul) of [UNDENIABLE TRY]. COD for the clever surface.
16 A small month in a yacht basin (6)
MARINA – MAR{ch} (a small month) IN A (in a).
17 Fly around circle in dance (5)
TANGO – GNAT (fly) reversed (around) and O (circle).
19 Entire? With gap (5)
WHOLE – W (with) and HOLE (gap).
20 Craftsman’s painting is given a name (7)
ARTISAN – ART (painting) IS (is) A (a) N{ame}. We seem to have seen ARTISAN quite frequently recently.
22 Something cooked, right off the jetty (3)
PIE – PIE{r} (R{ight} off the jetty – remove last letter from PIEr.
23 Paradise where, having died, alderman transported (9)
DREAMLAND – Anagram (transported) of [ALDERMAN] and D{ied}.
Down
1 Batter sections in defensive earthworks (8)
RAMPARTS – RAM (batter) and PARTS (sections).
2 Spaniard rises for cursory greeting (3)
NOD – DON (Spanish gentleman) reversed (rises).
3 Copper diffident, not demanding (5)
CUSHY – CU (copper) and SHY (diffident). That’s cushty!
4 This team shouldn’t chuck stones about? (7,6)
CRYSTAL PALACE – Cryptic hint based on the old adage that ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’.
5 Give reasons for maybe one dumped on prairie (7)
EXPLAIN – EX (maybe one dumped) and PLAIN (prairie).
6 Be honest, what do you do in the shower (4,5)
COME CLEAN – Double definition, the second cryptic.
7 British plead to sunbathe (4)
BASK – B{ritish} and ASK (plead).
11 Seasonal song in plain setting, one from The Gondoliers? (9)
BARCAROLE – CAROL (seasonal song) inside BARE (plain). A BARCAROLE is a gondolier’s song, which may be new to some, but is very generously clued.
13 Famous divorce centre – wife coming to bad end (8)
RENOWNED – RENO (divorce centre) W{ife} and ending in an anagram (bad) of [END].
15 Strong flavour eased in cooking (7)
ANISEED – Anagram (cooking) of [EASED IN].
17 Carry minute family emblem (5)
TOTEM – TOTE (carry – TOTE that barge) and M{inute}.
18 Change hands over (4)
SWAP – PAWS (hands) reversed (over).
21 At which one is confused, in the main? (3)
SEA – To be at sea is to be confused, and if at sea, one is in the main – double definition.
‘song’ + ‘Gondoliers’ gave me BARCAROLE, which I then parsed. There’s a famous barcarole in ‘The Tales of Hoffman’; come to think of it, it’s the only barcarole I know. 5:35.
That’s the one I know, but I know it as the Barcarolle, which confused me.
I was surprised, when I went to find a YouTube link, to see that it’s also spelled with two L’s.
I’m guessing that barcarolle is the French spelling. The composer, Offenbach was French though he sounds as Germanic as Hoffmann.
19:17. Lots of fun- a good mixture of pups,paws, gnat, and Reno in the wordplay and a touch of Wagner too. DREAMLAND and RENOWNED took me the longest to get. Only knew COB as horse so thanks for blog for the bread sense plus other illuminations!
Cob is also a building material made, IIRC, from mud and straw.
Thanks, interesting to learn.
10:58, but with an error when I failed to spot that I had an A not an E as the middle crosser, but was otherwise willing to convince myself that a gondolier might carry a BARGEPOLE. NHO BARCAROLE, now I have learned something today.
My puzzle didn’t have a 16d, so that looks like an error in the blog.
Gondoliers use an oar. For the Offenbach Barcarole, try
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u0M4CMq7uI
Yes, if I had taken the time to really think it through, I would have remembered that gondoliers use oars, not poles. More haste, less correct answers, as they don’t say. Thanks for the link, that’s a beautiful little piece of music.
I’ll come clean, let me explain. Please turn a blind eye to 16d if you saw it (now edited out). It was left over from my last blog, which I edited to produce this one. My usual quality control checks must have let me down – maybe I was all at sea at the time. Anyway, now fixed – thanks for pointing it out.
This wasn’t too bad – I thought of carol, and put barcarole in. However, for some reason dreamland gave trouble even though I had all the letters, and of course Crystal Palace may not be in a non-UK solver’s list of football teams. I did actually know it, but needed a few checkers to jog my memory.
Time: 9:38, just under target.
Lord V., are you good with Accrington Stanley, Sheffield Wednesday, Jumbo fodder and Partick Thistle (13 letters) and with Queen of the South (which has 15)?
Impressed you’ve heard of Thistle!!
I always smile when I think of Billy Connolly’s crack. “I thought they were called Partick Thistlenil”.
Why impressed? I have watched Celtic live, been to Rangers and Arbroath. I have also heard of Partick Teazel! As pronounced by Sir Alex & Co. I also know the name of Kirkcaldy’s team. Anyone? I used to knock around Glasgow with Robbie Coltrane!
That would be Raith Rovers. If you duck down to the Highland League, Inverurie Locomotive Works is an impressive 24 letters. Good luck to 13 letter Bonnyrigg Rose as they make their Scottish League debut shortly.
I’ll see you, and raise you the Toledo Mud Hens!
My favourite U.S. sports name is University of California Santa Cruz Banana Slugs. Fans at matches occasionally hold up signs “No Known Predators” (referring to its numbingly toxic slime).
What goes on inside American Sports Stadia with the ‘The Banana Bunch’, is of no surprise to me. Us British fans are quite content with a ‘Pukka Pie’ and a pint at half time – my kinda music.
I follow English football (Brighton and Hove Albion- 20 letters!) but my first thought of CRYSTAL PALACE was of the grand structure erected for an exhibition in Victorian times which I think burned down.
This took me all of twenty minutes, from Crystal Palace to Ingoldmells, due to the rail strike and me being well off the wavelength for most of that time.
FOI 27ac PIE as I started at the bottom.
LOI 3dn CUSHY Butterfield – and I wish she was here!
COD 1ac RING CYCLE
WOD 29ac DREAMLAND – between Chapel-St-Leonard’s and Butlin’s Skegness lies Ingoldmells,home to ‘Dreamland’ A massive, noisy and gaudy amusement arcade which seemed like Paradise when we were kids. Now it appears to be Purgatory!
At 11dn I too entered BARGEPOLE (accidentally), until the RYC put me right – l sincerely hoped I was alone! But l note that Mr. Doofenschmirtz has already been ticked-off by Kevin -and given extra music homework!
I would imagine that 4dn Crystal Palace FC, once under the management of ‘Woy of the Wovers’, would give our American Cousins pause for thought?
7 minutes. Biffed CRYSTAL PALACE from ‘team’, enumeration and a couple of checkers but missed the rather good cryptic element until after the event.
Decent time.
8.19
Wanted that long one to be TEAR A STRIP OFF even though it had no connection to the clue. I’ll blame the lack of coffee. Clever anagram though. Liked RENOWNED too
Thanks Rotter and Teazel
Solving without stimulants? Me too! Blue Mountain as soon as I have completed!
Where to find 16d in the grid? That’s the enigma!
Please see my reply to Doof above.
My apologies, I scanned through the earlier posts without noting Doof’s note.
And indeed with ‘anideed’ a good run of not having any typos comes to an end. Pity as at 12m I was pleased with today’s effort. Had ‘wedge’ for WHOLE for a bit until I saw where the ‘carol’ of BARCAROLE needed to go even though an edge isn’t a gap. Didn’t know RENO was a divorce centre, unexpectedly knew RING CYCLE and PUMPS as a type of shoe but totally NHO BARCAROLE and didn’t submit withouth checking such a thing existed. Testing fun.
27 minutes.
Made this tough for myself by misspelling PALACE, ICE instead of ACE. I blame it on being a down clue. This made my LOI: ARTISAN impossible until I spotted my error.
FOI: RAMPARTS.
The NHO RING CYCLE got from wordplay then checking on WIKI post solve. The same with BARCAROLE. Sometimes you just trust the cryptics and get the correct answer even if it’s an unknown.
35 minutes but a lot of it was spent on the Barcarole (nho) and Marina for some reason.
Ring Cycle I knew because I had to look up Wagner for a recent puzzle. Crystal Palace I think I got from watching Ted Lasso recently.
Foi: Cob
Loi: Marina
Cod: Come clean. I love a pun, so cryptic definition clues delight me.
Thanks Rotter and Teazel!
On great form today as this took me 6½ minutes, even without having the first idea why divorce centre gives Reno. Perhaps in the US “they talk of little else”, but not one I know.
14A Turn a blind eye is both a great anagram and an extremely impressive surface. It would have been my COD, but that has to go to Rotter’s 16D, henceforth known as the Russian clue: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. Certainly a mystery …
Many thanks for the blog – I do really appreciate the slightly fuller explanations.
Cedric
On fire Cedric!
Thank you. On fire in more ways than one as I am driving north (courtesy of no trains) in the hot sun with the aircon off (courtesy of £2 a litre fuel and the need to drive more economically).
A little smile at 22A Pie as I have just passed Wigan, home to the eponymous Pier, and of course to numerous Pies.
Cedric
Commiserations. I think I’d take the hit and use the aircon!
A very good puzzle – thanks to Teazel. I picked off many of the shorter answers and then went carefully through the rest. Not quite carefully enough, though. My LOI was SWPP….. Nevertheless, I was pleased to be within my 15 min target even with my typo correction. Thanks to Rotter – back to his full and helpful blog now to enjoy some of the neat clues at leisure. John M.
Had to check spelling of BARCAROLE and spent a while getting DREAMLAND and RENOWNED but managed to get there in the end.
Not quite on the wavelength this morning, as is quite often the case with Teazel
As above, the single L in BARCAROLE threw me slightly (in fact it’s that Garanca/Netrebko recording that I know), and that was my LOI, but RENOWNED and DREAMLAND also held me up.
TURN A BLIND EYE was a vg clue, and my favourite today.
7:18
“Origin. Late 18th century French, from Venetian Italian barcarola ‘boatman’s song’, from barca ‘boat’.” Every day’s a school day.
FOI RING CYCLE, LOI BARCAROLE, COD TURN A BLIND EYE (what a lovely surface), time 06:37 for 1.3K and a Very Good Day.
Many thanks Teazel and Rotter.
Templar
6:12
Enjoyable challenge.
Thanks, tr.
Another quick one for me, although, like others, I was surprised to find BARCAROLE spelt with only 1 L and hesitated over that. Apart from the Offenbach already mentioned, the only others I could think of are by Chopin (listen to it here) and the 3 Songs Without Words by Mendelssohn. COD for me was PUMPS for the image conjured by the surface. Thanks Teazel and Rotter. 3:47.
🔥 again!
Julia Florida is a famous barcarole for guiatists
13 mins and pleased with it because halfway through this felt like a real toughie.
FOI COME CLEAN
LOI (&NHO) BARCAROLE
COD RENOWNED although only parsed RENO post biff and it rings a bell but I wouldn’t have known it if independently asked for the divorce centre of the US.
Thanks Teazel and Rotter
Was looking late last night at yesterdays comments. Some of the times mentioned are off-the-scale amazing – I couldn’t hit them just by copying the answers in or filling up the grid with random letters😳
Couldn’t agree more – how do they do it?
Finished fairly quickly and much enjoyed wit. Liked TURN A BLIND EYE, CRYSTAL PALACE, BARCAROLE, RING CYCLE. Finished RHS first, jumping around the grid a bit.
Thanks all, esp ROTTER
Bit of a slog and firmly back in the SCC today. Always find Teazel puzzles get my grey cells firing… FOI RING CYCLE, then patchy success over the next 10 mins or so. Finally began to fall with CRYSTAL PALACE, DREAMLAND and LOI PUMPS (did not think of pups for some reason!). All parsed bar RENOWNED (did not think of RENO, thought ‘o’ was centre of ‘divorce’, then was left with ‘ren’ – many thanks Rotter). Very enjoyable workout. Thanks Teazel.
A strange solving experience: a very fast start; then becalmed; then reasonably quick to finish after getting the difficult RENOWNED and some others. I live quite near Crystal Palace but I needed all the checkers.
LOI should have been BARCAROLE, a word I knew. But that revealed my error at 22a where I had POT; a port lacking R.
14:43 in the end. An excellent QC with lots of good surfaces and some tricky but gettable words.
David
Started with CUSHY, finished with MODESTY. No dramas. 7:44. Thanks Teazel and Rotter.
24 mins…
One of my issues with the big crossword is that I can never seem to get a foothold to get going. Worryingly, this seems to be starting with the QC as well. Needed the NE corner before I got any entries which slowed me right down.
Overall though some good clues, and whilst I’d NHO 11dn “Barcarole” it was generously clued.
FOI – 6ac “Cob”
LOI – 3dn “Cushy”
COD – 6dn “Come Clean”
Thanks as usual!
Took me longer than usual… just under 40 mins. Got off to a flying start but held up by BARCAROLE which I parsed but have NHO.
I suppose it depends where you live but I wouldn’t consider THATCH a particularly unusual roof covering in many parts of England.
13D was my LOI. Took ‘divorce centre’ to indicate a O and struggled to see where REN came from.
Thanks Rotter and Teazel
Made good progress (for me), slowed slightly at the end and then came to a juddering halt at BARCAROLE – NHO. DNK that Reno was a centre for divorce, mainly biffed. Fun all the same. Thanks, Teazel.
FOI – TURN A BLIND EYE
LOI – BARCAROLE
COD – RING CYCLE
MODESTY forbids that I should TURN A BLIND EYE at my stupidly biffed ‘song cycle’, but once I climbed the RAMPARTS I was on my bike with Herr Wagner’s masterwork.
I started very poorly, and on the first pass TANGO was only my second one in. Eventually I scraped inside my target, but I didn’t think it was that difficult – it was just my brain suffering the mental equivalent of a slow broadband speed.
I’ve only ever seen BARCAROLE with a single L. And I’ve only ever been ALL AT SEA.
FOI COB
LOI MARINA *
COD TURN A BLIND EYE
TIME 4:49
* The Morris MARINA, not British Leyland’s greatest creation, was the standard company car at Federated Insurance when I joined in 1978. I remember my boss taking his in to the dealership because the carpet in nearside footwell was soaking wet – this wasn’t an uncommon problem with that model – but he had to chuckle when the Service Manager remarked with a wink that “you’ve got to expect water in a MARINA !”
Finished in 8.34 and found this a pleasant middle of the road puzzle.
There seems to be a lot of discussion about the spelling of 11dn. I went wrong by putting in BACCAROLE before changing the c to an r to suit 14ac. Am I imagining it, or is this an alternative spelling not so far mentioned? I’ve many a time listened to Offenbach’s musical piece that I thought was spelt this way.
Very slow to get started but the mental fog started to clear and ended up at a reasonable clip. NHO BARCAROLE and had no idea that RENO was associated with divorces but fortunately Wagner’s RING CYCLE is gradually getting embedded in my crossword vocabulary.
Crossed the line in an over target 10.35 with LOI CRYSTAL PALACE.
Thanks to Rotter and Teazel
Both 1a (RING CYCLE) and 1d (RAMPARTS) eluded me until I had all of their checkers, so I had to work up from the bottom of the grid. I made steady progress in this endeavour, but rather struggled to populate the NW corner. However, 1a and 1d did finally fall and I was left just trying to parse TANGO and TOTEM. This took me 5 minutes, or so, and I crossed the line in 36 minutes. Perfectly acceptable in my book, given the setter.
I have NHO the Gondolier’s song, so I had to rely only on my parsing of BARCAROLE, and I still have no idea why ‘divorce centre’ = RENO. Sounds like a load of guff to me. Can anyone explain?
Unusually, Mrs Random struggled a bit today – particularly at the end with MARINA, for wich a lengthy alphabet trawl was required. As with me, she had NHO BARCAROLE and DNK that RENO is or was a divorce centre. She finally finished in 50 minutes with the comment “I’m not impressed”.
Many thanks to Teazel and Rotter.