A lovely puzzle from Felix, pitched a bit towards the gentler end.
I made fairly straight progress through this fun mix of clues, clocking in nicely under par at 5.39. Rather more time spent looking for the theme, which I think I’ve vaguely cottoned on to…
Very nice with or without the theme – many thanks to Felix!
| Across | |
| 7 | Sounds and smells overwhelming one (6) |
| NOISES – NOSES (smells) overwhelming I (one) | |
| 8 | Women having ideals shattered (6) |
| LADIES – anagram (chattered) of IDEALS | |
| 9 | Valuable park in very holy surroundings (8) |
| PRECIOUS – REC (park) in PIOUS (very holy). REC, short for recreation ground, crops up a fair bit. | |
| 10 | Head of science to take up chair (4) |
| SEAT – S (“head” of Science) to EAT (take up). I can’t find TAKE UP = EAT in the dictionary (as opposed to just TAKE), but it’s fairly clear what’s meant. | |
| 11 | Skilful band or society regularly appearing (6) |
| ADROIT – b A n D o R s O c I e T y, “regularly appearing” | |
| 13 | Information concerning class (5) |
| GENRE – GEN (information) RE (concerning). GEN, short for “general information”, and synonymous with DOPE, also crops up a fair bit. | |
| 14 | Reading or writing, perhaps, in each period (3) |
| ERA – reading and writing are two of the “three Rs”, insert one into EA. (short for EACH) | |
| 15 | Hence cover for firm (5) |
| SOLID – SO (hence) LID (cover) | |
| 17 | Hustle harassed detective (6) |
| SLEUTH – anagram (harassed) of HUSTLE | |
| 19 | Wretched person without room (4) |
| WORM – W/O (without) RM. (room). My LOI: you get so used to WITHOUT meaning either “going outside x“, or simply “losing x“, that you forget its even simpler abbreviation. | |
| 20 | Land found by swan swimming with boat (8) |
| BOTSWANA – anagram (swimming) of SWAN with BOAT. Ooh, the giddy coincidental excitement, I’m going there on holiday in a few months! I think I’ll take this as a sign to read the first book in the series. | |
| 22 | After long time, clubs in New York providing service (6) |
| AGENCY – after AGE (long time), put C(lubs) in NY (New York) | |
| 23 | Extremely grasping relations in truth (6) |
| VERITY – VERY (extremely) grasping IT (relations). It/relations/congress/etc, occasionally less-euphemistically known as SEX. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Swine, one who’s uninteresting to listen to (4) |
| BOAR – we “listen to” the same as BORE (one who’s uninteresting) | |
| 2 | Old picture used in autopsy chosen (6) |
| PSYCHO – “used in” autoPSY CHOsen | |
| 3 | Various roads set to be overhauled (8) |
| ASSORTED – anagram (to be overhauled) of ROADS SET | |
| 4 | An advantage, being endlessly luxurious (4) |
| PLUS – PLUSH (luxurious) “endlessly” | |
| 5 | Strange youth? Very likely (4-2) |
| ODDS-ON – ODD (strange) SON (youth) | |
| 6 | Last month, F Prefect’s friend becoming corrupt! (8) |
| DECADENT – DEC. (the last month), and F. Prefect from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has as a friend A. DENT. | |
| 12 | Remove dogsled I damaged (8) |
| DISLODGE – anagram (damaged) of DOGSLED I | |
| 13 | Kaput goes vast heater! (3,5) |
| GAS STOVE – anagram (kaput) of GOES VAST | |
| 16 | Bemoan unconvincing religious books (6) |
| LAMENT – LAME (unconvincing) NT (religious books) | |
| 18 | Journalist having conflict with duke and king (6) |
| EDWARD – ED. (journalist) having WAR (conflict) with D(uke) | |
| 20 | Accepts Yankee on board public transport (4) |
| BUYS – Y(ankee) on board BUS (public transport) | |
| 21 | Do, re, me, fa, so or la? (4) |
| NOTE – &lit, with the entire clue being both a literal definition and cryptic wordplay: as we are lacking the seventh note of the scale, there is “no TE” | |
One letter wrong as put dorm for 19ac which I thought was as good🥴
41:37, of which roughly half the time was spent staring blankly at the PRECIOUS / PLUS crossing pair before realising I’d carelessly put BORE and not its homophone – amazing how having the right checking letters increases my ability to solve a clue!
Chuckled at “No Te”, and did remember A. Dent being F. Prefect’s friend which helped. Also initially put NORM but wasn’t convinced and continued my alphabet trawl until the right answer emerged.
I forgot to press go on my timer so am not sure how long this took – less than 10 minutes though. I thought it was just ok at the time, but having read some of the comments, I think I may have misjudged it! I like anagrams, but there seemed to be rather a lot here. Having said that, I did like ASSORTED and WORM, and the combination of SEAT and WORM worked out by mch1 is brilliant. No problem with F Prefect and A Dent – we were only talking about Hitchhiker’s Guide yesterday and saying how dire we thought the 2005 film was! As usual I didn’t see the theme, although had a quick look for it – that’s frustrating because I have read many of the books and seen the TV series, and enjoyed them. The cleverness of NOTE passed me by 🙁
FOI Noises LOI Worm COD Ladies
Thanks Felix and Roly
Whenever approaching a Felix I am always prepared to be bombarded by a bunch of well hidden anagrams. Six of them today but all seemed easy to spot. In a longer clue perhaps Kaput as the anagrind for GAS-STOVE would have been less noticeable
17 mins
Was reasonably pleased with my time until I came here and saw several comments about how easy it was. I don’t disagree, but that made me realise that I hadn’t achieved anything special, and I am still floundering about with this.
Struggled with WORM, VERITY and PRECIOUS (put BORE rather than BOAR initially, idiot!). So many abbreviations I either don’t know or miss. Can’t get EA for EACH or RM for ROOM to stick. 6dn meant nothing to me and was a guess. NHO IT in that context and PLUS took forever.
Thanks for the blog.
13:27, including a very long stare at 9a before I realised that I’d got 1d wrong. Thank you for the blog!
Raced through this (for me) until I lost a little time on LOI WORM, but only enough to take me to 11:35, which is something like my 13th best ever. Missed the theme which was a little upsetting as I enjoy the books and am slowly working my way through the series, having read five. Thanks Felix and Roly.
8:27
LOI DECADENT
COD DECADENT
Thanks