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Author   william_j_sPosted on 26th July 2024 at 7:00 AM23 July 2024Categories Daily Cryptic
51:18
This was a belter – not for the faint-hearted, but I thoroughly enjoyed the pretty stiff challenge.
I made three mistakes along the way: thinking 1ac was a spelling mistake (should it be ‘blank’? No, just the only really weak surface in the whole puzzle); entering ‘barmy’ for 1dn (could ‘bay’ mean ‘coach’, like a sick bay but on a train…?); and considering ‘ledge’ for 23dn (maybe a run/race/channel…?).
I also had to dredge up, guess, or learn the vocabulary for 10ac, 2dn, and 7dn.
COD to 26ac – a beauty. Definitions underlined.
P.S. I have had to construct the blog on my iPhone from an old template, as I don’t currently have access to the script, and I may not be able to catch up on comments either, so please accept my apologies for any typos or questions – hopefully the TftT doyens will step in if necessary.
| Across | |
| 1 | Screens bank for weakness (5,4) |
| BLIND SPOT – BLINDS (screens) + POT (bank). | |
| 6 | He may perhaps steal piano and flute (5) |
| CRIMP – CRIM (criminal, he may perhaps steal) + P (piano). Like folds in fabric. | |
| 9 | One cramming viscount in possession of drugs into posh car (7) |
| REVISER – VIS (viscount) contained by (i.e. in the possession of, possessed by) E+E (drugs), all in RR (Rolls Royce, posh car). | |
| 10 | Eulogies once I am gone (7) |
| ENCOMIA – anagram of ONCE I AM. | |
| 11 | Report of secretive life in Irish town (5) |
| SLIGO – sounds like “sly” (secretive), then GO (life). | |
| 12 | Bananas aren’t nice fruit (9) |
| NECTARINE – anagram of AREN’T NICE. | |
| 14 | Contemptuous expression of son leaving party (3) |
| BAH – BAsH (party) without the ‘s’ (son). | |
| 15 | Intimate knowledge of face-lifts going wrong (5,2,4) |
| FACTS OF LIFE – anagram of OF FACE-LIFTS. Like ‘the birds and the bees’. | |
| 17 | Talks of people welcoming self-seeker, no saint (11) |
| NEGOTIATION – NATION (people) containing EGOIst (self-seeker) minus the ‘st’ (saint). | |
| 19 | Characters facing embarrassment always tease and scoff (3) |
| EAT – first letters from (facing) Embarrassment Always and Tease. | |
| 20 | Shorn ewe followed by shaggy ram in agitated state (7-2) |
| WROUGHT-UP – remove the outermost letters from (shorn) eWe, then ROUGH (shaggy) + TUP (ram). | |
| 22 | Cold, shy, surly person (5) |
| CHURL – C (cold) + HURL (shy). | |
| 24 | Old playwright bitten by Greek bird (7) |
| GOSHAWK – O (old) + SHAW (playwright), inside GK (Greek). | |
| 26 | Near middle of pub, almost horizontal (7) |
| INLYING – almost all of INn (pub) + LYING (horizontal). | |
| 27 | Some concern as alarm sounded by hooter (5) |
| NASAL– hidden in concerN AS ALarm. | |
| 28 | Cleaner of busy royal fellow (9) |
| DETERGENT– DET (detective, busy) + ER (royal) + GENT (fellow). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Coach full of sailors feels very hot (5) |
| BURNS– BUS (coach) containing RN (sailors). | |
| 2 | Sound off, given rum in outskirts of Ipswich (7) |
| INVEIGH – anagram of GIVEN inside the outermost letters of IpswicH. | |
| 3 | Make uneasy male dons ready for a dance? (9) |
| DISCOMFIT – M (male) contained by (dons) DISCO-FIT (ready for a dance?). | |
| 4 | Skills needed to raise issue (11) |
| PARENTCRAFT – cryptic definition. | |
| 5 | Kick tenor missing note (3) |
| TOE – TOnE (tenor) without the ‘n’ (note). | |
| 6 | Commanding Officer carried over a drink (5) |
| COCOA – CO (commanding officer) twice (carried over) + A. | |
| 7 | Doctrine briefly troubles one member of Muslim sect (7) |
| ISMAILI – ISM (doctrine) + all but the last of AILs (troubles) + I (one). | |
| 8 | Ordering lap dances, church folk start to tremble (9) |
| PLACEMENT – anagram of LAP, then CE (church) + MEN (folk) + first letter of Tremble. | |
| 13 | Protein in dairy item, for example (4,2,5) |
| CASE IN POINT – CASEIN (protein in dairy) + POINT (item). | |
| 14 | Bishop and wife covering Greek festival, the latest fad (9) |
| BANDWAGON – B (bishop) AND W (wife) + AGON (Greek (film?) festival). NHO that last bit. | |
| 16 | Duty gives way to enjoyment in special kind of railway (9) |
| FUNICULAR – partICULAR (special), with ‘part’ (role, duty) replaced with FUN (enjoyment). | |
| 18 | Explains away ultimately puzzling disappearances (7) |
| GLOSSES -last letter of puzzlinG + LOSSES (disappearances). | |
| 19 | Learned about boomerangs Buddhist men regularly used (7) |
| ERUDITE – RE (about) reversed, then every other letter from bUdDhIsT mEn. | |
| 21 | Head of Logistics phoned up boss (5) |
| GNARL – first of Logistics + RANG (phoned), all reversed. Come to think of it, this went in with a shrug at the time. I’m not sure about the synonymy: a knot in a tree, or to domineer, perhaps? | |
| 23 | Run on the level (5) |
| LEGIT – leg it (run) | |
| 25 | Guy slips clothes off (3) |
| KID– sKIDs (slips) missing the outermost letters. | |
45 minutes. It’s a long time since I entered so many answers with queries in the margin. In some cases I felt either the definition or the wordplay seemed a bit loose or required a leap of faith.
I found CRIM short for criminal in the dictionary, but I can’t say I’ve met it before, and is a CRIMP the same as a flute, I wondered.
I’m sure I never heard of WROUGHT-UP but knew ‘overwrought’ so it had to be right.
FUNICULAR also had to be, but ‘duty / PART’ seemed a bit of a stretch. I’ve since found them as synonyms in a thesaurus but am struggling to think of an example in which they can be substituted
CHURL was my LOI by some way.
Greek festival AGON??? Boss GNARL???
I can see ‘GLOSSES over’ as ‘explains away’, but not GLOSSES on its own.
ISMAILI came from wordplay. It has appeared a few times including a puzzle I blogged last year, but I hadn’t remembered it and the spellcheckers don’t like it.
Having said all the above, there were some excellent clues here. 23dn for example, and NEGOTIATION was neat.
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One of the definitions of ‘part’ in Collins is ‘a person’s proper role or duty’, and it gives the example ‘we all must do our part’.
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Thanks. If the dictionary says so then I have to accept it, but I’d never say one of the examples given. I’d say ‘we must all do our duty’ or ‘we must all play our part. ‘Doing a part’ simply sounds wrong to my ear.
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‘If I were a wise man / I would do my part’.
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I’d have to concede that one, Rob, but in the context of poetry one often has constructions that sound a little strange to the modern ear. This is one of my favourite hymns, btw, and in my childhood at church and school it was always sung to the setting by Gustav Holst. Later this seemed to go out of fashion and other settings were used, none of which captured the same mood for me.
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Holst is fine for congregational singing, but Harold Darke’s setting has its claims to excellence. Sublime harmonies in verses 2 and 4, and that tenor solo for verse 3… High emotion.
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Yes I agree it sounds a bit odd, unlike ‘do your bit’.
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I agree. This was a half decent crossword let down by the usual clunkers that you’ve highlighted.
I would add that 4d is barely cryptic, and the definition of inlying as ‘near the middle’ is very loose indeed. ‘The inlying villages of the fens are at risk of flooding’. But those villages could be near Peterborough and not anywhere near the ‘middle’ of the fens. Inlying simply means ‘not on the outer’Reply
Soundly beaten again. NHO cramming for revision and got gnarl but didn’t get it! Bit of a mer at skids/slips, thinking slip is more like falling and skid more like sliding but I’m sure it’ll be in a dictionary somewhere. Enjoyable though. Thanks WJS and setter
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Challenging puzzle. Nice touches. Thanks to setter and to wjs. But I’m still puzzled by parsing of 28a: since when has DET meant “busy” (even if, as wjs suggests, it stands here as a truncation of “detective”)? On a separate point: I’m tired of seeing “e” clued as “drug(s)”. Is this on anybody else’s pet-peeve list?
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See AlsoLA Times Crossword 30 Jul 24, Tuesday - LAXCrossword.comWhich Of These Is NOT A Part Of Managing Your Emotions?Old Organization For The Rock Crossword — Our Great Redeemer's Praise Hymnal 1Mark Twain And Bret Harte Are Examples Of American _____ Writers.TranscendentalistRealistModernistRomanticI know what you mean regarding E for drugs, but I feel maybe the setter has to have some standard devices to produce crosswords regularly.
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17.00
Excellent, challenging, everything a good puzzle should be!
‘Busy’ is Liverpool slang for a policeman (not necessarily a detective, in fact more likely to be a uniformed officer). Apparently derived from their always being “too busy to help”. Is the setter a Scouser?
COD DISCOMFIT
LOI CHURLReply
During my time at the uni there in the ‘60s the slang for a rozzer was ‘a scuffer’. Perhaps this is more recent.
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14:41. Tricky, but all yielded. I liked the intimate knowledge and the dance-ready chap. No problem with duty/part (His part/duty on the day was to xyz, close enough for me), nor slips/skids.
Thanks both.
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14:00. Like William I had to recall the vocab for ENCOMIA, INVEIGH and ISMAILI – all words I’d seen before, but none of which I could have told you the meaning of beforehand. Similarly GNARL in the meaning used here – personally it always makes me think of sports like surfing or skateboarding where participants perform a “gnarly” move. There may be some forthcoming in the Olympics.
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Another biff-fest and William’s blog was needed to explain far too many clues. In any event I typoed “wrougtt-up” to compound my annoyance at a waste of 12:03 – COD to LEGIT.
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I didn’t find it so hard as I was going through but at the end the clock read 35:33 so obviously it was hardish. LOI was CRIMP where it took me a while to think of both crim for criminal, which is slang I think, and crimp for flute.
Thanks setter and blogger, always much appreciate the work that goes in to thisReply
45 mins with 5 short, all in the SE.
Busy=policeman=detective=DET is too convoluted for me. Unknown slang followed by non-synonym followed by unknown abbreviation.
I was trying LAMAS for Buddhist men, possibly reversed.
But pleased with other answers including some pretty hairy vocab.
COD FACTS OF LIFE
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46 minutes, by which time everything was parsed satisfactorily too, apart perhaps for INLYING . I was unsure that POINT could mean ITEM so COD TO FUNICULAR. Mind you, I never trust one.An earnest puzzle, but a good one. Thank you William and setter.
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Some toughies in this excellent puzzle but I got there successfully, 38.42, thanks all.
From Subterranean Homesick Blues:
Ah get born, keep warm, short pants, romance
Learn to dance, get dressed, get blessed, try to be a success
Please her, please him, buy gifts, don’t steal, don’t lift
Twenty years of schoolin’ and they put you on the day shift
Look out KID, they keep it all hid…Reply
10:07, taken over the ten-minute mark by the somewhat oblique CRIMP. No other major problems.
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A bit Fridayish, this one, and some clues that I thought stretched the boundaries rather. Still, got there 🙂
Some neat clues too, I liked the intimate knowledge and the blind spot ..Reply
About 25 minutes.
I’ve come across crim for criminal before so I got CRIMP even without being sure of its flute meaning; didn’t know the boss meaning of GNARL but again the wordplay helped; DETERGENT was clear enough so I didn’t worry about the ‘det’ part; didn’t parse CASE IN POINT as I haven’t heard of casein, and I thought it might have been a reverse cryptic; and got FUNICULAR without seeing how part=duty, though the explanations given by others above make perfect sense.
Thanks William and setter.
FOI Cocoa
LOI Crimp
COD ReviserReply
DNF Ha. 26a inlying??? Some odd vocab here. But doable apart from 26, which I should/could have got.
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16:17. Some stretchy definitions in places (e.g. duty = part), but all fair. LOI INLYING, not a word I’ve seen. I liked DISCO FIT and LEGIT. Thanks William and setter.
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I banged in HORNY for 1d, thinking hoy might be a carriage of some sort. Clearly I’ve been doing the Guardian quite a lot recently. Held me up for quite a while.
I eventually got CASE IN POINT, and wrote it in before thinking how clever it was.
18’26”, thanks william and setter.
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About 75 minutes. Tough but enjoyable. FOI FUNICULAR. Liked GOSHAWK. Couldn’t parse ERUDITE. Looked for parts of erudite in Buddhist men. I have to use more than several close glances next time. Had problems with busy in DETERGENT. Chambers Thesaurus gives colloquial busy in detective. Wouldn’t have ever worked it out myself.
Thanks William.Reply
35:24
Fridays are the only morning of the week that I wake with a sore head so I was pleasantly surprised to make a decent stab at this one.ISMAILI and ENCOMIA were the only unknowns although a couple of others were outliers. Luckily SLIGO is known to me thanks to slightly obscure football knowledge.
I thought there was some nice but fair cluing throughout.
Thanks to both.
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Isn’t there a Sam Allardyce connection? Or have I imagined that?
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He managed in Ireland though I’m not sure if it was at Sligo Rovers. I know it from being one of the last clubs of the great Dixie Dean, and the first of Everton captain Seamus Coleman.
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Just Limerick, it seems, as player-manager
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26.21 with so many clues part entered until I could justify filling in the gaps
I mean, I do get bank=POT, but they seemed far apart. I refrained from entering POINT after CASEIN because I couldn’t see where the O in PINT came from. PARENT?????, with no particular help from the CD. How do you get to TOE from tenor missing note? Isn’t middle of pub U? It should be GNARL but how is that a boss? Is WROUGHT UP a thing?
All resolved before submitting (except TOE, I think) but sometimes you forget how cryptic cryptic can be.Reply
27:38
Fairly comfortable ride this morning – no problem with CRIM or WROUGHT-UP. Wasn’t sure that was what INVEIGH meant but seemed the obvious combination of letters with a couple of checkers already in. Shrugged a bit at GLOSSES, toyed with LIP rather than KID until I’d thought of the correct playwright in 24a. Liked the CASE IN protein and 16d always gives me the ‘Funiculi, funicula’ earworm (recorded variously by Luciano Pavarotti, The Grateful Dead and Alvin and the Chipmunks!).
Thanks William and setter
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24 mins, much of it spent trying to fathom out INLYING. Aside from that, the rest seemed pretty straightforward.
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26.34 and would have been quicker if I had convinced myself earlier about inlying. It even took a couple of reads of Jackkt’s explanation before I was finally convinced. COD for me was deffo legit, happy days.
Thanks setter and blogger.
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9:49 Not too hard for a Friday. Bit of a biff-fest today with DETERGENT, PARENTCRAFT, ENCOMIA, NASAL, DISCOMFIT, etc. No problems with any of the vocab, though I’m not sure I’ve heard WROUGHT-UP before. I thought LEGIT was a lovely clue, as was the witty DISCOMFIT and NECTARINE. Even as an old classicist I thought AGON was a bit obscure, as I’ve not come across it outside of academic articles. On balance, COD to ENCOMIA, one of those perfectly concise anagrams you’d like to be able to find when writing a clue. Really strong puzzle, and one worth spending time over post-solve to appreciate all the nuances.
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27:45 but could only think of light as a word to fit L-G-T then as soon as I hit submit thought of LEGIT. Doh!
One of the first things I learnt from this community was not to enter an answer unless you can parse it but as I had been equally unable to fathom Detergent, inlying, bandwagon and eat I took it on faith😊
Excellent puzzle – COD to the QC escapee Nectarine just for its beautiful surface but many other excellent clues.Thanks William and setter
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23:40 – found this relatively straightforward though I was bamboozled a bit by TO(n)E until I finally saw the other meaning of tenor.
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24 minutes. I found this more tractable than the usual Friday. Still, I didn’t know AGON for ‘Greek festival’ and had the same MER as several others at GNARL for ‘boss’. Favourite was eventually working out the wordplay for DETERGENT.
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How on earth Verlaine managed this in under 7 minutes is beyond me. There were several connections that at the time I either didn’t understand or seemed loose (flute = crimp, go = life, point = item, agon = Greek festival, gnarl = boss), but in many cases this was due no doubt to my ignorance. 58 minutes.
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31:22. Most enjoyable and, as many others have said, decidedly odd in places. No problem with busy=policeman but det for detective was hard to see, and I was trying DI or perhaps DS somehow.
NHO AGON. I wondered about B(ishop) AND his WAG (wife) ON (covering), which did not need the Greek Festival at all. They all count.
Thanks blogger and setterReply
I struggled to get started and my FOI was GNARL. Next in was LIP at 25d which came out again when the GOSHAWK arrived. The grid filled slowly with the NW last to fall. PARENTCRAFT went in with a shrug. INVEIGH arrived and helped a lot. BLIND SPOT and BURNS soon dropped in, and TOE finally made sense. Liked FACTS OF LIFE and WROUGHT UP. NHO AGON. INLYING from wordplay. REVISER, SLIGO and DISCOMFIT finished the job. 27:11. Thanks setter and William.
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34:35
Very satisfying completion. Tough but entirely fair, with none of the mers raised above.
Finished in the SE with CHURL offering LEGIT and finally INLYING.
COD PLACEMENT
Thanks all.
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Didn’t know agon but apart from that all good. Some great surfaces, with encomia being the pick of the bunch. Medium difficulty for me, which is good for a Friday.
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Held up by RIP in for 25d
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Blimey, am I allowed to say that? I am amazed i got within twenty mins of Mr Verlaine. Mind you I biffed in 28ac and 28d. 23 down was one of those bang head on table when the penny drops clues. Thanks for this great start to the weekend.
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Got there in just under thirty minutes. Like others there were a few “half-parsed” (careful there…) solutions. FUNICULAR wasn’t parsed at all and INLAYING took a while as I was solving the wrong definition (..almost horizontal). Nevertheless always happy to beat 30 on a Friday, thanks William and setter.
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Seemed more like a Wednesday than a Friday. COD INVEIGH because of the well-hidden role of ‘given’, which I only got on reading the blog. Also liked LEGIT, and several others. AGON (αγών) is literal Greek for ‘game’ or ‘contest’, the meaning being transferred to encompass the festival of such activity. Rather a topical reference. (Somebody above seemed a bit doubtful about this.) Stravinsky wrote a rather obscure twelve-tone ballet with that title in 1953.
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DNF, failing on the crimp/Ismaili crossing (although I got Ismaili from the wordplay once I knew crimp).
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Good morning!
GNARL: any knotty protuberance or swelling on a tree
BOSS: a knob, stud, or other circular rounded protuberance, esp an ornamental one on a vault, a ceiling, or a shield
But it seems most everybody figured that out.
Thesaurus.com doesn’t have “flute” listed as a synonym for CRIMP but does have CRIMP as a “strong match” for “flute” (“as in groove” and “as in pleat”). I stopped to check that one.Reply
Pleasant enough puzzle, with nothing to frighten the horses.
11 across gave me a chuckle, as I am currently in SLIGO visiting family.Reply
Agree this was tough but fair, with some excellent clues. All done in two bites, totalling 37 minutes. NHO BUSY=policeman, but this did not hold me up. Also WROUGHT UP looks odd to me, but I am happy to accept that it makes sense to someone somewhere in Anglophonia.
FOI – NECTARINE
LOI – INLYING
COD – INVEIGH
Thanks to william and other contributors.Reply
DNF
Beaten by INLYING and LEGITReply
31.02, but I could not parse them all. Infuriated again by the puzzle repeatedly flipping to a different puzzle page when I select letters on my iPad touch screen.
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I seem to be a day behind in my solving and I know nobody is going to read this now. It’s really just for me.
I was very surprised to complete this correctly because some answers seemed a bit of a stretch but it’s a rare Friday finish so I’ll take it.
LOI’s were the ISMAILI/CRIMP crossing. FOI was NECTARINE (easy but nice) and COD was NEGOTIATION.Reply
TEE for TOE, dammit. Otherwise 27’38”.
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