The puzzle can be solved online here.
A typical Chifonie puzzle (not too easy, not too hard) let down by a clumsy SE corner, with TABLE and AVERTABLE crossing. I think this should hvae been spotted by the editor and it would have been so easy to fix. Within less than a couple of minutes I came up with many alternative words for 15dn and 19dn which would have resolved this (TRIBE/DIRECT, TRACE/PARENT, TITLE/ATTEST, TASTE/ASSENT, THREE/URGENT, THEME/RECENT, TILDE/ELDEST, TROPE/MOLEST etc etc).
A shame, as the rest of the puzzle was fine.
Thanks, Chifonie.
| Across | ||
| 1 | CARTHAGE | Convey fury with Spain to ancient capital (8) |
| CART (“convey”) + HAG (“fury”) + E (international vehicle code for “Spain”) | ||
| 5 | CHAPEL | Man gets the Castilian into place of worship (6) |
| CHAP (“man”) gets EL (“the” in Spanish) | ||
| 9 | MANITOBA | Last part of contingent departed in frenzy for region of North America (8) |
| [last part of] (contingent)T + OB. (died, i.e. “departed) in MANIA (“frenzy”) | ||
| 10 | BRETON | French person in British school (6) |
| BR. (British) + ETON (“school”) | ||
| 12 | TRASH | Tory leader spots scum (5) |
| T(ory) [leader] + RASH (“spots”) | ||
| 13 | TROUSSEAU | Initially, the painter depicts bride’s clothing (9) |
| [initially] T(he) + (Henri or Theodore) ROUSSEAU (“painter”) | ||
| 14 | WHEEL BEARING | List transport in faction that facilitates revolution (5,7) |
| HEEL (“list”) + BEAR (“transport”) in WING (“faction”) | ||
| 18 | EVERY SO OFTEN | Always having yen to appease, entertaining Oscar occasionally (5,2,5) |
| EVER (“always”) having Y (yen) + SOFTEN (“to appease”) entertaining O (Oscar in the phonetic alphabet) | ||
| 21 | SCOUNDREL | Villain gives poor Don ulcers (9) |
| *(don ulcers) | ||
| 23 | TABLE | Rumour about second-class furniture (5) |
| TALE (“rumour”) about B (“second-class”, as in B-list) | ||
| 24 | REASON | Think about an issue (6) |
| RE (“about”) + A SON (“an issue”) | ||
| 25 | SEA BREAM | Bear swims in channel for fish (3,5) |
| *(bear) in SEAM (“channel”) | ||
| 26 | DRESSY | Stylish, clean and young (6) |
| DRESS (“clean”) + Y (young) | ||
| 27 | ASBESTOS | Wally stores prime, oxygen-resistant material (8) |
| ASS (“wally”) stores BEST (“prime”) + O (oxygen) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | COMETS | Senior officer came across special space travellers (6) |
| C.O. (“senior officer”) + MET (“came across”) + S (special) | ||
| 2 | RENTAL | Conservationists separate material for hire (6) |
| NT (short for National Trust, so “conservationists”) separate REAL (“material”) | ||
| 3 | HIT THE HAY | Retire to buffet the YHA organised (3,3,3) |
| HIT (“buffet”) + *(the yha) | ||
| 4 | GO BY THE BOARD | Follow the directors or come to grief (2,2,3,5) |
| GO BY (“follow”) + THE BOARD (“directors”) | ||
| 6 | HARMS | Hothead has weaponry that causes injury (5) |
| H(ot) [head] has ARMS (“weaponry”) | ||
| 7 | PATHETIC | The way name’s brought up is contemptible (8) |
| PATH (“way”) + <=CITE (“name”, brought up) | ||
| 8 | LANGUAGE | Speech of film director getting fashionable over time (8) |
| (Fritz) LANG (“film director”) getting U (“fashionable”) over AGE (“time”) | ||
| 11 | DOUBTFULNESS | Lose funds but shift suspicion (12) |
| *(lose funds but) | ||
| 15 | AVERTABLE | Confirm item of furniture can be turned aside (9) |
| AVER (“confirm) + TABLE (“item of furniture”) | ||
| 16 | MEASURED | Firm invested in drink? That’s deliberate! (8) |
| SURE (“firm”) invested in MEAD (“drink”) | ||
| 17 | DESOLATE | Fail to get back in time, becoming sad (8) |
| <=LOSE (“fail”, to get back) in DATE (“time”) | ||
| 19 | OBJECT | Take exception to article (6) |
| Double definition | ||
| 20 | HERMES | Another messenger reveals himself (6) |
| Hidden in “anotHER MESsenger” | ||
| 22 | NOOKS | Retreats agreed in numbers (5) |
| OK (“agreed”) in NOS. (“numbers”) | ||
*anagram
Thanks Chifonie and loonapick
Mostly fine, as you say, but a bit sloppy in places. I wrote in TABLE doubtfully as I wasn’t happy with “rumour” = TALE; I was even less sure that it was right when it crossed with..TABLE. I also wasn’t happy with “channel” = SEAM in 25a. My Chambers doesn’t have Y=”young” (I checked!)
I liked WHEEL-BEARING, and admired MANITOBA without deciding whether I liked it or not…
This was an enjoyable puzzle to tackle, even though I was actually a dnf as I had HURTS instead of HARMS for 6d (D’oh – I thought “URTS” must be an abbreviation of some kind of gun or other weapon!). Like loonapick I was unhappy about the two TABLEs being so close together and both clued as “furniture” in 23a and 14d AVERTABLE. On the other hand, I particularly liked 14a WHEEL BEARING (as did muffin@1), 21a SCOUNDREL 19d OBJECT (my LOI) and 20d HERMES. I couldn’t fully parse 9a MANITOBA (OB. was unfamiliar) and 2d RENTAL (forgot about the National Trust!).
So thanks to loonapick for the blog and to Chifonie for the brain workout.
Thank you Chifonie and Loonapick.
Just the right level of stretch for this sleepyhead.
A question for anyone:
Just how common is sea bream in the UK?
I don’t recall ever seeing it on a menu.
Here (they call it orata) it is a simple fish, simply cooked;
baked in a little oil and water with a couple of other things.
Absolutely delicious.
Sorry Julie, I should have asked “in the UK or elsewhere..”
[il principe @3
When I used to visit the fish-market in Blackburn (I don’t think it’s still functional) there were often fish labelled “sea bream”. (There were also fish labelled “dorada”, which seems a bit unlikely as it’s the gilt-head bream, and found rather a long way from Britain!) I’ve never seen it on a restaurant menu, though.
I never tried it as I always bought halibut fillets – the King of the sea as far as I’m concerned.]
[me @5
Apparently dorada is extensively farmed in Mediterranean areas, so might be exported.]
Thanks Muffin;
I’m not sure if what I eat here is sea bream or gilt-head bream.
The local name seems to suggest the latter.
Wandered through the acrosses with nothing happening, then it began to unfold. Didn’t mind the two tables crossing, a bit lazy but hey ho. I have obit?, overboard?, outward bound? next to Manitoba for the ‘ob’ bit. Took an age to remember fury=hag, ditto to get the scoundrel (d’oh), and had the same doubt as muffin re seam/channel. Dnk Rousseau the painter (at the D’orsay Mrs ginf and I never get past the favourites, up to about Seurat). So today was a mixture of write-ins (chapel, Breton, trash, object) and a bit of head-scratching; e.g., ‘bear’ feels a bit archaic for ‘transport’, as in ‘I bear a message from the King, sire’.
In all quite enjoyable, thanks Chifonie and Loonapick.
[grantinfreo
You may well have seen this picture. It’s in London’s National Gallery]
Ta for that muffin yes I have, and when I looked him up I I did recognize, but the images didn’t surface spontaneously at the name, hence ‘dnk’ as shorthand.
il principe @3: sea bream is a standard item in Marks & Spencer foodhalls – hope the link works:
https://www.marksandspencerfoodhall.co.uk/product/2-sea-bream-fillets–4a930ecf-0eec-42b2-b3bb-db939340e928
where muffin @5 prefers halibut, I usually go for monkfish, sometimes at M&S, more often in the local market
ipdo: Fish sold as sea bream are widely available here in the NE – they are almost certainly farmed.
muffin: no problem with Y = young. YMCA, YFC (Young Farmers Club).
Thanks Chifonie and Loonapick
Yesterday Ferrier, today fish! I love it. Any grumps?
Ahem, Monday Ferrier, but you know what I mean…
Spookily similar experience to JinA@2 except I got the NT! And like ginf@8 I struggled with hag=fury but it all makes sense now with loonapick’s help. I’d be interested in insights from Chifonie / editor /other setters as to how the table tangle happens – it seems so obvious when solving but presumably less so when setting.
Thanks for an otherwise excellent puzzle Chifonie and for the blog loonapick.
Thanks loonapick. The double-booked table did irk me a little too, but it’s hardly a hanging offence. The other slight niggle was that ‘THE’ in HIT THE HAY was fully spelled out in the clue. But overall, thanks Chifonie for a steady solve.
cholecyst@12: problem is detaching single letters from acronyms – it would certainly be unfair to clue T as ‘trust’ without ‘National’
Agree with everyone else about today’s puzzle. I was going to comment on 2x table but it had already been done. Felt AVERTABLE was anyway a rare word where AVOIDABLE is much more common. Quand même, as they say in the Quai d’Orsay (agree about not getting past favourites, grantinfreo) many thanks to Chifonie and loonapick.
Quel horreur, got my cases mixed in d’Orsay. Tant pis, trop de vin rouge (that’s my excuse anyway). Absy no offence of course, Martin, all fun.
grantinfreo@19: absy no offence taken! Was just trying to be mildly witty. You can never have too much vin rouge. V pleased we live not so far from la belle France here in Bad Kreuznach, though more seem to have heard of Bingen, 20 km away, where the Nahe flows into the Rhine.
Martin@21, and you have a bridge like Ponte Vecchio and Rialto, with buildings on it! I recently submitted a similar design to our local Council, from the railway station to the town. The response was wtf (Oz for Que?). Oh well…
A little more on the sea bream debate. Sea bream are caught in the UK mainly in the south and west and mainly in the summer. The two main species caught in the UK are the black bream and the red bream, but gilt-head bream are also known. There was a 12lb plus gilt-head bream caught in the Kingsbridge estuary last year. I’m sure rising sea temperatures are the reason they are becoming more common.
I enjoyed the rest of the crossword too! Thanks to Chifonie and loonapick.
Thank you Chifonie for an enjoyable puzzle and loonapick for a very helpful blog.
The blog is beautifully clear with the bold lettering, but I agree with PeterM @17 and would prefer to see the ‘Conservationists’ given as the acronym NT (National Trust) – and also to see BR (British), Y (yen), Y (young), O (oxygen), S (special) since these are not clued here with an indicator such as ‘initially’, ‘leader’ , etc..
Thanks to Chifonie and loonapick. An enjoyable and steady solve and much of which needs to be said, has been said. Not too easy and not too difficult. Last in was the SW and I liked language and every so often. Thanks again to Chifonie and loonapick.
grantinfreo@21: Yes, I got a similar more or less wtf response when I offered to redo the town’s English tourist info pages just after moving here 14 years ago. If they don’t want help, don’t bother… Regards to Oz, where a long dead uncle of mine emigrated in the 1930s before I was born.
Cookie – I take your point about NT, but I did make he other examples bold – do you mean that you would like me to distinguish between abbreviations such as Br. And other short indications such as the T of contingent?
Thanks Chifonie and loonapick.
Having used Y = yen, I think he was a bit desperate with DRESSY as Y = young is a non-standard abbreviation – could have put a ‘primarily’ or some such. One table OK, two tables a bit wobbly.
I quite liked the YHA buffet and the WHEEL BEARING.
On Y for Young, I agree with muffin @1 and robi @27 and disagree with cholecyst @12 (you’ve got some gall, etc). Heaven knows we could do with another way to use Y, but there’s no dictionary support for it. As has been discussed many times before, if you’re going to invoke Young Men’s Christian Association etc, why not M for Men’s, C for Christian, A for Association?
It would result in https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy#/media/File:Anarchy_A_Stencil.jpg for Anarchy.
loonapick @26, yes, to distinguish between ‘symbols’ like O (Oxygen) and short indications such as T(ory) (leader), (contingen)T (last part of) etc., hardly any bloggers do – in this crossword everything is clear, but this is not always the case. Thank you for replying.
I’ll take that feedback on board; thanks!
Thanks to Chifonie and loonapick.
This did not leave me purring, for much the same reasons already delineated by others but I did enjoy many: NOOKS, EVERY SO OFTEN and MANITOBA (once I had OB. explained). Only came on in a spirit of helpfulness to loonapick to point out that ASS is “wally” in ASBESTOS and not “ally” – one of those iritaatting msprints.
Thanks to Chifonie and loonapick. No complaints. I enjoyed this puzzle.
Thanks both.
I enjoyed this and found it quite easy. The only thing that gave me pause was u= fashionable. The usage was coined to mean, ‘upper class’ in an essay by Alan Ross in 1954. If anything, the U words tend to be less fashionable than the non-U ones.
Cookie@29
I’ve made some edits – are they more helpful?
grantinfreo @13 – if by “grumps” you mean people who object to this website being taken over by a handful of people to chat amongst themselves about their own trivial interests rather than the crossword, there are usually a good number of us. See this discussion. I have to admit, though, that I am intrigued, per Martin @25, to learn more about how the long-dead person managed to emigrate to Australia.
Enjoyable Crossword. Thanks Chifonie and loonapick.
I was also not familiar with OB.=died (Julie @2 etc.) – readily solvable anyway, but not parsable. Like grantinfreo @8, I was completely unconcerned with the two TABLEs crossing. This did not distract from the enjoyment of the crossword.
I had no problem finding BEAR=carry=transport (e.g. “bear the blame”). It reminds me of a favourite story/joke of the Victorian girl who called her teddy bear “Gladly” from the hymn she sang/heard in church: “Gladly my Cross I’d bear.”
loonapick @34, yes, but I did not mean it was necessary to add [last part of] to (contingen)T or [initially] to T(he), etc., such clues are clear enough and it such a bother for you.
On the other hand I would like to have seen BR. (British) [not BR.(itish)], Y (yen) [not Y(en)], O (oxyen) [not O(xygen)], etc..
I am sorry to be so poor at explaining myself, my English is very rusty.
Cookie@37
Edited again. Was that what you meant? I’m happy to change my shorthand or explanations in any way that helps solvers understand how to get to the answers. It was no bother, by the way, and although (contingent)T on its own may have been clear to experienced solver, a newbie may not agree, so I’ll trial this new style for a while and see what feedback, if any, it gets.
Thanks for reading the blog.
loonapick @38, SUPER
Van Winkle @35: I think in those days they would take any body.
Felt the same as Tyngewick @ 33 about U. I always think of U and non-U as class descriptions, not as about fashion. The rest has been said. Quite fun I thought, despite one or two quirks. I did fill everything in but didn’t parse everything.
BTW, here in my part of the UK, pan fried sea bream on crushed new potatoes is a gastro-pub classic. And very nice it is too!
Nice puzzle; super blog – clear and helpful. Thanks both.
Nice Wednesday puzzle from Chifonie, with a number of elegant, concise, and well-constructed clues — I would list, as top examples, TRASH, DOUBTFULNESS, REASON and DRESSY. Oh, and also HERMES. I also liked SCOUNDREL, because that word and “Don” seem to go hand in glove these days. The table/table junction in the SE was not ideal, but certainly was not something I would ever get eruptional about. Having said that, I think any of the word pairings that loonapick suggested for 23ac (which is what he surely intended to say, not 15dn) and 19dn would have been preferable to TABLE/OBJECT.
Many thanks to Chifonie and loonapick and the other commenters.
Gonzo@40 ouch!
Enjoyed this. I suppose two TABLES are a bit much but I didn’t really notice them at the time. Not much to add but I did like TROUSSEAU and the puzzle cheered me up after watching Theresa May’s rather meandering speech. Can oblivion be far away?
Thanks Chifonie.
Cheeky, Gonzo@40! [The Kiwis have a hard-to-riposte quip, viz that they send their riff-raff to Oz, thus raising the average IQ of both countries].
Van Winkle@35, thanks for the link. Yes I suppose my Grumps question was provocative, and I agree with the roughly 70/30 yardstick, but feel elastic about latitude. The essence is the wonderful, infinitely generative subtlety of language, which, imho, is inseparable from the feelings, memories, life experiences and, yes, even hobbyhorses (Ferrier, fish) that language arises from and in turn evokes.
Best wishes, ginf.
For 26A I had CLASSY which screwed that quadrant
This was fun to complete – although some of the parsing eluded me. Like JinA and others, OB. in Manitoba was new to me: I’ve never seen obituary abbreviated to anything other than “obit”. I guessed Dressy, and although I agree that Y=young is perfectly valid (YHA is already in the puzzle, after all), nevertheless it felt a little clunky having Y=yen elsewhere in the same work. However Breton, Hermes, Trousseau, Language and Pathetic were dead classy. Thanks to Chifonie for a good mental workout, and huge thanks to Loonapick for the clear and patient explanations.
Just wanted to chime in from across the pond… today’s puzzle was kind of easy, which is nice so I can go on to other chores…
Also just wanted to say thanks to everyone who creates the daily blogs with the parsing (for ex. until today I did not know heel = list). I appreciate the work involved and would not quibble with any particular formatting (or non-formatting). The work is appreciated as is. 🙂
U=fashionable? How so?
Van Winkle@35: OK, point taken but there’s no need to be irreverent towards the dead, just because I omitted “now” before “long dead” (pretty obvious, I would have thought). I get the impression that some contributors are more interested in scouring this blog for what they deem to be irrelevant comments than saying something more constructive. This is a day late, sorry.