A fair challenge from Aardark today. Thank you.
Realising that there was a pangram in the offing helped to narrow down some of the possibilities. This helped to balance out the grid being in three parts, each only connected by one light. It looks like there might be more than one pangram here, so if someone fancies counting all the letters then please leave a comment with your findings..
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | TOWNIE | Urban-dweller’s private during relationship (6) |
| OWN (private) inside TIE (relationship) | ||
| 4 | CLINIQUE | Exclusive group of people governing stylish private hospital (8) |
| CLIQUE (exclusive group of people) contains (governing) IN (stylish) | ||
| 9 | AWAKEN | Stir partly created by one Kawasaki doing a U-turn (6) |
| found inside (partly created by) oNE KAWAsaki reversed (doing a u-turn) | ||
| 10 | SKINLESS | Like a particular sausage link chopped into four quarters (8) |
| anagram (chopped) of LINK in S E S S (four quarters, of the compass) | ||
| 12 | SUEZ | Take action against unknown in mid-50s, the centre of a crisis (4) |
| SUE (take action against) then Z (an unknown quantity) | ||
| 13 | CONTINGENT | Group of people trace books on criminal (10) |
| TINGE (trace) NT (books, of The Bible) following (on) CON (criminal) | ||
| 15 | PEANUT BUTTER | Elvis favourite? A tune played in empty pub, say (6,6) |
| anagram (played) of A TUNE inside PuB (empty) then UTTER (say) – see fried peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich | ||
| 18 | TERENCE STAMP | English actor moving centre stage, finally, to make an impression (7,5) |
| anagram (moving) of CENTRE stagE (finally) then STAMP (make an impression) STAMP | ||
| 21 | EVEN CHANCE | Toss-up just before tea, then next cricket event starts (4,6) |
| EVEN (just) then CHA (tea) and starting letters of Next Cricket Event | ||
| 22 | JADE | Ornamental stone jars dear with fifty percent off (4) |
| JArs DEar missing 50% | ||
| 24 | KILOVOLT | Amount of energy left over, playing football perhaps in Scottish outfit (8) |
| L (left) O (over) V (versus, playing) O (something round, a football perhaps) inside KILT (Scottish outfit) – an measure of potential difference, technically not quite the same thing as energy but close enough for a word puzzle | ||
| 25 | GUFFAW | Laugh loudly, gorging stuffed prawns in essence repeatedly (6) |
| middle letters (essence) of gorGing stUFFed prAWns | ||
| 26 | DEXTROSE | Type of sugar daughter passed on to recycle store (8) |
| D (daughter) EX (died, passed on) then anagram (to recycle) of STORE | ||
| 27 | SYDNEY | Olympic venue to be completed within two years, son recalled (6) |
| END (to be completed) inside Y Y (year, twice) S (son) all reversed (recalled) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | TRANSEPT | Some of church, having time, organised Harvest Festival season? (8) |
| T (time) RAN (organised) SEPT (September, harvest festival season) | ||
| 2 | WHALEMAN | Robust male tucking into pasty needs salt (8) |
| HALE (robust) M (male) inside WAN (pasty) – a salt is a sailor | ||
| 3 | IBEX | Regularly nibbled by goat (4) |
| nIbBlEd (every other letter, regularly) then X (by, multiplication) | ||
| 5 | LAKE TITICACA | Barking at Cecil, akita wants large amount of water (4,8) |
| anagram (barking, mad) of AT CECIL AKITA | ||
| 6 | NO-NONSENSE | Plain-spoken, unfinished sonnet twice broadcast (2-8) |
| anagram (broadcast) of SONNEt SONNEt (unfinished, twice) | ||
| 7 | QUEUER | Maybe member of crocodile viewable by all in unusual environment (6) |
| U (viewable by all) inside (in…environment) QUEER (unusual) | ||
| 8 | ERSATZ | Fake European art’s strangely variable (6) |
| E (European) and anagram (strangely) of ART’S then Z (variable, in equations) | ||
| 11 | DOUBLE FAULTS | Errors serving large drink terribly fast inhibiting university student (6,6) |
| DOUBLE (large drink) then anagram (terribly) of FAST containing (inhibiting) U (university) L (learner, student) | ||
| 14 | DUVET COVER | Bedding, light, and the rest, taken through Channel port (5,5) |
| UV (light) ETC (and the rest) inside (taken through) DOVER (channel port) | ||
| 16 | PARAFFIN | Air soldier with Forces getting in fuel (8) |
| PARA (air soldier) with F F (force, twice) and IN | ||
| 17 | SPEEDWAY | Swerve to maintain intense turning – in this sport? (8) |
| SWAY (swerve) contains (to maintain) DEEP (intense) reversed (turning) | ||
| 19 | JERKED | Having seen cuckoo, Edward behaved like a twitcher? (6) |
| JERK (cuckoo ?) ED (Edward) – I’m not 100% sure about this. Cuckoo and Jerk don’t suggest the same thing to me. One implies mad, the other contemptible. | ||
| 20 | REFLEX | Bent sports official on side of Liverpool once (6) |
| REF (sports official) on LiverpooL (side of, either one) and EX (once) | ||
| 23 | QUAY | Discussed crucial landing-place (4) |
| sounds like (discussed) “key” (crucial) | ||
I did spot it was a double pangram.
Found this a mixed bag but enjoyed it overall.
I disagree that 24a is ok for a word puzzle. I think it is plain wrong. VO for playing football seems a stretch too far but I may be saying this because I didn’t see it.
Could understand jerk = cuckoo either. I often find so-called link words jar with me. The inclusion of “needs” in 2d fell into this category.
So thanks with some reservations to Aardvark and thanks also to PeeDee.
Hi Hovis, there are lots of ways that people use words that are “just plain wrong” when viewed from a technical standpoint. The English language is full of this sort of thing. For example you don’t expect someone to say “You have lost mass since I saw you last”, everyone knows what you mean when you say “You have lost weight…”. Doesn’t the word energy get any leeway?
Thanks to Aardvark. I found this one extremely challenging!
I can give some leeway for weight/mass, speed/velocity and maybe others. But, let’s face it, we pay for energy usage. We don’t pay for voltage irrespective of the current taken and the time used. I admit that people living at the top of a hill don’t pay extra for their potential energy and that voltage is electric potential. Maybe somebody can convince me that I’m wrong to not allow this. Over to everyone else.
Hovis – in retrospect, I do think you do have a good point. I was thinking of how people talking physics use “energy” and “potential” fairly interchangeably, and “volts” and “electron volts” interchangeably. It is implicit from the context when they are abbreviating “electron-volts” and “potential energy” which are a bit more of a mouthful. But in reality the only people who have this sort of conversation are physicists and nerds (guilty as charged) so I don’t think this really counts as general use of the English language.
11d. I came to this late in the day but noticed that there is a redundant “s” is “fast” in both the FT crossword and in the parsing. I hate to be a pedant but thought I should point it out
Well spotted tenoidia, so glad lad to have a pedant paying attention to the details. I completely missed that when solving the puzzle.
I can’t immediately think of any other explanation other than it is a mistake. Can anyone offer an explanation?
PeeDee
There is no error, the entry is DOUBLE FAULTS. Your grid and parsing are correct but you missed the S off the solution when typing it.
Thanks Aardvark and PeeDee. Missed QUEUER but otherwise found this extremely satisfying. Knowing it was a double pangram made it a bit easier to guess entries like SUEZ and JERKED. I’m OK with KILOVOLT as I see puzzles more as art than science, hence, a bit of “poetic license” can be expected.
Thanks Aardvark & PeeDee.
Not sure that kilovolt expressed as energy is technically wrong. Electric potential is defined as the work (i.e. energy) required to transfer a unit positive electric charge from infinity to a point, and a kilovolt is a measure of potential difference between two points.
Hi psmith, technically speaking the quantity of energy you are describing is measured not in volts (V) but in electron volts (eV). The electron volt is as you say the energy required to transfer one electron (one unit of charge) through one volt (a potential difference).
Linguistically speaking this is another matter. Is the word “energy” also used more loosely to describe (amongst other things) a voltage, a potential, something closely related to potential energy? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Your own verbal description of of energy as potential difference could be taken as an example of just that.
The thing that swings it for me is that the grid entry is not volts (which could be thought of as speaking about electricity in general) but kilovolts which is a much more precise and technical term. So I think the definition for KILOVOLTS should to be more than just “amount of energy”.
Geoff @8 Thank you – fixed now.
Thanks Aardvark and PeeDee
Quite a hard one for me which took over the hour across multiple sessions to get out. Did spot the pangram about a third of the way through but didn’t realise that it was a double pangram until seeing the blog. It would have saved me the error with my PEEKED instead of JERKED at 19d (had come here to see how PEEK = ‘having seen cuckoo’ after not making sense of it for quite a while). Couldn’t really see the VO = ‘playing football, perhaps’ at 24a either, but so it was.
It was good to work out more than the usual answers from wordplay and then have to check the definition instead of the other way round – 2d, 5d and 18a were all examples of that. Had hastily written an unparsed DEMERARA at 26a which held up progress in that troublesome SW corner.
Finished with the corrected DEXTROSE (a new sugar for me), REFLEX (a new bent for me) and WHALEMAN (a new sailor / salt for me).