A terrific challenge from GAFF today, themed as a Coronation puzzle.
FF: 9 DD: 10
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | CHAIRS |
Committee leads Conservative down (6)
|
| C ( conservative ) HAIRS ( down ) | ||
| 4 | MILCH COW |
Dairy producer whom colic ruined with nothing left (5,3)
|
| [ WHOM CoLIC ( without O – nothing ) ]* | ||
| 9 | REALMS |
Genuine Microsoft domains (6)
|
| REAL ( genuine ) MS ( MicroSoft ) | ||
| 10 | MILLIONS |
Lots of top predators follow mainly the odds (8)
|
| LIONS ( top predators ) after MIL ( MaInLy, odd letters ) | ||
| 12 | BLESSING |
Smaller engine holds advantage (8)
|
| LESS ( smaller ) in BING ( engine ) | ||
| 13 | LIGNUM |
Plant bean the Italian brought back (6)
|
| reverse of MUNG ( bean ) IL ( the, italian ) | ||
| 15 | OATH |
Curse leads to old actor’s terrible Hamlet (4)
|
| starting letters of “..Old Actor’s Terrible Hamlet” | ||
| 16 | CORONATION |
Famous street choir at noon performed without second thought (10)
|
| [ ChOIR AT NOON ( without H – second letter of tHought ) ]* | ||
| 19 | ARCHBISHOP |
Knowing piece of grace (10)
|
| ARCH ( knowing ) BISHOP ( piece ) | ||
| 20 | AVES |
Rescues headless birds (4)
|
| sAVES ( rescues , without starting letters ) | ||
| 23 | CHAPEL |
Building small holy place (6)
|
| double def? if i have this right, its a clever clue. CHAPEL shortened is CH, which can stand for CHURCH ( building, holy place ) | ||
| 25 | CAROUSER |
Community abandons racecourse wrecked by reveller (8)
|
| [ RACecOURSE ( without EC – european community ) ]* | ||
| 27 | ALLUVIAL |
Completely turn container of soil (8)
|
| ALL ( completely ) U ( turn ) VIAL ( container ) | ||
| 28 | CASINO |
Better place for watchmaker to hide name (6)
|
| CASIO ( watchmaker ) hiding N ( name ) | ||
| 29 | MONARCHY |
Family rule is to be working during month before start of year (8)
|
| [ ON ( working ) in MARCH ( month ) ] Y ( Year, starting letter ) | ||
| 30 | WEIGHT |
Importance of width with boat crew (6)
|
| W ( width ) EIGHT ( boat crew ) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | CARABAO |
Buffalo State airline in rising row (7)
|
| CA ( state ) [ BA ( airline, British Airways ) in reverse of OAR ( row ) ] | ||
| 2 | ANALEPTIC |
Restoring broken pact with alien (9)
|
| [ PACT ALIEN ]* | ||
| 3 | REMISS |
Careless about failure (6)
|
| RE ( about ) MISS ( failure ) | ||
| 5 | IRIS |
Assistant rejected flower (4)
|
| reverse of SIRI ( assistant, on iphones ) | ||
| 6 | CULLINAN |
Luxury ride with large chunk of ice (8)
|
| double def; referring to the rolls royce model as well as the diamond of the same name | ||
| 7 | CROWN |
Type of green tooth covering (5)
|
| double def | ||
| 8 | WISE MAN |
Meals regularly cooked with wine and sage (4,3)
|
| [ MAS ( MeAlS, regularly ) WINE ]* | ||
| 11 | ENDORSE |
Praise from vendor sells (7)
|
| hidden in “..vENDOR SElls” | ||
| 14 | SORORAL |
Extremely red of mouth, like a sister (7)
|
| SOR ( extremely red? ) ORAL ( of mouth ) | ||
| 17 | INVESTING |
Putting aside underwear in topless restaurant experience (9)
|
| VEST ( underwear ) in dINING ( restaurant experience, without starting letter ) | ||
| 18 | OBSERVER |
Witness paper delivered sometimes (8)
|
| double def | ||
| 19 | ACCLAIM |
Recognition of bill overdue (7)
|
| read as AC CLAIM ( bill ~overdue ) | ||
| 21 | SURCOAT |
Confusion in court as cover for knight (7)
|
| [ COURT AS ]* | ||
| 22 | HOMAGE |
Native holds silver in repsect (6)
|
| AG ( silver ) in HOME ( native ) | ||
| 24 | ALLEN |
Woody Irish bog (5)
|
| double def; first relating to woody allen, american actor | ||
| 26 | BATH |
Order slipper maybe for City loss (4)
|
| quad def |
Half finished and wasn’t enjoying it, so I abandoned ship. Too many obscurities.
SORORAL
So-extremely
R-red?
ORAL-of mouth
The 3 phases (of a 3-phase electric connection) are identified as Red, Yellow and Blue (RYB).
There must be other places, where R stands for Red.
CHAPEL:
Can it be this…?
small holy: H+PLACE
Building (HPLACE)
An &lit?
Managed some of the top half, but gave up. Now I’ve seen the solutions I’m not at all surprised by my “failure” . . .
Building HPLACE-an anagram of HPLACE (of course, it was obvious. Yet…) 🙂
Didn’t go a bundle on this.
CHAPEL is &lit, but ‘small holy’ for the H? Not in Chambers as an abbrev, so that must be an attempt at first-letter indication. R for red isn’t in either.
Very hard. Too many unknown and barely heard of words to list, most of which at least were theoretically possible to get from wordplay and crossers. For me the most obscure was the ‘Irish bog’ but I’m sure that’s just my ignorance. I wasn’t sure what to make of CHAPEL either, just parsing it as a double def. I liked the BATH quad def.
Failed at the end on CULLINAN which I hadn’t (but probably should have) heard of, either as a car or diamond.
Thanks to Turbolegs and Gaff
CROWN green: a type of bowling green in which the sides are lower than the middle (collinsdictionary.com). I was expecting this to be a shade of green.
ALLEN
From Wiki
The Bog of Allen (Irish: Móin Alúine) is a large raised bog in the centre of Ireland between the rivers Liffey and Shannon. New to me.
BATH
‘Take a bath’ means ‘suffer a heavy financial loss’ (seen in a few dictionaries). I think this must be the context of the fourth definition.
Not so much a terrific challenge as a horrific one, at least for me. Like Geoff @1, I abandoned ship.
KVa @9
The City part of BATH is certainly suggestive of a financial loss; my thoughts were more along sporting lines (City being any of a number of football teams) in which players, typically on the losing side, ‘take an early bath’.
I gave up on this too – something I rarely do. I just wasn’t enjoying it.
A challenging slow solve until my last one in 6d C?L?I?A? – all I could think of was CULTIVAR.
Needed OneLook to find the Rolls Royce of Diamonds.
Liked the bog of Woody ALLEN.
Surprised R for red is not allowed.
Old enough to remember RGB in old colour TVs before CMYK took over.
And Red, Black, Green in electrical plugs, before Brown, Blue, Green/Yellow took over.
Gave up with an about 25% remaining, all on the left hand side. Lost the will to live. Got some of the very hard ones and missed a few easy. I find that when there are some very obscure words, sometimes my mind goes far too far from the beaten track. Alluvial is a good example of one that is actually quite easy, but I didn’t get.
I’ve heard of a Caribou, never a Carabao.
Hmmmm
Glad I didn’t persevere longer.
I’m another who was finally up-ended by CULLINAN. Had to make liberal use of the check function along the way but only once or twice because my hypotheticals were wrong.
I was expecting a few more clues to do with the coronation since this was overtly announced as the theme but in the end they were a bit thin on the ground. ARCHBISHOP, MONARCHY and CORONATION itself. Did I miss something?
Tx Gaff and Turbolegs
Thanks for the blog, I really enjoyed this. INVESTING was my favourite, CHAPEL is nearly perfect but the small holy=H is not quite there. The CULLINAN diamond will probably be on show tomorrow so part of the theme. One of numerous items stolen from Africa.
Only managed about 50% :-/
don’t get why BING is an engine
Bing is a search engine.
Had at least half a dozen tries but with only 10 solved i gave up.
omg totally forgot about that (never use it).
thanks Enlumined
I am not sure I would have finished without the theme to nudge me on some clues. Surprised to see CORONATION also appear in the puzzle itself. I could not parse BLESSING–obvious, now, but I excuse myself for having forgotten all about Bing. I do not quite understand the reference or joke about “paper delivered sometimes”?
The Observer is a weekly newspaper. I guess that’s why…
Not sure if there is something else that I am missing.