An enjoyable solve with some neat surfaces. My favourite clues were 4ac, 6dn, 7dn, and 18dn. Thanks to Pasquale
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | DEMOBS |
Restrained by some Parisian, crowd reverts to peaceful mode (6)
|
| definition as in ‘demobilise’, to take troops off active duty
MOB=”crowd” inside DES=”some” in French i.e. “Parisian” |
||
| 4 | LEANDER |
Lover, first character to hide in library? (7)
|
| definition refers to the Greek myth of the lovers Hero and Leander
A=”first character” of the alphabet; inside LENDER=”library?” |
||
| 9 | CONFUCIUS |
Endless upset about copper nabbing one wise man (9)
|
| CONFUS-[e]=”upset”, endless; around CU (chemical symbol for “copper”) which itself goes around I=”one” | ||
| 10 | OFFAL |
Waste material not fresh dumped by a lake (5)
|
| OFF=”not fresh” plus A (from surface) + L (lake) | ||
| 11 | DRAFT |
US beer – an early version? (5)
|
| double definition: draft beer is the US spelling of draught beer; or an early version of a document | ||
| 12 | TARANTINO |
Film-maker with something black excited nation (9)
|
| definition: film-maker Quentin Tarantino
TAR=”something black” plus anagram/”excited” of (nation)* |
||
| 13 | ROTIFER |
Small animal needs unusual fortifier if fading (7)
|
| definition: a type of microscopic animal [wiki]
anagram/”unusual” of (fort if ier)* with the if removed/”fading” |
||
| 15 | MUTTER |
Male, say, to grumble (6)
|
| M (Male) + UTTER=”say” | ||
| 17 | COLLOP |
Work on Scottish island for a bit (6)
|
| definition: a small bit or slice of meat or other food
OP (opus, “Work”) after COLL=”island” in the Inner Hebrides in Scotland |
||
| 19 | BLUSTER |
American guy getting left trapped shows bravado (7)
|
| BUSTER=”American” slang word for “guy”, around L (left) | ||
| 22 | MANOMETER |
Moment era changes – one can gauge the pressure (9)
|
| definition: a device to measure pressure
anagram/”changes” of (Moment era)* |
||
| 24 | OPTIC |
I see nothing – then across time small image appears (5)
|
| O=zero=”nothing”, plus T (time) with PIC (short for picture, “small image”) around it | ||
| 26 | LIE-IN |
Reason for not going to work? Deceitful story fashionable (3-2)
|
| LIE=”Deceitful story” + IN=”fashionable” | ||
| 27 | BRUNO MARS |
Singer to manage mystical sound in musical sections (5,4)
|
| RUN=”manage” + OM=”mystical sound” [wiki]; inside BARS=”musical sections” | ||
| 28 | SO THERE |
Drunkard in this place offering words of defiance (2,5)
|
| SOT=”Drunkard” + HERE=”in this place” | ||
| 29 | EYELID |
Terribly idle, inwardly you flap (6)
|
| anagram/”Terribly” of (idle)*, with YE=”you” inside | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DECIDER |
Beast pins hero in crucial contest (7)
|
| DEER=”Beast” around CID (El Cid, 11th century knight)=”hero” | ||
| 2 | MANGA |
Comic book with some inhuman gags (5)
|
| hidden in (“some” of): [inhu]-MAN GA-[gs] | ||
| 3 | BOUNTIFUL |
Spreading fun, Liberal in short out to be bighearted (9)
|
| anagram/”Spreading” of (fun Lib out)* with Lib=”Liberal in short” | ||
| 4 | LUSTRUM |
Desire that’s odd for a number of years (7)
|
| definition: a period of five years
LUST=”Desire” + RUM=”odd” |
||
| 5 | ADORN |
Sailors having a party on deck (5)
|
| definition: “deck” as in to decorate
A DO=”a party”, placed “on”/above: RN (Royal Navy, “Sailors”) |
||
| 6 | DIFFIDENT |
Not the same with identity as monarch no longer reluctant to speak out? (9)
|
| DIFF-ER-ENT=”Not the same”, with ID (“identity”) replacing ER (Elizabeth Regina, “monarch no longer”) | ||
| 7 | ROLL-ON |
We cannot wait for one sort of deodorant! (4-2)
|
| double definition: ‘roll on the holidays’ = we cannot wait for the holidays; or a type of deodorant applicator | ||
| 8 | BITTER |
Beer warm? Certainly not! (6)
|
| double definition: bitter as a type of beer; or bitter meaning cold | ||
| 14 | THORNIEST |
Terribly inert host becoming most prickly (9)
|
| anagram/”Terribly” of (inert host)* | ||
| 16 | TAUTOLOGY |
Reportedly instructed in a science? That must be right (9)
|
| the first syllable sounds like (“Reportedly”): ‘taught’=”instructed”
plus -OLOGY as a suffix associated with the names of sciences |
||
| 18 | POTABLE |
Italian water that’s taken on board is OK for drinking (7)
|
| PO=river in Italy=”Italian water” + TABLE=”board” | ||
| 19 | BARQUE |
Ship’s protective layer, as you might say (6)
|
| sounds like (“as you might say”): ‘bark’=”protective layer” | ||
| 20 | RECUSED |
Secured criminal let off court appearance? (7)
|
| anagram/”criminal” of (Secured)* | ||
| 21 | SMILES |
Enthusiast for self-improvement appears to be happy (6)
|
| double definition: the first refers to Samuel Smiles [wiki] who wrote about self-improvement | ||
| 23 | MINCE |
Maiden in church to act in affected manner (5)
|
| M (Maiden, cricket scoring abbreviation) + IN (from surface) + CE (Church of England) | ||
| 25 | TRAIL |
‘Dog’ could be about right for this (5)
|
| for definition: ‘Dog’ as in ‘follow’ can mean TRAIL
for wordplay: ‘Dog’/’follow’ can also give TAIL to go around/”about” R (“right”) |
No chance of parsing SMILES but what else could it be. Favourite was DRAFT.
I really enjoyed this puzzle – classic Pasquale, with the customary sprinkling of unfamiliar words, gettable from the usual meticulous cluing, along with interesting references to things which were within my comfort zone.
From a collection of excellent clues, my ‘short’ list is LEANDER, CONFUCIUS., BRUNO MARS, DECIDER, DIFFIDENT, BITTER, POTABLE, BARQUE and – at the top – TAUTOLOGY, which I don’t think can upset the homophone police and made me laugh out loud, as it immediately conjured up the wonderful Maureen Lipman:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK5-2fPyCjAman
Many thanks to Pasquale for a great start to the day and to manehi for a super blog.
LOI: I’m probably not the only one to stumble over COLLOP. Dollop seemed likely. Got MANGA without noticing it was hidden. I’d forgotten SMILES, if I ever knew him. It had to be though.
Strictly a DNF as I had an unparsed Dollop in at the 17ac. The nearest word I know to COLLOP might perhaps be Codswollop. However, this went in smoothly, even though there were several unparsed and one or two unknowns in MANGA and ROTIFER.
Thanks Pasquale and manehi
I had never heard of SMILES the author. I would have had DOLLOP too if I hadn’t checked, but I had heard of COLL.
I spent a long time trying to work out which switch to make in 6d – it’s not entirely clear. The definition for OPTIC isn’t obvious either.
Favourite POTABLE for the misleading “Italian water”.
Manehi – the heading for this puzzle doesn’t say that it’s from the Guardian
Fun puzzle, educational blog (never heard of Sam S, so thank you!) and Eileen@2, your link to the delicious Lipman made my day!
Eileen @2, that Maureen Lipman is about 4 years after I was transported to the colonies but full of her classic sense of humour.
Maureen Lipman took the name Beattie to do those BT adverts.
Bruno Mars vaguely heard of, but thought he was classical (Yo-Yo Ma assonance, maybe). Otoh, the little beast rotifer was a nho. And I know that just about anything pronounceable might be a Scottish island, but Coll was more likely than Doll. Enjoyable, thanks Don and man.
Fun puzzle from Pasquale. I enjoy learning new words and this one afforded the opportunity. My favorite in a close vote was DIFFIDENT. Thanks Manahi and Pasquale.
BTW, is it just in the States or are others not able to access today’s FT Cryptic?
I can’t see it from Oz, Jay @11 so I’m guessing Sir Keir hasn’t instituted a trade ban on crosswords with the US. 🙂
LOL, who could blame him if he did.
Defeated by BARQUE, and needed help with one or two other (for me) obscurities such as COLLOP. A very enjoyable challenge, a good balance in which there was enough to encourage me to keep going throughout.
I’d never heard of Samuel Smiles. I’m sure he’d cope if he hadn’t been dead for 24 lustra. This was a good workout, but it all made sense. Thanks Pasquale and Manehi.
New words: Lustrum, Rotifer, Collop.
Thanks manehi, and for the link to ROTIFER. Fascinating little creature.
Feeling a bit thick. I ”parsed” OPTIC, but I’m further away than muffin@5 who said the definition isn’t obvious. I don’t get it at all.
Likewise, I wish I could join in with Eileen@2’s enjoyment@ of TAUTOLOGY. I got the homophone and the ‘ology’ suffix, but I don’t get the definition.
I liked RECUSED, for the surface. Made me laugh. Simple anagram, but the answer was familiar to me from my pre-retirement work life. It’s not the criminal who’s let off court appearance, but the judicial officers.
paddymelon @16, the second definition in Chambers for tautology is “A statement that is necessarily always true (logic)”
Agree, pdm @16. Can’t think how to substitute optic for I see; seen, maybe ( .. this is the optic/seen effect or outcome ..), but even that’s a stretch.
Good fun solving this last night and educational as usual with LUSTRUM, ROTIFER and COLLOP. I thought there was a bit of a boozy theme emerging in the NW with DRAFT, BITTER, (DE)CIDER plus (LUST)RUM, BAR(QUE), POTABLE and SOT but not enough really. BRUNO MARS and TARANTINO were my standout clues.
Ta Pasquale & manehi.
The unknown for me was MANOMETER, and goodness knows how I knew that LUSTRUM was a word. I can’t see how TAUTOLOGY means “that must be right”, even though I love the wordplay. (aha: thanks TimC@17: formal logic is unknown territory to me).
Thanks Tim C @17. Didn’t know the ”logical” definition.
[My football-following-family used to chuckle at Rex Mossopisms. A former player (league and union) turned commentator, in/famous for his tautological phrases eg “now the referee’s giving him a verbal tongue lashing”. He may have had too many head-high knocks on the noggin. )
Jay @11, Tim C @12 – the FT puzzle is here now:
https://www.ft.com/content/2c8e06e5-6576-48f5-a7f7-5f86f336f97c
pm@16. To add to TimC’s comment, an example of a tautology is “Brexit means Brexit”. It must always be true, but it is completely empty of content. Like BoJo.
I was also one who fell into the DOLLOP trap, but I really enjoyed this. LUSTRUM was me to me. Thanks, Pasquale and Manheim.
Like Scraggs@14 BARQUE was my ‘Jason Gillespie’, stubborn tailender that took nearly as long to bowl out as the rest of the crossword; my brain just seems to avoid ‘Q’ in its whirrings. Lovely puzzle and blog, thanks both.
TassieTim @23: ‘LUSTRUM was me to me’ – a TAUTOLOGY😉
Closest I could come to the definition for OPTIC was noun: (archaic, humorous) An eye.
Collins has “informal word for eye” as a definition of optic. You hear it in the phrase “seen through the optic of….” (Here’s an example.)
Thanks to Eileen and Pasquale.
(Sorry – crossed with Paddymelon)
Scottish Islands are one of the many lacunae in my solver’s armoury, so I spent an agreeable five minutes researching various Doll Islands (usually in horror films). I thought RESCUED was a bit of a stretch for the definition till I realised it was the wrong answer. I enjoyed the rest.
DNF for me – defeated by COLLOP. I think I’ve heard of it in the plural but surely a more precise definition than “a bit” is needed for an obscure term for a piece of meat? I hope that’s not sour grapes on my part – I enjoyed the rest of the puzzle. Favourites were POTABLE, TAUTOLOGY and LUSTRUM, which has finally secured its place in my crossword-only vocabulary list.
Thanks P and M.
Pasquale – reliable as ever. I learned new things (aforementioned), 13a ROTOFER (gettable from anagram and crossers) and 17a COLLOP (though I needed to look up whether DOLL (cf Petert@28), BOLL and COLL were Scottish islands to get the latter – DOLLOP made more sense than BOLLOP and the unfamiliar COLLOP). Favourite was definitely 27a BRUNO MARS. Thanks to both Pasquale and manehi.
Lots of fun, also had to look up Scottish islands! Was pleased with self for spotting the swap of the old monarch and the if deletion! Often forget that odd doesn’t always mean odd letters or anagram!
Thanks both.
Quite tough but enjoyable.
Favourite: BRUNO MARS.
New for me: COLL island and COLLOP = slice; MANOMETER; rotifer.
I could not parse 24ac, 21d (never heard of Samuel Smiles).
Thanks, both.
My favourite was ADORN for the very neat surface. Like some others I entered DOLLOP at 17a, assuming there must be an obscure Scottish island called Doll.
A tautology is a statement that is true by definition, like “My sister is my sibling”. It has to be true, whereas “My sister is an optician” might be true or it might not. But, in my case I don’t actually have a sister, so if I make the first statement, is it true or false? Or is it neither true nor false? Bertrand Russell spent a lot of time worrying about this…
Many thanks Pasquale and manehi.
I enjoyed that crossword. I learnt some new words but the grid made it solvable.
[Lord Jim @33, I’m with Dummett wrt sentences that have empty singular terms. What matters is how we understand the effect of logical operations on such sentences. Which is to say that we have to think about the justification for our logic.]
Only a week since my last quotation from Sir Walter Scott, for which apologies. This is from Rob Roy:
“Our landlady, however, now made a great bustle to get some victuals ready, and, to my surprise, very soon began to prepare for us in the frying-pan a savoury mess of venison collops, which she dressed in a manner that might well satisfy hungry men, if not epicures.”
This I also recalled from the ‘Cyclops’ episode of Ulysses:
“—Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king’s messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The king’s friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me.
—Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?
Mine host bowed again as he made answer:
—What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog’s bacon, a boar’s head with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish?”
Just two random nuggets from my memory, but I wonder if COLLOP is particularly associated with venison and/or if its use is distinctively Scots/Irish.
A good number of new words for me – ROTIFER, COLLOP and LUSTRUM were all gettable from the wordplay and crossers, but I was ultimately defeated by BARQUE.
No complaints because it was a very enjoyable ride.
Lots of ticks but my favourite was ADORN for the lovely surface and precision of the clue.
Many thanks to manehi (especially for the explanation of SMILES) and to Pasquale.
Much to like here, but also a couple of niggles. NHO rotifer, and apparently far from alone. Similarly for smiles; “what else can it be with those crossers?” is not really a satisfactory way to “solve” a clue. I have no idea what the surface of 14D is supposed to mean. And I was very mildly irritated by 10A: while offal can certainly be waste, it can also be eaten, and indeed considered a delicacy.
But my biggest complaint is for 17A: an obscure word composed from an obscure Scottish island – the last refuge of the setter who has written themself into a corner. One or the other, please, but not most. What makes it most annoying, though, is that many words that offered a much fairer challenge fit with those crossers, DOLLOP in particular coming immediately to mind.
Ace @37 – one person’s obscure Scottish island is another person’s home or favourite place to visit when in those parts. Count me among the latter. And what are the other ‘many words’ besides ‘dollop’ that would fit with those crossers? I can think of ‘roll up’ (as in the circus) or ‘roll-up’ (as in cigarettes), but Pasquale already has ROLL ON at 7d. Even if only ‘dollop’ was available, then the setter is not painted into a corner – he is making a choice, and the fact that you did not know the word is hardly his fault. Not being within the compass of your GK does not ipso facto make these things obscure.
Don’t people have atlases? A few seconds inspecting the Hebrides is enough to find the missing island. (IMO educated people should know all the islands anyway, so should be sheepish about this being NHO.)
I thought this puzzle was a collop clunky, with some obvious definitions and surfaces, but at least that made it a relatively painless Friday offering. In fact the whole week’s puzzles took about half as long as last week’s, and I prefer it that way since there are other things to be getting on with…
A slow start for me–usually I try to find a way in and work from crossers, but I had to jump around a bit before I got things going in the lower right. Didn’t help that i didn’t look at 2d or 14d till I’d worked around from there, as those seem like they would’ve got me off to a better start. And everything turned out mostly understandable in the end–I had a bit of worry about the homophones but as Eileen@2 said, they wound up being impeccable regardless of my accent! (BARQUE was LOI.) Teaching formal logic is much of my day job so at least I had no trouble for the definition for that one. Favorite clue BRUNO MARS, which came to me after trying to work BINGO in there from Mr. Crosby.
Needed the blog for 6d, which I had as two abbreviations, DIFF IDENT, and unable to account for ER, and another who had DOLLOP figuring that at least I’d heard of one of those words. [Adrian@39: One of two islands in East Elizabeth? (7)] LUSTRUM was new to me; ROTIFER I’d heard of from Mary Ladd Gavell’s wonderful story that is in “The Best American Short Stories of the [Twentieth] Century,” and Smiles’s Self-Help [once I’d got it from the crossers] rang a bell from Wodehouse; turns out it’s from “The Great Sermon Handicap”:
“Good man!” said Bingo. “Now I can see daylight. Say I have a tenner on Heppenstall, and cop; that’ll give me a bit in hand to back Pink Pill with in the two o’clock at Gatwick the week after next: cop on that, put the pile on Musk-Rat for the one-thirty at Lewes, and there I am with a nice little sum to take to Alexandra Park on September the tenth, when I’ve got a tip straight from the stable.”
It sounded like a bit out of “Smiles’s Self-Help.”
If the clue had said Scottish village instead of Scottish island, then DOLLOP would have worked.
DrWhatsOn@41: aha! I knew that “Doll, that’s something in Scotland” wasn’t coming out of nowhere.
I can’t find your DOLLOP, Dr. W @41- are you sure you’re not thinking of DOLLAR https://clackmannanshire.scot/index.php/locations/dollar
(which I did know about)?
Late to comment today but wanted to say how much I enjoyed this – not one of his harder puzzles but beautifully constructed with many clues where, on the the first pass my response was “pass” but which came together once a crosser or two was in place. Just enough easy ones to get started as well.
For all those new to “lustrum” I can recommend Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy, of which Lustrum is the middle book. If you like historical fiction, it is well worth a go. Interesting to see that Balfour’s literary quotations all refer to “collops of venison” as the only time I had come across the word was in that same context, at a dinner in Oxford. It sounded much posher than “lumps of deer” anyway.
For optic, I took it for a synonym of “eye” which then works with the definition “I see”. As in the well known expression “A slight inclination of the cranium is as adequate as a spasmodic movement of one optic to an equine quadruped utterly devoid of any visionary capacity”.
Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.
Hi Eileen @43, I think Dr. WhatsOn means there’s a Scottish village called Doll, not Dollop 🙂
[Off topic, sorry, but a little while ago I asked if anyone else thought the Guardian Quick Crossword was getting more cryptic. This week we’ve had: “Man or mouse? (4)”; “Last person to get it? (6,5)”, and “Not the only one on the beach? (6)”, none of which I think are exactly straight definitions!]
Adrian@39 Are you saying that educated people should know all the Hebrides, or are you including the Orkneys and the Faroes and the Channel Islands? Do I get a pass for being a non-Brit? (I do know some of them anyway.)
I had issues with several of the definitions, which by me were no such thing. Mentioned already were OFFAL and OPTIC. I’ll add that “lover” is a bit vague for LEANDER and OLOGY isn’t a word. I’ll also point out, since mrpenney isn’t here to, that “Buster” doesn’t equal “guy.” Nobody would say “So this buster walks up to me and …” It’s used only in the vocative, as in “Look here, buster ..”
Overall, enjoyed the puzzle, with the aforesaid quibbles. Thanks to Pasquale and manehi.
I was rebuked by my German teacher last century for tautology, in the sense of needless repetition of words that mean the same thing. I thought perhaps he had erred but I looked it up and, of course, he was right (he’s too dead to tell him anyway). But it turns out there’s the other definition as discussed above.
Thanks, Lord Jim @45 – I’d forgotten what the clue was! My apologies to Dr.W.
[LJ@45: is your aside, initially at least, another reference to 24a?]
Have to confess a hairs-breadth DNF here – missed one letter! I could figure out BRUNO ?ARS easily enough from the wordplay and crossers, but had no idea what the missing letter might be, never having heard of the singer in question. Should I have? Has this clue just fallen foul of my GK weak spot?
My other unknown word was LUSTRUM, though it was clear from the wp.
Balfour@35: I had heard of COLLOP, though not that ‘bit’ was a definition: ‘Scotch Collops’ get a mention in the novel Kidnapped so here is a further reference to add to your quotes:
—On that first day, as soon as the collops were ready, Cluny gave them with his own hand a squeeze of a lemon (for he was well supplied with luxuries) and bade us draw in to our meal. “They,” said he, meaning the collops, “are such as I gave his Royal Highness in this very house; bating the lemon juice, for at that time we were glad to get the meat and never fashed for kitchen. Indeed, there were mair dragoons than lemons in my country in the year forty-six.”
I wouldn’t know how to make the dish: perhaps I could dig up a recipe, but it’d have to be vegetarian.
Everything else went in fine. Favourites? Too many to list. CONFUCIUS, DIFFIDENT, DECIDER stand out, maybe. And MINCE which (in the sense used here) comes originally from the Polari dialect, I believe – though it has passed into common English usage.
Thanks to Don and Manehi.
Valentine@46: True, OLOGY isn’t a word, but surely a bit of cruciverbal licence is good enough to let it stand! See also here. 🙂
Another DNF, defeated by COLLOP. If I’d pulled out an atlas, I suppose I could have got it, but I didn’t.
Other than that, I got on better with this puzzle than I usually do with Pasquale.
Laccaria @51 – see also me @2 😉
Thanks manehi and those who have given examples of COLLOPs as I was another dolloper, had more luck with 13a, I thought SMILES had a connection to the Bristol brewery but seems not, I recall Dr Smiles being an electronic shrink in a PKD novel too, maybe Ubik? Very enjoyable with ADORN my highlight, thanks Pasquale.
Chambers has
ology (facetious)
noun
1. A science whose name ends in -(o)logy
2. Any science
ologist
noun
A scientist
Laccaria @50 A Balfour, of all people, should have remembered a quotation from Kidnapped. Thank you for that.
Adrian @39 I assume you know the name of all the Canadian islands.
Thanks Pasquale for an expertly crafted crossword. Despite my stumbles (COLLOP & BARQUE) I really enjoyed this with my top picks being DRAFT, BRUNO MARS, ADORN, and BITTER. I couldn’t parse SMILES; thanks manehi for the help.
[Bear of little brain @49: that would make a good clue!]
Here’s my contribution to the C/DOLLOP discussion. (I was a dolloper, or dollopologist.)
As ginf@10 hinted, I think it is a reasonable assumption that any four-letter word could be a Scottish island. (There are 800 of them, after all.) The definition for 17a is “a bit”. A dollop is a small bit of something -a smidgen. A collop is a large slice of meat. To me, dollop comes closer to the definition than collop. And, to add a dollop of techno-support, auto-correct twice changed collop to dollop in this comment.
I love the TILTs that I get from Pasquale’s puzzles. This time they are the aforementioned COLLOP, ROTIFER and LUSTRUM. Having read the Cicero Trilogy (a 21st century classic in my opinion) I should have known LUSTRUM, but my single volume of the trilogy doesn’t include the titles of the original three novels.
Thanks Pasquale and manehi for the fun and education.
I’m amused by the heated collop/dollop discussion, as there’s a recipe for “Scotch Collops” right there in my “Great British Cooking: A Well Kept Secret” cookbook (Jane Garmey, 1981, Random House). I guess it’s so secret even the Brits don’t know it. :-). Apparently they were very popular in Queen Victoria’s day and Mrs. Beeton has several recipes for them.
NHO Mr SMILES or BRUNO MARS, but the first could be nothing else and the clueing was kind for the second. A straightforward and enjoyable one to end a busy day with a cup of tea in the last rays of a pleasantly warm sun. Thanks to setter and blogger.
Cellomaniac@60: Although I was a dolloper, I do tend to think of a dollop as a fairly large lump, so I can’t fault Pasquale on that. Though I do think dollop is a more common word.
[Nobody asked about my clue @40, but HEROINE–referring to North and South Hero in Lake Champlain, and definition-by-example of Elizabeth Bennet–neither of those very fair!]
I too fell for dollop. It brought back memories of school lunches and those aproned dinner-ladies waiting to serve us with their big round ladles.. a dollop of this, a dollop of that. But NO custard please!
A few devilish tricks in this one. Not surprising given its guardian number.
I was for sure not going to pull up google maps at 11pm when I remembered crosswords exist to scour the frilly bits of Scotland, so DNFed with 5 unsolved including COLLOP. Considering I don’t always finish the Quiptic I thought that was a valiant effort.
Appreciated MANGA and BRUNO MARS for being somewhat modern cultural references, and BLUSTER for giving me an excuse to do my worst American accent >:3
Oh also DEMOBS goes in the most crosswordy words list. One day I shall make a crossword entirely of filler words.
Really late to this, but traditionally the Monday before Shrove Tuesday was Collop Monday, when any leftover meat was eaten before starting the Lenten Fast (Shrove Tuesday finished up the eggs and milk – and possibly the booze, my parents used to make crepes Suzette and start Lent with a hangover), So I knew collops from that, as well as reading old books.
No need to go so far back for mentions of collops. The late great Keith Floyd gives recipes for both venison and beef collops (though I too was desperately trying to find a Scottish island called Doll)
I thought that there probably wasn’t an island called Doll, but supposed that there was a word for a “bit” that was rather like DOLLOP, so wrote that in, and felt completely content. As I still do.
Cheers all.
Thought I would get stuck in the halfway trap, but managed a mini breakthrough and got within eight of finishing
We also have DRAFT beer in Canada
6a I had DIFFERENT, reading “identity…no longer”. Blocked any hope of getting TARANTINO
TAUTOLOGY and BARQUE are great soundalikes, and pass the rhotic sniff test!
Another DOLLOPer here. Etu@70, yes, life’s too short!
Frogman @57 — Touché!