If it’s Sunday it must be Filbert in the Independent.
And as we’ve come to expect we have a set of elegant clues constructed with admirable concision and some very neat surfaces indeed. Overall I found it a bit less tricky than Filbert can sometimes be, perhaps because the grid was about as solver-friendly as it’s possible to get, with all those starting crossers.
Very early on in the solve I did, however, briefly fall down a fashionista rabbit hole at 9ac, thinking it might be an Everyman-style primarily clue, which ever so nearly led me to Anna Wintour’s handbag. But alas there was no U to be found. The crossers soon put me straight on that one.
I particularly enjoyed BRING TO HEEL, BARBICAN and OCHRE for their amusing surfaces and, my favourite of all, ENDURANCE. Thanks, as ever, to Filbert.
MOH’s patent hardness scale rating: Fluorite
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | POSTHASTE |
Office enjoys short meal quickly (9)
|
| Charade of POST + HAS + TE[a] (short meal) | ||
| 6 | KAPOK |
Nut packers agreed to include high grade plant fibre (5)
|
| KP (the nut people) + OK (agreed) around A (high grade). Kapok trees can be quite extraordinary, as this photo shows | ||
| 9 | CARRIER |
Woman in Number 10 once, remembered primarily for bag? (7)
|
| CARRIE (Johnson, wife of former prime minister Bozo the Clown) + R | ||
| 10 | RESPRAY |
Fresh out of clothing may I ask for new coat? (7)
|
| RES (fRESh out of clothing) + PRAY | ||
| 11 | INN |
Somewhere to stay during November (3)
|
| IN (during) + N | ||
| 12 | LIGHTWEIGHT |
Less beefy women’s crew on land (11)
|
| W + EIGHT (rowing crew) on/after LIGHT | ||
| 13 | IGNATIUS |
Early Jesuit outfit an American soldier brought back (8)
|
| Reversal (brought back) of SUIT + AN (from surface) + GI. St Ignatius of Loyola was a co-founder of the Society of Jesus | ||
| 15 | MING |
Honk in MG, taking the car outside (4)
|
| MG around IN, honk and ming both being slang words for stink (among other things) | ||
| 18 | ALGA |
Simple liver in water left in oven (4)
|
| L inside AGA, the word liver here suggesting lifeform | ||
| 19 | DYNAMITE |
Man upset with deity destroying stuff (8)
|
| Anagram (upset) of MAN DEITY | ||
| 22 | BRING TO HEEL |
Fish follows Brighton swimming master (5,2,4)
|
| EEL following anagram (swimming) of BRIGHTON | ||
| 24 | ATE |
Mischievous goddess visiting Earth (3)
|
| AT (visiting) + E. ATE is the classical Greek goddess of mischief, folly and the like | ||
| 25 | COLDISH |
Pass food on its way to being frozen? (7)
|
| Charade of COL (mountain pass) + DISH | ||
| 26 | DEBACLE |
Returning European sent a telegram, having left late in fiasco (7)
|
| Reversal (returning) of E + LCABED (CABLED/sent a telegram with L sent to the end (having left late). Or the beginning before it gets reversed) | ||
| 27 | NATTY |
Smart abstaining in negative vote (5)
|
| TT (teetotal, so abstaining) in NAY | ||
| 28 | ENDURANCE |
Nun cared about English patient suffering (9)
|
| Anagram (about) of NUN CARED + E | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PICNIC |
Never finishing, choose appropriate meal (6)
|
| PIC[k] (choose) + NIC[k] (appropriate) | ||
| 2 | SHRINKING VIOLET |
Shy type treating fellow winner like Mike Teavee? (9,6)
|
| In Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Mike Teavee (one of the five winners of a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory) ends up SHRINKING to the size of a chocolate bar. One of his fellow winners is VIOLET Beauregarde (who gets tuned into a giant blueberry) | ||
| 3 | HAIRLINE |
Very fine ventilation policy introduced by hospital (8)
|
| AIR (ventilation) + LINE (policy) after (being introduced by) H | ||
| 4 | SPRIGHTLY |
Frisky agent holding hands? (9)
|
| SPY (agent) around (holding) RIGHT + L | ||
| 5 | EGRET |
Tall bird among others on time (5)
|
| EG (for example, so one example among others) + RE (on) + T | ||
| 6 | KOSHER |
Pure in faith, that woman bears heavy blows (6)
|
| HER (that woman) after (bears, in a down clue) KOS (knockouts. Not the Greek island) | ||
| 7 | PEREGRINE FALCON |
High diver losing day in terrible career-ending flop (9,6)
|
| Anagram (terrible) of CAREER EN[d]ING FLOP (losing day) | ||
| 8 | KEY STAGE |
King with deer in sight shows years of education (3,5)
|
| K + EYE around STAG. In England’s education system the national curriculum is divided into distinct key stages | ||
| 14 | UNAMENDED |
Football team having gone up finished without improvement (9)
|
| Reversal (having gone up) of MAN U + ENDED | ||
| 16 | BARBICAN |
Watchtower article starts with insult and ends in mini panegyric (8)
|
| AN (article) after (starts with) BARB + last letters (ends in) of minI panegyriC | ||
| 17 | MILLIBAR |
Some pressure building across stream, perhaps obstruction limiting current (8)
|
| MILL (building across stream, perhaps) and BAR (obstruction) around (limiting) I (current) | ||
| 20 | UGLILY |
Ill guy trembles in a bad way (6)
|
| Anagram (trembles) of ILL GUY. Surely one of the ugliest words around | ||
| 21 | RENEGE |
Refuse some fake generosity, returning it (6)
|
| Hidden reversal (some… returning it) in fakE GENERosity | ||
| 23 | OCHRE |
Brown ring lifted in unpleasant job (5)
|
| CHORE with O lifted to the top |
Very enjoyable puzzle and great blog.
Thanks Filbert and MOH.
The degree of difficulty: Agree with the blogger.
Liked LIGHTWEIGHT, BRING TO HEEL, HAIRLINE and KEYSTAGE.
Whilst I solved SHRINKING VIOLET, I have not been an avid follower of Roald Dahl’s work so characters in the Chocolate Factory are unknown to me. So that one was impenetrable from a parsing perspective. Otherwise, nice solid Filbert.
Thanks to both
Filbert is one of the most consistent setters. Consistently good I should add. I didn’t care too much for SHRINKING VIOLET. Easy to guess but no chance in parsing. Never heard of KAPOK or IGNATIUS but both fair and easy to parse. Last in was the deceptively difficult (for me, at least) MING.
A very interesting grid of solutions, wherein the crossers fell favourably for us solvers. A perfect blend of misdirections and leftfield ideas.
Three birds, but they do not a theme make. In 21(d), RENEGE, “refute”, or similar, more accurate than “refuse”, for me.
I suppose 24(ac), ATE, is a bit of Greek mischief: if pronounced “ah-teh”, it means “Oh no!”, but the goddess is “ar-tee”, creator of chaos and delusion. The Greek for “mischief” is αταξια, phonetically familiar in English as the medical term ataxia, a nervous system dysfunction, so Ate gets the blame.
Super crossword, great surfaces; best in show, 7(d), PEREGRINE FALCON, where Filbert stitched me up proper with Tom (DA)le(Y) as a dummy. 5(d), EGRET, “tall bird”, made me think of that quiz howler….”name a tall bird with a long neck?”. “Naomi Campbell”.
Big thumbs-up, Fil & Moh
IGNATIUS was very neat. ENDURANCE had a great surface and OCHRE produced a nice aha moment. It’s impressive to produce very good puzzles every Sunday as Filbert does. Thanks both.
I found this great fun, though by no means easy. I always feel with Filbert that I can trust that the clues are ultimately solvable (by me), even if, for the time being, I am totally mystified. At a point where I might give up with some other setters, I will persist with Filbert.
Thanks for a fun puzzle and a great blog.
Word for word agree with @Sourdough. Also agree with @Postmark re SHRINKING VIOLET & @Hovis on all of those! Was a struggle, but got there in the end.
Thanks both. A typically enjoyable Filbert challenge. I’ve only been unable to fully justify RESPRAY wherein ‘may I ask for’ seems to be defining ‘pray’ which feels a little overworked, but I may well be missing something.
@TFO Personally, I took ‘for’ as a link word and had ‘pray’ = ‘may I ask’, as in “What, pray, do you mean by that?”.
Enjoyable as ever from Filbert.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory must be the film I have watched the most times being a Christmas tradition so I did solve SHRINKING VIOLET as intended. Big tick for that.
Ticks for LIGHTWEIGHT, BRING TO HEEL and POSTHASTE
Only downer was I missed the anagram for PEREGRINE FALCON which was last in from the checking letters. I guess that’s a sign of a naturally reading surface.
What a horrible word UGLILY is.
Cheers Filbert and MOH
Another one here who knew nothing about Charlie and tbe Chocolate Factory, and got 1dn entirely on the definition. The only other problem was 22ac right but entering it wrong.