A chewy challenge this week from Vlad.
Timon and I found this puzzle enjoyable but on the difficult side, with a certain amount of general (or even specialist) knowledge required and a use of both UK and USA idiom. We appreciated the political comment at 5 across, although the clue was almost impossible to solve without most of the crossers in place and we raised our eyebrows at 18 across. I am slightly dubious about the parsings of a couple of answers, particularly 10 across and 16 down, so comments are, as always, very welcome.
If there was a theme, it eluded us, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one!
Thanks to Vlad for a good mental workout.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | DOT BALL |
Doctor told lab nothing will come from it (3,4)
|
| *(TOLD LAB). A cricket term: a dot ball is one off which the batsman scores no run, nor are any extras, such as byes or wides, awarded. | ||
| 5 | PORKIES |
Corporate body running risk over start of enquiry – revealing these? (7)
|
| P(ost) O(ffice) (a corporate body), E(nquiry) inside *RISK. A reference to the Horizon computer scandal which led to hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters being prosecuted by the Post Office, and the subsequent public enquiry (whose final report is awaited). “Porkies” is a form of rhyming slang; pork pies/lies. | ||
| 9 | CHINO |
Punch’s old material (5)
|
| CHIN (punch) O(ld). We didn’t know that chino refers to the material, and chinos are the trousers made from it. | ||
| 10 | TESTIFIER |
Dummy trial for Trump rejected witness (9)
|
| In American usage a pacifier is what we in the UK call a baby’s dummy; so I think the wordplay here is to replace PAC with TEST (trial). A PAC (Political Action Committee) in the USA is a tax-exempt organisation that collects funds for political candidates, but not exclusively for Republicans. An alternative parsing is to read “trump” in the sense used in card games, meaning to outrank a card of another (non-trump) suit, or to cap it, but I think that is stretching the synonym a little. Anyone have a better parsing? | ||
| 11 | NIGHT-LIGHT |
Easy to pick up, Sir said previously (one’s not very bright) (5-5)
|
| Homophone of “knight” (Sir), LIGHT (easy to pick up). | ||
| 12, 28 | WINE TASTING |
Point to neat gin – it’s wrong drink for test (4,7)
|
| W(est) (point of the compass) *(NEAT GIN ITS). | ||
| 14 | UP TO SCRATCH |
Preceding score no more than satisfactory (2,2,7)
|
| UP TO (preceding) SCRATCH (score). | ||
| 18 | URBAN LEGEND |
Timeless Punjabi superstar being fanciful? It won’t be true (5,6)
|
| (T)URBAN LEGEND (Punjabi superstar?). Not all inhabitants of Punjab wear a turban, of course. | ||
| 21 | KNIT |
Come together shouting ‘Booby!’ (4)
|
| A homophone of “nit”, or fool. | ||
| 22 | RIDING CROP |
Pricing rod for ‘guidance’ – it may be used for beating (6,4)
|
| A simple anagram of (PRICING ROD). | ||
| 25 | ARTEMISIA |
Herb Alpert releasing record – aim is to get hit (9)
|
| *(A(lp)ERT AIM IS). An LP is a record. | ||
| 26 | OMANI |
Arab returning very soon (5)
|
| IN A MO (rev). | ||
| 27 | DISMISS |
Badmouth teacher getting sack (7)
|
| DIS(respect) MISS (teacher), | ||
| 28 |
See 12
|
|
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | DECENT |
Want to accommodate Charlie round town, OK? (6)
|
| This took us a long time to parse, and to decide between DECENT and DECANT. Eventually Timon spotted that NEED = want, and so we got C inside NEED (rev) (the reversal indicator being “round”) followed by T(own). | ||
| 2 | TRIAGE |
What often awaits you at A&E? Visit with no parking taking a very long time (6)
|
| TRI(p) (visit with no parking), AGE (a very long time). Some may feel that this clue has a semi-&lit quality. | ||
| 3 | ABOUT-TURNS |
Reverses, so doing showing hesitation (5-5)
|
| I think that this is just a cryptic definition, unless someone can point out the wordplay. | ||
| 4 | LATHI |
‘Stick with it!’ Fail occasionally getting upset (5)
|
| Alternate letters reversed (“upset” – this is a down clue) in “wItH it fAiL”. | ||
| 5 | POST-HASTE |
Following bad feeling second intervenes quickly (4-5)
|
| POST (following), S(econd) inside HATE (bad feeling) | ||
| 6 | RAIL |
Train flier (4)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 7 | INITIATE |
Why I went to Pizza Express for a starter? (8)
|
| IN IT I ATE. An old chestnut, with no connection with Pizza Express: any word for restaurant would do. | ||
| 8 | SCREECHY |
Grating a lot of cheese, cry after mishap (8)
|
| *(CHEES(e) CRY). | ||
| 13 | PRODIGIOUS |
Promises to provide funding for archaeologist’s work upfront – that’s great (10)
|
| An archaeologist is a PRO who DIGs; IOUs are promises to provide funding. | ||
| 15 | THE MISSUS |
‘So, about young woman on the internet?’ (Think she may be getting suspicious) (3,6)
|
| EMISS (electronic young woman) inside THUS (so). The term is redolent of a past era of British comedians who made misogynistic jokes about wives and mothers-in-law. | ||
| 16 | AUCKLAND |
Caught in Scotland, maybe the biggest city in the country (8)
|
| The auk is a seabird which may be seen in Scotland (but also elsewhere), so if we describe Scotland as “auk”land, and insert a C we have the largest city in New Zealand. | ||
| 17 | OBVIATES |
Prevents originally one motelier having sex (8)
|
| O(ne), VI (Roman numeral six, or sex in Latin) inside BATES (the owner of the motel in the film Psycho). We spent some time looking for a word containing IT, on the assumption that sex = IT in crosswords, which it usually does, but not here. | ||
| 19 | ARGALI |
Threatened horny individual, one bothering a girl (6)
|
| A *(A GIRL). A species of wild sheep with horns, most of whom are listed as endangered. | ||
| 20 | SPRING |
Pop up in bookies’ enclosure? (6)
|
| SP is short for Starting Price, which is determined by the bookies who gather in the ring, their enclosure at a racecourse, so the SP RING is a plausible if fanciful description (hence the question mark). | ||
| 23 | INAPT |
Not the done thing to sleep through it (5)
|
| NAP inside IT. | ||
| 24 | IMPI |
Content to clear Zulu fighters (4)
|
| (l)IMPI(d) (clear). |
10. Trump is CAP and rejected is a reversal indicator, to give PAC which as you say is replaced by TRIAL.
Thanks bridgesong – definitely chewy, but that’s what I want from a Prize. (I parsed 16 as Scotland = ‘A UK land’, with the c included.)
I parsed 14a as UP TO (no more than) preceding SCRATCH (score), and 13d as PRO (for) + DIG (archaeologist’s work) upfront, then IOUS.
No ideas on the others I’m afraid.
Thanks to bridgesong & Vlad.
Agree with the above comments.
ABOUT TURNS
RE turns ~~~~~~>ER (hesitation)
UP TO SCRATCH:
I agree with the blogger.
1d. I noted that the single letter abbreviation T for town is not given in either Chambers or Collins. However, it is given in the ODE with a very specific reference to its use in designating sports clubs, they even cite “Mansfield T(own)” as an example (Grimsby would be just as good as we saw today!).
PRODIGIOUS
I think it would be better if we take the ‘Promises to provide funding for archaeologist’s work upfront ‘ as
one block to indicate PRO DIG IOUS.
INITIATE
Looks like the def should be ‘for a starter’.
Thanks bridgesong and Vlad.
INITIATE
Apologies
The underlined ‘a starter’ works considering ‘INITIATE as a noun.
I parsed 16d as ‘C’ in ‘A UK LAND’ – Scotland, maybe.
Couldn’t solve a few in the SW; for AUCKLAND, thanks Bullhassocks @2 and Sandsak @10; for ABOUT-TURNS thanks KVa@5 – you’re right of course. For IMPI, was stuck thinking of Zulu as code for Z. Liked THE MISSUS and PORKIES (knowing nothing about the scandal). A little disquieted about Pizza Express meaning nothing in INITIATE. Thanks Vlad and bridgesong!
Quite a challenge from Vlad, and given it was Vlad I felt pretty satisfied to finish it – eventually. But even with answers for everything a number of those were unparsed and lightly pencilled in – TESTIFIER, ABOUT-TURNS, DECENT, AUCKLAND and IMPI, and I wasn’t completely convinced ‘chin’ was a ‘punch’ as opposed to somewhere one punched. I had at least understood OBVIATES, which I thought was neat. Feeling there was some unfinished business here, I went back to those five, and at least IMPI, AUCKLAND and DECENT finally clicked. (I saw AUCKLAND as per Bullhassocks@2). Thanks Jay@1 for ‘trump’ = ‘cap’, and KVa@5 for ‘re”er’, neither of which had ever occurred to me. So, quite a workout; thanks Vlad, and thanks bridgesong.
I did up to scratch like Simon @4, and like others Auckland as A UK Land. But yes, nice chewy Vlad, thx him and b + T.
Slow, satisfying solve. Some tricky constructions for a good mental workout. SE held out the longest. Got my loi 17d OBVIATE via Thesaurus. Took a while to parse, and then the penny dropped. “Sex” = VI appeared recently in another puzzle. A few others I couldn’t parse, so thank you bridgesong for clarifying
Favourite 13d PRODIGIOUS (I also took is as “for archaeologist’s work” = PRO DIG, which brought a smile)
Yes, a curious choice of restaurant for 7d INITIATE (Pizza Express). Perhaps intended to connect with the following clue, 8d SCREECHY (“Grating a lot of cheese”)? An ellipsis might have worked here
Usually I don’t even attempt to solve a puzzle by Vlad but thought I would give it a try. I didn’t finish – three unsolved – and there were a few I couldn’t parse but I did a lot better than usual.
Favourites: CHINO, DISMISS, TRIAGE, PRODIGIOUS (MY FAVOURITES) OBVIATES
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong.
Thanks for the blog , very good clues on the whole and just right for Saturday .
PORKIES very clever , we have had whole crosswords about this scandal .
OBVIATES is neat , sex=vi becoming trendy , it is actually better , both from the same culture .
ARGALI is well set , pretty obscure I think so very clear wordplay .
Not keen on ABOUT-TURNS , basically a clue to a clue .
AUCKLAND , surely Wales would have been better , no repeat of LAND .
Well done Fiona@15 , good to try the harder ones , learn a lot , make progress and enjoy it .
Mig@14 – Pizza Express and the clue is a reference to Andrew Saxe-Coburg Gotha Battenberg Windsor , I do not wish to say more .
Thanks bridgesong. Another that was hard to get started and that took two or three sessions. Thanks too to KVa @ 5, I was all around it but never quite got there. Had to kick myself that one of my LOIs was 16d, lived there for long enough.
Vlad and I do not really get on terribly well.
This was impenetrable for 24 hours. I got about half way by Tuesday and abandoned it
I think these are some of the leftest of leftfield clues I have ever seen.
Still, I will try again when Vlad next appears on a Saturday and hope to reach an understanding with him!
A slow, steady and enjoyable solve through the week for me. Thanks Vlad and Bridgesong.
I don’t understand RAIL=FLIER and I’m having about train tbh) which, apart from looking up the goat, was my LOI. And it was a toss up for me between that and REIN.
I managed to get this done, despite having not one answer after my first run through. It took several attempts and I finished with a material number unparsed. I ticked INAPT, CHINO and WINE TASTING.
I do agree with Woody@19. Some of these clues were bizarrely obscure, leaving me no hope of parsing them
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong
Being Scottish we parsed 16D as Auchland (caught being ‘sounds like’), assuming a southern interpretation of how we speak 🙄. A UK land is much better!
Thanks for all the comments, particularly those who came up with better parsings than I did. I don’t know why I thought AUK instead of A UK! And Kva’s suggestion for ABOUT-TURNS seems plausible, although I take Roz’s point about its similarity to an indirect anagram.
Tiplodocus @20: a rail can mean a species of bird, so a flier. And you can go by rail or by train synonymously.
Yet again I learned something I didn’t know about cricket (the DOT BALL) from a crossword clue. Took several goes to arrive at answers for everything, and TESTIFIER and ABOUT TURNS remained unparsed.
Tiplodocus@20: a rail is a kind of bird. This is a water-rail, but there are others.
I think Jay has correctly parsed 10a. I don’t agree with Birdsong that cap is a stretched synonym for trump. It’s in Chamber’s Thesaurus as a widely used verb – not just in card games.
I found this SO hard and hadn’t heard of DOT BALL, ARGALI, LATHI or IMPI. I got there in the end, but needed help with the parsing of several. Thanks, all, for helping me get my head around them.
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong
It’s always good to look for implied comment in a Vlad puzzle: I think PRODIGIOUS PORKIES is a good summation of said corporation’s approach to the Horizon scandal and attendant perversion of justice.
I finished this last weekend but then lost my newspaper, so had to do it again online, a bit quicker this time.
I say finished, but I didn’t get ARGALI as I couldn’t be bothered to look it up. The wordplay is clear but it involves an anagram and a guess – is ‘one’ A or I? – as with so many obscure crossword animals.
As has been commented, some very left-field clues, with TESTIFIER the creme de la creme. I had to bung and shrug in the end, because although I had CAP for Trump I didn’t think of pacifier as a sort of intermediate answer. Very odd clue.
Thanks to Vlad and Bridgesong.
4d should read
wItH iT fAiL
Copyright Nitpickers R Us
Following the horizon scandal thread Simon s @27 could we add POST-HASTE and ABOUT TURNS?
Perhaps even TESTIFIER and DISMISS
I quite enjoyed looking up ARGALI, ARTEMESIA and DOT BALL – I like learning things from crosswords. IMPI has been in other crosswords, so that one was getting enough crossers to have the back of the brain niggle surface into memory.
Fun puzzle from Vlad, thank you to bridgesong (and Timon) for the blog.
A bit like Fiona @15 this was a DNF for me (ahem I maybe had a few more than 3 left blank at end!)!
I saw THE MISSUS and TESTIFIER clearly enough but no idea on the parsing which seems pretty obscure now Bridgesong and other learned colleagues have revealed the secret.
PORKIES, which I did not see at all falls into the same category for me (Corporate body = PO —really?).
AUCKLAND is fair but very tough!
Thanks to Vlad (I think!) and bridgesong and all other illuminators of my persona darkness
Shanne@31. I like learning things from crosswords, but if I’m solving it in the pub over a pint I don’t want to look it up there and then, just so that I can “complete” the grid. I can do that later if I remember, or come here instead.
As indeed I have done!
The definition for 14a niggles me. “No more than satisfactory” suggests a negative connotation absent from the phrase “up to scratch” used correctly (ie idiomatically).
It would be misleading for a teacher, for example, to describe the performance of a gifted pupil as ‘up to scratch’ if they have only just scraped a pass. At least that is my understanding. Happy to learn I’m wrong.
Tough but satisfying crossword (not that I completed it). At times it felt like Vlad has been studying the work of Paul !?
Agree with those who found this hard. Got all the answers but had to come here to parse TESTIFIER and OBVIATES – both clever. I’d had doubts about UP TP SCRATCH too but agree with syminbyc@4 that it works well in his parsing.
For those who hadn’t come across DOT BALL before – a cricket scorer records the result of every ball bowled – e.g. number of runs scored, whether the batsman was out, and/or other possibilities. If there is nothing to note, the scorer just puts a dot on the scorecard – so that ball is known as a ‘dot ball’
Thanks both.
It was worth persevering to finish this. My picks were: Trump’s TESTIFIER, Herb Alpert’s ARTEMISIA, the LATHI stick, INITIATE, with as Roz@17 points out, a dig at a certain ex-royal, and A UK LAND with a big city.
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong.
Thanks for the parsing of TESTIFIER, I missed the substitution trick as I thought dummy led to test – now I agree with the reverse cap version.
DNF because I put ‘rein’ in for RAIL as flier can mean a fast horse, giving a cryptic definition, it was a toss up between the two and I forgot about the bird.
7d, I think ‘Why …’ naturally leads to ‘to eat in it’ (a reason) which doesn’t quite match IN IT I ATE (stating what happened).
A fun challenge that took me all week. Had to look up Zulu fighters in the end to complete – I had guessed the parsing but assumed I needed the content of ‘to clear’ rather than just ‘clear’. Is the inclusion of ‘to’ fair for this type of clue? Thanks for explanations of 5A & 7D – totally missed the current affairs references.
MJ@34: You will be happy when you see the correct parsing by simonbyc@4. The definition is, of course, just “satisfactory”.
Loiner@39
ah yes, thank you, I take my comment back.
I should have paid more attention.
I don’t usually find Vlad quite as testing as I found this. I usually keep back some of the Prize to keep me amused on Quiptic Sundays, and by Monday I had cracked everything except 19D. Having stared at it off and on (mostly off) over a few subsequent visits, and having ARMANI stuck pointlessly n my head, I decided on Wednesday that it was time to consult a list of endangered species (sub-section mammals). There happily I did not have to scroll down very far to spot the sheep. A good test, this one, I thought.
MrW@38 – TO has multiple meanings , one of which is OF , so – content of clear ..
The IMPI often appear in crosswordland when not using an assegai to fight the Iceni .
So Seurat was a cricket scorer ? who knew ? I am surprised they played cricket in France .
Roz @42
Have you not heard of French Cricket?
[Wonder if Seurat was influenced by Oz indigenous art — lots of dots there …]
Roz @42. France won the silver medal at the 1900 Olympics
I seem to remember parsing ABOUT TURNS and TESTIFIER as I was falling asleep – the way one sometimes does – last Saturday night, having put down the puzzle at that point.
ABOUT TURNS reminded me of a lark once had, where we made up double cockney rhyming slang e.g. “Judiths” = “haemorrhoids” (Judith Chalmers, farmers, farmer giles, piles).
Cheers all.
This took longer than usual, but all made sense in the end, I thought.
Thanks Vlad and bridgesong. Too tough for me. Quite satisfying though, because of the five clues remaining unsolved, most I would not have got without even more cheating. Least of my worries is the apparently redundant apostrophe-S in 9a!
Thanks to bridgesong for the blog and to the other commenters.
Graham@48 The apostrophe in 9a is a link between the two wordplay elements of the clue.
Solved it, most was acceptable. Thanks Vlad for some lovely clues, like 2d TRIAGE (despite the minor inaccuracy), 7d INITIATE, 23d INAPT.
Thanks bridgesong and bloggers. I think the following clues were weak:
9a: i’ll take “punch” for “chin” as a verb, but the “s” in “Punch’s” has no business there.
10a even when playing cards, I don’t think ‘Trump’ means ‘cap’
12/28 ‘drink for test’ is not ‘wine tasting’
22a beats me how ‘for guidance’ is an anagram indicator
1d I don’t buy ’round’ as a reversal indicator used like that
2d lovely clue, except that strictly “a very long time” is “an age”, so it should have just been “very long time”
3d about-turns eludes me. if it is simply that doing about-turns means you are hesitating, then it’s not enough of a clue for me. if it’s ABOUT-TURNS -> RE TURNS-> ER -> HESITATION then it’s too far-fetched for me
I didn’t manage to finish this puzzle. Was I the only person to put CLOUT at 9a? (An old word for cloth.)
The only additional thought I had was that I had parsed 24d as “I’m pi”, ie I am self satisfied (or content). Of course, that renders “to clear” superfluous, so I am sure the parsing here is more correct.
Roz@42, I now have this indelible image of a pointillistic painting depicting Seurat at his easel in the park on Sunday, keeping score as the umbrellaed ladies play French cricket.
I also enjoyed your impish comment re 24d, and noticed that this puzzle had four short answers ending with the letter “i”. If Vlad had included assign and Iceni, would that have constituted a theme?
Re me@53, I just noticed that auto-destruct changed “assegai” to “assign”, which hardly fits the theme.
Cellomaniac@53 , it was said by Beaulieu@35 that if nothing happens the scorer puts a dot , so every cricket game must lead to a pointillist painting . You would need to add etui and lorelei for a theme .