This was a characteristically challenging puzzle from Imogen, which we thought was just about the right degree of difficulty for a Prize puzzle.
There were some very clever clues, such as those for CHAMELEONS and COBALT. We only had one quibble, relating to the definition of RETINA as a focusing device, but any ophthalmologists out there should feel free to correct us. If there was a theme, it eluded us completely.
Many thanks to Imogen.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | MATRICES |
Arranged numbers in very quick time to visit house in South of France (8)
|
| TRICE (very quick time) inside (visiting) MAS (a house in the South of France). We needed most of the crossers to get this one. | ||
| 6 | SOMBRE |
Lugubrious brother invites a few round (6)
|
| BR(other) inside SOME (a few). | ||
| 9 | RETINA |
Keep adjusting a focusing device (6)
|
| RETAIN with the A moved (adjusted). Timon was keen that I should point out that it’s the lens that is the focusing device in the eye, not the retina, which is a sort of screen. | ||
| 10 | FINE-TUNE |
Make small improvement to well-crafted melody (4-4)
|
| Cryptic definition. | ||
| 11 | ESCAPE KEY |
On board, one depressed to flee island … (6,3)
|
| A simple charade, a key being an island. | ||
| 13 | TOUGH |
… hard to get right out of depression (5)
|
| T(r)OUGH (depression). I’m not sure that the ellipsis between this clue and the previous one really works on the surface or offers any assistance to solvers. | ||
| 15 | LOITER |
Hang around Ohio, opening an American volume (6)
|
| O(hio) inside LITER (American spelling of litre). | ||
| 17 | COBALT |
For Lithuanian, Latvian is sort of blue (6)
|
| To a Lithuanian, a Latvian is also a Balt or co-Balt. | ||
| 18 | EASING |
Stopping heading off and tailing off (6)
|
| (C)EASING. | ||
| 19 | TUNDRA |
Cold plain fish medic tucks into (6)
|
| DR (medic) inside TUNA. | ||
| 21 | LENIN |
Vlad rejecting Indian meal? What are the odds then? (5)
|
| Odd letters in iNdIaN mEaL, all reversed. | ||
| 22 | RUN SCARED |
Be frightened, knight: crusader’s rampaging about (3,6)
|
| N (chess notation for knight) in anagram of CRUSADER. | ||
| 25 | FILIGREE |
Lie prostrated with grief: this is so delicate (8)
|
| *(LIE GRIEF). | ||
| 26 | AGOUTI |
Animal in a painful condition essentially fit (6)
|
| A GOUT (a painful condition), (f)I(t). | ||
| 28 | CAUGHT |
Pet suppressing cry of disgust when grabbed (6)
|
| UGH (cry of disgust) in CAT (pet). | ||
| 29 | SEE STARS |
Be dazed by what you may do on a clear night out (3,5)
|
| Double definition. I wasn’t persuaded that “out” was strictly necessary, but Timon disagrees. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | AWE |
Dread anonymous compilers (3)
|
| A(nonymous) WE (compilers). | ||
| 3 | RAITA |
The Indian side inform on Australian touring India (5)
|
| I(ndia) inside RAT (inform on) A(ustralian). A misleading definition held us up for a while. | ||
| 4 | CHAMELEONS |
Their chosen meal flies (10)
|
| *(CHOSEN MEAL); a brilliant & lit clue. Arguably, it’s only a semi-& lit, because “their” doesn’t form part of the wordplay, but I still think it’s a brilliant clue. | ||
| 5 | SOFTEN |
Temper shown by son many times (6)
|
| S(on) OFTEN. | ||
| 6 | SUNK |
Louis XIV briefly ruined? (4)
|
| SUN-K(ing) (as Louis XIV was known). | ||
| 7 | METROLAND |
Bumped into Rat in London suburbs (9)
|
| MET (bumped into) ROLAND (Rat – formerly a children’s TV character). Metroland was the name given to the northwestern suburbs of London whose development was facilitated by the building of the Metropolitan line. | ||
| 8 | RENEGOTIATE |
Frenchman persuaded one brewing tea to come back to the table (11)
|
| RENÉ (Frenchman) GOT (persuaded) I (one) *TEA. | ||
| 12 | SALVE REGINA |
Saint revealing a freshly-composed prayer (5,6)
|
| *(S(aint) REVEALING A). Catholics may have been at an advantage here: we had to look this one up. | ||
| 14 | ROGUE STATE |
Ordinary visitor comes in to criticise part of Evil Empire (5,5)
|
| O(rdinary) GUEST inside RATE (criticise). | ||
| 16 | INSPIRING |
Breaking up during April I find exhilarating (9)
|
| I inside IN SPRING (in April). | ||
| 20 | DURESS |
University gown brought round, one’s forced under it (6)
|
| U(niversity) inside DRESS (gown). | ||
| 23 | ABOUT |
Neighbour with empty stomach is close (5)
|
| O (empty) inside ABUT (neighbour). You have to read “stomach” as an inclusion indicator. | ||
| 24 | FRET |
Worry, losing the last bit of spare time (4)
|
| FRE(e) T(ime). | ||
| 27 | TAR |
Pitch that a rainstorm covers (3)
|
| Hidden. |
I got off to a fine start and was then defeated by the NW corner. Top stuff, I thought. Thanks Imogen
Found this difficult. LOI was LENIN but now can’t see why it took me so long to get it.
Didn’t parse SALVE REGINA
Liked: LOITER, AGOUTI, SUNK, INSPIRING, COBALT, TOUGH
Thanks Imogen and bridgesong
My faves:
MATRICES, COBALT, RAITA, SUNK (may not be a fresh trick) and ABOUT.
Thanks Imogen and bridgesong.
Thanks bridgesong. As with the previous comments I found the NW corner difficult (as it often is) and LENIN was LOI. I had been working on some connection with ‘impaler’ at first. Never heard of MAS as a house and needed all the crossers before DURESS emerged.
Took a couple of sessions but was defeated by MAS. I speak French reasonably well, but can’t say if this was a language or GK failing. Thought COBALT was part silly, part clever, part amusing.
A tough challenge. All done, except 1a MATRICES (I thought the def was at the end. BARRACKS? DARRACQS?). Couldn’t parse 9a RETINA. Liked 11a ESCAPE KEY (“flee island”), 17a CO-BALT, 19a TUNDRA (“Cold plain”), 4d CHAMELEONS (“chosen meal flies”), 6d SUNK (“Louis XIV briefly”), 20d DURESS (“one’s forced under it”)
I loved the surface of 10a FINE-TUNE. That’s exactly what I spend a lot of my time doing!
I’d suggest that the ellipsis between 11a and 13a works for the surface about depression. The depressed one fled the island…it’s hard to get out of depression
29a SEE STARS, I agree with you bridgesong that “out” could be omitted — you could see stars from inside, through a window or skylight!
I really wanted 14d ROGUE STATE to be DARTH VADER
23d ABOUT, I read “empty stomach” as “nothing inside”
Very satisfying, some lovely clues that look ages to work out. Love RAITA, LENIN and CHAMELEON. Eventually remembered eating at a few MAS that had been turned into restaurants around Perpignan.
My only quibble is that I can’t quite see how “prostrated” is an anagram indicator (although it was obvious enough that it was) – could it be the third definition here from Chambers – distraught? “lying face downwards in an attitude of abject submission, humility or adoration. 2 lying flat. 3 distraught with illness, grief, exhaustion, etc.” Lovely crossword anyway!
Brisbukane@7, how about, also from Chambers, “Prostrate” = “to overthrow”?
The definition of RETINA held me up as mentioned in the blog.
RAITA was difficult, the surface implies a collective noun and it’s one of many sides. I assumed my lack of cricket knowledge was the problem.
MATRICES was my LOI and I initialy parsed ‘very quick time’ as A TRICE.
Thanks for the blog ,very good set of clues and tricky in parts . COBALT is neat , the blue colour is famous for Bristol glass . RAITA and ABOUT are clever clues and good to see MATRICES .
RETINA , Timon is correct , the cornea does most of the focussing and fine tuned by the lens . The retina basically a screen to process the image . This should have been picked up by a test-solver/editor .
SEE STARS , Timon right again , find somewhere very dark , take a picnic blanket , flask and somebody warm .
Yes, a tough challenge. Thrown (inverted?) by MATRICES, RAITA and LENIN. Always harder when one misconstrues which bit is the definition.
Never got close to LENIN. Whereas I knew Stalin to be Joseph/Joe, Lenin’s forename was missing from my general knowledge.
LOITER and COBALT were favourites. Many thanks, Imogen
Also had difficulty with RETINA as a focusing device (and, alas, couldn’t parse it). Spent a lot of time on AGOUTI and ABOUT. Particularly enjoyed FINE-TUNE, SUNK and a superb COBALT. Was surprised at O as an abbreviation for Ohio (but apparently it was used in the past). Thanks Imogen and bridgesong!
One could argue that you need a retina to be able to decide when focussing has been effected.
LENIN was last one in for me too.
I’m not unduly bothered by RETINA. After all it is the device, onto which the image is focused, and that will do for me.
I thought that this was very good for not needing much esoteric or archaic general knowledge.
Cheers everyone.
Really liked MATRICES and METROLAND.
I couldn’t solve ESCAPE KEY, but see it now as a clever charade, nor SALVE REGINA.
Layman @12 – the O is Ohio opening.
I spent a lot of time looking things up for this – MAS, SALVE REGINA, LENIN’s first name, but it’s always good to learn things. RAITA I know, and thought as I inserted the solution that it seems to turn up regularly when we rarely see Tzatziki, the Greek equivalent, clued.
Thank you to bridgesong (and Timon) and Imogen.
I’m glad I found time for this one. I agree with what has been said already about a number of clever clues. MATRICES, my LOI, was difficult: TRICE (or A TRICE, as I tried first) was the easier bit, but MAS (which I will dare to call obscure) was the bit I had to look up after getting the answer from the definition.
Thanks to Imogen and bridgesong.
Shanne@16: I don’t think so, as otherwise there would be no insertion indicator, “around” being part of the definition
O as an abbreviation for Ohio is in Chambers, but I suspect it is not often used nowadays.
I’m struggling with the parsing of ROGUE STATE. I can’t think of a sentence where RATE could replace CRITICISE. To me it means either to evaluate or to approve. Having said that, I really rated the puzzle overall!
This was Imogenious: lots of great clues with extra appreciation given to:
– CHAMELEONS, for anagrist and anagrind both being so relevant to the solution, and for almost being &lit;
– RETINA (even if the definition isn’t quite accurate, I was happy with it, and “keep adjusting a” was clever);
– LENIN for the nifty wordplay in general and the misdirection of having the fearsome Vlad as definition.
MAS and the Latin prayer have been added to the list of things crosswords taught me, joining AGOUTI which was added some time ago. ROGUE STATE was sadly topical.
Many thanks to Imogen and bridgesong.
Filled in the right-hand side fairly rapidly, thinking that this was surprisingly straight-forward, then I ground to a halt! Retina threw me as lens didn’t fit and I kicked myself over LENIN as the fodder is straight-forward (I also realised belatedly that I was unaware of Lenin’s first name). Some great clues though.
Took Mrs P and I all week – very satisfying once we finally got there!
Like many, our last in was LENIN, who was well hidden.
Thanks Imogen and @bridgesong!
I really needed the blog today, so thank you bridgesong & Timon.
MATRICES was my last: bunged in with crossed fingers and semi-parsed.
Dr W @5, don’t be too disheartened, for I’ve been living in SW France for some years now, and hadn’t heard of mas. I’m not denying the word exists – Brisbukane @7 shows it does – but I’d not previously encountered it.
On the plus-side, I enjoyed SUNK, METROLAND, NEGOTIATE and the classy COBALT.
[As well as being totally mas-free, our parcelle is free of light-pollution; we often do as Roz @10 suggests (but with a bottle of Blanquette de Limoux rather than a flask) and sit on a bench at the bottom of our garden: meteor showers are fun and, on moonless nights, the Milky Way is awesome]
RETINA is simply wrong , if you are short or long sighted you will get an unfocused image on the retina and it does not care , but crosswordland treats science with contempt generally .
I have found the Bank Holiday Special , page 52 of the main paper , beware the answers are at the bottom again , I have remembered to fold my paper this time .
Like others, I had failed to retain LENIN’s first name and had to, under DURESS, look up the prayer. Either LEININ or MATRICES was LOI.
I liked COBALT, RENEGOTIATE and ROGUE STATE (first thought, Third Reich).
Very good crossword. Thanks Imogen and bridgesong and Timon.
O for Ohio is used by the New York Times – they consistently use the “old” state abbreviations. This was one of many clever and accurate clues that I really appreciated.
Unfortunately three were too clever for me – or in the case of MAS found my south of France GK lacking. I was totally misled by 21a, my thoughts – such as they were – revolving around “the impaler”, and it was a real shock to see LENIN as the answer.
Thanks to Imogen for the challenge and Bridgesong for the explication. (I was pleased to get SALVE REGINA despite being an atheist!)
I found it tough, but fair. I was stuck for a while after completing the rhs. Restarted with help from the mother of mercy. I was pleased to get ESCAPE KEY, and also MATRICES after confirmation that MAS was a house. Immensely frustrating not to finish. Stuck on 21ac with a V from VLAD minus Indian meal DAL. Did inspect odd letter runs, but didn’t think of reverse run. Well and truly misdirected away from Vladimir Illych. Plenty of ticks otherwise, especially SUNK and INSPIRING. Grateful for bridgesong’s help in explaining 23d and making LENIN sound so obvious.
[ Wellbeck @24 , you are lucky , we have one street light that spoils the Southern sky from our garden but we can walk out to total darkness easily and I need it for certain targets . Andromeda galaxy , Uranus and Ganymede are all possible at certain times . ]
Usual good stuff from Imogen.
Another nho ‘mas’ here.
Favourites include COBALT, RAITA, TUNDRA and aseveral others.
Big Maz@20 – ‘criticise’ doesn’t have to mean to be negative. A theatre critic may rate/criticise a play they see and then write that it was wonderful.
Roz@25 – I’m not an expert in opthalmology, but doesn’t the brain use the image on the RETINA to adjust the lens to get correct focus (which may not be possible in some cases of long/short sightedness)? So the retina, like the lens and indeed the brain, is (part of) a focusing mechanism.
Thanks Imogen and bridgesong.
Another with MATRICES as LOI. Didn’t know that meaning ( last definition in my Chambers) and MAS not in my French dictionary. Otherwise very enjoyable.
Roz @25 Thanks for the warning. Removing my glasses to get an unfocussed image, I cut the answers out and hid them.
Mas is in Chambers, which is how I knew it (probably from a different crossword some years ago) but it can also be found in a French dictionary (see Zoot’s comment @31): my Petit Robert has an entry which describes it as a word “languedocien et Provençal”. Its etymology is connected to those of maison and manoir.
Johnjb#28
I was stuck on DAL for Indian meal @ 21a as you were. I wonder if anyone ever dared to refer to Lenin as VLAD any more than they would to Putin ….though, now I think of it, one of Putin’s friends might.
1a.As a non-scientist I was pleased to spot C=speed of light=in very quick time but Google didn’t find MATRIES as a French house.
17a If blue wasn’t navy, Prussian, or sky then it had to be COBALT and the wordplay msde me smile.
brtidgesong re 4d. I agree that this was a fun clue. Thanks for the blog and thanks to Imogen.
Eager to see today’s blog as I did this on a plane without any other resources than my ageing brain. Loved the 70% I managed to complete, especially CHAMELEON, ESCAPE KEY, RENEGOTIATE, METROLAND etc. Missed out on MATRICES, RETINA, LENIN, AGOUTI and SALVE REGINA all of which I would have struggled with anyway.. Have loved Imogen’s puzzles, ever since the fine tribute to eileen. Thanks to bridgesong for the long-awaited elucidation
bridgesong@33 Mas isn’t in my Chambers.
Thanks to Imogen for a wonderfully entertaining puzzle and to Bridgesong for another excellent, precise blog and the mention. As for RETINA and “out” in 29A, I stand by my views (tks Roz et al for support ) but will always apply Aurucaria’s test – was it still solvable (?), so not really complaining, just commenting. Apols for late-ish post.
Zoot @36: are you sure? It’s in every edition that I own, going back to 1993, and including the 2016 edition. Which edition is yours?
beaulieu @30 I do know about theatre critics and literary criticism but I’m still not sure the verb to criticise is used in anything other than a negative way. ‘To critique’ is used as a verb in this context.
bridgesong@38 1983. It wouldn’t have helped solve the clue. I’d have needed to know the word in order to look it up. I think it’s a bit obscure. Barracks or carracks would have done just as well.
Big Maz@30 – I agree that the word is usually used in a negative way, but it can mean to rate in a neutral way. So I do see your point, but the clue worked for me.
I found this very difficult but soldiered on until the grid was filled. I liked the ESCAPE KEY, the CO-BALT, the misleading Vlad for LENIN, the Indian side for RAITA, the CHAMELEONS eating flies, the ordinary visitor in ROGUE STATE, the INSPIRING break-up, and the neighbour ABOUT with an empty stomach. I did solve RETINA with a grimace as I agree with Roz @25 that it is completely wrong. I also thought prostrated was a poor anagrind.
Thanks Imogen (I nearly typed Vlad!) and bridgesong.
beaulieu, 30,
Yes, that works for me too. (RETINA)
I have to leave soon but for now I’ll say that Google gives “mazet” as a word for a small “mas” (I never heard of it either)m and there’s a French restaurant in West Hartford called “le mazet.” Maybe that’s what they had in mind.
Thanks Roz @25 for the warning. I had had a quick look at the puzzle but not spotted the answers. Like Zoot @ 32 I have now cut it out and put it away.
Having had a quick look I seriously doubt I am going to get far. But I will try.
Nice try Beaulieu@30 but we just have to disagree , if the clue said – part of focusing sytem – then fair enough , but focusing device must change the direction of the photons itself , good wordplay though .
Zoot@32 and Fiona@45 I got caught out last time not expecting the answers to be on the same page . It seems that the Bank Holiday Special tradition has been abandoned .
Another angle on MATRICES – if H is abbreviation for house in english, M could be the same for maison in french. So. we have A TRICE in M and S(outh).
Very enjoyable crossword that we found a challenge. We were going for removing DAL from Vlad for ages until we looked more closely.
Anyone my sort of age has had matrices drilled into them for many an hour in maths lessons so that was our first entry.
Thanks Bridgesong and Imogen
A very worthy Prize, with a lot of the entries taking quite some thought. MATRICES and LOITER came as flashes of inspiration, and I never did parse the L[]ITER bit, mentally reading and pronouncing it as a hypothetical Americanism LI(GH)TER which I inevitably failed to make sense of. Funny how the brain can be fooled by confusing signals such as the presence of that O (or e.g. by not writing a word down that you’re seeing in your head, which often trips me up in crosswords!)
I also didn’t spot the anagrist “revealing a” for (S)ALVE REGINA which was a guess from the checkers; very nice and unexpected!
I didn’t specifically know mas, but in Catalonia where they also abound they are called masias. These beautiful stone farmhouse buildings are commonly used as restaurants or guest houses these days, but some still have traditional uses. Football fans may have heard of or even visited one particular example that sits right inside what is now the city of Barcelona: La Masia (de Can Planes), part of Barça’s Camp Nou stadium complex, which was used in the past as a residence for upcoming youth players, and which by metonymy represents the organisation’s youth training system which produced a number of football’s brightest stars.
Thanks both
I’ve seen RATE used to describe the act of shouting at foxhounds to call them back from a false trail. Those opposed to the “sport” do this to distract hounds from pursuing their intended quarry.