I am writing this intro in my cosy chambre in the famous Hôtel la Louisiane (there’s a documentary about it) on rue de Seine (Saint-Germain-dés-Pres), on vendredi après-midi, after a visit to the Librairie philosophique J. Vrin up by the Sorbonne—and I must now stop buying books, as I am not sure all the ones I’ve acquired will fit into my little suitcase… I’ve only bought très petits livres (of which the French are quite fond) for that very reason. Last Saturday, accompanying a friend, I marched with les gilets jaunes, and yesterday, on my way to la Fondation Cartier for the exposition “Jeunes Artistes en Europe,” I emerged from the métro at Raspail to find myself near the front of the huge protest march of unions representing fonctionnaires—employees of hospitals, schools, public radio/TV, all sorts of government agencies… Macron certainly has the Republic (or its people) on the march, but not in the way intended when he named his group.
On an earlier trip, I mentioned to a poet from India who was staying here that the motifs in two series of Cy Twombly’s paintings then at le Centre Pompidou reminded me of the pattern on the very worn carpet in the hotel’s quite narrow corridors. He said that La Lousiane was Twombly’s favorite place to stay in Paris, a fact that I was able to immediately verify online.
Oh, but the puzzle, right… This seemed hard, but I don’t know if that’s just because I was too beat to finish it in one go Saturday/Sunday night, or if it was harder to get into the right frame of mind after a couple weeks of working no crosswords at all, or if I was intimidated by seeing that it was a Dean—or all three or none of the above. I was sure glad the receptionist could print it out, or it might have been impossible! The clues run the gamut from hidden words to &lit, but there are no DDs. The one homophone is entirely unobjectionable. However, I do object to 25 across, as you will see…
I do (asargnam)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Address according to zip code? (3,4) |
| PEP TALK — PEP is “zip” and TALK is “code,” with “according to” merely providing linkage to the definition. | |
| 5 | Food scarce at safe houses (4) |
| EATS — Wow, two hidden words today. And somehow neither seemed terribly easy. The second one (16) hasn’t a clever inclusion indicator like “houses” but the nearly imperceptible “of.” | |
| 9 | It replaced aerial in TV, say (7,8) |
| ITALIAN VERMOUTH — (aerial in TV)* + MOUTH (“say”). I’ve never seen this abbreviation outside of crossword puzzles, have you? | |
| 10 | America’s past as a Time feature (5) |
| AFTER — So… referring to, say, fifteen minutes past noon as “fifteen after” is strictly a US thing? I didn’t know! | |
| 12 | Noble title—it’s unwanted, he thought (9) |
| ARISTOTLE — ARISTO + T[-it]TLE | |
| 13 | Failing to include endless herb is good for soup (11) |
| VICHYSSOISE — ”Failing” is VICE, with “herb” HYSSO[-p] + IS inside, with “good for” merely providing linkage. | |
| 14 | Almost pull over? Indeed (3) |
| NAY — YAN[-k] <— As used in quaint old lingo as an intensifier: This clue is clever—NAY, diabolical! | |
| 16 | Currency of central Europe (3) |
| LEU — Since this is money in Romania, this clue is an &lit. | |
| 17 | Wild cats, felines, camouflaged creatures (4,7) |
| LEAF INSECTS — (cats, felines)* | |
| 20 | Name certain to describe one little pest (9) |
| SIGNATURE — S(I [“one”] GNAT)URE | |
| 21 | Small egg on roll (5) |
| SURGE — S + URGE That’s a “roll” as a wave. | |
| 22 | Infinity of plane? (5,7,3) |
| WORLD WITHOUT END — plane[-t] Though the answer seemed obvious, it took me a minute to parse this. | |
| 24 | Fall carrying new ladder (4) |
| SNAG — S(N)AG, “ladder” as in a stocking | |
| 25 | Odd wife that man rejected, of course (7) |
| WHIMSEY — W(ife) + HIM (“that man”) + YES <— (“of course”). But since when is “whimsey” (or “whimsy,” for that matter) an adjective—or “odd” a noun…?! (Something or someone “full of whims” could, conceivably, be “whims-y”—but not “whimse-y.”) | |
| DOWN | |
| 1 | Ancient coach very bad, you might say (9) |
| PRIMAEVAL — Sounding like “prime,” which can mean to “coach,” though I wager you won’t find these cross-referenced in any thesaurus, and “evil,” “very bad.” (EDIT: Actually, I was looking for cross-references for “primer” and “coach” and after I parsed it correctly neglected to look again!) | |
| 2 | The work of a features editor? (7,7) |
| PLASTIC SURGERY — CD | |
| 3 | One winged beast stopped half-way (3) |
| ANI — ANI[-mal] | |
| 4 | Some Africans know stories but run away (7) |
| KENYANS — KEN, “know” + YA[-r]NS | |
| 5 | I bore myself over old lecturers (7) |
| EMERITI — I TIRE ME <— | |
| 6 | People like Delilah supply hair? (11) |
| TEMPTRESSES — TEMP as a verb, I guess, for what a temp(orary) worker does + TRESSES. I saw the “hair” part immediately, but my first guess was that she was a “traitress,” which of course I couldn’t parse at all. | |
| 7 | Keen on traps being economical (7,7) |
| CUTTING CORNERS — ”Keen” is CUTTING and “traps” is CORNERS. | |
| 8 | Turn left? No, this is fun (4) |
| WHEE — WHEE[-l] | |
| 11 | Forgiveness for what a monarch says? (5,6) |
| ROYAL PARDON — Edited. I thought this was just a rather “meh” CD, until Keriothe pointed out that it is “‘what’ a monarch might say.” (Over here, I might say, “Hein?”) | |
| 15 | Old song that makes me happy about windy desert (9) |
| YESTERDAY — Y (desert)* AY. The clue for the YAY part is very similar to the clue for the def. of 8. | |
| 18 | Funny old lady back on drugs? (7) |
| AMUSING — MA <— + USING | |
| 19 | Skating event is entertaining church, and how! (3,4) |
| ICE SHOW — I(CE) S + HOW | |
| 20 | Run up from all directions (4) |
| SEWN — The four cardinal points | |
| 23 | Sound of discharging weapon (3) |
| UZI — ”oozy,” ick! | |
Not having a complete grasp of the Queen’s English, is a problem on occasion. Said Queen’s mother was a devotee of the old ‘Gin and It’, as am I. One assumes all Americans enjoy vodka Martinis.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/thesaurus/coach
Guy, here you will find prime under coach (verb) – just how much was your wager!?
23dn UZI is an Israeli automatic machine pistol, named after its inventor Major Uziel Gal in 1950. I believe a Martini is also a gun.
FOI 5ac EATS
LOI 17ac LEAF INSECTS
COD 9ac ITALIAN VERMOUTH
WOD 13ac VICHYSSOISE
No time at all!
Do people really say “gin and it,” as everyone here seems to be putting it, or “gin and ‘eye tee’”?
I put “iffy” in my notes for UZI. “Icky” sounds nearer the mark. I did like KENYANS but WHEE gets my COD vote.
Chambers has WHIMSEY (whimsy) as: adj. full of whims; changeable; quaint; odd
whimsy in British
or whimsey
noun
Word forms: plural -sies or -seys
1.
a capricious idea or notion
2.
light or fanciful humour
3.
something quaint or unusual
adjective
Word forms: -sier or -siest
4.
quaint, comical, or unusual, often in a tasteless way
Edited at 2019-05-12 08:24 am (UTC)
Online dictionaries can be hard to identify: on the Collins Site:
* “Learner” seems to be the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners Dictionary – they call it something different on the site, but that’s what’s on the spine of my copy, acquired when they offered me a free dictionary that would have been a duplicate. Not an official reference for us, but useful sometimes on usage points, and phrasal verbs.
* “English” means Collins English Dictionary, apparently including updates since the last printed edition
* “American” means Webster’s New World College Dictionary, one of the various generic “Webster’s” dictionaries
I wish the Collins site gave you an option to see only one, but it doesn’t, and in editing, setters have occasionally been found to have used a US meaning from the American part.
At the Chambers website, the free dictionary provided is NOT The Chambers Dictionary, which is used for all the barred grid puzzles like Mephisto, but Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, in which “The focus is on the English that people use today, and definitions are given in straightforward, accessible language” (from its Amazon page) – rather different to the big red book with all sorts of strange words (the main reason for it not being an official STC reference) and rather terse defs. Up to the 1983 edition, the big red book was “Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary”, so there is scope for confusion for those who remember that title.
Other dictionaries are available – in particular, the Oxford Dictionary of English is also official here, although I discourage setters from using difficult material from both in the same puzzle.
Edited at 2019-05-12 08:30 am (UTC)
I thought WHIMSEY was odd in the same way as our blogger but now see how it works. I had ECU at 16a (EU for Europe and C for central)and this remained in my grid as I found 1d impossible as well as 10a; and ANI was unknown and unguessed.
So I fell a bit short but the puzzle rewarded the effort I thought. I liked WHEE and UZI amongst others.
I now recall that, in American football, they refer to the point after. I saw the point of AFTER after being nudged to listen to Lady Antebellum. David
Edited at 2019-05-12 07:25 am (UTC)
I’m another man with Chambers but no Collins, but was satisfied with WHIMSEY post-solve, and also with “supply = temp”, and ANI.
Thanks to Guy, I now understand PEP TALK, and UZI.
FOI EATS
LOI UZI
COD WHEE (also liked PLASTIC SURGERY)
TIME 20:06
I didn’t know that WHIMSEY could be an adjective, but that didn’t cause me problems. The thing I don’t understand is ‘code’ for TALK in 1ac.
Yes, ‘quarter after’ is purely a North American thing, as is ‘quarter of’.
In 11dn the wordplay is saying that a ROYAL PARDON is the way a monarch might say ‘what?’ This is a bit inaccurate because you will never hear a posh person saying ‘pardon’ (frightfully non-u, don’t you know).
Edited at 2019-05-12 10:40 am (UTC)
Edited at 2019-05-12 02:01 pm (UTC)
Edited at 2019-05-12 10:42 am (UTC)
Edited at 2019-05-12 10:49 am (UTC)
I also don’t understand ‘code’ for TALK in 1ac.
Could someone please explain how the first clue has been parsed?
mike04
Thank to blogger for explanation.
We always enjoy Dean’s Sunday offerings.
Found this very tough and took well over an hour across a number of sessions to get it done. A couple that I didn’t fully parse – missed the extremely clever word play of PLANE[T] at 22a and went down the ‘primer’ instead of ‘prime’ path at 1d.
Because I’m doing these puzzles all out of sequence, it so happens that WHEE came up in one of the ordinary Times puzzles from March that Ive just done recently, which made that a little easier than it could’ve been.
I had trouble equating ‘code’ to TALK but now understand – thought that it was avery good clue. VICHYSSOISE was a new term for me … and gotta say it doesn’t sound all of that appetising – not helped by the weather sitting in the mid teens here at the moment.
Finished in the NW corner with PRIMAEVAL the strange little ANI bird and the Americanism AFTER as the last few in.