Pretty rapid progress was held up by one or two gaps around the grid. My end time of just on 10 minutes shows that none of these ended up being too problematic. LOI 21dn, COD 23ac, WOD 13dn. Some clever stuff which I’ve only appreciated whilst writing this up. Thanks Tracy.
I had great fun parsing 12ac which seemed to be, in order, wrong then tricky then oh so simple!
ACROSS
1. Brave bishop, elderly (4)
BOLD – bishop (B), elderly (OLD).
4. Violent quarrel between family members and household servant (8)
DOMESTIC – double definition – the first being so long, I was trying to break it down into ROW between MA and PA/DAD.
8. One’s own role in play opening in London (8)
PERSONAL – role in play (PERSONA), (L)ondon.
9. Area final cut short, regrettably (4)
ALAS – area (A), final cut short (LAS)t.
10. Guarded route across river (4)
WARY – route (WAY) across river (R).
11. Substitute, first of defenders booked (8)
RESERVED – substitute (RESERVE), (D)efenders.
12. Salt, say, in short shanty? (6)
SEASON – to season is to salt (which itself is a seasoning) so I was happy with the answer. To biff or not to biff? That is, indeed, a question. However, for the diligent blogger, duty calls for rolled-up sleeves and a determined tilt of the chin before delving into the word play. At first I had say (AS) inside short shanty (SON)g. Even though it’s usually ‘such as’=say, that’s what I thought it was at first, but what about the ‘E’? I’d obviously gone wrong. Although I realised that the answer is 6 letters not (3,3), I thought about whether a sailor/salt could be a sea son – son of the sea. This wasn’t getting anywhere but, having split sea and son, the answer became blindingly obvious. ‘Say’ is there to show that to salt is an example of to season. Short shanty is (SEA SON)g. There, that’s better, isn’t it?
14. Author George, essentially healthy (6)
ORWELL – clever use of the parsing here. The author is Orwell using George essentially (in the middle – geORge), healthy (WELL).
16. Singer in pub, on end of stage, holding it (8)
BARITONE – pub (BAR), on (ON) and stag(E) holding it (IT).
18. Good penalty (4)
FINE – Double definition.
19. Singular stock phrase for men only (4)
STAG – singular (S), stock phrase (TAG – as in tag line).
20. At a higher level, very happy about Pope’s last verse (8)
ELEVATED – very happy (ELATED) about Pop(E) and verse (V).
22. Island‘s secret society backing racket within (8)
TRINIDAD – secretvsociety (TRIAD within which is racket (din) backwards (NID).
23. Aircraft‘s self-assembly set with ultimate in glue (4)
KITE – self-assembly set (KIT), glu(E). Nice surface bringing back olden days of fingers stuck together trying to assemble a plastic plane.
DOWN
2. Manage to perform surgery (7)
OPERATE – double definition.
3. Good looking policeman, retiring (5)
DISHY – policeman (detective inspector DI), retiring (SHY).
4. Slip into some red ones (3)
DON – some re(D ON)es.
5. Men lose it badly in important event (9)
MILESTONE – anagram (badly) of MEN LOSE IT.
6. Bird box on bank (7)
SPARROW – box (SPAR), on top of bank (ROW).
7. Picture in periodical that is outside (5)
IMAGE – periodical (MAG) with ‘that is’ (IE) outside.
11. Senator ordered, editor declined (3.2.4)
RAN TO SEED – anagram (ordered) of SENATOR, editor (ED).
13. Just a little biting insect inside tin (7)
SMIDGEN – WOD – biting insect (MIDGE) with tin (SN) outside.
15. Tolerant of one German keeling over during fast (7)
LENIENT – one in German (EIN) keeling over (backwards) inside fast (LENT).
17. Agent taking out female player (5)
ACTOR – agent taking out female f(ACTOR).
18. Honest following row (5)
FRANK – following (F), row (RANK).
21. Destroy object (3)
END – double definition.
Chestnuts missed:
Domestic
Reserved
Season
Actor
An experienced solver has probably seen each of these half a dozen times or more, so they should be write-ins. At least I recognized the every-popular smidgen, frank, sparrow, Orwell, and wary.
DOMESTIC in the first sense started as police jargon.
Edited at 2020-06-16 12:29 pm (UTC)
*** Telegraph puzzles give a free puzzle each today and today it’s the cryptic ***
Edited at 2020-06-16 06:59 am (UTC)
FOI: bold
LOI: kite
COD: domestic (so I remember it next time)
FOI BOLD (so easy that it belonged in another puzzle – Tracy lulling us into a false sense of security), LOI ACTOR (I was thinking of the Bond-type agent for too long), COD a dead heat between two really excellent clues, SEASON and ORWELL. Very clever.
Thanks Tracy, you win today, and thanks for a really good blog, Chris.
Templar
Thought maybe salt referred to seaman for a while.
Edited at 2020-06-16 12:21 pm (UTC)
Thanks to Chris
RAN TO SEED required a full writing out and checkers. LOI was TRINIDAD; not the first island to occur to me and I failed to see Triad. 18:17 on the clock.
COD to SEASON. David
Chris, there is another small typo in your blog, where you have typed ‘manageD to perform surgery’ in 2d which makes the tense of the answer wrong, and may confuse. I had to look back at the original as I didn’t remember such confusion when solving. I did wonder when solving though if this was a triple definition, with manage, perform and surgery all pointing to the answer, but decided that the last two needed to be taken together for the dd to work.
Thanks Tracy and Chris.
The clock says 45 minutes but this one feels like it was a DNF.
FOI: 1A Bold
LO1: 11A Reserved
COD: 13D Smidgen
Thanks Tracy for the puzzle and chrisw91 for the informative blog!
Dnk run/ran to seed.
Cod season.
I only got Trinidad because I was looking for Din backwards so I guess I am progressing in a way.
Thanks as ever. I did enjoy today.
(Am brief because I type slowly on iPad!)
Nothing unfair in here, although it took a while to get 21ac “kite” and 17dn “actor”. I got 12ac “Season” by initially thinking of Sea being a type of salt. Flawed thinking in the end, but for once the end justified the means.
For 11dn I’m more familiar with “gone to seed”, so that also puzzled me longer than it should.
FOI – 1ac “Bold”
LOI – 17dn “Actor”
COD – 16ac “Baritone” – although there were a few I could have picked.
Thanks as usual.
PlayUpPompey
COD 13a. SMIDGEN, but equally enjoyed SEASON and ORWELL.
Thanks to all
Don’t think I’ve ever seen ‘ran to seed’
Edited at 2020-06-16 12:29 pm (UTC)
If vegetable plants go to seed or run to seed, they produce flowers and seeds as well as leaves.
Like James and Filbert, I have only heard of “gone to seed” and I also struggled with SEASON and PERSONAL.
My COD has to be DISHY which made me smile.
Thanks to Tracy and to Chris.
Edited at 2020-06-16 12:38 pm (UTC)
Thanks to Chris for the usual excellent blog. I needed it today for the parsing of ORWELL which I biffed.
I was all over the grid, and this was definitely tricky, even though I was inside my target.
FOI BOLD
LOI DOMESTIC
COD FRANK
TIME 0.59K
Biffed 14A Orwell – it could not be anything else once I had the checkers but I’m unfamiliar with the convention that “George, essentially” gives OR. Can someone wiser or more experienced explain please?
Otherwise all seems straightforward enough when one reads Chris’s blog, for which many thanks. So I mark today down as just Me Being Slow.
Cedric
Cedric
FOI: bold
LOI: smidgen
COD: smidgen (good use of the periodic table – should have spotted it sooner)
Thanks for the blog Chris
Collins has:
If vegetable plants go to seed or run to seed, they produce flowers and seeds as well as leaves.
I enjoyed this, thank you Tracy.
But SMIDGEN defeated me, I can’t even spell it on a good day.
Diana
Edited at 2020-06-16 08:27 pm (UTC)
Edited at 2020-06-16 02:55 pm (UTC)
In this case Collins has:
f. is an abbreviation for ‘following’. It is written after a page or line number to indicate that you are referring to both the page or line mentioned and the one after it. You use ff. when you are referring to the page or line mentioned and two or more pages or lines after it.
Thanks setter and blogger.
Thanks to the Blog for ORwell.
Thankfully the bird came to mind as one of the more obvious beginning with S.
1a took too long – mental note to ignore, or even move, punctuation in future!
Lots to enjoy as they steadily fell when I thought that they wouldn’t.
Thanks all,
John George