DT 30808

49 comments on “DT 30808”

1. Great fun if on the tough side but it is Friday. I needed help with a couple but the rest fell in slow motion. This made for a satisfying solve as the pennies dropped one by one. It was a two mugs of coffee challenge. I did like the appearance of Slash and Eminem – an unlikely duo. I wonder when the last time was anyone used a 7d. I have two contenders for the crown, 1a and the aforementioned duo but Morecombe and Wise become COTD by a whisker.

   The Quickie pun was suitably groanworthy.

   Thank you, setter for the challenge. Thank you, Mr. K for the hints and the pusskits.

   1. I didn’t do the puzzle today as I couldn’t get it printed, but I’m so glad I’ve visited so that I can see the kitties. Thank you so much Mr. K. (I wouldn’t have been able to do it anyway!)

2. Here’s a non floating one. 😊

   

   1. Adorable.

3. Needed electronics assistance after coming to a halt after getting my first four answers. Once I got going again, the remaining answers eventually came.

   Favourites include the 26a curry shop and the 12a people at sea.

   Nice mild day here to the North. It is difficult to plan any activities as no two days are the same and the weather forecast is not to be trusted.

   Thanks to the setter and Mr K.

4. I thought I was never going to get on wavelength and then did struggle to stay on it so much so that I came near to chucking my hand in. Merely food in 14a and 4d is IMHO a bit unimaginative as is 15a “made for”. I do like it it if clues read with some kind of sense even if only amusingly. Thank you setter (wonder who?) and MrK.

5. This was a fair and enjoyable challenge to cheer up yet another grey, dank morning in Shropshire. For a podium I have chosen 1,12 and 24a.

   My thanks to our Friday setter and Mr K.

6. I would agree with Mr K’s ratings – quite tricky, but a few smiles during the solving process.
   Thank you setter and Mr K.

7. An enjoyable cranial exercise for the last day of the week – ***/***

   Candidates for favourite – 1a (surely an oldie but goodie), 19a, 7d (Steve C – last used in 1972!), and 16d – and the winner is 16d.

   Thanks to whomsoever, setter spotting has been a little challenging in the last couple of days, and to Mr K.

   I wonder if Terence was in attendance to see what generated this Sports Headline – Chelsea fall apart against Fulham

   I wouldn’t think that this feline fell from the sky!

   

8. I thought I was on a hiding to nothing today but perseverance paid off and I managed to complete with very little help, finding the whole puzzle thoroughly enjoyable. No overall favourite but I did like 19a, the first one I marked, where the definition was hidden in plain sight and the surface read was plausible. I also liked 12a, once I’d stopped trying to make the second word into water, and 13d where I didn’t even realise that I was looking at an anagram! Thanks to our Friday setter for a pleasurable morning and Mr K,whose help I didn’t need today but whose snowflake pusscats raised a smile 😊

9. A cracking Friday-level puzzle – thanks to our setter and Mr K.
   Top clues for me were 1a, 4d, 7d, 8d and 16d.

10. A tough work out today. Several clues put up a mighty tussle to parse but all of the answers were fairly clued.
    4*/4*
    NE held out the longest with 7d last in – never seen one of these!
    1a my favourite today.
    Thanks to all

11. This puzzle, like the Thursday offering that I did not comment on, are just not my cuppa tea. Too way out there with clues that just don’t do it for my liking and I just didn’t enjoy them.
    For those that did, good for you.
    Sorry setters.

    The only clues worthy of favourite was 1a & 22a

    Bring on Saturday

    Thanks

12. Wonderfully difficult and whimsical, with special kudos to 11 down (and Mr K’s succinct explanation). Hit of the day for me, though is a tie between the snowing pusses and Carole King’s delighted reaction to Aretha’s piano playing and singing her song 👏👏, thank yous to Mr K and to our compiler/setter

13. I enjoyed this but got a bit cross-eyed with all those esses in reassesses.

14. An utter joy from start to finish. That said the NE was more of a tussle and took me as long as the remainder to complete until the various pennies dropped. But that just added to the enjoyment factor. My podium comprises 1a, 16d and 10a in top spot. Thanks to the compiler and Mr K.

15. I see that the soft snowflakes have been replaced by something rather more substantial – possibly not what one would wish to have landing on one’s head!
    I’m assuming that this was penned by our erstwhile crossword editor although, like Senf, my setter spotting hasn’t been too good recently so I won’t draw any definite conclusions.
    Several smile-worthy clues today including 1,12&25a plus 7,13&23d.

    Thanks to our setter and to Mr K with his feline host for the review.

16. Cracking puzzle Gromit, I though I was missing the kitties but then one floated before my eyes. Thanks to MrK and Setter/Compiler
    I am tackling the Elgar now and apart from an easy time around the border the middle is a bit trickier

17. Very enjoyable and suitably tough for a Friday – 1a has to be my favourite.

    I’m not totally sure about the parsing for 11d – you need the new year’s promise and I’ve and I understand changing the v for an s but where does it say to change the s of the promise for a v?

    Thanks to setter and Mr K

    1. Try re-reading the last bit of the clue which tells you that you need to swap round the Very and the Small.

18. Hello, compiler here. Thanks very much for taking the time to solve, analyse and discuss. Thanks, too, for all the interesting discussions throughout the past year. Hope to see you again in 2025.
    In an end-of-year vein, here’s my favourite record of the year, ‘Orange’ by Akai Ko-en (which is Japanese for Red Park). Sadly, they don’t exist any more since their guiding light, Maisa Tsuno, committed suicide in October 2020, aged 29.
    Tsuno was the guitarist, pianist and songwriter. Unusually, she wrote everything, including the words, but never sang lead. I’ve tried to think of British/US groups where that applied and could only come up with two examples — one from the 60s and one from the 80s. I’ll let you try to guess them (and can you think of any others?).
    ‘Orange’ was actually Akai Ko-en’s final record, released a month after Tsuno died.
    If it tweaks your interest, I’ve made a YouTube playlist: search YouTube for ‘Akai Koen Phil’, and my playlist will pop up.
    I’ve added a comment to most of Akai Ko-en’s YT videos saying who’s who, what the song’s called in English, etc — sort the comments by ‘Newest’ first. The playlist also includes records Tsuno wrote for other Japanese pop singers.
    Of course this may be of no interest whatsoever!
    Thanks again for solving today’s effort. Much appreciated. Happy New Year!

    1. Thank you for a very benevolent puzzle today. I say benevolent because I usually can’t get on your wavelength but today was truly enjoyable,

    2. Spoiler alert! The ones I thought of are Pete Townshend and Gary Kemp. Happy Christmas.

19. I made heavy work of this and needed the hints for 9a.
    Top picks for me were 1a, 15a, 4d and 7d.

    Thanks to Mr K and the setter.
    Love the snowflake kitties.

20. I thought this was quite hard really and I needed to lean on Mr Kay. The falling cats would have fitted in with yesterday’s 1a and 22a was favourite partly because it was my first one in. Twin tubs were very sensible, we had one in the fifties. You could start off very hot with the whites, then coloureds and so on but best was right at the end when you threw in the dusters. Mother had a great big Thor washing machine in the thirties with an electric wringer over the top. When I was about 3 and she was pegging up the sheets in the garden I decided to climb up and dabble some doll’s clothes which I then fed through the wringer, but I forgot to let go and my arm went through the wringer. It sprang apart eventually ( I was screaming blue murder) and all the flesh on my chubby little arm was pushed up to the shoulder. Dr Herwitz was called and he sat and massaged the flesh back down my arm. I remember it quite clearly! All my mother could keep sobbing was “William will kill me”. Oh well, back to the guzzle – many thanks to Messrs Setter and Kay.

    1. That sounds horrendous! Pleased you didn’t sustain permanent damage!
       My mother had a tub and a poster, then it went through the wringer. Really hard work every Monday. We had no electricity on the small arm where I grew up, so no 7d until we moved to a nearby town in my mid teens.

       1. Posser, not poster

       2. I remember the corrugated zinc washtub with the posher as my mum called it. Boiled the whites in a gas copper first. Then haul away at the mangle. The clothes were then draped over a wooden clothes horse and placed before the coal fire in the living room where they stopped all heat getting into the room.
          I hated Mondays!

21. 4*/2*. I found this quite tough, but there’s nothing wrong with that on a Friday. However, it was a mixed bag for me in terms of enjoyment and there were a few surface reads which didn’t really pass muster.

    Thanks to the setter and to Mr K.

22. If one didn’t know what day of the Christmas week it is, one does now!

    This was hard work and therefore satisfying to complete though the 15a/7d comby took me in to the CET (the next time zone).

    I do like Zand’s style: the letter swap in 11d and the female tweak in 27a are great examples of his quirkiness (His Quirkiness sounds like a character in Blackadder).

    My podium is 12a, 24a and 4d.

    Many thanks to Mr Z and Mr K.

    4*/4*

23. Not as challenging as a usual Friday IMO. I don’t like any word greater than 9 letters though, this of course had a few. My fav was 1a.

24. Shot myself in the foot by sticking ‘screw top’ in for 15a, which rather put paid to anything crossing it, oh well…….

25. I found this really challenging with just one answer in after the first pass. However I persevered and gradually got on the setter’s wavelength and enjoyed completing it in the end. Thank you zandio and Mr k.

26. It seems to be raining cats and …… eh? …… no dogs on here! First time I’ve seen that ……

27. Oh it’s Zandio – I do like his offerings. At first thought I was going to struggle but the south fell into place , and the rest followed in after without having to resort to hints or cheats. Yesterday’s I found much more of a struggle. Thanks you for the raining cats 😀 and to Zandio and Mr K.

28. For me this has to be one of the most enjoyable and entertaining puzzles for some time. Maybe it took me a little longer than usual to get into the setter’s mindset, but once ‘on the road’ it was a super solve – But and I have to say this, I wish crossword setters would refrain from using the insulting word “peasant” or “peasants” to describe farmers and workers on the land. Surely peasantry is non existent, surely at least here in Britain and the west. I’d never dream of referring to any of our local Salopian country gentlemen in such a demeaning terms. With that gripe over, some of my favourite clues were, 8d, 1a & 12a 11d, 13d. My thank yous to setter and Mr K.

    1. Good to see you posting, Salop Sam. I hope all’s well.

       I do hear what you’re saying about the peasant but my guess is that Z felt ‘the worker of the land’s business’ would be too long.

       It’s a tricky one.

       1. All’s well indeed, Tom, thanks for asking – I just don’t get to posting as often as maybe I once did. I felt my comments were sometimes getting a tad too repetitive.

    2. Hi, Shropshirebloke. That surprised me as well when I solved that clue.

       But, having thought about it, I don’t think 10a is describing farmers as peasants; it’s describing peasants as farmers, which is different. It isn’t even claiming that peasants still exist. The phrase “peasant’s business” can mean ‘the business that a peasant used to be involved in back when peasants existed’. Which seems fair enough to me, matching dictionaries’ definitions of ‘peasant’.

       If a clue used the phrase ‘reeve’s business’ to define ‘law’, it wouldn’t be claiming that all lawyers are reeves, nor that reeves still existed.

       1. Fair play and I do take both your’s and Tomds65’s points. It’s just a word or description that always makes me cringe whenever it appears in a crossword puzzle – I have to add that I’m most definitely not part of the woke brigade though, lol. It’s just my personal opinion

29. Clearly I have my contrary hat on today, as I found this easier than most Fridays, and so much more enjoyable than yesterday’s puzzle. Like some others, after my first pass, I thought this was going to be a stinker but it happily proved otherwise. Just required a bit more thinking, and luckily for me, the checkers really helped. I was misled by 27a hint as I only know “mule” as stubborn and that wouldn’t work. LI was 3d. Thank you to Zandio and Mr K.

30. Yet another laboured solve but an enjoyable one. It may only have been a two mugs of coffee challenge for Steve C but it took me a pot of tea & a long wait for my full Scottish breakfast (19 of us having arrived at the Old Bank Cafe in Callander for our traditional pre journey feed upon leaving Tigh Mor) & then a coffee.
    Lots to like (particularly the 4 long ‘uns) but the thought of Eric & Ernie on acid was hard to beat. ✅s.
    Thanks to Zandio (haven’t twigged the non singers yet) & to Mr K – great music & love the floating puss cats

31. Much of this was beyond me today, but clues were fair. Thanks to Mr K for his much needed hints and to Zandio.

32. I’m afraid this strayed into toughie territory for me. I didn’t dislike it but most of the enjoyment came from actually finishing it. Having said that there were quite a few contenders for favourite and I’ll go with 12a. Thanks to Zandio and Mr. K.

33. I found this tricky but then I did not really have enough time to do it justice, I needed some help to finish the last couple. As ever there were some very fine clues and the lurkers were excellent and I enjoyed the anagrams.

    Many thanks to Zandio and to Mr K for the hints.

34. Good evening
    Crikey! I actually finished the crozzie at 5:00, after a lo-o-o-o-ong struggle!! It took me ages to find a way in, and then it was stop-start-stop-start throughout the afternoon until finally, pennies began to drop. I’ve been meaning to drop in here since.

    I tell you what, though: I enjoyed the challenge. Just what was needed. My only quibble is the 3* rating; I would say today’s was a fourser verging on a fiveser, and it comes as no surprise at all to see that it was the handiwork of the Mind of Zandio.

    Many thanks to the MoZ and to Mr. K. I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas.

35. A perfect Zandio post-Christmas treat. I made things hard for myself by instantly interpreting the cryptic meaning of 25a correctly … then somehow forgetting that the answer existed, and put in ‘sunrise’ as the most colourful thing I could think of. Ooops.

    The clues I enjoyed most included 11d’s very small swap, 1a’s acid, 26a’s not-hot curry, the self-referential 9a, and the splendid construction in 17a’s occasionally westbound. My favourite was 27a’s stubborn females. Thank you to Zandio and Mr K.

36. 3*/4* …..
    liked 23D “Fly-by -nights slow dancing (4)”

37. We found it quite tough but eventually finished. We didn’t start until 8.00pm UK time.
    Enjoyable and challenging.
    Thanks to all contributors.
    Gary and Val

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