DT 30700

65 comments on “DT 30700”

1. Rather gentle for a Friday, I thought. I didn’t know the acronym in 20d, and I think the Quickie pun took me longer than any other clue.

   Thanks to all.

2. My last one in was 18d, a very clever clue in my opinion, interested to see who the setter is today, as the whole puzzle had a quirky feel to it.

3. I thought top end ** and **** fun factor. Just a few anagrams and lurkers and whilst on first perusal another tricky one somehow if fell quite well. The assumption of walking speed in 18d was curious but fair enough I suppose 4d was my LOI and tricky. My COTD was 10a. Excellent. Thanks to Mr K and our setter.
   PS I was pleased to get a letter in on Saturday so surprised to get another printed today!

   1. Congratulations on your letters being chosen, NAS. You clearly have what the the editor is looking for!

      I’ve only hitch-hiked once: a few years ago an Ilkley Literature Festival event with England cricketer Moeen Ali was moved from being a weekend daytime event in Ilkley itself (in walking distance of our home) to a weekday evening at a private school in north Leeds. I was able to get there by train and bus, but public transport home would have taken several hours to cover 15 miles, so I nervously stood at the exit with a home-made sign, and somebody took pity on me.

      Out of interest, how did somebody living in Tintagel end up with a girlfriend in Pitlochry?

      1. Well done. I was on holiday with my parents in Tintagel and she was on holiday with her parents in Pitlochry, which was rather inconvenient…..

         We both attended the same state Grammar School near Wigan.

         1. You left a family holiday in Cornwall to hitchhike to Pitlochry to see your girlfriend? NAS, you old romantic!

            You have my admiration because it’s the kind of thing I would have done in my wild youth.

   2. That distance would be measured in years if I were to try!

      1. Merusa, I love you! You understand the subjunctive case!
         It was drilled into me at school. So much so that I hate “if I was”. 😈

         1. Thank you! (Pssst, what’s a subjunctive case?)

4. 1a’s excellent. I know “rank and file” is lifted straight from Chambers but couldn’t “the workers” have sufficed instead? Or just “ordinary people” which is the other official definition. Just curious, really. And wouldn’t “returning” have been easier on the eye than “returned” for 9a’s surface? Some of the Jabberwocky clues were more pleasing to solve (12a, etc) than to read but that is, of course, the right way round. 4d’s jolly, 22d too, and 18d’s very smart. Great fun. Thanks to our setter and Mr K.

   1. Oh, and the quickie pun is magnificent!

      1. Agreed! One of the greatest cyclists ever and he could have won more Tour de France stages if he hadn’t been so unlucky with illness and injuries.

         1. Och, he did all right!

   2. Hi ALP

      You clearly love trying to tidy up clues (call them ‘assists’) which is absolutely fine. But, in the last couple of months, you have started to forensically dissect clues, suggesting tiny tweaks e.g returned/returning as opposed to, say, a change of word order. You are, of course, right in this example but I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for the setters who probably get a tad nervous when they see your name appear.

      It’s impossible for these superstars to nail 30 clues, four or five times a week, or however many they compile. I rarely suggest tweaks for that reason.

      Maybe let the occasional one slide?

      No problem if you want to crack on as it’s your prerogative (not perogative – how many times have I seen that?)

      You know that I’m a huge fan; you bring a lot to this blog. So, I hope you don’t see this as a criticism.

      1. Hi Tom. It’s not meant as criticism in any way, I’m just fascinated by the minutiae. And our “superstars” as you rightly call them certainly don’t need “assists” from the likes of me! Nervous? Of me? Surely, surely not!! I hope this is Zandio – I’m a massive fan of his – and he often pops in. As I say, I’m genuinely interested in the mechanics of it all and I wouldn’t DREAM of criticising any of our setters, and certainly not Zandio. Sorry if it came over like that. Not my intention.

         1. Oh, and I see he’s just popped in with a Sunday teaser. Marvellous!

         2. I love to look at a clue with a magnifying glass; it’s great fun.

            So, we’re in the same gang in the playground. I just think your magnifying glass has a more convex lens. That’s all.

            1. Convex? I’m quite sure there are other adjectives!

               1. is that a suggested tweak?

5. A splendid finish to the week.

   Stacks of multi-worded answers on a nice grid that will please a lot of solvers. Who doesn’t love a 13 letter lurker. Great fun.

   Any setter who can get the lollipop-sucking TV detective into a clue gets my vote.

   My podium is the aforementioned plus 27a.

   Many thanks to Zandio (?) and Mr K.

   3*/4*

6. Just the job for a Friday – many thanks to our setter and Mr K.
   I particularly liked 12a, 1d and 3d but my favourite was the clever and amusing 21a.

7. A bit of a struggle for me perhaps because I was feeling ‘cream crackered’ coming towards the end of one of my busiest weeks in quite a while. Additionally, the setter is probably the member of the Friday triumvirate who causes me the most problems. ****/**

   Smiles for 10a, 21a, and 13d.

   Thanks to Zandio, or whomsoever if it is not he, and thanks to Mr K.

8. I agree with Gazza that the excellent lurker at 21a has to be today’s winner. We have been blessed with some terrific puzzles this week, and this one was a fine addition to end the week.

   My thanks to our Friday setter and Mr K.

   I probably won’t be posting for a couple of weeks as we are off to sunny Greece later today so play nicely and I will ‘see’ you on our return.

   1. Have a great time, YS. Our daughter and son-in-law used to live in Athens and we loved to visit.

      1. Cheers Steve. We are going to Kefalonia in the Ionian chain so hopefully hot but not too hot.

         1. Enjoy their famous meat pies!

         2. It looks as thought the heat wave in Kefalonia is tailing off so you shouldn’t suffer too much. Friends of ours who live in Spartia have had a dreadful time this summer with the constant high 30s defeating their air-con.

            We fly out at the beginning of October when the temperatures are usually pleasant. Enjoy your holiday.

            1. And from someone on the island it is still averaging 35° in Kefalonia this week – just what the doctor ordered!!😎

9. A great end to the week. It was tough but fair as far as I was concerned. I totally missed the wonderful lurker at 21a and put in “shampoo”, which held up the south west for a while. I’m not sure I would walk that far in 20 minutes but I have never timed it. Perhaps I will this afternoon. My COTD, out of many candidates, is the American having hair treatment at 19a.

   Thank you, setter for a great end to the week. Thank you, Mr. K. for the hints and pusskits.

10. A very enjoyable solve & relatively straightforward for a Friday. 13d my pick from a number of ticks.
    Thanks to the setter & to Mr K.
    Ps the Quickie pun doesn’t work for me with the cooker

    1. Yes, a river would have perhaps been better for the pun, but wasn’t Marco V a well-known sports-person impersonator way back when?

11. I thought initially that I was never going to get on with this, I finally got going in the south west and slowly made progress and completed it. Having tried to make 21a an anagram for quite some time the answer suddenly dawned on me and that will be my favourite clue for today. I liked 22d too! There is always a great sense of achievement when I finish a Friday puzzle, it has indeed been a very good week of guzzling.

    Many thanks to the setter and to Mr K for the hints and pics

12. Really liked tnis, but it did take quite along time to solve.
    Funnily enough I’ve only got a couple of ticks, one for the runner up of the day, the huge Lurker at 21a, which only revealed itself once I’d guessed the second word. But my COTD is 1d, which is exactly the sound of that heavy penny dropping!
    Many thanks whomsoever and to Mr K and his cats.

13. I dread to think how much money one would have to spend in Liberty to claim a complimentary copy of Shakespeare, but the notion rather amused me.

    Thanks to Zandio for the fairly gentle Friday challenge and to Mr K and the gang for the review.

14. I saw 9a as Dec1, being beginning of the last month, followed by a heavy weight, then reversed?

    1. Yep, me too! But it sort of works t’other way as well, I guess.

    2. Me too, but it works Mr K’s way.

15. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Mr K and the setter. Just needed help with 3d which for some reason, even with all the others complete, escaped me.

16. Hello, compiler here. Thanks very much for taking the time to solve, analyse and discuss. Always greatly appreciated.
    If you liked this one, I wonder if you might enjoy this weekend’s Sunday Toughie? Here’s a teaser:
    John’s avoiding one’s places to go! (10)
    Have a great weekend.

    1. Thanks for the heads up about Sunday Zandio, and for popping in. A great puzzle today.

17. Thank you to Zandio for the entertainment. My favourite was 9a’s “beginning of last month”, once I finally got it. I interpreted it as … oh, I see that Vince has already explained that in the time it took me write the rest of this comments.

    Other highlights included the food in 10a, 18d’s sign, 21a’s rent-a-car, 20d for North and South not indicating N and S, and 7d’s here. And I’ve learnt that I’ve been misinterpreting “tempered” all these years, thinking it meant strengthened while it’s apparently the opposite — wonder how come I never noticed from the context? Ooops.

    Thank you to Mr K for explaining 1d’s wordplay.

    1. S. I’ve always thought that tempered is a bit of a contronym (or Janus word). Tempered steel, for example. From Wiki:

       Tempering is a heat treatment technique applied to ferrous alloys, such as steel or cast iron, to achieve greater toughness by decreasing the hardness of the alloy.

       Making it softer but more tough (or strong?).

       Perhaps our resident metallurgist could explain?

       1. Ah, OK — I’ve been confusing toughness with hardness. Thanks for explaining, Jose.

          1. I’ve just checked to make sure and both the BRB and (especially) The Chambers Thesaurus confirm that temper can mean lessen, weaken, soften, etc and also toughen, strengthen, etc.

    2. Regarding tempered, how about in the context of ‘he tempered the harshness of his remark with a sweet smile’?

18. A very enjoyable end-of-week puzzle which threatened at first glance to be more of a challenge than turned out to be the case. Highlights for me were the other creatures of 17a, the exhausted traveller in 1d and Biblical event in 18d.

    Many thanks to Zandio and Mrk

19. I found this Friday puzzle one of the tougher offerings. For me, much of the parsing was hard to get or not get at all. Leads me to think this is a Zandio puzzle as I usually have troubles getting on his wavelength, especially the parsing of many of the clues.
    I’m no expert so I could be way out in left field.

    Favourites were plentiful when I finally finished puzzle. Culled down I chose 9a, 25a, 7d, 13d & 20d — with winner 13d
    25a & 22d were PDM’s when they finally clicked in.

    Thanks to Zandio & Mr K.

    (I see in scrolling through the comments before posting this that it is indeed a Zandio puzzle)

20. I found this tougher than many previous commentators but enjoyed it in a masochistic sort of way. I needed a couple of hints to get me over the finishing line, and then wondered why I had so much of a problem with them. Whilst I think that the lurker in 21a is inspired, I’m going with 14a as my cotd. Thanks to Zandio for the challenge and Mr K for the necessary hints.

21. A really good Friday puzzle. Great clues, quite tricky in places and an enjoyable solve for sure. I have ticked several, but will pick 21a as my favourite today. 3.5*/4*.

22. A great guzzle to end the week. I needed the hints to parse 12a.
    Top picks for me were 1d, 22d and 21a.
    Thanks to Mr K and Zandio.

23. Started out with panic stations this morning when my printer wasn’t working. I didn’t know how addicted I was until I started to have DTs, but my lovely neighbour came in and jiggled a few wires, and it worked! This has to be Zandio, though I admit this one made (marginally) more sense than his usual offerings, though I did need ehelp. I needed Mr. K to explain quite a few but that’s my tiny brain, nothing to do with Zandio. I liked 13d, but the fab lurker at 21a wins the blue ribbon.
    Thank you setter, Zandio?, and Mr. K for his help and the kitties, nice to get my Friday fix!

24. I started out with some misgivings, it being Friday and a Zandio, slightly alleviated by the hopeful *** rating (better than ****). First pass wasn’t terribly encouraging but then it all began to slot together. COTD to 13d. Don’t think we have anything called a 21a over here, but I did have one in England. Solved enough for the checkers to show me the way to the finish. Thanks to Zandio for being a bit kinder, and Mr K for the pictures.

25. Thanks Zandio good to see such a long lurker! Mr K love your supercat

26. After yesterday’s uphill struggle, I found this to be a fairly pleasant stroll in the park with a few tricky obstacles to overcome. I totally missed the even letter lurker in 25A but the answer had to be what it was.

    ***/*** for me and the very slick 2D is my pick of the bunch.

    Thanks to Zandio and MrK

27. As usual on Fridays I’m a long way off being able to finish this one but enjoyed the bits that I could do.
    I liked 10 and 25a and 8 and 22d. My favourite was 22d.
    Thanks to Zandio and to Mr K.

28. Oof. I found this one tough and had to give up after spending much of my free time today tackling it. Even the blogger’s hints were not helpful to me today.

    I’ve heard that the Saturday cryptic is tough, but then again I’ve heard it tends to be easy to encourage new players. Guess there’s only one way to find out.

29. Good afternoon

    What a titanic battle this turned out to be! I should have guessed I’d be crossing swords once again with the Mind of Zandio.

    Lots of instances of putting the crozzie down, going away, and picking it up again. In between completing 3 quadrants and returning to face the SE, I nipped out for a pub lunch with my daughter and my gorgeous granddaughter; so 3 pints of Salcombe Gold must have done the trick!

    Wasn’t sure of the parsing of 4d, but obvious now, looking at the hints. For those, my thanks to Mr K. COTD is a tie between 12a and 18d. My thanks to the MoZ for the challenge.

30. Got so involved that I had to rush away to book group and running the last 400 metres managed to arrive just 5 minutes late. One can just get lost in a challenging crossword and it is a joy. Later in the day had time to revisit the upper half and last 2 in were 1 across and 1 down. Favourites were 6 and 19 across and 18 d. Did not like 1 across because in my ignorance it did not come to mind as the obvious definition to rank and file but it must be so . Many thanks to our clever setter Zandio and Mr. K .

31. Great Friday challenge. A dnf due to 4d partly because I need to do other stuff this evening and became impatient.

    Thanks to all.

32. Thanks to Zandio for the puzzle and to everyone who has commented today.

33. Mr K

    If you would like an appropriate feline picture for future inclusion how would I send this to you?

    Regards.

    NAS

34. First DT I’ve done without using any reference/help sources whatsoever, therefore a superb day and a great milestone.
    A really enjoyable crossword today.
    Big Dave and all of you have provided outstanding support and enjoyment over many years – thank you.

    1. Welcome to the blog, Shaun, and well done on your achievement.

    2. Welcome from me as well, Shaun. I do hope you will comment again now that you have put your head above the parapet.
       Congratulations on your achievement – great feeling, isn’t it? 👍

35. 4*/4* ….
    liked 21A “Rent-a-car pet’s wee permeates internally – cleaner needed! (6-7)”

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