11.26, so I kept counting the squares to make sure I wasn’t doing the Quickie by mistake because for me (always make the remark with caution ’cause it may be just me) this was firmly on the easy end, with a possible sub-10 on the cards (8 minutes or so with two clues to go). Such a rarity for me was scuppered by what must be a howler at 19d, unless the setter and the editor share a dictionary the rest of us don’t have access to. Latin and French (and arguably Hebrew) turn up, but hardly so you’d notice, and I will watch with interest to see what obscurities some of you have struggled with. An oddity with this one has all the anagrams in down clues.
Definitions underlined in italics, and I continue my experiment with showing excluded letters in []. Otherwise explanations should make enough sense.
| Across | |
| 1 | Note something not intended by a learner (10) |
| ACCIDENTAL – Well. nobody intends to have an ACCIDENT, even when A L[earner]. Our answer is a musical note “a sharp, flat, or natural not in the key signature”. Possibly a right note, “but not necessarily in the right order” | |
| 6 | Promised Land lacking an amazing wedding venue (4) |
| CANA – For the Hebrews fleeing slavery in Egypt, the Promised Land was CANAAN: deduct AN and you get the town in Galilee where Jesus dramatically accelerated the wine making process despite using water only. | |
| 9 | Split — like some tennis courts (7) |
| GRASSED – Split as in informed on. Wimbledon is an example of courts remaining true to the lawn tennis ideal. | |
| 10 | Rejected rubbish had to be reduced (7) |
| REFUSED – A very ordinary word for rubbish, REFUSE, plus the reduced form of had as in he’D | |
| 12 | Rival firm getting more pruned, holding little in France (10) |
| COMPETITOR – Firm is the usual CO[mpany], MORE, when pruned, lops the E off the end, throw in PETIT (does anyone not know that’s French for little?) | |
| 13 | Woman making time to fill Christmas stocking? (3) |
| EVE – In our house, Santa came after midnight mass, so it wasn’t technically Christmas EVE, but you get the idea. | |
| 15 | London borough in distress (6) |
| HARROW – Distress as a verb. | |
| 16 | Street sellers covering area in vessels (8) |
| COASTERS – Street sellers in Petticoat Lane and similar are COSTERS. Insert A[rea] | |
| 18 | Register a loan, taking vehicle around (8) |
| CALENDAR – A plus LEND for loan (verb, not noun) surrounded by CAR, the most likely of vehicles. | |
| 20 | It’s not right for Parisians to be socially inept (6) |
| GAUCHE – Left (ie not right) for the French is GAUCHE, here applied in another example of prejudice against left-handedness. | |
| 23 | Curate’s food, say, good (in parts) (3) |
| EGG – Reference the famous Punch Cartoon first seen in 1895 and occasionally repeated. How we laughed! | |
| 24 | Home with those folk having single yen to be rich? (2,3,5) |
| IN THE MONEY – Home is IN, those people THEM, single ONE, Y[en], all respaced. | |
| 26 | A number of books — English — penned by a single German (7) |
| INTEGER – Books is/are N[ew] T[estament] add E[nglish] and surround with single I and GER[man]. Don’t lose time reminding yourself that single in German is ein. I know I did. | |
| 27 | Woman at number 13 taken in by this criminal group (7) |
| THIEVES – Fetch down the woman at 13a and surround her with THIS (in plain sight!) | |
| 28 | Celt is more than a breath of fresh air, we hear (4) |
| GAEL – Sounds like (we hear) GALE, given in understated form. | |
| 29 | Plot uneven with novel’s ending held to be ”messy” (10) |
| BEDRAGGLED – (Garden) plot is BED, uneven is RAGGED, insert the end of [nove]L | |
| Down | |
| 1 | What may be trapped in coastal garbage? (4) |
| ALGA – Seaweed hidden in coastAL GArbage. | |
| 2 | Calm disrupted by first person’s big noise (7) |
| CLAMOUR – An anagram (disrupted) of CALM plus the first person plural possessive OUR | |
| 3 | Unworthy daughter is gesturing with finger, holding dad up (13) |
| DISAPPOINTING – D[aughter] IS POINTING with the inclusion of a reversed (up in down clue) PA for dad. | |
| 4 | What could be untidy condition that’s exposed (6) |
| NUDITY – An anagram (could be) of UNTIDY. | |
| 5 | Lawn treatment needing a time to get into ground (8) |
| AERATION – Poking holes in a Wimbledon surface. A plus ERA for time plus an anagram (ground) of INTO | |
| 7 | Severe wind coming with energy (7) |
| AUSTERE – AUSTER is a south wind, to which is added E[nergy] | |
| 8 | People given messages, possibly sadder notices (10) |
| ADDRESSEES – An anagram (possibly) of SADDER plus SEES for notices. | |
| 11 | Heralding what could make air show end — fog (13) |
| FORESHADOWING – An anagram (could make) of AIR SHOW END FOG | |
| 14 | Something in sauce that is ”nautheating”? (10) |
| THICKENING – Thuffering Thuccotash! Thylvester contributeth a lithping clue! | |
| 17 | Garden feature mostly separated — blunder admitted (8) |
| PARTERRE – Most of PARTE[d] for separated with ERR for blunder inserted. | |
| 19 | Messenger given entrance into shelter (7) |
| LEGATEE – I have looked and looked, but I can’t find a definition of legatee that means someone with a message (that’s legate), and this is where I lost my chance of a sub-10. The wordplay is GATE for entrance within LEE for shelter, but the definition is plain wrong. Ed? | |
| 21 | Herb is cold when meeting the girl, nasty almost (7) |
| CHERVIL – C[old] plus HER for the girl, plus most of VIL[e] for nasty | |
| 22 | Right or wrong mark? Put off comprehending that (6) |
| DEXTER – Wrong mark is X, “comprehended” by DETER, put off. Only in comedy have I seen Roman soldiers marching to the Centurion’s “sinister dexter horribiles homunculos” but it might have happened. | |
| 25 | Guided? Not her, being well-worn, maybe (4) |
| USED – Guided is USHERED, take out HER (in plain sight) | |
Having seen Z’s header remarks while looking for the QC blog, I was expecting a bit of a breeze (a gale?), but found I wasn’t as on the wavelength as I’d hoped. No problem completing in the end, but slowed down particularly in the SE with SLOI DEXTER – where I couldn’t get defer out of my head and BEDRAGGLED. In retrospect, I was over-thinking many of the clues – when I remarked to Mr Ego about something particularly obscure, I found that vocalising the problem almost immediately sorted it. Hence LOI GAEL. It didn’t help that I was half-convinced that I’d somehow got LEGATEE wrong and there wasn’t a final E. GRASSED and HARROW were easy for this born-in-Londoner, but clearly the former’s usage is restricted to the UK and those who watched The Sweeney! Apart from the mistake, now corrected, it seems, a fun puzzle!
14:09 – First person’s for OUR seems strange, but probably isn’t. The LEGATEE had acquired its more normal (corrected?) definition by the time I got there, which was helpful.
First persons’ better?
23 mins. On the slow side, largely due to thinking the clue for THIEVES was for a woman’s name, probably Irish with IEVE in the middle. Needed the T for my LOI DEXTER.
I made pretty good speed, and put in legatee from the parsing alone. But dexter and bedraggled were really tough, and I must have spent a good five minutes on them, trying different things. I agree there were a lot of unusual and off-putting literals, but working from the cryptics gives it to you.
Time: 26 minutes
DNF
Never seen a lisp clue so managed to convince myself that a misread nautheaRting was an obscure word for lacking courage, so ‘chickening’! Chicken sauce?
Not too many problems with this, and was expecting an easy one after the heads up by Z. DEXTER was my LOI where for a while my schoolboy Latin deserted me. I didn’t have a clue about the parsing for THICKENING, but there seemed no other plausible answer. I eventually crossed the line in a respectable (for me) time of 29.36.
22:53 held up for over 5 minutes on Bedraggled and Dexter which I struggled to drag from memory despite recently listening to the excellent Elbow track Dexter and Sinister. Can’t remember seeing the “comprehended by” device before so that also threw me. Clue for legatee had been corrected by the time i did the crossword on line.
Thx Z and setter
By the time I came to this puzzle 19d had been revised, so in it went without delay. ALGA and ACCIDENTAL got me off to a good start. THICKENING went in quickly with a smile. Took auster=wind on trust. REFUSED and AERATION were late entries. Didn’t know CHERVIL so relied on the wordplay. BEDRAGGLED was LOI. 15:48. Thanks setter and Z.
14:00
Held up only by last three: GAEL, BEDRAGGLED and LOI DEXTER. Thanks
All correct in record time but I hadn’t got a clue how to parse thickening and legatee was puzzling.
At least no errors today, but Dexter took me ages to solve.
Knew Canaan but not Cana, but it was fairly obvious from -a-a.
Maybe 35 minutes with my LOI, AUSTERE, biffed right away, but then I spent another 5 minutes alphabet trawling to make sure there really was no other answer — too many one mistake DNF’s this week. Except for that everything was very easy. THICKENING definitely the COD.
19.35
Held up at the end with AUSTERE and then the simple REFUSED (spent too long trying to see the w/p rather than just clocking the definition) and finally AERATION where I knew what I wanted but couldn’t (a) spell it or (b) think of the right time
Liked DEXTER and THICKENING
Some good guesses for me, namely “thickening”, “austere” and “integer” where I was pretty certain the answers were correct, but couldn’t work out why. Now I understand, I really like “thickening” and wish I could have worked it out. Sadly DNF, because I didn’t know of Cana (although Canaan was well known to me) and I couldn’t get Nirvana out of my head for the Promised Land.
Straightforward. I wasn’t sure what LEGATEE meant so I just assumed it had to be a messenger. The fact that they changed the clue later is a clear sign it was a mistake. Wasted some time on CANA parsing “land without an” as LD. But I’ve actually been to CANA so easy once I realized what was going on. I also don’t think I knew AUSTER but I do know it Australis means south (Australia anyone?) so I assumed it must be a wind from the south, as indeed it is. DEXTER was my LOI (“right” should be underlined in the blog surely).
Busy day so visited a couple of times. thought it was reasonably quick overall except I DNF having no idea of dexter (though I should have). instead I biffed texter for no good reason than I was stuck. thanks Zabadak and setter
A good work-out, with some ingenious clues, all done in 29 minutes, about average for me. Would have been quicker had I not struggled with LEGATEE, but I eventually bunged it in anyway as nothing else seemed to fit (no correction possible for the print version). No problem about the first person in 2dn being plural. Despite living in London I do not have an instant recall of the names of the Boroughs, especially the outer ones. But HARROW finally dawned on me. I remember a local quiz-master getting a lot of flak for setting a question requiring quizzers to find a London Borough, and many participants getting grumpy when the answer turned out to be BATTERSEA, which is not a Borough!
FOI – CANA
LOI – DEXTER
COD – THICKENING
Thanks to Zabadak and other contributors.
15.51. This felt more like a Torygraph puzzle. 19d wasn’t corrected in the online version that I solved, but, I thought, what else could the answer be ?
Re “comprehending”: see the second-last line of Philip Larkin’s poem, “High Windows”: “The sun-comprehending glass”.