A couple of tricky ones, but some clever wordplay and lots of straightforward clues. I finished in good time but had a typo that I couldn’t spot for several minutes, so nul points pour moi.
| Across |
| 1 |
Fish male clerk left out for cooking (8) |
|
MACKEREL – Anagram (‘for cooking’) of MALE CLERK with one L removed |
| 5 |
Employed, but taken advantage of (4) |
|
USED – double definition |
| 8 |
Complete yet difficult progress (13) |
|
THOROUGHGOING – THO (yet) ROUGH (difficult) GOING (progress) |
| 10 |
Daggers concealed in robe lining (5) |
|
OBELI – hidden word. Obeli are the typographer’s dagger symbols |
| 11 |
Instance of former member overcome by drink (7) |
|
EXAMPLE – EX (former) MP (member) inside ALE |
| 12 |
A large tree growing in a mountainous region (6) |
|
ALPINE – A + L + PINE |
| 13 |
Business transaction restricted by one’s principles (6) |
|
IDEALS – DEAL inside I’S |
| 16 |
Girl taking a long time to produce a piece of mosaic (7) |
|
TESSERA – TESS + ERA |
| 18 |
Creature like Tarka having higher temperature in Bow? (5) |
|
OTTER – HOTTER as pronounced by a resident of Bow in the East End of London. Tarka The Otter is a book we were all made to read at school, about which I remember nothing. It was written by Henry Williamson who was a Moseleyite fascist. |
| 20 |
Flowering plant her many chums cultivated? About time (13) |
|
CHRYSANTHEMUM – anagram (‘cultivated’) of HER MANY CHUMS + T for time |
| 21 |
Island easily located by Amundsen at first? (4) |
|
ELBA – acronym |
| 22 |
Rate poet engineered for stage production (8) |
|
OPERETTA – anagram (‘engineered’) of RATE POET |
| Down |
| 1 |
Encountered crook regularly in underground (5) |
|
METRO – MET + alternate letters of cRoOk |
| 2 |
Photograph of the Spanish eleven initially plugging trophy (5-2) |
|
CLOSE-UP – LOS (‘the’ in Spanish) + E for eleven, all inside CUP |
| 3 |
Deadpan European staying in one place (11) |
|
EMOTIONLESS – E + MOTIONLESS |
| 4 |
Young bird, say, allowed around area (6) |
|
EAGLET – EG (say) + LET (allowed) around A for area |
| 6 |
Cut back on masonry initially dumped in builder’s container (5) |
|
SKIMP – M for masonry inside SKIP |
| 7 |
Go off at a tangent about son in rented accommodation (7) |
|
DIGRESS – RE (about) + S for son inside DIGS (accommodation) |
| 9 |
Relative of Shakespearean fairy in more imposing surroundings (11) |
|
GRANDMOTHER – MOTH is the Shakespearean fairy from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, placed inside GRANDER |
| 12 |
What broadcasters may use in traffic tailback, do we hear? (7) |
|
AUTOCUE – sounds like Auto Queue |
| 14 |
Try a casual worker in borders of Tibet (7) |
|
ATTEMPT – A + TEMP (casual worker) inside T[ibe]T |
| 15 |
Quick snooze set up worker in close-fitting headgear (6) |
|
CATNAP – ANT backwards inside CAP |
| 17 |
Do away with uncultivated vegetation (5) |
|
SCRUB – double definition |
| 19 |
Posh doctor involved in Royal Academy dance (5) |
|
RUMBA – U (posh, according to Nancy Mitford) + MB inside RA |
Despite a worryingly slow start I managed to complete all in about 19 minutes. However I wrote in TESSALA instead of TESSERA which held me up significantly with my LOI, EMOTIONLESS, and so earned me 1 pinkie. Doh! (That said, I think TESSALA does parse even though it’s wrong so I’m not too downhearted.)
So not a brilliant week for me thus far. Let’s see how tomorrow pans out.
Thanks to Orpheus for a great QC and to the ever reliable Curarist for the blog.
How does TESSALA parse?
Girl (TESS) taking a long (AL) time to produce a (A) piece of mosaic? (OK – there’s the small matter of accounting for ‘time’ but when one is trying to avoid the SCC it is easy to overlook.)
Since I first asked I’ve discovered TESSALA isn’t a word. At least the online dictionaries don’t have it but they do have “tessella” which is a “small tessera”. I remember doing tessellation in primary school.
Is l=long valid? I can’t think of anywhere I’ve seen it although l=length is used in mathematics but they’re subtly different.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a kinder solve. Are you back to parkrun?
I have to admit by being led there by ‘tesselate’ in my haste.
Yes, back to Parkrun tomorrow, weather permitting!
go to parkrun whatever the weather!
L for long is pretty standard in clothes fitting
Aha – thank-you.
Have you seen it used or do setters simply tend to default to Large or 50 for L?
I think “Hardy’s girl” would’ve been kinder here, given the obscure answer. I’d never have got it without the checkers!
15 minutes, so right on the outermost limit of my revised target time.
THOROUGHGOING was my LOI, late in arriving because I completely missed the wordplay (even after solving) and concluded it was probably an ‘all-in-one’.
I was pleased to have all the building blocks and some checkers to construct CHRYSANTHEMUM correctly.
Tarka the OTTER was on our study list at school and a copy sat in my classroom desk for at least a year, but somehow I seem to have got away with never reading it or pretending to have studied it. Perhaps it had been an option that the teacher decided to swap at some point and we studied something else. Now I come to think of it The Overloaded Ark by Gerald Durrell who came up in the Jumbo I blogged most recently was in the same category of worthy books about animals that we were supposed to study but never got round to.
We had The Overloaded Ark in class too, but I remember it as being hilarious, and I read ahead of the lessons and subsequently searched out Gerald Durrell’s entire oeuvre. Never got around to Lawrence Durrell, though.
I never found out. More interested in James Bond by that time!
Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet is quite the achievement, difficult but very rewarding. His travel writing around the Mediterranean-Greek islands and Provence mainly- is well worth the effort too. I would hesitate to recommend his Avignon Quintet- beautiful sections but overall quite the puzzle!
I had a chicken tarka last night, it’s like a chicken tikka but ‘otter.
Don’t think I knew THOROUGHGOING was a word and it was tough parsing and wasn’t sure of TESSERA either but once I trimmed TESSA I was confident. Ended up all green in 15 but all the long ones caused me bother – even GRANDMOTHER. Spotted ‘motionless’ quickly, found it a letter short and didn’t add an e at the front for ages.,
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Was that Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde or all your own work? 😊
Funny! Though my ability to retell the joke is somewhat wanting, when my other half gagged at the comment. I had to explain it wasn’t really otter.
Darn it, I was hoping to be the first to do that gag!
🤣🤣🤣 Do you remember Tarka Dal and Bhindi Bhaji – representatives of the Vindaloovians in Red Dwarf?
Sorry hard to type while crying with laughter about the Chicken Tarka!
Great puzzle. NHO obeli but well clued. A misread of the clue for rumba had us wondering who the POLISH Doctor Umb was! Oops
As is often the case COD to LOI Autocue took some time for the clanging PDM by Mrs RH. All done in 26.20
Thanks Orpheus and curatist for parsing of thoroughgoing, is tho=yet a common usage?
Also thanks Mendesest, you made our day 😀
. . .if you think the setters are restricted to common usage, you are going to be sorely disappointed
… indeed. I think I worded that badly. What I meant to say was is that a device often used by setters as we’ve not seen it before.
Made quick progress through this but was careful to double check the fodder whilst spelling CHRYSANTEMUM as I felt it needed an extra ‘a’ and no ‘e’. I’ve not read AMSND so hadn’t heard of the fairly but the answer was clear which just left LOI THOROUGHGOING which took some parsing.
I bumped into a Tarka this morning, in this case it’s a dog who’s life goal seems to be to kill mine – fortunately today he was on his lead when we met.
Finished in 5.24 with COD to AUTOCUE.
Thanks to Curarist
(CHRYSANTHEMUM!)
15 minutes. Able was I ere I saw … AUTOCUE, a 5 minute breezeblock for my LOI. Otherwise not too difficult though I needed the crossing O from OTTER to be sure the ‘Shakespearean fairy’ in 9d wasn’t an admittedly unlikely “fath”.
Thanks to Curarist and Orpheus
DNF
Breezeblocked at the end on AUTOCUE. Once I saw ARTICLE fits, the brain cells froze. Nice clue. Also liked THOROUGHGOING.
Thanks Orpheus and Curarist
Yes, I was also stuck for too long on ARTICLE. That was after I’d previously been stuck on ATTACHE.
Exactly what happened here too with article and attaché
Another one here, DNF due to AUTOCUE. I found it to be a bit of a strange puzzle, with the top half flying in and the bottom half being a slog.
4:00. LOI IDEALS. I liked EXAMPLE the best from the puzzle, but chicken tarka better. Thanks Orpheus and Curarist (and Mendesest).
I thought this was a fairly easy offering from Orpheus which I managed to make a mess of all by myself. All filled in under 8 but there was an error – turned out I had stupidly put shrub instead of SCRUB. Doh! So that’s a DNF, thanks setter and curarist
Well, I finished, but it took a while. 28.44.
NHO OBELI.
VHO TESSERA and THOROUGHGOING.
Oh well.
Happy Friday. Pi
DNF. Another ARTICLE, despite not being convinced I could parse it – I reckoned an ARTIC was an articulated lorry somehow causing the traffic jam…
Thanks Orpheus and Curarist.
snap
Finally corrected DNF at 25:14 after bunging in article and attache instead of AUTOCUE. Had got down to that at 15mins and then breezeblocked.
NHO OBELI or MOTH. THOROUGHGOING may have come up before but I certainly didn’t remember it and was put off by the spelling of EAGLET where the clue seems incorrect about where to put the A.
There were some lovely clues down in the SE in ATTEMPT/RUMBA/CATNAP but I never got a feeling of confidence (and therefore enjoyment) with needing to get the pen&paper out for anagrams for words like CHRYSANTHEMUM and OPERETTA. Then you get a clue like Tarka=OTTER where I barely glanced at the 2nd half but I doubt anyone under 30 would know.
Have a good weekend if you’re not back tomorrow. I’m off to run hills 🤪
4:32 but ruined by a fat-thumbed METTO.
Thanks Curarist and Orpheus. And Mendesest for the laugh!
A very nicely balanced puzzle, done in 12 minutes. I too wondered about the possibility of a fairy called fath before Tarka the Curry (as the book will now be renamed in the Statherby household) put me right, and I DK Obeli (or indeed Obelus) but the hidden was not hard to spot. Otherwise few hold-ups until my LOI Emotionless which threatened to breezeblock me until a flash of inspiration helped me home.
Chrysanthemum is a tremendous anagram but I suspect I will not be alone in biffing it (I mean, how many common flowers with 13 letters are there?) and then checking all the letters were there, rather than solving it as an anagram.
Many thanks Curarist for the blog
Cedric
11:38 so just outside the target of 60 mins for the 5 weekday puzzles.
Never really knew that THOROUGHGOING was a single word, and left the last five letters blank for ages after considering BRED and FARE.
LOI was AUTOCUE because I had banged in CUBA for a four letter island ending in BA. I am sure “easily located” could mean “cub” in 1930s public school slang. “I say, Bunter, have you cubbed my cricket bat”.
Was worried about those fairies, couldn’t remember them. Peachbottom or something.
COD DIGRESS. smooth surface.
14 mins
Thought of Oberon, Titania, and Puck for the fairy.
Got stuck on last 2. Tessera and LOI autocue are difficult intersecting clues. Thought of article but couldn’t parse so did an alpha trawl.
COD grandmother/grandpucker
4:17
Bifftastic grid – luckily have come across TESSERA before, however I didn’t know the Shakespearean fairy (I have seen AMND but that must have been thirty years ago – never read it). No probs with either CHRYSANTHEMUM bunged in from a cursory look at the anagrist, nor with THROUGHGOING from six of the seven checkers. LOI was AUTOCUE – I hadn’t been able to get ATTACHE, which fit the checkers, out of my head, so had to reverse out of that and as soon as I thought of AUTO, in it went.
Thanks Orpheus and Curarist
12/24. Happy with half.
Tarka was one of the defining books of my childhood. I absolutely loved it; still do; and have somehow acquired numerous copies, including a couple of first editions. It won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927, has never been out of print and has been highly influential for its accurate portrayal of animal life without either sentimentality or anthropomorphism. I knew nothing of Williamson’s politics and am sad to learn of them.
Fast through till hitting the traffic jam, where I too had immense mental struggles to see past first “article” and then “attache”. Fortunately U was next in the trawl.
Really good puzzle, even though having to spell CHRYSANTHEMUM always reminds me of childhood spelling bees and brings me out in a cold sweat! Finished in 08:19 for an OK Day.
Many thanks Orpheus and Curarist.
Templar
Likewise regarding his politics. No excuse, but it seems he had a rough WW1
So did my grandad, but he wasn’t a fascist.
I found this really heavy going. All but one eventually in 25 minutes and I didn’t want to sit thinking for the next few hours so rested on what I had done.
Made good time today, despite being stuck on LOI AUTOCUE for a while. ARTICLE and ATTACHE were considered and discarded, and I had to ignore the grid and crossers and concentrate on the clue to get the answer, as those two words kept swimming up into my consciousness and blocking any attempt to get the correct answer!
I liked MACKEREL, NHO OBELI or MOTH, but luckily that was not a problem.
4:29
A steady solve, no real problems, although NHO OBELI. LOI AUTOCUE – just didn’t see it at first.
11 minutes but with a troubling unparsed ARTICLE.
I decided to look again and it took me two more minutes to find AUTOCUE, very clever and my COD. Time well spent.
I did not pause to parse the flower; as noted above, had to be.
An enjoyable puzzle. OBELI common in crosswords. TESSERA quite tricky, but I knew it once I’d found it.
Good puzzle.
David
Started with 1d, Metro, which then made 1ac obvious, though I did hesitate over the spelling (just the one ‘a’, you say . . .hmm). After that, a fairly steady solve down to my last pair in the SE corner, the overlapping (as if!) Tessera/Catnip. A timely adjustment to the relevant end of 15d produced Catnap, and Tessera followed immediately thereafter, for an 18min finish. CoD to 7d, Digress, a nose ahead of Attempt. Invariant
Not too many problems with this one, crossing the line in 8.19. Dashed in the plant at 20ac without fully checking the anagram, and initially ended it NUM instead of MUM. Solving 14dn automatically corrected the error.
Total time for the week was 43.08, giving me a daily average of 8.38. So all in all a good week for me with only one solve twenty or so seconds outside my target time.
Not to difficult, though I needed the orange one’s help with 8a, (though he now has a large black smudge on his forehead, which he won’t let me clean off – been hiding under cars again methinks!)
When trying to spell the flower at 20a, I always think of the lyrics in Benny Hill’s song, Garden of Love:
… Your mother and your cousin Chris, they often used to come
So, in their honour, I have raised a nice chrys-an’-the-mum…
24:46
My verdict: 👍
Pumpa’s verdict: 😸
Well I made heavy weather of this but did eventually cross the line all correct. With hindsight nothing was too tricky but really wasn’t on Orpheus’ wavelength. Tarka was on our school reading list too. Can’t remember whether I enjoyed it or not – seems a rather long time ago! Knew TESSERA and OBELI from previous cryptic crosswords. Breezeblock on LOI THOROUGHGOING and not convinced it was actually a word. COD to AUTOCUE (love a homophone). Many thanks C.
I solved a good number of clues on first read through but was then slow filling in the gaps, all of which led to a completion time of 20 mins. I didn’t stop to parse THOROUGHGOING and couldn’t parse EAGLET but otherwise all good. Remembered OBELI and TESSERA, probably from other cryptics and I had read Tarka the Otter, albeit a very long time ago. I had to check off the letters in the anagrist to ensure that I spelled CHRYSANTHEMUM correctly.
FOI – 5ac USED
LOI – 4dn EAGLET
COD – 13dn AUTOCUE
Thanks to Orpheus and Curarist
Well, I started these infernal QCs on 1st June 2020 – No. 1625 (Joker), which ended up as a DNF after more than hour with seven clues unsolved – and today marks my 1,000th consecutive puzzle. Strangely, my most recent DNF (just a couple of days ago), was also a Joker, although with only two clues unsolved on that occasion. 25,015 clues later, I wrote in AUTOCUE and put down my pencil hugely relieved not to have to chase times any more. By maintaining a comprehensive record of my progress (or otherwise) I inadvertently hung a millstone around my neck, as I found myself constantly chasing the next target and feeling awful when things were going wrong. From tomorrow, the QC will be tackled purely for fun and I may even switch to doing it electronically, sometimes.
Today, I started with USED and OBELI (even though it was a NHO) and I made steady progress until about the half-dozen clues to go point. Things then got rather sticky with THOROUGHGOING, EMOTIONLESS, CLOSE-UP and GRANDMOTHER all proving very difficult.
My L2I were EAGLET (Is it really a word?) and AUTOCUE, but only after forcing ATTACHÉ and ARTICLE out of the front of my brain as I knew they didn’t parse.
Time = 28 minutes.
Many thanks to Orpheus and Curarist.
P.S. I will come back later with some stats from my 1,000 QCs.
Congratulations. Amazing achievement.
Well done on your milestone!
In my experience it’s very liberating solving for fun only so would highly recommend 😃
Wow, quite the journey- very pleased for you!
Blimey! Those are some staggering stats. Well done!
I have a lot of catching up to do…
Very wise. The time taken has always been an additional factor of comparison to give an idea of whether the solve was ‘on form’ or not. Never reliable – as the wavelength/gk thing is very variable – well, I suppose the more you know, the less variable it is. I had to rewrite that last sentence to avoid the use of the term ‘random’ which would have caused a deal of confusion. Congratulations on your perseverance, progress and always enjoyable posts. Have fun! Regards to Mrs R.
Well done MrRandom – I think you probably inspired me to keep a spreadsheet of times and I know what you mean about it becoming a millstone. Every so often, I step back and refocus – recording time needs to be about keeping a record of how I’m progressing rather than a target to be broken. I look forward to hearing your stats.
As promised earlier, here are some headline stats from my first 1,000 QCs. They were all solved in chronological order, on paper, alone and without aids.
No. Fully solved vs DNFs:
1st 100: 47-53
2nd 100: 62-38
5th 100: 83-17
10th 100: 94-6
Overall: 790-210
Median outcome:
1st 100: DNF (1 clue unsolved)
2nd 100: 55 mins
5th 100: 39 mins
10th 100: 30 mins
Overall: 38 mins
No. <20 mins: 59 (SCC escapes)
20-39 mins: 457
40-59 mins: 226
60+ mins: 48
No. DNFs: 210
PB = 11 mins (achieved only once)
PW = DNF, 12 clues unsolved, 60 mins
Longest successful solve = 96 mins
Some setter-specific comments to follow.
Classic steep learning curve – improved by 35% in first 500; only 11% in the next 500.
I once saw it said that you can learn 95% of a language within 6mths with good exposure to it but it takes 20yrs to learn the remaining 5%. And of course with the QC, you’re only getting 5-6 shots per week.
And some final stats from my first 1,000 QCs ….
I created a ‘Coefficient of Perceived Difficultness’ (my label) which tracked the level of the challenge posed by each setter and by each day of the week, as this has been debated from time to time.
My CoPD ranked the main setters as follows:
Group A (most challenging): Teazel, Wurm, Izetti, Orpheus, Joker, Tracy
Group B (quite challenging): Pedro, Jalna, Felix
Group C (relatively comfortable): Hurley, Mara, Breadman, Oink
Group D (borderline easy): Trelawney
And by the day of the week ….
Most challenging: Friday
Average difficulty: Tues./Wed./Thurs.
Least challenging: Monday
(Insufficient data: Saturday)
That’s it! Many thanks to The Times puzzle editors, the setters, the blogging team and everyone who dares to post their comments here.
Well done Mr R!
I had hoped your stats would tell us how many times you have triumphed over Mrs R! 🤣🤣
25 minutes – pleasant steady solve. NHO TESSERA but got a niece called Tess so that helped! Liked AUTOCUE – very clever.
Thank you Orpheus and Curarist.
DNF. Couldn’t get to AUTOCUE as once I thought article or attache my brain stopped searching. I also thought scrap or strip first for SCRUB but getting ELBA put me right there. I’m a big Tarka the Otter fan, done book and movie each several times. Henry Williamson’s Salar the Salmon is a fascinating study, in many ways better than Tarka. I think the fact that Tarka involves people and dogs(instead of just undersea life) makes it much more popular.
Another missed chance 🙄 I reached a point with ARTICLE/ATTACHE where I bunged them in because I didn’t want to find out after half an hour of alphabet trawling that it was one of those and I’d just not understood the homophone or definition. That was exacerbated by there being other stuff present that I’ve NHO. Screw the SCC, we should go to the pub to drown sorrows …
Great idea- hmm, where’s a good pub halfway to meet up at, maybe Greenland?
😀😀😀
Ye Olde George Inn, Christchurch?
Yes, of course, why not take the more interesting route around the globe?
8:38, with more than a minute spent on my LOI – the same breezeblock as many others! Otherwise I thought this was a nice puzzle, not too hard, with some entertaining surfaces. I liked GRANDMOTHER, AUTOCUE and ALPINE. It never ceases to amaze me how many ways setters seem to clue CRYSANTHEMUM.
No problem with the Shakespearian fairy – we did AMND at school, and I’ve seen a few productions since – very popular with the summer outdoor theatre groups. We also read My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell for a set text – probably my desert island book!
FOI Mackerel LOI Autocue COD Example – that made me chuckle and reminded me of the old Private Eye usage of ‘tired and emotional’ for inebriated. If I remember rightly it was first used to describe an MP (George Brown?) in the 60s.
Thanks Orpheus and Curarist
All correct but struggled to get going and had to start at the bottom and work up. Don’t know why I didn’t solve MACKEREL straight away. FOI ELBA! Biffed hidden NHO OBELI.
Liked AUTOCUE, METRO, EMOTIONLESS, SKIMP, DIGRESS.
No problem with TESSERA. Did remember Moth after biffing GRANDMOTHER.
As I have pompously remarked before, Nancy would never have used the word ‘posh’. But I do find ‘U’ a help in Crosswordland.
Thanks vm for blog, Curarist.
No, posh was very non-U, wasn’t it 😅😅
At first this felt like it was going to be hard going and, left to my own devices, it probably would have been. Thanks to Mrs T for spotting AUTOCUE (for me, pipping 8a for COD) quickly whilst I was still struggling to justify ATTACHE. LOI EMOTIONLESS prevented an uncommon sub 10 finish. Still, very happy with 10:26 on a, without any doubt, ‘two heads are better than one’ day.
Started with OBELI. Didn’t know the fairy but had enough crossers to biff GRANDMOTHER. Was also held up by ARTICLE, but worried at it until I got something that parsed, AUTOCUE. RUMBA was LOI. 7:28. Thanks Orpheus and Curarist.
DNF. I couldn’t get AUTOCUE because I didn’t have the T from TESSERA. I came up with miSSERA and laSSERA as possibles for the unknown mosaic. There were other holdups too….GOING and IDEALS.
12.02 I made a meal of this. I quickly discounted THOROUGHGOING because the G from EAGLET was in the wrong place for the initial G of GOING. But it’s the other G! Transposing the YS in CHRYSANTHEMUM made EMOTIONLESS impossible. AMND was my O-level play but I’d forgotten all about Moth until I eventually biffed GRANDMOTHER. But it sorted itself out and I finished up with AUTOCUE, ELBA and SCRUB. Thanks Curarist and Orpheus.
All correct, but slowed by obsession with ARTIC- LE, but saw the light in the end. Further obsession with puck the fairy
Helped by seeing the long-named flower recently in a crossword, I got through this in a zippy 8:50. It seems I managed to avoid some of the troubles mentioned above. For the elderly relative, I guessed ‘FATH’ was less likely than ‘MOTH’. Thanks for the blog.
19:32
Just inside target. Definitely some chewier ones here. Wasn’t sure of TESSERA and took ages to get CLOSE-UP and THOROUGH GOING. LOI IDEALS.
Defeated by Thoroughgoing despite all the checkers telling me it was Thorough. Reading the posts some similar experiences, unusually a lot of well reasoned biffs were wrong.
Shocked and amazed that the well used hod was replaced with skip.
Enjoyable puzzle thank you Orpheus and the lively blog from Cuarist
Couldn’t get my mind past article / attache so gave up, went for a walk. Sat down with a cup of tea on return and AUTOCUE jumped straight out at me! I’m going to give it my COD as it was a really nice clue.
Thanks Curarist and Orpheus.
16 minutes (but I’m calling it a DNF)*
Took ages to get MACKEREL, 3dn and 8ac. Can’t say I was overly happy with my performance, and got just two on the Quintagram. Glass half empty sort of day.
Some SCC escapes this week, but none of them anything to get excited about. Still waiting for that moment when the fog burns back and all becomes clear (fat chance!).
* When I checked the Snitch earlier today, I accidentally saw TESS in the blog. I’m not convinced that I would have got this otherwise (I might just as easily have gone for MISS), and it gave me the T in AUTOCUE. On reflection, I’m not counting this as an SCC escape. I’m calling it a DNF. That makes it another week of failure 😞. My ability to muck it up for myself never ceases to amaze.
Thanks for the blog Curarist.
16:53 here. Similar comments to others, with AUTOCUE the LOI after the penny dropped with a clang. Quite apt today, reading the news about 10 miles of the M25 being closed all weekend.
Thanks to Curarist and Orpheus.
29 mins…
A bit late writing this as I’m in London for the weekend. I thought this was going to be fiendishly difficult at first, but I managed to grind my way through each clue to finish just before my cut off.
FOI – 1dn “Metro”
LOI – 12dn “Autocue”
COD – 12dn “Autocue”
Thanks as usual!