Not too hard, with a good range of clue types. Not everyone will have heard of 13d, but the wordplay is clear enough. 5m 30s for me
| Across |
| 1 |
Two days in A&E with another one tacked on (5) |
|
ADDED – 2 x D for day inside A + E with another D at the end |
| 7 |
Strange seeing OAP spying (9) |
|
ESPIONAGE – anagram (‘strange’) of SEEING OAP |
| 9 |
Board needing a “yes” from Paris and Berlin (5) |
|
OUIJA – Yes in French and German |
| 10 |
Speaker at end of month will be a painter (9) |
|
DECORATOR – ORATOR at the end of DEC |
| 11 |
Large ducks in the ladies perhaps (3) |
|
LOO – L + O + O |
| 12 |
Completed film a step too far? (9) |
|
OVERSHOOT – OVER (completed) + FILM (shoot, verb). I chewed on this a bit thinking the answer was a verb, in which case the ‘a’ in the definition is a bit redundant, but I think it works as a noun. |
| 14 |
New chair isn’t a religious person (9) |
|
CHRISTIAN – anagram (‘new’) of CHAIR ISN’T |
| 16 |
Idiot cancelled having heart transplant (3) |
|
OAF – OFF means cancelled, change the ‘heart’ to an A |
| 18 |
Tossing and turning, unlike princess awakened by a kiss? (9) |
|
SLEEPLESS – I suppose this is a double definition of sorts |
| 20 |
Suffer tucking into certain curries? (5) |
|
INCUR – hidden word |
| 21 |
Friendship to influence half of nation (9) |
|
AFFECTION – AFFECT (influence) + [nat]ION |
| 22 |
Frosty setter I start to dislike (5) |
|
GELID – GEL is a ‘setter’, i.e. it sets. Add I + D[islike] |
| Down |
| 1 |
Unscrupulous US city travellers heading north (6) |
|
AMORAL – LA ROMA backwards |
| 2 |
Work on kitchen renovation? I’m not helping! (2-2-8) |
|
DO-IT-YOURSELF – self-explanatory |
| 3 |
Dad loses out, a complete failure (4,4) |
|
DEAD LOSS – anagram (‘out’) of DAD LOSES |
| 4 |
Geronimo, say, quickly capturing hearts (6) |
|
APACHE – APACE with H added. The practice of shouting ‘Geronimo’ when jumping from a great height originated by US army paratroopers in WW2, inspired by a 1939 film of the same name. |
| 5 |
Animal suffered, by all accounts (4) |
|
BOAR – sounds like BORE |
| 6 |
Clandestine group surrounding English king (6) |
|
SECRET – SET outside E + CR (Currently HM the K) |
| 8 |
Very large Mail cartoons reproduced (12) |
|
ASTRONOMICAL – anagram (‘reproduced’) of MAIL CARTOONS |
| 13 |
Turn informer twice in NY prison (4,4) |
|
SING SING – self explanatory provided you’ve heard of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. |
| 14 |
Accost ’Arry, protecting fellow actor (2-4) |
|
CO-STAR – hidden word |
| 15 |
Son abandoning extremely cold region for a warmer one? (6) |
|
IBERIA – SIBERIA minus S for son |
| 17 |
Unfinished state leaving you red-faced (6) |
|
FLORID – FLORIDA without the last letter |
| 19 |
Treaty in the bag, one might say (4) |
|
PACT – sounds like PACKED |
Each of the first three dropped in but then only three more to give six on the first passnof ac.rosses. Struggled to unravel ASTRONOMICAL and then took a while to convince myself that suffered means BORE. Good one. All green in 13.
11 minutes, so a little slow considering I had no difficulties other than looking twice at OVERSHOOT and coming to the same conclusions as our blogger.
BOAR is our signature piggy reference of course.
I wrestled with GELID for a while but got there in the end. A smooth and enjoyable solve at my usual leisurely pace.
7.44, all good, thanks Oink and Curarist, enjoyable puzzle.
A solve of two halves for me. The top flew in but the bottom put up a lot more resistance leaving me with a slightly under average time.
FLORID, GELID and IBERIA were my major sticking points which was frustrating as none of them were particularly difficult and the last of them is a bit of a chestnut.
Finished in 7.35.
Thanks to Curarist for the blog and Oink for the entertaining puzzle
Exactly our experience
13 minutes
first time comment, got OVERSHOOT straight away. in engineering it is a noun describing a feature that goes above the required range during start-up. if a furnace gets too hot it has overshoot.
for the rest, steady, not hard.
Welcome!
Hello! And a good time to boot.
Welcome to the club. And please make sure you comment on tomorrow’s Quickie. A lot of people don’t realise that we bloggers don’t get paid if we don’t attract the required number of comments!
you on duty tomorrow galspray?
Yes if I sober up in time.
Downing a couple with the All Blacks?
Yes, my royalty cheques keep flowing in…
May I suggest some burner accounts and posting that “the QC is getting harder” …
All done in 18.45 with the right hand side taking a while to unravel. LOI Gelid was NHO for me but as we trawled through the missing vowels it rang a bell with Mrs RH.
Iberia took a while too as convinced it must start ice until the PDM.
Thanks Curarist and Oink, there’s always a cheer here when we find the piggy answer😀
Yes we shared a preference for the LH side. Amused you can’t write RH side due to confusion with your username!
6.34 WOF
Forgot to do BOAR having stared at the clever F__R_D assuming the penultimate letter was an E, then hastily pressing “go” when the penny dropped.
Took a while to get a foothold but the grid filled up once I did in another excellent Oink puzzle.
Thanks Curarist.
More straightforward than usual from our porcine pal, and rattled off in two passes, all the Down clues falling in line on the first.
FOI ADDED
LOI GELID
COD DEAD LOSS
TIME 3:27
19:37
Just inside target. I usually speed through the east answers and get stuck on the last few. Today I had 6 to go at the 19 minute mark but as the checkers went in the answers became obvious and the last few flew in. LOI IBERIA.
Finished and enjoyed. Started with a smile at OUIJA then skipped about solving fairly steadily, but was a little dim about e.g. ADDED and BOAR (!)
GELID had to be. LOI IBERIA.
Liked many inc DIY, FLORID, APACHE.
Couldn’t parse OAF, dim again.
Thanks vm, Curarist.
A steady solve although ASTRONOMICAL was a bit slow to construct from the anagrist. The SE was slower but I finished just inside 20 mins.
Belatedly, yesterday’s Bjorn was great fun and I look forward to his next puzzle.
12:33
Par for the course. Didn’t really like sleepless/princess. Struggled with florid, decorator, apache, boar, and LOI amoral (having qui = yes didn’t help). More coffee!
COD christian.
In Sleeping Beauty, the Princess was awakened by a kiss and is therefore no longer sleeping thus is sleepless !
I get that but it’s a bit meh!
Gives Mid vibes (I’ve been reading articles on Gen Z lingo)
So many were friendly and fun that it was annoying to be left with so many undone.
As you say, NHO Sing Sing (glad to assure you all) but it had to be. Only just HO ouija, no idea what it was, but lovely.
I did think of idiot = OAF, also cancelled = OFF, but surely the heart (F) is in no sense ‘transplanted’. Where do we get A from, please?
NHO GELID or Geronimo (and vague as to what an APACHE is – in fact still vague – more US culture – what is it?).
Is red-faced FLORID? – really?! NHO that. Thank you, Curarist – and (later) thank you, Invariant.
All in all, managed the LH half but not much of the RH.
Cancelled = Off, replace the middle (heart) ‘f’ with another letter (‘a’, in this case) to get Oaf.
Apache are one of the Native American tribes (Sioux, Cherokee etc)
A florid complexion
I’m not a fan of this type of clue, it is unsatisfying to have a letter that could be anything.
Ah – thank you for your sympathy!
maybe the clue should have been’ having a heart transplant’!
10:45
Wasted time on 22a thinking “setter” would be ME or I. Needed the initial G to put me on the right track.
Thanks Oink and Curarist
10 minutes, but felt like longer as I never really established a rhythm. BOAR was put in mainly because the puzzle was by Oink, as like Mendesest I needed a moment or two to convince myself that bore = suffered, and GELID was only VHO but went in trusting the wordplay.
I’m always uncertain with clues like OAF – one saw OFF, and worked out that the middle letter was to be changed, but there is no hint that it is changed into an A specifically. Fortunately not many options here, but it seemed vaguely unsatisfying.
Thank you Curarist for the blog
Cedric
A straightforward top to bottom sub-20 solve, with just the Iberia(n) chestnut causing problems. I spent quite some time trying to remove an ‘s’ from a word beginning with Ice, before coming to my senses(🙄). Gelid looked a bit odd as well, but the clue’s instructions were clear enough. CoD to the nicely hidden cockney Co-star (that rules out Dick Van Dyke, then). Invariant
Before I had any checkers I wrestled with removing “Ant” from Antarctic – under some illusion that the North Pole was warmer than the South.
You weren’t the only one! I’d forgotten that misstep.
Another DNF, but self-inflicted this time. I reached my final clue shortly after entering the SCC and, as I’d parsed it correctly, I should have found it in a matter of seconds. Nearly 15 minutes later, however, neither FLORID nor FLORIDa had come to mind, so I threw in the towel knowing that FLaReD was wrong. How is it possible to to have a mental block for so long over such simple words?
Many thanks to Oink and Curarist
P.S. I have been so disillusioned by my frequency of DNFs and slow times over the past 2-3 months that I have deleted all of my records. At least I won’t have to add today’s embarrassment, I suppose.
I think the assumption that it ended ED made it difficult for me too.
How wise!
A nice quick end to the week as I do the print version. NHO GELID, but the clueing made it the obvious choice. COD IBERIA.
8:02.
Finally a fast one. Good range of clues but nothing too hard, LOI SECRET.
Well beaten by the 15×15 today. They have huge variability over there as well, today’s Snitch was double yesterdays, meaning it took everyone twice as long on average.
In my ability to get into the 15×15 from the QC I feel a bit like one of those teams destined forever to hover between the Premier League and the Championship, looking at you Norwich or West Brom.
12:51 for the solve! Last four minutes spent unravelling ASTRONOMICAL to then get the second half of OVERSHOOT and GELID (NHO). If it hadn’t been Oink, I doubt I’d have got BOAR.
I first thought Hart (Hurt?).
You may have been living among Canadians too long if you think hart and hurt sound the same 😉
Anyway, how did you do timewise? You’ve been solving well this week despite the puzzles continuing to be tougher.
Yes, getting through most lately in decent times. This was 10.28. If I can concentrate without distractions- TV, music, conversations etc- I can usually come through unscathed. Have a good weekend!
Well done, another fab time.
This just came up in my Youtube feed and I thought of you .. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9bTYa7mquU
Excellent- I think Point Break provides a lesson for us in our quest to improve our cryptic solving skills. Johnny Utah was such a crappy surfer at first but through perseverance finally learned to master the waves!
Done in 11 minutes with LOI FLORID -was not sure what meaning of State was required.
I too had quite a long think about OVERSHOOT.
A nice puzzle. COD to IBERIA, chestnut or not.
David
Finished correctly in 35 minutes. Hooray !
A cheering result after yesterday’s disaster. I always though Borg was a ruthless player. But maybe Oink is now a friendly little porker.
Gelid is a new one for me. How to put this word into a sentence ? Possibly : “Do you like gelid eels ?”.
Did not know that Geronimo was an Apache. I do now. Sitting bull was a contemporary but he was not Apach on him.
5 down : these porcine references are getting a bit of a boar.
Well done, Mr K! Great puns.
Breeze-blocked by OVERSHOOT but got there eventually. Everything else went in easily enough although NHO SING SING or GELID. Luckily had seen OUIJA a couple of times fairly recently. Thought the definition in DO-IT-YOURSELF was ‘I’m not helping!’ or that it was maybe a DD? Sometimes don’t understand the distinctions… sure I will be enlightened! Enjoyable. Thanks C.
Yep, it’s a double def.
Many thanks galspray
I’m rather glad that the only word I didn’t know, GELID, was as the bottom of the grid and could be constructed from checkers and wordplay. I messed up on the CHRISTIAN clue where I was looking for a non-religious person but SING SING was a write in. From ESPIONAGE to GELID in 7:03.
Yes, I also looked for a non-religous person and wasted time trying to fit ANTICHRIST into the available squares.
Ha ha. Love it. I started off typing in ANTI as well.
Pretty straightforward. I missed the Oink piggy ref Boar at 5d, and for some reason 15d (s)Iberia didn’t come to me for a minute. Liked 4d Apache/Geronimo.
17:43 which I think is my fastest so far. Like others, GELID only vaguely rang a bell so held me up. I also struggled to parse OAF as it doesn’t directly clue an “A”.
The avatar has landed! Well done.
Nice avatar! Now come on, @andyf.
Well you did nudge me so I had to oblige 🙂
6,46 but finger trouble turned my DIY into DO IJ Y due to OUJAA. Drat! Thanks Oink and Curarist.
Solving at a keyboard today instead of pecking away at my phone screen – I don’t know if it’s just psychological but I always seem to go faster with a keyboard.
Excellent puzzle from Oink as usual, and I really enjoyed it. OUIJA is probably a chestnut but it made me chuckle; COD CHRISTIAN was a clever piece of deception to make you think you’re looking for an atheist; DIY was very good too. GELID went in with crossed fingers, NHO.
All done in a rapid (for me) 05:14. Many thanks Oink and Curarist.
It’s definitely not psychological. I can easily double my time on a phone solve but I take comfort in the fact that my ineptness on the phone just means I pay little attention to it. I don’t think you have that luxury in your profession. My lawyer daughter has two phones on the go at all times (work and personal). Last month a cyclist snatched her work phone from her hand and she was so bereft that she decided to run after him…..obviously didn’t catch him.
A nice mix of clues today after a good day yesterday. LOI was Florida and NHO Gelid but got it from the checkers. Thanks to Oink and Curarist and have a good weekend everyone.
Found this a canter finishing in 6.49. Only one which caused pause for thought was LOI GELID a word I wasn’t familiar with.
Great week so far loving the QC.
Yet another slowish time for me finishing in 12.58. FLORIDA and IBERIA held me up more than any other of the clues, but both were fairly set, so I think it was just me that was slow on the uptake.
My total time for the week was 66.58 giving me a daily average of 12.58. At nearly three minutes over target time, this continues my poor run of form. I’ve checked back through the blog to see my recorded average weekly time and find this is the tenth consecutive week I’ve been above my ten minute target. It was way back in August that I achieved a weekly average of 7.43. Over the years I think it has been about fifty fifty in terms of finishing either above or below 10 minutes. This could mean either that my mental capacities are diminishing, or that the QCs are getting harder. I selfishly hope it’s the latter!
Dear Mr Pandy,
It is, most definitely, the latter.
I nho GELID so fail for me, actually I found this whole thing hard for no particular reason.
OUIJA made me smile a lot. Is it a chestnut? I love it
About 30 mins. Really enjoyed this. Some clues just at my level.
NHO gelid but got that via word play.
Thanks to Oink and Curarist
Just into the SCC and enjoyed this with many clues at my level (like xwordnewbie)
Also NHO GELID but it fitted with the crossers and word play so believed it had to be. I think that’s progress!
NHO GELID, nor LA MORA city, but both eventually biffed. The rest was enjoyably doable.
Ah – LA for US city and ROMA for travellers – LAROMA heading ‘ north’ = AMORAL!
Failed by missing IBERIA, which should have come a lot more readily. Rest ok for an enjoyable puzzle
16 mins…
Lots of fingers crossed for 22ac “Gelid” which I’d never heard of – but couldn’t see what else it could be. Similarly, I didn’t know 13dn “Sing Sing” either. Thankfully, both were generously clued.
Seems quite a while since we had an Oink puzzle, so I was hopeful it would be at a good level and include the usual porky reference. I wasn’t disappointed, with quite a lot of smiley faces across a number of different clues.
FOI – 1ac “Added”
LOI – 13dn “Sing Sing”
COD – 1ac “Added” – simple, effective and possibly true.
Thanks as usual!
Enjoyable Oink as always and FOI was BOAR – I decided to try the six downs first and see how it went. SECRET followed and then ESPIONAGE went across so I was motoring. Alas, the SE corner held me up and in the end it was 18 minutes. Thought 22a might be GELEE which held me up until FLORID(A) suddenly came to mind. COD the inspired Paris/Berlin OUI JA. Loved it. Thanks to setter and blogger
4D – I get APACE with H added but what does APACHE have to do with … anything?!
Geronimo was an apache
But who was Geronimo? NHO.
Really quite well known from cowboys and Indians type stuff and his eponymous war cry – that said if it had been a quiz question couched as “Which Native American tribe was Geronimo the leader of/ prominent person in?” I would not necessarily have got it right.
He even appears in The Lone Ranger
Apologies for the vast link (DNK how to create hyperlink on my android phone)
https://search.app?link=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fgb%2Fpodcast%2Fthree-against-geronimo-6-29-1938%2Fid270886797%3Fi%3D1000429824378&utm_campaign=aga&utm_source=agsadl1%2Csh%2Fx%2Fgs%2Fm2%2F4
10.36 Held up at the end by 5d and 10a. The setter led me to BOAR and DECORATOR followed to finish. I was convinced I was looking for a speaker and had tried to make DECLAIMER work. Thanks Curarist and Oink.
Mostly straightforward but completely breeze-blocked by 15dn and17dn. These two extended my time by at least 6 mins to 22 mins. I thought 2dn was barely cryptic and therefore refrained from entering it until it was confirmed by a few crossers. Couldn’t parse DEAD LOSS having failed to see the anagram.
FOI – 7ac ESPIONAGE
LOI – 15dn IBERIA
COD – 19dn PACT
Thanks to Oink & Curarist
21:58 with no errors. I too hadn’t previously heard of GELID but the wordplay was generous enough. As astronomy is one of my lifelong interests, 8d was a write in for me. COD – CHRISTIAN for the misdirection closely followed by DO-IT-YOURSELF which amused me. FOI -ADDED, LOI FLORID. Thanks Oink and Curarist
Failed on a few clues, apache, gelid for 2, the latter we did not know. Otherwise a pleasant solve.
16:13 here. I thought I was on for a quick time after getting more of the acrosses on my first pass than normal, then I was interrupted and when I came back I couldn’t get back on the wavelength at all. COD to OUIJA.
Thanks to Oink and Curarist.
Quickest I have ever done, thanks Oink. Feel better after Bjorn’s tricky one yesterday.
LOI Amoral (had to ask hubby too).
7:09
No troubles here apart from a few moments waiting for IBERIA to pop up.
Thanks C and Oink
9:28 is still pretty quick for us but we’d have been about a minute and a half faster if we hadn’t been so hung up on US city + (travellers heading north) rather than (US city + travellers) heading north for our LOI. SECRET went in pretty quickly but had at least me puzzled because I was looking at SECT outside E and R but the order was wrong. Right result nevertheless. Thanks to Curarist and Oink.
Never heard of Gelid.
An escape from the SCC for us – just. An enjoyable puzzle – thanks Oink.
Gelid (NHO) went in with fingers crossed. A little unsure of Sleepless, and put in Boar for our porcine reference before understanding it. We were discussing why we say Geronimo when jumping from a height – thanks for the explanation Curarist.
FOI – Added
LOI – Gelid
COD -Ouija or DIY
14:49 for me, which, as it was a late solve, is pretty good for me. Liked OUIJA. I wonder of Bjorn is going to take a leaf out of Oink’s book and put an Abba reference in all his puzzles. Thanks all.
Union agreement in the air? (1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2)
👰