Good morning, and today we have a puzzle by Myles, one of the less frequent setters: by my reckoning this is only his 6th of the year, and 12th overall – though that is a bit misleading as after 2 puzzles in 2014, QCs no 10 and 29, he was then silent for more than 9 years before re-emerging with QC no 2410 last year. I have on the whole found his previous puzzles quite challenging, but after a relatively slow start I got into a rhythm with this one, helped by some lovely surfaces, for an 11:29 completion.
We have a good number of DDs – I counted 5 – and a very nice triple homophone, with the solution to the clue sounding like not just one but two other components of the wordplay. There are also 4 anagrams (and another as part of a clue), all signified with very straightforward indicators: wrongly, changed, oddball, disorientated and arranged. Some setters are far more obscure with the words they choose to indicate anagrams!
So, an enjoyable puzzle which I mark as medium-difficulty. How did everyone else find it?
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, and strike-through-text shows deletions.
Across | |
7 | Cautiously move part of hand or foot (4) |
INCH – A DD, the first part being fairly straightforward (“inching along”) and the second referring to scales of measurement.
Even though many of our fraternity are from countries that use the metric system not imperial measurements, an inch as one-twelfth of a foot is I think acceptable GK, especially as this is a UK-based crossword. An inch as a quarter of a hand, though, is a bit more SK (specialist knowledge); the hand in question refers to the traditional way of measuring a horse’s height (as in “a 15-hand chestnut”), and was traditionally the width of a man’s hand. It is now taken to be 4 inches. “Inch” is derived from the Latin word uncia, the name of a unit equal to 1/12 of another unit called the as. The word “ounce” is also derived from uncia, and was originally 1/12 of a pound; while a pound avoirdupois is now 16 ounces, in the scale used to weigh precious metals a Troy pound still consists of 12 Troy ounces. |
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8 | Running right into relative — good (8) |
COURSING – R (right) inserted into COUSIN (relative), + G (good). | |
9 | State of Asia — it’s holding area back, washed-out (6) |
TAIWAN – TI with A inserted (ie “it back, holding A for Area”) + WAN (washed-out). Myles has neatly avoided controversy and the ire of Beijing by calling Taiwan a state not a country, but “island” might perhaps have been even more neutral. | |
10 | Cast in support of sitting ruler, by the sound of it (6) |
THROWN – Sounds like THRONE (ie “support of sitting ruler”), with the homophone indicator being “by the sound of it”. | |
11 | Fruit skin, we hear – or two (4) |
PEAR – Another homophone, with the indicator being “we hear”, and not just two same-sounding words this time but a fine triplet, as PEAR the fruit sounds like both PARE (to skin something) and PAIR (two).
When I had just the E checker for this, the temptation to try to make the answer PEEL or PEAL was considerable, but we have to “lift and separate” fruit and skin to make the clue work. |
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12 | Wrongly parse her word, in other words (8) |
REPHRASE – (parse her)*, the anagram indicator being “wrongly”. When a word is rephrased, it is put into other words. | |
15 | Dispirited team of players with county (4,4) |
CAST DOWN – CAST (team of players, specifically in this case actors) + DOWN (a county in Northern Ireland). | |
17 | Apply colour that’s fashionable time after time (4) |
TINT – IN (fashionable) + T (time) all after an initial T (“after time”). A second very nice “lift and separate”, as one has to avoid being distracted by the common phrase “time after time” at the end of the clue. | |
18 | Every year, install a deity inside temple (6) |
PAGODA – PA (per annum, ie every year) with A GOD (a deity) inserted into it (ie “installed”). | |
21 | Catastrophe, as foci changed (6) |
FIASCO – (as foci)*, with the anagram indicator being “changed”. | |
22 | Tragedy of family meeting regal oddball (4,4) |
KING LEAR – KIN (family) + G LEAR (ie an anagram of regal, with the anagram indicator being “oddball”).
Quite a lot of monarchs in the past could be considered to be “regal oddballs”, most famously perhaps Charles VI of France (reigned 1380-1422). In his lifetime he preferred to be known as Charles the Beloved, but alas for him, history has settled on the appellation Charles the Mad instead because of his periodic bouts of insanity. But oddball here refers not to a king but to the word “regal” itself. |
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23 | Fish or beef (4) |
CARP – A DD, with the second meaning being the verb sense of to beef, to complain, to carp. |
Down | |
1 | Disoriented American being judged away from public gaze (2,6) |
IN CAMERA – (american)*, the anagram indicator being “disorientated”. | |
2 | Worthless bunch or individual engaged in demonstrating? (6) |
SHOWER – Our third DD of the puzzle, with the two meanings having different pronunciations of “shower”. | |
3 | Sequence of events arranged in a score (8) |
SCENARIO – (in a score)*, the anagram indicator being “arranged”.
I got this from the anagram and checkers, and only then saw how the definition worked: I tend to think of a scenario more as a singular setting (“the scenario is wartime London”), but it also means a sequence or development of events, as in the plot for a play or film. |
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4 | Hardly fair (4) |
JUST – Another DD, with the first meaning as in “he just made it / he hardly made it (implication, but he did)”. A good example of the rule that two word clues are very often DDs. | |
5 | You are reportedly holding certain person taking a lot of interest (6) |
USURER – U R (ie “You are” reportedly) with SURE (certain) inserted into it, the insertion indicator being “holding”. Interest in the financial sense here, not something I give my attention to – though no doubt a lender would be very interested in the interest his loan is earning him. | |
6 | Was familiar with Kafka’s first novel (4) |
KNEW – K (Kafka’s first, ie first letter of Kafka) + NEW (novel).
A fine surface, because Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was an author who wrote prodigious numbers of novels, mainly short stories. He is reputed to have not finished any of his full-length novels and to have burned around 90 percent of his work, but the corpus that has survived is still substantial and places him very high on the list of early 20th century writers. |
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13 | Naval ship in which to be dressed overall? (8) |
PINAFORE – An interesting clue which after some thought I classify as another DD, our fifth of the puzzle. I have underlined just “overall” as the second definition, because an overall is an outer work garment such as a pinafore, but one could argue that it is all of “in which to be dressed overall”.
Most people will probably think of HMS Pinafore for the naval ship, but although Gilbert and Sullivan entitled one of their operettas HMS Pinafore, there has never been a Royal Navy vessel with the name. Surprisingly though, there has been an American vessel with the name, the USS Pinafore, which was a US Navy launch in commission from 1902 to 1920. The second meaning is Pinafore as an overall or outer garment worn “over all other clothes” to protect them, when for example cooking or doing other messy work. It is almost always (in Britain at least) shortened to “pinnie”, but the full name gives away its origin, a pinafore having no fastenings or buttons of its own but being held in place by being pinned (pin) to the front of (afore) a dress. |
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14 | Cushy job at home acquired by firm (8) |
SINECURE – IN (at home) inserted into (“acquired by”) SECURE (firm). | |
16 | Reasoning without conclusion, however (6) |
THOUGH – THOUGHT (reasoning) with the last letter deleted (“without conclusion”). | |
17 | Coverage for building (not this church) (6) |
THATCH – THAT (ie not this) + CH (church).
Thatched churches are not at all common, but they do exist, and for some reason are mainly to be found in East Anglia. A particularly fine example is St Mary’s Thornham Parva in Suffolk. This is a 14th century church with not just thatch on the main roof (over the nave) but also on the top of the tower, making it one of the very few churches totally covered with thatch. See http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/thornhamentry.htm. |
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19 | Centre of Kalahari Desert is this (4) |
ARID – A hidden, in KalahARI Desert, the hidden indicator being “centre of” – and the 4 letters of Arid are indeed right in the centre of the 14 letters of Kalahari Desert. Our only hidden of the puzzle. | |
20 | Tip of cross covered by primate (4) |
APEX – X (cross) after or underneath (ie “covered by”, this being a down clue) APE (primate). |
Made heavy weather of this finishing in 17:21. But a fat fingered pink square typing THOUGT so wont count. Having steamed through Fridays puzzle less than 12 hours ago on a mobile phone, this was a chastening experience and I guess comes down to wavelength or maybe the bottle of modest bordeaux that I supped through the first couple of hours of the test match.
There were one or two that I wasn’t sure about – I’m sure I’ll be put right but absent any checkers and the word play I would have thought that DOWN CAST would be more likely than CAST DOWN.
Didn’t like PINAFORE and I thought one or two others were just a bit too clever for a QC – TINT for example
Anyway thanks Stathers for the considerable effort you’ve put into adding additional colour to the explanation of the solutions – its appreciated.
Cheers
Horners
I think DOWNCAST would have to be shown as one 8-letter word, not (4,4). There are quite a few verbs which go xxxx down and lead to an adjective or noun that is downxxxx, such as downfall, downpour and (at more of a stretch) downbeat, downplay etc.
DNK the hand INCH. Calling TAIWAN a state wouldn’t avoid China’s ire. I learned of SHOWER from a 15×15; someone in the blog provided this example from Terry-Thomas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L5LNIi5bAs 6:25.
Re SHOWER, me too, and the helpful video made it stick in my memory, thankfully.
Thx Kevin. Whenever I hear shower in that context I always think of T-T so must be that clip. He and John le Mes in a film makes for gentle Sunday afternoon viewing.
On wavelength to day for a perfectly pitched QC IMHO. J
I had a different analysis for ARID, although I thought I’d found a rare mistake in a clue. Centre of Kalahari for A (its actually AH though) and RID for desert, &lit. Overthinking it! I liked the triple homophone (or whatever is a good name).
I did exactly that for ARID without counting the letters to check A was in the middle.
I was a little slow on this one, and didn’t parse all the clues. When Pinafore is your last one, a biff is probably inevitable. I think the King Lear clue is a bit of an &lit, since the wordplay pretty much describes what happens in the play. I thought thatch was a very neat clue, although not very hard.
Time: 10:01
17:05, solved on my Friday evening. I particularly liked the precision of the clue for ARID, my COD.
Thanks to Myles and Cedric.
Slow going at 17 minutes. I can’t pretend I parsed everything, eg PINAFORE, and most of the anagrams only came with the help of crossers.
A short four letter answer and not a complicated clue but I liked the ARID hidden. I also enjoyed reading the comments about INCH and PINAFORE in particular.
Thanks to Myles and Cedric
9 minutes. Pleasing stuff.
23:25 for the solve! Bucking the trend but I thought that was tough for a QC or at least will be difficult for the beginners to get into as I sped up once checkers started going in. Spent last 6mins alphabet trawling to get CAST DOWN (LOI). Felt like a lot of 15×15 clueing and SINECURE / IN-CAMERA answers I’ve only come across a couple of times in past QCs.
Edit: only 28secs slower at parkrun – for a combined QCpr of 47:18
It took us 4 minutes to get our FOI, which then unlocked a steady solve to finish in 22.35. Probably spent 3 of those minutes in the alpha trawl for LOI just.
Some very neat clues that slowed us down to enjoy on the way, that’s the joy for us, rather thank speed. This felt like a nicely achievable challenge for our level of competence.
COD to inch for the misdirection into anatomy, wondered about heel for a bit which can be part of hand or foot. Thanks Myles.
Great blog Cedric.
Good observation about “heel”, glad I didn’t think of it, haha.
I found this quite tough and had particular trouble with some of the anagrams – FIASCO and REPHRASE being prime examples. I spent time thinking about different types of naval ships, such as frigates and corvettes etc before the starting checker pointed me in the right direction.
Started with INCH and finished with PINAFORE in 10.33.
Thanks to Cedric
This seemed tough at first and I was sure I wouldn’t finish but the clues fell steadily one by one and it was all completed in 34m.
There were some delightful clues to be appreciated and savoured such as THRONE, KING LEAR and PEAR.
Then to cap it all a most informative blog from Cedric.
Thank you both for a good start to a Saturday.
7.33
Also struggled a bit but lots of DDs and anagrams explains that (REPHRASE and SCENARIO both slow to arrive).
Great blog Cedric and thanks Myles
I found this tricky with PEAR, SHOWER and TAIWAN holding me up at the end. I was also predisposed to be DOWNCAST, but IN CAMERA precluded that option. PAGODA delayed me too. 11:42. Thanks Myles and Cedric.
10:49
I enjoyed this, although I made slightly heavy weather of some of the anagrams with POI SCENARIO causing me more of a struggle than it should have done.
Thanks CS for a very informative blog
My love/hate relationship with the Saturday QC continues. Yes the anagrams were well flagged, but Scenario and Fiasco(!) still took an age to work out. The four letter Carp required a tedious alpha-trawl (despite realising what sort of beef might be involved), and even though I kept on coming back to 9ac, Taiwan, I still needed all the checkers to make any sense of the clue. All this resulted in a sluggish 30+min solve, thankfully with joint CoDs Thatch and Usurer to lift my mood. Invariant
PS I wonder if it’s the smell of the Saturday croissants cooking that disturbs my concentration?
I always thought the Saturday QC’s were more difficult as I never seemed to finish them. I will look back in a few weeks at my records and see how they compared to other days throughout the year.
I always blamed it on having to do it on my iPad rather than the paper.
I was engaged and amused by this crossword, and then likewise by Cedric’s blog. We are so lucky to have such dedicated guides to the wider world behind the simple set of letters for each answer.
ARID was very good, also IN CAMERA, amongst the general fun. I will be interested to see if PINAFORE causes comment,, as G&S may not be as well known in this era, and outside these shores. My dad was fond of G&S generally, and having been a “British Tar” in a school production it was a write-in for me.
49 minutes, and had to resort to list of synonyms and other aids.
Annoyed with myself, as each clue I solved there was a “of course!!” moment.
A lovely puzzle.
LOI just.
FOI pear
COD: too many to choose from. Either Taiwan, or coursing.
Thanks to Myles and Cedric
Much enjoyed this witty puzzle. Fast at first but had to think about INCH (PDM horse hand), CARP, USURER (LOI), COURSING, and PINAFORE, having tried to remember of types of ship! Also slow on THATCH.
Liked the above and PAGODA, TINT, TAIWAN, KNEW. FOI IN CAMERA.
Thanks vm, Cedric.
DNF. Unaccountably bowled by a straight one, just could not see TAIWAN, even with all the checkers. Tried Yemen and Nepal forwards and backwards. The “s” of “it’s” was what threw me, I thought it would have to be an A inside ITS, and there was nowhere to put the S.
But I misspelt USURER (USERER) anyway.
Liked pair/pare/pear.
20 mins…
Good stuff this, with some thoughtful clues. Enjoyed the various double/triple definitions, although for those that hate those type of clues I guess it was probably a nightmare.
FOI – 11ac “Pear”
LOI – 14dn “Sinecure”
COD – 5dn “Usurer”
Thanks as usual!
33:25
Gosh that was hard going, especially the SE where for some reason I couldn’t see FIASCO, CARP or SINECURE. LOI THATCH.
Parksolve over the hour mark this week.
14.54 This was a good puzzle but I found it tough. SCENARIO and PINAFORE needed many checkers. LOI THATCH. Thanks Cedric and Myles.
5:16. So, yes, medium difficulty for me too. COD to INCH. Great blog Cedric; thanks for that and to Myles too for the excellent crossword.
10:43. This seemed quicker for me than for many other solvers whose times are usually better than mine. My biggest problem was getting CRUISING stuck in my head which was so close to being acceptable.
Never, ever thought about the source of PINAFORE, but that is so interesting!
Like Jalna, Myles has been one of the tougher setters for me, but today went very smoothly and I finished in 8:57. I’m quite surprised at that as I couldn’t get a way in for the first half dozen clues so nipped down to the last clue, and bingo! I had thought of INCH but couldn’t quite parse it initially, which was frustrating.
It’s been A Good Week mostly – apart from Monday, which was a DNF. One clue in a crossword everyone else found pretty easy flummoxed me – in fact, I was BEMUSED 😅
I thought this was a very good and witty crossword, even though I now realise that I didn’t fully parse PEAR or KING LEAR. I really liked the surface for the latter, but had better not claim it as my COD as I didn’t get its finer details. In fact, it’s quite hard to choose one – INCH, IN CAMERA and SCENARIO all got ticks, and THATCH got a smile.
FOI Apex LOI Rephrase COD Knew (I’m not familiar with him though!)
Thanks Myles and Cedric – another fascinating blog
An enjoyable solve today. Somewhere in the 20-25 minutes range, I think.
Both SHOWER and THATCH made me chuckle. CAST DOWN, PEAR and TAIWAN (my LOI) required careful parsing. USURER and SINECURE are both words I’d heard of, but didn’t really have a full grasp of their meanings.
Many thanks to Myles and Cedric.
Absolutely useless this morning. Not feeling 100 percent. I got apex and nothing else.
We all have those days. Next one will be more fun!
10:24, a fast time for me with this lovely puzzle. So many excellent clues, but I especially liked THROWN, KING LEAR, and KNEW. I was lucky that I remembered the British slang meaning of SHOWER, also lucky that DOWN came easily thanks to the song Star of the County Down. The triple homophone misled me until IN CAMERA went in to change PARE to PEAR.
Thanks Myles and Cedric! The blogging standard is going through the roof here lately, you all may have to start charging fees.
16:39, held up longer than I should have been by FIASCO (I knew what was happening but just couldn’t see it), THATCH and LOI PINAFORE. Enjoyed it very much, despite the initial sigh at what I think is called a portcullis grid.
Thank you to Cedric for the blog!
Medium is exactly my experience too, coming in at 07:54 for slightly below average. Thoroughly enjoyed it with lots of very good clues. COD to THATCH (very deceptive) which also gets by BOD (blog entry of the day) from a packed field of interesting goodies.
Many thanks Myles and Cedric.
6:06
Surprised to find I was not far from finishing after 4:30, but managed to string it out to more than 6 mins. TAIWAN was the longest delay but relieved the blockade.
Thanks Cedric for another fine blog, and Myles for a good puzzle