Quality puzzle, quite tricky.
At 9:20, this took me a full five minutes longer than yesterday’s done just beforehand. I followed a bit of a slow-quick-slow rhythm, only getting five on the first pass of the acrosses, and finally grinding to a bit of a halt with my last four on the LHS: SMOOTHIE and GENTLE are both quite tough; SAGA and LAZINESS seem less so in retrospect.
Top notch puzzle, with good clues aplenty, my favourite being that devious, neatly worded and smooth-surfaced 11d smoothie. Lovely stuff – many thanks to Joker!
| Across | |
| 4 | Record major returning congestion (3,3) |
| LOG JAM – LOG (record) MAJ. (major) “returning” | |
| 7 | It’s cheap circulating something drawing on a number of sources (8) |
| PASTICHE – anagram (circulating) of ITS CHEAP | |
| 8 | Avoid losing head? Run in that predicament (6) |
| SCRAPE – eSCAPE (avoid), losing head = missing first letter, insert R for a run in cricket | |
| 9 | Reluctance to work of girl carrying fan mag (8) |
| LAZINESS – LASS (girl) carrying ZINE (fan mag) | |
| 10 | What’s in water regularly dissolves (4) |
| ISLE – d I s S o L v E s “regularly” | |
| 12 | Chap challenging endless Chinese speech (8) |
| MANDARIN – MAN (chap) DARINg (challenging) “endless” | |
| 15 | Scorn politician replacing second in dispute (8) |
| CONTEMPT – MP (politician) replacing the S(econd) in CONTEST (dispute) | |
| 18 | Highland dance with drum (4) |
| REEL – double definition. I assumed the latter to be some noisy instrument I was unaware of, but no, Chambers defines it as a “cylinder, drum, spool, bobbin or frame on which thread, fishing-line, wire, cables, photographic film, etc may be wound.” Aah yes, duh! That makes more sense. | |
| 20 | Frank sat right strangely (8) |
| STRAIGHT – anagram (strangely) of SAT RIGHT | |
| 22 | Having an irrational fear of mischievous imp in picture (6) |
| PHOBIC – HOB (mischievous imp) in PIC(ture). Wiki tells me that HOB is a diminutive of Robin, itself a diminutive of Robert: apparently hobs (and their related hobgoblins) were mischievous household sprites that would do bits and bobs around the house at night, and were quick to take offence. To make them seem less frightening, they were given breezy little nicknames, and the name that happened to stick was Hob. | |
| 23 | Lacking enthusiasm? Not the best way to go shopping (8) |
| LISTLESS – double definition, the second being somewhere between whimsical and good advice | |
| 24 | Spy traditional beer? Never a mild (6) |
| GENTLE – AGENT (spy) ALE (traditional beer), remove the A’s (“never a”) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Long story is something exciting when written up (4) |
| SAGA – A GAS is indeed something exciting, and when written “up” gives the answer | |
| 2 | Small ballistic missile having a harsh sound (8) |
| STRIDENT – S(mall) TRIDENT (ballistic missile) | |
| 3 | Loud cry “leave quickly” — put energy into it (6) |
| SCREAM – SCRAM (leave quickly) – put E(nergy) into it | |
| 4 | Boy following the French example (6) |
| LESSON -SON (boy) following LES (the, French) | |
| 5 | Clothing that’s rubbish, lacking maturity (4) |
| GARB – GARBage (rubbish) lacking AGE (maturity) | |
| 6 | Very suitable program round web location (8) |
| APPOSITE – APP (program) O (round) SITE (web location) | |
| 11 | Drunk is home to drink (8) |
| SMOOTHIE – anagram (drunk) of IS HOME TO | |
| 13 | Snake of a short species (3) |
| ASP – A and SP. (an abbrev. for species) | |
| 14 | A flier I’d seen going round here? (8) |
| AIRFIELD – anagram (seen going round) of A FLIER ID. A semi-&lit clue: an &lit clue is where the whole clue is both cryptic wordplay and a literal definition; a semi-&lit clue is where the whole clue provides a literal definition, but not all of it is cryptic wordplay, which in this case is the word “here”. | |
| 16 | Reported bivalve’s strength (6) |
| MUSCLE – sounds like (“reported”) MUSSEL (bivalve) | |
| 17 | Beat time, hard and over-hasty (6) |
| THRASH – T(ime) H(ard) and RASH (over-hasty) | |
| 19 | Go up against an objection (4) |
| ABUT – A BUT = an objection | |
| 21 | Mix-up is severe when king goes missing (4) |
| HASH – HArSH (severe) when R (Rex = king) goes missing | |
15:13. SMOOTHIE was my favourite. Thanks for the parsing of GENTLE.(Take 2 a’s out!) I had WARINESS first instead of LAZINESS because I thought reluctance was the definition and not reluctance to work.
Like Roly, I didn’t think of the right drum, and just went with the dance; it was a safe enough bet. I biffed CONTEMPT, thinking, ironically, that CON was the politician; never figured out how the clue worked. 8:00.
The reel/drum device rang a bell with me, and sure enough it was Teazel just over a week ago: Drums for Highland dances. A: Reel.
This was an enjoyable puzzle by Joker, it took me 10.19 because I got held up by the tricky GENTLE and ABUT. SMOOTHIE also took a while because the crosses made me think of something to do with Scotch which took me nowhere. ASP was no problem: 3-letter snake beginning with A. As for SAGA, I’m sure ‘something exciting’ was exactly what the Stones had in mind…
[The answer was actually REELS, not REEL, in case anyone was confused!]
Yes, sorry for the typo.
I was going so well, flew through it in 9 min or so then came to a complete stop over SMOOTHIE/GENTLE.
Of course ‘drunk’ is an anagram indicator but no, I was hung up on all of the myriad words the English have for inebriated people.
I came in right on my average time, and really enjoyed this puzzle. Plenty of interesting clues, and pitched at a pretty good level I think.
5:35 as I’m gradually adjusting to one-handed solving. Liked LISTLESS.
Thanks Roly and Joker.
12 minutes, falling between my old and revised target times, so like our blogger I’d rate this as a little harder than average. As so often, it was intersecting answers that delayed me, in this case SMOOTHIE and GENTLE.
It occurred to me when solving that REEL might be a gimme today, since a similar clue with ‘drums’ for ‘reels’ had given rise to comment here so recently.
10 minutes for me, and another for whom the SMOOTHIE / GENTLE cross were the L2I and prevented a considerably faster time. I’m not sure why SMOOTHIE took so long; I spotted straight away it was an anagram but it simply would not come.
PASTICHE was the only other real hold-up, more because I’m never quite sure what the word means. I thought it was more a piece of art “drawing on a certain style” than “drawing on many sources”.
Many thanks Roly for the blog
Cedric
I had GENTLE all right but had written in SOLE for 10ac which held me up no end trying to think of a drink going O-O at the start. And of course, there were two O’s in the anagrist so it wasn’t obviously wrong. So my final time was 9:28, whereas I had been on track for 6 minutes or so.
8.26
Harder for me too, possibly due to starting it a lot earlier than normal. Struggled to get a foothold but eventually sped up. Liked the simple ISLE where I wasted time looking at the wrong end.
Thanks RT and Joker
Found this hard and had to alphabet trawl my way to GENTLE with a long pause to see why it work – good moment of realisation. Had previously tried to force ‘seethe’ in there. SMOOTHIE was a surprisingly hard anagram to crack – partly because like Tina I was looking for a noun but also because a soft drink never occurred to me. Thought of football ‘fanzines’ immediately but ‘zine’ on its own was new to me – but the definition was pretty generous. All green in a hard fought 18.24.
After a week away on a Greek island we seem to have regressed! Found this tough going with a technical DNF plumping for an unparsed seethe before finding gentle in 33.14
Wrote out the letters for smoothie early on but couldn’t see it until we had most of the crossers, same with pastiche.
Thanks Roly for correct parsing of asp, we biffed it as the three starting letters in the clue although there was no instruction to do so!
Thanks Joker
I found this tricky in places – mainly the ones already mentioned – and like Mendesest I’ve not seen ‘zine’ on it’s own before.
Started with LOG JAM and finished with GENTLE in 9.33 with COD to LISTLESS as I do like a pun.
Thanks to Rolytoly
Very good work out this morning.
Like Dvynys I was looking at the wrong end for ISLE – when it finally dawned on me, SMOOTHIE, GENTLE and LOI ABUT all suddenly came in a rush. Lots of people seem to have struggled with SMOOTHIE, even though it was an anagram – for me it was because I automatically assume that “drink” is going to refer to alcohol, so was just not thinking on the right lines. Draw your own conclusions.
COD to GENTLE, even though it seemed to have escaped from Big Puzzle! All done in 07:23 for a sub-K and thus a Red Letter Day.
Many thanks Joker and roly.
13:03 (Battle of Roslin. Scots beat English)
SMOOTHIE needed pen and paper to unravel.
LOI ISLE, which was obvious in hindsight.
Spotted GENTLE as requiring the A to be removed from ALE, but puzzled over GENT=spy, not twigging that the “never” meant all As to be removed.
Thanks Joker and Roly
Nearly didn’t but actually did drop into the SCC which I rather enjoyed as the travelling well was just as pleasant if not more so than the arriving. I spent a lot of time parsing the biffed which on reflection might be down to the number if clues involving letter insertion substitution and deletion. Anyone remember this many in a QC?
I enjoyed the exercise and the blog debrief, so thank you Joker and Rolytoly
6:44
I found this fairly approachable – SMOOTHIE came to mind at the second attempt with the first two checkers in place, leaving me with GENTLE and APPOSITE (a word I use frequently in my own blogs). I would agree that a PASTICHE is more an homage to a single style rather than something drawing on a number of sources, but the word jumped out at me from the anagrist so I bunged it in anyway.
Thanks Joker and Roly
Wiktionary supports both:
Noun pastiche (countable and uncountable, plural pastiches)
1) A work of art, drama, literature, music, or architecture that imitates the work of a previous artist, usually in a positive or neutral way.
2) Coordinate term: parody
A musical medley, typically quoting other works.
3) An incongruous mixture; a hodgepodge.
This supposed research paper is a pastiche of passages from unrelated sources.
The house failed to attract a buyer because the decor was a pastiche of Bohemian and Scandinavian styles.
4) (uncountable) A postmodern playwriting technique that fuses a variety of styles, genres, and story lines to create a new form.
I was interrupted briefly during my solve, so the timer is somewhat inflated – but I found Joker’s offering quite challenging anyway. Luckily, I remembered the “drum = REEL” device, or might have been held up there awhile. COD/SLOI took a while to hit me, while my LOI wasn’t helped by carelessly misreading the clue. I biffed CONTEMPT and took a while to parse it afterwards. Not my best effort overall.
FOI LOG JAM
LOI GENTLE
COD ISLE
TIME 5:43
15 mins…
A good puzzle, although tricky in places. Wasn’t 100% sure about my LOI 24ac “Gentle” – I figured the “ale” element, but struggled to see the “agent” bit and assumed “gen” was just a slang term for a spy. Similarly, I struggled with the parsing on 1dn “Saga”. 18ac “Reel” seems to be popular at the moment, that’s the third time I’ve seen it numerous crosswords over the last couple of weeks.
FOI – 5dn “Garb”
LOI – 24ac “Gentle”
COD – 23ac “Listless”
Thanks as usual!
Like others I struggled to get GENTLE – thanks for the explanation! A testing puzzle overall.
Biffed CONTEMPT, ASP and GENTLE- thanks Roly for explaining. COD LISTLESS.
My first time over twenty minutes for many a year. I eventually fell over the line in 20.27, and needless to say I really struggled. All was going well until the sw corner, then with six clues to solve I ground to a halt. It must have been five or six minutes of zero progress before ABUT came to me, and even with the extra checkers I still made slow progress after that. My LOI was GENTLE which I managed to parse, but only after stopping the clock. Looking at the relative times posted so far, it doesn’t appear to be as difficult as I made it. I’ll just put it down to having an off day.
As I sat down to write this, I noticed that I had not completed 24a.
So 11 minutes LOI SCRAPE, became 13 minutes LOI GENTLE.
And COD to GENTLE -tricky.
I too remembered the REEL thing the other day.
I would have written logjam as one word or with a hyphen.
David
Lots of gaps after first pass. LOG JAM was FOI. GENTLE took a little while, but my big holdups, as for others it seems, were SMOOTHIE and LOI, ISLE. 10:43. Thanks Joker and Roly.
DNF after 25, about half of which were spent on not getting SMOOTHIE and GENTLE. Can’t imagine why I didn’t think of drunk being an anagrind now. I thought 24a might be SUBTLE, but having 11d end with U always seemed a bit unlikely. I’d done well up till then, so disappointed not to reach the finish line. Anyway, enjoyed LISTLESS among others so thanks Joker and Roly.
Any lingering hopes of a sub-20 were blown out of the water by time spent failing to parse Gentle (both ‘A’ s, who would have thought it 🙄), and an age trying to shuffle SHIP into the remaining four spaces of loi Pastiche. Not a word I use every day, but known well enough as to leave me baffled why it took so long to come to mind. Apart from those two, there were several more teasers from Joker, perhaps with a few too many ‘remove that add this’ instructions for this to ever be a smooth(ie) solve. CoD to 17d, Thrash, for the pdm. Invariant
Found this tough and definitely over 20m.
Even straight for sat right took a while. gentle.
Also held up by LOI/COD smoothie/gentle.
Needed help parsing GENTLE (thanks roly). Fairly straightforward otherwise until LOI AIRFIELD where for some unknown reason I failed to spot it was an anagram and ended up revealing it. Would normally have persevered but solving on phone today in supermarket coffee shop and really needed to do some shopping – happily not LISTLESS. Remembered reel from previous QC. New to me were ‘hob’ and ‘ zine’, and the precise meaning of PASTICHE. COD SMOOTHIE. Nice puzzle. Thanks Joker and roly.
A rare bucking of the trend for me, and my best WITCH score for a few weeks.
I found this quite straightforward, HASH went in last and I liked LISTLESS best of all, with GENTLE a close second. NHO ZINE, but was luckily LAZINESS wrote itself in with a few checkers.
5:09
As a newcomer I’m dead chuffed to have cracked this Joker puzzle which Roly rightly describes as tricky. Admittedly this took me well over an hour but I’m entirely content to be in the SCC and, while I’m in awe of the times that many of you achieve, I much prefer to proceed at a leisurely pace, pausing to relish the satisfaction of solving each clue. At times I struggle a lot, but this adds to my sense of achievement. The joy of reading all your comments afterwards on TfTT is the perfect finishing touch.
Welcome! 😁
Well done and welcome!
Bravo!
Welcome Jubilado, I agree with you about the pleasures of taking the scenic route. The online battle against the clock can be fun but sometimes I miss settling in for a leisurely solve with pen and paper and a glass of red in the pub…
Since your not worried about the time, try and get into the habit of parsing as you go along. Not only do you then have a good chance of spoting any mistakes before they get too significant, but you will get much more enjoyment out of the puzzle.
I always parse as I go. I just don’t understand how anyone solves without parsing, it must require ESP!
Possibly, especially as I’ve seen Kevin comment a few times that he wrote the answer in without reading the clue. . . and I’m not talking about three letter snakes!
Welcome and well done! Enjoy!
OWL club today.
17d Thrash; decided NHO thrush=beat. Doh!
22a Phobic; hob is a bit rare and archaic for the quickie IMHO, but the PIC was obvious, so not hard.
On the whole I felt it was hard, and the grid didn’t make things easy.
DNF LOI GENTLE. Very Tricky. Took ages today. I wasn’t on the wavelength but did better after a pause.
Slow on SCRAPE, GARB, STRIDENT, CONTEMPT, AIRFIELD.
Liked LISTLESS, MANDARIN, PASTICHE (agree with Mike), ISLE.
Biffed PHOBIC – just guessed Hob but of course knew Hobgoblin.
Thanks vm, Roly.
DNF couldn’t really get going, and surprised other bloggers self-evidently found it a breeze.
Tricky and excellent. COD – ABUT – neatly devious! Also Liked ISLE. Much clueing concision throughout. Thanks as ever.
11.24 for me – SW corner held me up at the end. Messed around with SPOTLE before alighting on GENTLE having finally realising drunk was the anagrist for SMOOTHie
Not even close to finishing. Amazed no comments on zine for fan mag I have no idea what that is and still don’t. Never seem to get any better and certainly not with obscure words. Sigh☹️
Tim, here’s the SOED entry for zine:
zine – noun. US colloq. Also ‘zine. M20.
[ORIGIN Abbreviation.]
A magazine, esp. a fanzine.
M20 means it’s been around for a long time, but I admit I don’t recall seeing it here before.
Thanks
I seem to recall beginning to see it in the 90s. But I’ve always been too online.
SMOOTHIE and GENTLE were also our POI and LOI at, a fairly fast for us 10:08. Some trepidation on hitting the final enter key because I couldn’t equate ‘gent’ with ‘spy’. The relief of having been correct triggered an appreciation of the proper parsing a few seconds later. I agree with the summary of this being a top notch puzzle. Thanks Joker and Roly!
Wow, that was tricky! I did most of the lower half and thought I might have to leave it and come back later but then APPOSITE enabled me to get SCRAPE and then GARB and so on leftwards.
I think clues like 8a where you had to both remove E from escape and then add r are a bit difficult for a QC as were GARB, and CONTEMPT. NHO hob or zine or gas in that sense(tried tale/elan) so all in all I was very pleased to complete it. Thank you Joker for a good mental workout and Roly for explaining the clues I biffed.
25 manually timed finish. Like many LoI Smoothie, I had the anagram but was looking for a more interesting drink.
Found some clues difficult and pleased to work through them. Parsed all.
Thanks Joker and Roly
15:34, had to come back to it to knock off the GENTLE SMOOTHIE.
No-one else going to complain about the obscure HOB, well, I will. Whereas I thought ZINE was fine, in fact I barely knew the word Fanzine.
DNF, defeated by PASTICHE and GENTLE. With the former I completely missed the anagram indicator and could only fit ‘particle’ into the letters that I had, and that was obviously wrong. With the latter I spent some time trying to justify ‘seethe’ but again it was obviously incorrect so I ran out of patience on 26 minutes and came here. I might have got PASTICHE if I’d seen the anagram indicator, although I didn’t know its meaning. I might have biffed GENTLE but would never have been able to parse it and anyway I was too hung up on seethe. Thanks for the blog Roly – I needed it as Joker definitely had the last laugh today.
FOI – 4ac LOG JAM
LOI (of those I completed) – 2dn STRIDENT (took me an age to see this – no idea why)
COD – 23ac LISTLESS
I now wish I’d never attempted this puzzle. With five clues still to solve after 28 minutes progress was a little slow, but not too bad, for me at least. Then I came to the (awful) SW corner.
15 minutes later THRASH and CONTEMPT had been written in, but I had to endure a further 15 minutes before I thought I’d crossed the line. ABUT and SMOOTHIE caused me no end of problems, but I also put SEETHE instead of GENTLE. Despite thinking of AGENT for spy, I never even came close to parsing the clue and I eventually went with SEE for spot and SEETHE for never (a) mild. Weak, I know, but I was fed up by then.
Thanks to Roly for the blog.
Got everything before the train reached Winchester except Mandarin, so that’s about 40 minutes. Got Mandarin immediately on my return journey. NHO Zine or Hob. Could not parse Scrape. Liked Isle and very much liked Listless. Thanks Roly and Joker.
I’m back again. Sorry!
“The Times has stopped publishing a daily Quick Cryptic crossword”. Discuss!
After 4+ years at this game, I had successfully wrestled my solve rate up to >95% and my mean time down to ~27 minutes. Not great, by any stretch of the imagination, but also not that bad any more. In the past six weeks, however, 12 so-called QCs have exercised me for beyond three-quarters of an hour (one took me 79 minutes) and six have ended as DNFs.
Either,
a) I have suddenly (and strangely) lost many of the crosswording skills I had amassed since June 2020, or
b) The Times no longer publishes a daily Quick Cryptic – just two Cryptics, one slightly smaller than the other.
The evidence above is based on a sample size of one, namely me. Weight of evidence above: Er …. !
Couldn’t agree with you more!!
You’ve probably become more of a lightweight since you reached 1000 …
I’ve felt they have got harder since the passing of Richard Rogan in mid-June and I suspect he fed back to setters or tweaked clues more than we realised. But I think we’ve also had some new setters with new styles and modernised clues. Familiarity plays a much greater part in solving than many realise. And of course, RR himself was a regular setter under an array of pseudonyms.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. We are certainly missing RR’s tweaks.
I agree with your suspicions about RR’s (likely beneficial) tinkerings, pre-publication.
Perhaps you could analyse the Quitch? While I think it is imperfect as there is a difference between the best solvers and the lower end solvers, it might highlight if there are few puzzles with low scores recently than in the past. Certainly the weekly avg. has been high since July but it was also up there from Oct-Jan
That’s an interesting point about RR – his absence has definitely been evident on a couple of occasions, but when it comes to increasing difficulty I think it’s still too early to say: as you say Oct-Jan was a tough patch as well, so these things can come in waves. It’s if the wave goes on much longer than a wave should will things be clearer… oh, and a magic backdated Quitch with seasonality stats over the years would be nice!
As I said to New Driver, this certainly looks like a tough patch on the Quitch, although it’s too soon to say if it’s more long term than that. But if you’ve only been doing these for 4-ish years, you could always go back and sample a random couple of puzzles from ten or fifteen years ago, and see how they stack up. Could be interesting!
I suppose we’re all “a sample size of one” but may I add my sixpennyworth? I usually manage to finish the QC but on average only get one clue of the 15×15, so in my perception (at least) there is a huge difference in trickiness between the two.
10.19 Most clues needed a second look. I was pleased to solve GENTLE and LAZINESS from the wordplay. It wouldn’t have happened a year ago. HASH and SMOOTHIE were the last two. Thanks rolytoly and Joker.
Maybe doing these when fully awake is a good strategy! I enjoyed this, didn’t get more than momentarily stuck, and finished faster than yesterday at 13:06. A quality puzzle, witty and challenging with no super-arcane GK or pop culture references or far-out synonyms.
Loved GENTLE though it took some unwinding; like our blogger I had to wait to the end for that and its crosser SMOOTHIE. CONTEMPT also good, I sense a pattern here. I was only dimly aware of HOB as a name for what I would call a brownie. ABUT was strangely hard to think of.
Thanks to Joker and rolytoly!
26 mins.
A poor performance caused by some beginners level errors.
My decline shows no sign of stopping as this really wasn’t that hard. To misquote Gary Player: ‘The harder I practice, the worse I get’. I have neither confidence nor ability, and I find that very demoralising.
2 DNFs and no SCC escapes this week. That’s bad even by my low standards.
16/28 on proper crossword. Horrible.
PS After reading the blog for the proper crossword, I feel even worse. I’m absolutely nowhere with this!!! My mind (or what remains of it) is thoroughly scrambled.
☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️
DNF again, thwarted by GENTLE. I quite like the clue in retrospect – very clever, well done Joker – but if we’re going to start seeing that sort of device I’d appreciate an introduction that’s a bit more, well, gentle. I sometimes get the impression that the QC is aimed more as a brief diversion for experienced solvers than a practice tool for us newcomers, and fair enough if so, but it strikes me as a missed opportunity.
Thank you for the blog, as ever!
Forgot to clock in here upon return from train trip where plenty of time so did finish (LOI GENTLE – liked that, very clever). But several were CNP’s so thank you, Roly, for the instructive blog.
NHO ZINE, nor species = SP; wonder where you would find that?
I would love to know which library is in your photo rolytoly. I have just got back from visiting the Long Room. Part of the Trinity College, Dublin, library. As beautiful and inspiring. Just caught it before renovations begin for the next 2/3 years. Removing all the books had taken so much longer than they expected so were already behind schedule. I discovered it was a ‘bucket list’ library. So I was delighted to have crossed one off before I knew I had one.