Time: 15:36
Music: Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth.
I have had an annoying cold this week, and it seems to have impacted my solving. I felt very slow solving this one, even though my time was acceptable. I did get stuck for several minutes at the end on flick, carpenter, and passable, even though they are not really difficult. The whole puzzle was little more than a Quick Cryptic in a 15 x 15 grid, and I’m sure everyone will whip it off quite easily.
| Across | |
| 1 | Temporary profession of players (6) |
| ACTING – Double definition. | |
| 4 | Gently boils some carrots, immersed (7) |
| SIMMERS – Hidden in [carrot]S IMMERS[ed]. | |
| 9 | Any number packed into space wherein contest is held (5) |
| ARENA – ARE(N)A, a chestnut. | |
| 10 | Noticing old bishop helping at Mass? (9) |
| OBSERVING – O.B. + SERVING. | |
| 11 | Chief royal figure almost first to insult China (9) |
| PRINCIPAL – PRINC[e] + I[nsult] + PAL….been reading the news, have we? | |
| 12 | Arab maybe having a throat problem, we hear? (5) |
| HORSE – Sounds like HOARSE. | |
| 13 | Record middle of opera in box at La Scala? (4) |
| LOGE – LOG + [op]E[ra]. | |
| 14 | Craftspeople come in beset by grumbles (10) |
| CARPENTERS – CARP(ENTER)S. | |
| 18 | A son’s tried to develop skill (10) |
| ADROITNESS – Anagram of A SON’S TRIED. | |
| 20 | Endless pity for fraud (4) |
| SHAM – SHAM[e] | |
| 23 | Fraudulent American introduced by John (5) |
| BOGUS – BOG + US, where John is probably US slang, but bog is definitely UK. | |
| 24 | Holy father drinking coffee with late queen seen as sycophant? (9) |
| FLATTERER – F(LATTE)R + E.R. | |
| 25 | Concerned with commercial risk bearing returns with existing coverage (9) |
| ACTUARIAL – ACTUA(AIR backwards)L. | |
| 26 | Boy wanting more dance (5) |
| TWIST – Double definition. | |
| 27 | Study NT book in European country (7) |
| DENMARK – DEN + MARK. | |
| 28 | Vessel has possible indicator of nationality attached (6) |
| FLAGON – FLAG ON. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | A couple of pianos in a room associated with a type of singing (1,8) |
| A CAPPELLA – A C(A, P, P)ELL + A, an easy biff. | |
| 2 | Call after match creating rows (7) |
| TIERING – TIE + RING. | |
| 3 | Subtlety is absent from annoying individual (6) |
| NUANCE – NU[is]ANCE. | |
| 4 | Source of fibre and iodine girl’s eaten up (5) |
| SISAL – LAS(I)S upside-down. | |
| 5 | Drug hospital injected into leg — more needed externally (8) |
| MORPHINE – MOR(P(H)IN)E. | |
| 6 | I emerge after travelling — a settler in another land (7) |
| EMIGREE – Anagram of I EMERGE, really a French word as we would not normally use gender in English. | |
| 7 | Good university in Durham, say, to carry on without a break (5) |
| SEGUE – SE(G,U)E. A see that is not Ely! | |
| 8 | Customers initially order ungarnished beef (8) |
| COMPLAIN – C[ustomers] + O.M. + PLAIN. | |
| 15 | Fair exam ought to be like this? (8) |
| PASSABLE – Cryptic hint. | |
| 16 | Person who helps ruin one possessed by the devil (9) |
| SAMARITAN – SA(MAR I)TAN. | |
| 17 | African city family has to be housed in South Africa (8) |
| KINSHASA – KIN + S(HAS)A. | |
| 19 | Trendy leader’s deserting Sussex resort (5-2) |
| RIGHT-ON – [b]RIGHTON, another chestnut. | |
| 21 | Board sacking old, old president (7) |
| HARDING – H[o]ARDING. | |
| 22 | Possibly to do with parts of USA at last being reformed (6) |
| STATAL – Anagram of AT LAST. Obvious, but probably objectionable. | |
| 23 | Fifty in group exciting little interest? (5) |
| BLAND – B(L)AND. | |
| 24 | Digital means of projecting film? (5) |
| FLICK – Double definition; this one had me thinking for a bit. | |
Very straightforward – 6:34 for me, and I see there are a few slicker times on the early leaderboard. BOGUS raised a smile.
Around 35 minutes as fast as my best time so it was quite straightforward. Possibly my fastest ever since I had problems with my pen writing on the paper.
20:30
I was slow, and with no cold to account for the slowth (the SNITCH is about as low as it’s ever been).
I messed it up, could not see TIERING for the life of me (I rejected that word because I couldn’t get it to parse) so a DNF in about 25. Oh, THAT kind of match, and that kind of call…annoying. I’m also fearful that STATAL will make its way into the real world and become common: ‘This is not a federal issue, it’s a statal issue.’ So let’s keep it between us.
From Queen Jane Approximately:
Now when all of the bandits that you turn your other cheek to
All lay down their bandanas and COMPLAIN
And you want somebody that you don’t have to speak to
Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?
Had my doubts about PROJECTING for digital flicking until I thought about a projectile. Pretty straightforward fare for a Monday with gimmes like SIMMERS and HORSE combined with head scratches like ACTUARIAL and PASSABLE, for me anyway. COD to ADROITNESS.
Thanks V.
13:50, with a few hold-ups. SEGUE is one of my least favourite words, along with cognitive and dissonance.
I’ve added STATAL to the list…
7:06. Quick enough to give me the time to post, which I haven’t often managed recently. My wife is with ulaca in that SEGUE is one of her least favourite words. I rather like it since I realised its pronunciation relatively recently (oh, like Segway!).
29 minutes. I lost time early thinking of PORCELAIN (china) at 11ac and attempting to justify it via wordplay before giving up on the idea. 14ac (I had ENTER but not the rest of it), PASSABLE and ACTUARIAL were my last ones in.
Top half went in pleasingly fast, followed by a delay getting decent traction in the lower half, somewhat due to typing COMPLAI(N)T into 8d. After that was fixed a reasonably orderly completion, finishing sequence HARDING – FLATTERER – FLICK. But with typo check omitted…
…and I paid the price with OI transposed in ADROITNESS. 24:19 fail.
I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have I slain to-day, instead of him.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
(Richard III)
15 mins pre-brekker, having guessed Loge was a box and not really being familiar with Harding.
Ta setter and V
17 minutes with LOGE a little uncertain. STATAL went in with a shrug. COD to FLICK. Enjoyable Monday fare. Thank you V and setter.
8.05, LOGE entirely taken on trust, and HARDING dragged out of my memory. Misread ‘projecting’ as ‘protecting’, which would explain why I didn’t know what was going on with FLICK!
Thanks both.
That’s funny, I did exactly the same and felt a bit foolish over wasting quite a bit of time on it. At least I wasn’t alone!
A box at La Scala is a “palco” not a “loge”.
You might have to take that up with the Loggionisti. Not recommended for the faint-hearted!
A very rare sub 20 for me. 19:58, they all count.
Had to trust the wordplay for LOGE and STATAL.
Liked FLICK – what you shouldn’t do in Subuteo.
Just under 25 minutes.
– Took much longer than I should have done to see TWIST – I needed the checkers in the end
– Only realised EMIGREE had the extra E once I’d started writing it in
– Didn’t think of the right meaning of ‘board’ even after I got HARDING
A nice way to start the week. Thanks vinyl and setter.
FOI Acting
LOI Actuarial
COD Flick
9’43″today.
Nho LOGE. SEGUE took a while being an unusual word. Used to live in Brighton. Knew the ugly word STATAL from Azed I think.
Thanks vinyl and setter.
Very enjoyable 13m producing a high feel-good factor even though it was rather easy. With regard to pronunciations (cf segue earlier) I learned yesterday from an excellent audiobook (by Philip Kerr) that ‘sal volatile’ is not pronounced ‘sal-volla-tile’ but ‘salver latterly’. How about that!
I had heard of sal volatile (second pronunciation) as one of my mother’s homeopathic remedies. You don’t often see it written down, as smelling salts, but I was aware of it with, in my head, the first pronunciation. They coexisted for ages as two different things. Just like Arkansas, the American state you see written down but never hear about
35 mins with last three in PASSABLE, FLICK then ACTURIAL holding me up for a while, otherwise pretty straightforward.
Agree, STATAL is a horrible word.
Thanks V and setter.
VHO STATAL, the English equivalent of the Italian ‘statale’ but I foolishly got the Italian wrong and put ‘a cappello’ so failed to get ADROITNESS and a few others in the SW corner. On the whole it seemed easy enough and a quick solve but a DNF for me, I’m afraid.
13:31
Pretty straightforward with only ACTUARIAL casuing a problem – partly because I thought it was spelt ACTURIAL. I liked FLICK,BOGUS and FLATTERER.
Thanks to vinyl and the setter
8:53 with a brief pause at the only-in-crosswords TIERING and STATAL. Pointless has broadened my range of American Presidents considerably, so no problem with HARDING.
NB for overseas readers and those who still work for a living, ‘Pointless’ is a TV quiz show you watch at tea time after you have retired.
27 minutes, NHO LOGE or STATAL, but no problems, though apparently I am very much on the slow side today.
Thanks setter and blogger
1d I had A Capell(o)a as Long Term Lurker above, but corrected when 18a had to be Adroitness.
6d Emigree. I didn’t notice that it was feminine, didn’t think really. I’ve added this f version to the Cheating Machine as, understandably, it was absent.
22d Statal, I agree it is objectionable, but it was, oddly, already in CM. Wiktionary marks this use of it as “dated”.
23:02, with NUANCE my LOI.
TWIST took longer than it ought. I saw OLIVER would not fit, then needed the checkers before considering his surname. NHO STATAL.
Thanks Vinyl and setter
5:54. Mostly very quick but I slowed down a little bit in the SE corner. No real problems, no unknowns.
45m
Finished in two sittings.
COD flick.
An equal PB for me, 11 minutes. A quickie in a 15×15, as said above.
From ACTING to HARDING in 14:35. I raced through the top half then became becalmed for a while down below. FLATTERER, then RIGHT ON got me going again, with a smile at BOGUS. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
12.01 for me. I do the quick crossword in the morning (Sydney time) and the cryptic in the evening. I mistakenly did the cryptic in the morning without noticing that it was not the quickie.
22 mins. Mostly easy until I got stymied by ACTUARIAL. Was trying to read too much into the clue. NHO LOGE.
I think Vinyl’s remark that it’s little more than a QC in a 15×15 grid is pretty accurate. I had no trouble with this, less in fact than on some QCs, although STATAL seemed odd. It was only because of dithering over ACTUARIAL that I was 20.01 minutes, pity not to record what would be a rare sub-20 time.
A fairly straightforward solve in 23.30 starting with ACTING and finishing with ACTUARIAL. I’ll award my COD to the latter as it was the toughest to solve in my opinion.
15.40 with no terrors. Becoming increasingly amazed at the number of versions of toilet that can be used in clues! But it’s not an inconvenience.
Liked flagon and passable.
Inspired by a fellow QCer, I had a go at this and did it in 45 minutes. Well pleased!
This was solvable, as mentioned; I had three errors in today’s QC which for me was not solvable!
LOI here was HARDING.
I assumed LOGE must be right.
And I realised I could not spell ACAPPELLA without help; two Cs surely!
I enjoyed this very much.
COD to SAMARITAN.
David
I raced through most of this in 14 minutes, and then spent another 14 minutes trying to work out the last four clues in the SE corner. Eventually saw that 22dn was an anagram, and carried on from there, but had lost momentum. Agree this was really a giant QC.
FOI – SIMMERS
LOI – HARDING
COD – SAMARITAN
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.
17.23
A bit sluggish compared to “contemporaries” and indeed it didn’t feel as easy to me as others found it. Having CAPELLO didn’t help; whilst ACTUARIAL and HARDING weren’t gimmes. Always happy with a sub-20 though
16:38
NHO LOGE, not sure I would have spelt 1d with 2xP, and didn’t know that LOI STATAL was a word. Got to about 12 minutes then stuck on the last half dozen (MORPHINE, SAMARITAN, SHAM, HARDING, FLAGON, STATAL) which were entirely freed up and bunged in very quickly after seeing CARPENTERS.
Thanks V and setter
It was all going very well until my brain seized up and for life of me I couldn’t see ACTUARIAL (despite all my working life being spent in the insurance industry), FLAGON or HARDING (particularly annoying as I went through a mental checklist of US presidents without him occurring to me).
I got FLICK, but it took a while to come because I haven’t heard anyone call a film a “flick” since my now very distant childhood, and that was only by my granddad.
I thought “Holy” in the clue for 24ac was redundant and, for me anyway, a bit of a misdirection as it had me thinking that POPE had to be involved in some way in the answer.
10:51. DNK LOGE so relied on the wordplay for that. LOI the unknown STATAL. Another puzzled by 24A….”Holy father” had me looking for “pope” in the answer, which is what it means.. Why is “Holy” in the clue? Thanks Vinyl and setter.
. . .in my case, so that you don’t have to bother with Pa or Pop, but can instead waste time wondering why Pope doesn’t play a part, before finally thinking of Fr
No time as my solve punctuated by builders. But very Mondayish with only LOGE being NHO. SW corner a little harder to crack than the rest and didn’t parse LOI ACTUARIAL. I suspect I would have misspelt KINSHASA if the clueing wasn’t so helpful. Thanks Vinyl and setter.
Well this is my fastest ever; I wrote most down as soon as I read the clue- paper man me- but looked at five mins and just over half way. 7:55 in the end. I shall never understand how some can do it in under four mins.
But never mind best by 30 seconds.
19’00”
Pretty good, but he’s too long in the tooth to challenge the youngsters over 5f downhill at Epsom.
I was faster on a Monday in 2023 with an almost identical Snitch, but that grid included a loosebox; a bit of a gimme for me. I hope the ACTUARIAL profession still sponsor the UK maths challenges; exams which aptly include(d) the opportunity for a bit of a gamble.
A box was a loggia at my local opera gaff, but its design was a bit odd. I’ve only been in a box once; at the ballet – best seen at a bit of a distance – in the ‘red-velvet’ theatre in Prague, the one near Wenceslas Square, and a two-handkerchief evening it was!
Thank you for the sub-twenty opportunity setter, and Vinyl; my accompaniment was Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet on Radio 3.
25.51 Ten minutes for the top half, slow in the SE. LOGE was new. I thought of Oliver but forgot he had a surname so TWIST was LOI. Thanks vinyl1.
14.48 probably slowed by tackling the MCS immediately before, and as it happens Mephisto before that. You just don’t expect to know any of the entries.
Finished fairly quickly all correct (so must have been easy). Lots biffed then parsed. Slowed down by wanting to use pope for holy father as mentioned above, and took a while to see FLICK which was LOI. Liked BOGUS 😁 Many thanks all.
37:40
Whilst not quick, I think this is my PB for the 15×15. Admittedly, I’m only tempted over here when the Snitch is suitably low. Nothing here that wouldn’t have been out of place in the QC. That said I did flirt with QATAR for the Arab (catarrh) but decided it would have to be Qatari.
15’30”, only seconds over a PB for me, but with the parsing of ACTUARIAL completely eluding me after a lifetime working in the financial sector. (At least I saw the solution, but I’m still kicking myself for having had to come here for the explanation – but thanks to our blogger for providing the boot.)
24 minutes, which is a bit too slow for a not very problematic Monday puzzle!
24:58 for my second fastest time on the biggie. Struggled with ACTUARIAL (LOI) and ADROITNESS anagram. Should have got HARDING as I know them all back to 1900 but gave up backtracking through my list of old Presidents when I reached Coolidge and Hoover. And the Harrisons were the other H I could think of. Eventually Warren popped to mind.
Great time! Oh, and add Rutherford B. Hayes to your U.S.Presidents starting with H list.
Thanks CO – Hayes would definitely be a Pointless answer for me. I really ought to round out my knowledge by learning all of them.
Have you seen that John Tyler (born 1790 – #10 in office 1841-45) still has a living grandson? In fact, it was two until a few years ago.