A lovely puzzle from the lyre of Orpheus. There is one serious obscurity but three out of five letters were checked and with those the answer was obvious even if (like me) you’d never come across the word. Slightly below average for me at 07:55; I hope you all enjoyed it too. Whether you did or didn’t, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Sawbill’s from last weekend – it’s excellent. Link here.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Popular medic attempts endlessly to take in new teaching (8) |
| DOCTRINE – obviously this means “teaching” and starts IN [popular] + DR/MO/MB [medic]. Oh. Can’t make that work. Let me look at 1d. Got that, so first letter now D. Ah, ok, so actually it obviously means “popular” and starts with DR. No, can’t make that work either. Umm – ok, finally got it. DOC is “popular medic” (I think because it’s slang and thus “popular”); TRIE{s} is “attempts endlessly”, and it contains N [to take in new]. As you can see, I made a bit of a hash of that. | |
| 5 | Young rascal failing to complete swindle (4) |
| SCAM – much easier. A “young rascal” is a SCAM{p}, remove the last letter [failing to complete]. | |
| 8 | Sadly digests opening of this geographical aid (5) |
| ATLAS – ALAS [sadly] contains [digests] T [opening of this]. | |
| 9 | Diplomacy originally informing Civil Service manoeuvres (7) |
| TACTICS – TACT [diplomacy] + I [originally informing] + CS [Civil Service, didn’t know the abbreviation but it wasn’t hard to work out]. | |
| 11 | Songbird’s dark period buffeted by strong wind? (11) |
| NIGHTINGALE – NIGHT [dark period] + IN GALE [buffeted by strong wind]. Excellent clue. | |
| 13 | Seize pass, lake and river to begin with (6) |
| COLLAR – COL [pass] + L [lake] + AR [and river to begin with]. | |
| 14 | Batch of newborn puppies possibly? Rubbish! (6) |
| LITTER – double definition. The first one is a “definition by example”, indicated by the question-mark, because other animals have litters too (pigs, for example). | |
| 17 | European still showing no strong feeling (11) |
| EMOTIONLESS – E [European] + MOTIONLESS [still]. | |
| 20 | Afternoon show in English inspired by ship’s officer (7) |
| MATINEE – IN [in] + E [English] going inside [inspired by] MATE [ship’s officer]. Not for the first time I am struck by the peculiarity of a word deriving from the French “matin” (morning) mutating to mean specifically an afternoon performance. | |
| 21 | Priestly vestment initially attracting rodents (5) |
| AMICE – A [initially attracting] + MICE [rodents]. “A rectangular piece of white linen worn by priests around the neck and shoulder under the alb, or formerly on the head”. Thank you Collins; forty years of Anglicanism had not taught me that. Fortunately the wordplay meant it was always going to be “arats” or “amice”, so the checkers made the answer inevitable. The customary argument between “far too obscure for a QC, why wasn’t it agile or alive, setters just don’t know what they’re doing” and “isn’t it good to learn new words” may now take place between the usual tribes. | |
| 22 | Call round (4) |
| RING – another double definition. | |
| 23 | Wasted fish, we hear, like a favoured boy? (4-4) |
| BLUE-EYED – I really struggled with this, my LOI by some distance, but when the penny dropped it was very satisfying and so this is my COD (fishy ho ho). Two bits of aural wordplay combine to make this a tough clue – BLUE for “blew” [wasted] and EYED for “ide” [fish – “a small slender European cyprinoid fish, Idus idus“, aka the orfe. It lives in the Crosswordland Aquarium in the tank next to the eft.] A BLUE-EYED boy is a favourite or darling. The expression always reminds me of ee cummings’s poem “Buffalo Bill”, which ends
“and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death”
|
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Distribute timber somewhere in Kent (4) |
| DEAL – ooh, the lesser-spotted triple definition. “Distribute” as in “deal the cards”; “timber” as in softwood, typically pine; and “somewhere in Kent” as in the coastal town just north of Dover. Very good. | |
| 2 | Senior officer — a bit of a nut, by the sound of it (7) |
| COLONEL – sounds like [by the sound of it] “kernel” [bit of a nut]. This is a very old pun: read all about Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the Knuts (1914) here | |
| 3 | Leaving statement that shows acceptance (11) |
| RESIGNATION – double definition. | |
| 4 | Write music on stave prepared at Eton (6) |
| NOTATE – aaaaand there it is, today’s reference to Slough Grammar. Anagram [prepared] of “at Eton”. | |
| 6 | Outstanding feature associated with a mate in Bow (5) |
| CHINA – Bow indicates the east end of London, which in turn indicates Cockney Rhyming Slang. China plate = mate, me old chinas. CHIN [outstanding feature, unless you’re a chinless wonder like Gilbert the Filbert] + A [associated with a]. | |
| 7 | Her maid’s carelessly picked up wrong information (8) |
| MISHEARD – anagram [carelessly] of “her maid’s”. | |
| 10 | Thoughtful judge supporting argument against team (11) |
| CONSIDERATE – RATE [judge] going underneath [supporting] CON [argument against] + SIDE [team]. | |
| 12 | Banner headline involving elite in southeast Russia principally (8) |
| SCREAMER – I’m not sure how I knew that a tabloid headline is called a SCREAMER but I did, which made this easy. To construct it from wordplay would be a bit harder: CREAM [elite] inside [in] SE [southeast] + R [Russia principally]. | |
| 15 | Swear, being touchy about Kipling poem? (7) |
| TESTIFY – TESTY [touchy] containing [about] IF [Kipling poem]. | |
| 16 | Fictitious peacekeepers ready for Brazil (6) |
| UNREAL – UN [peacekeepers] + REAL [the currency of Brazil, ie “ready” in Brazil]. “Ready” or “capital” meaning “money” often catch me out but today I twigged. | |
| 18 | Like some cereal consumed in borders of Oman? (5) |
| OATEN – ATE [consumed] inside [in] ON [borders of Oman]. Fortunately Mr Waitrose sells Duchy Organic Oaten Biscuits or I might have struggled here. | |
| 19 | Part of rosary venerable scholar read out (4) |
| BEAD – rosaries have BEADs and that’s pretty much all I know about them. Sounds like [read out] the Venerable Bede. | |
9:56. I wanted STREAMER for banner until I saw elite gave CREAM. BLUE-EYED and UNREAL were favourites.
I couldn’t make much of doctrine at first pass either, and wanted 1 down to be dole. So I skipped that section, and opened operations elsewhere. Nightingale and emotionless were easy, and got me started. I was a little startled by amice, as I just blogged it in my last Mephisto blog. Many will say that’s where it belongs! Same wordplay, too.
Time: 6:38
I rashly biffed STREAMER (banner) at 12d and forgot about it, which made COLLAR my LOI. 7:43.
Wot Templar said. Struggled with DOCTRINE, then plain sailing, before NHO AMICE. But the wordplay for once gives people a chance (unlike a certain painter clue yesterday …), so a completion in 8:18 for a Better Day Than Yesterday.
Many thanks for the blog.
Exactly what I thought. NHO Amice, but with A_I_E and the clue, I was never going to miss it. I thought the painter clue yesterday was unfair because if you didn’t have the GK you were reduced to guesswork.
Really enjoyable blog, I like the more descriptive ones
9.04, held up by DOCTRINE. Good fun, thanks Orpheus and Templar.
10 minutes. Very enjoyable. I was distracted by the priestly vestment beginning with A because the one that came immediately to my mind was ALB. I was missing other checkers at the times, so it might have been relevant. This was the first occurrence of AMICE in a QC and, perhaps significantly, 4 of its previous 9 appearances were in Mephisto puzzles.
A very recent addition to the Crosswordland Aquarium is the lazy ide who has decided to dispense with the ‘e’ in his name. So far only Chambers has caught up with him.
Ended up in the same place as many others it seems, trying to make ‘streamer’ work before looking at the clue very much more carefully to get SCREAMER and suddenly COLLAR seemed easy. All those years watching the Tour de France I ‘col’ never occurred to me (col de Buttertubs from when the tour came to Yorkshire in 2014 being a particular favourite). Enjoyed NIGHTINGALE, exactly my sort of clue! All green in 11.42.
Col de Buttertubs – brilliant.
Wasn’t it ‘Col de Blubberhouses’?
yes, but ‘cote de jenkin road’ still has it for me.
7:34. I started out making the same hash of DOCTRINE at 1ac, followed by a smooth run to a fast time. And I knew SCREAMER, assuming it had come up here before, but a search doesn’t find anything recent except a Mephisto in 2023, and that can’t be how I knew it. I liked UNREAL and BLUE-EYED.
Thanks to Orpheus for a fine puzzle and to Templar for a first-rate blog
Also much of what Templar said. Enjoyable puzzle and blog,which as well as providing delightful entertainment helped us with the parsing of china and unreal, thanks. All done in 17.50
Started thinking popular = in plus doc so was looking at shorter versions of indoctrinate before getting 1d caused the penny to drop
Lots of great clues but deal takes COD here.
Thanks Orpheus
Enjoyable and flowing for 11:39. Thanks Orpheus. I used to lay out the AMICE for our priest as a Catholic, rosary reciting, altar boy, so that I knew. I think it’s rarely used by Anglican clergy, so understandably unfamiliar to most. Thanks Templar for an entertaining blog, and for sharing your trains of thought. Could ‘originally’ continue to the first letters of Civil Service, meaning CS is not necessarily an acronym?
I agree with you re initially I-C-S. But even if CS stood for Civil Service it would be an abbreviation not an acronym.
Thanks
For a detailed discussion of the terms ‘abbreviation’, ‘acronym’, ‘initialism’ etc see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym. Among much else it quotes the OED 2011 as ‘The broader sense of acronym, ignoring pronunciation, is its original meaning and in common use.’
Yes, it could work like that CT, thanks. But CS is listed in Collins as an abbreviation for Civil Service (along with Christian Science, Chartered Surveyor and others), so it could have been that too!
11:02. Held up with the wrong BEAD/BEDE, which made the tricky BLUE EYED impossible. Was never going to parse IDE, homophones are hard, especially when it’s a NHO.
I thought AVOLE for AMICE looked and sounded Latinate enough, but the third checker sorted that out. Also trying to get the classic COPE in there as another crossword priest vestment.
Gentle offering today not counting 1a but DEAL sorted that out, but wouldn’t have seen Doc for popular medic. Couldn’t see TESTIFY for some reason and BLUE-EYED didn’t come easily. Three of the four long ones were write-ins but EMOTIONLESS held out.
Thanks Templar and setter.
Had a similar thought process to Templar et al over DOCTRINE, which ended up being my LOI, but other than that a very friendly puzzle from Orpheus.
Finished in 6.36 with CsOD to SCREAMER and BLUE EYED.
Thanks to Templar
7:30 (birth of Offa)
With AMICE I’m in the “nice to learn a new word” camp, although I doubt I’ll find a use for it since I’ve never come across it in a lifetime of Anglicanism.
DOCTRINE was my LOI, with a similar train of thought to Templar.
Thanks Templar and Orpheus
I was another tempted by “streamer” but I came back to it on the second (and final) pass through the clues. By that time the parsing was perfectly clear, as it was with the NHO AMICE. Thanks for an excellent blog Templar, and a very enjoyable puzzle from Orpheus.
FOI SCAM
LOI BEAD
COD BLUE-EYED
TIME 4:46*
* I have decided to slow myself down (again!) in an attempt to cut out the ridiculous amount of typos committed of late – a pair of them again yesterday 🙄
Time will tell whether checking every entry individually as I go is the way forward. It worked on yesterday’s 15×15, where I spotted a typo immediately.
As a tabloid subeditor for many years (now retired), I’d say that screamer always referred to an exclamation mark rather than a banner headline. However, the wordplay definitely indicated screamer rather than streamer. (Another, more common, description of an exclamation mark referred to a part of a canine’s anatomy but I’d better not repeat it here).
It was always known as Shriek in maths at school (as in 3!)
Nothing to worry about here, I came in at just over 8 minutes, which is better than usual and better than my personal “target” of 10 minutes.
I had a similar journey as Templar on DOCTRINE, which ended up being my LOI, with the added complication that when I had all the checkers I was still trying to make it end in ING for “teaching”. So probably 25% of the solving time was on that clue. I had no issue with AMICE, a word which I’ve never come across IRL but one which seems to be common currency (or park ready?) in Crosswordland.
Quite testing in places, requiring biffing and crossing of fingers, but finally completed in 25:15, slower than average for me. Problems were DOCTRINE, BLUE-EYED, AMICE (NHO) and SCREAMER – pure guess.
Always good to learn a new ecclesiastical garment. Apart from that, doctrine, and the failed-to-parse blue-eyed, I found this straightforward and altogether enjoyable. Liked testify. 7:03.
No problems completing this. Wordplay helped with SCREAMER and AMICE, both NHO. COD NIGHTINGALE. Like other solvers, was slow to see DOCTRINE which shouldn’t have been difficult as my father was known as Doc during his wartime years and after. Thanks for great blog Templar.
I thought this was very good so thanks Orpheus and Templar. I’ve got 50+ years of Anglicanism too and been head of RE and never heard of an amice either. The rest was excellent so I won’t moan too much about it – it just seems a bit unnecessary with those letters available for something more sensible.
ALIVE could have been clued in lots of interesting ways.
I’m a Roman Catholic educated at a convent and I think I drew my first picture of an amice aged 6 – and we loved dressing our dolls in priestly vestments
Be prepared for copes, chasubles, dalmatics, humeral veils, rochets and surplices among others.
Chasuble is such a terrific word, thank you. That took me straight off to “Summoned by Bells”:
Those were the days when that divine baroque
Transformed our English altars and our ways.
Fiddle-back chasuble in mid-Lent pink
Scandalized Rome and Protestants alike:
“Why do you try to ape the Holy See?”
“Why do you sojourn in a halfway house?”
And Canon Chasuble is the priest in The Importance of Being Ernest.
Massive PB for me today of 13:44. Previous best just under 20 minutes.
Also started with indoctrinate for 1a
As an avid D&D player Amices are frequently mentioned as well as other medieval era names of clothing
That’s a massive difference, congratulations!
What is D&D?
Dungeons and Dragons
Congratulations to Paul on the PB!
👍🏻
Catholic, check, convent check, plus chorister and altar boy … still NHO AMICE. Cassock and cotta incoming.
Enjoyed todays QC and the blog.
Me neither- educated by the Augustinian Friars and felt like I spent most of my formative years in a white ‘frock’
Stuck on seize = T-L-A- for ages, then realised the banner wasn’t a StREAMER but the NHO SCREAMER which unlocked COLLAR. Failed the LOI, guessed BLUE-bYrD but yes of course, thank you, Templar. So, all except two letters! NHO AMICE but it seemed marginally more plausible than Arats (and then of course the checkers confirmed it). Much fun, thank you, Orpheus.
BLUE BYRD : pornographic version of madrigals made up by bored choristers.
Matron!
Too good!
Is this one of the BLUE BYRDS of happiness that flew somewhere over the rainbow or even over the White Cliffs of Dover?
12:08 for the solve. Flew through the top half, slower in the SW but the four in the SE had me stumped. Wasn’t helped by misremembering Kipling’s poem as “IT” and then trying to find some unknown version of attest/testate. BLUE-EYED could only be a bif as the soundalike is near impossible to derive.
Not keen on having two religious clues intersecting and while saved by alphatrawl wasn’t entirely sure whether I should be going for beed or bead from the soundalike.
Thanks to the Orpheus and Templar 😇
From DEAL to BLUE EYED in 5:38. Needed crossers for DOCTRINE. Wrote in NIGHTINGALE from definition and the leading N plus the T from NOTATE. SCREAMER rang a faint bell. I was initially distracted by ALB at 21a, but remembered AMICE from an RC upbringing once the crossers were in. Thanks Orpheus and Templar.
A very good puzzle from another excellent setter who seems to have made an effort to provide a genuine ‘quickie’. However, that doesn’t mean I found it easy.
My solve was steady but I had to work out the NHO AMICE. My time was seriously extended at the end because, like Kevin, I fell into the yawning bear trap with a biffed STREAMER. It took a while to fail to find any word based on T_L_A_ so COLLAR was my LOI when I finally sorted myself out.
So far, I have managed a week without entering the SCC, though (19.40 today). Can’t be bad after the last few months! I shouldn’t tempt providence……..
Some great clues; thanks to Orpheus. Thanks to Templar, too, for an excellent blog and for some helpful parsing of answers like BLUE-EYED that I had glossed over.
Had all of them apart from BLUE-EYED today in 50 minutes. Keep getting tripped up in my lack of fish knowledge 😆 Very enjoyable puzzle, really liked CONSIDERATE as for the longest time thought CONSIDER meant to “judge” and had to figure out how ATE meant “argument against team” until it clicked. Thank you for the explanations, lots of good things to remember for future puzzles
NHO AMICE but easy to get from clue.
Quite a lot of crossword lore in here- DEAL etc. A good one for learners.
Finished in 11 minutes EMOTIONLESS.
A nice QC. COD to BLUE-EYED.
David
Very similar experience to others with SCREAMER (not streamer then), AMICE (qué?) and DOCTRINE. Everything else went in fairly smoothly although couldn’t parse BLUE-EYED (forgotten about the ide fish). This now gets COD, with NIGHTINGALE a close second. Lovely puzzle and informative blog. Many thanks.
5:39
If you’ve ever worked for the Civil Service (my first full-time job back in the 80s), you’ll know that CS is its standard shortform. Two uses I can think of immediately – CSSC (Civil Service Sports Club, based in Chiswick); PCSPS (Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme).
AMICE foggily recalled from many years ago, as part of a priest’s vestments.
Thanks Templar and Orpheus
I remember it as the CSSSC. Civil Service Sports and Social Club.🙂
1974-75 ish.
No real problems with this apart from joining the STREAMER brigade at 12dn. Forgetting to return to parse it I then struggled with my LOI 13ac, before solving it without the benefit of the first letter, and suddenly 12dn was a SCREAMER (back of the net!). So a sub seven minute solve had as a result extended out to 7.35. Quite happy with that though.
Templar described my experience with DOCTRINE perfectly; glad it wasn’t just me. All done in 14:18, mildly helped by a very vague recollection of watching Simon Anthony come up with AMICE in one of his videos for Cracking the Cryptic.
Couldn’t parse UNREAL, so thank you to Templar for clearing that up!
Top half went in easily but the bottom half took a lot more work for 33m.
LOI was BLUE-EYED and I had no idea what the parsing was until reading Templar’s very helpful and enjoyable blog.
Thanks to Orpheus for a spot on QC – the 4th this week.
I closely followed Templar’s route, dithering with Doctrine to start and then stuck on CoD Blue- Eyed to finish. Unfortunately it took me twice as long, so ‘another’ sub-15 chance was gone. I didn’t even have the excuse of Amice being a nho, since as a High Anglican server I have worn one.
The bottom half of the grid seemed a touch harder than the top, but perhaps that was a result of Screamer putting up some resistance – now that was a genuine nho for me. Poi, Testify, was a welcome pdm, and would have been CoD before the blew ide one came along.
My thanks to Templar for his customary entertaining blog, and especially the Knut link. Invariant
I’m with you. The top half went in like lightning and was I was seriously thinking I’d be on a for sub 10 – but then I hit the SE corner and everything ground to a halt.
A very enjoyable puzzle with some brilliant clues. I too was waylaid for a while by streamer. Loved BLUE EYED, UNREAL. NHO AMICE but it had to be correct.
Thanks Orpheus for the perfectly- judged difficulty leveland thanks Templar for the blog
I too had Templar’s experiences with DOCTRINE, which was almost last in. I also went for STREAMER before the penny dropped. So what was going to be quite a quick solve (for me) ended up taking 23 minutes. (Also held up by BLUE EYED, AMICE and BEAD: sometimes I’m just intimidated by the clues)!
Nevertheless, an enjoyable and satisfying QC. Thank you Orpheus and Templar for your blog.
All done in just over 15 minutes – about my average. I thought this was perfectly pitched as a QC and thoroughly enjoyed Templar’s very informative blog – thanks to him and Orpheus.
Ten today….
Note that the exclamation mark is also known as “bang” in IT circles, particularly in programing and the C language in particular if memory serves.
It used to be known as “pling” in British software, but I haven’t heard that in years.
My first experience of program storage was punch cards. My first remote access was via an accoustically coupled modem and a Teletype at 110 Baud. I think pling was a Fortran thing wasn’t it?
I’m familiar with it from Acorn software in the 1980s. I don’t know where it started.
7.48 I spent a few moments trying to fit PEDAGOGY into 1a. It has GOG for “attempts endlessly” but the rest didn’t work. So DOCTRINE was POI and I finished with AMICE. Another word I thought I didn’t know but, having looked it up, I recognise the article from when I served mass, so I’ve almost certainly heard the name. Thanks Templar and Orpheus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amice
4.38. So on the easier side for me.
DNK Screamer but did know Amice.
I had a brief moment of elation upon realising that I had a sub-Busman, only to see that he had deliberately slowed down for this one. Oh well, one day…
I too like the full explanations given by Templar, always informative and amusing.
Many thanks to Templar and Orpheus.
Parsed Blue-eyed and Bead after reading the enjoyable blog. QC was neat too. Thankful.
Enjoyable puzzle. Biffed LOI NHO AMICE. Slow on DOCTRINE, only solving after NOTATE and RESIGNATION fell into place.
FOI COLONEL.
Liked NIGHTINGALE (COD), MATINEE, BEAD, CHINA, CONSIDERATE.
Was obliged to correct Streamer when COLLAR came to mind.
Thanks vm, Templar. CNP BLUE-EYED.
Well I made a right mess of that. I started with a new spelling of doctorate at 1a = DOCTRate which I justified as DOC + TR(Y) + ATE = take(n) in. I then followed it with tOnATE at 4d. So I needed TACTICS to fix the right mess I gotten myself into. DNK AMICE but it fitted the word play. My LOI was SCREAMER which I justified as someone who makes a proclamation out loud! I think I must have had the orange one on my mind at the time. 8:19 for a should have, could have, would have sort of day. Thanks Templar.
I made reasonable progress until I was down to my last few, which were all in the SE corner. Just over 35 minutes in the end and all except 16d fully parsed.
My awkward SE clues, all inter-connected, were UNREAL, which I could not parse, the NHO AMICE, BLUE-EYED, TESTIFY and BEAD (my LOI). These five probably added a quarter of an hour to proceedings, so I was getting quite close to implementing my knock-it-on-the-head policy to preserve sanity. Fortunately, however, the finish line came just soon enough.
Many thanks to Templar and Orpheus.
I had no problems with DOCTRINE, AMICE and I have recently come across Ide fish.
( via the brilliant Fish Doorbell site https://visdeurbel.nl/en/).
My block came with SCREAMER. A technical DNF but a fun QC.
Thanks to Orpheus, and to Templar for an entertaining blog
5:15
Nice puzzle – enjoyable solve.
Thanks, T.
Matinée meaning afternoon performance seems to come from the same school as entrée meaning main course rather than starter.
~ 11:50. We also were STREAMERs to start with but couldn’t make it parse. NHO SCREAMER in that sense. Biffing UNEMOTIONAL also led to delays. NHO LOI AMICE but once the checkers were in it had to be. Thanks, all.
Another great puzzle…Was feeling a bit off colour from my covid jab yesterday so was not expecting to tackle this so early in my day, nor with much success – but it was fun to do. Held p by Emotionless/testify/blue-eyed but a short nap solved them all!
FOI 1a Doctrine
LOI 23a Blue Eyed
COD 11a Nightingale – amusing!