Good morning, and we have a fine puzzle from Hurley today, on the slightly more challenging side of average I think if my time of 13:46 is anything to go by. I was very slow to start, and only had 4 of the acrosses on the first pass, but the two long down anagrams at 2D and 8D were very helpful and opened up the grid nicely.
Hurley has used just about the full range of clue types and tricks open to the QC setter here – the only common one that is missing is a cross reference in one clue to another, and many of this parish will not be sorry about that I suspect. But the puzzle is probably one that those who like anagrams will enjoy especially, and for once my anagram hat was to the fore.
How did everyone else get on?
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, and strike-through-text shows deletions.
| Across | |
| 1 | Do wait at table (5) |
| SERVE – A DD to start us off, with the first definition as in “That’ll do” / “That’ll serve”. | |
| 7 | Never-ending mess, I’ll go wild about it (9) |
| LIMITLESS – (mess I’ll)*, with the anagram indicator being “go wild”, surrounding (ie “about”) IT (from the clue). | |
| 9 | Small and almost defenceless reptile (5) |
| SNAKE – S (small) + NAKE (ie naked, or defenceless, with the last letter deleted, given by “almost”). | |
| 10 | Saintly fisherman welcoming church feature and counter for steps (9) |
| PEDOMETER – PETER (saintly fisherman) surrounding (ie “welcoming”) DOME (church feature).
My FOI, but actually domes are a lot more common on mosques, where they are (almost) universal, than they are on churches, where they are relatively rare and only a few of the most important churches (for example St Peter’s in Rome or St Paul’s in London) tend to have a dome. |
|
| 11 | Animal you picked up (3) |
| EWE – sounds like YOU, with the homophone indicator being “picked up”. | |
| 12 | Shunning pleasure at start, Spartan out to change high flyer? (9) |
| ASTRONAUT – an anagram, with the anagrist being “spartan out” without the P (“shunning pleasure at start”) and the anagram indicator being “to change”. | |
| 14 | Strong point welcoming Greek characters — hint of future (9) |
| FORETASTE – FORTE (strong point) surrounding (ie “welcoming”) ETAS (eta is a Greek character, so more than one of them are presumably etas). | |
| 16 | Drink valet uncovered (3) |
| ALE – |
|
| 18 | Portrait at right angles in print? (9) |
| LANDSCAPE – A cryptic clue, based on the fact that when printing from a computer, “normal” or document printing, ie with long edges along the sides and short edges top and bottom, is called Portrait style, and when you want to print with the paper turned through 90 degrees you specify Landscape style.
Which I found a lot easier to solve than describe! |
|
| 20 | Two needed for this tea, as communicated? (5) |
| TANGO – A play on “you need two to tango”, with the tango in the answer being the NATO alphabet name for T (ie tea, “as communicated” or as heard in speech). | |
| 21 | Crude translation of “get in lane” (9) |
| INELEGANT – (get in lane)*, with the anagram indicator being “translation”. | |
| 22 | Regular temperature occurrence (5) |
| EVENT – EVEN (regular) + T (temperature). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | US uncle stopping to observe plant (6) |
| SESAME – SAM (US uncle) inserted into (ie “stopping”) SEE (to observe). | |
| 2 | Arrival (not the first) in car arena, peep curiously (12) |
| REAPPEARANCE – (car arena peep)*, with the anagram indicator being “curiously”. One’s first arrival is an appearance, and every subsequent one is a reappearance.
I often approach long anagrams with some foreboding, especially if the grid is only very sparsely populated with checkers, but both this and 8D leapt out of the page at me. |
|
| 3 | Room-mate that’s hard to miss and hard to discuss? (8) |
| ELEPHANT – A DD of sorts: an elephant in the room is indeed hard to miss, and it is also a term for a subject everyone knows is important but no-one wants to be the first to start talking about. | |
| 4 | Surrounded by a fog concealing day (6) |
| AMIDST – A MIST (a fog) surrounding (ie “concealing”) D (day). If you are surrounded by eg flowers you are amidst them. | |
| 5 | Check part of flower (4) |
| STEM – Another DD, with the first definition as in for example “To check/stem the flow of blood from a wound”. | |
| 6 | Liveliness of elf, last to ascend to top (6) |
| ESPRIT – SPRITE (elf), with the last letter, E, moving from the end of the word to the start – or as this is a down clue, ascending to the top. | |
| 8 | Excessive spending? New age tax — craven! (12) |
| EXTRAVAGANCE – (age tax craven)*, with the anagram indicator being “new”. | |
| 13 | Food house husband leaves with unfinished letter (8) |
| OMELETTE – OME (home, ie house, with the H deleted, given by “husband leaves”) + LETTE (letter “unfinished”, ie with the last letter deleted). | |
| 14 | Boost man reportedly (6) |
| FILLIP – Sounds like Philip (ie “reportedly”). This was my LOI, as for a long time I was looking for a word meaning man (eg chap, fellow) not a man’s name. | |
| 15 | Insect some classified as religious, almost blessed originally (6) |
| SCARAB -Formed from the first letters of (ie “originally”) Some Classified As Religious, Almost Blessed. | |
| 17 | Provide protection for troubled sector (6) |
| ESCORT – (sector)*, with the anagram indicator being “troubled”. | |
| 19 | English editor displaying storage facility (4) |
| SHED – A hidden, in EngliSH EDitor with the hidden indicator being “displaying”. | |
I biffed LIMITLESS & LANDSCAPE; DNK portrait/landscape. 9:12.
13:47. I thought the religious insect would have to be the (Praying) MANTIS. In painting a portrait and a LANDSCAPE are totally different things so I knew something else outside my range of knowledge was involved!
This was a tough one for me – not on the wavelength for sure. I couldn’t do the anagrams, couldn’t think of the right elf, was looking for a bird instead of an astronaut, a type of tea, etc, etc. Definitely a little quirky. Fillip was my LOI.
Time: 14:57
Chewy I thought. The only write-ins for me were the two long anagrams, SCARAB, TANGO, LANDSCAPE and the three-letter words, everything else requiring a bit of thought. Had forgotten about the fisherman so PEDOMETER took a while to see but should have seen counter for steps sooner. Liked OMELETTE and FORETASTE. COD to ESPRIT, which appeared in a quickie on the 9th and caused a bit of a stir as ‘sprit’ was clued as ‘pole’ and the definition then was ‘quickness’ which is pretty much the same as today’s ‘liveliness’.
Great blog Cedric and thank you setter.
11 minutes. The two long down anagrams helped me get a start on what I found a harder than average puzzle. I couldn’t work out the parsing of FORETASTE until I had a few checkers and LIMITLESS gave me trouble as I didn’t think to lift and separate ‘mess’ from ‘Never-ending’. ESPRIT also no write-in but helped by the recent QC appearance as mentioned by Quadrophenia. On the other hand I have an unfair advantage for FILLIP which went in straight away.
I’m glad I didn’t have to explain LANDSCAPE and ELEPHANT; Cedric did a much better job than I would have!
Thanks to Hurley and Cedric
Portrait of Roommate Fillip doing Tango whilst eating an Omelette sums up the half-parsed for me. DDs never my forte
18:42 and an enjoyable romp so thank you Hurley and thank you Cedric for allowing me to make a complete parse out of my half-parsed effort.
🤣 thanks for the laugh
👍
>only a few of the most important churches
Almost all Orthodox churches have domes. I’ll less sure about the surface reading of this clue..
Also, still not sure what’s going on with LANDSCAPE.
(Loved the other CD though, the one for ELEPHANT. Sounds like one of those funny Chambers ones.)
14 minutes, my slowest solve of the week but still just within my target 15 and my QC week was a clear one in that respect.
I didn’t understand LANDSCAPE but should have done because I’m perfectly familiar with the printing terminology. Now that I see it I’m tempted to award it a rare COD as it’s really rather clever.
re Landscape: think of a photographic print which will be either landscape or portrait
Oh, dear. Romped into the SCC. Brain insisted on sticking with SECT for ‘part of insect’ with religious connotations, and refused to see the pointer (‘originally’).
LOI FILLIP
So many deliciously clever clues.
Our slowest solve for many days, though absolutely one the most enjoyed offerings
COD 3a ELEPHANT
Many thanks to Hurley and Cedric.
Super crossword, with TANGO and ELEPHANT tying for COD.
10′, thanks Hurley and Cedric – I couldn’t have described LANDSCAPE any better!
Good to hear that I wasn’t the only one to struggle with this as I felt as though I was wading through treacle for much of it with even some of the easier clues putting up a fight e.g. EVENT.
Pen and paper were needed for many of the anagrams and I didn’t help myself by reading 12a as ‘sTunning pleasure’.
A good work out which I finished in 11.50 with COD to ELEPHANT.
Thanks to Cedric and Hurley
I found this pretty tough, though I did finish unaided.
I don’t recall the use of SERVE for “do”; SERVE instead of “work” is more familiar.
As for REAPPEARANCE, I was fixated on something meaning second-born, as in not the first arrival. Once the crossers were in place, the penny dropped.
Pi ❤️
A minor point but stems are parts of plants, not flowers. Crosswords can be irritating to the botanically minded!
I’ll make a mental note that next time I buy a bunch of flowers, I should check whether the stems are included in the price.
I, too, found this tough (not unusual for me with Hurley’s recent puzzles). I almost lost patience with it but relented, stopped the clock, and got on with it.
I enjoyed tussling with many of the clues and finished steadily (with some biffs followed by, sometimes cursory, parsing). Too many good clues and too much clever misdirection to list here.
A good puzzle, once I was prepared to see it as just that, rather than a QC that had to be rushed for the sake of my time.
Recent experiences make me feel that this approach is my way forward but I fear that I will be ejected from the TFTT family if I ignore the first T.
Thanks to Hurley for a fun challenge and to Cedric for an excellent blog with his usual clarity of parsing.
If that was a rule, I’d never have got in in the first place…
😁 Glad to know that I’m not alone (though my memory tells me that quite a lot of posters now tell of their experience without quoting a time).
Including me – I have just given up on it after 4 days.
😁
That’s true persistence: the VIP suite of the SCC awaits you
25 mins…
Definitely a toughie, and on the first pass I barely got anything. Some clever cryptic type clues: 3dn “Elephant”, 18ac “Landscape” and 20ac “Tango” come to mind.
FOI – 1ac “Serve”
LOI – 14dn “Fillip”
COD – 3dn “Elephant”
Thanks as usual!
DNF Disaster. Not enjoyable for me but did like ELEPHANT and TANGO.
Thanks vm, Cedric.
A scrabbling, nail-clinging solve for me, battered and somewhat bewildered by the time I got the “completed” message and dragged myself into the SCC for strong coffee and brandy.
My anagram hat, usually reliable, has clearly been through the wash and come out badly. Like Plett11 I found this an exceedingly viscous puzzle generally.
Do = serve? Well, maybe, but it went in pretty late on when nothing else came to mind. Nothing otherwise to complain about other than being on a totally different wavelength; some clever clues that were so nearly too clever for me today. Weary thanks for the blog and puzzle.
I think “do” for “serve” will do. Or serve.
10.36
Stuck in the NE for an age with ELEPHANT finally understood and inserted as my LOI.
Good stuff. Thanks all
12 half bifd including the two long anagrams, serve, snake, and pedometer. I went for foresight having no checkers for the second syllable but the F gave me the bifd fillip.
Very enjoyable for me, thanks setter and blogger. I can remember faces but I have trouble remembering names.
PS Domes on mosques are minerettes aren’t they? Also appear on Greek and Russian authodox churches. Comes up in concise crosswords periodically.
A minaret is a tower.
Indeed, and they can reach great heights. The Islam Khoja minaret in Khiva, Uzbekistan, for example, is 185 feet high – see https://uzbekistan.travel/en/o/islam-khoja-minaret-khiva/. The great height is explained by the three uses such a minaret had: as well as the well-known use as a platform from which the muezzin issued the call to prayer, it was also a beacon or lighthouse to guide people to the city from across the desert, and finally an instrument of punishment, as criminals were executed by being thrown off the top of it.
You can gather that spelling is not my strong suite 🙂
15:50
LOI FILLIP
10:59. Slow to get started but the anagrams fell nicely and kept me going. I had the same unfair advantage with the saintly fisherman as BletchlyReject did with Fillip. I liked SERVE and ELEPHANT. Thank you Hurley and Cedric
Took a long look at 1ac, thinking it can’t be that hard, turned to 1d to get the initial S and still couldn’t see the answer. That set the tone for the rest of the solve: heavy use of the crowbar to tease out what should have been obvious answers.
Standing room only by the time I finished (. . .with 1ac), leaving me relying on the kindness of others for a seat on a hot day (good job I’m not London based). CoD to Pedometer for the parsing. Invariant
Found that quite tricky eventually finishing in 12,55 but with a really careless EXTRAVAGENCE. No idea how I managed that ‘cos I know it’s spelled with an A. Drat! Liked ELEPHANT. Thanks Hurley and Cedric.
Caught out by Fillip. I had Fillin which I read as “Fill in” for support and assumed Fillin was a viable name.
20:35 but for the 5th day in a row an error – EXTRAVAGeNCE. Only EWE and ALE which felt like gimmes went in on the Acrosses and not much better on the Downs.
I don’t like 1A is with DO=serve and an unappealing surface, especially when you compare to other high quality surfaces in the puzzle. Surely SERVE could have been clued better to give us a foothold given the cryptic ELEPHANT was hanging off that. I was held up there along with ASTRONAUT (complicated), FORETASTE (which Greek letter to put in front of S) and LOI FILLIP went in with a shrug. At least I recalled ESPRIT from a week or so back.
Thanks to Cedric and Hurley
I saw 1a as Do/Serve your time, as in a prison sentence. Seemed ok to me.
That’ll work, I agree.
Quite a long slow solve but let down in the end by TANGO as I was too busy looking for a type of tea. Obvious now though.
Pleased to spot ‘picked up’ as a homophone indicator after missing it yesterday.
Liked ELEPHNAT. Thanks Hurley and Cedric.
Finished in just under an hour. Think TANGO and ELEPHANT were both very clever and funny clues. Spent far too long on 2d thinking it was appearanceer, instead of REAPPEARANCE, thinking the word I made up could be someone who made regular appearances! 😆 Thank you for the blog
In hindsight we made rather heavy weather of this one. 17:45 with LOI FORETASTE (forte just wouldn’t come for strong point). We missed the six initial letters until, having stared for an age, we’d finally guessed SCARAB. FILLIP too was slow in coming – doesn’t it break the no names in wordplay ‘rule’ though? Liked TANGO but we needed the initial T to tee it up. Wondered about serve / do so your example was very helpful, Cedric. Thanks also to Hurley
11.19 Only a few seconds slower than yesterday so I was surprised at the Quitch. The top half except for ASTRONAUT went straight in but the bottom was harder. LOI TANGO. Thanks Cedric and Hurley.
Slow to get started, but my pace quickened until I was somewhere past the halfway mark. After that it was stop-start-stop-…. until I finally crossed the line with TANGO, which needed an alphabet trawl.
Time ~32 minutes.
My CoD was ELEPHANT.
Many thanks to Cedric and Hurley.
re Landscape: think of a photographic print which will be either landscape or portrait
Thought this a teaser but just because after a quick start in the NW, I was too tired to gather momentum.
FOI 1a Serve
LOI 14a Foretaste
COD 18a Landscape
10.39
I don’t think it was hard today, but many distractions took me out to 23:18 to solve it. Lots of good moments. Liked ELEPHANT, odd since I generally don’t like straight cryptics and also couldn’t see it (that would be the source of my dislike) until nearly the end. But I couldn’t figure out LANDSCAPE at all and put it in at last with bewilderment. SERVE was too subtle for me until crossers appeared. I too kept trying MANTIS for SCARAB, though really “knew” there had to be a B there. COD to FILLIP, which was successfully outsourced to the back office.
I think drumming practice is not the best accompaniment to solving. But didn’t want to shut the windows.
Thanks to Hurley and Cedric.
A lovely puzzle full of top quality clues…which I happened to find rather difficult! REAPPEARANCE (great misdirection) followed by SERVE (doh) then ELEPHANT were my last 3 in. Was another looking for a bird in 12a. COD TANGO which had me stumped for quite some time. Really enjoyed this one. Thanks Hurley and Cedric.
I found this hard, taking 27:16. PEDOMETER appears as the answer to a very similar clue in one of the Bertie Wooster books, so that made me smile.
Thanks to Hurley and Cedric.
Back to the SCC for me at 22:15, and needing Cedric’s help to understand LANDSCAPE and TANGO.
Thank you for the blog!
Found this very difficult, a lot of cumbersome anagrams with combining words or deleting letters, and quite a few unguessable tenuous synonyms (check for stem, naked for defenceless, serve for do?!??), plus Fillip which I’ve never heard of.
More than double my mean time. I would like to say I wasn’t on wavelength but I thought there was some great masking and misdirection in this.
One of the best QCs I have done in a while with three great ‘penny drops’ in TANGO, ELEPHANT and LANDSCAPE
Thanks blogger and setter
18:59
Held up at the end by ESPRIT despite the word coming up only last week.