Tough to get going here, eventually finished off with LOI RUNNER in 13:02. Nice puzzle from the Joker, with his characteristic smooth surfaces.
I couldn’t decide if the double JUST at 13 was a bug or a feature. I checked to see if there was any symmetry with the other side, but there isn’t.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, Synonyms in (parentheses), {deletions in curly brackets} and [square brackets] for other indicators.
| Across | |
| 6 | Bird arranged in casserole? (6) |
| PARROT – POT (casserole) contains ARR{anged}
You’ll often see Arr. for “arranged by” when referring to musical arrangements. |
|
| 7 | Accepted a deadly sin (6) |
| AGREED – A + GREED (deadly sin) | |
| 9 | Swindle involving one pound? (4) |
| COIN – CON (Swindle) contains I (one) | |
| 10 | House in Cork area of little height (8) |
| BUNGALOW – BUNG (cork) + A + LOW (of little height)
Nice surface, because, of course a BUNGALOW is a house of little height. Derived from “a house in the Bengal style”. |
|
| 11 | Living head of state losing power (8) |
| RESIDENT – {p}RESIDENT (head of state)
The adjective, such as “resident poet”. |
|
| 13 | Fair contest between knights, nought is ruled out (4) |
| JUST – J{o}UST (contest between knights) | |
| 15 | Cut nails back (4) |
| SNIP – PINS (nails) [back=reversed] | |
| 16 | Carries family headgear (8) |
| BEARSKIN – BEARS (carries) + KIN (family)
Not to be confused with a Busby or a Shako. |
|
| 18 | In where I am, even parts of units will be built-in (8) |
| INHERENT – IN HERE (where I am) + {u}N{i}T{s} | |
| 20 | Earn millions as keen entrepreneur initially (4) |
| MAKE – M{illions} + A{s} + K(een) + E{ntrepreneur} | |
| 21 | Compulsion to put on clothes over uniform (6) |
| DURESS – DRESS (put clothes on) contains U{niform} | |
| 22 | Shoot messenger (6) |
| RUNNER – DD
Runners are specialized stems that develop from the crown of a plant that grows horizontally along the ground and forms a new plant at the nodes. They are a type of Shoot. Or during a film shoot, the Runner is a messenger? |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | No Parisian will accept an extreme emperor (8) |
| NAPOLEON – NON (No in French [Parisian]) contains A + POLE (extreme)
“Pole” for “extreme” is used in the phrase “opposite poles”. |
|
| 2 | Book illustration is perfection in a way (12) |
| FRONTISPIECE – (IS PERFECTION)*
It’s an illustration that faces the title page of a book. It’s typically placed on the left-hand page, opposite the title page on the right-hand page when the book is opened. Not common now except in fancy volumes like Folio Editions. |
|
| 3 | Small item of furniture is not likely to topple (6) |
| STABLE – S{mall} + TABLE (item of furniture) | |
| 4 | What’s attractive green at first introduced by French artist (6) |
| MAGNET – G{reen} contain within MANET (French artist) | |
| 5 | Girl’s love is knight in shining armour (4) |
| HERO – HER (Girl’s) + O (love) | |
| 8 | Only chaps in trade turned out further tailoring (12) |
| READJUSTMENT – JUST MEN(Only chaps) inside (TRADE)* | |
| 12 | Born in want to a large degree (3) |
| NEE – NEE{d}
Whether a Need=Want is a philosophical/ethical question. I need a coffee just thinking about it. |
|
| 14 | Perfectionist staff left Keir regularly (8) |
| STICKLER – STICK (staff) + L{eft} + {K}E{I}R
STICKLER is derived from the obsolete verb “stickle,” which is related to the concept of arranging, controlling, or setting in order. We should bring it back, when pedants strikem you can respond with “Stop Stickling” |
|
| 16 | Desperate starlet finally bares chest (6) |
| BREAST – ({starle}T + BARES)* [Desperate is the anagram indicator] | |
| 17 | Important route for vessel (6) |
| ARTERY – Double def.
The main road into a town is called an Artery by traffic engineers. |
|
| 19 | Any number working outside university term? (4) |
| NOUN – N(Any Number) + ON (working) conraibs U {niversity}
A NOUN is tough to define in one word. |
|
In 7ac, I overlooked the ‘a’ in the clue, thus wasting a lot of time. I biffed READJUSTMENT from checkers without any idea of how it worked, only parsing post-submission. 7:33
I threw off my solve by trying to make sentient fit where resident should be, causing me to doubt frontispiece. So I just continued in other parts of the puzzle, and when I came back resident was perfectly obvious. You often see abbreviations like arr. and dist. in Mephisto, but they are not common in Quickies.
Time: 7:48
Ditto with sentient – making it my LOI.
(Pleased to see it wasn’t just me 😊)
Not the easiest of quickies. BUNGALOW should have gone in earlier than it did but the Irish (Cork) in the clue threw me. NAPOLEON it had to be but had trouble with the extreme/pole part. FRONTISPIECE biffed from checkers. NOUN took a bit of parsing for a four-letter word. Was unsure about DURESS/compulsion but the wordplay was clear. COD to INHERENT.
Thanks M and setter.
Made a mess of this and DNF, couldn’t see RUNNER or ARTERY for the life of me. Nothing was working so I threw in the towel after 12 or so. There were some terrific clues/surfaces here, including RESIDENT, NAPOLEON, READJUSTMENT and FRONTISPIECE (that is one good anagram!). Thanks Joker and Merlin.
14 minutes. Slow going for me but I knew all the references in the clues and the answers as they arrived. The grid contained two very common words that nearly always seem to delay me unduly, BUNGALOW and ARTERY. I only needed ‘budgerigar’ to complete the set.
10.55
Slow going here but the eyes were still rather on the bleary side for optimal solving conditions. Like Lindsay really struggled to see ARTERY and RUNNER at the end but finally eked them out. Rather a good puzzle I thought. Ta Merlin/Joker
Fast start then slowed trying to unravel FRONTISPIECE, trying to justify PARROT (thanks Merlin) and by BEARSKIN, MAGNET and BREAST. Pleased to finish all green in 15.48.
Classic Joker that was eminently solvable with time, took us 26.38 to unpick it all, with some of that used up in marvelling at the elegant cluing.
COD to breast what a very clever clue, with bungalow close behind
Thanks Joker and Merlin
A solve of two halves for me with the top being fairly gentle but the bottom putting up a lot more resistance.
Started with PARROT and finished with FRONTISPIECE in 8.30 with COD to AGREED.
Thanks to Merlin and Joker
A good puzzle that I found at the trickier end of the scale. Thanks Joker and Merlin. Can someone please explain why 4D is “introduced by” rather than “introduced to”? I was looking for a G at the start or finish.
Agreed – I was typing exactly the same point (in a much more longwinded way!) when your post appeared. I was also looking for the G at one or other end of the word, and certainly not in the middle of it.
On this basis RODING was my first guess, but it’s not actually a word.
There is the Essex settlement of Roding Valley, whose tube station has the distinction of being the least busy on the London Underground.
I do believe I’ve seen that station on an episode of Secrets of the London Underground with Siddy Holloway!
Pretty sure roding is a word. It describes how woodcock often fly.
I think you’ll find it is – Roding Woodcocks spring to mind..!
Hard to think of an example but how about “decimal currency was introduced by the UK in the 1960s”? That gives a sense of it being “brought in”.
Thank you! I do so appreciate your measured, delightful way of clarifying queries. : )
My pleasure. That’ll be 500 guineas 😉
DNF, with the same two causing the problem as for LindsayO, ie ARTERY and RUNNER. No complaints about RUNNER, which is a good clue, and it was just that without the R opening checker it was simply not emerging however long I looked at it. ARTERY though was too tough: a DD with both of the two definitions not in my common lexicon. I think I may have heard of main roads being called Arterial roads, but never Arteries.
Before that I found it a very mixed puzzle – some brilliant clues (FRONTISPIECE is a class anagram!) but some which I really struggled with, including MAGNET, where “introduced by French artist” seems to me to be wrong for inserting the G into MANET. “Introduced into”, perhaps, or “swallowed by” (which would go nicely with greens, ie vegetables), but I struggle to see “introduced by” as an inclusion indicator as Joker intends. Several others were Biff-then-parse too, most notably BREAST, so the blog very helpful.
Many thanks Merlin for guiding us through this one.
Correct, A1 –> A6 clockwise are the London Arterial roads.
14:00. Only heard of frontispiece in crosswordland and only once before that I can remember. Needed the snip to disabuse me of the thought that the answer started with print…
Some clever clues like inherent Napoleon bungalow.
Many thanks Joker and Merlin
Thats the strangest reason I’ve heard for having a vasectomy …
😂
🤣
😉
Wot no Eton?!
Chewy enough – five acrosses missing on first pass. However, all the downs bar 17 fell in a rush and after mopping up I was left looking at the tricky ARTERY/RUNNER crossing. Eventually a trawl produced ARTERY and RUNNER went in last with a bit of a shrug. No DPS appeared so all green in 08:26 for 1.1K and a Decent Day. COD to AGREED.
Many thanks Joker and Merlin.
12:40 (death of Llewelyn the Great)
Breezeblocked at the end by RUNNER. An alphabet trawl is slow when the letter U has to be reached.
Thanks Merlin and Joker
I once lost over 2 minutes on a Championship puzzle by having to alpha-trawl “-E-L” when the answer was ZEAL. And when I got there the parsing was perfectly clear!
DNF INHERENT, NOUN and COIN, a bit dim there.
Liked BEARS KIN, STICKLER, PARROT, among others.
Funnily enough, RUNNER was an early solve – have been gardening a lot.
Fortunately FRONTISPIECE appeared after a break for toast.
Many thanks, Merlin. Interesting to hear about BUNGALOW.
Tough but fair. 19m.
Pi ❤️
44:27 for slowest successful solve of the year. Ugh.
From the comments above must just be me that struggled through this. I missed a sitter or two but still ended up with a twenty minute alphatrawl on ARTERY/RUNNER. Never seen ARR=arranged (of parrot) in Crosswordland.
Thanks to Merlin
Not at all! I found this one of the toughest for quite some time. Luckily I don’t worry about time as this would have been very long indeed 🤣
I don’t worry about time either – you get what you get. But I do have a sense in my head of whether what I’m tackling meets my expectations for the puzzle, partly based on what goes in on first pass and the complexity of clueing or choice of words involved.
I struggled too, nearly giving up with 3 clues unsolved.
I think a greater degree of cryptic crossword experience might have made it easier – hoping that comes with time and perseverance.
I’m certainly something of a flat track bully.
😊
I think you’re being very harsh on yourself.
I’m finding that some of the ones I think are relatively easy, the seasoned veterans struggle a little more than usual (albeit by adding only another 2-3 mins on their times). But then ones I can’t finish, they fly through.
I can only surmise it is that breadth of cryptic crossword experience they have, and I occasionally get lucky with general knowledge or parlance.
Not like you New Driver – thought you’d done a typo there for a minute with that time. However, I thought it was tricky.
I struggled for 40mins on one of the earlier Joker QCs this year and everybody else flew through it. Though there was some complicated (non-QC) clueing in there e.g. readjustment and breast albeit I got those relatively quickly but also duress=compulsion. Ho hum
Feeling tired and distracted this morning, rather than waiting for a better moment, I made not quite a half-hearted attempt, but certainly less than a fully-hearted one. Probably a two-thirds hearted attempt.
And I reaped what I sowed, with a highly unusual 10 min DNF. Being distracted and unwilling to fully engage the parts of my brain that deal with guessing, anagrams, uncommon indicators, and the notion of ‘compulsion’, PARROT, FRONTISPIECE, RESIDENT and DURESS all alluded me. SENTIENT went in for RESIDENT, hampering FRONTISPIECE, and the rest was history.
COD RUNNER.
6:04
Pretty smooth – FRONTISPIECE dug out from checkers before realising it was an anagram. Bunged in READJUSTMENT as well, without fully paying attention to the wordplay. Stuck briefly at the end with PARROT (wondering how it could relate to casserole!) and INHERENT which needed more painstaking building.
Thanks Merlin and Joker
Very good, as always from Joker. I was also delayed at the end by RUNNER and ARTERY, resulting in a 10′ solve. Liked BUNGALOW – both the clue, and its etymology, which I didn’t know – thanks Joker and Merlin!
Joker separates the sheep from the goats again with an interesting but non-QC.
I soon realised that my time would be extended and just got on with trying to get inside the setter’s head, ignoring the clock.
I managed most of them but lost the will to continue when I finally reached RUNNER and ARTERY. Glad to know that I am not the only one failing on these two.
Some very nice clues but too many trip wires and ERs for me.
Thanks to Merlin for making some of it look easier than it was in practice. Admiration to Joker for his clever puzzle but I am sad that he can only lower himself to my level occasionally in order to produce a genuine QC (e.g. his last one).
Not on wavelength at all this morning and gave up with 3 to go. DNF with FRONTISPIECE, ARTERY and RUNNER.
I thought today was Ok and finished in 13m16s which is par for me. Knew frontispiece from reading Country Life, where it is the term used for what we referred to as “Country Wife”. Thanks Joker and Merlin.
30:10
A struggle today. Some tough definitions, BEARSKIN for headgear, RUNNER for shoot.
Failed to parse ARTERY but that seems to come up frequently as a vessel. LOI STICKLER.
From STABLE to PARROT in 7:09, so on the wavelength for this one. Joker often makes me struggle, but not today. FRONTISPIECE took a while. Thanks Joker and Merlin.
Tricky, and even a bit clunky, in places, so I was pleased to finish in time to pick up a sub-20. With enough crossers in place, Readjustment was a biff then parse answer and similarly the dnk Frontispiece had to be carefully assembled from the remaining anagrist. Arterial roads on the other hand was a write-in.
CoD to Runner, for bringing back memories of Boot’s (the reporter, not the pharmacist😉) search for cleft sticks. Invariant
Any more chemist jokes?
Speaking as a physicist, it’s more a case of where to start. . .
Ooooooooooooooooooh
My dad was trained as first a physical chemist and then a chemical physicist and I grew up well aware of the hierarchy (in some people’s minds).
Found this my hardest in a while (possibly only fair after yesterday’s first ever sub-30 minute) – NHO RUNNER as a shoot or ARTERY as a vessel (though in hindsight should have thought blood vessel). Also didn’t see how STICKLER could work as I was stuck thinking of staff=employees, or BREAST as with the S I saw ST from ‘finally {bare}S {ches}T’.
Very much enjoyed FRONTISPIECE, though – thanks Joker and Merlin!
I was lulled into a false sense of security by a fairly successful first pass, but the second pass left me with a lot of white space in the NW quadrant. I should certainly have seen PARROT much earlier than I did, and I had “piece” in place early, but failed to spot that it was an anagram.
It wasn’t my nails that were affected by the SNIP, but it was a pair of nail scissors that I resorted to a couple of weeks later, when the “self-dissolving stitches” totally failed to live up to their name.
FOI AGREED
LOI FRONTISPIECE
COD BUNGALOW
TIME 5:24
Just about on target with this one until I neared the end, where I ground to a halt with my final three. In the order they were solved, RUNNER came to me followed by INHERENT, and finally a good minute later by ARTERY. I then returned to PARROT which I had inserted but not parsed, and thankfully I quickly worked out what was going on. My time in the end was 12.02, so the last laugh as ever is with The Joker.
12:40, which is below my average, but that may be because I gave up on some of the parsing and headed here instead.
Thank you for the blog!
Sitting in the SCC, not too far in – having used checkers to finish – INHERENT/NOUN.
Still struggling with NOUN.
As usual, learnt quite a bit … arr. Shako, Busby v Bearskin… and possibly too much about SNIPS. 🙂
Thank you Joker – tough for us but entirely fair – and Merlin.
In common with many of the above, my L2I RUNNER and ARTERY. Biffed BUNGALOW – thanks Merlin for parsing and derivation. A tricky puzzle but fair.
About 12.30, but the timer failed to show a time when I finished.
Too hard for me again, I’m afraid. Two clues unsolved (ARTERY and RUNNER) and one error (I guessed gARNET for MAGNET). Also, I couldn’t parse NAPOLEON and had no end of trouble over a number of other clues.
Several clues solved only by some inspired random guesswork (e.g. READJUSTMENT, BEARSKIN, STICKLER) and too many long periods without tangible progress. I pulled stumps after 45 minutes of toil without any real sense of achievement. Not fun and not well pitched for a QC, IMO.
Many thanks to Merlin for the blog.
Eventually got there after nearly half an hour. Runner and artery went in with a bit of a shrug, didn’t feel that happy with either of them but guess they’re OK. Last to go in was frontispiece, even left with the six remaining anagram letters I had to use the check function due to never having heard of it and the unusual construction of the word.
Took too long on bungalow and hero, put off by the long definition of hero, and thinking bungalow clue was going to be a word meaning “of little height”. Probably would’ve never thought of bung for cork without checking letters.
Also didn’t understand noun when it went in, not sure noun and term are really synonymous and was confused as I thought number would be abbreviated to no, not n. All good fun in the end.
As above RUNNER and ARTERY proved too tricky. Also didn’t think there was an ‘I’ between ‘T and ‘S in FRONTISPIECE, which caused all sorts of trouble, hard but fair for a QC, which is the best combination
Managed to solve in an hour. Got very lucky with 6a, it being my LOI but couldn’t figure out the word play but thought of PARROT with the checking letters. Lots of good clues, really liked the clue for JUST. Thank you for the blog 😁
Took forever! Very nice clueing but very tricky in places. The ones that particularly held me up were DURESS, ARTERY, FRONTISPIECE (?) and HERO. Really liked STICKLER. Struggled to parse PARROT. Many thanks, especially for explanation of wordplay in MAGNET.
Struggled with ARTERY, RUNNER and INHERENT as obviously did several other contributors. Biffed READJUSTMENT. Took a longer than average 28:11, but didn’t seem like it.
31:27
I agree with Invariant, tricky and clunky – I found this tough.
First pass of the crossers sapped away my confidence with the downs replacing some of it.
Biffed BUNGALOW (thanks Merlin) and was left with three clues and a towel about to be thrown in.
ARTERY came first after finally getting the A1 road out of my head. Followed by FRONTISPIECE (NHO), only biffed when pen went to paper and it appeared to be the only way the remaining letters could fit.
LOI was RESIDENT – as with vinyl1, I just couldn’t get sentient out of my head.
Not my most enjoyable solve, but I do concede there were some great clues.
Thanks to Joker & Merlin
Substantially over par here at 15:34, held up by the pairings of AGREED / HERO and, especially, RUNNER / ARTERY where RUNNER finally allowed us to accept an initially doubted ARTERY (very slow seeing the ‘1st’ meaning.) Good one, Joker, and thanks, Merlin.
18 minutes over two sessions: mid morning interruption. Knew the Indian origins of BUNGALOW from Brewer and from Hobson Jobson, a fascinating miscellany of words and phrases. READJUSTMENT just had to be, and FRONTISPIECE (you don’t see them that often nowadays) was a great anagram and gave lots of checkers. Super puzzle: thanks setter and blogger.
21 mins…
Personally thought this was quite difficult, albeit there were a few I’ve seen before and should have got quicker, namely 4dn “Magnet”, 22ac “Runner” and 5dn “Hero”. Had to think carefully about 1dn “Napoleon” as I’ve often misspelt it for some reason.
FOI – 7ac “Agreed”
LOI – 22ac “Runner”
COD – 6ac “Parrot”
Thanks as usual!
Quite a tough one that took some time.
I had a suspicion that the ‘vessel’ in 17d was not a ship and after trying a few drinking vessels a blood one proved to be the answer. Didn’t manage to parse it without Merlin’s help though.
COD READJUSTMENT
Thanks both
Along with plants, I despair when I see the word vessel and while I thought of aortas it went no further 🙄
7.48 Tied with vinyl1. FRONTISPIECE went straight in because I happened to be thinking about front matter yesterday. RUNNER, NOUN and INHERENT were a bit slow at the end. All parsed except BUNGALOW. Thanks Merlin and Joker.
17:06 with the same last two as many others, RUNNER and ARTERY. Didn’t spot the “important route” meaning for the latter, I had A + RTE and was wondering where RY came from.
Thanks to Joker and Merlin.
As usual got one wrong at the end!! Put in ASTERN instead of ARTERY. In my world stern is important and if a ship goes astern it travels backwards. Apart from that all was correct in 30 minutes. A bungalow is not a house – it is a single storey dwelling much favoured by myself whilst working in the removal industry. The origin of the word came when the house builder ran out of bricks so they had to bung a low roof on!
Thanks Joker and Merlin.
lovely!
🙂
21:00 INHERENT, STICKLER, and RUNNER used up the most time. FRONTISPIECE brought back happy memories of childhood books that had beautiful illustrations at the start.
17:25, rather sluggish solve . Nothing really jumped out as being too hard but simple words were JUST not popping out as they ought.
Who knows why some days I simply don’t know how to do this? And this was one of them. Maybe my brain cells were off looking for the missing Eton? Yes, Joker is frequently hard for me, but this puzzle is not *that* hard. It took almost 25 minutes to solve it, for no particular reason. [After reading the comments, maybe it is that hard after all.] Well, tomorrow’s another day. I did see FRONTISPIECE immediately without any crossers, but didn’t believe it until my second look. Sheesh.
Lots of great clues but for some reason NOUN really tickled me.
Thanks to Joker and Merlin.