About average difficulty (for a Shay puzzle, that is).
Shay’s fifth puzzle: with the previous four being 112, 160, 111 and 106 on the Quitch, that’s an average of 122, which is roughly where I’d put this. In any case, it took me a notch under 13 minutes, well over double yesterday’s time. EDIT: the Quitch is settling at just below 100, and by a decent number of comments now it seems I’m alone in being waaay off the wavelength!
I was slowed for a couple of minutes at the end by CUCUMBER: it’s made trickier when you ignore the whole category of fruits and vegetables as being only parts of a plant. But no, it seems calling it a… well, a cucumber plant is quite unnecessary. I was also slowed by having to write out the anagrist for PATERNALISM, and before that mangling “IN POTTERIES” at 11ac to yield a confidently entered REPERTOIRES (hardly rehearsals, but there we are).
Beyond that, it’s hard to pinpoint where the difficulty lay, other than a sense that the general complexity of the clues was towards the 15×15 level. So a useful stepping stone to persevere with if that’s your thing, and sure if not there’ll be another puzzle along all too soon!
Lots to enjoy along the way, although I particularly liked all the four long clues. Lovely stuff – many thanks to Shay!
| Across | |
| 1 | Plant initially cultivated using compost and brown earth (8) |
| CUCUMBER – CUC (“initially” Cultivated Using Compost) and UMBER (brown earth). UMBER is probably from Italian terra d’ombra, shadow earth (so same idea as UMBRA). | |
| 5 | Computers brought round for fraudulent scheme (4) |
| SCAM – MACS (computers) brought round = reversed | |
| 8 | Ordinary outlaw completely losing heart (5) |
| BANAL – BAN (outlaw) ALL (completely) losing “heart”/centre | |
| 9 | Many men put out about female’s conclusion (7) |
| UMPTEEN – anagram (out) of MEN PUT about E (femalE‘s “conclusion”). UMPTY was military slang for an indefinitely large number, from the turn of the (2oth) century, modelled on twenty, thirty, etc; UMPTEEN came a few years later, modelled on thirteen, fourteen, etc. | |
| 11 | Rehearsals of Brahms and Liszt in Potteries (11) |
| REPETITIONS – anagram (Brahms and Liszt) of IN POTTERIES. Rhyming slang for PISSED, as in drunk: the OED’s earliest citation is 1972; MOZART AND LISZT appeared a decade earlier. They might have a certain charm, but there are umpteen more evocative words to choose from – there was a rather silly article in the Times last year about so-called “drunkonyms”, and their uniqueness to British culture, see here. | |
| 13 | Squawk that hurt chicken (6) |
| YELLOW – YELL (squawk) OW (that hurt!). Yellow/chicken/craven. | |
| 14 | Book for children by strait-laced queen (6) |
| PRIMER – PRIM (strait-laced) ER (queen). | |
| 17 | Daniel upset Gladys, briefly top-billed actress (7,4) |
| LEADING LADY – anagram (upset) of DANIEL and then GLADYS in plain sight, only “briefly” = dock the tail. | |
| 20 | Top bishop, perhaps one with role at wedding (4,3) |
| BEST MAN – BEST (top) MAN (bishop, perhaps). MAN can refer to any of the chess pieces, hence “perhaps”. | |
| 21 | Mental picture of one’s later years (5) |
| IMAGE – I’M (one’s) AGE (later years). As in I’M going = ONE’S going; and as in “Being of age/later years, they still referred to a chesspiece as a man.” | |
| 22 | November in joyless seaside attraction (4) |
| SAND – N(ovember) in SAD (joyless). I consider sand a very good reason to eschew the beach, so I was in cucumber territory for a bit here as well. | |
| 23 | Soothing stuff spoken in royal residence (8) |
| BALMORAL – BALM (soothing stuff) ORAL (spoken) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Young animal on a Caribbean island (4) |
| CUBA – CUB (young animal) on A | |
| 2 | Manage Crown’s turmoil on a regular basis (7) |
| CONTROL – C r O w N s T u R m O i L “on a regular basis” | |
| 3 | Amoral pimp’s squirming and misspeaking (11) |
| MALAPROPISM – anagram (squirming) of AMORAL PIMP’S. From Mrs. Malaprop, a character in the 1775 play The Rivals. | |
| 4 | Value fairness (6) |
| EQUITY – double definition | |
| 6 | Company restricting communist beliefs (5) |
| CREDO – CO. (Company) restricting RED (communist) | |
| 7 | Government department is finally stopping car tax (8) |
| MINISTRY – S (iS “finally”) stopping/plugging MINI (car) TRY (tax) | |
| 10 | Condemned Parliament’s condescending attitude? (11) |
| PATERNALISM -anagram (condemned) on PARLIAMENT’S. Chambers defines it as “A system or tendency in which well-meaning supervision and/or regulation, etc is apt to become unwelcome interference.” | |
| 12 | Start to snooze after endless sweet course (8) |
| SYLLABUS – S (“start” to Snooze) after SYLLABUB (sweet) becomes “endless” | |
| 15 | Ex-PM reportedly eats in exclusive part of London (7) |
| MAYFAIR – Theresa MAY (ex-PM) and FAIR sounds “reportedly” the same as FARE (food/eats) | |
| 16 | List of things to do in Copenhagen daily (6) |
| AGENDA – “in” copenhAGEN DAily | |
| 18 | Incendiary crime of unclothed clergymen (5) |
| ARSON – the “clothing” letters are the outside letters, remove them here in the word PARSONS (clergymen) | |
| 19 | Flog prisoner here, we hear (4) |
| SELL – “we hear” the same as CELL (prisoner, here) | |
MALAPROPISM & PATERNALISM were impressive anagrams. Fortunately, I knew ‘Brahms and Liszt’ (from a cryptic); less fortunately, I didn’t notice a typo (repItitions). 8:54 WOE.
For me, malapropism was a write-in, but paternalism was definitely not. Repetitions also gave difficulty before I saw what was going on. However, my LOI was ministry, which I biffed.
Time: 10:33
Was looking for something a bit easier after today’s 15×15, but it was not to be. The long anagrams took me forever to solve with the exception of MALAPROPISM which I knew from previous outings. NHO the sweet SYLLABUB. A bit of a slog and needed to reveal CUCUMBER at the end as didn’t think of ‘umber’ for brown earth. COD to UMPTEEN.
Thanks R and setter.
4:41 but foolishly wrote CELL for SELL. No excuse!
Longest staring-at was SYLLABUS, where I kept looking for a dessert, although not knowing SYLLABUB would explain that. I think ‘repeat’ in its continental versions (French, German, etc) is more closely associated with the notion of artistic rehearsal, which is why it came to mind quickly.
Yup, CELL for SELL for me too – and a lot of others too by a look at the stats.
12 minutes, so within my extended target but a bit on the slow side.
There were no particular hold-ups but I looked twice at ‘rehearsals / REPETITIONS’. Then I thought of ‘répétiteur’, the pianist who accompanies rehearsals of opera, musicals etc and coaches the choir / chorus and that seemed to cover it.
I certainly found this above average difficulty but the snitch sits at 95 so shows what i know
Had to use an aid to get syllabus and get on with my day. Other than that found this challenging but within my level to enjoy!
Several clues took a few goes, especially paternalism where we wrote out the grist and returned to it as each crosser appeared. Only with them all did we see it, great anagram. L2I yellow and syllabus probably took 3 of our 22.50
Thanks Roly for the blog and passing of repetitions, another great anagram that we didn’t spot.
Liked Balmoral. Thanks Shay
Always good to be on the same page as the blogger. LOI CUCUMBER ✅. Confidently put in REPERTOIRES ✅. (To be fair I did then look at the anagrist and realise that there was an N, so took it out again.)
Really good puzzle, I thought, with COD to UMPTEEN which beat me all ends up at first pass. Cracking clue.
Got home in 08:31 which is my average +1: on a Shay I’m calling that a Good Day. Many thanks roly and Shay.
There was nothing overly tricky in the puzzle but I had one of those solves where several answers were tantalisingly just out of reach – MALAPROPISM, SYLLABUS and PATERNALISM being good examples.
Finished in 9.06.
Thanks to rolytoly and Shay.
I had a remarkably smooth romp through this one. The answers just came, though SELL took a while, and once the checkers were in, a couple of the longer ones jumped off the page.
14m which is decent for me.
Pi ❤️
Apologies for using your name in vain for a dad joke 🤣
Ah – now I get it! Works at all levels Cutie-Pie.
😉
I’m honoured!
Same here .. one of the easiest for me, ever.
I was a bit slow, 13.23, having a few other things to think about today. I thought this pushed the outside of the QC envelope but it seems most others found it not too difficult. I avoided the CELL/REPERTOIRE bear traps but took ages on CUCUMBER and UMPTEEN. Thanks to roly and Shay.
Another ‘CELL’ here too which marred an otherwise confident solve in 20.20. 😕
I suspected that PATERNALISM was a chestnut, apparently not. Pity that Maternalism doesn’t work.
Lots to like and altogether seemed a good mix. COD YELLOW as it gave me a smile.
Thanks Roly and Shay
Seven on the first pass of acrosses which should have given me a good start but only one of those – SCAM – was in the top half so lots of work to do. Ended up with CUCUMBER – was sure ‘cyclamen’ must be the answer because ‘clay’ for brown earth is more or less in there until MALAPROPISM finally made me look again. Excellent clue. Ended up in 15 on the dot but with REPiTITION – nice to be in good company but I sure I can spell it normally and I’d written out the anagrist! Frustrating after being so careful with SELL.
When I saw C_C I thought CYCLAMEN too.
I swiftly moved on from 1ac and it ended up being my LOI. Nothing too challenging apart from that but I still managed to insert D instead of L to give me SELD and BALMORAD. Burnaby rules, however, state that fat fingers as opposed to spelling mistakes don’t matter. 9:35.
Just time to do this before we go away – but not time to work out PATERNALISM or PRIMER, both too difficult for me. Have children used primers since the 1960s? Oh … biffed SYLLABUB which gave November in BAD (joyless) = BAND (seaside attraction). Humph. True, SAD / SAND are better. Three to the bad, then, par for the course for a Shay. Thank you, Roly.
Exactly the way I went with SYLLABUB BAND but twigged prior to submission
Another CELL victim, sadly. Otherwise a fairly steady solve in 20:30. LOI BANAL. Impressive anagrams!
I was tempted to say that this was too hard for a QC, especially being over my target by almost 25%, but both Verlaine and Aphis were comfortably inside the 3 minute mark. I think it’s simply a wavelength problem with Shay. I seem to find myself looking for unnecessary stuff (like an actual actress, or a specific MINISTRY). It took me way too long to see CUCUMBER and CONTROL. Just a bad day.
FOI SCAM
LOI EQUITY
COD IMAGE
TIME 7:29
Yes, it’s all about wavelength. Today Shay and I had a meeting of minds, with many clues write-ins from the definitions with subconscious parsing. Another day and it will be another hard-fought slog. Thanks Shay and Rolytoly.
13:34
A very similar experience to Roly. I needed pen and paper to get PATERNALISM, and needed all the checkers in place to get my LOI BALMORAL.
Thanks Roly and Shay
9.31 WTE
I agree with Phil that this was hard. Not loads of gimmes and quite a few of the clues needed thought (even if the answers did then reveal themselves).
Two issues for me. Thought B and L were lies so had no idea what was going on with REPETITIONS but with all the checkers it had to be.
My mistake(s) were SYLLABUS and SAND where I bunged in a B at the end thinking (a) I cant quite parse it but what other words fit and (b) BAND isn’t the obvious thing you go to the beach for.
Very difficult (for me) to slow down when filling those last ones in.
Thanks RT/Shay
It used to be …
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside
Oh I do like to be beside the sea
Oh I do like to walk along the prom prom prom
Where the brass band plays tiddly-om-pom-pom
16 very pleased given some of the other comments. I did well on the long anagrams with the help of checkers.
I went with sea to get sena – joyless as in Not the nine o’clock news – no luck yet.
Customary thanks
DNF. I was convinced 1a was Cyclamen but I couldn’t parse it. Hence I failed on MALAPROPISM and I completely missed the anagrind for PATERNALISM. I also put in REPETITIOuS as I had no idea what the clue was about. Oh well. Thanks Roly.
Re the QUITCH. As it excludes the DNFs then it may be lower than the puzzle warrants.
Took me 31 minutes to finish, though couldn’t understand a few clues and only got them from the checking letters. Learning about Brahms and Listz has made me laugh thus morning, must remember that in future! COD goes to BALMORAL which I found very clever. Thank you for the blog 😁
Clever misdirection for 12D as my initial thoughts also for SYLLABUB and BAND, but realised it didn’t parse correctly. Great anagrams. LOI CUCUMBER. Thanks Roly and Shay.
A great many biffs turned out to be right fortunately, but needed CCD for POI EQUITY, which finally gave me UMPTEEN.
Liked BALMORAL, YELLOW, PRIMER, and COD ARSON.
Struggled with RHS. I guess MAY is a useful syllable for setters, so must remember her (as if one could forget.)
Oh, I see I put SYLLABUb, no wonder I CNP. That meant bAND, like Dvynys.
So DNF.
Oh well, thanks, Roly.
9:05 a rare sub 10 and an even rarer
quicker than blogger. Many were half-parsed and I too almost missed the s in sell and syllabus (Bifd syllabub until sand crossed)
Nice one Shay and excellent blog Rolytoly (👍thanks for the rare QTB; I’m rarely quick enough for a QTPi- see what I did there😉)
Great solve – very happy to oblige with the QTB!
Slow to get started and then held up at the end by a few.
LOI CUCUMBER unparsed. POI CONTROL.
Some quite tricky stuff in this good puzzle.
16 minutes in the end.
And looking at my newspaper I see I’m another who just wrote CELL without thinking hard enough.
COD to BALMORAL.
David
I was totally off Shay’s wavelength, struggling to finish in 14.07. I failed to recognise Brahms and Liszt as an anagram indicator, and for too long was including B and L in the anagrist. I’m impressed that Verlaine and Aphis could break the three minute mark with this puzzle, but there again they are super fast on the 15×15. I suspect many, including myself, will consider this to be very tough by QC standards.
From CUCUMBER to PATERNALISM in 7:07. No dramas, although I did read the clue for SELL several times. Thanks Shay and Roly.
Nice steady chug through with no prolonged hold ups. Last 3 in were 4, 10 and 11 but they all came in a rush once the 2 Ts were in place.
Thanks to Shay any rolytoly.
I was riding the Shay wave today, a steady working down the grid with just enough to keep me thinking but no major problems. The long anagrams were clever, liked the pained fowl.
Shay has caused me grief in the past so either they have relented or I was just lucky. Whatever, it makes for a nice start to a sunny Test listening day.
24 mins with one error. I carelessly put SYLLABUB.
LOI PATERNALISM.
COD was also FOI: CUCUMBER.
Thanks Shay and roly
The mysterious wavelength was working in my favour for once giving me my best time of the week so far of 14 minutes. I couldn’t parse BANAL or MINISTRY and I had no idea what Brahms and Liszt were doing in 11ac. I’ve never heard that before.
FOI – 5ac SCAM
LOI – 4dn EQUITY
CODs – 13ac YELLOW and 23ac BALMORAL.
Thanks to Shay and Rolytoly.
This one made me work. Couldn’t parse MINISTRY or REPETITIONS (doh, it was an anagram) or SYLLABUB – which was incorrect anyway and inadvertently changed SAND to BAND.
So a DNF in 38 minutes.
Nicely entertaining though with thanks to Shay and Roly.
Expected this to be a non-QC when i got stuck forever with cucumber, not knowing umber for brown earth. Repetitions came easily but found out from our helpful blog about the drunk reference for Brahms and Liszt , ha ha. Is Mozart and Liszt also a drunk reference? My dictionary doesn’t know about it.
Is syllabub a popular sweet? I have not seen them in supermarkets. I see tiramisu a lot.
Syllabub is what I would call a pudding, others would call a dessert, sweet or afters! Whipped cream with lemon, sugar and sometimes a splash of white wine. Quite delicious, but rather difficult to wrap, so unlikely to be found in the sweet aisle 😂
Mozart and Liszt
Yes, exactly the same idea, and indeed came first. It is a bit more unwieldy with the extra syllable, though, so I suppose Mozart got pushed out by Brahms and it now languishes in the nether regions of the complete online OED.
A faltering start, with only one (SCAM) of my first eight clues going in, was succeeded by a more productive spell, during which I solved at a rate of one clue per minute, until I well and truly hit the buffers. At that stage 21 minutes has passed and I had only six clues to solve, so not bad for me.
However, it was another 23 minutes before the first (UMPTEEN) of those remaining six went in – a barren patch of increasing despair. I think the only reason I stuck at it was because Mrs R had kindly served me a second cup of coffee part way through. Does anyone else get so stuck for so long, despite having so many clues still to work on?
Fortunately, UMPTEEN proved to be a catalyst and my remaining five clues (MINISTRY, EQUITY, REPETITIONS, PATERNALISM and PRIMER) all fell at the previous rate of one a minute, again.
So, total time = 50 minutes and a partly enjoyable, partly tortuous experience.
Many thanks to Roly and Shay.
20 mins…
Although I was pretty much bang on average with my time, there were a few clues where I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what was going on: 11ac “Repetitions” and 12dn “Syllabus” come to mind (NHO of that rhyming slang nor the sweet). Factor in the long anagrams of 3dn “Malapropism” and 10dn “Paternalism” and this definitely felt above average difficulty. Even 21ac “Image” took a while to wrestle the various definitions.
FOI – 1dn “Cuba:
LOI – 12dn “Syllabus”
COD – 7dn “Ministry” – if only!
Thanks as usual!
Enjoyed this. All green in 9.34 LOI was PATERNALISM.
Also one who narrowly dodged the SYLLABUB BAND
Thanks all
A syllabus is a document that describes the contents of a “course’, not the “course” itself. Or am I being too pedentic😊
Well I’d agree with you. But if crossword setters had to get definitions spot on rather than “nearly, give-or-take, all-in-the-game, know-what-I-mean”, I suspect quite a lot of clues would either be very tedious, have dreadful surfaces or simply not work. Since the whole of the setter’s art is to mislead, an iffy definition (provided it is not outright wrong) is surely in keeping with the rest of their dark arts.
Or so I keep telling myself when I can’t see the definition however hard I try …
I employ the “overlap” concept to rationalise iffy definitions. Surely X doesn’t mean Y, does it? Oh well, I guess some part of X could be seen to overlap part of Y’s meaning.
29:17
Another struggle. Got through most of this in 20 minutes apart from the last 3. Couldn’t parse REPETITIONS, struggled with EQUITY and LOI CUCUMBER.
Maybe average for some, but for me a long, entertaining and bewildering solve, so I join our blogger in being completely off the wavelength, with REPETITIONS the most impenetrable clue I’ve ever dealt with. Oh. I’ve just read the blog. Damn you Britspeak! 19:51 including two alphabet trawls (I always feel I’ve been defeated if I resort to such tactics). PATERNALISM held me up because instead of simply solving it, I kept trying to remember the last time I saw it, very silly. To make up for it I carefully avoided cELL. Liked IMAGE, UMPTEEN (one of my trawls) and SAND.
Anyone else think a SYLLABUS is not a course but an outline of a course?
Thanks to Shay and roly.
Well, it is nice to have a bit of company on the off-wavelength! And yes, I didn’t think twice at the time, but you do have a point with syllabus and course.
Absolutely right. I was never going to get SYLLABUS from such a poor clue. A SYLLABUS is no more a “course” than AGENDA are a “meeting”. So it was completely dependent on having heard of an obscure pudding (which I haven’t).
LOI CUCUMBER went in completely unparsed – many thanks roly. A few pauses here and there (especially REPETITIONS) otherwise all fairly smooth. I did like MINISTRY 😆 Many thanks Shay.
Really very surprised by the SNITCH on this, which is resolutely under 100 for what I thought was a difficult puzzle that took me 15:46 – and that included some guessed-not-fully-parsed. But then I see that no less than 21 SNITCH contributors have been excluded for errors, and if one excludes all those who failed, one can see how the SNITCH increasingly represents the best solvers who did not fail.
Anyway, as I say, I found this challenging. The long anagrams took a lot of thought, not least because I took some time to twig that “Brahms and Liszt” was an anagram indicator (number 123,456 in my list; the list of words that can’t be used as indicators is probably by now shorter), and I could not see what “earth” was doing in 1a, as I though umber was just a type of brown colour. And several others took a long time to emerge, though thankfully I avoided the CELL/SELL trap and also the SYLLABUB/BAND one.
Tough day. Many thanks Roly for the blog.
Missed a few anagram indicators first time round, only got PATERNALISM after a long consideration overall average difficulty for me
On the wavelength today. I no longer time myself but I had no holdups. Double checked the SELL/CELL answer
FOI Cucumber
LOI Balmoral
COD Paternalism
Thanks Shay and Rolytoly
9.54 PATERNALISM, REPETITIONS, CONTROL and CUCUMBER were all slow at the end but still much quicker than yesterday. Thanks rolytoly and Shay.
A good puzzle with many enjoyable clues (already mentioned above in most cases). I took it steadily, along with a sandwich after a long drive home, and actually solved it all in under 17 mins.
Unfortunately, the screen message told me I was unlucky….. it took me a while to realise that I had hit K instead of the adjacent M when entering CUCUMBER so ca. 17.50 and a technical dnf. Drat!
CsOD REPETITIONS and MINISTRY and I enjoyed the anagrams at 3d and 10d.
Many thanks to Shay and Roly.
15:08 here, with alphabet trawls needed for SYLLABUS and UMPTEEN, both of which were very clever. Unusually, the long anagrams didn’t hold me up for too long.
Thanks to Shay and rolytoly.
Very slow to start and needed help to finish. Hot weather does not help our ageing brains.
10:32…
…amidst a lot of noise, on ‘phone in Copenhagen. Even allowing for excuses, I was still slow, confidently entering SYLLABUB. UMPTEEN also took ages but was the key to many in the NE corner. PATERNALISM was a bit of a stretch for a QC.
Thanks Shay and Roly
14:35. I got sell/ cell right eventually but for quite a while I considered BEAT since BE AT could be construed somehow as “here”. OK, ridiculous I admit.