Hello everybody. It’s been a little while since I’ve had a crossword by the wiggly one to blog and I enjoyed this. My picks today are 11d and 20d. Thanks Wurm!
Definitions are underlined in the clues below. In the explanations, I generally italicise indicators unless it seems clearer not to. Where the removed part is specified, [deletions] are in square brackets, and I’ve capitalised and emboldened letters which appear in the ANSWER. I sometimes omit link words and juxtaposition indicators if it doesn’t feel necessary to explain them. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments section.
| Across | |
| 1a | Greek hero cool in receding waters (8) |
| ACHILLES — CHILL (cool) in reversed (receding) SEA (waters) | |
| 6a | Considerate sort (4) |
| KIND — A double definition | |
| 8a | Son breaks mirror in church recess (4) |
| APSE — S (son) goes into (breaks) APE (mirror, imitate) | |
| 9a | Lies some might gladly swallow? (4,4) |
| PORK PIES — Some might happily eat (the meaty kind of) PORK PIES | |
| 10a | Pole, old fellow, beast once (8) |
| MASTODON — MAST (pole) + O (old) + DON (fellow) | |
| 12a | Concept used in tide analysis (4) |
| IDEA — The answer is part of (used in) tIDE Analysis | |
| 13a | Nubia’s barking deity (6) |
| ANUBIS — NUBIA is anagrammed (barking) | |
| 15a | Down covers bad leg in young bird (6) |
| EAGLET — EAT (down) surrounds (covers) an anagram of (bad) LEG | |
| 17a | Bouncer perhaps for dance (4) |
| BALL — Two definitions | |
| 19a | Man’s situation is as heir ruined (5,3) |
| IRISH SEA — Man being the Isle of Man. IS AS HEIR anagrammed (ruined) | |
| 21a | One held up in bad weather? (8) |
| UMBRELLA — A cryptic definition, pretending to be a statement about being delayed by rain etc | |
| 23a | Bank charge right to be reversed (4) |
| REEF — FEE (charge) and R (right) to be reversed | |
| 24a | Burden we must carry? (4) |
| ONUS — Something which is ON US might be something we must carry | |
| 25a | Bring down when blocking edict (8) |
| DECREASE — AS (when) inside (blocking) DECREE (edict) | |
| Down | |
| 2d | First murderer grabbing fit leader (7) |
| CAPTAIN — CAIN (first murderer) taking in (grabbing) APT (fit) | |
| 3d | Still inside container terminal (5) |
| INERT — The answer is inside contaINER Terminal | |
| 4d | Cheek and mouth part (3) |
| LIP — Two definitions | |
| 5d | Tiger seen roaming Tanzanian reserve (9) |
| SERENGETI — TIGER SEEN anagrammed (roaming) | |
| 6d | Writer to sleep with Heather (7) |
| KIPLING — KIP (to sleep) with LING (heather) | |
| 7d | Earl received by lovely relative (5) |
| NIECE — E (Earl) inside (received by) NICE (lovely) | |
| 11d | Passed around yet pure (9) |
| DISTILLED — DIED (passed) around STILL (yet) | |
| 14d | Country carnivore devouring large American (7) |
| BELARUS — BEAR (carnivore) taking in (devouring) L (large) + US (American) | |
| 16d | Blind doctor sees Ely (7) |
| EYELESS — Make an anagram of (doctor) SEES ELY | |
| 18d | A row about motorway management (5) |
| ADMIN — A + DIN (row) around (about) M (motorway) | |
| 20d | Smack the Pony? (5) |
| HORSE — Two definitions. Belated edit: smack and horse are both slang term for heroin. The surface is the comedy sketch show | |
| 22d | Answer Roman Catholic in Bow (3) |
| ARC — A (answer) + RC (Roman Catholic) | |
RHS went in pretty quickly but we spent a long time on the rest. Lots of barking up the wrong tree today. Eventually finished at 28.03 and exclaiming “either that was particularly tough or we were a bit thick this morning”. Was hoping to come here the find the former.
Thanks Wurm and Kitty
Another Monday, another typo catastrophe. Managed to get three in this time with a wonky DISTILLED also wrecking the IRISH SEA and an odd II at the end of SERENGETI was particularly annoying as I’d written it out and ticked the letters off! Six on the first pass, no idea about ANUBIS but noticing ‘unbias’ would fit caused me mental pain in my attempts to resist. Hard in places. Loved MASTODON and was relieved to stumble upon ONUS. All parsed, not all green, in a bit over 14.
Nice calm start to the week. Pleased with 11 minutes on a sleepy Monday morning.
FOI ACHILLES
POI BELARUS
LOI ONUS
COD IRISH SEA
Thank both.
Very enjoyable with lots of top level clues. My standouts were KIPLING, HORSE and ANUBIS due to the very appropriate anagram indicator.
Started with ACHILLES and finised with REEF in 6.57.
Thanks to Wurm and Kitty
One of my first ever memories of cryptic crosswords comes from reading, as a boy, one of the “Doctor in the House” novels which my parents had on the shelves. Sir Lancelot Spratt was solving The Times crossword before surgery and was very pleased with himself when he solved “Poet asleep on the heather”. I had to look up “ling” to understand it and have never forgotten it as a result!
At the start of my crosswording career a few years ago, I was thwarted by “ling” and learned that it was a type of fish. I swore a bit and resigned myself to having to learn a bunch of new vocabulary, but my resolve was sorely tested when I discovered a day or two later that it’s also a type of heather.
SCC today at 23:29 Failed to remember the chestnuts Anubis Onus (seen that clue before) and Mastodon (again that’s an obsolete hairy elephant I’ve only ever encountered in crosswordland)
I had a nasty wipe out on that reef and I was the one held up by that umbrella.
Ta KAW
found this tougher than the qitch suggests everyone else did. ADMIN/ONUS holding me up the longest
Having started well, I had to look up gods for ANUBIS. NHO.
Otherwise plodded through OK. I liked IRISH SEA, ADMIN, MASTODON, and COD KIPLING. LOI REEF.
Thanks vm, Kitty.
6:37
NHO the comedy show, so I wondered a bit about the surface (why the capital ?).
All the twos today – 22:22 (I’m sure there’s a bingo call for that).
Held up badly by ADMIN/ONUS, but glad to have finished.
Pi ❤️
A witty puzzle which I went through fast until hitting the buffers in the SW. Eventually I got BELARUS by the wrong route (thought “large American” = LA, so wrote LAR in the middle and then spent a while wondering what a BERUS was until the penny dropped!). That unlocked ONUS (groan) then ADMIN and eventually LOI ANUBIS. I’m sure we’ve had him before but non-Greek/Roman deities just don’t stick in my head.
Lots to enjoy, COD IRISH SEA, all done in 07:39 for a Slightly Disappointing Day. Many thanks Wurm and Kitty.
Addendum on edit – in fact we haven’t had ANUBIS before. Per the TfTT search function there have been five appearances in all: twice in the 15 and twice in Mephisto (between 2010 and 2017), plus one outing in a Jumbo in 2024. That’s yer lot.
18:36 – quite a reasonable time for me since I couldn’t parse them all. LOI REEF.
I join Blue92 in finding the Quitch (88) very difficult to accept. Maybe it is just me on a Monday morning but I thought this was clever but tough. My difficulties have been listed by others above but I added to my own woes by mis-spelling NIECE (why on earth?) which ended up as NEECE when I entered PORK PIES.
Monday has recently provided the most accessible QC of the week but not today for me. Perhaps I should join others and ditch any remaining concern about my times concentrating, instead, on the pleasure of solving.
Thanks to both. I bifd DISTILLED and was grateful to Kitty for parsing it. It is not her fault that the setter used the awful ‘passed’ for died……
COD IRISH SEA
Enjoyable QC with great surfaces. Slow to see UMBRELLA and couldn’t parse DISTILLED – thanks Kitty.
Amazing I was able to do in 36 minutes. Got stuck on 10a but worked it out. Other Monday puzzle were nearly or over an hour to complete or give up. 😆
👏🏻 it’s such a great feeling when a puzzle falls into place faster than anticipated. And this wasn’t a gimme either.
Well done 👏
I couldn’t decide if it was a Monday morning thing or a wavelength thing so I was relived to find that others found this harder than the Snitch would suggest. I actually thought Saturday’s puzzle was easier.
However it was a lovely QC with some gems among the clues such as 19a IRISH SEA (oh, that Man) and the surface of 23a REEF.
Thanks both.
18:58
Started well and then got held up at the end by REEF. No idea why as it was obvious once I got it. I’m blaming fatigue.
FOI KIND LOI REEF COD HORSE
Thanks both.
11 minutes, but a DNF. As so often (though not for a QC) two intersecting answers did for me, 11 and 13.
9:24 for a sprightly solve – I am usually rather more foxed by Wurm. But on the way I went down the same garden path as Templar (goodness, walking with the experts here!) on BELARUS before I saw the parsing, and had no idea what was going on with HORSE (or why on the app the clue was in italics even before I solved it). My LOI though and biggest hold-up was IRISH SEA – why I can never ever remember that Man can mean, in fact in Crosswordland usually does mean, the IoM is one of life’s great mysteries.
Many thanks Kitty for the blog.
5:17
No ponies were smacked in this gentle week-opener. Same experience as Templar (and others?) trying to solve BELARUS – eventually bunged in from checkers and solved post-submission. Luckily MASTODON was the first ‘beast once’ I thought of.
Thanks Kitty and Wurm
5:33 – but I typed UNBRELLA, so ended up with two errors from one typo. I’m ignoring that as a genuine fat-finger error.
Terrific puzzle. Lot’s of fun definitions. IRISH SEA my COD.
8:07. Managed to get through this OK, helped by the lack of uncommon words, perhaps with the exception of ANUBIS. Favourites were the ‘Man’s location’, the idea of the ‘Tiger seen roaming’ in the SERENGETI and another ‘carnivore devouring large American’ for BELARUS. .
Thanks to Kitty and Wurm
Horse and smack are both street slang for heroin so isn’t this a simple double definition and nothing to do with drop the dead donkey…
Golden brown in The Stranglers song has nothing to do with sun tans. I had to wait for Peaky Blinders to work that one out.
15 CoD Irish Sea
Missed the simple cryptic umbrella, ella, ella
Thanks K & W
it can’t be a double Def .. horse is the answer
and it’s nothing to do with drop the dead donkey
You are right that it is a double definition. You are also right that the comedy show (though not that one – you were the first to mention a donkey!) has nothing to do with how the clue works cryptically. My comment refers to the surface reading – I’ll add in a link above to try to make that clearer.
I’ll follow the link … thank you.
Never heard of that show, 23 episodes although it did span three aeries.
I think I stopped watching comedy shows when Not the Nine o’clock News became Alas Smith and Jones.
Enjoyable and pretty friendly. Some very neat clueing IMHO. Enjoyed ANUBIS and IRISH SEA. Roundly misdirected in a couple of places ( which is enjoyable after you realise). Had to lookup why smack means horse…
Thanks to both
Frustrated by SW corner, having positively whistled through the north and east sides. Took a while to get DISTILLED and UMBRELLA. Then all fell into place.
Liked IRISH SEA
Thanks Wurm and Kitty
NHO ANUBIS but it seemed possible so looked it up and there it was. Also DNK drug slang but guessed it. Otherwise most difficult were DISTILLED and LOI MASTODON (pole can be so many things). But all good in the end; agree with others that IRISH SEA was an enjoyable PDM. Thanks Kitty for pointing out that down = eat.
There seem to be mixed thoughts about whether this was easy or a bit on the tricky side. As far as I’m concerned I thought it was bang on the money for a QC as my time of 10.05 would suggest. I spent a little time on my last two, but MASTODON then came to me and DISTILLED then became obvious, although I didn’t parse it until after I’d stopped the clock.
DNF. Could not see the ADMIN/ONUS combo.
Easy right hand side much slower left. LOI was 13a with all the unches being vowels it was perm any one from six, and I guessed the wrong one. Thanks Wurm and Kitty.
I thought this was a quality QC, but pretty hard for a Mondy, so I wasn’t surprised to find myself scrambling for an aisle seat at the end, in part due to a pesky Umbrella (🙄).
I could picture the dog like deity but had no idea of the name, so had to wait for all the checkers and a thankfully non-existent ‘bus to turn up. Likewise the Mastadon didn’t exactly spring to mind.
CoD, by a country mile, to Irish Sea, with Pork Pies getting a consolation smile. Invariant
Easy in parts and tricky in other parts with some lovely surfaces. I was all done in 18 minutes with everything parsed except HORSE (never heard of it as slang for heroin).
FOI – 8ac APSE
LOI – 20dn HORSE
COD – 19ac IRISH SEA, closely followed by 24ac ONUS
Thanks to Wurm and Kitty.
For most of this puzzle I was in with a chance of an unexpected PB, and then I hit the buffers in the SW. All done in 8:01, which is still pretty zippy by my standards.
Thank you for the blog!
Tricky in places but overall an enjoyable puzzle.
Unfortunately a spelling mistake caught me out.
First Lap: 9
Answered (no help): 24
Answered (help): 2
Incorrect: 1
Time: 34:33
Dare I ask if the help came from a certain feline?
No. Unfortunately he had to be put to rest a little while ago. He developed a large tumour in his stomach that was inoperable, and to make it worse the vet told me Pumpa was in a lot of pain. Therefore it was best that he was put to sleep.
So sorry to read that 😞
Also very sorry to hear about Pumpa.
Very sad news. I had feared the worst given you have not referred to him for a while. He will be greatly missed, even by those who never met him.
Is a bear not an omnivore?
Yes, good point. Chambers describes a bear as carnivorous though, so the setter has an excuse.
11 mins…
First thought for 1ac was “Achilles”, but I couldn’t parse it initially. Didn’t know the “Horse/Smack” drug reference, although it couldn’t be anything else, and never got to properly parse 11dn “Distilled” which I now realise is pretty clever.
For anyone who has watched endless Egyptian pyramid type films, Anubis comes up all the time.
FOI – 8ac “Apse”
LOI – 24ac “Onus”
COD – 18dn “Admin” – amusing surface and took longer to parse than I thought it would.
Thanks as usual!
Surely you remember Zammo wanting smack instead of just saying No.
I do – but I didn’t know the “horse” reference.
I messed up by putting punch instead of horse – I’ve heard of a Suffolk Punch, you can’t fool me. I realized it must be wrong when the crossing letters didn’t work. I thought Anubis was rather for a Quickie. I ended up stuck at the end with A _ M _ N – what word could possible fit that, other than Ammon? Enlightenment was slow to arrive.
Time: 7:57
My thanks to Wurm and Kitty.
Special thanks to Kitty for LOI, biffed, 11d Distilled. Doh, died & still.
20d NHO “Smack the Pony” but didn’t need to have.
Mostly fairly zippy for me but held up at the end by MASTODON/INERT (finally spotted latter was a hidden). COD DISTILLED, although I too hate ‘passed’ as a synonym for ‘died’. Some lovely surfaces including SERENGETI and BELARUS. Many thanks both.
8.20
MASTODON brought to mind the lovely P G Wodehouse quote: “……..Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps……..”
15.20 The top half flew in but I ran out of steam in the bottom half. BELARUS, ONUS and ADMIN brought up the rear. Thanks Kitty and Wurm.
Straightforward, albeit slowed by being sure there was an ‘H’ in SERENGETI
Lots to enjoy today and for a change I was on Wurm’s wavelength. I sprinted through the puzzle but slowed for my last two ADMIN and PORK PIES (doh). COD to HORSE. 6:37 Thanks Kitty
This was too hard for me, I’m afraid. 42 minutes, but with two errors – MASTaDON and ANiBuS (without the required GK it was a 1:6 chance). Various other clues went in un- or only partly parsed (e.g. DECREASED and ONUS) and most of the LHS was blank for most of the time.
I enjoyed IRISH SEA when the penny dropped, but it was all too much of a slog for my liking.
Thanks to Kitty and Wurm.
18 mins. Didn’t equate down with eat, so waited til the end before sticking that in with fingers crossed. SE corner trickiest for me with distilled and decrease taking a while. On the plus side, spotted the hiddens quickly for once.
FOI Achilles
LOI Eaglet
COD Captain
Thanks Wurm and Kitty
I wasn’t convinced by down for eat either – you can down a pint of beer, but do you down fish and chips?
This didn’t feel easy for the most part but our 10:07 puts it on the gentler side for us. POI and LOI ONUS and BELARUS. Thanks, all.
Late tackling this as I had to drag my carcase to the pharmacy for a covid jab this morning. From CAPTAIN to DECREASE in 7:40. Thanks Wurm and Kitty.
I was all set to take a break from the QC this week in the hope that it might clear my head after a dreadful run of performances. However, after almost completing the Saturday 15 x 15 (in 1.5 hours), I thought that I might have turned a corner and so decided to see how Monday went.
Colossal mistake!
I spent somewhere around 45 mins on this and still failed, putting ANIBUS for 13ac. Absolutely typical of me to guess incorrectly. How anyone found this straightforward is beyond my comprehension. It was a grind and any slight feeling of positivity I achieved following Saturday has been destroyed. Struggled badly on ONUS, ADMIN, MASTODON, DISTILLED, DECREASE and HORSE.
I will definitely be taking a break from this for the rest of the week. I look at how easy most commenters found this and yet again ask myself why they can do this and I cannot. It is beyond infuriating to put so much in and get so little back.
Back next week.
I like Wurm and all done in 15m with HORSE and REEF being my last pair to fall – HORSE without really getting the drug refs and the parsing. Slight query about 18d: is admin really management? Took a while to get Man as the Isle of, and then the anagram made perfect sense! 24a made me smile, as did 6d. I must remember Cain as first murderer – my instinct is always to head for Shakespeare! Lots of fun and a satisfactory solve – thanks Wurm and Kitty.
agree re Admin !
Wurm is often tricky in a good way; and so he was today.
I raced through most of this in 10 minutes but then was very held up by my last two BELARUS (Bolivia had been my early biff) and LOI ONUS, a typically clever clue. 17 minutes in all.
Ticks for IRISH SEA and ADMIN and many others to admire.
David
17:37
A very nice challenge from Wurm.
Thought I wasn’t going to get my LOI, but had a PDM on the way to the kettle.
Similar issue with BELARUS as Templar and Mike and agree with Nutshell that HORSE is just slang for heroine and could be a pony.
FOI: IDEA
LOI: REEF
COD: IRISH SEA/PORK PIES
Thanks to Kitty and Wurm