A few weeks ago someone commented on the relative rarity of the two Dons meeting but here it is happening again. An enjoyable puzzle that once again largely eschewed the use of the anagram QC staple, with only one full anagram clue and two others I think in which anagrams make a contribution. Many thanks to Izetti.
FOI was 1A and I think LOI was 11D. I’ll also give that the COD award because the WAR bit tends to misdirect by confusing the parsing at first glance (to the lazy eye WAR may look as though it could be ‘dispute’ before you notice the ROW), although in practice it is quite biffable as soon as you see the month of JAN.
Definitions are underlined and everything else is explained just as I see it is as simply as I can.
Across | |
1 | One being given sustenance by another (8) |
CANNIBAL – cryptic definition. A CANNIBAL eats ‘another’ and therefore derives sustenance from them. | |
6 | Some music, a feature in place of refreshment (4) |
CAFE – hidden word: ‘some’ musiC A FEature. | |
8 | Senseless maiden in retro hairstyle (4) |
NUMB – a BUN is a hairstyle, and if it is ‘retro’ then we need to write it backwards: NUB. Insert M for maiden and you get comfortably NUMB for all you Pink Floyd 22As. | |
9 | Criminal venture to achieve mastery (8) |
CONQUEST – CON (criminal, short for ‘CONVICT’) + QUEST (venture). | |
10 | Meant to have eaten outside — is in France stuck inside (8) |
DESTINED – I don’t know, is there any rule against cluing part of an answer twice? It seems to me here that the definition is ‘meant to have’. Then we have DINED (eaten) ‘outside’ EST (French for ‘is’, i.e. ‘is in France’). But then we also have ‘stuck inside’, i.e. DINED with EST (‘is in France’) ‘stuck inside’. So both of those lead to the answer but one is superfluous. | |
12 | Dog beginning to twitch and be ill (4) |
TAIL – T (‘beginning to’ Twitch) + AIL (be ill). Dog here is of course a verb, as in ‘to dog one’s footsteps’. | |
13 | Company car once made by Ford (6) |
ESCORT – double definition. | |
16 | Choose out-of-this-world person to encourage workers to strike (6) |
PICKET – PICK (choose) + ET (extra-terrestrial: ‘out-of-this-world person’). | |
17 | Droop when encountering a lengthy account (4) |
SAGA – SAG (droop) + A. | |
18 | Poetry with awful lines entertaining everyone (8) |
BALLADRY – BAD (awful) + RY (railway, therefore ‘lines’) ‘entertaining’ ALL (everyone). | |
21 | Owls flying towards county lose speed (4,4) |
SLOW DOWN – anagram of OWLS (‘flying’) = SLOW + DOWN (county in Northern Ireland). | |
22 | Expert‘s device for adding polish (4) |
BUFF – double definition. | |
23 | In gale we rescue vessel (4) |
EWER – hidden word: ‘in’ galE WE Rescue. | |
24 | Place for waiter bringing thick slice of bread (8) |
DOORSTEP – double definition, the first one being slightly cryptic as people often have to wait on doorsteps until someone answers the doorbell. |
Down | |
2 | Article pretty sharp-witted? (5) |
ACUTE – A (indefinite article) + CUTE (pretty). | |
3 | Good Parisian, upwardly mobile bigwig (3) |
NOB – BON (French, therefore Parisian, for ‘good’) ‘upwardly mobile’ (i.e. reversed in this down clue). | |
4 | What may be brought home by the successful artist (5) |
BACON – double definition &lit. BACON may be brought home (as in ‘bringing home the bacon’), and Francis BACON was a successful artist. But of course, if an artist is successful then he or she may well be bringing home the bacon which is what the whole clue suggests. | |
5 | Impertinence involving naughty nude in a row (5,2) |
LINED UP – LIP (impertinence) involving an anagram (‘naughty’) of NUDE. | |
6 | “Crabby” types making a living, excellent actors originally (9) |
CRUSTACEA – CRUST (a living) + ACE (excellent) + A (Actors ‘originally’). | |
7 | Money paid to secure very good person, one very merry (7) |
FESTIVE – FEE (money paid) ‘securing’ ST (saint, very good person) + I (one) + V (very). | |
11 | Month in dispute — something black about that old conflict (6,3) |
TROJAN WAR – JAN (month) ‘in’ ROW (dispute) with TAR (something black) ‘about’. | |
14 | Believe what could be a sign of summer coming? (7) |
SWALLOW – the saying ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ implies that a number of swallows may make a summer. So one single swallow ‘could be’ a sign of summer if followed by others. | |
15 | Paper a bit “old”, in need of redesign (7) |
TABLOID – straight anagram (‘in need of redesign’) of A BIT OLD. The first and only full anagram clue today. | |
19 | Slow time of abstinence before Easter egg (5) |
LENTO – LENT (time of abstinence) before O (Easter egg). It is an occasional device in crosswords to clue something by the shape of letters although I must admit it jars a little bit with me. So here O ‘looks like’ an egg. Sometimes you get OO clued by ‘a pair of spectacles’. I think I have also seen J clued as a hook. You get the idea. But I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I mean there isn’t really much difference between letters ‘looking like’ something and dodgy homophones ‘sounding like’ something (and sometimes not all that much). Anyway, they do happen and just thought I’d mention it being aware of the ‘educational’ aspect of the Quickie. Also lento is one of those musical directions that appear on sheet music and which come up from time to time (I remember a few weeks ago an anonymous contributor having a problem with ff for ‘very loud’ (fortissimo) so again I thought it worth mentioning). | |
20 | Front bit missing from toy weapon (5) |
RIFLE – take the ‘front bit’ from tRIFLE (toy). | |
22 | Vehicle has creepy-crawlies — not good! (3) |
BUS – BUGS are creepy-crawlies, and ‘not good’ tells us to take out the G to leave BUS. |
Edited at 2021-03-08 06:36 am (UTC)
A few words needed to be confidently stuck in which I hadn’t quite heard of in that part of speech: BUFF as a noun for polishing device, BALLADRY and CRUSTACEA, where I had tried to jam in Crustacean by missing out the second ‘a’.
I maintain that 3D can be equally NOB or BON the way it is clued, with the comma indicating that the upward instruction goes with nob, for an answer of BON. I’ve been caught out by these before, and didn’t commit until seeing CANNIBAL. This was a casualty of my down-first strategy today.
LOI FESTIVE
COD DOORSTEP (place for waiter, nice)
Liked BALLADRY
Thanks Don and Don
Pb
Unless people in your household regularly cut wedge-shaped slices, that is a rather poor metaphor. DOORSTEP makes far more sense for the uniformly thick slices most of us cut.
—AntsInPants
FOI: cafe
LOI: destined
COD: conquest
Thanks to Izetti and Astartedon.
Longest holdup was on 18A Balladry, as I first tried to make “awful lines” into an anagram of lines. That clearly failed when the B from 15D Tabloid came in, but it took a while for the penny to drop on awful lines = bad ry. LOI was 11D Trojan War, a clever clue that I only saw the parsing of post solving.
Many thanks to Don for the blog
Cedric
NHO DOORSTEP for a thick slice of bread, unfamiliar with BALLADRY and LENTO. Heard of EWER only as a surname. So my general knowledge failed me completely this evening…
…will sulk overnight then pick myself up for another go tomorrow!
WB
FOI CAFE, LOI CONQUEST, COD CANNIBAL (just pipping PICKET), time 1.25K for a Goodish Day.
Many thanks to the two Dons.
Templar
Enjoyed LENTO, very clever with Lent being the fast before Easter (you can read the clueing as either “abstinence before Easter, egg” or “abstinence, before Easter Egg” as our blogger has it).
Thanks Izetti and Astartedon, a decent start to the week in QC land.
Edited at 2021-03-08 09:21 am (UTC)
It’s not to do with shape, it’s heft – a sandwich so large and chunky you could use it as a doorstop.
After all, we haven’t used “thou” for some time now and no doubt there were a few complaints as it slowly altered to “you. “
I still have a frisson when reading “decimate “ instead of “destroy” though. I hope to get over the feeling before too long.
Diana
Edited at 2021-03-08 01:29 pm (UTC)
Sal
I retired hurt after 40mins with a few completed, and then discovered at least three of them were wrong anyway by which time I’d lost interest.
Oh well , there’s always tomorrow.
Diana
Edited at 2021-03-08 09:44 am (UTC)
LOI TABLOID after correcting ESTATE which had been my best guess for 13a.
And I have just noticed that I got 8a wrong with DUMB (which had replaced Boob).
So a DNF for me.
David
There’s not much more I can say about this one, other than I did not enjoy it at all. I lost interest in it in the end.
On the bright side: I can’t do any worse tomorrow than I did today.
Oddly enough I did get 6d CRUSTACEA. Once I had worked out the answer I did have to look the word up in the dictionary to see if it was really a word. I have heard of crustacean/s, and I guessed crustacea was Latin.
Edited at 2021-03-08 10:21 am (UTC)
All the rest I managed relatively quickly. No prob with DOORSTEP. Liked PICKET, SWALLOW, BACON.
Thanks for much needed blog, Don.
Edited at 2021-03-08 12:34 pm (UTC)
Like others here, I had entered bon for 3 down instead of NOB and that made 1 across impossible. Having said that, I did consider swapping it round and I still couldn’t identify what the first on the grid should be. The problem is, I guess, that once you’ve decided a puzzle is impossible, then that’s what it becomes.
Some complex parsing here IMO. For example, DESTINED, BALLADRY (clever misdirection ), FESTIVE, TROJAN WAR etc.
Ah, well. Tomorrow is another day….
Thanks to Don and Izetti.
Edited at 2021-03-08 01:42 pm (UTC)
Thanks to astartedon
Edited at 2021-03-08 03:17 pm (UTC)
I thought NOB was, unusually for Izetti, an unfair clue. Otherwise I unravelled it without too many dramas.
FOI CAFE
LOI CONQUEST
COD CRUSTACEA
TIME 5:29
Edited at 2021-03-08 02:48 pm (UTC)
P.S. I am an ageing Pink Floyd 22a (as our blogger puts it) equipped once again, now that I’ve retired, with the long hair.
P.P.S. For any other prog-rockers out there, may I recommend you listen to Mostly Autumn, credited as “the best band you’ve never heard” by whispering Bob Harris.
Unfortunately, Mrs R made precisely the same error, although after only 32 minutes (so she beat me again today).
Many thanks to astartedon and Izetti.
FOI – 6ac CAFE
LOI – 9ac CONQUEST
COD – 16ac PICKET
Thanks to Izetti and Astartedon
Thoroughly enjoyed cannibal, bacon, balladry.
11:24
Thanks don and izetti
Had Lente and then couldn’t get Doorstep
Oh well out into the garden.
If it is dry tomorrow I will cut the grass for the first time this year.
Thanks all
John George
Edited at 2021-03-08 03:54 pm (UTC)
I knew I was in for a difficult morning when I finally deciphered 6dn as “Crustacea”. Was convinced 4dn was “Money” or “Monet” — but couldn’t fathom the homophone. Maybe my confidence was dented, but easier clues such as 13ac “Escort” and 11dn “Trojan War” failed to materialise. I also kept thinking “good” in French was “bien” which scuppered 3dn. At least I knew what a “Doorstep” was.
FOI — 6ac “Cafe”
LOI — dnf
COD — 6dn “Crustacea”
Thanks as usual.
Thanks for the blog Don.
I made it harder by falling for BON, which made CANNIBAL take a long time, then I’d made a complete pig’s ear of typing in TABLOID, which had me looking for 18 across to begin with L, rather than B. I also biffed LANCE, but that was soon changed to RIFLE once I got BUFF.
Longest time for a while at 13:39, but a good bit of that was down to carelessness.
Too much work on, so only just done this, and I’ve not had a proper lunch – must go and investigate dinner.
I won’t go back and edit the blog now though as it is near the end of the day and people will not gain any benefit from it because nobody will be looking at it!
Apologies for any confusion caused and many thanks to those who contributed comments to prop me up and fill in the gaps!
Don
Many thanks, Mr Random
Don
Mr R.
Very tricky and a DNF here. The bottom half went in easier than the top half. I didn’t fall for the Nob/Bon error but did have dumb for senseless. I eventually gave up and looked at the blog to get Cannibal which enabled me to get nearly all the others bar destined. A challenge from Izetti & thanks to Don