QC 2777 by Mara

82 comments on “QC 2777 by Mara”

1. 11 minutes for me, with a MER at waffles being made from potato, and STAGE WHISPER being to the side (which I assume means from the wings, but surely a stage whisper is just someone on stage talking in a “whisper” loud enough for the audience to hear).

2. 15:40. AFTERS, FRECKLE, and IDLER were the most satisfying for me to solve and parse. Merlin, my sides are still aching from the laughter provoked by your Germanus joke!

3. An enjoyable crossword from Mara (not Jalna, Merlin, as you suggest at 23ac FAST). It took me 9.24, FOI STAR, LOI HOLDALL. STAGE WHISPER was tricky, there’s not exactly a lot to go on and the def seems neither helpful nor especially accurate. What with fritters, waffles, afters, (cook) pot, fat chewing and the thermos flask we had a bit to digest. Thanks M&M (sorry Merlin, I’m afraid I didn’t get your obviously clever Germanus joke!)

4. Collins says “mess” as a transitive verb meaning “to muddle or dirty” is “often foll by up,” which means it needn’t be.
   I’ve seen potato pancakes, even had them, so WAFFLES wasn’t that much of a stretch.
   AFTERS was my LOI, and I quite like it.

5. 4:40 and just realised I never parsed AFTERS. Thanks for that one Merlin. Don’t want to reveal my ignorance so I’m waiting to see how many are laughing at your germanus joke before I decide whether to join in.

   Enjoyable puzzle today, thanks Mara. I thought STAGE WHISPER (my LOI) was very good.

6. I was very surprised to find only 10 minutes on the clock when I finished this one as I had begun by struggling to find a first answer and I felt I had been really slow working through the rest of it.

   On CHEW THE FAT and ‘rabbit’, very few synonyms correspond exactly in every circumstance. I recognise your interpretation of ‘rabbit, but Collins has ‘to talk inconsequentially; chatter’ which I’d say also equates with chewing the fat.

7. on AFTERS I figured out the answer off pudding but got stuck on parsing, thinking “Aft” stood for “tale” (which is course it does not — that would be “tail”) so was baffled about how to parse the rest of it. Tough for a Tuesday!

8. Never knew it was a REPERTOIRE, I wrote on REPoRTOIRE in full confidence. Should have checked the anagrist. Sruggled mightily before entering an unparsed AFTERS. Well persevered Merlin! Started badly thinking ‘side parting’ would fit – STAGE WHISPER went in easily enough on the second pass without Paul’s reservation occuring to me. Undone by ignorance in 17.44.

9. Struggled with this one, taking 16 minutes in all. Thought a number of the clues a bit loose: STAGE WHISPER with its less than helpful cluing, EVE for its carelessness – it is NR that is doing the hugging not NEVER – and WAFFLE because not all potato cakes are waffles and not all waffles are made of potato. Not to mention the (mis-) use of OLD in HOLDALL. So I fully intended to come here to harrumph, only to find Merlin had got there first.

   LOI AFTERS, never did parse it. Very neat now it is explained to us. Many thanks for this and the rest of the blog – now off to translate the Latin.
   Cedric

   1. When you have done the translating please let the rest of us in on the joke C

      1. Well, as Merlin says, it is a play on the Latin word germanus meaning both German and relevant/germane. So the quip is “Why is the German brother always relevant? Because he is germane”. And I will now have Herman the German on my mind for the rest of the day

         1. My Latin is not good, but can GermanUS mean germane as well as German ?

            1. Who knows what meaning Cicero would have given the word. But germanus would be the ordinary adjectival form (in the nominative masculine), and it does appear to have had the meaning “sincere, thorough, relevant” in classical Latin. My etymological dictionary (Walter W Skeat’s etymological dictionary, 1879, 4th edition 1910) suggests that the word then came into English via Old French, where germain meant “fully connected”, as in siblings who share both parents – Chaucer, for example talks of “cosins germains” in his Tale of Melibee (one of the Canterbury Tales). And modern French still uses the phrase cousins germains for direct first cousins.

               I note in passing the extraordinary compliment the Romans were (perhaps inadvertently) giving to their enemies the Germanic tribes – one of the few peoples to successfully resist being brought into the Empire – by using the same word as their name for such positive sentiments as sincere, thorough etc.

         2. O sides, do not split! Thank you Cedric

            1. 🙂 Cogito, ergo sum

10. I found this tricky in places particularly in the SE, leading to a bit of a sluggish solve.
    Like our blogger I confidently started 24a with ‘thermal’ and assumed that I was looking for an unknown (to me) scientific term. It wasn’t until I finally unravelled PAINFUL that I started looking at alternative options.
    Started with STAR and finished with REPERTOIRE in 10.16 and COD to CHEW THE FAT.
    Thanks to Merlin for the blog and Mara for the entertaining challenge.

11. 14 mins for me, and I enjoyed it hugely. AFTERS is a rare clue type where it is asking you to fill in the blanks of another clue.
    In this case the other clue would be something like What is AFTER S in stale? Answer = TALE. Has this type of clue got a name?

12. What’s Latin for ‘Why is Ecstacy in Munich relevant?’
    prefer Esso to afters
    Ta both

13. 14:10. more of a struggle than perhaps it should have been. LOI AFTERS unparsed, now looks very good. I am sure Google translate didn’t do justice to your highly acclaimed Germanus joke, Merlin. Many thanks

14. 5:27. Tricky in parts. The two long acrosses didn’t come immediately. LOI POT, but held up mostly by parsing AFTERS before stopping the clock. Nice one. Thank-you Mara and Merlin.

15. Finished and enjoyed, though I felt some clues took longer than they should have.
    Ambled about the grid filling in answers here and there. FOI CHEW THE FAT. Also liked FELT TIP, IDLER, FRECKLE, HOKUM, among others.
    The setter used the letters F and K frequently, I noted.
    LOI AFTERS, unparsed.
    Thanks for thorough blog, Merlin. Too early in the morning for jokes in Latin, but I salute you.

16. A struggle. A hasty THERMAL flask made AFTERS tricky. Took a while to see REPERTOIRE. Enjoyable. Thanks all.

    No doubt my brother Dvynys will beat my time easily but I had a two to his four on Wordle today so all is good 😀

    Time: 15:42

    1. Not so much quicker…

17. Lots to enjoy here so thanks. I agree that chew the fat doesn’t really mean rabbit and 17d is a clever clue but not for this puzzle I would argue. ‘Afters’ was a familiar term for my generation growing up, but I don’t hear it these days.

18. It had its moments, but I biffed AFTERS and didn’t much care for the definition of STAGE WHISPER – it would be practically impossible to issue one from the wings.

    FOI STAR
    LOI AFTERS
    COD THERMOS FLASK
    TIME 5:16

19. What a struggle. Sort of finished it but no idea how AFTERS worked, and NHO TOTALISER (something to do with betting, perhaps? never been there). STAGE WHISPER and FRECKLE clever but difficult. Thank you, Merlin. (23: you mean Mara, not Jalna?)
    Drat: don’t like better = FITTER (dubious equivalence); for this LOI I guessed LITTER (= waste) + F but no good of course.

20. Struggled today, not helped by my understanding of potato cake (rosti, latke, hash brown), being very much non-adjacent to waffle – which contains no potato, and is rather made from batter or dough. I am vaguely aware of the frozen “potato waffle”, which I remember eating in the 80’s, but I rather assumed that these had died a death. Maybe I should familiarise myself with the contents of the freezer aisle again.

    I had also entered THERMAL FLASK, which made my LOI AFTERS impossible until I checked the anagrist and entered THERMOS. AFTERS gets COD. STAGE WHISPER was also difficult for me.

    Congrats to Mara for the bamboozlement (though I feel the waffle clue to be unfair). Thanks to Merlin for the blog.

    9:45

    1. rösti! yum! It’s been too long.

21. Took a while to get STAGE WHISPER, WAFFLE and REPERTOIRE. Also held up at the end trying and failing to parse AFTERS. I eventually shrugged and submitted. 8:57. Thanks Mara and Merlin.

22. 9.36

    Like Hopkinb a bit of a struggle here as well.

    Loved the parsing for AFTERS (LOI) but the surface maybe wasn’t the smoothest. As for WAFFLE [insert identical comments to Hopkinb]

    Thanks all

23. 14:18

    Held up at the end by last two in: fritter and afters.
    Had a few question marks next to right = ok, fitter = better, and waffle.
    COD afters.

24. A couple of MERs for me. Not sure how FITTER is a synonym of BETTER, and I might be officially OLD but certainly not WORN-OUT just yet! Could not parse AFTERS – thanks Merlin for the explanation.

25. 10:43

    I thought this was a cracker, thanks Mara: not a word wasted.
    Great blog too Merlin.

    FOI STAR
    LOI GERMANE
    COD FELT TIP

26. I really struggled with this, fearing at one time I wouldn’t finish. In the end I crossed the line in 15.10, but it was my final three that really threw me. It took WAFFLE to get me going again after a long unfruitful spell, and with the starting W, STAGE WHISPER followed shortly afterwards. I was nearly two minutes alone on my LOI which was AFTERS, and even then I couldn’t parse it. I’m grateful to Merlin for his explanation.

27. Needed extra coffee for this one. LOI by a long way was AFTERS which I never did parse (clever) but also held up by WAFFLE, STAGE WHISPER and POT (very unsure that this meant cup but couldn’t be anything else). Thanks for the blog Merlin. Interesting to hear about the etymology of germane; sadly the Latin joke was lost on me – I blame my comprehensive education! Many thanks all.

28. After 15 minutes I just needed two; so normal progress.
    But I got really stuck on FRITTER (so many options for Better and Waste) which eventually led to LOI AFTERS, which I did parse. At that point I had 28 minutes on the clock.
    I agree with many of the comments above; some good stuff in here and a few doubts.
    David

29. You’ve got more rabbit than Sainsbury’s,
    It’s time you got it off your chest ….

    Good old Chas & Dave.

    Flew through until Icarus-like I tried to parse AFTERS … looked at it up, down, sideways, round the back, from underneath – could not make head nor tail of it. Far too good for me. Thank goodness for the blog. As per hopkin on WAFFLE.

    So home but one unparsed in 07:37 for a Pretty Good day. Many thanks Mara and Merlin.

30. Thanks Mara and Merlin.

    FYI the underlining in the blog at 13d is in the wrong place, and Im not convinced your parsing of 15a is correct, I read it as a pure anagram of “so deep”

    An enjoyable steady 15 min solve for me

31. I struggled from CHEW THE FAT to a biffed AFTERS in 9:21. The TREATISES anagram required several visits as did FRECKLE/HOKUM with the K checker. My penultimate solve was FRITTER and I needed the blog to understand AFTERS so thanks Merlin for figuring it out.

32. DNF, defeated by AFTERS and FRITTER. Just couldn’t see them.

    1. Same ones for me

    2. me too!

33. 10:01, I started fast, then slowed down in the middle, once I got STAGE WHISPER I sped up again but not quite enough to beat the 10 minute mark because my last 2 in, FRITTER and AFTERS, were slow again.

34. I must be very dense. I still cannot understand the proposed parsing of AFTERS

    1. In the word ‘stale’, the word ‘tale’ is after the letter s.

       So tale is where in stale? AFTER-S!
       and I guess pudding is a dessert which is called afters somewhere. (I’ve never heard it be called afters)

       1. Yes, in the UK “afters” can be synonymous with “pudding” and “dessert”. I think it might be an indicator of social class rather than a regional thing, a bit like “napkin” vs “serviette”.

          1. Out of curiosity, is “afters” U or non-U?

             1. Decidedly non-U, I think.

                Just to complicate matters, “pudding” is used generally as a synonym for “dessert”, but is also a particular type of dessert – I think they’re typically steamed, Christmas pudding being an example. They tend to be dense and stodgy and will “stick to your ribs” as my late father (a great fan of puddings in every sense) would say.

                And then to add a bonus layer of confusion on top: a pudding in the latter sense can also be savoury (as in steak and kidney pudding). Not really to my own taste, but I gather that they’re made with suet plus whatever fillings you want to add.

                So to sum things up: a pudding in the UK can be:

                1) A generic term for a dessert;
                2) A suet-based thing that may or may not be a dessert, depending on whether it’s sweet or savoury.

                It occurs to me now that I’ve written at some length to answer a question that nobody’s asked. Oh well!

35. OK just seen it grrrr

    1. Oh haha didn’t see your comment here pls disregard my explanation

36. 10 minutes with three to go and then another 10 minutes trying to get them. DNF with AFTERS and FRITTER eluding me (both seem logical now!) So it is – some were write-ins, including STAGE WHISPER known to all participants in amdram and CHEW THE FAT which was helpfully clued. Great fun and excellent blog – thanks Mara and Merlin.

37. Dnf…

    Just couldn’t get 23ac “Fast”. Like Merlin, I got taken in by the “nippy” = cold, but it didn’t help that I also spelt “Treatises” wrong for 13dn. I had no idea what was going on with 17dn, but it couldn’t be anything else.

    FOI – 8ac “Star”
    LOI – dnf
    COD – 10dn “Chew the fat”

    Thanks as usual!

38. Tip of the hat (again) to anyone starting with 1ac – I needed quite a few crossers, and share others’ concerns about Waffle being described as a potato cake. While I’m in the moan mood, a Thermos Flask does not maintain a constant (ie unchanging) temperature. It helps to keep liquids hot (or cold), but come back 24hrs later expecting no change and you will be sorely disappointed. As for the rest, a slow solve left me well into the SCC, but I’m still glad I persevered with parsing loi Afters. The eventual pdm elevates it to stand out CoD. Invariant

39. I thought that the 1a Stage Whisper was being directed by the actor to the wings as it would be crude to face towards the audience, and to the rear would be inaudible.
    From Wiktionary:
    “waffle (plural waffles)
    1. (countable) A flat pastry pressed with a grid pattern, often eaten hot with butter and/or honey or syrup….
    2. (countable, British) In full potato waffle: a savoury flat potato cake with the same kind of grid pattern.”
    There are 2 more defs.
    Failed to properly parse 17d Stale, and thought that Ta… would come after S in the dictionary, so I was very dim there.

40. I enjoyed this puzzle. I wondered how good ChatGPT is at cryptic clues. Here’s what it told me.

    The cryptic clue “Iron clothes clerk ordered for Mark (7)” suggests a synonym for “Mark” with wordplay involving “iron” and possibly an anagram of “clerk.”

    The answer is likely “CLERICAL.”

    Here’s the breakdown:

    “Iron” is represented by the chemical symbol Fe.

    “Clothes” suggests something that surrounds or contains, so “Fe” is likely “clothed” by an anagram of “clerk” (as “ordered” indicates an anagram).

    “Mark” refers to a clerical mark or notation.

    Anagramming “clerk” gives “leric,” and surrounding it with “Fe” forms “CLERICAL,” which fits the clue and definition of “mark” in a clerical sense.

    1. Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll all be fine when AI is running air traffic control or nuclear power stations!

    2. Every now and again I get AI to solve a clue, and the answers vary between “bang on” and “absolute gibberish”.

       1. I’m a bit sceptical about what AI means, and the best def I’ve found so far is “anything we don’t know how to program”.
          On the other hand I am optimistic that computers will quite soon be better drivers than we are, but I’m very unsure that they will be using what today’s vendors call AI. Same goes for the nuclear reactors etc.
          All IT salesfolk ARE salesfolk. Q. How can you tell when an IBM salesman is lying? A. You can see his lips moving. (This left over from the days when IBM was making more profit than the whole of the rest of the IT business put together).

41. 10′, needed Merlin for the parsing of AFTERS, which I’d never have work out! Enjoyable puzzle though, especially after flunking the 15×15.

42. Thanks for explaining AFTERS, which is a type of clue you see in the AZED puzzle (and one of my late solving colleagues called a “self referential clue”), and I always struggle with. The word is probably a bit dated now.
    All correct. Had to go halfway down the across clues to get started! Not easy, but I didn’t want to spend all day on the 15×15 today and get nowhere.

43. 15:57

    Another fairly straightforward puzzle but I really got stuck on LOI AFTERS, taking an extra 3 mins. Was looking for something starting OFF for stale. Never did parse that one but lost patience and gambled.

44. Usual story! None of the long clues went in quickly, but I built on the shorter ones well enough to reach the two-clues-to-go point in just 24 minutes (not bad for me). My final two clues (__I_T_R and ___E_S) then held me up for a further 22 minutes.

    I thought of FRITTER quite early on in my deliberations, but I couldn’t see the connection with waste and FITTER does not mean better (or vice-versa). AFTERS was even more of a mystery to me, as I just could not deconstruct the clue at all.

    Total time = 46 minutes and most of the earlier enjoyment has turned sour, unfortunately.

    Thanks to Mara and Merlin.

45. I didn’t know Hum = Smell, will add it to my list thank you for the tip!

46. 8:47

    Enjoyed this offering from Mara which had some mildly chewy moments, not least towards the end when FRECKLE, FRITTER, REPERTOIRE and LOI AFTERS failed to leap out quickly.

    Thanks Mara and Merlin

47. just to comment that waffles are definitely not potato cakes which are called farms or boxty in Ireland where they originate.

48. Finished correctly in 49 minutes. Two in a row. Hooray !
    “1 Across A line to one side? (5,7)
    STAGE WHISPER – Cryptic definition, and a hard one”
    A hard one indeed. Almost incomprehensible. Not sure how I got this one.

    N.B. “12 Across Turner taking some Miro to Raphael (5)
    ROTOR – Hidden in Miro to Raphael”
    Three famous painters in one clue ! Quite recently we also had Gainsborough. It will be Dali or Magritte next. Mark my words.

49. A lot to like here. On my own I think I’d have been a DNF on LOI AFTERS but fortunately Mrs T was able to put me out of misery by biffing it within 13:54. Once again we are grateful to these excellent blogs for helping us with the parsing and it’s now my COD. We were also held up for a while by THERMAL until it became apparent that we’d need the ‘L’ for PAINFUL. Thanks to both Merlin and Mara.

50. Tricky- disappeared down numerous rabbit holes, but struggled to a completed grid – AFTERS complete biff

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