09:34 for me. Some very smooth surfaces.
I have a stinking cold, so 8A was rather triggering.
Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate, I’ll be giving thanks with my in-laws in LA on Thursday.
Across
| 1 | Romanians resettled in European country (3,6) |
| SAN MARINO – (ROMANIANS) *[resettled]
A very pleading anagram to start us off. |
|
| 6 | Article subsequently trimmed (3) |
| THE – THE{n} (subsequently) | |
| 8 | Confused chart about a source of regular cold symptom (7) |
| CATARRH – (CHART)* [confused] contains A + R{egular} | |
| 9 | Fine bridge player in celebration (5) |
| FEAST – F {ine} + EAST (bridge player)
I originally had this as
and was going to hunt through the many definitions of FINE to see the most likely. |
|
| 10 | Material for correspondents? Initially we telephone Times, say, about it (7,5) |
| WRITING PAPER – W{e} + R^ING PAPER [“telephone Times”] contains IT
Very nice, and for once the capitalisation was helpful. |
|
| 12 | Official accepting story in mitigation (6) |
| RELIEF – RE^F (official) contains LIE (story)
As in “The lawsuit offered financial relief/mitigation” |
|
| 13 | Daughter is married, almost entirely unhappy (6) |
| DISMAL – D{aughter} + IS + M{arried} + AL{l} (entirely) [“almost” means truncated here] | |
| 16 | Support for surfer seen in charge at sea (6,6) |
| SEARCH ENGINE – (SEEN IN CHARGE)
“Surfer” in these puzzles is often an internet thing, although the term is pretty dated now, as is the concept of there being more than one search engine available. |
|
| 19 | A sailor going round India, backing Indian dish (5) |
| RAITA – A + T^AR (sailor) reversed, contains I(ndia)
An Indian side dish of yogurt mixed with vegetables, fruits, or herbs.
|
|
| 20 | Massage bishop? Nonsense (7) |
| RUBBISH – RUB (massage) + BISH {op}
In jocular CofE circles the Bishop is described as “The Bish”. |
|
| 22 | Satisfied article not found in what vegetarians decline (3) |
| MET – ME{A}T (what vegetarians decline) | |
| 23 | Experimental trip vets tried out (4,5) |
| TEST DRIVE – (VETS TRIED)* |
Down
| 1 | Diseased lake abandoned in oil spillage (4) |
| SICK – S{L}ICK (diseased) with the L{ake} removed | |
| 2 | Rising brown river following the usual course (7) |
| NATURAL – TAN (brown, rising) + URAL (river)
I had URE for my river which left me a letter short. Although the URAL mountains are more famous, there is a river there too. And its the river that is considered the geographical boundary between Europe and Asia. |
|
| 3 | Duo skipping piano melody (3) |
| AIR – {P} AIR (Duo) – P{iano} | |
| 4 | Popular worker already being dealt with (2,4) |
| IN HAND -IN (popular) + HAND (worker) | |
| 5 | Polluted water for children? (9) |
| OFFSPRING – OFF (polluted) + SPRING (water) | |
| 6 | Vagrant heading for trouble on freeway exit? (5) |
| TRAMP – T{rouble} + RAMP (freeway exit)
The word “Freeway” cues up that this is an Americanism. We call them slip roads. |
|
| 7 | Learn to manoeuvre around front half of this entrance (7) |
| ENTHRAL – (LEARN)* contains TH{is}
You have to say “en-TRANCE” for this to make sense. Tricky, as the previous clue had been going on about Exits. |
|
| 11 | Cutting insect at bottom of ditch (9) |
| TRENCHANT – TRENCH (ditch) + ANT (insect)
So that’s what Trenchant means. Never knew that one. I think I’ve only heard the term “trenchant critic” so I thought it meant “determined”. |
|
| 12 | Nonsense about small drink where speaker stands (7) |
| ROSTRUM – RO^T (nonsense) contains S{mall} + RUM (drink)
The word evolved from a specific location in the Roman Forum, which was named the Rostra (the Latin plural of rostrum) because it was decorated with the “beaks” or pointed prows of warships captured in a naval victory in 338 BC. |
|
| 14 | Not entirely crazy about family’s audacious swimwear (7) |
| MANKINI – MAN^I{C }(crazy) [“not entirely” = truncated] contains KIN (family)
It was popularized by Sacha Baron Cohen, who donned one in the 2006 film Borat. Don’t google it, you’ll mess up your search engine for ever, and it can’t be unseen. Good secret Santa present, though. |
|
| 15 | Knight with place to sleep after overturning rubble (6) |
| DEBRIS – SIR (Knight) + BED( place to sleep) all reversed | |
| 17 | Celebrity contribution to festival is terrible (1-4) |
| A-LIST – Hidden in “festival is terrible”
For this to work, “A-List” should be an adjective or a singular noun. As in “an A-LIST Hollywood actress” |
|
| 18 | The woman snatching old footwear item (4) |
| SHOE – SHE (The woman) contains O{ld} | |
| 21 | Inferior pop group releasing some number (3) |
| BAD – BA{N}D (pop group) |
I think 9ac. is simply F + East?
Yeah, that’s what I figured eventually.
Apologies. I honestly didn’t see (read?) your first few lines. Overtired and under”paid”.
But I do have another q: is the report/analysis/blog for Jumbo 1759 issued? Cuz I can’t find it. Or am I doubly daft?
2:51, a PB after waiting slightly over a year for one.
Agree that ‘search engine’ is becoming something of a historical curio for the layman.
Thanks Pedro and Merlin!
Wow! Congrats
New age where AI searches are taking over from conventional search engines. I’m doing a government funded course on digital marketing which is highly focused on AI as an aid to creating content to direct prospects to “landing pages” where you put your offer and encourage them to buy.
On the subject of mankinis, you can often see spectators wearing them when the Tour de France has a mountain stage. The idiots run aside riders to get on TV. There must be a reason for that but escapes me.
🚀🚀🚀
Thanks Templar and Dvynys!
I’m stunned.
That’s incredible, congratulations!
even if I knew all the answers it would take me 5 minutes to read all clues and type out all answers.
I biffed so much that I hardly appreciated the cryptics – really, you can almost treat this as a concise. Of course, I did have to consult them a bit, but if you can glance at seen in charge and say immediately that’s an anagram of search engine, your solving life is going to be pretty easy. Mankini would have given trouble if I had not encountered it in a previous puzzles, but I saw audacious swimwear and thought of it at once.
Time: 4:45
Thanks Merlin not too many problems here all green in 6:53 maintaining decent start to week. Mucked around a bit with spelling of the cold symptom.
LOI for me was DEBRIS.
10:22, a leisurely stroll through an enjoyable puzzle. A bit of a biff-fest; took more time parsing some clues after entering them than actually solving them.
Many thanks Merlin for the blog.
CATARRH was probably the hardest word to spell but that didn’t stop me typing ENTralL and so giving me three pink squares for two errors on the day that would otherwise have taken me to zero errors for the month. Bah. Good fun right until two seconds are pressing submit! A little under 8 minutes, all parsed but spotting spelling errors in vertical words gets me (yet) again. Usual ace blog, thanks Merlin.
11 minutes with WRITING and TRENCHANT as my last two in requiring all their checkers. I started to write out the grist for 16ac but spotted SEARCH ENGINE before I got it all down.
A pleasant stroll today but CATARRH needed carefull spelling and, like our blogger, it appears that I’ve never understood the correct meaning of TRENCHANT.
Started with SAN MARINO and finished with ENTHRAL in 6.08. CsOD to OFFSPRING and RELIEF.
Thanks to Merlin and Pedro
Slower than previous solvers at 13:28 but very much enjoyed.
Thanks Pedro for a lovely puzzle and Merlin for educating me as to the meaning of trenchant.
Congrats Shred on the PB and Merlin on the RST. 15:35 for me and not yet sure if it’s a QTPi. Trenchant test drive of mankini left debris.
Ta MAP
Thanks!
A bit over 7 minutes. Unusually for a Pedro, none of the clues gave me too much trouble, even the unfamiliar MANKINI.
DISMAL, RUBBISH, SICK and BAD, but still an enjoyable puzzle.
Thanks to Merlin and Pedro
Pottered through this without ever getting up a head of steam. Had to pause over the spelling of CATARRH and RAITA, thought the second word of 10a would be “press”, and the URAL was not my first (or indeed my fifth!) thought for a river.
Got there in 07:05 for a Reasonable Day. COD RUBBISH. Many thanks Merlin and Pedro.
PS Merlin – you’ve underlined and emboldened “Romanians” for 1a, rather than “European country”.
1a now fixed, thanks.
Also you meant pleasing anagram rather than pleading, I think
7:07 for the solve. Nice one – SAN-MARINO chestnut went straight in and then I spluttered for a few clues before getting into rhythm. Made hard work of FEAST which was 3rd last in ahead of OFFSPRING and SEARCH ENGINE.
My fastest Pedro puzzle ever, a setter who has given me seven tickets to the SCC this year and as Merlin indicated, great surfaces. I suspect the QC setter also provides an extra five for the Cryptic Quintagram as that is super smooth today and took me 47 secs.
Thanks to Merlin and Pedro.
11 in 20 minutes, 16 in total. it was an after midnight effort.
When people say LA it can mean anywhere within a 50 mile radius of LAX. 🙂
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it. My second marriage was 22nd November 2007 which happened to be Thanksgiving. That’s the earliest date it can be of course.
Thanks M & P
8 minutes exactly. A straightforward solve, slowed down only by having to carefully check the spelling of CATARRH.
1d, 2d, 5d and 11d made me wonder if there was a theme related to the pollution of waterways.
Thanks Merlin and Pedro
A pleasant and happily brief time was had. Enjoyed the workings of each and every clue – found ENTRANCE particularly pleasing having tried to walk through the non existent door.
Smiled at many – OFFSPRING, RELIEF included.
Will now look at the Quintogram : )
Thank you Pedro – and Merlin.
How did you do on the Cryptic Quintagram?
It was absolutely wonderful, thank you – had first answer before even dipping the pen into the ink, and on it went, all done in less than 1 min 30 – giving me the gentlest taste of how doing the QC must feel for you lot. I momentarily felt quite able. 🙃
Well done – took me a good ten seconds to find the right bit of kitchenware and it wasn’t pans!
…maybe I spend longer in the kitchen……?😁
This was an erratic solve for me; the puzzle just wouldn’t ‘flow’ and I didn’t really enjoy it. More often than not, Pedro has tipped me into the SCC in the past so I was content to finish in 15.55.
A MER at ‘ramp’ but it had to be. I guess Pedro is not from these parts.
Thanks as usual.
Held up by my last two: SEARCH ENGINE and DEBRIS. Otherwise a smooth 12 minutes.
Smooth surfaces too and a nice QC.
David
4.24
Yes quite a lot of biffs but I noticed a lot of v smooth surfaces so for me a v nicely constructed puzzle. Thanks Pedro and Merlin.
13:54
Parsed all but LOI and half of MANKINI, going for MAD not entirely and KIN – waiting for the blog to see where NI came from 🤭
Another lovely QC.
FOI: DISMAL
LOI: BAD
COD: OFFSPRING (for the smile it induced)
Thanks to Pedro and Merlin
27.20 but it felt faster than that.
An enjoyable QC.
LOI: RELIEF
COD RUBBISH
Thanks Pedro and Merlin.
Slightly off topic, but has anyone else tried the cryptic crossword in the RHS’s magazine ( The Garden)? Harder than QC ( for me anyway) but well clued and fun.
Yes, but I find it tricky and I miss the T4TT to explain it!
A pretty quick time finishing well inside target at 7.50. The clue that held me up the most was my LOI where I was all at sea with SEARCH ENGINE, trying to think of an alternative term for a surf board. A decent puzzle with some clever misdirection I thought.
A trouble-free solve in 15 minutes. I lost a little bit of time trying to anagram ‘trip vets’ at 23ac before realising I was a letter short.
FOI – 1ac SAN MARINO
LOI – 15dn DEBRIS
COD – 5dn OFFSPRING. Also liked RUBBISH
Thanks to Pedro and Merlin
5:42
Pretty gentle – more than half in the first pass of acrosses, gave plenty of checking fodder for the downs, but tbh, they were pretty straightforward too. Slowed a little with TRENCHANT until the C appeared – LOI RELIEF once TRENCHANT was in.
Thanks Merlin and Pedro
I am obviously an outlier here as I found this very testing, taking 27:23 to crawl home. Lots of head scratching and biffing required. LOI NATURAL and NHO RAITA, but worked out from the clue.
Forgot to go back and check ENTHRAL, so DNF.
Otherwise much enjoyed. I admit I also check spelling of CATARRH. Liked LOI DEBRIS plus OFFSPRING which made me smile, ditto TRENCHANT and RUBBISH.
Thanks vm, Merlin.
What happened to enthral? That seems like the correct answer
Typo/bisho/dud
From SAN MARINO to SHOE in 5:14. A gentle romp! Thanks Pedro and Merlin.
Took far too long to parse SEARCH ENGINE before a long groan. COD RUBBISH for the mental picture only matched by the startling memories of never to be forgotten Borat.
26mins and a fond return to usual place in the club.
Thanks Merlin and Pedro.
A steady solve from SAN MARINO to TRENCHANT. I biffed WRITING PAPER and ROSTRUM and initially wrote in RAITi at 19a. 7:07 Thanks Merlin
As was the case last week, I have successfully avoided the SCC in both of the first two QCs of the week – 17 minutes today. In between, however, my efforts have been distinctly average (30-40 minutes) plus a horror show with Shay – a multi-clue DNF, which took nearly an hour. Quite a range of outcomes, I think. Erratic solving by me, erratic setting or both?
Today, I started with SAN MARINO, felt somewhat queasy when MANKINI turned up and finished with TRENCHANT. Nothing obscure and (unusually) not breezeblocked, so a good day for me.
Many thanks to Merlin and Pedro.
Well- pitched puzzle for a QC
Liked RUBBISH and ENTHRAL particularly
Cuppa still warm when LO went I
Thanks Pedro and Merlin
Having already typoed the Concise (ioya is NOT a Greek character) I was VERY careful and sight checked every answer as soon as I’d typed it. Only my LOI, which I biffed, remained after two passes.
FOI SAN MARINO
LOI SEARCH ENGINE
COD MANKINI
TIME 4:11
We enjoyed this, especially RUBBISH though ROMANIANS and MANKINI were also great clues. Finished in a faster than average 10:23. Thanks, Merlin and Pedro.
10:53
No problems here apart from not knowing how to spell CATARRH. LOI BAD.
Started with 1ac, San Marino and it was a steady solve thereafter, assisted by one or two biff then parse answers – Writing Paper was just too obvious with a couple of checkers in place. If only I could say the same about Surf Engine. That must be about the 3rd or 4th time I’ve been caught out: I was again ‘at sea’ for too long. However, no complaints about a 17min solve for Pedro, as I often struggle with their puzzles. CoD to Offspring for the smile. Invariant
PS Yesterday’s 15×15 was quite friendly for the most part.
Thanks for the heads up re yesterday’s 15×15 – managed all but 9 clues before throwing in the towel. That’s a good day for me having only ever fully solved one 15×15 before.
Having write-ins for the first couple, I checked the clock and finished this in a rare sub-20 mins, desite handing the paper back to OH mid-solve so he could check the chess solution.
FOI – san marino
LOI – enthral
COD – Debris
Thanks Merlin and Pedro.
22 mins…
A bit off it today. None of the clues were too difficult, but my mind had turned to mud, so the “en-trance” element of 7dn took an age to see, along with the “Surfer” in 16ac and the massaged bishop in 20ac.
FOI – 1ac “San Marino”
LOI – 21dn “Bad”
COD – 7dn “Enthral”
Thanks as usual!
Anyone else spit their coffee out when reading “Massage bishop…”?
21 mins. Sorting out the anagrams of Test Drive and Search Engine, took too long. Otherwise enjoyable and doable. Thanks Pedro and Merlin
11:02 – felt like I could have gone quicker as was half listening to some announcement… Quite tricky in places. Liked DEBRIS.
8.56 Mostly steady but not especially quick. SEARCH ENGINE and WRITING PAPER were the last two. Thanks Merlin and Pedro.
Bit of lergy today so did most of it in bed, but had to get up and work seriously on the SW corner. Keep forgetting REF (12a); NHO RAITA but apparently that’s what it had to be, then eventually LOI ROSTRUM appeared. Thanks Merlin.
Been concentrating on the 15x15s on paper of late so it was a great pleasure to zoom through this in 8:14. Definitely a Q. C.
Lovely puzzle from Pedro. I particularly enjoyed being misled by the pronunciation in ENTRANCE and RELIEF.
Despite the anagram I was sure that CATARRH had a G in it somewhere so it took several attempts until it looked, and was, right.
Thanks Merlin for the blog.
8:03, and a fun time was had. FOI SAN MARINO, LOI and COD RELIEF. For once, I wasn’t fooled by “entrance” or “surfer”. Learning has taken place.
Thanks to Pedro and Merlin, entertaining lore today.
Struggled today especially in the sw corner. Not sure what the new archbishop would say about rubbing though!
I used to find Pedro very wordy and quite difficult but less so these days, and this was really enjoyable. Like yesterday, lots to like and quite hard to choose a COD. We’ve seen similar clues to 1a before, but I really liked SAN MARINO. A-LIST made me smile and, bearing in mind that I will be preparing an early Christmas dinner for a vegan and a vegetarian in a week or two, MET was extremely timely! CATARRH though – what a strange collection of letters and I too had to wait for the checkers before I could absolutely sure where the H went.
8:14 fully parsed – no biffing today! FOI San Marino LOI Debris COD Search engine (it may be outdated but I liked it!)
Thanks Pedro and Merlin
Vegan Christmas sounds tricky!
Not as bad as you might imagine – even a nut roast with lots Christmas flavours and cranberry sauce can be very nice 😊
8.27.
1 hour 21 mins. found it tough
Pedro has never been the easiest of setters. Just keep plugging away and you’ll improve over time
Thank you, will keep going.
I admire your perseverance with this.
You may have already done this but, if not, a good idea would be to find online a list of the common abbreviations used in cryptic crosswords. Until you are reasonably adept at spotting these, the puzzles will remain hard.
When I started solving, I used these as an aid and found it very helpful. As time passes, you will find that you need the aid less and less.
I also wrote down each day any new abbreviations, tricks used by setters that I had not come across before. The act of writing something can be a good way of making sure you remember it.
Best wishes going forward with this.
Gary
Thank you Gary. I’m going to start doing that.
Fairly or not, Pedro is lodged in my head as one of our more brutal setters, so this came as a pleasant surprise. A total of 10:59, with my only real problems being my inability to spell CATARRH and Pedro’s success in misleading me with the phrase “support for surfer”, both of which are entirely my own fault.
13 minutes. Still well behind the competition and unable to achieve a properly fast time. I haven’t checked the Snitch, but I’m guessing this fell into the very easy category. Stupidly had TRACING PAPER for 10ac for a while and still struggling to spot immediately the word play and the definition.
Over an hour on 15 x 15. Failed by one as I gave up through frustration, fatigue and anger at my lack of ability compared to others.
Shouldn’t it be S{L}ICK (oil spillage) with L{ake} removed?
Great though. Really helping me understand when I get an answer but can’t figure out the wordplay.