I found this very neat and tidy with some nice surfaces, particularly 22ac and 5 dn. Pretty much on-target 6 minutes for me.
| Across | |
| 1 | Praying to find wild child with talent (6,7) |
| INFANT PRODIGY – anagram (‘wild’) of PRAYING TO FIND | |
| 8 | Gay guys initially in for drink (4,3) |
| PINK GIN – PINK (gay) + G + IN | |
| 9 | I must leave master class (5) |
| GENUS – GENIUS minus I | |
| 10 | Log of charges for entry? (9,3) |
| BATTERING RAM – cryptic definition | |
| 12 | Menu needs rump put into cooker (6) |
| AGENDA – END (rump) inside AGA | |
| 14 | Start of alpine trail an upward slope (6) |
| ASCENT – A for alpine then SCENT | |
| 17 | Bats rescued wolf (7) |
| SEDUCER – anagram (‘bats’) of RESCUED. ‘Bats’ as in batty, mad. | |
| 19 | Pickpocket maybe one the force imprisons (5) |
| THIEF -THE + F, with I ‘imprisoned’ inside | |
| 20 | Bank invests pound for working man (5) |
| TILER – TIER with L inside | |
| 21 | Clever sort rounded hill covering wide area (4-3) |
| KNOW-ALL – KNOLL around W + A | |
| 22 | Doctor Marten with no decoration (8) |
| ORNAMENT – anagram (‘doctor’) of MARTEN + NO | |
| 23 | So, America on Thursday? (4) |
| THUS – TH + US | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Wicket lost in fine game (1-3) |
| I-SPY – WISPY (fine) minus W for wicket | |
| 2 | Showy display from cool and distant European (7) |
| FANFARE – FAN (verb, cool) + FAR + E | |
| 3 | Dark near bottom of shaft (5) |
| NIGHT – NIGH + T | |
| 4 | Insect kept in ferret’s food store (6) |
| PANTRY – ANT inside PRY | |
| 5 | System converting song into aria (12) |
| ORGANISATION – anagram (‘converting’) of SONG INTO ARIA | |
| 6 | Private meal served without starter (5) |
| INNER – DINNER minus the first letter | |
| 7 | Natural attraction? See family lost out (8,5) |
| YOSEMITE FALLS – anagram (‘out’) of SEE FAMILY LOST | |
| 11 | Voice raised in row by Cornish river (8) |
| FALSETTO – SET-TO (row) after FAL | |
| 13 | Propriety after month nothing strange (7) |
| DECORUM – DEC + O + RUM | |
| 15 | Remarks on stone heap moved around mine (7) |
| EPITAPH – anagram (‘moved’) of HEAP outside PIT | |
| 16 | Defective machine-gun all right inside (6) |
| BROKEN – BREN (machine gun) outside OK | |
| 18 | Part in Normandy landings for Thomas? (5) |
| DYLAN – hidden word: NormaDY LANdings. Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and epic drinker. | |
On line today after golf ,and felt pleased to finish in 12:07. LOI AGENDA.
I kept trying to find the pig clue and only realised coming here that I was imagining the wrong setter.
I wasn’t sure about all my answers but enjoyed today’s challenge from Wurm.
David
I found this super tough and had to have so many breaks I can’t really record a time (or it’s 6h58m including them all). Enjoyable but a tough end for me to week that I’ve been whizzing through until now. I was only in Yosemite a month ago and it was still my penultimate one in. What a donkey.
I thought this was quite user-friendly really, as Wurm can be quite challenging. I too wasn’t sure about the FALLS, but with F, A, L, L and S left over in the anagrist… well, it wasn’t too tricky.
COD 10 ac for a super bit of 15×15 quality. Thanks Wurm and Curarist.
Definitely on the hard end of the QC scale, but lots of excellent clues. Loved BATTERING RAM, BROKEN and THUS among others. Thanks as always!
Joining with those who said this was (super) tough, tough enough to be less enjoyable.
For me this was a real toughie. After 15 minutes I had very few answers in the grid and was scraping around to add any more. In the end I used this blog to add a couple of the long entries to give me clues for some of the others, which helped quite a lot. Some clever clues, but in my opinion many were more suited to the 15×15 than the QC.
This was a fight all the way through! Only Thief and Thus in the first pass and didn’t try the Down clues but concentrated on the SE to get some purchase. Dylan, Epitaph and Broken helped but it was then a real slog. Not an enjoyable solve tonight.
Definitely tough. Not often I finish the 15×15 but get defeated by the QC (FANFARE and BATTERING RAM; latter was a great clue even if I couldn’t see it)
I printed out the extra Weekend QC 59 but now can’t find the solution. Please can anyone point me in the right direction?
After I posted that the link popped up, so thanks.
I had a nightmare with this one. Didn’t see the anagram at 1ac and put in infant promise, which really mucked things up. Also stupidly missed the anagram for 7dn. Did ok on the rest but ended up with a DNF, with four clues either incorrect or incomplete. I’m cross with myself because I think this was eminently doable, but I was just on a very bad day. Disappointing as this had been a decent week so far.
My progress is definitely not as good as I had hoped. I don’t think I have improved at all in recent months, but can’t work out why.