This was stretching it for a QC in my opinion, and I will be interested to hear how you all got on. There is some very tricky wordplay, and a few left-field definitions. I spent ages trying to crowbar a B into 3 down until the penny dropped. 10 minutes for me, way over target.
| Across | |
| 1 | Rubbished chronic type of fireworks (11) |
| PYROTECHNIC – anagram (‘rubbished’) of CHRONIC TYPE | |
| 8 | Less easy to restrain old obsessive person (7) |
| HOARDER – HARDER with O for old inside | |
| 9 | Early religious leader favoured by former queen (5) |
| PETER – PET (favoured) + ER | |
| 10 | Agitated man’s valid destructive behaviour (9) |
| VANDALISM – anagram (‘agitated’) of MANS VALID | |
| 12 | Individual working with energy (3) |
| ONE – ON (working) + E | |
| 13 | Aristocrat, oddly, regularly seen as unimportant figure (6) |
| NOBODY – NOB (aristo) + alternate letters of OdDlY | |
| 15 | Coin showing delicate line around head of King (6) |
| NICKEL – NICE + L round K for king. Slightly odd definition of ‘nice’. My dictionary says it can mean ‘slight’ or ‘subtle’, but ‘delicate’ seems a bit of a stretch. | |
| 17 | Chicken shed emitting quiet bird sound (3) |
| COO – COOP minus P | |
| 18 | Severe rain and storms surrounding company (9) |
| DRACONIAN – anagram (‘storms’) of RAIN AND outside CO. Tricky for a QC | |
| 20 | Consider flirting with detective at university (3,2) |
| EYE UP – (private) EYE + UP | |
| 22 | Dishonourable recording about a good-looking person (7) |
| CADDISH – CD outside A DISH | |
| 23 | Dicky hated milder setting for fantasy novels (6-5) |
| MIDDLE-EARTH – anagram (‘dicky’) of HATED MILDER | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Person easily manipulated to accept right component of cocktail? (5) |
| PRAWN – PAWN round R | |
| 2 | Editor and assistant interrupting revolutionary in the act (3-6) |
| RED-HANDED – ED and HAND inside RED | |
| 3 | Passionate Dorothy, embracing one bishop after upset (6) |
| TORRID – DOT with IRR inside all backwards. Poor QC-ers. You’ve just got the hang of bishop always meaning ‘B’, then they chuck in RR for Right Reverend. | |
| 4 | Top article amongst leaders of Conservative Party (3) |
| CAP – A inside C[onservative] and P[arty] | |
| 5 | Year away from US city brought about start of television channel? (7) |
| NETWORK – NEW YORK minus Y for year, around T for television. Another one with too many moving parts for a QC. | |
| 6 | Free access that’s arranged for central beach (5,7) |
| CARTE BLANCHE – anagram (‘arranged’) of CENTRAL BEACH. Another odd definition. Freedom of action, rather than access, surely? | |
| 7 | Son in possession of the best male toiletry (7,5) |
| SHAVING CREAM – S + HAVING + CREAM | |
| 11 | Protective gear delivered to religious group — delivered by post? (4-5) |
| MAIL-ORDER – MAIL (protective gear as in chain mail) + [religious] ORDER | |
| 14 | Reserved about new library item (7) |
| BOOKEND – BOOKED outside N | |
| 16 | Awkward Frenchman’s left (6) |
| GAUCHE – double definition | |
| 19 | Certain European flag over top of hall (5) |
| IRISH – IRIS is a flag, plus H for HALL | |
| 21 | Drink up, finding mate (3) |
| PAL – LAP (drink) backwards | |
18 mins…
I thought this was ok. There were a few tricky clues but nothing out of the ordinary in my opinion.
Trickiest element was trying not to insert Netflix for 5dn.
FOI – 4dn “Cap”
LOI – 5dn “Network”
COD – 7dn “Shaving Cream”
Thanks as usual!
I usually do the 15*15 and didn’t find this hard at all. I think these two facts explain why some didn’t like it.
I guessed that the Carte Blanche might be an access card to get into the secure office?
Taken just over my target by this trickier offering from Pedro. FOI was CAP and NETWORK brought up the rear. 10:44. Thanks Pedro and Curarist.
9.14
Totally froze on IRISH and particularly DRACONIAN – just couldn’t see the parsing. Seconds became minutes so I tried bunging CO in the middle and the answer jumped out. Good clue.
Thanks Curarist and Pedro
It’s been a busy week but I have stopped by every day to see what you’ve all had to say!
Today took 10:40. I agree with most of what has been said above – quite tricky, but then I seem to have a bit of an issue generally with Pedro, and can’t exactly say why. Same with Hurley. For the most part, I do like knowing who the setter is, but wonder whether it affects my expectations. I definitely get a smile on my face even before I start on an Oink puzzle, although recently I’ve found him more difficult too. Still funny though!
Anyway, this week has been much better – no DNFs and some quite good times 😊
FOI Pyrotechnic LOI Bookend Nothing really stood out as COD – I did like CARTE BLANCHE until I read the comments and found myself slightly going off it, but TORRID made me titter.
Thanks Pedro (I really appreciate the effort and skill) and Curarist (ditto)
13/24. Those 13 were: pyrotechnic, vandalism, one, nobody, nickel, coo, eye up, middle earth, cap, shaving cream, mail order, bookend, pal. I found those to be very easy. Took about 30 minutes. Everything else stumped me!
I am always amazed at the setter’s skill with the anagrams, here especially with VANDALISM and PYROTECHNIC. I needed two sittings to see CARTE BLANCHE.
I am not worried about loosely clued offerings or those not quite synonyms – it’s only a puzzle, but I do enjoy all the debate around them from those who do mind. TfTT is always an interesting and entertaining read.
So thank everyone and to Pedro and Curarist.
12:26 I found this quite mild. Flag meaning iris is new to me so IRISH was a biff. Thanks to Curarist and Pedro.
Made heavy weather of this today. LOI NICKEL. Needed blog to parse IRISH (thanks curarist). COD to COO – made me smile. Also liked PETER and CADDISH. Wrote in most of the long anagrams then double-checked with anagrist. NETWORK took a predictably long time to solve and although it parsed I still wasn’t convinced. Thanks Pedro and curarist.
Toughest puzzle this week and chuffed to solve it, albeit with a little guesswork – NETWORK, NICKEL. I agree that OMITTING for EMITTING would have been more appropriate.
16:11 DRACONIAN, CADDISH, EYE UP and. SHAVING CREAM were my favourites. Unlike many others I had no problem with free access in regard to CARTE BLANCHE, but agree with others that channel isn’t very good for NETWORK.
I was stuck with 5 to go and used aids to get NICKEL then the rest followed with a bit of effort. I’m actually quite pleased with that as this was a tough QC.
Just over an hour to finish.
FOI PYROTECHNIC
LOI CARTE BLANCHE
COD PRAWN which made me laugh after looking for cocktail ingredients like olives.
Thanks Pedro and Curarist, I learned a few things today.
30:17, which is about average for me. Enjoyed it, but I’m currently in Kos on the outside of several glasses of cava so am kindly disposed to the world in general. Iris = flag is new to me, and I will try to remember it without great hope.
Thank you for the blog!
24:02, raced through then spent half the time on the last 5 clues. FOI 1ac, LOI 16d – I knew the French meaning, just not the English.
I guessed (is that ‘biffed’?) 19d IRISH – thanks for the explanation Curarist, didn’t know IRIS was a flag.
COD 5d NETWORK – never seen that type of cryptic clue before.
Thanks again Curarist and Pedro.
Biffed or BIFD from “Bunged In From Definition”. The site has a glossary of this stuff.
Thanks chabuduo, only joined up Wednesday, though I have been a frequent visitor.
I didn’t know there was a glossary – Thank You! An enormous help.
Well good! Not my time (33 minutes) particularly, but just to finish such a tricky QC at all and without errors.
I lost count of the number of times I thought I had entered my last clue, but on each occasion I somehow wrestled another one to into submission. I ended up with 5 clues to get, all in the SE corner, but after a 4-5 minute hiatus I found DRACONIAN and the others (MAIL ORDER, IRISH, CADDISH and GAUCHE) all followed fairly soon after.
Many thanks to Pedro and Curarist.
I thought that was an absolute regulation puzzle in terms of difficulty; in fact I would have placed it on the slightly easier side. I only got stuck on NICKEL, NETWORK and LOI PETER, and came home in a time smack in my bog standard range (08:08 – Monday 07:12, Tuesday 08:30, Wednesday 08:55, Thursday 08:11). I’m obviously a creature of habit. Got the DPS today, though, having fat-fingered CCP for CAP. Durr.
Some great clues in there – PYROTECHNIC and SHAVING CREAM worth the price of admission alone.
Many thanks Pedro and Curarist.
Templar
All done inside target in 14:00, although I wasn’t keen on NETWORK, my LOI.
I’ve always found the English meanings of GAUCHE and ADROIT to be interesting: clear evidence of pro-rightie bias!
Thanks to Pedro and Curarist.
A fight pretty well all the way! I usually solve on a print-out and resorted to ‘Check word’ on-line a lot to see I was still on-track. Got there in the end. Phew…
Interesting that was perceived as hard as this was my first 40min solve (usually I am 50min to an hour). I understood the wordplay on DRACONIAN but on some clues I didn’t understand the parsing also guessed correctly eg TORRID.
Thank you Curarist and Pedro 👍
I enjoyed this crossword and especially shaving cream and red handed. I suppose I didn’t finish as I couldn’t quite get Peter. I had p- – er but again couldn’t quite get network to help me. I knew what it was getting at but didn’t quite get there. Also had Torbid instead of torrid! I decided it couldn’t be turbid because what would that say about Dorothy! 😆
Good fun though.
Torrid/torbid…… I must confess to trying to shoe-horn DORRIT into the grid. I even went so far as to check on any possible connection to ‘Little Dorrit’!
Well that’s yet another week blown. Missed my 2-hour goal and, to add salt to the wound, missed the chance for 20 consecutive solves.
I was sailing along, well inside SCC cut-off, with only 19dn and 15ac to get. Put IRISH for the former but spent ages worrying about it. Not a good clue.
Thought 15ac might be FINKEL. Went to check on Google. Entered ‘Finkel coin’ as search term and, very annoyingly, the correct answer appeared, depriving me of the chance to work it out.
Would I have worked it out eventually had this not occurred? I’ll never know, but it’s a DNF so the question is academic. A truly awful way to end the week – I can’t decide whether it was just a poor clue or (more likely) ineptitude on my part.
All I needed today was a 32-minute finish to achieve my target. Was that really too much to hope for?
In recent months the QC has become less and less enjoyable, as I fail miserably week in, week out. Progress is non-existent and has been so for some time. I have a good day and then follow it up with something like this. It’s beyond infuriating.
Thanks for the blog. Have a good weekend everyone.
Back for more torment on Monday. I would say my confidence is shot to pieces, but that boat sailed a long time ago.
My aim is just to finish. Did so, and therefore chuffed, but took a good while.
Nothing stopped me dead, just ploughed on. FOI 1ac, saw it straight away, so that was a help. LOI TORRID, got the gist from the definition but NHO of RR being a Bishop clue until reading it here.