Rest in peace, Jeff. Alternate Thursdays were “Rotter Days” and we will miss you.
After a few tricky ones this week and some feisty exchanges of views on the blog, Trelawney has served up an elegant and gentle puzzle today. We have a sprinkling of fairly simple anagrams to give encouragement to the solver throughout and nothing obscure. Finished in 06:20 so I hope that this will be generally hailed as being on the easier side. Thank you Trelawney!
Definitions are underlined in bold italics. Be nice to me, people, I’ve never blogged anything before except some of the Saturday Specials and vinyl has had to explain the mysteries of JavaScript to me very patiently!
[On edit: thanks for all the kind words, which are much appreciated! I’m travelling for most of today and won’t be able to add anything until the evening, but I’m sure that the wise heads will be able to explain anything meanwhile.]
| Across | |
| 1 | Flag obtained from Jack, Oliver, and another guy (5,5) |
| JOLLY ROGER – J for “Jack” (bridge notation), followed by his two chums OLLY (“Oliver”) and ROGER (“another guy”). This always reminds me of “Under Milk Wood” – “The boys are dreaming wicked of the bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea”. | |
| 8 | Don’t drink at basin for a change (7) |
| ABSTAIN – an anagram (indicated by “for a change”) of “at basin”. | |
| 9 | A bit of whisky, say, before a play (5) |
| DRAMA – a write-in for me, sitting in the Highlands as I am today. DRAM (“bit of whisky, say”) before “A”. The “say” indicates that you can have a dram of other spirits, which is no doubt technically true but I’ve never been offered a dram of rum or vodka. Dram has its ultimate origins in the Greek word “drachma”, in its sense of a measure of weight. | |
| 10 | Hurting Greek god’s back (4) |
| SORE – the god in question is Eros, son of Aphrodite and the Greek god of love. Spell him backwards and you get SORE. | |
| 11 | Leo possibly stirred tsar’s gin (4,4) |
| STAR SIGN – Leo is one of the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac (“possibly” indicating that this is a definition by example). An anagram (indicated by “stirred”) of “tsar’s gin”, which isn’t served in drams. Nice nod to Tolstoy in the “Leo” as well, bravo. | |
| 13 | Tiara moved around lobbies (5) |
| ATRIA – one lobby is an atrium; two lobbies are ATRIA, the Latin plural. An anagram (indicated by “moved around”) of “tiara”. | |
| 14 | Silly to accept ultimately poor sketch (5) |
| DRAFT – here “silly” = “daft”, into which we insert the last letter of “poor” (“ultimately poor”) to get DRAFT. | |
| 16 | Saint who’s after some eggs? (8) |
| BENEDICT – I really liked this and it gets my COD. “Eggs Benedict” is the name for ham and poached egg on top of a muffin, covered in Hollandaise sauce (yum). So BENEDICT is a saint whose name comes “after” “some” eggs (not all eggs, because there are lots of other ways to serve eggs). Very neat. | |
| 17 | Rule announced for horse riding gear (4) |
| REIN – a homophone for “reign” (“Rule announced”). My LOI and I stared at it in blank despair for some while. Eventually Dame Jilly Cooper DBE came to my aid. | |
| 20 | Rents dilapidated part of ship (5) |
| STERN – an anagram (indicated by “dilapidated”) of “rents”. | |
| 21 | Quibble with returning metal tool (7) |
| NITPICK – the “returning metal” is “tin”, which you reverse to get NIT; then add a PICK as the “tool”. | |
| 22 | American predator beginning to disturb pirate (10) |
| BLACKBEARD – this is very clever and had me barking up several wrong trees as I tried to fit US or AM or USA into it. The “American predator” is the BLACK BEAR, Ursus Americanus, to which we add D as the “beginning to disturb”. BLACKBEARD was the nom de guerre of Edward Teach, the notorious C18 pirate and captain of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. JOLLY ROGER at the top and BLACKBEARD at the bottom, but if there’s a theme I’ve missed it as usual. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Frenchman’s trousers? (5) |
| JEANS – just as a Frenchman’s beach shoes are Phillipe Phollops, so his trousers might be JEANS. A play on the male French Christian name “Jean”. | |
| 2 | Left a runner holding queen’s office equipment (5,7) |
| LASER PRINTER – an Ikea clue, in which you assemble the constituent parts while swearing at the inadequacy of the instructions. L (“left”) + A + SPRINTER (“runner”), into which you insert ER (“queen”). | |
| 3 | Pine cut short for a period of time (4) |
| YEAR – “yearn” (“pine”) without its last letter (“cut short”). | |
| 4 | Fancy a tenor badly (6) |
| ORNATE – an anagram (indicated by “badly”) of “a tenor”. | |
| 5 | Mythical city found in field or a dockland (2,6) |
| EL DORADO – a neatly concealed hidden (indicated by “found in”) – “fiELD OR A DOckland”. For centuries Europeans believed in the existence of a South American lost city of fabulous wealth, and launched numerous expeditions in search of it. The useful by-product was the mapping of much of Colombia, Venezuela and Guyana. | |
| 6 | Region containing Peru has Inca material all over the place (5,7) |
| LATIN AMERICA – an anagram (indicated by “all over the place”) of “Inca material”. | |
| 7 | Publication to acquire something attractive? (6) |
| MAGNET – at first I thought that this was a reference to the long defunct “story book for boys”, The Magnet, of Billy Bunter fame. But just as I was bracing for the wrath of Merlin I realised that in fact it was just MAG (“publication”) + NET (“to acquire”). Phew. | |
| 12 | Queen, perhaps, at home with a large Catholic leader (8) |
| CARDINAL – Another trip to Ikea. CARD (“Queen, perhaps” – another definition by example, since other cards are available) + IN (“at home”) + A + L (“large”). | |
| 13 | Surprise attack in the morning north of outback (6) |
| AMBUSH – AM (“in the morning”), which is “north of” (ie above, since this is a down clue) BUSH (“outback”, defined by Collins as “the remote bush country of Australia” – one for Tina). | |
| 15 | Beautiful perfume reduced by one hundred (6) |
| SCENIC – a synonym for “perfume” is “scent”, remove its last letter (“reduced”) for SCEN, add I (“one”) and C (“hundred” in Roman numerals). | |
| 18 | Dane confused about king not wearing anything (5) |
| NAKED – anagram (indicated by “confused”) of “Dane”, going around (“wearing”) K for “king” (chess notation – “king” can also indicate R for “rex” or CR for King Charles, or if the setter’s feeling really mean some long dead king, like GR). | |
| 19 | Skewer bananas upside down (4) |
| STAB – to skewer means to pierce with a long thin piece of wood or metal, so that’ll do for STAB. The cryptic bit is that when read from bottom to top (“upside down”, this being a down clue) you get “bats” (= “bananas”) . | |
9.36
Slow here but just tested positive for the dreaded lurgy so just happy to get it done
Great blog – very much looking forward to your offerings in the future without forgetting the excellent Rotter
And what a time from my Jumeau!
6.40 WOE. I put STUN in 19d, but it was plainly wrong so I deleted the N. Then BLACKBEARD supplied a B to make STUB. This is also obviously wrong but I didn’t look at it again. An easy puzzle marred by my haste. Thanks Trelawney for the puzzle and Templar for the excellent blog.
A slow start for me today for some reason but my speed increased as I went along, eventually finishing in 14 minutes. I didn’t bother to parse LASER PRINTER as it had become obvious from the crossers, and only parsed NITPICK after completion.
FOI – 10ac SORE
LOI – 21ac NITPICK
COD – 16ac BENEDICT
Thanks to Trelawney and especially to Templar for a fine first blog.
Very straightforward today, thanks to an abundance of anagrams. A steady solve.
A fun gentle puzzle that bestowed my second ever sub-20 time on me!
It wasn’t just the difficulty level though – I must be learning as I actually yawned (mentally) at the clue for YEAR. I loved the confused Dane. Gee, I always imagined the Danish were more open-minded about such things.
The commenters here have helped me immensely! I have a bad habit of obsessing over things but reading your descriptions of how you solve has led me to force myself to glance quickly at every clue once before staring at anything. Works so much better for me!
Excellent blog Templar, if I may say so. Perfectly clear and informative at the same time.
A very quick time (18 minutes) for me, but not a PB. I was almost on track for one until my last five clues, which were all in the lower part of the grid.
NITPICK, SCENIC and STAB posed a few problems, but BENEDICT and BLACKBEARD held me up the longest. I had BoNifaCe and BLACKguARD respectfully for these two clues and they caused me to waste time checking the correctness of CARDINAL and trying to find a word ending in ‘g’ for skewer.
Many thanks to Trelawney and Templar.
About 20m which is good for us, had stun for19d until blackbeard fell into place. very impressive times above.
4:36. Welcome to the QC bloggers club, Templar. Of course I knew already you would be a great blogger from your encouraging blogs of the early Weekend Quick Cryptics. As for today’s, very neat. I was held up only by trying to make 19D STUN. LOI BLACKBEARD. Thanks Trelawney and Templar.
Welcome Templar, a beautiful debut.
8:56 here for a very rare sub-10 minute outing. LOI was BLACKBEARD, which was blocked for a while by having STUN instead of STAB, like some other commenters.
Thanks to Trelawney and Templar.
A terrific maiden blog on the CQ, Templar – it must be daunting to follow the Rotter, but it was very well done!
An entertaining and not very demanding puzzle from Trelawney. Post-solve parsing of Blackbeard, and I did try entering Bluebeard (goodness knows why as I was trying to enter Black…). Probably not a PB but I don’t time myself as I prefer to enjoy the puzzle and savour the answers as I get them. However, pretty well a top-down solve today indicated a tolerant setter.
FOI 1a Jolly Roger
LOI 21a Nitpick – obvious from the crossers
COD 16a Benedict
Thanks Templar for the interesting detail in the blog.
I thought this a wonderful puzzle from Trelawny. So many words with alternate meanings that threw me off track but made me smile when I realised what was going on.
COD LATIN AMERICA for the wonderful image conjured up of the Inca material all over Peru.
is anyone else having problems with the online app? i lose my answers when I close it down, hoping to return. All the answers have been wiped out.
Congratulations Templar on the superb first blog – as clear as could be with lots of interesting info and thoughts. And of course welcome to the alternate Thursday QC slot – with the Rotter’s excellent blogs it was always nice to feel I could coast a bit for my own effort, and clearly the baton has been passed on to a particularly safe pair of hands for that to continue!
As for the puzzle, a notch over 6 minutes, held up a bit by the NUTS/BATS “trap”. Nice, breezy puzzle – thanks to Trelawney.
Oh yes – Vinyl has my email address if you need to swap weeks (or indeed anything else).
Thank you, and he has mine too should need arise!
Great blog for which thanks.
Doing it on paper late in the day means times are useless to me but seemed gentler than some
Yes to a Saturday QC please.
Thanks Templar. I loved your blog entry – you spell it all out clearly and in a pleasant and chatty way. I hope you do many more. I was very sorry to hear about Rotter – I shall miss him greatly. I found the crossword exceptionally easy and finished well before Basingstoke, which was a shame in a way because the trains were delayed on the way back and I could have done with something to stare at crossly while waiting. But I’m not really complaining. Thanks Trelawney.
Didn’t use a timer but definitely my best time. Got answers, except Blackbeard and Stab, at first pass.
Congrats to Templar and a brave person joining the magic circle of bloggers.