A really witty puzzle from Myles, full of clever devices and definitely on the tricky side. I enjoyed it very much, although it pushed me well over target at 10:59. If you aspire to graduate to Big Puzzle (I still haven’t), then this is a good stepping stone because it’s full of the sort of chicanery you encounter over there.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Incitement to riot, say, in second issue (8) |
| SEDITION – S for “second”, EDITION for “issue”. I questioned the definition but it’s in the dictionaries (eg Collins sense 3 – “an incitement to public disorder”) so fair enough. | |
| 5 | One part of skirt that’s meant to attract attention (4) |
| AHEM – one part of a skirt (or any garment) is A HEM; it’s also “a clearing of the throat to attract attention” (Collins). Nice surface. | |
| 8 | 1000 in America — or less (5) |
| MINUS – M for “1000” + IN + US. | |
| 9 | Faked feeding frenzy? (7) |
| FEIGNED – anagram (“frenzy”) of “feeding”. Such a neat, tight surface, bravo. | |
| 11 | Fish that’s set before me in scales, so to speak (3) |
| RAY – three letter fish starting with R. Has to be RAY. Can’t understand why. Give up and move on. Solve 2d; now it’s a three letter fish starting with R and ending with Y. It really has to be RAY. But why? Head scratch, stare out of window. Aha! A musical scale could be DO-RE-ME (etc). In that context the “re” sounds like (“so to speak”) RAY. A three letter clue and it did me all ends up. | |
| 12 | Turmoil minutes after master interrupted by learner (9) |
| MAELSTROM – the final M is for “minutes” (nautical positioning), which comes “after” MAESTRO (“master”) with an L inside (“interrupted by learner”). | |
| 13 | How board game ends decisively for patient, perhaps (6) |
| INMATE – you “decisively” win a game of chess through checkmate; it thus “ends” IN MATE. Patients are INMATEs but so are others (eg convicts) and so this is clued as a definition by example (“perhaps”). | |
| 15 | Unusually, direct something seen at end of film (6) |
| CREDIT – anagram (“unusually”) of “direct”. | |
| 18 | Parade statement that becomes true on April Fool’s day (5,4) |
| MARCH PAST – sometimes hyphenated but sometimes not, a MARCH PAST is a “parade”. And on the first of April, March is past. Badoomtish! | |
| 19 | Local piece of music (3) |
| BAR – double definition. | |
| 20 | Like days in June around South, affected by dryness (7) |
| THIRSTY -THIRTY days hath September, April, June … that goes around S for our answer. | |
| 21 | Useful kind of cheque left in financial institution (5) |
| BLANK – L in BANK. | |
| 22 | Sound from pen and old writing material (4) |
| OINK – scene in the Setters’ Common Room a few weeks ago: “I say chaps, wouldn’t it be a lark if Oink stopped doing piggy clues and we all started? What a hoot! Who’s in?” Myles obviously raised his hand. O for “old”, INK for “writing material”. The pen here is the pigpen, of course. Top notch clue. | |
| 23 | You are heard with kindness and with quick response (8) |
| URGENTLY – U R is a homophone (“heard”) for “you are”; GENTLY is “with kindness”. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Eastern fighters raised spirit in disordered parts of Asia (7) |
| SAMURAI – spirit is always “gin” – except today it wasn’t, it was “rum” which is reversed (“raised” in a down clue) inside an anagram (“disordered parts of”) of ASIA. Took me a while to work out which end was the definition. | |
| 2 | Both extremes of democracy fine for Americans (5) |
| DANDY – the first and last letters of “democracy” are D AND Y. Very neat. | |
| 3 | Experiment with strikes in international meetings (4,7) |
| TEST MATCHES – you “strike” matches, so if you are trying out matches to see if they work, then you “experiment with strikes” and thus TEST MATCHES. Ho ho! | |
| 4 | Compensate for not shooting film? (6) |
| OFFSET – if a film crew is “off” the “set”, they probably aren’t shooting the film. To OFFSET means to counterbalance or compensate for. | |
| 6 | Cricketing feat replicated a dozen times for MCC (7) |
| HUNDRED – please don’t tell me this is a chestnut because I’ve never seen it before and I want it to be original. Scoring a HUNDRED is a “cricketing feat”, so that’s the straight bit. As for the cryptic, MCC stands for Marylebone Cricket Club, founded in 1787 and based at Lord’s. But it is also the Roman numerals for 1,200 … so replicate a HUNDRED a dozen times and you get MCC (if you’re a Roman, anyway). Brilliant and my COD. | |
| 7 | Mark first man’s address to female (5) |
| MADAM – M for “mark” (currency) + ADAM for the traditional “first man”. | |
| 10 | Enigmatic, as unclear bits might be (11) |
| INSCRUTABLE – anagram (“might be”) of “unclear bits”. | |
| 14 | Chap screening pictures — one is ET (7) |
| MARTIAN – a MARTIAN would be an extraterrestrial being or generic “ET”, so I suppose the definition is fair enough. However, *the* ET (in the Spielberg film) was not a Martian: if you dig around enough in associated sci-fi nerdery you discover that he came from Brodo Asogi. Me neither. MAN (“chap”) has inside it (“screening”) ART + I (“pictures – one”). | |
| 16 | Name in part of Eurasia for old-fashioned jailer (7) |
| TURNKEY – N for “name” in TURKEY. | |
| 17 | Professional who can work on either half of suitcase (6) |
| LAWYER – talking of nerdery, last time I described a clue as &Lit I had the Clue Nerd Police all over me. So I’m not doing it again, but strictly just for your eyes gentle reader, and please don’t tell anyone I said so, I think that this is at least the kissing cousin of an &Lit. If you’re a litigation LAWYER, like me, then you work on SUITs which could also be called CASEs. That means you could “work on” “either half” of the word “suitcase”. Very, very neat and I needed the checkers. | |
| 18 | Saying “bottoms up” endlessly (5) |
| MOTTO – if you remove the first and last letters of “bottoms” you get “ottom”; if you reverse it (“up” in a down clue) then you get MOTTO, which is a “saying”. Another really top rate clue. | |
| 19 | Be said to survive explosion (5) |
| BLAST – B is a homophone (“said”) for “B”; add LAST for “to survive” and that’s it, you’re done. | |
Aargh, BLAST, I was so busy with last-minute PDMs in SW, ie MOTTO and OINK (COD), that I forgot I had not solved 19d.
Now exhausted. A witty and amusing puzzle.
Liked many inc AHEM, SEDITION (FOI), MARCH PAST, MAELSTROM.
Thanks vm, Templar. Great blog. I liked the vision of the Setters’ Common Room.
11:01
Tricky sometimes to get to grips with a different setter’s slant on clue-building – Myles is up there with Pedro as the setters that I have most difficulty with. I liked this a lot with each answer offering enough in the way of checkers to assist with other answers. OINK was very good but was held up at the end by URGENTLY and LAWYER. I wondered whether ET should be taken literally as the film character or as a more general extra-terrestrial which would certainly fit the MARTIAN answer.
Thanks Myles and Templar for the blog
Nice puzzle, great blog! SEDITION was FOI, URGENTLY was LOI. MARCH PAST and LAWYER required some cogitation. I had a number of 21a-s on first pass. Loved OINK. 8:44. Thanks Myles and Templar.
DNF.
Really wish I had not bothered with the QCs this week.
Or at all, possibly.
I have found that after a while weeks like these give a sort of masochistic pleasure…
Yes, last week I finished them all, with a bit of help, but this week is another matter. Clever stuff, but far too obscure and tricky for me.
👍
I struggled with this one from the off with only three across clues solved on my first pass. I didn’t really pick up speed at all, and ended up dodging all over the grid to complete. Ironically, bearing in mind my lack of speed, my LOI was URGENTLY. I was glad that I actually managed to complete in the end, as I had my doubts at one time. Having said all that, I enjoyed it, but it did lean towards the biggie in terms of difficulty. Well outside target today, lurching over the line in 12.54.
I really enjoyed this one. Harder than usual, but no terrible clues and nothing I didn’t know.
As a big cricket fan (though not a member of MCC, I freeload on all my mates from my cricket club who were good enough, unlike me, to play their way in), I very much liked HUNDRED. Given the MCC connection, I can’t help thinking that the setter missed an open goal for an &lit. Maybe they don’t do them in the quickie? I’m sure somebody can say for certain if they do or not.
e.g. “A dozen such scores for MCC” (I think this very poor effort demonstrates why I am not, and never will be, a setter 🙂 )
Just realised my effort isn’t even an &lit. Never mind. I refer to my earlier comment about not being a setter…
Really enjoyable crossword. DNF – Oink had me beat. I convinced myself that Motto had to be wrong!
20.57 Back in the SCC. This was tricky but an excellent puzzle. I particularly liked LAWYER, HUNDRED, BLAST, DANDY and AHEM. RAY was an unparsed LOI. A great blog too. Thanks Templar and Myles.
I thought 22A was PINK, as in the sound from an engine. Sound would be the definition, then P for pen and INK. I solved six clues today.
16:57 of tough wrangling with many very fine clues, several of which would have been CODs in other QCs. I made the same error on parsing MAELSTROM as LindsayO so thanks, Templar, for putting us straight. Thank you, Myles, for a challenging but ultimately very satisfying puzzle.
Absolutely superb crossword – just what a Times QC should be. Brilliant stuff.
Too hard for me – most of the left hand side remained blank despite coming back three times to see if the brain had been working in the meantime – sadly not. Just not up to this level of difficulty.
27 mins…
Probably one of the best QC’s in quite a while – over half of the clues had me chuckling and nodding in approval. Hats off to 5ac “Ahem”, 17dn “Lawyer”, 22ac “Oink”, 18ac “March Past” and many more. Only one that puzzled me was 12ac “Maelstrom” – as I thought it was an anagram of ‘Master’ and couldn’t see where the extra “o” came from.
FOI – 1ac “Sedition”
LOI – 17dn “Lawyer”
COD – 6dn “Hundred” – just had to be…
Thanks as usual!
A real toughie. No entries at all for quite a few minutes. Ended up working up from the bottom, but much to savour when I eventually got a foothold. Favourites were AHEM (brilliant), OINK, DANDY and RAY. Mind goes blank when a cricketing clue is spotted so I solved HUNDRED last – had no idea about the parsing though. This felt very different in style to other QCs but maybe it was just harder! Really enjoyed working everything out but it felt a stiff challenge to the end. Thanks for the great blog.
I had a very slow to start for the second day in a row. However getting SAMURAI really helped as I was able to complete all the across clues in the NW from there. Finally finished in 21 minutes, with all parsed except BLAST, which I needed Templar’s excellent blog for.
FOI – 15ac CREDIT
LOI – 19dn BLAST
COD – almost impossible to choose a winner in such a strong field but I think it has to be 6dn HUNDRED. Also very much liked MOTTO and RAY
Thanks to Myles and Templar
19:51
With a head that I think our blogger described as crapulous, so reasonable.
Tough though.
Liked hundred, march past, oink, and dandy.
Possibly my favourite QC I’ve done. So many great clues! Ray was too clever for me to parse so thank you for explaining that one.
Special credits to Oink, Lawyer, and Hundred
It was hard, it felt very 15x15ish, it was great. I don’t know when I last did a QC that so constantly tipped me between confusion and admiration. Bravo, Myles.
And a similar tip of the hat for the blog. QC heaven.
Great crossword, struggled through(eventually) couldn’t parse HUNDRED
Most enjoyable thanks and another finish.
COD among many options to Maelstrom.
Always a worry when more than half way down and no a crosses filled in. Progress slow and painful, needing lots of aids but some clues really clever – a bit too clever for me. Especially appreciated the very likeable and informative blog. Many thanks.
Good QC. Couldn’t parse MAELSTROM so thanks for that.
Great crossword but failed in putting dinky for dandy
43:24
Whoa! That was a monster. More than double my target time. The whole thing seemed tough. The SW corner held out longest with THIRSTY, MOTTO and LOI LAWYER. Nice clue when I finally figured out what was going on.
DNF – missed LAWYER and URGENTLY but should have got them. Thanks for a very informative blog.
A great puzzle. Had just the same thought processes as Templar with regard to RAY and like others, tried to make MASTER fit into MAELSTROM. I biffed far more clues than usual so very grateful to Templar for the excellent blog today.
I loved this crossword. It took me most of the day on and off, but I thought many of the clues very clever. Thank you, Myles.
A brilliant QC, and a brilliant blog. What more could we ask for. Completed early waiting for my root canal procedure and then after waiting for the numbness to wear off and ready to take some painkillers to start work….. If I’m impressed under these circumstances, then both puzzle and blog have to be exemplar!
You can guess what’s coming, so you may wish to skip this….
I am astonished that so many enjoyed this. I hated every one of the 51 minutes I took to complete it, and it is the final nail in the coffin of my aspirations to one day move on to the proper crossword.
After 20 + minutes I had 5 answers and nearly gave up. I persisted but every clue was hard and there wasn’t a single straightforward one for me. I spectacularly missed the blindingly obvious several times. I was in such a mess that I couldn’t see anything!
Bottom line is that I don’t belong here. I can’t do it and I’m simply deluding myself if I think I can. Not far off 4 years at this and I am absolutely nowhere. As usual, I’m at the wrong end of the list and thoroughly depressed and disillusioned. When I read the other comments and see those amazing times, I just want to scream. I dare say I’ll be back, but with zero enthusiasm and a deep sense of foreboding.
What saddens me the most is that I desperately want to enjoy the experience, but I just cannot tolerate being so bad. I spent 90 mins on one of the weekend crosswords to get a total of 12 answers. Where’s the fun in that? Being made to feel like an idiot is not my idea of enjoyment.
Don’t reply. My computer will be turned off 5 seconds after I finish typing this.
Thanks for the blog.
A most enjoyable if chewy offering, completed in exactly 30:00 (or 29:59 if I take off a second for stopping my watch). COD and WOD to MAELSTROM. Thanks Myles and Templar.