This seemed to flow nicely. There are a couple of clues with slightly left-field wordplay – for example the use of ‘essentially’ in 18ac – but overall very enjoyable with some nice surfaces. Five and a bit minutes for me
| Across |
| 7 |
Girl with one sweet or savoury drink (5) |
|
LASSI – LASS + I. Yoghurt-based drink from India. |
| 8 |
State newspaper (7) |
|
EXPRESS – double definition |
| 10 |
Axe small door frame on exit (7) |
|
HATCHET – HATCH (small door) + ET (‘frame’ of EXIT) |
| 11 |
What receives signals in rheumatoid-arthritic back? (5) |
|
RADIO – reverse hidden word |
| 12 |
Game rousers trapping exposed reed birds (3,6) |
|
BEE EATERS – BEATERS with [R]EE[D] inserted |
| 14 |
Destiny that can be drawn out (3) |
|
LOT – double definition |
| 15 |
Draw level, almost (3) |
|
TIE – Level is TIE[D] |
| 16 |
Deterioration of nickel regularly occurring after ten years (9) |
|
DECADENCE – Alternate letters of NiCkEl after DECADE |
| 18 |
Pigment essentially etched into mineral aggregate (5) |
|
OCHRE – CH (the central part or ‘essence’ of ETCHED) inside ORE |
| 20 |
Hernial malfunctions — breather required (7) |
|
INHALER – anagram (‘malfunctions’) of HERNIAL. A hernial is a hernia afflicting someone from Bristol |
| 22 |
Quietly locate wild mustelid (7) |
|
POLECAT – P + anagram (‘wild’) of LOCATE. Mustelids being weasels etc. |
| 23 |
Blood covers tip of spiny, prickly shrub (5) |
|
GORSE – GORE with S for SPINY inserted |
| Down |
| 1 |
Confusing series of acronyms unexpectedly appeal to Bush (8,4) |
|
ALPHABET SOUP – anagram (‘unexpectedly’) of APPEAL TO BUSH |
| 2 |
Possibly weariest, so to speak (2,2,4) |
|
AS IT WERE – anagram (‘possibly’) of WEARIEST |
| 3 |
Using humour, primarily humour (4) |
|
WITH – WIT (humour) + first letter of HUMOUR |
| 4 |
Kind chap, extremely likeable (6) |
|
GENTLE – GENT + L[IKEABL]E |
| 5 |
Given notice, hauled up assistant extracted with difficulty (8) |
|
APPRISED – PA backwards + PRISED |
| 6 |
Commander The Admiralty accommodates (4) |
|
HEAD – hidden word |
| 9 |
Brave deaths, true to struggles (12) |
|
STOUTHEARTED – anagram (‘struggles’) of DEATHS TRUE TO |
| 13 |
Poet hosting current church gathering (8) |
|
AUDIENCE – AUDEN with I (current) inserted + CE. W.H. Auden is famous enough, but in the QC ‘poet’ usually just means ‘bard’ or sometimes ‘Dante’. That, together with a slightly obscure definition of audience = gathering might trip a few |
| 14 |
Publican is large as well as noble (8) |
|
LANDLORD – L (large) + AND + LORD |
| 17 |
Printed fabric feature — fringes of topaz (6) |
|
CHINTZ – CHIN (feature) + T[OPA]Z. ‘Feature’ in crosswords is always ‘chin’ for some reason |
| 19 |
Bore left in thread periodically (4) |
|
HELD – Alternate letters of tHrEaD with L inserted |
| 21 |
Cheerful greeting announced (4) |
|
HIGH – Sounds like ‘Hi’ |
It was a nice puzzle, liked ALPHABET SOUP. 8:38 here, held up for final 2 minutes by a sitter (not thinking of GENT for ‘chap’). I agree that Auden is a bit obscure for a QC although I managed to dredge up ‘Stop all the clocks’ (the first line only, of course) from Year 7 English. Didn’t understand BEATERS, known in a sporting context only from Quidditch!
Beaters are the people who go ahead of the ‘sportsmen’ in a shoot to flush out the poor benighted grouse or pheasants they are bent on murdering.
Beaters normally drive the game towards the guns, and isn’t the plural of pheasant pheasant like the plural of grouse is grouse?
You can probably gather I haven’t done well on the QCs this week and I’m a bit of an unpleasant grouse.
surely the plural of grouse is grice?
I’m not sure, to be honest – I’ve always called them pheasants, but then I prefer to see them alive, so am unfamiliar with the hunting lexicon.
Surely “unpheasant grouse”?
I see! Thank you.
Well described.
Long pause at the end for BEE EATERS. Look like beautiful birds. Three Es in a row is must be rarish. Took a while to get to AUDIENCE – he wouldn’t have appeared in the list if I was asked to list all the poets I know but his initials come to minds as soon as I see his name. No idea what he wrote – but then centre for cross caused no problems earlier in the week. All green in 14.37 to close out what has been a tricky week here for me.
If you’ve seen ‘Four weddings and a funeral’ you’ve at least heard one of his poems: ‘Stop all the clocks’
You’ve nailed my place on the cultural spectrum but I haven’t seen it. Will look it up now. Is it the one about a young lass from Devizes who wins a competition?
No. One of Hugh Grant’s earlier movies. Well worth watching.
Didn’t enjoy 4 Weddings and Funeral too much myself although I realise it was quite popular and successful. Maybe if the number of funerals and weddings had been reversed?
😂
As a funeral celebrant I would advise against Stop All The Clocks wherever it is a celebration of someone’s life. It is a very depressing and without hope poem.
14ac had to be LOT, but I didn’t (don’t) understand the second definition. I had no idea what a mustelid is, but of course didn’t have to. ‘Essential(ly)’ has shown up several times recently in the 15x15s; I don’t much care for it, but it looks like it’s here to stay. LOI APPRISE; took me quite some time. 7:12
Lots are drawn (as in lottery).
I thought of that; but ‘out’ puzzled me.
I rationalised it by thinking of lots being drawn out of a bag or other container (like the Greeks choosing a champion to fight Hector by putting lots into Agamemnon’s helmet).
I’ve no complaints about anything but I found this on the hard side and needed 21 minutes to complete the grid. The last 7 of these were spent on APPRISED.
DNF due to being stumped by WITH, even with the checkers in place. What a dope.
For 15A, I interpreted “level” as TIER with the R removed.
Pi ❤️
Ditto with TIEr.
And me re. TIEr
Add another TIE{r}
Ditto
And me
Me too!
A couple of tricky definitions for WITH and BORE, a very vaguely heard of drink and a major breezeblock with my LOI, where I was looking for a game rather than a bird, meant that this was a bit of a two paced puzzle for me.
Started with EXPRESS and finished with BEE EATERS in 8.55.
Thanks to Curarist for the blog and Cheeko for the enjoyable work out.
13:40. Slow to get started. FOI 11ac RADIO. And then at the end I had to mop up some odd ones: LASSI, LOT and HELD. I liked ALPHABET SOUP.
The 4 four-letter words are WITH HEAD HELD HIGH but I don’t see any more than that. It’s not AUDEN.
Thank you Cheeko and Curarist
25:00 SCC over 3K …5C no QTB but QTPi a DNF. Anyone for alphabet soup?
I found this difficult. Might need to apprise Cheeko, as it were, that Bee Eaters and Mustelids with lassi were tricky to this audience.
Cheers Curarist. Cheeky Cheeko
I’m probably being dim but what are QTB and QTPi?
It’s a solving time that is Quicker Than Blogger, a once in a blue moon occurrence for me. I have to be absolutely on the wavelength and the blogger has to hit a road block for it to be even remotely possible! This week I’ve had two as well as two SCC😂 I used to look at Kevin’s time to gauge the difficulty (and the fabulous snitch of course) but what I find more interesting is how fellow commentators with similar times to myself get on. That’s where QT…Pi comes in and it’s got a nice ring to it😉
Just me being silly 😜
Thanks for asking btw
Many thanks for your lovely, full explanation. Now you’ve said it, I think you have explained in the past, but I forgot. QTB should perhaps be added to the glossary – I’m sure you’re not the only one who uses that as a measure. I used to check myself against Templar and Plett as we all started posting around the same time and frequently had similar times, but they’re usually far ahead of me these days 😅 So it’s a Red Letter Day if I come close to them!
And I did think Pi must be part of the equation, but couldn’t see why – now I understand. Nice wordplay too 😉
👍
I can’t see how HELD means BORE at 19d.
Carried.
I’ve just spent a couple of minutes in dictionaries working that out, you are not alone!
Past tense of hold and bear (e.g. a grudge).
I’m with you on that one.
I couldn’t understand that either, although the answer couldn’t be anything else, so in it went. I also parsed TIE as ‘TIE(R)’, but ‘TIE(D)’ works equally well.
7:34 DNF due to AUDIENCE and CHINTZ.
Went for CLIPTZ and expected to feel silly on finding the answer, but no, the answer sounds just as implausible. Too far for a QC, in my view.
I feel similarly about AUDEN.
Leave this stuff to the main cryptic, I’d say.
15:24. Hard.
NHO LASSI, and with LISA being a random girl, LISAI looked just as likely.
I always forget what the device “essential” means (middle letters), and thought it was one of the many for outermost letters. And, mustelid, no idea what kind of animal it was, thought they were camels/llamas (those are camelids).
Chin=feature is one of those maddening crossword “conventions” that setters use and solvers shrug and learn. It gets added to the canon and no-one can remember why. A face has many features, so why chin?
LOI APPRISED
More a case of how do you clue C H I and N in a word, surely?
Painted fabric is Switzerland in fringes of topaz. (6)
Ha, good one, though all I meant was that chin is more likely to be a constituent of another word than nostril, or alternative features might be…
Why chin ? Who nose……
I just don’t get on with Cheeko, I’m afraid. I finished (and parsed it all) but he took me well into the SCC (again!). I have only once avoided this in his last few puzzles.
Lots of twists and cleverness but, in my opinion, he has yet to really ‘get’ the concept of a Quick Cryptic.
A disappointing end to the week and a real contrast to Mara’s excellent, genuine QC yesterday.
The whizz kids will disagree, of course. 🙄
Thanks to Curarist.
12:51
Another voting for hard here. With four left, I struggled – ALPHABET SOUP went first, followed by AUDIENCE. But even with four of the five checkers, and assuming the first word was BEE, I didn’t know where to go with the birds. Last in was APPRISED once I’d realised how it worked.
Thanks Curarist and Cheeko
Found this very hard indeed. Still don’t get BEE EATERS or HELD.Took ages to see APPRISED and GENTLE. Took over 40 minutes. Phew. Need a coffee.
HELD – “She bore/held herself with grace during the ceremony.”
BEE-EATERS – BEATERS [game rousers, because “beaters” are people on a driven shoot who “beat” the game birds towards the guns], inside which [trapping] goes EE [exposed reed, that is “reed” without its first and last letters – same idea as “uncovered” or “naked”].
Well, I enjoyed this a lot – always a challenge with Cheeko, and what’s the point otherwise? However, he beat me this time – I went with HIGH for ‘using’, though unable to parse satisfactorily – I couldn’t think of another word that made sense – but of course WITH both works and parses, so one up to Cheeko.
16:59
Very hard. Only a few words entered on first pass. Needed pen and paper for STOUTHEARTED.
LOI was AUDIENCE.
I considered most of the US states to see if they were the name of a newspaper, before eventually seeing EXPRESS.
COD to BEE EATERS.
Thanks Curarist and Cheeko
11.33 That felt tricky. I was also puzzled by HELD for bore and delayed by APPRISED at the end. Thanks Curarist and Cheeko.
I found that very gettable until the sting in the tail of APPRISED – LOI by some distance. Now that I read the blog I see that I was nowhere near parsing it correctly! That one was definitely a refugee from the fifteen.
A clever and enjoyable puzzle, lots of sparkle. The QUITCH is running at only 108 so this is Cheeko (top of the leaderboard in Starstruck’s “setter difficulty table”) on mild form. Great fun, COD to ALPHABET SOUP.
All done in 07:29 for 1.1K and a Very Good Day. Many thanks Cheeko and Curarist.
A bit of a struggle today. Couldn’t see how BORE = HELD but obvious in retrospect. LOI BEE EATERS. COD ALPHABET SOUP. Thanks Curarist.
I was slowed down by my inability to quickly parse. The clues I was struggling to parse were HATCHET, LOT, OCHRE, AUDIENCE and HELD. Fortunately ALPHABET SOUP went in straight away but the unknown LASSI and WITH at the top of the grid were my LOsI. Thanks Curarist. 10:05 and a slow day.
A toughie which took me over my target. From WITH to APPRISED in 12:34. Liked ALPHABET SOUP and AUDIENCE. Thanks Cheeko and Curarist.
Not much on first pass but much helped by getting the long down anagrams early on. This led to a 14:09 solve, which I’m happy enough with for a typically stretching Cheeko puzzle. Some interesting GK required, eg LASSI, BEE EATERS and knowing what a mustelid is, but I’m slightly surprised people think Auden obscure.
Many thanks Curarist for the blog.
Fairly tough – a useful warm up for the 15×15.
I love a LASSI.
Thanks to Cheeko and Curarist
Is that a bonny, bonny LASSI?
Indeed.
My wife is from Perthshire.
When I see that Cheeko is the setter I get concerned, but this was on his milder side. Like others NHO ’mustelid’ but all others seem fair game. Tried to find the anagram in ‘reed birds’ before AUDIENCE put me straight. LIO APPRISED. A good Friday test after yesterday’s rather simpler effort.
24mins, so not too bad for Cheeko, who I think is still struggling to find the right level for a QC. If 1d had gone straight in, I might even have had a chance of a sub-20, but Shop rather than Soup was too tempting, and so I had to wait for checkers. Tie (à la Curarist) eventually opened the door. CoD to loi Apprised, for the parsing. Invariant
32:36
Found that one extremely tricky. Not helped by being unable to see the long down anagrams or thinking the birds were an anagram of rousers with a double e inserted. Failed to parse OCHRE, LOI AUDIENCE.
Pretty tough I thought. Interestingly different from usual. Some clever ideas.
9d Stouthearted, didn’t bother to check the anagram.
POI 22a Polecat. My mustelid Q is; can you tell a stoat from a weasel? Yes, the weasel is so weasily distinguishable and the stoat ‘stotally different.
Thanks Curarist and Cheeko.
Sneaked into the SCC with a time of 20 minutes. I initially found the acrosses difficult but they started to come together as I reached the bottom half. From there I had to jump around the grid slotting in answers as the pennies dropped. I couldn’t parse HATCHET or LOT (didn’t get the second meaning) and didn’t stop to parse ALPHABET SOUP as I couldn’t be bothered to sort out what the anagrist was. I had to check that LASSI was in fact a drink – it rang the faintest of faint bells.
FOI – 12ac BEE EATERS
LOI – 5dn APPRISED
COD – 16ac DECADENCE
Thanks to Cheeko and Curarist
13:22. The four four-letter words were hard to parse!
DNF disaster on LHS.
NHO LASSI.
Revealed ALPHABET SOUP which helped a bit, but not enough.
Not my day. Thanks, Curarist, blog much needed.
I found this very tough requiring 17.53 to finish, although I didn’t help my concentration by keeping an eye on what was happening at The Open golf championship. I join the list of those that worked 15ac out as TIE[r].
My poor form of late gave me a total time for the week of 77.30, which gives a daily average of 15.30, over 50% more than target.
19:56
Quite slow but an enjoyable challenge. STOUTHEARTED took me an age to work out.
Probably one of the hardest I have actually completed. Several quibbles as mentioned above. Mineral Aggregate = ore? The only link between the two that Google can find is “Mineral Aggregate as a crossword clue will probably be ore” – enough said. “Required” in 20a appears to not only be superfluous but also pushed the definition (surely just breather) away from the end.
Thanks to both.
The Times setters don’t rely on Google for definitions. They use dictionaries.
Collins:
ore in British English
noun
any naturally occurring mineral or aggregate of minerals from which economically important constituents, esp metals, can be extracted
How very unusual – another Collins only. Does Collins tell you which ore(s) they have in mind that are aggregates? I cant think of any (I am an ex Industrial Chemist and collector of rocks and minerals). By the way Google doesn’t have definitions, it just brings them in from all sorts of sources, including dictionaries.
Not Collins only. The first definition of ore in Chambers is: a solid naturally occurring mineral deposit from which one or more economically valuable substances, especially metals, can be extracted, and for which it is mined.
It’s really inherent in the nature of an ore that it is an aggregate, because by definition an ore is a mixture of both the valuable substance which is desired and a load of other less desirable stuff. If it didn’t contain a mixture it wouldn’t be called (eg) “gold ore”, it would be just … gold.
I learned in a case about a dispute over an iron ore mine that the undesirable stuff is called “gangue”, a word which I am sure is going to appear in a crossword one day. Collins defines it as “valueless and undesirable material, such as quartz in small quantities, in an ore”.
I may try “gangue” in a future Weekend Special 🤣
Don’t you dare!
Seconded.
(I’m quite sure he will.)
Mineral deposit yes – of course it is.
Mineral aggregate – In mineralogy and petrology, an aggregate is a mass of mineral crystals, mineraloid particles or rock particles.[1][2] Examples are dolomite, which is an aggregate of crystals of the mineral dolomite,[3] and rock gypsum, an aggregate of crystals of the mineral gypsum.[4] Lapis lazuli is a type of rock composed of an aggregate of crystals of many minerals including lazurite, pyrite, phlogopite, calcite, potassium feldspar, wollastonite and some sodalite group minerals.[5]
By its very nature an aggregate is a mixture of things, that is what an aggregate means – useless as an ore unless you want a mixture of say iron, copper and aluminium all mixed together.
No – quite wrong.
Iron ores heamatite and magnetite are more than 98% Iron oxide, Of course they are not pure iron it would have gone rusty over the years. Doh!
The process of smelting removes the oxygen, the other stuff comes off as slag. Neither are Aggregates. The only ore with more than one metal in has both Iron and Titanium in it, that is also not an aggregate it is something called a solid solution. Incidentally there are no gold ores it is completely unreactive – so gold “ore” is oh yes – gold. It is found in nuggets and dust of almost pure gold. If you have seen films of the Yukon the miners are panning for gold, i.e. picking it pure from the streams. They are not setting up rock crushers, blast furnaces etc.
Didn’t understand why held=bore but very obvious now! Looked up what a mustelid was so a technical DNF. NHO LASSI but obvious from wordplay. Was expecting to struggle more, this being a Cheeko ‘n all, but actually found it surprisingly doable. COD to HATCHET for the rather interesting wordplay. Biffed ALPHABET SOUP early on which helped significantly. LOI APPRISE. Nice one Cheeko. Thanks for the blog c.
Solved in a time quicker than my Snitch rating, but I didn’t enjoy it much, and biffed my NHO LOI after failing to crack the anagram.
FOI EXPRESS
LOI ALPHABET SOUP
COD HATCHET
TIME 4:42
Dnf…
Everything after 20 mins apart from 12ac “Bee Eaters” and 5dn “Apprised”, both of which I probably should have got, but didn’t.
Doesn’t surprise me though, as it’s a Cheeko puzzle, and I’m sure my success rate with this setter is pretty poor.
FOI – 7ac “Lassi”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 13dn “Audience”
Thanks as usual!
Rather gentle by Cheeko’s standards, but nonetheless very enjoyable. COD HATCHET.
Thanks, C², and have splendid weekends, all
After a lot of hard work this was a DNF thanks to APPRISED which just would not come despite all the crossers. Even with the answer I could not see the parsing until coming here. Must remember PA for assistant.
Good practice for the 15*15 though.
Thanks Cheeko and Curarist.
This one took me a good while. I struggled all over the place, but all parsed and correct in the end. Last one in was HELD, where the parsing took me so long. Definitely in the toughie category for me, but I enjoyed it.
Thanks Cheeko and Curarist
Another DNF. Far too hard for me so therefore not remotely enjoyable. Not my idea of a QC but then since QC’S seem to attract more experienced solvers than novices I guess it’s par for the course. Onto tomorrow
Definite contrast to yesterday with my first DNF in a while, annoyingly – also stuck on BEE EATERS, and couldn’t see the parsing of APPRISED at all. Also NHO LASSI, or POLECAT as a mustelid, so they were both a case of “hmm, I guess they’re probably right?”
COD STOUTHEARTED – took a while to realise it was an anagram, but useful afterwards!
Thanks Cheeko and Curarist.
I did this untimed while catching up on the past few stages of the Tour de France and I was around halfway through when I noticed that Cheeko was the setter. It was hard going for me, but for once, just like the peloton, I did eventually cross the finish line. Probably 40-50 minutes, but who knows? And, I think it’s the first time I haven’t been beaten by Cheeko. Phew!
My FOI was EXPRESS, LASSI was a NHO, WITH was my COD and my LOI was AUDIENCE. How’s that for a ‘confusing series of acronyms’?
Many thanks to Curarist and Cheeko.
Another golf interrupted solve. LOI APPRISED, guessed early, but took time to unravel; I wanted Siri to be my assistant.
Hoped LASSI was right; vaguely remembered.
DNK what a mustelid is.
A QC at the harder end but enjoyable .
Heavy rain just started at Portrush.
David
Tier. DNF I’m afraid
DNF
Oh dear, another one.
Three left unsolved – APPRISED, BEE EATERS & AUDIENCE.
So I’d go with, this was hard.
Loved ALPHABET SOUP though.
Thanks to Cheeko and Curarist
8.25
Toughish but nothing unfair I thought. If we have one hard QC a week on a Friday I’m happy for it to be like this.
Nothing in the NW for starters so began in Kent and worked around the country finishing with AUDIENCE.
Thanks Curarist and Cheeko
We wave from the SCC (26mins) put there by APPRISED (nearly 8 minutes)- an answer where we understand the steps, though still struggle with the definition.
Can’t yet equate ‘being made aware of a situation’ = with being ‘given notice of’ a situation, at least not in colloquial language.
The phrase, ‘Blood, Guts and Gore’ (and book of same title, John Gordon Smith, surgeon of sorts at Battle of Waterloo) suggests a differentiation between blood and gore… so we were slow to align the two. New to mustelids – happy to learn. HELD -BORE took a long time.
A challenge for us. Not quite an enjoyable one. Good to have variation though.
Thanks to tricky Cheeko and Curarist.
Approximately 8.00 minutes.
17:49 here, a couple of minutes over my average. I used CCD to unravel STOUTHEARTED once I had all the checkers and knew how it worked: just couldn’t rearrange all those letters into a single word. BEE EATERS was new to me, will try to remember that.
Thanks to Cheeko and Curarist.
A struggle, joined those who had problems with 19d held, so obvious in retrospect.