Well, that was hard work. The blog I mean, not the puzzle. How I miss the halcyon days of Javascript. The blog editor site seems to be possessed by an angry demon who randomly decides how much space is allowed between lines, and absolutely won’t be told otherwise.
As for the puzzle, I’ve had to solve it three times this morning (don’t ask) so I’m having trouble remembering what I thought about it. Enjoyable with a couple of chewy ones, I think. Time: no idea.
ACROSS
1 Section husband over wife’s performance (4)
SHOW – S + H + O + W. Not sure why S is ‘Section’
4 Come after job daughter had (8)
POSTDATE – POST (job) + D + ATE
8 Lively coach beginning to train swimmer (8)
BUSTLING – BUS (coach) + T for train + LING (fish)
9 Chat about a great story (4)
SAGA – GAS backwards (‘about’) + A
10 Clean city (4)
BATH – Double definition
11 Empty out all contents of bevy pack Mum hated (8)
EVACUATE – internal letters of BEVY PACK MUM HATED. Neat.
12 Scottish legend to take part in Innes siege (6)
NESSIE – hidden word. Loch Ness Monster, obvs
14 Cheery start to unknown piano hit (6)
UPBEAT – U for unknown + P + BEAT
16 Waiter’s ability is rustling up nice pâté (8)
PATIENCE – anagram (‘rustling up’) of NICE PATE
18 Flash sucker (4)
TICK – double definition
19 One in every two coming back “flash” after leaving the south (4)
HALF – FLASH backwards minus S for south
20 It saves sailors and passengers fail to be moved (8)
LIFEBOAT – anagram (‘moved’) of FAIL TO BE
22 One who uses manoeuvre to stop military engineers retreating (8)
EMPLOYER – PLOY (manoeuvre) inside REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) backwards
23 Penny leaves fruit for every person (4)
EACH – PEACH minus P
DOWN
2 Laugh about covering American and European cost of transportation (7)
HAULAGE – anagram (‘about’) of LAUGH with A for American + E
3 Keep an eye out for one with hands around your wrist (5)
WATCH – double definition
4 Foreign character’s backed internet service provider (3)
PSI – ISP backwards
5 Characteristic of mounted US soldier’s personality (9)
SIGNATURE – GI’S backwards + NATURE
6 Trouble is I’d burst all over the place (7)
DISTURB – anagram (‘all over the place’) of I’D BURST
7 Shorter legwear saving money? (5)
TIGHT – TIGHT[S]
11 Join after dropping new friend forever (9)
ETERNALLY – ENTER ‘dropping’ (i.e. lowering) the N, + ALLY
13 Expert finally stops endless fun in coup de grâce (7)
SKILFUL – S (last letter of STOPS) + FU[N] inside KILL
15 Old fashioned chief advanced in charge (7)
ARCHAIC – ARCH (chief) + A + IC
17 A large gun? Panic! (5)
ALARM – A + L + ARM
18 Propose police officer leaves Tories (5)
TABLE – CONSTABLE minus CONS
21 Remote force returns (3)
FAR – RAF (Royal Air Force) backwards
Welcome to Kybos, who keeps up the tradition of posting an interesting and pretty challenging puzzle for their first outing. I took 22:56, but as I am currently overseas and very jetlagged, my time probably says more about me than the puzzle. I failed to parse SKILFUL and found the wordplay for TABLE odd – surely it is the Tories who leave the police officer not the other way round? In a similar vein I am never sure with a clue like 4D whether it is PSI reversed to give ISP or the other way round, as the wordplay can read either way, but fortunately the crossing across clues settled that one.
All done, but I’ll wait till I can tackle Kybos when fully awake before fully deciding if we get on. Many thanks Curarist for the blog.
I think the idea is that it parsed as “police office leaves the Tories (behind)”. Kind of like if you wrote the Easter Bunny leaves eggs.
Like others, I found this very hard for a QC but enjoyable.
9:00 on a day when I have no particular excuse for poor performance indicates to me that this is likely one of the hardest QCs this year.
Excellent and enjoyable puzzle even if it did take me almost 18 minutes to complete. Much of the time was spent thinking about SKILFUL and TICK. Solving the latter was especially ponderous, including a tiresome alphabet trawl. Not the first time I’ve been (almost) defeated by a DD.
28.53 I was completely off the wavelength today. The NW and SE were both slow. LOI SKILFUL. Thanks Curarist and Kybos.
Well I’m quite annoyed with myself after stupidly putting in PHI instead of PSI. I always imagine computers and their abbreviations will be complicated and meaningless to me, e.g. HyperText Markup Language for HTML, so it didn’t cross my mind to think of another Greek letter once PHI had crossed my radar. Aside from that, my time of 20:40 was reasonable given other people’s times. Apart from my LOI EMPLOYER, the bottom half seemed a lot easier than the top. Liked EVACUATE. Thanks Curarist and welcome to Kybos.
I can’t see how 18 down works – surely the Tories have left the policeman?
See comments above…
My thanks to Kybos and Curarist.
Jolly tricky I thought. Wasn’t certain I would finish. Took a while.
8a Bustling; could not force a FISH in there.
2d Haulage; took forever and FARE wasn’t going to fit anywhere.
7d Tight. Trews fit but wasn’t parseable.
11d Eternally was easy to biff but following the N down took a minute.
13d Skilful hard to parse. Expert finally was of course T, but no.
Thanks for alerting me to the NHO “trews”, which I just looked up. I hope I can remember it at need.
Hooray for Tina! Thanks C for reaching out. Holidaying in Greece is by far a better situation than I had feared.
25:43
Done by skilful bath employer(sounds dodgy) MER as I would bathe the baby or give it a bath…?
Ta… CAK seems fitting today but Hooray for Tina!
10.04
Yes, a few tricky ones (HAULAGE and SKILFUL, which totally bamboozled me).
Congrats Kybos on the first puzzle and thanks Curarist
31 mins…
Hard I thought and a real slog. Still not sure how we’re supposed to know that 1ac is the first letter of each word. In addition, I thought the backwards “reme” for 22ac was a touch on the difficult side. Part of the problem was putting “ISP” for 4dn – a 5o/50 shot that didn’t initially pay off.
Not sure if this is Kybos’s debut or not – I don’t recall them being on here before.
FOI – 9ac “Saga”
LOI – 18ac “Tick”
COD – 14ac “Upbeat”
Thanks as usual!
I think SHOW is derived from abbreviations rather than initial letters, e. g. O for a cricket over, W = wife, H = husband. The only one I’ve
not seen before is S for section (see Curarist’s comment).
Maybe legalese? You (or I) could be detained under S3 of the Mental Health Act (1983)
Ah yes, thanks
Ahhh…now it makes sense.
DNF. Spent ages on HAULAGE, BUSTLING, SKILFUL, UPBEAT, and SIGNATURE but got them eventually. No success with TICK however!
I accept the result today!
PS I struggled to get TICK for a while – it is a deflating experience struggling to get a 4-letter word where you know two letters and a 3rd must be a vowel
Yes, deflating is a good description!
A tough one. Struggled with TICK, SKILFUL, EVALUATE and BUSTLING (amongst others!), but finally limped home in a slow 29:11. Needed the blog to explain a few.
A nicely judged puzzle from Kybos – another to add to my list of ‘setters I will do’ from the Quickie stable. LOI and COD was EVACUATE. Nothing unreasonable or unfair, though TICK/TABLE held me up for a while.
Tricky in places but enjoyably ‘new’. I wondered if we had a new setter as we went through. Welcome Kybos! It suited us though: 12:26 all parsed which is about our average. Thanks to Curarist (and all of our bloggers) for struggling through the present IT problems.
I found this very tough and revealed a couple along the way, both of which I could have solved with a little more perseverance (TICK, EMPLOYER). I’m not feeling great so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! Interesting to have a new setter. Definitely a different feel. Very much enjoyed despite the DNF. Thanks for the discussion about CONS TABLE – very informative. Thanks as usual.
Well, peaches (and nectarines) are my favourite fruit!
I really enjoyed this to start off with, and continued to enjoy it even though I struggled with the last few clues – TICK, HALF and TABLE, although in retrospect I don’t really know why I had so much trouble with them (except my LOI. DDs can be so tricky). On edit: TABLE caused me the same problems as many others above!
I liked NESSIE and the surface for PATIENCE made me smile after all the chat about liver sausage the other day 😅
12:29 FOI Watch (I tentatively put BATH in first but waited for a checker to confirm – see above about DDs!) LOI Tick CODs Upbeat and Each
Thanks and welcome to Kybos, and thanks to Curarist too, especially for coping with the additional trauma
ps Thank goodness I copied my post – I was halfway through reading everyone’s comments, when the page disappeared and error 500 popped up 😖
Kyboshed by Kybos today.
After 18 minutes I got my LOI EVACUATE- unparsed like a few others.
I knew WASH was a stretch at 10a – I assumed the city of Washington could be thus known. So a DNF for me.
Perhaps the Error 500 will prevent this news getting out?
A challenging QC which I enjoyed.
Now to go back and look at all the parsings.
David
A tricky one, finished in 17:44. Never parsed SHOW, thought it was missing an indicator that we needed the first letters. S for ‘section’ was not in my list of common abbreviations. Liked EVACUATE, although the slightly awkward “bevy pack” in the clue was a bit of a signal to look more closely.
Excellent news about Tina, who has been missed. Thanks to Curarist and Kybos.
We joined those who found it a hard slog, but pleased to finish with a minimum of help, thanks Kybos.
Welcome Kybos, and stop looking at my diary.
Tonight I’m going to WATCH a SHOW. It’s PATIENCE. Charles Court Opera’s production of the
Gilbert and Sullivan piece, at Wilton’s Music Hall.
30:36
Well, I have to say, I found that exceedingly hard work. Failed to parse TABLE then had a right old struggle in the SW with EMPLOYER, SKILFUL and LOI HALF.
Dear dear, it took a long time, 24:41, and I got one wrong anyway. I fell into all the transatlantic traps. The flashes unnerved me, that is, 18a TICK made no sense to me, though I got it from “sucker” and the crossers; as a result I was completely unable to see the obvious at 19a HALF. Ohhhh, “in a flash/tick/no time” but we would never say “tick” in that context. In more US-centric whining, we don’t use “bath” as a verb, though of course I know the city. I settled for “wash” and forgot to go back and think again, how sad. And of course as an American I spell it “skillful”. Liked EVACUATE. TABLE gave me pause for a moment but I’ve seen this construction before and I’m good with it.
The whole solving experience felt a bit different to me so I’m starting to understand what it means for a setter to have a style. Welcome Kybos, and I look forward to more.
Thanks Kybos and Curarist.
Mmm did complete even fairly quick if I was to time it. Some nebulous matters I thought if that is fair. How many cities do you need to settle on clean I tried Nice to start with, how many fruits with a P to lose, isn’t TIGHT ‘not spending’ money rather than ‘saving’, but I quibble. A happy Friday many thanks.
If you’re not spending then aren’t you saving the money you would have spent?
Well, I was a bit slow on this one. Held up by the NW corner, as others were. However, it was an enjoyable puzzle and all parsed
Thanks Kybos and Curarist
Unfortunately not on Kybos’ wavelength, but I don’t think any of the clues were too out there after reading the blog, apart from maybe TABLE, but that’s already been discussed. Thank you for the blog 😁
A nice challenge from Kybos. Found it difficult to get a foothold but once started answers started dropping into place. I thought it a well pitched QC.
Thanks Kybos and Curarist
40 minutes, so towards the very bottom of the league table today (why am I not surprised?).
Sheer incompetence from me as usual. I am utterly clueless and totally incapable of ever achieving anything like a decent level of solving ability. I just cannot read clues in the right way.
Last 5 clues took at least 25 minutes. 2 were guessed. All were perfectly solvable with just a bit of application.
I spend hours and hours trying to improve by attempting 15 x 15, yet I can’t complete a moderately hard QC in a respectable time. Proof positive that I will never succeed here. How can I be this bad after so much practise?
Appalling end to a poor week. Nearly 2 hours again. Nowhere near good enough.
My computer is now going off for the weekend. I will doubtless return next week for more pain. Not sure why.
A hard slog for this resident of the SCC. Gave up after about 45mins with BUSTLING, PATIENCE EMPLOYER and SKILFUL amongst others unsolved.
Encouraged by the SNITCH being over 120 and therefore this being known as a hard QC.
like Cedric, I’ve also noticed first puzzles from a setter can be on the more challenging side. I have wondered if that is due to needing some time to get on the same wavelength of the setter, or if they have put a lot of their best clues for their debut! Either way as a relative beginner to these puzzles I enjoy seeing some different concepts being used. I haven’t seen REME before, only RE, so had to come to the blog to see what was going on there.