Another tricky one.
NOSH went in quickly enough, but the next five acrosses were all unyielding, and a fairly patchy solve continued right up until a bit of a stare at my last two of HARARE and CHECKOUT.
So 9:30 on the money, which is one of my slowest solves in a while (although I didn’t get a chance to try yesterday’s).
We were treated to a wide range of interesting clues and some lovely surfaces, and I very much liked it – many thanks to Jalna!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Boy sent back hospital food (4) |
| NOSH – SON (boy) “sent back”, H(ospital) | |
| 3 | Investigate where payments can be made (8) |
| CHECKOUT – and to CHECK OUT is to investigate | |
| 8 | Heartless fighter lacking experience around conflict (4,3) |
| BOER WAR – BOXER (fighter) “heartless” = remove the heart/centre, RAW (lacking experience) “around” = reverse | |
| 10 | Bit of quiet on a podcast (5) |
| PIECE – sounds the same (ie, heard on a podcast) as PEACE (quiet). BIT and PIECE can both mean COIN, as well as a generic scrap, etc. | |
| 11 | What magnificent mum does, everybody repeats (11) |
| ALLITERATES – ALL (everybody) ITERATES (repeats) | |
| 13 | Greeting king in a doorway every now and then (3,3) |
| KIA ORA – K(ing) I n A d O o R w A y “every now and then”. Literally “good health” in Maori, and also (with the irony typical of what we would now call a UPF) a brand of fruit juice concentrate that seemed to advertise quite a lot back in the 80s – owned by Coke and defunct in the UK as of 2019. | |
| 15 | Schoolkids about to make mistakes (4,2) |
| SLIP UP – PUPILS (schoolkids) about = reverse | |
| 17 | Pick up certain card in Monopoly or choose Risk? (4,1,6) |
| TAKE A CHANCE – double definition | |
| 20 | Language with individual cases (5) |
| HINDI – is “cased” by witH INDIvidual | |
| 21 | Look to comprehend what others are saying? (3-4) |
| LIP-READ – cryptic definition, tricky without checkers. | |
| 22 | Suspect thug in back yard is affected by wind (8) |
| DRAUGHTY – anagram (suspect) of THUG in a reversal (“back”) of YARD | |
| 23 | Payment finally agreed for satellite broadcast, perhaps (4) |
| FEED – FEE (payment), D (“finally” agreeD) | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | State banks are overhauled (8) |
| NEBRASKA – anagram (overhauled) of BANKS ARE | |
| 2 | Great surge (5) |
| SWELL – double definition | |
| 4 | Race around river area in city (6) |
| HARARE – HARE (race) around R(iver) A(rea). It’s in the top ten least desirable cities to live on the planet, apparently, just in case you were thinking of relocating there on a whim. | |
| 5 | Sort of characters making up RNVR in naval vessel (7,4) |
| CAPITAL SHIP – CAPITALS are the “sort of characters making up RNVR”, HIP = in/cool/etc. News to me. The RNVR is the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, if you’re wondering, and a capital ship is simply the largest and most powerful ship in a fleet, only coined fairly recently (in naval terms) in 1909. | |
| 6 | Old writer — with drink — starts speaking candidly (5,2) |
| OPENS UP – O(ld) PEN (writer) with SUP (drink) | |
| 7 | Those people ultimately dealt with ample criticism (4) |
| THEM – the “ultimate” letters of the rest of the clue | |
| 9 | Weirdly awe-striking sport (5-6) |
| WATER-SKIING – anagram (weirdly) of AWE STRIKING | |
| 12 | Added software programme shut down (8) |
| APPENDED – APP (software programme) ENDED (shut down) | |
| 14 | One feels soldier maybe upset the Queen at some point (7) |
| ANTENNA – ANT (soldier, maybe) and then “upset” or upend ANNE (the Queen, at some point) | |
| 16 | Story time incorporating book and iPad? (6) |
| TABLET – TALE (story) T(ime) incorporating B(ook) | |
| 18 | Relative from Greece infrequently heading north (5) |
| NIECE – “from” greECE INfrequently “heading north” | |
| 19 | Dull noise so endlessly deafening at first (4) |
| THUD – THUS (so) “endlessly”, D (Deafening “at first”) | |
I found this difficult, but not impossible, and as a solver of Pangakupu’s puzzles, I’m used to a little Maori now and then, if the cryptic is kindly. I did start out with dahl, but soon erased it – that can’t be right, and it wasn’t. Once I had nosh, Nebraska was obvious, and I was back on track. Take a chance was a nice giveaway clue to open up the middle.
Time: 9:27
This goes down as a 22 minute solve but although it was hard I made things worse for myself by carelessly writing THUS at 19dn (thinking of the wordplay) which made 22ac impossible to solve until eventually I spotted my error. That must have added at least 5 minutes to my time.
Despite its Mauri name KIA-ORA was an Australian brand that launched in the UK in 1917 and the Australians sold the British rights to Schweppes in 1929. I became aware of it as an orange drink in my childhood in the 1950s. Schweppes became Cadbury Schweppes in 1969 and it was from then on that KIA-ORA became an iconic cinema drink. The Coca Cola Company bought them out in 1998 and that was when the decline started.
Time 13:13. A nice puzzle. LOI CAPITAL SHIP, which I got from the parse but hadn’t heard of.
Three on the first pass of acrosses and it stayed hard from there. 3,3 starting with K only brought kowtow to mind so I was glad to get WATER SKIING and ANTENNA to remind me KIA-ORA was more than squash with a catchy tune. CHECKOUT held out to the end only falling when the R of BOER WAR showed me where the second R went, then I had cricket to thank for the answer. All green in 17.21.
Although just above my average time, I’m quite pleased with my 12:02 finish on this tricky puzzle. I had vaguely heard of KIA ORA but did not know it was specifically a greeting – we had Welsh earlier this week, and now Māori, every day’s a schoolday – and I needed all the checkers for Harare. I’m surprised it is considered so undesirable a place – it may not be quite the place it was in the past (I confess it is 40 years since I was there) but I can think of many worse places, not least the various warzones of the world, and when the jacaranda trees are in bloom it is most attractive. LOI though was FEED; I often find short clues with common letters as checkers tough, and the definition here was far from obvious.
Many thanks Roly for the blog.
Put me down for a DAHL too, along with COLD WAR, set me off on a warped tangent for far too long despite suspecting 1D was an anagram. Tricky one.
Nosh and Nebraska went straight in followed by about 5 minutes of head scratching. This took a lot of perseverance and I’m glad we had the time to finish in 30.04. Lots to enjoy and clanging PDMs for several answers well hidden in plain sight!
Very much liked alliteration
Thanks Roly for the blog, and parsing of piece which eluded us, must remember podcast as aural wordplay
Thanks Jalna
12:59. Held up by LOI CHECKOUT.
Knew KIA ORA, just got back from NZ myself.
COD ALLITERATION
11 minutes. Number three (so far) to initially opt for DAHL at 1a which didn’t get me off to a good start. HARARE is one of those clues for which the def of ‘city’ gives so many potential answers that you just hope the wordplay is helpful; it wasn’t too bad here, though HARE for ‘race’ needed some thought.
NHO CAPITAL SHIP as a thing, but I liked the wordplay and along with the ‘What magnificent mum does’ it was my COD.
Thanks to Jalna and Roly
Make me No 4 for dahl, although I soon realised it couldn’t be right.
#5 to start with dahl, but possibly #1 then to write in “dhal” followed by “dalh” to see if they worked any better. Not a great start.
Another testing, enjoyable puzzle. I went anticlockwise round the grid and ended up staring at CHECKOUT/HARARE for a while. KIA ORA I knew only from the adverts (“Too orangey for crows!”) so entered from the word play. COD to the brilliant ALLITERATES.
All done in 09:59 for a Reasonable Day. Many thanks Jalna and roly.
Another tough and tricky one from Jalna. I made little headway (and got very frustrated) at first and had to get to the SE quadrant before making any significant progress. I trudged through it, only persevering out of a determination that Jalna would not ***dy-well beat me.
There was the occasional flash of light from a PDM plus the occasional grudging appreciation of a devious and clever clue until I was left with K_A_R_ . I biffed KIA ORA – I knew it from the almost forgotten drink but had no idea where the words came from.
I was surprised to see the ‘congratulations’ message on screen with a time of 22.16 (it seemed longer).
Jalna is an enigma – very clever, of course, but little sense of what a QC should be as far as I am concerned. Great for the Whizz Kids but a real challenge for some of us. Still, thanks to him for an ultimately satisfying work-out. Thanks to Roly for a comprehensive blog and for confirming all my parsing. My COD was ALLITERATES.
And we are number 6 for ‘dahl’ (having tried ‘dhal’ – number 2 for that) plus ‘peace’ for bit of quiet and ‘cold war’ for the conflict. Off we went at great speed, in totally the wrong direction.
Himself knew CAPITAL SHIP so that was handy.
Really enjoyed this, though needed the blog to parse HARARE, ANTENNA and had a most delightful PDM when the parsing of ALLITERATES finally hit.
Thank you Jalna and Rolytoly
Not easy, but solved steadily in an average 20:25, albeit with a FEW biffs (CAPITAL SHIP – NHO, ANTENNA, HARARE, PIECE). Thanks for the explanations in the blog.
A bad start with a misspelt ‘dalh’ afterwhich I made slow but steady progress through this tricky but entertaining puzzle. I was left at the end scratching my head over the unpromising K_ A/_R_.
Crossed the line in 9.42.
Thanks to Rolytoly and Jalna
Thought this was hard for a QC. Another dalh to start, but NEBRASKA leapt out. I believe HMS Ark Royal is the latest CAPITAL SHIP (?), following HMS Ocean. Loved those
KIA-ORA cinema ads, but the drink was disgusting.
6’33”, thanks roly and Jalna.
I thought this one was fun. I couldn’t parse PIECE, it being the first time I’ve seen a podcast instead of a radio to invoke a homophone. No doubt somebody will tell me this isn’t the first time we’ve seen it. Also NHO KIA-ORA apart from the drink and the advert that told us that “we all adore a Kia-Ora”, superb jingle.
I failed in about 10 minutes because I wrote in DRAUGHTS, seeing [THUG] in the middle and forgot to go back and parse it correctly.
Tricky indeed! Started with NOSH, but drew a blank in the rest of the NW apart from — WAR and WATER SKIING. Hadn’t come across CAPITAL SHIP before. Back in the NW I eventually came up with BOER, SWELL (doh!) and NEBRASKA and was able to work out LOI, KIA ORA, which I didn’t know as a greeting, but did vaguely remember as a drink. 12:38. Thanks Jalna and Roly.
18:35
I fell into the “how do you spell dhal” trap at 1a, and never really got back in my stride. I was delayed a long while at the end by CHECKOUT and HARARE.
Despite drinking a lot of KIA ORA in cinemas in my childhood, I had no idea it was a Māori greeting.
Thanks Roly and Jalna