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.
Kia Ora escaped a reference in The Rocky Horror Show unlike “you’d better not try to hurt her, Frankfurter”. Another staple of the Sunday night science fiction, double feature.
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.
I too started with DAHL, but 1d put me right eventually.
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.
You called, sir?
We first had it in the QC in August 2024 (QC 2759, also Jalna). Merlin was blogging that day and said “On a podcast” is a new way of indicating a homophone. “On the Radio” is the more common indicator, but many people listen to podcasts instead of the radio, so this is a good update”. We also had it in October 2025 (QC 3126, Asp), but this is only its third QC outing I think.
Its first ever appearance as a homophone indicator recorded by TfTT was in the Monthly Club Special 20,211 (blogged by Verlaine 1 May 2018).
Blimey, older than I imagined! Given that I often listen to podcasts, pretty much every time I leave the house on my own, and almost never listen to the radio (even when I get in the car, it automatically detects my phone and starts playing my podcasts), I should probably have twigged it.
Thanks for the update 🙂
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
This is just awful. Is this what the “Q”C has become? Yes we had NOSH a couple of days ago so that was clear. But after an hour, still managed less than half, two of those eleven unparsed. Misery.
Sorry but if the expert vinyl1 finds this “difficult but not impossible” may I suggest it’s not a QC?
I managed seven in 20 minutes plus a couple of halves (war and ship) from crossers. I parsed Kia Ora but I had no idea it was a greeting.
Ha! I’m not even an expert, I’m a middle-rank solver. The experts solved it in 1/3 my time.
I agree a terrible puzzle for a QC
37 minutes (a tad slow for me but I’m getting there). Another puzzle I was quite happy getting finished. Being a child of the 80s it was rather nice to see KIA ORA as a solution.
Thoroughly enoyable puzzle – plenty of nice surfaces and some twisted ways to make me re-read the clue.
Cheers to the setter and blogger as always.
NOSH and NEBRASKA went in early, but then almost nothing else for ages. It was very hard work from then on and I only just managed to cross the line. Time = 48-49 minutes, which is significantly longer than average.
Towards the end (from about 6-8 clues out), I was reduced to alphabet trawling for anything that fitted – an unsatisfying way of completing a crossword. Trouble was that I struggled to parse several clues (e.g. ALLITERATES) or even have any idea at all about others (e.g. CAPITAL SHIP).
I’m glad to have survived, but would much rather have done battle with a proper QC.
Many thanks to Roly and Jalna.
The times so far recorded indicate that this puzzle was yet again on the tough side. I certainly found it to be so, and I’m not too dispirited to finish outside of my target time at 11.23. CAPITAL SHIP was unknown to me, and I didn’t spot ‘hip’ as a synonym for ‘in’; I then wasted a little time looking for an alternative before deciding it must be right. KIA ORA as a greeting was another unknown, but I recall downing a few at the cinema in my younger days.
Pleased to get this done in 12:51 but I felt lucky at several points to have twigged the intended meanings relatively quickly. On another day it could easily have taken me twice as long.
I suspect that the snitch is not a reliable indicator of difficulty for us less experienced solvers, but for what it’s worth: this week has seen the highest average score from Monday to Thursday in the last twelve months. Perhaps we’ve earned a Trelawney tomorrow?
Thank you for the blog!
I agree with you on the Snitch. I think the issue is that a person who usually solves in say 3-4 minutes might be pushed out by a difficult puzzle to 4-5 minutes (so about 20% more); someone like me (average 11 minutes) takes more like 14-16 minutes (so more like 40% more); and for some slower solvers it sends them into DNF territory.
The other issue is that the calculation for the Snitch excludes DNFs, and so as puzzles get more difficult, the population solving it and so creating the Snitch is biased towards the better solvers, being those who have finished it.
Conversely, with a very easy puzzle I can more than halve my standard time – but one of the top top solvers is unlikely to improve by so much, just because of the fixed time taken to read the clues and write in the answers.
But for all that it is a really interesting tool which we should be grateful for (do click the “Buy me a coffee” button!), and I for one have no suggestions for how to improve it and overcome the biases I’ve highlighted.
It might be interesting to see how the times for slower/more thoughtful solvers changed from day to day, by simply excluding any finishing times of 10mins or quicker. It would at least test your hypothesis.
It would be interesting to see a QUITCH excluding 15×15 ref solvers but as the SNITCH can only see the top 100 which quickly fills up with such solvers most slower times never register.
9 short when I started doing reveals. I agree with the general sentiment of lots of difficult clues, but nothing unfair. Thanks to Jalna and rolytoly. If I was being realyy picky I would point out that software = computer program(s), you dont have software programs, and program is spelled thus. A programme is a collection of projects which, between them, produce a business outcome. If you meet a Programme Manger they would be very insulted for you to think they wrote software for a living, a bit like confusing an architect with a bricklayer.
Eek! Another DNF. I’ve not managed to finish a single QC this week. However, I enjoyed this one far more than I have the others before it. Difficult but fair.
Being ex-Navy, Capital Ship went in right away.
I have never heard of a city called Harare. It’s not even listed in Chambers Crossword dictionary. I was disappointed that I didn’t get Antenna.
I didn’t know that Kia Ora was a greeting. For me it’s a drink from my childhood.
First Lap: 8
Answered without help: 16
With help: 4
DNF: 4 (22a, 23a, 4d, 14d)
Time: stopped after 44 minutes.
You needed to look under city / capital cities to find HARARE. I’d have thought it was well known as the capital of Zimbabwe, formerly Salisbury, capital of Southern Rhodesia. The transfer of power was a big enough story in its day!
You’re absolutely right, it is there.
I wonder if SpecSavers is in the same dictionary 🤣
🙂
Quite tricky in places today. 17 minutes with LOI DRAUGHTY after THUD and HINDI gave me parsing problems- parsed both before LOI.
CAPITAL SHIP an unknown and needed carful unravelling.
But I enjoyed this overall.
KIA ORA remembered from schooldays -had no idea it was a greeting.
COD to CHECKOUT.
David
My thanks to Jalna and rolytoly.
10a Piece; didn’t treat “on a podcast” as a homophone indicator so was foxed. Silly! It has been used before.
POI 13a Kia Ora, I remember drinking this, but didn’t find out for another 60 odd years what it means.
5d Capital Ship, missed the in=HIP and was foxed. Silly!
The top half remained obstinately blank on the first pass so I basically solved from the bottom up (and rather slowly too). I realised that we’d had the clue for 1ac recently and that the answer wasn’t Dahl but was disappointed not to be able to recall the correct answer immediately. I wound up with a 27 minute solve, the same time as yesterday’s. I couldn’t parse BOER WAR, HINDI, CAPITAL SHIP or TABLET so the blog was very much needed. I had vaguely heard of CAPITAL SHIP and knew KIA ORA only from the drink.
FOI – 15ac SLIP UP
LOI – 4dn HARARE
CODs – 11ac ALLITERATES and 22ac DRAUGHTY.
Thanks to Jalna and Rolytoly.
A reasonable start in the NW, with Nosh and Nebraska going straight in (I tried Dahl as an answer a few days ago, and once bitten. . .). Boer War followed as soon as I could see the parsing, but then I had to wait for Take a Chance before again putting pen to paper. After that it became a case of hop around the grid and wait for the pdms that, thankfully, kept coming. Like Roly, my last two were Checkout (🙄) and Harare.
Overall, definitely on the tricky side, so I was relieved to finish short of the 30min post. However, a deserved tip of the hat to Jalna for some terrific clues, which made picking a coD really difficult. The nod goes to Capital Ship, a nose ahead of Alliterates in a strong field. Invariant
An intriguing puzzle, which I finished (all parsed) before the cuppa was quite cold. A toughish challenge, but enjoyable. Started with NEBRASKA and then wandered all over the place, picking off clues randomly. All came together eventually, finishing with CoD ALLITERATES.
Thanks Jalna and rolytoly
These crosswords are just getting too hard for me: another DNF. Failed on CHECKOUT/ HARARE. I think overall I was intimidated by what felt like rather American terms.
A very slow start with only a few filled in around the grid. With some checkers around, I then picked up speed and finished in 13 minutes. ALLITERATES probably stands out as the hardest as I was lost in the parsing. Very satisfying all round when I got there.
“Aurora! Don’t forget the KIA ORA!”
Fortunately I’d encountered it as a greeting in “15×15 Land” fairly recently.
The one I didn’t know was my LOI, but fortunately it was obvious once the crossers were in place.
FOI NOSH
LOI CAPITAL SHIP
COD ALLITERATES
TIME 4:18
Another toughie. Spent ages trying to parse HINDI and NIECE before eventually realising they were both hiddens – when will I learn! Hadn’t solved NEBRASKA before attempting KIA ORA so did an alphabet trawl for the K…which didn’t really help. Had no idea this was a greeting but remember the drink very well. DNK CAPITAL SHIP. Didn’t parse BOER WAR (thanks RT – very obvious with hindsight). Finished but had to persevere. Rather liked DRAUGHTY which brought a smile. Doable 😅
Toughie. 13 mins or so. I’m starting to have some sympathy for those who question what the QC is for: 15×15’ers doing a bit of sprint training or encouraging newbs into the wonderful world of cryptics? If you can complete this one then the Mon/Tue biggy is well within reach though the goalposts have moved there too.
I did enjoy it though, COD ALLITERATES.
10:04. Would have been a bit less if those silly Brits would just spell “DRAFTY” correctly. 😉
Another splendid puzzle (just shy of 10′), as always from Jalna.
Kia-ora got me thinking about the drink, which hasn’t been in shops for yonks – I hope I still like it, as I’ve just bought the minimum-size-order I could find online, which is 6 x 1.5 litre bottles 😅. I’ll be looking like Donald in a few weeks!
Thanks Jalna, and rolytoly for the excellent blog.
DNF disaster. Had to reveal CHECKOUT, DRAUGHTY and there seemed to be two spellings of KIA/Kai ORA. Also needed hint for ALLITERATES.
In haste, but thanks Roly.
Well this just proves to me how many hidden variables are involved in the skill of crossword solving. I generally only solve about 5 clues in twenty minutes, but today I got twice as many! Even though I’m at the bottom of the curve, I get fewer solutions when the ten minute and under folk take longer, so there is a correlation with the consensus on difficulty. But today is an anomaly! – why? Also I’m curious to know whether people report timings at one sitting? I give up after twenty minutes due to boredom with a feeling of nowhere left to go with my associate memory. For example in 4D we have four generalities: Race, River, Area and City in the clue – there are so many associative possibilities for each of these words – where do you start? My brain goes into melt down very quickly!
18:31
I thought there were some cracking clues in this and, whilst tough, I thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the solve.
Couldn’t parse PIECE and didn’t realise ‘in’ was HIP. Oh, and KIA ORA was only known from the cinema adverts of my childhood but from the clue, it couldn’t be anything else. (It also brought back distant memories of that dreadful Pearl & Dean advert music!)
FOI: TAKE A CHANCE
LOI: ALLITERATES
COD: LIP-READ/PUPILS
A big thanks to Roly and Jalna
We were way off today – 21:56, approaching twice as long as a typical solve. We perhaps made somewhat heavy weather of it but it did seem unusually difficult. NOSH went in quickly but, when we got round to it, NEBRASKA took an inexplicably long time which in turn delayed KIA ORA. Also missed that HINDI was a hidden! Liked ALLITERATES a lot. Understandably, we concur with the opinions above that the Quitch doesn’t fully reflect the difficulty in cases like this! All fair though. Thanks, Roly and Jalna.
I needed all the checkers for my last two. My penultimate solve was LIP READ (doh moment) and my LOI was the till! 8:50 Thanks Roly