Tango’s fifth puzzle, approachable and very nice.
Tango’s previous puzzles were 76, 100, 75, 90 on the Quitch, and I found this to continue the early trend of odd-easier / even-harder: I finished up in 4:32, I think my quickest time in a while.
Lots of very neat clueing and good surfaces such as “Artificial pitch” and “Struggle with belief”, and I particularly liked the imaginative additions of Chuck Berry and Terry Jones – very nice indeed, many thanks to Tango!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Checking car can go to begin with (8) |
| AUDITING – AUDI (car) TIN (can) G (Go “to begin with”) | |
| 6 | Struggle with belief (4) |
| VIEW – VIE (struggle) W(ith) | |
| 8 | Fanatic regularly hosting introduction to Chuck Berry (4) |
| ACAI – f A n A t I c “regularly” hosts C (“introduction” to Chuck) | |
| 9 | Liking quiet charm (8) |
| PENCHANT – P (Piano = quiet) ENCHANT (charm) | |
| 10 | City beach pier exposed by work (3,5) |
| SAN DIEGO – SAND (beach) pIEr “exposed” = pare the outer letters, and GO = work | |
| 12 | Murderer’s California home (4) |
| CAIN – CA(lifornia) IN (home) | |
| 13 | Initially pay attention after Associated Press turn up (6) |
| APPEAR – P (“initially” Pay) EAR (attention) after AP | |
| 15 | Son leaves cold region for European peninsula (6) |
| IBERIA – S(on) leaves SIBERIA (cold region) | |
| 17 | Aunt cooked fish (4) |
| TUNA – anagram (cooked) of AUNT | |
| 19 | Wild iris can start to show flowers (8) |
| NARCISSI – anagram (wild) of IRIS CAN and the “start” to S |
|
| 21 | Artificial pitch that’s symbolic of Ireland (8) |
| SHAMROCK – SHAM (artificial) PITCH (rock). I couldn’t equate PITCH and ROCK, but Collins has the equivalence in the sense of a boat rocking/pitching in a rough sea. | |
| 23 | Terrible fate state of mind brought about (4) |
| DOOM – MOOD (state of mind) reversed/brought about | |
| 24 | Love god in hospital drama’s hiding ring (4) |
| EROS – ER’S (hospital drama’s) hiding O (ring) | |
| 25 | Avoid changing its speed (8) |
| SIDESTEP – anagram (changing) of ITS SPEED | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Release family member shortly before a politician (7) |
| UNCLAMP – UNCLe (family member) “shortly” before A, MP (politician) | |
| 3 | Island boy pens one epic poem (5) |
| ILIAD – I(sland) LAD (boy) pens I (one) | |
| 4 | In the afternoon, I upset mischievous child (3) |
| IMP – PM (in the afternoon) I “upset” = reverse | |
| 5 | Foolishly ignore old boatman? (9) |
| GONDOLIER – anagram (foolishly) of IGNORE OLD | |
| 6 | He and Clive developed means of transport (7) |
| VEHICLE – anagram (developed) of HE and CLIVE | |
| 7 | Boredom that is on the rise around new northern university (5) |
| ENNUI – IE (that is) “on the rise” = reverse, going around N N U | |
| 11 | Terry Jones too busy, shunning all outsiders? Wrong! (9) |
| ERRONEOUS – shun the “outside” letters of the previous four words | |
| 14 | Philosopher’s calculations are the wrong way round (7) |
| ERASMUS – SUMS (calculations) ARE “the wrong way around” | |
| 16 | Popular retail outlet coming soon (2,5) |
| IN STORE – IN (popular) STORE (retail outlet) | |
| 18 | American woman’s escort (5) |
| USHER – US (American) HER (woman). Collins lists HER as slang for a female: “is the new baby a him or a her?”. The apostrophe-s in the cryptic reading of the clue is therefore a linkword between wordplay and definition: American woman IS (ie, equals) escort. | |
| 20 | Worshippers spending hours in Asian river (5) |
| INDUS – HINDUS (worshippers) “spending”/wasting H(ours) | |
| 22 | Child of king and maid abandoned by mother (3) |
| KID – K(ing) and then MAID with MA (mother) abandoned. | |
I just read USHER as US(American) + HER (woman’s).
Yes that’s easier! I’ll leave the stuff about the linkword in as it does apply elsewhere – 12ac for instance.
I suspect this puzzle will be just the ticket for some of our more querulous commenters, with a number of simple clues using stock cryptic elements. I was scribbling in answers as fast as I could, pausing only for San Diego.
Time: 4:51
Querulous? A bit unkind.
Positively generous! 🙂
Hear hear!
13 minutes. ACAI from wordplay only. I was going to say I’d never seen it before and its 3 most recent appearances were in Mephisto puzzles which I don’t do, but it has also turned up in some weekday puzzles, including one in 2024 which I blogged myself. I noted that in those it had always been defined as a berry, but on that occasion it was clued as ‘energy drink ingredient’ which I felt was a little unfair.
Saw ACAI would fit but had NHO so left it until ILIAD made me feel happier. Except I was solving in 2024 so probably claimed I’d NHO it then too. Seven on the first pass and and lots of downs by slowed by SAN DIEGO, INDUS and AUDITING. Made things hard by putting in ‘Ibson’ which although it fits and has 1 and son in doesn’t parse and isn’t how he spelled his own name but I guess he is “one (who) pens epic poem” – anyway I’d tried to force ILIAD into the space that became ‘idyll’ a few days ago so it was there ready to be used. All green in 12.20. Not bad.
Lovely! 11.50 is in our very fast range. Lots to enjoy and for once the anagrams all revealed themselves without the need to resort to pen and paper. Thanks Roly and Tango
7.07, nice puzzle. My last two were KID (which was sitting right there in front of me, not sure why it didn’t go straight in) and SIDESTEP. Wasted time at PENCHANT thinking it was going to end in -ing. Thank you Tango and Roly.
Very neat crossword. I liked ERRONEOUS and ACAI.
Saved me scrolling all the way to the bottom to comment. My thoughts, exactly. Thanks, Tango
10:39. Satisfied grin here.
Pi ❤️
9 mins…
Definitely on the more straight forward side and my first sub-10 in quite a while.
FOI – 1ac “Auditing”
LOI – 6ac “View”
COD – 9ac “Penchant”
Thanks as usual!
7.00 fully parsed. Suspect will be a low SNITCH today.
Thanks all
Nice puzzle.
Did anyone else get Sinclair C5 vibes from 6d?
Started with IMP and finished with AUDITING in 6.17.
Thanks to Roly and Tango
Yep – Sir Clive several decades ahead of Elon yet beset by range problems…..
Bucking the general trend here by finding this rather more challenging, with a bitty solve jumping all over the grid leading to a 12:51 solve. Not sure why, though I note Tango seems to like IKEA clues (which I sometimes struggle with) and there are no hiddens (which I like). Never parsed the Rock = Pitch part of SHAMROCK, so thank you Roly for explaining that.
And just one day after Countrywoman commented that “IMP is another popular QC word”, it duly appears! Can you perhaps tell us what’s going to be in tomorrow’s QC as well?
Many thanks Roly for the blog.
I only wish I could predict! Today I wish I had remembered sooner that if you see the word ‘car’ it is often AUDI.
4:25. Nice one. Held up only by trying to equate rock and pitch to complete the parsing. Thank-you Tango and Roly.
6:33 for the solve for the Quitch. Early struggles with the Across clue but the lower half went in nicely. Then found myself to have reached a new level of solving with throwing in answers for ENNUI, USHER, INDUS, INSTORE with barely more than a confirmatory glance at the clue.
Overall thought it was a rather well-constructed puzzle. Enough to challenge (AUDITING, APPEAR, ERASMUS) and the particularly clever ERRONEOUS. NHO ACAI and concerned about how to spell NARCISSI. Didn’t parse pitch=ROCK until post-solve.
Thanks to Roly and Tango.
PS Found today’s Cryptic Quintagram tough but rewarding when I got it done
Sidestepped (😉) 1ac in favour of the View from the NE, for a sprightly clockwise solve. Towards the end, San Diego and the nho Acai needed a few crossers to be confident about, and the parsing of the former was interesting to say the least, but the one that beat me was the rock/pitch in Shamrock. The answer was obvious enough, but I never thought of a boating connection and pulled stumps to preserve a sub-20.
CoD to the Erasmus for the smooth surface. Invariant
10:33 but one wrong.
Never heard of AÇAI and misread the instruction, so entered ACTI.
4:37 – a nice, fun, quick puzzle.
The only hold-up was IBERIA. Rather stupidly, I was trying to remove the S from ICE ASIA for a while, until I saw the obvious and just thought of European peninsulas.
Lots to like here, but COD to ERRONEOUS.
9:58. RST (rare sub ten) and QTPi (but not by much so no grub wiping please😉)
Slowed for a moment for auditing and establishing that the sums are in the correct order.
Ta RAT
We’re with Mr Statherby – not so fast for us, not sure why as delightfully crafted clues.
NHO ACAI however instructions were clear.
Needed the blog for the PDM with pitch/roll/rock… had been through ever other type of pitch…
One interruption – though definitely avoided SCC, but not by as much as we would have hoped.
Many thanks to Tango and Roly
5:50
Pretty quick though had to wait until the death to get the city. Much biffing including AUDITING, ERASMUS (from checkers), SHAMROCK (didn’t get the pitch=ROCK so thanks for that Roly)
Thanks also to Tango for the puzzle
Approachable, yes, but some puzzles in the NW inhibited completion. NHO ACAI (but had to be) or LOI INDUS, confess I cheated by looking up possible rivers. Thanks Roly for some of the more obscure parsing (especially pitch = ROCK), but what is ER for hospital drama, please? OK I’ll guess emergency resuscitation, but NHO it.
Oh yes, also this: I thought “spending” = omitting was a bit mean. Maybe spend is one of those words that can mean its opposite? If spending money = losing, spending hours can also be interpreted positively, i.e. = using, not so?
Emergency Room is US for A&E.
Just to fully explain the clue – ER was an TV hospital drama starring George Clooney in the 1990s.
I would have slightly prefered ‘spent hours’ (used up hours) in the clue, but spending is pretty close.
I confidently bunged in I and G round the N for liking, only to have to erase them when PENCHANT became obvious, otherwise more or less straight in with the rest. ACAI berries are one of those super foods that become all the rage for a short time, like smashed avocado on sourdough – nobody had heard of them twenty years ago! Nice, if easy, puzzle.
the only avocado you would have seen 50 years ago would have been the colour of the bathroom suite.🙂
I remember having avocado with prawn cocktail in my local trattoria – a double 70s whammy in one dish 😅
Yes, likewise and I really loved it.
Sticky start with only seven on the first pass. Next four took a while but finished with 21 in 40 minutes. Missed auditor and unclamp, Cain, Indus and doom….need a bit more focus to keep me in a relatively industrious mood.
23:22. A bit longer than usual as unable to parse a few and needing crossers and the odd biff to finish. NHO ACAI – alphabet trawl required to get it.
10:08 TYTBAS
I finished in a decent time of 8.13, but felt I was on form to achieve that. Early times submitted so far suggest it was perhaps easier than I thought. Never heard of AÇAI and trusted the wordplay. LOI was AUDITING which I spent more time on than any other clue. Nice puzzle, particularly liking ERRONEOUS with mention of the former python Terry Jones. A statue to the great man was recently unveiled in the town of his birth, Colwyn Bay.
I took this gently and managed to avoid the SCC by a couple of minutes. I did not find it nearly as easy as most early posters but, apart from the MERs above, most of it was fair.
I needed help with parsing San Diego and Shamrock (rock/pitch needed Roly’s help).
Previous Tango QCs have left me in the low/mid teens so I think this was a bit tougher than most of his earlier offerings for me.
AÇAI came from a dusty recess in my brain and there were some good anagrams. I liked PENCHANT and ERRONEOUS.
Thanks to both.
My thanks to Tango and rolytoly.
I didn’t find it at all easy. I’m possibly in the SCC.
8a Acai, only ever seen in Xwords, but to be fair quite often there.
10a San Diego biffed; wasn’t thinking well and failed to explain IEGO.
21a Shamrock. I could picture the four leaf clover but its name wouldn’t come until I had ?h?m????.
24a Eros was a write in and I knew ER as American A&E but was unaware of the drama.
11d LOI Erroneous, saw E?R and biffed the answer then saw how it works. Belated COD.
From AUDITING to SIDESTEP in 6:00. Nice puzzle. Had to squint a bit to see rock=pitch. Thanks Tango and Roly.
Slow but straightforward, technically a DNF, I wrote down AAI + C against 8a on my first across pass, but moved on as I had no crosser to position the C, and then forgot that I had done so and left it uncompleted at the end. Doh!
Pitch = Rock gave a slight pause, but I know that pitch does occur naturally in the ground so I suspected it might be in some dictionary somewhere as a rock, or even might technically be classed as such (After all dried out clay and mud both are).
Thanks Tango and rolytoly.
Miles off the wavelength, coming in at around my average with 13:08. Couldn’t parse APPEAR for the life of me so wasted a couple of fruitless minutes there, before moving on with crossed fingers.
Thank you for the blog!
From VIEW to NARCISSI in a speedy 5:39. I particularly enjoyed the cluing for AUDITING, VIEW and ERASMUS. Thanks Roly
15 mins.
If that was easy then I really am struggling. I found it hard. NHO ACAI.
Miles behind the competition again.
8 either incorrect or unanswered on 15 x 15 in 1.5 hours. Another struggle.
The competition? Who are you competing against, and why?
Who – people who are broadly at the same level as me, time wise. Perhaps ‘comparators’ is a better word than ‘competition’.
Why – I suspect most of us have other solvers against whose times we rate our own performance.
I found this more difficult than earlier solvers and needed an aid for my LOI when I ran out of time at 20 minutes. All parsed bar the second half of SHAMROCK.
FOI – 12ac CAIN
LOI – 1ac AUDITING
COD – 11dn ERRONEOUS. Also liked ERASMUS
Thanks to Tango and Rolytoly
9 minutes for me which is better than my average. LOI PENCHANT.
I have probably seen ACAI before, but had forgotten it. The instructions were clear.
Did not parse SAN DIEGO or INDUS whilst solving.
COD to AUDITING.
David
Found this pretty straightforward. Only pauses were in equating rock with pitch, and NARCISSI which needed pen and paper. COD ERASMUS, with INDUS a close second. Some lovely surfaces throughout. Many thanks both.
I had to peer very closely at my phone to count every other letter in “fanatic” before getting ACAI. That was one hold up. The others were not being able to see SIDESTEP without checkers, and hesitating long and hard over LOI IN STORE – I was being too literal and therefore struggling to think how something that was “in store” was nevertheless “coming soon”. Oh, and I typed VEHCILE, as I often do, so had a pause on CAIN.
Otherwise no issues and I finished in 05:44 for an Excellent Day. COD USHER but there were lots of good ones.
Many thanks Tango and Roly.
Infrequent reader, first time commenter. Found my gathered crossword esoterica extremely helpful today, for a better than average 24:07.
NHO narcissi, but couldn’t see any other way for the letters.
Welcome!
You will see lots of narcissus growing alongside daffodils in the spring. They are often white with a small pale yellow cup.
Welcome and kudos for constructing the nho NARCISSI!
An important announcement: Chloe Hutton has posted a time for this puzzle of 1:27. That must be the fastest time any human has ever posted for a Quick Cryptic.
Don’t let this discourage you – you’ll never play golf like Rory McIlroy, either
I knew she’d benefit from the chat we had at the championship.
👏🏻
Zowie.
there’s a bunch of faster times by Verlaine, Lili and Jason according to the Quitch Top 10 for them
this however only scraped into Chloe’s top 10 at #10. her fastest are 51s and 56s.
You are KIDDING!!! 😳
Distracted this morning and made unnecessarily heavy weather of this, solving between tidying for cleaner who didn’t come, worrying about friend’s accident, and then also Pilates and French conversation. But puzzle all finished eventually.
LOsI AUDITING and PENCHANT (good clues). Also liked IBERIA, ILIAD, INDUS and ERRONEOUS.
Maybe I have very vaguely heard of ACAI, come to think of it, but had to biff.
Yes, I did watch ER back in the day, because of George.
Thanks vm, Roly.
..tidying for the cleaner? Who pays who?
Off-topic but cleaner has more time to actually clean if the house is tidy, so on Thursdays I have to start the crossword later in the day due to early tidying 🙂. Probably more info than you needed.
I’m with you on this – I get teased mercilessly by friends for conducting a weekly ‘pre-cleaner clean’ (/tidy), but it makes eminent sense to me!
Isn’t that one of the best reasons for having a cleaner? That they make you have to tidy regularly? 😂
And to me. I do the same.
Like some others above, ACAI was a never heard of, LOI answered purely from wordplay/checkers.
As for “pitch” = “rock”, whatever Collins says, that is a stretch; “pitching” is up and down movement of bow and stern; “rocking” is synonymous with “rolling”, i.e. tipping from side to side.
11.12 Slowest of the week but I’m not sure why. LOI SIDESTEP. Thanks rolytoly and Tango.
NHO AÇAI, apart from that pretty straightforward
8:16 to finish this pleasing puzzle. Some really good surfaces made it a pleasure to solve, especially the struggles with belief and the confused philosopher. Fell into the “ing” trap at PENCHANT.
Anyone addicted to the NYT Spelling Bee puzzle has long ago internalized ACAI (and its friend acacia).
Thanks Tango and roly. I shall strive to eschew querulity in future.
7:26 for me, which is very quick. I parsed everything except SHAMROCK, where I made the connection that rock climbers have pitches and moved on. The boat-related explanation is much better. COD to ERRONEOUS, very nice.
Thanks to Tango and rolytoly.
Straightforward indeed, but a very enjoyable 7 mins. ERRONEOUS was excellent! Thanks Tango, and Roly for the blog
Yes, a nice one from Tango and I fairly zipped through it.
That IMP is playing up again 😅
I liked VIEW, NARCISSI and ERASMUS a lot.
7:28 FOI View LOI Appear (because I skipped past it initially) COD and AOD Gondolier
Many thanks Tango and Roly
This SCC resident was happy to slowly meander through this crossword enjoying some great clueing (e.g. ERRONEOUS and ERASMUS) and some cunning misdirections (e.g. Chuck Berry). Thanks Tango
It was all going so well, but a ‘terrible fate’ awaited me.
I was all done bar two in just 22 minutes (very good for me), but the I___S/__O_ combo remained unyielding for a full 15 minutes. Then, just as I was throwing in the towel, DOOM came to mind and the NHO Asian river followed soon afterwards.
AÇAI, IMP and CAIN were my FOsI and ERRONEOUS was my CoD, but I’m not sure my last two were worth the struggle.
Total time = 38 minutes.
Thanks to Roly and Tango.