Time: 09:02. Just about the right degree of difficulty for me. Not everything was a write-in but there wasn’t anything unreasonably convoluted or esoteric. My favourites were the mental picture of the louche aristocrat sipping a cocktail at the social function in the Berkshire town and the implicitly cross-referenced 22a and 20d.
No big deal but we have a (probably inadvertent) Nina here – has anyone spotted it?
Thanks to Shay
Definitions underlined in bold, deletions and letters in wordplay not appearing in answer indicated by strikethrough.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Returned mate’s make-up (4) |
| SLAP – Reversal (‘Returned’) of PALS (‘mate’s)
I’ve only ever heard SLAP for ‘make-up’ referring to theatrical make-up. The definition in Chambers specifically mentions this and the Oxford Dictionaries def has the term as informal for any cosmetics, “especially when applied thickly or carelessly”. |
|
| 3 | Son packed and fled (8) |
| SCRAMMED – S (‘Son’) CRAMMED (‘packed’) | |
| 9 | Physical therapist uses arm vigorously (7) |
| MASSEUR – Anagram (‘vigorously’) of USES ARM | |
| 10 | My animal’s coat is pink (5) |
| CORAL – COR (‘My’) A |
|
| 11 | Dance beat with verve (5) |
| TANGO – TAN (‘beat’) GO (‘verve’)
Echoes of Tom Lehrer. |
|
| 12 | Inevitably result in ear, nose and throat trouble. (6) |
| ENTAIL – ENT (‘ear, nose and throat’) AIL (‘trouble’)
I did wonder if the ‘ear, nose and throat’ should have been capitalised to indicate the medical specialty or hospital department. As far as I know (and a quick look at the dictionaries backs this up) E, N and T do not stand for ear, nose and throat respectively in any usage other than the ENT initialism. |
|
| 14 | Sign of unusually fine anatomist (13) |
| MANIFESTATION – Anagram (‘unusually’) of FINE ANATOMIST | |
| 17 | Snooze in second-row seat (6) |
| DROWSE – Hidden (‘in’) I’ve been having a very bad run at spotting hiddens lately – this not very difficult clue was one of my LOI’s. |
|
| 19 | On reflection, Channel Islands school is fabulous (5) |
| MAGIC – Reversal (‘On reflection’) of CI (‘Channel Islands’) and GAM (‘school’)
GAM for ‘school’ of whales, a setters’ favourite. |
|
| 22 | Mental picture of one’s later years (5) |
| IMAGE – I’M (‘One’s’) AGE (‘later years’)
I’M for “I am” = “one is”, with “one” used for the first person. I imagine ‘Mental’ was included to help the surface reading. See also 20d. |
|
| 23 | Our pets running amok in carriage (7) |
| POSTURE – Anagram (‘running amok’) of OUR PETS
‘Carriage’ as in deportment or physical bearing and nothing to do with a vehicle. |
|
| 24 | Children of humble cook (5,3) |
| SMALL FRY – SMALL (‘humble’) FRY (‘cook’) | |
| 25 | Imitates war poets every so often (4) |
| APES – Alternate letters (‘every so often’) of |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Former tommies bursting with energy (8) |
| SOMETIME – Anagram (‘bursting’) of TOMMIES and E (‘energy’) | |
| 2 | Incendiary crime of vicar after power cut (5) |
| ARSON – |
|
| 4 | Cleaner reprimands one in tears (6,7) |
| CARPET SWEEPER – CARPETS (‘reprimands’) WEEPER (‘one in tears’) | |
| 5 | Starts to arrange social function in Berkshire town (5) |
| ASCOT – A The surface reading is misleadingly inviting us to to separate the ‘social’ and the ‘function’. I only did General Mathematics in Year 12 at school and never got as far as the cotangent or COT which is the ratio of the adjacent side to the opposite side in a right-angled triangle, or the reciprocal of the tangent; I’d better stop there. |
|
| 6 | Swallow one cocktail (7) |
| MARTINI – MARTIN (‘Swallow’) I (‘one’)
My AI tells me that although a swallow and a martin look similar and belong to the same family Hirundinidae they are separate species with different colouring and physical characteristics such as tail shape. Still, close enough for crossword purposes although some twitchers may disagree! |
|
| 7 | Twerp from Telford periodically turned up (4) |
| DOLT – Reversed alternate letters (‘periodically turned up’) in T The famous engineer Thomas Telford, after whom the town was named, cracked a mention in QC 3293 which I blogged a couple of weeks ago. |
|
| 8 | Extremely louche aristocrat allowed to go unpunished (3,3) |
| LET OFF – L Amusing surface. |
|
| 13 | Underwear thieves reported (8) |
| KNICKERS – Aural wordplay (‘reported’) of NICKERS (‘thieves’) | |
| 15 | Ultimate goal of Buddhist group (7) |
| NIRVANA – Double definition
The final goal of Buddhism and the American rock band – Kurt Cobain et al. |
|
| 16 | Practically lost, am flustered (6) |
| ALMOST – Anagram (‘flustered’) of LOST AM | |
| 18 | Said we’ll go round (5) |
| WHEEL – Aural wordplay (‘Said’) of WE’LL | |
| 20 | Surly type finally staying behind (5) |
| GRUMP – See also 22a. |
|
| 21 | Fail to notice girl (4) |
| MISS – Double definition | |
I didn’t understand the wordplay for nirvana, and thought it was nearly a straight definition, an escapee from the concise. I did struggle a bit with the long anagram, but carpet sweeper was obvious – we’ve had a lot of the trainspotter style clues lately.
Time: 7:42
All those albums, but no Nirvana!?
Ha! I missed the group as well – it just seemed to be a straight clue.
The long anagrams set me back a bit and some other clues were quite hard, but I got there in 8.25. Thanks Shay and BR.
A few Bif then Parse clues NIRVANA, MAGIC, ASCOT in a very doable puzzle to finish once again on the right side of 20mins. COD ASCOT with NIRVANA just behind.
Thanks Bletch and Shay.
9 minutes, and another sub-10 to encourage me after a long spell without any. That’s 3 of the last 4 QCs. Such a shame about my disastrous effort on Saturday that interrupted the run.
I missed the double definition of NIRVANA, although having read the blog I realise I was vaguely aware of some sort of a pop group of that name.
A very solid 8 on the first pass of acrosses and then quite a few downs. I found it amazingly hard to unscramble ALMOST, had to come back to it twice and only got there when all three checkers were in place. Also wasted time on ASCOT not being sure of what a ‘cot’could be – thanks Bletchers. But it was needing to keep coming back to MANIFESTATION that really slowed me down. Special mention for the surface that led to CORAL – very good. All green in 12.27.
There was an earlier group called Nirvana on Island Records, who had a big hit with ‘Rainbow Chaser’ in 1968. During a performance of it on French TV Salvador Dali threw black paint on them.
Never parsed ASCOT (cot for a function is several levels above me), or MAGIC (I may have heard of GAM for what I would more often call a Pod of whales, but if so I’d forgotten it) or NIRVANA (NHO the group so thought it was just a simple, and rather surprising, single definition. But all 3 biffable. and with the two 13-letter clues going on quite quickly this led to a pleasant 11:53 solve. I’ll take that for a puzzle by Shay.
Many thanks BR for the blog.
COT reminded me how we were taught to remember the ratios, switching O and A for COSIN etc
SINbad Ordered His
SECond Hamburger And
TANkard Of Ale
Absolutely useless in life, as was learning to use books of tables when calculators were available
It was SOHCAHTOA for me !
Me too. 😀
Snap! Fond memories 🙂
Wow! That’s dredged up the mnemonic we used for SIN, COS & TAN which I haven’t thought of for almost 50 years:
Saints On High
Can Always Have
Tea or Alcohol
It was soh toa cah for me.
Silly Old Hitler
Caused Awful Headaches
To Our Airmen?
OHMS : opposite over hypotenuse means sine.
One Ancient Teacher Of History Swore At His Class
Though I’ve no idea whether we’re multiplying or dividing them.
I’ve got a maths degree.
Our maths teacher taught “Sex on hard concrete always hurts the old age”
All going nicely and pretty quick until totally breezeblocked with entail. At 15.20 after about 3 minutes of alpha trawling, revealed a letter to get over the line 😕
Thanks BR for the blog, needed your help for COT, gam and Nirvana.
Thanks Shay
All green in 6:52 – like others needed Bletchley’s assistance to fully understand NIRVANA , ASCOT and MAGIC so thanks!
Nothing to scare the horses, but I was another who had NIRVANA down as a very mildly cryptic definition.
Started with SLAP and finished with CARPET SWEEPER in 5.57.
Thanks to BR and Shay
12:34 very in keeping with the beat of Nirvana if I’m not mistaken. Almost magic and no small fry sums up my difficulties, do no rare sub ten today.
But my thanks might lift and separate one’s spirits…
Ta BRAS
Well, Shay seems to be softening a little if this actual QC is anything to go by. I quite enjoyed it – good, fair clues and I only had to biff a couple. I liked the anagrams – MANIFESTATION slipped in quickly as soon as I had M_N…. from SOMETIME and NIRVANA (didn’t get the band, just the straight def.) Didn’t parse MAGIC or ASCOT – NHO GAM or COT in this context (clearly my University Maths has fled my memory). LOI GRUMP 13.58
Thanks to Shay and to BR whose blog I will now explore further.
P.s. is anybody having trouble with this site? I am constantly being logged off after posting without doing anything. I am then taken around a doom loop which ends up on my Profile page but am then chucked off when I try to exit that page. I did make a few typos that needed correcting before I got my post right today. Perhaps it is just me?
However, it happened yesterday and today. Luckily, I learned years ago to copy and save before posting……
My post seemed to vanish after ‘posting’ today so I re-posted and then found it was duplicated on this page.
The same tiresome thing used to happen to me until Penny suggested I tick the Remember Me box *before* entering my details.
After doing that, I have remained logged-in, fingers crossed.
Thanks. Yes, I normally do that and I then remain logged in for weeks. I did clear my cache a few days ago but always expect to have to log in again (once) after doing that, of course.
Enjoyable puzzle. I knew NIRVANA from Buddhism and VHO rock band.
CNP ASCOT, CORAL or MAGIC.
LOI ENTAIL.
Liked MARTINI, CARPET SWEEPER.
Thanks vm, BR.
8:10 for me today. I failed to remember (again) GAM for school so assumed it was some abbreviation that I’d never heard of. Recently my partner, a teacher, told me that you have to encounter a word in 7 different contexts for it to be truly remembered. This obviously explains why I miss the same things over and over. Also missed the “group” part for Nirvana, despite them being firmly in my era.
Can anyone help me out with a substitution where AGE = later years?
Lighter than I like my QCs, but the sort of puzzle I should be completing much more quickly, still sub 9 mins is better than my average
TYTBAS
Yes, they’re very close but I had troubles with an exact substitution of AGE (rather than old age) and ‘later years’. The best I could come up with was the not very satisfactory “Like a good wine he improves with age / in his later years” though I agree this only sort of works.
Last six took a while, and ASCOT, CORAL, MAGIC and SMALL FRY more or less guessed. NHO band/group NIRVANA, nor GAM, and function = COT is difficult. But somehow it all went in. LOI CARPET SWEEPER. Thanks, BR.
Blighter: I too liked the anagrams. We seem to have had a similar experience.
Yes. Anagrams (especially long ones) always open things up early for me.
NHO GAM, or COT function (although knew SIN, COS & TAN). MER SWALLOW = MARTIN, but none of these held me up. Thanks BR for filling in the gaps in my knowledge and Shay for the enjoyable puzzle.
NHO GAM, or COT function (although knew SIN, COS & TAN). MER SWALLOW = MARTIN, but none of these held me up. Thanks BR for filling in the gaps in my knowledge and Shay for the enjoyable puzzle.
19:48 – a fairly average time. 4 unparsed: ASCOT, GAM, MAGIC and CORAL. SCRAMMED biffed – don’t remember ever having come across it before. I suppose MARTIN = SWALLOW is just about allowed in a crossword.
My thanks to Shay and BletchleyReject.
Pretty much top to bottom solve. I enjoyed the 4d carpeted weeper and the louche toff at 8d and silent K nickers at 13d. Didn’t parse 15d Nirvana properly.
Didn’t initially spot that 17a Drowse was a hidden. Didn’t spot the Nina. No surprise at either of those.
Spured on by a quick 1ac/d start and some surprisingly friendly cluing from Shay, the top half of the grid went in without too much bother. . . and without too much thought either. A bifd Carpet Shampoo🙄 came back to bite in the SW corner. It took a belated spot of Drowse (40 😉) to finally realise that all was not well with 4d.
The upshot of ignoring the need to parse on the go was a standing room only solve, with CoD to Entail for the pdm. Invariant
I put in both MAGIC and ASCOT confident that both were correct, but struggling with the parsing relating to GAM and COT. I know we’ve seen the former before, but I never remember it. A good solid puzzle from Shay that kept me occupied for 11.15. A disproportionate amount of that time was spent trying to unravel the long anagram.
Long time since I remember seeing GAM in a QC if I ever did. Would have been back when I started in 2021-22.
9:31 for the solve for the Quitch. Fastest time on a Shay puzzle but can’t say I enjoyed it as I felt they’d gone out of their way to obscure the definitions and some synonyms e.g. sometime=former; practically=almost, sign=manifestation; posture=carriage; age=later years; drowse, scrammed; while NHO GAM or COT. Felt more like the clueing I’d see in a full size puzzle. Don’t mind the occasional sticking point but this felt like it had too many. Those complaints aside appreciate the surface were decent and enjoyed SMALL-FRY
Thanks to BR and Shay
17:18 for me. Had forgotten GAM was a school of whales and don’t remember ever coming across cotangent although it did sound familiar when I thought about it. Liked DROWSE and CORAL. LOI was CARPET SWEEPER. Thanks BR and Shay.
A little tricky in places. Didn’t understand COT but ASCOT came straight to me. I grew up in Bracknell and my 8-year-old self would often go into Ascot on the big race days to take photos of police motorcycles 🤣
Was reluctant to enter CORAL at first but with the letters already present it just had to be.
First Lap: 11
Answered (no help): 23
Answered (helped): 3
Time: 26:00
Shay the Merciless softens a little … but GAM for school and COT for function were too good for me, and because I failed to notice the significance of “group” I too hesitated long over NIRVANA as too easy. But my main hold up came from typing SOMETMIE, so that MANIFESTATION looked as though it started I-N-F …. It wasn’t until I sorted that out that I could finish in 08:04 for a Disappointing Day.
COD to SMALL FRY, lovely clue. Many thanks Shay and Bletchers.
I take issue with SMALL FRY; I don’t understand how the singular noun fits the plural definition.
All the meanings of SMALL FRY in Collins are plural:
1. people or things regarded as unimportant
2. young children
3. young or small fishes
I accept it based on the dictionary entries (thanks, by the way), but is that how the term actually gets used in the UK? What’s wrong with ‘small fries’?
Yes, I think that is how the term is used. Same word singular and plural for fish, ditto fry- their offspring (and offspring is another one!) Small fries is more appropriate to a Maccy D’s.
A dismal 18 minutes.
All solved bar three in seven minutes and then, as usual, the fog descended and I took ages to get DROWSE, WHEEL and SMALL FRY (NHO in context of children). Missing a hidden is not good but I was fixated on the word beginning with B (for second-row).
Disappointed with that.
Five short on 15 x 15 in an hour.
I seem to remember finding a Shay puzzle particularly tricky some time ago. This one, however, was spot on for a QC. LOI was MAGIC because I needed to check the meaning of GAM. Cuppa still acceptably warm when I finished.
Thanks Shay and BR
16:38
Had to get all but one checker to see CARPET SWEEPER and then spent a full 4 minutes on my last one in -d’oh!
All parsed bar, as some others, the ‘group’ half of NIRVANA.
FOI: MASSEUR
LOI: ENTAIL
COD: SMALL FRY
Thanks to Shay and Bletchley
From SLAP to DROWSE (which seemed rather well hidden!) in 6:28. Needed crossers to unscramble SOMETIME. I have a CD of NIRVANA Unplugged in New York. Gave my daughters a surprise when they saw it! Thanks Shay and BR.
16:05
SW corner was the tough part. LOI DROWSE.
SCRAMMED seemed to have a lot of words that might fit : S/TRAPPED, S/CREAMED etc
Saw COT but had forgotten all about GAM, which is a bit obscure for a QC
COD CARPET SWEEPER
7:49 but…
…inexplicably entered DROWZE. Didn’t like WHEEL as a homophone of WE’LL though it’s probably correct – WE’LL is pronounced WILL in my book
Thanks BR and Shay
VHO gam but not cot, although liked both clues. COD CORAL. Another gentle one completed in leisurely fashion. LOI MANIFESTATION. Another not fully appreciating NIRVANA until reading the blog. Many thanks both.
I made a right meal of this one, taking 15:08. Not sure what the problem was, I can only chalk it up to my brain not working properly.
Thank you for the blog!
I briefly had the album “Nevermind” by NIRVANA, but I quickly tired of grunge as a genre and donated it to a local charity shop.
This was, I thought, a nicely pitched QC with some lovely surfaces.
FOI SLAP
LOI GRUMP
COD CARPET SWEEPER
TIME 3:33 (nicely symmetrical)
7.41 Quicker than yesterday. The GK was familiar except for GAM. DROWSE was LOI. It’s frequently a hidden. Thanks BR and Shay.
Definitely a lot more approachable than some of Shay’s past offerings, and all the more enjoyable for that. As we were saying over the last few days, it’s lovely to have an easier challenge every now and then (especially when as well clued as yesterday’s), but it’s also nice to have a bit of a challenge, without feeling that you’re being put through the wringer. For me, this hit the spot. Some of the clues took a bit of unravelling (SOMETIME, DROWSE, ASCOT), others were very accessible, and I was surprised to come in at under 10 minutes.
Such neat cluing – I really liked CORAL, DROWSE, POSTURE and LET OFF. Smells Like Teen Spirit – no problem here! Only one really caused any trouble. I didn’t know / remember cot in this context – sine is my go-to for that sort of function – so although ASCOT was the obvious answer, I couldn’t parse it.
8:14 FOI Martini (because I saw it immediately as I picked up the print-out) LOI Wheel COD and AOD Manifestation
Thanks Shay and BR
Eventually struggled over the line when I spotted the hidden in 17ac, which netted 18d with a groan after 35 mins Defintely me not the puzzle, though I am in the nho gam and cot club.
FOI Masseur
LOI Wheel
COD Small fry
thanks Shay and BR
All ok, but NHO ‘gam’
09.02. Dead heat with our esteemed blogger.
12:28 for me, all parsed bar the heard-of-but-forgotten GAM for “school”. Maybe this time it will stick. COD to MARTINI, a very neat and smooth clue.
Thanks to Shay and BR.
With only three clues solved (MASSEUR, CORAL and APES) after six minutes or so I thought I was in for a rough ride today. However, my expectations were proved wrong, my pace picked up and I crossed the line in around 22 minutes. This is quick for me and secured me a decent table in the SCC.
Not sure if I have ever come across gam for school or DROWSE as a word, and I wouldn’t expect the choice of function in ASCOT to be GK to non-mathematicians. Fortunately, I are one, as I demonstrate ALMOST every time I flounder my way through a word puzzle such as this.
CoD: SMALL FRY
LOI: DROWSE
Thanks to BR and Shay
DNF Entail being the missing one despite the checkers.
Took a long time to get on Shays wavelength to parse the answers.
Thanks Shay and Bletchley
I did the 15×15 first today, which meant this seemed very easy indeed! For all that, I didn’t understand COT, despite the answer being obvious. On reading 19a I simply wrote it in as I read it, CI followed by GAM, so that I had the answer as I finished reading the clue. Doesn’t happen often, but fun when it does. My only near miss was with 1d, where I vaguely thought I remembered a former as being a teaching book like an ABC (probably thinking of primer), so entered SEMITOME at first before having a rethink and redistributing the vowels in the more obvious manner!
I enjoyed this despite (because of?) words like scram (Mallory Towers anyone) and drowse/dolt: fun anagrams and clear clueing throughout. Slap is surely pretty current usage for obvious or overdone make-up? My cod was 4d and if I come across someone in tears I’ll be sure to carpet them. 15m in total and good fun along the way. Thanks Shay and Bletchley!
11 mins…
Considering it was Shay, this was definitely on the easier side. I thought COT might be a mathematical function, but I couldn’t recall what – even though I did A-Level Maths. I knew Sine, Cosine and Tangent and have no doubt I probably looked at Cotangents as well – but what part of trigonometry (or maybe even calculus) would have me dusting off my old A-Level files in the attic (yes – I still have them 😀). Not sure I remember seeing “Gam” for school before – so I will have to try and remember that.
FOI – 1ac “Slap”
LOI – 12ac “Entail”
COD – 15dn “Nirvana”
Thanks as usual!
11:03 for probably my nimblest Shay time. Can only echo the above re: gam, cot and the few rather shruggy synonyms already mentioned; that said, I’ll cheerfully take it over previous half hour tussles so no complaints!
Thanks to Shay & BR.
09:18. quite tricky, a great puzzle with some harder surfaces and wordplay. really liked this one.
My solve time on this was is massively inflated because I left my computer active and failed to pause the timer several times. That said it was probably still close to half an hour of actual effort to get a solution.
Slap and Carpet were both used in wildly unfamiliar ways but I got there in the end. MANIFESTATION and SOMETIME were my favourites, despite the former being one of those extremely long anagrams that I am hopeless to solve without tedious labour or a preponderance of checking letters.
Time: 1:14:42