A puzzle that I thought was at the tougher end of the scale, with some less than commonplace vocabulary.
The crossword can be found here if the usual channels are unavailable: http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20151026/10374/
Definitions are underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | Peel’s first deed, producing treaty (4) |
| PACT – P (Peel’s first, i.e. the first letter of “Peel”) + ACT (deed) | |
| 3 | Steal a Kandinsky painting, for example? (8) |
| ABSTRACT – double definition, the second referring to the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, who (per WIkipedia) is “credited with painting one of the first purely abstract works” | |
| 9 | Rhode Island’s one and only savoury dish? (7) |
| RISSOLE – RIS (Rhode Island’s) + SOLE (one and only). Chambers: “A fried ball or cake of minced seasoned meat or fish coated in breadcrumbs” | |
| 10 | Rodent has change of heart, seeing big creature with horns (5) |
| MOOSE – MOuSE (Rodent) but wth the middle letter U (heart) changed to an O. Interestingly, this set of checkers cropped up in the first preliminary of the Times Crossword Championships just over a week ago, though with the answer MYOPE (and obviously a very different clue) – it took me ages to get MOOSE out of my mind at the time. | |
| 11 | Picked up sound made by group of animals, say (4) |
| HEARD – homophone (say) of HERD (group of animals) | |
| 12 | Abduct child, then take forty winks (6) |
| KIDNAP – KID (child) + NAP (take forty winks) | |
| 14 | Way Essex town’s character is an aid to progress (8-5) |
| STEPPING-STONE – ST (Way, i.e. street) + EPPINGS (Essex town’s) + TONE (character) | |
| 16 | Energetic person‘s awful Monday! (6) |
| DYNAMO – anagram (awful) of MONDAY | |
| 19 | Daggers supplied by old boy and priest (5) |
| OBELI – OB (old boy) + ELI (priest). An obelus (singular) is one of these: † | |
| 22 | In maturity the Italian is nimble (5) |
| AGILE – IL (the Italian, i.e. an Italian word for “the”) inside AGE (maturity) | |
| 23 | Recently clothed in bright colour – as mother and daughter are (7) |
| RELATED – LATE (Recently) inside (clothed in) RED (bright colour) | |
| 24 | Regretful writer, one given shelter (8) |
| PENITENT – PEN (writer) + I (one) + TENT (shelter) | |
| 25 | Musical atmosphere met by Handel at first (4) |
| HAIR – H (Handel at first, i.e. the first letter of “Handel”) + AIR (atmosphere). The rival of Evita for the title of Crosswordland’s most popular musical. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Buy leverage (8) |
| PURCHASE – double definition | |
| 2 | Conspirator involved in Guernica’s capture? (5) |
| CASCA – hidden (involved) in GuerniCA’S CApture. One of Caesar’s assassins. | |
| 4 | Chicken thieves may do it, and also if caught in the act! (5,4,1,3) |
| BREAK INTO A RUN – double definition, the first literal and referencing a chicken run | |
| 5 | Mousy chap a girl’s thrown over (5) |
| TIMID – TIM (chap) + reversal (thrown over) of DI (a girl) | |
| 6 | Fruit provided by a very old accountant at party (7) |
| AVOCADO – A + V (very) + O (old) + CA (accountant) + DO (party) | |
| 7 | Arduous march leaders of the Royal Engineers finally undertook (4) |
| TREK – TRE (leaders of the Royal Engineers, i.e. the first letters of “the Royal Engineers) + K (finally undertook, i.e. the last letter of “undertook”) | |
| 8 | Delay in violent robbery? (4-2) |
| HOLD-UP – double definition | |
| 13 | Display greater ferocity to confuse (8) |
| BEWILDER – BE WILDER (Display greater ferocity) | |
| 15 | Blissfully happy Welsh girl supporting Cambs city (7) |
| ELYSIAN – SIAN (Welsh girl) after (supporting) ELY (Cambs city). Probably most often encountered in the phrase “Elysian fields”, which itself is probably most often encountered as the French “Champs-Elysees”. | |
| 16 | Damages booty (6) |
| SPOILS – double definition | |
| 18 | Expert in a small section of store (5) |
| ADEPT – A + DEPT (small section of store, i.e. a shortened version of the word “department”). My second Quick cryptic in a row with this answer. | |
| 20 | Exceptionally wide, for example (5) |
| EXTRA – double definition, the second referring to an example of an extra in cricket | |
| 21 | Possesses penny to get hinged plate (4) |
| HASP – HAS (Possesses) + P (penny) | |
I can see why it’s a big jump from the Quickie to the ‘big’ puzzle. They might try to make the Quickie just a little harder without going too far.
As for my times, if you look at my blogs for the daily puzzle, you will see that I regularly take 3 or 4 times as long as the best solvers. In the puzzle I blogged today, my time was beaten by nearly everyone.
In response to vinyl1, the difficulty of Quickies varies quite a lot and there were a couple last week that struck me as really quite hard. On such days there are usually adverse comments from newbies so I think over a period of, say, a week, the setters and editor have the level pitched about right if they don’t want to put people off and still encourage more to come on board. The level of difficulty of the main puzzle varies quite a lot too.
Obeli was a new word but the wordplay was there. I also looked up who Kandinski was, and I’m ashamed that I needed three checkers to solve a 6 letter anagram. The only bit of parsing I didn’t see was ‘be’ in 13D, which led to it being my LOI, but it’s obvious now.
Brian