I found this to be one of those puzzles which feels quite tricky at the time, but then when you write up the blog you wonder why you made comparatively heavy weather of it. Nothing obscure, not much GK required, and perfectly fair cluing throughout – but still it put up stout resistance as far as I was concerned. And a very enjoyable challenge it was.
I’ll nominate 22a as my COTD, closely followed by the (slightly tricky) 6dn. Interested to see how you all get on.
Thanks to Orpheus for a good work out.
Definitions underlined: DD = double definition: anagrams indicated by ^(–): omitted letters indicated by {-}
| Across | |
| 1 | Do farm work quietly by Irish lake (6) |
| PLOUGH – P (quietly) + LOUGH (Irish lake) | |
| 4 | Ornamental tuft two little dogs displayed (6) |
| POMPOM – A couple of POMs (two little dogs) ‘displayed’ gives us the fluffy tuft | |
| 8 | Chose to imbibe last of alcohol, getting drunk (7) |
| PICKLED – PICKED (chose) takes in (imbibes) L (last of acohoL) | |
| 10 | Prickly shrub obtainable from heath or nursery (5) |
| THORN – Hidden in (obtainable from) heaTH OR Nursery | |
| 11 | District accommodating new stadium (5) |
| ARENA – AREA (district) takes in (accommodates) N (abbrev. New) | |
| 12 | Introduction to play — final part imminent (7) |
| PENDING – P (introduction to Play) + ENDING (final part) | |
| 13 |
Seminars involving Egyptian boy king, one entering exams (9) |
| TUTORIALS – TUT (Egyptian boy king) + I (one) ‘entering’ ORALS (exams) | |
| 17 | Bird taking water in French country house (7) |
| CHATEAU – CHAT (bird) + EAU (water). For anyone not familiar with the chat bird family (whinchat, stonechat etc.) this is worth remembering as it often crops up in crosswords. | |
| 19 | Arrive at stretch of river (5) |
| REACH – DD | |
| 20 | Greek character fencing in horned mammal (5) |
| RHINO – IN is ‘fenced’ by RHO (Greek character – 17th letter of the Greek alphabet) | |
| 21 |
Joy English originally outlined in ancient language (7) |
| ELATION – E (English) + O (first letter of – ‘originally’ – Outlined) inside LATIN (in ancient language) | |
| 22 | Campanologist’s double? (6) |
| RINGER – Neat concise cryptic definition – the bell ringer and the ‘dead ringer’ | |
| 23 | Upset, say, get theatrical (6) |
| STAGEY – *(SAY GET) with “upset” signalling the anagram | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Union leader leaves well-liked part of London (6) |
| POPLAR – U (Union leader) ‘leaves’ POP{u}LAR (well-liked) giving us the tough east end neighbourhood | |
| 2 | Terrible chore initially required in base — 15’s job? (13) |
| ORCHESTRATION – *(CHORE) – with “terribly” signposting the anagram – + R (initially Required) in STATION (base), giving us the ‘job’ of the scorer (i.e. one who composes a musical score) – which is the answer to 15d | |
| 3 | Chivalrous Liberal worker supporting young woman (7) |
| GALLANT – L (Liberal) + ANT (worker) below (supporting) GAL (young woman) | |
| 5 | Newspaper editor originally employed in cricket side frequently (5) |
| OFTEN – FT (newspaper) + E (Editor originally) included in (employed in) ON (cricket side – i.e. the leg / on side as opposed to the off side) | |
| 6 | Academic is rushing to secure start of this business arrangement (6-7) |
| PROFIT SHARING – PROF (academic) with IS HARING (is rushing) ‘securing’ T (start of This) | |
| 7 | Maiden takes a long time to cope (6) |
| MANAGE – M (maiden – cricket terminology) with (takes) AN AGE (a long time) | |
| 9 | Withdrawal of trade? Pure rubbish! (9) |
| DEPARTURE – *(TRADE PURE) with “rubbish” indicating the anagram | |
| 14 | Wild bears in a forest at last, side by side (7) |
| ABREAST – *(BEARS) – with “wild” signalling the anagram – ‘in’ A + T (a foresT at last) | |
| 15 | Person who may register twenty runs? (6) |
| SCORER – Cryptic definition based on twenty being a score | |
| 16 | Reason pub accepted noise made by horse (6) |
| WHINNY – INN (pub) ‘accepted’ by WHY (reason) | |
| 18 | Call up woman protecting old king (5) |
| EVOKE – EVE (woman) wraps around (protects) O K (old king) | |
The parsing for scorer is ‘score’ + ‘r’, so not a cryptic definition.
Anyway, all roads etc….
Edited at 2017-11-29 09:50 pm (UTC)
‘Nick the Novice often crops up – but never with his Time given. Thus we have no perameters by which to judge his
‘quite tricky’, ‘stout resistance’ and ‘challenge’. This blog is actually called, ‘Times for the Times!’
A New Year Resulution perhaps or follow the path of SNITCH and please give us your yardstick!
My time was 7.20 so I would say it was very average.
If there had to be a COD 9dn DEPARTURE
WOD 16dn WHINNY
Edited at 2017-11-29 02:15 am (UTC)
I’m afraid I shall on go with pen and paper and so am unlikely ever to know how long it took.
Templar
When the QC first came out in March 2014, I had the privilege of being invited to be a blogger (I had recently discovered the TftT forum as a genuine novice attempting the 15×15, and the then site administrator – Linxit – thought it would be a good idea to have some newbies blogging the new QC). I blogged QC number 3, and have continued as a QC blogger ever since.
The original statement of intent with regard to the role of the QC (by Richard Rogan, then Times crossword editor) was as follows: “it will be reduced in size and hopefully in difficulty too [relative to the 15×15], the intention being to introduce new people to cryptic crosswords, and to encourage those solvers who’d like to have a go at the main puzzle but feel daunted by it, or who can perhaps only solve a handful of clues”.
What happened? In the first couple of months, some new solvers started contributing to the TftT QC blogs, which was great. However, the majority of comments on the QC were from seasoned 15×15 campaigners who (as per the convention on the traditional TftT 15×15 blog) published their completion times – some of which were around the 4 minute mark.
Not surprisingly, the genuine newbies (i.e. the target market) found this intimidating / dispiriting, and a number of them raised this as an issue in the forum. This seemed eminently reasonable to me. A newcomer who is thrilled to have completed a QC in, say, 45 minutes who then goes to the forum and finds that most people are claiming completion times of 5 minutes or so is probably going to feel like a complete failure – whereas in fact they should be congratulated on their achievement.
As a result of these comments, there was something of a “policy” debate around month 3 of the QC as to whether it was appropriate for people to post their QC completion times. Of course, as a purely for fun hobbyist’s forum, the outcome of the debate was never going to “bind” anyone to any particular future conduct. However, bloggers and commenters were (to a degree) galvanised into taking a stance.
My personal conclusion was very clear. Given the intent of the QC, it seemed to me entirely wrong in principle to intimidate newcomers by posting completion times. Others took a different view – and of course, that’s fine too. But I have to remain true to my view. If this is unacceptable to the majority of the commenters on the QC site then I will happily resign my blogging spot.
In addition to the overall “philosophical” viewpoint stated above, I would also make the following more specific points:
1. The “etymology” point seems to me a complete red herring. When the TftT site was set up, the QC did not exist. The QC is a totally different animal. It is a good thing that the TftT site embraces the QC: it would be a bad thing if traditional aspects of the TftT site (such as giving solution times) undermined the overall intent and purpose of the QC.
2. Individual completion times seem to me a complete irrelevance in terms of indicating the degree of difficulty of a puzzle. Some might regard a 30 minute solve as indicating an “easy” solve: for others “easy” might equate to 5 minutes. It all depends on your level of experience and overall capability.
3. I personally think an indicator of “degree of difficulty” is useful – hence my use of “quite tricky”, “fairly straightforward” etc. etc. This seems to me far more useful than a solving time, given the point made in 2. above.
4. Finally I’ve personally never understood the interest in completion times for crosswords anyway. I suppose if you are someone who enters the competitions then these things matter. However, I’ve always regarded crosswords as a fun recreation rather than a competitive thing (I get plenty of competitive adrenalin flowing in my ‘real’ life). Rather, one might (in a loose kind of way) equate doing a crossword with recreational sex: it’s fun, and the longer it goes on the better – do you set a stop watch?
Anyway, if I may throw my 2 cents’ worth in:
1) Whether or not there’s a point to posting one’s times, there’s certainly no obligation on blogger or solver to do so.
2) This blog is not part of the Times, or a service of the Crossword Club. The introduction of Quickies was made by the Times, presumably for the purpose Richard Rogan articulates. That this blog took on the job of reporting on the Quickies was certainly a plus for solvers, especially new ones, but not part of any remit.
3) Which to me means that whether newcomers to the Times Cryptics are discouraged by faster times reported here than they at this stage can achieve is neither here nor there.
4) I started here 10 years ago, and I stank. But it certainly never occurred to me to be discouraged by the times I saw reported, any more than it would have discouraged me to see Tiger Woods’s scores (I also stink at golf). Frankly, I have little sympathy for those who have complained about seeing the gap between their times and those of more experienced solvers. If I were discouraged by my inferiority to others on a whole range of abilities, I would have given up on life. Those–I imagine there have indeed been some–who have given up because daunted by some solvers’ fast times probably did the right thing.
Given this (the times not the sex) is a recurring theme over the years, you may have had enough for one week (the times not the sex) but you may like to have a look through Tuesday’s blog comments where this all raised up. I’ve swung (once again I’m referring to times rather than anything else) from one approach to the other so may give the no-time side another try.
Edited at 2017-11-30 04:45 pm (UTC)
As me mum used to say – “don’t let the buggers get you down”.
Wasn’t 100% sure about chat/bird, pom/dog, or lough/irish lake but they have probably come up before and also the answers were quite biffable.
Three contenders for my COD: abreast, profit sharing and often.
Thanks Nick
NE corner stumped me again just like yesterday. ERSE?? Could not see POMPOM.
I parsed ‘15s’ job as the full back in Rugby Union who I thought might be orchestrating the defence…
Needed the blog to explain the parsing of TUTORIALS (thanks Nick) though it went in easily enough.
A pretty smooth solve completed well before London Bridge. Got held up on ELATION which was LOI – I was convinced there was an ancient language I was forgetting as I tried to shoehorn Etruscan in there! Finally spotted that “joy” had to be doing something … durr …
Thanks to Nick and Orpheus
Templar
I’ve now looked at yesterday’s blog – banker = river.
Another good QC I thought. 16 minutes for me. David
Still, to compensate I wrote in the equally-long 2d almost immediately without even bothering to solve the related 15d first. That and bunging in 13a TUTORIALS without reading further than “Seminars…” tells me I’m getting better at biffing.
Today I the stars aligned and I managed this one, and the Times and Guardian 15x15s all inside my target times, which hasn’t happened for a while. Thanks to setter and Nick.