A very enjoyable puzzle, with a good mixture of clue types and difficulties. I started off at a gallop, getting 3 of the first 4 acrosses in seconds, but then I slowed down. A lot. I ended up finishing in 23:31, with SERPENT and MIRE being the last two in, and probably accounting for a good 5 minutes of that time.
The stand-out clues for me today were FLASHLIGHT, SHELLFISH, MIRE (eventually!) and PROFOUND.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough.
| Across | |
| 1 | Name of monarchs, primarily John, Anne, Mary, Elizabeth and Stephen (5) |
| JAMES – First letters [primarily] of John, Anne, Mary, Elizabeth, and Stephen.
A gimme to get started. |
|
| 4 | Delighted to do work cleaning Mediterranean (7) |
| CHARMED – CHAR (to do work cleaning) + MED (standard abbreviation). | |
| 8 | Dragon exhausted eating queen quite recently (7) |
| SERPENT – SPENT (exhausted) containing [eating] ER (queen quite recently).
This was one of my last 2 in: I had the second E as a crosser, so I was trying to find words that matched S___ERT. |
|
| 9 | Trainee acted strangely (5) |
| CADET – Anagram [strangely] of ACTED. | |
| 10 | Isolated state of country after a deception (10) |
| ALIENATION – NATION (country) after A LIE (a deception). | |
| 14 | Stay with mother in control (6) |
| REMAIN – MA (mother) in REIN (control). | |
| 15 | Holiday worker lacking occupation (6) |
| VACANT – VAC (abbreviation for vacation: holiday) + ANT (worker).
“Lacking occupation” as in “not occupied”. |
|
| 17 | What can relieve the gloom of strike during journey by air (10) |
| FLASHLIGHT – LASH (strike) inside [during] FLIGHT (journey by air).
What a great clue. The surface reading is so smooth. |
|
| 20 | Typical guest unable to be regularly ignored (5) |
| USUAL – Every other letter [to be regularly ignored] of gUeSt UnAbLe. | |
| 22 | Baseball player in jug (7) |
| PITCHER – Double definition.
Making sense of the surface reading depends on knowing that “jug” can mean “jail”. |
|
| 23 | Suspect male reader is one into fantasy (7) |
| DREAMER – Anagram [suspect] of M for male and READER. | |
| 24 | Child’s first with yen for American sweets (5) |
| CANDY – First letter of Child [Child’s first] + AND (with) + Y (abbreviation for yen, the currency). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Only fair (4) |
| JUST – A double definition. | |
| 2 | Notes area of boggy ground (4) |
| MIRE – MI + RE (two notes in the do-re-mi naming of notes).
And now I’ve got Julie Andrews stuck in my head. This was my last one in: I was trying to get A for Area at the end, but when the R from SERPENT came, the penny dropped. |
|
| 3 | Food Molly Malone sells she will char? (9) |
| SHELLFISH – SHE’LL (she will) + FISH (char, a type of fish).
From the song “Molly Malone”: “She wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow, crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive-alive-o'”. Cockles and mussels being shellfish. |
|
| 4 | Strange cult with alien food (6) |
| CUTLET – Anagram [strange] of CULT + ET (alien, from the film).
Oh dear. It took me an embarrassingly large number of attempts to assemble the fairly obvious parts into a word that actually meant some type of food. “cluttet, culett…” |
|
| 5 | Source of light in the middle of equinox month (3) |
| ARC – the middle letters of A two-step solve, first getting the month and then taking the middle letters. We don’t often see clues like this in the Quickie, but the crossers were very friendly. |
|
| 6 | Mostly Spanish city girl’s song (8) |
| MADRIGAL – MADRI |
|
| 7 | Go off assignation outside school (8) |
| DETONATE – DATE (assignation) outside ETON (school). | |
| 11 | A hepcat? It is awful cool (9) |
| APATHETIC – Anagram [awful] of A HEPCAT IT.
That’s “cool” in the sense of “not interested”, not in the “stylish” sense. |
|
| 12 | Demanding deep study on behalf of institute (8) |
| PROFOUND – PRO (on behalf of) + FOUND (institute, as a verb meaning to start). | |
| 13 | Naive admission of older age (8) |
| IMMATURE – I’M MATURE. ‘Nuff said. | |
| 16 | What’s cured sleeper (6) |
| KIPPER – Another double definition.
A bit of a chestnut, but I still needed all the crossers. |
|
| 18 | Fine item’s not quite finished (4) |
| THIN – THIN |
|
| 19 | Soldiers being very foolish (not British) (4) |
| ARMY – |
|
| 21 | Los Angeles motorway hit hard (3) |
| LAM – LA (Los Angeles) + M (motorway, as in M1). | |
Very pleased to finish today after yesterday’s complete failure.
Some really amusing clues.
Given the rain recently we have too many meres
23:17
Made a real mess of this. Convinced myself that the food in 4dn was LETUCE with one T. Only when I rechecked my answers did I see it wouldn’t work as an anagram of cult with ET even if it was spelt correctly. That allowed CHARMED and LOI ALIENATION. About 10 minutes on the last 3!
28 minutes.
I haven’t read any other comments as I am too embarrassed to see how many good times there are. A real festival of failure today, reinforcing my belief that I lack the competence to ever be a good solver.
Got DETONATE but was in such a hurry that I somehow mangled the letters. This stupid, idiotic error cost me time. As always, too many avoidable mistakes.
Totally stressed out by today’s experience. I’m heading for another dismal ending to the week. The harder I try, the worse I get!
Oh dear
10:37 – a quick start, in fact I saw 1d JUST as soon as I picked up my printout, but slowed down in the SW corner. BUT mere instead of MIRE – WOE is me again.
FOI Just LOI Immature COD Cadet
Thanks Joker and Doofers
An excellent mix of clues from Joker provided an entertaining visit to Costa this afternoon. Starting with no crossers I was sure that 4a was Lettuce until I ran out of squares…then with 4a providing ‘C’ I was able to resolve it correctly. Some very easy ones and some needing some working through, but all fair enough. A pleasure to complete.
FOI 1a James
LOI 12d Profound
COD 13a Immature.
Busy day so late start on this. Needed help from The Gentleman for the baseball player and for Molly Mallone.
Lots to make me smile. Loved the trainee acting strangely. I’ve met a few in my time.
Anyway this hepcat enjoyed the rock’n’roll so thanks Joker and Doofers
Delighted to have finished in just under an hour after much head scratching and angst.
CofD 17a and LOI 12d
Thanks for the entertainment Joker and Doof for the explanations, two of which I failed to parse.
Enjoyable enough in the round and some fun clues. But I’m not keen on SERPENT = dragon! And I had MERE, so DNF. Silly me.
PROFOUND was the only word that could fit the checkers but I couldn’t work out the straight definition (which I actually quite like now I understand it) or the parsing. Though I still can’t convince myself PRO can mean “on behalf of” as a standalone word. As far as I’m aware it either means “in favour of” or is a part of several borrowed Latin phrases in which, yes, it means “for” (i.e. on behalf of), but you wouldn’t ever use it on its own in that context. So, sure, “The lawyer acts pro bono (publico)” means “The lawyer acts on behalf of the public good”, but you’re not going to say “the lawyer acts pro the public good” or “The other lawyer acts pro her client”. Or are you? What have I missed?
Thanks Joker and Doofers.
The only example I found was “proconsul”, being someone who acted on behalf of the consul. So not a stand-alone word, as you say.