With nine clues involving anagrams, I hope you all had your anagram hats close at hand today. I was pushed a little beyond my 15 minute target, finishing in 16:14. My last two in were ANNUAL and INTENDED. I very much liked some of the short answers: ETCH and AGAR in particular.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough.
| Across | |
| 1 | Zesty thing, failure (5) |
| LEMON – A double definition to open with.
The fifth definition of LEMON in my dictionary: “…a simpleton, a loser…”. I didn’t know this meaning: I knew the “lousy car” meaning and extrapolated from there. |
|
| 4 | Bright star seen in April, so extraordinary (7) |
| POLARIS – Anagram [extraordinary] of APRIL SO. | |
| 8 | Deliverer of food in rebuilt terrace (7) |
| CATERER – Anagram [rebuilt] of TERRACE. | |
| 9 | Eaglet ultimately has solitary short claw (5) |
| TALON – |
|
| 10 | Athlete blasted club (4,6) |
| SHOT PUTTER – SHOT (blasted, like a gun), PUTTER (golf club). | |
| 14 | Stop to pen a book (6) |
| ANNUAL – ANNUL (stop) containing [to pen] A.
This was my POI: I had the two As, but it took a good while for the “book” meaning of annual to dawn on me. |
|
| 15 | Position held by Pakistan, certainly (6) |
| STANCE – Hidden in [held by] |
|
| 17 | Weather set to change, darling (10) |
| SWEETHEART – Anagram [to change] of WEATHER SET. | |
| 20 | Broadcaster in South American city screening commercial (5) |
| RADIO – RIO (South American city) with AD (commercial) inside it [screening]. | |
| 22 | Snug clothes on in the near future (7) |
| TONIGHT – TIGHT (snug) surrounds [clothes] ON.
Clothes switches from a noun in the surface to a verb in the wordplay. |
|
| 23 | Tinkerer, one taking a bow? (7) |
| FIDDLER – Either a double definition, or a definition and a cryptic hint, the bow in question being a violin bow. | |
| 24 | World having change of heart (5) |
| EARTH – Anagram [change] of HEART. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Cuckoo caught by buffalo, comfortably (4) |
| LOCO – Hidden in [caught by] |
|
| 2 | Dog leads on many, unlikely terriers tethered (4) |
| MUTT – First letters [leads on] M |
|
| 3 | Remake has rotten direction (5-4) |
| NORTH-EAST – anagram [remake] of HAS ROTTEN.
Yes, I tried to make an anagram out of REMAKE HAS too. |
|
| 4 | Spread covering Irish Rover (6) |
| PIRATE – PATE (spread) covering IR for Irish.
Sallee Rovers were pirates in the Mediterranean in the 17th and 18th century. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen “rover” used to mean “pirate” without the “Sallee”, but it is the first definition in my dictionary. |
|
| 5 | Books on fire (3) |
| LIT – A double definition, the first being an abbreviation for literature. | |
| 6 | Telling tale, grin maniacally (8) |
| RELATING – Anagram [maniacally] of TALE GRIN. | |
| 7 | Newspaper airs bits and bobs (8) |
| SUNDRIES – SUN (newspaper), DRIES (airs). | |
| 11 | Complete cane broken: something to say? (9) |
| UTTERANCE – UTTER (complete) + an anagram [broken] of CANE. | |
| 12 | Sarnies organised with minimum of fuss, type without decoration (8) |
| SANSERIF – Anagram [organised] of SARNIES, plus the first letter [minimum] of F I had always thought this was two words, sans serif, meaning “without the twiddly bits”, but the dictionary has this spelling as an alternative. I would be failing in my blogging duty if I missed the chance to mention the nation of San Serriffe. This was published in The Guardian, which I seem to recall was the first major British newspaper to adopt a sans serif typeface. Coincidence? |
|
| 13 | Deliberate, one having finished absorbing religious books (8) |
| INTENDED – I (one) and ENDED (having finished) containing [absorbing] NT (New Testament – religious books).
This was my LOI, but once I got the crossing N from ANNUAL, it came quickly. |
|
| 16 | Person having a flutter fully recovered (6) |
| BETTER – A double definition, the first being slang for a small wager. | |
| 18 | Gelatinous substance a scrap of cloth picked up (4) |
| AGAR – A RAG (a scrap of cloth) backwards [picked up, since this is a down clue].
This one sent me the wrong way: I thought ‘picked up’ was a homophone indicator. No doubt exactly as intended. |
|
| 19 | Cut the new bandages carefully at first (4) |
| ETCH – an anagram [new] of THE contains [bandages] C |
|
| 21 | Bird on wall at regular intervals (3) |
| OWL – Every other letter [at regular intervals] of O |
|
From LOCO to ANNUAL in 7:28. Thanks Mara and Doofers.
9 minutes. Steady going until I hit ANNUAL at the end. I liked the original PIRATE for ‘Rover’ and the SHOT PUTTER; as pointed out by David1, apt for poor old Rory.
Thanks to Doofers and Mara
DNF. Gave up at 35 mins with 16d and 22a remaining. Not sure I would’ve got those last two anyway…
DNF.
Missed by one – 5 Down “Lit” I put “Lot” for some reason, just did not get Lit at all.
1 Down Loco. “In loco parentis” springs to mind, as my teacher friend put it – “the crazy parents”.
23 Across. Fiddler. Took ages to remember that fiddler has two “d”s.
12 Down. Sanserif. Took ages to work this out. Should have been easier because I studied fonts for a long time when I designed websites. Heigh-ho.
12 mins…
Got slightly excited at the prospect of a sub-10, but then threw it all away with a brain freeze on 14ac “Annual”. Some nice clues here, with some lovely surfaces.
FOI – 1ac “Lemon”
LOI – 14ac “Annual”
COD – 19dn “Etch” – great surface.
Thanks as usual!
Is better really fully recovered?
17/26.
13:28
Nothing to worry about here. Maybe took a little too long on LOI ANNUAL.
Quite happy with my 24-minute finish.
Started very well with 1a (LEMON) and 4a (POLARIS) going in early to provide seven starting letters.
The awkward clues for me were AGAR and ETCH, neither of which I parsed fully, and LOCO and PIRATE (my LOI), where the definitions were new to me.
Many thanks to Mara and Doofers.
SHOT PUTTER – great clue; SANSERIF held me up to 12mins, which isn’t bad for me
A more normal 38m finish today with ETCH and ANNUAL holding things up at the end.
The meaning of ‘pate’ as ‘spread’ has finally dropped. I couldn’t get bald heads out of my mind.
7.15 Luckily I did have my anagram hat on today. PIRATE needed a few visits and ETCH was LOI. SANSERIF is still horrible. Thanks Doofers and Mara.
DNF for me today, beaten by NE cluster of Polaris, pirate and sundries. April so gave me (I thought) solarxx and then I just got stuck in the mud! Lesson learned: do not fixate but play round with anagrams. I liked fiddler and shot putter – though again I spent a while trying to conjure up a type of golf putter with an h in the prefix: chip? Chop? Hey ho: if you DNF are you allowed a rest in the SCC?🤔
25:05 today, again not super stuck on anything but just pondering and talking myself through and getting everything parsed. FOI LOCO, LOI ANNUAL. Other hard clues were TONIGHT, NORTH-EAST, and PIRATE. Favorites were ETCH and SWEETHEART.
I note that it’s roughly six months since I first started doing the QC and quickly discovered TfTT. Thanks to you bloggers and commenters my frustration level has gone down and my skill level has gone up, and I’ve made the acquaintance of some charming internet personalities. If you care for stats: weekly average times started in the 40s, bounced around in the 30s and low 40s for a couple of months, ditto the 20s, 30s, and 40s into the fourth month, and now have settled in the 20s with occasional forays into the high teens.
Thanks to Mara and Doof!
Great progress- it’s good you get lots of pleasure from the experience too!
Excellent progress. You will soon be a blogger! 👍👍
You have made more progress in 6 months than I have made in 4 years.
blogger LOL
Well I don’t know about the importance of progress in speed. The main thing is I don’t get so frustrated any more. It’s a relaxing time that I look forward to every day. I might just keep getting slower from here. On purpose 🙃
We found this to be a fairly straightforward run through though LOI ANNUAL took us nearly a minute. 11:10.
I always enjoy a puzzle with plenty of anagrams. LOI ETCH.
Liked by this permanent inhabitant of the SCC (except when I’m on the special table). Thank you Mara, for me a fun, doable challenge. I’d not seen “bandages” for “includes” before (19d) but it made (crosswordland) sense.
14 minutes
No, I’m not happy with that. It took me 4-5 minutes to get my LOI, ETCH. I always find a way to muck it up.
I am a LEMON!
Thanks for the blog.
I am obviously the odd one out here as I thought this was a stinker. NHO of AGAR (although I wildly guessed it) or of LEMON = failure (again guessed with a shrug) or of PIRATE = rover as explained by our blogger. Couldn’t parse ETCH, either and needed some help to get SANSERIF as I only know this as SANS SERIF. A really bad day.