The Don has given us a witty and approachable puzzle today, with no obscurities and a masterclass in smooth, economical cluing. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was only really held up by having to trawl for LOI 23a on my way to 06:05. Hope you all liked it too.
Definitions underlined in bold.
| Across | |
| 1 | Food communications that are unwanted (4) |
| SPAM – double definition. The pink stuff you used to get at school, that was a bit like meat but wasn’t, was apparently originally called “spiced ham” but the manufacturer launched an internal competition to rename it – the winner came up with SPAM and got $100. The word later came to mean unwanted electronic communications, as a reference to the Monty Python “spam” sketch in which every dish on the menu comes with more and more spam, whether you like it or not. | |
| 4 | What operator of cannon will do as a lively person (8) |
| FIREBALL – if you let off a cannon you would FIRE a BALL. Ho ho! Was it Bertie Wooster who got his Old Testament in a muddle and said that Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day but a ball of fire by night? | |
| 8 | Communications taking a long time to get to army room? (8) |
| MESSAGES – MESS is an army room; AGES are a long time. | |
| 9 | Some start showing skills (4) |
| ARTS – hidden (“some”) inside “start showing”. | |
| 10 | One in vehicle is conceited (4) |
| VAIN – I inside VAN. | |
| 11 | Be in pain, landing ashore (8) |
| BEACHING – BE for “be”, ACHING for “in pain”. | |
| 12 | Hesitation after beloved becomes more expensive (6) |
| DEARER – ER for “hesitation” after DEAR for “beloved”. | |
| 14 | Tragic king’s about to go to India or some other country (6) |
| ISRAEL – King LEAR’S our customary tragic royal and he gets to use this week’s silent apostrophe. He goes backwards (“about”) to give us SRAEL, which then meets I for India (Nato alphabet). Thus we get “some other country” (ie a country which is not India). Clever and smooth; COD from me. | |
| 16 | Friends knocked over by explosive sound immediately (4-4) |
| SLAP-BANG – “friends” are “pals”; reverse them (“knocked over”) and you get SLAP, followed by BANG for “explosive sound”. Collins does give “In a violent, sudden or noisy manner” for SLAP-BANG so I suppose “immediately” is OK as a definition but it felt a bit of a stretch because I’ve only come across this in the phrase “slap bang in the middle of” something or somewhere. | |
| 18 | Swimmer enveloped in surf is happy (4) |
| FISH – hidden inside “surf is happy”. This was a lot easier than the clue for the same word in a recent Big Puzzle, that’s all I’m saying. | |
| 19 | City is huge, look! (4) |
| OSLO – OS (outsize) for “huge”, LO for “look”. | |
| 20 | Home with no money is guiltless (8) |
| INNOCENT – IN for “home”, NO CENT for “no money”. | |
| 22 | Prisoner punished and locked up (8) |
| CONFINED – CON for “prisoner”, FINED for punished | |
| 23 | Come down — listen to group of players (4) |
| TEEM – aural wordplay (© jackkt) between TEEM/team. I found this really hard and trawling for the LOI with the clock ticking gives me brain freeze! I was looking for homophones first for musicians, and then for actors. Sports players for once took a long time to come to mind, and even then I had to think twice about why TEEM meant “come down” (“teeming rain” is of course why). | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Creep tremulously round female with a few words to start with? (7) |
| PREFACE – anagram (“tremulously”) of “creep”, going “round” F for “female” and A. Sneaky definition. | |
| 3 | Mum has boy who may belong to secret society (5) |
| MASON – MA has a SON. | |
| 4 | Tedious job in the Smoke (3) |
| FAG – I wondered whether this was a double definition but I decided that FAG couldn’t be “the smoke”, it would only be “a smoke”. Shades of Kipling’s “The Betrothed” here – when the narrator’s fiancée gives him a choice between her and his tobacco, he reasons his way through the pros and cons and concludes “a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke”. | |
| 5 | Anger with ship at sea — fresh design results (9) |
| RESHAPING – anagram (“at sea”) of “anger” and “ship”. RESHAPING is to be understood as a noun here – “the results of a fresh design”, if you like. | |
| 6 | Foolish talk — see bishop foam (7) |
| BLATHER – B for “bishop”, LATHER for “foam”. I’m more familiar with as “blether” for “foolish talk” but that turns out to be Scottish. | |
| 7 | Reveal learner joining college (3,2) |
| LET ON – L for “learner”, ETON for our favourite educational establishment. Calm down everyone, we’ve had Harrow several times recently, it’s Eton’s turn. | |
| 11 | Wicked man undermining pub, West Indian (9) |
| BARBADIAN – BAD IAN is the “wicked man”, and he comes after (“undermining”, in a down clue) BAR for “pub”. Lovely. | |
| 13 | Disapproval concerning strength of spirit (7) |
| REPROOF – RE for “concerning”, PROOF for “strength of spirit”. Such a neat clue. | |
| 15 | Eastern scenes, weird in basic quality (7) |
| ESSENCE – anagram (“weird”) of “scenes” + E for “eastern”. The ESSENCE of something is its most basic quality. | |
| 17 | Girl given ring? It’s ropy! (5) |
| LASSO – LASS for “girl”, O for “ring”, jokey definition. | |
| 18 | Feature a church in newspaper (5) |
| FACET – A + CE for “a church” (Church of England), going inside (“in”) the FT for “newspaper”. Very elegant cluing. | |
| 21 | Fellow turning up gets gesture of acceptance (3) |
| NOD – a “fellow” in a university is a “don”; reverse him (“turning up” in a down clue) and you get the answer. | |
In a big hurry today so failed with a couple of bad biffs Barbarian and Restaging (sp?).
Enjoyable puzzle. Liked many inc SPAM, VAIN, SLAP BANG, PREFACE.
FOI FIREBALL (COD). LOsI OSLO LASSO.
Thanks vm, Templar.
For what it’s worth – there is a Spam Museum in Austin, Minnessota (the home of Hormel Foods). One of the exhibits includes a continuous repeating loop of the Monty Python sketch.
That is great.
Biffed TEEM without trying that hard to get to bottom of it, apart from a few corrected spelling errors all fairly straightforward
Finished correctly in 56 minutes.
Quite a tough one, I thought.
17 Down – “Lasso”. Luckily I have this on my list of difficult to spell words.
4 Across. “Fireball”. Did not know this could mean a lively person. Would have associated this with stories of spontaneous combustion.
23 Across – “Teem”. Usually meaning a lot of rain coming down. I live in Bolton so I know all about that.
Took me a while to see RESHAPING and BEACHING, otherwise a slam dunk. FOI was SPAM, LOI was TEEM which also took some musing. 7:21. Thanks Izetti and Templar.
Another very nice Izetti and I will forgive the slight against my name in 11d.
I initially had ‘junk’ for 1a until it didn’t fit with the checkers. It seemed like a perfectly good answer.
All finished in 43.37 with LOI like others being TEEM.
Indeed; there can be no such thing as a “bad Ian” – but I finished it anyway! Friendly for an Izetti but took me into the SCC, enjoyably.
17m
Didn’t find this easy but then I’m streaming with a cold and didn’t sleep well.
Questions marks next to the see in 6d and slap bang.
Had rephasing which didn’t help with messages.
COD fireball.
Fun and approachable was my verdict, with facet and teem my LOIs. The rain’s coming down – it’s teeming! I biffed Caribbean for 11d at first, but innocent and beaching put paid to that. I enjoyed Eton sub-dividing to be let on: fun. As for 4d, tiresome chores have been a fag throughout my seven decades, and more recent (offensive) slang usage can’t really undo that. Smoke is the clue. So I don’t think anything remotely offensive was intended!
13:09, a fast time for me and a pleasant morning diversion.
Lots of good clues with great surfaces. COD 11d BARBADIAN, oh that bad Ian! Also liked 14a ISRAEL. FOI 1a SPAM, of course. LOI 21d NOD because I forgot to read the clue. Just before that was 23a TEEM because NHO “teeming rain” and couldn’t parse it.
Thanks to Izetti for another fine puzzle and to Templar for the blog. Lot’s wife 🤣
9:13 here, a rare sub-10 minute finish, particularly for an Izetti. Very much enjoyed this, with too many candidates to pick a COD. Finished in the NE corner with the BLATHER / BEACHING nexus.
Thanks to Izetti and Templar.
How do I find todays cryptic and quick cryptic, HELP!
13.48 Mostly straightforward but with five minutes spent on TEEM at the end. I thought of teem from the wordplay but didn’t think of teem meaning rain or come down meaning rain until I’d completed a fruitless alphabet trawl. Thanks Templar and Izetti.
The expression ‘teeming it down’ (meaning raining heavily) was familiar to me from my youth (up north) so that went in quickly once we had the checkers. BEACHING and ISRAEL were our POI and LOI to finish in 9:41, pretty quick by our standards.
16:31. Poor Ian, I feel that he is grievously misunderstood. Didn’t think much of TEEM’s definition but otherwise enjoyed it. Thank you for the blog!
Outrageous libel it is….
An enjoyable solve, made more so by a fast time (for me) – 22 minutes.
My two favourite clues were BARBADIAN and SLAP BANG. Slightly fortunate to reconsider and correct BARBArIAN and FoG before writing them in firmly.
Many thanks to Izetti and Templar.
A gentle offering from the usually tricky Izetti. Solved steadily after yesterday’s disaster.
Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of my sleep deprivation but the recent puzzles by some setters I usually find ‘more challenging’ have seems much smoother and def quicker than usual. Perhaps some over-thinking barriers are down and I am seeing the clues more directly… This was full of Izetti’s trademark elegant surfaces and a joy to solve. Took a while to get started while in the dentist’s waiting room, finished later in Costa with a breeze-blocked LOI 23a where it took the short drive home for the PDM to occur – ‘teeming with rain’ followed by a rush to enter it just for the sake of seeing a completed grid on my printed out puzzle.
FOI 9a Arts
LOI 23a Teem
COD 22a Con-fined – lovely.
Nobody is forcing you to read this….
Total humiliation.
Put FOG instead of FAG for a 28-minute DNF. Complete failure to understand the clue. What an idiot! Inept, incompetent, incapable.
I am unable to do the QC in anything approaching an acceptable time. I never improve and I feel absolutely useless just reading the other times. This is a game for people with better brains than me. If this QC was gentle, I am wasting my time and delusional if I think I will ever achieve a modicum of respectability here.
Three DNFs in 5 days is bad beyond belief. I am at a loss to understand how the rest of you all get better whilst I get worse. I overthink everything and finish the QC stressed, angry and frustrated.
Thanks for the blog.
My computer is now going off!
Agree with Templar a lovely, smooth puzzle. DNF Teem got me. Thanks Izetti
11 mins…
Finished this yesterday, but due to football related escapades never got around to writing it up. Definitely in the more straight forward end of Izetti’s range. Enjoyed the simplicity and wittiness of clues such as 4ac “Fireball”, 11dn “Barbadian”, 8ac “Messages” and 22ac “Confined”.
FOI – 1ac “Spam”
LOI – 22ac “Confined”
COD – 20ac “Innocent”
Thanks as usual!