Good morning, and we have an excellent puzzle by Izetti today which in my view is very much what a QC should be – none of the answers is an obscure word, and regular solvers should have met all the various setters’ tricks the Don has employed. One omission is a straightforward anagram – there are two clues where an anagram contributes to the answer but none where the answer is a straight anagram pure and simple. Unusual perhaps for a QC?
I am not always fully on Izetti’s wavelength, so I’m quite pleased to have cracked this in a slightly faster than usual time of 10:53. How did everyone else get on?
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, and strike-through-text shows deletions.
| Across | |
| 8 | Salacious old boy, part of act on stage (7) |
| OBSCENE – OB (old boy) + SCENE (part of an act).
The division of plays into discrete sections has a very long history. Theatre in ancient Rome had divisions and breaks in the action, in fact it is thought that in classical times a play was more a series of set pieces than a continuous action. By Shakespeare’s time some rudimentary stage settings and props were common, and the action was often halted for the stage to be reset. How this was done was more often up to the producer than the playwright though, and although Shakespeare often indicated where he thought the natural breaks were, not all early editions of his works had them, and not all of them had them in the same place. It was not until the publication of the First Folio in 1623 that the divisions became more fixed, and the terminology of Acts and Scenes became more standard. |
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| 9 | City in Croatia in two parts? (5) |
| SPLIT – A DD. I think the question mark in the second definition may be because one can also split something into more than two parts. | |
| 10 | Greek character short time back and long time back (5) |
| OMEGA – OM (mo, ie a short time, reversed, ie “back”) + EGA (age, ie a long time, reversed, ie “back”). A very clever clue, though I suspect a good number of people will have seen the O checker at the front, run through the Greek alphabet to Omega, and only then parsed it. | |
| 11 | Supposed visitor could be picked up (7) |
| GUESSED – Sounds like GUEST (visitor), with the homophone indicator being “could be picked up”. | |
| 12 | Feeling ecstatic, chaps into form of technology (9) |
| SENTIMENT – SENT (ecstatic) + IT (technology) around MEN (chaps). We have to lift and separate feeling and ecstatic to find the definition. | |
| 14 | Gratuity? Restaurant’s ending with one penny! (3) |
| TIP – T (restaurant’s ending, ie last letter) + I P (1 penny).
Izetti has got quite excited with his punctuation here and I am not sure I really follow what the ! is signifying. Or indeed the ?. |
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| 16 | Delay someone in and out of jail? (3) |
| LAG – A DD, and for those in the UK and of a certain age, the second meaning inevitably triggers fond memories of Norman Stanley Fletcher. | |
| 18 | Container of explosive vehicle meets somewhere on mountain? (9) |
| CARTRIDGE – CART (vehicle) + RIDGE (somewhere on mountain).
And a third clue where Izetti finishes it with a question-mark. I am clearly going to have to brush up on the various meanings and significances of question-marks in clue setting. |
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| 21 | This writer’s involved in new green diet maybe (7) |
| REGIMEN – I’M (this writer’s, via This writer is -> I am) inserted into REGEN (anagram of green, the anagram indicator being “new”). | |
| 22 | Toy missing head in sack (5) |
| RIFLE – TRIFLE (toy) with the T deleted (“missing head”).
Sack is here in its verb form, and the meaning is as in to sack a city. But I think when soldiers sack a city, they do rather more damage than rifling through it. |
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| 23 | Quiet king drinking beer, looking less healthy? (5) |
| PALER – P (quiet) + R (king) surrounding ALE (beer), with the surround indicator being “drinking”. And another clue ending in a question-mark. | |
| 24 | Second coffee (7) |
| INSTANT – A DD, and for once I might have put a ? by coffee (coffee is not the only thing that can be instant) but Izetti hasn’t! | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Huge financial deficit in fossil fuel (8) |
| COLOSSAL – LOSS (financial deficit) inserted into (ie “in”) COAL (fossil fuel). Another case of needing to lift and separate, as the financial deficit may indeed be huge, but it does not have to be. | |
| 2 | A second bird at the back of ship (6) |
| ASTERN – A (from the clue) + S (second) + TERN (bird). | |
| 3 | Goddess embraced by father, apparently (4) |
| HERA – A hidden, in fatHER Apparently, with the hidden indicator being “embraced by”. | |
| 4 | Dog beginning to bother bird (6) |
| BEAGLE – B (beginning to, ie first letter of, Bother) + EAGLE (bird). | |
| 5 | An HQ heard someone expressing agreement (8) |
| ASSENTER – Sounds like A CENTRE (an HQ), with the homophone indicator being “heard”.
Cue discussion on whether one would more naturally say “an HQ” or “a HQ”. For me, I think “a HQ” sounds more natural, and in this particular clue it would also fit the wordplay better (A + HQ = A + Centre) – but I suspect opinions will differ. |
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| 6 | Secret idiot spotted around home counties? (6) |
| CLOSET – CLOT (idiot) around SE (home counties, ie South East England). My first stab at this was CLOSED, with Clod for Idiot, until the T in 14A put me right. | |
| 7 | Home office mostly for boss (4) |
| STUD – STUDY (home office) with the last letter deleted, given by “mostly”. And a very neat surface, with the image of the boss working from home. | |
| 13 | Where film may be kept out of the public eye (2,6) |
| IN CAMERA – A DD.
We may be possibly the last generation for whom Camera and Film go together as a natural association – these days almost all cameras, whether as a separate item or as part of a mobile phone, are digital and so film-free. |
|
| 15 | Papa dislikes gifts (8) |
| PRESENTS – P (papa, the name for the letter P in the NATO alphabet) + RESENTS (dislikes). I think Resent is usually a little stronger than merely dislike, but it is clear what Izetti means here. | |
| 17 | Leg broken after performance? Show amusement (6) |
| GIGGLE – GIG (performance) + GLE (anagram of leg, the anagram indicator being “broken”). | |
| 19 | Sour head of detective group did this (6) |
| RANCID – The wordplay is “ran CID”, ie managed the detective force – which is what the head of the detective group did. | |
| 20 | Fed up over preliminary race — not the first bad result in sport (6) |
| DEFEAT – DEF (fed reversed, ie “up”) + EAT (heat, ie preliminary race, with the H deleted, given by “not the first”). And yet another lift and separate, as we are not looking for the first bad result. | |
| 21 | One may be stranded in gym (4) |
| ROPE – An & lit clue, as the whole clue points to a rope, which is probably stranded, ie made up of strands, and is standard equipment in a gym.
I confess I don’t always find &lit clues easy (wot, no wordplay?), but the checkers were very helpful here. |
|
| 22 | Impetuous artist shut up (4) |
| RASH – RA (artist) + SH (request to be quiet, ie shut up). | |
11:11. Thanks for interesting info re scenes and acts, Cedric, also for the parsing of SENTIMENT. RANCID was my COD. When I saw __S_A__for second coffee I figured it might be NESCAFÉ!
My only worry was that it might be assentor, which it wasn’t. Otherwise, all very straightforward, and I didn’t allow the inexact nature of some of the clues to stop me. B/eagle and t/rifle are well-known chestnuts, so that sped things up even more.
Time: 5:39
DNF
….on the other hand I did think it was ASSENTOR.
About 5 minutes for all but, and then 2 minutes on, ROPE. It couldn’t be anything else but what was the parsing? Especially with PE at the end. Finally twigged.
Thanks Cedric/Izetti
Exactly the same re ROPE.
13 minutes with one wrong, although I dispute that because, like Dvynys, I also went for ASSENTOR. It would be my default spelling since it looks right to me whereas ASSENTER doesn’t.
Chambers agrees. It has both spellings but lists ASSENTER as ‘obsolete’. Collins and most of the Oxfords also have both, but for some odd reason the printed edition of the ODE doesn’t have either – simply not recognising the possibility of an agent noun deriving from ASSENT.
As the crucial letter is unchecked in the grid the clue should have been edited to make clear which spelling was required.
My Chambers (the app) lists ASSENTER without an obsolete tag. ASSENTATOR, directly above it, has one.
It defines ASSENTOR as something slightly separate to the core definition of ‘assent’: A person who subscribes a candidates nomination paper in addition to proposer and seconder.
Just over six and a half minutes, but I had to retrieve the page several times during solving.
Gentle going today with just ASSENTER and RIFLE, where I was thinking of teddy bears, trains and rattles etc, putting up much resistance.
Finished in 5.23 which must be close to PB territory for an Izetti puzzle.
Thanks to Cedric and Izetti.
We really liked this. In our early days we would quake at an Izetti but we now mostly get on his wavelength very quickly. All done in 16.58
We thought rifle was really clever, the clue suggests both toy and sack as nouns but of course are both verbs, brilliant misdirection and definitely COD in these parts. Rancid wasn’t far behind.
I guess an or a for HQ depends on whether you say aitch or haitch. As someone who says “aitch kyoo” it must be “an”😀
Thanks very much to the Don and Cedric
“A haitch kew” is an abomination.
FOI OBSCENE (see above!)
LOI/COD RANCID
TIME 3:34
Yes I agree – has to be ‘an’ in my view. for the word play it can be [An HQ] heard rather than [An] + [HQ heard]
Nine on the first pass.
16 on the second pass – still thinking without reading the blog….
Brilliant QC – fun surfaces, clever wordplay, and crucially without obscure words. Just what QCs should be like.
Finished in just under 20mins, with favourite clue being RANCID.
Most enjoyable, thank you.
Hear Hear Cedric !
Although I got 12A – SENTIMENT, I’ve never heard of SENT meaning ecstatic. A new one on me.
Nearest I can think of is “that music really sends me” from the jazz era. There is a refer pun in there somewhere.
No same for me – I briefly parsed as SENTIENT (form of technology) including M (chaps) until I read the blog!
‘Sent’ meaning ecstatic is a word from the 1950s (I am afraid I remember it!) See also the pop song ‘You send me’.
Nine on the first pass.
16 on the second pass – still thinking without reading the blog….
Didn’t get any better.
I was trying to think of a cryptic thank you with I and C but nothing’s come to me yet.
Got fixated on cache and shires…
A most enjoyable QC. I was surprised to glide through an Izetti in 13.20. A good start to the weekend.
Thanks to Izetti. I have just read Cedric’s excellent blog and confirmed my parsing.
I had no problem with ASSENTER. I really dislike the (US?) tendency to end some words with ‘-or’ instead of ‘-er’ (e.g. the awful advisor instead of adviser). No doubt someone will disagree….
I once worked for a US company which contained the word Advisors in its name. And despite that (or even because of it?) I agree entirely. But it is hardly the only word to change its spelling as it crosses the Atlantic …
Quite so, Cedric. Two nations divided by a common language? Still, the meaning is clear either way, I suppose.
Cedric, I smiled at your comment:
‘TIP – T (restaurant’s ending, ie last letter) + I P (1 penny).
Izetti has got quite excited with his punctuation here and I am not sure I really follow what the ! is signifying. Or indeed the ?. ‘
I wonder if it is perhaps a subtle sign that Izetti shares my unhappiness with the way in which the smallest unit of British currency has become the pee? We hear one pee, two pee, fifty pee. What became of one penny, two pence (or tuppence), fifty pence?
To be fair, I do occasionally hear ‘pence’ – but mainly ‘one pence’ !!!
Sorry, I seem to be on a roll today.
I’m fairly sure it’s a hangover from the early days of decimalisation, when it was necessary to distinguish between, for example, 3p and 3d.
Yes.
However, before that, we never referred to the penny as a ‘dee’. We referred to ‘new pence’ for a while but got fed up of saying ‘new’ and didn’t continue with ‘pence’.
Over half a century after decimalisation, most younger people have never used the old penny; there can be no confusion now.
Surely we can manage to adapt to this modest change and encourage more people to say penny and pence? It will only change if more people make a very modest effort and we gradually return to using these terms.
Perhaps we might even make gentle fun of the pee? (I seem to think there is an expression for making fun of things which involves a similar term but, for the life of me, I cannot recall it. 🙄)
You have my sympathy, but I’m afraid that boat has long gone.
You are probably right, Invariant.
Still, you will never catch me calling a penny a pee!
I’m relieved 😂
🙄😂
Took longer than expected (25:21) to complete this entertaining puzzle. Don’t really know why!
Liked this, particularly RANCID, and ROPE. Finished in 7.31 with a supposed error for ASSENTOR which, like others, I can’t see as being more wrong than ASSENTER.
But the clue was leading us to a homophone. We wouldn’t say centor instead of centre.
Oh dear, another can of worms…… centre/center. Even my spellchecker changed centre to center! 🙄 I must turn it off in my settings. 🙂
I guessed that point would come up so didn’t cover it in my original comment, but I think it’s possible to be misled by what the words look like when written.
The wordplay here indicates a homophone [heard] but in received pronunciation and many dialects ‘A centre’, assentor and assenter all sound much the same. As has been discussed here ad infinitum, homophones in crossword clues are rarely exact matches for everyone anyway so can’t be relied upon to distinguish between two valid spellings of the same word.
Either Izetti is getting easier or I’m more on his wavelength, but no problems today with this enjoyable puzzle. Thanks Cedric for great blog and interesting info about scenes. COD RANCID.
An enjoyable puzzle, though I was slower in the SE until PDM CARTRIDGE, which gave me RANCID. I hesitated about LOI RIFLE as I could not see it meaning Sack.
FOsI OBSCENE and COLOSSAL so a good start. It did not occur to me to spell ASSENTER with an O.
Liked many inc PALER, REGIMEN and the above-mentioned RANCID.
Many thanks, Cedric. An HQ, btw.
12:50. Good puzzle from Izetti which I never really got on top of. It’s been a while since I’ve seen INSTANT for ‘coffee’ so 24a was yet another double def to cause problems and was my LOI.
Me Leica IN CAMERA (yes, an oldie and maybe not such a goldie). ROPE was the other highlight.
Further to the ASSENTER/ASSENTOR debate and particularly Blighter’s comment above, it’s interesting that the OED online, which gives pronunciations, has the pronunciations of ASSENTOR and ASSENTER as being different, with the former having a more definite “-ore” sound. Maybe splitting hairs, but possibly enough to let Izetti and our editor off the hook and to justify ASSENTER as a better homophone of CENTRE.
Thanks to Cedric and Izetti
Yes, I clearly thought that ASSENTER was a better homophone of A CENTRE.
However, to argue against myself, I just realised that many people in the East Midlands would pronounce it ASSENTOR/A CENTOR. Many also say LESTOR for LEICESTER (with a drop of the jaw and an open mouth on the last syllable).
I will pipe down now.
16 mins…
Have to agree, this was a perfectly pitched QC, although I would always use “an” before an “h”.
Only hold up was my LOI 5dn “Assenter” and trying to parse 12ac “Sentiment”. Not sure I’ve come across “sent” = “ecstatic” before.
FOI – 9ac “Split”
LOI – 5dn “Assenter”
COD – 21dn “Rope”
Thanks as usual!
18:18
Indeed, an excellent puzzle. I disagree that none of the answers are obscure. HERA is a definite NHO for me and annoyingly my LOI as I failed to spot the hidden. SENT = ecstatic is also lost on me. Oh, and failed to parse ROPE.
Am I right in thinking that “haitch” is largely Northern Irish? Anyway, if you pronounce the letter “aitch” it’s obviously “an”, not “a”. A nice, gentle puzzle from Izetti with, however, no diminution in quality.
‘Haitch’ crops up in SE England too but not ‘ere in ‘ampshire. (Forget how to reverse quote marks.)
Having just returned from Northern Ireland where those with a strong local were almost unintelligible, I thought about those situations where posh folk add an ‘haitch’, as in here in East Hanglia.
Many years ago I came across a humorous book ‘Fraffly well spoken’ which provided phonetic examples of ‘West End’ English, eg “Egg-wetter gree. A moffler swirk of grey chooma. Mirsten choiple. Wommer snoppy with otter copy”.
Some could not make any sense of some of it, but my grandmother had no trouble at all which caused great hilarity.
🙂. Went to school in NI at one point so no problem there. Sometimes find Glaswegian difficult. I seem to remember a programme Parliamo Glasgow . Must look it up.
Father was broad Glaswegian. When I qualified I said to him that I hoped he was pleased I was now a doctor. “Noo” he said, “I wanted you to be a docker!”
Ha, Countrywoman1, I’m in Hampshire, too, though hardly in the country. I live on the edge of Winchester, from where I can see plenty of countryside.
I liked this, and managed to complete, with Rope my last one in, in about 12.19, which is a little above average for me. But I found, as often recently, that I could only solve it online via the Crossword Club. This is also true for the Concise. Other online puzzles with problems include both types of Quintagram. Problems have been going on for over a week. Anyone else having problems, or is it just me?
Just me then! Hmmm!
Very enjoyable, thanks to Izetti and Cedric.
I too am an -er person and view the -or as a quirk . The school I went to had some very snooty boys, but even they wouldn’t have been able to say “a haitch” without causing falling about mirth from all (including some of the less stuffy teachers).
Quick up until LOI ROPE, where like Dvynys I just couldn’t justify the obvious answer, kept thinking it was PE for gym and couldn’t see what the RO was doing. In the end I submitted with a shrug – and immediately parsed it.
A pleasingly precise 07:00 but still a Could Have Been Better Day. Many thanks Cedric and Don.
10.50 I hesitated over ROPE. Do gyms still have them? And I was slow in the SE finishing with DEFEAT and RIFLE. Thanks Cedric and Izetti.
There are still ropes in gyms but not necessarily as you might remember them. Mrs T and I attend a “circuits” class most Sunday mornings where it took us quite some time not to fear the frequent appearance of “Battle Ropes
7:22
Held up slightly at the end by COLOSSAL and SENTIMENT. Otherwise no issues.
Thanks Cedric and Izetti
From OBSCENE to DEFEAT in 5:33. Thta was a tad easier than today’s 15×15! Thanks Izetti and Cedric.
A 15min sprint by Izetti standards, and would have been sub-15 if I hadn’t written 22d Rash in the space for 21d. S*l*r for less healthy was always going to be tricky. On the other hand, Rifle went in despite completely misunderstanding the clue, so we’ll call that a draw – or at least a step up from CoD Defeat.
As a boy, having watched various family members struggle loading film into a camera, I thought my Instamatic film cartridge was a scientific marvel. . . Invariant
10:23 but without fully parsing SENTIMENT (like others above, ‘SENT’ didn’t leap out) and we were perhaps lucky not to have considered ASSENTOR. COD ROPE. Thank you, Cedric and Izetti.