Good morning, and we have a brand new setter this morning as City makes their debut. I make that our fifth new setter of the year, joining Dangle, Jet Lag, Juji and Shay, and what a sparkling debut City has given us. In my opinion there are several really excellent clues, many lovely smooth surfaces, and no obscure words or questionable definitions.
As for the standard of the puzzle overall, City seems to have hit the QC spot first time out, with a nice balance of easier clues and others that require a bit more thought. At any rate the puzzle took me 12:05, which is almost exactly bang on my average. I suspect others may be considerably faster, but I wanted to relish the excellent surfaces on this one.
I have decided to copy others in using the ~ mark to show where insertions are; thus in the first clue, T~OM means that the R is inserted after the T of TOM.
How did everyone else get on?
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (abc)* indicates an anagram of abc, ~ marks insertion points and strike-through-text shows deletions.
| Across | |
| 1 | Cat trapping right clavicle, say, in instrument (8) |
| TROMBONE – T~OM (cat) containing (ie “trapping”) R (right), + BONE (clavicle, say). And I was off to a flyer, as what little musical talent I have is spent tootling away on a trombone. Great instrument, though perhaps not one for the shy and retiring type. | |
| 5 | Composer beginning to hail taxi that’s reversing (4) |
| BACH – H (beginning to, ie first letter of, Hail) + CAB (taxi), all backwards (ie “reversing”). | |
| 9 | What goes with gin, too nice not to finish (5) |
| TONIC – TO |
|
| 10 | Clay pit breaking standard (7) |
| TYPICAL – (clay pit)*, with the anagram indicator being “breaking”. | |
| 11 | Somehow he set our axle straight (12) |
| HETEROSEXUAL – (he set our axle)*, with the anagram indicator being “somehow”. Another very smooth surface, as setting something straight is a well known phrase. | |
| 13 | New version of extremely rare footwear (6) |
| REBOOT – RE (extremely, ie first and last letters of, RarE) + BOOT (footwear). | |
| 15 | Most of metal framework is free (6) |
| GRATIS – GRAT (grate, ie metal framework, with the last letter deleted, given by “most of”) + IS (from the clue). | |
| 17 | Construction of deck that is vulnerable in high winds? (5,2,5) |
| HOUSE OF CARDS – The deck here is a deck or pack of cards, and the construction is the tower of cards that one can – if one has very steady hands – make with them. And it is indeed very vulnerable in a high wind; indeed when I try to build one it usually falls over of its own accord without needing a puff of wind to help it.
The tallest house of cards I have been able to find on the internet was a frankly unbelievable 25 feet high – that’s 7.6 metres. See here: https://www.cardstacker.com/tallest-house-of-cards. |
|
| 20 | A swift shortly clutching at marine? (7) |
| AQUATIC – A (from the clue) + QU~IC (quick, ie swift, with the last letter deleted, given by “shortly”), containing (ie “clutching”) AT (from the clue). | |
| 21 | I, for example, am returning picture (5) |
| IMAGE – I (from the clue) + MAGE, formed from EG (for example) and AM (from the clue), all 4 letters then reversed (“returning”). A little care it needed here, as only 4 of the 5 letters are reversed, the I staying at the front of the clue. | |
| 22 | Initially, spider is tangling every part of web (4) |
| SITE – Formed from the first letters (ie “initially”) of Spider Is Tangling Every. Another very smooth surface, as the web we want is the World Wide Web not, as one might be led to think, a spider’s web. | |
| 23 | Sluggish man who’s getting married with relative tranquillity at first (8) |
| STAGNANT – STAG (man who’s getting married) + NAN (relative) + T (Tranquillity “at first”, ie first letter of). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Gallery of rubbish — English? (4) |
| TATE – TAT (rubbish) + E (English). Even if one does not have the T checker from 1A, this should be a good starter for most people for the down clues.
There are of course other galleries in the world, but as far as Crosswordland is concerned, “gallery” is nearly always the Tate. |
|
| 2 | Weight to ruin a chef, regularly ignored (5) |
| OUNCE – Every other letter of tO rUiN a ChEf, given by “regularly ignored”. | |
| 3 | Celebrate dancing with hot unmarried woman (12) |
| BACHELORETTE – (celebrate hot)*, with the anagram indicator being “dancing”.
I needed all the checkers for this one, as while the meaning of the word is obvious once one sees it, it is not a word I have seen in real life before – the dictionaries suggest it is “mainly US”, as used in the phrase “bachelorette party”, which this side of the pond is called a hen night. Whether one knows the word or not, though, one can admire another very smooth surface from City – many men would indeed celebrate if they were dancing with a hot unmarried woman. |
|
| 4 | Nato admitting one new country (6) |
| NATION – NAT~O (from the clue) with I inserted (given by “admitting one”) + N (new).
NATO admits new members rather more often than I realised. Having started with 12 founder members in 1949 and relatively quickly added Greece, Turkey and Germany by 1955, its membership was then static for over a quarter of a century. But since 1980 it has more than doubled in size, with 17 further members added at fairly regular intervals over the last 40 years or so, the most recent new member being Sweden, who joined last year. |
|
| 6 | Relation of current peer (7) |
| ACCOUNT – AC (current) + COUNT (peer). Relation as in the telling of a story, rather than a member of one’s family.
I was very slow to solve this one, as Count is not a title in the English peerage and I didn’t think of it for ages. Why, alone among the names for peers, we retain the Saxon word “earl” for this rank of the peerage, when almost all other titles use the Norman French terms (Duke, Marquis, Baron, Baronet, even Viscount), I do not know – and what makes it even more of a puzzle is that the wife of an Earl is given the title Countess. I look forward to the answer from other contributors – I am sure someone will know! |
|
| 7 | Impotent part of the LP lesson (8) |
| HELPLESS – A hidden, in tHE LP LESSon, with the hidden indicator being “part of”. | |
| 8 | Express’s lead editor involved in distributing fast optical character recognition? (5,7) |
| SPEED READING – SP~READING (distributing), containing E (Express’s lead, ie first letter) + ED (editor), with the inclusion indicator being “involved in”.
A somewhat whimsical definition, and I was sent down all sorts of blind alleys thinking of acronyms for technology that can read printed text into a computer. |
|
| 12 | Warms up beforehand, concerned with preliminary races under pressure (8) |
| PREHEATS – RE (concerned with) + HEATS (preliminary races), all prefaced with (ie “under”, this being a down clue) P (pressure). | |
| 14 | Audibly jeer Kay’s smell (7) |
| BOUQUET – Sounds like BOO (jeer) + KAY (from the clue), with the homophone indicator being the very straightforward “audibly”. | |
| 16 | Remnant of copper wrapped in newspaper (6) |
| OFFCUT – OF (from the clue) + CU (copper) inserted into (given by “wrapped in”) F~T (newspaper). | |
| 18 | US state expelling popular huntress (5) |
| DIANA – |
|
| 19 | Car manufacturer’s vehicle part (4) |
| SEAT – A DD, and City ends with yet another very smooth surface. | |
I whipped through this until I found myself beating my head against the wall of 19d SEAT. Trawling threw up seat and vent, NHO either one for a car manufacturer, tried to reparse, gave up, asked the internet and got SEAT. So really another DNF, in 18:22. Great puzzle though and I expect some fast solves. It has a modern-ish feel with HETEROSEXUAL for “straight”, SITE for “part of web”, and REBOOT for “new version”. I wanted SPEED READING to be “sight reading” but, sigh. BACHELORETTE is a tacky sort of word, but as an American I found it all too familiar.
Welcome City, and thanks to Cedric for excellent blogging.
Great puzzle and great blog. Could not parse SPEEDREADING but otherwise enjoyed clever clues. Thanks City and Cedric.
9.22. I had hoped that the rehash of the format would solve the instability of the site, but, sadly, not so.
This had the feel of a new setter. A fun puzzle in which we were somewhat faster than average at 11:34, though we didn’t pause to parse our LOI SPEED READING, but it was still challenging. Great start, City, and thank you, Cedric, for the typically entertaining and informative blog.
Clever QC, enjoyable, tricky.
Was stuck at one point so looked up cars for SEAT, having solved most of the rest inc BACHELORETTE – I think I remembered that one from a dubious TV programme/cartoon.
Liked many inc HOUSE OF CARDS, BOUQUET (COD), OFFCUT, AQUATIC, GRATIS. (lots of PDMs)
Must remember relation=nan often, as was slow on STAGNANT.
Biffed SPEED READING.
Many thanks, Cedric.
Not on the wavelength at all today. Limped over the line in 33:20, more than double my average. The anagrams were very very slow to come today. Ho hum, onto next week.
Thanks to City and Cedric.
Got through this in 9:26 with a typo (TATa) but whos counting
Listed loads of car manufacturers before Seat finally came to mind. I was close to bunging in belt, though why I thought of that without seat is beyond me. Biffed speed reading after finally working out the heterosexual anagram.
FOI Tate
LOI Seat
COD House of cards
Thanks for an enjoyable test City, and an informative blog CS.
Welcome City! Thank you for a well pitched puzzle! Thank you for the blog Cedric.
As I don’t subscribe online, I cannot attempt the Saturday QC.
I tried to do the 15 x 15 and came up 2 short, so another failure to add to the collection.
Likely apocryphal, but I remember reading a theory that the Normans stuck with ‘jarl’ because ‘comte’ sounded, even then, a bit too much like another word to the Anglo-Saxons. Since there isn’t an equivalent offensive word that sounds like ‘countess’, they switched that over with everything else. So earl and countess.
Great puzzle on debut from City. All green in 7.32 which looking at some other times from the regulars suggests I was on wavelength. Thanks for blog Cedric.