I got off to a flyer with 1ac going straight in, and more than half the acrosses followed on my first pass. But then the wheels came off a bit, and I ended up taking 16:03, a bit over my average time.
The ones that ate up my time were REAPPOINT, EVERY INCH and INVENT. Each of these uses non-obvious synonyms and meanings, but there’s nothing unfair here from Jalna.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, anagram fodder indicated like (this)*.
| Across | |
| 1 | Places where people call xenophobes out (5,5) |
| PHONE BOXES – (XENOPHOBES)*
One of my favourite anagrams, right up there with T.S. Eliot being an anagram of toilets. |
|
| 8 | Supporter of the arts? (5) |
| EASEL – Cryptic definition.
I think the question mark is there because not all types of art can be supported by an easel. Statues and murals spring to mind. |
|
| 9 | Eliminate small feeling of uncertainty, by the sounds of it (4,3) |
| WEED OUT – Sounds like [by the sounds of it] “wee doubt” (small feeling of uncertainty). | |
| 10 | Really recover following diet (9) |
| LITERALLY – RALLY (recover) follows LITE (diet, as in tonic).
Minor shudder at ‘LITE’. |
|
| 12 | Eggs, mostly egg-shaped! (3) |
| OVA – OVA |
|
| 13 | Extreme component of long-haul travel (5) |
| ULTRA – hidden in [component of] long-haUL TRAvel.
An appropriate clue for me as I’m just back from New Zealand, definitely a long-haul trip. |
|
| 15 | Nearly time for hours of darkness (5) |
| NIGHT – NIGH (nearly), T for time. | |
| 17 | Closely examine part of potato (3) |
| EYE – A double definition. | |
| 18 | Writer heading for town to take in luxury flat (9) |
| PENTHOUSE – PEN (writer), first letter of [heading for] T |
|
| 20 | Touching performance in hat, once (7) |
| TACTILE – ACT (performance) in TILE (hat, once).
I think reading the Flashman books is where I encountered “tile” meaning “hat”. It’s dated usage now, but fairly indicated by “once” in the clue. |
|
| 21 | Pinkish, black and very green? (5) |
| BLUSH – B for black, LUSH (very green, like a lawn).
I had this one backwards for a while, thought I was looking for something along the lines of ROSEB. Ho hum. |
|
| 22 | Volunteers express disappointment in Wales about legislation (7,3) |
| STATUTE LAW – TA (Territorial Army, volunteers) and TUT (express disappointment) inside WALES reversed [about].
“Volunteers” in the clue often leads to “TA” in the answer. |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Honoured bard out late, cavorting with a peer (4,8) |
| POET LAUREATE – (OUT LATE A PEER)*. | |
| 2 | Start working as a film director, perhaps (5) |
| ONSET – A film director works on a set. | |
| 3 | Devious type ultimately made everyone distrustful (3) |
| EEL – last letters [ultimately] of I suspect that the phrase “slippery as an eel” is more often used to describe character rather than actual slipperiness so I’m comfortable with “devious type” as the definition here. |
|
| 4 | Periodically dour, thoroughly dystopian author (6) |
| ORWELL – Every other letter [periodically] of |
|
| 5 | All at the finish are incredibly on edge (5,4) |
| EVERY INCH – Last letter [at the finish] of That’s “inch” as in “Zaphod inched his way up the corridor as if he’d rather be yarding his way down it”, for today’s gratuitous Douglas Adams quote. I didn’t parse this while solving, I was stuck on the “rim” meaning of “edge”. |
|
| 6 | Farewell single, no good (2,4) |
| SO LONG – SOLO (single), NG (no good).
I don’t think I’ve seen the abbreviation NG in the wild, but apparently it is used in the film industry to mark a shot or take that is unusable. |
|
| 7 | New athletes turn up and have surprising success (5,3,4) |
| STEAL THE SHOW – (ATHLETES)* + SHOW (turn up).
SHOW without UP for “turn up” caused a MER here, but then I thought of the phrase “no-show” which means “didn’t turn up”. Close enough for me, anyway. |
|
| 11 | Assign position again to gather what is relevant (9) |
| REAPPOINT – REAP (to gather), POINT (what is relevant). | |
| 14 | Swimmers crowding river channel (6) |
| TRENCH – TENCH (a type of fish, swimmers) including R for river.
I’m struggling to see how ‘crowding’ means ‘including’. Anyone? |
|
| 16 | Coin in small opening (6) |
| INVENT – IN (from the clue), VENT (small opening). As in “to coin a phrase”.
Nothing to do with money, then. Ah well. And “small” didn’t give “S”. Doubly tricksy. |
|
| 19 | Typical America university starts to accept loans (5) |
| USUAL – US (America) + U for university + first letters of [starts to] A |
|
| 21 | Bill raised for sporting equipment (3) |
| BAT – TAB (bill), reversed [raised]. | |
EASEL – with a very similar definition appeared in the concise crossword today….in exactly the same position. It confused me for a while!
Me too!
Another here.
… and another!
I too badly parsed the clue for “Every Inch”. The clue is every inch not for “speed solvers” like me. But the QC was stimulating on the whole. Thanks Doof and Jalna.
Lucky we had POET LAUREATE recently!
INVENT beat me, I just couldn’t believe that small didn’t mean S (and does a vent have to be small anyway?). Apart from that total misdirection, I enjoyed this puzzle.
Decided to commit today, after some weeks of desultory approaches. Found this quite tricky; 27min, badly held up at the end by INVENT. The (unnecessary?) inclusion of “small” confused me; besides, the crosses admitted several common words that I found myself running through (“Insect! insert! intent! Is incept a word? Surely a coinage is the inception of a phrase!…”) Pleased to have persisted this time.
NHO TENCH or TILE for a hat.
Thanks Jalna and Doofenschmirtz.
Perhaps the tench crowd around the R and hem it in.
That’s how I read it.
Me too!
Quite tricky, and 13:15 for a completion at the slower end of my range. I DK tile for hat and had no idea what was going on in EVERY INCH, my LOI – I got Every from all and Inch from the -N-H checkers, and then sat back both pleased at the completion message and baffled at how my last one was parsed. Many thanks Doofers for explaining it!
My third consecutive sub-10 minute solve! This was commonplace for me for years, but recent weeks have been horrific. It surely can’t last.
11:10 with SO LONG and STATUTE LAW fully parsed post solve. Needed the blog to understand EVERY INCH.
NHO ‘tile’ meaning hat but it had to be.
Liked WEED OUT because it raised a smile.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
Flying start with 1A and looked out in vain for a pangram which didn’t help. NHO ‘TILE’ for a hat. I wonder if it is related to a roof tile, roof =head?? Pondered over LOI INDENT/INVENT/INTENT as couldn’t manoeuvre CENT in anywhere. Took a while to get STATUTE.
Altogether I found this quite hard and was glad to finish in 30 mins.
Thanks Jalna and Doofers. I hope you enjoyed your trip. I guess if you were still there you would be almost be a year ahead of the rest of us by now.
13 minutes. Managed to complete this despite being slow to get PHONEBOXES and missing the parsing of STATUTE LAW and EVERY INCH. I share our blogger’s dislike of LITE. Favourite was the surface for OVA.
Thanks to Doofers and Jalna
All green in 13:45 so relatively slow. Thought for a while it would be a DNF but then the POET went in at 1D and this really opened everything else up including PHONE BOXES which is not seen before. LOI EVERY INCH.
Thanks Jalna and Doofers
21:14 – found this harder than yesterdays but also much more enjoyable
Slightly sluggish today, which I’m going to blame on a lurgy addled brain.
Started with COD PHONE BOXES and finished with INVENT in 8.54.
Thanks to Doofers and Jalna
24:14 From the onset, literally every inch was difficult.
TaDAJ
Tricky but oh, so enjoyable. Many clues where (especially upon becoming the full book while reading the excellent blog) we applauded both setter and Doofenschmirtz.
Running late as we are with little time to achieve all we have so rashly set out to be done by ‘end of year’ – we used check grid and a reveal letter so technical DNF.
Nevertheless, a happy time was had and we wish all a wonderful end of year with health and happiness to follow in 2026.
Enjoyable puzzle. Yes, luckily we had my FOI 1d recently. Liked PHONE BOXES, STEAL THE SHOW, EVERY INCH, and SO LONG, among others. COD WEED OUT. Fiddled about with STATUTE LAW for a while and needed a hint for LOI INVENT.
Thanks vm, Doofers.
Again, happy new year to all.
4:11. I seem to be bucking the trend by not finding it tricky… or maybe navigating the tricky bits quickly. Not a mark on my copy apart from the filled in grid and my time. Like our blogger, I liked the PHONEBOXES anagram. Thanks Jalna and Doofers.
Dressed in style, a brand new tile,
Your father’s old green tie on
I wouldn’t give you tuppence for your watch and chain
Old iron, old iron
From “Any Old Iron”, even before my time. I always thought a “tile” was a flat cap, but according to the dictionaries it’s just CRS for hat.
I found the crossword a bit tough. really liked PHONE BOXES which I don’t remember seeing before. Thanks to Jalna for an enjoyable puzzle and thank you Doofers for the fine blog
I knew TILE from the lyrics of ‘where did you get that hat”
Where did you get that hat?
Where did you get that tile?
Isn’t it a nobby one and just the proper style?
I should like to have one just the same as that
Where e’er I go they shout: “Hello, where did you get that hat?”
nice one 😀
Ah, one of my favorite people pulls that out when we get together to sing. Which isn’t often enough these days.
A rapid 10:33
I was late to see the Xenephobes anagram, which must be a chestnut, but new to me.
Learnt hat=tile literally yesterday when the job of “tiler” for a hatter came up in the book I was reading (“Lion Hearts” : strongly recommended)
READDRESS was close with read=gather, had to back that one out.
LOI EVERY INCH
Tough for me – my slowest Jalna QC ever (26 mins).
Some good clues but I was slow to build up the grid and get (very necessary) crossers. It became a bit of a trudge, I’m afraid.
The left hand side held me up at the end – I am annoyed with myself for not seeing POET LAUREATE a lot quicker after seeing it in a recent puzzle. I would have been quicker given the first letter of many across clues: PHONE BOXES (brilliant), EASEL, LITERALLY, ULTRA, TACTILE (my LOI).
A very poor day for me but thanks to both.
I found this easier than many recent puzzles, finishing in 19:05 and failing to parse only 3 (LITERALLY, STATUTE LAW, EVERY INCH). Happy New Year to all QC puzzlers.
16 mins…
Probably a better time than I thought I would get based on the difficulty. As noted above, nothing unfair, but there were some sneaky definitions, with 16dn “Invent” taking the longest to get my head around. I’m sure we had Poet Laureate fairly recently, proving once again that clues often come around like buses.
FOI – 1ac “Phone Boxes” – pretty much consigned to history now
LOI – 16dn “Invent”
COD – 9ac “Weed Out”
I wish everyone a good New Year and hope 2026 is slightly less chaotic than the last one felt.
Thanks as usual!
Although I sailed through this in a quicker time than my Snitch average, I had the feeling that it had the potential to be tougher than I made it.
FOI EASEL
LOI INVENT
COD TRENCH*
TIME 4:09
* The use of TENCH as a plural was a clever piece of misdirection. I enjoyed PHONE BOXES too.
7:23, with REAPPOINT my LOI.
The setters seem to be keeping the POET LAUREATE busy at the moment.
Thanks Doofers and Jalna
A very nice anagram to start with and then lots of pleasant solving until the final hurdles of EVERY INCH and INVENT. 23 minutes to finish.
I originally had FRAME instead of EASEL for 8a until 1d sorted that out.
Could not parse PENTHOUSE until I came here.
Thanks Jalna and Doofers. I had no problem with ‘crowding’
Bit of a sting in the tail of the year: after the first hour only the RH half done, but with further determination managed to complete it though with two guesses: NHO hat (even once) = TILE but got away with that; and the parsing of EVERY INCH seems far-fetched but got away with that too, so mustn’t grumble. LOI INVENT. Thanks, Doofers, and HNY to all.
So here are some 2025 stats from the back of the class (am I the first to declare?!):
135 (57%) completed; 42 (18%) one to the bad; worst two were 17 to the bad (Juji, Shay); friendliest setters Trelawney, Pipsqueak, Dangle, Hurley; failed the single Lupa and all three Becks.
I don’t keep stats and solve on paper, but interestingly, the first four setters you mention are among those 50% or so that I never bother with, as I find their style irritating. I reckon that Jalna would count among the trickier ones, so bravo for persevering with this one! Happy New Year!
17:29 for the solve. The last minute-plus trying to parse EVERY-INCH without success and eventually bunging it in. PHONEBOXES was a cracking clue and the reappearance of the POET-LAUREATE much more palatable today. NHO TILE=hat and thought there was some other tough clueing in here.
End of year reflection that the QC seems to have settled down. Lots of new setters which can make for challenge but is good for variety. Thank-you to all the setters plus Editors and thanks to the TfTT bloggers for their efforts to get it up early! I note a couple of absent friend from the blog – was pleased to see a short reappearance from Tina a couple of months back but the always friendly CurryOwen seem to have disappeared. I hope all are well and to see everyone again next year.
Tough workout today for me. Lovely anagram for PHONEBOXES – not seen that before. Share dislike of LITE. NHO TILE meaning hat, but it had to be. Could not parse EVERY INCH – thanks Doofers for explanation and customary great blog.
From PHONE BOXES to TACTILE in 7:47. EVERY INCH took some pondering, as did STATUTE LAW. The top half seemed easier than the bottom half apart from the aforementioned EVERY INCH. Thanks Jalna and Doofers, and Happy New Year to all.
I was about to come here after 17 minutes failing to improve on INSERT for LOI 16d. But for once I stuck to the parsing rule and 2 minutes later found INVENT-clearly correct when you think of it. A clever clue.
Also held up by TACTILE, but I knew tile.
A good challenging QC.
COD to PHONE BOXES.
David