I think this will be at the easier end of the scale for most solvers. There are enough fairly easy clues that the trickier ones will all have plenty of crossers by the time you get to them.
Having said that, I took just a smidge longer than my average time, finishing in 15:44 and had a real howler of an error at 15ac, described below. Much of my time was on my last two in: GARISH and STREAMER
How to read the explanations: definitions are underlined, synonyms are in (round brackets), wordplay is in [square brackets] and deletions are in strikethrough. Anagram indicators are italicised in the clue, anagram fodder is indicated like (THIS)*.
| Across | |
| 1 | Wet, like that American monarch (7) |
| SOAKING – SO (like that), A for American, KING (monarch). | |
| 5 | Artistic work broken (4) |
| BUST – Two definitions. | |
| 7 | Forty winks scruff cut short (3) |
| NAP – NAP |
|
| 8 | Flag media player? (8) |
| STREAMER – Another double definition.
I’m not sure if the media playing device or the person using the device would be described as a “streamer”, but I don’t think it matters. It took me a very long time to see this one, even with all the crossing letters in place. |
|
| 10 | Passage made of tin and aluminium (5) |
| CANAL – CAN (tin) + AL (chemical symbol for aluminium).
Hands up everyone who spent time wondering where the fifth letter came from after starting with Sn and Al. |
|
| 11 | Something on a motorbike raised when flying round first of corners (7) |
| SIDECAR – (RAISED)* including [round] first [letter] of C |
|
| 13 | Warmer months, might one add? (6) |
| SUMMER – Our third double definition. | |
| 15 | Yellowish, everything scoffed by pig (6) |
| SALLOW – ALL (everything) inside [scoffed by] SOW (pig).
This was where I made my mistake. In fact, two mistakes. Firstly, I somehow came up with “cow” as a synonym for “pig”. As childish insults go, ok, that almost works. But then, in justifying CALLOW to myself as the answer, I went from “callow” to “inexperienced” to “there’s a colour that means that” to “aha, there’s a colour in the clue too, must be right.”. Sadly, the colour that means “inexperienced” is green, not yellow. Sigh. A reminder to check your working. |
|
| 17 | Country hotel so in need of renovation (7) |
| LESOTHO – (HOTEL SO)* | |
| 18 | Player in fact ordinary (5) |
| ACTOR – Hidden in |
|
| 20 | Meat found in armpit as horrible! (8) |
| PASTRAMI – (ARMPIT AS)*
I’ll never be able to look at a pastrami sandwich without thinking of this anagram from now on. |
|
| 22 | Colour studied, we hear? (3) |
| RED – sounds like [we hear] READ (studied).
The most straightforward homophone clue ever? |
|
| 23 | Butcher’s little sound (4) |
| PEEP – Double definition.
The first definition is from Cockney rhyming slang, where “butcher’s hook” – often shortened to “butcher’s” – means “look”. |
|
| 24 | Famous and lacking skills? (7) |
| NOTABLE – If you are lacking skills, you are NOT ABLE. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Son with man — one of those might be on the beach (10) |
| SANDCASTLE – S for son, AND (with), CASTLE (man, on a chessboard). | |
| 2 | Writer under a small tree (5) |
| ASPEN – PEN (writer) under A and S for small. | |
| 3 | Cheeky hosts very, very short of money (9) |
| INSOLVENT – INSOLENT (cheeky) contains [hosts] V for very. | |
| 4 | Loud tease stood up, and I shut up! (6) |
| GARISH – RAG (tease) reversed [stood up], I (from the clue) and SH (shut up!).
Picture someone hissing at a noisy audience-member for “sh” = “shut up!”. |
|
| 5 | Primarily bleating actually, as sound from animal (3) |
| BAA – First letters [primarily] of B |
|
| 6 | Template with holes in Celts manufactured (7) |
| STENCIL – (IN CELTS)* | |
| 9 | Defensive feature of design game (10) |
| DRAWBRIDGE – DRAW (design), BRIDGE (game). | |
| 12 | Admit star upset playwright (9) |
| DRAMATIST – (ADMIT STAR)* | |
| 14 | Treatment that’s needed, reportedly? (7) |
| MASSAGE – “needed” is a homonym [reportedly] of “kneaded”. And if you get a massage you could say you were kneaded.
A little unusual in that the homonym isn’t actually the answer, but a stepping-stone to the answer. This reminds me of the sign near the tip jar in many a bakery, “we knead the dough”. |
|
| 16 | Fix principal area (6) |
| DOMAIN – DO (fix), MAIN (principal). | |
| 19 | Pulse right in both for a change (5) |
| THROB – R for right in (BOTH)*.
Even though I saw how this one worked, I spent too long thinking of the “lentils and beans” meaning of pulse. |
|
| 21 | Best cardigan, say (3) |
| TOP – Another double definition, or a definition and a definition-by-example? I don’t think it matters. | |
I didn’t get MASSAGE or STREAMER. I think it’s very uncommon in the QC to have to come up with a synonym of a homonym, I never even considered it, and gave up after a 10 minute think. INSOLVENT took me a while but I found the rest pretty easy.
8:07 WOE
Once again failing to notice a typo. I had no idea how MASSAGE worked, but as they say, it had to be. Didn’t care for do=FIX.
I pictured a sinister Kray brothers-style henchman, for whom “I’ll fix ’im” and “I’ll do ’im” could be synonyms.
I’ll do/fix the dinner tonight
I found this a bit harder than yesterday’s, with the very clever massage providing a bit of trouble, along with the difficult domain. A streamer is definitely a device, they sell them at online audio stores.
Time: 9:07
HaHa a rare QTB 15:24 but another one… (and this is something I never the thought I would be admitting…) that massage took far too long.
Ta DAM
I wanted to make a SIDECAR tonight, but I’m out of lemon juice.
11 minutes. I missed the 10-minute barrier because of STREAMER as my LOI which added a good 2 minutes to my time. Another very nice puzzle. So far this week is shaping up better for me than last week which was very poor overall.
Had to leave SOAKING until almost the end but otherwise a fast start before finishing in regulation time. Made things hard for myself by misspelling LESOTHO – INSOLVENT and MASSAGE became much easier once I reanagramed the letters. Then misssed the CRS for PEEP so showed good restraint and didn’t whack in PEEP. I did whack in cALLOW though and do remember thinking “is a female pig called a cow” before moving on not even considering my answer fitted green not yellow. A fully deserved pink square for being super dim. Not all green in 16.
Classic Mara full of clever misdirections. Typical of him to put the homophone IN the clue, I liked it!
Started pleasingly with soaking and a nice steady solve until,like our blogger, stared at garish and streamer for about 3 of our 20.38
Thanks Doofers for parsing of sandcastle, must remember man=chess piece
Thanks Mara for all the PDMs
5:59
A good day where everything dropped in nicely, apart from my LOI PEEP, where I didn’t get the CRS in flight. Bunged in for a quick completion at the risk of being hopelessly wrong, but it turned out fine. Needed all of the checkers to see STREAMER and took a few moments with BUST, but other than that, no issues.
Thanks Doofers and Mara
I didn’t find this as easy as our blogger suggests, taking 14:14 to complete it, and I see the SNITCH is currently over 100, but other than MASSAGE (put in from checkers with all fingers crossed) the clues all responded to careful thought. MASSAGE was different though, and I’ve not met that trick before – I think I applaud Mara’s innovation, but it certainly surprised me when I read Doofers’ explanation.
Many thanks Doofers for the blog.
A slow start in the NW but the rest of the puzzle was very obedient and, with checkers in place, my revisit to the top left corner at the end didn’t take too long.
Started with SANDCASTLE and finished with GARISH in 6.40. COD to PASTRAMI.
Thanks to Doofers and Mara
The first network enabled music players were “streamers”. RJ45 input and two phono for the output. Wireless “Ethernet” if you were lucky. Forerunners of the Sonus devices circa 2001/2. Several first mover self funded businesses didn’t make it when VC funded Sonus entered the market. Your smart phone is effectively a streamer, 5G in, Bluetooth out at the physical layer.
I went yelp for peep.
Managed 20 without help.
Missed the anagram indicator in 17a
Thanks D and M
Wow – not sure I understood any of that, but shows what a variety of knowledge lurks behind all the avatars!
Still shaking the snow off my boots after a week on the slopes, but managed to navigate this safely if a little slowly. MASSAGE would be very welcome just now. As would a SIDECAR….
I enjoyed the bimonthly visit of my therapeutic massuse this morning 🙂 I only drink alcohol when there is a D in the month so no screwdrivers or wallbangers.
I have a phisiotherapist on Friday mornings. Still trying to get my legs to work again. Best hope is calipers and a Zimmer Frame.
Meanwhile going up the learning curve of WordPress so I can build out my website for my consultancy business based around cycling aerodynamics.
Good luck with all your endeavours, health wise and in business. Maximising all those little gains is what it all seems to be about, fascinating if incomprehensible to us leisurely weekend riders!
Thank you
Website sounds like a fun challenge.
Life is such a strange reality. None of us asked to be here, yet, here we all are, bound to travel its unpredictable roads, tunnels and varying trajectories – unsure where we will end up. I guess we just grasp those uncertainties and go for it… onward and good luck! Restriction of any kind can be lonely… but be assured at least on this site, you are not alone. Friends in the ether…
The modern ones are a little more sophisticated:
https://www.musicdirect.com/network-audio-player/cambridge-exn100-music-streamer/
I’m just thinking, is it pointless using Spotify lossless if I’m then using Bluetooth to my headphones or soundbar….
Yes, for good sound, everything should be hard-wired. Those who buy this sort of streamer would typically use a big power amp and suitable speakers.
Is vinyl indicative of you being a fan of the medium? In my university days I did a calculation about wow (as in wow and flutter) caused by the degree of warp in a vinyl LP. This was to justify using a low end Sugdens (?) belt drive turntable with an SME tone arm and a Sure V15E. I still have the V15E (!)
I’ve still got most of my vinyl from the late 1960s up to the CD era, although only about 80 albums. The original “Dark side” is in there somewhere.
I’m living in a flat now so only using Spotify over the phone with decent Bluetooth headphones these days.
Yes: thank you, Mara, enjoyed that, especially the surface for SIDECAR. LOI DRAWBRIDGE after staring at it for some time.
Wow – I did wonder about MASSAGE, thank you Doofers, that is ingenious.
Another DNF, maybe I should have spent longer on the last three: MASSAGE, STREAMER, and GARISH.
MASSAGE really doesn’t work for me. It never occurred to me to look for a synonym of a homophone, or the other way around? I went for MISTAKE, which sounds like “missed ache”, well, it fitted.
6.11
No problem with MASSAGE but SOAKING GARISH and STREAMER needed thought. Enjoyable blog and puzzle.
5:48. Exactly the same time as yesterday. I was slow spotting some of the clues were anagrams (e.g. SIDECAR and DRAMATIST) but nothing held me up unduly. LOI DOMAIN. I was mystified by the surface of 7A, otherwise all good. Thank-you Mara and Doofers.
I was held up by two initial errors.
Firstly I put in OPUS for 5ac thinking Work = OP, broken = US. I did think it didn’t work but tried to justify it as some kind of half &lit. I was never convinced and thought about it for far too long before moving on. Fortunately 5dn couldn’t be anything but BAA so it didn’t detain me later.
Then I put in STANDARD for 8ac while wondering if the venerable London organ was even still a thing (I haven’t commuted since before the pandemic) and further asking myself if any arbitrary newspaper would constitute a media player and, if that was the right answer, what was the question mark doing there. That one stood up to 3dn going in (I couldn’t see 4dn on the first pass) but also fell to BAA.
I finished in just over 15 minutes, with SOAKING, GARISH and MASSAGE the last to fall. Overall I liked this one again. Good week so far.
After a very good start, I was seriously delayed by STREAMER, MASSAGE, SOAKING and PEEP (the latter was a biff – the rhyming slang caught me out on this occasion) .
A typo put the tin hat on it for me today and took me into the SCC again.
I was pleased to see my way through some very good clues but, in the end, some of Mara’s misdirections were just a bit too clever for me.
Thanks to both.
Finished all correct, but slow on LOsI GARISH and STREAMER. In fact, not particularly fast in general as I had to hop around the grid.
Liked SANDCASTLE (biffed), THROB, DRAWBRIDGE, and BUST.
CNP MASSAGE, INSOLVENT. FOI SOAKING.
Thanks vm, Doofers.
I’m sat on the DNF step today, lost patience after banging my head for a while on STREAMER and PEEP. I got MASSAGE but couldn’t parse it – thanks Doofers! (And Mara.)
11:07, with MASSAGE and PEEP holding me up at the end.
Thanks Doofers and Mara
10 minutes but very puzzled about MASSAGE – came here for enlightenment – thanks! I expected the first 3 letters of 3dn to be IMP due to ‘cheeky’ but ended up leaving until more checkers came long.
Hi Chris. Is Woodsy at the Olympics?
He’s not competing (a bit old now!) but is doing the commentary on TNT including slopestyle, half pipe and big air.
Thanks. Tempus has fugited! I’ll look out for him.
26 minutes which is my quickest of the week.
Happy to put my hand up for 10 across….. slowly getting the hang of these things 🙂
I’m also becoming used to the idea that I should think PASTRAMI when I see the word meat…. and now I want a bagel.
Cheers to Mara and Doofenschmirtz
10:30
The massage clue doesn’t work. Treatment that’s needed, reportedly? Okay, so it’s saying ‘treatment that is kneaded’ or to put it another way, ‘treatment that one kneads’. Can you knead a massage? I don’t think so. You can knead something or someone, and you can massage something or someone. But you can’t knead a massage or indeed massage a knead.
Thanks, D.
I’m with you on this. I might buy “treatment that’s needy, reportedly” except of course that doesn’t work for other reasons. “Treatment thats needing, reportedly”, terrible surface though logical. But of course, not having been able to parse the clue, I wouldn’t like it, would I haha.
On further thought, I might just barely save the clue with the observation that “treatment that’s needed” can be expanded to “treatment that has needed”. Maybe.
Thanks, SC. I think you’re on the money with the ‘has needed’ parsing, and I duly retract my criticism and apologise unreservedly to the setter! 🙂
Ok, you’ve persuaded me that I’m right! 🙃
Mara wins again.
19:25 to finish this entertaining puzzle, which I found much more approachable than many other recent offerings. However, couldn’t parse MASSAGE (a pure guess) and took time to see SOAKING, INSOLENT and DOMAIN.
Slow start, quick bulk in the middle, and then ages on streamer and trying to parse massage. Very enjoyable thanks Mara and Doofers.
I don’t know if it was the fact I saw 1ac/d straight away or because Mara really was in a generous mood, but I found this one fairly straightforward. Helped along the way by waiting (this time, 😉) for crossers before trying to spell Lesotho, and knowing that Flag is usually one of Iris/Standard, but can sometimes also be a Streamer.
I agree Massage didn’t exactly jump off the page, but loi Bust (four letters !) was the one that took me longest to see. All done and dusted in a smudge over 15mins.
CoD to Sidecar for the parsing, with Peep a length behind. My thanks also to Doof for another entertaining blog. Invariant
16:04
Failed to parse MASSAGE but like the blogger got stuck on the last 2, GARISH and STREAMER.
All correct in a gentle 30 minute solve. Took me a while to get going but once I got GARISH and STREAMER I was on my way. Couldn’t parse MASSAGE (way too obscure for me) and I incorrectly parsed PEEP thinking of Little Bo Peep which has the word little and she could have been a butcher!!
Thanks Mara and Doofers
7.34.
My thanks to Mara and Doofenschmirtz.
I didn’t find it easy and struggled with LOI 16d Domain, where the def seemed loose at the time, so biffed.
8a Streamer, another challenge, but it does work OK.
23a Peep, CRS took a while to come to me.
14d Massage pencilled in straight away, but very, very lightly.
Failed to parse MASSAGE and misspelt LESOTHO, which made 3D an impossibility as ending in O! Struggled for far too long over STREAMER and GARISH and still don’t really get them. COD NOTABLE. thanks v m Doofers.
I thought of MASSAGE as a potential answer, but was so unsure that I wouldn’t put it in until I worked out the connection with ‘kneaded’. It also took me a little while to work out STREAMER as my LOI. Other than that however I found it relatively straightforward, finishing in a respectable 8.34.
19 mins…
Main hold ups were 23ac “Peep” (nearly put Beep), 4dn “Garish”, 8ac “Streamer” and my LOI 14dn “Massage”. For that I nearly invented the treatment of “Mustave”, thinking it was a slang homophone of “Must ‘ave” (ie. That’s needed).
FOI – 1ac “Soaking”
LOI – 14dn “Massage”
COD – 1dn “Sandcastle”
Thanks as usual!
. . .would that, by any chance, be the modern version of a mustard poultice 🤔
I couldn’t get past MASSAGE starting MuSt, went with the made up MUSTAVE treatment in the end
I think I might have been more likely to get that in the 15×15 where I am much more likely stretch the boundaries of what I think is possible for a clue to be asking of me
About my average time for this rather jolly puzzle. Last two in were MASSAGE and PEEP, and COD must go to MASSAGE.
Thanks Mara and Doofers
26 mins with a lot of thinking, humming and haaring, most of which is discussed above. As said, couldn’t parse MASSAGE, I liked SANDCASTLE as I remembered chess/man and felt smug. I didn’t like Do/Fix.
I had a Pastrami Reuben on my way to the airport last week before return flight home (in lieu of airline food). Is there an equivalent of an ‘Ear worm’? Mouth bug? Lip stick? Offers welcome.
Thanks Mara & Doofers
I have to disagree wholeheartedly with the blogger; in no way was this QC easy. In fact I found it to have been extremely tough. I gave up after having only solved half of the clues in one hour. That is my worst attempt in a long time.
Now to pop over to the Daily Telegraph cryptic.
See you all tomorrow.
I enjoyed this one and was very pleased to remember a chess piece for ‘man’ and to consider some CRS when all else failed. The only clue that caused any real problem (bearing in mind that I very much take my time) was LOI DOMAIN which I never did parse – thanks D. I rather liked GARISH as I had to work at it, but COD (of course) to MASSAGE, my favourite type of clue, second only to a Spoonerism 😆 Many thanks Mara and D.
11.50 Another quite slow day. I had to return to most of the top half and I finished with a biff of MASSAGE. Thanks Doofers and Mara.
I thought this was going to be the first time I finished a puzzle in less than 30mins, but I could not solve Streamer and I don’t think it’s a media-related word. Streaming yes, but no-one is a Streamer!! Anyway after only solving five clues yesterday this was a great improvement!
if you are streaming media to watch, listen to, whatever. You could be considered to be a media player or ‘streamer’ (one who streams).🙂
If you are steaming vegetables are you a Steamer?
The clue states media player? … the presence of the question mark is deliberate to indicate there is something quirky going on.
Netflix is a streaming service so it’s not that much of a grammatical jump to consider them a streamer. Even if no one ever uses the term doesn’t make it incorrect.
While I’m not big on classifying clues, I’d say it’s a cryptic hint rather than the double Def our blogger has opted for.
My point is that if you are buying something in a shop you’re a ‘Buyer’, if you’re playing media that you’re streaming off t’internet to watch/listen to, then you personally are a ‘Media Player’ cos your the one playing it and consequently that means that you’re a ‘Streamer’ cos your the one streaming it (streaming refers to both transmission and reception).
Simples !🙂
Have you erroneously replied to me? My comment was to the questioner A Ragman.
I think you and I are in agreement that there is nothing wrong with streamer = media player. Albeit from different sides of who is playing
Thanks – it seems that anything goes in these puzzles!
I posted a sample of a streamer above, the Cambridge EXN100 Music Streamer. That’s what the manufacturer calls it, and it is a media player.
So music streamers are a thing, and most of my friends in the audio club have one. I’m still playing records.
Dear AR,
A streamer is another namer for a media player, which is a source component in a hi-fi system. They come in budget, mid-range and true audiophile levels of quality and expenditure. If you have deep enough pockets could spend well into five figures on some top of the range models (see below).
Linn Klimax DSM: £35,000
Naim ND 555: £26,999 (+ £18,500 if you also want the dedicated power supply)
Food for thought?
Now we’re talking! I heard the B&W 801 Signature speakers at a local audio dealer, and they would be a good match for those streamers.
Dear Vinyl1,
Here’s something for you to save up for – the SME Model 60 ‘One of One’.
A snip at just £81,960, although that doesn’t include a cartridge. SME are based just a five minute walk from my house.
B&W are local to me as well and they used to have a test/listening room five minutes walk from me as well.
10:15 for me. COD to MASSAGE which I parsed in real time. Didn’t like DO for FIX albeit understand it and so DOMAIN was LOI.
13:27, with my LOI DOMAIN breeze-blocking me for a good couple of minutes at the end. I didn’t find it easy but it felt less brutal than most over the last week or so.
From SOAKING to PEEP in 8:29. No dramas. Thanks M ara and Doofers.
We were doing well at somewhere close to 10 minutes until the last two in the SW. MASSAGE went in with fingers crossed as we couldn’t see how it worked but couldn’t think of anything else. At least it was correct. We had a DNF with BEEP at 12:14 (were we the only ones?). NHO PEEP as CRS for a butcher so there was nothing else to guide us and the first one thought of went in. Other than that, not too difficult. Thanks, Doofers and Mara.
Butchers is CRS for Look and Look=Peep.🙂
Once again, the NW corner proved impenetrable at first, so I started elsewhere and fairly whizzed around the grid until I arrived back after 16 minutes with only five to do (that’s jolly fast for me).
Trouble was, I still had the same five clues to solve 12 minutes later and I had begun to despair. Eventually, however, whilst staring at __S___E_T for the nth time, I thought of SO for ‘very’ and INSOLVENT soon came into my head. This was the catalyst for me then to solve CANAL, SANDCASTLE, SOAKING and GARISH in fairly short order.
Total time = 34 minutes (including an interminable 12 minute hiatus). Phew!
Many thanks to Doofers and Mara.
Another miserable DNF.
Put CALLOW for SALLOW and WEEP for PEEP. Don’t understand the clue, but neither do I want any explanations.
Couldn’t be bothered to time myself.
Utterly useless performance as usual. Rapidly losing interest in this. Just can’t do it.
A bit tired after 13 holes of golf in muddy conditions, I found this tricky.
Mostly done in 13 minutes but then held up by three: SOAKING, GARISH and LOI STREAMER which I put in after 20 minutes.
But I see I left an unparsed YELP at 23a so a DNF for me.
No criticism of the puzzle. On the MASSAGE debate , I failed to parse it but now quite like it.
David
22:11, oh Mara, you did it to me again. Of course I saw MASSAGE and PEEP immediately but couldn’t (and can’t) parse them. I flirted with “mustard” for a while on the theory that a mustard plaster is a treatment. After searching, and searching, and searching, boredom set in. I submitted them in the certainty of seeing pink squares and now I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get bored sooner. Other than that, the usual thought-provoking but do-able clues from Mara. With one other notable event: the clue for PASTRAMI made me laugh so hard I couldn’t think straight for some minutes.
Thanks to Mara and Doof.
massage / kneaded caused raised blood pressure from my physiotherapist wife.