This morning we have a puzzle by City that left me with slightly mixed feelings. I solved it in routine time – 10:19, par for me and also the fastest I have completed a puzzle by City – but there were a number of clues that I wasn’t entirely sure about and a number of definitions which are from way left field. I think I have managed to deduce the parsing of all of them by the end, but there was quite a bit of biffing and eyebrow motion while I was in flight.
There is one clue which I think has a fair chance of causing some comment, as 2D refers to 7A. Cross-referencing clues have been known to excite some quite strong reactions in the past from some in the TfTT community, and in this one the referencing is not even in a very straightforward way. But no doubt others will welcome its innovative ingenuity …
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 | |
|---|---|
| 7 | No one verifies internally (5) |
| NEVER – A hidden, in oNE VERifies.
And the first instance of having to think hard what the definition was – but “Never!” can be a (very) emphatic way of saying No. |
|
| 8 | Rare to remove coat before competitor’s appearance (7) |
| ARRIVAL – AR (middle letters of rARe, with the deletion of the first and last letters given by “to remove coat”) + RIVAL (competitor).
And more serious thought required for the second clue as well, as I was fixated on appearance having something to do with one’s looks until the penny dropped. |
|
| 10 | Gathering the VAR’s broken (7) |
| HARVEST – (the VARs)*, with the anagram indicator being “broken”. | |
| 11 | Element 10, next to nothing brought back (5) |
| XENON – NONE (nothing) + X (10), all reversed (“brought back”).
A very sneaky clue, in which one has to lift-and-separate Element from 10, as the 10th element in the Periodic Table is not Xenon but Neon – Xenon itself is the 54th element. Two facts I (thankfully) did not need to know to solve the clue and only discovered later. |
|
| 12 | Playing words with care — this gives one point for each (5,4) |
| SCORE DRAW – (words care)*, with the anagram indicator being “playing”.
In football (soccer) league tables, a draw earns both teams one point – in fact it does whether or not there is any score, as a 0-0 draw is also worth one point to each side. |
|
| 14 | Prime time with Oscar (3) |
| TWO – T (time) + W (with) + O (Oscar, being the name for the letter O in the NATO alphabet). And 2 is indeed a prime number. | |
| 15 | Amazing card (3) |
| ACE – A DD. | |
| 16 | Gossip about mushy sprout in eating establishment (9) |
| GASTROPUB – GA~B (gossip) around (sprout)*, with the anagram indicator being “mushy”.
A nice play on “mushy peas”, a standard accompaniment to fish and chips. And very tasty mushy peas are too, though whether mushy sprouts would be is more debateable. |
|
| 18 | President’s cap (5) |
| TRUMP – Our second DD. And both of them so far 2 word clues, thus demonstrating once again one of the more reliable rules of crosswords, that “Two Word Clues Are Usually DDs”. | |
| 20 | Drums beat — I’m panicking to a certain extent (7) |
| TIMPANI – A hidden, in beaT I’M PANIcking, with the hidden indicator being “to a certain extent”. | |
| 22 | Dish from California area (7) |
| CALZONE – CAL (abbreviation for California) + ZONE (area).
Calzone is a style of pizza, and while I’m sure you can get very good calzone in California, it actually originated in Naples. |
|
| 23 | Convict following gut, mostly in prison camp (5) |
| GULAG – GU (gut, “mostly”, ie with the last letter deleted) + LAG (convict).
The Gulag was a system of forced labour camps in the USSR. The actual word Gulag (in Russian, Гулаг) comes from the phrase Главное управление исправительно-трудовых лагерей, or “Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps”, and originally referred to the division of the Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the camps, but in English usage it became a generic term for the camps themselves. The term Gulag is probably best known in English from the book The Gulag Archipelago, by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident in the post WW2 era, in which he writes about the system of the camps. The book is part autobiographical and based on his own time as an inmate of the camps. |
|
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Cuisine that’s surprisingly warm (12) |
| ENTHUSIASTIC – (cuisine that’s)*, with the anagram indicator being “surprisingly”. | |
| 2 | Suggestion upset 7 too (8) |
| OVERTONE – An anagram of never (the answer to 7A) and too, with the anagram indicator being “upset”.
It would be too strong to say I was “upset” by this clue, but when the answer to one clue provides part of the anagrist for another (just part of it, not even all of it), there was definitely some mild eye-rolling, and I am left slightly wondering where the QC boundaries are. |
|
| 3 | Scottish island without one large plant (4) |
| TREE – TIREE (Scottish island) with the I deleted (“without one”).
A challenging clue I think, as Tiree is not the best known of Scotland’s myriad islands – it is not, for example, in the same league as Skye – but it is the most westerly island in the Inner Hebrides, and reputedly one of the sunniest places in Britain. I can’t vouch for the latter, as on the only occasion I have been there it was overcast every single day of our holiday, but it was certainly one of the windiest islands I’ve been to, on account of its largely exposed position and very flat terrain. |
|
| 4 | Sportsperson covering for fish? (6) |
| BATTER – Another DD, making use of the modern custom of calling batsmen and batswomen, words which were good enough from the dawn of cricket till about 3 years ago, by the now-preferred gender-neutral term. | |
| 5 | In favour of axes, at first we always recommend indirect fighting (5,3) |
| PROXY WAR – PRO (in favour of) + X Y (the two axes of a graph) + WAR (the first letters of We Always Recommend, given by “at first”).
A complex clue, which I biffed from the definition and enumeration and then sat thinking about the parsing for some time until the penny dropped that “axes” was the plural of “axis” not of “axe”. |
|
| 6 | Shakespeare was associated with this rising star (4) |
| AVON – NOVA (star) reversed (“rising”, as this is a down clue).
The association is not so much with Avon itself as with Stratford-upon-Avon, as the town was Shakespeare’s birthplace, home for large parts of his life and final resting place. Born there in 1564, he grew up in the town, raised his family there, and returned to live there for his final years before being buried in the town’s Holy Trinity Church. |
|
| 9 | Twisting or bending old collapsible spanner? (6,6) |
| LONDON BRIDGE – (or bending old)*, with the anagram indicator being “twisting”.
A very quirky definition, playing firstly on bridges spanning things and secondly on the old nursery rhyme “London Bridge is falling down”. |
|
| 13 | This makes room for soldiers to encourage limiting ops in retreat (3,5) |
| EGG SPOON – EGG~ON (encourage) surrounding (“limiting”) SPO (ops “in retreat”, ie reversed).
The soldiers here are toast fingers which one dunks in boiled eggs, and to make room for the dunking one has to eat some of the egg first, and for that one needs an egg-spoon (with or without a hyphen; I prefer with) to scoop it out. I hope that’s all clear? But actually, with the first word going E-G, I suspect many will have just got this from the checkers. |
|
| 14 | Best opportunities to buy broadcast equipment for boats (8) |
| TOPSAILS – TOP (best) + SAILS (sounds like SALES, or opportunities to buy, with the homophone indicator being “broadcast”).
Topsails were the largest and main driving sails of square-rigged ships; typically each mast would carry a lower sail, called a Course Sail, then a Topsail, then often a sail above that, called a Topgallant. |
|
| 17 | Easy chance to score with model (6) |
| SITTER – A DD, the first meaning being common in British English for a very easy play in eg football or cricket, so easy in fact that the player could almost make it “sitting down”. | |
| 19 | Unpleasant fruit mostly ending in jelly (4) |
| UGLY – UGL (ugli, a fruit, with the last letter deleted, given by “mostly”) + Y (ending in, ie last letter of, jellY).
I can’t help feeling that City has somewhat overcomplicated this clue, as just the first two words of it (“Unpleasant fruit”) would have given a straightforward DD. Unless there are unwritten rules for how many DDs a puzzle can have? City has already given us four … |
|
| 21 | Wizard of 1000 years (4) |
| MAGE – M (1,000, represented in the Roman notation by the letter M) + AGE (years).
I am not entirely sure about Years = Age, but by this stage of doing the crossword I felt it was probably close enough to go straight in. |
|
11:41. I felt well tuned in to City’s wavelength for this splendid romp. A MER from me too at 2dn. Is it an “indirect anagram” and, as such, totally verboten? LOIs TREE and BATTER – and I have to choose BATTER for COD.
Thanks to City for the puzzle and thank you Cedric for the blog
I’m not an expert on the terminology but I don’t think it’s technically an indirect anagram. After all if you know the answer to 7A then you know what letters to anagram. My understanding of an indirect anagram is that you are asked to find a synonym for a word in the clue and then anagram that
I had to hop around the grid quite a lot before I could get going properly and establish some flow, so I’d rate this as somewhat harder than average for a QC. 16 minutes.
32.18. Slow for me today. Struggled with the SW corner. Kicked myself for staring at CALZONE for the longest time, and took ages to get SITTER. Not an art or football fan so was slightly nervous of it. FOI XENON, LOI SITTER, COD LONDON BRIDGE
Thanks City and Cedric.
Can’t say I enjoyed this one much, I think seeing two apparent cross reference clues in the first few I looked put me off (even though 11a turned out not to have anything to do with 10a) and I never regained any enthusiasm for it.
Started with NEVER and finished with OVERTONE in a sluggish 11.04.
Thanks to Cedric and City.
On edit, now that my grump is over, there were some excellent clues including LONDON BRIDGE and XENON.
I enjoyed this challenging puzzle taking 38 minutes to finish over a steadily cooling cup of tea but took a long time to get going until 1d finally provided some checkers to open up the rest of the grid.
I didn’t mind the cross reference as I saw what was going on but the definition was tricky.
COD LONDON BRIDGE
Thanks City and Cedric.
After a week away, it’s nice to get back to our seat in the SCC at 22.34. Thought it might be rather longer than that but the SE came in a bit of a rush at the end.
We thought the cross references would raise eyebrows and I’m not sure I’ve seen one before where the reference clue is actually one of the crossers.
Had a big eye brow raise at London Bridge, wondering if collapsible spanner was referring to Tower Bridge, with the same apocryphal mistake that means the old London Bridge is now somewhere in Arizona? Not sure I buy Cedric’s falling down as collapsible either?
Thanks City and Cedric for the extra info and entertainment
7.55
I was also tempted to grump but actually I really enjoyed this as there are some smooth and amusing surfaces which very comfortably (imho) outweigh 2d and 3d (not sure the surface really works for the former and the latter was quite hard). Anything that gives VAR a hard time gets my vote so COD to HARVEST.
Thanks Cedric and City.
4:50. I wasn’t bothered by the cross-reference, although I think one per crossword is enough. LOI CALZONE. I liked ENTHUSIASTIC and LONDON BRIDGE. Thanks City and Cedric.
Quite a tough one for me with eight after 20 minutes finishing with ten. Couldn’t crack either of the long down anagrams. Bit of a mer at Cal for California, SoCal is acceptable but I’ve never heard anyone use Cal. Liked egg-spoon and proxy war. Almost got my lines of the periodic table mixed up and narrowly avoided Argon which is atomic number 18 of course.
Thanks CnC
California institute of Technology is fairly widely known as Cal Tech.
Those of us who went to the U. of California (at Berkeley) refer to it as Cal. Cal. and Calif. were standard abbreviations, CA an innovation when the Post Office created the 2-letter postcodes.
6d – The common reference to “The Bard of Avon” makes the cluing entirely fair IMO.
(And some minor subbing: You currently have 10a harvest as an anagram of “harvest” rather than “the VAR’s”)
Anyway, yes, this one felt sticky and difficult to get a rhythm on, without anything being too difficult in retrospect.
Many thanks to City & Cedric
Thanks, blog corrected on Harvest!
21:05 with OVERTONE, XENON and EGG SPOON causing most thought. COD LONDON BRIDGE.
I don’t like cross-references but I do like obscure Hebridean islands, so there we are.
Lots to enjoy in this one, especially LONDON BRIDGE, GASTROPUB and COD HARVEST. I also enjoyed learning about GULAGs from our esteemed blogger. The key to this one was probably cracking ENTHUSIASTIC early on – I did, and crossed the line in 06:00 dead for an Excellent Day.
Cedric, how would “unpleasant fruit” have been a DD when one is UGLY and the other is UGLI? Am I being thick?
Many thanks City and Cedric.
[PS the QUITCH seems to be frozen this morning – lots of the above times haven’t been logged]
You’re right, it would have to be ‘fruit sounding unpleasant’… Although that wouldn’t indicate which of the two possibilities filled the unch. I can’t get the Quitch either.
Good point and yes that would work.
Was fixated on thinking of different fish names before PDM with BATTER. 2D went in without a problem as I’d already got 7A, but thought there’d be a few raised eyebrows. Liked PROXY WAR, LONDON BRIDGE and EGG SPOON. Thanks City and Cedric.
A very slow start for me – I almost set it aside. However, I persevered once I saw a few of the easier answers and, once I saw ENTHUSIASTIC, I was slowly drawn in. I was never really on City’s wavelength but did manage to finish in 21.10 and parsed them all.
I was particularly slow with clever clues such as PROXY WAR, CALZONE, EGG SPOON and kicked myself when I saw AVON, TRUMP, BATTER, and GASTROPUB (and when I realised the (usual) significance of ‘broadcast’ in TOPSAILS.
I think you have a good point about OVERTONE, Cedric. I found it worth going over your blog again because there were some fine clues to re-visit; I was tempted to include more excellent clues here but desisted.
Thanks to City for a challenge which gave some satisfaction when I got there in the end.
A comparatively slow 26.20 for us – some minutes of which could have been avoided by following instructions (eg ‘rare without coat’). Part biffing ‘mainsail’ in lieu of TOPSAILS did not help.
That said, very much enjoyed nearly every clue (not keen on cross-referenced clues).
A fair and pleasing challenge.
A happy return to childhood with EGG SPOON.
Thank you City and Cedric
21 mins…
A funny one this. After 10 mins, I barely had 4 answers. I couldn’t work out if I was being dim, I wasn’t on the right wavelength or it was genuinely hard. Eventually things fell into place, but it definitely didn’t feel straight forward.
FOI – 14ac “Two”
LOI – 3dn “Tree”
COD – 9dn “London Bridge”
Thanks as usual!
A lovely crossword, not too easy, with some favourite clues – LONDON BRIDGE, XENON and EGG SPOON – standing out. I’d never heard of PROXY WAR, so that was worked out, as opposed to Cedric’s post-parse. Otherwise, all known. LOI was TREE, once the crossing E was in place. I was a bit worried about SITTER, as I couldn’t parse the first part, but Mr Ego tells me it means the same as ‘sitting duck’.
I saw both sides of this one, there are some strange things in it, but none of them caused too much trouble and I liked it. The longest pause was amazing=ace, but I had forgotten that anything a child does is now worthy of that epithet so I suppose playing an ace at cards would justify a call to the Nobel committee. Teeny MER at 14d as its pronounced tops’l and doesnt rhyme with sale at all. Thanks to City and Cedric.
14:46, but with two pink squares for OVERNOTE, which is in the OED, with examples of usage such as “capturing in a bottle the light floral overnotes and spicy pungent undernotes”.
Thanks Cedric (and City). No objection from me to 21D. “It’s been an age since…” or “ages since…” = “it’s been years since…”
13:09. Very sour taste left by 2D where I bunged in EVERMORE thinking it was the opposite (upset) of NEVER. Think I’ve only encountered being expected to use the letters from another clue once or twice before. My view is that in the Quick if the setter is going to use unusual words or tricks then it should be fairly obvious in the clue what we’re trying to do – and while suggestion=overtone is valid it’s not a pair of synonyms I’d go for. Didn’t much like the over “10” in XENON.
Thanks to Cedric and City
Edit: further thought about OVERTONE clue while at the supermarket. Just don’t like it in the QC because if you can’t get the answer to 7A then you don’t know what you’re anagramming and you end up with a pair of clues unsolved rather than just one. I can’t see a good reason for not just writing a standalone clue for 2D
Very slow again today. Brain taking a while to warm up. Jumped around all over the grid trying to find some easier ones. Held up by NEVER(didn’t spot the hidden – grr)/OVERTONE and GASTROPUB/EGGSPOON. Liked TREE for misdirection, and surface for PROXY WAR. Tough but worth the perseverance (for me at any rate). Thanks City and Cedric.
20.10 Back in the SCC. I had all but three done in nine minutes then NEVER, TREE and OVERTONE seriously breeze-blocked me. I did like LONDON BRIDGE. Thanks Cedric and City.
Oof! We finished in a better than average 10:44 but it felt like we had to be on our A game to get there. Didn’t pause to parse our LOI OVERTONE so didn’t worry about the cross reference but not a huge fan. Good variety of clues so we enjoyed the workout but I’d have said this was harder than average and we got there under par by being ‘on the wavelength’. It’s been a good week for us having been faster than average throughout without ever having felt short-changed. Thanks to City and Cedric for today’s offering and blog.
Nice puzzle from city had to guess LOI TREE. Loved the spanner clue. Home and hosed in slightly better than par 9:12 albeit a fat fingered DPS. Thanks Cedric.
Not my favourite puzzle, I did like XENON and LONDON BRIDGE though. I’m not a big fan of cross-referencing clues in general, since they force you to solve in an order decided by the setter, but it feels particularly unfair to make the clues cross each other in this way creating a double dependency of clue and crossing letters. Thanks Cedric and City.
Struggled quite horribly with this for some reason, but finished eventually, with a doffed cap to the setter. Spent an age trying to force Neon where it didn’t belong and a couple of definite slapped foreheads ( no, a collapsible spanner isn’t some devious tool !). I retire a bit chastened, and not really triumphant.
21:11
I enjoyed the cross referencing clues even though NEVER held me up for ages before I spotted the hidden. After that the rest were easy. LOI TREE.
17:57, I had a hard time with this one (though I liked it), failing to notice the cross-reference, missing the hidden NEVER, taking forever to unscramble ENTHUSIASTIC, not knowing TiREE or SCORE DRAW etc. etc. I liked PROXY WAR best and had a good laugh after trying to put GASTROPod. I’ve only seldom seen “gastropub” but it does seem inevitable. Finally, finally I’m able to remember “soldiers” as toast, hurray! Oddly once I realized there was a cross-reference, I didn’t bat an eye at the anagram, maybe I was just too happy at finishing.
Thank you to City and Cedric.
I don’t like to disturb your memory palace, and I guess it may vary, but soldiers were never toast in our house. Just normal bread with butter on them cut into appropriately widthed strips
Ps I see Cedric likes them that way.
PPS I wanted to go for gastropod too!
But how does untoasted bread have the structural integrity necessary for dipping?
This is a very important issue. My memory palace hangs in the balance.
I dunno. I was eating, not conducting a science experiment! You just dip the soldier into runny egg, it’s a quick coating of yellow. Same as how you don’t leave a digestive in your tea too long!!
So pleased to read this, ND, I was beginning to think it was just my family!
I thought I had set about trying to solve the QC, but I was obviously mistaken. 56-57 minutes for me. No fun at all for the last 20 minutes or so.
If two clues are interdependent how is it possible to (confidently) solve and parse either of them without having (confidently) solved and parsed the other?
Many thanks to Cedric for the blog.
7A can be solved independently. The wordplay that’s it’s a hidden seems confirmatory enough to be although although the “No”=”never” definition could leave a little doubt.
I agree 2D is problematic but it doesn’t really matter to me that it happens to cross with 7A. NEVER could have been anywhere in the grid and without it you can only solve 2D independently with a bif of overtone=suggestion. Giving them a mutual V makes that bif even harder to get on I’d say
23 mins. The last 8 of that spent on the never, overtone, tree crosser. Which I won’t complain much about as soon as I actually looked for the hidden, they all fell into place, but definitely made this a tougher one for me. Enjoyable variety of clues/cryptic dark arts in this one stopped it feeling like a grind.
FOI Harvest
LOI Tree
COD Proxy war
Thanks City and Cedric.
No time as watching football and navigating several online chats also. Despite these distractions I found this an enjoyable puzzle.
Laughed a lot at BATTER after the Joe Root discussion earlier in the week.
Agree that soldiers aren’t toasted.
COD to PROXY WAR.
Thanks to City and Cedric.
15:35 and tricksy methinks. Held up by Never Tree Overtone although should have spotted lurker as never was on my mind in as much as NHO Tiree
TaCAC
Well, it seems that I almost made it to 50 before learning that an egg spoon is a thing. Don’t you all just use a teaspoon?
Anyway, a tricky one today, taking me 17:52. I’d definitely be tutting if we’d had this one during the week but I don’t mind a bit of eyebrow-raising at the weekend, and I particularly liked PROXY WAR.
Thank you for the blog!
Took me a little over 40 minutes, and I needed some help from Mrs L before I could finish. But we got there in the end.
A little trivia, Tiree has no trees. So Scottish island without one large plant (4) is rather clever.