I was breezing through this one until suddenly I wasn’t. I finished in 12:29, below my average, but at one point I thought I was heading for a very quick time. Things slowed down a bit from there, but never ground to a halt.
My COD goes to AUDITOR, for the misdirection of “university dons”.
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 | Pine for American wife (6) |
| MISSUS – MISS (pine for), US (American). | |
| 4 | Elderly impressionist not entirely laid back (4) |
| AGED – DEGA |
|
| 9 | Different poem by Diana (7) |
| DIVERSE – DI (common abbreviation of Diana), VERSE (poem). | |
| 10 | Hard border — row of leylandii, say? (5) |
| HEDGE – H for hard (as in pencils), EDGE (border).
I’d never heard of leylandii, (and neither has my spell checker, evidently), but apparently it’s a type of cypress tree often used for hedges. Not the maker of the Austinius maximus, then. |
|
| 11 | South Africa trained iron man in European country (3,6) |
| SAN MARINO – SA (South Africa), then (IRON MAN)*. | |
| 12 | Cat in short book (3) |
| TOM – TOM |
|
| 13 | Colour of canary — like a chicken? (6) |
| YELLOW – double definition, the second being ‘cowardly’. | |
| 15 | Mat has fallen apart — some condition! (6) |
| ASTHMA – (MAT HAS)* | |
| 17 | Argument for public relations officials, first of all (3) |
| PRO – “first of all” of P That’s “pro” as in “con”, of course. |
|
| 18 | Neglected strip one found in advertisement (9) |
| ABANDONED – BAND (strip, as in ‘a band of colour’) + ONE (from the clue) in AD. | |
| 21 | Duck in fear of another bird (5) |
| QUAIL – Double definition.
I was so sure that this was going to be an ‘O’ inside a four-letter word for “fear” that when I got the crossing Q I thought it must be wrong. |
|
| 22 | One favouring the cream in coffee ultimately, menu has it covered (7) |
| ELITIST – |
|
| 23 | Whirlpool ripping head from cuddly toy (4) |
| EDDY – |
|
| 24 | Key Percy turned, letting Henry in (6) |
| CYPHER – H for Henry (SI unit of, um, inductance) in (PERCY)*.
Not to get all technical here, but a cypher (aka cipher) is an algorithm that uses a key, not itself a key. When I was 18 and studying for A-level Physics, I could have told you what inductance is. Any 18-year olds out there? |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Reserve place on farm, way above it (7) |
| MODESTY – STY (place on farm) with MODE (way, as in “of behaviour”) above it.
That’s the noun form of “reserve”. |
|
| 2 | Number six originally — just like two or four? (5) |
| SEVEN – S An example of the common convention that numbers written out like this are not cross-references to another clue. But remember that that is just a guideline, not an iron law of the universe. |
|
| 3 | Foolish — and expensive? (12) |
| UNREASONABLE – A double definition. | |
| 5 | Travel from the Netherlands and split the bill (2,5) |
| GO DUTCH – Go (travel), DUTCH (from the Netherlands). | |
| 6 | Reverie’s ending in short vision (5) |
| DREAM – One of my favourite definitions, which I read in a book by Iain Banks, defines a dram as a measure of whisky which is pleasing to both guest and host. |
|
| 7 | House where newspaper turned up without leader (4) |
| SEMI – Almost the same recipe as AGED at 4ac. For the non-British contingent, a semi-detached house is one that shares a common wall with just one other house. cf ‘detached’ (no common walls) and ‘terraced’ (two common walls). |
|
| 8 | Cry loudly, feeling upset? Misguidedly I say “Oh dear!” (6-1-5) |
| WHOOPS A DAISY – WHOOP (cry loudly), SAD (feeling upset), (I SAY)*.
I was trying to make an anagram of “I say oh dear”, despite knowing that I’d be a couple of letters short, when light dawned. |
|
| 14 | Terrible ordeal homing puma at first — that cat’s wild! (7) |
| LEOPARD – (ORDEAL)* containing [homing – giving a home to] P |
|
| 16 | University dons unsettled adroit checker (7) |
| AUDITOR – U for university is clothed in [dons] (ADROIT)*.
Very neat usage of multiple definitions of “dons”. |
|
| 17 | Anger in summit reported? (5) |
| PIQUE – Sounds like [reported] “peak” (summit). | |
| 19 | Last word in testament? (4) |
| AMEN – hidden [in] |
|
| 20 | Sound from behind stable door as hinge turned (5) |
| NEIGH – (HINGE)*. | |
Something can very well be expensive but still reasonable surely?
Hence the question mark?
18:11 with a discombobulated time zone crossed and Moet fuggled brain that along with the somewhat stressful flight path into UAE (no alarms and no surprises🙏) sat solving in Dubai airport with a 5 hr layover for a Heathrow flight. Missus took a while to reveal unreasonable modesty.
TaDAM
Tweetie-Pi
Somewhere over the Mediterranean about now? Safe travels.
12 minutes solving in a noisy room, so not ideal conditions. I know I was distracted because I spotted DREAM immediately as the answer at 6dn but I couldn’t for the life of me think how DRAM could mean ‘short’!
The setter has ample support for ‘key / CYPHER’ from Collins (the key to a secret message) and ODE (a key to a code), although Chambers only has that meaning under a separate entry, ‘cypher key’ (a key to a cypher or a secret piece of writing).
In my experience it is a bone of contention in the UK housing market that ‘end of terrace’ houses which by definition can have only one shared wall are valued considerably less than semi-detached houses in the same area despite being of the same size and internal design.
Is that through structural/maintenance concerns?
IMO it is because of the area, in which most of the other houses are terraced. Also, often, there are no windows in the unshared wall so no benefit.
7.19, so no problems except in the NW where MISSUS, SEVEN and UNREASONABLE were LOsI. A fun puzzle, thanks to Mara and the Doof.
5:54, finishing with MISSUS. Pleased to come in four seconds inside target.
My horses were quite scared. The use of ‘dons’ in the clue for AUDITOR was magnificent, totally misdirected me – solving that is my crossword moment of the month! An awful lot going on in the clue for ELITIST, loved that too. My LOI. Boringly regular typo was double H in WHOOPS A DAISY. I’d resolved to be more careful – leaderboard now shows 12 errors for me in the month.
I’ve more or less got my regular typos under control, and was down to one error for this month. Unfortunately I invented an interesting sounding Italian dessert in today’s Concise. Titamisu anybody? Maybe it’s served with cherries on top…
Ideal for me, steady and enough to chew on without choking, and lots of tasty morsels. AUDITOR was so clever, ELITIST and QUAIL close behind. The urge to be misled into forcing an O into the later was only overcome when the Q appeared.
Fine puzzle, fine commentary, thanks both.
I was very slow getting started and then entered and deleted WHOOPS A DAISY a couple of times as I couldn’t figure out what the anagram fodder was!
Lots to enjoy here and I finished in a bang average 7.34.
Thanks to Doofers and Mara.
13:54, but would have been much quicker had I not been held up at the intersections of MISSUS, UNREASONABLE, MODESTY. Fun though.
Pi ❤️
4:49 LOI CYPHER not thinking of that sort of key until I had the checkers. I liked WHOOPS-A-DAISY. Thank-you Mara and Doofers.
13.50 A few seconds quicker than yesterday so things are looking up for me and for the accessibility of recent QCs.
Some very good clues, some answers were easy to see (then parse) once a few crossers emerged. LOsI were MISSUS and the clever AUDITOR. I must admit to glossing over the rigorous parsing of WHOOPS-A-DAISY and DREAM.
Thanks to Mara and Doofers.
I took an unfathomably long time to see LOI UNREASONABLE, despite all checkers. I’m sure if it had been an across clue I’d have seen it immediately, funny how that works.
Tricky in parts (ELITIST, “mode” for “way”, WHOOPS A DAISY), easy in others, all balancing out for 06:54 and a Good Day. Many thanks Mara and El Doof.
I kept trying to fit in Epicure or similar but finally a PDM and I saw LOI ELITIST.
Medium pace today, fairly steady solve, once I got started with AMEN, ironically enough.
Liked WHOOPS A DAISY, CYPHER, MISSUS.
Thanks vm, Doofers.
18:16, so a bit quicker than usual, despite struggling with ADROIT, AUDITOR and ELITIST.
Clever misdirection in a number of clues – AUDITOR my COD. NHO DRAM meaning short, but leylandii no problem – we all have different GK! Thanks Mara and Doofers.
21:07. Started off well (for me) with all but two in at 11 minutes, then sat looking at the WHOOPS A DAISY/ELITIST pairing for an achingly long time. Put THROWS in for the first word thinking it was about having some sort of tantrum and couldn’t get passed it until it came in a flash and all done. Great puzzle regardless of my ineptitude. FOI HEDGE, LOI ELITIST, COD WHOOPS A DAISY
Thanks M and D.
I completely misread the clue for DREAM and thought it said shot not short, upon which dram was obvious and the answer appeared immediately. Had I read the clue properly I’d have been a lot more stuck as dram = short does not strike me as anything like as clear.
That apart I found some of the puzzle quite chewy, though I never ground to a complete halt in what ended up as a 13:24 finish. UNREASONABLE was my LOI as I struggled with both parts of the DD: foolish means unwise, stupid more than unreasonable (a blackmailer’s demands may be unreasonable but are not foolish), and as for expensive, lots of things are expensive for a very good reason.
COD to SEVEN, such a simple clue, such a misleading surface.
Many thanks Doofers for the blog.
From SEVEN to AUDITOR in 7:09. Liked WHOOPS A DAISY. Thanks Mara and doofers.
I solved clockwise from the NE as I couldn’t get a foothold in the NW. My LOsI were MODESTY, MISSUS and UNREASONABLE. Thanks Doofers 7:56
Just the 12 today.
None eaten – Nuneaton
Thanks M & D
6:15
WHOOPS-A-DAISY from enumeration and parsed post-entry. Had QUAKE for QUAIL briefly. I would have agreed with our honourable blogger in saying that a CYPHER is not a key in itself, but what do I know? Looks like some dictionaries have other ideas.
Thanks Doofers and Mara
I think part of the fun of these crosswords is learning new meanings for words we take for granted. As others have said, it was only when I was parsing that I thought, ‘Hmm, I didn’t know that cypher could mean the key as well as the message but I can how that would work’. And lo and behold that meaning of cypher (or cipher) is in the SOED, OED, and Collins so good enough for me.
Then reading more, I saw that it can also be a person or a monogram. And those did actually ring a faint bell for me.
But the sound of a malfunctioning organ pipe? That was completely new to me.
70+ years and still learning. What’s not to like?
Well over par for me – just didn’t like it. All green in 12:44. LOI MISSUS
Well, I managed to avoid a third successive window seat, but only because I was left scrambling for one in the aisle instead.
Couldn’t see either of 1ac/d to start with, but at least I managed to resist a briefly tempting Dali for 4ac. Diverse and Hedge then got me going, but Auditor/Elitist and Missus/Modesty eventually came back to bite, and confirmed this as a poor effort on my part. Perhaps I should try starting the day with the Sudoku ?
CoD to Auditor and the devious University Dons. Invariant
12:00 dead, a bit under my average. Started badly but picked up speed in the SW, before getting delayed again by AUDITOR and CYPHER. No excuse in either case, I just misunderstood the former and couldn’t see the latter.
Thank you for the blog!
PS ~ the 15×15 is on the easier side today, for those like me who venture over there occasionally.
Dnf…
19 mins for everything, but then couldn’t get 21ac “Quail”. I knew there was probably something wrong with 17dn and, sure enough, I can’t spell. Disappointing, as I thought this was a good puzzle.
FOI – 2dn “Seven”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 1ac “Missus”
Thanks as usual!
The general consensus would appear to suggest that this was a good deal more straightforward than I made it. I was about 30 seconds or so over my ten minute target with just one to get, but for the life of me I just couldn’t get UNREASONABLE, despite all the checkers being in place. A torturous two minutes plus passed before the penny dropped, allowing me to stop the clock at 13.08.
16:30. Really struggled to keep my eyes on the prize today with numerous distractions and at one point thought it would be a second successive throwing in of the towel. Happily the trusty method of walking away for a while allowed for renewed concentration and all fell into place.
Started with HEDGE, finished with MODESTY.
Liked SEVEN and AUDITOR.
Thanks Mara and D.
DNF, missing the MISSUS/MODESTY pair, and the PIQUE/QUAIL, where I was sure duck=0.
Having clued MISSUS in a recent Weekend Special got me off to a quick start, and after 2 passes I biffed my LOI and parsed it afterwards.
FOI MISSUS
LOI DREAM
COD QUAIL
TIME 2:54
An enjoyable if slow solve, finally gave up on 24a and put zyther in as the only word that I could think of, not sure why I missed cypher on the trawl. Had the same slight reservations about “unreasonable” as others have mentioned but on reflection somthing that is not expensive is often referred to as reasonable so I suppose the opposite also applies, and fools are pretty much by definition not suceptable to reason. Thanks Mara and Doofers.
Inductance: the ability of a moving or changing magnetic field to cause (induce) a current to flow in an adjacent wire. Its what makes transformers, dynamos, alternators, spark plugs and magnetos work. It also works in reverse, so a wire with a current flowing through it which is moving or the current is changing will exert a force on any nearby magnet. That is how electric motors work.
DNF – 63% complete
Called time at 25 minutes, having spent the last 5 minutes cycling through the remain clues taking some pretty random guesses and using the ‘check’ function to see if I’d get lucky. I didn’t.
23A POOR TEDDY! 🙈🐨🐻
17 + so quite a way from the SCC so happy enough.
Took an unreasonable amount of time to work out ELITIST.
Thank you Mara, Doofers.
Genuine question: Can someone explain how it is possible to get to WHOOPS A DAISY from the clue alone; or is just a case of getting enough checking letters that you can work through the permutations to get the answer, then reverse engineer the wordplay as confirmation?
Sometimes multi- word answers jump out, but if they don’t it’s usually a lot easier to wait for a few checkers than painstakingly decode the cryptic. If you try to answer each clue as a stand alone test, it will a) take you a lot longer and b) no longer be a crossword.
The blogger gives an explanation of how he got Whoops-a-daisy.
Not many will get it from the clue without any checking letters in place.
For me, the middle singular was probably going to be A or I.
After trying to anagram “I say oh dear” like the blogger; I saw that maybe it was an anagram of just “I say” which fitted the -I-Y ending I had with checkers.
That would leave “Oh dear” bereft at the end of the clue and therefore to be the definition.
With —–/A/-AISY it wasn’t too difficult to then get the answer.
But that did take a few mins to unravel.
NB I didn’t bother to confirm the WHOOP/SAD part because I felt it was highly unlikely anything else relevant would fit the -H-O-S checkers. I did however decode it post-solve and I have been caught out with that gamble on occasion.
1 vote for enough checking letters
There was no way I would have got that from wordplay alone with no checkers. But – checkers are very much part of the game. These are called “cross” words after all. So trying to get letters from other clues and seeing if they help you understand it better is a tool in everyone’s toolbox.
Ditto
I found his one to be not too difficult, though there were some head scratchers causing me to ask for help with some clues.
Unfortunately I had one pick square on submission; I had a Y at the end of 3d instead of an E.
I had no idea what a cypher was but it was the only word I could make out of PERCY H, so in it went. All I could think of was Charles Cypher who played Sheriff Brackett in John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN and HALLOWEEN II.
I was delayed for a while with QUAIL as, like Merlin, I wanted to put an O in there.
First Lap: 11
Answered (no help): 21
Answered (with help): 5
Incorrect: 1 (3d)
DNF: Nil
Time: 31:20
My thanks to Mara and Doofenschmirtz.
Well! I thought for a while I wasn’t going to finish a QC, but things sort of came together eventually.
1a Missus, I was clueless for ages.
12a Tom, didn’t see the tom(e) so biffed.
1d Modesty, took an age for mode=way to show up, I was trying to place a STreet somewhere.
7d Semi. We Brits had back-to-backs as well once upon a time, 3 common walls.
8d Whoops, I spent ages trying to find the anagrist. Added to Cheating Machine, so I think this might be a first sighting.
27 minutes for me, so just inside my presumed average and unofficial target.
DIVERSE and HEDGE came early, but I struggled to follow up on them and was forced to redirect my attention to the bottom of the grid.
ABANDONED, WHOOPS-A-DAISY and SEMI were fortunate guesses, once I’d got most of their checkers in place. TOM and DREAM were my LOsI.
I had to hide 23a (EDDY) from Eric, who is sitting beside me. He is a Teddy bear made to an original Steiff design by Mrs Random a few years ago. He spends his time deep in thought and checking that I don’t get up to any mischief when Mrs R is out, which she is today.
Many thanks to Doofers and Mara.
7.28 WHOOPS A DAISY went in from the checkers and I finished with AUDITOR. Thanks Doofers and Mara.
16:51
All parsed.
As a few others, 1a/1d were slow to come. Having the ‘Q’ from PIQUE still didn’t stop me looking for a word meaning fear beginning with ‘Q’ with an O’ in it.
But at the end of it all, I found this thoroughly enjoyable with the use of just the right amount of misdirection. Hence my COD for trying to find a word meaning ‘cry loudly’ which included the letters from ‘I say “Oh dear!”‘
FOI: HEDGE
LOI: ELITIST
COD: WHOOPS A DAISY
Thanks to Mara and Doofers
14:13 and Mara gave me less difficulty than usual but still had me looking for ELITIST for several minutes. CYPHER, QUAIL and MISSUS were good and also delayed me for a while. AUDITOR was really good but for some reason went right in. I didn’t like UNREASONABLE and I don’t think it’s because I needed all the crossers, it just didn’t seem very cryptic; maybe it’s just me being …. NHO “short” as “dram”; drinking anything stronger than wine is not for me, and even for the sake of the QC I don’t think I’ll take it up. Favorite surface the gruesome EDDY (apologies to Eric).
Thanks Mara and Doof.
PS second the motion on the easy 15×15 today