Very Teazy from Teazel today with plenty of trickery. I got a bit stuck in the SE corner until I saw the Q, taking 7:30 – well over par for me. Some great clues, though, including a lesser-spotted quadruple definition. Thank-you Teazel! How did you all get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Sawbill’s turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword here. Can you spot the Nina? If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 153 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, deletions and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Support letters after appointment (4) |
| POST – A four word quadruple definition. Nice one! | |
| 4 | Birds wrangle with noisy arguments (8) |
| SPARROWS – SPAR (wrangle) + ROWS (noisy arguments). I spotted the ROWS first and then the birds, then “spar” =”wrangle”… well I suppose so, but I needed the answer to the clue to see that. | |
| 8 | More enthusiastic man painting? That is right (8) |
| HEARTIER – HE (man) + ART (painting) + I.E. (id est; that is) + R. You need to see you have to split “man painting”, which I didn’t at first. | |
| 9 | Creep along in church (4) |
| INCH – IN + CH (Church). Phew! An easy one. | |
| 10 | In two brief months, boil (6) |
| DECOCT – DEC (December) + OCT (October) – two brief months. I knew of decoct meaning “extract”, but not that it also meant “boil”. | |
| 11 | Preserved vegetables for cheeky child (6) |
| PICKLE – Double definition. The second definition was a new one on me, but what else could the answer be? | |
| 12 | Terrible war starts — a GP’s to seek desperate salvation (5,2,6) |
| GRASP AT STRAWS – [Terrible] (war starts a GP’s)*. | |
| 16 | Charlie no winner, but not so far behind (6) |
| CLOSER – C (Charlie in the phonetic alphabet) + LOSER (no winner). | |
| 17 | Friend beginning to recover after earth tremor (6) |
| QUAKER – QUAKE (earth tremor) + first letter of , [beginning to], Recover. Ah. That sort of friend… “Quakers, or members of the Religious Society of Friends, are a faith group founded in 17th-century England by George Fox. They believe in a direct, personal connection to the Divine, often called the “Inner Light” or “that of God in everyone”. Known for their commitment to equality, peace, truth, and simplicity, they worship in silence without clergy.“ | |
| 19 | Pheasant, for example, unable to walk properly (4) |
| GAME – Double definition. The dictionary says of the second definition “origin obscure”. It’s a synonym of “lame”. | |
| 20 | Beloved park in holy surroundings (8) |
| PRECIOUS – REC (park) in PIOUS (holy). Did anyone else get hung up on trying to get a P for “Parking” in the middle? Wrong trees and barking spring to mind. | |
| 21 | Methodist’s awful news about destruction of Yale (8) |
| WESLEYAN – [awful] (news)* about [destruction of] (Yale)*. A double anagram and inclusion – wordplay that’s perhaps a little tricky for a QC, but the definition and crossers should lead you to the answer. | |
| 22 | Crazy star taking time to make a comeback (4) |
| NUTS – Not any old star but our own… SUN (star) including T (time) all reversed. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Some robes evidently far too heavy (5) |
| OBESE – Hidden in , [some], rOBES Evidently. | |
| 3 | Reptiles, huge nuisance for cat (13) |
| TORTOISESHELL – TORTOISES (reptiles) + HELL (huge nuisance). | |
| 4 | Splashed front of parka in river mud (5) |
| SPILT – First letter, [front of], Parka in SILT (river mud). No it doesn’t begin with R for river with 3 letters meaning “mud”. | |
| 5 | A rugby player’s eating nothing suitable (7) |
| APROPOS – A + PROP’S (rugby player’s) including, [eating] O (letter that looks like 0; nothing). | |
| 6 | New form of an incinerator following refurbishment (13) |
| REINCARNATION – (an incinerator)* [following refurbishment]. | |
| 7 | Why candle almost out in Irish town? (7) |
| WICKLOW – WICK LOW (why candle is almost out). | |
| 10 | Ultimately unsuited to cycling, one walked (3) |
| DOG – Last letters, [ultimately], of unsuiteD tO cyclinG. Lovely definition! | |
| 13 | Free to take another contract (7) |
| RELEASE – RE-LEASE (take another contract). | |
| 14 | Degenerate American going to pot (7) |
| ATROPHY – A (American) + TROPHY (pot). “going to” here is a juxtaposition indicator I’ve not seen before. It took me a while to see this one. | |
| 15 | Aristocrat turning up conceals title (3) |
| SIR – Reverse hidden in [turning uop conceals], aRIStocrat. | |
| 17 | Almost strange name for band (5) |
| QUEEN – QUEE{r} (strange) without the last letter, [almost], + N (name). No, not a belt or a stripe, but a differnt sort of band. It took me a while to see QUEER, which then helped me complete the SE corner quite quickly. | |
| 18 | Perfect climbing over base of Everest, go up? (5) |
| ERUPT – PURE (perfect) [climbing] -> ERUP + last letter, [base], of EveresT. Another tricky one, I think, to finish. | |
I enjoyed the quadruple definition of POST. Thanks to setter and John as always.
I hope that the regulars on here will enjoy the Weekend QC. Do let me know how you get on.
I can absolutely guarantee I will enjoy it more than today’s imposter for a QC …
Looking forward to Sunday morning already.
Thanks Sawbill – ripped through that in 5:39 – my fave was 3D which I biffed then saw the clever parsing!
Did you see the hidden message????
I didn’t so I had to type it all in again. 1min38 on second go round.
I see it now – reminds me of the time when Cedric was clued !!
Splendid Weekend QC – thank you, Sawbill! About the same difficulty as “today’s imposter” which I also thoroughly enjoyed.
The quad was my FOI, and I proceeded with alacrity from there. Wicklow we have seen before, although maybe not in a Quickie. Atrophy was my LOI, and I did not parse it.
Time: 9:57
15 minutes. LOI QUEEN forced by the Q -checker from QUAKER which had only just preceded it, and confirmed by wordplay. I know nothing of the band in question.
You seriously know nothing of Queen?
Why would I?
Greatest rock band of all time (IMO, at least), biopic from just a coupla years back, but most likely from the seminal hits that are played and referenced all the time? “We Are the Champions”, “We Will Rock You”, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Don’t Stop Me Now, “Under Pressure”, “Another One Bites the Dust”, among many others?
Well that’s fine and let me assure you I’m not trying to be snobbish about it, but I have absolutely zero interest in this type of music and don’t follow it, keeping up with who is or was famous in their day. I may know a bit about rock bands that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s but that’s about it.
Quite a struggle, at 16.41 that’s two Johns and change. The south-east undid me, and I wasn’t helping myself by trying to make an anagram of earth + r instead of QUAKE + R for friend. For a while I thought the cat at 3dn was an anagram as well, and was fooled by the clever 4xdef POST for too long. A clever puzzle, thanks John and Teazel.
I also spent time trying to anagram earth + r.
And me!
Me too!
Me too!
We tried to parse SHAKER — not sure if they have survived as a religion – not believing in sex may have been a limiting factor.
I too went down the Shaker route. I visited a Shaker settlement in New England several years ago, so they certainly still exist in a few areas.
: ) fascinating where doing a QC takes one…. I will now read about them.
Bit above my paygrade and enjoyed more in retrospect. Pleased with myself when POST went straight in but hard from there. Ended up with a GAME/lame toss up half expecting the clue to be wrong. I’d previously struggled with DECOCT – clearly clued once you have the checkers – and TORTOISESHELL (my cat is a ragdoll rescue – the size and quantity of hairballs was not in the manual). ATROPHY hard too. Loved HEARTIER when in game. Some great clues in here. All green in 21.12.
22:24 Spent 15 minutes on precious queen with Quaker nuts erupt. Yes I know.
TaJAT
😅
Slow but steady progress this morning. Like others, the SE put up a fight at the end. DECOCT and GAME were new to me but I wondered if the latter was related to ‘gammy’ in some way.
Started with POST and finished with ATROPHY in 9.28.
Thanks to John for the blog and Teazel for the entertaining workout.
When the clock stopped at 21.20 we were pretty pleased after an interesting battle with this one. To come here and find it’s probably our first solve in under 3 Johns is very gratifying. NHO decoct but with the crossers it had to be. Held up a bit with swallows which fitted birds and available crossers and assumed an unknown parsing. The quadruple is very good indeed, thanks Teazel and John
DNF. And that is doubly annoying as I struggled mightily through what I do not think is a QC, only to fail at the last when in desperation to complete the puzzle I put in LAME for GAME. I do not understand setters who choose such a deliberately obscure meaning for a word – Merriam-Webster has 246 synonyms for GAME and being unable to walk isn’t among them – and to do so when the checkers are -A-E compounds the feeling that the clue was out of place in a QC.
Before then I was held up by several clues where although the wordplay was clear, the definition/vocabulary was unusual. DECOCT, for one (did not know it meant to boil) and DOG (“one walked”? I do, finally, see it but it is either very clever or far too clever-clever for a QC, take your pick), and I had not met GRASP AT STRAWS (I have only met Clutch at straws) or QUAKER as a friend.
There is certainly a place for clues where a difficult definition is clued with friendly wordplay, and clearly part of the game is using wordplay to construct an unknown answer. And of course some of the time the definition is not so much “difficult” as merely “unknown to me”. But four in the same puzzle strikes me as “too much of a good thing” and left me struggling to enjoy this one.
Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to Sawbill’s Weekend Special even more than usual.
Strangely MW does mention game under GAMMY
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gammy
Phew, that was tough. I suspect that the blood of some regulars will be DECOCTing.
For me the holdups were (well, apart from half the puzzle – I mean the *particular* holdups) in all the SE – QUEEN, QUAKER, ERUPT and LOI ATROPHY. When I finally got QUEEN it unlocked it. “Going to” threw me out so I took comfort from it being new to our esteemed blogger as well.
Good tussle for 10:04 and a Workout Day; many thanks Teazel and John.
I wish the online version would name the setter. I’d have known better than to waste my time today!
It is there in the phone app if you know where to look…. settings – puzzle info
I suspect the same is available in the online version.
You can always look in the home page of this blog.
Oh my goodness. Tussle indeed. Quadruple definition impressive – some clever clues – QUAKER, some fun clues CLOSER, WICKLOW …. however, DECOCT? GAME? We rather enjoy a little trickery – being teased, tripped up, taken up the garden path, all engineered with a friendly smile. Today, we could not help but feel a little taunted. So, decocting we are not, though we feel a slight simmering ….
All up, a good work out with an occasional grimace.
Thank you Teazel and John.
DECOCT was an outrage, wasn’t it? But fortunately the cryptic was super clear: two short months. Solve DOG (an easy one) and the first one now starts with D, so is DEC. Right, now what could the other one be? DECOCT seemed the only even faintly plausible possibility. At least it looked like a word!
GAME was easy enough if you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan: someone who limps is often described as having a “game leg” (e.g. The Boscombe Valley Mystery: “Lestrade shrugged his shoulders. ‘I am a practical man,’ he said, ‘and I really cannot undertake to go about the country looking for a left-handed gentleman with a game leg. I should become the laughing-stock of Scotland Yard.’ “).
Thank you – and true indeed… on all counts… the old gammy leg has held up many a would be escapee and others.
I still feel DECOCT contrived of necessity rather than constructed of choice. I prefer the latter.
That said, hats off to Teazel and his fellow setters -doodling with words as it were, some months back, I tried to create a QC. Good grief. 😳
Yes it’s not easy. MyWeekend QCs take me two days to get to something I’m satisfied with.
Please carry on! Like so many, ‘Oh, it can’t be THAT hard’ contemplations – reality proves one wrong.
And thank you, so many moments of enjoyment flow from your two days of toil.
12:54 for the solve. Agree that was tough but it seemed about right for a Friday puzzle – although I’m sure I’m only saying that because I came through unscathed. Held up by HEARTILY for a minute or so at the end. NHO DECOCT; thought GAME was perhaps the proper spelling of “gammy” but the latter is correct. Liked the DOG clue.
Tough week but this was the 2nd fastest. All solved in just under 1hr10. The good thing about tough weeks is they stop me making mistakes so April remains clean.
Thanks to JohnI and Teazel – have a good weekend everybody.
Well done #50. With times like that you should be tackling the 15*15.
Thanks #5. I do occasionally dip into it. There is definitely a step up though
Per Collins “game” and “gammy” share a common Irish root.
game
in British English
adjective
a less common word for lame
game leg
Word origin
C18: probably from Irish cam crooked
gammy
in British English
British slang
(esp of the leg) malfunctioning, injured, or lame; game.
US equivalent: gimpy
Word origin
C19: from Shelta gyamyath bad, altered form of Irish cam crooked; see game
Hence the use of gimp as a derogatory term for a disabled person. Using that word got Shane Sutton the sack from British Cycling.
Thanks for doing the legwork with the dictionary on that one Templar
Oddly this was my second fastest solve of the week.
NHO DECOCT but it was the only real possibility. Nor that meaning of PICKLE
Some of our ancestors had ‘Friend’ as a middle name so I knew about the Quaker connection. Another example of useless knowledge from one’s parents having a use after all.
ATROPHY nearly did for me until an alphabet trawl produced the T (Trophy for Pot is quite a tenuous link)
Thanks to Teazel and John
Dnf…
The SE corner did it for me – plus putting in 19ac “Lame”, which I agree was pretty obscure and a 50/50 toss up if you didn’t know.
Again, not one for doing if you’re in a rush.
FOI – 6dn “Reincarnation”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 10ac “Decoct”
Thanks as usual!
NHO GAME but presumed related in some way to gammy; Mrs M assured me DECOCT was a word, and reminded me WESLEYAN. But convinced the holy surroundings was PRECInct so no hope of ERUPT, those 2 to the bad. Thanks, John.
I was very hung up on precinct too!
20:14. Taken into the SCC by the difficult ones mentioned above; having DECOCT for ‘boil’ and PICKLE, with one of the defs being ‘cheeky child’, across the grid was a good indication of the degree of difficulty. I took a while to see it but the quad def POST made up for the frustration in being so slow with many others.
Thanks to Teazel and John
DNF
My biggest ever fail on a QC. I gave up after 22 minutes, having failed to get HEARTIER, QUAKER, PRECIOUS, ATROPHY or QUEEN.
Thanks John for the blog
This was my slowest ever time, I think. 16.19. I could not for the life of me see HEARTIER, ATROPHY or PRECIOUS. On reflection, PRECIOUS wasn’t all that hard, but you really needed ATROPHY first.
NHO DECOCT, NHO GAME having that meaning but guessed that LAME was less likely to have a double-meaning. NHO PICKLE in that sense. NHO QUAKER = FRIEND but seemed likely.
Although I’m all for a challenge, I feel this massively stretches the meaning of QC. I do the 15×15 every day but this had more NHO than the typical full crossword. I rely on the QC to get me going, but this rather depressed me for it’s difficulty. It’s not that the clues are bad: they are great; but I don’t think they are in the spirit of the QC, as opposed to the 15×15.
I have to agree. Teazel does step over the QC line far too often for my liking.
Wow! Teazel strikes again. A good puzzle, once I accepted it was going to be slow and did my best to relax into it. The teaser is a mischievous setter, though.
Some very clever clues but some serious traps. I finished in the SE after battling with QUEEN and QUAKER but it took me ca. 24 mins. I do avoid the SCC from time to time with a Teazel puzzle (he has occasionally let slip an easy QC in the past -just for fun, I suppose) but, looking back, I am often in the low 20s.
Like gcook, perhaps I should stop looking at the setter’s name on my iPad.
Going through the posts above, I think I am closest to Cedric in my reaction to this one.
Thanks to JohnI and a gentle raspberry for Teazel.
Obviously tough for a relative newbie. I managed eight. Dog and Quaker were easy enough. Pickle and game were bifd. Reincarnation constructed.
Game for it / up for it… neither of which I am with two game legs.
I’m also in the clutch(ing) at straws camp. Present continuous in normal parlance. I’ve never heard grasp at straws. Usage example anyone?
Imagine the outrage if it had been “catch at straws” … https://grammarist.com/phrase/grasping-at-straws-or-clutching-at-straws/
Guardian headline “Men ‘grasping at straws’ over intelligence claims”
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/aug/25/highereducation.uk1
28:16 – phew! Very difficult indeed. Several unparsed and alphabet trawls needed to struggle home. DECOCT = BOIL? PICKLE = CHEEKY CHILD? NHO either. Basically a bit too hard for a QC.
Tricky indeed as nearly everyone has said, and I forgive myself for a time way above target at 14.38. DECOCT troubled me a little as it seems an awkward sort of word, and better suited to the 15×15 or even Mephisto perhaps.
Today’s toughie upped my weekly total to 58.56, giving me a daily average of 11.47. Hoping for better things next week if the setters spare us!
37:53 but miraculously all green.
Rapidly realised this was going to be a slower one after a few passed clues (I can’t keep up with which setter is harder/easier yet…still working on just getting the answers!) but made steady progress once FOI INCH and PICKLE got me started. The bottom half across clues went in quite easily and I started to have hope, but then got bogged down with the NW and SE. NHO DECOCT and was a matter of deduction and TORTOISESHELL made me pause as I considered whether I was thinking of butterflies. How can I know WESLEYAN but not TORTOISESHELL?!
Anyway, ended up flicking between 8A, 14D and 20A while watching the timer click up. Thought of HEARTIER but decided that didn’t quite mean “more enthusiastic” and couldn’t parse it. Went down a rabbit hole of wondering if HEART was an oblique reference to the “man painting” I knew as a child as Tony Hart…decided that was ridiculous and dismissed it, before coming back and immediately seeing HE and ART. Same for the SE corner, finally got ATROPHY after spending ages with AMT at the start, and then could not see LOI PRECIOUS for an age. Almost resorted to a crossword solver before it just popped. I had been putting P in the middle of it somewhere.
COD POST. First quadruple definition I think I’ve ever seen.
Thanks Teazel (you Teaze!) and John.
Most enjoyable. That darn cat held me up for much too long. WICKLOW and WESLEYAN might be slightly obscure GK for some I suppose ( the anagrist for the latter seemed very clear to me). If you’ve raised a cheeky child, you’re well aware of PICKLE as one of the politer names you call it. Refused to start going through all 144 month combos until I had the D to narrow it down – knew decoction, so there must be decoct ( I too didn’t realise it involved boiling) . I wonder if there’s anything else valid lurking amongst the months.
Thanks to setter and blogger for a delightful jaunt.
27:02
Made hard work of this one. NHO DECOCT and the SE corner had me really stumped, even when I got the Q. Didn’t think rec for park so struggled to parse PRECIOUS. LOI ERUPT.
Another DNF. Had to reveal 12a and 20a which between them gave me the rest. Cant help feeling that the QC has lost its way a bit. Its stated intention was to introduce complete beginners to the art of cryptic crosswords. If someone’s very first stab at a cryptic was Monday of this week’s offering I very much doubt whether they would still be with us or ever return. Thanks Teazel and John.
Phew! 28 minutes and I’m definitely in the ‘not really a QC’ club. Have only ever heard of ‘clutching at straws’, heard of DECOCT but didn’t relate it to ‘boil’ but with the only 2 months that fitted it couldn’t be anything else. GAME went in easily as with Pheasant clued so that couldn’t be anything else. Couldn’t parse HEARTIER. I’d always thought PICKLE was a northern expression for a scamp, rather than cheeky. I wouldn’t say ATROPHY was a synonym for Degenerate – in medical terms it means hardening and wasting away. Liked QUAKER though. Thanks John – fewer thanks to Teazel. Latecomer.
Crushing DNF, correctly giving up after 20 minutes with several blanks and no will to continue. I’ve tackled a couple of 15x15s this week with much more success.
Thank you for the blog!
DNF — failed at the last hurdle having not had to look at a single hint or dictionary definition all week. Sadly, the clue I missed was PRECIOUS with all the checkers; pretty unforgivable really. I did think this puzzle was stretching the boundaries for a QC, but good to have a challenge every now and then.
A strange week for me here.
Mon-Wed: Too difficult, could not finish
Thur: Finished but did not enjoy at all.
Fri: Could not finish but enjoyed it.
Hopefully next week will have better offerings.
DNF for me, but a fun puzzle none-the-less. I failed to get HEARTIER and ATROPHY, and I didn’t know that use of game but guessed it was linked to Gammy? Decoct was also new to me.
Phew. Much too difficult for me with only about 60% completed. Not a great QC but that’s how it goes. On to tomorrow
11:06
I thought this was brilliant. A good stretchy puzzle for the end of the week. Firstly, I enjoyed the quadruple definition (don’t usually spot multiple definitions above two), and no problems with DECOCT, PICKLE = cheeky child, and GAME (read enough detective novels where the suspect has a game/gammy leg) and worked my way around until six remained – a short period of puzzlement ensued. HEARTIER was the first of those to drop, with all checkers and an IER ending, followed by QUAKER (oh, that sort of Friend), QUEEN, ERUPT, PRECIOUS and finally, ATROPHY. Very happy if the range of QCs continues to include gems such as this.
Thanks John and Teazel
Finished with use of check button for GAME and DECOCT (could it be a real word?). Also, while in confessional mood, revealed first letter of HEARTIER. LOI TORTOISESHELL/POST. Very, very teazely. Great challenge for a Friday which I wasn’t quite up to 😂 Many thanks for the blog John. Hadn’t spotted the quadruple definition. I thought COD ERUPT was an absolutely outstanding clue. Thanks Teazel.
38 minutes with one square to go – what was it to be? An L or a G? I went for L rather than G and so Lame was revealed as incorrect!! I thought it had to be Game but couldn’t see how that could mean unable to walk! Bit daft in hindsight!!
Apart from that, despite a lot of pondering, I got there in the end. Lovely puzzle – thank you Teazel and John for the blog.
Gosh, what a lot of unhappy solvers! I am relatively new to the QC but my late husband frequently complained about his game leg, my granddaughter is frequently called ‘a little pickle’ and I taught for many years at a Friends’ School. Admittedly I have never decocted anything.
11 clues solved after 20 mins – about average for me! It would be nice to finish the occasional puzzle but these so-called quick ones seem to be getting harder. A few weeks ago the more experienced solvers were taking between 5 and 10 mins and lately there are many exceeding 10 mins. At the bottom of the curve I seem to correlate with the level of difficulty stated. Just need to start moving up it a bit!
25.56 That was challenging. HEARTIER, ATROPHY, PRECIOUS and ERUPT were all very slow at the end. POST was nice when I finally realised what was going on. Thanks John and Teazel.
Just about to grasp the door knocker of the SCC! 19:47, slowest in quite a while but none the less enjoyable for that. Couldn’t see the cat until the penny had finally dropped on our POI POST. What a great clue that was! DECOCT was a barely heard of and I could imagine WESLEYAN being tricky for some but I didn’t think there were any unfair clues here. Thanks to both blogger and setter.
P. S. GAME was a “finger’s crossed” . I thought I knew GAM as a lame equivalent but didn’t know where the E was coming from, though the whole clearly fitted pheasant. Perhaps not quite QC in retrospect.
Could anyone help me with how ‘man’ can be a synonym for ‘he’ in 8a? I would understand ‘the man’or ‘that man’ but ‘man’ on its own doesn’t really work.
“He” and “man” can both serve as a prefix meaning male. For example in “he-elephant” and in the original meaning of “man-child”.
That doesn’t really work as you would not say ‘man-elephant’ or ‘he-child’.
I cannot think of a use in which ‘he’ and ‘man’ are interchangeable.
Tricky! Late to this one as I’m just back from Skipton and have unpacked and put a wash on, but even thought it took me 13:14, I’m still well inside the top 100 on the Leaderboard. OBESE was FOI and HEARTIER brought up the rear. Struggled with QUAKER, QUEEN and ERUPT. Also took a while to see HEARTIER. Thanks Teazel and John.
10.37.
Not at the races on this one as I struggled throughout. NHO GAME as a synonym for lame and I misspelled WESLEYAN causing a long delay before I corrected it and saw ATROPHY. Knew DECOCT was a word but couldn’t have said exactly what it meant. Considered POST at 1ac as I could see two of the definitions but was wondering what the other two words in the clue were doing. I eventually threw in the towel on 30 minutes as is my custom at which point 3dn and its crossers 1, 8 and 19 across remained outstanding.
FOI – 16ac CLOSER
LOI – DNF
COD – 7dn WICKLOW
Thanks to Teazel and John
16:51 for me. I had pencilled in PROP as a four-letter support for 1ac. OBESE for 1d meant that it had to come out, but that helped APROPOS to come almost immediately, which made me smile. COD to POST.
Thanks to Teazel and John.
Let me know what you think of my weekend QC
Nothing that caused me real difficulty (luckily, I knew DECOCT), and two passes did the trick.
FOI POST
LOI ATROPHY
COD QUAKER
TIME 3:52
I found this much easier than yesterday’s, even though I failed to get ERUPT; can’t think why, it shouldn’t have been that difficult. ATROPHY took me the longest.
What with Quakers, Wesleyans and Reincarnation, I wondered if there was going to be a Nina, but there wasn’t!
my COD was absolutely DECOCT; I loved it. The quadruple definition in 1a was a close second, despite how much grief it gave me.
I struggled with some areas of the grid, particularly QUAKER/QUEEN, where I was on all the wrong tracks with the parsing of the former and had the right parsing of the latter, but couldn’t come up with the right synonym. NHO ‘game’ as an adjective and couldn’t decide on whether to go for that or ‘lame’.
I’m surprised to see so many people who haven’t heard of PICKLE like that; I ask my three-year-old fairly often if he’s being a pickle. =)
25:23
Much the same as many others. NHO DECOCT, DNK the second meaning for PICKLE and held up in the SE until I finally unravelled QUAKER to reveal QUEEN and ERUPT. Those three and my LOI putting 10 minutes on my solve.
As Martinů, I just assumed GAME was related to gammy leg, and I’m another for the ‘clutch at straws’ camp.
Another educational day.
FOI: INCH
LOI: HEARTIER
COD: QUAKER
Thanks to Teazel and John
DNF. Had to reveal DECOCT (NHO), ATROPHY, PRECIOUS, and ERUPT.
COD QUAKER. Also liked POST, PICKLE, POST, TORTOISESHELL and HEARTIER.
No problem with GAME. Like others, I usually say Clutch at Straws, so had to wait for PDM GRASP.
Thanks for vital blog, John.