The majority of these clues might have been out of place in a Quickie, but only because they were too easy. However, interlaced with these was some tricky stuff, so how you did will depend to some extent on how familiar you were with the unusual ones and how tolerant you are of crosswords that mix things up in this way.
I got home in 18:40. How did you do?
| Across | |
| 1 | Beg mischief-maker to take on new role (7) |
| IMPLORE – IMP anagram* of ROLE | |
| 5 | Attend police station, not having caught one-time dropout (7) |
| BEATNIK – BE AT (attend) NI |
|
| 9 | State of hair in dogs outside bars? (9) |
| CURLINESS – LINES (bars can be used to mean bar lines in musical notation) in CURS | |
| 10 | Month the Spanish produce literary work (5) |
| NOVEL – NOV EL | |
| 11 | Chap inside stole tea (5) |
| BOHEA -HE in BOA (stole, as in furry thing round neck) | |
| 12 | Irish island where drinks are on the house? (9) |
| INNISFREE -if an INN IS FREE, the drinks may well be on the house; INNISFREE (a small island in Lough Gill in Co, Sligo) is best known for its appearance in Yeats’ early poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ | |
| 13 | Control plant’s rebirth (13) |
| REINCARNATION – REIN CARNATION | |
| 17 | C-in-C’s orders one’s studied at first in car (13) |
| GENERALISSIMO – GENERA (orders) + IS (one’s) S |
|
| 21 | King Edward, possibly, digesting poem about a crawler (9) |
| TOADEATER – TATER (potato, of which the King Edward is a variety) containing A in ODE; a TOADEATER (originally a mountebank’s assistant who would pretend to eat toads [believed to be poisonous]) meant a crawler or servile flatterer; the more familiar ‘toady’ is believed to be derived fron this | |
| 24 | Enemy captures leaders of soldiers storming ditch (5) |
| FOSSE – S |
|
| 25 | For all players, express disapproval with note (5) |
| TUTTI – TUT TI (as in do, re, me, fa, so, la) | |
| 26 | Young farm animal initially swimming lake during trial (9) |
| SHEARLING – S |
|
| 27 | US landowner managed revolutionary rabble to begin with (7) |
| RANCHER – RAN CHE R |
|
| 28 | Foot of gigantic bird that’s legendary in the East (7) |
| TROCHEE – ROC (gigantic bird that’s legendary) in THE E | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Popular youngster primarily interpreting nightmares (6) |
| INCUBI – IN CUB I |
|
| 2 | Maybe one astride a heavy carthorse? (9) |
| PERCHERON – if someone was perching on a horse, s/he might be said to be astride it; a Percheron is a compact heavy breed of carthorse; Le Perche (after which it is named) is a former province of France approximately occupying a place in modern-day south-east Normandy | |
| 3 | Old friend in Paris collecting gear for pastime in Japan (7) |
| ORIGAMI – RIG (gear) in O (old) AMI (French for friend); as far as solvers are concerned, the only Japanese pastimes are origami, bonsai, noh and haiku | |
| 4 | Mournful English supporter going over Iowa and California (9) |
| ELEGIACAL – E LEG IA CAL | |
| 5 | Member of cattle tribe thus invading waste container perhaps (5) |
| BISON – SO in BIN | |
| 6 | Memory defect mother raised upset first-class nurse once (7) |
| AMNESIA – reversal (raised) of MA followed by reversal (upset) of AI (first-class) SEN (state enrolled nurse) | |
| 7 | New girl meets head of Roedean? I don’t believe it! (5) |
| NEVER -N EVE R |
|
| 8 | Scene of cat fights? Type disturbing a fellow (8) |
| KILKENNY – ILK (type) in KENNY (random man); the Kilkenny cats are a fabled pair of cats from County Kilkenny in Ireland, who fought each other so ferociously that only their tails remained at the end of the battle. | |
| 14 | Bring back army corps court covering most of county (9) |
| RESURRECT – SURRE |
|
| 15 | Artisan travelling north is crossing motorway (9) |
| IRONSMITH – M in NORTH IS* | |
| 16 | A contemptible person on a hill, one causing trouble (8) |
| AGITATOR – A GIT [on] A TOR | |
| 18 | New shrine ultimately south of a European river (7) |
| RHENISH – SHRINE* |
|
| 19 | Big fire? Deduce otherwise (7) |
| INFERNO – if others think the fire is big but you deduce otherwise, you may be said to INFER NO | |
| 20 | Alliance placing silver urn originally in shelter (6) |
| LEAGUE – AG (silver) U |
|
| 22 | Continue to perform in part of West London (5) |
| ACTON – ACT ON | |
| 23 | Stunner posed again, given rise (5) |
| TASER – reversal of RESAT | |
Well summed up, Hugh.
Raced through this until I hit the unknown cat venue.
27 minutes as far as I went but I had no idea about KILKENNY and even with all the checkers in place I was unable to construct it from wordplay. Now that I’ve seen the answer I may have heard of ‘Kilkenny cats’ but not the legend about them fighting.
Elsewhere CURLINESS, TOADEATER and INNISFREE delayed me longer than most, and I was very pleased to trawl up INCUBI and PERCHERON from the depths of memory.
I don’t understand why the KILKENNY clue has “scene of cat fights”. The legend seems to refer to just one fight.
12:48.
I agree with our blogger on the wildly fluctuating difficulty. KILKENNY went in (“well it’s a place I’ve heard of”) once I thought of ILK, though I didn’t know about the cats. The NHO BOHEA and VHO PERCHERON crossers caused me the most trouble – neither BOHEA nor BHEOA looked especially appealing, but pencilling in the former led a light in some dim & dusty recess to switch on for PERCHERON. I was still crossing my fingers slightly upon submitting.
I also found TOADEATER a bit tricky, because of the (correct) lack of hyphen.
Was anyone else perturbed by ‘produce’ as a link in the clue for NOVEL? Produces/producing, or even “X and Y produce”, but “X Y produce” seems odd.
Thanks both.
I think ‘X,Y’ can function as shorthand for ‘X and Y’ in headlines for instance.
21:23
This was mostly relatively easy going but I was slowed by the last two unknowns PERCHERON and KILKENNY (not the place but the cat reference).
I also hadn’t heard of SHEARLING, BOHEA, RHENISH, and TROCHEE. Plus I also stymied myself by misspelling ELEGIACAL even though the wordplay was very kind. That slowed INNISFREE.
Thanks to both.
Around 40 minutes which is fast for me FOI IMPLORE LOI SHEARLING/ TASER. Liked GENERALISSIMO , ELEGIACAL, TOADEATER, KILKENNY (and the cats)
Once again I did all the hard work, but didn’t get TOADEATER.
Knew KILKENNY from the song Carrickfergus:
‘Now in Kilkenny it is reported
On marble stone there as black as ink
With gold and silver, I would support her
But I’ll sing no more now, ’til I get a drink’.
And knew INNISFREE only from the poem.
Could I please add ‘ikebana’ to the Japanese list?
Thanks ulaca and setter.
Re the Japanese list, I have an occasional vision of Samurai warriors charging into battle carying miniature trees and bellowing “Bonsai!”
On a business trip to Japan a few years ago, a colleague of mine out to dinner with his Japanese hosts, having had a bit too much sake, stood up at the table, raised his glass, and shouted “Banzai!”; he doubtless confused it with “Kampai”. It did not go down well.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made
(Yeats as mentioned above)
25 mins left me with the (for me) ungettable PercherOn.
And I guessed Kilkenny. And too many start/end letter indicators.
Ta setter and U
Here he is reading it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLlcvQg9i6c
11:42
What Ulaca said, although I don’t recall any tricky ones. I never heard of an IRONSMITH; I call them blacksmiths, or just plain smiths. Well, tomorrow is another day; hopefully, very other.
There were quite a few quickie-level clues here but the harder ones meant I found this a more testing challenge than our blogger did. But 23.54 is probably a shade under par for me, so it wasn’t that testing I guess. FOI IMPLORE, last in the NHO horse which I chanced upon after my first two guesses were met with the Unlucky! message. Thanks to Ulaca for the blog, I think I’ve seen ikebana (flower arranging) as well. For those interested there is an ancient, fascinating recording of Yeats reading his poem. He hams it up a bit.
From Red River Shore:
Well I sat by her side and for a while I tried
To make that girl my wife
She gave me her best advice when she said
Go home and lead a quiet life
Well I been to the East and I been to the West
Been out where the black winds roar
Somehow I NEVER got that far
With the girl from the Red River shore
a bit.
It was an early poem. I would like to hear it read by the young Yeats, but guess a recording of that doesn’t exist.
9.05, with plenty of biffables.
NHO BOHEA or LOI TOADEATER
My late father, when in the last stages of dementia, still managed to quote the first verse of ‘The Lake Isle of INNISFREE’ whenever he stood up from his seat.
My opening sentence « a game of two halves » completely concurs with our blogger’s intro. The first pass went so quickly that I too checked to make sure I hadn’t printed out the QC! Then it hit me.
Unknowns included the tea, the horse, the farm animal and the TOADEATER. Finally got them all except PERCHERON which I should have seen. Bah.
Thanks u and setter.
12.05 . Damn! Thought I was on for my first subten in ages but held up at the last by trochee and ironsmith. Enjoyable romp. Thx setter and blogger.
26 minutes but without PERCHERON. I’m more familiar with carthorses being Bolton centre-halves than French coach horses, but the horses at least seem to be gentle giants. I’d already exhausted myself constructing TOADEATER, I knew about KILKENNY cats and arose to Innisfree quite happily. COD to BEATNIK. Good puzzle and I feel I should have got the horse. Thank you U and setter,
9:40. As others have said, mostly pretty easy, but I’d NHO the KILKENNY cats nor my last two – TOADEATER and STEERLING the first two constructed from the wordplay and the last one biffed (apparently wrongly! – see below). I was pleased to remember BOHEA, PERCHERON and INNISFREE. Thanks U and setter.
I looked it up and. STEERLING is indeed a young or small steer!
Ha Ha! I hadn’t realised I’d got it wrong.
STEERLING crossed my mind as well, but I dismissed it because it didn’t fit the wordplay at all. Then the equally unheard of SHEARLING sprang to mind and that clearly did fit the word play, so in it went.
Quick today and no unknowns. Toadeater from the Flashman books, bohea well known to us Heyer fans.
My favourite Japanese pastime involves a Hibachi ..
DNF, defeated by the unknown BOHEA and PERCHERON – I thought of the former, but wasn’t confident enough to put it in.
– Didn’t know that INNISFREE is an island
– Couldn’t see how GENERALISSIMO worked
– Dimly remembered TROCHEE from a previous crossword
– Had no idea how KILKENNY related to cat fights so trusted the wordplay
Agree with others that this was a strange mix of very straightforward clues with some real obscurities. Thanks ulaca and setter.
COD Implore
29m 27s
TOADEATER and SHEARLING are words?Who knew?
But lovely to be reminded of W B Yeats’ gorgeous poem. By way of a change, here’s Judy Collins singing it…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TleIuj9xIYE
Oh no! They’ve Kilkenny!
As indicated, an odd selection. If I’ve heard of KILKENNY cats then the knowledge is filed under “not wanted on voyage”. I assumed a TOADEATER was a kind of snake with a predilection for tardy amphibia, but remembered BOHEA from Pope’s Rape of the Lock. Having essayed PERCHANCE – “maybe” as the definition – I struggled with the wordplay until the half-forgotten horse trotted up and nudged me gently.
The unusual IRONSMITH, and the poetic long-short TROCHEE might be added to the oddities, but the rest was fairly standard fare.
I did wonder whether the setter was risking a fiery debate with both RESURRECT and REINCARNATION crossing each other. All I know is I don’t want to come back as a tin of evaporated milk.
Ha ha … made me smile.
😄
27.22. Mousse with nuggets, I thought. BOHEA stumped me till I remembered Pope’s Rape of the Lock. PERCHERON you sort of recognise once you’ve put it in, especially when Clydesdale and Suffolk Punch are not going to fit, though I’m not sure I’d have had it in my (very short) list of heavy horses. Thanks for the derivation. TROCHEE was OK: at the risk of annoying the anti-classicists I will admit to having had the elements of Latin metrical rules dinned into me at school. I have just finished James Rebanks’ book A Shepherd’s Life and I don’t think he mentioned SHEARLING once, it was more hoggs and wethers and tups. (My wife got to about page 50 before she turned to me and said ‘there’s an awful lot about sheep in this book’). Thank you setter and blogger.
A great, fascinating read, A Shepherd’s Life. It also lead me to the book that started him on the path to self-education, A Shepherd’s Life, by WH Hudson.
For once, reading detective stories is helpful. I had only heard of our horse thanks to The Deadly Percheron, by John Franklin Bardin.
Being a Jethro Tull fan helped me. Their song “Heavy Horses” contains the lyric “The Suffolk, the Clydesdale, the Percheron vie with the Shire on his feathers floating”.
I was also helped by some bubble gum cards I collected over fifty years ago now which depicted horse breeds and other horse related things and which are the source of most of my GK where horses are concerned. I’m not sure why I collected them, because I have never been at all interested in horses – I think it was because I just liked collecting bubble gum cards.
Exactly how I knew PERCHERON.
“Now you’re down to the few
And there’s no work to do.
The tractor’s on his way…..”
There’s a lot of us about – although give it a few years and we’ll be “down to the few” 🙂
I’m another Tull fan, but I had forgotten that Percheron was mentioned in the song.
19:42
Exactly as ulaca says. BOHEA and TOADEATER both new to me but easy to get. I didn’t bother to parse GENERALISSIMO. A slight pause over RESURRECT when I thought the county might be Staffs.
You can listen to Yeats reading Innisfree on YouTube. His voice is not at all what I would have imagined.
Thanks to ulaca and the setter.
Exactly the same experience as many others, it was very easy until it wasn’t!
At 18 minutes I had 3 to go, 8dn 2dn and 9ac. After a minute or so I got ILK inside KENNY and decided that was a place I had vaguely heard of. I was close to giving up on the other two, till I suddenly remembered a book The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin* which I read almost half a century ago as a teenager. That finally gave me CURLINESS and of course I felt very stupid for not seeing that one immediately.
So finally there in 22:51, could have been worse maybe.
Thanks setter and blogger 🙂
* PS I can still remember it was in a penguin omnibus edition with two other stories by the same writer, they had a vaguely nightmarish quality as I recall
I thought there was some difficult vocabulary; bohea, Innisfree, shearling, generalissimo, ironsmith, toadeater. And I never parsed 8d Kilkenny, and NHO the cats.
You bastard!
6:54. What ulaca said. There are some fast times on the leaderboard, and I think the sheep and goats will have been sorted according to whether you 1) have heard of and 2) are able to bring to mind based on the definition the various obscurities. I don’t remember coming across TOADEATER or SHEARLING before, I didn’t know about the cats, and words like PERCHERON and RHENISH don’t exactly leap to mind.
I enjoyed the mental stimulation in what was otherwise a very easy puzzle.
I only knew SHEARLING from Delboy’s jacket and those ubiquitous slippers.
So ubiquitous that I’ve never heard of them!
La crème de la menthe!
Exactly my experience, K, as for the first time ever I dipped under 10 minutes. The various obscurities mentioned were all, fortuitously, things I not only knew but could remember.
Congratulations! It’s a major milestone – I can still remember where I was the first time I did one of these in under 10 minutes.
Congrarulations! First of many, I’m sure.
Many congratulations from me too!! It’s a real milestone for sure and my dream to make this too one day (10:40 is my record so far)
15.16. Quick by my standards but I expect that many will be a lot faster. My poor spell8ng was tested by ‘generalissimo’ and resurrect’ but the crossers spared my blushes.
Stopped the clock at 18m only to come here and realise I completely passed over the heavy horse clue. Just as well, as I doubt I would ever have got it. Absentmindedness has its advantages.
Like others, all went in very quickly by my standards until SHEARLING (wanted steering, but doubted teering = trial) and TOADEATER. And IRONSMITH was a bit dodgy since I never really knew the word. Bars = lines struck me as odd: surely a bar line is, as Collins says, a vertical line separating two bars. But as it also says, a bar is another word for a bar line; which seems loose, but there it is. 30 minutes, with aids for TOADEATER, which I never knew but should have guessed from WP.
Bars for lines is, I suppose, a type of synecdoche.
Yes, I tried arguing the same point as Wil some months ago here and ended up converted.
15 mins. Mystified by TROCHEE until I realised the legendary bit was part of the literal. Another NHO Kilkenny cats.
Bah for my impetuous entry of steerling. Otherwise i would have done it sub 10; bah again. Admit to biffing 8 down though.
35′ but had to look up the horse and tea nexus so a DNF in reality. A few other unparsed, such as KILKENNY where the cats were unknown and GENERALISSIMO which was unparsed. INNISFREE was known but prompted by the film rather than a poem. And it all started so well….thanks Ulaca and setter.
7:31 I think we’ve had a few of these recently – easy clues peppered with some slightly recondite vocabulary – maybe it’s the same setter. I only know of PERCHERON from the Jethro Tull classic “Heavy Horses” so here’s a handy mnemonic for shire horses in crosswords and IRL:
“The Suffolk, the Clydesdale, the Percheron vie
with the Shire on his feathers floating
Hauling soft timber into the dusk”
Nice to be reminded of Innisfree and the Kilkenny cats. Lovely crossword, keep them coming.
I went pretty rapidly for me with all but one finished in under 25 minutes, then being left with just 2dn to tackle. Nearly eight minutes later I managed to construct PERCHERON, and in it went, but with doubts it was right. I was pleased to find my patience repaid, and the line was crossed finally in 32.45.
Well persevered! I would guess that most of us have had to struggle on for 10 minutes or so on a single clue to get to where we are today, i.e. spending five minutes on a single clue!
25:02, with one pink square due to a fat fingered INNISFRRE.
18:31
Both easy and tough, PERCHERON and TOADEATER needed teasing out with all checkers in place. INNISFREE remembered from studying the poem at school (not one that I remember at all though). Nice puzzle overall.
Thanks U and setter
With one exception, I found this very easy and finished in less than 10 minutes, and that was despite four NHOs (one of my big weaknesses) in the answers – BOHEA, TOADEATER, SHEARLING and IRONSMITH (!), all got quickly enough because the wordplay (my other big weakness) was transparent.
I was only held up by KILKENNY, which I biffed from checkers, although once I had biffed it I could see that it was right from the wordplay; the problem was the cat fight reference, which meant nothing to me at all, but I knew that I would find the explanation here. Thank you, Ulaca.
For the curious: There once were two cats of Kilkenny/Each thought that was one cat too many./So they hissed and they spit/And they fought and they fit/Till except for their nails/And the tips of their tails/Instead of two cats there weren’t any.
My grandmother once described two women who’d been ejected from her local pub as “fighting like KILKENNY cats”, so it went straight in, although the legendary fight was a one-off affair, so should strictly have been clued in the singular. I was badly slowed down by confidently biffing “reinstate” at 14D making four other clues temporarily insoluble. Despite having all the crossers, including PERCHERON, I was also slow to spot my LOI.
FOI IMPLORE
LOI CURLINESS
COD INNISFREE
TIME 9:04
Got to this one late, after a morning replacing the power unit in my desktop PC (wiped out by lightning yesterday and a new unit delivered by Amazon today), to find the new power unit was working OK but the motherboard had also died. Oh well. Now got to order a SATA to USB cable to unload the old drive, although 90% of it is backed up to the cloud. Sorry to ramble on, it’s just been a tedious day.
I struggled to finish this one, unable to do 2d, didn’t know about the cat fight, and never heard of a toadeater. A bit tough for a Monday, IMO.
In sympathy
I agree with our blogger about the strange mix of straightforward and obscure in this puzzle, but still found it enjoyable. All done in just over 20 minutes. NHO TOADEATER, but I am glad I am not one. Have come across RHENISH only in connection with one of Schumann’s symphonies.
FOI – IMPLORE
LOI – TOADEATER
COD – BEATNIK (if only for old times’ sake)
Thanks to ulaca and other contributors.
My hero Sam Pepys drank Rhenish wine daily. It is rather an archaic term, in other words ..
It’s his Third Symphony, and my favourite. I had it playing while in labour with my son!
Hamlet tells us that Claudius ‘drains his Rhenish down’ early on in the play, which is where I remembered it from.
20’30”
Got conditions to suit and a clear run, stayed on well.
Fairly straighttforward if, as Ulaca and Keriothe have pointed out, all fell within your ken; in this respect I was very fortunate.
Well done Lizzo; you beat me to it, and yours is better than my truncated Limerick version.
Thank you to Ulaca and to the setter for the rare opportunity to post a respectable time.
Most of this done this morning, but had to stop, put the puzzle down and pick up the cat from board and lodgings (she’s a gentle one and would avoid the Kilkenny variety), then did a few more clues and was left with the SE corner. After a meeting with an estate agent, came home and worked out the TROCHEE and IRONSMITH intersection.
All correct.
Thanks to blogger and setter.
17 DNF
Teased out the tougher ones apart from PERCHERON. Quite a difficult one to get if you dont know the horse whereas the other NHOs were more easily deducible from the w/p
Once lived near Kilkenny (graignamamagh) so that wasn’t a problem. Quoted the Jethro Tull song recently when we had Clydesdale. The Perche – where the horse is from – is a lovely area west of Paris. Daphne du Maurier’s glassblowing ancestors were from there. Thought I might be heading for an under-tenner but CURLINESS held me up. Couldn’t get CORGIS out of my head. 13’46”
Corgis occurred to me, too, but I already had PERCHERON so Curs suggested itself soon after. No problems with this one. The easy ones helped with the harder ones, and the only (forgotten) reference was to KILKENNY cats, LOI, which I bifd from the crossers, and it rang a faint bell. Spent some time checking the spelling of TROCHEE, but helped by the bird, of course and the horse was also familiarish, and confirmed by crossers. I know Yeats’ poem, but INNISFREE always makes me think of those retirement bungalows so named, or alternatively, Dunroamin’! A thoroughly enjoyable romp through in a quickish time for me.
32 minutes, with the last five spent on the carthorse.
I’d say that ‘cat fights’ is admissible in the plural here, given that it’s referring to a legend. It’s like saying that Aladdin is a tale of magic carpets, enchanted lamps and evil viziers, even though you only get one of each.
Thanks to blogger and setter
Hmm. Well, I’m glad so many people found this easy, but put me down as one of those who is perhaps slightly intolerant of puzzles with so many ‘obscurities’ (which, of course, means things of which I am not aware and am very unlikely to remember in future). DNF after picking up and putting down several times, each more heavily than the last. Maybe I’ll do better with tonight’s University Challenge.
Wow, just whipped through that. Extraordinary feeling for a QCer. PERCHERON courtesy of a son in the Light Cavalry, who tend to sing “Horse Soldier” by Corb Lund at every opportunity.
All done in 12:53 😳. And I’d promised a dry night, too. Many thanks ulaca.
DNF, defeated by Ironsmith/Trochee.
Mondayish only in parts.
Excellent article! Manic Monday is such an interesting concept. This article provided ne with some writing tips for my own financial services UK blogs.
42:16. Bipolar is about right … I made very heavy weather of it and very impressed with the quick times despite the extended vocabulary… Thanks both!