Time: 9:32
Music: Falla, Three Cornered Hat, Giulini/Philharmonia
I have to admit, I really stepped on it for this one, coming close to my time for the Quickie. The only problem is that I didn’t bother to parse most of the clues, which I will now do. I did use knowledge and experience to cut through to the answers, feeling for a brief moment like I was one of those super solvers. I’m sure this feeling will completely dissipate the next time I get a hard one and take over an hour, while the super solvers take eight minutes instead of five!
Looking at the SNITCH, all the early times are similar to mine.
| Across | |
| 1 | Aggressive goat possibly put an end to brittle toffee (12) |
| BUTTERSCOTCH – BUTTER + SCOTCH. | |
| 8 | Out of bed, in one’s cups and on edge (7) |
| UPTIGHT – UP + TIGHT. | |
| 9 | Female bird initially installed in strange element (7) |
| RHENIUM – R(HEN,I[nstalled])UM. I saw the initial R and biffed it as a likely enough element. | |
| 11 | Elderly relative eager for hard-wearing fabric (7) |
| NANKEEN – NAN + KEEN, a chestnut, and not disguised, either. | |
| 12 | Elevated plain dish — to the French (7) |
| PLATEAU – PLATE + AU. | |
| 13 | Chooses photographs for the audience (5) |
| PICKS – Sounds like PICS. | |
| 14 | The writer’s left a set of books? That’s significant (9) |
| IMPORTANT – I’M + PORT + A + NT, a compendium of stock cryptic elements | |
| 16 | House in which study has unusual cerise coating (9) |
| RESIDENCE – Anagram of CERISE around DEN. | |
| 19 | Film bachelor, one embodying American book (5) |
| BAMBI – B(AM,B)I. I tried to work ET in, and failed. | |
| 21 | Going west for example, a space where boats are tied up (7) |
| MOORAGE – E.G. + A ROOM, all backwards. I tried marina and it didn’t fit, so it must be moorage. | |
| 23 | Assumed names as found in American stories (7) |
| ALIASES – A + LI(AS)ES, another biff. | |
| 24 | Heavenly body wanting a treatment for asthma? (7) |
| STEROID – [a]STEROID, another chestnut. | |
| 25 | E.g. Oliver, extremely emaciated and bent (7) |
| TWISTED – TWIST + E[maciate]D. | |
| 26 | Again book sea transport, ringing about legal position (12) |
| RECORDERSHIP – RE (C) ORDER + SHIP. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Relating to plants thrown into cab (7) |
| BOTANIC – Anagram of INTO CAB, my FOI. | |
| 2 | Finally effect entry, dislodging new cat (7) |
| TIGRESS – [effec]T + I[n]GRESS. | |
| 3 | Stress started by former partner’s building project? (9) |
| EXTENSION – EX + TENSION. | |
| 4 | Divest oneself of team colours? (5) |
| STRIP – Double definition – UK only. | |
| 5 | Outdoor broadcast introduced by old writer (4-3) |
| OPEN-AIR – O PEN + AIR. | |
| 6 | Wild dream of church artist involving half of High Mass (7) |
| CHIMERA – C (HI[gh],M)E + RA. Some more cryptic cliches. | |
| 7 | Deliver the goods: appear with President Adams at last? (4,2,6) |
| TURN UP TRUMPS – TURN UP + TRUMP + [adam]S. | |
| 10 | Perhaps part of Ben’s area separating stage belonging to TV channel (12) |
| MOUNTAINSIDE – MOUNT (A) IN SIDE. Again, a bit UK -centric. | |
| 15 | Inferior writer, one sampling The Raven, perhaps? (9) |
| POETASTER – POE + TASTER, a biff for me. | |
| 17 | Central European singer regularly embracing sweetheart (7) |
| SLOVENE – S[i](LOVE)N[g]E[r]. | |
| 18 | Bad blood I attracted at first in game (7) |
| DIABOLO – Anagram of BLOOD + I + A[ttracted]. This was the one clue that gave trouble, since Diabolo does not spring readily to mind. | |
| 19 | Like our fellow countrymen’s mistake about short ceremony (7) |
| BRITISH – B(RIT[e])ISH. UK-centric for sure! | |
| 20 | False move of young girl upset teacher’s favourite, perhaps (7) |
| MISSTEP – MISS + PET upside-down, another chestnut. | |
| 22 | Finished novel originally accepted by two press chiefs (5) |
| ENDED – E(N[ovel])D + ED. | |
21:58. Actually feel slightly deflated as having seen others talking about PB times – it had set high expectations. I felt like I was struggling across the SW half and ended up with my second fastest time. No shame in that and I reached my last pair of RECORDERSHIP (NHO) and POETASTER(vHO) at 19mins. The gulf between language in QC and 15×15 continues to need learning as didn’t know “in one’s cups”, couldn’t fully unravel the TURN-UP-TRUMPS or the IN of MOUNTAINSIDE among others, DIABOLO (vHO).
TURN UP TRUMPS and the IN of MOUNTAINSIDE gave some experienced solvers pause for thought today, so don’t be hard on yourself. I wouldn’t say that ‘in one’s cups’ is necessarily a 15×15 thing as opposed to a QC; it’s just one amongst a thousand expressions for being drunk that some people will know and others won’t.
Thanks for your kind words jackkt. I notice my times on the 15×15 when I attempt it are generally coming in around yours, and like you I also aim to parse everything as I’m going through. You are my role model 👍
Oh dear, I’m flattered! Although I always post my times, I gave up my attempts at competitive solving within a couple of years coming to TfTT in 2007. As somebody put it in Saturday’s QC discussion, I acknowledged I had ‘reached my ceiling’ and settled for enjoying myself as the main objective. I hope to solve (fully parsed) within 10 minutes for a QC and half-an-hour for the main puzzle but it doesn’t bother me unduly if I take longer.
QC blog suggested that this was approachable, so I had a go and, with a few biffs and with fingers crossed, I finished in 37:37. MOUNTAINSIDE, DIABOLO, TURN UP TRUMPS, RHENIUM, MOORAGE (not MOORING?) took longest. Luckily, THE RAVEN by POE featured in the QC which helped!
A gentle Monday exercise, all done over a lunchtime pinta in 18 minutes. Good to see that BRITISH was an answer, as well as an element in some of the clueing. Dvynys’s comment above reminded me of some of the puzzles which I attempted in my youth, where not only was ELEMI a frequent guest, but we also had regular appearances of NEOPHYTE as an anagram of THE PEONY.
FOI – UPTIGHT
LOI – DIABOLO
COD – POETASTER
Thanks to vinyl and other contributors.
55 minutes
A rare foray into the 15×15 based on the low snitch. NANKEEN and POETASTER are words I’ve only learnt from crossword land. Struggled in the NE with RHENIUM and PLATEAU but got there in the end.
16:56. 11 seconds off a PB.
FOI: BOTANIC
LOI: RECORDERSHIP
NHO: SIDE (= TV Channel), RECORDERSHIP, NANKEEN, SCOTCH (= Put an end to), “In one’s cups”
COD: STEROID
Rarely manage but a few clues in this grown-ups puzzle but following encouragement in the QCC blog thought I would give it a try. To my surprise and delight I finished in 66.09 for a first and best. NHO POETASTER or NANKEEN. Biffed RHODIUM then realised it was birdless and corrected to RHENIUM. Used to play DIABOLO at school but almost forgotten. All in all, very worthwhile but I think I am best placed in the QCC but may feel a little more confident to dip a toe in the 15×15 again.
Thanks Vinyl and setter.
Congrats! For knowing when to dip your toes again in the future, I recommend referring to the website times.xwdsnitch.link/ which shows difficulty ratings for the Times Cryptics based on solvers’ times. You’ll see that today’s had a 46 rating which is very low.
Nice one Steak. No turning back now!
09.25 my first sub ten for ages. It’s interesting to note that when you know you’re quick, your fingers get stubbier and there’s a temptation to just bang something in.
Thanks setter for the confidence booster. Don’t feel you have to make life difficult next time!
NHO RHENIUM, so bunged in from the directions with the first three crossers in place. Already had the U and the N, so no problems with TURN UP… Also wrote in Poe Taster before realising it was the ‘only heard here’ POETASTER. And likewise parsed RECORDERSHIP without having heard of it. Didn’t parse MOUNTAINSIDE – it went in from crossers, and took too long over LOsI BUTTERSCOTCH and TIGRESS, while trying to make ‘billy’ fit in somewhere! But yes, jolly quick for me.
20:57. I enjoyed doing this one – I didn’t find it nearly as easy as some of you. Completely thrown by putting in COME UP TRUMPS at first. once that sorted it all resolved quite easily.
Not a PB (that was 11:48 back on 13/02/2023 ) but not far off at 13:52. Did all but the last 3 (DIABOLO, STEROID and RECORDERSHIP) in about 10:30 and I might’ve been faster still if I didn’t originally put ‘mooring’ instead of MOORAGE like some others here.
Been too busy to do it earlier, but surprised to knock it off in 12 minutes, an equal PB. It’s Monday. Nothing to add.
Encouraged by the comments on the QC we came early to this one (we normally do it late at night and don’t bother commenting) and DNF! Our time of 16:56 would have knocked about a minute off our PB but, in our haste, we carelessly biffed POI SCRAP instead of STRIP, despite not having a scooby about how the former related to team colours. Our own fault but fun to have a go anyway, it was well within our capabilities. There were no NHOs though NANKEEN and POETASTER required some memory dredging, both learnt from earlier crosswords IIRC. LOI MOUNTAINSIDE was also biffed from the checkers; we recognised the Ben bit but didn’t see the full parsing. Thanks to both Vinyl and setter.
14.56 Very quick for me. I was slow at the end getting MOUNTAINSIDE and parsing RECORDERSHIP. Thanks vinyl1.
22 minutes by the time I decided that 4dn could only be STRIP (and not SCRAP or whatever), so pretty much a PB and very boring. What bothers me most are the superabundant rather contrived surface readings, which hardly ever make much sense. The setter’s job is to make the definitions look like straight definitions of concepts which could really exist (but of course are not the answer being sought), but I think this setter has a lot to learn.
This took me 20 minutes which seems to be one of the slower times today. Normally I would be delighted with 20 minutes. I was slowed down by entering Edged for Ended leaving an unlikely S-e-o-g for 24ac.
Seeing all those comments, my 13’59” feels distinctly pathetic. Come to think of it, I haven’t had an under-ten in months. Must be the evening solves.
Another 20 minutes here. I too had originally entered “Come up trumps”, but the inevitability of NANKEEN soon put that right. A fairly Mondayish puzzle.
A good musical choice on the part of our blogger; my late father would have been playing first flute on that recording!
I need an easy one every now and then thanks! First under nine mins.
16:46. A bit late today., but a time worth recording. My second fastest. Still haven’t read the blog and other comments. I bet I’m not the only one with a fast time