My solving time of 36 minutes belies the problems I had completing this one. It certainly seemed longer than that. Many of the definitions might be described as ‘oblique’ but nevertheless I enjoyed myself unravelling them.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
| 1 | Cut off source of exclusive rum (8) |
| ESTRANGE | |
| E{xclusive} [source of…], STRANGE (rum) | |
| 6 | Psychologist with case for live dance music (6) |
| JUNGLE | |
| JUNG (psychologist), L{iv}E [case for…] | |
| 9 | I recalled teacher is pupil’s neighbour (4) |
| IRIS | |
| I, then SIR (teacher) [recalled]. Both are parts of the eye. | |
| 10 | To free drill, beg for costly spanner? (4,6) |
| TOLL BRIDGE | |
| TO, anagram [free] of DRILL BEG. The definition is cryptic. |
|
| 11 | Rioting crowd ends a cutting-edge show (5,5) |
| SWORD DANCE | |
| Anagram [rioting] of CROWD ENDS A. Another cryptic definition. | |
| 13 | Word of advice — try harder at first (4) |
| OATH | |
| O{f} + A{dvice} + T{ry} + H{arder} [at first] | |
| 14 | Hard material covering a small window (8) |
| CASEMENT | |
| CEMENT (hard material) containing [covering] A + S (small). This is a window with a vertically hinged frame. | |
| 16 | New T-shirt is long (6) |
| THIRST | |
| Anagram [new] of T SHIRT | |
| 18 | Dad’s ringing large old lady for vital matter? (6) |
| PLASMA | |
| PA’S (Dad’s) containing [ringing] L, then MA (old lady) | |
| 20 | In foreign parts, manages broadcast (8) |
| OVERSEAS | |
| Aural wordplay [broadcast}: “oversees” (manages) | |
| 22 | Place to relax before boxer’s last fight (4) |
| SPAR | |
| SPA (place to relax), {boxe}R [’s last] | |
| 24 | Attraction of drink consuming a distant ship (6,4) |
| SAFARI PARK | |
| SIP (drink) containing [consuming] A + FAR (distant), then ARK (ship) | |
| 26 | One with lots of fresh European Cointreau (10) |
| AUCTIONEER | |
| Anagram [fresh] of E (European) COINTREAU | |
| 28 | Steady revenue is somewhat reduced (4) |
| EVEN | |
| Hidden in [somewhat reduced] {r}EVEN{ue} | |
| 29 | Farm animal with headgear is big deal (2,4) |
| SO WHAT | |
| SOW (farm animal), HAT (headgear). Both definition and answer are dismissive sarcasm. | |
| 30 | Present lady’s coat in a gentle way (8) |
| TENDERLY | |
| TENDER (present), L{ad}Y [’s coat] | |
| Down |
|
| 2 | Zany dance for prison guards? (9) |
| SCREWBALL | |
| Taken separately, SCREW (prison guard), BALL (dance ) so a ‘dance for prison guards’ would be a SCREW BALL | |
| 3 | What one may do after a fault in supply (7) |
| RESERVE | |
| RE-SERVE (what one may do after a service fault in tennis). For the definition a reserve is a supply, store or stock of a commodity. | |
| 4 | No TV clergyman is famous (5) |
| NOTED | |
| NO, TED (TV clergyman). I’ve never seen the TV comedy Father Ted, but I know that it’s held in high esteem by many. | |
| 5 | Reveal oddly chopped fish (3) |
| EEL | |
| {r}E{v}E{a}L [oddly chopped] | |
| 6 | Post office? (3,6) |
| JOB CENTRE | |
| Cryptic. I don’t know whether they have Job Centres overseas but in the UK they are government-funded agencies for unemployed people seeking work. They used to be called Labour Exchanges. | |
| 7 | One messiah maybe held up around old city (7) |
| NAIROBI | |
| I + BRIAN (messiah maybe) containing [around] O (old) and reversed [held up]. The wordplay refers to the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Brian wasn’t the Messiah, just a very naughty boy. | |
| 8 | Run on the level (5) |
| LEGIT | |
| LEG IT (run). Legit is colloquial slang for ‘legitimate’. | |
| 12 | Heads for vegetarian food? (7) |
| NUTLOAF | |
| NUT + LOAF (heads) | |
| 15 | Flog spare pots, one has a chip (1-8) |
| E-PASSPORT | |
| Anagram [flog] of SPARE POTS. | |
| 17 | Flights here reportedly look all right (9) |
| STAIRWELL | |
| Aural wordplay [reportedly] “stare” (look) / STAIR, WELL (all right) | |
| 19 | Nick what capable people are up to (7) |
| SCRATCH | |
| The hint refers to the saying ‘up to scratch’ | |
| 21 | Leading group in Home Counties of highest status (7) |
| SUPREME | |
| UP (leading) + REM (pop group) contained by [in] SE (Home Counties – South East England) | |
| 23 | God’s power curtailed southern town (5) |
| PLUTO | |
| P (power), LUTO{n} (southern town) [curtailed]. Luton would probably not be in the first 50 places the average Brit might come up with if asked to name a town in southern England as it’s some 40 miles north of London, but strictly speaking it has to qualify as it’s not in any other geographical region. I just think the setter might have found another way of referring to it. Although the town is 15 miles away from me, sadly I am lumbered with a Luton postcode which adds a premium to the cost of my household and car insurance. Other than one enforced stay in its hospital I have never set foot in the place since moving here 41 years ago. | |
| 25 | Transmit again about unfinished letter (5) |
| RERUN | |
| RE (about), RUN{e} (letter) [unfinished] | |
| 27 | Consume centres of ten roast pasties (3) |
| EAT | |
| {t}E{n} + {ro}A{st} + {pas}T{ies} [centres of…] | |
Around 45 minutes for a most enjoyable puzzle. For a change I saw the oblique definitions quite quickly.
In 10 ac for example as soon as I saw spanner I thought BRIDGE so it was simply a matter of getting TOLL. In 17d flights immediately suggested it started with STAIR. In 24ac I had the starter S and a distant suggested AFAR so SAFARI PARK went straight in. Hopefully this change will continue for me since it has been my biggest weakness. FOI EAT LOI OATH (I spent some time on this).
Thanks Jack
Like Kenso I failed to spot the ‘at first’ part of the clue for OATH, so this easiest of gimmes was my LOI. Also arriving late were JOB CENTRE and JUNGLE, both terrific clues. 28.32 for me, a really enjoyable puzzle, thank you Jack.
From Lay Lady Lay:
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and EAT it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he’s standing in front of you
Great stuff. One of my favourite Dylan songs.
So far off the wavelength I might as well have been on a completely different continent. thanks, jack
Well, I was on the wavelength. All the tricky literals seemed rather obvious, and the whole thing turned into a biff-fest. I suspect there was an element of experience involved, as tenderly, screwball, and overseas seemed rather familiar, and certainly employ common cryptic elements. I ended up with supreme and even, which should not have been as difficult as I made them.
Time: 16:18
I just worked this right after yesterday’s and found this one the easier. POI CASEMENTS, which brings to mind Keats, and last NUTLOAF, which took much longer than it should have. I must’ve felt that surely one clue would turn out to be a real poser.
I was somewhere on the same continent as Paul; for some reason I was embarrassingly slow. Slow to remember that ‘nick’ means ‘scratch’ in my dialect, while trying to recall the meanings I’ve learned here; slow to come up with REM; slow to think of PARK, and just generally slow. I liked ‘One with lots’.
Very similar experience to Vinyl; bang on the wavelength with my only holdups being things I should really have seen immediately, like OATH and THIRST. 17 minutes. Enjoyed the REM and Life of Brian references.
A classic Screwball comedy is 1937’s Easy Living with Ray Milland and Jean Arthur. Fast food gets a new meaning!
15 minutes for this.
Everything just fell into place nicely today with the exception of RERUN and TENDERLY which came late. If only all days were like this! COD to OATH.
Thanks Jack.
37m 41s
6d Post Office struck me as a suitably succinct clue worthy of Dean Mayer.
Thanks, Jack.
Some bits of fun. At the easier end of the spectrum. Like POST OFFICE. If Luton is southern, then I live in northern France.
It’s definitely south of Middlesbrough!
11:26. Some of this felt quite familiar – I feel sure that the run/licit device for LEGIT and “Flights here” for STAIRWELL are relatively common. Luton also seems to make an appearance periodically. Based on my experience I wouldn’t recommend it – I’ve visited twice of an evening and witnessed fights both times! (possibly this was bad luck and it’s a lovely place – apologies to any Lutonites if I’ve given a wrong impression!).
Lutonians rather than Lutonites, I think. Having worked there, I can tell you that the T in the middle is generally silent.
Is cement a hard substance? I thought it was a powder.
These of us of sufficient age will remember the advert where Lorraine Chase refers to “Lu’on Airport”!
you won’t find many Hornets there
9.23, and particularly entertained to see a RERUN of my own first published clue (NUT LOAF). I daresay I wasn’t the first, in any case!
At the start of 2024, the need for JUNGLE became an unexpected University Challenge-related meme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-67955753
Thanks both.
Finished in about 30 minutes but was held up by 12 dn, having confidently entered NOODLES to begin with. Enjoyable.
I made exactly the same mistake! Took about 35 minutes but lots to enjoy on the way.
Me too.
And me
I was thinking on those lines as well (NOGGINS was my first thought), until I remembered that my vegetarian uncle and aunt from the U.S. came to stay a week with us when I was a boy (a very long time ago) and brought their own food with them, which basically consisted of tins of “nutloaf” that they ate for dinner every day.
17:10
One of those which I think I should have solved more quickly. There was nothing too obscure and I thought it very fairly clued, I just struggled at times to think of rather straightforward words (RUM = STRANGE, HEAD = LOAF, HARD MATERIAL = CEMENT etc etc).
An enjoyable solve from start to finish so thanks to both.
26:26 (1 error)
Enjoyable – but did not think through 19D fully and entered STRETCH instead of SCRATCH.
Thank you, jackkt and the setter.
Same here. A pity because I enjoyed doing the crossword. Took me far too long to see my LOI JOB CENTRE.
I was going to say that I hadn’t enjoyed a puzzle as much as this for a long time, until reaching this point in the thread and realising that I DNF’ed, because I too put STRETCH for 19D; this has taken the edge off my enjoyment, but only a tad.
24 mins so very quick for me and very enjoyable. A lot of clues just went straight in and a few, eg NAIROBI, went in unparsed.
A number of nice anagrams to play with. I liked SWORD DANCE & AUCTIONEER best.
Thanks Jack and setter.
18 minutes with LOI SAFARI PARK. I was on wavelength today., slowed down a bit only by E-PASSPORT. The days of a sub-10 seem to have gone with the passing years. I can’t write that fast. No longer shiny but still happy, I think REM are the most recent band I know! Very enjoyable. Thank you Jack and setter
13’55”, so on the wavelength and I know what continent I’m on.
Really guffawed at NAIROBI.
Luton, despite jack’s reservations, is now regarded as a London airport.
And it’s an excuse to repost this paean to it: https://youtu.be/dldJCeZjcBo?si=ajkjPvJxTpI83cMG
Thanks jack and setter.
Thank you for the link. Much enjoyed. Never seen or heard before despite working out of the airport for 25 years.
All night has the Casement jessamine stirr’d
To the dancers dancing in tune
(Maud, Tennyson)
25 mins, taking it gently, pre-brekker. I liked it, especially the Screw Ball.
I’m sure I’ve come up with the exact same clue for Legit recently (ST 5140, 1 Dec) so I guess it is a chestnut.
Ta setter and J
If Preston is 100miles to my south (and in the same country) and is a Northern town then Luton can surely qualify as Southern – that’s not to say I wasn’t convinced the 23D was Truro although I couldn’t make the clue fit the answer!!
If it had been TRURO we’d have been receiving complaints all day about it not being a town but a city.
I also tried to make Truro work
So did I, but realised it couldn’t be made to work.
I live in Folkestone, from where most of the country is north and so Luton didn’t leap to mind as a southern town; I thought of Pluto first and then the penny dropped that the “southern town” involved was Luton; to me, anything north of London and south of Lancashire/Yorkshire is in either Wales, East Anglia or the Midlands.
10:08. Not difficult but fun. I liked POST OFFICE, NAIROBI and OATH best. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
Pleased to log 32:32 with a couple of cheeky checks. Surprisingly JUNGLE was FOI, with a long wait for SOI. Also missed the construction of OATH so that was my LOI.
I didn’t see either the REM or BRIAN references. I don’t parse ‘em all, unless it’s my blogging day.
Some great clues, including “spanner” for bridge, not seen that before, but adding it to flower, lower, number, looker etc.
Got confused with LEGIT as I thought that on=leg.
COD SCREWBALL
20 mins or so. AUCTIONEER was my COD as it gave me the most satisfaction when the penny dropped … i.e. that I wasn’t looking for a Mr (or Mrs) Moneybags 🙂
On the wavelength here, done in just under 15 minutes.
– Didn’t know JUNGLE as dance music, but the wordplay was very clear
– Couldn’t have told you what exactly a CASEMENT window is
– Wondered about NAIROBI as Brian definitely wasn’t the messiah, but then I guess that’s covered by the ‘maybe’
No problems otherwise, and a really enjoyable puzzle (maybe because I saw the cryptic definitions pretty quickly). Thanks Jack and setter.
FOI Iris
LOI Overseas
COD Toll bridge
He was only not the messiah according to his mum.
And himself, but only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
Bit of an odd one for me, as I share jackkt’s reservations, pretty much.
E.g. for me, where ‘cutting-edge show’ is nice, ‘costly spanner’ is not, as toll bridges aren’t necessarily all that expensive to cross (depending on your circumstances I suppose, but still). And as for Luton being southern, Bedfordshire is in ‘the east of England’: the county’s western parts are in the South Midlands, so why not simply ‘generally disliked town’? An opinion, I know, but I have been there.
All in all I found this a little bit naff, though the prison officers’ dance earned a chuckle. I can see them now, keys jangling and everything.
I think it means costly in the sense of incurring a cost, rather than merely expensive. In crosswordland that is a legitimate meaning and I quite liked the clue
Quick today, despite another noodle here.. It seems unfair to say this was cliched but quite a lot of it seemed familiar.
Fun though, and several clues I really liked including Brian, REM and the cutting-edge show.
Luton is obviously in the North as it is directly North of Watford…
There is a sign on the M1 that says “Luton and the North” so Luton isn’t in the north. You could say not in the south as well though….
I was joking, of course.. its all relative, I would go for Midlands, myself.
I thought it was Hatfield and the North
Now we’re talking. Give me ‘Gigantic Land Crabs in Earth Takeover Bid’ any day.
A very slow 49 mins held up by the NOODLES despite being vege and REM despite being a fan.
Luton is very much southern but then I’ve always considered London to be the end of the line in the UK and anything south of that so remote it might as well be France.
COD to not the messiah.
25:52
Delayed by a confident ‘noodles’ until SAFARI went in. The 6’s took an alpha trawl and finally yielded LOI and COD, NAIROBI (not TRIPOLI, which I couldn’t let go of).
Lovely puzzle, thanks all.
Plain sailing for me too, though I very nearly submitted with NUTLOAF incomplete. Sometimes you leave a clue you can’t immediately solve ’til later, which highlights the importance of proofreading.
My favourite piece of JUNGLE music probably isn’t Jungle, but this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H75ivqdjgCg from ELO. If Mr Blue Sky wasn’t on the same album, it would pass for me as the best track.
Every track on that double album is an absolute Banger.
17.11
Delayed by a hasty RESTOCK but otherwise fun. Couldn’t get how REM meant group but in it went. Wry smile when I came here to see the light.
Thanks all
07:48, some very nice definitions and a slight eyebrow raise in company with those whose reaction to Luton being a southern town was “well technically, I suppose so”. Good fun all round.
And there I was, going through life thinking it was a nut loaf. But Collins confirms that it’s one word. Chambers doesn’t seem to have either. 41 minutes on a really quite easy crossword and I suspect I should have done better. Another who was a bit tied to Tripoli not NAIROBI.
It will be interesting to see if this is removed, as my post on yesterday’s Quick Cryptic evidently was. If so, nobody told me. Or maybe it just disappeared for no known reason.
Wil, your comment on yesterday’s Q C (posted at 7:52pm) was not deleted. There were so many comments (101) that the system rolled the later ones over automatically to a second page. If you scroll to the bottom of Page 1 you will see a link to ‘Newer comments’. I don’t know if the rollover is fixed at a particular number, but yesterday it seems to have happened around #85.
I *think* it is fixed – which also means that comments that originally appear on the first page might be shunted onto ‘newer comments’ if there are later replies to previous comments, which take the total comment count over the limit. If you could see your comment at first on that page, but not later, that might be why.
The link to Newer Comments is at both the beginning and the end of the first page.
Thanks for all your explanations etc. I was pretty sure it was something simple. Yes at first my comment was on the main page, which was why I suspected it might have been deleted.
Didn’t like NUTLOAF as a single word, which doesn’t exist in my Online Chambers app (nor even as two words). Would’ve been fairer with a (3,4) numeration. Also RERUN: why ‘transmit again’?
FOI IRIS, LOI NUTLOAF, CODs SAFARI PARK, OATH & LEGIT, along with some others, but there were a few other rather lame contributions among the gems, I thought, e.g. JUNGLE, EAT.
BBC4 output is mainly reruns. ..
Very easy, completed in a -for me – very quick 18mins. Only hold up was the biffed SUPREME, because I couldn’t see how group=REM. Thanks for explanation.
LOI by a long way OATH. Was tempted to biff it but didn’t. SLOI Nutloaf; saw the nut but it took both crossers to get the loaf, DOH!
Liked Auctioneer & So What?
7:29. Pretty breezy this morning. No unknowns, quite a lot of biffing. Good fun. One of my kids is quite into JUNGLE at the moment, so that came to mind easily.
fairly straightforward for me today at 25′. Enjoyed the Brian reference! Also REM and JUNGLE, though i thought of the group rather than the music. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
23 minutes. I quite liked the cryptic defs like TOLL BRIDGE and SWORD DANCE. As for occasional above, I also liked the prison officers bopping along in SCREWBALL.
From EEL to PLUTO in 19:40. I did some mainframe training on the old machines that used to run the BT Voicemail systems at the BT offices in Luton. I remember a lot of concrete and a good pub we spent lunchtimes in. It took me over 3 hours driving south to get to our training centre in Milton Keynes, and then another half hour down the M1 to get to Luton, so it qualifies as The South for me! Thanks setter and Jack.
18:06
Slow to solve the last four, needing the not-fully-parsed SUPREME (forgot about the pop group) to nail down SAFARI PARK, which gave NUTLOAF and finally OVERSEAS. Failed to parse RESERVE too, not thinking of the tennis fault. I lived in St Albans for six years, but never travelled the 12 miles to Luton either!
Thanks Jack and setter
This was a contrast to yesterday. Many found that one easy-peasy while I found it tricky in places. By contrast this seemed about as straightforward as it gets, with only NUTLOAF holding me up for a minute or two.
18:15 – plenty of biffs with what seemed like overfamiliar devices – LEGIT, TENDERLY, SE for Home Counties, ma for old lady etc – and some more original touches. It didn’t cavil at the geographical designation of Luton. I always think of it as a London airport though admittedly it’s a pretty long drive north.
5:40. MER at REM being described as a group – I’d say band since they play instruments. Definitely bothers me more than LUTON which was my other (probably unfounded) quibble.
JUNGLE held no fears for me as I was very much into it as it morphed out of the rave scene of the early 90’s. Still a regular listener, and the boy is now a fan too.
Reasonable time I suppose, though I’m easing back into puzzles after a bout of ‘flu kept me in bed for a week and change over the Christmas period. Note to self, get a jab next year…
OATH LOI for some reason.
17:41
19 minutes but, alas, a “resurge” for “reserve”! Festina lente.
DNF a careless “screwtail” for the dance was entered.
It felt tougher than yesterday’s, but the SNITCH is of similar magnitude. Some clever setting amid more familiar clues like LEGIT
Thank you Jack
I got off to a quick start, but then slowed up, not helped by scoring an own goal with NOODLES at 12dn (like Jeffrey and others). I had to abandon that when nothing else fitted and crawled home in 37 minutes. Overall, an enjoyable outing.
FOI – JUNGLE
LOI – NUTLOAF
COD – NAIROBI (proxime accessit AUCTIONEER)
Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.
Game of 2 halves, the NE being the problem, mainly because I thought capital must be TRIPOLI although it didn’t parse. 26 mins
I got half of this then struggled but a cup of coffee after lunch gave me the boost I needed.
LOI was STAIRWELL- caught once again by the flight chestnut.
I spent quite some time trying to see how STANSTE(A)D could work; maybe subconsciously influenced by Luton ( and no, it’s not in the South but I quickly decided it might be in Crosswordland).
Lots of good clues and fun. A vote for SO WHAT to get at least a nomination for COD.
David