Started fine in the NW then messed around in the bottom half before finishing (with LOI 9ac) in the NE. I came in a few seconds over 10 minutes. Lots of fun clues make this a very enjoyable QC.
I seem to remember something happening in 1966 but it’s a long time ago now. I looked for a theme but can only see a single Russian assistant referee (who happened to be called Tofiq Bahramov for the pub-quizzes amongst you) plus the number of goals England scored.
Definitions are underlined.
Across | |
1 | Beginning of play being performed: start filming! (6) |
ACTION – beginning of play (ACT I), being performed (ON – what’s on at the theatre). I remember liking the ACT I device a lot the first time I saw it but I’ve seen it around a bit by now. | |
5 | Not very clean food to hand (6) |
GRUBBY – food (GRUB), to hand (BY). Keep something close by/close to hand. | |
8 | Just a single ship? That’s a joke (3-5) |
ONE-LINER – only one liner – it’s the way your tell ’em. | |
9 | Beat the Spanish horse (4) |
LASH – the Spanish (LAS), horse (H – as in heroin). | |
10 | In favour of enclosing University Square (4) |
FOUR – in favour of (FOR) enclosing University (U). | |
11 | Tips for hot weather clothing cease to convince (4,4) |
WEAR THIN – a tip for cold weather clothing would be to wear thick. | |
12 | Composer’s name announced (6) |
HANDEL – homophone (announced) of name=handle. | |
14 | Beyond delta, soil shortage (6) |
DEARTH – take delta (D), go past/beyond it and write in soil (EARTH). | |
16 | Wild dancing in red fez (8) |
FRENZIED – anagram (dancing) of IN RED FEZ. Sounds like a good party! | |
18 | Cathedral on right bank (4) |
RELY – cathedral (ELY) on right (R). | |
20 | After dinner treat some munch occasionally (4) |
CHOC – some of mum(CH OC)caisonally. | |
21 | Breaking par, eight lead (8) |
GRAPHITE – anagram (breaking) of PAR EIGHT. Graphite – innards of a pencil. | |
23 | Knowing about shirt being really tough (6) |
STEELY – knowing (SLY) about shirt (TEE). | |
24 | Impede the movement of basket (6) |
HAMPER – double definition. |
Down | |
2 | Cheat doubly to get US apartment (5) |
CONDO – cheat doubly (CON DO). | |
3 | Uncouth bride collapses, having drunk two litres (3-4) |
ILL-BRED – anagram (collapses) of BRIDE with two litres (L L). | |
4 | Grandmother makes bread (3) |
NAN – double definition. | |
5 | Wreathed with flowers, a fish out of water? (9) |
GARLANDED – a fish out of water (GAR LANDED). Easy biff but great cryptic. | |
6 | Dark lake surrounded by military group (5) |
UNLIT – lake (L) surrounded by military group (UNIT). | |
7 | Bravo! Help for member of the band (7) |
BASSIST – bravo (B), help (ASSIST). | |
11 | From list of bequests, one at a time sons cut out by choice (9) |
WILLINGLY – list of bequests (WILL), one at a time s(INGLY) with son (S) cut out. | |
13 | Missed stroke, as atmosphere’s sweltering (3,4) |
AIR SHOT – atmosphere’s sweltering (AIR’S HOT). Golf can be a very frustrating game. Hitting the ball too low, jarring your arms and sending the ball rolling only a few yards is bad enough, swinging for and missing the ball (air shot) is really embarrassing (I have plenty of practice of both). | |
15 | Patriarch putting an undergarment over back of thigh (7) |
ABRAHAM – An undergarment (A BRA) over (on top of in a down clue) back of thigh (HAM). The ‘over’ is great misdirection. | |
17 | Hotel in French city is just the place for me (5) |
NICHE – hotel (H) in French city (NICE). | |
19 | What’s in large bottle? Some swill it: retsina! (5) |
LITRE – the contents of a bottle can be a ltre for example – hence the ‘?’. Some of swil(L IT RE)tsina. | |
22 | Remains sort of blonde (3) |
ASH – double definition. |
Interestingly, Kevin topped Verlaine – you seldom see that.
Very satisfying over all. Good mix of write ins and scratchers. 30 Mins.
COD ACTION. Thanks Chris and Teazel.
Edited at 2021-09-21 07:46 am (UTC)
Heroin? Not sure why you are referencing the H as being heroin. I know H is a slang for heroin, but the clue quite clearly says “horse”, and, according to Chambers, H is an accepted abbreviation of horse. Therefore I think the H in the clue refers to Horse, not Heroin.
Anyway, I found this QC quite tricky in places. 11d was utter gibberish to me until I had enough letters for the penny to drop.
4d – NAN: I have seen this clue, or similar, before, and I have never understood it. It is NAAN bread, is it not? I see that NAN is in Chambers under bread, as is naan, but if I Google “Nan Bread” all I get is NAAN bread. The clue did not indicate a homophone, so I am a little puzzled as to what NAN bread actually is.
46 minute solve with three trips to Chambers.
So if it’s in the dictionary (which it is – nan (2), NOUN (also naan) (in Indian cooking) a type of leavened bread, typically of teardrop shape and traditionally cooked in a clay oven. As modifier ‘nan bread’) then it doesn’t matter what you find on Google.
Edited at 2021-09-21 07:18 am (UTC)
As for h – there are many clues where ‘drug’ needs to be translated to e or h. I first came across this in cryptics (rather than real world experience) and have added it as another thing to try to remember.
It would be great if all the blogs had the answers hidden behind a click.
/C
Heroin AKA Horse AKA H. Take your pick.
Bigger stumbling block was futzing around trying to work in EL not thinking about Los or Las.
FOI & COD ACTION, LOI ABRAHAM, time 12:47 for 2.8K and a Bad Day.
Many thanks Teazel and Chris.
Templar
Edited at 2021-09-21 07:25 am (UTC)
LOI STEELY, I had FEY=knowing which was a dead end.
Great misdirection for GRAPHITE, and I also liked AIRSHOT, another of those “re-split” clues that we don’t have a good name for. Several good ones last week, coleslaw comes to mind.
Edited at 2021-09-21 07:32 am (UTC)
Around the 16 minute mark for me which is a good pace. My LOI was also Steely which I took some time to spot. I liked Wear Thin once I worked it out. I biffed lash as thought of the Spanish la but didn’t get how Sh= horse, which of course it doesn’t. Thanks for the blog to explain
FOI: ACTION
LOI: WEAR THIN
Temporarily biffed GARNISHED (simply because of GAR) but later remedied, after some delay. (Silly typo with ONE LINNR)
Thank you, chrisw91 and Teazel.
WILLINGLY took some parsing and I needed all the checkers for ABRAHAM. Finished in 8.24 with STEELY, where I was assuming that T would be the abbreviation for T-Shirt.
Thanks to Chris
Thanks Teazel for the funny plays on words
HANDEL made me smile, as did WEAR THIN, ONE-LINER, HAMPER.
Finished NW corner quickly then pottered around rest of grid.
Thanks vm Chris.
Agree that H is for the animal horse, as on race card. Heroin never entered my head!
FOI: ACTION
LOI: ILL BRED
COD: ONE LINER
Thanks Teazel and Chris.
I thought this an excellent QC. Time 11:40.
COD to WEAR THIN which seems to have challenged most of us.
David
So when I started on the QC my target was to finish by the time my train arrived at Charing Cross (about 40 mins). Then I discovered this blog and was blown away by the speed which was possible — 40 mins no longer seemed satisfactory!
I didn’t know what time to set and so in the end I decided to try to solve in less than 5 times Kevin’s time (his time was a natural benchmark because it was always fast and usually at the top of the blog entries because of his time zone, though for years I just thought he was an early riser!).
Once I could do that I tried 4K, then 3K, then my first “raw” time, which was 15 mins. Now I try to get below 10 mins/2K and that’s been my target for quite a while. I’m not sure I’ll ever set a new one because I think I’ve found my level, but I live in hope!
Edited at 2021-09-21 01:59 pm (UTC)
Now i just need to win the lottery/inherit from a previously unknown relative, so I concentrate on getting the 15×15 times into a narrower band.
Edited at 2021-09-21 01:14 pm (UTC)
Quite a tricky offering which kept me on my toes.
FOI ONE-LINER
LOI WEAR THIN
COD FOUR
TIME 4:36
11A Wear thin didn’t strike me as untoward as I was doing the puzzle but on reading comments above, I agree it’s another singular/plural conundrum. Presumably only the need to have the word wear as a plural verb forced the plural tips in the surface.
Many thanks to Chris for the blog.
Cedric
FOI Action
COD Action
DNF
Thanks Teazel and Chris
Whilst I didn’t have any issue with 11ac I also normally associate it with the plural. Similarly, I think of Nan bread as Naan (unless it is a different type of bread mentioned above somewhere).
But — a good puzzle on the whole with some clever clues.
FOI — 1ac “Action”
LOI — 15dn “Abraham”
COD — 18ac “Rely”
Thanks as usual!
FOI – 8ac ONE LINER
LOI – 23ac STEELY
COD – 5dn GARLANDED
Thanks to Teazel for an enjoyable puzzle.
Struggled after a good start and foundered on the 11 ac / 11 d intersection with the dreaded brain freeze. Could see that 11d ended in “ingly” but could I summon a word for list of bequests? When I finally did, 11 ac fell immediately, although like Jack and others, I had more than an MER for the use of “tips” in the plural.
Overall I felt the puzzle was above average difficulty for a QC but it wasn’t that hard!
Thanks to Chris for his blog and to Teazel
Cod frenzied, nice surface.
LOI 16ac FRENZIED
COD 21ac GRAPHITE
WOD 5ac GRUBBY
I liked ONE LINER, but got very stuck on ABRAHAM, ASH, WILLINGLY and WEAR THIN (my LOI). Like others above, I was bamboozled by the contradictory plural ‘Tips’ and singular ‘cease’ in 11a. I also had HANDLE for a long time, which made __E_INGLY impossible to solve.
I don’t think Mrs R got stuck anywhere, today. She wasn’t under any particular time pressure, so she allowed herself to slip into the SCC. Our finishing times were 46 minutes for me and 23 minutes for Mrs R.
Many thanks to Teazel and Chris.
I liked GRUBBY, mainly because my kids are perpetually in such a state, despite being 16 and 11.