Hi all. It’s another Orpheus Monday. With a few family members appearing in clues and answers, including the rather naughty 5d, perhaps I should have subtitled this post A Family Affair.
It took longer for me to get a foothold in the NE than elsewhere, but once I did the rest followed without undue delay. As usual I’m struggling to nominate a COD, but I’ll go with 16a. Thanks Orpheus!
Definitions are underlined in the clues below. In the explanations, quoted indicators are in italics and I’ve capitalised and emboldened letters which appear in the ANSWER. For clarity, I omit most link words and some juxtaposition indicators.
| Across | |
| 1a | Little bird, one moving around Latvian capital (10) |
| BUDGERIGAR — BUDGER (one moving) around RIGA (Latvian capital) | |
| 8a | Predicament initially experienced after exchange of blows? (6) |
| SCRAPE — The first letter of (initially) Experienced comes after SCRAP (exchange of blows?) | |
| 9a | Large tome‘s bulk (6) |
| VOLUME — Two definitions. The first is a book, but I’m not sure that such a volume is necessarily large | |
| 10a | Girl keeping the Spanish food shop (4) |
| DELI — DI (girl) containing (keeping) EL (the, Spanish) | |
| 11a | I’d backed priest, one controlling everything (8) |
| DIRECTOR — I’D reversed (backed) + RECTOR (priest) | |
| 12a | Border where mother has drink with king (6) |
| MARGIN — MA (mother) + GIN (drink) + R (Rex, king) | |
| 14a | Possible car‘s ultimately ramshackle condition (6) |
| ESTATE — The last letter of (ultimately) ramshacklE + STATE (condition) | |
| 16a | Make illegal entry — father’s breaking lock (8) |
| TRESPASS — PA’S (father’s) going inside (breaking) TRESS (lock – of hair) | |
| 18a | Public show accommodated by Essex police (4) |
| EXPO — The answer is in (accommodated by) EssEX POlice | |
| 20a | Penetrate jetty alongside church (6) |
| PIERCE — PIER (jetty) next to (alongside) CE (church) | |
| 21a | US city‘s way to divide benefit (6) |
| BOSTON — ST (street, way) needs to go into (to divide) BOON (benefit) | |
| 22a | Musician‘s son’s boast I misrepresented (10) |
| BASSOONIST — SON‘S BOAST I anagrammed (misrepresented) | |
| Down | |
| 2d | Relative caught dipping into articles in French (5) |
| UNCLE — C (caught) going inside (dipping into) UN and LE (articles in French – grammatical articles) | |
| 3d | Metal framework making rasping sound (7) |
| GRATING — A double definition | |
| 4d | Twisted-sounding grass (3) |
| RYE — WRY (twisted), homophone (…-sounding) | |
| 5d | Turn on French writer’s son’s nanny (9) |
| GOVERNESS — GO (turn) preceding (on, in a down entry) VERNE’S (French writer’s) S (son) | |
| 6d | Soldiers left in charge of a venerated object (5) |
| RELIC — RE (soldiers) + L (left) + IC (in charge) | |
| 7d | Meaning of item brought from abroad (6) |
| IMPORT — Two definitions | |
| 11d | Disgusting substance found on a Welshman’s overalls (9) |
| DUNGAREES — DUNG (disgusting substance) + A + REES (Welshman) | |
| 13d | Scared of force initially used in a military attack (6) |
| AFRAID — The first letter of (… initially) Force put between (used in) A and RAID (military attack) | |
| 15d | Thanks young relative restraining extremely rare disloyalty (7) |
| TREASON — TA (thanks) and SON (young relative – relatively speaking, anyway!) around (restraining) the outer letters of (extremely) RarE | |
| 17d | Get rid of brushwood (5) |
| SCRUB — Our final double definition | |
| 19d | Sanctimonious priest’s first evidence of debts (5) |
| PIOUS — Priest’s first letter + IOUS (evidence of debts) | |
| 21d | Voice disapproval of most of 9? (3) |
| BOO — All but the last letter of (most of) BOOk (9: 9a, VOLUME) | |
Biffed a couple without bothering to parse: BUDGERIGAR (saw RIGA), GOVERNESS, TREASON. 3:50.
I biffed quite a few as well – governess, dungarees, treason. The puzzle must be quite easy, although I did carefully follow the cryptic to avoid a misspelt budgerigar.
Time: 5:34, pretty good for me.
Scraped home in 10 minutes, so just on target but it was a close thing as a number of clues needed to be revisited several times before giving up their secrets. I don’t have problems with spelling BUDGERIGAR but it’s a word that seems to take me by surprise whenever it appears and indeed today it was my LOI. We always had budgies in the childhood family home so it’s not a word exactly unknown to me!
After a bit of a pause to find a bird that had Riga in it things moved quickly before a brief panic when ‘export’ wouldn’t fit the gap where IMPORT went to finish. A few seconds of tension before it came up all green for a huge pb of 5.34. That’s still 1.5Ks, so if other people would say they struggled I’d appreciate it.
Excellent time. Congrats on the pb.
Congratulations on the big pb!
Wow, that’s rapid!! Well done!
Fantastic time! Well done!
Well done!
🎆
Well done M!
👏
A bit less than 8 minutes. Didn’t see BUDGERIGAR straight away, for some reason latching on to the money sense of ‘capital’ and thinking I would have to work out the unknown Latvian currency from crossers. I thought that a GOVERNESS and a ‘nanny’ were slightly different, the first being a teacher and the second a nurse or carer, but I see at least one Thesaurus has them as synonyms.
I’ve just begun re-watching “Rumpole” so BASSOONIST was my pick today.
Thanks to Orpheus and Kitty
Orpheus in friendly mood as this took me 6½ minutes, not a PB but not far short. All done, all parsed, all enjoyed, all good. An upbeat start to the week, and nice to see Pious in full for once – it is so often rendered as Pi.
Many thanks to Kitty for the blog
Cedric
Thought this was going to be tricky as I didn’t get my FOI until DELI, but after that things flowed smoothly for a 6.03 completion. COD to DUNGAREES as the surface made me chuckle.
Thanks to Kitty
Was pleased when 8:13 showed up as it felt much longer.
Saw Riga but still didn’t see BUDGERIGAR for quite a while and was thrown by looking for chestnuts that simply weren’t there: ‘Dai’ in DUNGAREES and a synonym for bulk that started with ‘L’
Kitty saw 5D as naughty but I read ‘turn on’ as ‘show sudden anger towards’ rather than ‘arouse’. Freud would have a field day.
Thanks Orpheus and Kitty.
Oh dear – yes, MangoMan, your interpretation of 5d’s surface reading is almost certainly the intended one.
1108. 11:08 Construction of Winchester Cathedral starts
Not too much to trouble the horses here, with FOI UNCLE and LOI PIOUS. Was a bit confused on PIOUS with PI (“sanctimonious”, and much loved by setters) in there, and Eli absent this time.
I liked BUDGERIGAR, thought it didn’t jump out as although I considered RIGA, I also considered just “L” for Latvia’s capital.
11D DUNGAREES COD, though I went through the usual characters of Dai, Taff, Evans, Jones etc.
Winchester Cathedral: … and 858 years later, along came the New Vaudeville Band with their hit song.
I thought it was the Bonzo dog door dah band🤔
A stroll in the park for me today, and all clear bar four of the across clues on the first pass.
FOI BUDGERIGAR
LOI BOSTON
COD ESTATE (see below)
TIME 3:09
I shall now take our “ultimately ramshackle” 18 year old Ford Ka down to the local scrapyard, having replaced it with one half its age on Saturday. Used cars are so ridiculously expensive these days !
A good puzzle to start the week. Most of my thoughts have been enunciated by others above. It was a steady but dogged solve for me with a fair few biffs (parsed later). It brought me in more than a minute inside my target. LOI DUNGAREES.
Thanks to Orpheus and Kitty. John M.
12 mins…
I thought this was fairly straightforward – although there was a lot of biffing going on, especially on the RHS.
FOI – 2dn “Uncle”
LOI – 7dn “Import”
COD – 16ac “Trespass”
Thanks as usual!
Seemed relatively gentle today. Was slow on Budgie as was vaguely thinking Vilnius was the capital I needed which made the bird difficult.
Agree a GOVERNESS would be offended to be considered a nanny.
Otherwise I jumped fairly quickly about the grid, biffing here and there.
Just realised I didn’t have to write out any anagrams today but just guessed eg BASSOONIST.
Liked MARGIN, IMPORT. FOI RYE.
Thanks vm, Kitty.
Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn – I’ll admit, I often attribute them to the wrong Baltic country.
🙂
Not so gentle for me, but within target.
Top right held me up, but the biffed GOVERNESS opened it all up, with ESTATE going in last.
DUNGAREES my favourite.
6:09
Straightforward as far as I was concerned with no real hold ups, apart from having to carefully check the parsing to see that I had spelt BUDGERIGAR correctly…. I had! Crossed the line in 5.44
A bit of a shocker this morning for Rotter – 16 minutes for an Orpheus puzzle that everyone else seems to have found easy fare. I must be degenerating! UNCLE FOI, SCRUB LOI, only after BASSOONIST finally fell. I was convinced that the overalls were going to start with DIS and that the definition was at the other end of the clue. Thanks both Orpheus and Kitty. I am beaten today.
For a dose of regeneration – have a look at 23ac in the 15×15 today.
16 mins also for me today. Don’t despair – there are many ways to enjoy a QC and for me, understanding the answer and no biffing means I will never achieve the sort of speedy times posted by others!
No big problems for me today. I needed 11 minutes. LOI was SCRUB avoiding a lazy biff of SHRUB just to finish. Prior to that TRESPASS, which I also nominate as COD.
I did have trouble spelling budgerigar, but I was helped by the wordplay and also by trying to fit it into another puzzle very recently . BUDGIE is the root of my problem.
A nice QC.
David
Orpheus certainly not in a friendly mood, as per usual I hasten to add.
I found parts of this very tricky indeed. I have always found Orpheus’ QCs unpleasant and this one was no exception.
I used all three lives and still had two unanswered and two incorrect.
Not a good start to the week.
I found this a struggle finally crossing the line in 23:43. Many minutes spent on GOVERNESS, VOLUME and LOI ESTATE. Biffed BOO. Decidedly off my game today. Liked DUNGAREES. Many thanks all.
A satisfactory start to the week with a green finish in 17:31. FOI UNCLE, LOI ESTATE and a few biffed along the way like others. I knew SHRUB wasn’t right but it took a while for SCRUB to come to mind. A couple of MERs for nanny/GOVERNESS and VOLUME / large tome. Thanks Orpheus and Kitty.
A straightforward effort today after Friday’s disaster. No problems with anything really.
As a relative newcomer I cannot resist showing off: this is the first one I have managed to complete (in about an hour). FOI VOLUME; sad to see DELI yet again; LOI SCRUB (easy once I had TRESPASS). COD BASSOONIST, but then I am a musician. I found DIRECTOR annoyingly hard, distracted by wanting it to be DICTATOR, but RELIC had to be right. Biffed RYE – MER there – is “wry” twisted? All in all, fun, and doable. Thanks Orpheus.
Congratulations on the first completion! Onwards and upwards.
Bravo!
👍👍👍
Congratulations on your first completion!
Fantastic achievement – very well done 👏👏👏👏👏
Well done. It’s a great feeling.
I had the same thoughts about wry but the dictionary confirmed it later. I think we are most used to the ironic meaning in ‘a wry smile’ but even that is twisted.
Thank you all for your kind comments!
Nice gentle Monday offering. Long delay on LOI BUDGERIGAR, though – if only I wasn’t a geographical ignoramus.
COD to TRESPASS. All done in 06:42 for 1.8K and a very Good Day.
Many thanks Orpheus and Kitty.
Templar
Particularly liked the lovely surfaces here, solved in under average time. I think 8a considers a large book divided into several physical VOLUMES, but it is the book rather than the volumes which is LARGE. FOI UNCLE, LOI and COD IMPORT. Thanks Orpheus and Kitty.
Enjoyable puzzle completed in 46minutes. The clues all fell one by one.
LOI and COD to TRESPASS for the lock misdirection.
Didn’t realise that the 9 at BOO referred to another clue so could not parse it but it had, fingers crossed, to be right.
Well done, Mr V!
🎆
👍
Wow! Breathless pace here at the Random’s this morning. Mrs R achieved a silver medal performance when she crossed the line in 11 minutes – only once has she gone faster than this – and, at the 67th attempt, I finally broke free of the SCC’s shackles when tackling an Orpheus QC. 17 minutes for me, with nearly all clues fully parsed.
My FOsI were DELI and DIRECTOR, but I really got going down near the bottom of the grid. I experienced a few problems with GOVERNESS, TESPASS and BUDGERIGAR, but (mercifully) no interminable delays. All in all, a great start to the week.
Many thanks to Orpheus and Kitty.
👏
Well done both of you!
I seem to be congratulating a lot of people this evening. Well done the Randoms! 👏
Couldn’t see Budgerigar to start with, and that set the tone for a very bitty solve, slowly building up answers from crossers. Too many biff then parse answers for me to ever feel in control, so no complaints about an 18min solve. CoD to loi 16ac, Trespass. Invariant
A gentle start to the week for me. RYE started things off. RIGA was spotted straight away, but I had to wait for some crossers before the bird flew in. Didn’t bother to parse it any further. DUNGAREES brought up the rear. 6:56. Thanks Orpheus and Kitty.
I wasn’t quite as quick as some of you! I got stumped on GOVERNESS which I needed to get before my LOI VOLUME. COD for me is DUNGAREES. 7:21
4.29
No problems here. Spent a deservedly memorable (for all the wrong reasons) couple of hours in Riga airport hungover from a late night in Vilnius. My handle has a link to the Baltic states so those capitals are a few I can get right
Thanks all
I assumed your handle was a camouflage of Dennis! Now I google and see it’s Lithuanian for “twin”.
Indeed. I have family connections there and quite separately am a twin, whose other half is also (probably unsurprisingly) a poster here from time to time
16 mins fully parsed and an enjoyable outing. It is always a good day when a QC makes me laugh out loud and 11d did that today. Lots of clever clues today but COD to GOVERNESS from me.
Thanks Kitty for the blog. In 5d I had ‘turn on’ meaning ‘go’. As in ‘how do I make this machine turn on’. But it works both ways.
Prof
Filled in mainly from west to east for a very rapid for me 7:03. 15dn was clued in a 15×15 recently as something like ‘Yorkshire person’s explanation’. LOI Import. Thanks for the blog.
Under 10 mins, no problems except for grating which needed an alpha trawl, which grated.
COD Boston.
13:10. Pleased to roll along smoothly with only BUDGERIGAR and DUNGAREES taking longer than the others.
Slightly slow to start with but soon gathered pace, crossing the line in 12 minutes. A fairly straightforward start to the week from Orpheus and most enjoyable. Didn’t stop to parse GOVERNESS as I had most of the crossers by that time, so thanks to Kitty for the explanation.
FOI – 10ac DELI
LOI – 11dn DUNGAREES
COD – 16ac TRESPASS. Also liked DUNGAREES.
2:53 (all parsed en route) which equals my PB, although I see from the Club leaderboard, 50 seconds slower than Verlaine!
A friendly start to the week from Orpheus, as witnessed by several PB’s as reported above.
After Liverpool’s 7-0 victory over Man U yesterday, I have to say it’s been an enjoyable 24 hours.
COD 1 ac “Budgerigar” which I immediately decided to leave until I had more crossers, thinking “Latvian capital” could be any of Riga, or L, or a foreign currency.
Thanks to Orpheus and to Kitty for a succinct blog.
Wow, that’s a quick one! V rare to see a sub 3, and then only from you or Busman.
9.40 Quick for me and I was held up by putting BASOONISTS initially. Lots of biffing to finish but it was all parseable afterwards.
Very fast this evening after Friday’s horrible qc
10:58
Would have been quicker, but despite having been there I convinced myself that theEstonian capital was Tallin. Pretty straightforward.
After being heartened by Penny’s kind comments at the weekend, I enjoyed this QC and came home in 15 mins.
Struggled a bit in NE at first but my new approach of solving the downs in reverse order paid off again.
FOI – SCRAPE
LOI – BOSTON
PDM – BOSTON again
COD – DUNGAREES
Thanks for the great blog Kitty.
Oh dear. My sense of achievement at actually finishing squashed by all the fast times and comments about friendly etc. Time? Best part of an hour.
Congratulations on your finish.
Everyone goes at their own pace Dave, so you shouldn’t let a lot of quick times by others bother you. There are plenty of days when I am simply happy to finish! A finish always beats a DNF, regardless of time taken.
This was a DNF for me yesterday – I had around 2/3 complete and then got cryptic-solvers-block and couldn’t see anything.
Picked it up off the bedside table this morning. Got Budgerigar immediately and the rest just flowed in 3 or so minutes.
Funny how one day you can’t get into the head of the setter and the next you “just see it”. Doh!