Solving time: 28 minutes!
Was it just me, I wonder? Perhaps I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but I really had a problem getting any sort of flow to my solve today. Okay, I saw 1ac immediately and there were some other easy ones, but I had to hop around the grid to find them and every quarter had blanks where the answers didn’t come to me for far too long.
Lupa has set for us only 5 times to date and last time I gave up after 15 minutes with an answer missing, so I was absolutely determined to finish today without resorting to aids no matter how long it took. How did you all do?
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.
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1 | Puzzle unravelled in game (6) |
ENIGMA | |
Anagram [unravelled] of IN GAME | |
4 | Composed note on a grievance (6) |
SCORED | |
SCORE (grievance – a score to settle), D (note) | |
8 | Complaints surround Long Island convictions (7) |
BELIEFS | |
BEEFS (complaints) containing [surround] LI (Long Island) | |
10 | Liberal first lady left a plane (5) |
LEVEL | |
L (Liberal), EVE (first lady), L (left) | |
11 | Joint covered in crackling (4) |
RACK | |
Hidden [covered]in {c}RACK{ling}. Rack of lamb, for example. | |
12 | Troubled boy tries temperance (8) |
SOBRIETY | |
Anagram [troubled] of BOY TRIES | |
14 | Thus Den sent back after trip cut (9) |
TOURNEDOS | |
TOUR (trip), then SO (thus) + DEN reversed [sent back]. Another cut of meat! | |
18 | Dodgy beer withdrawn by brewery ultimately (8) |
SLIPPERY | |
PILS (beer) reversed [withdrawn], PER (by – makes a change from ‘a’), {brewer}Y [ultimately] | |
20 | Plenty of luggage (4) |
BAGS | |
Two meanings. Bags of fun! | |
22 | Old German point of view (5) |
ANGLE | |
Two meanings | |
23 | Catty on a royal scale (7) |
LEONINE | |
Cryptic, the lion being King of the Jungle. I saw the word that fitted the checkers and recognised the connection with cats but took ages to understand why ‘royal’. | |
24 | Service re-ordered before prince becomes destructive (6) |
LETHAL | |
LET (service re-ordered – tennis, when a newly served ball touches the net), HAL (prince – in Shakespeare) | |
25 | Second small insult (6) |
SLIGHT | |
S (second), LIGHT (small) |
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1 | Board sailing ship after enquiries made initially (6) |
EMBARK | |
E{nquiries} + M{ade} [initially], BARK (sailing ship). I always thought the ship was ‘barque’ and indeed that appeared in the QC only last Tuesday, but apparently it can also be spelt BARK. | |
2 | Unwell and in charge, before it is outlawed (7) |
ILLICIT | |
ILL (unwell), IC (in charge), IT | |
3 | Appropriate encounter (4) |
MEET | |
Double definition. As I wrote in a blog on a previous occasion: The first may be unfamiliar to some but I learnt it in church-going days long ago from a response that appeared in one of the standard services in the Book of Common Prayer “It is meet and right so to do”. I thought that was within the past year or two, but on checking the archive I found it was 9 years ago! | |
5 | State result of American bias and confusion (8) |
COLORADO | |
COLOR (American bias – no ‘u’), ADO (confusion) | |
6 | Variety show appraisal received (5) |
REVUE | |
Aural wordplay [received] REVUE / “review” (appraisal) | |
7 | Desmond takes set, causing holdups (6) |
DELAYS | |
DES (Desmond) contains [takes] LAY (set – e.g. the table) | |
9 | Villain directed cruel nods (9) |
SCOUNDREL | |
Anagram [directed] of CRUEL NODS | |
13 | Summon reserve before writer takes short nap (8) |
SUBPOENA | |
SUB (reserve – substitute in sport), POE (writer), NA{p} [short] | |
15 | Place a call after quiet communion (7) |
SHARING | |
SH (quiet), A, RING (call) | |
16 | Become unwell under donkey attack (6) |
ASSAIL | |
ASS (donkey), AIL (become unwell) | |
17 | Face the view! (6) |
ASPECT | |
Two meanings | |
19 | Finding Ottoman’s place of concealment for bar of gold (5) |
INGOT | |
Hidden in [place of concealment] {find}ING OT{toman} | |
21 | Monster has no right to ring (4) |
TOLL | |
T{r}OLL (monster) [has no right] |
Are popes royal? If so, perhaps 23ac is referring to Leo IX? Probably not, though!
Plenty of King Leos around, so for me:
a royal = LEO (king of Armenia or the jungle or a popular video game according to your preference) and scale = NINE (nine notes in a dual scale)
On Edit: It’s a dual scale, not a regular scale
I found this very difficult.
Classic case of ‘being on the wavelength’. I’m a founder member of the SCC, but this was almost a straight write-in: no hold-ups at all. Most clues subconsciously biffed, then saw the parsing and in they went. No doubt tomorrow everyone will say “easy, easy” and I’ll have a DNF.
Oh totally! It’s also why I’ve stopped really commenting on clues I don’t like. Most of the time ‘I don’t like’ just means that I didn’t get it and that’s a me problem. People don’t need to read that negativity.
But this was way too hard. Too many DNF gaps and no idea how the clue parsed.
Maybe I should try the biggie to cheer myself up!
Fairly ridiculous for a QC IMO, not enough easier clues to go with the many real hard ones (compared to regular levels of QC difficulty).
Absolutely agree in no way was this a QC even a hard QC
DNF. TOURNEDOS was my downfall. I also failed to parse RACK, LETHAL, LEONINE and COLORADO. Still there were enough enjoyable clues to offset these failures!
Slow going for me, too. TOURNEDOS especially took time; even with all the checkers, I couldn’t think of a word that would fit, and double-checked the downs to make sure they were correct. 8:28.
This was a real challenge but a quality puzzle and I’m not going to complain beyond saying that, yeah, it was a cut above what we might expect in a quickie. 16.25, with SUBPOENA, TOURNEDOS and COLORADO taking ages at the end. Still don’t get why colo(u)r = bias and was flummoxed by DELAYS until coming here. I also didn’t know that score = grievance and never thought to wonder what ‘settling a score’ meant. Thanks Lupa and Jack.
Easier to see if you think of verbs: ‘My judgement was coloured/biased by my upbringing.’
Thanks U, that works
Tougher than today’s main puzzle. Lots of misdirection and trickier vocab, often colliding in the same clue, eg SUBPOENA and TOURNEDOS.
A very fine puzzle, but it will probably function more as a reality check to novice solvers than as something to be savoured.
12 minutes.
19:56, just escaped the SCC
Found it heavy going, especially TOURNEDOS, COLORADO and SLIPPERY.
Didn’t like LEONINE.
COD SUBPOENA
Well into SCC territory at 24 minutes. I found this very tough and ended up being unable to parse SCORED which was my LOI. TOURNEDOS, COLORADO and SUBPOENA also took a lot of working out, particularly the identification of the definition. Favourite was the LET bit of LETHAL.
Thanks to Lupa and Jack
A slog but TOURNEDOS was the only unknown answer. Managed to only put one L in LEONINE for once. Should have got to COLORADO quicker, the ‘ado’ part would have been a big help it I’d taken a step back rather than just hoping a US state would come to mind – not helped by not seeing SCORED. Ended up all green in 21.18.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch…
Are you a Christabel fan?
Love it, but surely:
Hath a toothless mastiff which
From its kennel, by shine and shower
Every quarter and every hour….
Learned Christabel 70 years ago. Did I overlook bitch?
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud.
I consulted three sources and they agreed. But of course, this is the internet.
I think it’s hilarious, though, that your memory meets up with my first encounter with this poem, in Michael Innes’s quirky and (to my mind) poetic mystery novel Lament for a Maker. In a truly ridiculous encounter in a snowstorm two characters dispute whether the word in question is “bitch” or “which”. Now that I think about it, *surely* one of the characters put it just as you did (“surely…”)? Are you toying with me???
Blimey. I may be slow, but I usually finish. Not a hope with this one. LETHAL, SUBPOENA, SLIPPERY, TOURNEDOS all did me in. Gave up at 30m.
Ditto, I know I’m slow but nowhere near finishing this one. Also gave up, but after about 40 minutes.
I also found this harder than today’s main puzzle. Gave up on this one with two answers missing after 15 minutes – I had finished the main one faster than that.
Starting with the positives, always good to get 1a and 1d straight away. Enjoyed assail for the mental image of a donkey attack. Then after 36.38 finally seeing lethal and then subpoena where we spent too long with writer = pen.
Managed to finish but thanks vm Jack for the parsing of slippery, leonine, meet and subpoena which all eluded us!
Thankfully it’s a dark dismal morning so delaying our walk worked out ok.
Not just you, jack. I took 16’40” to finish – had to check all the parsing, didn’t really understand LEONINE, got confused between ‘Del’ and ‘Des’, and typoed early on. Too hard for a QC, I think, took me 5′ longer than the 15×15.
Thanks jack and setter.
23:10 for the fail with LiONIsE. I bunged it in as I’d had enough already as wasn’t expecting the EMBARK/RACK pairing to be correct. NHO TOURNEDOS. Never seen by=per before. Post solve sorted out deLAYs=set and SUBpoena=reserve. All a bit too much for a Monday.
Lupa puzzle times before this 15, 25,38, 44. Current rating – hasn’t mastered the QC brief. Can do better, must try harder.
Edit: Quitch currently showing at 0 (zero). Either it’s buggered or we’ve all misjudged it!!
Tough going and not all parsed but finished in 12.28 with LOI SCORED and COD to COLORADO.
Thanks to Jackkt for the much needed blog.
Although I biffed SLOI COLORADO, I parsed it quickly afterwards. Certainly at the sharper end of the QC scale, but I didn’t find it at all inaccessible.
FOI ENIGMA
LOI SCORED
COD TOURNEDOS
TIME 5:04
Looking back I often seem to be more on Lupa’s wavelength than some people here, and today I would characterise this as “tough but eminently doable” – it took me 14 minutes, my longest of Lupa’s five puzzles to date but only just so, and not out of my normal range. Some of the definitions were a bit of a stretch (LETHAL does not quite equate to destructive – I have a small grandson who is certainly the latter but hopefully not the former) and like some others I was not entirely enamoured with the clue for LEONINE, or sure how per = by.
Last two were COLORADO (needed the C checker and didn’t really see “American bias = color”, but Ulaca’s example explains it well) and SUBPOENA, again only spotted once the A checker appeared. A tough one to end on and hats off to anyone who got there entirely through the wordplay – for me it was very much “biff then parse”.
Thank you Jack for the blog
Cedric
‘Lethal’ doesn’t have to be taken too literally, just capable of causing a lot of damage or causing great harm or destruction.
I mixed someone a cocktail at the weekend which they described as “lethal”. I don’t think they meant it literally!
Crikey O’Reilly. If I wanted to think that hard, I’d do Big Puzzle. I got TOURNEDOS early on and immediately realised that this was going to be a slog.
COLOR clued as “American bias” is a bit thick in the QC. It’s like Malcolm Marshall bowling 90mph bouncers at tailenders. Remember your audience, Lupa.
Limped home in 12:27 for 1.5K and a Tough Day.
Many thanks Lupa and Jack.
May I ask what the reference to 1.5K relates to? I’ve seen similar references in your posts and one or two others and have often wondered? Cheers
When I started doing the QC I rarely finished it and then I couldn’t understand the answers when they were printed the next day. Then I discovered TFTT. It was hugely helpful and educational, and I read it avidly. The first post was usually by Kevin – he’s in Japan, so solves early. I would read his comments and behold his time in utter wonder. So I started timing myself by how many multiples of Kevin’s time I had taken. At first my ambition was to get below 4 Kevins; when I achieved that, 3 Kevins and so on. People noticed this and thus “the Kevin” became a unit of crosswording time, now abbreviated to a K.
I still remember the heady, heady day when I first got a sub-K. I’ve had more since, but they’re very rare for me and he’s still setting the standard to which I aspire.
Ah gotcha thanks.
I still remember my very first sub-1K day. And, to date, it remains a complete one-off!
11:31, held up by LOI SUBPOENA.
I now have the opening chorus of “Trial by Jury” stuck in my head:
For today in this arena,
Summoned by a stern SUBPOENA,
Edwin, sued by Angelina,
Shortly will appear.
Thanks Jack and Lupa
Rare foray into Super SCC 34 min. Just too many variables and possibilities in most clues so I found myself having to go through several permutations for all bar a handful of write-ins. Good misdirection or a bit off the mark for a quickie…?
Thanks Jack for the explanations and Lupa for delaying my breakfast by 20 minutes.
Ooo, the SCC Executive Suite! Nice there, extra strong drinks to revive one.
13:47 and very pleased with that having read the comments. A hard QC particularly SLIPPERY and LOI SUBPOENA
I haven’t done the crossword yet but please see the festive announcement on the home page 🎄.
Far too many clues which would have been considered tough in the main cryptic. Thanks jackkt, thanks but no thanks Lupa!
We should always thanks Lupa and all the setters, it’s a very hard job, as I discovered when doing the TfTT challenges in past years.
You are right to remind me to be gracious so apologies to Lupa. Setters do need to calibrate, however, and Lupa has done a few now.
Well yes, and many thanks for the TfTT weekend crosswords, but I suspect your work is in the finest amateur tradition. I think we are entitled to expect a setter to be able to pitch a puzzle at roughly the right level. After all we expect education professionals to be able to stretch but not discourage. Or do the Times setters just do it for the love of the game too?
Hear hear! Setters can take comments here personally, as a recent (and quickly deleted) post from Izetti demonstrated very clearly …
I remember that comment and had reason to doubt it’s authenticity. Someone playing games, I think .
I did wonder at the time. That said, setters are only human and the final say on suitability as a QC should be the editor’s – since we now have one again!
There’s a tendency to come down very hard on clues that are perceived as sub-par by solvers, which for me is a shortcoming in what is otherwise an excellent and informative resource.
Any hope of a gentle start to the week soon vanished, and like our blogger I had a lacework of answers and pencilled parts on my way to a slooow finish. TOLL took some time and I resorted to an alphabet trawl to find the right monster to cut down. Wouldn’t have thought of that meaning of ring otherwise anytime soon.
TOURNEDOS was also evasive, although the wordplay, in retrospect, was fair.
May go and try the biggie in view of comments above.
The trouble with the fair wordplay of a clue like TOURNEDOS is that when the puzzle is a struggle, you aren’t expecting the setter to give you something so simple.
Indeed. Nothing worse than when something impenetrable turns out to be perfectly penetrable if only approached from the right direction.
I was feeling rather stupid until coming here, as it took me far longer than usual to get through it. Having said that, I was impressed with TOURNEDOS and SUBPOENA, both excellent clues, but perhaps pitched a bit high for the Quickie. I didn’t like LEONINE and needed Jack’s blog to get REVUE, though I should have got ‘received’. Also took some time to come up with COLOR for American bias, though in fact it was bifd from the C and parsed subsequently. Looking forward to an easier ride on the 15×15!
18.12 for me and I was pleased with that as there were some that I thought were really quite tricky. Also failed to parse at least a couple of them. LEONINE I saw early as its appeared before either here or in the longer form of the game since I started doing these 18 months ago but I couldn’t really work out the Royal element to it.
Was held up slightly with a typo in ILLICIT which gave me an incorrect crosser for LOI RACK.
COD: Ill go for TOURNEDOS although I liked the use of COLOR for American bias.
Thanks to Lupa and particularly Jackkt for the perserverance in blogging this one.
The top LH corner was a write-in but after that, I had quite a struggle to finish. Didn’t see the royal connection in LEONINE and couldn’t parse SLIPPERY. Apparently BEER SLIPPERS are a thing, but clearly NHO for the majority of Times readers! Thanks Jack for the helpful blog.
Isn’t the lion known as ‘King of the Jungle’?
I wonder if anyone ever thought of writing a blog that explains how the clues work☺️
That would be a brilliant idea. I don’t think anyone would bother reading it, though.
As indeed Jack observes in the blog up there ↑↑↑
Hard. Never parsed 18a Slippery, clever. Cheated for 14a Tournedos. The rest of it I “got” eventually. I don’t usually have to cheat for the QC.
DNF.
If it was hard for Jackkt then it was impossible for me !
Hope not to see any more puzzles from this setter.
DNF. NW a write-in, but then only got a few random clues at first. Did manage SUBPOENA and LEONINE and then the SW and on I ploughed.
Looked up American states for COLORADO. Saw that TOURNEDOS was the only word that would fit but failed to see *Cut* of meat. Also failed on TOLL, which did not ring a bell, good clue though. Was exhausted by then.
Others like SLIPPERY I got right but don’t know why, so blog much needed, Jack.
DNF
The easy ones flew in but after getting about half ground to a complete halt and threw the towel in with 2 unsolved after 35 minutes.
Beaten by SUBPOENA and LETHAL and, rather less forgivably, putting LIONISE instead of LEONINE.
Those were the two that defeated me. Not a good start to the week, as I stumbled on the Paxo clue in the 15×15.
Battled for ages but had to concede defeat on five plus a few CNPs. Thank you (and well done!) to jackkt.
SCORED: ok will learn grievance = SCORE but do think random “notes” (= anything A-G) are bogus.
TOURNEDOS simply too contortedly difficult – did think “thus” = SO + “Den” backwards but that was only two of the five steps demanded. “Q”C?
SLIPPERY, SUBPOENA similarly beyond my modest abilities.
Biffed ANGLE but please tell us why this is “Old German”?
Also biffed LETHAL, NHO the tennis expression. Our two-year-old was destructive, but never lethal (sorry, Cedric got there first!).
NHO bias = COLOuR, but ok, will learn.
So that was that day – humph.
The Angles were a German tribe that invaded Great Britain in the 5th century. . . well before the invention of deckchairs 😉
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were Germanic tribes that invaded post-Roman Britain. The Angles are remembered in terms like Anglo-Saxon, East Anglia, and Anglican.
I assume they are old Germans in the way the Goths are old Germans. Then they must have invaded Britain and anglicised it!
Edit: appears others believe the same!
Settle a grievance = settle a score
First pass of the acrosses only came up with 4 or 5 answers and several more passes were required. RACK didn’t go in until I had the crossers, despite my being quite partial to a rack of ribs. Oh that sort of joint! Eventually SUBPOENA, COLORADO and SCORED finished things off. 8:02. Thanks Lupa and Jack.
Tough but fair. Needed an extra coffee to get over the line and Jack’s help to fully parse SLIPPERY, SCORED and LEONINE (hadn’t thought of king of the jungle – very good). After all that mental effort LOI was the hidden RACK 🙄 COD LETHAL for getting these lazy brain cells firing. More of these please! Thanks Jack.
I found this as difficult as any QC I can recall, and my time of 23.50 reflects that. Getting the last three answers took me about 13 or 14 minutes, and I was on the point of giving in when TOURNEDOS came to mind. This spurred me on and eventually it dawned on me that the American state was in its full form, and it was not just the more usually asked for abbreviation. Even with all the checkers it was a minute or two before I finally wrapped things up with SCORED. Glad to finish with all correct with this beauty.
Novice here, and almost a relief to come hear and read that I wasn’t the only one who struggled today. SUBPOENA took an age because I had PEN for writer instead of POE and couldn’t wrangle the rest of it. TOURNEDOS a real stopper for me. All good experience, I guess.
11:33 but…
…somehow managed to type SUBPEENA – grrr.
Missed the parsing of SLIPPERY entered from definition. LOI was BELIEFS – oh that sort of conviction! – after a not-very-confident MEET.
But yes, I agree that in places, this was a level up. (Also, it appears to have broken the Quick Snitch which is currently reporting NITCH values, but not WITCH values)
Thanks Jack and Lupa
14:43
Tough start to the week. Didn’t know what was going on with COLORADO or SLIPPERY but obvious with checkers. TOURNEDOS took time and is a tricky clue for a QC.
LOI TOLL
Thanks Jack and Lupa.
Very chewy, but somehow approachable.
Thanks to Jack and the Lupine one
I don’t think I have ever guessed so many answers to a QC. Couldn’t parse loads – got the answers by filling in the blanks with words that came to mind and then unravelling the clues. Took me just over 40 minutes of struggle. Hard work indeed for a QC.
25m
No accurate time but one of my longest solves.
Last few were leonine, troll, and aspect.
COD leonine.
About 10mins for all the easy ones, and then another 30 or so at the coal face teasing out the others. I had thought about *nedos as a potential ending to CoD 14ac quite early on, but the Tour/trip part still took ages to come to mind. The final ‘s’ did help with Sharing though, so mustn’t grumble (too much). Subpoena and one or two others seem to have escaped from the 15×15 and really shouldn’t have got this far. Invariant
15:26, unlike some I found the regular puzzle a bit harder, but definitely a toughie!
Very difficult. Glad to get through it.
Thanks, jack.
Just three – not one for the novice…
3d, 11 and 12 ac
Spotted 9d was an anagram but didn’t see the answer. I’m not one for using pen and paper.
Ah – the wonders of wavelength. I must admit that while solving I thought some might struggle with some of the word play and definitions though there was nothing here outside my GK. Being a carnivore certainly helped in a couple of instances. I biffed one or two from checkers (e.g. LEONINE) and finished in 8:29 which, since I have to reset the ‘show word breaks’ parameter every time I start a crossword puzzle on my IPad, I will round down to 1K.
Very much a game of two halves (or four quarters really).
Top left and bottom right all green, top right and bottom left with a distressing amount of red.
Oh well…
Struggled with the SE corner principally plus one or two other scattered clues. Wanted for a long time to put leopard in at 23ac as I was missing 15dn and 17 dn at the time. Obviously it didn’t parse so I managed to resist the temptation. I was also held up by failing to see the hiddens at 19dn and 11ac. The former wasn’t too much of a problem as the crossers were helpful but 11ac was a different matter. I wasn’t sure what sort of joint I was looking for and spent some time wondering about unknown slang words for cannabis cigarettes. All of which nudged me into the SCC at 20 mins exactly.
FOI – 1ac ENIGMA
LOI and COD – 11ac RACK
Thanks to Lupa and Jack