Solving time: 16 minutes
Dare I risk saying this was mostly straightforward? Compared with last Friday, yes, and the Saturday before that. Anyway I’m sure you will all let me know what you thought.
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 | Second section of race? It could be painful (4) |
| SLAP | |
| S (second), LAP (section of race?) | |
| 4 | Author’s flimsy material about small bird (8) |
| LAWRENCE | |
| LACE (flimsy material) containing [about] WREN (small bird). I saw LACE straight away which brought ‘Lovelace’ to mind and I wondered if ‘ovel’ might be a bird. Not convinced by that, I decided to wait for checkers. There’s a choice of at least two famous authors the clue may be referring to. | |
| 8 | Very small amount includes foreign money arbitrarily (2,6) |
| AT RANDOM | |
| ATOM (very small amount) contains [includes] RAND (foreign money) | |
| 9 | Two notes, not the whole lot (4) |
| SOME | |
| SO + ME (two notes) | |
| 10 | Drunk greeting we hear (4) |
| HIGH | |
| Aural wordplay[we hear]: “Hi” (greeting) | |
| 11 | Formal agreement in Conservative pamphlet (8) |
| CONTRACT | |
| CON (Conservative), TRACT (pamphlet) | |
| 12 | Some bride’s potentially a tyrant (6) |
| DESPOT | |
| Hidden in [some] {bri}DE’S POT{entially} | |
| 14 | Calm court following second half of case (6) |
| SEDATE | |
| {ca}SE [second half of…], DATE (court – ‘go-out’ with / woo] | |
| 16 | Swimmer that’s about to go inside for a rest? (8) |
| BREATHER | |
| RE (about) contained by [to go inside] BATHER (swimmer) | |
| 18 | Money for travel and food (4) |
| FARE | |
| Two meanings | |
| 19 | Move slowly at home and church (4) |
| INCH | |
| IN (at home), CH (church) | |
| 20 | Former dictator starts to encourage each one facing a test (8) |
| EXAMINEE | |
| EX (former), AMIN (dictator – Idi), then E{ncourage} + E{ach} [starts to…] | |
| 22 | A trooper could become brain surgeon? (8) |
| OPERATOR | |
| Anagram [could become] of A TROOPER. The question mark mitigates the DBE. I was a little surprised to find dictionary support for ‘operator’ as a surgeon as I had assumed it was just a play on words, but SOED has it, and Collins online has ‘a person who performs a surgical operation; a surgeon’ in its American English section. | |
| 23 | Some thought it obvious he was a Communist leader (4) |
| TITO | |
| Hidden in [some – again!] {though}T IT O{bvious}. Real name Josip Broz, Tito was president of the former Yugoslavia. | |
| Down |
|
| 2 | Framework in which the Parisian traps Greek (7) |
| LATTICE | |
| LE (‘the’ Parisian) contains [traps] ATTIC (Greek) | |
| 3 | Surprisingly cheap fruit (5) |
| PEACH | |
| Anagram [surprisingly] of CHEAP | |
| 4 | Boy happy but not good (3) |
| LAD | |
| {g}LAD (happy) [but not good] | |
| 5 | Flirt is more sensible, old fellow having been taken in (9) |
| WOMANISER | |
| O (old) + MAN (fellow) contained [having been taken in] by WISER (more sensible) | |
| 6 | Made certain king gets followed around (7) |
| ENSURED | |
| ENSUED (followed) contains [around] R (king) | |
| 7 | Funny commander-in-chief keeping order (5) |
| COMIC | |
| CIC (commander-in-chief) containing [keeping] OM (Order of Merit) | |
| 11 | Snag encountered involving new intake of pupils from local area (9) |
| CATCHMENT | |
| CATCH (snag), then MET (encountered) containing [involving] N (new). I don’t know how things are done overseas, but in the UK local schools have catchment areas from which they draw the majority of their pupils. | |
| 13 | Illegal hunter means to cook eggs? (7) |
| POACHER | |
| Two definitions. One means of cooking eggs is in an egg-poacher. | |
| 15 | Jog to the north to protect soldiers in anguish (7) |
| TORMENT | |
| TROT (jog) reversed [to the north] containing [to protect] MEN (soldiers) | |
| 17 | Approach bankruptcy, abandoning one at university? (3-2) |
| RUN-UP | |
| RU{i}N (bankruptcy) [abandoning one]. UP (at university). You need to go ‘up’ to university in order to be sent down if you misbehave. | |
| 18 | Female dressing in Welsh town (5) |
| FLINT | |
| F (female), LINT (dressing for wounds) | |
| 21 | Broadcast song (3) |
| AIR | |
| Two meanings | |
18:37
Nothing too bad but struggled with BREATHER and never did parse it. But it was LOI HIGH that pushed up the time, needing an alphabet trawl. I just didn’t associate drunk with high.
The Status Quo classic includes the lyrics:
Living on an island
Looking at another line
Waiting for my friend to come
And we’ll get high
I never realised they were talking about a line of beers.
Compared to the last three we raced through this. One or two trickier ones but all done in 8:08. Thanks Izetti and Jack.
You dare risk saying it’s mostly straightforward, and who am I to say you nay? but it took me 19 1/2 minutes because CATCHMENT for Americans has to do with catching water, not pupils, and I could not parse BREATHER and finally just put it in with fingers crossed. Although we wear bathing suits hereabouts, we wear them for swimming, not bathing, illogical I know. Also, I couldn’t account for the word “that’s” in the clue, thanks jackkt for the “that has” interpretation. A bit frustrating at the end of what was indeed a straightforward solve. WOMANISER was cute.
Thanks Izetti and jackkt!
Reasonably standard FARE, but a long barren spell after my first full pass pushed my time out to 35+ minutes. No complaints from me, though. Izetti is very precise with his clueing.
FOI: SO-so (corrected to SOME later)
SOI: HIGH
LOI: BREATHER
COD: AT RANDOM (obvs.)
Many thanks to Jack and Izetti.
A gentle enough puzzle. I had a fat thumb typist error on the POACHER clue, which wouldn’t have happened with pen and paper, but I’d solved it correctly in my head.
Yes the firecrest and gold crest are slightly smaller than the wren.
Thank you Jack and Izetti
A delightful start to the week. Thank you Izetti! I was definitely on the right wavelength and completed it in 16 minutes, a Very Good time for me. I didn’t spot PEACH was an anagram, thinking ‘1p each’ was cheap and I couldn’t parse BREATHER, so thank you for the blog and added comments Jack.
A lot of solvers must have found this easy as my time of 7:45 is outside the top hundred on the leaderboard. I don’t remember being held up by too many clues but I did wonder how many solvers would know of FLINT….easy for me as I grew up just down the road. FOI SLAP and LOI TITO. Thanks Jack
15m
Done in 2 sittings. LOI fare.
COD breather.
Thanks.
Rather slow solve with 8a and 18a causing us problems. Good puzzle from Izetti.
20+ min solve. LOI Breather one of several I needed Jack to parse for me. Thanks Jack and Izetti.
Thank goodness Izetti. Quality and logic.
7.07. One of my faster efforts.
DNF today with 10 clues unsolved. Very enjoyable puzzle none the less, and learnt a lot of good crossword words to look out for in the future. Only managed to get CONTRACT as remembered TRACT being used in a QC I’ve done in the past. Thank you for the explanations
7:42 for the solve. Wasn’t particularly enthused about attempting this one – the recent run of tougher puzzles beginning to weight on me. Good puzzle from Izetti – no particular hold ups other than last minute spent in the SE until TITO, FLINT, FARE (LOI) revealed themselves. BREATHER was a write-in as it appeared in the Daily Express Crusader which I did at lunchtime. Thanks to Izetti and Jackkt
The real highlight of today was achieving a 100kg deep squat at the gym this afternoon
07:51. I think Jack’s right to say mostly straightforward… took me a while to get FLINT – my geography of Wales is negligible… thanks both!
This was so straightforward I decided to make a lot of unforced errors to up the difficulty.
I put in INSURE rather than ENSURE which got me looking for an author ending ITCH
BREATHER I got fixated I was after a fish or other water creature.
FLINT- was in and out. I knew it was a town but couldn’t point it out on a map.
EXAMINEE- I listed off a whole load of old dictators only to find it had to be preceded by EX
RUN-UP- I had WIND-UP (as in end a business) in my head and couldn’t work out what to do with it.
Others didn’t go in as smoothly as they should have.
Quicker on the main one today.
Good puzzle though liked AT RANDOM and TITO.
A disappointing 18 minutes for ‘the easiest Izetti ever’. I am still unable to read most clues in the way that quick solvers do and so I remain well behind the competition. Reminds me of why I gave up golf. I realised that I would never be able to swing the club and strike the ball as one is meant to.
Did ok on 15 x 15 but took ages.
Thanks for the blog.
PS Turns out I didn’t do ok on 15 x 15. Two idiotic errors, so that’s another fail to chalk up.
And there I was congratulating myself on spotting Surprisingly cheap fruit at only a penny (p) each…
Love the blogs – thank you for getting me started on the QC’s.