Hi everybody. I really enjoyed this, and I suspect I won’t be alone. Trelawney keeps the difficulty down and the enjoyment up. It was close to personal-best-except-for-that-one-time-I-smashed-it territory for me, but I still found time to smile and appreciate the excellent surfaces.
Hearing about the dodgy inn in 13a, that the pub tea is awful (15a), how the restaurant employee drops one drink (1d) and seeing the huge drinks bill in 6d, the blog title naturally suggested itself. (When I solved 6d I was thinking that the drinks were very pricey, but on reflection maybe there were just lots of them. A more fun way of running up a large bill!) It could have been a more drinks-filled puzzle than it is: the optic 7a isn’t the kind you find in bars, 12a isn’t rum, and 3d isn’t necessarily a lager lout, although it is possible. All good fun – cheers Trelawney!
Definitions are underlined in the clues below. In the explanations, most quoted indicators are in italics, specified [deletions] are in square brackets, 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 | Desire unknown nerd, a chocolate factory owner (5,5) |
| WILLY WONKA — WILL (desire) + Y (unknown, of the mathematical kind) + WONK (nerd – as seen in “policy wonk”) + A | |
| 7a | Choose interesting course primarily related to vision (5) |
| OPTIC — OPT (choose) + initial letters of (… primarily) Interesting Course | |
| 8a | Continuous noise by bongo, say, is mediocre (7) |
| HUMDRUM — HUM (continuous noise) by DRUM (bongo, say) | |
| 10a | Somehow help Ron to the top of the world? (5,4) |
| NORTH POLE — An anagram of (somehow) HELP RON TO | |
| 12a | Not even unusual? (3) |
| ODD — A double definition | |
| 13a | Vet ran dodgy inn (6) |
| TAVERN — An anagram of (… dodgy) VET RAN | |
| 15a | Positive pub tea is awful (6) |
| UPBEAT — PUB TEA is anagrammed (awful) | |
| 16a | Outlaw’s gang incomplete (3) |
| BAN — BANd (gang) without the last letter (incomplete) | |
| 17a | Rigid loop found in small shelter (9) |
| STRINGENT — RING (loop) found in S (small) and TENT (shelter) | |
| 20a | Spice up some rotten live news (7) |
| ENLIVEN — Some rottEN LIVE News | |
| 22a | Keen on covering footballer’s last start (5) |
| INTRO — INTO (keen on) around (covering) footballeR’s last letter | |
| 23a | Trade Monet works for art gallery (4,6) |
| TATE MODERN — TRADE MONET is anagrammed (works) | |
| Down | |
| 1d | Restaurant employee drops one drink (5) |
| WATER — WA[i]TER (restaurant employee) sheds (drops) I (one) | |
| 2d | Fight to secure musical instruments (4,5) |
| LOCK HORNS — LOCK (to secure) + HORNS (musical instruments) | |
| 3d | Lout overturned dried grass on two ducks (5) |
| YAHOO — Upside down (overturned) HAY (dried grass) on O O (two ducks – zeros in cricket) | |
| 4d | Resistance unit owes him money initially (3) |
| OHM — We find the unit of electrical resistance in the first letters of (… initially) Owes Him Money | |
| 5d | King and a libertine admitting love for singing activity (7) |
| KARAOKE — K (king) + A RAKE (a libertine) taking in (admitting) O (love) | |
| 6d | Drinks bill extremely large in Arthur’s seat location? (5,5) |
| ROUND TABLE — ROUND (drinks) TAB (bill) + outer letters of (extremely) Large. A sneaky misdirection towards Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh | |
| 9d | Time during intervention for relaxing exercise (10) |
| MEDITATION — T (time) in (during) MEDIATION (intervention) | |
| 11d | Dear old partner lost in thought (9) |
| EXPENSIVE — EX (old partner) + PENSIVE (lost in thought) | |
| 14d | Country house contains an orchid (7) |
| VANILLA — VILLA (country house) contains AN. I have learned that the vanilla plant is an orchid | |
| 18d | Beatle starts to needle George in Brazilian city (5) |
| RINGO — Initial letters of (starts to) Needle George in RIO (Brazilian city) | |
| 19d | Polished off and defeated without leader (5) |
| EATEN — [b]EATEN (defeated) missing its first letter (without leader) | |
| 21d | Regularly avoided struggle (3) |
| VIE — Regular letters of (regularly) aVoIdEd | |
5:47
10 mins…
Possibly could have been quicker, but also stupidly biffed “Yobbo” for 3dn which knocked off a few minutes. Like a few, didn’t know “Vanilla” was a type of orchid, but Trelawney was very generous with their clueing creating a perfectly pitched QC to begin the week.
FOI – 7ac “Optic”
LOI – 6dn “Round Table”
COD – 1ac “Willy Wonka”
Thanks as usual!
4:37 There seems to be a group of us commenters racing each other to the finish line.
Done in 6:00 PB, I only managed to finish half the time so this must have been easy! Didn’t really struggle with anything, Karaoke last in was obvious from the checking letters. Very enjoyable.
A very smooth QC as usual from Trelawney, solved in 7:35 which is my PB for 2025. So many excellent clues, HUMDRUM especially pleased me (our neighborhood has acquired an avid drums aficionado, would that this person would confine themselves to bongos!). TATE MODERN really good too (sorry, I’m not a fan). LOCK HORNS was a nice bit of misdirection. A lot parsing after the fact here but no less fun for that. I too stumbled over the Edinburgh misconnection.
Thanks to Trelawney and to Kitty for the entertaining blog. Going out for drinks with friends tonight so now I’m in the mood. No pub tea for me.
PS: thanks to all the commenters for teaching me “yobbo”. What a fun/horrible word.
I see there are PBs everywhere today, and it was a good opportunity for me to get somewhere near my best time. Sadly I didn’t achieve it, in fact I was over a minute adrift at 5.22. It is somewhat of a disadvantage to use pen and paper obviously, but I do feel I should at least have broken the five minute barrier. Delayed slightly making sure I had the cryptic direction right for the spelling of KARAOKE, and did not know that a wonk was a nerd, but the answer was obvious.
Well done to everyone on achieving their PB.
7:02
Not so easy for me for some reason. Didn’t see LOCK HORNS quickly enough, or HUMDRUM, and finished in a pretty average time.
Well done everyone with a PB, and thanks Kitty and Trelawney.
12 min finish, possibly a PB but don’t keep records. Getting Willy Wonka straight away gave a generous start to the down clues. LOI Round Table, kept thinking of Edinburgh. Great puzzle, thanks Trelawney and Kitty
Just over 18 minutes to complete a pleasantly undemanding puzzle whilst waiting for a delayed Shuttle Train to the continents. There are many worse ways of killing time!
As above! Fun puzzle, entertaining surfaces and a decent time. Well done to everyone with PBs (or near ones) 😊
I liked EXPENSIVE and RINGO (although I think the Beatle who used to needle George was John!) and the run of 12A, 13A and 14A were quite simple but very effective. STRINGENT and ROUND TABLE slowed me down a bit, for the same reasons as everyone else.
7:07 FOI Willy Wonka LOI Intro (because I somehow completely skipped it!) COD Tate Modern – what a cracking surface
Many thanks Trelawney and Kitty
8:45
A PB for me and only my second time under 10 mins with an unusual (for me) amount of biffing from crossers.
Definitely the easiest QC I can remember but still very enjoyable – loved LOCK HORNS and STRINGENT (as I did Kitty’s blog).
A big thanks to Kitty & Trelawney
A PB here too! All done & dusted in 5:25, which doesn’t even get me into the top 100 today. All bar BAN and STRINGENT went in at the first attempt. The only hitch in an otherwise smooth experience was misreading the clue for VANILLA and wondering what an orchard had to do with the answer.
Thanks to Trelawney and Kitty.
New PB here with 12:28. Thanks for the Blog.
Echoing all above comments, I really appreciate the approachability of Trelawney’s puzzles. 10 minutes of fun, loved the thought of the EX being PENSIVE and the K(ing) with A RAKE, O ho! Only delays were YOBBO giving way to YAHOO (obvious in retrospect) and hesitation at 10a where I thought the first word might be POLAR: but no A so thought harder! On with the day (not much left now). Thanks Trelawney and Kitty.
Great QC! also tempted into Edinburgh by 6d but Round leapt out. Tried to keep my speed down as I was waiting for an appointment and finished off afterwards and all probably before the SCC opened (just for a change). At least this enabled me to savour the humour a d clever setting. Nice to see 23a including Monet yet still not leading us to Tate Britain (TB is one of my two favourite places, with the NPG in first place!
Yesterday I found an unsolved QC 1972 by Wurm that I had been using as a bookmark as settled down to try it. It was so much easier than expected for Wurm – either I’ve improved or the QC is indeed getting more difficult.
Newbie to QC here! Won’t post time as go back and forth between puzzle and work and always on paper!
Lout = YAHOO new for me, but obvious from rest of clue. Defeated by EXPENSIVE and STRINGENT bother it! All the rest relatively fast for this novice. One day I’ll make less than 10 mins I hope!
Welcome Yamin – and well done 😊 Hope to hear from you again!
Well that was fun and a PB too at 19:40. First sub 20 and about half the time of a usual solve. No doubt back to normal tomorrow!
Hugely enjoyable puzzle completed in a PB of 10:58 – at one point I thought I might break through the 10 minute barrier. Unusually all parsed so a great start to the week.
Many thanks to Trelawney for an excellent QC and to Kitty for the blog.
Fabulous QC, thank you Trelawney. If I’d timed carefully I might even have escaped the SCC! Happy Mondays 😊
No paper delivered today so you can have a day off from my whinging.
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.
9:27. Not a PB but a sub-ten is always pleasing. LOI STRINGENT which took some looking at. Loved the drinks-themed blog, Kitty, and the fun QC from Trelawney
Remembered Yahoo from Swifts Gullivers Travels. Maybe where the term was first used.