Hello all, and welcome to Loon. I really enjoyed this debut, finding a little more cryptic cunning on display than on some Mondays, but not enough to extend my time too much: I still took a little under my average time for a QC. My favourite clue was 12a, CUTS A DASH, with an honourable mention to the cold body part in 2d. Thanks Loon!
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 | Attractive tailless insect approaching (8) |
| BECOMING — Without its last letter (tailless) BEe (insect) + COMING (approaching) | |
| 5a | When initially in space, stare open-mouthed (4) |
| GAWP — The first letter of (… initially) When in GAP (space) | |
| 9a | Ignoring its tip, earth’s spherical (5) |
| ROUND — Omitting its initial letter (ignoring its tip), gROUND (earth) | |
| 10a | That woman’s family is after good food to pickle (7) |
| GHERKIN — HER KIN (that woman’s family) is after G (good) | |
| 11a | Badger or horse? (3) |
| NAG — Two definitions | |
| 12a | Chopped down tree has striking appearance (4,1,4) |
| CUTS A DASH — CUT (chopped) + SAD (down) + ASH (tree) | |
| 13a | Group of workers search engine pipes? (6) |
| TUBING — TU (group of workers) + BING (search engine) | |
| 15a | Marshy area ahead of the German guard (6) |
| FENDER — FEN (marshy area) preceding (ahead of) DER (the German) | |
| 17a | Most despicable taxi drivers blocking street (9) |
| SCABBIEST — CABBIES (taxi drivers) inside (blocking) ST (street) | |
| 19a | Biblical character’s task (3) |
| JOB — Two definitions | |
| 20a | Famous Italian goalie tumbles across line (7) |
| GALILEO — GOALIE is anagrammed (tumbles) around (across) L (line) | |
| 21a | Old French wine, the ultimate for entrée like lamb? (5) |
| OVINE — O (old) + VIN (French wine) + the last letter of (the ultimate for) entréE | |
| 22a | Regretted offensive broadcast (4) |
| RUED — RUDE (offensive), as heard (broadcast) | |
| 23a | Manufactured clash, yet in a restrained way (8) |
| CHASTELY — An anagram of (manufactured) CLASH, YET | |
| Down | |
| 1d | Aristocrat open-minded at first visiting London borough (7) |
| BARONET — The initial letter of (… at first) Open-minded entering (visiting) BARNET (London borough) | |
| 2d | Clutched cold body part (5) |
| CLUNG — C (cold) + LUNG (body part) | |
| 3d | CID men liable to break training equipment (8,4) |
| MEDICINE BALL — CID MEN LIABLE to be anagrammed (to break) | |
| 4d | Almost time when stars are visible (5) |
| NIGHT — NIGH (almost) + T (time) | |
| 6d | Difficult week, Grant admits (7) |
| AWKWARD — WK (week), which AWARD (grant) takes in (admits) | |
| 7d | Contribution to hardship in Chelmsford nick (5) |
| PINCH — A part of (contribution to) hardshiP IN CHelmsford | |
| 8d | Months ago, trainees resolved situation with three involved (6,1,5) |
| MÉNAGE À TROIS — M (months) + an anagram of (… resolved) AGO, TRAINEES | |
| 14d | Raised details intended to make Reading more accessible? (7) |
| BRAILLE — A cryptic definition | |
| 16d | Flexible like part of bridge? (7) |
| RUBBERY — A series of (usually) three games in the game of bridge is a rubber, so whimsically something akin to this could be described as RUBBERY | |
| 17d | Tease American about sweetener in tea? (5) |
| SUGAR — RAG (tease) and US (American) backwards (about) | |
| 18d | Making a comeback, survive hard period (5) |
| EPOCH — In reverse (making a comeback) COPE (survive) + H (hard) | |
| 19d | Drink most of pitcher — very cold water (5) |
| JUICE — Most of JUg (pitcher) + ICE (very cold water) | |
Really enjoyed this too.
Is it harsh to say a gerkin isn’t a food to pickle but one which has been pickled?
Chambers says a gherkin is “a small cucumber used for pickling” and other dictionaries have similar definitions, so the clue is accurate. I doubt there would have been many complaints had the definition been simply “pickle” – but I’m sure somebody would have said something.
Interesting etymology: Byzantine Greek angourion (cucumber) led to Slavic words, e.g. Polish ogorek, and then to early German forms like augurke, then to the Dutch gurke which led to our English term.
Nice puzzle, finished in 21.30 but 2 mins of that trying to find tubing, can’t believe I didn’t think of Bing.
Enjoyed cuts a dash but COD to scabbiest for the thought process of “taxi drivers are cabbies, can’t be that it’s too big to fit inside something, Oh yes it is!”
Thanks Kitty for the parsing of the threesome.
Thanks Loon, and welcome.
Yes, TUBING was my last in and held me up similarly.
(Thank you for the careful wording above: without “the parsing of” there could have been a few raised eyebrows!)
Well the only BING I’ve heard of is Crosby, so having put that in with a shrug I had to come here for the parsing.
Like others, that and the BRAILLE crosser held me up at the end. I guess BRAILLE has to be the standout clue….
Thanks Kitty
*** applause ***
NHO Cuts a Dash, I guess it’s not a Canadian saying. Also Barnet is unknown to me. Just don’t have the GK to complete this one.
I think the “grant” in 6d should be AWARD.
Thanks to Kitty and Loon
Oops, AWKWARD, don’t know how ALLOW got in there. I’m half asleep! Will correct it now, thanks.
I really enjoyed this crossword by Loon. There are very witty and clever surfaces without making it too hard.
Seeing GHERKIN, I cannot resist mentioning my latest novel The Green Feathers. They feature all over the cover by the brilliant Jem Butcher.
Number 6! I’ve got some catching up to do…
Perfect for those winter evenings … hopefully they are intelligent and witty – a bit like Loon’s puzzle.
No idea you were an author. Being in this knitting circle is good enough for me so just ordered book 1 on my kindle.
Lovely puzzle today. I’m now a signed up Loony. J
Thank you. I was very impressed by Loon’s debut.
An excellent debut from Loon and it would get my vote for puzzle of the month if such a thing existed.
Started with GAWP and finished with TUBING in 7.33. COD of the day goes to CUTS A DASH but with honourable mentions to SCABBIEST and TUBING.
Thanks to Kitty and Loon
Started strong and crawled to a finish! Nine on the first pass of acrosses but then BARONET, BECOMING and TUBING took as long as all the others put together. All green in 19.32.
The exact same 3 that brought me to a halt.
15:49 Gawk awkward ménage-a-trois with rubbery tubing sums it up.
BIFD those half parsed so grateful for the explanations 👍
Ta KAL
Doing a poor job, not fully understood leaving piano behind (4-5) ?
Haha that one’s 2*HP’d
GASP – a QC fail!
I agree, an excellent debut puzzle from Loon which I found quite challenging. My favourites were the BRAILLE cryptic def and the whimsical hint for RUBBERY.
Thanks to Kitty and to Loon – look forward to your next
I was doing really well until I wasn’t. DNF for me. I think i might have gotten TUBING if I had recalled the union (I’m out of practice).
I biffed BARONET (I don’t know Barnet) and nho CUT A DASH.
So all in all I think a well pitched QC for a first timer!
You may also encounter Barnet in relation to hair, deriving from the Cockney Rhyming Slang “Barnet Fair”. Worth trying to remember, so that (if you’re like me) you can feel annoyed that you forgot it instead of annoyed that you didn’t know it!
Lovely puzzle, thanks Loon and Kitty.
12 minutes, no problems
21:34 but much biffing required as my parsing skills seemed to desert me quite often today. Thought this was quite difficult.
5:11
Some interesting wordplay helped to make this an enjoyable Monday puzzle. No real hold-ups though I didn’t fully parse 8d in flight, though it had to be… Anyone who fits SCABBIEST and GHERKIN into their puzzles gets my vote.
Thanks Kitty for the enlightenment, thanks and welcome to Loon
That was doable, thank you, Loon – despite two NHOs OVINE (LOI) and MEDICINE BALL. A little worried about SCABBIEST (is despicable a good synonym for scabby?), but suppose it had to be. Thanks, Kitty.
A very good debut from Loon. I enjoyed it and was surprised to see 19 mins on the clock when I finished – it seemed much quicker.
OVINE took me far too long but I parsed them all except my LOI TUBING which I bunged in on the basis of the crossers and definition. I have a very, very faint memory of BING but never used it.
I liked CUTS A DASH and SCABBIEST.
Thanks to Loon for a fair and interesting start to the week and to Kitty for a good blog.
11:07, CUTS A DASH holding me up for ages because I couldn’t get CUTE out of my head for the first word
10:42
Nit too much trouble this morning, but LOI CUTS A DASH pushed me over the 10 minute mark.
COD BRAILLE
An enjoyable debut puzzle from Loon. I started with GAWP and GHERKIN, then went for the top row down clues, populated the top half then went down under, finshing with CHASTELY. 7:25. Thanks Loon and Kitty.
28min
Started off slowly but soon got going. An enjoyable QC
Thanks to both.
I enjoyed this one. Not so easy that the answers jumped out but not too hard to annoy on a gentle monday morning. 8:10 for me.
25:06 would have been quicker if I’d let go of the wrong end of clues for the definition, quicker. Also decode anagrams slower digitally than on paper. Great start to the week. Thanks Loon and Kitty
Welcome to Loon, and an impressive and enjoyable début. I found it on the chewier side, taking 17:12, and I didn’t parse everything while doing the puzzle, but I never ground to a complete halt . TUBING and BRAILLE my L2I; moderately surprised to see Bing referenced, and needed the B to get my last one – but then I usually find cryptic clues difficult.
Many thanks Kitty for the blog.
A promising debut from Loon. I was held up by my last two, and should definitely have seen BRAILLE much more quickly. I biffed my LOI due to the search engine being beyond my ken.
On those rare occasions when I visit MacDonald’s (only when in a hurry in the City Centre) I always make sure that they don’t give me any GHERKIN.
FOI BECOMING
LOI TUBING
COD GALILEO
TIME 4:45
6:21. Enjoyable. Meatier than the usual Monday. TUBING and BARONET took a while – there are quite a few London boroughs in B (although I did go to school in Barnet for a while, so should have been quicker there). Not sure how widely known Bing would be, especially to Mac users or people who only use Windows at work. MEDICINE BALL was fresh in the mind due to having watched a Chris Eubank Jr training video yesterday, ahead of the Benn Jr rematch. Thank you Loon and Kitty.
Hard to get going but finished all correct. NHO MEDICINE BALL. Every time I solved a clue I thought, now why didn’t I see that straight away?
Liked BECOMING, FENDER, BRAILLE, but not so sure about RUBBERY!
Thanks vm, Kitty. CNP CUTS A DASH at first, nor TUBING.
Dnf…
23 mins, but put “Cuts a Tash” for 12ac 😀, which I knew didn’t sound right, but then again nothing seemed right (Cuts a Path, Cuts a Dash etc etc). I never did parse 13ac “Tubing”, however upon reading the blog it is a clever clue.
1dn “Barontet” wasn’t an issue, as we played Barnet at the weekend and drew 2-2. After ranting and raving about our second half performance, and the manager’s substitutions, it was only half way through that I realise we’d had a man sent off. I must have missed it when I went for a coffee. No wonder everyone was looking at me like I was mad 😳.
FOI – 5ac “Gawp”
LOI – 12ac “Cuts a Tash” (incorrect)
COD – 13ac “Tubing”
Thanks as usual!
More challenging than most Mondays, but completed with one cup of coffee, although it was somewhat cold by the time I entered OVINE, my LOI. Enjoyable and I wouldn’t have been able to complete it a few weeks ago, so progress!
Just nine in ten minutes. Nothing after that.
I need to adjust to the setter.
21 minutes all parsed but it seemed quicker. Great puzzle.
FOI – 9ac ROUND
LOI – 5ac GAWP
COD – 17ac SCABBIEST. Also liked the open- minded aristocrat.
Thanks and welcome to Loon and thanks to Kitty for the blog.
Thanks to Loon and Kitty.
I thought this was very hard, getting none of the first half dozen clues I read at first pass.
However all came together eventually.
13a was obviously Tubing but I didn’t separate search and engine for ages.
15a Fender; I wondered if a fender is a thing in English English or only in the US version. But the naval version and the fireguard are British.
1d Baronet, never thought of Barnet but struggled with Baron’s Court which is not a borough. Doh!
16d Rubbery, ho-ho. I like Uxbridge.
Very much enjoyed this, just the right level of challenge for a steady but not fast solve. Plenty for me to chew on, and thanks for the blog to fill in a few parsing gaps. I feel it’s a good sign when an answer is obvious once solved but less so in the moments/minutes before… CUTS A DASH was clever and had me puzzled for a while, also OVINE. GAWP was Gasp for some time but wouldn’t parse, so demanded a rethink. A fun start to the week.
I had a terrible start to this one, but things soon picked up and I finished with a very enjoyable 14:30. My COD is TUBING, which make me smile when I realised what was going on.
Thank you for the blog!
6:11. A neat debut from Loon. LOI CUTS A DASH. Held up by unaccountably writing EPOCH as EPOCE in the grid, which made CHASTELY a bit of a head-scratcher until I saw what I had done. Doh! Thanks Loon and Kitty.
17:53
A well pitched puzzle. This was mostly going fine but I got stuck in the top left, not helped by biffing dog for badger. Eventually got BARONET so revised that to NAG. Still spent 3 mins on LOI TUBING haven forgotten there are search engines other than Chrome and Safari.
“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon!” This line from Macbeth was the unofficial motto of the Trinity Roofclimbing Club when I was its equally unofficial President in the early 1980s; it acted as a warning not to wear anything pale, to make us harder to spot. Now all the main roofs have infrared motion detectors, which is very unsporting. Anyway, welcome Loon, cream-faced or otherwise.
Lovely puzzle. I blew 90 seconds or so failing to get either of the 1s at the beginning; they ended up as my last two in. In a panic I turned to the bottom half and solved anti-clockwise from FOI SUGAR. Lots of candidates but COD to SCABBIEST; I bet Phil enjoys it.
All done in 07:24 for a Decent Day. Many thanks Loon and Kitty.
“Hold off, unhand me, grey-beard loon” says the wedding guest to the Ancient Mariner.
8.05
What Templar said minus the roof climbing.
Great debut; and thanks Kitty.
Well done Loon, an excellent debut to the QC. I found it to be a little tougher than average, finishing a couple of minutes beyond my target at 12.02. The main culprits were sorting out the sw corner after I put in LOT for 19ac, which made solving RUBBERY and JUICE problematical. Looked back and saw the error of my ways (unlike his missus), and solved it. I wasn’t finished yet however, and BRAILLE and finally TUBING must have taken me the best part of two minutes to solve.
LOT, me too, why, why, why?
Perhaps you were thinking of a Job lot.😃
😂
Or maybe thinking of nothing at all.
25:02
I found this hard work with only one in on the first across pass – might just be because its Monday.
Last two in, BECOMING & TUBING, ensured my seat in the SCC.
Could not parse RUBBERY – thanks Kitty.
For me, as a relative newbie, the solve felt a bit like an educational workout in QC solving – so a big thank you to Loon for that.
FOI: FENDER
LOI: TUBING
COD: CUTS A DASH
Thanks to Kitty and LOON
For once, I’ve caught up and did this one on the day of publication. Really enjoyable QC, pitched just right for me. I never time myself but finished it over coffee and a snack in a local coffee shop. No trouble with 1a after foi 2d. The ones I struggled with were the threesome, epoch and ovine. As an ex-sheep keeper, I should have got it quicker but, in my defence, it’s “pertaining to sheep” not lambs!
Thanks Kitty for the parsing of 8d and 12a. Thanks Loon for an enjoyable 20 mins or so.
Do we mention that the Canadians call their dollar coins “loons” from the waterfowl on one side?
Well, the dollar coins are just known as loonies and then the two dollar coins introduced a few years later were immediately dubbed toonies to rhyme.
Great puzzle! I froze on the bottom half, unable to see the obvious in several places. (I’m too embarrassed to specify!) 21:02 to finish but really, it wasn’t that hard. Really enjoyed MEDICINE BALL, among others.
Welcome Loon, thanks Kitty.
10.05 I found it hard to get going but finished with a fairly average time. RUBBERY and TUBING were biffed at the end and parsed afterwards. Thanks Kitty and Loon.
Enjoyable, although, like Goldy, coffee was definitely cold by the time I’d finished. Main holdups were TUBING and parsing of SUGAR 🙄 COD to the excellent BRAILLE. Nice one LOON. Thanks Kitty.
Enjoyed this, two biffed but remaining unparsed (TUBING,BRAILLE)looking for something more complicated in latter)
A nice stiff puzzle from Loon taking me 44 minutes to finish.
The NW was the hardest section thanks to BECOMING, BARONET and LOI TUBING.
Enjoyed CUTS A DASH and I also had LOT rather than JOB until JUICE sorted it out.
Thanks Loon and Kitty.
19.46 out of the SCC : )
BLOOMING in lieu of BECOMING caused a little delay : ‘looming’ was v appealing and we allowed a BEE to lose a lot of tail.
TUBING (we sat here, bewildered, saying ‘tub – ing’..took forever to pronounce it as one should>PDM).
NHO Barnet, however, eventually got there.
FOI GHERKIN (chuckled)
COD BRAILLE
Enjoyed this! Thank you and welcome to Loon and thanks Kitty.
14:28 with one error: seems I can’t spell MEDICINE when it’s a down clue. Sigh. But other than that, very enjoyable and everything parsed except TUBING, thanks for explaining that Kitty.
Welcome and thanks to Loon, and thanks to Kitty.
11.28. Somehow I just kept muddling myself up.
18 minutes gone (very fast for me) …. Only 3 clues to solve …. Breezeblock ahead!
TUBING, FENDER and MÉNAGE A TROIS combined to push me out to somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes. Very frustrating, but not atypical for me.
Many thanks to Kitty and Loon.
A hold up at the end on the BRAILLE/TUBING crossers pushed this out to 12 minutes. I’m another who doesn’t use Bing and I confused the definition – whatever are ‘engine pipes’ anyway? A good QC, thanks all.
21:45 for me, the last few spent on CUTS A DASH which I knew I would know when it came to mind. Loved SCABBIEST and also OVINE. An excellent puzzle all round. Thanks Kitty and Loon.