Hi everyone. A bit more complex than we usually see on a Monday, but I was surprised to see that it hadn’t taken me as long as I’d thought (6:06 on the clock if you want the numbers). I’ll be interested to see how you found it.
There are some really nice constructions here. Obviously I liked the shy cat in 12a; more objectively I’d highlight 9a and 15d for their surfaces, and my favourite 6d for its clever use of “ringing home” inside a plausible story. I also have to mention 4d which combines a well-disguised definition with another great surface.
Oh, and the author has signed his work at 5d. Thanks Tango!
Definitions are underlined in the clues below. In the explanations, I generally italicise indicators unless it seems clearer not to. Where the removed part is specified, [deletions] are in square brackets, and I’ve capitalised and emboldened letters which appear in the ANSWER. I sometimes omit link words and juxtaposition indicators if it doesn’t feel necessary to explain them. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments section.
| Across | |
| 1a | Ludicrous colonel grabbing microphone before head of army (7) |
| COMICAL — COL. (colonel) taking in (grabbing) MIC (microphone) before the first letter of (head of) Army | |
| 5a | Pine for one number on the radio in Ireland? (4) |
| TREE — Sounds like (… on the radio) how an Irish person might say THREE (number) | |
| 7a | Initially, fed up learner on French road having regrets (6) |
| RUEFUL — First letters of (initially), Fed Up Learner by (on) RUE (French road) | |
| 8a | Plain fish that diner on vacation tucks into (6) |
| TUNDRA — TUNA (fish) that DineR upon emptying of its inner letters (on vacation) goes inside (tucks into) | |
| 9a | In my opinion, holding money from Russia is worrying (11) |
| TROUBLESOME — TO ME (in my opinion) holding ROUBLES (money from Russia) | |
| 10a | Posing like man on board (6) |
| ASKING — AS (like) KING (man on board – a chess board) | |
| 12a | Cat shy around boats (6) |
| YACHTS — CAT SHY anagrammed (around) | |
| 14a | Drama slowly developing in Woolf’s novel (3,8) |
| MRS DALLOWAY — An anagram of (… developing) DRAMA SLOWLY | |
| 17a | Dense copper deposits to the west (6) |
| STUPID — DI (Detective Inspector: copper) and PUTS (deposits) all reversed (to the west, in an across entry) | |
| 18a | Free former European politician ahead of time (6) |
| EXEMPT — EX (former), E (European) and MP (politician) ahead of T (time) | |
| 20a | First glimpses of trainer helping obese rock god (4) |
| THOR — Initial letters of (first glimpses of) Trainer Helping Obese Rock | |
| 21a | Foreign character lopes in, drunk (7) |
| EPSILON — LOPES IN anagrammed (drunk) | |
| Down | |
| 1d | Are you supporting Charlie’s vineyard? (3) |
| CRU — RU (are you) underneath (supporting) C (Charlie) | |
| 2d | Criminals all turned up, one thus provided a million (7) |
| MAFIOSI — All reversed (all turned up), I (one), SO (thus), IF (provided) A and M (million) | |
| 3d | Perhaps worker caught pinching pounds is rising star (5) |
| CELEB — BEE (perhaps worker) plus C (caught) surrounding (pinching) L (pounds) is going upwards in the grid (rising) | |
| 4d | Draw large river mammal close to city (7) |
| LOTTERY — L (large) + OTTER (river mammal) + the last letter of (close to) citY | |
| 5d | Tibetan government hosts dance (5) |
| TANGO — TibeTAN GOvernment hosts the answer | |
| 6d | Seriously ahead of time, ringing home (9) |
| EARNESTLY — EARLY (ahead of time) surrounding (ringing) NEST (home) | |
| 9d | Try to agree international (4,5) |
| TEST MATCH — TEST (try) + MATCH (to agree) | |
| 11d | Doctor enraged very important person (7) |
| GRANDEE — Make an anagram of (doctor) ENRAGED | |
| 13d | Small room contains old women’s second-class instrument (7) |
| COWBELL — CELL (small room) contains O (old), W (women’s) and B (second-class) | |
| 15d | Drink unlimited here? Fab! (5) |
| SUPER — SUP (drink) + without the outer letters (unlimited) hERe | |
| 16d | Northern city guides in conversation (5) |
| LEEDS — Sounds like (… in conversation) LEADS (guides) | |
| 19d | Mostly weak joke (3) |
| PUN — All but the last letter of (mostly) PUNy (weak) | |
Just stayed out of the SCC with 19.25. An enjoyable dance around the grid with quite a few PDMs as those other synonyms revealed themselves. Spent a bit too long thinking the instrument might be some kind of NHO ‘cello, but loved cowbell when it clanged!
Thanks Tango and Kitty
9 minutes. Is RU in CRU text speak? If so, I wondered if it might be unreasonable to expect some sort of indication the clue, at least in a QC puzzle.
I was while coming to terms with the parsing of TREE as, before I realised it was a homophone indicator I had thought ‘on the radio in Ireland was a refernce to RTE ( Raidió Teilifís Éireann – the Irish for ‘Radio [and] Television of Ireland’) with came up recently in a puzzle I blogged here. Anyway that didn’t work out so I had to think again, by which time the clock had ticked on.
I think RU is so common, both in text speak and, indeed, crossword clues, that no further indication would be needed. It makes a welcome change from ‘game’.
Three and a third….
Mutts latreen with solid deposit
My relatives in Limerick would not be impressed.
A tough start to the week, with a fair bit of headscratching before I limped home in 15:16 – and that only after checking the NHO MRS DALLOWAY online. A minor query over TUNDRA being defined as a plain; for me the defining feature of the Tundra belt (apart from it being cold) is that it is treeless, and it is by no means all a flat plain.
That apart I was held up by MAFIOSI (very much a biff-then-parse) and EARNESTLY, where I could not get ET “ring home” out of my mind. But all round chewy. I did however spot the setter’s namecheck at 5D – a challenge for Oink to emulate perhaps?
Many thanks Kitty for the blog.
I thought that about tundra but wiktionary specifically mentions plain, but wiki does not.
Not easy but I never ground to a complete halt.
Started with COMICAL and finished with TREE in 8.44.
Thanks to Kitty and Tango
The clueing for TREE reminds me of a story (no idea if it’s true or not) from Leicester rugby club who used to have a player called Billy Twelvetrees. He was nicknamed was 36 because when one of their Irish players said his name it sounded as though he was reciting a line from his 12 times table!
It is true.
Lots to like here but I didn’t find it easy. Alphabet trawl need to get to TREE – that clue had me absolutely baffled until I reached R! No other big hold ups but quite a few longish delays to get to answers. All green in 15.58.
Sunny with scattered showers. For me the rain fell at CELEB (needed all checkers, far more complicated clue than I thought it was going to be), COWBELL, TREE (where I was working on some sort of aural wordplay between Eire and air) and LOI EARNESTLY. Oh, and an age checking the anagrist to make sure it wasn’t Mrs Galloway.
All that led to 07:34 and a Bang Average Day. Many thanks Tango & Cash, I mean Kitty!
I put MRS GALLOWAY, then checked the anagrist and changed it to DALLOWAY.
For those of us treading the path of learning to do cryptics, I must point out how Templar was able to go down all these dead ends, and still have a successful solve in 7:34! Impressive agility.
10:55. surprised myself by knowing MRS DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf. Nice to see the setter’s own name in the grid, and to see that the unchies down the east side of the grid spell EAST. So a bit disappointing that the ones on the west spelled RAST. Setter, what went wrong?
Never mind. Thanks to Tango for an enjoyable puzzle and thank you Kitty for the fine blog
A reasonably straightforward offering from Tango, with a slight hiccough over 5d where I confidently bifd LAMDA before realising that was nonsense. TREE amused me – whether it will have the same effect on Irish solvers remains to be seen. FOI CRU, LOI COWBELL.
See my anecdote below.
12:22, a tricky start to the week.
I made a STUPID mistake entering STOLID (despite doubting whether lots=deposits), which delayed my LOI SUPER.
Thanks Kitty and Tango
Same here! Stuck with STOLID for far too long
I flirted with STOLID too, but decided it was stupid.
saw what you did there 🙂
A chewy Monday QC. I thought I was going to finish well under 15 but hadn’t reckoned with ASKING holding me up at the end, taking me to 16.20.
MRS DALLOWAY took a while and I BIFD MAFIOSI and STUPID but parsed the rest. Some good clues to go back and enjoy with the help of Kitty’s blog.
Thanks to both.
Satisfying if quite a taxing puzzle. Knew MRS DALLOWAY which was a big help. Couldn’t parse MAFIOSI and STUPID – thanks Kitty for explaining.
No obvious start – FOI YACHTS – but in the end all doable, thanks Tango, even if some parsing queries, thank you Kitty. Ah, TO ME (not IMO), and DI (not CU). Having once battled unsuccessfully with MRS DALLOWAY it’s most satisfying to find it’s an apt anagram of drama slowly.
DNF. I should have followed Templar in checking the anagram fodder for ‘Woolf’s novel’ more carefully; I did bung in MRS GALLOWAY, kidding myself I knew the title of the book, and moved on.
An enjoyable cryptic with the geographically appropriate EAST a nice touch. I also liked the ‘obese rock god’ and the opinion about financial dealings with Russia.
Thanks to Tango and Kitty
Plenty of clever wordplay and misdirections to get the brain going on a Monday morning.
Crossed the line in 26.30 with LOI ASKING requiring close reading of the clue after rejecting surfers, sailors and snowboarders.
MAFIOSI made me smile with all the five final words making up the answer…backwards.
Thanks Kitty and Tango.
23:34. Very chewy and the odd alphabet trawl needed to finish. LOI COWBELL.
15 mins…
A slightly hard start to the week and I think Tango missed a trick by not having “Ali” directly across from 1ac (with a different grid of course). I had vaguely heard of “Mrs Dalloway”, but it needed checkers. First attempt at parsing 13dn “Cowbell” thought the parsing of an old woman was a bit harsh until I realised that wasn’t it.
FOI – 1dn “Cru”
LOI – 13dn “Cowbell”
COD – 10ac “Asking”
Thanks as usual!
A really nice puzzle to start the week, and I felt I was on reasonable form to finish in 8.48. Like Bletchley above I thought I knew the book title and wrote in MRS GALLOWAY, but fortunately double checked the available letters and changed it to DALLOWAY. My time was extended somewhat at the end trying to work out 5ac, going down most of the wrong routes mentioned above, but eventually TREE came to me and the clock was stopped.
I only managed the six “easy” ones today.
Thanks Kitty for the blog and Tango for the QC
Enjoyable puzzle. Fairly easy, as far as I was concerned. Horses for courses/wavelength, I guess.
FOI COMICAL, LOI CELEB. Am finally beginning to recognise that ‘man on board’ could be a chess piece, as in ASKING.
Liked many inc EXEMPT, THOR, RUEFUL and TREE.
Anecdote – One time my mother was talking to an Irish groom who told her they stabled the horses in trees. She was puzzled for a moment or two.
No problem with MRS DALLOWAY.
Many thanks, Kitty. Admit I biffed CRU and STUPID.
Skulked these boards for a while and have decided to come out of the hedge. Found it hard to get in the mindset so had to biff a few. Loved Mafiosi – genius! 29.34
Welcome!
Thank you
Stay out! Welcome.
Thank you!
Welcome ex-lurker!
Thank you!
8:01
Five in from the first pass of acrosses, but I felt that I wasn’t switched on for the first minute or so. Once I’d got into it, it was quite enjoyable, though I didn’t parse the convoluted MAFIOSI, or STUPID. Had heard of MRS DALLOWAY, which only became clear with five checkers in place. Didn’t see what was going on with TANGO either. Oh well…
Thanks Kitty and Tango
I thought this was a good QC from Tango, with a decent mix of write-ins and some that were much more challenging. Loi Tree and Asking were definitely in the latter group. The nho Mrs Dalloway also needed nearly all the crossers, and some careful letter juggling, to come up with a plausible name.
Pulled stumps in time to secure a sub-20, having spent at least the previous two trying to parse the obvious Celeb (🙄, Those whom. . .) CoD to the well-deseved Stupid – for the parsing. Invariant
Tricky. Too tricky for me. I was using aids far too much for it to class as a solve. Therefore I DNFed it. Can’t say I enjoyed it.
Harder than average for me – cuppa got quite cool. All correct and parsed, though. Took a while to see Mrs D at 14ac, and felt 17ac when the meaning of ‘developing’ finally emerged from my thick skull. MAFIOSI was obviously right, but parsing took me a longer while. TREE was LOI and was accompanied by a big grin.
Overall, tricky but satisfying
Thanks Tango and Kitty
I found this one a tough start to the week, taking me 14:32. Jason mentioned recently on here that he tries to escalate the difficulty as the week progresses, which is good news for those who enjoy a chewy QC but perhaps the rest of us should gird our loins.
Haven’t tried the 15×15 yet, but the snitch has it rated at a mere 55/100 so this might be a good day for those who don’t regularly attempt it.
Thank you for the blog!
Many, many thanks – did as you suggested and finished only my second ever 15×15 😁
Fantastic, well done!
Thanks for the hint. I finished it, too, but in slightly over twice my QC time.
Nice puzzle from Tango which I was pleased to complete in 7:06. Thanks Kitty for blog.
Haha I too thought old woman (like me!) = COW – bit rude then realised the room was a CELL 😆
18.47 min so a bit slow 🐌 but very enjoyable! Copper deposits was a favourite – nice to see this without the usual CU element in the solution. Thank you Tango & Kitty
I started with COMICAL and made steady progress through most of the top half of the grid, but my later clues proved more tricky.
I particularly enjoyed MAFIOSI and EARNESTLY and took a little while to notice that I’d mistakenly written GRndeEE at 11d.
The SW corner gave me the most trouble. SUPER, TEST MATCH, the NHO novel (MRS DALLOWAY) and STUPID (my LOI) held me up for ~12 minutes at the end.
Time = 35 minutes, which I think is 15-20% longer than average for me.
Many thanks to Kitty and Tango.
From CRU to ASKING in 8:43. LOI, ASKING was held up by a careless MAFIOSO. Another GALLOWAY to DALLOWAY conversion here. Thanks Tango and Kitty.
Ditto with MAFIOSO
Enjoyable puzzle with many that could be pleasingly truffled out with a bit of head- scratching. I prefer puzzles where I stand a reasonable chance of knowing the word being clued, so I feel the Woolf novel doesn’t really belong – tricky to get if you don’t know it, even if you identify the anagrist and have some crossers. End of whinge.
Write out 100 times – “Earnest not Ernest”. ( sigh)
Many thanks to setter and blogger.
Virginia Woolf is quite well known, imo.🙂. Admittedly Tom Wolfe floated around my head at first with Bonfire of the Vanities.
Found this fairly gentle although TROUBLESOME took a long time to parse post-biff. Luckily knew MRS DALLOWAY which helped enormously. LOI (and COD) TREE raised a smile when the penny dropped. Many thanks Kitty and Tango.
19 minutes with several biffed, so an average sort of day. Thanks to Kitty for the parsing of TROUBLESOME, STUPID and MAFIOSI. No problem with MRS DALLOWAY which I read once. All I can say is that it was just as well it was a slim volume.
FOI – 1ac COMICAL
LOI – 3dn CELEB
COD – 1dn CRU
Thanks to Tango and Kitty.
I solved with relative alacrity, but I realized as I was solving that some of the clues were difficult for a QC. Yes, I read Mrs Dalloway in some graduate seminar many years ago, but how many solvers will know it? Well, there is always Orlando, a novel US city.
Time: 8:45
Very slow but very enjoyable outing. No long hold ups but no write-ins either. Put in the obvious GOTH for 21a without parsing it. Lots of nice surfaces, top of the list the dense copper and stupid DI being blended into a clue. Thanks Tango and Kitty.
9.56 Slower in the bottom half. Thanks Kitty and Tango.
Only 2 clues solved after 15mins! Way too hard for me!
As an Irish person, I can say that not everyone pronounces three that way 😀
Regional accents are so interesting (I’m native to an area with a distinctive though little-known American variant). It seems to me there’s a strong interaction with class that is rather under-discussed. But anyway it’s not surprising that Ireland is large and diverse enough to have a lot of variation.
As another Irish person, I’d like to second your comment, EN.
18:27. Found I had to work harder for this and my brain was slower than usual. NHO MAFIOSI (I know, I must have led a sheltered life) but easily gettable from the wordplay. Thanks Tango and Kitty.
Good we have some new commenters these days. Welcome all!
Hear, hear!
Biffed quite a few ( CRU, TUNDRA, andthought TREE was pushing it in this day and age, but biffed it toreasonably timed conclusion
18:40
Couldn’t parse STUPID and only partially parsed TROUBLESOME – thanks Kitty.
DNK MRS DALLOWAY and spent too long seeing my LOI LEEDS swapping out the ‘L’ with all the letters in the 14a anagram as I’d never heard of a northern city called ‘LIENS’. Then the PDM!
Incidentally, pronouncing three as TREE is quite common in the South Coast Southampton area 🙂
FOI: TREE
LOI: LEEDS
COD: EARNESTLY
Thanks to the Tibetan Government and Kitty
OK, I’ll bite: Why does Tango = the Tibetan Government ?
The word Tango is hidden within TibeTAN GOvernment.
Yes, I’ve just realised/remembered. I’ll be forgetting my name next. . .
Quite tricky but never stuck, mirroring some comments above.
LOI TUNDRA after 13 minutes.
I knew Mrs. Dalloway was a Woolf novel, but nothing more than that- a big help.
David
Did we do this in a good time? No – however, we did enjoy it and after reading the excellent blog could only sit and wonder why we didn’t sail through – such is the delight ( in our HO) of a well crafted offering.
Chuckled merrily at 5a. When in a far corner of Ireland, we sat, silently, next to a group of locals, delighting for a good ten minutes or more in the music created by their accents. On leaving, lest they have concern about our eavesdropping – we paused, to compliment them on the sound of their wonderful language, and assured them we did not speak Gaelic and understood not a word. They smiled at first, then stopped – puzzled – ‘ but we were speaking in English?’.
Priceless. Visiting Leeds I heard a lot of talk around me that was completely incomprehensible.
: )
I can assure both of you, that there are one or two English accents where I have to really concentrate. . .
Interestingly, the Irish accent is very close to 16th-century English. They moved on in London – the language of Pope and Swift was very different, and then in the 19th century they came up with RP.
Thank you!! Fascinating (as, it seems, is nearly everything if you either get in to it deeply enough, or are fortunate enough to bump into someone to whom it is a passion of some sort). I have now been moseying about the internet reading about language and derivations etc. Olivia Coleman ( she who played the Queen at one point in the Crown).. she suggested that, if one is the Queen, ‘EARS’ = Yes.
On derivations – any idea about CL? clasp, claw, clamp, clip.. and on it goes – yet I have not been able to discover why all such words relating to ‘holding’ commence with ‘cl’…
Grasping, Snatching, or if you want one beginning with C, Consolidating ?
27 minutes for a satisfying solve. Nothing totally impossible to work out but did require a fair bit of head scratching. Liked COWBELL and MAFIOSI but would never have got that one without the checkers. Thank you Tango and Kitty
10:40 to finish, with some head-scratching at TREE, ASKING (I know I’ve seen this before but it still fooled me), MRS DALLOWAY (because STUPID, I know the book), and CELEB – an unlovely word. Oh, and COWBELL, because CEMBALO got stuck in my head. So many excellent surfaces, top honors to MRS DALLOWAY. Second place to the rock god. FOI COMICAL, LOI CELEB.
Thanks Tango and Kitty.
Very enjoyable and home in 19, with COWBELL my last. The misdirections were fun – do I remember a Punch cartoon showing overloaded dinghy with 2 Irishmen and a huge oak captioned ‘Tree in a boat’? Stereotyping – allowed? (OK by me). The French road had to be RUE but it’s really a street, and roads are ‘routes’: no matter. Like others, I found drama slowly an excellent anagram of MRS DALLOWAY. Thanks Tango and Kitty
10:49 for me, with only MAFIOSI unparsed. TREE was my LOI, entered with a smile.
Thanks to Tango and Kitty.
My thanks to Tango and Kitty.
Foxed by Troublesome, saw the rouble(S) but was foxed by TsO ME. Doh!
Never read Mrs D but Mrs Andyf was re-sitting A-levels at a crammer when I met her because she wanted to go to a “better” Uni. She ended up at the LSE, and I learnt a little bit (just the title) about Mrs D, and a bit more about Paradise Lost and Under Milk Wood. (I was helping with revision.) That would have been about 1971-ish.
17:30, slightly harder, for me, than our usual Monday offerings. But nonetheless very enjoyable. In fact not much slower than the 15×15 where I experienced one of my rare successes.
TREE made me smile. COD to EARNESTLY.
Thanks Tango and Kitty.
Slightly quirky puzzle with lots of great surfaces. Inwardly groaned at 5d when I saw Tibetan govt but relieved to spot it was a simple hidden…
FOI 1a Comical
LOI 14a Mrs Dallington – not familiar with these works but it was possible to work it out
COD 15d Super – Sunshine Desserts anyone?
I didn’t get where I am today by not recognising that quote !
Um – if you “ worked out” Mrs Dallington you may need to work it out again