A very imaginative puzzle of similar difficulty to yesterday – until I hit a dead end with my last clue.
The offending clue (rather good as it happens) being 15d: 6 minutes to get to there and then a bit over half that time again to finish. But I’m glad I persevered, on a non-blogging day I’d almost certainly have thrown in the towel before then, despite some wishy-washy resolution to improve my last-clue-itis.
A lovely puzzle, with lots of good clues, my favourites probably being 6d and the excellent 1d – many thanks to Wurm!
| Across | |
| 1 | Pirate, British, to be clean-shaven? (10) |
| BLACKBEARD – B(ritish), and to LACK BEARD could be to be clean-shaven. | |
| 8 | Deathless seabird entering wild lea (7) |
| ETERNAL – perhaps our most common seabird in crosswordland, the TERN, enters an anagram (wild) of LEA | |
| 9 | Sinking vessel about to disintegrate (1-4) |
| U-BOAT – anagram (to disintegrate) of ABOUT | |
| 10 | Silly sketch Rembrandt initially discarded (4) |
| DAFT -DRAFT (sketch), discard the R (Rembrandt “initially”) | |
| 11 | One among the stars in M*A*S*H (8) |
| ASTERISK – nice cryptic definition | |
| 13 | Post Office holding very popular image (5) |
| PHOTO – PO (Post Office) holding HOT (very popular). A bit of time lost wondering why PVINO wasn’t the answer, as it’s so clearly what the clue was telling us to do. About the most 22ac thing about PVINO is that it clocks up fewer than 5000 results on google… and there was me convinced it was some sort of Slavic cocktail of beer and wine. | |
| 14 | Tories’ leader goes off left-wingers (5) |
| TROTS – T (Tories “leader”) ROTS (goes off) | |
| 16 | Hoover perhaps, but no power for householder (8) |
| RESIDENT – remove the P for Power from PRESIDENT (Hoover, perhaps) | |
| 17 | Ace, then service returned at a distance (4) |
| AFAR -A(ce) then RAF (one of the services) “returned” | |
| 20 | Cancel yearbook with second article expunged (5) |
| ANNUL – ANNUAL (yearbook) has two A’s – that is, articles – expunge the second one | |
| 21 | Renowned inn — meet to get sloshed (7) |
| EMINENT – anagram (to get sloshed) of INN MEET | |
| 22 | New town theory is remarkable (10) |
| NOTEWORTHY – anagram (new) of TOWN THEORY. At a push – or at least in a different clue – NEW could be the definition, and “is remarkable” could be the anagrind. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Get on in the sack — produce baby? (5) |
| BREED -get RE (on/about) in the BED (sack) | |
| 2 | When one may legally agree to scene of nag being shot (3,2,7) |
| AGE OF CONSENT – anagram (being shot) of TO SCENE OF NAG | |
| 3 | Considerate sort (4) |
| KIND – double definition | |
| 4 | Join forces? (6) |
| ENLIST – cryptic definition, with the surface reading misdirecting you towards the idea of “teaming up.” | |
| 5 | Game allowed to block path (8) |
| ROULETTE – LET (allowed) to block ROUTE (path) | |
| 6 | Chain of events with disastrous end: come off it (6,6) |
| DOMINO EFFECT – anagram (disastrous) of END COME OFF IT | |
| 7 | Small bears in horse race (6) |
| STAKES – S(mall) TAKES (bears – as in “I can’t take/bear it”) | |
| 12 | Dodgy old boiler with no current in madam’s house (8) |
| BORDELLO – anagram (dodgy) of OLD BO |
|
| 13 | Opening wine that goes with almost everything (6) |
| PORTAL – PORT (wine) goes with AL (“almost” AL |
|
| 15 | Explosion somewhere under the bridge? (6) |
| SNEEZE – nice cryptic definition, referring to the bridge of the nose. Yet again, when faced with _ N _ E _ E, it looked like there should be quite a few possibilities, but I see there’s only one or perhaps two other words that would ever appear in a QC or 15×15 (annexe and inhere). My calibration for these things is just miles off. | |
| 18 | Irritable as overrun with vermin? (5) |
| RATTY – pretty much a double definition | |
| 19 | Lover of Aeneas accomplished nothing (4) |
| DIDO – DID (accomplished) O (nothing). The kind of answer that makes you glad you’re doing a cryptic rather than a concise. | |
Ooh, SNEEZE has me going for ages but it was a nice PDM when it came.
11:23 – I’m yet another with the same experience. Good puzzle and blog – thanks.
DNF
Made a real hash of the SE. Biffed NEWSWORTHY without checking the anagram. Remarkably that didn’t stop me getting BORDELLO which gave me NOWSWORTHY but it did stop me from getting the last one, SNEEZE. so quite a few pink squares today.
27 minutes ☹️☹️☹️
Another incompetent performance. Well into my 4th year of doing the QC and I am nowhere. Too embarrassed to reveal all my mistakes. Why am I incapable of doing these wretched puzzles in anything like a good time? It’s driving me up the wall when I see how well others with similar levels of experience are doing.
It’s a long time since I criticised a setter, but 4dn doesn’t belong in a QC. ENLIST is not cryptic, but simply a word for joining up! I thought of it immediately but took ages to put it in because it wasn’t cryptic. It made a bad day even worse. I was – perfectly reasonably – looking for a double definition.
My confidence is completely shot (again). I am incapable of deriving any sense of satisfaction or accomplishment from the QC, because I cannot get my times down.
Thanks for the blog.
DNF but laughed til I sneezed after I’d looked up 15D!
And I’d only just finished LOL from ****
‘Twas a tricky puzzle but the humour makes up for it.
An honourable mention for U-BOAT.
Thanks Wurm and Roly
Exactly that! A DNF is salved by the wit! Great puzzle
Penny’s Law strikes again! After the joys of yesterday came today’s 18 minute battle with Wiggly Woo – he really is my nemesis 😅 I’ll excuse myself by saying I did this quite late after a very busy day and I was really quite sleepy.
Otherwise as everyone else says – it was good fun. I liked NOTEWORTHY, particularly appropriate as I was at a U3A architecture appreciation meeting today and we were discussing model villages – the new towns of their time, I guess, and some of them were quite remarkable.
FOI U-boat LOI Sneeze COD Breed (although sneeze was very good too)
Thanks Wurm and Roly
This was a lot of fun. The West was conquered nicely and then the East took some time with some small cheers as they fell. That said Sneeze held out for a DNF but I enjoyed it so much once I’d read the blog. Lovely stuff Wurm and thank you Roly. Many brilliant clues.