A crossword for anagram fans from Mara today, with 7 full anagrams and one part-anagram clue. It seems like too many to me, but they are all good clues. It took me 5:38 so above target but not too far from my average time. My COD was 18D for the amusing surface. Thank-you Mara. How did you all get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is my turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword, entitled “X squared” here. Can you spot the Nina? If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 100 here.
SAVE THE DATE – Saturday 15th June at The George, Borough High St from 12 noon. After we had such fun with a summer get-together last year, attended by some TimesforTheTimes old hands, bloggers and commenters, we thought we would have another one. Read about last year’s here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
| 1 | Remove accompanying tie (8) |
| WITHDRAW – WITH (accompanying) DRAW (tie). | |
| 5 | Flower in hair I see (4) |
| IRIS – Hidden in haIR ISee. | |
| 8 | Obscene imperial measure (5) |
| GROSS – Double definition. I did wonder about the second definition, but being a dozen dozens it’s clearly not a decimal quantity. | |
| 9 | Affair of party of S Africans in Italian city (7) |
| ROMANCE – ANC (African National Congress; S African political party) in ROME (Italian city). | |
| 11 | Side by side, kiss twice? (4,3,4) |
| NECK AND NECK – NECK (kiss) AND NECK (kiss). | |
| 13 | Districts around northern stadia (6) |
| ARENAS – N (northern) in AREAS (regions) | |
| 14 | Don’t stop transmitting semaphore signals in jug (6) |
| FLAGON – FLAG (transmit semaphore signals) ON (carry on; don’t stop) | |
| 17 | Comic hating smart stooge (8,3) |
| STRAIGHT MAN – (hating smart)* [comic]. Nice surface. | |
| 20 | Are inclined to enter knockout competition to make a lot of money (5,2) |
| CLEAN UP – LEAN (are inclined) in CUP (knockout competition). | |
| 21 | Doctor tries second test (5) |
| RESIT – (tries)* [doctor]. Another nice anagram surface. | |
| 22 | Some obstacle, a sticking point (4) |
| EAST – Another hidden. This time in obstaclE A STicking. | |
| 23 | NY hotels refurbished in an inconspicuous manner (2,3,3) |
| ON THE SLY – (NY hotels)* [refurbished]. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Regular payment heading for worker on time (4) |
| WAGE – First letter of Worker, AGE (time). | |
| 2 | Whip messing up recount (7) |
| TROUNCE – (recount)* [messing up]. More shambles in the House of Commons. Lol. | |
| 3 | Impious act remarkably considerate! (11) |
| DESECRATION – (considerate)* [remarkably]. | |
| 4 | A comprehensive in another country (6) |
| ABROAD – A, BROAD (comprehensive). | |
| 6 | Sweep sounded out bottom of flue (5) |
| RANGE – RANG (sounded out), last letter of fluE. Nicely deceptive surface. | |
| 7 | Communication technologies ultimately coming to the summit? (8) |
| SPEAKING – Last letter of technologieS, PEAKING coming to the summit). You have to separate “communication technologies” to get the definition. I didn’t at first and bunged in SPEAKERS without testing the wordplay, which held me up later. | |
| 10 | Moderate month for Eliot’s work (11) |
| MIDDLEMARCH – MIDDLE (moderate) MARCH (month). I’ve neither read the book nor watched the costume drama. Have I missed much? | |
| 12 | Butcher provides service with care, surprisingly (8) |
| MASSACRE – MASS (church service) (care)* [surprisingly]. | |
| 15 | See and sign new book (7) |
| GENESIS – (see, sign)* [new]. | |
| 16 | Maestro cut in (6) |
| CHOPIN – CHOP (cut) IN. Frédéric Chopin was a distinguished performer not just a composer, hence a maestro. | |
| 18 | Flightless birds share a dog’s dinner (5) |
| RHEAS – (share)* [dog’s dinner]. Nice anagrind and lovely surface. | |
| 19 | Visit state, taking in first of temples (4) |
| STAY – First letter of Temples in SAY (state). | |
A Much Better Day! I got completely stuck on SCREWY yesterday and DNF the biggie either, but today I did this in 9:38, and I finished the 15×15 too, admittedly in nearly an hour.
Without giving anything away, I see there are a couple of clues in both crosswords today that could be related – could it be the same setter?
I thought this was a typically neat Mara crossword – always lots of white space around his clues!.
FOI Iris LOI Abroad COD Straight man
Thanks Mara and John
About on par overall at 13:19 but held up by the remaining three in the
NENW corner, especially LOI ABROAD which seemed so obvious once we’d seen it. COD FLAGON. Thanks, Mara and J.I didn’t notice how many anagrams there were but I did try to make one of ‘impious act’ to make a word meaning considerate….it looked the right amount of letters. MIDDLEMARCH needed all of the checkers. Strange, having looked up the notable works by George Eliot I know most of the titles but have not read/viewed any of them. My penultimate solve was ABROAD (could only find Angola as a named country with 6 letters) and my LOI GENESIS…one of the few bible books I am familiar with. A regulation 8:19 for an OK start to the weekend.
Flew off at speed then ground to absolute halt and gave up 2nd DNF on trot
7.07
Also wanted RISE to begin with.
Is Middlemarch worth a read? Yes. Is it one of the greatest books in English literature. Not sure. But it’s certainly interesting as was the author of course
Thanks John and Mara
34 mins…
Not sure what’s going on this week – really struggling with a lot of the puzzles, to the point where I was wondering if my ability was in a downward slide. To be fair, I have this internal debate on a regular basis, but my stats are definitely not improving.
FOI – 1dn “Wage”
LOI – 18dn “Rheas”
COD – 7dn “Speaking”
Thanks as usual!
13:48 here, which I’m pleased with. No major hold-ups or quibbles, other than thinking of the wrong Eliot until the crossing M_R_H at the end made MARCH inevitable.
Thanks to Mara and John.
17:58 – slow start with just WAGE, IRIS and AND going in in the top half until I got to ARENAS, FLAGON. Tried to put “dodos” in until I thought of RHEAS and wasn’t that impressed by the “dog’s dinner” anagrind then added EAST, ON-THE-SLY and STAY to finish off the first pass.
Pleased to unravel DESOCRATION off just the D and A. Whereas I couldn’t get GENESIS even when spotted the G. Like others, finished with ROMANCE, RANGE, ABROAD. My mind has a complete panic when asked to name cities in foreign countries so Rome didn’t spring to mind.
While my time was about average for Mara this year, I thought this was tougher than his usual offerings. Some difficult definitions and hard to spot anagrams in places. So all in all, pleased with that.
Just scraping under 1hr39 for the standard week with 5/5 completions – 4 SCC escapes and just the Izetti blotting my copybook at 34+ mins. I’d like to get the sub2 full week but I suspect we have a Felix coming at us tomorrow.
Well done 👍
You’ve ground me into the dust with your performances. Your improvement is remarkable.
16:28, quick by my standard, and much enjoyed the many good surfaces.
Had to slowly pick my way through considerate -> DESECRATION, ticking off letters mentally, looking at crossers, and just as the penny dropped, the phone rang! The person from Porlock could not be put off and I was on tenterhooks trying to deal and remember the answer too. LOI MASSACRE, not that it was hard but it reminded me of a particularly gruesome clue I solved recently for the same word, and it seems that put me off.
Middlemarch is a great book, but you have to love long books where not much “happens”. I don’t agree that the issues it treats are no longer ours.
Thank you John and Mara!
We put withheld for 1ac which caused a number of problems. Normally anagrams are a stronger point but we were slow in identifying some today.
30:17
And so ends possibly my slowest fully completed week ever. Monday was good but over target every day since.
Really guessed LOI RANGE and had the wrong Eliot (TS rather than George) in mind which held me up in the middle. Hopefully faster next week.
24:31, which is only a minute or two slower than yesterday’s but felt much harder. RANGE seems a bit unkind. Anyway, thank you as always for the blog!
Somewhere around 30 minutes for us. We are in Spain for a week with a friend and did bits of this this around a pleasant evening with a nice white Rioja and some chat.
Can’t understand why we couldn’t see Wage until the end, such an obvious answer!
Also put in withhold to start with and for once I had the right author over Mrs RH who went off down the Eliot track.
Sorry to hear of your woes Tina, hope you are well on the mend
Thanks Mara and John
Don’t read (or, if you do, don’t say you weren’t warned).
29 awful minutes.
I’m in a poor state of mind and have absolutely nothing positive to say. After butchering the Quintagram (2/5), I came here for another lesson in how bad I am at cryptic crosswords.
I floundered around and missed most of the anagram indicators. It was a thoroughly depressing slog, every minute making me more and more convinced that this is a sophisticated game that I lack the tools to play. My brain just doesn’t have the capacity to do this to a standard which I consider to be acceptable. Looking back, this QC wasn’t that hard (lots of anagrams and hiddens), so why did I make such a meal of it? How could I not see MIDDLEMARCH much sooner?
My times for the week are:
17 mins
34 mins
29 mins
22 mins
29 mins
Total – 2 hours, 11 mins
Another weekend of self-reproach awaits. I’m embarrassed to be so bad when others are now street ahead of me. The whole point of this is to learn and get better, whereas I fail to learn and get worse. I can’t enjoy it if I am unable to see any improvement.
I’m a paper-only solver, so you won’t need to put up with my moaning tomorrow!
Thanks for the blog John.
Great times this week, Mr A! Only 2hrs 11 mins, so nearly twice as fast as me.
For the record, this week’s fare has had me beavering away for a total of 3hrs 59 mins – 15, 50, 55, 81, 38.
N.B. I also solve exclusively on paper and I print out Saturday’s QC to enable me to do so.
Thanks Mr R. Perhaps I was a little hard on myself.
I hope things go better for you next week🤞🤞
It’s been a strange week. I could easily have had a couple of hour-long solves, as there were times when I became completely stumped. I was fortunate that, at least once, a semi-guess unlocked the door.
Oh dear.
You don’t sound like you’re fully focused when solving. We all have moments where doubt steps in, see my comment above about when challenged to think of a city in Italy. You have to spot that in yourself, reset and working through what you do know.
In my experience, you would do well just to rip through the rest of the month without paying attention to the clock, whether you solve successfully and just quitting when you’ve hit a block. A period where you deliberately fail would allow your brain to rebuild its confidence by resetting all these ideas you have about where you’re at. Because you’re currently like a guy who hit a hole-in-one at golf and now even pars and birdies on every hole are dissatisfying.
Thanks New Driver. I appreciate you taking the time to give me your advice.
What I struggle to deal with is the fact that there are days when I can achieve a sub-20 quite easily and days when I am absolutely nowhere. I know that happens to everyone now and then, but I’ve had a lot of trouble with it lately. Up until the last 2 weeks, I’ve often done comparatively well on some tough ones, and messed up the easy ones.
I also find it impossible to keep in my head all the abbreviations, word play indicators etc. The abbreviations part is getting better, but the same can’t be said for the word play. I’m at the stage where I see what I think is word play, but often turns out to be me getting completely the wrong end of the stick. It happens every time I try the Quintagram.
I’ll take your advice on board and try to be a bit more positive (and realistic). I still think my weekly target is well within my compass, if only I wasn’t so fixated on improving. I’m too much of a perfectionist for my own good.
I generally find Mara one of the more generous setters, but he was clearly not in that mood today. 38 minutes for me, which is bang on my overall median performance since I started nearly 4 years ago, but several minutes slower than my current median.
I was particularly stuck on RANGE (my LOI) and was not at all sure it was correct even when I’d found it.
Thanks to Mara and John.
I was in the groove with this today, starting straight in with WITHDRAW. Liked NECK AND NECK and FLAGON. Only uncertain was LOI RANGE which I entered with some trepidation and glad to see all green in 22 minutes.
Thanks Mara and John
And I thought Mara was female.
Clang.
Nice puzzle though
11.37 Very late to this having been away. I immediately thought of RANGE as something you might find at the bottom of a flue, but I couldn’t parse it. Thanks John and Mara.