About average difficulty (for a Shay puzzle, that is).
Shay’s fifth puzzle: with the previous four being 112, 160, 111 and 106 on the Quitch, that’s an average of 122, which is roughly where I’d put this. In any case, it took me a notch under 13 minutes, well over double yesterday’s time. EDIT: the Quitch is settling at just below 100, and by a decent number of comments now it seems I’m alone in being waaay off the wavelength!
I was slowed for a couple of minutes at the end by CUCUMBER: it’s made trickier when you ignore the whole category of fruits and vegetables as being only parts of a plant. But no, it seems calling it a… well, a cucumber plant is quite unnecessary. I was also slowed by having to write out the anagrist for PATERNALISM, and before that mangling “IN POTTERIES” at 11ac to yield a confidently entered REPERTOIRES (hardly rehearsals, but there we are).
Beyond that, it’s hard to pinpoint where the difficulty lay, other than a sense that the general complexity of the clues was towards the 15×15 level. So a useful stepping stone to persevere with if that’s your thing, and sure if not there’ll be another puzzle along all too soon!
Lots to enjoy along the way, although I particularly liked all the four long clues. Lovely stuff – many thanks to Shay!
| Across | |
| 1 | Plant initially cultivated using compost and brown earth (8) |
| CUCUMBER – CUC (“initially” Cultivated Using Compost) and UMBER (brown earth). UMBER is probably from Italian terra d’ombra, shadow earth (so same idea as UMBRA). | |
| 5 | Computers brought round for fraudulent scheme (4) |
| SCAM – MACS (computers) brought round = reversed | |
| 8 | Ordinary outlaw completely losing heart (5) |
| BANAL – BAN (outlaw) ALL (completely) losing “heart”/centre | |
| 9 | Many men put out about female’s conclusion (7) |
| UMPTEEN – anagram (out) of MEN PUT about E (femalE‘s “conclusion”). UMPTY was military slang for an indefinitely large number, from the turn of the (2oth) century, modelled on twenty, thirty, etc; UMPTEEN came a few years later, modelled on thirteen, fourteen, etc. | |
| 11 | Rehearsals of Brahms and Liszt in Potteries (11) |
| REPETITIONS – anagram (Brahms and Liszt) of IN POTTERIES. Rhyming slang for PISSED, as in drunk: the OED’s earliest citation is 1972; MOZART AND LISZT appeared a decade earlier. They might have a certain charm, but there are umpteen more evocative words to choose from – there was a rather silly article in the Times last year about so-called “drunkonyms”, and their uniqueness to British culture, see here. | |
| 13 | Squawk that hurt chicken (6) |
| YELLOW – YELL (squawk) OW (that hurt!). Yellow/chicken/craven. | |
| 14 | Book for children by strait-laced queen (6) |
| PRIMER – PRIM (strait-laced) ER (queen). | |
| 17 | Daniel upset Gladys, briefly top-billed actress (7,4) |
| LEADING LADY – anagram (upset) of DANIEL and then GLADYS in plain sight, only “briefly” = dock the tail. | |
| 20 | Top bishop, perhaps one with role at wedding (4,3) |
| BEST MAN – BEST (top) MAN (bishop, perhaps). MAN can refer to any of the chess pieces, hence “perhaps”. | |
| 21 | Mental picture of one’s later years (5) |
| IMAGE – I’M (one’s) AGE (later years). As in I’M going = ONE’S going; and as in “Being of age/later years, they still referred to a chesspiece as a man.” | |
| 22 | November in joyless seaside attraction (4) |
| SAND – N(ovember) in SAD (joyless). I consider sand a very good reason to eschew the beach, so I was in cucumber territory for a bit here as well. | |
| 23 | Soothing stuff spoken in royal residence (8) |
| BALMORAL – BALM (soothing stuff) ORAL (spoken) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Young animal on a Caribbean island (4) |
| CUBA – CUB (young animal) on A | |
| 2 | Manage Crown’s turmoil on a regular basis (7) |
| CONTROL – C r O w N s T u R m O i L “on a regular basis” | |
| 3 | Amoral pimp’s squirming and misspeaking (11) |
| MALAPROPISM – anagram (squirming) of AMORAL PIMP’S. From Mrs. Malaprop, a character in the 1775 play The Rivals. | |
| 4 | Value fairness (6) |
| EQUITY – double definition | |
| 6 | Company restricting communist beliefs (5) |
| CREDO – CO. (Company) restricting RED (communist) | |
| 7 | Government department is finally stopping car tax (8) |
| MINISTRY – S (iS “finally”) stopping/plugging MINI (car) TRY (tax) | |
| 10 | Condemned Parliament’s condescending attitude? (11) |
| PATERNALISM -anagram (condemned) on PARLIAMENT’S. Chambers defines it as “A system or tendency in which well-meaning supervision and/or regulation, etc is apt to become unwelcome interference.” | |
| 12 | Start to snooze after endless sweet course (8) |
| SYLLABUS – S (“start” to Snooze) after SYLLABUB (sweet) becomes “endless” | |
| 15 | Ex-PM reportedly eats in exclusive part of London (7) |
| MAYFAIR – Theresa MAY (ex-PM) and FAIR sounds “reportedly” the same as FARE (food/eats) | |
| 16 | List of things to do in Copenhagen daily (6) |
| AGENDA – “in” copenhAGEN DAily | |
| 18 | Incendiary crime of unclothed clergymen (5) |
| ARSON – the “clothing” letters are the outside letters, remove them here in the word PARSONS (clergymen) | |
| 19 | Flog prisoner here, we hear (4) |
| SELL – “we hear” the same as CELL (prisoner, here) | |
27:07
Wow lots of biffing!
Including BANAL, NHO the sweet syllabub and missed the anagram indicators to REPETITIONS and my LOI – PATERNALISM.
I think not getting on Shay’s wavelength made this a bit of a struggle. But on reflection, there was nothing unfair and a sprinkling of some nice clues to enjoy.
Thanks to Shay and rolytoly
DNF with a careless EQUATE rather than EQUITY.
Was I the only one to biff PATRONISING for “condescending attitude”, it gave three good checkers, only LEADING LADY forced a rethink.
I knew of Syllabub, one of my Mums “go-to” dinner party deserts.
COD BALMORAL
40 minutes amidst a lot of head scratching and letter juggling – some very clever anagrams. Upon first look I never thought I’d finish so happy with the result eventually. Thanks Shay and Roly.
Thanks to rolytoly and Sage.
I struggled with the first few, and when I got them I wasn’t pleased. I didn’t like this one because I hate doubting an answer because I think the clue was too weak to justify it. Otherwise went in fairly quickly. But in fact it was my failures; nothing wrong with the Xword.
LOI 9a Umpteen, actually this is a good clue I was just slow to see it.
11a Repetitions, I nearly biffed this straight away but it just seemed so weak. Now rolytoly has shown me the anagram of course it is a very fine clue.
7d Ministry, I still hadn’t fully parsed this, so it is better than I realised at the time.
12d Syllabus. I misread the clue so I got a bit sniffy. I failed to lift & separate sweet and course so thought it was supposed to mean “Start”. DOH!
19d Nearly wrote Cell then saw it is quite plainly Sell. Bother
14 mins, 4 of them spent on CUCUMBER!
Missed 15 x 15 by 3 (2 errors and 1 incomplete) in about 90 minutes.
A hard slog of a day, even by my standards.
Life has been full recently and I have touched upon such joys as the QC late in the day if at all. Interestingly, I found I was on the wave length – nearly all merrily slotted in.
Possibly (were it not for interruptions) one of my best times, whereas Himself (elsewhere) found it v hard going.
For SELL/CELL – I was told some time back a definition had to be at start or end (is that correct??) – so Flog > SELL had to be the way to go? Biffed BANAL and still haven’t really got head around the biffed REPETITIONS- can see it is an anagram…but in predictable form, remain a bit lost. Thank you Shay and Roly.
Just finished it in a fair bit over my usual – not much more to say than everyone else (NHO syllabub, was also trying to think of a specific ministry), though since I’d never heard ‘Brahms and Liszt’, thanks for that link!
It must be a wavelength thing but this was one of my quickest ever solves, apart from fat fingers, but I have struggled on others where people class them as easy