Solving time: 15:58
Yikes! I found this quite tricky in places, and was not helped by a brief spousal ’emergency’ (Mrs H wrestled a mouse from the jaws of one of our cats – named Roary, though he probably tells other cats his name is Night Prowler – and while releasing it in the nearby park at stupid o’clock in the morning, managed to get poked in the eye by a sharp stick – she’s OK, thanks for asking, but I lost my solving mojo briefly).
A bigger issue was yet to come though as I struggled with my L2I 17d and 22a – fine clues both, but I am reckoning on the crossword equivalent of a huge pile-up as several solvers come to grief on the same pair of answers.
As for 3d, did he make it in America or Australia? Do tell…
Definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [directions in square ones]. I have also adopted jackkt’s use of the tilde sign ~ to indicate an insertion point in containment clues.
| Across | |
| 1 | Perhaps Robinson Crusoe players off on tour (8) |
| CASTAWAY – CAST (players) AWAY (off on tour)
‘Perhaps’ implies that Robinson Crusoe is an example of a CASTAWAY. Fewer people will have heard of Chuck Noland… The full title of the novel Robinson Crusoe, originally published in 1719, was: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself. |
|
| 5 | Beautiful female with distinctive appearance (4) |
| FAIR – F (female) with AIR (distinctive appearance) | |
| 8 | Grand car here, ordered for the duchess (3,5) |
| HER GRACE – Anagram [ordered] of G (Grand) CAR HERE
An example of Grand abbreviated to G can be found in the nickname of the Republican Party of the USA – Grand Old Party (GOP) |
|
| 9 | Quickly turn page in grave error (4) |
| SPIN – P (page) inserted into S~IN (grave error) | |
| 11 | Strum balalaika, holding a dance (5) |
| RUMBA – Hidden [holding] in Strum balalaika | |
| 12 | Tons of tarnish replaced with very glossy coat (7) |
| VARNISH – Replace the T (Tons) of |
|
| 13 | Text message about father’s cramps (6) |
| SPASMS – S~MS (Text message i.e. abbreviation for Short Message Service) about PA‘S (father’s) | |
| 15 | Worries before small stroke (6) |
| CARESS – CARES (Worries) before S (small) | |
| 18 | One taking a trip may have a generous whisky here (7) |
| TUMBLER – Mildly cryptic double definitions
TUMBLER (aka Rocks Glass, Lowball or Old Fashioned) is one of the four basic types of glass from which whisky is usually drunk. The others are Highball (for whisky cocktails), Shot Glass (for whisky shots), and Nosing Glass (for whisky tasting – aka Tulip, Snifter or Copita). |
|
| 19 | Takes hot drink, unfinished in hurry (5) |
| HASTE – HAS TE |
|
| 21 | Skin: what it does after too much sun? (4) |
| PEEL – The ‘it’ of the second part of the clue refers back to the definition…
…though arguably ‘skin peels’ or ‘it peels’ (both with an ‘s’ on the end) might be more grammatically correct answers than simply answering ‘peel’ |
|
| 22 | Coaxed with caution, came to the front (8) |
| WHEEDLED – W (with) HEED (caution) LED (came to the front)
My LOI following a lengthy think. WHEEDLE meaning “to entice by soft words; get by flattery” is from the 1660s, and is perhaps connected with a survival of Old English wædlian “to beg” from wædl “poverty”. |
|
| 23 | Appealing to reduce energy (4) |
| CUTE – CUT (reduce) E (energy) | |
| 24 | Mother more dapper becoming seductress (3-5) |
| MAN-EATER – MA (Mother) NEATER (more dapper) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | In centres of reactors, high explosive holds together (7) |
| COHERES – Insert HE (high explosive) into CO~RES (centres of reactors) | |
| 2 | Get out first piece of stored stuff (5) |
| SCRAM – First letter [piece] of S{tored} then CRAM (stuff)
SCRAM meaning “depart quickly,” often as an interjection, comes either from: 1920s U.S. slang, as a shortened form of scramble (i.e. a rapid take-off of a group of aircraft); or from German schramm, imperative singular of schrammen “depart”. |
|
| 3 | Crazy idea, normal for teenage diarist (6,4) |
| ADRIAN MOLE – Anagram [Crazy] of IDEA NORMAL
There probably aren’t too many teenage diarists to choose from, but I did wonder whether this might be a bridge too far for our overseas solvers… Sue Townsend wrote eight books about ADRIAN MOLE. The first book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 (published 1982) sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and was translated into 48 languages. |
|
| 4 | A sweetheart embraces Charlie in quiet corner (6) |
| ALCOVE – A L~OVE (sweetheart) containing [embraces] C (Charlie – NATO phonetic alphabet) | |
| 6 | Advise of a very quiet pay increase (7) |
| APPRISE – A PP (very quiet i.e. musical notation pp = pianissimo) RISE (pay increase) | |
| 7 | Was responsible for church estate (5) |
| RANCH – RAN (Was responsible for) CH (church) | |
| 10 | Sportswoman excited at her title (10) |
| TRIATHLETE – Anagram (excited) of AT HER TITLE | |
| 14 | Holster, could one say, that may be beside you as you sit down? (7) |
| ARMREST – One might say that a Holster is a resting place for one’s gun i.e. an ARM REST.
Within the mildly cryptic definition part of the clue, ‘that’ refers to the answer. I am not sure that everyone is going to enjoy this clue… |
|
| 16 | Fine line intercepted by transmitter (7) |
| SLENDER – L (line) inserted into [intercepted by] S~ENDER (transmitter) | |
| 17 | Composer finally changes into a god (6) |
| BRAHMA – The final letter of BRAHM My second last in, crossing with 22a – tough with only vowel checkers in place. BRAHMA (the Creator) is a Hindu god, part of the Trimurti, the trinity of supreme divinity that includes Vishnu (the Preserver) and Shiva (the Destroyer). He is prominently mentioned in creation legends. |
|
| 18 | Subject to snap (5) |
| TOPIC – TO PIC (snap i.e. snapshot) | |
| 20 | Relax around place for break (5) |
| SPLIT – S~IT (Relax) around PL (place) | |
15:42. Agree with Mike that WHEEDLED and BRAHMA were very tricky. I also caused myself some grief by seeing VEER hidden in the clue for SPIN.
Agreed. I saw that too since it means quickly turn. I’m relatively new to crosswords but should a clue have two possible answers?
Welcome, Cathy! I don’t think that “veer” is really a possible answer here, because it leaves the word “page” in the clue unaccounted for.
Arguably there is only one answer as VEER doesn’t fit the -P-N checkers. So while it’s not great to have multiple possibilities, especially in the QC, it’s really only a faux pas if they both fit.
We had a situation a year or two ago where CARDAMOM/CARDAMUM was clued ending in “mother” and the checkers didn’t decide. CrosswordHQ allowed both.
Incidentally I’ve seen the birds TERN and ERNE in the same hidden word clue along the way.
6:50. Yes, tough for a Quickie, especially the BRAHMA / WHEEDLED intersection.
Can confirm that Adrian Mole was widely known, though I’m not sure I’d recognise one in the wild.
Liked TRIATHLETE. Thanks Mike and Teazel.
NHO Adrian Mole, and had to guess between LEMO and MOLE, Mole seemed the most likely, but a complete guess nonetheless. A few tricky clues but I didn’t find anything else too tough after careful reading of the clues.
WHEEDLED/BRAHMA was tricky, and I was trying to make COHERES much more difficult than it was, using “centres of reactors” to give CT, and fitting a high-explosive in the middle.
Luckily I had heard of ADRIAN MOLE and so was a write-in from “teenage diarist”. I guessed BRAHMA must be a god, based on Brahmin being a caste. I got WHEEDLED easily from the wordplay. I also assumed centre of reactors was CT before seeing how the clue really worked. Nothing too hard (although I did manage to mistype a letter and not see it, so technical DNF).
9:02. All was smooth until WHEEDLED, TUMBLER and ARMREST. I was on the right parsing track for all three, but they just took a while. Really liked the WHEEDLED wordplay, as well as the word and definition themselves. Didn’t find BRAHMA too hard once I started cycling through famous composers. (Nice blog title by the way.)
Adrian Mole was staple reading for me. I wouldn’t revisit now as probably better read when young. But hilarious at the time.
Pandora!
I adore ya.
I implore ye
Don’t ignore me.
DNF. Several gaps, towel thrown in at 26 mins.
Had HIDE for skin and what it does after too much sun.
Had the BRAHMA clue all wrong, looking for a composer with S in a god.
TUMBLER (a chestnut) and ARMREST also stumped me.
I knew Adrian Mole from my parents reading and enjoying them when they came out and I know Brahmns (mainly from rhyming slang) and needed that to get to the dimly known BRAHMA to get WHEEDLED via most of the letters in the alphabet. Needed the hint to understand how to get COHERES – I was miles off despite having watched Chernobyl and my parents living near Hinkley Point – I bunged it in when CASTWAY removed the possibility of ‘adheres’. None of that matters though because I managed to type SCReM – not sure what happened there, there’s a 2cm gap between the right keys. Four on the first pass and all done, albeit not accurately, in 15.32. Enjoyed MAN-EATER emerging from the clue.
I’m under heavy pressure to get a cat at the moment. Thanks Mike for the reminder that it’s not all purring and warm laps. Maynard once came into the kitchen, spotted me and dropped the rat he’d caught. I’m still get flashbacks to that big tail disappearing behind the kitchen units. Three days of tussle before I got it back to the garden including laying the long bedroom mirror on the kitchen floor to direct it to the backdoor. Maynard couldn’t have cared less.
Our childhood cat would regularly leave squirrel tales under the spareroom bed. I’m sure he considered them a gift but my mother wasn’t overly impressed!
That must have been quite some cat. 🐅🦁Squirrels can be vicious..
22 minutes with interruptions that put me off my stroke.
No matter how many times I read 16dn: Fine line intercepted by transmitter I can’t see how this can be interpreted as ‘L contained by SENDER’. It’s the ‘by’ that does for it. Fine line intercepts transmitter would do the job although it’s not as good a surface.
BRAHMA was hard; WHEEDLED nearly beat me as my LOI.
I don’t quite get your interception point. If a pass is intercepted by a defender in football (either kind), that defender catches/traps the ball and it’s now in their possession, between their hands or feet. The conceptual metaphor seems to work.
But the transmitter of the pass is the attacking player, not the defender.
I’m in agreement with Jackkt
But the meaning of the word transmitter is irrelevant here. The fact that its related to the way the wordplay works is a coincidence/a misdirect. And FWIW I don’t think the objection you have articulated is the same one Jackkt raised.
When parsing the clue, we can swap “transmitter” for “a string of letters”. Line is intercepted by that string of letters – as the good doctor says – that means that string of letters is now in possession of line, or L. The string of letters, as we know is SENDER –> SLENDER
Football and other team sports are a complete mystery to me, so sadly the analogy. is lost on me. I’m just going by the meanings of the words as I understand them.
Collins has “to stop, deflect, or seize on the way from one place to another; prevent from arriving or proceeding”.
So here the “line” is “seized” by the “transmitter”.
Yes absolutely. If my hand intercepts a cricket ball, the ball is in my hand.
👍
As an overseas solver, I report that ADRIAN MOLE was heretofore unknown but with most of the crossers I took a wild guess. Knowing that the books referenced feature stories told in first-person diaristic form would require some familiarity with the subject (if not for the plausibility of the anagram).
They were horrible, patronising books written at a time when children and adolescents were generally despised by adults
Apart from the two escapees from cell block 15, all present and correct.
Fortunately, my son was a reader of ADRIAN MOLE so no problems there. TUMBLER went in from the checkers and parsed later. PEEL, went straight in and didn’t consider anything else. Much to like around the grid. COD to TUMBLER.
Thanks Mike and setter.
DNF. I had quite a few problems this morning: ARMREST, TUMBLER, PEEL, TOPIC, WHEEDLED, BRAHMA, TRIATHLETE.
Like Merlin, I was convinced that “skin” was HIDE. And the specific use of “sportswoman“ made me think it must be a person’s name, so I never saw TRIATHLETE, even though I had all the right letters. Ho-hum.
Pi ❤️
Came a-cropper on 17d and 22a. WHEEDLED was just NHO, and BRAHMS is probably about 10th on the list of composers I know best, and I wasn’t willing or able to dig that deep.
15:55, and a strange puzzle I thought, with the top half quite straightforward and the bottom half a lot tougher. I was held up by PEEL (I also toyed with Hide) and then stumped for rather longer by the BRAHMA/WHEEDLED pair.
I rather agree with Jack that the clue for SLENDER reads very oddly; I see dr.shred’s explanation but it’s an unnatural reading in my view. On the other hand, I suppose twisted and unnatural wordplays are all part of the game …
Many thanks Mike for the blog.
Glad I wasn’t alone in finding the top half easy and the bottom half way more difficult. Not impressed by TO PIC for “to snap”. Fortunately I had heard of BRAHMA so that wasn’t too hard once I started working through the list of composers I know.
I enjoyed this one, especially the nostalgia brought on by the reminder of Adrian Mole and the lovely Pandora.
My biggest issue was a typo in SCRAM which made HER GRACE very difficult until I spotted my error. I enjoyed the PDM for HASTE but my COD goes to MAN EATER.
Started with FAIR and finished with WHEEDLED in 8.18.
Thanks to Mike and Teazel
37:19 (average: 37, target: 43:20)
Lots of thinking time for me on this one. I saw how the wordplay worked quite quickly on almost all, but then took some time to supply the answers. COHERES was the exception as I saw the answer immediately, but kept going back to it again and again to make it fit.
LOI was WHEEDLED that really did take some time for me. BRAHMA wasn’t a write in, but it came quite quickly after many decades of amateur piano.
Thanks for the write up Mike. Sorry to hear you had such a tough morning. I winced audibly as I read your description. Found the Robinson Crusoe full title very interesting. Thanks Teazel for the tough but very enjoyable session.
I found this tough and not just because the new format threw me at first. I wasted time finding my way around the ‘cog wheel’ to change to my usual settings.
I didn’t see that it was Teazel at first but the setter soon became evident as I found my way into the puzzle (and slowed down).
I enjoyed some very clever clues and thought I might continue my recent run of sub-20 Teazel QCs. However, once it became clear I was heading for the SCC, I relaxed and tried to enjoy the ride. TUMBLER was a PDM that arrived late (as did my COD MAN-EATER). My last two were WHEEDLED (despite entering …LED early in my solve) and BRAHMA (who just would not come to mind).
I’ll put this one down to experience. Thanks for the blog, Mike.
Note. The website is still very flaky. I need to keep trying have to open a new page repeatedly in order to get on to the site. I get the usual message time after time:
Error 500 – Internal server error
An internal server error has occured!
Please try again later.
Me too – Error 500! Infuriating.
Thanks Liz. Good to know it is not just me.
I wonder if any others on the blog have the same issue. If so, they might post here and raise the profile of the problem.
John
I got Error 500 today too.
I have had it a few times, especially recently.
Ironically, also the first few times I tried to post this..
The Error 500 is strong today!
And me
Very pleased to crawl over the line as, after much pondering ( muttering, sighing etc) I wheedled out my LOI. And nearly amongst the ungodly but then the PDM.
Excellent mental exercise, and blog.
And me!
I am pleased to have managed 12 including armrest which I parsed with the aid of a checker or two. Spasms came easily possibly because I suffer from them as a result of my spinal cord injury. Missed the obvious castaway and rumba. I was trying to justify ceilidh with an alternative spelling kiala from a reverse hidden – duh
Thanks Mike and Teazel
Quit at 30mins unable to get to WHEEDLED / BRAHMS pairing having reached those in about 17mins which would have made it average. Not helped by irritation of the new site unnecessarily moving up or down as I cursored up or down; and generally unsettled by the changes.
Adrian Mole – very much a fan back in the day. Still have my copy of the original book as my dad dropped round a box of my childhood. Glanced at a new edition some years ago and I’m fairly sure it’s been edited to remove some of the ‘raunchier’ stuff such as the copies of Big & Bouncy magazine and his chart on growth in the Norwegian Leather industry 😂
Thanks to Mike and Teazel.
Found this very tough and took a long 35:20 to struggle home. LOI WHEEDLE. Several biffed once a few crossers in and parsed afterwards. Soon got the hang of the new format on my IPad, but preferred the previous colours.
DNF
All going well until that crash in the SE corner. Finally managed to see BRAHMA but had CHEERLED for coaxed and a double DPS.
Thought I’d finished when Whisky Rambler turned out to be something on Google (how does taking a trip = TUMBLER, please? – something to do with drugs? NHO) – but 18d was then a bit of a nonsense and all in all much better that it was wrong. Thank you, Mike – but please, how does “centres of reactors” work? BRAHMA no problem, but WHEEDLED was difficult.
Only saw this myself after reading Mike’s blog. The centres of reactors are CORES – split by HE for high explosives.
Goodness! Would never have got there without you – thank you.
Sorry, failed to read Mike’s CO~RES as CORES – stupid!
If you trip, you may tumble over. Therefore “one taking a trip” could be said, whimsically, to be a person who tumbles or a “tumbler”.
Thank you – of course. It took me far too long to connect trip with tumble.
Tough but fair QC today. Saw a hidden VEER in 9A which slowed down the NE corner for a couple of minutes. My L2I also WHEEDLED and BRAHMA. Could not parse COHERES – obvious in retrospect. COD MANEATER. Thanks Mike for great blog.
Well into SCC territory at 25 minutes with the WHEEDLED and BRAHMA pair almost defeating me. At least no errors but too slow. As some consolation, I liked the surface for MAN-EATER.
Thanks to Mike and Teazel
DNF for me. Thanks for blog Mike you were spot on re the pile up on that particular pair of clues.
16.48
Crikey!
Totally flummoxed in the SW. Clues like “Subject to snap” always send me into panic as there are so many possible synonyms (though of course the w/p was much easier here). Another blind spot is thinking of two synonyms (getting high and travelling for “trip” but not looking further for the (obvious) third). Anyway getting PEEL unlocked the easier ones there (with ARMREST as a “it must be”) but I was still left with BRAHMA and WHEEDLED. Put 15 x 15 hat on and eventually they emerged. Those last three really were quite hard.
Thanks Mike and Teazel
Well looking at some of the times posted so far, I was clearly right on the setters wavelength today finishing well under target at 7.49. That included the best part of nearly two minutes on my final two TRIATHLETE and finally WHEEDLED, which certainly took some wheedling out all right. No trouble whatsoever with BRAHMA which seems to have caused problems to others.
Mike’s story about his cat and the mouse reminded me of our late departed and much loved cat Bibs, who was a hunter sans pareil. He would regularly bring back, always alive, mice, pygmy shrews (my favourite), baby rabbits and even on one occasion a mole. One mouse extracted from his jaws by my wife in our dining room managed to escape her grip and bolted for it. It took me a full hour to find it cowering in the folds in the top of the curtain before recapturing it and releasing it. The mouse showed how grateful it was by biting me!
Our cat is much less merciful. With rabbits she eats the head (skull and all) and leaves the headless corpse to ooze its contents over whatever carpet she has left it on. This is not a nice habit. She once killed a stoat and was so proud of herself that she laid it unblemished by our bed to await admiration. Occasionally she leaves a live mole in my study, I think for the pleasure of watching me trying to catch it in the wastepaper bin.
Egbert, who I rescued a year ago, spent the first 6 months leaving small intact dead prey next to my pillow for when I woke up. I was never too sure if they were presents or were godfather horses head type warnings. As he bites viciously when crossed, perhaps he is a Godfather fan.
Now they are left – often headless – hidden in the dining room for me to find/smell later
Godfather horses head 🤣😂😱
Whistled through that until hitting the SW corner, like Dvynys. It seemed to come from a different puzzle altogether! Eventually ARMREST hove into view and I winkled out the rest until I was left staring at *R*H*A. (I’d got WHEEDLED without too much drama.) I then proceeded to get annoyed about why Brahms didn’t fit until the penny dropped.
Got there in 07:59 which was faster than it felt. Delighted to see from the QUITCH that my average has edged below 8 mins for the first time in ages!!
COD to WHEEDLED. Many thanks Teazel and Mike.
5.55, which I guess means I was in the groove for this one based on previous comments.
All very fair I thought, but like others had to rethink the centre of reactors not simply being CT.
COD TRIATHLETE
LOI BRAHMA
18:04 Brahma’s cute armrest with a tumbler thrown in also caused me considerable head scratching. Varnish was genius. Great puzzle.
Ta M&T