Joker is in generous mood today with a fairly gentle puzzle. I skipped through this in just 4:10. A couple of slightly oblique definitions and a clever bit of wordplay (15D, my COD) were the only minor hold-ups for me, but, as always, your mileage may differ. Thank-you Joker.
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is my turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword, entitled “The Bells” here. Can you identify the theme and find the thematic references? If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 139 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics , ( Abc )* indicating anagram of Abc, deletions and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
| 1 | Yield and authorise again? (6) |
| RESIGN –RE–SIGN (authorise again). | |
| 4 | One who sings three times (6) |
| TREBLE – Double definition | |
| 8 | Cold capital — note that’s weather in general (7) |
| CLIMATE – C (cold) LIMA (capital) TE (note) | |
| 10 | Parasite mostly eating head of the water lily (5) |
| LOTUS – First letter of The in LOUS{e} (parasite) [mostly]. | |
| 11 | Impressive electronic image (4) |
| EPIC – E (electronic) PIC (image) | |
| 12 | Pure spirit inhabiting everywhere on the internet? (8) |
| VIRGINAL – GIN (spirit) in VIRAL (everywhere on the net). | |
| 14 | Boy I fed to alligator? This one put up a good fight (9) |
| GLADIATOR – LAD (boy) I in GATOR (alligator). Nice one. It reminded me of the one about the cannibal’s statement after eating his gran. No. Don’t ask. | |
| 18 | Festival of the Body — around four (8) |
| CARNIVAL – CARNAL (of the body) about IV (four in Roman numerals). | |
| 20 | Competent architect builds large edifices primarily (4) |
| ABLE -Initial letters [primarily] of Architect Builds Large Edifices. | |
| 22 | Strange degree in dance (5) |
| RUMBA – RUM (strange) BA (degree). | |
| 23 | Diligent chap receives top mark (7) |
| EARNEST – A (top mark) in ERNEST (man’s name; chap). I thought that an odd choice of definition, but it makes for a better surface than e.g. serious, sincere or eager. | |
| 24 | Rodney’s travelling over there (6) |
| YONDER – (Rodney)* [travelling]. | |
| 25 | Actor is back? (6) |
| PLAYER – Double definition, the second by example, hence the ?. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Missile plant (6) |
| ROCKET – Double definition. I rather like rocket in a salad. | |
| 2 | Being acceptable placement outside university (7) |
| SUITING – U (university) in SITING (placement). | |
| 3 | Quickly take unfinished canal boat northwards? (4) |
| GRAB – BARG{e} (canal boat) [unfinished] going upwards. | |
| 5 | Demote concerning papal emissary (8) |
| RELEGATE – RE (concerning) LEGATE (papal emissary). | |
| 6 | Stick no bill up (5) |
| BATON – NO TAB (bill) all going upwards. Do you remember the old graffiti on signs saying “Bill stickers will be prosecuted”? “Bill Stickers is innocent”. | |
| 7 | Lie, say, misled without difficulty (6) |
| EASILY – (lie say)* [misled]. | |
| 9 | Take out talkative bird entering high society (9) |
| ELIMINATE – MINA (talkative bird) in ELITE (high society). | |
| 13 | Confirm a detail’s wrong under verse (8) |
| VALIDATE – V (verse) (a detail)* [wrong]. | |
| 15 | Potentially doing a stretch with Oscar for the second crime (7) |
| ROBBERY – The only tricky clue today… It’s RUBBERY (potentially doing a stretch) changing the second letter to O (Oscar in the phonetic alphabet). My COD. | |
| 16 | Perhaps skip small Indian dish (6) |
| SCURRY – S (small) CURRY (Indian dish). Again a slightly indirect definition, indicated by the “perhaps”. | |
| 17 | Persistently annoy Lords member about empty statement (6) |
| PESTER – Outside letters of S{tatemen)T in PEER (Lords member). | |
| 19 | Right country for old Italian (5) |
| ROMAN – R (right) OMAN (country). A Roman can be a new Italian too. | |
| 21 | Test for singers missing church (4) |
| ORAL – {ch}ORAL (for singers) without the CH (church). | |
Hi John, you misspelt the answer for 1d. Also, the bird in 9d is normally spelt with a y, so talkative may be a homonym indicator.
Thanks. Typo corrected. As for mina, interesting idea but I think it’s fine as an alternative spelling and I don’t think “talkative” works as a homophone indicator.
and an “H”
A quick search brings up mynah, minah and myna but no “mina”
Certainly got me.
It’s in Chambers and Collins
MINA is never recognised as valid by Polygon which always makes me jolly cross!
I knew you would say that. Fair for the 15×15 does not equal suitable for the 13×13 IMHO, and on this occasion I think you are outvoted judging from the comments below.
Agreed. We travel every year to where they are frequently seen. Never ever seen them spelt as mina. I have only once seen mynah. The normal spelling is myna which is used by every ornithological source I have ever seen.
Not exactly a breeze for me at 10.01, but all good fun. Completely missed the cleverness of ROBBERY and the PLAYER DD, and those two took up some time as I stared glumly at the screen and got nowhere. Thanks J&J.
7:38 Needed to come here to see what was going on with ROBBERY- thanks , John. I had RECEDE first instead of RESIGN but finally saw the light.
Yes, I put in recede, but I erased it almost immediately – cede does not mean authorize! I also had a lot of trouble with virginal, eliminate, and curry, which should not have been that difficult.
Time: 10:06
Haha, 10:06 for vinyl1! Me too, got completely stuck on ROBBERY and PLAYER. Thought RECEDING and CEDING were the way forward, clearly missing the *rub*ber part and the need for an example word clue! Thanks for the enlightenment, John. Some of these are genius, like ROBBERY changing letters for Oscar – brilliant. Others, like virginal or SUITING, were just… tricky. Time to go back to the drawing board and stop staring glumly at the screen!
I have on occasion hit the SCC, when I am really off the wavelength! As an experienced solver, I rely on the usual tricks, and when they don’t work I have to think for a while.
A pretty quick start but then I got very stuck. So stuck I took time to count the clues I couldn’t do – 11. Finally saw GLADIATOR and that got me going again with ROBBERY then leading to PLAYER (thanks John, rugby players were nowhere near my thoughts) but then the separate NE took a long time. BATON LOI for some reason, could have done with the N for VIRGINAL a lot earlier. Seems I struggled on an easier one – all green in 16.55.
After yesterday’s DNF I was pleased to finish this one with 10 minutes on the clock.
At last, a day on Joker’s wave length with a close to PB of 11.55. Like others our thanks to John for unpacking LOI robbery which we biffed earlier but only entered after POI player.
Thanks Joker, and John for making Mrs RH laugh at the Bill Stickers gag 😀
I found this quite tough. I did make reasonable progress, but ground to a halt with ROBBERY and PLAYER. So DNF in the end.
Pi ❤️
10:48. Straightforward, but still nicely tricky. The north east corner held out the longest, but once I remembered the Pope’s LEGATE it all fell into place. I liked CARNIVAL and VIRGINAL. Thank you John and Joker.
PS. John, I don’t get the Glossary any more from the Useful Links (or the Quick Cryptic Guide), just the Oops 404 error message. Is it just me? or have they been left behind?
I just tried those links and also get 404 Page Not Found.
Yup. Same here. I also get a header to this page with the title in small blue type and just a tiny blue square containing a question mark – no banner picture (with Big Ben etc.).
The same happens with the avatars for many posters including my own.
Sorry. I forgot to update the widgets when I replaced the links in pages, posts and comments to the temporary address we had during the migration. Will fix it now.
Many thanks, John.
Cheers John 🙂
Thank you
4:24. Didn’t really know a lotus was a water lily but makes sense since the flowers and the pads are seen together suspiciously often.
12:04, which is faster than usual for a puzzle by Joker, and it would have been even better but for a breezeblock over my L2I, the PLAYER/ROBBERY pair. I took some time to accept that PLAYER was the right answer for 25A as I was convinced I was looking for a reversal of something, and then ROBBERY was the only possible answer for 15D despite not being able to parse it.
I didn’t fully understand how one gets “mina” for the bird in ELIMINATE – I spell it myna, mynah or even minah but never mina – but having come here, I agree with Joseph that it must be “mina, sounds something like myna, with talkative as the homophone indicator”. Devious as in the word ELIMINATE, mina is pronounced with a short i and a long a, but the bird has a long i and a short a!
Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to the Sunday Special.
MINA is a valid alternative spelling in both Chambers and Collins and I really don’t think “talkative” works as a homophone indicator. Furthermore, as you say, it is not pronounced the same in ELIMINATE so it’s not a homophone anyway.
Happy to accept that. A very interesting word, then, with 4 possible spellings, of which the one Joker chooses is much the least common -generic online sources (eg Wikipedia, Google) don’t have it at all. (And yes I know they are not authoritative sources for crosswords!)
Steady going today.
My main hold ups were wanting to put ‘corpival’ into 18a which I knew a) couldn’t be a real word and b) made no sense and but my brain got stuck on it and the SUITING/RESIGN combo which is where I finished.
Crossed the line in 7.52 with another vote for ROBBERY as COD.
Thanks to John and Joker
This was definitely not gentle lmao.
Couldn’t parse ROBBERY (thanks John) and Biffed ORIGINAL before a minute’s thought directed me to VIRGINAL. COD GLADIATOR for the groan. 22 mins so a mild Friday from Joker.
Thanks to all.
9:26, at least a few minutes of which spend on SUITING. I foolishly discounted uni = U fairly early, because I didn’t like UI or IUI, and this was my downfall, as MIT was obviously no help.
RESIGN also wouldn’t go in without all the checkers.
But I thought overall a good puzzle.
Gentle? Managed the NE and SW corners, only four others. Misery!
OK since you say it’s gentle, I’ll apply myself more EARNESTly – never enjoy these random chaps. So, eventually got GLADIATOR, so it must be ROBBERY after all, but why? So it must be PLAYER after all, but why? Hence that random chap. Then PDM ELIMINATE, but no idea why. All just guesswork – left NW corner still undone (or unguessed). Liked TREBLE.
Ah. Thank you, John. So: random capital, random note. Who is MINA? Difficult.
Googling reveals this bird is always myna or mynah (but still NHO!), nothing about talkative?
On edit: sorry, I do see I’m wrong about that: amazing (and entertaining!) how they can imitate human speech. Thanks, Snail39.
On a sports field, Backs are Players. Left Back, Centre Back, Right Back…..
I think the “talkative” refers to the fact that the Mina {many spellings available} bird is known for it’s ability to mimic the human voice similarly to a budgerigar.
Tough. I am pleased for those who found it ‘generous’ and ‘gentle’ but cannot agree. I got nowhere in the top half and resorted to another slow start from the bottom. The SW corner went in quickly but it was a slog from there with two biffs – ELIMINATE (I have never before seen Mynah spelt Mina) and my LOI ROBBERY although I spent a couple of minutes proof-reading at the end before realising that I had somehow hit T and entered ROBBERT, over-writing the Y in PLAYER. Despite this, I avoided the SCC by a minute which is a minor victory for me with Joker’s largely unfunny QCs.
I do not get on with Joker -too many iffy definitions for me. They eclipse the many good clues that he also produces.
Thanks for the blog.
I did not find this at all gentle, taking 15:18 to crawl over the line with the unparsed ROBBERY/PLAYER pair. Thanks John for making sense of these.
I also started with RECEDE, which meant I took ages to see SUITING.
COD to GLADIATOR.
Finished but found it very difficult, so not hugely enjoyable. LOI RESIGN, which I nearly did. Was slow both in NW and SE. Last few solves included EARNEST, PESTER, ROBBERY, ROCKET, and SUITING.
Liked CARNIVAL, SCURRY, GLADIATOR and RELEGATE COD.
Agree about spelling of Mynah bird.
Thanks vm, John.
Like John I found this gentle for a Joker puzzle. I did have to think carefully to parse CARNIVAL, ROBBERY, EARNEST and PLAYER though. From TREBLE to EARNEST in 6:25. Thanks Joker and John.
Timer says SCC for me although I had several distractions and had to do this in four sittings. The Climate certainly wasn’t Suiting this Earnest Player sums it up although as ever everything is fairly clued with common vocab and reasonable cryptic definitions. Ho Hum.
Ta JAJ
Pleased I’m in good company finding this quite difficult. Also struggled with parsing RUBBERY/PLAYER. My first experience with a myna/mina bird was age 16, I’d gone for an interview as a volunteer at a Dr Barnado’s home. I was waiting in an empty room and a loud cackle and ‘hello!’ behind me gave me a real fright.
I am another who always finds joker hard.
Some good clues, but others just passed me by
I thought random names (ERNEST) were not supposed to be used or have I missed something?
Thanks for the blog.
Would that it were so … For “chap” we’ve had Ian, Ray, Tony and doubtless many more. I agree, it’s bogus, isn’t it!
I agree.
I am in the found it a struggle camp, not parsing quite a few and relying on biffing once some letters in. NHO MINA, only MYNAH, so ELIMINATE took a while, as did ROBBERY, EARNEST (hate these random name clues) and VIRGINAL.
Just the six. My wife is called Mina (Min-na), does that make her a talkative bird? You could get away with that as a joke in the 1960s, you’d get six months for saying it now. My sister is Lorraine, does that make her a tart?
I can’t help it, I’ll get my coat…..
Edit: It should be Myna or Mynah….
: )
thanks for the laugh 😃😀
Not gentle for me. I started well then got stuck with 8 or 9 left. Getting LOTUS was a big help and others quickly followed for some reason.
Last two were VALIDATE and CARNIVAL.
16 minutes.
I liked lots of clues so hard to pick a COD. TREBLE and CLIMATE appealed to me.
David
Just over 12 mins. Nearing a PB for us – so very happy. Initially tried to remove CH from CHOIR without success and momentarily sidelined by trying to make LOCUST a parasite (which it is not of course). Delighted to have found and understood ROBBERY early in the piece. Needed the blog to understand PLAYER and the minor bird issue … MYNA, MYNAH, MINAH… as we were some of the many who had not previously met MINA.
All up, much enjoyed.
Many thanks to Joker and to JohnI
I nearly always find the Joker takes me up to my ten minute target, but today I only needed 6.31 to complete. Either the Jokers been benevolent or I’ve had a good day; perhaps a bit of both. Although I started with the across clues, I solved all the down clues at first read with the exception of my LOI which was ROBBERY. I never did get to parse that even after stopping the clock.
My total time for the week was 45.29, giving me a daily average of 9.06
Enjoyable crossword, got two wrong, immediately thought of Mynah as the talkative bird, eventually settled for eradicate (all crossers vowels – yipee) and marginal without being able to parse either. I expect someone will point out a source of “mina” (let me guess – Collins?)
Thanks to both, still a nice crossword.
Try Chambers:
“myna, mynah or mina noun (mynas, mynahs, minas) any of various large, SE Asian birds of the starling family, some of which can be taught to imitate human speech.
ETYMOLOGY: 18c: from Hindi maina.”