Solving time: 8:02
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Took a little while to get going with this – just two very short acrosses in from the first pass, so started working upwards from the bottom, which provided some footholds to work with.
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I suspect there might be a few comments about 16d which is a slightly unusual past participle, but it’s all pretty fair in my humble opinion.
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Let me know how you got on…
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Definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [directions in square ones]. The tilde ~ indicates an insertion point in containment clues.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Fellow Charlie most pleased shedding stone (7) |
| CHAPPIE – C (Charlie – NATO phonetic alphabet) HAPPIE |
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| 5 | Pressure to behave to gain agreement (4) |
| PACT – P (Pressure) ACT (behave) . I didn’t know that PACT is a verb as well as a noun – the online OED says that the verb PACT means “to make a formal agreement or alliance between two or more parties” and originates from the Latin word pactum meaning “something agreed upon.” The earliest known use of the verb appears in the writings of Thomas Cromwell in the 16th century. |
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| 7 | Alcoholic drink valet removed from case (3) |
| ALE – |
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| 8 | First love, a girl in Barking (8) |
| ORIGINAL – Anagram [Barking] of O (love) and A GIRL IN | |
| 10 | Insect regularly bit dogs in Middle East (5) |
| MIDGE – Alternate [regularly] letters of bIt DoGs inserted [in] into ME (Middle East) . MIDGE is a popular name for a tiny two-winged fly, applied indiscriminately to many small insects, from the Old English mygg, mycg “gnat” |
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| 11 | Rotating egret’s boldly catching shellfish (7) |
| LOBSTER – Reverse [Rotating] hidden [catching] in egrets boldly | |
| 13 | Figure in Spielberg film set in New York (6) |
| NINETY – IN ET (Spielberg film) inserted [set in] into NY (New York) . ET is the best-known Spielberg film in Crosswordland. |
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| 15 | Footballer’s advanced position after start (6) |
| GOALIE – A (advanced) LIE (position) after GO (start) | |
| 17 | Slacken binding of some nun’s trappings (7) |
| UNSTRAP – Hidden [some] in nun‘s trappings | |
| 18 | Drunk loses first game of chance (5) |
| LOTTO – . BLOTTO meaning “drunk,” comes from the very early 20th century, and is related to the “soak up liquid” meaning of the verb ‘blot’. |
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| 20 | Mammoth — caging it is complicated (8) |
| GIGANTIC – Anagram [is complicated] of CAGING IT | |
| 22 | Snake starts to be overly aggressive (3) |
| BOA – First letters [starts to] of B{e} O{verly} A{ggressive} | |
| 23 | Issue instructions to cut cheese (4) |
| BRIE – Remove last letter [to cut] of BRIE |
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| 24 | Plunder some French post office, centre of Aurillac (7) |
| DESPOIL – DES (‘some’ in French) PO (common abbreviation for post office) then middle letters [centre] of {Aur}IL{lac} | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Revolutionary glum in camp, saying nothing (8,2) |
| CLAMMING UP – Anagram [Revolutionary] of GLUM IN CAMP | |
| 2 | Change result after graduate getting upset (5) |
| AMEND – END [result] after MA (graduate) reversed [getting upset] | |
| 3 | One demonstrates for person making examination (9) |
| PROTESTER – PRO (for) TESTER (person making examination) | |
| 4 | This writer’s turned on ally, topped in malevolent way (6) |
| EVILLY – I’VE (This writer’s) reversed [turned] on . ‘on’ is apposite as this is a down clue. |
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| 5 | Quietly greeting Greek character (3) |
| PHI – P (Quietly – musical notation for piano) HI (greeting) | |
| 6 | Son wrapped in jacket on exposed walk along the shore (7) |
| COASTAL – S (Son) contained [wrapped] in COA~T (jacket) on {w}AL{k} without its end letters [exposed] . Again, ‘on’ is apposite as this is a down clue. |
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| 9 | Disorganised fight where no one’s charged? (4-3-3) |
| FREE-FOR-ALL – Extremely mild cryptic – if no one is charged, it is FREE FOR ALL | |
| 12 | They secure footwear, and loose cables too (9) |
| BOOTLACES – Anagram [loose] of CABLES TOO | |
| 14 | Comparatively horrible when drawn into new row (7) |
| NASTIER – AS (when) inserted into [drawn into] N (new) TIER (row) | |
| 16 | Rejected clues editor was hostile towards (6) |
| SPITED – TIPS (clues) reversed [Rejected] then ED (editor) . To SPITE = to intentionally annoy, upset, or hurt someone |
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| 19 | Sound of disapproval following cheers is not acceptable (5) |
| TABOO – BOO (Sound of disapproval) following TA (cheers i.e. thanks) . TABOO has its origins in Polynesian languages, particularly from the Tongan “tapu” and the Maori “tapu,” which refer to things that are sacred or forbidden. The term was introduced into English in the late 18th century, primarily through the writings of Captain James Cook about his Pacific Ocean voyages. It signifies a social or cultural prohibition that is often based on a group’s sense of what is sacred or offensive. |
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| 21 | Affirmative vote first person read aloud (3) |
| AYE – Homophone [read aloud] of I (first person pronoun) | |
Steady solve for me but with a stupid typo (GAGANTIC) that I didn’t notice. At 5A I took “to gain” as clue verbiage that if you execute the wordplay you gain a word for PACT. I had no idea it was a verb either. Several clues I biffed and worked out the wordplay after submitting.
This one was a bit more difficult, and I didn’t help myself by biffing shoelace. Fortunately, lobster was a hidden. I wanted evilly to start with me rather I’ve, too. I did interpret ‘to gain’ as being mere linking words, like giving or producing.
Time: 9:20
9:33 for a steady solve, though SPITED took some winkling out – I see my phone doesn’t like the word and has given it the red squiggle treatment and I rather agree. That apart, no hold-ups, though like the two earlier posters I assumed the definition for PACT was just the noun Agreement.
Many thanks Mike for the blog.
Top half was trickier than the bottom and it was that plus carelessness that did me in. Paid too little attention to the anagrist and whacked in shoeLACES and then when LOBSTER I didn’t noticing that had changed the opening letter to make BOOTLACES clear. Both good clues. No typos at least – I typed the errors in purpose. I had been pleased with being under 10 and I suppose I would never have done it on paper so I won’t let it ruin my day. Good one!
As others have said, a steady solve. Slightly slower than the previous two days at 12:22 and needed help to fully understand a few.
A MER at SPITED. Didn’t like EVILLY. Did like DESPOIL.
Thanks Juji and Mike.
A big help getting 1a and 1d straight off to a steady finish in 15.38 means we were on Juji’s wavelength today. Thanks Mike for the blog, we couldn’t unravel goalie and spited only came after submission.
Liked bootlaces in particular, thanks Juji
Biffed GOALIE and BRIE without parsing and was glad to find a generous helping of anagrams which were most welcome.
No real problems and I was surprised to find I hit 23 mins but I seemed to have a lot of fat finger issues. Maybe I need to do some phone screen maintenance.
No really outstanding clues but I liked DESPOIL.
Thanks Roly and Juji. Who would have connected etymology of Midge and Gnat. Thinking of “GN..” words, only 4 others came to mind (gnome, gnu, gneiss, gnarly) so I was surprised to find 151 listed in Merriam-Webster.
Third enjoyable and accessible QC in a row. Only real hold up was LOI SPITED which took me to 20:15.
Could not parse BRIE so thanks Mike for the explanation.
Liked NINETY, COASTAL and ORIGINAL.
No dramas today.
Started with CHAPPIE and finished with SPITED (ugly word) in a brisk 6.40.
Thanks to MH and Juji
A steady solve in 8:17, with a slight delay at the end parsing GOALIE.
Thanks Mike and Juji
A steady but jumpy solve. I had many of the issues described above but managed to get it together (with the odd biff/parse later) in 19 mins. I quite liked MIDGE, COASTAL, and the hiddens but didn’t help myself by going down a few blind alleys e.g. wanting 8ac to end in ER (‘er for her in Barking). Not really on Juji’s wavelength again.
Thanks anyway to Juji and Mike.
Needed blog to parse BRIE and must remember when > as (NASTIER), a little unhappy with SPITED and EVILLY. Unnecessarily slow with ORIGINAL. Slower than wished progress today. Liked LOBSTER and DESPOIL. Thank you Juji and Mike Harper.
Lovely puzzle. Needed most of the checkers for CHAPPIE and was slow to see LTI COASTAL (COD) and GOALIE, but otherwise plain sailing for 06:39 to pip Plett by one second for a Teehee Day 😁. I was another who saw PACT as a noun and “to gain” as filler.
Great information about BLOTTO, Mike! Thanks to you and Juji.
21:49 – about average for me. Biffed GOALIE, BRIE and CHAPPIE, didn’t like SPITED at all. Found the bottom half easier than the top.
Clamming Up went straight in, but the cheerful Chappie needed another crosser or two, so I ended up jumping around the grid a bit. Delays with Original (I was trying to get Mad/Barking squeezed in) and Evilly (I thought it would start Em-), meant I missed out on a window seat, but I’m ok with 24mins for a little teaser like this.
Overall, I thought Juji was making an effort to think up clues more suitable for a QC –Spited, although a bit unusual, was well signposted.
CoD to Ninety, ahead of Coastal in today’s IKEA Stakes. Invariant
I had similar issues – going for a reversed “me” for the start of 4dn and also trying to squeeze “mad” into 8ac “Original”. Inevitably, I biffed “Shoelaces” for 12dn which then needed correcting later.
7.54
Just couldn’t parse BRIE but in the end adopted the well established Dvynys systematic approach of thinking “Botheration” (other exclamations available) and bunging it in anyway. I couldn’t think of another cheese and my alpha trawls are half-hearted at best.
Lovely puzzle. Don’t know how ORIGINAL it is but that clue was my fave.
Thanks Mike/Juji.
I use that system too! 😆
I ended up reading the clue in a Yoda voice to make it work
Finally managed to log in, after my earlier attempts had that now familiar message telling me that I had attempted too many times to do so!
A good puzzle I thought that I was never going to post a fast time for, and I was pleased to finish under target at 8.42. I initially biffed CLAMPING UP for 1dn, not taking enough care to note that there was only one P in the anagram. Solving MIDGE autocorrected the error.
21 mins..
A few sneaky clues here that took me a while to figure out – namely 4dn “Evilly”, 8ac “Original” and 15ac “Goalie”, and quite a few incorrect biffs that needed adjusting later – 3dn “Presenter” and 12dn “Shoelaces”. As a result, I sneaked into the SCC withouth even realising.
FOI – 5dn “Phi”
LOI – 15ac “Goalie”
COD – 9dn “Free for all”
Thanks as usual!
Managed to get on to this website at last! Good that it wouldn’t let me (Error 429 “too many requests”, nonsense, first time today) ‘cos it was a DNF, so humph, had to go away and try a little harder. Eventually the PDM came for LOI GOALIE, so 75th birthday rewarded with success – hooray!
Thanks Mike for reminder that ET is Spielberg. Not sure when (or whether) ME is ever used to mean Middle East?
Happy 75th birthday!! I do agree about being unsure as to when the abbreviation ME would actually be used for Middle East
Thank you, Mike! Well, Mrs M works at the British Library (they’re all still suffering terribly from that cyberattack two years ago) and says that internally her department is called the AAC (Asian and African Collections), within which is the MECA section (Middle East and Central Asia). And in the British Academy hers is the AAME section (Africa, Asia and Middle East). I don’t think any of those other initials could or would appear in a crossword, do you?
We do have EMEA in US banking – Europe/Middle East/Africa. It does come up as a commonly used abbreviation.
Yes, thank you … I suppose my point is this: if those are the grounds on which “Middle East = ME” is deemed allowable, then one would have to deem “Africa = A” equally allowable – which it is probably not. In that case, you see ……
Many happy returns 🎉🎂🎉
Happy birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!
Three quarters of a century, congratulations!
Lost my draft
22 after 40 minutes.
Pleased that I parsed 24 across.
Missed 1ac, 2d, 4d, and 16d.
Thanks M and J
Putting on my amateur setter’s hat, I really didn’t like the clue for BRIE. “All the right ‘notes’ but not necessarily in the right order” in my opinion. If one were to the remove “to” from the clue it would just about pass muster. Still, Juji gets paid and I don’t, so never mind -it was an easy enough biff.
That apart, it wasn’t too taxing.
FOI ALE (as the FOI on tomorrow night’s little outing will be)
LOI EVILLY (I tried to start with “EM”)
COD NINETY (quality surface)
TIME 4:22
Yoda-speak seems to be creeping into the QCs lately.
30 min here. Not super fast but pleased nonetheless. Very enjoyable and “despoil” is new to me, so something learned!
I got sidetracked by thinking 1A was some variant of STOKED without the ST.
Thank you Juji and Mike.
All done in 12:41, but struggled with the parsing of GOALIE and BRIE and was held up by biffing SHOELACES. But a very enjoyable puzzle so thanks to Juji and to Mike for the helpful explanations.
About average time, I guess. Dregs of the cuppa still warm when I finished. Failed to spot LOBSTER at first attempt and so was held up a bit on EVILLY.
Just about right for a QC
Thanks Juji and Mike
From CLAMMING UP to GIGANTIC in 8:24. Not so easy. Had LOBSTER before doing 12d so didn’t trip over my SHOELACES. Thanks Juji and Mike.
8 in first accross pass, and 6 in the downs. Then progressively slower and slower until finally gave up with 4 and 16 not done. Good crossword though, no complaints. Thanks Juji and Mike. I had to wait until 11;30 to get in with the “too many tries” error. I do use dark screen so perhaps there is a link. Some pictures have gone again.
DNF. All-but-one in 25 minutes, which is quite fast for me, but a further 15 minutes on E_I_L_ failed to reveal the answer. I couldn’t get past EM for this writer’s turned and I never thought of EVIL for malevolent. Doing these crosswords over the past few years has brought home to me just how poor my internal thesaurus is. If it’s not blocked my brain is very slow to see synonyms, even for relatively simple, well-known words.
Many thanks to Mike and Juji.
Synonyms definitely my weak spot for sure!
I always do the concise crossword before this one in an attempt to get my synonym brain firing 🫤
11:27. FOI CHAPPIE but only after spending time on it when I should perhaps have just moved on. I liked NINETY and COASTAL.
Thank you Juji and Mike
My thanks to Juji and Mike Harper.
Interesting puzzle with a few wrinkles.
Like AndyPandy I biffed Clamping up at 1d, corrected by 10a Midge, but it was still a biff as I didn’t bother with the anagram. Incidentally Wiktionary has for ME:
“Abbreviation of Middle East: a geographic region of West Asia, additionally including Turkey, as well as Egypt in North Africa.”
4d Evilly also biffed.
But unlike many I was happy with 16d Spited.
20:38
I found this enjoyable but quite a work out, with many circuits of the grid to finish. So, happy to be at the front of the SCC.
As others, wanted to use EM for 4d and could not parse GOALIE and BRIE but could they have been anything else? – thanks for the enlightenment Mike.
FOI: MIDGE
LOI: BRIE
COD: NINETY
Thanks to Juji and Mike
I struggled a bit with this, and not all parsed whilst solving. 15 minutes in all; LOI CLAMMING UP which I went back to to parse.
I assumed SPITED was a word, NHO.
COD to ORIGINAL which I failed to parse but I now see is very clever.
David
DNF EVILLY. Slow in NW with e.g. CHAPPIE. And, oh dear, Projector instead of PROTESTER.
Not my day, as I was in too much of a hurry and now see I failed to complete SPITED.
COD FREE FOR ALL.
Thanks vm, Mike.
This was a biff and parse effort for me, and I had to amend CHAPLIN to CHAPPIE when the evil protestor became clear, and shoelaces to BOOTLACES to accommodate LOBSTER. Cod was 9d with decent pun on FREE. Blank R blank E had to be BRIE but I couldn’t parse it (sigh). Juji new to me: into the SCC but thanks nonetheless, and to Mike for explaining all.
A mostly straightforward 10:53 but wasn’t happy with LOI BRIE. Even though it is always brie (and Edam didn’t fit anyway) I couldn’t see how it parsed. Even having seen ‘brief’ that, to my mind, means to inform rather than to instruct. URGE would also fit and seemed a bit more like instruct but didn’t remotely resemble any sort of chopped down cheese that I knew of. BRIE it was. Sorry, felt the need to get that off my chest! Thanks to Mike and Juji.
Not sure if SPITED is verb of SPITE spell-checker certainly doesn’t think so, filled in anyhow. 10mins
13:01 with no big frustrations, just one thought-provoking clue after another, ending in GOALIE, where “lie” as a noun, “A” for “advanced” (must try to remember, from A-levels I guess), “go” for start proved very elusive. Also had trouble seeing SPITED as a word. And CHAPPIE, which my spell checker doesn’t know either. Liked COASTAL best, followed by the (plaintive?) SPITED.
Thanks Juji and Mike.
All but seven done in 30 mins! – The anagram indicator Barking was a new one to me. Why was it in capitals? ‘barking mad’ isn’t anything to do with Barking the place? It did remind me of the story about a man who taught his dog to play the trumpet whilst commuting on the underground. Went from Barking to Tooting in less than an hour!
One of the conventions is that capital letters are permitted in clues in order to mislead.
The capitalisation of an ordinary noun is a well-established Setter trick, hence Barking for barking. Doubly sneaky if it’s also the first word of a sentence 😉 The good news is that they are not allowed to reverse the process and use a lower case letter for a proper noun.
7.47 I liked BOOTLACES and finished with PACT. TfTT is playing up again. Thanks Mike and Juji.
10:24
11:55 for me. Didn’t get the parsing of BRIE, but _R_E for a cheese couldn’t be anything else.
Thanks to Juji and Mike.
Easiest one for a while, 6 minutes.
I’ve been unable to get onto the blog for most of the day again – usual ‘too many requests’ notification. Does anyone know if there’s anything I can do, or whether it’s the site itself? I’m really missing being able to read everyone’s comments.
7:56, which close to half my average, so I’m very pleased with that time for a puzzle which doesn’t seem to be easy. The stars must have aligned today, and I will look forward to a disastrous performance tomorrow to make up for it.
Thank you for the blog!