Matilda provides our Monday morning entertainment today.
The grid is a bit unfriendly, with very little connection between the top and bottom halves, but I found the puzzle mostly straightforward, with a couple of slightly tricky constructions to keep us guessing. Thanks Matilda.
Definitions are underlined; square brackets [] indicate omitted letters. If anything else isn’t clear, please ask!
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PERUSE | Inspect each benefit (6) |
| PER (for each) + USE (benefit, as in “tenants have the use of the garden”). | ||
| 4 | SHARED | Read erratically, following quiet joint (6) |
| Anagram (erratically) of READ, following SH (instruction to be quiet). Joint = shared as in “joint bank account”. |
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| 9 | WEATHER FORECAST | ‘Car of sweetheart polluted’ (statement about climate change) (7,8) |
| Anagram (polluted) of CAR OF SWEETHEART. | ||
| 10 | BISHOP | Repeat dance for man on board (6) |
| BIS (twice: an indication in music that a section is to be repeated) + HOP (dance, as in Lindy Hop). Man on board = chess piece, of which bishop is an example. |
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| 11 | ORIGINAL | First exam covers writer with spirit (8) |
| ORAL (an exam in which answers are spoken rather than written) , containing (covering) I (writer = first-person pronoun) + GIN (spirit = alcoholic drink). | ||
| 12 | MEASURED | Considered Matilda as terribly rude (8) |
| ME (Matilda, the crossword setter) + AS + anagram (terribly) of RUDE. Considered = measured as in “a measured response”. |
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| 14 | GUIDES | Escorts for girls (6) |
| Double definition; the second refers to Girl Guides, otherwise known as Girl Scouts. | ||
| 15 | ATTEND | Be there when the news is read at last (6) |
| AT TEN (when the news is; the UK generally has a TV news programme at 10pm) + the last letter of [rea]D. | ||
| 18 | MAKE GOOD | Fix mood having drunk a barrel (4,4) |
| MOOD containing (having drunk) A KEG. Make good = fix = repair. |
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| 21 | CRITICAL | Major‘s really sick (8) |
| Double definition: as in “a major incident”, or as in a shortened form of “critically ill”. I’m not sure this is really fair as a double definition, because these are different uses of the same meaning rather than two different meanings. | ||
| 22 | ONSIDE | Where fielders may be in a position to play (6) |
| References to two different sports: the ON SIDE (or leg side) in cricket is the side of the wicket where the batsman stands, or “onside” in football means that a player is in a legal position to play the ball (as opposed to offside). Other sports are available, in which these terms probably have many other uses. | ||
| 24 | HAIR CONDITIONER | Hotel with cooler bathroom product (4,11) |
| H (abbreviation for hotel) + AIR CONDITIONER (cooler). Generally referred to simply as “conditioner”. |
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| 25 | ELDEST | First of children to turn 13 (not her) (6) |
| A tricky one! Anagram (to turn) of SHELTERED (the answer to 13 down) minus the letters HER. Variation of “oldest” when applied to people; teachers and parents used to tick us off for talking about an “older” brother or sister. I suspect the distinction has largely disappeared now. |
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| 26 | ODDS-ON | Likely to happen for strange boy (4-2) |
| ODD (strange) + SON (boy = male child). Odds on = better than 50-50 chance. |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PRECISE | Bang on about recipes (7) |
| Anagram (about = scattered) of RECIPES. Bang on = slang for exact = precise. |
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| 2 | RETCH | Leave an impression after really top gag (5) |
| R[eally] (top = first letter in a down clue) + ETCH (create a design in the surface of metal). Retch = gag = strain as if to vomit. |
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| 3 | SLEEPER | Agent is one out for the count (7) |
| Double definition: a secret agent not currently active but placed in preparation for a possible future task, or someone unconscious or asleep. (The phrase comes from boxing, where an incapacitated contestant is unable to get up before the referee counts to ten.) | ||
| 5 | HERRING | Harry initially going astray for swimmer (7) |
| H[arry] (initially) + ERRING (going astray). Clupea harengus and related species of fish. |
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| 6 | RECEIVING | Not serving rice, given stew (9) |
| Anagram (stew) of RICE GIVEN. In tennis and other racket sports, when one player serves the ball, the opposing player receives it. |
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| 7 | DISEASE | Nearly set aside dodgy complaint (7) |
| Anagram (dodgy) of SE[t] (nearly) + ASIDE. Complaint = disease = illness. |
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| 8 | AFFORD | Have enough money for a French car (6) |
| A F (abbreviation of French) FORD (a make of car). | ||
| 13 | SHELTERED | Protected Theresa deal, but not as planned (9) |
| Anagram (planned) of THERES[a] DE[a]L without the two instances of the letter A (not as). It took me a long time to see this one. | ||
| 16 | TERRACE | Police car returns holding up houses (7) |
| Hidden answer, reversed (holding, up, in a down clue) in [polic]E CAR RET[urns]. Terraced house – one of a long row of houses sharing side walls. |
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| 17 | DOCTORS | Professionals court indoors (7) |
| CT (abbreviation for court) in DOORS. A slightly sneaky construction where you have to break up a word to make sense of the clue. | ||
| 18 | MELODY | Gosh, takes dole back in part? (6) |
| MY (gosh = expression of surprise) containing (taking) DOLE reversed). Part as in music; one of two or more lines being sung or played at the same time by different people. |
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| 19 | KNOTTED | Secured some junk, not Ted’s (7) |
| Hidden answer (some) in [jun]K NOT TED[‘s]. | ||
| 20 | OLD BEAN | My friend‘s used kidney, say (3,4) |
| OLD (used) + BEAN (of which kidney bean is an example). A somewhat dated term of endearment. |
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| 23 | SLOGS | Labours small records (5) |
| S (small) + LOGS (records, as in log books). | ||
12a would have gone quicker for me had I paid attention to the setter’s name!
Thanks Matilda and Quirister
I thought this was great. though quite hard for a Quiptic. Standout favourites were MEASURED, RECEIVING and MELODY.
I thought “major” for CRITICAL was a bit loose.
I solved 13d by finding an anagram of “there deal” (Theresa deal, not as): LEATHERED, which certainly can mean “protected”. Eg Motor Cyclists wear leathers for protected against skidding. After that I couldn’t parse it any other way! I’m glad you (Quirister) took a long time to spot the intended parsing!
Otherwise OKish but rather hard for a quiptic. Thanks all.
An enjoyable solve with no quibbles. Thanks Quirister for the parsing of TERRACE. I often miss reverse hidden words, which are always obvious with hindsight. Thanks also to Matilda for the entertainment.
Another fine crossword from Matilda.
One that I didn’t find as easy as I thought it would be seeing these rather short clues.
[an average of only 5.6 words per clue]
What happens in 13dn (‘as’ = A,A) I have seen before but actually from only one particular setter (Philistine).
But I agree with Colin R that it can lead to something else if taken as ‘as’ = AS.
That said, it is less likely because A and S then have to be deleted in the reverse order (before the anagram’s taken).
This was all fine (especially the wonderful 9ac) except 8d in which Matilda thinks F = ‘French’ but it is not (F = ‘France’ and FR = ‘French’).
Purely coincidentally I had a chat last Saturday, in York, with a favourite daily setter about using
‘about’ as an (anagram indicator in front of the fodder. We concluded that it’s not ideal, perhaps even dubious. See 1d – same applies to Qaos in last Friday’s 7d.
Many thanks to Quirister & Matilda.
Thanks Matilda for a great crossword, Quirister for sorting out a few items for me and for the blog in general, and muffin for the tip on the other blog.
A few of these took quite a while to emerge from my sluggish Monday brain, “BIS” for twice is new to me (clue perfectly clear without that anyway) and SHELTERED was one that I entered and only when bothering to properly check the subtraction anagram did I realise that a and a needed to be removed, not as, and realised it was a bit more involved than I had thought. I think one reason the Quiptic can be harder than the Monday cryptic is that the setter here is encouraged to use the full array of devices in the various clues, some of which may be quite tricky and require an extra layer of thought to unravel (DOCTORS being another such, for me).
My favourites 18D and 20D but lots more to enjoy.
Also found it tricky, with the SW the last to fall. A few niggles, but surprised no-one mentioned climate change vs weather forecast. They’re REALLY not the same thing, and it’s idiots who say “this winter was cold, so much for global warming” who would love to see the two things conflated. Weather and climate are totally distinct entities.
Rant over.
This one’s for you, TheZed:
https://youtu.be/TQlHaGhYoF0
18d. “Part as in music; one of two or more lines being sung or played at the same time by different people.”
No reason why the parts need be played by different people. it is a commonplace of baroque, classical and romantic keyboard music that it is in up to four parts, played by one person.
Jeremy @9: yes. I’m a singer so I can only manage one part at a time, but keyboard players are better at musical multi-tasking.
Lovely Quiptic and great blog – thank you both very much.
I can’t ever admit how long it took me to see what a “man on board” would be, and the manoeuvres I went through trying to make it work otherwise, having first carefully ruled out the correct answer … oh dear, oh dear.
Also found this tricky for a Matilda who is consistently our favourite of the Quiptic setters. Enjoyed lots of these but took a long time, especially the Theresa one as I also mistakenly removed the ‘A’ and ‘S’ instead of the ‘A’s – and subsequently couldn’t parse 25ac until it all fell into place.
@TheZed re. Climate Change, if I know this setter, I doubt there’s any misunderstanding, it’s more likely an intentional cryptic definition, to tie in with the pollution reference in the clue. Just how I read it.