Another Quince blog for us. We have now blogged 3 out of the last 4 puzzles. In our last one, published on April 24th we said – here’s to the next one – and here we are!
DINNERS was clever, BIDETS made us chuckle when we realised our error and HANDS DOWN needed all the crossers before we twigged the parsing. We weren’t so impressed with 29ac however. The surfaces were good – we particularly liked 23ac but there were many others.
Thanks Quince – here’s to the next one!
An anagram (‘jumping’) of TOM DALEY INVERTS
NOTED (celebrated) around or ‘crossing’ CH (Switzerland)
A Spoonerism of KEIR (Starmer) BAN (put a stop to)
A play on the fact that when it is 6:30 both HANDS on the clock are DOWN
W (wife) inside or ‘drawn in by’ SIMS (computer games) – our son was very keen on Sim City
You can read DINNERS as D (daughter) IN NERS (nerds)
Alternate letters (‘regularly scrubbed’) in SuLlEn DoGgErS
Double definition. In Mathematics the greek symbol Σ (SIGMA) is used to indicate the sum of the numbers or quantities given. In Greek the letter S (the first letter in Santorini) is called sigma.
wHEn (middle letters only or ‘exposed’) and an anagram (‘stormy’) of DANIELS. She certainly made the HEADLINES
Double definition
GEL (setter) reversed or ‘retracted’ + SLIP (error)
One of our last ones in – a not very cryptic definition in our opinion
Double definition – Sir Anthony Eden, PM 1955-57 and the garden of Eden (‘lost plot’)
ST (saint – good person) around or ‘overcoming’ a reversal (‘about’) of UM (hesitation)
Sounds like (‘speaker’s) UNCHASED (lacking followers)
STUDIOus (hard-working) without ‘us’ (our team)
JAB (vaccine) around or ‘nursing’ W (last or ‘final’ letter of review) and ONES (my)
BIDEn (President missing last letter or ‘almost’) and TroopS (first and last letters only or ‘evacuated’). We were a bit puzzled by the definition at first because we were linking ‘behind’ to the wordplay.
Double definition
An anagram (‘deployed’) of SPY ON HIS
I (the i newspaper) after O (love) MAN (island)
DIS (slight) and a homophone (‘caught’) of GUYS (men)
An anagram (‘supply’) of NIGEL and E (last or ‘final’ letter of Farage) around or ‘packing’ EG (for one)
SING (spill the beans) around or ‘about’ C (Conservative – ‘Tory’) and HEM (fringe)
EU (Brussels) LOG (account) IS E (first letter or ‘beginning’ in expand).
Hidden (‘some’) and reversed or ‘over’ in tIME LEft. We had to check the origin of the trees from which ELEMI is extracted – they are found in the Philippines.
AS (like) around or ‘circumventing’ TOLL (tax)
A F (female) and an anagram (‘prepared’) of MALE
Hidden (‘impressed’) in the clue JuLIA Roberts
ME (Quince) OP (job) reversed or ‘turning up’. The ‘stressful’ relates to the fact that the arrangement of stresses or emphasis on certain syllables is the foundation of the rhythm in poetry
I found this one quite tricky in the SW. I did not spot the definition for DISGUISE, had a (stupidly) bunged in LINGERIE for NEGLIGEE (I did sort that one out but it delayed me) and I had no hope at all of seeing what was going on in DINNERS or in HANDS DOWN. (I guess, strictly, both hands are not exactly down as the hour hand will be half way between 6 and 7! 5:30 would achieve the same result in mirror image.) NOTCHED, SLEDGES, HEADLINES, SMUT, UNCHASTE and OMANI were my faves today.
Thanks Quince and B&J
Enjoyed this puzzle very much. The parsing for DINNERS is beyond me but I got everything else apart from the S as the letter for SIGMA which I should have twigged, and the ‘behind jets’ (droll) which I had thought was directional rather than anatomical so thanks for a fantastic blog B&J. Not a clue I didn’t like but I’ll select HANDS DOWN (LOI and I think both hands are close enough to down), as outright tops closely followed by UNCHASTE, DISGUISE (liked ‘caught’ as the indicator) and POEM. Many thanks Quince for a very satisfying solve.
Thanks Quince and B&J
Not that satisfying for a change. Too many clues that were lacking something or just not very good. Spoonerisms are ok when clever or funny but not this time. 15 letter not really cryptic clue. etc.
Sorry – maybe just not my thing
COTD: HANDS DOWN (I like the point made by PostMark@1. Still the clue is pretty good. My HANDS were almost up before I got there).
Loved DISGUISE (front to back, all good), UNCHASTE (pure joy!) and SIGMA (totally appealing! A near-CAD (summer beginning=S), adding another layer).
Thanks Quince and B&J
PostMark beat me to the comment on HANDS DOWN but still like the clue. Beaten on several today but they all seem gettable in hindsight. I thought the second word in 29a was MESSAGE and couldn’t think of a first word to go with it. Drat! I like a challenge that takes me just just past my limit and this fits the bill nicely.
I really enjoyed this – HANDS DOWN was my favourite PDM for quite a while (and quite a while it took me at the end!).
Thanks Quince & B&J.
LOi 13a HANDS DOWN – but it’s only second best. I failed to parse 15a D IN NERS (well done B&J for getting it) – It beat me, so it has to be COTD.
Here’s an Ancient Greek SPELLING MISTAKE. It’s from the 472/471 BC ostracism of Themistocles, son of Neocles.
Only the voter has misspelt his name as ThemisTHocles. I wonder if it counted.
[I’d like to see ostracism introduced in the UK, especially for the person receiving the ‘lift and separate’ treatment for 16d NEGLIGEE]
Thanks Q & B&J
Whenever I know a setter has me beaten I kind of lose heart and completely miss answers to clues I would solve in another puzzle. This happened today on 3 or 4 clues and there were another few I was never going to solve/parse.
I thought HEADLINES was an outstanding clue and my favourite today.
Even with B&J’s excellent blog it has still taken me quite some time to realise what facility meant in HANDS DOWN.
Thanks to B&J for their usual 1st class work, and to Quince for the reality check.
Thanks both. Comments here suggest different levels of enjoyment, but I certainly got along with it very well. HANDS DOWN is to be admired, and the hands are sufficiently down for it to work in my view, and whilst I agree SPELLING MISTAKE seemed not so cryptic once solved, it was cryptic enough to hold out for a while. I suspect Ms Daniels will be making crossword HEADLINES for a while.
Thanks both. My experience was very like Postmark’s and Hovis’s, I also originally had unparsed LINGERIE and MESSAGE. So EMI but I was pleased eventually to sort it all out. My personal favourite was HANDS DOWN which I think is close enough and made me laugh. No hope of parsing DINNERS…