Maybe it was just me, but I found this one quite an odd experience. For me, it was one where the answers flowed in easily enough (no obscure GK or unusual words) but where the detailed parsing of several of the clues was quite challenging. Net result is I am frankly unsure whether I have successfully got fully to the bottom of three of the clues - 8a, 5d and 16d. I might have, but then again...
I started (as a virgin blogger) blogging the QC with puzzle number 3 over two years ago, and have blogged every fortnight since then: I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever posted a QC blog where I have been plagued by doubts about any of the parsing - and when three come along in the same puzzle, it is a bit discombobulating! Lest I be misunderstood, that is in no way a complaint - on the contrary, it was a stimulating and enjoyable puzzle - but is intended as an indicator of the trickiness of some of the clues as far as I was concerned.
Anyway, I'll be very interested to hear what others thought. Thanks to Pedro for an exhausting experience!
On edit: thanks to all for the explanations re. the ones that eluded me. I should have picked up the pun in 8a and the deployment of the "standard" Crosswordland idiom in 16d (whether that idiom is so old hat as to be of questionable merit is a different debate...): a chastening experience for your humble blogger!
Definitions underlined: DD = double definition: Anagrams indicated by *(--)
I started (as a virgin blogger) blogging the QC with puzzle number 3 over two years ago, and have blogged every fortnight since then: I can honestly say this is the first time I have ever posted a QC blog where I have been plagued by doubts about any of the parsing - and when three come along in the same puzzle, it is a bit discombobulating! Lest I be misunderstood, that is in no way a complaint - on the contrary, it was a stimulating and enjoyable puzzle - but is intended as an indicator of the trickiness of some of the clues as far as I was concerned.
Anyway, I'll be very interested to hear what others thought. Thanks to Pedro for an exhausting experience!
On edit: thanks to all for the explanations re. the ones that eluded me. I should have picked up the pun in 8a and the deployment of the "standard" Crosswordland idiom in 16d (whether that idiom is so old hat as to be of questionable merit is a different debate...): a chastening experience for your humble blogger!
Definitions underlined: DD = double definition: Anagrams indicated by *(--)
| Across | |
| 1 | Desire is seen in women's hearts (4) |
| WISH - IS appears between ('seen in') W (abbrev. women's) and H (abbrev. hearts in bridge notation) | |
| 3 | Former schoolfellows no longer ill? That's not made clear (8) |
| OBSCURED - OBS (abbrev. old boys - former schoolfellows) + CURED (no longer ill) | |
| 8 | One's work on plot includes a clash of blades (4-5) |
| LAWN MOWER - This one, my friends, drove me nuts. Had I just been a solver, I'd have cheerfully slapped the answer in from cross checkers and enough in the clue (plot, blades) to point to Lawn Mower, and moved on. However, as your humble blogger, I do not have the luxury of "biffing". I therefore went on a hunt for some kind of definition and wordplay. Of course, hunts can rapidly turn into nightmarish experiences if you start to doubt whether there is actually a quarry at all! After an unfeasible amount of time spent looking for bits of anagrams, hiddens, lifts and separates and every other ploy known to our daily tormentors, I gave up. And then I had what I think might be a penny drop moment - maybe this is one of those relative rarities (at least in Quickie country), a "Semi & lit" with "one's" (i.e. the lawn mower's) work etc. etc. I'll refrain from dwelling too long on the fact that if there is a "clash of blades" your mower has a serious problem and, in a normal scenario, the mower's blades will not clash. Or maybe I've finally lost the plot altogether. On edit: see explanations below; the key to the clue is the "pun" based around two meanings of blade - mower blade and blade of grass. Kicking myself for not spotting that... | |
| 10 | Amount of money curtailed enjoyment (3) |
| FUN - FUN | |
| 11 | No rag, badly edited, may be considered a newspaper (5) |
| ORGAN - *(NO RAG) with "badly edited" as the anagrind | |
| 12 | Line in magazine included in a morning mix (7) |
| AMALGAM - MA{L}G (line in magazine) inside (included in) A AM (a morning) | |
| 13 | Necessitate angry speech after conflict (7) |
| WARRANT - RANT (angry speech) follows (after) WAR (conflict) | |
| 18 | Difficult bottling oxygen for store (5) |
| HOARD - HARD (difficult) with O (symbol for Oxygen) included (bottling) | |
| 19 | Marine activity not quite sound in part of aircraft (7) |
| WHALING - HAL | |
| 20 | I simpered awkwardly, showing skin (9) |
| EPIDERMIS - *(I SIMPERED) with "awkwardly" as the anagrind | |
| 22 | Manage failure, letting one go (3) |
| RUN - RU[I]N (failure minus the I - 'letting one go') | |
| 23 | Plaything most of you duplicated (2-2) |
| YO YO - YO[U] (most of you - i.e. last letter removed) repeated (duplicated) | |
| 24 | Request core part of French agreement (8) |
| ENTREATY - EN (core part of FrENch) + TREATY (agreement) | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Surprised exclamation about blight in wood (6) |
| WILLOW - ILL (blight) 'in' WOW (surprised exclamation) | |
| 2 | Work with needle, taking a long time, and waste material (6) |
| SEWAGE - SEW (work with needle) + AGE (a long time) | |
| 4 | Greeting first parts of body of work (3) |
| BOW - First letters (first parts) of Body Of Work | |
| 5 | Machine in the wings is the first thing seen in theatre (7-6) |
| CURTAIN RAISER - DD - I think - with the first being (I guess) a reference to a contraption used to raise the theatrical curtain (which said contraption would, one assumes, be located in the wings) and the second being the more frequent usage of the first act on stage. Must admit I'd never really thought about the process behind the curtain going up, but I assume it must be mechanised (as opposed to a couple of burly blokes on each side of the stage tugging at ropes as if erecting sails on a yacht). Or maybe I've gone completely haywire here! | |
| 6 | Shelter sports official, very large for a Cockney (6) |
| REFUGE - REF (sports official) + [H]UGE (very large with the aitch dropped in Cockney style) | |
| 7 | Busy person ruined Monday (6) |
| DYNAMO - *(MONDAY) with "ruined" as the anagrind | |
| 9 | Maltreat new worker interrupting bloke (9) |
| MANHANDLE - N HAND (new worker) inside (interrupting) MALE (bloke) | |
| 12 | Weapon taking top off simple cart (5) |
| ARROW - [B]ARROW - the 'simple cart' loses its first letter (top off) | |
| 14 | Friendly call receiving reduced attention (6) |
| CHEERY - CRY (call) 'receiving' HEE[D] (attention - heed - 'reduced') | |
| 15 | Speak about idiot making sense (6) |
| SANITY - SAY (speak) around (about) NIT (idiot) | |
| 16 | Mountainous country - I make a mistake entering it (6) |
| SIERRA - Whilst the answer became clear with the arrival of a couple of cross checkers and the word 'mountainous' at the beginning of the clue, I was a tad unsure about the full parsing here. We clearly have I ERR (I make a mistake) entering something; I originally thought that something was SA (being an abbreviation of South Africa = 'country'): however, for this to work our definition would be 'Mountainous', whereas I would have thought 'mountainous country' would be the more likely definition for SIERRA. On second thoughts, I think maybe I'm being too rigid in my analysis of clue construction here, and we are simply being given a steer towards a word meaning mountainous country that includes I ERR and with no specific clueing of the SA bit... All views gratefully received! On edit: again, your blogger fell over - much egg on face. Thanks to those who put me straight: the IT in the clue is the old crossword device equating to "sex appeal" - in turn abbreviated to SA. | |
| 17 | Information collected by a heartless county organisation (6) |
| AGENCY - GEN 'collected' by A C | |
| 21 | Fellow one's pulled from the sea (3) |
| MAN - MAIN (sea) losing I (one's pulled) | |