Chandler is more commonly seen as a setter of Quiptics and Quick Cryptics, but has upped the difficulty level a little in this puzzle. There are some easier clues too, with a couple of nice anagrams, and elegant surfaces. Thanks to Chandler.
| Across | ||||||||
| 8 | MUTINEER | Term in use possibly with no end of churches for Christian, say (8) Anagram of TERM IN USE less [churche]S, referring to Fletcher Christian of Mutiny on the Bounty fame |
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| 9 | NOUGHT | Duck in middle of canal looked for when sun is out (6) [ca]N[al] + SOUGHT (looked for) less S[un]. A duck is a score of 0 in cricket |
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| 10 | SPECTRUM | Colourful band from special city snubbed president (8) SP. + EC (postal district of the City of London) + TRUM[p] |
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| 11 | NUMPTY | Dimwit put many off after scrubbing article (6) Anagram of PUT MANY less A (indefinite article) |
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| 12 | NATURAL DISASTER | Supermarket among restaurants stricken in flood, maybe (7,8) ALDI in RESTAURANTS* |
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| 15 | STATE | Declare condition (5) Double definition |
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| 16 | DIVER | Amusements (not half) for one working in a suit (5) Half of DIVERsions |
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| 20 | BY TRIAL AND ERROR | Andorra terribly treated in an experimental way? (2,5,3,5) (ANDORRA TERRIBLY)* |
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| 21 | TRAVEL | Insurable activity held in extra velodrome (6) Hidden in exTRA VELodrome |
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| 23 | DISPATCH | Circling resort, abandon speed (8) SPA (resort) in DITCH (bandon) |
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| 25 | POTTER | One engaged in break, perhaps, gets to move with little energy (6) Double definition – one playing snooker, and to potter about |
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| 26 | SANCERRE | Anglican bishop into sound tipple (8) CE (Anglican) + RR (bishop) in SANE (sound) |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 1 | OUTPLAY | Perform better than leader of party cutting expenditure (7) P[arty] in OUTLAY |
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| 2 | DISCOUNTER | Cheap outlet with 70s music and a French name losing money (10) DISCO (70s music) + UN (French “a”) + TERM less M[oney] |
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| 3 | WEAR | Sport seen in Jarrow earlier (4) Hidden in jarroW EARlier |
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| 4 | BROMIDE | Dim bore concocted placatory statement (7) (DIM BORE)* |
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| 5 | ON ONE’S MIND | Performing individual with singular object of concern? (2,4,4) ON (performing) + ONE (individual) + S[ingular] + MIND (to object) |
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| 6 | GUAM | Revolutionary face encapsulating a US territory (4) A in reverse of MUG (face) |
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| 7 | CHUTNEY | Husband in trim overturned longing for Indian food (7) H in CUT (to trim) + reverse of YEN |
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| 13 | ART GALLERY | Paul S’s partner in Paris to go over unknown site with a collection? (3,7) ART G (Garfunkel, singing partner of Paul Simon) + ALLER (French “to go”) + Y (unknown) |
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| 14 | SHEARWATER | Tar was here at sea to locate marine bird (10) (TAR WAS HERE)* |
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| 17 | CYPRIOT | Islander clearly disheartened facing start of public disorder (7) C[learl]Y + P[ublic] + RIOT |
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| 18 | FADDIST | Duke defending a theologian, one given to temporary obsession? (7) A DD (Doctor of Divinity, theologian) in FIST (duke, as in “put your dukes up”) |
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| 19 | CONCURS | Agrees with Italian and French priests (not English) (7) CON (Italian “with”) + CURÉS less E |
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| 22 | VETO | Sanction over Eton excluding outsiders (4) Remove the outer letters of oVEr eTOn |
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| 24 | SINK | Decline feature in a kitchen (4) Double definition |
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Managed to complete this and fully parse them all as well, which is rare for me. A fairly gentle start to the week so far.
Thanks to Chandler and Andrew.
Harry, Denis … oh snooker – got there in the end 🙂
Top ticks for FADDIST and SANCERRE. And another visit from the setters’ favourite supermarket ALDI
About right for a Tuesday
Cheers A&C
Thanks Chandler and Andrew
Some gave me a bit on thought. Favourite NOUGHT for the misleading definition.
Andrew – I don’t think object is part of the definition for 5d, as it’s needed for the wordplay.
Thanks – 5d corrected (I blame the heat) A
A steady solve for me, and very enjoyable. Like bodycheetah@2, I particularly liked FADDIST and SANCERRE. And MUTINEER was fun. Thanks to C & A.
Muffin @3. Yes that looks like a misunderlining at 5d because Andrew does have MIND as part of the wordplay in his parsing.
This went in fairly well to begin with, thanks mainly to the big anagrams, but SANCERRE held me up for ages at the end.
Another who liked POTTER.
I don’t usually do the Quiptic or Quick Cryptic puzzles, which are Chandler’s more familiar surroundings but I thought this was a very good Tuesday cryptic and I really enjoyed it.
There were some really neat constructions, clever anagrams, smooth surfaces and misleading definitions – plenty to keep me interested throughout.
I particularly enjoyed NATURAL DISASTER, BY TRIAL AND ERROR, SANCERRE, ART GALLERY, CYPRIOT and CONCURS. I also smiled at the lovely NUMPTY, a favourite word of my Scottish husband’s. I only discovered when I checked it today that it is actually Scottish in origin but I’m sure we used it as children.
Many thanks to Chandler for a very pleasant start to the day and to Andrew, as always, for a fine blog.
Quirky in parts and quite enjoyable.
Favourites: CYPRIOT, CONCURS, ART GALLERY, SANCERRE.
I was unsure about 25ac ‘one engaged in break perhaps’ but guessed it had something to do with billiards or pool. Oh, I see…. snooker.
Thank goodness all the four-letter specimens gave me an easy start – the clues got much harder as the answers got longer. I liked the misleadingly religious surface for MUTINEER, Paul S’s partner in ART GALLERY, the flooded supermarket in NATURAL DISASTER and the POTTER making a break. Took ages to remember the SHEARWATER, and I finally gave up on SANCERRE. Didn’t know the NUMPTY had a Scottish origin: thanks to the Scots for such a useful word!
That was enjoyable, once I had dismissed all thoughts of the World Cup and Christian wasn’t Pulisic, Potter not Graham and Andorra not the victim of a VAR controversy.
Very entertaining, and I had plenty of ticks. DISCOUNTER had a lovely story-telling surface, “Cheap outlet with 70s music and a French name losing money”. MUTINEER was good for the misleading use of “Christian”. ART GALLERY was great for “Paul S’s partner” = ART G. (Slightly reminiscent of the classic “Friend of Caesar, J, or the opposite (7)”.)
Many thanks Chandler and Andrew.
I did double check the setter as this was quite a bit tougher than usual for Chandler. Had to reveal the unknown SANCERRE but with a few gentle short clues and the anagrams I managed to complete the rest with DIVER putting up quite the fight.
Some nice clues in this.
Thanks Chandler and Andrew
Nicely done, with lovely long anagrams and misdirections such as MUTINEER. Other ticks for SANCERRE, DISCOUNTER, ART GALLERY and NUMPTY following on from the snubbed president, where an ellipsis would have worked nicely.
Ta Chandler & Andrew.
This was good, but I really struggled with DIVER, FADDIST and SANCERRE. I know my boozes, but not my religious abbreviations, which I realise I really have to around here. It was useful to have DISPATCH again to lock down the knowledge from earlier this month.
MUTINEER, NOUGHT, the long ones, DISCOUNTER and ART GALLERY all good fun.
Thank you Chandler and Andrew
Lots to like here, and for me a good degree of difficulty. As always I did not know the bird, but having pencilled in WATER, the rest was inevitable and confirmed with a quick web search.
I particularly liked 13D, ART GALLERY
Thanks Chandler and Andrew
Thrown by 24d which I has as PASS.
As usual, I started swiftly and finished slowly, failing to parse ON ONE’S MIND. I liked the CHRISTIAN mutineer, the duck in the middle of a canal with NOUGHT (NOUGHTIES yesterday), the good anagram for NATURAL DISASTER with the useful supermarket, and the theologian FADDIST.
Thanks Chandler and Andrew.
Finished most last night, but a few defeated me. I specially liked DISPATCH.
I have even less grasp of snooker than of cricket, of which realm I have a dim grasp.. Potter was one of my defeats.
But fun all around. Thanks, Chandler and Andrew.
I did solve this but was surprised how many I couldn’t parse – until I came here and realised that I had never heard of quite a lot of the elements – such as dukes for fists, Fletcher Christian, RR, Y as unknown, and the snooker reference. Given all that, I did quite well!
Like gladys, I got off to a flying Quiptic-style start with many of the shorter answers, and indeed I liked enough of the puzzle overall, with NOUGHT being my favourite. But I wasn’t taken with some items.
I can see that MUTINEER (it was likely to be that from the checkers) might have been fun if you’d heard of the character (though even then only as a back-parse presumably), but the def is utterly mystifying if you haven’t. I’m not a fan of that kind of clue. I also thought DIVER and POTTER were quite a stretch; gettable, I guess, but.. enjoyable?
I think I just don’t like puzzles with a wide difficulty (or in this case, obscurity) range. I like to know what I’m getting, largely for the aesthetics but also to be able to allot time adecuately.
Nevertheless, thanks to Chandler for the challenge. I won’t shed many tears if I never come across the word FADDIST again though! And of course tx to our blogger.
AP @19
I take your point about MUTINEER, but I doubt that any would be as well known as Fletcher Christian (Mutiny on the Bounty, Captain Bligh etc.)
[I remember reading that Christian was distantly related to royals, so Pitcairn Island (where they settled) has the highest percentage of royal blood in any population!]
I found this quite tough. I failed to parse POTTER, NOUGHT, SANCERRE and ON ONES MIND but got them all right. I fell for the Christian misdirection. Despite all this I enjoyed it but it was a slow solve.
Thanks Chandlers and Andrew.
My advice to anyone who hadn’t heard of Fletcher Christian is to watch The Bounty from 1984, and then see if you can stop yourself from constantly impersonating Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh: NO SIR THANK YOU MISTER CHRISTIAN NO THANK YOU SIR DAMN YOUR EYES!
Am I the only one who thought of Charlie Christian?
That was a really good crossword. Didn’t take overly long but it was quite tricky. I got left with 16a and thought ‘_I_E_? I’ll never get this’ then thought of diving suit.
Probably, Zoot @24. Less well-known these days, I suspect, than the MUTINEER, and only 7 letters.
I took one look at the clue and immediately thought ‘Fletcher’, seeing through any intended misdirection. A more careful reading of the clue put me right, and I was off.
Zoot@24, possibly. I immediately thought of Christian McBride, and was looking for a solution about Scottish weddings.
I liked this puzzle, and I concur with everything Eileen said @6. Like Ianw@25, my last one in was 16 DIVER, and it immediately became my favourite.
Thanks Chandler for the amusing diversion, and Andrew for the excellent blog.
I loved Paul S, and learning that you can’t spell natural disaster without the supermarket!
Defeated by my newest acquaintance Mr Christian, and Sancerre (I forgot tipple can mean the cause, rather than the effect).
Many thanks to Chandler for a great crossword, and to Andrew for the blog!
I’m not sure that the makers of Sancerre would be all that delighted by it being referred to as a “tipple”!
A bit more challenging than a Chandler Quiptic but not overly so IMO. Got going with 20a and 14d initially and then moved south to north. The NW corner clues were my last ones in. I think ART GALLERY was my overall favourite but there was a lot to enjoy I felt. Thanks Andrew for the blog, and Chandler for the puzzle.
I think the clue that Lord Jim @10 recollects:
Friend of Caesar, J, or the opposite (7)
is a bit better than the ART GALLERY one. For one, you need to know the French for to go for this one.
Thank you for the blog.
In 10a, how do you know that “snubbed ” means removing a letter from TRUMP, and then which end of the word to take it from?
We enjoyed this one. Some easy, some harder as Andrew suggested.
We will have to try some SINCERRE wines: new to us.
Thanks to Chandler and Andrew.
Hi Steffen. This is one of those clues that can fall two ways, either guess the answer and then parse it – I thought of rainbow first, but not enough letters, so then it had to be SPECTRUM – or look at the wordplay and see if it suggests a word. SP is a standard abbreviation for ‘special’ and EC is the postcode for the City of London, so we’ve got SPEC____. Yes, there is nothing to say which letter comes off the president’s name, but it would be normal, as here, to take off the final letter, as the setter is more likely to use something like ‘doesn’t start’ or ‘loses head’ if it’s the first letter. A ‘snub’ nose is one that looks shorter because it turns up a little at the end.
STEFFEN@32: It’s a good question. What we have here (imho) is an adjective ‘snub’ being used as a verb. Since the adjective means ‘short’ or ‘shortened’ (snub-nosed) the verb by extension (ironically) can be taken to mean ‘shorten’. So ‘trump’ gets shortened by whatever means, in this case by dropping the last letter.
Steffen @32, sheffield hatter @34. [First, Steffen, why is your contributor name suddenly in uppercase? And, by the way. I have recently responded to your last query on Newbies Corner.}
Back to the clue. I take ‘snubbed’ in one sense to mean ‘cut off’ – as in to cut someone off socially, or to ‘ghost’ them in contemporary parlance. Which end to ‘cut off’? Well, as hatter says. you already have ‘sp’ = special’ and ‘ec’ = city.. Instinctively, like hatter, I would say at the end, and besides, what sense would SPECRUMP make?
Balfour @26,Cellomaniac@27. I felt sure both of you would respond if you visited, but I wondered if anyone else might. I was fishing, really. I don’t know how many aficionados are on here.
Balfour @26,Cellomaniac@27. I felt sure both of you would respond if you visited, but I wondered if anyone else might. I was fishing, really. I don’t know how many aficionados are on here. I should have thought of the MUTINEER first, as his first name is my surname.
Nice solve right in my difficulty level. I came here mainly to check on SANCERRE, which I learned today is a wine-growing region. I couldn’t parse the RR part, as I’ve never heard of that as related to ‘bishop’. Thanks to Chandler and Andrew.
Thank you 34, 35 & 36.
I didn’t have a clue about EC.
I have no idea why my name has changed; the alteration has not been accompanied by any improvement in my solving abilities!
This seemed relatively friendly at first, but the lower half gave me a lot of grief, partly because of a misprint in one of my solutions. Stuck a long time on my last two, 26a SANCERRE (guessed correctly, unparsed), and 25a POTTER (which I got wrong, guessing LOITER over TOTTER)
I mostly enjoyed the puzzle, but unlike Eileen@6 I found the surfaces generally unconvincing. Favourites 8a MUTINEER (misleading definition), 11a NUMPTY (great word, nho), 21a TRAVEL (interesting definition), 18d FADDIST (“Duke” = FIST)
Thanks both
Thanks all, enjoyed this alot. I am going to start attempting the cryptic everyday instead of just mondays and Sundays over the summer so hopefully they aren’t too much harder than this! Why can sun and money be abbreviated to their first letters? I find it much easier to remember abbreviations if I know why.
Eddie27@41, S for sun will come from astronomy I assume, and M for money from Economics. The first I take on trust having never personally seen it, but the second has been explained on here in the past. So it occurred to me to see what ChatGPT has to say:
In economics and macroeconomics, M is very commonly used to denote the money supply. For example:
M = money supply (generic)
M1 = narrow money (cash and highly liquid deposits)
M2 = broader money measure
M3 = even broader measure (used in some jurisdictions, including the euro area)
Examples:
“An increase in M may lead to higher inflation if output remains constant.”
“The central bank expanded M2 through asset purchases.”
“The growth rate of M3 slowed during the quarter.”
I should have guessed that AI would get straight to the point. I guess that’s going to be handy whenever any of us have similar questions (which we often do!)
Thanks AP, that was very helpful
So after spending a week on this, and judicious use of the check all, this blog is how I discover that this puzzle was somehow mislabelled as a Monday one. Ouch.
SHEARWATER was a jorum for me — very satisfying to work it out from the wordplay and find out that it actually exists!
Snooker is a closed book to me, so I didn’t understand 25ac (POTTER), but I managed to guess it.
I did wonder about whether everyone would know that dukes are fists. That’s definitely old-timey slang. I thought it might be specifically American, but the dictionaries don’t seem to back me up on that. Some even speculate that it’s rhyming slang: duke = duke of york = fork, but then you have to know that “fork” is (apparently) slang for fist.
Steffen@32, we’re no experts but in some instances using your best guess and then trying to parse it is the way to go. And often more fun.