Times Quick Cryptic 1666 by Corelli – feel the heat

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Cap’n Corelli in good form, producing a very challenging puzzle with a sting in the tail and a theme. Click ‘read more’ for more details.

Slow, quick slow for me today with the SW proving very tricky at the end. I made a terrible and unnecessary hash of 1ac which slowed things down. I don’t think this will suit newcomers looking for fast completions but will be savoured by the old stagers and those who enjoy a good, chewy solve (unless you happen to strike lucky in a biff fest). I ended up satisfied and quite pleased to have completed in 11 minutes.

Events at 1 and 5 across on Thursday 6th September in the year of the number of this puzzle are referenced in 1dn and 9dn and possibly 11ac.

ACROSS

1. Boxer taking in r-row leading to afters? (7)
PUDDING – boxer (dog – PUG) taking in r-row – a stuttering row (D-DIN). I thought, initially that this was a tough start which I had no hope of without checkers. This was entirely unnecessary. Even when it could be nothing other than pudding, I waited until the blog to understand the clue. I got hopelessly messed up by reading ‘affairs’ rather than ‘afters’ whilst solving. Before I managed to read the clue properly, I had managed to come up with the all-too-flimsy definition ‘leading to affairs?’ referring to what was left in Thomas Farynor’s oven overnight which led to the affairs of the next morning i.e. the great fire of London!
5. Aircraft abandoning its initial path (4)
LANE – initial letter missing from aircraft p(LANE).
7. Prove wrong potato perhaps has been sent back (5)
REBUT – potato is an example of a tuber – backwards=REBUT.
8. Artist in East End district, one using a series of colours (7)
RAINBOW – artist (RA), in East End district (IN BOW).
10. Little jerk not quite recalling quote (3)
TIC – backwards of quote without the last letter e(TIC).
11. Remiss not to initially put on short nightdress (9)
NEGLIGENT – (N)ot (T)o put on the end of nightdress without the last letter (NEGLIGE)e.
13. Minister‘s peculiar circle (6)
CLERIC – anagram (peculiar) of CIRCLE.
14. Old person using their teeth in passing (6)
OBITER – old (O) person using their teeth (BITER). As in obiter dicta – remarks ‘in passing’.
17. The desire of Billy No-Mates? (5,4)
NANNY GOAT – cryptic definition. COD for this delve into the erotic fantasies of a mate-less billy goat.
19. Bird unable to fly, somewhat bemused (3)
EMU – Some of b(EMU)sed.
20. Caught noise from empty tummy finding pudding (7)
CRUMBLE – another pudding reference. Caught (C), noise from empty tummy (RUMBLE).
22. Finish in French in front of Irish politicians (3,2)
END UP – ‘in’ in French (EN), Irish politicians (DUP).
23. Inferno you witness got finally put out (4)
OUST – infern(O) yo(U) witnes(S) go(T).
24. Attempt to swathe girl, in place of skin treatment (7)
TANNERY – attempt (TRY) to swathe girl (ANNE).

DOWN

1. Like fireworks going off in porch etc, around end of day (11)
PYROTECHNIC – anagram (going off) of IN PORCH ETC around da(Y).
2. Disaster when large taxi reverses into river (7)
DEBACLE – as in my misread of 1ac! Large (L) and taxi (CAB) backwards inside river (DEE).
3. Fashionable decades provided unknown boost (9)
INTENSIFY – fashionable (IN) decades (TENS), provided (IF), unknown (Y). Did I tell you about once looking for a birthday present for someone called Justin? Hanging over the new range section was a large sign saying JUST IN.
4. Auto business backing for example a charity event (6)
GARAGE – all backwards of for example (EG), a (A), charity event (RAG).
5. Garland that is left upside down (3)
LEI – this time it’s all upwards (which is backwards) – that is (IE), left (L).
6. Enjoy ballet every so often, being aristocratic (5)
NOBLE – e(N)j(O)y (B)a(L)l(E)t.
9. Wet spray plus short, weird thing needed for firefighting (5,6)
WATER SUPPLY – anagram (weird) of (WET SPRAY PLU)s.
12. Some certain bet we enjoy, amongst other things (2-7)
IN-BETWEEN – some of certa(IN BET WE EN)joy.
15. Related to dance, it gets your feet moving! (7)
TREADLE – anagram (to dance) of RELATED.
16. Dress right for a boy (6)
ROBERT – dress (ROBE), right (RT).
18. Gold in vase turned up in Pacific Island (5)
NAURU – gold (AU) inside URN – turned up (NRU). NHO this tiny dot in the Pacific west of Paula New Guinea and 33 miles south of the equator.
21.Flutter to be in (3)
BAT – double definition. The first eluded me for a long time – to flutter/bat ones eyelashes/lids. To be in, in cricket, is to bat. I so nearly biffed BET but resisted and then stared (with un-batted eyes) at this. I got it via the cricket term yet it still took ages to get the flutter bit.

66 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1666 by Corelli – feel the heat”

  1. All straightforward for the most part (I didn’t stop to parse PUDDING, which was obvious from the checking letters). But I spent a good three minutes or so on the BAT / OUST crossing, which I found exceptionally tricky… I had the totally wrong idea for the wordplay on OUST. And don’t you just hate it when you have one letter of a three letter word and can’t guess it?!
  2. PUDDING LANE is also surely part of the theme. Maybe also DEBACLE and INTENSIFY?
  3. Same experience as Vinyl give or take a minute. With B-T as my LOI and FLUTTER as the definition there was no hope of avoiding the bear trap even though I couldnt see the parsing. I did think this was quite tough but no complaints – indeed, some nice clues.

    Thanks Corelli and Chris

  4. Over 20m and a pink square for INTENSITY not INTENSIFY. I’d feel worse but only 11 of 28 submissions on the early leaderboard are all correct! Couldn’t parse PUDDING even though I had pug as possibly a sort of boxer. For my pink square I had IN, TENS and Y so can’t be sure why I failed to get IF from ‘provided’ except that I was keen to get this over with and had found a word that fitted! NHO of NAURU but generously clued and also NHO of OBITER. TANNERY was LOI.
  5. 13 minutes as yesterday, so continuing my patchy run that’s lasted for 2 weeks now.

    As soon as I saw the name of the setter I was on the lookout for a theme and this makes 3 consecutive Ninas from Corelli. Last time out we had ‘Little Dorritt’ and the time before it was ‘Hamlet’. On a previous occasion the theme was ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’. In fact this is a sort of milestone puzzle for Corelli as it is his 20th starting with his first appearance on 26th March 2014 when the QC was in its infancy, making an average of 3 puzzles per year.

    I enjoyed the ‘Billy No-Mates’ clue.

    Edited at 2020-07-28 07:14 am (UTC)

  6. When I saw the number of the puzzle I was on the look out for a fire of London theme and the first two across clues showed me that Corelli wasn’t going to disappoint . Most of this went in fairly quickly but I got held up in the SW with unknown Island, CRUMBLE, BAT and OUST, which needed an alphabet trawl. Thankfully I resisted the temptation to bif BET. Finished in 10.08 with my favourite being CRUMBLE.
    Thanks to chris for the blog and Corelli for the entertaining puzzle.
  7. Was expecting a theme of this sort today and was good to see it handled so well by Corelli. Managed to whip through most of this quickly but then ended up stranded for a bit on OBITER which I hadn’t heard of – even though it made sense from the parsing, it looked like such an odd word I didn’t put it in for about 5 minutes. 15:14
  8. I avoided the “bet” bear trap and completed in just over 9 mins … but a rushed “intensity” meant one pink square. Drat!
  9. Thank you Chris for pointing out the theme. I didn’t spot it. I was aware that I had to wrestle with most of the clues. FOI was an easy one LANE. Some clues I typed in a definition and parsed while typing e.g. GARAGE. I wanted to put in BeT instead of BAT but it just didn’t work so a quick alphabet trawl resolved the issue. I did bung in NANNY GOAT but wondered if I had missed something in the cluing. My LOI was the NHO OBITER (similar to obituary?) but fairly clued. Quite a work out at 14:25 but enjoyable nonetheless.
  10. Spotted the theme after finishing in 15 mins, dotted throughout the answers and clues.

    Held up by last 3: nanny goat, parsing took a while even though I could see it had to be, robert, and LOI the dnk Nauru.

    Had bet for a while, until the doubt over the parsing caused me to return.
    COD crumble or obiter.

    thanks

  11. What a cracking puzzle, one to savour. Lots of hard (for a QC) but fair clues, with plenty of enjoyable penny drops – including the Nina, which jumped out from the top line when looking at the puzzle post solve! I was another who lost time over “bet” and I also tried very hard to make “tug” work for the “little jerk”. it took me 14 mins but I’m still giving this a Good Day because I thought it was up a level and none of the worse for it.

    FOI LANE, LOI TREADLE, COD NANNY GOAT. Many thanks to Corelli and Chris.

    Templar

  12. A very good puzzle but I found it very tough. I was in the high 20s and spent a lot of time in the SW corner after a jumpy ride around the grid. The old hands above seem to have had a little difficulty but I would have been happy to have seen a time within my usual target and close to theirs. Thanks to Corelli and now to get more out of it with help from Chris’s blog. John M.
  14. I put if bet for flutter but that was a fair cop. Don’t like 1a at all – feels like the setter was a bit desperate to find an extra d – maybe just me! thanks setter and blogger anyway.
    1. I agree, also no idea how you get pug from boxer, the two are completely unrelated apart from being dogs. You could equally well have England as the clue for crockery because England = country = China = crockery
      1. pug, short for pugilist, rather than any canine reference. Crosswordese, rather than standard English..
        1. We crossed! But not crosswordese, I think, as it’s a recognised slang usage listed in more than one of the usual sources.

          Edited at 2020-07-28 01:22 pm (UTC)

        1. Interesting – thanks. I didn’t feel the need to look further than the canine approach. Collins has:

          A pug is a small, fat, short-haired dog with a flat face.

          A boxer is a dog with short hair and a rather flat face.

      3. Actually I thought it might be a breed of boxer dog and let it slip under my radar. Apparently it’s short for pugilist so nothing to do with dogs after all 🙂
  15. … but it was a struggle, and took me 17 minutes with 1A Pudding left unparsed, and 5D Lei not a word I have met before. But in the first case the checkers and in the second case the cluing gave the only possible answers.

    Bat-bet-bit-bot-but – tried to make a case for all 5 of them before eventually deciding that it couldn’t be Bet because it didn’t parse at all, and so had to be Bat.

    I spotted the first two across clues and the connection to 1666 but is it really a full Nina with only 3 or 4 (or at most 5 if one is generous) linked answers?

    A tough workout, and I’m relieved more experienced solvers also found it so. Thanks to Chris for the blog.

    Cedric

  16. Felt good when I finished in 12:51 with ROBERT; but the computer said Unlucky.
    I had put BET =Flutter and not thought too hard about the rest.
    My mistake. A good puzzle.COD to CRUMBLE. David
  17. ….and I “bet” I’m not Billy No-Mates on that score. COD TREADLE.
  18. I really struggled with this and finished after 32 minutes only to find INTENSITY and BET were wrong. Perhaps I should have got them as I could see the wordplay didn’t fit, but it was at the end of a difficult solve.
    As usual the theme passed me by, thanks to Chris for pointing it out.

    Brian

  19. About average for me with a time of around 18 minutes but alas INTENSITY for INTENSIFY. Also managed, solving on paper, to overlook 10ac entirely! Oh well, there’s always tomorrow. I didn’t notice the puzzle number and therefore the theme passed me by completely (nothing new about that).

    FOI – 7ac REBUT
    LOI – 3dn unparsed and wrong!
    COD – 2dn DEBACLE for the smooth surface

    Thanks to Corelli for an enjoyable workout and to Chris for pointing out my errors.

  20. I once worked for part of Butterworths, the publisher. The law publishing company editorial staff had a samizdat newsletter called Obiter Dicta, so that clue fell easily. But I gently fluttered into the betting trap. Billy no-mates definitely COD. Nice puzzle today! Thanks.

    Edited at 2020-07-28 09:58 am (UTC)

  21. Just over 20 minutes for this little cracker, which I found delightfully chewy. Spotted the theme on completion, and thought there might be more to it, but didn’t spot the puzzle number (dumb!). Thanks Corelli and Chris.
  22. Oh, another little story from Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon company. When the Chinese requested the UN that geographical locations be rendered into English in the pinyin system in 1977, Cap’n Bob ordered that the Pergamon Atlas be redone in that system. There are a few funnies that artists in his studio introduced into the published version. Examine closely and you’ll find a couple of towns close to each other called X-mas and Pu-ding.

    Edited at 2020-07-28 10:13 am (UTC)

  23. Happened to spot the number of the puzzle before I started and immediately thought of the Great Fire and wondered if that would be a theme, especially as I recognised Corelli as a setter that has included themes before. Hence I thought of PUDDING straight away for 1a, but couldn’t parse it at all, so I left “pudding” it in. Not for long though, as I then got 5a and decided, parsed or not, PUDDING had to be right. No really severe holdups after that (by my standards), but so many clues were very chewy that I ended up taking 52 minutes. I resisted the “intensity” and “bet” traps though. NHO OBITER or LEI and only parsed 1a and 9d after I’d finished. LOI was 16d. Nauru is the third smallest country in the world, by the way, and with only about 10,000 residents, has the second smallest population (behind the Vatican City).
  24. A very good puzzle but I found it very tough. I was in the high 20s and spent a lot of time in the SW corner after a jumpy ride around the grid. The old hands above seem to have had a little difficulty but I would have been happy to have seen a time within my usual target and close to theirs. Thanks to Corelli and now to get more out of it with help from Chris’s blog. John M.

    Note: I posted this at 8.58 and it has just reappeared here at 10.27 with no involvement from me. I wonder if anybody knows how?

    Edited at 2020-07-28 10:32 am (UTC)

        1. I did that before I saw yours, and luckily it worked.

          Thank you anyway!

          Diana.

  25. Not easy today, I was completely stumped by 17a and needed the blog for an explanation.

    I should have got ROBERT but my mind goes blank when I’m supposed to be thinking of names – a bugbear of mine.

    But I appreciate the Nina, thank you Corelli and Chris.

    Diana

    This is me , I!m getting a message that says “ your login cookie seems to have disappeared”. Any suggestions as to how to get it back gratefully received.

    Deckhandiana

    1. Go to live journal itself and try logging out and in again?

      Edited at 2020-07-28 12:59 pm (UTC)

  26. Twenty minutes of fun, or rather 18 plus a further couple trying to parse 21d Bet before turning to the blog and discovering why it had proved impossible… I did however manage to spot the Nina, but only as I completed loi 5ac, Lane, so not a great deal of help, but since I never normally spot them I still count it as a bonus. CoD to the sun parlour (😉) at 24ac. My thanks to Corelli and Chris. Invariant
  27. Don’t usually do the Quick Cryptic but printed out and did this one as it was flagged as a goodie. Quickly solved in 4 minutes 30 without hold ups, can’t write any faster. Some nice clues though. Liked NANNY GOAT.
  28. Can’t remember the last Corelli puzzle so their themed puzzles must have passed me by, but I found this one too tough.

    After 30 mins still had 9dn and 15dn to complete. No excuse for “Water Supply”, just had a mind fart, but DNK “Treadle”. Upon checking I then found I’d fallen into the “Bet” trap, annoying as I nearly biffed “Tug” for 10ac earlier. So, whilst a good and challenging puzzle, not a successful day.

    One point re: 1dn, part of me wondered whether this should be plural based on the clueing, but that could be me making a grammatical error.

    FOI – 5dn “Lei”
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 2dn “Debacle” – it certainly was for me

    Thanks as usual.

    1. 1dn is OK, I think. This from Collins:
      1. of fireworks
      2. designating or of devices or materials that activate propellants, safety systems, signals, etc. in spacecraft, by igniting or exploding on command
      3. brilliant; dazzling
      pyrotechnic wit
  29. I’m another one who bet on the wrong answer at 21d 🙄 I did notice the number and wondered if there would be a theme, but instantly forgot about it as I started concentrating on the clues! I found this pretty hard with some vocab (OBITER) and clues (17A) that might be more suitable for the biggie. In fact, I didn’t really understand 14a – parsed it loosely by linking the obit part with passing away, and the subtleties of NANNY GOAT passed me by!

    FOI Lane
    LOI Robert
    COD Crumble
    WOD Pyrotechnic
    DNF in 13 mins with one wrong

    Thanks Corelli for the challenge and Chris for the very helpful blog

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