Quick Cryptic 1364 by Joker

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A mixed bag of write-ins and more obscure ones. Not sure I am happy with the rule-breaking 2d, especially in the quickie. Favourite has to be the elegant 9a, LOI (last one in) 14d

Across

1 Redesigned quad with cute water channel (8)
AQUEDUCT – anagram (‘redesigned’) of QUAD CUTE
5 Religious group with 100 in clique (4)
SECT – SET (clique) with C for 100 in
8 Express disapproval: our heartless teacher! (5)
TUTOR – TUT + OR (our without the middle letter)
9 Upbringing having run true to form? (7)
NURTURE – nicely disguised anagram (‘to form’) of RUN TRUE
11 Nothing left at home on returning (3)
NIL – L + IN backwards
12 Angry with procedures as a bishop manoeuvres? (9)
CROSSWAYS – CROSS + WAYS
13 Rebellious group loses its first battle (6)
ACTION – FACTION minus the first letter
15 Muscle initially bulging in chaps exercising pretty solidly (6)
BICEPS – first letters of Bulging In Chaps Exercising Pretty Solidly
18 Go off after desk gets broken and run away (9)
SKEDADDLE – go off is ADDLE, with anagram (‘gets broken’) of DESK on the front.
19 Remain without a home in the country (3)
STY – STAY minus A
20 Iron perhaps used for cores to help cements? (7)
ELEMENT – constructed using the insides of hELp cEMENTs
21 Message with untruth revolving about mother (5)
EMAIL – LIE backwards around MA
22 Extreme features of showy Neo-Gothic harmonise in time (4)
SYNC – first and last letters or ShowY and Neo gothiC
23 Shortly attending church for spirit (8)
PRESENCE – Attending is PRESENT, ‘shortly’ i.e minus the last letter (remember Curarist’s first Law), + CE for church.

Down
1 Worker erected girl’s aerial (7)
ANTENNA – Worker is ANT, girl is ANNE, reversed
2 Jauntily up to appearing in that? (5)
UNTIL – Now hang on. Isn’t there a rule that says the definition is always at the beginning or end of the clue? Hidden word jaUNTILy
3 Company officers give order to make a formal speech (11)
DIRECTORATE – DIRECT + ORATE
4 Preserve Tell’s first functioning part of Switzerland (6)
CANTON – CAN (preserve) + T (Tell’s first) + ON (functioning)
6 School note expected about pet? (7)
EDUCATE – E (note) + DUE around CAT
7 Focus attention on cutting first lock of hair (5)
TRESS – Focus attention on is STRESS, minus the first letter
10 Playing sevens tries always needing to move (11)
RESTIVENESS – anagram (‘playing’) of SEVENS TRIES
14 Metal used for foil when wrapping present in it (7)
THEREIN – TIN (Metal used for foil) around HERE. Straightforward in the end, but I stared at this for ages before I got it.
16 Colour TV company suffering from depression (3,4)
SKY BLUE – SKY (TV company) + BLUE
17 Changer of text in English rubbish I had written up (6)
EDITOR -E (English) + ROT I’D all backwards
18 Species that is missing a means of seeing clearly (5)
SPECS – SPECIES minus IE
19 Spread including whiskey and fish eggs (5)
SPAWN – SPAN with W inside.

31 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1364 by Joker”

  1. I started very quickly but then hit the buffers on several clues.Sky Blue, Sty and Spawn all needed some hard thinking.
    My last two were CROSSWAYS which I managed to parse after much thought and 13a. At 13a I thought it had to begin ANTI and Faction never occurred to me. From the depths, I remembered the Battle of Antioch which I assumed could have variant spellings in the remoter parts of certain dictionaries. So I pressed reveal after 22 minutes and discovered my error.
    Well done Joker. As our blogger says a mixture of easy and very tricky stuff. COD to SKEDADDLE.
    David

    Edited at 2019-05-31 07:08 am (UTC)

  2. Nothing particularly noteworthy; I think THEREIN took me a while. No problem with UNTIL. There’s certainly no rule about where the def goes; I’d go so far as to say (while deferring to Jackkt) that there isn’t a convention. It’s just that it’s not easy to place defs elsewhere.
    1. Yes, perhaps ‘convention’ is overstating it – more of a tip to new solvers trying to find their way around cryptic clues. Tim Moorey mentions it first on Page 8 of ‘How To Master The Times Crossword’ and quotes it extensively throughout the book: “In my experience, beginners find it much easier to decode a cryptic clue when they are told that the definition is almost always either at the beginning or end of the clue, sentence or phrase’.

      On another matter entirely, whilst researching a clue for a puzzle published elsewhere in noticed that Chambers printed editions have ‘K’ as an abbreviation for ‘knight’, and their on-line edition goes further with ‘K (chess): knight’ whilst also listing ‘K (chess): king’! This would surely be confusing for those wanting to decipher the documented moves of a game. Has anyone come across this before? The only alternative I can find for ‘N = knight’ in chess is ‘Kt’ which was apparently used many years ago.

      Edited at 2019-05-31 08:30 am (UTC)

      1. I can confidently assert that the old style chess convention had knight as Kt and the modern convention is knight as N, to avoid confusion with the king, which is K. The two conventions are called the descriptive and algebraic notations, respectively. 🙂
      2. I don’t normally do this–in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever done this–but since Jackkt animadverted the other day (I can’t remember when) on scat, and I don’t know how to contact him directly, I wanted to send him this, which I just stumbled on. I don’t know that it will change his mind, but. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul54NWmwLxs
        1. Kevin, I’m sorry if this appears ungrateful after you have gone to the trouble of posting a link to something that you hope may be of interest to me (for which I thank you), but to be honest the clip demonstrates everything that I dislike about scat singing. I can however appreciate the technical skills involved and under other circumstances I have admired and enjoyed Annie Ross.

          BTW if you ever want to contact LJ posters directly you can do so by clicking on their user-name and at the top of one of their postings and using ‘Send Message’ on their Home Page. There is a facility to switch this method of contact off but the default setting is ‘on’ and most people leave it so. They are then notified of the arrival of the message by separate email.

          Regards
          J

          Edited at 2019-06-01 04:41 pm (UTC)

  3. It took me a while to get my head around the unusually phrased 2d, and THEREIN also took some mental juggling. I wanted to put CROSSWISE at 12a, but was happy enough with CROSSWAYS when it had to be. Liked SKEDADDLE. FOI, AQUEDUCT(saved from AQUADUCT by the anagrist), LOI PRESENCE. Nice puzzle. 9:20. Thanks Joker and Curarist.
  4. 21 mins but found it tough.
    Looking for a country called rem.

    Cod sty or spawn.

  5. 13 minutes today but the last four on PRESENCE and SPAWN, neither of which would come to mind. Also wondered about UNTIL at 2dn but just shrugged. COD to 18 for a much underused word!

    NeilC

  6. My experience chimed with that of our esteemed blogger (to whom I offer thanks for some parsing subtleties) – a mix of easy and the very obscure. A similar SCC time to davidivad for me after what I thought was a quick start. The long downs (3&10) slowed me down, as did the parsing of EDUCATE and SPAWN. I liked SKEDADDLE and ELEMENT. My last in were ACTION and THEREIN. A good and testing puzzle, as always, from joker. John M.

    Edited at 2019-05-31 08:13 am (UTC)

  7. A very rare DNF for me in a QC as 14dn scuppered me. It was going to be my LOI but when I had stared at it blankly for longer than I had taken to solve the remainder of the puzzle I decided enough was enough and used aids to find the answer.

    I had also lost time on CROSSWAYS, a word unknown to me and also to the printed editions of the usual sources, and I had to upgrade from the Concise Oxford to the OED to find it listed as an alternative to ‘crosswise’. It’s in all the on-line versions however, which might suggests that it’s a comparatively recent addition.

    I’m never sure how rigidly the convention about definitions at the beginning or end of a clues is applied, but it certainly isn’t in the &lit type of clue.

    Edited at 2019-05-31 07:32 am (UTC)

  8. Solved on paper again. No time but it lasted longer than my coffee. Disappointed no one else seems to have thought “as a bishop” was anagrind at 12a. Serves me right for not spotting DIRECTORATE quicker. See you next week!
  9. I enjoyed the challenge but much of it seemed rather difficult for a quickie. I didn’t have an issue with 2d but I do have a misgiving with any suggestion that K might be an alternative for knight in chess, it might be for Knight in KBE but a K in chess has to be the king
    1. Yes, my thinking too. There’s also a convention (?) that a letter (such as K) standing for something (like Knight) in a longer abbreviation or acronym does not of itself justify its use as a single letter abbreviation.
  10. I had no problem with UNTIL. I have seen the definition in the middle of a clue before. In this case I thought the surface flowed well enough for it to work.
    PlayUpPompey
  11. ….the ELEMENT in the room, and then spent around three minutes alpha-trawling THEREIN. My worst time for some weeks.

    FOI AQUEDUCT
    LOI THEREIN
    COD ELEMENT
    TIME 7:23

  12. A very enjoyable 26min solve with my last pair, 14d and 12ac, responsible for about five of those. 2d is not the first time I’ve seen the beginning/end convention broken, but it doesn’t happen often. Lots of good clues to choose from, but 20ac, Element, just beats 14d, Therein, for my CoD vote. Invariant
  13. For me I raced through many, trying all in order and getting 10 across clues on first read (not something I usually achieve) and then nearly as many down. Then I hit the brakes and slowly crawled through 12a 13a and 23a and 19d eventually leaving Element and Therein which I decided to look up on 30 minutes. Not sure about the use of TV company Sky but laughed at Specs when spotted and appreciated Crossways.
    In the right mood today and brain more on track.
    Many thanks all.
    John George
  14. May I, on behalf of those of us who attempt the QC on a the digital version, congratulate Curarist and like-minded bloggers who quote the full clue and enumeration, and respectfully wonder if others could follow suite. To have to swap back and forth between screens to understand the parsing is very awkward.

    Perhaps someone with programming skills could write an app which copies and pastes the clues automatically to save the blogger the effort.

    As ever, many thanks to those who daily rescue me from my un-parsed solutions.

    Philip

  17. Joined those who had problems with 14d and 20a. Not keen on crossways for 12a, bishops move diagonally. Thanks to Joker for an interesting puzzle.
  18. A brisk start in the NW but after that things slowed down with some chewy clues causing me to just miss my target time of 15 minutes. I was held up at the end by ACTION, THEREIN (just gets my CoD vote), PRESENCE and SPAWN. WOD goes to SKEDADDLE.
    Thanks for the blog
  19. Completed this in circa 1 hour (one of those done with paper version, nibbled at through the day/evening at sporadic odd moments so very difficult to give an accurate time) with absolutely no aids just pure brain power. Somehow much more satisfying than reaching for the thesaurus as is my wont on harder puzzles.

    Like others I found UNTIL tricksy, my LOI.

    What is Curarist’s first Law?

    Plenty of material here for the OneNote notes, like Expected=DUE.

    Nice playful but hard-ish diversion from the fifteen-squared.

    Thanks to setter & blogger.

    WS

    Edited at 2019-06-02 07:10 pm (UTC)

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