Quick Cryptic 548 by Hawthorne

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
This is only Hawthorn’s third outing in the Quick Cryptics, the other two appearing in January and March this year, and I found it a joy to do. I had about 8 little ticks beside the clues before I got bored ticking, for there was an abundance of really lovely surface readings. “Counsel commercial immorality.” How neat is that? Answer: very. All very accessible as well, I found. I found the SW the trickiest section, with smoothie and hour taking a bit of time and being the last one ins.

There was an interesting discussion about NINA crosswords on Monday, and I spent a couple of unsuccessful minutes trying to find a hidden message or theme. The best I have to offer is a pidgin description of an attractive man wearing jewellery: him smoothie, bracelet stud. Other than that, there was perhaps a bit of an alcohol theme, which is always good fun.

Excuse the wittering on, my attempt at brevity failed. And I forgot 9ac – it’s included at the bottom of the acrosses due to my formatting ineptitude.

Across
1 HEREFORD – county town: HERE (in this place), FOR, D(ay). I groan when I see towns, but ‘Here’ made this more gettable than most.
5 STAB – wound: hidden in conSTABle.
8 MASTODON – ancient elephant: anagram (problematically) of STOOD, blocking MAN. Definitely problematic to find yourself in front of one in a hunt-based scenario, but also a nice feast for a recently arrived native American. And a taste of the old country as well. Woolly mammoths and mastodons died out around the same time, apparently –  ca. 10,000-12,000 years ago. It does seem sort of self-evident that we hunted them to extinction, but that nice simple picture has been questioned of recent: climate change, among other things, mean we weren’t entirely to blame for the megafauna collapse.
11 OBLITERATE – totally clear: O(ld) B(ook), and well read is LITERATE. Oh to be such a fine thing.
14 MORALE – spirits: cut further = MOR(e), beer = ALE. This got a tick. Nice, answer-related surface, assuming the ‘cutting’ is to do with price or duty.
15 ADVICE – counsel: commercial = AD, immorality = VICE. And another lovely surface.
17 ON THE WAGON – cryptic definition: if you’re being trolleyed you might be on a wagon, and if you’re trolleyed (drunk; troll-eyed?), you would certainly not be on the wagon. I never knew the reason for this phrase, and having looked it up I’m not that much more enlightened. It’s short for ‘on the water-wagon’. What I really want to know is how many words there are for ‘drunk’. That would make a good Fermi Question, which I would estimate by taking how many words there are in English and dividing somewhat arbitrarily by 2. So, probably about half a million.
20 HOUR – time: take (dispatch) the on from H(on)OUR. My LOI, and a very nicely disguised clue.
21 PAVEMENT – that’s alongside the street: anagram (out) of MAP EVENT. “I was totally pavemented last night,” one might say, and (in context) be perfectly well understood. I count maybe 6 other possible synonyms for drunkenness. In a puzzle of 24 words, that makes the arbitrary estimate of half a million implausibly high, but we’re still good for a quarter of a million.
22 EVEN – double definition: uniform = even, and if a game is tied, it is even. The question mark signifies a slightly oblique approach to the second definition.
23 DEADENED – made senseless: put E in DEAD-END. I loved this clue, with a sordid little picture painted by the surface.
9 AREA – field: A, “harvest” shortened is REA(p).

Down
1 HYMN – religious song: him is a homophone (heard) of ‘that man’. Ok, “him” in not a homophone of “that man”, but you know what I mean.
2 ROSE – double definition, one a noun, the other a verb.
3 FOOTBALLER – sweeper, perhaps: anagram (what’s damaged) of TABLE FLOOR. Lovely surface, and it took me a while to get a single word out of floor and table.
4 ROOKIE – beginner: ROOK (chesspiece), and I.E. (that is).
5 TERRAPIN – reptile: top of P(etunia) eaten by TERRAIN (land). A nicely deceptive use of land reptile. “Yup, rookied it up and got completely terrapinned last night. But I was thankfully somewhere shy of being braceleted.”
6 BRACELET – piece of jewellery: anagram (smashed!) of BET CLARE.
7 HEAD-TO-HEAD – meeting: HEAD TO (go in direction of) HEAD (teacher). The apostrophe in “teacher’s” changes meaning here from the possessive in the surface reading to “is” in the cryptic reading: i.e., “Go in the direction of teacher = [is] meeting.”
8 SMOOTHIE – double definition, second one semi-cryptic (something that’s drunk). My 2nd-LOI, and, when the penny dropped, my COD – loved it! I was thrown for a bit by the “that’s” seemingly signifying “ie”.
9 PROTRUDE – project: PRUDE (narrow-minded person) takes on [absorbs, etc.] ROT (rubbish). And yet another lovely surface.
13 KARATE – form of self-defence: KATE (Catherine) grabs R and A(rm) – Arm, primarily. How do you spell the past tense verb “karate”? Hard to say, but that, mastodonned, rookied, smoothied [cf. blitzed], protruded, and, of course, obliterated, combine to make me think the answer might easily be a quarter of a million.
16 SEEN – observed: homophone of (listened to) SCENE (part of play).
18 STUD – fastener: anagram (off) of DUST. And, capping off a lovely crossword, a very nicely hidden anagram.

19 comments on “Quick Cryptic 548 by Hawthorne”

  1. All going swimmingly until the SW corner where I needed two bites of the cherry so a slow time but I agree totally with rolytoly what a pleasant puzzle, every answer going in with a satisfying click.

    After my mild rant on the 15×15 yesterday I do prefer rookie to newbie.

    Tyro Tim

  2. A rare excursion completely off the scale for me in Quickie Corner at 26 minutes – the last 16 being accounted for by 12, 13, 20 & 22 which I simply could not see.
  3. I started off thinking I was on for a record time and had all bar the SW corner completed in 12 minutes. Then I got completely stuck so I put it down for half an hour. Coming back I finally saw 14a which unlocked 12d for me. The rest then went in quite quickly. COD 12d, LOI 20a.
    Thanks for the blog roly and if anyone has any pull with the schedulers I’d be very happy to see Hawthorn appear here more often.
  4. My first one for a while and possibly the first time ever I didn’t finish..found the SW corner problematic.

    However, I just wanted to thank today’s writer/answerer for their amusing comments regarding words for drunkenness…my partner (who is foreign) and I regularly play the game of simply making up words for ‘drunk’ on the grounds that seemingly anything can just have an -ed stuck on the end, and maybe also a good adverb chucked in before then too.

    The English language – you’ve got to love it…

    Wonderstevie

  5. That was hard work ! Started quickly but some of the trickier surfaces had me going in the wrong direction everytime. I don’t think I would have finished this 6 months ago, so getting a full house just north of the hour was very satisfying. 3d and 11ac were my favourites, but lots of very nice clues. Thanks Hawthorn and Rolytoly. Invariant
  8. the blogger doesn’t “need” to do anything, including this blog. What fun you must be at dinner parties
    1. Thank you Jerry. I’m assuming the post was at least in part an attempt to teach brevity by example – it was well made but sadly fruitless!
  9. I thought I was on for a record time for the first few minutes on this. But when I got to the SW I encountered the same problems as others. Four defeated me – 14a, 20a 12d and 13d. I looked at them for a long time to no avail. I see from the blog how clever the clues were. A very stern test today but most enjoyable. David
  10. is, I believe, a reference to the temperance movements in late 19th century America. The Temperance Wagon would tour a district drumming up custom for their meetings. Someone hitching a ride in order to take the pledge was said to be ‘on the wagon’. Nice puzzle, 8 enjoyable minutes delayed by biffing ‘besotted’ at 12d.
    GeoffH
    1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) it is to do with water wagons. Examples;
      1889 ‘Let me give you a dose of rum.’ ‘No, thanks,’ was the reply; ‘I’m on the water-wagon.’
      1910 Cent. Mag. Nov. 39 The advance of the water wagon. An apparent change of sentiment with regard to liquor drinking.
  11. I believe that the origin for on the wagon was the trip of the condemned between Newgate prison and Tyburn where they would be hanged. They were generally inebriated stopping at many inns on the way. Those that didn’t drink stayed on the wagon. Incidentally I also thought that one for the road came from the same journey.

    SW corner also tricky for me today

  13. Same problem area, SW, same problem clues as fellow solvers: 14a 20a 22a 12d 13d for a DNF. Good puzzle. Don’t see why Cut = more, at 14a, I spotted ALE, but there are a lot of 6-letter words that could fit.

    12d : ‘drunk’ was a red herring, as it is often an anagrind. Another good clue, and as Fred Trueman used to say “that were too good fa’ thee”.

    Michael Macintyre has a routine about words for ‘drunk’ such as “utterly gazebo-ed”

    1. It’s “further” = MORE with “cut” indicating the deletion of the last letter – as Roly wrote in his blog above.

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