Quick Cryptic 558 by Hurley

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
I found this a good bit harder today. Coming in at 20 minutes or so, and after an especially speedy Mon-Wed, it pretty much doubled my aggregate for the rest of the week. There was some misleading wordplay along with a couple of bits of relative obscurity (for me at least), and I needed the checkers from the easier clues to make headway. It gradually slotted into place, though, to make a thoroughly enjoyable puzzle, with pretty much all the clues reading very nicely in their own right. I would give mention to 1d, 11d, and 12ac, but I think my favourite was 14ac – I love the word, and the clue conjures up a great little image.

There was also a nice use of the adjective “Titian” that I hadn’t come across, although a quick look online shows it to be in fairly common usage. If you happen to be a collector of 1960s red-haired Barbie dolls, you might be expected to know they were officially labelled ‘Titian’. How proud he would surely be… oh, by the way, if you’re interested and you’ve got a few minutes, I’ve just read a very interesting article on ‘possibly the most influential painter in history’ in the Guardian from a while back (http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/jan/04/artsfeatures). Many thanks to Hurley.

I changed the format after the totally botched numbering job of my last effort, in the hope that a bit of copy and pasting might help reduce the error rate!

Across
1 Pastor’s first recruits reorganized his favourite books?
SCRIPTURE: anagram of Recruits and the first letter of Pastor’.
6 Is about time to rest?
SIT: “Is about” means reverse “is”, and t(ime).
8 Harry, maybe, holding learner’s chart instrument
PLOTTER: Harry (may be) Potter, and potter holds L. I was ages before hitting on the Harry Potter idea.
9 Strength seen in Crimean War — battling back
BRAWN: very well hidden (seen in) in CrimeaN WAR Battling, going back. Another nice surface.
10 Out of practice — starts to read up suitable texts? Yes
RUSTY: Starting letters of Read Up Suitable Texts Yes.
12 Commanding officer, navy and monarch in tricky situation
CORNER: Commanding Officer is CO; [Royal] navy is RN; and monarch is ER.
14 Man’s glad crone discomfited gossip
SCANDALMONGER: anagram (discomfited) of Man’s glad crone. A very satisfying word, although I needed five checkers (a,d,l,o,r) and a bit of working out before getting it.
16 Examine American country site, vacant
PERUSE: PERU is the country; site when vacant or empty etc. is SE.
17 Teacher in from France — alluring woman
SIREN: Teacher is SIR; EN is French for in.
19 Expect answer: 50 kilograms maybe by sound of it
AWAIT: A for answer; WAIT sounds like weight, which could be 50kg. This one threw me for a bit, I was thinking L for 50 and wondering if K could possibly be short for kilogram. I think I did actually say “aah, wait!” to myself as the penny dropped.
20 Destroyed garden building after threat regularly ignored
TRASHED: SHED is the garden building, and it goes after ThReAt with the even letters removed.
22 Head teachers’ union
NUT: double definition, the other being the National Union of Teachers.
23 Titian added here surprisingly?
RED-HEADED: anagram (surprisingly) of ADDED HERE. This was a new one on me. The OED defines the adjective titian as describing the hair colour favoured by Titian in his paintings – a bright golden auburn (or it can just be red). One of the paintings it cites as an example is Flora, and it is indeed a beautiful painting. It’s possibly a personification of the goddess Flora – and thus possibly a bit of a Siren, while we’re on the subject, if you consider the dangers associated with an overenthusiastic foraging of flora.

Down
1 Restrain drink mob
SUPPRESS: SUP is drink, to mob is to press (to crowd around, etc.). The nice succinct surface made this tricky – LOI bar one, and I needed the P in Plotter.
2 Group of three, heading off for Brazilian port
RIO: TRIO with the heading off.
3 Husband in sympathy, full of meaning
PITHY: PITY is sympathy, and in goes H(usband). If something is both pithy and zesty, is it peely?
4 French article about prayer editor’s forgotten
UNRECOLLECTED: UN is the french article, RE is about, COLLECT is a prayer, and ED I think we should all know by now. If i ever knew a collect was a short prayer, it’s been well and truly forgotten. A short prayer with a single point in mind, there is a bit of confusion over the etymology, but the OED says it derives from collectio, in the sense of collecting, or summing up, the sentiment of a reading of scripture – pithily, you might say.
5 Problem bar going partly for Prohibition?
EMBARGO: another well hidden clue, being a part of ProblEM BAR GOing.
6 Forager: namely, one retaliating
SCAVENGER: SC is short for scilicet (i.e., namely); an AVENGER is one retaliating. Not sure the last time I saw sc. used, in crosswords or out.
7 Distinctive smell of leather — good
TANG: Tan = leather in at least two senses (the colour; to thrash), and g is good.
11 Appears confused over right replacement component
SPARE PART: anagram (confused) of APPEARS, going over/above RT.
13 Island tour extremely popular — I join parent
TRINIDAD: the extremes of TouR is TR, in is popular, I is I and parent is DAD.
15 Active person interrupted by posh Baronet — he’s not convinced
DOUBTER: an active person is a DOER, in goes U and BT, which is presumably the abbreviation for baronet. In a recent survey of over 1,000 baronets, less than a third knew the correct abbreviation for their title. (Possibly.)
17 Flood in resort — note to follow
SPATE: a resort is a SPA, TE follows. I initially wondered if “spare” could somehow mean flood, with “re” as the note, but it can’t.
18 Rule northern area, grassy
LAWN: Rule is LAW, N is northern. My LOI, and needed an alphabet trawl to get there, for some reason.
21 Expression of annoyance upset this brick-carrier?
HOD: D’Oh is Homer Simpson’s expression of annoyance, turned upwards (upset).

23 comments on “Quick Cryptic 558 by Hurley”

  1. Thanks blogger for confirming my feelings that this was the toughest this week. I was moving around the grid like a pinball but each answer was a bit like James May rebuilding his lawnmower by giving a satisfying click when entered. Nice one Hurley

    Edited at 2016-04-28 08:10 am (UTC)

  2. Hi Roly, I think you got things back to front in your 1a. The anagram fodder is first letter of Pastor with RECRUITS.
    1. Ah yes, thanks, so I did – right after talking about a reduced error rate! Will correct now.
  3. I found this one the easiest of the week! -about 12 mins. The ability to solve certain crosswords rather than others really does depend on individual interests, type of education and age doesn’t it?

    Rita

    1. Yes, this fascinates me! Somehow the setters have to cater for a range of solvers and generally manage well – but there have been times when I could have strangled the setter for being, to me, unreasonably obscure. Yet to others that will have been easy! And vice versa of course. More experienced solvers get their fun from seeing how fast they can solve a puzzle, hence this blog, some like me perhaps, get their satisfaction from wrestling with the clues and using this blog to educate their solving brain. It has definitely helped me but even as you come to know the tricks and abbreviations there will always be a gap in knowledge, education, aptitude and sheer brainpower between the ones who can solve in under 15 minutes and those, again like me perhaps, who struggle on for an hour or more. Do we strugglers ultimately get more satisfaction from getting there in the end I wonder?
  4. I’d agree this was slightly harder than the three previous offerings this week, and it delayed me for 12 minutes.

    Those brought up on the Book of Common Prayer (few of us left, I suspect) should have no difficulty with COLLECT as every Sunday and many other days throughout the church year have their own designated Collect, Epistle and Gospel. But I’ve no idea whether this tradition continues in any form in the modern C of E.

  5. I’d say the main criterion is enjoyment. With practice, solvers tend to do puzzles faster so there will be time in the day left for other things… Solving times can be interesting to compare difficulty of puzzles and are essential to the Times Championship of course. Otherwise it does not really matter too much IMHO.
  6. Found that tough today, best part of an hour for me.

    Harry made me think ‘Prince’, especially when that provided the P in 1d.

    I was recently at a funeral that had ‘collect’ printed in the order of service, not sure I’d have remembered that otherwise.

    As for Titian, there was an author of Cold War thrillers, Colin Forbes, who had a red-headed female character. Unfortunately, he used titian haired every single time he described her, which got quite wearing….

  7. Definitely a trickier offering today, which took me around 40 minutes. A few things were unknown to me – sc in 6d, collect in 4d and the Titian reference. Fortunately the word play and checkers made them all solvable. Too many enjoyable clues to pick out a favourite today.
  8. Needed two sittings and consequently a slow time to solve todays puzzle, but got there in the end with only sc = namely preventing a full house. Sadly (thankfully ? ) I am of an age where I think Hal rather than Potter when I see Harry. . . My favourite today was 16ac for its surface. Invariant
  9. 12 minutes, so a continuation of this week’s fairly straightforward puzzles for me. I enjoyed it.
  10. Everyone gets better with practice, re pexeter’s conmment above. Education and general knowledge do help, as does experience, I started on the Mail and then the Telegraph at age 14, then moved ‘up’ to the Guardian and the Times as an undergraduate. Now I am retired, I have more time, and everyday practice means, for me, a creditable time on the big one (usually), and flying through the QC afterwards. It is totally best not to compare yourself with others, but to plot your own progress.
  11. Another enjoyable puzzle coming in at 28 mins. I’d agree with the sentiments regarding progress: this blog makes all the difference. In three months I have made a lot of progress but feel I need a lot longer at the QC before further attempts at the 15×15. Much indebted to the bloggers found herein.

    Edited at 2016-04-28 01:29 pm (UTC)

    1. Give it a go.
      I started on the 15×15 about 3 months ago and it took a good few weeks before I got anyway near finishing one. This week I have completed 3 out of 4. I do use aids, an old Chambers, an old Roget and Wikipedia, I don’t at this stage consider it cheating to check a spelling or look for a person in an area I am weak on. e.g if you look at 4a in todays 15×15 the answer is cherubini, a man I had never heard of, however I could see that the word involved Cher from the french a u from classy so I looked up Italian composers and bingo. On the other side of the coin the word sport had a lot of the regular bloggers chuntering, it’s a word I know well, and trust me it is a great feeling when you slap one in that others have problems with. Bet you would have got a few today, 2d, 3d possibly, 26a 22a and a few more I would expect to see in the QC.
  12. I couldn’t agree more, Rita – and wouldn’t it would be a very boring crossword indeed that didn’t make use of those different areas of more ‘specialised’ knowledge? My art knowledge, for example, is very poor, and I’m very glad to have learnt a little about Titian today.

    And then there’s the ‘unreasonable’ obscurity – I’ve definitely felt like a bit of setter strangling on occasion, Pexiter! It must be an extremely difficult thing to balance.

  13. Spent about half an hour on this, but it was a DNF due to 17d. Had it down to SPA_E, but unfortunately there was no connection between the words “flood” and “spate” in my brain.
  14. As a newbie, after spending six hours on this and getting only scandalmonger, siren, corner and await, I decided to turn to you for enlightenment. Fifty Kg is what I believe some Germans call a Centner, and we call a hundredweight, abbreviated to CWT. So it was a long time before I thought of the simpler AWAIT.

    Titian was an OLD MASTER, and when that didn’t fit, I thought of pink, as in the Limerick “When Titian was painting Rose Madder, She was perched at the top of a ladder. The position to Titian suggested coition, So he climbed up the ladder and ‘ad ‘er.”
    Ian Donaldson

  15. brilliant. love the limerick.

    are we saying te is the note? as in the sound of music? i ask because there is a suggestion that is ti, not te.

    1. I think any Sound of Music note can be used for Note, along with A thru G. The Germans use H for B natural, but that would be a little tough in QC land.
  16. Needed help with this one and it took me ages, but all complete in the end. Phew.
  17. Have been away for a couple of days and came back to this.
    It was hard and took me quite a while over several sessions. But I got it all in the end. LOI was 8a. I thought 4d was a rather inelegant word but there were some interesting clues and I enjoyed the challenge. David
  18. Sorry – a correction. The reason I couldn’t find this common word in any of my German dictionaries is it is spelt (spelled?) with a zed, not a C. Words beginning in C are not common in German. Curiously however there is das Cental which is 100 pounds – a short hundredweight.

    Titian was in Radio 2 this morning – not that I ever listen to it – in regard to Harry’s red hair. Prince Harry, that is.

    Glad you liked the Limerick, Paul.

    Ian Donaldson

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