Quick Cryptic 210 by Alconiere

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
I thought we had a new setter today, but on checking I found that Alconiere has appeared once before, having set puzzle #122 in August. The name appears to be derived from a 19th century Hungarian painter. I found myself hopping around the grid quite a lot so this was never going to be amongst my fastest solving times but I completed it in 14 minutes

{Deletions}, Definitions, [Indicators]

Across
1 Exclude start of Chinese poem that’s meant to scan (3.4)
BAR CODE – BAR (exclude), C{hinese}, ODE (poem). I like the degree of uncertainty in the definition which allows for the bar codes on discount vouchers produced by Tesco tills which in my experience almost invariably fail to scan when presented for redemption and involve the checkout operator keying in a 12+ digit code number whilst the people in the queue behind scowl at me for holding up the proceedings.
5 Smooth   French author (4)
SAND – Double definition.  The first refers to sanding a surface to make it smooth. The French author is George Sand (1804-1876) possibly best remembered for her romantic involvement with the composer Frederic Chopin.
8 Nervous, finding money outside police station (7)
PANICKY – PAY (money) outside NICK (police station)
9 Climber coming across gold material in tooth (5)
IVORY – IVY (climber) enclosing [coming across] OR (gold). As most teeth are not made of ivory I might have expected a question mark here.
11 Shakespeare’s first tragedy goes wrong: it’s when he died (2.7,3)
ST GEORGE’S DAY – S{hakespeare}, anagram [wrong] of TRAGEDY GOES. The Bard of Avon died on St George’s Day, April 23rd 1616. Tradition once had it that was his birthday too but modern sources seem to discount this and just say it was prior to April 26th 1564 which is recorded as the date of his baptism.
12 Memorable problem: an unknown (6)
CATCHY – CATCH (problem), Y (an unknown). A catchy tune or ‘earworm’ perhaps.
14 Bellowing after losing head, and rowing (6)
OARING – {r}OARING (bellowing)
15 Awful exponent of martial arts: a comic hero (9,3)
DESPERATE DAN – DESPERATE (awful), DAN (exponent of martial arts). Desperate Dan, the renowned eater of cow-pies, is a regular character featured in The Dandy comic. He first appeared in 1937 and is still going strong today.
17 Very old colonel, awfully loud, first of all outspoken (5)
VOCAL – V{ery}, O{ld}, C{olonel}, A{wfully}, L{oud}
18 Composer in short video – one embracing girl (7)
VIVALDI – VID (short video) enclosing [embracing] VAL (girl), I (one). Most famous as composer of The Four Seasons. I was unfamiliar with ‘vid’ as an official abbreviation for ‘video’ but I was pleased to find it in all the usual sources as I’m not a fan of clues which require the solver to shorten a word by a random number of letters.
20 Minister‘s offer spurned by Queen (4)
TEND – TEND{er} (offer) with ER (Queen) deleted [spurned]
21 Gaily, it moves, displaying this? (7)
AGILITY – Anagram [moves] of GAILY IT. ‘This’ as the defintion refers back to the whole clue so I suppose that makes this one &lit.

Down
2 What I’m surprised to say you’ll find in Sahara (3)
AHA – Hidden in {s}AHA{ra}
3 Stick cold tongue that’s chopped (5)
CLING – C (cold), LING{o} (tongue – language)
4 Old soldier who’s had an up-and-down March (4,2,4)
DUKE OF YORK – A cryptic defintion with reference to the nursery rhyme “The grand old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men, He marched them up to the top of the hill, And he marched them down again”. There are a number of disputed candidates as to whom the rhyme commemorates.
6 Instructor drives a convertible (7)
ADVISER – Anagram [convertible] of DRIVES A. This can be spelt with an O or an E, however the ‘anagrist’ leaves no doubt about the spelling required here.
7 Arrow, silver, girl’s got for old swordsman (9)
D’ARTAGNAN – DART (arrow), AG (silver), NAN (girl), the companion of the Three Musketeers in the novel by Alexandre Dumas. Again attention to the wordplay clarified the correct spelling for me; left to my own devices I would probably have put -ON.
10 In a hotdog, strangely head of gerbil is something lucky! (1,4,5)
A GOOD THING – Anagram [strangely] of IN A HOTDOG, G{erbil}
11 Small cloak Billy maybe gives Aunt Sally (9)
SCAPEGOAT – S (small), CAPE (cloak), GOAT (billy maybe). Apart from the fairground game ‘Aunt Sally’ can be defined as an object of unreasonable attack, and that’s the one required here.
13 Skipper in headgear can set about one (7)
CAPTAIN – CAP (headgear), TIN (can) enclosing A (one). In case anyone’s not familiar with it, ‘skipper’ is a nautical term for the captain of a ship. Didn’t I read somewhere here within the past few days that traditionally the Times doesn’t allow A for one? Maybe I imagined it. Anyway I have no problem with it.
16 Pull line, in a manner of speaking (5)
DRAWL – DRAW (pull), L (line)
19 Little girl not seen in Asia’s capitals (3)
DOT – I think the idea here is that if you write ASIA in capital letters you will not see a dot above the I. A somewhat curious clue that makes me wonder if there’s a better explanation.  It’s also odd because a dot is actually seen in “Asia’s capitals”, twice, despite the clue saying otherwise. It’s nice to have something a bit different but I’m not sure this one works very satisfactorily.

13 comments on “Quick Cryptic 210 by Alconiere”

  1. 10 minutes of very smooth progress – or so I thought – and I had all but 4ac. Stared at _A_D for 5 minutes and put in bard as a guess. This would have DNF’d me without ‘ON’ at the end of 7dn – so I seem to be on jackkt’s wavelength more than the setters! Thanks for the really informative blog – I had no idea that Desperate Dan was still munching on his cow pies!

    Edited at 2014-12-29 09:00 am (UTC)

  2. Took about 40 minutes to complete but couldn’t understand 19d and assumed ‘one’ in 13d was an I and ‘set about’ was TAN but it didn’t quite work. I hadn’t heard of OARING but guessed it was another example of the modern practice of a new verb being derived from a noun but maybe it is older than that. I got 11d eventually and it is my COD. Thanks for the very informative blog, Jack.
  3. So I’ve got time to get back to the quickie 🙂 Apologies for long absence – working a 5 day week as a Learning Support Assistant, then coming home & falling asleep squeezes solving time. I was surprised to see how many devices I still recalled. It took me 19 mins with some Z8ery but not much.

    Thanks Jack for a super blog – very surprised to see only a 5 minute differential in solving times..

    LOI was BAR CODE – COD was DESPERATE DAN – loved the humour!

    Edited at 2014-12-29 12:43 pm (UTC)

  4. After 10 minutes I had all but 5a & 12a. 5 minutes later, and after running through the alphabet a couple of times I breathed a sigh of relief as they finally succumbed. Strangely I was just telling my daughter about George Sand two days ago.
    I was flummoxed too by the working of 19d – so came here in the hope of enlightenment. However like Jackkt I’m still not entirely convinced by the proposed explanation.
  5. Ivory is derived from tusks, which I believe are technically teeth.

    Scapegoat was brilliant – COD ++

    Philip

  6. Still amazed at how fast you all are. I find it usually takes me several goes – I don’t seem to be able to get out of one way of thinking very easily.

    I got “oaring” but felt it was bogus even if it turns out to be 1,000 years old.

    1. Don’t panic, this was yet another 2 hr ‘stroll’ for me as well. Not helped by my knowledge of 4 letter French authors beginning and ending with Zola. Bar code and scapegoat were very enjoyable, but like the others, Dot went in without knowing why. Invariant
  7. Like our blogger, I found myself hopping around the grid during the solve. Started off thinking it would be very straightforward, then got a little hung up on a few of the clues, e.g. PANICKY, CATCHY, CLING.

    Overall, though, a relatively straightforward solve, except for DOT, which went in without understanding. Thanks for the explanation jackkt.

  8. “a dot is actually seen in “Asia’s capitals”, twice”

    But “capitals” is not part of the string referred to: it’s the indicator to turn the rest of it into upper case

    FGBP

  9. That was a comparably tough one, for me. I’m still flummoxed by 19d, as no capital letters have dots, so Asia’s irrelevant…
    1. “I’m still flummoxed by 19d, as no capital letters have dots”

      That’s exactly the point of the clue as I understand it.

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