Championship 2015, Preliminary Two, Puzzle two – nothing scary

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

This one seemed the easiest of the three in the set, took me just under 15 minutes and had no words I needed to check afterwards. I’d never heard of 27a but it was clear from wordplay and plausible.

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Across
1 TONIC – T (temperature), ON IC(E) = mostly kept cool; D drink.
4 CUBAN HEEL – CUE = prompt, insert BAN and HE, add L: CU,BAN,HE,E,L; D part of shoe.
9 PATAGONIA – TA GO = troops travel, insert in PAN = vessel, I, A; D region of S America.
10 RACER – RE = on, CAR = wheels, reverse it; D competitor.
11 SPLINTER GROUP – (STOPPING RULER)*; D faction.
14 RULY – (T)RULY = very, not initially; D well-behaved. Not a word often seen, but the more commonly seen ‘unruly’ means the opposite, so it’s clear.
15 ARCHBISHOP – A RC then BISH (mistake) inside HOP (bound); D cleric.
18 PRIMORDIAL – PRIM (proper), OR (soldiers), DIAL (call up); D first.
19 STYE – Hidden word in NA(STY E)DIFICES; D eyesore.
21 UNEMBELLISHED – MENU (food items) reversed, BELL sounds like BELLE = dish, I SHED = I dropped; D plain.
24 HOIST – HOT = very sexy, insert IS; D jack.
25 RANGELAND – RAG = bait, around N for new, ELAND = today’s antelope species; D grazing territory.
27 MAN ORCHID – MANOR = patch, C = front of cottage, HID = concealed; D showy flower. So-called because the flower looks a bit like a human figure, as you’d expect.
28 TANSY – (NASTY)* D aromatic plant. Plant it along with your potatoes to keep the colorado beetles away.

 

Down
1 TYPESCRIPT – (PRETTY PICS)*; D copy.
2 NIT – I had TUN = container reversed for NUT; D egg. EDIT Apologies for the goof. It appears I fell into the usual trap of finding one plausible answer without then looking for others; I quite liked my “plant egg” but as rapidly pointed out below, the answer is NIT being TIN reversed, a nit is apparently the egg of a louse which lives in human hair; thankfully I was brought up in a nice clean household and never suffered.
3 COGENT – CO = business, GENT = fellow; D convincing.
4 CONFERRED – CON and RED as political opponents; insert REF reversed; D consulted.
5 BHANG – H = heroin, in BANG = report; D cannabis.
6 NARCOTIC – NOTIC(E) = warning, briefly; insert A R (a run) C (initially costly); D drug.
7 ESCAPE HATCH – E SCH = English school; insert CAPE, HAT; D way out.
8 LYRE – Alternate letters of p L a Y s R e E d; D instrument.
12 LILLIPUTIAN – LILLI = flower picked up, i.e. sounds like lilly; PUT = positioned, IN around A = IAN; D minute. After Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels.
13 SPLENDIDLY – SPEND = fork out, around L = pound, IDLY = in casual fashion; D very well.
16 HEADLINED – HEAD LINED would be top teacher in row; D featured prominently in newspaper?
17 LODESTAR – LODES sounds like loads = much; TAR = sailor; D travellers’ guide.
20 RIPEST – PRIEST = clergyman, move the P down 2 letters (‘head lowered’); D most mature.
22 BIRCH – CRIB = bed, lifted = BIRC, H = hard; D wood.
23 WHAM – W = with, HAM(MER) = heavy instrument not half; D hit.
24 ANN – ANON = soon, remove O; D girl.

45 comments on “Championship 2015, Preliminary Two, Puzzle two – nothing scary”

  1. I have NIT. “Tin,” container, up; Definition, “egg.” Not to pick nits, but a nut is not an egg.
  2. I had NIT for 2dn. But I also had a typo on a crossing letter. And I also spelled PRIMORDIAL incorrectly. But I think NIT is correct.
  3. … it’s got to be NIT. Took the def at 4ac to be “behind part of shoe”. Either works but. Sometimes malapropised during my Merseyside childhood as “cubic” heels.

    Romped through the top half, but the nether end was more of a problem.

    Edited at 2015-12-02 08:00 am (UTC)

  4. 33 minutes, but with the word I’d entered at 14a not revisited once I’d put in the excellent LILLIPUTIAN. Lots of unknown vocab here: BHANG, MAN ORCHID, TANSY and CUBAN HEEL, but an exemplary puzzle, I thought.
  5. Having done presumably alright at this one on the day, I just managed to restore normal levels of Verlaine service by biffing in the dreaded NUT and going the standard off-by-one. Despite having done the puzzle before not long ago. Thank heavens these competitions take place in the afternoon when I’ve had time to wake up! Either that or I’m a low-level psychic and only do well when Magoo’s brainwaves are in the room to hitch a ride on.
    1. Sorry, it’s only biffing when it’s done FROM definition, not DESPITE it, isn’t it? So I bidded in NUT. Or possibly bivouacked it, Via One’s Unnecessarily Acrobatic Contortions.
  6. Shade inside 40 minutes for me, so back to normal. I enjoyed the puzzle though, some nice challenges. I remembered CUBAN HEEL, often associated with winkle-pickers. I thought the anagram at 11 was well disguised. I don’t think that I knew either of the flowers on the bottom line, but they were gettable from the clues. Nice job setter (and blogger)
  7. 42 minutes with some problems finishing off but I was pleased to complete without aids despite not knowing MAN ORCHID or TANSY and not being 100% sure of BHANG or RULY

    Edited at 2015-12-02 09:15 am (UTC)

  8. … the inevitable goof. Turns out that, had I been able to take my place in this prelim as scheduled, I would have been kicking myself over NUT. I suppose I could assume (facts not in evidence) that the adrenaline on the day or stray Magoo brainwaves would have caused me to actually think about the clue.

    I found this a bit harder than the first, at 18 minutes. There are quite a few Ikea clues, which are not my strong suit (“lay piece 1 on a flat surface; add piece 2, but only after inserting piece 3 into slot provided”)

    CUBAN HEEL is a good example, with that ‘left behind’ coming along after the closing of the initial container. I feel I’ve never quite got to grips with that kind of clue. But then, I never quite got to grips with where to close the brackets in middle school algebra, either.

    COD … the SPLINTER GROUP clue. A good old, straightforward anagram!

    Edited at 2015-12-02 09:16 am (UTC)

  9. The good news is that I finished it. The bad news is that I put POLESTAR for 17d. Also, had I been in the competition I would have had 2 minutes to complete the other two puzzles. Even a hyper-charged Magoo would have had difficulty with that challenge.
    It was the SW corner that did for me (including the excellent LILLIPUTIAN).
  10. Very enjoyable puzzle – I’m good at Ikea clues and brackets in equations. Its all that literature that stumps me. However, biffed quite a few of these from definition + checkers like CUBAN HEEL, SPLINTER GROUP, UNEMBELLISHED etc

    Must put in a word of defence for those of us that caught nits at school and suffered the regular routine special shampooing. Nothing to do with how clean you are – everything to do with the cleanliness of the children you mix with

    1. Sorry to hear that Jimbo, you should have gone to Bournemouth GS, at which my ‘mix mates’ were nit free as far as I know. As were those at B S for Girls across the playing field, where we also ‘mixed’.
      1. Sadly in my case BGS stood for Battersea GS, a far cry from leafy Bournemouth. But the real problem was at the schools before that which were in Balham and then Brixton – both delightful areas!
    2. It’s nothing to do with cleanliness at all. There is a myth that lice prefer clean hair but that isn’t true either: they are perfectly happy either way, and kids will get them if they come into contact with other kids who have them.
      I remember the shampoo from childhood too, but it doesn’t really work because it kills the lice but not the NITs, which then just hatch. Combing is the only reliable treatment.
      I know much more about this subject than I would like.
        1. Ahem, sorry. That’ll teach you not to implicitly impugn the cleanliness of my children! Mind you they more than merit it.
  11. I’m another NUT. I was thinking of both egg and nut as colloquial for head. Have I just imagined egg as colloquial for head?
  12. I had “nut” in the competition but since I did not reach the final anyway I did not argue that it was acceptable. Did anyone? What was the outcome?
    1. If I’d thought of NUT as a test-solver of this puzzle, the “thing resembling a bird’s egg in shape” def for egg in the Oxford Dictionary of English might have triggered a suggestion to amend the clue to eliminate NUT.

      It’s a while ago now, but as one of the markers in the scoring room, I don’t remember NUT as an alternative answer that was noticed. That doesn’t guarantee that no one had it as an answer, but implies that no-one otherwise all-correct had it as an answer. Presumably, either or both of TIN as the container and NIT as the egg were dominant in solvers’ thoughts.

      Edited at 2015-12-02 03:17 pm (UTC)

      1. Fascinating isn’t it that there seems to have been a rash of NUTs today, but to the best of our knowledge it wasn’t remotely an issue in October. It’s almost enough to make you believe in an Alan-Moorean conception of communal “ideaspace”, upon which all of our mental back gardens abut.
      2. Peter, while you’re here, I wonder if you’ve read the comments in the forum on Sunday’s puzzle?
  13. Too much for me without the help of the iPad but then I had already failed in Heat One. Never heard of the use of BISH for mistake.
    1. Very much a prep school word and if remember correctly appeared frequently in Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings books…”crumbs Darbishire what an awful bish”
    2. It actually comes up rather a lot. A recent example is 1dn in No. 26,160 (25 July): “Awful mistake set in stone (8)”.
  14. A laboured 41:43 for me. CUBAN HEEL and MAN ORCHID both unknown to me. SW corner held me up, thinking ‘flower’ was the definition for 12d for ages. 14d my last one in and I had to through the alphabet to find it. At least I had NIT right.

  15. Not a happy camper hereabouts –

    FOI NIT so I had a head start!

    I thought 10ac was poorly clued but SOI

    All went SPLENDIDLY until

    MAN ORCHID!

    Should it not be MAN ORCHIS!?(Chambers)

    Ref!? Verlaine? Jimbo!? Anybody!?

    Horryd

    1. My Chambers (ipad app) has man-orchid (hyphenated), but no ‘man orchis’ with or without a hyphen. Orchis is described, among other things, as ‘a flower of any of these genera’ (these genera being orchids or other similar plant genera).

      Flower is described, among other things, as ‘any plant that produces blossoms’.

      The man-orchid is described as the ‘plant (orchid) whose flowers have human like shape’.

      If the word flower in the clue refers to the flower or blossom itself (rather than the whole plant), wouldn’t the answer have to be ‘man-orchid orchis’?

      If the word flower in the clue refers to the whole plant, then the clue is correct as it stands.

      Just my humble opinion of course, other brands of opinion are available!

  16. 25 min, but really DNF, as after spending about 5 minutes failing to find anything to fit at 12dn, resorted to ‘Word Matcher’ – possible misprint option showed me that my guess of RARE at 14a was wrong (and also that I’d been wasting time trying to think of possible rivers or plants.) So 14a was my LOI.
    No problem with NIT, which went in straightaway without checkers.
  17. I think I found this the hardest of the three: certainly harder than the first, and I remember that I left quite a few blank and moved onto the third puzzle.
  18. Another tricky offering at 20:58 which leaves me under 15 minutes for puzzle 3. Mind you, I am still pretty much at death’s door with a nasty cough.

    DNK rangeland and bhang and only slightly knew the plants.

  19. Found this the toughest of the Finals puzzles so far, suggesting I was better off in the first heat. Not least because I was another NUT. That apart, various unknowns where I had to trust the wordplay but found that faith justified, typically a sign of a good puzzle.

    I also managed to create a rod for my own back by putting in BAEDEKER for 17dn. It sounds like “BY DECKER” and ships have decks, so a sailor could be a decker, and…er, forget I mentioned it.

  20. I also found this the most tricky of the heat puzzles – my last in was RULY coming hot on the (Cuban) heels of LILLIPUTIAN. MAN ORCHID from definition, and I didn’t worry about the wordplay for NARCOTIC
  21. About 25 minutes, so not very quick, but I also had NUT. Luckily I live too far away to consider going to any competitions. Despite that bit of disappointment, I really enjoyed the LILLIPUTIAN clue. Regards.
  22. 23 mins. I’m another who didn’t find this straightforward, and I finished with RULY after TYPESCRIPT which took me way too long to untangle from the anagram fodder. NIT went in as soon as I read the clue and I didn’t consider “nut” at all.
  23. I can reassure [Vinyl1] that he (or she) is indeed competitive, though perhaps only with me – I took 42 minutes.

    And… just realized my mistake at 17d, with POLESTAR, which I justified on the basis that things that are poles apart are indeed much apart. Now, if only POLESTAR was one word… Ah well. I had earlier tried to make BAEDEKER fit, and I see that I am not alone.

    NHO MAN ORCHID, but it was clear from the parsing. I have heard of the bee orchid, whose flower has evolved to resemble a lady bee in order to attract male bees to mate with it, thereby achieving pollination. I can only imagine, therefore, that a man orchid is one of nature’s more remarkable achievements.

    Edited at 2015-12-02 08:42 pm (UTC)

  24. Thanks for the blog, Pip. I had several post-solve queries which you answered. I’m glad to say I didn’t come across any nits – of the headline variety- at my grammar school in Tunbridge Wells. 48m 02s
  25. Nice meaty puzzle, completed while listening to Liverpool destroying Southampton in the Capital One Cup. Like others, I entered some answers purely on the strength of the wordplay, but that proved good enough.
  26. 12:14 for me – not a total disaster, but somehow I fear it might not have been fast enough on the day.

    A fair amount of biffing, including SPLINTER GROUP, which I’m alarmed to say I didn’t realise was an anagram even after I’d finished, and only found out when I read your blog!!!

    Another interesting and enjoyable puzzle, well-suited to a Championship semi-final.

  27. As you may be able to tell I printed this one off and have just had the chance to complete it (well nearly – I’ve had to come to your blog for the SW – thank you!). I don’t think it’s covered in other comments so I thought I’d just question the parsing of 18ac. I think it’s call up (DIAL) with PRIM and OR taking the lead. Not sure what ‘D first’ indicates?
    1. Chris,

      the “D first” isn’t part of the parsing – it’s the blogger’s way of saying the definition (D) for the clue is “first”.

      In general pleased to say Nit went straight in. Less pleased that I fell into the Polestar trap; I couldn’t parse it so thought it wasn’t right but put it in in lieu of anything better. Turns out it’s two words anyway.

      50 minutes for me with one incorrect, so think it’s safe to say I won’t be entering this competition any time soon.

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