QC 1055 by Orpheus – Luddite’s Revenge

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

This week I decided to try to overcome my Ludditism with crosswords and complete this online rather than with pencil and paper. I was pleased to see that it had a positive effect on my time, even with my frequent mistakes caused by not knowing the letter writeover rules sufficiently well to avoid having to retrace my butterfingered steps frequently to make sure the right letters ended up in the right places. I think I will try to persevere with this in future and no doubt familiarity will breed proficiency!

So I was breezing through in what looked like about 5.30 until I hit a minor bit of breezeblock. All the Across clues went in with hardly a thought, the only exception being 18A, and then the Down clues could hardly fail to do anything but oblige. And then I came up against that 18A again and, inexplicably, it held me up for another minute.

I have a theory about this breezeblock thing. I don’t think it is an actual inability to think through the clue quickly and get the right answer. I think it is more akin to the speed wobble on a bike (not being a cyclist I do have to take this rather on trust, but I am told that sometimes you can be going along so fast that unaccountably you then ‘wobble’, sort of twisting your lead wheel out of alignment and ruining your otherwise speedy progress).

Or something that is closer to my experience, what I call the ‘consciousness wobble’ when you are playing a musical piece that you know well, or singing lyrics or reciting a piece of poetry or drama. You’re going along really well, not thinking about what you are doing, when suddenly your conscious mind kicks in and starts thinking about it and ruins it. You suddenly realise you’re coming up to that tricky bit that caused you a lot of trouble when you were learning it, but now somehow your fingers just do it, but when you think about it consciously your fingers suddenly seem to realise how difficult it is and mess it up instead of just playing it smoothly.

It is of course an occupational hazard for performers of all sorts. I know it once happened to Robert Plant when fronting Led Zeppelin for the song ‘Black Dog’. He strode out onto the stage and had to deliver the very simple first lines that he had done a hundred times before:

“Hey Hey Mama, sitting where you move
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove”

But opend his mouth and nothing came out.

Or Lou Reed on the live ‘Rock n’ Roll Animal’ album:

“Riding a Stutz Bearcat, Jim,
Those were different times
[Those poets they studied rules of verse]
And those ladies, they rolled their eyes.”

On the recording it can clearly be heard that the bit in square brackets temporarily drops out of Lou’s memory. As if he could have cared.

Well sometimes it’s like that with the crossword. All the clues are writing themselves in, when your brain suddenly stops and says, “Wow, this is easy”, and then grinds to a halt.

I also have a theory that it is amongst the setter’s secret arsenal of black magic to trip you up over the clues that ought to be most obvious to you. I remember once puzzling over ‘FELT TIP PEN’ when that was exactly the instrument that was resting in my hand at the time. Or ‘CASSEROLE’ immediately after I had just shoved one into the oven before sitting down for the daily lexical tussle. And of course the old chestnut ‘CROSSWORD SOLVER’ which, like a marketing oversell, can only be perpetrated once on any particular target as they cannot fail to be wise to it if they should ever meet it again in the future!

So it was for me with TANDOORI. My favourite destination of a Friday night. Or any other night for that matter. And yet when presented to me in clue form my brain froze. So I guess that has to be my COD as well as my LOI. My FOI was 1A, closely followed as I say by nearly all the other Across clues.

Many thanks to Orpheus for skilful deployment of the black arts.

Definitions are underlined. Everything else is explained as well as I can.

Across
7 Articles framed by Republicans? I’ll say! (6)
RATHER – A + THE (articles, one indefinite and the other definite) sandwiched by R + R (Republicans).
8 Unhappily imagine being short of one puzzle (6)
ENIGMA – make an anagram of IMAGINE (‘unhappily’), take away I (one) and you may have a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an ENIGMA.
9 Time to go back and prepare for publication (4)
EDIT – time and tide wait for no man, and tide can even represent time itself (as in Eastertide, Christmastide). Turn it round and there you have it.
10 Jumping over arched structure in roof (8)
VAULTING – double definition.
11 Income distributed in Angers (8)
EARNINGS – anagram (‘distributed’) of IN ANGERS. (I’ve actually been to Angers, where they have an amazing set of apocalyptic tapestries.)
13 Catch sight of English agent (4)
ESPY – E (English) + SPY (agent).
15 Legend presented in crummy theatre (4)
MYTH – hidden word: crumMY THeatre.
16 One popping the question for model? (8)
PROPOSER – PRO (for) + POSER (model).
18 Sort of restaurant, one with yellowy-brown entrance (8)
TANDOORI – TAN (yellowy-brown) + DOOR (entrance) + I (one).
20 Liveliness one found in little sibling? (4)
BRIO – a BROTHER is a sibling, and his diminutive version is BRO. Insert I (one) and things start to get lively.
21 Husky ambassador carrying rowing equipment (6)
HOARSE – OARS are fairly essential rowing equipment, and if HE (His/Her Excellency) carries them you get to the definition.
22 Bull left us with lacerations, by the sound of it (6)
TAURUS – sounds like TORE US (left us with lacerations).
Down
1 Guesthouse owner with son in outskirts of Londonderry? (8)
LANDLADY – AND LAD (with son) in LY (outskirts of Londonderry).
2 Murdered at night? It’s a mere guess (4,2,3,4)
SHOT IN THE DARK – double definition, first one slightly cryptic.
3 Cowardly bird at foot of cape (6)
CRAVEN – RAVEN (bird) underneath C (cape).
4 Reportedly writes critiques of stage shows (6)
REVUES – homophone, REVUES/REVIEWS.
5 Nursery rhyme character, tearing bib, let out yell (6,3,4)
LITTLE BOY BLUE – anagram (‘tearing’) of BIB LET OUT YELL.
6 Old blokes writing on the wall? (4)
OMEN – O (old) + MEN (blokes).
12 Initially grill a river fish (3)
GAR – initials of Grill A River.
14 Sanctimonious about minister’s former convictions (8)
PREVIOUS – PIOUS (sanctimonious) about REV (minister).
16 Pair admitting strong affection for shore bird (6)
PLOVER – PR (pair) ‘admitting’ LOVE (strong affection).
17 Narcotic drug I consumed after work (6)
OPIATE – I ATE (I consumed) after OP (opus, work).
19 Woman entertaining love for unidentified writer (4)
ANON – ANN (woman) ‘entertaining’ O (love).

37 comments on “QC 1055 by Orpheus – Luddite’s Revenge”

  1. Nothing slowed me down much this time, although I certainly didn’t get them all in sequence. At 3:35, this has to be my PB–I don’t recall ever getting in under 4′, but then I don’t recall much. Feeling quite chuffed, I went to the leaderboard and saw that the amazing Jason finished in 1:41! I went back to the grid, and typed the answers at the speed I’d use in actually solving, hitting the return button each time; it took me exactly one minute. That would leave me 41 seconds to think of all the answers. The mind boggles.
  2. 30 minutes.

    Going fine until hitting a Texan sized breezeblock of earnings, revues, previous, and the final 2 of vaulting and craven.

    Brio was unknown. COD previous.

  3. 6 minutes. Having read the intro and the blog I’ve no time left to comment further!
  4. At 8m 13s I have never achieved a sub-10m QC before, but I found it to be surprisingly unsatisfying. Either I was in the groove or it was on the generously easy side, but I found that the temptation to go for a PB meant that I had no time to enjoy the clues, some of which I can now see had some nice surfaces and pleasing answers. The enjoyment of a crossword is the thinking process and the delight of the eventual solve, even if it takes up to 30m, as it usually does for me. LOI 18ac.
    1. I agree. I know I will very rarely finish one so I am able to ignore anyone’s timings and just enjoy trying to solve and then
      admiring the result!

      Enjoyed the extended comments too. Diana

    2. Oh how we agree with those sentiments. I’d hate to finish too quickly. If we can do it together whilst eating lunch and maybe finished the last few at supper, we feel we’ve had a good day.
  5. In a time of two kevins (not kelvins) I sped through this, far quicker than ‘astartedon’s’ intro
    FOI 1dn LANDLADY
    LOI 4dn REVUES
    COD 8ac ENIGMA
    WOD BREVITY

    Edited at 2018-03-26 03:06 pm (UTC)

  6. Quick time for me too, and would have been quicker had it not been for breeze-block on TANDOORI, just like Don.

    Very enjoyable puzzle, thanks to Orpheus.

    Not that it matters, but I didn’t parse 12dn as the initials of Grill A River – in my head it was “initially grill” = G, + A, + then the conventional R for river.

    My music teacher taught us various musical terms with the aid of smutty limericks, which if course as schoolboys we found hilarious. Here’s brio:

    A cellist who played in a trio
    Seduced the violinist, called Cleo.
    As she pulled down her panties
    She said “No andantes:
    I like it vivace con brio.”

    Templar

  7. Like Astartedon I have decided to join the 21st century and from now on will be solving these electronically, so this was a nice gentle introduction. I soon realised that the main problem is that I still need paper and pencil to work out the anagrams! I was held up briefly by putting ‘stab’ at the start of 2d and by my lack of ornithological knowledge for my LOI 16d. Completed in 10.05 with CoD going to 14d.
    1. I still use pen and paper for long anagrams too, and I’ve been solving online for around a year!
  8. … to which I’ll add my own at 3’45”. Not that I thought it was overly easy as I worked through it. Maybe we’re all just well rested and raring to go this morning.
    Very subtle WOD today, Horryd!
  9. Once again, as a result of dashing through – with pause to get TANDOORI – hoping to break 5 minutes, submitted without looking for typos – and so ended up just over that and with an error. Grrr.
  10. A nice straight forward puzzle which took me 7:16, starting with RATHER and finishing with PLOVER. Was fixated on Little Bo Peep, so Boy Blue took longer to surface, doh! Nice puzzle. Thanks Orpheus and Don. I know exactly what Don means about being in the groove, and as an amateur performer have experienced that heart stopping moment when the words desert you while in full flow. Even worse is the moment when the nerves get you and your fingers just won’t do what the brain is trying to tell them!
  12. Hi Everybody. I think I’m picking up that I go on too long with my intro. I’m only doing that because personally I quite enjoy it when someone talks about the background to how they do the puzzle, or comments on something that happened to them recently, or gives their thoughts on the whole process of doing puzzles anyway. And I always feel that if I don’t like it I don’t have to read it. I also like it when people pick up on things and a bit of a conversation starts. But no worries. If it is too long-winded for most of you and you just want me to get in there, do the puzzle and get out again leaving some sort of explanation behind then I am very happy to do that. Plus, this time I really was doing it at about 3.00 in the morning during a wakeful (sounds more positive to me than ‘sleepless’!) night, when there were no time constraints. A ‘nuit blanche’ as we used to call it in Advertising… but there I go, going on too long again! Sorry, I am relatively new at this but I only want to do right by you all. Or as many of you as possible! So I get the message and will be shorter next time.
    1. I also enjoy a bit of chat, sometimes engendered by a clue, or sometimes just chat. If someone doesn’t have time to read a more verbose blog, there’s nothing to stop them scrolling past! After all if you’re donating your time and effort to analyse a puzzle, it’s only fair that you get to put into it your own thoughts. I do find it interesting to find out a bit more about our contributors than just their thoughts on a clue. It also helps knowing a little bit about the people you meet up with at Setters, Sloggers and Bloggers conventions. Party on Dude!
      1. Hey thanks John – and enjoyed your comment about amateur performance earlier as well!

    2. The battle between the concious and unconscious mind is explored in a series of books by W Timothy Gallwey. His first book was about golf and then he expanded to look at business. Fascinating. As a beginner it was good to get some easy clues to start but made an error with stab instead of shot for 2d which held me up

      1. Thanks very much. I wonder if my son has read it. He plays off 2 and is going through the Sisyphean task of trying to shave that down to scratch. In doing so he seems to be looking at the game from every possible angle from Nutrition to Psychology and everything in between. I’ll have a look at it and pass it on if I think he can fit it in with all the other material.
    5. Anyone who quotes the Zep can write as much as they like in my eyes. Did wonder if the lyric is “hey, hey mama said the way you move…” Or am I missing the point? Problem is I’ve been dazed and confused so long it’s not true… (sorry couldn’t resist)
      1. Well I think from what you say I have MISQUOTED the Zep here! I have honestly never looked up the lyrics to Black Dog, I have just had a vague idea in my head all along since my teens of what he was trying to say. I must say your reading sounds a lot more plausible than my garbled and frankly ungrammatical (if that matters) effort! A case of “Excuse me while I kiss this guy”!
        1. Well having looked at it again perhaps not ungrammatical but just nonsensical. I mean we would have to say that “Jabberwocky” is grammatical even though it is full of nonsense. Even though the words are unfamiliar we can always see how they stand in relationship to their neighbours.
        2. Purple Haze? I remember an Alas Smith and Jones sketch with that line. If I remember rightly it was an end sequence.
  13. It would probably have taken me longer to read the blog than it took me to do the crossword. Wasn’t sure about TIME and TIDE, although Yuletide, etc probably makes it OK.
    PlayUpPompey
  14. I did most of this quickly. A Stab in the Dark held me up a bit but I was down to two after 10 minutes -18a and 14d.
    Tandoori I worked out from the clue -COD I think. My problem with Previous was the parsing, which I eventually worked out. So 15-20 minutes in all; nice puzzle. David
  15. Over target because of the alluded to breeze block. Didn’t get the tide/time thing and was trying to justify emitting something for publication. Couldn’t see landlady either for ages even though I had the l and y. 26 minutes.
  17. Keep your intros coming, I love the variations in blogs. We look for Jackkt for is time as we use that as our yard stick on difficulty of puzzle, your for interesting asides and each of the other bloggers for their own take.

    As they as the world would be a fuller place if we were all the same.

    Keep it up all you bloggers and thanks to the setters too.

    Sybar

    1. Thanks! I do agree – variety is the thing. That way there is something for everyone.
  18. 57 years old and this is my first ever complete solve. Very exciting. Tandoori was my last clue as well.

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