QC 1125 by Orpheus

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

I found this comparatively difficult. Completely different from the last one I blogged which gave me a PB. By contrast I laboured over this one for nearly 12 minutes. The only similarity to the last one from where I was sitting was that my LOI was once again one of the easiest clues (20A). Unlike last time, however, when my mistake was caused by misreading in my haste because all the other clues were going in so quickly, this time I can only say that it was a good clue ‘hidden in plain sight’ that stumped me. FOI was 1A as I remember it and my COD I think has to be 8A, if only for making me stop and think about my defiinitions more deeply than I would normally do (see comment in the blog body).

Many thanks to Orpheus for a brisk and witty challenge.

Too much going on in the astartedon household at the moment for me to say much more today so I’ll just leave you to enjoy it and look forward to any comments.

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

Across
1 Informer touches down in natural pastures (10)
GRASSLANDS – GRASS (informer) + LANDS (touches down). An example of what I have come to think of as a ‘one and two halves definition’ since I started blogging. That is to say the overall definition plus two definitions of the separate parts. I justify calling them ‘halves’ even when (unlike here) the two ‘halves’ are not equal in length, because in semantic terms they are ‘halves’ (or at least as much halves as any other fraction) because I see them as contributing equal doses of meaning to the whole.
7 Dance doctor held in Rugby area (5)
RUMBA – RU (Rugby Union (as opposed to Rugby League)) + A (area) with a doctor (MB, Bachelor of Medicine) ‘held’. The initials are reversed because of stylised Latinisation: there was no such term as Medicinae Baccalaureus in ancient Rome, so the Classical civilisation-worshipping authorities of the universities had to invent one.
8 Compiler’s best friend — Irish, perhaps? (6)
SETTER – whimsical (double?) definition. Assuming and presuming that our compiler today is a man, then a SETTER, possibly an Irish one as here (but could have been a red one if things had been compiled differently), might be that man’s ‘best friend’ (i.e. dog). The potential double definition lies in the fact that we tend to use the words ‘compiler’ and ‘setter’ interchangeably in Crossword Land to mean the person who is doing duty as Deity of the Day, but thinking about it more closely only as I write this I realise they must be separate roles. The setter who composes the crossword, and the compiler who is presumably synonymous with the editor who checks it over, suggests any changes and then gives it the OK. And of course these two people must surely be the very best of symbiotic friends, as they cannot really survive without each other.
10 Following publicity? It’s a craze (3)
FAD – F (following) + AD (publicity).
12 Vellum produced by knowing fellows in port (9)
PARCHMENT – ARCH MEN (knowing fellows) ‘in’ PT (port).
13 During conflict, duke reveals secret (6)
INWARD – IN WAR (during conflict) + D (duke).
14 Disquiet coming from misfortune, as expected (6)
UNEASE – hidden word: misfortUNE AS Expected.
17 Name a club cooked up for hospital transport (9)
AMBULANCE – anagram (‘cooked up’) of NAME A CLUB.
19 Put a stop to the main round, ultimately (3)
END – final letters (‘ultimately’) of thE maiN roaD.
20 Class invaded by large rook (6)
CASTLE – CASTE (class) ‘invaded by’ L (large) = CASTLE.
21 Ancient language the French can identify (5)
LATIN – a rare use of the feminine French definite article in wordplay! LA (‘the’ in French) + TIN (can). I’ve always wondered why LA isn’t used more often as surely it is just as useful as a setter’s building block as LE? And certainly there are enough wordplays flying around with American cities in them, which usually turn out to be either NY or LA (vide infra at 18D).
23 Shabby European with rather bad novel (10)
THREADBARE – anagram (‘novel’) of RATHER BAD + E (European).
Down
1 Grid fairly reconstructed for versatile female employee (4,6)
GIRL FRIDAY – another anagram.  GRID FAIRLY ‘reconstructed’.
2 Start to achieve this writer’s goal (3)
AIM – A (‘start’ to Achieve) plus IM (this writer’s). If the writer speaks of him or herself in the third person: “This writer’s going to the ball…”, then if he or she decided to rephrase in the first person the result would be “I’M going to the ball”. Hence equivalence between ‘this writer’s’ and ‘IM’ in the wordplay.
3 Run away, having originally stolen fish with hesitation (7)
SCARPER – S (‘originally’ Stolen) + CARP (fish) + ER (hesitation).
4 A sure thing, we hear, to declare (6)
ASSERT – homophone: sounds like ‘A CERT’ (a sure thing).
5 East Ender’s wife from the Low Countries? (5)
DUTCH – double definition with the first being slightly cryptic. If you are Dutch you come from the region of Europe known as the Low Countries. You could also be the wife of an East Ender, as of course we all know that they transact all their daily business in rhyming slang (certainly in Crossword Land anyway). In this case there seem to be two main etymologies: Dutch plate (presumably from the decorative regional tableware) = MATE, or Duchess of Fife = WIFE. Actually I heard another example of RS the other day that I hadn’t come across before but I liked it and thought it worth a mention. I had arranged to have a property cleared, and the guys turned up with their van and did the job. At the end I asked if I could pay them by card and the leader said, “No sorry, Mate, you couldn’t go over the road to Tesco’s and get some Cadbury’s could you?” (Nice bit of misdirection in the surface there…). As it happened I didn’t need to go over the road as I do normally carry a load of Cadbury’s Smash (cash) in my pocket for just such eventualities.
6 Envoy’s time to receive eastern member (8)
DELEGATE – DATE (time) ‘receiving’ E (eastern) + LEG (member).
9 Presence at function about two hours before midnight? (10)
ATTENDANCE – AT DANCE (at function) ‘about’ TEN (two hours before midnight).
11 Gloomy signal from the conductor? (8)
DOWNBEAT – double definition, one signalled as slightly cryptic by the interrogation mark, although to me it seems a perfectly reasonable straightforward DD.
15 Irritated, being required to cross lake (7)
NEEDLED – NEEDED (required) to ‘cross’ L (lake).
16 Extension built by woman overlooking river (6)
ANNEXE – ANN (woman) ‘overlooking’ (in this down clue) EXE (river).
18 Security device initially tested in US city church (5)
LATCH – T (‘initially’ Tested) in LA (US city (there you go: vide supra at 21A)) + CH (church).
22 Meal players left unfinished (3)
TEA – TEAM (players) left unfinished = TEA.

25 comments on “QC 1125 by Orpheus”

  1. 8 minutes, so all straightforward here.

    My change of user pic today (courtesy HM Bateman, captioned ‘A quiet half-hour with The Times’) is with reference to 20ac and in memory of a previous TftT contributor, a retired colonel, who went into seven fits of apoplectic rage whenever a setter referred to the chess piece as a ‘castle’. We’ve not heard from him for many a moon so presumably his fury eventually took its toll and he has long since adjourned to the great chess board in the sky.

    Edited at 2018-07-02 07:22 am (UTC)

  2. I’d forgotten about the colonel, although an eyebrow did rise a bit when I got to the clue. 4:07; sorry to be late, Templar.
    1. Yes, I did almost write a comment about it although as I have said before unless something is blatantly wrong or out of place I tend to just show how the clue works and leave the rest to the community to comment. Even if I had written a comment though I would have come down on the side of the setter (a) as it is after all a perfectly good English language definition and (b) I think most of us who play the game actually ‘unlearn’ calling the Rook a Castle. Learning the game at our parents’ or grandparents’ knees we learn childish names such as Castle and Horse. And if we go on to play the game with any degree of enthusiasm we learns to update our vocabulary. But people who never go on to play the game any further often still think of the pieces in those terms simply because they have never been to a Chess club and had to moderate their language quickly or be laughed out the door.

      Think of it another way. An English-speaking person who has never played Chess before is walking along the beach one day and finds a Rook that a child has lost out of his portable Chess set. He will look at it and say “Now what on earth is this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s a piece from a child’s game. It looks like some sort of… castle.” And there he is using an English word perfectly naturally as a definition of what he finds in his hand.

      I suppose it’s a bit of a case of specialist and lay usage. I used to run an engineering company although I come from a scientific background rather than an engineering one. Coming from the scientific world I naturally used to treat ‘data’ as a plural noun which is obviously ‘correct’. I would say “The data are conclusive…”, for instance, but the engineers would laugh at me and say it sounded silly. And translating myself into their world I could see what they meant. But there was no way that my mind could actually bring myself to the point of saying “The data IS conclusive…”.

      1. Jesus, Don, I just said an eyebrow rose a little! I actually don’t care any more than I suspect Jack does what one calls the thingy (and I believe the king-rook exchange is called castling not rooking; but I digress). And I do hope you never actually say that the data are conclusive. Data never are conclusive, as Duhem and Quine were at pains to point out.
        1. OK. Thanks for your comment and I obviously just take this thing a little too seriously.
  3. I thought there was some chewy bit to this puzzle. I was looking for a word for informer at 1a for a while and I hadn’t heard of the expression at 1d either so needed most of the checkers in place before unravelling the anagram. Like Templar I tried inventing a camp fish, which put some strange images into my mind.
    Eventually completed in 13.22 with LOI 3d.
    Thanks for the blog
  4. So found that one quite easy; most unusual for a Monday! In the absence of Kevin I was one jack (which usually equates to about 1.75 on the Kevometer)
    so pretty happy with that.

    I spent a little time trying to convince myself that there must be a campfish in some ocean somewhere in order to make “scamper” work at 3dn …

    Very nice to have an elegant but gentle puzzle before the week’s hurlyburly so thanks to Orpheus and to Don for the entertaining blog (I now can’t help but think of you as Arthur Daley, dishing out handfuls of crumpled notes to geezers in white vans).

    Templar

    1. Many thanks for that. Good old Arfur! One of my teenage heroes. Maybe it’s worth a change of name, or at least a change of pic!
    2. I was too was going for ‘scamper’ – thinking of ‘scampi’ with the ‘i’ being dropped as some result of ‘stolen’
  5. Unlike our blogger, I too found this quite easy, being only about 20s outside my PB. Hard to pick a COD, but I choose SCARPER for the fishy bit and being a good word I’ve not heard for a while.
    1. Yeah, well, to be honest there were perhaps some mitigating circumstances but I’ve come to the conclusion that people don’t want to hear about that. And if I really want to I should be able to close myself off and concentrate and do it without distractions. But then that is part of the pleasure of the Quickie – you can multi-task with it and just weave it into the fabric of whatever else you’re doing.
    2. I think 1m50s for this one can’t be more than about 10s over my QCPB. Must’ve been very straightforward!
  6. 24 minutes, 6 under my target but I was helped by checkers falling in the right places for biffing. As for ‘castle’ it”s in Chambers as ‘informal or childish” but I wonder what the chess club set do when they O-O or O-O-O.

    Brian

    1. That is a very good point. Even the Colonel would have to admit that ‘castle’ is thereby a valid Chess vocabulary word, and the etymology of the move must surely derive from the name of the piece itself. In fact I am sure that when the game was first introduced in its modern recognisable form from India (when it was called ‘Caissa’ I seem to remember?) Rooks were called ‘Elephants’ and they had Castles on their backs, and I think there is a connection there to the area of ‘Elephant & Castle” in South London.

      Unfortunately the clue definition would then have to refer to a move you make with a Rook rather than simply then piece itself. But I think your comment firmly establishes that the Colonel’s apoplexy was completely unjustified!

  7. Straightforward I thought. Enjoyed SETTER, my COD. THREADBARE took a while to unravel, I spent far too long trying to a find a letter to follow the “d”. Should have started at the beginning.
    Having 3 sons, SCARPER came quite easily!
    PlayUpPompey
  8. Worked my way through this one in 6:55, so obviously not too tricky. Started with AIM and finished with CASTLE. Liked SCARPER. Thanks Orpheus and Don.
  9. Another new PB for me at 3:47, taking some 24 seconds off my previous best. I think I really must be approaching my limit of what is possible on the ipad app where everything has to be selected and entered with a single digit.
  10. Thanks for another great blog Astartedon, I always enjoy them. And thank you for finishing the puzzle off for me — just couldn’t get CASTLE, ended up with BATTLE…don’t ask me why. Prefer draughts! Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed this Orpheus: a good start to the week.
  11. I was never seriously held up on this but nor was I quick.
    It took me about 19 minutes to get all but four in the SW.
    13a, 20a, 11d and 16d(LOI) all required a bit of extra thought.
    I’m still not sure about Inward=Secret but the clueing was very clear. At 11d I thought the conductor might ring a BELL,so Doorbell was a strange possibility (Dour bell).
    And at 16d I thought the river Nene might make its debut in a QC;it’s been flowing through the big puzzles recently.
    About 23 minutes in total. David
  12. 22mins, so that counts as straightforward on my scale. Like others, Scampers was my first thought for 3d, and I also spent ages trying to parse 12ac without success. Port = Pt is a new one on me, though probably more likely than the part/port misprint I settled on as the explanation. Invariant
    PS It’s Bellum, Bella, so you can safely ignore the engineers
  13. Another enjoyable one for me. I managed to do it in one sitting over lunch and a shade under 30 mins and not too much ‘research’ – just needed help with 23ac, as far as I remember. So it must have been easy.

    Thanks to Orpheus and astartedon

  14. A late run today, with Mrs Z paying rapt attention to the appalling Love Island in the background, so my just under 7 minutes counts as an achievement. Thanks A for a comprehensive blog: I look forward to your novella length offering when the household demands relax a bit!

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