QC 1345 by Hurley

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Many thanks to Hurley for this puzzle which was promising to be a personal best for me (allowing for the fact that I was doing it from a bed in a hotel near Terminal 5 while away on a conference a few minutes after waking up with my wife pestering me to make a cup of tea), but which ended up with my pressing ‘submit’ and receiving the message “Unlucky, it’s not quite right yet”.

I have been through my solution several times now and scratched my head so hard that I am surprised I haven’t caused a brain haemorrhage. I cannot for the life of me see what is wrong with it. I checked and double-checked for my usual butterfingered typos arising from my unfamiliarity with the way letters get entered in the online grid and for once there were none. Eventually in desperation I reset the grid and entered the whole thing over again but to no avail. I can only assume that I have fundamentally misunderstood one of the clues and got it horribly wrong.

Unfortunately though I do not have much time to investigate further as I have to write this quickly in order to go and join the rest of the conference attenders (not attendees: please see previous discussion on this blog). So I am just going to have to leave my answer out there in its imperfect state and hope that when I return verlaine or some other Olympian (or even some anonymous occasional solver) will have stooped to correct my error.

As I say, before pressing ‘submit’ everything was going swimmingly. FOI was 7A just as it should be. LOI was 5D, which is my most likely candidate for my error. My misgivings come from the fact that ‘life’ for ‘source of vitality’ is perhaps too tautological (although I think well within the usual parameters for an acceptable clue) but it is the only way that I can see that it works. The alternative might be to have ‘V’ cryptically as the ‘source of vitality’, but then I would need a 3-letter word meaning ‘quite’ to make things work. And one that fits with the ‘I’ and ‘E’ checkers into the bargain to make sense of everything in the end. And then, of course, the definition seems right, with a ‘TRUE-LIFE’ drama being one that is ‘quite realistic’.

In my current state of incomplete knowledge and limited time I am loth to choose a COD but I will go for the double definition at 22D just because of the picture it paints in my mind.

Definitions are underlined and everything else is explained just as I see it in the simplest language I can manage.

Across
7 Organised go at base wrecking? (8)
SABOTAGE – straight anagram (‘organised’) of GO AT BASE.
8 Australian jumper, male, finds space (4)
ROOM – ROO (kangaroo, Australian ‘jumper’) + M (male).
9 House fruit (6)
ORANGE – double definition (house as in William of Orange).
10 Long-serving soldier’s wife in chair (5)
SWEAT – W (wife) ‘in’ SEAT (chair). SWEAT is a slang term for a soldier with a long service record.
11 Vote in favour, I heard (3)
AYE – sounds like ‘I’ (heard). AYE as in ‘the AYEs have it’.
12 Wise person in a vehicle entering street (6)
SAVANT – A VAN (a vehicle) ‘entering’ ST (street).
14 In middle of morning, I’d emptied sachet (6)
AMIDST – AM (morning) + ID + ST (SacheT ’emptied’).
16 By sound of it, vendor’s storage area for wines (6)
CELLAR – sounds like ‘seller’ (vendor).
18 First and third of colours always bright (6)
CLEVER – CL (first and third letters of CoLours) + EVER (always).
19 Bustling activity in meadow (3)
ADO – hidden word: meADOw.
20 Happen again in playground, initially unexpected result (5)
RECUR – REC (recreation ground) + UR (Unexpected Result ‘initially’).
21 King, Eastern, accommodated in requirement for outdated gun (6)
MUSKET – K (king) + E (eastern) ‘accommodated in’ MUST (requirement).
23 Ruin diet regularly getting measure of alcohol (4)
UNIT – rUiN dIeT ‘regularly’ gives UNIT, the language in which the nanny state attempts to get us to regulate our alcohol intake. (Incidentally, my son, who doesn’t like alcohol but who likes a beer, buys an alcohol-free drink appropriately branded “Nanny State” which is made by Brewdog (alternative alcohol-free beers are available) which he says is quite palatable.)
24 Coins are switched? That might happen (8)
SCENARIO – straight anagram (‘switched’) of COINS ARE.
Down
1 Market willing to identify legitimate target (4,4)
FAIR GAME – FAIR (market) + GAME (willing).
2 Old Boy turns up, referring to something useful (4)
BOON – OB (old boy, turns ‘up’ in this down clue) + ON (referring to).
3 Warning feline’s gobbling veal left out (6)
CAVEAT – CAT (feline) ‘gobbling’ VEA (VEAL minus L (i.e. ‘left’ out)).
4 When swimming, reads about English stretch of water (3,3)
RED SEA – anagram (‘swimming’) of READS ‘about’ E (English).
5 Time on French street source of vitality? Quite realistic (4-4)
TRUE-LIFE – T (time) ‘on’ (in this down clue) RUE (French street) + LIFE (source of vitality). Please see comments above however.
6 Move fast to get security feature (4)
BOLT – double definition.
13 Distribute tea, local, in new arrangement (8)
ALLOCATE – straight anagram (‘in new arrangement’) of TEA LOCAL.
15 Mischievous elves hid wicked lady? (3-5)
SHE-DEVIL – straight anagram (‘mischievous’) of ELVES HID.
17 Most unusual artist on break (6)
RAREST – RA (Royal Academician, i.e. a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, therefore ‘artist’) ‘on’ (in this down clue) REST (break).
18 Oblige Pimlico MP, electioneering, just a bit (6)
COMPEL – hidden word: PimliCO MP ELectioneering.
20 Call boxing arena (4)
RING – double definition.
22 Gaiter disagreement (4)
SPAT – double definition.

39 comments on “QC 1345 by Hurley”

  1. Don’t fret! The checker is wrong! It has misplaced 6D with 23A and 8A with 20D.
    Just goes to show you can’t always rely on a computer to get it right. Luckily a not so challenging puzzle today. I hope your wife enjoyed her tea. Well done for getting that right.

    Edited at 2019-05-06 06:46 am (UTC)

  2. I’m currently in a 25-way tie for first place on the leaderboard, with 4 errors. I gather that this is a bank holiday, so I don’t expect anyone to be there at Snafu Central to remedy this until tomorrow. 5:16.
    1. You are currently in a 41-way tie for second place. One solver managed to beat the system!

      Edited at 2019-05-06 08:23 am (UTC)

        1. There are four people on the puzzle club with all answers “correct”. It’s almost as though they’ve revealed the grid on the main website and then just typed in the answers. Why do they bother?
  3. I finished this correctly in about 19 minutes but the clock did not stop for the reasons stated above. The computer has adopted the Eric Morecambe approach; all the right letters just not in the right order.
    This should not detract from a deceptively difficult puzzle from Hurley. It looked easy on the surface but wasn’t for me.I did not help myself with a couple of lazy biffs -Rarity at 17d and True Grit at 5d; but I knew these were doubtful.
    FOI ROOM; LOsI ORANGE and FAIR GAME(COD). David
  4. I’m with you. A misprogrammed solution in the NE corner is the problem I think.
    For some reason I couldn’t think of bolt so a frustrating dnf for me.
  7. I encountered the same problems on submission to The Times Crossword Club website. It says I have 4 errors similar to most others on the leaderboard!

    FOI 3d CAVEAT, LOI 22d SPAT Guessed 10a SWEAT 8:46 with no errors.

  8. I’m filling in the paper edition so no problems there. Not come across sweat as slang for soldier. Interestingly Chambers gave it as a long labour and a soldier but not together. Not come across spat either so I struggled with that but all fair enough. Thanks.
  9. Like others, I was surprised to see two (and then four) ‘errors’ when I completed the grid – ROOM and BOLT plus UNIT and RING all of which were write-ins for me. No time because I rely on the online version on my iPad but it was quicker than any of last week’s solves for me. LOsI were FAIR GAME and SABOTAGE. Lots of nice clues and a very approachable start to the week. Thanks both (and a big raspberry to whoever is responsible for the online version). John M
  10. I’m stone last as I had a genuine typo to throw in the mix anyway putting me on 6 errors.

    Knew i shouldn’t have bothered today

  11. I finished on my 20 minute target despite my phone saying ‘sorry’, but I didn’t enjoy it. I wonder if the setters know how much I dislike this type of grid, with no 1 across and double and triple checkers and unches. Three-letter answers where you have two checkers are also hardly challenging, however clever the wordplay.
    Perhaps the Crossword Editor can explain why they are allowed in the QC when they are not used in the 15×15.
    Rant over!

    Brian

    Edited at 2019-05-06 09:01 am (UTC)

    1. Not the editor, but I think that when three letter words appear in the main puzzle, they too will have two letters checked by crossing answers.
  12. ….be SABOTAGE ?

    I was held up briefly by my LOI, but otherwise my only mer was SWEAT not being preceded by “old”. I guess it’s OK though.

    FOI SABOTAGE
    LOI TRUE-LIFE
    COD BOLT
    TIME 3:25

  13. A tricky NW corner held me up today where I tried hard to work out how a BORE could be useful. Solving that one seemed to clear the jam and ORANGE and FAIR GAME followed soon after. Like others I got an awful shock when I was told there were 4 errors and was relieved to see I wasn’t being dense. Completed in 12.50.
    Thanks for the blog.
  14. Apart from the frightful four, 16ac doesn’t seem to be clued unambiguously – after doing the rest in 5 or 6 minutes, I then spent a couple pondering which of the alternatives were required before plumping for the wrong one.
  15. Thanks everybody for your feedback. I should perhaps explain that as bloggers we access the puzzle in a slightly different way which helps us format the blog but only gives a simple right or wrong comment on completion rather than any indication of any errors. Of course what I should have done next was to solve the puzzle online in the usual way and then I would have seen what the errors were but I didn’t really have time in the circumstances. And yes, Mrs A did get a very nice cup tea which I suppose had to be my main priority.
  16. Yes, a bit of a shock when the app showed four straightforward answers in red when I submitted. NE and SW corners. A quick recheck convinced me there was a technical error, and this thread confirmed it. Thank-you.
  17. I mean, just to explain why I was trying to work out what clue I might have got wrong rather than just being able to see what the problem was as all of you did!
  18. 8:29 for me with the same 4 “wrong” as everyone else. Enjoyed the puzzle otherwise. Thanks Hurley and Don.
  19. Just shy of 30mins. A promising enough start turned into a bit of a footslog with 11ac (!) and 6d my last pair. … I did at least resist the urge to put Goat for 6d. Invariant
  20. Don’t like 16a. Seems quite ambiguous to me whether answer is seller or cellar and none of the other clues depend on getting it correct.
      1. Depending how you read it. A seller sounds like a storage area for wine.
        1. Yes, I’m actually aware of the homophony of ‘seller’ and ‘cellar’. My question was, “How could the clue mean ‘seller’?”–a rhetorical question, as it can’t. As our blogger explains below.
          1. People come to these forums to learn not to get sarcastic responses. Perhaps you’re aware of the homophony of nob and knob?
    2. I think the answer there is that if SELLER were the correct answer then all you would have done would be to solve a straight definition clue, i.e. VENDOR = SELLER. The rest of the clue would be superfluous. The only reason you have a clue to solve at all is that the setter has created a cryptic surface by not using the word SELLER directly in the clue.

      To put it another way, the first ‘trick’ you have to do is realise that a vendor is a seller and substitute that word in the clue, at which point it becomes clear that the only answer can be CELLAR.

      Edited at 2019-05-06 11:10 am (UTC)

      1. I thought the convention was that the clue is either at the beginning or the end, which means we are looking for either a word meaning “by the sound of it” or “storage area for wines”. That seems a better disambiguation, although there is also the fact that it says “sounds like vendor”, and as above if it were “seller” the “sounds like” would be redundant.
        I used to have difficulty with this when I first started, but remembering the rules generally makes it clear.
        Pwliv
        1. I don’t think there’s any convention of that sort; rather, it’s just hard to work it so that the definition is elsewhere. On edit: By chance, there’s a rare example in today’s 15×15 (27344).

          Edited at 2019-05-07 12:38 am (UTC)

      2. I’m fairly new to cryptics so I appreciate your reply. Could you not argue the same from a different starting point. A storage place for wine is a cellar therefore the only appropriate simile for vendor is seller?
        1. Yes, you could. And in fact that is what the best solvers do. They home in on the straight definition and very often don’t bother looking at the cryptic bit until later. Of course, for the beginner the difficulty is working out which is the straight bit and which is the cryptic. But as you get more experienced you get more of an eye and a feel for it and that is how the top solvers manage to do crosswords so quickly – they minimise the need to read the rest of the clue and just pop the answer into the grid from the definition and move on to the next clue.

          Well that is perhaps a bit simplistic, because sometimes if you don’t read the cryptic carefully enough you can put in the wrong answer and come a cropper. But it is all part of the cut and thrust between the setter and solver, because of course the setter will deliberately try and misdirect you by setting up an ‘obvious’ definition that you put in instinctively, but which you would realise was wrong if you read the cryptic properly.

          This is what people do when they ‘BIFF’ answers. BIFD means ‘Bunged In From Definition’. If you try to pronounce BIFD it sounds like BIFFED, the past participle of BIFF. Hence the verb ‘TO BIFF’ entered the crossword jargon.

          So I suppose what the best solvers do is ‘intelligent BIFFing’. They BIFF the answer from the definition but have one eye on the cryptic, maybe reading it fully and seeing how it works, but often just scanning it quickly for standard crossword tropes that will give them enough confidence to move on to the next clue. Once the grid is filled they sit back and just check through that it all makes sense before submitting their solution (going through the cryptic to make sure it makes sense is known as ‘parsing’, a word which you may remember from grammar lessons at school when you used to analyse sentences for their structure.)

          Sorry if you knew all that already, but you did say you were a beginner and asked the question so I thought I’d answer. And when I answer I generally get a bit carried away and probably over-egg things a bit.

          Edited at 2019-05-07 11:14 am (UTC)

  21. The Answer to four clues are in the wrong place. 20 down should be 8 across 23 across should be 6 down and vice versa
  24. Knocked out in quarter of an hour, only to be incredulous that four easy write-ins were wrong, relieved to learn that there was a technical issue.

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