QC 1565 by Teazel

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

I think this coronavirus thing isn’t just physically infecting loads of people worldwide. In my house it also seems to be infecting our very thought processes. As I was sitting down to write this for instance I reached into the fridge to get a beer and when I looked at the label I could have sworn it said “Corona – la virus mas fina”. I blinked and got my lenses into focus and realised that it actually said “Corona – la cerveza mas fina”. Then my wife came in and started talking about “this Coriolanus virus…”, starting me off on a train of thought that had the bard acting as 16th century prophet of modern day epidemics as well as predating Freud and gender fluidity and setting up Hamlet as our model for the conflicted 21st century male. Then came the news that my wife had come into the room to deliver – that the first person to have succumbed fatally to this virus in this country was in fact the mother of her sister’s neighbour – and it all felt suddenly quite a lot closer to home.

But so what. There’s a blog to do. And I am very pleased to be meeting Teazel, my oldest adversary, to whom many thanks for an entertaining puzzle to start the week.

And here I have to own up a bit. I do think this was a very straightforward puzzle, although in real time it took me quite a bit longer than usual because before reaching into that fridge to get that beer I had finished off a bottle of Laphroaig and I wasn’t really thinking or seeing straight.

So, as far as I can remember, my FOI was the obvious anagram at 1A. LOI was 23A which was the one that I held back on longest because I thought it had to be more complicated than it was. And for my COD I think I have to go with 7D because of its topicality and humour even though in construction it is but a humble anagram.

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

Across
1 Nan told wimp off for hoax with skull (8,3)
PILTDOWN MAN – straight anagram (‘off’) of NAN TOLD WIMP.
8 Vital part of German city church (7)
ESSENCE – ESSEN (German city) + CE (Church of England).
9 Endure repulsive piece he painted (5)
DURER – hidden word: enDURE Repulsive ‘piece’.
10 Without a second thought, had fun too excitedly (3,2,4)
OUT OF HAND – straight anagram (‘excitedly’) of HAD FUN TOO.
12 Tree, or its remains? (3)
ASH – cryptic definition referring to what you might get if you cremated the tree.
13 Seize greeting card (6)
HIJACK – HI (greeting) + JACK (card).
15 Call for quiet, keeping debate calm (6)
SMOOTH – SH (call for quiet) ‘keeping’ MOOT (debate).
17 Ladder, or short part of one (3)
RUN – a part of a ladder is a RUNg, and if this is shortened you get the answer. The definition here is referring of course to a run or ladder in a pair of tights or a stocking.
18 Girl is in sight, with potential to be cut up (9)
DIVISIBLE – DI (girl) + VISIBLE (in sight).
20 Great success, putting chapter into back story (5)
ECLAT – ELAT (TALE (story) backwards) with C (chapter) inserted.
22 Little Kenneth died, Saturday or Sunday (7)
WEEKEND – WEE (little) + KEN (Kenneth) + D (died).
23 Child looking for this game (4-3-4)
HIDE-AND-SEEK – I think this is just a simple cryptic definition, as in a game of hide and seek a child would indeed be looking (for other children).
Down
1 Suggest one wears mail (5)
POSIT – I (one) ‘wearing’ POST (mail).
2 Looking miserable, having been confronted for ages (4-5)
LONG-FACED – LONG (for ages) + FACED (confronted).
3 One introducing music reading out two letters (6)
DEEJAY – hardly a clue at all really, given that a ‘DEEJAY’ is often simply referred to as a DJ anyway. But for the record if you ‘read it out’ it sounds like those two letters.
4 We had married (3)
WED – WE’D (we had).
5 Am actor changing musical direction (7)
MARCATO – straight definition (‘changing’) of AM ACTOR. Marcato is a musical direction written on a score to indicate that certain notes or chords are to be accented.
6 Prime minister protects Tyneside town (5,7)
NORTH SHIELDS – NORTH (Prime Minister 1770-1782) + SHIELDS (protects).
7 March of Helen? Wrong — of Welshmen (3,2,7)
MEN OF HARLECH – strange clue this as the definition is split as indicated above. The answer is an anagram (‘wrong’) of MARCH OF HELEN. Thankfully renditions were muted on Saturday (but don’t tell my mother-in-law I said that).
11 Block a view of Syrian city (9)
DAMASCENE – DAM (block) + A + SCENE (view).
14 Sounded like Christmas bells? (7)
JINGLED – vaguely cryptic definition as in “Jingle bells, jingle bells…”.
16 Admitted a vendor initially unpaid (6)
AVOWED – A + V (Vendor ‘initially’) + OWED (unpaid).
19 Holiday snap (5)
BREAK – double defeinition.
21 Drink is golfer’s support, they say (3)
TEA – sounds like (‘they say’) TEE, the support often used for a golf ball when teeing off.

32 comments on “QC 1565 by Teazel”

  1. I biffed 1ac, parsing post-submission. DNK either MARCATO or NORTH SHIELDS, but neither was really problematic, although the town worried me at first (clues that contain ‘Berkshire village’ or somesuch always scare me at first). 5:08.
  2. FOI PILTDOWN MAN

    LOI 5dn MARCATO

    COD 6dn NORTH SHIELDS

    WOD 11ac DAMASCENE

    Time 9 minutes 15 seconds

  3. 30 mins with typo mercato.

    Hide and seek is weak.
    Dnk piltdown man, men of harlech.

    Cod hijack.

    Try the 15×15, same standard as this and less unknowns for me.

    1. Thanks for the heads up about today’s 15×15. We tried a couple last week and were completely stumped. Will give this one a go.
  4. I completed this in 7 minutes but in the process noted that it may not be as straightforward as my time would suggest if one is not a practised solver with all the requisite GK.

    Re Don’s intro, the second person to succumb fatally to CV in the UK did so at my nearest hospital, only 12 miles up the road, so it certainly feels as if it is on the doorstep now.

  5. I had nearly all of the required GK for this. I could see that 5d was anagram to derive a musical term which was unknown to me. So that became LOI -and a lucky guess.
    Prior to that I went very quickly, not always parsing as I went -MEN OF HARLECH obvious, but only if you know it.
    I would have been under 10 minutes but for DEEJAY and LOI MARCATO which required writing out and the crossing of fingers.
    10:44 in the end. David
  6. 26:06 which represents a good day for me. FOI 1a, LOI 16d. NORTH SHIELDS reminds me of going to a FA Amateur Cup final at Wembley as a boy in the 60s when NS were playing and hearing the men behind me singing along to the national anthem ‘God save North Shields’ which I thought hilarious.
  7. I found that a gentle Monday offering, with some clues (HIDE AND SEEK, JINGLED, ASH) feeling barely cryptic. But there were some stretchers too and in the end I was 1 Jack or 1.5 Kevins for a Very Good Day.

    FOI PILTDOWN MAN, LOI MARCATO (because I’d never heard of it and wanted all the checkers even after I’d guessed it), COD SMOOTH.

    Thanks Teazel and Don.

    Templar

  8. It took me a while to work out the long answers at 1a and 7d which slowed me up as I was missing a lot of potential 1st letters. But I made my way steadily around the grid until left with the unknown MERCATO which, like others have commented, required a guess as to the order of the consonants. Crossed the line in 11.02, with a nod to SMOOTH and WEEKEND.
    Thanks for the blog
  9. I’m afraid to say I was two minutes over the top of my target range at 17 minutes, due mostly to MARCATO and NORTH SHIELDS. I kept thinking that we had had a double-barrelled PM, North-Something, and that Prime Minister was the definition instead of part of the word play before the penny dropped. For MARCATO (NHO), it was just a reluctance to plump for one of the anagram options, each of which sounded implausible.
  10. No time today as I was interrupted. but it felt like I was on my 20 minute target. As usual for Teazel some of the definitions required extra thought, but HIDE AND SEEK was not really up to the usual standard.
    DNK MERCATO as all of my knowledge of musical terms has come from crosswords (adante, etc) and I hadn’t come across this one before.
    Thanks to Teazel, and to astartedon for the entertaining blog.

    Brian

  11. I found this a very mixed bag. There were quite a few write ins including ESSENCE, ASH, RUN, WEEKEND and HIDE-AND-SEEK which I tried and failed to parse. I also had 3 guesses with DAMASCENE, DURER and MARCATO (the latter a decidedly DNK) and why oh why did my LOI DEEJAY take so long? 1.8 Kevins for a good start to the week.
  12. … though my last two, 5D Marcato and 10A Out of hand needed the checkers to fill in the anagrams. A 7 minute finish in all for a good start to the week.

    Have we not had Deejay really quite recently? I seem to remember a few MERs then about whether it was a real word – not sure it gets better on repetition!

    Thank you to the Don for the virus-laden blog, and to Teazel for a nice puzzle.

    Cedric

  13. A good puzzle from Teazel with a few head-scratchers. I was interrupted by a delivery from our postperson and then by having my specs disintegrate. I repaired my specs and timed my absence so I made it in 2.6K. I liked SMOOTH, WEEKEND, ECLAT (again?), POSIT, DAMASCENE, and AVOWED. My LOI was DEEJAY which took longer than it should. Many thanks to Teazel and Don. John M.

    Edited at 2020-03-09 11:22 am (UTC)

  14. About 30 mins for me today. One of those puzzles where it was possible to work out the majority of longer clues without the need for the GK (albeit with fingers crossed on a couple). 1ac, 7dn and 11dn come to mind.

    As a result of not obviously knowing “Piltdown Man”, it was a toss up between North and South Shields until I saw the hidden word in 9ac.

    FOI – 4dn “Wed”
    LOI – 15ac “Smooth”
    COD – 22ac “Weekend” – nice surface

    Thanks as usual.

  16. Easy enough. MARCATO going in last. Struggling to remember anything else. 6:21. Might go and have a bash at the older brother.
  17. Had to work at this one. Probably down to a weekend of Cumbrian carousing addling the brain slightly. I started with WED and ASH, then spotted PILTDOWN MAN and NORTH SHIELDS. After that I ploughed my way through and finished in 12:12. LOI was DIVISIBLE, which I made hard work of for no good reason. Thanks Teazel and Don.
  18. I finished in under an hour with minor help from my husband with NORTH SHEILDS – he went to Durham university! Didn’t manage to parse SMOOTH until seen here but got it anyway. Also got held up by DAMASCENE as knew WEEKEND and HIDE-AND-SEEK were corct but couldn’t fit DAMASCUS, took a while to work out the definition was OF Syrian city. Otherwise all good. I think as part of the role of this quick cryptic is to encourage beginners like myself it’s good to have a slighlty variable standard and today has certainly encouraged me to keep going.Now to try the 15×15. As always thanks to you all.
  19. This is one I finished without needing to resort to aids, which makes it a good day for me… All done in under 6k, which is also good going for me.

    Started with wed and ash. Then I wondered about Durer but couldn’t see how the ‘repulsive’ fitted in. His paintings certainly are not that. Shouldn’t the words containing the hidden bear some relation to the clue?

    Also a bit of a MER for 23a – what is the ‘this’ the child is looking for?

    Thanks to Teazel and Don for a pleasant start to the week.

    1. ‘This game’ is the definition i.e. the name of the game the clue is leading you towards.
  20. ….where I was only held up by needing the early checkers for PILTDOWN MAN – and all of them for the NHO MARCATO.

    Despite being late on parade, I’m still 8th on the leaderboard.

    FOI ESSENCE
    LOI MARCATO
    COD HIJACK

  21. We have enough complaints in the 15×15 blog about unknowns being clued as anagrams without them arriving here. Although I guess that MARTACO was unlikely, but possible?
  22. Breezed through this one today – lifted our spirits after trying a couple of the 15x15s over the weekend 😱
  23. Straightforward was the word that sprang to my mind too after finishing this Monday offering pretty quickly (for me!) As others have commented, some were absolute gimmes – ash, break, and tea for starters. But some interesting GK and a full range of the setter’s art added to the fun. NHO marcato so glad that was ok.

    One minor quibble re weekend – surely it’s Saturday AND Sunday, not OR?

    I thought Hijack was a fun clue, and Men of Harlech has given me a stirring earworm 😊

    FOI Essence – that German city again!
    LOI Smooth – moot didn’t show itself straightaway
    COD Piltdown Man – entertaining surface
    Time just under 9 minutes

    Thanks Don and Teazel

  24. Just right for a quick cryptic. Not a pushover but not impenetrable either.
  25. ….on the tube going up to Tate Britain for the excellent nw Beardsley exhibition- so about 30 minutes. Posit, Avowed, Moot for Debate all had me worried and it was a guess between Marcato and Martaco but guessed at the former…
    Weekend scared me but raised a big smiled once spotted as did some of the others.
    A good start to the week.
    Thanks all,
    John George
  26. Every day the blogger announces how easy it is and how it took them 5 minutes.
    Well it took me well over an hour and then a further 45 mins to unsuccessfully attempt DEEJAY.
    It’s never written deejay. Or hasn’t been for forty years.
    Ridiculous clue!
    What with my pension and lifetime savings being literally decimated as I write , could have done without this…
    Nick
    ps have played the piano since I was 6 and have never heard of the term MARCATO (but guessed it was similar to staccato…)

    1. Agreed – only got to it this morning and never having heard of MERCATO or MEN OF HERLECH or DURER I struggled to finish. A bit more GK needed than usual and not the better for it. A low number of comments normally means a hard puzzle for mortal solvers!

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