QC 1595 by Tracy

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Sorry, I have absolutely nothing to say today, as I fell asleep after cooking dinner (whilst taking on board the customary amount of chef’s ‘inspiration’) and woke up in the middle of the night realising I had not written this. FOI was 6A and LOI was the slightly unusual 8A. There were several possible CODs with some neat surfaces competing for the crown but in the end I will probably go for 11D as being the neatest and most compact whilst also incidentally reminding me of one of my oldest friends (although to be fair to him he rarely causes impasses). Slightly distracted along the way by reading a highly entertaining article about Joseph Heller being asked to write a script for Casino Royale but finally got here saying thanks to Tracy for an entertaining medium-difficulty small hours solve.

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

Across
1 Police officer in Cape, working with firm (9)
CONSTABLE – C (Cape) + ON (working) + STABLE (firm).
6 Man behaving dishonourably — Conservative, notice (3)
CAD – C (Conservative) + AD (notice).
8 You and I filling awfully large trousers? (7)
LEGWEAR – WE (you and I) ‘filling’ LEGAR (anagram (‘awfully’) of LARGE).
9 Information supplied by American group (5)
GENUS – GEN (information) + US (American).
10 Joined female taken advantage of (5)
FUSED – F (female) + USED (taken advantage of).
12 Backing students, a mistake (4-2)
SLIP-UP – PUPILS (students) reversed (‘backing’).
14 Decoy, small, speaking with rough voice we hear (8-5)
STALKING-HORSE – S (small) + TALKING (speaking) + HORSE (sounds like HOARSE – with rough voice ‘we hear’).
16 Get away at one in punt (4,2)
BEAT IT – AT I (at one) ‘in’ BET (punt).
17 Fling? Witness pair inside (5)
SPREE – SEE (witness) with PR (pair) inside.
19 Charlie spots accident (5)
CRASH – C (Charlie) + RASH (spots).
20 Naval officer, mostly commendable, book omitted (7)
ADMIRAL – ADMIRABLE is commendable, most of it is ADMIRABL, and omitting B (book) gets you to the answer.
22 Biblical character, drawn endlessly (3)
EVE – EVEN (drawn, as in 1-1 or 2-2 etc.) ‘endlessly’.
23 One holding the purse strings in power may, somehow, by changing rates (9)
PAYMASTER – P (power) + AYM (MAY ‘somehow’) + ASTER (‘changing’ RATES).
Down
1 Person showing no emotion, caught getting on after nicking francs (4,4)
COLD FISH – C (caught) + OLDISH (getting on) with F (francs) inserted. 
2 Knight on silver horse (3)
NAG – N (knight in chess notation) ‘on’ (i.e. ‘above’ in this down clue) AG (silver in periodic table notation).
3 Cloth in river at Berwick (5)
TWEED – double definition.
4 Disturb canary, unfortunately, where it’s protected? (4,9)
BIRD SANCTUARY – straight anagram (‘unfortunately’) of DISTURB CANARY.
5 Single out hard school subject (7)
ENGLISH – ENGLIS (anagram (‘out’) of SINGLE) + H (hard).
6 Victor perplexed coroner entertaining question on uniform (9)
CONQUEROR – anagram of CORONER (‘perplexed’) ‘entertaining’ Q (question) ‘on’ (i.e. ‘above’ in this down clue) U (uniform).
7 Dart in dartboard, a shocker (4)
DASH – hidden word: ‘in’ dartboarD A SHocker.
11 Old friend causing impasse (9)
STALEMATE – STALE (old) + MATE (friend).
13 Derisive remark about prosperous gem dealer (8)
JEWELLER – JEER (derisive remark) ‘about’ WELL (prosperous).
15 Sauce boat raised (7)
KETCHUP – KETCH (boat) + UP (raised).
17 Finally asks a male graduate for a dance (5)
SAMBA – S (askS ‘finally’, although I always think this is a cheap way of cluing an ‘S’) + A (a) + M (male) + BA (graduate).
18 First of mannequins wearing superb top (4)
ACME – M (first of Mannequins) ‘wearing’ ACE (superb).
21 Predictable way of life, in truth (3)
RUT – hidden word: ‘in’ tRUTh.

34 comments on “QC 1595 by Tracy”

  1. Did a lot of biffing where the solution became clear to me as, or once, I typed it in; but I never did get around to parsing 1d. POI EVE, LOI ACME. 6:41.
  2. Avoided Vinyl’s CONQUEROR trap but still got a pink square for STALKING HPRSE – annoying. All done in just under 12 – surprisingly fast because I only had three on the first pass of the acrosses and had to sit and think about quite a few of the answers. SPREE was LOI, passed over it twice when the answer didn’t jump out and only solved when I really looked at it – once I had SPR_E it came soon enough!
  3. 9 minutes with time lost fixating on SHOOTING as being the first word at 14ac – S (small), HOOTING (speaking with rough voice) – until the arrival of new checkers forced me to rethink it.
  4. Also just under 12 mins.

    Last few spree, stalemate, and the unparsed Eve, haven’t seen Esau for a while.

    COD english.

  5. I thought that Tracy was being kind to us today. The NW went straight in for a quick start and the longest hold ups I had were checking the order of the vowels in CONQUEROR and a brief pause over LOI SPREE. Enjoyed KETCHUP and STALEMATE but my favourite was SLIP UP. Finished in 8.37.
    Thanks for the blog
  6. I thought I was on for a slow time getting only 4 answers going through the acrosses, but NAG, TWEED and BIRD SANCTUARY got me going and the rest all fell into place without anny more hold ups. We’ve has some variation on JEER/JEWELLER a couple of times recently so I didn’t get stuck on that this time. I also avoided spelling CONQUEROR wrong without checking the anagrist. LOI FUSED. COD to the hard school subject – ENGLISH. 4:57.
  7. Slid in just sub-10 for 1.4ishK and a Very Good Day. Like John I found the acrosses tougher than the downs today. I always thought a STALKING HORSE was a live beast, but Wiki tells me that occasionally hunters also hid behind wooden horse shapes (and it has a hilarious C19 illustration of some poor chap bent double behind one approaching some duck).

    FOI CONSTABLE, LOI PAYMASTER, COD SLIP-UP

    Thanks Tracy and Don.

    Templar

  8. An enjoyable start to the week. I moved clockwise round the grid finishing with STALEMATE and immediately sussed that my unparsed and unsatisfactory biff ELI should be EVE. I appreciated KETCHUP, JEWELLER, FUSED. A minute or so under target but, happily, ca. 2K. Thanks to Tracy for a fair QC and to don for a concise blog. John M.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 09:32 am (UTC)

  9. A few seconds outside my target range of 10m – 15m after a quick start in the north. LOsI were STALEMATE and EVE for no accountable reason. With EVE I was fixated by ELI despite the improbable ending that would give to 11d. Thanks Tracy and Astartedon..
  10. Submitted a little over target at 1.7K with a guess at STALKING-HORSE and EVE unparsed. Quite a few clues in the SW corner required more than one look and I do think I should have got STALEMATE, KETCHUP and CRASH a lot sooner than I did. FOI CONSTABLE and LOI JEWELLER. Thanks Tracy and don.
  11. 2K finishing in opposite corners with dash and eve. Although the answers seemed obvious, both took me time to parse before entering.
  12. ….Wyle. E Coyote as soon as I saw ACME. The creators of the “Roadrunner” cartoons had such clever denouements when the box from Acme Products was opened, only for the bird to come out on top yet again.

    0.57K and not a lot more to be said.

    FOI CONSTABLE
    LOI CONQUEROR
    COD ACME

  13. On paper today after the dog walk. FOI NAG. No real problems except I thought 17a was SPRAY (Say around PR) which is close to the verb Fling. But 13d had to be LOI JEWELLER so a quick change was made. About 12 minutes on the clock.
    COD to BEAT IT- a very nice variation on this theme. David
  14. Not my fastest time at just over 17 minutes but I found this extremely enjoyable.
    Some clever clues and I particularly enjoyed LEGWEAR, SLIP UP AND CRASH.
    I biffed 1D but was looking for a word without the letter F to denote ‘nicking francs’.
  15. Distracted this morning but good until SE corner slowed me down. Liked KETCHUP. Failed to parse cOLDFish.
    Good Day by my standards.

    Thanks!

  16. A good puzzle, coming in around average (30 mins). Main hold ups were 1dn “Cold Fish” and 8ac “Legwear”. Only query was whether 8ac needed the question mark (or is it just a distraction?)

    FOI – 6ac “Cad”
    LOI – 8ac “Legwear”
    COD – 12ac “Slip up”

    Thanks as usual

  17. A good diversion from the morning’s laptop-based tedium. Straightforward enough, and at 6:10, seemingly quite quick (for me) viz a viz our usual yardstick.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 12:37 pm (UTC)

  18. At one point I seemed set for a highly improbable sub 20 Tracy, but the SW corner was my downfall. Ketchup (CoD) and Stalemate took a few minutes and then I lost a couple more trying to parse Eve – I could only come up with eve(r)/drawn out, which I wasn’t happy with, having missed Even/drawn game along the way. So, 23 mins in the end for a reasonable enough start to the week. Invariant
  19. Enjoyable crossword – not too straightforward (for me anyway) but nothing off the scale in difficulty either.

    FOI – 8ac Genus
    LOI – 1dn Cold Fish, which took me far too long to parse
    COD – 15dn Ketchup – made me chuckle.

  20. I wasted a little bit of time on trying to shoehorn INSPECTOR into 1a, but as it didn’t parse I switched my attention to the top row of down clues, which was more productive. The CONSTABLE then hove into view. STALEMATE, COLD FISH and STALKING HORSE all required employment of all available neurons, but I managed to sneak in under my target at 9:52. Thanks Tracy and Don.
  21. All pretty straightforward today and we had a few lol moments at some of Tracy’s clever clues. Very fast time for us today.

    FOI: Constable
    LOI: Acme
    COD: Stalemate (although there were many excellent contenders)

    Amusing blog too – thanks Astartedon

  22. at 14ac has not been defined yet! It is a political animal – a candidate who cannot possibly win but is put up to test the political waters Sir Anthony Meyer 1989 v Margaret Thatcher – George Romney v Nelson Rockerfeller 1968. Today’s politically barren landscape leaves no place for these creatures.

    FOI 1ac CONSTABLE – do such things exist in the US? – I saw today they do in Canada (NS)

    LOI 10ac FUSED

    COD by a country mile 11dn STALEMATE

    WOD the STALKING HORSE

    Time a sluggish quarter of an hour.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 01:29 pm (UTC)

  23. … with a finish in just under 8 minutes, and no real issues except the NW corner which held me up a bit. Much helped by both 13-letter clues (14A & 4D) going in early.

    COD to 4D for a lovely anagram – I always think it is going to be a Good Day if a long anagram goes in early!

    Thank you Don for the blog and Tracy for an enjoyable start to the week.

    Cedric

  24. Has anybody mentioned that the 15squared is very approachable and enjoyable today. I did it well within my target (possibly a personal best) so it must be a bit of a doddle. Well worth a punt. John M.

    Edited at 2020-04-20 04:58 pm (UTC)

    1. Worth a punt maybe but it contains one word that many TfTT contributors had never heard of and I needed to aids to finish it off which suggests it’s not that easy.
      1. You are right about one clue. I needed all the crossers (if it is the one I think you mean) but maybe my professional background made it accessible to me. I thnk the rest is pretty reasonable – or perhaps my brain cells were active today. I am always grateful when a QC blogger mentions an accessible ‘biggie’ so though I’d mention it. John.
        1. Yes, by all means make suggestions, they’re always welcome; just thought I’d add a word of caution though in case anyone attempted it and was then discouraged. On reflection, in addition to the clue you’ve correctly identified, 12dn was a beast too.
    2. FOI was 17ac… so no more than a shilling each way! I did eventually manage to finish, with aids for 4 and 12d, but it was really hard work. Not the easiest Monday puzzle.
    3. I had a bash. The easier 15x15s take me around 20 minutes. This one was >40. Not easy, but I did finish.
      1. I have never managed the biggie in 20mins, I’m afraid. I did feel I was on the wavelength today (at my level, at least – at a little over 40 mins) and am glad others managed to complete it, too.
      2. I have never managed the biggie in 20mins, I’m afraid. I did feel I was on the wavelength today (at my level, at least – at a little over 40 mins) and am glad others managed to complete it, too.

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