QC 1745 by Wurm

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Pretty much a standard Monday puzzle, with most of the Across answers going in sequentially which made the Down answers even more straightforward. Many thanks to Wurm for a gentle and enjoyable start to the week. How did the rest of you find it?

FOI was 1A as you would expect and LOI similarly was 22D. COD as usual goes on qualities such as neatness and smoothness of surface rather than difficulty and plausible candidates were 11, 14 or 15D. I think I will go for the last of these because of the novel (well, novel to me anyway) subdefinition of EX.

Definitions are underlined and everything else is explained just as I see it as simply as I can.

Across
1 Applaud catch that’s rubbish? (8)
CLAPTRAP – CLAP (applaud) + TRAP (catch).
6 New beer knocked back in style (4)
ELAN – N (new) + ALE (beer) ‘knocked back’.
8 Shakespeare nasty about Romeo (4)
BARD – BAD (nasty) ‘about’ R (Romeo in phonetic alphabet) brings us to the Bard of Avon.
9 First course study with French department (8)
CONSOMME – CON (study) + SOMME (French department). Consommé (with an aigu accent added to the SOMME bit) being a clear soup and therefore a first course.
10 Carer she misled in fact-finding (8)
RESEARCH – straight anagram (‘misled’) of CARER SHE.
12 Comprehensive with no spare places? (4)
FULL – double definition.
13 Benefit sheltering theologian in breeze (6)
DODDLE – DOLE (benefit) ‘sheltering’ DD (Doctor of Divinity, theologian).
16 Write critical assessment on Panorama? (6)
REVIEW – RE (on) + VIEW (panorama).
17 Small vehicle showing damage (4)
SCAR – S (small) + CAR (vehicle).
18 Bumpkin holding hearts in game (8)
PHEASANT – PEASANT (bumpkin) ‘holding’ H (hearts).
21 Tea bag so explosively causes destruction (8)
SABOTAGE – straight anagram (‘explosively’) of TEA BAG SO.
22 The setter’s rich source (4)
MINE – double definition.
23 Supreme creator gets racket on ball (4)
ODIN – DIN (racket) on O (ball) gives ODIN, the Norse mythology version of the supreme creator.
24 Race generating more than local interest? (8)
NATIONAL – double definition, ‘National’ being a common abbreviation of the Grand National, the famous annual horse race held at Aintree. And if something is of NATIONAL interest then it is of more than just local interest.
Down
2 Rental contract to satisfy without pressure at first (5)
LEASE – pLEASE (to satisfy) without P (pressure) at first.
3 Shell in Aleppo detonates (3)
POD – hidden word: ‘in’ AlepPO Detonates.
4 Fast driver expert in Rolls-Royce (5)
RACER – ACE (expert) ‘in’ RR (Rolls-Royce).
5 Leopard one breathless catching horse? (7)
PANTHER – PANTER (one who is ‘breathless’) ‘catching’ H (horse).
6 Game is on TV — fee to be arranged (4,5)
ETON FIVES – straight anagram (‘to be arranged’) of IS ON TV FEE.
7 Animal savaged Edinburgh’s foremost author (1,1,5)
A A MILNE – anagram of ANIMAL (‘savaged’) + E (Edinburgh’s foremost).
11 Bedcover has colour that is turning blue (9)
EIDERDOWN – RED (colour) + IE (id est, that is) ‘turning’ + DOWN (blue as in ‘feeling blue’)
14 Where one grows fruit or vegetable (7)
ORCHARD – OR + CHARD (vegetable).
15 Describe partner that was unattractive (7)
EXPLAIN – EX (partner that was) + PLAIN (unattractive).
19 Personage finally opening show? (5)
EVENT – E (personagE ‘finally’) + VENT (opening).
20 Assassin hiding in town in Japan (5)
NINJA – hidden word: ‘hiding in’ towN IN JApan. The whole clue could also be a reasonable description of a NINJA so this doubles as an &lit clue.
22 Low feeling daughter ignored (3)
MOO – MOOd (feeling) with D (daughter) ignored. The definition here is LOW as in the sound that cattle make (“The cattle are LOWing…”).

79 comments on “QC 1745 by Wurm”

  1. DODDLE, ETON FIVES, and NATIONAL giving me pause. SABOTAGE was my last in — couldn’t see the anagram until I had the checking letters in place.
  2. No problems, although it took me a moment to remember DODDLE (not in my dialect), and to see how EIDERDOWN worked. I wondered about ‘supreme creator’ as the definition of ODIN, as he himself was the son of Bor or someone, and he was not alone in giving life to the first humans. But wotthehell. 5:01.
  3. 6 minutes, my only slight hold-up being SABOTAGE for the reason already mentioned by vinyl1; I needed to write down the unchecked grist before I could grind it.
  4. A very enjoyable start to the week. Could not parse CONSOMME. Had never heard of the archaic term CON to learn by heart and did not connect SOMME with a named department, aigu or otherwise, although topical, Remembrance Day. Took a while to parse EIDERDOWN too.
    With Boris in jankers and no sign of our Brexit negotiators throwing away our sprats to catch the mackerel, it looks like the UK is heading for another chaotic episode of Yes Minister this week.
    Thanks to Wurm and Astartedon for the denouement.
    Sub 30 minutes and no passes.
    1. I haven’t heard of ‘con’ meaning specifically to learn ‘by heart’ but if it has that meaning the clue doesn’t rely on it as ‘con’ is just a general word meaning to learn, study or simply read up on a subject to familiarise oneself with it. It’s a staple of cryptic crosswords that crops up most weeks if not most days in one puzzle or another. In this clue it’s covered by ‘study’.

      Edited at 2020-11-16 07:34 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks for the explanation. Obviously this (common) usage must have fallen into the category of my many unparsed previous solves! Dictionaries that do reference it (archaic) define it as “con – study attentively or learn by heart (a piece of writing)”. I shall certainly look out for it in future but will not rush to include it in my vernacular. I wasn’t all that happy with the substitution of Somme for sommé either but I suppose all is fair in love and war. This is why this blog is so rewarding for us novices.
  5. The last five took some getting. Needed all the checkers to get CONSOMME and NATIONAL and while I’ve heard of FIVES I’ve not come across ETON FIVES but once the V from REVIEW went in it had to be. Also slow to see where DD was going to go in DODDLE. All green in 11, so pretty good but perhaps a missed opportunity to go much, much faster.
  6. A couple of seconds over 10 minutes before the grid was FULL for me, which is about as good as I get these days, particularly this early in the morning. No real difficulties, and no outstanding candidate for COD. LOI MINE, only because it was the last one I looked at, FOI CLAPTRAP. Thanks Wurm and Astartedon.
  7. A good puzzle but, once again, I was so immersed that I underestimated my time substantially. I was surprised to find that I just scraped my 15 min target when I thought I would be under 10. The top half went in without a hitch apart from ELAN and DODDLE (my LOI). PHEASANT offered some nice misdirection and ODIN had to be, despite misgivings about the definition. I quite liked CONSOMME, EIDERDOWN and ORCHARD for its construction even though it was a doddle. Thanks to Wurm and Don. John M.

    Edited at 2020-11-16 08:30 am (UTC)

  8. I came just inside 10 minutes having been held up in the SE. When I saw ’causeS destruction’ I assumed that the ‘S’ was at the end. When that was sorted out loi ‘event’ went in easily.
  9. No major hold ups but I was slow to unscramble the ETON FIVES and SABOTAGE anagrams so had to turn to pen and paper before finishing with REVIEW and FULL. All done in 8.17 with my WOD going to CLAPTRAP.
    Thanks to astartedon
  10. … and all done in just under 11 minutes. Main hold-up and LOI was 9A Consomme, got from the checkers and only then parsed – it seems that one must now know the names of all 95-odd French departements for this puzzle (and there are lots of short names which setters could use, like Ain, Lot and Var and no less than 10 with just 4 letters).

    I share Kevin’s MER at 23A Odin. Odin had many many nicknames and roles – Allfather being the main one but there were literally hundreds – but nowhere in Norse mythology is he depicted as a creator god.

    COD 15D Explain, because of the surface: I was pleased to correctly parse it with the “that was” going with partner not plain!

    Many thanks to Don for the blog
    Cedric

    1. I never really realised how unpopular Parisians were in the rest of France until one year when we hired a car with a ’75’ departement code in the number plate…

      Edited at 2020-11-16 12:33 pm (UTC)

  11. Also, just wondering exactly how much Eton pays the Times for subliminal advertising. Not content with insinuating that “school” and “Eton” are virtually synonymous, they’ve snuck another reference to themselves in again today!

    Cedric

    1. No disrespect to people who went there, but I’m personally sick of seeing Eton constantly mentioned in these puzzles. If it’s not the first choice for “school”, one of it’s more obscure sports now appears as a game.

      Appreciate the historical context and all that, but there are other institutions.

      1. It’s not the historical context, it’s the spelling: if the school were named Zelm, you’d never see it here, however prestigious.
  12. A good , slightly tricky, start to the week.

    I managed to put in MYTH instead of MINE which didn’t help.

    COD 7d. Presumably it was an extremely fierce bear, high on honey, that savaged the author.

    Thank you Setter and Blogger.

    Diana

  13. Like Chris I got delayed in the south, especially by trying to invent the god BATO. Fortunately I then tried his brother OBAT and that led me to the correct answer. That’s not even a Ninja Turtle.

    FOI CLAPTRAP, LOI CONSOMME, COD ORCHARD, time 1.8K for a Decent Enough Day. Actually a Wurm under 10 has to be a Good Day so I’m upgrading.

    Thanks Wurm and Don.

    Templar

  14. A gentle Wurm turned up today. FOI BARD; LOI DODDLE which required a couple of looks. Some nice clues; COD to EXPLAIN.
    I was helped by knowing nothing about Norse mythology.
    Time:08:08. David
  16. Very easy, very Ximenean. Odin is the Supreme Creator in Collins as well as in Germanic mythology.
      1. Yes, so I see, and therefore I too concede Wurm is off the hook. And since it is axiomatic in crosswordland that Collins is never wrong, I shall merely say that on this occasion I wonder if the oracle is perhaps “not entirely right”.
  17. Perhaps worn out with my effort on the 15×15 today (3 clues short), so DNF after 20 minutes. No excuses.

    I played a game called Five Stones as a boy (like jacks), which was such a near miss at 6 down I had to keep checking the anagram. I claim it is more widely played than “Eton Fives” which is played by maybe oh, 50 people a year?

    Is H=Horse drug slang, or is there another usage?

  18. Perhaps worn out with my effort on the 15×15 today (3 clues short), so DNF after 20 minutes. No excuses.

    I played a game called Five Stones as a boy (like jacks), which was such a near miss at 6 down I had to keep checking the anagram. I claim it is more widely played than “Eton Fives” which is played by maybe oh, 50 people a year?

    Is H=Horse drug slang, or is there another usage?

    1. I played both Eton & Rugby Fives while at school. Hard on the hands but good for reflexes. Served me well for playing squash which was much more enjoyable.
      2. I also played fives at school, although not enough to know there were two varieties – I understood the court was based on the buildings at Eton, so wonder how the Rugby variety arose? Main memory of the game was discovering a split in my glove the hard way – not something you forget!
        1. From what I can remember, there were a row of Fives courts, 3 had a low back wall where the odd spectator could linger, the other 2 were open at the back and consequently the cause of lost ball. Not sure which were Eton type and which were Rugby, but the ones without the back wall were less popular and often water logged. I think the Eton wall game was a very different sort of scrummaging affair that was unique to them and their wall.
          1. In my memory the courts were fully walled on 3 sides, with a low short wall about 3ft from the back wall on the left (the chapel). Sounds like there were many variations of courts! Of course it all depends on what you regard as the back wall, on edit I suspect you mean the wall behind you, whereas I am thinking of the front of the court as where I am standing to play, hence the back wall is in front of me. The joys of the English!

            Edited at 2020-11-17 04:22 pm (UTC)

            1. All a bit back to front in our communication it seems. To me, the front wall was the one in front of you that you stood facing and serve towards (normally!). In our school we had two different types of Fives courts. One with a pepperpot front left face and a wall at the back which I think was Rugby type (sounds like the same as yours) and one without a wall at the back which I think was Eton type, and larger, and more popular for doubles, but I am probably wrong as memory is weak on a sport I didn’t really relish, but it finally came in useful at spotting a crossword clue.
  19. My quickest solve for quite a while. Started with CLAPTRAP, finished with MOO and no passes. 5:35. Thanks Wurm and Don.
  20. I didn’t find this quite as easy as most seem to have. Top half OK, although CONSOMME took a while, but bottom half needed more thought. Got there in the end.
  21. I was flying through this until I got stuck – inexplicably – on my last two in. These were DODDLE, 13 across, where I kept trying to find a verb meaning to aid, or give unfair advantage to. And this, even though I knew the word almost certainly had to be “*ODDLE”. Agghhhh…. The other one that held me up was the perfectly straightforward EVENT, 19 down, even though I knew it was “E*E*T”. I think that, by then I had used up all of Monday’s brain cell allocation on fun but tricky clues like PHEASANT and CONSOMMÉ. Doesn’t bode well for the rest of the day. Eek.
    Thanks as always, Don, for the blog and thanks too to Wurm
    1. The MBCA. Monday Brain Cell Allocation. Another lovely image to go with your memorable ‘brain glue’ from several weeks back!

      Great to see you back again.

      Don

  22. I have recently started to learn how to solve cryptic crosswords, having avoided them for so long as I thought I would never be able to solve them. But armed with Chamber’s Crossword Dictionary and a copy of How to Crack Cryptic Crosswords (Tim Moorey), and assisted by Lockdown boredom, here I am. (Hopefully the use of a crossword dictionary is not classed as ‘cheating’).

    This took me about 54 minutes to solve as I tried to apply my new found knowledge of cryptic clues.

    One that totally had me baffled was Eton Fives. Though I have never heard of it, it was an answer I came up with using Scrabble tiles to solve the anagram. However, because I had never heard of Eton Fives, I rejected it as nonsense. I should have Googled the phrase. I kicking myself.

    54 minutes to solve. Yes, woeful compared to some of your 5/6 minutes, but I am feeling pleased with myself for the clues I did manage to answer, which was about 80% of them.

      1. And welcome! Do stick at it – only just 18 months ago I was delighted at my then very rare finishes. Practice does make things easier – that and reading the very helpful blogs on this site.

        Cedric

    6. Well done!

      In my book there’s no such thing as cheating. The puzzles are there for fun , and it’s entirely up to you to solve them in the way you find most satisfying.

      I enjoy reading the mildly competitive entries, but have no desire myself to complete. So I don’t post my times (unless it’s unusually brilliant), and have no compunction in using any aids I can find to help me through sticky ones.

      Good luck!

      Diana

      Diana

    7. Welcome and very well done! This is exactly why the Quick Cryptic was started, to help people like you get a foothold.

      Back in the day if you wanted to get started with cryptics you had to gaze blankly at the standard 15×15 grid before giving up and then waiting for the solution the next day before reverse-engineering the clues until you got the hang of it. But keep coming back here for a few weeks and you’ll be cracking the big one in no time.

      In fact I think if you have a look at today’s 15×15 you might be pleasantly surprised to find a lot of the clues within your reach as IMHO they are not much more difficult than the ones you have just done.

      You will also get used to the fact that every now and again you will meet a bit of vocabulary you don’t know. With ETON FIVES for instance, I am sure that with a bit more experience you would have seen it as a straight anagram, worked it out (with or without your Scrabble set!), and thought “well I’ve never heard of it, but it must be right because that’s where the cryptic is pointing me”.

      And if you go even further you will find that at the other end of the scale there are puzzles (Mephisto for instance) where it is very likely that you won’t have heard of a good proportion of the vocabulary, and you will be relying on the cryptic part of the clue to expand your knowledge. That is another great pleasure of crosswords, certainly for me anyway, that you do learn stuff from them.

      Anyway, please do keep it up and we all look forward to seeing you back here soon!

      Don

    8. Oh yes, and nobody could describe your time as ‘woeful’. I think it is perfectly respectable given the amount of experience you say that you have had.

      Don

    9. Nice to ‘meet’ you. Great idea to use Scrabble tiles – I must try that the next time I’m stuck!
    10. Welcome to the Times 30-60 club (minutes that is, all ages welcome). Bit of a far cry from Club 18-30 but definitely a lot of enjoyment and no hangover, unless consequent to mitigating failure to find that elusive LOI (Last One In).
    11. Thank you all for your very encouraging words and comments.

      One thing I am noticing, and I guess this is simply due to inexperience, is that when I read the clues I keep reading the surface meaning, which throws me off the scent. However, I have noticed that as I do more of these puzzles, I am starting to notice certain keywords, which then make me think in a different way, which usually gets me the answer.

      1. You are learning fast.

        Here’s a little tip, but you are leaning so fast that you may be aware of it already and probably will be if as you say you have been reading Tim Moorey.

        Can you do the ordinary ‘concise’ crosswords? I imagine you are quite quick at doing those because they are straight definitions. A three-letter word clued as ‘animal’ could be CAT or DOG. Well the secret is that the cryptic crosswords are just definition crosswords wrapped up in a bit of a riddle. Somewhere in what sometimes looks like gibberish there will be a more or less straightforward definition of the answer (and sometimes that definition is itself a bit cryptic but a definition nonetheless), and the rest of the clue is ‘another way of looking at it’ from a cryptic standpoint, i.e. by mixing letters up, or inserting a word or letters inside another, or joining together a string of words or letters, or taking the first or last letters of a phrase in sequence and so on. But always in the clues a definition is hidden (as shown for instance by my underlinings in my blogs, although other bloggers may indicate definitions differently).

        If you can get adept at ‘spotting’ the definitions, then you can often leave ‘parsing’, or working out how the cryptic bit works, until later, which can often save you a bit of time. But it is a risk/reward scenario because sometimes the definition that occurs to you is wrong (and may even have been a misdirection intended by the setter to trap you), and if so it could give you wrong letters for other answers. But once you know the dangers you can hopefully be on the lookout for them. This kind of solving is know as BIFFING. It comes from the acronym Bunged In From Definition. BIFD translates phonetically to BIFFED and so the verb ‘TO BIFF’ was born.

        Solvers sometimes talk disparagingly about BIFFING but it is a very useful skill to develop. What helps me is if I have done a particularly difficult crossword I go back at the end and highlight all the definitions. Then I look at the crossword again and think why did I find it difficult in the first place because if I had only looked at the definitions and ignored the rest it would have been easy!

        Anyway, sorry if you already knew all that but keep going and keep coming back and commenting. And while you’re at it why not join the club and set yourself up with an avatar. The more the merrier.

        All the best

        Don

  23. FOI Claptrap. LOI, ironically, Doddle. Also hesitated about Odin until I worked out the parsing.

    Explain made me smile. I biffed Pheasant before I realised it was game. (Not so many as usual around here.)

    I thought National was too easy but bunged it in faintly at first.

    Thanks to Wurm for a good start to the week, and to Astartedon.

  24. ….but submitting it at 3:27 proved more problematic, as I had two typos. I’m doing everything on my phone this week as necessary preparation for the Championship this coming weekend. Hopefully I can mug my other half for her iPad on Saturday morning !

    COD ETON FIVES

  25. After 30 minutes I just couldn’t get 13ac “Doddle”. At one point I thought it might start with N or S to reflect a type of wind direction but, apart from putting myself through an alphabet trawl, it wouldn’t come.

    The rest of the puzzle was a nice start to the week and for once I wasn’t held up by Low = Moo. Liked 9ac “Consomme”, 1ac “Claptrap” and 18ac “Pheasant”.

    FOI – 1ac “Claptrap”
    LOI – 13ac dnf
    COD – 15dn “Explain” – great surface.

    Thanks as usual.

  26. A lovely start to the week with all done and dusted in 7 minutes. I worked clockwise round the grid from checkers starting at 1a. I hesitated over ETON FIVES but I have seen it before, FULL and NATIONAL. LOI was EIDERDOWN which I parsed post solve. COD to EXPLAIN which made me smile.
  27. Lost time at the start looking at the wrong end of the clue for 1ac, so decided to give that a miss and began a clockwise solve in the NW with Elan. Steady progress thereafter, but a fairly comfortable sub-20 was then put in jeopardy by a cluster of Wurm’s little teasers in the SE corner – Doddle, Orchard and Odin. Probably the hardest of those, Orchard, was actually the one I got first (once I saw how the clue worked) and the other two then quickly followed. By the time I returned to 1ac (19mins and change), Claptrap was a pdm write-in. CoD to 14d Orchard, though 9ac Consommé ran it close. Invariant
  28. No real issues with this one which we completed in 11 minutes. Thanks Wurm.

    FOI: claptrap
    LOI: mine
    COD: explain

    Thanks to Astartedon for the blog.

    Unusually I had a go at the 15×15 with my elevenses and managed to complete most of the grid pretty quickly so it must be on the easier side today. I only mention it in case anyone is contemplating having a go.

  29. Nice & straightforward. 4:42. CONSOMME was LOI, and a bit of a biff, as I’m either not aware of, or immediately forget each time I come across it, that CON = study.
  30. My time was slower than usual – lots of write-ins at first and then I got stuck for a little while. Only got Eton Fives from the cross checkers – a bit obscure for this former comprehensive teacher who spent much time drumming into GCSE and A-level chemistry students the important difference between DESCRIBE and EXPLAIN. So 15D was a reluctant LOI under protest.
  31. I started very well but was slowed down by the problematic DODDLE/ORCHARD/SABOTAGE/ODIN intersection.
    Lots of lovely clues though including PHEASANT, PANTHER and EIDERDOWN. My COD goes to A A MILNE for stirring up many happy memories.
    Thanks to Wurm for just under 15 minutes of enjoyment and to Don for the helpful blog.
  32. 18 mins for me with a fair proportion of that spent on the last three: doddle/explain/pheasant. I am at a loss to know why the latter took me so long to see as I couldn’t think of any direct synonym for bumpkin except peasant. I also realised immediately that 13ac was a 4-letter word with DD in the middle and probably ended –DDLE or –DDER. Unfortunately I was looking at the wrong end of the clue and spent a few minutes trying to think of a 4-letter word for breeze. All the rest went in quick order, so it might have been a much quicker time but for the brain freeze at the end.

    FOI – 1ac CLAPTRAP
    LOI – 15dn EXPLAIN
    COD – 9ac CONSOMME for the smooth surface.

  34. Took me longer than it ought, but I was typing slowly to avoid my usual spray of typos! Came in in 5:47. Vaguely remember ETON FIVES from somewhere, but the checkers made it a gimme anyway.

    COD CLAPTRAP

    H

  35. I was pleased to complete this in 22:14 as I didn’t think it was that easy. I guess my time would suggest it was on the easier end of the spectrum, but what I mean is there seemed to be quite a few clues that would have totally beaten me when I was starting to do these. Words like ELAN, CON, SOMME meaning a French department (actually that was still an unknown), DD meaning theologian and ETON FIVES, and anagram indicators like “misled”, “explosively” and “savaged”. So, if there are people out there who didn’t find it as easy as some on here have indicated, don’t be disheartened; this was a puzzle that particularly favoured experienced solvers in my opinion.
    LOI 19d, COD 7d. Thanks Wurm.

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