QC 1895 by Teazel

Author   astartedonPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

OK please move on everybody. Nothing to see here. Thanks to Teazel, my oldest adversary I believe, for a gentle Monday-morning stroll.

FOI was 1A. A lot of clues went in sequentially after that, with LOI being 21D as you might expect. A couple of clues caused hiccups in the smooth sequence, one example being 15D which gets my COD award for reminding me of my favourite underground girl.

Definitions are underlined in bold italics. Everything else is explained just as I see it as simply as I can.

Across
1 Language making sober actor struggle (5-5)
SERBO-CROAT – straight anagram: ‘making SOBER ACTOR struggle’.
8 Cleric is hopeless at first in dance (6)
BISHOP – IS + H (Hopeless ‘at first’) ‘in’ BOP (dance).
9 Bird seen round loch is quail (6)
FLINCH – FINCH (bird) ‘seen round’ L (loch).
10 Some sweet nature, but it is liable to erupt (4)
ETNA – hidden word: ‘some’ sweET NAture.
11 To limit error, confirms flight (6,2)
CHECKS IN – CHECK (limit) + SIN (error).
12 Large hole right at side of case (6)
CRATER – CRATE (case) + R (right) at its side.
14 Perhaps straw one is easily taken in (6)
SUCKER – cryptically a sucker could perhaps be a straw.
16 Spare man ordered this to go on pasta perhaps (8)
PARMESAN – straight anagram: SPARE MAN ‘ordered’.
18 Article about the most prolific author? (4)
ANON – AN (indefinite article) + ON (about). There is a lot more written material in the world by ANON(ymous) than by any single known writer.
20 Swordsman who puts up a barrier (6)
FENCER – double definition.
21 Fruit drinks, just short, filled with ice (6)
JUICES – JUSt ‘short’ ‘filled with’ ICE.
22 Little number donned always? This is the only chance (3,2,5)
NOW OR NEVER – NO (abbreviation for ‘number’, therefore ‘little’) + WORN (donned) + EVER (always).
Down
2 Be no longer first (5)
EXIST – EX (no longer) + IST (first).
3 Memorised last of story in the bar, drunk (2,5)
BY HEART – Y (last of storY) ‘in’ BHEART (anagram (‘drunk’) of THE BAR).
4 Catch bluebottle (3)
COP – double definition, bluebottle being a slang term for a police officer.
5 Away three months or so, when it’s cheaper (3,6)
OFF SEASON – OFF (away) + SEASON (three months or so).
6 Feeble king to use his brain (5)
THINK – THIN (feeble) + K (king).
7 To perform on stage, I have to be brisk (6)
ACTIVE – ACT (to perform on stage) + IVE (I have).
11 One turned to reach the wine (9)
CORKSCREW – cryptic definition.
13 Harvest worker extremely prone to break back (6)
REAPER – PE (‘extremely’ PronE, i.e. the letters at the extremes of the word) ‘breaking’ REAR (back).
15 Check girl underground gets drinking bowl (7)
CHALICE – CH (check, as in Chess) + ALICE, a girl who famously followed a white rabbit down a hole and ended up underground.
17 Waterproof being worn is red (5)
MACON – MAC (waterproof) + ON (being worn). Well OK, you do get red wines from Mâcon in Burgundy, but you get whites as well, so the clue might have been better with a ‘could be’ or a ‘possibly’. Bonne santé anyway.
19 Before end of parade, medals far too heavy (5)
OBESE – OBES (medals, specifically Orders of the British Empire in this case) before E (end of paradE).
21 Take top off slightly open pot (3)
JAR – aJAR (slightly open) with the ‘top’ removed in this down clue.

56 comments on “QC 1895 by Teazel”

  2. 9 minutes with the last of them spent on the writer at 18ac before I suddenly realised what was going on!
  3. I found this hard. I dithered about MACON for several minutes and ultimately did not submit because I have never heard of it (and thought I was looking for a color). Somewhere in the 9-10 minute range.
    1. “Have you got a white Mâcon please?” “No love, it’s these funny uniforms they make us wear.”
      Perhaps not …..
  4. FOI 1ac; LOI 19d. I liked ANON, which could have been clued as “Most prolific author soon.”
  5. DNK bluebottle for police?? Agree 21A seemed too easy — so I kept looking for too long; a double bluff perhaps? Assumed 17D was a colour. Thanks blogger and Teazel.
  6. All done in 15 but not that straightforward plus I typed in esist for EXIST, which is annoying because I’d enjoyed solving it! NHO MACON or bluebottle for police (tried fly at until I had enough checkers for the language — very impressed our blogger saw that straight off — and had SUCKER as LOI it didn’t seem quite right as the person using the straw is the SUCKER. Only three on the first pass of acrosses but then lots of downs. Enjoyed REAPER, I don’t think I’ve ever used it without ‘grim’ and it has never occurred to me that reaper is job in its own right!
  7. I got bogged down in the NW, where the language the forgotten term for a policeman, my COD EXIST and the elusive BISHOP took longer than all the other clues combined. After a lot of juggling with the anagram at 1a, I finally saw SERBO-CROAT and the rest quickly followed.
    An enjoyable start to the crossword week, finished in 10.38.
    Thanks to astartedon
  8. 22:09, slow start , with the NW corner causing trouble, even after seeing 1a straight away.

    For 15 d I was looking at VAL+U for a word meaning “check”. I took my “lift and separate” advice incorrectly for “girl underground”. Nice clue. In most Chess notation check is written “+”.

    11A LOI, I saw what was going on, but couldn’t get there. CLOSES IN looked good for some time. Was also looking for some aeronautical equivalent of “chocks away”, that a pilot might say.

    COD OBESE

    1. You’re right of course about + for check but I think that is the modern way of doing it, which I guess came in with the rise in popularity of algebraic notation as a more efficient and universal method of recording games. In the books I grew up with descriptive notation was still largely prevalent (P-K4, B-B4 etc.) and I seem to remember ch. appearing regularly in those books. And in fact a quick glance at the online dictionary suggests that ch. as used in Chess is the only standard abbreviation for check. Ch. does stand for a lot of other things, but only in that context for check.
  9. A gentle start to the week with EXIST FOI and CRATER LOI. Liked CORKSCREW. 7:38. Thanks Teazel and Don.
  10. I don’t know if my heart just wasn’t in it, or what, but I found this one very hard. I really got nowhere with it. Many clues too obscure for me. DNF in a big way.

    Edited at 2021-06-14 07:28 am (UTC)

    1. On days like that, put the puzzle aside and leave it for a few hours. You’ll be surprised how often the restart bears fruit.
  11. as I hastily thought that 8ac was HIPHOP! I saw an H and a dance and never thought any more of it. Coming here I found my 9:45 was not up to par!

    FOI 1ac SERBO-CROAT (1-0)

    (LOI) 8ac BISH-OP!

    COD 11dn CORKSCREW for the

    WOD 17dn MACON – VILLAGES

    Today’s 15×15 is OK but….a couple of nasties. Warm up with the Monday GK to improve one’s GK!

  13. FOI SERBO CROAT, THINK, BY HEART
    Liked CRATER, CORKSCREW, ANON, SUCKER.
    Seemed easier than usual eg PARMESAN, JAR.
    Better get on with the garden, then.
    Thanks vm, Don. I admit there was some lazy swift biffing so I needed the blog, though familiar with MACON rouge and dimly remembered Bluebottle = cop.

    Edited at 2021-06-14 08:29 am (UTC)

  14. A fair Monday morning puzzle although I felt a bit sluggish. No real problems, although ANON and OBESE were LOsI for me and held me up. I parsed all within my completion time with the exception of the obvious NOW OR NEVER (parsed later). Almost a minute under target so I can’t complain. I agree with Don that MACON could have been better clued. We drink much more Macon Blanc than Red and it took a moment to click. Of course, it is the Macon-Villages appellation that is reserved solely for white Burgundy. Historically Macon was mainly red but the last century saw a rise in production of white (Chardonnay) to over 85%. My COD was CORKSCREW. Thanks to Teazel and to Don for a good, concise blog. John M.

    Edited at 2021-06-14 08:33 am (UTC)

  15. … “red” for Macon caused a serious MER here. The Macon does have 349.12 ha of vineyards producing red wine … as against 3,767.91 ha producing white wine! (Source: Bourgogne Wines dot com.) It’s like clueing “gin” as “Scottish spirit”, on the basis that they make some gin in Scotland.

    Anyway. Foxtrot puzzle for me with clues falling in bursts followed by pauses. Eventually I admitted defeat on trying to do SERBO-CROAT in my head and wrote out the anagrist , at which point it leapt out at me.

    FOI EXIST, LOI SUCKER, COD CORKSCREW (very neat!), time 12:34 which looks pretty but is 2.7K and thus a Disastrous Day.

    Many thanks Teazel and Don.

    Templar

    1. A fellow oenophile agrees – Macon is most commonly a white wine. As you say, they do make some red, but it would never leap to mind as an area making red wine. I suppose the setter can fall back on those 349 hectares as defence!
      1. Thank you to all the Times Crossword Wine Club for all the extra detail!
    2. A similar experience to you today and despite the fact I had to look up the meaning of oenophile!!! I wasn’t sold on MACON as a red either. I resisted the urge to write out SERBO-CROAT but it was my penultimate solve with COP being the last to fall in 12:13.
  16. at MACON mentioned above, a reasonably straightforward puzzle.

    I did like EXIST and also CORKSCREW.

    More or less bang on target at 6:09.

  17. 9 minutes to get to my last two. At 15d I toyed with CAPRICE but could not parse the RICE part. Eventually I thought of CHALICE which just left the author. I plumped for AMOS and submitted after 14:47 when my error was revealed.
    No problem with MACON but I too wondered about the colour.
    Excellent puzzle. COD to CORKSCREW.
    David
  18. … found this one very hard going. LOI CHALICE. Did not know CH for chess, although obvious now (thanks to blogger). Had DRIES for MACON as initially thought ‘is red’ was an anagram 😂 Soon realised my mistake when nothing else made sense. Still enjoying being in the SCC, and expecting to be here a while yet!
    1. Just to clarify — ch. is the abbreviation for ‘check’ as used in Chess — not for Chess itself (which your comment seems to imply). Just making sure I hadn’t misled you.
      1. Ah, yes I had misunderstood, not being a chess player. Thanks for clarification.
    2. Just to clarify — ch. is the abbreviation for ‘check’ as used in Chess — not for Chess itself (which your comment seems to imply). Just making sure I hadn’t misled you.
  19. … with not everyone finding this easy. I was all done in 14 minutes, longer than my average for Teazel, so join those not entirely in agreement with Don’s view that this was “gentle”.

    Despite the time, I found most of it was indeed straightforward enough (though blue-bottle for 4D Cop was unknown and guessed). What took the time was my last two, which like Davidivad were 15D Chalice and 18A Anon. With Chalice, I just took an age to see how the clue worked, not helped by not thinking of Check = ch (I have converted entirely to the modern chess notation system where Check = +), and then LOI Anon took a moment before the penny-drop and a big smile. Clever clue.

    Many thanks to Don for the blog
    Cedric

  20. Solved in 22 mins, of which a full 6 mins were spent on the last 2 clues, 15dn and 18ac. NHO bluebottle for cop and the wine at 17dn never occurred to me as I thought it must be some obscure shade of red. Thanks to Teazel and Astartedon.

    FOI – 1ac SERBO-CROAT
    LOI – 18ac ANON
    COD – a lot of great clever clues but I think the award goes to 11dn – CORKSCREW (took me all the checkers to see it).

  21. Twenty minutes or so. FOI Serbo-Croat, LOI Anon after much pondering, COD Serbo-Croat, though I liked flinch. Thought I had parsed all these but the blog gave nuances I hadn’t spotted. Thanks, Don, and Teazel. GW.
  22. I thoroughly enjoyed this, finishing in just over ten minutes with my finger hesitating over the choice of vowel in 4 down…. I’ve never heard of bluebottle to mean policeman so I was stuck with variations of cap, cup or cop, all of which could potentially mean catch. Luckily, I went for COP but that was just chance.
    Lots of great clues here, especially FLINCH, ANON and CORKSCREW. I floundered a bit at 17 down but not for ages. In fact, I think it’s a nice clue, although “might be red” would have dispelled my doubts ahead of submission (as would eg “catch half penny” in 4 down ).
    Thanks, Don, for your, as always, super blog and thanks, too, to Teazel.
  23. A tough going 35 mins for me. I thought this was hard — not necessarily the clues but just getting a foothold and starting the damn thing. Picking the right clues in the right order to allow you to answer other clues was a puzzle in its own right (almost like a microcosm of the 15×15 which I often struggle with).

    After 20 mins I only had 3 answers, so the majority of the puzzle was completed towards the end. If answers over time was plotted on a graph this would be very skewed to the right — perhaps if I’d started in the SE corner I would have been quicker.

    Interestingly, because of the difficult start, it had the usual psychological effect of rendering even the easier clues difficult. Why it took me so long to spot “Corkscrew” for 11dn, for example, I have no idea. Liked 2dn “Exist”, 8ac “Bishop” and 15dn “Chalice”.

    FOI — 10ac “Etna”
    LOI — 19dn “Obese”
    COD — 22ac “Now or Never” — simple, effective, not immediately obvious.

    Thanks as usual!

  24. Got to be honest, but this one from Teazel was far from a stroll for me! In fact I found this one of his most challenging ones, but as it’s the first time I’ve tried doing a QC online rather than with pencil on paper, that’s what I’ll use as my excuse.
  25. 4:00 this morning for what I felt was a gentle start to the week, a nicely pitched QC with some clues that had to be thought about.
    LOI 18 ac “Anon” where I was briefly trying to put “an” around a two letter word for “the most”, then like others experienced the PDM.
    COD 11 d “Corkscrew” — a utensil that came in for a fair amount of use last week when we finally got a very pleasant break in the Lake District .
    Thanks to Don for the blog and Teazel.
  26. 22 minutes, so on the harder side for me too. i just made heavy weather of it, I think. Loi was SERBO CROAT; if I had solved that anagram quickly I would have had a better start!
  27. Just four to get after 26 minutes – 14a (S___E_), 15d (____I_E), 18a (____) and 19d (__E_E), but I couldn’t make headway. Therefore, with so few checkers, I was faced with a long series of alphabet trawls.

    OBESE came first, followed almost immediately by ANON (my favourite clue, today), but the CHALICE/SUCKER combination took a further 22 minutes. Although I spent most of that time on S___E_, I had to switch to __A_I_E to achieve the breakthrough. SUCKER (my LOI) produced an involuntary groan when I finally got it, but CHALICE remained out of reach for so long for several reasons:
    i) I have never read Alice in Wonderland, so ‘underground’ flummoxed me …
    ii) … therefore, it could have been any ‘girl’ (ANNA, AVA, AMIE, EVA, ALI, …).
    iii) I have never come across CH as an abbreviation for ‘check’. I play some chess, and it’s denoted by a plus sign (+).
    iii) I thought a CHALICE is a cup or goblet with a stem and base, and not a ‘bowl’.

    End result: not very happy. However, Mrs Random did well today, finishing without such difficulties in 20 minutes before going out to tend her plants (various staking, pruning, tying in and so forth).

    Many thanks to Teazel and astartedon.

    1. Hi Random. Sorry it was such an ordeal. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, ch. is an abbreviation that was used back in the days of descriptive (as opposed to algebraic) notation, which I remember well from my childhood.
      1. Thankyou, and explanation accepted.
        I invariably struggle with Teazel, so I wasn’t surprised when I ran into the quicksand. At least I escaped its clutches in the end.
  28. We enjoyed this – a good mix of write ins and others that made us think. We were surprised to record a time of 14 minutes – it’s seemed longer.

    FOI: ETNA
    LOI: EXIST
    COD: CORKSCREW (very clever and amusing)

    Thanks to Teazel and Astartedon.

  29. Dnf but enjoyed. I couldn’t work out the word for C…P at 4d, not knowing Bluebottle.

    MACON , too, defeated me.

    ANON was clever, and I do like being able to do 1a first, it gives me hope for the future.

    Thank you, Teazel and Don

    Diana

  31. ….the colour of MACON wasn’t an issue — I just knew it was a wine ! It took me a good half a minute at the end for the PDM on ANON.

    As much as I loved the clue for CORKSCREW, the “girl underground” was the highlight.

    FOI SERBO-CROAT
    LOI ANON
    COD CHALICE
    TIME 3:31

  32. 14 minutes so not a gentle start to the week for me, I’m afraid. Some answers just dropped in with great ease – SERBO-CROAT, ACTIVE, ETNA for example, while others took a good deal of mining, including BISHOP, NOW OR NEVER and the underground girl. In fact, I never did make the connection until coming here! Not sure why I made such heavy weather of it – it’s all perfectly fair and there were some most enjoyable clues, once I stopped fretting about them. EXISTS, BISHOP and FLINCH all got ticks. It was quite hard to pick a COD.
    FOI Serbo-Croat
    LOI Chalice
    CsOD Anon and Corkscrew
    Thanks Teazel and Don

    Think I’ll get a cup of tea before I start the biggie!

  33. 14 minutes for me, but I felt like I wasn’t firing on all cylinders. I enjoyed ANON, and with ETNA, ACTIVE and CRATER did wonder if there was a volcano theme starting to appear. Thanks both.
  34. Generally this seemed to suit us finishing abt 20m. Loi chalice, we did not get the ch or the girl. Enjoyed sucker and anon. Thanks to all.
  35. Did this this morning and struggled due to tiredness. Nothing unfair in retrospect although had never heard of BLUEBOTTLE for policeman or MACON (us non-drinkers are at a bit of a disadvantage in crosswordland), but it took 45:54 to cross the line with LOI CHALICE, which I’ve always considered to be a cup rather than a bowl. Anyway, COD to OBESE. Thanks Teazel and Astartedon.
    1. You may be at a disadvantage yes. But non-drinkers themselves do turn up fairly regularly as TT or DRY or similar. And I don’t suppose the disadvantage is any worse than the one that we non-ornithologists, or non-horticulturalists, or non-geographers face. These are black holes in my knowledge but thanks to crosswords I am very gradually managing to fill them in. I certainly know a lot more about birds, plants and capital cities and states than when I first started.

      I mean of course I take your point and agree with it — but we all have our blind spots!

      Edited at 2021-06-14 11:09 pm (UTC)

  37. Nothing particularly chewy here. FOI 1ac SERBO-CROAT and pretty much by the numbers to LOI 21d JAR. Completed in 15.

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