A lot of good clues here and for the most part the surfaces were shiny smooth and read very naturally. Medium difficulty from my end, what say you, good people? Pleased to see ‘drunk’ used as a definition rather than an anagrind, particularly in a clue where an anagram was used as a device and it therefore served as a potential misdirection. FOI 1A and LOI 14D (I think). Several potential CODs but I’m going for 24A. Many thanks to Breadman, very enjoyable puzzle.
Definitions are underlined and everything else is explained just as I see it as simply as I can.
Across | |
1 | Like some cakes I’d put around church (4) |
ICED – ID (I’d) ‘put around’ CE (Church (of England)) | |
7 | Changeable writer to stop going through dictionary (4-5) |
OPEN-ENDED – PEN (writer) + END (to stop) ‘going through’ OED (Oxford English Dictionary). | |
9 | Horse grabbing Mike’s grooming implement (4) |
COMB – COB (horse) ‘grabbing’ M (Mike, phonetic alphabet). | |
10 | I must accompany soldiers in specialist trial (10) |
EXPERIMENT – I + MEN (I ‘accompanying’ soldiers) ‘in’ EXPERT (specialist). | |
11 | Prison in west Iraq (4) |
STIR – hidden word: ‘in’ weST IRaq. | |
12 | Pregnant woman‘s doctor with the gown obtaining temperature (6-2-2) |
MOTHER-TO-BE – MO (Medical Officer, doctor) + THE ROBE (the gown) ‘obtaining’ T (temperature). | |
16 | Map — volunteers recalled it on crop-growing estate (10) |
PLANTATION – PLAN (map) + TA (Territorial Army, ‘volunteers’) + TI (IT ‘recalled’) + ON. | |
19 | Occasionally require old currency (4) |
EURO – EUR (‘occasionally’ rEqUiRe) + O (old). | |
21 | Drunk European in Britain troubled newsman (10) |
INEBRIATED – E (European) ‘in’ an anagram (‘troubled’) of BRITAIN + ED (newsman). | |
23 | Potty about American work of music? (4) |
OPUS – PO (a chamber pot, or ‘potty’) ‘about’, i.e. reversed = OP, + US (American). | |
24 | Irish city’s naval team that’s driven in and out of port maybe (9) |
CORKSCREW – CORK’S (Irish city’s) + CREW (naval team). A CORKSCREW may be driven in and out of a bottle of port in the process of removing the cork. | |
25 | Want massage, reportedly (4) |
NEED – sounds like (‘reportedly’) KNEAD (massage). |
Down | |
2 | Small farm councillor attends frequently (5) |
CROFT – CR (councillor) + OFT (frequently). | |
3 | Dog award accepted by doctor on staff (8) |
DOBERMAN – OBE (award) ‘accepted by’ DR (doctor) on (i.e. ‘above’ in this down clue) MAN (staff). | |
4 | Outside in drizzle, identify tyrant (6) |
DESPOT – the ‘outside’ of D |
|
5 | Funereal vehicle picks up elders initially (6) |
HEARSE – HEARS (picks up) + E (Elders ‘initially’). | |
6 | Cheese produced to the north (4) |
EDAM – MADE (produced) ‘to the north’, i.e. written upwards in this down clue. It’s the old schoolboy joke: “Which cheese is made backwards?”. And just to keep the PC wardens happy I assume this would have been a schoolgirl joke as well but I never knew such beings existed until much later in life having attended a single-sex prep school. | |
8 | Copenhagen citizen maybe eating grub half ignored famous river (6) |
DANUBE – DANE (Copenhagen citizen) ‘eating’ UB ( |
|
13 | Headwear that’s uncovered (3) |
HAT – |
|
14 | Moderate single daughter in urban community (4,4) |
TONE DOWN – ONE D (single daughter) ‘in’ TOWN (urban community). | |
15 | Colin, giving away nothing, in charge of private hospital (6) |
CLINIC – C |
|
17 | Surrounded by morning papers, sat peripherally (6) |
AMIDST – AM (morning) + ID (papers) + S |
|
18 | Unit reformed our sailors, one after another (2,4) |
IN TURN – INTU (anagram (‘reformed’) of UNIT) + RN (Royal Navy, ‘our sailors’). | |
20 | Altered outer course (5) |
ROUTE – straight anagram (‘altered’) of OUTER. | |
22 | Block new farm building (4) |
BARN – BAR (block) + N (new). |
Edited at 2021-11-01 01:04 am (UTC)
I didn’t bother with the more complicated cryptics; mother-to-be, inebriated, and open-ended were the obvious answers.
I call the attention of newer solvers to the cryptic for corkscrew, which is very popular with setters. There are many variants, but don’t be fooled.
More importantly this was the first QC I’ve completed with no aids. Thanks Breadman and @astartedon.
General note: I had to unspam Anon’s comment. I wondered why it was treated as suspicious and can only conclude it’s either because the poster made use of the new quotation facility or the use of @ sign.
Moral: Drink it, don’t keep it unless you have the right storage conditions.
P.s. Contrary to a fairly common view, a bottle with a crumbly cork is not a ‘corked’ bottle. A corked bottle has a cork that has been contaminated with TCA (trichloroanisole) which give rise to a characteristic, unpleasant, smell.
Edited at 2021-11-01 09:55 am (UTC)
I am always amused by the reviews on, for example, the W-rose Wine website where some purchasers get angry and return wines because the cork crumbles a bit (they usually say it is ‘corked’). I now use the ‘Butler’s Thief’ in preference to a corkscrew for most older wines.
FOI 23ac OPUS
LOI 24ac CORKSCREW — as per Jack, this clue doesn’t quite work as port has a ‘bung’
COD 6dn EDAM but Gouda preferred
WOD 3dn DOBERMAN — the stooge in BILKO!, my favourite ever American boxed-set.
Booked for the new Bond movie tomorrow.
Edited at 2021-11-01 06:22 am (UTC)
Missed EXPERIMENT, AMIDST, DESPOT. All fair, sometimes one just can’t see ‘em.
PO=potty? In what context? Like most, I know dozens of slang words, but never heard of this. I work in Purchasing, and a PO is a Purchase Order. My offering,
Authority to buy American work of music (4)
COD CORKSCREW
Edited at 2021-11-01 08:07 am (UTC)
“ Ma’s out, Pa’s out, let’s talk rude:
Pee! Po! Belly! Bum! Drawers!
Dance in the garden in the nude!
Pee! Po! Belly! Bum! Drawers!”
08:01
Templar in haste
po
in British English
NOUN
Word forms: plural pos
British an informal word for chamberpot
Templar beat me to the F&S refreence, but here’s a link to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSrXqOI9988
Edited at 2021-11-01 08:29 am (UTC)
I approach the two cryptic crosswords very differently. With the DM you do not get the answers for a few days, as they are all prize crosswords. Due to that, I take my time with each DM cryptic, taking a few days for each one, only stopping when the answers are revealed a few days later. Often, I complete it with no aids used.
However, with The Times “Quick” Cryptic I am a lot harder on myself, allotting myself an hour only from the moment I start. This, I assume has been putting too much pressure on me. I guess I misinterpreted the word “quick” here.
Therefore, a new approach for the Times QC is needed. From now on I will not time myself, and if it takes me a full day to solve, so be it. Because I am no longer timing myself, I will also restrain from the use of aids. I have been attempting cryptic crosswords for almost one year now, so I feel I need to wean my reliance off them.
Now, on to today’s QC. Very enjoyable – probably because I did not pressure myself as I usually do. My FOI was ICED, LOI was CORKSCREW, which I thought was a very clever clue.
23a. I always think of Steptoe and Son when I see the word “Po”. It reminds me of an episode where Harold is buying himself a new bed, one that has no space between the underside and the floor. Puzzled, Steptoe asks the salesman, “Where do you put the ‘Edgar Allan’”?
I know I said I was not going to time myself, and I did not, but I do happen to know it took me 37 minutes. I started at 0717, and only paused once to let the cat out.
No aids used.
Edited at 2021-11-01 08:32 am (UTC)
Well done for adopting your new approach, and I wish you all the best with it.
A steady medium difficulty puzzle for me. 30 minutes over breakfast with some interruptions to make tea etc.
BW
Andrew
Thanks to astartedon
I whizzed through the grid having Biffed 7 clues (a record) and then spent 6 minutes trying to parse them (with mixed success) to finish in a satisfactory 21 mins.
Thanks Breadman and Astartedon.
LOI AMIDST, which I did have to work out.
Liked EXPERIMENT, OPEN ENDED, DANUBE, CORKSCREW.
Thanks all, esp Don.
I particularly like the classic “lift-and-separate” in the surface for 19A Euro. Managing to get “old currency” into the surface for the newest major currency in the world is very good!
Jack — the deleted comment in reply to yours at 01:03 was mine; it was merely to observe that vintage port often has real corks, but others made the point much more elegantly further down. Memo to self — read all the posts before adding one’s own, to avoid repetition!
Many thanks to Don for the blog
Cedric
The first true Quick Cryptic for many a day, in my opinion. Many thanks to Breadman for a nice start to the week and to Don for his usual informative, economical and enjoyable blog. John M.
Edited at 2021-11-01 09:38 am (UTC)
Congrats!
I’ve always found Breadman to be one of the easier setters and I personally think this was one of the more straightforward QC’s in quite a while ( I think we were due one). As has been mentioned above, a lot of them were biffable and it took more time to working out the parsing rather than the answers.
Main hold up was 24ac “Corkscrew” where I felt into the trap of running through every Irish city imaginable thinking it was the full answer.
FOI — 1ac “Iced”
LOI — 24ac “Corkscrew”
COD — 10ac “Experiment”
Thanks as usual!
In the end, all correct in 14 minutes. A good QC.
David
Yes the cheaper bottles you get in supermarkets usually don’t have a cork, just a stopper that you pull out by hand. I suppose the ‘bottle end’ is made of cork but you obviously can’t put a corkscrew through it. But the good bottles definitely have corks — or do they? I note that
horryd (who I believe is a bit of an oenophile) commented that they don’t have corks, they have bungs. And I wonder is that a technical distinction that I was unaware of? That a ‘cork’ in a bottle of port is correctly called a ‘bung’?
In the context of the clue though, it doesn’t matter a damn of course. Whether it is a cork or a bung you still use a corkscrew not a bungscrew to extract it, so the definition is correct as ‘that’s driven in and out of port maybe’.
I do like port very much although I am told it is going out of fashion except for a small contingent of the young set who apparently like it with lemon (I think the noble drink would probably rather die a dignified death than be subjected to such adulteration). We inherited two very nice bottles of ‘85 a couple of years ago, and for a wedding present back in 1990 a dear friend who was then the cellarmaster at New College Oxford gave me a bottle of ‘55 from the vaults. And another dear friend who sadly died young laid down a few bottles of ‘63 in my father-in-law’s barn before he passed away. He was another oenophile, but too much so. Although his demise was not caused directly by alcoholic addiction it was certainly a contributory factor. His bottles were not bequeathed to us, but everybody concerned says that my wife and I are morally entitled to them. Me because I had known the guy since I was about 5 and my wife because she had a 6-year relationship with him before they broke up and we got married.
I just need to find the time to get out to the barn to claim the bounty!
I still have a vivid memory of his Memorial Service in London and of tasting his first vintage (among others) with his family and friends at the Athenaeum afterwards.
Edited at 2021-11-01 12:13 pm (UTC)
I was impressed to be offered aged Riesling and Semillon by famous Clare Valley winemakers from their Wine Libraries and to find that, despite being 2 or 3 decades old, they were always bottled under screw cap and were in perfect condition. And the wines had aged beautifully; the winemakers were not convinced by the claim that wine only ages if some air can get past the cork (does it anyway?). The only great wines I have tasted that were ‘off’ were bottled under cork; the resulting disappointment after waiting years to taste a cherished fine wine is something one remembers!
However, when the change away from cork accelerates, the last to fall into line will be the Port bottlers. Most cork comes from Portugal, after all.
Edited at 2021-11-01 03:51 pm (UTC)
🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺
LOI and favourite was CORKSCREW, which you’ll definitely need for your better bottles of port.
4:32
FOI ICED
LOI OPUS
COD MOTHER-TO-BE
TIME 3:31
FOI – 1ac ICED
LOI – 4dn DESPOT
COD – the very succinct 13dn HAT
Thanks to Breadman for an entertaining puzzle.
COD 24 ac “corkscrew”, evidently a popular choice. Which reminds me, I have two bottles of ’77 Fonseca, untouched for some time. Just waiting for an opportunity to share, certainly these days Mrs P and I would require assistance !
Thanks to Don for his entertaining blog and to Breadman for a pleasant start to the week.
FOI: ICED
LOI: CORKSCREW
COD: MOTHER TO BE
Thanks Astartedon and Breadman.
FOI Iced
LOI Despot
COD Euro
Thanks Breadman and Don
FOI: ICED
LOI: AMIDST
COD: CORKSCREW
My FOI was ICED and, unusually, I solved several clues on my first pass down the grid. It felt so good being able to parse each clue without undue angst or hopeful biffing. Let’s hope I can continue today’s form for the rest of this week. My final two in were AMIDST (my CoD) and CORKSCREW.
So, an enjoyable and successful solve, and I will come back later when Mrs Random has had a chance to tackle it (she has just arrived back from a walk and lunch with a friend).
Many thanks to Breadman and astartedon.
P.S. I braved what I think will be my last sea-swim of the year earlier this morning. I say “last” because I don’t currently have a wetsuit and the water temperature was below 12°C. I know some people who are hardy enough to swim throughout the winter, but just 10 minutes was enough for me today.
In fact, I had everything other than CROFT in after 12 minutes with an agonising 6 minutes looking blankly at C_O_T.
Very chuffed indeed! Looking back at my stats, I’ve finished 3 out of 4 QCs by Breadman, so must be on his wavelength.
There was a bit of biffing involved today, but everything was parsed by the end.
Edited at 2021-11-01 04:19 pm (UTC)
I fear it’ll be business as usual tomorrow with DNF after 45 minutes…
Earlier in the week, we mentioned the unfortunately truncated film title “Who Framed Roger Rabbi”. It reminded Wadham Sutton, a reader, of one of his favourite jokes. “A Catholic priest, an Anglican vicar and a rabbit go to a clinic to give blood. The nurse asks the rabbit if he happens to know what blood group he is. The rabbit thinks for a moment and then says, ‘I think I must be a Type O’. “
Brilliant 😂 Definitely a joke for all crossword lovers, which is not surprising, as Wadham Sutton is better known to us as Orpheus!
About half a course with lots of biffing
Not sure about the walnuts and port though
… minus (e.g. 13 minus 7 = 6)
… times (e.g. 5 times 3 =1 5)
… divided by (e.g. 6 divided by 2 = 3)
… gerzinter (e.g. 7 gerzinter 28 four times)