QC 2506 by Joker

Author   MerlinPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

 

Felt on the hard side to me, at least compared to yesterday’s where I was biffing left and right.

Following on from my comment last week, I decided to compute the average Scrabble point score for the words, to see if there was a preponderance of obscure letters. It is 1.39. One large analysis of over 400,000 English words calculated the average points per letter to be 1.15 points. So crossword Vocab has a higher preponderance of obscure letters, but not by much. At least not today’s QC.

Definitions underlined in bold , synonyms in (parentheses) (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, other wordplay in [square brackets] and deletions in {curly} brackets.

Across
1 Standing deer attracting new insect (8)
STAGNANT – STAG(deer) + N{ew} + ANT (insect)
6 Endless remorse for fraud (4)
SHAM – SHAM{e} (remorse)
8 Mass slaughter mainly gains nought (4)
KILO – KIL{l} [“mainly” indicates drop last letter]+ O (nought)
9 Turning over tablet seen in puddle … it’s a big sweet (8)
LOLLIPOP – PILL (tablet) inside POOL (puddle) all reversed

Is a lollipop always a big sweet? I think the stick is the definitive attribute, maybe the clue could have been “it’s a sticky sweet?”
10 Red meat I moved a distance across plate? (8)
DIAMETER – (RED MEAT I)*

Since a plate is circular, then the distance across must be definition be a diameter.
12 Have a gander to hold back (4)
PEEK – KEEP (to hold) reversed

“Have a gander” is thought to simply come from the characteristic way geese seem to extend their necks when looking. Though I don’t know why this is restricted to the male of the species.
13 Lad embracing insolence as something easy to get into (4-2)
SLIP-ON – SON (lad) contains LIP (insolence)

Slip-ons are leather shoes, with a full heel which do not have buckles or laces. They were first known as “loafers”, surprisingly George VI (not know for sartorial innovation) was an early adopter.
15 British arrangement on which customs are based (6)
BORDER – B{ritish} + ORDER (arrangement)

The definition is cryptic/whimsical, although customs are based “at” the border, I can’t quite make “on” formulation work.
17 Suspicion of strike around November (4)
HINT – HIT (strike) contains N{ovember}
19 Lift to reveal ground (8)
ELEVATOR – (TO REVEAL)* [“ground” = anagram]
21 Concrete motorway consumed initially resulted in all going short (8)
MATERIAL – M{otorway} + ATE (consumed) + R{esulted} + I{n} + AL{l}

Lots of construction needed on the Motorway to get this all sorted, with a couple of diversions in there: “consumed” and “in” are not  containment indicators. “Initially” applies to the next two words.
23 Help to import Cape bitter (4)
ACID – AID (help) contains C{ape}
24 Dispatched perfume as ordered by phone? (4)
SENT – homophone [ordered by phone] for SCENT (perfume)
25 Advocate international exhibition having indemnity regularly (8)
EXPONENT – EXPO (International exhibition) + {i}N{d}E{m}N{i}T{y}
Down
2 Worthless four imprisoned by court hearing (7)
TRIVIAL – TRIAL (court hearing) contains IV (four)

This also works with six (VI).
3 Depression of key on weaving machine (5)
GLOOM – G{key} + LOOM (weaving machine)

I’m not a fan of the “key” convention when it is a crapshoot for the first seven letters. Although LOOM was pretty easy.
4 Alone when one is left completely (3)
ALL – ALONE  subtract ONE and replace with L{eft}

This is an unusual construction where a sequence of three letters is replaced with a single letter. Leads to a great surface.
5 Not bad distributing beer to all (9)
TOLERABLE – (BEER TO ALL)*
6 Captain having small fish for breakfast? (7)
SKIPPER – S{mall} + KIPPER (fish for breakfast)

I’m not good with fish but the “for breakfast” was a friendly hint from the Joker. The word SKIPPER is nothing to do with Skipping but comes from the Dutch for a captain.
7 Fuss concerning worship (5)
ADORE – ADO (fuss) + RE(concerning)
11 Ordered a green tin for fruit (9)
TANGERINE – (A GREEN TIN)*
14 Calm   person in hospital(7)
PATIENT – Double def
16 Feeling European movement (7)
EMOTION -E {uropean} + MOTION (movement)
18 Current judge is very angry (5)
IRATE – I (current) + RATE (judge)
20 What speculator hopes to make once more (5)
AGAIN – A GAIN (what speculator hopes to make)

Not strictly a double def, since the enumeration is different (1,4)
22 Ace breaking old record for circuit (3)
LAP – LP (old record) contains A{CE}

77 comments on “QC 2506 by Joker”

  1. Looks like I’m with the majority here. Seemed hard at first look, but with the anagrams in it became much easier, apart from MATERIAL and BORDER, which were last in.

  3. Like Z, I got stuck for a minute or so on LOI, BORDER, where I tried to justify BARTER for a while. Sadly it was all in vain as when typing LOLLIPOP into the grid, I managed to type LOLLOPOP, overwriting SKIPPER as I went. Drat! 7:34 W2E. Thanks Joker and Merlin.

  4. Is there a pinned post about the crossword champs on 21 Oct and potential meet in the pub?
    Not sure whether to travel down for a few drinks.

  5. All done in under 25 minutes with only Border, Material and Kilo giving any difficulties. Thanks Joker for a very nice QC.
    Irate has to be one of the easiest clues ever.
    I was about to ask how 4d ALL works. At first I thought that ‘one’ left ‘alone’ to leave AL and could not see where the ‘L’ came from. But on closer reading of Merlin’s blog I see that ‘one’ is or becomes ‘l’ for left. Very clever.

  6. 11 minutes, and no problems. SCAM just wouldn’t parse, and SHAM came quickly. My L2I were GLOOM and KILO. STAGNANT needed some checkers, but no other difficulties. Thanks Joker and Merlin. Now waiting for boiler service, and then the heating is finally going on!

  7. 12:03. Another who thought SCAM looked promising until it didn’t. I seem to be the only one who thought the same for SNAP-ON. Thanks for parsing of MATERIAL. Growing up we used the terms LOLLIPOPS and suckers interchangeably.

  8. Struggled to get a foothold then all fell fairly easily. FOI KILO, LOI PEEK. Several biffed then parsed. Liked the surface for STAGNANT. Dare I say I’ve been missing learning a new word or two of late but otherwise very enjoyable. Interesting to hear about the origin of skipper. Many thanks Merlin and Joker.

  9. Fairly straightforward for me today. All done in 12 minutes. Didn’t bother to parse TOLERABLE or ELEVATOR as both were by that point obvious from the crossers. Managed not to fall for the ‘scam’!

    FOI – 6ac SHAM
    LOI – 12ac PEEK
    COD – 6dn SKIPPER. Also liked KILO

    Thanks to Joker and Merlin

  10. 6.50

    Little to add. Another SCAM to SHAM with KILO delaying me at the very end.

    ALL was very good.

    Thanks Joker and Merlin

    1. Seems fair enough. An abbreviation for kilogram, and kilogram in Collins (sense 2) is “the basic SI unit of mass”.

  12. 13 mins…

    I didn’t find this too bad overall. I’m still not sure about 4dn “All” though. Are we saying the “left” element acts as both the instruction to remove “one” and to include the extra “l”? Or am I missing something?

    I initially thought “Sham” for 6ac as well, but then I’ve been stung by those clues before, and as I couldn’t parse it I waited until a pdm appeared later.

    FOI – 3dn “Gloom”
    LOI – 6ac “Sham”
    COD – 10ac “Diameter”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. No, the “left” isn’t doing double duty.

      “Alone when one is left completely” breaks down as “when the ONE in AL-ONE becomes L for left, then you have AL-L”.

      Hope that helps!

  13. No-one else seems to have had PEEP for 12ac. I see now that it’s PEEK ie “keep” (hold) reversed (back). At the time I thought PEEP did “hold” (its meaning) when reversed (back). Neat, I thought. If this was the Championship I would appeal

  14. Arrgh.

    The first DNF in weeks; never really saw PEEK as the reverse of KEEP so put in PEEP for much the same reason as kapietro above. Flew through the rest in what would have been a PB, so feeling a bit 18d with myself.

    Onwards and sideways.

  15. 9:05 for a rare sub-10 minute outing. As others found, none of the first three acrosses went in quickly, which had me a bit concerned, but then I spotted LOLLIPOP and things went well from there until my LOI MATERIAL.
    Thanks to Joker and Merlin.

  16. Did not even bother to try this one.
    Just went straight to the answers.
    Glad I did.
    What a nasty one.

  17. Slow start quickly speeding up and finishing in 9 minutes. Loi diameter. Interesting snippets in the blog (especially the history of slip on shoes which used to fly off, with poor consequences, when playing football).

  18. Coming late to the blog today and have not perused the comments so apologies if I repeat. Very enjoyable QC but totally fooled by Joker with KILO. I could not get beyond ‘mass slaughter’ so failed on my LOI. Very clever misdirection.

  20. A bit over 13 1/2 minutes. Harder than yesterday. Stuck on BORDER at the end which I still only sort of understand. Like kapietro and Eugene, PEEP crossed my mind for 12a but PEEK fitted the wordplay better; kapietro’s palindromic interpretation (luckily) didn’t occur to me. There’s also PEER of course to complete the four-letter PEE_for “look” trifecta, but that didn’t work here either.

    Thanks to Joker and Merlin

  21. An annoying DNF for SCAM. I couldn’t parse it and so put a circle round the clue to come back to at the end. Having stopped my watch at 11:57, just 10 seconds slower than yesterday, I did relook at it, but I couldn’t think of anything better and by then the time wouldn’t have been good anyway. Oh well, thanks Joker and Merlin.

  22. I solved this earlier today, but only now have the opportunity to post my comments (and I won’t be able to read everyone else’s until later, I’m afraid).

    I was very pleased to finish all correct in just 23 minutes, which is very fast for me with Joker. A slow start with only PEEK going in until I reached the bottom of the grid, but my early frustrations didn’t last for too long. I enjoyed finding LOLLIPOP and struggled a bit at the end with SLIP ON, PATIENT and (LOI) MATERIAL.

    Mrs Random blitzed it today in 13 minutes, her innate ability to (randomly) guess correctly coming to the fore. I think I’ve forgotten what a family point looks like.

    Many thanks to Joker and Merlin.

  23. Surely BORDER on which customs are based refers to activities rather than custom duties. Such as caber tossing is a Scottish custom?

  24. Another day of frustration and woe.

    All done bar 15ac in 9 mins and then a horrible 8 mins to come up with BORDER for a poor 17 mins overall.

    I’ve tried (really) to be pleased with the first 9 mins, but cannot get over the complete brain freeze on the last clue. This is now happening so often that I hit panic mode as soon as I reach the last one.

    Another chance for a sub-10 missed and towards the bottom of the class again.

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