QC 2927 by Dangle, welcome to our newest setter

Author   MerlinPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

A new setter, welcome Dangle.

I generally don’t pay much attention different setters styles, but it’s good to have someone new join the team. Dangle’s opening offering felt pretty tough to me, how did everyone get on?

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

Across
1 Made a delivery, containing urge with knees apart (3-6)
BOW-LEGGED – BOWLED (Made a Delivery, in cricket) contains EGG (urge)

Egg on = Urge on.
6 Promise Victor it hurts (3)
VOW – V{ictor} + OW (it hurts)
8 Entertaining American soldier’s growths (5)
FUNGI – FUN (entertaining) + GI (American Soldier)
9 Place where one might learn about religion’s income (7)
REVENUE – “R.E. Venue” (where one might learn about religion)

Very nice clue, which beat me all ends up until I was able to biff from checkers.
10 I resist terrible threats to kidnap Oscar (8)
RHEOSTAT – (THREATS)* [terrible] contains O{scar}

It’s a variable resistor just like the ones in a traditional dimmer switch.
11 Panic starts to feel like anxious pattern (4)
FLAP – F{eel} L{ike} A{nxious} P{attern}
13 Compulsion to set alight extremely pretty country (9)
PYROMANIA – P{rett}Y [extremely] + ROMANIA (country)
16 Open a glass container (4)
AJAR – A + JAR (glass container)

One of the very first jokes I remember telling was “When is a door not a door? When it is ajar.” I didn’t learn the meaning of “ajar” until many years later, and so developed a whole line in what I thought were similar jokes such as “When is a dog not a dog? When it is a cat.” Parents dutifully laughed. Then, “When is a fish not a fish?”  etc.
17 Bush can stop former head of state (8)
LAVENDER – LAV (can) + END (stop) + ER (former head of state)

I thin CAN is very much American English, like DOVE or GI, but LAV is very much British English.
20 Mine providing fuel regularly? That’s terrible (7)
PITIFUL – PIT (Mine) + IF (providing) + {f}U{e}L
21 Fury about new series (5)
RANGE – RAGE (Fury) contains N{ew}

RANGE=series is not the first use of Range that comes to mind (but to be fair, it is first in the OED). One example is “a whole range of emotions”
22 Close to losing knight’s attention (3)
EAR – NEAR (Close to ) – N[knight, in Chess notation]

“Give EAR and come to me” – Isaiah 55:3
23 Tough Listener I messed up (9)
RESILIENT – (LISTENER I)*

I’m Not sure what the surface refers to. With the capital L maybe it refers to the demonic Listener puzzle generally regarded as the most difficult cryptic crossword to appear in a national weekly. It survived the closure of The Listener and now appears in The Times on a Saturday.
Down
1 Earlier bribe for exploitable guards (6)
BEFORE – Hidden  [guards] in “bribe for exploitable”
2 Flinch as top of cork found in Beaujolais? (5)
WINCE – WINE (Beaujolais) contains C{ork} [top of]
3 Representative young woman stops before she should, left out (8)
EMISSARY – MISS (young woman) enclosed by [stops] EAR{l}Y (before she should) [left out]

You can tell this is a tough parse as it needs all my different types of brackets to explain. I had LASS with the L missing for a long time.
4 Nameless gamer spread disease (6,7)
GERMAN MEASLES – (NAMELESS GAMER)* [spread]

The surface is somewhat ungrammatical for what is a very good anagram.
5 Bird plunged in LA (4)
DOVE – DIVED (plunged) in American English [in LA]

One of the few examples of new strong verbs that have appeared in the last 50 years. Generally strong verbs (which indicate past tense by a change of vowel) get replaced by their weaker forms. eg Chid/Chided, Strove/Strived, Spake/Speak.

Snuck (for sneaked) is another new strong verb, and Drug (for dragged) is starting to make an appearance.
6 Plain caravan? I’ll alter covers (7)
VANILLA – Hidden in “caravan? I’ll alter”

The OED has this meaning from 1972. It can now be confusingly used with foods such as “Do you want a flavouring in your coffee”, “No just Vanilla”, and “Yes, Vanilla” produce very different results.
7 Wife assists young animals (6)
WHELPS – W{ife} + HELPS (assists)

WHELP is a very Old English word :it’s in a very early translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels (Matt. xv. 27)  But is rarely heard this days, where “pup” seems to cover it, except perhaps in dog-breeding circles.
12 In time, big upset is essential (8)
INTEGRAL – IN + T{ime} + LARGE (big) [upset=reversed in a down clue]
13 Penny with second tray of food (7)
PLATTER – P{enny} + LATTER (second)

The OED explains LATTER this way: mentioned second of two, last of a group of more than two, or at the end of a preceding clause or sentence.
14 Collector quietly taken in by manipulated image (6)
MAGPIE – (IMAGE)* [manipulated] contains P(quietly, in music)

The OED recognises Magpie=collector from 1900. The earliest known reference to magpies as hoarders or collectors comes from ancient Roman times. Pliny the Elder mentioned this behavior in Naturalis Historia, (77-79 AD). In Book 10, which covers birds, Pliny describes magpies as having a tendency to steal and hide shiny objects.

But modern research shows that magpies are actually quite cautious about shiny objects.
15 Desperate old city gentleman (6)
URGENT – UR (old city) + GENT (gentleman)

GENT for gentleman is a bit weak. Maybe “chap” or “fellow” would have been better.
18 Unintelligent study with vacuous style (5)
DENSE – DEN (study) contains S{tyl}E (vacuous, lose the middle)
19 A long way away from return of Nadal? (4)
AFAR – RAFA (Nadal) reversed

Nice one! Rafa Nadal, the famous tennis player.

81 comments on “QC 2927 by Dangle, welcome to our newest setter”

  1. 13:41. Some quite tricky elements here as others found. Wish I’d persevered with LAVENDER when I initially biffed it. INTEGRAL took some serious finding as well. Haven’t seen the word RHEOSTAT for a while either. A great start for Dangle – well done!

  2. As above! Quite tricky but I got there with LAVENDER and REVENUE not parsed.
    Off for more walking, bird watching and eating on a glorious Norfolk day.
    12:43 FOI Vow LOI Emissary COD German measles
    Thanks and welcome Dangle, and thanks Merlin for the usual informative blog 😊

  3. Too hard for me, only managed vow and afar.

    Practiced my post reveal parsing technique and only failed on two, so that’s encouraging.

    1. Sounds very encouraging – well done! I use this technique on the tricky 15×15 crosswords. I feel like I’m at least ‘having a go’ and find it a really enjoyable way of learning 😃

  4. BOW LEGGED and BEFORE were first 2 in. Steady progress after that until I was left with 4d and 17a. Should’ve seen GERMAN MEASLES a lot more quickly! Still took another moment to parse LOI, LAVENDER. 8:13. Welcome and thanks to Dangle, and thanks to Merlin for the blog.

  5. First of all, welcome Dangle.
    As to the crossword, I found it really quite tricky and had to hop around the grid in search of crossers to help with some of the clues. Loi Emissary then took an age to parse, so no real surprise that this turned into another 30min post in plain sight job. Invariant

  6. 6:21

    I didn’t think this was too bad, a couple of answers giving a little pause for thought (BOW-LEGGED, BEFORE (until I spotted the hidden)). RHEOSTAT only known from schoolboy physics, but the mention of dimmer switches in this blog reminded me of their current (ho ho) domestic usage. Only really got a little stuck trying to justify LAVENDER which I assumed must be a bush, before seeing how the wordplay worked.

    Thanks Merlin and welcome Dangle

  7. Tricky and required some staying power! LOI by a long way was LAVENDER which I needed the blog to unravel – thanks Merlin. Anything with lav in gets my vote so this is very much COD 😄 INTEGRAL also took a while to solve (and to parse). Liked this first offering from Dangle – many thanks.

  8. Tied COD 1a BowL egg ed with 17a Lav end ER.
    Was pleased to solve 4d German Measles faster than my Cheating Machine anagrammer could, and then I didn’t have to check that GM was in there.
    Thanks Merlin, and a warm welcome to Dangle.

  9. 10 1/2 minutes. I could only make sense of the RE VENUE (v.good) with the help of crossers and EMISSARY and LAVENDER both took a bit of nutting out.

    Merlin mentions strong verbs which have appeared recently in his explanation of DOVE. It’s an example from more than 50 years ago, but I seemed to remember “clumb” for “climbed” being used, probably in a humorous sense, in either Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. My curiosity got the better of me and I looked it up in the OED where “clumb” is given as a Middle English variant spelling of the past participle of “climbed”, so hardly modern usage!

    Thanks to Merlin and thanks and welcome to Dangle

  10. I thought it an excellent first QC.
    Thanks Merlin and big welcome to Dangle 👍

  11. Looked pretty difficult at first glance, but finished all correct in the end. I thought 1a must be BOW LEGGED but could not parse it. In fact there were several I had to biff rather than parse, eg BEFORE, LAVENDER (LOI), REVENUE.
    Fortunately GERMAN MEASLES sprang to mind straight away which helped.
    Did not know what a RHEOSTAT was. Missed that VANILLA was hidden.
    Liked EMISSARY, MAGPIE, AFAR, DOVE, EAR.
    URGENT was comforting, ditto AJAR.
    Thanks for very much needed blog, Merlin.

  12. 11.36 I put in LAVENDER, took it out, finished the rest of the crossword, stared at it for another two minutes and biffed it. It took another couple of minutes to parse it. COD for baffling me. Thanks Merlin and Dangle.

  14. 6:21

    Nice start, thanks Dangle and Merlin. No hold ups until LOI LAVENDER needed all the checkers.

  15. DNF today, with 7 I couldn’t work out, and many I did put in only from letters I’d got from clues I’d managed to work out. Many thanks for explaining the clues

  16. DNF. Never found PLATTER or thought of LATTER for second. Put PSALTER (with s for second) instead. I know it doesn’t parse properly, but I guessed that psalter meant some sort of tray of food and I couldn’t bring myself to enter into yet another extended alphabet trawl. A downside of my limited vocabulary.

    Didn’t parse any elements of LAVENDER and very uncertain about REVENUE.

    A little over half an hour (about average these days), for what it’s worth.
    Enjoyable until the last few.

    Many thanks to Merlin and Dangle.

  17. 28:18

    Really struggled on last 2, LAVENDER and INTEGRAL, which took the last 10 minutes. I wasn’t helped by carelessly having RESISTANT for 23ac. Got there in the end.

  18. Bemused by the definition for Rheostat. Guess it was tricky to compose. Enjoyed the nice QC and blog. Thanks

  19. 17 mins…

    I didn’t find this too bad – but upon looking at the blog, I realised the few that I biffed were more complicated than I thought (17ac “Lavender”, 3dn “Emissary”). A nice puzzle from a new setter, who didn’t leave me dangling.

    FOI – 1ac “Bow Legged”
    LOI – 3dn “Emissary”
    COD – 12dn “Integral”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. Found this very tough, about half a dozen clues which stumped me. Thanks to the blogger for explaining.

  20. 12:55 of which at least a minute was spent trying to fully parse LOI LAVENDER before entering it. Didn’t see the ER bit and worried whether ‘former’ might instead be EX. Fingers crossed in the end so thank you Merlin for the explanation and welcome Dangle!

  21. I loved this puzzle in spite of the fact that my brain was totally broken. I finally walked away from it and came back for my last two, the obvious MAGPIE (easy, if you don’t think “image” has six letters, hmmmmmmmmmm) and AJAR (easy, period.) Must sleep better. 35:06, oh the shame.

    It was interesting that I could “feel” the different style of this setter. As a relative newbie, I haven’t been sensitive to individual styles other than Izetti’s.

    Welcome Dangle!, thanks Merlin.

  23. DNF. Threw in the towel at 30:00 with LAVENDER and INTEGRAL missing, the latter partially because I had RESISTENT at 23ac. Just not on the wavelength today. Ah well, onto tomorrow.

    Thanks to Merlin & thanks and welcome to Dangle.

  24. I found this fairly doable, and given the other comments I must have been lucky to be on the wavelength today. Finished in 15:02, which is about average for me, albeit I needed help to parse LAVENDER and EMISSARY.

    Thank you for the blog!

  25. Welcome Dangle. This went very well but had to bif LAVENDER and EMISSARY and spend some time working out the parsing. 34:50.
    Nice to see the letter V getting three mentions.
    Thanks Merlin for the informative blog.

  26. Very enjoyable puzzle from our new setter. Welcome Dangle, looking forward to your next offering! Thanks for the blog Merlin.

  28. Horrible day.

    34 minutes of misery.

    Took forever on 9ac and 5dn. No enjoyment or satisfaction to be had .

  29. DNF.
    Not on setter’s wavelength at all. I found this very difficult for a QC.
    Thanks for much needed blog.

  30. Completed 15 x 15 in 40 mins. Briefly happy until I saw the Snitch. Still no sign of progress ☹️

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