QC 2963 by Beck

Author   MerlinPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Plenty of hiddens today, some very contemporary GK and a pink square.  15:23 for me

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

Across
1 Have no mercy hiding spitefulness (5)
VENOM – Hidden in “Have no mercy”
4 Pop singer’s praise set back International Publishers’ Association (3,4)
DUA LIPA – LAUD (praise) reversed + IPA

I very vaguely heard this name, and it turns out to be her real name (NÉE), of Kosovo/Albanian heritage. I have no problem with GK like this.
8 Enthusiastic approval of profit and loss review by accountant (7)
PLAUDIT – P&L (Profit & Loss) + AUDIT (review by accountant)

Don’t often see abbreviations where the & is dropped, but this is a new one, and works well with accountant for a clean surface.
9 Praise bygone tax deducting just one pound (5)
EXTOL – EX-TOLL (bygone tax) – L (one pound)

I though the bygone tax was going to be “tithe”.
10 Leave feeling excitement for just a moment (10)
FLEETINGLY – FLEE (Leave) = TINGLY (feeling excitement)

I got this by guessing that “feeling” must be part of an anagram.
14 Man strayed to the west (6)
DENNIS – SINNED (strayed) reversed [to the west]

Trick here was to assume that “strayed” probably ended in -ed, so need a name starting DE, hence DENNIS.
15 Child attending a part of recital (6)
SONATA – SON (child) + AT (attending) + A
17 Favourite source of personal recommendation (10)
PREFERENCE – P{personal} [source of] + REFERENCE (recommendation)
20 Statesman from Isle of Wight area, close to Sandown (5)
IOWAN – IOW + A{rea} + {Sandow}N

Statesman for “someone from the state of Iowa”, I liked this. IOW is more commonly seen in Email-speak as “In other Words”, IMHO.
22 Dean set off for area of London (4,3)
EAST END – (DEAN SET)* [off]
23 “They let off steam”, blokes said (7)
GEYSERS – Sounds like GEEZERS (blokes)

As in a recent puzzle I tried to get GUVNORS to work before remembering that a governor on a steam engine controls the speed, it’s the safety valve that lets off steam.

Blokes regulate the speed, they say (7) is the clue I tried to answer.
24 Rather eccentric nickname for a girl (5)
DOTTY – Double def

I looked up famous people called Dotty and there really aren’t any, not spelt this way, any way.
Down
1 Enjoy an e-cigarette with clumsy fellow after 5 (4)
VAPE – APE (clumsy fellow) follows V(five)
2 Awesome element of drone attack (4)
NEAT – hidden in “drone attack”

Neat=awesome is a good pairing, with the same connotation of breathless teen-speak.
3 Pop singer tucking into Beck’s cake (9)
MADELEINE – ADELE (singer) hidden in MINE (Beck’s, where Beck is the setter)

With the checkers of M-D I tried to misspell MADDONNA to fit. Interesting self-reference to Beck here, I don’t think I have seen that before. And in some of the on-line Times versions the setter’s name doesn’t appear, if this affected you, you have my sympathy.
4 Changing one or the other initially to show hesitation (6)
DITHER – EITHER (one or the other) [Changing initially]

I think this is the correct parsing, with the instruction to just change the initial letter, but no clue as to what. Why not ZITHER?
5 Cut taxes without limits (3)
AXE – {t}AXE{s}
6 Complete rearrangement of triangle (8)
INTEGRAL – (TRIANGLE)*

I kept seeing RELATING. This well known set also yields ALERTING and ALTERING. The clue would have been more head-scratching as “Complete altering of triangle (8)”
7 Cry about being trapped in distant back street (8)
ALLEYWAY – YELL (Cry) reversed and contained in AWAY (distant)

This was my LOI, I saw WAY=street, with “cry” as the definition and “back” as a reversal.
11 Plastic on sidecar coated with metal (4-5)
IRON-CASED – (ON SIDECAR)* [plastic]

Not in collins, or chambers. But the OED has lots of references, for example when referring to HMS Warrior. “Iron Clad” seems to be the preferred usage now, certainly in metaphors.

Plastic is a new anagram indicator for me, but it literally means “malleable”, and did so for hundred of years until the 1900s when synthetic products made from oil derivatives were so described. Now it is rarely used in the original sense, hence it confused me today.
12 Modifying giant pad in an unusual way (8)
ADAPTING – (GIANT PAD)*
13 Started directly below track (8)
UNDERWAY –  UNDER (directly below) + WAY (track)

Not sure what the “directly” is doing here, surface doesn’t need it, so must be part of the definition for “under”?
16 Heartless, reckless pause in proceedings (6)
RECESS – REC{kl}ESS [heartless]
18 Mailed out in absentia (4)
SENT – Hidden in absentia
19 Nervous editor going crazy ultimately (4)
EDGY – ED (editor) + {goin}G + {craz}Y
21 Once-called dictator’s opposing vote (3)
NÉE – sounds like NAY (opposing vote)

The source of my pink square, as the only word I could get to fit was NOE, which is what the Speaker says when he says “The Noes have it”, who are the opposing votes. I thought “Noh” could have been a Vietnamese Dictator. It turns out there is a Malaysian politician called Noh, but I don’t think he makes the dictator ranks.

NÉE is the term that married women use to refer to their maiden name, hence “once-called”. My son-in-law was rare in having to use NÉ, since he took his wife’s name. Good lad.

99 comments on “QC 2963 by Beck”

  1. Really enjoyed this one, despite being tough. No doubt the first time I’ve solved a QC faster than Jackkt.
    I’m sure a lot more here would remember Dua Lipa if I reminded them that she sang ‘Dance the night away’ and was a mermaid in the Barbie movie 🤣.
    Thanks Merlin, Beck and Jason.

      1. Blimey Mr Random … you did well to avoid the biggest movie of 2023 made about $1.5billion. I’m sure it must have got mentioned somewhere in The Times with the Barbenheimer phenomena

  2. DNK

    Same as Merlin, a clumsy DPS for NEE. Tried Nae, the Scottish version of no.

    It was a 27 minute struggle anyway. Dua Lipa (Houdini is one of my favourite songs of the decade) and Adele helped but NHO MADELEINE cake and I failed to parse FLEETINGLY. LOI UNDERWAY.

  3. Pushed into the SCC at 21:19, but it’s absolutely packed in there today, no seats at all 😀

    DUA LIPA and PLAUDIT went in quickly and I wondered if we were going to have a theme with answers being almost anagrams of each other, but that didn’t go anywhere. I never parsed DITHER, and had to check whether TOTATA was a word (no) before SON occurred to me.

    Thanks to Merlin and Beck.

  4. Happily ambled round this, enjoying it more than yesterday’s, despite a dreaded hidden at 1 accross. Definitely helped over the line by remembering the lively debate I had with Mr P over the use of plastic to indicate an anagram the first time I saw that one.

    Thanks Beck and Merlin

  5. Well this turned out to be harder than I thought it was going to be at the start but we fared better than many it seems. All done in a not very much slower than average 14:17. DUA LIPA was a ‘modern’ cultural reference that I knew and tbh would have expected to have been more widely known. On the other hand I was grateful for the generous wordplay to get to IOWAN, not having come across that Welsh statesman before (Mrs T claims she saw the correct reference all along). I groaned inwardly at 14a needing a random man’s name but, as Merlin points out, it’s not so difficult if you assume it will start with DE. We were amongst those not knowing at the outset that the setter was Beck but the cake came reasonably easily from having some checkers and Adele enabled us to make the assumption. Enjoyable puzzle I thought. Thanks, Merlin and Beck.

  6. Judging from the other comments I must have lucked into the correct wavelength today. I struggled with DENNIS and UNDERWAY but eventually finished in 14:43, which is approximately average for me.

    Thank you for the blog!

  7. 20:54 WOE, the one you know. After diligently calling to mind DUA LIPA (known only from her previous appearance here), excavating the amusing FLEETINGLY, and recovering from a brain scramble at 11d that had me musing over IRON-arSED as a possibility, I was too pleased with myself to remember to go check on NAE before submitting. Note to self: use the pencil!

    I slowed down a lot at the beginning wondering what in the world was going on with the repeated “praise” (and “awesome” and “enthusiastic approval”) and “pop singer” in the early clues.

    Thanks Beck and Merlin.

  8. Long slog foe me, didn’t get Dua Lipa (I thought living people were a No No), Madeleine or Nee. I don’t think Integral means complete (nor do the Dictionaries I could check online), it means essential for completeness. X is integral to the alphabet, you cannot have a complete alphabet without an X. That doesn’t mean that X is a complete alphabet.

    1. The “no living people” rule was recently scrapped. I agree about integral as far as my usage goes (leaving out math). But Collins has “intact; entire” as second meaning. Typical crosswording trick.

      1. Ah – useful to know about the no living people rule being gone. Hopefully that means we can dump all the 1930s stars that I’ve never heard of and concentrate on the more recent ones (particularly as QC was always supposed to attract new solvers).

  9. I had very mixed feelings about this one – I started off not liking it very much at all and struggled to find a toehold (!). There seemed to be too many similar words in the clues – praise, tax, pop singer.
    I got NEAT for AWESOME immediately, but it felt oddly uncomfortable – it obviously works for Americans but maybe not so much for us, or perhaps it’s just me! I also wasn’t keen on IRON CASED or UNDERWAY as one word. But by the time I got to the end, I realised that there were several clues that I really enjoyed, including EAST END, SONATA, MADELEINE and EMAIL.
    However, I couldn’t parse DITHER or FLEETINGLY, so am relieved to see that I got them right.
    16:46 FOI Venom LOI and COD Dennis. I don’t mind names as answers, just not clued as girl or boy, and that’s it!
    Thanks Beck and Merlin

  10. 24 minute DNF.

    Put NOE for 21 dn. I do not understand this clue and it ruined what little enjoyment I had. Don’t bother with any explanations. It makes no difference now. Why do I always make mistakes like this when the rest of you avoid them?

    Just looked at clue again and still fail to understand it! I have lost count of how many times I fail by a single unfathomable clue.

    NHO ADELE or DUA LIPA. I have no interest in pop (or any other) musc.

    I tried 15 x 15 first today. Got most answers in an hour and then this abject failure.

    Why is it that solvers who don’t seem to go near the 15 x 15 beat me hollow on the QC?

    I am frustrated beyond measure by these puzzles and my inability to complete them. Time to give up perhaps? I don’t improve and I don’t know why.

  11. PS. Failed by 5 on 15 x 15. All bar one were very gettable. Just for once, I’d like to feel a sense of accomplishment after 2 plus hours of slogging away at cryptic crosswords. Practice makes imperfect in my case.

  12. Did not get DENNIS did not get NEE, but had quite a good time, if a long time…

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