QUICK CRYPTIC 1 by Des – Not so quick

Firstly I’d like to say that I welcome this addition to the Times range of puzzles and I find it encouraging that it appears to demonstrate a commitment to the future.

Having said that I have a few immediate gripes that I hope can be put down to teething troubles that will be addressed and sorted out within a day or two. Firstly this puzzle was not available on-line in the Club area and it was with some difficulty that I eventually tracked it down in the on-line newspaper. It ought to sit alongside the other puzzles and offer the same opportunities for leaderboarding and comment in the forum. Secondly, as far as I can see there is no facility to print it other than by printing the screen or by similar cut-and-paste means. Thirdly, if as seemed to be suggested in the pre-publicity, this puzzle is intended as a stepping-stone to the Times Cryptic, I think it’s very important that it should follow the same basic rules, most importantly that answers consisting of multiple or hyphenated words should be indicated in the enumeration of the clues. Not doing so raises the level of difficulty significantly and puts the puzzle in a different league altogether. I lost ages before I realised what was going on.

Edit at 6:40 A.M. : Now that the e-newspaper has been published (the on-line facsimile of the printed edition) I am very pleased to see that the enumeration of multi-word and hyphenated answers is shown correctly. Also there is a print option there although it’s extremely fiddly to use it, including changing the default size of paper from A3.

And so to the blogging: We have a NINA of sorts in the top and bottom rows. On edit: Thanks to z8 for pointing out that the top part of the NINA continues at 7dn. I was worried about that apparently inconsequential THE at 6ac.

Time taken: Far longer than it should have.

Across

1 GREETINGS – Anagram of GET SINGER. Definition: hello
6 THE – hidden. Def: article
8 PLACARD – P (parking), then CAR (vehicle) inside LAD (boy). Def: notice
9 OKAPI – OK (fine), API (Applications Programming Interface). Def: browser – as in the animal. I never heard of this acronym
10 ALL SYSTEMS GO – STEMS (checks) inside anagram of Good ALLOYS. Def: everything’s ready
12 FROM – First letters of Make Oneself Read Fiction reversed. Def: not to
13 EROS – Alternate letters of tEaRoOmS. Def: figure seen in Piccadilly, which is not true as that statue is of Anteros
17 WEIGHTLIFTER – W (women), EIGHT (regatta team), LIFT (raise), ER (Royal). Def: sportsperson
20 DYLAN – hidden. Def: Welshman
21 TO SPARE – SPAR (box) inside TOE (boot). Def: extra
23 NEW – Sounds like “knew” (understood). Def: novel
24 CROSSWORD – CROSS (go over), WORD (promise). Def: this

Down

1 GAPE – G (grand), APE (parrot). Def: stare
2 ENABLER – Anagram of BEEN, LARk. Def: authorizer
3 TEA – TE (note), A (answer). Def: leaves
4 NUDIST – DI’S (CID officer’S – Detective Inspector’S) inside NUT (lunatic). Def: streaker?
5 STONE-DEAF – Anagram of NOTES, DEcAF (coffee). Def: in a sense completely defective
6 THAWS – TH (Thursday), then Water inside AS (when). Def: gets more cordial
7 EDITOR – E (energy), ID (reversed), ROT (nonsense, reversed). Def: press person
11 SYMPHONIC – Anagram of CHOPINS MY. Def: sort of composition, with ‘sort’ doing double-duty as anagrind (anagram indicator)
14 OREGANO – REGAN (ungrateful daughter – of King Lear) inside 00 (ducks). Def: herb
15 SWEDEN – WED (married) inside SEN (old nurse – State Enrolled Nurse). Def: country
16 BLOTTO – BLOT (stain), OT (part of bible, reversed). Def: very drunk
18 IN-LAW – IN-LAW opposite of ‘outlaw’ (what Robin Hood was). Def: relative
19 WELD – WE (you and me), LD (Lord). Def: join together
22 SIS – double definition: girl in family / MI6 – service supplying agents

40 comments on “QUICK CRYPTIC 1 by Des – Not so quick”

  1. 22 minutes, which, being roughly half of what I took on the Cryptic, seems about right.

    I would, however, have taken considerably longer had I not read Jack’s comments re enumeration. Hopefully, a glitch they will shortly solve. I wonder if the Print option can be so easily implemented. I hope so, as this is the kind of thing I might do over ‘tea’.

  2. Great blog Jack, thanks for picking it up at such short notice. I agree with everything you said about the presentation of the puzzle. I tried printing it out but got a grid with no black squares and one clue. Luckily I read in a comment that there was no multi-word enumeration so that didn’t hold me up much.

    1. Hi linxit, I sent you a PM with my email address late last night. Did you get it?

      I don’t know how to write one of these blog entries so I thought I should familiarise myself with it all before my first post tomorrow.

      Thanks

      Ian

  3. I can’t access the article… if someone could provide a url or print to a .pdf that would be really helpful
  4. Thanks jackkt. I agree with all the criticisms.

    Interesting to see the Show Solution button. I wonder if that will be there every day and if so what the motive for having it is. I might find it too tempting sometimes.

    Unlike the main puzzle, I note that the new software allows you to complete the puzzle on an iPad which is handy although personally I prefer hardcopy.

    I found it easier than the main puzzle because the definition part of each clue seemed less well disguised. Pitched well for a beginner like me. I still found some of the wordplay difficult to work out.

    What’s a NINA?

    Edited at 2014-03-10 08:17 am (UTC)

    1. Ian, I think you will find the Show Solution button will only work on and after the day following publication.

      A Nina is a hidden message. In this case, as far as I can see, it’s: GREETINGS THE (at 1 & 6ac) and NEW CROSSWORD (at 23 and 24ac). I’ll leave the explanation of the origin to others although it may already be somewhere in “About This Blog”.

      Edited at 2014-03-10 08:31 am (UTC)

      1. Jack, that’s what I would have expected and so was surprised that it works today – am I right in thinking this is the day of publication?
        1. Right, I see what you mean now. When I clicked it I expected the answers to appear in the grid and hadn’t noticed they appear by the clues instead. The “show solution” button by the main cryptic brings up Friday’s puzzle, which is what I would expect. Maybe it’s another glitch that needs sorting.
          1. Maybe. Hopefully I won’t be cursing it’s absence when it is my turn tomorrow 😉
      2. Having just had another look, I’d say that the Nina was GREETINGS FROM THE NEW CROSSWORD EDITOR (1ac, 12ac, 6ac, 23ac, 24ac, 7dn).

        I’m very disappointed that it hasn’t been published on the Crossword Club site though, with the usual leaderboard etc.

    2. It’s maybe worth noting that the Guardian and Independent online puzzles have “cheat” buttons, so it wouldn’t be unprecedented if the Times went that route too.
  5. If it gets more people solving, then so much the better.

    I can see it going down well with the grannies at my bridge club who all have iPads and tablets.

    Nice straightforward solve, glad the bugs are being ironed out. I found it a bit frustrating just after midnight, but given a little bedding in time, it will be a good addition to the fold.

    Can I be the first to plead the setters’ names stay here and nowhere else?

    1. “Can I be the first to plead the setters’ names stay here and nowhere else?”

      Indeed. The ST Cryptic is spoiled for me by having the setter’s name shown.

      1. One reason for not worrying very much about the use of bylines in the ST was that it was already possible to discover that we had three setters, and the fact that they were normally used in an ABCABC sequence like the Mephisto setters can’t have been much of a surprise. The main disadvantage was that some people thought new bylines indicated new setters, rather than people who had already been producing ST crosswords for several years.
    2. “Can I be the first to plead the setters’ names stay here and nowhere else?”

      How do you mean? The pseudonyms are being published with the puzzles, but I don’t know who “Des” is, and nobody’s outed him on here yet. From the Nina I can guess, but it’s not his usual pseudonym elsewhere.

      Edited at 2014-03-11 12:02 am (UTC)

  6. Solved in a wakeful 10 minutes or so in the middle of the night: thanks to the Times for reproducing, if ever so faintly, a child’s anticipation of Christmas morning.
    Took me a while to find – not on my Times Android app but via the main website, where the enumeration initially was incorrect. In the paper version, the enumeration is correct.
    The “show solution” button also picks out errors in your completed grid, which of course I only found out by entering an experimental wrong answer.
    As to the crossword itself, I put in EROS knowing that it isn’t really but is by popular acclamation., and noted there are a brazen two hiddens.
    Like IN-LAW, and INLAW, of course.
    Other NINA-ish elements, I thought: it was hard not to read “greetings from the editor” even if you had to elevate the “from”. And was ALLSYSTEMSGO (sic) a triumph of expectation over delivery, since clearly some systems are not yet go?
  7. 7 mins and I thought this was a pleasant enough puzzle. I do the paper version so the enumeration wasn’t a problem. I might have been quicker but I’d just finished the main puzzle in a fairly fast time so put pressure on myself because this one was the “easy” one. Stupidly, I didn’t spot the nina. TO SPARE was my LOI. I thought 12ac was a tricky clue and it took me a while to see what was going on.
  8. This appeared as the first puzzle on my iPad app, with the enumeration correct, so I avoided all the problems mentioned above. It took me a little over five minutes, which was a relief after the mess I made of the main puzzle.
    1. Agreed re iPad , keriothe. Now all we need them to do is to stop bits of clues being covered by the circle indicating the number of letters, and we will be in business. This is particularly annoying with anagrams.

      On the puzzle, for me a pleasant wind-down after the big one. As far as I can see, no reference to either here or The Times Crossword Club in RR’s article.

      1. Yes, I agree with that. It adds a certain spice to the difficulty level, but on the whole I prefer it when you can see all the letters in a clue.
        At least they managed to fix the punctuation.
  9. Only found this after coming here, as it’s not on the Club site, so had to open the main paper (which I don’t usually look at, as I get my news elsewhere) and go to the puzzles section.
    Not timed – there’s no club timer – but was slowed seriously by the ‘helpful’ features: entered letters were automatically skipped, so that whenever there were crossing words, typing in my solution gave nonsense, so I had to reposition the cursor and correct it. Also the automatic moving on to the next clue meant that the habit of hitting return resulted in going to the second cell. So I had to be sure to always look at the grid while entering solutions on the desktop, which I didn’t need to do for the main puzzle. (I haven’t yet tried to see how well it goes on the tablet.)
    1. I believe you can turn off the default skipping behaviour by tapping/clicking on the little gear icon.
  10. Does anyone know who I should lobby to have this puzzle included in the Irish printed version of The Times? I only buy the paper for the puzzles, and feel short changed in not getting one of the crosswords.
  11. I thought 9a was a bit hard. I take it that the answer is okapi because that animal happens to look around (ie browses) -or am I missing something?
    1. It’s browse in its pre google days of graze as in sheep and other mechanisms for turning grass into methane.
    2. Okapi(s) are notorious for going into shops and not buying anything.

      Also, def 2 of browse in Chambers online is:

      2 said of certain animals, eg deer: to feed by continually nibbling on young buds, shoots, leaves and stems of trees and shrubs, as opposed to grazing.

      1. Brilliant! My defence is that the online free dictionary didn’t have this definition. I really thought that they must be meerkatish in their behaviour
  12. A “stepping stone”? Whoever for? I cut my teeth on the real thing in the Sixth Form Common Room and remember getting the thing half done as a proud achievement to rank with doing the Lyke Wake Walk.

    And if Times high-ups want people actually to do the thing, why put it in the handy throw-away supplement?

    To boot, calling the Shaftesbury Memorial “Eros” is a schoolboy howler. O tempora, o mores! (Oh Times, Oh Daily Mirror!)

    1. Hardly a schoolboy howler. It’s the popular name of the statue. Regardless of what it was originally intended to be

      Aunt Eros

  13. The quick cryptic is an excellent idea and hopefully will introduce more people to the beauty of the cryptic crossword. I thought this puzzle was pretty good- with the exception of 9a – which was rather out of place, and would have seemed hard to me in the regular cryptic.
  14. Hi, I am a novice at cryptic crosswords, and I very much enjoyed doing this old one as the first puzzle in the Times Quick Cryptic book (I would love to know if there is an index of the puzzle numbers for this book?) and reading this excellent blog post to help me to capture some of the nuances.

    There are a couple of clues that I don’t understand, even after reading this post though…

    Specifically, how does ‘ducks’ lead to ‘oo’?

    Also, I am not totally sure I see how an ‘okapi’ is a ‘browser’?

    Thanks! -Paul

    1. oops, I see the okapi thing has already been discussed. Great!

      I am still in the dark about ducks = oo though … 🙁

    2. Hello, Paul,

      Your query about ducks is easily dealt with if you are familiar with cricket terminology. If a batsman has scored nothing he is said to be “out for a duck” so duck = 0 and by extension for cryptic crossword purposes, ducks = 00 (or more 0s if you can think of a word that requires more than two).

      The query about the book is not so easy, partly because I have never seen it, but I think I gathered from a recent comment in the blog that the puzzle numbers are not given, which seems something of an oversight on the part of the publishers. The best I can suggest is you take a look at the comments under this puzzle http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/1604224.html#comments , scrolling down to the Anonymous comment posted by Diana with the heading “At last!”. The replies following on from that may be of help.

      If you have further queries or comments I’d suggest you put them in the Quick Cryptic blog for the current day where more people will see it and will be happy to help you. I only knew about your query today because as the person who initiated this very early blog I get notified by email if anyone adds to it.

      Kinds regards

      jackkt

      Edited at 2016-10-07 12:29 am (UTC)

      1. Ahh! cricket! Thanks very much for that thorough and helpful reply. I am glad that I now have one more weapon in my cryptic arsenal 🙂

        Kind regards, -Paul

        1. You’re welcome. Also for 0 there’s “love” (tennis – never seen 00 for “loves”, but it would work) and also “egg” (reference its shape and in French it’s “l’oeuf” from which the tennis “love” is derived). I think I have seen 00 for “eggs”.

Comments are closed.