Quick Cryptic 1594 by Rongo

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Straightforward I think, but I have a thumping headache. 9 minutes for me.

Across

1 Thread or line attached to card (4)
LACE – L + ACE
3 Meatiest stews producing round figure? (8)
ESTIMATE – anagram (‘stews’) of MEATIEST
9 More than a billion people found in machine search (7)
CHINESE – hidden word: maCHINE SEarch
10 Flower I call “exotic” (5)
LILAC –  anagram (‘exotic’) of I CALL
11 Arrest old boy, one in powerful position (5)
NABOB – NAB + OB. A Nabob being a governor in the Moghul empire
12 Despot’s extremely timely tirade (6)
TYRANT – TY (extremes of ‘timely’) + RANT
14 Mistaking one end of mastoid for the other, accept responsibility for flat bone (8,5)
SHOULDER BLADE – SHOULDER BLAME with the M changed for a D
17 Wicket struck, gutted eleven go pale (6)
WHITEN – W + HIT + EN (‘eleven’ with the guts removed)
19 Maybe a potato bin, I’m not sure (5)
TUBER – TUB + ER
22 Light wood, a thick piece turned over (5)
BALSA – A SLAB backwards
23 Seeing first couple last, admire ghost (7)
SPECTRE – RESPECT with the first two letters moved to the end
24 Asian country had Latin converts (8)
THAILAND –  anagram (‘converts’) of HAD LATIN
25 Mock professional clown dropping stone (4)
JEER – JESTER with ST removed

Down
1 See board game about new monster’s home (4,4)
LOCH NESS – LO + CHESS with N inside
2 Conservative member to reach a higher position (5)
CLIMB – C + LIMB
4 Place a foot, part of it, on sand, agitating series of scrap dealers (7,3,3)
STEPTOE AND SON – STEP + TOE +  anagram (‘agitating’) of ON SAND. Classic 70’s TV comedy.
5 Layabout almost direly wasted (5)
IDLER –  anagram (‘wasted’) of DIREL (being almost DIRELY)
6 Georgian city in the place of Los Angeles welcomes worker, say (7)
ATLANTA – AT + LA with ANT inside
7 Treat with acid and the rest before hospital (4)
ETCH – ETC + H
8 Some of whatever Balzac’s expressed in words (6)
VERBAL – Hidden word: whateVER BALzac
13 I agree the woman has caught a flightless bird (4,4)
HEAR HEAR – HER with A RHEA inside
15 Hope abandoned with trouble over tragic role (7)
OPHELIA –  anagram (‘abandoned’) of HOPE with AIL backwards on the end. Hamlet love interest who goes nuts and drowns herself
16 Head striker’s spread (6)
BUTTER – double definition
18 Large skin blemish shows up in thorough search (5)
TRAWL –  L WART backwards
20 Swim and play cricket with the man (5)
BATHE – BAT + HE
21 Are accessories to answer wager? (4)
ABET – A + BET

44 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1594 by Rongo”

  1. FOI LACE, LOI JEER but didn’t go in smoothly from top to bottom. Took me a long time to see the long ones, 11a and 4d. c36 mins.
  2. I wondered about 1ac: is LACE a thread? It’s made from cotton or silk thread, but. 6:20.
    1. Verb? To thread something can be to lace it up? ‘I threaded my laces’!
      1. I don’t see that as working. I can’t think of a case where thread/lace would be interchangeable as verbs.
        1. Collins gives thread as a synonym of lace as a verb in the sense of to fasten. Sorry for delayed response!
  3. A puzzle of two halves for me with the top proving relatively straightforward but the bottom, particularly the SE, putting up more resistance. I took far too long finding the Asian country, whilst the parsing of SPECTRE, HEAR HEAR and TUBER also took some time to work out.
    Finished in 13.02 with LOI JEER.
    Thanks to curarist and I hope your headache improves.
  4. 24 minutes, about average, but I thought it was going to be longer as the clues seemed obscure and my FOI was 13A HEAR HEAR. For once the checkers proved helpful, although I didn’t parse the bone or my LOI SPECTRE.
    Thanks to Rongo for a challenging puzzle, and to curarist for sorting out the wordplay.
    Brian
  5. 8 minutes but (rarely for me) with one clue (14ac) not parsed in that time. I gave up trying to explain it overnight but spotted it immediately on returning to it this morning.
  6. I tackled this before going to bed well after midnight, which was a mistake, as I saw what was required at 14a but plumped for the wrong substitution. Found this fairly tough, but I may have just been half asleep. 11:23 WOE. Thanks Rongo and Curarist.
  7. Off the wavelength by a few MHz on this. LOI JEER took a while, but so did SHOULDER BLADE which I never managed to parse worrying what a mastoid is (not that we needed to know). COD to HEAR HEAR… about which I’ll say nothing more! 7:39
  8. I had (welcome) phone interruptions but this QC threw me. I couldn’t seem to maintain any momentum. Some answers such as OPHELIA went straight in but many simple clues gave trouble (BUTTER for one) – I did enjoy lots of doh moments when I got into my shambling stride. I was glad of curarist’s blog to confirm some of my uncertain parsing (e.g. SPECTRE). I liked HEAR HEAR and LOCH NESS and my uncertain LOI was JEER. A chewy end to the week and another day with a time 10 mins over target. John M.

    Edited at 2020-04-17 09:09 am (UTC)

  9. I never parsed SHOULDER BLADE so thanks for the explanation! Slowed myself down by pencilling in SAME HERE at 13dn (there’s a RHEA in there somewhere … and a SHE even if that uses the H twice … OK it wasn’t a great idea) and since I’d started with the downs today it wasn’t till I got JEER that I realised it was wrong. End result was a smidge over ten for 1.6K (normal service has been resumed) and a Good Day. I confidently predict howls of outrage from my sons about STEPTOE AND SON (“so old!”), NABOB (“when did anyone last say that?”) and SPECTRE (which I thought was pretty stiff for a QC).

    FOI CLIMB, LOI BUTTER (did anyone else try to make an anagram of “striker” before realising it was 7 letters?), COD LOCH NESS.

    Fun puzzle, thanks Rongo and curarist (good luck with the headache).

    Templar

  10. Last of all greens on the early leaderboard at a little over 15m but reading comments it seems perhaps I did OK afterall although I was nowhere near understanding what was gong on with SPECTRE. BUTTER and TRAWL took a while too.
  11. 18 minutes for me and a bit of a slog. I too dithered over which substitution to make in 14a, but was helped by the convention is that the definition is either at the start or end of the clue. HEAR HEAR and OPHELIA took far too long to come to mind. Thanks both!
    1. Kevin corrected me when I mentioned this some time ago, saying this is not a convention but simply the way it normally works out. Given that, I think this is highly ambiguous (although I plumped for the “correct” way).
      What I still think is a convention is no anagrams of words that aren’t in the clue, and that’s what 23a looks like to me! Personally didn’t like this QC, filed under “setter too clever for his own good”
      1. You’re right about anagrams, but 23ac isn’t an anagram! And ‘shoulder blame’ isn’t an expression or lexical item, so couldn’t be the solution.
    2. See moi below. [ON EDIT: Well, above. This was supposed to be a reply to The Rotter.] There is no convention or rule about where the definition is placed.

      Edited at 2020-04-17 01:50 pm (UTC)

  12. I didn’t find this straight forward. I think when the clues are quite wordy my ability to solve them diminishes….both SHOULDER BLADE and STEPTOE AND SON required a few checkers and I parsed the former after submitting. I also had a mixed result spotting the hiddens. I saw VERBAL straight away but missed CHINESE on first pass. My FOI was LILAC and my LOI JEER. I enjoyed the construction of quite a few clues e.g ESTIMATE, LOCH NESS and HEAR HEAR. 1.8K for an OK day.
  13. About 20 mins, I got stuck on love nest/loch ness and chinese so left it to start making blind scouse (wife is veggie). Saw them immediately on return.

    Cod butter.

  14. Many of these were more suitable for a 15 x 15. I don’t think this was a quickie but maybe i just had an off day.
  16. Managed to come in just under target at 4:53, despite not seeing CHINESE straight away and wondering why LOVE NEST was the answer to 1d. What sort of monster would live there?

    I also missed ESTIMATE on first pass as I wasn’t expecting such a crafty definition in a QC – good training for beginners though.

    1. I entered Dastardly Denise’s love nest in 2010. She turned into monster in 2012….
  17. ….by parsing my LOI, so hopefully my best wishes will help to banish his.

    No other problems, and a respectable 0.67K.

    FOI LACE
    LOI SHOULDER BLADE
    COD TRAWL

  18. A lockdown special from Rongo which took me 20 minutes to unravel. FOI was IDLER and was looking for a way in. Are we in for lots of partial anagrams I wonder?
    Was pleased to get Steptoe, without that may have been a DNF.
    Problems were SHOULDER BLADE where PLATE occurred to me first. Never did parse it. Tried to fit BATH in as Georgian city.
    LOI was BUTTER caused by the Plate.
    Tough stuff from Rongo. COD to ATLANTA or OPHELIA. David
  19. Rongo certainly came up with an interesting puzzle with quite a bit to chew over, especially towards the end down in the SE corner. With 14ac, I could see the clue hinted at an m/d reversal, but needed a few checkers before Shoulder Blade became obvious. However the one that caused me most difficulty was 23ac Spectre. In the end I gave up trying to parse the answer, crossing the line just short of 27mins. Invariant
  20. What a lovely puzzle! I thoroughly enjoyed it and finished in just under half an hour. Thank you Rongo! Lots of chewy clues that I didn’t think I would be able to solve then the penny dropped. I had put in NOBLE for 11a but that was sorted out by VERBAL and I put in SPECTRE speculatively without being able to parse it. As others have said, the SE corner was the last to fall.
    FOI lilac
    LOI butter
    COD several I could choose but I’ll go for whiten – lovely cricketing surface!
    Thank you Curarist for demystifying the harder clues.
    Blue Stocking
  21. I thought of it as in ‘shoe lace’. That could just about be considered as a piece of thread…
    1. Kevin your laces are undone!

      Synonyms of to thread – verb

      to interlace, to intersperse, to interweave, to lace, to salt, to weave, to wreathe

      Her tales are threaded with such inaccuracies.

      Trump’s excuses were laced with lies.

      to intermingle – highly frowned upon these days.

      Edited at 2020-04-17 03:31 pm (UTC)

  22. Aargh, failed on BUTTER. So obvious in retrospect. Bit of a struggle. Have any young heard of Steptoe, which I got immediately?
    But thanks all round, as ever.
  23. Started off at pace then slowed down a bit in the NE and SW quadrants when we had to work a bit harder to solve the clues. Great fun and a nicely satisfying end to the week.

    FOI: lace
    LOI: trawl
    COD: hear, hear

    Thanks Rongo and Curarist

  24. Hear hear to others’ comments – I found this a bit heavy going and not as whimsical as some we’ve had recently, although I did like 1d.

    Although I got in under my par 12, I do think that being stuck at home full time is having quite a negative effect on my brain! I’ve been struggling all week to think clearly – is anyone else finding this?

    We saw something very similar to 23a quite recently, presumably either in a jumbo or a 15×15 if no-one remembers it here. I recognised it straightaway which was very helpful. Despite that, I got a bit stuck in the SE corner, having got TATER stuck in my brain which slowed down BATHE.

    I gave up trying to parse SHOULDER BLADE, although I had some idea of what was going on.

    FOI Lace
    LOI Bathe
    COD Loch Ness
    Time 10:20

    Thanks Rongo and hope your headache gets better quickly, Curarist

  25. but 9:37 seems to have been a reasonable time.

    My personal battle with hidden words continues, with CHINESE being POI. Then BUTTER was LOI.

    I saw the parsing of SHOULDER BLADE, and liked that clue a lot.

    Had a go at the guardian puzzle this morning on a dull conference call. Weird, same but different.

    Edited at 2020-04-17 12:55 pm (UTC)

  26. 15:25 – a record for me (at least since I started timing this week!).

    I was surprised to see that one of the answers appears in the other cryptic today, with entirely different cluing. Not sure if it’s bad form to say which, in case folks are reading this before tackling the other.

    My classics weren’t enough to give me the tragic role, but had enough letters to guess at OPHELIA.

    Briefly went with batter rather than butter (as in batsman, even though batter isn’t a spread – although you could spread it).

      1. Sorry – it’s not here but on the 15×15 thread. Mea culpa !

        Edited at 2020-04-17 10:14 pm (UTC)

        1. Thanks, good to know. I found the other thread after and breathed a sigh of relief!
  27. … due to putting Shoulder blame in for 14A. My mistake for not knowing the convention that the definition is usually at one or other end of the clue, and that one has also now been added to the rapidly growing list of Things One Needs To Know.

    But I do also feel that (a) the cluing gives absolutely no hint at all as to whether one is substituting D for M or M for D, and (b) with the greatest of deference to Kevin, who is much more experienced than me, if ‘Shoulder blame’ isn’t an expression or lexical item, so can’t be the solution, how come it can be part of the derivation of the solution? One should not have to go through phrases that don’t exist to get to phrases that do.

    But that apart, not a bad puzzle, and thank you to Curarist for the blog. A safe weekend to all.

    Cedric

    Edited at 2020-04-17 02:07 pm (UTC)

    1. I agree there was the possibility of confusion at 14ac and I only put the answer in with assurance because of the ‘definition at beginning or end of a clue convention’.
  28. Personally I found this hard going and didn’t get anywhere for the first 5 to 10 minutes – the NW corner just stumped me at the start. In the end it took around an hour on and off which is well above my average.

    Particular chewy clues included 1ac “Lace” – I also didn’t think it was a thread, 20dn “Bathe” (I know it seems obvious, but I don’t associate bathing with swimming) and 25ac in which I erroneously biffed “Jest”.

    Whilst I enjoyed 4dn – it probably confirms to the younger generation that crosswords can be somewhat old fashioned.

    FOI – 12ac “Tyrant”
    LOI – 13dn “Hear Hear”
    COD – 1dn “Loch Ness”

    Thanks as usual.

  29. FOI 1ac LACE – see my note to Kevin above.

    LOI 23ac SPECTRE – an ‘IKEAN anagram’ not a KEVIN anagram.

    COD 9ac CHINESE

    WOD 11ac NABOB

    Time 2.5 kelvins

    Edited at 2020-04-17 03:29 pm (UTC)

  31. Am I the only person to have heard (several times) the phrase “shoulder the blame”?

Comments are closed.