Quick Cryptic 16 by Flamande – Screamadelica

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
As at time of writing, it appears as though the Quick Cryptic link from the Times site is incorrect – the puzzle is actually at: http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20140331/117/, though the setter’s name is missing when accessing it this way. Ah – the link seems to be correct now, but I still can’t see the setter’s name. Thanks jackkt.

I thought this puzzle was another excellent addition to the QC stable, with clear wordplay and no obscurities. COD to DREADFULLY, as there’s something pleasing to me about answers that can be broken down like that.

Including the clues in the blog post didn’t quite meet with unequivocal approval last time, so this time around the clues will only be available by hovering your mouse over the clue number. Comments about the presentation, parsings, and Primal Scream are all welcome.

Across
1 AIRWOMAN – Definition: pilot. Anagram (flying) of IN A WAR around OM (centre of ColOMbia). If you spend much time in Crosswordland, you may end up assuming that genderless nouns such as pilot always refer to males – at your peril.
5 SPAM – Definition: unwelcome emails. First letters (initially) of Some People Accept Many.
8 CLAPTRAP – Definition: rubbish. The wordplay indicates that the component parts of CLAPTRAP, i.e. CLAP and TRAP, rhyme.
9 ETON – Definition: College. SET ON (determined to), minus its initial letter (dismissing head).
11 RED HERRING – Definition: distraction. HER (Girl’s) inside (wearing) RED (ruby) and RING (wedding band).
14 ABROAD – Definition:in a different country. A + BROAD (American word for woman).
15 CARTON – Definition: box. CON (Against) around (keeping) ART (paintings), where CON with this meaning is perhaps most commonly seen in the phrase pros and cons.
17 DREADFULLY – Definition: Terribly. Last letter of involveD (involved ultimately) + READ FULLY (absorb from cover to cover).
20 TA-TA – Definition: ‘Goodbye’. TA (Territorial Army) twice (repeated). TA is one of many military abbreviations commonly encountered in crosswords, whose comrades-in-arms also include RM (Royal Marines), OR (Other Ranks), RE (Royal Engineers), REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), RA (Royal Artillery), RN (Royal Navy), RAF (Royal Air Force), and others.
21 SACK RACE – Definition: sports day event. SACK (Discharge) + RACE (people).
22 SLAM – Definition: hit. Hidden reversed in PriMAL Scream. For anyone who hasn’t listened to pop music in recent decades, Primal Scream are an indie rock band best known for tracks like “Loaded” and “Movin’ on up”. YouTube them at your own risk.
23 CASSETTE – Definition: Tape. SET (collection) + last letter (finally) of puT inside CASE (holder).

Down
1 ARCH – Double definition: “Very clever” and “structure”. I tend to think of arch as having mischievous connotations rather than necessarily clever ones, but Chambers has both cunning and shrewd among its definitions.
2 ROAD – Definition: Way. Homophone (speaker’s) of rode (travelled).
3 ON THE CARDS – Definition: Likely. The rest of the clue is a cryptic definition referring to a pack of cards. I suppose there is an argument to be made that the entire clue is a cryptic definition, also.
4 APACHE – Definition: brave (in the sense of a Native American warrior). PA (old man) surrounded (Beset) by ACHE (pain).
6 PATRIOTS – Definition: country lovers. PAT’S (Paddy’s, with both Paddy and Pat being short forms of Patrick) around (welcoming) TRIO (group of three).
7 MANAGING – Definition: able to cope. MAN (Fellow) + AGING (getting old).
10 GREAT LAKES – Definition: expanses of water. Anagram (Unusually) of LARGE SKATE. The Great Lakes lie on/near the Canada-US border and include Erie, perhaps the most famous lake in Crosswordland.
12 MANDATES – Definition: Instructions. MAN (staff, as a verb) + DATES (nights out).
13 GREEN TEA – Definition: Drink. Anagram (sozzled) of TEENAGER.
16 GUYANA – Definition: Country. GUY (man) + AN + beginning (leader) of Australian. Guyana is the only South American nation where English is the official language.
18 PACT – Definition: Agreement. P (power) + ACT (to do something).
19 HERE – Definition: in this place. HE (His Excellency) around (receives) ER (the Queen, Elizabeth Regina). His/Her Excellency is the mode of address for an ambassador, so seeing “ambassador” in a clue should make you think of HE.

27 comments on “Quick Cryptic 16 by Flamande – Screamadelica”

  1. Yes, a very nice puzzle that delayed me 14 minutes including parsing time. 12dn and 14ac added a couple of minutes between them. For a while I was convinced that 12dn was something to do with music and possibly an anagram of ‘on nights’.

    Your blog looks fine, m. I thought there seemed to be quite a lot of support for including clues and I am planning to put them in myself next Monday now that I’ve found a means of doing so without typing them all out. I’m intrigued how you managed to hide them. Could you supply a sample line of coding please?

    Edited at 2014-03-31 12:47 am (UTC)

    1. Jack,
      Copied this from the page source:

      [td valign=”top”][span title=”Pilot flying in a war round centre of Colombia (8)”]1[/span][/td]

      Replace square brackets with angle brackets.

      Edited at 2014-03-31 04:10 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks, mct. I’m planning to run with the version I’ve already written to get feedback on it next Monday, but I’ll play with this as a possible alternative for another time.
        1. As I remember, Andy (linxit) also tried this way of showing the clue for one of his Saturday blogs. Maybe ask him too?
    2. For the hovering, I can send you the template that Andy sent me, if you can message me your email address. Equally, the code copied by mctext can be put in each row of the blog table.

      May I ask how you are going to get the clues? I was going to write a script to parse them out of the Times’ site’s HTML but you may have done my work for me 🙂

    3. M’s is a brilliant a way of including the clues for those who want to see them. Can this be made standard practice for all the crossword blogs?
  2. I had fun with this one and no real holdups. I think that getting used to keeping an open mind is helping me most, for example “terribly” at 17ac would have had me searching for anagram fodder for ages a couple of weeks ago.

    Thanks for the blog – the hovering clue thing is excellent. I will try it out too if I may. Does anybody read the Guardian’s Crossword Blog? Alan Connor has his own conventions using colours/italics/underlining to annotate the clue directly. If we could make an explanation and key easy to find, could this be another helpful addition?

    1. There’s already a set of conventions used by some of the bloggers here as well as on the other two main crossword blogs Fifteensquared and Big Dave, which I think would be preferable to Alan Connor’s (simply because I think he’s the only person who uses his convention!) However one reason I’m trying not to use any convention at all on these Quick Cryptic blogs is that I feel they add another layer of mystique to the solving process, which may be off-putting to newer solvers. Having said that, there are no hard and fast rules regarding blog formats, so feel free to try out your ideas – commenters will soon let you know their opinions.

      Edited at 2014-03-31 07:51 am (UTC)

      1. Very good points. I’m very much for keeping things as simple as possible and easy on the eye. I find most of the “Big Dave” blogs unreadable for all the extraneous details and pointless illustrations.

        Edited at 2014-03-31 08:28 am (UTC)

  3. 4 mins with DREADFULLY my LOI. This was a welcome change of pace after today’s main puzzle.
  4. Found this one trickiest Quickie yet to finish. May have been a particularly long day down the pit, or just a wave length thing. Going fine until I hit the north west corner, then brick wall time…

    AIRWOMAN held me up as I fell into the gender trap and was looking for a war – Crimean, for instance, around OM.

    ROAD I was just slow to cotton on. CLAPTRAP was a neat clue, but I stared at it for a good ten minutes before the penny dropped. Then ARCH was a shoe in, but not until I had the C from CLAPTRAP.

    Very elegant and economical blog mohn2 – thanks for that. Liked the hovering clue thing. Will see if I can get the hang of that technique for my alternate Wednesdays.

  5. 7m. I couldn’t see ABROAD for ages, for some reason.
    I like the presentation, m. Primal Scream I can take or leave.
    1. I’m not a fan, but the fact that I can hum perhaps 3 of their songs means they are considerably better known to me than most of the music-related bods who tend to turn up in the Times crossword(s).
      1. They’ve had some good tunes – notably Country Girl – and are definitely more familiar to me than the usual classical references.

        I expect to see Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers, etc make appearances from now on…

  6. I really liked today’s puzzle.

    Nice blog mohn2. I like the way you elaborated on other possibilities 20a. Very helpful for us newcomers.

    I though ARCH was weak even if it is an obscure usage to be found in a dictionary. My favourite CLAPTRAP.

    1. Other abbreviations/conventions to look out for include TAR(S) and AB (Able Bodied) for sailor(s), and initial and final (initial and final relative to the wordplay under consideration) S’s for a phrase such as ‘on board’ (where ‘on board’ is shorthand for ‘in the ship’, that is, a bit of wordplay inside SS [abbreviation for ‘Steam Ship’]). A recent example is CHEAPSKATES, clued by ‘Vulgar girl on board points to penny-pinchers’.

      Edited at 2014-03-31 10:55 am (UTC)

  7. I rather liked DREADFULLY as well – did this in short breaks at work and was also nearly tripped up by the (surely I’ve seen it before) ABROAD
  8. DNF today – my first failure on QC – as I had PASS at 18d and could think of no alternative so stuck on 23a. Enjoyed the blog but never heard of Primal Scream though it did make me think of Munch!
  9. As a newcomer to the “proper” crossword, I am hugely enjoying these quicker cryptics -#16 took me a good few hours (in between doing the things i actually have to do) but i compeleted it (hurray!) – they seem to me to be ‘challenging but do-able’ – a great way into the cryptic world!
  10. Excellent blog and explanations, mohn2. Thank you. I got stuck in one corner because I thought of flue/flew instead of road/rode so I thought I was on the wrong track in looking for an anagram of in a war and om.

    Making the clues available via a simple hover of the mouse is a super idea. Thanks for that too.

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