Quick Cryptic 1644 by Joker

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Not the easiest, but fairly straightforward after the fact. I took a while to spot 7 & 8 down. 9 ac is interesting. Obvious answer, but very unusual parsing, with the definition being dragged into the word play without it really being an &lit. Not sure I’ve seen that before. I’ll leave you all to debate the rights and wrongs of that as a device…

Across

1 Mischievous about remaining beggar (10)
IMPOVERISH – IMPISH outside OVER
8 Volcanic opening about to swallow tree (7)
CALDERA – CA (about) outside ALDER
9 Spicy rice, alluring eastern cuisine (one wants seconds!) (5)
PILAU – Second letters of sPicy rIce aLluring eAstern cUisine. A write-in but parsing took a long time
10 Mediterranean port area (4)
ACRE – double definition
11 Nearly go running through all four seasons (8)
YEARLONG – anagram (‘running’) of NEARLY GO
13 Type of children’s book heroine mostly following it (6)
ITALIC – IT then ALIC(e)
14 Liven up by means of hot spice (6)
PEPPER – PEP + PER
17 Understood vase is rarely open (8)
TACITURN – TACIT (understood) + URN
19 Mist surrounding river amphibian (4)
FROG – FOG with R inside
21 Rub out because put in before (5)
ERASE – AS inside ERE
22 Marksman getting small owl, perhaps (7)
SHOOTER – S + HOOTER
23 Rather sour tonic tends to go off (10)
DISCONTENT – anagram (‘to go off’) of TONIC TENDS
Down
2 Girl swallowing aluminium for a fever (7)
MALARIA – MARIA with AL inside
3 Start on introducing exercises (4)
OPEN – ON with PE inside
4 English reputation lies initially in painted artwork (6)
ENAMEL – E + NAME + L
5 I’m one who carries for international trader (8)
IMPORTER – I am porter
6 He will ring in greeting (5)
HELLO – HE’LL + O
7 Australian flyer has to shift equipment by air without one (10)
BUDGERIGAR – BUDGE + RIG + AR (‘air’ without i)
8 Carriage driver’s optimism about a public disturbance (10)
CHARIOTEER – CHEER with RIOT inside
12 Sit awkwardly in ceremonial uniform in agony (8)
DISTRESS – anagram (‘awkwardly’) of SIT with DRESS outside.
15 Joke about girl being strictly moral (7)
PURITAN – PUN outside RITA
16 All others in post office can be very quick (6)
PRESTO – REST inside PO
18 Vegetable is cold and tough (5)
CHARD – C + HARD
20 Cover coolants regularly going missing (4)
COAT – alternate letters of CoOlAnT

54 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1644 by Joker”

  1. I was miles off wavelength day, taking more than half an hour to get across the line and only then after turning to all available aids – without Crossword Solver I’d still be looking for BUDGERIGAR (Austrialian, did not know that so the clue would have been easier without that information!). Only two on the first pass of the acrosses – FROG and SHOOTER – and that sinking feeling that not many I’d passed over were in easy reach. Downs started well, MALARIA went straight in by OPEN remained to the end – knew PE was there and that ON was probably literal but still couldn’t get it! Pleased to get TACITURN though – TACITUS came up in yesterday’s Telegraph so a hard clue rendered simple. Nice to see CHARD in there, I had my fingers crossed for a Somerset town nina, but alas. I’ll take today’s lessons and move on!
  2. A tricky one for me today. I was slow over the starting line getting just three clues on my first sweep. Not a good sign! I then struggled my way almost to the end but had to seek assistance for 7d BUDGERIGAR, 11a YEARLONG and 13a ITALIC.

    I was very much the tail walker today, limping over the line at around 40 minutes.

    Edited at 2020-06-26 06:22 am (UTC)

  3. Tough. Way over my normal time but maybe par for the course. Felt like the 15×15 for some of the clues and vocab (CALDERA) having to really put the thinking cap on.

    Flitted around the grid until finally nailed IMPOVERISH which opened everything up

    Like a previous comment I was totally thrown by the Oz reference for the bird which was my last one in. Usually the bit of extra info you get in the QC is helpful but the other way round for me on that one.

    A good challenge though – thanks Joker and Curarist

  4. 15 minutes with a wrong answer at 10 where I simply couldn’t remember the name of a port in the Med to fit A?R? even assuming that was how the clue worked. I won’t say what I bunged in because I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t be bothered to spend any more time on it. Lost a little time earlier with GINGER at 14ac until the checker supplied by 5dn put paid to that idea.
  5. Nothing particularly troublesome, except PILAU, which I started to biff, but wasn’t sure if it was U or F. Biffed CALDERA & BUDGERIGAR, which gave me the U. 5:51.
  6. Once again I found this challenging and took well over my target time. Approrpriately enough I began with HELLO, and would’ve followed with PILAU, but couldn’t see the parsing, so left it out. CALDERA was a write in. BUDGERIGAR took a lot longer than it should have, but putting in PILAU, regardless of parsing(never did see it until coming here), allowed me to get it. IMPOVERISH and MALARIA were my last 2 in, except that MALARIA forced me to change my biffed ADEN to ACRE. 14:43. Ouch! Thanks Joker and Curarist.

    Edited at 2020-06-26 07:39 am (UTC)

    1. Worst performance or non-performance for weeks. Most discouraging. Even used Xword book to no avail.
      Did not get taciturn though thought of tacit. Rarely Open not v fair definition. All SW corner a failure despite solving charioteer early on.
      Did not know the port Acre. Actually put Caldera but cd not parse.
      Re Budgerigar. Lived in Oz for a while and was continually amazed by all the wild birds.
  7. 25:42 – outside 20 min usual. Didn’t get many on the first sweep of the acrosses and downs so thought it could have been worse. Didn’t see how PILAU worked until reading the blog here. Wanted MALADY to fit where MALARIA was meant to go so much that at first I put MALADIE, thinking this was some alternative spelling of both malady and Maddy. Had never heard of an ITALIC as a children’s book before so that slowed me down at the end – shoved it in without really knowing the answer.

    FOI: yearlong
    LOI: italic
    COD: budgerigar

    1. First did not finish in weeks. Thanks curarist for the enlightenment. Nothing otherwise to enjoy mostly a waste of my day!
    2. Hi there – the ‘childrens’ reference is to the heroine Alice – Italic is a type as in a font setting
    3. Italic – Children’s book heroine mostly = ALICE less the E (ALIC) following IT. Italic is a TYPE face.

      Edited at 2020-06-28 11:23 pm (UTC)

  8. Tricky in places but CALDERA and CHARIOTEER (COD) went straight in so I had plenty to work off. My main hold ups were IMPOVERISH, where I was looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definition, ENAMEL and ITALIC (LOI) where I thought the definition was a type of children’s book and eventually resorted to an alphabet trawl before the penny dropped. I couldn’t parse PILAU and could have stared at it for hours without seeing what was going on.
    Considering all of that and some of the other comments I’m pretty pleased to have finished in 11.11.
    Thanks to curarist
  9. Really bad today. NHO CALDERA and only completed about half before giving up and working it out with the blog – for which, many thanks, Curarist.
    Diana
  10. Another amazing time for plett11 -well done.
    I thought this was a very difficult QC and was please to finish all correct in 20:04.
    LOI was ITALIC, one of many tricky clues for this level. Hold-ups included CALDERA which I got from parsing,DNK what it meant;and MALARIA -there are so many girls’ names (and trees). COD to TACITURN, another tricky one.
    As always Joker’s clues were high quality but this was tough.
    David
  11. First did not finish in weeks. Thanks curarist for the enlightenment. Nothing otherwise to enjoy mostly a waste of my day!
  12. I join mendesest in being off-wavelength and finding this a slow solve. Similar time, too. Not really a QC – I think Joker was ‘avin a larf today. I didn’t parse every answer and was grateful for curarist’s blog and his help with PILAU for example. Biffed ACRE – NHO the port. Still not convinced by DISCONTENT even though it was the only anagram I could manage. With hindsight, I see that there are many clever clues (such as TACITURN & CHARIOTEER) but my pleasure during the fight was limited as it just became a hard slog to get to the bell. A dispiriting end to the week. John M.

    Edited at 2020-06-26 09:33 am (UTC)

  13. Limping over the line at just under 23 minutes, this was quite a struggle.
    I biffed CALDERA, PILAU and ACRE so thanks to Curarist for the enlightenment.
    I had a MER at IMPOVERISH which doesn’t seem to tally with ‘beggar’.
    My COD is ITALIC closely followed by BUDGERIGAR (which I always think looks incorrectly spelt).
    Thanks to Joker. I now need the weekend to rest my brain!

    Edited at 2020-06-26 09:47 am (UTC)

  14. 8:09 which is WAY over my target 5 minutes. I can’t remember getting fewer answers on the first pass of the acrosses. I also wasted a lot of time squinting at the letters of DISCONTENT to see if they could be arranged into anything else as the answer seemed to be the wrong part of speech for the definition.

    CALDERA a write in for me thanks to:
    a) remembering it from ‘O’ Level Geography;
    b) having stayed in Santorini in a hotel overlooking the Caldera (famous for its sunsets); and
    c) having bought an album by a band called Caldera at a jumble sale in about 1977 because I liked the cover (see avatar). It turned out to be an Afro/Latin Jazz/Funk/Rock fusion affair which I rather liked.

    Caldera has also come up in the 15×15.

  15. 17 minutes for me, which I thought was a poor performance until I came here. I never parsed PILAU, but knew CALDERA which helped. My LTI were ACRE, TACITURN and ITALIC after CHARIOTEER finally fell (putting an end to my biffed ETCETERA at 17a – I couldn’t think of another word to fit the checkers, and one definition of etcetera is ‘a tacit understanding of the remainder from the context’ or similar). I thought this was a very good, but challenging QC. Thanks for explaining PILAU Curarist, and for the rest of the blog.
  16. Much harder than Joker often is I thought, but as always scrupulously fair and enjoyable. Had heard of CALDERA so that was a write in and my FOI but many others were very chewy. Last ones in, after 37:02, were IMPOVERISH and then ACRE, which I had down up till then as AYR (a port I hoped) with A(rea), but I realised that AYRA was very unlikely to be an alternative name for the Mediterranean that I hadn’t heard of. Joker very rarely puts in things I haven’t heard of, which is one of the reasons he’s my favourite setter. Didn’t get PILAU on my first run through, but biffed it from P_L_U and only realised I hadn’t parsed it when I read Curarist’s comment at the top of here. I then went back and tried to parse it, but couldn’t for the life of me see what was going on. In retrospect though, Joker couldn’t have made it clearer. He’s even put an exclamation mark next to the instruction about what he wants us to do. Hidden in plain sight. Thanks as always to Curarist and Joker.
  17. I think this Joker QC demonstrated to me how important checkers are to my solving ability. I couldn’t work out 1a or 8d on first glance so went through all the across clues followed by the downs and after 6 minutes had just 7 entries in the grid and very few checkers to build on. My FOI was 19a FROG. Very slowly I pieced together each clue (all parsed) with BUDGERIGAR going in at 20 mins. I couldn’t solve 10a ACRE so gave up with a DNF at 25 mins. I’m rating this as very tough for a QC but I still enjoyed it. Thanks Joker and curarist.
  18. Tough – 61mins with two unparsed pilau and erase. Thankfully blog explained. Pleased to complete this without aids.
  19. Found this one difficult. Needed help for Caldera and Charioteer so the left hand side was difficult so 33 minutes. Never mind , onwards and upwards. Learnt some new things. Thanks Joker and thanks for the explanations.
  20. Started with 19ac, Frog, so I guessed this was going to be ‘tricky’. After 30mins I pulled stumps with only about half the clues answered (not including 1ac or 8d) and consoled myself with the thought that this was the hardest QC for quite some time. Decided to revisit a bit later and managed to get 1ac, which helped with the top half of the grid, and eventually prompted Charioteer. Gave up again with two or three missing in the SW. However, I’m nothing if not stubborn and so came back for a third go and finally managed the Italic/Distress pairing. No idea of total time, but it can’t have been far short of an hour. CoD, for what it’s worth, to 9ac, Pilau, which I did manage to parse, but a GR for the puzzle as a whole. Invariant
  21. Knew my good run would come to an end at some point and today was it. DNF – after 2 sittings and over an hour in time.

    Just couldn’t get 7dn “Budgerigar”, although on reflection I think this one has scuppered me before. Also didn’t get 10ac “Acre” which should have been more obvious.

    Other tricky ones included 13ac “Italic” – originally thought the heroine might be “Emma” for some reason – but that was only because I was struggling with 2dn “Malaria” (the clue that is – not that I have the disease).

    FOI – 9ac “Pilau” (which I never parsed)
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 13ac Italic”

    Thanks as usual.

  22. Took me 2 sessions to finish this. DNK CALDERA or CHARD. Never parsed PILAU. All in all quite an effort.
    Thank you for the challenge. Worth it in the end.
    PlayUpPompey
  23. Not that I learned the word at the time, but my first sight of Crater Lake, at the age of 5, has remained in memory since.
  24. I seem to be out of kilter with most of you – I was reasonably happy with my time and I enjoyed the ride. I was on track for my 12 minute par but spent nearly a minute on 10a – like crispb I questioned my new nickname for the Med until the right port (so to speak) fell into place!

    I didn’t mind the cluing for PILAU – I think I’ve seen it before (maybe in the biggie). In fact, I thought it was quite witty, as you’d expect from Joker. Also went for GINGER at 14d initially. I liked PRESTO too, as my son works in the distribution dept of a company with that name, so the clue was particularly apt 😊

    FOI Pilau
    LOI Acre
    COD Pepper
    Time just under 13 minutes

    Many thanks Joker for the entertaining puzzle and curarist for the clear explanations

  25. Wasn’t this a toughie. Genuinely thought we might not finish – but we did in 34 minutes. The thing is – our QC’s wouldn’t be fun if we rattled every single one off in a couple of minutes without any challenge at all. So, although it’s great to have a very quick time, it’s even better to overcome an apparently insurmountable obstacle. So thanks for the birthday present Joker – we have the satisfaction of solving your puzzle!

    FOI: pilau
    LOI: budgerigar
    COD: taciturn

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog

    Enjoy the weekend all – see you next week 😀

  26. ….”we want seconds”, and it’s unusual for FOI to also be COD.

    CALDERA took time to emerge from hiding deep in my grey matter. Almost missed my target after taking time to break the anagrist of my LOI.

    FOI/COD PILAU
    LOI DISCONTENT
    TIME 0.83K

  27. Needed aids to find Budgerigar and took a long time to parse Pilau. Very tricky today imo.

    FOI 10ac Acre
    LOI 7dn budgerigar
    COD 18dn chard

  28. DNF even with aids. Stumped by left side as could not get 8d and only had CALDERA and ERASE of the crossers. Really difficult puzzle made more so as I was trying to watch the Battle of the Brits at the same time.
  29. DNF, couldn’t get ACRE. I am really rubbish at geography clues. 9 minutes for the rest of it. COD PILAU.

    Thanks Joker and curarist.

    Templar

  30. Lost on ACRE. Appreciated the challenge, but if I’m going to be dredging up difficult vocabulary and doing alphabet trawls to find the names of random ports, I’d rather it be in a 15×15 puzzle. Shrug.
    1. I agree entirely. In fact anyone who completed this should have no fears about tackling 15x15s on most Mondays.
  31. … with a wait until 19A before I could fill one in. A bit disheartening to look at a completely blank top half of the grid! But thereafter the clues proved more malleable and in the end a 15 minute finish, slower than I tend to hope is my average.

    But far from all parsed – the main two culprits being a brain fade on 1A Impoverish as I didn’t see remaining = over (presumably as in “left over”?), and the construction of 9A Pilau, a type of clue construction that was wholly new to me. Very clever, and one to store away.

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog and a good weekend to all
    Cedric

  32. First one I didn’t finish in many a week, couldn’t see/get/ know the port of acre and didn’t see budgerigar but having failed on the port didn’t bother to fight further with the bird.
    I would suggest the port is rather obscure but no doubt everyone else has heard of it, disappointing clue for a QC as far as I’m concerned
    Notreve
  33. Did not get Caldera, Acre, Charioteer or Enamel (lost it by then). Probably an hour for that DNF but good experience. Pilau took a little while to see why but I thought it neat.. pleased to get Taciturn and Impoverish among others.
    Many thanks all
    John George
  34. Very hard, but finally (almost) got there but had to get help for BUDGERIGAR and guessed ACRE – still don’t know why it’s right!
  35. Another late post for a solve carried over to breakfast. Needed aids tho. Surprised others struggled with 10a Acre as I’m sure We’ve seen it more than once. Had to write out both 8d and 7d to see the delightful answers. Needed Curarist to understand some of the parsing. Dredged up 8a caldera from archived memories of Kim Stanley Robinson Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy! Always find Joker elegant, fair and a real challenge.

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