Quick Cryptic 1714 by Juno

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Well, this is a bit of a multi-definition fest, including two rather neat triples. Not too hard I’d say, 8 min for me. COD 8dn

Across
1 Rent holiday place on the Adriatic (5)
SPLIT – double definition
4 Hang around some cathedral in Germany (6)
LINGER – hidden word: cathedraL IN GERmany
9 European trapped in loo: self-esteem to drop! (5,2)
LEAVE GO – Loo is LAV, insert E for european, add EGO
10 See director general close to some gatekeeper’s house (5)
LODGE – LO (see) + DG (director general) + E (last letter of ‘some’)
11 Organise race series (3)
RUN – triple definition
12 Unusual to have year in exotic capital (8)
ATYPICAL – Y inside anagram (‘exotic’) of CAPITAL
15 Daytime Brexit broadcast making use of both Left and Right? (13)
AMBIDEXTERITY – anagram (‘broadcast’) of DAYTIME BREXIT. Remember when everyone talked about nothing but Brexit? Happy days.
17 One using ruler from Middle East, a certain king (8)
MEASURER –  ME (middle east) + A + SURE + R (edited – thanks to Cedric below)
18 Pickle — or something sweeter (3)
JAM – double definition
20 No longer like to fall asleep, as alarm may? (2,3)
GO OFF – triple definition
22 Stick flexible as putty (4,3)
STAY PUT – anagram (‘flexible’) of AS PUTTY
23 Something sandy or maroon? (6)
DESERT – double definition
24 Like pitch Jack’s seen near railway (5)
TARRY – (Jack) TAR + RY
Down
1 Ancient trade route composed of dark soil (4,4)
SILK ROAD – anagram (‘composed’) of DARK SOIL
2 Hear about tragic king meeting knight (5)
LEARN – LEAR + N (knight in chess notation)
3 Rival groups, leaderless, demand to enter thus (4,3,2)
THEM AND US –  (d)EMAND inside THUS. In the 15 x 15 this sort of clue would be constructed with synonyms rather than the words from the clue.
5 Trouble the setter is going to! (3)
ILL – double definition (I’ll). ‘Setter’ usually denotes the first person singular. It sometimes means dog, or the sun (which sets).
6 Old African colonel initially grinning as dull dignitaries all file in (7)
GADDAFI – initial letters Grinning As Dull Dignitaries All File In
7 Rock in river covering snakelike fish (4)
REEL – R + EEL
8 Post Office New York state’s used for letter delivery system once (4,7)
PONY EXPRESS – PO + NY + EXPRESS (state)
13 Some wine Brian takes getting him drunk? (9)
INEBRIANT – hidden word: wINE BRIAN Takes
14 Harmony of form, a sort of m-mystery! (8)
SYMMETRY –  anagram (‘a sort of’) of  M-MYSTERY
16 British school’s for French people (7)
BRETONS – BR + ETON’S
18 Comedian’s “yes” to German upset salesperson (5)
JAPER – JA + REP backwards
19 Ancient silver beads oddly missing (4)
AGED – AG (silver) + ED (alternate letters of BEADS)
21 Airmen coming north a long way (3)
FAR – RAF backwards

50 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1714 by Juno”

  1. Amazing how absorbing crosswords can be. I accidentally solved this on the puzzles page and not the Crossword Club so then reentered at CC. Actually writing in the answers took two minutes – during the wait for 13.59 to come round again I read the paper and made both coffee and porridge and still had a full minite to wiat to press submit – it usually passes in a flash. AMBIDEXTERITY took the longest, I wanted it to end OUS so wondered if daytime was AM then with an anagram of Brexitand something else. Not being very certain of the spelling didn’t help. Left with SPLIT at the end – I onlyknow ot from a Winter Olympics and never thought of it as a holiday destination, plus ‘let’ looked like it might be in there for ‘rent’. Pleasant end to the crosswording week.

    Edited at 2020-10-02 07:22 am (UTC)

    1. It always bugs me when in the CC you constantly see solve time in just over two minutes. Who are they trying to fool. I tried it once, just writing in the answers and it took over 2 minutes too. How can you read the clue, solve it correctly and write it in, in that time?

      Edited at 2020-10-04 08:29 pm (UTC)

  2. I found this tricky in places but didn’t help myself by biffing LEAVE IT for 9a – I’ve seen LEAVE GO before but it just looks wrong for some reason. My other struggle was with the hidden at 13d – a real doh! moment when I realised what was going on and ATYPICAL, where I convinced myself that I was looking for an obscure Asian or African capital city. Those were my last 2 in and accounted for the final 3 minutes of my 14.37 solve.
    There seem to be lots of directions of where one should be or what one should be doing; LEAVE GO, LINGER, TARRY, GO OFF, STAY PUT, RUN – is something going on or am I reading too much into it?
    Thanks to curarist

    Edited at 2020-10-02 07:29 am (UTC)

    1. I’m sorry – I missed your comment. I saw Split, linger, leave, go, go off, stay put – so adding your additional tarry and run – the more I look, the more I see – desert – possibly pony express. Is there anything literary about the Silk Road that might explain?
      1. I wondered if this was linked to 15ac, which is at the heart of the puzzle … is our setter saying something about the Brexit process? Unusual to see the B word in the puzzle!

        [On edit – I think Rotter has nailed this below]

        Edited at 2020-10-02 09:53 am (UTC)

  3. Solving at speed I started to write AMBIDEXTROUS at 15ac but was stopped in my tracks when I got to the T and realised I was going to run out of letters. Of course I realised it was an anagram but I needed another checker in place to bring the noun to mind. I also struggled a bit with ATYPICAL.

    In the end I was relieved to finish within my 10-minute target, but with only a 1ac second to spare.

  4. … which gives me the privilege of being the first to beg to differ from our blogger, as I did not find this “not too hard”; indeed at 21 minutes it was my slowest complete solve for some time.

    I’m not entirely sure why, as once solved, all the clues seem fair. Some though are certainly unfamiliar words: I don’t think I’ve ever seen, far less used, the word inebriant (nor I see has my smartphone spellchecker!), and at 9D, Leave go sounds slightly forced – the more natural phrases to me are Let go and Leave off.

    I’m pleased to see I was not the only one to start writing in Ambidextrous at 15A – if even Jack is momentarily misled I feel less foolish. And 3D Them and us took me a long time; the comma between leaderless and demand in the clue completely threw me and I was looking for words for groups that I could take the first letter off. Well, with “and” in the middle (a truncated “band”, I convinced myself), it looked plausible …

    Curarist, I think your explanation of 17A might perhaps mention the A (from a certain king)?

    But all round, I found this a tough one. Many thanks to Curarist for the blog, and a good weekend to all.

    Cedric

  5. An unsatisfactory week ended with the third DNF. I retired with the last letter of 9A empty. I could not decide between “Leave to”, or “Leave do”. Leave Go just seems odd, when ‘let go’ is much more common.

    I was barking up the wrong tree for 12A (ATYPICAL) also left unsolved. Was searching down obscure capital cities, before the clock clicked down to 30 mins (my cut-off for a DNF)

    Like others I did not get the suffix of AMBIDEXTERITY until a checker appeared at the end. If I had used a pen and paper I could have got there, I suppose. I’m fed up with Brexit, so I’m glad to see the damned word has some utility as the source of new Anagrams.

    After yesterdays AT LARGE we had 11a: RUN, another Triple Definition.

    18A (JAPER) felt like a contrived word. I just checked the OED, first usage 1362 in Piers Plowman, can’t get an older pedigree than that.

  6. Like Cedric, I found fhis tough despite a very quick start with my tail up for a quick finish. 21 mins also. LINGER, ILL, and LODGE took a while. I needed to write down the anagrist for 15a when I realised that the obvious word didn’t fit but it was then easy. However, THEM and US together with LEAVE GO in the NW corner were my LOsI and my downfall. Very quirky, I thought, but an intriguing end to the week. Thanks to both. John M.
  7. Trying to think of exotic capitals!
    Got the rest of the clues with a struggle.
    FOI Silk Road, then SWCorner.
    In fact all the corners were easier than the middle.
    Was slow to get Ambidexterity, Symmetry, Them and Us.

    Thanks all, as ever.

    Edited at 2020-10-02 09:24 am (UTC)

  8. I started off fairly quickly but then seemed to get bogged down a bit. Like others I biffed AMBIDEXTROUS, and then changed it to AMBIDEXTEROUS, until GADDAFI came along and I checked the anagrist properly. SPLIT was my FOI and ATYPICAL brought up the rear. 9:09. Thanks Juno and Curarist
  9. After three 8 minute solves to start the week, I went better when I finished Thursday’s this morning in 6:30. It was with some trepidation that I approached today’s only to have my hopes of a full week under 10 minutes dashed by the 13dn/12ac crossing. In 13dn I was looking for an anagram but eventually got it from the definition. That left 12ac where I was hammering my brain for capital cities in exotic places to bung a y in when 10 minutes slipped past on the clock. Eventually saw it for the anagram it was. Lesson learnt (I hope), relax and just enjoy it and you’ll do better. Hats off to Juno for my 11:18.
    Split, linger, leave, go, go off, stay put – is there a theme?
  10. Almost scuppered by 23a where STRAND was so obviously correct – or not, as it turns out.
  11. This was difficult in my opinion. Several clues where the definition was not obvious and at times it felt like a 15×15.
    There were some easy pickings to get started. FOI REEL, then Lodge, Linger and Ill.
    LEAVE GO took some parsing but after 15 minutes I was down to my last two or three. My problems were partly self inflicted; I too tried to make Ambidexterous work; this required Asymetry- could there be two spellings?
    I corrected those and then really struggled with the Old African. That left me with 12a. Could not see the definition. RARE around RIGA took a while to discard; there had to be a Y in there. Eventually I saw how it worked. COD to ATYPICAL. Congratulations to the setter; an excellent challenge. 26:53 on the clock; pleased to have all correct. And it’s raining outside, so nothing else to do.
    David
  12. Against what seems to be today’s trend ATYPICAL went in with barely a moment’s thought. But it was a less happy story for my last pair, LEAVE GO (last encountered by me in a Billy Bunter book, I think – “Leave go, you fatheads”) and SPLIT. I hate geography clues. Grr. Trawling for those two added 6 minutes to what would otherwise have been a respectable time.

    Very good puzzle and clever Nina; kudos to Rotter.

    FOI LINGER; LOI SPLIT; COD AMBIDEXTERITY; time 1.4 Jacks (in the absence of Kevin) for a Not Great Day.

    Many thanks Juno and curarist.

    Templar

    1. I have just, with a gentle smile, looked through an old annual – “Billy Bunter’s Own” – and could not find “leave go”. I did find, “Why you cheeky beast – here, I say, leggo – yaroooh!” and “Ow! wow! Leggo! Help! Whooop! “

      I remember encountering things along the lines of, “Leave go of him,” in the playground as an eight-year old immigrant to Australia in the late ‘50s.

  13. 19 minutes for me, but that included spotting a theme of sorts, with the key being AMBIDEXTERITY. The opposing left and right across answers all appear to be antonyms of each other, with the possible exception of MEASURER and JAM, where I can’t see that connection. Can anyone add to this? Incidentally, LEAVE GO is a Welsh expression in my experience.

    Edited at 2020-10-02 09:47 am (UTC)

    1. Oh yes, that must be it. Well worked out, Rotter. RUN/ATYPICAL is the other exception. But otherwise it’s SPLIT/LINGER, LEAVE GO/LODGE, GO OFF/STAY PUT and DESERT/TARRY. Bravo.
      1. I think RUN / ATYPICAL works if you think of run of the mill. Also, there is a vague connection between MEASURER and JAM in music. It would work better with MEASURED, but that would screw up INEBRIANT.
        1. “… would screw up inebriant”. A word that well deserves screwing up in my view. And then throwing in the WPB!
    4. Good spot. If I may add a suggestion… I think it’s only those clues that start in the first column or finish in the last column that are the theme, with all the left hand side SPLIT, LEAVE, RUN, GO and DESERT meaning to depart and LINGER, LODGE, JAM, STAY and TARRY meaning the opposite.
      And, furthermore, the theme is described by AMBIDEXTERITY for the acrosses and SYMMETRY down the clues on each side. Or have I over-thought that?

      Edited at 2020-10-02 04:28 pm (UTC)

  14. ….there is no sensible anagram of “wine Brian”. Combined with becoming a victim of the “ambidextrous” pandemic, I missed my target by some way. Needless to say, the theme was wasted on me.

    FOI LINGER
    LOI DESERT
    COD LEAVE GO
    TIME 5:52

  15. Just to confirm my atypical qualities, I had no trouble with 12ac and might even have produced a blue moon sub Plett time but for 9ac Leave Go. As others have pointed out, let go and leave off are the normal expressions and Leave Go still looks distinctly odd. Perhaps an example of a Nina induced compromise? Crossed the line after 18mins with Linger (ill/ail issues at 5d) and Leave Go my sluggish last pair. Invariant
  16. Agree with other bloggers, not actually difficult, just slow going. Would have helped if I could spell. Gaddafi which was obvious enough to put on without checking the parsing (how many other old African colonels do you know?) did parse 15a though and so got it right. Nothing to object to in it, just a bit of a trudge, without any discernible highlights.
  17. Sadly a DNF caused by ATYPICAL where I, too, was looking for an exotic capital.
    I couldn’t parse THEM AND US or LODGE (where I’d forgotten that ‘close’ indicates the last letter of a word).
    Some lovely anagrams – AMBIDEXTERITY, STAY PUT and SYMMETRY – and my COD goes to BRETONS for its simple but effective wordplay.
    Thanks to Juno for the challenge (which sadly I didn’t meet), to Curarist for the helpful blog and to Rotter for spotting the theme which totally passed me by.
        1. I thought at first it may be an anagram of ‘have year’ but the checkers soon put paid to that. Even with them all in place my mind was a blank and, when I saw the answer, I too felt ‘idiotic’!
  18. Well over my target, coming in at 45 mins. I thought this was hard – not unsolvable – but fairly slow going.

    A few clues left me puzzled for a while. Rent = Split just wasn’t obvious and I spent ages thinking of “Lease”, “Let”, “Hire” etc. Similarly, I had mental gymnastics on the tenses around “Leave Go” for 9ac. Like many, I had a few versions of 15ac “Ambidexterity” – it didn’t help that I got it into my head that Daytime = AM, and I completely missed the hidden word for 13dn (as well as nearly missing the initials for 6dn).

    A good workout though – if not the most enjoyable.

    FOI – 1dn “Silk Road”
    LOI- 14dn “Symmetry”
    COD – 3dn “Them and Us”

    Thanks as usual.

  19. Which made life difficult, as did confidently putting in STRAND, plus a delivery mid-solve made for a slow day, where it needn’t have been. 10 minutes or so, I’d guess. No idea how I misspelled GADDAFI, especially as i saw how the clue worked.
    1. You are in excellent company in not knowing how to spell Gaddafi. Even the man himself never settled on a single Latin-alphabet version of his name! Qaddafi, Gadhafi, Khadafy and several others are all pretty common on the internet alongside Gaddafi.

      Shades of the Bard and his many variations on his signature!

      Cedric

    2. I too entered strand which slowed me up. The Strand in London being a beach until the Embankment was built. Blue flag it wasn’t. Johnny
  20. I thought I was in for the long haul today when my FOI was LODGE but with a few more checkers in play things speeded up. My only problem with AMBIDEXTERITY was checking I had the correct vowels in the right order. I had to return to the NE corner for my POI GADDAFI and LOI LINGER. 8:38.
  21. My experience with this crossword seems to be not ATYPICAL for this week – a quick start, followed by a real slowing down! I enjoyed this, despite that. Of course I didn’t see the nina – well spotted Rotter, Chris and Templar for getting on the right track. Lots of lovely clues although I too didn’t much like LEAVE GO. Fortunately I didn’t fall into the trap at 15a – for once I looked carefully at the anagrist so no biffing today!

    I tend not to recommend the biggie these days, but it only took me twice as long as this, so if you’re feeling brave why not have a look?

    FOI Split
    LOI Desert
    COD Split, although I liked Silk Road and Jam too
    Time 16 m

    Thanks Juno and Curarist

  22. Not that easy I thought, although coming at the end of a week when I have had a DNF and had to resort to aids a couple of times, I should be happy to finish (unaided) in 20 mins. I didn’t spot any sort of theme of course, but then I never do.

    FOI – 4ac LINGER
    LOI – 12ac ATYPICAL
    COD – 16dn BRETONS

  23. I found this hard at first, but after a break managed it surprisingly easily. I got LEAVE GO, but it’s not an expression I am familiar with.
  24. Not my Friday, but I thought I’d come and see how others got on. I enjoyed the two triple definitions. Thanks Rotter for spotting the theme. FOI SPLIT. LOI JAM. I had AMBIDEXTROUS at first before SYMMETRY corrected me. COD to BRETONS. Lovely puzzle. 4:25.

    Edited at 2020-10-02 04:32 pm (UTC)

  25. I think RUN and ATYPICAL also antonyms. Think of an atypical item breaking a run.
  26. Easier than usual for a Friday, but caught out by AMBIDEXTERITY – I knew it wasn’t that but couldn’t work out what it should be.
    And as usual I was so concerned with the answers that I didn’t notice the Nina – clever.

    Thank you everyone, I do enjoy the comments.

    Diana

  27. We didn’t record a time for this one but I’d guess it was one of our slower solves. Really good puzzle – made us think. Thanks Juno.

    FOI: split
    LOI: Gaddafi
    COD: ambidexterity

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog

    1. The city of Split is on the Adriatic in Croatia and if something is rent (in days of yore) it is torn and split.

Comments are closed.