Quick Cryptic 1874 by Felix

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
An interesting mélange today, which some may find tricky. There’s also a fairly obvious Nina (Glossary here if you don’t know what that means): 1ac 6ac, who is 9ac, wrote 13ac and lived in 6dn. There are probably more examples, but I will leave them for those more familiar with the subject to spot. My favourite is the most elegant 22dn.

Across

1 Chap, sad to say, botched raid (8)
ALASDAIR – ALAS + anagram (‘botched’) of RAID
6 English poet Thomas seen in good light? (4)
GRAY – G + RAY
8 Scottish resort to herb tea infusion, last of all (4)
OBAN – last letters of tO herB teA infusioN
9 Late last month, became calmer (8)
DECEASED – DEC + EASED
10 Announce Mail Corp has been reorganised (8)
PROCLAIM – anagram (‘reorganised’) of MAIL CORP
12 Leave Detective Sergeant in gallery (4)
GODS – GO + DS. The gallery of a theatre is called ‘the gods’
13 Frolic outside a northern Scottish town (6)
LANARK – LARK outside AN
15 Large pants legal (6)
LAWFUL – L + AWFUL. ‘Pants’ meaning ‘a bit rubbish’ was common parlance among the young for about two weeks in the late 90’s, but managed to become permanently embedded in crosswordese.
17 Great flag to the west regularly appearing at a distance (4)
AFAR – Alternate letters of gReAt FlAg backwards
19 Call with drink for bird (8)
RINGNECK – RING + NECK (verb)
21 Illegal country sports event endureth sadly (8)
DEERHUNT – anagram (‘sadly’) of ENDURETH
23 Boy king following Dynasty (4)
HANK – HAN + K
24 Get warmer a week on Thursday (4)
THAW – A W on TH
25 Do nothing right with, indeed, small openings (8)
DOORWAYS – DO + O +R + W + AY + S

Down
2 Land held by rising millionaire, bilingual (7)
LIBERIA – reverse hidden word: millionAIRE BILingual
3 Very pleasant, with no end of sound (5)
SONIC – SO NICE without the last letter
4 Put on commercial broadcast in the middle (3)
ADD – AD + D (middle letter of BROA D CAST)
5 Fruit shake with lemon mixed (4,5)
ROCK MELON – ROCK + anagram (‘mixed’) of LEMON
6 Scottish city to be radiant, as golf is held in it (7)
GLASGOW – GLOW with AS + G inside
7 For each person in the lead (5)
AHEAD – Sort of double definition, though the first would normally have a space
11 So a drunk resolved to tour area to make enquiries (3,6)
ASK AROUND – anagram (‘resolved’) of SO A DRUNK, placed around A for area.
14 Show boasted team on board plane (7)
AIRCREW – AIR (show) + CREW (past tense of CROW)
16 A French tin nearly empty? That’s weird (7)
UNCANNY – UN + CAN + NY (‘nearly’ without its contents)
18 Cheeky old slave upset husband (5)
FRESH – SERF backwards + H
20 Specialised skill spoken of? Not at all (5)
NOHOW – sounds like ‘knowhow’. In my dictionary as ‘US: used in uneducated speech to emphasise a negative’
22 Teeth originally without brace (3)
TWO – T + WO

63 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1874 by Felix”

  1. More than tricky for me. Only two on the first pass of acrosses and still lots of gaps at 10m. Ended up all green in 32 but it was a struggle. This hasn’t changed my view that ninas normally spoil puzzles — it was pointed out in the crossword club comments, I wouldn’t have got it otherwise as I’ve never heard of him, or Thomas GRAY (or ROCK MELONS or at least I’ve not heard them called that). Hard without much sparkle has to be my assessment I’m afraid. See you Monday!

    Edited at 2021-05-14 07:58 am (UTC)

    1. I see from the Crossword Club that verlaine completed in 3:01. That’s ten times faster than us. Just extraordinary.
      1. I usually think of 3minutes as a slow time for a QC but this was a hard one! I was helped by being really very fond of Alasdair Gray, so I quickly fell into the Scottish swing of things. He did some murals at Oran Mor in Glasgow, which is not quite 8ac, Mor or less.
  2. A massive DNF for me today. I agree with Mendeset, ninas (and pangrams) always seem to lead to extra difficulty and obscurity which detracts from my enjoyment of the puzzle. RINGNECK is the US name for the ring-necked parakeet, and Chambers has ROCK MELON as Australian, which explains why I hadn’t heard of them.
    Thanks to Curarist for sorting out the wordplay.

    Brian

    Edited at 2021-05-14 07:38 am (UTC)

  4. I nearly always throw the towel in at 30 mins, so this was a rare 30+ solve. And it was a tough one:

    NHO ROCK MELON, which is “Australian only”
    NHO RING NECK either.

    HANK=boy, I don’t understand. Are there no men called Hank? Is “boy” some crossword convention for a diminutive name?

    I still don’t understand LOI NOHOW, that’s just poor spelling, surely? I was also convinced that “specialised skill”=”knack”, which could be written “NACK”, “NAC”, “NACH” etc.

    9A DECEASED also talk time to winkle out, as “R” or “L” following the DEC looked more promising for us trawlers.

    COD DOORWAYS: for a six-parter in just seven words and eight-letters.

    1. Yes, it’s something of a convention as you have surmised. Not applied rigidly but it’s one to be aware of.

      As for NOHOW it sounds like [spoken of] “know-how” defined as having the knowledge (or specialised skill) to do something, but NOHOW is a correctly spelt word that means ‘not at all’ and doesn’t have anything to do with knowledge. No, never, nohow!

      Edited at 2021-05-14 08:39 am (UTC)

      1. I lived in the US for 10 years. Number of times I heard it: bumpkiss, diddly-squat, jack, zilch, Zippo, nada.
  5. Now I am in a complete muddle. My TOL actually has two QCCs showing today!
    1615 and 1874. Having just finished 1615 I popped over here to have insight into a couple of BiFFs and I find something completely different. Well at least I now have something for the weekend as barbers used to say. Will have to dig into the past to find the insight to the mystery clues. Altogether very peculiar.
    Anyone else notice this?
    1. Yes I’ve got 2 Quick Crosswords as well. 1615 and 1874. It must be something to do with the android version ? Completed 1615 although I probably did it before ( can’t remember it though). So on to the next !
      1. Even more confusing is that although the link says 1615 it’s actually 1614!

        Bob

        PS Now off to do today’s real one

        1. Curious indeed. On my Android phone it shows as No 1615. Going to Times Online on my PC, Puzzles, it too shows Nos 1615 and 1874. Seems as if we are in a minority. Couldn’t parse 4D JERSEY. Clue is Top Lower. Couldn’t see what Jersey had to do with Lower, until I wrote it here and the penny dropped!!!
    2. I also see the two puzzles (using iPhone) and of course I didn’t notice and did the wrong one. As noted, the dummy one is really 1614 and annoyingly, I found I did it a bit faster the first time round!

      Something funny about that puzzle – jackkt noted a mix up between 1614 and 1615 on his blog at that time (15/5/20). A year ago and the 14th/15th of the month. hmm

    3. Me too – and on iMac. iPhone also shows 2 QC’s…was a struggle to do 1614/5 this evening and still have 1874 to do tomorrow. Have posted my comment about this at about 20.30hrs (local).

      Anyone know why/how this happened?

  6. 12 minutes, delayed by the unknown RINGNECK and ROCK MELON, also a little by HANK and NOHOW.

    Seeing Felix as the setter had me on the lookout for a Nina or theme and I didn’t have to look further than the top of the grid. My only problem was that I’ve never heard of the person so tracking down other references was not going to be easy. I only found two other definite references and another possible. There’s a typo in the intro, curarist, 1ac and 6ac, not 2ac.

    Hopefully Felix will look in later and give us the rundown on anything we have missed, and if he does, could I request that in his capacity as Times Crossword Editor he spares a moment to enlighten a host of baffled solvers concerning a clue in the Saturday prize puzzle dated 24 April #27960?

    The clue was 28ac: In dire straits after reputation collapsed, a first for relatively wealthy area (11,4)
    to which the answer was STOCKBROKER BELT, but we haven’t been able to fathom the wordplay. A couple of us left queries in the Club forum that have so far gone unanswered. The TfTT discussion is https://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/2529154.html.

    Many thanks in anticipation…

    Edited at 2021-05-14 07:44 am (UTC)

    1. In BELT [dire straits] after STOCK [reputation] BROKE [collapsed], the first letter of R{elatively}: wealthy area.

      The only thing I can’t quite work out there is how BELT is “dire straits” as opposed to just “strait”.

      1. Thanks, v, but your ‘only thing’ is just what we need explained. Maybe it’s a bit loose or perhaps there’s something that we are all missing.
        1. In my Chambers app “belt” is defined as “strait”: “strait” is defined as “2. (usu in pl) difficulty, distress, hardship”. I think “belt” as in “strait” is actually probably “1. a narrow part, place or passage”, and this “three point turn in a thesaurus” is in fact a mistake on the setter’s part (I can find no examples anywhere of “in a belt” meaning “in a difficult spot”); but I can see how it might have happened.

          Edited at 2021-05-14 05:06 pm (UTC)

          1. Thanks. It would still be nice to hear from Richard (or David) on the subject.
  7. Awful. Got absolutely nowhere with this one. One of the worst puzzles I have tried.
  8. I made much swifter progress with the 15 x 15 which says it all really. Rock Melon and ringneck pretty obscure, Lanark not well known, Fresh and Hank very US, Alasdair not a common spelling. only my opinion but too tricky for a quickie. Thanks though!
  9. Did about half and gave up. Managed RINGNECK, OBAN, GRAY, UNCANNY.

    NOHOW (MER) was one that defeated me. I admit I could have got ALASDAIR but often miss random names clues. NHO ROCK MELON. Should have got LANARK but had lost heart by then.

    Will draw a veil.

    Edited at 2021-05-14 10:39 am (UTC)

    1. “NOHOW” has a pedigree in English literature in that it is repeatedly used by Tweedledum when speaking to Alice in the Looking-Glass world. Tweedledee uses “CONTRARIWISE” in the same way.
  10. 35 minutes, so definitely tricky. It took me forever to get started and create checkers to help. A good challenge, and I enjoyed the Scottish theme.
  11. Really tough today. FOI OBAN and a clear Scottish theme emerging; hard for non-British solvers.
    I had most of it done in under 15 minutes with NHO ROCK MELON my only doubt.
    My final three took ages. I went through every dynasty I knew starting with Ming; not a long list. But HANK for the boy seemed OK. Spent ages on the skill and had thought of RINGNECK as it fitted the clue and could be a bird.
    NOHOW emerged on the umpteenth alphabet trawl. So RINGNECK had to be right-and it was.
    All correct in 28:06. Very pleased to finish but hard yards.
    David
  12. Like others, I found this really tough and took nearly 35 minutes to finally complete it. My problems were the NHO RINGNECK and ROCK MELON, and real struggles with NOHOW, HANK. I had also never heard of Alasdair Grey nor any of his works, never seen Alasdair spelled that way, I was very slow to see the reverse hidden LIBERIA, and SONIC (completely my own fault that one). I was well and truly slowed down if not beaten, so hats off to Felix.

    Now that I have looked up the Scottish writer and polymath, I see several other references are there, hidden in the grid.

  13. For some reason The Times website offered me 1614 by Mara today, which I completed in an average time only to realise that it was an old one when I came here to read the blog.

    Good job, because I thought this one was pretty awful really. Lots of IMO pretty obscure answers before we even get to the ridiculousness of including ROCK MELON and NOHOW in a QC.

    I’m pretty sure DEERHUNT should be (4,4) rather than (8) too.

    Never mind, thanks Mara for an old one! Thanks Curarist for picking the bones out of this one too. Enjoy your weekend everyone.

    Edited at 2021-05-14 10:21 am (UTC)

    1. Me too. The list of puzzles offered me 1615 and when I clicked on it I got 1614.

      (Not sure if this will get posted; it says anon comments are banned. I thought that was merely a proposal?)

      /C

    2. DEERHUNT doesn’t appear to exist in any of the usual dictionaries, whether as one word, two, or hyphenated.
  14. Tough. 5 Mins over target but I biffed DOORWAYS, RINGNECK and the ROCK part of the MELON. The last two were rather contrived, I thought. Perhaps in order to force a Scottish Nana in? ** I had a real fight with NOHOW (very poor clue, in my opinion) and only when I had managed that did I turn to my LOI — H?NK. This took ages even with a vowel trawl and my groan was audible from afar when the HAN dynasty clicked. What a clue — worthy of the biggie, surely? My COD was TWO but I loved LAWFUL.
    Many will not define this as a QC but it was a very clever puzzle from FELIX, inspired in parts but contrived in others. Thanks to both. Now to return to Curarist’s blog to savour selected clues again. John M.
    ** I think Ninas are for Nanas. Waste of time.

    Edited at 2021-05-14 03:44 pm (UTC)

  15. Slightly bucking the trend here …
    … as I completed the grid in 13 minutes — a challenge, as Felix usually is, but not for me more than that.

    NHO the same two as others, 5D Rock melon and 19A Ringneck, but they were generously clued and guessable once the checkers were in.

    Many thanks to Curarist for the blog, and a good weekend to all
    Cedric

  16. … I thought “I ain’t gonna finish this – noways, NOHOW”. But I did (in 43 minutes)! Felix always poses problems for me, so I was very pleased to come through unscathed, especially in a good-ish time for me.

    My LOI was AIRCREW, partly because I did not know that CREW was to crow in the past tense, and partly because I was slow to see THAW. In fact, given the presence of other Scottish towns/references, I even thought 14d might be Airdrie. I had NHO the poet or the type of melon, but the clueing for these was fair and I trusted to luck. The other clues that stumped me for a while were AHEAD and HANK, although with hindsight I don’t really know why.

    Mrs Random proceeded at her usual pace until getting properly stuck in the NE corner, where she unfortunately had very few checkers to build from. She did eventually break through and finished successfully in 48 minutes.

    many thanks to Felix and to curarist.

  17. After doing a Mara puzzle in 11 mins plus, then coming here to see what everyone else thought, I discovered I’d done the wrong one.

    This one was even tougher for me. Not helped by putting in AIR at 4d, which made DECEASED impossible for a long while until I realised that AIR must be wrong.

    DEERHUNT took forever to unravel, as did DOORWAYS.

    15:09

  18. I got there in the end, but it took me 40 minutes. You know it’s going to be difficult when you struggle with the 3 letter answers for 4dn and 22dn. DNK 6ac “Gray”, 5dn “Rock Melon” nor 19ac “Ringneck” although they were all obtainable from the clueing.

    Never been a fan of names as answers and I definitely won’t start here with 1ac “Alisdair” and 23ac “Hank”. Knew there would probably be a Nina, but kind of lost interest as I had no idea what the theme was and it wasn’t helping.

    Overall, challenging but not that enjoyable.

    FOI — 8ac “Oban”
    LOI — 4ac “Add”
    COD — 16dn “Uncanny” — nice surface

    Thanks as usual!

  19. Possibly the first time I’ve not finished in 20 minutes. Certainly the first time I’ve had three to go. Didn’t obey the “think verb and noun” rule so unable to get the second part of the NHO bird. NOHOW and HANK were the other two. Hate to say it but rather liked NOHOW. Knew what I needed to look for with the boy but the will to live had rather been lost by then. Knew all the Scottish stuff but still came up short

    Thanks all

  20. Oh, one of my worst performances. I am not slating the crossword itself, or indeed the setter.
      1. I just tried to edit my original comment for clarity, but I guess the edit window has expired as I can no longer edit it.
        1. Hi, poison_wyvern. Yes, the edit option is lost as soon as somebody has replied using the ‘Reply’ button.
          1. Yes, that does make sense. Oh well, I’ll just have to be more careful in future.
  21. Probably in a better frame of mind because I stuck at this one. 35 minutes but 3 unsolved.
    Alasdair — didn’t see it even though I saw it was _L_SDAIR… doh — NHO Alasdair Gray.
    Defeated by Nohow and Hank — so I didn’t like either of those clues.
    Oh and I put Flesh instead of Fresh thinking that Self was an old slave to self or similar.
    Very tricky.
    COD 3d — made me smile!
    Add was a bit strange because it was also ‘broadcast’ of Ad so it felt odd.
    Thanks all
    John George
  22. Tough one, so pleased to finish in 26 mins. Ninas normally pass me by but even I noticed the Scottish flavour to this (not that I thought to investigate further). I struggled with a lot of clues where, with hindsight, I should have been much quicker. Foe example 3dn, where I originally had TONIC, thinking of TOO NICE with both words truncated. Eventually the penny dropped for 1ac, resulting in a hasty revision. Also 9ac where I was looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definition.

    FOI – 6ac GRAY
    LOI – 5dn ROCK MELON, entered with a shrug
    COD – 24ac THAW

    Thanks to Felix and Curarist

  23. Bit of a struggle today but rather surprised to see my time (7:12) quite high up in the Club Leaderboard, so a lot of people must have shared my experience. The clues were definitely at the tough end of the QC spectrum and the SE corner took a while to sort out.
    I was aware of a Scottish link as I worked through but as ever the Nina didn’t cross my mind. FOI Alasdair helped by the fact that I had a cousin whose name was spelt thus.
    Thanks to Felix for providing a good work out and to Curarist for an enjoyable blog. I agree with your comment regarding “pants” – it is strange how some transiently fashionable words and phrases appear to establish themselves in crossword puzzle parlance. Maybe in this instance the opportunity for puns is too hard for setters to resist??
  24. DNF. NHO rock melon. Did not get 4 d and 9 ac either. Otherwise do-able. FOI Gray. 12 on first pass. Rest of grid going in fairly quickly except the three mentioned above. Thanks, Curarist, for sorting it all out, and Felix for the challenge. GW.
  26. ….not to bother with Felix’s self-indulgent puzzles, but I went for it. I could see a Scottish tinge, but NHO the Scotsman, or the ROCK MELON. Took a ridiculous amount of time to get ADD before nailing my LOI. Missed my target, but that didn’t surprise me.

    FOI ALASDAIR
    LOI DECEASED
    COD UNCANNY
    TIME 6:26

  27. I did this in about 12 minutes this morning but have been out and about since then, including lunch in a real cafe! What a treat 😊
    Which is more than I can say about today’s quickie, I’m afraid. I wasted a couple of minutes looking for a Dickensian theme, then looking down all the first and last words of each clue before entering my first answer – obviously Felix wasn’t going to follow the theme of his last few ninas! No problem with ALASDAIR- my brother-in-law’s name and when OBAN appeared, I realised it was all a bit Scottish, but that was as far as it went. I echo everyone’s else’s views on ROCK MELON, RINGNECK and NOHOW – I worked them out OK but was just a bit flummoxed by them.
    FOI Proclaim – not Proclaimers tho!
    LOI Aircrew
    COD Two – the only clue I put a tick next to today
    Thanks anyway to Felix and to Curarist too

    I did the biggie when we got in – it took around 35-40 minutes I’d say, so might be worth a try if you haven’t already had a go?

  28. This was tough and even with some of the obscure answers I am none the wise. For example ringneck from call with drink. I see the call but what does with a drink have to do with neck. An explanation of some of these really obscure clues would be helpful. A very tough puzzle
    1. To neck can mean to drink (quicky). “I’m going to neck that beer down”.
  29. Bit annoyed at myself with this one. Managed to finish, although I could tell it was a toughie and it wasn’t just me being dense, in 30:18, which I thought was reasonable in the circumstances. However, on coming on here, I immediately saw I had spelt 1a wrong, putting ALISDAIR instead of ALASDAIR. This was not because I failed to parse it, but my parsing was that “ails” = sad (yeah, now I think about it, even that part of my tenuous parse doesn’t work) and that sounds like (possibly in a Scottish accent of some description) ALIS. It really would help if I knew who ALASDAIR GRAY was. Anyway, I guessed there had to be some Scottish Nina going on, but that’s as far as I got with it, and I too had never heard of ROCKMELON or RINGNECK as a stand alone word, though I am guessing it refers to the ringneck parakeet, which has established itself in parts of the south of England. Thanks to Felix and to Curarist.
  31. Did that in a couple of sessions in a mad busy day. Didn’t enjoy it hugely for reasons already stated by others. Random Christian names are my pet hate.

    About two Phils but a Not Much Fun Day.

    Thanks for trying Felix, and thanks curarist.

    Templar

  32. I downloaded from the on-line edition and solved away only to find is was QC1614 by Mara from Fri 15 May 2020. Just tried again and still getting QC1614… Anyone shed any light on this?!

    In fact, just noticed there are TWO QC on the on-line page – 1614 and 1874….

    Worse still, 1614 was a stinker! At least I still have 1874 to do tomorrow

  33. Started this yesterday lunchtime but had to abandon it after a while – we’re just too busy to spend ages on a “QC”. On the other hand, we don’t give up that easily so we’ve had another go this morning. Sadly, we turned in our worst performance in memory – we were stumped by RINGNECK and ROCK MELON which made solving a few of the other clues in the area tough. Never mind, wouldn’t want to become complacent!

    Thanks Felix and Curarist.

  34. Found this one really frustrating as it doesn’t seem difficult yet featured words I’d never heard of: RINGNECK, ROCK MELON, and HANK isn’t an instinctive thought for a boy’s name. Even DEERHUNT seemed a non-UK ref. Makes it harder to get there from the clues. Was fooled by the Scottish theme and “northern Scottish town” – I was mentally up on the Moray coast. Thinking too literally, my perennial problem.
  35. This was tough and even with some of the obscure answers I am none the wise. For example ringneck from call with drink. I see the call but what does with a drink have to do with neck. An explanation of some of these really obscure clues would be helpful. A very tough puzzle

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