Quick Cryptic 2588 by Teazel

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

This one should be popular. 4 minutes 12 for me, and not much longer to blog it.  Generally an enjoyable solve with nice tidy surfaces.

Across
7 Extra starters from waiter in diner eventually (4)
WIDE – acronym. Nice to get correct cricket terminology after the bye/wide horrors of last week.
8 Little followed by lots is unreasonable (1,3,4)
A BIT MUCH – self-explanatory
9 Rick, resident originally in a warmer country (6)
SPRAIN – R[esident] inside SPAIN
10 Soft bed for sportsman (6)
PLAYER – P + LAYER
11 Outfit including line in national dress (4)
KILT – KIT with L inside
12 A large painting done out of doors (8)
ALFRESCO – A + L + FRESCO. I though this was normally two words but I guess they are both acceptable.
15 Astonished from the off: was in front! (8)
STARTLED – START (the off) + LED
17 Cut round circular figure to make a coil (4)
LOOP – LOP (cut) round O
18 Female telling stories in a plane? (6)
FLYING – F + LYING
21 Place and time for crop pest (6)
LOCUST – LOCUS (place) + T
22 Candidate is poisonous creature, I storm angrily (8)
ASPIRANT – ASP + I RANT
23 Related to lord (4)
TOLD – TO + LD
Down
1 Find exact place that could give you a sharp prick (8)
PINPOINT – self explanatory
2 Engineers finished meal (6)
REPAST – RE + PAST
3 Bad weather only half rare during autumn (8)
RAINFALL – RA[re] + IN FALL
4 A bit of cloud in view is pleasant (4)
WISP – hidden word
5 I have no suntan: spit! (6)
IMPALE – I’M PALE. Spit as in ‘put on a spit to roast’.
6 Came struggling to make summit (4)
ACME – anagram (‘struggling’) of CAME
13 Tidy file? Somehow that’s showing devotion (8)
FIDELITY – anagram (‘somehow’) of TIDY FILE
14 Annoyed to travel regularly on such a tyre? (5-3)
CROSS-PLY – self-explanatory. PLY as in ‘ferries that ply the Channel’
16 Artist is home for a little fruit (6)
RAISIN – RA + IS +IN
17 Identify centre of loch, not in time to go round (6)
LOCATE – OC (centre of LOCH) with LATE outside
19 Strong desire of lieutenant to tour America (4)
LUST – LT with US inside
20 Rudely take lighter, shortly given up (4)
GRAB – BARGE (ie type of boat) minus the last letter, backwards. This is the only one that made me pause and come back. Not the first definition of lighter that came to mind.

109 comments on “Quick Cryptic 2588 by Teazel”

  2. Amongst the slower solvers today: biffed GRAB, took awhile to work out CROSS-PLY (well aware of the tyre!), ASPIRANT, LOCATE and PINPOINT. Pleasantly challenging, I felt.

  3. After limbering up with my regular horror show on the Quintagram (only 2 answers), this took me a dreadful 29 minutes. I might just have avoided the SCC had I not taken ages to get IMPALE, but I’d already made some silly mistakes by that point.

    There is no excuse for missing my target this week (5 solves in under 2 hours). The QCs have been straightforward and I don’t think we’ve had an Izetti.

    As it is, I’ve had a DNF (PROFESSOR rather than PROCESSOR) and just a single SCC escape, with 3 times in the 20s.

    Thanks as always for the blog.

    I hope you all have a good weekend. Until I began the QC, I thought that golf was the most frustrating pastime there was. Now I know differently.

  4. Repast and Cross Ply too obscure. Cross Ply?! Grab too tricky and Aspirant too clever. and I’m with Tina with A Bit Rich. So a frustrating Friday.

  5. After a record finish yesterday it was back to normality today and a dnf as a result of a bit rich. Aaagh. Onwards and upwards

  6. Clearly in a different league! The SCC was empty after I’d taken about an hour to solve this. Most clues were a real battle to see what was going on. But I did know about CROSS PLY tyres so I must fit the category of “old enough” or maybe “really old”; that one went in fairly quickly.

  8. I also wandered up a couple of blind alleys… and am not conversant with cricket terms… ergo 🤔 . Quite fun reading the various comments above. Makes me think I’m not too thick after all….. 😉

  9. This PLAYER found it a lot harder than others to LOCATE the solutions. I was initially WIDE off the mark for many of them.

    Came back to it this morning and was STARTLED to find those last clues FLYING in.

    So glad I did not give up earlier. It is so satisfying when you finally LOOP the LOOP.

    We have another nice pub nearby called the LIGHTERman so I did know the word but somehow the brain did not dredge it up until after I’d biffed the clue.

    Now to start Saturday’s which I did not get time to look at yesterday.

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