Quick Cryptic 2901 by Wurm

Parksolve time = 36:46.  Nice day for a slow plod and a median solve.

Wurm has presented us with a slightly unusual mix of clue types here.  There’s a paucity of anagram clues, no double definitions and no less than five (!!!) straight cryptics.  These are clues that have no wordplay, really just riddles when you think about it.

I imagine that will suit some solvers more than others, so let us know in the comments how you went.

(In the clues, definitions are underlined and anagram indicators are in bold italics.  In the explanations (ABC)* indicates an anagram of abc.  Deletions and other devices are indicated accordingly, I hope).

Across
1 Fuss after Kipling hero backs emperor (6)
MIKADO – ADO (fuss) after MIK [KIM (Kipling hero) reversed (backs)]

An old title for the Emperor of Japan which most solvers will recognise from the comic opera of the same name.

Kim is the eponymous protagonist of the Rudyard Kipling novel.

4 Kitty which has seen much dough? (3,3)
FAT CAT – Cryptic definition

A straight cryptic that makes use of two definitions of kitty and two definitions of dough.

8 Set out to stop honest administrator (7)
TRUSTEE – (SET)* in (to stop) TRUE (honest)
10 Gloomy doctor close to losing head (5)
DREAR – DR (doctor) + EAR [NEAR (close to) without the first letter (losing head)]
11 Symbol to know in the Highlands? (5)
TOKEN – TO + KEN [Scottish (in the Highlands) for know]

Dae you ken wit a mean?

12 One sinking beneath the waves? (7)
TORPEDO – Cryptic definition

Cryptic def number two.  Not a bad one.

13 Director’s shoot perhaps screening four (9)
EXECUTIVE – EXECUTE (shoot, perhaps) “screening” IV (four)
17 Militaristic state — country after power (7)
PRUSSIA – RUSSIA (country) after P (power)
19 Magnate at last opening part of competition (5)
EVENT – E [last letter (at last) of magnatE] + VENT (opening)
20 Rubbish former Queen and King Edward? (5)
TATER – TAT (rubbish) + ER (former Queen)

King Edward is a potato cultivar grown in the UK since 1902, but you already knew that.

21 Princess dropping ecstasy into poor claret (7)
ELECTRA – E (ecstasy) “dropped into” (CLARET)*

Daughter of Agamemnon, the patron saint of spelling bees.

22 Delivery from Galway or Kerry (6)
YORKER – Hidden in galwaY OR KERry

A type of delivery in cricket.

There’s nothing quite like a perfectly executed yorker, especially one that rips out middle stump.  Who was your favourite exponent? Malinga? Waqar? Garner? Starc?

23 Adult with mortal sin admitted (6)
AGREED – A (adult) + GREED (mortal sin)
Down
1 Speechless about a temperature change (6)
MUTATE – MUTE (speechless) about [A + T (temperature)]
2 Weapon that is truly 16? (7-6)
KNUCKLE-DUSTER – Cryptic definition

Cryptic number three, referencing “AT HAND” from 16dn.  This won’t be everyone’s favourite clue.

3 Increase in warmth? River engulfing shelter (7)
DETENTE – DEE (river) “engulfing” TENT (shelter)

Increase in warmth as in a thawing of icy relations.

5 Run to escape from large snake (5)
ADDER – LADDER (run) “to escape from” L (large)

Just who is escaping whom here?  Might need Yoda to explain this one.

6 Met men cheered winds? It’s the drink! (5,2,6)
CREME DE MENTHE – (MET MEN CHEERED)*

Thought this was a weird surface at first, but of course it’s referencing men of the Bureau of Meteorology.

FWIW in Australia we refer to it as the BOM rather than the MET.

7 Trout swimming around black fish (6)
TURBOT – (TROUT)* around B (black)
9 Aberdeen tour agent catching train (9)
ENTOURAGE – Hidden in (catching) aberdeEN TOUR AGEnt
14 Big chunk of the North Atlantic? (7)
ICEBERG – Cryptic definition

Cryptic number four.

15 Route inside a yard brings indifference (6)
APATHY – PATH (route) inside [A + Y (yard)]
16 Ace worker storing tons nearby (2,4)
AT HAND – A (Ace) + HAND (worker) “storing” T (tons)
18 Instigate proceedings at court? (5)
SERVE – Cryptic definition

The last in a series of five, hiding a reference to tennis in a courtroom surface.  Maybe the best of the bunch.

68 comments on “Quick Cryptic 2901 by Wurm”

  1. 14:14 My first thought of big chunk of the North Atlantic was Iceland. I also fancied knuckle-buster for a while. I never thought of Electra as a princess but I guess she was. I can’t visualise any cat I ever co-habited with eating dough!

  2. I really enjoy this cryptic kind of crossword, gets the mind working and is a nice change from the anagrams and usual wordplay. Loved TORPEDO and ICEBERG when I eventually saw them. KNUCKLE DUSTER just wouldn’t come til I figured out TRUSTEE, had been thinking of buster as the second word. Liked TATER although when you see King Edward it kinda gives the game away.
    I’ll go with Anderson or Wood for speed!
    Thanks G and W.

    1. Fair call Quad. Anderson an all-time great and Wood very fast. But I’d argue neither of them is iconically associated with the yorker.

  3. 14 minutes, continuing my run of >10 minute QC solves following a run of 6 <10 minutes.

    My inability to come up with KNUCKLE DUSTER until the very end was a distraction as I simply couldn't think of a weapon with two Ks in its first word. Very annoyed with myself for another delay over ENTOURAGE until all the checkers made the answer inevitable, and I didn't spot that it was a hidden answer until after I had stopped the clock.

    1. I think it was you that came up with iceberged, sunk by something hidden! Very appropriate in todays puzzle

      1. I don’t think so,RH, perhaps somebody else will remember. Anyway it hasn’t made it to the TfTT Glossary so far .

  4. We certainly made hard work of this… Yet on reflection, there was nothing overly obscure. We simply couldn’t make it flow. We also missed the hidden ENTOURAGE until after the event.
    Himself remains unhappy about ICEBERG. AI (do we trust this?) states that, ‘the overall percentage of the North Atlantic covered by icebergs is very small’. Himself is a man of fact.
    In a desperate biff, I tried to make Cream of Tartar work…
    Know nothing of cricket, but am up on my princesses and potatoes.
    So – not our favourite but all part of the mix and got there in the end.

    1. It seems the North Atlantic begins at the Equator and contains places like the Caribbean Sea so a small percentage looks right to me.

      1. True, but an iceberg is still a “big chunk”. And icebergs are (well the most celebrated ones are)
        “of the North Atlantic”.

  5. 11:24 for the solve. Pleased with that as Wurm can be tough sometimes especially back in the summer when they were embracing the living persons rule with gusto. CREME-DE-MENTHE must have taken up a minute faffing around with checking the spelling / anagrist.

    Edit: parksolve coming in at 36:27

      1. Thanks #5. I see you had a bit of a nightmare but well done for persevering with it. Frustrating to be defeated at the end like that.

  6. From MIKADO to AGREED, but with a lot of darting hither and thither about the grid, in 8:28. Yoda speak come to mind failed to do, so I biffed ADDER. Biffed CREME DE MENTHE from the C from FAT CAT and enumeration. Thanks Wurm and Galspray.

  7. My solving ability seems to have deserted me over of late as I had another struggle with this one.

    I find that with straight cryptics I tend to either see them straight away or stare at them blankly for an age and today it was definitely a case of the latter. KNUCKLE DUSTER was particularly stubborn as I was trying to think of types of gun and I’d had a brain freeze over the Kipling character, depriving me of the very helpful starting letter.

    Crossed the line in 11.41 with LOI SERVE.
    Thanks to galspray for the blog and Wurm for the workout.

  8. 11:09 for a solid enough solve, but unlike some I’m not a great fan of pure cryptic clues, as there is nothing to work with if you don’t see the answer. TORPEDO, for example, took me an age and a long wordsearch (I was missing the opening T at the time), and I was also held up by ICEBERG (not all bergs are big, not all of them are in the North Atlantic) until I got the G checker.

    But some very enjoyable clues in the mix too to lighten the mood, so a good start to the weekend.

    Many thanks Galspray for the blog.

    1. Cheers Cedric. I was thinking the setter might contend that a chunk (of ice) has to be pretty big before it achieves the status of iceberg. And the question mark allows for the possibility that icebergs can appear elsewhere.

      On edit: In fact Wikipedia informs us that if a chunk of floating glacially-derived ice is less than 15 metres long it’s called a “growler” or a “bergy bit”. What are the chances of that coming up in a pub quiz?

  9. After a morning spent in celebration yesterday with HRH Princess Royal, princesses were prominent in my mind, so ELECTRA posed no problem, nor in the same vein TATER. Sadly the same cannot be said with ICEBERG or TORPEDO that challenged parsing and seemed a bit of a cryptic long shot for me.
    DREAR fell into place even without a Y on the end. COD CREME DE MENTHE. An unpleasant concoction with an appealing colour. All done in 30.
    Thanks Wurm and Curry
    PS Apologies for name dropping above, but was an exceptional privilege. The weekend returns to the mundane, suffused with a memorable afterglow.

  10. You were very much correct that KnuckleDuster was not my favourite. Very much not helped by not picking up that “16” was a reference to the other clue and I couldn’t think of any words including XVI in the middle! (Maybe “16d” would have helped for us newbies?)

    Not that it particularly mattered as it also took me an age to get At Hand, as I’d temporarily forgotten that worker doesn’t always mean some sort of insect.

    1. Early in my visits here someone kindly elucidated that a clue containing a numeral (rather than a number spelled out) is usually cross-referencing another clue. Some people hate these but I often find they help with both answers.

  11. With one left after 60 minutes I revealed ENTOURAGE just as I spotted it was a hidden (at least that is what my brain told me but I think it was self delusion). Well and truly ‘iceberged’ as noted above.
    However I enjoyed slowly solving the clues with COD to DETENTE which looked so unlikely at first.
    Thank you Wurm and Galspray.

  12. I think I’m a fan of cryptic definitions because they make me smile. And today’s did. So thanks Wurm, and Galspray, especially for parsing ADDER. Might Yoda, like Spooner, one day enter the weaponry of the setter?

  13. Slow all round at 15 minutes, despite cottoning on to all the cryptic defs quite quickly, a rarity for me. I did like SERVE which could apply to both senses of ‘court’ and was confused as intended by the odd word order in the surface for ADDER, my LOI.

    Favourite was the v. good ENTOURAGE hidden which was one of the reasons for my not exactly rapid time.

    Thanks to galspray and Wurm

  14. I’m out of step. I was not within light years of Wurm’s wavelength at first.
    I made progress with this but didn’t enjoy it. After getting ADDER (but not making much sense of it) I didn’t make time to finish the puzzle on a busy Saturday morning.

  15. Bit of a struggle. FOI DETENTE and then various others scattered around the grid, like ADDER and FAT CAT and APATHY, AT HAND.
    Liked YORKER, KNUCKLE DUSTER (PDM), EVENT, C de MENTHE, ENTOURAGE ( COD).
    Finally held up by PRUSSIA and, I am sad to admit, had to seek CCD inspiration for a country with second letter U and last letter A. Oh dear.
    Then LOI SERVE dropped into place.
    Thanks vm, Galspray.

      1. See what Galspray says- RUSSIA country after P power. I felt I was being dim not to think of Russia when I had the second and last letter.

  16. DNF
    Just not on Wurm’s wavelength. Gave up after 30 minutes.
    NHO Yorker. I assume it is yet another cricketing term.
    Thanks for the blog galspray.

    1. A yorker is a type of bowling delivery (in cricket, yes) that aims to catch the batter out by being fired in close to the batter’s foot before they can get their bat on it. Galspray’s edit describes the desired result perfectly. Malinga my favourite exponent

  17. 10.50, speeding up once I switched on to the right wavelength. Didn’t consider ELECTRA till it could be nothing else. TORPEDO, KNUCKLE-DUSTER and SERVE were all fun

  18. While I had no problems with what was, for Wurm, a fairly gentle offering, I was annoyed (as usual) by the cross referenced clues. AT HAND fell on the first of my two passes, and I biffed KNUCKLE-DUSTER from the crossers without going back to it. My LOI was the only one that didn’t fall during that procedure.

    FOI MIKADO
    LOI AGREED
    COD TORPEDO
    TIME 3:57

  19. Well this one certainly got my slow brain cells firing. Began to wonder if I was ever going to finish but little by little the grid filled up and I finished in ‘a very large latte sort of time’. Most of this was spent on KNUCKLE DUSTER/TRUSTEE which I should have moved on from and solved with more checkers in place. Never mind, much enjoyed, especially the cryptics. COD very definitely goes to TORPEDO 😁 Also liked SERVE and the very well-hidden ENTOURAGE which made me smile as it was rather unexpected. Tried ‘bobcat’ for FAT CAT until ADDER put pay to that. LOI EXECUTIVE. I’m not sure this puzzle played to my strengths, but that’s why I liked it so much (when finished, obvs). Many thanks for the explanations of YORKER from galspray and others (didn’t have a clue, solved from wordplay only). Thanks Wurm.

  20. SCC by 20 seconds but in my defence I was distracted by a non draining integrated dishwasher I had taken to pieces and couldn’t quite muster the enthusiasm to put back together. 20 yr old Miele and got it working again but might be time for a new one.
    Just couldn’t get started, then got a few then (apologies to Pennys and Pendletons) all my pennies dropped like an avalanche at the penny arcade leaving me wondering what all the fuss was about.
    Cheers Gals (are you a very fast runner, a very fast solver or just pretty damn good at both?) and to Wurm as always a resounding YES

    1. No apologies needed! A PDM is a Good Thing 😊
      And a 20 year old dishwasher – they don’t make them like these days! Actually our Indesit is 19 years old.

  21. FOI – Creme de Menthe
    LOI – Creme de Menthe
    COD – …..

    Misdirected by large snake as adders are small, I was thinking anaconda or boa constrictor

    Aren’t the cryptics effectively biffs if there are no checkers?

    On the edge in Dover remains in Leicester

  22. Plodded along reasonably well, with a fair number of biffs, but nearly stumped (!) by LOI SERVE. Just couldn’t see it until a lengthy alphabet trawl came up.

    A tough one for me but enjoyable nevertheless. I can’t believe the solving speed of some correspondents, just amazing. By a similar TOKEN they probably can’t credit mine either.

  23. A bit like TC, although minus the dishwasher problem (touch wood), I hardly had anything to show after the first five minutes effort, and then suddenly started to write the answers in as if there was no tomorrow. The upshot was a satisfying 16min solve, with just hold-ups on Drear(y) and Apathy (when I went to school, the abbreviation for a yard was yd, never just y) preventing a sub-15. CoD to 12ac, Torpedo, for the pdm.
    As to bowlers, memory sometimes plays tricks, but I would still give the nod to Fred Trueman. He often seemed on the verge of exhaustion, before producing that spectacular delivery (‘ay lad, much too good for thee’) to send the middle stump flying.
    Invariant

  24. 7:30

    Not too tricky, just a bit slow in places – KNUCKLE-DUSTER, PRUSSIA and SERVE were my last three in.

    Thanks Galspray and Wurm

  25. Extremely hard! Approx. 80 (eighty!) minutes. And, for a long time, I thought it would end up being a DNF.

    My LOsI were EXECUTIVE, DETENTE and MIKADO, but plenty of others didn’t reveal themselves until around or after the hour mark. My struggles were caused by an inability to parse (e.g. LADDER and CREME DE MENTHE), poor GK (e.g. MIKADO and ELECTRA), limited vocabulary (e.g. DREAR) and much barking up the wrong tree. My favourite clues, however, were YORKER and TATER (what a great word!).

    Many thanks to Galspray and Wurm.

      1. I could only think of:

        “But there’s nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear, than to stand in the bar of the pub with no beer”.

        To be fair this is an exclusively Australian cultural (?) reference.

        1. I’m sure that sad sentiment would apply in Canada too! On a sidenote could or should “or” be “nor”?

          1. Oh it’s a sad sentiment anywhere, but I’m using an actual “cultural” reference. It’s from an old song that’s extremely well known in Australia but presumably unheard of beyond these shores.

            Or or nor I can’t be sure.

      1. I was logged out earlier, but have (hopefully) rectified the issue. Mrs R and I are visiting relatives and friends at the moment so, whilst I have kept up with the QCs, I haven’t posted my thoughts.

        0-2 today. probably a blessing in disguise.

  26. This one suited us. 11:21 for an interesting mix of clues, COD going to ICEBERG. Thanks to Galspray and Wurm.

  27. 8.19. I think that 17a would have been fairer if it said ‘Former militaristic state….’. – not that it caused me a delay.

  28. 19:33 here, nowhere near Wurm’s wavelength today. I entered and removed ADDER twice before all the crossers arrived and made it impossible to be anything else, but I still can’t see how “X to escape from Y” can mean “remove Y from X”.

    Thanks to Wurm and Galspray.

  29. An enjoyable tussle lasting 18:38; I thought I was headed for the Club until I convinced myself that King Edward could be a variety of potato and that YORKER must be a thing – oh cricket! Only I submitted with a typo, AADDR, ugh. Put in ADDER, took it out, put it in, took it out, saw the parsing, put it in without looking and that was my downfall. Great surface but I kept thinking no, silly, you need a word for “large” that you can remove an R from. Laughed at “princess” for ELECTRA. I had no idea about the Met men but ignored them.

    Thanks to Wurm and galspray.

  30. 11.03 For once I wasn’t delayed by the cryptic definitions. ADDER was a tempting biff but I left it until last. I didn’t think of ladder and the wording still doesn’t make sense to me. The puzzle was entertaining though. Thanks galspray and Wurm.

  31. 22:28

    Parksolve time = 51 mins. For me a median plod and a slow solve.

    Not helped by putting ENTENTE. Only when I remembered Kim did I get MIKADO and then LOI DETENTE. Also failed to parse ADDER.

    Favourite Yorker bowler? Well, I do reckon Waqar was the best, real toe breakers, but my favourite has to be Goughie.

  32. A slower finish for the end of the week, but it is a Wiggly Woo, so that’s ok!
    I liked TRUSTEE, and I thought TORPEDO was a very good clue but I felt guilty about liking it 😅 I also tried Iceland initially, and will admit to being nearly ICEBERGed by ENTOURAGE. Every *!*%* time – even when it’s sort of obvious that it’s a hidden because of the unusual collection of words, I still don’t see them 🙄
    I remember being given a cocktail in France (at the age of 14!) called a perroquet, comprising anise and peppermint cordial (much like CREME DE MENTHE) – a truly disgusting conconction that ensured that I never drank either again. But the French family I was staying with thought it was wonderful!
    13:30 FOI Mikado LOI Agreed COD Fat cat (I hope Kitty doesn’t mind!)
    Thanks Wurm and Galspray

  33. 12:07. strange crossword – quite enjoyed it though! I wonder if the setter had been to NE Scotland recently, as we had Dee and Aberdeen… (maybe Dee is the Welsh one). lots to like, I think may favourite was FAT CAT.

    thank you both.

  34. Dnf…

    I found this really hard, and struggled quite a bit with some of the more cryptic clues (which is unusual as I normally quite like them). Upon reflection, some of the clues I couldn’t get: 17ac “Prussia”, 18dn “Serve” and 2dn “Knuckle Duster” were pretty obvious. I’ll blame the virus I’ve been struggling with the last couple of weeks – the constant coughing just hurts my brain!

    FOI – 7dn “Turbot”
    LOI – Dnf
    COD – 21ac “Electra” – amusing surface.

    Thanks as usual!

  35. Biffed a few. Didn’t parse ENTOURAGE until coming here and was trying to figure it out as an anagram! COD CREME DE MENTHE. Time: 17:16 Thanks Wurm and galspray.

  36. Struggled to start with,easier after a good lunch,knuckle duster took an age,most enjoyable, FOI yorker,fav big bird Joel,closely
    followed by Waquar

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