Quick Cryptic # 2994 by Joker

Author   DoofenschmirtzPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

 

16:09 here, proudly in 5th place on the leaderboard as I start writing this (of, um, five). Most of this went in reasonably quickly, but I shot myself in the foot by choosing the wrong part of TITBIT for 22 down and not spotting my error until after I had done a whole alphabet trawl for 22 across.

The full parsing of BEARABLE escapes me, and I really hope I’ve missed something in the parsing of BIT, since I do not like the way I’ve currently got it. [Edit: I had indeed missed the much better way of parsing this clue, details updated below.]

Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, anagram fodder indicated like (this)*.

Across
1 Dead month at the end of the year went slowly (8)
DECEASED – DEC (December), EASED (went slowly, as in “eased into”).
6 Dread musical ability going after fever’s onset (4)
FEAR – EAR (musical ability) after the first letter [onset] of Fever.
8 Call back youth around one (4)
DIAL – LAD (youth), reversed [back] including [around] I (one).
9 Word differently with hearers confused about page (8)
REPHRASE – (hearers)* including P for page.
10 Permit the growing of crops that can be sustained (8)
BEARABLE – ARABLE is clearly ‘the growing of crops’, but how ‘permit’ leads to BE is a mystery to me. Unless I’ve totally misunderstood the clue, of course.

I look forward to the hive mind telling me what I’ve missed.
12 Small child’s slide (4)
SKID – S for small + KID (child).
13 March is leaving Shangri-La, say (6)
PARADE – PARADisE (Shangri-La, say), with IS leaving, literally.
16 Upset fish in tin (6)
SHAKEN – HAKE (fish) in SN (the chemical symbol for tin).

I was confident that “tin” would be “can”, so I pencilled in the C and the N on my first pass, which caused a problem for 5 down.
17 Splash out on grabbing ring float (4)
BUOY – BUY (splash out on) including [grabbing] O for ring.

I was looking for something a bit more dramatic for “splash out on” than the slightly pedestrian “buy”, but the crossers made it obvious what this had to be. Thank heavens this wasn’t a homonym clue, as this word is said dramatically differently on different sides of the Atlantic.
18 Cruel coalmine I bar (8)
PITILESS – PIT (coalmine), I, LESS (bar).

I’ll confess, I have been here for a good 5 minutes trying to come up with a sentence where ‘bar’ can be replaced by ‘less’ and have failed. I can see the commonality in meaning, but I think it is a bit of a stretch for the Quickie.
21 Line one item of clothing not having right tough fibre (8)
LIGAMENT – L (line), I (one), GArMENT (item of clothing) with the R removed [not having right].
22 Embarrassing mistake docking bird’s tail (4)
BOOB – BOOBy (bird) without its last letter [docking tail].
23 Charge including time for outdoor function (4)
FETE – FEE (charge) including T for time.
24 Prison officer reported very little inspection (8)
SCRUTINY – SCRU (sounds like [reported] ‘screw’, slang for a prison officer), TINY (very little).
Down
2 The best part of A-level I teach (5)
ELITE – hidden in A-levEL I TEach.
3 What holds fishing line that’s run out for fish (3)
EEL – rEEL (what holds fishing line) with the R removed [run out].
4 Perhaps rose a short time in submarine (5)
SHRUB – HR (hour, a short time) in SUB.

I don’t fancy the idea of being in a submarine at all, so I suspect an hour would feel like a long time to me.
5 Lower deck is holding record (7)
DEPRESS – DRESS (deck, as in ‘out’) containing EP (record).

“Record” is often LP or EP.
6 Anticipate topping everything with wood (9)
FORESTALL – FOREST (wood) on top of [err, topping] ALL (everything).
7 Gold — something generating interest — is a favourable sign (7)
AUSPICE – AU (chemical symbol for gold), SPICE (something generating interest).

I don’t think I knew this meaning of AUSPICE. It is much more common in the plural with the meaning of “with the help or protection”, as in “under NATO’s auspices”.
11 Prepare servant verbally for immediate employment (5-4)
READY-MADE – READY (prepare), MADE, which sounds like MAID (servant), the homophone indicator being “verbally”.
14 Disparaging area public transport one has (7)
ABUSIVE – A (area), BUS (public transport) I’VE (one has).

For the last part, think of how the King would say he owned something. I had a MER at the definition: ‘abusive’ in my book is much stronger than ‘disparaging’.
15 Train like a former Times reporter? (7)
EXPRESS – Ex-press.

The most chestnutty of chestnuts, I feel.
19 Teacher taking up harmful alcohol? That’s not good (5)
TUTOR – ROTgUT (harmful alcohol) reversed [taken up, since this is a down clue] and minus the G [not good].
20 Laugh at son over trite humour (5)
SCORN – S for son above CORN (trite humour, as in ‘corny’).
22 Bird driving another away in scrap (3)
BIT – TitBIT (scrap) with TIT (a bird) having been removed [driving away].

Both BIT and BIRD for ‘girlfriend, companion’ seem to me to be well past their Use By Date. I’d be delighted if there is a way to parse this that doesn’t leave this slight bad taste in my mouth.

I tried to parse it with SCRAP being the definition (as in ‘a scrap of paper’) but I couldn’t see a way to make it work without having SCRAP do double duty because it has to be interpreted as TITBIT to make the wordplace sensible.
22 Bird driving another away in scrap (3)
BIT – BITTERN (a bird) with TERN (another bird) having been removed [driving away].

Thanks to the early commenters for giving me this far more palatable parsing of this clue.

88 comments on “Quick Cryptic # 2994 by Joker”

  1. I guess if you tell a field to “Be arable!” you are telling it to permit the growing of crops.
    To get to BIT I thought BITTERN and then eliminated the TERN.

  3. What curryowen and DramS said about BIT (so ‘scrap’ is the def), and about BEARABLE: ‘arable’ means ‘permitting the growing of crops’, so arable land is land that permits etc. 8:20.

  4. DNF beaten by 3 clues in the SE corner. I considered TIT but couldn’t parse it, so I didn’t have many checkers for SCRUTINY (and NHO screw for a prison officer). BOOB for a mistake is not something I’m familiar with, although I had parsed the clue correctly, I just couldn’t think of the right bird.
    Even without these clues this was not an easy QC I don’t think. Lots of very wordy clues which I always find tricky to unpack.

    1. Might not be as common now, but many a police series in the 70’s and 80’s described prison officers as screws – in the UK at least. Not sure of the origin.

      1. Screw is an old slang word for a key. Prison guards have been known as ‘screws’ at least since the early 19th century.

      2. I’m pretty sure it comes from the punishment of having to turn a wooden handle, where the resistance to motion could be increased by adjusting a ‘screw’ ?

  5. 10.00 on the dot, quite a tricky puzzle with some non-QC tendencies. My LOI was ligament, I was thrown off by the word fibre, and in the same area BOOB and TUTOR (I guessed it but the parsing was elusive) took a bit more time. Thanks Joker and Doof.

  6. Couldn’t finish it. Made life hard by getting my vowels muddled in BUOY. Needing public transport with an O at second letter is tough. Now know that Shangri-La is paradise but didn’t and couldn’t bring PARADE to mind for a march and also couldn’t do BIT – I only considered fights and binning – or BOOB.

    I’d have tried to claim I finished but as Terry once said to June if you make a boob the best thing to do is make a clean breast of it.

    1. That might explain why Terry and June repeats now come with a trigger warning!

  7. 16 minutes as far as I went, but this was a technical DNF. As happens so often, I became blocked by two intersecting answers (both referring to birds today) and had to resort to aids in order to break through. The one I looked up was BOOB which without the first letter checker was never going to occur to me as I’ve only vaguely heard of BOOBY as a bird as opposed to its other meanings. Then with B and T as checkers, 22dn had to be BIT which made me uneasy because I only saw the wordplay as deleted by Doofers and could hardly believe The Times had allowed it to stand. I was relieved to come here and find an innocent explanation of the wordplay.

    An enjoyable solve until I hit the buffers.

    1. Thank heavens I’m not the only person who saw the possible dodgy parsing. I’ve been questioning myself…

  8. 18:38. Less as in all bar one?
    Pretty tricky methinks.
    Thanks Doofs for blogging a challenging puzzle today. Half parsed Bit and Bearable.
    Joker you are a card

    1. We used all bar one as our example too. Reminds me of a friend who suggested we went for lunch to the new Italian restaurant in town “Albarone” pronounced Al-ba-rone-ee. Took us a while realise she meant All Bar One 😂

      2. 😂 similar to my comment last week about an innuendo being an Italian suppository 😱

        1. Indeed! picking up from another recent thread, I think innuendo is “autological” 🙂

  9. I joined the TIT/BIT team and several others I couldn’t parse. Liked FORESTALL and SHAKEN. DNF.
    Thanks Doofers and Joker

  10. Oh yes and what CurryO Drams and Kevin said makes sense… could this land be arable or would it be better suited for solar panels?

  11. 12:03 I found this on the hard side for a QC
    I did get the bittern though!

  12. Tricky in places but all gettable, although I joined some distinguished company in being unable to parse BIT.
    I have Patrick O’Brian to thank for remembering ‘booby’ as I seem to recall Maturin getting very excited over spotting the blue footed variety and the name stuck as it appealed to my childish sense of humour.
    Started with DECEASED and finished with BIT in 8.58.
    Thanks to Doofers and Joker

    1. Me too on O’Brian. I almost included a comment about the “blue-footed booby” in the blog, before deciding it was already wordy enough.

  13. DNF, with several guessed but not parsed and the BIT/BOOB combo not even guessed. Did not parse the BE- in BEARABLE (for a long time I wanted the clue to start with LET-) did not see Less for Bar in PITILESS, took ages to equate Spice with something generating interest and DK that meaning of AUSPICE. So whatever wavelength is, I didn’t come close to it today.

    Many thanks Doofers for the blog. Not an easy one to be given to do.

  14. We like a Joker but recognise it will be tough, and so it was. A finish at 27.59. Don’t get be arable either.

    A morning with Mrs RH biffing some great answers for me to unpick the parsing (eventually)

    Liked ready made best, oh that kind of employment!

    Thanks Joker, and Doofers

  15. DNF – gave up with five incomplete. Saw what some might be, but couldn’t parse well enough to pitch them in. BE-ARABLE? Major eyebrow raise. Still don’t see that “be”, which is an instruction, can really equate to permit, or allowing.
    If I buy a potato am I splashing out on it?
    Saw both answers but didn’t like either and lost interest in finishing a couple more.
    Sorry Joker, you weren’t much fun for me today. Grateful to Doofs for the blog, and the hive mind for the further thoughts.

    1. No, but if you splash out on a diamond ring I’m afraid you can’t avoid buying it!

    2. ‘Be’ here isn’t an instruction: to be arable=to permit the etc.

      2. Ok, and thank you for the elucidation, but it’s still a “nah” for me.

  16. DNF. Stuck at the end, not knowing that Shangri La = paradise, and eventually biffing PALACE more in hope than expectation.
    The Quitch has eleven reference solvers with errors today. I wonder what errors the other ten made.

    Thanks Doofers and Joker

  17. DNF for us, too – and time pressed so stopped at the door of the SCC after 20 minutes.
    At that point – BEARABLE, PARADE, BOOB and BIT remained.
    Am being slow with CALL = DIAL?
    Some clever clues, particularly 13 A and 21 A ( not that we correctly parsed them until wise words of Doofers).
    Thank you Joker!

      1. Thankyou!… always so obvious when someone else points it out… : )

  18. Very clever but I didn’t really enjoy this. I finished it and parsed all except BIT (and I biffed LESS for BID but with no confidence). DIAL is a but old-fashioned these days; our old phone with a dial has been in the loft for decades. Prod would be more accurate.
    An interesting puzzle but not in the correct place.
    Thanks to doofers for a valiant, honest blog.

  19. Got there after 40 minutes but with a few unparsed guesses which is unusual for a QC. These were BEARABLE, PITILESS, DEPRESS and BIT.
    Also failed to properly parse PARADE (nice one) and TUTOR. Thank you Doofers for the blog explaining these.

  21. Dnf…

    Apart from misspelling “Buoy” (always seems to happen), I struggled with the SE corner – particularly the parsing of 19dn “Tutor”.

    The rest went in fairly steadily, although nothing seemed straightforward.

    FOI – 8ac “Dial”
    LOI – Dnf
    COD – 24ac “Scrutiny”

    Thanks as usual!

  22. 13.24

    Thought this was tricky (which it is) but comparable times suggest I was pre-breakfast (also true). Got the BITTERN thing having almost seen one down here in Somerset (another story) and BOOBY also from O’Brian. On which subject have just started the Tolstoy autobiography. Interesting but very detailed.

    Thanks Doofers and Joker

  23. A good test as usual from The Joker, and to the usual high standard. I would have finished inside target if I hadn’t spent the best part of a minute on my LOI SCRUTINY, finishing eventually in 10.10. I really don’t know why it took me so long as I thought of the SCREW derivation quite quickly. I fortunately didn’t fall into the TIT/BIT trap mainly because the alternative didn’t occur to me, and the correct parsing came to me soon enough.

  24. DNF
    I seem to be the only one to have had the very plausible SLIP, for “small child’s slide”. Still looks perfectly OK to me, as in “a mere slip of a girl”.

    This was in addition to just not being able to get PARADE, I guessed that it needed the IS removed, but could not come up with a plausible category of which Shanghai-La was an example.

    Likewise didn’t figure out BIT.

    1. You’re not the only one. Seems equally valid to me, though in retrospect the addition of small is a pointer.

      1. I had slip too. I got all the other ones and even parsed Bit, so that’s very annoying!

  25. Well sort of finished it, but so many guesses and biffs, dependent on the good Doofers to explain everything – thank you! LOI READY-MADE.
    BEARABLE: well my mind was on exactly the same lines as yours, Doofers, and (in addition to your concerns) slightly doubtful about ARABLE (adj.) = the growing (noun). Can anyone parse it better?
    Got away with BOOB, then – NHO bird BOOBy. And these birds! Wouldn’t have jumped to BITTERN in a long time.
    Ah – got away with TUTOR, too! Did wonder whether it might be rotgut, but NHO.
    So: thank you, Joker – all green today!

  26. Based on the comments of others I will take my 13.48 as being an ok day – could be one of those days where SNITCH doesn’t quite reflect true difficulty due to the number of DNFs being reported above.

    Off at a gallop in NW corner but then slowed to a crawl. Thanks Doofers for explanation of TUTOR, PARADE and DEPRESS which I didn’t parse in realtime.

    Reasonable puzzle from the Joker – at the end of the day they were all gettable with no NHOs. LOI for me was BIT but I did spot it in the end without resorting to a guess.

  27. Did finish! Made heavy weather of this but got there in the end, all correct. But feel I should have been much quicker on the uptake. CNP TUTOR. (Rotgut!). After much pondering, I did think of BITtern. Those terns, they’re very popular with setters.
    I hopped/plodded around the grid and every time I solved a clue the only crossers to appear were vowels.
    LOI BEARABLE, unparsed. Liked READY MADE, SHAKEN, DIAL, LIGAMENT.
    COD SCRUTINY. Thanks vm, Doofers.

  28. Problems with BIT, BOOB, BEARABLE and PITILESS, so plenty of headscratching needed to limp home in over 28 minutes. Not easy!

  29. 8:51

    Made it to the end in a roundabout way – SCORN then BOOB and finally BIT, thinking it was something to do with TITBIT but not understanding how – wouldn’t have thought of BITTERN I don’t think. I liked READY-MADE and PITILESS.

    Thanks Doofers and Joker

  30. Steady romp through, very enjoyable thanks. Only held up for a moment by having BOUY – whoops.
    I think some of the gripes are a bit harsh. “Bit on the side” I think is still fairly common parlance for an illicit girlfriend. Buy doesn’t always mean splash out, but splash out always does mean buy. “Be” I was happy with as in “let it be”, or “leave it be”, to permit something, a bit weak perhaps, but we have seen many weaker ones. Calling someone’s best effort crap is both abusive and disparaging, certainly close enough for crossword land.

  31. Ooh, that was a little too clever in parts. My particular stumbling blocks were BEARABLE, BUOY, SCRUTINY, SCORN and LOI BOOB. 11:18 and thanks Doofers

  32. Joker back to his/her brilliant best after a few tamer ones recently. Tricky to choose a COD as there are so many good ones, but I’ll pick READY MADE cos it made me smile.
    Great crossword, super blog, thanks Joker and Doof

  33. Re shangri-la, I see that the Chinese have renamed one of their towns that to drum up tourists!

  34. Really struggled to start this, (couldn’t even get some of the short ones), so put it down and read the paper before coming back for a second sitting. I then saw quite a few of those I had been stuck on (Parad[is]e, Tutor, Bearable etc), before falling at the last when I frustratedly shoved in Bat for the bird, having just spent an age getting Boob(y). CoD to Ligament for the pdm. Invariant

  35. Thanks Doofenschmirtz and Joker.
    10a Bearable I was foxed by Be=permit, perhaps “let it be” is relevant? (Thanks to the Beatles.)
    16a Shaken, I had the same problem as the Doof, writing “can” prematurely.
    I did correctly parse 22d Bit(tern) but felt far from confident because it’s so unusual and I’m not 100% that the clue works.
    Pretty tricky, but enjoyable.

  36. A resounding DNF. Too difficult by far for me.
    As the quitch is currently 126 I won’t beat myself up.
    Thanks for the blog.

    1. I’m with you there. Normally I’m in the SCC. Today barely 50% done . . . And some of the speedy solvers wondering about the clues!

  37. Back after a break, this took me 16 minutes.
    I spent time on the parsing of both BEARABLE and BIT without fully getting there.
    LOI SHAKEN.
    David

  38. That was definitely tricky! Apart from ELITE, EEL and DIAL my NW corner stayed blank until almost the end. Eventually DEPRESS and DECEASED sprang into view and the rest followed with BEARABLE partially understood. I can just about see it now. That left BIT and BOOB to sort out. BOOB came first, then I tried to parse BIT from the titbit direction and submitted with crossed fingers. Glad there’s a proper parsing, but it didn’t even cross my mind! 13:36. Thanks Joker and Doofers.

  39. DNF

    Beaten all ends up by the SE corner with the intersecting BIT and BOOB.

  41. Half of this went in easily and half was a big struggle. Could only see tit for bit, but couldn’t understand it. I guessed that it was a word meaning containing tit and another bird that I had to remove, but couldn’t do it, would never have got bittern tbh. The crossing boob was also unfinished for me, never heard of a bird called a booby and only vaguely aware that boob is an (unused) word for embarrassing mistake. Depress also took forever even though I could see exactly how the clue would work and that I needed a 5 letter word for deck around ep, but dress needed all the checking letters before I could think of it. Never heard of auspice, thought it might be something like that, obviously beginning aus and I was thinking of words like auspicious, but didn’t know the word auspice, and spice for “something generating interest” was fairly unguessable without checking letters (stock or share seemed obvious but didn’t make a word). Took me way too long to get eel, dial, shaken and skid, poor performance! Happy to work out forestall immediately despite not knowing the word.

  42. Challenging I would say but we did OK with 14:59, helped by being familiar with all the required birds. Our POI was BEARABLE, where we were reasonably confident with the answer but didn’t get the ‘BE’ bit so thanks all, and especially Kevin, for the discussion above. LOI was PARADE which went in solely on the definition with fingers very tightly crossed. I’d considered heaven and nirvana but fell short of paradise so lucky in the end I guess. Thanks, Doofers and Joker.

  43. Struggled through this in 24 minutes which, given some of the comments above, I was reasonably happy with. Couldn’t parse BEARABLE, PARADE or TUTOR – thanks Doofers. It helped that matters ornithological are one of my few areas of expertise as booby and bittern do not exactly spring to mind.

    FOI – 6ac FEAR
    LOI – 22ac BOOB
    CODs – 24ac SCRUTINY and 6dn FORESTALL.

    Thanks to Joker and Doofers.

  44. 14.45 That was tough. LOI EEL. All parsed except for TUTOR and BEARABLE. Thanks Doofers and Joker.

  45. DNF, despite 50+ minutes of hard graft, after throwing in the towel with BOOB and BIT unsolved and DEPRESS, BEARABLE, PARADE and TUTOR unparsed. Several other clues (e.g. LIGAMENT, SCRUTINY and SCORN) took several minutes each to unpick. All very disappointing, really, especially given that my first four clues (DECEASED, FEAR, DIAL and EEL) all went in within the first minute.

    Now to read everyone’s comments above and to find out if I was the only one to find this too challenging.

    Thanks to Doofers and Joker.

  46. 15:59. TUTOR, PITILESS, LIGAMENT, PARADE, SHAKEN, SCRUTINy- all great fun!

  47. Argh, having a tough week. Did not finish, couldn’t find LIGAMENT and got tired of looking. DNK BOOB for mistake either, part of why I got fed up; I submitted to fate and threw it in, but had no further motivation. I can’t claim I never saw “screw” for prison guard, but the bell it rang was very, very faint. It took a long time to read BEARABLE as BE ARABLE = “permit the growing of crops” but I did get there and I make it my COD. Also liked DEPRESS for its misleading “deck”.

    Thanks to Joker for the schooling and to Doof for the entertaining blogging.

  48. 30 min finish but read blog nervously as was unconvinced by my last 2 in Depress and Shaken. Pleasantly surprised to see all good. Thanks Doof and Joker

  49. Needed the blog today! Many thanks D. Got there in the end but couldn’t parse TUTOR (NHO rotgut – it was gut rot in our house 😆), BIT (thought of titbit), or the BE in BEARABLE (which I didn’t understand until Kevin’s comment above). Thought LIGAMENT and SCRUTINY were clever, but COD to SKID which I found deceptively tricky. Thanks Joker. A toughie.

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