Quick Cryptic 3081 by Joker

Author   galsprayPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

It may be just me as I’m a bit out of sorts, but I thought this was on the very challenging end of the Quickie spectrum.  It took me almost triple my median solving time to complete.

There were no real obscurities to deal with, but some complex construction required for many of the clues.  So think of it as a good springboard into attacking the 15×15 and thank Joker for the challenge!  After all, what better way is there to start your Saturday?

Or maybe you just breezed through it.  Let us know in the comments.

(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 What gets water inside? Employ scheme when it’s baking outside (10)
HOUSEPLANT – HOT (baking) “outside” [USE (employ) + PLAN (scheme)]

Not the most obvious definition and we’re off to a slow start.
8 Complaining after church has gone very cold (6)
BITING – BITCHING (complaining) after CH (church) has gone

A little surprised to see this term for complaining but it’s still in all the dictionaries. Let’s not have too much of it in the comments!
9 Weary about doctor’s tone of voice (6)
TIMBRE – TIRE (weary) “about” MB (doctor)
10 Beast roaming two thirds of Oregon (4)
OGRE – [OREG (two-thirds of OREGon)]*
11 State of stagnation far from new in barrels of oil? (8)
DOLDRUMS – OLD (far from new) in DRUMS (barrels of oil?)
12 Who breaks things left behind London museum? (6)
VANDAL – L (left) behind V AND A (London museum)
14 Car park associated with house? (6)
ESTATE – Double definition

A very subtle lift-and-separate required for car park.
16 To an extent, any fitter people running round will get trim (8)
PRETTIFY – Reverse hidden (to an extent, running around) in anY FITTER People
18 Regretting missing university’s call (4)
RING – RUING (regretting) missing U (university)
20 Time to maintain new pub (6)
TAVERN – T (time) + AVER (maintain) + N (new)
21 Stones, v. small or v. large possibly (6)
GRAVEL – (V LARGE)*
22 Inattention getting sack, perhaps, around a pit (10)
DREAMINESS – DRESS (sack, perhaps) “around” [A + MINE (pit)]
Down
2 Outstanding triumph in uphill advance (5)
OWING – WIN (triumph) in OG [GO (advance) reversed (uphill)]
3 Allowance of three points (7)
STIPEND – S (point) + TIP (point) + END (point)

S being a compass point, in case you missed the, um, point.
4 Animal regularly appearing in spring (3)
PIG – Alternate letters of (regularly appearing in) sPrInG
5 Army equipment badly blocking main road (9)
ARTILLERY – ILL (badly) “blocking” ARTERY (main road)
6 Clock, say, showing minutes in order (5)
TIMER – M (minutes) in TIER (order)
7 Concert pianist extremely quick to respond (6)
PROMPT – PROM (concert) + PT [first and last letters (extremely) of PianisT]
11 Flirtation from each and every one during ball (9)
DALLIANCE – [ALL (each and every) + I (one)] “during” DANCE (ball)
13 Something less than a major route overseas (6)
ABROAD – A B-ROAD (something less than a major route)
15 Country’s queen formerly travelling by rail? (7)
TERRAIN – ER (former queen) in TRAIN (travelling by rail)
17 Opening of the grass flower (5)
TWEED – T (opening of The) + WEED (grass)

You’ll recall from your first class in Cryptics 101 that round these parts, something that flows is a flower.
There are Tweed Rivers in Australia and the UK.  Both serve the purpose of separating us from those insufferable people on the other side, whichever side you’re on!
19 Wants what Able Baker does in radio comms? (5)
NEEDS – Homophone (in radio comms) of KNEADS (what an able baker does)

Sorry folks, the capitalisation is just there to trick you.  And me.  Which it did.
21 Brilliant cut and mounted? (3)
GEM – &lit*.  MEGA (brilliant) “cut and mounted” (truncated and reversed).

*&lit (crossword shorthand for “and literally”) describes a clue where the entire clue serves as both the definition and the wordplay.

I agonised over how to categorise this one before settling on &lit, mainly because I had “brilliant” on its own as the definition.

But you need to take the whole clue as the definition.  ie a diamond (possibly a “brilliant”) that has been cut and mounted is an example of a GEM.  The DBE (definition by example) is signalled by the question mark.

Or you could look at the clue and the G_M, shrug your shoulders and say “must be GEM”.  Either method works.

79 comments on “Quick Cryptic 3081 by Joker”

  1. I enjoyed this despite not getting inside my 6 minute target, but have to thank Galspray not only for his blog in general, but also for parsing GEM which totally eluded me

    Yes it was at the top end of of the QC equivalent of Moh’s Scale of Hardness, but it is the weekend, and theoretically most of us have more time to consider the puzzle.

    FOI TIMBRE
    LOI TWEED *
    COD GRAVEL
    TIME 6:23

    * DREAMINESS was my major hold-up, largely because I spent too long considering “Trent”, using “opening=rent” as a tenuous excuse.

  2. My lunch breaks are steadily getting longer and longer… Needed more than a bit of perseverance but got there in the end. Spent much of my time on PRETTIFY, HOUSEPLANT and TERRAIN, none of which were that tricky on reflection. Biffed then parsed STIPEND (very clever) and DREAMINESS (sack=dress?). Favourite clue, of course, NEEDS 😁 Many thanks for the blog. Thanks Joker – tricksy.

  3. My goodness me! I had hoped, after a 91 minute DNF with Cheeko yesterday, for a little light relief today. But no, it wasn’t to be. I did however reach the finish line, albeit after 77-78 minutes of proper hard graft.

    My first full pass took me 10-12 minutes, but by then I had only 5 solutions written into the grid – PIG, TIMBRE, PROMPT, RING and TAVERN. My solving pace slowed markedly after that. Many clues had to go in without parsing, not because I was racing for a time, but because I simply had no idea what was going on.

    DOLDRUMS was my LOI, after which I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

    Many thank to Galspray for the blog.

  4. DNF. I abandoned this one when I saw I had more than 30 minutes on the clock and was just sat staring at the last four in the northwest corner: BITING, OGRE, OWING and STIPEND.
    Still, an impressive puzzle. Thanks to Joker, special thanks to galspray for the blog and an extra thankyou to Invariant for explaining grass=weed, which completely passed me by

  5. LOI and COD to VANDAL. What a clever clue once the penny dropped.
    This one was hard but the puzzles earlier this week seemed to have prepared me for the battle and it was finished in just under an hour. I didn’t think it was as hard as the Snitch score indicates.
    Failed to parse STIPEND or GEM but otherwise it all made sense.
    Thanks Galspray and Joker

  6. 16:20, also found this hard for a QC but once I got warmed up I enjoyed it. Thought the 3 points clue was clever. LOI BITING took an alphabet trawl as I was looking for the missing CH at the start not in the middle, but luckily just needed to reach B and there it was

  7. I thought I was a bit on the slow side today, until I came here. Even though it’s the middle of the afternoon I’m well up the leaderboard, relatively speaking. From PIG to BITING in 15:07. Managed to parse GEM but not NEEDS. Thanks Joker and Galspray.

  8. Ooof. Might have managed my last four eventually but had other things to do. Lots of v hard but nothing wholly unfair – although the removing CH from inside a slightly obscure synonym (to me) was borderline non-QC.
    Nothing to add generally to all above. Despite the DNF I was pleased with what I did solve, and various lessons learnt.
    Effusive thanks for the blog, Galspray, much needed!

  10. 25.16 DNF. A tough one after a week away. I put in PRETTILY at the end and I’d typoed TERRIAN for three errors in total. Thanks galspray and Joker.

  11. DNF. BITING was my downfall. Got all the rest, hooray, but with quite a few the parsing was a mystery!

  12. That felt like running across a slippery log expecting to crash and knock my teeth out at any moment, but somehow miraculously making it to the other side.

    08:29 is nothing special but today feels like a Miraculous Day.

    Many thanks Joker and gallers.

  13. As a newbie, relieved to see this was difficult for this crowd as well.

    Can someone explain how car park works as ESTATE? Still can’t see it. Is there something an American wouldn’t know about going on, or am I just being slow?

    1. A station wagon in the US is an Estate car in UK.
      A park associated with a (grand) house would be an Estate.
      Double defn (as Galspray says) but you have to separate ‘car’ and ‘park’. Sneaky!

      1. I will just add that “estate” as a car, vehicle, etc. comes up a lot in these puzzles. I added it to my internal dictionary of British thingies early on.

  14. Wowsers!

    Joker has really done it this time, providing an entertaining head-scratcher that took me 30:52 to finish. To be fair though, a lot of it was my ineptitude in entering DALLLIACE when I meant DALLIANCE. After repairing that I was so flummoxed that I couldn’t see PRETTIFY and finally got it by attempting to parse it as “somewhat” = PRETTY containing a mysterious IF.

    In my garden, grass is a weed (grrrrrr), but in general? (Oh, cannabis, thank you Invariant.)

    FOI OGRE, LOI PRETTIFY (a great clue). Could not parse NEEDS at all, at all. The rude BITING, the very British VANDAL and ESTATE were excellent, but COD to STIPEND.

    Thanks Joker and galspray.

  15. 13:24 here, bucking the trend by being faster than normal for me. I particularly liked STIPEND and BITING, which were my last two in.

    Thanks to Joker and Galspray.

  16. 50 minutes!

    That was rather tricky.

    I note the quicksnitch has this second hardest since records began.

  17. I seem to be enjoying the comforts of the SCC more recently these days, with 21:24 today. It started well with HOUSEPLANT coming fairly quickly and I was lucky to hit upon the rather surprising wordplay for BITING without too much trouble. I was unsure about PROMPT (which does not mean “quick to respond” as far as my copy of Chambers is concerned) and things went downhill from there. Generally a bit too much for me, I’m afraid.

    Thank you for the blog!

  18. Had to resort to a synonym trawl to get biting, but otherwise a steady enough solve for me. Must have been on wavelength as I gor through most of it no slower than usual. Have masses of couch grass to wrestle with in the veg garden, so didn’t need to think of the drug ref to get to weed. I really enjoyed this – tough, but fair with some nice clues.

    FOI Pig
    LOI Biting
    COD Dolddrums

    Thanks Joker and Galspray

  19. Massive DNF. Despite abandoning and coming back for another go, I could only manage half of it. Way too hard for a QC. Disheartening.

  20. I was only a few seconds quicker than the prize. No obscure words but as said some constructions which I thought were a bit beyond the QC or at least what I have encountered before. But maybe I’m just a bit tired after a long day.

    COD HOUSEPLANT

    Thanks blogger and setter.

  21. I have no access to the Saturday QC, other than to come here and reveal the clues one by one, trying to solve them without checkers but knowing the straight definition and the wordplay.

    I got about 6 today, my lowest ever. From that I can conclude that I would have had a 60 minute DNF or something similar had I done this normally.

    I did spend 3 hours on the Jumbo and got about 2/3, reinforcing my firm conviction that I do not have the right type of brain for this and never will. Another dismal day in cryptic crossword land. The more time I put in, the more frustrated I become. ☹️

  22. Only 167 in the table and I made it into the top 90 for the first time ever, with a sub-19-minute finish. Thoroughly enjoyed this while solving, even before I discovered my time wasn’t woefully slow, as I had first feared. COD STIPEND for outside-the-box wordplay.

  23. Took a long time with this today, often thinking “ugh, no, I’ll finish this later” and tossing my phone aside, and it wasn’t until my fourth run through of it that I actually got them all in – at 50 mins way over my target but that seems to be the case with most people today. The only ones I couldn’t parse were GEM, NEEDS and STIPEND – for that last, my mind immediately went to PENALTY (correct number of letters, gets you three points in rugby), and so my mind was then stuck thinking in sports mode for it. Today’s lesson for me: the pre-NATO radio alphabet, even if it was just there as a misdirection. Thanks Joker and Galspray!

  24. This was hard…although I did finish! But I had to go away and come back to get the last few. I do the 15×15 almost every day so I was fine with the difficulty level, but I think this is the hardest quickie that I’ve done (I don’t do it every day).

  25. There have been quite a few stinkers recently? We found it impossible but as many here finished it without turning a hair, I think we might be in the wrong place.

  26. 12:51

    Yes, this did feel like 15×15 clues stuffed into a QC grid, but no less enjoyed for it (by me at least). I struggled to get a foothold anywhere on the grid really, until a few went in at the SE corner. HOUSEPLANT popped up giving some useful first letters, after which it was more a case of filling in the gaps. I too, finished with the tricky BITING, having enjoyed TWEED, PROMPT and STIPEND particularly.

    Thanks Galspray and Joker

  27. I found this one really hard to get into. I’ve come back to it several times since starting yesterday and have eventually finished. I’m too stubborn to give up!
    Thanks Galspray and Joker

      1. In my dreams… it’s a very old school boy joke….

        First woman: My husband is a ship’s captain, he works for Cunard…

        Second woman: My husband’s an engineer, he works quite hard too.

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