Quick Cryptic 3145 by Mara

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Quality puzzle from Mara, about average difficulty.

Some lovely things on show today, with the trickier things tempered by five or six long anagrams to keep things ticking along. I think my favourite was the neatly-constructed PULL UP.

We have a couple of down clues at the very end, with NIECE and NUT, that are about as chestnutty as a couple of chestnuts can hope to get: this tallies with the theory that setters (as well as solvers) can sometimes run out of steam a bit towards the end, so can be a good place to look for an easier clue. (Of course, if it’s your first time seeing said chestnut, it’s simply a good clue.)

I finished up in 5:09, and much enjoyed it – many thanks to Mara!

Across
1 Provider of food feeding endless tea to nurse? (7)
CATERER – TE (“endless” tea) fed to CARER (nurse)
5 Boy in lift? (4)
JACK – double definition.
7 Shattered, bound to keep resting at first (5)
TIRED – TIED (bound) to keep R (Resting “at first”)
8 US state partly over Montana (7)
VERMONT – “Partly” oVER MONTana
10 Observe letter that’s read out? (3)
SEE – spoken the same as the letter C
11 All at sea on certain vessel (9)
CONTAINER – anagram (all at sea) of ON CERTAIN
13 Keep Territorial Army in control (6)
RETAIN – TA in REIN (control)
14 Girl writing story about idiot (6)
LASSIE – write LIE (story) about ASS (idiot). LASS derives from the Old Norse lasqar, meaning unmarried.
17 Naples Uni developed strip of land (9)
PENINSULA – anagram (developed) of NAPLES UNI
19 Return of figure after tax (3)
NET – return/reverse TEN (figure)
20 Forever fashionable ultimately, navy with bluish-green trim (7)
ETERNAL – E (fashionablE “ultimately”), RN (Royal Navy = Navy) with TEAL (bluish-green) going around (ie, providing a “trim” for it)
22 Good lord and soldier — royal favourite? (5)
CORGI – COR! (Good lord!) and GI (soldier). The breed favoured by ERII, and possibly others.
23 Construction in one’s tree? (4)
NEST – “in” oNES Tree
24 Overcome, minister has filled bucket (7)
PREVAIL – REV. (minister) has filled PAIL (bucket)
Down
1 Char’s teapot broken — disaster! (11)
CATASTROPHE – anagram (broken) of CHARS TEAPOT
2 Huge amount to lease out, accommodating first of residents (7)
TORRENT – TO, RENT (lease out) accommodating R (“first” of Residents)
3 Fall on cue, dirt all over the place (9)
REDUCTION – anagram (all over the place) of ON CUE DIRT
4 A grape plant south of river in gorge (6)
RAVINE – A, VINE (grape plant) south of R(iver)
5 Pot slightly open, lid off (3)
JAR – AJAR (slightly open), “lid off”. AJAR is a corruption of “on char” meaning “in the act of shutting”, with char being an obsolete word for return/backward movement.
6 Top   money once (5)
CROWN – double definition
9 Others in trailer scattered on the ground (11)
TERRESTRIAL – REST (others) in an anagram (scattered) of TRAILER
12 A menacing high roller? (9)
AVALANCHE – cryptic definition
15 Grain, as brewed for alcoholic drink (7)
SANGRIA – anagram (brewed) of GRAIN AS
16 Stop — the same thing capsizing? (4,2)
PULL UP – a palindrome, hence the same thing capsizing/reversing. To PULL UP, in the sense of a vehicle coming to a stop somewhere.
18 Relative somewhere in the south of France, we hear? (5)
NIECE – “we hear” the same as NICE (the city).
21 Head  idiot (3)
NUT – double definition

82 comments on “Quick Cryptic 3145 by Mara”

  1. Did try NOB for ‘head idiot’.

    Did all of these okay, couldn’t get AVALANCHE. Idk, is the joke that the clue sounds like a mean person at a casino?

  2. 15min. CONTAINER and AVALANCHE held me up at the end.
    First the extra-long anagrind “All at sea” confused me. Then it took me a few minutes to work out the “high roller” cryptic definition. (“What rolls/spins high and is a menace? A hurricane? A drone?…”)
    Even now I’m not sure I understand. Are avalanches associated with a rolling motion?

    I’m often slow with anagrams, so it took a while to arrange REDUCTION and TERRESTRIAL into position. (Also to convince myself that 12d wasn’t “A menacing” anagrammed.)

    Thanks Mara and rolytoly.

  3. Thanks Roly, spent a long while at the end trying to parse ETERNAL and got nowhere near seeing what ‘trim’ was doing in the clue. Also couldn’t separate ‘forever’ from ‘fashionable’. Mara got me good there. Flew out the blocks with 9 (nine) on the first pass of acrosses but that still left gaps at the bottom that were troublesome to the end. Needed ETERNAL to finally see what PULL UP had to be – figured out how it worked but couldn’t summon the letters and Elvis pesky Costello kept unhelpfully singing Pump It Up in my head as I pondered. All green in 11.57.

  4. 8:34. Mostly fine, although TEAL didn’t come readily to mind in the construction of ETERNAL. LOI AVALANCHE – I think of them sliding rather than rolling – but with those crossers it had to be.
    Thanks Mara and rolytoly

  5. A very rapid 6:49, with only my LOI AVALANCHE taking time. Put in from the checkers in the end, but I’m still not sure I understand the reference to high rollers.

    Many thanks Roly for the blog.

      1. I think of them sliding rather than rolling, even if the general appearance is somewhat tumbling. Certainly it is sliding that initiates one, shearing between snow layers.

        1. I’m no expert, but I believe once they gain momentum they adopt a wave like formation down the hill, as the velocity of the snow at the top will differ from that underneath – hence the rolling/tumbling effect.

    2. I dont either. Even after reading wiki on waves and avalanches I am less convinced than ever.

  6. Caught out by a couple of Mara’s well disguised misdirections. Finished in a pleasing 15.38 after spending 2 mins on LOI avalanche before Mrs RH pulled it from nowhere. Liked pull up, having spotted the palindrome indicator and with the final p and enumeration, it was a write in.

    Thanks Mara, and Roly

  7. Made good progress through this until hitting the buffers with the PULL UP/ETERNAL combination.
    Finished in 7.21.
    Thanks to Rolytoly and Mara

  9. Today I found out I have been spelling and pronouncing TERRESTRIAL without the final R all my life but the clue kept me right which gave me the I in CORGI followed by LOI AVALANCHE.
    COD to CORGI but PULL UP was a close second.
    27.02
    Thanks Mara and Roly.

    1. You are not alone – ‘it won’t fit!’ I exclaimed in alarm, before counting available ‘Rs’ and realising that three R’s were all part of the standard plan….gosh… well, there we are. News to me.

  10. 13:10
    Never really got going, picked them off randomly as checkers appeared.

    Thought AVALANCHE was anagram of “A MENACING”, with “high” as the indicator.

    LOI PREVAIL

  11. Very friendly and fun, thank you, Mara. CATASTROPHE was easy, having been 1a in the 15×15 just last Friday. Thanks Roly for explaining the TEAL round RN. LOI CORGI.

  12. 13:22, with my LOI AVALANCHE taking the last few minutes. Only when I had got pen and paper to try and make an anagram of A MENACING did I realise that I had one A too few and needed to change my thinking.

    Thanks Roly and Mara

  13. 15.28 (as per most days, broadly echoing the RoundaboutHere team). Smiled at JAR and PULL UP. LOI CROWN – could not get coin to move on…
    Fun to do.
    Thank you Mara and RolyToly

  14. I think of a nut as being an eccentric rather than an idiot. I put it in with fingers crossed, although ‘nit’ (a head louse) would have worked just as well. When I was at junior school in the 1950s, we were regularly visited by ‘Nitty Norah’, a nurse charged with checking our heads for lice. A glamorous job indeed!

    2. We had a visit from her, every year, as well. Even when I was five, I thought there was a risk in her using the same comb, to check every head in the class. Maybe, even, every pupil, in the school.

  15. Also took a while with AVALANCHE as also misled into thinking it was an anagram. Lots of things to enjoy. 8:44.

  16. AVALANCHE LOI as I was also trying to make it an anagram. An enjoyable puzzle today. NEST a neat clue. Thanks Roly for explaining derivation of AJAR.

  18. A good QC with plenty of PDMs for me. LOI was CROWN.
    The excellent anagrams dropped into place and I finished in 15 mins. I didn’t parse everything (didn’t see TEAL in ETERNAL) and I needed the crossers for AVALANCHE so Roly’s good blog was appreciated.
    Thanks to Mara for a fine puzzle.

  19. I sped down the LHS but came to a crawl on the right. Missed the hidden for VERMONT but biffed it from MT and ON. Finally ground to a halt with LOI AVALANCHE which I got in the end from alphabet trawling the remaining letters. 22 minute solve which was disappointing as I thought I was on the way to a sub 20 solve. Taking my usual corner seat.
    Like PULL UP and more.
    Thanks Roly and Mara.

  20. 23:40. I found this to be on the harder side, despite the couple of chestnuts. Like several others I biffed AVALANCHE and didn’t see the clever PULL UP until late (LOI).

  21. 9:34 for the solve. That was fun and like most others above – LOI AVALANCHE. My daughter spent a year at Naples Uni as part of her languages degree so particularly enjoyed that clue even if I couldn’t unravel it immediately. COD NEST.

    Thanks to Rolytoly and Mara

    PS 5th clue on today’s Cryptic Quintagram is worth the price of admission.

  22. Spurred on by a WhatsApp from eldest son, who’d completed this in 05:27, I decided to try for speed. Alas I couldn’t match him, held up by PULL UP (I tried hard to justify my first thought, “turn up”) and LOI ETERNAL (the “trim” device fooled me completely).

    A very enjoyable puzzle, with COD to the overcome minister at 24a. All done in 05:47 for a Silver Medal Day. Many thanks Mara and Roly.

  23. Relatively straightforward with most answers going in on first read, resulted in a finishing time of 7.47. I was held up at the end due to the fact that I biffed RADIATION for 3dn. This naturally gave me problems with 11ac, and it finally dawned on me that it would be sensible to check 3dn. It was quickly obvious that REDUCTION was the answer, and CONTAINER and finally AVALANCHE were straightforward. More haste less speed yet again.

  24. It must be a wavelength thing! I hurtled through the QC today with just AVALANCHE requiring a few checkers and my LOI PULL UP a moment to parse. Thanks Roly 5:14

  25. 11 minutes. Not too many problems, with PULL UP being the one to take me out to over ten minutes, trying to make ‘capsizing?’ the def. Like Martinů, CATASTROPHE was a write-in after last Friday’s ‘disaster’ in the 15×15. Favourite was the cryptic def for AVALANCHE.

    Thanks to Mara and Roly

  26. I was on track for an average time until I was brought to a halt by my last two, CORGI and AVALANCHE. This pushed me into the SCC with a 22 minute solve. All parsed except AVALANCHE which I didn’t really understand (not one of Mara’s finest imo).

    LOI – 7ac TIRED
    LOI – 12dn AVALANCHE
    COD – 16dn PULL UP

    Thanks to Mara and Rolytoly

  27. CATERER was FOI. I typed in AVALANCHE with only the A from CONTAINER in place, thinking that I could rethink it if crossers later so indicated, but it withstood the test. As others have said I thought it was a sliding motion rather than rolling, but definitely threatening! TERRESTRIAL brought up the rear. 6:16. Thanks Mara and Roly.

  28. Very enjoyable romp through with no holdups. Thanks Mara and roly.
    I too shared the scepticism about avalanches rolling, there is no mention of it in the usual sources. Rolling would imply that some of the snow that has hit the deck will come back up and go over again which it doesn’t. However the wordplay is clear enough for it to be obvious and I suspect the high-roller as in a casino was too good a misdirection to miss out on.
    I had 11a as a cryptic referring to shipping containers which are “all at sea” when they are on a container ship (“on certain vessel”). Perhaps my years in Cunard’s container division shaded my thinking!

    1. Containers “all at sea” momentarily brought me out in a cold sweat – in the 1990s I worked in Hong Kong for several years, and just before we were due to return to UK and send all our possessions home by sea, a friend in HK who had left just a few months before us suffered a disaster when the container with all her things in it was lost at sea. Which made our return home even more fraught, with nightmares until our stuff was declared safely in UK!

      Losing containers from container ships is I gather very very rare, but it is far from unheard of and I believe quite a hazard for round-the-world yachts as they float just below the surface, invisible but at prime boat-destroying depth.

      1. We lost about 40 in my 5 years, so not as rare as might be hoped. Most loaded ones will sink as will empties (they arent usually airtight), but ones loaded with furnature or personal posssesions do sometimes float right near the surface, and have caused both fatal and loss of vessel accidents.

  29. 6:23

    Mostly straightforward, though like others, I did look for an anagram at 12d, at least until the third (and leading) A appeared. Nothing to scare the horses though

    Thanks Roly and Mara

  30. 12 minutes for me. LOI TERRESTRIAL where I waited for the checkers to help with the anagram and the position of REST.
    1a held me up as I looked for synonyms for Tea rather than just take what was given. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing.
    Enjoyable QC.
    David

  31. 15 mins…

    Definitely a few unparsed here – I thought 23ac “Nest”, 11ac “Container” and 16dn “Pull Up” were cryptic rather than the hidden word, anagram and palindrome they turned out to be. 20ac “Eternal” took a while to unravel and, like many, I wasn’t 100% sure about 12dn “Avalanche”. However, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

    FOI – 1ac “Caterer”
    LOI – 23ac “Nest”
    COD – 16dn “Pull Up”

    Thanks as usual!

  32. Good puzzle but I was a bit slow with e.g. TERRESTRIAL, NUT, unparsed ETERNAL, and very slow with LOI AVALANCHE.
    Liked PULL UP, COD CORGI (smiled at that one), PREVAIL, JACK, CROW.
    ‘When is a door not a door? When it’s A Jar’. Early chestnut joke.
    FOI CATASTROPHE.
    Thanks vm, Roly.

  33. My thanks to Mara and rolytoly.
    It seemed tricky at first glance but it was just presented in an unfamiliar way.
    A very erudite blog I thought.
    1a Caterer took a while to parse, not sure why except I was convinced the tea would be cha.
    20a Eternal, I was helped by my employer adopting a new style after change of ownership – teal green or did they call it teal blue?
    22a Corgi COD.
    12d Avalanche, I was worried by the def but it must be OK.

  34. Another good day as everything bar one fairly rolled in! Yes, it was AVALANCHE which took about 30 seconds to work out. Like others, I struggled with the definition a bit, so it went in with a shrug.
    I really liked 1d for personal reasons – a friend called Char deliberately broke a teapot when explaining the architect’s concept for the Imperial War Museum in Manchester. He had dropped a teapot, and the resulting shattered pieces inspired the museum’s design. I am going to send her the clue – I think it will make her laugh. The resulting mess, if not catastrophic, certainly took a while to clean up!
    7:52 FOI See LOI Avalanche COD Catastrophe
    Thanks Mara and Roly

  36. Just over five minutes, although my LOI Avalanche took one of those. The crossers meant it had to be, but I was reluctant to put it in. Snow in an avalanche flows, and the snow at the bottom moves faster than the snow at the top, so not at all convinced by the idea that it rolls.
    Otherwise, very enjoyable.

  37. The same MER as others at AVALANCHE, and I simply biffed ETERNAL as a WECIB (What Else Could It Be?). Two straight passes and no problems.

    FOI JACK
    LOI PULL UP
    COD VERMONT
    TIME 3:54

  38. Sluggish brain today but got there in the end. I liked ETERNAL once I’d worked it out. LOI CROWN/JACK. Thanks Mara and Roly.

  39. 11:07, which is pretty good for me, but I was lucky to see AVALANCHE fairly quickly.

    Thank you for the blog!

  40. “Avalanche” is also the name of a roller coaster in Blackpool… although it isn’t especially high, as roller coasters go.

  41. Do AVALANCHES roll? All-knowing AI comes back with “ Yes, avalanches can roll, and a “rollerball” is a specific type of small, rolling avalanche that can indicate larger instability. While larger avalanches, such as slab avalanches, typically move as a cohesive mass, smaller avalanches composed of loose snow can start as individual particles that break off, roll, and pick up more snow as they move downslope.”

  42. 8.47 AVALANCHE needed the checkers to convince me it wasn’t an anagram. I biffed PULL UP and only spotted the cleverness afterwards. Thanks rolytoly and Mara.

  44. 09:22
    Getting quite excited thinking this could be a PB, so not bothering to parse many clues (including anagrams) – thanks roly. Then the last 3 or 4 dashed my hopes ☹️.
    Still, a very satisfying solve 🙂.
    FOI: VERMONT
    LOI: CROWN
    COD: CORGI (made me smile)

    Thanks to Mara and rolytoly

  45. Quite pleased with 25 minutes, as I thought it was tricky in several places and, unlike yesterday, I wasn’t terminally breezeblocked at the end.

    My FOI was VERMONT and, because I was having some success, I continued in an organised was the through the Acrosses before doing likewise through the Downs. Actually, the last few Down clues at the bottom of the grid are always my favourites – the South Downs, some might say. Of course they are, Mrs Random and I live here.

    I didn’t parse ETERNAL and wasn’t sure of NEST, but both seemed they had to be. TERRESTRIAL was my LOI.

    Many thanks to rolytoly and Mara.

  46. Smooth and straightforward for me today, just under 10 m which is quite fast for my paper solves. CORGI was a gimme – we collect our new corgi puppy in under two weeks! The long anagrams stood out somehow and I enjoyed the palindrome at 16d. Haven’t had a sangria for ages (note to self). Thanks setter and blogger!

  47. 17:49, but had NIT for NUT, mostly because I is before U in the alphabet. Sigh. Liked the Naples Uni anagram.

    Thanks to Mara and rolytoly.

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