ParkSolve Time: 35:55 (solid run, middling solve)
My third Joker in a row. I don’t usually pay much attention to who’s setting the puzzle, but I’m becoming more aware of his(?) style. He seems to embrace a wider spread of clueing techniques than other Quickie setters. Not big on anagrams, but doesn’t mind a reversal or a double definition, as is particularly evident today.
For me that makes for a slightly slower but no less enjoyable solve. How did you find it?
BTW, I’m the worst Nina-spotter in the business but I notice that lines three and eleven spell out RUNNING TOTAL THREE HUNDRED. A milestone for the Joker perhaps?
(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 | Criminal man with influence (10) |
| MALEFACTOR – MALE (man) + FACTOR (influence)
Another word for a wrong’un. |
|
| 8 | Current means of keeping fit (7) |
| RUNNING – Double definition | |
| 9 | What could be grand wreck (5) |
| TOTAL – Double definition
Second def refers to something (usually a vehicle) being “totalled”, as in a total write-off. |
|
| 10 | Capital L (4) |
| LIMA – L = LIMA in the NATO alphabet
Not often the wordplay consists of a single letter. |
|
| 11 | Delta pilot carrying unknown worker on junket? (8) |
| DAIRYMAN – D (delta) + AIRMAN (pilot) “carrying” Y (unknown)
For the surface reading, junket means a work trip where you don’t actually work. Don’t think I ever managed to score one of those. For the definition, junket refers to the curd-based dish. |
|
| 13 | Past error by church (5) |
| SINCE – SIN (error) + CE (church) | |
| 14 | Course smothered in Tabasco traditionally (5) |
| ASCOT – Hidden (smothered) in tabASCO Traditionally | |
| 16 | Illuminating landing (8) |
| LIGHTING – Double definition | |
| 17 | Wintry fall today on sierra (4) |
| SNOW – NOW (today) on S (sierra)
Another visitor from the NATO alphabet. |
|
| 20 | Group of men in a boat you once cut by four, ultimately (5) |
| THREE – THEE (“you” once) cut by R (fouR, ultimately)
Three Men in a Boat being the famous novel published in 1889. |
|
| 21 | Number under mixing in high-definition (7) |
| HUNDRED – (UNDER)* in HD (high-definition) | |
| 22 | Set poetry mangled English cliché (10) |
| STEREOTYPE – (SET POETRY)* + E (English) | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Painting taking up the French spirit (5) |
| MURAL – LARUM [LA (“the” in French) + RUM (spirit)] reversed (taking up) | |
| 2 | Supervisors who look after railway? (4,8) |
| LINE MANAGERS – Double definition
The second definition is just a bit of whimsy, I don’t think railways actually have “line managers” in that sense. Or maybe they do? |
|
| 3 | Just a long way round island (4) |
| FAIR – FAR (a long way) round I (island) | |
| 4 | Good brandy may turn clubs around (6) |
| COGNAC – CANGOC [CAN (may) + GO (turn) + C (clubs)] reversed (around) | |
| 5 | Beginning of public holiday (8) |
| OUTBREAK – OUT (public) + BREAK (holiday) | |
| 6 | In core may get developed — this? (6,6) |
| ATOMIC ENERGY – (IN CORE MAY GET)*
The core being where fission occurs in a nuclear power plant. |
|
| 7 | Programme on alien world (6) |
| PLANET – PLAN (programme) on ET (alien) | |
| 12 | Conscious feeling avoided by millions (8) |
| SENTIENT – SENTI |
|
| 13 | Greet Aleuts when travelling (6) |
| SALUTE – (ALEUTS)* | |
| 15 | Fix a new task that’s unfinished (6) |
| ANCHOR – A + N (new) + CHOR |
|
| 18 | Golf club first to win advantage (5) |
| WEDGE – W (first to Win) + EDGE (advantage) | |
| 19 | Particulars of Northern Ireland must be raised (4) |
| INFO – OFNI [OF + NI (Northern Ireland)] reversed (must be raised) | |
17 minutes with time lost on my last two in, crossing answers OUTBREAK and TOTAL. Very nice puzzle though.
Joker is John Grimshaw, so I think you’re okay with ‘he’, Galspray.
I hadn’t spotted the Nina. My calculation of Joker’s total to date taken from the spreadsheet I update daily is 298 rather than 300. There’s always the possibility I may have made an error, however I then searched the TfTT archive which also has 298.
Anyway, no matter whether it be 298 or 300, Joker’s back catalogue of puzzles is impressive and I would like to express thanks for all the pleasure he has given to so many at TfTT since his first Quick Cryptic (#5) appeared on 14th March 2014. Many congratulations, Joker, on your 12th anniversary!
Another John G eh? Must be a wonderful chap.
Indeed! Incidentally you blogged his last milestone, the 250th (#2685), in which every Down column contained CCL.
It is possible that the QC blogger forgot to add the setter name on 2 Joker crosswords (or had the wrong attribution) but it seems more likely that our editor scheduled this one for the 12th anniversary and there are 2 others submitted earlier that are yet to be published.
I think your second explanation is more likely. My records are compiled daily from what I see on the Times site so do not rely on what’s published at TfTT. Also, on making a further check since my earlier posting I didn’t have to go back through all Joker’s puzzles, only to his 250th as detailed above when there was a Nina to mark the occasion and my figures and the TfTT archive all tallied then.
Perhaps he wrote two that havn’t (yet) been published?
18:00 for the solve. Feel like a party pooper but once again Joker failed to entertain me became a grind; 5th puzzle this year and all of them have been slower than my average by some margin. I still mourn the loss of the Joker who was once my favourite setter for his first 250 or so puzzles as they were always good fun, accessible and relatively quick but we all move on in life to be different people and so it goes.
Today I was particularly held up by the intersection of the second half of MALEFACTOR, DAIRYMAN the latter of which I had no idea of junket, TOTAL first def iffy and OUTBREAK (LOI but fair enough).
Thanks to Galspray and Joker
Not sure about mourning his loss ND!
Hope your run brightened your day.
I found this fairly chewy in places with some difficult definitions but the wordplay was all clear so it was a satisfying solve.
Started with LIMA and finished with RUNNING in 9.58.
Thanks to Galspray for the blog and thanks and congratulations on the 300 to Joker.
10:02, which is slow for me. I thought this was tough for a QC. MALEFACTOR across the top and MURAL 1dn made this hard. For the life of me couldn’t think of COGNAC (probably because of the ‘Good’, which is a MER for me – is Cognac always good brandy?).
I enjoyed this though, and nice to have a tough QC to finish an otherwise relatively normal week. I really liked ATOMIC ENERGY.
I wondered the same about cognac but I don’t know enough about it to even enter the conversation.
Cognac is not automatically ‘good’ brandy; there are plenty of cheaper examples around.
The G diverted me and I don’t equate CAN and MAY, I’m afraid.
The use of ‘Can I get’ instead of ‘May I have’ is an appalling modern habit.
When asked by taxi customers “can I get a taxi to……”, I was wont to reply “Why, is there something wrong with this one?”
Utterly infuriating. My former partner ran a cafe. “Can I get a latte” was always “No, but I can get one for you”.
In most cases the offender would look totally bemused. She became my ex partner when I realised that one pedant in a relationship is quite sufficient!
I was very slow to gain footholds at first. Perseverance led to some very good clues and some enjoyable PDMs. However, it was a slog rather than a smooth solve for me. 26 mins – not good, even for a Saturday.
This was a fine puzzle but it stretched the QC boundaries for me.
Thanks to Joker for a workout. I liked DAIRYMAN, WEDGE, and SENTIENT amongst others. I’ll now check galspray’s blog to see if my parsing was up to scratch.
TOTAL and OUTBREAK my last two in. COD ATOMIC ENERGY. Congratulations Joker on another milestone on setting great puzzles.
Pleased with 12.
NHO the milk based definition of junket. I spent a long time trying to work out how to get a 3 letter word for “worker” (clearly wasn’t ANT) into the middle of the answer (I was thinking PILOT [verb] = MAN) and something meaning a junket. Eventually I wondered if there was some word for a person accepting a junket that I hadn’t heard of, but then spotted AIRMAN for pilot and realised that fitted the wordplay. At that point I put it in with a shrug for the LOI, assuming in my head that JUNKET must have a dairy based meaning that I was unaware of.
Not sure how long I spent on that clue, it felt like a very long time, so was suprised that the whole solve only took just over 10 minutes.
22:05 – not bad for a Joker puzzle as I always find them difficult. Really struggled with DAIRYMAN (NHO of JUNKET food), TOTAL in this context and parsing of COGNAC.
Absolute belter of a puzzle, fitting way to pass the milestone even if the editor slipped it in early! The surface for THREE is brilliant but DAIRYMAN just edges it for COD. What fun.
On wavelength for a very fast (for me …) 05:04 and an Excellent Day. Off now to see if the tractor will start after winter. Many thanks Joker and gallers.
Slipping it in early never ends well…..
19.28 pleased to have remained out of the SCC.
Struggled a little with LIGHTING – landing.
Grateful to Galspray for helping us to fully parse SENTIENT and THREE
Did we enjoy this? We did, though for us it was more challenge than amusement, we signed off pleased rather than humming…
Thank you Joker .
6:49. Rather sluggish this morning, but just me rather than the puzzle being hard, I think. LOI DAIRYMAN not knowing what junket is. Congratulation JG on the 300th and thanks for all those puzzles, and Galspray for the blog today.
19 minutes. Lots to make me think hard here and I was fortunate to avoid the SCC. A few I skimped on the parsing when solving and I ended up with MURAL which I only parsed after submitting. Favourite was the admirably brief ‘Capital L’.
A big thanks and congrats to Joker for being one of the stalwarts of the QC and to galspray – well done on spotting the Nina too.
I found this difficult but enjoyable.
First Lap: 5
Answered (without help): 21
Answered (with help): 3
Incorrect: 1 (1d spelling mistake MUReL)
Time: 41:15
Signs of improvement. DNF, but this time about 85% complete before calling time at around 35 minutes. (Admittedly I did use the ‘check’ function a couple of times to correct errors and confirm wild guesses – which may also account for the higher than normal percentage.)
11:51, with top half much slower than bottom. Struggled with TOTAL and MURAL.
Never heard of DAIRYMAN, thought it might me a Catch-22 reference where easy missions (junkets) were called milk runs. It’s actually a dish ?
COD LINE MANAGER
Yes, junket is an old-fashioned milk pudding.
DNF DAIRYMAN, OUTBREAK. MER – Cooks made junket in the kitchen, not men in the dairy, surely.
Did not enjoy this one, apart from e.g. MURAL, SENTIENT, ANCHOR, INFO and ASCOT.
Thanks to Galspray.
Dnf…
Couldn’t get 5dn “Outbreak” – mainly because I put “Malificent” for 1ac which I knew wasn’t right, but struggled to think of anything else.
A tough one today I thought. Seemed to be a lot of the NATO alphabet (or whatever it is called) in some of the clues.
FOI – 1dn “Mural”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 8ac “Running” – simple, but effective.
Thanks as usual!
No exact time as I was interrupted, but probably around 15 minutes. As that suggests I found this quite chewy – but always entertaining and nothing unfair. I failed to parse COGNAC in flight, and took time to equate “what could be grand” with TOTAL, but otherwise everything understood. THREE is a great clue, my COD.
Many thanks Galspray for the blog and a good weekend to all.
Too much for me. Gave up with 9 incomplete and needed 5 reveals to get the remaining four, Thanks Joker and galspray. (by the way I think you have a typo of event for evident)
Thanks Ham, fixed now.
From LIMA to SALUTE in 5:38. Had to rely on wordplay for DAIRYMAN as I didn’t know the definitions required. Failed to parse COGNAC. Thanks Joker(and congrats) and Galspray.
DNF. I wasn’t enjoying the solve and so pulled stumps after 25mins with Outbreak and Dairyman extant. Either might have given the other, but as I had neither. . .
Invariant
I actually spotted the Nina, a very rare occurrence. I enjoyed this, and it stretched me a little more than some of late.
FOI LIMA
LOI DAIRYMAN
COD COGNAC*
TIME 4:07
*I find a “cheap” COGNAC perfectly acceptable, and don’t jib at adding it to my late cappuccino. I’d never do that with an Armagnac though!
7:59
Seemed to have a blank in the top half and had to revisit a few times to piece together the missing answers. I did note the nina on submission – congrats Joker, I have been entertained very frequently over the eight years or so I have been attempting the QCs. I didn’t link ‘junket’ with DAIRYMAN in flight, but the old cogs whirred into action after the event and came up with Junket Through The Window, one of a compendium of Enid Blyton stories I read as a kid.
Thanks Galspray and Joker