Quick Cryptic 429 by Teazel

Author   emu66Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
All seemed to be going swimmingly and I thought I was on for a fast solve until I came to 8d. Determined not to be tricked by the setter into thinking linesman was anything to do with football, I tried to make it something to do with railways, but soon switched off my timer in a bit of a sulk and resorted to crunching through the alphabet. In the end it was my clue of the day!

Across
1 MINISTER – clergyman; I inside church = MINSTER
5 SPUR – incentive; brief football team = SPUR(S)
9 COMBO – small group; start to bathe = B in Italian lake = COMO
10 GLOWING – fire doing this; hidden word in gettinG LOW IN Gas
11 BAD – unfit to eat; fish turned = reversal of DAB
12 TURNTABLE – where one might find records; go = TURN, board = TABLE
13 ERMINE – fur; hesitation = ER, dig out = MINE
15 LAMENT – bewail; feeble = LAME, set of books = NT (New Testament)
17 FACE-SAVER – this spares one’s blushes; anagram (collapse) of FEAR CAVE’S
19 PHI – foreign character; quiet = P (musical direction), greeting = HI
20 TSUNAMI – a disaster, naturally; MAN backwards inside anagram (rumpled) of SUIT
21 ACUTE – serious; wound = CUT inside Accident and Emergency to start with = A E
22 DAFT – silly; daughter = D, at the back = AFT
23 REVERENT – showing great respect; always = EVER inside cost of housing = RENT

Down
1 MACABRE – gruesome; taxi = CAB inside horse = MARE
2 NOMAD – wanderer; sane = NO MAD
3 SHOOTING STAR – one falling from the sky; murders = SHOOTINGS, sailor = TAR
4 EAGER – keen; hidden in middlE AGE Responsibly
6 PLIABLE – easily persuaded; pressure = P, responsible for = LIABLE
7 ROGUE – villain; non- British accent = (B)ROGUE
8 POET LAUREATE – cryptic definition
14 MACDUFF – Shakespearean character; raincoat = MAC, no use = DUFF
16 TRIDENT – attribute of Neptune; I’D inside river = TRENT
17 FATED – condemned; obese = FAT, pressman = ED(itor)
18 VOICE – say; love = O, inside wickedness = VICE
19 PAUSE – stop; anagram (frothing) of SEA UP

13 comments on “Quick Cryptic 429 by Teazel”

  1. 1ac should be in the Guinness Book Of Records by now as the most overused cryptic clue of all time! The remainder proved very easy too I thought, with only 8dn and perhaps 19ac as possible stumbling blocks. 8 minutes.
  2. Pretty much smooth sailing from the start, although I didn’t get 1ac on the first pass. I think I misparsed 5ac at first, looking for a word for ‘incentive’ lacking its final letter; not being familiar with the Spurs didn’t help matters. 8d went in rater easily, from enumeration mostly; ‘linesman’ didn’t really mislead, perhaps because I don’t know what a linesman is.5:25.
  3. COD 5A. 🙂 COYS!

    I also liked 14D. Like the blogger I had to resort to going through the alphabet to get 8D.

  4. I think I’ve seen ‘linesman’ as a cunning definition for poet before, so that went in fairly quickly. 21a and 19d my last two in… thinking SPUME for 19d didn’t help. An average 6:49 for me.
  5. One of my most straightforward also until I reached Poet Laureate. I resorted to the checkers but Laureate did not appear just marriage and carriage seemed possible. I was saved by the checkers however as poet appeared after I had rejected boot and foot.

    Edited at 2015-10-30 09:50 am (UTC)

  6. Another enjoyable puzzle. I had to do it in episodes today, so when I came back for the second time I looked up the answer to 8D and the rest of the right hand side dropped in.
    I think Teasel and Joker are at the top for surfaces.

    Brian

  8. An enjoyable puzzle. Held up by ‘goal’ for 5a , from ( a) the brief given to a football team by its manager and (b) incentive. Deferent is a fit with definition, fit with checkers and near parse for 23a — defer-rent. 8d LOI. Katie Rose
    1. I agree with you! Not quite as neat as reverent but for me it’s an answer. What do the more experienced think?
  9. Defeated by 8d. I will have to add that definition of linesman to the memory bank for future reference. I also took a while to spot the hidden word in 10a but other than that it was relatively straightforward.
  10. No real problems today. Stopped myself putting in Macbeth without thinking and got Poet Laureate pretty quickly. I finished with 7d David
  11. Defeated by 8d, which was hard enough to be offside in my book. Sorry to call foul on the setter etc etc.
  12. Got hung up because I put in “GRAVE” for 7d with quick confidence. – the “grave accent” is used outside Britain, and a villain could be said to be “grave” (serious or solemn in manner or appearance). whoops!

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