Quick Cryptic 493 by Mara. The wordplay’s the thing.

Author   oliviarhinebeckPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
The setter in playful mode.  Some truly excellent clues and some on the harder end of the QCs.  Sometimes you just have to slug it out, but this is one where a sort of semi-disciplined free association works well –  if you can find the setter’s wavelength. A fair number of double definitions.  7.05.  Definitions in italics underlined (except the double definition clues).  Answers in bold caps.

Across
1.  Run off some jazz (4)
SCAT. Double definition.  Well I got off on the wrong foot with “riff’ which was just careless solving.  In fact this whole puzzle repays careful reading.  Ella Fitzgerald – the queen of scat.
4.  Strength of character in personal column (8)
BACKBONE.  I briefly tried to do something with spine which obviously didn’t fit.  Double definition.
8. US city partially waned, as apparently backwards (8)
PASADENA.  A reversed (backwards) container clue (partially) – w[ANED AS AP]parently.  California city which has a big college football game called the Rose Bowl every January.  No I’m not interested either.
9. Implement – also utensil ultimately (4)
TOOL. TOO=also with the last letter in “utensiL” (ultimately).
10.  Secret plan to take cannabis around Lithuanian capital (4)
PLOT.  POT=cannabis surrounding the first letter (capital) in Lithuanian.
11. Comprehensive back in action (8)
DETAILED.  TAIL=back contained in DEED=action.
12.  Praise cultivated in land of old (6)
PERSIA.  Anagram (cultivated) of “praise”.
14,  Eat as a joke audibly? (6)
INGEST. Homophone (audibly) of “in jest”=as a joke, and thank goodness one that works for everyone.
16.  New menus are identifying what to type to log in? (4,4)
USER NAME.  Anagram (new) of MENUS ARE.
18.  Vermin taking a thousand diamonds (4)
MICE.  M=thousand and ICE=diamonds.
19. Plate found in cupboard is charming (4)
DISC.  I carelessly entered “dish” at first which made a horlicks of 13d.  It’s a container clue where the word is found in cupboar[D IS C]harming.
20.  Difficulty sleeping in higgledy-piggledy mansion one tucked in (8)
INSOMNIA.  Anagram (higgledy-piggledy) of MANSION and I=one.
22.  Very large royal (8)
PRINCELY.  Double definition.  As in a princely sum.
23.  American tug (4)
YANK.  Another double definition.

Down
2.  Idiot, daily, to tell stories (7)
CHARLIE.  CHAR=daily and LIE=tell stories.  This definition always makes me slightly uncomfortable because it’s my brother’s nickname, although I call him something else and he is anything but.
3.  Brown bread for your health, perhaps? (5)
TOAST.  And another double definition.
4.  Extra farewell (3)
BYE.  And another.  In sports (tennis, cricket, football) I believe it means that in a tournament, series of matches or competition an individual or team can advance to the next round without actully playing.  Or this may just be a cricket term.  None of this is exactly my forte.
5.  Boundary between land and water so clean, it turns out (9)
COASTLINE.  Anagram (turns out) of “so clean, it”.
6. In time, metal put in sack (7)
BATTING.  This is a tricky one and certainly could be found in the other cryptic any day.  UK sports are not my bag but I’ve come to learn a number of cricket, rugby and football terms and names. In cricket the side that is batting is “in”.  Of course y’all know that but it’s well hidden just the same.  T=time plus TIN=metal, contained in BAG=sack.
7. Rope, feature including loop? (5)
NOOSE. While this could be a feature of a rope (without going into gruesome details), in fact I believe the feature here is NOSE which includes a second O=loop.  I first read this with “loop” as the definition.  Does anyone see this otherwise? Not difficult but still tricky parsing.
11.  Awfully smart idea to adapt for the theatre (9)
DRAMATISE.  Anagram (awfully) of SMART IDEA.
13.  Southern people embraced by an Arab (7)
SARACEN.  S[outhern] plus RACE=people contained in AN.  Another clue that might well crop up in the other cryptic.  It may be that the word mostly survives now as part of a pub name.
15.  Part one, it’s rearranged to cover first of chapters (7)
SECTION.  Basic lesson in cryptic solving – ignore the punctuation.  Except of course when it can’t be ignored…..  Anagram of ONE IT’S (rearranged) with a C for chapter in the middle.
17.  Malingerer denied victory, one going downhill (5)
SKIER.  The malingerer is a skiver ( nice word) removing the V as in victory.
18.  Parent kept under wraps (5)
MUMMY.  Sort of a double definition and a beauty of a clue.  So we have Persia, a Saracen and an ancient Egyptian.
21.  Remain, having cleared out a filthy home (3)
STY.  STAY=remain.  Remove (clear out) the A and you have the pig’s place.  Rather unfair to pigs who are very clean creatures.

23 comments on “Quick Cryptic 493 by Mara. The wordplay’s the thing.”

  1. I thought of ‘riff’, too, but could make nothing of it, oddly enough. And I thought of ‘spine’, too! and even went on to the next before I remembered BACKBONE. PASADENA–a bit obscure for a quickie, perhaps?–is, or was, the emblem of respectable dullness in Southern California; the Beach Boys, I believe, had a song about a little old lady from there. DNK ‘skiver’, so I put this in from the definition and checkers, a pretty safe bet this time. 7 or 8 years doing the Times cryptics and I still can’t remember any cricket terms; I got this from wordplay only, and it was my LOI. Or else DETAILED was; it took me a long time to see the two words as synonymous, perhaps because they aren’t. 9′, I think; I forgot to write down my starting time.
    1. I got off on the wrong foot with ‘TRAD’ for the first clue. Run off is DART backwards!
  2. BYE is a type of run in cricket. I tried to explain and it wasn’t clear, so here’s the SOED definition: BYE A run made from a ball that passes the batsman without being struck. cf LEG BYE, a bye from a ball that touches the batsman.

    I found this hard and at 16 minutes, it took me a minute longer than the Don’s offering yesterday, mainly down to problems getting started. In view of the need to cater for various levels of ability and experience, and I know some felt a bit deflated yesterday, it’s a shame to have two hard ones in a row.

    With reference to 6dn, perhaps it would be useful to explain some of the rules of cricket to those not already au fait with them:

    You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

    When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game

    Edited at 2016-01-28 05:35 am (UTC)

    1. A tour de force Jack! And now it’s all perfectly clear but I’m going to have a little lie-down…
      1. Not original, I’m afraid, Olivia, just pasted in. It’s sold printed on tea-towels in tourist shops.
        1. A description of the Noble Game that is both concise and comprehensive at the same time. All that’s missing is the observation that a game can last for five days and still often ends in a draw! Tough QC today, 9′. Thank you Mara and thank you Olivia for the blog.
          1. A bye, like a wide or a no-ball, is an extra in cricket. It refers to a run not scored with the bat and not credited to a particular batsman. Hence this word in the clue. Katie Rose
  3. Fairly tricky and over my par time of 10 minutes. At first I had KINGSIZE for 22a, which didn’t help in the slightest.
    6d LOI until I was able to reverse engineer it and saw the “in” definition.
    Thanks Olivia for parsing 17d – I was trying to stuff WIN into it without success.
    Thanks too to Jackkt for giving us such a concise, straightforward and easy explanation of cricket. Now will some of our transatlantic colleagues describe baseball to me in equally lucid terms?
  4. I was making progress on these, but this one completely defeated me. Got about 8 answers and gave up. I have no idea what the standard is of a quick cryptic but this seemed to me so much harder. Last week I finished 4 out of 5 this week not so good as yesterday,s was also difficult.
  6. I normally do not time myself but decided today that I would. Timing soon went out of the window as I was struggling greatly so, as usual, put it down for some time. I had to do this several times finally finishing over a pint in the pub! Last in an unparsed BATTING, completely missed the definition was just “in” which is a bit disappointing as I am a cricket fan. Perhaps because I finished it unaided I thought it was a good puzzle right at the extreme of difficulty although SCAT strikes me as a bit too obscure. Favourite BACKBONE.

    Puzzles this difficult should be rare.

  7. The setters seem to have upped their game this week. I did finish this one (unlike the last two) by my LOI 6d was a complete guess from the checkers as I thought the definition was ‘in time’ and 11a was unparsed, as usual the blog solved all my queries, so thank you Olivia.
    I think 1a has come up before which is how I dragged it out of the memory banks. COD for me was 20a purely for the use of higgledy-piggledy as the anagrind.
  8. I too found this difficult but I was quicker than yesterday and seem to have got it all right.
    Some very good clues I thought and I never had the feeling of hopelessness I had yesterday for quite a while.I was very pleased to get Saracen after a long journey around the Arab world. My last one was 6d and I had written Batting but couldn’t parse it until I had the breakthrough moment. And I am a long-standing cricket fan, and I had one of the tea towels mentioned by Jackkt!
    David
  9. Once again thanks to all for the comments – they are interesting and helpful. Keep’em coming!
  10. Just like to say that neither of us has ever heard of scat as jazz and still don’t see it’s anything to do with run off which is disappointing as there is no way we would ever have guessed it. The first time this blog and the QC has let us down!
    1. Sorry you were let down by the blog. The word in both meanings is in the 2 vol. Shorter OED. Here is a link to Ella Fitzgerald singing scat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrcIsUH6RfI

      Also in the OED is SCAT as a colloquialism meaning “run off” or “go away”, used in the imperative to e.g. drive off an animal (cat) or a person.

  11. Yes, a toughie but, for me, not as challenging as Monday. Really grateful for the blog for understanding just how 6d works; also 9a, 11a. Haven’t we’ve had 17d before…. COD for a smile -23a Yank.
  12. I parsed this as the definition being the whole clue, is it what you call an ‘and lit’? Dennis
    1. Oh yes I see, you could well be right Dennis. That “and lit” thing always eludes me. I’m a seat-of-the-pants solver so perhaps not the world’s best blogger.
      1. If it’s not too late, Olivia, I would like to say that I am really enjoying your blogs – I find them clear and friendly, and I am sorry to read that you won’t be carrying on later in the spring. PB
        1. Thank you – much appreciated. Thought I’d sent this last night but evidently not. If Andy needs a pinch hitter in the fall I’ll make myself available (DV).
  13. Thanks. I consulted both the Concise Oxford and a couple of online dictionaries but, of course, I was looking ‘the wrong way round’ if you see what I mean as I didn’t have the answer. And yes, the more I think about it, I did know ‘scat’ as meaning run away to say to a cat.
    We really do find the blog an essential part of explaining the answers. It is so helpful to beginners. It wasn’t helped either by not having Charlie or Toast which was a bit pathetic of us – thanks again!

Comments are closed.