Quick Cryptic 541 by Orpheus

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A mainly easy crossword with a couple of knotty clues and an unusual number of hyphenated words thrown in. 10 minutes.

I’ve kept the blog brief – we’re all lined up ready to field any further clarifications which may be required.

ACROSS

1. Bedroom – sleeping place. BROOM outside ED.
5. Spot – double definition.
8. Needled – irritated. NEEDED outside lake (L).
9. Grain – wheat perhaps. Good (G), RAIN.
11. Cross-section – a representative sample. Angry (CROSS), anagram (damaged) of NOTICES.
12. Drover – mover of livestock. (R)esiding inside DOVER.
14. Donjon – tower (central keep of mediaeval castle also know as dungeon). Party (DO) and taking place (ON) outside New Jersey (NJ). I vaguely remembered this when I’d pieced ‘do’ to ‘NJ’ so I was confident putting it in. Still guessable, I think, if you hadn’t heard of it.
15. Non-conductor – wood in one sense. This is the second knotty one perhaps. Wood doesn’t conduct electricity. Toscanini was a famous conductor so ‘not him’ is non-conductor.
17. Mason – stoneworker. Parent (MA), offspring (SON).
18. Storage – cost of keeping. (O)ld (R)elics inside STAGE.
20. Toys – playthings. Sen(T) t(O) livel(Y) youngster(S).
21. Grown-up – mature. Set (GROUP) outside opponents at bridge (WN).

DOWN

2. Eye – organ. Homophone of ‘aye’.
3. Radio – communicate with. RIO outside a (A), daughter (D).
4. Overstrung – intensely strained. Upright pianos are (apparently) all overstrung and underdamped. These terms describe the layout of the stringing and the position of the dampers within the mechanism of the piano. So now we all know.
6. Puritan – a strait-laced moralist. PUN around RITA.
7. Tricolour – flag. Rhode Island (RI) and colonel (COL) inside TOUR.
10. Head-hunter – primitively collector of trophies. Anagram (dreadfully) of HAUNTED HER.
11. Cormorant – sea bird. (C)lacton, (RAN) inside an anagram (broken-down) of MOTOR.
13. Victory – win. Woman (VI), (C)elebrate, Conservative (TORY).
16. Throw – confound. (TH)e, argument (ROW).
19. Gnu – wildebeest. (G)e(N)i(U)s.

29 comments on “Quick Cryptic 541 by Orpheus”

  1. I don’t think this was very difficult, but it took me quite a while (42 mins or so) due to some clues I hastily penned in while gunning for record time, which were wrong.

    With just 15a remaining, and not knowing much about Toscanini, I needed the “check” button to tell me that TRICOLORE for 7d was wrong (it’s the French / Italian spelling, apparently; also the one I remember from the title of a French textbook).

    Also I’d made up a word BEDRUSH for 1a, which held up 4d, but the less said about that the better.

    DONJON was the new and unfamiliar word of the day, but I guessed it correctly.

    1. BEDRUSH! What an utterly stupid mistake to make. How imbecilic!
      OK, OK, I did exactly the same.
  2. A nice puzzle with fairly easy clues and clever surfaces. I took 25 minutes, but I think I would have equalled my 20 minute record but for 14A. I knew Donjon but the little mark I made to indicate the hyphen in 10D turned the D into a P which threw me for ages – really silly. I also missed the wordplay in 16D, so thanks to Chris for the blog.
    Brian
  3. 40 mins with couple of errors. DONJON was tough, had to do a bit of research as didn’t get the DO ON part. Poor spelling of CORMORANT led to BAD CONDUCTOR, which I think is a better answer. Also had GROWS UP for GROWN UP. If I go for a decent time, can’t seem to stop making errors.
    1. Don’t feel too bad Merlin, I made the very same errors initially with BAD and GROWS. I was however, able to spell CORMORANT with the help of the anagram letters, and that sorted BAD out. Luckily, I spotted the GROWN for GROWS before completing.

      I think you are right. Wood isn’t a non-conductor (of either heat or electricity), but it is a very poor conductor (of both), otherwise moisture meters (designed to estimate the moisture content of wood) wouldn’t work, and your desktop wouldn’t feel warmer or colder than your hand when you touched it.

      Pedant, Surrey

      1. Is wood a non-conductor? In the sense you give (heat) then it does conduct but the clue is ‘In one sense perhaps’ – so could refer to something which wood does not conduct – I thought of electricity but then I’m not sure about lightning. I’m sure someone can confirm that wood doesn’t conduct something and then we’d all be fine. The ‘perhaps’ is also a licence for bending the definition somewhat. Good points – good discussion – thanks,
  4. I don’t think anyone could describe Toscanini as a “bad conductor”. Eccentric possibly.
    The interesting thing is that Wood is also the name of a famous conductor: namely, Henry Wood who founded the Promenade concerts in 1895, now in the Royal Albert Hall. I suspect that’s coincidence though, or maybe not…
  5. A nice puzzle but I was robbed of achieving my 10-minute target by carelessly biffing DEER-HUNTER at 10ac and then being unable to solve the most difficult clue to DONJON at 14ac. Difficult when one is trying to find a word starting with R, that is!

  6. Phew! An easier one. Still missed Donjon (forgiveable), non conductor (great clue) and overstrung (darn, how could I?!). BD
  8. Most of this went in quite quickly, and I had four left (14, 15, 16 and 21) after 20 mins and then down to one (14) a few minutes later. The curse of the unknown LOI then struck, leaving me a lucky guess away from a PB. 30 mins in total. Invariant
  9. I think I made heavy weather of this this but parsed it as NOT a non-conductor i.e. a conductor (double negative). As a (slightly more experi nce) newby, are double negatives ever allowed in crosswordland? Thanks again for the blog. I imagine lots of people read the blogs although do not regularly make a comment.
    1. I agree that many read the blog and do not comment. Some may not know that comments days or weeks after the date of the crossword are still alerted to the blogger – so any questions, anytime folks.
      As for the non-conductor – the only negative I see is ‘not’ Toscanini. So I stand by the blog – the word play being not a conductor so non-conductor. Whether it is technically true that wood is a non conductor is covered in other comments.
      1. Sorry Chris, I was not having a pop at you. I parsed it as: “Wood, in one sense perhaps..” (i.e. a non-conductor) and then: “but, not” – so not a non-conductor i.e. a conductor (a.k.a Toscanini)! That’s why I said I made heavy weather of it. BUT my real reason for posting the comment was to ask whether double negatives are allowed. I don’t think I’ve seen one but I imagine they could (just about) work. I am so grateful to you and all the bloggers who give your time to help us newbies to (slowly) improve.
      2. Thanks Chris. Helpful to know that comments can be picked up later by bloggers. I’m often running behind the game (as you will see from this!) so I’ll bear that in mind. Thanks, as always, for your blogs.
        bandjo
  10. Most of this was straightforward I thought and I had just a couple left after 15 minutes: 4d and 12a. I did not know Overstrung but it seemed OK. I then spent a few minutes on 14a thinking it might be something that tows-Donjoo was wrong apparently. David
  11. Just reflecting on the Donjon clue, I have always thought of a dungeon as an underground room for incarceration;so I think Tower was misleading. David
  12. I like others had Bedrush for a while. I also had ear instead of eye which held me up with 8a, my LOI. Similarly Donjon was a new word to me, but all in all I finished and it was much easier than yesterday.
  13. Yes, easier today. No idea on time but I’d guess under an hour, so good (for me). No problem with donjon as a tower. Maybe I was just on the right wavelength today. Not sure what to do now when I get to Costa later this afternoon!
  14. No great problems but for some reason held up by spot and thus puritan! My best at 33 mins. High dungeon David? Dudgeon? Joka
  15. DNF due to 5a sore not spot and 2d ear (hear) not eye. Both seemed to work well for me and once you have them it’s difficult to see how they could be wrong
    1. I see what you’re getting at but wouldn’t it need to be ear ear (hear hear) to mean yes?
    2. I see what you’re getting at but wouldn’t it need to be ear ear (hear hear) to mean yes?
  16. How can you post “x min but for a couple of errors”? That’s a DNF, surely?
    1. Yes – all non-correct completions are technically dnf’s. However, I’m still interested in how long it took someone to complete having mistyped a word – as opposed to ‘infinity’ for unfilled answers.
  17. I find Wiki quick to answer crossword quandaries, and you can get more than you bargain for. Donjon and Dungeon have common language roots, it seems, but dungeons go down and donjons unquestionably go up. A quick check of several hundred Donjon images confirms their obvious purpose, they are towers for off of which you rescue damsels from!

  18. DNF for me today as I was undone by 14a, another new word for my vocabulary – I couldn’t think of any words that had NJ in the middle so couldn’t even think of any sensible guesses. Other than that it was relatively straightforward.
  19. DNF due to 5a sore not spot and 2d ear (hear) not eye. Both seemed to work well for me and once you have them it’s difficult to see how they could be wrong
  20. I see what you’re getting at but wouldn’t it need to be ear ear (hear hear) to mean yes?

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