Quick Cryptic 56 by Orpheus

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
The puzzle can be found at: http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20140526/163/

Orpheus’s fifth, I think, and in common with the previous four I would peg it as being at the easier end of the spectrum. There’s just one full anagram, plus one as part of the wordplay in another clue, which is an unusually low number for these Quick Cryptics (it would be considered a low number in the main cryptic too). I would guess that solvers of all levels of ability find that anagrams are one of the simplest clue types to identify and solve, so it may well be to beginning solvers’ advantage to NOT be fed a diet rich in such clues, so that more time is spent on the clue types that tend to cause the most trouble to new visitors to Crosswordland.

I’ll give my COD to 21A, both for its surface as well as its foreshadowing of the questionable animal food theme that crops up again in 5D.

Definitions are underlined.

Across
1 Goofy type providing information (4)
DOPE – double definition, both colloquial
3 How Lancelot Brown landscaped his gardens? (7)
CAPABLY – cryptic definition, a reference to the English landscape architect Lancelot “Capability” Brown, perhaps best known for designing the grounds of Blenheim Palace. His nickname apparently came from his habit of telling clients that their grounds had “great capability” for improvement.
8 Like free tickets – reciprocal, by the sound of it (13)
COMPLIMENTARY – homophone (by the sound of it) of complementary (reciprocal)
9 Sailor leaves dessert unfinished (3)
TARTARt, i.e. tart (dessert) without the final letter (unfinished). Not all tarts are desserts but I doubt this will raise anyone’s eyebrow(s). Less likely is that the setter was actually thinking of taro, which is a dessert in certain cuisines.
10 Small picture of trendy group (5)
INSETIN (trendy) + SET (group)
12 Install a petty officer overcome by drink? (7)
APPOINTA then PO (petty officer) inside (overcome by) PINT (drink). I wouldn’t have quibbled if the question mark had been omitted, but it’s perhaps an indication that “overcome by drink” shouldn’t be interpreted in its usual sense of being drunk.
14 Relative giving graduate £1,000 for a start (7)
GRANDMAMA (graduate) preceded by (for a start) GRAND (£1,000)
16 Natural skill, say? Not by any means (5)
NOHOW – homophone (say) of know-how (natural skill). If prior crosswording experience hadn’t taught me otherwise, I would have thought that NOHOW was either two words or hyphenated. Whichever way you slice it though, N_H_W is a set of checkers that has more than a whiff of the exotic but then disappoints with the denouement.
17 Bag originally sold at chemist’s (3)
SAC – initial letters (originally) of Sold At Chemist’s. This is a bag in the biological sense.
20 Similarly affected, like the Owl and the Pussy-Cat (2,3,4,4)
IN THE SAME BOAT – reference to Edward Lear’s nonsense poem “The Owl and the Pussycat”, in which the titular protagonists went to sea in a beautiful pea-green … oh, you know. The first of five animal-related clues in a row.
21 Chewy sweet a king fed to beast of burden (7)
CARAMELA + R (king, i.e. rex) inside (fed to) CAMEL (beast of burden)
22 Youth holding end of poodle’s leash (4)
LEADLAD (Youth) around (holding) E (end of, i.e. last letter of, poodlE)
Down
1 Avoid fish, for white meat (8)
DUCKLINGDUCK (Avoid) + LING (fish). Possibly the average person’s fifth choice at best if asked to name a white meat. Ling is more popular in crosswords as another name for the shrub heather.
2 Cat starts to prowl around without hesitation (4)
PUMAPA (initial letters of (starts to) Prowl Around) surrounding (without) UM (hesitation). Hesitation usually means either um or er.
3 Church artist carrying a minute photographic device (6)
CAMERACE (Church, i.e. Church of England) + RA (Royal Academy, the usual crosswordese for artist) around (carrying) A + M (minute). The definition is something of a giveaway.
4 Tight-fisted type mischievously assaulting a named girl? (5-7)
PENNY-PINCHER – if a pinch can be regarded as a mischievous assault, then someone mischievously assaulting a girl called Penny could be termed a Penny pincher
5 Wave horse’s feeding-bowl? (8)
BRANDISH – this seems to be based on the assumption that bran is commonly fed to horses, and hence the container in which it is served might be a BRAN DISH. However a bit of Googling seems to suggest that bran isn’t that great for horses because it depletes calcium. Regardless, as long as your brain associates bran with horse food then you needn’t trouble yourself over the possible deficiencies of a bran-based equine diet.
6 Child’s toy bringing greetings from America (2-2)
YO-YO – if one American greeting is yo, then greetings (plural) is at least YOYO
7 Rich dairy product: Charlie somehow created first of many (7,5)
CLOTTED CREAMCLOT (Charlie, as in a fool) + anagram (somehow) of CREATED + M (first, i.e. initial letter, of Many)
11 A tree was diseased: it comes and goes in waves (3,5)
SEA WATER – anagram (diseased) of A TREE WAS, with the definition gently cryptic
13 Most of the conflict Edward foiled (8)
THWARTEDTH (Most of “the”) + WAR (conflict) + TED (one of several diminutives of Edward)
15 A worry, containing extremely serious attack (6)
ASSAILA + AIL (worry) around (containing) SS (extremely, i.e. the extremes of, SeriouS)
18 Record one’s held in the Washington area (4)
DISCIS (one’s) inside (held in the) DC (Washington area, i.e. District of Columbia, the region containing the capital (and the Capitol) of the US). Washington DC should not be confused with Washington state on the other side of the country. Nor Columbia with Colombia.
19 Breach that sounds complete (4)
HOLE – homophone (sounds) of whole (complete)

9 comments on “Quick Cryptic 56 by Orpheus”

  1. I was starting to feel panicky about 5d, my LOI, until I finally noticed that I’d typed ‘complimentery’ at 8ac. That got me BRANDISH OK, but I didn’t stop to try to parse it. Is know-how (or knowhow, which looks rather odd to me) natural? I would have though most know-how is acquired; but anyway. And I share Mohn’s reservations about duck as ‘white meat’. And ling is also erica. 7:50.
  2. A slow start made this the most difficult of Orpheus’s puzzles so far for me but I closed it out in 13 minutes.

    Duck as white meat is something of a grey area though I believe it can be justified by its inclusion on some official list or other. A tart, I’d have said, is more usually not a dessert but I suppose that it can be on occasion is sufficient for our purposes. I spent as long the other day contemplating whether ‘sweet’ was a valid definition of ‘choc ice’. I really must get out more!

  3. Yes I know it wasn’t a difficult one but it was momentous as the first QC I’ve finished in one sitting. Actually I wasn’t sitting I was lying down because I completed it in almost exactly an hour, online on my tablet, before getting out of bed! Although I got just one letter wrong — DUPE instead of DOPE — I’m still counting it as a win. I’m not sure I totally understand where all the answers came from so now I’ve had my extra-large celebratory helping of chocolate breakfast cereal I must calmly and carefully read through the explanations above.
    Hope you have an equally good Bank Holiday folks.
  4. 6 mins so it wasn’t one of the easier ones for me. Although the clue for 3ac led me to the answer easily enough I didn’t think it was a particularly good CD. The DOPE/DUCKLING answers were my last in, and you can count me as another who doesn’t like “white meat” as a definition for the latter, although as has been said it is something of a grey area.
  5. In my innocence I clicked on the Quick Cryptic in the ToL today and found #51 by Grumpy. This must have been one from last week that I didn’t complete as I didn’t recognise any of the clues. It was only by coming here that I found I’ve done the ‘wrong’ one!
    1. Yes, the bunglers in the Times IT Department are at it again – pretty much every Monday we get a stuff up (which is not to say other days are error free either). After 11 weeks, you’d really think they would have got their act together. Pathetic.
  6. Found this one quite tricky, albeit no obscure vocabulary or GK. Probably just that several of the answers were words that are embedded deep in my memory bank rather than being readily accessible – e.g. brandished, thwarted etc.

    Anyway, got it out in around the half hour mark.

  7. Enjoyed this one – 13 minutes with the last one in DUCKLING. If my duckling was served white, I’d definitely send it back….
  8. 18 mins with a little help from my fiend aka himself.

    COD & LOI BRANDISH but IN THE SAME BOAT and CAPABLY were close runners-up.

    Nice blog mohn2 – like the caustic nuances.

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