Quick Cryptic 697 by Mara

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
I had to put this down and come back to it a couple of times before I started getting anywhere with it. The NW was the last corner to yield; all but 3dn, anyway, which is the cause of my DNF. I actually had to use the “reveal” button to get the word, despite understanding that it was an anagram and having all the chequers. Similarly, I knew the homophone at 1dn, but did not make the connection with the synonym. That combined with a crafty anagrind at 7dn, and getting the wrong end of the stick (clue) at 8dn, means this was a fair old struggle for yours truly. Thanks Mara for the gentle nudge off of the nursery slopes.

Hope you all fared better.

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Punctual reminder on stage (6)
PROMPT – double definition.
4 Heads for seedy cinema usually marketing dirty film (4)
SCUM – first letters of (heads for) Seedy Cinema Usually Marketing.
9 Nonconformist lamenting order (9)
ALIGNMENT – anagram of (nonconformist) LAMENTING.
10 Joiner entering San Diego (3)
AND – hidden in (entering) sAN Diego.
11 Old spinner, a septuagenarian? (7-5)
SEVENTY-EIGHT – double definition, the first referring to a type of vinyl record.
13 Boggy, extremely heavy on planet (6)
MARSHY – outside letters of (extremely) HeavY, on MARS (planet).
15 Cartel spilt drink (6)
CLARET – anagram of (spilt) CARTEL.
17 One collecting data that’s intact, as it is after adjustment (12)
STATISTICIAN – anagram of (after adjustment) INTACT AS IT IS.
20 Doctrine remains with Magdalen’s principal (3)
ISM – IS (remains, exists) with first letter (principal) of Magdalen.
21 Pig consuming litre thanks large vessel (3,6)
OIL TANKER – OINKER (pig) surrounding (consuming) L (litre) and TA (thanks).
22 Identify retired English opener (4)
GATE – TAG (identify), reversed (retired), and E (English).
23 River cut north (6)
SEVERN – SEVER (cut) and N (north).
Down
1 Top dog, did you say? (4)
PEAK – homophone of (did you say?) “pique” (dog, annoy) “peke” (Pekinese, dog breed).
2 Nothing pleasant being shelved (2,3)
ON ICE – O (nothing) and NICE (pleasant).
3 One’s required when moving innocent chap around (12)
PANTECHNICON – anagram of (around) INNOCENT CHAP. A large removals van.
5 Bell, one dropped in error (7)
CLANGER – double definition. As in ‘dropped a clanger’, made an error.
6 Reflect, seeing change in friend (8)
MEDITATE – EDIT (change) in MATE (friend).
7 Steak rare for poet (5)
KEATS – anagram of (rare) STEAK.
8 Overpriced, Chelsea lost sporting competition (12)
STEEPLECHASE – STEEP (overpriced), and an anagram of (lost) CHELSEA.
12 Breaking up is wonderful (8)
SMASHING – double definition.
14 Again open the door to study with German (7)
READMIT – READ (to study) and MIT (with, in German).
16 Beginning of sob story, hackneyed (5)
STALE – first letter (beginning) of Sob, and TALE (story).
18 Joint an ungulate turned (5)
ANKLE – AN with ELK (ungulate) backwards (turned).
19 I ruled the country (4)
IRAN – I and RAN (ruled).

25 comments on “Quick Cryptic 697 by Mara”

    1. Thanks for this – I had considered it but couldn’t find support for the abbreviation of Pekinese in my dictionary. Google agrees with you, though!
  2. 11 minutes. I lost a minute or two getting properly started on this one. I caught a glimpse of 1ac as the puzzle came off the printer and solved it mentally on the spot, but having started the clock and written in PROMPT, I couldn’t immediately solve any of the intersecting clues and had to jump around the grid several times before finding another answer that leapt out at me.

    I don’t usually award COD, but today I loved OINKER for “pig” at 21ac, so I shall make an exception in that case.

    Whilst I’d be happy with “exists” = “is”, at 20ac we have “remains” = “is” which doesn’t seem as good a fit as it surely means “still is”.

  3. DNF, everything done in 20 mins except 1a, 9a, 1d and 3d and revealed them after another hour.

    I should have got the across clues but the down were beyond me.

  4. Never heard of a PANTECHNICON, and was unable to assemble it from the anagrist.

    It now goes on to my list alongside OREAD and BUCKMINSTERFULLERENE.

    Thanks Mara and William.

  5. I found this really tricksy, so I was astonished to find I’d scraped in under my 0 minutes benchmark.
    PANTECHNICON was no problem, but like most, the NE corner was the most stubborn, with 9a being my LOI.
    I never did get around to parsing 21a and 8d, so thanks William.
    Nice one Mara.
    1. You’re Doctor Who AICMFP!

      Similar story. Took a while to spot that 7 and 9 were anagrams. (Only having two “checkers” for 7 and 16 makes this grid a bit tricky.) FOI 1ac LOI 1dn.

      Good puzzle, good blog, thanks all.

      Edited at 2016-11-09 01:33 pm (UTC)

      1. Whoops, where did the “1” go in “10”?
        It was probably because I was typing through welling-up eyes.
        Were I Dr Who, I think I’d be going back in time and introduce Mrs Trump senior to birth control.
  6. A very tricky one day and, as a result, a DNF for me. Couldn’t get 3dn despite knowing it was an anagram. 22ac stumped me as I was looking for a word for “identify”. And 14dn really confused me as to what I was actually looking for. A good challenge, though. Gribb.
  7. Chacun a son gout as we say in Lancashire, I found this of easy to middling difficulty, as once the four long ones were in the rest dropped in without trouble, but a number were biffed then parsed. With Jack all the way about OINKER. Thanks Mara and blogger.
  8. Thought I was about average, but all is relative. After this morning’s news it’s a wonder I can function at all. Liked SEVENTY-EIGHT, had one or two in the house, and OINKER as noted. Thanks william and Mara.
  9. Fairly average time of 28 mins for me, but I seem to be getting fairly consistent times this week. I would go further than William with respect to the anagrind at 7dn – crafty maybe but I personally can’t think of a usage where rare would mean mixed up or equivalent.
  10. Limped home after nearly an hour, with 1d my stubborn LOI, so I was relieved to see a number of regular bloggers also struggled. I knew 3d, so that wasn’t a problem, but took ages over 9, 20 and 22ac. A hard QC after a long night. Has the world gone mad this year ? Invariant
  11. 3dn A ‘Big Rig’ in the USA was my COD – common enough back in Blighty. Also liked OIL TANKER’s porcine clue.

    11.27 so not so easy IMHO.

    7dn ‘A crafty anagrind’? – less of this Wednesdayspeak!

    The world has gone quite mad!

  12. Third one in a row where I have been pleased to finish at all. Hard to break into and stayed a challenge most of the way through. Like others, I enjoyed OINKER. Being the pedant that I am, it is DATA ARE please not DATA IS, although I realise that data like criteria have become singular these days.
    My LOI was 12d, having spent ages trying to think of synonyms for breaking up or wonderful. I far prefer clues where I have a chance of building the answer.
    PlayupPompey
  13. I had most of this done in 14 minutes when I decided to stop for a break needing 1d, 9a, 7d and 8d. In the meantime I had a quick look at the main cryptic and got a few clues quickly so I felt on the ball. Coming back to this I had to really struggle. Oddly enough 7d was my LOI which with hindsight is fairly easy. Pantechnicon was one of my first. Favourite 4a. Time unknown but long. A very good test and nothing unfair. David
  14. For years I have bitten my lip when friends or the media use Data as plural. In the 70’s, when computers entered our vocabulary, terms such as Data Processing or “the data suggests that . . .” implied to me that the term itself was singular, even if it referred to more than one item of information. One might also say “given the data, it seems it was poorly structured”. Surely singular . . .

    My head above the parapet . . . waiting in trepidation.

    Philip

  15. Some harder ones for me today were 22a gate where I plumped as my LOI for gets so a DNF; 20a ism as this hardly a word in my opinion; and 1d peak. I thought 78’s were made of shellac – hence easily shattered….I count vinyl from the days of LP’s & 45’s.
    Did word pantechnicon go out of usage in the early 1950’s in the U.K.? Familiar term in the days of B&W cinema…
    So far, so pretty good this week apart from today’s 22a.
    1. Still used in the late fifties at least – as I was totally aware of the word. Dinky Toys had pantechnicons into the sixties.
  16. Beaten by 1d, after jotting down 10 words which fit. Homophone of an abbreviation, was always going to be a stretch. ‘Rare’ as anagrind at 7d was a new one.
  17. As well as being plural from the Latin, “data” in English is a collective noun and as such takes the singular in everyday usage.
  18. Perhaps it’s just my mood today, but I found this one of the hardest QCs I’ve tried, coming in at about 25 minutes—only a little below my personal best for a 15×15. Took me a while to get PANTECHNICON, even though I knew the word and its interesting origins. LOsI SMASHING, which I should have seen much earlier, followed quickly by ISM and GATE.
  19. I find Mara one of the tougher setters and today was no exception. I was eventually defeated by 20a despite a couple of runs through the alphabet (must have skipped over s). 14d, 22a, 1d and 9a lso proved tricky but perseverance eventually paid off. A good challenge.

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