Quick Cryptic 836 by Felix

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A lot of my 16 minutes were taken up with fully understanding (and therefore enjoying) the word plays. Some excellent clues (16ac, 1dn, 5dn, 7dn) and plenty of long anagrams. Unless it’s just me on the wrong radio channel entirely, I suspect this won’t please newer solvers who are after the gratification of quick times. Well worth working through though.

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ACROSS

1. Second string – inferior. Give backing to (SECOND), series (STRING).
8. Sunni – Muslim. Star (SUN) home (IN – backwards).
9. Tea shop – small restaurant. Anagram (raving) of HAS POET.
10. Yum – tasty. (Y)oghurt (U)sually (M)ost.
11. Hollywood – film industry. Pounds (L) inside very good (HOLY), golf club (WOOD).
13. Get-go – start. Anagram (scrambled) of EGG TO.
14. Tutor – teacher. Express disapproval (TUT), f(OR) without the first letter (head’s left).
16. Nicaragua – country. Estate perhaps (CAR) in Northern Ireland a (NI A), month (AUG – backwards).
17. Gap – break (which could be from working as in gap year). From workin(G AP)peals.
19. Mafiosi – gangsters. I (I) following an anagram (devious) of AIMS OF.
21. Yonks – a long time. Americans (YaNKS) having brought in nothing (O) instead of A.
22. Border Collie – sheepdog maybe. To be beside (BORDER), miner (COLLIEr – endlessly).

DOWN

1. Sissy – weakling. Say (SaY – losing heart/middle letter) with is (IS) and (S)trong inside.
2. Cinematic – description of picture (film). Anagram (confused) of CAT and MICE IN.
3. Neighbourhood – area. Anagram (moved about) of HUGE ROBIN, roof (HOOD). Roof=hood felt only loosely right until I found this definition: the folding roof of a convertible car.
4. Settle – place to sit. City of Washington (SEaTTLE) doesn’t have A.
5. Ready steady go – this gets competitors started. Cash (READY), firm (STEADY), leave (GO).
6. Noh – drama. With odd characters disappearing – iN sOcHi. Cultural education time – noh is a classic form of Japanese drama with choral music and dancing, using set themes, simple scenery, masked and costumed performers, and stylised acting.
7. Spider – creepy-crawly. On (RE), sink’s (DIPS) all climbing upwards.
12. Octagonal – in a particular shape. Anagram (fashioned) of A LONG COAT.
13. Genome – set of chromosomes. (E)ach inside dwarf (GNOME).
15. Uglier – more grotesque. Headless horn blower b(UGLER) seizing one (I).
18. Paste – stick. Father’s (PAS), note (TE – as in doh ray me…).
20. Flo – the diminutive form of Florence (Nightingale). COD for this cheeky last clue.

23 comments on “Quick Cryptic 836 by Felix”

  1. Sluggish again today, I’m not sure why, especially as I biffed a couple (GENOME, SPIDER), and NICARAGUA is the only one I recall struggling over. Like Chris, I liked FLO. 6:51.
  2. Pretty smooth solve with a bit of time spent on NICARAGUA and a minor hold-up at the end for FLO. Cheeky little last clue indeed.

    Thanks Felix and Chris.

  3. 8 minutes for this one with only the biffable TUTOR giving pause for thought as far as wordplay was concerned – I needed to read the second part of the clue several times before realising what was going on. GENOME might have been tricky for those who didn’t do the main puzzle referred to by Jonathan above, and this may be the first appearance of NOH (aka NO) in a QC puzzle, so is probably unfamiliar to some whilst being a write-in for more practised hands..
  4. “Finished” in 30 mins but I also had yanks for 21a, doh…which I thought might be the answer for 6d but that didn’t parse so stuck with the unknown noh.

    Lots of great clues, favourites were 16a Nicaragua 22a Border Collie and 5d Ready steady go 15d Uglier.

  5. I thought this was an interesting challenge with several clues that were biffable but where the parsing needed some thought – 7d, 16a, 14a and 11a (I thought ‘pounds’ gave a double l, leaving my with an unparsed ‘hoy’). The only one I couldn’t figure out in the end was 7d.
    I would have spent a lot longer on 6d if I hadn’t previously met it a couple of times in crosswordland. I’ll join the bandwagon for COD being 20d. Completed in 18 minutes, LOI 1d.
    Thanks to chris for the blog.

    Edited at 2017-05-23 07:39 am (UTC)

    1. I, too, was looking for a double L for pounds. Got the answer but couldn’t see why HOY was very good…
  6. I forgot to say I’m not convinced that SECOND STRING necessarily equates with “inferior”. The full expression “having a second string to one’s bow” means having an alternative course of action, something in reserve should the first option fail, so it’s perfectly possible for a SECOND STRING to work out better than the first.

    Edited at 2017-05-23 07:36 am (UTC)

    1. I got comfortable by the reference to a second string team in football as a weakened side.
      1. Ah, well, Football. I wouldn’t know anything about that!

        Now that I’ve taken the trouble to check, of the usual sources only Collins has it as “inferior” and it’s the fourth of four meanings.

  7. This one definitely required some thought. I thought I was heading for a slow time, but after leaving a lot of the upper grid blank and carrying on with the lower half before returning, I scraped in under 10 minutes at 9:49. GET GO seems a weird expression to me and I didn’t put it in until I had all the crossers. Took me ages to see CINEMATIC too. Good puzzle. Thanks Felix and Chris.
  8. Despite a flying start I made very heavy weather of this one – a combination of silly errors, inability to see the wood for the trees and sheer ignorance. 35 minutes. Oh well, onwards and upwards. Thanks for the blog. I came quite close to looking at it before completion today!
  9. I came across get-go in a crossword the other day as well. Seems very odd but it’s there in Collins. Some new-fangled Americanism I suppose.

    Is 20dn a CD? We are not told. I supposed that in some way flo = form, but perhaps not.

    1. Yes, I believe 20dn is a cryptic definition. Nightingale’s first name is Florence – the diminutive form of which is Flo. Referring to Nightingale as Flo seems a bit cheeky as would referring to HRH as Liz.
  10. I enjoyed this one more than yesterday’s. I got most of the anagrams – bifd or otherwise. But I did need the crossings to point me in the right direction for many.
    I definitely struggled with the what went with “huge robin”. I knew hood as top of a convertible car but didn’t make the connection.
    Didn’t know that Seattle was in Washington (anyway, I thought it was referring to a city – no doubt deliberately misleading!).

    All in all, as very much a newbie, I thought it was much more manageable than other recent ones.
    Thanks to Chris for the explanations…

  11. Just a note for today’s blogger. I am a newbie, and I suspect like most newbies I have no interest in quick times, and no expectation to solve in a quick time. . What I do want are puzzles that I can learn to solve. I accept there will be hard days and easier ones. I love the blogs as they help me learn. It is only depressing as a newbie to have a number of very hard puzzles in a row that are too difficult. The balance is about right at the moment
  12. I got 20d straightaway and it would have been my first in, but then I thought is this cryptic or a GK question. A minor point overall.
    I started quickly at the bottom of the puzzle, got a bit stuck and then rattled to the end in 17 minutes with with 11a and 16a not parsed. Thank you blogger for explanations. LOI was 3d. Noh I knew from other puzzles. David
  13. As some have already said, one of those puzzles where the answers were very biffable, but it took a while to work out the wordplay. Notable examples include 1dn, 7dn, 11ac and 18dn.

    Spent an age looking for a homophone for “weakling”, even though I couldn’t get it to match sissy. Similarly, I was also expecting to “L’s” for investing pounds to give Hollywood, but was left struggling with Hoy. Is the famous cyclist that good?

    Didn’t know 6dn “Noh” so that was a new one on me.

    COD was 16ac.

    Thanks as always.

    DR31

  14. Surprised no-one’s mentioned the parsing for 4D. I can see settle as a verb meaning to sit, but that leave “place” otiose. Can settle really be used as a noun to mean “place to sit”?
    1. A settle is also a seat, for two or more people, usually made of wood with a high back and arms, and sometimes having a storage space in the boxlike seat
  16. Just a note for today’s blogger. I am a newbie, and I suspect like most newbies I have no interest in quick times, and no expectation to solve in a quick time. . What I do want are puzzles that I can learn to solve. I accept there will be hard days and easier ones. I love the blogs as they help me learn. It is only depressing as a newbie to have a number of very hard puzzles in a row that are too difficult. The balance is about right at the moment

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