Quick Cryptic 915 by Tracy

Author   mohn2Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Tracy’s offering today contains no uncommon words (apart from maybe the first definition in 22A) or complicated wordplay so I would wager solvers will find it at the straightforward end of the spectrum. However I vaguely recall that, some time ago, jackkt produced a ranking of which setters he found the hardest – Tracy’s position near the easier end of that personal scale produced the most debate among other solvers, so I won’t be surprised if my assessment is way off beam. COD to 17D.


The puzzle can be found here if the usual channels are unavailable: http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/puzzles/crossword/20170911/26259/

Definitions are underlined, {} = omission

Across
1 Gloria, poorly, received by doctor in plant (8)
MARIGOLD – anagram of (poorly) GLORIA, in (received by) MD (doctor). Perhaps not Crosswordland’s most common doctor abbreviation, but no doubt familiar to all from Doogie Howser.
5 Girl having a field day (4)
GALA – GAL (Girl) + A. I’m not sure I would have necessarily thought these two were the same thing, but Chambers has for gala: “1. A festivity, 2. A sporting occasion, with competitions, etc” and for field day: “1. A day when troops are taken out for instruction in field exercises, 2. A day spent on outdoor activities, 3. Any period of great activity, success or enjoyment”, so there’s clearly some overlap.
8 Leave, parking in narrow opening (5)
SPLIT – P (parking) in SLIT (narrow opening), with the answer slang
9 Bring information back about old soldier (7)
TROOPER – reversal of (Bring … back) REPORT (information) about O (old)
11 A new daily, ultimately not one in particular (3)
ANY – A + N (new) + {dail}Y (daily, ultimately, i.e. the last letter of the word “daily”)
12 Strengthen control by arm-twisting (9)
REINFORCE – REIN (control) + FORCE (arm-twisting)
13 Failing to change sides (6)
DEFECT – double definition, the first a noun, the second a verb
15 The French in conversation in holiday camp building (6)
CHALET – LE (The French, i.e. a French word for “the”) in CHAT (conversation)
18 Singer his rector trained (9)
CHORISTER – anagram of (trained) HIS RECTOR
19 Send up a drill (3)
APE – A + PE (drill, i.e. physical education)
20 Perception, in a sense (7)
INSIGHT – IN + SIGHT (a sense)
21 Turn of phrase in papers I’m carrying round (5)
IDIOM – ID (papers) + I’M around (carrying) O (round). One of the 35 nounal definitions Chambers has for round is: “A round thing or part”.
22 Egg shell (4)
BOMB – double definition, the first a slang expression for the second
23 Moving on pearls, one’s own (8)
PERSONAL – anagram of (Moving) ON PEARLS
Down
1 Relish slander involving celebrity (7)
MUSTARD – MUD (slander) around (involving) STAR (celebrity)
2 Genuinely devoid of energy in comeback (5)
RALLY – R{e}ALLY (Genuinely devoid of energy, i.e. the word “really” (genuinely) without the letter “e” (energy))
3 Achieve excellent start (3,8)
GET CRACKING – GET (Achieve) + CRACKING (excellent)
4 Go wild seeing permit with tear (3,3)
LET RIP – LET (permit) + RIP (tear)
6 Clothes appear out on line (7)
APPAREL – anagram of (out) APPEAR, + L (line)
7 A European losing last match (5)
AGREE – A + GREE{k} (European losing last, i.e. the word “Greek” (European) without its last letter)
10 Loco — where one may end up after crash? (3,3,5)
OFF THE RAILS – literal interpretation referring to the other meaning of loco (i.e. a locomotive)
14 Force almost abandoned wreckage found at sea (7)
FLOTSAM – F (Force) + anagram of (abandoned) ALMOST
16 Warm weather Malta needs (7)
THERMAL – hidden in (needs) weaTHER MALta. “Needs” might seem like an odd hidden indicator, but you can’t write “weather Malta” without the string of letters “thermal” inside it, hence “weather Malta” needs “thermal”.
17 Astute running may get you a bronze, perhaps (6)
STATUE – anagram of (running) ASTUTE
18 Cold, member making ascent (5)
CLIMB – C (Cold) + LIMB (member)
19 Strange article about piece of fiction (5)
ALIEN – AN (article) about LIE (piece of fiction)

27 comments on “Quick Cryptic 915 by Tracy”

  1. 8 minutes. The first meaning ‘egg’ was unknown or forgotten and in my haste I had parsed 19a as a double definition, what with ‘drill’ being a type of monkey – it works, but renders the ‘a’ surplus to requirements so is less satisfactory in that respect, and it’d be a bit obscure for a QC.

    Thanks for referencing my league table, mohn2. If you know when I posted it I’d be grateful for the info as, although I have the original file of workings I don’t know the exact basis on which it was calculated. Reading what I wrote here at the time might help to clarify this, though I could probably work it out eventually. For those interested, this was the table:

    Setter Difficulty (1-10)
    Izetti 7.0
    Joker 6.9
    Mara / Rongo / Teazel 6.5
    Hurley 6.3
    Felix 6.2
    Grumpy 5.7
    Orpheus 4.5
    Pedro 4.0
    Tracy 3.7
    Flamande 3.6

    As mohn2 indicated above, this was based on my own solving times so it is purely subjective.

    Edited at 2017-09-11 05:09 am (UTC)

      1. Many thanks. More than a year has passed so I shall revisit this and see how the figures for the past 12 months look by comparison.
  2. Jack’s table would make sense if hardest was 1.

    Tough going. After 20 minutes I still had 5a, 12a, 13a, 22a, 3d, 7d and 14d outstanding. Crawled over the line in 39 mins.

    LOI 22a was eggtremely obscure for the QC.

    I would have gone with more well known definitions:

    A pretty penny is explosive.

    COD 13 defect.

  3. Here’s my analysis of my solving times 1st August 2016 to 31st August 2017. Despite the comment above I think it’s perfectly clear what is intended, but just in case it’s not, the easiest puzzles would score 1 and the hardest would score 10. I think the Richter scale for earthquakes works that way round so if it was good enough for him, etc. I have excluded setters who gave us fewer than 4 puzzles.

    Setter (Puzzles Set) / Difficulty 1-10 (Last time)

    Des (4) 7.5 (n/a)
    Hawthorn (13) 5.4 (n/a)
    Howzat (4) 5.0 (n/a)
    Hurley (26) 5.0 (6.3)
    Oran (4) 5.0 (n/a)
    Pedro (14) 5.0 (4.0)
    Rongo (9) 4.4 (6.5)
    Izetti (26) 4.2 (7.0)
    Joker (26) 4.2 (6.9)
    Teazel (27) 3.3 (6.5)
    Tracy (26) 3.1 (3.7)
    Orpheus (26) 2.7 (4.5)
    Felix (8) 2.5 (6.2)
    Flamande (26) 1.9 (3.6)
    Mara (26) 1.9 (6.5)

    Sorry LJ has squashed it all up – it looks fine in preview.

    Edited at 2017-09-11 09:56 am (UTC)

    1. I’m possibly reading too much into this, but your table suggests that familiarity helps – new setters are more difficult until we get used to their tricks (or not as the case may be). Anyway, that’s my excuse for being hopeless at The Guardian crosswords when I occasionally have a go. Invariant
      1. I would say that the Guardian has a much wider range of difficulty than the Times, not least because setters at the Guardian seem to have much more of a free rein than at the Times. Setters such as Boatman and Enigmatist will use techniques that you rarely (if ever) see in the Times, which can make them seem impenetrable at first. Setters such as Chifonie and Rufus are pretty gentle though. My favourites there are Arachne, Paul, and Philistine for their humour – I think that both Arachne and Paul set for the Times (with Paul a Quicky setter too), but I feel that the Guardian gets their best puzzles.
  4. 10:00 no problems, I didnt know egg for bomb either, but B_M_ for a shell is pretty straight forward
    Incidentally Richter scale is logrythmic so hardest would take 10,000,000,000 times as long as easiest
  5. I found most of this fairly straightforward until my last two in. For 5a I was trying to think of 3 letter girls names and for 22a the first definition was a new one to me. Fortunately I got there in the end and completed the puzzle in 17 minutes (around average). My COD was 17d.
    1. I meant to add that I mainly agree with jack’s list but I’d have Flammande at the bottom and Izetti a little higher. Most interesting (to me) was how Mara has gone from one of the hardest to one of the easiest, although I would have him a few places up the list.
  6. I thought this was quite tricky. Needs for a hidden, and abandoned for an anagram were, I thought, not so obvious as indicators and Egg as a definition for Bomb …… (27:23)
  7. Just shows how personal these things are – I find Tracy towards the tougher end of the scale and today was no eggception. I thought that a childhood of Biggles and similar had left me with an unrivalled knowledge of RAF slang but egg for bomb is a new one on me! (And my own view is that if it;s not a definition in Chambers or the COD then it’s too obscure for the QC.)

    Anyway, since the only alternatives I could think of were bump, bumf and bums, in it went.

    I also had to get all the checkers before MARIGOLD went in – clue was fair enough but I hate plant definitions since I know too many! (“Flower” is even worse because then you also have to run through a checklist of rivers.)

    Templar

  8. Held up at the end by the 3d/12ac pairing, both of which I thought at the time to be a bit of a stretch, but now seem perfectly reasonable. I thought 21ac was a nice clue, and had no problem with 22ac, having spent most of my youth reading war comics – you didn’t have much choice in those days. Invariant
  9. I found this at the harder side. Took me 33 minutes, so a little over my target of 30 minutes. I biffed bomb in from the definition “shell”.

    I presumed APE was a double definition of copying (or sending up) someone by (to APE them) and the “drill” being a type of primate related to Mandrills (although, I think these are technically monkeys, not apes…)

  10. Thanks for the table, Jacktt, but could you clarify what the third figure is. Is it solving time, or something else? It’s just that 1.9 minutes seems really fast and there was nothing like that in the earlier table where the quickest was something like 3.6, I think.
    1. Just to clarify, the table doesn’t include solving times at all. 1.9 is my ‘difficulty’ rating based on 1 being easiest and 10 being hardest. It’s all completely subjective according to my ability to solve the puzzles within 10 minutes, a figure I chose arbitrarily.

      I would mention that I include parsings in my solving times for the QC, so it’s not just a matter of filling the grid with the correct answers.

  12. Just over 20 minutes for me today with Ape going in last unparsed. I hesitated over Bomb. Gala also held me up.
    Some nice clues today – I liked 17d and 11a.
    As people have said no really unusual words and a good enjoyable QC challenge.
    Very interesting table Jackkt -thanks. It’s obviously very personal how one fares with a particular setter. David
  13. This seemed fairly hard, with more than my usual number of clues I had to skip over and come back to several times. 10:08, FOI SPLIT, LOI BOMB, where I finally remembered that I’d seen it used to clue “grenade” in a 15×15 at some point…
  14. Found this slow. Really didn’t like Gala but accept it just about works. Ok with ‘egg’ being slang for ‘bomb’ but not ok with ‘bomb’ and ‘shell’ being synonymous. A shell is fired from a gun whereas a bomb is dropped (e.g. from a plane) or placed and so the two are different objects.
      1. Mills bombs were hand grenades that certainly weren’t fired from guns so were not shells. I cannot think of anything that is/was a bomb that could also be called a shell. (I know that someone here will probably come up with one!)
        1. As so often the perceived problem lies with those pesky lexicographers. SOED has ‘shell’ as : An explosive projectile or bomb for use in a cannon, large gun, or mortar. M17., and ‘bomb’ as : Orig., an explosive projectile fired from a mortar. Now, a container filled with high explosive or incendiary material, smoke, poison gas, etc., or a body of high explosive etc., which may be dropped from an aircraft, fired from a gun, thrown, or deposited manually, and is exploded in various ways. L17.
  16. Collins dict has: BOMB any container filled with explosive, SHELL a hollow artillery projectile filled with explosive… so I think it’s OK. Was almost my LOI.

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