I enjoyed this despite the ungodly hour. Good mix of clue types, nothing particularly fiendish. Came in at just over 9min. My favourites are 20ac and 15dn. LOI 16ac, for no obvious reason
| Across | |
| 1 | Preserve trunk road around Caribbean island (7) |
| JAMAICA – JAM (preserve) + AI (road) + CA (circa) | |
| 5 | Trap feline near church (5) |
| CATCH – CAT + CH | |
| 8 | No 1 sign diet at fault? (11) |
| INDIGESTION – What we call an &lit clue, the whole thing is both cryptic and surface. Anagram (‘at fault’) of NO 1 SIGN DIET. With ‘I’ instead of ‘1’, obviously | |
| 10 | Fuel that is partly undervalued (4) |
| DERV – hidden word | |
| 11 | See a drum beaten with show of restraint (8) |
| MEASURED – anagram (‘beaten’) of SEE A DRUM | |
| 12 | Huge numbers of weapons from Cornwall and Devon? (6) |
| SWARMS – SW (South West) + ARMS | |
| 14 | Vegetable dish and ham too, served regularly (6) |
| POTATO – POT (‘dish’) + alternate letters of hAm ToO. Note to ex-Vice President Dan Quayle: it doesn’t need an E on the end | |
| 16 | I will leave night clothes near entrance to room for someone staying (8) |
| LINGERER – LINGERIE (‘night clothes’) minus the I, plus R (‘entrance to Room’) | |
| 18 | Cheer leaders of rubbish team, accepting goalless draw? (4) |
| ROOT – Leaders of rubbish team are R and T, goalless draw is 0-0, or OO in crosswordland, assemble. To root is to cheer. An yet when they cheer Joe Root by calling his name it sounds like they’re booing. As if cricket wasn’t complicated enough. | |
| 20 | Reveal terrible pain is constant (11) |
| EVERLASTING – Nice compound clue. An anagram (‘terrible’) of REVEAL plus STING (‘pain’) all into a nice surface. | |
| 22 | Suppose one will receive letter from Athens (5) |
| OPINE – ONE with PI (‘letter from Athens’) inside. | |
| 23 | Homeless old lady sheltering in barrel (7) |
| VAGRANT – GRAN (‘old lady’) inside VAT (‘barrel’) | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Stick offer in as expected, initially (5) |
| ABIDE – ‘Offer’ is BID, put inside the initials of As Expected. | |
| 3 | Heading off, pass town in Hampshire (7) |
| ANDOVER – Remove the first letter (‘heading off’) of HANDOVER | |
| 4 | Company takes on good employee who’ll play small part (3) |
| COG – CO (company) + G (good). Why is ‘G’ always ‘good’, does anyone know? Is is something to do with racing? | |
| 6 | Roadie usually having the last word (5) |
| ADIEU – another hidden word roADIE Usually. | |
| 7 | Challenge wrongdoer put on trial (7) |
| CONTEST – CON (‘wrongdoer’) + TEST | |
| 9 | Person photographing crocodile? (7) |
| SNAPPER – double definition | |
| 11 | Strong wind and cloud over river and a lake (7) |
| MISTRAL – Know it well. MIST (‘cloud’) + R (‘river’) +A + L (‘lake’) | |
| 13 | Account‘s dazzling pure wit (5-2) |
| WRITE-UP – anagram of (‘dazzling’) PURE WIT | |
| 15 | Line restraining stray dog (7) |
| TERRIER – ‘Line’ is TIER, stray is ERR assemble. Very nice neat surface. Proof that a really good clue doesn’t have to be difficult. | |
| 17 | Fresh information about sappers (5) |
| GREEN – ‘Information’ is GEN, placed around RE (Royal Engineers, or ‘sappers’) | |
| 19 | Newspaper article following gold mining’s end? (5) |
| ORGAN – OR (‘gold’) + G (‘mining’s end’) + AN (article) | |
| 21 | Empty shore near a stretch of water (3) |
| SEA – Empty shore is SE, add A | |
I wish I could analyse what gave me problems but I can’t, other than to say the clues that delayed me were 1ac, 16ac and 2dn, all of which seem perfectly straightforward now with hindsight.
Edited at 2017-10-20 06:32 am (UTC)
Very nice puzzle though the top half of the grid felt a lot easier than the bottom, for unknown reasons!
Thanks to Flamande and curarist
Templar
27:20,with at least 7 mins on LOI, LINGERER. Did not parse at all, so thanks, blogger.
As soon as I see “Hampshire Town” I always try ANDOVER, Hampshire has many towns but only seem to ever see this one in the crossword.
OO for goalless was a new one for me.
COD 11d, MISTRAL
Matthew Booth, the (now retired) South African footballer, was another sportsman for whom it was easy to confuse the crowd’s acclaim for a lengthy booing. G stands for Good when describing the condition of vinyl records, but I suspect there’s probably a more commonplace equivalence than that.
I thought 16a difficult and a bit misleading as night clothes must be pyjamas which I do not see as synonymous with lingerie. But I was not held up for too long. Opine was also tricky. David
I finished in approx. 3hrs across the whole day. For me, it was the correct level of complexity for a Quick Cryptic.
COD 16a
LOI 19d (gold is OR, why?)
11d was a “biff” based on checkers given, but I’d never heard of that word beforehand.
In the right-hand column of this page, there is a section called “Free online editions of UK dictionaries”, which contains links to Oxford, Chambers, and Collins respectively. I use these frequently to check on words or meanings that I don’t know. You can also get apps for all three. I think that Collins tends to be the dictionary used by Times compilers (though there is obviously a lot of commonality between all three).
Finally, congrats on the completion! Practice, as well as reading the blogs for explanations of ones you couldn’t get or couldn’t understand, will bring your completion times down.
I couldn’t actually answer your question about OR so I looked it up. It’s a heraldic term meaning gold or yellow colour. It’s also French for gold, but I suspect that’s not the reason.
A bit like G for Good above, there are loads of crossword abbreviations whose meaning I know, but whose derivation I don’t.
Maserati Mistral
Maserati Khamsin
Volkswagen Scirocco
Maserati Bora
Dnk derv.
COD indigestion or swarms.