Quick Cryptic 957 by Flamande

25 comments on “Quick Cryptic 957 by Flamande”

1. I’ll be the first to complain about 1a. With _A_A, there are plenty of hip/jazzy combinations that fit. If you didn’t know either ‘rag’ or ‘raga’ then you were in trouble.

   I had a close call at 3D, where you need an anagram meaning ‘want publicity’, so I stuck in DEMONSTRATIVE, which at first pass looked pretty good. I don’t exactly check long anagrams, but was surprised that there was another answer.

   1. Maybe at first pass,but your alternative answer requires an O and only two Es whereas the anagrist has no O and three Es.

      As to jazz, surely rag and ragtime are common enough terms?

      1. I have heard of ragtime but not rag by itself, although as I mentioned I did get the right answer.

         I think for a QC an obscure word like raga should be clued by less obscure wordplay:

         Newspaper a feature of Indian music.

         1. ….from a crossword point of view, would be raga, sitar, tabla, Ravi Shankar. Everyone would be expected to know these pretty well. The more obscure words would be sarod, tambura, tala, and shehnai….and someone who’s not Ravi Shankar.
            1. thanks vinyl1
   2. Merlin – surely you know by now that it’s no use complaining about the QC? Someone, usually jackkt, will always pop up to tell you why you are wrong!
2. I’ll be the second!

   Excellent puzzle spoiled by 1a. Trad for Jazz didn’t fit. Bunged in rag as in rag time. Obviously newbies to cryptics are meant to be au fait with indian classical music.

   Last few took my time from about 15 minutes to almost an hour: leathery, slew and LOI raga. Sage went in unparsed.

   Otherwise: legroom, luddite, leathery, and dessertspoons (COD) great clues.

   Aqaba is a bit of a dump now, but well known from Lawrence of Arabia.

   Edited at 2017-11-08 05:26 am (UTC)

3. Well, Raga is traditional Indian music and a Sitar is an Indian instrument so as a cryptic clue that seemed quite OK to me. I had always thought a dessert spoon was two words but that turned out not to be the case. I also thought, after my first few in, that every answer was going to start with an A. That turned out not to be the case either.
4. Biffed 12ac and 17d–I’m not sure I would have spotted ALL IN. NHO GO SPARE. DESSERT SPOON [sic] is yet one more in an endless series of disagreements I have with the setter, but that’s life. I agree with mrkgrnao about RAGA; seems perfectly fine to me, and not really beyond the GK-for-Quickies range. Then again, I’m not a jazz fan, so the only 3-letter genres I can think of are RAG and ‘bop’. 6:04, except that I forgot to type in 9a!
   1. I had thought I was going to provide an explanation for it being one word, but now I’m not so sure. It’s true that we have ‘dessert fork’, ‘dessert knife’, ‘dessert plate’, ‘dessert service’, ‘dessert wine’, ‘dessert apple’, ‘dessert pear’, etc, but when it comes spoons we have the single words ‘teaspoon’ and ‘tablespoon’, so ‘dessertspoon’ would appear to be a logical construction in the same vein.

      But then I thought of ‘soup spoon’…

      The only suggestion I now have is that ‘teaspoon’, ‘tablespoon’ and ‘dessertspoon’ are traditionally used as measures in recipes (and can all take the suffix ‘-ful’ if required) whereas ‘soup spoon’ is not, and perhaps that has some bearing on the matter.

      Edited at 2017-11-08 06:26 am (UTC)

      1. Mind you, I’m not saying that my enumerations are right and the setters’ wrong, and I don’t imagine that there’s anything like a predictable pattern, beyond perhaps a general tendency to move from two words to hyphenated word to single word over time. I just wish the setters would have the courtesy to consult with me first.
      2. This is interesting. I’ve always thought of dessert spoon as two words because that’s how I pronounce it/them, maybe because of the hardish T at the end of dessert, whereas teaspoon and tablespoon both run together as one word. As far as cooking is concerned, I have never come across dessert spoon, sorry dessertspoon, in any of the few basic recipes I have been allowed to attempt. However, the other two spoons appear frequently, and always as tsp and tbsp respectively. But you may well have a point with -ful.

         As far as rag is concerned, I’m afraid I never considered that to be an obscurity. I tend to use myself as a good yardstick for what is obscure and what isn’t – if I’ve heard of it it isn’t obscure, whereas if I haven’t it is. Incidentally, I’m not particularly a trad jazz fan, but a brief look through my record collection revealed Weather Bird Rag, Snake Rag and High Society Rag all on one King Oliver CD.

         When I started doing these I daily encountered many obscurities in them. Gradually, over the years, after the words have appeared at least three times in Times crosswords (strangely, never in my real life) I become vaguely familiar with them. As a result, I now only usually encounter about three or four obscurities a day in the main cryptic. I think that is a bit of progress.

         1. So far as I can see, almost everyone who posts on TffT holds exactly the same view as you (and I) do, ie that any word that is unfamiliar to them is automatically obscure, by definition. It leads to some interesting exchanges sometimes..
5. Just home under the wire in 10 minutes today, but I lost more time than I should have deciphering the wordplay at 19ac where my first thought was that IN in NINE came from ‘in’ in the clue.

   For the avoidance of doubt I should point out that at 4ac AIREDALE is a ‘Yorkshire terrier’ in the sense that it’s a breed of terrier that originated in Yorkshire (aka ‘Bingley or Waterside terrier’) which is not the same thing at all as the ‘Yorkshire terrier’ (aka ‘Yorkie’).

   Edited at 2017-11-08 06:38 am (UTC)

6. Loi 22ac stumped me for some time but I still managed to creep in under 10 minutes (by 5 seconds!). I have something of an issue, I think, with 4dn. I pronounce angel as ainjel – Colin’s has eɪndʒəl and I’m pretty sure that ‘posh people’ say Gel rather than Jel. I’d have been happier if the clue was ‘Treasure a northern girl, as posh people might WRITE (5)’.
7. Third day in a row with a time of just sub 30 minutes. 1a and 2d both went in as a guess rather than with any certainty. Also Cabby went in unparsed so thanks as always for the explanation.
8. I didn’t quite make my 15 minute target today, probably indirectly due to the SWR strike, as I was cramped and standing all the way on the rattler.

   I agree with Chris above regarding the part ‘homophone’ for ANGEL, but it went in quickly enough. I also started looking for a two word anagram of HELOTS before spotting the hidden in 11a. Otherwise, no real excuse.

   I think for a newbie that there may be a touch too much GK here (1, 2 and 13 particularly), but I enjoyed the warm up for the 15 x 15.

9. Gave up after an hour with quite a few gaps including 1, 4, 7 and 21. Just not on form today. Invariant
10. I found this leathery. After 20 minutes I had three left -21a 17d and 22a -and I needed another three minutes to get these. LOI was 17d but really it was 21a as I had Cabby waiting (meter running) but I just couldn’t parse it -thanks for the explanation.
    I had to guess 1d but it was clearly clued. 1a seemed fine to me COD to 7d.
    The GK discussion is infinite and subjective.
    I also was surprised that the spoons were one word; clever clue, well done setter. David
11. ….letter-skipping typo. I may have to try turning letter skipping off and see if I get any better results.

    I went really fast for the most part, as the top half was very easy.

12. Had no problem with raga as I remember Ravi Shankar coming to play them in Oxford Town Hall. Of course it was in the flower power era. No silly safe places for we students in those days.
13. 10:31 for me today. Started with AQABA and finished with CABBY, which I failed to parse. RAGA came late in the solve with a muttered “of course!). I am also dubious about the GEL bit of ANGEL, and I thought DESSERTSPOON was two words, but hey ho!. A pleasant enough puzzle. Thanks Flamande and William.
14. I’m in the camp with those who don’t know much about jazz (or Indian music) so 1a proved tricky and was my, very tentative, LOI. But an enjoyable puzzle, completed in 21 minutes with COD going to 7d with an honourable mention to 6d as well.
15. 6 completions in a row! But this the longest of the lot at well over 1 hour. No issues with Raga but leathery and cabby took me an age, the latter going in unparsed. Dnk Aqaba but fairly clued. Knowing sailor = ab suppose means moving on from newbie status.

    Mighty

    1. Be sure to add ‘os’, ordinary seaman, one rank below an able seaman.

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