Quick Cryptic 985 by Teazel

Before getting into the meat of this puzzle I must say hello and introduce myself as your newest blogger. Having hung around on the periphery of this community for a few years, I finally plucked up the courage recently to respond to a request for blogging volunteers. The first time I expressed an interest somebody else got there first, but the next time a vacancy came up I was next in line, and so here I am!

It is a huge privilege to share a platform with the great bloggers that I have come to admire and enjoy over the years and I must thank vinyl1 for giving me the opportunity to do this and also thank him and jackkt for providing endlessly patient assistance and understanding in getting me set up with the ‘furniture’ with which to do the job. I must also say thank you to mohn2 for keeping the seat warm and now passing it on to me. I shall be blogging the QC initially for you on alternate Mondays, with my first blog being delivered today on the auspicious occasion of my wife’s birthday!

Who knows, maybe one day I will get close enough to touch the hem of somebody’s robe, maybe even verlaine’s, and he will turn and say “Who was it that touched me? I felt the power go out from me…”, and I will feel a sudden flash of inspiration and finally fill in a 3-letter tiddler that has been eluding me for hours…

Back to reality. So it was with mingled joy and trepidation that I began my first blog, and mercifullly found the puzzle to be a fairly straightforward affair. No real headscratchers and most answers writing themselves into the grid pretty smoothly. So much so that I can’t really remember an FOI or LOI. My COD would probably be 17D for the surface that seems to present me with stark alternatives for an untimely demise but then takes me back to the films of my youth. I don’t know where the original phrase comes from, but it certainly puts me in mind of Shane, my dear lamented father’s favourite film, where the prelude to the big gunfight goes:

Shane (Alan Ladd): So You’re Jack Wilson.
Wilson (Jack Palance): What’s that mean to you, Shane?
Shane: I’ve heard about you.
Wilson: What have you heard, Shane?
Shane: I’ve heard that you’re a low-down Yankee liar.
Wilson: Prove it.

After which, of course, the expected diet of lead is duly served up and eaten.

Anyway, here goes for the first time. Definitions underlined in italics, explanations given just as I see them.

Across
1 Jogger is concerning carer (8)
REMINDER – we’re jogging memories here rather than pounding the streets. RE (concerning) MINDER (carer).
5 Passion displayed in theatre (4)
HEAT – hidden word: tHEATre.
7 Russian revolutionary backed, then beheaded in square (4)
NINE – the trusty old Bolshevik LENIN is reversed and his head cut off to give NINE, which is a square (3 x 3).
8 Tree on borders of Surrey appeared full of gold (8)
SYCAMORE – The borders of Surrey are SY, then CAME (appeared) is filled with heraldic gold (OR).
9 Totally unacceptable collection of articles by scholar (8)
ANATHEMA – a whole string of articles, AN, A and THE followed by MA (scholar)
11 No sound from horse is heard (3)
NAY – sounds like neigh.
13 Maintain part of castle in revolt (4,2)
KEEP UP – a KEEP is a part of a castle, UP can mean ‘in revolt’, as in an uprising.
16 Bean say eaten by crazy mule (6)
LEGUME – EG (say) inside LUME, an anagram (‘crazy’) of MULE.
18 Poke nose into party regularly (3)
PRY – pick the alternate letters out of PaRtY.
19 Perhaps buy more shares in control undergarment (8)
REINVEST – REIN (control) + VEST (undergarment).
20 In bad visibility chap’s finding Russian city (8)
MURMANSK – MANS (chap’s) in MURK (bad visibility).
22 Little rodent’s new love (4)
VOLE – make LOVE anew to give VOLE.
23 Legal document that can be taken either way (4)
DEED – a palindromic legal document.
24 Deduced the grade must be reviewed (8)
GATHERED – anagram of THE GRADE (‘must be reviewed’).
Down
1 Managed large bag for plunder (7)
RANSACK – RAN (managed) + SACK (large bag).
2 Cannibal’s mother more tidy (3-5)
MAN-EATER – MA (as in mother this time, not scholar) + NEATER (more tidy).
3 Paint that makes dog sick (9)
DISTEMPER – as well as being a painting technique it is a canine disease.
4 Fabulous bird eaten by crocodile (3)
ROC – Hidden word: cROCodile.
5 Smelly sort of bird? (7)
HUMMING – I assume we have all heard of hummingbirds? ‘Nuff said.
6 A friend, married, gets pronounceable initials (7)
ACRONYM – A CRONY (friend) + M (married).
10 Possible designation of big match: everyone approves it, we hear (3-6)
ALL-TICKET – ALL-TICKET sounds like ‘all tick it’.
12 Nice farewell? (2,6)
AU REVOIR – & lit. Farewell is a straight definition of AU REVOIR, while a NICE farewell (i.e. one that might be heard in the town of Nice in France) is a cryptic one.
14 Record I restore to health a foodie (7)
EPICURE – EP (record) + I CURE (restore to health).
15 A system for selling Egyptian tomb (7)
PYRAMID – Double definition. A Ponzi scheme and a Pharaoh’s resting place.
17 Swallow poisonous element or be shot (3,4)
EAT LEAD – as in spaghetti westerns and gangster movies: “Eat lead, punk!” or words to that effect. Lead is, of course, element number 82 in the periodic table and is poisonous, which is why we stopped using it in petrol.
21 Horse’s name: Silver (3)
NAG – N (name) + AG (silver = Ag, element number 47).

40 comments on “Quick Cryptic 985 by Teazel”

  1. Welcome astartedon, and thanks for taking on the job. You did indeed get a fairly straightforward puzzle for your first; I was slowed down mainly by MURMANSK (couldn’t get away from ‘fog’) and especially by ALL-TICKET, which I didn’t know. The ALL was easy, but I needed the K to get ‘tick it’. I didn’t care much for HUMMING; a hummingbird is a type of bird, a humming isn’t a type of anything, but wotthehell, I suppose. 4:56.
    1. Sounds like we went through a very similar process, albeit your process ran considerably faster than mine! 9:52 for me. Also delayed by 9a where I had Ana as the collection of articles and couldn’t see why a scholar was theMA rather than just MA
    2. “Humming” means smelling bad – like rotten meat. I think it probably comes from the blubootles buzzing round it (the bad meat, that is)…
      1. I knew what ‘humming’ meant–in fact, I learned the word from a cryptic. My objection–well, qualm–was grammatical: humming is not a sort of bird. But see jackkt below.
        1. Sorry, misunderstood – I didn’t have a problem with humming being a sort of bird but maybe I should!
  2. Thanks Astartedon.

    30 minutes but last 2 held me up for 15 of those.
    – Reminder, couldn’t get remember out my head…which didn’t help with…
    – Distemper, knew it was connected to illness but didn’t know the dog connection.

    Also took a while to crack the parsing of up in keep up.

    Lots of great surfaces in the clues, my COD vole.

  3. Congrats on your first blog, astartedon, welcome to the team and I’m going to enjoy sharing the Monday QC slot with you.

    I needed 10 minutes for this one, and like Kevin above I was delayed a little by MURMANSK, my Last One In – not helped by its being a lesser-known Russian city that’s not listed in the Tom Lehrer song “Lobachevsky”, a valuable resource when trying to think of lesser-known Russian cities!

    I’m not sure we have had this particular grid before as I have no recollection of seeing 3-letter answers in a Quickie with all three letters checked.

    I have no problem with 5dn which, as indicated by our new blogger, I take as a single definition (smelly) plus a cryptic hint with reference to ‘hummingbird’ – the slight leap of faith required for this being indicated by the question mark.

    Enjoyed EAT LEAD. In addition to petrol it was also a constituent of paint for many a year and therefore an unseen source of illnesses around the home in olden days. Even in my childhood (not sure why I say ‘even’ as we’re talking some 70 years ago now) lead was used in the making small toys such as soldiers. It’s a wonder now that we survived!

    Edited at 2017-12-18 05:28 am (UTC)

  4. Welcome Astartedon and thanks for picking up the baton, or poisoned chalice or whatever metaphor you think fits.
    As Kevin indicates, a fairly gentle one to ease you in – I thought I might actually break that 5 minute barrier, but alas it was not to be, by 20 seconds.
    I know of Murmansk as being the Soviet port for the Arctic convoys, arguably the most treacherous sea voyage in WWII.
    LOI 9a, a nice (not Nice) clue.
  5. As they used to say in Commando magazine.

    Nice easy Monday puzzle; I particularly liked REINVEST.

    Thanks to astartedon for joining the blogging team.

    Templar

  6. A gentle start to the week I thought, although MURMANSK held me up until the K appeared. Not sure that DISTEMPER is a painting technique. Thought it was a type of paint used particularly on walls. Enjoyed the surface to 10dn so my COD.
    PlayUpPompey
  7. And a welcome from me too! I was one of the early blog team when the quickies were launched and I see it won’t be long before you feel quite the veteran. Very nice to see a new face/avatar.
  8. Welcome!
    A big ‘if only’ day for me. A really straightforward puzzle; ‘if only’ I hadn’t written ‘nae’ instead of ‘nay’, I wouldn’t have wasted several minutes trying to get ‘acronym’ with the wrong letters in place, and all records would have been beaten – perhaps at about 7 minutes instead of 11. Grrr!
  9. Congratulations on your debut, astartedon! Nice blog (blogue?) for a puzzle that didn’t contain any nasties, with MURMANSK my LOI after a few seconds of concern that ?U?M?N?K was going to have to be solved via wordplay only. Spent much too long on 22A considering permutations of N, O, NIL, etc, before I realised it was simply an anagram. COD to 2D.
  10. Welcome astartedon and thanks for the blog.
    I didn’t find this as simple as some seemed to have done but there was nothing too tricky. I was held up at the end by 20a and 10d, but my LOI was 3d as I was unfamiliar with the painting technique and therefore wasn’t sure of the parsing.
    Completed in 19 minutes with my COD going to 1a for the misdirection that took me a while to spot
  11. A Merry Christmas to our new blogger. I’m not sure if Astartedon means anythin? Found this a gentle, fun Monday puzzle and complete in about 10 mins. Today’s 15×15 is also good for improvers. My eleven month old grandson is being a bit of a pain today so I’ve had to put the lead-painted ornaments to the bottom of the tree – eat lead you little varmint!
  12. Thanks Astaredon. All fell steadily into place today from the bottom up. Couldn’t parse 3d so spent an age running through types of dog to go with any synonym for sick before nervously putting in what turns out to be the right answer. Also held up by having the outskirts of Surrey at the wrong end of 8a for a while. Nice to start the week with a sub 30.
  13. After quite a lot of virtually impossible (for me, still on the edges of the foothills) QC’s, one that I could do and enjoy! Thanks to Teazel for the encouragement and to Astaredon for the blog.
    I struggled with 7ac as I can’t visualise words easily, normally needing to write them down but I managed to decapitate Lenin and realise we weren’t dealing with a physical location.
    I even finished this one early enough to feel it worth adding to the blog.

    7ac also reminds me of hearing the late Colin Dexter saying his favourite clue was “Nothing squared’s a cube” (3 letters).
    No prizes for getting the answer as it’s probably an old chestnut in any event.
    If you’ve ever heard him, you’ll know that CD was a very entertaining speaker.

      1. Think gravy and Lynda Bellingham … 🙂

        I would never have got it but Colin Dexter explained it to us …

        1. Oh, indeed! Obvious really … but I wouldn’t have got it. Apologies if you’ve had this before but I’m trying to set up a new computer and in rather a muddle.
  14. Thanks to astartedon for his excellent first blog and to Teazel for an enjoyable start to the week.
  15. My wife thinks doing crosswords is a waste of time. I know what she means but they give me pleasure. My dilemma comes when I’m stuck. How long should I spend trying to work out the answer.
    Today it was 20ac. I had the man(s) in the middle. I couldn’t get past gloom or fog or mist. I’m sure eventually I would have got murk but how long would it have taken.
    Reader, I cheated. After about five minutes. Was I wrong?
    1. Only if you think you’re wrong.
      There are no “rules” here (except of course if you enter the competition proper) so it’s solely and entirely up to you.
      There comes a time when, say, you are completely stuck with still loads to fill in. If then you use so-called “aids” to get one or two and thereby get back on track, so what?
      Despite the seemingly phenomenal times some people post on this site, at the end of the day the only person you are competing against is yourself.
    2. I use Google on occasion, a thesaurus regularly and those online aids when I’m really stuck. I see no shame in it – I’ve been doing cryptics for less than a year, and sometimes you need the answer to understand the question, if that makes sense, otherwise I’d never learn anything! And, of course, these fantastic blogs where (particularly when I was an absolute beginner) all is made clear.
  16. very enjoyable and again, just enough for a learner to stay interested.
    COD 9a – a little gem in my opinion.
    LOI 3d – I’d heard of neither!
    thanks to Teazel and Astartedon (welcome too!).
  17. I found it pretty hard. I am beginning to realise that there are beginners and those who have been at it for a few years. The latter seem to complete them fairly quickly and us beginners strive to get there. For those learners who get a bit depressed by the times and statements that the puzzles are straightforward, just remember that they are made by experienced bloggers or solvers who have been at it for a while.

    I continue to learn but confess I find the logging of times a real pain and very dispiriting. And I don’t really care if it is called times for the times, it strikes me as a bit of a bragging exercise. But then that’s just me and I accept to some it is benchmarking.

    Thank god for the bloggers or I would never learn anything. I will live in hope that one day I will finish one of these

    .
    .

    1. Please please do not be discouraged by the times logged and the “easy” comments here. We have all of us been where you are now – beginning. What’s important is the pleasure we take in solving, acquiring the know-how, and in being part of a disparate (geographically and otherwise) and remarkably friendly group. It’s certainly taken me years, and it was only comparatively late in the process that I learned of this site.

      There’s no need to do it but it’s easy and free to acquire your own identity here. Or you could just sign a name to the end of your comments.

    2. Please don’t be discouraged about others posting times. No need to worry about timing yourself – the aim is simply to finish!
      But there is no merit in struggling on either. If I get completely stuck I put it away and sometimes the missing clues sort themselves out in my subconscious mind – or I simply check this blog to understand the answer. This is a great resource to help beginners understand the little tricks of crosswordland.
      It’s for pleasure not a race and practice does help. Often its chance that you know the word or not (eg I know a lot about baking and music but not much about cricket or birds…)
  18. Welcome to our new blogger, and thx for a very concise set of explanations! 3d is one of those nouns that quickly became a verb – something we often rail against these days. FOI 5a LOI 1a COD 9a. Time was split over several sessions but,if it helps others who sometimes struggle, probably about an hour in all! It’s often said, and well said again today, that you’re really only contesting against yourself so stand and admire those who complete in times shorter than it takes some of us to read through the clues!
  19. Welcome to Astartedon and many thanks for a neat and elegant maiden blog.

    An excellent Quickie, I thought, with just the right level of difficulty. A tad over 10 mins required by me.

  20. Hello and welcome, Astartedon! Lovely blog (I like the ones that are full of witty snippets and trivia) and I enjoyed the puzzle too. 16A was a good un, as was 7A. Just the right level of difficulty for me – might have a bash at the 15×15 after a hot bath and a glass of fizz!
  21. I had a problem with 7a..when I backed Lenin I got ninel which I beheaded and got inel…threw me of the scent for a while. I think the word “then” should have been omitted. Otherwise all great – took me 45 minutes – and needed help with loi anathema. Regards and thanks.
  22. Many thanks for volunteering to take on the blogging duty: the noble efforts of all those who take their time to help solvers, especially new ones, are much appreciated. As for the puzzle itself, I think it was very fair and not too demanding. To my shame, I have to admit that in the Times2 puzzle I had not come across the meaning of ‘crawler’, though it was the only likely solution: I think it’s an age thing.
  23. Have been to Stoke on Trent today and solved this on the way up. It took me about 20 minutes.Enjoyable and quite tricky I thought. LOI was 9a and that was my COD. Lots of other nice clues.
    Welcome Astartedon. Excellent blog. I will now look up what your avatar name means. David
  24. Welcome to the QC blogger team, Astartedon, which means I’m no longer its newest blogger. Nice blog too. I went a bit over par on this one, getting unaccountably stuck on 17d and (ahem) 23a – how did I fail to spot the anagram for so long?
  25. I found it pretty hard. I am beginning to realise that there are beginners and those who have been at it for a few years. The latter seem to complete them fairly quickly and us beginners strive to get there. For those learners who get a bit depressed by the times and statements that the puzzles are straightforward, just remember that they are made by experienced bloggers or solvers who have been at it for a while.

    I continue to learn but confess I find the logging of times a real pain and very dispiriting. And I don’t really care if it is called times for the times, it strikes me as a bit of a bragging exercise. But then that’s just me and I accept to some it is benchmarking.

    Thank god for the bloggers or I would never learn anything. I will live in hope that one day I will finish one of these

    .
    .

  26. Finished in c30 mins, so on the easier side for me. No real hold ups, distemper loi. Liked anathema, but a slightly different definition than I was used to.

    Mighty

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