Quick Cryptic No 1093 by Hurley

Author   TheRotterPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A plethora of geographical questions here (10, 11, 12, 22 across and 4 and 5 down), which together with some very simple hidden and other relatively easy clues made for a fast time, at least for me, at just inside the 10 minute mark.  My favourite clue (CoD) today is 14a, and my word of the day (WoD) is a toss-up between 19d and 14d.  I’ll try to use them both during the course of the day, maybe in the same sentence.

I have finally hit pay dirt in my investigations into the numbers of the QCs that I blog.  1093 is quite special, in that it is a prime number, and together with 1091 and 1097, it forms a prime triplet. It is also a happy prime and a star prime. It is also the smallest Wieferich prime. Finally, 1093 is a repunit prime in base 3.  If interested, google ‘1093 number’ or look it up on wikipedia to discover more.

I hope you all enjoyed it.  I’ll be interested to see your comments.

Across
7  A daughter taking long time to see truism (5)
ADAGE – A (a) D{aughter} and AGE (long time)
8  Half of scheme ignored by artist – extremely lurid colour (7)
EMERALD – {sch}EME (half ignored) RA (artist) and L{uri}D (extremely)
10  Main feature of German city church (7)
ESSENCE – ESSEN is the German city and CE is church (from C{hurch of }E{ngland}
11  Aides with name for island mountains (5)
ANDES – swap N{ame} for I{sland} in AIDES to get ANDES – couldn’t be simpler!
12  Catty set I abandoned in Rome once (4-5)
CITY-STATE – Anagram (abandoned) of [CATTY SET I].  A CITY-STATE refers to a sovereign state, also described as a type of small independent country, that usually consists of a single city and its dependent territories.  Rome was such a state until I don’t know when, probably until the last stages of the unification of Italy when Rome became its capital in 1871, but I’m happy to be corrected by more knowledgeable commentators
14 It’s nailed low down (3)
TOE – Nice cryptic definition that made me smile when I got the answer
15 Shelter wrapped in fleece (3)
LEE – Hidden (but not very well) in {f}LEE{ce}
16  One profiting illegally from tennis equipment and beers uncovered (9)
RACKETEER – RACKET (tennis equipment) and {b}EER{s} (uncovered, i.e. remove first and last letters)
18  Some fun duenna finds excessive (5)
UNDUE – Hidden (barely) in {f}UN DUE{nna}.  Well done if you knew that DUENNA was a kind of chaperone – I didn’t and needed to look it up after solving.
20  Expose firm; note result (7)
OUTCOME – These modern days, to OUT someone is to expose them.  This is followed by CO (firm) and ME (note, as in Do, Ray, Me)
22  US city jeans so fancy (3,4)
SAN JOSE – anagram (fancy) of [JEANS SO] to identify the economic and cultural centre of Silicon Valley
23  Hundred have high opinion of old car (5)
CRATE – C (hundred) and RATE (have high opinion of)

Down
1 Paintings sale row – court involved (12)
WATERCOLOURS – Anagram (involved) of [SALE ROW COURT]
2  Visible from Veronica’s settee, container for recording (8)
CASSETTE – Hidden (this time more effectively) in {veroni}CAS SETTE{e}
3  Clergyman’s article located in study (4)
DEAN – A (article) inside (located in) DEN (study)
4  Information on girl in Swiss city (6)
GENEVA – GEN (information) and EVA (girl)
5  Middle Easterner seen – able, flexible (8)
LEBANESE – Anagram (flexible) of [SEEN ABLE].  Did you know that Lebanon is the smallest recognised  country on the entire Asian continent?
6  Monsieur with help, servant (4)
MAID – M (common abbreviation in France for Monsieur) and AID (help)
9 Potential heir ends date with lower expectations? (12)
DISHEARTENED – Anagram (potential) of [HEIR ENDS DATE]
13 Buildings expert certain to include volume Roy brought up (8)
SURVEYOR – SURE (certain) containing V{olume} with ROY reversed (brought up in a down clue)
14  Not drinking alcohol, Peg to speak briefly (8)
TEETOTAL – TEE (peg, as in golf tee) with TO (to) and TAL{k} (speak briefly).  In the old days of the Royal Navy, every sailor was classified as either TT (teetotal), UA (under age) or G (grog) as an indicator of their entitlement to draw the tot, the daily rum ration.
17  Exclamation of admiration about fine English stove (6)
COOKER – The exclamation of admiration is COR!, which is about (or surrounds) OK (fine) and E{nglish}.
19  Starts to drizzle awfully, new kit wet (4)
DANK – First letters (starts to) D{rizzle} A{wfully} N{ew} K{it}
21  Friar’s sweets for schoolchildren (4)
TUCK – Double definition, the first the famous Friar from Robin Hood, and the second the sweets available from a TUCK shop.

20 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 1093 by Hurley”

  1. I don’t think this has happened yet in the Quickies, but COR is often clued by ‘my’ (My!); worth keeping an eye out for. What is the smallest UNrecognized country in Asia, Rotter? 6:19.
    1. Aah! Good question. I missed out the word ‘mainland’ in the rush to complete my blog. Wikipedia states that Lebanon is the ‘smallest recognised mainland country’ in Asia. There are five smaller island countries, including The Maldives, Singapore, Bahrain, Brunei and Cyprus.

      However, it is the ‘recognised’ word that I think you are questioning. There is also one smaller mainland country / region / state – Palestine. This is where it gets a bit more difficult, and where the recognition comes in. Palestine is a ‘region’, whilst the State of Palestine is recognised by 136 UN members (but not all). However, its status as non-member observer state in the United Nations amounts to de-facto implicit recognition of its statehood, whilst most of the areas claimed by Palestine are occupied by Israel.

      I hope that this answers your question, whilst failing to offend anyone in this highly sensitive area. I take no position, and do not wish to offend.

      1. Good heavens, Rotter, I had no intention of sending you off to do research! Just a bit of facetiousness on my part, for which I apologize. As to the status of Palestine, I do take a position, and am happy to offend, but not here.
  2. I found this quite straightforward apart from 9d where I was looking at the wrong end of the clue for the definition and wasted time looking at descendants and disinherited before spotting the anagrist. That was my LOI and took me to 10:11. The other long anagram at 1d was my penultimate entry. ADAGE was an easy starter. Nice puzzle. Thanks Hurley and Rotter.
  3. Like our leader above I struggled with this one and my solving time was even worse at 19 minutes! I absolutely raced through most of it (6-7 minutes would be my estimate) but ground to a complete halt with four answers missing in the SE corner: TOE, TEETOTAL, OUTCOME and COOKER. There’s really no accounting for it now but I just read the clues over and over again until gradually one by one they gave way.

    COR! as an ‘exclamation of admiration’ occurred to me quite early on whilst working on 17dn but I was fixated on FE for ‘fine English’ and that led me down a blind alley. Seeing Rotter’s avatar of Terry-Thomas always has me thinking of British comedy films of certain era and set me trying to recall what T-T’s preferred expression of admiration might have been, but without coming to any conclusion. I thought of “I say” which he probably said a few times, but it’s more associated with Leslie Phillips (I saaaaaay!). “Cor” (Coooorr!) accompanied by a throaty gulp was Kenneth Connor.

    Edited at 2018-05-17 04:20 am (UTC)

  4. No accurate time because of work but about 25 mins.

    Slowed down by cooker, like Jack I was using FE for fine English, the long anagram disheartened which took surprising long to crack, and LOI toe, which I thought might be TIP and even with T_E still took a minute or two to work out.

    COD cassette or disheartened.

  5. Faster than jack, John dun and even vinyl1. Completed in less than 1.5 Kevins. I think I may have to retire. This will never happen again.

    My theory is that the puzzle was a bit too easy for the better solvers, who are looking for tricks everywhere, whereas my simple mind sees (eg) “not drinking alcohol” and immediately decides that the answer is going to be “teetotal”.

    TOE was one of only a few I didn’t get straight off and was my LOI; it made me chuckle when the penny dropped and gets COD from me.

    Thanks Hurley, and thanks Rotter for a very enjoyable blog.

    Templar

    1. Very well done Templar! It’s these little triumphs that make it all worth while:-)
      1. Thank you John! They are rare enough in my case … but I keep trying

        Templar

  6. About average difficulty for me today, finishing in 15.51. Like john dun I toyed with disinherited for a while at 9d and was stumped at the end by the surprisingly tricky 14a, which was my LOI and CoD.
    Thanks for the blog
  7. Stopped at 20 mins with just 1dn WATERCOLOURS left to solve. Even with so many checkers couldn’t see the solution. Obvious now I have read the blog! Thanks
  8. FE in 17D for me, too — and didn’t see the anagrind “potential” for 9d. Liked WATERCOLOURS and EMERALD, but really struggled with CRATE. So a bit tricky, today (about 20 Mins). Thanks Rotter for helping me out!
  9. Solved this in 20 minutes on the train to London.
    FOI was 19d and LOI was 1d where,as ever without the first letter, I was a bit slow.
    I was doubtful about Toe but otherwise all was clear. Helpful to have seen Racketeer recently. David
  12. Still don’t see why ‘toe’ ! Can someone put. E out of my misery please??

  14. A toe has a toe nail (so it’s ‘nailed’) and is low down (on your body).
  15. Late to the party catching up on Friday. About a minute under average for me, so nothing to difficult. Count e in as another suckered into looking for FE in 17d for a bit, but the checkers sorted me out. Nice geograhical theme.

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