QUICK CRYPTIC No. 11 by Dazzler

This took me 12 minutes including understanding the wordplay but the last two of those were spent on 2dn where I suffered a mental block. As with most of the Quick puzzles so far, the surface readings of the clues are excellent. I particularly liked 5dn today. As at the time of blogging the link on the Play button is not working (page not found) so here is a link to the puzzle through the back door for those of you who are unable to access it by other means:


http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20140324/111/

Across

7 ACHE – Hidden inside teACHErs. Definition: smart
8 RIGHT OFF – Sounds like (one might say) “write off” (damage beyond repair). Definition: immediately
9 QUOITS – O (ring) inside QUITS (ends). A popular cruise-ship activity. Definition: game on deck
10 DOLLOP – DO (carry out), POLL (survey) reversed (about). Definition: lumpy food – I read this as a lump of food.
11 MESS – Triple definition: where captain may eat, hash, stew
12 ROMANTIC – Anagram (swimming) of MINORCA with T (time) inside it. Definition: dreamy
15 STRIDENT – S (small), TRIDENT (spear). Definition: penetrating – as a voice may be, for example
17 JAPE – J (judge), APE (parrot). Definition: joke
18 GAFFER – GAFFE (mistake), laughteR. Definition: boss
21 HOARDS – Sounds like (said to be) “hordes” (large groups). Definition: collections
22 FLAMENCO – F (following) + anagram (all over the place) of COALMEN. Definition: steps taken i.e. a dance
23 NANA – AN, AN (articles repeatedly) reversed (returning). Definition: fool – possibly in this context it’s short for banana. I think the second part of the clue should be ‘article repeatedly’

Down
1 SCHUBERT – Anagram (confused) of BRECHT US. Definition: composer
2 GENIUS – I (one) inside GENUS (type). Definition: mastermind
3 PRESERVE – P (page), RESERVE (book). Definition: keep
4 AGED – DEGAs (French impressionist, minus S for son) reversed (turned up). Definition: old
5 STOLEN – STOLE (woman’s fur garment), opeN. Definition: hot
6 AFRO – Anagram (change) of FOR A. Definition: bushy hairstyle
13 MATCHBOX – MATCH (game), BOX (penalty area). Definition: where strikers are in
14 IMPUDENT – IMPrUDENT (foolish minus R for rook). Definition: bold
16 INFAMY – Anagram (drunk) of MANY IF. Definition: wickedness
17 JOANNA – JOy (endless joy), ANNA (girl). Definition: piano – it’s rhyming slang
19 ALLYwALLY (idiot minus W for wife). Definition: friend
20 RANK – Double definition: revolting, row

23 comments on “QUICK CRYPTIC No. 11 by Dazzler”

  1. I can’t say I’ve noticed that the style of clue is remarkably different in the Quickie and regular Times Cryptic and I shall be interested in the comments of others who have tackled both types over the past couple of weeks.

    I wonder whether expectations played a part in your difficulties, v. Certainly I found my first Quickie (#01) the hardest to date although there were other factors in play that day.

    From the comments read both here and in the Club forum I’d say the new puzzle is proving remarkably popular with new solvers but less so with older hands for whom the puzzle is not really designed anyway.

    Edited at 2014-03-24 05:42 am (UTC)

  2. 23 mins, a 7 min improvement on Friday. Z8 still hinting but generally more vaguely. 21 ac a nasty trap – I happily entered ‘hordes’ & then got a spousal warning to check the cross-clues. 8 ac not my instinctive response to ‘immediately’ – I would be far more likely to include it in the phrase ‘This clue hacked me….’
    Beautifully clear blog, Jack, many thanks!
  3. Thanks for the link Jack – I managed to click on it without reading the answers! The puzzle is still otherwise inaccessible online.

    I thought last week and again today that it may well be the same setter for both daily cryptics. Today we had a sprinkling of Js Qs and Xs in each and an overlap of the French artist. 7 minutes for me including the usual hiccup with the letter skipping. Very good blog.

    Edited at 2014-03-24 10:28 am (UTC)

  4. I think they’ve got the mix just right for the Quickie. I’ve done all of them, and there appear to be two main differences between a Quickie and even a very easy Cryptic such as today’s. First, the target words (“lights”, I believe, is the jargon) are almost without exception words or phrases that are well within the well-read layman’s ken. (The only exception I can think of is ‘organdie’, from last Thursday’s puzzle). Second, the literals (or “definitions” in the clue) tend to be “hidden in plainer sight” than those in the traditional puzzles. They’re just easier to dig out – sometimes no digging, just a little scraping, is required.

    I’m 100% in favour of the Quickie. Crossword solving is not for an exclusive club. Almost all of us had to do the hard miles – take comfort from the experience of this site’s founder (and current ST crossword editor Peter Biddlecombe). After starting with the Times as a teenager, he became dispirited and switched to the Telegraph, before returning to the Thunderer. Two Times championships later…

  5. 4 mins for this one, which I think is my quickest time so far. I find the cluing in the QC far more straightforward than the main puzzle, and that came as a surprise when I did #1, but now I’ve solved 11 of them I seem to be able to switch between the two styles more easily. In this one DOLLOP was my LOI.

    When I started doing cryptics about 22 years ago I did the Telegraph and I didn’t complete one for ages. I got gradually better at it and reached the point where they were no longer much of a challenge. I switched to the Times after I drunkenly picked up a half-completed one on a late-night train journey from London back to Basingstoke and managed to complete it, and I decided I liked the style of it. When I first found this site I was completely blown away by the times some of the regular contributors were doing them in, particularly Peter Biddlecombe (when I first saw a time like 7.24 I thought he was telling us what time in the morning he did the puzzle). I persevered, and with practice and an ever-expanding vocabulary I have got considerably faster over the years, so all I would say to the newer solvers out there is “keep at it, you’ll reap the rewards”.

    1. Absolutely agree with this – perseverance pays. I’ve been doing the puzzles for about 15 years but until I joined the Crossword Club about 4plus years ago (I think it was but I’m a bit vague) my solving was of the slow and painstaking kind. Then I found that the daily interaction with other solvers and, however stupid they are in some respects because of the neutrinos, the competitive impetus of the leaderboards considerably upped my game. These new quickies are an excellent development – and will be even better once the teething troubles are sorted out by the IT people.

      Edited at 2014-03-24 11:54 am (UTC)

      1. Totally agree with the above comments. The new crosswords ARE a good idea but I don’t understand why they are fiddling with the IT. The club site works quite well as it is . If they wanted to improve it I would suggest using the same format as the Best for Puzzles site ; at least , on that , you can whizz through without the hassle of double letters and going inadvertently to different parts of the grid.
  6. Thanks, jackkt for your blog and, especially, for the link as the Quickie is still not available online through my Webpack subscription. It’s great that TftT has taken up the Quickie with such enthusiasm. It’s definitely a worthwhile puzzle and I hope it attracts new solvers, as is the intention. I forgot to log my start time so I can’t say how long it took me but it didn’t seem to take long. I thought there were quite a few anagrams today but can’t comment on the links or otherwise with todays Cryptic as I’ve not attacked that yet. I agree with Andy Borrows and with Olivia’s follow-up comment. 12 years ago when I first started, it used to take me all week to do the Saturday prize puzzle. Now my mean time for the Cryptic is an hour, give or take 30 seconds.
  7. I’ve done all the quickies except last Friday’s – I thought the link might still work on Saturday and was going to do it in the morning, however even though the button was there on the crossword screen, the link went nowhere.

    This was my fastest of the short cryptics (I’m also getting more used to looking at the grid while entering answers so I don’t waste a minute deleting and backing up), whole thing finished in under 5 minutes.

    I’d rather do the easy before the traditional cryptic, but it appears they’re not going to be linked at the same time, so I’ll probably go back to loading it up at work and doing it on a coffee break

  8. You can access Friday’s by using the URL given in the blog but changing the date to 20140321 and the number to 110.
  9. Can’t excuse ‘smart’ as a clue for ‘ache’. Having experienced both, I regard them as opposites. Finding the Quick feels as hard as the Trad at the time, but I finish it much quicker. But had to use a solver today to get DOLLOP.
    Love to all
    Joe
    1. I think you may have a valid point, joe. ‘Smart’ is acute and stingy whereas ‘ache’ is dull and prolonged. Collins Thesaurus supports the setter but that’s not necessarily good enough.
    2. You may wish to address your complaint to the editors of Collins Thesaurus:
      HarperCollins Publishers
      77-85 Fulham Palace Road
      Hammersmith
      London
      W6 8JB
      Here’s their entry under ACHE:
      hurt, suffer, burn, pain, smart, sting, pound, throb, be tender, twinge, be sore
      To compensate, they don’t make the same mistake in their entry for SMART. Roget does!
      1. Thanks for the comment. However, in a thesaurus, the list needn’t be synonyms, just related, including co-hyponyms and the like (unless labelled explicitly).
        1. Generally speaking, thesaurus links are good enough for the Times. I agree that there are nuances of meaning between the two words, which Jack catches perfectly, which make a substitution test pretty unconvincing, but I’ve seen worse! You know it’s time to complain when the two words only connect by a third word. It happens!
  10. Nice crossword and clear blog. Lots of a setter’s favourite abbreviations and just the right level of difficulty I thought.
  11. My confidence is rising again after Friday’s dreadful performance with the Quick Cryptic. This one was much more accessible and I managed 11 clues straight off! I’ve realised that I need to be more careful about homophones and what word/words actually go in to the grid eg write off/right off and hordes/hoards. Also today I missed “swimming” and “drunk” being used to signify anagrams. Dollop was my favourite answer and one I solved all by myself.

    I’m well impressed with how quickly you experts are completing these puzzles — I’ve decided not to start timing myself until I can at least complete a whole puzzle unaided ;-/

  12. 8m on the late train home. I enjoy the more straightforward definitions on the QC and so far have found them about 25% as hard as the main puzzle. Today’s for example took me 38m be I’ve never been near 8m for one of them. Had doubts about DOLLOP until I read the ‘food in a lump comment’. Found this a challenging grid too. I completed the NW corner 1&2 across and 7,9 and 11d to find I only had a couple of checked letters to help me progress further. Thanks for the blog.

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