Quick Cryptic No 130 by Des

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A geographical slant on today’s puzzle, good for coffee drinkers. Some write-ins, some needing a little thought and a few worthy of the main cryptic. It took me 12 minutes -partly because my print-out from Jackkt’s scan was somewhat blurred. When will the IT people get their act together?

Across
1 COME BY – Double def; you come by something to acquire it; you pass.
4 JAVA – JA = German for yes, VA = Virginia, USA; def. coffee.
9 PEPPERONI – (PIPE PRONE)*, anagrind = fracture, def. hot dish.
10 ARC – A C is arc shaped; it’s hidden reversed in S(CRA)BBLE.
11 PEAK DISTRICT – PEAK = top, DI = female, STRICT = firm, def. National Park.
13 ON HAND – Double cryptic def; fingernails on hand, on hand means readily available.
15 ARMADA – AR (WAR, with leader W left), then MAD = unbalanced, A, def. naval force.
17 TOUR DE FRANCE – (RACE OFT UNDER)*. I had the ‘joy’ of watching it whizz past close to us this year, in the pouring rain, after being bombarded with tacky missiles of freebies by the ‘caravan’.
20 ANT – A NT (New Testament, series of books); def. colonist.
21 WHIRLPOOL – Hazelnut whirls were once a treat: do they still exist? No doubt they’ve shrunk if so, or been banned in case they contain nuts. WHIRL followed by POOL = kitty, def. eddy.
22 DANK – Turning SKIN HARD is DRAH NIKS; take alternate letters (regularly) DrAh NiKs; def. cold and wet. It was easy to put in RANK by mistake and then be baffled by 12 dn, as I was temporarily.
23 AMIENS – (NAME IS)*, def. French town (actually it’s a city).
Down
1 COPE – PC = COP, E = first in electronics; def. manage.
2 MAPLE – Top of pear = P, covered by MALE = he, MA(P)LE, def. tree.
3 BREAKING DOWN – Double definition.
5 ARABICA – A CI BAR all reversed, A, def. coffee.
6 ALCATRAZ – AL (nearly all), then CRAZ (endlessly insane) around AT, ALC(AT)RAZ. Def. prison.
7 TOXIC – Second, short = TIC(K), with OX = neat, inserted; def. like poison.
8 VICTORIA PLUM – VICTOR = person who won, A PLUM = a prize; insert I = one, def. fruit. Prize can mean plum as in ‘a plum job’.
12 PORT SAID – (PARODIST)*, anagrind ‘rubbished’, Egyptian city on the Med.
14 HOUSTON – H O = heads of ‘home of’, US, TON = heavyweight; US city. Sorry, it was in my notes but the clue was chopped off the bottom of my near-illegible printout, so not in original blog.
16 AFFIX – Hidden word in reversed (‘holds up’); BO(X IF FA)STENED.
18 CLOVE – L= girl’s bottom, ‘pinched’ by COVE = chap; C(L)OVE, def. spice. Nothing more, but it was a nice thought.
19 ALAS – Healthy food = SALAD, reversed, not finished, = ALAS, def. sad.

26 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 130 by Des”

  2. Number 130 appeared (and I completed it) last Saturday. I wondered then what was going on.

    Edited at 2014-09-05 07:35 am (UTC)

    1. Ok, let me get my head round this, and then pull out my remaining hair. I’ve just spent an hour of my life blogging No. 130, which should be online today (yesterday’s being 129) but isn’t. 130 appeared in the paper, (or online?) last Saturday, a day when we do not expect a Quickie nor do we have an assigned blogger. So the solution has also appeared? Is 130 in today’s hard copy paper?
      Mr Editor, what is going on please?

      1. 130 is in today’s hard copy

        we do not seem to get any comments from the Times-I see that they were advertising for a crossword editor a few days ago

      3. I saw this crossword on Saturday on my Times iphone app but it was certainly never blogged. I’ve no idea if it was in the paper or iPad versions. I hadn’t realised at the time that it was no 130 but on checking it was. I did appreciate the blog today as I didn’t understand a couple of the clues. Thank you

        Susie

  3. 11 minutes with a small hold-up in the NE corner where I was unfamiliar with the 4ac coffee.

    Sorry about the blurred image which I can’t account for. It’s not a scan, it’s a copied image taken directly from the facsimile newspaper.

    Anyway it’s now available here, though not in the right place by date or sequence:
    http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20140830/261/

    1. The blurring was more a result of my doing a PrtScn and paste into Paint.net to get the image saved, cropped and blown up, not your fault! And my poor eyesight.
      I had tried various combinations of dates and numbers like 261 to ‘find’ 130 but didn’t think to go backwards!
      No doubt light will be shed in due course.
      Java is a strong coffee from Indonesia – the coffee cup icon also being used by the ubiquitous software company, more famous than the coffee.
  4. Tough one, I thought. I may be missing something obvious, but appreciate guidance on why OX = neat?

    Thought ARC was excellent, and admired the – er – panache of CLOVE’s surface.

    Just when I thought SNAFU Central had finally got its act together, we have this stuff up. Now 10.22 am UK time and still not fixed! Dismal performance.

    Thanks to setter and blogger, but not to the IT people.

    1. neat. OE.

      1 A bovine animal; an ox, a bullock, a cow, a heifer. Now rare. OE.

      Now rare, but not in Xwordland!

      1. Aha! Thanks Jack. Before admitting my ignorance I had checked out the dictionary for definitions of OX, but not the other way round, so to speak. OX defs had included “espec. a castrated male of the species”. It had crossed my mind that there maybe some connection there, but dismissed this on the basis that I had probably spent too much time with female supremacists.

        I clearly need to spend more time with those who still speak OE. Maybe there are a few down at the local footy club…

  5. Very difficult. Got 4a, 10a and 15a quickly but then spent about 10 minutes before I got another answer. One wrong, I put in an unparsed TONIC for 7d. Last one in the excellent hidden AFFIX. Favourite clue 8d.
  6. 5 mins. This did indeed feel on the trickier side so I’m happy with my time. I finished back in the NW corner with COPE and COME BY, the latter of which I don’t think I’d have thought of without all the checkers.
  9. This was much more difficult than others this week. Several answers went in without fully understanding the wordplay. Did not know how OX = neat, though it is my phone app X-word solver dictionary.
  10. Well when I tried on line all I got was “Crossword loading or you are not logged in… Please try again”. It’s happened before but when I reported it they told me they could find no problem and advised me to reload the app – on a PC??
    Had to wait for the paperware version when I got home. Not too tricky at 10:20 though I wasn’t impressed with “Di” as “female” in 11a.
    Nice anagram at 17.
    1. You will get this error if the Daily Crosswords page (from where you click on “TIMES QUICK CRYPTIC”) hasn’t fully loaded, though today’s puzzle (before the link was corrected) also gave me that error …
      1. Thanks,that’s great – I’ll give it a try if it happens again.
        Now why didn’t their technical help give me this nugget…?
        1. For me, it can sometimes take up to 10 seconds for the page to fully load (which seems to be entirely because of the adverts.) A decent software implementation would make the Quick Cryptic button unclickable until the page has loaded, but I must admit I usually access the puzzle by fudging the previous day’s URL (except in cases like this one where the URL changes unpredictably …)
  11. 7 down. Must be thick. Cannot see the connection between OX and NEAT. Could someone kindly explain, preferably in modern English. Thanks.

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