Quick Cryptic No 158 by Rongo

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
This needed a little thought here and there, not just a fast write-in, took me about 15 minutes to be sure of the parsing as well as entering the answers where obvious. All very fair and I would think of medium difficulty as the Quickies go.

Across
1 PAINSTAKING – PA (father), IN (at home), STAKING (killing a vampire); def. conscientious.
8 ELLIPSE – EL (in Spain, the), LIP (edge) SE; def. curve.
9 PLACE – P (soft, piano), LACE (delicate fabric); def. locate.
10 INTERCEPT – (TIP CENTRE)*; def. cut off.
12 HEN – HE (male) N(ame); def. female.
13 MAROON – Double definition; a colour, and to strand, or leave stranded e.g. on a desert island.
15 UNREAL – Def. pretended, sounds like UN-REEL, to take off spools.
17 YAP – PAY (salary) reversed; def. shrill cry.
18 STAGE NAME – SAME (unchanged) around (AGENT)*; def. actor’s moniker.
20 ACORN – Double definition pun; hard fruit of tree, and A CORN.
22 COINAGE – Double def; Bits of loose change, and a noun meaning the making up of a word – more usually seen as a verb, ‘to coin a word’. Not obvious until you have the checking letters.
23 EJECTOR SEAT – Easy cryptic definition.

Down
1 PILOT – PLOT (conspiracy) with I (one) involved; I presume a pilot is ‘one of them’ because a pilot will PLOT a course. EDIT ‘one of them’ refers to 23ac, see below comment from jerrywh.
2 IMPERIOUS – I’M PERILOUS (dangerous) with the L removed; def. domineering.
3 SKEWER – Double def; a spike, and something that would distort, since ‘to skew’ can mean ‘to distort’ e.g. an image.
4 ASP – AS (like) P (middle letter of Cleopatra); the cause of her demise.
5 IVANHOE – IVAN (terrible ruler, the Russian chap), HOE (remove weeds); def. Saxon hero, of the eponymous novel.
6 GREENSLEEVES – Cryptic definition for the tune, grassy elbows, ha ha.
7 DEVIL-MAY-CARE – (AVARICE LED MY)*; def. reckless.
11 TANGERINE – TANG (strong flavour), then ERE (before) wrapping IN, TANG-ER(IN)E; def. fruit.
14 REPROVE – RE-PROVE would be to show the truth again, REPROVE means reprimand.
16 CANCER – Zodiac sign, hidden in signifi(CANCE R)ecognised.
18 APART – A PART = actor’s role, APART = separated.
21 NUT – Double definition; a fan, and a variety of nut.

19 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 158 by Rongo”

  1. IVANHOE was my last one in, but a few slowed me down at the end. I thought the A in 4dn came from “Cleopatra’s end”, so couldn’t parse the SP bit. And not knowing whether the definition at 7dn was reckless or misbehaving.

    I thought the PILOT in 1dn (my favourite clue) refered to Pontius?

    Thanks for the nice, clear blog.

    Edited at 2014-10-15 06:17 am (UTC)

  2. 13 minutes. Yes, I also felt the need to tread carefully through this one so I double checked most of the parsing as I solved. SKEWER and MAROON were responsible for taking me past 10 minutes for the first time for a while.

    I don’t think I have seen ellipsis used to link last Across and first Down clues before.

    Edited at 2014-10-15 06:34 am (UTC)

  3. Found this quite tricky in parts (IMPERIOUS, and took a while to see the “audience” homophone indicator for UNREAL), and a DNF as I failed to get SKEWER (just couldn’t see it for some reason).

    Not much else to write home about – thanks for the blog pip.

  4. 5 mins. I thought this was a little trickier than my time suggests, and my time was probably helped by my having seen the four long answers round the edges quite quickly. The CANCER/COINAGE crossers were my last ones in.
  5. There are few answers I can put straight in so I should be grateful for one as easy as this. And I know that ‘high’ was needed to make the clue even mildly cryptic but as the ejector seat was designed specifically to give aircrew a chance to escape when flying at very low level I was a bit disappointed with the wording. High flyers have little need for an ejector.
  6. re 1dn, I think “One of them” just means a high flyer, ie that is the def. for the clue, the wordplay being I in PLOT. The … indicates that the clue carries on from the previous one.

    Anyone who thinks ejector seats are only required at low level should try climbing out of a Typhoon cockpit at any height or speed. Basically, you can’t; they are a design essential for any modern jet, at least from the pilot’s point of view

    Did anybody see the marvellous programme recently about Air Commodore Eric Brown, the world’s greatest pilot? If not you can see it here. In it he describes trying to eject from a burning plane, and it wasn’t easy!

    1. Ah, I see, it ( 1dn) refers to 23ac. Because of the way I’d copied and pasted the clues to print off, I missed this connection. I did think the plot – pilot idea was a bit thin.
      1. Thanks to all pointing out the 23ac/1dn run on – didn’t see this and thought the pilot clue was a bit dodgy too! 20 mins without Ivanhoe which, as a Russian enthusiast, I feel bad for not getting now I have seen it. Thanks to setter/blogger/explainers.
      1. The ellipsis was also missing from the android edition, and from the browser version, and has been from every crossword that has included linked clues recently. Doing the crossword online, I don’t see the clues written one after the other, so always miss these connections, and even if I look at the clue list, 1d doesn’t follow underneath the last across clue. This has spoiled two or three crosswords for me recently, and I wondered if anyone else felt this way? Has anyone tried to contact The Times about this, or other, crossword issues? I can’t find an email address for this kind of complaint/feedback.
        First post here, by the way, although I read the blog often, and find it very helpful as a beginner.
  8. About 40 minutes of which 15 minutes on just three clues (UNREAL, COINAGE and SKEWER). GREENSLEVES made me smile.
  9. I found this for the most part an enjoyable puzzle to solve, but a bit strange in actual practice. Had very few answers after first reading, then seemed to get on Rongo’s wavelength and quite quickly got through most of the rest before being stopped in my tracks by COINAGE, UNREAL and SKEWER like tonygg.

    COINAGE I got by just working through the alphabet in my head for the missing letters, but was still uncertain about the parsing until confirmed by our blogger (thanks for that pipkirby), though it still seems a bit tenuous to me. I’m also not sure about UNREAL for pretended. Would the literal make better sense as pretend. i.e. it was an unreal/pretend situation?

    Edited at 2014-10-15 04:36 pm (UTC)

  11. Some good clues and interesting blog and comments. I had difficult in connecting fan and nut. The missing link could be buff but is there any other connection?
  12. 26 mins with some Z8ery. I wrote in quite a few clues before Z8 insisted I parse them!

    My COD is GREENSLEEVES wonderfully whimsical, I thought.

    LOI was COINAGE – just couldn’t see it. FOI was PAINSTAKING – very witty 🙂

    Hope to do it earlier tomorrow. Z8 just settling in his study to blog tomorrow’s biggie. Night all! 🙂

    Edited at 2014-10-15 11:03 pm (UTC)

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