Quick Cryptic No 168 by Juno – pot pourri

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A nice mixture of clue types today requiring a modicum of general knowledge – dogs, a capital, a composer and a biblical chap, to list a few.

Across
7 REVUE – REV (vicar), U (university), E (English); def. show.
8 AMNESIA – (A NAME IS)*; def. inability to recall.
10 TIDE RIP – TRIP (journey) with I’D, E (ncountered), inserted; def. rough water.
11 USUAL – US (American), then alternate letters of oUr AlLy, def. average.
12 ENNOBLING – E, N, (points), then NO BLING (no flashy stuff); def. raising.
14 REF – Last letters (tips) of playeR confusE alooF; def. official.
15 IRE – I (one) RE (about); def. passion.
16 AIREDALES – AIRED (shown) ALES (drinks); def. dogs. A particularly nice breed of dog, in my view.
18 LAGER – REGAL reversed; HM owns corgis; the def. ‘drink’ follows from the previous clue.
20 NOTICED – Noticed so not missed, and an unfinished cake is NOT ICED yet.
22 WILDCAT – (CLAW IT D)* indicated by ‘badly’; def. feline; the D for the anagram comes from the last letter of ‘scratcheD’.
23 SATIE – SAT(urday) I (one) E(uropean); def. composer, Erik Satie, one of my favourites; his piano pieces sound easy to play, but aren’t, unless no-one else is listening.

Down
1 BROTHER-IN-LAW – BOTHER with R (runs) inserted, IN (home), LAW (rule); def. family member.
2 EVIDENCE – DE (of French) inserted in EVINCE (show); def. testimony.
3 REAR – Double def; the back end, and to ‘parent’ as a verb.
4 TAIPEI – TA (thanks), [I.E. P, I] all reversed; def. Far East capital.
5 INDULGED – (ELUDING D)*; def. satisfied. D for anagram from the end of eisteddfoD.
6 ESAU – Biblical character hidden in Josh(UA’S E)ntourage reversed.
9 ALL OF A SUDDEN – (UNFOLDED ALAS)*; def. without warning.
13 BOAT RACE – BOA (snake), TRACE (follow closely); def. sporting event.
14 RELOCATE – COLE (Porter perhaps) reversed inside RATE (class, as a verb); def. move. Trickiest clue in the puzzle.
17 RENATA – RENT (tore), A, ‘covering’ A; def. female (name of).
19 GULP – PLUG (bit of publicity) reversed; def. swallow.
21 TOSH – TO SH ! (be quiet, button it!); def. it makes no sense.

25 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 168 by Juno – pot pourri”

  1. At 24 minutes this was my longest solving time in about 25 puzzles. For some reason the SE corner gave me problems, notably 14, 17 and 21dn and 20ac.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever come across the name RENATA; I knew a Renate many years ago and whenever I’ve heard the name since I have assumed it was spelt that way. On checking I now find that the girl who famously sang with Renee was spelt Renato, and this is certainly news to me!

    1. Renee was the girl. Renato was the bloke. I am ashamed I know this.

      Terrible effort for me today, I gave up. Just too much stuff I would never have got – eg Airedales. I started confidently too, with most of the down clues going in easily… But no. Juno definitely not on my wavelength. Not even on the same spectrum.

      Tomorrow is another day. I’ve had such a good run recently I can’t complain.

  2. Renatas, I know a few.. several tennis players, notably Renata Tomanová who Sue Barker beat to win the French Open. I also thought of the East German athlete (and drugs cheat) Stecher, but I find she is a Renate.

    I’m with you on airedailes, Pip. My grandfather, a keen golfer, called his Bunker, because he was always getting in the way…

        1. I always remember that because he couldn’t have won any other ‘Grand Slam’ but his own in the days when hardly any overseas player turned up.
  3. Found it hard today and DNF missing 18a and 19d. Not helped by iPad edition of the crossword missing the “…” In front of 18a to show the link with 16a.
  4. Found this tricky throughout, but for no obvious reason (other than, possibly, tackling it at the end of a particularly tough day at the factory here in Sydney)

    Like Jack, the SE corner did me in. Never heard of SATIE, never had the pleasure of knowing a Renata, and NOTICED passed me by (normally like this pun type of clue – must be off my game…)

    Ah well, bring on tomorrow’s offerings…

    1. You must have heard Satie’s music even if you don’t know his name. Check out gymnopedie 1 on YouTube. Beautiful.
  5. ‘Tosh’ is well outside my recallable vocabulary range, Satie and Renata likewise (if they were ever in it) and just to cap off that corner I was able to solve 20 only by untangling the pun. I cannot make ‘not noticed’ and ‘unnoticed’ synonymous, in fact looking antonyms for ‘unmissed’ I find ‘not noticed’.

    I would have enjoyed something on the lines of:

    ‘Spotted like an unfinished cake’ but perhaps too easy.

    Several others again required blogger parsing, for which many thanks.

    Rather put the brakes on my self assessed improvement!

  6. Much trickier than normal and my time reflected it. I was held up in the SW by the LAGER/GULP crossers, then in the SE by the TOSH/SATIE crossers, and it was only after I’d got the latter that RELOCATE was my LOI.
  7. This is a terrific puzzle, if more of a Times cryptic lite than a Quickie. Ennobling and noticed are particularly worthy of a mention in dispatches. I’m ashamed to say I never got lager, so thanks to our Bordeaux man for that. 11 minutes.
  8. Comforted to see that others found this difficult too – DNF for me without Ennobling and Relocate, roll on Wednesday.
  9. Well Z8 had to as after 16 mins of blank stares I had 6 clues. So my final time was 37 mins with some Z8ery – once I got over the hump it speeded up.I knew rip tide rather than TIDE RIP.

    COD was AMNESIA because I was suffering from it, big-time!

    We used to own an AIREDALE – after my Polish Mum vacillated between (sic) a Coolie and a Damnation we ended up with an Airedale.

    LOI TOSH which summed up my cruciverbalistic skills perfectly.

  10. An interesting puzzle that I thought I’d finish OK. But was found wanting in the SE corner, in particular 23ac and 21dn. Thought of TOSH for 21dn but didn’t parse it at first and really couldn’t begin to think what or who 23ac could be. Once I used a cheat for SATIE (unknown to me), TOSH clearly became the likely answer and I saw the parsing as pipkirby demonstrated.

    Perhaps a little peeved about not getting 23ac, but couldn’t quite see how E for european comes at the end. Perhaps “appearing after day one”, but how does “appearing on day one” work?

    1. The bits are discrete; day = Sat. one = I, then European = E appears. If you’ve never heard of the composer, it’s less obvious, hence my comment in the intro that unusually for a Quick Cryptic, some modest GK was required.

      Edited at 2014-10-29 07:09 pm (UTC)

    2. The clue is “..European ON day one..”, which to me suggests that E is at the beginning of the answer rather than the end. So that’s why I have the question.

      The deception that I didn’t get in the clue is “day one”, which made me think of Monday, Genesis etc., and not something simple like a day=SAT and one =I. If I had, SATIE would have been a clearly possible answer, even if I hadn’t heard of the composer.

      1. It’s a convention worth remembering that words such as ‘on’ and ‘by’ don’t usually specify a particular order.
        1. Thanks for the info and I’ll log it in the mind for future reference 🙂
  11. I wondered who BERTIE PEAHEN was – the letters revealed as a Nina in the top and bottom rows.

    Perhaps a little-known Wodehouse character.

    Edited at 2014-10-30 10:23 am (UTC)

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