Quick Cryptic No 190 by Corelli

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
My first time blogging a puzzle by “Corelli”; not the Captain of mandolin fame, or the Italian baroque composer chap, but perhaps inspired by them. Either way, I thought this was a fine, harder-than-usual Quickie with a quirky sense of humour embedded; well done, Mr Corelli.

Across
1 MARATHON – MAR (ruin) A TH(ursday) ON (performing); def. something really long.
5 OPPO – Palindromic word for ‘friend’, originally a naval abbr. for ‘opposite number’, the chap who shares a shift with you etc. OP (surgery) and PO (surgery, reversed).
8 IGNORANT – SIGNOR (Italian gent) loses his head, then ANT (social worker); def. rude.
9 RACY – Def. slightly blue; take the last letters of ‘lonely, Artic, Sea, navigator’ = Y C A R and reverse them.
11 ATTENUATES – (TEA SET AUNT)*; def. becomes diminished.
14 JOKERS – Double definition, where a ‘card’ can mean an amusing person = joker or a playing card joker.
15 GRUMPY – (GYM PRU)*, def. Doc’s colleague, another of the seven dwarves.
17 COMPLETION – CO (firm), MP (politician), LET ON (spilled beans) with I inserted; def. settlement. A compound clue worthy of being in the Cryptic, you might think.
20 IRIS – I (RIS(E) (lift, briefly); def. flag, for one; actually, three species of iris seem to be ‘flag’ varieties.
21 DOLITTLE – Well, if you do little, you’re mostly idle; and Doctor Dolittle is a lead character in all those books, movies and the musical.
22 GERM – Country = GERMANY, deprive it of ANY, leaves GERM, a cause for complaint.
23 A GOOD BUY – A (answer), GOOD BUY sounds like GOODBYE, so long; def. a bargain.

Down
1 MAID – M (millions), AID (charity); def. one serving.
2 RANK – Double def.
3 TURN TURTLE – Take UTTERLY, remove the end Y, ‘confuse’ it, (UTTERL)*, so you’re ‘turning’ TURTLE; def. capsize.
4 OINKED – INKED = written in pen, insert O, def. grunted; implied, the pig in the pen. Neat.
6 PLAYTIME – PLAY (drama), TIME (what prisoners do), def. period of recreation.
7 ODYSSEYS – Def. long journeys. To arrive at it, take the first and last letters of O(ccupie)D, Y(ear)S, S(eventy-fiv)E, Y(ear)S, and string them together. Great stuff, Mr Corelli.
10 PUERTO RICO – (TO PROCURE I)*, an unincorporated territory of the USA, in the Caribbean. Presumably, if they incorporated it, it would be a State; 54% of the locals voted for that option in the 2012 Referendum.
12 EJECTING – (NICE J GET)*, the J = judge initially, def. sending out.
13 SKIMPIER – SKIM (glance quickly over) PIER (seaside attraction); def. revealing more.
16 STRONG – Def. powerful, hidden word in reversed soverei(GN OR TS)ar.
18 STAB – ST (way, street), A(verage) B(rit), def, go. As in ‘to have a stab at…’.
19 DENY – DEN (study), Y (last part of study), def. refute.

15 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 190 by Corelli”

  1. A very enjoyable puzzle completed in 12 minutes parsing all but one as I went. But I forgot to go back and decide exactly how ODYSSEYS worked, so thanks for saving me the trouble. I particularly liked OPPO and OINKED.
  3. Quite a tough one, but most enjoyable. Particularly liked GERM, OINKED and the cunning reversed hidden that gave us STRONG.

    Unfortunately, a DNF as I had no idea about Iris Flags and could not figure that one out. Definitely one to store away for future use, I suspect.

    Thanks to setter for a great puzzle, and Pip for a very nice blog.

    1. Flag irises are among the most arcane of the regular Crossword devices. Not you, Nick, but others may like to store away those similar sounding Egyptian divinities, Isis, Osiris and Horus, though the last named doesn’t pop up so much.
  5. Cor, that was tough. 25 mins (got stuck in NW). For me, a curious mixture – lots of clues I loved but a few that I thought were below par.

    I loved GERM, ODYSSEYS (I think that’s the longest one of, err, that type of clue I’ve ever seen – very ingenious and my COD!), JOKERS (nod to a fellow setter from Corelli?), GRUMPY and A GOOD BUY. Super – clever, quirky, funny

    But I thought a few were not up to scratch – MARATHON (my last one in) I thought an over-mechanical, fussy clue; MAID – to me this was imprecise since I think M is million or a thousand, not millionS; and OPPO – I got it quickly but I still don’t really see that it works – it’s not surgery “either way”, it’s “half” surgery either way, isn’t it?

    Anyway, the good ones were excellent and more than made up for my grumbling!

    Thanks to Pip for the blog too.

    PS on 11ac, the blog says “def. diminished” but surely the def. is “becomes diminished”?? To match the tense of “attenuates”?

    1. yes, 11a amended thanks. I think ‘op’ is a commonly used substitute in speech for surgery… ‘my op has been postponed… ‘ it’s not half, it’s a synonym and its reverse.
  6. And not for the first time.
    I wanted to complain about Oppo – never understood why the oppo were friends – so thanks for clearing that up.

    The thing that gets me every time is the change of part of speech, eg den – study while I’m looking for a verb;

  7. Much harder than usual – needed help from the blogger for the first time for ages. But good, thanks!
  8. First DNF for quite a while. Needed a lot of aids and completely stuck in NW corner. Would never have thought of OINKED as a word even though pig was an obvious grunter. Kept trying but couldn’t make an anagram (ruin) of Thursday. Clues where each word supplies one or two letters are very tricky, hence MARATHON and MAID not found. Too hard for me.
  9. Finished OK, but tend to agree with ulaca that it was too difficult for a quickie. LOI was DOLITTLE – a bit of a doh! moment and made me smile. Reminded me of THIN KING from yesterday, which was pretty much a repeat clue from an earlier quick cryptic. Wondering if DO LITTLE may be another old chestnut for the more experienced solvers.

    Thanks for the blog pipkirby, but one question re.3dn. Once turtle was indicated the answer had to be TURN TURTLE so went in a such. I presume turn must mean become, but I’ve not seen it used as that before. Turn into, for sure, but not just turn…

      1. I did a thesaurus check,which also gave turn as a synonym for become. But, at the risk of being a little pedantic, I find it somewhat out of place in a quick cryptic.

        You would not say “become traitor”, for example, but “become a traitor” instead. You could say “it turned out well” where turned out clearly is became. But using “turn” to directly mean “become” does not seem at all usual and the sort of thing I’d expect more in the main crossword from a particular type of setter…..

        1. It “turned” dark, it “became” dark. He “turned” green with envy etc etc

          If it’s right it’s right, if it’s wrong it’s wrong, regardless of the puzzle 🙂

          FGBP

          1. fgbp, I’m not sure I can agree with you. The question here is not wrong or right, but at what level this crossword should be pitched.

            The entymology of turn arises from the Latin for lathe and is used used to indicate a circular motion. It has the usage as in move (something) so that it is in a different position in relation to its surroundings or its previous position. From that you can get turn dark from light, turn green from normal complexion, turn turtle from upright…..

            Become has its origins in Old English meaning come to a place, come (to be or do something) and is usually used in that context.

            As you can see their roots are entirely different and they are only linked by the idea of change. That means there are far more circumstances where turn and become cannot be meaningfully interchanged, e.g. turn left, turn the tables, turn on a sixpence, this lady is not for turning…..

            It may even be more amusing to substitute become for turn in the song below

            To everything, turn, turn, turn.
            There is a season, turn, turn, turn.

            🙂

            Edited at 2014-11-29 01:09 pm (UTC)

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