Quick Cryptic no 192 by Flamande

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Comments on the difficulty of this one would be appreciated as I found it hard going in pockets but in the cold hard light of the blog, it looks fine. A deluxe puzzle, it has a triple definition, a cheeky one, a sailing reference or two and even gives me the chance to blurble about my trip. So, in the spirit of the Land Rush of 1889, wagons roll!

Definitions are underlined.

Across
1 Like wild animal I sight, jumping about without hesitation (8)
&nbsp &nbspTIGERISH – Anagram (jumping about) of I SIGHT around (without) hesitation (ER).
5 Cricketers out to lunch (4)
&nbsp &nbspBATS – Double definition – I wasn’t familiar with the cricketing reference but a quick trawl through Collins informs me that ‘bats’ is a shortened form of batsmen.
8 Former pit worker admits a person carrying out tests (8)
&nbsp &nbspEXAMINER – Former (EX), pit worker (MINER), containing (admits) a (A).
9 Song in Hair, Aida? Oddly, no (4)
&nbsp &nbspARIA – Oddly, no = even letters of hAiR aIdA.
11 Went on horseback round Wild West show (5)
&nbsp &nbspRODEO – Went on horseback (RODE), round (O). Travelling and learning – rodeos came about because Cowboys wanted to test their skills against others. In the interests of equality I should note that The National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City also lists the females who have successfully beaten off the competition.
12 Hurtful newspaper extract (7)
&nbsp &nbspCUTTING – Double definition.
13 Several TV programmes Southern Ireland’s shown retrospectively (6)
&nbsp &nbspSERIES – Southern (S), Ireland’s (EIRE’S) all backwards (shown retrospectively). Some diversion in the wordplay – with Southern Ireland = Eire and an S at each end. On edit – please see comment from achillesheling below.
15 Sailor encounters a large creature (6)
&nbsp &nbspJACKAL – Sailor (Jack), a(A), large (L).
18 Degree qualification almost official (7)
&nbsp &nbspDIPLOMA – Official (DIPLOMAt) without the last letter (almost).
19 Book house by the Mediterranean, perhaps (5)
&nbsp &nbspHOSEA – House (HO), Mediterranean is an example of (perhaps) (SEA). For those, like me, who may be a little rusty on their prophets ‘Hosea (הושֵעַ) prophesied during a dark and melancholic era of Israel’s history, the period of the Northern Kingdom’s decline and fall in the 8th century BC’. His book is included in the Hebrew Bible as one of the first minor prophets.
21 Manage, putting lead for extension on PC (4)
&nbsp &nbspCOPE – The PC here is nothing to do with IT but is one of the constabulary (COP) and has the leading letter for Extension (E) added to it.
22 Funny entertainer against admitting the press, say (8)
&nbsp &nbspCOMEDIAN – Against (CON) including the press, say (MEDIA).
23 Material for a fantastic tale (4)
&nbsp &nbspYARN – Double definition. Couldn’t get away from saga or something to do with falsehood for ages.
24 Maybe pullovers ultimately shrink in water, sadly (8)
&nbsp &nbspKNITWEAR – The untimate letter of shrink (K) inside an anagram (sadly) of IN WATER.

Down
1 Earliest of Turin’s centres for opera and theatre? (3,4)
&nbsp &nbspTHE ARTS – The earliest letter of Turin is (T), centres (HEARTS). Really quite easy when you’ve got it but I found it hard to get.
2 Cost of a piano? (5)
&nbsp &nbspGRAND – A little cheeky, this one, IMHO. A type of piano is a grand so that is the definition and a grand (£1,000) can be the cost of something including perhaps a piano. With serendipity operating on all cylinders, yesteray’s historic tour of Breckenridge CO included an old house with a square grand piano. I’ve nver come across one before but apparently they make a similar sound to a real grand piano but can fit into corners and against walls. So, on with the crossword…
3 Beastly type misused Cornish ore (10)
&nbsp &nbspRHINOCEROS – Anagram (misused) of CORNISH ORE.
4 Draw picture of small boat (6)
&nbsp &nbspSKETCH – Ah, a sailing clue to cheer me up. Small (S), boat (KETCH). That’s the one with two masts, the bigger being the front one (excuse the naval jargon).
6 Highly indisposed? (7)
&nbsp &nbspAIRSICK – To be airsick is to be indisposed at altitude. Nice one, Flamande.
7 This language incorporates non-U expressions (5)
&nbsp &nbspSLANG – The answer is in the clue (incorporates) thiS LANGuage.
10 Liking what might accompany email (10)
&nbsp &nbspATTACHMENT – Double definition with liking as in forming an attachment to. Just had to double check I wasn’t being nontechnoist by not explaining the second definition, but if you read blogs, you presumably do emails.
14 Redecorate, both up and down (7)
&nbsp &nbspREPAPER – The only clue you get here is that the answer reads the same forwards as backwards (both up and down). Are there any other words for redecoration which do this?
16 Inexperienced driver, one inclined to cross centre of motorways? (7)
&nbsp &nbspLEARNER – One inclined (LEANER) across the central letter of motorways (R).
17 Car almost everyone crams into shortly (6)
&nbsp &nbspSALOON – Almost everyone is all without the last letter (AL) is put inside (cams into) shortly (SOON).
18 Bow tie in poor condition, Richard (5)
&nbsp &nbspDICKY – Triple definition. Bow tie = dicky or dickey. If one is feeling a bit dicky, one is in a poor condition. Dick or dicky is a shortened form of Richard.
20 Polish girl seen outside home (5)
&nbsp &nbspSHINE – Girl (SHE) outside home (IN). HO or H for home got in the way until I thought of ‘in’.

30 comments on “Quick Cryptic no 192 by Flamande”

  1. I had to hop around the grid quite a lot to gain a foothold at the start and at least once more during the solve when I ran out of steam, so it seemed quite a hard one until I checked the clock on completion and found I had taken only 9 minutes.

    On 20dn: I was also for a moment tempted by H (home) – inside SEEN to give SHEEN (polish) but decided it was rather too weak a clue if that’s the way it worked. Then the checker provided by 22ac put paid to that idea. I think H could be ‘home’ as used in sports results but there is allegedly a reluctance to allow too many single-letter abbreviations in the main Times puzzle so I wonder whether it would be permitted. Even assuming that idea applies to the 15×15 I don’t know that it would carry across to the Quick cryptic.

    Quite a few regular contributors seem to have disappeared recently. I hope interest in the Quickie is not beginning to wane.

    Edited at 2014-12-02 06:31 am (UTC)

    2. I’m fairly sure it’s just ‘she’ plus ‘in’, the latter being shorthand for ‘at home’ in these northern parts. . .
      1. Yes – Jackkt and I agree with you. Jackkt’s comment was to help me understand why my first thoughts on the parsing were suspect.

        Edited at 2014-12-02 08:03 pm (UTC)

    3. You asked whether we found it hard — I solved 75% of the puzzle easily and then got stuck. I eventually cheated and looked up the solutions to the remaining 5 words but still couldn’t work out how the solutions related to the clues, that’s why I came here. I agree, pockets of difficulty in an otherwise accessible puzzle. BATS was the hardest. I’m a cricket fan and I still couldn’t fathom that one out without help!
      1. Good to hear from you, docbee6. Leaps and bounds seems to describe ‘75% easy’. Not so long ago that would have been quite a statement. Which cricket team, county or national?
        1. Indeed!”75% easy” is a testament to perseverance, countless hours spent pouring over half-completed puzzles, and the patience of you lot selflessly bothering each day to explain your black art to people like me. I’m getting there…and quite proud of myself actually.

          Also, England…. and Hampshire.

  2. It’s quite rare to see a RHINOCEROS in a grid, so kudos to the setter for that. Also, partly because of its greater length and commensurably greater difficulty in incorporating into the grid, we don’t get JACK for ‘sailor’ as often as AB or TAR (or OS – Ordinary Seaman – quite possibly, too). Besides the informal BAT(S), BATTER(S) is sometimes found in puzzles as well.

    Last in was the clever THE ARTS (especially clever, if like me, you were looking at the centre(s) of t[U]R[I]n), making my time a Jack + 30 seconds.

  3. Recently I have been lowly indisposed.

    Found this one easy until I got to the last three, 5a, 15a and 6d. Made life difficult by looking for a large creature but once I twigged the large was just L they all fell into place.

    Thanks Chris for parsing THE ARTS. Favourite KNITWEAR for the elegant surface reading.

  4. I normally get home too late to blog, but on this occasion I’m able to oblige with a comment or two.
    I thought this was a challenging puzzle for any novice as it used a number of constructs and devices more often found in the 15×15: a knowledge of the Bible (19), a devious cryptic (6) and a triple definition (18d) to boot. Fairly easy if you’ve come across them before and can recognize them for what they are, a pain if you haven’t.
    A nice steady solve coming in at 12 minutes.
    LOI 6d – also my COD.
  5. A sluggish 15 mins for me. I got stuck with the 6/15 combo at the end, and it took ages to come up with JACK for some reason. I spent some time wondering if there was such a creature as a saltal before the penny finally dropped.
  6. I think there are a lot of people who really appreciate the blog but don’t register as such. We would very much mourn it’s demise. Please keep up the good work. Sally
  7. I appreciate the blog enormously especially for the discussion that it generates. I have been working with the interactive Times online but this seems to have disappeared. I therefore had to do todays crossword without my IPad and no cheating. In some ways this was easier as I was able to see all the words at once and I was just one word short. I would have recognised bats as cricketers but not as out to lunch.
      1. Out to lunch means batty – not focussed/dotty as in:
        1. not giving your attention to what you are doing Their team is so good, they’d have to be totally out to lunch for us to win a game.
        2. lacking good mental judgment She’s clearly an idiot, and even a five year old should be able to tell she’s out to lunch.
        Etymology: based on the literal meaning of out to lunch (away from your place of business because you are eating lunch) [quotes from freedictionary]

        Edited at 2014-12-02 06:11 pm (UTC)

  8. Eire simply translates as ‘Ireland’. (All of it) It was convenient officialise for Irish republicans to refer to the whole island during the many years that the Republic did not recognise the existence of Northern Ireland. It was probably also pleasing that many Brits mistook the word as referring to the Republic. ‘The South’ and ‘The North’ were and still are common euphemisms used in the Republic to refer to a division that was for many years constitutionally non-existent.

    Geographically ‘southern’ Ireland makes no obvious sense as the most northerly county in the island is in the Republic.

    1. Thankyou and sorry for the late response – timezones mean it’s just early morning here now. You prompted me to do some research and I found this:
      http://alt-usage-english.org/ireland.html
      It seems that Eire was only in official use between 1937 and 1948.
      I will, as ever, attempt to remain uncontroversial and so will amend the blog.

      Edited at 2014-12-02 04:38 pm (UTC)

  9. Finished in about 30mins today while having my haircut. Thanks for the parsing of 1d and 18a which I didn’t manage. On 1d, I spent ages with T of Turin and E and A from the centre of opera / theatre asking myself where do i get HRTS from?! Teach me to read “of” instead of “for”.
  10. The blog is very useful and is a great stepping stone to the main crossword. Finished almost all today but could not link cricketers with lunch (does ‘out to lunch’ mean batty?). Thanks for the great work.
    2. Yes, mad as a hatter, daft as a brush, etc.

      We’re like the London buses – nothing for an hour then two come along.

      Edited at 2014-12-02 01:54 pm (UTC)

  11. Interest certainly not waning….I more often understand comments and have nothing to add but enjoying the quickie every day….come on what about Saturday?
  12. I found this puzzle generally on the easy side and was all done in just over 8 min bar 1D (THE ARTS), which, for some reason I am unable to fathom, I needed another 4 mins to solve. It was basically a simple clue, but the simplicity was well-disguised.
  13. Only the Irish could load a four-letter word with so much political claptrap. To anybody else, Eire is the republic, and Ireland is the island overall.
    Although it is true that bits of Southern Ireland are in the north, clearly it is correct on average

    Good blog, for a good crossword

    1. A four letter word that is, er, an Irish one. What their country is called matters a lot to some people, there is no need to be rude about that.
      On crossword matters, what is the definition in 3d?
      1. Good spot – thanks – I should have (and will now) underline beastly type – which is the definition.
      2. That’s not rude, those are called facts. In the link our esteemed blogger provided, the Taoiseach himself is quoted as saying “If the Senator will look at Article 4 of the Constitution she will find that the name of the State is Éire.” And if you look at the rest of the quotations, you will soon see why the politics.
        As for rude, why the anonymity? Some (though not me) would say that was rude, since a name costs nothing..

        The definition in 3dn is the underlined bit, “Beastly type.” Good crosswordese for a wild animal..

        2. Thankyou to all contributors. I think this thread has probably come to its end.
          Do, though, sign up to LiveJournal – it’s free, safe and you get an email prod when a comment is replied to – and the conversation is also improved.
  14. Good to see a much busier forum, especially after yesterday’s low point, and thanks for keeping faith all you bloggers.

    My experience was very similar to jackkt’s, moved around the grid to get my footholds, got stuck here and there, but was surprised to find that I ended up with quite a quick solve. Agree with chrisw91 that the clues were fair, but on the higher side of difficulty.

    Main cause of difficulty was in the 6dn/15ac intersection, where I made the mistake of first putting in AIRLIFT for 6dn and then realising that the only word I could come up with for 15ac was SALTAL. Might have been tempted with that answer in a 15×15 as I continually discover new words there, but concluded 6dn was wrong. JACKAL then quickly followed and, after a little head scratching, AIRSICK.

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