Quick Cryptic No 2886 by Pipsqueak

A good selection of clues here, some very straightforward, and some … not. This pushed me well out beyond my target time, finishing in 23:48.

After 10 minutes I had everything to the left of the centre-line done, and a couple of minutes after that the south-east was done. It was the north-east corner where I struggled. My last five in were OLDISH, SMASHED, HARE, FLOOR and SOFA, and I found none of them easy (although in retrospect, SMASHED is pretty straightforward.)

Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, anagram fodder indicated like (this)*.

Across
1 Crazy combination of drugs (8)
CRACKPOT – CRACK (a drug), POT (another drug).

I initially pencilled in COCKTAIL here, purely on the grounds that it was 8 letters long and I’d heard it used to mean a combination of drugs. But it was not to be.

6 Extremely overweight, spending time on this? (4)
SOFA – SO FAT (extremely overweight), minus [spending] the T for time.

Hands up everyone who thought “aha, extremely overweight, eh? Must mean O and T. Gosh, I’m good at this.”

8 Raced around island in wet weather (4)
RAIN – RAN (raced) around I for island.
9 Doctor to reveal way of getting to the top? (8)
ELEVATOR – (to reveal)*
10 Huge temptation for Adam in New York (3,5)
BIG APPLE – Double definition, the first being a mildly cryptic reference to the story of Adam & Eve.
12 Try moving east? Go quickly! (4)
HARE – HEAR (try, as a judge does), with the E for east moving, as instructed.
13 Secure  place in which to keep a hack? (6)
STABLE – Double definition.

I’d always assumed that a hack was a slightly derogatory term for a horse, but it seems to just be a contraction of “Hackney”, as in “Hackney cab”, and to have no negative connotations.

15 Over 50, good-looker, but getting on a bit (6)
OLDISH – O (over, from cricket), L (50 in Roman numbers), DISH (good-looker).
17 Outstanding poem read out loud (4)
OWED – Sounds like [read out loud] ODE (poem).

Surely one of the least-controversial homophone clues we’ve ever had.

19 Conservative tendency to create poorly-paid work (8)
CLEANING – C (standard abbreviation for Conservative) + LEANING (tendency).
21 Foreign boat sure to be a destroyer (8)
SABOTEUR – (boat sure)*
23 Born and died in poverty (4)
NEED – NEE (born) + D for died.

You’d see both of these usages in the Who’s Who? entry for a deceased female who changed her name on marriage. For example: “Margaret Thatcher (née Roberts), b 1925, d 2013…”

24 Smile for one providing constructive support? (4)
BEAM – double definition
25 Hypocritical pair confronted (3-5)
TWO-FACED – TWO (pair) + FACED (confronted).
Down
2 One having no illusions about most celebrated group of individuals (7)
REALIST – RE (about) + A-LIST (most celebrated group of individuals).
3 Dance with prisoner, happy for the most part (5)
CONGA – CON (prisoner) + GAy (happy), truncated [for the most part].
4 American author regularly spooked (3)
POE – Every other letter [regularly] of sPoOkEd.

Once you see “American author” and “(3)”, it’s pretty much always going to be POE.

5 Wrong to free her for this reason (9)
THEREFORE – (to free her)*.
6 Mum’s in shed, completely drunk (7)
SMASHED – MA’S (Mum’s) in SHED.
7 Where to spend a penny in French ground (5)
FLOOR – LOO (where to spend a penny) in FR (French).

I’m struggling to come up with an everyday example of where “FR” is used as an abbreviation for “French”. But it is in Collins online, so we’ll go with it.

11 Far-seeing prince set out (9)
PRESCIENT – (prince set)*
14 Unacceptable behaviour of disobedient class (3,4)
BAD FORM – double definition.
16 Genuine, almost as before (7)
SINCERE – SINCe (as), truncated [almost], + ERE (before).
18 Sea creature’s mournful cry picked up (5)
WHALE – sounds like [picked up] WAIL (mournful cry).
20 Hitman in Jamaica concealing another killer (5)
NINJA – Hidden in “hitmaN IN JAmaica”.
22 Romeo leaves me jumper (3)
ROO – ROmeO. As in Kanga.

This clue doesn’t really work for me. This is “me leaving Romeo”, surely, not “Romeo leaves me”. Although I suppose if Romeo leaves his sweater behind, he leaves without his sweater, but that still feels like a stretch.

79 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 2886 by Pipsqueak”

  1. Shorthand for something like ‘Romeo walks away, leaving me behind’? Interesting about scantily lettered Poe – Harper Lee is the only other one I can think of. Who are we missing? Thanks dfsz, nice blog

      1. Tan is good, Nin probably wouldn’t count as American, but makes the point that there aren’t very many three-letter authors anywhere

  2. I too was held up at the end by SOFA and FLOOR. In fact I went and did the 15×15 and came back. As for BIG APPLE, the Bible never says it is an apple.

  3. Another victim of the NE, which took up about four of my 11.24. They all look fairly straightforward now. I too was puzzled by the ROO clue. Thanks to Pipsqueak and the Doof.

  4. I join our blogger and others above having a problem with FLOOR, HARE, ROO, and SOFA.
    They turned a quick solve into a near-SCC disaster.
    Thanks for the parsing, Doofers.

  5. FLOOR, HARE, SOFA all held me up at the end of 20m solve. I’d previously been help up by putting an extra A in SABOTEUR – BAD FORM was a lot easier after that. NE was tough, glad to be through it.

  6. DNF due to the SOFA/FLOOR combination. This was due to HOPE for the HARE clue. Looked pretty solid with try=hope, then Hop ( go quickly) +E. Just not quite in the right order.

    OLDISH held up with both Dame and Doll for looker, and OLDIE and OLDSTER not quite fitting.

    COD BIG APPLE

  7. 13.38 our best ever : )
    LOI 12a HARE – biffed and 16d SINCERE not fully parsed until blog. Thank you!
    And the apple not in the bible…? Well, there we are, we learn rather a lot from this site. Nevertheless, quite a prominent fruit in the scheme of things..Adam, Newton, Mr Tell and his arrow …Steve Jobs, ‘apple of eye’ and so on. Not sure why this would be so, though doubtless harder for an archer to skewer a banana.
    On with the celebration -second cup of coffee.

  8. I got off to a rapid start and hit the above mentioned buffers. FLOOR wasn’t a problem with LOO very likely and I shrugged the FR as a reasonable indicator.
    HARE not so easy although I have seen the’moving E/W’ trick before, but forgotten. SOFA and OLDISH took a while but brought a smile.
    Just scraped into the SCC on 21 but seemed faster. Thanks Pipsqueak and Doofers.

  9. A rapid solve until hitting the usual suspects in the NE.
    Eventually saw SOFA allowed me to put LOO in the right place in 7d before biffing HARE from the checkers which I parsed post submission.
    Finished in 7.13.
    Thanks to Doofers

  10. 10 minutes. I had trouble with SOFA and HARE too and needed the crossers to get PRESCIENT. Otherwise not too hard and some nice surfaces, especially for OLDISH and SMASHED.

    I had always thought of a ‘hack’ as a type of horse and the usual dictionaries do have the “negative connotations” Doofers refers to. For example, Collins has “an old, ill-bred or overworked horse” and the ODE, under the sense of “a horse for ordinary riding”, a further sense of “an inferior or worn-out horse”; poor old thing, I can empathise.

    Thanks to Doofers and Pipsqueak

    1. Journalists were called hacks as well which I’d always taken to be one who is lower quality, dodgy or taking short cuts. The last of these is what the modern world also likes to call “hacks” but in my day were simply tips or advice.

  11. 16:41 for this odd puzzle, which I found somewhat unbalanced – very straightforward in the main and very chewy indeed in one corner. in fact my experience was exactly as our blogger’s: rapid completion of 80% of the puzzle, tick; did not think the wordplay for ROO worked, tick; NE corner more than doubled my total time, tick; and yes, I too thought “extremely overweight” gave OT, tick. Otherwise, no holdups.

    Many thanks Doofers for the blog
    Cedric

  12. 11:16 – as with the rest of you, severely held up in the NE. LOI was SOFA which dropped in after FLOOR which only came after biffing HARE. Thanks Doofers for the parsing of the latter.

    Cheers

    Horners

  13. We also echo much of Doofers experience, but made worse by getting the wrong end of the clue so putting in hear by moving the e in hare. That made floor impossible for about 6 minutes until a quick grid check made us think again. Finally got sofa at 26.12

    Thanks for the parsing of sincere.

    Some lovely surfaces, thanks pipsqueak, especially need which gets our COD in a close contest.

  14. Exactly what Plett said. 07:00 for a Good Day.

    COD to CRACKPOT, which I thought was superb.

    Many thanks Pip and El Doof.

  15. 12:18 for the 2nd DNF of the year with SOFT. Reached that last pair of FLOOR/SOFA at 9mins and then just had no idea what to do with either clue. Eventually an unparsed FLOOR=ground popped into my brain after I’d just come up with SLAB and I just bunged in SOFT for extremely overweight.

    The problem was there were at least a couple of other places where I’d biffed answers but not been able to nail down the exact wordplay (CONGA, SINCERE) so I end up assuming the rest of this puzzle will be like that.

    There were some clever, humorous clues in there but I also felt like there was some next level stuff going on which was too much. Mixed feelings which are compounded by the DNF.

  16. Over 30 minutes and I made good use of the check button. Looking back there was nothing too difficult even though it felt otherwise. COD: crackpot
    Thanks Doofers and Pipsqueak

    1. What’s a check button? I do the QC in the paper version. Is there some sort of cheat facility in the on-line version?

      1. Yes! In the app there are buttons to both check and reveal.
        Very handy for those of us who are useless at cryptics. 😉

      2. If you do the puzzle through The Times app, there are both “check” and “reveal” functions which you can apply to individual clues or to the entire grid.

        If you do the puzzle through the Crossword Club, these functions are removed.

  17. Biffed SOFA, HARE and SINCERE. Interesting info about apple in the bible. As apocryphal as Play it Again Sam, which is never actually said in Casablanca – a random thought! Thanks Doof and Pipsqueak.

    1. “… a random thought”? I have a lot of thoughts, but Mrs Random claims that most of them are useless and tells me just to get on with stuff.

  18. An early solve for me and I thought at first that I was in for a very rough ride. Only two Across clues (RAIN and TWO-FACED) solved during my first pass, but the Down clues came to my rescue. Seven of those went in and their checkers helped unlock eight more Acrosses during the second pass.

    As with some others above, the NE corner had me stumped for a few minutes at the end, with HARE, FLOOR and SOFA being my last three in. I never parsed ROO or SOFA, but they had to be. Untimed, but probably just shy of half an hour. Average for me.

    Many thanks to Doofers and Pipsqueak.

    1. Thank you for posting that, as it describes my experience pretty much exactly and saves me the bother! I thought that HARE was particularly brutal.

      Thank you for the blog!

  19. Yes, same problems in NE but got there. Liked NINJA, CRACKPOT, WHALE.
    Enjoyable. Thanks vm , Doofers.

  20. Lovely puzzle, all doable (and even parseable), just right for me so expect everyone else found it easy! LOI SOFA (laughed at that – yes, my hands are up). Yes the NE corner held out longest. Thank you, Pipsqueak.

    1. Off to Malvern Theatre on Sunday to hear the Pavel Haas Quartet play your String Quartet No.5, along with Dvorak Cypresses and Smetana From my life. Looking forward to it. Should be a good concert.

      1. Thank you! A good programme indeed. I have No.5 down as “dancingly pleasant, but essentially pot-boiling; supposed to be ’emotional turmoil’, guilt due to Kapralova” (my avatar!). In other words, not one of the best, which are Nos.2 and 3 (IMHO), then 6 and 7. This is the problem with Martinů: he’s uneven, and when he’s played at all it’s too often the wrong works that are trotted out, undermining his best chance of appeal. The Smetana is of course a masterpiece, with that dream solo for the viola player who (however) pays the price for it when the finale turns into a nightmare (quite near the beginning of the movement) with an endless passage of running semiquavers – watch out for it!
        (John: hope you don’t mind – indulged myself here only ‘cos it’s yesterday’s blog and it won’t detain anyone else!)

        1. I, too, hoped it wouldn’t offend to go off topic as it was the next day. The blog does sometimes drift and it’s non the worse for that, IMHO. Folks are generally well behaved.

          I did do an image search for your avatar a while ago and tracked it down. Not heard any of her work, though.

          1. Glad I intrigued you to search out the lovely Vítězslava Kaprálová! Her work is amiable and competent, but not memorable or as bursting with originality as Martinů’s (which it naturally resembles, rather as Clara Schumann’s resembles Robert’s, Fanny Mendelssohn’s that of Felix, or Sonia Delaunay’s pictures resemble Robert’s). So, a good and worthy cause, especially in these days of woke promotion of anything by women or those of colour, but not (sadly) important.

  21. Strangely I had no struggle with the NE corner today which went straight in. Must have been on the setter’ wavelength. I needed the blog for parsing of GENUINE and ROO which I biffed. I agree with Doofers that the latter doesn’t really work.

    I think the parsing of 10a is BIG for ‘huge’ and APPLE for ‘temptation for Adam’. While there is mention of ‘forbidden fruit’in the bible, it doesn’t say it was a big one!

  22. Enjoyable overall so thanks Pipsqueak and Doofenschmirtz ! I agree about Roo and quite a few of the clues were a bit advanced for a quickie in my opinion but hey! Incidentally I know we have a tradition but you won’t find the word apple in the book of Genesis.

  23. 5:34 switching to pencil half-way through when my pen ran out. Another who finished in the NE corner. LOI SOFA after eventually seeing FLOOR. Thank-you Pipsqueak and Doofers.

    1. I aspire to one day (in the far distant future) being sufficiently competent to using a pen. Until then, it has to be a propelling pencil for me. Even they run out sometimes, though.

  24. Enjoyed this one today although after the first pass of A clues I only had three in and one possible – the D’s then filled in a few to cross reference off and it all fell together – on paper so no exact time but I think under 10.00

  25. Similar experience to the above for a sub 40m solve.
    Two well disguised anagrams in ELEVATOR and SABATEUR which was my LOI.
    COD: NEED
    Thanks Doofers and Pip.

  26. 8:46 (Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid becomes King of Tara and High King of Ireland)
    A very fast solve, then ground to a halt on HARE. I needed an alphabet trawl before spotting it as a word meaning “go quickly”, but needed to come here to see how the wordplay worked.

    Thanks Doofers and Pipsqueak

    1. Maele Ruanaid looks like it might possibly have changed into Mulroney- name of a former Canadian Prime Minister.

  27. Another who spent far too long in the NE until SMASHED opened it up. I also failed to parse LOI, ROO, until after submission, and only then by using some mental gymnastics. FOI was RAIN. Scraped in under my target at 9:59. Thanks Pipsqueak and Doofers.

  28. I thought I’d run the three NE corner clues through the AI “Ask Ross” app, to see how it did.

    It couldn’t solve any of them without checkers.

    For SOFA, once given the S it could both solve and parse correctly.

    For HARE, it could suggest the answer – without being able to parse it – if given either the H or the R.

    For FLOOR, it was convinced that the answer was PLACE and if given the O or the R said that they were wrong. However, once given the F (even without any other letters) it could solve and parse correctly.

    Humans still ahead!

  29. Very quick until hold-up in the NE; as others it seems.
    11 minutes, LOI SOFA.
    Tried to find alternatives to SHED, although first guess was TRASHED.
    A lot to like in this. My favourites were CRACKPOT and OLDISH.
    David

  30. Pipsqueak’s puzzle came with more than just a scattering of teasers, and it felt churlish not to explore the well worn path to the overweight bear trap, so it was no surprise to find this required an SCC visit. In fact the missed sub-20 allowed a third look at loi 24ac, and a wry little smile when Beam finally replaced the earlier Seam and Perm options.
    A strong field for CoD, with 1ac, Crackpot, edging out the Two-faced, Oldish guy on the Sofa.
    Invariant

  31. For the third day running I finished in under eight minutes at 7.45. It would have been under seven minutes but for my LOI THEREFORE, which was unsolvable until I realised I had 14ac wrong. In my haste seeing 50 and good looker in the clue, I decided the answer had to be LADISH. Once I had corrected to OLDISH the remaining answer was straightforward once I realised it was an anagram.

  32. Floored by that pesky NE corner – I raise my hand and admit to taking O and T from overweight (extremely) and then putting in SLOT. And 7d had to be EN something (French for in) so I was completely misdirected and dnf. But the rest of the puzzle took under 10 minutes so I was – until then – feeling rather smug! Hah: pride before a fall. The over 50 dish was quite fun. So was the A list in REALIST. Thanks Pipsqueak and Doofers

  33. My experience mirrors Doofers’ exactly. Quick solve of the left-hand side and then a rather slow grind up the right until complete paralysis in the NE corner. Having reached 30 minutes ( my normal cut-off time) I handed it over to my wife who doesn’t do cryptics. She promptly finished it off!

    FOI – 8ac RAIN
    LOI – 7dn FLOOR
    COD – 23ac NEED

    Thanks to Pipsqeak and Doofers

  34. DNF. Failed on 3 clues on the top left corner. Three DNFs in a row. Very depressing.
    I disliked 6 Across :
    “Extremely overweight, spending time on this? (4)
    SOFA – SO FAT (extremely overweight), minus [spending] the T for time.”
    Extremely overweight = “so fat” ? That is a stretch . And since when does spending = minus ? Seems an unfair clue to me.
    Also 7 Down : “Where to spend a penny in French ground (5)
    FLOOR – LOO (where to spend a penny) in FR (French).”
    Since when is ‘Fr’ an abbreviation for French ? Seems wrong to me.
    And 12 Across: “12 Try moving east? Go quickly! (4)
    HARE – HEAR (try, as a judge does), with the E for east moving, as instructed.”
    Seems a bit hard for a so-called “Quick Cryptic”.
    Doubtless all the ‘experts’ will pooh-pooh my comment, but I am entitled to my point of view.

    1. ‘So’ can be used as an intensifier to mean ‘very’ of in this case ‘extremely’. I think it works either way but my parsing would involve lifting and separating, SO (extremely), then FAT (overweight) rather than both in one.

      If you spend all your money you are without it, so FAT spending T (time) becomes FA.

      Fr. is an abbreviation for French and is in all the dictionaries.
      .

  35. 7:17

    Like others, held up at the end in the NE – needed HARE to see SMASHED, then ELEVATOR (which I should have twigged more easily) to see FLOOR and finally SOFA. Also had COCKTAIL for a short while at the start until POE and CONGA put paid to that.

    Thanks Pipsqueak and Doofers

  36. Took a while to get a foothold but then slowly began to fill the grid. How different we all are; I had no problem with SOFA/HARE/FLOOR – my hold-ups were in the SE. Didn’t see hidden NINJA for ages and could parse neither SINCERE (forgot about ere=before) nor ROO – many thanks D 🙄 My favourites were SOFA and OLDISH. Thanks Pipsqueak.

  37. This was enjoyable, with only LOI HARE being biffed. I knew that it meant ‘go quickly’ but couldn’t work the logic, thanks for the clarification.

  38. 20 mins…

    Pretty much on the cusp – would have been a sub-20 but for spending far too long on 7dn “Floor” and 12ac “Hare”.

    FOI – 4dn “Poe”
    LOI – 12ac “Hare”
    COD – 1ac “Crackpot”

    Thanks as usual!

  39. Not sure that CLEANING definition works these days! The hourly rate of our cleaners is twice the rate of qualified freelance copy editors in these days of digital publishing…

  40. From CRACKers to the SOFA in a seemingly speedy 6:49. ELEVATOR was my penultimate solve and I didn’t properly parse SINCERE but I could spot both since and ere.

  41. 19:49 (the year my parents got married) with no errors. Like many others I took too long with HARE, FLOOR and LOI- SOFA which added at least six minutes to my time. FOI – RAIN, COD – CRACKPOT but I also liked SMASHED. Thanks Pipsqueak and Doofenschmirtz.

  42. 21.54 Getting comfortable in the SCC with much time spent on FLOOR and SOFA. Thanks Doofers and Pipsqueak.

  43. That was a good test and took me about 30 minutes. I too got stuck in NE corner but once I worked out FLOOR, sofa and hare went amidst much aahing and relief.
    Thanks Pipsqueak for a very good puzzle and Doofers for the blog.

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