Quick Cryptic No 3042 by Teazel

Author   DoofenschmirtzPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

 

This one took me 16:39, a little bit over my average, so I’m calling this a fairly moderate one from Teazel. I think the only answer that may be a new word to some is SPINET, but the crossing letters give you 4 of the 6 letters.

I would have been faster if I hadn’t spent fully two minutes staring at FRONTIER, my LOI, completely unable to move on from MAL as “French wrongly” despite the crossers giving me nowhere to put it.

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
3 Heaven is taking part in procession (8)
PARADISE – IS (from the clue) included in [taking part in] PARADE (procession).
7 Remarkably subtle part of women’s dress once (6)
BUSTLE – (subtle)*
8 Covered in sweat, talked nonsensically with leader away (8)
LATHERED – BLATHERED (talked nonsensically) without the first letter [with leader away].
9 A resounding honour? (4)
GONG – GONG is a synonym for medal (honour), and full-scale gongs resound when struck.

This clue was easier to solve than to blog!
10 Joke was successful when read out (3)
ONE – homophone [when read out] of WON (was successful).

“One” = “joke” as in “that’s a good one”
11 Place where old pet is eaten by larger relative (8)
LOCATION – O (old) CAT (pet) inside LION (larger relative of pet cat).

The surface reading is a touch macabre.
13 Is separating rook and king a gamble? (4)
RISK – R (rook, from chess notation) and K (king) separated by IS (from the clue).
15 Warships missing odd parts in the current state (2,2)
AS IS – alternate letters [missing odd parts] of w A r S h I p S.
17 Countryman failing to finish revolting beer (8)
VILLAGER – most of [failing to finish] VILE (revolting), followed by LAGER (beer).
19 This vegetable would be sweet in the flowerbed (3)
PEA – A cryptic definition, that works on “sweet pea” being a flower and “pea” being a vegetable.
22 Team’s day in Rome, the last to move to the front (4)
SIDE – IDES (day in Rome), with the last letter moved to the front.
23 French wrongly orient border (8)
FRONTIER – FR (abbreviation for French), + (ORIENT)*.
24 Moving from Ulster, take stock (6)
RUSTLE – (ULSTER)*

Very smooth misdirection here. This is to “take stock” as in “steal cattle”, not “reflect on current position”.
25 Scene of battle has to contain pain (8)
HASTINGS – STING (pain) inside HAS (from the clue).
Down
1 Audibly indulge us? Funny (8)
HUMOROUS – Sounds like [audibly] “humour us” (indulge us).
2 Disgrace of Greek character eating starter of taramasalata (6)
STIGMA – SIGMA (a Greek letter/character) containing [eating] the first letter [starter] of Taramasalata.
3 Race along and hide (4)
PELT – double definition
4 Sensible rodent on Scottish island loch (8)
RATIONAL – RAT (rodent), IONA (Scottish island), L (abbreviation for loch).
5 More difficult to understand physical exercise in browser (6)
DEEPER – PE (physical exercise) in DEER (browser, one that browses).

For those who grew up in the US, what you know as “gym class” is “PE” in the UK.
6 Hunt for witness and king (4)
SEEK – SEE (witness), K (king).
12 Raid popular vehicle in which nothing is picked up (8)
INVASION – IN (popular) + VAN (vehicle) including O IS (nothing is), reversed [picked up, for a down clue].
14 Regularly delay its transforming (8)
STEADILY – (DELAY ITS)*

As in “the clock beat steadily”.
16 Early keyboard of wood set in stone (6)
SPINET – PINE (wood) inside [set in] ST (abbreviation for stone, the unit of weight).
18 Donkey is above one Italian town (6)
ASSISI – ASS (donkey), IS, I (one).
20 Stretch of land in Near East (4)
AREA – Hidden in neAR EAst
21 Mistakes by love god, preferring Romeo to Oscar (4)
ERRS – EROS (love god) with R [NATO Romeo] replacing O [NATO Oscar]

That’s “mistakes” as a verb.

70 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 3042 by Teazel”

  1. 15:02. Good thing I solved PELT or else I was going to enter PATTERED (spattered missing its first letter) instead of LATHERED. And I eventually solved LATHERED thinking of it being slathered missing its first letter!

  2. Had to wait for BUSTLE and GONG to go in before I saw STIGMA. Nothing too difficult. Thought ONE as a homophone for ‘won’ a bit weak. Liked ERRS with the Romeo to Oscar trick. Had my doubts about LATHERED but I see it can mean a horse covered in sweat. COD to PEA.
    Thanks D and setter.

  3. I wondered about ‘early’ keyboard, since in the US a spinet is a kind of upright piano. No biffs for once. 5:55

  4. Beaten today. Couldn’t parse ‘result’ but couldn’t see what else would be an anagram of Ulster so whacked it in and planned to come back – and forgot. As Rotter once said “if it doesn’t parse, it’s usually ….” and so it was. Should have listen to that advice. A hard fought 15.46 before being surprised by pink. Still only one error is better than the three I managed on Monday and a bargain for three pink squares. This is turning into a hard week for me.

    Also, ‘take stock’ is a great definition – I’d’ve enjoyed that if I’d got it!

  5. 10 minutes. Until I spotted ‘blathered’ as ‘talked nonsensically’ I hesitated over ‘sweat / LATHERED’ as I couldn’t square it, but after writing the answer in I thought of being ‘in a lather / sweat’ over something or other. It seems that the synonym came from the heavy sweat visible on a horse’s coat as a white foam. One lives and learns!

    Also, although I am perfectly familiar with SPINET as an early keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family I never heard of it as a type of upright piano in the USA as mentioned by Kevin G above, so I checked on YouTube and found some interesting videos on the subject.

    Back to the crossword I wondered for a moment if there might be significance to RUSTLE and BUSTLE in diagonally opposite positions in the grid but couldn’t find anything else to confirm a pattern.

  6. All done in 18.29 but with the same error as Mendeset. Could vaguely parse result but “take stock” for rustle is COD territory.

    My uncle had a spinet when I was a small boy and I was always really intrigued by the keys being coloured the other way round to a piano, must look up why!

    Thanks Teazel and Doofers

  7. 15:53 a rare QTB quicker than blogger for me and avoided the SCC despite the big tease setting. Thought one and pea on the whimsical side of cryptic definitions. I was impressed by the variety of clues with some less commonly seen in the QC: letter substitution in eros and letter translocation in ides. Some fabulous surfaces with brilliant misdirection… take stock … browser and a raid where nothing is picked up.
    Bravo Teazel.
    Thanks Doofers (QTB made my day😉)

    1. Happy to oblige! I’m pretty sure I’m the slowest of all the bloggers, which bothers me not one tiny bit. I’m not auditioning for Solve to Survive.

      1. Yes the time doesn’t bother me. I’m never disappointed by a slower solve but it’s human nature to compare oneself to others. In the tftt spirit of things I’ve gone from a 10K to a 2-3K in the past 5 years. Now I’m amazed I can occasionally equal the time of our bloggers; something I never thought possible. 🙏

  8. 8.17. I found this very hard going at the start but started to accelerate towards the lower half. LOsI the SPINET/FRONTIER intersection. I have a big question mark about the joke/one thing. I don’t mind the homophone, but if the definition alludes to a construction like ‘that’s a good one’ it seems to me we could substitute almost anything for joke because there is no limit to the amount of things we might refer to, one way or another, as ‘one’. Car? I have one. Tennis shot? Nice one…I won’t go on, thanks Teazel and Doof.

    1. The usual example given for ‘joke / one’ is “Have you heard the one about…?” which can be a standard way of introducing a joke to a conversation. It was used widely by traditional stand-up comedians (before the term stand-up had been invented). “Here’s another one…” was widely used as a follow-on.

      1. Thank you Jack for that – I was entirely with LindsayO on the clue being weak, and for precisely the same reasons, but your explanation makes it clearer. Not much better, and I still think it not the best clue in the puzzle, but certainly clearer.

        1. The main thing to take is that it has come up before many times and will no doubt do so again.

        2. Thanks for that Jack. I was really struggling to see how joke could = one.
          However I still think it is a contender for a Golden Raspberry award.

          1. It’s a shame I didn’t think to check and post in my earlier comment that ‘one / JOKE’ is in all the usual sources, Collins, Chambers and the Oxfords.

  9. I found most of this fairly straightforward but with a few tricky ones to mop up at the end – FRONTIER, LOCATION and LOI HUMOROUS. I to fight hard to resist the urge to biff ‘result’ for COD RUSTLE and initially chucked in SEEr at 6d.

    Like others I thought ONE was weak but vaguely justified in the sense that you might say ‘you’re a one’ for someone who’s mucking about – which I think is even weaker than Doofers’ explanation.

    Finished in 7.08.
    Thanks to Doofers and Teazel

  10. 11:16
    LOI LATHERED, as there are many words that were close like Prattled, chattered etc.

    Didn’t see how ONE worked. Still don’t like it. Surely “one” can substitute for just about any word?

    And is an INVASION a raid? Surely a raid is almost the opposite, where the protagonists have no intent on staying. The Vikings raided the coast of England for decades before settling, and even then it wasn’t an invasion. Since we have HASTINGS in the clue, we can agree that what the Normans intended was not a mere raid.

  11. I too was slow to get started here, and like some others I did not really understand ONE = joke, but I take Jack’s explanation above. I did also see that Result fitted both the anagram and the checkers for 24A, but fortunately I discarded it in time as it failed at the definition hurdle. And I was initially unsure about Mistakes = ERRS, as I struggle to see a sentence where they are interchangeable, but the answer was clear. And all capped off with a long delay as I found my LOI FRONTIER – nice clue, and one where once you see it, you wonder why it took so long.

    So a bit of a choppy ride to a slightly slow 12:43 solve. Good puzzle, and great blog- many thanks Doofers.

    1. On edit – I was just checking the QuickSNITCH for this puzzle and I see that Mohn completed it in 1 minute 29 seconds. I am awe-struck. There are 112 squares to fill in and 25 transitions between the clues, so a minimum of 137 key-strokes, which is less than 2/3 of a second per keystroke even without any reading or thinking time. How is this possible? Even filling the grid with random letters takes me as long as that.

      1. It’s staggering, isn’t it? I’m a pretty decent typist and I suspect I’d struggle to hit that time if I had the answers written out in front of me on a piece of paper. I can only assume that he’s not just a quick typist, but that he figures out the answer to each clue while typing out the previous one. Monumentally impressive.

        1. Fast typing is definitely a factor – I can fill in a 13×13 grid in less than 30 seconds if I already know the answers (though there are others here who are faster typists than me). Getting better at typing is easy to do – there are various fun sites like TypeRacer, though my favourite typing game is “The Typing of The Dead” (can usually pick up a Steam key for under a tenner – you kill zombies by typing the increasingly complex words/phrases that appear in front of them). The second major factor is being able to quickly recognise the definition in each clue, then guess the answer from the definition/enumeration/checking letters (essentially how you solve a Concise), and then check the answer fits the wordplay. This is harder to do but gets easier once you have done tens of thousands of puzzles. Keep an eye out for Paul Gilbert and cmjhutton, both of whom have posted multiple sub-1m30s times in the last couple of years and who, as relative youngsters, will no doubt get faster.

  12. Slow to see ONE and FRONTIER and biffed SPINET, very vaguely remembered. A longer than normal 25 minutes to complete.

  13. “Hmm, ‘take stock’ is a loose definition for ‘result’, must look that up later”. Those were my idle thoughts as I moved on to the next clue. Smacked in the face by no fewer than *three* DPSes. Ouch.

    So 06:36 but. And that was after a long debate about where the second U goes in HUMOROUS.

    COD to LOCATION, grim as the surface was. Many thanks Teazel and Doofers.

  14. DNF. I also fell into the RESULT trap.
    Not convinced that one is a synonym of joke, but it had to be the answer.

    Thanks Doofers and Teazel

    1. Have you heard the one about the giraffe that walked into a bar?

      Seems a perfect synonym to me.

  15. I failed on RUSTLE as well, having put in RESULT. I couldn’t quite work out why it was “take stock” but was thinking about take stock as in, after the result work something out. Like others, I planned to think about it more but forgot then when I put the LOI (AREA, of all clues) I got the “not quite right…” message.

    On the subject of ONE, and without wishing to open an old debate, ONE and WON are very definitely not homophones in my (West Hertfordshire) accent. I would definitely have this one in the “aural wordplay” category.

  16. Age 10 I was allowed to wear my grandmother’s wedding dress for a Victorian day at school. She must have been tiny as it only just fitted me. I remember being fascinated by the bustle.
    Enjoyed today’s puzzle with no real problems. Thanks Doofers and Teazel.

  17. Did dreadfully with this one, nowhere near on the same wavelength this morning. Only completed half of it. Thank you for the blog, it was much needed today 😁

  18. 4:32. After a few gaps in the acrosses, the downs all fell in succession. My only problem was I had unaccountably written in DEEPER as DEPEER which slowed me up in seeing LATHERED. Nice puzzle. I liked the cat eats cat.Thanks Teazel and Doofers.

  19. 8 minutes. Managed to get this out without too many delays, including the ONE for ‘Joke’ which as I remember has led to much harrumphing whenever it’s appeared before. RUSTLE was my favourite for the misdirection of the ‘take stock’ def in the surface reading of the clue.

    Thanks to Doofers and Teazel

  20. No real issues today, though thought “remarkably” was an indicator for a homophone rather than anagram. Also didn’t get the deer/browser link, so DEEPER was my LOI. COD LOCATION, appealing to my dark sense of humour there. Thanks Teazel and Doofers.

  21. Another RESULT! It’s annoying when there are two possible anagrams of the key word, as one tends to stick with the first not-quite-right one, when the crossers fit, as opposed to thinking of a possible second instead. It would have been my COD, along with LOCATION. The rest was quite humdrum, though.

  22. From PARADISE to the depths of despair with VILLAGER LOI, in 6,23. Pink square at fat fingered STEADILT. Grrhhh! Thanks Teazela and Doofers.

  23. Very pleased to cross the line, all fully parsed in 34 minutes. This is very slightly longer than my average time, but it is a Teazel and I have always found him the most awkward regular setter.

    Only four clues solved during my first pass through the Acrosses and my solving pace didn’t really pick up, but I also never became totally bogged down.

    FOI: BUSTLE
    LOI: DEEPER
    COD: VILLAGER (partly because lager is more revolting than real ale).

    Many thanks to Doofers and Teazel.

  24. A bit slow in NE. Should have got PARADISE straight away as then PELT and LOI LATHERED fell into place.
    Liked GONG, AS IS ASSISI, COD HASTINGS, HUMOROUS, Joint COD LOCATION.
    DNF as put RESULT – pencilled very faintly, I now see, but forgot to go back and think again.
    Thanks vm, Doofers.

  25. Forgot to put the timer on for the online edition. Roughly 7 minutes. Anyone else find it annoying that the timer is automatically switched off now?

    I’ve never really agreed with the notion that one and won are homophones. I’d pronounce won as “wun”.

    1. What is annoying me is that the timer no longer stops and displays when the puzzle is completed successfully. I now have to click on ‘Review Puzzle’ to get an approximate time. My other oft repeated gripe is that, on my iPad, the puzzles often flip to a different page when I select a letter. This does not happen on other puzzle sites.

      1. I mentioned the non-stopping timer some time ago (and again yesterday). Thought it was just me and my iPad.
        It wasn’t picked up by anyone who can deal with it so am just resigned to using a separate timer (when I remember…).

    4. I pronounce one as wun! But grew up in the SE and have Midland friends who (to my bafflement) pronounce ONE as “on” with a W in front.

  26. 17 minutes all parsed except RESULT – oh, it’s wrong. As I solve on paper I don’t get any pink squares and have to come here to discover my failings. I had put a question mark next to 24ac and even written out the anagrist but still never saw rustle. Everything else was fairly straightforward although I did also have a question mark next to 10ac. ONE for joke is a bit loose imo.

    FOI – 3ac PARADISE
    LOI – 1dn HUMOROUS
    COD – 11ac LOCATION

    Thanks to Teazel and Doofers.

  28. 15 minutes – Result 😎 but oh no!! What is this RUSTLE? My bubble has been well and truly burst. It didn’t parse very well but I didn’t give it any further thought.
    Very enjoyable puzzle – thank you Teazel and Doofers.

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