Quick Cryptic No 3114 by Mara

Author   DoofenschmirtzPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

 

This one took me 15:56, a few seconds over my average. There are a couple of clues with definite Britishisms which may cause problems for overseas solvers, but that’s fair enough – The Times is a British newspaper.

I found the acrosses harder than the downs, with only 5 falling on the first pass. Most unusually for me, my COD is an anagram: I think “in a cocktail” is an inspired anagrind, since cocktails are mixed and sometimes shaken.

I’m not fully convinced by my parsing of 11ac, looking forward to the hive mind explaining it in a more satisfying way.

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 Sweet starter in banquet, say, with alcoholic drink (12)
BUTTERSCOTCH – first letter of [starter in] Banquet, UTTER (say), SCOTCH (alcoholic drink).
8 Celebrity  image (4)
ICON – A double definition.
9 Church had gold castle (7)
CHATEAU – CH for church, then ATE (had) and AU (chemical symbol for gold).
11 Something for dessert? Quite! (1,6)
A TRIFLE – I think this one is another double definition, but I’m not 100% certain. I put it in with no crossers, then removed it and only reinstated it once I had the R, F and E.

I love a good trifle, but it isn’t a common dish in the US.
12 Mark painful having caught cold (5)
SCORE – SORE (painful) with C for cold inside [having caught cold].
14 Very much respecting friend (6)
REALLY – RE (about, respecting), ALLY (friend).

We had the same definition of RE the last time I blogged, and that was also a Mara puzzle. A bit of a MER at “ally” being “friend”, since allies don’t necessarily have to be friends, and friends don’t have to be allies.
15 Energy absorbed by a host, a microscopic organism (6)
AMOEBA – E for energy inside A MOB (host) A.

The second ‘A’ is part of the word play, not part of the definition.
18 Wash in shower in Seville (5)
RINSE – Hidden [in] showeR IN SEville.
20 Last of wires going in and the new phone unit (7)
HANDSET – S [last letter of wireS] in (and the)*.
21 Filthy article written by relative (7)
UNCLEAN – AN (an article, like ‘a’ or ‘the’) next to UNCLE (relative).
23 Complaint — wrong order for vegetarian? (4)
BEEF – A definition and a cryptic hint.

Beef for “complaint” sounds very Raymond Chandler-esque to me.
24 Sweet thing is part shandy in a cocktail (6,6)
DANISH PASTRY – (IS PART SHANDY)*

I don’t recall seeing “in a cocktail” used as an anagram indicator before, but I think its great. Nice one.
Down
2 Shaky, shaky nut in race (9)
UNCERTAIN – (NUT IN RACE)*

As in “being on shaky ground”.
3 Melodious playing of lute, fun! (7)
TUNEFUL – (LUTE FUN)*
4 Shoot up in salad ingredient? (6)
ROCKET – A double definition.

The leaf known in my grocery store as “arugula”. One to store away for the non-UK-based crowd.
5 Crude line drawn up on ship (5)
CRASS – ARC (line), reversed [drawn up] on SS (steamship, ship).

Someone mentioned a couple of days ago how ships were almost always SS in Crosswordland, and I’m happy to show an example.
6 Report of Asian fixture (3)
TIE – Sounds like [report of] ‘Thai’ (Asian).

Only now as I write this blog has the sporting meaning of “fixture” come to mind. D’oh. I had been thinking of “tie bars” and other such things.
7 Lords and Conservatives, for example, function under one roof? (5,5)
HOUSE PARTY – HOUSE (Lords), PARTY (Conservatives).

I read this as “Lords and Commons”. The answer still came to mind, although accompanied by doubts about the parsing, and then I actually read the clue properly. That often helps.
10 Play area of a reasonable size reduced to dust? (10)
FAIRGROUND – FAIR (of a reasonable size), GROUND (reduced to dust).

“How big is the garden of the house you’re buying?” “Oh, it’s a fair size.”
13 Turn wheel too sharply to reverse the wrong way (9)
OVERSTEER – (TO REVERSE)*
16 One bishop enters without vehicle (7)
MINIBUS – I (one) and B (bishop, from chess notation) inside (enters) MINUS [without].
17 Extraordinary punch catching Ali finally — stay positive! (4,2)
CHIN UP – last letter [finally] of AlI inside (PUNCH)*
19 Odds — or else? (5)
EVENS – A definition and a cryptic hint, or possibly two definitions.

EVENS is the name of the odds on the bet where you win exactly your stake if you win. And I think the other half of the clue is referring to  numbers, where if you take away the odd ones, what is left is the evens.
22 Vessel in ocean actually capsized (3)
CAN – Hidden [in] oceaN ACtually reversed [capsized].

71 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 3114 by Mara”

  1. 3:05 which would have been good were it not for CHATEUU. Oh dear.

    I also read it as ‘Lords and Commons’! And ‘a trifle’ for ‘quite’ as in ‘it’s a trifle stuffy in here, open a window’. My feeling on ‘beef’ is that it first became well-known in the UK through US and UK urban music like rap, and then became more widespread, perhaps through celebrity gossip columns and so on. That could be totally wrong, though. Thanks Mara and Doofenschmirtz.

    1. I think the use of “beef” has been around a lot longer than rap music. At least 50-60 years. Happy to be proved wrong but it seems to have been all my life.

      2. I believe ‘beef’, at least in America, was quite common ~100 years ago, became rarer/old-timey sounding, and was then brought back into the mainstream by rap. Much like ‘gat’ for gun.

  3. No problems today. I took ‘else’ in the EVENS clue to mean ‘otherwise’ or ‘if not’, as in programming. No problems with A TRIFLE, as dr shred says above. We seem to be having a few Danish pastries lately. Liked BUTTERSCOTCH. COD to AMOEBA.
    Thanks D and setter.

  4. Thought I had six on the first pass of acrosses, turned out to be five. That didn’t hold me up too much though as UNCERTAIN went in before realising it mean ‘star’ has to be ICON. Took a long time at the end on DANISH PASTRY where I didn’t realise it was an anagram – in a cocktail is nice – and finally on FAIRGROUND when the clue had me stumped even with only two letters left to get. Fell over the line in 11.18.

  5. A very rare day when we came in a few seconds under our blogger, and well away from the SCC.

    Also wondered about a trifle bur Dr Shred has cleared that up.

    Liked tie and parsed as Doofers too. Thanks, and thanks Mara

  6. 16.53, but they all went in okay. I had OMNIBUS, but couldn’t parse it until the AMOEBA came along and put me on the correct path with MINIBUS.

    Pi ❤️

  7. 5:49

    Fast-medium Wednesday puzzle – only issues were: failing to see that 13d was an anagram, bunged in the obvious answer; wondering about A TRIFLE – when one says it’s a trifle warm, they don’t mean just a little bit warm, they mean warmer than is comfortable, so A TRIFLE = quite works for me; EVENS – not a very satisfactory clue imho.

    Thanks Doofenschmirtz and Mara

  8. I am not sure I want to go this HOUSE PARTY, the chef needs to RINSE HANDS – hence UNCLEAN BEEF. The two desserts look tempting, though.

  9. 5.00

    Couldn’t immediately see the first few so started at the bottom and worked clockwise round.

    DANISH PASTRY had an offbeat surface but I liked it. Also nice to see a reference to one of our illustrious solvers (Amoeba).

    Thanks Doofers and Mara.

  10. A comparatively slow 13:06, and it felt it too, as several clues felt very chewy and I made somewhat heavy weather of rather too many of them. Looking back once all done I’m not sure why, as most of the wordplays are fairly straightforward, though I still don’t really understand EVENS for or else (or else what?), and I’m with those who are a trifle unsure that A TRIFLE works (and no that is not the same as being quite unsure).

    Many thanks Doofers for the blog.

  11. 17:39. Generally slow throughout. Too much thinking-through and not enough writing-in. First one ICON, but I didn’t write it in because I thought there might be something else. LOI BUTTERSCOTCH.
    Thank you Mara for this tussle (even though it shouldn’t have been) and thank you Doofenschmirtz for the blog

  12. I enjoyed this so thanks. I don’t understand ‘a trifle’ – if it’s not a dessert it’s a small matter isn’t it? What does ‘quite’ mean here ? Also I’m not sure a fairground is a play area as such.

    1. I took it to mean ‘a bit’, as in you could say, “It’s a trifle cold out” or “It’s quite cold out”.

  13. I feel I made heavy weather of this one and none of the long perimeter clues fell easily which didn’t help matters. With hindsight there was nothing overly complicated, although EVENS is still a bit of a mystery.
    Started with CHATEAU and finished with MINIBUS in 9.38.
    Thanks to Doofers and Mara

  14. I limped my way through that, burning a minute or two at the start trying in vain to crack 1a (I was convinced it began BEG, the “say” being “eg”) and then feeling annoyed at lack of progress plus no checkers! Eventually I turned to FAIRGROUND and then solved left to right.

    My cursory proofread was for once useful, since I spotted that a sloppy HOUSE MATES had overwritten HANDSET to produce HANDSEE, and therefore couldn’t be right. Sorted that out, and clocked off at 09:23 for a Poor Day. COD to MINIBUS.

    Many thanks Mara and Doofers.

  15. I approached this in a hurry prior to a day out. It showed. I did everything quite smoothly until I biffed OMNIBUS as my penultimate answer. Like Pi (above) that made -O-E-A impossible for 15a and I DNF because I was being pressed to get the car out…..
    More haste, less accuracy.
    Thanks to both. A good QC and blog.

  16. Slow to get going but gradually sped up as clues fell into place in random order. LOsI FAIRground and REALLY. Among FOsI EVENS, TIE and the anagrams.
    Liked CHIN UP, BEEF, BUTTERSCOTCH and HOUSE PARTY.
    AMOEBA and Spirogyra I remembered from ye olde school days.
    Thanks vm, Doofers.

  17. 35:23 (average: 35, target: 34)

    I felt I made rather heavy weather of this. My recall seemed very slow. There’s nothing that hard in there looking back. It felt even slower than it was.

    There were some brilliant clues in there. BUTTERSCOTCH, FAIRGROUND and DANISH PASTRY all escaped me initially, but seemed so neat once I’d solved them.

    I’d thought BEEF in that usage was a very UK English slang term. Probably because I learnt it from my kids alongside aggro. But definitely looks very American on looking it up https://www.oed.com/dictionary/beef_n2?tl=true. PG Wodehouse is listed as using it there as part of the vernacular of a very American character (Dolly Molloy).

    Thanks Doofenschmirtz (there were a couple of really tough ones to write up there: A TRIFLE and EVENS – I got them quite quickly but would not have enjoyed explaining how) and Mara.

  18. 20 minutes with a couple of holdups in A TRIFLE (still not convinced about this), AMOEBA and MINIBUS (had OMNIBUS until AMOEBA went in).

  20. Nothing. Too many anagrams at the top end. Completely missed the hiddens. And I didn’t even have alcohol last night.

  21. 21 mins…

    Took a while to get into this with hardly anything in the top half in my first sweep. A few definitions caught me out, such as 10dn “Fairground” and 11ac “A Trifle”, and 24ac “Danish Pastry” took an age to unravel. Other than that, a good puzzle.

    FOI – 5dn “Crass”
    LOI – 24ac “Danish Pastry”
    COD – 24ac “Danish Pastry”

    Thanks as usual!

  22. Thank you, Mara – that was unusually doable and enjoyable. LOI SCORE (mark can be so many things). Thanks also to Doofers – needed you to explain host = MOB.

  23. 16:31

    A steady solve slowed by SE corner, AMOEBA, MINIBUS and LOI BEEF stretching the time.

  24. A very enjoyable 12 minutes. Didn’t see OVERSTEER was an anagram and took a while to convince myself of A TRIFLE. I do like a DANISH PASTRY though so definitely my COD.
    Thanks to Mara and the wonderfully named Doofenschmirtz

  25. 6.20 so definitely on the harder side for me.

    No problems with trifle.
    COD to amoeba.

  26. Well I managed to finish under target at 9.23, but that looked pretty unlikely after the first pass of the across clues yielded only three answers. One of the three even included A TRIFLE, although I was uneasy about the definition. Having read the comments above, I am happy to accept it being used in the context of trifle = quite. I think it was a good puzzle by Mara which certainly stretched me, and I was more than pleased to eventually beat my target time.

  27. I saw BUTTERSCOTCH quite quickly which helped move things along although I needed quite a few checkers to see FAIRGROUND. I had HOUSE mates for a while too but my penultimate solve HANDSET sorted that and HOUSE PARTY was my LOI. 6:55 Thanks Doofers

  29. Is it normal for a clue to be dependent on the crossers to solve? 8a had at least three possible answers that couldn’t be differentiated from the clue itself (icon, idol and doll).

    1. I take your point with IDOL, but I don’t see how DOLL fits either definition in the clue? What am I missing?

Comments are closed.