Quick Cryptic no 3123 by City

(use this in act)*, with the anagram indicator being “cast”.  Not the most obvious anagram indicator perhaps, but I picture picking up Scrabble tiles and casting them onto the table to see what new arrangement they end up in.

A tough anagram to open the puzzle, and I needed quite a few checkers before it went in.

Formed from the first letters (given by “at first”) of the words Pets Are Nervous In Cat.

A lovely lift and separate at the end of the clue.  It’s the little touches like finding the word flap for the definition, and then placing it by cat to allow the reference to the common phrase cat flap, which are the hallmark of a class setter.

NAME (celebrity) + VAC (short for vacuum cleaner, the truncation given by “briefly”), all reversed (“recalled”).

A cryptic clue, an anagram, and probably a chestnut too.  But mainly for me an all round headache, as I first of all tried NOE (as in the Ayes and the Noes being the two alternative ways one can vote) and then when the Y checker proved that wrong, wondered about YES.  I only got it when the second checker appeared.  So much effort for such a short clue.

A four part IKEA clue, the construction being M (Messenger’s first) + OMEN (warning) + TO (from the clue) + US (America).

CELL (ie a prison cell, where you might find a lag) + O (over).

EL (“the” in Spanish) + GIN (drink).

MEDI~ATOR (intermediary) containing T (head of, ie first letter of, The).

We had this answer as recently as just over 2 weeks ago, in QC 3109 by Lupa on 2 October, where it was clued as “Go-between taking time for Marcus Aurelius”.  No need to know about second century Roman emperors this time – or for that matter Rodin’s famous sculpture.

Sounds like KNEW (ie experienced?), with the homophone indicator being “in audiobook”.

Is Knew a synonym for Experienced?  Not sure, so I asked my pet AI engine exactly that.  And the answer came back “No, ‘knew’ is not a synonym for ‘experienced'”.  But to be fair the AI did then go on to say “however, they are related and ‘knew’ can be used in contexts that imply experience”.  Which qualifies as rather a loose link, but probably just about an acceptable one.

LE~D (went first), containing (“skirting”) B (black) + ICE (from the clue), all reversed (“in retreat”).

One of the less helpful definitions perhaps – yes a decibel is a unit, but City has not given us a great deal to go on here!

TA~TE (ie the Tate Gallery, where “much”, ie many pictures, are framed) containing (“around”) S (second).

Crosswordland’s favourite art gallery gets yet another mention, though at least this time the wordplay for it is new.  (I was about to say Crosswordland’s only art gallery, but last Saturday in QC 3117 by Teazel we had The Louvre.  So it does have at least 2 galleries).

(Italy hadn’t + EE)*, the anagram indicator being “worked”.  And another long anagram which held me up and needed pencil and paper to solve.

Slightly inelegant surface perhaps, and to me there is the merest hint of a suspicion that City just needed those two Es to complete the anagrist and could not think of a neater way to indicate them.

EM (ie me, or the setter, reversed, ie “brought up”) + every other letter (ie “regularly”) of aPaThY.

I spent too long thinking that “vacant setter” was going to be SR, ie the first and last letters of setter, before the penny dropped that City was referring to himself, ie “me”.

L (eeL finally, ie last letter) inserted into (“caught in”) (net acted)*, with the anagram indicator being “strangely”.

A second 4-part IKEA clue, the construction being UN (group of countries) + COM (come, ie appear, with the last letter deleted, given by “mostly”) + FOR (in favour of) + TABLE (board).

(cinem)*, with the anagrist being cinema with the last letter deleted (given by “almost”) and the anagram indicator being “terrible”, and then the resulting INC~ME containing (ie “securing”) O (Odeon’s opening).

Phew, that took longer to describe than parse.

Both an &lit clue, I think, and also an anagram-based clue.  The anagram wordplay is (I envy cheaters)*, the anagram indicator being “struggling”.  Although, if they are indeed cheaters, they are more succumbing to it than struggling with it.

City’s third long anagram of the day, and the third time I was well held up before the answer emerged.

IS (from the clue) + M (first letter of Meaningless, given by “to begin with”).

I have come to accept ism as a full word in its own right, and I’m sure we’ve seen it in previous QCs, but it still seems slightly strange, a suffix with ideas of independent grandeur.  Collins gives it full word status though (albeit marked as “informal, often derogatory”),  so that is good enough for City’s purposes;  only the OED is holding out in declaring it unequivocally just and always a suffix.

UNI (university) + SON (child).  “Supporting” because this is a down clue and the SON is underneath UNI.

(grandiose)*, the anagram indicator being “dances”.

C~Y (ie the first and last letters of CannY, given by “extremely”) containing OMED (demo, ie protest, reversed, given by “over”).

The sweet bread is a STOLLEN, from which one L (length) is removed.

Confession time, I adore stollen, and I am delighted that it seems to have become established in the UK as a Christmas treat.  I first met it in Germany on a visit there over 50 years ago, and at that time it was very difficult to find back in London and I was hunting high and low for it with little success.  Now every supermarket has it as part of their “Christmas range” – which means it is in the shops from about September!

WEE (week, ie 168 hours, with the last letter deleted, given by “almost”) + DY (day, ie 24 hours, with the middle letter deleted, given by “losing heart”).

The dance is the cha-cha-cha (sometimes abbreviated to cha-cha), and we want “one of its repeated parts” for the colloquial word for tea.

The various words for the drink known as tea, cha, char or chai all come from the same Chinese word 茶, and the differences are all to do with how the leaves reached Europe.  Tea first reached Europe in the 1590s via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and therefore picked up the local Cantonese pronunciation of the word, cha – the modern Portuguese for tea is still chá.  The more common form tea arrived in the 17th century via the Dutch, who sourced their tea closer to their colony in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and got their pronunciation from the Malay teh, connected to the Hokkien pronunciation te (the Dutch call the drink thee, pronounced tay, to this day).  The third form chai (usually in the UK used for spiced tea) originated from tea (ie the Chinese cha) that travelled overland via Central Asia and the Silk Road, where it picked up both the spices which differentiate this version of the drink and a Persian ending yi – one can see echoes of this, and of Russia’s control of Central Asia, in the modern Russian word for tea, which is чай, or chay.

The standard English word for the drink, ie cuppa, as in “Fancy a cuppa?”, is however entirely home-grown.