Quick Cryptic No 382 by Mara

19 comments on “Quick Cryptic No 382 by Mara”

1. Quite a tricky number this. ASTHMA has come up quite a bit recently in various cryptics. Well worth considering if you are faced with a 6-letter ‘condition’. ESCORT is another favourite 6-letter filler of setters, however clued. Besides the ones you mention, Nick, I thought SET ASIDE was quite cunning.

   I think 1a just about works if you imagine a comma after ‘dairy produce’, so ‘that is corny’ parses as ‘cheese is corny’.

   Edited at 2015-08-26 02:45 am (UTC)

   1. Thanks ulaca – sort of get it… And agree SET ASIDE was very nice.
2. Yes, I found this at the trickier end of the scale too and needed 15 minutes to complete it with most time lost in the NW corner.

   I don’t at all think it’s splitting hairs to query 7ac as it’s the niceties of grammar and nuances of meaning on which these things turn, and makes clues, and solving them, so interesting.

   Ulaca’s explanation above almost convinces me, but on the con side, firstly ‘corny’ itself is not listed in any of the usual sources as the equivalent of ‘cheese’ or even ‘cheesy’ so one has to go via another definition such as ‘inferior’ which is not necessarily quite the same thing. Secondly, two usual sources have ‘cheese’ (as opposed to ‘cheesy’) as “anything of excellent quality” (Chambers) and “something that is first-rate” (SOED). On the pro side is Ulaca’s suggested parsing and the deciding factor, in my view, is the question mark which suggests a little humour is intended and there’s room for a bit of a stretch.

   Edited at 2015-08-26 05:08 am (UTC)

   1. Jack, thanks for pointing out the question mark (and its significance) which I had carelessly omitted in the blog itself – now fixed.

      Regarding my somewhat coy presentation of the issue, I am always very reluctant to raise queries of this nature as the setters here are so remarkably good. I always start from the presumption that I’m missing something! This is compounded by the fact that, on the handful of occasions I have raised a query, I have ended up with egg on face as I have, indeed, got it wrong…

      In this particular instance, I do think that in general usage “cheesy” can be pretty close to “corny”, but I’m still not quite convinced that one can then extrapolate that to the point where “cheese” equals corny. Then again, I guess it comes down to just how much wiggle room the all-important question mark actually gives… Thanks again for your insights.

      1. I’ve collected enough egg over the years to make several omelettes. Your principle (‘The setter is always right’) is the one I adopt as default. Question marks, exclamation marks, ellipses, even, not to mention, brevity (which tends to increase ambiguity, as the lawyer in you will appreciate!) are some of the ways setters indicate that they are being ‘loose’, for want of a better word. The few genuine ‘errors’ they make tend to revolve around semantics rather than syntax, as far as I can recall, i.e. they get the sense of a word wrong, or had another word in mind and it got past the editor.
         1. Mate, I’ve waited all my life for a licence to be verbose. At last!! Thank you!!
   2. Rereading all this later in the day I don’t understand now what I found to discuss. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the clue at all, and probably even the question mark wasn’t needed. Brain must be slowing down further.
3. Another for whom it was a puzzle of two halves. The L/h went in quickly but the R/h was very slow as I took ages to get the anagram at 5d. Last in ASTHMA.

   Favourite SHOOT OUT which was one of my first in after 7a and 9a.

4. I found this tricky too, getting few across clues on the first read through. As for 7a, I sort of agree with the discomfort, but I read “Dairy produce that’s …” as meaning something that describes a dairy product, and cheese is undeniably cheesy. 17d my LOI.
   1. Thank you kindly!
5. I found this a struggle but eventually solved it all apart from 1d, which seemed like double dutch to me. Imagine my surprise when I checked the blog and realised I should have been looking for a 5/3 answer not a 3/5 one. Suddenly the clue made sense. Feeling a little annoyed with myself right now.
6. Quite a little teaser from Mara, especially 1d and 2d – my last pair. 7ac only works for me on the basis that milk/cheese are the most obvious (corny) examples of dairy produce. Perhaps we can tempt Mara to comment? Invariant
7. Interesting that some find west half more difficult and some the east half. I’m in the east brigade. For some reason I found 5d took a while and given my predilection I can’t for the life of me think why. 😉
   Greta blog, clear and succinct as usual
8. I read cheese to be a noun that describes especially music that is corny. “This CD is full of cheese” being synonymous with “This CD is full of cheesy tracks”. It may be a little “slangy” but I’m sure it is used in the common vernacular.

   Probably nowhere near what was intended by the setter but that was my method of parsing and ultimately it’s the destination that matters more than the journey I suppose!

   Dan

9. I’ve been looking again at 18 across. I thought there was a convention that the definition normally comes either at the beginning or end of the clue rather than somewhere in the middle. I don’t think I’ve seen it like this before. Am I missing something?
   1. Bryan,

      The definition is “note” which is at the beginning of the clue.

      1. So it’s how stupid….the silent t, and I play them all the time
10. I didn’t find this difficult. LOI was 1d.

    Agree with the other anonymous commenter. E.g. “80s cheese” mean corny music from the 80s. In this sense, cheese the noun is something that’s corny.

11. Following a controversial clue in the 15×15 last week it seems we can no longer rely on the definition being placed at the beginning or end of a clue. Not that it necessarily applied to all types of clue anyway as many cryptics and all &lits are by their very nature excluded.

    Edited at 2015-08-26 10:30 pm (UTC)

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