Quick Cryptic No. 40 by Grumpy

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
I seem to be meeting Grumpy more often than not on Fridays now. This one seems to be continuing the trend of increasing difficulty for the Quickies, I hope the debutantes are keeping up!
It’s a fair, balanced puzzle, with no obscure words, a couple of rather vague double definitions (d.d.), and more anagrams than usual.

Across
1 CARPENTER – Complain to = carp, key = enter (in keyboard sense), def. craftsman.
6 REF – Right = R, E and F are musical notes, the ref blows the whistle. surprising, in these high tech days, that nobody has invented something more audible over the crowd, and less reliable.
8 OBSCENE – Old boy = OB (also often clued by ‘alumnus’ in crossword-land) SCENE = part of a play, def. is disgusting.
9 CHAIR – start for combination = C, locks = HAIR, making CHAIR. You needed to think a bit laterally to get to this meaning of ‘moderate’ as in ‘moderate a discussion between politicians’.
10 GREENFINCHES – Inexperienced = GREEN, female = F, cautiously moves = INCHES, put it all together for the pretty garden birds.
12 AMENDS – Clever little clue; at noon, morning = A.M. ends, and amends means reparation.
13 FEEBLE – A hidden answer COF(FEE BLE)ND. def. somewhat lacking in strength. As was I, mentally, this morning.
16 FROMAGE FRAIS – A much trickier anagram, indicated by ‘all over the place’, (GIRAFFES ROAM)*, to sort out a food which is not exactly obvious, took me a while to see it and I’m in France.
19 BASSO – Another less than easy clue, qualified people = BAS (those having BA degrees) and LIKE THIS = SO, def. is the singer, I suppose BASSO is akin to alto or contralto, more than BASS would be.
20 CAPITAL – d.d., capital, as in ‘first class, Jeeves’, and upper case letters.
22 EAT – def. ‘scoff’, knock the first letter from (H)EAT being a preliminary round.
23 RESIDENCE – (RICE NEEDS)* ‘new’ is the anagram indicator and the def. is ‘home’.

Down
1 CLOT – Place for baby is COT, insert L = left, to get the def., ‘dummy’. Neat.
2 RESERVE – An easy d.d. which crops up often in crosswords, reserve or book a table, a reserve is a spare part.
3 EYE – Another d.d., to ‘clock’ someone is to see or eye them, and the eye is found in the centre of a hurricane (if not every storm).
4 THE OFF – A TOFF is mild slang for an upper class chap, bring in / insert ‘HE’ to get the def. ‘start of race’.
5 RACONTEUR – This one I thought vaguely amusing but a far from obvious definition; a raconteur relates entertaining stories. If someone sees I am missing something more specific please comment.
6 REACH – d.d. My online dictionary says a reach is ‘A continuous extent of water, especially a stretch of river between two bends, or the part of a canal between locks’ and reach also means ‘get to’.
7 FORESEE – Def. ‘anticipate’, it’s easier to guess the answer and then work out that deposits = ORES are ‘taken in’ to FEE = payment. F(ORES)EE.
11 ENDEAVOUR – A nice anagram with a nice surface, (OVER A DUNE)* indicated by ‘scrambling, def. ‘try’. Nothing to do with Morse.
12 AFFABLE – Def. ‘easy to talk to’, A + F (=fine) + FABLE (=story).
14 BRITTEN – Homophone clue, the celebrated British composer sounds like BRITAIN = country, and music was certainly his forte, although not to my taste.
15 FENCES – Another d.d. Fences are criminals (abetting other criminals) and fences are Grand National features.
17 ONSET – Def. ‘start’ as a noun, ON = working and SET = gel.
18 FLEE – Def. ‘run’, a lot of ships = FLEE(T) is cut removing the T.
21 PAD – Initially (P)lain (A)s (D)ay, gives PAD, verb meaning stuff.

12 comments on “Quick Cryptic No. 40 by Grumpy”

  1. Thanks for nice blog Pip. Can I suggest that 13ac is not an anagram but a hidden from last three letters of coffee and first three of blend?

    Fully agree this was at the trickier end of the spectrum. Some great surfaces (liked 8ac particularly) and some very neat clues – particularly enjoyed 10ac and 12 ac.

    On a pedantic note, is Britain a “country”? Made me do a double take anyway…

    1. Amended, thanks Nick, more haste less speed. I think Britain is an accepted short name for ‘The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland’. So it is a country.
      1. Fair enough. Always been a bit confused by that one – tend to think of Wales, England, Scotland as “countries” and the collective as – well, something else… And Britain versus Great Britain adds a layer of further complexity I will not enter into!
  2. 5 mins, but I felt that this puzzle contained some tricky cluing and it was only my experience that made me see some of the answers as quickly as I did. FROMAGE FRAIS was my LOI.
  3. Took quite a while, did this (19 minutes), finishing with the French cheese. I think at 1ac ‘key’ is being used as a noun (the Enter key).
  4. Phone calls and doorbells mean my 23 minutes is unrepresentative but I agree that this was harder than usual. 16 ac, 5 and 15dn seemed the trickiest.
  5. I found this quite easy and was hoping to achieve my first 10 or <10 minutes solve since puzzle #30. But unfortunately I was missing 23ac in my printout so I suffered a short delay towards the end and completed in 11 minutes.
  6. A good blog, Pip, from someone who also lives in France. One cheese you can’t seem to get here, though, is ricotta*. I thought this one was on the easy side of medium, especially the top half; 12mins altogether. I like the use of different devices to get beginners used to the regular Cryptic. In 3d and 9ac, for example, the sense of two words is not what it appears to be. In 3d CLOCK is a verb i.s.o. a noun; and in 9ac MODERATE is a verb i.s.o. an adjective. I agree that 19ac was a less than easy clue.
    *Wasn’t it de Gaulle who said something like “how can you govern a country that has 246 different types of cheese?”?

    Edited at 2014-05-02 11:18 am (UTC)

    1. Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage? (Les mots du General, 1962). I’ve wondered whether this means ‘how can you…’ or ‘how would you like to… ‘ which has a slightly different slant.
      Here’s how to make your own ricotta
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0reTTKCnIwc
      1. I’ve now looked up the quote in the Oxford Dictionary Of…which says “How can you govern etc..” and that quote itself comes from the book you mention. Oh, Sue says thank you very much for the recipe!
  7. As usual, late entry in the blog – I tend to do the crosswords late in the day or even the next day. But I would just like to say how much I enjoyed the last couple of quickies. Very much like their big brother, but without the arcane GK. Having said that, yesterday’s main event was not really any more difficult than the better quickies….

    Nigel from Surrey

  8. 26 mins with a fair deal of Z8ery until I got going.
    Made a few wild & very wrong guesses like Othello for 8ac & locksmith for 1ac .d’oh!

    COD was 12ac – brilliant clueing 🙂
    14dn was fun too, I’ve sung in the War Requiem – awesome.

    Thanks, Pip, for a lovely clear blog.

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