Quick Cryptic No. 61 by Teazel

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
As usual on a Monday the link on the Times button goes to the wrong puzzle  so here’s the way in: http://feeds.thetimes.co.uk/timescrossword/20140602/168/

Teazel set a couple of hard puzzles during the first month of Quickies and then a couple of easier ones, but at 11 minutes I found this the easiest of his/her offerings to date. This came as a welcome relief after my last blogging experience on Friday. I hope others also found it a gentle start to the week. Definitions are underlined.

Across

1 Slight wound is no handicap (7)
SCRATCH – Double definition, the second often with reference to golf
5 Confront Bill with fine (4)
FACE – F (fine), AC (bill, account) but the E is unclued unless I’m missing something
7 Page in directory (5)
RECTO – Hidden inside dRECTOry. This is the right-hand page of an open book. Watch out also for ‘verso’ meaning the left-hand page.
8 One may be up for a party in the garden (7)
MARQUEE – Cryptic definition
10 From the start, worker is trading intelligence (3)
WIT – First letters of Worker Is Trading
11 Rat-catcher departs by sewer into breakwater (4,5)
PIED PIPER – D (departs, abbreviation) + PIPE (sewer) inside PIER (breakwater). This refers to the character in the poem by Robert Browning.
13 Show mercy, soldiers – fast (6)
RELENT – RE (soldiers , Royal Engineers), LENT (fast, the period in the church calendar prior to Easter)
14 Being poor is difficult at university (4,2)
HARD UP – HARD (difficult), UP (at university, a crossword chestnut)
17 Orchards invaders wrecked over years (9)
VINEYARDS – Y (years) inside anagram [wrecked] of INVADERS
19 Veg is not quite fruit (3)
PEA – PEAr (not quite fruit)
20 Was head of state, but stepped down, not having succeeded (7)
REIGNED – REsIGNED (stepped down, not having succeeded, S)
22 Not advanced from first degree, that’s what I meant (5)
BASIC – BA (first degree – Bachelor of Arts), SIC (that’s what I meant, a Latin annotation indicating exactly as written or quoted)
23 Not many would be heard in squabble (4)
FEUD – Sounds like “few’d” (not many would)
24 Where baby rocks the crown? (7)
TREETOP – Double definition, the first with reference to the nursery rhyme “Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top”

Down
1 Implement warder’s given to cabbie (11)
SCREWDRIVER – SCREW (warder, prison slang), DRIVER (cabbie)
2 Article’s condemned singer’s performance, say (7)
RECITAL – Anagram [condemned] of ARTICLE
3 Cheap, at 200 for a pound? (3-1-5)
TWO-A-PENNY – Double definition. The first is slang and the second is cryptic based on 2 x the 100 pennies that make a pound. It’s a very old expression though and prior to decimalization in 1971 you’d have got 480 for a pound.
4 The village prince (6)
HAMLET – Double definition, the second with reference to Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark
5 Service thrown up a long way (3)
FAR – RAF (service – Royal Air Force) reversed [thrown up]
6 Stupid person caught by sleeping policeman (5)
CHUMP – C (caught, in cricket), HUMP (sleeping policeman, a term used for a hump built into a road as a traffic-calming measure)
9 Part of continental breakfast set prized by footballers? (8,3)
EUROPEAN CUP – EUROPEAN (continental), CUP (part of…breakfast set, for tea, coffee or eggs perhaps) but the whole clue can be read as a cryptic definition
12 Horribly abuse pill? Only too credible (9)
PLAUSIBLE – Anagram [horribly] of ABUSE PILL
15 One’s picked up in warehouse. and one’s put down (7)
DEPOSIT – IS reversed [picked up] inside DEPOT (warehouse)
16 Believe Devon town’s not working (6)
CREDIT – CREDITon (Devon town not working, i.e. with ‘on’ removed)
18 Sound from hooter enveloping one (5)
NOISE – I (one) inside NOSE (hooter, slang). Fans of Tony Hancock will have no trouble with the slang here.
21 Indicate approval as new party set up (3)
NOD – N (new), DO (party) reversed [set up]

31 comments on “Quick Cryptic No. 61 by Teazel”

  1. I misread 17 as ‘orchard invaders’, and wasted time looking for an anagram of (over years)* that would refer to some pest. Took a while to get 6d, also, until I finally remembered ‘sleeping policeman’ (not a term used in the US, where they’re simply speed bumps). I always remember ‘hooter’ from ‘Hard Day’s Night’, where Paul’s granddad criticizes Ringo for ‘always having yer hooter in a book’. Took me something over 5′, plus time to come here again to get the link when I lost the grid for some reason. Thanks, again, Jack, for providing the link.
  2. It does seem odd. ACE can mean fine as well, perhaps the clue was meant to be ‘confront fine with fine’ ? Otherwise the E is unclued, as you say.
  3. 19 mins with some directional hints from Z8. He also said I’m beginning to read clues as clues 🙂

    Glorious blog, Jack, crystal clear!

    LOI FEUD in a close race with FACE, which still doesn’t parse right for me. Was there an airman called Bill who was a flying ace?? Or is Bill a name for an ace in Poker??

    COD EUROPEAN CUP, which Spurs will win again, some day!

    Edited at 2014-06-02 09:23 am (UTC)

    1. Win AGAIN?! I recall Spurs winning the Cup Winners Cup but not the main competition, I’m afraid. Ah, my Blanchflower and my Mackay of times past!
  4. 4 mins, although FACE went in with a shrug. I had the same initial thoughts as Kevin for 17ac and only saw what was really going on when I got the N checker from 18dn. FEUD was my LOI.
  5. I tend to be pedantic about 1ac: to have no handicap is not the same as having a handicap of 0. A scratch golfer would be rather piqued to be told that he or she had no handicap.
  6. As Pip and ulaca say, 5ac is a mystery. I liked the cryptic definition of MARQUEE but COD goes to TREETOP. 9mins, so on the easy side of medium. Thanks for a very clear blog, Jack.
  7. I struggled with this puzzle and completed over a couple of sittings so no time. Last ones in 16d and 24a.

    Also did not parse FACE. Post solve looking at a thesaurus I see ace and bill are synonyms for a dollar. Somewhat obscure for a quick cryptic if that is what is going on.

    1. It’s not in any of the usual sources so if that’s what’s going on it’s totally unacceptable in a Quickie and probably in the main cryptic too. I assume, and rather hope, that it’s down to an editing error, but even that would be disturbing in the light of recent events.
      1. Where did you find that definition, Jack? Even if it’s unacceptable for a quickie, it still makes the best sense!
        1. I didn’t find it anywhere, munk, I was responding to rube’s posting above.
          1. Thanks, rubeculaw. I’d still maintain it’d be far too obscure for a quickie and as it’s not in any of the source dictionaries the editor should have disallowed it if that was how the setter sought to justify it. I still think it’s an error of sorts and it’s a shame the Times have not seen fit to comment on it.
  8. Couldn’t agree more with keriothe, this is a horrible mess and bugs be every Sunday.
  9. 6m, although slowed down by the horrible ST format they’ve used today for some reason. Puzzled by FACE like everyone else. Also puzzled by ‘orchards’ for VINEYARDS, but that seems to be just me.
    1. I wondered about this, but decided a vineyard is a type of orchard even if it has as it were grown apart from its superordinate “parent”.
  10. After a week off for half term, delighted for the first time ever to complete No 61 – a happy day! Thanks for the blog.
  11. If you’re going to grumble about handicaps and FACE I might mention 4d because a hamlet is very definitely not a village! Nevertheless, the clue made me smile.

    I got stuck for a long while in the NW corner and RECITAL/RECTO/RELENT were my last in. I’m really liking solving the puzzle on my tablet (Nexus 7) but to get those last three words I had to resort to pencil and paper to get the juices flowing.

    1. Whatever the arguments, for the crossword-setter’s purposes any definition confirmed by a source dictionary is acceptable. In this case Collins, Chambers and COED all have ‘village’ under ‘hamlet’. The general consensus is that it’s a small village or cluster of houses or, specifically in Britain, a village without its own church.
      1. I stand corrected and realise how much better it would have been if I had actually looked it up in the dictionary rather than relying on poorly remembered definitions from all those years ago as an undergraduate *wipes egg off face*
        Your patience is acknowledged and appreciated.
    1. Alan (and t’other anon above), thanks for the idea. On the face of it FACT might appear to fit the bill, but unfortunately it fails on several counts. Firstly it would leave us without a definition because the noun ‘fact’ cannot mean ‘confront’ which is a verb. Secondly ‘bill’ and ‘act’ are not synonymous though one may become the other at separate stages of parliamentary legislation. The absolute killer though is that answers to the Quick cryptic are available at the click of a button on the Times website, and the published solution is FACE.

      Regards, J

      Edited at 2014-06-02 04:50 pm (UTC)

  12. Glad I’m not the only one to not be able parse 5ac. All done in 15 minutes nonetheless, but a plea to the editor. Will you please, please stop using that really awful ST format? It is particularly annoying when the alternative is available, and if anyone at the Times prefers it, they obviously don’t use it! It also means that for those of us who like to know if we’ve solved correctly, there is no way of knowing at once if your efforts have been in vain or if you can pat yourself on the back…..
  13. I find I like their clues so want be be sure not to miss them but teazel not in this Mondays times…
    1. So far Teazel has set 6 puzzles, one on each weekday and two on Tuesdays. There have been 7 weeks without their contribution.

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