Quick Cryptic No. 80 by Joker

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A fine, well balanced puzzle from Joker again, IMO easier than Wednesday’s blog although that might be down to a lack of hangover today. Nothing obscure and a few to make you smile when the penny drops. It took me 8 minutes to solve before starting the write-up. Excuse some brevity, we have visitors.

Across
1 WON TON – Later = NOT NOW, reversed, tasty Chinese dumpling.
5 SUPPLY – Drink = SUP, alternate letters of pally = PLY, def. ‘provide’.
8 TAKE A BACK SEAT – Surprise = TAKE ABACK, chair = SEAT, def. ‘to act in a subordinate role’.
9 EYES – E (top of Everest) YES (certainly), def. ‘views’, as a verb.
10 CONFRONT – CON (servative) FRONT (boldness), def. ‘face up to’.
11 SHINTO – Very much = SO, divided by HINT (suspicion), S(HINT)O, def. Religion in Japan’.
13 ASPIRE – (PRAISE)*, indicated by ‘excitedly’, def. ‘strive for higher things’.
15 CROCKERY – C (cold) ROCKERY (stony part of garden), def. ‘all kinds of earthenware.’
17 SACK – SLACK (careless) with the L left out, def. ‘bag of material’.
19 ROUGH AND READY – (OUR HYDRANGEA’D)*, not very elegant, indeed a slightly clumsy anagram.
21 UNTRUE – UN(I)T, RUE (regret), def. ‘false’.
22 MORSEL – The Oxford detective plus L for learner. Apologies for omitting this earlier, my printscreen – paste method of getting the quickie on paper dropped this last clue off the page.

Down
2 OVARY – Madame Bovary loses her head (B), def. ‘part of flower’. I read this recently because it’s free on Kindle, it was less bad than I expected.
3 TREASON – T (turncoat’s first) REASON (justification), def. ‘disloyalty’.
4 NUB – Hidden word reversed in DE(BUN)KERS, def. ‘the central point’.
5 SECONDARY – (A DRY SCONE)*, def. ‘inferior’.
6 POSER – Double definition.
7 LEARNER – Def. ‘student’, removing the central R would give you LEANER = more unproductive.
10 COOPERATE – COOPER (cask maker) ATE (took in), def. ‘work with other (joiners)’.
12 HARPOON – HARP (instrument) + O + ON, def. ‘whaling ship will have this’.
14 PASTEUR – PAST (former) EUR (European), Louis Pasteur, 1822-95, French chemist and bacteriologist chap, immortalised in ‘pasteurisation’.
16 CIGAR – GI (american soldier) reversed, IG, in CAR (motor), def. ‘smoke’.
18 CADRE – CARE (feel concern) about D (firebrand’s end), CA(D)RE, def. ‘revolutionary group’.
20 DAM – MAD (very angry) reversed, def. ‘flood prevention barrier’.

30 comments on “Quick Cryptic No. 80 by Joker”

  1. The perfect puzzle for me. I finished it in about an hour and a half over a couple of sessions. Yes, I know it’s still early but crosswording is a good insomnia diversion. There seemed to be more general knowledge involved today and less of the individual-letters-wordplay I find a bit tedious. I was stuck on the SE corner for a while and my last ones in were SACK/CADRE
  2. Not as tough as the last couple of days. About 20 minutes but almost fell at the last hurdle as initially had COOPERAGE at 10d but lack of parsing then enabled me to see the correct answer.

    Favourite today was the elegant but not too difficult EYES.

  3. Most enjoyable. Found it at the relatively easy end of the scale, but I thought the surfaces were particularly elegant – a beautifully crafted thing.

    Like stevieshot, I also struggled a bit with the logic of LEARNER – I’d always equated leaner with more efficient (= productive). Anyway, minor quibble.

    1. I agree, Nick and Stevie, it could be leaner as in ‘a leaner harvest’ or leaner as in more efficient / less overstaffed. Dodgy for those learning English!
  4. As a learner and hopefully becoming more productive I found I nearly got all of today’s in about two hours. I still have a very long way to go before I get the crossword jargon, but at least joker has given us learners a chance to progress. I was one of those that felt like giving up after the puzzles in the early week. Thank you joker
  5. Enjoyable and not too difficult puzzle, though some clues – e.g. COOPERATE – would not have been out of place in the main Times Cryptic.
  6. Agree with other’s with L plates. Managed this entirely without help by coffee time (sorry I don’t put a stop watch on it nor do I work on it exclusively as life goes on around). This is very much due to all the help from this blog, so thanks. I do however remain sometimes unsure as to which way round a clue should be answered….. Eg today MAD DAM. I assume because the ‘about’ was after the very angry part of the clue but not sure this logic always applies. Any generic help on this would be appreciated. Of course the cross checkers always confirm the answer.
    1. 20 Very angry about flood-prevention barrier (3)

      I seem to have less trouble with these type of clues than some others, which may of course mean I’m missing hidden depths that others are plumbing!

      But I think in general terms Occam’s (Grammatical) Razor may be invoked. In today’s clue it it natural to interpret it the way the setter means it to be interpreted, that us, as a reversal of ‘very angry’ (‘very angry about’). It would simply be stretching normal grammar principles too far to take it to be intended as a reversal of ‘flood-prevention barrier’ (‘about flood-prevention barrier’). Only Yoda of Star Wars fame (whose style DOES crop up in whimsical clues occasionally – but not in reversal clues) would like this talk!

  7. 10mins so at the easier end of the scale. I liked PASTEUR and WON TON. TREASON is also in today’s Concise (24ac there). Judging by docbee6’s, bryanlawson’s and Anon’s comments, the Quick Cryptic is succeeding in bringing in new ‘crosswordistes’. Great!

    Edited at 2014-06-27 10:45 am (UTC)

  8. 11 minutes with some delay at 19dn where COOPERAGE was the first answer that came to mind and I took a while to think of an alternative and then to understand how it worked.

    My average solving time for the week equalled my best so far (week 12) at 11:40 but two bad weeks at the start of the month screwed up my four-week average.

    Edited at 2014-06-29 06:03 am (UTC)

  9. Got on really well today, quite a change from earlier in the week. As a ‘returner’ to cryptic crosswords I find the standard varies as does my ability to complete any of the clues………..
  10. I initially took 6 mins with ROUGH AND READY my LOI, but I wasn’t happy with my unparsed “cooperage” at 10dn so took another minute to think about about it and came up with the correct (and parsed) COOPERATE. I’m glad I wasn’t alone in not seeing the correct answer immediately.

    As far as Bryan Lawson’s question about ambiguous reversal clues is concerned, there don’t seem to be any rules about this as far as I can tell, and the same can be said for some letter substition clues. Sometimes the grammar of the clue is so clear that the correct answer is obvious, but where it isn’t I generally keep both options in mind and wait until a checker removes the ambiguity. On the very rare occasions that such an ambiguity can’t be resolved by checkers (i.e. the ambiguity is an unchecked letter or letters) I go with the most logical reading of the clue, and if I’m wrong I whinge at the setter and call it a bad clue. Others may have a different view.

  11. Managed this in 67 minutes ( good for me) with no real problems. Very pleasant after having struggled quite a lot with some earlier in the week.
  12. After the last two puzzles what a relief to find a compiler on my wavelength. I had begun to think that the quick cryptic was just too difficult!
    1. Agreed! I was well chuffed with myself for finishing this one -first one ever, tho I have come close a few times. I lost a bit of confidence over the previous 2puzzles.
  13. Thanks particularly to ulaca and Andy for their helpful comments on this. Much appreciated that you take the time and trouble to help us L platers
  14. Re 7 down. Surely learner is already missing 1of the 3 Rs without removing another to make leaner ? Is there another way to parse this clue?
    Curious
    1. Yes, I went down that road too. I think it’s just one of those slightly unsatisfying clues that throws up doubts of various types (see also comments above re. leaner meaning productive rather than unproductive).

      If there was an alternative parsing, I reckon the combined experience / intellects of the esteemed Ulaca, jackkt, Andy and others would have found it – so on that pragmatic basis I don’t believe there is!

    2. I think the clue – Student is more unproductive without one of the three R’s (7) – can be parsed with ‘without’ in its ‘There is a green hill far away without a city wall’ sense, meaning ‘outside’. So we have ‘leaner’ (‘more unproductive’) around (outside) R. So the clue can be read as ‘Student is…more-unproductive-without-one-of-the-three-R’s’, which makes more cryptic sense.

      As for the fact that ‘lean’ can mean more productive or less productive, that ambivalence is something that can very reasonably be exploited by the setter, so I can see no problem with that either.

      Edited at 2014-06-28 12:05 pm (UTC)

      1. Aha! Somewhat late in the day, but I get it. Thanks for that.

        Most elegant explanation, if I may say. Interesting how traditional hymn lyrics – not sung in anger since leaving school – continue to float around the brain and resonate so readily. “Without a city wall…” instantly transported me back to the old school assemblies. Whenever I duck into a service station for petrol, I find myself thinking of “fuel” as a three syllable word a la Good King Wenceslas.

        Notwithstanding my positioning as a curmudgeonly 58 year old atheist, there’s definite magic in those old hymns.

  15. Is there some way to print these crosswords? I don’t like the interactive software

    1. They are printable directly from the Times site if you have access to the on-line facsimile of the newspaper but as this requires more than the basic subscription package you may not be able to go there. The new paper is available in this format each day usually from around 6am UK time.

      The only alternative I know is a cut-and-paste job and you’ll need to find your preferred method of working to do this, possibly via screen prints or Snipping Tool if you’re on Windows. There are two principal irritations in this, firstly the wide-open blank space between grid and clues, and secondly the inability to display all the clues without scrolling down which means they have to be copied in two sections.

      My method is 1) copy the grid only, using Snipping Tool, and paste into Word, 2) copy the clues from the top as far as visible and paste alongside the grid, 3) scroll down to expose the remaining clues and repeat the process for them, 4) print from Word.

      If anyone knows a simpler way of doing any of this, please let me know.

      Edited at 2014-06-29 06:02 am (UTC)

      1. Thank you. I can’t access the facsimile. In the absence of a print button your method is probably the simplest way. I’ll try it but I’m not sure if the quick crossword is really worth that much effort.. perhaps with a word template it would be quicker
        1. After practising a couple of times my method takes barely a couple of minutes. You might try asking again in the blog to a new puzzle, and earlier in the day when more contributors will see your query.

          Edited at 2014-06-29 10:13 am (UTC)

        2. Using snipping tool it takes about one minute, I find (assuming you have a blank Word document open ready to receive the snip).

          I find I can do it in just two snips – one for the grid, and one for all the clues: maybe this is just a screen size thing, or maybe jackkt is not adjusting the zoom thingo in the browser.

          Once you’ve got both snips in, just treat them as pictures and reduce size so you get everything on one page.

          Well worth a minute out of your life, I’d suggest…

          1. Yes I have my browser set at 125% for The Times using NoSquint. Failing eyesight comes with age, I’m sorry to say, but it’s probably better than the alternative!

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