Quick Cryptic Number 175 by Teazel

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A puzzle of intermediate difficulty, which has plenty of inventive crypticness and tongue-in-cheek definitions. There’s nothing unfair about any of these clues, but a decent amount of lateral thinking is required for some! I was held up by 1dn initially, and later by an unknown word at 20ac, and my favourite clues were the nearby 2dn and 21ac.

Definitions underlined as usual.

Across
1 BASIC – put I’S (one’s) inside CAB (in taxi) and reverse the result (returned) for simple.
4 TIME LAG – delay from TIME (sentence, do time) to LAG (an unusual synonym for convict, known only to me in crossword land).
8 CLEANER – clubs is C (from bridge notation?), with LEANER (more efficient) for daily. More definitions learnt solely to solve crosswords: daily and char.
9 GORGE – GORE (blood) around G (grand) for canyon.
10 MAKE IT SNAPPY – “make its nappy” and be quick.
12 SOVIET – someone from the former USSR (former Russian) with SOT (drunkard) surrounding (overcoming) VI + E (six with English).
13 PROOFS – manuscripts or mathematical solutions; they need checking by the respective professionals.
16 ILL TREATMENT – anagram of TELL MARTINET (indicated by off) and abuse.
18 ADMIN – another anagram. This time of AND I’M (indicated by confused) for paperwork.
20 PAINTER – this is a rope at the front of a small boat used for towing or mooring, and was a bit of guess. The first half of the clue alludes to an artist.
21 RUSTLER – a cryptic definition that made me chuckle. We need to think of a conspicuous livestock thief. Reminds me of one in a series of jokes: what do you call a man… under a pile of leaves? Russell.
22 EERIE – remove the first letter from bEER (pint with no head), plus IE (that is), for weird.

Down
1 BECOMES – a double definition that held me up for longer than it should. Changes into and suits (as in, that jacket is very becoming).
2 SPEAKS VOLUMES – double definition, first part cryptic. This would be done by one who records an audio book, and an idiom meaning means a lot.
3 CONTINENT – CONTENT (happy) surrounding (to keep) IN (home) in Africa for one.
4 THRUST – H (hard) interrupts (to break) TRUST (confidence) for push.
5 MUG – GUM reversed (stick up) and rob.
6 LORD PROTECTOR – Oliver Cromwell’s title in the 1650s, and someone who might advocate for the House of Lords (defender of the aristocracy).
7 GLEN – GEN (officer (General) briefly) circling L (large) for valley.
11 AIR STRIKE – AIRS (publicises) and TRIKE (child’s toy) is something delivered by plane.
14 SET FREE – deliver (as in, liberate) from SET (group of items) with FREE (no charge).
15 REAPER – a field worker who harvests crops and a reference to the Grim Reaper.
17 FAIR – a straightforward double definition. Just and light (fair skinned).
19 NIL – our long river is the NILe, shortened to become nothing.

19 comments on “Quick Cryptic Number 175 by Teazel”

  1. 11 minutes for this very pleasing puzzle. Well done sorting the format, William. I think you should be able to delete your original comment as long as no-one’s replied to it, but just possibly this depends on what access rights Andy has given you.

    Edited at 2014-11-07 08:22 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks jackkt – I think it’s successfully deleted. Who knew a missing backslash at the end of one line could make the two halves of the blog dissociate entirely? It appears html is not really my thing!
      1. It looks fine now. Once you’ve put up the blog, if it looks wrong and you click Edit you should have tab options to view in Visual Editor or HTML. I always use the first as it’s a WYSIWYG method so you can edit as you would in Word etc, in today’s example simply by placing the cursor at the top of the gap and pressing delete repeatedly until the gap closes.
  2. I think lag is a fairly well known term for a convict? As in – old lag? Perhaps I watched too many episodes of porridge as a child.

    Nice puzzle. Good blog.

  3. 7 minutes or so for this fellow, where AIR STRIKES and last-in PROOFS were the satndouts for me.

    AIR clued by publish, broadcast etc. is something to look out for, ‘though ‘air’ and ‘broadcast’ do double duty as homophone indicators.

  6. As someone who has been trying to get to grips with cryptic crosswords for the past year (have found the Times quickie to be invaluable by the way) this was probably my most satisfying effort to date, finishing in about 25 mins. Spent the first five staring at the grid with nothing leaping out at me apart from 6dn and then something clicked and the answers went in with regularity after that. Prob finish about 50% of the quicks now but certainly enjoyed this outing the most. Incidentally, many thanks to the bloggers on here – probably the best resource I’ve found for learning the ‘rules’ so far.
    1. Well done, anon. Now you’ve cracked one your confidence will build with practice. Hope you’ll stick around and make yourself known. You can put a name or nickname at the end of anon posts, or better still open a (free) LJ account and get yourself a user pic and name.
  7. Couldn’t get started – FOI was NIL!

    Managed 30 mins in 2 bites with some gentle hinting by Z8.

    I have 2 CODS – couldn’t separate them; MAKE IT SNAPPY – being a Grandma nappies are still part of our lives except Z8 changes them! Also REAPER – beautifully clued IMHO.

    LOI was PROOFS – just didn’t see it & I used to teach Maths.

  8. Strange one for me – got about a third of the clues quickly then sat staring at the grid for 10 minutes until I got ‘make it snappy’ and then it all flowed. About 30 minutes I think.
  9. I don’t keep a track of my times, but this was “completed” very quickly. Only problem was I made the same ERROR as pat33. Was a little crestfallen to read the correct answer as blogged by william_j_s (well done). As a matter of interest, if I solved on line would I have been warned there was an incorrect answer so that I’d have been able to do some “proof reading” to see where I went wrong?
    1. Indeed you would. You can press “check” after solving and it will either say “well done” or highlight the errors in red. On some devices it will also give you the correct solution to individual clues when you press this button.

      This is completely different for the main cryptic (I understand their was talk of consolidating the systems at some point).

      1. Thanks for that william_j_s. I hadn’t realised the Quick version would actually show the errors. In the main cryptic, I’m under the impression that it just gives an incorrectly solved message on submission of the fully completed puzzle if there is a mistake(s). Is that the case?

        Edited at 2014-11-07 06:37 pm (UTC)

          1. I don’t have a subscription as I get the paper version and do both the main and quick versions with a quill and ink :).

            I really dislike reading a newspaper on a computer, even with a large screen. So I’m afraid I can’t try the on line version to check.

  10. Very enjoyable offering – plenty of wit and some nice surfaces. LOI PAINTER – the rope meaning was lurking somewhere deep down in the memory bank, but took an age to retrieve it!

    Would echo faceofboe’s observation re. LAG: I suppose whether any word is “well known” or not is a pretty subjective thing ultimately, depending on the luck of the draw in terms of the spoken vocabularies of the people you spend most time with, what you read (I’d guess “painter” would be second nature to C S Forester aficionados, for example) and favourite TV shows (e.g. FOB’s reference to Porridge). Anyway, LAG crops up a lot in Crosswordland so well worth tucking away for future use.

    Thanks to setter and William for nice blog.

  11. Firstly thanks to William for a lovely clear blog

    Secondly the cluing for 2 dn might have been more logical if it was ‘records audio books’ not ‘record an audio book’ as the answer refers to VOLUMES which is more than one book.

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