Quick Cryptic Number 176 by Tracy

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
I’m standing in for mohn today.

A mixed bag of predominantly straightforward clues, which required the dredging-up of one or two half-forgotten bits of vocabulary. Lots of nice surfaces to throw you off the scent, too!

Definitions underlined, deletions in curly brackets.

Across
8 ACROBAT – ACT (turn) holding ROB A (mug and a) for tumbler.
9 PROBE – examine from P (first of posh) with ROBE (gown).
10 DIGIT – DIG (poke) plus I (one) with T (end of first) for finger, perhaps.
11 ANCIENT – very old from ANT (worker) taking in (drinking) anagram of NICE (indicated by bubbly).
12 CATALONIA – L (left) surrounded by (wearing) an anagram of A COAT IN A (indicated by high) for region in Spain.
14 TOO – remove the last letter of TOO{l} (implement) for extremely.
16 RIB – tease and RI (Rhode Island) plus B (bishop).
18 AGREEMENT – conformity from MEN (soldiers) within (during) A GREET (a salute).
21 POLENTA – dough from an anagram of ON PLATE (indicated by dished out). I certainly wouldn’t have made the link between polenta and dough without the anagram and all the checkers.
22 VILLA – holiday home from VILLA{in} (wicked person without in).
23 GREEN – double definition. New and putting area in golf.
24 LATTICE – grating from ATTIC (garret) surrounded (secured) by LE (the Parisian, i.e. “the” in French).

Down
1 PANDA CAR – Police vehicle hidden in (on the inside of) jeeP AND A CARavan.
2 BRIGHT – shining and remove on from BRIGHT{on} (resort).
3 ABUT – touch, and TUBA (brass instrument) written up (having risen).
4 STRAIN – clearly a double definition, but I did not find figuring out the first one straightforward. Air (as in tune, melody) and filter.
5 SPACE-AGE – SAGE (learned) surrounding (fencing) PACE (step) for very modern.
6 COGENT – convincing from CO (small company) with GENT (man).
7 FELT – ran one’s hand over and soft fabric.
13 LEARNING – L (first letter, head, of Lyceum) plus EARNING (getting paid) for knowledge.
15 OUTDATED – OUT (abroad?) with DAD (father) surrounding (pocketing) TE (note, from the sol-fa scale) for no longer current.
17 BILLET – BET (risk) surrounding (crossing) ILL (bad) for quarters.
19 REALLY – very from REAL (genuine) and extreme letters of L{ovel}Y
20 ECLAIR – cake from an anagram of ALICE (indicated by baked) with R (last letter of Hatter).
21 PAGE – messenger and P (parking) on AGE (time).
22 VETO – prevent and an anagram of VOTE (indicated by rigging).

11 comments on “Quick Cryptic Number 176 by Tracy”

  1. 9 minutes straightforward start to the week. Solvers aiming to graduate to the 15×15 at some point should have a go at today’s puzzle.
  2. Top half went in quickly but struggled with the bottom. Left staring at 21a and 17d for ages, was about to cheat when I saw the anagram at 21a, should have seen it earlier, and with the l checker 17d fell into place. Favourite PANDA CAR.
  3. 28 mins needed a fair deal of Z8 ery. Got 15 dn wrong OBSOLETE instead of OUTDATED but I was guessing in desperation.

    COD – VETO very neat, I thought.

    I’m not happy with ‘dough’ as a definition of Polenta.

    Polenta is cornmeal porridge, prepared by boiling. Dough is what is baked to become bread, pastry or goods found in a ‘patisserie’.

    LOI was BILLET wasn’t thinking militarily despite the abundance of clues of that genre recently.

    1. COED has: maize flour as used in Italian cookery – a paste or dough made from this flour, which is boiled and then fried or baked.
    2. I didn’t like polenta either! Oddly enough BILLET was my LOI as well, having firstly put in BOLDER for no reason than it seemed to fit….doh!!
  4. Could someone please send me a link to the puzzle? It keeps saying I’m not logged in or crossword is loading and I can’t get any further. Thankyou!
  6. As usual, didn’t get to start on this until this evening and was pleased to complete but made a mess of 15d where I was fixated on using PA rather than DAD and ended up with ‘outpaced’ as best guess…I overlooked the sol-fa link and was busy with pre- Euro currencies (not that this lead anywhere useful!). Always good to come and see how I should have got to the answers, so thanks to all of you. So near and yet so far…

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