Quick Cryptic Number 4 by Flamande – Pleasantly strolling

Author   macavity123Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Solving time: 6 1/2 minutes.

Hello everyone, long-time lurker, occasional poster, inveterate solver here. This was a nice pleasant stroll with nothing too challenging for me. I solved it on line so was held up by the cursor skipping and two clues didn’t have indications that they were phrases. Minor grumbles that I’ll either get used to, or the techies will sort.

Across
1 CONSTABLE – The definition here is the whole clue. STABLE (unlikely to waver” after a slang word for a criminal (CON)
6 PAD – P (very little money) + AD (these days, anno domini) Definition is ‘accommodation’
8 DOGMA -A + M (male) + GOD (divinity) – all reversed
9 TERRIER – A double definition clue, but a bit cryptic – Breed of dog and volunteer refers to a type of soldier.
10 NORTH SEA – Given as 8 on line, but 5,3 in the paper. An anagram (indicated by drunk) of TENOR HAS.
11 MAZE – Take a type of corn and remove the ‘kernel’, middle letter. MA(i)ZE.
13 GRANDFATHER – A thousand pounds (GRAND) + obese (FAT) + woman’s (HER) = relative.
17 POPE – I made this clue more complex than it is! One of those I wrote the answer in from the checking letters and looked why, assuming it was (Vox) POP – an ad hoc report. Nothing of the sort! POP = Unexpected report, i.e. a sudden bang. A report is another word for the noise of a gun or other weapon. Add E (European).
18 IN FLIGHT – Given as (8) on line, but it’s (2,6). IF LIGHT (If not heavy) with N (any number) inside (carried)- the definition is ‘during plane journey’. Edit: This should be (2-6) Thanks Jackkt!
21 RESERVE – Double definition. A word that means to book and the name for a substitute player.
22 TROLL – T (little time) + ROLL register. Definition is ‘provocative post’. I knew the internet troublemakers were called trolls but I didn’t realise one of their posts can also be called it.
23 THE – Definition is ‘article’. THE(M) – those people abridged, i.e. last letter missing.
24 WISCONSIN – The definition is ‘a state’. WIS(E) – mostly sage + CONS (Tories) + IN.

Down
1 CEDING – ‘Allowing’ is the definition. CE (Church) + DING (bell’s sound).
2 NIGER – NI (Part of UK) + GER (German) = NIGER (land).
3 TEACHING – TE (Half a term) + ACHING (feeling pain). Definition is ‘working in classroom’.
4 BUTTERFINGERS – A double definition, with half of it cryptic (indicated by the question mark) A way of describing someone who is clumsy / a type of thin shortbread biscuits.
5 EARL – Definition is ‘nobleman’. Answer is hidden inside FEARLESS
6 PRIVATE – Another double definition. A word meaning ‘uncommunicative’, keeping oneself to oneself, or a name for a soldier.
7 DOREEN – DO (social event) + NE’ER (never) – reversed (upset).
12 STILETTO – T (last letter, finally, of LEFT) inside an anagram (oddly) of TOILETS. The definition is ‘pointed weapon’.
14 RIPOSTE – An anagram (possibly) of ROPIEST. Definition is ‘comeback’.
15 SPIRIT – A double definition. Alcoholic drink / energy.
16 STOLEN – The definition is ‘pinched’. Take the name for a type of Christmas cake popular in Europe, STOLLEN and remove L (middle bit missing).
19 GLOSS – A homophone (superficially) of the shortened form of Gloucestershire. Definition is ‘attractive appearance’. Thought this was probably the only weak clue here.
20 CREW – A final double definition. The name for the company on a ship and the noise made by a cockerel.

Thanks to Flamande for a nice pleasant solve.

21 comments on “Quick Cryptic Number 4 by Flamande – Pleasantly strolling”

  1. 17 minutes including parsing. I was rather surprised to lose several at the start coming up with my first answer and several more at the end before realising we were back to incorrect enumeration in the on-line version at 10 and 18ac. I thought that was supposed to be fixed now?

    Incidentally 18 should be (2-6) rather than (2,6).

    Another excellent first-time blog and I like your user-pic.

    Edited at 2014-03-13 10:38 am (UTC)

  2. Thanks macavity123, great blog. I hadn’t got some of the parsing and thought one or two clues were simply unsatisfactory until I read your explanations. e.g. NE’ER for never and NIGER. I had never heard of TERRIER as a British Army reserve. NORTH SEA and IN-FLIGHT held me up a bit due to the improper enumeration.

    My faves were BUTTERFINGERS and TROLL, I just thought they were clever.

    Edited at 2014-03-13 10:43 am (UTC)

  3. Thanks macavity123.
    I found this the easiest so far: a little over four minutes. Perhaps the brain workout from doing the difficult main puzzle helped.
  4. Just under 10 minutes for me, but I’m in debt to Jack for alerting me to the enumeration issues before I attempted it. Welcome to our latest blogger – I wonder how long it will be before ‘inflight’ becomes widely and officially used as one word. It looks good, which is half the battle.
  5. Good blog, and greetings from a fellow cat. Not many hold-ups in this one other than LOI MAZE, where the many options for _A_E (160 as per Chambers) caused a brief panic.
  6. Grrr too many cats about!

    Great blog macavity. Like keriothe, I came to this wired up from one of the best main cryptics I have seen.

  7. Very nice debut Hidden Claw! I had the same time as you. Pleasant decompression after the main cryptic.
  8. Thanks macavity, I think I’m getting used to the new interface now – not so many mistypes and stopped the clock at around 3:40 (my own – I haven’t found a secret timer on the site!)

  9. A nice puzzle, elegantly blogged. I’m still irritated by the square-skipping device, which did not respond to my attempts to disarm it. Forgot to time myself; do hope they get a timer soon. I tried printing off the screen, but that only yielded a copy of the completed puzzle, no clues; and at this point I can’t remember what if anything struck me at the time.
  11. 5 mins. Another enjoyable QC with MAZE my LOI. I’m glad I’m solving it on paper and not having the IT-related issues a lot of you seem to be experiencing.
  12. Tried this one on a break from work and got an interesting glitch – using firefox and Windows XP (yep, that old of a work computer), hovering over the “play” moved the button to the left side of the screen… moving the mouse over there put it back in the middle. After a few minutes chasing it like a cat with a laser pointer, I tried right clicking to open in a new tab and there it was.

    The “easiest” of the offerings so far – I got each down clue on the first try.

  13. Thanks, Macavity…Nice looking cat! We have a grey kitten who looks just like that! As you say, a nice pleasant solve; the easiest of the four so far I think. I took 16mins. Nothing awkward to solve so good for the stated purpose of encouraging new crosswordistes. I, too, hope the enumeration and square-skipping gets sorted out soon. I selected no skipping, but it did. Thank you to jackkt for alerting me to the enumeration issue in 10ac and 18ac.

    Edited at 2014-03-13 07:30 pm (UTC)

  14. Made this a lot harder for myself than it should have been by sticking in CONSTANCE early on as 1 ac. On reflection a silly mistake with no real justification from a parsing perspective (at least insofar as STANCE was concerned).

    Whilst this did not stop me getting CEDED, TEACHING and EARL (all of which further reinforced my original thought that CONSTANCE was somehow right!) I came to a grinding halt with BUTTERFINGERS. As this was to some extent the “spine” of the puzzle, progress then became a lot slower.

    Eventually sorted myself out when I concluded BUTTERFINGERS had to be right, and then the whole thing fell into place.

    As with others, very irritated by the incorrect enumeration issue. Odd how this has returned today after two days when it appeared fixed. Hope they sort it out soon once and for all.

    Thanks for great blog.

  15. … go at one of these. Never could understand 13×13 cryptics, but I’d say this was OK.

    To get around the absence of a print option, I resorted to a screen shot. Which left me wondering why the clues are so far removed from the grid. Surely it would help if they were closer?

    1. Have you found a means of displaying all the clues so that you can resort to a single screen shot? Because of the scrollbars on the clues and their distance removed from the grid that you mention I find I need 3 separate chunks of screen shot to capture everything I need.

      It’s a shame to see so many fewer comments here today than on previous days.

      1. I think a combination of the novelty wearing off and a later posting of the original may account for fewer comments.
      2. Guess it depends on the size of your screen.
        Doesn’t work well on my MacBook (too small), but it’s OK when I plug it in to a large-ish Dell monitor. Then, of course, it’s necessary to “shrink to fit” at print time. Can send a sample if you like.
        1. Thanks for the offer but I was just interested whether there was something simple I was missing. Shrinking to fit etc is no easier than my current modus operandi which I’m now becoming expert at. Hopefully we’ll get a Print button sometime soon.

          It does seem a shame to me that the Times have gone off half-cock yet again. The puzzle is a great idea for getting new solvers involved but having no print option will surely put off a large proportion of the potential target audience. I simply cannot solve puzzles on line. I practised everyday for weeks on the Times 2 and eventually gave up on it.

  16. A late comment, the first opportunity since solving this morning in around 10 minutes. Adding my congratulations to macavity on a fine piece of work.
    I take it the “revealed” answers don’t give the hyphens and spaces (they didn’t with these. At a pinch, both answers so affected can be found online with no spaces anyway, though perhaps not convincingly enough.
    I’m with “anon” of 195.81.243.53 on 19: there isn’t a homophone indicator – “appearance” is just part of the definition Gloucestershire conventionally shortens to Glos, and its ‘s at the end gives you the other one you need for GLOSS.
    1. The revealed answers don’t, but the clues in the printed edition* do.

      *Also accessible in facsimile on-line, but not until around 6AM GMT.

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