Times 26419 – What the Pry Mincer waves?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 12 minutes

Music: Beethoven, Symphony #3, Jochum/LSO

Now here’s a Monday offering. My time was a personal best, as I madly biffed without hesitation, resulting in a completed grid before the end of the first movement. I admit, I had been feeling dull after having a go at Anax’s little Sunday offering, but this one got me back into a little more positive view of my solving abilities.

It would be interesting to see how the Quickie graduates do with this one. Part of my solving speed came from experience, as I plugged in the known equivalents of known cluing elements, and rapidly got enough crossers to start biffing away. But it really wasn’t that hard, so the Quickie crew is encouraged to make the attempt.

Across
1 TRIMESTER, TRIM + EST[h]ER, or maybe [h]ESTER, either one will work.
6 SUPER, double definition, where ‘wicked’ has its slang sense of ‘excellent’.
9 UNAWARE, UN(A WAR)E.
10 ANAGRAM, definition by example, with EAST GRINSTEAD and ITS GREAT DANES as the sample anagram.
11 AMPLE, A(M.P.)LE
13 TRICKSTER, T[-e,+RICK)STER, a rather complicated substitution clue with an eminently biffable answer.
14 IMPECCANT, I MP (E.C) CAN’T. One of the few where you might need the cryptic, particularly if the answer is not on the tip of your brain.
16 ENVY, ENV[o]Y, one we’ve seen before.
18 DIRK, KI(R)D backwards, ditto.
19 TECHNICAL, anagram of CLAN ETHIC.
22 CHEQUERED, CHE(QU)ERED.
24 OFLAG, O + FLAG, not a very specific definition. Something like ‘old stone where there are no men’ would have made it harder.
25 BEGONIA, BEG ON + backwards A1.
26 TANGELO, T(A N GEL)O, where the container is our old friend OT backwards.
28 LATTE, hidden in [mea]L AT TE[aroom]. This made me think “we haven’t had ‘lathi’ for a while, I wonder when that’s going to show up.”
29 HERBARIUM, HER BARIUM.
 
Down
1 TSUNAMI, T.S. + UN AMI.
2 IDA, sounds like EIDER if you happen not to be rhotic.
3 EVANESCE, EVAN(E)S + C.E. At first I though the Welshman was Evan alone, which made the cryptic impossible to parse.
4 TRENT, T(R)ENT.
5 REALISTIC, RE ALI’S TIC.
6 SPARKS, [fixe]S (PARK) [light]S.
7 PURITANICAL, anagram of PAIR IN A CULT.
8 REMARRY, R.E. + MAR RY, a compendium of cryptic cliches.
12 PAPERWEIGHT, PAPER (W[ood]) EIGHT.
15 AFTERMATH, A F TERM AT H.
17 INSOMNIA, anagram of A MINION’S.
18 DECIBEL, L (BE) ICED upside-down.
20 LEG ROOM, LE GROOM. The English word ‘groom’, meaning a bridesman, is an assimilation of O.E. ‘guma’, a cognate of Latin ‘homo’, into another, unrelated word.
21 QUINCE, [e]QUIN(C[ultivated])E. My LOI, I had to think quickly to finish.
23 DETER, RE(T[own’s])ED upside-down.
27 ELI, [r]ELI[c], where R.C. is what is removed.

55 comments on “Times 26419 – What the Pry Mincer waves?”

  1. This was easily my PB (although I tend not to time in order to avoid a depressing start to the day). This was bifferama for me, a word which reminds me of the splendidly eccentric HATN. Fingers crossed with OFLAG which reminded me of Gulag. Also never heard of Impeccant, but my RC wife thought this was Sats level English. Found this easier than the QC. Recovering from the Sunday quiz with a cold IPA overlooking Christchurch harbour – wonderful!
    Alan
  2. Well that was relatively eazzzzy. Today’s QC was tough , contained a record number of Zs and I made one mistake.
    I managed to get all of this correct having guessed Oflag, Impeccant and Tangelo with some confidence. The clues in this were a bit more grown-up but it’s rare for me to complete one of these in under an hour. So I am very chuffed. David
  3. zoomed through this one even with a hangover. IMPECCANT from wordplay. Guardian was easy too, haven’t tried Indy yet.
  4. Yes, a breeze today. Didn’t time it, but probably 12 minutes or so – not a PB but not taxing either. I also took the (short) time required to see the parsings, so I didn’t really join in the biff fest except for TRICKSTER. Like others, IMPECCANT from wordplay, and the ANAGRAM clue was the best of the lot. Regards.
  5. Indeed easy today (my time of 33 minutes is quite good for me). My LOIs were TRIMESTER (originally I was looking for a word meaning “neat”) and then IDA and EVANESCE fell into place. IMPECCANT and OFLAG were new but easy to get from wordplay. I saw ANAGRAM quite quickly, but what else was going to fit from the mess of letters presented in the clue? Except for a typo while entering I managed yesterday’s as well, but it took an hour.

    University terms are trimesters in the US, but they are semesters in Germany and there are only two each year. But I prefer what semester means in Swedish: vacation (or the kind of holiday one goes on but doesn’t necessarily celebrate, for Brits). Actually, for German speakers Swedish has lots of other amusing words: gift is poison in Germany but means married in Swedish (but free in Swedish is unmarried in German), what is oil in Germany is beer in Sweden and for that matter, petrol in Germany is booze in Sweden. My favourite is “meaning” and its Swedish and German cognates: “mening” usually means intention, but “Meinung” means opinion, and all of this can lead to interesting misunderstandings.

    Edited at 2016-05-23 07:26 pm (UTC)

  6. Damn. This was probably a PB for me in something under 15 minutes, but as I was solving it online and had left the window open and hence the timer running, I will never know.

    I fully understand hydrochoos’ observation that petrol in Germany is booze in Sweden. It’s those long, depressing winters.

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