Times Quick Cryptic 1631 by Orpheus

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

This seemed really hard at first but then the answers started rolling in and I completed in 11 minutes. An enjoyable and eventful solve with LOI 16dn, a new (or forgotten) word to me at 18ac, four answers of 11 letters or more and a raised eyebrow (which has since been lowered) at 7dn. COD to 6dn because there’s a fair amount going on in it.

Here’s how I got on:

ACROSS

1. Police officer delayed digesting papa’s ornate writing (11)
COPPERPLATE – police officer (COPPER), delayed (LATE) inside which (digesting) is papa (NATO phonetic alphabet – P).
8. Honest, but not grand? (7)
UPRIGHT – in reference to pianos – if one is an upright one then it isn’t a grand piano.
9. Being adequate in feeding Fido, perhaps (5)
DOING – in (IN) feeding Fido, perhaps (DOG). Here in Yorkshire ‘that’ll do’ means ‘of outstanding brilliance’ but elsewhere, I’m told, it means a more prosaic ‘merely adequate’.
10. Stories about weird set initially so insipid (9)
TASTELESS – stories (TALES) about an anagram (weird) of SET, (S)o.
12. Short female boxer? (3)
ALI – short for (ALI)son.
13. Live with army corps team (6)
RESIDE – army corps (RE – Royal Engineers), team (SIDE).
15. Part of cannon leader of Roundheads found in tree (6)
BREECH – (R)oundheads found in tree (BEECH). The breech is the bit at the back you bung the canonnballs in.
17. Unimportant employee – good company at first (3)
COG – good (G), company (CO) at the front.
18. Size of book I found after month in Italian Cathedral (9)
DUODECIMO – I (I) found after month (DEC) inside Italian cathedral (DUOMO). I took one look at this and carried straight on to the next clue. Only later, with some checkers, did I realise that a) I knew the word duomo and b) that duodecimo had to be a book size. Having looked it up it’s about 5 x 7.5 inches and is a twelfth of a printer’s sheet.
20. Press horn hard, seeing 17, for example (5)
TOOTH – press horn (TOOT), hard (H). 17ac – cog. Whilst cog means a wheel with teeth on it, Collins shows it also means a tooth on the rim of a gearwheel.
22. Disinclination to move in developing a rite (7)
INERTIA – in (IN), anagram (developing) of A RITE.
23. Barber‘s musical attracting a theatre employee (11)
HAIRDRESSER – musical (HAIR), theatre employee (DRESSER).

DOWN

1. Clubs, possibly, for eccentrics (5)
CARDS – double definition.
2. Stubborn and arrogant, having change at top (9)
PIGHEADED – arrogant b(IGHEADED) having the first, or top, letter changed to (P).
3. Woman originally housed in compound (6)
ESTHER – compound (ESTER) containing (H)oused.
4. Block of protective material in flat (3)
PAD – double definition.
5. Enliven a friend touring part of UK (7)
ANIMATE – a friend (A MATE) touring part of UK (NI).
6. Lady from his neighbouring land mostly going with Welshman, oddly (12)
ENGLISHWOMAN – anagram (oddly) of GOIN(g – only ‘mostly’) and WELSHMAN. The definition depends upon the ‘Welshman’ in the rest of the clue. I call this a partial &lit – do correct me if I’m wrong.
7. Flatter drink – sweet (12)
BUTTERSCOTCH – flatter (BUTTER), drink (SCOTCH). My eyebrow got some exercise as I was familiar with ‘butter-up’ to mean flatter and wondered what was going on. Collins, once more to the rescue, with the transitive verb flatter=butter. The American use includes ‘often with up’. As for the sweet itself – it seems to be cropping up a bit.
11. Witch destroyed crosses without hesitation (9)
SORCERESS – anagram (destroyed) of CROSSES including hesitation (ER).
14. Italian chaps? At first some almost disregard one (7)
SIGNORI – (S)ome, almost disregard (IGNOR)e, one (I).
16. Cow, say, originally bleating like sheep? (6)
BOVINE – (B)leating, like sheep (OVINE).
19. Bury in virgin territory (5)
INTER – inside virg(IN TER)ritory.
21. Deceived husband introducing publicity (3)
HAD – husban (H), publicity (AD). To be had is to be deceived.

62 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1631 by Orpheus”

  1. I biffed ENGLISHWOMAN, and a good thing, too, as it took me quite a while to parse it afterwards. I wasn’t sure what name was being shortened to ALI. It seems that for setters, the only part of the UK is Northern Ireland. Chris, a typo at 15ac; it’s a 2-N cannon (‘The one-N canon/ He’s a priest’, as Ogden Nash might say). 6:10.
  2. Congratulations this morning to Orpheus who with this offering becomes the latest setter to achieve 150 Quick cryptics. His first was QC#8 published on 13 March 2014 but his career as a Times setter of 15×15 puzzles and Jumbos goes back much further than that, to 1972, which makes him the longest serving compiler of modern times. 48 years and still going strong is an amazing achievement, and long may he continue to delight us!

    I found this the toughest QC for a while and I needed 13 minutes to complete it, missing my target by 3 minutes. I originally had two queries- both since resolved – the first being ‘flatter’ for ‘butter’ at 7dn as (like our blogger) I’d have thought it had to be ‘butter up’, but I also found that Collins seems to think it’s okay. The second (which I needed Chris’s blog to resolve) was at 12ac where I had thought ‘short’ was to be read as an instruction to remove two letters from Alice to arrive at ALI. This would indeed have been cutting it short, but there’s a convention that only one letter be removed unless otherwise indicated in the clue. I had overlooked the possibility of ALI being a valid abbreviation of a name, and on reflection perhaps it’s every bit as valid for Alice as for Alison.

    Edited at 2020-06-09 06:28 am (UTC)

  3. My experience was similar to Chris’s only in slow motion. Only two acrosses on the first pass and with ten minutes on the clock only 8 clues filled in – I thought I could spare the time to count them. From there thinks picked up a bit thanks to a lot of use of the what fits / does in parse technique. Had to trust the clueing to get DUODECIMO and had to write the checkers for ENGLISHWOMAN horizonatally to get it – and not parse. All done in 22 but with a pink square for SEGNORI – E and I aren’t close on the keyboard so not a typo – what was I thinking? Best to egnore it and move on!

    Edited at 2020-06-09 06:29 am (UTC)

  4. Chewy in places, with a real struggle to work out UPRIGHT, BUTTERSCOTCH and DUODECIMO, which was a new word to me, as was the Italian for cathedral, so I never fully parsed it. Finished in 13.10 with my favourite being SORCERESS.
    Thanks to Chris and congrats to Orpheus – my mind boggles at how he continues to come up with original clues after 48 years of setting cryptic crosswords.

    Edited at 2020-06-09 07:21 am (UTC)

  5. Nice job. Very minor error for 3 down. The definition is woman: Esther. The compound is ester.
  6. A proper work out this morning, with some obscure vocab (DUODECIMO) and some stretchy definitions (DOING for “being adequate” eg). All good fun for me in a whisker over 10 mins for 1.6K and a Good Day, but novice son got only half of it in 45 mins and has gone off to work remotely in the dining room in a grump!

    FOI COPPERPLATE, LOI ESTHER (down with random Christian names, booo), POI & COD UPRIGHT (probably a chestnut but new to me and I thought it was great!).

    Many thanks (and congratulations) to Orpheus and thanks Chris for the customarily excellent blog.

    Templar

  7. Very pleased to finish this in 13:46;not at all easy.
    It took me nearly three minutes to get started with COG and then it was always a bit of a struggle from top to bottom.
    Getting DUODECIMO was a big help and, if you haven’t seen it before, you need to know your duomos signori.
    LOI was BREECH; so many trees, so little time.
    Another day of congratulations to the setter (and of course daily thanks to our bloggers). David
  8. Thanks for the blog. You have a slight error in the crossword number in the title.
    Regards
    1. Thank you. Even when pointed out, for some reason I had a blind spot and just couldn’t see what was wrong! Now corrected.
  9. Went all in correctly in 16 minutes which was somewhat surprising as I wasn’t sure about DUODECIMO – in my mind I’d also conflated the Dewey decimal system so glad I somehow put in the correct letters.

    Can’t fathom a relation between the word TOOTH and the number 17 though (20a), can someone explain?

      1. No such thing as a stupid question on this blog. I have many a blank moment. Happy that light dawned.
  10. COPPERPLATE went in as I read the clue, and once again I just kept going. I had to return to PIGHEADED when I got UPRIGHT, otherwise, no problems. SORCERESS was my LOI. 5:54. Thanks and congrats to Orpheus, and thanks Chris for the blog.
  11. Back to being over target range at 18 minutes today (about twice yesterday’s time). I thought of COP… straight away, but the rest of it didn’t occur to me until quite late, which made ESTHER my LOI. I enjoyed UPRIGHT, took ages to see the Welshman’s lady neighbour. Congrats to Orpheus on the milestone – what a clutch of them we have had! Any more to look out for Jack?
    1. No, they’re all done now, Rotter, though I still have one to celebrate that I missed on the day.
  12. Oooh, that was hard. I’ve no idea how long it took me to finish but it felt like A Very Long Time. For ages, I just stared at it in disbelief as it seemed to be the first QC ever where I couldn’t solve a single clue. Then I had a coffee and came back for round two. Almost immediately, I saw COPPERPLATE, ENGLISHWOMAN and BUTTERSCOTCH – the last one mainly because it came up last week (?). Getting these three long ones in made all the difference. I have to say, though, that quite a few of these found their way into the grid without benefit of parsing eg TOOTH, UPRIGHT and SORCERESS. Perfectly obvious, of course, once I’d read the blog. I only git HAIRDRESSER because I thought of Sweeney Todd – didn’t Barber write the musical of that? Even if he didn’t, my certainty that he had, gave me the answer. I just imagined that, just like a make up artist, there would be a place for a hairdresser backstage. Of course, the musical Hair plus a dresser makes much more sense but, even if my journey was different, my destination was the same. Some answers I entered feeling very unsure that they could be right eg DOING, ALI and HAD. Thanks so much, blogger and setter.
    2. Odd how minds work – I thought Hairdresser was a gift, but Upright was my sloi.
  13. Congratulations to Orpheus. You had me cogitating today, so much so that I had to stop and make myself a cup of tea. I was fixated on calligraphy for 1a and couldn’t see how it worked because it didn’t. CARDS was my FOI so I already had the C. After the break, I solved BUTTERSCOTCH and that provided much needed checkers to get going. ENGLISHWOMAN was biffed and DUODECIMO painfully constructed from the wordplay as my LOI. 4 mins + tea + 12 mins. Thanks Chris for the blog.
  14. Found this one very hard at first. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to finish as I went through the across clues hardly putting anything in. However, things got easier as I got to the bottom half of the downs and it was a fairly steady solve from there. I was pleased to stop the watch on 39:11 with LOI BREECH, but upon coming on here I found I had been too hasty. As I had trawled through the months that could possibly fit 18a, ie to find one with an E in the middle, I got to SEP and put it in before vaguely remembering DUOMO to fit around it. I have only heard of book sizes once before, that time being on here, and DUOSEPIMO sounded reasonable. Only thing is, it doesn’t sound half as reasonable as DUODECIMO and I am now cursing myself for not going through till the end of the year. Oh well, a good workout anyway. Thanks Chris and Orpheus. Amazing to be compiling crosswords for longer than I’ve been alive.

    Edited at 2020-06-09 09:52 am (UTC)

  15. 16 mins, with another silly typo in upright.

    Main hold ups were Ali, Esther, pigheaded, upright, Englishwoman, and duodecimo.
    I had question marks next to Ali, doing, and upright.
    COD tooth.

  16. 7 minutes with doing the last be worked out, I have to confess to bunging in copperplate, sorceress and englishwoman without fully working them out. Had to be careful with the construction of duodecimo. Thanks to the blogger as ever, and Orpheus.
  17. After reading the first few clues, I had to check that I hadn’t clicked on the 15×15 by mistake…
    It was a relief when I managed to get started but, like some others, I did have to biff a few, including BREECH (which I did not know), ANIMATE (didn’t think of NI) and ENGLISHWOMAN (very convoluted clue IMHO).
    I plodded on for 27 minutes and was pleased with myself for persevering.
    COD to UPRIGHT as I found this to be the easiest one today.
    Congratulations to Orpheus on his great achievement and thanks to Chris for the clear parsing.
  18. ….would appear to be BUTTERSCOTCH, as I think it’s the third time I’ve seen it clued lately (and always differently).

    This definitely wasn’t an entry level puzzle, and I fully understand the travails of many on here this morning. However, it was right up my street, and I was only a smidgeon slower than Aphis99 and Verlaine (we’re 6/7/8 on the leaderboard, although I’m pretty sure the top 5 are neutrinos).

    FOI COPPERPLATE
    LOI TASTELESS
    COD BOVINE
    TIME 2:58

    1. I think after 2:58 I was still sipping coffee trying to get my eyes to focus.
    2. 3 of the top 5 are definitely neutrinos; one I’m not sure of, the other is for real. And in any case, you rock.
    4. Stellar time Phil! I was chuffed to break five for this one. Thoroughly enjoyable and worthy of our landmark setter.

      No rant today. Sorry if yesterday’s felt out of place to some.

      Many thanks to Orpheus and Chris.
      4’50”

      Edited at 2020-06-09 02:15 pm (UTC)

  19. Gave up after 20 minutes having got one answer. Don’t think quick cryptic s are for me If this is the standard of easy.
    3. It was a very tough puzzle. However, the level of difficulty varies enormously e.g. yesterday’s puzzle was much, much easier. Don’t give up….
      1. I didn’t finish either. Not on my wavelength at all.
        But I go on trying and hopefully store one or two new answers in my tiny brain for the future.
        Thank you Orpheus and Chris
        Diana
  20. Managed to start with 1ac and thought this was going to be OK, but when 4d was the only immediate success from six first letters, I knew this was going to be tricky. The occasional free gift – Hairdresser – couldn’t make up for some real struggles such as Upright and Englishwoman, and iffy clues like Ali. My loi would have been 18ac, Duodecimo, but I didn’t know the Italian for cathedral, so pulled stumps. Invariant
  22. Very difficult. Got Copperplate immediately and a few others like Hairdresser then had to resort to ChambersXword book.
    I actually dimly remembered Duodecimo but had to check.
    Guessed Esther and quite a few others including Englishwoman.
    A lot of the letter H today.
    Who has called an eccentric a card in the last 100 years??
    But I did like Upright.
    Thanks as ever.
  23. I struggled mightily, couldn’t get going, took a break, still couldn’t get going so resorted to the blog for 1a (I was another fixated on calligraphy). Thanks Chrisw (and all the other bloggers) as this was one of the occasions I would have had to give up. As it was with that (hefty) help I then managed to finish. Thanks also to Orpheus. Frankyanne
  24. After yesterday’s pb we thought that we might have a DNF on our hands. However, we plugged away and, after 26 minutes, solved the last clue. What a challenging but ultimately rewarding puzzle. Someone has mentioned that Orpheus has been setting puzzles for nearly half a century – amazing, what a talent (and congratulations on your 150th QC).

    FOI: cog
    LOI: duodecimo
    COD: too many to choose from….

    Thanks to Chris for the blog

    1. And that’s only for The Times! I imagine he would have started elsewhere before that.
  25. Back to normal today after my possibly best-ever time yesterday – in fact, today’s took twice as long! I must admit that I also didn’t fully parse a couple of them – UPRIGHT(which is a really nice clue so a pity it was wasted on me) and ENGLISHWOMAN (which I saw immediately was an anagram and got the definition at the same time – just not the full anagrist).

    We had DUODECIMO a while back, perhaps in the biggie, which I parsed purely form wordplay then, so I was pleased to remember it today.

    FOI Duodecimo
    LOI Cards
    COD Breech – I liked the idea of the roundhead leader up a tree, rather than Charles II
    Time 12:40

    Many congratulations to Orpheus for an amazing achievement, and to Chris for the as-ever entertaining blog

  26. … as despite comments above, this one went in fairly smoothly for me. Still a 10.5 minute solve but for me these days that is definitely better than par.

    LOI 18A Duodecimo, which I DNK and needed to trust the wordplay in the clue, but with all the checkers in, it had to be.

    My brother once had a girlfriend called Ali – she was nearly 6 ft and was in no way a “short female”!

    Congratulations to Orpheus on joining the 150 club and thanks to Chris for the blog.

    Cedric

    Edited at 2020-06-09 12:43 pm (UTC)

    1. Good to see we weren’t the only ones who found it fairly smooth, although unfortunately not very pleasant as to us the quality of the clues seemed very poor. Always hate random names, even when they are quite easy to find, it seems a cop out.
  27. Terrible day for me today – gave up after 30 mins as I felt I couldn’t spend all day on it. after about 10 mins I just had one answer, had a bit of a rush to fill out the SE, then SW, then NW corners, but remained stuck on the final corner. Strange to find such a difference between today’s offering and yesterday’s (done in about 10 mins) so not sure what was going on with me today.

    Some nice clues in here however:
    FOI: reside
    COD: bovine
    WOD: duodecimo

  28. Having come back to cryptic crosswords after being temporarily furloughed I’m starting to see some success and completed this in about 25 minutes after completing yesterday’s in 20 minutes.

    I had to trust the wordplay for Duodecimo and biffed Englishwoman without checking the anagram fodder. My last two were Esther and Bovine which held me up for a good five minutes.

    I sometimes get disheartened after reading through the clues and barely coming up with an answer but daily practise has certainly helped. I’ll usually get about half of the main cryptic at the moment but a big improvement over one or two answers just a few months ago.

    Thanks for all the great work with the blog, it’s been a tremendous help.

    Sean

    1. So happy to hear you’re gaining momentum and, more importantly, enjoying them. Practice is the only way – but when you’re having fun, what’s not to like?
  29. Quite a toughie today, I thought. I didn’t begin the QC until mid-afternoon. I was very very slow to start to fill the grid but gained momentum as I progressed. I was not unhappy with a 17 min time in the circumstances. I have given up quoting in Ks or whatever – better to simply come clean, I think (and Kevin has been absent on a few recent occasions). I would have been quicker but I typed in DOIIG for 9ac by mistake (I seem to be increasingly fat-fingered on an iPad keyboard these days). Having now read the blog I feel better about not being the only one to have gone over target. I liked UPRIGHT, DOING (apart from my slip) and was pleased to get DUODECIMO having thought of Duomo quickly. SIGNORI, ESTHER and PIG-HEADED were neat. Thanks to Orpheus and to chris. John M.

    Edited at 2020-06-09 02:32 pm (UTC)

  30. Thought the female at 12 Across was Alia. Short generally is for one letter deletion, isn’t it?
    1. Yes, it can be but also valid for names such as Nick, Tom I’d have thought.
  31. Definitely slower than yesterday but I didn’t find this too bad. Had to go down as far as 15ac before putting anything in and then couldn’t connect anything with it. However I saw 17ac straightaway and then solved fairly steadily in the SW and then the SE before returning to the top half.

    FOI – 15ac Breech
    LOI – 3dn Esther (entered with a shrug as DNK the compound ester – since Googled)
    COD – 18ac Duodecimo

    Thanks (and congrats) to setter.

  32. I have been doing these for a while now, and even when I DNF manage to complete over half of the clues. The blog then helps. But today was OTT and even some of the blog did not enlighten me. TBH if I could brag and just “biff” some of these difficult clues I would not bother doing it. Bit like me showing off to my grandson that I found his reading or counting easy and telling him so. Bad day and no fun. Worst ever for me. Always tomorrow Bill70.
    1. I print off the weekend prize puzzles and sometimes spend the week chewing through them – the more I do so, the more I pick up and the quicker I get (especially the Sunday). Sometimes it’s the harder puzzles that gives us the greater learning – and, as a lot of posts to this blog testify, that then helps with getting through the easier ones. I advocate keeping going and focusing on the satisfaction to be gained from answering any in a tough puzzle – it is fun when you get in the swing.
  33. I stopped on this one in just over an hour, with only 18A left to go in. Duodecimo is definitely a new word for me. A tough one but it gave me just enough to keep going till I nearly had them all. I don’t seem to speeding up much but get closer all the time to completing them without help!

    Someone mentioned a Chambers crossword checker – is this a book that can help with learning to solve difficult clues?

    FOI: 13A reside
    LOI: 3D Esther (I always struggle to see the random names)
    COD: 6D Englishwoman (One of those moments where the answer just appears all of a sudden when you’ve been looking at it for ages!)

    Thanks for the blog and the puzzle!

    1. I suppose it’s one of these:

      https://chambers.co.uk/crosswords/

      There’s a difference between ‘learning to solve’ and ‘feeding in checking letters and getting possible answers’. For the latter there are free websites like http://oneacross.com/

      Also, take a look at ‘other crossword sites’ on the right hand side of this page.

      Good luck and have fun!

      Edited at 2020-06-10 02:15 pm (UTC)

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