Times Quick Cryptic 1727 by Mara

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
An abundance of cleverly hidden answers, great anagrams and a touch of inventiveness, so there’s lots to enjoy. I never got into the flow, however, and had to ‘start again’ with an unchecked word a couple of times. The SW corner was last to fall.

Can anyone help me with 18dn? There is no justfication for my interpretation in the dictionaries I have at home. Am I missing something?

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Various genres, each in online program (6,6)
SEARCH ENGINE – anagram of (various) GENRES EACH IN.
8 Field that has concrete mass (5)
REALM – REAL (concrete) and M (mass).
9 In public, once defeated, give up (7)
CONCEDE – hidden in (in) publiC ONCE DEfeated.
10 Flat jotter (3)
PAD – double definition.
11 Body of water in river rose unexpectedly (9)
RESERVOIR – anagram of (unexpectedly) RIVER ROSE.
13 Alcoholic drink is a hit (5)
PUNCH – double definition.
14 French river, one in mythology (5)
LOIRE – I (one) contained by (in) LORE (mythology).
16 Cherry, nut and bananas not required (9)
REDUNDANT – RED (cherry), then an angram of (bananas) NUT AND.
17 Medicine initially mislaid, suffering (3)
ILL – remove the rifst letter form (initially mislaid) pILL (medicine).
19 Original sign (7)
INITIAL – double definition.
21 Ungentlemanly spilling of a pint (5)
INAPT – anagram of (spilling of) A PINT.
22 So it’s always the more still? (12)
NEVERTHELESS – cryptic definition: something that is ‘always the more’ is also, therefore, ‘never the less’.

Down
1 Band splits up (5)
STRAP – PARTS (splits) reversed (up).
2 A bit of kebab and one doughnut left (9)
ABANDONED – hidden in (a bit of) kebAB AND ONE Doughnut.
3 School improves, hence transformed (13)
COMPREHENSIVE – anagram of (transformed) IMPROVES HENCE.
4 Two letters read out, that’s more than enough (6)
EXCESS – sounds like (read out) ‘x’ and “s” (two letters).
5 Commander leading attack when everyone’s out (7,6)
GENERAL STRIKE – GENERAL (commander) in front of (leading) STRIKE (attack).
6 Born on the Algarve, finally (3)
NEE – last letters of (fainally) oN thE algarvE.
7 It’s a shame only part of brigade armed (4,2)
DEAR ME – hidden in (ony part of) brigaDE ARMEd.
12 Start cooking or eating around one (9)
ORIGINATE – anagram of (coking) OR EATING containing (around) I (one).
13 Document what one might do with one’s hair? (6)
PERMIT – cryptic hint: one might ‘perm it’.
15 Speculation about everyone dancing in classical style (6)
BALLET – BET (speculation) containing (about) ALL (everyone)
18 Flower you found in a whole bunch (5)
LOTUS – U (you, textspeak) contained by (in) LOTS (a whole bunch).
20 Heart of policeman that might melt (3)
ICE – central letters from (heart of) polICEman.

37 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1727 by Mara”

  1. All done in under 10, so pretty good going, but ruined by entering PERMI not PERMIT and being unable to stop myself in time from pressing submit when a 99% complete message unexpectedly flashed up. LOTUS was LOI, and I didn’t know what was going on there but it was NEVERTHELESS which caused the longest delay even with five checkers in place. Only five on the first pass of acrosses so I was pretty happy with how the grid filled up from there. Not a single all green all week, fingers crossed for tomorrow.

    Edited at 2020-10-21 05:20 am (UTC)

  2. Once again missing a hidden, I thought that ‘once’ might be part of an anagram and biffed CONCEDE; whatever works, I suppose. I only caught on post-submission. Also biffed REDUNDANT and parsed post-sub. LOI was 13d; I actually wondered for a moment if PARTIT was a word. 6:19.
    1. I neglected to report that PARTIT was my LOI so I failed to complete correctly today.

      Edited at 2020-10-21 07:06 am (UTC)

  3. We came in at a satisfactory 11:57 today. Thanks Mara – very enjoyable puzzle.

    FOI: realm
    LOI: dear me
    COD: lotus (we parsed it the same way as William)

    Thanks for the blog William

    Edited at 2020-10-21 07:12 am (UTC)

  4. 10 minutes.

    Did you mean to query 18dn Will, as you have parsed it correctly? If it’s the U that’s concerning you, it goes back way before text speak and is in at least SOED with reference to IOU (U: you pronoun. Cf. IOU). Collins has it as ‘you’ (messaging and social media).

    Edited at 2020-10-21 06:18 am (UTC)

    1. Yes – I couldn’t find the textspeak reference in Chambers (the only one I have). Your IOU explanation is much better though, so thanks!

      1. Chambers has all sorts of gaps in it whilst also being the only one of the usual sources with words, definitions and especially abbreviations that aren’t in the others.

        Fortunately Collins and the Oxford English (Lexico) are available free on line at:
        https://www.collinsdictionary.com/
        and
        https://www.lexico.com/
        so there’s no need for additional outlay to access them.

  5. Ran into trouble in the SW corner, with the (non-existent) legal document PARTIT. Also wrote down plenty of plausible words that squeezed into the checkers along the bottom, mainly focusing on -NESS words. Just did not see what was going on in the clue.

    Seemed to be a lot of “hiddens” today? Three seems a bit excessive.

    COD GENERAL STRIKE

    But in other news, I did a sub-60 on the 15×15 yesterday, improving my PB by 30 minutes.

    1. I believe the regular cryptics are limited to one hidden, or 2 if one is reversed; but there is no such limitation on the Quickies.
    2. Thanks for spurring me to have a go at yesterday’s 15×15. I managed it in a little under 50 mins which is a pb for me. 👍
  6. A woeful DNF for me after a full hour and a half, defeated by a three pronged attack led by GENERAL STRIKE, NEVERTHELESS and PARTIT. Quite a few others held me up too, so maybe I just wasn’t on the wavelength today. Maybe I’ll have a go at yesterday’s 15×15 given Merlin’s PB. COD to 9a. Thanks all
  7. Quite a tough one from Mara. I had to jump all over the grid before having enough crossers to be able to make meaningful progress with the longer answers. I biffed LOTUS and toyed with PART IT before deciding that could never relate to a document. PERMIT and INITIAL were LI and my time was 19.35. I quite liked REDUNDANT and NEVERTHELESS but thought INAPT was a weak clue. Some nice anagrams, though, plus some clever hiddens. Thanks to Mara and William. John M.

    Edited at 2020-10-21 09:24 am (UTC)

    1. I’m glad I was not alone in thinking 21A a bit weak. It doesn’t totally fail to work, but Ungentlemanly and Inapt are not exactly synonyms to my mind.

      Cedric

  8. I seem to be having a bad run at the moment. I failed to unravel all the long anagrams without an abundance of checkers. I really wanted to put PARTIT in for 13d but persisted with an alphabet trawl to find the correct answer which was my penultimate solve. My LOI was NEVERTHELESS. 17 minutes which is better than a DNF.
  9. A very slow start with only PAD, NEE and ICE on my first run-through which was rather worrying. Once I’d managed to unscramble SEARCH ENGINE though, things started to improve and I finished within 15 minutes.
    I had to biff REALM (didn’t think of ‘real’ for ‘concrete’) and CONCEDE (totally missed the hidden).
    Lots of amusing clues including NEVERTHELESS, DEAR ME and PERMIT – and COD goes to EXCESS for being my PDM today.
    Thanks to Mara for a great puzzle and to William for the helpful blog.
  10. at 8:42.

    NEVERTHELESS took me the longest. I liked REDUNDANT, and failed to notice that CONCEDE was a hidden!

  11. A satisfying 11 minutes this morning, which actually seemed faster than that. I also wondered about the number of hiddens and anagrams. Wasn’t there a kind of convention limiting straight hiddens to one per puzzle at one time? NEVERTHELESS was LOI, and took a little time, but I saw SEARCH ENGINE straight away, which helped enormously. Thanks Mara and William.
  12. I usually find Mara one of the trickier setters but today was a real struggle and I just couldn’t get going at all. I managed to talk myself out of PARTIT trap and thought INAPT was a bit of a stretch but other than that everything else was fair enough. Finished in 19.46 with LOI EXCESS, which I was convinced was going to start EM or EN.
    Thanks to William and well played to Mara
  13. 30 mins to complete but DNF, as I put in some gobbledygook for 22ac which didn’t make any sense upon reflection.

    I thought this was a nice challenge from Mara with more hidden clues than I expected (never did see 9ac). Enjoyed 2dn “Abandoned”, 13dn “Permit” and 12dn “Originate”

    FOI – 10ac “Pad”
    LOI – 22ac dnf
    COD – 5dn “General Strike”

    Thanks as usual.

  14. A satisfying 11 minutes this morning, which actually seemed faster than that. I also wondered about the number of hiddens and anagrams. Wasn’t there a kind of convention limiting straight hiddens to one per puzzle at one time? NEVERTHELESS was LOI, and took a little time, but I saw SEARCH ENGINE straight away, which helped enormously. Thanks Mara and William.
  15. I had hardly anything after the first pass and thought this was going to be a real stinker. Fortunately, after a short re-think, I spotted 5d General Strike and impossible clues suddenly began to look more reasonable. Search Engine and Comprehensive opened up the grid, and even a fruitless -ness search with loi (and CoD) Nevertheless didn’t dramatically extend a slightly above average 25min solve. I did however come away thinking this could easily have taken twice as long. Invariant
  16. Thank goodness I didn’t think of “partit”. Nice to see state education featuring for a change; I was beginning to think that Eton was the only school in Crosswordland.

    Long struggle with NEVERTHELESS; did anyone else think that it was a bit unsporting to have “Still” at the end of the clue and thus immediately before the question-mark?

    FOI SEARCH ENGINE; LOI NEVERTHELESS; COD LOIRE because I love the wines; time 10:10 till we do it again, or 1.6K, for a Good Day.

    Thanks Mara and William.

    Templar

    Edited at 2020-10-21 11:32 am (UTC)

  17. A very slow start and a real struggle, but when a couple of anagrams solved most of followed, albeit with a little help. Took a while.
  18. A sense of achievement after yesterday.
    FOsI Ice , Pad, Reservoir, Excess
    then General Strike and Comprehensive and Dear Me
    Better once Search Engine appeared.
    Struggled with Permit (COD), Initial, Nevertheless, Strap, Realm, Redundant (LOI)

    Thanks all, as ever.

  19. … for a finish a few seconds over 10 minutes. I enjoyed the long anagrams, which certainly helped start the grid off, and like others, I was a little surprised at the number of hiddens. LOI and definitely COD 22A Nevertheless; a great clue and one of those that are even better when read out loud.

    Slight surprise at 8A Realm; realm and field are not really the same. Or at least, if any king’s realm is just a field, he isn’t king of very much!

    Thank you William for the blog – I didn’t see anything amiss with your parsing of 18D Lotus, which was as I parsed it too.

    Cedric

  20. Finished in 13:30 with PARTIT and INITIAL as my last two.
    Amazing how many of us decided that partit was an obscure legal document. COD to Comprehensive.
    Victory to Mara today.
    David
  21. ….but once I got going it was plain sailing.

    FOI PAD
    LOI ABANDONED
    COD ORIGINATE
    TIME 4:18

  22. A slow solve today taking us over our target. Loi 22a, needed all the checkers to get it. Did not parse 18d, found it all quite a challenge, thanks Mara and for the blog.
  23. Finished in 18 mins with several unparsed and one wrong (STRIP instead of STRAP at 1dn). Thanks to William for explaining those that I couldn’t parse (including the hidden at 9ac which I totally failed to see). I also had a bit of a problem equating REALM with field and I’m not sure thinking academically makes it that much better. NEVERTHELESS thanks to Mara for an entertaining puzzle.

    FOI – 10ac PAD
    LOI – the incorrect 1dn
    COD – 22ac NEVERTHELESS

  25. I struggled a bit with strip rather strap, for example. Came up with PERM quite early on, just struggled to find the last two letters.

    Not too happy with inapt for ungentlemanly, initial for sign, permit for document – but no one else has complained, so I guess I’m on a limb!

    Thanks for the blog

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