Times Quick Cryptic 1816 by Joker

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

You wait for a solve exactly 9 seconds over taget and two come along in a few weeks. Some of this was spent mulling over 12ac  – let me know if I’m missing something here. Hats off to the two long definitions at 9 and 16dn with 9dn winning COD – 16dn had a rather simpler cryptic.

The definitions are underlined.

Across
1 Finish getting runs in place for batsman (6)
CREASE – finish (CEASE) containing runs (R).
4 Tart and custard isn’t desirable in courses — just starters (6)
ACIDIC – (A)nd (C)ustard (I)sn’t (D)esirable (I)n (C)ourses.
8 Extensive notes showing how much policemen are indebted? (7)
COPIOUS – notes showing indebtedness (IOUS) of policemen (COPS).
10 Share out a fee for passage on the way back (5)
ALLOT – a (A), fee for passage _ toll – on the way back (LLOT).
11 Writing on the wall round gents (4)
OMEN – round (O). gents (MEN).
12 Left gold for respected poet (8)
LAUREATE – left (L), gold (AU), for (RE). I can’t make ate=respected so have to conclude that the definition is respected poet and there isn’t any parsing for ‘ate’. Ususally in these situations someone points out to me the blindingly obvious which I’ve missed. Bernchn has come to the rescue – gold (AUREATE – meaning golden, gilded).
14 Theatre operative attaching end of arm to leg (9)
STAGEHAND – end of arm (HAND) attached to leg (STAGE).
18 Spot calcium used in cosmetic cream (8)
LOCATION – calcium (CA) in cosmetic cream (LOTION).
20 A taxi passenger’s last to be dropped some way away (4)
AFAR – a (A), taxi passenger (FARE).
22 What’s in creel? Very small fish (5)
ELVER – inside cre(EL VER)y.
23 Your setter has a completely confident step (7)
MEASURE – your setter (ME), a (A), completely confident (SURE).
24 Walk street and go from side to side (6)
STROLL – street (ST), go from side to side (ROLL).
25 Just book early for a change (6)
BARELY – book (B), anagram (for a change) of EARLY.
Down
1 Safeguard two companies working (6)
COCOON – two companies (CO CO), working (ON).
2 Former print media, say (7)
EXPRESS – former (EX), media (PRESS).
3 Son has sexy photograph (4)
SHOT – sone (S), sexy (HOT).
5 Conservative shock with chap meeting leader (8)
CHAIRMAN – conservative (C), shock (HAIR), chap (MAN).
6 Letter of thanks after getting shown the way up (5)
DELTA – thanks (TA) after getting shown the way – led – upwards (DEL).
7 Crufts regularly allowed meat on the bone (6)
CUTLET – (C)r(U)f(T)s, allowed (LET). As far as I know, a cutlet doesnt have to be on the bone – but certainly can be.
9 Where Queen may entertain government or set up Order of Merit (9)
STATEROOM – government (STATE), or upwards (RO), Order of Merit (OM).
13 Ground patrols round a country (8)
PASTORAL – anagram (ground – as in coffee) of PATROLS around a (A).
15 Mostly disagree about us lacking concentration (7)
DIFFUSE – mostly disagree (DIFFE)r about us (US).
16 What help one get a grip resolving perils (6)
PLIERS – anagram (resolving) of PERILS.
17 Queen carried in pretentiously refined vessel (6)
ARTERY – Queen (ER) carried in pretentious (ARTY).
19 Caught beyond fielding position (5)
COVER – caught (C), beyond (OVER).
21 Give a long involved story (4)
SAGA – give (SAG), a (A).

66 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1816 by Joker”

  1. Chambers has:

    aureate /öˈri-ət/ adjective
    Gilded
    Golden
    Floridly rhetorical

    Not a word I recalled, but it seemed plausible.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 02:28 am (UTC)

  2. Putting in DEFOCUS then confirming it with AFAR made the other crossings impossible. Of course now that I think about it I couldn’t really explain where the O comes from…
  3. brnchn has parsed it right. (Or at least it’s how I parsed it!) I think it was ARTERY & BARELY that took me a while. 8:16.
  4. 10 minutes, so another only just within my target time.

    I noted in the margin that I had never heard of AUREATE but on searching TfTT I find it has come up 4 times in the 15×15 including twice in 2018 and once in 2019, and I’ve never expressed a problem with it before. The answer LAUREATE was pretty much biffable today and made easier with some checkers in place.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 06:06 am (UTC)

  5. Struggled today. Held up for a long time in the SE by SAGA, ARTERY and BARELY. I couldn’t parse LAUREATE — left wondering if ‘reate’ meant ‘respected’. I was well misdirected by CHAIRMAN and unravelling that gave me my best moment. All green in 22.
  6. Not easy but not unfair. Held up at the end by ARTERY. Knew AUREATE so no problem with 12A. I liked the juxtaposition of COPIOUS and ALLOT. 6:35.
  7. That was a toughie for yours truly. LOI was 5d CHAIRMAN, but only after I finally twigged 10a ALLOT.
    A bit of a struggle but I managed to complete it in about 50 minutes. A slow solve, even for me!
    Today’s favourite was 1d COCOON.
    Thanks Joker. A taxing but satisfying puzzle.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 08:50 am (UTC)

  8. 13:24. A pretty steady solve. Stopped on 5dn wondering if HAIR came from hairy. No. Saw it easily enough. A satisfying completion. COD ARTERY
  9. Tough going today with my main struggle being to identify/understand the definitions, particularly in the SE. DIFFUSE, MEASURE, ARTERY and BARELY felt like they had to be pried out with a crowbar after much head scratching. With hindsight they were all fairly clued but I was just slow in working out what was going on. Finished in 16.19 with LAUREATE unparsed and my CoD going to COPIOUS.
    Thanks to chris and Joker for the workout.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 09:52 am (UTC)

  10. Bottom right was a bit sticky.
    ARTERY, MEASURE, BARELY (I put in RARELY to begin with, but couldn’t place the R) – never parsed LAUREATE, so thanks for “AUREATE”, which as per Jack, will be filed away, and no doubt forgotten!
    7:45.
  11. A good puzzle but, like others, having sorted out ALLOT, LAUREATE (biffed), and then CHAIRMAN, I came up against the SE corner. SAGA, DIFFUSE, BARELY, and ARTERY were all clever clues but tough enough to take me well into the SCC. I don’t think I’lll be alone today. Many thanks to Joker and to Chris. John M.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 09:37 am (UTC)

  12. 20A I had as FARE, being the taxi passenger, with FAR (some way away) + E (last (of) to be). That didn’t really involve “dropped” and didn’t quite feel right, but seemed likely enough. That then made all the others impossible and I got too annoyed to work it through. Oh well…
  13. Am i alone in thinking 16D was beyond the pale? Without an s at the end of help the clue was impossible to construct into anything. Am i supposed to alter each word slightly to make a phrase and see if that might work, and if it doesn’t move on to alter another? That is just tedious. Perhaps i should have solved the anagram and then parsed it but i wasn’t confident it would be an anagram either. Some of the other clues were similarly unhelpful as remarked by others. I was pleased to finish the top half. Thanks Chris for explanations. DavidS
    1. It’s the cryptic-ness of cryptics which make one clue really hard for some but easy for others. It’s how the clue is looked at – I find that I often get clues really easily after having put a puzzle aside for a while and gone back to it. I think it’s just a viewpoint thing.
    2. I did also find the surface reading of 16D a bit clunky, initially wondering if “can” had been omitted after the “What”. It was only when I realised the answer was plural that I could make sense of it. Personally, I would have used “These” rather than “What” in the clue.
      1. I also had a double-take on reading the clue and “These help …” would have been both much smoother English and also a better indicator of how the clue worked!
        Cedric
  14. I found this hard but I’m wondering if I stymied myself by attacking the 15 x 15 first. I breezed though the left of the main one, then tried to tackle the quickie and hit a brick wall. Finished in the end but it was a real struggle. Aureate is a bit obscure for a quickie in my view but no real complaints. Thanks setter and blogger.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 01:08 pm (UTC)

  15. FOI: 7d CUTLET
    LOI: 23a MEASURE

    Time: DNF

    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 21

    Clues Answered with Aids (3 lives): 5d, 15d, 17d

    Clues Unanswered: 25a, 21d

    Wrong Answers: Nil

    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/26

    Aids Used: Chambers, Bradfords

    I normally do quite well with Joker’s QC, and this one was no exception. Though a DNF with only two remaining, this one was an enjoyable puzzle. There were some clues that took me forever to work out, but once that “ah-ha!” moment arrives, it encouraged me to keep going.

    21d. SAGA – I initially thought TALE but knew that SAGA or YARN could have fit. I just could not get the “give” part of the clue. It did not occur to me that here give did not mean to provide, but sag. I could not decide which to use and so DNF it.

    25a. BARELY – Another I just could not work out as much as I tried. I initially thought CHANGE was the definition, but then started looking for a JUST BOOK, as in a religious text. This ended up being my second DNF clue.

    16a. “What help one get a grip resolving perils.” – I was not happy with the English in this clue. “What help one…” Should that not have read, “what helpS one get a grip …”? However, I realised I was looking for an anagram of perils, and so the answer came quite easily.

    No obscure words with this one, and I was pleased that I answered 12a (LAUREATE).

    I didn’t manage to blog my attempt from yesterday, but it was an awful attempt with 2 wrong answers, and a DNF.

    Edited at 2021-02-23 10:15 am (UTC)

  16. True. I guess “What help you grip..” sounds better than “what help one grip”.

    I am not sure. It just did not read correctly to me. Perhaps it’s just my poor English. >.

  17. Well the first part of my time was 15 which would be within target, but when I round it to the nearest minute it becomes 16, so over target for me, with the usual holdups. I had to read the clue for 16d several times to make sense of it. Of course, once the answer is seen it becomes perfectly grammatically correct, but doesn’t scan right without the answer. I tried to parse LAUREATE the same way as Chris initially, but after failing to explain the ATE part, looked again and just accepted that there must be a word AUREATE from which gold’s chemical symbol is derived. Looking it up after completion, I see that the chemical symbol is derived instead from aurum which I think is Latin for gold. Ah well, it served! Thanks both.
  18. We’ve often had ARTERY = vessel but I forgot that one. Annoying, but it is a sunny morning.
    Struggled anyway most of the way through. Luckily remembered a few cricketing terms.

    FOsI. AFAR, SAGA, ACIDIC, LAUREATE (written in very faintly), ELVER. Don’t know why I found PLIERS difficult.

    COPIOUS made me smile. Liked MEASURE once I worked it out.

    Thank you, Chris, as ever.

    1. I’m sure there’s a correlation between the number of smiles in a day and the amount of sunshine.
  19. I found this hard going and was held up for an age by my LOI, ARTERY. BARELY and DIFFUSE also held me up, the later as I’d guessed that 14a might end _MON, (end of arM, and ON/leg cricket-wise). All correct eventually but 17:21 had elapsed. Thanks Joker and Chris.
  20. I thought this was a high quality and properly difficult puzzle from Joker. I had warmed up solving a few clues from the 15×15 but I still stared at this for over a minutes before I got SAGA.
    Then it was slow determined progress with the SW completely blank until the end.
    I thought of LAUREATE quickly but could see no way of parsing it (thanks for that to bloggers)so waited for checkers to confirm. My last two were PLIERS and PASTORAL where I had been trying to find a country name.
    As I said, properly difficult, from the setter’s art not from obscure words, birds or fish. COD to BARELY -great surface -but lots of candidates.
    20 minutes of hard and enjoyable work.
    David
  21. I struggled today and spent a couple of minutes on my last two in which were BARELY and ARTERY. COD to PLIERS as I needed all 3 checkers in play before I could work out the anagram. 14:15
  22. Grip is the verb being applied to the subject (pliers), so it’s definitely correct for that to be singular, but the subject help applies to is the singular reader, so I agree with PW that it should be helps.

    –AntsInPants

  23. Never really got going, and decided to throw the towel in early. Was on a roll after a quick solve of the 15×15 yesterday. I have solved one Jumbo Cryptic and one 15×15 since my last QC solve.

    COD COPIOUS

    1. I’m convinced that the more time I spend trying to do the 15×15, the more I struggle with the QC
      1. I still think they’re quite different types of puzzles.

        I know a lot of commentators on here say the “quick” crossword is just a smaller version of the main 15×15 (rather than it being easier), but no matter how hard I try the approach just feels different and the methods I use never seem to work – even when they are relatively easy.

        Maybe I’ve just been mentally conditioned to think it is hard and therefore I am defeated before I even start.

        1. I agree there is often a sizable step between the two. In commiserating with Merlin, the point I was trying to make is that attempting the more complex clues in the 15×15 sometimes makes me over-complicate the QC ones.
    2. Merlin. U and I must be on the same wavelength as I was about to blog with the same title as yours! Definitely not on Jokers lambda today. Only 25% done. Ho humm. Johnny.
  24. ^ I of course meant it’s correct for grip to be plural, not singular. Sorry for the typo.

    –AntsInPants

    1. They help to grip …

      It helps that they grip …

      I think the clue, though clunky , is correct.

      Diana

      1. That only works if you omit the subject (what/whom) of the help. The clue doesn’t do that, it asks, “What help one…” – where ‘one’ is clearly a singular subject. Subject-verb agreement rule #1 is that subjects and verbs must agree in number, so it has to be the singular verb ‘helps’ for the singular noun ‘one’. Sorry, it’s not just clunky, it’s wrong.

        –AntsInPants

        1. Replace “what” with “pliers”. “Pliers help one get a grip”, not “pliers helps one get” — sounds right to me.

          Edited at 2021-02-23 04:36 pm (UTC)

          1. I use them almost every day as a modeller and have always described them as a pair of pliers
              1. Seems to me it works when you get the answer but makes a total mess of the surface as written.
  25. Second day in a row with tough puzzles. Today I honestly thought I was doing the main puzzle. In my view this was no where near to a qc for us learners. Not much fun Joker
  26. Got there in the end but it wasn’t quick, however I refused to have another shocker like yesterday, so stuck it out and crawled in after 50 mins.

    Some days, extracting information from my brain is like scraping out the last of the jam from the bottom of the jar. You think it’s all done, but if you just dig a little deeper you can get that last bit stuck in the bottom of the rim.

    I made a few mistakes today but had the patience to rectify them when I knew the parsing wasn’t right. 10ac “Allot” started as “Split”, 15dn “Diffuse” was “Defocus” and 24ac “Stroll” was “Stride”. Main holdups were 9dn “Stateroom” and the SE corner where I dismissed “vein” for 17dn and then forgot about “artery”. Also puzzled about the “ate” in Laureate and the surface of 16dn “pliers”.

    FOI — 1dn “Cocoon”
    LOI — 25ac “Barely”
    COD — 9dn “Stateroom”

    Thanks as usual.

  27. I thought that, for a QC, this was very tricky in places, but also very satisfying when the pdm arrives — and there was quite a bit of loose change today. Finally crossed the line after 26 mins, with the last one of those spent trying (and failing) to parse Laureate. Several CoD candidates, but 15d, Diffuse, was my favourite, edging out 23ac, Measure. Invariant
  28. We really appreciate this level of challenge in the QC. Not too hard, not too easy – just right. So, when we solve the puzzle we leave it feeling suitably content with our efforts. It took us 16 minutes to complete this excellent puzzle – thank you Joker.

    FOI: crease
    LOI: barely
    COD: copious (but omen made me smile too)

    Thanks for the blog Chris.

  29. Today’s dismal outcome was a comprehensive DNF with six clues unsolved after 72 minutes of honest toil. Adding today’s failure to yesterday’s DNF makes 13 unsolved clues in 2 hrs 20 mins, and that’s as many unsolved clues in two days as in all of the previous 38 QCs combined.

    I foundered on 17d (ARTERY), 21d (SAGA) and 25a (BARELY) in the SE corner, 5d (CHAIRMAN) and 10a (ALLOT) in the NE, and 9d (STATEROOM) in the centre.

    Why is B short for book?
    Does HAIR really mean shock?
    I’m fed up with clues about vessels – there are thousands of them.

    On the plus side, I enjoyed solving 4a (I love TARTs) and 8a (the vision of COP IOUS made me chuckle.

    N.B. Mrs Random’s summation of today’s puzzle was “Hard, hard, hard”. She finished it in 54 minutes.

    Thanks to chrisw91 and Joker, and respect to all those who completed it successfully.

    1. I can only say it’s in Collins and Chambers and I doubt a week goes by without it coming up, however before responding to your query I looked it up – something I doubt I have done in 50+ years of solving – and I was rather surprised to find that none of the Oxfords/Lexico acknowledge it.

      ‘Shock’ for ‘hair’ is common enough. SOED: A shaggy and unkempt mass of hair. E19.

      1. Collins has b=book as the 14th definition in the American English section. In the English section it has b as an abbreviation for a word (any I suppose) beginning with b eg born.
  30. I really enjoyed this, it was a belter. I struggled to get off the blocks, got about three on the first pass, which puts it on a par with the 15 x 15. FOI Stagehand. Had about twenty minutes at it then ate lunch with the grid in sight, during which filled in everything except 17d. Went through all the sea-, river- and canal- going vessels, the jugs, the bottles, the ewers and the urns, and finally thought of vein. Aha! The muscular version of that vessel! Fifty minutes all told, with much cogitation time. Disinterested husband no use today. Thanks, Chris, and Joker. GW

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