Times Quick Cryptic 1906 by Joker

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

A game of two hallves with the left hand side flying in but much slower progress toward the right. Which reminds me of a faintly remembered report of a goalless draw  – the football reporter described the first half as dull and boring with nothing meriting a mention – he went on to say ‘there was also a second half’. Let’s hope for a more satisfying game this evening.

I found the RHS extremely satisfying and entertaining with lots of clever deceptions – and really enjoyed writing it up for this blog. Hope you got on OK and enjoyed it. I took 12 minutes overall so found it quite hard.

Definitions are underlined.

Across
1 Applauding picking for international match outside left (8)
CLAPPING – picking for an international match (CAPPING) inside which is left (L).
5 Note picture is a very long film, perhaps (4)
EPIC – note (E), picture (PIC).
9 Large bird eaten by hunting hounds? (5)
EAGLE – eaten by (inside) hunting hounds b(EAGLE)s.
10 Information is needed about European society’s origin (7)
GENESIS – information (GEN), is (IS) around European (E) and society (S).
11 Again circulate glowing eulogy about one son (12)
REDISTRIBUTE – glowing (RED), eulogy (TRIBUTE) about one son (I S).
13 Poodle, perhaps with some black eye (6)
LACKEY – some of b(LACK EY)e.
15 A million involved in fast must be keen (6)
LAMENT – one of my last in as I didn’t get lent – a million (A M) inside fast (LENT).
17 Grown-up with ecstasy to share out, mixing with inferior stuff (12)
ADULTERATION – grown-up (ADULT), ecstasy (E), to share out (RATION).
20 Poles dividing it all to invest in office (7)
INSTALL – poles (NS) inside it all (ITALL).
21 Mollusc caught once mostly by the end of beach (5)
CONCH – caught (C), once mostly (ONC)e, beac(H). Oddly, it took a while to associate conch with a creature rather than just the shell.
22 Leave, concerned with spilt blood (4)
GORE – leave (GO), concerned with (RE).
23 Message Marjorie allowed to be returned (8)
TELEGRAM – Marjorie (MARGE) and allowed (LET) all backwards.
Down
1 Cold chop to munch (4)
CHEW – cold (C), chop (HEW).
2 Ninety degrees, say, needed for fish (5)
ANGLE – double definition.
3 Just like Washington, say, putting parking above providing places to live? (12)
PRESIDENTIAL – parking (P) above providing places to live (RESIDENTIAL) – referring to an area.
4 Deny in former London prison losing weight (6)
NEGATE – former London prison (NE)w(GATE) – losing weight (W).
6 Bearing costs centrally, cutting 100% (7)
POSTURE – c(OST)s cutting (inside) 100% (PURE). Not seen 100% as a synonym before so it threw me – but I liked it.
7 Old video format prescribed in class (8)
CASSETTE – prescribed (SET) inside class (CASTE). I was off on the lines of Betamax for a while.
8 Some unusual matter in strangely inapt newspaper feature (12)
ANTIPARTICLE – anagram (strangely) of INAPT, newspaper feature (ARTICLE). Anyone else hunted anagrams because of ‘unusual’? Great clue, I thought. Would have been even better if this puzzle had been no 1932 when Carl D Anderson, while studying cosmic rays, discovered the predicted positron – the first known antiparticle. LOI.
12 Constant inclination for housework? (8)
CLEANING – constant (C), inclination (LEANING).
14 Ship curries all over the place (7)
CRUISER – anagram (all over the place) of CURRIES.
16 Grating last of cheese to go under cooker (6)
GRILLE – chees(E) to go under cooker (GRILL).
18 Housekeeper and wife in unit on top of restaurant (5)
OWNER – wife (W) inside unit (ONE) on (R)estaurant. Great deception here – especially after housework in 12dn – I was thinking char/maid/butler etc.
19 Feign endless embarrassment for one’s actions (4)
SHAM – endless embarrassment (SHAM)e. Is ‘for one’s actions’ adding much here? – well, except to confuse – which proved successful in my case.

46 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1906 by Joker”

  1. I thought of CLAPPING immediately, but since I had never heard of CAPPING, I refrained from biffing. With a couple of checkers, I was compelled to infer that it is, in fact, picking for an etc. I was too quick to throw in ADULTERATING (because of ‘mixING’), which slowed me down at 18d, of course. Finally went back and read the clue. I didn’t care for the superfluous ‘for one’s actions’. 5:04.
  2. Never parsed CLAPPING. I was surprised I didn’t need to bust out the ol’ ODI!
  3. At 12 minutes, missing my target by 2, I didn’t find this so easy. ANTIPARTICLE delayed me, and POSTURE for some unknown reason.
    1. Why is note E? Because it is!

      It can also be A B C D F and G but not H or beyond!

  5. I had an absolute shocker. Partly self-inflicted where I failed to read the hidden properly and entered ‘lacker’ in place of LACKEY, which would have made a lot more sense but I figured a lacker could be a type of poodle. I was a bit desperate by then as I’d only got three on the first pass of acrosses and followed that up with just two downs to give me a solving rate by then of <1 per minute. Things picked up when I saw CLAPPING before slowing as I prised out POSTURE and LAMENT — really ought know fast (often) = lent by now but ‘pure’ for 100% baffled me for a bit. I then compounded things by getting an N at the end of ANTIPARTICLE — I’m now looking at my keyboard wondering how I managed that. 22 minutes, two pink squares, three errors (and one definitely deserved) and dead last on the leaderboard.
  6. Fully parsed in 5:45 – like a dose of Epsom Salts!

    Crickets!

    FOI 1ac CLAPPING – tonight Three Lions v Uber Alles United

    LOI 10ac GENESIS- ‘the first shall be last’

    COD 13ac LACKEY – Poodle Pence once was currency…..

    WOD 21ac CONCH – from ‘Lord of the Flies’ – that’s more like it!

    If you found this puzzle OK, why not pop over to 15×15-land – where the waters are quite Mondayish!

    Come-on Engerland!

  7. No major dramas in this enjoyable solve. There were a bunch of write ins in the NW which got me off to a good start, but some clever cluing on the RHS provided a good challenge. My one question mark was understanding how to get from beagle to EAGLE and had to laugh when I read the blog at how dozy I’d been.
    I loved the misdirection for OWNER so that gets my COD but an honourable mention to LOI POSTURE. Finished in 9.06.
    Thanks to Chris
  8. Rather struggled with this, missing a few chestnuts but it was POSTURE which did for me as I assumed it was just the S rather than OST that was needed and struggled to equate 100% with what was left. Just biffed it in the end.

    Thanks Chris and Joker

    1. To Chris: ‘Pure 100% Wool’ was SIRDAR’S claim, back in the day when everyone knitted, including The Duke of Windsor.
  10. FOI: 1a. CLAPPING
    LOI: 18d. OWNER
    Time to Complete: 65 minutes
    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 17
    Clues Answered with Aids: 7
    Clues Unanswered: Nil
    Wrong Answers: Nil
    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/24
    Aids Used: Chambers

    I did not think I was going to complete this one, and I only just did so, relying on the use of aids to assist me.

    3x 12-lettered answers, I find, can either greatly assist or greatly frustrate. I managed to answer two of the 12-letter2 quickly, but the final one, ADULTERATION, frustrated me. Even the use of aids did not help me with this one. It was not until this was the final clue remaining that the checkers came to the rescue.

  12. CHEW went in first followed by EAGLE, ANGLE and NEGATE, at which point CLAPPING became obvious. An unusual device for EAGLE I thought, but it made me smile. Careful reading of the clue allowed me to get ADULTERATION first go. ANTIPARTICLE was LOI. 8:53. Thanks Joker and Chris.
  13. H is used for B in German, they use for B for B-flat. Bach’s peerless B Minor Mass is rendered as h-Moll-Messe.
  14. Did alphabet trawls and thought carefully about LAMENT, but did not see fast=LENT. I thought Keen in this sense meant the verb weep, but it’s a usage I’ve only ever learnt from crosswords. I went for the unconvincing GAMEST, for ‘must be keen’.

    I also had never considered the creature that inhabits a conch shell, as Horryd says, it remains inextricably linked with Lord of the Flies. Even in modern day Zoom calls, where people are speaking over each other I’ve heard someone say “Give me the conch”, and the Brits defer to the speaker.

    1. I was tempted by GAMEST as well, having totally forgotten about Lent, even though it came up recently somewhere. GEST obviously having some link to GESTATION and fasting… It was only when I used an aid to check four letter fasts that I had the PDM.
  15. Classic Joker puzzle, with lots of invention and sparkle. I really enjoyed that, and then there was the bonus of an excellent blog (I enjoyed learning about the missed chance for puzzle 1932, Chris!). Thank you both.

    FOI CLAPPING, LOI ANTIPARTICLE, COD LAMENT, time 08:44 for 1.7K and a Very Good Day.

    Templar

  16. Like Chris, the left hand side went in very quickly for me but the rest slowed me more than I realised and I finished over target and very close to the SCC. I thought there were some really clever clues. I will go back over Chris’s blog to enjoy Joker’s brilliance at leisure and in more detail. FOsI CHEW and CLAPPING, LOI ANTIPARTICLE. I think INSTALL, TELEGRAM and NEGATE beat the excellent anagrams as best clues today. Many thanks to both. John M.

    Edited at 2021-06-29 08:41 am (UTC)

  17. I seemed to be entering everything in slow motion. I thought of CLAPPING at 1a but didn’t feel confident with the parsing until checkers were in place. EAGLE from BEAGLE was incorrectly parsed. Unfortunately my beagle was decapitated. CONCH which for me will be forever associated with William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ took an age and two of the long ones were my LOsI. REDISTRIBUTE and ANTIPARTICLE. I ambled home in 11:23.
  18. I didn’t find this easy and struggled with 11a and 8d, for which I needed checkers to solve. Would never have got ANTIPARTICLE without. Put in EAGLE and OWNER without being able to parse them. All a bit frustrating.
  19. As already mentioned, this was another example of Joker’s precise cluing and wit.
    I must have been on the wavelength today as all done in 08:03. And that was after some time spent on LOI ANTIPARTICLE, a word I had to make up as O-Level Physics did not take me that far.
    FOI was EPIC. Good clues all round.
    David
  20. Struggled with ANTIPARTICLE, solving the last half first. Also slow on REDISTRIBUTE, among others.
    FOI EAGLE, CRUISER, LACKEY
    PDM with TELEGRAM.
    Couldn’t parse POSTURE or SHAM (stupidly). Liked NEGATE, GENESIS, GORE, CHEW, ANGLE. LAMENT was clever too.
    A difficult puzzle. Thanks vm, Chris.
  21. I’m puzzling over HOUSEKEEPER as a definition for OWNER.
    Collins only includes the sense of someone who runs or looks after a house, ownership not implied.
    (The DVLA is also quite particular about the distinction between a car’s keeper and its owner 🙂

    Then again, if I said I kept cats, you’d assume I owned them.
    So I get the sense of the misdirection but for me the clue would work better if house and keeper were separated?

  22. Same time as yesterday (17mins) but this seemed faster. A really enjoyable crossword – thanks Joker. I didn’t put in EAGLE for a long time although I was sure it was right as I couldn’t parse it. The penny dropped eventually. Never managed to parse POSTURE so thank you to Chris for the explanation – obvious when you know!

    FOI – 1ac CLAPPING
    LOI – 6dn POSTURE
    COD – 23ac TELEGRAM – very clever

  23. Just outside target at 15:35, but thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. LOI LAMENT after ANTIPARTICLE and POSTURE finally fell. FOI CHEW and CLAPPING. Thanks Chris and Joker.
  24. Obscurity is subjective, but would you care to expand on which clues you consider dodgy and say why? That way there’d be a conversation to be had. Otherwise we can’t really help you.
    1. I fear that “Mr.McBain” is either beyond help, or a neutrino of some kind.
  25. …but for ANTIPARTICLE — yes, Chris, I was definitely looking for anagrams with unusual and gave up! Also needed your blog to parse cassette — hadn’t thought of ‘caste’ for class. Otherwise pretty happy with 20 mins for the rest. COD the rather topical CLAPPING. Many thanks Joker and Chris. Really enjoyable as ever.
    1. It is now known as Beijing. BDM = Beijing Duck Moment ⛩🐍🌈

      Edited at 2021-06-29 12:16 pm (UTC)

  27. Not easy but not as difficult as some QCs have been — nowhere near as hard as the occasional 15×15 that I’ve tried – but that’s MY opinion. I have been doing them for a while but I doubt I’ll ever be fluent.
  29. Didn’t find it easy and resorted to aids on a couple of clues – should have got LENT, though. A bit of a MER at using the generic physical format for videos when I was thinking more specifically. Lots of old fashioned video systems used cassettes, even at least one that had a disc inside. IIRC.
  30. Thought this was quite a tricky, deceptive puzzle from Joker so was quite surprised to come in around 25 mins. The top left hand corner went in fairly quickly, but I then got bogged down, particularly in the SW.

    After whizzing through VHS, NTSC, PAL, SECAM, Betamax, Super 8 and every other video type/format I could think of I realised 7dn was simply “cassette” 😀

    The 100% = pure also threw me for a while, as did housekeeper not being a cleaner and fast not referring to being quick.

    FOI — 1ac “Clapping”
    LOI — 15ac “Lament”
    COD — 8dn “Antiparticle”

    Thanks as usual!

  31. might have slowed me up a bit, feel like death warmed up after second dose of moderna yesterday.

    5:59, for a second under target.

  32. With less than 25 minutes on the clock and only four clues left to solve (amazing progress for me, given the setter) I well and truly ran into the buffers. It took me 20 minutes to break into the P___U__, G_N____, C___E___, _A____ structure in the NE, by which time I really thought a DNF was on the cards. Eventually, however, POSTURE came into my head from nowhere, and GENESIS, CASSETTE and LAMENT all followed quickly after that. Total time = 47 minutes.

    Mrs Random finished in 33 minutes today, and very kindly saved me from what would have been a wasted alphabet trawl after I had come up with LAMENT (my LOI). I wasn’t convinced by ‘fast’ = LENT and I have NHO ‘keen’ = LAMENT, so I was just about to spend an age checking all other possibilities when Mrs R stepped in and said I had already found the solution. My thanks to her.

    Thanks also to Joker and chrisw91.

  33. We raced through this one but were delayed by ANTIPARTICLE and particularly by LAMENT. Had no clue that LAMENT = KEEN but we do now. We finished in 18 minutes, can’t remember our last sub10 minute finish – we need a holiday!

    FOI: CHEW
    LOI: LAMENT
    COD: NEGATE

    Thanks to Joker and Chris.

  34. ….OWNER (eg Mrs.Dalloway) so I didn’t think 18d worked. Almost half a minute at the end to disentangle my LOI, but I’m still 7th on the leaderboard (or 4th if you remove the neutrinos at the top).

    FOI CLAPPING
    LOI ANTIPARTICLE
    COD EAGLE
    TIME 3:13

  35. Struggled a bit here …
    … though whether that was because I was solving on my phone or not I don’t know. I do prefer pen and paper, and will revert to it tomorrow now my short holiday is over.

    I’m not sure I agree entirely with those that saw this as “Joker’s usual very precise cluing”. Rather too many clues seemed a little verbose or even vague to me. The extra words in the clue for 19D Sham have already been mentioned, but the clue for 3D Presidential is also less than crisp — “providing places to live” is a weak and rather verbose formulation for residential, and housekeeper for owner in 18D is also debateable.

    But mostly enjoyable enough, and all done in 13 minutes, which given that checking for and correcting typos etc on the tiny screen on my phone took at least 2, I shall count as more like 11 minutes for a Satisfactory Day.

    Many thanks to Chris for the blog
    Cedric

  36. Its about music, and the names of the musical notes (A, B, C up to G). Others call them doh, ra, me etc, but not here.
  37. A pretty straightforward write-in for me, done in 11 minutes. Enjoyable nonetheless. FOI CLAPPING at 1ac, LOI the mollusc, CONCH. Thanks to blogger.

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