Times Quick Cryptic 1911 by Mara

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Long anagrams aren’t my go-to clues so it was no surprise that 9dn was my LOI. Only very late on did I see the real anagram and therefore the full definition. A satisfying way to finish especially when I crept inside 10 minutes by 6 whole seconds. 5dn had me exploring several 3 letter music genres before 5ac came to the rescue. At the opposite end of the grid, at 21dn, another 3 letter answer caused me unnecessary problems – even with the first and last letters. All ended well though.

I’ve counted 7 double definitions and 7 anagrams which seems rather more than usual. COD between 20ac and 9dn.

Definitions are underlined.

Across
1 Head of security near to troubled US politician (7)
SENATOR – (S)ecurity, anagram (troubled) of NEAR TO.
5 People rush along (4)
RACE – double definition.
7 Account starts to concern Rwandan ambassador in African capital (5)
ACCRA – account (AC), starts to (C)oncern (R)wandan (A)mbassador. The capital of Ghana.
8 I propose to adopt voting system to make things better (7)
IMPROVE – I propose (I MOVE) to hold voting system (PR).
10 US general, slippery thing recalled (3)
LEE – slippery thing – eel – recalled (LEE).
11 Tack into wind, beginning to raise sail (9)
SPINNAKER – tack (PIN) inside wind (SNAKE), (R)aise. The great big one at the front.
13 Public school, distress! (6)
HARROW – double definition.
14 Cook traces boxes (6)
CRATES – anagram (cook) of TRACES. Anyone else think of The Adventure of the Clapham Cook?
17 Chart success for myself (6,3)
NUMBER ONE – double definition.
19 Love of French poem (3)
ODE – love (O), ‘of’ in French (DE).
20 Angered, furiously? (7)
ENRAGED – partial &lit where the definition (ANGERED) is also the material for the anagram – indicated by furiously.
22 Contribution is not picked up then, originally (5)
INPUT – original letters if (I)s (N)ot (P)icked (U)p (T)hen.
23 Ruffian seen in jacket, huge (4)
THUG – seen inside jacke(T hug)E.
24 Common boy after information (7)
GENERIC – boy (ERIC) after information (GEN). I had general at first (Al=boy) but it didn’t work.
Down
1 Tweak for coppers (5,6)
SMALL CHANGE – double definition.
2 Uncle out on a run — that’s some sort of energy! (7)
NUCLEAR – anagram (out) of UNCLE on top of a run (A R).
3 Switch patroness when corrupt (9)
TRANSPOSE – anagram (when corrupt) of PATRONESS.
4 Fruit is in water (6)
RAISIN – is (IS) inside water (RAIN).
5 Type of music hit (3)
RAP – double definition. Bop and pop were decent options before RACE was solved.
6 See something with face and hands (5)
CLOCK – double definition.
9 Maybe Leave voter‘s awfully poetic curse (11)

EUROSCEPTIC – anagram (awfully) of POETIC CURSE. The five letters of voter caused many a rethink about whether this was anagram (awfully) of VOTER and anagram (curse) of POETIC.
12 Language a winner, go for translation (9)
NORWEGIAN – anagram (for translation) of A WINNER GO.
15 Soldier brought up in care, poor thing (7)
TROOPER – brought uo (backwards) inside ca(RE POOR T)hing.
16 Almighty corporation set up for chief exec, say? (3,3)
TOP DOG – set up – all backwards – of almighty (GOD), corporation (POT as in stomach).
18 Start of spring walk (5)
MARCH – double definition.
21 Concert that’s coming up just the same? (3)
GIG – palindrome. Ah – only now have I seen the cause for my delay here – I read comcerN rather than concerT and wondered what best could fit G_G – came to GIG as the least improbable.

73 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1911 by Mara”

  1. I biffed SPINNAKER, took a while to parse; nice surface. Chris, you’ve got a typo at GENERIC; ERIC after GEN. 6:00.
    1. Information is “gene” not “gen”. I think Ric (not Eric) is right.
      1. Information is GEN, as Chris has it, not GENE (‘gen’=’information’ is frequently, maybe over-frequently, used in clues); RIC is not a name I’ve ever seen, whereas ERIC of course is. (And if RIC is right, then the typo is at GEN, but it isn’t.)
        1. I have to agree with kevingregg.

          I answered the clue with GEN ERIC.

        2. Ocasek of the Cars is one I’ve heard of. (But it’s certainly GEN.)
  2. Straightforward. Time 8:00 minutes

    FOI 18ac ODE

    LOI 9ac EUROSCEPTIC

    COD 1dn SMALL CHANGE

    WOD 11ac SPINNAKER – a write-in

    Indeed 12ac HARROW is a Public School – which in UK is also Private School (with mo dorms!). Alumni: Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Lord Byron, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Harold MacMillan, Chris Blackwell and Pandit Nehru.

    Edited at 2021-07-06 01:50 am (UTC)

    1. Not Supermac! He was an Etonian.

      Although technically ‘private’ the more widely used term for such schools is ‘independent’.

    2. Of course, it”s the Harold Macmillan Medical Centre that is in Harrow, silly me!

      Elton and Harrow were Private/Public Schools, but became ‘independents’ at the bidding of successive Labour Governments of the late 20thC. Britannica.

      Edited at 2021-07-06 06:21 am (UTC)

      1. I wonder why there is a Harold Macmillan Medical Centre in Harrow. I never heard of it so assume it arrived after I left the borough in 1983. It’s in Butler Avenue (named after a former Harrow School headmaster) but the pop-up on Google says it’s permanently closed.

        They seem to go for big names for medical facilities in Harrow. I recently attended the Clementine Churchill hospital which it turned out is situated just opposite my old school playing fields, so that brought back many unpleasant memories of school sports, all of which I loathed. In fact I left that school at 16 just to get away from them.

        Edited at 2021-07-06 06:45 am (UTC)

        1. No more school!
          No more stick!
          No more bleedin’ arithmetic!

          But I bet you didn’t run!

          1. No more bleedin’ compulsory sport would be more to the point. I continued formal education for another 6 years only not surrounded by people who treated sport as a religion.
  3. Deceptive! Everything seemed straightforward, but I kept getting misled and needing to work clues in unexpected ways.
  4. There have been a lot of EUROSCEPTICS around in Crosswordland of late, especially in the Guardian, where they are, I think, generally frowned upon…
  5. 9 minutes. The biggest mystery about this puzzle is how I have managed to lose my print-out between solving it around midnight and this morning!
  6. Made things hard for myself in the NE by putting in ‘watch’ and ‘pop’ in place of CLOCK and RAP. I was so sure ‘watch’ was right it delayed me putting in SPINNAKER as a biff. That clue took a little unravelling — I’d initially though it was going to be an anagram of ‘tack into’ plus r. All green in 15 in the end after a game of two halves.
    1. Same here . Was sure of watch and pop . So couldn’t fit improve or race
    2. Yes, we had watch too. Not at all helpful!

      Edited at 2021-07-06 01:05 pm (UTC)

  7. Unusually I was right on Mara’s wavelength today and I seemed to have my anagram hat on, which also helped. The LHS went in with barely a pause and the RHS didn’t put up a lot more resistance I thought this was a particularly witty and enjoyable puzzle with SMALL CHANGE just pipping NUMBER ONE as my COD.
    Finished in 5.50, but with LOI SPINNAKER parsed post submission
    Thanks to Chris
  8. A couple of weeks ago jacktt welcomed me to be join the QC (I normally only enter comments for the 15×15).
    Yesterday I posted my ‘Tangerine Dream’; vinyl1 praised my ‘witty and well-aimed’comment, but decided he had to delete it, on the grounds it was insulting.
    A dozen others, including jacktt, had made their voices known against someone who is a disruptive and insulting troll on the QC platform. This is just what edmcbain wants! I shall stick to the 15×15 from now on, until our intelligence is no longer insulted by this interloper.
    1. I didn’t see your message, but could I ask what it is you must object to? And what purpose is served by confining your comments to the 15x15s? We all would be happy if edmcbain took his comments elsewhere, but he’s disrupted nothing and insulted no one; nor have the dozen others who criticised him (which is why Vinyl hasn’t deleted any of their comments).

  9. FOI: 1a. SENATOR
    LOI: 22a. INPUT
    Time to Complete: 55 minutes
    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 23
    Clues Answered with Aids: 3
    Clues Unanswered: Nil
    Wrong Answers: Nil
    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 26/26
    Aids Used: Chambers

    Another completion with a little help from aids. 5d and 6d caused me a few snags initially, due to my first answers being incorrect.

    5d POP & 6d WATCH – These were my first answers that went in when I saw these clues. However, when I came to 5a I was stuck. I soon began to realise that either 5d or 6d, or indeed both! Were wrong. Eventually RAP and CLOCK came to me.

    1a. SENATOR – A favourite of setters I have noticed.

    1d. SMALL CHANGE – Did not see this until I had used an aid. Nice clue.

    At 55 minutes it was under my one-hour target.

  10. Very much on Mara’s wavelength today …
    … and I raced through for a 7 minute finish. Not quite all parsed though, as Corporation = pot escaped me in 16D, and 11A Spinnaker (my LOI) biffed from the checkers, so blog much appreciated.

    Nice to see a school other than Eton name-checked for a change.

    Small pedant point — I believe the highest rank Robert E. Lee ever attained in the US army was Colonel. It was the army of the Confederacy that he led as a General. So the clue for 10A could refer to an American general, but not, strictly, a US one.

    Many thanks to Chris for the blog.
    Cedric

  11. I had 6 d as watch . Double definition of see and face and hands . So got stuck as couldn’t fit improve or race
  12. I raced through the LHS with no problems but gradually ground to a halt on the RHS. I biffed SPINNAKER and GENERAL/GENERIC (until my brain kicked in) and the latter error didn’t help with my LOI EUROSCEPTIC. I enjoyed IMPROVE and TOP DOG but had problems with CLOCK and TROOPER. All good clues — just me, I suppose, but they tipped me from a decent time into the SCC (just). Thanks to both. John M.

    Edited at 2021-07-06 08:11 am (UTC)

  13. I like anagrams and enjoyed these, identifying the indicator is part of the pleasure.

    COD SPINNAKER, naturally.

    Thanks to Mara and Chris

    Diana

  14. So here’s a thing. If a hypothetical solver did all the acrosses first and biffed GENERAL at 24ac because it was the only one left and he was keen to try to get a clean sweep, when arriving at 9dn that solver would be looking at E-R-S-E-T-L. All of which are to be found in “leave voter’s”. Leading that hypothetical solver to spend 5 minutes trying to solve an anagram meaning “awfully poetic curse”, and coming up with a large number of curses of his own, increasingly less and less poetic.

    But then surely no-one would be such a twerp, would they?

    FOI SENATOR, LOI EUROSCEPTIC (*weeps bitter tears*), COD SPINNAKER, time 11:39 for 1.9K and an Idiotic Day.

    Many thanks Chris and Mara.

    Templar the Twerp

    1. You are not alone, Templar. I was such a twerp, too (see above) and I spent longer before the impossibility of fitting in two ‘v’s really made me change tack and the pennies finally dropped.
      Don’t be too hard on yourself. I am trying not to be. John

      Edited at 2021-07-06 08:31 am (UTC)

    2. Whilst your comment raised a smile, nicely blended with sympathy, you should credit yourself with managing to overcome the dire situation you got yourself into. 1.9K for a Resilient Day?
    3. That’s the trouble with biffing. I also biffed GENERAL but immediately realised it didn’t parse so escaped your fate.
    4. It took me 10 minutes or more to finally ditch GENERAL and see the proper anagram (after which it took me just a few seconds to solve EUROSCEPTIC and GENERIC). Slight MER though, as I think that ‘awfully’ describes the preceding words. IMHO, the setter should have used ‘awful’to describe the succeeding words.
    5. Then we too are twerps because that’s exactly what we did! We spent absolutely ages trying to find a word with 2 “v”s meaning a poetic curse. Eventually we decided to check on the acrosses and we realised that GENERAL, which we had biffed in a millisecond, was obviously wrong.
  15. 08:30 on the clock for me as I looked at LOI 5a. FOI was POP, which seemed OK as Pop = hit.
    It took me three minutes to realise my mistake and find RAP then RACE.
    A puzzle which was accessible and fun. COD to EUROSCEPTIC
    David
  16. FOI LEE, then managed SW corner and TRANSPOSE helped. Liked SMALL CHANGE, biffed SPINNAKER (one for Diana, of course) but could not parse it. LOI EUROSCEPTIC, having initially made the same generAL mistake as others.
    SCC +
    Thanks vm, Chris.
  17. Nothing to frighten the horses here. I started with SENATOR and finished with CRATES. EUROSCEPTIC was my penultimate entry, but I managed to avoid the boy, ERAL, so wasn’t held up too long there. 8:26. Thanks Mara and Chris.
  18. A quick solve today despite time lost on a few biffs. For some unknown reason I typed in SPARE CHANGE at 1d and then wondered why the cluing for 10a was the wrong way round. EEL fitted but LEE didn’t. I also biffed GENERAL but immediately saw that the name part of the clue didn’t work….parsed like others before me as GEN and ERIC. LOI was CRATES as I forgot cook could be an anagrind. COD to SPINNAKER. 7:01
  19. A fairly comfortable sub-20 turned into a race against the clock (Ha! only just seen the relevance) because I had 5d as Bop initially. Loi 5ac then became B*c* and required a fruitless alphabet trawl for a last letter to go with a vowel before Rap/Race came to the rescue with seconds to spare. A few too many anagrams for my taste, but still a decent enough puzzle, with CoD to the well-crafted 11ac, Spinnaker. Invariant
  20. An enjoyable 14 mins although I never did parse 11ac “Spinnaker”. Debated 5dn for a while — thinking it might be “Pop” rather than “Rap”, so needed 5ac to finish up the NE corner.

    Obviously going though a good spell at the moment — seem to have more sub 20 min finishes in the last few weeks than in the preceding months.

    FOI — 10ac “Lee”
    LOI — 6dn “Clock”
    COD — 6dn “Clock”

    Thanks as usual!

  21. Held up by the long anagrams 9d and 12d but got there in the end after a steady solve.
  22. Seems I fell into a number of the same traps as many other here – POP for RAP, GENERAL for GENERIC, Leave Voters as the anagrist for EUROSCEPTIC.

    However, avoided WATCH for CLOCK which meant I could unravel POP, and the impossibility of inserting a double V in 9dn once all the checkers were in quickly showed me I had the wrong end of the clue.

    Otherwise I worked through this pretty handily for me – all in all done in 20 mins, whilst splitting my attention with work.

  23. I made nearly the same error as Templar, except I didn’t get ALL the acrosses on first reading, and couldn’t bring myself to enter GENERAL as I couldn’t see the boy in it. That didn’t stop me initially looking for an anagram of [LEAVE VOTERS] with ‘awfully’ as the obvious anagrind though, for 9d. Eventually, I looked again and saw the real anagrist. I also fell for the POP trap, which works perfectly well with the clue, but I avoided WATCH. As a result, I was tempted by PACE for 5a, but couldn’t quite justify it, causing a rethink on POP. 11:20 in the end. Thanks both.
  24. 11:03 for another good day. LOI TOP DOG as I was very unhappy with POT= corporation. I have previously MER-red about corporation=stomach, an expression I have never heard, but have no idea how POT fits in. I was looking at TOH=corporation, for HOT DOG (how some CEOs see themselves), or maybe TUM=corporation for MUT DOG (I think a good expression for one’s boss).

    This was the only downer on a good puzzle.

    Off to a good start with the anagrams in NW, and avoided the GENERAL WATCH POP traps. I’ll share a new trap, three letter US general ending in E, I went for IKE, meaning I had to persuade myself that EKI was a slippery thing.

    COD EUROSCEPTIC, where I was misled by “voters”

    Edited at 2021-07-06 10:39 am (UTC)

    1. Lee was an almost instant write in — thanks entirely to the Dukes of Hazzard.
  25. Found much to enjoy here. FOI Accra. Twelve on first pass. I am in the ‘general’ club, which was resolved for me by the long anagram at 9d, for which I identified poetic curse as the eleven letters required. As this was my LOI, once I had crossed off the letters I already had, the anagram resolved and general became generic, with an aha. All done in twelve and a half minutes, but biffed improve and spinnaker. COD Norwegian, fond memories of the Norwegian Blue. Thanks, Chris, and Mara. GW.
  26. …then I got totally stuck on NUMBER ONE of all things so a DNF in 20 for me. My parents used to use corporation for stomach but I still couldn’t parse TOP DOG without the blog as ‘pot’ for stomach/corporation eluded me 🙄 COD NUCLEAR. Thanks Chris and Mara.
  27. 3:58 this morning.
    Interesting to read about the pros and cons of biffing.
    I got to my COD 11 ac “Spinnaker” early in proceedings with few if any crossers and although Spinnaker was my immediate thought, I decided to parse it before moving on, because if I had got it wrong it would have caused problems later. After that it turned into a straightforward but enjoyable solve.
    Thanks to Chris and Mara.
  28. I could (possibly should) have escaped the SCC today, but entering POP, instead of RAP, and GENeRal (faintly), instead of GENERIC, held me up for 10+ minutes on RACE and EUROSCEPTIC. I did get there, but in 29 minutes, whereas it should have been much faster. My CoD and WoD was SPINNAKER.

    Question: Shouldn’t 9d read: Maybe Leave voter’s awful poetic curse, rather than … awfully poetic curse?

    Mrs Random was also delayed by poP/RAP, but only by a couiple of minutes. She finished in 17 minutes and wondered how I had got so confused by EUROSCEPTIC.

    Thanks to Mara and chrisw91.

  29. But I think I did only actually biff three – TOP DOG – for the same reason as Merlin identified above, TROOPER (never spotted the hidden), and SPINNAKER, which now I’ve seen the parsing, is my favourite!

    Either way, I wasn’t pausing to parse unnecessarily as it was feeling fast, and so it turned out to be. 5 seconds slower than my PB from last week.

    3:26.

  30. Commiserations! But thank you for making me laugh out loud.
    Please don’t kick yourself any more. We’ve all been there😉 And in any case, as Chris says, that was a good time!
  31. I enjoyed this a lot. There were some lovely, witty – although in one case rather sad if accurate – surfaces, and it was another fast solve for me at 7 minutes. Ticks next to SMALL CHANGE and TROOPER (that was the one that made me a little melancholy). I loved the anagrist for EUROSCEPTICS. Biffed SPINNAKER – thanks for the parsing Chris.
    FOI Accra
    LOI Harrow
    COD Improve
    Many thanks Mara and Chris
  32. We completely messed up 9D by biffing GENERAL for 24A. We’ll done Mara – lovely trap and we walked straight into it which made 9D impossible to solve until we correctly answered GENERIC! We also gave ourselves problems by answering WATCH a instead of CLOCK for 6D. Great fun – took us 19 minutes to complete.

    FOI: SENATOR
    LOI: EUROSCEPTIC
    COD: SMALL CHANGE

    Thanks Mara and Chris

    Edited at 2021-07-06 01:18 pm (UTC)

  33. Having watched Verlaine’s excellent video the other day I decided to try to be quicker and more decisive in my approach. It definitely worked wonders as I swiftly moved on when not obvious etc.
    However many traps ensued.
    Spare Change flew in and therefore Eel before the spelling of Nuclear led to backtracking for Lee (obvious if I’d read it clearly) and the Small Change — again obvious from “tweak”.
    And then as if that wasn’t enough I too fell for the General and anagram of Leave Voters as described by Templar earlier. So similar..
    Couldn’t parse Improve or Top Dog, but they had to be.
    LOI was Raisin.
    I need to carry on the decisiveness but read more carefully!
    Thanks all,
    John George
      2. Time has rolled on so the video I watched (not all of it!) was the 2 hour video which was for Tuesday 6th July — which is currently second or third in the list in the link kindly provided earlier.
        Your question is great because I didn’t see that there were more videos before…
      3. Oh and I meant to say it included his QC solve for that day. A leisurely 5 minutes or so. I need to get solving online and improve my typing skills!!
  34. I made the POP error, and with CLOCK in, could only think of the PACE people. Silly!
    I liked the surface for 9d
    Regards
    A
  35. ….TOP DOG, so hopkinb will be very happy with a 7 second victory.

    There was a point where I was going so quickly that my PB of 2:24 was genuinely under threat, but I fell into the “Leave voter’s” trap (inspired, Mara !), couldn’t parse TOP DOG which I biffed, but parsed afterwards, and failed lamentably to spot the reverse hidden for my LOI.

    FOI SENATOR
    LOI TROOPER
    COD EUROSCEPTIC
    TIME 3:31

  36. Same problems outlined above with spinnaker and top dog, also in the general trap until 9d fell into place. However a fairly quick solve at abt 20m.
  38. 18:35 for me, which is my best for a couple of weeks. I keep coming to these tired after work and as soon as I start to struggle my motivation goes. Consequently I’ve had several DNFs recently. I did complete yesterday’s, but it took a couple of sittings before I decided to plump for my LOI and NHO CHOLER. Anyway, thankfully today’s was easier despite only vaguely having heard of SPINNAKER. I didn’t parse IMPROVE and I also failed to think about why POT was “corporation”. Having read Merlin’s comment, I now remember coming across corporation = stomach on here before, but it’s an additional stretch to turn that into pot. I guess you can have a pot-belly, but then surely it’s the belly that’s the stomach. Not really sure what the pot means there come to think about it. Anyhow, FOI SENATOR, LOI EUROSCEPTIC, COD RAISIN. Thanks Mara and Chris.
    1. Some of the usual sources (e.g. SOED) list ‘pot = protuberant stomach’ as a variation on ‘pot-belly’. Also look out for ‘spare tyre’ as that has also come up before now.
  39. Darn it. Completely fooled by 9d and came here to learn this word I’d never heard of, comprising the strangest set of letters anagramised: LEAVEVOTERS. Duh. Wrong end of clue! My LOI – or rather not – after a speedy 8-minute solve of everything else. Darn it!
  40. Not one we’re proud of. He was actually a general in the army opposed to the United States, the Confederate States.
  41. Finished within target.

    Im surprised so many people had difficulty with 9D. Eurosceptic was the first word I thought of when I read “leave voter”. Couldn’t parse 11A though, which was my COD.

    Could someone please explain how corporation = pot = stomach? Three completely unconnected words as far as I can see.

    1. If you read my comment (two above yours) you can see the dictionary entry explaining pot = stomach. The same dictionary defines ‘corporation’ as: a protruding or prominent abdomen.

      Edited at 2021-07-07 04:06 am (UTC)

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