Times Quick Cryptic 1916 by Joker

With apologies to those uninterested in football, I’ve found it impossible not to draw references from Sunday’s game.

I found this something of a test – not in the same league as the Italian football team – but a test nevertheless. 13 minutes ticked by until I finished with the second of the two long down clues.

Quite a few of the down clues are really very clever.

Definitions are underlined.

Across
1 Annoyed with nation’s sport (5-7)
CROSS-COUNTRY – annoyed (CROSS), nation (COUNTRY). Well, that’ll be England then.
8 The French lay back for break (3-2)
LET-UP – ‘the’ in French (LE), lay – put – backwards (TUP). After the first 30 minutes, the Italians didn’t – let-up that is.
9 Is youngster up to finding restaurant? (7)
CANTEEN – is youngester up to (CAN TEEN). The youngsters of the English team couldn’t – beat the huge Italian keeper in the shoot out.
10 Letter from abroad from Charlie with greeting (3)
CHI – Charlie (C), with greeting (HI). 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet (x). I rather stupidly toyed with hic for a while.
11 Unacceptable ruling about backing up (9)
REPUGNANT – ruling (REGNANT) around up backwards (PU). To be fair, I thought the ref did a great job with no unacceptable rulings (although I thought Sterling had a decent penalty claim).
13 Backward-looking group of reporters with a bygone style (5)
RETRO – inside the clue (a group of letters running backwards inside) rep(ORTER)s. Well hidden. Ah – the bygone style of 66.
14 Miserable person, head down to go to be sick (5)
RETCH – head or first letter down/to go/missing from miserable person w(RETCH). Quite an accurate description of me during the penalty shoot out.
16 I’m nervous about being infested (9)
VERMINOUS – anagram (about) of IM NERVOUS. And I was!
17 Short paragraph’s given backing for criminal charge (3)
RAP – short paragraph – par – backwards (RAP). Poor Gareth will take the rap for those late subs not working out as hoped.
19 Practical program deliberately gave wrong answer (7)
APPLIED – program (APP), deliberately gave wrong answer (LIED). Think applied maths.
21 Not appropriate to sleep inside it (5)
INAPT – sleep (NAP) inside it (IT).
22 Girl with nipper is a mean individual (5-7)
PENNY-PINCHER – girl (PENNY), nipper (PINCHER).
Down
1 Gut feeling commanding officer is over defeat mostly (5)
COLIC – commanding officer (CO) on top of (over) defeat mostly (LIC)k. I suppose I’m now over the defeat (mostly) – better to lose in a final than a semi.
2 Clothes shop known to have better suiting? (9)
OUTFITTER – known (OUT), better suiting (FITTER).
3 Being on top of exceptionally good job (13)
SUPERPOSITION – exceptionally good (SUPER), job (POSITION). Well, we were, and then we weren’t.
4 People regularly touchy about trophy (6)
OCCUPY – t(O)u(C)h(Y) around trophy (CUP). A country is peopled by the group of people who live there. Regularly touchy about not having a trophy for so long – us?
5 Peaceful response son earns going around (3-10)
NON-AGGRESSION – anagram (around) of SON EARNS GOING. Peaceful=non-aggressive, does peaceful response=non-aggression? Happily the game was played in a good spirit all round.
6 Regret starting running up Everest (3)
RUE – (R)inning (U)p (E)verest. Well, plenty to rue, I suppose.
7 Steal tin at church (6)
SNATCH – tin (SN – chemical symbol), at (AT), church (CH). The Italians snatched the win at the end.
12 Later consequences of getting me that far drunk (9)
AFTERMATH – anagram (drunk) of ME THAT FAR. Maybe the less I say here the better – but Monday got off to a slow start.
13 Show soldiers meat from farm animal (6)
REVEAL – soldiers (RE), meat from farm animal (VEAL).
15 Part of ship finished in stoppage (4-2)
HOLD-UP – part of ship (HOLD), finished (UP – the game’s up). Stoppage time makes allowance for any hold-ups and is always held up on a board.
18 Piper, perhaps noble, keeping time (5)
PETER – noble (PEER) keeping time (T). Peter Piper – or Shilton or Crouch.
20 A little pasty? One must get stuck into exercises (3)
PIE – one (I) stuck into exercises (PE). Half time necessity!

45 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1916 by Joker”

  1. 9 minutes with the unfamiliar SUPERPOSITION the only clue to give me pause for thought.
  2. FOI: 1a. CROSS-COUNTRY
    LOI: 15d. HOLD-UP
    Time to Complete: 48 minutes
    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 20
    Clues Answered with Aids: 4
    Clues Unanswered: Nil
    Wrong Answers: Nil
    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/24
    Aids Used: Chambers

    An early start for me as I was woken up a 3am by an ambulance pulling up outside my neighbour’s house. His 13-year-old boy had suffered a severe asthma attack. Fortunately he was improving by the time he was transported to the hospital.

    No words that I had not heard of in today’s crossword, though I always thought that superposition, as a single word, was something to do with quantum physics. But getting that and non-aggression helped towards solving this enjoyable puzzle.

  3. daft word without pause for thought. Time 9:45.

    FOI 2dn OUTFITTER – MENSWEAR always raises a smile.

    LOI 19ac APPLIED

    COD 1ac CROSS COUNTRY – bad memories

    WOD 22ac PENNY PINCHER

  4. Off to a slow start with only four on the first pass of acrosses and then the downs caused problems too. Things started moving when I got COLIC and then finally saw CROSS COUNTRY with a groan — I must have done hundreds of those races, though not that many recently. That opened up the downs and gave me the confidence to put in the top half of SUPERPOSITION and to get NON-AGGRESSION. Those checkers made the difference and I then solved from left to right before being left with PENNY PINCHER which I found hard to spot even with all the checkers — at least until I gave up trying to make ‘panther’ the second word. All green in 16 — much better than I feared early on.
  5. A poor show with three short in SW after 30 mins.

    Tried panther=Nipper, but couldn’t see a girls name without an initial letter.

    Didn’t get SUPERPOSITION either.

    COD APPLIED

    1. I had panther for a while as well, which of course meant I couldn’t get Pink Panther out of my head even though it didn’t fit.
  6. Seemed to fall in place for me this morning in just less than 14. Can teen? …made me chuckle. Thanks Joker and Chris.
  7. Not my day at all. I didn’t even get HOLD UP.

    Come on tomorrow…

    Diana

  8. I struggled with this one and it turned into a bit of a slog. Everything was fairly clued I was just a bit foggy brained today. Enjoyed PENNY PINCHER and eventually finished with SUPERPOSITION and HOLD UP in 16.47.
    Thanks to Chris
  9. What a difference a day makes. Super quick yesterday and super slow today. I pretty much struggled from the word go by typing in that well known gut upset COLOS. I never did parse RETRO and while I got RETCH fairly quickly I wasn’t sure about head down as an indication of a missing first letter. I was held up at HOLD UP and completely befuddled by the simplicity of CANTEEN and my POI CROSS COUNTRY. LOI the unknown SUPERPOSITION. 23:41 for a very disappointing day.
    I’m off for a consolatory bike ride now as the temperature in Mallorca has dipped below 30 degrees in the shade.

    Edited at 2021-07-13 08:47 am (UTC)

    1. The temperature back in the UK has also “dipped below 30 degrees” … last Summer!
  10. Hard to get a HOLD at first.
    Liked CROSS COUNTRY, CANTEEN.
    oh I see, OCCUPY = fill with people. Solved, but couldn’t parse that one. Lots of the letter ‘p’.
    Couldn’t parse REPUGNANT either, nor RETRO. Didn’t know SUPERPOSITION was a word but it had to be.
    Thanks vm, Chris.

    Edited at 2021-07-13 11:59 am (UTC)

  11. … at which point, it became glacial. I always have a heart-sink moment when I see joker’s name at the top of the grid. It’s not that he’s unfair, it’s just that I have an instinctive ability to not get where he’s coming from. And thus it came to pass again today…
    My particular problems were my LOIs, HOLD UP and APPLIED. I only got the last one through an alphabet trawl of the second letter. Not in a million years would I have reached the answer through testing synonyms of “practical. “. Part of the issue was also that I hesitated over SUPERPOSITION, not actually believing that there was such a word.
    Some great clues here, too, though. I especially liked CANTEEN and PENNY PINCHER.
    Super blog, too! Thank you!
    And thanks, too, to joker.
  12. that take me over my target, I parse everything, rather than merrily biffing/semi-biffing. The only one I didn’t see was the reverse hidden RETRO.

    Lots of good clues, and a challenge without being too hard. HOLD UP was my LOI for some reason, and VERMINOUS my favourite.

    6:55.

  13. Still away from home and I did this between interruptions. An excellent puzzle from Joker and a good blog from Chris confirming my parsing and adding interest, as usual. I wasted time by biffing nonaggressive instead of nonaggression (lazy — didn’t parse it carefully) so this held up PENNY PINCHER until I sorted myself out. LOsI were LET UP and REPUGNANT. No time today but I was slower than recently — certainly over target. John M.
  14. Can’t be doing with running, especially first thing in the morning. Nevertheless CROSS COUNTRY was my FOI. Then there was no LET-UP from the COLIC I got from the REPUGNANT meal in the CANTEEN, which made me RETCH. Ok time to blow the whistle on this frivolity! I was held up by my LOI, HOLD-UP. 8:21. Thanks Joker and Chris. Great blog!
  15. there are less and less folk on the blog! MY COD VERMINOUS.

    Edited at 2021-07-13 10:08 am (UTC)

  16. 12:52 which I was happy with — it felt longer. SUPERPOSITION was FOI which helped (I think PW was thinking of supersymmetry, which is something to do with quantum physics). LOI HOLD UP, COD APPLIED. I was slightly surprised not to see Martin PETERs getting a name check in Chris’ blog at 18d. All good though, thanks to Joker and Chris.
    1. I’m definitely with you there – I started typing Martin but it all got over complicated with first names vs partial surnames.
    2. PW is correct. Superposition is the random coincidence if waves of different wavelengths in the quantum world. I don’t know of any other uses for the word.
  17. Another pleasing 21 mins which I throughly enjoyed.

    My school had a wood at the back of it which was regularly used for cross country (usually on the days when it was raining and the PE teacher couldn’t be bothered). Sounds a cliche, but people did hang around in there and smoke until it was time to come in.

    DNK 3dn “Superposition”, and needed the checkers to finally put something in and never parsed 11ac “Repugnant”. As Merlin noted above, for a while I was thinking 22ac might have “panther” at the end, but it obviously didn’t make sense.

    FOI — 1dn “Colic”
    LOI — 3dn “Superposition”
    COD — 18dn “Peter” — simple, but made me smile.

    Thanks as usual!

  18. Much trickier than yesterday, taking me a full 19 mins to complete. Failed to parse RETRO. Never heard of SUPERPOSITION as a single word and I was in general delayed by both long down clues.

    FOI – 10ac CHI
    LOI – 3dn SUPERPOSITION
    COD – 9ac CANTEEN with an honourable mention to 22ac PENNY PINCHER

    Thanks Joker and Chris.

  19. 4:04 this morning for a puzzle where I felt several clues required a bit of thought. The clues were concise and neat without any obscurities, although “superposition” is a word I haven’t seen too often.
    COD 13 ac “Retro”, because I thought it was a clever variation on a “reverse hidden” clue with a nice surface too.
    Thanks to Chris and Joker
  20. Another tricky one from Joker, with plenty to chew over while I waited for inspiration. Despite a confident start with Colic and Outfitter, I didn’t see the now obvious Cross/annoyed link, so I gave 1ac a miss and moved further down the grid. Even with some gifts along the way, I struggled with quite a few of the clues (Applies, Repugnant and Non-aggression) and it was 30mins before loi Penny Pincher fell. CoD to 21ac, Inapt, for its simplicity. Invariant

    Edited at 2021-07-13 10:59 am (UTC)

  21. Did this on my phone since I’m actually in a train going somewhere!! Such novelty. I feel like the first passengers on Stephenson’s Rocket, gasping at the speed and wondering whether my internal organs will be crushed.

    Wonderfully witty puzzle, sparkling with invention. And the blog made me laugh a lot, so what a fun break.

    FOI CROSS COUNTRY, LOI LET-UP (I tried so hard to make “lie-in” work), COD CANTEEN, time 10:03 for 1.9K and a Decent Day.

    Many thanks Joker and Chris. (Played in good spirit apart from Chiellini trying to pull Saka’s shirt off, which was definitely not Corinthian!)

    Templar

    1. Oh dear! I sincerely hope your internal organs don’t get “crushed”, otherwise you may RETCH and end up with COLIC.
      Enjoy the journey, if you can withstand the g-forces.
  22. Had to nip around the puzzle looking for openings. Finally finished with APPLIED and SUPERPOSITION.
    Very nice surfaces. Thanks setter.
    Amusing blog too!
  23. All done in 18, with most trouble in the SW corner – APPLIED required all checkers and an alphabet trawl, SUPERPOSITION went in with a shrug as I’m sure I’ve heard of it but would struggle to identify where, REVEAL took far too long to reveal the type of meat.

    All in all though a very fun puzzle – thanks Joker and Chris

  24. I am mightily impressed by the performances above, as I came here thinking that, like me, many people would have suffered today. I found Joker’s puzzle way more cryptic (and much less quick) than normal, and I was on the verge of giving up during all of my last 30-40 minutes. I got there in the end, but it took 72 minutes in total for one of my slowest ever successful solves. I’m not sure why I persevered.

    My LOsI were VERMINOUS, SUPERPOSITION, REVEAL (I was alphabet-trawling ___HAM) and RETRO, but all of the longer solutions and many of the medium-length solutions required a lot of hard graft.

    N.B. Mrs Random has just finished, as I write, in 35 minutes. Slightly slow for her, but like a rocket, compared to me.

    Many thanks to Joker, although it seemed like torture for much of the time, and to chrisw91 for the excellent blog.

    1. Totally agree! I found this very difficult and spent a rather long time with only a handful of clues solved before struggling over the line in about 50 mins. FOI CHI, LOI a tentative SUPERPOSITION, COD CANTEEN, unparsed pre-submission REPUGNANT. Thanks to Joker (I think!) and to Chris for a very entertaining blog. Hoping for less brain fog tomorrow.
  25. … and scooted round the grid in increasingly random circles looking for an entry. Eventually found a way in and then the answers came all in a rush for a 13 minute solve, much quicker than at one stage looked likely.

    Two in particular caused me to pause. 3D Superposition is not a word I know or am ever likely to use (thank you PW and Somerandomchap for explaining it). But I followed the cluing and it had to be, so it went in. And the link peple = occupy in 4D took a bit of thought too; not the most obvious synonym for me when I was doing the puzzle but I see now that it does work just about.

    Many thanks to Chris for the blog — soccer references accepted this once and much enjoyed, but not I hope a style all bloggers will feel they have to follow for ever more!
    Cedric

  26. A bit too hard for me without checkers. Struggled with REPUGNANT, SUPERPOSITION (NHO) and CANTEEN and only saw OCCUPY and SNATCH late on. A real struggle.
  27. ….SUPERPOSITION, but otherwise had no problems.

    FOI CROSS-COUNTRY
    LOI HOLD-UP
    COD RETRO (beautifully concealed I thought)
    TIME 3:55

  28. First of all: many thanks to Chris for the most entertaining blog! And thanks too to Joker for this witty and clever puzzle – there are lots of smiles and ticks all
    over the grid. But I did find some of it quite tricky, not helped by an interruption to my thought processes when Mr B came to talk about builders, so I don’t have a very accurate time – about 12 minutes I think.
    FOI Cross country
    LOI Superposition – it was an NHO for me too
    COD – Aftermath

    Finally: Penny pincher – not me, although I must admit to liking a yellow sticker in the supermarket 😂

  29. One of those puzzles which depends on getting the long clues. Once we got 5d things speeded up, and we finished roghly on target.
  30. 17 minutes. There weren’t any really hard clues for me, but significant thinking time for all but a few clues. Thanks, Joker.
  31. Hmm, a solid fifteen minutes. Found this tricky, with NON-AGGRESSION, REPUGNANT and OCCUPY being particularly resistant. NHO SUPERPOSITION. Relieved to make the finish line.
  32. Very enjoyable at about 40 mins which is 2x my target. I seemed on the wavelength for the long down clues but struggled mightily with some of the across especially in the SW. Thanks Joker and Chris.

  33. Late posting today, almost forgot. I have not recorded a time for this one – another which needed two goes with a gap in between to let my brain work out the answers without me. Even so I finished with four unparsed. FOI chi, LOI repugnant. NHO superposition but it was fairly clued. Lots of good clues, COD verminous. Thanks, Chris, and Joker. GW.
  34. Completed on 16 July (it’s been a busy week).

    FOI: LET UP
    LOI: REPUGNANT
    COD: CROSS COUNTRY

    Loved the blog — thanks Chris

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