Times Quick Cryptic 1917 by Wurm

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
LOI and COD to 1ac, which made for a slow start but a satisfying penny-drop moment at the end. I also had a chuckle at 4dn. I wonder if our international friends are familiar with the burrowing litter-pickers from Wimbledon?

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Shrink undergarment? That offers revealing glimpse! (8,4)
FREUDIAN SLIP – cryptic hint, with ‘shrink’ refering to a psychotherapist.
9 I love to wear dumb expression (5)
IDIOM – I then O (love) contained by (to wear) DIM (dumb).
10 Two for one for example in Bury (7)
INTEGER – EG (for example) in INTER (bury). ‘For one’ is indicating that ‘two’ is an example of an integer.
11 Stadium beside lake hosts second team (7)
ARSENAL – ARENA (stadium) and L (lake) containing (hosts) S (second).
12 Regularly seen around in Dunnet Forest (5)
OFTEN – reverse hidden in (seen around in) dunNET FOrest.
13 Maybe Irish agile playing at speed of light (6)
GAELIC – anagram of (playing) AGILE then C (speed of light, from ‘celeritas’, Latin for speed).
14 Father entertains a deity in shrine (6)
PAGODA – PA (father) contains (entertains) A GOD (a deity).
17 Sons suffering in Catholic country (5)
SPAIN – S (sons) and PAIN (suffering). I’m not sure why the plural ‘sons’.
19 Saint in love with wealthy bird (7)
OSTRICH – ST (saint) inside O (love) and RICH (wealthy).
21 Friend in Paris clever and approachable (7)
AMIABLE – AMI (friend in French, in Paris) and ABLE (clever).
22 Submarine about to disintegrate (1-4)
U-BOAT – anagram of (to disintegrate) ABOUT.
23 Mate pointing out natural colouring (12)
PIGMENTATION – anagram of (out) MATE POINTING.

Down
2 Publish again about children (7)
REISSUE – RE (regarding, about) and ISSUE (children).
3 Taboo being mean online but funny (13)
UNMENTIONABLE – anagram of (funny) MEAN ONLINE BUT.
4 Winter eavesdropper? (6)
ICICLE – crytpic definition: something that hangs down (a dropper) from a roof (eaves) in winter!
5 Citizen with confidence in charitable organisation (8,5)
NATIONAL TRUST – NATIONAL (citizen) and TRUST (confidence).
6 Match not serious (5)
LIGHT – double definition.
7 Fish from Asian country served in public house area (7)
PIRANHA – IRAN (Asian country) contained by (served in) PH (public house) and A (area).
8 Great singer takes most of bed (4)
DIVA – all-but-the-last letter from (most of) DIVAn (bed).
13 Light source good with volatile plasma (3,4)
GAS LAMP – G (good) and an anagram of (volatile) PLASMA.
15 Venezuelan flower for womble (7)
ORINOCO – double definition (kind of). A river (flow-er) in South America, and the lazy womble.
16 Strong container holds ten (6)
POTENT – POT (container) contains (holds) TEN.
18 Copying brooch in silver (5)
APING – PIN (brooch) inside AG (silver).
20 Dislike seen in clash at Edgbaston (4)
HATE – hidden in (seen in) clasH AT Edgbaston.

49 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1917 by Wurm”

  1. Biffed a few: IDIOM (took me quite a while to parse), UNMENTIONABLE, PIGMENTATION, ORINOCO; parsed post-submission, but I still have no idea what ‘womble’ means. 5:01.
  2. Orinoco was a Womble – they lived on Wimbledon Common – Elisabeth Beresford 1968. Just pre- Sesame Street.

    FOI 20dn HATE

    LOI 8dn DIVA

    COD 1ac FREUDIAN SLIP

    WOD 10ac INTEGER

    Remember You’re a Womble! Mike Batt didn’t come ’til 1974 – we danced to in the street with loads of kids, darn in Shepherd’s Bush!

    Edited at 2021-07-14 04:17 am (UTC)

    1. Thanks. I looked ‘womble’ up in Collins and Chambers, stupidly didn’t try Googling. On edit: Looking further, I see that I did come across Uncle Bulgaria here some time ago, so I can’t say I NHO wombles.

      Edited at 2021-07-14 04:53 am (UTC)

        1. Brother Jonathan has never enjoyed English children’s Lit. However Disney fully embraced ‘Winnie the Pooh’ and utterly spoiled it. E.H. Shepherd must turn in his grave every bed-time.
    2. William it is Edgbaston and not Edgebaston.
      The Pedant, Edgware Road.

      Edited at 2021-07-14 09:30 am (UTC)

  3. Very enjoyable puzzle and not as difficult as some of Wurm’s offerings. I loved the image of a volatile plasma powering a light and also enjoyed ICICLE but my COD was FREUDIAN SLIP which was my POI and corrected my thinking that 7d was going to start with GAR. Finished in 9.18.
    Thanks to william
  4. US solver here. Another fun puzzle tonight.

    William’s supposition is correct. Never heard of the Wombles before, but there was only one possible answer for me anyway given ‘Venezuelan’ in the clue. Now I need to check out the Ws…

    But I knew ‘National Trust’, probably originally through repeated hearing of ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’ by you-know-who.

    Lastly, knew 1ac had to be ‘Freudian slip’, but refused to believe it for a few minutes. Once I got that the rest snapped into place pretty fast.

    1. Welcome, anon, and thanks for your interesting comments. Hope to hear from you again but next time could you please write a name (real or made up) in the message so that we can recognise you, or better still register for a free Live Journal user account and sign in.
  5. I have to report a rare QC DNF, not because I was beaten by the setter but thinking I had just scraped home within my target 10 minutes, I forget to check the grid and realised only this morning that I had omitted to solve 13ac.
    1. As today’s official blogger-in-chief, I propose we call it a 1 minute penalty and never speak of it again.
  6. I found this hard. Totally wrong footed by FREUDIAN SLIP and those missing checkers caused me grief with PIRANHA and ICICLE both holding out to the end. It started well enough with seven on the first pass of acrosses but I had to grind out UNMENTIONABLE and NATIONAL TRUST before the pace picked up. Held up by SPAIN too — I think the extra information provided by ‘catholic’ in the clue undid me, All green in 16.
  7. I don’t usually bother timing myself other than very approximately but days like today I wish I had. After a bit of a quick rummage in the mental lingerie drawers (oh er!) to get slip, which gave me Freud, the rest went down steadily in a clockwise route ending up back at my dad’s team at 11A.
    ICICLE was my smile of the day. Deserted the SCC today for sure, a rare foray.
  8. 16:06 and pleased to be back in the greens.

    Slow to get started with FOI INTEGER. Spent quite a bit of time trying to make IDIOT work at 9a.

    Why “Catholic country” for Spain? It’s not needed for the surface, and is it supposed to narrow down the list of countries? Just to provide misdirection?

    At 7d I thought Public House would be Inn or Bar, so that held up 1a, FREUDIAN SLIP, which ended up being both COD and LOI.

    I recall being in a choir rehearsal singing Beethoven’s Ninth, when we basses came in a bar early with a strident “Freude, Freude”. The conductor stopped and said “bit of a Freudian slip there”

    1. Because the setter has catholic tastes perhaps. And William, ‘S’ is for sons plural as in the printers Warterlow & Sons.- which is ever abbreviated to ‘W & S’. Meldrew

      Edited at 2021-07-14 08:15 am (UTC)

  9. FOI: 14a. PAGODA
    LOI: 8d. DIVA
    Time to Complete: 48 minutes
    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 21
    Clues Answered with Aids: 3
    Clues Unanswered: Nil
    Wrong Answers: Nil
    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/24
    Aids Used: Chambers

    I started slowly but then things improved, and I completed most of the lower half of the crossword within about 20 minutes. I then slowed further in the middle of the grid before finally completing with the help of Chambers.

  10. A bit of a struggle but enjoyed some PDMs like FREUDIAN SLIP, PIRANHA
    FOI ICICLE, DIVA, LOI POTENT
    I thought I had forgotten the slightly annoying Wombles but they came back to me.
    Thanks vm for blog, William. Didn’t know the speed of light was C but guessed.
    1. Its most famous usage is in E=mc2

      Pet peeve, it should be read out loud as “m, c-Squared”, with a nice break between the m and the c2. Not as the usual, “emcee squared”, with implicit brackets around the mc. Which would be a completely different equation: E=(mc)2, and of course not what Einstein discovered.

      1. A very readable book (Why does e=mc2? and why should we care?, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw) was published in 2009. Excellent and understandable, even for this non-physicist.
  11. A steady solve from FOI DIVA and then a pause at the end until the PDM with FREUDIAN SLIP. ICICLE and UNMENTIONABLE followed in quick succession. I only got ORINOCO from the womble reference. I knew ORINOCO as a river but not the where. COD FREUDIAN SLIP. Time an acceptable 9:48 after yesterday’s disaster.

    Edited at 2021-07-14 08:42 am (UTC)

  12. I was off to a flier with Freudian Slip and was well pleased to see the National Trust, that most English of pastimes – I have been a member since 1989. 5dn my COD. Time 4.39
  13. I started in the NE with LIGHT, OFTEN, INTEGER and ICICLE, hardly pausing for breath. PIRANHA took a bit more thought, but soon led to slip after which Mr Freud emerged from the mist. Then a steady solve saw me over the line in 9:14. Nice puzzle. Thanks Wurm and William.
  14. Wurm is always a stiff challenge and so he was today. Any puzzle where 1ac is your LOI has been a struggle! But very enjoyable and rewarding.

    FOI REISSUE, LOI & COD FREUDIAN SLIP, time 11:35 for 2.3K which is pretty poor but I’m still going to rate this as an OK Day.

    Many thanks Wurm and William.

    Templar

  15. 13:20 here, with the excellent FREUDIAN SLIP coming fairly early after a couple of the downs gave some checkers. I also enjoyed ICICLE. Thanks both.
  16. directly into the crossword club today for a change. Luckily I was able to spot FREUDIAN SLIP straight away, which helped, and I seemed to be on Wurm’s wavelength.

    My last two were IDIOM and DIVA, I liked ICICLE, and enjoyed being reminded of the Wombles, though as I live about a mile from Wimbledon Common, I can often be found “wombling free”, or at the very least, walking the dog there!

    3:45, which puts me 12th on the board for now, though I submitted nervously as I didn’t proof-read, but luckily no pink typos.

  17. Not Asia, surely. Later: oh I see, it is defined as Western Asia. Hm.

    Edited at 2021-07-14 09:52 am (UTC)

  19. Nice and steady solve- mainly bottom to top- but took a long time to see ICICLE.
    Finding the 15×15 tough going today
    BW
    Andrew
  20. A longer 26 mins today — and another example where sometimes it’s not always best to start at the top.

    Main hold ups were trying to put an “x” in 16dn, forgetting that obscure “issue” for kids and not being able to get “Arc Lamp” out of my head for 13dn.

    Having worked in retail for a little while, I was also distracted by 10ac possibly containing “BOGOF”.

    FOI — 12ac “Often”
    LOI — 2dn “Reissue”
    COD — 4dn “Icicle”

    Thanks as usual!

  21. 5:04 this morning, which I think is a little above my average time for Wurm’s puzzles but not sure why. Perhaps because there was a delay before the anagram at 3 d “unmentionable” revealed itself.
    Still, an enjoyable solve with COD 1 ac “Freudian Slip”.
    Thanks to William and to Wurm.
  22. I guessed the slip part of 1ac straight away, confirmed by Light and Piranah, but I struggled with Freudian until I realised 2d was going to be Re—, at which point the shrink was revealed. I was glad I persevered, because Unmentionable, National Trust and today’s stand out CoD 3d, Icicle were then write-ins and I was off to a flyer. A slight pause over 15d, where I started to write in Oregano before realising my mistake. In the end, all done in 16min, with loi Potent responsible for the last one of those via the rabbit hole of using X for ten. Invariant
  23. We didn’t get to yesterday’s puzzle because we were busy in the garden erecting a very heavy oak gazebo which was a bigger job than anticipated and took us all day to complete (looks great though – very happy with it). Will check out yesterday’s blog when we complete the puzzle. Back to today’s challenge – we started slowly and ended in the same way taking 11 minutes in total. Some great clues.

    FOI: IDIOM
    LOI: POTENT
    COD: ICICLE (loved it)

    Thanks Wurm and William.

    Edited at 2021-07-14 01:11 pm (UTC)

  24. Much better than yesterday but still firmly in SCC! All present and correct in 24 today. LOI was ICICLE which was COD and also held up by POTENT (same reason as jamesed46 — looking for somewhere to insert X). FOI LIGHT. Did not know that Orinoco was in Venezuela but womble gave it away! Madame Cholet was always my favourite. Thanks Wurm and William.
  25. ….Albert says E equals m c squared” (Landscape : “Einstein a- gogo”.

    If I’d had the earworm BEFORE tackling the puzzle I’d have seen GAELIC far more quickly. I was also slow with PIRANHA, which I needed before I could crack my LOI. Not one of my better days — I blame the pint of Peerless “Knee Wobbler” with which I celebrated my clean bill of health. I suppose 5.2% is a little strong for 10.45 am.

    FOI IDIOM
    LOI FREUDIAN SLIP
    COD ICICLE
    TIME 4:34

    1. A nice little “sharpener” for elevenses does tend to dull, rather than sharpen the mental faculties!
  27. Steady solve until we spent far too long trying to put an x into 16d rather than solving the easy way. Enjoyed icicle.
  28. Very enjoyable and a nice distraction from the activities of the workmen in the house. FOI Arsenal, COD lots of good ones here, but picking one it has to be piranha. LOI by a gap in the solve for the brain to do its stuff was potent. Conscious mind was looking for a word with x in it. A couple unparsed. Thanks, William, for the blog, and Wurm for the puzzle. GW.
  29. Thoroughly enjoyed this 😊 Usually I find Wurm quite tricky but I must have been on his wavelength today and came in a smidge under 9 minutes. So many great clues — FREUDIAN SLIP, UNMENTIONABLE (they actually go together quite well, I’ve just realised 😉) GAS LAMP, ORINOCO and ICICLE all got smiles. There’s a village near here called Woodhouse Eaves — beautifully sums up its location tucked under the brow of the hills – and as an NT volunteer, of course I’m delighted to see it mentioned here!
    All in all A Happy Day
    FOI Freudian slip
    LOI Potent — count me in as someone else who wanted to shove an X in there
    COD Ostrich 😂 even if bird is a bit passé
    Many thanks Wurm and William too
  30. Just 28 minutes for me, which counts as a very good day – particularly as it was a Wurm offering. I struggled a littel early on, but then got going and things fell into place. I tried to fit UNCONSCIONABLE into the UNMENTIONABLE space, before spotting it was an anagram (COMPANIONABLE also fits the space), but my LOsI were IDIOM, REISSUE and DIVA).

    Mrs Random escaped the SCC yet again today, with an 18-minute finish. That’s her 5th SCC escape in the last 8 days. I don’t often get close to her time these days, as my times appear to have plateaud somewhat – But our average time is improving, so I will take heart.

    Many thanks to Wurm and william_j_s

  31. Late to the party today …
    … and my experience mirrors several others. An enjoyable but by no means straightforward solve, all done in 13 minutes.

    Unusually, the Slip part of 1A Freudian slip was my FOI, while the Freudian bit was almost my LOI.

    I also share the puzzlement over why “sons”, plural, in the clue for 17A Spain but the answer was clear enough.

    Many thanks to William for the blog
    Cedric

  32. A good puzzle. Back home after an excellent stay in the Lake District plus a return to the wonderful Midland Hotel in Morecambe. A long drive back dulled my faculties a little but I only strayed over target by half a min so that is OK.
    A slow start but I found many answers eminently biffable once a few crossers emerged (but I parsed all).
    Most of my comments have already been made by others above but I must say I rather liked INTEGER, POTENT (once I had finally cleared my mind of ‘X’ for ten), and ICICLE. Thanks to Wurm and William. John M.
    Now to have a go at the T-graph online 15×15. I find I do it almost as quickly as the Times QC most days and occasionally even quicker. More of a confidence boost than many QCs……

    Edited at 2021-07-14 04:26 pm (UTC)

    1. Interesting to hear your comments about the Telegraph 15×15. I often have a crack at the Times 15×15 but only manage around a third before looking at the blog. Maybe I’ll try the Telegraph for extra practice (and much needed confidence) before the Times 15×15… Many thanks!
  33. My regular ten-minute solve. FOI – and my COD – ICICLE, LOI UNMENTIONABLE. Nothing too challenging but a good brain work-out all the same. Enjoyed this one.

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