Times Quick Cryptic 7 by Teazel

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
No setter’s name as yet (0300 UK) but whoever they are they produced a good, chunky puzzle. Thanks to jackkt who maybe has a paper version – name now updated. This took me 31 minutes of concentrated effort but to be fair, I really am not used to being up this early.
With about 24 hours notice I’m grasping an opportunity to visit family and friends in USA. 11ac therefore rang a lot of bells – at 0300 I look pretty bad already and am only just on my way to LHR.
I may therefore not be able to reply to comments or correct typos but will hopefully find a wifi somewhere.
First blog – which would have been exciting enough without the trip – and many thanks to linxit who has organised us all so well.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*

Across
1 Step –  Favourites=pets rev (on edit as I had this the wrong way round – thanks jackkt).
4 Drawback – Ward is backwards. Not sure of the clue type but it’s a neat one.
8 Retrench – RE – Royal Engineers and the trench they make.
9 Zone – Z is the unknown and one is the individual.
10 Wary – Conflict=war with Y for years afterwards. Technically years would be yy or ys but I suppose it makes the surface better.
11 Globally – Lo=look, bally=awful with the final letter of flying in front. Somewhat archaic/Wodehouse-esque Bally which I rather liked.
12 Always – every route sounds like all ways.
14 Indigo – India without the a and go is the game.
16 Fishcake – (I ask chef)* up t’North we have proper fish cakes which are a slice of potato each side of some real fish all done in batter. Rather tastier than the mashed up potato offering elsewhere IMHO.
18 Farm – F=fine, arm=branch.
19 Tier – ‘One that secures’ is something that ties so is a tier.
20 Informal – Advise=inform, Al=little boy.
22 Cheyenne – On edit – it sounds like ‘shy’ for nervous and ‘Anne’ would be the girl.
23 To-do – to=to, make=do

Down
2 Toenail – Neat cd of the little piggy which went to market.
3 Party – Politicians are organised into parties – but thereafter they seem anything but.
4 Don – Finished=done – not quite takes off the ‘e’.
5 Aphrodite – (pit? Oh dear!)* A fine figure of a woman born from a rather unfortunate deletion from Uranus, which, when thrown into the sea, caused foam (aphros) from which she appeared. Those Greeks sure knew how to have a good time.
6 Buzzard – Excited feeling=buzz supported by A way=rd for road.
7 Canal – American alone. One’s in Panama and about to get bigger locks.
11 Gestation – Good=G, European=E, position=station (as in life).
13 Ashtray – Wrong=astray around husband=h – it’s quite hard to remember now how suffocating it used to be going into a smoke filled pub – for readers outside UK, smoking was banned in pubs here a few years back.
15 Garland – dd – A 5dn of her day.
17 Irish – flag=Iris (it also means another Greek Goddess, this time of the rainbow) plus H – this time from hospital rather than husband.
18 First – Strike=fist capturing R from rook (in chess).
21 Foe – COD – cd – whoever would NOT say Friend when challenged ‘Friend or foe?’ by a sentry?

23 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 7 by Teazel”

  1. Well done on your first blog, Chris.

    The setter today is Teazel.

    At 1ac you switched your answer and explanation. Easily done as I know to my cost. It should be STEP = pets reversed. And 5dn doesn’t mention that it’s an anagram of ‘pit, Oh dear’.

    20 minutes for me (all parsed). APHRODITE and RETRENCH held me up.

    Bon voyage!

    Edited at 2014-03-18 07:35 am (UTC)

  2. Any easy way into this for a non-epaper person? (A URL perhaps) The relevant Times Online puzzle page has a broken link message.
      1. Thanks. I have saved the link in a Word document, so that I can “massage” the necessary puzzle out of it in future in the event of further technical problems.
  3. Thanks chrisw91. Some nicely phrased explanations.

    Enjoyable puzzle I thought. About 45 mins for me.

    Iris=flag?

    Edited at 2014-03-18 08:02 am (UTC)

    1. Flag/iris with reference to plants is an old crossword favourite. It comes up regularly.
  4. I was motoring (for me at least) and had all done except the NE in 20 minutes. Then came to a grinding halt not helped when I put in district for 4a. Finally saw 6d and then the anagram at 5d (should have seen it earlier). Was not able to parse 11a. LOI and COD 4a. Time, about 45 minutes.

    Apologies, I should have mentioned the excellent blog, thanks chrisw91.

    Edited at 2014-03-18 09:09 am (UTC)

  5. I found this rather chewy, spending a long time at the end on the GLOBALLY/APHRODITE cross, where I was expecting the latter to mean ‘dear’. The Wosehousian epithet pops up today not a million miles away from this puzzle! Very neat blog, Chris.
  6. Wee small hours solve for me, a tad over 10 minutes online not least because I still can’t type and solve clues at the same time. Harder than 13,254 from December ’72, so no evidence for dumbing down, then.
    DRAWBACK was a pretty clue, and I liked FOE. ASHTRAY held me up longest, as I couldn’t fit in A PROPER PINT.
    1. Fighting talk! Come and check out the small local breweries in Sheffield – Farmers, Abbeydale, Thornbridge, Kelham Island. Suggest you come along for a ‘gargle’. Come to think of it, I wonder why I’m leaving the country!
      1. I think in truth we could give you a run for your money, though you have to know which pubs can keep the stuff properly. There’s a decent place not too far from here which sells a range of Homerton brewers beers right up to a 25% (sic!) Gargleblaster. Perhaps we should compare notes over an extended period of serious research!
  7. Good blog Chris, thanks. Enjoy the trip.
    9½ minutes. Quite tricky, some of this.
    I liked 21dn, my last in. It reminded me of the “line on the left, one cross each” scene in Life of Brian.
  8. Well done Chris, glad you got your access sorted out!

    Around the half hour. Had to check Iris / Flag before fully understanding that one. Botany is blind spot for me.

    Finally got the “bally” after recalling time spent with my Great Uncle Roy, an archetypal Wodehousian chap who had (as far as I could ascertain as a young fellow) never read The Master – his stock line to me was “get your head out of that bally book and come and play cricket”. A good egg.

  9. 44 minutes, so I wasn’t exactly throwing the clues in. I wasn’t aware of BALLY=awful of IRIS=flag: thanks to Chris for sorting those out for me. I thought FOE was brilliant once the penny dropped.
      1. I don’t think it does correspond to ‘awful’ actually. It’s a euphemism for ‘bloody’ or ‘ruddy’ used as an intensifier. So you might say something is ‘bally awful’.
        1. Actually I don’t think it is an intensifier in this case: it’s used in the sense “accursed”. As in (to use nick_the_novice’s example above) “that bally book” = “that bloody book” = “that wretched book”.
  10. 6 mins with ASHTRAY my LOI. This one felt a little chewier than some of the ones we’ve had so far.
  11. Nice blog, chrisw91! Liked your explanation of Aphrodite. And needed your help to understand Globally. I made a bally awful attempt at 22ac then failed to notice the effect it had had on the end of gestation.
  12. 6:04 here, although that included a couple of minutes stuck on my last two, INFORMAL and FOE. Just went blank there for a bit, as I expected “relaxed” to be a verb rather than an adjective, and although I expected the sentry to cry “Halt! Who goes there?” I didn’t realize there were only two possible answers!
  13. 11m here though I misspelt the Indian so really a DNF. Good blog and explanations – thanks.

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