Times Quick Cryptic 970 by Mara

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
This one took me 2 minutes over my target 10 because I had a complete blank on my last one in, 13ac, which on reflection now seems quite inexplicable. I thought this was mostly straightforward although the character from Greek legend may not be easy for some.

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]

Across
1 French produce MP embraced by whip (9)
CAMEMBERT – MEMBER (MP – Member of Parliament) contained [embraced] by CAT (whip – cat-o’-nine-tails)
6 Sweet potato, no starter (3)
PUD – {s}PUD (potato) [no starter]. ‘Pud’ short for ‘pudding’ aka ‘afters’ or, as here, the very non-U ‘sweet’.
8 Odd variety, by the way (7)
STRANGE – ST (way – street), RANGE (variety)
9 Highest-ranked group in personnel I tested (5)
ELITE – Hidden in {personn}EL I TE{sted}
10 I put shampoo liberally around head of poodle — muddy animal? (12)
HIPPOPOTAMUS – Anagram [liberally] of I PUT SHAMPOO containing [around] P{oodle} [head]. I’m not sure that the hippo was particularly associated in peoples’ minds with mud before this song came out, but it surely has been ever since. It’s generally overlooked that it was written by Flanders & Swann for the opera singer, Ian Wallace, who made the first commercial recording and popularised it, but in my opinion the F&S recording as performed in their revue ‘At The Drop Of A Hat’ has stood the test of time far better and still sounds great.
12 Female relative — male different (6)
MOTHER – M (male), OTHER (different)
13 Bill after Elizabeth (6)
POSTER – POST (after), ER (Elizabeth – HMQ). Why did I find this so hard!
16 Kick the telly — might it shock the children? (4-2-3-3)
JACK-IN-THE-BOX – JACK-IN (kick – two slang expressions for ‘give up’), THE, BOX (telly)
19 Taken to court, last of source material (5)
SUEDE – SUED (taken to court), {sourc}E [last]
20 31 days of course initially has to be right (7)
OCTOBER – O{f} + C{ourse} [initially], TO, BE, R (right)
22 Some say a king is bovine (3)
YAK – Hidden in [some] {sa}Y A K{ing}
23 Matter resolved with hospital department: medical care (9)
TREATMENT – Anagram [resolved] of MATTER, ENT (hospital department – Ear Nose & Throat)

Down
1 Actors / thrown (4)
CAST – Two meanings
2 Red tram carrying half a dozen uphill (7)
MARXIST – TRAM containing SIX (half a dozen] all reversed [uphill]. Giving us ‘tram’ in the clue instead of, say, ‘vehicle’ reems remarkably generous of the setter, even for a Quickie.
3 Soldiers from the platoon each finishing (3)
MEN – {fro}M + {th}E + {platoo}N [each finishing]
4 Former lover abandoned, not entirely immune (6)
EXEMPT – EX (former lover), EMPT{y} (abandoned) [not entirely]
5 Number new, not yet developed (6-3)
TWENTY-ONE – Anagram [developed] of NEW NOT YET
6 Proper to accommodate a Trojan king (5)
PRIAM – PRIM (proper) containing [to accommodate] A. This King of Troy at the time of the Trojan war may not be known to all but the answer should be accessible from wordplay and checkers.
7 One putting clothes on / sideboard (7)
DRESSER – Two meanings
11 Identification carried by current leader (9)
PRESIDENT – ID (identification) contained [carried] by PRESENT (current)
12 A joke in my dignified appearance (7)
MAJESTY – A + JEST (joke) in MY
14 Difficulty beginning to trace foreign currency (7)
TROUBLE – T{race} [beginning], ROUBLE (foreign currency)
15 In moat he swims (2,4)
AT HOME – Anagram [swims] of MOAT HE
17 Lip — part of the face (5)
CHEEK – Two meanings
18 Club welcoming rogue at first, ill-mannered child (4)
BRAT – BAT (club) containing [welcoming] R{ogue} [at first]. Those of a pedantic disposition may argue that a club is not a bat and/or vice versa but I don’t intend to get into that again!
21 Nip  / nipper! (3)
TOT – Two meanings – small alcoholic drink / small child

18 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 970 by Mara”

  1. PRIAM was a gimme, as I know of only one Trojan king; if I hadn’t, I might have been seriously slowed down. DNK JACK-IN, so I didn’t get the clue, biffing from the enumeration mostly. The hippo is the deadliest animal in Africa, at least in terms of human body counts. 5:17.
    1. Discounting the ever present mosquito of course. Very similar time to Kevin (5’20”) but held up trying to parse the obvious 1a before writing it in. I wanted there to be an anagram in there for some reason. COD definitely goes to 13a which raised a chuckle.
  2. 9:51 here. Without planning to, I worked clockwise completing the quadrants starting in NE and ending up in the NW where cryptic standard assumptions at 2dn (VI – or IV upwards) and 1ac (MP) held me up until LOI 4dn. Whilst it seems a little familiar from another crossword at some time, cod to 16ac.
  3. 22 minutes.
    Had difficulty parsing men, strangely!

    LOI Suede.
    Liked at home poster, and yak but COD to hippo. Nice surface.

  4. 21:40 just before take off on a long haul. I’ll give the 15×15 a shot today.

    COd and LOI 2d MARXIST.

  5. Started with CAST, then was sure that 1a would be CAMEMBERT, but couldn’t parse it until I’d written it in, at which point it jumped out at me. 2d took longer than it should’ve as I wrestled with an upside down VI to no avail. No problem with the king, as he’s the only one I know too. Took a minute to see the parsing of OCTOBER. LOI was POSTER which again took a while to see, but raised a smile. A fun puzzle. Thanks Mara and Jack. 8:16.
  6. A fairly gentle offering from Mara. If I had had the courage to enter Camembert straight away, I would have finished a lot quicker than 28 mins, but I couldn’t see the parsing so I held off until 3 and 5d made it obvious. Even then, I needed an alphabet trawl for loi 4d – it’s amazing how turning a word through 90° causes so much difficulty. Invariant
  7. dare I say, a little too easy even for a learner!
    last Thu completely threw me and I didn’t get chance to look at Fri, but if anything like this, perhaps I should!
    I enjoyed suede, at home and poster.
    COD 19a, suede.
    LOI 16a, jack …
    1. No, don’t say that – it’s never too easy for this learner! DNF – stuck on 4 answers others identified as tricky but I still almost never complete a puzzle in one sitting. Still really enjoying the challenge though and still finding the blog invaluable for making sense of everything!
  8. A rare sub-jackkt time that will hopefully keep me warm all week while I nurse the man flu I picked up over the weekend.

    2d does seem generous but like others I started off trying to find a 5-letter synonym for tram, into which I could insert IV to find a shade of red. 1a was also cleverly misleading, with CHAMPAGNE and CHAMPIGNY coming to mind before being dismissed.

    6a seems to be becoming a bit of a chestnut, but that didn’t stop me trying to parse YAM!

    COD and LOI 16a.

    Thanks for the blog Jack.

  10. Being a pen and paper on the train person I can’t join in the “5 minutes 27.816534 seconds” willy-waving but that went in pretty fast. Either Mara was in generous Monday mood or the fact that I was on a later train with coffee inside me improves my speed (maybe both).

    Encouraged by this I moved onto the Big Boy crossword and slowly limped to getting 25% of it done … one day …

    SUEDE made me chuckle and gets COD from me.

    Templar

    1. Such opportunities to wave the said item are few and far between, please don’t deny us our small pleasures, we mean no harm.
      1. 🙂 Quite! After all the site is actually called Times for the Times, and the times provided do help Starstuck to produce his SNITCH for the 15×15 puzzle. It all helps to assess one’s progress. Having said that, the point of doing the puzzles is to enjoy them, not to be as fast as possible, unless that’s your enjoyment too.
  11. After struggling with the grown-up crosswords over the weekend, returning to the QC is sometimes light relief.
    Today was a case in point. Hardly any hold-ups and I finished with 21d.
    An enjoyable puzzle. COD to 2d. Took me 13 minutes. David
  12. I didn’t have time to buy a newspaper today so had to resort to electronic solving which I find much harder for some reason. In spite of that I managed to complete in 16.02 so it must have been at the gentler end of the spectrum. I had to leave the NW until the end as I had similar problems parsing 1a and working out LOI 2d.
    Thanks for the blog

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