Times Quick Cryptic No 1028 by Joker

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Very nice puzzle from Joker. I came in a notch under my target ten but it felt harder than that when solving and a few were bunged in unparsed. Lots of good clues – I particularly liked the update to the curate’s egg at 5d, the bad bridge designer at 11d, and the double definition at 11ac. The two long clues at the top and bottom also both worked very well, and these, along with that trickier 11ac/d crosser, rather directed the flow of things. Much enjoyed – many thanks to Joker!

Across
1 Getting on with building somewhere to stay (8,5)
BOARDING HOUSE – BOARDING (getting on [a plane, etc.]) with HOUSE (building)
8 Polluting car stops working with just half of fuel (6)
DIESEL – DIES (stops working) with EL (half of fuEL). I suppose this definition would have raised eyebrows a couple of decades ago.
9 Scoop small and humble dwelling (6)
SHOVEL – S(mall) HOVEL (humble dwelling)
10 Short tum-tum for percussion instrument (4)
BELL – BELLY= tummy = tum-tum, “short” the final letter.
11 General prevalence of money (8)
CURRENCY – double definition, and a very nice one.
12 Easy to understand cold king in Shakespeare play (5)
CLEAR – C(old) LEAR (king in Shakespeare play)
13 Political organisation to some extent loses the left (5)
PARTY – PARTLY (to some extent) loses the L(eft)
15 Ran quickly — grabbing donkey under constant strain (8)
HARASSED – HARED (ran quickly) grabbing ass (donkey)
17 Some comedian backed protest (4)
DEMO – “some” of the letters in cOMEDian “backed”
19 Part of the eye that’s concerning can start to atrophy (6)
RETINA – RE (concerning) TIN (can), start to A(trophy). Tin for Can is a type of misnomer, which cropped up in a discussion in the 15x puzzle last week. Wiki’s entry is worth a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnomer
20 Intelligent British like wet weather (6)
BRAINY – B(ritish) RAINY( wet weather)
21 Act of putting over excellent situation (13)
SUPERPOSITION – SUPER (excellent) POSITION (situation). The curiouser and curiouser world of nature, eh? In quantum physics, superposition describes how a particle exists in many places and in different states at the same time until it is observed, when it immediately becomes sharply defined – Schrödinger thought this idea ridiculous, hence his absurdist idea of a cat being both dead and alive in a box until you open it up and look. What is known is that superposition happens, it’s completely crazy, and we don’t know really have a clue what that’s telling us about the nature of reality.
Down
2 Exist to chase round girl? (5)
OLIVE –  LIVE (exist) to chase/come after O (round)
3 Decide to tackle a crossword a second time? (7)
RESOLVE – or re-solving a crossword.
4 Unlucky Jill has lost Jack (3)
ILL – Jill loses J(ack)
5 Snail, perhaps, having good parts when cooked (9)
GASTROPOD – anagram (cooked) of GOOD PARTS.
6 A person going after Australian sea air (5)
OZONE – ONE (a person) going after OZ (Australian). Using ozone (O3) to describe fresh air (where oxygen is O2) is another misnomer. As the OED says, ozone was “formerly supposed to have a tonic effect and was erroneously believed to be present in fresh air”.
7 Reorganisation of SkyTech Limited (7)
SKETCHY – anagram (reorganisation) of SKYTECH
11 Pack instrument for one with bad designs for bridge? (9)
CARDSHARP – CARDS (pack) HARP (instrument). “Bridge” is the card game in the definition, and the thing you cross in the surface reading..
12 Stately home abroad serving up two teas and ultimate in tiramisu (7)
CHATEAU – The two teas are CHA and, er, TEA, and then the ultimate letter in tiramisU.
14 Incandescent tirade about squandered aid (7)
RADIANT – RANT (tirade) going about an anagram (squandered) of AID.
16 Quick-moving US soldier gets in beer (5)
AGILE – GI (US soldier) goes in ALE (beer)
18 Run after chap for fruit (5)
MANGO – GO (run) after MAN (chap)
20 Transport is mostly broken (3)
BUS – BUSt (broken, mostly)

22 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1028 by Joker”

  1. 9 minutes, slight delayed at the end by the unknown SUPERPOSITION. It has come up only once before in TftT history (in 2014) and as such, might stretching things a bit for a QC. But it’s fairly clued with both components of the word being well-known in their own right, so on balance I don’t think there are any justifiable grounds for complaint. Re 8ac, I’m certainly not a paid-up member of the green movement but I think all cars pollute, even the electric ones which just shift pollution elswehere.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 07:24 am (UTC)

    1. Not so about electric cars
      If the electricity is generated from coal then it produces much less CO2 due to being more efficient, and almost no NOx or SOx which are the dangerous pollutants
      If from gas then as above but even more so
      If from renewables then no pollution at all
      Also power stations emit their pollution high up and well away from city centres
      1. Thanks John, That’s exactly what I had in mind, but I left it as I avoid debating with anons.
  2. I had a bit of trouble with the two long acrosses, and had to wait a while for checkers to arrive. In fact my first across was CLEAR. I don’t recall the discussion of ‘tin’, and I’m not going to look for it, but ‘tin’ means (among other things) ‘can’; the absence of tin in tin cans is neither here nor there. I don’t think I’ve come across ‘diesel’ as referring to a car; but then there’s lots of stuff I haven’t come across. 5:53.
    1. Of course tin for can is in no way incorrect – the wiki link was interesting in that it is an unusual description, and differs from the OED’s more usual sense of “wrong name” or “misapplied term”. On reflection, it’s very possible that someone has gone to considerable effort to make the Wikipedia entry of misnomer a misnomer!
  3. Disaster. So had to do it on my phone, which is a very odd experience if you aren’t used to it. You can’t chew your phone while you think about an anagram, for example.

    Anyway. On the easy side of medium for me. Witty puzzle, thanks Joker. I particularly liked the two teas in CHATEAU.

    LOI was SUPERPOSITION.

    Templar

  4. 22 minutes, last three were shovel and the two long crossers cardsharp and superposition.

    I didn’t understand “Act of putting over” but the wordplay was pretty clear.

    Didn’t really like 10a Bell. Short tum-tum for percussion instrument.
    Alternative is:
    Call Ahab lemminglike? willful Jezebel ultimately.

    COD agile or ill.

    Edited at 2018-02-15 09:17 am (UTC)

  5. On target again. CoD and WoD SUPERPOSITION – it’s going to be fun trying to slip that into today’s conversations.

    The word and it’s quantum meaning reminds me of the famous old graffito – ‘Hiesenberg Rules – I think’.

  6. I found this very hard and frankly thought 11 d a poor clue and don’t understand the connection. Easily the hardest of the week.
  7. I take my hat off to anyone who found this easy. I don’t think I would ever have worked out 11d just from the clue, as I needed all the crossers before the penny finally dropped. I’m also not convinced that Joker was thinking about quantum mechanics with 21ac, but I enjoyed the subtle dig at Heisenberg, Roly, in your explanation. . .😋 Just over 40mins, so definitely on the harder side of average for me. Invariant
  9. Normally I am on Joker’s wavelength but today I got bogged down in the SW.
    15a 19a and 11d were the problems.
    For 19a I became convinced that LID was in the middle of the word. 11d was a mystery to me for a long while; eventually I persevered with the Cards … theory and I cracked it. And in 15a I was working on RACED not Hared for a long time.
    10 minutes to do the first three quarters and longer to complete. A tough Joker today I thought. David
  10. about Medium to Hard for me and over an hour in total duration too.

    LOI: OLIVE (there are so many different ways to include O in a crossword that I’m losing track!).
    COD: CHATEAU (loved the “two teas”).

    I agree ref. 11a/d, quite tough and it’s only once I solved these that the remainder slotted in quite quickly.

  11. I came to a grinding halt after 16 minutes with 11a, 11d and LOI 21a still remaining. I had to put the puzzle down for a couple of hours and then saw 11a, which opened up the other 2. It felt like Joker gave me a proper workout today.
    Thanks for the blog
  12. superposing something on top of something else is an ordinary word, not necessarily a quantum physics word. It means putting (imposing) something on top of something else, in Photos or films etc.
  13. Hello, I am a long time lurker and I have been doing the quick cryptic since the start.

    Although I didn’t finish the crossword, I enjoyed deciphering each clue piece by piece.

    I thought that the skill and knowledge gap between the Quick Cryptic and the main cryptic weren’t that small, but after starting to try the 15×15 I realised that the gap is huge.

    I also thank the setters for compiling the crosswords, the editor for trying to make sure that they are fair and the bloggers for blogging the parsing of each clue.

    1. Hi drglds, and welcome. Yes it is a big jump, but every now and again the 15×15 is set at a more approachable level – I can usually tell after 15 mins or so if it’s worth persevering. Invariant
      1. Yes welcome drglds. There’s a slightly different style to the 15x that takes a bit of getting used to if you’ve only been used to the QC. There’s also a strange thing where a clue always looks very much harder when you parse it backwards from the answer, so do take encouragement from that! Monday and Tuesday of this week are towards the easy end and might be worth a shot. Good luck and keep posting.
    2. Welcome, drglds, and thanks for your contribution. Hope to hear from you regularly now that you have finally de-lurked!
  14. I did this in 11:10 today, but unfortunately didn’t notice that when I typed my LOI, CARDSHARP, I accidentally typed CARD SHARD and overwrote the P in SUPERPOSITION. I suppose it was only to be expected after sitting up til 5am knocking back G&Ts with my daughter to celebrate our joint birthday (her 40th). I did feel as though I was on a different planet when I eventually surfaced at about noon! I also happen to think that modern properly adjusted diesels aren’t quite the villains they’re made out to be if you consider their entire life cycle. Thanks Joker and Roly.

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