Times Quick Cryptic No 1048 by Pedro

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
This is the first puzzle I’ve blogged from Pedro, and a lovely one it was too. I thought some of the surface readings were excellent, adding a rich extra layer to the answer. I particularly liked 4ac, and had a good chuckle at 11ac, but also enjoyed the forelock-tugging lord at 12ac, the struggling ship at 22ac, and the dodgy dancer at 14d. Lots of other good things going on as well. It took me slightly over my target, coming home a bit shy of 11 minutes, with my main hold-ups being in the far East (7d and 16d, and their crossers, 4ac and 19ac). Thoroughly enjoyable – many thanks to Pedro!

Across
1 Say no to junk (6)
REFUSE – double definition.
4 Neckwear twisted after suppressing a disturbance (6)
FRACAS – SCARF (neckwear) – twist/reverse it, contain/suppress an A.
8 Difficult individual to wake? Not entirely (7)
ONEROUS – ONE (individual) to ROUSe (wake – not entirely: cut the last letter)
10 Rubbish used to be placed next to note (5)
WASTE – WAS (used to be) placed next to TE (note, also spelt ti)
11 Strip to highlight one’s naked glory, primarily (5)
THONG – First letters of the five words preceding “primarily”.
12 Me, a Lord, excited in peer’s estate (7)
EARLDOM – anagram (excited) of ME A LORD. You could take “estate” to refer to the earl’s position/rank, or to the actual land.
13 Fool is amusing or funny (9)
IGNORAMUS – anagram (funny) of AMUSING OR
17 Astronomical phenomenon in bits of film shown in middle of week (7)
ECLIPSE – CLIPS (bits of film) shown in EE (middle of wEEk)
19 Mere husband taken in by prophet (5)
SHEER – H(usband) taken in by SEER (prophet): sheer = mere = pure.
20 Failure, involving new argument (3-2)
RUN-IN – RUIN (failure) involving/including N(ew)
21 Security is regressive in storehouse (7)
DEPOSIT –  SI (backwards/regressive “is”) in DEPOT (storehouse).
22 Ship entering sound exhibiting difficulty (6)
HASSLE – SS (SteamShip) enters HALE (sound/well)
23 Larder with unknown level (6)
STOREY – STORE (larder) with Y (maths unknown)

Down
1 Marsupials circling stone to find places to rest (6)
ROOSTS – ROOS (marsupials) circling ST (stone)
2 Deafen sailors at sea in North Atlantic location (6,7)
FAEROE ISLANDS – anagram (at sea – as in “all at sea”) of DEAFEN SAILORS
3 Firearm that’s initially carried by Japanese VIP (7)
SHOTGUN – T (That’s, initially) carried/held by SHOGUN (Japanese VIP). Broadly synonymous with “tycoon”, the shogun was the hereditary military commander of feudal Japan, and the de facto ruler of the country, from 1185 until feudalism was abolished in 1867.
5 Apparently argumentative boatman? (5)
ROWER – Cryptic definition, with a pun on arguing/rowing.
6 Princesses had unusual source of funds (4,9)
CASH DISPENSER – anagram (unusual) of PRINCESSES HAD
7 Erotic extremes in story about sporty group (6)
STEAMY – SY (extremes in StorY) going around TEAM (sporty group). I was toying with something like E(CE)LAT for a sporty group.
9 Lead that woman with a daughter to eat fruit (9)
SPEARHEAD – SHE (that woman) with A D(aughter) to eat PEAR (fruit)
14 Stop him dancing in part of rock arena (4,3)
MOSH PIT – anagram (dancing) of STOP HIM. Good image of sweat flying from a wet, tousled mane a-leaping, to a sufficiently antisocial level to necessitate immediate cessation.
15 Expensive getting only half of this in shortage (6)
DEARTH – DEAR (expensive) getting only half of THis
16 Fairly unimportant to bridge river (6)
PRETTY – PETTY (unimportant) to bridge R(iver)
18 Review body, perhaps, to criticise closures of theatre and hospital (5)
PANEL – PAN (criticise) “closures” of theatrE and hospitaL.

19 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1048 by Pedro”

  1. 12 minutes, so my run of missed 10-minute targets continues and now stands at 3 consecutive days. To some extent today was self-inflicted as I wrote the answer to 1dn (my First One In) at 1ac and lost time rubbing it out, and then compounded this by writing FAROE ISLA at 2dn before realising my answer would not fill the squares available and use up all the anagrist, so I had to rethink the spelling. More rubbing out followed and more time was lost.

    I have never heard the term MOSH PIT before, so I needed to write down the anagrist and find out what was left over once PIT and the M-checker had been removed. There wasn’t really more than one option, but it didn’t help that the connection between SHEER and ‘mere’ hadn’t leapt out at me so I had been missing the second checked letter.

    FRACAS also held me up a bit and in the event it was my Last One In.

    Edited at 2018-03-15 06:04 am (UTC)

  2. Phew, that was tough but satisfying. With lots of “rubbish” clues (waste, refuge). 37 minutes.

    FOI 18d, searched around the grid to get going.

    But once started, I slowly worked my way around until LOI pretty.

    Couldn’t see sheer = mere.

    So many contenders for COD:
    Faroe (or Faeroe) Islands, eclipse, cash dispenser (seen before I think), mosh pit, fracas and spearhead.

    Edited at 2018-03-15 06:55 am (UTC)

  3. Never been to a MOSH PIT [shudder], but knew the term. I did the same as Jack with the islands, forgetting how to spell them. Biffed FRACAS. 5:51.
  4. Think there should be an allusion to the fact that this is not the normal spelling attributed to the Faroe Islands ?
  5. No problems today, finishing in a spritely 14 minutes. I also had to double check the spelling of 2d, it took a while to spot the parsing of 4a and spent a couple of minutes thinking that the definition in 7d was ‘sporty group’. LOI 9d and 14d just takes my vote for COD.
    Thanks for the blog
  6. I agree with the comment about the islands, it is not the normal spelling. Another very tough puzzle that is 2 so far this week that I could not come close to solving.
  7. Never heard of a MOSH PIT, but it doesn’t sound like a pleasant place to be! Worked it out from crossers and fodder. This puzzle took me much longer than usual. Tricky stuff. FOI REFUSE, LOI STEAMY. Unusual spelling for FAROE ISLANDS! 14:06. Thanks Pedro and Roly.
  8. I found this one difficult with more biffing and dictionary-bashing than usual, leading to 15 minutes over my 30 min target. My LOI was ‘Pretty’, and I spent ages trying to fit ‘Shepherd’ (Shepeard?) into 9D

    Brian

    Edited at 2018-03-15 11:46 am (UTC)

  9. I do sympathize with a non-finisher. I think this may be the hardest puzzle I have ever completed, and it took a full hour instead of around 25 minutes. I spent ages trying to turn source of funds into princesses instead of vice versa!
    I was brilliantly misled by 13ac. I am relieved to find I am not too ignorant in my normal spelling of the Faroes. DM
  10. I thought this was tougher than recent puzzles. The spelling of Faroe Islands as Faereo put me off for a long time as I struggled to find references to that spelling browsing the internet. Found one in the end obviously. Thong/Strip and Sheer/Mere were hard I thought and Ruin for Failure although obvious doesn’t seem a good fit to me. Also ‘her’ is a better fit for ‘that woman’ surely, as in ‘which woman was that?’ To which the answer might be ‘her, in the red dress’; not ‘she, in the red dress’. Probably reading it wrong!
    1. Yeah, they cunningly hid the alternate spelling in the first line of the Wikipedia page for the islands. In bold.
  11. I’m another who struggled with this. In fact I needed a second sitting before completing the SE corner. I am relieved to say that I have never heard of a mosh pit, but regret that a few more brain cells have been used up on a piece of trivia. Good job I don’t live in Tunbridge Wells or Pedro would be getting two bits of 3d. . . Even setting aside 14d, I thought this was quite a testing QC. Invariant
  12. Probably the hardest one I have completed, although I did manage to complete it eventually. If you have to use Wikipedia as a reference for a spelling you are pretty desperate – I have never seen this spelling, and can’t find any other reference to it. I think sheer/ mere is highly tenuous, and for 4ac I spent ages trying to take an a out rather than put one in, as to me suppress means prevent. When I see reports of police suppressing a riot in future I will assume they are starting an additional one!
  13. I may be reading to much into 6d princesses di,s as in princess Di and Spenser her maiden name
    Maybe I should get out more often!
  14. Never been in a mosh pit? You’ve never lived.
    I was in one before a concert started and there was a young lady near me on crutches. Obviously she was never going to last five minutes.
    However, much to everyone’s surprise, when the band arrived she raised her crutches to the horizontal and began spinning round, clearing a neat circle around her, and nearly severing a couple of necks.
    As for me, well I knew the experience would come in useful one day.

    Edited at 2018-03-15 07:43 pm (UTC)

  15. Managed to get a round of golf today on a rather wet golf course, but 18 holes open nevertheless.
    This was a relatively tough puzzle I thought; took me 23 minutes in my rather tired state and LOI was 9d which I had guessed but could not parse for a while.
    Some excellent clues and surfaces. COD to 14d for getting such a term into a crossword. Is this a first?
    David

  16. Like our blogger, I thought this was rather good and was surprised to find some found it quite hard. Yes, it took me a bit longer than average, but not by a lot. Like others, I had a MER at the spelling at 2d, but we had to make use of all the letters of the anagrist, didn’t we? The slightly naughty 11a my favourite. Thanks Pedro and Rolytoly.

    Edited at 2018-03-15 09:45 pm (UTC)

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