Times Quick Cryptic No 1292 by Joker

Author   plusjeremyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Introduction

Either this was very difficult or my head wasn’t in the game (we’re currently moving apartments, so that’s a very real possibility), but in any case this puzzle took me an unspeakable amount of time to finish. That being said, I really enjoyed the wordplay and the word choices!

Nobody took me up on my offer to go in depth on any clues last time, so I didn’t. I’m going back to the more elaborate clue parsings, but I confess I’m more interested in writing about the solving process. If anyone wants to suggest clues they got stuck on, I’ll be happy to amend this blog with some “deep dives”.

Solutions

Across

7 Prospect [of] girl being kept in by parents (8)
PANORAMA – NORA (“girl”) inside (“being kept in”) PA + MA (“parents”)
8 Little Annie, somewhat thin (4)
LEAN – LITTLE ANNIE (“Little Annie”) contains the answer (“somewhat”)
9 Stick with present company? (6)
COHERE – next to (“with”) HERE (“present”), CO. (“company”)
Or ‘with’ is a connector, and “present company?” is just a cheeky way of clueing CO HERE. I originally threw in ADHERE which screwed me up later.
10 Dull time with church ceremony (5)
TRITE – T (“time”) + (“with”) RITE (“church ceremony”)
Last one in. I was trying to convince myself the answer was TAIZÉ, a bland, meditative prayer I remembered doing from time to time as a church organist.
11 Champion runs out of speed (3)
ACE – R (“runs”) removed from (“out of”) RACE (“speed”)
12 Firmly reprimand / one walked all over? (6)
CARPET – double definition; the second, cutesy
14 Casual gran, heading off to meet 2, briefly (6)
RANDOM – GRAN (“gran”) without its first letter (“heading off”) + (“to meet”) DOME (“2”, Down) without its last letter (“briefly”)
2 Down is DOME.
16 Furious [when] swindled, Conservative departed (6)
HEATED – CHEATED (“swindled”), C (“Conservative”) removed (“departed”)
18 Run through kilometres in underground channel (6)
SKEWER – K (“kilometres”) inside (“in”) SEWER (“underground channel”)
Loved this clue.
19 Consider tailless rodent (3)
RAT – RATE (“consider”) without its last letter (“tailless”)
This one confounded me, hiding in plain sight. I thought for sure the answer was a four-letter rodent without its last letter.
20 Drive [from] south Sussex resort (5)
SHOVE – S (“south”) + HOVE (“Sussex resort”)
This one was a bit of a guess on my part, never having been to Hove or even having heard of it.
21 Chicken [given by] African charity (6)
AFRAID – AFR (“African”) + AID (“charity”)
Laughed out loud at the idea of this one!
23 Friend beginning to eat pasty (4)
PALE – PAL (“friend”) + first letter of (“beginning to”) EAT (“eat”)
24 Month very short time to locate small monkey (8)
MARMOSET – MAR (“month”) + MO (“very short time”) + SET (“to locate”)
Still trying to find a good sentence that passes the substitution test for ‘set = locate’… how about “Set in the hills of Vermont, […]” and “Located in the hills of Vermont, […]” ?

Down

1 Nobles at Runnymede out of place on a barge (8)
BARONAGE – anagram of (“out of place”) ON A BARGE (“on a barge”)
Some of the authors of the Magna Carta.
2 Rounded vault put back in mosque model (4)
DOME – the answer is reversed inside (“put back in”) MOSQUE MODEL (“mosque model”)
3 Warning at coming to end of grotto (6)
CAVEAT – AT (“at”) after (“coming to end of”) CAVE (“grotto”)
This one also fooled me into assuming ‘end of grotto’ meant O, even though I had almost all the letters in place.
4 Substance [that’s] less shiny? (6)
MATTER – double definition
‘Mat’ or ‘matt’ or ‘matte’ means ‘a non-glossy finish’.
5 Daughter leaves casual relationship [for] marriage? (8)
ALLIANCE – D (“daughter”) removed from (“leaves”) DALLIANCE (“casual relationship”)
Great clue. Might be a chestnut, but I’d never seen it before. The question mark in the definition means “for example”.
6 Food [for] passenger (4)
FARE – double definition
13 Gone wrong under direction — a cause of complaint (8)
PATHOGEN – GONE (“gone”) anagrammed (“wrong”) below (“under”) PATH (“direction”)
Not the first time I’ve seen ‘complaint’ referring to illness, but it’s a bit of an idiosyncratic usage.
15 Joke [with] Queen Mary, say (3-5)
ONE-LINER – double definition-ish
“Queen Mary, say” is “one liner”.
17 Very pleasant days dealing with girl (6)
DREAMY – D (“days”) + RE (“dealing with”) + AMY (“girl”)
I assume this AMY is the same as the one in BIGAMY.
18 Small delay employing many famous actors? (6)
STARRY – S (“small”) + TARRY (“delay”, as a verb)
A cheeky definition here: a sky with many stars is ‘starry’, so why shouldn’t a film with many stars be so as well? Loved this clue.
20 Carefully read front of spaghetti tin (4)
SCAN – first letter of (“front of”) SPAGHETTI (“spaghetti”) + CAN (“tin”)
This comes up every now and again and I have to remember how the usage of ‘scan’ has changed: we often use it as a synonym for ‘skim’ or ‘lightly peruse’.
22 Great success that’s central to patriotism (4)
RIOT – hidden inside (“that’s central to”) PATRIOTISM

45 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1292 by Joker”

  1. I set off quickly but got bogged down in the SE, mainly because I’d mistyped ONE LINER as OON ELINR. This had me puzzling over AFRICA and MARMOSET until I realised, so I went over my target, submitting at 12:05. I also overlooked RAT(e) on my first pass. For SET and LOCATE, I would suggest I’m going to set/locate my rockery at the bottom of the garden, A nice puzzle though. Thanks Joker and Jeremy.
  2. I started with ADHERE, too, but quickly went back and fixed it. Biffed MARMOSET, didn’t think about locate/set. I don’t see anything idiosyncratic about ‘complaint’. LOI HEATED: I was trying to get CON in there for too long. 7:02.
  3. That’s 2 days in a row that the puzzles have been very difficult, with today’s being even harder than yesterday’s. As I often remind the setters if you actually want newbies to keep at it at least give us a couple of puzzles a week that we can complete around 50% of. I think I got 10 clues after 90 minutes and could not be bothered after that. Even after looking at the solution it is dubious whether some of these clues are suitable for a QC.
    Still learning but it is nice to have some encouragement through success in completing a good percentage of the puzzle.

    Tim

    1. 1) You’re not necessarily reminding the setters of anything if you post to this blog; I don’t know if they, or how many of them, read it.
      2) On the other hand, if you specify a clue that you didn’t get, or that the blogger’s explanation didn’t work for you, you will get a response from the blogger; Jeremy has gone above and beyond in that respect (see his intro to this blog).

      Edited at 2019-02-20 06:24 am (UTC)

      1. Perhaps the setters do read these blogs and take more notice of the “I did this one in 2 mins 33 seconds” ers rather than what I think should be the real target of the QC. If I consistently finished in such quick times I would move on to something I considered more challenging.

    2. I felt the same way Tim. I admire the sub ten minute people but I found this incredibly difficult and very hard for a ‘quickie’.

      I really appreciate all the bloggers who give up their time, it definitely helps with the learning

    3. Far too difficult for a QC. Agree entirely that we newbies need the encouragement of being able to finish more often than not. There has been quite a run of DNFs for me lately. More than can be accounted for as me having an off day.
  4. I too was becalmed with 11 clues filled in for quite a while, most of them in the top half. I pondered MARMOSET and RIOT on the first pass but couldn’t parse. Not sure why I didn’t like riot for “great success” in retrospect. Two name trawls for random ladies held me up too, my vocabulary failing to find synonyms from the definitions for DREAMY and PANORAMA (I didn’t have the DRE but I did have the PA MA). I over-complicated 20d trying to fit SN into the answer, so that’s my COD for the fun of the misdirection. Not my favourite puzzle of what’s been a tough week here and in the 15×15. I reckon it’s the Times setters as much as me though because having got an unexpected free Telegraph yesterday I breezed through the crossword – so perhaps painful days like these doing some good.

    Edited at 2019-02-20 06:49 am (UTC)

  5. 9 minutes wih BARONAGE the only real hold up as I returned to it several times as the checkers fell into place. I didn’t twig that it was an anagram clue until I’d got to the answer by other means. I was pretty sure of the BARON bit because Runnymede immediately suggested the signing of Magna Carta (Did she die in vain?) but the only words I could think of to fill the available squares were BARONETS and BARONACY, neither of which were suitable. The arrival of the last two checkers forced the issue.

    Edited at 2019-02-20 06:54 am (UTC)

    1. Thank you for the reference to Hancock – brought a smile to my lips after a grim struggle with pathogen!

      Edited at 2019-02-20 05:53 pm (UTC)

  6. A tricky grid with so many first letters missing and no long answers which provide lots of checkers; coupled with Joker in a tricky mood,it all added up to a tough challenge. I had to solve almost every clue on its own so to speak.
    My last two were HEATED after PATHOGEN.
    Runymede immediately suggested Barons so the unknown Baronage went in easily. Marmoset was tricky.
    I was pleasantly surprised to finish in 14:15.
    David
  7. Too dificult for me, I gave up at 25 minutes with 7 or 8 answers left.
    I don’t like this type of grid, they make the puzzle artificially more difficult without input from the setter and detract from my enjoyment. If they’re not used in the 15×15, why are they allowed in the QC?

    Brian

  8. I could hardly solve any and am relieved to find others with the same experience. The relief is tempered by sympathy as I know how they feel!

    Diana

  9. Bamboozled by Joker again but I did like it. 19.16 after struggling with the last four or five for nearly half that. Like others I fixed on removing CON, thus making HEATED particularly hard (when it wasn’t), ALLIANCE was cleverly tricky, didn’t fully parse AFRAID and LOI was PATHOGEN where I nearly gave up until Mrs soj pointed out that ‘Gone wrong’ probably meant an anagram. She also supplied the necessary historical background for BARONAGE. My COD to the appropriate ONE-LINER.
  10. Very good work out, this one, for which I don’t have an accurate time as I was interrupted by an urgent trip to Sainsbugs under Mrs Rotter’s orders, amongst other things. I think the interruptions may have actually helped, as I was happy to take a break each time being bogged down at the time. On my return, I always seemed to find a new break through, but I imagine my total time was well over 20 minutes.
  11. I am looking at the grid after completion and I can’t see any obscure words or even biffs but I still needed 18 minutes to complete. I also had adHERE at first but I quickly corrected it when I failed to parse it. My last two in were 16a HEATED after an alphabet trawl and finally 13d PATHOGEN which fell easily once I had the final T checker in place. Sometimes when you have a little knowledge of a subject (My BSc is in Genetics) it seems to work against you. A very difficult but fair QC by Joker. Thanks Jeremy for the blog.
  12. ….tricky FARE, and I sympathise with those who’ve already posted. Even an experienced solver like myself won’t easily come up with BARONAGE – I saw “barons” easily enough, but couldn’t quite work it out.

    I missed my 5 minute target mainly due to not cracking my LOI for around a minute.

    FOI LEAN
    LOI AFRAID
    COD MATTER
    TIME 5:20

    1. I agree. Joker doesn’t make me laugh at all. Some of his ‘synonyms’ are ridiculous. I regard his clueing as unfair.
  15. Slow but sure until the final section in the NW. I had adhere and parsed it as adhere – stick made up form present AD (as opposed to BC) company – here. Well, no it doesn’t quite work, does it, but it was so close that it was firmly in so I was convinced 1dn couldn’t be an anagram – until no other avenues were left. So a bit of brain strain which I’m sure was good for me! 12.29.

    Edited at 2019-02-20 11:10 am (UTC)

  16. Another tricky one from Joker who certainly lives up to the name. A fitful wander round the (unhelpful) grid pattern for me with second and third circuits needed before finishing in a crushing 27 mins. I quite liked CAVEAT, ALLIANCE, and TRITE but BARONAGE and LITTLE ANNIE (doh) held me up. I finished with STARRY and AFRAID, the latter being a bit weak in my view. I hope the end of the week is kinder to us all. John M.

    Edited at 2019-02-20 11:29 am (UTC)

  17. I had to give in today and with loads left unanswered. In my opinion, there’s not a single GR here. They’re all fair and lots of them are really clever and very funny. I just couldn’t do it in the time available to me which is about 40 minutes. Thank goodness for Jeremy – you star! Never mind: every day, in every way, I get better and better (a la Emile Coue). Thanks, to Joker, too.
    1. Good heavens, Louisajaney, you’re much too young to remember Coueism! I mean, I’M too young to etc.!
  18. Well, another very challenging puzzle, I think. Managed to finish in 14:06, but didn’t enjoy it much. This kind of grid isn’t much help either. Thanks to Joker and to Jeremy for his excellent blog, as always.

    Adrian

  20. That was a real struggle, spread over 2 or 3 sessions. Not seen anything this hard for a very long time. To the new solvers, don’t give up. You won’t see many this hard.
    NOTE TO JEREMY. Suffering from a ‘complaint’ is a very common English expression for having some sort of illness, and not at all idiosyncratic this side of the pond.
    PlayUpPompey
    1. Thank you! I’ve seen it before but it still surprises me each time.

      Edited at 2019-02-20 02:08 pm (UTC)

  21. I wrote SKEWER in the space for 16A at first, which didn’t help and HEATED ended up being my LOI. I agree with others that this again seemed on the tricky side. I’d never thought of TRITE as meaning “dull”, thinking it more like vapid or superficial… but I know better now. I like the hidden LEAN. COD to PALE. 7:29.
  22. We join the found this difficult brigade, particularly around the se corner. Took a break for a gin and finished all except 13d, which in desperation we put in potholes. Another hard challenge after some easy ones last week which seem a distant memory!
  23. One of the least pleasant QCs for a long time, containing many of my pet hates (Clues referring to the solution of other clues, random names, random abbreviations, dodgy definitions) . Biffed 13d as potholes for my LOI, since they cause more complaints than pathogens in my neck of the woods, and by that point I didn’t really care any more.
  25. This is fast becomming one of ‘those’ weeks for QC puzzles, albeit I didn’t find Joker’s offering quite as difficult as yesterday’s from Felix. Most of my problems were in the bottom half of the grid where, to be honest, I thought Starry and Afraid were weak clues, and not in the same league as, say, Caveat and Cohere. However it was my loi Alliance that caused me the most difficulty, and pushed my time out beyond 35mins. Invariant
  26. We join the found this difficult brigade, particularly around the se corner. Took a break for a gin and finished all except 13d, which in desperation we put in potholes. Another hard challenge after some easy ones last week which seem a distant memory!
  27. I feel wrung out but satisfied after spouse and I finished this one. It took several sessions through the day but a great sense of achievement when finally crossing the line. Some brilliant clues. It’s why, as a relative newbie, I stick with it but my sympathies do lie with those who didn’t. On the first shot we only got four in!
  28. File me under “found it harder than usual and didn’t think it was as good as Joker puzzles normally are”

    Templar

  29. I’ve had some difficulties in the past, but this one sure beat me. Hardly got any correct and will study this blog to hopefully gain knowledge / understanding for future toughies. Not even a challenge as I never got going.
  30. This was a toughie but enjoyable all the same. I got very held up in the NW due to putting in ADHERE which meant that I discounted 1d being an anagram for way too long. I also found 1a difficult as it’s not a definition I’m a familiar with but I thoroughly enjoyed the word play. My only quibble was that I thought 21a was a poor clue due to the AFR part of it.
    Finally crossed the line in a very tardy 22.13 with LOI HEATED.
    Excellent blog as always Jeremy
  31. I didn’t take you up on the offer last time, Jeremy, as all seemed clear with the explanations you gave. Today was a real struggle, as others have said. My problem is often coming up with the right word to match the definition (eg 12a), my brain doesn’t work the right way unlike my better half who sees things instantly…

    The ones I struggled with today (quite a list) were 1d where I couldn’t work out what sort of clue it was, 13d ditto, 21a, 7a, 16a and 20a (because I couldn’t think of Sussex towns).

  32. I appreciate your comments and efforts to help. Some of the definitions are a bit loose!
    Rate and consider
  33. Very good work out, this one, for which I don’t have an accurate time as I was interrupted by an urgent trip to Sainsbugs under Mrs Rotter’s orders, amongst other things. I think the interruptions may have actually helped, as I was happy to take a break each time being bogged down at the time. On my return, I always seemed to find a new break through, but I imagine my total time was well over 20 minutes.
  34. Found this very hard – a couple of hours or so and missed out four – ALLIANCE, TRITE, FARE, SKEWER.
    A few obscure definitions- one liner? Why one? Why with? Riot a success? Passenger fare?
    Grid didn’t help!
    Nick
  35. Wouldn’t it be nice if The Times crossword editor read these comments and acted upon them. Some hopes!

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