Times Quick Cryptic No 1469 by Jalna

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

My first Jalna Quick Crossword to blog today, and just the second from this new setter after his/her debut on 20th August. Many found that one tough and there are a few tricky clues here today, I think, including one (23A) that I have difficulty in getting to work. But there are some lovely surfaces, clever misdirections and neat wordplay. I had several candidates for Clue Of the Day, but I vote for 7A as the pick of the bunch. Thank-you Jalna. I was surprised to find I got through this in a well-under-average 4:46. How did everyone else get on?

Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 After party, knock back drinks, dance! (3-1-3)
DOS-A-DOS – DO (party) with SODAS (drinks) reversed [knock back] -> SADOS. I had vaguely heard of this but didn’t know it is a dance move. The phrase also, I learnt, refers to a type of book-binding, that turns two books into one.
5 Put in order? That’s kind! (4)
SORT – Double definition. My first thought for this was TYPE, with the first definition as a verb, but I luckily remained unconvinced and didn’t bung it in.
7 Those at the forefront of satire often laugh at readers of The Sun (5)
SOLAR – A lovely surface and nice misdirection with the definition. It is the initial letters [those at the forefront] of Satire Often Laugh At Readers. Nice!
8 End of privet edged and pruned (7)
TRIMMED – [End of] priveT RIMMED (edged). As one will have done with ones privet hedge to keep it neat.
10 Regret being endlessly cruel (3)
RUE – cRUEl without it’s outer letters [endlessly].
11 Winners cash in: MP furious about nothing (9)
CHAMPIONS – (cash in MP)* [furious] [about] O (nothing). A crossword convention to remember… the letter O looks like a number zero, 0.
13 Hit book has extraordinary editor (6)
BASHED – Another neat misdirection. We need to look for ‘hit’ the past participle. B (book) (has)* [extraordinary] ED (editor).
14 Exactly where drivers go? (2,1,3)
TO A TEE – Double definition, second cryptic. When you are going to be playing your next golf shot with a driver, that’s where you will be heading.
17 Give somebody a ring, then elope in disguise (9)
TELEPHONE – (then elope)* [in disguise]… to Gretna Green, perhaps?
19 Staff boy (3)
ROD – Double definition.
20 Country exchange named before return of kroner (7)
DENMARK – [exchange] (named)* [before] [return of] KR (kroner) -> RK. Kroner, of course, being the currency of the said country. Neat.
22 It’s an odd discolouration (5)
STAIN – (it’s an)* [odd].
23 Hammer time! (4)
BEAT – Yet another double definition, but I’m not quite convinced by this one. Yes you beat time in music and I suppose a beat is the duration, i.e. time of a pulse. Have I missed something?
24 Pointers after end of construction contracts (7)
NARROWS – ARROWS (pointers) [after] last letter of [end of] constructioN. We had the reverse of this in a QC I blogged recently.
Down
1 Delivered small eulogy after senior cop died (11)
DISTRIBUTED – This takes a bit of assembling.. Put S (small) TRIBUTE (eulogy) [after] DI (Detective Inspector; senior cop) and add D (died).
2 What are said to be places for wine merchants (7)
SELLERS – This sounds like [what are said to be] CELLARS (places for wine).
3 Tattered hat priced at a very low cost (4,5)
DIRT CHEAP – [Tattered] (hat priced)*.
4 GPS device oddly starts getting vehicle to reverse (6)
SATNAV – Alternate letters of [oddly] StArTs with VAN (vehicle) [getting… to reverse] -> NAV.
5 Extremely sick, I go downhill fast (3)
SKI – Another great surface. Take the outside letters of [extremely] SicK and add I.
6 Young lover runs rings around me (5)
ROMEO – R (runs) and O O (rings) [around] ME. Another O convention to remember.. O for ring as that is what the letter looks like.
9 Who form lines and swoop down on insects (11)
DESCENDANTS – A bit of a tricky definition, I think, but the wordplay is clear. DESCEND (swoop down) [on] ANTS (insects).
12 Declare love and, primarily, respect for a teacher (9)
PROFESSOR – PROFESS (declare)  O (love; zero, as in 11A) and first letter of [primarily] Respect.
15 Strong wind ripped a door’s top half (7)
TORNADO – TORN (ripped) A and the first two letters of [top half, writing it downwards) DOor.
16 Can your relatives pay a quick visit? (4,2)
LOOK IN – LOO (can; both informal terms for a toilet in UK and US respectively) KIN (your relatives). Another lovely clue.
18 Fine fabric used to sheathe knight’s weapon (5)
LANCE – LACE (fine fabric) outside [used to sheather] N (knight, in chess notation).
21 Bacon pieces, for example, in quiche with no topping (3)
ART – Francis Bacon‘s pieces would be of his ART derived by removing the first letter [no topping] of tART (quiche).

38 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1469 by Jalna”

  1. A slowish end to a slow week. Wondered about BEAT a bit. Do-si-do is derived from DOS-A-DOS, and that actually helped me here. John, at 16d the underline should include ‘pay’. 7:07.
  2. 18 minutes and another ‘red’ solve to complete what has been a disastrous week of QCs for me with not a single ‘green’ to signify a 10-minute target achieved. I’m not sure that has ever happened to me before.

    There wasn’t anything particularly difficult here, but it just took me a long time to sort it all out. I marked up DOS-A-DOS as the trickiest, mainly because I’d not heard of it, although I did know DO-SI-DO as a move in American square-dancing and that complicated the issue rather than helping it.

    Re 23ac we’ve had ‘time = BEAT’ before, probably in a 15×15, and I concluded then as now that the setter had confused ‘time’ aka ‘tempo’ with ‘rhythm’ which in my book are two different features in music, however there could be another context that I haven’t thought of and somebody else might point out.

    Edited at 2019-10-25 04:45 am (UTC)

  3. 14 mins so fast for me. Especially as completed with annoying kids tv in the background.

    Held up by beat which required a short alphabet search.
    Dnk dos a dos.
    Liked bashed, art, and telephone
    Cod beat

  4. Well I was quicker than yesterday but it still took me about 20 minutes to get to my LOI BEAT.That required a long alphabet search followed by a question to self-does this work? I now think BEAT is fine, but tricky.
    Dos a Dos was constructed and not known. At 18d I biffed LINEN until I tried to parse it; that was 2LOI. 22:12 in the end.
    Quite a tricky puzzle overall. It took me a while to adjust to the setter’s style.
    Re the golf clue I immediately thought of TEE as the wooden thing (which doesn’t fit the clue) and only later thought of the area.
    David
  5. 19:36, so just under my target for the first time in a few week and I thought the surfaces and mis-direction were excellent. My last three were the dance which I didn’t know, ART and BEAT.
    An excellent QC, my only queries were whether ”time’ could be ‘beat’ and how Francis Bacon’s work could be considered as art, but thats just in my opinion.
    Thanks to setter and blogger, very enjoyable all round.

    Brian

  7. the beat of the music suggests time to me so for me it was straight in. I tend to think of can as prison in US speak rather than loo ( john??)
      1. Thanks – I think I might have heard it. I wonder how widespread it is. I’m not necessarily saying this is the case here, but I do find that some setters court controversy by opting for an obscure use, when for a quickie it’s often a bit OTT.
        1. ‘John’ for me was the standard reference to the loo, until, ages ago, within the space of a couple of months I made the acquaintance of three different Johns, and felt obliged to drop the term in favor of ‘can’.
          2. Understandable – I’m English and my first name is Gerald but as a lad the word Gerry or Jerry meant either a German (potentially a Nazi) or an American chamber pot so I never allowed anyone to call it me twice 🙂
  8. Really enjoyed this puzzle. Thought I might be on for a pb after getting most of it done in about 13 minutes, but the last few took me over. Still a very good time for me at 19:48. Only my third ever sub-20 solve so I’m pleased with that, especially when some others didn’t find it the easiest. I had no problem with time=beat, possibly because I don’t know enough about music. I just figured you could keep time or keep beat. I was also helped by not knowing too much about my LOI dos a dos. I had heard of do si do (didn’t realise it was American mind) but didn’t know quite how to spell it so I just thought, when I’d worked out the word play, that dos a dos was the way. Lots of good surfaces, but the one that made me smile most was 16d so that gets my COD.
  9. An enjoyable puzzle with a few tricky clues that took me over my target to 12:16. DISTRIBUTED and BASHED took me a while as I missed the “has extraordinary” instruction and waited for the leading B before seeing it. BEAT then held me up as I had to do an alphabet trawl. I think it just about works on the music side, but it’s a bit tenuous. Thanks Jalna and John.

    Edited at 2019-10-25 01:56 pm (UTC)

  10. Convinced myself that LOI 12D ended ‘ASIR’ and the definition was Declare (or Declare love), to the point I had to walk away and return to allow my brain to re-calibrate. DNF anyway as I wrote in BUSTED for 13A; saw Book = arrest = bust, but, like the screws left over after making a flat-pack, see I ignored ‘extraordinary’. Thanks to John (I would not have parsed the first half of 16D without the blog) and Jalna for an enjoyable end to stimulating QC week.

    Sam

  11. Thank you Jalna for the lovely surfaces and wordplay. I particularly enjoyed 21d ART cluing. I thought today I was racing through the QC starting at 1a DOS-A-DOS (do-si-do my first thought also) and finishing with 24a NARROWS but I still took 10 minutes (relatively quick given my solving times this week). My pauses were with DISTRIBUTED, TELEPHONE, LOOK IN and BEAT. I interpreted BEAT to be ‘similar’ to time as in keep to the rhythm.
  12. Yes, Jalna’s style is quite distinct – all the conventions are there and yet the clues seem different somehow. I thought it would take me a while to get to grips with this when I first scanned the clues, but, in fact, it was done and dusted in 14 minutes – about average, and that included a short alphabet trawl for beat.

    I liked this crossword – great, entertaining surfaces, nothing unfair (although I did wonder about the beat / time definition – a tad tenuous perhaps). Today I liked solar, telephone and stain. I got dos-a-dos from wordplay but then it clicked that do-si-do must be a corruption from French back-to-back You always learn something new here!

    FOI Sort
    LOI Beat
    COD Art – lovely misdirection there. Bacon’s works are definitely not my sort of thing, but a bacon sandwich? Yum yum 😊

  13. I found that fairly straightforward (and very enjoyable). Would have been sub ten had it not been for getting totally stuck on DISTRIBUTED – I could see exactly how it worked but couldn’t get “praise” out of my head for “eulogy”. Anyway, the penny dropped eventually and then I immediately got BASHED to end in 1.75 Kevins and a Good Day.

    Lots of COD candidates but like John I’m going for SOLAR, which has a wonderful surface.

    Thanks John and Jalna.

    Templar

    Edited at 2019-10-25 09:25 am (UTC)

  14. I don’t remember attempting a Jalna crossword before but if today’s is an accurate examplar, then more please! After yesterday’s disastrous mismatch between my brain and that of the setter’s, the QC today was a soothing balm. It took me just over 20 minutes but it was all so enjoyable that I could have answered a grid twice the size and still enjoyed it. I just think that the setting was so clever. Halfway through, I twigged that there was a huge amount of disguise and misdirection going on so my MO from then on was to try and identify the least obvious meaning of a word every time and that seemed to work for me. I know that not everyone is happy with 23 across – it was my LOI, too – but the strategy devised above saved the day. For my money, there isn’t a duff clue anywhere here but I especially liked 7, 14 across and 21 down – the latter is my COD. Thanks so much, John, for a super blog and thanks, too, to Jalna for a cracking puzzle.
  15. ….although I’m surprised that nobody seems to be moaning about the level of difficulty. There were certainly half-a-dozen clues of 15×15 standard. It was my slowest solve of the month so far, and well over target.

    NHO DOS-A-DOS, will grudgingly accept BEAT, and also the two extra letters on “TO A T” which is how I’ve always written it, but Chambers gives both. I’ve booked my eyebrow replacement op.

    FOI SORT
    LOI LOOK IN
    COD ART
    TIME 5:44

  16. No accurate time for me as I was disturbed twice – first to change the bulb in Mrs Rotter’s dressing room, and second to drive to the dentist for an appointment mid-solve. I got the last two clues in the waiting room for a total elapsed time of 26 minutes, which probably means a sub 15 minute actual solve for the first time in a week or two.

    Excellent puzzle and blog, and I look forwards to seeing more of Jalna. I wonder if the name comes from the city / region in India, from the series of books (never read them) by Mazo de la Roche, or from the dairy products manufacturer probably most famous for yoghurts (never eaten them). Or from somewhere else entirely?

  17. But everything fell into place as I waited in the queue for a blood test. “Would ticket number….” so a few distractions and a time of 35 minutes. Just enough answers going in to keep the next one possible.
    Same experiences as others ending with a concerned trawl to get Beat – which was missed on first pass.
    COD 7a
    Thanks for mentioning Do-Si-Do Jack – that is what I was thinking of having put in 1a but couldn’t remember it precisely.
    Thanks all
    John George
  18. By the way, I forgot to say that those gently moaning about BEAT seem to be unaware of the sheer brilliance of the surface – “HAMMER TIME!” is one of the most famous rap lyrics ever (as witness the fact that even I have heard of it). It’s part of MC Hammer’s seminal oeuvre “U Can’t Touch this” from 1990. I’d post a few links but this post would then get spammed.

    So props to my man or lady Jalna, yo. Brilliant clue.

    Edited at 2019-10-25 12:56 pm (UTC)

    1. It did cross my mind at the time, and then as is often the way, I heard the track on the radio this afternoon! Spooky or what 😨 It’s now today’s earworm.
  19. I don’t remember doing the earlier Jalna QC, so took this to be a new setter and approached the puzzle with some caution. Took some time to get into Jalna’s maximum confusion style, but in the end it was my loi 9d, Descendants, that pushed me north of 25mins, so not too difficult overall. I was helped along the way by being in Denmark only last week, and also by getting all the checkers for the unknown dance at 1ac quite early on. Several CoD candidates, but 14ac, To A Tee, gets my vote. Invariant
  20. Slowly completed except Beat and Art (clever) enroute from Newcastle to London on the new Azuma. Listening to Podcasts, mayhem as the reservation system did not work, lunch and my ineptitude lead to a slow but ultimately satisfying solve. Seemed to have pick the right days this week as missed Thursday but this was similar to Wednesday’s.
    Keep up the good work Jalna.
    Graham
  21. 11 minutes (which I’m happy with given other comments). I join others in saluting some great clues – art and to a tee topping the charts – and for loi beat. Excellent stuff – thanks all.
  22. Excellent entertainment and not too tricky a way to end the week. Completed in 11.09 with LOI BEAT. The dance was unknown but cluing clear and I let out a snort when the penny dropped for the bacon clue, so that gets my COD.
    Thanks for the blog
  23. I’ve been doing the QC for quite a while and regularly look at the blog – however this is my first post (so bear with me!).

    I really enjoyed this puzzle. I thought it was going to be fairly easy at first, but as I worked my way through it I could see there were some well crafted clues and good misdirection. For some reason I had 14ac as “On a Tee” rather than “To a Tee” which meant I struggled on 12dn for longer than I should.

    For me, beat=time makes sense. Learning the piano when I was young, a piece of music was often described as in 4/4 time or in a 4/4 beat. Maybe this is technically not correct, but I always thought them interchangeable.

    Anyway, thanks to Jalna for something different.

  24. It’s French. Means back to back. It’s when you slide past your partner in this manner. Only seen it in a barn dance. Johnny
  25. Loved this puzzle, my first from Jalna. Tackled after a tiring week and two modest glasses of wine, so wasn’t sure how I would manage, but it all flowed well for a sub-30 minute solve. LOI ROD after DESCENDANTS. Loved SOLAR and the Bacon Art, and was someone else who thought of type before sort, but easily corrected once I looked at SKI. COD to LOOK IN. So many lovely surfaces. Thank you Jalna!
  26. Really enjoyed the misdirections in this puzzle. Despite, ahem, a degree in Art History missed 21D, had linen for 18D which left that whole south west corner looking a bit sorry for itself and subsequently the whole beatgate passing me by. COD for me was 7A. Thanks johninterred and Jalna both. I enjoyed it so much I’m off to find Jalna’s other puzzle.
  27. Very late solve so very late comment. Different and therefore quite challenging. I liked DOS-A-DOS and DESCENDANTS but thought ART was absolutely brilliant. 3K (yet again). Thanks, both. John M.

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