Times Quick Cryptic No 1598 by Oink

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
A middling-difficulty puzzle from Oink that I managed two minutes under target. I found this good quality and fun when solving but a couple of the clues look a bit shaky on closer inspection (I’m looking at you, 23ac and 11d) – I would have added 19ac to those two as well, but I see they originally had distinct meanings. The rest was an enjoyable stroll with nothing of obscurity and some good twists on the chestnuttier clues such as 2d. So many thanks to Oink, who gets the porcine reference in early at 6ac.

Across
1 Burst into tears in paper shop (9)
STATIONER – anagram (burst) of INTO TEARS
6 Corner house with garden at the front (3)
HOG – HO. (house) with G (Garden “at the front”)
8 Engineer in USSR, a chap from Moscow? (7)
RUSSIAN – anagram (engineer) of IN USSR A
9 Blog resists accommodating trolls (5)
OGRES – accommodated in the letters of bOG RESists. A task we thankfully have little need for hereabouts.
10 Famous school rejected by daughter (5)
NOTED – NOTE (Eton/school, rejected/reversed) by D(aughter)
12 Very little drunk (6)
TIDDLY – double definition. Etymology obscure, but I see a “tiddlywink” is also an unlicensed pub or pawnshop.
14 Loss of detective inspector’s looks (13)
DISAPPEARANCE – DI’S (detective inspector’s) APPEARANCE (looks)
16 Used to be a delinquent, high on drugs (6)
WASTED – WAS (used to be) TED (delinquent – well, disputably!)
17 Dad’s at back, making something to eat (5)
PASTA – PA’S (dad’s) TA (at, “back”)
19 Old doctor who’s after your blood? (5)
LEECH – double definition. The OED says the two meanings were originally distinct (the first deriving from Old Germanic for health) but grew together due to the former’s extensive use of the latter, memorably seen here.
20 Essential Tyneside editor gets flu treated (7)
NEEDFUL – NE (Tyneside) ED(itor) gets an anagram (treated) of FLU
22 Have lunch with tenants occasionally (3)
EAT – t E n A n T s “occasionally“
23 Person loved by king — he dishes out the lolly! (9)
TREASURER – double definition. Originally the person entrusted with managing the king’s revenues. Edit: see Vinyl’s comment below.

Down
1 Love song composed about Bill (8)
SERENADE – SERENE (composed) about AD[vert] (bill)
2 Girl going topless, the idiot (3)
ASS – LASS (girl) going “topless”
3 I struggled, choked by climber? (5)
IVIED – I VIED (I struggled)
4 Absence somehow contented Anna (3-10)
NON-ATTENDANCE – anagram (somehow) of CONTENTED ANNA
5 Make new demand on brotherhood of monks (7)
REORDER – RE (on/about) ORDER (brotherhood of monks)
6 Difficult words to learn? Bad luck! (4,5)
HARD LINES – HARD (difficult) LINES (words to learn)
7 Catch your breath when grabbed by doctor (4)
GASP – AS (when) grabbed by GP (doctor)
11 Will’s statement rubbished (9)
TESTAMENT – just about an anagram (rubbished) of STATEMENT
13 Tell Her Majesty to become a shopkeeper (8)
RETAILER – RETAIL (recount/tell) ER (Her Majesty)
15 Criticism of marijuana’s very fashionable (7)
POTSHOT – POT’S (marijuana’s) HOT (very fashionable)
17 Lean on the papers (5)
PRESS – double definition
18 Run off with high jumper, you say? (4)
FLEE – sounds the same (“you say”) as FLEA (high jumper). So if a flea was the size of a human, could it really jump over the Eiffel Tower? You can read more than you’d ever wish to know about the matter right here.
21 Airmen heading north for miles (3)
FAR – RAF (airmen) heading north. As in miles/far away.

63 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1598 by Oink”

  1. Once again Teddy Boys are maligned; I’m glad Dorset Jimbo doesn’t do the QCs. Didn’t know that about leech/leech; thanks for the note, Roly. 4:42.
  2. Some stretching definitions today. SW last to fall with the crossing FLEE and LEECH holding out to the end, in fact I was so pleased to finish I wrote FLEA to get muck up EAT and get dead last on the leaderboard with two wrong in 17 minutes (but I wouldn’t have done that on paper so as usual I’m letting me off!). Also struggled with RETAILER – wanted it to be JEWELLER (again) – and REORDER but with the latter the problems with were of my own making for inexplicably putting in TIPPLE at first. Didn’t understand SERENADE, so thanks for the blog – not sure how I don’t know AD for bill after all these years and I’ll just have to admit OINK’s cunning beat me with SERENE for composed.
  3. 11 mins with typo in 1d.

    Last few were russian, potshot, hog, and tiddly.
    WOD tiddly.

    COD russian.

  4. 9 minutes with parsing missed at 1dn. Pigs have been given a bad press over the years with all sorts of unpleasant characteristical and behavioural traits wrongly ascribed to them so I’m disappointed that our setter is not more sensitive to the feelings expressed so regularly around here about the maligning of Teddy boys as a youth culture.
      1. Jack, if Teddy Boys were not a youth culture, then what is the correct definition?
    2. I wonder what could replace that now troublesome definition, as TED would appear to be something that could crop up a lot. In the daily we see ‘spread out grass’ or similar: that would surely be panned by QC ites! Or ‘generally well-behaved, as Jimbo, young 50s chaps dressed as Edwardians’ 🙁
      1. Your alternative definition may pass as humour round the Yokahama district, but here in Sycamore Drive, Shanghai it had me over :-))
  5. 34 minutes, well over target for a very tricky puzzle. I spent a long time trying to get ‘newsagent’ to fit 1A, and I was never sure about a lot of meanings such as ‘retail’ and ‘serene’. Putting in TAPAS instead of PASTA didn’t help with the time (it almost fits) and if I’d biffed RETAILER earlier it might have been different.
    Thanks to Rolytoly, I had a lot to sort out today, and to Oink.

    Brian

    Edited at 2020-04-23 07:11 am (UTC)

  6. A mixed bag. Some tough ones (my LOsI matched flashman’s). Not happy about all the definitions e.g. needful/essential and IVIED (and I wasn’t a Ted but recent usage of the word in QCs has been way off the mark). POTSHOT and RETAILER took a while. I was very slow to start and I completed the bottom half before moving back to the gaping holes at the top. Just a couple of mins over target today – same time as mendesest.. I didn’t find it a vintage Oink but I found enough to enjoy. Thanks to Oink and Roly. John M.

    Edited at 2020-04-23 07:12 am (UTC)

    1. I thought twice about NEEDFUL /essential and was going to query it, but having looked it up I find I have been unaware of this particular meaning all my life, and it’s listed first in SOED so not at all obscure.

      Edited at 2020-04-23 08:06 am (UTC)

      1. This is where the King James comes in handy eg Luke 10:42 (“But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”)
        1. Thank You Jeeves:
          Jeeves will know where to lay his hand on seas of butter. … I had only to go and get in touch with him and he would bring out pounds of butter on a lordly dish. And not only that, but he would lend me enough of the needful to pay my fare to London and possibly even to purchase a packet …
  7. Was Leech an actor who played Dr Who? Over 40 min with several penny drop moments in the parsing.
    1. I remember an actor called Richard Leech – I’ve just googled him and you’re right, he was in Dr Who! More amazing, he trained as a doctor before becoming an actor!
  8. Glad I didn’t have bacon this morning, it would have felt disloyal, somehow.

    I thought this was going to be fast as only TIDDLY and TREASURER evaded me on the acrosses, and only POTSHOT on the downs … but the POTSHOT/TREASURER intersection held me up for a looong time. Ouch. 2K in the end so I can only rate this as an OK Day.

    Having now read the wiki page on Teddy Boys there appears to be enough material to justify using “delinquent” for “ted”, however lovable individual teds posting on TftT may have been in the 1950s!

    FOI STATIONER (very nicely hidden anagram), LOI TIDDLY (because I forgot I hadn’t done it, so pre-occupied was I with POTSHOT/TREASURER), COD POTSHOT. Many thanks Oink, entertaining as ever, and thanks roly.

    Templar

    1. Many words have developed different usages over the years but I don’t think it is fair to lump together the young men who liked rock and roll music, draped jackets, Slim Jim ties and ducks arse haircuts with the gangs that used these trademarks to cover anti-social behaviour and serious violence. I grew up side-by-side with members of the former group who were stylistically challenged but really quite nice lads.
      We can all think of unsavoury members of a particular group of people (or things) but to reflect their behaviour back on to the whole group is usually unjust.

      Edited at 2020-04-23 09:11 am (UTC)

  9. I enjoyed this – thanks Oink and Rolytoly. Funnily enough I didn’t have any issue with the ones questioned – they all went straight in without much of a second thought. I did however think that potshot is a bit loose ( tend to think of it in terms of having a go rather than having a go at. Also for me bill for ad (vert) is a bit thin but these are minor quibbles.
  10. Nothing too tricky and my major issue was with spelling as I’m always uncertain whether some words end ‘ence’ or ‘ance’. There two of them today and, most inconveniently, they both had the key letter unchecked. Fortunately I picked correctly but I had some trepidation when pressing submit. Finished in 9.40 which LTI STATIONER and IVIED with my favourite being HOG.
    Thanks to Roly
  11. On the wavelength today… I flew through this getting most of the acrosses and then a clean sweep of the downs. LOI TIDDLY as I filled in the missing ones from the bottom up. COD to FLEE. 3:12.

    Edited at 2020-04-23 07:54 am (UTC)

  12. POTSHOT took a while to see, otherwise no particular problems. All done in 7:29. Thanks Oink and Roly.
  13. … Remember to note who the setter is! I spent more time than was sensible staring at 6 across, HOG. Of course, HARD LINES, 6 down, and GASP, 7 down quickly secured it but if I had had the wit to recall that Oink had compiled this, I would – I hope! – have cracked it from the clue alone. (although… HO for “house”?? A common abbreviation? It doesn’t spring to mind readily ) The whole grid took me 22 minutes so 7 minutes over target but I’m not too unhappy with that. The recent spate of references to Teddy Boys as delinquents sorted out the parsing in 16 across, WASTED, but, like many here, it is not something that seems necessarily so. I’m not sure I can pick a COD – they all seem a little workmanlike today. 16 down, POTSHOT, raised a smile though. Thanks so much, blogger and setter.
    1. Ho for house comes up a lot but perhaps not in the QC. It’s one to remember anyway, I’d suggest.
  14. 13 minutes, which I was pleased enough with. FOI was HOG (Oink’s trademark self-reference) at 6a, and then GASP at 7d (to confirm HOG which felt too easy). I also tried to make newsagent fit at 1a and was slow to see the anagram. LOI was WASTED due to a typo in the will – stupid boy! Thanks Roly and Oink.
  15. No problems today completing in exactly 8 minutes with Potshot. A good clue but I had to convince myself that it is an exact synonym of criticism. Still not sure – he gave a criticism/potshot of… normally it’s ‘take a potshot at’ and you wouldn’t take a criticism at. Anyone?
    1. I didn’t consider the equivalence at the time but you have a point – Collins and Lexica both call a potshot “a criticism” and then give an example sentence with taking a potshot, which doesn’t work for criticism. The only direct swap I can think of by isolating the noun, so something like: an unwarranted potshot/criticism can be hard to stomach.
  16. I really enjoyed this – I whizzed through it in about 1.6 K and that included a sneezing fit (hay fever season – oh joy) so it counts as A Good Day! There are a lot of ticks and smiley faces by the clues today – lots of common crossword words but, as Roly says, some interesting variations on the cluing and some really entertaining anagrams.

    I particularly liked STATIONER, RUSSIAN, and HARD LINES.

    FOI Noted
    LOI Potshot
    COD and WOD Tiddly, which I might be tonight as it’s our wedding anniversary!
    Time c 7:50

    On the subject of Teddy boys, I agree that we shouldn’t tar everyone with the same brush but my memory of them was that they were very intimidating. But then large gangs of any teenagers, then and now, often are.

    Anyway, many thanks to Oink for a most enjoyable outing and to Roly for an equally entertaining blog 😊

  17. When I saw Oink’s name I knew this was going to be tricky so I started at the bottom with FAR and then managed to keep going until finishing with ASS.
    A few pauses en route -NEEDFUL meaning,but seemed OK -and very late to see POTSHOT so I’ll make that COD.
    It was fun.Time 11:52.
    David
    PS well done John Interred, an amazing time.
  18. I also stared at 6ac for quite a time until the penny dropped, not realising that “ho” could be an abbreviation for house. 1dn went in unparsed, so thanks for the explanation. Otherwise all fairly straightforward.

    FOI – 10ac Noted
    LOI – the recalcitrant Hog
    COD – got to be 15dn Potshot.

  19. Forgot to mention that it took me 26mins, so about average these days. Invariant
  20. I very much liked my LOI – POTSHOT.

    When I moan about the hippies next door “smoking pot” and playing their bongos, the 15 year old always rolls his eyes at me, so it must be a dated phrase, though I have a feeling it was already dated by 20 years when I was his age… I’ll have to crack out “reefer” and “groovy” next.

    7:20, so of average difficulty for me.

  21. I thought this was a good puzzle from Oink, with a satisfying mix of write-ins and head-scratchers. Started in the NE and worked clockwise round the grid, finishing with 1ac/1d. Delays and excursions along the way included Retailer and the Flee/Leech/Potshot grouping in the SW. Honourable mention for the surface in 1ac Stationer, but CoD to 15d Potshot… which I only twigged after writing it out (in full) horizontally! Invariant
  22. Finished, if slowly!
    Got HOG from the cluing but couldn’t see why. Now I realise it’s in the sense of hogging all the bananas or whatever. Not a synonym to me, but it is indeed in the dictionary, I now see.
    Agree about the Teds, a fashion disaster, not criminals.
    Thanks as ever.
  23. ….and whizzed through this in my quickest time for some weeks (9th on the leaderboard, and if I’ve identified the neutrinos correctly probably a true 2nd).

    Due to various distractions and interruptions I did the 15×15 first today, and I may try that again tomorrow to see if it has the same effect !

    FOI STATIONER
    LOI GASP
    COD SERENADE
    TIME 2:52

  24. Thought our time would be a shocker today and that we might have made mistakes. However, neither was true and happily we were fine on both fronts.

    FOI: noted
    LOI: potshot
    COD: hard lines (amused me)

    Appreciated your blog Rolytoly – good to understand our biffing.

    Thanks to Oink for the mental workout.

  25. Not often I don’t enjoy a QC, but today’s left me somewhat indifferent – which is odd as I normally like Oink’s offerings.

    As has been noted, there is nothing really unfair or obscure, but I just found the clues a little “bitty” and unsatisfying, 3dn being a particular example.

    Anyway, completed in around 45 mins which is slower than my usual average. Got bogged down in the SE corner as I did the classic getting the answer the wrong way around for 21dn which left me puzzled somewhat for 20ac.

    FOI – 8ac “Russian”
    LOI – 12ac “Tiddly” – initially had Tiddle
    COD – 19ac “Leech”

    Thanks as usual.

  26. I struggled with 6a because, to me, garden at front means the G comes first and ‘gho’ made no sense…
    1. For “garden at the front” to mean G then G on its own would have to be a valid indicator for garden, which it isn’t. “At the front” is the first letter indicator, not the position indicator.
  27. my longest ever! Just didn’t get on board. Found the long anagrams unhelpful.

    FOI 18ac LEECH showing my age!

    LOI 12ac TIDDLY I started with TIPPLE which really messed things up! Doh!

    COD 23ac TREASURER

    WOD 6ac HOG – Oink-Oink-Woof-Woof-Baaaa

  28. … as I took ages to get started on this one. FOI was not until 17A! But from there it was fairly steady and when I went back to the across clues (after doing most of the downs) they seemed to go in much easier second time round. Not sure why I was so dim on the first pass but it made for a slow 16 minutes solve.

    I agree that Oink’s signature 6A was a bit strange – why not “… garden at the back?” for a word ending in G?

    Many thanks to Roly for the blog.
    Cedric

      1. Many thanks. As a relative newcomer to the QC I find I’m learning a trick a day!
  29. It’s always annoying when I think I’ve finished the QC, and come on here to find I’ve got one wrong. First time I’ve actually got round to posting about it though.
    I had HUG for 6A (as in Hug a Corner). I agree with others that Ho is not really an abbreviation for house anywhere other than in crosswordland. I also didn’t see how corner could mean HOG until countrywoman1 enlightened me.
    I also had a quibble with 1A as I’d talk about a Stationers for a paper shop.
    Anyway, I enjoyed the puzzle, and am happy enough any time I get close to escaping a DNF.
    1. In think in that context you’d be talking about a stationer’s meaning stationer’s shop, singular as in the answer to the clue.

      ho. as an abbreviation of ‘house’ didn’t get into all the dictionaries by appearing in crossword puzzles. It’s used in street directories, gazetteers, newspaper small ads etc.

      1. My dear Mrs. Lyallnt,
        Our Jack hasn’t been out of the ho. much lately, and his stentorian tone is due to cabin fever, nothing more. I too had a MER (see our glossary top right) about STATIONER but I didn’t like to say, as I have a twin brother who lives, as does Jack, in Leighton Buzzard – and I don’t want a ho. brick through his parlour window.
        A very warm welcome to Crosswordland and better luck next time with the HUG.
        Victor Meldrew
        1. Thank you very much for the welcome, Horryd. Not quite sure why you’ve decided that I’m a married woman though…

          I’m grateful also to Jack for his reply. I’m still not convinced that he would talk about nipping down to the greengrocer for some essentials. Or to the baker for a loaf. To my mind, the singular is the retailer (relevantly enough); the possessive is the shop.

          1. Thank you very much for the welcome, Horryd. Not quite sure why you’ve decided that I’m a married woman though…

            I’m grateful also to Jack for his reply. I’m still not convinced that he would talk about nipping down to the greengrocer for some essentials. Or to the baker for a loaf. To my mind, the singular is the retailer (relevantly enough); the possessive is the shop.

            1. Welcome lyallnt (may your married-life status and gender be keeping you well). I’d be much more inclined to say “I’m going to the greengrocer” (meaning the shop) than the baker or the stationer, but all the usual dictionaries are explicit in describing them as the shop as well as the owner… having said that, a shop that vends baked goods is clearly a bakery, which is clearly not the case for stationery. But what do I know? These days I couldn’t even arrange a piss up in a brewer.
  30. Badly phrased perhaps, I meant maligning the youth culture of Teddy Boys (by defining them as ‘delinquent’).

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