Times Quick Cryptic No 1699 by Mara

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

A neat quick crossword from Mara today with a good variety of clues. Nothing too tricky, I think, but you do need to “lift and separate” a couple of times – COD to one of them, 1D, but I liked 11A too for the amusing surface. All done in a well sub-average 4:04 for me. Thanks Mara! How did you all get on?

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Phil’s turn to provide the weekend entertainment. You can find his quick crossword here. Enjoy!

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

Across
7 Desert shade (6)
MAROON – Double definition.
8 Charm in a hybrid tree, originally (6)
AMULET – A MULE (hybrid) Tree [originally].
9 Muscle complaint (4)
BEEF – Double definition
10 Silver-tongued quality, mixed blessing (8)
GLIBNESS – [mixed] (blessing)*, which you need to separate.
11 Stoppered vessel, vessel secured by stop! (8)
DECANTER – CAN (vessel) inside [secured by] DETER (stop). I liked this one – very neat.
13 White part of horse (4)
HOCK – Double definition. The first being a white wine. My last one in.
15 Employer held back by chores, unfortunately (4)
USER – Reverse hidden [held back by] choRES Unfortunately.
16 Male in fancy red coat, US politician (8)
DEMOCRAT – M (male) [in] [fancy] (red coat)*.
18 Battle, as things going to pieces (8)
HASTINGS – (as things)* [going to pieces].
20 Dissolute fellow’s garden tool (4)
RAKE – Double definition number 4.
21 In a mo, the dancing (2,4)
AT HOME – (a mo the)* [dancing]. Sneaky definition, which you need to “lift and separate” from the phrase.
22 King in play destroying Borneo (6)
OBERON – [destroying] (Borneo)*, the play being A Midsummer’s Night Dream, of course.
Down
1 Travelling salesmen, unknown (8)
NAMELESS – [travelling] (salesman)*. Another deception. You have to separate travelling and salesman.
2 Fire Tory with standard quota (13)
CONFLAGRATION – CON (Tory) FLAG (standard) RATION (quota).
3 Reportedly dark piece (6)
KNIGHT – Chess piece that sounds like [reportedly] NIGHT (dark).
4 Back up, holding good sword (6)
RAPIER – REAR (back) reversed [up] -> RAER [holding] PI (good). We had PI = good in my last outing here 2 weeks ago.
5 Finally improve, or go round the bend? (4,3,6)
TURN THE CORNER – Definition and a cryptic hint.
6 Reported information, all points! (4)
NEWS – All the points of the compass. A bit of a chestnut, this one.
12 Look at yours truly when speaking (3)
EYE – Sounds like I (yours truly) [when speaking].
14 Crazy attempt on prize (8)
CRACKPOT – CRACK (attempt) POT (prize).
16 Biblical character in deal that’s dodgy (6)
DANIEL – (in deal)* [dodgy].
17 Pole saving company, is that lucky? (6)
MASCOT – MAST (pole) outside [saving] CO (company).
19 Agreements initially missing for book (4)
ACTS – pACTS (agreements) [initially missing]. The ACTS of the Apostles.

45 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1699 by Mara”

  1. It took me a while to sort out the anagrist for HASTINGS; I think I needed a checker or two. And I slowed myself down by biffing CRACKERS from the A_K, with the intention to return to it; as usually happens with me, I forgot the intention and naturally couldn’t find OBERON until I went back to the CRACKPOT clue. 5:18.
  2. About as fast as I can go… everything made sense on first glance. I could have cracked the 5 minute mark, but I was debating between HACK and HOCK. Got lucky, I suppose, to pick the right one!
  3. At 11 minutes I was a bit slow off the mark with this one made more difficult by having a grid with no words at the perimeter. One of the editors (I can’t recall whether it was Richard R or David P) told us a while ago that these grids were being phased out but clearly that has hasn’t happened yet, or perhaps the policy was changed.

    Nothing difficult or even vaguely unknown here.

  4. Slow to start today with my FOI being USER so I decided to solve the clues in order instead of using the ‘cluster method’. I’ve no idea if it had any impact on my time but proved an interesting change.
    As I tuned in to Mara’s wavelength things sped up and I ended up in the NW corner when I finally realised I needed to lift an separate 1d. LOI would have been MAROON, but on my spell check I noticed that my tentative CALF (I had a vague idea that calving and complaining might be linked) at 9a had made a mess of NAMELESS so needed a rethink. Finished in 9.14 with my favourite being decanter.
    Thanks to John and thanks in advance to Phil for the weekend puzzle
  5. I also don’t like these grids, apart from being artificially more difficult you usually get fewer clues to solve.
    I finished two minutes under my 20 minute target, without too many problems. I thought of BEEF and HOCK first time round, but I thought the definitions were a bit loose so I left them until I had the checkers.
    Thanks to Mara, and to John for the blog, for once I didn’t need help with the wordplay.

    Brian

  6. Outclassed by Mara today. Finished in 20m which is OK but needed help with parsing post solve. Nowhere near seeing that GLIBNESS is an anagram of ‘blessing’ – amazing! I must have seen hybrid for mule before but it wasn’t close to my mind even once I’d bunged in AMULET from the definition, as John notes in the blog we’ve had pi for good recently (and often over the years) but I still couldn’t find a way to justify RAPIER and it just too me a long time to get to MASCOT. An end to a week I seem to have found hard. Better give the brain a rest over the weekend.
  7. Not an easy one from Mara. I added my last two (MAROON and KNIGHT) at 15.54 so just over my target again but all parsed. I was delayed by biffing SAHARA for 7ac because I have seen Sahara as a colour in paint shade guides and that messed up my NW corner until I wiped it and tried again. I liked DECANTER, NAMELESS, CRACKPOT, RAPIER, and ACTS. I did not warm to HOCK which I thought was weak (hock has a lower than usual level of alcohol for a white wine these days 🙄). Thanks to Mara and John, whose time is impressive. John M.
  8. A slow start on the Across clues but, once I’d cracked the two long Down clues, things picked up and I finished a minute over target in 16 minutes.
    I thought the GLIBNESS and HASTINGS anagrams were great and I enjoyed MAROON and MASCOT.
    I agree that DECANTER deserves to be COD even if it was my LOI.
    Thanks to Mara and to John for the blog. Even though I managed to parse everything, it’s still good to check.

  9. Hats off to anyone who managed to solve this in order – I got all the way down to 16ac… before I entered my first answer. At which point my brain woke up and I started to fill in the bottom half of the grid. The two long down answers then came to mind quite quickly, and that helped open up the top half, so that after 22mins I was just left with 4d/8ac. It took me another final couple of minutes to see Amulet, and realise that ‘good’ in 4d wasn’t g but pi. I liked 8 and 11ac, but my CoD vote goes to 21ac, At Home. Invariant (aka ‘the poster above’ apparently 🙄)

    Edited at 2020-09-11 06:35 pm (UTC)

    1. It’s beef..”the flesh of adult domesticated cattle; extended to that of some other animals, such as the horse; muscle”, says Chambers. As used in the word beef-cake to describe a muscular man or Beefy Botham, now Sir Ian.
  11. We did a great job of solving clues only to discuss them to death – and our time of 23 minutes reflects that beautifully! I guess that’s one of the perils of “teamwork”. That said we really enjoyed today’s challenge – thanks to Mara for some very clever clues.

    FOI: democrat
    LOI: rapier (Steed was convinced there had to be a “g” in the answer)
    COD: conflagration (we also loved “turn the corner“ and “crackpot”)

    Thanks to John for the blog – especially the explanation of rapier…. our answer was a complete biff!

    So sad to hear of the death of the wonderful Diana Rigg aka as Mrs Peel (my avatar)

    Looking forward to another weekend QC 😀

    Edited at 2020-09-11 10:17 am (UTC)

    1. It is good to be reminded that the QC is about enjoyment more than being a speed freak (although we do all take note of our times!). Your shared enjoyment always comes over in your posts. Thanks, John M.
    2. Very sad about Diana Rigg. Strangely enough I was just talking about her to family members re: the new version of All Creatures Great and Small when it was announced.

      However, when I saw some images on TV of her roles your avatar came to mind.

    3. I had the good fortune to meet Patrick Macnee on a number of occasions in the past while treating a close member of his family. He was as charming off-screen as he was on. Disappointingly he sported neither bowler now brolly and most disappointing of all, no sign of the delightful Mrs Peel. No doubt she is now re-united with John Steed, protecting angels from harm.
    4. It is good to be reminded that the QC is about enjoyment more than being a speed freak (although we do all take note of our times!). Your shared enjoyment always comes over in your posts. Thanks, John M.
  12. I don’t understand pi = good, and can’t find a definition in the admittedly limited online dictionaries i’ve just googled?
    1. It’s definition 2 in Chambers. “obtrusively religious, sanctimonous; a pious or sanctimonious person or talk [short form of pious]”. As I said in my blog it came up in the last QC I blogged 2 weeks ago, and comes up quite often in crosswords.
      1. Nothing in that definition equates to “good” to me, quite the opposite. It was obvious to me what was intended, but I thought it a very poor clue, and in fact described it as that when asked for an explanation.
  13. A lovely end to The Times QC week with a sub 9 mins submission although the unhelpful grid did delay the solve. My FOI was NAMELESS and my LOI after an alphabet trawl was MAROON. I put in HOCK from ‘part of horse’ once the checkers were in play and had to come to the blog for the ‘white’ explanation. Thanks John and Mara.
  14. I agree with the above poster that running through the across clues was a tough way to attack this puzzle today. In fact after getting almost to the end without any write-ins I left it for some time. The ipad Times App clock still runs, even if you don’t enter anything so a time of 6 hours plus came up when I finally went back to it. Figured it was a less than impressive 20 mins.

    I was held up by the anagram at 1d even with all four checkers, unable to decide between ‘lameness’ and ‘maleness’. Must be rare to have an anagram with four checkers and three plausible answers.

    Not PI=good again, please. I ranted on this at least twice in the last month, about “conventions” that have no basis in language as used by any of the puzzlers.

    COD MAROON: Always impressed by two word double definitions with a neat surface, where each word pulls in a different direction.

    1. Pi was quite frequently one of my mother’s expressIons when describing someone who obviously was rather pleased with themselves. I think it’s very descriptive.

      Mind you , that was a fair time ago now and I don’t suppose my grandchildren would have a clue what I was talking about if I tried it on them today.

      I wasn’t on the same wavelength at all on this one so unashamedly
      gave up after a bit and enjoyed working out the answers from the blog – for which many thanks.

      Diana

  15. Not an easy one from Mara. I added my last two (MAROON and KNIGHT) at 15.54 so just over my target again but all parsed. I was delayed by biffing SAHARA for 7ac because I have seen Sahara as a colour in paint shade guides and that messed up my NW corner until I wiped it and tried again. I liked DECANTER, NAMELESS, CRACKPOT, RAPIER, and ACTS. I did not warm to HOCK which I thought was weak (hock has a lower than usual level of alcohol for a white wine these days 🙄). Thanks to Mara and John, whose time is impressive. John M.
  16. My only holdup today was my LOI, HASTINGS, made much more difficult by my typo at 2d, CONFLAGRARION. I finally noticed this when the presumed anagrist didn’t have an R in it. 8:22. Thanks Mara and John.

    Edited at 2020-09-11 12:28 pm (UTC)

  17. Made heavy weather of this one, but maybe others have too, given there aren’t many comments posted yet. I live in hope. Anyway, things hadn’t gone too badly, except for wondering if I’d got HOCK right (don’t think I’ve ever heard of a part of a horse called that, but it sounds horsey) until I got down to four to go – 3 and 4d and 7 and 11a. With only a few vowels and the G in 3d, I just couldn’t see what was going on with any of them and there were too many missing letters to do alphabet trawls. I wondered if “dinghy” could be a “piece” (=boat?) and sound like dingy (=dark) but it seemed like a long shot and the Y in 11a seemed unlikely. I almost gave up, but you know you’re going to kick yourself if you do that when you come on here and see the easy solutions you’ve missed. The breakthrough came when I considered the possibility that 3d ended with GHT, thus making 11a _E_A_TE_. At last, after 50 minutes I saw DECANTER (what else could a “stoppered vessel” be really?) and then in quick succession I got RAPIER (haven’t seen PI = good for a while and so hadn’t considered that), KNIGHT (so simple in retrospect, but I just never thought of pieces being the things in chess) and LOI MAROON. Stopped the watch at 52:43 so avoided the ignominy of going over the hour, if not the ignominy of still being twice as slow as anybody else on here. COD 1d Thanks Mara and John
    1. Nowhere near twice mine! I don’t really time myself as I tend to do it in bits – today it was over lunch. Well over half an hour, I would think.

      I found it tough. A very unhelpful grid for starters and I biffed quite a few before parsing. Nrver fid parse 11a – so thanks to John for the explanation. Had to resort to an anagram solver for the battle and the travelling salesmen – at least I worked out that they were anagrams and picked the correct anagrist.

      Edited at 2020-09-11 09:33 pm (UTC)

  18. ….and I’d hope to reach this standard myself with more practice.

    FOI MAROON
    LOI HASTINGS
    COD BEEF
    TIME 3:57

    1. We really enjoyed your puzzle Phil – some very clever and witty clues. We finished it in 17 minutes, but we took our time to enjoy the witticisms.

      FOI: clog
      LOI: kernel
      COD: bigfoot (and we liked Grease very much too)

      We really appreciate you and John taking the time to set the weekend puzzles. (I’ve commented here because I can’t seem to do so on John’s blog)

    2. I thoroughly enjoyed your excellent weekend QC. Thank you!!
      I couldn’t get going in the North West but managed to complete the rest quite quickly. I then went back to the tougher (for me) clues and finished with 13:24 on my timer. My target is 20 and my quickest just within 10 so this seemed perfect. I noticed Oldham Athletic in there. I wondered if it was part of a nina, the rest of which I am missing! MM

      FOI: 15a GARDEN
      LOI: 1a MODEST
      COD: 22a SERIOUS

      1. Thank you ! I wondered if solvers might suspect a NINA, but those two answers were in the grid before I noticed they were adjacent. If I were sadistic I might have tried to write a Guardian style linked clue, but I don’t much care for those.
  19. Tricky Mara returned today I thought. My FOI was RAKE after my usual random look for an easy starter. Pretty good progress after that but had to work hard.
    After 12 minutes needed just 7a and 11a. I thought of MAROON and will add a vote for COD to that.
    At 11a I had Beer and Halt for the two parts but wondered about BEHALTER. It sounded plausible. In the end I went with an unparsed DECANTER after 13:53.
    Pleased to get all correct today.
    David
  20. As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling –
    Because at least the past were passed away –
    And for the future – (but I write this reeling,
    Having got drunk exceedingly today,
    So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
    I say – the future is a serious matter –
    And so – for God’s sake – HOCK and soda water!”

    Good old Byron. Without Don Juan I’d still be looking at 13ac.

    I made a right Horlicks of that, a full 3K for a Dismal Day. Next!

    Thanks Mara and John. Looking forward to Phil’s weekend treat!

    Templar

    Templar

  21. I thought this was a great puzzle to end the week and was pleased to finish it in 20 mins. However, it was one of those instances where I was obviously on the right wavelength as answers just seemed to pop into my head before I’d even parsed them. For anyone not as lucky, I could see it being a struggle.

    Enjoyed 1dn “Nameless”, 2dn “Conflagration”, 10ac “Glibness” and 24dn “Crackpot”. No real pattern in approach, but thankfully managed to get 13ac “Hock” right at the end (also thought it might be Hack at first).

    FOI – 1dn “Nameless”
    LOI – 13ac “ Hock”
    COD – 11ac “Decanter”

    Thanks as usual.

    Edited at 2020-09-11 11:34 am (UTC)

  22. … and some lovely clues, especially 11A Decanter for the surface. My COD. Took a while to get going and at 10 minutes the left hand side was almost wholly unsolved, but getting 2D Conflagration opened the way for a 15 minute finish.

    I liked 13A Hock, partly because it is a word one doesn’t hear so much now (I believe the Germans think it is too reminiscent of past horrors such as Blue Nun and Black Tower, so they are trying to get us to think in terms of Rhine and Mosel as the names to remember), and partly because they were my father’s favourite and the wines I was brought up on 50+ years ago. Rüdesheimer Rosengarten was our favourite, and when I was in Rüdesheim am Rhein a few years ago I went to see said rose garden – wine growers used to grow roses by the vines because they were attacked by the same pests, so if the roses were healthy so would the vines be. It’s still there, but not growing grapes any more sadly.

    Very much looking forward to our Saturday special – it is so good of John and Phil to create them.

    Thanks to John for the blog and a good weekend to all.
    Cedric

    Edited at 2020-09-11 11:44 am (UTC)

  23. Enjoyable, if far from easy, puzzle today – thanks Mara. I’d got down to 15ac before I managed to solve one and from thereon solved the bottom half fairly easily (apart from 14dn where I needed all the checkers), before returning to the blank spaces at the top of the grid. Took me a while to parse DECANTER and RAPIER (was looking to put a G in the latter). All finished and parsed in 20 minutes.

    FOI – 15ac USER
    LOI – 14dn CRACKPOT
    COD – lots of concise clueing from Mara. A three-way tie between 1ac, 1dn and 3dn.

  24. Having got 1 down as Nameless then entered 7 across as Sahara which is a shade of brown as well as a desert. Confusing and made top left corner a problem.
  25. as I rattled through this in 4:53, though DECANTER and HOCK were biffed. DECANTER very neat on consideration, but my thanks to john as blogger for providing the enlightenment!
  26. FOI. Hock
    LOI. Acts
    CsOD Amulet, Maroon
    Could not parse Rapier despite being involved in the earlier discussion about Pi! Couldn’t parse mascot either.
    Had a childhood passion for horses – who knew the vocab would turn out to be so useful?
    Thanks to all.

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