Times Quick Cryptic No 1738 by Hurley

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Gentle enough from Hurley today – it’s been a while since I’ve blogged a puzzle and have come in under 7 minutes, so that was nice if not especially diverting. Slight hold up at the end with 20ac and LOI 8d, and I needed the L to work out what was going on at 6d, but otherwise fairly plain sailing. Oh well, I’ll just have to come up with some more imaginative way to avoid the news. Many thanks anyway to Hurley!

Across
1 Brief picture of biscuits burning (8)
SNAPSHOT – SNAPS (biscuits) HOT (burning)
5 Highly curious in past, prying ultimately (4)
AGOG – AGO (past, as in years ago/past) G (pryinG “ultimately”)
9 Clergyman forgetting first offence (5)
ARSON – pARSON (clergyman) forgetting first [letter]
10 Go by stream with a fierce guy (7)
GORILLA – GO by RILL (stream) with A
11 Just starting old Danish epic poem (3)
ODE – just the starts of Old Danish Epic
12 Wins top English painting (9)
LANDSCAPE – LANDS (wins) CAP (top) E(nglish)
13 Energetic guy from Soho many dearly recalled (6)
DYNAMO – “from” sohO MANY Dearly “recalled”
15 Linger and look into Ebro, oddly (6)
LOITER – LO (look) I n T o  E b R o “oddly”
17 Room at inn organised for one proposing candidate (9)
NOMINATOR – anagram (organised) of ROOM AT INN
19 Faded image partly indistinct (3)
DIM – fadeD IMage “partly”
20 Too much foam from waves — draw back (7)
SURFEIT – SURF (foam from waves) EIT (TIE = draw, “back”). Small query over this one, although it’s clear enough what was meant: “surfeit” as an adjective does exist but it’s rare/Scottish; “excess” would have done instead of “too much”.
21 Cat, it’s returned with good Queen (5)
TIGER – TI (IT “is returned”) with G(ood) ER (Queen).
22 Cowardly, ignoring old wife’s shout (4)
YELL – YELLow (cowardly) ignoring O(ld) W(ife)
23 We hear group of countries support barrier (8)
BLOCKADE – “we hear” as BLOC (group of countries) AID (support)

Down
1 Crab? Silly oaf does (7)
SEAFOOD – anagram (silly) of OAF DOES.
2 I will briefly broadcast in passageway (5)
AISLE – I WILL “briefly” = I’LL, “broadcast” = spoken
3 Sign I’d led men astray with just one purpose (6-6)
SINGLE-MINDED – anagram (astray) of SIGN ID LED MEN
4 Own goal to include Republican article in periodical (5)
ORGAN – OG (own goal) to include R(epublican), AN (article).
6 Romeo’s lass cut top off plant (7)
GALLANT – GAL (lass) cut top off pLANT
7 Rating turned colour of ash, reportedly (5)
GRADE – sounds like (“reportedly”) GREYED (turned colour of ash)
8 Satiric actor affectedly upper-class? (12)
ARISTOCRATIC – anagram (affectedly) of SATIRIC ACTOR
14 Figure meal run out (7)
NUMERAL – anagram (out) of MEAL RUN
16 Regret referring to signalling code (7)
REMORSE – RE (referring to) MORSE (signalling code)
17 Unpleasant refusal to accommodate street (5)
NASTY – NAY (refusal) to accommodate ST(reet)
18 Complete stop as outsiders leave — speech unfinished (5)
TOTAL – TO (sTOp as “outsiders” leave), TALk (speech “unfinished”)
19 Boxer maybe supported by mother’s belief (5)
DOGMA – DOG (boxer, maybe) supported by MA (mother)

39 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1738 by Hurley”

  1. I liked this one. A nice mix of straightforward clues with some head-scratchers, especially GRADE, my last in.
  2. This felt quite hard to me, although I no longer remember why. The election news certainly didn’t help my attention. 8:02.
  3. 10 minutes, nearly missing my target because of 6dn where GALLANT for ‘Romeo’ would never have occurred to me and the wordplay took me a while to untangle. Also at 23 where I delayed putting in BLOCKADE thinking that BLOC sounds like ‘group of countries’, but then wondering how KADE meant or sounded like a word meaning ‘support’. Foolish!
    1. Same experience and time but I was, alas, more foolish than you for I bunged in blockage – so dnf.
  4. All green in 12 but this felt quite hard. I had to pass over the first four clues on my way to five on the first pass of acrosses. Downs were more helpful to give a good range of checkers. Needed the blog for GALLANT, having Romeo in the clue really threw me and I fell right in to the trap having Juliet at the forefront of thoughts, and SURFEIT where tie for draw never occurred to me.
    2. I parsed it the same way as Roly, but this does look the more likely answer on reflection.
  6. Embarrassingly I threw the towel in with SNAPSHOT unfilled, and this after I had parsed it’s likely structure.

    Is Romeo really GALLANT? I’ve always thought him a bit of a weak and impetuous character. But clever misdirection as I tried to get Juliet in there.

    10a references Guy the Gorilla who was a much-loved London Zoo attraction, and has his own Wikipedia page. So called because he arrived on Nov 5th, today’s date, BTW.

      1. I read it as ‘a Romeo’ as well. Having rejected the phonetic alphabet and anything to do with Montagues.
        PlayUpPompey
  7. A PB at 7.42 so under 1K, that’s never happened before. Bit early to be breaking out the lockdown lager though. Just one wouldn’t hurt I suppose.
  8. A good puzzle which I managed to complete in 14 mins (within my modest 15 mins target but under 2K again). I corrected a dodgy insertion of blockage seeing BLOCKADE when I took the time to parse it. Finished in the NW corner with SNAPSHOT, AISLE, SEAFOOD – don’t know why I passed over those at rhe beginning. I liked GORILLA, SURFEIT, GRADE, NASTY, TOTAL but did a double-take at the GALLANT definition which didn’t really click for me. Now to get back to the real nail-biter across the pond. Thanks, Hurley and Roly. John M.

    Edited at 2020-11-05 08:13 am (UTC)

  9. Steady going with a sting in the tail. At the end I got very stuck on SURFEIT, which eventually needed an alphabet trawl as I hadn’t thought that SURF could be foam, and TOTAL where the answer was obvious but the parsing took some untangling. I also got held up on GRADE, where I had my tenses mixed up and spent some time trying to justify GRAZE. Finished in 12.37 with my favourite being BLOCKADE.
    Thanks to Roly
  10. Interesting that others found this hard, but I got the long anagrams at 3D and 8D straightaway so that helped me to a sub-average time. FOI ARSON, LOI SURFEIT. COD to GORILLA for mentioning Guy on 5th November. 4:07
  11. Complete failure for me, thoroughly distracted by the news, and carelessly finished with BLOCKAGE instead of BLOCKADE. Also struggled with SURFEIT, GALLANT and TOTAL. I parsed LOITER the same as anon above, although LO for LOOK had occurred to me, but didn’t fit as comfortably with the wordplay. Thanks Roly and Hurley.
  12. This is my third sub 9 minutes solve this week. I skipped over the 1s and my FOI was ARSON. I had to return to 1a and 1d a number of times with SNAPSHOT falling first. I needed all the checkers for SURFEIT which gets my COD despite Roly’s reservations and the wordplay for YELL also made me smile. I finished in the NE corner with AGOG and my LOI GALLLANT. Thanks Roly and Hurley.

    Edited at 2020-11-05 09:39 am (UTC)

    1. You’re reaching the point where 9 minutes should be your target every day – great progress . Here’s to the next target reduction 🍻
  13. I got stuck on my last two after 11 minutes; I needed 18d and 23a. I had biffed TOTAL but I then deleted it and spent ages on the parsing. It was my LOI after entering BLOCKAGE rather hurriedly; I’ll join Rotter’s club.
    So one error today after 14:27.
    Quite a clever puzzle I thought with some challenges throughout.
    David
  14. Wot no gunpowder? Not even a hidden Guido? Booo.

    Roly nails it with “Nice but not especially diverting”. There seemed to be a lot of anagrams but on a countback it was only 5; I think it seemed more because I did the downs first and 1, 3, 8 and 14dn are all anags.

    FOI SEAFOOD, LOI BLOCKADE, COD GRADE (very neat), time 1.05K (aaaarrgh) for an Excellent Day.

    Thanks Hurley and roly.

    Templar

  15. Bits of this were quite tricky and I was 2 mins over my target range of 15-20 mins. Didn’t seem to get into any sort of flow as I had to dodge round the grid quite a bit. Never managed to parse Surfeit and took a long time to spot that 1dn was an anagram – don’t know why with the 20/20 vision of hindsight. I was also held up by trying to shoehorn Juliet into 6dn for a while.

    FOI – 1ac SNAPSHOT
    LOI – 20ac SURFEIT
    COD – 22ac YELL

  16. But back at them now. Today was easy enough at 5:32. GRADE last in, but only because that was the only one left, rather than it being the most puzzling. I can never see the word SURFEIT without also lampreys and the supposed demise of Henry I coming to mind.
  17. Quite straightforward today, although it took while for GALLANT and BLOCKADE to click. Some neat clues, but perhaps a surfeit of anagrams.
  18. ….was severely interrupted in the NE corner, and I missed my target. Didn’t care for GALLANT, but GRADE was a near miss for COD.

    FOI SNAPSHOT
    LOI LOITER
    COD LANDSCAPE
    TIME 5:18

  19. Started with 1d, and then toyed with an anagram of biscuits for 1ac, before common sense intervened and Snapshot came to mind. Thereafter a fairly steady solve left me with just the NE corner looking empty as the clock moved past 18mins. Luckily, Gallant fell to a more detailed study of the cryptic, and that opened the way to Gorilla and Organ on the stroke of 20mins. CoD to the tricky Surfeit down in the SW. Invariant
  20. Stuck on Agog, Gorilla and Gallant, but should have got Organ.

    The rest flowed in easily so it was disappointing to get stuck. I either think of gorilla the animal or a foredeck gorilla, i.e. strong young bloke handy with the sails, not a fierce guy.

    Agog is witty, though. Managed Blockade after some thought. Liked Dogma and easy Remorse.

    Thanks all.

  21. Probably me – but I didn’t find this easy and dnf after 30 mins.

    Didn’t get “Surfeit” for 20ac and put “Landslide” for 12ac which ultimately hindered my attempts at 6dn. In hindsight, it seems obvious it was “Landscape” but maybe elections were playing on my mind. Still not convinced about Romeo = Gallant, although it was an interesting trying to find a plant that had “uliet” in it.

    I did get 1ac “Snapshot” but spent an age on an anagram for “biscuits”. In fact it was one of those crosswords that felt quite anagram heavy.

    Enjoyed 7dn “Grade”, and the chestnuts of 2dn “Aisle” and 9ac “Arson”

    FOI – 11ac “Ode”
    LOI – dnf
    COD – 23ac “Blockade”

    Thanks as usual.

    1. Snap (🙂) – and given my overall problems with anagrams, I’m surprised I keep on trying to add extra ones.
  22. We seem to have fallen into a pattern recently – completing most of the grid quite quickly and then coming unstuck with about 3 clues to solve. Today was no exception – we took ages to work out gallant, agog and gorilla and finished in 16 minutes. Thanks to Hurley for an enjoyable puzzle.

    FOI: snapshot
    LOI: blockade
    COD: a toss up between gorilla and grade

    Thanks to Rolytoly for the blog

  23. …some going straight in, with others taking more time but still enabling me to finish within my target of 15 minutes.
    I had to biff GORILLA and TOTAL so thanks to Rolytoly for the explanations.
    SNAPSHOT, DYNAMO and GRADE were all clever clues – and my COD goes to BLOCKADE which went in from the checkers before parsing.
    Thanks also to Hurley.
  24. Again a hard puzzle so congratulations to all those who finished in a quicker time than I could read it.

    Be nice to have a slightly easier one tomorrow

  25. I liked this and was getting on well until I got totally stuck on 1a and 4d. I wanted 4d to involve rag or mag. In the end I used an aid for 1a but I was still puzzled as SNAPS doesn’t mean biscuits to me. (Ginger snaps maybe.) I then realised it was definitely ‘organ’. I’m OK with cricketing terms but not football. COD total
    During the last lockdown I got into the habit of doing the QC every day and often posting a comment. Maybe I’ll do that again!
    Blue Stocking
  26. NE corner also was where we lost time and finished, otherwise steady solve. Enjoyed 1a and 7d. 20m which is ok for us.
  27. 7:17, even though most things seemed to go in on a first reading. Took a few seconds over GALLANT, but thought it was a perfectly good clue. Did LOITER turn up a day or two ago in the 15×15, or is that my imagination?

    COD SNAPSHOT, though I don’t care for brandysnaps myself!

    H

  28. … nor a landslide here either, despite me trying to insert it in 12A. That made 6D Gallant impossible, so back to the drawing board, error corrected, … and I still found 6D difficult even with the correct checkers. Not sure Romeo = Gallant is the finest cluing Hurley has ever created! Eventually sighed, trusted the word play, put it in and all done in 12 minutes.

    I liked 23A Blockade and 7D Grade, and the long down anagrams flew in for some reason, but overall this was for me a workmanlike puzzle more than a gem to remember. At least it was better than the 15×15, which had some really groanworthy clues!

    Many thanks to Roly for the blog
    Cedric

  29. I was multitasking today but with the benefit of hindsight should have tackled this as probably under 10 which is PB territory. Only one biff which was Gallant and LOI. Perhaps a QC is easy compared to installing a new BT Router. Johnny
  30. Kept me entertained at odd times throughout the day. Ground to a halt for a while on GALLANT, overcame queasiness for SNAPSHOT (ate a tray of homemade cream filled brandysnaps as a child with obvious consequences), CODs SURFEIT and GRADE.
    Thanks Roly and Hurley and all of you for interesting comments.

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