Times Quick Cryptic No 1879 by Joker

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

We have a delightful Quick Cryptic from Joker today to end the week’s series of good crosswords. We are treated to a triple definition (my Clue of the Day) a double anagram and four other clues that got approving ticks on my copy because they made me smile : 11A, 17A, 2D and 5D. Very neat. About average difficulty, if my time is anything to go by… but I’ve been wrong on that before! There are one or two trickier clues that might cause a bit of head-scratching for some, I think. How did everyone get on?

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Phil’s turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the latest crossword here. Enjoy! And if anyone is interested in our previous offerings you can find an index to them here.

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

Across
7 Mostly give comfort to southeast Lancashire? (6)
CHEESE – CHEEr (give comfort) “mostly” SE (southeast). With the ? indicating a definition by example.
8 Settled a selfish desire (6)
AGREED – A GREED (selfish desire)
9 Restoration of wild rye after cover is ploughed up (8)
RECOVERY – (cover)* “ploughed up” (rye)* “wild”. A double anagram,
10 Stick up letters in position (4)
POST – Triple definition! I do love these.
11 What may contain beer — Courage, perhaps (6)
BOTTLE – Double definition with the delightful surface including “perhaps” to indicate the definition by example of Courage as a beer, not just a synonym for BOTTLE. Lovely!
13 Stripped, going around grammes lighter (5)
BARGE – BARE (stripped) “going round” G (grammes). Lovely misdirection of the surface… the definition is lighter (noun) as opposed to the surface reading of lighter (adjective).
14 Short letter rejecting new fiction (3)
LIE – LInE (short letter; as in dropping someone one a line) “rejecting” i.e. without, the N (new).
15 Mouthwatering pie, with tons for papa (5)
TASTY – pASTY (pie) replacing P (papa in the NATO phonetic alphabet) with T (tons)
17 Provide with flexibility (6)
SUPPLY – Double definition. Very succinct.
19 Walk at a leisurely pace, missing street turn (4)
ROLL – stROLL (walk at leisurely pace) “missing” ST (street).
20 Pennant, perhaps right to be carried by older ship (8)
STREAMER – R (right) inside, “to be carried by” STEAMER (older ship). “Perhaps” again denoting a definition by example… other sorts of STREAMER are available.
22 Container not motoring group’s to return (6)
CARTON – NOT RAC (motoring group) reversed, “to return” -> CARTON.
23 Compelled to redo Verdi composition, finally (6)
DRIVEN – “redo” (Verdi)*, compositioN, “finally”.
Down
1 Small garden implement — what could be about a foot (4)
SHOE – S (small) HOE (garden implement).
2 Concerned with a measure of potential rising (6)
REVOLT – RE (concerned with) VOLT (a measure of (electrical) potential).
3 Extremely cut off cathedral city (8)
SEVERELY – SEVER (cut off) ELY (cathedral city).
4 Song about Zulu that’s work-shy (4)
LAZY – LAY (song) “about” Z (Zulu in the NATO phonetic alphabet).
5 Right argument in favour for each (6)
PROPER – PRO (argument in favour) PER (for each).
6 Cockle maybe from south, all she’s flogged (8)
SEASHELL – S (South), (all she’s)* “flogged”. [Edit: See comment from eurcon below. Should this have said “from east”?]
12 Voluntary mobile platoon capturing island (8)
OPTIONAL – “mobile” (platoon)* outside, “capturing”, I (island).
13 Most excellent journey on horseback, with one leg on either side (8)
BESTRIDE – BEST (most excellent) RIDE (journey on horseback)
16 Shawl auntie regularly used for greeting (6)
SALUTE – Alternate letters, “regularly used”, of ShAwL aUnTiE.
18 Place tart in cool (6)
PLACID – PL (place) ACID (tart).
20 Become submerged in floods in Kingston (4)
SINK – Hidden “in” floodS IN Kingston.
21 Young eel abandoning lake at any time (4)
EVER – ElVER (young eel) “abandoning” L (lake).

54 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1879 by Joker”

  1. A steady solve, although I biffed CHEESE, parsing post-submission. I didn’t think much of ‘cover’ being part of the anagrist for RECOVERY. John, I’d draw the underlines for SUPPLY as ‘provide’ and ‘with flexibility’. ‘Supply’ has been used a few times in 15x15s as a misleading anagram indicator. 6:00.
  2. 10 minutes by the proverbial skin of teeth. For those as interested in parsing as in speed of solving I rather enjoyed that COVER in RECOVERY was not clued by ‘cover’.
  3. I had to pass over six clues before getting LIE as my FOI but things went better from there to end up all green in 10 — pretty good. I thought about entering RECOVERY on the first pass but although it parsed couldn’t believe ‘cover’ would be in plain sight. Held up at the end with AGREED when I couldn’t think of a five letter selfish desire to fit _ R _ E_! Good end to a good week for me on the QC — in stark contrast to my struggles with the Telegraph in recent days.
  4. I got horribly stuck in the NW with CHEESE and REVOLT. I’m showing my ignorance but I didn’t know that a volt was a measure of potential and assumed that rising was wordplay. MY LOI was RECOVERY because I couldn’t believe that it could be the answer until all the checkers were in place. I can now see how it works and that Joker outsmarted me!
    Finished in 15.07 with my favourites being BESTRIDE and SUPPLY.
    Thanks to John

  5. I found this trickier 22min today. Nothing went in on first pass of across clues. SE then SW got me started and, as often is the case, on revisiting the accrosses with my subconscious working in the background they went in quickly. Good fun. A good week. Thanks to all

  6. I struggled to get a foothold on this (save for SHOE!) and before long found myself in my favourite bottom right corner from where I slowly battled my way back. In quite a few places I lacked the Courage of my convictions and spent too long wrestling with self doubt. I rated this 6-7 nearer 7 and at 40.05 that was pretty near 7K confirming my metric quite well which has correlated all week.
    Many good clues relying on crossers for me to solve. Thanks Joker and John and all those that confirmed SEASHELL was not my mistake.
    Now if I can just find one more ironed shirt I will drive to work for the third time in 15 months. So good to see people again, face masks not withstanding.
  7. … with the acrosses proving very intractable but the downs melting like butter.

    RECOVERY seems to be a Marmite clue – I’m in the Kevin camp of not being overly impressed.

    I liked the idea of seashells being flogged (“She sells seashells …”). A neat allusion.

    FOI AGREED, LOI STREAMER, COD BOTTLE, time 12:32 for 2.1K and an OK Day.

    Many thanks Joker and John.

    Templar

  8. RECOVERY was LOI, after CHEESE. CHEESE being bunged in from definition (by example) and SE. Didn’t spot the error with SEASHELL. I liked the slight nod to the tongue-twister “she sells (flogs) seashells by the seashore”. (edit: I see templarredux beat me to it!)

    RECOVERY was a bit meh I thought.

    6:58

    Edited at 2021-05-21 08:18 am (UTC)

  9. 21:43, so just outside target time, therefore no date from me.

    A tough start, nothing showed up in the first few across clues, with eventual FOI SHOE.

    ‘Lighter’ just about always means a ship in these crosswords, would be a real shock to see it with its primary meaning. And on boats, I pencilled in SCHOONER at 20a which fitted the checkers I had at the time.

    Very elegant misdirection at 2d where ‘rising’ in a down clue was the definition rather than a directional indicator. That led to CHEESE being LOI, and as a Mancunian I suffered from too much information, thinking about towns in Lancashire that might fit. Not a fan of Lancashire cheese, though. Too salty.

    COD the triple def POST

    ON THE 6d error, maybe the grid was originally mirror-imaged on the diagonal with all the acrosses down clues and vice versa. Then the setter flipped it all to get the devious ‘rising’ as a down clue, which then broke SEASHELL as ‘from east’ became ‘from south’.

    Edited at 2021-05-21 08:27 am (UTC)

  10. This took me a disappointing 29 mins 54 seconds. Seemed to have too many blind spots on simple answers like “shoe”. (I was thinking “show” rather than “shoo”!). Also, was led astray by the “Extremely” clue, thinking it had to be “Coventry” (cathedral).
  11. … with a most enjoyable crossword, all done and parsed (and in the case of 6D Seashell mis-parsed!) in just over 9 minutes. Not the first time though that I have finished the puzzle, come to TftT and found there is a major discussion taking place about something I just didn’t notice at the time.

    On the other hand I did pause for a moment or two over 9A Recovery. To have cover in both clue and answer is odd, I think, and doubly so that the answer could also be constructed as “cover contained within anagram of rye”.

    COD for me 13D Bestride — very smooth surface. And a name check for my local town in 20D — and we have certainly seen flooding from time to time here in the last few winters.

    Many thanks to John for the blog, and now on to the Saturday Special
    Cedric

  12. I managed most of this, and enjoyed the explanations of the rest.

    COD POST — so simple-sounding and effective.

    I wonder whether any other language has quite so many words which have several meanings seemingly completely unconnected. That’s what makes these puzzles so fascinating of course.

    Thank you J and J.

    Diana

    1. Not to be outdone, the French can do the same trick just by switching between m/f
  13. My FOI was CHEESE and LOI, PLACID. I didn’t notice the problem with SEASHELL as it looked likely and I didn’t count the letters. I also skimmed over COVER being part of the clue as I constructed it from the rear with ERY, then noticed RECOV was an anagram of cover. Wasted a bit of time with STEAMER being very slow to arrive. 9:11. Thanks Joker and John.
  14. I didn’t do very well with this one. I got nothing on my first run through, and then just a few trickled in after that.

    Seeing the talk here of the possible error in the SEASHELL clue wording, I am quite pleased with myself for actually getting this answer correct, despite the error.

  15. I went slightly over target at 17 minutes, held up by CHEESE, and trying to justify SEASHELL. In the end I had to accept that the anagrist was just plain wrong. I wondered if there was a nautical theme going on with BARGE, STEAMER, LIGHTER, SEASHELL, SINK, SALUTE, CONTAINER and SHIP all in either the answers or the clues, but I think it is just a combination of coincidence and my old naval head looking for patterns that aren’t there. Thanks both.
  16. After a good week I found this hard and, despite some help, failed to get CHEESE (I now see why) and REVOLT – did not know VOLT was electrical potential.
  17. I usually find Joker an awkward setter, though not unfair, and today was no exception. It was an awkward grid design, compounded (for me) by awkward clues. However, I made it through in 48 minutes and am very pleased as a result.

    Three clues went in fairly quickly at the start, but there then followed a very long pause before any further progress was made. I really struggled in the NW corner, with CHEESE, REVOLT, BOTTLE and RECOVERY all causing problems, but my last two in were STREAMER and PLACID in the SE. Also, I was particularly pleased to parse TASTY, as the ‘with X for Y’ clue structure normally beats me.

    Unfortunately and most unusually, I have to report that Mrs Random posted a DNF today. She gave up after 53 minutes without managing to solve REVOLT and BOTTLE. I think that as she is much less used than me to having to grind out the last few clues, she perhaps has less patience when required to do so. Or maybe it’s just that she has more of a life to get on with.

    Many thanks to Joker and to johninterred (and, in anticipatrion, to Phil for tomorrow’s fortnightly extra).

  18. Sorry to be a bore, I got the triple definition in POST but still don’t get the significance of “up” in the clue. Is it intended as an adjective describing “stick”, i.e. an “up” (vertical) stick, as opposed to any other type of stick?
    1. I think it’s ‘stick up’ in the sense of ‘post’ a bill (on the wall). The clue becomes quite tricky without the ‘up’.
    2. I’d say, yes. Is there such a thing as a horizontal post?

      Edit
      SOED seems to confirm: post – a long stout piece of timber, metal, or other solid material, usu. of round or square cross-section, used in a vertical position in building and construction.

      Edited at 2021-05-21 11:42 am (UTC)

    3. I was wondering if it meant post as in social media. So stick it up on Facebook/insta whatever?

  19. At nearly 30mins, i found this quite tough, even allowing for a long delay trying to parse 6d — I think that’s the second time in the last few weeks there has been a problem with a clue: I hope it’s not the start of a trend. Seashells aside, there were lots of CoD candidates, with 7ac, Cheese, an early leader, but 13d Bestride gets the nod. Invariant
  20. A poor 39 minutes for a tricky, but clever puzzle from Joker.

    None of the answers were difficult, but the surface of the top half especially left me staring blankly at many clues. The mix of deep sighing and swearing under my breath when I eventually saw 11ac was a case in point…I must have gone through every beer container known to man apart from the obvious. Similarly, 2dn “Revolt”, 5dn “Proper” and 8ac “Agreed” all stubbornly refused to come and I had an internal debate whether 17ac was “supple” or “supply” — eventually opting for the latter which made more sense.

    I also couldn’t parse 6dn “Seashell” and thought “south”was a loose definition for SE — but as noted above it may be a genuine error.

    FOI — 1dn “Shoe”
    LOI — 11ac “Bottle” — doh!
    COD — 7ac “Cheese”

    Thanks as usual!

  21. So, it’s actually a quadruple definition, i.e. (1) stake, (2) put up on wall, (3) mail and (4) the letters in POSITION.
    1. Nice idea but no as that would require stick to do double duty — on its own and with up.
  22. 5:02 which enabled me to get my average for the week to below 5 minutes. However in my haste I did miss the seashell inaccuracy. Otherwise a very good puzzle with COD being the 10 ac triple definition. LOI was 18 down where I had to forget about trying to replace “tart” with “pie” – “Pl” for “Place” cracked it. Thanks to John for the blog and Joker
  23. ….meant that we came in at 21 minutes. A thoroughly enjoyable puzzle that kept us fully entertained – nice finish to the week.

    FOI: BOTTLE
    LOI: SEVERELY
    COD: CHEESE

    Thanks to Joker and John.

    Looking forward to Phil’s WQC.

  24. For every action etc. After yesterday’s high comes today’s low 😕 I tried doing this on screen again with the trusty stylus but it didn’t go well! Just got completely stuck on REVOLT and PLACID. I do have a 20 minute time limit for the quickies (double my target ) so packed it in at that point, thus a DNF for me.
    I didn’t notice the issues with SEASHELL and also didn’t much like RECOVER, but otherwise all was fair. Actually I liked this a lot, especially POST and BESTRIDE. Just not a good day for me!
    FOI Cheese
    COD Bottle — I remember the Courage brewery in Reading very well
    Thanks Joker and John

    Annoyingly, I had a similar result with the biggie today: all done bar two, but it was much harder!

    1. I’m just back from a 7 mile walk in the wind and the rain, resuscitated afterwards in the Six Bells in Felsham by a pint of… Courage Directors!

      Edited at 2021-05-21 01:31 pm (UTC)

      1. My younger son has decided to go the wagon, and donated his last six BOTTLES of beer to me, including a Courage Director’s. Chin chin !
  25. A DNF missing Cheese and Severely.
    No time for the rest since I fell asleep having had too much for lunch!
    Seashell went in without spotting error luckily.
    Paused for a while regarding Recovery — unsettling and in faint pen for most of time.
    Otherwise quite tricky.
    Thanks all
    John George

  26. I struggled with Cheese and wrongly biffed Coventry for 4 DN at the start. Soon realised my mistake though. This felt slow but in the end finished in just under 20. I do find clues like 9A where you have the word of the answer in the clue a bit odd, in that I often think it can’t be that obvious.

  27. A fine puzzle which I found quite tricky. Only carton from the acrosses at first, but once the downs started going in some of the acrosses yielded nicely. FOI carton. LOI recovery – I thought this was the solution for many a while but thought surely not – no rearrangement of the letters of cover. From the blog I see that there was, actually, but in a convoluted way. Had to have three goes at this. Left after two attempts with cheese, revolt and recovery to get. Called in husband to help and as soon as he sat down I saw cheese and revolt, without any input from him other than willingness to participate. Then I checked recovery in the grid online as I was sure it wasn’t that. But it was. I’d estimate three sessions of ten minutes each. Thanks, John, for the blog, and Joker for the puzzle which I found quite difficult, but none the worse for that. GW.
  28. This was the hardest of the week. I got 4 clues and gave up. Not a fun experience. I still don’t get some of the answers even after the blog. Compared to yesterday this was like a full cryptic.
  29. Hardest of the week for me but that is perhaps because I started it a little while ago after a long, eventful drive punctuated by bad weather and delays caused by a serious accident. I’ve decided that I manage crosswords best early in the day before the realities of life start to intrude. It was a good puzzle but it took me into the SCC by a couple of minutes. Thanks to both. John M.
  30. Missed CHEESE and PLACID. And SEVERELY . Oh dear, brain not working after long walk (only 5m) and long drive.
    Struggled to start as first. Should have begun with the Downs which were easier. FOI ROLL.
    No problem with SEASHELL or BOTTLE. Slow to see BARGE forgetting the other meaning of lighter, dimly.
    Oh well, another crossword, another day.
    Thanks for much needed blog, John.
  31. Rather slow progress with help in one or two clues needed eg 3d to get sever. Enjoyed 11a, bottle although it took an age to get it. Also took time to get past astride for 13d, until the penny dropped. Thanks Joker for the workout.
  32. ….in 10th place on the leaderboard at quite a late stage in the day. I did wonder if some of the regulars entered “supple” at 17A, but it would seem not.

    South East Lancashire is one of the areas worst affected by the Indian variant, so they need all the comfort they can get.

    FOI RECOVERY
    LOI AGREED
    COD CHEESE
    TIME 3:21

  33. Good fun but took me longer than recent outings. LOI 2d REVOLT, eventually. Thank you.
  34. Very enjoyable but quite a challenge. Several where it took some time to work out what was going on inc CHEESE, TASTY, PLACID, but all done eventually. Liked the BOTTLE clue especially.
  35. New poster here. First time I’ve felt moved to write anything. Love this blog and it’s so instructive for a late learner like me. But today’s crossword was an absolute stinker. Usually I can complete the QC and come on here for explanations of clues I’d biffed (is that the word?) . Today I’ve given up having solved a mere 9 on my own. Impenetrable.
    “Lighter” = barge for heaven’s sake!
    1. Welcome anon. Glad you find the blog useful. It would be nice if you gave yourself a name to distinguish yourself from other anons.
  36. I wondered if it was supposed to be parsed ‘maybe from south’, though not sure if that passes cluing muster!
  37. Great QC. Tough, but fair. About 20 minutes, all parsed.
    Thanks setter and blogger.

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