Times Quick Cryptic No 2068 by Felix

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
One of those gratifying puzzles that has the feeling of being quite tricky but all goes in smoothly: I came in at 6.35, about a minute quicker than yesterday, helped along by getting all but four of the acrosses on the first pass (missing out on 1,9,17,25). Good, fair clueing. There is a theme, as we’ve come to expect from Felix, but it was unobtrusive and didn’t stilt the solve – see end of blog for brief details, although I could well have missed some bits. An array of smooth, fun surfaces to boot, so many thanks to Felix!

Across
1 Lifeless hair: you can do nothing with it! (8)
DEADLOCK – DEAD (lifeless) LOCK (hair)
5 Bark in court, loudly (4)
WOOF – WOO (court) F (forte = loudly)
9 Desolate, when left with bill outside (5)
BLEAK – L(eft) with BEAK (bill) outside
10 Rioting in each N Indian city (7)
CHENNAI – anagram (rioting) of IN EACH N
11 There’s no nice weather, save for this! (1,5,3)
A RAINY DAY – cryptic hint
12 Musical notes, allegro, mostly? (3)
FAS – FASt (allegro) “mostly”
13 One hundred arms and legs — or shins? (6)
CLIMBS – C (one hundred) LIMBS (arms and legs). As in to shin/climb up.
15 Cheddar maybe tucked into by English fellow (6)
GEORGE – E(nglish) tucks into GORGE (Cheddar, maybe)
17 Sink with air coming the wrong way (3)
SAG – GAS = air going the wrong way
18 Fifth such journalist to become an infiltrator? (9)
COLUMNIST – cryptic definition, a fifth columnist being an infiltrator.
20 Survive a tour we organised (7)
OUTWEAR – anagram (organised) of A TOUR WE
22 Accommodation found in Soho, usefully (5)
HOUSE – “found in” soHO USEfully
24 Small row to escalate dramatically (4)
SOAR – S(mall) OAR (row)
25 Saint speaks: has trouble doing so? (8)
STUTTERS – ST. (saint) UTTERS (speaks)

Down
1 Fish that’s rotten brought up (3)
DAB – BAD (rotten) “brought up”
2 Doing a typical amount of damage given a rag (9)
AVERAGING – anagram (damage) GIVEN A RAG
3 Compare Liberal Eisenhower with Reagan finally (5)
LIKEN – L(iberal) IKE (Eisenhower) with N (reagaN “finally”)
4 Scoundrel entering spies insect (6)
CICADA – CAN (scoundrel) entering CIA (spies)
6 Possess topless robe (3)
OWN – gOWN (robe) “topless)
7 Mad Miss Flite is most weak (9)
FLIMSIEST – anagram (mad) of MISS FLITE
8 Print out again, in entirety, permit (6)
RETYPE – “in” entiRETY PErmit
11 Carstone’s eccentric forebears (9)
ANCESTORS – anagram (eccentric) of CARSTONES
12 Tables etc initially required, not included in future (9)
FURNITURE – R N I (“initially” Required Not Included) in FUTURE
14 Throw it down — and be dying to kick it? (6)
BUCKET – double-ish definition: the first as in pissing, the second as in passing, if you’ll excuse the crudity. There is no satisfactory etymology for “kick the bucket” but it goes back to at least 1775 – see here.
16 Wine from clubs, drunk later (6)
CLARET – C(laret) and an anagram (drunk) of LATER
19 I might tip this rubbish! (2,3)
MY HAT – double definition
21 We hear Peg leaves for a drink (3)
TEA – is heard the same as TEE (peg)
23 German town Seamus regularly visited (3)
EMS – s E a M u S “regularly visited”. News to me (and not because it seems to have been renamed Bad Ems in 1913), but generously clued.

So the theme is 9ac 22ac, which I haven’t read, with a number of characters therein, such as 1ac (without the A), 15ac, 14d, crossing in 4d and 16d, and in the clues of 7d and 11d. Any others?

53 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 2068 by Felix”

  1. 17 minutes for Mrs R, and 24 minutes for me. I wonder if this was facilitated by there being an unusually high number of short solution clues (6 x 3-letters and 2 x 4-letters) and relatively few longer solution clues (just 4 x 9 letters). 28 clues in all, which is uncommon for a QC in my experience.

    CICADA has come up a few times, but I still don’t know what one is and it always nearly stumps me. I had NHO EMS and only just remembered DAB. I also found FLIMSIEST a difficult anagram to crack. I wanted it to be F____LESS.

    I have enjoyed the few Dickens novels I’ve read (e.g. David Copperfield; Great Expectations). He must be up-and-coming, so I will look out for some of his other stuff.

    Many thanks to Felix and rolytoly.

    Edited at 2022-02-10 02:22 pm (UTC)

    1. Cast your mind back to holidays in the Mediterranean — remember those?? That warm sun and cool wine, and not forgetting the whirring hum in the background — that’s the cicadas (not the aircon!) It’s making me feel really quite nostalgic…
  2. Totally way off the mark today and really struggled with this — maybe it was the heavy cryptic nature that fooled me. Didn’t help that I couldn’t spell Cicada properly (even though I did it in another puzzle only a few days ago). Similarly, put “A Sunny Day” for 11ac and “Stammers” for 25ac, which made any attempt at 19dn futile.

    FOI — 1dn “Dab”
    LOI — dnf
    COD — 15ac “George” — made a change from Liz Truss’s favourite product.

    Thanks as usual!

  3. .. which like for quite a few it seems was 24A Soar. I am entirely with Templar and his fluttering raised eyebrows on Oar = row — I don’t find this works for me and I cannot think of a natural sentence where they are interchangeable. “My turn to oar”, anyone? “Let’s go for an oar”? “Pull hard on the other row”?

    But that apart, and despite not getting the theme (I never do), an enjoyable puzzle and even with a 2 minute alphabet search for my LOI, all done in 12.

    Many thanks to Roly for the blog
    Cedric

  4. LOI for me was bucket. Interestingly, ‘cast down your bucket’ is a phrase from Moby Dick, and was used famously by Booker T. Washington in his 1895 ‘Atlanta Compromise’ speech. Obviously I didn’t clock the Dickens’ theme!
  5. Quite quick, for us, with most of the puzzle, slowed down by putting Ems in at 21d, which messed up the se corner for a few minutes. Also misspelling Chennai did not help. Missed the Dickens connection which seems so obvious when looking at the completed grid. Thanks Felix.
  6. 20 mins for me today, which is not only the fastest time of the week so far but also the first time that I’ve completed without using aids. Still a relatively slow time by my normal standards though, so I’m writing this off as a bad week. Didn’t get too many on first read through but the grid filled up quite steadily until I was interrupted by a phone call with 2 or 3 to go. These last fell quite quickly after I resumed. The theme passed me by, but then they usually do and I haven’t read the book either.

    FOI – 5ac WOOF
    LOI – 24ac SOAR (after finally rejecting SPAT)
    COD – 11ac A RAINY DAY

    Thanks to Felix and to Rolytoly

  7. Enjoyed this one and trotted steadily through. NHO EMS. Missed the theme , as usual. But I now see BLEAK HOUSE etc.
    MY HAT sounds extra archaic, even by Crossword standards. COD A RAINY DAY.
    Thanks all, esp Roly.
    Those who don’t like Dickens could try the audiobook of A Tale of Two Cities.
    1. The phrase died out in the early fifties when hats for men became passé. My grandfather used it, but not my dad, even though he was as bald as a coot!
    1. If you mean ‘oar’ for ‘row’ it’s perfectly standard, is in all the usual dictionaries and according to the Oxfords dates back to the early 17th century.
  10. Perhaps the wittiest QC ever.

    A rainy day, columnist and bucket are from the top drawer in the raising a smile category!

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