There are one or two tricky bits including 21A and 4D in this Quick Cryptic from Joker that took a bit of working out. Furthermore, I was held up by having a very reasonable DRAW for 18D at first, which made the SW corner a bit puzzling until I found another answer. All in all it took me 5:32. Thank-you Joker for the workout. How did you all get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. The Times has bowed to pressure and started publishing an online Saturday Quick Cryptic crossword. But there is still no Sunday Times Quick Cryptic so we will continue the series of Weekend Quick Cryptics. This time it is my turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword, entitled “Down In The Woods Today”, here. If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 97 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
| 1 | Loud bird is cockerel perhaps (4) |
| FOWL – F (Forte; loud) OWL (bird). “Perhaps” because it is a definition by example… i.e. cockerel is a type of fowl. | |
| 3 | Strange couplet having eight parts (7) |
| OCTUPLE – (couplet)* [strange]. | |
| 8 | Wheeling along, posh cars with monarch round centre of Bath (6-7) |
| ROLLER-SKATING – ROLLERS (Rolls-Royce cars; posh cars), and middle letters [centre] of bATh in KING (monarch). I bet they wouldn’t wheel very fast. The traffic in Bath is terrible. | |
| 9 | Whopper? Large, that is (3) |
| LIE – L (large) I.E. (id est; that is). | |
| 10 | General truth of maxim uncovered initially over minutes (5) |
| AXIOM – mAXIm without the outside letters, [uncovered], and first letters, [initially], of Over Minutes. | |
| 12 | I arrive to travel round Mediterranean coast area (7) |
| RIVIERA – (I arrive)* [to travel round]. | |
| 14 | Stories about National Trust gifts (7) |
| TALENTS – TALES (stories) about NT (National Trust). | |
| 16 | Steer badly and turn back to starting point (5) |
| RESET – (Steer)* [badly]. | |
| 17 | The man’s greeting son (3) |
| HIS – HI (a greeting) S (son). | |
| 20 | Mourned deeply, unfortunately little engaged? (13) |
| UNDEREMPLOYED – (Mourned deeply)* [unfortunately]. | |
| 21 | Sensationally and transparently when Charlie’s king? (7) |
| LURIDLY – A little tricky, this one… LU{c}IDLY (transparently) changing the C (Charlie in the phonetic alphabet) to R (Rex; king) -> LURIDLY. | |
| 22 | In this establishment? In another establishment (4) |
| HERE – Hidden in anotHER Establishment. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Predict change under Foreign Office (8) |
| FORECAST – FO (Foreign Office) RECAST (change). | |
| 2 | Predator one across upset (4) |
| WOLF – 1A is FLOW so this is… (flow)* [upset]. | |
| 3 | Seafood years in store going off (6) |
| OYSTER – Y (years) in (store)* [going off]. | |
| 4 | Obliquely answer with poetry line in test (12) |
| TRANSVERSELY – Assemble the answer as instructed… ANS (answer) VERSE (poetry) L (line) all in TRY (test). I needed all the checkers to see this one. | |
| 5 | Royal at home caught by invading newspapers (8) |
| PRINCESS – IN (at home) C (caught by, on a cricket scorecard) in, [invading], PRESS (newspapers). | |
| 6 | Thus it is seen in Oliver Goldsmith (4) |
| ERGO – Hidden in OlivER GOldsmith. Luckily for me, (and maybe for you too?) you don’t need to know anything about what Oliver Goldsmith authored to solve the clue. | |
| 7 | Polite bore, chap needling everyone, initially looking embarrassed (4-8) |
| WELL-MANNERED – Another multi-part construction job… WELL (bore that you might get oil or water out of) MAN (chap), first letters of Needling Everyone, RED (looking embarrassed). | |
| 11 | Rum fellow, say, sporting red nails (8) |
| ISLANDER – Ho ho. A fellow from Rum, the island. (red nails)* [sporting]. Entertaining surface. | |
| 13 | Person turning up ruined teen date (8) |
| ATTENDEE – (teen date)* [ruined]. | |
| 15 | Dance quietly, Jimmy — and don’t start with Jack (6) |
| SHIMMY – SH (quietly), {j}IMMY, not starting with the J (Jack). | |
| 18 | Be attractive in drag (4) |
| PULL – Double definition. Not DRAW as I had initially. | |
| 19 | Lowest part of car port (4) |
| TYRE – Double definition, the first a cryptic hint, referring to the part of the car that touches the ground, the second being this ancient Lebanese port. | |
Look away now (I suspect most of you no longer need to receive this warning)
45 mins of sheer torture.
I am so depressed at my incompetence, and my feelings of humiliation worsen when I come here and see the times recorded by those I was once on a par with. Solvers who started after me now just leave me in the dust, and it is becoming intolerable.
I probably spent 20 mins on TRANSVERSELY. I saw it fairly quickly but couldn’t parse it. Struggled on so many easy ones – FOWL/WOLF/ATTENDEE! That’s how bad I am. So often I can’t see the wood for the trees. I have no mental agility. If I don’t see it immediately, I struggle badly.
I have absolutely nothing positive to say any more. You’re probably sick of me moaning, but how can I get any pleasure or satisfaction when I am so bad at this?
I am so desperate to improve, but it just doesn’t happen for me as it seems to do for the rest of you. There was a time when I thought I had a decent intellect. Four years of attempting the QC have taught me otherwise.
Thanks for the blog John.
Hmm. Gary, I’m no psychologist, but it seems to me you have an inbuilt expectation of failure. If you see an answer quickly but can’t parse it (like TRANSVERSELY today), just shrug and move on, but be prepared to reconsider if you can’t get checking answers to fit. You could have saved 20 minutes by doing that today! I often have to do that myself with the 15×15. When I get stuck on a clue I fall back on the logic of asking “What’s the definition?”, which is generally at one end of the clue or the other. Then I look for wordplay indicators… is it an anagram, a hidden, a reversal, an acrostic or a charade? Not being able to see a setter’s deception is not a lack of decent intellect… it’s being led up the garden path. Sometimes you just have to wait for the blog and slap your forehead when you see it explained.
Thanks John. Your advice is, as always, greatly appreciated.
Early clues went in easily but had to get help from The Gentleman to finish. Why could he see that RED NAILS was an anagram and I not? Well I taught him everything he knows (in Crosswordland) anyway.
Even he couldn’t parse LURIDLY when we worked out that was all it could be.
COD OYSTER even though the thought of the seafood going off was enough to make me SHIMMY.
Thanks Joker and John.
Cruised through this one but DNF as idiotically didn’t see Forecast despite parsing Fo and the checkers. Great QC. Thanks Joker
COD HIS