Today we have just the second Quick Cryptic by Dangle and the first I’ve got to blog…. …and what a super Quick Cryptic it is. It took me just 4:11 solving all but three of the clues on a first pass, so it can’t be too hard, can it? OK, as ever, maybe your mileage will differ as there are a couple of clues that are on the tricky side.
At the Words and Puzzles conference in Oxford that I attended two weeks ago (see here), a common theme that came up a few times is that a good cryptic clue should have some sort of story in the surface reading. My COD goes to 10A for the story that is entirely non-fiction. Lovely job Dangle, thank-you! How did everyone else get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Sawbill’s turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword here. If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 126 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
| 1 | Vile celebs paid to dance (10) |
| DESPICABLE – (celebs paid)* [to dance]. | |
| 8 | Enduring course (7) |
| BEARING – Double definition, conforming to the late Rotter’s rule that a two word clue will usually be a double definition…. an exception being “Pin number (4,3)“. For the answer to that see later in the blog. | |
| 9 | British pilgrim’s Indian snack (5) |
| BHAJI – B (British) HAJI (pilgrim). “Hajj is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for capable Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime.” A pilgrim who has undertaken the Hajj is a Haji. | |
| 10 | Perhaps Murdoch’s nationality, briefly (4) |
| IRIS – IRIS{h} (nationality) without the last letter [briefly]. Iris Murdoch “…was a an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Born in Ireland, when she was a few weeks old the family moved to London...” hence the factually accurate clue surface. Nice one! | |
| 11 | Split up ecstasy and rum (8) |
| ESTRANGE – E (ecstasy, the drug) STRANGE (rum). I can’t comment on whether it is better not to take them both at the same time, but that’s what the clue seems to recommend. | |
| 13 | Principally work a long time for these? (5) |
| WAGES – First letter of Work, AGES (a long time). Fortunately I am no longer a wage slave now I’m retired, although I was one for a long time. | |
| 14 | Honk horn hard in Jag (5) |
| TOOTH – TOOT (honk horn) H (hard). You need to ignore the misleading capital of Jag for the cryptic reading of the clue. | |
| 16 | Female with golden hair in defence (8) |
| FORTRESS – A three part charade… F (female) OR (golden) TRESS (defence). | |
| 17 | Rejected objections in short piece (4) |
| STUB – BUTS (objections) reversed [rejected; sent back] -> STUB, of a cigarette, perhaps. | |
| 20 | Buddhist monk caught pack animal (5) |
| LLAMA – LLAMA sounds like [caught] LAMA (Buddhist monk). | |
| 21 | Italian food mixing air, oil and a dash of vinegar (7) |
| RAVIOLI -Add just a single letter [dash] of Vinegar, to the mixture… [mixing] (air oil v)*. | |
| 22 | Removes water from her teddy as liquid (10) |
| DEHYDRATES – (her teddy as)* [liquid]. Maybe she dropped her teddy in the bath. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Name a current trade hub in the Middle East (5) |
| DUBAI – DUB (name; give a name to) A I (symbol for current in physical equations such as V = IR). | |
| 2 | Cry out to host possessing grooming product (7,5) |
| SHAVING CREAM – HAVING (possessing) in SCREAM (cry out) – [to host] being an inclusion indicator. | |
| 3 | Goddess lives on island (4) |
| ISIS – IS (lives) IS (abbreviation for island). | |
| 4 | Solemn month (6) |
| AUGUST – Double definition. Our second such two word clue… and the answer to the clue given in the first one at 8A above, “Pin number (4,3)“, is… DEAD LEG. Geddit? The clue’s a two word cryptic definition. | |
| 5 | Reprimand, after 51 getting free (8) |
| LIBERATE – LI (51 in Roman numerals) BERATE (reprimand). | |
| 6 | Brown rat, I fancy, out for fish (7,5) |
| RAINBOW TROUT – (Brown rat I)* [fancy], OUT. | |
| 7 | Advanced problem enthrals European (2-4) |
| HI-TECH – HITCH (problem) outside, [enthrals], E (European). | |
| 12 | Upset Yorkshireman resumed displaying identification online (8) |
| USERNAME – Reverse hidden [upset… …displaying] in YorkshirEMAN RESUmed. | |
| 13 | Cake made of batter? Go on! (6) |
| WAFFLE – Double definition, but not a two word one this time. | |
| 15 | Wrong of stars to have yen for model, ultimately (6) |
| ASTRAY – The only tricky clue in the puzzle, I think… Take ASTRAL (of stars) and replace the last letter, [ultimately], of modeL with a Y (symbol for the currency Yen) -> ASTRAY. | |
| 18 | Happiness is found in Tbilisi after odd characters expelled (5) |
| BLISS – Put IS in the even-numbered letters of tBiLiS. | |
| 19 | State hesitates to dispense with borders (4) |
| AVER – Well maybe this one is slightly tricky too… It’s state the verb in the cryptic reading rather than the noun it is in the surface reading. {h}AVER{s} (hesitates) without its outside letters [dispense with borders]. Update: As several commenters have said{w}AVER{s} works just as well and may be what the setter intended, but I prefer havers. | |
14:20 Took the most time on BHAJI. Memories of Senegalese footballer, El Hadji Diouf, who played a few years in England finally led me to the answer. HI-TECH was my favourite. I got AVER from thinking of wavers.
Is it because you used to go for curries with him? 🤣
Haha, no, only saw the gentleman on the idiot box!
The serial expectorator according to Gary Lineker.
NHO BHAJI, but it had to be. I got AVER from ‘havers’; surprised that I didn’t think of ‘wavers’ first, since ‘havers’ isn’t in my vocabulary. I biffed SHAVING CREAM & RAINBOW TROUT. I dithered (or havered) over LLAMA because I took ‘caught’ as C at first, wasting time before biffing. 8:13.
Blimey Kevin, have you never tried an onion bhaji?
Yes, you are really missing out. Try a bhaji – but maybe they don’t serve them in Japan where (I think) you live.
8:18, and what curryowen said. I think I knew of bhajis and I definitely knew of the Hajj so I have no idea why BHAJI took so long, but it did. Also agree that AVER comes from wavers not havers.
All good otherwise, thanks Dangle. And thanks John for the pin number chuckle and for pointing out just how good the IRIS clue is.
Parts of this were moderately difficult – I didn’t think of fortress or dehydrates right away. The iris clue we have seen before, but it is well-disguised. Hi-tech also gave me trouble, but I eventually biffed it and went on to bhaji, my LOI. I never heard of bhaji, and I thought the pilgrim was a hadji, but I put it in as the only alternative.
Time: 9:33
A really nice QC challenge that I thought, at the start, was harder than it turned out to be after I got into the swing of it. I was fooled all puzzle long by seeking a dance for the def at 1ac, and IRIS deserves a special mention. At 9ac I’m reminded of The Thick Of It, ‘I’m the man who makes the onion BHAJI go away.’ TOOTH took a while because I couldn’t see jag as a definition and I’m still dubious. Another waverer here. 12.52, thanks John and Dangle.
Lindsay, I thought immediately of jagged (as in jagged teeth).
OK sure but I’m still not there. As far as I know TOOTH is a noun and JAG is a verb and I can’t see where they mean the same thing…
JAG can also be a noun, definition “a sharp projection“. The Chambers Thesaurus entry for it reads “barb, point, projection, protrusion, snag, notch, spur, nick, tooth” so that’s good enough for me.
Fair enough!
9 minutes with three unparsed when I stopped the clock as I was desperate to come in under 10 again following a couple of bruisings earlier this week inflicted by Oink and Jalna.
In the end I misparsed BHAJI by thinking HAJ for the pilgrim, I for Indian and ‘snack’ as the definition.
Collins has ‘jag’ as a toothlike projection, and ‘jag / TOOTH’ is in their list of synonyms, but the other dictionaries don’t go there.
I also trimmed ‘wavers’ at 19dn but can’t see that ‘havers’ is any less valid.
I missed BHAJI but everything else went in after a struggle with some of the clues. I also thought ‘waver’ was the word to be trimmed. Have to say I didn’t enjoy this and thought it was just a 13×13 cryptic. It’ll be interesting to read what the quickie crew have to say.
Thanks John.
I’m Team Havers.
A sluggish 12.55 for me.
12d and 15d I couldn’t parse which slowed me down considerably, 12d ending up as being LOI.
I’ve met too many upset Yorkshiremen to have spotted the instruction, it would seem.
Very nearly a BHAgI thanks to Gheorghe Hagi – lucky it was an across clue because seeing it written out was what saved me. Got absolutely nothing until LLAMA and then RAVIOLI and DEHYDRATES followed and I built from the bottom up finishing with ESTRANGE and then USERNAME – which took a lot of finding. All green in 14.07.
A quick slow quick dance to 23.12. Top went in pretty swiftly then ground to a halt picking off odd answers until a burst in the left once we unpicked shaving cream. We were missing the crosser as convinced ourselves that the monk was spelled laama so thought it was a poor clue that could be read either way🤔
Liked the cleverly hidden username, thanks Dangle and John for the comprehensive blog.
Despite many blanks on the first pass, they resolved themselves quickly when the Downs appeared, to lead to a 9:48 completion. Unlike John, I had no problems with AVER and ASTRAY (I’m sure we’ve seen the latter before) but it was BEARING that delayed me most – unhelpful checkers and several possibilities. Delighted to see HI-TECH with a second H on the end; we had HI-TEC recently (QC 2936 by Breadman) and it looked wrong.
All in all a most enjoyable puzzle – thank you Dangle. Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to the Sunday Special.
Not that it matters, but I didn’t say I had problems with AVER and ASTRAY, just that the wordplay in the clues were a bit tricky. I thought of AVER for state and ASTRAL for starry straight away having the checkers in place. I checked… and yes we had ASTRAY as recently as QC2945 on 25th March, but with an anagram clue. Well remembered!
I found this fairly gentle but very enjoyable.
I’d not heard of the jag/TOOTH meaning but the wordplay was clear and I took the wAVERs route to 19d. One of my few hold ups was DESPICABLE which turned out to be a good thing because I’d probably have spelt it with an extra ‘i’ if I hadn’t had to focus on the anagram fodder.
Started with BHAJI and finished with BEARING in 6.35.
Thanks to John and Dangle.
23.36 Delightful! Though nowhere near as fast as many of our puzzling friends. Took us a while to get going, then a steady solve. Slow to get the DESPICABLE anagram, though knew it was there. Headed in wrong direction (toward the lingerie department) with TEDDY. A PDM with IRIS (‘ The Sea, The Sea’ being a favoured read some years back).
So, in the SCC. No complaints. An excellent work out.
Thank you Johninterred and Dangle.
PS Dead leg ‘number’ — gets us every time. Such realities help explain our presence in cosy SCC.
Super crossword – thanks, Dangle! I didn’t know HAJI being a pilgrim, but being fond of the occasional bhaji it was obvious enough. I’m another waverer, but it matters not. 9.23.
Thanks for the excellent blog, John, and thanks also to Sawbill for the weekender, which I’ve just completed – nice one
A very nice puzzle which I cocked up on my LOI. One of the effects of my dyspraxia is difficulty in sequencing something in reverse, and it was thus that I invented a security device called an ESURNAME. It’s been that sort of week…..
A good crossword which I dnf because of stupidity. I managed all but one in around 15 mins but couldn’t work out _I_E_H as a (4,2) clue. Then the penny finally dropped – I had fixated on (4,2) instead of (2,4).
I finally realised my mistake but was then into the SCC. Woe is me.
Thanks to Dangle and John.
20:28 for the solve. Always hard to enjoy a puzzle when I feel stressed by it which I did here. Felt I was being challenged by 15×15 level knowledge. The NE was the main culprit where my list of specific TROUT ran out at none and I couldn’t rearrange the anagram, HAJI NHO so while I knew the Indian food wasn’t sure on its spelling and unconvinced by having an -I (which turned out to be correct for HI-TECH and NHO Jag=tooth. Second area of stress was being unable to get DUBAI/SHAVING CREAM and being challenged by a double-def for BEARING. AVER went in unparsed but spotted both possibilities postsolve. And ASTRAY struggled to parse because I was seeing an anagram of stars to start it off.
All that said, can appreciate post solve that there was some good clueing and surfaces in there. USERNAME a good hidden which I biffed and only parsed postsolve. So thank-you to Dangle for that.
1hr25 for the week needing three visits to the SCC. For those who aren’t back for Saturday’s QC, have a good weekend. And for those who are back, have a good weekend.
Thanks to JohnI for the blog and Weekender
Middling hard in a few places, for me, and needed Johns excellent blog to see where USERNAME, LOI, came from as I biffed it with all checkers in place.
AVERS was clearly something trimmed so I didn’t bother working out what, as the def was clear. ASTRAY another biff, assuming it was S. T.A.R and some trick I couldn’t see. Must remember that which I expect is common in the 15×15 but rare here.
A good, into the SCC, puzzle which I much enjoyed.
10:21
BHAJI went straighten in – I’m very fond of onion bhajis.
TOOTH took longer, as I wasn’t sure of that meaning of jag, leaving HI-TECH as my LOI.
Thanks John and Dangle
Good puzzle. I was pleased to finish in 14:24 as I got stuck for what seemed like an age over tooth and hi-tech. Didn’t connect jag with tooth and couldn’t bring hitch to mind for problem. Iris Murdoch was on my school’s sixth-form reading list back in the 70s. A bit of a strange choice then but would be a lot stranger now.
Hardly any across solutions seen at first look, but got a few of the downs and slowly filled in the blanks, not without a couple of biffs. LOI BEARING. On the difficult side, I thought.
8.10
Also liked it (and also the IRIS clue). The trickiesh BHAJI/HI-TECH crossers and ASTRAY were my LOIs.
Thanks Dangle and John.
Another “done before the coffee is finished”. I am sure we have seen Jag = tooth quite a few times before. I still don’t get pin number = dead leg.
Numb = without feeling – try that!
Another “done before the coffee is finished”. I am sure we have seen Jag = tooth quite a few times before. I still don’t get pin number = dead leg.
Ah! of course. Now I think of it I think I have even seen number as something that makes you numb before.
Really good puzzle, just the right mix, with a real head-scratcher at the end. LOI IRIS, convinced Rupert wasn’t Irish but then PDM. A couple CNP, so thank you, John: NHO jag = tooth (surely “horn” in the clue is superfluous), and NHO havers, was happy enough with hesitates = ER but stuck to explain AV.
Honk, by itself, can have a slightly different everyday usage 😉
Oh! (Thank you.) I won’t ask you to elaborate … this has passed me by. Now with a British (rather than hard) leader, that would be clear, but ….
I suspect you are going down the wrong track, albeit quite an interesting one.
Honk is an informal word for vomit.
Thank you so much! The things we learn here …..
It’s also the verb used to describe getting out the the saddle when cycling, either to relieve pressure or put out more power. I honked up Cop Hill.
That sounds like something I do every day (our part of London is at the top of a hill): stand up on the pedals to give yourself more power. I’ve heard that called stonking – are both used, or is one definitely wrong?
also a bad smell
Sailed through this one in 5:17. FOI was DESPICABLE, LOI DEHYDRATES. Have eaten many an onion BHAJI! Nice puzzle. Thanks Dangle and John.
DNF.
Really good puzzle ?
Really nasty puzzle if you ask me.
Could hardly get a single one.
So sorry to hear your discouragement. That’s where I was three years ago; may I presume you’re a (fairly?) new boy? You’ll learn, and therein lies the fun!
I’m also a newbie, less than a year.
I parsed about five and semi parsed / biffed seven others.
Getting there slowly.
Liked rainbow trout.
Didn’t like despicable.
Pin number = something that makes your pin (leg) numb. I vividly remember suffering dead legs (caused by the impact of the knee of the assailant on the thigh muscle of the victim) at grammar school in the 1950s.
Liked the puzzle, which was exactly at QC level. Thanks John and Dangle
Another middling solve for me. A lot of the answers flew in from just definition and checkers. I didn’t bother to parse SHAVING CREAM, DEHYDRATES and USERNAME until after the solve. I did get a little stuck in the NE with HI TECH, TOOTH and my LOI ESTRANGE. 7:59 Thanks John for the blog
I’m a haverer, and I duly havered over TOOTH (was sure “jag” was going to indicate “cat”), ASTRAY (where I blundered to the right answer with an anagram of “stars” + Y for Yen and then spent ages wondering how the heck it worked in terms of swapping an A for an S) and LOI USERNAME (since I forgot Kevin’s Law that if the clue doesn’t make sense it’s probably a hidden).
Lovely puzzle, all done in 07:40 for a Good Day, many thanks Dangle and John. Looks like I’ll have time this weekend for the extra puzzle, which is good news.
Middling in difficulty imo, leading to a middling time for me of 17 minutes. A bit of a hold-up for my last three (2 & 12dn and 20ac) but nothing too serious. Biffed several of the downs from crossers, all parsed after the event.
FOI – 1ac DESPICABLE
LOI – 12dn USERNAME
COD – 10ac IRIS. Also liked BHAJI and TOOTH
Thanks to Dangle and John.
An interesting and enjoyable crossword at the slightly harder than average level of difficulty for me. Lots of different types of clues, but nothing too obscure barring some necessary GK (e.g. IRIS Murdoch, of whom I knew not). I didn’t parse BLISS properly, but it went in as it just had to be.
FOI: DESPICABLE
LOI: ESTRANGE
COD: WAFFLE
TIME: Just short of 35 minutes, I think.
Many thanks to John and Dangle.
You can tell the sort of week this has been by the fact that just over 25mins seems like a good result. Even that was in doubt until Hi-Tech and Estrange tumbled after a Bhaji pdm. Other oddities in today’s solve included Iris and Astray being practically write-ins, whereas the straightforward Bearing (. . .tout droit?) needed an alpha-trawl. Bliss was nice to parse, but 16ac Fortress gets my CoD vote. Invariant
7.39 slightly hampered by solving with thumbs on the phone. Nice straightforward QC – a good one for beginners with a variety of common devices and old favourite AVER making yet another appearance. Cheers John and Dangle.
It must be hard for an expert to judge what would be good for beginners.🙂
You kindly attempt my weekend QC and know that for me it is harder to gauge the difficulty of a crossword than it is to come up with the clues.
I would love others to try mine this weekend (see John’s blog above).
Seemed quick to me – scraped in under 7mins and everything parsed; thanks for that Sawbill.
The difference for me between this and today’s QC is that not so much jumped off the page in the QC. I either had to work to find answers and/or when I got them the parsing wasn’t easily understood (hence aver, username, astral parsed postsolve).
Great time🙂. I look forward to Sawbill’s QC on Sunday.
I found this very easy to start with and then ran into difficulties on the right and at the bottom. All done in 11:42 so I can’t have struggled as much as I thought I did at the time, though I completely failed to parse ASTRAY. I vaguely recall thinking “Oh, it’ll be an anagram of STARS + Y”, which it clearly isn’t, so I got lucky there.
Thank you for the blog!
14:31 for a bit of a struggle with some tricky clues. I assumed “wavers” to get to AVER. “Havers” works too but only South of the border; in Scottish English to haver is to talk nonsense. It’s an annoying confusion that could easily be resolved if someone just got a grip on it
Needed help with LOI TOOTH. Just could not think of a synonym for Honk the horn, apart from Hoot and the French ‘klaxoner’. Synonyms seem harder for the aged! But MER at Jag=tooth anyway.
Pretty slow today on e.g. BEARING (PDM), HI TECH, ESTRANGE.
Liked WAFFLE, STUB, FORTRESS, among others.
COD the reversed hidden Yorkshireman.
I don’t think IRIS’s work has stood the test of time, by the way.
Thanks vm, John. CNP all e.g. ASTRAY.
8.56 Many of the clues needed a couple of looks. ESTRANGE and ASTRAY were the last two. Thanks John and Dangle.
22 mins…
Tough but enjoyable. Only one I didn’t really parse was 15dn “Astray”.
Slightly gob smacked at the number of people who have never heard of Bhaji – but each to his own I guess. In terms of curries, I’m a Korma man myself, which generates an incredible amount of ridicule when I go out.
FOI – 3dn “Isis”
LOI – 15dn “Astray”
COD – 13ac “Wages”
Thanks as usual!
Parsed Aver after reading the blog, thanks. But NHO of havers which is also not in the online dictionary I use.
Wonder when Dangle set his first QC, couldn’t have been recent.
Dangle’s first was just a month ago, on 4th March, QC 2927. As for HAVER, to dither, it is in Chambers, OED and Collins. I wonder what online dictionary you use?
Thanks , so it was as recent as March 4 when we had a Dangle QC! I really am having my senior moments.
Also, found out thefreedictionary didn’t redirect to “haver” when searching for “havers”.
13:45
A nice simple one although I couldn’t quite get the clues for BLISS and ASTRAY to work and completely failed to parse LOI USERNAME but obvious from the definition once the checkers were in.
20:50, so hoping for a seat by the fire in the SCC. My L2I were HI-TECH and TOOTH, and I’m still a bit unconvinced by “jag” as the definition. Liked FORTRESS the most today.
Thanks to Dangle and John.
Just like yesterday, didn’t finish this one, both a hard puzzle, but enjoyable too. Had 7 clues at the end I couldn’t work out, but looking at the explanations there’s lots of good thinks to remember for the next one. I do question whether a WAFFLE is a type of cake though? Thank you for the blog, and will give the extra weekend cryptic a go now too!
we did not get 7d hi tech and 12d username, found it generally quite tricky.
9.05.
Enjoyed this despite a DNF. Missed the reverse hidden USERNAME of course and could not solve BHAJI or HI-TECH.
Thanks Dangle, keep up the good work. And thanks John for a v helpful blog.
I’m in the minority here. Found it a real struggle with lots of biffing of stuff I just couldn’t parse. DNF as had no idea about 12d
Slow starting but enjoyable once I got going. Some good clues in this QC such as BHAJI and ESTRANGE.
Thanks to Dangle and John
About seven hours later than my usual time for solving this, but worth the wait as I thought this was an excellent puzzle. Well done Dangle, you can hang around and do another any time. I didn’t quite make my target finishing in 10.48, but it was certainly tough enough to stretch me a little.
My total time for the week was 64.52 (including a 20 and 19 minuter), so bar these two disasters the rest wasn’t too bad, giving me a daily average of 12.58.
I don’t comment very often and when I do it is usually positive. But this puzzle was silly. I have been trying to do them for years. And I got 3 right answers today. After ages. No fun and very boring for me.
Really enjoyed this one, thanks Dangle for an entertaining puzzle. COD 10 across.
Thanks to blogger John