Times Quick Cryptic No 3085 by Dangle

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Fun puzzle, on the gentler end of things.

I crept in a few seconds under the five minute mark, which doesn’t happen too often. Some nice things mixed in with those good old favourites like ‘antipasti’ and ‘Etna’, including a bit of a chuckle on realising the ‘PM, briefly’ wasn’t deducting the last letter from a six-lettered PM.

In fact, there seem to be a mere four six-lettered prime ministers: two are fairly gettable, but come to the front of the class for a very large cupcake (sometimes just called a cake) if you manage either of the others.

Answer:

Most of us should be able to dredge up WILSON and ATTLEE, but then you’re right back to some chap called Henry Pelham (1743-54) for the third. The fourth is slightly debatable, but if you knew that the mid-Victorian Lord Palmerston’s actual name was Henry John Temple.. well then you should probably be feeling quite smug.

Good breezy fun – many thanks to Dangle!

Across
7 Tolerate rabid English hosts (5)
ABIDE – is “hosted” by rABID English
8 Ghost beginning to panic Chinese male (7)
PHANTOM – P, HAN (Chinese), TOM (male – as in a male animal, rather than a random male name)
10 Curse about the missing hot clothing (7)
SWEATER – SWEAR (curse) about TE (ThE missing H for Hot)
11 Come a cropper collecting large medieval weapon (5)
FLAIL – FAIL (come a cropper) collecting L(arge). News to me (mercifully) but now I know the origin of “to flail about”. A mace on a chain, basically. The flail was originally a tool for threshing corn, but vaguely serviceable as a weapon if needs must, à la pitchfork: think nunchucks, which probably also derive from it.
12 A new suggestion to go with sparkling wine: hors d’oeuvres (9)
ANTIPASTI – A, N(ew), TIP (suggestion) to go with ASTI (sparkling wine)
14 Asian city close to Tokyo (3)
LAO – LA (city), closing letter of tokyO
15 Sharp intake of breath after son disappears in hole (3)
GAP – GASP (sharp intake of breath) loses S(on)
16 Prises end off vending machine, perhaps (9)
DISPENSER – anagram (off) of PRISES END
18 Tie up   PM, briefly (5)
TRUSS – double definition, the second as in Liz Truss, the less said about the better.
20 Stuffy, bald husband leaves (7)
AIRLESS – HAIRLESS (bald), H(usband) leaving
22 Trio tactfully concealing 18th-century legislation (4,3)
RIOT ACT – concealed in tRIO TACTfully
23 Defy British party (5)
BRAVE – B(ritish) RAVE (party)
Down
1 Chuckling, after bloke initially suggests unlawful killing (12)
MANSLAUGHTER – LAUGHTER (chuckling) after MAN (bloke) and S (“initially” Suggests)
2 Avoid team’s favourite somersaulting (8)
SIDESTEP – SIDE’S (team’s) PET (favourite) “somersaults” = reverses
3 Second time in faction (4)
SECT – SEC(ond) T(ime)
4 Rejects special containers for tea (6)
SPURNS – SP(ecial) URNS (containers for tea)
5 Face fine for developing stimulant (8)
CAFFEINE – anagram (for developing) of FACE FINE
6 Smoker in canteen upset (4)
ETNA – “in” cANTEen “upset” – reverse
9 Underfed, mishandle our careers (12)
MALNOURISHED – anagram (careers) of MISHANDLE OUR. As in to career (or indeed flail) about.
13 Editor stops troublesome individual with a large platform (8)
PEDESTAL – ED(itor) stops PEST (troublesome individual) with A L(arge)
14 Salvages lost city (3,5)
LAS VEGAS – anagram (lost) of SALVAGES
17 Inadequate theory voided following study (6)
SCANTY – TY (TheorY “voided”) following SCAN (study)
19 University fellow is a noodle (4)
UDON – U(niversity) DON (fellow)
21 Polish base of shiny gemstone (4)
RUBY – RUB (polish) Y (“base” of shinY)

 

79 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 3085 by Dangle”

    1. I agree – brilliant. Sort of the opposite of a “lift and separate”, I wonder if it has a name?
      Easily my cod. (No rolytoly cake for me took me a while to get Wilson at which point I gave up)

      1. Sorry, indicator is probably the wrong word – as a pedestrian, I’m a little hung up on indicators because drivers don’t seem to know what they are – I just meant that “briefly” looked like wordplay.

  2. Blew it, couldn’t get BRAVE, but the rest was mostly straightforward and the long downs were there to be hit, which helped. Thanks Dangle and Roly.

  3. 9:20 – found it very tough today for some reason – wasn’t thinking straight. Some great clues though. Agree with LouWeed that the Truss clue was excellent. And yes, the easy two PMs only came to mind.

  4. Not so easy for me. Only four on the first pass for a second day in a row but all those checkers from MANSLAUGHTER helped a lot. Ended up needing a long time to get to SPURNS having spent a fair while on BRAVE. ETNA was harder than it should have been. All green in 13.38. Good one.

    1. Sainsbury’s sells Udon noodles as a staple item in its aisle. Thanks to that I was sure about Udon when solving.

    2. In my experience, udon, soba, and ramen are the only words you need to know to cope with any Japanese noodle clue in Crosswordland.

  6. 23:59 (average: 37, target: 29:30)

    Mostly easy going. Some of the anagrams (DISPENSER and LAS VEGAS) stood out so clearly I could see the answer before I read the clue. I got a bit bogged down in the SE corner with SCANTY, RUBY and BRAVE. BRAVE added about 4 mins to my time and even now I can’t make it fit as neatly as a synonym for defy as I normally do. RAVE crops up a lot though so I should have seen it quicker.

    I too enjoyed the humour of the wordplay on TRUSS. My COD.

      1. Thanks for the help Barry!

        Personally until now I’d always seen a large semantic gap between “defy the elements” and “brave the elements” where the first is an act of intentional resistance against the supposed will of the elements and the second is an act of personal courage against an uncontrollable force, but not a direct opposition to a will which I thought of as being the core of defiance.

        I think after considering it during the day and looking at some examples that boundary is not always as distinct as I’d thought and often the two words are used more interchangeably. Certainly easy to find the synonym referenced virtually everywhere. So I definitely learnt something today. Thanks again!

  7. DNF, sadly.

    I flew through this, heading for a decent time, until I was totally breezeblocked by BRAVE and SCANTY. Just couldn’t see them. Dope.

    Pi ❤️

  8. Nice and straightforward again although I was oblivious to the PMs, apart from she who shall not be named

    Started with MANSLAUGHTER and finished with SCANTY in 4.56 with COD to 18a.
    Thanks to Rolytoly and Dangle

  9. Exactly 9 minutes. I agree that 18a was a very good clue.
    Mistyped ASIDE, which delayed my getting my LOI SIDESTEP.

    Thanks Roly and Dangle

  10. ‘PM, briefly’ lovely indeed. I’ve come up with Attlee, Wilson, can’t think of –and now that I’ve looked, realize I never knew–the others. NOT Farage, anyway. 5:22

  11. DNF. I pink square in 22 mins
    Just couldn’t get LAO. I picked a vowel at random in the end. Clever clue.
    The rest I found straightforward once I got going.
    FOI: GAP
    LOI: ” LOO”
    CODs TRUSS and LAO.
    Thanks Dangle and rolytoly

  12. I enjoyed this one, as I continue to be slightly confused by the new look of the online version.

    My LOI was 18ac, having failed to get it on the first pass, probably for the same reason as our blogger, i.e. not bringing to mind a PM of six letters. I also failed to spot for a time that it was the last remaining clue, implying that an unsolved clue is somehow less obvious to my eyes in the new format. Such delays made my final time 8:14, or in other words, slightly longer than 18ac I think.

  13. 9:48 with SCANTY corrected after bunging in swatty. Was getting increasingly irritated by the screen scrolling off the page as I cursored up and down trying letters in there. I would have said to scan is the opposite of studying something – a cursory glance versus a detailed read.

    Despite it going in quickly, I didn’t really much enjoy it. Don’t know HAN, LAO, UDON while ABIDE=tolerate, BRAVE=defy and aforementioned SCAN=study not my first choices.

    COD TRUSS but have no idea where to find these other PMs. I just scanned the grid and can’t see them and the blog doesn’t explain.

    Thanks to Rolytoly and Dangle

    1. My iPad version of the blog has a yellow ‘show more’ link at the end of Roly’s introduction. I didn’t have the patience to try to find old PMs myself.

      1. Thanks – yes I got that too. I subsequently realised Roly was just quiz questioning us on six-letter PMs. Nothing to do with the contents of the grid other than the Truss clue.

    2. I had exactly the same thoughts about scan and study.

      There is no way I would use them in any sentence to get the same meaning.

  14. Didn’t find this as easy as our blogger, only getting for across clues at first pass, but finding the down clues more straightforward. A couple of biffs (PHANTOM, SCANTY) and a finish in 21:15, about average for me.

  15. A steady solve in 17mins for me (but I had to check the unknown noodle). I would have done better if I had looked at 1d early on rather than jumping round the grid looking for ‘sitters’. I also wasted time on 10ac trying to form an anagram from CURSE and TE.
    Just off to check Roly’s blog to enjoy some of the clues properly but TRUSS has to be my COD – a very good clue.
    Thanks to Dangle and Roly.

  16. 9 minutes. FLAIL as a ‘medieval weapon’ was a NHO but wasn’t difficult to work out. The rest went in steadily enough with TRUSS being my favourite too.

    Thank to roly and Dangle

  18. Wow – got away with LOI FLAIL! Thank you, Roly, for explaining that, also the Chinese HAN (searched for HANTO but apart from one random Chinese restaurant in USA, nothing) and SWEATER. I’m sure we all enjoyed TRUSS.
    Oh, I forgot this, spelling of CAFFEINE: the E had to be there due to the crossers, but I worried for a while due to the rule “I before E except after C … when it rhymes with bee”, to which there are very few exceptions, notably seize (also the names Keith and Sheila). So here’s another.
    No, despite “dredging”, can’t see even WILSON – can someone please explain for those of us at the bottom of the class?

    1. Hmm, the others are just further examples of six letter PMs, none of whom appear in the puzzle itself.

    2. I also had caffiene to start until the chemistry came to the recue. -ENE denotes a type of hydrocarbon (e.g. ethylene), whereas INE denotes (amongst other things) an alkaloid (E.g. nicotine, codeine & caffeine)

  19. 19 something minutes… still settling into new format.
    1d and 9d in first – slow with ETNA – added a minute or so.
    Post blog, we see it took longer than it should have, not sure why… a lot of little hesitations and plodding thinking ..dragging feet a bit.
    Enjoyed. : )
    Thank you Rolytoly and Dangle

  20. I’m not on the wavelength of Dangle, and it took me a while to get into the puzzle with enough crossers to biff the clues that didn’t spring to mind. Consequently I had the B from RUBY to make BRAVE a write in. 18a was excellent misdirection. LOI was SPURNS, which took far too long to come to mind. However, all fair and all known vocabulary, so no complaints.

  21. Didn’t know the noodle, but UDON seemed more likely than UBOD. From ABIDE to RUBY in 6:55. Thanks Dangle and Roly.

  22. My fourth sub ten minute target beating time of the week, finishing in 9.02. I didn’t think this was at all straightforward, and my overall feeling was that I was on song to finish in the time I achieved. BRAVE was my LOI, but I had to trust to luck on the unheard of UDON.

    1. Thank you for the NHO “on song”, a lovely piece of slang unknown here in my part of the world. Can’t wait for it to show up in a cryptic.

  23. This turned out to be a lot easier than I expected from Dangle. Unfortunately I needed an alpha-trawl to get round a complete block on loi Scan/Study and that nudged me into the SCC. Otherwise a steady top to bottom solve. CoD to 18ac. Invariant

    PS What about John Stuart (1762 – 63) as the fifth member of the six letter club ?

  24. I finished in 4:38 with NHO LAO, but unfortunately fat-fingered “scamty”. Adjacent keys have been a problem again this week, just as I thought I’d started to control my typo habit. COD TRUSS.

  25. 11.39 so comfortably inside my target for online solving but would have been faster if I could remember that the new improved format doesn’t recognise when the first letter of an answer already exists. Nevertheless, pleased to have a gentle offering after yesterday’s DNF fiasco when I was too discombobulated by the changes to bother.

  26. 15 minutes of hard work for me. LOI was LAO; NHO and required some time to think through.
    Also NHO UDON but parsing was clear I thought- but, as noted above, UBOD also “works”.
    A difficult grid meant that nothing came easily.
    But I enjoyed it, especially TRUSS,CAFFEINE and BRAVE.
    David

  27. 19 mins…

    Probably one of the easiest Dangles since they started. The two long clues down each side were fairly straightforward and helped with the rest of the grid. Main hold up was 17dn “Scanty” and debating whether 19dn “Udon” was correct (although I couldn’t see it being anything else). Even 14ac “Lao” took longer than it probably should.

    FOI – 15ac “Gap”
    LOI – 17dn “Scanty”
    COD – 15ac “Gap”

    Thanks as usual!

  29. This seems to be very easy or pretty hard – we were the latter at 29 minutes with several learning opportunities (flail,lao,udon)
    Thanks as ever to setter and blogger

  30. Managed to solve in 23 minutes, a steady solve for me. Found it an enjoyable puzzle, and like everybody else got a chuckle from 18a. Thanks for the blog 😁

  32. I thought I was in trouble getting only 4 in the first across pass, and one of those wrong (KYO for 14a, which fits the clue and is slang for Kyoto, as Brum is for Birmingham). However almost all of the downs went in in one pass and the rest followed. Excellent degree of difficulty to my taste, only 3D was a write in, but no real holdups. Thanks to Dangle and rolytoly.

  33. I only managed six. 1d and 9d were write ins. 22ac Trio being an anagram of riot so right answer for the wrong reason. Didn’t even think about looking for the hidden. Udon parsed and antipasti bifd given Asti.

    Thanks to R and D

    I need some more R&D on my technique.

  34. A speedy one for me at 10:12, but I preferred taking these more slowly on my phone as I enjoyed a leisurely buffet breakfast on the holiday from which I returned yesterday. I’m ready for my croissants and coffee now, and maybe an extra fig or two, but there aren’t any.
    COD to the well hidden RIOT ACT. Thanks Dangle and Roly.

  35. 5:23

    This was pretty gentle with two long write-ins down the sides. Not sure whether I’ve come across UDON before, but if I have, I didn’t know that it was noodles. LOI SCANTY which needed a short think.

    Thanks Roly and Dangle

  36. Not easy as far as I was concerned. Took ages, despite solving 1d straight away. LOI COD TRUSS. Very slow in that corner. I kept choosing the wrong anagram letters in general. In fact, I was rather dim today.
    LAO was one of my early solves, though. Also liked SIDESTEP, AIRLESS, SWEATER. DNF FLAIL, though vaguely heard of, come to think of it. NHO UDON.
    Thanks vm, Roly.

  39. A gentle and entertaining 10:22 solve, with so many surfaces to admire. I especially like LAO, GAP, and TRUSS, and MANSLAUGHTER, though chestnutty, elicited a slightly horrified guffaw. Surface-of-the-day to UDON, I worked with many such in my career.

    Thanks to Dangle and rolytoly.

    If only the website would settle down!

  40. 7:29. But could have been faster if I’d been more confident with LAO and UDON. Two NHOs was a bit unexpected. And UBOD looks just as likely.

  41. 9:09, very enjoyable puzzle, and I particularly liked the brief PM – great clue, and yes, like many others I was looking for a 6 letter PM to shorten like I was meant to.

    Many thanks Roly for the blog.

  42. 6:34. Yep also fell for the 6 lettered PM, but moved on quickly so was left with T and U crossers which made me chuckle.

  43. 15:19 here, but I’m blaming at least some of that time on my cat who was very insistent that I should put my phone aside and pay attention to him. At least he doesn’t bring me dead things.

    I liked TRUSS and SWEATER the most today. Inexplicable Slowness Award goes to ETNA, where I knew exactly what was going on but somehow still missed the hidden. Ho hum.

    Thanks to Dangle and rolytoly.

  45. A steady solve today. I didn’t parse PHANTOM and was slow to see SWEATER, BRAVE and LOI SPURNS. 7:09

  46. I got diverted on 14A. An Asian city that closed to become Tokyo is Edo.
    I did live there for a few years !

  47. Not sure why it took so long, but I was slow today. There were a few darker clues today, what with MANSLAUGHTER, FLAIL, MALNOURISHMENT and TRUSS (although that one did make me LOL – not the actual person obviously).
    I have no idea why my LOI took so long – I had the SP, and thought about URNS, after bags, pots and cups, but didn’t put them together for what seemed like ages!
    15:30 FOI Antipasti LOI Spurns COD Dispenser
    Thanks Dangle and Roly

  48. NHO Lao. Is this some random Asian person, the same way as Han are a random (though large) group of Chinese and Tom (as I thought until I read the blog) some random bloke?
    Googled lao, but could only find Laos, of course.

    1. I had to look it up too, but dictionaries better than Google for crosswords.

      Collins: “Lao
      in British English
      (laʊ IPA Pronunciation Guide ) or Laotian (ˈlaʊʃɪən IPA Pronunciation Guide )
      noun
      1. Word forms: plural Lao, Laos or Laotians
      a member of a Buddhist people of Laos and NE Thailand, related to the Thais
      2. the language of this people, closely related to Thai
      adjective
      3. of or relating to this people or their language or to Laos”

      1. I was surprised, a while back, to find out that Laos is properly named “Lao People’s Democratic Republic” and therefore the S in Laos indicates the plural or apostrophe or some such thing. Had forgotten that by today.

        1. Thanks both.
          Even knowing Laos, it never occurred that it could be a native of that country, I would have expected Loasian or similar. I thought it must be some leader I hadn’t heard of.

  49. My thanks to Dangle and rolytoly.
    Overall not a pushover by any means. Thought I might get stuck. Eventually DNF on GK/Vocab, Udon at 19d.
    11a Flail, I had to think about this as it isn’t normally a weapon as such, any more than a machete or any other agricultural implement.
    COD 18a TRUSS!!!!! Excellent!
    Nearly failed on a lazy 12a AntipastO, but woke up in time.
    DNF, NHO 19d Udon. Never seen them in Sainsbury. Guessable but I didn’t, so. I think that is abstruse, especially for a quickie. But then, if you don’t know it it’s hard, if you do it is easy….

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