Times Quick Cryptic No 3110 by Joker

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Joker is in generous mood today with a fairly gentle puzzle. I skipped through this in just 4:10. A couple of slightly oblique definitions and a clever bit of wordplay (15D, my COD) were the only minor hold-ups for me, but, as always, your mileage may differ.  Thank-you Joker.

Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic.  This time it is my turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword, entitled “The Bells”  here.  Can you  identify the theme and find the thematic references? If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 139 here.

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

Across
1 Yield and authorise again? (6)
RESIGN –RE–SIGN (authorise again).
4 One who sings three times (6)
TREBLE – Double definition
8 Cold capital — note that’s weather in general (7)
CLIMATE – C (cold) LIMA (capital) TE (note)
10 Parasite mostly eating head of the water lily (5)
LOTUS – First letter of The in LOUS{e} (parasite) [mostly].
11 Impressive electronic image (4)
EPIC – E (electronic) PIC (image)
12 Pure spirit inhabiting everywhere on the internet? (8)
VIRGINAL – GIN (spirit) in VIRAL (everywhere on the net).
14 Boy I fed to alligator? This one put up a good fight (9)
GLADIATOR – LAD (boy) I in GATOR (alligator). Nice one. It reminded me of the one about the cannibal’s statement after eating his gran. No. Don’t ask.
18 Festival of the Body — around four (8)
CARNIVAL – CARNAL (of the body) about IV (four in Roman numerals).
20 Competent architect builds large edifices primarily (4)
ABLE -Initial letters [primarily] of Architect Builds Large Edifices.
22 Strange degree in dance (5)
RUMBA – RUM (strange) BA (degree).
23 Diligent chap receives top mark (7)
EARNEST – A (top mark) in ERNEST (man’s name; chap). I thought that an odd choice of definition, but it makes for a better surface than e.g. serious, sincere or eager.
24 Rodney’s travelling over there (6)
YONDER – (Rodney)* [travelling].
25 Actor is back? (6)
PLAYER – Double definition, the second by example, hence the ?.
Down
1 Missile plant (6)
ROCKET – Double definition. I rather like rocket in a salad.
2 Being acceptable placement outside university (7)
SUITING – U (university) in SITING (placement).
3 Quickly take unfinished canal boat northwards? (4)
GRAB – BARG{e} (canal boat) [unfinished] going upwards.
5 Demote concerning papal emissary (8)
RELEGATE – RE (concerning) LEGATE (papal emissary).
6 Stick no bill up (5)
BATON – NO TAB (bill) all going upwards. Do you remember the old graffiti on signs saying “Bill stickers will be prosecuted”? “Bill Stickers is innocent”.
7 Lie, say, misled without difficulty (6)
EASILY – (lie say)* [misled].
9 Take out talkative bird entering high society (9)
ELIMINATE – MINA (talkative bird) in ELITE (high society).
13 Confirm a detail’s wrong under verse (8)
VALIDATE – V (verse) (a detail)* [wrong].
15 Potentially doing a stretch with Oscar for the second crime (7)
ROBBERY – The only tricky clue today… It’s RUBBERY (potentially doing a stretch) changing the second letter to O (Oscar in the phonetic alphabet). My COD.
16 Perhaps skip small Indian dish (6)
SCURRY – S (small) CURRY (Indian dish). Again a slightly indirect definition, indicated by the “perhaps”.
17 Persistently annoy Lords member about empty statement (6)
PESTER – Outside letters of S{tatemen)T in PEER (Lords member).
19 Right country for old Italian (5)
ROMAN – R (right) OMAN (country). A Roman can be a new Italian too.
21 Test for singers missing church (4)
ORAL –  {ch}ORAL (for singers) without the CH (church).

83 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 3110 by Joker”

  1. Above average difficulty for me, finishing in 12:24, but I did at least parse the excellent ROBBERY correctly. Lots of great surfaces and altogether enjoyable. I thought there might be some link between ELIMINATE, RELEGATE and VALIDATE when the third -ATE verb popped in, but it seems to be just a random thing.

  2. Interesting, I came here expecting to find most of you as fed up as I am. 41:35 for me, and I only persevered for that long because of my DNF yesterday.

    Thank you for the blog!

  3. All done in 24 minutes so not too easy after all. Couldn’t parse PLAYER (never thought of back in the sporting sense) but did manage to parse ROBBERY. I spent some time at 16dn thinking of all sorts of different curries before spotting the blindingly obvious. I also took a long time to parse VIRGINAL.

    FOI – 4ac TREBLE
    LOI – 1ac RESIGN
    COD – 6dn BATON

    Thanks to Joker and John

  4. 14 mins…

    Definitely one of Joker’s easier offerings. Interesting we all thought about Gladiator yesterday with the Marcus Aurelius clue, and here it appears in 14ac. Main hold ups were 9dn “Eliminate” (where I originally thought Extricate) and 12ac “Virginal” (where “Ethereal” came to mind) – but neither would parse. 15dn “Robbery” could have been trickier, but was slightly more obvious with checkers.

    FOI – 1dn “Rocket”
    LOI – 23ac “Earnest”
    COD – 15dn “Robbery”

    Thanks as usual!

  5. That was like Earth in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – mostly harmless. However, the bits that weren’t harmless were pretty spiky – EARNEST, ROBBERY, PLAYER and LOI ELIMINATE.

    In my head the Mina Bird is always so spelt, because that was the first spelling I encountered as a child and it stuck. But when I started doing Polygon in the Times, it refused to accept “mina” as a valid word. I tried Collins to find that under “British English” it only had “mina” listed as meaning “an ancient unit of weight and money, used in Asia Minor, equal to one sixtieth of a talent”. Now I look more closely, however, I see that under “American English” Collins also has it as “alternative spelling of myna”. And as I just posted in response to Ham above, Chambers has “myna, mynah or mina noun (mynas, mynahs, minas) any of various large, SE Asian birds of the starling family, some of which can be taught to imitate human speech. ETYMOLOGY: 18c: from Hindi maina.”

    Anyway, the short point is that Polygon ought to recognise it!! Harrumph.

    Hacked out the last four in time to finish with 07:42 for a Pretty Good Day. Many thanks Joker and John.

    1. Whether the polygon should accept US spellings at all is a moot point – I’m always surprised when both of eg color and colour are listed as answers. But I agree, there is something awry when one Times puzzle accepts a US spelling and another Times puzzle refuses it! Perhaps the clue today should have said “talkative American bird”, to make it clear that we are looking for a word/spelling that is not usually found in British English.

  6. 10:24. I didn’t find that easy at all! definitely off the wavelength and the NE corner kept me going quite a while. LOI was EASILY annoyingly enough!

  7. DNF
    Made a hash of this by assuming chap was GENT, and looking for a word ending thus.
    And only spelling I knew was MYNAH bird
    Nearly went with ORIGINAL, for VIRGINAL, close to “pure”.
    Finally could only come up with the festival of CORPIVUS, which sounded plausible for a ROMAN rite.

  8. Tough old slog for me but I got there in the end having replaced ERADICATE with ELIMINATE when the penny dropped. I put in PLAYER without really knowing why and I was slightly bothered by singers = choral when I would say singers = chorale: but it had to be ORAL so in it went. But well into the SCC and like others I was hesitant over EARNEST, the importance of which never ceases to amuse me. Thanks Joker and John from up the road.

  9. 11:55

    I too, would question the gentleness of this puzzle. After around 6 minutes, I came to a grinding halt. I pencilled in the poor PLAYER which I never did satisfactorily commit to, then eventually ROBBERY which I only understood post-completion. Those were enough to break the deadlock and see me home. LOI was VIRGINAL (and not the tentative ORIGINAL)…

    Thanks John and Joker

  10. 11.38 Less than half done after the first pass. I was distracted by nuncios and CORPIVUS but it came together quite quickly. I did like ROBBERY. Thanks John and Joker.

  11. 18 minutes. Definitely not gentle for me after a wrestle with the 15×15. Couldn’t get going in the NW so slowly worked my way through the rest, having no idea about the parsing of ROBBERY. I then returned to the NW, with the not easy for me SUITING my LOI. ROMAN, EPIC and GLADIATOR had me wondering but I don’t think there’s enough else for a theme.

    In a minority, but I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to find this on the hard side.

    Thanks to John and Joker

  12. All okay took ages to get head around PLAYERS, and a while to remember unfortunate cardinal Wolesley’s legate

  13. Thank you John, I really tried hard to parse my biffed ROBBERY before giving up and coming to the blog. FOI was CLIMATE and LOI EARNEST in 7:29.

  14. This was a really hard slog. Nothing at all in the top half on first pass. Then got ABLE and a few more in the bottom half and gradually squeezed the blood out of the stone using aids finishing with the NW corner. Agree with others about MYNAH / MINA.

  15. Finished this, but only by using crossword solver copiously as would never have thought of some of those definitions.

  16. If that was Joker “in a gentle mood” I would hate to to meet him when he’s not. I found that decidedly tricky. 34-35 minutes for me, but helped by quite a lot of fortuitous biffing (e.g. ROBBERY, VIRGINAL, PLAYER).

    I struggled to get started and then found myself lurching around the grid, just to keep any sort of momentum going.

    FOI: RELEGATE
    LOI: TREBLE
    COD: YONDER (because it brought back memories of Only Fools And Horses).

    Many thanks to John and Joker.

  17. Seemed super reasonable to me. A rare two days in a row with a finish, though slower today at 28:53, held up by RESIGN/SUITING, which seem pretty easy in retrospect.

    Can someone explain ‘TE’ as note for me? I feel this may have been explained to me before, but when I google they try to tell me it is the musical note, but surely that os ‘ti’?

    2. Both TE and TI are fairly common crosswordese for the note that goes with jam and bread. Similarly, LA and DO sometimes have a trailing H, and SO is also known as SOL.

      1. Interesting, I can’t remember seeing TE, although now that I think of it I have run into the DOH/LAH thing, albeit only in crosswords. Thanks to you both!

  18. I always thought it was a ‘minor’ bird 🤣🤣 Happy to be educated by all you clever peeps. Found this reasonably gentle otherwise. LOI SUITING. COD ROBBERY. Many thanks both.

  19. Quite hard in places, but escaped the SCC fairly easily I think.
    Player/Robbery; I missed the sporting implication of “back” in player, but the parsing of Rubbery=doing a stretch seemed obvious if a little hard to believe.
    Thanks to Joker and Johninterred.

  20. 13:21 for me, starting with CLIMATE and ending with CARNIVAL, via an unparsed ROBBERY and PLAYER. Needed the blog to understand those two.

    Thanks to Joker and John.

  22. 22:39
    I certainly didn’t find this easy, 1 on the first across pass, 4 on the first down pass and then a halting solve, biffing ELIMINATE and VIRGINAL (so I can’t join the MINA debate).
    SW corner revealed itself in a gush followed by a slower SE. NE came next with the NW delivering me agonisingly into the SSC.
    I seem to struggle to get onto Joker’s wavelength – not sure why, no issues with the clues.
    FOI: ABLE
    LOI: RESIGN
    COD: not sure I have one.

    Thanks to Joker and John

  23. 9.14. Having read the blog I realise that I misparsed ‘lotus’: I thought that it was ‘locust’ with the ‘t’ replacing the redundant ‘c’, but a locust is not parasitic.

  24. Couldn’t be bothered to time myself but at least I finished. Parsed very little as I went. Still feeling angry about yesterday’s performance. Another disappointing week.

  25. Another in the “this wasn’t easy” camp, although I’ve known Joker be a lot harder at times. Ended on EARNEST with 24:54. Thanks Joker and John.

  26. I did this on my phone while waiting for a flight at the airport, so numerous distractions/interruptions. They also take the blame for an initial non-existant Corpival. I continue to be amazed every time a seemingly impossible clue (15d) is transformed into an obvious answer by the addition of a single letter – in this case the b of Able. No real idea of my time, but
    perhaps around 20mins. Invariant

Comments are closed.