Quick Cryptic 1684 by Joker

Author   curaristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Seemed a bit chewy at the time, but is fairly straigtforward in retrospect, which means the surfaces are clever. LOI 6dn – they get me every time. Curarist’s third law states that if you’re completely stumped, it’s probably a hidden word. One day I’ll start to follow my own advice.

Across

1 A number of people run television for a county (8)
SOMERSET – SOME + R + (tv) SET
5 Cut good tree (4)
GASH – G + ASH
7 Barrier keeping tons off path (4)
RAIL – TRAIL is path, minus T for tons
8 Explosive is key anytime, unfortunately (8)
DYNAMITE – D + anagram (‘unfortunately’) of ANYTIME
9 Wide-ranging elite, 300 in Rome are upset (8)
ECLECTIC – anagram (‘are upset’) of ELITE + CCC (300 in Rome)
11 Unit working with energy (3)
ONE – ON + E
13 Union rioting about cold papal emissary (6)
NUNCIO – anagram (‘rioting’) of UNION + C
16 Ancient European in for a top Olympic medal (3-3)
AGE-OLD – A + GOLD with E inside
18 Marine mammal mostly seen here (3)
SEA – short for SEAL
19 Forking out pence in mailing? (8)
SPENDING – P inside SENDING
20 Be undersized and run down (8)
BELITTLE – double definition
22 Call for a young man in uniform (4)
PAGE – double definition
23 Man, say, is left with ecstasy (4)
ISLE – IS + L + E
24 Concern with bus in Essex dropping last two off (8)
BUSINESS – hidden word BUS IN ESS(ex)
Down
1 Doctor has son to encourage (7)
SURGEON – S + URGE ON
2 Mother queuing up to take drugs (8)
MAINLINE – MA IN LINE
3 Revolutionary is outside rabble-rousing? (9)
SEDITIOUS – anagram (‘revolutionary’) of IS OUTSIDE
4 One hundred to an indefinite number (3)
TON – TO + N
5 Idiot turned up with what may be Oxford detective (7)
GUMSHOE – MUG backwards + SHOE. (‘Oxford’ in crosswords ALWAYS means shoe)
6 Bag carried by fans at Chelsea (7)
SATCHEL – hidden word: fanS AT CHELsea. Stared at this for ages.
10 Never-ending scales, see, when playing (9)
CEASELESS – anagram (‘playing’) of SCALES SEA
12 Name talkative bird in short comment (8)
NOMINATE – MINA is a talkative bird, inside NOTE
14 Pointless to exploit fewer (7)
USELESS – USE LESS
15 Upset with what one needs to know when buying headgear (7)
CAPSIZE – self explanatory
17 Stray remark that’s critical over topless robe (7)
DIGRESS – DIG + (d)RESS
21 Volunteers beginning of Bungalow Bill (3)
TAB – TA + B

67 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1684 by Joker”

  1. A tough one for a Friday, I thought. I was buoyed by a deceptively quick take off but I then slowed to a crawl trying to see ECLECTIC, CEASELESS (don’t know why because it was straightforward), MAINLINE, and my LOI PAGE which took forever. I couldn’t believe that I took over 20 mins in the end, all parsed. Good, totally immersive puzzle with clues to go back over with curarist’s list. Thanks to both.
    Strange to see I’m the first poster. Could it be that others found ut harder than our blogger? Or did I just wake up earlier than usual?
    Btw I thought MINA was a talkative bird (MINAH) ‘in short’. However, when I thought about it, the bird is a MYNAH. I can find a Mynah/Myna bird but not a Mina. Am I missing something?

    Edited at 2020-08-21 06:59 am (UTC)

    1. All is explained if you check the timeline above the blogger’s name!

      I found this straightforward and finished it in 9 minutes making this my first complete week of 10-minute targets achieved since May when I had two, but not consecutively.

      Edited at 2020-08-21 07:58 am (UTC)

      1. The timeline above the blogger’s name? I must be thick. I can’t find anything relevant up there.
        Thanks, anyway.
        P.s. And what about the non-existent ‘Mina’? John M.
        1. The blogger posted at 7:22 and you a few minutes later, meaning that the traditionally early posters had no blog to post to, hence you are the first.

          Chambers has Mynah, Myna and Mina as alternate spellings for the chatty bird.

          1. Thanks for getting in first. In the meantime I checked that the timeline appears in slightly different positions according to device viewed on but it’s always at the top of the blog somewhere.
            1. Thanks, rotter and jack. I’ll explore all the stuff around the pages. I wonder if it is different on my ipad.
              1. On an iPad (or at least a first generation iPad Pro) using Safari, it’s indicated by the red arrow: . If you’re using something like DuckDuckGo then it’s above the blogger’s avatar.
  2. Struggled with this one, though not without enjoyment. Read County as Country so SOMERSET was POI despite living there. Couldn’t understand how the emissary wasn’t LEGATE. Then after 10 minutes stared at _A_E for another 4 minutes alphatrawling for PAGE.

    Chalk this one up to Joker I think!

    Thanks Curarist as well

    2. Excellent. Can’t remember how many times I’ve read county as country. Must read the clue, must actually read the clue….
  3. Over 20 minutes for a third time in a row with yet another typo but an excellent puzzle I thought. Annoyed at myself for not getting stronger glasses even though I know I’ve moved beyond my kitchen pair as an old Yeovil College student would have nailed SOMERSET in a second or less if only I hadn’t read ‘country’, arrgh. I had seven of the acrosses at the first pass which is good for me but a worryingly empty NW (see above) which persisted to the end. Left at the end with my usual pair of four letter words RAIL took too long but not as long as PAGE, which I’ve seen before and recently I think. NHO of NUNCIO but the checkers were kind. I missed the hidden too and had to guess from checkers and then work it out. An end to a tough week for me – ready for a week’s camping on the Isle of Wight.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 06:47 am (UTC)

  4. Another DNF (after a self-imposed 30 minutes cut-off). The clock finally ran out on PAGE, where I double alphabet-ed through about 50 candidate words. But I had previously biffed in MEDICINE for MAINLINE, after misspelling ECCLETIC.

    COD was CAPSIZE, another example of a common enough word that the setter looked at it a novel way.

    Also surprised at MINA spelling for Mynah. And commiserations to county/country confusion, a mistake i have made in the past, often when filling out on-line web forms.

    Nice misdirecting by Joker who lived up to his name by having “Oxford Detective” not be “Morse”.

  5. Biffed ECLECTIC once I had the 3 Cs. Didn’t care for ‘pointless’ cluing USELESS; ‘unavailing’ or somesuch could have been used. (A similar clue has been used a couple of times in the 15×15.) And shouldn’t ‘ecstasy’ have a capital E? Or is E in Chambers as an abbreviation for ‘ecstasy’ as well? 7:07.
    1. Apologies in advance if I’ve misunderstood but the drug ‘ecstasy’ doesn’t require a capital. The single-letter abbreviation usually does but capitals are irrelevant when letters are entered in the grid.
      1. A quick web trawl suggests that opinions vary on the capitalization. Reuters handbook says Ecstasy. Stedman’s word book says ecstacy, yes two Cs. Yer pays yer money and …

        H

      2. No, you’ve understood, all right: I assumed (checking only with my ODE) that the drug is called Ecstasy, hence the clue should have capitalized the word. I must say I’m surprised that e.g. “I took some ecstasy and started dancing” was possible.
        1. I just checked the drug in all the usual sources (printed versions) and the results were:

          Chambers: ecstasy
          Collins: ecstasy

          Oxford Concise and ODE: Ecstasy
          Shorter Oxford: (Freq. E-) A hallucinogenic drug

        2. Is the clue required to use the correct capitalization? For example, I thought it was OK to use Yank in order to mislead people into thinking about Americans when in fact “tug” is the meaning that’s required.

          H

          1. It’s OK to capitalize a word that doesn’t in fact require capitalization, so Yank=tug is kosher. It is NOT OK to use a lower-case letter when the word is normally capitalized. So if, as I thought, the drug Ecstasy is standardly spelled that way, then the clue should not have ‘ecstasy’, since ‘ecstasy’ (meaning ecstasy) is not abbreviated E.
  6. All present and correct after 10 mins save for _a_e but my alphabet trawl only came up with mate. No complaints though. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter
  7. Not a good day! Got stuck on ISLE and PAGE, and opted for RATE for some reason so DNF in 15 mins 🙁 Don’t you hate -A-E danglers. I also misread county and was held up for a little while there. Brain not in gear today.

    Oxford – I always think of shoe so didn’t fall for that one and GUMSHOE went straight in.

    H

  8. Very slow today at 24 minutes, jumping around all over the grid, so congratulations to Joker who defeated me comprehensively. Whilst I didn’t fall for the county / country eyesight test, I am finding it difficult to read the clue numbers on my iPad mini, where I usually solve, often requiring me to count the answers to match a clue to the space, which slows me down. As Mendesest says, I need stronger glasses or a bigger iPad! Thanks Joker and Curarist.
  9. Most people seemed to have found this tough so I’m glad it isn’t just me losing my touch. Spent ages trying to make things work which were actually wrong (eg medicine not mainline) As you say in retrospect it is all fair enough though I expect many will think it is slightly too tricky for a quickie 🙂 Thanks setter and blogger!
  10. 17 mins held up by belittle, nominate, capsize, and LOI page.

    Lots of good clues, favourites were belittle, business, mainline, and COD capsize.

  11. A lot to enjoy today and fortunately my foray into thinking of countries was mercifully brief as the wordplay quickly got me to SOMERSET. The NW proved trickiest but getting 1d was the key to unlocking it. I’m so used to doctor being part of the wordplay that I assumed that encourage must be the definition.
    Like others PAGE was my LOI and required an alphabet trawl – it’s a bit of a chestnut so hopefully one day the brain cell will remember it. Finished in 11.59 with CAPSIZE just beating AGE-OLD to COD.
    Thanks to curarist

    Edited at 2020-08-21 09:16 am (UTC)

  12. I was another one who struggled with the -a-e condundrum. My offering of cave seemed reasonable, assuming, incorrectly, that it was a cryptic definition of the dated cry of public schoolboys alerting colleagues to the presence of authority.
  13. I struggled with NOMINATE as I couldn’t parse MINA. Does the talkative indicate a homophone of a Myna bird? I ran out of patience trying and failing to solve PAGE. Good QC though. Thanks to Joker and curarist.

    Also I have obviously led a sheltered life as I have NHO of MAINLINE as in to take drugs. Another one for the QC book of knowledge.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 09:35 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks for the quick reply but I cannot find a reference to that spelling. Can you point me in the right direction?
        1. No worries. I have found a link in Collins dictionary – American English.
        2. I share your concern about the mythical Mina bird (see above). However, rotter has found the (only) reference to Mina in Chambers as an alternative spelling of Mynah/Myna/Maina (see above, also). It didn’t come up on my search for Mina, though. A bit dodgy, I think. John
  14. SOMERSET was my FOI, quickly followed by TON, but then I dried up in the NW and moved clockwise, coming back to finish on SURGEON. I found this quite tricky and went over my target, submitting at 11:08. Thenaks Joker and Curarist.
  15. Looks like I followed a well trodden path; I had everything bar 22a in 13 minutes something. I then went into deep thought and alphabet trawls. I got PAGE in the end. Nothing else I considered worked. 19:05 on the clock.
    FOI was GASH. This was a puzzle with clever witty surfaces that required care. A good example of Joker’s craft. The odd grid made it tougher I think. COD to 5d where I tried repeatedly to fit Morse in; probably what Joker had foreseen.
    David
  16. Found this very hard and had to resort to help. I share the views on MINA – the bird is surely MYNAH, although I did get the answer.
    1. Well it clearly is on occasions otherwise it wouldn’t be in at least one of the usual source dictionaries. The Shorter Oxford has it as one of the earlier spellings when it came into English from the original Hindi.

      Edited at 2020-08-21 12:02 pm (UTC)

  18. Initially read ‘county’ as country, thought MINA was spelled mynah, and failed completely on PAGE. Enjoyed MAINLINE though. Not my best day
    PlayUpPompey
  19. Got Nominate but agree with all complaining re spelling of Mynah!

    Missed Page, eclectic and Mainline

    Capsize and Gumshoe made me smile. Was trying to fit Morse in at one stage too.

    Thanks all round.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 10:39 am (UTC)

  20. My web search for mina bird was immediately successful, so there is no question that it exists as an alternative spelling!

    Search Results
    Web results:
    Mina bird – definition of Mina bird by The Free Dictionarywww.thefreedictionary.com › Mina+bird
    1. myna – tropical Asian starlings. mina, minah, myna bird, mynah, mynah bird. starling – gregarious birds native to the Old World. Acridotheres tristis, crested myna – dark brown crested bird of southeastern Asia.

  21. Clever and fun puzzle; lots to enjoy in what was a quick solve until I was left with _A_E and soon decided that there were so many possibles that I couldn’t be bothered to Carry On Trawling (they really should have made that – Sid James as the skipper of the Saucy Sue). Subsequent investigation shows that there are 151 words which fit _A_E, from babe to yate, so I’m glad I didn’t persist.

    FOI GASH, LOI SOMERSET (yes, I thought it was country too …), COD AGE-OLD, time 1K but.

    Thanks Joker and curarist.

    Templar

  22. Just over 4 minutes to reach 22A for the second time. Two alpha-trawls later I biffed “name” despite being 99.9% sure it was wrong.

    COD GUMSHOE (reminded me of the excellent Albert Finney film !)

    1. Nice to be in such good company! I biffed SAME on the basis that it means “uniform” and, err, Sam is a boy’s name, and errr, not sure what else.
  23. Made a real pigs ear of this (where were you when needed, Oink?), by getting off on the wrong trotter (OK, enough) with Country/County confusion – a mistake I’ve made before, and no doubt will again. Slowly began to piece together bits of the grid, but it was north of 30 mins before I returned to the NW. Only then did I spot that 1ac was looking for a county, by which time Somerset/Surgeon were write ins. That still left the Rail and Page double act, which took far more than two alphabet trawls to spot. Finally staggered over the line, just north of 35mins. Several CoD contenders, but I think 9ac Eclectic wins by a short snout… Invariant
  24. After 30 mins I only had half the grid completed, but I persisted as I was enjoying the challenge. In the end I came in around the hour mark, with 22ac “Page” being the LOI. Still not sure whether it was me not on the right wavelength (I always seem to find Joker hard) or just a chewy puzzle.

    However, there were some tricky clues: 2dn “Mainline”, 5dn “Gumshoe” and 9ac “Eclectic” come to mind – not necessarily because they were difficult per se, but there could have been a variety of different interpretations. For example, I could have quite easily biffed “Medicine” or even “Morphine” for 2dn.

    I always find it hard when a particular device is used which hasn’t been used for a while eg. “Oxford” = shoe. But, I guess part of the fun is trying to pluck some of these from your memory.

    As above, didn’t really care for 14dn “Useless”.

    FOI – 1ac “Somerset”
    LOI – 22ac “Page”
    COD – 15dn “Capsize”

    Thanks as usual.

  25. A similar tale to others, except I must be a lot slower than the rest of you at alphabet trawling. I realised fairly quickly that this wasn’t going to give me a fast time, but I made my way through it steadily, having all bar 22a done by about 35 minutes. Never heard of MAINLINE and I’m not sure where I dredged NUNCIO and GUMSHOE from, but I somehow knew they were right as soon as I thought of them even though I’d have been at a loss to define either if you’d asked me beforehand. As for MINA, I’m afraid I’d forgotten that it was usually spelt with a Y anyway, so that didn’t raise much of an eyebrow. Anyway, then I came back to 22a and settled down to systematically go through every likely combination of _A_E and a whole load of unlikely ones. I did think of “name” but that didn’t work with uniform, and “same” but that didn’t work with call, and nave, mate, bade, tare and hale didn’t work for numerous reasons. Apart from the Ws, P was the last letter I had down to try, and finally PAGE leapt out at me, but I had taken as long to get it as the rest of the puzzle put together, so I finished in 72:59. And I thought I was finished posting half marathon times. Oh well, thanks Joker and Curarist
  26. Put Rack in for 7a. Track for path, but suppose rack isn’t a barrier…found difficult but particularly NW corner..missed out on Eclectic, Mainline and, naturally, Page, after stopping at 40 minutes.
    Loved Capsize and Satchel and pleased to have got Seditious and Nuncio…
    Thanks all
    John George
  27. Enjoyed this puzzle but was beaten by 22a like others.

    I put in the SAME, unparsed answer as Templarredux.

    Off to a good start with 1a FOI. COD to 9a.

  28. After a slow start, I began to get into some sort of rhythm today and only had a couple of unparsed entries – GUMSHOE (I will try and remember that Oxford means ‘shoe’ and not always ‘Morse’) and NUNCIO which was easy to guess with 5 of its 6 letters in place!
    I smiled at BELITTLE, BUSINESS and CAPSIZE and my COD has to be MAINLINE for its straightforward construction.
    LOI, like many others, was PAGE which bumped my time up to seconds short of 20 minutes.
    Thanks to Joker and to Curarist for the helpful blog.
  29. Why did so many of us struggle with PAGE? In hindsight it seems trivially obvious what the answer was. I can’t work out why I was fooled by it. Has anybody else any idea why they got stuck? Did we all fix on one reading of the clue and not shift position when that wasn’t working out? I read once, in The Times I think, that Mark Goodliffe put much of his success down to being able to discard a failing parsing very quickly and move onto another one. Perhaps we all need to become more like him!

    H

    1. I don’t think it was obvious in hindsight. I have never “paged” anybody in my life (though I suppose the modern equivalent is texting), and nor would I describe, or think of, a pageboy as “a young man in uniform”. I have no problem with the clue as I can see both meanings are completely legitimate, but I can see why it stumped so many. The reason I took so long was not because of any reluctance to discard a failing parsing, but because there were so many possibilities to discard.
    2. I can’t comment on how others approached this, but I focused on ‘young man in uniform’ and went down the scout/cub blind alley. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hotel page(boy) in real life, but I knew straight away that page was the right answer, just a shame it took me nearly 5mins to get there. Perhaps that’s the sign of a good clue?
  30. … as all done bar 3 in double quick time, and then an age to see 9A Eclectic (clever clue and entirely fair, so not sure why I was so slow), 10D Ceaseless (even less excuse here) and finally everyone’s favourite, 22A Page which was my LOI. I am Not Good at finding the word given _A_E.

    I initially shared the doubt about the spelling of the bird but if it is in the dictionary …. One to store away in my Little Book of Things to Remember (which is rapidly becoming not so little).

    An odd grid with 2 clues (11A & 18A) entirely filled with checkers and two others (13A & 16A) with 5 out of 6. It is nice to have variety but this wasn’t my favourite.

    COD 21D Tab, such a simple clue but like so much of the puzzle, very nice surface from Joker.

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog and a good weekend to all.

    Cedric

  31. Really struggled with this one, taking 39 mins to complete. A lot of hold-ups caused by answers which appear in retrospect to be perfectly straightforward – obvious even. Managed not to misread 1ac but, like pretty well everybody else, had to do an alphabet trawl for 22ac. Pleased to have got to the end of it finally, even if around double my target time. Thanks to Joker and Curarist.

    FOI – 5ac GASH
    LOI – 20ac BELITTLE
    COD – a tie between 2dn MAINLINE and 15dn CAPSIZE

  32. Relieved that so many of you also found page to be a stinker. We thought this was a very good puzzle with a good mix of clues – ranging from very simple to some real head scratchers. Took us ages to get page and we ended up with a time of 23 minutes. Thanks Joker – great way to end the week.

    FOI: Somerset
    LOI: page
    COD: capsize

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 02:57 pm (UTC)

  33. Joined others with a very slow start, then the answers started to fall into place, having two brains helped with a number of clues with one of us prompting the answer by the other. Pleased to finish within our 30m target for a clever crossword. Thanks to Joker and for the blog.
  34. I got there in the end but PAGE added a good 5 minutes onto my time so that it was 24 minutes on the clock when, via an alphabet trawl, I realised what it was. I enjoyed this puzzle, though, and thought it was imaginative. I especially liked GUMSHOE and will try to remember that Oxford always means shoe – lovely misdirection! For a while, I had in some wrong ‘uns – eg same for PAGE, medicine for MAINLINE, ten for TON, and my favourite, SHELLING (as in shelling out = forking out, led to this unhappy place by shilling and pence…. Yes, I know… ). Anyway, sense – and impossible parsing – put me straight on all of these eventually. Also, though 1 across, SOMERSET, was my FOI, I don’t think I recall coming across R as an abbreviation for “running ” before. Another one to remember. Thanks to curarist for the blog and to Joker for the puzzle
  35. Yes 22ac was the one that caused me a DNF too. Started with LAUD (lad with U) but it didn’t really mean call and didn’t fit with the down clues. By the time I was left with the -A-E I had lost the will to trawl.
    1. I also had Laud for some time, also misdirected by U=Uniform. That Phonetic Alphabet is used less often than I might have expected, some letters seem to be setters favourites (Charlie, Yankee) and others like today’s Uniform, much rarer.
    2. I’m glad I never thought of that – I would have been seriously tempted.
    3. i also had laud- to hail someone to call? It then left me with a right dog’s ear for 17D
  36. Is a very old expression for injecting drugs into a vein. I remembered this from drugs awareness at school in the 70s. If you used that term in your local crack den these days I doubt you would be understood.
    22 ac. I had CLAD. Thus the SE corner took some sorting.
    Johnny
  37. No problem with PAGE, as I remember the days before everyone had mobiles, so pagers were widely used. MINA was known from previous puzzles – it’s easier for the setter to fit in than the usual spelling !
  38. Was ok with mina we’re a Scottish household and Chambers fans, surprised more didn’t fall for laud but also read country instead of county, really liked capsize and ceaseless once I had untangled all the ees and esses thanks both
  39. A bit behind after a busy week but took ages over this one. A DNF as I was tempted to enter caprice for capsize at 15d despite the obvious problem – just too tired to struggle further! Hope to be solving daily again next week!

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