Quick Cryptic 1694 by Trelawney

Author   curaristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Nice and easy this week. Hard to pick a winner, but I rather like 18dn for its absurd surface. 5 minutes for me.

Across

1 Greek character with naughty crime at sea (6)
PIRACY – PI + RACY
4 Factory containing last piece of satellite for Mars, perhaps (6)
PLANET – PLANT containing E
8 Significant narration (7)
TELLING – double definition
10 Scoundrel‘s accent not British (5)
ROGUE – Accent is BROGUE minus B for British
11 Carmen, for example, seen in Europe rarely (5)
OPERA – hidden word: EurOPE RArely
12 Heal Charlie badly with my dubious branch of science (7)
ALCHEMY – anagram (“badly”) of HEAL C with MY on the end
13 Most intelligent tips from climber leaving mountain (9)
CLEVEREST – C + L (tips from Climber and Leaving) + EVEREST
17 Put down roots around a US city (7)
SEATTLE – SETTLE with A in
19 Those back to front beliefs (5)
ETHOS – THOSE with the back (the E) moved to the front.
20 Quietly must leave golf club, say (5)
UTTER – PUTTER minus P for quietly
21 Senor OK playing a game (7)
SNOOKER – anagram (“playing”) of SENOR OK
22 Apprentice not starting profitable activity (6)
EARNER – LEARNER minus the first letter
23 Discarded goods from planes in the morning (6)
JETSAM – JETS + AM
Down
1 Nothing in routes that arouses pity (6)
PATHOS – PATHS with O inside
2 Wave with one not trying fairground ride? (13)
ROLLERCOASTER – ROLLER + COASTER
3 Fashionable article on NE racetrack feature (7)
CHICANE – CHIC + NE
5 Cyril composed a bit of verse (5)
LYRIC – anagram (“composed”) of CYRIL
6 Lack of powerful Arab rulers, we hear, is not much good? (2,5,6)
NO GREAT SHAKES – sounds like No Great Sheikhs
7 Drew on unknown English hippy’s clothing, possibly? (3-3)
TIE-DYE – TIED (drawn) + Y + E
9 Inelegant, like an atheist’s meal? (9)
GRACELESS – An atheist doesn’t say grace before eating
14 Something ugly I observed in conversation (7)
EYESORE – sounds like I SAW
15 Statue is demolished — shrewd! (6)
ASTUTE – anagram (“demolished”) of STATUE
16 Marsha rebuilt Hindu retreat (6)
ASHRAM – anagram (“rebuilt”) of MARSHA
18 Brusque in Battersea (5)
TERSE – hidden word: batTERSEa

50 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1694 by Trelawney”

  1. Made life hard for myself by thinking the Greek character would be mu making me obsess on ‘mutiny’ not PIRACY and then deciding it must be ‘helterskelter’ not ROLLERCOASTER, which shares a lot of common letters for the checkers so it took a while to unravel. Ended up taking 16m as a result.
  2. DNK CHICANE, which was my LOI (Curarist, you forgot the A). I write ROLLER COASTER as two words, as does ODE. I remember SHEIK causing trouble here some time ago, as many people, including Brits, pronounce it sheek not shake; I had thought it was a neat UK=shake, US=sheek, but no. (ODE gives both pronunciations–shake, sheek–as does Oxford American–sheek, shake.) Still, I don’t expect it caused any problems here. 5:05.
  3. That was a better day. Although I managed to put SLINK into 20a which didn’t help.

    COD UTTER

    Thank you Trelawney and Curarist

    Diana

  4. Like mendesest I initially tried forcing MUTINY into 1a and it cost me some time, but after that it was a top to bottom solve with barely a pause along the way.
    I finished in 5.13 with LOI EARNER (simply because it was the last clue I looked at) and my favourites being GRACELESS and PIRACY.
    Thanks to curarist
  5. A time of 16:37 leaves me still in the Renaissance, in fact the year of Tuilpmania in the Netherlands.

    Several minutes/centuries lost in chasing down the NE corner with ROGUE the LOI.

    COD was the clever GRACELESS, although NO GREAT SHAKES certainly made me smile: those are the best two clues of the week, in my opinion. Well done Trelawney.

    I managed to avoid the bear trap of HELTER SKELTER by not thinking of it, but now that mendesest has mentioned it I see that it would have been a tough dead end to unwind. I was one of those snagged by MEMORIALISED earlier in the week.

    CLEVEREST also a good clue, although I don’t know why L=”Leaving”. I have long learnt that just about every English word can have its initial letter as an abbreviation.

    2. The 15×15 is eminently doable today if you want to go for two in a row 🙂

      H

  6. Tips from climber leaving mountain but tips from climber AND leaving mountain might be better.
    1. Not sure it needs the “and”. I thought the clue was fine and fitted the surface nicely.
  7. 6 minutes, so a nice easy end to the week. Also the main puzzle if anyone wants to try it. I was done and dusted with both in 34 minutes.
    1. Well done with the 15×15. I had a go and made it (with my answers to a couple of definitions checked online) but it took me almost an hour. Fun, though. Thanks for the tip. John
  8. Yes, a nice easy end to the week. I found my progress unusually smooth from top to bottom with just a hiccup from EYESORE at the end. 11.16 for me so a third good time this week (on my scale at least). I enjoyed NO GREAT SHAKES, PUTTER, and ETHOS. Thanks Trelawney and curarist. John M.

    Edited at 2020-09-04 08:25 am (UTC)

  9. I thought I was going to be very quick today after FOI PLANET followed quickly by others. But I went for the very plausible MUTINY and then struggled over 1d. I was also slow to get Roller Coaster and Graceless (COD to that).
    LOI was CHICANE. Time 09:48. A good well-balanced QC. David
  10. Due to travelling, I missed completing yesterday’s QC, so was pleased to get back into it with a nice 18 min solve for the end of the week.

    Some lovely clues here I thought. Enjoyed “No Great Shakes”, “Terse”, “Chicane” and “Graceless”. Nearly went awry by thinking 1ac was “adrift” – but it didn’t fit so ditched it fairly quickly.

    FOI – 8ac “Telling”
    LOI – 23ac “Jetsam”
    COD – 20ac “Utter” – something lovely about that surface.

    Thanks as usual.

  11. None the worse for being easy, a very well constructed puzzle with lots of wit and sparkle. I really enjoyed that. So nearly a true clean sweep but I couldn’t get UTTER first time round – then saw it as soon as as I’d entered JETSAM. At least I’d finished all the acrosses before I started the downs, so that’s an almost-clean sweep.

    FOI PIRACY (I too tried to make MU-tiny work); LOI TERSE; COD GRACELESS (made me chuckle); time 1.2K for a Very Good Day.

    Many thanks Trelawney and curarist.

    Templar

  12. I thought this was pitched just right for a quickie – thanks trelawney and curarist. Puzzled at the description of surface as absurd but heh!
  13. ‘Parse as you go’ saved me from my initial choice of mutiny for 1ac, and after that the sailing was plain enough (🙂) to get me to the finish line in 17mins. A few quirky clues along the way, but they just added to the overall enjoyment from Trelawney’s QC. Numerous CoD candidates today, but I will plump for 19ac Ethos, just ahead of 9d Graceless. Invariant
  14. Went for HELTER-SKELTER at 2dn but 17ac SEATTLE soon settled that.

    FOI 4ac PLANET

    LOI 1dn PATHOS

    COD 3dn CHICANE no chicanery in American motorsport.

    WOD 2dn ROLLER-COASTER

  15. Just about perfect for a QC, I finished two minutes under my target of twenty. A lot of great clues, my COD had to be GRACELESS.
    Thanks to Trelawney ans Curarist

    Brian

  16. Well, that was a very satisfying 14 minutes – some excellent clues. Thanks Trelawney.

    FOI: lyric
    LOI: eyesore
    COD: we loved “no great shakes” and “graceless” equally

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog.

  17. ….”it’s yesterday once more” as I again found myself left with 1A/D. Fortunately it only took me half a minute to crack them. Lovely puzzle.

    FOI PLANET
    LOI PATHOS
    COD GRACELESS
    TIME 4:03

  18. After almost a year (10th September 2019), during which time I know I have improved no end, at last I broke my record, coming home with a big pb of 11:39. That betters my previous best by four minutes 22 seconds. I knew I was on for it when I got all but four of the acrosses on the first run through (TELLING, ETHOS, UTTER and EARNER were the ones I missed) and then proceeded to get pretty much all the downs straight away, as well as filling in three of the four I’d missed. I’d never heard of ASHRAM but it couldn’t really be anything else and then I was just left with 22a. My watch said nearly 11 minutes at that point so I knew I had five minutes to get it, but I know from past experience (like yesterday) that it only takes one tricky clue to turn a good day into an awful one or even a DNF. So I was very grateful when the crucial PDM came after another 40 seconds or so and I suddenly thought that perhaps an apprentice could be a learner. CsOD to 9d and 19a. Thanks Curarist and especially Trelawney.
    2. I don’t use a timer, so I let the iPad Times App surprise me with the final time. Which I then screenshot if its a pb, just to be sure. Otherwise there is too much frustration at minutes ticking away at the last clue, which is off course the hardest (that’s why it’s last).

      Congrats on your new pb. As well as pb, we could track mean and standard deviation of times. My mean is probably around today’s time of 16:37, but too many days are still in the DNF zone.

      After all, this blog is called Times for the Times.

  19. An easy Friday, but I made it harder than it should have been by biffing helterskelter. So I wasted time on 13A trying to fit “smartest” into nine letters, wondering why it started with S and thinking “I need everest in here”. And then the penny dropped! Once I’d fixed that everything fell nicely into place.

    COD : GRACELESS.
    FOI : PATHOS (I often tackle the downs first)
    LOI : SEATTLE

    H

    1. It’s when a garment is tied in some places before dying so that those areas retain their original colour. I remember having a go at this myself!
  21. PB for me in 3:40. Maybe my third ever sub 4 minuter, knocking a whole second off my previous best back in November. I have to confess, there were several biffed/semi-parsed clues once I realised I was on for a quick time, so I failed to appreciate the neatness of the cluing.

  22. 8 mins with Leffe hangover. So pretty straightforward.
    Liked seattle, and ethos, COD to graceless.

    Echo Jack that the main puzzle is doable.

  23. Not sure how much quicker I would have been if I hadn’t misread accent as ascent but it would have never been in PB territory because I got very stuck on GRACELESS my LOI. Great clue….why was I even trying to justify grapeless? Thanks all. 7:44
  24. …and my quickest time for nearly 4 weeks!
    I started with the downs today to get the two long clues solved early on and that helped me to sprint home in just under 13 minutes.
    Also pleased to parse everything and I enjoyed both GRACELESS and EYESORE. COD goes to NO GREAT SHAKES for making me laugh.
    Thanks to Trelawney and to Curarist – great time!
  25. Obviously much easier than the past couple of days. I was all done and dusted in 14 mins, less than half the time I took for yesterday’s effort. A very neat crossword with some fine clues, so thanks for that Trelawny. Thanks too to Curarist for the blog, which I needed for the parsing of ALCHEMY.

    FOI – 4ac PLANET
    LOI – 17ac SEATTLE
    COD – 6dn NO GREAT SHAKES for making me laugh out loud.

  26. Why does ‘p’ mean quietly ? Why does ‘tie’ equal ‘drew’ ? Where does ‘unknown’ come from ?
    1. Good questions, I’ll elaborate a bit on the blog.

      1. p is Italian for “piano”, meaning soft and is very common in sheet music to indicate play/sing quietly.
      2. tie = drew as in a match were the scores are level, not common in AMerican Sorts, but common most other places
      3. y = unknown as it is an unknown quantity in Algebra, along with x. Look out for z as well.

      1. Given crossword setters obsession with cricket, it is surprising they equate the two, because a tie is not the same as a draw in cricket where it is reserved for the very unusual situation of the match finishing with both sides having the same score.
  27. Very pleased with a 5:44

    FOI was Piracy, LOI was Graceless.
    COD was Chicane

  28. though stuck in NW after quick start, not helped by putting pirate at first.
    Enjoyed No great Shakes.
    Thanks all.

    Edited at 2020-09-05 09:05 am (UTC)

  29. Whizzed through this in 5:45, but carelessly automatically entered TIE DYED(It’s always that in the 15×15) at 7d, leaving mne with TIE DYD. Drat! Thanks Trelawney and Curarist.
  30. Looked a bit of a challenge at first, but it gradually unwound as I worked through it. EYESORE was LOI as I just could not see it until a revisit.
  31. … and all done in 7 minutes, which while not a PB is certainly my best for a while. I thought this was a lovely puzzle: good variety of clue techniques, no horribly obscure words or GK that stretches the definition of “general”, nice surfaces, opportunity for being misled. What more could a QC offer?

    I avoided the bear traps more I think by luck than judgment: by deciding to do the down clues first I had 1D, and so the P to start 1A, and was thus never tempted by mutiny. Similarly “wave” = “roller” is fairly hard-wired after regular holidays as a child on west-facing Atlantic coasts, so I never considered Helterskelter for 2D (and anyway, how would it parse?)

    I thought the surface for 6D No great shakes was very funny so that gets my COD.

    Many thanks to Trelawney, and to Curarist for the blog, and a good weekend to all.

    Cedric

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