Times Quick Cryptic 1427 by Hurley

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Slowed down by the SE corner and a couple of words less familiar to me, but otherwise a normal day at the office.

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Bother after company curtailed lord in US State (8)
COLORADO – A DO (bother) after CO (company) and all but the last letter of (curtailed) LORd.
5 Good first point (4)
GIST – G (good) and 1ST, in which the digit looks like the letter ‘i’.
8 Music radio station will allow, strangely, past Lily (8)
PLAYLIST – anagram of (strangely) PAST LILY.
9 Encourage sudden effort to knock out finalist? (4)
SPUR – SPURt (sudden effort) missing its last leter (to knock out finalist).
11 Hospital with pharmacy ultimately within easy reach (5)
HANDY – H (hospital), AND (with), then the last letter of (ultimately) pharmacY.
12 A game, extremely grubby, leads to expression of regret (7)
APOLOGY – A, POLO (game), and outermost letters from (extremely) GrubbY.
13 Military detachment’s unconvincing role terminated early (6)
PATROL – PAT (unconvincing) and ROLe without its last letter (terminated early). I didn’t know ‘pat’, but online dictionaries have it variously as simple/glib/unconvincing.
15 Result extremely fortunate for English cricket team, just starting. (6)
EFFECT – first letters from (just starting) Extremely Fortunate For English Cricket Team.
18 Just this time willing to get involved in force (3,4)
FOR ONCE – ON (willing to get involved) inside (in) FORCE. Or at least I think so. I can imagine saying “Are you on for this weekend?”. However, ‘willing’ could just mean ‘on’, with the rest of the clue indicating the inclusion, but I can’t find support for either.
19 Examine carefully capacity for action (5)
SCOPE – double definition.
21 Reportedly most important feature of lion (4)
MANE – sounds like (reportedly) “main”.
22 Law-breaker’s gambit is misplaced (8)
BIGAMIST – anagram of (replaced ) GAMBIT IS.
23 Dazzling display in Brazilian port, ahead of time (4)
RIOT – RIO (Brazilian port) then T (time).
24 Prepare for performance — again listen by wings of stage (8)
REHEARSE – RE-HEAR (again listen) and outermost letters (wings) of StagE.

Down
1 Note work — quiet work, in police station (3,4)
COP SHOP – C (note), OP (opus, work), SH (quiet) and another OP (work).
2 Commit to memory name of king, northern (5)
LEARN – LEAR (name of king) and N (northern).
3 Provide support in motoring competition with drinks for all (5,5)
RALLY ROUND – RALLY (motoring competition) and ROUND (drinks for all).
4 Part of screed is malicious, dreary (6)
DISMAL – hidden in (part of) screeD IS MALicious.
6 Plead with troublemaker, backed by traditional knowledge (7)
IMPLORE – IMP (troublemaker) followed (backed) by LORE (traditional knowledge).
7 Belated thanks, dry, out of order (5)
TARDY – TA (thanks) with an anagram of (out of order) DRY.
10 Seize cat if cones knocked over (10)
CONFISCATE – anagram of (knocked over) CAT IF CONES.
14 Doctor on tour including city in Canada (7)
TORONTO – hidden in (… including) docTOR ON TOur.
16 Tale including rest for a horse? (7)
TRESTLE – TaLE with REST replacing (for) ‘a’.
17 Something frosty about for example system of government (6)
REGIME – RIME (something frosty) surrounding (about) EG (for example). Another new word for me; rime is frozen dew or ice deposited by freezing of supercooled fog.
18 Bone from female bird, rook (5)
FEMUR – F (female), EMU (bird) and R (rook, in chess notation).
20 Tree, more promising, topped (5)
OSIER – rOSIER (more promising). Vaguely remembered from crosswords past, but still my LOI.

23 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1427 by Hurley”

  1. Like our blogger I was also slightly troubled by a couple in the SE corner which were responsible for me exceeding my target 10 minutes by 2.

    I biffed the tree OSIER eventually although my first thought for the parsing was {c}OSIER (more promising) and I wasn’t happy with that. r(OSIER) came to me only after I had stopped the clock.

    That provided the O-checker for my LOI and whilst I recognised SCOPE as ‘capacity for action’ I wasn’t sure about ‘examine carefully’. Anyway I bunged it in assuming it must have some connection with ‘microscope’ which is used for examining things but I’m not sure about that now as Collins gives this usage as either ‘slang’ or ‘informal’.

    Edited at 2019-08-28 05:05 am (UTC)

  2. The SE was OK, although SCOPE isn’t in my idiolect and TRESTLE took me a while to parse–I don’t think we’ve had many replacement clues in QCs, have we? I thought–and ODE seems to agree–that a PLAYLIST is a list of what is to be/was played; ‘allow’ seems a bit of a red herring. It seems to me that OSIER has been defined in other cryptics as a shrub or bush; I wouldn’t know. 6:19.
    1. Your meaning is surely the most usual, but I have heard it used in the context of a recording (or these days a whole artiste’s output) that has been banned and said to be ‘taken off the playlist’.

      I also found this definition in Collins under ‘American’: a limited list of musical recordings or videos that may be played, as on a radio or TV station.

      Limited being the operative word.

      Edited at 2019-08-28 06:31 am (UTC)

      1. Page three of today’s Times:
        Melting Pot has been permanently removed from Gold’s playlist, which means in effect that it is banned.
        1. so THAT’S what’s in the rest of the paper before the backpage – who knew?
  4. I was finished in 11:38 but had put OLIER for 20d. “Unlucky” said the computer and another look led me quickly to OSIER which I remembered as a plant from previous puzzles.
    LOI was PATROL where I had had several looks and could not get PLATOON out of my head.
    GIST very good. David
  5. I got very bogged down in the SE, with an alphabet trawl required for OSIER and I dubiously put in SCOPE as I couldn’t think of anything else that seemed remotely plausible. I also spent a lot of time trying to get a 3 letter word for rest into TA_ _ _ LE, before I saw what was going on. Finished in 15.07
    Thanks for the blog
  6. At my 20 minute target I had just the three in the SW to go, bur it took another 12 to get OSIER, SCOPE and finally TRESTLE. I knew ‘osier’ was a type of willow and I was about to biff ‘trestle’ several times before the PDM with the wordplay – great clue!
    Some of the definitions were a bit strange, ‘unconvincing’ for ‘pat’ is not in my Chambers app – in fact the entry is exactly the opposite, which is what I always thought it meant.
    Still, a nice puzzle and excellent blog

    Brian

  7. ….and I narrowly missed my target. I had to stop and move to fresh territory a couple of times, and, whilst the SE corner went in OK, I had a little difficulty in the SW.

    I remember Cliff Richard being totally removed from BBC Radio 1’s PLAYLIST a few years ago, as his music was deemed to have become irrelevant to that station’s audience.

    FOI COLORADO
    LOI PATROL
    COD TRESTLE
    TIME 5:19

  8. An odd mix of write-ins and head scratchers from Hurley, but fun as always. The western side was completed quickly, the NE more slowly but the SE was tough. Like others, I found OSIER And SCOPE tricky. COD TRESTLE. I just failed to manage 3K overall having biffed a couple so thanks to william for the blog. John M.

    Edited at 2019-08-28 09:06 am (UTC)

  9. I gave up after 15 minutes as I DNK OSIER and I couldn’t work it out from two alphabet trawls and the wordplay. I also biffed REGIME and put in FEMUR without parsing. Thanks for the blog William.
  10. COLORADO went straight in from “bother” and a quick check of the rest of the wordplay. I then did a steady solve with TRESTLE going in last after I spotted the substitution trick. 9:47. Thanks Hurley and William.
  11. Bang on my 15m target after the usual delays in the SE, even though TRESTLE had been entered without difficulty. It didn’t help much with SCOPE and finally OSIER. Thanks William and Hurley.
  12. Well I’m glad to find others had problems with the SE. Stopped the clock on 71:54 today and even then had very little hope that the ‘s’ I’d put in to osier would prove to be the right letter. I thought the ‘more promising’ word might be cosier, but wasn’t happy with it and rosier never occurred to me. It goes without saying that I’d never heard of osier (despite having a degree in biology – I preferred the zoology side of it). I did get scope relatively quickly. I wasn’t 100% about it but it seemed to more or less define examine carefully. It’s the sort of word I imagine someone in the SAS using. As far as the capacity bit goes, I wondered if the ‘for action’ bit is necessary. Trestle was my second to last one in. I didn’t think of putting in rest for the a, I just imagined that ‘tle’ might be an abbreviation for tale. I only thought of trestle being a horse when I remembered my mum having a wooden clothes horse that I suppose might be described as a trestle.
    Like someone else said, I had a MER at pat meaning unconvincing, and I will now try to remember that rime is clearly not just an old spelling of rhyme as I’d always assumed (probably shouldn’t admit to that).
    I enjoyed 7d but COD to the well hidden 14d.
    1. I took “unconvincing” to be as in “a pat answer”, the kind of thing that politicians specialise in.
  13. OSIER rings a vague bell, but didn’t think of it. SCOPE = ‘examine carefully’? Quite the opposite in my experience. I regard ‘scoping’ as developing a broad outline, with the careful examination to follow. Pretty straightforward otherwise.
    PlayUpPompey
  14. All went smoothly until, like others, problems with 16d and19a. Knew osier, it has appeared before, but needed help with the other two clues. Did not spot the substitution and never thought about it, a ploy to remember. Thanks to Hurley and for the other helpful comments.
  15. We meant to ask if the inclusion of a question mark has any significance in the 16d clue.
    1. Question marks often appear when there’s a definition by example (DBE) and I think there may be a hint of one here if there are types of trestle that don’t qualify as ‘horse’. I don’t know enough about the technicalities to be sure.

      Alternatively, as this is a QC, the setter may have wanted to be generous by indicating the clue is not referring to the sort of horse that immediately comes to mind.

Comments are closed.