Times Quick Cryptic 1590 by Juno

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Solving time: 10 minutes. Today we have a very rare offering from Juno who although first setting for us in June 2014 has contributed only 10 puzzles to date. The most recent before this was the milestone Quickie #1500 in December last year which contained a memorable Nina –  details not revealed here in case anyone wants to look it up in the Times archive and have a go at it. On the strength of that I checked for a Nina today but was unable to find one, although I wondered if the juxtaposition of 2dn and 11dn in the second column was entirely coincidental.

STOP PRESS: Many thanks to anon (below) posting at 01:17pm for finding the Nina. I quote:
There is some sort of theme. In successive rows there is Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. I usually omit all reference to positional indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.

Across
1 Rainy season from first of May, happening shortly? (7)
MONSOON : M{ay} first], ON SOON (happening shortly)
5 Fit porter, maybe, carrying bishop (4)
ABLE : ALE (porter, maybe – beer), containing [carrying] B (bishop)
8 Strive somehow to possess universal, noble qualities (7)
VIRTUES : Anagram [somehow] of STRIVE containing [to possess] U (universal – film classification)
9 Come over displeased (5)
CROSS : Two meanings
11 Fear woodshed has been rebuilt as previously suggested (12)
FORESHADOWED : Anagram [rebuilt] of FEAR WOODSHED. An indirect reference to Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm perhaps?
12 Legendary king wounded, not finished off, on craft (6)
ARTHUR : ART (craft), HUR{t} (wounded) [not finished off]. The ‘A on B = BA’  rule for Across clues applies here.
14 Next to tubes, I deposit bottles (6)
BESIDE : {tu}BES I DE{posit} hides [bottles] the answer
15 The PC version of Desert Island Assistant? (6,6)
PERSON FRIDAY : Cryptic definition with a non-gender-specific reference to Robinson Crusoe’s ‘Man Friday’
17 Exam may once more be attempted initially in break (5)
RESAT : A{ttempted} [initially] contained by [in] REST (break)
18 Huge birthday dinner? Do this to candles! (4-3)
BLOW-OUT : Two meanings
20 Tabloid king is ruined (4)
SUNK : SUN (tabloid – sister newspaper to The Times), K (king)
21 Coming up from bar, heading off, I do songs (7)
ARISING :{b}AR [heading off], I, SING (do songs)
Down
2 Sash on brim appearing regularly (3)
OBI : O{n} B{r}I{m} [appearing regularly]. One of those Crosswordland-only words that one just has to learn.
3 Some unsavoury task upset woodland deity (5)
SATYR : Hidden [some] and reversed [upset] in {unsavou}RY TAS{k}
4 Too powerful sort: govern badly (10)
OVERSTRONG : Anagram [badly] of SORT GOVERN
6 They may be pushed by street vendors to stop fights (7)
BARROWS : BAR (stop), ROWS (fights)
7 Religious festival date: years off (6,3)
EASTER DAY : Anagram [off] of DATE YEARS
10 Nimble Queen of crime? (3,7)
CAT BURGLAR : Cryptic with reference to female cats aka ‘queens’ as opposed to ‘toms’
11 Weak, supporting Church of England? Not so! (9)
FORCELESS : FOR (supporting), CE (Church of England), LESS (not so!). MER at the last bit of wordplay but perhaps I’m just not seeing it.
13 Muslim has us in dancing (7)
HUSSAIN : Anagram [dancing] of HAS US IN
16 Daughter has got these last ten clues! (5)
DOWNS : D (daughter), OWNS (has got)
19 Vessel to spin with the top off (3)
URN : {t}URN (spin) [with the top off]

42 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1590 by Juno”

  1. Felt a bit sluggish, with FORESHADOWED taking some time to sort out, some more time required to come up with PERSON, and more time for the penny to drop with SATYR; once again I failed to see a hidden, even with the ‘some’. I shared Jack’s doubts about LESS. Some of us actually know OBI from experience, although I will say it comes up far more often in crosswords than in my daily life. (It’s also the ‘tai’ 帯 of ‘seitai’声帯(‘voice belt’=vocal cords), so I use it to make clear to students how the term is written.) 6:21
  2. As per Jack 10 minutes. I am only the second respondent! And it’s already 4pm here in downtown Shanghai where it is also not raining!

    I only have one student – she has made great progress on her art studies (Van Gogh, Revilious and W S Lowry) in the lock down.

    FOI 1ac MONSOON

    LOI 17ac RESAT which I initially saw as a noun hence the earlier RESIT.

    COD 11ac FORESHADOWED very Stella Gibbons!

    WOD PERSON FRIDAY!!!! Really! Whatever next!? ISLE OF PERSON!

  3. Enjoyed this but I don’t get resat? where is any reference to past tense. Also why is Hussain a Muslim – is it a presumption about the late and generally unlamented Saddam?
    Maybe I’m being obtuse this morning – I often am 🙁
    1. It’s passive voice indicated by ‘be’. You may resit an exam, so the exam may be resat.

      Wiki advises: Hussain is an alternative spelling of Hussein, commonly given as a male given name, particularly among Shias.

      Edited at 2020-04-13 09:31 am (UTC)

        1. Apologies – only got the top half of your reply in my browser – thanks for clarifying Hussein too!
      2. I parsed resit which meant I spelt Hussain incorrectly, the only one I know being Nasser. So changed to an a but didn’t like resat. Johnny.
  4. Quite a quick start but the longer clues needed some time and I needed all the crossers for PERSON FRIDAY (nice clue, I thought). CAT BURGLAR had me stumped for a while. RESAT had to be but didn’t quite hang together. I was in line for my target time until interrupted by a call from my phone provider (working on Easter Monday!) which knocked me off balance. A nice mix of clues but I never really got into the swing of Juno’s style. Thanks to both, though. John M.
  5. I managed to finish this Easter Monday offering but I certainly was not on Juno’s wavelength. The SW corner took me an age to unravel and I found the answers somewhat unsatisfactory particularly FORCELESS (not a word I use), RESAT and my LOI PERSON FRIDAY. Sorry, unlike Old Blighter I didn’t enjoy the clue. The clues that worked for me were FORESHADOWED where I spent a long time looking to put in ‘afore’, ARTHUR where I assumed incorrectly that I needed to separate Legendary from king and DOWNS (COD). Thanks Juno and Jack. Just under 15 mins.

    Edited at 2020-04-13 09:43 am (UTC)

  6. Saddam poor clue if we’re honest. 0.66K for this, not my favourite QC of recent times.

    FOI MONSOON
    LOI FORCELESS
    COD DOWNS

  7. 8 minutes so no big hold ups. I had resit until Hussain came along. I also struggled with forceless. Could it work as less being the opposite of more – and is in relation to supporting CE less = not supporting CE as much as someone else? I’m still doubtful. No doubts over COD – which goes to 16dn for the downs.

    Edited at 2020-04-13 09:41 am (UTC)

  8. 10 minutes and small change here, so at the quick end of the Rotterometer. Also MER at LESS, but I justified it as follows – if one adds LESS to a word – think for example of blameless, cordless, goalless or homeless, the first part of the word is negated, or ‘not so!’. Does that help?

    I also wondered about HUSSAIN being clued as Muslim. Isn’t this equivalent to Peter being clued as ‘Christian has temperature in equal’? A bit doubtful to me.

    1. I like it!

      On Muslim = HUSSAIN my blog originally concluded ‘I’m not getting into this one’ as I thought it would be controversial. Then I thought I might be encouraging dissent so I removed it.

      Edited at 2020-04-13 12:09 pm (UTC)

  9. … with all three of 11D Forceless, 13D Hussain and 17A Resat put in rather slowly, reluctantly and with MERs. How devilish of Juno to put all three together so my doubts over the answers interlocked!

    17A Resat is not IMO well-clued – it could so easily have been “Exam might once more …”. Less for Not so equally had me scratching my head, and I’m with those who find Muslim=Hussain stereotyping and not these days totally PC. I know people with Western names who have adopted the Muslim faith, and I suspect there are many people called Hussain who don’t follow Islam.

    But mainly a nice puzzle, and a 12 minute finish. COD 16D Downs – made me chuckle when i worked it out.

    Thanks to Jack for the blog

    Cedric

    Edited at 2020-04-13 10:29 am (UTC)

  10. 12 minutes to get to LOI 9a. Stared at it for ages,went away and then thought of CROSS.
    It was an unfriendly grid I thought and some odd words -e.g. Forceless.
    I now see that I must resit as I failed to see RESAT and thought Hussian might be a Muslim. David
  11. Not much to report here. No light bulb moments, no Duh! ones and not much chuckling, either. Workmanlike and all very work-outable. I, too, had RESIT, for a while but had to change it to accommodate the slightly dodgy HUSSAIN. I also briefly had ORISONS for 21 across as songs with horizons and its heading off. Clearly, however, being a rubbish answer, this was doomed! Quite liked 6 down, BARROWS. I don’t recall seeing OBI before but know that, after 2 years of temporary accommodation in Crosswordland, I must have done. Thanks, Jackkt, for the blog, and thanks, too, to Juno for the puzzle. Hope everybody here has had / continues to have a happy and safe Easter.
  12. Raced through to start with, though frowned at Hussain. Then stuck by Forceless – admit I had to resort to the crossword dictionary.
    Thanks to all, as ever.
  13. Like others I had a double take at FORCELESS, but nothing else would fit so it went in with a shrug. My only other hold up was self-induced by thinking that nimble was the definition for 10d. This added a minute or so to my time of 8.14, in what I found a fairly gentle start to the week.
    Thanks to jackkt.
  14. We never report on our completion time but we’re always keen to know what it is. So, it’s always frustrating when the time pops up on the iPad screen as something ludicrous like 2h 30min which it did today. However, back to Juno’s puzzle which we also thought contained some slightly unusual clues. Still, we worked out the answers so we’re happy….

    FOI: monsoon
    LOI: forceless
    COD: cat burglar

    Edited at 2020-04-13 11:21 am (UTC)

  15. An enjoyable if somewhat curious start to the week, completed in my average of about 30 mins.

    Like many above, I found some of the answers a little clunky – the SW corner the main culprit. I had more of an issue around “Person Friday” than “Forceless”, the former feeling somewhat contrived.

    FOI – 1ac “Monsoon”
    LOI – 15ac “Person Friday”
    COD – 16dn “Downs”

    Thanks as usual.

  16. Another RESIT corrected by HUSSAIN here. Flew through the top half, but was reined in by the bottom half with FORCELESS, PERSON FRIDAY and CAT BURGLAR holding me up and tipping me over my target. 10:57 Thanks Juno and Jack.
  18. Started at a brisk pace, and wondered where the hold up was going to come. Didn’t have to wait too long, with 11ac/d providing a solid enough boundary wall to the lower half of the grid. Spent too long trying to shuffle Fear Woodshed into something else, before pushing on with other clues and coming back when I had more crossers. Really enjoyed 16d, Downs, which is CoD by a country mile – hard to see how the same setter can be responsible for Forceless. I took an age over-complicating Loi, 21ac Arising, and so wasn’t surprised to see 30mins on the finish clock. Invariant
  19. Game of two halves – wrote in the top half. Bottom half caused more head catching.

    No problem with “not so” = “less” as in “not so funny / clever” = “less funny / clever”.

    13D seemed odd.

    FOI = 1a monsoon
    LOI = 21a arising
    COD = 16d downs

    1. Sorry, didn’t spot your comment on LESS until after I’d posted.
  20. Basically what many others said – especially desdee. I started very quickly and thought it was going to be easy. But pride / fall and all that … My last three took ages – I thought forceless was weak, cat burglar was elusive and person Friday quite poor, to be frank. However, downs made me smile 😊 Very slow again so Not a Good Day. Sluggish is the right word for just under 3K.

    FOI Monsoon
    LOI Person Friday
    COD Foreshadowed
    Time 17

    Thanks all the same to Juno and to Jack

  21. There is some sort of theme. In successive rows there is Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
    1. Very well spotted! Hadn’t seen that but it is clever.

      Cedric

  22. 4:46

    Isn’t the equivalence simply that if something is less, say, spicy it is not so spicy? Or following a set-back someone might be less / not so cocky. So LESS needs to be taken in isolation. The ! is presumably just there for the surface reading.

  24. The fact that all my trousers seems to be shrinking during lockdown (ahem) led me to do a Joe Wicks exercise class this morning … maybe it was the resultant extra bloodflow but I whizzed through this in 1.3K for an Excellent Day.

    Didn’t think much of the puzzle. Two pretty weak words to my mind (OVERSTRONG and FORCELESS) plus a really rubbish definition – how on earth can you define HUSSAIN as Muslim just because it’s a common name in some predominantly Muslim countries? It’s like defining “Mark” as “Christian”. Fox News cluing – “he’s called Barack Hussein Obama so he must be a Muslim”.

    Thanks for the blog, Jack.

    Templar

  25. Very clever once it’s pointed out, but unfortunately it seems to have been wasted on the vast majority of solvers.
    1. I think very few spotted it but it is hardly ‘wasted’ on us. Many of us really appreciated it. 🙂
  26. All green in under 20 so happy from that point of view but not much fun to be had. Whacked in RESAT with no real confidence and actually disappointed to see it was what was intended. FORCELESS and OVERSTRONG leave me missing EYOTs and PALIMSESTs. Setter’s desperation for a nina made for a poor puzzle that was very short of wit. Liked DOWNS though.
  27. Sluggish anon above was me – logged out again. Thanks to other anon for working out the nina – clever and it accounts for some of the curious clues! I’m not sure it entirely justifies some of them tho – sorry.
  28. No real reason, maybe the grid. Didn’t spot the NINA, maybe that’s why some of the clues didn’t please everyone. LOI was ARISING, which I was looking at the wrong way. 9:38.
  29. I got there in the end with help from aids but there were a number of clues where I was just not sure if I had got the right answer. ‘Less’ bothered me though it has been well explained in the blog. I didn’t understand what ‘bottles ‘ was doing in 14a and 15a did feel a bit like ‘political correctness gone mad’. There seemed too many possible words that would fit -r-s- at 9a and -e-a- at 17a, none obviously the right answer. So thank you Jack for explaining it all and thank you Juno for a very clever NINA.
    Blue Stocking
  30. Personally would have preferred more thought in the clues and less in the Nina. I mean “I do songs”=“I sing” – really the best Juno could do??
    1. ” I mean “I do songs”=“I sing” – really the best Juno could do?? “

      Well, it’s supposed to be the “Quick” cryptic …

      I cannot remember exactly but there’s an Easter week flavour to this in addition to the days of the week

    1. (minor) Eyebrow Raised at an iffy clue, as opposed to a Golden Raspberry (GR) award for a really shocking clue.

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