Times Quick Cryptic 1636 by Tracy

Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Pretty rapid progress was held up by one or two gaps around the grid. My end time of just on 10 minutes shows that none of these ended up being too problematic. LOI 21dn, COD 23ac, WOD 13dn. Some clever stuff which I’ve only appreciated whilst writing this up. Thanks Tracy.

I had great fun parsing 12ac which seemed to be, in order, wrong then tricky then oh so simple!

ACROSS

1. Brave bishop, elderly (4)
BOLD – bishop (B), elderly (OLD).
4. Violent quarrel between family members and household servant (8)
DOMESTIC – double definition – the first being so long, I was trying to break it down into ROW between MA and PA/DAD.
8. One’s own role in play opening in London (8)
PERSONAL – role in play (PERSONA), (L)ondon.
9. Area final cut short, regrettably (4)
ALAS – area (A), final cut short (LAS)t.
10. Guarded route across river (4)
WARY – route (WAY) across river (R).
11. Substitute, first of defenders booked (8)
RESERVED – substitute (RESERVE), (D)efenders.
12. Salt, say, in short shanty? (6)
SEASON – to season is to salt (which itself is a seasoning) so I was happy with the answer. To biff or not to biff? That is, indeed, a question. However, for the diligent blogger, duty calls for rolled-up sleeves and a determined tilt of the chin before delving into the word play. At first I had say (AS) inside short shanty (SON)g. Even though it’s usually ‘such as’=say, that’s what I thought it was at first, but what about the ‘E’? I’d obviously gone wrong. Although I realised that the answer is 6 letters not (3,3), I thought about whether a sailor/salt could be a sea son – son of the sea. This wasn’t getting anywhere but, having split sea and son, the answer became blindingly obvious. ‘Say’ is there to show that to salt is an example of to season. Short shanty is (SEA SON)g. There, that’s better, isn’t it?
14. Author George, essentially healthy (6)
ORWELL – clever use of the parsing here. The author is Orwell using George essentially (in the middle – geORge), healthy (WELL).
16. Singer in pub, on end of stage, holding it (8)
BARITONE – pub (BAR), on (ON) and stag(E) holding it (IT).
18. Good penalty (4)
FINE – Double definition.
19. Singular stock phrase for men only (4)
STAG – singular (S), stock phrase (TAG – as in tag line).
20. At a higher level, very happy about Pope’s last verse (8)
ELEVATED – very happy (ELATED) about Pop(E) and verse (V).
22. Island‘s secret society backing racket within (8)
TRINIDAD – secretvsociety (TRIAD within which is racket (din) backwards (NID).
23. Aircraft‘s self-assembly set with ultimate in glue (4)
KITE – self-assembly set (KIT), glu(E). Nice surface bringing back olden days of fingers stuck together trying to assemble a plastic plane.

DOWN

2. Manage to perform surgery (7)
OPERATE – double definition.
3. Good looking policeman, retiring (5)
DISHY – policeman (detective inspector DI), retiring (SHY).
4. Slip into some red ones (3)
DON – some re(D ON)es.
5. Men lose it badly in important event (9)
MILESTONE – anagram (badly) of MEN LOSE IT.
6. Bird box on bank (7)
SPARROW – box (SPAR), on top of bank (ROW).
7. Picture in periodical that is outside (5)
IMAGE – periodical (MAG) with ‘that is’ (IE) outside.
11. Senator ordered, editor declined (3.2.4)
RAN TO SEED – anagram (ordered) of SENATOR, editor (ED).
13. Just a little biting insect inside tin (7)
SMIDGEN – WOD – biting insect (MIDGE) with tin (SN) outside.
15. Tolerant of one German keeling over during fast (7)
LENIENT – one in German (EIN) keeling over (backwards) inside fast (LENT).
17. Agent taking out female player (5)
ACTOR – agent taking out female f(ACTOR).
18. Honest following row (5)
FRANK – following (F), row (RANK).
21. Destroy object (3)
END – double definition.

48 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1636 by Tracy”

  1. A bit slow, even though I biffed a couple. FRANK and KITE took a while, the latter enabling the former. It also took me a while to remember the argument sense of DOMESTIC. Chris, shouldn’t ‘say’ be underlined in 12ac? It’s a DBE. 7:04.
  2. 12 minutes slowed by initial doubts about wordplay at 8ac which made me reluctant to write it in until all checkers were in place.

    DOMESTIC in the first sense started as police jargon.

  3. Totally ground to a halt today about half way through. Disappointing, but I generally find Tracy very challenging. So I have to post a DNF today. The first one for some time 😟

    Edited at 2020-06-16 12:29 pm (UTC)

  4. Heavy going for me today. Only four on the first pass of acrosses – it started o well with BOLD – and then didn’t really pick up. All green in 26m more accurate typing than of late but terribly slow. Some problems were self-inflicted, notably bunging in SWALLOW to try to get some momentum and as three of four checkers fitted it took a long time to revisit – which suddenly made RESERVED terribly obvious! Ended up in the SW with STAG, ACTOR, TRINIDAD and END in that order. All fair in retrospect but bewildering at the time – but I still don’t like SEASON!

    *** Telegraph puzzles give a free puzzle each today and today it’s the cryptic ***

    Edited at 2020-06-16 06:59 am (UTC)

  5. Thought this was a fairly simple offering so was a bit disappointed in my time of 17:04. Like vinyl1 above I failed to see the chestnuts immediately which slowed me down considerably. Enjoyable puzzle in any case.

    FOI: bold
    LOI: kite
    COD: domestic (so I remember it next time)

  6. I don’t know why people are saying “It was easy but I took a long time” – you took a long time because it wasn’t easy! Jack’s over 10 and even Kevin took 1.75 Kevins on his normal scale! I thought this was a real challenge and it took me 2.3K to complete and parse it for a Not Great Day. Hard yards, with some quite out-of-the-way definitions.

    FOI BOLD (so easy that it belonged in another puzzle – Tracy lulling us into a false sense of security), LOI ACTOR (I was thinking of the Bond-type agent for too long), COD a dead heat between two really excellent clues, SEASON and ORWELL. Very clever.

    Thanks Tracy, you win today, and thanks for a really good blog, Chris.

    Templar

    1. Agreed. I found it tough – but on the other hand, I did manage to finish without using aids, so not a bad day. Couldn’t parse several (8a, 14a, 6d – Confused by bank=row, and always forget to link box and spar).

      Thought maybe salt referred to seaman for a while.

      Edited at 2020-06-16 12:21 pm (UTC)

      1. I loved your avatar story BTW – now I say “Hello Filbert” to your avatar!
  7. As I was going through this it felt as if I was making heavy weather of it but by the sounds of the early comments I might be being hard on myself. I had blanks all over the grid but unravelling RUN TO SEED seemed to be the key to unlocking most of them. Crossed the line in 11.40 with LOI ALAS and my COD going to SMIDGEN.
    Thanks to Chris
  8. I enjoyed this fair but interesting puzzle. I had to jump from a partly completed top end to the bottom and then fill in at random but I managed it all in 14 mins which seemed slowish until I saw it was 2K. I had to wait for crossers to get DOMESTIC and TRINIDAD (nice clue). I also liked SMIDGEN, RAN TO SEED, and LENIENT. Thanks to Tracy and to Chris for a good blog that I will now enjoy in more detail. John M.
  9. Tricky Tracy today, I thought. Like others I started with BOLD and all seemed straightforward for a while. But I got stuck in a number of places.Tried to fit KIN into 4a and EG into 12a. Parsing SEASON took a while and I ended up with SEASON/G.
    RAN TO SEED required a full writing out and checkers. LOI was TRINIDAD; not the first island to occur to me and I failed to see Triad. 18:17 on the clock.
    COD to SEASON. David
  10. … ended rather less so. This took me a full 35 minutes in what turned out to be a game of two halves. The first nineteen slipped in effortlessly beginning with BOLD. The remaining seven took almost half an hour of staring hopelessly at the screen, waiting for inspiration. There was nothing here that was unfair or daft (Well, apart from me being the latter). I just couldn’t see the combo of ACTOR, STAG, END and TRINIDAD nor that of FRANK, ELEVATED and KITE. Once I’d seen the 2 eight letter words in each knotty group , I got the others quite quickly but my word…. getting these final answers was like pulling teeth. Despite it being such a hold-up, TRINIDAD is my COD. Thanks so much, Chris, for the blog and thanks, too, to Tracy.
  11. I saw SEASON straight away, being more familiar with sea shanty than shanty on its own, but that didn’t prevent me taking just short of 20 minutes for this, which the Rotterometer says is hard. There were lots of little hold-ups for me, and I never did parse PERSONAL, but it had to be.

    Chris, there is another small typo in your blog, where you have typed ‘manageD to perform surgery’ in 2d which makes the tense of the answer wrong, and may confuse. I had to look back at the original as I didn’t remember such confusion when solving. I did wonder when solving though if this was a triple definition, with manage, perform and surgery all pointing to the answer, but decided that the last two needed to be taken together for the dd to work.

    Thanks Tracy and Chris.

  12. Struggled mightily, but sadly a DNF despite guessing a couple of answers I could not parse. Defeated by SEASON, STAG and SMIDGEN.
  13. 2 down should be “Manage” in the clue, I was trying to work out the difference in tense…
  14. Not at all easy. I think when you have first letter checkers and still struggle to solve the clue you have been outwitted. My FOI was BOLD which seemed promising but my LOI was the adjacent DOMESTIC. Clues I particularly struggled with were PERSONAL, SEASON, STAG and ACTOR. Completed in 1 Rotter. Thanks for the blog Chris and well played to Tracy.
  15. An enjoyable puzzle which I only just managed to complete within my target time. Started with BOLD and DISHY. PERSONAL took a while and I failed to spot DOMESTIC until I had some checkers. I wanted to put SEAMAN at 12a, but SMIDGEN put me right. I needed KITE to get Frank. TRINIDAD was my LOI. 9:47. Thanks Tracy and Chris.
  16. Whenever I get 1A on the first pass, I always think its going to be a good puzzle, but like others this had a mix of easy, doable and hard clues. I couldn’t get to 11A (Reserved) without resorting to synonyms for substitute and its only on reading the blog that I realised I had the clue backwards with the definition actually booked! Likewise 15D (Lenient) held me up, especially as I had Knit for 23A for a while!

    The clock says 45 minutes but this one feels like it was a DNF.

    FOI: 1A Bold
    LO1: 11A Reserved
    COD: 13D Smidgen

    Thanks Tracy for the puzzle and chrisw91 for the informative blog!

  17. Held up by some clues that should have been obvious like Elevated. Annoyed I looked up Sparrow in the book. Reserved is another that took me too long.
    I only got Trinidad because I was looking for Din backwards so I guess I am progressing in a way.

    Thanks as ever. I did enjoy today.
    (Am brief because I type slowly on iPad!)

  18. Started off really well with the NW corner all banged in within a few minutes, but then slowed down with the rest. In the end, completed in about 40 mins.

    Nothing unfair in here, although it took a while to get 21ac “kite” and 17dn “actor”. I got 12ac “Season” by initially thinking of Sea being a type of salt. Flawed thinking in the end, but for once the end justified the means.

    For 11dn I’m more familiar with “gone to seed”, so that also puzzled me longer than it should.

    FOI – 1ac “Bold”
    LOI – 17dn “Actor”
    COD – 16ac “Baritone” – although there were a few I could have picked.

    Thanks as usual.

  19. Not at all easy. Spent as long on some of the parsing as I did solving the clues. DISHY made me chuckle, and as with others KIT took me back many years. Much enjoyed, so thanks setter.
    PlayUpPompey
  20. All green but only after some serious head scratching and resorting to the dictionary for the final few. Could I have a definition/usage of RAN TO SEED? I put it in only on the basis of it sounding more probable than RAN SO TEED, but have never heard of it and google doesn’t seem to show much.

    COD 13a. SMIDGEN, but equally enjoyed SEASON and ORWELL.

    Thanks to all

    1. It’s more usually ‘gone to seed’. Means old and shabby, like a plant that’s past its best…

      Don’t think I’ve ever seen ‘ran to seed’

      Edited at 2020-06-16 12:29 pm (UTC)

      1. Collins has:

        If vegetable plants go to seed or run to seed, they produce flowers and seeds as well as leaves.

  21. Should be tin not tine for 13 down. I didn’t know SN was tin but now I do.
  22. With 15 minutes on the clock I thought that this was going to be a DNF but I plodded on and eventually finished around 10 minutes later.
    Like James and Filbert, I have only heard of “gone to seed” and I also struggled with SEASON and PERSONAL.
    My COD has to be DISHY which made me smile.
    Thanks to Tracy and to Chris.

    Edited at 2020-06-16 12:38 pm (UTC)

  23. ….were often the opening words leading to a DOMESTIC in the back of my taxi. Usually just a shouting match, so the word “violent” was a tad misleading to be FRANK.

    Thanks to Chris for the usual excellent blog. I needed it today for the parsing of ORWELL which I biffed.

    I was all over the grid, and this was definitely tricky, even though I was inside my target.

    FOI BOLD
    LOI DOMESTIC
    COD FRANK
    TIME 0.59K

  24. … for a 20 minute finish. It could have been worse, as I found it really difficult to get going and at 10 minutes had barely a third done.

    Biffed 14A Orwell – it could not be anything else once I had the checkers but I’m unfamiliar with the convention that “George, essentially” gives OR. Can someone wiser or more experienced explain please?

    Otherwise all seems straightforward enough when one reads Chris’s blog, for which many thanks. So I mark today down as just Me Being Slow.

    Cedric

    1. Essentially – the essence of – the central core of. Therefore take George and take the centre two letters. Ge(OR)ge.
      1. Ah. Thank you Chris. I store it away in my Book Of Things To Know. It is becoming quite a long list.

        Cedric

  25. We too thought that this was a tricky little puzzle. Some great clues and an odd one “ran to seed” but it was smidgen and Trinidad that held us up. So, we’re turning in a time of 26 min 😟. Thanks Tracy – our little grey cells have benefited from the workout.

    FOI: bold
    LOI: smidgen
    COD: smidgen (good use of the periodic table – should have spotted it sooner)

    Thanks for the blog Chris

    1. A few have commented on ran to seed. As usual, if it’s in the dictionary it’s fair game.

      Collins has:

      If vegetable plants go to seed or run to seed, they produce flowers and seeds as well as leaves.

      1. But is it in the dictionary- I have no problem with “run to seed”, but have never heard “ran to seed”. To me there is a significant difference which is beyond my technical grasp of English to explain, but essentially it just isn’t a phrase. Having said that, it couldn’t be anything else given the anagram.
        1. The definition is declined – past tense. To decline is to run to seed, declined is ran to seed.
          1. My spinach is running to seed at this moment, annoyingly.
            I enjoyed this, thank you Tracy.
            But SMIDGEN defeated me, I can’t even spell it on a good day.

            Diana

            Edited at 2020-06-16 08:27 pm (UTC)

  26. Found this one the hardest for a long time as I spent about two hours on it and still ended up with a DNF as the FRANK/KITE crossing defeated me. In retrospect I should have thought of kit for “self assembly set” and if I had I’d have seen FRANK (I know because I immediately did when I saw KITE on here). I guess I just wasn’t on the right wavelength today. Why is “following” abbreviated to just ‘F’ by the way? Is it a cricketing term by any chance?

    Edited at 2020-06-16 02:55 pm (UTC)

    1. It’s often easiest to accept that there are lots of first letters as abbreviations.
      In this case Collins has:
      f. is an abbreviation for ‘following’. It is written after a page or line number to indicate that you are referring to both the page or line mentioned and the one after it. You use ff. when you are referring to the page or line mentioned and two or more pages or lines after it.
  27. Give the last contributor full marks for tenacity, we would never have lasted that long. Took us over our target, but an enjoyable puzzle with interesting clues eg 12a,22a. Both of us enjoyed 4a in particular. Thanks Tracy.
  28. Around 8 minutes, with the top giving trouble, milestone, domestic and reserved all taking time to be revealed. Loved season, and the parsing of Orwell was too subtle for me.
    Thanks setter and blogger.
  29. I often find Tracy to be at the trickier end of the spectrum but managed it in 20 minutes. Would have been a bit faster if I hadn’t been disturbed by the DPD driver buzzing the door with the latest in a never ending queue of online shopping deliveries. As a relatively recent returnee to cryptic crosswords, after a few decades away, I hadn’t seen Smidgen before, so that was my COD. Having grown up in Scotland, Midge was an immediate word association for biting insect! FOI Bold, LOI Stag, for no other reason than the bottom left corner generally slowed me down a bit and got left to the end.
  30. 22 minutes – very pleased after all done in 18 except for the last two Kite and then Frank. I must remember Frank = Honest!!
    Thanks to the Blog for ORwell.
    Thankfully the bird came to mind as one of the more obvious beginning with S.
    1a took too long – mental note to ignore, or even move, punctuation in future!
    Lots to enjoy as they steadily fell when I thought that they wouldn’t.
    Thanks all,
    John George

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