Times Quick Cryptic No 1853 by Pedro

Author   therotterPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
This was a relatively easy solve (12 minutes for me) but with a couple of pieces of chewy parsing along the way.  Not too much esoteric general knowledge required, although 11a, 1d, 4d may cause a short hold-up for some.  The tricky parsing was mostly at 8a and 5d in my personal experience.

In my ignorance, I always thought of 25a as two words (2,6), but I’m glad to be shown better by Pedro, who has, IMHO, produced a workmanlike QC for us all to test ourselves against.  Please let me know how you found it.

Across

3  I’m coming back into quiet home (8)
DOMICILE – IM (reversed, coming back) to give MI, inside DOCILE (quiet).
7  Source of flavour in beer – the culminating touch (6)
FINALE – F (source, or first letter of F{lavour}) IN (in) and ALE (beer).
8  With a passing fancy, each approach is to disappear with time (4,4)
FADE AWAY – FAD (a passing fancy) with EA (abbreviation for each) and WAY (approach).
9  Man from Edinburgh, say, to rush, avoiding a round (4)
SCOT – SCO{o}T. Scoot (to rush) avoiding one of the Os (a round).
10  Pleasant disposing of new cold dessert (3)
ICE – {n}ICE – pleasant dropping N{ew}.
11  Studying front of car before driving (8)
CRAMMING – C{ar} (front of / first letter of Car) and RAMMING (driving).  To CRAM for an exam is to study hard to pass it.
13  Uproar with rubbish around capital of Italy (4)
RIOT – Not ROME but Italy’s other capital, the letter I inside ROT (rubbish).
15  Fielder in error (4)
SLIP – Double definition, the first referring to one of the unfathomable (to the uninitiated) fielding positions in the game of cricket.
17  Starry celebration given by commander-in-chief?  About time (8)
GALACTIC – GALA (celebration) with CIC (Commander-In-Chief) containing (about) T(ime).
19  Boat’s propeller observed initially beside a river (3)
OAR – O{bserved} (initially) beside A (a) and R{iver}.  In a rowing boat, the only mechanism to propel the boat forwards is an OAR.
22  Deafening, behold, and extremely unbalanced (4)
LOUD – LO (behold) followed by U{nbalance}D (extremely – outside letters only).
23  European celebrity finding direction indicator? (4,4)
POLE STAR – POLE (European) and STAR (celebrity).  The Pole Star (Polaris) is a star that appears to remain close to the North Pole and has been used as a guide or direction indicator for millennia.
24  Fail to appreciate development of region (6)
IGNORE – Anagram (development) of [REGION].
25  I will avoid various coal-fires out of doors (8)
ALFRESCO – Anagram (various) of [COAL-F{i}RES] after I is deleted (I will avoid).

Down

1  Intuitive version initially is clear, but misinterpreted  (8)
VISCERAL – V{ersion} (initially) followed by an anagram (is misinterpreted) of [IS CLEAR].
2  Refuse to allow tailless domesticated fowl (6)
BANTAM – BAN (refuse to allow) and TAM{e} (domesticated, tailless – drop last letter).  Domesticated could be doing double duty here as a BANTAM is a type of domesticated fowl, but it isn’t really needed for the definition – fowl will suffice.
3  Skilful line not seen in Dutch crockery (4)
DEFT – DE{l}FT (take L (Line) out of delft (Dutch crockery).  This was my FOI.
4  Crazy: equipment almost entirely for a song (8)
MADRIGAL – MAD (crazy) with RIG (equipment) and AL{l} (entirely, almost, drop the last letter).  I knew this term for an unaccompanied song, but I’m not sure why – I’m not very musical!
5 Lunar feature cold?  Very much not hot (6)
CRATER – C{old} followed by RAT{h}ER (very much – rather, after dropping the H (not H{ot})).  If you are confused by equating ‘rather’ with ‘very much’, imagine asking my avatar if he’d like a gin and tonic?  I imagine him answering “RA-THER!”, rather like me!
6 Story-teller in bar getting upset (4)
LIAR – RAIL (bar) reversed (getting upset).
12  They don’t appreciate popular Government’s initial taxes (8)
INGRATES – IN (popular) with G{overnment’s} (initial) and RATES (taxes).
14  Commemorative  article I brought in about failing railway (8)
OBITUARY – Anagram (failing) of [ABOUT] containing I (I brought in) and followed by RY (abbreviation for railway).
16  Post Office sure upset pretentious type (6)
POSEUR – PO (post office) and an anagram (upset) of [SURE].
18  Shy about learner working in group (6)
COLONY – COY (shy) around (about) L{eraner} and ON (working).
20  Ring up, getting venue for swimming (4)
POOL – LOOP (ring) reversed (up) to give POOL.  We’ve had a couple of LOOPs recently reporting quasi-discoveries which might make us all rethink the Standard Model in physics – CERN and Fermilab.  How exciting!
21  Three players heading for tour, going to South American city (4)
TRIO – T{our} (heading for Tour) and RIO (South American city).

56 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1853 by Pedro”

  1. I took ‘in’ at 7ac to indicate inclusion, which lost me some time. Biffed OBITUARY. Luckily for me, SLIP appeared recently in a 15×15, at which time I’d never heard of it. 5:22.

    Edited at 2021-04-15 02:04 am (UTC)

  2. 8 minutes with no problems. MY FOI was DEFT which came easily as I have been to Delft and visited one of its potteries, if that’s what they’re called.
  3. I had Kevin’s problem with 7A but the time I lost on it overall exceeded his whole solving time. Not helped by not getting 1D for a while either. 3A also took longer so I had to work out from the centre which was rather more amenable to me.
    The rest went in steadily for about 30 mins with tea and enjoying the dawn chorus led by an enthusiastic blackbird. Good start to the day.
  4. Finished a shade under 11 for my fastest time in a while only to find I put three Ms in CRAMMING — annoying! Seven on the first pass of across which is pretty good but I to wait until ICE — the fifth across clue — before getting started. Nothing came too easily but I made good progress until the NE was left. MADRIGAL was biffed then parsed (and known only from crosswords), DOMICILE had to be carefully extracted and DEFT took a while — I’m impressed with all those above who had it as FOI. I didn’t parse ALFRESCO, I was so far away from penetrating the clue that although I thought of if immediately from the definition I couldn’t justify it and left it until all the checkers were in. Seems simple in hindsight, thanks Rotter. Still annoyed about about my pink square — I ‘d have been ahead of my two secret enemies on the leaderboard without it!
  5. I was slow to get going with this one and thought it was going to a typically tricky offering from Pedro, who I often struggle with. On first run through I couldn’t make head or tail of the NW and much of the NE and my FOI was ICE. The bottom half proved much more friendly and my brain cell had clearly woken up when I returned to the top of the grid. Fittingly I finished in the NW with FINALE in 10.18 with DEFT not fully parsed, having never heard of the crockery. COD to POSEUR.
    Thanks to Rotter
    1. I struggle with Pedro too and did again today until I finished the last 7 clues in a flash on the loo (there is probably an alternative clue to 20d in this last word somewhere!).
  6. Failing to solve either 3A or 1D I headed to the bottom and worked my way up without much of a problem until I popped in LEARNING for Cramming this brought me to an abrupt halt at the top left corner and it wasn’t until I spotted the error of my ways that I could complete 3A and LOI 1D leading to a pretty much on par 6.5K.
    No problem at all with DEFT although not to my taste, I amassed a sizeable collection of unopened Blue Delft Bols miniatures filling 2 shoe boxes, courtesy of KLM in the days when flying was taken for granted and AMS was a handy hub. Probably should put them on eBay if I find the box that they are packed away in the garage.
    COD FADE AWAY.
    Must go, plumber at the door looking nervous.
    Thanks Pedro and Rotter.

    1. We accumulated lots of those KLM Delft houses too when I was growing up. No idea where they are now!

      1. I have some too. Did anyone ever open them to drink the contents (I presume gin of some type)?
        Cedric
      2. All unopened! No doubt when a curious youngster finds them they will be opened and the contents sampled, assuming gin has not evaporated.
        They came in useful for a clue today. At last I have an answer to the question “What on earth are you keeping these things for?” At least I managed to cure myself of the temptation to keep countless amenity kits (except for toothpaste, removed).

        Edited at 2021-04-15 08:57 am (UTC)

      3. I refuse them because I’ve never found a way to get at the alcohol inside them (perhaps just in the business class version?). And the cabin crew don’t know either — or aren’t telling!

  7. Although this ended up being a couple of minutes quicker than yesterday’s offering for me at around 18 mins, it felt slower. I think it’s because I didn’t get much on the first pass, FOI Scot and then a few shorter words so it felt a little empty. Spent a bit of time trying to make “equipment” a short anagram before getting the across clues to see “Madrigal”. Domicile was also slow in coming and LOI was Liar – I was misled by the type of bar.

  8. Held up by my LOI, COLONY which came only when I belatedly realised that working was ON. I had to leave and come back to DOMICILE until I had the checkers. COD to FINALE. 5:11.
  9. … and it took me a full 15 minutes, though eventually all done and parsed.

    It took a while for me to realise that a group could be a colony for 18D, but my main hold-ups and last two in were 14D Obituary and 7A Finale. In both cases my downfall was the same: mistaking how the clue worked, and trying to make the words about (in 18D) and in (in 7A) indicators of words being included in other words. At least I share the latter misunderstanding with Kevin, but it does bring to mind the saying “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. Except that as it is a setter’s main intent to fool and mislead us, it’s a little hard to heap shame on either Pedro or me for him succeeding! Perhaps we need a new saying “Fool me once, kudos to you, fool me twice, double kudos to you”.

    All very enjoyable and a good work-out. Many thanks to Rotter for the blog
    Cedric

    1. I used to think the Obituary was the Finale until I read the Epitaph.
    2. Dear Cedric, I’m often fooled, re-fooled, re-re-fooled, re-re-re-fooled, …, so multiple kudos’ to the setters and much shame (to the nth power) should be heaped on me. I suppose that’s why I’m invariably a member of the SCC.
  10. That’s better. I enjoyed this morning’s challenge — OAR was easy, anything to do with water is appreciated.

    “My” ship was featured in yesterday’s “Pictures “ — and again today ( in the online version). Hopefully I’ll be on board again in September.

    Thank you, Pedro and Rotter

    Diana

  11. FOI: 9a. SCOT
    LOI: 18d. COLONY

    Time to Complete: DNF

    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 21

    Clues Answered with Aids (3 lives): 17a, 1d, 4d

    Clues Unanswered: 7a, 15a

    Wrong Answers: Nil

    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/26

    Aids Used: Chambers, Bradford’s

    After half an hour I only had 5 or 6 clues answered, including the short ones. I was about to give up but decided to give it a few more minutes. I am glad I did as I slowly answered more clues. I ended up with using 3 lives and leaving two clues unanswered for a satisfactory DNF.

    17a. GALACTIC – First life used. Being ex-navy the abbreviation for Commander-In-Chief to me is CINC (CINCFLEET for example), and that threw me as I was trying to include an N in the answer.

    7a. FINALE – An unanswered clue. I was misled by thinking that “source of flavour in beer” meant that the letter F (source of flavour) had to go into a word for beer. Now I see I was wrong, and the parsing seemed obvious to me now that I have seen the answer here.

    16. POSEUR – I have never heard of this word before, but with the letters I had already present, the answer had to be POSEUR or POUESR. The former struck me as being the only reasonable answer, and so in it went.

    12d. INGRATES – I managed to parse this one with some difficulty at first. Had I not seen this word crop up in a puzzle recently, I would not have answered this one.

    I purchased the Daily Mail Big Book of Cryptic Crosswords vol. 1 from Amazon the other day. Last night I attempted the first puzzle and managed to answer all but one clue. I am not sure where the DM cryptic puzzles fall in the hierarchy of difficulty, but it seems to be perhaps around the Daily Telegraph level. Perhaps a little easier.

    1. The Mail was one of my early training grounds, after which I went on to the Telegraph (someone else’s copy — I really couldn’t read the paper !)
  12. Unlike rotter, I found this tough. I was slow to start in the top half and moved around the grid having more success in the lower half. There were still holdups for me — COLONY, OBITUARY (a smile when it clicked). I liked POSEUR but not INGRATES.
    Then, moving up the grid, DOMICILE and CRAMMING took a while, BANTAM was a biff, and FINALE was my LOI. My COD was GALACTIC. A poor show from me which took me 3 mins into the SCC. I must avoid doing anything that will tax my brain today. Thanks to Pedro for an interesting but rather unsettling puzzle and to rotter for his usual reliable blog. John M.

    Edited at 2021-04-15 08:48 am (UTC)

  13. Brisk enough business but I didn’t really enjoy it, the puzzle suffering (in my view) from too many excessively wordy clues (eg 8, 9 and 17ac).

    FOI DEFT, LOI CRAMMING, COD INGRATES, time 08:18 for 1.5K and a Very Good Day.

    Many thanks Pedro and Rotter.

    Templar

  14. I had to look at several clues before getting FOI POSEUR. I managed to keep going until my last two which were GALACTIC and COLONY; both derived from careful parsing.
    Happy to finish in 11:42.
    COD to GALACTIC.
    David

  17. mainly because I bunged in WEAR AWAY, which cost me some time, especially once I’d got DOMICILE.

    Tried very hard to make DEWY mean skilful, but eventually the penny dropped, FADE AWAY was entered, then DEFT and MADRIGAL, but my LOI was COLONY.

    6:14.

  18. Thought there were a few tricky (but fair) parsings here. CRATER needed to be reverse engineered as did DOMICILE so the NE held me up for a good couple of minutes.

    Liked OBITUARY. Wanted it to start MEM..with ROME providing the starting checker, but soon put those nonsenses to bed.

    Thanks Rotter and Pedro

  19. I have to respectfully disagree with Rotter as I thought this was tough. Whilst I came in at 23 mins, which is better than I thought I would, I had a feeling that newer solvers would find this difficult.

    Some great clues though, including 4dn “Madrigal”, 17ac “Galactic” 1dn “Visceral” and 3ac “Domicile”. I have to admit, I also thought 25ac “Alfresco” was two words.

    FOI — 6dn “Liar”
    LOI — 2dn “Bantam”
    COD — “Fade Away” — beautifully constructed

    Thanks as usual.

  20. FOI ice, six acs and six dns on first pass, bottom half filled in quickly, then the work began, but they slowly dropped in. About twenty minutes to complete today, with some nuances in the parsing that I missed on several clues. Scot occurred to me straight away but I left it out as could not parse it, ashamed to say. I found a lot of the clueing here witty and enjoyable. Thanks, Rotter, for the blog, and Pedro for an excellent puzzle. GW.
  21. Wot Rotter said, down to FOI and AL FRESCO being two words – perhaps the single word option is just us. Certainly in my Italian classes, it would have been two words! Pleased to be on target time-wise today as I often find Pedro tricky – pretty much bang on 10 minutes. Some great anagrinds I thought – development, various, misinterpreted – which really added to the surfaces. I had the same problem with SCOT as GW although it made me smile when I got it! A bit of stereotyping though? I also thought 12d’s surface was particularly apposite considering all the reports about HMRC’s latest wheeze.
    FOI Deft
    LOI Bantam
    COD Galactic, closely followed by Visceral

    Thanks to Pedro, and to Rotter for the usual entertaining and enlightening blog

  22. Started with 3d, Deft, having also visited Delft and the pottery (a surprisingly long walk away from the town centre on a very hot day!), but then struggled and had to pick out the short answers to get going. I see I was a day early with Rot for rubbish in 13ac, but at least it helped with Obituary. Loi, after 24mins, was a well disguised Finale – and there was me thinking types of hop was a bit of a stretch for a QC… CoD to 25ac, Alfresco, for the surface. Invariant
  23. I started with DEFT, having been to the Dutch town in the dim and distant past. I worked my way clockwise, finishing with VISCERAL and then CRAMMING. 8:11. Thanks Pedro and Rotter.
  24. Glad you found it easy — spent an hour and a half and DNF.

    Biffed fade away, obituary finale etc

    Missed domicile liar and colony.

    Too hard fo me Pedro

    Nick

  25. My solve was interrupted but I finished just north of 10 minutes so outside my target. I was aware I biffed quite a few answers once a few checkers were in play, notably FADE AWAY, SCOT, GALACTIC, CRATER and my LOI OBITUARY. Although for me there were no unknown words I think some of the wordplay was quite involved…hence the biffing. I think those new to the QC will find this one on the tricky side. Thanks Rotter and Pedro.
  26. New word for me was BANTAM, and I had also considered AL FRESCO two words, but otherwise ok.

    I still don’t understand MADRIGAL, despite biffing it : if we need the AL from ALMOST, then the indicator is ‘almost entirely’ ie not all of it. But then the indicator is using the word ALMOST as well (ie twice?)

    Thanks.

    1. As it says in the blog, the parsing for MADRIGAL is as follows:

      MAD comes from crazy,
      RIG is equipment, and
      ALL means entirely, except the wordplay says almost entirely, so we drop the last letter of AL{l}.
      Put those three parts together to get MADRIGAL. AL does not come from ALMOST.

  27. I finished successfully in 51 minutes today, but I found it tough at the end. The NE corner caused me the most problems with DOMICILE, DEFT and LIAR taking 10+minutes to fall, and FADE AWAY (my LOI) not succumbing for a further12 minutes. Such a simple phrase, but so difficult to drag out of what passes for my brain!

    Neither I nor Mrs R tackled Jalna’s offering yesterday, as we were partaking of homemade vegetable quiche, homegrown salad and homemade chocolate cake with a few of my more elderly relatives, one of whom was celebrating her 90th birthday. However, for completeness, I can report that I completed it earlier this morning in 46 minutes. ‘Difficulness’ rating: similar to today’s puzzle, IMHO.

    I will post again later if Mrs Random catches up, which probably won’t take her long once she starts.

    1. The family celebratory lunch sounds yummy. Congratulations to your 90 yo relative!
  28. A steady solve in 15 minutes. I found the shorter words mostly quite straightforward (which is not always the case) but was slowed up somewhat by the wordplay in some of the longer ones. Biffed ALFRESCO and OBITUARY form crossers – thanks Rotter for the explanations on these two.

    FOI – 9ac SCOT
    LOI – 18dn COLONY
    COD – 7ac FINALE
    WOD – 1dn VISCERAL

  29. After staring at a virtually empty grid for what seemed an age we started to make progress from the bottom up. At times it felt that we were heading for a DNF but then seemed to speed up and we finished in 22 minutes.

    FOI: LIAR
    LOI: VISCERAL
    COD: MADRIGAL

    Thanks to Pedro and Rotter.

  30. ….but, once I did, this was relatively straightforward.

    The first answer I entered was wrong (wear away), but the real first answer was DEFT, which put me right. I finished in 4:23 with, rather aptly, OBITUARY.

    My COD (because it sent me down the wrong track, just like Poison Wyvern) was FINALE.

  31. This was the hardest of the week. I did the FT today and it was significantly easier than this puzzle. I may have been off but I thought the clueing was really poor. Not a fan of Pedro
  32. After yesterday when we felt our brains has gone to mush, this was a welcome relief with no real holdups, so we finished in abt 18m which is very satisfactory.Thanks to Pedro and Rotter.
  33. … Mrs Random has now caught up — I knew I wouldn’t be ahead for long — and has successfully finished both yesterday’s Jalna (29 minutes) and today’s Pedro (27 minutes) in-between various other onerous activities. She regards both as being of moderate difficulty. Goldilocks standard, perhaps — not too hard, not too easy, just about right.

    Many thanks to therotter and Pedro.

  34. 19 minutes.
    I thought that this was tricky because many of the clues seemed long with some semi-difficult vocabulary.
    NW corner hardest for me so like some others worked from mainly bottom up and right to left.
    Having said that FOI was 6d.
    19a wavered on Bar (initially Beside A River) but 16d Post Office soon corrected that thinking.
    Madrigal was the hardest for me and LOI Cramming. Like others with a shrug.
    My exam technique was always last minute cramming but I never considered that as studying. More like survival.
    Visceral — WOD since I didn’t know it’s meaning.
    Thanks all
    John George
  35. Not on Pedro’s wavelength today, or maybe I just don’t do well after a day at work, but this took 54:52. Second to last one in was DEFT which I only got from the DE and the “Skilful” bit of the clue. Delft was definitely not in my vocabulary. Getting that allowed me to get my LOI FADE AWAY. Several other tough clues as well: VISCERAL, DOMICILE, MADRIGAL for instance, so hats off to those who finished in under half the time I took, which admittedly seems to be most of you. Oh well. Thanks to Pedro and Rotter.
  36. 9a’s and 7d’s on first pass felt good but had to work a number of the remainder.FOI 8a Fade away. LOI 11a Cramming (not see ramming=driving, but it does). COD 17a Galactic.
    Several clues to enjoy – Obit/Pole Star among them.
  37. Wasn’t he the bloke who painted ceilings!
    Should have been two words IMHO but there seems to have been a number of concatenations recently.
    One course and a bit
    1. On the subject of painting ceilings:
      Mrs Random and I have recently watched a really excellent Sky Arts documentary (approx. 2 hours, so not lightweight) by Waldemar Januszczak, entitled The Michaelangelo Code: Secrets of the Sistine Chapel.

      It was not for the faint-hearted, but was absolutely excellent. Even as a non-religious, uncultured heathen I was spellbound — although we did have to watch it in two sittings. Highly recommendable, and I just love WJ’s presentation style.

      1. We’ve been meaning to watch it — will search it out on the iPlayer. I couldn’t agree more about his style, particularly when he starts stomping about 😅 I believe the podcast he does with Bendor Grosvenor (Waldy and Bendy’s adventures in art) is very entertaining, if you haven’t discovered those yet. MrB is a big fan.
        1. Thankyou for the podcast recommendation. I will search it/them out.
  38. Slow for me these days — 28 minutes. Perhaps I was tired — I usually solve in the morning but this time in the evening after a day spent walking miles and then in a Zoom meeting. A glass of wine
    helped me to unlock the NW corner which was holding me up. It really wasn’t that hard.

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