Quick Cryptic 69 by Dice

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This week’s 11 x 11 crossword from the Guardian, intended to teach cryptic crosswords, found here

This week we have the 3rd Quick Cryptic by Dice, a setter only seen in the Quick Cryptic slot. Today we only have anagrams and alternate letters with all the letters given, plus reversals and dropped letters. Reversals are making their 15th appearance, dropped letters their 5th, last seen in week 42, and alternate letters their 8th appearance, last seen in week 49.

The whole point of these crosswords is support and encouragement of new solvers, so special rules for these crosswords apply – see here – those rules include not posting solving times.

This blog continues to develop in response to suggestions. We hide the answers and the wordplay descriptions (parsing) too.   To find the solution click on “Answer” and to find how the word play works, click on “Parsing” which will reveal the hidden information. You can choose to reveal everything using the “Expand All” button. If you have partially revealed the page, refreshing it will clear that, and allow you to expand all. The definition is in bold and underlined, the indicator is in red.

For additional help click here

There is a summary of the tricks used in the first six months here and a Guardian Crossword blog called the ultimate beginner’s guide has tips which may be useful for some solvers

 

For abbreviations and clue tips click here

Fifteen Squared uses several abbreviations and jargon tricks, there’s a full list here, of which I’ve used the following in this blog:

  • underlining the definition in the clue – this is either at the beginning or end of the clue
  • indicators are in red.
  • CAPITALS to indicate which bits are part of the answer, e.g. EnViEd first lady for the example.
  • anagram – letters being used shown in brackets (SENATOR)* for the clue below to give TREASON.
  • anagrind – anagram indicator – in the case below it is “arranged”
  • reversal – shown using the < symbol, so ‘Deity’s pet coming back (3)’ is DOG < for pet, reversing (coming back) gives GOD
  • CAD or clue as definition– where the whole clue gives the definition, sometimes called an &lit. These are rare.
  • DBE or defintion by example – e.g. where a dog might be clued as a setter – often using a question mark, maybe, possibly or e.g. to show that this is an example rather than a definition.
  • surface – the meaning from reading the clue – so often cryptic clues use an English that could only be found in a cryptic crossword, but a smooth surface is a clue that has a meaning in English, which can be pointed or misleading.

TODAY’S TRICKS – from the crossword site – because the clues have moved on from the clue descriptions below, I am now adding more to the descriptions hidden above. Clues begin or end with a definition of the answer. The rest is one of these:

  1. Anagram An anagram of the answer and a hint that there’s an anagram
    ‘Senator arranged crime (7)’ gives TREASON
  2. Reversal The answer backwards, and a hint that we’re reversing
    ‘Deity’s pet coming back (3)’ gives GOD
  3. Alternate letters Choose every other letter for the answer
    ‘Oddly EnViEd First Lady? (3)’ gives EVE
  4. Dropped letter Remove a letter from another word
    ‘Time away from coach in wet weather (4)’ gives RAIN (from tRAIN)

ACROSS Click on “Answer” to see the solutions
1
Periodically our Danny grew fruit (6)
Answer

ORANGE
Parsing

alternate letters (periodically) of OuR dAnNy GrEw.
4
Short, fat professor on the board? (4)
Answer

PLUM
Parsing

drop a letter (short) from PLUMp (fat) to get Professor Plum, one of the characters in the board game Cluedo
8
Paint chore abandoned (5)
Answer

OCHRE
Parsing

anagram of (CHORE)* with anagrind of “abandoned” for this mineral paint – in watercolours one of the standard colours I was taught to use in landscape painting is yellow ochre, but there are other colours available – Verona gold ochre.

9
My darling is only occasionally shy or needy (5)
Answer

HONEY
Parsing

alternate letters (only occasionally) – of sHy Or NeEdY
10
Cereal is 75% butter? (3)
Answer

OAT
Parsing

drop a letter (75%) of gOAT (for a 4 letter word 75% means going down to 3 letters) – and a GOAT is a butter because it butts, which is such a common cryptic trope that I now see butter in a clue and think goat or synonyms.
12
Ivan ran frantically to find enlightenment (7)
Answer

NIRVANA
Parsing

anagram of (IVAN RAN)* with anagrind of “frantically”
14
Every so often Ms Dean is poorly – affecting hearing, among other things (7)
Answer

SENSORY
Parsing

alternate letters (every so often) mS dEaN iS pOoRlY for SENSORY – something relating to all the senses, so “among other things” is saying that hearing is a definition by example (dbe)
15
Foreign character had food sent back (3)
Answer

ETA
Parsing

reversal (sent back) of ATE < (had food) to give the Greek letter (foreign character). I’m sure I’ve said this before, but not for a while: the Greek alphabet is worth learning as vocabulary for cryptic crosswords.

16
Notices stalls from the East (5)
Answer

SPOTS
Parsing

reversal (from the east) of STOPS < (stalls) for one of the many pairs of words that spell a word in either direction.

17
Out-of-practice – reliable, but one time only! (5)
Answer

RUSTY
Parsing

drop a letter (one time only) from tRUSTY (reliable) with only one T (time – from physics formulae), so one time only means dropping one of the Ts in TRUSTY.
19
Googled, but regularly ignored the top result? (4)
Answer

GOLD
Parsing

alternate letters (regularly ignored) of GoOgLeD – and the GOLD medallist in the Olympics is the top result – but that’s only an example, hence the question mark to indicate a definition by example (dbe)
20
Stay and officiate, but powerlessly (6)
Answer

RESIDE
Parsing

drop a letter (powerlessly) from pRESIDE (officiate) without the P (so P = power in Physics, powerlessly means remove the P)
DOWN
1 Fragrant food poor, so Mum’s leaving every other piece (7)
Answer

ODOROUS
Parsing

alternate letters (leaving every other piece) of fOoD pOoR sO mUm’S
2
Head covered in itchy patch left behind after a fire (3)
Answer

ASH
Parsing

drop a letter (head covered) of rASH (itchy patch) – head covered isn’t the clearest instruction to remove the first letter of a word, but that’s what is required here.

3
Go ensure he organised a warm place that encourages growth (10)
Answer

GREENHOUSE
Parsing

anagram of (GO ENSURE HE)* with anagrind of “organised” to give GREENHOUSE
5
Eagle in out-of-control descent (7)
Answer

LINEAGE
Parsing

anagram of (EAGLE IN)* with anagrind of “out-of-control” for descent/lineage of a family
6
Might serve up root vegetable (3)
Answer

MAY
Parsing

reversal (served up – in a down clue) YAM < (root vegetable)

7
Cheer Terry, performing where blossom grows (6,4)
Answer

CHERRY TREE
Parsing

anagram of (CHEER TERRY)* with anagrind of “performing” for the tree celebrated in A Shropshire lad
11
Dropping the odds at sign of jovial Meat Loaf cover? (7)
Answer

TINFOIL
Parsing

alternate letters (dropping the odds) of aT sIgN oF jOvIaL for not only a covering for a meat loaf but hats of conspiracists. There is a misleading capitalisation here to make the solver think of the singer [Bat out of Hell].

13
Yes, Alan transformed study (7)
Answer

ANALYSE
Parsing

anagram of (YES ALAN)* with anagrind of “transformed”

16
Brought about fuel slump (3)
Answer

SAG
Parsing

reversal (brought about) of GAS < (fuel)

18
Travel downhill fast, mostly outside (3)
Answer

SKI
Parsing

drop a letter (mostly) from SKIn (outside) – and that took an alphabet trawl to work out which letter to drop.

 

 

36 comments on “Quick Cryptic 69 by Dice”

  1. Have to say, I don’t think that would encourage anyone picking up a Cryptic for the first time but a good challenge for those who’ve been doing these for the year or so since they were introduced. Anyway thanks to Dice for the puzzle and Shanne for the comprehensive blog (as ever).

    I recorded my weekly talkthrough which is available at https://youtu.be/eygEotrviRg containing tips and tactics on how to solve.

  3. Struggled with two.. I got ‘oat’ as I had the O and that’s a common cereal, but could not work out the rest of the clue. Butter = goat is a new one on me!!

    But the one I had to cheat was ‘ski’, skin being outside I would never have guessed nor ski for going downhill fast. My first cheat in at least a few months 🙁

  4. Sarah @3 – I worked out it was SKI from the crossers and that meant I could see the definition, but I really did sit there going through all the four-letter words starting with SKI to work out what the outside could be – so skid, skiff, skill (no, need 5 letters), skim, skin, skip, skis, skit – to write the blog.

  5. Hmm – definitely the hardest Quick Cryptic yet. I’m halfway through and think I will return to it later and hope for inspiration.

  6. The dropped letter ones are particularly difficult. It was a good workout from doing all these quicks, but definitely on the top end of difficulty. Had to reveal the foreign character, just didn’t get that part and for my sins didn’t equate ‘ate’ with food…

    Thanks Dice and Shanne

  7. The dropped letters really added a challenge to this. Had to do some unsuccessful enter-and-check on PRESIDE to finish. SKI took a similar trawl to parse, having spotted the definition, and I never would have parsed OAT (I was doing some mental gymnastics of COAT > ‘smear’, ‘butter’ as verb) so appreciate that clarity. I’ll be adding butter to my mental locker alongside layer and lower!
    Thanks for the explanations Shanne and Dice, for the more challenging Saturday morning!

  8. Very enjoyable. Like HG@1 says would have been almost impenetrable a year ago when I began with the QCs. Concur with Holypeanut@7 about ‘butter’. I also had guessed OAT as I had O and T from other clues and rationalised it as butter -> spread -> coat -> oat so will need to remember butter -> goat for another time 🐐😄
    My LOI was PLUM and this was my favourite for the smile it raised when I made the connection to Cluedo (a family favourite board game).
    Thanks Shanne for the comprehensive blog, and Dice for the challenging grid today.

  9. I wouldn’t call this quite a Quick Cryptic. Yes, I solved it pretty quickly because I have now been doing Quiptics and Everymans, with the occasional nervous foray into Cryptics, for about a year (I’m working backwards through the archives) but I felt this required too many “extra steps” to qualify as a QC.

  10. I couldn’t leave it unfinished as I’ve completed every Quick Cryptic so far and usually parsed everything. Today I couldn’t parse OAT or SKI but it seems I’m not alone in that. For once knowledge of the clue types was at times more hindrance than help. I spent ages overcomplicating 8a and 5d before realising they were simple anagrams: OCHRE and LINEAGE. I thought the Professor PLUM clue was really good though it was a while before the penny dropped.

  11. All done and really rather enjoyable but I struggled to parse 10A, 15A, 20A and 18D. I only got those with the aid of the crossers and a bit of mental letter substitution for 20A and 18D.
    Must say that I did like 4A as a clue – just something appealing about it.

  12. I was challenged by Eagle in out-of-control descent. Same letter count. 7. “Eagle in” and “descent”. Grammar ok. Could have gone either way, except for the crossers and the answer.

  13. I find alternate letters hard because I never know where to start (is that the first word or a linking word?) and whether I want odd or even letters. So I wait for crossers to help. When there are this many in a crossword because they are only using 4 clue types, I find that a real challenge. Overall pretty tough today, I thought.

  14. Paggers @13 – on those alternate letters clues, I start with the first letter and see if a word starts appearing, if it doesn’t, I try using the second letter. I could see 1A, 9A, 14A, 19A, 1D and 11D were alternate letter clues from the indicators, so was writing them in as they worked well. “Dropping odds” in 11D tells you to start at the second letter as you’re losing the 1st, 3rd, 5th and etc letters.

  15. I thought OAT was COAT with a dropped letter, as if you butter a piece of bread you coat it… Would never have thought of “goat”.

  16. There are a lot of ways things are coded in cryptic crosswords:

    layer – can be a layer like a coat – or could be a hen – as something that lays eggs
    lower – further down – or a cow because it lows
    butter – spread/oil – or a goat because it butts
    warbler/singer/winger – all ways of referring to birds (there will be other versions)
    banker/flower – plus others: those often mean a river – because it has banks and/or flows

    And these are regular swaps, the regular tricks that are often seen, but setters will think of any way they can to disguise a definition.

  17. Thanks for the blog Shanne. Really helpful. I had finished but with very incomplete and sometimes downright wrong parsing. This was most definitely at the tougher end of the Quick Cryptics.

    The difference between a Meat Loaf cover and a meat loaf cover has brought a smile to my face.

  18. Thanks so much Shanne ( esp for @14 in your guidance for alternate letters). I picked up which clues I had to drop letters from but often didn’t know which word to start with. Once I had letters from other clues it was easier , although 1d had too many o s to decide where to start. Plus I was thinking fragrant food was the definition. And in 9a I thought needy was the definition. I do sometimes struggle with whether the definition comes at the beginning or end ( and whether it’s a word or phrase )
    But I’m enjoying my voyage into cryptics by doing these quick cryptics and reading the blogs.

  20. I enjoyed this, but was sorry to see that it wasn’t pitched quite right for a Quick Cryptic. Maybe they should let Dice have a go at a Quiptic or a Monday – s/he has a nice style.

  21. I loved the clues, thank you Dice. But like some others, I’ve been doing these since the beginning – shows the system works! Then again, to bring me down a peg, I get totally floored by some of the Sunday Quiptics. Maybe it’s time to start a new series of Quick Cryptics, shove the tricky ones like this up into the Quiptic slot, and we all roll over…

  22. Thanks Dice and Shanne for some joy.
    My take on cryptics is – enjoy them. One way or another – parse, guess-and-parse, brute trial, reveal-and-aha! They are for entertainment, They don’t play fair, so get your pound of joy hook-or-crook!

  23. Enjoyed this one. About the right level of challenge for me who’s done all the previous iterations of the QC, but no others.

    Enjoyed working out why PLUM and SKI worked.

  24. I found this one a bit tricky. I didn’t know the professor from Cluedo (never played the game) and had 6 down the wrong way around initially. I needed this blog for some explanations. Thanks, Dice and Shanne.

  25. I’m not surprised people are finding this on the difficult end of the spectrum for this slot. Drop-a-letter clues are among the most challenging types, since there’s an additional step. “Think of a synonym for x, drop an unspecified letter from it, and arrive at the answer meaning y.” There’s a certain “guess what I’m thinking” aspect to the whole thing. I often find that I can only solve them backwards: I see that the definition is y, I put in the answer, and then figure out what letter has to be added to it to get me back to x. There’s nothing un-kosher (treif?) about that type of solving technique, by the way, so don’t ever feel bad about reverse-engineering a clue!

    Anyway, I’m among the everyone who did that today with SKI.

  26. Thank you, Shanne!
    I never heard of Cluedo, just guessed the word. And I also parsed OAT as C|OAT. So, @16 was really useful. Enjoyed it!

  27. Tough one but with the alternate letter clues I thought it fell on the right side of fair for a QC. Very enjoyable as well.

    Deleting letters is always difficult but if you’ve got to learn that skill at some point.

    Thanks Shanne and Dice

  28. Agree the deduction clues were tough. I also thought of COAT for OAT – when I butter my corn, I coat it. I also thought the clue for ASH pretty vague.

    Favourites were MAY and LINEAGE for their nice surfaces

    Thanks Dice and Shanne

  30. I struggled with the parsing for 10A and 20A. I wouldn’t have thought of Professor Plum but thought it was plumP with a dropped letter.
    Thanks Dice and Shanne

  31. Struggled with that and was fruitlessly going through various Meat Loaf tracks for a long time! Thanks Dice for giving my brain a work out and thanks Shanne for your brilliant explanation of how the answers should have been found!

  33. I got ‘ochre’ for 8A but thought ‘abandoned’ was a rather tenuous anagrind. Like some others here, i got oat but was unable parse it. Having had it explained, i rather like ‘butter = goat’!

  36. Thank goodness for this blog. Without it I’d never understand some of the answers. I learn, then look forward to the next Quick cryptic. Thank you Shanne.

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