Quick Cryptic 2744 by Cheeko

Author   CuraristPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

I don’t think I’ve blogged one from Cheeko before, and this one has quite an interesting style. There are some fairly obscure answers – though the wordplay is always fair – and a couple of cracking anagrams.  As an added bonus there is a little Nina for the eagle-eyed. Perhaps on the harder side judging by my above-par 8 minutes.

Across
1 Grabbing glimpse of decisive victory, punch cheat (8)
HOODWINK – Glimpse of ‘decisive’ is D, victory is WIN, put both inside HOOK – a kind of punch in boxing
5 Unlimited information relating to The Listener? (4)
OTIC – ‘NOTICE’ minus its ‘limits’ i.e. first and last letters.
9 Excellent lingerie, very alluring up-front (5)
BRAVA – BRA (lingerie) + V[ery] + A[lluring]. ‘Bravo’ when addressing a woman.
10 Tip with change, having no time at all for port (7)
IPSWICH – OK, this is an interesting one. basically you take the Ts out of TIP SWITCH. It’s a bit odd in that it uses both the word in the clue for TIP, but then a synonym for SWITCH, but I guess it’s the only way to make the surface work.
11 Digital outlier that’s manually located? (6,6)
LITTLE FINGER – cryptic definition
13 Book van, going back round Northern Ireland (6)
DANIEL – Van is LEAD (as in vanguard), reverse it and insert NI
15 Introduction of soft metal with nickel backing (4-2)
LEAD-IN – LEAD + Ni backwards
17 What would assess final appeal of criminal computer user (7,5)
SUPREME COURT – anagram (‘criminal’) of COMPUTER USER. Nice. Kind of works as an &lit too.
20 Old dons deserve being in media, periodically (7)
EMERITI – MERIT inside alternate letters of mEdIa. My dictionary reckons ’emeritus’ is an adjective.
21 Snatch letters, reportedly (5)
SEIZE – sounds like C’s
22 Window frame needs front of seasoned wood (4)
SASH – Front of “seasoned” = S, plus ASH
23 My oracle, unfortunately mine (8)
CLAYMORE – anagram (‘unfortunately’) of  MY ORACLE. A type of anti-personnel mine.
Down
1 Tramp primarily has overpowering personal whiff (4)
HOBO – H[as] + O[verpowering] + BO (body odour)
2 Unconfined tapir chasing fine animal (5)
OKAPI – [T]API[R] after OK
3 Have whittled fragments — that’s annoying (4,3,5)
WHAT THE DEVIL – anagram (‘fragments’, verb) of HAVE WHITTLED
4 Fixed trouble in elevated study (6)
NAILED – AIL inside DEN backwards
6 Got temperature wearing hairpiece (7)
TWIGGED – T + WIGGED
7 Sticking together recent changes about erected house (8)
COHERENT – anagram (‘changes’) of RECENT around HO backwards
8 Song from dreadful egoists, maybe (2,4,4,2)
AS TIME GOES BY – anagram (‘dreadful’) of EGOISTS MAYBE
12 Hero sussed most of you out (8)
ODYSSEUS – anagram (‘out’) of  SUSSED + YO[U]
14 Threadbare Italian city embraces saint (7)
NAPLESS – NAPLES with S inserted. Another NHO for me
16 Entertaining both sides in election, face refusal (6)
DENIAL – Both sides in election ins EN, put inside DIAL
18 Hard-nosed type that might charge you (5)
RHINO – cryptic definition
19 There’s unwrapped present (4)
HERE – [T]HERE[S]

133 comments on “Quick Cryptic 2744 by Cheeko”

  1. Definitely a trickier offering than most. I managed to come in under my target, but only just. I was held up by LOI, EMERITI as I’d carelessly entered ODYSSIUS at 12d. A second glance at the anagrist put me right. 9:39. Thanks Cheeko and Curarist.

  3. I enjoyed it. I do regularly do the 15*15 and agree that it was at that level. I think this took about the same time as today’s big one. I see why some say it was too hard. I do not say that.
    I was surprised and pleased by the odd words – have I heard of EMERITI or BRAVA? Probably. Both good clues, might deserve CODs or WODs.

  4. 18:40. Very challenging but I felt totally fair. I thought Rug instead of WIG first but only the latter produced a real word! I also saw three S’s in sussed and jumped to Ulysses- too few letters though so tried the Greek version. IPSWICH and HOODWINK my CODs. Good spot of Nina, New Driver!

    1. Thanks CO

      TWIGGED was my LOI and, until IPSWICH presented itself, I was more than willing to believe TRUGGED was a word 🤷‍♂️ with the other stuff like BRAVA, EMERITI being in there …

  5. 33.07 DNF. DANIEL and DENIAL took an age. As I hit submit I belatedly spotted the four anagrammatic answers. But I was undone by a biff of SWIPE. Unusually, it took another couple of minutes to get to SEIZE. OTIC and IPSWICH were biffed. NAPLESS was NHO. Thanks Curarist and Cheeko.

  6. This was a hard, amusing puzzle that I was glad (ok, surprised, even) to finish in under 25 minutes at 21:28. Maybe just hard enough to induce a sense of victory.

    Does anyone say WHAT THE DEVIL any more? I can only think of Jane Eyre’s Mr Rochester, my teen heartthrob. The WIGGED T, the egoists’ song, the righteous punch, all raised a smile after the penny dropped. I never understood LITTLE FINGER as I kept looking for wordplay that wasn’t there. “Glimpse of” made sense but was a new one on me for first letter. I was another who got stuck on “swipe” before finally getting SEIZE by reasoning that I needed an S sound at the end. Sorry, gang, I loved IPSWICH. Never heard of CLAYMORE mines (ugh!) but it was the only thing I could make fit, and had heard of the sword.

    And what a fun little Nina, it completely passed me by during the solve.

    Welcome and thanks for the buffeting, Cheeko, and for the blogging, Curarist!

  7. Crikey. Took me quite a while to get going and even longer to (nearly) finish. My nearest mainline station is 10a but I would never have defined IPSWICH as a port: it’s on the Orwell, sure, and it used to have docks and boats, but it hardly functions now.
    At 7d I put COHERING for ‘sticking together’, failing to spot the RECENT anagram. Silly slip.
    As for BRAVO/BRAVA, the latter is shouted entirely naturally and unselfconsciously in Italy and elsewhere, but in the UK it sounds a shade pedantic when an audience member insists on BRAVA! BRAVA! for the diva. Grammatically correct, of course, and the clueing made it clear, but a tiny wince from me. In 55 minutes I managed all but three. A new setter who taught me a lot!

  8. It took me 33 minutes to complete this one and even then I had to use aids to get my LOI. I thought it was difficult but I wasn’t sure whether this was because it was a difficult puzzle per se or whether I was just struggling to get used to Cheeko’s style. I can’t however agree with kapietro that there was no obscure vocabulary. I consider myself to have a reasonably wide vocabulary but I’ve never heard of napless, a feminine form of bravo or emeritus/i being anything other than an adjective. I couldn’t parse hoodwink or otic at all and quite a few others without going back after completion to take a closer look. Thanks to Curarist for the enlightenment.

    FOI – 9ac BRAVA (took a punt that such a word existed
    LOI – 23ac CLAYMORE (needed aids for this as I hadn’t considered this meaning of ‘mine’, however I have vaguely heard of it)
    COD – 11ac LITTLE FINGER

  9. Dreadful! 6/24. I normally hope to finish (SCC) but accept DNF by one or two as helping me to learn etc.

    There was way too much mental gymnastics and obscure vocab for me (CLAYMORE, BRAVA, OTIC etc).

    I’m glad I looked at the QSNITCH and gave up. Why can’t QC’s like this come with a health warning for members of the SCC?

  10. Yes, this was very challenging and out of my competency range. Some clever clues, SUPREME COURT as an example, but I would never include IPSWICH in a list of UK ports, despite being Suffolk born and raised. Guess there’s not anything else special about the town to help the definition! And yes, this is from a Norwich City supporter. Enough said.

  12. Little to add to the foregoing. If this had been a 15 x 15 we might have felt 24:24 was a pretty good effort, though even then only with the assistance of ‘checking’ a couple of partially filled clues, most notably the assumption that MY would be one of the two letter words in the ‘egoists’ 8d – neither was of course. At least once we’d wrestled that one it allowed us CLAYMORE which I knew but would have struggled to get without some key checkers. Too hard for a QC but I’m inclined to forgive Cheeko in exchange for being cut some slack on their next outing. Thanks, Curarist, in particular for the full parsing of 1a and 10a.

  13. Too hard for me. I only got 5 answers. The fewest I can ever remember. Should have had a few more as I now see from the blog.

    I don’t worry about hard ones. I just give up after so many minutes of going nowhere. So interesting to see how many people liked it and the opposite.

  14. Well it WAS a hard one but with the use of aids and having to leave several answers unparsed i managed to finish at the same time as watching the olympics whereas some previous hard QCs have been DNF for me. Maybe I’m just getting better at this thing.

  15. This morning there was a signalling failure at Basingstoke, so when I started this puzzle and got only Sash out of the first pass of Across clues, I thought that this puzzle would keep me entertained through the journey. However, there was no delay, and by the time I got to Winchester, I had eight clues outstanding. I got all but Seize on the way back, and I was able to parse most of the answers. DNF. NHO Napless and Claymore and wasn’t sure Otic was a word, but it turned out to be. Admired Supreme Court. Maybe if Cheeko gets together with an easier setter and swaps some clues then we might get something pitched at a better level.

  16. Far too difficult for me – some very obscure. First one I didn’t do this week and I didn’t even get close.

  17. Dnf…

    Haven’t read any of the comments above yet, nor the blog, but I think this was the most difficult QC I’ve ever done since I’ve been doing these. I only had 4 answers after 20 mins and ended up abandoning after 30 mins when it became apparent this would take all afternoon.

    FOI – Hobo
    LOI – Dnf
    COD – As I barely completed this – I didn’t have one.

    Thanks as usual!

    1. I’ve been doing the Quick Cryptics since they started & I completely agree with JamesEd46 this is easily the hardest & most obscure ever. Very little pleasure in it and DNF on a big way

  18. Far too hard for a QC. After 3 attempts, still 6 clues outstanding, having guessed a couple. This and yesterday’s made a depressing end to the week. Someone needs to check the difficulty level more closely for us non-experts.

  19. Well, I am over the moon to have solved just one clue – SASH. Many thanks for the blog. I hope GaryA is on good form.

  20. This was a challenging puzzle but I ploughed on and was left with only one answer missing. When will I learn that book often refers to a book in the bible!!

  21. I eventually solved this in about an hour using many devious methods. There were no comments as yet posted. Curarist had spoken of being “on the harder side with fairly obscure clues” I wondered whether to make the first comment and to disagree and to say that this was the hardest QC that I have seen. I am happy to make the “last” comment and say that I think Curarist was being very kind.

  22. DNF after 74 minutes.

    Put ADHERING for 7dn and NHO OTIC (and I still haven’t got any idea what it means or how it relates to the clue).

    I seriously don’t know how anyone derives pleasure or enjoyment from this torture. It just makes me feel ignorant and out of my depth. If I am this bad on a QC, there really is no hope.

    Here is my week:

    M – 12 mins
    Tu – 13 mins
    W – 20 mins
    Th – 20 min DNF
    F – 74 min DNF

    How can I possibly derive any satisfaction from that? I have spent hours and hours trying to improve by having a go at the big crossword. I’ve been wasting my time.

    Thanks for the blog.

    Just spent an hour in big crossword. Got about 12 – dismal, dismal, dismal!!!! I feel very disillusioned with this.

  23. Agree it was a monster, but 2726 a few weeks ago had the Snitch at 200 at one point before finally finishing at 150, and this is currently at 159 so not that much harder (although I do suspect that the very hard QCs may attract some of the 15×15 experts who don’t usually bother). We are not fast solvers, usually in the 13 to 20 min range, but did finish both these uber hard QCs and there is some satisfaction from just plugging away until you get there when you have this blog to explain the ones we biffed. I wouldn’t want it too often, but I think one very hard QC a month is acceptable, particularly with new setters.

  24. Welcome Cheeko.
    I often don’t have time to get to the QC so I’m not a good judge of what’s too hard or too easy, but I liked this a lot. Either you did or you didn’t, I guess.
    I thought it had a whiff of the USA (Hobo, Claymore, Supreme Court, What the Devil, and possibly the assumption that “Play it, Sam” would be familiar) about it.
    One of our other setters – one whose reputation for perfect surfaces reminded me a bit of this puzzle – once had the Bravo / Brava discussion with us regarding a 15 x 15.

  25. Had to fight my way through with aids and checking my printed-out paper with the on-line version step-by-step. Not at all fun. I only had a handful on first pass at Costa and then worked through at home. The on-line version clock said just under an hour but add on another 20 minutes at Costa… I did manage Ipswich and liked that clue a lot. Ditto Little Finger. Had inspiration for As Time Goes By. Did manage a number of others but because this was a new setter I struggled to find a style/pace/wavelength. Thought a lot of these clues abstruse and so didn’t trust my solving. Without Curarist I would never have seen the parsing of Hoodwink. NHO Otic/Brava (had to be once 2d solved)/emeriti (singular, yes – plural, nho). Re an earlier comment, I would never have described a billiard table as ‘threadbare’. Liked Supreme Court – Court was obvious but took ages to see it was an anagram.
    FOI 11a Little Fingers
    LOI 12d Odysseus (not so easy to see the Greek version)
    COD 10a Ipswich
    Would appreciate these being dialled down a tad. I am up for some hard ones, but this was a tad too far.

  26. Finished in 27:34, but WOE: I had filled in “RING” as the last four letters of what ended up being COHERENT, and never went back to check the parsing once COHERING had occurred to me.

    I’m in the “like a hard one now and again” camp, so no complaints from me.

    Thanks Cheeko and Curarist.

  27. I had 5 left when I couldn’t do anymore after 30 minutes. Whilst it was tough I felt a bit of an achievement getting as far as I did. I preferred Cheeko to izetti who I can never get on with

  28. When I struggle with a crossword, like this one, I think that it’s because I am not clever or knowledgeable enough.
    Reading some of the comments above made me angry. If you can’t do something, stop complaining and try and get better. The entitlement is extraordinary.

  29. Tough one but good workout 🧠
    Seize reminded me of O’s in “Four Candles” sketch by The Two Ronnies.
    Thanks Cheeko and Curarist

  30. 12:57

    I really enjoyed this. Didn’t know CLAYMORE is a mine and no idea that IPSWICH is a port, but enjoyed the challenge and piecing the answers together. Finally left with 20a, 3d and 1a which were knocked off in that order.

    Thanks Cheeko and Curarist

  31. I started this yesterday, but decided to pause with only 11 solution written in after 50 minutes of extremely hard graft. I took nearly 6 minutes to get off the mark and my first complete pass through the entire grid yielded only 3 solutions – SASH, HOBO and HERE. A few more clues fell, but nothing came easily.

    A further stint of 25 minutes this afternoon has resulted in only 4 more solutions, so I have given up (hoping not to see another Cheeko QC).

    Result: DNF
    Clues unsolved: 9 (5x NHO, 2xDNK, 2xDNP)
    Time spent: 75 minutes
    Verdict: The polar opposite of a QC

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