Times Quick Cryptic No 2774 by Joker

81 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 2774 by Joker”

1. 8:59. I shortened BOOm instead of BOOk but luckily still got the right answer. I had doubts about singular DOUBT being clued by misgivings. Also while I thought C was the second note I had just E being the first. PLANETARY, EARMARK, and UNRESTRAINED were favourites. Thanks, John, for IONIC and MINARET details.

2. FETE took me so long because I couldn’t let go of the idea of ‘in charge’ = IC. We really do need a phrase for those incorrect answers that won’t let go.
   Same with the good old Oboe for a wind instrument.

   I DNF because I couldn’t be bothered working out the anagram for ANDALUSIA because if never heard of the place before. The rest was great though!

   1. Yep. I had a similar experience trying to remember the towers that are found on the east coast. My head told me they started with an M. Wouldn’t come for ages but we had that starting letter. Only after minaret became obvious did I let it go and post solved satisfied myself with a Google to find Martello!

      1. Ah, Martello; I was struggling with Martini towers which I was sure were wrong.

         1. We have plenty of Martello towers on the Suffolk coast. We passed a few in our visit to Felixstowe last week.

3. I raced through most of this, and got thoroughly stuck on the unrestrained/headgear crossing. I eventually biffed both of them without being able to see the parsing, a most unsatisfactory ending to a solve.

   Time: 15 minutes

4. I had an even more unsatisfactory ending, giving up on HEADGEAR after I could find nothing to explain any of the words in the clue. Now I’ve seen the answer I’m thinking (a) I should have tried harder and (b) it’s a very good clue. As was UNRESTRAINED and a few others besides. Anyway, DNF in about 11.30 but very enjoyable nonetheless, thanks Joker and John.

5. DNF, with a pink square for HEADWEAR after 5:14.

   In my defence:
   Kit – noun 2. The clothing used for an activity such as a sport.
   Wear – noun 2. Clothing used for a particular purpose or of a particular type.

   Thanks John and Joker.

   1. There must be others in a similar boat. Collins online has:

      Headwear
      New Word Suggestion
      Covering for the head
      Submitted By: Unknown – 26/08/2013
      Status: This word is being monitored for evidence of usage.

      1. Collins is ‘monitoring’ it? OED cites examples going back to 1896!
         HEADWEAR must surely be a correct answer as it fits the crossers, definition and wordplay…

         ON edit – sorry ulaca, that sounds like I’m having a go at you – I’m not, just at Collins!

   2. Yes, I think you have right of appeal over HEADWEAR, galspray, I’m only glad I didn’t think of it first. For that reason I don’t think as much of the clue as curryowen does. I’m astonished that Collins is still dithering over whether to include HEADWEAR and Chambers doesn’t list it. Of the Oxfords, only ODE has it, but as one of the official references for Times crosswords that should validate it as an acceptable alternative answer.

      Not that it made any difference, but I thought of BOO{m} at 19ac before I realised that BOO{k} was more satisfactory.

      11 minutes with last one in UNRESTRAINED putting up most resistance to my attentions.

      1. I think it was me, not curryowen, who gave HEADGEAR the thumbs up. TBH the alternative headwear had not occurred to me, it just struck me as a clever construction once John had explained what was going on…top of school indeed!

         1. Apologies for the incorrect attribution.

   3. Count me in the HEADWEAR brigade too (fume)

   4. Me too!

      1. Me three 🙁

         1. I certainly considered which was closest to the wordplay, HEADGEAR or HEADWEAR.

6. Glow little glow worm glow and glitter,
   Glow like an incandescent fritter

   12:51. Nice to see FRITTER again, and RANGE which must be the in-word of the week. LOI HEADGEAR (after discarding HEADWEAR at the last minute!). I did not know it was a Joker puzzle so remained unteased by 15ac. I liked DATA and the hidden HAUNTED

   1. Yes, I wonder if there will be another barrage of complaints today about a setter referencing himself in a clue. I was going to say yesterday that it’s common enough practice elsewhere but of course there’s less scope for it in the Times 15×15 where it can only be done obliquely e.g. the setter, writer, etc. QC setters can hardly be expected to take account of a technical glitch on one of digital platforms.

      1. I don’t see it as a problem today Jack – you didn’t need to know that Joker was the setter to solve the clue.

         1. Agreed not a problem today, but to revive yesterday’s discussion, I don’t see the lack of a setter’s name on the online versions as a ‘glitch’ that setters can overlook. There must have been an editorial decision to leave the names out, because they have never been included and presumably never will. With the greatest of respect to Cheeko et al, like many other solvers I strongly feel they should stop clueing in this way.

7. A rapid solve until thoroughly double-breezeblocked by the UNRESTRAINED / HEADGEAR crossing. That took a further 2-3 minutes and pushed me to a 12 minute solve. Rained for Fell was the culprit, did not seem obvious at the time, and then HEADGEAR was a long wordsearch – a good job Gear comes before Wear in the alphabet or I might have followed Galspray.

   A good medium difficulty puzzle – it has been quite a varied week so far with puzzles ranging from very friendly to pretty tough.

   Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to the Sunday Special
   Cedric

8. DNF. Gave up after 6 minutes or so, and used aids to get UNRESTRAINED. I was in that position that we’re all familiar with, where a word seems to fit the letter pattern (entertained in my case, and it doesn’t actually fit anyway!) but you can’t justify it, and are unable to crack the surface of the clue.

   1. 😂. You had had enough by the time I was about four clues in, looking around for some easier starters and rolling up my sleeves for a long haul, well into the SCC. Yet we are all enthused by the same activity and by discussing it.

9. Some tricksy stuff today and I was very slow to get started, my FOI being TEE, but it was an enjoyable workout.
   I found the bottom half (especially the downs) more approachable and worked my way back up the grid until left with the UNRESTRAINED/HEADGEAR combo. Fortunately I’d confidently written in ‘gear’ for kit into the second half of the latter whilst I pondered the first half so the alternative never crossed my mind.
   I made a note to self, for the umpteenth time, that father can be ‘FR’ and is not always ‘pa’, ‘da’ or others of a similar ilk. I live in the hope that it will stick one day 🙄.
   Finished in 10.40.
   Thanks to John and Joker

10. One of those days that required persistence and lots of coffee. Finally got there in 34.10 with planetary LOI

    Spent too long going down all sorts of rabbit holes, eg try to put pa or dale with headless ale or lager. Our synonym hat was a little wanting!

    Thanks Joker and John

11. Joker, that lacked laughs, but it was a fair if testing puzzle. I struggled at the start where I thought Keep might be Fort, and then saw FRITTER as 1D, but then couldn’t work out the rest of 1A and what the definition was (Hair… Forelock? No,,, ). until I went off on other clues, came back and was struck by the blindingly obvious. Strange how the mind works. Or doesn’t.
    My other issues are already mostly covered by other comments. Liked BATHE with its 2 articles, again it took a while for me to see the obvious.
    I tried to separate Indian and Queen in 10A with a distinct lack of success, but didn’t know Rani anyway so biffed half parsed once I had crossers. Helpful blog to mop up the outstanding uncertainties.

12. Like Tina I was sure 5A had to include IC for ‘in charge’ so my LOI, which now seems ridiculous. Also parsed REORDER missing the 2nd note of RECORDER as E being the first, and C being the 2nd, but clearly it works just as well the way John says. Thanks Joker, and John for interesting blog.

13. 8 down. I biffed it but could someone explain how “rained” is a synonym of “fell” please. I can’t see it listed in any online dictionaries.

    1. The bombs rained/fell down out of the sky over Dresden/Coventry perhaps?

       1. Yes that was (eventually) my parsing too, but I agree it wasn’t the most obvious linkage of the day.

14. DNF. As per Busman, but a lot slower and also still missing HEADGEAR. As Fred Truman used to say after clean bowling a tail ender, “That were wasted on thee, lad”. Next! Many thanks John and Joker.

15. Just over 12 min and that’s fast for me tackling a Joker QC. Wear didn’t cross my mind as its use as a noun didn’t spring to mind… the benefits of inexperience! This one was completed via Crossword Club and submitted to leaderboard (on a whim) but I won’t do that again because I found it too stressful even if it did speed me up!
    many thanks J&J
    TC (Melodymaker)

16. 31:46

    Gosh that was sticky. Even with all the checkers I struggled with UNRESTRAINED. Never did see what was going on with that clue. Only know the Rani from Doctor Who so found that hard. Then the NW corner held me up. I still don’t see where the shape is in FORTRESS. LOI RANGE.

    Edit. Thanks for the blog. Form! See it now.

17. Slow going today.
    12a Planetary. Good clue, but what is “dwelling” doing?
    23a RainWear fitted, but fortunately the wordplay stopped that. I see I am not alone here.
    8d Unrestrained, I never parsed this. Being a bit thick today I think.

    1. Dwelling is part of the definition – ‘dwelling on a heavenly body’ = PLANETARY. I struggled with this one and needed John’s help to unravel it.

       1. Ah, thanks. It is still IMHO surplus to requirements but that is OK if it sounds better. I should have read the blog more carefully.

          1. Yes Dwelling is part of the definition, as shown in the blog. You could maybe define it as “of a heavenly body”, but I’m not sure “on a heavenly body”. But with “dwelling” on front it makes sense and leads to the wonderful surface reading of lust in the theatre.

18. Another harder one, I found this harder than Cheeko’s offering yesterday.

    HEADGEAR, UNRESTRAINED and MINARET (LOI) being my sticky ones.

    8:37

19. A tad over 9 minutes, but with HEADWEAR. Thanks Joker and John.

20. Lots of interruptions but approaching 20mins.

    Got stuck on recapitulation, planetary, fete, headgear, unrestrained, and LOI fortress.
    CODs to the Fs: fortress, fete, and fritter.

21. Some tricky clues, but not as hard as yesterday. LOI UNRESTRAINED. Failed to lift and separate thinking it must a DD but unable to parse the ‘top of fell’ bit (thanks for explanation John). Another to shorten boom rather than book in BOO. Liked EARMARK and FRITTER. Thanks all.

22. I finished in 11:12 today, I was held up at the end by UNRESTRAINED and LOI HEADGEAR, looking at the comments I wasn‘t the only one 😉

23. I gave up trying to parse loi Unrestrained at the 25min mark, having gone through all the moorland/stumble options I could bring to mind. Never thought of rain falling (full sun at the moment, for a change ☺). I had already pencilled in Gear at the start of 23ac, so only a small adjustment was required when the Head came along. Other than those two, a fairly uneventful solve, with CoD to 1ac, Fortress, for the (eventual) pdm. Invariant

24. An embarrassing 48:54 today, but my defence is that my son phoned me in the middle and I really couldn’t concentrate for about 20 minutes of that. As usual with Joker puzzles, lots to enjoy and all fair, although I don’t think I’ve heard of REDOUBT as a military construction so that held me up more than it should have done. I particularly laughed at the smooth surface of 21a NOTED so I’ll give that my COD. I did think of HEADWEAR but surely ‘wear’ doesn’t really fit with the ‘kit’ in the wordplay. LOI EARMARK. Thanks Joker and John.

25. Breezeblocked by the same two as everyone else. Eventually got HEADGEAR, then biffed UNRESTRAINED, but could not parse it. I was so sure I was wrong that I submitted (after 16:46) off leader board, and was pleasantly surprised to be all green. Thanks John for explaining how the clue worked.

26. The Jokers toughest offering yet I think reflected by my time of 12.54. Even then I had a wrong answer, joining those who elected to put in HEADWEAR. This was my LOI preceded by UNRESTRAINED which took me some time to get. Again like others, I didn’t get past BOO[m] as the parsing for 19ac, even after an alphabet trawl somehow disregarding K.
    What started as a week of sub target times, it all petered out dramatically with a total time of 56.36, giving me a daily average of 11.19. I’ll take that considering that included yesterdays time of 18.38.

27. Very slow and DNF because of HEADGEAR and UNRESTRAINED (I thought of this but couldn’t seem to parse it).

28. 7.43

    Didn’t find this as tough as some others, helped by not thinking of HEADWEAR and shamelessly biffing UNRESTRAINED at the end. Good clue to beat Phil. I liked FRITTER too

29. Good puzzling puzzle. Spent ages on LOI UNRESTRAINED because at first I idiotically biffed Cooker instead of STOKER. Sort of thinking the CO was a good man. Ridiculous because Good Man is always ST.
    Anyway I did finish all correct. HEADGEAR sprang to mind, luckily.
    Love ANDALUSIA, so that was easy. Dislike APHIDs but that was easy too.
    But slow on RANGE. LHS quicker than right. PDM EARMARK.
    Thanks vm, John.

30. Got there but found it hard and thought it lacked a dose of sparkle.

31. 17.17 UNRESTRAINED and HEADGEAR were the last two. Not breeze-blocked, just slow throughout. Thanks John and Joker.

32. Chewy is not a word I would ordinarily use but it seems appropriate for today. We finished in 15:16 with (surprise!) POI UNRESTRAINED and LOI HEADGEAR. We didn’t think of HEADWEAR but commiserations to those who did. Thanks John and Joker.

33. DNF had even more trouble than I had yesterday. I agree that this week has been varying from relatively simple to verytough

34. Extremely tough, but I got there …. eventually! 58 minutes for me, but with a 20+ minutes barren interval with 9 clues remaining. Does anyone else experience such lengthy brain-freezes with so many clues to go at? Or, might it be an early sign of dementia.

    The nine clues that stumped me for so long were NOTED, UNRESTRAINED, MINARET, STOKER, EARMARK, ENTRY, PLANETARY, FORTRESS and (my LOI) RECAPITULATE. I made some progress with several of these clues, but just could not close out on any of them – until I realised my feTED should be NOTED and they all fell fairly quickly after that.

    Thanks to Joker and John.

    1. Yes to the long brain-freezes, cycling around the remaining few with increasing pessimism. I won’t swear it’s not dementia though 😱

35. I stumbled through this, wandering haplessly around the grid, and was glad to finish in under 25 minutes given my parlous physical condition. I’m too out of it to parse everything, so the blog is extra welcome today! Saw and heard my first ever MINARETs on my recent trip so at least that came to mind even though I couldn’t think of RANI. Some day I’ll learn to associate HEAD with school and bITTER with beer. Thank goodness I never heard of HEADwEAR! Liked RECAPITULATE for the good feeling that comes of diligently digging out an answer.

    Thank you to Joker and John.

36. 10:23
    HEADGEAR LOI for me as for many.

37. I’d like to let you all know that I tore through this one easily, starting with a fully-parsed UNRESTRAINED and HEADGEAR, for a blistering 3:15. Unfortunately it would be wholly untrue in every respect, including the 20 minutes of my solving time that appears to have fallen down the back of the couch on my way to the SCC.

    Thank you for the blog!

    1. 🤣

       You’re gonna need to vacuum back there!

38. 15:50, but WOE. Add me to the HEADWEAR faction. Never managed to parse REORDER: the recorder didn’t appear in my mental list of wind instruments. Maybe next time.

    Thanks to Joker and galspray.

    1. My junior school teacher must have had the patience of a Saint to teach a class of 8 year olds how to play the descant recorder. Over 60 years later, I still shudder at the memory of the resulting cacophony.

       1. Yes indeed. But recorder playing can be better than that. Try Red Priest’s interpretation of the first movement of Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Season here. The rest of the complete set are equally miraculous.

          1. Very, very impressive, but it looks a little big for a descant ? Much more tuneful than Go and Tell Aunt Sally. . .

39. Hopped and skipped around all over the grid but eventually finished. Stuck for ages on FORTRESS which should have been a write in.
    Thanks Joker and Galspray.

40. 8:34

    Similarly delayed by 8d and LOI HEADGEAR, although I must say, GEAR for KIT is a Times chestnut, but WEAR is not, so it wasn’t ambiguous for me.

    I thought at the time I was going quicker, but clearly everything needed a moment’s more thought than write-ins.

    Anyway, I thought it was jolly good, thanks Joker.

41. New to this game and I found this one (and yesterday’s) tricky – the first half of the week was much easier. I have committed to become a good cryptic puzzler this year! What does “LOI” mean?!
    Mark

    1. Welcome Mark! LOI stands for Last One In. You can find explanations of lots of our jargon in our Glossary via the menu at the top under Help.

       1. thanks John!

42. 8:21

    Another phone solve so didn’t notice the Joker self-reference. Pretty comfortable until last three – PLANETARY and HEADGEAR went in (though did also see HEADWEAR would fit) then a good pause before UNRESTRAINED…

    Thanks Joker and John

43. I was lucky to have thought of GEAR before WEAR, but am still struggling to parse the HEAD part. “Top of school” doesn’t work for me. I’ve never heard of a head(teacher) being referred to as the “top of school” any more than I’ve heard of a CEO being referred to as “top of company” or the King as “top of monarchy”. All these people are AT the top of their respective organisations but none is referred to as being “the top”. A disgruntled parent might tell a class teacher, “I’m going to the top with this!”, meaning that s/he will raise a complaint with the headteacher, but s/he would never say, “I’m going to the top of school with this!”. So I think this is a stretch, frankly.

    I came to a different conclusion before reading John’s excellent blog. Could HEAD mean “put on top of” and the straight definition be “school cap”? Could the question mark be there because of the relative obscurity of the example given, and the reason the word “school” is in there at all be simply to improve the surface?

    EDIT: on reflection, perhaps HEAD simply means “top” – in other words, “kit” put on “top” = “school cap?”.

    1. Interesting interpretation. I took “top of school” for head to be a whimsical cryptic hint rather than a straight definition.

44. 38 mins…

    I found this pretty hard, but managed to persevere beyond my cut-off time and complete it. Some good word play from Joker and enjoyed the use of his name in 15ac “Joker”. There definitely seems to be a trend for setters being self referential.

    FOI – 11ac “Tee”
    LOI – 3dn “Recapitulation”
    COD – 21ac “Noted” – made me chuckle at least.

    Thanks as usual

45. Very tough but got there.

    LOI HEADGEAR. I’m with the HEAD = TOP brigade

    Have a nice weekend folks.

46. Shockingly bad week:

    M – 10 mins
    T – 10 mins
    W – 15 mins
    Th -63 mins DNF
    F – 24 mins DNF (HEADWEAR)

    Dismal beyond measure!

    I still cannot hit my target, despite trying to improve by attempting the big crossword. Spent 90 mins on that today, with 5/6 incorrect or not known. Miserable 🙁. There is no light at the end of my tunnel.

    1. You’re obviously feeling down about the last two puzzles but there’s nothing dismal in any way about Monday – Wednesday. Your timings were 10, 10 and 15 minutes, mine were 7, 9 and 12 but I’ve been solving cryptic puzzles for 50+ years and writing blogs here for the last 17 of those, so I’d expect my times to be faster than yours, however these three are not so different. Take pride in your achievements, take each day as it comes, and don’t think about overall timings for the week then it won’t matter if you have a bad day or two.

       1. Thanks jackkt, much appreciated. I’ve become too focused on a particular weekly target.

47. I found this hard. Struggled with UNRESTRAINED and (sadly) with EARMARK/STOKER. No problem with HEADGEAR as never heard of HEADWEAR! Took me ages.

48. Comforting that no one will read this (it’s so late). Sounds as if I didn’t miss anything being away last week. Returned on Sunday and opened the Friday paper, then wished I hadn’t: failed six and would never have got them anyway so no reproaches: FORTRESS, STOKER, HEADGEAR, FRITTER, EARMARK and UNRESTRAINED all too hard for me. Hope tomorrow’ll be more approachable!

    1. Well I, for one, read your comment as I get notified of all comments on my blogs. I hope you had a nice time away and, yes, tomorrow is the start of another week of QCs.

49. Sadly we didn’t enjoy this one – a dnf, although we got a few of the trickier ones – but either Joker was trying too hard or we weren’t trying hard enough. Just couldn’t connect and frustratingly drew stumps early.

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