Quick Cryptic 2924 by Joker

77 comments on “Quick Cryptic 2924 by Joker”

1. Not sure why, but I found this very difficult and needed 23 minutes to complete it. The only problem I can remember now is that I didn’t know the required meaning of REFRACTORY as I only think of it with reference to refraction of light.

   12dn is clever as it uses Los Angeles to give us LA but can also be taken to indicate the American spelling, VENDER.

   1. Hi Jackkt,
      Can you please take a look at today’s contribution from ‘Mr H’. I am slightly surprised that he is still allowed to post after his previous outburst.
      Invariant

      1. Thanks. I have removed it and will ask again for action to be taken to prevent further such comments.

         1. Thanks.

2. My favourite clue was 21ac, I liked the neat segue between shape of earth (round) and earth (ground). I wondered what the person whose chief weapon is surprise was doing but I guess the whole title gives you someone hisPANIC. Ditto for some, I just assumed that US meaning. 9.13 for me, thanks Joker and Curarist.

3. I found this hard too, probably because I looked at the Quitch, and was expecting it to be hard. It was not actual too bad, but I unfortunately put in unaccustomed without parsing it. This made salami and pest very difficult, and I wasted several minutes on those. I finally erased it, and solved pest and salami. Interestingly, Budapest was originally two distinct cities, Buda and Pest. I then put in acquainted after thinking a minute.

   Time: 15:25

   1. I remember now that I also put ACCUSTOMED without parsing and was later forced to rethink it.

      1. I found this tough too! No real complaints but I think it’s at the top end of difficulty for sure!

4. Failure. Knew it was TEETHE but I’ve neverhad to spell it and turns out its not just teeth but different, so went for ‘teeths’ – and annoyingly I can remember thinking that although a lot of teeter was in there I couldn’t account for the S. Spent ages on PEST because the definition threw me, slow on CONCORD and CIRCLE before that. Enjoyed ROUND. So that’s a second non-typo pink square of the week. 15.00 – which I’d been quite pleased with when I pressed submit.

   1. Thinking of pestilence helped get me to that definition.

5. 8:54. I thought this was the hardest one of the week by far. Made harder by writing in ACCUSTOMED but I see I wasn’t alone there. Shrugged at the unfamiliar spelling of VENDER. Then took a few minutes at the end before BUDAPEST came to mind.

   Thanks Joker and Curarist.

6. I join those who found this hard. Very hard, in fact, as it took me 18:21 – and that was with several biffs, quite a few not fully parsed and some outright guesses, all of which fortunately turned out to be correct. So a completion, but hardly a successful one.

   I DK that meaning of REFRACTORY, thought the definition for PEST very weak – many things can cause destruction but a pest is not the first or even tenth thing that comes to mind – was confused by the US spelling of vender (thank you Jack for explaining the pointer, far too good for me), could not parse PANIC at all, did not see “American” as indicating an A in AWESOME (it usually signifies AM or US) or some for “great deal” – and those were only a few of the things I needed Curarist’s excellent blog for. For which many thanks!

   1. Always check the dictionary – the first meaning of pest in Chambers is any deadly disease, plague. The current colloquial meaning of pest is very watered-down.

   2. One of the things that can cause more destruction than a budaPEST is WARsaw, but it doesn’t have enough letters.

7. No real problems, although I seem to have biffed PANIC without parsing it. I wondered, very briefly, if VENDER was a British spelling; it’s ‘vendor’ for me, anyway, although obviously not here. 7:42.

   1. Vender: from the internet I learn “The spelling vendor is the standard spelling. The New Yorker, as part of its bizarre house style, uses the spelling vender. No one else does, besides those trying to emulate The New Yorker’s style.” Chalk this one up to Joker being unusually quirky I think …

8. 15:32 so not too bad, considering. POI PEST with its unhelpful definition (as Cedric says above). Even when I had seen (Buda)PEST I did still wonder if I had missed the right east European capital. LOI AWESOME. I liked ROUND, very neat

   1. I first thought the East European capital would be WARsaw but had to abandon it.

9. Tricksy Joker today, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

   Despite not knowing this definition I got REFRACTORY early on which made the left-hand side of the grid a lot easier than the right. I enjoyed piecing together ACQUAINTED and am now grateful that ‘accustomed’ never occurred to me but my real struggles were with AWESOME, BEST and LAVENDER. I never did parse PANIC, where the inquisitor general had me completely baffled.

   Started with REPULSE and finished with LAVENDER in 10.04 with C&WOD to POPINJAY.
   Thanks to Curarist and Joker

10. Difficult in places, no write in for sure so went to sleep between two efforts. Could not parse AWESOME trying to fit WEst SOuth etc to no avail. No problem with teething following sleepless nights (not mine), REFRACTORY is commonly used in medicine for slow/obstinent to respond, took a sleep to see PEST after listing the Eastern European capitals and fortunately remembered on waking. JCOD HORSEPOWER and POPINJAY. Couldn’t parse PANIC to see the point of Inquisitor General trying to add/subtract IG until I read from the blog that it refers to Monty Python. Very tricky.
    All in all probably an hour, spread over 7.
    Thanks Curarist and Joker

11. One or two tricky words but I was all done in 5 minutes bar PEST which took an alphabet trawl to find. I liked ROUND best. Thanks Joker and Curarist.

12. Very good puzzle but a DNF for me, just could not crack AWESOME; got impatient and used an aid. Tough clue I thought. 8 mins for the rest, including wrestling with the siren call of “accustomed”.

    FOI ARCHETYPAL, COD REFRACTORY. Many thanks Joker and Curarist.

13. Very difficult. Technical DNF in 40 mins.
    Clues seemed fair and plenty of PDM, but much harder than a typical QC. Some seemed more typical of 15×15 (SALAMI for instance – biffed).

    Totally missed ASTRAL which I got from checkers. I was grumpily wondering if this was the name of some C-List so-called celeb that the setter thought I should know. But no, I missed the word play. D’OH. (Sorry Joker, for the thoughts that passed through my mind. )

    NHO vender. Again this was biffed.

    FOI THANK YOU
    LOI TURMERIC
    COD ROUGH

    Thanks for a much needed blog, Curarist.

14. Thanks Curarist for the blog and Joker for the QC which seemed to like me, with a 12:18. I was interested in the etymology of REFRACTORY, given that it seems to be related to ‘refract’, which concerns bending or breaking up something like light, as Jack says. I think going back it describes someone or something there to be broken up, or doing the job of being broken up, ie stubborn or resistant. Not sure, a better etymologist might explain. THANK YOU was there in a recent 15×15 hidden in ‘-t hanky out’. Like buses some of these clues.

    1. Refractory bricks (Refractories used to line kilns) are very resistant to fire and erosion. I assumed similar usage.

15. Definitely on the tricky side. Lots of hopping around the grid to pick off the low hanging stuff. Started with HELM. PEST and AWESOME took a couple of minutes at the end. Scraped in under my target. 9:50. Thanks Joker and Curarist.

16. 12:36
    TEETHE was my LOI.
    Never seen VENDER spelt that way before, so briefly doubted my spelling of LAVENDER and crossed my fingers at submission in case there was an alternative LAVENDOR spelling.

    Thanks Curarist and Joker

17. I think it has all been said by bloggers above, especially jackkt, Cedric, and Templar. A strange mix of very easy clues (a few), some head-scratchers (mainly) and some very clever clues. Overall, I found it really rather annoying because, yet again, Joker is simply unable to hit the QC level for normal solvers and, as usual, appeals to the sub-10 group and regular 15×15 solvers.
    I also missed AWESOME and snorted at VENDER (whilst reluctantly entering it). A rare DNF but SCC entry is becoming commonplace for me with some setters.
    Thanks to Joker for another lesson and to Curarist for a good blog.

18. Like Templar, AWESOME was my undoing, so a DNF.

    Pi ❤️

    1. My LOI by a long way too.

19. 24:18 for the hopeful guess at the end. That felt very misjudged for the QC slot with NHO POPINJAY requiring a 5min alpha trawl to hope that -JAY was the right bird to finish. But it wasn’t just that, as others said – didn’t know the meaning of REFRACTORY; have never come to CONCORD / agreement with someone – the plane stopped flying over 20yrs ago. Questionable VENDER spelling.

    Momentarily thought gaunt might be wan to go with the K and the Y of thank-you – which about sums up my feelings on this one. I used to look forward to Joker’s puzzles but they’ve lost their humour, become wordy and complicated.

    Easily the best five days of puzzling I’ve had at 54mins and a clean sweep. While I knew the run of sub-10s would take a knockback at some stage, I didn’t expect it to be this bittertasting.

    All that said, thank-you the easiest anagram of all time!

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog – what does POPINJAY / dandy refer to?

    1. 6dn stumped me for a while, as I don’t associate “gaunt” with “lanky”. The latter has always been someone tall for me.

       1. Indeed, I would refer to a tall thin person as lanky. The clue wouldn’t have suffered with a Tall definition

    2. I believe the was some disagreement at the time as to whether the Brit/French plane should be called Concord or Concorde, but the French won, hence ‘Concorde’. (Oh sorry, I see that is in the blog, though kinda undiplomatic.)

       1. Concorde was an amazing thing – especially as it’s never been replicated. My aunt was a stewardess on it for some years back in the 80s.

          1. I dimly remember the Russian then built a similar plane which we called Concordski.

             1. I seem to recall watching a Youtube about that. It didn’t work, or if it did it was a very noisy experience – not the luxury of what the AngloFrench created

20. 12 minutes. Not easy, with ACQUAINTED, AWESOME and the “just looks wrong” spelling of VENDER for ‘seller’ in 12d causing most of the problems. I liked the misdirection in the clue for ROUND and the word POPINJAY for ‘dandy’ – “macaroni”, my first thought, is almost as good.

    Thanks to Curarist and Joker

21. Oof. 19.28 and needed to check it wasn’t ACE- – – – before finally seeing AWESOME. Ditto with many of the above comments. Didn’t know REFRACTORY. Missed Arab as horse, initially. Must remember that. Helpful blog and comments👌

22. Dnf…

    A bad end to the week. Like many above, I found this tough, and by the time I’d got to my 30 min mark I still had 2dn “Rapport” and 15dn “Awesome” to get (which I didn’t). I was too busy trying to force in an “l” to see “Port” for the former, and “ace” for “excellent” into the latter.

    Some challenging clues.

    FOI – 3dn “Helm”
    LOI – dnf
    COD – 23ac “Horsepower”

    Thanks as usual!

23. Failed on JAY and PEST. Had I persisted I would have got to PEST eventually but I have NHO POPINJAY. I biffed AWESOME and parsed post DNF. Thanks to all. I enjoy the comments as much as I do the blog.

24. Hard. Needed guesses and checks to limp home in 40 minutes. REFRACTORY, AWESOME, ACQUAINTED and PANIC the major problems. DNK American spelling VENDER, but it had to be.

25. A tough slog today, and in the end relieved to finish with all correct and parsed in 14.59. There were quite a few answers that I was doubtful about, including LANKY for gaunt and the VENDER part of LAVENDER. POPINJAY I’ve seen quite a few times before, but only in crosswordland. So The Joker has the last laugh as usual, truly AWESOME being my LOI. Thanks to Curarist who apparently found it a good deal easier than most.
    My total time for the week is 55.05, giving me a daily average of 11.01, a minute outside my target time.

26. 9a (his)Panic, DOH. Biffed and never parsed. I took HIS out of Spanish giving span but not panic. Shrugged and moved on.
    7d Acquainted, I was sure it was accustomed as well, and was going to moan about it, then it wasn’t.
    12d LavendEr, I had to look vender up as I was going to moan about this too, then found that Joker was OK.
    Thanks Curarist & Joker.

27. DNF AWESOME. Didn’t think of A for American, don’t know anything about bridge and never considered ‘some’ for a great deal 😆 Also forgot the rule about trying a Q before a U when stuck so ACQUAINTED took an age. I liked PANIC when I finally solved it and this helped with LANKY which I also equate with tall and thin. No problems with REFRACTORY which I biffed then parsed. Have seen POPINJAY before. Needed the blog for ROUND (I know!). For some reason RAPPORT also took me ages. Not really on it today, although it looks like most people found it fairly tricky. COD SALAMI which generated a welcome smile. Many thanks Joker and C.

28. Pretty difficult, took ages but got there in the end. Struggled with LOsI AWESOME and PEST, particularly the former.
    FOsI FOOD and REFRACTORY.
    Pulled myself together to solve ARCHETYPAL which helped with COD POPINJAY, smiled at that one. Also liked PANIC, HELM and HORSEPOWER
    Quite a spelling test today. Vender? Yes, I put Accustomed instead of ACQUAINTED at first. CONCORD was one of the few write-ins, as far as I was concerned.
    Thanks vm, Curarist.

29. Well, what to say? Definitely not designed to encourage beginners – or even intermediates, for that matter.
    Mrs Random’s verdict was “elitist”.

    I struggled to get started and then made rather laboured progress until about the half-way point. My previously heady speed of “rather laboured” then slowed even further to ‘embarrassing’ and I ground to a halt completely with seven clues remaining (all of which were on the RHS of the grid). At that point I gave up and got on with my life before coming back and trying again.

    Eventually, CIRCLE and ACQUAINTED went in and provided just enough checkers to enable me to go on and reach the line. My last few in were CONCORD, AWESOME, PEST, PANIC and (the NHO) POPINJAY.
    Time = not much short of 70 minutes.

    Many thanks to Curarist and respect to anyone who found this straightforward.

30. Agree with Random – I reckon that this puzzle would be far too difficult for beginners.

    1. You don’t even have to look at the clues to know a crossword with archetypal, refractory, concord, popinjay, turmeric, lavender is probably not going to be beginner fodder.

       I’ve always praised Joker for his puzzles being full of known words and while I can only genuinely say popinjay is unheard of here – it’s not a great puzzle today.

       1. Popinjay was more commonly used in the 1890-1930 period to describe a sharply dressed man. You won’t hear it much today.

          1. Thank-you vinyl1

    2. And far too difficult for the lesser mortals like us who have attempted over 90% of the QCs since it began.

31. I thought this was very difficult and got my first DNF for a while. I simply couldn’t see what was going on at 15d, so gave up after wasting several minutes on it. I’m afraid I didn’t find this AWESOME.
    That was despite getting 1a as my FOI, which doesn’t happen that often. But I couldn’t parse PANIC, TEETHE was quite painful, I didn’t know REFRACTORY, VENDER with the ‘e’ didn’t look right, and POPINJAY – although a wonderful word – was tricky. I liked ASTRAL, mostly because my daughter’s dog is called Astra, and CONCORD, because I used to love watching it fly over our flat when we lived in south London!
    All in all, a Poor Day and a Disappointing Day too, as overall this week hasn’t been too bad.
    DNF in 18 minutes FOI Archetypal WOD Popinjay
    Thanks Joker for the challemge and Curarist for the blog – as others have said: much needed!

32. 28.07 POPINJAY went straight in but not much else did. The long anagrams at the top and bottom needed checkers. I also had ACCUSTOMED for a while. REFRACTORY without the initial checker had room for defiant, which led me up the garden path. AWESOME and PEST were the last two. Pleased to finish though. Thanks Curarist and Joker.

33. 8:16

    Having looked at the Quitch post-solve, I was surprised it was quite so high at 127 i.e. very hard. I didn’t find this easy, but the answers did mostly seem to fall favourably. For REFRACTORY, I didn’t know the definition but following the cryptic seemed to come up with a word which made sense. Longest pause was due to entering ACCUSTOMED at 7d (from the C U D checkers), but once I’d decided that PEST and SALAMI must be right, I rethought, thinking ‘If U, then Q”.

    Thanks Curarist and Joker

34. Much too hard and not enjoyable, I’m afraid. I eventually finished in 32:51 after resorting to the “check” feature, but to be honest I wish I’d just given up after half of that.

    Thank you for the blog!

35. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw I was in the top 100 today. I’m rarely in the top 200! I found that the answers slipped in smoothly and none of them held me up. I have no idea why I found it easy when so many of you seasoned players struggled. No doubt, tomorrow will revert to normal.

36. A tiller is a tiller and a helm is a helm. The only place I could find where the two meet is in computer security software. Not something that your average person would be familiar with.

    Tough but pleased that I managed to parse four correctly before I got stuck.

    1. Well yes, but the setter is allowed some leeway and on this occasion is on firm ground. From Wiktionary:
       “helm (plural helms)
       1) (nautical) The tiller (or, in a large ship, the wheel) which is used to control the rudder of a marine vessel; also, the entire steering apparatus of a vessel.”
       …so Joker skates.

37. Quite tough for a QC. Clues for awesome , panic, acquainted were all awful. Not neat.

38. Slow throughout for me today. I confidently started entering contract at 22ac only to find it didn’t fit. Having rectified that I then fell into the accustomed trap at 7dn and proceeded to stare at the SE corner for a long time until realising it was wrong. The annoying thing was that I had thought of pest quite early by thought the definition was too loose, so left it blank. I eventually entered my LOI just as I reached my cutoff point of 30 mins.

    FOI – 8ac REPULSE
    LOI – 15dn AWESOME
    COD – 21ac ROUND

    Thanks to Joker and to Curarist for the much-needed blog especially the parsing of panic.

39. 14:53. Roof for FOOD and Reprove for RAPPORT sent me off in wrong directions. I remember finding myself beside the Thames in 1969 and witnessing the Concorde flying over. I see from looking up its history that must have been a demonstration from the Paris Air Show in June of that year.

40. Completed in about 10 minutes, but I thought some of it was quite tricky for a QC.

    I didn’t like ‘vender’, and recently we had IKON in the 15×15. I know you can find both in a dictionary, vender as the US spelling of vendor and ikon as a variant spelling for icon (the only spelling I have ever seen), but back in the day when I had daily spelling tests at primary school (a very long time ago) I’m pretty sure that both would have been marked wrong.

    I also didn’t like gaunt = lanky. It doesn’t; you can be lanky without being gaunt and gaunt without being lanky. Coherence sacrificed to a clever surface.

    1. Thank you, A-R. In your erudite comment, you’ve expressed my feelings about this crossword, too.

41. A 15 x 15 clue for AWESOME ! Thanks for the parsing of this one. Liked ARCHETYPAL. A bit tricky, but no complaints, indeed quite the reverse.

42. I looked at this after golf; was feeling a bit sleepy.
    After about 20 minutes I was stuck with two left.
    After a break, I got AWESOME then had a long alpha trawl to get PEST.
    Agree with comments above about Vender etc.
    Some hard stuff in here.
    COD to ACQUAINTED.
    David

43. (Mrs Wade) Could not get POPINJAY, AWESOME or ACQUAINTED without help. Too American for me.

44. A slow 28:19 today, as I never got into any sort of rhythm. In retrospect, I’ll give my COD to PANIC because I totally failed to understand how it worked.

    Thanks to Joker & Curarist, especially for explaining PANIC.

45. A real struggle, spread out over two sittings but almost certainly north of 30mins. Horsepower was a write-in, but that was the only one of the four outer clues that fell quickly. In fact, a plausible Accustomed down the RHS was a real hindrance until it was knocked for six by a fearsome looking Salami. I also lost time by thinking the dandy was bound to be Macaroni- I mean, just how many eight letter dandies are there ? As others have said, some rather strange clues for a QC, but at least (g)Round produced a smile, so it gets my CoD vote. Invariant

46. DNF and SCC – but lots of fun on the way. Defeated by TEETHE, AWESOME and RAPPORT. I suppose intellectual understanding is mental rapport but I always think of it as an emotional thing. Relieved to see lots of us found it hard going! Funnily enough the long ones went in easily, starting with ARCHETYPAL. Glass of Lalande de Pomerol to console me!

47. 15m
    Pretty weak one from Joker, especially awesome and vender.

48. Had a run of completing 5 puzzles until todays where I was unable to finish this one Had 6 clues left, but was unable to figure out the wordplay for a lot of the clues I had put in. Thank you for the explaining how they worked.

49. A day trip to hell.

    DNF after over an hour. Thought TEETHE for 4dn but wasn’t familiar with it so didn’t fill it in.

    Got SALAMI but thought 7dn was ACCUSTOMED, so flummoxed.

    Lost for ages on many others.

    Utterly appalling and I will carry the scars for a long time. Yesterday’s success on the 15 x 15 might as well not have happened. It’s turned to ashes very quickly. ☹️

    A dismal weekend awaits.

50. Ashamed to say I am also a member of the ACCUSTOMED club. Unfortunately I could not see that it was wrong, especially when it concorded with three other answers. Really should have seen SALAMI but food is one of my weak points and I tend to leave them until I have all the crossers.

    Gutted to get a DNF on the quick especially after finishing the main earlier in the day. Not sure that one would have looked out of place for the regular cryptic on a Monday.

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