Times Quick Cryptic No 2930 by Jalna

80 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 2930 by Jalna”

1. Mostly pretty straightforward with a few needing checkers, like PROLIFERATION but saw ‘ration’ so that helped. Not familiar with GEODES but it sounded right. Thought ESTATES was rather good. Liked TITHE as it didn’t include the usual ‘the’, opting for ‘not just any old’ for a change. EVIDENT had me wondering as I couldn’t think of ‘event’ for pole vault. Nice end to the week.
   Thanks J and setter.

2. All done in 10.01. On my fast pass there were several gaps in the NE and that is where I finished, with GEODES, RESOLVE (I sort of get the break down def) and DRESSED TO KILL my LOsI. Thanks John, thanks Jalna, a good weekend to all.

3. 20:22. Had to stare for ages at PROLIFERATION and GO SPARE before they would reveal themselves.

4. Both short and sweet, and climate denier, were so obvious I didn’t stop to parse them, and I got lots of checking letters very quickly. I have to admit, however, that I struggled with capital, only to find it much easier than I expected. But COD has to go to the dancing toddler in the sharp outfit – this is truly a great surface.

   Time: 8:54

5. 4:09 today, which suggests there were no major obstacles. Some very nice clues though, as others have mentioned.

   COD to Canberra of course, a place that deserves a little (not much) better than it’s reputation as “a good sheep station ruined”.

   Thanks Jalna, great blog John. Nice time BTW. You probably spent longer agonising over where “old” belongs in the parsing of TITHE than you did on the solve! (FWIW either way works).

   1. Some Aussies are so rude about Canberra – I loved living there. Perfect climate, peaceful, sporty, culture on the doorstep.

      1. Truth be told, the reason I chose Canberra for the clue is that I’ll be living there soon, so I’m glad to hear you say that! 😄

         1. Bon voyage🙂. Only thing, I believe it is a lot dryer nowadays, maybe hotter too, despite the elevation.

         2. Dress warm.

         3. Thanks for dropping by. Good luck with the move!

6. 10 minutes, mostly easy, the main exception being GEODES. which has turned up only twice (singular and plural) in the TfTT era, once in a Jumbo in 2022 and once in a Mephisto in 2010. There have also been a handful of appearances of the derivatives ‘geodesic’ and ‘geodesists’. I guess the setter was forced into a corner here and picked the best of the bunch as the other 13 words listed by Chambers that fit these checkers are possibly even more obscure. But at least there was little room for doubt as to where the unchecked anagrist needed to go.

   I’m not entirely sure about ‘sierra / RIDGE’ although POD (Premium Oxford Dictionary) has them as synonyms. ‘Range’ was the first that came to my mind but obviously wordplay and one of the checkers ruled that out.

7. I seem to be out of sync today because I found this tricky. TITHE, TRICORN and GO SPARE in particular holding me up. All enjoyed in retrospect. All green in 16.34.

8. DNF
   NHO GO SPARE. I thought of SHORT AND SWEET early on, but never did parse it; the anagrist was well hidden. I wondered a bit about RIDGE.

9. A strange solve, with very little on the first pass through the across clues, almost all the downs straight away, then no problem filling in the gaps to complete the acrosses on the second pass. All led to an 11:11 finish, and a rather better performance than the last few days.

   Pole vault = Event and Not just any old = The both nice PDMs when I finally saw them. DRESSED TO KILL the pick of the clues, lively surface.

   Many thanks John for the blog, and I look forward to trying the Sunday Special.

10. Up early today so thought I’d give the puzzle a go, and it was a much needed confidence boost after my last 2 days. Didn’t time myself, focused on trying to understand the clues, and had a rare occasion of only having 2 clues after everything had been put it where I couldn’t figure out the word play. Had to get help for GO SPARE, CASTE, RIDGE and PROLIFERATION, but apart from those the answers came steadily. Thank you for explaining the clues.

11. Totally made me smile. Tithe was THE COD for me. Resolve and ridge took far too long. 18:45 and very much enjoyed the effort. Thanks Jalna and John

12. I found this quite fiddly in places but with no serious obstacles.

    I’ve always thought that the expression was SHORT but SWEET, having LENGTH already in place cured me of that. The checked letters also helped me with the order of the ‘s’ and ‘z’ in the composer which would be a toss up without any guidance.

    Started with CAPITAL and finished with RANGE in a slightly over average 8.28 and COD to GO SPARE.
    Thanks to John and Jalna

13. I felt this was going to be harder than it turned out to be. Enjoyable.

    Pi ❤️

14. Plodded along and down to fill in the blanks without much method to get to the end in 24 minutes, so, not many holdups. Liked DRESSED TO KILL and TITHE.
    Thanks Jalna and John.

15. I’m out of step with early posters, yet again. Jalna usually tips me into the SCC and today was no exception (even though I finished only a minute into the club).
    Some superb clues but I fear that, once again, we have a puzzle that tips a little towards the 15×15 level.
    Most of the longer answers emerged early on and so I benefitted from plenty of crossers. I was pleased to get GEODES, TRICORN, TITHE, and the clever LENGTH pretty quickly.
    We’ll see what the less expert solvers make of it.
    Thanks to both.

    1. You called?! I struggled to get going, to the extent that after wrestling a few at the top I went for a jog. This seems to have cleared some of the stupidity as I then made steady progress, albeit not fast (very much like my jog).
       I thought it was an amusing and clever puzzle, which I would have enjoyed rather more on a better day. Thanks Jalna, and John. Sounds like there will be plenty of room for me in the SCC today.

16. Lovely crossword, which took longer than it felt at 11:07. Thoroughly enjoyed! Thanks J and J.

    ON EDIT: thanks also for the fortnightly cryptic – very good!

    1. Glad you enjoyed the Weekend Quick Cryptic. I had fun setting it.

17. Excellent puzzle with some cracking clues. Geography one of my many Achilles’ heels – I didn’t know that Canberra was a CAPITAL and wasted time looking at 1a for a hidden, and I thought a sierra was a plain not a RIDGE! Otherwise a counterclockwise solve, from CASTE to RESOLVE in 08:40 for a Decent Enough Day.

    Many thanks Jalna and John.

18. Some clever anagrams today. Loved the image of the dancing toddler. Can understand RESOLVE meaning eg to break down an answer to a clue. Have I missed something? Thanks Jalna for a great QC and John for the blog.

    1. The first definition for RESOLVE in Chambers is To separate into components.

       1. Ah yes. Thank you

       2. I’d already checked this in my copy of Chambers and you’re quite right, but I’m struggling to think of a sentence where it’s familiarly used in that sense.

          Anyway, 15:30 (a couple of which were spent staring suspiciously at RESOLVE).

          Thank you for the blog!

19. I didn’t find this easy, but when a few answers went in, others seemed reasonably obvious without being immediately able to parse them. TRICORN, GO SPARE, TITHE and GEODES most problematic.

20. 21:48 for the solve. First readthrough left me feeling a bit downhearted and bewildered by the clues but they slowly got unpicked to the point where at fifteen mins I only had GEODES, PROLIFERATION and FLAWS to sort out. Kept thinking of F-ACTS for the latter although it didn’t parse.

    Been a slow week of solving and, dating back to last Friday, the last seven puzzles have averaged 23mins which includes taking less than 7mins on Monday’s Oink. The good thing is they have all been successful.

    Have a good weekend everybody who’s not back for Saturday. And for those who are, have a good weekend.

    Thanks to JohnI for the blog and to Jalna who I felt incorporated a good array of devices in the clueing.

    1. Not many puzzles this week have had me writing in answers straight away – although I will concede that’s been happening all year so far for me.

21. After a couple of visits to the SCC, a swifter solve at 10.51. Forgot Canberra was a capital so that held me up. Bunging in DRESSED IN SILK took up some more time and never fully appreciated TOTALLY anyhow so thanks John.

22. From CAPITAL to TRICORN, with a pause to correct TOTALLT on a quick proof read, in 9:47. GEODES from wordplay and crossed fingers. Thanks Jalna and John.

23. My fastest for some time; I bunged in LOI TRICORN to stop the clock after 8 minutes.
    A nice QC.
    COD to DRESSED TO KILL; some other good ones too.
    David

24. All done in about 25 minutes here, which is quite quick for me (especially these days).

    I started with CAPITAL and the rest of the NW corner tumbled into place, followed by the SW corner. I carried on in an anti-clockwise direction to finish with RESOLVE and RIDGE in the NE.

    It all sounds very smooth and organised, but it seemed much more jumbled in my head. GEODES was my only NHO today, but the wordplay was clear and GEOlogy is the study of rocks, so it really had to be.

    Many thanks to John for the blog (I can’t get my head around how anyone could manage to solve every clue at the first attempt) and Jalna for an increasingly rare true QC.

25. A bit trickier than yesterday for me. Lazily biffed ‘short but sweet’ which made LENGTH impossible until I went back to the anagrist and found my error. GEODES was unknown but sounded eminently plausible (and fitted the wordplay). Needed blog to parse TRICORN – thanks John. LOI INEPT. Liked OFFICER and DRESSED TO KILL. Thanks Jalna and John.

26. DNF GEODES. Quite a tricky puzzle, I thought. Took ages for PROLIFERATION, CLIMATE DENIER, and SE generally, after a quick start gave me false confidence.
    Liked CANBERRA (bit shocked by those above who said they DNK it was a capital) and OFFICER, DRESSED TO KILL, AT BEST.
    Thanks vm, John. Lots I CNP.

    1. Yeah, surely being the capital is the only thing Canberra is famous for.

27. 11:06
    Fun puzzle.
    Thanks, John. Great time, btw.

28. 16:41

    More like it. Back under my 20 minute target after a few struggles this week. All pretty straightforward but had to think about TRICORN and LOI GO SPARE.

29. DNF as I was let down by my GK skills. Although I was a little unsure about GEODES, TRICORN was unheard of. I also couldn’t think of anything other than range for sierra until the D arrived. Thanks John.

    1. I initially put Trihorn for 16ac – thinking it was “ri” in Thorn and assuming the latter was a synonym for ragged. I could visualise the hat, but the description didn’t seem right – thankfully it clicked later on.

       1. Thanks James. We seem to be in the minority struggling over TRICORN.

30. I started quite slowly with few across answers solved on first read, and I even wrongly biffed RANGE for 5ac. The down section was more straightforward however, and after correcting RANGE to RIDGE after DRESSED TO KILL was put in, I eventually stopped the clock at 10.40. I always considered Sierra to be more substantial than just a ridge, but the definitions speak for themselves I suppose.
    My total time for the week was 52.58, giving me an average time of 10.36, not too far above my target time.

31. 15 pleasant minutes for a medium difficulty puzzle imho. Some slang (GO SPARE, NARKY) but very fairly clued and by the end I reckoned 24a, 8a! Enjoyed LISZT with vague recollection that we’ve had it before, fairly recently. My first guess at 9a was TEMPEST (wind) thinking that pole vault might be a test (certainly for me) and then trying to work out a meaning for EMP: swiftly abandoned when PROLIFERATION went in. All in all, a great Friday crossword. Many thanks Jalna and John, who must be bathed as am I in Suffolk sunshine!

    1. Yes I am! T-shirt weather for the last 3 days.

32. DNF.
    Found this impossible. Am having much more joy with the 15×15.
    Thanks for blog.

    1. How bizarre. I found the 15×15 very difficult and struggled to finish it.

       1. Haven’t finished 15×15 but I have solved far more clues than I did on today’s QC.
          Have had several goes at the QC today and I seem to be on a totally different wavelength.
          Yesterday’s QC which some thought hard I found easy. That I found bizarre. Normally if others find the QC hard, I don’t stand a chance.

          Oh well….

33. LOI GEDODES which was a NHO but THE solution with all the checkers. I seem to recall this being discussed in this column before but in financial markets the OFFER price is the price someone buys at whereas the BID price is what someone sells at. So, OFFICER was entered with a shrug.

    1. Interesting. I think it’s the other way round…. To my mind BID is the amount the buyer offers and OFFER is the price the seller asks for. Whatever… Chambers has for BID : To offer, esp to offer to pay at an auction, so that’s good enough for me.

34. 9 minutes. Very enjoyable with nothing too obscure or unfair. Some smiles along the way and worth doing for the surface of DRESSED TO KILL alone.

    Thanks to John (great time) and Jalna

35. Seven with five of those biffs, including officer and dressed to kill which seemed obvious from the 7, 2, 4.

36. Missed out on a sub-20 thanks to time wasted looking for a lengthy synonym of vitality to go after Pro in loi 2d. It was only after I parsed my answer that I spotted ration/helping 🙄. Apart from that one, CoD Length was another that didn’t exactly jump off the page, but a window seat finish is still a distinct improvement over my last couple of efforts. Invariant

37. 8:27

    I found this not so easy on the first pass, inking in only three acrosses (LISZT, GEODES and FLAWS). Did better on the downs which gave plenty of footholds. Returning to the NW, picked up EVIDENT, CASTE and assuming 2d would begin PRO, CAPITAL. Failed to parse LENGTH in flight. Wouldn’t agree that CLIMATE DENIER was a write-in, but with checkers in place, it was pretty obvious. Like others, I enjoyed 6d.

    Thanks John and Jalna

38. I found this quite tricky, eventually finishing in a slightly interrupted 21 minutes. Needed all the checkers for proliferation and NHO geodes although the latter was clear once the crossers were in place. Didn’t parse length (very clever) or climate denier (didn’t see the anagram and was wondering what medicine had to do with it). I was very slow to see resolve and capital.

    FOI – 10ac LISZT
    LOI – 13ac GEODES
    COD – loved the dancing toddler and also liked totally despite it being a bit of a chestnut.

    Thanks to Jalna and John

39. 22.42 for us and back into the (not so crowded today) corner after our few days in the sunshine.
    For us, the hardest this week.
    Quite a few examples of what we call, ‘cousin once removed’ clues – where there is an extra step eg. pole vault >event, ragged >torn
    Not to say we didn’t enjoy it. We did!
    And the edifying blog -hadn’t spotted the full workings of LENGTH -very clever.
    PROLIFERATION brought a smile.
    Thank you Jalna and John.

40. A slow start, thought this would be hard but it seemed to resolve itself nicely. Loved DRESSED TO KILL and SHORT AND SWEET.

41. No NHOs for us which helped with a relatively speedy (9:29) and enjoyable solve. Like others, COD to the dancing older. Thanks John and Jalna.

42. 17 mins…

    Apart from the usual debate about whether it’s Liszt or Lizst (thankfully 6dn helped me out here), a nice puzzle for Friday. Tried to force “Range” into 5ac, so was pleasantly surprised when it appeared at 20ac. Ration for helping had me stumped for a while until the other meaning twigged.

    FOI – 1ac “Capital”
    LOI – 2dn “Proliferation”
    COD – 6dn “Dressed to Kill” – amusing surface.

    Thanks as usual!

43. About 21 minutes (something weird happened to the web page), with my ticket into the Club provided by GO SPARE, possibly the weirdest British idiom I’ve encountered during this adventure. I did repeated alphabet trawls looking for something more plausible, then finally went with it, expecting to see pink (not red, so to speak). If not for that, the solve would indeed have been SHORT AND SWEET, with RESOLVE the only clue that gave me real pause. Of course I loved the dancing toddler though I confess the enumeration made the answer so EVIDENT that I biffed then only briefly checked the anagrist.

    Thanks to Jalna and John.

44. 8.37 WOE. Mostly straightforward. PROLIFERATION and LENGTH needed the checkers. Fat-fingering ROSOLVE gave me a pink square. Thanks John and Jalna.

45. 6.06

    Stared at _E_D_S at the end, not able to make anything of it for what seemed ages after the rest of the clues slipped in quite comfortably. Pause, is it a hidden; is it an anagram..ahh.

    Nice puzzle. Thanks Jalna and John

46. 21 min finish could have gone sub 20 but politeness meant had to engage with wife. LOI proliferation despite having all the checkers and seeing it was clearly Pro life. Biffed many. Thanks John for decoding Dressed to Kill. Great puzzle thanks Jalna

47. Not quite SHORT AND SWEET because it wasn’t EVIDENT how ‘break down’ equated to RESOLVE *, but in the end there were no FLAWS and I finished in a smidge over 10. I’ve found Jalna a bit tricky in the past (but I’ve never been NARKY or ON EDGE). So although not TOTALLY within his RANGE, there’s no need to GO SPARE. Perhaps I’m less INEPT and getting nearer to his waveLENGTH!
    I thought this was a CAPITAL crossword, with a LISZT of candidates for COD. A tip of the TRICORN goes to EVIDENT, PROLIFERATION and AT BEST.
    10:03 FOI Short and sweet LOI Resolve COD Dressed to kill
    Many thanks Jalna and John

    * tbh, Chamber’s first definition of resolve may be ‘to break into components’, but I’m still not entirely seeing it! To work out or to make up one’s mind are the first definitions I would think of.

    1. 👏👏👏

    2. 😀

48. 13:01 here. I’m another who takes 2 attempts to spell LISZT correctly and I also thought that 15a would contain ACTS in some way. Enjoyed this one a lot. Any of the four 13-letter clues could be the COD for me.

    Thanks to Jalna and John.

49. 14:06, with considerable time spent on RIDGE/RESOLVE. Still not sure about RESOLVE.

    COD TOTALLY

50. 32 minutes.

    Another black day that sees me beaten by all the competition. Beyond humiliating. Took forever to get RESOLVE, something of which I have very little.

    Got about 20 on 15 x 15. Pathetic.

    I’m at the stage with this that I reached playing golf. The fun of learning has been replaced by the knowledge that I’m not a real solver and I never will be. I look at the ability others have and realise that I am not playing the same game.

    Wish I’d never started TBH. All that effort and I’m still at the novice level. You either have the brain for this or you don’t. I don’t. ☹️

    PS Even worse than I thought. Several wrong on 15 x 15, so only about half correct. Just appalling.

    1. FWIW you are no where near the novice level – you can solve clues and that makes you better than 99.9% of the population (maybe more). I have got better over the years but I am never going to be as good as some of the solvers here, certainly not on the 15×15. But I get it. I started a printing class recently and am scraping along at entry level, in awe of the talented artists in the room. But they are a great supportive bunch, so I persevere. I hope you think the group here is as well

       1. Thanks. I appreciate you taking the trouble to remind me that I have some ability. Let’s hope your printing skills and my solving ability improve!

          Yes, I’ve had a lot of supportive comments here and some very helpful advice.

    2. Well, Gary. You finished. Beaten by competition? Maybe you shouldn’t think of it as a competition. Stuck on RESOLVE? Well so were plenty of others. Not a real solver? But you solved it! Novices can’t complete a QC so you are not a novice. 1/2 correct on today’s 15×15? Well done! I found it very hard. “Always look on the bright side of life”.

       1. Thanks John. Everything you say is true. I’ll try to be more positive going forward and stop thinking of it as a competition!

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