Quick Cryptic 1314 by Teazel

30 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1314 by Teazel”

1. 23 minutes with a massive leffe hangover.
   Quite an unusual grid.

   Last few: mouth watering (focused on boasting), improper and loi main.

   Dnk happen and prunus, prob forgotten bent for grass.

   Liked baptism, historic, the works, but cod improper even though i think its come up before.
   Thanks

   1. I wish I could drink Leffe, but Belgian yeast seems to disagree with me.
      1. I think all yeast is starting to disagree with me!
2. DNF after a bit more than 7′; I knew bent grass was a type of grass, didn’t know it could be called simply BENT. No idea about HAPPEN, either, but the checkers saved the day.
   1. ‘Happen’ is a Yorkshire expression meaning ‘maybe’, as in: “Will thou be going to t’ football on Saturday?” “Aye. ‘appen I will.”
3. 12 minutes making a total of three 10-minute targets missed this week. Nothing difficult here but rather a lot of clues that didn’t give up their secrets on first or even second reading.
4. 12:27 here after another session went all slow on me, this time when I had about 4 clues left. I was approaching 10 minutes and the grid stopped responding at all with 2 left. I eventually managed to pause it and ran it on the desktop by pasting the link from my laptop browser, but it gave me a Bad Response message when I submitted. I then tried in Firefox instead of Chrome and it showed I’d completed regardless. So frustrating. Anyway my last 2 in were FINCHES and BENT, but it was hard to concentrate on the crossword with all the browser issues. Didn’t know PRUNUS, but the wordplay left no doubt. BENT was vaguely remembered after a short alphabet trawl. Liked BAPTISM OF FIRE. Thanks Teazel and Curarist.
5. On a first run through the across clues I had a meagre 5 answers filled in. Fortunately I spotted MOUTH WATERING, my COD, straight away and that got me going. I was amused to see ‘APPEN, but suspect it may be unfamiliar to a number of overseas solvers, not just Kevin. 4:54.
6. A week mostly on the road so visits here have been rare. Solving in the newspaper meant no times but I thought I’d been doing well this week – but then this – LOI BENT biffed at a shade under 26m. No major hold ups apart from TOGETHER where I wanted a random woman’s name in the middle of FOR and then I though MOTHER might be the end. Overall just a spent relatively long time solving each clue. See you Monday!
7. I loved the IMP-ROPER, that made me properly chuckle when it clicked. COD for me (narrowly pipping PURSER for the smooth surface and TO-GET-HER, which also made me smile). A clever and enjoyable display of the setter’s art today, thank you Teazel.

   I happened to know BENT because as a boy I could earn a few pennies by digging out “the bents” from the lawn; the approved instrument was an old table knife with a yellow bone handle.

   Done and dusted in 9:38, a Very Good Day.

   Templar

8. Finished in 13:33 and would have been quicker but for inexplicably failing to think of Baptism immediately, having got Of Fire -Chariots intervened.
   Bent no problem for this student of golf; people do get emotional about fescues.
   An excellent puzzle I thought with good surfaces and clues.
   David

9. A testing end to a consistently SCC week for me. 3 Kevins. A good puzzle – thanks toTeazel who always poses a challenge. The NW corner clues and the unusual grid forced me to search for accessible clues elsewhere and I moved rather haphazardly around the grid. I liked HAPPEN and PRUNUS but found KOI difficult. Only when the K was available did THE WORKS emerge and the NW open up. I liked TO COME and my LOI was MOUTH WATERING. Thanks to Curarist for a tight blog and for confirming some post-biff parsing. John M.
10. I think I talked myself into a lengthy solve when I saw the unhelpful grid. Nothing flowed. FOI 15a GRIT and LOI 9a BENT. The LHS of the grid yielded last after many minutes…21 to be precise. I was not on wavelength with Teazel today which I am attributing to my rap/hip hop head after my late night out in London watching Hamilton.
11. Been a bit of a struggle in the latter half of the week. 14 minutes for this one but at least it was all correct breaking my run if dnfs. Did knit know bent but it ‘had to be’. Liked 11 and 18 across but cod to 16 down – a good clue, happen as like.
    1. This anon was me – not sure why I’d been logged out.
12. …and I struggled to remember ‘koi’, and was wondering if they’d really use ‘bent’ as a grass – they would! I got ‘of fire’ early on, but just could not think of ‘baptism’. Time, 14 minutes.
13. A whole week of DNFs for me, after 3 years practice. I had thought I was getting somewhere until Noam but clearly I have no talent for crosswords! However, perhaps someone can help me with one point. The clue for 18 across splits the word into two parts, but expresses them the opposite way round to the answer, to make the sentence flow (ie the IMP part is clued after lassoing with no indication this is so. If this is a ligitimate clue setting method, how do you pick when this has been done?
    1. 1) perfectly legitimate, happens all the time
       2) trial and error; there won’t be anything to inform you that the series of letters is to be divided in two different ways
       1. Not legitimate without a word like “on” in there

          In this instance it’s a description of the whole phrase one lassoing a trouble maker being described as an imp-roper as in one who ropes imps

          So in that regard it’s perfectly fine

       2. Thanks very much. You bloggers do a great job and your solving times are amazing. I can’t read the clues as fast as that!
14. Aye, ‘APPEN it did (where did that H come from ?)

    Any day I’m ahead of Verlaine on the leader board is special, especially since I did this in a pub accompanied by the Who and Fleetwood Mac.

    FOI TO COME
    LOI MAIN
    COD BAPTISM OF FIRE
    TIME 3:26

15. 12 minutes after yesterday’s 37, no problem at all.
16. With about 11 mins on clock, I had three in the NW corner undone: THE WORKS, TOGETHER and BENT. THE then clicked, closely followed by TOGETHER but I couldn’t quite believe BENT could be a grass. Eventually just bunged it in at 16.16. Liked HAPPEN.
    1. It looks like thousands of hours wasted watching golf on TV has paid off. If it’s California, the greens are poa annua, but if it’s Florida, then they’re bent.

       Edited at 2019-03-23 03:19 am (UTC)

17. Somewhere between pressing submit and my grid coming back after being checked the N of BE_T had mysteriously disappeared. Especially annoying as I’d spent the previous few minutes doing an alphabet trawl on that particular clue before chucking the answer in with fingers crossed.
    Three tough puzzles to end the week and I finished this one in 17.53 with the NW being very stubborn. Enjoyed 1d once I’d finally seen how it worked.
    Thanks for the blog
18. Yep, took me a long time at the end agonising over whether BENT was really a type of grass… seemed a bit obscure for a QC!
19. I’m getting dispirited. After more than a year of doing the QC, I’m still struggling. I’m just not good at seeing the words. Fir example, spent ages staring at …… – watering but couldn’t see what the first word would be. Ho-hum
20. About 2 hours but missed 1D – together. I can never get clues like this – to get her – as I’m a relative newbie and I just try and break things down. Spent ages on it tna.
    Knew bent as in bent fescue – and happen, which should surely have dropped the h for ‘appen!
    Got imp and roper but shouldn’t they be in the correct order in the clue? Things are hard enough without swopping parts around…
    Nick
    1. As stated above, ‘one lassoing trouble-maker’ might be called an ‘imp-roper’. Normally, you lift and separate the parts of the clue, but sometimes you have to take the whole phrase.
       1. Thanks – didn’t know that!
          Nick

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