Quick Cryptic 1654 by Wurm

45 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1654 by Wurm”

1. Raced through the top but got bogged down at the bottom. All done in 13 but with an annoying pink square for exporteR – where I seem to have forgotten what I was doing between solving and typing. Biggest hold up was CLIMB where I ran out of members after arm and leg. End of a careless week, must pay attention next week.
2. Time was OK for me coming in at 14:13. Spent too long on my LTI: EXPORTED and DISTRESS, being unable to think of a wine beginning with P apart from Pinot, which obviously didn’t fit. Enjoyable, and good to get away from the appalling time yesterday. Had never heard of “belter” being “peach”, and had always thought of magenta as a sort of hot pink, but google images shows me that calling it “purple” is acceptable.

   FOI: sag
   LOI: distress
   COD: mandolin

3. My only problem was that I’d never heard of BLADDERED or BELTER. 5:26.
4. Slow start but I thought I had accelerated. In fact, the screen showed 16 mins. I must have been immersed – time flies when you are enjoying yourself. A nice mix of write-ins and chewier clues to end the week (especially after yesterday’s QC which, given the comparative size of the grid, was pretty much on a par with the corresponding 15×15 for difficulty). I liked GUNSHOT, BELTER and DISTRESS but my LOI was MANDOLIN. COD BLADDERED. Thanks to Wurm and curarist. John M.

   Edited at 2020-07-10 08:15 am (UTC)

5. 13 minutes for an enjoyable puzzle with excellent surfaces.
   This completes my dichotomy for this week, with three sub-15 and two 30+ solves, with one DNF . Perhaps it’s a wavelength thing.
   LOI was EXPORTED, I should have thought of ‘port’ for wine sooner.
   Thanks to Wurm for the puzzle and to curarist for the blog.

   Brian

6. 9 minutes, no problems. Enjoyed BLADDERED and smiled at the thought of what our friends across the Pond might have made of it!
7. … I finished a Friday puzzle. And only 22 minutes. A great relief after yesterday’s disaster.
   LOI DISTRESS
   And I also felt stupid trying to think of another limb as well as leg and arm. Are there any?
   Thank you Wurm and Curarist
   Diana

   Edited at 2020-07-10 08:36 am (UTC)

   1. I think we might have had ‘branch’ for limb as well….
8. I managed to keep going today without major hold-ups. FOI was SAG; LOI ODIN where I resisted my first thought Icon. GUNSHOT held me up most so I waited for all the checkers. COD to MANDOLIN. 11:04 on the clock so a medium-strength Wurm today. David
9. 13 minutes for me, and middle of the road for difficulty on the Rotterometer. I have begun to notice that my times when blogging are regularly better than when just solving in between blogs. At first I thought that maybe I am more concentrated and focussed when blogging, but I now think that this is at least partly to do with the fact that when blogging, I do the puzzle at a completely different time of the day, instead of first thing in the morning. For instance, I completed yesterday’s much more difficult puzzle in one minute less (blogging time) than today’s easier puzzle (Standard time). Interesting! Well, it is to me.

   FOI AESOP, LOI PARTRIDGE, COD MANDOLIN. Thanks Wurm and Curarist.

   1. It is interesting, rotter. I have experimented with time of day and background noise v silence but I find the variations in puzzle difficulty and my mood invalidate all my attempts to find any correlation. Today, I ignored Today on Radio 4 and went to another room to do the QC but I didn’t feel it helped. Who knows? I might have taken longer if I hadn’t self-isolated! John.
10. I drew a blank in the NW, where I couldn’t see past an unparsable PLASTERED, or think of any snakes with LASP in the middle so thought that this might be a bit of a stinker. The rest of the grid proved more amenable and when I came back to the NW I immediately saw BLADDERED and the rest followed shortly after. I thought BELTER was a weak clue but the rest was most enjoyable with my favourite being PANDA CAR. Finished in 9.40 with LOI DISTRESSED.
    Thank to curarist
11. Oh dear, never heard of the expression Bladdered but should have got it. Could only think of Plastered, unparsed. So Distressed I failed on Belter too. Zoomed through everything otherwise.

    Thanks as ever.

12. How lovely to end the week on a high note! Not much in the way of DISTRESS here. There are loads more solutions from the grid that spring to my mind that would snugly into appropriate sentences but I’ll stop now.
    My FOI was BLADDERED and that’s always encouraging but, what’s more, I carried on answering them sequentially until I got to GUNSHOT, 20 across, which held me up for a bit and sent me over to the Downs for a bit . And these I was also able to answer almost sequentially. This rarely happens to me. It was still not an especially fast solve but I entered my LOI, SINGLE, with everything parsed, at 20 minutes.
    Some great clues here, I thought, and lots of chuckles on the way. I especially liked BLADDERED, ODIN, GUNSHOT, MANDOLIN and DISTRESS, especially the last two, because of the neat parsing. I also liked the mischief of the definition in 12 down, PANDA CAR. Does that mean anything to those solvers who are not British, I wonder? It makes me think of “Z Cars”. Anybody remember that series? It feels a million years ago! Thanks so much, Curarist, for the blog and thanks, too, to Wurm for providing a lovely end to the week.
    1. That “Anonymous” was me…Not sure how that happened.And what’s more, now that I’ve answered myself – as it were – I cannot edit it to correct the errors that I can see in my expression. More haste, less speed!

       Edited at 2020-07-10 09:13 am (UTC)

    2. Nine acrosses in a row – cracking stuff!
       1. Thank you!
    3. I also wondered how non UK folk would get on with Panda Car – but Kevin, for example, only cited bladdered and belter. Maybe it’s a crosswordland staple.
13. A very enjoyable puzzle, lots of cunning but with enough generosity to stop too much hair being torn out. Like curarist I spent some time looking for a synonym for “bed” (“cot” was favourite) until on second visit I realised that it was just … bed. As it was just “beer” in one down, after I’d run through ale, lager, IPA etc etc. Sometimes overthinking is as bad as underthinking.

    I had a huge delay on my LOI where on first pass I was pretty sure that with the checkers I had (S_A_P_ _) the answer was going to be SHAMPOO but I couldn’t parse it. Then when I came back to it (by which time it was (S_A_P_L) I eventually realised I’d typed in that well-known Norse deity OPIN. I mean, how do you even do that? The P is way over there in the top right, miles away from the D. Grrr.

    FOI SAG, LOI SCANDAL, COD lots to choose from but I thought that ODIN had a particularly neat surface. Done in 2K for a Decent Day.

    Many thanks Wurm and curarist.

    Templar

    Edited at 2020-07-10 10:15 am (UTC)

14. ….BLADDERED to start with, but the drink that Dizzy Delia proffered set me on the way to a very fast solve. I didn’t think it was a particularly easy puzzle, but, despite breaking the 3 minute barrier, I didn’t make the top 10 on the leaderboard – and only four of those luminaries are neutrinos.

    FOI SAG
    LOI AESOP
    COD GUNSHOT
    TIME 2:56

15. 13 mins. Don’t know why bladdered took so long. Maybe it was the pina coladas yesterday.

    LOI distress.
    Lots of candidates for COD, because there are some nice surfaces.
    I’ll give a double to sag and bladdered.

16. Completed in 26 mins, but I felt I should have done better.

    It was one of those puzzles that felt both easy and oddly hard at the same time. I was probably overcomplicating things, for instance looking for synonyms relating to “bed” for 1ac and “beer” for 1dn. Simple clues like 19dn “Chop” and 18dn “Laird” took far too long.

    Other than that, enjoyed 1ac “Bladdered”, 3dn “Distress” (the “H” definitely putting me off, especially after the other day) and 12dn “Panda Car”.

    Not being great on Shakespeare I DNK 16ac “Iago” but worked it out. 12dn “Magenta” I’ve only ever come across in day to day life on the keyboard of a 48k ZX Spectrum.

    FOI – 5dn “Dome”
    LOI – 20ac “Gunshot”
    COD – 17ac “Mandolin”

    Thanks as usual.

17. A right to left solve for me today as the 1s refused to give up on first pass. Knew both meanings but for some reason they didn’t come to mind. Managed to spot the definition and biff PANDA CAR. Like others I waited for more checkers before the GUNSHOT rang out (LOI). Can’t believe it’s Friday already.

18. This didn’t feel that easy, with few answers that came instantly to mind, but my eventual time of 28:49, which included being slowed down by being distracted by my son and his rats, would indicate no more than average difficulty. I can imagine being completely flummoxed by some of the clues not so long ago, so it’s nice to feel progress has been made. I liked GUNSHOT, but COD to 11a because I like the image of God rounding up his mates for a party.
19. I’m another one who over complicated 1a and 1d by thinking of synonyms for bed and beer and the NW corner was the last to fall. FOI was SAG followed by a roughly clockwise solve. ODIN went straight in, MANDOLIN was biffed from a few checkers and GUNSHOT from HOT for stolen. A pity really as both are good clues! LOI was BELTER. GUNSHOT just eases out PANDA CAR for my COD. All done and dusted in 7 mins. Thanks Wurm for a pleasing puzzle and curarist for the blog.
20. Wordplay can be wonderful! BLADDERED and BELTER are new words to me. As is Bobby’s Panda Car.
    Finally a sub 20 for me.
21. …as the answers flew in. I’m glad a spend 30 seconds proofreading, as I had a wrong letter in magenta. These typos do like to sneak in an ruin everything!
    1. Congratulations on the PB.
22. Couldn’t see 1ac, so started in the NE with Sag and soon warmed to Wurm’s quirky cluing, especially Panda Car (showing my age) and Mandolin. Nearly all done after 20mins, including a Plett style Plastered/Lasp diversion at 1ac. That just left I*g* for 16ac… And there I sat and pondered, but the muse (of fire or otherwise) would not come because we did Henry V, JC and MoV at school, not Othello, and I judged that enough Shakespeare for one lifetime, thank you. CoD to the aforementioned 17ac, Mandolin. My thanks to Wurm for a pleasant end to the week. Invariant
23. … as the clock stopped just a few seconds under 10 minutes. Would have been faster but for a struggle with LOI 3D Distress; I got it eventually from the wordplay alone, and even after that didn’t really see how Harrow fitted into the clue, or why it had a capital H. All explained by Curarist (or rather, the blog explains that there isn’t a reason other than playful cussedness!).

    We’ve had a bit of a go at Harrow, as it was in the QC earlier this week too – perhaps the team of setters are fed up with “school” always being Harrow’s great rival Eton. Winchester next week?

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog, and a good weekend to all.

    Cedric

24. Well, we enjoyed today’s puzzle – lots of clever and amusing clues – we completed it in 17 minutes. Thank you Wurm.

    FOI: sag
    LOI: belter
    COD: bladdered

    Thanks to Curarist for the blog

25. 5:34, threading the needle between Kevin and vinyl.
26. I appreciated the range of types of clues today, and some were beautifully constructed, like 17A mandolin.
    I had not heard of Bladdered, nor of Belter, and I still don’t see the Harrow-distress link: one can be ‘harrowed by ‘ something, but I haven’t heard it used as a noun meaning ‘distress’.
    For a relative novice this was fun and do-able (despite my mini rant just now. )
27. Lots to ponder about today but there were many lovely clues and I was particularly amused by BLADDERED and MANDOLIN.
    I had to biff GUNSHOT (didn’t think of ‘snug’ for ‘comfortable’) and DISTRESS (was fooled by Harrow) so thanks to Curarist for the clarification.
    COD goes to PANDA CAR (I, too, remember Z Cars – sadly!)
    Thanks to Wurm for almost 20 minutes of delight.
28. Nice puzzle which I completed without undue difficulty, although like others I was guilty of overcomplicating 1ac and 1dn. I solved it in a roughly clockwise direction from 6ac and then went back to the ones that had defeated me on the first pass: 1ac and 1dn, 17ac and 23ac. Didn’t parse GUNSHOT, so thanks to Curarist for the assistance with that.

    FOI – 6ac SAG
    LOI – 17ac MANDOLIN
    COD – a number of contenders today but I think I have to go with 6ac SAG – a lovely clue

    Thanks to Wurm for an enjoyable puzzle.

29. A nice end to the week, but I, like others, tried to over complicate the NW corner by trying to come up with other words for BED and BEER. Didn’t see SAG until the end which made 7D my LOI. Many thanks to Wurm for a nice puzzle and Curarist for the blog.
30. Bunged in PLASTERED without thinking, and then put in PANAD CAR, all of which made BELTER, DISTRESS and MANDOLIN harder than they needed to be!

    Nice puzzle though. 8:39.

31. Evidently, on old betting slips, it was H for Horse, M for Mare.

    The other important betting-slip abbreviation is SP for Starting Price, frequently clued as “odds”.

    1. Other race card abbreviations that might turn up :

       NR Non-runner
       WO Walkover
       RR Refused to race
       BD Brought down
       F Fell
       D Distance
       CD Course and Distance

       There are plenty more. Enough people follow “the Sport of Kings” for them to be fair play, and Richard Rogan follows the horses. Watch this space…..

32. Thanks for this Vinyl – I’d wondered where H=horse comes from.

    1. Through these crosswords, I’ve come to learn that H=horse=heroin – often clued ‘drug’. E for ecstasy also comes up at times. Interesting that H also means horse in the more traditional sense.

       Edited at 2020-07-10 04:54 pm (UTC)

33. 8:44 so my 4th quick finish for a good week. Held at the end by the crossing limeade and scandal and then panda car and mandolin.
34. I enjoyed this, with plenty to puzzle over interspersed with clues that went in easily. A welcome end to a difficult week. Though I do wonder if my solve times would be improved if I didn’t do the crossword at the end very end of the day!

    LOI 20A Gunshot, which I needed aides for as I just couldn’t see a word meaning report even with all the checkers. I only realised on reading the blog that “about” meant “reversed”, not “outside of”. Still learning! Several contenders for COD, but I liked 11A Odin in particular for the clever surface.

    Thanks for a pleasant Friday puzzle and a great blog.

35. Over an hour, but at least I got them all. Re Templar’s new member of the Aesir, (see above) I can imagine the terror in the hearts of Surtr and the giants of Muspelheim as the great spear was flung at them with the battle-cry, “‘ere’s ‘opin’!”
36. Carried over this solve to Saturday morning to fix 2d Aesop (wrongly entered but not spotted yesterday) which messed up 8a as L-O– Anyway, that fixed left me 3d distressed which, despite all the crossers, and seeing the D+IS was a real brain tease. FOI 1a bladdered. LOI 3d distress COD the amusing 17 a mandolin, but there were several contenders for this slot. Needed the blog to parse 20a as I was also interpreting ‘about’ as ‘enclosing’. Hope to catch up Monday!

Comments are closed.