Quick Cryptic 1864 by Izetti

60 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1864 by Izetti”

1. Very tough. Partly for the clueing, partly for the definitions. Had no idea about KERB DRILL which was phased out before I was born and even now Curatist has written it out it has failed to register — ‘by the way’ is a good hint if you know it I guess! Needed the hint for ROOMY, had it in but couldn’t spot “to the north” for a reversal. Didn’t know KEEL for a flat bottomed boat but got to KERNEL somehow — although I then entered ‘kernal’. Bunged in ‘fire drill’ for KERB DRILL and that made KNEELING impossible, not least because I wanted the N for knight to go at the front and then it looked like it had to start with F. One to learn from. All the aids came out in the end but it was still tough to see what was going on. Enjoyed PITCHER though as it always reminds me of overhearing two American students at my Scottish university in the very late 1980s (so I nearly met KERB DRILL) reminding each other to ask for the jug when you wanted water because one had tried asking “pass the pitcher” and been met with complete silence and inaction. All but seven in 13m then struggled closer to finishing with aids by 27m but still couldn’t get there. Only one person below me on the leaderboard — we may hear from him later!

   Edited at 2021-04-30 07:32 am (UTC)

   1. Ha! And I grew up in Manchester where I went with school friends to the pitchers on a Sat’dy morning and our posher neighbours had pitchers on their walls.
2. Today’s puzzle makes the second time I failed to get six clues this week. KERB DRILL was unknown, and like many, I am sure, I put Fire Drill which knocked out 11a and left me short of checkers for POLYESTER. “Material” is a tough definition to work from. Also missed TAMPER.

   1a is a nice clue with “change of direction”, although I did not parse until the blog. Also I enjoyed building up both CONSIDER and MONTREAL from the pieces.

   COD BUST

3. A slow but doable puzzle. As the letters dropped in the solutions to the blank gaze started to gel. I liked 1A but wondered at first if it could be Throne, Throw, changing W for NE but that didn’t work so got to Proper. and appreciated the change of direction.
   LOI Polyester. A chemical parrot always comes to mind.
   Some excellent clues, none too extreme for me, but I did hop about a lot and ended up sub 40 mins.
   Started the cure last night, should be good in about a week. (brisket that is).
   Thanks everyone, enjoy the long weekend.

   Edited at 2021-04-30 07:51 am (UTC)

4. I was painfully slow, with as I recall PITCHER & POLYESTER taking too much time. And NHO KERB DRILL; and even with the checkers KERB took unnecessary time to register (I spell it ‘curb’). 9:16.
   1. Surely curb not the same thing at all as kerb…?
      1. It’s exactly the same thing. (There are other meanings of ‘curb’, of course, but US ‘curb’=UK ‘kerb’.)
         1. Ah, the two nations divided by a common language phenomenon again! Reminds me of many years working for US corporations and having to change vocabulary when the US started work or when the home phone rang in the early hours….
5. I am glad to see that I am not the only solver to have had a hard time with this one. I started well and enjoyed my progress but slowed towards the end. I got KERB early on but needed the crossers for DRILL. I found (LOI) RANK and PACKED difficult and needed crossers for POLYESTER which took a moment or two to parse. MARBLES raised a smile.
   In the end, I was on the cusp of the SCC but managed to parse everything (following my new-found determination to remove biffs if I cannot parse them). A little over 2K so that takes some of the pain away. Thanks to Izetti for a testing QC and to curarist for an excellent blog which added to my appreciation of some lovely clues. John M.
   I had to look up Green Cross Man / Darth Vader to discover that David Prowse was both. Thanks, curarist.

   Edited at 2021-04-30 08:08 am (UTC)

   1. It’d be unlikely to indicate that the puzzle was tough. When there are so few early comments it’s a good ploy to check the time the blog was put up. It was 07:38 today, quite early enough for the UK home audience, but some overseas regulars would not have been able to post comments at their usual time.

      I had few problems getting started as I like to deal with easy pickings first but nothing jumped out at me for a while. Then I lost time thinking ACCORD at 5ac and spent too long trying to justify it. 11 minutes in all.

   2. Prowse of course didn’t do the voice on Star Wars, but there’s some lovely footage somewhere of him on set speaking the lines before it was dubbed, where Darth Vader has a thick West Country accent.
      1. “..Oi foind yurr lack of faith disturrbing…”
6. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, although it definitely fell into the chewy category. The only slightly unsatisfactory clue was LOI KERB DRILL which I’d never heard of and required all the checkers and an alphabet trawl. Lots of contenders for COD but I’ll go for MARBLES. Pleased to finish in 13.14.
   Thanks to Curarist

7. Fingers all over the place this morning, but I managed to spot all of my typos before submitting.

   Thank you, curarist and Izetti

8. Got nowhere with this one. Izetti again! I really do not like this setter. Never heard of kerb drill, not even the Green Cross Code Man would have heard of it I bet.

   Oh well, I look forward to Monday.

   1. A large number of my generation would probably not have survived to our teens had it not been for the KERB DRILL being drummed into us from the time we started toddling.
      1. I’m sure the KERB DRILL was great in its day, but the Green Cross Code itself is over 50 years old now. Bit obscure for those still of working age.
9. Distinctly tricky in parts — particularly after some initial mistakes: Keep Right (to face oncoming traffic when walking along the roadside) and See (I said I could). Even so, 26mins seemed a bit slow, but I will wait for a few more times to be revealed before I pass judgement. Rank was my loi, confirming my customary struggle with (some) four letter words. CoD to 7d, Expanse, a nice example of Izetti’s attention to detail (use of through rather than the more natural by). Invariant
10. Toughish

    NHO KERB DRILL

    Double definitions always give me problems so I really had to put the brain into gear for RANK — but getting that unlocked MARBLES and TAMPER

    No problems with some of the other more difficult ones

    Thanks Curarist and Izetti

11. I was about to query KEEL as a boat until I read Eurcon’s comment and looked it up.

    Quite difficult today, and dnf, then the explanations made sense and I wished I’d thought of them myself. Not for the first time…

    KERB DRILL probably saved my life as I crossed Salisbury to school on my own from the bus for 8 years. I can remember one or two near misses even now.

    Thank you, Izetti and Curarist.

    Diana

12. I was slow to get going; FOI CONSIDER.
    Then this required my full attention. No gimmes today. LOI was EXPANSE after 14:43.
    Lots of excellent clues. Perhaps COD to ROOMY.
    I have to say that I did not remember Kerb Drill so needed the checkers for that.
    David
13. The 15 x 15 is much easier than this today – nuf sed
    1. I tried the 15×15 to raise my spirits after this and failed there too!
14. Another completion in glacial time, but enjoyed the gradual process, and all parsed. Having got 1A after some pondering I was meandering all over the grid to make progress, but it was only when the NE filled out that I was able to work back to my numerous problems. PACKED just wouldn’t come to mind which held up POLYESTER. The ROOMY / MYTH cross also held out for ages, and MONTREAL. Liked MYTH despite that, and ESSAYS was a neat hidden. Always glad to finish an Izetti so thanks for the exercise.
15. ROMMY was FOI, then I found the top half quite tricky, but speeded up down below, apart from KERB DRILL which I eventually dredged from my memory. RYE was well hidden I thought. 8:56. Thanks Izetti and Curarist.
16. LOI was RANK, which took some thinking time.

    Lots to like – POLYESTER, the surfaces of KNEELING and MONTREAL. I never quite parsed PROPER, bunging in from checkers and definition, and waited until seeing the blog to get the synonym for project, so thanks Curarist. I already had KNEELING, but when faced with K?R?/DRILL, I deleted the K and put in an F. Eventually realised that KNEELING couldn’t be anything else, put the K back, and bunged in KERB, thinking it might be a precursor to the Green Cross Code.

    Reasonable time it seems – 8:11. Thanks to Curarist, and to Izetti for a good puzzle.

17. It’s been a tough old week, I wasn’t on the wavelength for yesterday’s either so decided I’d definitely print out today’s to ponder over on my day off. I had to work from the bottom up as the top half was unyielding. Like others I bunged in fire drill, nho of kerb drill, but realised kneeling must be right. Also struggled with tamper, rank and packed. No time but must be close to an hour, so not very quick!

18. SCC today, but only just, with nearly all of my hold-ups in the NE. PACKED, TAMPER, POLYESTER and EXPANSE were last to fall after being unlocked by RIPE, which was also slow to reveal itself — I just never thought of RIP. I also knew exactly what was required for MONTREAL, but couldn’t see it for the life of me. NHO KERB DRILL, but it made sense once KERB was inevitable. Well done Izetti, and thanks C.
    1. Far too difficult for me!
       But thanks for blog, Curarist.

       Edited at 2021-04-30 12:30 pm (UTC)

19. This was my second massive DNF this week. 30 minutes in and 7 clues to solve (so far, so good). 30 minutes later and still 7 clues unsolved, at which point I gave up, disillusioned once again.

    My missing solutions were PACKED, POLYESTER, EXPANSE, MARBLES, RANK, BUST (the clues for all of which I parsed, but just could not find the required word) and TAMPER (where I was barking up the wrong tree – I thought ‘Play’ was the definition).

    So, any sense of smug satisfaction I may have felt after my 14-minute PB on Monday has been well and truly hoofed into the long grass, first by Marty on Wednesday and now by Izetti. A week of extremes for me!

    Thanks, as usual, to curarist and Izetti.

    1. These were the exactly same 7 clues that left me beaten at 30 minutes. I also DNF-ed on Wednesday as well.
       1. Well, how about that? A strange coincidence. I’m sorry to hear you had a similarly disappointing experience, although it’s slightly comforting to know I am not alone in the boat. Good luck next week.
    2. yes, tough BUT how did Mrs manage? We need to know!
       1. Thankyou for asking. Mrs R attempted the puzzle much later in the day and finished reasonably comfortably in 42 minutes. She agreed that it was more challenging than usual for an Izetti. I have definitely been put back in my box after having stole the show (as far as the Random household is concerned) on Monday.
    3. Exactly the same for me. On a high after finishing mon my on and tues quickly and thurs not bad but wed and fri DNF — v v tricky.
       Never heard of rank for absolute
       Need to remember keel.
       And couldn’t get Expanse but now seems doable.
       Thanks for the honest feedback. Makes me feel better! And thanks Izetti and great blog.
       COD marbles made me chuckle
20. I actually found this easier than yesterday. I tuned into the right wavelength though some clues required more than one visit. I think RYE was my FOI. NHO of KERB DRILL so I had to wait for all the checkers and the K was a late arrival. Also DNK the second definition of TAMPER. LOI RANK required an alphabet trawl. 12:05 for a good day after yesterday’s DNF.
21. Particularly tough this I thought.

    I also initially put Fire Drill for 11ac, but it didn’t look right so switched to Kerb (mainly as it was the only sensible word that fit). However, along with many here, never heard of it.

    I had a lot of difficulty with the NW corner — just couldn’t see 1ac and ended up putting Ozone for 2dn which could have slightly worked if being generous. Picked the wrong definition for 3dn which meant I just couldn’t finish.

    Poor end to the week and one to forget.

    FOI — 4dn “Rye”
    LOI — dnf
    COD — 8ac “Montreal” — I was fairly crazed by the end of this.

    Thanks as usual.

22. Typical Izetti puzzle too hard for starters an absolutely no fun
23. At 10 mins m 74th on the list, better than usual. Must have been on my wavelength
24. Except for kerb drill, this is nothing obscure in answers to this puzzle – they’re words everyone knows. So the problem must be that the cryptics are too cryptic.

    Let’s take the seven toughies:

    PACKED – actually a bit of a chestnut, experienced solvers have seen packed/pact before
    POLYESTER – I built this from the cryptic, using the evident L + YE, said that’s not a word, and then saw it was
    EXPANSE – I had the crossers and biffed it, but the Exe and Dee are the two most likely rivers if you’re stuck
    MARBLES – With all the checkers, think of what words might fit, then work backwards into the cryptic
    RANK – Another one we have seen before, in various versions
    BUST – Fairly evident once you have the crossing letters
    TAMPER – If you spot the literal, you can think of various agent nouns that might describe what the smoker is doing

    Well, that’s how I solved them!

    1. Thankyou very much Mr or Mme Vinyl. Your comments are very helpful. I think I am let down by a more limited vocabulary than some (esp. Mrs Random) and I am still only part of the way up the learning curve when it comes to remembering many of the standard crossword conventions, such as packed/pact, ye for you, the rivers Exe and Dee (although I really should remember R Exe as that’s where Mrs R and I went to university, some decades ago).
25. I’m feeling really ancient today with all the youngsters saying they’d never come across kerb drill (and as a mid-1950s model, I really don’t think I’m that old!). I remember it clearly – also, I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t that safe because after their right then left then right again, kids just kept looking ahead, consequently not noticing oncoming traffic!
    I thought that this was a fair if very tricky puzzle, as expected from Izetti, but I’m afraid I didn’t enjoy it as much as others set by him. I can’t put my finger on why but it didn’t seem to have that Izetti zing today. Having said that, there were a few lovely surfaces – CONSIDER, RYE and MARBLES in particular, and 21a made me smile ruefully as our neighbours have been having their house roof pressure washed today (yes! – who knew such a service existed?) and in their desire for perfection have made our house pretty dirty!
    FOI Ripe
    LOI Rank – the same problem as dvynys
    COD Idealist – despite the dust!
    Earworm – Thin Lizzie
    12 mins
    Thanks Izetti and Curarist
26. ….so we’re a little out of practice and that may account somewhat for today’s struggle. Sadly it took us 39 minutes to achieve a DNF. However, there were lots of clever clues – Izetti made us work very hard.

    FOI: CORAL
    LOI: MARBLES (DNF)
    COD: KNEELING

    Thanks to Izetti and Curarist.

27. Started off badly, getting very few in the top half on first read through. Things improved in the bottom half so I gradually worked my way back up to the top. I was actually going quite well until the last four: Montreal, polyester, packed and expanse, which must have added considerably to my overall time of 22 mins. I was very slow to solve the anagram at 8ac and never managed to parse 1ac, 2dn or 7dn. Thanks to Curarist for the explanations. Thanks also to Izetti for the mental workout.

    FOI – 9ac RIPE
    LOI – 7dn EXPANSE
    COD – 13dn CLOSURE

28. Same struggles, same pleasures as above. Pebee nails it with her perceptive “great but perhaps not quite the usual Izetti zing” comment. Anyway, still a very enjoyable wrestle.

    FOI ROOMY, LOI MONTREAL (never thought of there being two anagram indicators), COD MARBLES, time 13:15 for 1.4K and a Half Decent Day.

    Many thanks curarist (especially for “propel”) and Izetti.

    Templar

    Edited at 2021-04-30 02:19 pm (UTC)

29. DNF with this. I find Izetti’s QC’s a challenge, and resigned myself to doing my best and then turning to this group for explanations of my gaps.

    Tough ones: 8A MONTREAL, as hadn’t considered there being 2 separate anagrams put together.
    14A: never heard of ‘tampering’ for a pipe. Had considered ‘packing’ tobacco, but with 5A being ‘packed’ that wasn’t even an option (though we had ‘material’ for both 5D and 6D clues.)
    18A: RANK, I understand with ‘to put something in order’ but still don’t understand with ‘absolute’ ?

    Happy Bank Holiday, and thanks to izetti for the puzzle and Curarist for the explanations.

    1. Rank outsider?
    2. It’s tamping, for tapping tobacco down into a pipe.
       1. thanks, and still a new one for me.
30. A tough challenge, but very fair. I had three goes at this, so I kind of gave up twice before deciding to have one more try, and I got there in the end. FOI scorer. Only four on first pass which always makes me nervous. Some of the other downs were gettable with some of the checkers in place. I had fire drill for a while until I thought about why the clue started with “by the way”. A few write-ins — coral, satan, a few easy anagrams — idealist, consider. Saw polyester early on but couldn’t work out why for ages, and it helped a bit when I finally saw how to parse it and put it in the grid. LO’sI expanse, tamper, packed in that order, p-c-e- sitting there for a while until pact made its way to the forefront of my mind from somewhere deep down and then of course it was obvious. One session of fifteen minutes and two of ten, with mind working without me knowing, apparently, in between. Lots of contenders for COD. A very enjoyable challenge. Thanks, Curarist, and Izetti. GW.
31. One for the older generation I think, and though I turned 45 yesterday, I suspect in Crosswordland, that doesn’t include me yet. I persevered on this for longer than I have for a long time – 106 minutes – before finally throwing in the towel. Then I had one last look and saw that 14a, which I had down as TINKER, was clearly TAMPER, which allowed 15d to be MARBLES. I then put RING for 18a thinking you might ring/order for a pizza. Yeah, doesn’t quite work does it? I also had FIRE DRILL for 11d and FREELING for 11a, which I just hoped was a thing, so not a good day, but I can’t help feeling this was just too hard for a QC. I don’t usually go along with those who say that sort of thing, as it’s good to have a range and give people a taste of the next level up, but given how many people failed to complete this, and that the 15 x 15 is there for people who want more of a challenge, I don’t see the point of having a QC this difficult. Thanks anyway Izetti and Curarist.
32. … not entirely unexpected when I saw Izetti was our Friday setter, but even so this felt a grind and it took me 16 minutes. And — albeit with due temerity — I do join those who think that some of the clues were below the Don’s usual high standard. To have “material” in two consecutive clues, for example …

    Coming from some 300 miles south of the Tyne, I wasn’t aware that Keel could mean the whole boat, as opposed to just the lengthwise base of the hull. One wonders idly if the worthy folk of Newcastle could not afford the rest of the boat and had to balance their cargo on just the keel-board.

    18A Rank also held me up, not least because to rank a set of items usually means to put them in relative not absolute order.

    So ends a week with some tough puzzles. Many thanks to Curarist for the blog and a good weekend to all.
    Cedric

    1. I have found that knowledge of the folk music and music-hall songs of various regions of the UK is very helpful with dialect words and regional vocabulary:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcGPIPaJtQ

33. I thought this a classic Izetti… just a little harder than an average QC with lots of neat and enjoyable clues. But, as last Friday’s blog showed, I am no judge of how difficult others find a QC. 5:21
34. Back to be being a late contributor…it does have the advantage of being able to read probably all of your contributions! I found the top much harder than the bottom half. Resorted to aids in an effort to finish. Still a DNF with 1a. 8a. 10a 3d and 7d not completed despite plenty of checkers. Lots of good clues and generally as precise as I expect from Izetti. NHO keel as a flat-bottomed boat but punt wasn’t getting me anywhere. Struggling to see rank=absolute. FOI 11a Kneeling. LOI 2d Roomy (after the aids gave be some of the letters). COD 5d Polyester of maybe 14a Tamper – brought back happy memories of years as a pipe smoker – ah, the ritual of it and the time it bought for thinking up a good answer to difficult questions! Sad to not fight my way through to a full completion (even with aids) but thx to Izetti for the workout and especially to Curarist for the much needed blog, and the rest of you for sharing your thoughts.
35. Didn’t get half of these
    I think if I’d tried for the rest of the year I would not have got EXPANSE. I can’t see attacks = pans.
    Maybe I should just stick to the Sudoku when I see Izetti
    Nick
    1. Nick, PAN in this sense is to criticise severely, so attack something verbally. For example film and theatre critics are said to have ‘panned’ a film or play they didn’t like.
36. I’ve retreated to the Quick Cryptic, confidence battered and bruised after consistent beatings by the Times Cryptic. Not sure this one helped! But reading all your comments did – it’s not just me struggling to get to grips with all the devices that the experts already know. Oh, and cricket terms. Why cricket?
    I want to single out jakkt for being particularly kind and patient in his replies. Thank you.
    1. i thought that this was easy peasy but I have failed on loads of others. Sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. It’s only about the challenge!
37. 4.09 minutes

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