Quick Cryptic 2461 by Izetti

Author   BletchleyRejectPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

 

A puzzle from Izetti today, so we know we’re probably not in for a gentle stroll.

Overall though I didn’t think this was unreasonably difficult and the ones that held me up at the end, the crossing 10a and 2d, turned out to be quite gentle. A bit of detailed parsing for us solvers to work out made this a satisfying puzzle to complete, even if I was no speedster at just over 12 1/2 minutes.

Thanks to Izetti

Definitions underlined in bold, deletions marked by strikethrough

Across
8 A king and enemy coming on the scene (7)
ARRIVAL – A (‘A’) R (‘king’) RIVAL (‘enemy’)
9 Fellow going to North America for super food (5)
MANNA – MAN (‘Fellow’) N (‘North’) A (‘America’)
10 Cut flower short (5)
SEVER – SEVERN (‘flower’=river) with last letter N deleted (‘short’)
11 Victorian writer reported disreputable female (7)
TROLLOP – Homophone (‘reported’) of TROLLOPE

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) author of Barchester Towers etc

On edit: Thanks to Yorkshirelass in the comments below. Incorrect definition underlined; it should be ‘disreputable female’ of course. The more often you look for a mistake, the less likely you are to find it!
12 Painter and inventor in Italy’s capital (7)
BELLINI – BELL (‘inventor’) IN (‘in’) I (‘Italy’s capital’=first letter or letter in upper case)

(1) Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922). Doing a bit of reading about him, more than “just” the inventor of the telephone

(2) Bellini was the surname of a number of Italian painters from the 15th to the 18th century.  Giovanni Bellini (c1430-1516) is the most well-known and the only one I had heard of
14 Sample latest of paintings in gallery (5)
TASTE – S (‘latest of paintings’=last letter of ‘paintings’) contained in (‘in’) TATE (‘gallery’)
15 Supply to last, right away (5)
ENDUE – ENDURE (‘last’) with R deleted (‘right away’)

Not a word you see or hear used very often, at least outside crossword land
17 Gloria’s unusual gem (7)
GIRASOL – Anagram (‘unusual’) of GLORIAS
19 A croc is swimming somewhere in the Med! (7)
CORSICA – Anagram (‘swimming’) of A CROC IS
20 First in class, little Andrew is sweet (5)
CANDY – C (‘First in class’=first letter of ‘class’) ANDY (‘little Andrew’)
22 Half of the things you really need in German city (5)
ESSEN – ESSENTIALS (‘things you really need’) with just the first five of the ten letters (‘Half of’)
23 Classical female appearing in select range (7)
ELECTRA – Hidden in ‘sELECT RAnge’
Down
1 Member of choir is b—- fool (4)
BASS – B (‘b’) ASS (‘fool’)

I think the dashes are just present for the surface, indicating that the word in full is meant to be “bloody”
2 Journey with one yet to pass test is rubbish (6)
DRIVEL – DRIVE (‘Journey’) L (‘one yet to pass test’=L for learner driver)
3 Maiden, possibly sweetheart losing head (4)
OVER – LOVER (‘sweetheart’) with first letter L deleted (‘losing head’)

For those who don’t know, in cricket a maiden over is a sequence of 6 balls bowled by one bowler (an over) from which no runs are scored by the batter
4 A writer’s absorbing article (8,5)
BLOTTING PAPER – Cryptic definition
5 A fraud I am after, alternatively (8)
IMPOSTOR – IM (‘I’m’) POST (‘after’) OR (‘alternatively’)

The usual sources give the -ER spelling as an … alternative; my first attempt until I looked at the wordplay more closely
6 They may be obtuse, but they also may be right (6)
ANGLES – Cryptic definition

This could be parsed as a double definition, but for the surface the cryptic def parsing is better. My pick of the day
7 Member of clan — one to wake up the folk in tents? (8)
CAMPBELL – The wordplay is a cryptic def itself; a CAMP BELL would be ‘one to wake up folk in tents?’
12 Brought up to hide pain, being violated (8)
BREACHED – BRED (‘Brought up’) containing (‘to hide’) ACHE (‘pain’)
13 Maybe Spanish folks and Russians, heading off (8)
IBERIANS – SIBERIANS (‘Russians’) with first letter S deleted (‘heading off’)
16 Most awful French art covered in muck (6)
DIREST – ES (‘French art’) contained in (‘covered in’) DIRT (‘muck’)

‘Art’ as a verb as in “thou art” for which the French is “tu ES”
18 Japanese money had for governing body (6)
SENATE – SEN (‘Japanese money’) ATE (‘had’)

(1) Looking it up on Wikipedia, the sen is a unit of Japanese currency, with 100 sen = 1 yen, although there are no longer any sen coins

(2) “I had breakfast this morning” = “I ate breakfast this morning”
20 Gang somewhere in Cheshire, we hear (4)
CREW – Homophone (‘we hear’) of CREWE (‘somewhere in Cheshire’)

After listening to the classified football results on the BBC for years, I’ve always associated the town with Crewe Alexandra FC. Also a major railway town and previously the base for Rolls-Royce and now for Bentley car production
21 Time that is long needing to be shortened (4)
YEAR – YEARN (‘long’) with last letter N deleted (‘needing to be shortened’)

80 comments on “Quick Cryptic 2461 by Izetti”

  1. Glancing at this early on I saw it was the much awaited Izetti but was encouraged by seeing several answers straight off. That led to a false optimism that was quickly ended once I sat down in Costa to solve properly. I have no problem with 11a other than it being rather out of fashion. Fell into the 2d Travel trap to begin with. Ditto the Impost-er/or trap. Liked a lot of the clues eg Essen/Corsica/Manna/Taste/Angles/Campbell. Bunged in Bellini from the crossers but was unable to parse. NHO Girasol so had to resort to aids to see if it worked – so a DNF. Missed out on the river=flower although usually alive to that misdirection but got Sever ok. Got Direst without the ‘tu es’, so that was another biff. Loved Blotting Paper.
    I generally like Izetti for the workout and the precision on his clues, but thought today he was not at his very best. I say this since once I conceded the DNF I resorted to the on-line solve to compare with my efforts on my printed out grid (which is my usual method) and had to use ‘reveal’ a few times to check I was on the right track eg senate (nho sen). Normally I can ‘simply’ rely on Izetti’s wordplay.
    FOI 8a Arrival
    LOI 7d Campbell
    CODs 22a Essen/4d Blotting Paper/12d Breached are all contenders.

  2. A total disaster! 85 minutes of toil, during which virtually nothing came easily, ending up with six errors. By far my worst performance since an offering by Orpheus (when I recorded eight errors in 70+ minutes) nearly 18 months ago.

    I am too embarrassed to list most of my incorrect solutions, but I should have come up with IMPOSTOR, CAMPBELL, GIRASOL, BREACHED, ENDUE and SENATE. In fact, I did come up with BREACHED at one point before inexplicably changing it to BRoACHED. I also found SENATE, but then changed it to something else because it had to fit with my incorrect solution for 17a, which in turn had to fit with my incorrect solutions for 5d and 7d.

    BLOTTING PAPER was very good, but it took an hour to come and (with apologies to Izetti) by that stage I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the quality of the clue.

    Mrs Random also had a “bad” day. She “had no idea” about the parsing and/or solutions of several clues, so she had to fall back on her witchy ability to guess 100% correctly every time. She crossed the line successfully in 40 minutes, which is aeons for her. Mrs R obviously sympathised with my plight, as she has just brought me a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit.

    Many thanks to Izetti and BR.

  3. Agree with all the above. Tricky, took a long time and failed on the gem – girasol thing – or whatever it was. Well blogged!

  4. Just gave up at 39mins with 7-8 left. I couldn’t even be bothered to reveal the answers once I’d given up 🤷‍♂️ A quick look through the blog reveals the usual 4-5 NHOs.

    The NE was inaccessible to me other than ANGLES and TASTE. Plus I put TRIPIL which I had assumed was some NHO version of tripe=rubbish which then blocked sever.

    After yesterday’s near success, I did a count-up and since start of April have 66 completions, 22 corrected DNFs with 1 wrong. That leaves 8 more problematic and five were Izetti – so that’s now six.

    Edit: just noting on reflection there are 3 bits of specialist GK in the NE – MANNA (NHO), TROLLOPE (didn’t know Victorian or even a writer), GIRASOL (NHO) 🤷‍♂️

  5. Found this really tough – I took absolutely ages to see BLOTTING PAPER, and more than one attempt to get CAMPBELL, TROLLOP (agree about the inappropriate cluing) and GIRASOL.

    Regarding all the comments about ENDUE: some of you need to go to Choral Evensong (or Choral Mattins) more often 😉 You’ll hear it sung there during the Responses: “Endue thy ministers with righteousness / And make thy chosen people joyful”

  6. 35 min DNF after putting GORASIL and misspelling IMPOSTOR (ER).

    Not a QC and frankly a waste of time and effort. What is the point of setting such a hard puzzle?

    Thanks for the blog.

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