Quick Cryptic 2840 by Hurley

90 comments on “Quick Cryptic 2840 by Hurley”

1. Under 10min – a decent end to the week – LOI 3D, COD 22A

2. 11 minutes. I lost time having thought of SHOWBOAT early but missed the parsing so it didn’t go in until later in the proceedings. It would have helped a lot if I’d just gone with it right away.

3. One pink square, typo on a phone solve. Don’t know how anyone solves on a phone, I found this pretty easy going but most of my time was spent back tracking fat thumbs.

   Autocorrect is great with regular prose like this, but of course doesn’t work when pecking letters in a crossword.

   13 mins and one pink.

   COD BILLIONAIRE, LOI GANGSTER

   1. I feel your pain

   2. I’ve had a lot more one letter errors since I started solving on the phone. I only print out barred puzzles like Azed and Mephisto, and the occasional Friday Times 15×15. Long anagrams are the main problem with phone solving.

   3. I always solve on the phone. I think it’s just a case of what you get used to. On my blogging days I used to print it out & then enter the solution on the laptop: I ended up with far more typos that way than just doing it on the phone.

   4. On the phone is our normal MO. Sadly, practice has not ameliorated my fat finger problems.

      1. I solve on all four of phone, iPad, PC and paper. I cannot honestly detect which is fastest or slowest, but I do find the phone most prone to fat finger errors. I tend not to count those as DNFs though – it’s entirely my own statistics for my own use so I will make the rules!

4. 10.35, all good except I don’t really get how payment and punishment align. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.

   1. You will pay for your bad behaviour?

   2. Collins sense 3: “something given in return; punishment or reward”

      1. Hmm

5. I took a while to locate the access points to this one, but got there in the end.

   23A had me go down a rabbit hole as I couldn’t get LANGUISH out of my head, until I conceded it had to be wrong, and re-emerged from said burrow to see GANGSTER staring at me.

   Pi

6. I biffed SHOWBOAT, and ASPECT parsing post-submission. OCTOPUS dates back at least to Frank Norris’s 1901 novel of that name, where it referred to the Southern Pacific Railway. 7:03.

7. Steady going and no hold ups for a routine solve.
   Started with EDGE and finished with MANTRA in 7.30 with COD to BILLIONAIRE.
   Thanks to Curarist

8. 12 minutes. A good mix of the straightforward with some less common words and original defs. SHOWBOAT and OCTOPUS weren’t exactly write-ins and held me up for a few minutes at the start. The ‘way of communicating’ def for DRAWL and just being thick for HOOPLA also slowed me down near the end. I liked the IKEA-like construction for BILLIONAIRE.

   Thanks to Hurley and Curarist

9. 7.28

   The HOSPITALITY anagram crosser with SPURT and PAYMENT held me up at the end. Know what Curarist means but a good one I think. Thanks to him and Hurley

10. 13:17
    I needed pen and paper for the HOSPITALITY anagram.
    MYTH and GANGSTER my last two in.

    Thanks Curarist and Hurley

11. Gave up after 7 minutes. Around 2 of those minutes were spent on PAYMENT, but I was breezeblocked by GANGSTER.

    1. Hard luck, Busman! GANGSTER was also my LOI, but I could only think of the unparsable lAuGhTER and dAuGhTER for a while.

12. I also made heavy weather of this, especially my L2I PAYMENT and GANGSTER, which pushed me out to 13 minutes. AY MEN for “vote for men” simply didn’t come, not helped by the fact that I spell it AYE and was trying all sorts of men such as OR before I realised it was, er, “men”. Even when the penny dropped, I had to squint hard to reconcile payment and punishment. And GANGSTER is one of those clues where I found any number of wrong trees to bark up before finally finding the right one – I even wondered briefly whether Laughter or Daughter could be the answer (they fit the checkers but that is all …).

    I did not know the original “powerful organisation” meaning for OCTOPUS but as it happens, here in the UK Octopus is our fastest growing and now largest domestic power company, so it is indeed a power-full organisation. I had a suspicion that that wasn’t really what Hurley meant though!

    So a slow solve, but got there in the end. Thank you Curarist for the blog.
    Cedric

    1. 🐙😅

    2. I would think of octopus in the sense of a crime syndicate where their long tentacles are reaching into many different areas, wrapping around and getting an unshakeable grip on what they want.

       1. Sounds exactly like the power supply company to which Cedric referred.

13. I think I am the first of the devout SCC clan to post today, and this took me out to 30 mins or so. Just enough clues that would go in – hiddens weren’t very hidden, a few simpler shorts and the two long downs, to give me enough to grind through.
    Just when you think you have seen every anagrind, along comes “maybe leading to” which didn’t register until rather later, delaying 1A.
    Similar comments as others on PAYMENT (MER) and GANGSTER ( ok, clever). Bottom half slower than the slow top half. As Curarist says, not so hard in retrospect, but I haven’t yet found the trick to retrospective solving, so I’ll have to continue with the old fashioned banging head on wall approach.
    I love the diversity shown in this blog, where I was pleased to have managed my first few in 7 minutes, by which time Busman has done all but 1 and concluded that was as far as he was going. He’d probably done the 15 and a few more before I finished, but the QC was enough for me for one day!

    1. Retrospective solving! Let’s get to work on that research 🤣

14. 6:20

    Bishbashboshed my way around the grid here, picking up a decent number of acrosses on the first pass – got SHOWBOAT from definition once the first three downs were in. Left at the end with PRINCIPALLY, GANGSTER, PAYMENT and EVERYDAY solved in that order. Not too keen on PAYMENT = punishment but guess it works.

    Thanks Curarist and Hurley

15. Harder than usual for a Hurley; struggled and had to throw in the towel with three to the bad.
    1) Did think it might be HOOPLA but why? NHO the first definition. 2) Ach, ANGST, natürlich.
    3) of course AY, but can’t quite swallow punishment = PAYMENT. Yes “you will pay” = “you will be punished”, but one is active, the other is passive.
    But many to like even if CNP SHOWBOAT (NHO definition), SEMI (you mean SE is “in” Home Counties”? well, only if you go north, but north has a different function, no?) or OCTOPUS.
    Thank you, Curarist.

    1. The home counties (those around London) are in the South East of England, and hence are just SE in crossword land.

       1. Of course! Thank you so much for reminding me.

16. Fuzzy head this morning having caroused with various legal eagles in EC4 last night so happy to take 13:12 and more importantly no careless pink squares on submission. Slightly derailed by entering MULTIPLY ahead of MUSHROOM the former clearly not being capable of the most tenuous parse.
    Enjoyed this puzzle a lot, I think this was a good example of a QC as a training ground for the longer form of the game – so thank you Hurley.

    FOI was SEMI
    LOI: GANGSTER
    COD: UNPROMISING – on the basis that it is a good example of a cryptic crossword clue with the answer constructed from multiple parts without resorting to NHO stuff.

    Thank you for your blog Curarist.

    Cheers

    Horners

17. SEMI FOI, but SHOWBOAT LOI – just couldn’t see it!

    Very enjoyable, smooth puzzle. COD to MUSHROOM, not least for giving poor old MU a run out instead of PI, ETA and CHI.

    Home and hosed in 07:09 for 1.001K and an Excellent Day. Many thanks Hurley and Curarist.

    1. Forgive me for asking, Templar, but I think you’re the only one who uses this K unit of measurement – what does it mean and how does it work?

       1. K = Kevin = Kevin’s time. He usually comments early and is consistently quick. Check out the link to the Glossary on the RHS of the page.

          1. OK I think I get it – so Kevin took 7’03” and Templar took 7’09”. But 709 divided by 703 = 1.008 (not 1.001). Maybe Templar meant “roughly”?

             1. I confess that the calculation takes place in my head and is not intended to be scientifically accurate. Very proud that I got so close today, I might have an extra coffee.

             2. Actually, 429 seconds cf 423. The ratio is 1.014.

                1. So sorry! You are of course absolutely right that 7’03” is not at all the same thing as 7.03 minutes. Apologies for oversight.

       2. A K is a reference to Kevin Gregg’s completion time as you’ll find if you check out the Glossary.🙂
          Some one beat me to it.
          D’s reply landed while mine was uploading.😲

          1. Ha ha. D + 1 minute.

             1. No, I ‘m still struggling; if D is Desdeeloeste, and he took 7’11”, how is that 1 minute longer than anything? Sorry I’m so slow ….

18. NHO other definitions of SHOWBOAT and OCTOPUS, and biffed ASPECT and PAYMENT, parsing afterwards. Not the easiest of QCs, but fair. COD UNPROMISING. Thanks Hurley, and Curarist for great blog.
    PS think you have a typo for 19D

19. 18:10 for a subdued solve. Halve that time spent on SEMI, GANGSTER and SHOWBOAT. No excuse for not being able to put SEMI together and so much of this just went straight in off the word play e.g. UNPROMISING and MUSHROOM. But had to parse the last two postsolve.

    Overall a good Mon-Fri coming in at 1hr10 – are these getting easier?!?

    Have a good weekend everyone who’s not coming back 👍

    1. It’s the usual behavior of things – reversion to the mean. Science!

       (And if you think I understand why QCs are the way they are, I have something to sell you….)

       1. If science says reversion to the mean is the usual behaviour … how does that gel with the second law of thermodynamics which says entropy is always increasing in a closed system?

          1. Too deep for me I’m afraid. Anyone?

20. Just the right level for me, not too simple but got there after some deliberation. LOI GANGSTER, COD PLUMAGE. Surely 15 would read better if ‘punishment’ was changed to ‘reward’, or am I missing something?

    1. I was fine with PAYMENT like paying for one’s sins etc.

21. FOI (SEMI) and LOI (SHOWBOAT-I missed the anagram) as per Templar but 2 secs slower. OCTOPUS was my penultimate solve…I had forgotten the definition but I think we have seen it before in the dim and distant past (Times Quick Cryptic No 2339, also by Hurley, in February 2023). 7:11

22. 8.52.

23. I thought this was a step up in difficulty from yesterday. Like Jackkt, I was convinced 1ac was Showboat but couldn’t parse it, so started in the NE for a clockwise solve. Payment wasn’t a problem, but I took a long time to work out what was going on with CoD Gangster. Mushroom and Myth were also slow to come to mind. Pulled stumps at 25mins with just 1ac annoyingly unparsed, only to come here and find it was a simple anagram 🙄 Invariant

24. 24 mins. FOI SHOWBOAT. LOI UNPROMISING.

    Enjoyed this. NHO octopus in this context. Did wonder what was going on, as I thought the energy firm Octopus was unlikely to be the intended answer.

    Thanks to both Hurley and Curarist.

25. I found this tricky too. Managed to come in under my target though. SEMI was FOI, with BILL anticipated as the first part of 3d, so SHOWBOAT went in unparsed on probabilities. It remained unparsed until I read the blog. Doh! GANGSTER was LOI. 9:20. Thanks Hurley and Curarist.

26. Held up by ASPECT for way too long 🙄 The rest seemed fairly straightforward and I plugged away to a finish in my usual leisurely manner. Very enjoyable. Thanks Hurley and C.

27. I made a bit of a mess of this one having inexplicably put in HOME for 1dn even though Home is mentioned in the clue! This made 1ac rather tricky as it hadn’t occurred to me to bother to check 1dn was correct. It was unfortunate that the crosser of METAL fitted in nicely with HOME, and that there was an H in the nailed on anagram for 1ac. I eventually solved SHOWBOAT followed by the Doh realisation for 1dn.
    I eventually staggered home in 15.23, my only time this week over my ten minute target. My total time for the week was 47.55 giving me a daily average of 9.35. Not too bad considering todays shocker.

28. DNF, simply couldn’t get PAYMENT the definition really threw me… still an enjoyable puzzle.

    COD: MUSHROOM for the ‘ahhh’ moment after trying to shove various Greek characters as the definition. Thanks setter and Curarist

29. Breeze blocked by GANGSTER. Struggled through the rest in 2o minutes or so but couldn’t see past laughter and daughter at 23ac, and they were clearly wrong. I was slow on SHOWBOAT thinking that boos what was unpromising as anagram fodder. I was also slow with BILLIONAIRE, needing all the crossers.

    FOI – 5ac EDGE
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 8ac METAL

    Thanks to Hurley and Curarist

30. Finished correctly in 40 minutes. Hard going. Answers just did not seem to chime well.
    Octopus – correct answer but just seems wrong.
    Hated the reference to the Sun as a newspaper. Better just to invoke it as a synonym for rag or comic.
    Drawl= “way of communicating” ? Just seems wrong to me. Just as an accent is not a way of communicating .

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