Quick Cryptic 6 by Hurley

27 comments on “Quick Cryptic 6 by Hurley”

1. 11 minutes – enjoyed the Irish flavour of 12a on St Patrick’s Day. Including the clue has been tried before and makes a lot of sense – has just never caught on. The fate of many things that make sense?

   Very professional blog – but what else were we to expect from the cat man? 🙂

2. Well done in the face of adversity, m. I sympathise with not finding the puzzle there when you expected it. Does your sub cover the e-paper If so, that would give you access to the facsimile of the printed newspaper from around dawn, where the puzzle has (so far) appeared correctly each day. And you can actually print it from there!

   I finished in 15 minutes with everything parsed on paper as I went along. I’ve nothing more to say about the puzzle, but on the blog (since you asked) I would prefer not to see the clues. But if others like them there and you want to continue the practice, might I suggest you put an extra space at the end of each item as I found this quite hard to read?

   As a matter of interest, did you type them in manually, copy and paste them one at a time or do you have some means of importing them en bloc? Or (d) none of the above?

   Edited at 2014-03-17 07:32 am (UTC)

   1. Unfortunately I don’t have access to the e-paper.

      Re the clues, another option (as suggested by Andy) is to add the appropriate HTML tags such that the clue can be seen only by hovering over the clue number. I will go down this route if this first attempt doesn’t prove popular. In either case, I think the only way to enter the clues is manually (via copy/paste or typing) – I did it via typing. I have noted your comment re finding it hard to read.

      1. Hiding the clue would be a better option just as long as bloggers are not all required to follow suit on their watch.

         By the traditional method I find I can scan through a blog in only a few minutes and understand it all without having to think what’s clue and what’s explanation.

3. Thanks mohn2.

   Just under an hour for me. CAST=drop in 11a. seems very loose to me. Maybe I’m missing something?

   I really liked SHAMROCK and CRUISE.

   Personally neither for nor against the clues being in the post but agree a different format would be required to make it more legible.

   Edit: I forgot to mention that the setter’s pseudonym is absent from the web version.

   Edited at 2014-03-17 09:18 am (UTC)

   1. Though cast would perhaps be more often used in the sense of throwing, drop is one of the definitions in Chambers. I’m guessing that the setter wanted the surface to refer to, say, dropping underperforming players from a football team.
      1. Ah thanks, I see it as discard in the Oxford now.

         I’ve noticed Chambers referred to often here. Is it a preferred dictionary of solvers then?

         1. I think Collins might be the preferred dictionary for the Times daily, but it’s quite rare that a word/definition crops up that isn’t also supported by Chambers. Other puzzles (such as the Mephisto and Listener) specify Chambers as their primary reference but I wouldn’t like to say how often a word crops up in those puzzles that can’t be found in another dictionary. Myself, I only have Chambers.
            1. Thanks. I just looked at Collins and was interested to see that the word drop occurs explicitly in the definition whereas it is absent from the definitions in the Oxford and Chamber that I can access.

               This may explain why I occasionally perceive definitions to be a bit tenuous. I normally use the Oxford simply because it is conveniently built into my computer. I’ll check out the other dictionaries before asking a question like this again.

               Thanks again for your help.

            2. I’ve always understood that Collins and the COED (that’s the smallish one-volume Oxford) are the main sources for the Times. In my experience it’s fairly common for Chambers not to have the exact shade of meaning or synonym used in the clue, but I keep all three to hand for blogging and commenting purposes, just in case.

               All this could change under the new editor of course.

               1. Tim Moorey’s book confirms what you wrote about Collins and COED jackkt.
4. E-paper, I thought? What e-paper? Since my sub to the Times includes just about everything, it’s been a joy of sorts to discover yet another version I can read, for which many thanks. I suppose it helps in understanding how it’s possible for the errors in some of the versions creep in. As to the Quickie: I’ve found a new way to occupy my time while the morning tea kettle’s boiling, though the dreaded word “Plant” held me up and heralded my LOI. My approval of clues being shown in the blog (it saves having to refer back to one’s own version when, for example, looking up the word “plant”) should not be taken as an indication that everyone else (and especially me) should do it.
5. Thanks mohn2. I must say like having the clues there to refer to, although it does make it a bit busy. By the same token I prefer it when people refer to the answer when commenting so you don’t have to look at the clue to understand what they’re on about!
   4¼ minutes for this, so definitely at the easy end of the spectrum.

6. Thanks Mohn! If it’s a lot of extra trouble to include the clues I wouldn’t bother. 8 minutes here but 2 of those were spent sorting out that maddening business with the letters prancing about all over the place because I forgot to turn off the skipping thing when I started. Shamrock went in right off the bat because of the date.
   1. Sorted out the “prancing ” problem by not using skip facility and it seemed to work …5mins seemed about right for this puzzle. I must admit I don’t go very often to the e-paper to do the crossword as it means cheating when you eventually submit! Having said that …I’ve probably run out of the option!

      Edited at 2014-03-17 10:20 am (UTC)

7. Just under 7 mins for this one. I was held up at the end by CRUISE and the SOMERSET/ONLOOKER crossers.
8. The turn off skip option doesn’t work for the last letter – if it’s already there when you type it, you’ve been moved on to the next clue, so the letter goes into the first available space.
   Nevertheless, even with the time spent on going back to fix errors, I was done in under 5 min, with nearly all the acrosses being write-ins.
9. Just over half an hour (once it finally appeared after last Wednesday’s had been erroneously shown online instead for several hours). For a world class newspaper, I have to say I find the stream of cockups that have accompanied the launch of this new offering quite extraordinary. Lack of QA, apparent lack of UAT – basics of any new product. Anyway, end of rant…

   Found this an odd mix of enjoyable clues (liked HAIRDO and CRUISE) and ones I personally found a bit questionable.

   The equation of country dwellers with PEASANTs may cause some consternation amongst the rural squirearchy (not, of itself, necessarily a bad thing – but caused problems for me as a humble solver).

   SOMERSET as the solution to the definition “cricketers” also seemed a bit iffy – and I say that (in all modesty) as someone who many years ago actually turned out for the Somerset junior teams. If Somerset equals cricketers, does (e.g.) Norwich equal footballers? Whilst appreciating the answer can be derived from the wordplay quite easily, surely a definition should be, well, somewhat definitive?

   1. I think all the county cricket sides tend to be referred to just as the county name, also we’ve had this cricket team/county equivalence at least once before in the main cryptic puzzle (Yorkshire in puzzle number 25485), so I must admit this didn’t give me pause when I was filling in the grid. I’d find it a little jarring to see Norwich clued by footballers, partly because to me the club is Norwich City and partly because of the club’s general lack of footballing fame (two League Cup wins notwithstanding) – Chelsea would be a different matter. I suppose it’s a bit of a grey area depending on one’s interest in a particular sport/team, but I doubt we’re going to see the day where, say, Coventry is clued by speedway team.

      Chambers has one definition of PEASANT as “a person who lives in the country”, but I would agree that in general use the word has connotations that country-dwellers might be offended by.

10. about 4:40 here, which I think probably makes it on the easy side for the Quick. Too early to tell, but I’m expecting my average for these to be around 6 minutes – so far my best was 3:40, slowest 10:16.

    I looked at it at around 9am, by which time they had the right puzzle up (although the setter’s name is still missing even now).

    @nick – the Times IT department don’t have any (effective) QA, and UAT (User Acceptance Testing, if anybody was wondering) is done by the paying customers. However, the editor did mention that they agreed to put the software in early as they “couldn’t use the old software”, and this was the only way to get the new puzzle online. So they haven’t written the timer or print option yet then…

    1. All a desperate last-minute bodge then. They should be ashamed to take our money.
       1. We didn’t actually contract for an extra x-word! I suppose if they did perfect the site without any glitches then it would pave the way for a pay as you solve option?

          Edited at 2014-03-17 04:16 pm (UTC)

11. Thank you for being so informative. Having the clues there as well as the explanations and further incidental tips was great for someone like me trying to learn howvto solve these cryptic puzzles. These quick ones are a good way in and so advice was very welcome.
12. When I blog on fifteensquared I use an excellent piece of software written by Paul Drury, which prints the clues and presents the blog in one of a variety of formats chosen by the blogger. (I was like jackkt and saw no need for the clues, reckoning that anyone who read the blog would have done the crossword and so would have the clues to hand; but my initially rather doubtful offering of the clues has been met with apparently universal approval, and I don’t think anyone on fifteensquared omits the clues now.)

    But unfortunately this marvellous program is only available to bloggers of the crosswords that are on fifteensquared, so not The Times. However, there are plenty of similar offerings out there.

    1. Thanks for this interesting comment. Do you know how this software works, by any chance? Is it accessing a (Crossword Compiler format?) file on each paper’s web server?
       1. Sorry, I’m pretty ignorant about how it works. I know the Independent has the crossword using Crossword Compiler on its site, and I think the program automatically trawls all the sites and finds the crosswords on them. The Indy and the Guardian are free; not sure about them all but I don’t know of any that charge, like The Times.
13. The FT is a free downloadable one, just to add to the list.

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