Times Cryptic 28969 – fast fail

96 comments on “Times Cryptic 28969 – fast fail”

1. Apart from one clue to an obscure word which I class as unfair I found this puzzle quite easy and completed it in 29 minutes but with one error. I’m looking at you 3dn, ICHNEUMON, which has only ever appeared once before, 8 years ago, and attracted a number of negative comments including this from keriothe:

   “ ICHNEUMON is the kind of word that should never be clued with an anagram, IMO. The word is horribly obscure and there isn’t anything particularly outstanding in the clue to justify it, particularly in a competition. I did manage to put all the letters in the right places but it stretched my ‘what Greek words tend to look like’ skills to the limit”.

   But at least with an anagram and checkers one stands a chance of getting the correct answer if one doesn’t know the word, whereas today’s partial homophone clue contains a bear-trap that few are likely to avoid other than by chance. I was aware of Cardinal Newman and noted from ‘in speech’ that the spelling of his name needed to be altered so I changed it to NEUMAN. This had the advantage of being a standard alternative spelling of the surname based on the German for ‘new’ which is ‘neu’ and also ties in neatly with ‘in Germany I / ICH’ which precedes it. A nice little touch I thought until I looked up the mongoose later and found it is spelt ICHNEUMON. I resolved recently to be more relaxed about dodgy homophones which I now refer to in my blogs as ‘aural wordplay’, but how with the best will in the world one is supposed to deduce that Newman becomes NEUMON is beyond me. PAH!

   1. The word was familiar to me through a black metal album from 2003 called ‘The Ichneumon Method’, by the Axis of Perdition. In other words, sheer luck. I do believe the mongoose synonymy is too obscure (especially for a supposedly easy SNITCH rating?) but I’m not experienced as you!

      I missed ALGONQUIN and DIOCESAN today; I blame the football last night (it started at 2am where I am). Was stupidly trawling through my very limited roster of Native American personages rather than thinking about names of tribes – classic fuzzy brain.

      1. The SNITCH disregards the times of solvers with errors. For this puzzle, 13 reference solvers were excluded, an unusually high number.

         1. Ah, didn’t know that, thanks. So for most people who were correct spellers of ‘ichneumon’, this was relatively gentle.

         2. I’m late to solve this as always, but was moved to comment thanks for this clarification!

            I have often wondered how puzzles I find particularly difficult get such (relatively) low snitch scores. Perhaps a reference solver submitted with error should automatically score 200 on the snitch. Then the average snitch would be more representative of the genuine difficulty of the puzzle.

   2. I thoroughly agree with you, Jack, (and with keriothe) about ICHNEUMON. I, too, opted for ICHNEUMAN. Pah, indeed!

      1. Another ICHNEUMAN here. It’s a double pah from me!

         1. Agreed. I opted for ICHNEWMON, after considering and deciding against the U. (Written acrossways rather than down in the grid it looks silly.)
            Otherwise very quick and easy.

            1. You were not alone with the bizarre animal ICHNEWMON (perhaps I was thinking in Scots?).

   3. Count me in as another ichneuman. Nightmare clue.

   4. I fully agree with you jackkt. It’s extremely unfair: even if you knew how to spell the word, it’s unlikely that you’d think to accent the second syllable in speech. This is the only way of divining the homophone correctly, but it still doesn’t give you any clue to the correct final vowel. Unless you know Greek (where you won’t find nominative nouns in -AN except for some gerunds) you’ll almost certainly opt for -MAN instead of -MON.

2. I also failed on 3d which is a word I don‘t know. I got the idea of the clue but spelt it ICHNEUMAN (like Jack it seems). Apart from that, I found this very easy finishing in 15:13.
   Thanks setter and blogger
   Steve

3. Another DNF thanks to the mongoose, although for variety I tried ICHNEWMON, which in hindsight looks very silly. I did consider a U, but couldn’t make the pronunciation work, probably thanks to NEU (the German for new) being pronounced NOY.

   Anyway, horrid word, but nastily clued.

   Thanks both.

4. 24:37 with one wrong, I got as far as NEUMAN but stopped myself writing it in because it didn’t look right. So I went with ICHNEUMEN. A horrible clue. I liked THREESOME

5. Well, well. Hello, Neumon. 18.17 for me but ‘used aids’ (ie cheated) to figure out the mongoose, finally getting the thumbs up after the endings ‘man’, ‘min’ and ‘myn’ all failed. I am entirely with Jack on this, it’s too obscure a word to be clued with a homonym requiring random guesswork. Anyway, enjoyed the rest of it and was pleased to get some tricky ones like DIRECTRIX and the eye thing in good time.

   From Drifter’s Escape:
   ‘Oh, help me in my weakness,’
   I heard the drifter say,
   As they carried him from the courtroom
   And were taking him away.
   ‘My trip hasn’t been a PLEASANT one
   And my time it isn’t long,
   And I still do not know
   What it was that I’ve done wrong.’

   1. Hello, Neumon. Very good.

6. 16 minutes with LOI ICHNEUMON. I had heard of the word and thought that the kindly light that led me there would need amending to ON. ALGONQUIN came courtesy of the hotel and Dorothy Parker. You might as well live, we only lost a football game. This enjoyably played to my knowledge base. Mind you, I only know DIRECTRIX from Maths and not as today’s blogger. Thank you Kitty and setter.

7. 25 minutes Easiest for some time. FOI OPHTHALMOSCOPE (lots of eye examinations with my diabetes).
   Then BALTI, BRONTOSAURUS, DUCKS AND DRAKES. Knew ICHNEUMON which was the only real difficulty. LOI STODGE

8. 9:59
   I rushed to get in under 10′–first in a long, long time–which was pretty stupid, considering I’d just got 2 errors on the QC by perfunctory proofreading. Anyway, biffed several–THREESOME, RUN-UP, LANDMARK….–parsed post-submission. ALGONQUIN as per Boltonw. ICHNEUMON because I knew the word; no idea it meant mongoose. Live and learn; or more likely, live and forget. No one seems to have mentioned that BRONTOSAURUS is dated, the name having been changed by whoever does that sort of thing to Apatosaurus (if I recall the spelling correctly).

9. And sell the mighty space of our large honours
   For so much trash as may be grasped thus?

   I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
   Than such a Roman.
   (Brutus in Julius Caesar)

   20 gentle mins mid-brekker. No ticks, crosses or MERs. I know the mongoose, liqueur and pupil-scope. And the nonsense writer, but not the composer.
   Ta setter and K

   1. I bet you’ve heard of The Merry Widow’, though, which is his most famous work. Not a composer that appeals to me, however…

10. 14’27”, with 90″ spent on DIOCESAN. I’d entered ICHNEUMON correctly, as it turned out, and was determined not to be stressed about it, as I reach my three-score-years-and-ten today.

    I’d never connected the DIRECTRIX in maths to a woman either. Incidentally, the BALTI is a British (Birmingham) invention.

    Thanks kitty and setter.

    1. Happy birthday Rob. I’m a few months in front of you, and can tell you that like every other ‘significant’ birthday the date comes and goes and makes absolutely no difference to anything…

    2. Happy Birthday! Enjoy something disgraceful! My choirmaster refers to a female narrator as a Narratrix, otherwise I would have been completely stumped. And he’s out of the ark, in attitudes, if not years!

11. Well I thought I was trundling along nicely having worked out the itchy scratchy thing and finally that 5d was an anagram all in 26 mins, only to come here and read Kitty’s blog and Jacks comment. Having obviously never heard of the mongoose, I had MAN. I agree with all above comments on this silly word.

    I only got the scope right as I had LEHAR in first and counted the letters very carefully. Hmmm, two Hs eh?

    Thanks Kitty and setter.

12. Very quick today. I knew ichneumon because it is a species of wasp. A whole family indeed, the ichneumonidae. Had no idea about mongeese.
    My 8 year old grandson informs me that you are not supposed to use the word brontosaurus nowadays, it is an apatosaurus, as Collins confirms.

    1. Maybe the clue should have read ‘An EXTINCT Jurassic herbivore…’

    2. What if it’s an apatosaurus that identifies as a brontosaurus?

    3. Mongooses. And I finally looked ICHNEUMON up and realized I was thinking of the wasp. Tell your grandson he’s quite bright, although I think I beat him to it; see above.

       1. Thank you Kevin .. I did say I had no idea about them. I see that Collins agrees with you; but the OED is more broadminded, “Plural: mongooses, (irregular) mongeese, (irregular) mongoose, (irregular) mongooze.”

          1. mongooze? That’s not irregular, it’s bleeding loony! One goose/two gooze? One house/two houze?

    4. The Natural History Museum (https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/brontosaurus-reinstating-a-prehistoric-icon.html) has this: “…a study in 2015 unexpectedly found evidence that Brontosaurus was distinct from Apatosaurus all along, signalling the reinstated status of this iconic dinosaur.” And Wikipedia agrees. So the brontosaurus is back! Don’t forget to let your grandson know.

       1. Yes! And apparently the debate rumbles on! You would think after 150 million years, the matter would have been settled by now.

          My grandson will be gutted.

    5. That’s where I knew the word from. NHO the mongoose.

13. 6:22. N0t far off a PB for me and faster than today’s QC. I knew ICHNEUMON from the fly of the same name, but didn’t know it was a mongoose. DIRECTRIX was unknown but generously clued. I liked the pupil examiner. Thanks Kitty and setter (who I think, from the style, may also be today’s QC setter).

14. I knew Ichneumon wasps but not the mongoose. Poor clue but everything else was OK.

15. 25 minutes Easiest for some time. FOI OPHTHALMOSCOPE (lots of eye examinations with my diabetes).
    Then BALTI, BRONTOSAURUS (the thunder lizard), DUCKS AND DRAKES. Knew ICHNEUMON which was the only real difficulty. LOI STODGE

16. Knew about ichneumon wasps though was unaware there was a mongoose of the same name. Thought the wordplay fair enough, though I note much chuntering. Thanks for parsing RUN-UP, I couldn’t see where the ‘up’ was coming from.
    16.14

17. 18:03

    There were a lot of answers outside of my ken this morning so I had to rely on wordplay and a little good fortune, particularly in opting for the right MAN/MEN/MON ending for the unknown 3D.

    MALLOW, ICHNEUMON, ALGONQUIN, and DIRECTRIX were totally new, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard that game being called DUCKS AND DRAKES. Luckily the bits in-between were mostly straightforward, and all of the long clues went in on first reading.

    Thanks to both.

18. DNF, defeated by the unknown ICHNEUMON. I thought of Newman, but I ruled it out because I assumed that kind of cardinal would require a capital C. I wouldn’t have got the spelling right anyway.

    Took a long time to spell OPHTHALMOSCOPE correctly; had no idea what was going on with RUN-UP (I need to add the NUR to my bank of trade unions); needed the checkers to get the unfamiliar DUCKS AND DRAKES and DIRECTRIX; and wasn’t sure why there was a question mark in the clue for RAKES.

    Thanks Kitty and setter.

    COD Diocesan

19. 11.20
    I also knew ICHNEUMON from the wasp (and Cardinal NEWMAN from the later renaming of my alma mater Preston Catholic College).
    The dead bishop in the Monty Python sketch looked a bit Bath and Wells-ish, but turned out to have Leicester, also diocesan, tattooed on the back of the neck.
    LOI LANDMARK

    1. When were you at Preson CC? I have some college friends who were there in the late 60s.

20. 18:14. My only defence for ICHNEUMON is that I guessed correctly. The U instead of W was a pretty safe bet. Not sure why I went for O instead of A, maybe I did recall it at some level.

    COD to DIRECTRIX although I’d forgotten it as a mathematical term until seeing the comments above.

    Thanks Kitty and setter.

    1. My first guess was ‘dominatrix’, but a couple of cuffs with the latex gloves and I saw the error of my ways.

21. I’d heard of ICHNEUMON but not as a mongoose. Finished in a little under 15. Thought of Trollope’s Dr. Thorne for the Bath and Wells bishopric number.

22. Is there any news on who the next crossword editor will be?

23. Pretty pleased with my 12.14 and no errors, partly because there were a few words not in the ordinary run of things, and partly because I know how to spell ICHNEUMON. My nearly error was in OPHTHAMASCOPE but I counted the letters to correct it in time.
    Unusual in 23d to have “old man” not cluing PA, and while KEN is of course a man’s name ,convention suggests that an abbreviated name should be clued with “boy” or some such.

24. 19:59
    Cantered through this for the most part. Don’t know how I knew ICHNEUMON but I did. DIRECTRIX was new – has a hint of S&M about it. Held up for some time by not seeing the anagram in DICOSESAN and hunting for a word beginning DR. BRONTOSAURUS by The Move is today’s earworm.

    Thaks to Kitty and the setter

25. DNF. Was mostly easy, leaving L3I as the mongoose, 4a MEDIOCRE as I didn’t have DIOCESAN because I whacked in ophthalmAscope without thinking; and as I was cheating by now I found 5d Diazepam which gave me mediocre. Couldn’t parse the drug (Valium) but knew it was an antidepressant so shrugged. The mongoose popped up instantly in Cheating Machine, also the valium.
    I agree about the complaints for 3d. I think I’ve seen it before; probably cheated then too.
    Didn’t know the mathematical Directrix. It wasn’t in maths, add maths or A-level, nor did it appear in my Engineering degree either so I was a bit surprised there.

26. Well, that was pretty annoying. Raced through the puzzle only to grind to a halt on the last two. You will all have guessed one of them. I had ICH, but even if I’d thought of a Cardinal (which I should have) I would have put ‘man’, not ‘mon’ for the obvious reason that the homophone doesn’t work otherwise. Instead, I looked up mongoose and found the term as referring to the Egyptian of the species. My other non-finish was DIOCESAN, where I was fooled by ‘doctor once’ and failed to see the anagram, added to which Bath and Wells was so obvious as a diocese that I automatically discounted it, looking for water-related parts! Tomorrow is another day…

    1. Me too spent ages, guessed DIOGENES to start with…..

27. 21 mins. Immediately typed BRONCOSAURUS for some age related reason, then struggled with 18 across. Fortunately knew ICHNEUMON, but unlike Scrabble, you need to know what a word means here. As I didn’t, it was perhaps a bit more like Scrabble.

28. 9:13 Funny how some folk complain about clues to words they don’t know. And this often seems to apply to flora & fauna, whereas technical sporting & engineering terms get a pass. I didn’t know DIRECTRIX but you could work it out from the wordplay, and I’m pleased to have learned something new today. For anyone that’s interested, ICHNEUMON is from the Greek for a tracker, i.e. an animal that tracks other animals, so ichneumon wasps (the only kind I’d previously heard of) track spiders, while the mongooses track down and kill snakes. The ichneumon shows up in mythology as a dragon-slayer. Is none of that vaguely interesting? Plus, ICHNEUMON has more Google hits than DIRECTRIX, which no one is complaining about! Anyway, that was a good puzzle for a Monday, and COD goes to DIOCESAN, which I thought was a nice anagram.

    1. I don’t remember anyone complaining just because they didn’t know a word. Nobody is unhappy about DIRECTRIX because the wordplay is unambiguous, which is emphatically not the case for ICHNEUMON.

       1. Fair enough, and I agree it’s a poor clue (in terms of the surface reading) but you’d rule out a lot of homophones if you insisted on unambiguous wordplay. Maybe I’m biased (as a old Classicist) but I don’t think it’s a particularly obscure word, and if you’ve got a word for an animal starting with ICH, and you know the last part sounds like NEWMAN (which it does in the UK at least) I would have thought the ICH should point you in the direction of Greek (no surprise for a scientific name); many Greek words have EU in them and many end in -ON (in fact I can’t think of any that end in -AN). I was wondering if the original wording was about flies or wasps then got changed to mongooses since that’s the only British use listed in Collins. Not that it would have improved the clue much…

          1. Nothing’s obscure if you’re heard of it of course, but based on a quick tally this clue seems to have caught out approximately half of the people commenting here, and a significant proportion of those who got it were either guessing (this includes me) or relying on having heard of a wasp with the same name. By this empirical measure I’d say it definitely qualifies as obscure.

             1. Right, I completely agree on the obscurity of the mongoose, but only on the basis that I’ve heard of the fly / wasp. My point was that the word itself isn’t obscure, and if you knew the word you could easily guess (as I did) that the same word could be used to refer to both insects and mammals. I seem to remember that the appearance of FRITILLARY (both butterfly and flower) raise similar issues a few weeks ago.

                1. A word that half the contributors here don’t know (in any context) qualifies as obscure IMO.

          2. Plenty of words ending in -αν, but I can’t think of any nouns except the god Πάν and gerunds like τὸ ὁρᾶν.

             1. I was meaning words borrowed into English. I suppose Pan would count, but there are hundreds ending in -on, including quite a lot of genus / species names, etc., since that was the nominative neuter ending.

29. 7:45. I flew through most of this, but then got badly stuck on my last three: MEDIOCRE, DIOCESAN and of course ICHNEUMON.
    I somehow managed to guess the ending of the last right: it seemed the most likely ending for a Greek-looking word, and perhaps at a subconscious level I remembered its last appearance. The O was a bit counterintuitive, because I would expect it to be pronounced ‘mon’, but according to Chambers at least the last vowel is a schwa so the homophone does work. Still, a dreadful clue.

    1. Collins will pronounce the word aloud for you, which I occasionally find useful.. not sure how definitive it is

       1. It seems to agree with Chambers, anyway.

30. 9:48 after struggling a bit with the Neumon/Newman non homophone. One for our temporary editor’s spike that should have been I think.
    Thanks to the compiler & to Kitty.

    1. According to Collins it is a homophone all right ..

       1. Well, ‘ich’ doesn’t sound like ‘ick’ to me.

          1. ICH isn’t part of the homophone.

31. I had all but four completed in just over twenty minutes, but slowed to a virtual standstill in the ne corner. My main problem was spelling OPTHALMOSCOPE with an A instead of the middle O, which was pure carelessness as I know how to spell it. After finally finding my mistake the rest followed fairly quickly, but by now the clock said 37.30. When I came to check the answers I then find I have joined the long list of those that ICHNEUMAN for 3dn. Grrrrrr……

32. 19:32 but…

    …I cheated with the NHO ICHNEUMON – I got as far as ICHNE_M_N after which there are too many combinations (W_O, U_A, U_O) – so a bit of an unfair clue for a very obscure word imho.

    Otherwise, the only hold up was through having entered STOOGE rather than STODGE which delayed the obvious DUCKS AND DRAKES from being confidently entered, but corrected eventually.

    Thanks Kitty and setter for a fun Monday puzzle

33. Avoided the mongoose trap, but that’s probably the Classical education. Taken with dear old UR, I have a mental picture of a senior member of the setting fraternity rubbing his hands with glee as the comments pour in.

    15 minutes.

34. 24 minutes. ICHNEUMON is one of the few words I can remember from my “Words I’ve forgotten from crosswords” file, sitting there nicely between “ichabod” and “ichor”. The rest went in at no great pace, with a few parsed only after biffing the answer. DIOCESAN was my last in after a few minutes of effort.

    Favourite was the lean and hungry looking labs racing to their much deserved bone.

    Thanks to Kitty and setter

35. I did solve this one. Ichneumon was tough, but I knew it ended in -mon, which helped. Bath and Wells might be tricky for non-UK solvers, but my knowledge of 18th-century British history and Walpole’s schemes of promoting bishops who voted for him in the House of Lords helped – I believe Bath and Wells was a plum appointment, well worth a vote. Algonquin? – yes, as chair of the roads committee, I have got the tax district to spend $200K to pave Algonquin Lane this year, so it is right at the top of my brain.

    Time: 24 minutes

36. 30 mins but no idea about the mongoose. Thought it was something to do with “his eminence”, or “your eminence” in speech.

    But pleased to get everything else quickly.

    MALLOW another Watership Down clue, where I get my obscure plants from. Also Campion, Chervil, Buckthorn, Speedwell.

37. 22:10 – easy till it was difficult, with the mongoose LOI and correct – no thanks to any precise knowledge of its termination on my part.

38. ICHNEUMON was easy since so far as I can remember from my boyhood interest in butterflies and moths the ichneumon fly (wasp perhaps?) was a nuisance since it lays its eggs in the caterpillars and that kills them. More than a nuisance, maybe. I had no idea of the connection with the mongoose, but perhaps the ichneumon fly is a parasite of mongooses, I suspected.

    No problems really, until at the end three in the SE corner proved a bit tricky. 27 minutes.

39. I didn’t appreciate having to cheat for ICHNEUMON, after all the checkers were in. DIOCESAN held me up only because I had an A where an O should go in OPHTHALMOSCOPE (my second one in, albeit imperfectly).

40. Half an hour but ICHNEUMON was beyond me. I wondered if a cardinal was a RED MAN or if a SERMON had anything do with it. The Oratory isn’t far from here so I should have thought of Newman, but it probably wouldn’t have helped if I had. DUCKS AND DRAKES was new to me but plausible. Thanks Kitty.

41. 32:16. peeked at a dictionary to get ICHNEUMON. I’m hoping that’s allowed sorta. LANDMARK took a while for some reason too, and otherwise it all went in very quickly. thanks Setter and Kitty

42. Came to this late and finished in a pretty quick 23′ of which some 5 mins were taken on 3dn, before resorting to Google. So 95% of almost QC level clues and then one stinker, not a good puzzle in my opinion, much as many others have said. Thanks Kitty

43. 27 minutes but I think it was just luck that I got the right spelling of ICHNEUMON. Well, half luck and half having just got back from Greece, perhaps. I was also lucky that just yesterday I was reading a document that listed an Imperatrix and a Demonstratrix, which made DIRECTRIX rather less of a stretch…

44. Easy enough except where it wasn’t.
    I had ICHNEUMAN , knowing the cardinal from Preston but not the mongoose or the fly.
    My high-flyer was a Hawk for a long time, until the lark ascended.
    I enjoyed most of this.
    David

45. Looked up ICHNEUMON so technically a DNF, but otherwise I found this more accessible than today’s QC (failed spectacularly on 3 clues). Enjoy learning new words so will add the aforementioned mongoose and DIRECTRIX to my growing list. LOI LANDMARK took up most of my time although not sure why. NHO DUCKS AND DRAKES as a game. Pleased to get the S and the C the right way round in DIOCESAN 😄 Thanks all.

    1. Ditto everything you said, fabian: so a DNF for me too — but I was happy to speedily travel through the remaining clues, especially OPHTHALMOSCOPE, where a run-in with that word in a previous puzzle had taught me the structure of the opening letters. BALTI in a recent puzzle, otherwise I would not have known it.

46. 23:53
    LOI was LANDMARK, held up by thinking of HAWK before LARK, and unable to make any sensible words beginning H.

47. This was easy and I thought I had a very fast time. But it was not to me since I’d put ICHNEUMAN like many others, so a pink square and a DNF. I took 17 minutes on this compared with 13 minutes to finish the quickie, pretty close (except I was all correct on the quickie).

    My mother was the head of PE at Bath Diocesan Girls School so DIOCESAN was instantly in for me, with both the See and the answer.

    Kitty doesn’t have a COD but I think we all agree on the WCOD.

48. 14.53 with -MAN. No excuses as I did Greek many moons ago

    Liked the dire tricks but COD to my home town clue with its clever “Doctor once said”

    Thanks setter and Kitty

    1. I missed the anagram indicator for “once said” – D’oh! So didn’t get DIOCESAN.

49. So, for the people who’ve never heard of ducks and drakes, what would you call that “game” when you skim flat stones across a pond. Just curious. Is it maybe a British thing? We always called it that when I was growing up near London.

    1. I would call it ‘skimming flat stones across a pond’ 😉

50. Got off to a flying start and thought I was doing the QC. But then it was down to earth and a long hold-up in the NE corner, which meant a total time of 21 minutes. No problem with ICHNEUMON as I had all the crossers and it was the only word I knew which fitted.
    FOI – BALTI
    LOI – MEDIOCRE
    COD – DIRECTRIX
    Thanks to Kitty and other contributors.

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