Times Quick Cryptic 1530 by Izetti

40 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1530 by Izetti”

1. An easy one, where I got in under 4 minutes, but with a typo that I can’t figure out: PEE for POE. FILIBUSTER in the US normally refers to a US Senator talking on and on and on to delay some action (filibustering is not possible in the House). James Stewart does it, I believe, in ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’. 3:47 but.
   1. ‘Pee for Poe’ doubtless sung to the tune of ‘Tea for Two’. (Irving Caesar)

      FOI 10ac ERA

      LOI JERSEY not quite GANSEY – which is similarly derived

      COD & WOD 1ac FILIBUSTERED

      Time 9.45 mins

      Edited at 2020-01-20 08:20 am (UTC)

      1. Actually, probably a Freudian slip; I do these right after breakfast.
2. I was heading for a time well under 10 minutes before grinding to a halt over a couple of clues. All the long answers seemed pretty easy to me. ELL I have learnt from crosswords and parsing STEVEDORE delayed me a bit but I knew the definition.
   Hold-ups were THEREFORE (briefly), NEEDY where having got the currency I was looking for NEYED. And finally a long pause to work out 7d. I thought the definition was Channel for a while and I finally got Mersey,an English channel but realised it did not parse. But then it was a short hop to JERSEY to finish in 17:40.
   A nice start to the week from Izetti. David
3. 6.59 with the last minute on JERSEY where I struggled to get SELSEY out of my mind even though it’s by the side of rather than in the English Channel. COD to 3D for the anagram disguise – I had BANK then blank until I had some checkers for that. A nice start to the week, thanks all

   NeilC

4. My quickest ever Izetti, I think. Until I got to 18A I was heading for a clean sweep, but I had to leave that to come back to as my LOI. All very smooth as usual from Don. I liked TEETOTALLERS best for the surface. 3:19.
   1. Yowsers, that is QUICK!! Chapeau! You’ll have the Neutrino Police looking hard at you now!
      1. Where did you find 18A?
         1. Eyesight problem. I should have put my reading glasses on to comment. I meant 16A – STEVEDORE.
5. Sub 10 but still 2.5K but no “but” … I’m struggling to categorise this. I think I’m going to call it a Decent Enough Day. It would have been faster except for my ignorance of the other meaning of “thorn” and resultant pen-chewing about what could be going on and whether Thor was the old character. Thanks for lightening my darkness, Jack.

   FOI FILIBUSTERED, LOI POE, COD STEVEDORE.

   Thanks Jack and Don.

   Templar

6. I didn’t like the answer flame, as was said old flame is the erstwhile lover. If the ? covers that eventuality, what is the need for erstwhile “a lover?” would have been sufficient.
7. The longer anagrams just dropped out for me so I whizzed theough most of this and was hoping for a super-quick time until I came to a grinding halt with JERSEY, EXPRESS, and POE. I didn’t help myself by biffing ODE for 20d (no, me neither) so Express became impossible.
   I liked NEEDY, STEVEDORE, and ALIEN but could kick myself for making such heavy weather of my last, easy, entries. Once again, my experience mirrors that of david above, especially with Mersey and with timing – I ended up with an almost identical time. Annoying to be over 4K because this was a gift from Izetti. Thanks, both. John M.
8. 15 minutes but with a typo in 22a.
   Had owl at 17a which delayed therefore.

   Also spent a while on Jersey, which gets my COD.

9. Technical DNF due to a stupid misspelling of TEaTOTALLER (note to self – always check the anagrist). Otherwise I was heading for a fast enough time. JERSEY was my LOI.
   1. I’m another one who plumped for TEaTOTALLERS so a DNF but then I had also correctly guessed ELL and THORN in my rush to finish.
10. Izetti seemed to be in a generous mood with this one. Like flashman I initially put an uncertain OWL in at 17a which caused me problems with THEREFORE. I was unfamiliar with the second meanings of ERICA and THORN so they went in only semi-parsed. Finished in 8.43 with my CoD going to STEVEDORE and WOD to FILIBUSTERED.
    Thanks to jackkt
11. Whizzed through this. Very enjoyable. Izetti puzzles range from very challenging to pretty straightforward but wherever they sit on the difficulty spectrum, there is a security to them because you know the clueing will be fair. The surfaces here are great. I liked lots of individual clues including 1 and 9 across and 18 down. Re 14 across, I think “yen” made an appearance last week, too. I was fine with “flame ” because the connotations are clear.

    When I did my degree, aeons ago, I studied Old English so regularly came across Thorn and its near neighbour, Eth (you might be interested in:
    http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2013/08/eth-thorn-and-ash-they-flunked-the-screen-test-for-our-alphabet/)

    The hidden “ear” in 6 across when you are only looking for a 3 letter word was an easy one but I liked very much the additional phrase, “listener engaged there”.

    Thanks so much, Jackkt, for the great blog and thanks, too, to Izetti, for another super puzzle.

12. I set off quickly with FLAME and FILIBUSTERED and carried on until after around 6 minutes I had all except JERSEY. This clue on its own took me between 2 and 3 minutes, until I finally realised the definition was top and not channel. As with David, MERSEY came to mind first, then the hop to JERSEY. Nice puzzle. 9:08. Thanks Izetti and Jack.
13. 24:28 while watching the entertaining end to the Test is lightening for me. Don’t normally finish an Izetti with any ease. FOI ALIEN, LOI JERSEY, pleased with myself for remembering THORN. Thanks Jackkt and the Don.
14. At one point I thought this was going to be sub-20, which I don’t think I have ever managed for Izetti, but my last two, 7d and 16ac, put paid to that idea, pushing me out to just north of 23mins. I had 3d Bank Statement marked as my CoD for most of the puzzle, but the surface of 7d Jersey is too good to ignore. Overall, a pleasant start to the week. Invariant
15. Worried that ELL was wrong and didn’t get THORN but otherwise OK. Took a while to arrive at ERICA even though I’ve used it in crosswords very many times – thought the ISA was literal and almost persuaded myself EL meant heather. Saw the light at the last. An encouraging start to the week!

16. I felt like this was going in quickly (for me) but went over my target 20 by almost 2 minutes, spent on JERSEY. It seems so obvious now!! Thank you Izetti for a really enjoyable challenge – as mentioned above all the surfaces are excellent. Thanks too to Jackkt for the blog. MM
    FOI 1a
    LOI 7d
    COD 3d
    WOD FILIBUSTERED
17. Felt a bit stodgy while never really being overly delayed. 7:54. Wouldn’t have pegged it as an Izetti.

18. DNK. Second time in a week that I have thought of her appearance at Twickenham, the other being the sad fact that the bookshop in Petersfield where she worked, made the papers last week by not selling a single book. Not that such thoughts are ever far away. My first girlfriend at Uni was from that town and knew Ms Roe. Johnny
19. I certainly remember rod, pole and perch but never used them in anger. We did use chains when I first started work in the City Engineers Dept in Liverpool.

    Like others, I struggled with 7d and had to resort to an aid in the end. I don’t really think of Jersey being in the Channel but it is, of course. Dredged up thorn after a bit of cogitation and erica as well, but ling was my first thought.

    I am still not reconciled to clues using random proper names (16a). Makes things too hard for me.

    1. I agree. They nearly always stump me. Usually when I get within a hair’s-breadth of finishing – a rare occurrence as it is. A good start to the week, I enjoyed it. But I’ve never come across that definition of thorn.
       Diana
       1. I think thorn is ‘th’ and can be written as a character that looks like ‘y’ – this is why we think that old English for ‘the’ is ‘ye’ as in ‘ye olde’.

          Edited at 2020-01-20 02:02 pm (UTC)

          1. You might like to see this:
             http://bookhaven.stanford.edu/2013/08/eth-thorn-and-ash-they-flunked-the-screen-test-for-our-alphabet/
             1. I’m not sure if you will see this late comment, but thanks very much for this link Louisa. I found it fascinating. Judy
                1. Not too late, Judy. I saw it. It’s really interesting, isn’t it? Thanks for letting me know that you’d read it.
                   1. I’ve just revisited this thread. Thank you, louisajaney. I now have the time to read it later today.
                      Diana
                      1. Happy reading!
    2. A chain survives as the length of a cricket pitch.
20. ….owl, which is the reason why my LOI was what it was. At least I’d marked it as a query because I couldn’t parse it. BANK STATEMENT was parsed after completion (I was oversimplifying with New Testament merely being the last two letters). Slow by my standards, especially for Izetti, but within target.

    FOI ALIEN
    LOI and COD THEREFORE

21. I forgot to note that I did not think 13ac ERICA was cryptic.
    And chains are still used in Jamaica.. no… for measurement!

    Edited at 2020-01-20 04:39 pm (UTC)

22. Looked at this late in the day and was surprised to find it fairly straightforward (especially for Izetti) – completed in about 20 mins.

    Only queries were 13ac “Erica”, which I didn’t know related to Heather (so was a guess), 17ac “Ell” and 21ac “Thorn”.

    FOI – 1ac “Filibustered”
    LOI – 13ac “Erica”
    COD – 16ac “Stevedore” (literally got this by parsing)

    Thanks as usual.

23. Many distractions/interesting moments so timing north of 30 minutes but really enjoyed this one.
    Stevedore known only from previous offering – and enjoyed playing the pronunciation – it still sounds like a Rodeo star or a neighbour called Steve….
    Slightly thrown by Ode which was Poe, now know Ell and Thorn – so good for that… just struggled with Heather = Erica …. but pray why when I KNOW that?? Thanks Johnny for the Twickenham reminder….
    LOI Jersey which shouldn’t have been last

    Thanks all

    John George

24. Whizzed along and completed all bar one in under 10 minutes – but for the tight cluing and lovely surfaces, I wouldn’t have believed it was an Izetti! I abandoned 7d as I had to go out, wondering if it was Selsey (like NeilC) or …sky (after all that is a channel that appears in Times crosswords from time to time) but simply couldn’t see it. What a great clue though 😀

    FOI Alien
    COD Jersey – even though I didn’t get it! Although I liked Filibuster a lot too – and I did work that one out.
    DNF

25. I know it’s late in the day, but today’s 15×15 is fairly straightforward, with just a couple of down clues where I had to trust the cryptic, and an unknown game.

    Edited at 2020-01-20 10:19 pm (UTC)

26. Technical DNF due to a stupid misspelling of TEaTOTALLER (note to self – always check the anagrist). Otherwise I was heading for a fast enough time. JERSEY was my LOI.

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