Times Quick Cryptic 1725 by Breadman

44 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1725 by Breadman”

1. …..at 9:18, but I had a mighty struggled with claret, thinking the literal was turned red.

   I was added by the large number of chestnuts, such as lambada, Ellington, and Aintree, all write-ins. I biffed gneiss without even noticing the hidden, but the checkers don’t allow for anything else at all rock-like. I should have had a better time at my skill level.

2. For some unknown reason I decided to throw caution to the wind and bash some letters about. I was rewarded with 3 errors. WILLIAM PAXTON wasn’t right: I wasn’t willing to spend 10 focused seconds to understand the wordplay, so I couldn’t figure out what that last letter was supposed to be. NUT (reversal of TUN) for NIT (couldn’t NUT and EGG be synonymous). And INSOLENT for INDOLENT… well, who’s the lazy boozer now?
3. I actually spotted the hidden GNEISS. My one DNK was ENDOWMENT; never having had a mortgage, I had no idea there were types of them, let alone what they were. 5:13.
4. Thought this was tough so was surprised to see only nine minutes on the clock as I entered the last letter. Unfortunately that last letter was U to make TUN not TIN, so all in vain. Didn’t think I knew WILLIAM CAXTON but having tried tried to force William Martin in there I reconsidered. Didn’t enter LAMBADA with total confidence either for the letter or the dance.
5. … and all done in just under 10 minutes. Only small hold-up was 7D Noel, where although the answer was clear enough to me, the parsing was not, as it took a second look to realise that “endlessly” can also mean “beginninglessly”. Not met that before and another to store away.

   Interesting factoid on Excel spreadsheets. I must say that the mind boggles that anyone would ever want to build a spreadsheet using 65,536 rows – or that if whatever they were doing needed that sort of size computer firepower, they would think that Excel was the best program to use for it!

   Thank you Jack for this gem, and the rest of the blog.
   Cedric

   1. I came across this in my time with an employer who must remain nameless (but you can probably guess) who had many systems that didn’t talk to each other and I was often required to come up with temporary Excel solutions in order to produce urgent statistics until such time as consultants could write or adapt bespoke software.

      If the Excel limit was exceeded it just dropped the data that wouldn’t fit without drawing attention to it, but fortunately I noticed this immediately and took to assembling and analysing smaller batches, bringing the results together to produce overall statistics. Who could have guessed the same problem would be encountered some 20 years after my experience in the world-beating ‘Track and Trace’ system especially as Microsoft updated their product some 13 years ago to eliminate it.

      Edited at 2020-10-19 07:59 am (UTC)

      1. Obviously the new versions of Excel exceed the ~ 65,000 row limit, but make no mistake it is still used today quite substantially in financial planning and reporting for large organisations.

         However, nothing was worse than a data dump in CSV format that then had to be parsed into proper columns.

         1. That was how all my data came down, so I had that to contend with too!
            1. Not too bad if the data was uniform, but hellish when there were numbers of different character lengths. I sympathise with the pain you must have went through 😂
   2. When I worked at the bank, the users were supposed to use the official system to produce MIS financial reports, but they were always asking for data extracts so they could create spreadsheets. We finally ended up writing a system where they could generate and download their own database extracts using a simple web interface, but limited it to 200,000 rows. We got a lot of complaints from those wanting to extract more data!

      We really wanted to discourage this, because once a financial analyst had the data on his local machine, he could do anything with it, and present his report as the official data. Before we had cut them off, they had truly gigantic spreadsheets that they loaded with new data every month. These spreadsheets had thousands of calculations and macros, and were very difficult to fathom, particularly if the wizard who had created it left the bank.

6. 11:46 today, worse than I’d hope for on a Monday, but not terrible. Feel incredibly tired today so I’ll put it down to that. Some nice clues and some easier ones that took me too long like CLARET which I just couldn’t see until I had the checkers and WEAR DOWN which should have been a write in from ‘blue’ in the clue
7. A gentle start to the week for me with my only issue being opting for the wrong organ at 9a, the resulting MY EAR made me pause briefly over NOEL before deciding to leave it to the end. I’ve seen the NIT/TIN clue a few times before so fortunately TUN/NUT option didn’t appear on the radar.
   Finished in 6.46 with MY EYE
   Thanks for stepping Jack – much appreciated as always.
8. A fair and enjoyable start to the week for me. No great problems although my LOI NIT/nut did make me pause. A few seconds over 12 mins (all parsed) so the slowest of the posters so far but not too bad. Some write-ins but some more chewy clues. I liked LAMBADA (not a chestnut in my experience) and things speeded up when I got enough crossers to see WILLIAM CAXTON and FRENCH MUSTARD. I liked MY EYE and SAY SO. Many thanks to Breadman and to jackkt. John M.
9. Drat and triple drat! That was me. I had cleared my search history and forgot to log in. John M.
   1. Still getting used to the touch id on a new ipad. What an egg container upside down. 🙄
10. Under 10 minutes apart from a delay getting 7d where I was trying to think of an obscure religious festival.
    FOI PAN. Took a while to work out COD WILLIAM CAXTON. Was generally on the wavelength for this testing-at-times puzzle. 12:29 in the end but I’m glad I took the time to work out NOEL.
    David
11. No real problems here and done and dusted, fully parsed at 16 minutes, a time with which I am happy. I really like clues with lots of wordplay and and processing to do and there were lots of these today eg WILLIAM CAXTON, SAY SO, AINTREE, etc. ELLINGTON isn’t a chestnut for me and so was a delight. Thanks Jackkt and thanks Breadman
12. A near PB at 14 mins today. Really enjoyed this, with some lovely straight forward clues. Even the ones that may have required a little GK were easily solvable.

    Favourites included 4ac “Dwell”, 4dn “French Mustard” and 11dn “Ellington”.

    FOI – 1ac “Wonderful”
    LOI – 14ac “William Caxton”
    COD – 13dn “Indolent”

    Thanks as usual.

13. Good old WILLIAM CAXTON, one of the many heroes of the “Great Britons” history book I had as a small boy. The first work he printed was The Canterbury Tales; there’s a copy in the British Library.

    Only two clues required second visits, ARTICLE (where I was trying to get “op” for “work” in there) and AINTREE. No issues with NIT/NUT – how is a “nut” an “egg”??

    FOI WONDERFUL, LOI AINTREE, COD WILLIAM CAXTON, time 1.35K for a Very Good Day.

    Many thanks Jack and Breadman.

    Templar

    PS on edit – MER at MUSTARD = “dressing”. Mustard is a paste eaten with meat; dressing is “A sauce for salads, typically one consisting of oil and vinegar with herbs or other flavourings.”

    Edited at 2020-10-19 09:50 am (UTC)

    1. If you’ve written in mustard when you know it’s not a dressing I don’t know why you’re picking on me for writing in nut when I know it’s not an egg!
    2. I considered nitpicking this one when writing the blog but decided against it. SOED has dressing as a sauce or other mixture added to food, which I think covers mustard if you choose to describe it as a paste.
14. LOI William Caxton (COD).
    Also needed the checkers for Nit and Mustard!
    My Eye does appear from time to time in Crosswordland. We used to say My Foot with the same meaning.
    Biffed Aintree without parsing but it now seems obvious.

    Thanks all for a good start to the week.

15. Slowish start, but the grid opened up quickly once I cracked LAMBDA, which took longer than it should being the only Greek Letter that has a unique number of letters (6), with 2,3,4,5 & 7 have multiple possibilities. And that is your trivia for the day.

    ELLINGTON may have been a chestnut, but I’ve not seen it before, so COD for me. And Elder=Tree? That’s one to file away.

    1. They like tree names that are not obviously trees, like elder, plane, and box – they make for a deceptive surface.
16. Well it should have been easier, but for some reason I needed all of my 15 minutes target to finish this one. I don’t remember ever being aware that GNEISS was a type of rock, or of anything else, but I realised it was a hidden on first reading, and just needed to look for the most likely combination of letters. I was also slow with CLARET, probably due to drinking a volume of it last night. I liked MY EYE and NOEL. I fell foul of the Excel limit on many occasions as an auditor analysing business stats, but once I had encountered the problem once, there was usually a work around, usually involving disaggregation a la Jackkt’s approach. Thanks both.
    1. Visit the NW Highlands. The Lewisian Gneiss makes for some of the most dramatic landscapes in the U.K.
17. As I was unable to get back to sleep after a nocturnal visit to the smallest room, I arose, did the new Jeeves puzzle, accompanied by a cup of tea and chocolate biscuit, followed by the General Knowledge, Concise and QC, then returned to bed and slept until 10:20. I can now report that the QC succumbed in 7:07, with WONDERFUL FOI, and INDOLENT bringing up the rear. A steady and enjoyable solve. Thanks Breadman and Jack.
18. I started off really slowly and missed 1a and 1d on first pass. My FOI was NIT followed by DWELL then ELLINGTON in a rather scattergun approach. However once checkers were in play I speeded up so much so that some answers were semi biffed i.e. FRENCH MUSTARD and WILLIAM CAXTON. GNEISS was unknown to me but clearly indicated. My LOI was NOEL but only because I read the clue last of all. A tad over 7 minutes and in good company with john dun on the leaderboard. Thanks Jack for stepping in for Don.

    Edited at 2020-10-19 10:47 am (UTC)

19. I entered ARTICLE and IMITATE unparsed as I didn’t think of ‘ice’ for ‘reserve’ and hadn’t spotted the CRS.
    WONDERFUL, AINTREE and INDOLENT were all satisfying to work out and my COD goes to IMITATE now that I understand its construction!
    Thanks to Breadman for the 16-minute challenge – and to Jackkt for the helpful blog and amusing link to ‘All my eye and Betty Martin!’.
20. This was a fairly straightforward 18min top to bottom solve, though I needed three goes at 14ac. My first biff was William Tyndale, but that only lasted until I ran out of space, so I switched to William Paxton (my excuse is I’m married to an architect) which at least had the benefit of fitting the space available, but I couldn’t get it to parse. Finally remembered Caxton 🙄. Chestnut or not, 11d Ellington is my stand out CoD. Apropos trivia, the French have a useful gesture for ‘my eye’, which involves pulling a lower eye-lid down with a finger. Invariant
21. Pretty straightforward today. GNEISS not known, but obvious from clue when a letter or two filled in.
22. We seem to have found this slightly tougher than everyone else and took 18 minutes to complete it. We didn’t struggle on any one particular clue – just took longer than usual. Thanks to Breadman for a good Monday workout.

    FOI: pan
    LOI: lambada
    COD: Ellington

    Thanks to Jackkt for the blog

23. 5 mins with 2 silly errors. Typo in 5d and forgot to enter sinew!
    COD NOEL.
24. ….GNEISS work if you can get it – which I did without problems.

    FOI WONDERFUL
    LOI FRENCH MUSTARD
    COD IMITATE
    TIME 3:29

25. A Red Letter Day coming in close to a PB, despite a couple of little interruptions from Mr B. In fact, I had to ask him to ‘ssh’ as I was writing in the last two because I was pretty sure things were speeding along! He was suitably apologetic 😊

    I thought it was enjoyable mix of clues – of course I missed the bread connections (thanks Sawbill) but that’s fun now it’s been pointed out. I’m another one with an MER at dressing for mustard, and although I had the French part straightaway, I had to wait for a couple of checkers before mustard became apparent. I liked GNEISS and NOEL.

    FOI Wonderful LOI Aintree COD Ellington Time just under 6 minutes

    Thanks Breadman and Jack

26. Glad to see the three goals from Breadman (PAN, PITTA and RYE), Oink will need to raise his/her game?
    1. a trick was missed with 23a being NUN instead of NAN
    2. Breadman is a he. Surname ‘Warburton’.
27. Started quickly, for us, then we were slow in remembering nit at 2d, also the bread at 19a. Enjoyable, or perhaps “nice” puzzle, thanks Breadman and for the blog.
28. Bit of a late solve today (a post work post you could say), but I might have benefitted from a more awake brain as this was my fourth fastest ever solve at 16:38. Held up a little by putting WIND DOWN in at 1d, but getting ARTICLE sorted that, leaving just LOI 15d. Thanks Breadman and Jack
29. Thought this was easy enough starting with 1a &1d so took a note of the time. Done leisurely over a cuppa and biscuits (these needed some attention, so slowing me down further) I was all done in 20 minutes. I worked pretty well top to bottom using Down clues whenever a first letter became available. I put this down to how easy it was but reading the blog it sounds I was doing well! FOI 1a Wonderful. LOI 21d Rye. COD 14a William Caxton. I wonder if I would have made 15 mins without the tea & biscuits and concentrating harder. Possibly not a PB but close. Thx to Breadman fir an easy start to the week and to Jackkt for the blog.
30. A steady sub 30 minute solve for me. Slowly worked down from top to bottom without much bobbing about.
    I assumed that 8A, reserve, was as in “put on ice”, rather than ICE (reserve – cold demeanour). Either way it got to the same solution.
    Thanks to Breadman and Jackkt.

31. Just over 10 minutes – but after fixing the biffed WILLIAM WALTON (first name seen, rest of clue not read) didn’t have another look at 2dn.
32. We seem to have found this slightly tougher than everyone else and took 18 minutes to complete it. We didn’t struggle on any one particular clue – just took longer than usual. Thanks to Breadman for a good Monday workout.

    FOI: pan
    LOI: lambada
    COD: Ellington

    Thanks to Jackkt for the blog

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