Times Quick Cryptic 1726 by Izetti

Author   ChrisPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Firstly, may I point you to jerrywh’s blog yesterday on the Leap of Faith crossword – in case you missed it and, like me, had no idea there was one, let alone two, new Wodehousian books to look out for.

I found today’s Izetti puzzle enjoyable, as usual, and on the easier side but I’m kicking myself for stumbling at the last and going over my 10 minute target on two of the easiest clues in the grid – 1 and 2dn. I’m very obviously not a Jeeves – a coincidental (surely?) reference can be found at 16dn.

ACROSS

1. Terrible failures that could make celeb sad (8)
DEBACLES – anagram (that could make) of CELEB SAD.
5. Drug supplied by ambassador meeting politician (4)
HEMP – ambassador (HE), politician (MP) – both very common in crossword land and worth knowing.
8. Army officer to slip and go to ground (8)
COLLAPSE – army officer (COL), slip (LAPSE). A building goes to the ground when it collapses.
9. Duck beginning to dabble with hesitation in river (4)
ODER – duck (O – zero), (D)abble, hesitation (ER).
11. Bird’s preserved food? Could be a problem (3,2,5)
CAN OF WORMS – birds eat worms and cans preserve food.
14. Business folk are primarily chaps (6)
AGENTS – (A)re, chaps (GENTS).
15. Extracted from mine, the necessary chemical (6)
ETHENE – inside min(E THE NE)cessary.
17. Sit awkwardly in breeze, becoming upset (10)
DISTRAUGHT – anagram (awkwardly) of SIT inside breeze (DRAUGHT).
20. A man with a wicked wife gets a good deal (1,3)
A LOT – a (A), man with a wicked wife (LOT).
21. Close friend to regale excitedly (5,3)
ALTER EGO – anagram (excitedly) of TO REGALE.
22. Ruler good, following relations (4)
KING – good (G) after relations (KIN).
23. Extend piece of writing with publicist’s introduction (8)
PROTRACT – piece of writing (TRACT) preceded by publicist (PRO). Dnk pro so here is Collins take on it:

Definition
a person who provides a favourable slant to a news item or policy on behalf of a political personality or party
a spin doctor-turned-minister
Synonyms
PR person,
PRO,
PR man,
public relations officer,
press agent,
PR woman

DOWN

1. Cut short weed (4)
DOCK – double definition. Why did this take so long to get?
2. Eat quickly and run off (4)
BOLT – double definition. Ditto.
3. Letters or cards? (10)
CHARACTERS – double definition – the second being a wag.
4. School outside American station (6)
EUSTON – school (ETON) outside American (US).
6. Red-nosed drunk is given support (8)
ENDORSED – anagram (drunk) of RED-NOSED.
7. Surrounded by fairies, she dies (8)
PERISHES – she (SHE) is surrounded by fairies (PERIS).
10. Most fretful sorceress, one participating in experiment (10)
TWITCHIEST – sorceress (WITCH) and one (I) inside experiment (TEST).
12. Journalist has penned awfully drab sort of book (8)
HARDBACK – journalist (HACK) penning an anagram (awfully) of DRAB.
13. A pot’s one unusual kitchen item (8)
TEASPOON – anagram (unusual) of A POT’S ONE.
16. Servant, awful brute about 50 (6)
BUTLER – our Wodehouse reference (I’m thinking Beech)  – anagram (awful) of BRUTE about fifty (L).
18. Star seen in massive gallery (4)
VEGA – in massi(VE GA)llery.
19. Harbour drink left (4)
PORT – triple definition to round us off.

43 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1726 by Izetti”

  1. This time it was just a slip of the keyboard. Accidentally had PERISHED instead of PERISHES.

    But this had some real sticky areas for me. The whole upper left with DOCK / BOLT / COLLAPSE vexed me, as did PROTRACT. I didn’t understand PROTRACT, so thanks to Chris. And DOCK was a guess and I was expecting to get my pink square there if anywhere.

    Oh well!

  2. No problems to speak of, although PROTRACT took a moment. I assumed retroactively that PRO was Public Relations Officer; never seen or heard ‘pro’ used in the Collins sense. I also wasn’t aware of Lot’s wife being evil; she was, after all, one of two people given the chance to escape Sodom. 3:47, which must be a pb: I’m almost positive I’ve never got below 4′ before.
  3. Thoroughly beaten today, all the aids came out with close to 20 minutes on the clock and finally ended up with a pink square for a careless ENDORSEE in 24m. I may be in a minority because there’s some fast times here already – sub 4 from Kevin! – and I’m dead last on the leaderboard. Problems all over but especially in the SE. I unscrambled ‘to regale’ to ALERT EGO but couldn’t make the jump to ALTER EGO, I think because I thought an alter ego was a version of the same person rather than a close friend and didn’t know publicist for more than PR so the O in PROTRACT had me looking for a piece of writing starting with O. PERISHES also beyond me – even with the hints I had to google to see what was going on: according to the Persian exegesis of the Qurʼan Tafsir al-Tabari, the peris are beautiful female spirits created by God after the vicious divs. CAN OF WORMS also held me up as did TWITCHIEST and DISTRAUGHT where I loved the fact that the very different sounds of ‘…raught’ made it take an age for the penny to drop. Tough day

    Edited at 2020-10-20 05:55 am (UTC)

    1. I didn’t explain further in the blog as I’m familiar with the term peri – from crosswords probably. Here’s Collins:
      1. (in Persian folklore) one of a race of beautiful supernatural beings
      2. any beautiful fairy-like creature
    2. Me too. Definitely a struggle, even though perished popped into my head quite easily. Can of worms took forever to come to mind.
  4. 8 minutes. PR (Public Relations) and by extension PRO (Public Relations Officer) entered my vocabulary early in life quite separately from crossword solving so I didn’t give more than a second’s thought to the parsing at 23ac, and was a little surprised to see it the subject of so much discussion. It’s just the title given to the person who handles publicity for an organisation. But perhaps it’s a term that’s gone out of fashion to be replaced with something sounding more grandiose.

    Edited at 2020-10-20 05:07 am (UTC)

  5. Woke up very early and couldn’t get back to sleep so here we are (maybe we’ll try the 15×15 as our post prandial work out at lunchtime). Well, we spent an enjoyable 15 minutes solving this fun puzzle. Nothing particularly unusual but Izetti kept the level challenge consistent throughout.

    FOI: hemp
    LOI: characters
    COD: can of worms 🥫 🐛

    Thanks to Chris for the blog

  6. DNF. The SWCorner didn’t fall into place, missing HARDBACK, ALOT, AGENTS.

    I did not know that Peri was a real word. Thought it was made up by WS Gilbert for Iolanthe.

  7. A good mix from Izetti. I was totally immersed and the time seemed much shorter than my 15 mins. Almost all the short answers went in quickly but I had to return to ODER (oh dear – it wasn’t hard). CAN OF WORMS raised a smile and I appreciated DISTRAUGHT, PERISHES, TWITCHIEST, and HARDBACK. Nice to see Izetti using more modern nomenclature for an alkene, too – ETHENE rather than ethylene. LOI was AGENTS. Good puzzle, good blog. Thanks to both John M.

    Edited at 2020-10-20 01:47 pm (UTC)

  8. I found this decidedly tricky in places and it felt as if I’d been transported back to my early struggles with Izetti. CAN OF WORMS, AGENTS, TWITCHIEST and DISTRAUGHT (LOI) proved to be particularly stubborn but there were delays all over the place. With hindsight there was nothing overly difficult and they were all fairly clued so maybe it was just not my day today.
    Finished in 14.40 with my favourite being CAN OF WORMS.
    Thanks to Chris and Izetti for the morning work out.
    1. Well, I think he’d prefer ‘gentleman’s gentleman’. I was connected to my comment on not being a Jeeves when I typed up the link – hence the confusion – blog clarified – thanks.
  10. Enjoyed this thanks setter and blogger! Is A lot a US term- can’t say I’ve ever seen it outside of one of these crosswords. I think that the cluing for protract is unnecessarily obscure for a quickie but mostly good stuff. Thanks again1
  11. A quick check on the clock showed that I had just two four letter clues left after 11:39.
    20a I had looked at a couple of times. Eventually went for A JOB getting the biblical reference but the wrong man. Finally back to 9a where I was looking for a duck. Attention to the parsing gave me ODER.
    13:03 on the clock but with one mistake.
    Good puzzle. COD to HARDBACK. David
  12. DNF today, I just couldn’t see AGENTS. About 10 mins for the rest. Oh well, another one tomorrow!

    Thanks Izetti and Chris (especially for explaining the PRO in PROTRACT, that baffled me).

    Templar

  13. A few seconds outside my target of 15 minutes, but with one wrong – I carelessly entered BAG OF WORMS. I know the expression well, and use it regularly (usually when describing my golf game!), so why I should convert can to bag on this occasion, I have no idea. I also struggled a bit with PROTRACT and A LOT, where I was thinking of a bargain, rather than a super-sufficiency. Hats off to the Don, and thanks to Chris for the blog.
  14. I was hopeless today. Even when I could see the letters for the anagrams I couldn’t work them out. DEBACLES and ALTER EGO took an age. FOI was HEMP and LOI was CHARACTERS after an alphabet trawl. Biffed PROTRACTS. An incredibly slow (for me) 16 minutes.
  15. 6:21, but I carelessly glossed over the wordplay in 7d and PERISHED. Thanks Izetti and Chris.
  16. A LOT = ‘a good deal’. In the sense of ‘I got a lot for my money’? Could be I suppose, but a bit loose I thought. Enjoyed the surface though. CAN OF WORMS amused me. ETHENE was new to me.
    Good challenge as always from Izetti. His puzzles always seem to take me a long time to warm up and then just fall into place.PlayUpPompey
  18. … with several “Oh, really?” clues. NHO Ethene (though it could only be that) or the “close friend” meaning of Alter ego, or PRO as publicist – although I can see that “public relations officer” is a legitimate phrase, I’d not met it abbreviated. And I read “a good deal” as implying a bargain, so never parsed that one either.

    So a bit of a biff-fest, for a 16 minute finish. And while it is good to encounter the occasional less common word or meaning of a phrase, to have no less than 4 question-marks as I turn to the blog for guidance leaves me feeling that this was not Izetti’s best – too much obscurity and awkwardness for my liking today.

    Probably me just being a little out of sorts today! Thanks to Chris for the blog, needed today and clear as always.
    Cedric

  19. I Collapsed, Distraught, after A Lot of Protracted failures. A debacle, a Can of Worms indeed.
    Almost perished after worst performance for ages.

    Thanks all though.

    Edited at 2020-10-20 12:56 pm (UTC)

  20. I worked my way steadily through this and didn’t have any problems other than PROTRACT so thanks to Chris for explaining this so well. I spotted the hidden ETHENE and hoped that this was the name of a chemical.
    COLLAPSE, DISTRAUGHT and HARDBACK made me smile and my COD goes to ALTER EGO for being such a well disguised anagram.
    Thanks to Izetti for the 17-minute workout.
    1. Phil, ethene is the monomer that polyethylene (polythene) is made from. You’ll probably recognise ethylene but, as I said above: ‘Nice to see Izetti using more modern nomenclature for an alkene, too – ETHENE rather than ethylene.’
      Chemical nomenclature was always a minefield being a mix of names from different traditions, countries, and languages. It has been largely standardised since IUPAC (the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) agreed a rational system for naming chemical compounds but old habits die hard. Its a bit like the metric system of measurement but miles, yards, feet and inches and ‘thous’ still persist. John
      1. For me, science is a foreign land. I’m still getting used to the fact that sulfur is a thing. And my 25 years in IT are obviously of little help in this fast changing world.
        1. Phil, like you, many of us inhabit worlds that are increasingly opaque to others. The last chemical compounds I worked on were complicated derivatives of a fairly simple basic structure named:
          2-Azabicyclo[2.2.1]hept-5-ene (with names up to twice that length). In comparison, ethane/ethane are easy peasy! Regards, John
          1. Nice catchy name. Maybe it’ll become popular as the latest must-have name for the offspring of celebrities.
  22. Probably in the minority here, but I thought this was hard and after 30 mins still had a lot of the grid to complete, especially the NW corner. Eventually had to give up with about three to go.

    NHO of “Peris” for fairies and always thought PR was a publicist not a PRO. However, my biggest error was putting “Mistakes” for 1ac which I thought was a great clue. The fact that I was struggling for 1, 2 and 3dn should have told me something wasn’t quite right.

    So a mixed bag in all – some nice clues interspersed with a few shrugs (20ac for instance).

    FOI – 5ac “Hemp”
    LOI – dnf
    COD – 17ac “Distraught” (I was)

    Thanks as usual.

    1. Apologies – that was me – got logged out.

      I might add, after looking at 1ac in more detail, I can pull apart my interpretation quite easily. Mistakes are not really terrible failures and celebs don’t have to be actors. So it wasn’t nearly as clever as I thought it was (and neither was I).

      Edited at 2020-10-20 12:18 pm (UTC)

  23. Mostly straightforward – only A LOT caused difficulty. I don’t think of Lot’s wife as wicked; just human! Interested in the comment about ethene being the new word for ethylene; it was ethene in 1970 when I did A-level chemistry!
    1. Quite right but, as with metric measurement, it can take generations to take hold, especially amongst those who were introduced to names much earlier.

      Edited at 2020-10-20 03:12 pm (UTC)

  24. Happy to finish about our 30m target, 20a took “a lot” of time until the penny dropped. Did not know peris but the answer seemed obvious. Enjoyed 11a, a good puzzle, thanks Izetti and for the blog.
  25. LOI PORTRACT with a questionamark, but I eventually remembered Public Relations Officer. I enjoyed CAN OF WORMS A LOT. 4:01.
  26. 12:13 🙁 Most of that was staring dumbly at COLLAPSE and CHARACTERS. Don’t know why, they weren’t difficult! Brain fade I suppose.

    I too was taught ETHENE way back when …

    H

  27. Did this earlier today, but then had to go out and have only now got round to commenting. Really enjoyed the puzzle, which I thought was a good mix of straightforward and quite chewy clues. I had no problem with A Lot, but another simple clue, Alter Ego, took a long time to tease out, though nowhere near as long as Protract and Perishes. CoD, in an otherwise steady 27min solve, to lol 11ac, Can of Worms. Invariant

Comments are closed.