Times Quick Cryptic 1830 by Oink

56 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1830 by Oink”

1. I found much of this straightforward, but plenty of unknowns like AGONY AUNTS and MARIE CELESTE made this a nut that had to be cracked. OLD-FASHIONED was unreasonably difficult for me, but then I’m more partial to MANHATTANs or a good GIN MARTINI.
2. I read about the MARIE CELESTE when I was a child; I wonder if it’s well-known enough for a QC. I was worried about OLD-FASHIONED, as I could make nothing of the checkers until I got the OLD. Never had one, never will; it’s made with bourbon, for one thing. 4:34.
3. Woke up much too early, so a sleepy but steady SCC solve for me. Nothing too obscure although I needed the blog to fully understand ASHEN, so thanks for that. 1A was obviously an anagram but took a little while to click, which also delayed me on the cocktail, which I’d heard of but it’s not on my drinks list. Thanks Oink for the gentle wake up.
4. Really enjoyed this right up until I pressed submit. Being pretty ignorant about cocktails I saw ‘Manhattan’ would fit and never let go of that and when AGONY AUNTS and MEDIATE (great clue) went in I decided an ‘Old Manhatten’ must be a thing — I can’t explain how I thought it parsed. I then managed to mistype ANCESTOR and so mucked up SWEET which in turn should have alerted me to ‘Manhattan’ not fitting. So that’s 7 pink squares and 3 errors in 12m — beat that!
5. 1045 for a good start to the week. Downs first then top to bottom with LOI UNEVEN.

   Certainly did not know HEN in Glasgow dialect for ASHEN, but just recently was introduced to the Old Fashioned at a Zoom cocktail mixing evening. MEDIATE was too clever for me, but an early biff meant I never went back to admire it.

   COD ANCESTOR for very natural surface.

6. A quick solve today, starting with MEDIATE, which seemed to unlock the top of the grid. No problem with OLD FASHIONED having seen it in previous crosswords. I put in UNEVEN and then took it out as I couldn’t parse it but that was my only minor hold up. Finished in 5.54 when I revisited UNEVEN and saw the hidden. WOD ESOTERIC and COD to AGONY AUNTS.
   Thanks to Jack
   1. Cracking time!
7. A quick one for me at just sub 20. 2d OLD FASHIONED held me up and I still don’t get the parsing for 13a ASHEN. (Isn’t Gorbals a housing estate in Glasgow?) Not much stood out but I guess my favourite clue today was 16a ESOTERIC.
   1. As Jackkt says in his blog, HEN was (and remains) a common slang term for a woman in Scotland generally, and Glasgow particularly, hence the reference to the Gorbals, which were indeed a tenement area in Glasgow. Having married a Scottish woman, I can attest to the currency of the term.

      Glad I read through this before ‘adding a comment’ — spell checker preferred Gorbachev to Gorbals.

8. Raced through this one at 12:53, would have been quicker but mistyped FLOGON ? Great start to the week. Thanks Oink you made my Monday !
9. After last week’s stodgy efforts we raced through this one in 6 minutes and clocked up a PB. Lots of good clues which were fun to solve – great start to the week!

   FOI: agony aunts
   LOI: ancestor
   COD: mediate

   Thanks Oink and Jack.

   1. Congratulations!
   2. Well done on your PB, which is a very good time.
   3. Whilst on a roll, go for the 15×15: I fell one clue short.
      1. Thanks for the tip. We’re having a go at the 15×15 virtually every day – some days are better than others. We don’t time ourselves as our main focus is just trying to finish it!
         1. Super time – congrats. I view the 15×15 in the same way as you – I don’t time it precisely, but just plod along and am happy if I finish. Friday was a stinker and I abandoned it! If you haven’t looked at today’s biggie yet, I’d say it’s definitely worth a go. Despite a slow start, I completed it in somewhere just over half an hour .
            1. Well, the 15×15 was my third cryptic of the day but I don’t think that is an excuse — I found it more difficult than any biggie in my recent experience (I don’t attempt them all). I won’t pick put any particular clues in case any one else is tempted to try it after the comments above.
               Not a happy ‘solve’ with 4 or 5 clues beyond my ken.
               Well done Peebee, though. John M.

               Edited at 2021-03-15 05:24 pm (UTC)

10. Quite steady solve without too much stress for a sub 30 minute solve.
    I had YEAR{ning} which came to the same thing. Too many cocktail menus sampled to have a problem with OLD FASHIONED and AGONY AUNTS (as exampled). DNK Byzantine is an anagrind but was quite obvious on sight.
    Liked ASHEN once I had worked it out. My father grew up in the Gorbals and it brought back many memories of unfathomable words and accent. COD MEDIATE.
    Thanks Oink and Jack

    Edited at 2021-03-15 08:48 am (UTC)

11. … as I found some of this quite challenging. I biffed 8A Mediate, only seeing the parsing after submission, had not heard of the cocktail in 2D Old Fashioned, and never parsed 13A Ashen at all — I saw “she” in A…N and wondered if “An” was another word for the Gorbals. Of course not having a clue what/where/who the Gorbals are did not help me!

    4D Uneven also held me up as I thought at first that “Odd nun” meant the answer started with an anagram of nun, so pencilled in UNN… which stymied 8A Mediate until I saw the hidden Uneven. On the anagram front though, no problem with the anagrist Byzantine in 16A — it is on the master list of anagrists that John Interred shared with us at the weekend for those that do the Saturday special (and if you don’t you are missing a real treat each fortnight!)

    Many thanks to Jack for the blog.
    Cedric

12. I parsed 11a (LEFT WING) as a straightforward double definition — ‘Socialist’ + ‘position on team’. Although in hindsight the first is probably a definition by example and the only possible indication of that is the question mark at the end — which, being after the second definition, maybe verges on unfair? That said, it was still easy to solve so where’s the harm?

    —AntsInPants

13. I found this a strange QC at first. I didn’t get a foothold in the top half (why? Still waking up?) and missed seeing AGONY AUNTS, MEDIATE, ARMED, and even the hidden UNEVEN). I began in the lower half and worked my way up. All seemed pretty reasonable by the time I completed and, despite my early hesitation, I cleared my mental block and finished in just under 13 mins so within target.
    Some very good clues (many were write-ins when I got going) and some smiles and gifts. My COD was ESOTERIC. Thanks to Oink and Jack. John M.

    Edited at 2021-03-15 09:30 am (UTC)

14. Monday Funday, a gentle start to the week and a slice of BACON to boot. Witty as well as generous; great work from Oink.

    Was on for a quick time but cudda wudda shudda … I couldn’t get going in the NW so started in the SW and went quickly anti-clockwise around the grid before returning to the ones I couldn’t do. Eventually I wrote out the anagrist for AGONY AUNTS and it all clicked from there.

    FOI ASHEN, LOI UNEVEN, COD MEDIATE, time exactly 1 Jeremy which today = 1.8K for a Good Enough Day.

    Many thanks Oink and Jack.

    Templar

15. Just inside my 15 minute target, despite a telephone interruption (included in the time). Nice puzzle, and good blog Jackkt, I totally agree with your reflections on the immediate past Speaker — an odious little man! Thanks both.
    1. So annoying, isn’t it, when a phone call interrupts the flow of genius — and the caller puts the phone down wondering why their nice chatty call was so brief. That happened to me today too.

       So I thought I was about to finish in record time until I couldn’t get LEFTWING ( which was pretty obvious) as I’d made 4d into Unedit.

       So another dnf, but very much enjoyed , and thanks very much Jack and Oink.

       Diana

16. Enjoyable – thanks Oink and jackkt! Just one thing – I guessed ‘old fashioned’ but had never heard of the cocktail. OED says its an American favourite – is it familiar over here or should that have been flagged up maybe?
17. A quick solve today, around six minutes. FOI small, LOI Old fashioned. COD agony aunts. Reference to pigs straightforward. NHO old fashioned, but it fit as it was the LOI. Got on the blog – I’d got one wrong. Should not have been a surprise as it didn’t parse, and it caused me a wrinkled brow. I had flop for slip. So I must declare a DNF.
    Thanks, Jack and Oink. GW.
18. An enjoyable start to the week. Now no excuse but to plod on with the chores.
    Yes, I had heard of the cocktail but had to wait for checkers. Biffed ASHEN, otherwise parsed as I went along. Biffed MARIE CELESTE immediately, amusing anagram.

    Thanks, Jack, as ever.

19. Apart from 2d, I too found this straightforward. Under 8 minutes to get to my LOI but then I spent ages inventing cocktails that could be no longer cool. The OLD CASHMOVER was my favourite until I thought of OLD FASHIONED which I did know was a cocktail. That’s my COD.
    About 14 minutes in total.
    David
    1. Old cashmover 😂 Well, cocktails are jolly expensive!

20. FOI 1D: ARMED
    LOI 4D: UNEVEN

    Gentle start to the week. I didn’t parse ASHEN correctly, wrongly assuming that the a in the clue formed part of the solution – and SHEN was n obscure Glaswegian name for a female! Although this was my best online time that I can recall, I’m more pleased that my typing at speed appears to be improving. (I’m likely to litter the 15 x 15 with typos when I attempt it later).

    Thank you to jackkt and Oink

21. I romped through this puzzle, but in my eagerness to get under the 6 minute mark, I misguidedly didn’t proof read and finished with a pink square UNEVEB. Drat! 5:58 WOE. Thanks Oink and Jack.
22. Really enjoyed this QC though it took me a few mins to find the way in — FOI was CRUSTACEAN and then onwards!

    Appreciate Jacckt’s comment about just enjoying the puzzles — I rarely finish all the clues, but turn here to see what/how/why I missed something.
    Today I was stumped by MEDIATE as I was looking for a synonym for ‘Intervene’ without a ‘d’…then tried an anagram (‘off’) of I’M DELAY.
    Though I saw YEAR as answer in 3D had failed to consider ‘long’ as a verb (to YEARN). Anyway, with guidance here, all understood.

23. FOI: 9a SMALL
    LOI: 4d UNEVEN

    Time to Complete: 79 minutes

    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 23

    Clues Answered with Aids (3 lives): 7d

    Clues Unanswered: Nil

    Wrong Answers: Nil

    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/24

    Aids Used: Dictionary

    One of those crosswords that I felt inside that I could complete. I did struggle with some of the clues and did not see the hidden in my LOI for ages.

    13a. ASHEN – I did answer this one but in a different way to the blogger. I saw SHE for woman, stuck the A from the clue on the front of it. But I could not see the N. However, ASHEN seemed like the correct answer. I was not sure what GORBALS meant; I thought it was a mountain range in East Europe – it just sounds like it should be.

    18d. PLAIN – There seemed to be several homophones in this crossword. I did not initially associate “reporter” as being a homophone indicator. But it eventually hit me that it was exactly that.

    4d. UNEVEN – My LOI, and I needed some help on this one as I did not see the hidden word until the very end. I had U_E_E entered. But where I went wrong was with “odd nun”. I saw that as meaning to take the odd letter from nun. Seeing as I had a U there anyway, I assumed that was what it meant. Only now does it occur to me that U would have been an even letter of the word nun, not an odd one. So, I was looking for a 5-letter word meaning eventually. I scoured Chamber’s and found nothing that would fit. I got my Collins English Dictionary and searched for words that had the letters U_E_E. Saw UNEVEN. It fit, but how did the clue mean uneven? Then I saw the hidden answer and almost punched myself in the groin at my stupidity.

    This ended up being a 79 minute solve for me. Would have been a lot less had I read 4d properly.

    Oh, and I cannot go to the candy store for my reward, as I have a dental check up in one hour. First world problems, huh?

    1. I parsed 13a almost the same as you, except I knew the Gorbals was (were?) in Scotland and assumed the “N” was for “north”.
       Good to see that you are regularly completing these now PW, won’t be long before the DNFs become the exception rather the norm, but don’t stop blogging!
24. Pretty straightforward apart from OLD FASHIONED – NHO, so had to check. ASHEN a bit obscure.
25. Mostly straightforward for me with all done bar two in 14 minutes. Those two were 8a and 4d and I just couldn’t for the life of me see either of them. Eventually I thought of “modulate” which, although it doesn’t fit at all, did get me thinking of having the E in 4d and then I got it. Only saw a minute later that it was a hidden though. I should have remembered Jack’s rule (I think it’s Jack’s) about looking for a hidden, but “getting cut down to size” just didn’t suggest one to me. Anyway, a couple of minutes later I finally got MEDIATE, but that was after 33:53 so not the good day it could have been. NHO the cocktail and didn’t manage to parse ASHEN (I had ARYAN in there at first thinking that it might be the term for somebody from AYR which is reasonably close to Glasgow), but overall very enjoyable, so thanks to Jack and Oink.
26. but the blasted hidden UNEVEN (grumble grumble :)), and my LOI and COD MEDIATE held me up sufficiently to take me to 5:27.
27. What a relief after last week! I positively flew through this one. Very nice clues, all fairly worded. I liked byzantine as an anagrind in 16, ESOTERIC.
    Thanks, jackkt, and thanks too to Oink.
28. I could see 1ac was an anagram and confidently entered Aunty as the first word, but couldn’t get the second (for some reason…), so moved on. The rest of the grid wasn’t too difficult, bar a long pause over Ashen, and so I came back to the NW now firmly in SCC territory. I eventually noticed that the answer to 1ac needed to be plural, changed and moved Aunty to Aunts and tidied up the corner. At the 25min mark I gave up trying to parse Mediate — I was convinced ‘without’ indicated outside and couldn’t see what was going on. Not a good start to the week. Invariant
29. 17 mins for me, but felt I should have been quicker. Couldn’t get a hold on the NW corner, so ended up starting in the NE and working my way around in a circle.

    Main problems were 8ac “Mediate” which I struggled to parse (I’m sure I’m not the only one looking for an anagram) and 4dn “Uneven”. Misparsed 13ac “Ashen” thinking the woman was “she” and for a while had Manhattan as the last part of the cocktail. As is often the case, TV came to the rescue as I’m sure an “Old Fashioned” was the tipple of choice for Don Draper in Mad Men.

    FOI — 5dn “Test Tube”
    LOI — 8ac “Mediate”
    COD — 8ac “Mediate” — for stumping me

    Thanks as usual

30. A good start to the week for me, as a relative newcomer to the QC, coming in at 6:45, my first sub seven minute result, so I was rather chuffed with that.

    I enjoyed 5D’s TEST TUBE and managed to get 2D and 6D without too much difficulty. ASHEN at 13A went in because it fitted. I didn’t fully appreciate the parsing until I read the comments here. A very enjoyable puzzle to kick off the week though, so thanks are owing to Oink.

31. Enjoyable puzzle which I managed to polish off, fully parsed, in 14 minutes. Only slightly held up by having originally entered SUITE at 20ac but a quick solve of 12dn soon put that to rights. No problem with the cocktail once I had a few crossers.

    FOI – 9ac SMALL
    LOI – 8ac MEDIATE
    COD – 5dn TEST TUBE

    Thanks to Oink and Jack

32. All correct in 18 minutes today. A silver medal winning performance (assuming I am the only competitor). However, I nearly put down my pencil without going back to check a few question marked solutions, which I hadn’t fully parsed. One of those was DISCOS for 15d, which would have caused me grief for the rest of the day if I hadn’t reconsidered before coming here. Amazingly, I also spotted the porky reference along the way as well. All in all, a great start to the week.

    Many thanks to Oink and to jackkt.

33. Bang on target today. I’m always happy to see Oink’s name as I print the puzzle off 😊 Back in the 80s, when cocktail bars were so trendy, my husband and I sampled a fair few, so the names of many of these concoctions are no strangers to me! Although, frankly, some of the names are very strange indeed, if not thoroughly off-putting – monkey gland or fuzzy navel anyone?. Having said, that I didn’t actually try many of them – far too sweet and much too small! Nevertheless, OLD FASHIONED still took a while to reveal itself. MEDIATE was also slow to appear, but otherwise I found this a very enjoyable puzzle with Oink’s typically witty surfaces. Very hard to choose a COD – liked BACON, ESOTERIC, OLD FASHIONED, TEST TUBE and ANCESTOR a lot.

    FOI Small
    LOI Old fashioned
    COD All the above

    Many thanks Oink, and Jack for the encouraging and interesting blog

34. Despite my vast experience of sampling alcoholic drinks, I’ve never heard of the cocktail OLD FASHIONED. Nor did I know that in some parts of Glasgow people once referred to a woman as a HEN. For those two reasons I found this an unsatisfactory solve.

    The rest was fairly straightforward though. Thanks Oink and Jack.

    1. I thought Hen was the equivalent of ‘dear’ or ‘love’. OK, hen. OK, dear. A term of endearment, like duck.

       Edited at 2021-03-15 10:15 pm (UTC)

       1. That’s it.
35. About 10 minutes; quite straight forward although the blog helped with a couple of write-ins — ASHEN and MEDIATE. Thank-you.
36. 7:43. I was held up in the NW corner with my last three. I belatedly spotted the hidden UNEVEN which then gave me AGONY AUNTS. Finally I came up with OLD FASHIONED (cocktails not my thing). Thanks Jack and Oink.
37. All done in about half an hour, so not a bad day by my standards. Struggled with uneven and mediate – like others, didn’t manage to parse the latter, so thanks, as always, for the blog.
38. I sailed through this in 11 minutes, probably a PB. It was a very enjoyable start to the week. I laughed at 1a, my FOI, as agony aunts are a more modern concept than that usually associated with wise women. There were plenty of entertaining clues. Thank you, Oink.
    Thank you to Jackkt for explaining ASHEN. I thought it was SHE inside AN —did that have some meaning in Scotland?
    COD will have to be 21a as that is our daughter’s name and her husband and family are all enthusiastic Chelsea fans.
    LOI uneven.
    Blue Stocking
39. Found this very challenging today- agony aunts eluded me for ever making the NW a sea of blanks for a long time.

    Excellent puzzle

    9:23 — thanks Jack and Oink

40. Saw Uneven as second to last but was fixated with 8a being an anagram of Delay I’m….should have realised that without then becomes surplus…. oh well — 18 minutes and dnf.

    Annoyed with myself!

    Undone by Oink. I wonder if Oink is a (Sweet) Chelsea fan..

    Thanks all
    John George

41. Around 10 m so very quick for us. Finished with 2d, got from the checkers, cocktail unknown, and loi the hidden at 4d. Very pleasant start to the week.
42. Gentle solve today in under one course.
    Some fun clues. Knew Old Fashioned from my days of reading The Saint books which really dates me, and couldn’t see a connection with not being cool
43. I don’t time my attempts but this one was between 5 and 10 minutes. I wrote most of the clues in immediately having read the clue. Unusual!

    I originally wrote in LEFT SIDE which made FLAGON tricky, but it had to be FLAGON so faced with LEFT _I_G it could only be WING and that fitted the clue.

    ASHEN was the only BIFD. I had no idea where Gorbals was. I visited Glasgow once or twice but have no recollection of that area. Even if I had done, I’d still have no idea about HEN which I DNK.

    Thanks to Oink and Jack.

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