Times Quick Cryptic 1901 by Tracy

57 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1901 by Tracy”

1. BREAKTHROUGH & TRENDSETTING took a while, and some checkers; in both cases I worked backwards from the solution to the wordplay. 5:11.
2. Finished in 5 minutes and change except for TICKER. After another 5 minutes I gave up!
3. I found this quite hard and felt I was lucky to get away with only 1 minute over my target 10.
4. Another day another careless keystroke — ‘relwase’ for RELEASE did for me today. Struggled in the SW and with TICKER (LOI) on the way to 17m. RISE TO THE BAIT, A MEANS TO AN END, TRENDSETTING and BREAKTHROUGH all took their time to arrive and missing those checkers made life hard.
5. 15:05 with one pink square. I had HARDEST where I carefully followed instructions, but ended up with a word that doesn’t quite mean ‘produce’. I went with it not realising I had applied ‘short’ to the wrong noun,. In English, adjectives usually precede the noun. Perhaps firm-short is like attorney-general. Mutter mutter.

   LOI RISE TO THE BAIT. Using ‘char’ as the canonical fish meant I didn’t understand the clue, and was vaguely looking for an anagram.

   I liked TICKER which I did parse successfully, avoiding the misdirection of ‘lost heart’. Sadly it was not joined with AORTA.

   COD ATLAST, very clever

6. Excellent puzzle but tricky in places. Needed all the checkers bar the H before BREAKTHROUGH revealed itself, was looking for ‘co’ to be in HARVEST somewhere and then the SORTIE/OFFBEAT intersection proved stubborn at the end – with the parsing of BEAT being particularly slow in coming.
   FIESTA, AT LAST and LARD were my stand out clues. Finished in 9.06
   Thanks to Chris
7. Managed to finish this in 49 minutes. The first finish in almost two weeks.

   Though I see that “cashier” is under dismiss in Chambers Crossword Dictionary, I do not understand how cashier = dismiss. However, the word cashier did fit so in it went.

   TICKER was my LOI and it took me a long time to answer it. I lost a lot of time trying to remove the “heart” from a word meaning learner.

   1. Well done! Cashier is to dismiss – usually dishonourably.
   2. Cashier is the term used in the armed forces — you get sent to the cashier to collect your final pay, then you are off
      1. It must be an archaic term in relation to the armed forces. I left the RN 4 years ago after 24 years service. Not once did I have to go to anybody to get my pay, not even my final pay; it’s paid direct into your bank account. Back in the “old days” members of the RN would go to the Pusser to collect his wages. I remember seeing photographs of the ship’s company queuing up in the hangar to collect their wages.

         In all my time in the RN I never once heard of the term “cashier” being used to describe a method of payment.

         1. The OED has no usage referenced since 1879.
         2. Just one of those terms that only ever seem to appear in crosswords. I’d never heard of it when I first started doing these, and now it’s pretty much a write in when I see it.

            As you’re well aware, there’s quite a few of those!

         3. Apparently it means/meant to force someone (an officer) in the forces to resign. I learned it from “Othello”, where Iago schemes to get Cassio cashiered.
         4. I had heard the word cashiered used in the Dreyfus affair. Wikipedia implies it was mainly used for Army officers. Those who had bought their commissions were cashiered and thus lost the sum and couldn’t ‘sell out’.
8. Thought I was on to a nina with PULSE, AORTA and TICKER but can’t see any more. Anyone?
   1. Offbeat?
9. … and the long clues in particular hard to get. All solved in the end in 11 minutes but not without being seriously misled by some clever clues — it took a time to realise how 5D Rise to the bait worked (I did not think of char = fish for a long while), and like Poison Wyvern I got the parsing of 4D Ticker completely the wrong way round, assuming the definition part was Difficult problem and the construction part Learner losing heart. LOI was 23A Trendsetting, for which I needed all the checkers.

   Many thanks to Chris for the blog
   Cedric

10. I did not get 1ac early so my time went to up to 11 minutes.

    FOI 8dn SPOT the dog!

    LOI 16dn SORTIE and not Goitre!

    COD 4dn TICKER

    WOD 20dn LARD — unfashionable, but no words were more interestin’.

    Mood Meldrewvian.

11. I was on a completely different wavelength today. BREAKTHROUGH and RISE TO THE BAIT (nothing to do with a cleaner then) were very late solves. I even misread the clue for HARVEST as ‘Produce from short undergarment’. I had forgotten the double definition of CASHIER and my LOI – good misdirection – was TICKER. About 15 mins.

    P.S. I’m just doing catch up from last week. I’ve tackled Thursday’s QC and can report a DNF. I remembered LORELEI, correctly guessed ROPE but had to give up on the anagram for MEERSHAUM!

    Edited at 2021-06-22 08:55 am (UTC)

    1. I got my “Chars” mixed up and initially thought it was to do with tea.
    2. I have this awful memory of agonising for ages and ending up with MEURECHASM.

       Edited at 2021-06-22 11:35 am (UTC)

       1. I did that crossword late last week so didn’t comment, but also dnf on that weird, obscure pipe thing. If you’d given me those letters to try and construct something out of them I’d still be doing it now I reckon.
12. My FOI was RELEASE, followed by the A for 2d and UNITE. SPOT, PULSE and TRAINEE quickly arrived, and I then saw the clever RISE TO THE BAIT and made the BREAKTHROUGH. A steady run to LOI ADDER saw me cross the line at 8:22. Thanks Tracy and Chris.
13. DNF for me; I never made the BREAKTHROUGH at 1ac and didn’t get TICKLER either. Hey ho, there’s another one tomorrow!

    Many thanks Tracy and Chris.

    Templar

    Edited at 2021-06-22 09:58 am (UTC)

14. Just inside target today, which is an improvement on yesterday. I drew a blank at 1a and went straight to the early down clues, enough of which fell to provide some helpful checkers, particularly HARVEST, which finally clinched 1a. There were a few write-ins further down the grid ( FIESTA, AORTA, RIFLE), but the puzzle continued to challenge until LOI ABANDON.

    Thanks Chris and Tracy. Chris, in 7d you have shirt instead of short, may confuse some.

    1. Thank you!
15. Tough. I was not on Tracy’s wavelength today and I got nowhere at the top (again). So, I worked up from the bottom fitfully (although TRENDSETTING came late after crossers were available). Like therotter, I benefitted from a few write-ins and I finished with BREAKTHROUGH and my LOI TICKER which was a cheeky one, I thought. A couple of minutes over target despite background noise and interruptions. Thanks to Tracy for an off-beat puzzle and to Chris. John M.

    Edited at 2021-06-22 10:12 am (UTC)

16. A DNF, sadly – all but two in 20 mins and then work started to intrude so gave up.

    Stuck for a long time thinking char = cleaner – NHO char as a fish before, so add that to the list – and in the end couldn’t biff or parse 5dn as a result.

    Similarly could not see the wordplay for TICKER 4dn.

    Annoying, as probably would have got there in the end for both.

17. Decent time but 2 pink squares/typos — first in a little while — very careless

    Long ones were not easy but cracked the Santa anagram (nice one); reverse engineered TRENDSETTING and filled in the gaps after getting all the checkers for the BAIT clue. Getting BREAKTHROUGH was the … breakthrough to finish the NE quadrant. Like others TICKER LOI — wrong end of the stick to begin with but managed to look at it a different way

    Thanks Tracy and Chris

18. An enjoyable puzzle, but another fairly slow completion at 30 mins. Not sure what’s going on, but the days of regularly doing these in 10 to 20 mins seem to have disappeared for the time being.

    After deciding 5dn wasn’t an anagram after all I mistakenly thought it had something to do with tea (wrong cha). In the end, I ended up biffing it once I had enough checkers, completely forgetting the fish and potential cleaner option. Struggled to parse the “beat” part of 21ac — but once I saw the blog I realised this has got me before.

    The rest went in fairly steadily with the main hold ups being 1ac and 4dn. Whilst I can’t really complain about “Breakthrough”, it’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of “separate”. Ticker though was a good clue, even if I didn’t know the “tickler” as a problem.

    FOI — 8dn “Spot”
    LOI — 4dn “Ticker”
    COD — 15dn “Abandon” — still makes me smile.

    Thanks as usual!

    1. I think 1 ac can be represented as “Break = Separate”, “Through = Because of” , “Breakthrough = Significant Discovery”
19. 7:29. My experience matches that of Chris —and shows the importance getting your checkers in place early on.
    I found this tricky in any event, having to re-visit several elements but had no complaints with the clueing which was very neat.
    COD 20 d “Lard”, more than a little macabre, I thought. Has Tracy been reading William Golding recently perhaps?
    Thanks to Chris and Tracy
20. I did most of this in about 15 minutes then got totally stuck on 3d and 23a. A PENNY TO AN ELF was my working hypothesis for 3d. And I was at sea (current) or in the electricity business at 23a. It took me far too long to see the clear anagram indicator and then A MEANS TO AN END was obvious. LOI TRENDSETTING.
    Limped over the line in 29:31.
    Good but tricky stuff today I thought.
    David
21. I completed this, to my surprise, in just over a quarter of an hour. I’ve got quite mixed feelings about this puzzle. On the one hand, I thought there were some really super clues, eg BREAK THROUGH, CASHIER, AT LAST and the, oh so clever, RISE TO THE BAIT. On the other hand, I didn’t much like some of the definition / synonym work here eg PULSE for vitality and TICK(l)ER for problem, even though this MERish response of mine did not stand in the way of solving the clue. Nor was I keen on the anagram indicator “that may cause” in ADDER, even though I saw straightaway what the answer had to be. Hmmmm… I still enjoyed this crossword — it’s just that I felt almost as if I was answering it at the same time as thinking “well, I would never have used THAT word to describe this. “

    Rereading this, I fear I sound grumpy. Not intended at all — I remain deeply in awe of our setters.

    Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Tracy

    1. Well put – I had similar thoughts on the way through but didn’t express them so well.
       1. Thanks, Chris.
22. I changed my style and went through the clues in strict order. It seemed to work, so I’m sticking with it for now.

    FOI CASHIER
    LOI SORTIE
    COD OFFBEAT (also liked RISE TO THE BAIT)
    TIME 3:05

23. I had to wait until 13d (FLAT OUT) for my FOI, but then managed to build steadily out from there until I had the whole of the LHS completed before anything at all on the right. The RHS was much more tricky, and I also didn’t get BREAKTHROUGH until near the end. My LOI was RISE TO THE BAIT, partly because I had forgotten that a char is a fish. Altogether, a well-structured and completely fair challenge.

    Starting a minute after me, Mrs R polished off both today’s puzzle in 21 minutes and yesterday’s Hurley (18 minutes) to finish exactly one minute ahead of me. Normality has returned to the Random household.

    P.S. We had THORN as a solution in one of last week’s QCs, which triggered a discussion amongst some of the more competent solvers about runic characters and Beowulf. I was unable solve that clue and lamented to Mrs Random about my lack of knowledge of classical literature/art/music etc. Her (sympathetic) reply was “Well, why don’t you read it then?”. So, I found a hardback copy of Seamus Heaney’s 1999 translation on World of Books (£3.19, incl p&p) and it arrived this morning. My challenge now, of course, is to read it.

    P.P.S. Mrs R then went on to say (even more sympathetically) “You could study Homer’s Iliad, and also learn learn Latin and French while you’re at it”. I may seek refuge once more in my traditional comfort zone – maths puzzles and the like.

    1. I’ve got a copy of Heaney’s Beowulf which I bought donkey’s ago – maybe I should start reading it too! I’m also thinking that learning the complete Greek alphabet (and not just the basics) and the full periodic table would come in handy but I’m not sure I’ve got enough memory space left!
       1. Good plan!
       2. I’ve never regretted learning the Greek alphabet in my teens (on a whim, as far as I can recall, although the fact that my father did Greek for his school cert, or whatever it was in the 1940s, might have been a motivation). It’s been a big help with crosswords. The periodic table might be a step too far, though!
    2. i can only think that Mrs R has only your literary improvement at heart – rather than being motivated by a desire for peace and quiet!
24. Well, that was a shocker! My worst time for ages at 23 minutes. I was crawling along with about 5 to go after 16 minutes when a friend rang. That break helped to unstick my glue brain a bit but I was still stuck on 16d.
    I realised that I had to reverse IT but unfortunately I had pencilled in -OIT– which caused a few problems. I was just about to refer to a crossword solver when the penny dropped so I finished without aids – but only just!
    I’m with Louisa that there were a few MER moments today.
    I’m not grumpy either, but there aren’t too many ticks or smiles next to the clues today 🙁
    FOI Release
    LOI Sortie
    COD Offbeat

    Thanks as ever to Tracy and Chris

25. Thought we were on course for a DNF but, after 30 minutes, we solved the last clue. This was a clever puzzle which really made us think. We wasted time trying to work out anagrams that didn’t exist and generally just took a while to see the through some of the clues.

    FOI: CASHIER
    LOI: SORTIE (TICKER was a very close runner up)
    COD: FLAT OUT

    Thanks to Tracy and Chris.

26. Oh dear, not on the wavelength at all.
    Thanks for blog, Chris.
    1. Everyone who comes here does so as they enjoy the challenge of cryptic crosswords – to give a time is a reflection of how difficult you found it and so is a relevant subject for discussion.
    2. If you thought this was hard maybe you should have a go at today’s 15×15 — then you’ll understand what a hard puzzle really is. Just don’t expect to enjoy it much — I certainly didn’t.

       The time we “experts” take is not necessarily a reflection of difficulty. I certainly appreciate that this puzzle was far from simple, but it fell into place for me. Tomorrow’s offering may be “simpler”, but it could take me longer if something doesn’t quite strike me at first sight.

       Just out of interest, have you ever tried the Guardian “Quiptic” on a Saturday ? That’s a puzzle aimed specifically at novices, unlike the Times QC, which is merely aimed to be quicker than the 15×15.

27. Finished this in about nine minutes, getting fourteen of the clues on the first pass. FOI cashier, LOI spot needing pulse and trainee to get it. C’sOD adder, aorta. Did not parse offbeat, so needed the blog as usual. Thanks, Chris, and Tracy. GW.
28. Having read the comments above, we were pleased to have finished within our modest 30m target. As others, we found 1a breakthrough tricky and needed to get 4d ticker to suceed. Ticker for heart seems old fashioned now but remember my father using it quite often.
    1. TICKER was, for me, more contemporary than “tickler” which I’d honestly never come across before !
29. One of those annoying ones where almost everything goes in easily but the last word just won’t come. The culprit was 4d for which I eventually (after 30) went for TICKET without much hope. I considered LEANER (taking the middle out of learner) and a word meaning a learner without an H for heart, and even a word for a problem with an L on the end meaning “lost heart”, but I never considered the definition might just be “heart”. Oh the irony of being faced with a difficult problem and then losing heart. Thanks Tracy and Chris.
30. I gave up after 30 minutes or so with 1a 4d 5d and 7d not solved. Just didn’t see char as fish and was convinced that 1a was going to mean Separate…
    Harvest is my favourite record label too…
    Nice crossword but a tad too hard for me.
    Thanks all
    John George
31. I found this much harder than yesterday so was a DNF for me. Always good to learn new words though… DNK cashier for dismiss (will try to remember) and NHO ‘tickler’ or ‘char’. Still enjoyable even though only managed around 2/3 today. Many thanks to this community and to the setters. England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 awaits, oh dear…
32. Hah, same title as the poster above, but Im sticking with is. Ive forgotten my exact time, but in the mid 10’s.

    Tracy used to cause me problems, the not so much. A welcome return to form from the setter.

    Thanks all.

33. Agree that this was tricky in enough places to foil any foolish complacency. FOI 18d RIFLE, LOI 5d RISE TO THE BAIT which just wouldn’t come! Around fifteen minutes saw it done.
34. I love reading your comments on the Random relationship, Mr R.
35. Clever crossword. Seemed very tough at the outset, was chewy all the way through, but when I had solved it, I felt as though my brain had had a good workout.
    About 30 minutes, so c 50% more than average. Very much enjoyed.
    Thank you, setter and blogger.

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