Times Quick Cryptic 1937 by Izetti

64 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1937 by Izetti”

1. Reading is one of the three Rs (Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic). I found this okay until I couldn’t get PICNIC for ages at the end.
   1. Doh! Thanks.
2. ….only getting cha and asters, but then I mentally adapted to the higher level of difficulty than usual. I think the letter-removal clues will befuddle at least some of the SCC, but they are common in more advanced puzzles like Mephisto. I did like the bear running loose in NY, he’s not the only one!

   Time: 9:03.

   BTW, I hope our Wyvern got moat, after I gave him the Moabite example cum chestnut.

   1. I did! and as soon as I saw it I remembered what you had said, and in went the answer. Thank you 🙂
3. ABSTEMIOUS threw me; I biffed it, worked it out post-submission. DNK, or barely K, POCHARD. 5d looked like it had to be TEA, which it couldn’t be; once again I was slow to see a hidden. And I dithered between EDIT (check?) and ADIT, which is a NYT chestnut but always clued as a mine entrance not a passage. 7:33.
4. 12 minutes, with PICNIC, ABSTEMIOUS and OBSCUREST delaying me beyond my 10 minute target. I was particularly annoyed that I took so long over PICNIC as both it and ‘piece of cake’ were referenced in my 15×15 blog yesterday in connection with the saying ‘easy-peasy’.

   I was pleased to remember POCHARD from a previous encounter. R for ‘reading’ has come up before but this may be its first outing in a Quickie.

5. Had to look up ADIT and POCHARD to check they really were things on my way to a 21m solve. Very becalmed in the SW before MIDDLE C for ‘note’ appeared which in turn allowed IN TANDEM and DOZEN. ABSTEMIOUS took a bit of unravelling.
6. After weeks of crises, minor abdo surgery that turned out to be anything but minor, and a succession of conflicting Olympian slug fests that had me on the ropes, I am glad to find relaxation in the pedestrian pleasure of the QCC.
   A challenging 42 mins with the DKN, but clearly clued, POCHARD and ADIT, COD MIDDLE C, couldn’t see CURE without the e acute and biffed ABSTEMIOUS. ACHIEVER took longer than it should due to a careless A instead of an E and was my LOI.
   Thank you Izetti for a very elegant puzzle with many tasty morsels, a thoroughly enjoyable work out and escape from a tough patch. Thanks William for the blog, surprised you missed the 3R’s! and to other commenters for their insightful experience.
   1. Sorry to hear about your troubles. Hopefully all is now well, and you can enjoy getting back to normal.
      1. Hope you are feeling better.
         1. Thanks to all, yes much better and seeing the world again without a haze of analgesia which I must say made XWD’ing a hopeless exercise! Now back to sorting out the usual stresses and frustrations of everyday, made that much more bearable by an unhurried QCC immersion.
      2. Yes, thank you.
   2. Glad to hear you are on the mend
   3. Good to see you back 😊
7. Went for MANSIZED, with man=player, other parts worked, sort of.

   But was pleased to look up “I wonder if an adit is a type of pipe”. After checking of EUDIT, of course….

   COD MIDDLE C

   ABSTEMIOUS has all five vowels in the correct order.

   1. As does FACETIOUS (she said seriously 😉)
      1. But not, therefore, facetiously, which has all the vowels in the right order including a Y…
         Cedric
         1. And of course abstemiously does too! I know which I’d rather be (she said not entirely facetiously 😅)
            I’ve never worked out how many other words have all the vowels in the right order — there must surely be more than two?
            On edit — just read PW’s comments — crossed lines there, sorry.

            Edited at 2021-08-11 04:08 pm (UTC)

8. I also struggled for 1 or 2 minutes on PICNIC. Strange — not a difficult clue when you know it but for three of us already there seems to have been some head scratching. I just couldn’t get BIONIC out of mind and was starting to curse the setter as to why the “answer” neither fitted the w/p nor the definition 😀

   Otherwise harder than normal but all workoutable

   Liked ABSTEMIOUS

   Thanks William and Izetti

9. Weird goings on in the Crossword Club as it still had yesterday’s puzzles up when I tried doing this. Only when I switched from MS Edge to Chrome could I access todays offerings.

   It was worth the faffing about as this was my favourite puzzle for quite some time. I started off swifty in the NW and made some good progress around the grid until bumping into some of the chewier clues. I didn’t help myself by biffing a careless TEA and spelling STATIONREY with two As and no E, but once I saw my errors the unknown duck and ACHIEVER revealed themselves.
   I finished in the SW with ABSTEMIOUS and CAPSIZED in 11.36, which I was pleased with despite being over target. DOZEN gets my COD.
   Thanks to William

   Edited at 2021-08-11 08:00 am (UTC)

10. FOI: 9a. ASHEN
    LOI: 16d. PICNIC
    Time to Complete: DNF
    Clues Answered Correctly without aids: 17
    Clues Answered with Aids: 7
    Clues Unanswered: 1
    Wrong Answers: 1
    Total Correctly Answered (incl. aids): 24/26
    Aids Used: Chambers

    I found this one very difficult, as I usually do with Izetti, and I relied heavily on the use of aids.

    One clue I was able to answer was purely down to a comment Vinyl1 made the other day. He told me about the Moabites, which referred to a clue that contained an extinct bird. When I saw “old bird” in 2d MOA immediately came to mind, giving me MOAT. (Thank you Vinyl1)

    17a. ABSTEMIOUS – This came to me rather quickly as I recall somebody once telling me that “facetious is the only word in the English language in which all five vowels appear in their correct order”. (It’s not the first time I have heard somebody say that). Abstemious is the word I gave that proved him wrong. There are a few other words that also have all vowels in order, though I can not remember what they are without a dictionary.

    One unanswered clue and one incorrect clue resulted in a DNF after 60 minutes.

11. I think William’s first sentence says it all.
    An excellent puzzle but in a totally different league to the normal run of QCs.
    Thanks to William and Izetti. John M.

    Edited at 2021-08-11 08:00 am (UTC)

12. 23 min without parsing several although definitions worked. Thanks for clear explanations and the ACE PDM (Penny drop Moment for C bring middle letter of ACE by the way) Great QC. Great blog.
    On another note I struggle with some of the TLA Three Letter Abbreviations and still am unsure of the meaning of SCC (apologies if my doctor head comment re skin disease upset others) could it be Slow Crossword Camp…. Can someone enlighten me please.
    1. This question comes up once a week. Just Google ‘Times for the Times Glossary’ or ‘Times Crossword Club SCC’ or similar and all will be revealed.
    2. It’s Slow Coach Club.

       The glossary is available under ‘Links’ at the top of this page (but not by either of the search terms OB has suggested!), or here:

       https://sites.google.com/view/tft-glossary/home

       1. Both search terms work for me, William. Using a simple Google search, each comes up with a list of alternative links that work. John.

          Edited at 2021-08-11 08:52 am (UTC)

    3. Graceful apology accepted — thanks.
       Re TLAs etc, on some devices (eg tablets and phones) you’ll find the glossary at or near the bottom of the TffT front page — there are lots of other fun and interesting links there too.
13. I thought. Economical clueing (though not as economical as Monday’s Guardian cryptic where I think all the clues only had 3 words), a few DNKs fairly clued. CAPSIZED was my LOI, ABSTEMIOUS was biffed (thank you William), and favourite was MIDDLE C, though I enjoyed several other clues as well.

    6:45.

14. 18 minutes for me, which is 3 over target, and I wondered why until coming here and finding the general consensus that it was harder than usual, and a bit ‘different’. I plodded along not really noticing that it was taking longer than average, until completion, when I saw the time. I think it is an excellently crafted puzzle from the Don. I knew POCHARD, and even saw the flowers almost immediately (horticultural clues are usually my bete noire!). Thanks both.
15. I found this on the trickier side, with OBSCUREST,POCHARD, CAPSIZED and LOI, PICNIC all giving me pause for thought. Got there eventually in 10:26. Like Plett11 I had to switch browsers to get today’s crosswords to work, despite clearing cookies in Edge. I’m using Firefox for now. Thanks Izetti and William.

    Edited at 2021-08-11 09:30 am (UTC)

16. I thought this was a peach, so many clever clues. Very slow, but I know, as William said, that Izetti clues are so precise, it just needs me to see the wood for the trees. Lovely when the lightbulb goes on. Pleased to have parsed them all, eventually, and a good start to the day.
17. Stupidly, I didn’t think of PICNIC – clever clue. Otherwise finished.
    Got POCHARD from the cluing but NHO. COD MIDDLE C. Also liked DO ZEN (failed to parse until blog enlightened)
    Lucky we had MOA recently.
    Just seen another mistake, put Edit not ADIT (NHO).
    FOI (tentative) COLE, then DANDYISH PIRATE.
    An enjoyable puzzle all the same.
    Thanks for much needed blog, William.

    Edited at 2021-08-11 09:55 am (UTC)

    1. My first thought on seeing DANDYISH was the highwayman! Now there’s an earworm I’m happy to have 😄
18. promises, promises
19. Enjoyed this halfway house between the normal QC and the main puzzle.

    Loved Middle C.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

20. As I understood it “a piece of cake” means something is easy. Picnic can also mean something is easy, by the opposite being “it was no picnic.
21. DNF after 42:46 because I had EDIT instead of the NHO ADIT. Okay, I hadn’t heard of an eduit either (for the very good reason that it’s made up) but I thought it might be similar to a conduit so it might very well be some kind of passage. Didn’t know a cure was a priest either, but I’m sure that’s come up before. Liked the use of the three Rs, although I didn’t see it before coming on here. I’m surprised they are not used more often. Anyway, much to admire so thanks to Izetti and to William for ravelling all the loose ends.
22. I was pleased to cross the line in 11 minutes as I expected to come a cropper today, especially as the last few in the SE slowed me down, not helped by another literal – I typed in I instead of E in OBSCUREST.
    As everyone (well nearly everyone) says, this is a super puzzle. I found it quite hard to work out where the definition was in several clues. Most annoyed with myself as I struggled with 16d, knowing I’d seen something similar recently — it was this: Picnic, and what you might eat on it? (5,2,4) Oink 27.7.21, blogged by Chris!
    Lots of witty and smart clues — COLE, MIDDLE C and DOZEN were among the highlights.
    FOI Comic
    LOI Adit
    COD Stationery
    Many thanks Izetti and William
23. I was all over the place with this one. It didn’t help that I put in “learned ” rather than LEARNER for 8 across which seemed eminently sensible at the time but for reasons which currently escape me. I also managed to scupper any remaining chances of success by writing OBSCUREST as “obscur-I-st”. Not in a million years, though, would I have come up with curé for priest. I realised that POCHARD had to be right though it was NHO but then, of course, couldn’t come up with 4 down, a robber spelt “P*D*T*”. To which I say harrumph! To make my disaster complete, I put the unparsed edit rather than the probably DNK ADIT.

    Disaster.

    Thanks to blogger and setter

24. Twenty very pleasant minutes, unfortunately followed by a further 10 on a trio of clues — Obscurest, Capsized and E/Adit. I suspected Edit was wrong, but I was convinced the answer was a type of check rather than passage. I’ve even seen Adit before in a 15×15, so no excuse really, other than the wording made it a bit of a stretch today. Having said that, others managed it without difficulty. CoD to 23ac, Middle C. Invariant
25. … that he couldn’t finish this one. So it’s DNF for me two days in a row. My undoing was that I put EDIT, since it could work for “check” and was the only word I recognised out of ADIT, EDIT, IDIT, ODIT or UDIT. Or indeed YDIT. So I am an IDIoT.

    Really tough. Mini 15×15, exposed me as the dilettante I am.

    COD MIDDLE C, LOI PICNIC.

    Many thanks Izetti and William.

    Templar

    Edited at 2021-08-11 01:07 pm (UTC)

26. Ed, I would have been happy to engage in discussion about the points you raise but your final remark insulting the people who enjoy solving and discussing the puzzles here has made me disinclined to do so. Any further postings containing comments along those lines will be deleted.

    Edited at 2021-08-11 12:57 pm (UTC)

27. Like others I was becalmed in the SW, although now I have seen the explanation, I do think middle C was a great clue. NHO Pochard and do think Dandyish is a bit of a stretch for somewhat trendy these days, given no-one has used the term outside of crossword land for at least the last 70 years! Still fairly clued. A DNF for me as I biffed edit having never heard of adit.

    Edited at 2021-08-11 12:56 pm (UTC)

28. Pleased with my 27 minutes but disappointed that Edit was wrong — I had my suspicions but the construction of the clue was IMO incorrect rather than misleading. It felt that the definition had to be ‘check’.
    Anyway, maybe I will remember Adit in the same way that Moa just recently appeared to help with this one…
    Very tricky but a very enjoyable struggle. I must have been in the mood!!!
    Thanks all
    John George
29. I was doing quite well on this until I reached the SW corner after only about 12-13 mins. Then solved 12dn, 14ac and 23ac reasonably quickly and spent what seemed a very long time staring at 13dn, 17ac and 20ac, my last three. I suspected DOZEN for 20ac but still couldn’t get 13dn even with the z in place. Couldn’t make head or tail of 17ac – I was unsure what the definition was, although I thought it had to be sober, and equally unsure whether I was supposed to use half of assume or half of bottle (and which half). Eventually capitulated and used an aid to reveal ABSTEMIOUS, after which everything became clearer. Time with aids 23 mins.

    FOI – 1ac COMIC
    LOI – 20ac DOZEN
    COD – 20ac DOZEN (couldn’t parse even when I had the answer – thanks for the exlpanatory blog William) and also 23ac MIDDLE C

    Thanks to Izetti for a fine puzzle

30. Very fine puzzle …
    … which kept me both stretched and amused for 12 minutes. For some reason the left side seemed much tougher for me than the right; indeed at one point almost the entire right was completed while the left was still blank.

    Both the Adit and the Pochard were known to me, so went in smoothly, and it was the SW corner, and especially my LOI 23A Middle C, which held me up. That last is a very nice clue (whatever some other poster says) and my COD.

    Many thanks to William for the blog
    Cedric

31. After spending an age cogitating on the SW corner we looked up ABSTEMIOUS (just couldn’t work it out). Once that was in place we solved the remaining few clues quickly and finished in a not so quick 30 minutes.

    FOI: POCHARD
    LOI: PICNIC (DNF)
    COD: DOZEN

    Thanks Izetti and William (very helpful blog).

    Edited at 2021-08-11 02:32 pm (UTC)

32. The Pochard 4ac has been with me since my schooldays, on a set of Brooke Bond Tea Cards – ‘Ducks and Waterfowl of Britain’. closely related to the North American Redhead. Those tea cards have stuck with me – as well as my old I-Spy books. Hence my FOI.

    LOI 19dn ADIT – a real old chestnut

    COD 23ac MIDDLE C – ‘vague and ridiculous’, how very descriptive of Mr. Mcbain!

    WOD 7dn more controversy with DANDYISH

    No 16dn at 15mins!

33. I’m parked right behind horryd! I hope the Mayfields (Steed & Emma) will rescue me if things turn ugly. This was a little more time consuming that I had expected as POCHARD was not known. 7.51 minutes. COD MIDDLE C of course.
34. Tough but enjoyable, Izetti’s clues are so good, eg 23a. Failed with 19d adit, could not think of audit for check, but should have done so, having known the word. Completed in 35m, over our target. Thanks Izetti and for the blog.
35. ….the easiest Izetti for some time, but once I spotted the device used for ADIT I revised my opinion a little. I reached the SW corner in seconds over 3 minutes, and then the brakes were applied so that I was relieved to finish within target.

    FOI COMIC
    LOI ABSTEMIOUS
    COD MIDDLE C
    TIME 4:26

36. Came to this late after a rare heavy lunch and midday pint. Not the time therefore to tackle a difficulty Izetti with my eyelids drooping and just wanting to crawl onto the sofa and have a snooze.

    Somehow I managed to get around 85% done after 30 mins, but completing the remainder was like that car driving scene in Wolf of Wall Street. In the end, had to concede defeat with just 11dn to go having created some mish mash of “opaquest”and “obliqueness” which wouldn’t remotely fit.

    FOI — 1ac “Comic”
    LOI — dnf
    COD — 23ac “Middle C”

    Thanks as usual! Going back to sleep…

37. I biffed in MAN instead of CAP, and EDIT. Grr! Otherwise got all the others. First failure in 12 I think- I didn’t do yesterday’s
38. Rather smug, despite a DNF (I had NUL at 21d as I couldn’t parse NIL and NUL is annul without an article). When completed, I thought it at the easier end of Izetti puzzles as I usually have to resort to aids with his.
    I biffed MIDDLE C from the enumeration and then saw how it worked, clever. Took me a while to get 3d and got 11d by starting with curate. Helped that I knew all the vocab.

    No time as I did it in stages but almost certainly a PB for Izetti. It shows, I guess, the wavelength theory has some justification.

    Edited at 2021-08-11 04:13 pm (UTC)

39. Finished in 12:22. LOI was the unknown POCHARD from wordplay. Tricky stuff from Izetti.
40. … and, with more than half the clues still unsolved, I nearly threw in the towel for my worst QC attempt ever. Fortunately, at that moment, Mrs Random arrived back from her walk on the Downs and, after a suitable pause, I was sufficiently motivated to carry on.

    I DNK POCARD or obsCUREst, and I couldn’t parse DOZEN, CLAN, NIL or LEARNER . Various other clues (e.g. DANDYISH, ACHIEVER, TENET and MIDDLE C) took an absolute age to crack, but all of these somehow found their way into my grid. Unfortunately, after 67 minutes of hard toil, I simply couldn’t solve _D_T, so today’s puzzle goes down as a DNF in my records.

    Question: Why did Izetti include the word ‘from’ in 19d? Why not use ‘in’? Or, why not switch ‘Check’ and ‘passage’? It’s a QC, after all.

    Mrs Random finished in 36 minutes, but failed on precisely the same clue for precisely the same reason. Her verdict was “That was unnecessarily devious and just plain mean”.

    To get it out of our respective systems, Mrs R went out and did some intensive gardening, and I went for a vigorous swim in the sea.

    Many thanks to william_j_s and Izetti (for all but 19d).

    1. Ref your query about ‘from’ in 19dn. A fairly common piece of advice when solving is to ignore punctuation as it can be there to mislead, but in this clue you may need to add your own punctuation to see how it works:

       Check uranium has been removed from, passage.
       That gives us A{u}DIT

       Edited at 2021-08-11 09:02 pm (UTC)

       1. Thankyou, Mr KT. Your explanation has shed some light. The clue’s a bit clunky though, in that case. However, I’ll let Izetti off, as his clueing is normally so precise — probably the best of the lot, in my limited experience.
41. MIDDLE C is a very fine clue, and especially for a Quickie. The musical knowledge required is of the most basic level. The definition is only one word, easy to miss, which is how the game is played, you know. The wordplay is exquisite, but of course liking wordplay is essential to liking the clue.

    ADIT is the entrance to a mine. It is, admittedly, the most crosswordy answer here. I know I learned it only from working (noncryptic) puzzles, at some distant point in the misty past. Some QC solvers may have experience with other crosswords, just not that much with cryptics.

    I’m not from the UK, so sometimes I have to look up a definition in Collins, even for the easy puzzles. This has come up before, but just FYI, for CAP that dictionary has “a hat given to someone who plays for their national team in a particular sport, or a player who receives this” (my emphasis).

    PICNIC in the figurative sense is strictly synonymous with the figurative sense of “piece of cake.” Usually, I’d also want some potato salad, sandwiches, a bottle of wine…

42. WHY does CONS indicate STUDIES? I don’t get it!
    1. ‘Con’ is an archaic synonym for know/learn/study. The only time I’ve heard it outside of crosswords was when an older friend used to say ‘conning up’ to mean ‘reading up’ (on something).
    2. Sorry for my late response. I have always assumed that ‘con’ has the same linguistic root as the French connaitre ( to know). John
43. Yes, I’m a bit surprised it made it past the Editor.
44. Took me ages. But I am always determined to finish Izetti’s brilliant puzzles. And I did with much satisfaction. Only to discover I was wrong with 19 D. I put in Edit. Doh!! Fred

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