Times Quick Cryptic 2060 by Joker

75 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 2060 by Joker”

1. I biffed FAINT-HEARTED, and never did parse it; tricky, indeed. Luckily, I saw immediately how UNEASILY worked. 4:36.
2. …as there were a surprising number of biffs possible. Faint-hearted, obvious, butterscotch, obvious, terrier, a chestnut. With all the crossing letters I had, the ones I had to work out came pretty quickly. Time: 6:55.
3. 8 minutes, so half the time spent on the Daddy crossword, which is very accessible today.
   1. Thanks for the hint. I had a go at the ‘biggie’ for a change today and enjoyed it. I finished in well under an hour (good for me….).
4. I’m back, having had my crossword skills knocked out by covid. Last week I couldn’t even finish the quickie, let alone the 15×15. Interesting to have an actual quantifiable measure of brain fog. My brother is a counselor and says normally you just have things like “on a scale of 1 to 10 how foggy are you?”

   No problem with this one except for AFTERCARE, my LOI. I was too distracted assuming it started AUTO… when actually the vehicle was somewhere else.

   1. Welcome back Paul, and congrats on beating the scourge.
   2. Good to hear you’re on the mend – hope you’re getting lots of suitable aftercare!
5. A typo-free Monday! I saw FAINT HEARTED would fit quite early but it remained unparsed to the end. Spent a while at the end at the spaces that became AFTERCARE. I became fixated on ‘auto’ being the first four letters but still ended up all green in 14. Tricky throughout with five going in on the first pass of acrosses. Dismissed DIPTYCH on the first pass because it didn’t look like a word in my head, I needed the checkers on paper to see that it was. 15×15 about to be printed for lunchtime at the office.
6. Completed and parsed in 19 minutes.
   From FOI: APPARENT to LOI: ELITIST, I marked 3 clues as COD choice, then went for 2: RHUBARB for its simplicity, and UNEASILY which wasn’t so.
   Not sure I have come across DIPTYCH before but the clue was clear.
7. WIMP
   W (wimp), IMP (mischievous child)

   Did you mean (with) rather than (wimp)?

   A difficult one for me. I don’t know whether it’s me or whether of late the setters have decided to make this QC tougher. For the past few weeks I have struggled. I am considering looking elsewhere for my cryptic enjoyment.

   1. Thanks. Amended.

      Where else would you find the support and encouragement on offer here? Not in any of the other solving forums than I have seen.

8. “Where else would you find the support and encouragement on offer here? Not in any of the other solving forums than I have seen.”

   To be honest, that’s the only thing keeping me here.

   1. Dear PW: I also thought the puzzles were tougher than usual in Nov/Dec and right at the start of this year, but they seem to have reverted to the long run average (or at least, my times have) more latterly. And no doubt yours will too. So do persevere — your company is much enjoyed.

      Cedric

      1. Beautifully put!
   2. PW – as someone who often DNFs after staring at the QC for a couple of hours, I’ve joined to remind you’re not alone in your struggles
      1. Us too!!
9. 11:39, after a very slow start. Only got a foothold (APPARENT) after skipping the first 6 across clues. Liked the triple def of MASS, although as often with triple defs, once you’ve seen two defs, you’ve feel you’ve parsed it satisfactorily and move on.

   Never did parse FAINT HEARTED, I think Joker was just a bit too clever there.

   LOI, COD and WOD for DIPTYCH, what a great word to end on.

   I’ll take a crack on the 15×15 based on the recommendations here. Took 5 on Wordle today.

10. Struggled to get a grip at the top so decided to try a bottom up approach which proved to be much more productive. Never parsed FAINT HEARTED but assumed that it did not rely on farted but EAR was relevant. COD UNEASILY. 21 minutes to sink into my usual chair and waiting for others to arrive. I will leave some banana bread made yesterday for the first time on the table. Please help yourself. Delicious. (Warning. Contains nuts).
11. Like Paulmcl above I struggled badly with AFTERCARE. Unlike Paulmcl I struggled with a few others too, including UNEASILY and DISEASE – although got them in the end but never got past looking at AUTO for vehicle and so was a DNF. Kicking myself now. Tough start to the quickie week. Will have a bash at the biggie later.
12. I was pleased to get rhubarb, a crossword (& Boris!) meaning that I wouldn’t have seen a few months ago.

    Quite straightforward in 11:30 with some nice surfaces. 9A brought to mind Yeats’ Irish Airman who forsees his death “A lonely impulse of delight lead to this tumult in the clouds”.

    FOI Rhubarb
    LOI Aftercare
    COD Uneasily

13. Enjoyed this. I am not a great fan of note/key to indicate almost a third of the alphabet and it was used twice here.
    1. Ditto. Key or note meaning “pick a random letter from A to G” unless its Do, Ra, Me etc. Horribly vague for clueing?
14. Thought this was going to be a toughie when the first few across clues and 1d proved unfruitful but DEPOSIT got things moving. I made good progress after that until left with FAINT HEARTED (which I never did parse) and AFTERCARE where, like Mendesest, I tried fitting AUTO into the first 4 letters until the penny dropped.
    I was vaguely aware of DIPTYCH but was relieved it was clued as it was otherwise the spelling of it would have proved a nightmare!
    For once my proof reading actually picked something up and thus saved me 2 pink squares.
    Finished in 8.34
    Thanks to Jack and Joker for an enjoyable start to the week
15. FOsI random like MASS and BUTTERSCOTCH and TART.
    LOsI FAINTHEARTED and FEASTED.
    TERRIER appears a lot as does Imp, hence WIMP. Got DIPTYCH, fortunately. Biffed various others.

    Thanks all, esp Jack.

16. … as I had Limp for 19D Wimp. Couldn’t parse it, suspected it was wrong, put it in and said to myself “I’ll come back to that later to see if inspiration strikes” — and then of course forgot that as I completed the puzzle with Limp still in place I trigger the “Unlucky”. Careless, and a shame as I was on for a sub 10-minuter.

    That apart, a nice puzzle, all parsed except 1D Faint-hearted and I see I am not alone in biffing that one. Just a little too convoluted I think, not least to have two different forms of notes (F, and TE from the Sol-fa).

    Many thanks to Jack for the blog
    Cedric

17. As every schoolboy knows, the William Tell overture is not just the theme tune to the Lone Ranger but also can be played by whacking a ruler up and down between your front teeth. Happy days.

    Failed on 1ac and 1dn, then got every single other down in a rush with only 02:43 on the clock. I thought I was in for a sub-5! But alas, IMPULSE needing writing out (!) and FAINT-HEARTED and AFTERCARE held out to the bitter end.

    FOI APPARENT, LOI AFTERCARE, COD UNEASILY, time 07:27 for 1.6K and a Very Good Day. Lovely puzzle.

    Many thanks Joker and Jack.

    Templar

18. 23 mins for me, held up by parsing FAINTHEARTED as I have a self-harming policy of always including parsing time in my total. I’m not sure why that started but it helps me learn.

    I very much enjoyed this puzzle. Jackkt – I can’t see the blog again as it is behind a link which doesn’t seem to work for me viewing on IOS).

    I was pondering on WIMP and why ‘imp’ always seems to be a mischievous child in crossword land, thinking ‘weak and cowardly with one politician’ or something similar might be better. I then thought there might be a theme going on here and spent a very enjoyable 20 mins musing on how to make a sentence using today’s answers. Here is what I came up with – can anyone improve on this?:
    PARTISAN ELITIST WIMP FEASTED UNEASILY (on) SURPRISE RHUBARB TART (and) BUTTERSCOTCH DEPOSIT (as) FAINTHEARTED MASS DISEASE AFTERCARE APPARENT.

    I thought there could be a second sentence that I couldn’t quite grasp – something like:
    PRECONFIGURE(s) DIPTYCH (of) AGREED RUSH (to) TELL (this) TALC-TERRIER (he’ll lose) DEPOSIT.

    I seem to have used ‘deposit’ twice. Anyway, got that off my chest. Prof.

    1. Okay, I’ve removed the hidden link on this one so you should be able to see it now.

       1. Thanks for trying but that has not solved it. I can still only see first two paragraphs but nothing below ‘clarification’. No worries.

          1. In that case, Paulo, I’m afraid I have no solution to offer, and in the absence of complaints from other contributors (plus I can access the blog on my own IOS phone) it would seem to be a problem unique to your device or settings. Sorry.
19. Over twenty minutes today. Nothing until talc, then thirteen on first pass. All the east going in, mostly empty squares in the west. Feasted opened things up a bit. I saw faint-hearted early on but didn’t see how it worked. Popped it in anyway, and finished except for aftercare, which I needed to put in the electronic version and check a couple of things – as said above, was it auto-something? Was the penultimate letter a t? No, and no – then PDM, aftercare. Technical DNF. Good, taxing puzzle. Glad to have seen the Wilton Diptych – anyone interested, have a Google. Triptyches seem more common. Thanks, Jack, and Joker.
20. Mostly easy but two or three which are VERY tricky for a QC. FOI feasted, COD ditto for its surface, LOI talc having been delayed by uneasily. I was fortunate to guess faint-hearted quickly, then saw that it parsed, but waited for all the crossers, as I dislike A to G for “note”, and think they should be banned in QCs. I needed all the crossers for aftercare, but have to admit that looking for = after is clever (and, for me, original), though arguably too clever for a QC. Thanks J&J.
21. My progress was steady rather than inspired, today. However, I finished right on target. I enjoyed Joker’s challenge and shared the difficulty others had in seeing AFTERCARE (my LOI, too). I entered HEARTED quite earlier but only finished it with FAINT when FEASTED finally came to me. I don’t know why it took so long.
    Some very good clues. My COD was the clever DIPTYCH (although FAINT HEARTED came close because of the clever construction). Many thanks to Joker and jackkt. John M.

    Edited at 2022-01-31 10:25 am (UTC)

22. FAINT HEARTED to biff it, but eventually got it from AINT HEARD and inserting required random notes to get the answer. That gave me FEASTED as my LOI, as I couldn’t get past DIETED or STARVED for going without food, which were getting me nowhere.

    DIPTYCH my favourite clue today.

    6:28, so bang in the target zone.

23. 12 minutes and some change for me, so middling on the Rotterometer. We saw TELL and RHUBARB very recently I think. TART was surprisingly my LOI, only coming to me after FAINT-HEARTED fell, and that was biffed rather than fully understood. I thought there were a couple of easy write-ins like MASS and BUTTERSCOTCH, but also some more complicated to wrestle with, so nice puzzle. Thanks Joker and Jackkt.
24. I started off very slowly with FOsI DEPOSIT, TART and PRE at 12a. I made regular visits to 1d until there were enough checkers to biff FAINT-HEARTED. FEASTED then became obvious. I too tried Auto at 14a and then saw that car fitted. AFTERCARE was a lovely PDM and I finished in 7:59 for a very good day.

    Just realised that I only got the Swiss hero part of TELL. NHO of the Count votes meaning.

    Edited at 2022-01-31 10:57 am (UTC)

    1. I did a double-take on TELL, too. Then I remembered the tellers in Parliament, who check the votes.
       1. Thank you. I’ve learned something new today. I could only think of a bank teller so the reference to votes was lost on me.
          1. Thanks. Strangely, teller came up in one of the 15×15 clues today. I had better not say more for fear of upsetting anyone who hasn’t finished it yet!
25. FEASTED was FOI, with FAINT going in 1d after IMPULSE made it likely, although the biffed HEARTED didn’t arrive for a while longer. BUTTERSCOTCH materialised from the anagrist as soon as RHUBARB went in. PREFIGURE took a moment or two and UNEASILY had to be teased from the wordplay. DIPTYCH was familiar enough but it was nice to have the spelling confirmed. AFTERCARE was LOI. 8:33. Thanks Joker and Jack.
26. Drew a, blank with both 1ac and 1d, and then nothing until a tentative Tart. The lower half of the grid proved more helpful, and I slowly worked my way back up, with the 1s as my last pair. Only vaguely saw how Faint Hearted worked, but stopped while a sub-20 was still available — my first one with Joker for some time. CoD to the construction of 13d, Uneasily, which I thought was never going to be a word until it was. Invariant
    1. Very true…I constructed it IKEA style and even then it took a couple of looks before my brain actually made sense of what the word actually was.
27. Have to admit when I saw Jokers name I braced myself for something tricky, and sure enough I stumbled in around 26 mins. The RHS wasn’t too bad, but I had lots of gaps to the left which didn’t help with not seeing “Faint Hearted” until the end nor thinking 1ac was initially “Starved”.

    I’d heard of a Triptych — which I believe are 3 connected panels in art (often used in wood carvings), but I hadn’t heard of the 2 panel equivalent.

    FOI — 4dn “Dredge”
    LOI — 3dn “Tell”
    COD — 22ac “Diptych” — nice surface

    Thanks as usual!

    1. Yes triptychs were often used around altars, one flap either side and one behind. The three-part construction suited this perfectly.
    2. Yes, I was struggling with 1A being some combo of SATED / STARVED or somehow making STARTED for an obscure definition of Went.
28. Took a while to figure out 1a and 1d and to see DIPTYCH, but a steady solve for the rest (with a little thought needed!)
29. I found this quite tricky and was “finished” in 15 minutes on paper with an unsatisfactory ALTERNATE at 14a. I had tried AUTO variations. So I set about alphabet trawls etc which got me to AFTERCARE in about another 4 minutes.
    FOI WIMP. COD to AFTERCARE.
    David
30. Nothing at all until I reached TALC, down in the SE corner. Then, I really got going with TERRIER, ELITIST and a whole bunch of down clues falling in quick succession. The NHO DIPTYCH went in fully parsed, but with fingers crossed, although I had heard of the word ‘triptych’ (but DNK its meaning).

    After 15 minutes, I had only 5 clues to solve, which was excellent progress for me. Trouble was that they were all in the NW corner and all were interconnected, so I had precious few checkers to work with. The HEARTED bit of 1d came first. Then, IMPULSE appeared in my brain, seemingly from nowhere. These were followed, slowly, by FEASTED, FAINT, TELL and TART (which required an alphabet trawl.

    Very pleased, in the end, to cross the line in 34 minutes.

    Mrs Random took a break from her raspberry jam making to polish this puzzle off in 24 minutes. She couldn’t think of anything too hard about it, except that she DNK the word DIPTYCH.

    Many thanks to Joker and Jack.

    1. so quick, I took a minute longer!
       1. Very well done! Does that equate to GN7?
          1. yes, keeping the maths nice and simple!
31. Quite tricky, Jackkt ? A bit more than that I thought.
    Ground this one out and finished correctly in 40 minutes.

    The wordplay for 1 down was very complicated, luckily I had an educated guess – since “FAINT HEARTED” is often used in puzzles.

    Diptych was one I had not heard of before. I will remember it – it rhymes with dipstick (almost). If diptych is a painting with two panels and triptych means three panels, then what are paintings with four, then five and so on ? Apparently a painting with four or more panels is a polyptych.

    1. Yes, I grant you that 1dn was something of a beast if taken in isolation, but it had a lot of checkers from other clues that were not so complicated. With some of those in place it should have proved a little easier to unravel.
    2. ‘polyptych’
       Great word, thank you!
32. “Nothing until a tentative Tart”

    We’ve all had weekends like that

    1. All the TARTS I’ve encountered have been anything but tentative….
    2. … do settle down in the 2/9s. 😉
33. Lovely puzzle, great fun to do. We finished in 11 minutes with 14A and 12D slowing us down at the end.

    FOI: RHUBARB
    LOI: PARTISAN
    COD: UNEASILY

    Thanks Jack and Joker.

34. ….failed immediately, but I only missed four across clues, and then picked off all of the downs straight away. I only parsed FAINT-HEARTED and the brilliant DIPTYCH afterwards.

    FOI RHUBARB
    LOI/COD DIPTYCH
    TIME 3:27 (which looks slow compared to mohn or aphis99 !)

35. My heart sank when I saw “swiss hero” after Friday’s “swiss painter” debacle but was relieved after getting IMPULSE gave me the L of TELL.

    Gave up after 90-120mins – having four unsolved after an hour. Admittedly I had a snooze in there too. The leftside did for me. I was stuck on 1A being some kind of sated/starved wordplay and 1D just wouldn’t clicked even though I had the hearted part at one stage.

    FOI PARTISAN
    COD DIPTYCH (albeit tentative because I’d only heard of triptych)

36. Impulse and tell took me just over 10 minutes. I was another who got tied up with triptych only to see how obvious the answer was.
37. Made steady progress from east to west. Prefigure went in without knowing the word. Fainthearted required all crossers before the penny dropped. Finished at abt 27m. Just within our target. A good puzzle to start the week.
38. In recent puzzles we had at least 2 famous Swiss people: William Tell and Paul Klee. I looked up some more famous Swiss people to see if they would appear in later puzzles :
    Albert Einstein
    Ursula Andress
    Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier
    Alberto Giacometti
    Carl Gustav Jung
    Louis-Joseph Chevrolet
39. I had a similar experience to many – a slow start with the acrosses, so after about four of the little so-and-sos, I switched to the downs, and things started speeding up a bit. Then relatively plain sailing for 11 minutes until I got stuck on AFTERCARE. Yes, I was also trying to kick off with AUTO and ended up spending another two minutes on that.
    Does anyone remember Callard and Bowser’s slab butterscotch – that and the treacle toffee were sooo good 😋 I haven’t seen them for years.
    Some lovely clues today – FEASTED, DYPTYCH, APPARENT and AGREED all got ticks, but only one got a smile, so that will be COD.
    FOI Apparent
    LOI Aftercare
    COD Uneasily
    Thanks Joker and Jack
    1. I don’t remember Callard and Bowser, but I saw butterscotch angel delight in the supermarket the other day, which took me back a few years. I’d presumed that they’d stopped making it.
       1. My daughter (in her 20s) still likes it!
    2. Callard & Bowser – delicious.
       1. Always found their butterscotch a bit too sweet and preferred the chewier liquorice toffee. Didn’t know C & B were no longer in existence. How sad. Like Frugrains. Gone but not forgotten.
    3. I loved C&B’s butterscotch and even the wrapper it came in.
40. seemed ok to me. I cringed at Prefigure, where Wiki offers help with ‘How to use Prefigure in a sentence’ – say no more! Faint-hearted made me weak, I couldn’t biff and I couldn’t parse it, not before I found the problem – my own silly crosser mistakes. Finish with one semi-parse 35 min a GN7.
41. Enjoyed todays qc
    Cod terrier
    6 on the trot so getting worried about tomorrow
42. Would have been a very good time for me had it not been for my LOI AFTERCARE, which took me an extra five minutes. Nevertheless, given Joker has been tough recently, I’ll settle for a within-target 18:37. Not familiar with DIPTYCH, but once the checkers were in place, the wordplay made it clear, and I’m not sure I’d have worked out FAINT-HEARTED had I not had the good fortune to have happened upon FEASTED first time round. Anyway, a great puzzle, with lots of enjoyable clues. Can we stay somewhere around this level of difficulty please Mr Joker, Sir? COD to UNEASILY, WOD to the topical RHUBARB. Thanks Jack and Joker.
43. Completely agree with the last comment. This was the first time I’ve been on this setter’s wavelength. Great puzzle to unwind with after a 14-hour day!

    Gary A

44. Got everything apart from Feasted. Faint hearted and Tell. Too obscure for me.
    Diptych was a great clue — got it before I spotted the word play because I knew it was a hinged picture like a triptych.
45. All done in 15 minutes apart from LOI AFTERCARE which I just couldn’t see. Gave in at 20 minutes and biffed ALTERNATE for no better reason than it fit.

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