Times Quick Cryptic 2764 by Mara

87 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 2764 by Mara”

1. I found this easy, and should have come in under my 6′ target, but having overlooked a typo in the Concise–putting an end to my 2-day streak of error-free leaderboards–I was neurotically careful in proofreading. 6:06.
   I wonder if anyone will object to CASTLE.

   1. Well, the deranged Colonel who used to post here on the subject has long since departed, so I hope not. Whilst it’s accepted in competitive and scholarly circles that rook is the preferred term, CASTLE is used less formally by many, and it can’t be without good reason that one of the official moves in chess is called ‘castling’.

   2. My dad encouraged me to prefer ‘rook’ to ‘castle’ but it does look like more like a castle doesn’t it? Also we talk about castling rather than rooking don’t we ? 🙂

2. 15:15. So a KNOT must be a bird and a Conference a PEAR! ENROBE took me ages to get. I liked the image of the STARLESS WOODLAND.

   1. We’ve had the bird and the pear a couple of times; that’s how I came to know of them. (It seems like most of what little I’ve learned over the past few years has come from these crosswords.)

      1. I know the feeling! A couple of months ago I did a few QCs with a friend who was recovering from a hip operation, and he was amazed at my knowledge of obscure trivia – ancient cities, Sees, weird fish, etc. I had to explain that I wasn’t really a mad genius and only knew those things because of crosswords.

3. Easy start to the week. Conference threw me for a while until I remembered the pear – I wonder why it’s called that?. I found enrobe and wolf quite tricky. COD weeknight.
   Thanks Jack and setter.

   On edit: Wikipedia says:
   The variety was developed in Britain by Thomas Francis Rivers from his Rivers Nursery in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. Its name derives from the National British Pear Conference in London in 1885, where it won first prize.

   1. Aha. So that’s why they are called conference pears. Thanks.

4. I made hard work if this, didn’t find it especially interesting either, which is a shame as I usually enjoy Mara’s puzzles. 19d is barely even cryptic. I think LATCH and CATCH are pretty suitable answers for 18d (I went for CATCH….), and I had NHO BLADWIN (I know half the solvers remember voting him in, but it’s fairly obscure for the average person these days isn’t it?). CONFERENCE and KNOT also seems unnecessarily obscure definitions that don’t make the clues any more interesting (I guess the setter couldn’t come up with better surfaces?).

   1. How does ‘catch’, or ‘latch’, mean ‘observe’?
      I know Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt; why shouldn’t you know Baldwin?

      1. Catch a movie? Latch on to something?

   2. David, these things are only unknown the first time you see them. That’s why nobody becomes a gun solver overnight. CONFERENCE and KNOT will appear again soon enough and then you’ll have the last laugh!

5. I guess I learned a type of pear and a type of bird today!

6. Not too many hidden dangers in this fun puzzle from Mara, though I struggled to remember an old PM ending in WIN for way too long, bald = plain not being immediately apparent. ENROBE was an odd word and the clue a tricky construction. I suspect PEAR and KNOT will prove elusive for some while others, like me, will overlook that men are also chess pieces and, like me, will have WEEKNIGHT and CASTLE as their LOsI. 8.18, thank you Jack.

7. I’d agree in retrospect that this was a relatively gentle puzzle, but it didn’t feel like it at the time and some serious head scratching was needed before I came home in just over 11 minutes. The WOLF/WATCH cross held me up, as did ENROBE – a small query about the use of coat as a verb to mean enrobe, as in my mind it might be used for putting on a coat of paint, but I’ve never heard it used for putting on clothing. Any more than the perfectly good verb “to trouser” is used for donning les pantalons.

   ESTONIA my LOI as I tried for far too long to make it an anagram of “at when i”. D’oh.

   Many thanks Jack for the blog
   Cedric

   1. But, the clue doesn’t mention putting on clothing. I saw it as something like ‘coat/enrobe the cake in chocolate’.

      1. Ah yes, I see how that might work – though it raises the supplementary that I’ve never seen enrobe used except for clothing. But then I’m not a chef or familiar with culinary terms, so perhaps in such circles it is a common usage, and in the kitchens of fancy restaurants they talk of little else.

         1. If anyone sees the term ‘enrobe the cake in chocolate’ in the wild please let us all know.

            1. Definitely seen on menus and descriptions on boxes of chocolates, enrobing chocolate is a technical process (distinct from moulding) as described here on The Chocolate Society website.

               1. Chocolate Society? Sign me up.

            2. You won’t see it in everyday use but it’s a specific term used in patisserie to describe the act of covering an item in, say, melted chocolate and letting it coat the whole item including the sides, as opposed to say, spreading with a palette knife or spatula.
               Yes, it’s a specific term in a specific field but we get lots of these in cryptics, don’t we?

               1. Thank you for the explanation, and I have learnt something new today. Which makes it a good day! I think this is the very definition of “one person’s GK is another’s NHO”, though in this case it is certainly erring towards the niche end of “general” knowledge.

               2. You’ve described it well, Q.

                  1. Thanks

            3. I bet Nigella enrobes cakes rather than just “pouring stuff over”…

               1. … and you have to drizzle olive oil onto salads and the like, rather than simply pour it on.

         2. 😉 ☺

8. It must have been pretty easy since I managed to do it in less than 20 minutes using my fat fingers on my phone. Intermittently attempting these while traveling I’ve been needing between 25 and 30 minutes no matter what the consensus of the blog has been.

   Loved the wee knight!

   Thanks to setter and blogger!

9. Having settled on WIN for the “success” part of the clue in 15d, I spent a wee while trying to make TON or STON fit “plain” before realising my error. LOI ENROBE which was only guessed from the crossers. Otherwise, I found this relatively straightforward.

10. A strange mixture of absolute gimmes and a few real puzzlers as well, but those might be down to a dodgy memory. I’d forgotten about KNOT, PEAR and the man/chess piece thing (although the former was very kindly clued). Interestingly my Chambers app has 26 definitions of KNOT and the bird isn’t mentioned at all!
    Overall I found this a slightly unsatisfactory solve which I finished a smidge over average in 8.30.
    Thanks to Jack.

    1. You need to go to the second meaning of knot to find the bird in the Chambers app.

       1. So it is, I clearly lost patience before scrolling that far down.
          Thank you.

11. Solved in my tent in Cornwall. Missed pen and paper as I struggled with ENROBE at the end. Also held up by PEAR even though they are my favourite type. Bit of a PEAR expert having spent a summer in the factory that makes a well know sparkling champagne perry. Tiny phone keyboard got me in the end with HINy escaping what I though had been a pretty rigorous ‘type and review’ regime. Not all green in 15.

12. After the first pass, I only had four solutions missing – I’d wiped out all the Down clues. My first sub-3 minute solve in quite a while, and with no typos. Not quite COD to BUDAPEST.

    FOI BEAM
    LOI WOLF
    COD WEEKNIGHT
    TIME 2:55

    1. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it’s SuperBusMan!!!!

13. 10:31 I don’t know why but after a very fast (for me) start I slowed right down.

14. Enjoyable. Mostly surprisingly easy for a change. NHO KNOT but it had to be. PDM with Conference PEAR which I do know – they are the thin and green kind. LOsI WOLF and WATCH. PDMs with CASTLE and ENROBE.
    Thanks vm, Jack. I was just thinking that now I’ve finished the crossword I’d better get on with gardening etc when I see mention of an easy 15×15. Ah!

    1. Yes, I’m having a foray there too. Some early success but let’s see how it goes!
       Later: It went! Not fast, but steady, and no birds or pears.

       1. I finished it too – amazing. It was actually easier than some QCs,

          1. Hooray us!!👏🏻

             1. 😀🍾

15. Positively rattled through this today, not least because I unchecked the Setting box for “Desktop” which has irritated me and slowed phone solving for ages. No problem with CONFERENCE pear which I thought I had bought on Friday but apparently are ‘Blush’, very colourful and tasty.
    DNK Knot was a bird. Paused for thought on WOLF and self-satisfied with ENROBE. Finished in 15 minutes without the usual finger errors due in part to Desktop setting and constant scrolling. COD WEEKNIGHT.
    Thanks Mara and Jackkt

16. Nice friendly puzzle; agree NHO KNOT but had to be. LOI STARLESS. Thank you, Mara.

17. 14:06

    A nice gentle start to the week. Didn’t parse WEEKNIGHT and took too long to realise LOI CASTLE had nothing to do with Celts. Both of which were chess clues. I really need to remember that in future. Otherwise no problems.

18. Also thought this was a straightforward enjoyable puzzle, easier than most with just a few clues that were not an immediate write-in. NHO the KNOT bird – every day a learning day! Chocolate being enrobed is another example of the hyperbole employed by writers of menus in up-market restaurants. COD BEE. Thanks Jack and Mara

    1. Out of interest, enrobing in chocolate isn’t recent. The Shorter Oxford dates the term from the early 20th century.

       1. Good one Jack! And the link to the chocolate site was great.

19. 8:54 (St Edmund becomes King of East Anglia)

    Generally straightforward, with my only hold-ups being PEAR (despite conference pears being the sort I most often eat), and my LOI ENROBE, where I was looking for an item of clothing, and took a while to remember the chocolate-related verb.

    Thanks Jack and Mara

    1. I good reminder that St Edmund was the patron saint of England and he was martyred in this country. I’ve never understood why the Roman soldier George from Lydda in Palestine became our patron saint

       1. Having a wolf guard one’s severed head beats dragon slaying every time.

20. 14:53, held up in North East with ENROBE. SHould have seen Poplar quicker, I have four of them in my garden. Putting in DOWNLAND held me up there.

    KNOT ? Thought it might be slang for jail time (bird)

    COD WEEKNIGHT, very nice.

    1. If I had one poplar in mine, I wouldn’t have a garden! Envious.

21. Fast start, slowed down. Didn’t stall. You can’t move for KNOTs up and down the muddy bits hereabouts so no problem with that, but although we don’t lack for WOODLAND either, I was slow to see it.
    No problem with the PEAR, but ENROBE was a bit too clever for me for a while, and my inability to remember “man” frequently invokes chess stuff was doubly unhelpful. Oink should sue for 16A pinching his trademark clueing.
    All done in very leisurely fashion without quite reaching the SCC, but near enough to drop in anyway – why break a habit.

22. I did not find this easy but no big hold-ups and I had seen KNOT before in puzzles.
    13 minutes LOI STARLESS which I will make COD; and there’s a nudge to listen to the excellent King Crimson song of that name which would occupy about the length of time I needed for the puzzle.
    I liked the puzzle overall; a good QC.
    David

23. Didn’t find this easy at all and failed to see ENROBE, so DNF.

24. 4:55. LOI was the pear. No problem with KNOT. I have seen them among other waders on the tidal water’s edge on the River Orwell. Thanks Mara and Jackkt.

25. Some write ins and some not so straight forward clues. I guessed there must be a KNOT bird and I have seen CASTLE for rook before but was slow to pick up on dressed as an anagram indicator. I was particularly tardy in the SE corner with ENROBE, WATCH and finally WOLF. 8:02

26. A fairly gentle start to the week as the times posted would suggest, and I had few problems finishing in 8.04. It was only my LOI ENROBE that held me up significantly, but thirty seconds or so was enough to put it to bed.

27. Feeling fuzzyheaded after overindulging last night made me a tad careless with my PAIR, and despite SPAIN correcting me, I didn’t notice and submitted PAAR. Drat! 7:47 WOE. Thanks Mara and Jack.

28. 10:07. Had hoped to go under 10m, but the early run of easy wins ran out and I was held up by ENROBE. I liked the surface of WOODLAND and so it gets my vote for COD. thanks Jakkt and Mara!

29. 16:17
    Started fast and ground to a halt.
    LOI enrobe
    COD weeknight/starless.

30. I didn’t find this as easy as others, and limped home around the 25min mark. Enrobe and CoD Weeknight took a long time to see, as did my last two, the Watch Wolf pairing. Definitely a sluggish start to the week, but might try the 15×15 later. Invariant

    1. Ditto…those fiendish axis clues were back again.

31. Must have been easy, think @ 14 mins, my fastest time. The hiddens and anagrams were well signposted. Parsed all answers, slowed down by Enrobe. Thanks all

32. Like most, an enjoyably steady solve today and all done in 13 minutes. Having lived in Budapest for three years I always look out for it when capitals are involved and upset gave me PEST and the U of BUDA. Very different cities either side of the DUNA (or Danube as we know it). Is there a theme? Red Carpet, HOGMANAY and GO TO TOWN suggested celebrations (with a tumbler or two of something delicious) but nothing more. Apart from Conference pears, 5d DISCOVERY is an early apple. My COD was 15d BALDWIN as I like reminders of our former PMs. When will TRUSS start to figure, I wonder.

    1. I don’t think arithmetic is one of her strengths. . . 😉

33. 11.12 KNOT was new. CASTLE and WEEKNIGHT took a while. With two examples maybe I’ll finally remember the chess man thing. Thanks Jack and Mara.

34. Not happy!

    I was progressing nicely until the wheels came off with 10 clues remaining. It then took me a further 10 fruitless minutes to get the ball rolling again, which happened when I spotted that my solution to 11a (downLAND) was incorrect. My solving pace picked up again after that, until I came to my last clue (18a).

    Unfortunately, I’d found cATCH at 18d and the only animals I could find to fit c_L_ were CALF and COLT. I reasoned that both could be wild, but I went with the former on the basis that FLAC might be some sort of digital stream of information in the world of Hi-Fi. I did wonder whether cATCH was wrong at 18d, but it seemed to fit really well and WATCH simply never occurred to me.

    Outcome = DNF after 40 minutes, with two errors.

35. A tough one for me, limping over the line at 23:39. I’m not sure what the problem was other than a general wavelength misalignment. I enjoyed WEEKNIGHT a lot, and it confused the hell out of me for a while – easy COD for me.

    Thank you for the blog – now to try the 15×15!

    (Edit: 41:21. Very happy with that! Second COD: 9d)

36. Wizzed through NW and spread across coming to abrupt halt in SE. Enrobe and wolf did for us so a DNF

37. 25 mins…

    I should have found this easy, but I made hard work of it. Spent far too long on the 18dn/18ac axis of “Watch” and “Wolf”, 8ac “Starless” and the anagram of 22ac “Secretly”.

    FOI – 10ac “Knot”
    LOI – 18ac “Wolf”
    COD – 5dn “Discovery”

    Thanks as usual!

38. nho KNOT nor equate ENROBE with ‘coat’

39. 13:03. Got off on the wrong foot with OVERCAST at 8ac – “unlike red carpet at Oscars ceremony” because the carpet is under the cast. And it took a while to sort out. STARLESS is much better. COD WEEKNIGHT

40. 11:17. Held up slightly by entering BRETON for the Celt (it kind of works, if you squint). But the wee knight showed that that couldn’t be right quite soon afterwards. LOI ENROBE: didn’t know the chocolate meaning.

    Thanks to Mara and Jackkt.

41. Late to this, bank holiday muddy stroll taking the blame.

    Precisely 1K of time was taken.

    LOI was BUDAPEST, COD was DISCOVERY.

    6:06

42. Very friendly today. NHO KNOT but had to be. Paused over CASTLE until I made the chess connection which then helped me solve WEEKNIGHT. COD to PEAR. Off to try the main crossword. Thanks for the heads up Jack (and for the blog).

43. 6:28

    Cat on keyboard denied me a faster time for this very gentle start to the week. Like Kevin, I took a few moments too, to check that I hadn’t entered anything fat-fingeredly.

    Thanks Jack and Mara

44. Didn’t find this easy, but all correct. Did it after I’d done the 15×15.
    Two very approachable puzzles today

45. This started very well and we were racing through to one of our better times until a disastrous SE corner gave us a DNF around 18 minutes.

    Have never heard of the chocolate covering enrobe but on seeing “Coat carried back, heading for exit” biffed EGRESS as exit and conviced ourselves that serge was a kind of coat (as well as the material used to make one), so reverse that and add a heading of South so all good – d’oh. That made Baldwin impossibe and we made up an unparsed Sellwin as a NHO PM
    Tomorrow’s another day 🙂

46. New to Crosswords. This was my first time completing the quick cryptic without resorting to synonym finders and help from the internet. Total time taken about 2 hours – but I am a beginner. I have found this site invaluable to help me understand the way clues work. Thank you.

    1. Well done! I sometimes used to take a couple of days to complete one of these 😂

    2. Welcome. omegamix!

    3. Good to hear from you, Omegamix. If you finished with all correct you beat me, irrespective of your time. Well done!

47. I remember 60 years ago my father’s engineering firm had a customer called Jahns and we made parts for their chocolate enrobing machines… Found this less accessible than most other contributors. But got there in the end.
    FOI 10a Knot
    LOI 9a Pear
    COD – none.

48. A nice start to the week, under 10 minutes for the first time after a full day’s gardening. BUDAPEST is a favourite city, fantastic market. LOI SECRETLY, and I’ve learned how to spell HOGMANAY!

49. 11 minutes.

    Solved big crossword but far too slowly.

    Thanks for the blog.

50. Woo! This one was my fastest solve yet at 13:37!
    It went very smoothly with only a few small roadblocks

    Tricky Ones:
    Enrobe – got stuck on this one trying to think of the name of a type of coat. Couldn’t think of carried being borne. tricky.
    Estonia – got the wrong anagram letters on this one, and couldnt think of the country.
    Starless – this cryptic did confuse me for a minute or two

    FOI: Beam
    LOI: Enrobe
    COD: Olive

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