Times Quick Cryptic 2812 by Wurm

59 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 2812 by Wurm”

1. 11:05. BOLOGNA and DISPUTE were my favourites. I agree ENNOBLE is pretty weak. I guess with subject and title you’re meant to be diverted into thinking of the realm of writing and publishing.

2. DNF
   Never would have got SAUNDERS. I’ve seen the pair a couple of times, years ago, but I couldn’t have told you her name to save my life.

3. 10.10, another who came close to being undone by Dawn French for the second time in a month. SUPERCHARGED and BOLOGNA also held me up. With ENNOBLE I wondered whether it had something to do with ‘subject’ referring to a plain old ordinary citizen, who loses that status when some kind of rank is conferred. But we should probably ask someone who cares. Thanks Jack and Wurm, enjoyable QC.

4. Encouraged by the stellar time of the Times Crossword championship winner, congratulations to Mark Goodliffe and participants, I zapped through this easier puzzle to finish in 18 minutes, somewhat held up by LOI POOH POOH. COD BOLOGNA.
   No plans to enter next year’s competition, nor the London marathon. I have come to terms with my limitations.
   Thanks Jack and Wurm

5. Found this really tough. Lulled into a false sense of security by solving the first clue I read this week but then ended up with only four on the first pass of acrosses, followed by only four of the downs. Couldn’t see PERSEVERENCE for ages, spotted ‘logn’ was going to feature but couldn’t make ‘Cologne’ make sense and moved on and still can’t make sense of TIE – don’t know what ‘inevitably’ is doing. Longest hold up was for SAUNDERS – seems to be a chestnut already, I’ll be on the lookout. All green in 21.20.

   1. Similar experience 1 second quicker!

6. 10.02 For me. Filled in SAUNDERS from wordplay and then groaned on parsing it having been bamboozled a couple of weeks ago.

   LOI: OUSE
   COD: PERSEVERANCE

7. Tough one for us. Still struggling to get Bologna at the 32 minute mark when I pressed the reveal instead of check button, oops! That led to LOI load

   Didn’t spot the comedy connection but came up with Saunders once we lifted and separated down from French which was leading us to use en bas or bas, thus under popped up and we just thought Saunders was some NHO from WWII !

   Liked dispute

   Thanks Wurm and Jack, was hoping for some clever parsing of ennoble…

8. 12:44 for a good Monday QC. Held up most by SAUNDERS and PERSEVERANCE. I really liked the NORTH POLE anagram – Ron to help out…

9. 10 minutes but WOE, as I completely misunderstood 5D and – given the new dispensation to use living people I’ve never heard of – invented the backing band JOSH JOSH. Well, for all I know they might exist.

   I see Dawn French makes her appearance again – her surname is becoming irresistible for setters keen to confuse us into thinking we are looking for un mot français. In this case I wondered briefly what the French for “down” was before the penny dropped.

   Nice puzzle. Many thanks Jack for the blog.
   Cedric

10. 7’20” for a speedier time than it felt. BOLOGNA, SAUNDERS, CRESCENDO, THOUGHTS and ENNOBLE all among the tougher (biffed) ones.

    Thanks Wurm and Jackkt

11. 11:30
    Add me to the list of those for whom LOI SAUNDERS was constructed from the wordplay, with no thought of Dawn French.
    Did not immediately spot OUSE, despite having walked the Ouse valley trail from King’s Lynn to Milton Keynes.

    Thanks Jack and Wurm

12. I found this fairly hard going.
    I needed most of the checkers to get SUPERCHARGED which meant that the grid was slow to open up and I was completely thrown by the French and Saunders thing (again) but I see a chestnut rapidly coming into being so hopefully …
    Like Mendesest I misspelt PERSERVERANCE which made ‘cologne’ irresistible which in turn gave me all sorts of headaches for ROBBER.
    Started with SHORE UP and finished with CONSTRUE in 11.05.
    Thanks to Jackkt and Wurm

13. Finally got SAUNDERS after exhausting all other possibilities for SA-N -E-S. Still can’t get used to thinking about living people in crosswords. POOH-POOH the other hold up in an entertaining puzzle.

14. DNF. Could not see SAUNDERS, but thought of Dawn before discarding it.

    Misspelt “BLOGONA”, which skewered LOAD.

    Liked PERSEVERANCE. Only knew CONSTRUE from Billy Bunter who was always construing his Virgil under the gimlet eye of Mr Quelch. Come to think of it. That’s the only time I have seen “gimlet” as well.

    1. At a place I worked in my 20s, a “gimlet” was the office term for the junior assistant who did all the tedious work preparing papers so that his or her manager could present the work and get all the credit. Gimlet as in “small boring tool” …

       1. 😄

15. 25:15

    This was going ok but put an extra E instead of an A in PERSEVERANCE which meant BOLOGNA took several minutes. The last 5 minutes was spent in the top left on ENNOBLE and the NHO LOI SAUNDERS.

    Edit. On reading Jackkt’s marvellous blog I’m smacking my forehead. That Saunders!

16. Looks like Dawn French is going to become the new Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Doubly useful name. SAUNDERS LOI for me because yes I still haven’t adjusted to living people and yes I still don’t really like the change. Hey ho, it’s happened.

    Classic Wurm puzzle, elegant and tricksy. He made a few references to romantic troubles a while ago, so 9d (COD for me) may be a piece of self-reflection. All done in 08:04 for a Decent Day.

    Many thanks Wurm and Jack.

17. I was sailing along quite nicely, with a comfortably under target time in sight until grinding to a halt with three to get. Time wise it took me as long to get these three as the rest of the completed answers. ROBBER was the first of the three I solved falling for the misdirection in looking for a garment with a possible anagram involved. Once this was solved BOLOGNA followed, but I would perhaps have got this earlier if I hadn’t spelt PERSEVERANCE with an ENCE instead of an ANCE. My LOI was SAUNDERS which I finally unravelled from wordplay without ever making the connection with Dawn French. This is particularly strange as when a similar clue about a month ago required the connection, I thought of her then! Staggered over the line eventually in 14.08.

18. DNF
    Saunders was never going to come to mind. I did watch French and Saunders but that was thirty years ago.
    Agree that ennoble seems a very weak clue.

    Hopefully things will get better during the week.
    Thanks for the blog.

19. Most of this was very difficult for me! BOLOGNA was a real struggle, much sweat elsewhere too – to cap it all, had to throw in the towel over 2d.
    Oh…. so that French. Just about HO – will have to add to the dictionary, then.

20. I started off really well with USAGE and SUPERCHARGED. The LHS of the grid filled out quickly with the exception of SAUNDERS and I join those who thought ENNOBLE was underwhelming. BOLOGNA took some time to put together and as for PERSEVERANCE, my LOI, I needed a PDM. 8:02

21. 5.18 but I thought it was going to be longer as I did it. I really enjoyed this puzzle. I smiled when the Saunders penny dropped.
    CODS to perseverance and dispute.

22. This one took two cups of coffee, a struggle to complete with LOI POOH POOH. It took a few minutes to realise that “ground” in 12a referred to an anagram. COD BOLOGNA, some excellent misdirection trying to think of a place called ‘Snake City’. A tough start to the week!

23. I found that hard, and despite the recent Dawn French incident I still didn’t realise who 2d Saunders was. DOH!
    13d POI Construe=explain? Well OK but very loose I would have thought, Wiktionary majors on translate/interpret, plus of course relate grammatically, rather than explain.
    17d Robber took far too long! But COD.

24. USAGE was FoI and SUPERCHARGE was POI. SAUNDERS was LOI after I stopped trying too fit la bas into it and assumed under. The French connection then hit me. Ha ha. The Orpheus reference made me smile too. 8:41. Thanks Wurm and Jack.

    1. A tip of the (pork-pie) hat for working that in.

25. I thought this was much more approachable than Jalna’s teaser from Saturday, though still challenging enough in places. Any outside chance of a sub-20 was finally scuppered by a slow to drop Saunders pdm and loi Perseverance. Although obvious once severance/divorce came to mind, this was another of those clues that seem impossible at first sight. CoDs to Bologna and Pooh-Pooh, although baffling how can they share a grid with Ennoble. Invariant

    1. I was trying to force some form of “prenuptial” for quite a while for 9dn.

26. Is it funny that comedians are holding up QC solving times? Possibly. I was glad to be delayed for a short while by such a good clue, however. Other favourites include ATTIC, OUSE, and the other living persons clue for SERB. ENNOBLE is a simple essay pun isn’t it? A title for a subject to be written about? I guess so.

    This was a very, very easy puzzle for me, speaking of which, a friend of a friend has said that the Championship puzzles for Saturday were also not much more than a doddle. I’m sure some of you were there, so all gossip gratefully received.

    1. Noted that 75 successfully completed the three first-round puzzles compared with 60 in 2023 which would suggest the friend of your friend may not be far from the truth… wish I’d been there now!

    2. Not too much detail about the championship puzzles please as I think in due course they will be published by The Times and blogged here.

       Edit: I see the Championship puzzle has already been published and is available here. The TfTT blog will follow at some point, so no discussions in the meantime please.

27. 6:26

    Much enjoyed, and missed the French connection initially building the answer from the cryptic and wondering if there genuinely had been a French collaborator name SAUNDERS during the war – then the penny dropped with a clang…

    The long ones down the sides both required writing out the letters to see the answer which on both occasions jumped out immediately.

    Thanks Jack and Wurm

28. Should have seen SAUNDERS, what’s ‘inevitability’ got to do with TIE? clue would have worked without it. Apart from SAUNDERS relatively straightforward

29. This is getting ridiculous. Yet another several-clue DNF … to follow Saturday’s and last Thursday’s and last Tuesday’s and the previous Friday’s. And all of these have followed straight on from my worst ever week of 5 x DNFs in 6 days, which itself capped a period of about a month when my success rate dropped to around 70%.

    In the 6 months leading up to this rocky spell my solve rate was in excess of 95% and my average time was less than 30 minutes. But now, over the past couple of months, my key metrics are almost as bad as when I started nearly four and a half years ago. I know my crosswording skills have improved markedly during that time and this difficult spell has sustained for too long for it to be a series of coincidences.

    The QC has toughened up considerably to the point that it’s no longer a QC and it’s ceasing to be a fun challenge over a cup of coffee/tea. So, whilst I won’t stop altogether, I will only attempt it on days when I know I have sufficient time to do it justice and to post my thoughts from now on.

    As for today? Well, it was a DNF with the erroneous SUPECHARGEr and SAUNDERS, BOLOGNA and DISPUTE unsolved when my 40 minutes was up.

    Many thank to Jack.

    1. A quick look at my stats shows my solve rate down to 67% for the year so far (68% for last year), but my average mean solve time for those completed has gone from 19 mins to 21 mins. My solve rate is slightly skewed by a poor Q4, which is almost down to 50% since the start of October. Like yourself, I’ve had a series of punishing DNF’s over a number of weeks.

       Interestingly, my solve rate declines from the beginning of the calendar year on a linear basis, and has done for the last three years. Maybe I just get tired as the months go on?

       1. Overall, I’m finding them harder as well. Are we not still short of crossword editor ?

    2. I echo SRC’s comments. “Quick Cryptic” hardly applies a significant proportion of the days and individual clues. It is unecessarily confusing and certainly defeats the initial objective of introducing the QC. I do not know where the editing situation is but perhaps the QC needs some improved discipline and adherence to objectives.

30. I found this all relatively easy except for a few which nudged my time up to 18 minutes. Chief offender was PERSEVERANCE which I probably stared at for 3+ minutes. Couldn’t parse CRESCENDO – missed the anagram of soccer. Solved 2dn from wordplay alone without seeing the ‘French reference’. PDM on reading the blog!

    FOI – 7ac USAGE
    LOI – 9dn PERSEVERANCE
    COD – 22ac DISPUTE

    Thanks to Wurm and Jack

31. DNF. Didn’t find this easy at all. Spent best part of an hour on it over lunch. Completely stumped by 2d. Not helped by not believing that DOWN=UNDER.

32. All done in 14 minutes except for the Saunders: worked it out from the clue but had no idea why it could be the right answer.

33. 24 mins…

    Like many above, a fair chunk of this was spent trying to get 2dn “Saunders”, whom I’d never heard of. Didn’t help that I bunged in “Partisan” at the start which led me astray. Liked 20ac “Bologna” and 12ac “Crescendo”.

    FOI – 3dn “Serb”
    LOI – 2dn “Saunders”
    COD – 9ac “Perseverance”

    Thanks as usual!

34. We too were fearing some NHO Gallic collaborator for our LOI until we clocked ‘under’ for ‘down’, the penny dropped, and we then recalled the last reference to Dawn. A MER here also at ENNOBLE but all done in 13:49. Thanks to Wurm and Jack.

35. 8.49 SAUNDERS came from the wordplay. PERSEVERANCE, BOLOGNA, ROBBER and DISPUTE took a while at the end. Thanks Jack and Wurm.

36. 7.07

    Wasn’t 100% sure what was happening with either PERSEVERANCE or SAUNDERS but the w/p in one and definition in the other were spot on.

37. Mixture of fun and bafflement for me: misdirected by French so never thought of SAUNDERS: I was totally entangled with the Maquis, SOE, trying to think of all those French terms (and slang) for collaborators in WW2. Lesson learned. Apart from 2d, all done in 20 minutes so cup of coffee and comfy seat beckon. Thanks to Wurm and to Jack

38. 18:35 got Saunders from a french = un with the hope that DER was a type of collaborator then scratched my head for a bit and then my chin until I spotted ‘under’ and bunged it in without defining until the PDM reading this blog…I won’t be forgetting my French collaborators in the future, and (sorry for the very long sentence) I will be looking out for ‘star with dawn’
    Thanks Jack and Wurm

39. 24:26 and this was never going to be a fast solve for me, but I was having a nice time figuring things out with no frustrating hold-ups until the French thing. To my shame it took an alphabet trawl to get me to see the wordplay. Maybe I better go read up on her if it’s going to go like this in the future. Huff huff!

    Good puzzle, liked PERSEVERANCE, thanks Wurm and Jack!

40. Joined those who had trouble with 2d. Not a fan at all with this type of clue. Otherwise we found the rest of the clues tricky but enjoyable.

41. 13m
    Only really struggled with robber, saunders, and LOI perseverance.
    COD crescendo, Bologna, or dispute.

42. I’m another one who misspelled perseverance with an ‘e’ and then struggled to make Cologne the city but couldn’t make ‘Coe’ into a snake. Not Sebastian surely! Apparently Durban is called Snake City. Also completely misled into French resistance and Allo! Allo!

43. Wish I’d been side-tracked into Allo!Allo! as that would have been some welcome light relief. Missed 2d Saunders, also Bologna/Robber cross. Not a great day!

44. Hard work but arrived safely in the SCC with all parsed (more or less). For me SAUNDERS was one of the earlier clues solved. Struggled more where there were 3 bits to find (e.g. BOA+LOG+N and ROBE+R+B). Feeling pleased having read the blog. Thanks all.

45. Very entertaining. Loved DISPUTE and SAUNDERS (my LOI – living people extend the range more than somewhat!) Mrs Edlavar did PERSEVERANCE for me.
    Grateful thanks.

46. Enjoyable puzzle but ground to a halt at Supercharged and Perseverance perhaps with more of the latter, I should have solved the former! Thanks Jack and Wurm

    PS it had to be Saunders, Petain was never going to work

47. 45 minutes so probably bottom half of National League. I found it very difficulty but felt that I would get there in the end if I too persevered which I did.
    Have spent over an hour today on the Times championship final 2024 crossword in which I have solved 10 of the 30 clues. The winner did it in 4 minutes 38 seconds!! I couldn’t write them in that quickly even if I knew the answers. Incredible talent but where’s the fun in finishing that quickly!

48. 20 minutes.

    SAUNDERS? Seriously? Some of us find the QC hard enough without these references to TV personalities.

    Got most of the real crossword but took forever. Progress non-existent. ☹️

49. DNF x 3. Perseverance, SAUNDERS, CRESCENDO. COD BOLOGNA.

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