Times Quick Cryptic 2824 by Izetti

99 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 2824 by Izetti”

1. Yes, this was definitely the easiest Izetti ever. Don Manley’s puzzles are always very well-constructed, and if he holds back on vocabulary and knowledge they should snap into place. The only potentially difficult answers, ousel and creeds, I saw instantly, and I remember Holi – not that it is really needed, as the H and the L are crossed.

   Time: 7:16

   1. My fastest times for Izetti puzzles are 6 minutes (x 2) and 7 minutes (x 15) so today’s was nowhere near his easiest for me. And my QC times include parsing.

2. 12:29 APOLLO and CREEDS had me thinking of the Rocky movie franchise. I think BABY is a valid alternative to BABE considering U.S. President Grover Cleveland’s sweet little daughter, “Baby Ruth”, and the popular American chocolate bar of the same name.

   1. Being more familiar with the Goonies than baseball, I put down BABY too…

      1. Indeed-the Wikipedia entry for Baby Ruth candy bar mentions a wide range of movies and TV shows that refer to it.

3. I’m sorry guys I didn’t find this easy at all, there were about five or so words I didn’t know at all, plus two rivers!

   I’m having a really bad run, and sometimes my failures get backed up by the fact that the crossword is tricky and sometimes I come in to find that everyone found it straight forward so it might be a me issue.

   Edit: I will say though, that I am very familiar with Holi, so it is really hard to say what is common knowledge and what isn’t.

   1. I found this very hard too, must be one of those that the experienced solvers find very easy but newer solvers struggle with.
      But according to vinyl nothing here is actually difficult, so we must be wrong…

      1. Well, there were a couple last week where I gave up after 20 minutes.
         The reason I found this one relatively easy is that I solve from the cryptics, which use very common cryptic elements that experienced solvers know by heart. No 15-letter anagrams or anything like that.

   2. Agree with you Tina. It seems to me that we are getting lots of puzzles which may be cutdown version of 15x15s. They’re going to be quick for anyone who does the 15×15 but not much fun to those of us who don’t and are hoping the QC will be an easier puzzle to tackle.

      Edit: currently QUITCHing at 105. Ten of the last fourteen puzzles over 100 is unprecedented. This one will probably scrape back under 100 later in the day but even so.

      1. This is the problem with the QUITCH. people who submit times are often people who also do the big one, and so they’re likely to not run into the same issues as qc-only gang.

         The other problem with the QUITCH is it really needs to add some sort of multiplier for submissions with errors instead of removing them from the pool, or a way people can submit a time they did not want to submit to the leaderboard

         1. I have discussed the way the SNITCH works with starstruck_au quite a bit. It’s not perfect but I agree with him that using only submitted all-correct times is the best that can be done to measure relative difficulty.

            1. Yeah I trust you both.

               I do sometimes have a look see at the number of submissions with errors though, so it’s not like that information isn’t actually there anyway.

         2. Tina, I agree that the QUITCH is not so directly indicative of relative difficulty for the QC only faction, albeit I am ever amazed that it exists at all. Impossible I imagine to exclude the 15ers impact on the scoring, but as Vinyl1 says, familiarity with the ways of the cryptic that are less transparent to the likes of me must help a lot.
            I found this hard, deeply into the SCC, but in Izetti I trust and with the time to unpick his clever clues I usually get there, as today, but it’s rarely an easy solve for me.

4. 9.49, nice to be under 10 (make that 15) for a change after some challenging recent puzzles. LOsI SEDUCER and PRESENCE into which I kept trying to cram a shortened ‘here’ for too long. I liked GIRTH once I got it, gave a tick to O for halo but isn’t something not allowed simply taboo? Can’t say I’ve ever encountered TABOOED before. Anyway a fun puzzle, thanks Izetti and Jack.

   1. I didn’t know, but the usual reference sources have TABOO as a verb as well as an adjective. For example: “Smoking was not allowed at school” = “Smoking was tabooed at school”. No, I’ve never seen it used before in this way either.

      1. I’ve seen TABOOED used before. A quick look back shows it was in an Izetti QC from March last year 😀 where it generated the same discussion! Outside of that though, you’re right – never heard it used.

         1. And let’s hope we never hear it again!

5. As always, I didn’t know who the setter was, but it was pretty easy for me, anyway. [NITCH currently 107.] [on edit: The 15×15 SNITCH currently at a very low 58; some of you might want to have a go at it.] Vaguely recalled Holi, but as Vinyl says. Biffed BONHOMIE, never parsed it. 5:52.

   1. Thanks for the tip about the 15×15! I rarely venture into that one but I managed to finish it today.

6. Too much Halloween. Put BABY Ruth.

7. 15 minutes. As pointed out, not very difficult but I became stuck on HOLIEST and then the straightforward PRESENCE as my LOI. I liked A LOT (the clue is close to a straight def as well) and GIRTH.

   Thanks to Izetti and Jack

8. NHO an OUSEL but the river Ouse comes up often enough to make it seem likely. Couldn’t see PRESENCE for reasons unknown. Didn’t know what a screed was.
   Thanks Jack and setter.

   1. Surprising to me, an ouzel is just a blackbird.

9. Just over 10mins – LOI was Apollo – not sure I’m familiar with Poll as a synonym for Head

   1. ODE sv ‘poll’: Origin: Middle English (in the sense ‘head’); perhaps of Low German origin. The original sense was ‘head’ … from which developed the sense ‘number of people ascertained by counting of heads’ and then ‘counting of heads or of votes’ (17th cent.).
      Ironically, the sense ‘a person’s head’ is marked as (dialect).

      1. Pollarding a tree.

   2. Remember the Poll Tax?

10. We’re with Tina and struggled for 38 minutes before finally cracking this one after resorting to a few checks of guessed letters.

    Not helped by putting bowel rather than below which sort of fits.

    Just one of those mornings where the right words would not pop out, po took ages to remember as the likely river!

    Thanks Izetti and Jack

    1. I put bowel too and thought it was a great clue!

       1. Oh that makes me feel better. Sooooo tempted by the endless pun possibilities in this reply but perhaps a little discretion is in order 😉

11. I found this fairly straightforward with only a minor hold up at the end for the god. Two NHOs today – ‘Holi’ and ‘poll’ – but the answers generously clued.
    Started with POST and finished with APOLLO in 5.40 with COD to GIRTH.
    Thanks to Jack

12. 22:03 but as I’d never heard of screed, debated between creeds and creedo and went the wrong way.

    Not heard of HOLI, OUSEL, screed, POLL=head doesn’t fill me with confidence that this was an easy one from Izetti. The last puzzle was 13:53 and I had one at start of August in 10:52 plus a couple in the 15-17min range.

13. 12:28. Chewy enough for the Quitch to be above a hundred. I liked POINTLESS, A LOT and BELOW

14. 12½ minutes, which is just over my average, but a good time for an Izetti puzzle. And as that time suggests, I found this a good but fair workout, with only the Holi festival not known – fortunately by the time I came to fill in HOLIEST I had all the checkers which left no other option for the answer. I shall now go and look the festival up.

    Many thanks Jack for the blog
    Cedric

15. 7.08 WOE

    No idea what possessed me to bung in BONHOMME at the end. I even thought it was a word 🙂

    Otherwise I thought this was in the medium rather than easy category

    1. ‘Bonhomme’ is a word, just not an English one. The USS Bonhomme Richard was a warship in the American navy in the War of Independence, commanded by John Paul (‘I have not begun to fight’) Jones.

       1. I was invited on board one incarnation of the USS Bonhomme Richard ages ago in the Middle East. A huge warship. No alcohol though.

16. Very gentle start to week solving in 9.39 after a couple of DNFs last week.

    Could have been faster being held up unduly by LOI: APOLLO and took a while to parse CREEDS before hitting submit.

    FOI: OUSEL
    COD: no stand out contenders but quite liked the simplicity of POINTLESS

17. Poll meaning head is to be found in many everyday expressions especially to do with politics and elections. The poll tax, for example, as introduced by Mrs T, was a tax per head regardless of ability to pay. Polling day, polling station, opinion poll are all to do with counting heads.

    1. Thanks Jack – good real world examples that make it easy to remember for future

    2. Yay! I’ve been reading down the comments thinking “Are they all so young that they’ve never heard of the Poll Tax?”. Thanks Jack.

       1. Shame betide any Scot that doesn’t remember it!

          1. Even I remember it, as an American who visited Scotland the first time in 1989. I still have a photo of a graffito “sucks to yer old poll tax there’s a rising on the way”.

             1. 😂

18. I enjoyed that very much. Lovely, smooth clues. NHO HOLI but “most religious of all” was a friendly definition.

    I held myself up by putting “bowel” instead of BELOW, and even had a chuckle about what an excellent definition “in the underground” was. Only when SHOT DOWN emerged was I able to straighten that corner out, and so LOI was APOLLO.

    All done in 08:15 which is pretty much my average so a QUITCH of around 100 seems about right to me.

    Many thanks Don and Jack.

19. Not Izetti’s easiest by some way IMO, but quite accessible. I had to think hard on my LOI.

    FOI POST
    LOI HOLIEST
    COD BONHOMIE
    TIME 3:57

20. I also found that on the easier side, finishing in 8:34. NHO HOLI.

21. Thanks Izetti and Jack. I biffed Apollo, thinking I was half parsing it with POLO (the mint with hole) as halo, and hoping to come back and see that somehow L stood for head. So thanks for POLL.

22. 4:46. Hooray. Under my target for the first time since last Wednesday’s Jimmy. Vaguely remembered HOLI for my last one in. Thanks Izetti and Jackkt.

23. With determination (after Friday’s fiasco), finished it. LOI EXCHEQUER. NHO BABE (US culture again), but Mrs M came up with it and claims it’s GK so there we are!
    Agree with Tina, NHO OUSEL, head = POLL, or HOLI. But all learnt and digested, thanks, Jackkt.

24. Finished and enjoyed. Pleased to finish an Izetti relatively quickly. No real hold-ups, except I biffed Harvest festival briefly, which made BLIGHTER difficult. Now there’s an old-fashioned word!
    Liked GIRTH, UTTER, EXCHEQUER, HOUSTON.
    Only vaguely heard of OUSEL.
    Thanks vm, Jack.

    1. I always spell them OUZEL, as does the RSPB Guide and my other bird books, so this penny took a while to drop. Ousel is a variant spelling, according to Collins. If I hadn’t known the bird I’d probably had worked it out faster!

       1. Ah!

       2. Ah, thanks for that. We initially didn’t put it in as I know the bird as Ouzel too but didn’t go to check.

25. 21:21 with One red Square, BABY. I (re)learnt last week that Ruth meant Pity, so was trying to make that work, but BABY had to be right….

    My 15×15 time is less than 50% faster, and no errors over there.

    Spent longest time on CREEDS/PIECE. I had the “beginning to end” as just an E. I thought the defining characteristic of a SCREED was its hostility, not its length.

    I think TABOOED works as a participle used as an adjective, English is very flexible in allowing these words to be created.

    NHO OUSEL or HOLI but guessable.

    COD HOUSTON

26. 6:51

    LOI BONHOMIE, as it didn’t come at first pass. FOI POST, COD SEDUCER. Gentle Monday, thanks Izetti and Jack

27. I found the QC middle of the road despite not knowing HOLI. For a change I tried the method of doing all the across clues followed by all the down clues but reverted to my method of using checkers after a haul of just 4 across answers (POST, A LOT, BABE, GEORGE). The clue surfaces seemed rather lack lustre for an Izetti but then I do hold him in high regard. Terminated at HOUSTON in 7:58.

28. I didn’t find this one particularly easy, but I also shot myself in the foot by misspelling TABBOOD. Wouldn’t have happened if it had been an across clue. Shudda gone to Specsavers! 7,29 WOE. Thanks Izetti and Jack.

29. 11 minutes for me. Did not know HOLI.
    Had to think twice before putting in BELOW, as “giving someone the Spanish archer” is the best crossword way to end a relationship – El-bow.

30. Found this one tough and finished with a well over target 31:24. NHO HOLI, SCREED or POLL. All those words with poll in them make more sense now, including pollarding. I had heard of Babe Ruth, though he is just about the only baseball player I could name, at least correctly (I did vaguely remember a guy called Stanley Kufax being mentioned in Stephen King’s Needful Things, which I read a long time ago, but Wikipedia informs me, his actual name was Sandy Koufax. I was close). Anyway, a good educational puzzle from Izetti, so thanks for that, and to Jack of course.

    1. Joe DiMaggio is another everybody should have heard of – although whether they should know he was a baseball player is another matter. He was married to Marilyn Monroe and mentioned in Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson

       1. Also mentioned in “Vogue” by Madonna.

31. Quite tricky. Having discovered “ruth” last week still struggled with an American baseball player. Ouzel not familiar to this birdy. Piece and seducer good.

32. Despite a good start, I struggled to complete this before my 30min cut off. My main problem was in the NE, where I wondered how to get an extra ‘e’ (beginning to end) into Credo. I did go for Creeds in the end, but of course couldnt parse it. Likewise Holiest remained unparsed at the cut off. Several candidates for CoD, with a fondly remembered (old) Blighter just pipping the cad at 7d. Invariant

33. Pleased to get back on track after the tribulations of last week. 18 minutes with everything parsed except APOLLO. I didn’t get much in the top half at first, so basically solved from the bottom up. Knew OUSEL and had a vague recollection of the festival but the main hold-ups were trying to fit ‘nob’ somewhere in 20ac and ‘her’ somewhere in 11ac. Still – happy with 18 minutes for an Izetti.

    FOI – 6ac POST
    LOI – 11ac PRESENCE
    COD – liked the former auditor at 5dn

    Thanks to Izetti and to Jack

34. Glad to finish under target for once at 9.15 after a pretty poor run of slow times. I joined others who initially put in BOWEL without carefully checking the parsing, and HOLI is a new one on me.

35. I did not think this was easy but I managed to finish all correct in 12 minutes.
    LOI HOUSTON where I had been trying to justify PRESTON.
    Lots of very good clues, as you expect with IZETTI. A vote for GIRTH as COD.
    I think experience really helped with this puzzle. Izetti is precise so if you follow instructions you should get home.
    DNK HOLI.
    David

36. And there’s me thinking SCREED was some type of concrete floor. NHO the other meaning!

37. Nho HOLI but easy enough biff. Overall quick and smooth progression

38. 17a Babe (Ruth.) I’m 75 and learned of this bloke from my mother when it pitched up in a crossword a good few decades ago. He died a year before I was born. How long do these people stay in the lexicon of valid things the setter can assume we know? Actually I don’t mind as long as it is something I know, but.
    POI 14d Tabooed. Didn’t know taboo was a regular verb. Whilst looking at Wiktionary I found tabooification and tabooize. Would not like to meet THEM in a crossword!

    1. Babe Ruth is generally considered the greatest baseball player of all time, so the name will be known forever. He was the core of the 1927 Yankees, that many consider the best team ever.

    2. There are some people who achieve such a degree of fame in their lives that it’s reasonable for a setter to count on them as fair game for GK purposes. Don Bradman in cricket. Ali in boxing. Pele in football. And I think that Babe Ruth falls into that category, because I’ve never watched a game of baseball in my life and couldn’t tell you the name of a single other baseball player (except Shoeless Joe from Hannibal Mo, whoever he was) – but I know Babe Ruth’s name, and I know about the Curse of the Bambino. That’s his level of fame.

    3. As an occasional baseball fan, it was interesting watching the World Series last week between the New York Yankees and LA Dodgers – and Babe Ruth is still towards the top of a number of stats – albeit in a different era where there weren’t all the play-off games etc. and maybe pitchers weren’t as good.

       1. OK then, Babe stays!

39. 23:09 with no errors. I wouldn’t say it was one of Izetti’s easier puzzles but I did enjoy it. Also unusual to record one of his as my best time in four days. I too have only come across SCREED in the concrete sense, but I did work in a Builder’s Merchant for 39 years. Also NHO HOLI but the cluing was generous enough. I liked POINTLESS but COD – RIGHT. FOI – A LOT, LOI – CREEDS. Thanks Izetti and Jack

40. I didn’t think that this was as easy as some others have, but plodded my way through with a couple of guesses along the way. LOI HOLIEST (NHO HOLI).

41. 12.29 I was distracted by Honiton for a while, though I’m pretty sure it’s not a city. GIRTH was LOI. Thanks Jack and Izetti.

42. Other duties at breakfast time so came to this on a phone at lunch. Not that easy but all done and all green in a pleasing enough 13.39.

    Will have a cracking at the 15×15 later – thanks for the tip off Kevin.

43. Found this quite difficult and took about 45 minutes. Had one letter wrong but I can live with that!
    Some clever clues which got the mind ticking over.
    Thank you Izetti and Jack

44. I think it would be wrong to say we struggled with this but, at 15:02, it was definitely slower than our average and, from memory (we don’t keep a log), we don’t usually do too badly with Izettis. Much of it was our own fault: getting to APOLLO was slowed considerably by not having taken in the first ‘in’ in 18d and having unhelpfully entered BOWEL (as in ‘bowels of the earth’) until we re-examined it and saw the alternative. LOI PRESENCE also took far too long as I contemplated words ending in HER{e}CE before the correct construction being revealed by POI.. NTLESS. Some great clues though: I’m another who had a quiet smile at the rather dated BLIGHTER, a word worth resurrecting. Thanks to Izetti and Jack.

45. A quick solve for us until we reached the SE corner. 17a had to be babe or baby, we are not baseball fans. 20a, did not know poll for head, and 18d any reference to parts of London nearly always causes us problems. Enjoyable overall, thanks Izetti.

46. 10:57 here. I found the bottom half much easier than the top half. COD to GIRTH for the completely unexpected anagram.

    Thanks to Izetti and Jack.

47. 15:55

    I wasn’t very with it this morning but still solved in a relatively short time. Classic churchy Izetti with a dash of paganism, very nice. Did not parse CREEDS, shame, shame. BLIGHTER so British. Also EXCHEQUER, thus pleased with myself for seeing it immediately. So many good surfaces, as always with this setter. I choose HOUSTON for my COD, for the associations of the clue with personal tribulations. Setting aside the personal, BONHOMIE would win.

    Thanks to Izetti and jackkt.

48. Another great QC from the ever reliable Izetti. was looking for Credos at 9a, Couldn’t parse 2a Apollo (thx to the Blog) and it had to be 12d Holiest given the checkers. Lots to like elsewhere.
    FOI 1a Bonhomie. distracted by starting off with bold—-
    LOI 20a Apollo
    COD 15a Blighter – a word worthy of Rotter himself, and a word deserving of being resurrected.
    Thx to Izetti and Jackkt.

49. 28 mins…

    Wouldn’t say it was easy, but got there in the end after being held up by 15ac “Blighter” and 16dn “Girth”. There were a couple of clues that I never parsed properly, including 12dn “Holiest” and 20ac “Apollo”. Still not sure about 19ac “George” and the inner energy element for “e”. It’s not the middle letter as it’s an even numbered word – maybe I’m misunderstanding it.

    If only the Yankees had Babe Ruth for the series last week.

    FOI – 10ac “A Lot”
    LOI – 15cac “Blighter”
    COD – 3dn “Houston”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. Inner just means inside without specifying any particular position.

    2. I think I know what you meant about GEORGE; I was looking for the center of “energy” to go in the answer and not having any luck. But in crosswordland “energy” often stands for E, as it does here. And “inner” is an instruction to put the E inside GORGE.

       1. Yep – I was overthinking this – the “inner” instruction element is now obvious. Thanks for pointing this out.

50. Combination of a SEER with a DUC amused me and the cad emerged: Lovelace all over again! I flirted with UMBLE at 13a, wondering if Dickens had ever used the term: but TABOOED put me right! Well into the SCC for me but I enjoyed the challenge and the word play, struggling finally with POST and PIECE, both of which took me an age! Thanks setter and blogger.

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