Times Quick Cryptic 3040 by Wurm

90 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 3040 by Wurm”

1. I was in good form, putting in Malaga and Golgotha without hesitation. Ganglion threatened to ruin my solve, as my mind went blank and I couldn’t find the literal. But suddenly, ganglion popped into my head – that must be it.

   Time: 5:11

2. Didn’t know GOLGOTHA but should have seen ‘goth’ for barbarian. Thought IRISH SEA for Man’s setting was very good. CELIBACY went in from the anagrist but took me a while to see how ‘it’ worked. DRAY from the wordplay but didn’t know the squirrel meaning. COD to BEER HALL.
   Thanks Jack and setter.

3. 13:07. CELIBACY was a puzzler until I remembered “it”. BEER HALL took too long because I looked at the wrong end of the clue for the definition. As a long-time ganglion- sufferer I would never have considered one any sort of tendon. I guess there’s a dictionary somewhere….

4. DNF
   GANGLION ruined my solve; ironically, since I once had one. The definition here is ‘tendon problem’: ODE sv ganglion 2: an abnormal benign swelling on a tendon sheath. Mine was on my wrist, and I thought it was on the bone.
   DNK HMRC, but guessed the RC was ‘revenue commission’. The ANKH was an ancient Egyptian symbol, which makes Tutankhamun apt.
   I thought the squirrel nest was a drey, and ODE confirms that, but Collins gives dray as a variant.

   1. Thanks, I have extended the underline re GANGLION to include ‘problem’ omitted in my haste.

      Now that you have mentioned it, ‘drey’ was the only spelling I knew for the squirrel’s nest and I now have added a note that DRAY is an alternative. Chambers also lists DRAY in this sense but one has to go to the SOED or OED to find it in the Oxfords.

      1. drey or dray, it seems a bit arcane for a QC.

   2. Agreed, in this instance the ganglion refers to a fluid filled pouch coming off a tendon or joint and is nothing to do with the nerve synapse alternative meaning. Thanks to Worm and jackkt.

      1. Thanks. That’ll teach me to paste something in from a dictionary without understanding it. Now removed.

   3. RC is revenue and customs FYI

5. Done in 6:46 EXCEPT for GANGLION.

   Overall, this had a few too many slightly obscure things for a QC, to my mind. ANKH, GOLGOTHA, GANGLION. The latter being my main bone of contention.

   COD 25a.

6. No issue with Ganglion having injected very many in a former life (common in wrist and finger flexor tendons) but required alphabet trawl to get DRAY which I thought was a cart for barrels of beer.
   LOI IRISH SEA which I biffed then parsed for COD. Remember ANKH from liberal 70’s when they seemed to be popular necklace adornments. Not as straight forwards as others found it, but got there in 22 mins which is pretty much par for me.
   Thanks Jackkt and Worm.

7. Typing catastrophe. Only corrected the second half of a mangled HAGGIS and a rogue C in CELIBACY – just typed celicaby there too, interesting – mucked up RUBY. So that’s three errors to start the week and not on the one I struggled with most: GOLGOTHA. All parsed in 14.45 but still dead last on the leaderboard.

8. 4.54

   Like Vinyl GANGLION popped into my head as LOI. Otherwise toyed with MACONA for a while. Liked CELIBACY.

   Thanks Jackkt/Wurm

9. 10.04 with GANGLION LOI as I knew it as a lump but did not know a tendon was involved. In earlier times the standard treatment was smashing the lump with a bible, no longer recommended. Couldn’t parse HARROW, thought it was H plus ARROW and wondered why. Liked CELIBACY and IRISH SEA, thanks Jack and Wurm.

10. Mostly straightforward, with a cheer as for once “school” didn’t refer to the Windsor establishment. But the cheer was well drowned out by groans at the use of “it” in the clue for CELIBACY. Can this extremely dated and extremely tired usage please be retired?

    That apart, plain enough sailing until LOI GANGLION, which needed a letter search as NHO. A word slightly out of keeping I think with the rest of the puzzle.

    9:43 for the solve. Many thanks Jack for the blog.

    1. I agree with you about ‘it’ but I think, if banished from crossword land, it would hog-tie the setters of Private Eye Cryptic Crosswords. 🙄😁

    2. If you really think that “doing it” is no longer used for sex, Cedric, you need to get out more … I’ve cited a few lyrics below but I think it’s summed up by this entry for “it” from Urban Dictionary: “everybody knows it means sex!!”.

       1. Completely agree. Like ETON, IT is a very useful crossword device, and these should be accepted for what they are. I don’t know why people get annoyed about these things, but hey.

          While I’m here: very good crossword, COD to IRISH SEA which made me chuckle.

11. Nothing too tricky if you have all the required GK. I’d heard of Calvary and GOLGOTHA but had no idea they were the same place, fortunately ‘goth’ came to mind for barbarian fairly quickly.
    Started with MALAGA and finished with GANGLION in 7.16.
    Thanks to Jack and Wurm

12. 8:18. I kidded myself I’d heard of a DRAY in the ‘squirrel nest’ sense but like GOLGOTHA I was only able to get the answer with the help of wordplay. The other one to give me trouble was LEMONADE for which I didn’t lift and separate the ‘article’ and ‘in French’.

    Favourites were the ‘Man’s setting’ for IRISH SEA and the surface for CADILLAC.

    Thanks to Wurm and Jack

13. 19:34 Golgotha and Ankh not in my morning repertoire but ankh known from Crosswordland. I took far too long trying to fit Achilles in and failing that running through every tendon in my retired doc head before pdm of tendon problem as definition and a less half parsed effort gave lion as the pack animal. We don’t hit them with the family bible anymore as mentioned, although I used to inject with a number and asteroid (2 chestnuts) then pierce them dozens of times with a needle; the colander method. Neither the bible nor the needle gave long term cures which is why those practices are obsolete now.
    Thought the definition for celibacy was interesting. Who was riding the bicycle? Why did it crash? Was it a tandem?
    Just failing to make it into the SCC again. I’ll try harder tomorrow 😉
    Cheers J&W

    1. 🫡 to getting those two chestnuts in.
       🍾

       1. Thanks SC! Couldn’t resist.

14. Cedric’s opening paragraph says exactly what I was going to, so I’ll move on.

    It’s a good job the “A” of DRAY was a crosser, and I already had CADILLAC. I’ve never seen it other than as “drey”, and a DRAY is definitely a brewery vehicle.

    A little too tough for a Monday QC if we’re honest, but my COD made it worthwhile.

    FOI MALAGA
    LOI CELIBACY
    COD IRISH SEA
    TIME 4:47

    1. Can I beg slightly to disagree on “it”? For certain sure SA is completely archaic but I’m pretty sure “it” is still in vaguely common use – or at least in more common use than many of the words we see here!

       1. Absolutely right. I refer the Hon Gentlemen to the lyrical works of Big Boi (“Doin’ it”), Kanye West (“I’m in it”), LL Cool J (“I’m doin’ it”), Janet Jackson (“Do it 2 me”) and no doubt a thousand others.

          Dr Shred will be along soon to give us some rap examples!

          1. 😂

          2. Haha I think you’ve more than covered it, so to speak. The only one that immediately came to mind was Jadakiss’ ‘We Gonna Make It’ from about 25 years ago, which, after re-listening just now, has a lovely bassline!

             You won’t believe this but it took your Tutankhamun comment for me to realise that ANKH was a hidden. I wonder if others got there through brain-racking without seeing the obvious staring them in the face?

             1. 👍🏻

          3. “Why don’t we do it in the road?”

       2. Can I disagree with your slight disagreement? I’m 69 next birthday; nobody, I think, in my generation refers to sex as “it”; my wife’s parents might have, although they avoided talking about “it” at all, but my parents certainly didn’t.

          I think that the only place these days where “it” is a reference to sex is in crossword clues.

          1. To take the slight disagreements a step further, here’s my penn’orth! I asked my millennial daughter and she says ‘it’ is still used by her generation. SA on the other hand is definitely dated, but nevertheless a useful couple of letters in Crosswordland.

15. A good start but I decelerated because of the unusual GK in (too) many clues.
    I knew the word Ankh because of Terry Pratchett (Ankh Morpork, the City in Discworld) and this took me tangentially to the Egyptian ‘cross’.
    I needed crossers for many PDMs and was held up at the end by CELIBACY (see comments above) and by my LOI NICK (d’oh).
    My COD IRISH SEA.
    A mixed bag but an interesting challenge. In the end, I avoided the SCC by the skin of my teeth.**
    Thanks, both.
    ** Note. The clock still keeps running on my iPad after I complete the Crossword (I mentioned this some days ago) so my times are approximate these days.

    1. When Sir Terry Pratchett was awarded a coat of arms, he had a Morpork owl on the crest, and the shield had a Ankh as the central element.

       https://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/news-grants/grants/item/39-sir-terence-david-john-pratchett

    2. On my android phone too…but if you close the puzzle and then review it comes up with the accurate solve time I find.

       1. Thanks for this. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me on my iPad. It still shows my completed time as 00.00 and the clock shown on the puzzle ticks on!
          I’m just getting used to it…..

    3. I salute the Pratchett reference!

       1. I miss him and his books! What an imagination…..

          1. Absolutely! The Watch ones were the best.

16. DNF
    A fast solve until breezeblocked by GANGLION. I did not know it as a tendon problem, only as a group of nerve cells.

    Thanks Jack and Wurm

17. ANKH isn’t random in “Tutankhamun” – it’s an essential component. The word “ankh” (𓋹) in ancient Egyptian means “life” or “to live”, and Tutankhamun means “Living image of Amun” (Tut-ankh-amun). ANKH appears in many Egyptian names. Yes I have spent too much time in the British Museum.

    Quite tough and LOI GANGLION took a while to winkle out. I also took an absurdly long time to see NICK. COD to LEMONADE, just pipping IRISH SEA.

    All done in 08:33 for a Bang Average Day. Many thanks Wurm and Jack.

    1. Impressive arcane knowledge.

18. Biffed DRAY, CELIBACY and IRISH SEA (COD), worked steadily through the rest in 21:11, pretty average for me.

19. 32 minutes, which is about average for me. But, given the setter and some of the TAXING clues, I’ll regard it as a good day.

    I started with BALI, RHO, APE and CHOICE from my first pass of the Acrosses and made steady-ish progress through the Down clues. The squirrel’s nest (DRAY), cross (ANKH), cavalry (GOLGOTHA) and tendon problem (GANGLION) were all unknown to me, so I hope they find accessible resting places in my sieve-like brain. The unparsed (and very difficult, IMHO) IRISH SEA was my LOI.

    Many thanks to Jack and Wurm.

20. LOI MALAGA as had convinced myself it included HAG. COD IRISH SEA. Thanks Jack and Wurm.

21. I enjoyed this one. Had to drag GANGLION up from somewhere and initially thought to myself, “didn’t realise this was a tendon, thought it was something else” before I realised that “problem” was part of the definition. COD for me was IRISH SEA.

    8:36 for me today.

22. Slow today, probably due to a fun filled weekend at The Great North Folk Festival in the heart of the North Yorkshire Moors, and beezeblocked by GANGLION, but it was all in vain as I’d started typing haggis from the wrong square and finished up with HAAGGS. “%$^&$*! 10,27 WOE. Thanks Wurm and Jack.

23. 10:53 with LOI CELIBACY which probably added a good minute to my time

24. Dnf…

    Everything apart from 23ac “Ganglion”. Frustrating, as I had the “lion” element, just in the wrong place. Only other issues were 11ac “Golgotha”, where I was looking for a horse term for “cavalry” and the usual internal debate about whether maroon really is purple – I think of it more as a deep red.

    FOI – 2dn “Taxing”
    LOI – Dnf
    COD – 3ac “Lemonade”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. For me maroon is half way between red and purple, on the reddish end perhaps. An example of maroon is the shirt the Queensland Rugby League side wear; the team are known as “the Maroons”, and if you google eg “state of origin rugby league” you will see their shirt and what people, or at least Australians, think maroon looks like.

       1. According to its registration document, my car is red. I think it’s definitely maroon, but two of my fellow residents think it’s purple….

25. An interesting mix of straight forward and not so straight forward clues. Fortunately the checkers from the former helped with the solving of the latter. I needed all the checkers for CELIBACY, IRISH SEA and my LOI GOLGOTHA (newly acquired GK). I had no problem with GANGLION (I know more about biology than I do about RE) and I wasn’t convinced that BEER HALL was correct until I had parsed it. COD to IRISH SEA. 7:47 Thanks Jack

26. Over target today at 11.29 and I thought it was a good test from Wurm. ANKH went in fairly quickly but only because I’ve come across it before in crosswordland. I’m not sure I would have found it as a hidden otherwise.
    My LOI was GANGLION which is ironic because one appeared on my wrist in my thirties. My mother, who was never short of an old wives cure for whatever, told me that traditionally people got rid of a ganglion by having someone thump it very hard with the family bible. Ever keen to experiment, I got a friend to hit me as hard as he felt reasonable with a heavy tome (not the bible!). Amazingly it did the trick, and the ganglion was knocked back into my wrist. In the ensuing forty or so years it has never reappeared.

    1. Similar experience with one on my finger. Accidentally whacked it on the shower door and it dispersed and has never returned!

    2. My mother did that. She didnt know what to do with herself because of the ensuing pain. Didn’t help either.
       She later found out it wasn’t a ganglion.

27. 17:55

    Mostly ok but failed to parse MACAROON, always forget that around can be CA. Struggled with the public school, not realising there was more than one. Finally had to construct LOI GOLGOTHA from the word play as NHO either the definition or the answer.

28. This felt difficult, or maybe I’m just off-form. 8:38. Some nice words here, though!

    I had no idea that GANGLION was a tendon problem. I know it from cognitive neuroscience only (and there only in passing). Dredged up ANKH the third time looking, and knew GOLGOTHA, but I feel many would struggle with those.

29. The grid made this slightly tricky Xword trickier.
    FOI 3a Lemonade, I instantly biffed Absinthe, then engaged brain for a change.
    11a Golgotha, this was slow to come to me.
    23a Ganglion, NHO the tendon medical condition, and thought it was ONLY a cluster of nerves and synapses so was foxed, shrugged, moved on.
    6d Dray; I knew only this spelling and was surprised Drey is more common. Or was I thinking of brewery vehicles?
    Thanks to Wurm and jackkt

30. DNF

    Oh dear, 6 crossers and 6 downs in 7ish mins and then a brick wall. Called time after ~30mins.
    Looking at jackkt’s blog, I could maybe have got another 8 with checkers but I was way out my depth with this offering from Wurm today.
    Ho-hum.

    Thanks (I think) to Wurm and a big thanks to jackkt

31. Approximately 9.42.

32. Today is a bad day for puzzles and not a nice way to start the week. Utterly failed at NYT’s Connections, failed even at Minute Cryptic, and completely failed at this. Lost count of the reveal button presses by the end. A lot of NHO’s just added to my grumpiness.

33. 14:13 for me. I felt that the cluing was relatively gentle but the vocab relatively hard. I was fortunate to dredge up GOLGOTHA and (my LOI) GANGLION from somewhere, the latter after a good few minutes of bafflement. CELIBACY elicited a smile and a groan at the same time.

    Thank you for the blog!

34. I did not find this “fairly straightforward” on a personal level. GANGLION I wasn’t aware was tendon-related, “it” for CELIBACY just lost me completely, and it took me ages to parse “Man’s setting” for IRISH SEA even after I’d slotted it in. Tough Monday for me!

35. Not a bad start to the week, and interesting to note from Starstruck’s latest amendment to the Quitch, that Wurm (who we often regard as very wiggly) is not up with the most difficult setters at all. Also interesting to note that the trickiest ones are all new setters, except Hawthorn, who seems to have disappeared completely! Maybe he’s too busy setting the daily Wordwatch.
    I must add that Starstruck’s endeavours are outstanding – many thanks.

    Back to today: I didn’t question the DRAY / DREY options, but now I think about it, I realise that I only knew the first as a brewer’s wagon and the second as a squirrel’s nest. Nevertheless, I liked the clue, and it got a tick, along with MACAROON, TIBERIUS, IRISH SEA and CELIBACY, both of which got a 😉
    Two blasts from the past: I remember ANKHs on bits of leather or cord were very trendy as necklaces back in the hippy days; and did Penguin biscuits ever come in purple wrappers? I have a vague feeling there was a fruit and nut one.
    10:17 I didn’t help myself by transposing the answers for 20d and 21d, which made for some odd checkers, and my LOI took 1:17 alone! FOI Bali LOI Ganglion COD Choice
    Thanks Wurm and Jack

    1. I must add that Starstruck’s endeavours are outstanding – heartily seconded! And no great surprise that Trelawney comes out as the most solver-friendly setter. Or that Cheeko is the most challenging.

       1. Yes, I clocked that too 😂

    2. I reckon you might be thinking of the purple-wrapped Club biscuit, Penny, which was the fruit one.

       1. Yes! Of course it was a Club – thanks for the reminder 😊 I wonder if they still make them – I haven’t had one in decades. Nor a Penguin, come to that 😅

36. Very much liked the puzzle

    LOI celibacy. Didn’t cotton on to IT for a while
    COD irish sea
    Hooray! It wasn’t THAT school for once!

    Thanks Wurm and Jack

37. Got nowhere near it – revealed Golgotha, which gave me macaroon and Malaga, then Tiberius which gave me Beer Hall and Irish Sea then Ganglion. No new words to me but some new meanings, particularly ganglion which I only knew in its nerve sense. Strange to see the same word with two completely different meanings, both medical. Maroon is a double “old chestnut” in that chestnut was its original meaning, and because I think it has appeared as purple in crosswordland before. How it came to mean quite such diverse colours is a mystery.
    https://images.app.goo.gl/kyrUb9C8CAywVPCn8
    Thanks to Wurm and jackkt.

38. Not so straightforward imo. This took me 22 minutes with all parsed. ANKH vaguely remembered (no doubt from another crossword). Knew GANGLION and GOLGOTHA.

    FOI – 8ac CADILLAC
    LOI – 14dn CELIBACY. This took me ages even after I had written out the anagrist and I didn’t understand the significance of “it” so just shrugged and came here.
    COD – 3ac LEMONADE

    Thanks to Wurm and Jack.

39. A fairly steady solve, with some hesitations eg GOLGATHA, GANGLION, BEER HALL.
    Forced to change Drey to DRAY. NHO ANKH but it had to be.
    Amused by HARROW. Also liked HAGGIS, CADILLAC, IRISH SEA, MACAROON – though maroon is not purple, imo.
    CNP CELIBACY, now explained above!
    Thanks vm, Jack.

40. 8:32

    Lucky guess for GANGLION with no confidence after 3’.

    Liked “Man’s setting” very much.

    Thanks Jack and Wurm

41. Steady solve with no unknowns for me. Liked CELIBACY, but COD goes to IRISH SEA. Very enjoyable. Thanks for the blog Jack. Also very interesting to read Templar’s comment about ankh – fascinating.

42. Tough one, even after 20 mins I had a misspelt GOLGOTHA, and NOCK for groove, as that’s the groove at the back of an arrow. I considered NICK, but just could not see cooler=nick.

    LOI GANGLION which I had just about heard of, but could parse.

    COD IRISH SEA

    1. I was about to agree with you, then I saw it. Cooler=nick=prison.
       Still not thrilled about nick=groove, though. I can see it but only just. It’s not easy when all you have is two definitions, neither of which seems to match the answer…

43. Looked at this after a visit to The British Museum this morning to see the Elgin Marbles (but they are not called that by the museum).
    The puzzle was straightforward until some mighty hold-ups.
    LOI GANGLION which I was familiar with but thrown by the definition.
    GOLGOTHA required all the checkers as I could not remember the exact location.
    16 minutes in all.
    COD to IRISH SEA.
    David

44. Nho GANGLION apart from character in Tom Sharpe novel

45. This went very smoothly until my last two: GANGLION which I solved and MACAROON which I didn’t. It’s not that hard either but just a complete mental block.
    Fortunately GOLGOTHA is one of these half understood words that fill my brain.
    Thanks Wurm and Jack.

46. We did pretty well with this : 9:35. Had all the GK including drey (as I would have spelled it) though the three feet up made the required spelling clear. Our LOI, GANGLION, needed all the checkers and the parsing came later. Enjoyed IRISH SEA and CELIBACY (well, for a very short while anyway). Thanks to Jack and Wurm.

47. We had Havana for 7a and failed with the Irish Sea 25a. Enjoyable solve otherwise. Thanks as always with the informative comments above.

48. 11.01 Mostly straightforward but there were a few tricky ones. BEER HALL, CELIBACY, HARROW, GANGLION (NHO with this meaning) and MALAGA held me up at the end. Thanks Jack and Wurm.

49. 9:36

    Slowish, but crossed the line with a half-remembered GANGLION, once I’d recalled that there’s a suboesophageal type. But didn’t know it was a problem nor owt to do with tendons.

    Thanks Jack and Wurm

50. 16:13 with one error: I didn’t spot the “prison” meaning of “cooler” and entered NOCK for 13a as my LOI. Ho hum. Liked IRISH SEA and CELIBACY the most today.

    Thanks to Wurm and Jackkt.

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