We have a new Quick Cryptic setter going by the name of Tilt today. Welcome! I didn’t find the puzzle very easy, and some of the surfaces seem a bit odd, but then I’m not a pinball wizard. It took me over 9 minutes, which counts as a bad day for me. Thank-you Tilt! How did you all get on? [Update: I had failed to note it was a pangram. Well done Tilt].
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is my turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword entitled “A Cry For Help?” here. The title is itself a cryptic clue to the theme. Can you find it and the related thematic references? If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 154 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Peak starts to fall under joint initiative (4) |
| FUJI – First letters of , [starts to], Fall Under Joint Initiative. | |
| 4 | Argument over the untidy home became annoying (4,4) |
| WORE THIN – ROW (argument) [over] -> WOR + (the)* [untidy] + IN (home). I was slow to see this but a reversal and an anagram in a charade is a bit tricky for a QC, I think. | |
| 8 | Awful peaty gin from African country (8) |
| EGYPTIAN – [Awful] (peaty gin)*. Well I’ve tasted peaty whiskies but never a peaty gin… and I’m not sure I’d want to. Is that a thing? | |
| 9 | Artificial sole binds to boot (4) |
| ALSO – Hidden in, [binds], artifiAL SOle. Nicely hidden. | |
| 10 | Spoilt son leaves ready to ride (6) |
| ADDLED – {s}ADDLED (ready to ride) without the S (son). | |
| 11 | Chinese dynasty heard important one’s blown in (6) |
| HANKIE – HAN (Chinese dynasty) + KIE sounds like, [heard], KEY (important). A cheeky definiton that made me smile. | |
| 12 | One has a meaningful job in publishing (13) |
| LEXICOGRAPHER – Cryptic definition. | |
| 16 | Powerful women and men (6) |
| QUEENS – Double definition, the second referring to chess men. Another one that held me up. | |
| 17 | This author’s introduced to unacceptable idea (6) |
| NOTION – I (this author) in, [introduced to], NOT ON (unacceptable). | |
| 19 | American Express entertaining staff (4) |
| CANE – Hidden in AmeriCAN Express, [entertaining]. | |
| 20 | United’s front two don’t move or warm up (8) |
| UNFREEZE – First two letters [front two] of UNited + FREEZE (don’t move). I’m not sure I could imagine such a thing described in the surface reading happening on a football field. | |
| 21 | Once more check out donkeys in reserve (8) |
| REASSESS – ASSES (donkeys) in RES (abbreviation for reserve). | |
| 22 | English show contempt for returning team (4) |
| SIDE – E (English) + DIS (show contempt) reversed [returning] -> SIDE. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | Incited blonde grumbling about borders (5) |
| URGED – Reverse hidden in [about borders] blonDE GRUmbling. The surface meaning is? I dunno. | |
| 3 | Impetuosity livens up Messi when playing (13) |
| IMPULSIVENESS – (livens up Messi)* [when playing]. | |
| 4 | Earl in Wisconsin turned Doctor Strange (5) |
| WEIRD – E (earl) [in] WI (abbreviation for Wisconsin) + DR (doctor) [turned] -> RD. Another mysterious surface reading. | |
| 5 | Farmer managed pop diva (7) |
| RANCHER – RAN (managed) + CHER (pop diva). | |
| 6 | What Professor McGonagall does with small geeks (13) |
| TRAINSPOTTERS – TRAINS POTTER (what Professor McGonagall does) + S (small). Ho ho. How odd. We had this answer in a puzzle just yesterday. Which clue do you prefer? | |
| 7 | Iris worked with pen to stimulate the imagination (7) |
| INSPIRE – (Iris + pen)* [worked]. | |
| 10 | Cleaner removing clothing to be off colour (3) |
| AIL – {d}AIL{y} (cleaner) without the outside letters [removed clothing]. Another wacky surface, I think. | |
| 13 | Teach ace duet to dance (7) |
| EDUCATE – (ace duet)* [to dance]. | |
| 14 | Unknown rubs Coe the wrong way (7) |
| OBSCURE – (rubs Coe)* [the wrong way]. | |
| 15 | Make a short trip, arguing regularly (3) |
| RUN – Alternate letters [regularly] of aRgUiNg. I was a bit unconvinced by this at first, but it is definition 16 for RUN in Chambers. | |
| 17 | Loud female drunk by noon is producing unpleasant smells (5) |
| NIFFS – F (forte; loud) + F (female) in [drunk by] N (noon) + IS. Not someone I’d want to meet before noon or any other time, for that matter. | |
| 18 | Discharged bishop departs drunk (5) |
| OOZED – {b}OOZED (drunk) without the B (bishop). | |
Held up at the end by QUEENS. I always forget that when I have a checked U to try Q before it. I didn’t know who Professor McGonnagall was since I never read Harry Potter, although I deduced from TRAINSPOTTER that he must be a teacher at Hogwarts.
Yes we admonished ourselves over the Q too, must remember that mantra!
Ditto, but saw that RULERS was a possibility and tbought no more
I thought of RULERS too at first, but it didn’t seem clever enough for a cryptic crossword.
I don’t remember doing so, but I think I may have nodded off whilst solving this. I certainly hope I did, as the timer was on 50 minutes when I eventually finished.
I struggled over a few clues when It came to completing the grid, most notably TRAINSPOTTER as the only McGonagall I was aware of was the Scottish rhymester and I was trying to related the clue to him. I know nothing of the detail of Harry Potter, only a passing acquaintance that has been impossible to avoid picking up.
HANKIE looks wrong to me as I would spell it ‘hanky’. One source classes it as the US spelling but others list both as valid alternatives.
Yes, I’ve only heard of William McGonagall and have never read any Harry Potter, so when I eventually revealed TRAINSPOTTERS I thought it must have something to do with the railway bridge over the “silv’ry Tay”!
Another Harry Potter-free zone here, so I suppose I have to nominate the Loon clue which I wasn’t that crazy about yesterday. While looking it up I noticed that today’s crossword is numbered the same as yesterday’s, and should be 3290. I found this quite tough, and finished in 12.08 with the SE holding out the longest. UNFREEZE opened the door to OOZES and NIFFS (huh?) was a guess. Thanks John and hello Tilt, welcome to the crease.
Oops. Title updated. Thanks.
Abandoned! Did most of the NW but huge empty spaces across the grid and no idea how to progress. Two on the first pass of acrosses in 3 minutes. Reminds me why I don’t do the 15×15!
Got through the top half in fairly short order (for us) but really struggled in the bottom. To finish in 24.12 .Unfreeze took a long time, and that gave us oozed, leaving queens as LOI. It was only the arrival of the Z that made me think PANGRAM (I say this at least once a week when a J appears and today I was right 😄) and that revealed the Q.
Happy to read that our blogger found it tough and a time of less than 3J is a win.
Thanks John and Tilt
Well spotted on seeing the pangram, which I forgot to check for. Blog intro updated.
One always welcomes new setters – and Tilt has kicked off with a pangram as well – but they nearly always in my experience start with a toughie, which I think must show that for an experienced crossword setter (as one assumes Tilt is), gauging a puzzle’s standard and pitching it just right for a QC is much more difficult than it looks.
This puzzle is a good example for me. Different, undoubtedly clever but I was nowhere near its wavelength. I guessed/biffed more than a few, made use of the check button several times to make sure I was not way off course, didn’t understand the parsing of several of the answers even after getting them, and generally limped home with what I should describe as a grid completion not a solve in 15:03.
As for the Macgonagall clue, add me to the Harry-Potter-free cohort and I had no idea what was going on until John’s blog. For which, John, many thanks and I look forward more than usual to the Sunday Special.
Definitely at the tougher end of the spectrum but got there in the end, although QUEENS remained unparsed.
Started with NOTION and finished with HANKIE, after an alpha trawl for the 4th letter, in 15.23. COD to IMPULSIVENESS
Thanks to John for the blog and welcome and thanks to Tilt. .
17:24
It must be geek Central with one yesterday and a couple today!
Held up by them queens until I spotted the pangram needing a Q
Ta JAT
11:26 for my slowest Quickie in almost a year. Held up by HANKIE, QUEENS and WORE THIN. All good clues but possibly bordering on 15×15 levels of difficulty.
Have to say I enjoyed the challenge. Welcome Tilt and thanks John.
10.25 Lots of tricky ones. I biffed AIL and finished with the hidden CANE. Thanks John and Tilt.
That was quite hard work, but satisfying. It took us a long lunchtime to sort out, and even then ALSO, HANKIE, and QUEENS had to wait until I returned to the puzzle a little later, at which point they fell quickly into place. Had to look up Prof M on t’internet however as I was thinking of the gifted poet.
geeks are not Trainspotters, Trainspotters are anoraks.
9:17
Having kids of the right age means the McGonagall reference was understood. QUEENS was my last in, solved by the ‘if U then Q’ rule. All others nicely clued – welcome Tilt!
Thanks John for the blog
Lovely puzzle – some clever clues, and a couple made me smile which is always a good thing. Welcome Tilt – more please! – and thanks John for the blog. 10 mins for me.
Not able to access the site since 9am – ‘Too Many Requests’
‘The user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time.’
If I have made too many, it is only because the site would not accept my post some 7 hours ago and didn’t let me copy my post (as insurance against issues like this).
Have others had this problem? It might explain the small number of posts at this stage of the day.
I was looking forward to a QC from a new setter today and found a clever offering from Tilt. I hope he will be able to re-assess levels of difficulty for a supposed QUICK crossword given time. I had fun with quite a few of the clues but biffed the McGonagall answer once there were crossers (I am probably one of the few who has not read any Potter books and don’t recognise the characters). I failed to finish, beaten by HANKIE and QUEENS (I had lost the will to finish this by then). I don’t give a monkey’s about Pangrams or Ninas and my views on their distorting effect on the flow of a puzzle don’t need rehearsing.
Thank goodness for the anagrams.
Another week of puzzles directed towards the expert solvers amongst us with too many clues that would sit well in a 15×15 puzzle. What has happened to the Quick Cryptic for newer entrants to the club and for ageing solvers like me? My powers obviously must be declining, given most of my times these days. Strangely, though, I managed to send off the latest Eye Cryptic in super-quick time yesterday.
If JohnI finds it a challenge, what chance do the rest of us have?
Thanks to him and to Tilt (in the hope that he softens a little with time).
Thank you for that – good to know I’m not alone. Agree with every single thing you say!
totally agree – impossible for me to finish. Good not to feel alone!
Yes, J, the same ‘Too many requests’ faced me, an hour and, then, half an hour ago.
Couldn’t get past the TMR message yesterday, at any stage.
I’ve not read any Harry Potter, either, so that question left me with the checkers and I did, eventually, solve the word.
I was frustrated by a DNF and then more frustrated by ‘429 TMR’s’ before throwing in the sponge and heading off for a game of golf foursome in the heat of the sun. A few more frustrations but at least they were soon forgotten. So, a day later, I return here for enlightenment. Thank you John and welcome Tilt. Not impressed by the pangram clearly signaled by the X,Y, Z. Do setters do it as a Rite of Passage? I wish they wouldn’t as it always involves unnatural crucynastics along the way. Off for a look at some fledgling bald eagles and a bit of fishing. I will leave today’s QC for tomorrow.
I returned early from my ‘week away’ from the QC feeling relatively optimistic. That didn’t last long!
50 minute DNF as I put RULERS for QUEENS.
Then I couldn’t get on the website for hours as I repeatedly got the ‘429 Too many requests’ message.
Another awful day for me. Two attempts this week, both failures and both taking forever. Why do I bother when I do not have the brain for this?
PS Thanks John for resolving the IT issue.
Same here! Been trying for hours, only just managed to get on. Does anyone know a solution, i.e. ways round, other ways to get on when the usual route doesn’t work? And then: *why* doesn’t it work?
I would like the answers to your two questions, too. Anyone?
There is no way round. Once the “Too many requests” threshold is triggered, the site is unavailable to online users until the site is restarted, which requires a support call/chat. I have made a change that will, I hope, resolve the problem, but there may be a different cause. We’ll just have to see.
Thank you, John, for addressing our concerns. It is, of course, obscure to most of us what that (Once the “Too many requests” threshold is triggered) means. Why should anything “trigger” such a block? If your answer is that any website can only cope with a limited number of “requests”, then it would appear that ours/yours now commands a sufficient degree of interest that its “trigger” needs to be moved to the next notch up. Well, maybe that’s exactly what you’ve done. As you say, let’s see if that solves it. But it does also beg this question: once we see that dreaded “TMR” block, what is the advice? Is there nothing better than “just keep trying every hour”? We do feel helpless and alone in a wilderness.
15:50, and given the snitch rating I was quite pleased to get it finished at all. LOIs HANKIE and QUEENS both took a large chunk of my overall time.
I’m shocked – no, appalled – that a bunch as learned as you lot don’t know who Professor McGonagall is. She’s one of the nice teachers at Hogwarts (a school for wizards and witches), in contrast with the various scoundrels who tried to kill Harry (Potter, protagonist whose parents were murdered by the evil wizard Voldemort) at various points. You’ll be telling me next that you don’t know who Doctor Strange is, either. If you’d like to shelve your Spinoza for the long weekend in the interest of self-improvement, I’ll compile a reading list for you.
Thank you for the blog!
NHO Doctor Strange either, but don’t bother with a reading list as I don’t read that kind of stuff – or Spinoza, for that matter!
Seconded, Caro!
Just a bit too hard for a QC in my book. I put SUPERS rather than QUEENS, so DNF. I might have gone for RULERS if I had thought of it.
Coming up as one of the hardest ever QCs on the SNITCH, and note also the number of solvers is low.
I managed to answer perhaps two thirds of the QC before giving up. The unsolved clues were just too obscure/difficult for me.
I liked the Harry Potter clue.
Disaster: managed only a bit more than half. Was underwhelmed with Harry Potter, gave up after the first book (many years ago), hence had to look up the Prof, still couldn’t solve it since TRANSFIGURE doesn’t fit. Don’t understand; that would apply to much of this “Q”(?)C. NHO NIFFS. Thanks anyway, John.
I had lots of question marks on my paper solving this but it looks like I emerged unscathed. 15 minutes.
LOI QUEENS because I couldn’t think of anything else.
The bridge over the silvery Tay led me to the wrong McGonagall etc.
Anyway , welcome to Tilt, and good to be back on this site.
David
Pleased to have finished this testing puzzle. After the Q in QUEEN I considered a probable pangram which helped provide the X to solve LEXICOGRAPHER.
I though McGonagle was the poet and wondered if TRAINS had some connection with the Tay Bridge Disaster (his most famous poem) but then saw the Harry Potter link to solve my LOI after 53 minutes.
Thanks John and Tilt – maybe a bit easier next time.
Tried to get on the site for ages this morning. Success at last at 17:10! Found this very difficult indeed and struggled home in a pitiful 32:00. WORE THIN, UNFREEZE and AIL took longest and another couple unparsed. Saw the Pangram once Q,X and J were in. Really testing for a QC.
This took me a very, very long time, liberal use of the check button throughout, and one reveal (CANE, thanks John – a hidden, well who’d have thought). Very tricky, but some absolute corkers, especially ALSO, WEIRD and QUEENS, but COD to the fabulous HANKIE. I was completely misdirected for far too long, but smiled broadly when the penny dropped. This was not one for the newbies but, as ever, there’s way more to learn from the tricky ones. Many thanks Tilt – a lovely challenge. Thanks John.
I tried to post this morning but couldn’t connect, and I now note the site was down. It’s only now I remembered I hadn’t submitted, so I confirm my time as 11.02. It would have been a minute and a half quicker if I hadn’t taken so long to get my LOI HANKIE. A pretty tough challenge judging by the times submitted, so I’m more than happy with that.
My total time for the week was 55.35, giving me a daily average of 11.07. Considering I had only one day breaking my ten minute target, and then not by much, I’m happy with that.
To make my misery complete, I got a pathetic 9 answers on the 15 x 15, taking forever. I’m at the end of my tether with these puzzles! I can’t finish a QC at present and can barely get started on the 15 x 15.
I’m impressed you even start the 15×15! I use the Daily Telgraph (puzzle subscription for the year is often £5) as my second puzzle – much closer to QC difficulty. I’ll need to be retired before I can give the big one the time it needs.
👍
DNF. Put Mace not CANE. Oh dear. And I can’t believe I had to reveal TRAINSPOTTER when we had it the other day, but actually Geeks are, well, geeky and nerdy computer guys, rather than collectors, IMO. I did find this a struggle in parts. LOI QUEENS.
Also slow on UNFREEZE, NOTION, NIFFS and HANKIE (COD).
Also liked FUJI, ADDLED and RANCHER. CNP various so thanks John. I tackled this puzzle hours ago, like everyone else, so have now more or less forgotten what I thought, except that it was pretty difficult. Did not notice the pangram.
10:30 enjoying a beer after a long tramp through the Yorkshire Dales.
Never got stuck but definitely tough. Many thanks and welcome to Tilt. Thanks to John not just for the blog but for being our IT hero.
First of all, a warm welcome to Tilt, though I do hope you take the hint that your target audience is (mostly) one of improvers rather than experts 🙂
As to the puzzle, the top half went in without too much trouble, but it was quite a struggle lower down, especially after wasting too much time deep down the poet rabbit hole. Had I (by some miracle) noticed the potential pangram, loi Lexicographer might well have sailed in without aids.
CoD to Hankie for the pdm. Invariant
25 mins. Completed yesterday but couldnt log in. Hankie and cane were the toughest for me. And getting the tense wrong and going for wear thin (war plus the and in) held up rancher for a while.
FOI fuji
LOI cane
COD oozed
thanks Tilt and John
I loved this! Blooming hard and took me to 30 minutes before admitting failure with QUEENS still outstanding.
Unable to access this site but with the QUITCH telling me this was a toughie I just sat back and enjoyed the process. I like being stretched and found most of this was gettable with thought and time. The highlight was the PDM when TRAINSPOTTERS fell and I had to forget about transfiguration 😀
Welcome Tilt and thanks John.
And thanks too for the heroic efforts in keeping this blog up and running, I was bereft yesterday!
Dnf…
Started this late and probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind – as a result, there were a fair number not completed. Didn’t help that I put “Ash” for 10dn. Looks like another challenging new setter though.
FOI – 1ac “Fuji”
LOI – dnf
COD – 4ac “Wore Thin”
Thanks as usual!
47 minutes for me.
Done a day late and, despite a promising start and a more steady mid-phase, I found it a struggle to get across the line. I had five left to solve at the half-hour mark, but they then held me up for a further 17 minutes. My L3I (UNFREEZE, OOZED and QUEENS) proved particularly difficult.
I think I was lucky to biff TRAINSPOTTERS and LEXICOGRAPHER without too many checkers, because both clues were gobbledegook to me.
Thanks to John and Tilt.
I got a scotch-barrel-aged gin in Colorado many years back and it was quite good! I was skeptical, too, but as gin and peaty scotch are my two favorite spirits, I had to try it.
I absolutely loved today’s TRAINSPOTTERS clue once I got it (it’s still an unfamiliar word to me, and the definitions between this one and yesterday’s were quite different).
30ish min finish. queens, ooze and Unfreeze being the last ones in. Tricky puzzle, quite unsure about my answers until checkers locked them in. Thanks John Mand Tilt