Times Quick Cryptic No 1389 by Izetti

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

A typically smooth and entertaining puzzle from Izetti for us today. One or two trickier clues, but I raced through this faster than usual in just over 4 1/2 minutes. I enjoyed the lovely surfaces for 15A and 6D in particular, but COD goes to the nice semi&lit at 14A. Trying to explain 4D gave me a bit of fun, though. Fortunately I live far enough away not to have to follow the advice of keeping my pets and children indoors. Sorry. I digress. As for the crossword as a whole.. great stuff, and a paragon of the QC genre! Well that’s what I think… how did you all get on?

Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 Old country female comes down to entertain the Queen (8)
FLANDERS – F (female) LANDS (comes down) outside [to entertain] ER (Her Majesty the Queen).
5 Bitterness of everyone after end of squabbling (4)
GALL – ALL (everyone) [after] [end of] squabblinG.
8 If about to stay, you’ll find a warm spot in winter (8)
FIRESIDE – FI (if reversed; [about]) RESIDE (to stay)
9 Heather uses loveless language (4)
LING – The language is LINGo. Lose the O (= 0 = love) at the end [loveless].
11 Matters son mismanaged — lots of different things (10)
ASSORTMENT – (Matters son)* [mismanaged].
14 You will need some beef for this! (6)
EFFORT – Lovely semi-&lit, where the whole clue is the definition, but only part of it the wordplay – in this case it’s a hidden word, indicated by [some] beEF FOR This.
15 Heartless sir grabbing woman — one may be on thin ice! (6)
SKATER – Remove the middle letter of SiR [heartless] and insert [grabbling] KATE (woman). Nice surface.
17 To English, Scottish game very embarrassing (3-7)
TOE-CURLING – TO E (English) CURLING (Scottish game). Curling, if you haven’t come across it, is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice towards a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It originated from Scotland. Don’t try this on thin ice, those stones are heavy.
20 Impolite and cross, by the sound of it (4)
RUDE – sounds like [by the sound of it] ROOD (cross).
21 Despot in car, an unreliable one, mostly (8)
AUTOCRAT – AUTO (car) and an unreliable one could be called a CRATe, all but the last letter [mostly].
22 District I had found in home counties (4)
SIDE – I’D (I had) in S.E. (south-east; aka home counties)
23 Nuts who’d contrived closure of business? (8)
SHUTDOWN – (Nuts who’d)* [contrived].
Down
1 Instrument‘s condition when given case of iron (4)
FIFE – IF (condition) inside [given case of] FE (chemical symbol for iron)
2 A biblical city with a distinctive quality (4)
AURA – A UR (bibclical city) [with] A.
3 Tragic suitors, sad, thrown into confusion (10)
DISASTROUS – (suitors, sad)* [thrown into confusion].
4 Newspaper perused, we hear, by chief (6)
REDTOP – RED sound like [we hear] READ (perused) [by] TOP (chief).This name for sensationalist tabloid newspapers came up before in a QC in one from Mara in April. There has been a local story about a pet snake that has gone missing which got reported in one of the aforementioned papers thus. I rest my case.
6 It’s eaten? That’s wrong — it’s drunk (8)
ANISETTE – (it’s eaten)* [that’s wrong]. Another lovely surface that had me chuckling. [Edit: I appear to be in the minority in knowing this word. Read all about the differnet varieties of this drink here].
7 Boats less substantial beginning to sink to the bottom (8)
LIGHTERS – Take LIGHTER (less substantial) and put [beginning to] Sink underneath [to the bottom].
10 Keeping under surveillance a top man determined to get outside (7,3)
STAKING OUT – A KING (top man) surrounded by STOUT (determined) [to get outside].
12 Measures teachers changed (8)
HECTARES – (teachers)* [changed].
13 Not working, finished being hurt (8)
OFFENDED – OFF (not working) ENDED (finished).
16 Stagnant swamp in Berkshire town (6)
SLOUGH – Double definition. Come friendly bombs…
18 Three performers from choir turned up (4)
TRIO – reverse [up] hidden [from] in denruT RIOhc.
19 Name of man ending in some Asian countries (4)
STAN – A lovely witty one to finish… Double definition. Second definition as in PakiSTAN, KyrgyzSTAN, UzbekiSTAN etc

24 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1389 by Izetti”

  1. I struggled to start and this became a bottom -up solve. The required GK simply did not occur to me quickly and I had to work out all the anagrams the slow way.
    Last two were FLANDERS and AURA (not Swann). Time 19:11.
    An excellent puzzle I thought, and a challenge. David

    Edited at 2019-07-05 06:46 am (UTC)

  2. 12 minutes, so well and truly over my 10-minute target today, accounted for by a slow start. I read 6-8 clues straight off without putting in an answer.

    An excellent offering from Izetti but possibly the hardest QC we’ve had in the past couple of weeks. We need a range of difficulty of course, so I’m by no means complaining.

  3. Done at 35000 ft on way back to uk, after hitting the red wine early so very pleased to finish in 35 mins with anisette put in as most likely to be a word.

    Also struggled with effort, autocrat, slough, and stan.

    Dnk fife, side/district or swamp/slough.

  4. On wavelength for this one to finish in my fastest time for a while at 7:37 (an estimated 1.5K and a Very Good Day). I agree with John about EFFORT as COD, but there were lots of contenders, including anagrams like ANISETTE and SHUTDOWN. I think that being able to transform the humble anagram into entertaining clues is a mark of Izetti’s quality as a setter – he produces such beautifully smooth surfaces.

    Isabella, Countess of Fife (1dn), died in 1389 (today’s puzzle number), but I expect that’s just a coincidence!

    Thanks Izetti and John.

    Templar

    1. I’m impressed you spotted that! I wouldn’t be surprised find Izetti or the editor knew that too.
  5. A tougher offering today, than for a while, kept me busy for 13:20, with the bottom half looking very sparse after 9 or 10 minutes. A sudden spurt, however, saw me over the line with no errors. ANISETTE unknown but easily constructed. FOI, FIFE, LOI, AUTOCRAT. Thanks Izetti and John.
  6. Same time as the rotter – I seem to be stuck around 17 mins these days with the occasional much shorter time on a good day. This was enjoyable. Last in were FIFE, FLANDERS, AUTOCRAT, and STAN (nice clue). I biffed 10d and it took a little help from william to convince me that STOUT was the right word to surround KING and I needed the crossers for SLOUGH. Some good anagrams. Thanks to Izetti and william. John M.

    Edited at 2019-07-05 08:43 am (UTC)

  7. ….and I took longer than normal for one of Don’s offerings.

    FOI GALL
    LOI STAN
    COD LIGHTERS
    TIME 4:28

  8. 17m for me, so like Jackkt, two minutes over my target. Some toughies in here, but chewing over them gave me a great deal of pleasure.
  9. To balance out the faster solvers, who say this was tough but still only took 2 or 3 minutes over their average times (I stand in awe as usual), this took me 64 minutes compared to yesterday’s 24 and target of 30 – 40. It was more satisfying to complete though. I’d never heard of anisette, but like someone else said, it seemed the most likely thing. Others I didn’t parse properly were fife and rude. I assumed the latter was a homophone of rued, which I thought might mean cross/angry, rather than rood, which I’ve never heard of, but will add to my growing list of things to remember together with slough/swamp. This now runs to 14 exercise book pages. LOI was autocrat, COD was Stan, my POI (penultimate one in).
  10. I took 39 minutes, twice my target, for this difficult but enjoyable puzzle. My LOI was AURA, I always think of Ur as an old city but I couldn’t fit it in until the end, and I didn’t spot the lurker in 14A.
    The frustrating thing about this puzzle was that every time I got an answer the new checkers were of no use, they always seemed to fall in the wrong place, which I think added to the enjoyment.

    Brian

  11. Unlike most posters so far, I got off to a flyer and had the top half completed in well under 10mins. The bottom half was a different story, but I was still down to the last few in the SE (Home Counties) corner after about 20. As usual, got stuck on the town, and also the 19d/21ac combination. I eventually saw Autocrat and that gave me the other two for a 27min finish – disappointing after the quick start. My favourite today, from a strong field, was 17ac, Toe Curling. Invariant
  12. This was my slowest Izetti solve for quite some time at 16 minutes. I spent my last 2 minutes staring at 4d RED_O_ trawling through the alphabet until TOP rang a bell. I guessed 6d ANISETTE from the anagram letters and checkers and biffed 19d STAN as a name without understanding the rest of the clue. Thank you John for enlightening me.
  13. For a solver of my limited vocabulary the relatively obscure definitions in combination with some hard clueing made this tricky. Most problems in the top half where I’d never heard of FIFE or ANISETTE and I wasn’t previously aware FLANDERS had ever been anything but a region of something bigger. On parts of clues I didn’t know UR or that CRATE could be used to refer to cars as well as planes. So a tough day. It’d be an exaggeration to say I totally enjoyed it
    1. Think ‘Fife and Drum’ for the instrument, but I agree Anisette was a bit of a stretch for a QC.
      1. One person’s GK is another’s obscurity. I hadn’t realised it wasn’t well-known. Maybe that makes me a dipsomaniac? Link added to the blog.
  14. Strange one for me, all done in 8 minutes, then a further 15 and change, for ANISETTE (NHO) and AURA.
    1. Good questions, but check your dictionary; from Chambers Dictionary…
      “side… 13 a part of an area of land; district. I live in the north side of the town”
      “slough… 2 (N Amer) an area of boggy land; a marsh or mire.”
      1. It’s pronounced “sloo” in the US swamp context. Only got that one because of Elkhorn Slough, a place we stop to look for seals driving back from Monterey to SF.
  16. Coming to this a bit late, but is there a Nina reading across from 12? Perhaps Izetti spent a while in the sun without a hat, or left his lunch out…
    A relatively slow solve for me, LOI 21a and 1d. Mark.
  17. I think the wordplay for this is “less substantial” = “SLIGHTER” from which you make the first letter (“beginning”) become the last (“sink to the bottom” – as it’s a down clue)

    Maybe a little late, but I’ve got a bit of time on my hands atm to catch up on some that were missed

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