Times Quick Cryptic No 1523 by Izetti

Author   TheRotterPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
As expected, this is another lovely puzzle from the Don (Izetti) which pushed me to the upper end of my target range at about 14 minutes fully solved and parsed.  My previous blog of an Izetti puzzle was some 12 weeks ago, and on that occasion I was pushed over 20 minutes, so perhaps I am improving?

Neither of the long across clues delayed me for very long, although I needed most of the crossers to see 19a.  6a appeared to me as soon as I saw the clue.  My one disappointment was the slightly clunky surface of 9d, which I think could have been phrased more eloquently.  How about ‘Faulty construction – I’d fence it’ if I can slightly amend Izetti’s wording?

COD for me is 7d (MODERN) and WOD 15d (JASPER).  Thanks to Izetti.  Please let me know how you got on with it.

Across

1  Talks about river, providing maps (6)
CHARTS – CHATS (talks) about R{iver}.
4  All getting excited in some short race (6)
SLALOM – Anagram (getting excited) of [ALL] in SOM{e} (short = drop last letter)
8 One odd curtain out of place with clashing colours? (13)
UNCOORDINATED – Anagram (out of place) of [ONE ODD CURTAIN].  The question mark is because colours do not always have to clash for something to be UNCOORDINATED – you should see me on a skating rink!
10  Type to keep quiet in game (5)
SPORT – SORT (type) ‘keeping’ P (quiet – musical notation).
11  Poem about senior member who participates in cricket? (7)
FIELDER – IF (poem by Rudyard Kipling), reversed (about) and ELDER (senior member).  Not all FIELDERs play cricket, hence the question mark this time – think baseball for instance.
13 Recommends lawyers (9)
ADVOCATES – Double definition clue obeying Rotter’s Law, which states that two-word clues are invariably double definitions, unless they are the exceptions of course).
17  Something flowery one man replanted to cover middle of bed (7)
ANEMONE – I think this may be the third consecutive puzzle that I have blogged containing this answer – at least, it feels that way!  This time the word play is indicating an anagram (replanted) of [ONE MAN] around {b}E{d} (middle letter).
18  A learner, individual without any classmates? (5)
ALONE – A (a) and L{earner} together with ONE (individual).  Here the question mark is because not all things ALONE are members of a class.  For instance, I am ALONE whilst writing this blog, but I am not considered a learner in a class.
19  Maybe tense people beset by its forebodings (13)
PRESENTIMENTS – PRESENT (maybe tense) and MEN (people) inside (beset by) ITS (its).
21  King to behave theatrically to get control (6)
REMOTE – R (king or R{ex}) and EMOTE (behave theatrically), to get the REMOTE (control device for the TV – in our house we call it a zapper).
22  Harmony when worker’s organisation accepts old Bob (6)
UNISON – UNION (worker’s organisation) containing (accepts) S (old Bob).  A Bob was a nickname for a shilling, from the old UK currency £SD or LSD (pounds, shillings and pence named after the Latin currency units of Libra, Solidi and Denarii).  This may catch out a few of our overseas solvers.

Down

1  What sounds like rough plan of action (6)
COURSE – Homophone – ‘sounds like’ coarse (rough)
2  A number show anger outside church in American port (9)
ANCHORAGE – A (a) and NO (number) and RAGE (show anger) outside (containing) CH{urch}.  ANCHORAGE is, of course, a city and port in Alaska, USA.
3  Sailor losing heart, away getting fish (5)
TROUT – T{a}R (sailor losing heart – i.e. middle letter) and OUT (away).
5  Not strict?  That is forbidden ultimately in period of austerity (7)
LENIENT – LENT (period of austerity), containing I.E. (‘that is’ from Id Est in Latin) and {forbidde}N (ultimately = last letter).  Here the question mark at the end of the definition part is to indicate that other definitions for LENIENT exist other than ‘not strict’.
6  Fate of man with wicked wife (3)
LOT – Double definition, the second referring to LOT from Genesis, whose wife famously looked wickedly back (because she had been warned not to) towards Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt as a consequence.  She seems always to be referred to as ‘Lot’s wife’, but I understand her name was Ado (I’m surprised I haven’t seen that used as an alias in Crosswordland before).
7  New fashion, the latest from our collection (6)
MODERN – MODE (fashion) and the last letters from (the latest from) {ou}R {collectio}N.
9  Faulty fence – it I’d replaced (9)
DEFICIENT – Anagram (replaced) of [FENCE – IT I’D].  A slightly clumsy surface here IMHO.
12  One missed wandering around American city (3,6)
DES MOINES – Anagram (wandering around) of [ONE MISSED].  DES MOINES is the capital city of the State of Iowa.
14 Fierce girl enthralling any number (7)
VIOLENT – VIOLET (girl) containing (enthralling) N (any number).  N or n is traditionally used in algebra to indicate an unknown number.
15  What’s held by raja’s perfect gemstone (6)
JASPER – Hidden answer in {ra}JA’s PER{fect}.  JASPER is an opaque quartz gemstone.
16  Argue concerning a member of the family (6)
REASON – RE (concerning) A (a) and SON (member of the family).  To REASON a case is to argue it.
18  In the morning fellow is found in capital city (5)
AMMAN – AM (in the morning – ante-meridiem) and MAN (fellow).  AMMAN is the capital city of Jordan.
20  Tree found in Angel Meadow (3)
ELM – Hidden answer inside (found in) {ang}EL M{eadow}.

48 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1523 by Izetti”

  1. I biffed 8ac and 19ac, pretty sure the anagrist was there in 8 and assuming PRESENT for ‘tense’; demi-biffed 5d, seeing LENT. I liked ‘poem about’ in 11ac (IF is the inevitable poem in these puzzles, as SHE is the inevitable novel). Was Lot’s wife wicked? Foolish, perhaps, but wicked? I agree with Rotter that ‘fence it I’d replaced’ is rather awkward, unless you’re Yoda perhaps; but ‘construction’ seems a bit dicey as an anagram indicator, no? 5:11.
    1. I knew I’d argued that point in a previous blog:

      Times 26792 1 Aug 2017

      25dn Man with wicked wife somewhere in France (3)

      LOT – Two definitions. I wasn’t aware that Lot’s wife was particularly wicked, only disobedient in that she is supposed to have looked back at the doomed city of Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt. Up to that point she was going to be spared by the angels so she can’t have been all that bad.

      Edited at 2020-01-09 06:16 am (UTC)

  2. 9 minutes. Quite straightforward apart from having to dredge up DES MOINES from the depths of memory. It has come up a couple of times before over the years and always gives me trouble.
  3. Not on Izetttis wavelength as usual, took 29 mins with 1 wrong, anenome.

    Think its just hangover though as even advocates wouldn’t come easily.

    I know Des Moines mainly from Bill Bryson.
    Csod fielder or modern.

    1. I once had the pleasure of meeting the Bard of Des Moines. Every bit as erudite and witty in life as he is in print.

      No problems today that haven’t been highlighted elsewhere. I think the question mark in 11a is more likely to be acknowledging that there are other participants in cricket, e.g. batters, bowlers, etc.

      Many thanks to Izetti and Rotter.
      4’15”

  4. ANEMONE has come up so often recently it’s remarkable that I still can’t spell it – submitting in confidence only to see two pink squares. Must remember the Ns and the M alternate. Needed all the checkers for PRESENTIMENTS and even then stared at it for a while, so pretty pleased with 14m, especially so as if I’d solved on paper – as I have done recently – I’d never have spotted the spelling mistake and been fully satisfied.

    Great puzzle today, hard enough to give a good tussle to a few of the clues. Certainly no challenge to GO PHUT for the worse solution of the year.

    Mendesest

  5. Just got the online subscription and Hooray! I’m getting better at this. Under 30 min but couldn’t see Id entered LOI as UNISSN …the formatting on my phone cuts off bottom row of crossword… Android Samsung… Anyone else got this issue? Thanks to Don for setting and TheRotter for blogging
    TC
    1. Its ok on my samsung phone. But have you tried the crossword club section of the app rather than going to the puzzle directly?
      1. Thanks Flash. Yes via club section. If I select the row above I can see the whole answer. Must remember to do that every time.
      2. Thanks Flashman Yes via club section. If I select the row above I can see the whole answer. Must remember to do that every time. PS Think I have fixed it by refucing phone font size.
  6. A very enjoyable 12 minutes for this one and for once I’d spelt the cursed plant correctly – maybe the frequency of it’s appearances is helping. My one uncertainty was the S for BOB, never having used the ‘old’ money, but the answer couldn’t have been anything else. I particularly enjoyed REMOTE, FIELDER and MODERN and my LOI was SLALOM.
    Thanks for the blog.
  7. Very much a bottom up solve for me today with a slow start before finding ELM. After that progress was steady with a final session in the NW. Last in were CHARTS, SPORT and COURSE. I had to correct the Troff fish en route. I also had a fairly confident Hamlet at 21a; happily he didn’t hang around for long.
    Not all parsed in order to keep going but all correct in the end. Time:12:42.
    Thanks Rotter for the explanations and of course to Izetti who keeps us on our toes.
    David
  8. An enjoyable puzzle from Izetti. 2.3K today but it whizzed by. I liked ANCHORAGE, FIELDER, LENIENT. PRESENTIMENTS dropped out amazingly quickly for me, given a few crossers. Thanka to Izetti and Rotter. John M.
  9. As the old schoolboy howler has it, Lot’s wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire at night.

    Terrific puzzle from the maestro, I really enjoyed that (though the clunkiness of 9dn is undeniable – Rotter’s version is much better). All done in 1.6 Kevins for a Very Good Day.

    FOI CHARTS, LOI COURSE, COD REMOTE (such neat misdirection).

    Thanks Don and Rotter.

    Templar

  10. Should have saved for later when I saw the setter’s name. As it was I charged in and struggled finishing in 2.5K. Unnecessary hold ups were a fixation with Archangel (I know – wrong continent but it wouldn’t go) and I just stared at 4ac with a completely blank mind. I did enjoy the rest – wrestling the wordplays into place. A good puzzle – shame about the solver!
  11. Re 14d, ‘n’ is used in algebra to denote ‘any’ number, as in the surface. E.g. in a flock of n sheep, the number of legs is 4n, for any n. Unknown numbers are usually x, y, z, and constants are a, b, c.
  12. I enjoyed this. I couldn’t get presentiment because I wasn’t in tune with the use of tense. I did get Fielder but couldn’t justify it. The comments seem to be suggesting that IF is a go to poem like film =ET show = Evita – Is that right? Agree Lot’s wife was foolish not wicked -Lot was more wicked maybe because he made a selfish choice:)
    1. IF is a poem by Rudyard Kipling and my father’s favourite! Worth googling if you don’t know it.
      1. Thanks I do indeed know it and can recite it on a good day _ I was asking if it was a regular go to for these cryptics
        1. I don’t think that IF is standard fare in QCs when clued by ‘poem’, but it is a very familiar poem and therefore fair game for a clue like this. I don’t remember seeing it used before in this way, but it could have been. Compilers are constantly inventing new devices, which may become chestnuts if picked up and used by others.
          1. Thanks again – if you are right then my instinct was right. By saying ‘poem’ you only have a few million to choose from – so maybe you have to be a bit lucky to solve the clue.
  13. As always. Certainly much more enjoyable than yesterday’s puzzle which I got to much too late in the day to do it justice (but “go phut “… Really?! ). Like some others here, I found the NW corner in today’s offering was a slow solve and contained my last three answers – I don’t know why as, once 1 across fell into place, the rest was obvious. I very much liked 11 and 22 across especially the latter with its masterful misdirection (RMTOB, anyone? ). Thanks so much, Rotter, for your lovely blog – I am especially grateful to learn the super fact that a woman called Ado was Lot’s wife (Much Ado about a Lot? ). Thanks, too, to Izetti, for another great puzzle.
  14. Scraped in under my target at 9:55, with DEFICIENT holding me up until I wrote out the anagrist. VIOLENT resisted until I had the V from ADVOCATES, which also took for ever to see. FOI, CHARTS, LOI VIOLENT. Thanks Izetti and Rotter.
  15. I’m almost too embarrassed to admit my time, even given I fell asleep for a while in the middle. I didn’t even have half of it done after about 30 minutes when I nodded off. When I came to, I finally got 1d and that unlocked 8a and then slowly the answers fell into place. Took a last few minutes at the end trying to either parse presentiments or think of an alternative, but couldn’t do either, so stopped the clock on 1:55:53 (oh the shame) and hoped for the best. As is usually the case in these situations, I now can’t see why I took so long. Should have seen present tense and as for one of my last ones, slalom, I could see how the clue worked and just didn’t put two and two together. And as for not seeing that One Missed was just an anagram until after I had got Des Moines….
    Right, better get on with something useful now.
    1. Commiserations – we have all had occasions when the mind goes blank and nothing seems to fit.
  16. Bit of a quibble about this one. Musically speaking, unison (two identical pitches) is quite different from harmony (two or more pitches with particular intervals between them, i.e a major third).

    It might work in a loose way in conversation, but …..

    1. I don’t think it is necessary to look at it musically. Harmony and unison have other equivalent interpretations such as complete agreement.
    2. Not just a bit of a quibble; whatever the meaning in music of the two words, in everyday English, they’re sufficiently close in meaning to be synonymous. (True synonyms–almost and nearly, say, or someone and somebody– are exceedingly rare, for good reason: why have them both?)
      1. Still not convinced by this. In everyday speech, ‘unison,’ to me means complete agreement; ‘harmony’ means close or complimentary agreement
        1. I see that we are not quite in HARMONY or UNISON on this point yet, although I am in complete agreement with Kevin, by the looks of it. Also with Chambers which defines Harmony as ‘concord, agreement’, and Unison as ‘complete agreement’. Kevin and Chambers are good enough justifications for me.
          1. Eh… naw. ‘Agreement’ and ‘complete agreement’ are not quite the same thing. I can generally agree with your standpoint on an issue -e.g. X politician is completely unsuitable to be prime minister – but there may be different aspects of his unsuitablity which trouble me, compared to you.

            And yes, I did consult Chambers, and the entries there for both words did not reassure me.

  17. Started with 1ac and 1d as write-ins, which is always a good feeling, and a fairly quick solve thereafter left me with just the SE corner with 20 mins on the clock. Took another five to get Reason/Unison and Present for the tense, and then almost the same again to see -iments. Never knowingly come across the word, so I am a little wiser for the experience. Sweepstake anyone on whether Evita or Anemone pops up next? CoD to 4ac, Slalom, a pleasure to parse. Invariant
  18. Started well on this but was then held up significantly by two clangers – biffing “Attorneys” for 12ac and “Coarse” for 1dn. The latter was perhaps excusable but the former I still can’t explain. I knew it was a double definition so tried to convince myself that this was some other obscure decsription of recommends. It was only until I got 5dn (which for some reason I’d missed earlier on) that I realised I was completely wrong.

    As a result, once corrected, the rest went in fairly easily to complete a good and challenging puzzle.

    FOI – 1ac “Charts”
    LOI – 7dn “Modern”
    COD – 21ac “Remote” (as I couldn’t quite believe it related to the TV pinger)

    Thanks as usual.

    Edited at 2020-01-09 01:05 pm (UTC)

  19. A steady solve, but – oh dear – my worst time in ages! 3.4K, all correct but not necessarily parsed 😕 All the same, there was so much to enjoy – perhaps I’ll convince myself that I wasn’t in a hurry anyway and I wanted to savour the Don’s work.

    FOI Charts
    LOI Modern
    COD Remote
    Time 18m

  20. ….which I biffed and moved on. UNISON is actually one of Britain’s biggest trade unions (white collar workers), so the clue didn’t quite work for me. Very rarely do I have the temerity to question Izetti !

    Finished nicely within my target.

    FOI CHARTS
    LOI REASON
    COD PRESENTIMENTS

    1. I thought that was one of the clever elements of the clue – whether it was deliberate or not I have no idea.
    2. Yes, our last one in for that reason, it didn’t seem right, particularly for an Izetti! Otherwise this was our fastest solve for ages, hardly a pause in completing – I had to go back and check I hadn’t misread the setter!
  21. Liked my LOI PRESENTIMENTS very much indeed, and came home in 6:16, which given that Izetti often makes me grind my teeth in frustration, I am very pleased with.
  22. I hadn’t heard of Des Moines (shame on me – a state capital too!) or it is so distant as to not count. I tried Des Monies in search and up came the correct answer. But that allowed me to get LOI presentiments (again very distant)
    So one bit of help. No time – split between lunch and evening- but about 40 minutes.
    Jasper was interesting to read about after the event..
    COD Fielder
    Thanks all and especially Rotter’s great fun blog
    John George
  23. No, defintely too hard for me.
    The difference between puzzles I can solve (about 75% of them now – it’s been an uphill struggle!) and those I can’t is that with the harder puzzles, even when I read the blog, I often *still* don’t see you arrived at the answer.
    I’m not sure that I’ve ever actually finished an Izetti puzzle. Maybe that should be my goal for 2020….
    Gloomily,
    Suzanne
    1. The ‘trick’ with Izetti is to trust the cryptic. Even if the word is unknown, the cryptic will get you there (albeit eventually in the case of 19ac today!)
      1. That’s easier said than done! I often can’t work out the parsing until I’ve biffed the answer…
        2. As a relative newcomer myself, all I can say is the more you do the better you become at reading the cryptic.

          I’m at the point now (with the QC at least) that I can often see the answer and the parsing at the same time. Some of this is due to similar clues being repeated, but a lot is just understanding the construction and identifying the various elements immediately.

          It’s almost like learning a new language. At first you are translating everything word for word, but by the time you are fluent you are understanding the meaning without thinking.

  24. Anyone put “Analogus” in for 10a ?
    “Ana” + “Log” + “Us” = something comparable.
    And then I read the blog….You live and learn.
    “O” dear…

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