Times Quick Cryptic No 1678 by Monty

63 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1678 by Monty”

1. Never heard of TAX DISCS, and was too easily satisfied with SPOTS. This does seem a bit much for a Quickie, what with TARQUIN and MAPUTO. Anyway, it was a bit much for me.
2. ….but my time was 18:38. I actually have heard of tax discs, despite living in the US, but the literal was quite well hidden and it took me a while to work the cryptic.

   I did know Tarquin, but did not know Maputo or Nuala.

   I have a feeling the actual SCC is not going to be too happy about this one.

3. 13 minutes delayed (like others) by SPOTS. Also MAPUTO – unheard of or forgotten, and NUALA – a name that has never registered in my brain. I think I knew there was an Emperor called TARQUIN so when the easy wordplay suggested it I bunged it in with confidence.

   So far we have comments from three very experienced solvers of 15x15s and two of us have 20+ years of blogging between us, yet one didn’t finish and the other two struggled, so I say welcome to the new setter, but let’s hope this was The Full Monty and perhaps we can have a little bit less next time out?

   Edited at 2020-08-13 05:49 am (UTC)

   1. Tarquin was king of Rome, not emperor. Very different things…🙂
4. I couldn’t finish this one – first time in months and months. Six on the first pass of acrosses which is pretty normal and not too bad on the downs but lots of clues where I just couldn’t see what was going on – lots of it was my fault: tried NUALA early on but rejected it because I didn’t recognise it as a name, got BARREL but it wouldn’t fit with SPOTS so I rejected it. ‘Bouncer’ made me think of cricket so determinedly that even knowing it ended in BALL and the first word was G_L_ I still couldn’t get it! Also out-foxed by TAX DISCS, TANG (!) and ENDGAMES. NHO: TISANE, MAPUTO, TARQUIN but cryptic was reasonable generous for all three. Not in total agreement with roly’s assessment of entertainment but welcome Monty, I shall be better prepared next time!
   1. Forgot to mention above, but I did the same thing: thought it might be N_U_ etc., but didn’t recognize it as a name. Not sure I do now. on edit: Oh, well, now that I see that Wikipedia lists a number of them–most of them Irish–I do.

      Edited at 2020-08-13 06:46 am (UTC)

5. Defeated by TAX DISCS since I’ve not lived in the UK for 40 years and we have a totally different system here. I had no idea they no longer existed anyway, in the sense of you don’t put them on your windscreen I assume.

   I never thought of SPOTS (or had checkers by then) but I’m surprised that wasn’t caught in test solves and fixed.

   Edited at 2020-08-13 06:38 am (UTC)

   1. Not just not display them, they are gone completely. The money is collected mostly on-line and non-payers are supposedly caught by means of ANPR.
   2. I don’t see why that would have to be “caught” – having more than one possible answer until checkers are in place is all part of the game.
6. Pretty much the same thoughts as Kevin, Vinyl, Jack et al. I had spots, struggled with NUALA (I’m thinking from The Lion King – oops that is NALA!) as a name, MUSLIMS from the definition ‘they believe’ and gave up with 15 minutes on the clock and TAX DISCS unsolved although perfectly fair. I didn’t mind MAPUTO or TARQUIN or TISANE because the wordplay was straight forward.

   Edited at 2020-08-13 07:15 am (UTC)

7. Yes welcome setter, but this was too hard for a quickie.
   Basically a mini 15×15, rather than an easier version to encourage new solvers.

   I finished but endgames, tax discs, fine tune and tang held me up.

   I have started solving on paper and find it quite difficult, having to add the word breaks manually and I keep losing sight of which clue I’m on.

   Liked fine tune and bus stop.

   Edited at 2020-08-13 08:16 am (UTC)

8. Weird and unsettling. Some very easy clues plus some very tough ones. Nice bear traps (SPOTS for one). I struggled in the NE but got most (after finally deciding that 14a had to be MOLES). However, I spent half my time on 7d which was very clever (too clever for a QC IMO) but took me to a disastrous 30mins plus. My only consolation is that I did actually finish. John M.
9. I was determined to avoid sloppy errors today, so took my time. However I did get stuck after about 14 minutes needing 7d and three clues in the SE.
   Once I saw the possibility of DISCS in 7d I got the TAX part; the complicated anagram instructions were over my head.
   Then to the SE. I thought 20d might be LORD, lor being common enough; but where was the tie? Perhaps a draw? Eventually CORD occurred to me. 21d was probably TAN plus something but I tried many weird combinations before TANG appeared. LOI CRAFT after thinking IT might be in the word.
   I also had SPOTS for a long time and thought RING TONE might be a fine tune, but I was being careful today.
   All correct for once in 29:19. An excellent puzzle;but a very hard QC. David
10. DNF after 18m. Defeated by Tax Discs. Otherwise enjoyable if on tough side. Thanks setter and blogger
11. Came to Know something new
12. First dnf for ages. No real complaints. Tax discs is clever but as has been pointed out it’s more that they don’t exist. What didn’t help me was that I have never heard the name Nuala so I thought I’d gone completely wrong somehow. I don’t like Cor for gracious or Tang for smack but maybe that’s just me. Thanks setter and blogger
13. Totally stumped by TAX DISCS. The rest went in easily enough, but 7D meant it was a DNF 🙁

    H

14. I fell into all of the above mentioned traps, taking a shocking 27 minutes to complete. Left hand side went in quickly enough, followed by the SE, where I struggled a bit with TANG and CORD, but that left the NE bare, and I couldn’t get a foothold until SPOTS went in, followed by TAX DISCS which I thought very clever. However, that answer confirmed SPOTS and I was slow to look at it again as a result. ANGERED was now apparent, and I was left with an alphabet trawl for the remaining clues. I had spotted the device for the girls name quite early, but rejected NUALA as being unheard of and inexperienced in my long lifetime, but it eventually had to go in to help reveal the last two answers and the SPOTS error. I’m pleased to have finished, but not happy with the new setter, and I feel strangely unsatisfied as a result of NUALA and the SPOTS / MOLES alternatives. Thanks Roly for the blog.
15. Well, the first half of this was straight forward – easy even. But with 5 to go, I came to a grinding halt. NUALA? Fine. Ditto, MAPUTO and TARQUIN.

    But I was stumped by TAX DISCS, CRAFT, MUSLIMS, CORD TANG…. which means that Monty’s first QC coincides with my first DNF since I can’t remember when. It didn’t help that, like many here, I put SPOTS when MOLES was what was needed. Once I’d realised ENDGAMES, that helped. I could see that 7 down probably ended in DISCS but never having come across “rare” as an anagrind, I thought I was looking for RE as in extremely rare”.

    I’m not happy with “They believe ” as a clue for MUSLIMS even though I can see the strength of “Maud, oddly, is losing weight ” in terms of wordplay. CORD and TANG are, I think, fair – I was just outfoxed by them..

    I don’t know whether this was too hard for the QC…. or just too hard for this QCer….

    Thanks so much for the blog, without which I would have remained dyspeptic all day. And thanks, too, to Monty.

16. Under 20 min with checkers and clues revealing words I DNK. I’m a relative newbie so perhaps not too far off the mark for a QC…? Enjoyable puzzle and excellent blog, thanks to both.
17. What a strange solve. After 5 minutes I had a perfectly symmetrical grid with the left half (including STRAIN) all completed and the right half (excluding MAPUTO) with nothing in at all. And so the slog began as I fell into the various traps already mentioned. BARREL, TANG (a hopeful guess) and TAX DISCS (LOI) all eventually succumbed but none of them were parsed. Fortunately I’ve just started reading Mary Beard’s SPQR so TARQUIN was a write in but I may have struggled with it a week ago. Eventually finished in 20.10.
    Thanks to Roly for the much needed blog
18. Having a bad week I think with another DNF – although after 45 mins I only had 17ac and 7dn to go. Not on the right wave length for both of these, although there were quite a few tricky clues which I managed to get from the wordplay. Along with getting 21dn wrong (I put in “Tans”) it definitely felt on the hard side.

    Like many, I biffed “Spots” for 14ac which slowed me down for the NE corner. Not a fan of obscure names for 9ac “Nuala” but couldn’t see what else it could be. At least this time I guessed lucky on the 50/50 toss up for Maputo.

    FOI – 1dn “Abed”
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 12ac “Griffin”

    Thanks as usual to the blogger and new setter Monty.

19. …but this was quite tough, taking me just over 21 minutes.
    I too fell into the SPOTS trap at first and couldn’t see SUIT for ages. I had to biff TARQUIN and STRAIN as a synonym of ‘Rick’ was a PDM.
    I enjoyed LINEN, MUSLIMS and TAX DISCS (which I do remember) and BISCUIT is my COD for its simplicity.
    Thanks to Monty and to Roly who had his work cut out today.
20. This took a couple of minutes longer than my usual time. Thank you Monty for not being tempted by the antelope at 9a.
    I suppose Monty could be another pseudonym of Mr Manley? He chooses names that go with Don.
    1. I don’t see why Don would want an additional pseudonym, and it certainly isn’t his style.
21. Left hand side easy-peasy, then struggled through SE corner. No problem with Maputo, but missed Tang. Got Tarquin from the cluing.
    But in NE like others I missed Tax Discs and Endgames, despite doubtfully putting in Nuala. Missed Moles too, despite rubbing out Spots.

    Glad I wasn’t the only DNF.
    Many thanks.

22. I was also held up by SPOTS, but managed to complete in 12:37. Unfortunately, my proof reading failed to notice that my FOI, 8a, had gone in as BUSCUIT. Drat! Agree that there was some obscure stuff in this one! Thanks Monty and Roly.
23. This was a really strange QC. Rattled through the easy ones in about 10mins and then got stuck, so stopped for a tea, came back and realised Spots were Moles. That opened up the NE and I progressed to the medium difficulty ones, (of which Fine Tune is my CoD), but I had to stop again with 7d and the SE corner still to do. Returned for a final stint and rejected Gird for 20d in favour of Cord/Craft and biffed Tang on the basis of Smack without seeing how it worked. That just left 7d, but even with all the crossers I just couldn’t see Tax Discs, so a DNF after a lot of effort. I will continue to enjoy watching you on Friday evenings Monty, but don’t give up the day job… 🙄 Invariant
24. didn’t know the city so went for MAPOTU- and didn’t know g for tang so DNF here sadly
    thought this was very difficult
25. ….I discarded two efforts as being too difficult. They were both easier than this.

    Don’t get me wrong – I thoroughly enjoyed it, and finished correctly just inside my target, but as Flashman says it’s almost a sawn-off 15×15. A slow time by my standards, and yet position 11 on the leaderboard in early afternoon, reinforces that view.

    I typed NUALA into Wikipedia later. I suspect that, like me, nobody outside Ireland could name one of the luminaries I found there (unless they were unfortunate enough to see the film “Hellboy II”). Luckily the parsing was straightforward.

    Carelessly biffed “ninon” at 22A, and only on correcting the error did I see my LOI.

    FOI BISCUIT
    LOI GOLF BALL
    COD TAX DISCS (I appreciate it was a pig for many !)
    TIME 4:51

26. A DNF for me as well. Didn’t get MUSLIMS, TAX DISCS or TANG. Ah well.
27. OK, new setter to get my mind around. Solved TANG (G force easy enough), but don’t understand how it = Smack. Beaten by TAX DISCS, although remember them well enough. Lovely clue though.
    PlayUpPompey
    1. Smack in the sense of an acidic taste in the mouth.
28. Having to solve the 15 x 15 and Mephisto, one gets to learn the ways to squeeze out answers.

    In a puzzle like this, I often put in partial answers to part of the cryptic and see if the crossing letters I get seem to work. If your theory is that 21 down might start with tan-, then put it in. An alphabet trawl reveals the tang as one possibility, and this word is often clued by smack – bingo! I had to think about the G for a bit, before hitting on G for gravity.

    Now let’s look at tax discs. If you have all the crossers, which are not that difficult to get, you’ve got A, D, S, S. Clues with peculiar-sounding surfaces are very likely to be either hiddens or anagrams, so the first thing to do is scan the clue for letters like this. Well, it’s not a hidden, so it’s probably an anagram. You’ve got two of the crossers in six-act, and if you see that dramas extremely will give you the other two, than the unused letters of six-act are probably the remaining four, so you’ve got I, X, C, T. There’s only one place the X is likely to go in what you’ve got, so the first word has to be tax.

    The important thing is to come up with some theory of how the clue works, and try it. If you don’t get anywhere, then erase all the penciled-in guesses and start over.

    1. Thanks very much, good tips and very helpful for us lesser solvers!
       Cedric
    2. Thanks for some really good advice. I did have all the crossers for 7d, so knew it wasn’t a hidden, and even thought of VI for six at one point. My issue with Monty is that I don’t think I have ever come across Rare as an anagram indicator (how does that work?) so, like Louisajaney, I thought extremely rare was flagging up RE, which was no help at all. Of course, once you know the answer everything becomes obvious (not always the case!), but it was a stinker of a clue to come across in a QC.
       1. Well, it helps not to pay too much attention to the surface. You’ve got A, D, S, S, and you think the clue must be an anagram. If you just treat the clue as a string of letters, and circle every instance of these letters in the clue, it will jump out at you: (S)ix-(A)ct (D)r(A)m(A)(S) extremely r(A)re? They’re no longer (S)creened here.

          It’s obvious that the front of the clue is loaded with the right letters, and the second half is probably the literal. The position of extremely is odd, but it must be referring to the previous word in order to give you the letters you need. I never even looked at rare, because I am already working under the assumption it’s an anagram and don’t need an indicator.

          1. That looks like a really useful technique – even with the D in screened it does indeed make it obvious where to look. Many thanks.
    3. Thanks for the advice.

       Only issue I sometimes find is that if you partially fill something in, but are not 100% sure of that part, it can completely throw your thinking for other clues if ultimately it is not correct.

       That of course might just apply to me, but like an annoying song you can’t get out of your head if it’s there on paper, it sometimes just won’t go away.

    4. Thanks so much for this. Really useful advice.
29. … like many others. NHO 9A Nuala but the cluing was clear, joined many others in putting in Spots for 14A (but no objections, it seems perfectly fair to me and I changed it to Moles when the checkers from 5D and 6D fell into place), and then biffed Tonk (reluctantly) for 21D for a 19 minute Fail. As I commented last week, I am not good at alphabet searches with short words with common letters!

    A strange puzzle, with some of the clues very straightforward (maybe even most of them?) and some tough enough to trouble much better solvers than me. I gave it to Mrs S to try (she often finishes the 15×15 in 15-20 minutes) and she took longer than she expected to, and thought some of the clues well up to the Big puzzle.

    I hope Monty is not discouraged – it is always nice to have a new setter – and will find his length in future puzzles; but for me this one was a little all over the place.

    Many thanks to Roly for the blog, he had his work cut out today I think.

    Cedric

30. This seemed easy at first as the ac were going in like a dream and all good until stuck on 20 and 21 d. I still don’t get tang being smack. Can someone give me a sentence where either could be used?
    1. I sniffed my gin, and there was a strong smack/tang of lemon.
    2. Opal fruits, 4 refreshing fruit flavours, all with the tang of citrus. Or see above 😉,

       Edited at 2020-08-13 02:34 pm (UTC)

31. Didn’t like this one I’m afraid. It was one of those puzzles where most of it went in really quickly (though admittedly, this included SPOTS), but then a few clues were on a different level and took ages. Never heard of TISANE and only vaguely of rick for STRAIN, TARQUIN and NUALA (I would have much preferred NYALA, Sawbill), though I didn’t mind these because they were gettable from wordplay. After nearly an hour I gave up with most of the NE still to fill in as well as 21d. From my previous comments, people might know that I don’t give up easily, but I’d been looking at what was left for ages without getting anywhere at all. Coming back to it a bit later, I filled in BARREL (bit of a MER at “touching” = RE) which allowed me to see 14a was MOLES and not spots, but nothing else would go in. I did think of the possibility of ENDGAMES, but I’d forgotten this referred to chess and so didn’t see how that worked with “mates” and so dismissed it. Should have got TANG and MUSLIMS, but I don’t think I’d have seen that 7d was an anagram so it would still have been a DNF. Still onwards and upwards. COD 20d Thanks rolytoly and welcome to Monty.

    Edited at 2020-08-13 02:20 pm (UTC)

32. Strange one
    I got 10 of the across and the first 6 downs in about 5 mins and thought I was on a pb
    Gave up after 25 mins with 7,16,20 & 21 d all still to do.
    Never did see the point of definitions so obscure that you have to put in idiot proof word-play
33. is not discouraged (!) and is sorry about TAX DISCS, tho amazed that they proved so problematic given they were common enough in the UK until not THAT long ago.

    And he will return soon …

    1. Welcome Monty! I thought it was a brilliant crossword. It took me 3.5 minutes over my target 20 but I completed it when so many much better solvers than me failed. I was lucky to have gone to school with a Nuala, whose surname, coincidentally, was Gallagher. Very helpful with Liam in the clue!!

       I was impressed that where a word was perhaps not well-known it was so clearly clued that it could be created from the word play. Looking forward to being challenged by you again soon. Thanks too to RolyToly. MM

       FOI 1d ABED
       LOI 20d CORD
       COD 7d TAX DISCS – beautiful misdirection!!

    2. Hello! And thank you. Looking forward to the next one.
34. Initially was flying through the clues, admittedly with spots at first. Then came to a grinding halt. Realised spots was wrong when I got endgames but 7d, 20d 21d all eluded me.

    A few too many difficult clues but I would say that as a DNF.

35. Finished in a very slow 28 minutes or thereabouts but with two wrong. Managed not to fall into the SPOTS trap at 14ac and knew MAPUTO and TISANE, both of which were straightforward from the wordplay anyway. TARQUIN surfaced from somewhere deep in the subconscious but NHO NUALA as a name. Quite a few that I did get right were biffed. Didn’t like 12dn GOLF BALL, although it didn’t hold me up once a couple of crossers were in.

    FOI – 10ac DRIFT
    LOI – 20dn CORD
    COD – very much liked 13dn FINE-TUNE fore the smooth surface and 18dn IN A RUT for causing me to laugh out loud.

36. Fortunately opted for MOLES initially and although slow, worked down steadily apart from 7D where I was thinking TAX but missed the now so obvious DISKS element, not seeing the clever literal. Mentally couldn’t get away from DESKS which made no sense!
    Ran out of steam with 17 , 18 new 21D incomplete. Didn’t know the city but should have seen the wordplay, but not seeing the other two.
    Hard for the likes of me but I enjoyed it and it seems entirely fair. I look forward to Monty’s next challenge.
    Plymouthian
37. I’ve also never seen RARE as an anagrind, and it isn’t listed in a common list of anagram indicators on line. However, one definition of RARE is UNUSUAL and in that sense I think it works – just!
38. We started well and the gird was filling up nicely but then we stopped and I mean stopped. I didn’t have an issue with Nuala – one of my favourite teachers was a Sister Nuala. But, we struggled with 17A and 7D and it took an age to get 5D and 6D. We eventually got Muslims and tax discs but only after entering the wrong answers and correcting them. Overall we took an impressive 58 minutes – way too long for a QC. Welcome Monty – you’re a hard task master – some lovely clues but some real puzzlers.

    FOI: biscuit
    LOI: tax disc (but DNF really)
    COD: golf balls

    Thanks to Rolytoly for the blog

39. I had all the same problems and fell into the same traps as many others, so I won’t bother to list them all. Being pedantic I could argue (21d) that gravity is a force pulling down from below not pressing down from above.
    1. Although the g here is the g force and not gravity per se
40. Hi all – I wonder if someone can answer a query for me. I posted as per norm this morning and saw my entry come up on screen, but it’s completely disappeared! This has happened a couple of times before. I don’t think I said anything controversial. Does anyone have any idea what may have happened?journal
    journal

    I’ve also got a strange problem that when I press enter for a new paragraph, if I’ve been using swipe and also if I put a title in, the last word appears (see example of journal above and below) Normally I backspace to get rid of them but left them in tonight as an example.
    journal
    journal
    Thanks in advance.

    BTW I mostly enjoyed the crossword 😊 Maybe it’s just a case of getting used to a new setter’s style. FOI Biscuit LOI Cord COD In a rut Time 12:30

    Thanks Monty and Roly

    1. Hi, Penny.Two things occur to me – possibly both hopeless! – about your posts disappearing. And I think that both of them have happened to me in the past. Firstly, did you write your post when you DEFINITELY had internet connection? Secondly – and I know this has happened – if you post on a telephone (as I do), it’s dead easy to delete rather than post….
       Not sure about your second problem though….
       Lisa
       1. Hi Lisa – thank you so much for your thoughts. I’m pretty certain the internet was on (especially as my husband is currently working from home – like so many) but I wonder if I did accidentally delete the post? It hadn’t crossed my mind until you suggested it but it’s certainly possible. I shall have to watch out for fat fingers in future! Yeah, the other issue is probably some sort of glitch in the soft / firmware. Weird tho. Thanks again – enjoy the rest of the weekend. See you back in crosswordland on Monday 😊 Penny
41. Chamber’s 12th edition contains a Word Games Companion with a list of more than 350 anagram indicators including ‘rare’.
42. I live on the Isle of Man. We have tax discs. I bought one a few weeks ago and placed it on the windscreen. Wasn’t aware they are no more in the UK.
    Stupid question!
43. Far too difficult for a quick cryptic. Obscure words and dodgy definitions. Didn’t enjoy it at all. Perhaps this setter should be confined to the bigger crossword.
44. Contrary to many views, this was fine for me. Guess it pandered to my areas of knowledge. Saved until today as the copier ran out of ink, preventing my habitual copying so my wife and I can solve in parallel. Or not, of course.

    Thanks , Monty.

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