Times Quick Cryptic No 1712 by Breadman

44 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1712 by Breadman”

1. ..no uhderwear managed to sneak in today! I thought this was a little more difficult for a Quickie, as auburn, Svengali, and esplanade were just a little tricky.

   I did read Greek wine and biffed retsina immediately, with only one checker. Caribou, en masse, and ragwort were also biffed.

2. Biffed a bunch: RETSINA, SVENGALI, NEW AGER, YODEL. We just had UNDERWEAR (or uhderwear) in a 15×15, which made it very easy today. 4:30.
3. Raced through this – too fast as it turns out – so that only NEW AGER was left after 9m. I couldn’t parse it, so thanks Jeremy, as ‘wager’ for venture was no where near my thoughts plus I was trying to apply initially to ‘ spiritualist’ so I was looking for an ecological venture beginning with ‘sea’. All done in 12 only to find I’d very carelessly entered the wrong steal, although it looks like I’m not alone, 11 of 33 solvers so far have a wrong letter.

   Thanks for the navigation tip at 12a Jeremy, made me laugh.

   Edited at 2020-09-30 06:07 am (UTC)

4. Once I got going with RETSINA, I had no hold-ups. LOI was PSYCH UP which required care.
   More Underwear on show;in a recent puzzle (as mentioned)and it was a recent Sunday Times word for the clueing competition.
   A nice well-balanced puzzle. 08:28 on the clock.
   David
5. I too struggled with NEW AGER which cost me about a minute or so at the end but everything else was pretty smooth so still happy with 8.35 as anything under 10 is a decent result for me.

6. 10 minutes, but it was a close thing whether I would achieve my target as I struggled with NEW AGER. It’s not a term that I was aware of with specific reference to spiritualism.
7. Relatively straightforward but held up mainly by two letters – A or E in 9a and the final letter of LOI, NEW AGER, where I had to resist the temptation to biff New Aged. ESPLANADE was the other minor sticking point as it had to be dredged from the depths. Finished in 8.27 with COD to STEEL (where I eventually chose the right option!).
   Thanks to Jeremy
8. I had no idea what was going on at 6d, plumping for NEW AGES. I only managed to parse it after seeing my pink square and rethinking the clue. No trouble with the rest of the puzzle. Completed in 9:05 WOE. Thanks Breadman and Jeremy.
9. Enjoyed too. Had to think about Ne Wager as I guessed it might be new ages or aged.
   FOsI Dali and Retsina
   Also had to think about Porterhouse
   Quite a lot of guessing as usual.
   Thanks all.
   1. I’m surprised that anyone had to give much thought to PORTERHOUSE, since the grid pattern left only 3 of the 11 letters unchecked !

      Edited at 2020-09-30 12:07 pm (UTC)

      1. Yes, I agree. Once I’d got the checkers it was easy but I tried it first without – I hardly ever manage to solve clues in order of appearance.
10. A sub 8 minutes solve which would have been a sub 7 minutes solve had I not dithered over the parsing of my LOI NEW AGER. My FOI was YELLOW and like others I too biffed quite a few including EN MASSE, SPINACH, CARIBOU and AUBURN. I parsed all before coming to the blog. Thanks Jeremy and Breadman.
11. A nice puzzle with no tripping hazards and all done in just under 15 minutes. I answered this in more or less linear fashion, with FOI 1 across, PASTY and LOI 21 down, RODE. Quite liked “swilling” in 10 across, RETSINA, as a novel and very fitting anagrind. At the risk of, yet again, appearing a total dunderhead, I don’t get SSE as a reading of “virtually south” in 12 across, EN MASSE – does it just mean “more or less south”? “vaguely south”? Thanks, Jeremy, for the blog and thanks, too, to Breadman
    1. South south east.
       1. Yes, I could see it was South South East but was unsure whether or not that was enough to justify “virtually south “. I wondered if it meant something else, something more technical than that. Thanks, though, Chris.
          1. I thought that was a bit of a stretch too – SSE is 22.5 degrees off south, which isn’t really “virtually” south in my book.
             1. A MER for me on SSE = “virtually south” too – not a construction I have encountered before (perhaps others have?), and it mainly brought to mind my maths teacher of 55 years ago who delighted in telling anyone who claimed to have got the answer “nearly right” that “nearly right means completely wrong”.

                A bit harsh perhaps but much as I felt about this clue…

                Cedric

                1. Hey, let’s cut the setter a little slack here! It’s a crossword, we’re not trying to land a probe on Mars 🙂

                   H

                   1. Well said, although I reserve the right also to nit-pick as and when the mood takes me. TBH I biffed EN MASSE and then omitted to return to it and check the wordplay so the subtleties of SSE were completely lost on me.

                      Edited at 2020-09-30 01:09 pm (UTC)

                      1. Me too!
12. Hurrah! A hat-trick of 8 minute solves this week. Like Kevin, I also came across underwear in a clue very recently – my blog on Tuesday: Clothing submerged in northern river? (9). So it was plain sailing and fun. Liked SSE as above. Thanks blogger and setter.

    Edited at 2020-09-30 09:44 am (UTC)

    1. Great stuff Chris, well done!
13. 12 minutes and plain sailing here, with LOI SCHOONER. I’m not sure that the Cornish purists would agree that a PASTY is a pie, and PSYCH-UP is usually hyphenated in my experience, but these are minor quibbles. Thanks Breadman and Jeremy.
14. I enjoyed this today after a slow start, with some neat clues. Struggled with NEW AGER, though.
15. Completed everything in 30 mins, but then discovered I had both 6dn and 10ac incorrect, putting “New Eden” and “Ratsine” respectively. Probably should have known the latter, but 6dn was a bit of a punt.

    Some good misdirection across the whole of the grid I thought. Nearly put “Peaky” for 1ac thinking it may have been a pie I was unaware of (it isn’t), and thought 16dn could have been something starting with “Umber”.

    However, enjoyed 12ac “En Masse”, 14dn “Psych Up”, 24ac “April” and 23ac “Underwear” (which I think we had the other day somewhere).

    FOI – 3dn “Yellow”
    LOI – 10ac (incorrectly)
    COD – 16dn “Auburn”

    Thanks as usual.

16. I also enjoyed this one and seemed to skip through it, finishing in just under 15 minutes.
    The only two unknowns were CARIBOU and DALI which were obvious from the wordplay and, like Jackkt, I wasn’t aware that NEW AGER had a ‘spiritualist’ connotation.
    Other than that, there were many lovely clues including RETSINA (I remember it well from my misspent youth), RAGWORT and PSYCH UP and my COD has to go to YELLOW for its amusing simplicity.
    Thanks to Breadman and to Jeremy for the clear blog.
17. Approx 20 mins. My first “on train” solve for six months.

    LOI NEW AGER which I never really parsed, as I had NEW=‘Modern Day’ and couldn’t see how it could work after that.

    I thought SSE for ‘virtually south’ stretches the meaning of ‘virtual’, and I hope this is not a new “convention” for the set of letters SSE ENE etc.

    I like the definitions of ‘Manipulative type’ and ‘Modern-day spiritualist’ for SVENGALI & NEW AGER.

    COD YELLOW

18. Fairly straightforward, but having initially passed on 1ac, a carelessly biffed Callow (thought it unlikely at the time) at 3d caused some havoc with the anagram at 7ac. I eventually remembered Esplanade and the slightly more common word for cowardly, which then gave me loi Pasty – much sucking of teeth in Cornwall I would imagine. Anyway, all that pushed me out to 22mins, with En Masse my favourite. There are some interesting articles on boxing the compass (of which SSE is 1/32nd) for those at a loose end. Invariant
19. I have a friend whose unofficial family motto is “semper ubi sub ubi” (literally “always where under where”). After having the same word on Tuesday the setters seem equally keen.

    Fun puzzle and I was bang on what seems to have been the common time of about 08:30. Solved in a clockwise direction for a change, held up only by BANTAM and NEW-AGER (which was a very satisfying PDM). An excellent and very apt surface for RETSINA, which was responsible for my first hangover aged about 14!

    FOI POSER, LOI UNDERWEAR, COD NEW-AGER, time 1.9K but still a Very Good Day.

    Many thanks Jeremy and Breadman.

    Templar

20. Fairly easy today (unlike yesterday’s 15×15, which was a swine). Apart from BANTAM everything went in on a first reading, though as ever my fat fingers slowed things down! I’ve still not made my target of under four minutes, though I have hopes every Monday ..

    H

21. ….Elton John’s album “CARIBOU”, do try to get a listen to “Ticking” – one of his very best songs in my opinion.

    FOI PASTY
    LOI NEW AGER
    COD CARIBOU
    TIME 3:28

    1. Yes, great lyrics with a wonderful piano accompaniment. So dramatic but also very sad. Thanks for the trip down memory lane…
22. … with the right amount of write-in clues and those requiring more thought, and all (with the exception for me of 12A En masse, which I and several others have commented on already), entirely fair and several rather elegant. All done in 11 minutes.

    I particularly liked 3D Yellow for its simplicity and 10A Retsina for the memories of many years ago that it brought back.

    Thank you to Jeremy for the blog
    Cedric

23. I started late today and managed to get within my target at 13 mins. Pretty straightforward apart from NEW AGER and EN MASSE. I liked CARIBOU and SVENGALI. Thanks to both. John M.
24. Fooled initially by being unable to find a suitable “pie” for 1a – all my Cornish ancestors will be turning in their graves to have the mighty pasty compared to “a pie”, but an illustration of how cyptic Crosswordland can be, I suppose! Otherwise a few struggles, inc whether it was new ages or new ages, but got there eventually, enjoyably.
    Plymouthian. (Temporarily in exile…)
25. Fairly straightforward and very enjoyable. I resisted writing NEW AGER in until the very end as I don’t think the new age movement, a general movement covering a multitude of ideas and practices, equates at all with spiritualism. So I though the answer must be something different.
26. Did not finish today as I could not decide between AGED, AGES and AGER for the second half of 6dn. All except that quite straightforward and completed in 16 mins. Biffed RAGWORT and EN MASSE.

    FOI – 10ac RETSINA
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 1ac PASTY (not being of Cornish extraction I have no problem equating pasties and pies)

27. Completed over lunch in a café today, not had the opportunity to do that for ages with this bug that’s going round. I enjoyed this QC (which, being interpreted, means could finish it without needing to resort to aids). I biffed a few, once I had some checkers, and parsed later – retsina is a write in whenever I see ‘Greek wine’, and esplanade as soon as I saw it started with ‘e’. Also Svengali – who got a mention in yesterday’s Times2 in a piece about “The Red Shoes”.

    No problem with the metal, as tge definition was at the end of the clue.

    Definitely a MER for wager=venture. I struggle to think of a sentence where the two would be interchangeable.

    Thanks to Breadman for an antidote to Monday’s mini 15×15 and to Jeremy for the blog.

    1. … I’ll venture/wager you could if you thought about it
       1. Hmmmmm…maybe. I wouldn’t have used ‘venture’ in that context. Thanks for the suggestion but I’m not going to withdraw my MER!!
28. I struggled with15a as I tried to work pal or mate into a vegetable. I still don’t see how CH implies companion. Apart from that it was enjoyable and I managed to work through it eventually.
    1. ‘CH’ stands for ‘Companion of Honour’. It does come up in cryptic crosswords,so is worth remembering.
       1. Thanks for the explanation, which would never have crossed my mind.
29. …..a porterhouse (COD) 😳. The Breadman delivered us a tasty puzzle today – lots to get our teeth into. Took us 11 enjoyable minutes to complete (LOI: oratory).

    Thanks to Breadman and Jeremy.

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