Times Quick Cryptic No 1798 by Izetti

86 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1798 by Izetti”

1. ….and who can blame them? Yes, I knew both meanings of oblate, and I am familiar with the Suffolk Punch, but I suspect many of our Quickie solvers will get stuck. This is a really high-quality puzzle, which makes heavy use of the oblique meanings of common words, but it’s not a walk in the park.

   Time: 11:52, about the same as yesterday.

2. I found this MOR-ish – rather than difficult.

   FOI 5ac AURA

   LOI 14ac OBLATE

   COD 23ac SEETHING – I was reminded of SEETHING LANE EC3 and Sir Edward Denny Bacon

   WOD 11ac DACHSHUND – it is little known that the ‘sausage dog’ was bred for badger baiting – which was a popular lunchtime sport for all the family in the first half of the 19thC., in the Midlands. Dachshund means badger-dog from the German.

   Edited at 2021-01-28 03:38 am (UTC)

   1. 60.06 in two goes. Assumed TUTORIAL was some sort of mash up around ORAL, thanks, Roly. Agree with comments re PUNCHY despite knowing both the horse and lawn mower. Little chit familiar as a teacher’s invective and the geometric OBLATE descriptor known.
      Didn’t think THING was fair for obsession, but that’s just me. LOI Figure. Cod DACHSHUND. Such funny looking dogs. Mine is a Bedlington terrier also “funny looking” as lambs go. Historically used for rat catching although mine has never caught anything and scared of cats and more. Doesn’t bark, doesn’t bite, doesn’t shed, doesn’t fetch, doesn’t chew stuff, doesn’t do much of anything at all. Ideal. Thanks Izetti. Tough but almost deciphered.
3. This was definitely obscure in a couple of places, although my failure was mistyping DACHSHUNDS and not noticing. I had no idea it was a “badger hound” so at least I learned something. It was my LOI since I assumed it was starting PACH… and was an obscure breed (to me anyway).
4. Does PUNCHY mean ‘vivacious’? I thought of ‘punchy’, but I’d forgotten the horse–I can’t honestly say I’d never heard of it, although probably only here, once–and the definition seemed too far off to risk it.
   1. SOED: punchy – full of punch or vigour; forceful. E20.

      Collins and Chambers also mentions ‘vigorous’. So now we have to consider whether ‘vigorous = vivacious’, but I think they are close enough.

      More generally, yes I found this hard, perhaps the hardest QC I can remember for a while, and I’m only sorry that The Times has chosen this day to publish it. We could have done with an easy one to calm the troops but this is rather a case of petrol on the flames. 17 minutes.

      Edited at 2021-01-28 06:03 am (UTC)

      1. I don’t (certainly didn’t) find ‘full of punch; forceful; vigorous’ to be very close to ‘vivacious’, but granting that they are, as they say, good enough for government work, isn’t this kind of broad equivalence something to be avoided in QCs in particular? It requires the solver to search a wider mental territory, thus lowering the chances of solving. Often enough, a QC setter helpfully does just the opposite: saying, e.g. “European port” instead of just “port”. This setter could have said “Vigorous horse” instead of “vivacious”.
         1. I’m questioning the equivalence a bit more now given your reasoning, but in my head while solving I thought there was ample crossover with vivacious/punchy prose both having a brisk, lively quality (among separate things). Indeed, the synonyms listed for punchy in Collins are “effective, spirited, dynamic, lively”, so I think it’s fair enough game.

            Incidentally, in addition to what Jack mentioned about the extent to which vivacious could mean vigorous, the OED does have a sense of “tenacious of life, long-lived, lively, vigorous”, related to its original meaning.

            1. I wouldn’t have said anything if this had been a 15×15, but–especially because of the question of QC difficulty–I brought this up. It’s standard in the biggies, when someone asks “does X=Y?”, to reply that Collins/Chambers/my grandmother gives some reason to accept the equivalence; and so we do. My point was that this is the QC, and we shouldn’t be so forgiving.
         2. I agree, Kevin. I solved the clue immediately, knowing the Suffolk Punch, but doubted the equivalence and so before coming here looked it up in the usual sources and found nothing which supported “vivacious”.
   2. I raised an eyebrow initially but after due consideration I decided it was fine as both words are often used loosely to mean ‘lively’.

      –AntsInPants

5. Quicker than yesterday but still slow. Some wounds were self-inflicted though like whacking in Iowa when I saw ‘state’ and ‘one with nothing’ in the clue and struggling with TUTORIAL when the definition couldn’t have been clearer — which deprived me of much needed letters in the SE. Some tough words today, both meanings of OBLATE, one of which I vaguely knew, and CHIT for an impudent youngster which I am certain I’ve never heard. Enjoyed SEETHING for the moment of realisation.

   Yesterday’s setter came by here late yesterday to confirm 21a was missing a word and to say it is now corrected in the online versions — now “Rest of her answer oddly skipped”.

   Edited at 2021-01-28 06:44 am (UTC)

   1. Setter is forgiven by including the problem with the skipped word in the surface of the correction.

      1. Indeed, and that’s why cryptic puzzles are so much more fun than word-for-word puzzles like Times 2. With a cryptic clue there should always be another way to an unknown or evasive answer. Sometimes it’s wordplay, other times it’s lateral thinking. Either way it keeps the brain ticking over whilst waiting for a spark of inspiration.

         Edited at 2021-01-28 09:37 am (UTC)

      2. True, but I’m not sure OBLATE falls into this category, since they are both pretty obscure words.
         1. Yes, double definitions can be tricky if one doesn’t know either meaning.
6. 9:40. Not my cup of tea, this one.
   Nor would I see “punchy” as meaning vivacious. “forceful, effective; vigorous,” perhaps (OED) but not lively or animated
7. I spelt WHOA as WA and so I got IOWA.
8. I found this one tough and thought I was going to exceed my stopping threshold of 30 minutes, but was pleasantly surprised to finish with three minutes to spare.

   DNK the archaic meanings of ‘chit’ and ‘oblate’ but convinced myself from the clues that they must be correct. I’m learning to trust my intuition a bit more.

   WB

9. I found this harder than yesterdays and have just deleted my initial post as it had turned into a bit of a rant.
   Finished in 20.26 with LOI FIGURE.
   Thanks to Roly
10. I found this a bit easier than yesterday’s thank goodness.

    But I was defeated by the top left hand corner. And NHO OBLATE.

    I was stumped by 11a for a bit as I thought it was “hound “ and couldn’t work out why it didn’t fit.

    Thank you, Izetti and Roly

    Diana

11. Like mendesest — ‘quicker than yesterday but still slow’. Some very good clues and some neat diversions. I enjoyed it but needed all the mental agility I could dredge up — the sign of a good crossword? Satisfying but not easy for the newer solvers (or for me). Here is hoping that Friday brings something less chewy ( just for a change). John M.
12. I thought that that was much (much) easier than yesterday’s (only three acrosses unsolved on first pass) and have been surprised by the reactions above bearing in mind I completely failed yesterday where lots of others did not. Go FIGURE.

    Re obscurities, I was very amused by roly saying of OBLATE “double definition, the first more obscure than the second”, when I knew the first very well but had no idea about the second at all! One man’s GK is another man’s obscurity, I guess.

    I too dallied with the Welsh CWIN (but “chit of a girl” then swam up from the memory) and tried hard to make IOWA work (there’s a “one”, and a “nothing”, and an “a” … surely I can jam these together …).

    FOI CONTEMPT, LOI THEREABOUT, COD UNHINGED (terrific surface), time 13:28 for a Decent Enough Day.

    Many thanks roly (wonderful trivia about DACHSHUNDS! – I shall look upon them with new respect) and Izetti.

    Templar

    Edited at 2021-01-28 10:09 am (UTC)

13. Failed on several points. Let me start with 1A which I think is a cruel construction. Both “briefly” and “almost completely” are length-indeterminate, and either could be as read, or a synonym (its the QC, so probably 1 of each). That means trawling through C, CO, CON, CONT followed by FUT, FUTI, FUTIL after failing on this, next try all possible synonyms of any length for both. Even though CONTEMPT is biffable, the nagging thought is that plenty of other words might fit. Finally I’m still not sure how empty=futile, apart from the usage of “empty gesture”

    Also Failed with PUNCHY, UNHINGED, EXTRACTION and DACHSHUND. I kept trying to get PACESETTER to work (PAS around CE, SETTER=dog). When I have a near-miss its hard to throw it all away, as I should have done, and considered DADS, along with PAS and FRs. And CH as well as CE.

    NHO CHIT

    COD “COME COME”

    1. I think you’ve answered your own query. You could substitute ‘promise’ for ‘gesture’ too.
14. then I feebly looked up Diagram for LOI FIGURE. Shd have got that. Also forgot to go back and solve MINI. (Rubbed out Duck quite quickly)
    I didn’t want to spend all morning on the puzzle as yesterday, but I did enjoy it.
    Guessed OBLATE, liked DACHSHUNDS, SEETHING, COME COME.

    FOsI CONTEMPT, CHIT, ARRESTED, no problem with PUNCHY (eventually).

    Thanks, Roly, as ever.

    Edited at 2021-01-28 01:47 pm (UTC)

15. Date: Thur, 28 Jan 21

    FOI: 19d SLUG
    LOI: 1d CHIT

    Time to Complete: DNF

    Clues Answered without aids: 14 (incl. 1 wrong answer)

    Clues Answered with Aids (3 lives): 3 (8a, 11a, 14a)

    Clues Unanswered: 7 (1a, 21a, 23a, 4d, 10d, 16d, 18d)

    Aids Used: Chambers, Bradfords

    Total Answered: 17/24 (including 1 wrong answer)

    I didn’t think I was going to get as far as I did on this. As I normally do, I first read through all the clues to see if any jump out at me. I got to the very last clue (19d) before that happened.

    As I slowly progressed there were times when I thought “let’s call it a day”. But I persevered, and glad I did as I was able to answer a few more.

    In the end I did better than first hoped, answering 17 clues including 3 with the help of aids, and one wrong answer.

    3d was my one wrong answer. I put DETRACTION as being a synonym of separation, though I just could not see how ethnic origin fitted into it. Now that I know the right answer, I can see where it fit in.

    1d CHIT – I entered this even though I was unsure. I assumed Conservative was “C”, and success was “hit”. I had not heard of a boy being known as a “chit”, but I went with my conviction and kept it. Now I know, thanks to the blogger, that chit is the youngster of an animal, and not a boy.

    12d – COME COME. Another one that I was unsure of. I guessed that the answer would be in the form of one word repeated, and “come” is an invitation. The only way I could think of “come come” meaning “I cannot accept”, was if somebody said something like “Oh, come come now, I can’t do that!” Several times in the past I have ignored my convictions and not entered a word, resulting in frustration when I found out later that it was the right answer, and I should have put it. So this time I entered my answer, and I was right!

    An enjoyable crossword. Not too tough, but not a breeze either.

    DNF, but better than yesterday.

    PS> I am aware that my posts can be a bit long, I hope this does not annoy anybody.

    Edited at 2021-01-28 10:23 am (UTC)

    1. It probably only annoys one person, so I’d just go on as you wish.
16. Well this was initially a DNF, when I came here with a pretty blank looking SE corner to see what I was missing. Luckily, the first thing I saw on LiveJournal was Jacckt’s extra blog on the difficulty of QCs, which I read through with interest. That inspired me to go back and look again at today’s QC, and not to give up. With a fresh eye, TUTORIAL fell, followed fairly quickly by the rest of the SE. Time from start to finish was 32 minutes, including reading Jacckt’s blog. The list of my original failures in the SE includes TUTORIAL, SEETHING, FIGURE, MINI and SLUG, so I had nothing much to go on. I now feel very smug and satisfied that I didn’t throw in the towel.
17. I don’t mind a DNF when my general knowledge is lacking, or when a setter uses a vital bit of “crossword code” that I haven’t yet heard of (e.g. another one of the seemingly unfeasible number of acronyms and synonyms for “seaman” – AB, RN, SALT, TAR, etc.). It does irritate me though when QC setters trawl for obscure meanings that, yes, may be written down somewhere but haven’t commonly been used in that way for ages (if at all).

    CHIT = “impudent”
    PUNCHY = “vivacious”
    OBLATE = “anything” 🙂

    Might have got PUNCHY from the Suffolk Punch if I hadn’t been mentally stuck on PONY and various others, but no chance on CHIT (CWIN?) or OBLATE.

    Thanks Roly for the explanations. Thanks too to Izetti for what I thought was otherwise an enjoyably tough but fair QC, but maybe leave the really obscure stuff for the 15×15 in future?

    Edited at 2021-01-28 10:28 am (UTC)

    1. Doubly annoying because I suspect Chit in the sense of small note giving permission is much more widely known.
    2. But if you do know both meanings of oblate it allows you a few minutes of unbearable smugness, (although if you are solving with your wife who doesn’t, that may not be a good thing!)
18. I gave up at about 30 mins with 4 clues remaining. This is definitely not one for the new solvers. The 4 remaining were CHIT (NHO) and OBLATE (NHO) DACHSHUNDS (wordplay lost on me) and FIGURE (not sure about the second definition). At least I guessed PUNCH correctly. Oh well.
    1. ‘chit’ was familiar to me, but then I’ve read a number of Victorian novels; from which I’ve inferred that a chit is an impudent girl/young woman (never seen it used for a boy). Not a particularly QC word.
19. They’re fine, PW. If anyone doesn’t want to read them (or comments by any other poster) they can scroll past.
20. While there was quite a lot to enjoy in today’s QC, I kept on thinking that it was pushing the bounds of what was acceptable in a QC — 14ac, Oblate being a good example. Anyway, after 35 tortuous minutes I was down to my last pair: Chit and Punchy. Ten minutes later I was still staring at C*i* and P*n*h* so decided to call it a day. Not sure what else to say, other than a heartfelt Really? Invariant
21. I was a bit distracted when starting to solve this so took a while to settle into it. DNK the first meaning of my LOI OBLATE, but I often find Izetti drops in ecclesiastical terms which I don’t know. I had a slight frown at PUNCHY for “vivacious” and “be understandable” for FIGURE, but decided they were OK. I liked the SLUG and Lettuce… I’ve drunk in that pub in York, I think. 8:14 – my slowest since November.
    1. I may well have been with you in the Slug and Lettuce:-)
       1. I do believe you were!
22. Both yesterday and today so can’t leave as long a comment as I’d like on either of the crosswords concerned. So, briefly, here goes : on the Exasperometer, yesterday’s was a 4,with me barely finishing it within half an hour. That was a walk in the park compared to today’s offering which is a 5, a DNF.
    It was much too hard today and I accept all of the difficulties I faced as being down to my own inabilities — with the GR exception of 14 across, a double definition in which both definitions are, IMO, completely obscure to the average punter and in which there was no alternative wordplay to help. It’s left me utterly 23 across.
    Thanks to the blogger.
    1. I was only 2 minutes into this when I was distracted by thoughts of your Exasperometer exploding.
       1. Oh,Phil, it was carnage here….
23. Very tricky again. A mixture of obscure definitions and occasionally very tenuous cluing more apt for the 15 x 15 I wonder if the setters might road test their efforts on each other???
    1. I suspect that’s just the problem. All the setters would do this puzzle in a few minutes, and say it’s easy. They don’t realize how much they know that the average solver does not know.
24. Second day running with one taking me well over my “not too far over 20min” target, but completed eventually, and enjoyed. I had all the vocabulary although I didn’t necessarily realise that whilst trying to solve — they floated up as the clues started to unravel for me. OBLATE was particularly well submerged. A few MERs all previously covered above, but fair and largely helpful cluing, I thought.
    I agree with the general view that we seem to have hit a chewy batch of QCs of late. I am enjoying them now, but six months ago I would have been getting quite frustrated, I think. More “13x13s” than QCs, which helps me trying to “move up” to the 15×15 but I sympathise with other views.

    Edited at 2021-01-28 11:33 am (UTC)

25. 30 minutes overall — but, again, this was hard and could have quite easily been a dnf. Spent an inordinate amount of time staring at 16dn “Figure” until it finally came.

    The NW corner was completely bare until towards the end and it was only after getting 1ac that things fell into place, although I can hardly say “Chit” and “Punchy” were obvious. Toyed with “Packhounds” for 11ac until it wouldn’t parse and also struggled with 21ac “Tutorial” and 10dn “Thereabout”.

    I think many of the words today expressed my range of emotions throughout: Contempt, Unhinged, Impotent (in the mental sense), Come! Come! and Seething.

    FOI — 5ac “Aura”
    LOI — 16dn “Figure”
    COD — 6dn “Unhinged”

    Thanks as usual.

26. Gave up after 77 and came on here. I had penciled in CHIT and was 50/50 with PUNCHY as I’d NHO a Suffolk Punch. Once I’d seen the answer to 1a I was able to complete by filling in 2d and 3d and managing to dredge up OBLATE although I think I’ve only come across the ‘religious person’ on here and maybe the ‘earthy sphere’ not at all. A bit annoyed with myself for not at least considering that the brief word meaning “continued” might just be a shortened version of continued rather than another word altogether. Something of a school boy (or girl these days) error, I think. Harder than yesterday then for me, but thanks anyway.
27. … which Izetti always is I find. I solved this in 18 minutes, all parsed, and felt properly challenged but never baffled.

    That this is a totally different reaction from the one I had yesterday says I think more about me than the two QCs concerned. The more I do these QCs (I started about 18 months ago) the more it seems that things like GK, comfort with anagrams, even wavelength are a personal matter. I have my blind spots (1940s films being one…) but who doesn’t, and while any puzzle can be seen at the same time by different people as “easy” and “difficult”, yesterday’s discussion strayed into views that it was both “fair” and “unfair”, which is a different matter and must make the setters’ task of pitching puzzles appropriately even more challenging. (And in passing makes the achievements of our Saturday Duo, John and Phil, even more impressive — they always hit the spot!)

    However, to today: a great puzzle, not by any means easy but some nice clues, with the longest hold-up for me being over 3D Extraction — I originally mis-read the clue and thought “from ethnic origin” was Ex- and then something, and spent some time looking for an 8-letter word meaning ethnic origin to follow the Ex. Got there in the end but needed all the checkers. For me the words underlying both 4D Punchy and 14A Oblate were “known and so gettable” — indeed in the case of the latter, I knew both meanings. Which rather underlines the point above about knowledge being a personal thing.

    Have read the discussion on Jack’s comment on difficult QCs with great interest but felt a touch nervous about commenting there lest a certain member of our community blasts me for length and clogging up the blog …

    Many thanks to Roly for another very helpful blog
    Cedric

    1. What the hell should you care about what a certain member–at least, that certain member– says? The QCs are intended for people like you, after all. I was hoping for more comments on that thread, precisely from people that a certain member objects to.
       1. Wow. Just read that comment now after being intrigued by this post. The pomposity is incredible. Ignore him (for it is certainly a “he”) Cedric, he’s not worth it!
       2. I have only just read that thread and, as I am almost certainly one of the people that the certain member objects to, I am about to comment there myself.
    2. Just ignore it, Cedric.
28. Enjoyed some clues, (eg come come) but a massive DNF. Far too difficult for me.
29. Where do I have to look to see “Jacckt’s extra blog” referred to in other comments, please ?

    Jim R

    1. Just click on the calendar for today and you’ll see the 3 blogs, this one, the 15×15 and Jack’s extra one.
       1. Thanks. Apologies for slight dimness and for mis-spelling jackkt as jacckt.
          Jim
30. More difficult than yesterday, at least in the time it took me, and yesterday was bad enough! I completed today’s in 27 minutes but never managed to parse 1ac (thanks for the explanation Roly). I can’t equate punchy with vivacious and didn’t know the religious person at 14ac (and the word is also pretty obscure in the second sense). While I don’t want a crossword to consist only of write-ins, this is the second day in a row which I have not enjoyed.

    FOI – 8ac IMPOTENT
    LOI – 4dn PUNCHY
    COD – 6dn UNHINGED

31. Another tricky one for me, taking me to 18.24. My LOI, FIGURE, held me up for ages. PUNCHY took a while. I knew the Earth as an oblate spheroid and an oblation as an offering/sacrifice, but didn’t know the other meaning of religious person. I vaguely knew the expression “a chit of a girl” needed all of the checkers to spell DACHSHUNDS, and felt that overall the solve was like a tooth 3d. Thanks Izetti and Roly.
32. after yesterday’s debacle.

    I thought I was on for another DNF when staring at a distinctly bare grid after 5 mins. Then realised that fathers could be “dads” as well as “pas” and deleted the P I had put in for the first letter of dogs and replaced with a D. DACHSHUNDS jumped in quickly, and it all fell into place thereafter.

    CHIT went in last, after CONTEMPT. Had only heard of the religious OBLATE. Liked COME COME and the surface of UNHINGED.

    Lovely crossword, if on the hard side, though much easier for me than yesterday, which was DNF after 17 mins.

    8:33.

33. A year ago I would generally avoid an Izetti. Now I really appreciate them. Just failed with not knowing Oblate. Educated guess on chit and punchy / vivacious is stretching it a bit in common parlance but liked the parsing.

    For me easier than yesterday’s nightmare and a lot more enjoyable (nina aside).

    Graham

34. Don’t know what on earth OBLATE is doing in this puzzle, I’m afraid. Neither meaning is well known, and Chambers has the religious version down as obsolete.
    1. Well, I know someone who is an oblate, so it’s not totally gone out of use.

       And of course if you are going to refer to th Earth as oblate, you can’t in the same sentence call it a sphere.

       I didn’t get it despite knowing both definitions, though.
       Katy

       1. I share your objection, I don’t think an object can be both spherical and oblate.

          Not the first time a pair of supposedly synonymous words has held me up in a cryptic, and unlikely to be the last!

          WB

          1. Having thought about this some more I will concede that a sphere is a special case of an oblate spheroid in the same way that a square is a special case of a rectangle.

             WB

35. Did so much better than yesterday – solved 18 clues without help and got 1A and 5A quickly. Knew oblate. Got stuck trying to get Pas instead of Dads into 11A. And thanks for no spoilers in the blog.
36. I found myself two-thirds of the way through after 20 minutes (good going for me), but found myself staring at a completely blank NW corner. Then, about 15 fruitless minutes later, PUNCHY (4d) just popped into my head (from who-knows-where) and I populated that corner quite quickly thereafter.

    So, with 40 minutes on the clock I was just faced with 14a: O_L_T_ and a long alphabet trawl ensued. OBLATE appeared very quickly and I knew it was a word, but I didn’t know either meaning. Plenty of other interesting possibilities presented themselves over the following 20 minutes or so, but I eventually went with OBLATE and was pleased to find it was the correct answer.

    Final result: Fully solved in 61 minutes.

    Many thanks to Izetti for the challenging puzzle, to rolytoly for the solutions and explanations, and to all who have posted above for helping me realise that I am not alone in thinking this was really quite difficult for a QC.

37. ….and enjoy his puzzles. However, this took me twice as long as my normal pre-15×15 warm-up, and, being objective, it is actually too hard for a QC !

    The NW corner gave me me the most difficulty.

    FOI AURA
    LOI PUNCHY (MER)
    COD UNHINGED
    TIME 6:50

38. 26 minutes, so a bit of a slog, but I got there and enjoyed the challenge. I have a bit of a niggle about the equivalence of FIGURE and BE UNDERSTANDABLE for grammatical reasons, but maybe I’m missing something and hey, I got the answer. Thanks to setter and blogger.
39. We sailed through most of this but really ground to a halt in the NW corner. We couldn’t get 14A so cheated and looked it up. Once we had oblate we were able to finish the puzzle in 39 minutes. Some great clues, we’re just disappointed that we couldn’t solve the puzzle!

    FOI: aura
    LOI: extraction (but really a DNF)
    COD: unhinged (made us laugh)

    Thanks to Rolytoly for the blog.

40. Your comment on 12d proves two things — one: trust your instinct ; two — trust Izetti!
41. Amazed to have got this all correct. I had to keep coming back to it as had many interruptions today and could not give it full concentration till now. Even so LOI OBLATE was more in hope than expectation. DNK CHIT.
    Big delays caused by Alienation at 3d and IMPAIRED at 8a. A Punch was not the first horse I thought of. At least I can now spell DACHSHUNDS which I tried and rejected at first as it did not fit (was rushing at the time).
    Tough stuff; on the clock 38:59.
    David
42. I found this to be another tough one, but, thankfully, not as bad as yesterday’s and I was pleased to finish (eventually, after a couple of long breaks). PUNCHY & CHIT took some getting and CONTEMPT was just a synonym for Disdain – thanks for explanation. Hopefully something less difficult tomorrow.
43. Very slow again today, but at least I filled in the grid!
    Despite taking about the same amount of time as yesterday, I found the journey today much more pleasant – Izetti does challenge us, but whereas I used to panic when I saw his name, I now think: ‘Well, I’m in for a slow ride today, but it will be fun’. Today was no exception.
    I agree with Cedric’s points on pretty much everything, inc how to parse 3d – I went down exactly the same route. I don’t mind old films (as long as I don’t get the names half wrong) but am fed up with terminology like ‘it’, SA, and bra for support(er).

    FOI Aura
    LOI Oblate – I didn’t think I knew the word but when nothing much else fitted, something rang a bell!
    COD Arrested
    Time 19 minutes

    Thanks Izetti for the challenge (and also for your comments in the extra blog) and to Roly for the thoughtful blog.

    I sincerely hope newcomers don’t get too put off by the puzzles over the last couple of weeks – although a lot of people are feeling frustrated at the moment, I have felt, over the years, that these things go in cycles. There were certainly times in the past when I had days on end without finishing, and then there would be a run of very friendly puzzles. Let’s hope something similar is round the corner.

44. I enjoyed Monday’s QC but yesterday I admired the delightful surfaces but was completely stumped by most of the clues. I gave up after doing not quite all of the top half.
    Today I really hoped I would be able to do better and so it proved. I went through it steadily (I knew punch and oblate) but got stuck on 16d and 23a. I resorted to aids and decided 16d had to be visual or figure though I couldn’t see why either was understandable. Only figure gave a sensible answer for 23a and I finished in half an hour- satisfactory.
    FOI 2d but I put SIPS and had to change it.
    LOI SEETHING
    COD Would have gone for 6d or 7d but it had to be DACHSHUNDS
    Thank you Izetti for restoring my confidence and Roly for your explanations.
    Blue Stocking
45. I thought this was a bit below par for Izetti, with some dodgy clues. I did know both meanings for oblate, but paused because whilst a member of a religious community, an oblate is specifically a lay person, so I had to shift gears to make it a person who was religious rather than what I think of as a religious person.
    Despite this I thought it was a very enjoyable puzzle, unlike yesterday’s !
46. Very challenging today. FOI was AURA and then I stopped for quite a while, desperate for a nice anagram clue which I found in 17A ECONOMICAL

    Haven’t heard of OBLATE nor CHIT. Something new.

    I have been wondering whether I would prefer to have one level of difficulty all week or these daily ups and downs, and the only downside to the tough days like today is that I don’t have the time to work through them in one go. Also, the comments here are very helpful.

47. Needed many aids to fill in this grid and was then stuck between OBLATE and OOLITH for 14ac. An oolith is a round earthy thing and I realised oblate was a religious type but could not parse either and plumped for the wrong one not realising the second meaning of the former.
48. FOI 9A: THOR
    LOI 4D: PUNCHY

    I tried this just after midnight so maybe I was tired.

    I had never heard of CHIT so I crossed my fingers based on wordplay alone.

    Thank you, rolytoly and Izetti.

49. Pleased to complete this one but it took me 39 minutes, so pretty tough for a QC. Got stuck on SLUG, assuming the lettuce would be COS. Guessed PUNCHY without knowing about the type of horse. I remembered the earth being an OBLATE spheroid from school 40 years ago – good to see all those years of schooling finally coming in useful!

50. Some very clever wordplay that meant clues had to be worked out word by word.
    Two courses and a bit.
    Finally.. all puzzles a vary in difficulty according to both setter and solver
    Stop moaning about it and learn from the mistakes.

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