Times Quick Cryptic No 2528 by Beck

85 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 2528 by Beck”

1. I didn’t notice the error, which was pointed out in the club forum; and I’m glad I didn’t, as it would have slowed me down. I was slowed down by CONFRERIE, which I didn’t know, although I knew ‘confrere’. I haven’t seen ‘mysterious’ as an anagram indicator before (or ‘ugly’ (6d), either); I don’t think much of it. TANK isn’t specific to tennis. 6:28.

2. 8:29. Luckily I didn’t spend too long on NERVE as it could only be a very rare slipup. EYEBALLED was my COD. I’ve been part of a COTERIE a few times and maybe even a CONFRERIE or two(now that I know the word for it). TANK is a common term in North American professional sports as teams are rewarded for poor finishes in the standings by getting to choose the best new young players. So they purposely lose games down the final stretch. Just the opposite of the more sensible relegation for having a lousy season. I think TANK TOP ERICA sat a few rows over from me in one of my high school math classes.

3. 8.20. Nice puzzle from Beck, though I too lost a not particularly significant amount of time over the stuff-up involving NEVER. I know a few NEW AGERs but none would call themselves a healer, alternative or otherwise. No other probs, CONFRERIE went in with a shrug but came up trumps so all good. Thanks roly.

4. As a speed solver – or attempted speed solver – I didn’t notice the problem with never, but just glanced at the letters and stuck it in. I also have to say that even though I am sitting right in the middle of Connecticut, solving one puzzle after another, I couldn’t think of any US state that fit the crossing letters for the longest time. Minnesota? Nope, too short. It does help if you know chi and rennet, everything else was quite simple.

   Time: 8:24

5. 12 mins held up by the error for a while near the beginning and trying to smash some form of 6-lettered ‘reverie’ into 5 instead. I think I can only recall one such setter error previously. Perhaps it’s not and there’s a devious twist to be revealed.

   I thought to TANK was simply to suddenly lose form or energy in any sport (in cycling it’s now to ‘bonk’) -I didn’t know it was deliberate and related specifically to tennis . Don’t Jockeys ‘drop their hands’?

   Quite a tough one all round I thought. Thanks Beck and Roly.

   1. Tanking has become a big phrase in American sports where high draft picks next season can encourage teams who are already having a bad season to deliberately avoid winning games. Not literally playing badly but trading decent players, starting the rookie over the experienced QB saying you’re doing it to give him experience. Obviously you don’t get tanking in sports where relegation is at stake.

      There have been examples of tanking in other sports. There were some badminton players at the 2012 Olympics who deliberately played to lose their pool game because finishing second would give them an easier opponent in the next round. Similar football example at the 1982 World Cup where Austria and Germany played out a draw to ensure they both qualified.

      There was a time where sports psychologists used “tanking” to indicate a player who loses it and just starts playing wildly. They start hitting every ball and serve as hard as possible, hoping it’ll win them the point but not caring whether it loses. This was decades ago but someone like Nick Kyrgios would be a good example of that.

6. 11 minutes, but I feel I should deduct a minute to compensate for the faulty clue that delayed me while I considered whether there might be a word REVER associated with dreams, perhaps derived from ‘reverie’. You will gather I didn’t have the N-checker from CONNECTICUT at that stage. Another thought arising from that and adding to time lost, was that REVER in ‘irreverently’ wouldn’t have needed ‘returned’ as it’s there whichever way you read it.

   TANK TOP was no problem but I didn’t know it as a deliberate loss even though it appears to have originated in tennis, the only sport I follow with any degree of interest.

   CONFRERIE was unknown, and REDUPLICATE is a cumbersome word which I wonder if anyone actually uses.

   Never knew LIMBER could be an adjective.

7. I DNF due to not knowing ERICA at all and no amount of alphabet trawling would have assisted me there. The rest of it was fairly straight forward though I thought

   I didn’t understand the parsing for NEVER and put it down to my deficiencies not a clue error!

   Also CONFERIRE I nho but like Roly said there was no other ways to spell the word.

   There’s a lot of tanking in Australian and US sports as being at the bottom of the league gets you rewarded with better odds of drafting good players for next year. Tanking in English football just gets you relegated and probably isn’t recommended.

   I quite enjoyed this one!

   1. I think tanking has two meanings, especially in Oz. In footy etc it refers to teams deliberately losing, but in politics when you tank in the polls you are on the skids…

      1. Not on purpose though, with the pollies!

      2. Stocks and shares have an irritating habit of tanking too (I do wonder whether some of that is deliberate as well…)

   2. You just found another way to spell the word!
      Keep the erica-ling-heather trio in mind; you’ll see them again.

      1. Ah thank you. Totally sounds like a group of mean girls at school

8. 2/4 so far this week. I must admit to finding many of the clues very hard to parse today, but once I’d got some checkers in things fell into place and I came in all green in about 23 minutes. Like others I’d never heard of CONFRERIE, but it had to be. WALLOP slowed me down and I guessed it in the end as I could see the OP but not the WALL (why should ‘with’ represent a ‘w’? It seems a bit random to me).
   All in all a fair QC today so thank you Beck and Roly.

   1. w, often w/, has represented ‘with’ for ages; I’m surprised you haven’t seen it.

   2. Yes, I think w/ = with is a US thing. “Burger w/ fries” etc.

9. Hard to gauge my time as I had to take a “go out to the car and look for a school shoe” break after 15m. So I wasn’t going to break any records today. Held up a bit by the error but I had the N from CONNECTICUT by then so once I’d dismissed ‘nerev’ I just stuck it in. Briefly revisited when faced with the unknown CONFRERIE and then was just slow to see TANK TOP when I was at the wrong end of the clue and trying to do something with ‘vest’ and didn’t think tanking had anything to do with failing on purpose, more snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Thanks to CO and Roly for putting me straight. Ended up all green in 22.

10. Sluggish going today and thought I was going to miss my target until the last few came to mind in a rush.
    Getting fixated on California, despite having the wrong number of letters, made 1d tricky and spent time toying with ‘rever’ at 7a. Needed most of the crossers for REDUPLICATE as it doesn’t look like it should be a real word. Surely by duplicating something you’re already repeating it so there should be no need for the ‘re’ at the start.
    Started with CLIMBER and finished with NINTH in 9.55 and had a couple of nice PDMs for ABASEMENT and EYEBALLED.
    Thanks to Roly

    1. A horrible word, but if you had to repeat the whole process because of a problem, you might be asked to ‘reduplicate’

       1. Fair point

    2. Reduplication is primarily a technical term in linguistics. Read the Wikipedia article – it was common in Sanskrit and Greek.

11. 9 minutes for this nice puzzle. No time wasted on the mis-cluing of Never as when I can’t quite parse the obvious answer I always assume the clue is just too clever for me and move on. The joys of not being an ace solver!

    Spent rather longer on Chi: when I just had the C checker I wondered briefly if Coo (from COO[L]) could be a life force. But Reduplicate put that right. In passing I do agree with Plett11 that it is a poor word, and either Duplicate or Replicate would be more usual – but I’ve learnt by now that a word being poor, ugly, archaic, obscure, foreign etc etc won’t stop a desperate setter using it if it is the only one to fit the grid!

    Many thanks to Roly for the blog
    Cedric

12. 6:00. Unlike some, I did spend a bit of time puzzling over NEVER, wondering if my eyesight was faulty when looking at ‘irreverently’ but I did eventually concede it might be a mistake and bunged the answer in. The unknown French word CONFRERIE also took me some time and I wasn’t aware of that meaning of TANK. Otherwise all quite pleasant. I liked BARTENDER best for the surface. Thanks Beck and Roly.

13. NEVER was jolly irritating, especially when solving on a phone because the letters are quite small and so I was squinting away to see if I was misreading backwards. I kept putting in NEVER and then taking it out again. In the end I decided to abandon doing the acrosses first and tackle the whole NW corner to get checkers from the downs. Those of course fitted NEVER, thus leading to a further outbreak of squinting. During all this a chap sat down opposite me absolutely stinking of booze (not that unusual on a late night train home but strange on a morning commuter train!) but fortunately I remembered an old face mask in my bag from the covid era, which was a nice silk one sprayed with lavender oil!

    Oh yes, the puzzle. Otherwise fun but the NEVER thing put me in a thoroughly bad mood from which I did not recover. All done in 07:29 for 1.2K and a Grumpy Day.

    Thanks roly.

    Templar

14. Finished fairly quickly and enjoyed but did spend some time worrying about Rever or NEVER until CONNECTICUT came to mind.
    Wasn’t sure of the parsing of BARTENDER.
    Knew ERICA which means Heather. I don’t have ericaceous soil, i.e. it is chalky, so I can’t grow azaleas, rhododendrons etc.
    CONFRERIE is surely a French word, but easy to biff.
    Liked ABASEMENT, TROPIC, WALLOP among others.
    Thanks, Roly.

15. 10:09 (Thorkell The Tall leads Viking invasion of Kent)

    7a was my LOI, since I couldn’t find a work that made sense reversing the letters. With all the checkers in place, it has to be NEVER, and I did not recheck that it was there in the reversed letters.

    I usually struggle with the middle C in CONNECTICUT, but the need to make a word meaning join steered me in the right direction.

    Thanks Roly.

    1. I’m now going to have to Google Thorkell the Tall

    2. Interesting- I’d never heard of the Vikings pestering that far south.

       1. They got (almost) everywhere including the Mediterranean South let alone west and east.

16. 13:55. (1355 riot at Oxford university breaks out, leaving 63 scholars and 30 locals dead)

    Not happy with the error at NERVE and the NHO CONFRERIE.

    1. Town 1- Gown 0.

       1. That’s the halftime score. After the king got involved it was very much Town 1 – Gown 2!

          Just spent some time reading the wikipedia article – very interesting. Quite the riot all right.

17. I wondered whether Beck is American as some of the words whilst used here might be more familiar over the pond. I’m thinking CONNECTICUT, CHOW, CONFRERIE, cotERIE.

    Quite a challenging puzzle.

    For those who are new LEAR, CHOW and ERIE are frequent visitors.

    Thanks Roly and Beck wherever you are!

    1. Clearly no relative of Martin 😉

    2. I also thought Beck might be a septic – as you mentioned (Connecticut/Tank =to lose), but also Bartender instead of barman/barkeeper. The Times Daily Quiz setter Olav Bjortomt is absolutely obsessed with setting questions on america, hopefully the quick cryptic can continue to provide some relief….

18. 9:36. Well I …, a mistake in a The Times puzzle, which I did happen to notice. Still, made up for by the chumminess of CONFRERIE and COTERIE, even if one of them sounded like a made-up word. Favourite was the ‘Large ugly royal’; I don’t think Beck would still be with us if Henry VIII were on the throne.

    Thanks to Roly and Beck

19. Took an age to find a foothold and get started, but still finished in 12 minutes without even noticing the now obvious error – probably making the same mistake as the Setter / Editor. Otherwise, a nice puzzle with some unusual vocab – I sense some cries of ‘foul’ from some of the newbie solvers, but it all seemed fair to me.

20. 16:07

    Didn’t really like this, especially never and confrerie (obscure word clued as anagram) where the vowels were inserted hopefully. Dnk Tank for lose on purpose, only throw.
    LOI Confrerie
    COD bartender.

21. 6:28
    Agreeable puzzle. As for the error, I nerev noticed it.
    Thanks, r.

    1. 🤣

22. 9 minutes for me. LOI was CHI.
    A lot of fairly simple stuff but with some odd words. I too wondered whether REDUPLICATE was a real word but put it in quite quickly; and CONFRERERIE seemed plausible. A coterie theme perhaps.
    A pleasant puzzle overall.
    David

23. Well virtually everyone’s times would suggest that this wasn’t too difficult, but I certainly didn’t find it easy finishing in 14.15. I suppose if you’re not on the setters wavelength then you have to make the best of it. I took the trouble to check 7ac to make sure that NEVER was in there but reversed, and satisfied myself that it was! Wishful thinking obviously!
    I did wonder about the clueing for 9dn where ‘repeat’ would normally be covered by DUPLICATE rather than REDUPLICATE, would it not be ‘repeat again’?

24. Wrestled with NEVER for a while before realising it must be a mistake. Remembered CONFRERIE from the French. Struggled with CHOW and TANK TOP. Odd to see EYEBALLED so soon again and the PIGGY = TOE clue. Quite hard, I thought.

25. 7.21. I missed the error because I initially wrote in REVERIE, which also isn’t quite there and quickly runs out of room.
    Do people in CONNECTICUT ever pronounce that middle C? Whenever I’ve heard it it’s sounded like the Cand T are elided into a soft D.

    1. Silent C, the T is subject to North American Intervocalic Flapping–not a [d] but as near as dammit. It’s what makes e.g. ‘metal’ and ‘medal’ homophones over here (well, not here, I’m in Japan; but on the other side of the pond).

       1. “North American Intervocalic Flapping” – a phrase I’m just going to have to drop into a conversation sometime over the next few days.

       2. Since I live in Connecticut, I would say that some people do pronounce the C, primarily as a bit of a joke. While metal and medal are homophones in many US dialects, that is not universal by any means. If you are from Ohio or New Jersey, yes, but maybe not so much in New England.

          1. All these years I’ve been saying Connecticut and now I find out it’s Onnecticut 🤐

             1. That’s just silly. It’s Connectiut … obvs!

26. Started with JERK and finished in around 10 mins with my LOI CONFRERIE requiring a lot of juggling of letters. It sounded the most feasible but I wasn’t confident enough to submit to the leaderboard. Having now read the blog and comments I admit to not seeing the rrEVER error with the double r merging into an n.

27. I managed to complete this one relatively quickly, using no aids. No help required from the cat either.

    I agree with rolytoly’s comment on CONFRERIE. I had never heard of it, but with all the checkers in place, and the French word for brother in my mind, there had to be only one way the remaining letters could go.

    Yesterday I was about to tackle the QC when my friend invited me into his Xbox party. I explained to him I was about to start the QC and he asked if he could help me, though he’d never attempted one before.

    I read each clue out to him as we tackled it and then explained what type of clue it was (reversal, hidden, homophone etc). Then together we tackled it. More often than not I’d see the answer first and would encourage him to find it too by giving him a little help, just as my cat does for me when I’m stuck.

    I have to say that he did extremely well. I’ll even confess that twice he got the answer before I did. He’s only 18 too! 🤣

    It took a couple of hours to solve as we went slowly so I could teach him. It was great fun teaching him how to solve cryptic clues, how to read the clue, all the different types of clues and what to look out for.

    I too did not notice the NEVER error. I think my brain just automatically sorted it out for me.

    1. The cat trick usually does work.

       When I was a programmer, and had an error I couldn’t figure out, I would sometimes ask a buddy for assistance. Often, as I was explaining how the code worked, and what was happening, the cause of the problem would become apparent before my colleague had a chance to open his mouth.

       1. Also known as rubber ducky debugging 😀

28. 7:15

    A few to think about here – I too was slowed by the NEVER/REVER/NEREV debacle, only resolved once BARTENDER and CONNECTICUT (from all of the other checkers) were safely in. Thought twice and then again before sticking NEW AGER in. CONFRERIE was a new word for me, but juggled with the letters to find the best fit (the similarity to confraternity left just the I and E to put in the correct windows). NHO that meaning of TANK i.e. to deliberately lose.

    Thanks Beck and Roly

29. I wasted a bit of time on the NEVER clue, but once INVERSE arrived I decided it was an error and bunged it in. ‘Twas all in ain though as I had a typo at 10a, EER. Drat! 7:43 WOE. Thanks Beck and Roly.

30. Well off the wavelength today resulting in a sluggish 24min solve, with loi Abasement taking ages to come to mind (amazingly via Amazement). Gave up trying to parse Never, and a bit miffed now I see it’s just an error rather than a cunning example of the setter’s art. CoD to 13ac, Trendy, just ahead of Ninth. Invariant

31. Needed all the checkers for NHO LOI CONFRERIE but sounded plausibly French. Always thought ‘tank’ meant ‘do badly’ rather than ‘deliberately lose’ – well I nerev (error not spotted). POI NINTH, took a while to spot the hidden but loved the surface. Also liked WALLOP – great word. FOI CONNECTICUT, only state I could think of that included ‘cut’. Many thanks all.

32. Delayed by NEVER even though I had all the crossers.
    For 1d I just started typing the really obvious inscructions – CONNECT and I CUT, with no pause for thought required, because that is way I taught myself how to spell this tricky state. So as I had N*V*R I really should not have spent the time.
    I thought CONFRERIE was easy to solve but French. I can’t find it anywhere so I spent another bunch of time on that as well. It is in both the French dictionaries I have, a Fr-Eng paper one and of course Wiktionary where it is absent from the English part.

33. My heart sank on seeing a rare setter whose foibles would not be familiar. As it turned out with 9 crosses solved, it turned out to be more accessible than I feared. Overall a nice puzzle but a trifle concerned at the 17a introduction of a less familiar French term. Lots of nice clues such as the hidden in 18d.
    FOI 5a Jerk – does Jerk=Fool? He might be someone who acts in a crass way..
    LOI 1a Climber – helped by 4d Rennet
    COD 1d Connecticut – this might help me remember how to spell it!

34. I didn’t lose too much time over 7ac – just assumed that there was some arcane parsing that I couldn’t see. Everything else went in ok (although rather slowly) but I had to stop myself putting in ‘new gear’ at 8ac. NHO CONFRERIE and didn’t spot NINTH as a hidden. A MER at the tautological REDUPLICATE at 9dn.

    FOI – 10ac EAR
    LOI – 17ac CONFRERIE
    COD – 3dn BARTENDER

    Thanks (despite the error) to Beck and to Rolytoly

35. 19mins here. Slowed by wondering about reve variations on dreams but eventually pout it in. Had never heard of confrerie but once the crossers were there it went in.
    Pleased to be 4 of 4 this week.

36. All correct in 30 minutes, but it could have easily been either another SCC escape or a DNF. I just had C_N_R_R_E to solve (or so I thought) after 18 minutes and I had spotted the possible anagram. However, I couldn’t believe such a word existed, so I wasted time trying to find an alternative solution to BARTENDER (which I hadn’t fully parsed). Once I’d hesitantly gone with CONFRERIE I checked my other question-marked clue (CHeW) and was much relieved to have done so when I saw my error.

    Many thanks to Beck and Rolytoly.

    P.S. I saw and was slightly delayed by the error at 7a, but I eventually went with NEVER and assumed that my parsing was not up to it – a common occurrence for me, so I’m often having to wing it a little.

37. 12.19 I had similar thoughts to Jack about REVER and NEVER went in with a shrug. CONFRERIE was new to me too. TOW and CHOW took a while at the end. Thanks rolytoly and Beck.

38. A question about 3d (BARTENDER):
    BENDER is a noun, whereas “heavy drinking” isn’t. Shouldn’t the clue therefore read “…… heavy drinking session” or “…… bout of heavy drinking”?

    1. Yes I’ve been tripped up by this sort of thing before. Don’t quote me on the grammar, although I think it’s called a gerund where an -ing verb acts as a noun. So in this case you could say something like: “Everything was going swimmingly until day three of the bender/heavy drinking.”

39. I found this harder after yesterday’s offering and just outside my target at 20:53.

    Like others, got held up by not be able to parse NEVER, and had never heard of CONFRERIE. Otherwise all fair and just my sluggishness to blame.

    Thanks to Beck and RolyToly

40. 7.41

    Thought I’d done this a little quicker but for a change I did notice the error and did waste some time there

41. Wasted a little time with the error, but not too much. Definitely felt like a puzzle from a rare setter, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

    Enjoyable though – I liked BARTENDER and finished with TOW after TANK TOP meant it wasn’t SOW, which I couldn’t parse, mainly because it was wrong!

    6:13

42. 24 mins, but a DNF as I did manage a different combination of letters for 17ac and put “Confriree”. A pity really, as I was quite enjoying it until I got to one of those clues that I hate.

    I did wonder about 7ac “Never”, but couldn’t see it to be anything else (even if the parsing didn’t make sense). Main hold up was 9dn “Reduplicate” where I originally had “Replicature” until I realised I was missing a “d” and nothing else was working.

    Other than that, enjoyed 1dn “Connecticut”, 11ac “Eyeballed” and 20ac “Tank Top”

    FOI – 5dn “Jaw”
    LOI – 17ac “Confrerie” (albeit incorrectly)
    COD – 18dn “Ninth” – not often I have a hidden clue as a COD, but this took so long to spot (mainly because I was skilfully misdirected) that I believe it deserved it.

    Thanks as usual!

    1. Very good clue but inappropriate for the QC I’d say.

       I’d forgotten about how good NINTH was by the time I’d finished. There were some nice clues in there.

43. So there isn’t an evergreen shrub called an EXITA 🤐 Made worse by knowing of ERICA=heather=ling and being able to remember it because my dad was an Eric.

    I might have spent a little longer on it had I not been left with an expected DNF due to the CONFRERIE anagram possibilities and the unparseable NEVER.

    Somewhat miffed but I may have been suffering from a surge of testosterone after finishing my Wednesday workout an hour before 💪

    1. Why did you do your Wednesday workout today? It’s Thursday, isn’t it?

       1. Good point! It’s assessment week so I got an extra rest day – only came in at 36 press-ups for the minute. It really has thrown me out as to where we are in the week.

44. For me, challenging but got there in the end (30 mins plus). Spent quite a while with REVER for 7a before assuming 1d had to be CONNECTICUT. Agree with others about REDUPLICATE being a strange word, initially wanted something like REPLICATE or DUPLICATE because those are more obvious words for “repeat”.

45. Another steady solve at at 30m. Put in never for 7a, as it was on irreverently, good enough for our standard of solving. Took time to sort out bartender. Thanks Beck for the puzzle.

46. Completing run has come to an end with confrereie. Saw score in 12a and entered twenty before realising I needed a d for bartender, also obverse instead of inverse.
    Favourite clue was eyeballed.
    Edit.
    I am seriously thick – completely missed confrerie is an anagram of reinforce therefore ended up with a DNF.

47. 13:03 here. Like others, I assumed I just wasn’t smart enough to figure out how the clue for NEVER really worked. Slowed myself by entering BARKEEPER for 3d, even though it didn’t parse. COD to NINTH, for a terrific surface.
    Thanks to Beck and rolytoly.

48. Gosh, I thought that the setter took an irreverent approach to 7a, reversing it only somewhat. Like so many others, I tend to assume that an inability to parse is due to my own shortcomings, so I rarely fret over not quite managing.

49. 19:44

    Just inside my 20 minute target. Nothing too tricky apart from NEVER, which I just biffed assuming a mistake by the setter and the NHO LOI CONFRERIE.

50. have not been able to login for ages but still try to solve the quick cryptic.
    spell checker did not like confrerie but all ok

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