Times Quick Cryptic No 2749 by Asp

Author   rolytolyPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

Our second puzzle from new setter Asp, pitched a bit gentler this time…

… which is to say, gentler than the dizzy heights of 150 on the Quitch, from Asp’s debut last month. Definitely quite a lot of tricky things going on here as well, but the grid was more generously peppered with easier entry points and anagrams, making for a more accessible puzzle.

And a lovely puzzle it was, with inventiveness and some cracking surfaces, my favourites being 11ac, 4d and an actual chuckle at 6d. I clocked in at 7:41, only slightly quicker than Tuesday’s, so I’d still put this above 100 on the Quitch.

Good stuff indeed – 7d to Asp!

Across
1 Resisting having status (12)
WITHSTANDING –  WITH (having / in possession of) STANDING (status). I’d never considered NOTWITHSTANDING deriving from NOT WITHSTANDING, instead guessing it was from NOT WITH STANDING (whatever that was supposed to mean). Notwithstanding several minutes poring over the dictionary, however, I remain notmuchwiser, although I suppose “not defending one’s position” could sort of mean “regardless”.
8 Obstruct everybody on street (5)
STALL – ALL (everybody) on ST[reet]
9 Fat babies regularly smudge clothes (7)
BLUBBER – BBE (B a B i E s “regularly”) that BLUR (smudge) “clothes”. A Yoda-esque type of word construction more often in the main puzzle seen.
10 Second person caught sheep (3)
EWE – if you catch something you hear it, in this instance YOU being another word for ‘second person’. In  Asp’s first puzzle there was an ambiguous ‘reversal’ clue, where the answer could have been either TIDE or EDIT. We have a similar clue today, in that the answer could perfectly well be YOU or EWE. It occasionally happens that a clue can be ambiguous, taken by itself, but there certainly is no rule against such a thing, unless the ambiguity remains after all the checkers are in place (obviously).
11 Lazy and not even dressed? (9)
SHIFTLESS – double-ish definition: a now rare meaning of shiftless is being without shift – i.e. naked – a shift being an undergarment. The OED cites someone called T. Otway from 1680, “He threaten’d me to banish me [from] his House, Naked and shiftless to the World.”  I did spend some time wondering if SHIRTLESS could possibly be a word for lazy.
13 Rent   somewhere in Croatia (5)
SPLIT – double definition, the first as in rent/torn asunder
14 Dispossess some crime victims (5)
EVICT – “some” crimE VICTims
16 Son is mixed up with Arab in scrapes (9)
ABRASIONS -anagram (mixed up) of SON IS with ARAB. Made a shade trickier by wondering if the anagram fodder was SON IS with ARAB, or SON with ARAB IN – either works in the cryptic.
17 Singular   type of number (3)
ODD – double definition. I felt sufficiently confident to put in ONE as the answer, thinking vaguely that something like “He’s a one” could mean being a ‘singular type’ as in someone particularly unusual. But no, doesn’t really work.
19 Man on public transport performing for money (7)
BUSKING – KING (man – another word for any piece in chess) on BUS (public transport). To busk originally had the more general meaning of going from place to place, or simply looking for something, from either the French busquer or Spanish buscar, to seek out.
21 I left marriage finally, after former partner’s removal from home (5)
EXILE – I L[eft] E (marriagE “finally”) after EX (former partner)
22 Dish was for lad prepared by another (7,5)
WALDORF SALAD – anagram (prepared) of DISH WAS FOR LAD, with the definition referring back to the word DISH. Yum. Although it’s been a while since I’ve had one. Edit: that would of course be a WISHDORF SALAD (a revolting thing indeed); this is an anagram (prepared) of WAS FOR LAD, with “another” LAD on the end.
Down
1 Debris used to be there following evacuation (5)
WASTE – WAS (used to be) TE (TherE “following evacuation”)
2 Itinerant reporter entertains wild party briefly (9)
TRAVELLER -TELLER (reporter) entertains RAVe (wild party) “briefly”
3 Complacent broadcast feels as if it’s beginning to decline (4-9)
SELF-SATISFIED – anagram (broadcast) of FEELS AS IF ITS and D (“beginning” to Decline)
4 Although adults loathe babies, everyone is tiny to begin with (6)
ALBEIT – the “beginning” letters of the six words following the definition. (Hmm, that felt only marginally quicker than writing out “adults loathe babies, everyone is tiny” and then fiddling with the starting letters.)
5 Daring dancing stunned lasses (13)
DAUNTLESSNESS – anagram (dancing) of STUNNED LASSES. Dauntlessness looks longer than stunned lasses.
6 Where one might file bad reviews about writer? (3)
NIB – A bad review might be carefully filed away in the BIN; about = reverse.
7 Cheers person getting paid to be a model (6)
PROSIT – PRO (person getting paid) SIT (be a model)
12 Real idiot upset leader (9)
EDITORIAL – anagram (upset) of REAL IDIOT
13 Silence report of religious building in disrepair (6)
SHABBY – SH! (Silence!) and ABBY unquestionably sounds (by “report”) like ABBEY (religious building)
15 His work is supposed to be done by someone else (6)
FORGER – cryptic definition
18 Daughter understood the meaning of fear (5)
DREAD – D(aughter) READ (understood the meaning of)
20 Main means of authentication is reduced (3)
SEA – SEAL (means of authentication) “reduced”

86 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 2749 by Asp”

  1. I don’t know if it was too hard but it was definitely going to take more work than I was willing to put into it, so DNF.

    Looking back I think the only word I didn’t know was PROSIT which probably makes this a fair puzzle on the harder end. Which is excellent 😀

    I like seeing how different setters approach clues and I’ve not come to grips with this one yet and that’s fun too. I’m glad it was much easier than last time.

    I liked the surface for ALBEIT.

    1. Ein Prosit seems to be played every 15 minutes whenever there’s an oompah band playing in the local beer hall in Germany. All part of the Gemütlichkeit. I think. Had no idea it was an English word too.

  2. Plodded through this. One thing that took time was putting in YOU at 10ac, which of course made 1d impossible. Getting the W finally got me to change to EWE. It might have taken me some time to come up with READ for ‘understood the meaning of’, but fortunately I thought of DREAD first. I biffed BLUBBER, SELF-SATISFIED, and WALDORF SALAD. 8:22.

  3. DNF. With one left after 5:26, my alphabet trawl for _O_GER got as far as DODGER which went in with a mild shrug. As I clicked the submit button my brain had continued on to F and I knew my fate before it was confirmed by the pink square.

    Then went on to make an even dumber mistake in the 15×15, capping off a couple of error-ridden weeks. Never mind, the sun is shining, the coffee’s hot, and there’ll be more puzzles to solve tomorrow.

    Thanks Asp and Roly.

    1. A very similar experience here – I did eventually get FORGER, but only after a double alpha-trawl had added almost 3 minutes to my solving time.

    2. Another ‘dodger’ here, but (as depressingly usual) in double the time.

      You can add the phenomenal performance of the Aussie athletes to your reasons for satisfaction, nay smugness! 🙂

  4. Another DNF on FORGER, in the end I got tired of slogging through the alphabet and hit reveal. But I found this harder than everyone else has and was looking at something like 15, twice my general target range. I think Asp has an entertaining way of doing these that is both crafty and fun, but there were some hard ones today. WITHSTANDING, DAUNTLESSNESS, PROSIT, WALDORF SALAD (I couldn’t identify the anagrist, ended up biffing it from ‘salad’) all took me a long time, and I’m another who began with both YOU and ONE. Thanks both.

  5. Yes, somewhat trickier than usual. Managed to sort it out with the exception of SHIFTLESS, having forgotten that SHIFT is an undergarment, but I think it has come up in the 15×15 before so no excuses. Then again, even if I’d remembered it, I wouldn’t have thought SHIFTLESS meant LAZY.
    COD to WALDORF SALAD for the clever anagrist of LAD prepared by another.
    Thanks setter and blogger.

  6. Fairly tough still, and I’d expect quite a few DNFs on this. Some complicated clues here, but mostly with adequate checkers, so it was only just into frustrating territory for me.
    I failed FORGER (tried DODGER…) and EWE (hadn’t heard of second person meaning you, so randomly chose between EWE for sheep and EVE for second person). Nearly wrote PROSAT but fortunately went for PROSIT after considering the tense.
    Some nice clues sprinkled in to enjoy though, thanks Asp and Rolytoly.

  7. An anagram of DARING STUNNED is UNDERSTANDING but I could not make that work!

  8. 13 minutes is a little on the slow side for me for a QC, although my revised target is 15, but I’m not sure what if anything gave me pause for thought.

    Two smiles today, the first because I can’t see WALDORF SALAD without thinking of one of the funniest episodes of Fawlty Towers featuring the actor Bruce Boa as the tetchy American guest.

    The second, because Roly’s remarks about the possible confusion over the answer at 10ac reminded me of the first hit by ‘The Seekers’ in 1964. Somebody pointed out at the time that with their Australian twang it sounded as if they were singing I’ll Never Find Another EWE, and once noticed, that added a whole new dimension to the meaning of the song.

  9. Like Tina I thought the surface for ALBEIT deserves special mention.

    Six on the first pass of acrosses on the way to an all green finish in 17.37. Hold ups at the end were TRAVELLER, FORGER and definitely the NHO PROSIT.

  10. 11 minutes. Not as tough as Asp’s first puzzle but still challenging enough. I was stuck on _O_G_R for 15d at the end too but when I looked away for a few seconds, there was FORGER magically staring at me. Only three letters in the answer, but like Roly I had a laugh at the surface of NIB.

    Thanks to Roly and Asp

  11. Got off to a flying start with 1A, 8A but then ground to a halt making BLUBBER enough to make a grown man cry.
    No problem with WALDORF once SALAD was clear so biffed it on the basis of WDF and approx the right number of letters.
    Liked NIB, being of an age when pens had them rather than roller balls and ink invariably found its way onto the lining of a breast pocket.
    I struggled with Asp’s first and didn’t fare much better with this, 32 mins.
    Thanks Roly and Prosit to Asp

  12. I didn’t find this too difficult until my LOI caused a huge delay as mentioned in my earlier response to Galspray. I biffed BLUBBER.

    FOI WITHSTANDING
    LOI FORGER
    COD SELF-SATISFIED
    TIME 7:31

  13. Thought I was going to be on for a quick solve when 1a and most of it’s offshoots went straight in but there were some tricky clues further down the grid that took me over target.
    Lots to enjoy along the way and Asp seems to have successfully recalibrated things to ‘tough but fair’ since his first QC.
    Finished in 10.19 with LOI the unknown PROSIT with COD to SHIFTLESS (where I narrowly avoided a semi-parsed ‘shirtless’).
    Thanks to rolytoly

  14. Tough but enjoyable. Tried a whole variety of every other letter of babies, would never have come up with the parsing but blubber became an obvious biff at the end.

    Forger also LOI for a long 37.17 but always satisfying to finish a toughie without help.

    Thought the “another lad” was very clever, and as said elsewhere, always reminds me of Basil saying “sorry we’re fresh out of waldorfs”.

    Thanks Asp and Roly

  15. DNF in 13

    Really struggled with this as couldnt see the long anagrams and no pen and paper to hand.

    The w/p for NIB also confused me though it’s my COD now I see it

    FORGER last in but all in vain as I was a SHIRTLESS. I’ve been caught out before by the S_I_T combo for clothes as there is skirt and shirt as well as shift

  16. I see my time for Asp’s first puzzle was 20:09. For this one I came in at 19:39 – so yes, I can’t really argue with Roly’s assessment that this was “a bit gentler”. But emphasis very much on the “a bit”, I would suggest, and at this rate, ie 30 seconds less challenging each time (and given my long-run par of around 12 minutes), I shall look forward to feeling at home with puzzles from Asp in about 12-15 goes’ time!

    Oh dear, I can already hear the harrumphing from some quarters about “people who complain at more difficult puzzles”. So let me be clear – because I have commented in the past on puzzles that I thought were “not a QC at all” – that I thought this was “very hard for a QC, but mostly doable, and mostly enjoyable”. By which I mean that although I struggled with quite a few clues while doing the puzzle (WALDORF SALAD and BLUBBER not parsed at all, FORGER needed an alphabet search, WITHSTANDING NHO, several anagrams that were at the tough end of the spectrum), I understood all of them after reading Roly’s blog. No tricks I have not met before or words with unnatural meanings.

    The one clue I entered and subsequently had to change was the EWE/YOU combo: that’s twice in 2 puzzles Asp has given us a clue with two possible readings and two possible answers that one can only resolve by waiting for the checkers. It is a crossword so checkers are part of the puzzle, but I’m not a fan of such ambiguity.

    Many thanks Roly for the blog.
    Cedric

  17. 16:44 (Battle of Marston Moor)

    I agree this was easier than the last Asp, but still hard. Held up at the end by FORGER (could only see RINGER, which caused me to doubt my spelling of ABRASIONS), and PROSIT (NHO).

    Thanks Roly and Asp

  18. I haven’t done the crossword yet but I wanted to start the day by sending my thanks to everyone who so kindly messaged me yesterday – your kind thoughts and best wishes were as good as any medicine!
    Wherever you are, whether you’re enjoying a coffee in Sussex, Yorkshire, the Cotswolds or the US (or the SCC), or a dram in Scotland, I hope you all have a lovely day and send you my best wishes 🤗

    2. Prosit! (Or slàinte mhath as they say up here… crikey what a clue that would be 😵‍💫.)

      1. Imagine trying to clue that one as an anagram. There would definitely be complaints 🤣

  19. A little bit harder than usual, especially FORGER and LOI PROSIT (NHO, though I know prost, which gave me some comfort that the wordplay hadn’t led me up the garden path). Had BIN for a bit, but WITHSTANDING sorted that out, which then made BLUBBER (COD) a write in.

    FORGER one of those that would have been a lot easier if the checkers were F?R?E?. Luckily F is relatively close to the start of the alphabet, and I wasn’t quite convinced by DODGER.

    Good stuff from Asp. Completed in an over-average but par for the difficulty time.

    7:19

  20. I had forgotten(!) that Asp had form, so approached this in an open minded way and made slow but steady progress. All to no avail ultimately, because I couldn’t shift🙄 from Shirtless for loi 11ac. I knew that was wrong, but pulled stumps at 30mins for a one letter DNF. Certainly more than just the odd teaser along the way, with CoD to one of them, 22ac Waldorf Salad, for the parsing. . . but mostly the memories. Invariant

  21. Managed it all (in an hour or so); FOI SPLIT, LOI (and COD, very clever) SELF-SATISFIED. As a German speaker I knew PROSIT, but not that it existed in English.

    1. PROSIT – not sure it does really. But English is the most magpie of languages and will take anything from anywhere if it fills a need (and sometimes even if there are perfectly good native word alternatives).

  22. Superb puzzle, with some terrific surfaces. Unfortunately I went for LOGGER rather than FORGER, which kinda made sense to me. Loved ALBEIT. Looking forward to the next Asp offering.

    1. I too settled for logger as it seemed perfectly reasonable to me (forger never occurred to me, even after I saw the pink squares).

  23. 29 mins…

    When I saw the setter’s name there was a sharp intake of breath and much cracking of knuckles and finger stretching in anticipation. Thankfully, I got there in the end, but it was still a bit of a slog and, like the blogger, I wasn’t sure whether 11ac was “Shirtless” or “Shiftless” (I’ve seen both used). I took a 50/50 punt and was lucky to come on the right side of it.

    I’m not a fan of clues like 10ac “Ewe” as there is no way of solving it on its own without reference to something else in the grid. I always thought, rightly or wrongly, that each clue should be able to be solved on its own merits – but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

    FOI – 8ac “Stall”
    LOI – 2dn “Traveller”
    COD – 4dn “Albeit” – great surface.

    Thanks as usual!

    1. Indeed! I saw the setter’s name and checked the QSNITCH before starting. Seeing it was “only” about 120 I started . . . And eventually finished 😀

      Best part of an hour, but did need help to get the NHO PROSIT (has any of the bloggers ever used that word in real life??)

  24. 9:53

    I’ve heard the word PROSIT said before, and the wordplay worked OK, but still felt happier about it once the crossers were in. Having said that, BLUBBER was biffed from the first and last checkers (got the alternate letters of BaBiEs but not the BLUR), and I’m glad I thought of SHIFTLESS before SHIRTLESS or even SKIRTLESS. From there, DAUNTLESSNESS and WALDORF SALAD both had a ‘leap of faith’ element to them – bung in the answer and check that the wordplay fits. Finally left with FORGER which fortunately came to mind fairly quickly.

    Thanks Roly and Asp

  25. No problems apart from LOI FORGER which I found on a second trawl. Until then Dodger was my best bet. But it felt wrong and I am on holiday, so have time.

    Enjoyed the puzzle. David

  26. From WITHholding (not enough letters) via SHIrTLESS (but doesn’t that mean poor?) and One (doesn’t end in D) to PROSIT in 8:42. COD to BIN.

  27. A hard one, pushing me out to 19:23. It hadn’t registered with me that this was ASP again, but that explains it, and it’s another good one. Some hard anagrams. I liked EDITORIAL

  28. I think I was one of a minority urging against Asp’s immediate lynching on their first outing, and the comments so far today are less damning but, wow, that was hard. Not sure my fellow SCC members will be showering our scaly setter with affection just yet, but we will see. Three laps of the SCC for me before I fell through the doorway.
    Maybe I was just dimmer than usual, but none of the long answers fell easily, although I can usually spot and wrestle most anagrams into place reasonably early. That left me dashing around the grid to piece together enough material to start pulling the rest together. Very, very slowly.
    It felt like a short 15×15 rather than a typical – whatever that is – QC. Most comments so far seem to be the 15ers who probably see this type of clueing daily, but almost everything seemed just that bit more obscure than the norm here. However, nothing I would consider unfair, and I had the time to beat my head against it until I had a complete grid, and a sore head. More coffee.
    Just a few degrees easier, Asp, and you will hit my Izetti-ish sweet spot.

  29. This was a challenge, not least because I misspelled ABRASIONS and entered RINGER at 15d. NHO PROSIT, and BUSKING was a rather republican use of “man”!

  30. I found this very tough to the extent it was a DNF. I finished in 16.20, but with BODGER for the troublesome 16dn. I considered DODGER, but on the basis that BODGER tenuously fitted the clue, in that his poor workmanship may need ‘to be done by someone else’. I expected it to be wrong, but after 16 minutes I think I mentally gave up the ghost.

  31. Another tough one from Asp requiring quite a lot of biffing, if not guesswork: PROSIT, BLUBBER, WALDORF SALAD, SEA. Phew!

  32. Having lived in Germany, PROSIT was not a challenge, unlike SHIFTLESS, which did not come to me due to may hang up with SHIRT and SKIRT.
    I also entered BIN incorrectly until it did not fit WITHSTANDING.
    Could a more experienced solver give me some guidance on these situations on how to see whether it is BIN or NIB?
    Many thanks

    1. BIN or NIB – a valid question and, like the EWE/YOU combo at 10A, one cannot really do better than wait for checkers to clarify which it is. As I commented in my main post, I’m not really a fan of such ambiguity but despite JamesEd46’s thought that “each clue should be able to be solved on its own merits” (which has my sympathy), I don’t think it is actually against the spirit of these puzzles to rely on checkers in this way.

      1. Thank you. I’m not sure whether I’m glad that there isn’t an unwritten convention or not! Patience was never my strongest suit!

  33. Very tough throwing in the towel at 30+ minutes. DNF shabby, forger, prosit (never heard of but interesting posit turned up twice very recently).
    Ewe went in without any problem.
    Thanks as always to setter and blogger.

  34. I gave up on this one after only a short time. I found it to be dull and uninspiring. Just did not have the motivation to continue.

    My verdict: 👎

  35. Had to work at this one and didn’t know PROSIT, so relied on the wordplay. WALDORF SALAD was LOI with happy memories of Fawlty Towers. WASTE was FOI. 9:05. Thanks Asp and Roly.

  36. 9a POI & COD, Blubber parsed correctly; surprised so many biffed it.
    10a Ewe, toyed with Eve as second person. But to be fair the sheep disqualified her. 17a also as others toyed with ONE.
    22a Waldorf S biffed, thanks rolytoly/vinyl1 for the actual anagrist; clever. Waldorfs (plural clipping) added to Cheating Machine.
    2d Traveller biffed, thanks again. Thought the party was a revel, and despite the “a” I couldn’t shake that thought. Is a reporter a teller? Only in crosswordland.
    3d Self Satisfied added to Cheating Machine. Self+9 came up with 15, none appropriate. The hitrate on multi-words seems to be about 95% now, so it is good to a add new one.
    Thanks to Roly and Prosit to Asp.

  37. Hmmm – not easy for me. I thought I was going to join the coffee morning in the SCC, but messed up 15d, so with a DNF after 20 minutes, I don’t even get a cappacino!
    I’m struggling to get to grips with Asp – s/he’s even more wriggly than Wurm, in my view.
    I put a big question mark next to PROSIT – I know the word, although would always say ‘prost’ with German friends – so really question whether it’s suitable for a British quick cryptic.
    I quite liked SHIFTLESS, DAUNTLESSNESS, NIB and EDITORIAL but found it a bit too much of a struggle to really enjoy today’s challenge. Oh, and the one I got wrong -DODGER instead of FORGER. I knew it wasn’t right but was getting a bit fed up 😅
    Thanks Asp – fingers crossed we’ll get on in due course, and thanks Roly for the usual excellent blog.

    1. Ah, “Prost”. I knew I’d come across something like PROSIT before, thank you!

  39. I’m afraid this was too hard for me and I gave up after 40m with less than half solved. I think that’s the first time that’s happened.
    After reading Roly’s helpful blog I realise I would not have solved most of these even if I’d kept trying.

  40. Have been working on this on and off for about an hour. Anyway, I completed it with one error, LOI Dodger instead of FORGER, like others. Took ages to get started. FOsI were EWE, SPLIT, EXILE, ALBEIT. Not much help.
    I did know PROSIT. Liked SHIFTLESS, W SALAD, SHABBY.
    Thanks for much needed blog, Roly.

  42. DNF and miles off the pace. Just couldn’t see FORGER, NHO PROSIT. And EVE for second person seemed like a good one.

  43. this is still to hard for me! I did get about 75% but was stumped on some.

  44. 45 minutes slogging away with pen and paper only to find my SHIRTLESS and DODGER were incorrect! Stupid errors but just wanted to finish. However, a fair and enjoyable challenge on this wet and miserable August day in Wiltshire.
    Thank you Asp and Roly.

  45. Oh dear! That was not a pleasant experience. After 25 or so minutes I had five clues remaining (or so I thought), but I didn’t cross the line until 59 minutes were on the clock. DAUNTLESSNESS, SHIFTLESS, PROSIT (are any of these three real words?) and EDITORIAL took around 10 minutes to prise out, but DREAD (my LOI) remained out of reach until I eventually realised ODD might be the answer at 17a, instead of ONE (which I maintain is a perfectly good alternative answer). I’m afraid all of this spoiled what had gone before, of which I enjoyed ALBEIT the most.

    Thanks to Asp and Roly.

  46. I could tell it was moderately tricky but surprised myself by making my usual slow progress until finally foxed by BLUBBER, PROSIT and FORGER. Time: breakfast and half of lunch.

  47. 14.59 This didn’t feel especially hard until I was breeze-blocked for three minutes by EDITORIAL, having not spotted that it was an anagram. I was feeling like a real idiot but I made the leaderboard (just!) so that cheered me up. Thanks rolytoly and Asp.

  48. A DNF for us in 12:36, foiled by the too swift attraction of SHIRTLESS. Frustrating because I knew SHIFTLESS once the error was revealed by the pink square but at the time of entering I wasn’t sure that shirtless didn’t mean lazy. Time spent also struggling with the clueing of E_E_D in 18d because ONE had seemed such an obvious answer. At least the daughter came to the rescue there before too long. No problems with the rest, inc. PROSIT. Much better Asp! And thank you, Roly.

  49. Contorted syntax very was. For Templar, puzzle such much swearing creates as solve it to struggle he does. Exception no was this Aspen offering and hard found it he. Finish he did, disbelieving in only 08:13. Longer felt it.

    Thanks many to roly and Asp.

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