A cracking Quick Cryptic from Breadman today. As is often the case with a Breadman puzzle, there is something interesting alphabetically going on. Did you spot it? It was also a little tricky in parts and and took me just under 7 minutes – well over my average time, with unknowns for me at 23A and 16D. My favourite was 17A for the lovely surface. Thank-you Breadman! How did you all get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is my turn to provide the extra weekend entertainment. You can find the crossword here. If you are interested in trying our previous offerings you can find an index to all 115 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
| 1 | Gather graduate’s captivated by Anglo-Saxon (5) |
| AMASS – MA’S (graduate’s) in AS (Anglo-Saxon). | |
| 4 | Young animal to intimidate California female (3-4) |
| COW-CALF – COW (intimidate) CAL (California) F (female). Not a word I’d seen before, but the answer was fairly obvious. | |
| 8 | Ignorant Parisian article covering a military conflict (7) |
| UNAWARE – A WAR (military conflict) in UNE (A in French; Parisian article). | |
| 9 | Roman Emperor’s past it — usually not all there (5) |
| TITUS – Hidden in pasT IT USually [not all there]. Titus Caesar Vespasianus (30 December 39 – 13 September AD 81) was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, becoming the first Roman emperor to succeed his biological father. | |
| 10 | Gloomy? Dicky calls her up (10) |
| SEPULCHRAL – [Dicky] (calls her up)*. I saw it was an anagram quickly enough but needed some checkers to see the answer. | |
| 14 | Note bar contains unknown nut (6) |
| BRAZIL – B (note), and Z (unknown, as in an algebraic equation) in RAIL (bar). | |
| 15 | Mob around Michigan playing roulette perhaps (6) |
| GAMING – GANG (mob) around MI (standard abbreviation for Michigan). | |
| 17 | Organised lovely party game (10) |
| VOLLEYBALL – [Organised] (lovely)* BALL (party). Super surface reading. | |
| 20 | Alter morning final (5) |
| AMEND – AM (morning) END (final). | |
| 22 | Country junkie periodically grabs shower (7) |
| UKRAINE – RAIN (shower) in alternate letters of jUnKiE [periodically]. | |
| 23 | See the old, repeatedly accepting unknown visual defect (4,3) |
| LAZY EYE – Z (unknown; our favourite one today) in LA (see; lo!; behold!) YE YE (old spelling of “the”) twice [repeatedly]. I hesitated for some time over this but could see no other answer. I had never seen “LA” for “see”. Had you? | |
| 24 | Home recording originally tense and awkward (5) |
| INEPT – IN (home) EP (extended play; recording) and first letter, [originally], of Tense. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Blue fish tank half-hidden (4) |
| AQUA – First four letters, [half-hidden], of AQUArium (fish tank). | |
| 2 | A judge comes down on US guitar hero (classical) (4) |
| AJAX – A J (judge) and then [comes down on – it’s a down clue] AX (US guitar). More than just a brand of cleaning fluid, Ajax the Great was a Greek mythological hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer. He played an important role in the Trojan War, and is portrayed as a towering figure and a warrior of great courage in Homer’s Iliad and in the Epic Cycle, a series of epic poems about the Trojan War, being second only to Achilles among Greek heroes of the war. | |
| 3 | Bender maybe, with small section on European mixed drink (9) |
| SNAKEBITE – SNAKE (Bender, maybe) BIT (small section) E (European). A mixture of lager and cider and reputed to make drinkers aggressive. I thought “Bender” for “snake” was stretching things a bit, but I guess it’s no worse than “supporter” for “bra”. | |
| 4 | Possible alternative to plastic monitor, we hear (6) |
| CHEQUE – CHECK (monitor) sounds like, [we hear], CHEQUE. | |
| 5 | Sense wife overcoming new technology (3) |
| WIT – W (wife) IT (new technology). Overcoming here is a juxtaposition indicator for a down clue. | |
| 6 | Top-grade drug shaped like a star (8) |
| ASTEROID – A (top-grade) STEROID (drug). Apart from the required meaning here and that of a rocky body orbiting the sun, the word can also mean “relating to or denoting echinoderms of the class Asteroidea.“. Or starfish to you and me. But the meaning we need here is the adjective, “Resembling a star – star shaped”. | |
| 7 | Some of aircraft’s fliers, unhappy initially, see about delay (8) |
| FUSELAGE – Fliers Unhappy [initially], SEE about LAG (delay). That was a bit tricky. It took me a while to see, anyway. | |
| 11 | Cleaner meets the King in French and Belgian city (9) |
| CHARLEROI – CHAR (cleaner) LE ROI (the king in French). | |
| 12 | Most importantly, Alan suppresses bad smell linked with meat (5,3) |
| ABOVE ALL – BO (body odour; bad smell) VEAL (meat), in AL (Alan). | |
| 13 | Car pioneer left to probe brake going round New Zealand (4,4) |
| KARL BENZ – L (left) in (brake)* [going round], NZ (New Zealand). | |
| 16 | Swear, getting awful job on Yorkshire river (6) |
| OBJURE – [Awful] (job)* URE (Yorkshire river). I didn’t know the meaning of the word, but I do now. | |
| 18 | Quintet, loud, that is maintaining volume (4) |
| FIVE – V (volume) in F (forte; loud) IE (id est; that is). | |
| 19 | Former partner blocks dry electronic message (4) |
| TEXT – EX (former partner) in TT (teetotaller; dry). | |
| 21 | Colouring ruined pretty blouse, at rear (3) |
| DYE – Final letters of ruineD prettY blousE [at rear]. | |
Dnf…
I’m going to have to look back over my times this week, but it feels like a shocker – even suffering with flu.
This wasn’t as bad as yesterday’s fiasco at least, but after 30 mins I was still struggling on 2dn “Ajax”, 6dn, “Asteroid” (no excuse) and 4dn “Cheque” (even more of a no excuse – although I was racking my brains for alternative material forms than payment methods).
What’s even more galling is that I haven’t even got to my Saturday nemesis which, for inexplicable reasons, I have an appalling success rate on.
FOI – 1ac “Amass”
LOI – Dnf
COD – 4dn “Cheque”
Thanks as usual!
Yes this was difficult, but I don’t want the QC to be simplified so that it loses the challenge. Therefore some days it will defeat me, as today with AJAX and SNAKEBITE. ‘Snake’ as a bender, no! Other than that, many thanks Breadman.
DNF
think this is the first 2 DNFs in a row since the early days.
Still like the biggie, but tempted to jump ship to Guardian, Telegraph for quickie. I’ll get sacked if the QC stays like this!
Today’s 15×15 is fairly straightforward, if you are looking for something a little easier. . .
ABQ for me (anything but quick) and dnf with SNAKEBITE absent and ABJURE present – oh dear. I knew I had to be looking for X, Y or Z with all those ‘unknown’ clues but answers came slowly. Biffed ABOVE ALL thinking that boveal might have something to do with rotten meat of the bovine kind! Well at least these challenging QCs make you think imaginatively. Probably 45 minutes in all, thanks Breadman and John for a masterly blog. A thought – if LA means see, does it relate in any way to La La land?
12:51
Clock was at under 10’ with only CHEQUE unsolved. Eventually realised I might be able to identify a required letter and the P D’ed.
Certainly tough for a QC, but I enjoyed it, thanks Breadman and John.
A hard end to a hard week. Absolutely no enjoyment from this one.
Agree with many of the above comments about difficulty and obscureness. We found this another tough one – we finished but way outside our target time and usual cut-off point. Needed aids to check ax and objure, and, like others, would query LA for see. We do try to parse as we go, but had to come to the blog to have a few explained.
29:28 but at least I finished, a relief after yesterday’s QC. Taking a moment for a bird’s eye view of the puzzle would certainly have saved me some time, as the pangrammy nature of the thing is pretty obvious at a glance. But no, just kept plodding away. Liked SEPULCHRAL, what a fun word. Oddly, AJAX went right in, and you’d think that would have told me to look for a pangram. LA! is familiar to me from Jane Austen, and my grandmother used to say it too. But I would have said it was more equivalent to “wow” than to “see”. I always assumed it was a euphemism for “Lord!”.
It felt a lot like my earlier days of solving – which is not so long ago since I’m in my first year. If we get a lot more like this, will I get a lot better at them? As long as I’m asking perhaps unanswerable questions, I wonder why today’s Quitch is so much higher than yesterday’s, when my impression from reading TfTT is that there were more DNFs yesterday.
Thanks Breadman and John!
Because the Quitch is only based on times of successful solves I believe
My general feeling is that’s a flaw for the reason you imply. And certainly people who give up and don’t submit a time are immeasurable – it just thinks they didn’t give it a go.
That said, if it is a tough puzzle then you can probably still expect the people who solve it to be slower than usual and therefore it has some representative value.
Ah, good point, thanks!
DNF, thwarted by AJAX in a bit more than half an hour.
I remain somewhat perplexed: who is the QC for, these days? It seemingly isn’t for newer solvers. It would be rather odd to aim it at experienced solvers, because you lot have got the 15×15 to test yourselves against. Is it for the enjoyment of the setters? Or for experienced solvers who want to warm up for the big one?
As I think I’ve written before: if the QC isn’t aimed at newer solvers then that’s fine, just tell us so that we can look for something more suitable for our skill level.
See my reply to John’s comment above (and others). We just happen to have a had a few harder ones recently. Be we also have had an easy one from Jimmy.
14.26. I don’t usually attempt the QC, but I was alerted that today’s was a bit tricky and some commenters on the main puzzle said that it took them longer to solve. Not so for me, but I was rather dim witted on the 15×15.
Didn’t have any idea. 1d I had ANHK from tank half hidden. 6d I had STELLATE. With my scientific background I can say for sure that an asteroid is as like a star as I am. These looked good and sensible but destroyed the top half for me as I lost all my checkers. Bottom right corner was fine although I still can’t parse 12d – I biffed it – I then ground to a halt. Thank goodness for this superb blog. I know Breadman is a Very Senior setter and I do admire such skill, but I do feel very stupid.
But it’s the adjectival form of ASTEROID that we need, which means “like a star”.
Agree this was a B******. Some fine clues but a lot of checking on-line was needed as I went just to know I was on the right lines. Spotted the pangram early but if I had gone further to see it was a double that might have helped me along.
FOI 1a Amass
LOI 4d Cheque (pretty well braindead by then)
COD 4d Cheque
Another day, another fail.
23 minutes but forgot to go back to 2dn, where I had A-A-. Would never have got AJAX. AX???
A dreadful performance to round off the worst week since I began solving without aids:
M – 28 min DNF
Tu – 50 min DNF
W – 10 min
Th – 51 min DNF
F – 23 min DNF
When I say that I don’t belong here, this is why.
A weekend of bitterness, self-recrimination and angst awaits.
Got most clues on big crossword but (obviously) couldn’t finish it.
I guess I don’t belong here either as:
M- 34min when I quit
T – 39min DNF
W – 10min
T – 44min
F- 28min (reached only AJAX to do at 23min)
It has been fun being part of this. Farewell cruel world 😥
Fair point, but you still solved 3 puzzles. Given the relative difficulty, that’s good. 👍
Gary, you do belong here. Many might suggest that it was this crossword which didn’t…
Thanks Cedric 😊
32:36 with one pink square, seems I’ve forgotten how to spell fuselage. FOI – AQUA, LOI -CHEQUE, COD – OBJURE as I’ve learned a new word that was gettable with the wordplay (I guess it helps being a Yorkshireman with the river Ure being familiar to me)
Apologies for the radio silence yesterday as I was out for the day walking in and around Norwich. |I’ll provide some belated responses to some of the comments above.
I think you will be glad that you were out walking yesterday. I hope you enjoyed the exercise and company (even if you were on your own!).
The sure was a lot of negativity in the comments when it was a perfectly good crossword and a lot easier than an average 15×15. I will be commending it to a member of my U3A Cryptic Crosswords who complains she has a hard time stepping up to the 15×15 from the Quick Cryptics.
As for the walking there were 12 of us and a good time was had by all as we walked about 11 miles. The plantation garden next to the catholic cathedral is a lovely haven of peace in the middle of the city.
Or in my case, take one look at the Qsnitch and decide not to try. The blog helped a lot in doing some learning.
Oh, and to whom is IT “new” technology?
Thanks.
I DNF this in The Globe and Mail newspaper which publishes these puzzles several weeks behind for some reason. For 3, “mixed drink” had been edited to “cocktail”. Maybe it was deemed too much like an anagrind.
How curious. The Times version still says “mixed drink”. A snakebite, to me, is not a cocktail as it doesn’t contain a spirit, and the usual reference dictionaries for The Times bear me out. Maybe your local definition for a cocktail is slightly different?