Today’s Quick Cryptic from Izetti was an enjoyable tussle. Being familiar with the style I was on the wavelength for this, finishing under target in 4:50. But there are some tricky bits, so your mileage may differ. Favourites include the bad-tempered minister and the ninja turtle. Thank-you Izetti! How did you all get on?
Fortnightly Weekend Quick Cryptic. This time it is Sawbill’s 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 120 here.
Definitions underlined in bold italics, (Abc)* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.
| Across | |
| 1 | Bad-tempered minister of religion outside house (8) |
| CHOLERIC – CLERIC (minister of religion) outside HO (house). | |
| 6 | Irish tribe determined to seize power (4) |
| SEPT – P (power) in SET (determined). | |
| 8 | One can see through this note penned by bereaved woman (6) |
| WINDOW – N (note) in WIDOW (bereaved woman) | |
| 9 | Crazy individual’s name, say (6) |
| NUTTER – N (name) UTTER (say). | |
| 10 | Second half of writer’s catalogue (4) |
| LIST – {nove}LIST (writer). “Second half” for half of the letters in a word is not a common wordplay device. | |
| 11 | Person protecting that place is troubled (8) |
| BOTHERED – BOD (person) outside THERE (that place). | |
| 12 | Untainted English in tribal group (5) |
| CLEAN – E (English) in CLAN (tribal group). | |
| 13 | Bizarre runes one observed in hospital? (5) |
| NURSE – [Bizarre] (runes)*. | |
| 15 | I mention going wrong very quickly (2,2,4) |
| IN NO TIME – (I mention)* [going wrong]. | |
| 17 | Classy shop refitted (4) |
| POSH – (shop)* [refitted]. Our third anagram in a row. | |
| 19 | Grass — it gets to change again (2-4) |
| RE-EDIT – REED (grass) IT. No not another anagram. A common sort of misdirection is, like here, for the enumeration in the wordplay (4,2) not to match the answer (2-4). | |
| 20 | Faulty regulation adopted by US agent (6) |
| FLAWED – LAW (regulation) in FED (US agent). | |
| 21 | Celebrity, good person meeting a king (4) |
| STAR – ST (saint; good person) A R (Rex; king). | |
| 22 | Continuing to annoy Heather after row (8) |
| RANKLING – LING (heather) after RANK (row on a chessboard). | |
| Down | |
| 2 | One wearing deerstalker maybe — one in country (5) |
| HAITI – I (one) in, [wearing] , HAT (deerstalker maybe), I (one). | |
| 3 | Inadequate character grabbing a daughter, a tearaway girl? (7) |
| LADETTE – LETTE{r} (character) without the last letter, [inadequate], outside, [grabbing], A D (daughter). An unusual but not unprecedented letter deletion indicator. | |
| 4 | Immature artist and wife (3) |
| RAW – RA (Royal Academician; artist) W (wife). | |
| 5 | Male or female’s argument against particular position (9) |
| CONSTANCE – CON (argument against) STANCE (particular position). A name that could be for a male or female. Tricky! I can’t find a single famous man called Constance, although there is the composer Constant Lambert who I thought was called Constance until I looked him up just now. | |
| 6 | Composer was a model in England originally (5) |
| SATIE – SAT (was a model) and first letters of In England [originally]. Eric Satie was a Parisian composer and pianist in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. His music, mostly for piano is terse and sparse in style and he was a big influence on Les Six. You can hear his characteristic Gnossienes here. | |
| 7 | Go before and go back under pressure (7) |
| PRECEDE – RECEDE (go back) under (this is a down clue) P (pressure). | |
| 11 | Famous runner one encountered on stairs? (9) |
| BANNISTER – Double definition, the second a cryptic hint. Roger Bannister was the first runner to run a mile in under 4 minutes. | |
| 12 | Satisfied with what’s inside (7) |
| CONTENT – Double definition. | |
| 14 | Hear pal upset painter (7) |
| RAPHAEL – (Hear pal)* [upset]. Did you ninja turtle this? | |
| 16 | Arrangement to request food? (5) |
| ORDER – Double definition. | |
| 18 | Birds together hide, conserving energy (5) |
| SKEIN – SKIN (hide) outside E (energy). | |
| 20 | Female, an ardent supporter (3) |
| FAN – F (female) AN. An easy charade to finish with. | |
Enjoyed this puzzle and finished in good time for us with a minimum of help.
Found this very doable but couldn’t parse LIST and SEPT went in with fingers crossed. LADETTE biffed then parsed. Liked FLAWED and HAITI. Many thanks.
From my (limited) perspective, Izetti forgot his target audience today. I DNF’d with 7 clues unsolved after well over an hour of hard graft. Almost nothing went in during my first pass through the clues and the top half of the grid was still mostly empty when I gave up.
Four NHOs: CHOLERIC, SEPT, CONSTANCE and SATIE.
Three DNPs (Did Not Parse): NUTTER, LADETTE and LIST.
Enjoyment: Not much, I’m afraid.
Many thanks to John for the blog.
On edit: Having now read through all of the above posts, I realise that I am completely out of my depth – even with just the QC. Heaven help me me if I ever try the 15×15.
The gulf between experienced and SCC residents was definitely the case for me! I had to look up SEPT (an obscure, medieval word??). Thankfully, though, I had heard of Satie and enjoyed his music. Around an hour with several (including CONSTANCE) unparsed. How did references to a male CONSTANCE get through checking?
27 minutes
M – 45
T – 22
W – 16
Th -17
F – 27
127 minutes and 2 SCC escapes. Frustrating, particularly given that one poster said this was the easiest Izetti ever. I’m still groping in the dark.
PS Not far short of 2 hours on the Thursday 15 x 15. Still 6 short! ☹️☹️☹️
PPS Guessed one of them put didn’t insert as couldn’t parse. Others were gettable. More frustration.