Times Quick Cryptic No 3036 by Joker

91 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 3036 by Joker”

1. I biffed PREPONDERANCE (from PONDER) and SPRIGHTLINESS, never parsed. After wasting some time trying to make ‘a German’ EIN, I took it to be an anagram, which gave me the right result, for the wrong reason. SIMPLETON was my LOI; I didn’t realize ‘silly’ was a noun until after I put it in. I don’t see a problem with LETTER: a tenant rents an apartment from the landlord, and a landlord rents his apartment to the tenant. 9:19

   1. Yes, my thoughts, exactly, on LETTER.

2. Quite a bit of thinking was required to finish this. Does a 16th century Metaphysical poet belong in a quickie? I’d certainly never heard of him but thankfully knew the answer from the definition. Wasn’t sure if PREPONDERANCE ended in ‘ence’ or ‘ance’ and didn’t know prance for trip but guessed correctly. Thought GENIUS was ‘brains’ but it didn’t parse, but EARSHOT solved the problem. Agree with blogger re LETTER. SNIPE took a while as I missed the ‘tail off the’ bit and thought I was looking for a synonym of ‘cut’ and a bird with the last letter missing. APPEAR was tricky for ‘show’. COD to SPRIGHTLINESS.
   Thanks Mike and setter.

   1. I did not know the answer from the definition so put in DaYENtE :(, I was so pleased with my self for finding a poet that fit i ignored the part of my brain that felt DOYENNE was probably a word

3. I whipped through the top half very quickly, and then became most thoroughly stuck for several minutes. Putting in perponderance didn’t help – how did that happen? I thought I was looking for an obscure metaphysical poet and a word meaning gave the game away. Suddenly, my solving brain kicked in again, and I saw doyenne and simpleton, and I was off to the races. Sprightliness was my LOI, and it was a biff.

   Time: 10:01

4. 10.52, with SNIPE taking a bit of time at the end because I wasn’t sure of the def and then struggled to see the SNIP/E device that delivered the answer. Nice puzzle, thanks Joker and Mike. Btw in the battle between Donne the Magnificent and Snipin’ Dr Sam I’m 100% with the former.

   1. I think Ernest Hemingway may agree with you so you’re in good company.

      1. Send not to know for whom the bell tolls
         It tolls for thee.

   2. Agreed! Donne is Mrs RH’s absolutely favourite poet, we had one of his poems read at our wedding!

   3. Indeed and Donne’s poetry will be read for a long time yet, and who reads the good Doctor any more? Boswell yes, SJ himself no.

5. Slow but steady, 6:24. Didn’t see SPRIG so thanks for that. CONTINENT and APPEAR gave me the most gyp. I wondered at DEVILMENT which I have never heard of.

   1. I was saved by Robert Johnson, in Rambling on My Mind: ‘She got devilment all on her mind.’ Not sighted since…

      1. Nice reference! Will try to remember.

6. 11 minutes. A few hard ones, notably PREPONDERANCE, SPRIGHTLINESS and DEVILMENT and a few others I just bunged in, eg I hardly even noticed the ‘metaphysical poet’ after seeing the ‘Prominent female’ at 17a. At least I made sure that I put the N and the W in the correct clues for 18a and 18d.

   Thanks to Joker and Mike

7. 12:04. Very rapid start but then slowed down in the bottom half. LOI SNIPE/SWIPE.

   Some pretty tough vocab such as OVERHASTY and SPRIGHTLINESS. Guessable but not exactly everyday words. And I knew of Donne, but didn’t know he was metaphysical, or that there was a masculine/feminine distinction for DOYENNE. If a woman is the Doyenne, is she the best of all women, or the best of all, who just happens to be a woman?

   Donne’s most famous quote “no man is an island” is often refuted in cryptics were “Man” often is just the island you’re looking for.

   PREPONDERANCE has unchecked vowels towards the end, and they are both Schwa sounds (uh-uh), so spelling is hard. See the ongoing blog in TFTT for a discussion on how we actually say words vs how we think we say them.

   COD SIMPLETON

   1. The ongoing blog in TFTT sounds interesting. How do I find it, please?

      1. I think he’s referring to the discussion I started yesterday called Homophonic Clues. It’s currently third from the top of the discussions page.

8. I was held up in exactly the same spot as Mike, and had to quickly alpha-trawl the bird, at which point my LOI kicked me sharply in the shin. Like Kevin, I biffed the two long ones. I didn’t notice the potential ambiguity of LETTER, but there is some merit in Mike’s argument.

   FOI AMORAL
   LOI SWIPE
   COD MANAGER
   TIME 4:56

9. I think “trip” in this case means “to dance around” as in “trip the light fantastic” , so a synonym of “prance” makes sense.

   1. I’ll pay that.

10. Another day of being done (or is that Donne) up like a kipper.

    Working in IT, I’m so used to only seeing the US version of program that it took me sooooo long to realise it wasn’t “show programme” so was cluing app!!!

    Like others, the swipe, snipe corner was tricky. I did wonder out loud about what “the” was doing in the bird clue but only realised afterwards.

    So many clues hidden in plain sight.

    Thanks Joker and Mike for the blog

11. Flew through the top half (although I had no idea what ‘prance’ was doing) but the bottom required a lot more thought. Eventually left with SPRIGHTLINESS and SNIPE which needed a crowbar and an alpha trawl respectively.
    Crossed the line in 9.05 with COD to ODDS ON.
    Thanks to Mike and Joker

12. DNF. Not on the wavelength as somewhat preoccupied and drew stumps at 20 minutes. Thoroughly enjoyed the blog, thanks Mike, and Joker.
    COD by default, SIMPLETON

13. A DNF, beaten by the SWIPE/SNIPE combination. I might have tried harder (and longer) to fill in these last two, but by then I had been so far off wavelength for this puzzle that I had lost interest. I’m sure it is a perfectly fair puzzle and my fault not Joker’s, but cluing Donne (who I had heard of) as a metaphysical poet (which I had not) and Prance as trip (where I just thought “Really? But no doubt Collins has it somewhere, even if English-in-real-life doesn’t”) did not endear me to this, and after battling through SPRIGHTLINESS, a complex clue for an unusual word, and finding it still did not unlock 18D I threw in the towel.

    Thank you Mike for the blog. I agree with you on LETTER, but perhaps Joker felt that making the clue clearer wasn’t in keeping with the rest of this chewy puzzle.

    1. Very much in agreement. Usually I finish and find a comfy chair in the SCC. Today I gave up with much of the bottom half empty. DNF big time.

       And being asked about metaphysical poets in the QC?? As an English teacher once said, doesn’t do poetry, bakes a good chocolate cake!

14. 9 minutes. I’m another who justified ‘trip / PRANCE’ via ‘dance’ as in ‘trip the light fantastic’.

    MANAGER is what has recently become known as a ‘cycling’ clue but by more traditional means.

    1. And there was I thinking that this was a new trendy way of doing an old style “cycling” clue!

       1. It’s an interesting point but it seems to me that ‘cycling’ emerged in a bunch of clues barely a year ago as that was when queries came in and I put up some images here to illustrate how they worked. There’s little new in wordplay construction so I assume the device already existed but was indicated in various ways (e.g. as today’s example) so there wasn’t a specific name for it.

15. I didn’t enjoy this . Ultimately gettable though as proven by an all green submission in 15:41 I never felt on the wavelength and there were a few that I just couldn’t parse in real time so looking forward to a proper read of Mike’s blog.

16. 25 minutes to unravel this chewy offering from Joker. Couldn’t parse PREPONDERANCE or SPRIGHTLINESS, and I agree that LETTER is one who rents out. SNIPE/SWIPE also held me up. A bit of a slog.

    1. I agree. We have become very lazy about this, using the word rent both ways. The verb to let is now hardly ever heard.

       1. ‘To Let’ features often.

    2. Or, lessor and lessee?

17. 18:36. I tap my phone or watch and very occasionally tap my credit card, but more often insert it. Swipe? ye are in the dark ages methinks. Donne by swipe. Pranced without sprightliness then a complete tail off (or should that be of?) the brain function until I got the bird.
    Agree with others that this was a challenging QC.
    Thanks J&M

    1. Hear hear – Grandpa Joker showing his age, I haven’t swiped a credit card for a decade!

       1. Oddly, for the country that gives us nearly all the big tech firms, using the magnetic strip to swipe is still surprisingly common in the States.

       2. I swiped a debit card in Sainsbury’s the other day as their chip reader was defective. Nationwide turned off my card as they “know” that the chip reader is used in Sainsbury’s and they didn’t want someone using an easy-to-make card copy (you only have to copy the stripe onto a bit of plastic) being used to defraud me. I then told Sainsbury’s NOT to ask people to swipe in future but they just shrugged. Should have gone to the manager, but.

       3. I haven’t even carried a credit card for over 3 years, thanks to Apple Pay.

       4. I went to a branch of the Nationwide BS last week, to pay in some paper notes I found in the pocket of a suit I shrank out of 9 years ago, and they swiped my debit card through the stripe reader on a keyboard to bring up my account details.

       5. 👍

18. I started quite quickly, and thought Joker had turned the corner and was back to being the friendly setter of old, but that thought didn’t last long. Preponderance, Sprightliness and Devilment (and the parsing thereof) made this a slow solve, compounded by th(e) tricky Snipe/Swipe as a finishing pair in the SE. As a result, I’m counting 25mins as a score draw.
    CoD to a clue more fitting for a QC: Aphid at 10ac. Invariant

19. Dnf…

    21 mins, but put “Slice”for 18dn even though I knew it probably wasn’t right. A few tricky clues on this one I thought.

    FOI – 1ac “Amoral”
    LOI – 18dn “Slice” (incorrect)
    COD – 9dn “Devilment”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. I also put in SLICE, knowing full well it wasn’t right, but sometimes you just have to finish the thing.

20. Totally breezeblocked on SNIPE/SWIPE, very frustrating! Needed all the checkers for PREPONDERANCE but had no trouble parsing trip/prance for the reasons given by others above.

    I’m amazed by the apparent waning of John Donne’s fame – the greatest of the Metaphysicals and also rake, soldier, lawyer, courtier and Dean of St Paul’s!

    SWIPE LOI provoked something of a snort because swiping a credit card is so old tech darling.

    All done in 07:10 for an Excellent Day. Many thanks Joker and Mike.

    1. Was it not Donne who definitely answered the question “Are the TT races held in mainland Britain?”

       No – Man is an island.

       I’ll get my coat….

       1. 😂

       2. Haha

       3. 🤣

    2. Certainly heard of Donne, as you say justly famous – no clue on metaphysicals though …

21. A struggle. Finished in about an hour, SE corner most difficult, LOI SWIPE. Assumed SNIPE must be some kind of bird. Still couldn’t see the trip in PREPONDERANCE, thank you, Mike (but your Collins must be bigger or newer than mine, which doesn’t).

22. Clearly in good company with L2I SWIPE/SNIPE. Donne the only metaphysical poet I can bring to mind, in spite of having studied a good few of them some 60 years ago. (Says more about my memory than the quality of the lecturers.) A fair puzzle but definitely on the tricky side today. Thanks Mike for great blog.

    1. Well arguably George Herbert belongs and he is well worth re-reading.

23. 5:03. It took me a while to see SNIPE , thinking the definition was “cut” for too long. I solved the two long across words from checkers and definition before parsing. I liked GENIUS best. Thanks Joker and Mike.

24. Approximately 9.44.

25. Tough. I was determined to finish it but didn’t enjoy it. I avoided the SCC by seconds.
    I had to jump around the grid, picking off the easy ones, until I had enough crossers to make sense of some of the longer ones. I confess to some biffing on the basis of crossers and a key word in the clue. I agree with comments on SWIPE.
    I biffed PREPONDERANCE (didn’t bother to parse it) and then got APPEAR to finish.
    Thanks to Mike for a good blog and to our resident comic for some good clues, some not so good, and precious few laughs.

26. 27:06

    Found that one hard work. Struggled with the long answers PREPONDERANCE and SPRIGHTLINESS, even with the checkers. Then had no idea what a metaphysical poet was so needed the checkers for DOYENNE before spending the last 5 minutes trying to justify LOI APPEAR.

27. I bucked the trend and had no trouble with SWIPE and SNIPE, but my problems were on the opposite side where DOYENNE and finally ODDS ON held me up. The toughest The Joker has put out for a while as far as I’m concerned, and the fact that I only had two answers on my first pass of the across clues seems to confirm that. I made it in the end but required 12.59 to finally make it.

28. DNF APPEAR and DOYENNE. (Even put Beyonce at one stage!)
    I do know Donne but did not think of him.
    So I enjoyed this in parts, particularly ODDS ON, EARSHOT, AMORAL.
    No problems with SWIPE/SNIPE.
    Thanks vm, Mike.
    Prominent man/woman for Dean/Doyenne seems odd, adding ‘of a group’ might have helped.

    1. Beyonce works for me 😉

       1. 😀

29. DNF today, with a few clues stopping me. NHO DOYENNE, but knew it had to include Donne from the checking letters, and NHO PREPONDERANCE. Very difficult clues. Thank you for the blog, much needed to understand the clues 😁

30. 14

    I thought a couple of things were a bit old fashioned despite there being a king in the throne when I was born.

31. Have now had a reply from Times IT about the crossword club problems. ( see a couple of days earlier) which others have also experienced.

    “We are aware that this has affected a small number of our subscribers, please rest assured that it is currently being investigated by our Techical Team and we hope this will be resolved in a timely manner. ”

    I hope so too.

    Sorry this is off topic.

    1. Thanks for doing the legwork XWN – let’s hope it doesn’t take too long.
       I’m hating doing the crossword on the Times Live site while on holiday – despite turning off ‘skip filled square’, it won’t let me start at the beginning of words if the letter is checked, which means most words go in wrong! And I can’t pause either, which I know other people have commented on. Back to paper next week, and the crossword club when necessary. Phew!

32. From AMORAL to SNIPE in 9:25. Held up at the end by SPRIGHTLINESS, MANAGER and SNIPE. Thanks Joker and Mike.

33. Got through it in 12 mins but with 2 pink squares in where I had the made up word DaYENtE rather than DOYENNE. Its a miracle for me to even know a poet, let alone one that fits the rest of the word play – I had no chance spotting that it was wrong when I have had maybe one previous encounter with the word DOYENNE before

    Enjoyable overall – thanks to all involved

34. 35 mins.
    I found some of this tricky but still very enjoyable.
    I am another one who was fine with SNIPE/SWIPE but struggled with SW.

    My LOI was ODDS ON. I thought of Donne but couldn’t see how it fitted for ages. Only once that went in did the penny drop.

    Some of my answers were biffed so am thankful for the blog.

35. Strolled into the SCC courtesy of the 18 across/down combo, finishing dead on 20 minutes. I didn’t parse preponderance or simpleton at the time meaning to do so post solve but then forgot. I wouldn’t have seen prance for trip anyway I don’t think.

    FOI – 1ac AMORAL
    LOI – 18dn SNIPE
    CODs – 19ac SPRIGHTLINESS and 15dn ODDS ON

    Thanks to Joker and Mike.

36. 7:13 DNF. Another DAYENTE. And went PEOSER for TEASER.

    Nothing actually wrong with the puzzle, but I did make heavy weather of a lot of it.

37. I think it has all been said by others here. DONNE was an unknown but it didn’t stop me from getting DOYENNE. PREPONDERANCE was a late parse and needed most of the checkers. I got SWIPE quickly but SNIPE was my penultimate solve. My LOI was SPRIGHTLINESS constructed in reverse. 9:03 Thanks Mike

38. 10:39. Enjoyed the longer and somewhat uncommon words used.

39. Lovely crossword, I enjoyed it very much even though it took until early afternoon with lots of breaks to do other things. Thanks Joker and Mike.

    Loved Satan’s army.

    I am the elder of two brothers so presumably I am the “odd son” and my brother is the “even son”. Perhaps I was odds-on to go into bookmaking.

    A couple of points of interest for me. I also didn’t get Prance = trip and Landlord = renter, the first has been explained, and the second “An owner who rents out a property” is in Collins. What an amazing coincidence that it is Collins out on its own in both cases, we haven’t seen that before.

    Silly as a noun? Ho hum, I have almost given up on parts of speech in crosswordland where nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs seem to flow seamlessly into each other.

    I had no idea what a metaphysical poet was, so any old poet would do and Donne slipped in easily. Bemusing to me that the poets were considered “Men of learning” when they still thought the sun went round the earth. What exactly had they learned?

    Snipe required the dreaded double alphabet trawl, I don’t use any sort of cheat and managed to find 17 words to fit S_I_E, each of which took several minutes in attempting to parse, the 9th one was Snipe.

    Sadly computers do destroy the poetic, my claim to fame is designing and building the world’s first computerised bookmaking system (Coral Credit – narrowly pipping Ladbrokes and William Hill). It didn’t bother with the tapestry of odds it just recorded how much you would get back from betting £1000 so “3 to 1” became £4000 and “3 to 1 on” became £1,333.33 (If you win you get your stake back).

    1. Gosh!

    2. Impressive and interesting.

40. 24.01 DNF. I was stuck for ages with about a third to go, mostly around the SW. OVERHASTY unblocked me but then I was stuck for another age with just the bird outstanding. I eventually biffed an unlikely SLICE for two pink squares. Thanks Mike and Joker.

41. Tail off the = e? Not sure about that. Tail of the, yes that would be e. But tail off the = th surely? That’s how the convention works. I thought we were looking for a 6 letter word for the (in the sense of THE one and only, etc) with it’s last letter removed, giving a bird. “Tail off the” implies discarding the tail, not removing it and then taking it as our letter.

    1. Yes my thoughts voiced earlier👍

    2. Yes, better would have been ‘Tail of the….’

42. Accidentally started this without realising, so when I reopned it I was already five minute in – honest! Only three on the first pass of acrosses and then failed to pick up the pace. Sprig for branch was tough and SPRIGHTLINESS was hard anyway. Good one. All green in 20.49 but chip time was closer to 16.00.

43. This went startlingly fast, with a finish in 7:37, near to my PB for 2025 so far. Must be the mysterious wavelength at work. I did a double take when I saw it was by Joker because normally his puzzles are much harder than average for me. Loved SPRIGHTLINESS, though unraveling the word play from right to left I got stuck at “high tension” and biffed the first part from crossers before parsing. Loved DEVILMENT but COD APPEAR just for the “feature used for sound capture” which made me laugh.

    Thanks to Joker and to Mike for the informative blogging. Did not know that Dr J, who is an old dear as well as an annoying old codger, came up with the term “metaphysical” for Donne and his like.

44. I’m useless!

    Had all the answers bar SWIPE and SNIPE in 7 minutes.

    Total time? 30 dreadful minutes.

    Another day in hell. Why do I bother with this when I am so ignorant?

45. 9:25 here, on the same wavelength as Joker today. FOI AMORAL, LOI DOYENNE. Liked many of the clues today but giving my COD to AVOID for being a perfect example to use when explaining how cryptic clues work.

    Thanks to Joker and Mike.

46. Never really got going; thought this was a bit OTT for a quickie

47. Having eventually had to throw in the towel after a very long struggle with Izetti yesterday (when most of you found it relatively easy), I really needed a confidence booster today – and I got one ….. almost.

    I thought I had crossed the line in just 21 minutes, which would have been a very fast time for me with Joker, but just as I was about to come here I spotted that I hadn’t solved 4a. And, as if to prove that I am definitely not one, it took me eight full minutes to find GENIUS. Exasperation!

    So, 29 minutes in total, but with a NHO metaphysical poet and a mental block as to how ‘Kind’ can mean NATURE. Otherwise, all fully parsed and understood.

    Many thanks to Mike and Joker.

48. 7.05

    Latish entry after flying from Munich to Vilnius.

    SWIPE no problem but SNIPE was cleverly disguised.

    Liked it

    Thanks Joker/Mike

49. Another one who sweated over SWIPE and SNIPE and then, like Mike, couldn’t see what the problem had been.
    I thought DOYENNE was very clever along with ODDS ON.
    Thanks Mike and Joker.

50. Solved the (apparently easy) 15 x 15 in well over an hour.

    Scant consolation for my appalling time on QC.

Comments are closed.