Times Quick Cryptic No 3098 by Shay

Author   JohninterredPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

I think my brain may be a bit frazzled with trying to sort out this Server 500 error malarkey, but I found this rather hard. No time as I bizarrely suffered from an extended sneezing fit while solving, but certainly well over average. Lots of tricky bits and if you solved this without difficulty you are ready to tackle the 15×15. Thank-you Shay for the challenge! 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 138 here.

Definitions underlined in bold italics , ( Abc )* indicating anagram of Abc, {deletions} and [] other indicators.

Across
7 Killer whale from California on banks of Oder (4)
 ORCA – Outside letters of OdeR, CA (California).
8 Real thug suffering convulsions (8)
LAUGHTER – ( real thug )* [suffering]. Hmm. What is a “real thug” and why would he/she suffer from convulsions? A potential short story plot, methinks.
9 Saunas struggling in Caribbean capital (6)
NASSAU – ( saunas )* [struggling]. How can a sauna struggle? Thumbs down from me for the surface here.
10 Animal nipping right bosom (6)
BREAST – R (right) in BEAST (animal).
11 Small child’s first to finish article (4)
 ITEM –  Take MITE (small child) and move the first letter to the end -> ITEM. Tricky.
12 Poorest chewed on last of hard, thick slice of bread (8)
 DOORSTEP – Last letter of harD, ( poorest )* [chewed].
15 Celebration of WI speciality endured by European (8)
 JAMBOREE – JAM (WI speciality) BORE (endured) E (European). I wonder what any WI members among our solvers think of the stereotyping here?
17 Feeling sad years after shock (4)
MOPY – Y (years) after MOP (shock of hair).
18 Bemoan unconvincing part of Bible (6)
LAMENT – LAME (unconvincing) NT (New Testament; part of bible). I need the checkers to come up with LAME.
21 One’s pens stay in the same place (6)
IBIDEM – BIDE (stay) in I’M (one’s). Another tricky one that I needed checkers for.
22 Lie about end of war and conflict (8)
 FRICTION – FICTION (lie) about last letter of waR.
23 Passionate desire left American close to derangement (4)
LUST – L (left) US (American) and last letter of derangemenT.
Down
1 Macerate bananas for light meal (5,3)
CREAM TEA – ( macerate )* [bananas].
2 Perfume ingredient found in Gorbals, amazingly (6)
 BALSAM – Hidden in Gor BALS AM azingly.
3 Fish struggle in water ? (8)
FLOUNDER – Double definition.
4 Restrain dog, beginning to bite (4)
CURB – CUR (dog) and first letter of Bite.
5 Encourages heartless cheaters (6)
CHEERS – Remove the middle letters from CHE{at}ERS.
6 Wimps are agitated when climbing (4)
 WETS – STEW (are agitated) [climbing] -> WETS.
13 Dutiful, I’d been to Barking (8)
 OBEDIENT – ( I’d been to )* [barking].
14 Regularly sense journalists love strong drink (8)
ESPRESSO – Alternate letters, [regularly], of sEnSe, PRESS (journalists) O (0; zero; love)..
16 Reportedly rupture buttocks (6)
BREECH – Sounds like, [reportedly], BREACH (rupture). Sounds painful!
17 Virile embraces lead to intimacy, for the most part (6)
MAINLY – First letter on Intimacy in MANLY (virile).
19 Leaving husband, unshaven and offhand (4)
 AIRY – {h}AIRY (unshaven) without the H (husband).
20 Cotton on top of Turkish rug (4)
TWIG – First letter of Turkish, WIG (rug).

101 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 3098 by Shay”

  1. 7:54

    Like many, I was slowed down in the SW corner. BREECH actually broke the deadlock for me – although an archaic term, it survives in: BREECH delivery/birth, where the baby is born buttocks first – usually these days, if detected, an emergency caesarean would be performed; BREECHES buoy – a rope-based rescue device used to extract people from wrecked vessels (this method was also used to transfer lighthouse staff from boat to rock – some of you may recall Blue Peter’s Lesley Judd being transferred in such a way to Bishop Rock lighthouse in 1975 – nearly came a cropper!); BRITCHES/BREECHES – short trousers fastened just below the knee. The C of BREECH was enough to give me FRICTION and the final two, AIRY and LAMENT fell into place in short order.

    Thanks John and Shay

  2. Well! 17 minutes in and, barring WETS, the whole of the top half was written in. So far, so good.

    Upon returning after an interruption, I somehow struggled my way through all but one of the remaining clues (incl. WETs) and, now with 40 minutes on the clock, I set to work on I_I_E_. However, having never knowingly come across the word or its abbreviation, my final 10 minutes turned out to be a complete waste of time and served only to irritate and annoy. This is not a good ploy, Shay, unless you are aiming to make the QC more elitist.

    So, a 50 minute DNF with 21a unsolved, I did consider ‘live’ for stay, but ILIVES/M certainly didn’t seem like a word.

    Many thanks to John for the blog and to Shay for about 75% of the grid.

  3. Looking at the comments posted so far I think I was definitely on Shay’s wavelength finishing in 8.52. There were certainly some terms that were a bit of a stretch for a QC such as IBIDEM, but fortunately I knew the word well enough. A good two minutes were spent on my final four in the sw corner.
    My total time for the week was 42.52, giving me a daily average of 8.35.

  4. DNF. Failed on WETS, IBIDEM, FRICTION, AIRY and TWIG. Also had ATOM for ITEM (atom = small. Tossed up between atom and item, couldn’t parse either of them and went for the wrong one). Around 24 minutes for those I did complete.

    FOI – 7ac ORCA
    LOI – DNF
    COD – 14dn ESPRESSO

    Thanks to Shay and John

  5. Soldiered on despite almost giving up, and eventually finished on 49:11, but was not particularly surprised to find ATOM should have been ITEM and IBIDES should have been the NHO IBIDEM. WETS took ages, TWIG took ages (but that was a good one), BREECH took ages, and so did CHEERS, although I admit that one shouldn’t have. Oh well, I could be working. Thanks all.

  6. I thought I recalled IBIDEM from a puzzle earlier this year and a quick Search says it was just under a year ago on 5th October 2024 in #2799 when Izetti gave us …

    “In the same place I stay overlooking Malta’s capital (6)”

    And paired it with MAENAD in the SW corner 🤣

  7. DNF. Disaster.
    In footballing terms you could say that the setter beat me ten – nil, and I was lucky to get nil.

    Never mind, life is hard and then you die.

  9. Tricky! Couldn’t parse ITEM and mis-parsed LAMENT (thought it was Lamentations shortened in some way by being ‘unconvincing’ 😂). IBIDEM was a PDM when I finally realised ‘ones’ could be ‘I’m’. Thought of breech birth so BREECH seemed worth a punt. COD TWIG – brilliant! Many thanks John. Blog much-needed. I enjoyed this as it took me a long time to figure everything out.

  13. Way out of my league. Lots of DNKs and NHOs. Got 13 answers in in about 25mins and then not the slightest flicker of an idea for the next hour. Surely this was one for the 15x15ers to show off with.
    Reminds me of my hockey playing days (3rd team) occasionally the opposition would turn up with a couple of first team players that had just finished their previous game on an adjacent pitch. They ran around and scored four or five goals and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Nobody else did.

  15. We did OK, coming in below par again (I think every day this week so far) at 11:24. Didn’t like MOPY but the checkers were very helpful. POI WETS required a mental alphabet trawl and I had a MER at stew / AGITATED but ‘are agitated’ does work better. You’ll not be surprised to learn that our LOI was IBIDEM. Spent a long time unfruitfully considering I_I_ES on the basis that one’s was inevitably I’S. Still don’t naturally think of I’M even though we’ve come across it many times now. Anyway, returning to ponder ‘in the same place’, a light bulb went on and revealed ibid in the deep recesses of my mind, and I did know it to be short for ibidem. It also caused me to reopen my PhD thesis for perhaps the 5th time in 50 years only to find it disappointingly ibid. free. Still looking for a use for the thesis which is too slim to use as a doorstop. Thanks, John (for today’s blog and your work on the site) and Shay.

  17. 20:58, so I’m hoping there’s still a chair in the SCC. Held up by too many to list, but finally by the alphabet trawl to find WETS, where I made the mistake of starting with A.

    Ho hum, onto tomorrow. Thanks to Shay and John.

  18. Catching up after a routine but disruptive medical procedure, yesterday I thought I was better, with a reasonable though not speedy solving time, but today was treacly at best, taking 22:36 to finish.

    I was surprised to see all green because I could not parse ITEM at all and had to guess at BREECH, supported by “breeches”. I only managed to justify WETS after submitting. JAMBOREE was hard until I guessed WI as a women’s organization known for making jam. MOPY was hard to justify but I managed. More than a mild eyebrow raised for CREAM TEA, I like mine heavy personally. With jam. I really, really liked TWIG and the rarely seen IBIDEM.

    Thanks to Shay for the workout, and much gratitude to John for managing to blog while rescuing the site!

    1. WI is usually Women’s Institute, maybe West Indies but unlikely to be Wisconsin. They probably have cheese teas there!

  19. DNF. Missed BREECH and IBIDEM. Knew of BREECH births and “britches”(like vittles and varmints from cowboy movies) but didn’t connect to buttocks. TWIG and JAMBOREE were favourites; needed blog to parse ITEM.

  20. 18.53 WOE. I foolishly put IBIDES, which I’ve never heard of, rather than IBIDEM, which I have, leading to a pink square. JAMBOREE also took a while (I was stuck on cake) and LOI ITEM was a biff. Thanks John and Shay.

  21. “Jam & Jerusalem” has been the WI’s unofficial slogan for decades, so I don’t think the jam reference was offensive. In fact Jennifer Saunders wrote a sitcom of that title!

    Shay the Merciless determined to maintain position at the top of the Setters Difficulty Leaderboard I see. Actually I didn’t find this too bad, since I knew where “ibid” comes from and could conjure up BREECH. STEW took a very long time though.

    All done in 08:45 for a Very Good Day. Many thanks Shay and John (and super extra thanks to John for all the tech stuff he is doing in the background).

    1. Thanks for the “jam and Jerusalem” pointer; I looked it up. It would seem the phrase is at worst derisive and at best patronising. No criticism intended of the clue though. (It always amuses me that British people seem to find “Jerusalem” so tiresome. I actually like it. But I suppose anything can be overdosed.)

  22. Dnf…

    Thankfully I wasn’t the only one who found this hard. A shame, as I was hoping for a clean sweep of sub-20 completions for the whole week (a rare event, if ever). I can’t add anymore regarding some of the really tricky ones: 21ac “Ibidem”, 6dn “Wets” and 11ac “Item” come to mind. I put “Cracks” for 16dn which, whilst somewhat vulgar, was worth a punt.

    FOI – 7ac “Orca”
    LOI – Dnf
    COD – 10ac “Breast”

    Thanks as usual!

  23. Tricky, yes. Unreasonable, no.
    FOI 7a Orca
    LOI 20d Twig
    COD 21a Ibidem

    Many thanks to those working to fix the site probably while also contributing.

  24. So, we flounder on today, not a surprise after better days this week. Desperately tried to get Cake into 15A just forgot all about Jam that would have helped. No description of Buttocks meant Rupture to me so empty squares there. One’s equals I’m question mark. Heaps of praise and admiration for Blog and Comments which make it all fun.

        1. I went for IS – thought I was doing well to remember that’s what One’s would be. Nasty clue I thought

  25. 57 minute DNF.

    Put IBIDES for IBIDEM.

    Nightmare end to horrific week. Well over 2 hours and 2 DNFs. Worse than when I started.

    I can’t remember the last time I derived anything but pain from attempting a cryptic crossword.

      1. One’s (I’m) new to cryptic crosswords and find the Englishness ( cream tea, doorstep, W1, never mind the cricket and chess) a challenge. An Irishman in my sixties, I always print the Quick and the 15×15 on Fridays here in Barcelona. Their cleverness appeal to me.

  27. My teacher had always warned me against dabbling in cryptic crosswords.He said it was like alcohol addiction,once into it you crave it even when you know its all RUBBISH !

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