Times Quick Cryptic No 3110 by Joker

83 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 3110 by Joker”

1. Hi John, you misspelt the answer for 1d. Also, the bird in 9d is normally spelt with a y, so talkative may be a homonym indicator.

   1. Thanks. Typo corrected. As for mina, interesting idea but I think it’s fine as an alternative spelling and I don’t think “talkative” works as a homophone indicator.

   2. and an “H”
      A quick search brings up mynah, minah and myna but no “mina”
      Certainly got me.

      1. It’s in Chambers and Collins

         1. MINA is never recognised as valid by Polygon which always makes me jolly cross!

         2. I knew you would say that. Fair for the 15×15 does not equal suitable for the 13×13 IMHO, and on this occasion I think you are outvoted judging from the comments below.

      2. Agreed. We travel every year to where they are frequently seen. Never ever seen them spelt as mina. I have only once seen mynah. The normal spelling is myna which is used by every ornithological source I have ever seen.

2. Not exactly a breeze for me at 10.01, but all good fun. Completely missed the cleverness of ROBBERY and the PLAYER DD, and those two took up some time as I stared glumly at the screen and got nowhere. Thanks J&J.

3. 7:38 Needed to come here to see what was going on with ROBBERY- thanks , John. I had RECEDE first instead of RESIGN but finally saw the light.

4. Yes, I put in recede, but I erased it almost immediately – cede does not mean authorize! I also had a lot of trouble with virginal, eliminate, and curry, which should not have been that difficult.

   Time: 10:06

5. Haha, 10:06 for vinyl1! Me too, got completely stuck on ROBBERY and PLAYER. Thought RECEDING and CEDING were the way forward, clearly missing the *rub*ber part and the need for an example word clue! Thanks for the enlightenment, John. Some of these are genius, like ROBBERY changing letters for Oscar – brilliant. Others, like virginal or SUITING, were just… tricky. Time to go back to the drawing board and stop staring glumly at the screen!

   1. I have on occasion hit the SCC, when I am really off the wavelength! As an experienced solver, I rely on the usual tricks, and when they don’t work I have to think for a while.

6. A pretty quick start but then I got very stuck. So stuck I took time to count the clues I couldn’t do – 11. Finally saw GLADIATOR and that got me going again with ROBBERY then leading to PLAYER (thanks John, rugby players were nowhere near my thoughts) but then the separate NE took a long time. BATON LOI for some reason, could have done with the N for VIRGINAL a lot earlier. Seems I struggled on an easier one – all green in 16.55.

7. After yesterday’s DNF I was pleased to finish this one with 10 minutes on the clock.

8. At last, a day on Joker’s wave length with a close to PB of 11.55. Like others our thanks to John for unpacking LOI robbery which we biffed earlier but only entered after POI player.

   Thanks Joker, and John for making Mrs RH laugh at the Bill Stickers gag 😀

9. I found this quite tough. I did make reasonable progress, but ground to a halt with ROBBERY and PLAYER. So DNF in the end.

   Pi ❤️

10. 10:48. Straightforward, but still nicely tricky. The north east corner held out the longest, but once I remembered the Pope’s LEGATE it all fell into place. I liked CARNIVAL and VIRGINAL. Thank you John and Joker.

    PS. John, I don’t get the Glossary any more from the Useful Links (or the Quick Cryptic Guide), just the Oops 404 error message. Is it just me? or have they been left behind?

    1. I just tried those links and also get 404 Page Not Found.

       1. Yup. Same here. I also get a header to this page with the title in small blue type and just a tiny blue square containing a question mark – no banner picture (with Big Ben etc.).
          The same happens with the avatars for many posters including my own.

          1. Sorry. I forgot to update the widgets when I replaced the links in pages, posts and comments to the temporary address we had during the migration. Will fix it now.

             1. Many thanks, John.

             2. Cheers John 🙂

             3. Thank you

11. 4:24. Didn’t really know a lotus was a water lily but makes sense since the flowers and the pads are seen together suspiciously often.

12. 12:04, which is faster than usual for a puzzle by Joker, and it would have been even better but for a breezeblock over my L2I, the PLAYER/ROBBERY pair. I took some time to accept that PLAYER was the right answer for 25A as I was convinced I was looking for a reversal of something, and then ROBBERY was the only possible answer for 15D despite not being able to parse it.

    I didn’t fully understand how one gets “mina” for the bird in ELIMINATE – I spell it myna, mynah or even minah but never mina – but having come here, I agree with Joseph that it must be “mina, sounds something like myna, with talkative as the homophone indicator”. Devious as in the word ELIMINATE, mina is pronounced with a short i and a long a, but the bird has a long i and a short a!

    Many thanks John for the blog and I look forward to the Sunday Special.

    1. MINA is a valid alternative spelling in both Chambers and Collins and I really don’t think “talkative” works as a homophone indicator. Furthermore, as you say, it is not pronounced the same in ELIMINATE so it’s not a homophone anyway.

       1. Happy to accept that. A very interesting word, then, with 4 possible spellings, of which the one Joker chooses is much the least common -generic online sources (eg Wikipedia, Google) don’t have it at all. (And yes I know they are not authoritative sources for crosswords!)

13. Steady going today.
    My main hold ups were wanting to put ‘corpival’ into 18a which I knew a) couldn’t be a real word and b) made no sense and but my brain got stuck on it and the SUITING/RESIGN combo which is where I finished.
    Crossed the line in 7.52 with another vote for ROBBERY as COD.
    Thanks to John and Joker

14. This was definitely not gentle lmao.

15. Couldn’t parse ROBBERY (thanks John) and Biffed ORIGINAL before a minute’s thought directed me to VIRGINAL. COD GLADIATOR for the groan. 22 mins so a mild Friday from Joker.
    Thanks to all.

16. 9:26, at least a few minutes of which spend on SUITING. I foolishly discounted uni = U fairly early, because I didn’t like UI or IUI, and this was my downfall, as MIT was obviously no help.

    RESIGN also wouldn’t go in without all the checkers.

    But I thought overall a good puzzle.

17. Gentle? Managed the NE and SW corners, only four others. Misery!
    OK since you say it’s gentle, I’ll apply myself more EARNESTly – never enjoy these random chaps. So, eventually got GLADIATOR, so it must be ROBBERY after all, but why? So it must be PLAYER after all, but why? Hence that random chap. Then PDM ELIMINATE, but no idea why. All just guesswork – left NW corner still undone (or unguessed). Liked TREBLE.
    Ah. Thank you, John. So: random capital, random note. Who is MINA? Difficult.
    Googling reveals this bird is always myna or mynah (but still NHO!), nothing about talkative?
    On edit: sorry, I do see I’m wrong about that: amazing (and entertaining!) how they can imitate human speech. Thanks, Snail39.

    1. On a sports field, Backs are Players. Left Back, Centre Back, Right Back…..

    2. I think the “talkative” refers to the fact that the Mina {many spellings available} bird is known for it’s ability to mimic the human voice similarly to a budgerigar.

18. Tough. I am pleased for those who found it ‘generous’ and ‘gentle’ but cannot agree. I got nowhere in the top half and resorted to another slow start from the bottom. The SW corner went in quickly but it was a slog from there with two biffs – ELIMINATE (I have never before seen Mynah spelt Mina) and my LOI ROBBERY although I spent a couple of minutes proof-reading at the end before realising that I had somehow hit T and entered ROBBERT, over-writing the Y in PLAYER. Despite this, I avoided the SCC by a minute which is a minor victory for me with Joker’s largely unfunny QCs.
    I do not get on with Joker -too many iffy definitions for me. They eclipse the many good clues that he also produces.
    Thanks for the blog.

19. I did not find this at all gentle, taking 15:18 to crawl over the line with the unparsed ROBBERY/PLAYER pair. Thanks John for making sense of these.
    I also started with RECEDE, which meant I took ages to see SUITING.
    COD to GLADIATOR.

20. Finished but found it very difficult, so not hugely enjoyable. LOI RESIGN, which I nearly did. Was slow both in NW and SE. Last few solves included EARNEST, PESTER, ROBBERY, ROCKET, and SUITING.
    Liked CARNIVAL, SCURRY, GLADIATOR and RELEGATE COD.
    Agree about spelling of Mynah bird.
    Thanks vm, John.

21. Like John I found this gentle for a Joker puzzle. I did have to think carefully to parse CARNIVAL, ROBBERY, EARNEST and PLAYER though. From TREBLE to EARNEST in 6:25. Thanks Joker and John.

22. Timer says SCC for me although I had several distractions and had to do this in four sittings. The Climate certainly wasn’t Suiting this Earnest Player sums it up although as ever everything is fairly clued with common vocab and reasonable cryptic definitions. Ho Hum.
    Ta JAJ

23. Pleased I’m in good company finding this quite difficult. Also struggled with parsing RUBBERY/PLAYER. My first experience with a myna/mina bird was age 16, I’d gone for an interview as a volunteer at a Dr Barnado’s home. I was waiting in an empty room and a loud cackle and ‘hello!’ behind me gave me a real fright.

24. I am another who always finds joker hard.
    Some good clues, but others just passed me by
    I thought random names (ERNEST) were not supposed to be used or have I missed something?

    Thanks for the blog.

    1. Would that it were so … For “chap” we’ve had Ian, Ray, Tony and doubtless many more. I agree, it’s bogus, isn’t it!

       1. I agree.

25. I am in the found it a struggle camp, not parsing quite a few and relying on biffing once some letters in. NHO MINA, only MYNAH, so ELIMINATE took a while, as did ROBBERY, EARNEST (hate these random name clues) and VIRGINAL.

26. Just the six. My wife is called Mina (Min-na), does that make her a talkative bird? You could get away with that as a joke in the 1960s, you’d get six months for saying it now. My sister is Lorraine, does that make her a tart?

    I can’t help it, I’ll get my coat…..

    Edit: It should be Myna or Mynah….

    1. : )

    2. thanks for the laugh 😃😀

27. Not gentle for me. I started well then got stuck with 8 or 9 left. Getting LOTUS was a big help and others quickly followed for some reason.
    Last two were VALIDATE and CARNIVAL.
    16 minutes.
    I liked lots of clues so hard to pick a COD. TREBLE and CLIMATE appealed to me.
    David

28. Just over 12 mins. Nearing a PB for us – so very happy. Initially tried to remove CH from CHOIR without success and momentarily sidelined by trying to make LOCUST a parasite (which it is not of course). Delighted to have found and understood ROBBERY early in the piece. Needed the blog to understand PLAYER and the minor bird issue … MYNA, MYNAH, MINAH… as we were some of the many who had not previously met MINA.
    All up, much enjoyed.
    Many thanks to Joker and to JohnI

29. I nearly always find the Joker takes me up to my ten minute target, but today I only needed 6.31 to complete. Either the Jokers been benevolent or I’ve had a good day; perhaps a bit of both. Although I started with the across clues, I solved all the down clues at first read with the exception of my LOI which was ROBBERY. I never did get to parse that even after stopping the clock.
    My total time for the week was 45.29, giving me a daily average of 9.06

30. Enjoyable crossword, got two wrong, immediately thought of Mynah as the talkative bird, eventually settled for eradicate (all crossers vowels – yipee) and marginal without being able to parse either. I expect someone will point out a source of “mina” (let me guess – Collins?)
    Thanks to both, still a nice crossword.

    1. Try Chambers:

       “myna, mynah or mina noun (mynas, mynahs, minas) any of various large, SE Asian birds of the starling family, some of which can be taught to imitate human speech.
       ETYMOLOGY: 18c: from Hindi maina.”

31. Above average difficulty for me, finishing in 12:24, but I did at least parse the excellent ROBBERY correctly. Lots of great surfaces and altogether enjoyable. I thought there might be some link between ELIMINATE, RELEGATE and VALIDATE when the third -ATE verb popped in, but it seems to be just a random thing.

32. Interesting, I came here expecting to find most of you as fed up as I am. 41:35 for me, and I only persevered for that long because of my DNF yesterday.

    Thank you for the blog!

33. All done in 24 minutes so not too easy after all. Couldn’t parse PLAYER (never thought of back in the sporting sense) but did manage to parse ROBBERY. I spent some time at 16dn thinking of all sorts of different curries before spotting the blindingly obvious. I also took a long time to parse VIRGINAL.

    FOI – 4ac TREBLE
    LOI – 1ac RESIGN
    COD – 6dn BATON

    Thanks to Joker and John

34. 14 mins…

    Definitely one of Joker’s easier offerings. Interesting we all thought about Gladiator yesterday with the Marcus Aurelius clue, and here it appears in 14ac. Main hold ups were 9dn “Eliminate” (where I originally thought Extricate) and 12ac “Virginal” (where “Ethereal” came to mind) – but neither would parse. 15dn “Robbery” could have been trickier, but was slightly more obvious with checkers.

    FOI – 1dn “Rocket”
    LOI – 23ac “Earnest”
    COD – 15dn “Robbery”

    Thanks as usual!

35. That was like Earth in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – mostly harmless. However, the bits that weren’t harmless were pretty spiky – EARNEST, ROBBERY, PLAYER and LOI ELIMINATE.

    In my head the Mina Bird is always so spelt, because that was the first spelling I encountered as a child and it stuck. But when I started doing Polygon in the Times, it refused to accept “mina” as a valid word. I tried Collins to find that under “British English” it only had “mina” listed as meaning “an ancient unit of weight and money, used in Asia Minor, equal to one sixtieth of a talent”. Now I look more closely, however, I see that under “American English” Collins also has it as “alternative spelling of myna”. And as I just posted in response to Ham above, Chambers has “myna, mynah or mina noun (mynas, mynahs, minas) any of various large, SE Asian birds of the starling family, some of which can be taught to imitate human speech. ETYMOLOGY: 18c: from Hindi maina.”

    Anyway, the short point is that Polygon ought to recognise it!! Harrumph.

    Hacked out the last four in time to finish with 07:42 for a Pretty Good Day. Many thanks Joker and John.

    1. Whether the polygon should accept US spellings at all is a moot point – I’m always surprised when both of eg color and colour are listed as answers. But I agree, there is something awry when one Times puzzle accepts a US spelling and another Times puzzle refuses it! Perhaps the clue today should have said “talkative American bird”, to make it clear that we are looking for a word/spelling that is not usually found in British English.

36. 10:24. I didn’t find that easy at all! definitely off the wavelength and the NE corner kept me going quite a while. LOI was EASILY annoyingly enough!

37. DNF
    Made a hash of this by assuming chap was GENT, and looking for a word ending thus.
    And only spelling I knew was MYNAH bird
    Nearly went with ORIGINAL, for VIRGINAL, close to “pure”.
    Finally could only come up with the festival of CORPIVUS, which sounded plausible for a ROMAN rite.

38. Tough old slog for me but I got there in the end having replaced ERADICATE with ELIMINATE when the penny dropped. I put in PLAYER without really knowing why and I was slightly bothered by singers = choral when I would say singers = chorale: but it had to be ORAL so in it went. But well into the SCC and like others I was hesitant over EARNEST, the importance of which never ceases to amuse me. Thanks Joker and John from up the road.

39. 11:55

    I too, would question the gentleness of this puzzle. After around 6 minutes, I came to a grinding halt. I pencilled in the poor PLAYER which I never did satisfactorily commit to, then eventually ROBBERY which I only understood post-completion. Those were enough to break the deadlock and see me home. LOI was VIRGINAL (and not the tentative ORIGINAL)…

    Thanks John and Joker

40. 11.38 Less than half done after the first pass. I was distracted by nuncios and CORPIVUS but it came together quite quickly. I did like ROBBERY. Thanks John and Joker.

41. 18 minutes. Definitely not gentle for me after a wrestle with the 15×15. Couldn’t get going in the NW so slowly worked my way through the rest, having no idea about the parsing of ROBBERY. I then returned to the NW, with the not easy for me SUITING my LOI. ROMAN, EPIC and GLADIATOR had me wondering but I don’t think there’s enough else for a theme.

    In a minority, but I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to find this on the hard side.

    Thanks to John and Joker

42. All okay took ages to get head around PLAYERS, and a while to remember unfortunate cardinal Wolesley’s legate

43. Thank you John, I really tried hard to parse my biffed ROBBERY before giving up and coming to the blog. FOI was CLIMATE and LOI EARNEST in 7:29.

44. This was a really hard slog. Nothing at all in the top half on first pass. Then got ABLE and a few more in the bottom half and gradually squeezed the blood out of the stone using aids finishing with the NW corner. Agree with others about MYNAH / MINA.

45. Finished this, but only by using crossword solver copiously as would never have thought of some of those definitions.

46. If that was Joker “in a gentle mood” I would hate to to meet him when he’s not. I found that decidedly tricky. 34-35 minutes for me, but helped by quite a lot of fortuitous biffing (e.g. ROBBERY, VIRGINAL, PLAYER).

    I struggled to get started and then found myself lurching around the grid, just to keep any sort of momentum going.

    FOI: RELEGATE
    LOI: TREBLE
    COD: YONDER (because it brought back memories of Only Fools And Horses).

    Many thanks to John and Joker.

    1. Replicates our experience, thanks.

47. Seemed super reasonable to me. A rare two days in a row with a finish, though slower today at 28:53, held up by RESIGN/SUITING, which seem pretty easy in retrospect.

    Can someone explain ‘TE’ as note for me? I feel this may have been explained to me before, but when I google they try to tell me it is the musical note, but surely that os ‘ti’?

    1. The 7th note in the scale in sol-fa notation can be spelled either TI or TE.

    2. Both TE and TI are fairly common crosswordese for the note that goes with jam and bread. Similarly, LA and DO sometimes have a trailing H, and SO is also known as SOL.

       1. Interesting, I can’t remember seeing TE, although now that I think of it I have run into the DOH/LAH thing, albeit only in crosswords. Thanks to you both!

48. I always thought it was a ‘minor’ bird 🤣🤣 Happy to be educated by all you clever peeps. Found this reasonably gentle otherwise. LOI SUITING. COD ROBBERY. Many thanks both.

49. Quite hard in places, but escaped the SCC fairly easily I think.
    Player/Robbery; I missed the sporting implication of “back” in player, but the parsing of Rubbery=doing a stretch seemed obvious if a little hard to believe.
    Thanks to Joker and Johninterred.

50. 13:21 for me, starting with CLIMATE and ending with CARNIVAL, via an unparsed ROBBERY and PLAYER. Needed the blog to understand those two.

    Thanks to Joker and John.

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