Times Quick Cryptic 1476 by Izetti

Author   chrisw91Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Yet another 12 minute solve – but I’ll settle for that for an Izetti with many long answers. There’s plenty of tricky anagrams and so many silky surfaces that it’s hard to pick a COD. It’s been really fun to lay out the blog – hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

ACROSS
1. Arrive to take care of male with minimal energy (4)
COME – care of (CO – as in addressing an envelope to someone at another’s address), male (M), minimal energy (E).
3. Bishop, worn out, blustered (7)
BRAGGED – bishop (B), worn out (RAGGED as in clothes). Bragged=blustered didn’t immediately sit well but Collins has bluster as ‘to speak or say loudly or boastfully’.
8. Unusual pattern a ruler re-established (13)
PRETERNATURAL – anagram (re-established) of PATTERN A RULER. anyone thinking that ‘unusual’ was the anagram indicator has my sympathy.
9. United achieved victory, we hear (3)
ONE – homophone (we hear) of won.
10. Cleric, very holy within? The reverse — a venomous type! (5)
VIPER – cleric (REV) with very holy (PI) within – all reversed.
12. Risks with daughter and son full of wrath (7)
DANGERS – daughter (D) and son (S) full of (inside which is) wrath (ANGER).
14. Godly type goes round in leisurely walks (7)
STROLLS – godly type (ST – Saint), goes round (ROLLS).
16. Crime of minister wanting leader removed (5)
ARSON – minister without the first letter p(ARSON).
17. Illustration from India engraved in copper (3)
PIC – India (I) inside (engraved in) copper (PC – police constable).
20. Food dish absurdly presented to heathen idol (4-2-3-4)
TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE – anagram (absurdly presented) of TO HEATHEN IDOL.
21. Spooner’s appearance for what reason? Conceited fellow? (4,3)
WISE GUY – a spoonerism is a mistake made by a speaker in which the first sounds of two words are changed over, often with a humorous result – here we have appearance (GUISE) and for what reason (WHY) giving us WISE GUY.
22. Not all of the athletes in preliminary race (4)
HEAT – some of t(HE AT)hletes.

DOWN
1. Prisoners upset by past vice (8)
CAPTIVES – anagram (upset) of PAST VICE.
2. Gather food for the audience (4)
MEET – homophone (for the audience) of food – meat.
3. Discarded item of furniture outside pub (6)
BINNED – item of furniture (BED) outside pub (INN).
4. A concept a kid worked out, full of excitement (6-6)
ACTION-PACKED – A (A) then an anagram (worked out) of A CONCEPT KID.
5. Good morsels thrown out? That’s stupid (8)
GORMLESS – good (G) then an anagram (thrown out) of MORSELS. The origin of gormless meaning stupid/dull is a variant of C18 gaumless, from dialect gome, from Old English gom, gome, from Old Norse gaumr heed (thanks, Collins). I’d have thought that ‘gorm’ would have meant the opposite of gormless but the English language (from the same source), displaying its lovable quirks, has gorm as a foolish person.
6. Buck’s other half receives pounds as handout (4)
DOLE – buck’s other half (DOE) received pounds (L).
7. Mad religions, sadly causing dismay (12)
DEMORALISING – anagram (sadly) of MAD RELIGIONS.
11. Strict believers making jokes about educated female (8)
PURITANS – jokes (PUNS) about ‘educated female’ – film reference to ‘Educating Rita’.
13. Feeling tense in front of teacher being nasty (8)
SENTIENT – anagram (being nasty) of TENSE IN and (T)eacher.
15. Initially sitting on child’s toilet suffering from rash? (6)
SPOTTY – (S)itting on top of child’s toilet (POTTY).
18. Fret when drippy folk are in the ascendant (4)
STEW – drippy folks (wets) in the ascendant (upwards) – WETS.
19. See some memories being conjured up (4)
ROME – ecclesiastical see – some m(EMOR)ies- conjured up – upwards – ROME.

31 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1476 by Izetti”

  1. 35:28 A different sort of PB having never completed a puzzle this early in the day – up in the middle of the night watching T20 NZ v England. Didn’t get the ‘see’ in 19D till read the blog – thanks, and pleased to remember the only-in-crosswords pi. Seemed like a lot of long anagrams for a sleep-deprived brain.
      1. No usher but probably servile. Might’ve known someone on here would recognise this, but still impressed!
        England batting collapse, lose, time for the second sleep.
  2. I suppose this was my PW–personal worst–if I don’t count DNFs. I was slow to pick up just about anything: for instance, at 8ac I had NATURAL, couldn’t think of PRETER. I did biff TOAD-IN-THE-HOLE from def and enumeration. 10 bloody 25.

    Edited at 2019-11-05 05:45 am (UTC)

  3. 32 mins but with typo for dole.

    Demoralising, puritans, wise guy, and sentient last few in.

    Must be demoralising for some, maybe puzzles of this difficulty should be binned.

    I normally say its on a par with the 15×15, but today I only completed about 3/4 of it and I can guess who the setter is.

    Cod puritans.

  4. This is the second puzzle from Izetti in less than a week and having been narrowly beaten by him last Thursday (11 minutes) I suspect I had more than one eye on the clock as I tackled it. I achieved my 10 minute target but got careless and made two errors.

    I don’t think I was quite happy with either answer so obviously I should have taken time to revisit them before signing the puzzle off.

    My errors were:

    LORE at 19dn, where I’d evidently thought LO for ‘see’ and then jumped in with both feet, ignoring the provenance of RE and thinking that (folk) LORE had something to do with conjuring up collective memories of the past.

    BLAGGED at 3ac, which fits the definition ‘blustered’ as neatly as the actual answer (i.e. not very well). I’d reasoned that if one was ‘worn out’ e.g. in a race, one probably ‘lagged’, but I can see now that bit’s not such a good fit.

  5. I really was not on wavelength with Izetti today and I crawled home in 22 minutes. The top line went in quickly enough with COME and BRAGGED and then my troubles began. I biffed DOLE and failed to parse it, ONE is not a homophone of WON when I say it, PRETERNATURAL required most of the checkers and was constructed from NATURAL then PRE and then TER and I had no idea whether unusual or re-established was the definition. I wanted 14a to be RAMBLES because of the god Ra. I put in MEME (very with it) for 19d initially before I biffed TOAD IN THE HOLE. My final two were the very tricky PURITANS and WISE GUY. Thanks Chris for the blog which I needed today.
  6. Home and hosed in 15:20 which at 1.5K I am going to score as a Good Day. I found this a little easier than recent Izettis but he remains the master of misdirection. What a light and elegant touch he has, though like Jack I hesitated between “bragged” and “blagged” since neither seemed quite perfect.

    FOI COME, LOI & COD ROME

    Many thanks to Izetti and Chris.

    Templar

  7. To buck the trend… I finished in a sub-average 5:36, but that’s maybe just that I’m in tune with Izetti after doing his recent Mephisto yesterday. My last 2 in were the double-unched SENTIENT and PURITANS. Many silky surfaces, as you say, Chris. I enjoyed the ecclesiastical flavour. COD to HEAT. Thanks Izetti and Chris.
    1. Another trend-bucker here with a sub-par 4’30”. Izetti is always challenging but also seems to tickle just the right bit of my brain. A double homophone Spoonerism to finish things off brought a smile.

      Thank you Chris and Izetti.

  8. 36 minutes, with fully 14 of them spent on my LOI SENTIENT. Second day in a row with a typo. Ho hum.
  9. I was taken over my target too, with 11:54 on the clock when submitted. At least there were no typos. COME was FOI and SENTIENT, LOI. No trouble with 8a or 20a, byt DEMORALISING needed some thought. Thanks Izetti and Chris.
  10. Just inside 20m here, after yesterday’s walk in the park, so back to what has become normal over recent weeks. Last two in were SENTIENT and finally ROME. I had seen the reverse hidden in mEMORies, but didn’t see the see for the longest time, finally understanding what was going on as I typed in the answer in an interrupted biff – a biff as I typed in the R, and fully sentient as I added the M. Thanks Don and Chris for your respective contributions.
  11. Tough, as one has come to expect from Izetti but an enjoyable challenge. I was slow but relieved to find I was under 3K. Some neat misdirection and quite a few clues would not have been put of place in a 15×15. Thanks to both. John M.
  12. As often, I find myself out of step with some commenters, since I really thought this one easy. The only thing that got me was ‘re-established’ as an anagrind, which I’d not seen before. And hope I never see again.
  13. Where do I start? Finally gave up at 88:01 by resorting to shoving in Rome for my LOI at 19d thinking without any confidence at all that rome just might be some odd word meaning to look at something. I would have been quite pleased therefore to have at least completed this, except it was a DNF really because I put blagged instead of bragged for 3a. I can see how ragged is a better word than lagged for worn out, but I think blagged is closer to my understanding of blustered. Still, what do I know? I suppose I can imagine Mr Johnson bragging/blustering about his past achievements. The other ones that caused me trouble, aside from not seeing the ecclesiastical see, were 2d, where I inexplicably took ages to see the homophone indicator and preternatural which is so unfamiliar a word to me that I assumed all along it meant re-established. COD to 11d.
  14. Tough today. Made worse as I thought I was progressing nicely with the 15×15’s also, to end up closing my laptop after 25 mins with 2 in.

    Made an error on GORMLESS. Needed an aid on SENTIENT. For some reason I put WEST GUY instead of WISE GUY, which I fixed on my final check.

    All over the place. Here’s hoping for a comeback tomorrow!

    RC

  15. Well, this doesn’t ever happen, so with joy today I can say that I finished in 1K! And V is absolutely right – it was pretty much double yesterday’s effort. As I said yesterday, I enjoy a bit of meat on the bones, and Izetti certainly gave us that, with a selection of food related clues, as well as a lot of religious links, as his custom.

    Lots of lovely surfaces, as you all say, but I did particularly like gormless. I don’t have a problem with re-established as an anagrind and it made for a very neat clue.

    FOI Come
    LOI Sentient (never did quite parse it)
    COD Heat (saw the answer straightaway but couldn’t quite see the very-well-hidden hidden for a bit)
    WOD Gormless – just a great word 😊

  16. ….so just over target. I usually nail Izetti fairly quickly (my PB is one of his), but I had to dodge around the grid before I got there.

    We should ask the new Speaker of the House of Commons whether he thinks “won” and “one” are homophones.

    FOI BINNED
    LOI DEMORALISING
    COD HEAT*

    * Many years ago, in a Leeds regional final, we had the clue “It comes before the final passion”. Many of us found it was our LOI, and were looking at “-e-t”. I was one of a fair few who entered “Lent” thinking Passion=Easter. John Grant was (correctly) totally unmoved by that argument !

  17. Had an interrupted solve today, and having started reasonably well (ie managed to get a foothold in the bottom half of the grid) the second sitting turned out to be a prolonged one. Probably at least 45mins in total, with the NW corner and loi 13d Sentient the main hold ups. Nothing too unfair, though the unknown 8ac took a bit of working out without the initial P as a guide, but I thought this was definitely at the trickier end, even for Izetti. Glad to finish with everything parsed, even the dreaded Spoonerism. CoD to 11d Puritans. Good film. Invariant
  18. And I mean “one” in the numerical, not phonological sense here! I finished the entire puzzle – apart from 13 down – in just under twenty minutes and, seeing as it’s an Izetti, was patting myself on the back. Well, that was premature self-congratulation. It took me another ten minutes to solve that final clue.And even then, I couldn’t parse it. Having read the – much-appreciated – blog, I get it but…. Shouldn’t it read soemthing more like “Feeling tense in being nasty in front of teacher”/ “Feeling tense in confusion before head teacher”. I know my versions don’t flow as well as the original (and I gasp at my own arrogant temerity)but splitting the anagrind from the anagrist certainly foxed me! Anyway, sigh…My COD is 2 down because I liked the hidden homophone signal. I was also amused by 21 across but couldn’t see the full extent of its cleverness until I read the blog. Thanks so much for your untangling of my confusions, Chris, and thanks, too, to Izetti, for yet another cracker!
    1. I see what you’re getting at, but the anagrist is TENSE IN T; it isn’t TENSE IN in front of T. The T of ‘teacher’ need not, in other words, be the final T of SENTIENT. If the clue had been ‘Feeling tense in being nasty in front of teacher’–aside from ‘in front of’ being inappropriate for a down clue–you would have (‘tense in’)* all right, but no way to derive T (T is not an abbreviation for ‘teacher’).
        1. Actually, now that I think of it, I don’t think ‘in front of’ would be inappropriate for a down clue.
  19. I decided to solve this on paper for a change. That was helpful as I needed to write out the long anagrams. I thought of PRETERNATURAL quite quickly but annoyingly had not written the anagram fodder down correctly with an extra A instead of an E. Praeternatural did not fit but delayed me somewhat so I left that to the end.
    The proper LOI was SENTIENT.
    And I have now been doing crosswords long enough so that when I see See I think Church, especially when Izetti is the setter.
    19 minutes after correcting 8a.
    David
  20. Indeed it was. 10 minutes over yesterday’s time, giving me 13:49.

    LOI was Rome…easy enough when you see it!

    Would have been quicker if I’d written down the long anagrams.

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

  21. Definitely no personal best today. Managed to get the last one in after a few hours, but then found I’d put “Blagged” in for 3ac. Like a few people above, I thought it worked.

    The top half for me was a struggle and I had to contend with 15dn “Spotty” as my FOI. Biffed 20ac and 21ac, but never really fully parsed “Wise Guy”, so thanks to the blog for the explanation.

    Then it was a bit of a trudge for the rest of the answers, with the NW corner being particularly difficult for some reason. Couldn’t get “Convicts” out of my head for 1dn and didn’t spot the homophone for 2dn. COD was 11dn “Puritans” purely for the “Educating Rita” reference.

    A good challenge overall, only spoilt by getting an answer wrong.

    Was there a bonfire night theme? A few answers of Heat, Arson, Puritans etc. and I thought there might be.

    Edited at 2019-11-05 02:57 pm (UTC)

  22. Well that will teach me to comment (yesterday) about preferring puzzles which make me think a bit. There was plenty to chew over today, but especially with 8a, 13 and 19d and the dreaded spoonerism. For some reason the mere sight of the name my brain turns into complete mush. The answer was clear once all the checkers were in place but not the parsing.
    Despite all of that this was a thoroughly enjoyable work out with my one minor gripe being 3a where I resorted to a mental coin toss and got lucky. Finished in 17.16
    Thanks for the blog
  23. Possibly COY for those atheists amongst us.

    After yesterday’s nirvana, very much in limbo today as a DNF. That’s enough religion methinks.
    Johnny

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