Times Quick Cryptic 1506 by Izetti

Author   chrisw91Posted on Categories Quick Cryptic

On holiday so as brief as ever.

Having struggled in the top half, I was lining this one up as difficult but progress further down and a 13 minute finish has made me ease the stick back to medium.

Loi 20ac as neither definition clicked for some time.

ACROSS
1. Speech at end of month to present gong? (10)
DECORATION – speech (ORATION) at end of month (DEC).
8. Unusual name given to one flowering plant (7)
ANEMONE – anagram (unusual) of NAME, ONE (ONE).
9. Period of aspiration suffering setback, Conservative admitted (5)
EPOCH – aspiration (HOPE) backwards (suffering setback) including Conservative (C).
10. Socially inept fellow participating in dinner-dance (4)
NERD – in din(NER-D)ance.
11. Medical student trained to be so humane (8)
HOUSEMAN – anagram (trained to be) of SO HUMANE – I was fooled here into thinking humane was the definition.
13. Good person, a German author (5)
STEIN – good person (Saint ST), a in German (EIN). Possibly Gertrude, Garth or Jean but I’m not sure.
14. A street in New York is unpleasant (5)
NASTY – a and street (A ST) inside New York (NY).
16. Comedian with repeated hesitation, one stumbling around? (8)
DODDERER – Ken (DODD), hesitation repeated (ER ER).
17. Man on board trying to avoid a mate (4)
KING – man=piece on a chessboard – cryptic definition.
20. Parade gets a bit of support (5)
STRUT – double definition.
21. Novice maybe finding Aintree tricky (7)
TRAINEE – anagram (tricky) of AINTREE.
22. Organised games after short time bringing delights (10)
TRANSPORTS – organised (RAN) and games (SPORTS) after short time (T).
DOWN
1. Depicted as tense (5)
DRAWN – double definition.
2. Chelsea erred — unruly supporters egging others on (12)
CHEERLEADERS – anagram (unruly) of CHELSEA ERRED.
3. Bird in stream hiding head (4)
ROOK – stream without the first letter – hiding head b(ROOK).
4. Article on French department reveals everything (3,3)
THE LOT – article (THE), on (top of) French department (LOT – a department of S central France, in Occitane region – capital: Cahors).
5. Honoured officer is bearing down on worker toeing the line (8)
OBEISANT – honoured officer (OBE), is (IS) on top of worker (ANT). Obedient was waiting in the wings to spring into the answer but I managed to hold it back.
6. Administrator, an ordinary person keeping grip on island one way and another (12)
COMMISSIONER – an ordinary person (COMMONER) holding (keeping grip on) island (IS) and the other way round (SI).
7. Drink with gritty stuff, hard to get swallowed (6)
SHANDY – with gritty stuff (SANDY) swallowing hard (H). COD.
12. One of an older generation having son react badly (8)
ANCESTOR – anagram (badly) of SON REACT).
13. Cruel person being unhappy is repentant ultimately (6)
SADIST – happy (SAD), is (IS), repentan(T).
15. You and I to descend on mostly pebbly seaside resort (6)
WESTON – you and I (WE), on top of (to descend on) mostly pebbly (STON)y.
18. Judge having people at party — no end of merriment (5)
GUESS – people at party without merrimen(T) (GUES)t(S). Had to think about judge=guess but ‘he guessed/judged my age’ works, I think.
19. Grumble when vehicle has minimal power (4)
CARP – vehicle (CAR), minimal power (P).

31 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic 1506 by Izetti”

  1. Very slow going, maybe a personal worst, aside from DNFs. Although I know of WESTON-Super-Mare, it certainly didn’t pop into mind. SHANDY was another a long time in coming. NHO DODD, DNK HOUSEMAN (my LOI). 11:15.
  2. How tickled I am at achieving a rare sub-Kevin today (9 minutes) but I guess I had home advantage as I can’t imagine what it’d be like to have lived one’s life without having Doddy in the background as part of it on radio and TV as both comedian and singer. Sadly missed having died last year aged 90.

    I was on course for something faster but lost time over OBEISANT (just saved myself from biffing OBEDIENT), EPOCH and LOI COMMISSIONER.

  3. All green but really hard. Stuck in THE LOT early without any real confidence and that held up HOUSEMAN as I didn’t really believe the O. Also struggled to see OBEISANT, COMMISSIONER and SHANDY. Been to Weston many times – but surprised not to see its name in full – but started by looking for US reversed rather than WE. Took 24.30, so the latest in a run of slow solves – this latest one less fun that some of the recent tussles.
  4. Some chewy stuff in here today, including; OBEISANT, COMMISSIONER, GUESS and HOUSEMAN. Happily I managed to spell the pesky plant at 8a correctly this week although, even after triple checking it, I wasn’t completely confident until the green squares appeared. Finished in 16.30.
    Thanks for the blog
  5. I fell into the OBEDIENT trap, making 11a hard to see for a while.

    Happily, one of the skills I’ve gradually learned is to reconsider my other answers if I’m finding a clue near the end impossible. Double checking the crossers let me find my mistake and then the HOUSEMAN, a word I’d forgotten, if I ever knew it…

    15d was cunning, especially if you know Weston well—there’s rarely a pebble in sight. Around here we call it Weston-super-Mud, but, you know, fondly.

  6. I was in tune today and fortunately had all the GK required. I liked the jolly judge’s party at 18D. 4:49.
  7. HOUSEMAN got me – pedantically not helped by the fact that a houseman is not a medical student, it is a doctor in his first year post qualification. GUESS and THE LOT for me made this tricky
  8. It seems that I was not too far off the pace today. Having 1a as my FOI is always a bonus. I did wonder whether the comedian at 16a would hold up some solvers and whether Weston was an accepted alternative for Weston-super-Mare but my personal hold ups were the interconnecting OBEISANT, COMMISSIONER (biffed IS for island) and LOI HOUSEMAN (like Chris fooled by thinking either medical or humane was the definition). Thanks Chris and Izetti. 1.1K for a promising start to the day.
  9. With just two left and under 14 minutes on the clock, I thought this was going to be quite quick for an Izetti which contained some chewy and gritty stuff. But I got stuck on 7d trying to fit in CHA for the drink; and I just couldn’t parse 6d – which island/s, which ordinary person etc?
    Eventually I thought of SHANDY and then Commissioner went in unparsed.
    Finished in 18:30. FOI was THE LOT after a bit of trouble getting started.
    COD to SHANDY. A good testing puzzle.
    David
  10. I found this chewy too. I started with OBEDIENT and then worked through the wordplay to correct it. NERD and ANEMONE were my first 2 in. SHERRY and WHISKY had to be decanted before SHANDY hove into view. My younger daughter ofter runs n the Mud at Weston. She took me to see Banksy’s Dismaland there when I visited her a few years ago. Took me a while to see the parsing of TRANSPORTS for some reason. 12:51. Thanks Izetti and Chris.
  11. 18 minutes for me, so I concur that this was above average difficulty. DECORATION and ANEMONE went straight in, but EPOCH held out to the end, not helped for a time by biffing brandy for the drink (bran is gritty stuff to me!). Recognising that I had paid no attention to the Hard part of the clue made me revisit my biff. Thanks all.
  12. For an Izetti puzzle I thought I was going great guns and was even looking at a personal best, but then I got stuck on 11ac and just couldn’t get it so DNF.

    Upon checking the blog, I then realised I had 3 clues completely wrong which is partly the reason I didn’t get 11ac.

    I had “The End” for 4dn, “Obedient” for 5dn and “Whisky” for 7dn – all perfectly reasonable upon first glance (apart from Whisky which I did struggle with). If deliberate, which I am sure it was, some wonderful misdirection that sucked me in good and proper.

    Other than that, a good puzzle that I failed miserably.

    FOI = 10ac “Nerd”
    COD = 16ac “Dodderer”

    Thanks as usual.

  13. Found this hard going but then… it’s an Izetti… always tough but always fair. Unlike those wiser than me, I biffed “obedient ” which totally stuffed that corner. Then again, I’m not sure I would have got “houseman”. I was puzzled by the clue and how to attack it but wondered if I was looking for a synonym for “humane”… No. I also wanted “hitch ” to feature somewhere in 9 across and “see all” to be 4 down. Even though I knew that none of these could be right, I couldn’t dislodge them from my head. Still enjoyed it, though. Thanks so much to Chris and to Izetti.
  14. Surprised to see Anemone again so soon – clued only last week with a similar construction
    1. Sometimes clues seem to be like buses, you get the same ones coming up in a short space of time then you don’t see them for a while. Anemone was only the other day, but then again “Man on Board” appeared only yesterday (albeit it related to draughts and not chess)
  15. Well off the pace today. In hindsight there is nothing outrageously difficult or obscure but, equally, very few write-ins. For reasons I couldn’t fully justify at the time (and certainly can’t now) I had STAG at 17a which made 6d impossible.

    Many thanks to Izetti and Chris.
    9’15”

  16. Really struggled to get into this puzzle from Izetti – same as his last QC. Gave up after 30 minutes with only 10 clues in (one of which was incorrectly OBEDIANT).

    I seem to remember we had ANEMONE not that long ago?

    I don’t deny that everything is fair, but most of the GK and wordplay was out of reach for me.

    Edited at 2019-12-17 11:53 am (UTC)

  17. ………………………….by Jove, I needed that !” Ken Dodd was a master of the comedy art who will be sadly missed.

    I biffed COMMISSIONER and parsed it afterwards.

    Currently 6th on the leaderboard – but Verlaine is up in 4th. I’m due my “once a month day” any time soon !

    FOI ANEMONE
    LOI WESTON
    COD DODDERER

  18. Like others, I found this very difficult (that’s two in a row from Izetti, so I hope it’s not the start of a trend). The LHS wasn’t too bad, and a second visit to 1ac helped clear up the top corner, but I found the NE almost impossible. I needed a second sitting to see Shandy, which prompted hope/Epoch, but I then fell into the Obedient trap (which looked even more convincing as Obediant…). Eventually I went back to thinking that 11ac was an anagram and this time got Houseman, which made the unknown loi Obeisant a write-in. Hard work. Invariant
  19. Very tough IMO. I seemed to suffer most of the problems referred to above, not least biffing OBEDIENT until I realised that 11a had to be HOUSEMAN even though I don’t consider a Houseman to be a student, still. Just a bit too clever for a supposed QC and it lost my attention to the point that I had a little doze in the middle (a good party last night). Perhaps it was just me but this was no fun, despite some quite nice clues on reflection. Thanks Chris for confirming my parsing. Izetti is just trying to cement his reputation as a hard man, I think. John M.
  21. Obeisant, but houseman and commissioner did for me, and I gave up a little meekly after 17 mins.
  22. Again solving while explaining to my middle son and his American chum. Lots of admiration from them for Izetti’s skill, with special rounds of applause for COMMISSIONER and their COD KING. They were delighted to notch 3.1 Kevins.

    Thanks Izetti and Chris.

    Templar

    1. I also wondered that whilst blogging. I’m not sure if someone who receives an OBE is called an officer but it turns out that there are 6 OBE officers who, I think administrate the process:
      Officers[edit]
      The Order has six offices:[9] King of Arms is not a member of the College of Arms, as are many other heraldic officers. Gentleman Usher of the Purple Rod does not – unlike the Order of the Garter equivalent, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod – perform any duties related to the House of Lords.
      Prelate: Bishop of London, the Rt Hon. & Rt Rev. Dame Sarah Mullally DBE[10]
      Dean: Dean of St Paul’s (ex officio), the Very Rev. David Ison
      Secretary: The Secretary of the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, Lt-Col Michael Vernon
      Registrar: The Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Home Civil Service
      King of Arms: Lt-Gen Sir Robert Fulton KBE
      Lady Usher of the Purple Rod: Dame Amelia Fawcett DBE CVO
  24. The setter might get the definitions correct! A houseman is a doctor NOT a medical student!!!
  25. V hard! Needed aids to complete this. For 11a I would suggest cluing as ‘resident male for WW1 poet’ or ‘home or Shropshire poet’ or similar. This would have avoided the student/doctor difficulties.
  26. I had a hard time with trying to fit in cough (COnservative) with UGH (something you say when you have a set back). I learnt I was completely wrong!
  27. Re 11a the clue makes it clear that the medical student is already ‘trained’…! RB
  28. Very difficult so didn’t finish. Disappointed with this puzzle as this setter can do better- very far fetched definitions I thought. Not suitable for a quick cryptic

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