Times Quick Cryptic No 1613 by Izetti

Author   therotterPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic
Whilst there were some very nice clues here, and nothing obscure or unusual, I’m not convinced that this offering from Izetti is up to his usual very high standards.  It may just be me, but I’ve identified a couple of little niggles in the notes below.

I completed this, fully parsed in 9 minutes, for a good day – I don’t often score below 10 minutes, so it definitely wasn’t hard by my scale of judgement.  However, I have said that in the past only to find that others disagree – comments on the blog should show what others thought about this one.

Thanks Izetti.  Readers, please let me know your thoughts and times.

Across

1  It’s bad at sea, stormy – lots of info here (8)
DATABASE – Anagram (stormy) of [BAD AT SEA].  DATABASES are an example of what we used to call in the IT trade ‘structured information’, and structured would have made a nice anagrind in this clue – perhaps ‘It’s bad at sea – structured information here’.  However, what do I know, I’m just a blogger, not a setter!
5  Chinese dynasty, something bright and good (4)
SUNG – SUN (something bright) and G{ood}.  SUNG and SONG seem to be interchangeable for the name of this dynasty that ruled China from 960 until 1269 – perhaps our China correspondent (Horryd) can add something here about why the alternatives.  My first thought here was actually TING, which turns out not to be a Chinese dynasty at all, but sounds credible, and I reason that if the SONG dynasty can be called the SUNG dynasty, then why can’t the TONG be the TING?  I think I’m just in a strange mood today!
8 Nobleman keeping nothing in outhouse (5)
BARON – O (nothing) in BARN (outhouse).
9 Bad look coming from someone vile, yes? (4,3)
EVIL EYE – Hidden answer in (coming from) the words {someon}E VILE, YE{s}
11  Pose to offer word of thanks in love (11)
AFFECTATION – TA (word of thanks) inside (in) AFFECTION (love).
13 Release a Parisian philosopher, guillotine finally spared (6)
UNLOCK – UN (French, or Parisian, for a) and LOCK{e} ({guillotine}E finally spared (omitted)).  John LOCKe was an English philosopher known as the father of liberalism.
14  Figure girl collects rubbish (6)
STATUE – SUE (girl) containing (collecting) TAT (my favourite kind of rubbish!)
16  I noticed Ron splashing around bathroom product (11)
CONDITIONER – Anagram (splashing around) of [I NOTICED RON].
18  Eastern bird coming to a lake, not stopping (7)
ETERNAL – E{astern) and TERN (bird) followed by (coming to) A L{ake}.
19  Finally allowing outsiders to depart with everything included (2,3)
IN ALL – {f}INALL{y} (hidden in ‘finally’ after the outside letters have been dropped / departed).  Under normal circumstances, I would argue that the expression ALL IN is more often used to indicate that everything is included, but IN ALL also works, as when totting up a bill and saying ‘that’ll be £10.50 in all’, as opposed to going on an ALL IN holiday for instance in the other case.
20  One’s confused, giving negative responses (4)
NOES – Anagram (confused) of [ONE’S].
21  Most magnificent garden redesigned, facing street (8)
GRANDEST – Anagram (redesigned) of [GARDEN] followed by (facing) ST{reet}.

Down

1  Smears experts (4)
DABS – Double definition, the second less well known.  As well as a smear, a dab is also defined as an expert, as in ‘to be a dab / expert hand at’.
2  Pretend not to notice what Nelson would do spinning round (4,1,5,3)
TURN A BLIND EYE – Nelson famously put his spyglass to his blind eye during the battle of Copenhagen and was reported to say ‘I see no ships’.  Actually, what he said was ‘I really do not see the signal!’  Whatever the case, being blind in one eye, if he span around, he would turn a blind eye.
3  Blessing has been surprisingly given to dissident group (11)
BENEFACTION – Anagram (surprisingly) of [BEEN] followed by (given to) FACTION (dissident group).
4  Embrocation finally rubbed into chest – awful stink (6)
STENCH – {embrocatio}N (finally) inside (rubbed into) anagram (awful) of [CHEST].
6  Computer screen maybe shows fine creatures running around (4,9)
USER INTERFACE – Anagram (running around) of [FINE CREATURES].  A computer screen is one example of a USER INTERFACE, hence the ‘maybe’, others include a mouse and a keyboard.
7  Teenager fixed drink (5,3)
GREEN TEA – Anagram (fixed) of [TEENAGER].
10  Inane tot in front of teacher, in trouble for not listening  (11)
INATTENTION – Anagram (in trouble) of [INANE TOT IN] and first letter (front of) T{eacher}.
12  Doddery uncle getting on, eating hospital meal (8)
LUNCHEON – Anagram (doddery) of [UNCLE] and (getting) ON and containing (eating) H{ospital}.
15 German dictator battered the French? Right! (6)
HITLER – HIT (battered) LE (the in French) and R{ight}.
17  Dull pad (4)
FLAT – Double definition.

50 comments on “Times Quick Cryptic No 1613 by Izetti”

  1. I once again managed to miss a hidden; I saw ‘vile’ and thought it was part of the anagrist (of what? you ask) and biffed, only to see what was going on after submitting. LOI FLAT; took me some time to see. 4:52.
    1. I’m not sure that I understand any logic for Gove as a possible answer for 1d.
    2. I’m not sure that I understand any logic for Gove as a possible answer for 1d.
  3. Fascinating puzzle that beat me. All green in 23m which is starting to become a normal time for me but the story was really a slow start followed by a quick middle and then being stuck for seven whole minutes. Just three acrosses on the first pass and all of them anagrams – I had to wait until 16a to write one in by which time panic was rising. A bit better on the downs and the grid then filled in nicely to be all done except for two at 16m. LOI was IN ALL which completely defeated me, stuck that in because what else could it be but certainly not parsed but also unparsed was INATTENTION, fixated on ‘inane’ being the anagram indicator and then not surprisingly couldn’t make sense of the rest of the clue and in the end bunged the answer in as it was what most nearly fitted the definition although I hadn’t made use of ‘trouble’ in the clue. Submitted with a resigned air and then most surprised by being all green. Needed the blog to see what was going on with both those clues – thanks Rotter.
  4. Quite a tough workout, I thought, involving a lot of hopping around the grid to keep up momentum. But I had false starts on too many clues and some of them, such as DABS and SUNG required revisiting a number of times before they yielded their secrets. 14 minutes, so that’s 3 consecutive 10-minute targets missed following a run of 7 achieved.
  5. 11 mins. Last 2 were sung? and unlock. Tried unlace first but quickly saw the light.

    16a could be I noticed Ron drunk bathroom product.

    COD luncheon.

    1. Except so far as I can see your clue isn’t a grammatical sentence.
  6. Solved on paper so no time really but managed a steady solve. 7 or 8 minutes perhaps.
    14ac STATUE is very similar to a clue in the main cryptic two weeks ago: Figure’s appeal, eating junk (6)
  7. I thought “what Nelson would do spinning round” a bit odd, but turned a blind eye to it and just kept solving. Like our blogger I too thought IN ALL looked the wrong way round. Otherwise all good… as is the blog. Thanks Don and Rotter. COD to the nice hidden EVIL EYE. 4:37.
    1. Spinning round would certainly help you to TURN A BLIND EYE.
  8. As a fairly newboy I feared for the worst when I saw it was Izetti, but this seemed fairly straightforward. Lots of anagrams which is always good for me. Finished in 18:06 anything under 20 is good for me. Thanks for the blog, always very interesting. And thanks to Izetti for being kind.
  9. I got a bit stuck on this one. I tried to solve the shorter clues first . This was a big mistake as the easiest clue in the puzzle was 2d which opened things up for me.
    As FOI I tried TING which led to GREEN TEA. Thought 19a might be IN BAG ( AG = AllowinG outsiders). Finally had to write out the letters for 6d and then do corrections. Thought I had finished and I’d missed 4d completely.
    16:07 in the end, and all finally correct. I liked the puzzle. COD to 6d. David
  10. I don’t know if I was feeling brighter than normal today or whether this was a gift from Izetti. My first sub-10min solve for a while with a very similar experience to rotter and a time just a few seconds longer than his. The NW was, unusually, filled in with no gaps and I moved around the grid anti-clockwise with even the longer answers seeming to flow. LOI was STENCH; best-hidden answers were EVIL EYE & IN ALL (both biffable, I thought). My COD was DABS (although I, too, liked 6d). Thanks to Izetti and therotter. John M.

    Edited at 2020-05-14 09:36 am (UTC)

  11. There really should be someone called Baron Evil-eye (laughs malevolently) – maybe there is? Really struggled with this one, not helped by skipping round the grid and not seeing the Nelson clue until later. COD User Interface although It’s slightly dubious – I suppose it impacts on a sense. 20m in all. Thanks all
  12. … with a quick, for me, solve in 8 minutes but a vague feeling that some of the clues weren’t from the highest echelon. 2D (Nelson) seems a bit clunky – any clue on 3 lines in the printed paper begs the question of why so long. And in 1D Dabs, while I’m familiar with the phrase “a dab hand”, I’ve not met dab used alone.

    LOI 13A Unlock, was looking for a 7-letter French philosopher i could drop the final E from before the centime dropped.

    I notice four words have the letters TION in them but can’t make any more of it than that …

    Thanks to Rotter for the blog

    Cedric

    1. DAB may be a bit fishy (groan !) but Chambers gives it.
      1. Well a fishy clue might indeed have been better! How about just “Smears fish”? But then I often wonder why the setters choose the exact cluing that they do.
        1. I also wondered about this but Collins has it too.
          Smear also seems rather a stretch, suggesting to me a heavy or too heavy an application whereas dab would be light. Any painters or artists have a view?
          1. I suppose a smear can be thought small, although Tony Hancock in the Blood Donor disagreed:
            “this is just a smear”
            “it may be just smear to you but its life or death to some poor bloke”.
  13. 22 minutes, just over target but good for an Izetti. I don’t get the setter’s name on my phone, and I never guessed that this was one of his. There seemed to be a lot of anagrams and I wasn’t on his wavelength for the double definitions, but I still managed a decent time.
    Thanks to Izetti and The Rotter, excellent blog as usual.

    Brian

  14. After yesterday’s miserable experience, I was a bit unhappy to see Izetti’s name at the top of the grid because it made me expect to get a thorough bashing two days in a row. But no! I verily skipped through this, finishing in twenty minutes which is 5 minutes over target but very very acceptable. I was able to fill in the grid in a more or less linear way, beginning with 1 across and finishing with 17 down (hasn’t FLAT turned up quite a few times recently? And 7 down, GREEN TEA? ). I was held up a little bit en route by 5 across, SUNG, flirting, as others here did, with TANG and by 18 across, ETERNAL. I don’t know why that last one foxed me – it’s very straightforward clueing. I think it’s because I was sure that it was going to turn out to be the name of some obscure oriental wild fowl. I liked lots of clues here but finally decided on TURN A BLIND EYE, 2 down, as my COD. I also enjoyed what, to me, seems some very imaginative parsing as in, eg, 9 across, EVIL EYE, offering, as it does, both a hidden and a cryptic definition. Ditto, the nice parsing of 19 across, IN ALL, where the use of the word “finally ” is pleasingly misleading. Super fun! Thanks so much, Rotter. Enjoyed, as always, your blog. BTW, I would have been a bit stumped by your alternative clue for 1 across – but I totally understand the misgivings that your expert knowledge of IT would create. Thanks, too, to Izetti, for a metaphorically sunny start to a literally sunny day.
  15. What’s Adolf doing hiding in the QC? Jack when did he last make an appearance?

    Time 8.15mins

    FOI EVIL EYE – hardly hidden!

    LOI 6dn USER (had the other bit early)

    COD 12dn LUNCHEON at IKEA!

    WOD Well I suppose………..!

    I loved JO JO RABBIT

    1. I wonder what you are trying to say, horryd? Most of your gnomic comments pass me by, I’m afraid.
      1. Firstly, I wonder who you are?

        Edited at 2020-05-14 11:37 am (UTC)

  16. ….INNER TENSION at 10D, nor, indeed, anywhere much else on this one. It did take me a while to crack my LOI, despite entering “user” early on.

    We haven’t seen The Don for a while, and this did seem slightly below his usual immaculate standard. Rotter, on the other hand, is in top form.

    FOI DATABASE
    LOI USER INTERFACE
    COD AFFECTATION
    TIME 0.87K

  17. A less difficult but no less enjoyable offering from Izetti today. I started with BARON, which gave me DABS and DATABASE and finished with SUNG. 7:25. Thanks Izetti and Rotter.
  18. There is no evidence to confirm the NELSON story, but it is a good story though. He actually just ignored a direct order but given the outcome I doubt anybody raised the issue. HITLER was, of course, Austrian not German.
    Enough of the pedantry. I found this pretty straightforward, especially by Izetti’s standards, but good fun for all that.
    PlayUpPompey
    1. Hitler was leader of Germany and a dictator, that makes him a German dictator in any reasonable person’s book.
  19. Feared the worst when I saw Izetti’s name at the top, but like others have said, this seemed to be a gentler offering than usual from him, the plentiful anagrams helping me to a slightly better than average time of 34:06.
  20. I really struggled with this and had one howler which made things even more tricky. I biffed BENEDICTION for 3d, which is one of those religious sounding words I don’t really know the meaning of, and caused me all sorts of brain ache for 11a – a good example of the perils of biffing because a closer look at the clue should have flagged up that a DICTION could not be dissident group.
    I also didn’t spot the anagram at 6d for way too long, spent far too long dithering over SUNG and eventually finished in 19.13 with IN ALL and FLAT.
    After I’ve recovered I might try the 15×15 for some light relief!!.
    Thanks to rotter
  21. Like plett I biffed BENEDICTION but fortunately I then lingered to puzzle over the parsing for long enough to realise that I had FACTIONed it up. Phew. However, many other moments of incomprehension took their toll and I ended up with 2.5K and a Not Brilliant Day – it didn’t feel as hard as that, but somehow the Don kept leading me up the garden path. Unlike the majority view so far, however, I thought that it was a fine puzzle with some lovely whimsy.

    When my children were small we used to chase little DABS with a net through the shallows on a beach in the West Highlands … now that they are adults they still love doing it!

    FOI DATABASE, LOI UNLOCK (a little convoluted, I thought), COD AFFECTATION.

    Thanks Rotter and Don.

    Templar

    Edited at 2020-05-14 10:48 am (UTC)

  22. Around 30 mins for me, but would have been quicker if I also hadn’t put Benediction for 3dn which left me puzzled for 11ac. Overall, I agree Izetti puzzles are normally trickier.

    With regards to “In all” for 19ac, I interpreted it as an expression sometimes used at the beginning of a sentence, similar to “At the end of the day” or “All things included”.

    FOI – 1ac “Database”
    LOI – 11ac “Affectation”
    COD – 13ac “Unlock”

    Thanks as usual.

  23. Got Turn a Blind Eye and Evil Eye straight away but that gave me false hope. Wish I had solved DABS without having to look it up eventually as that would have helped a lot. Had not heard of Sung dynasty.

    Oh well.

    Thanks all.

  24. An enjoyable romp through the grid today meant that we clocked up quite a fast time (would share what it was but the iPad reckoned we had taken 4 hours – think it might be linked to the time when we open the Concise Crossword). Lots of fun anagrams to mentally wrestle with.

    FOI: database
    LOI: Sung (like others we originally entered Tang and changed when the anagram for 6D wouldn’t work)
    COD: turn a blind eye (not the hardest to solve but gently amusing)

    Thanks Izetti and Rotter

  25. I’m a nine- minuter as well- not too tricky although for a while I was obsessed with the Ming dynasty
  26. I was another that biffed benediction for 2dn and then spent some time wondering whether 11ac was a word I’d never heard of. Sorted it out in the end. Everything else fell into place fairly easily although I waited until I had 6dn before entering Sung at 5ac (my knowledge of Chinese dynasties beginning pretty well non-existent). Overall a nice puzzle I thought but a bit heavily reliant on anagrams.
    FOI – 1ac Database
    LOI – 11ac Affectation
    COD – 6dn User Interface. The clueing made me think of some wild out of control screensaver.
  27. Izetti and Teazel labels were affixed to the wrong puzzles! I didn’t post yesterday, but I struggled mightily. EVentually finished in >20 mins, which is not something that had happened for some time.

    Today on the other hand, was anagram heavy, and was bang on 7 minutes, which is my target time

  28. Considering I scribbled down the wrong anagrist for 1ac, and consequently completely ignored the gift of a clue at 2d when I moved well away from the NW to try my luck (!) elsewhere, I wasn’t too surprised that I took nearly 30mins today. Not as difficult as some puzzles from Izetti, but more than enough to keep me interested from my false start to loi 6d, User Interface. CoD to the delightfully constructed 3d, Benefaction. Invariant
  29. Much more appropriate for a QC than yesterday’s sorry offering, I think .
  30. Very pleased to finish in just under 12 minutes and I enjoyed all the anagrams.
    In 13A I don’t really understand the need for ‘guillotine’ in the clue as I would have thought that ‘finally spared’ alone would indicate the missing ‘E’ in ‘LOCKE.
    COD to CONDITIONER.
    Thanks to Izetti for making my day and to Mr Rotter even though he was 3 minutes faster than me!
  31. Abt 20 min for Izetti, normally would be double that. No real holdups, 5a had so many 4 letter possibilities, but helped by 6d. Liked 1d. Thanks to all.
  32. just a shade over 10 minutes, with NHO sung LOI after the anagram at 6d confirmed the “u”. Hadn’t spotted how “in-all” worked so thanks to the blogger for that, and to Izetti for the puzzle.
  34. There have been several romanisations of Chinese, but the established modern one, pinyin, has SONG not SUNG

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