Quick Cryptic 3092 by Kybos

94 comments on “Quick Cryptic 3092 by Kybos”

1. I found this to be as tough as yesterday’s, and my time of 11.50 reflects that. I particularly had trouble in the nw corner where HAULAGE, WATCH and BUSTLING eluded me for a long time. Having said that, I think it was a well constructed puzzle with some excellent clueing. Well done Kybos.
   My total time for the week was 56.19, giving me a daily average of 11.16. A tough week, at least for me.
   I cannot believe I’m the first person to comment today, and assume there is something wrong with the system. Perhaps this comment won’t appear?

2. Is this a debut from Kybos? If so I thought it was a fairly well pitched puzzle that I enjoyed getting to grips with. There were a few tricky ones but with enough checkers in place they did eventually succumb to some head scratching and a closer study of the wordplay.

   Started with SAGA and finished with the BUSTLING SIGNATURE combo in 9.46.
   Thanks to Curarist and Kybos

3. Found this very tough, finally crossing the line at 30.13 with a couple unparsed, thanks Curarist for unpicking table and skilful in particular.

   Like AndyPandy found the NW very tricky but got a good foothold in the NE.

   Liked evacuate, thanks Kybos

4. I’m obviously being a bit dim here but how is tick a synonym for flash?

   1. a brief moment: in a tick/flash?

   2. I think it’s from usage like “just a tick” and “quick as a flash” both meaning a short moment of time.

      Found this one tough but fair and fun, 19:37 for me.

   3. Do Americans call a tick a flash (as in correct not wrong in terms of marking homework). Not to be confused with the Nike swoosh.

      The clue left me cold…

      1. We (well, I anyway) don’t use ‘tick’ or ‘flash’ to indicate the symbol for ‘correct’, or ‘tick’ to mean a short moment.

5. This one definitely put the Kibosh on me as I jumped around trying to get a foothold. Made progress in the lower half of the grid and slowly worked my way upwards with much gnashing of teeth.
   Not quick but got there just short of 30mins, so at the harder end of my scale.
   Thanks Curarist and welcome Kybos.

6. I think I biffed SKILFUL; don’t really remember. EVACUATE took me some time; in fact, the whole puzzle seems to have taken me a lot of time. 9:51

   1. It’s actually EVACUATE.

      1. Sorry; I meant (and have changed to) EVACUATE.

7. 11:53. Several harder ones slowed me down. SKILFUL was tricky and I was slow to separate the ‘Empty out’ and ‘all contents’ for EVACUATE. I’m not sure I’d seen S for ‘section’ before either, but (sorry) it’s in Chambers at least.

   On the basis of a TfTT site search it looks like this is Kybos’ first puzzle.

   Thanks and welcome to Kybos and thanks (and sympathies!) to Curarist

   1. S for SECTION is widely used in a legal context eg “He was arrested under s.43 of the Crossword Act 1846 for using four abbreviations in one clue.”

8. 14:01. The new setter making us work hard, but then it all fell nicely into place. FOI SHOW which I thought was missing an initial letter indicator, but if S = Section it’s fine. LOIs the TICK / TABLE combo. I liked EVACUATE, very clever. Thanks Kybosh and thank you Curarist for going above and beyond

9. 50:31 (average: 37, target: 47)

   I found this incredibly hard. But it’s the most enjoyable QC I’ve done. Everything was fair. No NHOs. NO BHOs. Just a lot of good misdirection. It was not hard in the way the 15×15 is. A really great QC.

   Thanks Curarist and Kybos

10. 28.24 (goal 15). Doing ‘ok’, six to go, long pause then four came quickly and the final two (SKILFUL and BUSTLING) required a slow march through treacle. BUSTLING, in hindsight, annoyingly simple, my suggesting ‘fish’ in lieu of ‘ling’ didn’t help. Felt many answers came in at a slightly skewed angle (e.g. SIGNATURE, NESSIE, EMPLOYER), which we found both refreshing and challenging.
    An enjoyable half hour.
    COD EVACUATE.
    Thanks to Kybos and extra thanks to Curarist.

11. 7:40; on the tough side for sure. Kept trying to make SKINFUL work for some reason. Enjoyed the puzzle. Thank you Curarist and Kybos.

12. My Somerset members club membership is going to be revoked. Struggled with cider yesterday and BATH today. Generally hard with depressingly familar inaccurate typing with TAvLE also wrecking the LIFEvOAT. One pink square for two errors in 21.02. Loved HAULAGE – had me utterly, utterly baffled for ages.

    1. LIFEvOAT – what happens when you have too few spaces for too many passengers 🤣

13. Always exciting to have a new setter. Kybos is Greek for “cube” or “die” (as in the singular of dice), so maybe we have a Classical gambler on our hands. Mind you it’s also an anagram of “bosky” and “kybosh” without the H, so possibilities abound.

    Really good puzzle, I thought, with plenty of easy ones to populate the grid but half a dozen toughies requiring winkling out. I made a hash of EVACUATE at first pass, reading it as “empty out all contents” and thus requiring the first and last letters … BY seemed a good start but bypkmmhd was less promising!

    COD to TABLE by a short head from BUSTLING. All done in 09:20 for a Good Day.

    Great fun, many thanks Kybos for rolling the dice and Curarist for slogging through the current lack of Java. (I too wrestled with the Demon of Random Line Spacing, failed to overcome it, and was then upbraided by someone yesterday for unsatisfactory line-spacing 🙄.)

14. Toughish but ultimately satisfying puzzle all green in 15 minutes. Thanks setter.
    LOI was the unparsed SKILFUL so thanks Curarist. Also took ages to parse HAULAGE which seemed pretty straightforward in the end.

15. I thought this was a very good crossword. At 16.04 I wasn’t exactly quick but it kept me interested the whole time. I enjoyed the sneaky nature of several clues which looked impossible and ended up being deceptively simple. Like SIGNATURE, BUSTLING and SKILFUL. Great start for Kybos, and thank you to our much put-upon blogger.

    ALSO, I should let everyone know I have been in touch with the lovely Tina, not seen here for quite some time, who says her life doesn’t leave much room for crosswords these days but says hi to all. We hope to see her back here again. Right now she’s on holiday in Greece, about to leave Athens for a wedding in Rhodes, so things aren’t so bad…

    1. Excellent news, and I do hope she finds the time for an occasional visit.

    2. That is very good news – was wondering what had happened to her. Well done to you, and warmest greetings to her.

    3. Do tell her she is remembered and missed. I always enjoyed her distinctive and entertaining comments. Hi, Tina!

    4. Thanks for the Tina Update 👍

    5. Thanks for the update, Lindsay. I had been worrying about Tina, since the last time I saw her post she was about to go into hospital! I miss her cheerful outlook on life and interesting posts.

    6. Thanks for keeping us up to date, Lindsay. It’s always hard to know whether to enquire about people when they disappear from the site, so it’s good news to hear that Tina is keeping well 😊

    7. Excellent news about the excellent Tina, thank you!

    8. Great news, thanks Lindsay!

16. I managed 13. Missed a couple that I should have solved eg EACH and the waiter anagram. I twigged REME but got no further.

    Thanks C and K

17. First of all, a warm welcome to Kybos.
    Started quickly enough in the NW and, when CoD Bustling went in without too much delay, I thought our new setter was shaping up to be a very welcome addition. Things got a little harder lower down the grid, but a sub-20 was still in sight before Half 🙄 and loi Skilful (. . .wrong end of clue) made a mockery of that idea and left me scrambling for a window seat.
    I suspect Kybos will take a bit of getting used to, with most of my difficulties today coming from not understanding their word play, but a good start. Invariant

18. Surprised to find myself 8th on the leaderboard despite being over my QSNITCH average. Two straight passes though!

    FOI POSTDATE
    LOI ALARM
    COD WATCH
    TIME 5:04

19. Finished it … frightened to say any more today.

20. A tricky but enjoyable puzzle. Took me ages to sort out HAULAGE. SHOW was FOI. TABLE brought u the rear. 9:31. Thanks Kybos and Curarist.

21. Tricky. First one this week to take me into the SCC with 21:39.

    Chucked in the last two, TICK and SKILFUL without parsing. Also couldn’t see how ETERNALLY worked.

    TABLE looks odd. The tories leave the police officer not the other way around. I’ve commented about this kind of thing before but it apparently allowed.

    COD EVACUATE.

    1. I do agree about the parsing of TABLE, Merlin. I got it, of course, but found the construction very confusing.
       Note. I thought the ‘Error 500’ issue was less of a problem today. Fat chance; this is my fourth attempt to post this.

    2. I read “leaves” as “rejects”, as in “take it or leave it”.

       1. Doesn’t do it for me, I’m afraid. In a sense, it doesn’t matter because we all got the answer.

          1. How about “leave” as in “abandon” (in both Collins and Chambers)? As in to leave one’s spouse.

             So police officer (constable) leaves (abandons, or rejects) the Tories (cons). Thus only “table” remains behind.

             1. Too arcane for me. I am a simple soul, at heart.
                To me, ‘Police officer leaves’ means he/she goes out of the door (or whatever). The ‘cons’ leave in this clue.

                1. With you Blighter I am – all the comments above I accept, but ultimately with this Yoda speak, I struggle 😅

                   1. 😄

22. 22:44 for the solve. Slowest time since Aug 1st tells a story. 75% of it was done in nine mins but the intersection of PATIENCE, SKILFUL, ETERNALLY plus the outlying TICK and HAULAGE (LOI) were just blanks and evaded alphatrawls for a while. There were some enjoyable clues in there – I just don’t recall what now – the long endgame has wiped the memory of them.

    On looking back through almost every clue of this challenged in some way – either a misleading definition, multiple moving parts, an unknown abbreviation or a synonym. Of course we want some challenge – but the Goldilocks amount. Just a bit too much for my liking.

    It’s a been week of solves that’s got slower by the day – totalling 1hr12 but at least with 5/5 successful solves.

    Have a good weekend everybody and thanks to Curarist And Kybos – I won’t go for the abbreviation today!

23. Too slow to be able to compete with the kybosh funnies.
    This was tough. I did most of it within the SCC barrier but the NW quadrant did for me. I made sure I finished but the counter showed 29 when I staggered over the line.
    Some very good clues but I did not get close to Kybos’s wavelength, I’m afraid. I’m sure a lot of thought went into setting this puzzle but it demanded more thought than usual from me for a QC. No problem with that; it was all fair (and it led to many d’oh moments).
    I’m just not happy with the way my brain made such heavy weather of it all.
    Thanks to Kybos and Curarist.

24. 14 minutes Enjoyable.

25. DNF. Carelessly put Lifebelt at first instead of LIFEBOAT which made SE even trickier.
    Had to reveal SIGNATURE and various others.
    Heavy weather indeed.
    Thanks vm, Curarist. Again sorry the new format is such a hassle for bloggers.

26. A slow but enjoyable solve with some long puzzled pauses: the TICK/TABLE pair were the last two in, after a lot of trawling.
    Plenty to chew on, felt closer to 15×15 style in several places but all quite fair once unravelled.
    Liked the EVACUATE clue but only saw what was going on once I had some checkers in place. I share Merlin’s comment on TABLE, even if the approach is allowed. I spent ages trying to find a work from which I could subtract DI, PC, DC, etc to get something that worked.
    Well done Curarist for battling through, and welcome to our new setter albeit I think they may give me some hard times in future…

27. Tricky but not as hard as yesterday’s in my book. It took me a while to get used to Kybos’s style but I got there in the end, crossing the line at 26 minutes. At least 5 unparsed so I really needed the blog today – thanks Curarist.

    FOI – 10ac BATH
    LOI – 18dn TABLE
    COD- 11ac EVACUATE

    Thanks and welcome to Kybos

28. DNF.
    I found this very tough and stopped at 30′.
    As SNITCH is 125 I don’t feel too bad with this.

    Just not on the wavelength.
    To me tick/ flash aren’t interchangeable – even with Dr Jack’s explanation. Oh well. I will hopefully remember it for crosswordland.

    Thanks for the helpful blog Curarist.

29. 8:22

    On seeing a(nother) new setter, one always wonders how it will play out. I found the clueing quite accessible with only ETERNALLY not fully parsed – didn’t equate ‘join’ with ENTER whilst in flight. I liked DISTURB and BUSTLING.

    Thanks Curarist and welcome, Kybos

30. Can anyone help me see how enter means join?

    1. One can enter the priesthood.

       1. *chabuduo has entered the chat*

31. Welcome to Kybos, who keeps up the tradition of posting an interesting and pretty challenging puzzle for their first outing. I took 22:56, but as I am currently overseas and very jetlagged, my time probably says more about me than the puzzle. I failed to parse SKILFUL and found the wordplay for TABLE odd – surely it is the Tories who leave the police officer not the other way round? In a similar vein I am never sure with a clue like 4D whether it is PSI reversed to give ISP or the other way round, as the wordplay can read either way, but fortunately the crossing across clues settled that one.

    All done, but I’ll wait till I can tackle Kybos when fully awake before fully deciding if we get on. Many thanks Curarist for the blog.

    1. I think the idea is that it parsed as “police office leaves the Tories (behind)”. Kind of like if you wrote the Easter Bunny leaves eggs.

32. Like others, I found this very hard for a QC but enjoyable.

    9:00 on a day when I have no particular excuse for poor performance indicates to me that this is likely one of the hardest QCs this year.

33. Excellent and enjoyable puzzle even if it did take me almost 18 minutes to complete. Much of the time was spent thinking about SKILFUL and TICK. Solving the latter was especially ponderous, including a tiresome alphabet trawl. Not the first time I’ve been (almost) defeated by a DD.

34. 28.53 I was completely off the wavelength today. The NW and SE were both slow. LOI SKILFUL. Thanks Curarist and Kybos.

35. Well I’m quite annoyed with myself after stupidly putting in PHI instead of PSI. I always imagine computers and their abbreviations will be complicated and meaningless to me, e.g. HyperText Markup Language for HTML, so it didn’t cross my mind to think of another Greek letter once PHI had crossed my radar. Aside from that, my time of 20:40 was reasonable given other people’s times. Apart from my LOI EMPLOYER, the bottom half seemed a lot easier than the top. Liked EVACUATE. Thanks Curarist and welcome to Kybos.

36. I can’t see how 18 down works – surely the Tories have left the policeman?

    1. See comments above…

37. My thanks to Kybos and Curarist.
    Jolly tricky I thought. Wasn’t certain I would finish. Took a while.
    8a Bustling; could not force a FISH in there.
    2d Haulage; took forever and FARE wasn’t going to fit anywhere.
    7d Tight. Trews fit but wasn’t parseable.
    11d Eternally was easy to biff but following the N down took a minute.
    13d Skilful hard to parse. Expert finally was of course T, but no.

    1. Thanks for alerting me to the NHO “trews”, which I just looked up. I hope I can remember it at need.

38. Hooray for Tina! Thanks C for reaching out. Holidaying in Greece is by far a better situation than I had feared.
    25:43
    Done by skilful bath employer(sounds dodgy) MER as I would bathe the baby or give it a bath…?
    Ta… CAK seems fitting today but Hooray for Tina!

39. 10.04

    Yes, a few tricky ones (HAULAGE and SKILFUL, which totally bamboozled me).

    Congrats Kybos on the first puzzle and thanks Curarist

40. 31 mins…

    Hard I thought and a real slog. Still not sure how we’re supposed to know that 1ac is the first letter of each word. In addition, I thought the backwards “reme” for 22ac was a touch on the difficult side. Part of the problem was putting “ISP” for 4dn – a 5o/50 shot that didn’t initially pay off.

    Not sure if this is Kybos’s debut or not – I don’t recall them being on here before.

    FOI – 9ac “Saga”
    LOI – 18ac “Tick”
    COD – 14ac “Upbeat”

    Thanks as usual!

    1. I think SHOW is derived from abbreviations rather than initial letters, e. g. O for a cricket over, W = wife, H = husband. The only one I’ve
       not seen before is S for section (see Curarist’s comment).

       1. Maybe legalese? You (or I) could be detained under S3 of the Mental Health Act (1983)

          1. Ah yes, thanks

       2. Ahhh…now it makes sense.

41. DNF. Spent ages on HAULAGE, BUSTLING, SKILFUL, UPBEAT, and SIGNATURE but got them eventually. No success with TICK however!

    1. I accept the result today!

       PS I struggled to get TICK for a while – it is a deflating experience struggling to get a 4-letter word where you know two letters and a 3rd must be a vowel

       1. Yes, deflating is a good description!

42. A tough one. Struggled with TICK, SKILFUL, EVALUATE and BUSTLING (amongst others!), but finally limped home in a slow 29:11. Needed the blog to explain a few.

43. A nicely judged puzzle from Kybos – another to add to my list of ‘setters I will do’ from the Quickie stable. LOI and COD was EVACUATE. Nothing unreasonable or unfair, though TICK/TABLE held me up for a while.

44. Tricky in places but enjoyably ‘new’. I wondered if we had a new setter as we went through. Welcome Kybos! It suited us though: 12:26 all parsed which is about our average. Thanks to Curarist (and all of our bloggers) for struggling through the present IT problems.

45. I found this very tough and revealed a couple along the way, both of which I could have solved with a little more perseverance (TICK, EMPLOYER). I’m not feeling great so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! Interesting to have a new setter. Definitely a different feel. Very much enjoyed despite the DNF. Thanks for the discussion about CONS TABLE – very informative. Thanks as usual.

46. Well, peaches (and nectarines) are my favourite fruit!
    I really enjoyed this to start off with, and continued to enjoy it even though I struggled with the last few clues – TICK, HALF and TABLE, although in retrospect I don’t really know why I had so much trouble with them (except my LOI. DDs can be so tricky). On edit: TABLE caused me the same problems as many others above!
    I liked NESSIE and the surface for PATIENCE made me smile after all the chat about liver sausage the other day 😅
    12:29 FOI Watch (I tentatively put BATH in first but waited for a checker to confirm – see above about DDs!) LOI Tick CODs Upbeat and Each
    Thanks and welcome to Kybos, and thanks to Curarist too, especially for coping with the additional trauma

    ps Thank goodness I copied my post – I was halfway through reading everyone’s comments, when the page disappeared and error 500 popped up 😖

47. Kyboshed by Kybos today.
    After 18 minutes I got my LOI EVACUATE- unparsed like a few others.
    I knew WASH was a stretch at 10a – I assumed the city of Washington could be thus known. So a DNF for me.
    Perhaps the Error 500 will prevent this news getting out?
    A challenging QC which I enjoyed.
    Now to go back and look at all the parsings.
    David

48. A tricky one, finished in 17:44. Never parsed SHOW, thought it was missing an indicator that we needed the first letters. S for ‘section’ was not in my list of common abbreviations. Liked EVACUATE, although the slightly awkward “bevy pack” in the clue was a bit of a signal to look more closely.

    Excellent news about Tina, who has been missed. Thanks to Curarist and Kybos.

49. We joined those who found it a hard slog, but pleased to finish with a minimum of help, thanks Kybos.

50. Welcome Kybos, and stop looking at my diary.
    Tonight I’m going to WATCH a SHOW. It’s PATIENCE. Charles Court Opera’s production of the
    Gilbert and Sullivan piece, at Wilton’s Music Hall.

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