29062 Not Cole’s law then.

Author   ZabadakPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

 

I thought I was doing well to get in just under 20 minutes, though I started in rather desultory fashion and spent too long dithering over the emperor, or possibly antique dominion at 5d. Apart from that clue, there wasn’t anything particularly obscure, or at least not to Times readers versed in cricket lore and Gilbert and Sullivan.

And since this is the point at which I complete the blog, I can report that “it doesn’t seem to be”.

Definitions underlined in italics, letters to be excluded are in [square brackets]

Across
1 Angry Sri Lankan POW’s cynical notion of work (10,3)
PARKINSONS LAW – “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. An anagram, with angry the slightly unusual indicator, of SRI LANKAN POW’S. I’ll let you know if it’s true once I’ve finished the blog.
8 Doughty at heart, fondle ferret (4)
GRUB – The middle of douGhty plus RUB for fondle. Ferret as the verb to rummage around.
9 Report on particular fielder (5,5)
COVER POINT – If you report on a particular issue, you COVER the POINT. Such a fielder stands on the cricket field around 10-15 yards to the left and a little forward of a right-handed batsmen in a vain attempt to stop cover drives.
10 Complex flavonoid initially lacking in curry (8)
VINDALOO – An anagram (complex) of FLAVANOID without its initial F.
11 Glimpse one impersonating copper (6)
APERÇU – One impersonating is the (rather ugly) APER, and copper Cu/U.
13 Writer’s gripped by odd sound (10)
UNIMPAIRED – Setter’s self referential I’M contained by UNPAIRED, as in an odd sock.
16 Smart set regularly wasted stuff (4)
SATE – Odd letters of SmArT sEt. Stuff as in eat to capacity.
17 Express contentment, parking posh luxury car (4)
PURR – P[arking], U for the Mitford posh, RR for a Rolls Royce.
18 Ribaldry and ebullience when Henry moves (10)
EARTHINESS – HEARTINESS would be ebullience, move the H[enry] to where it fits.
20 Look after a fine female pigeon (6)
AFFAIR – Look is (an) AIR, set after A F[ine] F[emale]. Via pidgin, a corruption of the Chinese word for business, pigeon is one’s affair or concern.
22 Swift perhaps to pursue boy with unknown bug (8)
LADYBIRD – The maybe swift is just a BIRD, placed after LAD for boy and Y for unknown.
24 Patience maybe of one manager overwhelmed by stupor (5,5)
COMIC OPERA – Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride, is a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof on the arty elite of the time. Here it’s I COPER, one manager, enclosed in a COMA or stupor.
26 Low-down half-wit (4)
DOPE – A double definition.
27 Re-enacted racy plays in support facility (3-4,6)
DAY-CARE CENTRE – An anagram (plays) of RE-ENACTED RACY.
Down
1 Pal refusing to swim in Asian sea (7,4)
PERSIAN GULF – Not quite as far east as I was expecting, but an anagram (to swim) of PAL REFUSING
2 Mad boozer keels over unconscious (5)
RABID – A boozer is a BAR that in this case is overturned, and then you have the unconscious source of all our baser drives, the ID.
3 Clean it up, shifting blame (9)
INCULPATE – An anagram (shifting) of CLEAN IT UP.
4 Deliverer of bouquet nicking half of it (7)
SAVIOUR – A Slightly easier clue, I think, than we had on Monday. Bouquet is SAVOUR, insert half of IT (I’ll let you work out which half).
5 Emperor in tears, intermittently missing Old Dominion (5)
NERVA – September 96 to January 98 following the assassination of Domitian. The odd (even) letters of iN tEaRs and VA from Virginia,  known as the Old Dominion, if not by me.
6 People watching lovely boy (7-2)
LOOKERS-ON – Someone who is lovely is a LOOKER, if not necessarily a SON or boy.
7 Briefly crave pasty (3)
WAN – That pronunciation of pasty. It’s WANT, craved, with its last letter scrubbed.
12 Tragedy of feline pet throttled by alpha male (11)
CATASTROPHE – OK. So it’s feline: CAT and then pet: STROP enclosed in A from alpha and HE from male.
14 Death of ethics over time (9)
MORTALITY – Over is the oddish containment indicator, putting T[ime] in MORALITY for ethics.
15 Dry and extremely delicate late husband cocked up on drug (9)
DEHYDRATE – The outer letters of D[elicate] followed by TARDY (late) H[usband] reversed (cocked up) and the the drug E.
19 Mostly depended on village’s banks for aid (7)
RELIEVE – Depended on gives RELIED, from which you detach the last letter. The “banks” of V[illag]E complete.
21 Port and fine German wine (5)
RIOJA – The port is the ever useful RIO, and JA what a German might say to me that’s fine.
23 Try and empty elegant basin (5)
BIDET – Try is BID, and if you empty E[legan]T you create the porcelain.
25 Random piece of period drama (3)
ODD – At last, today’s hidden, in periOD Drama

 

66 comments on “29062 Not Cole’s law then.”

  1. Another DNF to go with my failure to complete today’s Quick Cryptic, although I was missing only one letter. NERVA was the culprit. I was going to say I NHO the emperor but he has come up 3 times before, albeit a long time ago, namely in a 15×15 in 2012, a Jumbo in 2010 which I probably didn’t attempt, and another 15×15 blogged by me in 2008. Jumbo aside, I stated I NHO NERVA on both the other occasions. The second bit of wordplay was of no help because I had no idea that former dominions might include Virginia.

    INCULPATE needed all the checkers before I was able to squeeze it out of the angrist. It’s not a word I’m familiar with but it has appeared here once before in a Times crossword – one that I blogged in 2022.

    I enjoyed this puzzle as a whole and was disappointed not to finish it without resorting to aids.

  2. 19:40
    NHO COVER POINT, of course, and I was sufficiently unconfident even with the checkers in that I checked ODE. What was ‘Old Dominion’ doing here? I doubt if many Americans outside of the OD even know this term. ‘unconscious’ is a poor definition for ID; the superego and ego are unconscious, too, at least as much as the id is. All in all pretty easy.

    1. I am from West Virginia and one American who knew Virginia as “Old Dominion.” WV was the only state that broke off from a Confederate state and proceeded to outlaw slavery in its Constitution.

      1. OK, you’re one, I’m another (who knew etc., not who’s from etc.); that’s two.

      2. I think you are entitled to rely on local knowledge, just as we followers of cricket will know “cover point”, which I doubt gets much of an airing in West Virginia!

  3. I enjoyed this. NHO of PARKINSONS LAW but the anagram was helpful with a few checkers in place. Missed the parsing for DEHYDRATE so thanks for that. Didn’t know that meaning of affair. No idea about NERVA as I thought the emperor was NERO with the ‘O’ missing. Still fun though. COD to EARTHINESS.
    Thanks Z and setter.

  4. 34.15. I guessed NERVA but I’m calling it a DNF because I had no idea what the clue and answer were about. I also thought Z was a little charitable, there was some diabolical obscurity here: air = pigeon, ferret = grub, strop = …I’m not sure what strop is meant to equal. It took me an age to get COVER POINT and I was watching a test match at the time.

    From No Time To Think:
    Paradise, sacrifice, MORTALITY, reality
    But the magician is quicker
    And his game is much thicker
    Than blood and blacker than ink
    And there’s no time to think

    1. AIR comes from look, appearance. Pigeon is the definition to give AFFAIR. Pet ìn the CATASTROPHE clue indicates a fit of the sulks, which leads you to STROP.

    2. Very commendable of you to call this a DNF, Lindsay. My moral compass is obviously more wobbly than yours, and if I had happened to guess this correctly, I probably would have patted myself on the head and pretended that I really did know both unknowns after all!

  5. Just popping in to note that I also managed everything but the V of NERVA. Bah. 45 minutes for my DNF.

  6. All but the V of NERVA, and my word, what a stinker – a pretty obscure solution that, as Jack says, hasn’t appeared for over a decade, and nasty wordplay (an abbreviation of a state, clued by its nickname!). One or t’other is fair game, but not both.

    Other than that, a nice puzzle, but inevitably that’s what lingers…

    Thanks both.

  7. 29 minutes but with NERSA. Was South Africa ever a dominion? Otherwise I enjoyed this. I would have been quicker if it wasn’t for Parkinson’s Law applying. COD to COVER POINT. Thank you Z and setter.

  8. A very quick 20′ for me to also get to LOI NERsA. Pigeon=AFFAIR is NHO for me, as was the G&S, though both much more generously clued than the short-lived emperor. I wrote in CATASTROPHE, forgetting to parse, but now note the pet=strop thing that I nearly always forget… Pretty straightforward apart from one square. Thanks Zabadak and setter.

  9. Now, by my maidenhead, at twelve year old,
    I bade her come. What, lamb! what, ladybird!
    (Romeo and Juliet)

    25 mins pre-brekker left NER.A with no hope of getting it. Shame.
    Ta setter and Z.

  10. Just over 40 minutes. Most enjoyable. I just worked my way through with no particular holdups. FOI ODD LOI NERVA Knew it because I happened to be going through some lists with Roman politicians several days ago and remembered it. Liked LADYBIRD, UNIMPAIRED, EARTHINESS, LOOKERS ON and others. PARKINSON’S LAW brought back memories of my university studies. SHOT appears in Collins as “Slang Exhausted”
    Thanks Z.

  13. Another no NERVA.

    Z, the COVER POINT fielder is on the off-side, so would be on the right of a right-handed batter. (The position you describe is short midwicket).

    Thanks z and setter.

    1. In my defence (not the batter’s), from the point of view of the bowler his cover point fielder is definitely to the left his right handed target.

  14. 40:23, good solve, no aids. Definitely getting better at these.

    Was held up for ages with NER- -, Thought it had to be something to do with Nero, or maybe Nerhu spelt wrong. But eventually recalled that Virginia was the Old Dominion.

    Pigeon=AFFAIR? Wow, that is obscure.

    I picked out that the G&S opera was hiding its initial letter at the start of the clue. I sang in a full production of Patience at primary school, our headmaster was a big fan. But after considering SAVOY OPERA, or LIGHT OPERA, I struggled to think of a third five letter word.

    COD BIDET

  15. Got there in half an hour, but on a wing and a prayer with NERVA – a very tough clue, with wordplay that could easily send you barking up the wrong tree and a fairly obscure answer.

    – Remembered the term PARKINSON’S LAW though not what it actually is
    – Didn’t really understand the wordplay for COVER POINT
    – Couldn’t have told you that APERCU means glimpse
    – Had no idea that pigeon can mean AFFAIR
    – Forgot about id as the unconscious for RABID
    – Didn’t parse CATASTROPHE, partly through not separating ‘feline’ and ‘pet’

    Thanks Zabadak and setter.

    FOI Odd
    LOI Nerva
    COD Persian Gulf

  16. 22.24. Nothing too onerous but it did take a while to solve unimpaired which was my LOI. Didn’t feel totally confident about affair either. Knew of Nerva and saw the NER so just assumed the Va referred to Virginia.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

  17. 13:54 but I looked up the emperor starting NER and only then finished with APERCU. Nice puzzle apart from that obscure emperor. Thanks Z and setter.

  18. 41 minutes with about 15 spent on NERVA. I have never heard of the emperor, and despite living in the US I didn’t immediately connect “old dominion” to Virginia. Eventually I decided it must be since Virginia seemed so much more likely that California, Massachusets, Louisiana, and probably more.

  19. 32 mins. The classical education came to the rescue on Nerva, though I’ve NHO the Old Dominion. Thanks for parsing AFFAIR, which could be nothing else with crossers but DNK the Chinese ref. The only thing that really held me up was WAN, simply because for ages the only word I could think of that started that way with one letter missing was, well, something else -and the parsing didn’t work!

  20. 25:52 with a typo (RABIR/VINRALOO)

    I struggled to get to grips with the NW and when the pennies finally dropped I didn’t give my work even a cursory look-over.

    PARKINSON’S LAW, NERVA and the Comic Opera were the only unknowns, but I took ages on PERSIAN GULF and a couple of others.

    Overall an enjoyable crossword though so thanks to both.

  21. Don’t understand savour = bouquet. Nersa rather than Nerva (well, South Africa used to be one of the Dominions IMHO). Nice crossword though.

  22. 23:19 so a few seconds faster than I finished the QC last night. LOI was COVER POINT where my knowledge of cricket isn’t so good, I got COVER all right but then was desperately trying to think of the “particular”. Anyway finally got there.
    Thanks setter and blogger

  23. I finished in a decent time but only got NERVA because I knew (of) the emperor. Pretty poor clue.

  24. 24:25

    I enjoyed this a lot. Flying blind with both NERVA and AFFAIR but had a vague recollection of VA being a dominion and “it had to be” AFFAIR. Some excellent cluing elsewhere, PARKINSONS LAW, RIOJA and APERCU in particular.

    Thanks to Zabadak and the setter

  25. Another DNF. I enjoyed the rest of the crossword, apart from GRUB which seemed a stretch, but DK NERVA or what was going on with Old Dominion so bunged in NERJA which is a place in Spain. Yet another clue where we’re expected to know stuff only a few Americans would know?

  26. Canada was a dominion, so I put in NERCA. Also didn’t get AFFAIR (that’s not my pigeon is a bit WWII isn’t it?).
    Not on the wavelength or knowledge base for this one I’m afraid.
    Some good long anagrams though- like 1ac.
    Many thanks for the entertaining blog and thanks setter.

  27. What a daft Xword. Nice and easy then throws in the very obscure NERVA and equally obscure pigeon.

  28. Failed. I didn’t know the ‘Emperor’ or the ‘Old Dominion’ so was never going to get 5d, for which I guessed NERIA. I’ve tried to remember as many US presidents and UK PM’s as possible but I think I’ll give the Roman emperors a miss, even if it does mean more future DNF’s.

    AFFAIR for ‘pigeon’ for was one I had come across before, though only in crosswords. I liked APERCU, a word that makes you sound clever, so I’ve never used it.

  30. Is this a sign that The Times is going downhill or is it just a relaxation of things, along with the living people? I’m referring to the use of ‘over’ as an inclusion indicator in 14dn. You never used to see this, so you knew where you stood.

    Mind you, that’s not the reason why I took quite a long time (48 minutes), with several entered rather in doubt because the allusions were so far as I could see a bit loose or at any rate difficult to see: fondle = rub, COVER POINT, pigeon = affair, unconscious = id, NERVA, basin = BIDET. Yes I know most of these can be justified from some dictionary or other, but.

    1. Wil, I can’t cite any previous examples of ‘over’ as a containment indicator in previous Times puzzles as it’s not an easy thing to search on, but ‘over’ is on the list published in Chambers Dictionary in 2011, so it’s not something just inventd by setters. I’m not sure I would have thought about it until you raised it, but I shall look out for it now.

    2. If X is ‘over’ Y, it covers it. That seems to work! I suppose ‘under’ for an insertion would work, on the same logic, although it somehow seems less satisfying.

  32. Count me as another breeze-blocked by having neither piece of GK required to get NERVA. Otherwise pretty straightforward stuff.

  33. Screwed up by carelessly bunging in IMPLICATE for 3 dn without checking the letters, which of course completely jammed up the NW corner. Wouldn’t’ve got NERVA anyway. But the rest of it I enjoyed. Still in training after my hols.

  34. Breezeblocked by NERVA. Wasted 15 minutes coming up with a despairing NEROA. A disappointing end to an otherwise enjoyable puzzle. Would never have come up with VA for Old Dominion if I’d thought for the rest of the week, and didn’t know the Emperor. 34.07 WOE. Thanks Z.

  35. NERVA – what a nerve! Weak clue IMO. If half the crossword club cannot get it, then it will be wasted generally. I only finished with help… on… you guessed it… nerva!

  37. DNK NERVA or COVER POINT so DNF. I knew ‘pigeon’ meant affair though. As I said last time it appeared here, it is used as part of the phrase ‘is my pigeon’ in Brief Encounter, despite normally appearing in negative constructions (‘not my pigeon’)

  39. Ditto and ditto. Atrocious clue which should have been weeded out by the editor. Liked the rest of it but threw the towel in after 18 minutes

    1. Another ditto – in spite of correctly guessing that the Old Dominion might be a state I nonetheless picked the wrong one (Nerma) 😡. Shame. Enjoyed it otherwise.

  40. 1a Parkinsons Law, solved during a 10 minute walk back from the paper shop. Took the whole walk. Interesting to note that in support of his first law P quoted the Navy as a dept whose staff rose independently of the fact that the number of sailors and ships was falling. Note the Times -was it yesterday?- pointed out that we have more people in the MoD than the Navy & RAF combined. Quelle chance!
    DNF, cheated. 5d emperor Nerva was in Cheating Machine, so HHO but of course totally forgotten. I thought Old Dominion was far, far out for VA. Interesting, but not normal for GK. I’m getting used to this King, CIIIR, but that was CR, (don’t need the I for the first one) came to the throne 399 years ago, before even my time.
    12d Catastrophe, was a bit thus so couldn’t parse.

  41. tuesday one hour slog, wed 25 min zoom (for me) but today’s a mixture of Nerva and pigeons for DNF. A mixed bag so far, come on Friday.

  43. Another who failed only on NERVA.
    Annoyingly I thought of Virginia = VA and rejected it when I thought of Jamaica which I assumed could be JA. “Old Dominion” unknown.
    Enjoyed the rest.
    David

  44. 23:58 but…

    …cheated with NERVA by looking him up – no idea about Old Dominion so that was a bad clue – two bits of very obscure GK. The rest was enjoyable though. The only other words I didn’t know were INCULPATE (but was buildable with the assumed CULP in the middle), and AFFAIR = pigeon. Missed the full parsing of CATASTROPHE too.

    Thanks Z and setter

  45. I also failed on Ner-a. Never heard of him and never heard of the Old Dominion.
    Doubtless I will have forgotten about them both when they come round again 10 years from now.
    Everything else took me around 50 minutes with LOI Apercu.

  46. DNF. Took a punt on ‘Nersa’, thinking that the Old Dominion might be South Africa. It’s some consolation that my ignorance is not unique.

  47. One wrong in just over 20 mins. Eventually I gave up and went with NORMA at 5 down simply because it fitted.

    COD: APERCU.

  48. I’m in UK and proud say that I knew about Virginia.
    I have a number of lists that I go through when trying to shut down my brain at night and US states, their capitals and nicknames is one such list.
    Boring information comes in useful occasionally.

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