Times Cryptic No 28985 — Don’t blame Covid

71 comments on “Times Cryptic No 28985 — Don’t blame Covid”

1. DNF
   Virtually the same experience as Jeremy’s: Couldn’t come up with PEAKE, after doing a long alphabet-trawl. I suppose I ‘knew’ it, i.e. saw it when Groan came up ages ago, but it was as near a NHO as dammit. Like Jeremy, NHO CHUNTER, but knew HUNTER. PERIOD my LOI. Like Jeremy, MERs at ‘loudly’ and ‘bare’. I didn’t see a problem with ARTICLE, but now J mentions it, a ? does seem called for. o-daiji ni, Jeremy; hope you get better soon.

   1. I didn’t have a problem with the clue at the time, but now I wonder if I’m missing something. Or maybe it’s a semi &-lit or something….

      Thanks for the good wishes!

      1. Thanks, Jeremy, and best wishes for a quick recovery. I had some help from Mrs S, who thought of pique, otherwise I don’t think I would have got to PEAKE.

         On ARTICLE is there a convention that all double definitions should have a question mark? Neither part of the definition seems questionable.

         1. Only some help from Mrs S? I rely on help from Mrs C. Is there a mixed doubles category in the yearly competition?

            1. I’d welcome that! We’re definitely much better as a team, though I usually try to solve the 15×15 on my own before calling in assistance.

            2. The second definition is an unflagged definition by example. Not the first we’ve seen.

         2. Daily Express, for example.

            That’s why I think it has to be a semi &-lit. We get the the sense of ? from “this could be”.

            1. “This could be a.” First definition. It could also be “an,” or “the”…

               “feature in the Daily Express.” Second definition. It could also be a feature in The Times, or what have you. “Could be” in the clue, though, doesn’t carry over, so a question mark would not be uncalled for. The absence of one does not, however, make this a semi-&lit. There are two distinct definitions.

               1. The clue can be viewed as two separate definitions, but also as one: “This could be a feature in Daily Express” is just a definition of ARTICLE — and not even a cryptic one.

      2. I think the clue is just a DD, with the second D being a DBE, which could use a “?” to indicate that.

         1. Thanks (to you and to Jeremy), the DBE part now makes sense to me. (I usually gloss over such niceties once I have the answer.)

      3. I struggled on this one. I reckoned in 1D “it could be a” = article (as in indefinite article). But I really can’t see why “feature in Daily Express” – other than something in a newspaper, thus Daily Express could be replaced with any other newspaper. Probably missing something.

         As for 15A, pissed myself laughing at the unusual use of slang in the Times…

         1. You should do the Guardian, where toiletting references are common.

            1. I do it regularly, drives me round the U-bend!

   2. Also DNF also on Peake. The annoying thing being that my first stab at an answer was groan then thought no that’s a character and anyway it does not work. I then somehow did not make the leap to the author, very annoying😊

      Thanks Jeremy and setter and get well soon Jeremy

2. Having the last E in the 5a novelist, I put in (Nevil) SHUTE with fair confidence , reasoning ‘shoot!’ could be an American expression of irritation. Aw shoot! Not so! Took a period to sort out.
   26:35

3. The NW quarter was pretty easy but having completed that my progress elsewhere was slow but steady for the most part until I hit a wall in the NE with 4 clues unsolved. At that point I drew a complete blank and after a while gave up for the night. Things didn’t improve after sleep and eventually I resorted to a thesaurus for a synonym to get things moving and the remaining answers fell into place.

   My missing answers were PEAKE, EMOTIVE, EYRIE and PERIOD – the one I used the thesaurus for. I assume ‘mark’ means ‘punctuation mark’ and the reference is to what we in the UK call a full stop, but that would never have occurred to me from the single definition in the clue.

   I’m with those who would have liked an indication of a DBE in the reference to Daily Express at 1dn, a clue I see as a double definition.

   I didn’t like ‘loudly’ at 5ac, a word surely included for a reason but turned out not to be and only caused confusion. I also didn’t like having a random author and a random book heroine in intersecting clues.

   The Foreign Office abbreviated to FO ceased to exist in 1968. I don’t object to historical abbreviations being used in puzzles but I suspect this one may not find favour with some of our contributors.

   1. Quite – my father worked for the Diplomatic Service for 46 years and I’d never heard of FO, always FCO.

      1. And now it’s the FCDO, having had Development added to its responsibilities. The setter is being a bit naughty here, I’d say.

4. Top half went in reasonably easily but really had problems with the rest. DNF missed CAROLINE, PROFESS, PSEUD, CHUNTER, YPRES. I was feeling pretty second-hand with COVID and I finally just gave up.

5. I wondered about “deep” = “lost” but Jeremy clears that up.
   All else seemed clear enough.
   It took some time, but I got thru.

6. I managed to get through without any dramas and finished in 26.13. Most of my expressions of irritation only have four letters, so PEAKE took a while and gave me my LOI PERIOD. Never thought of EMOTIVE being controversial but was pleased to remember the MOT (an annual nightmare when I was driving dilapidated bits of junk around London in the 70s) as I was pleased for once to get ESC for key. I was flattened by Covid last week and these things were a real slog, so blame the pestilence and here’s hoping you get better J.

   From Mr Tambourine Man:
   Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
   Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
   With all memory and fate driven DEEP beneath the waves
   Let me forget about today until tomorrow

7. I came straight to this from failing on the unnecessarily difficult and tedious QC from a new setter – and thoroughly enjoyed it. I can’t disagree with any of the foregoing, and there are certainly minor flaws, but they didn’t hold me up.

   FOI SET UP
   LOI PERIOD
   COD ALI BABA
   TIME 9:17

8. 14.20
   A nice mixture of clues, spoilt only slightly by a couple of unnecessary words (“expressed” and “bare”) and the use of “relations” for IT.
   I particularly liked YPRES and EYRIE, but COD was ALI BABA.
   LOI CAROLINE (an earworm for the Quo fans).

9. 45 minutes, being slow to get going, before reaching the SW. I got CHUNTER from crossers and took the watch on trust. LOI DEEP. I walked on water, you drank water, he passed water. COD to EMOTIVE. Quite tough but easier than it looked. Thank you Jeremy and setter.

10. No official time – around 30 mins

    FOI: ALI BABA
    LOI: ESCARGOT

    Mostly straightforward and enjoyable. I did not fully parse DEEP (as in ‘lost’).

    Thanks to plusjeremy (get well soon) and the setter

11. DNF with the exact same problem as Jeremy and some others. Never heard of the writer and looked up PERIOD. Grrrrr. Shame because the rest went in quite quickly.

    I didn’t see the « a » in 1d either. Thanks for that, Guy.

    I liked PSEUD.

    Thanks Jeremy and setter.

    1. Yes I missed the ‘a’ also, when Jeremy pointed it out I thought it was a really good clue.

12. 9.28, and would have been quicker than the QC had I thought of PERIOD earlier (not being entirely sure of PEAKE didn’t help).

    I agree about Daily Express wanting a DBE, less so ‘loudly express’ being redundant – it would work without it, but I wonder if ‘loudly’ was actually intended as an assistance to the solver, directing the solver to the right sense of express. It screamed ‘homophone’ to me, in any case.

    I regularly CHUNTER to myself when solving.

    Fun puzzle, thanks both.

13. No issues this morning.

    I thought I was stuck in the NE, but remembered pique -> PEAKE from a while ago (‘novelist’, like ‘plant’, could have many, many possibilities).

    No problem with CHUNTER, it’s used in the tennis report in today’s Times.

    DEEP was my LOI, until I slipped into Guardian mode.

    15’02”, thanks jeremy and setter.

14. DNF

    Process for Profess. I wasn’t happy with it but as I also had doubts about DEEP and CAROLINE I cba to give it any more thought. I thought a lot of the definitions were a bit loose so didn’t enjoy this all that much.

15. 15:21. This puzzle kept me challenged throughout without ever feeling completely stuck, which is what I like in a puzzle. I was a little perplexed for a time when I wondered how to get CAROLEAN out of 17D, but once I realised the answer had to be CAROLINE it rang a bell as being an alternative term for relating to King Charles.

16. 32:07 with 1 error (PROCESS instead of PROFESS)

    A silly error as it didn’t really fit but Cabinet Office (CO) popped in my mind and I just went with it.

    No unknowns and the cluing was fair so no excuses from me.

    Thanks to both.

    1. I just spotted that Penfold made the same error so I don’t feel as stupid now.

       1. 👍

    2. I went with War Office 🙁

17. 23:19
    Just relieved to finish successfully after two pink square days on the trot. I find these are much more likely when solving on a train.

    Enjoyed this generally, but with the same reservations about unnecessary words and some loose definitions as others. I liked CHUNTER, PEAKE and DUDGEON ( Good name for a firm of solicitors) but COD was ARTICLE.

    Thanks to Jeremy and the setter.

18. 45′ and seemed to complete it in quarters with the NE going in last. INGRES I think is NHO, though I felt was some recognition when I solved the wordplay. PEAKE came immediately once I solved PERIOD but EMOTIVE = controversial took time, though is a nice clue. Always happy finishing a Friday puzzle! Thanks Jeremy and setter.

19. DNF here, too.
    One problem was putting WRATH for 5ac. I thought of the novelist as ROTH so I got the clue the wrong way round.
    Other blanks were 5d, 7d, 12ac, 15ac.

20. I was OK with this, and completed in 20.31 finishing inevitably in the PEAKE district. Like Amoeba, I took “loudly expressed” to mean “said out loud” (why not?) and a perfectly generous “aural wordplay” indicator.
    No issues either with ARTICLE, except that I struggled initially with imagining “this” as an article.
    I was prepared with an appeal to VAR over DEEP: the link to lost was stretchy.
    A splendid anagram at 20, though with a nod to our antipodean section, I played for a while with fitting in tinnie for the can of beer.
    Has this site somehow become a covid hotspot? Undiagnosed here, but self-isolating anyway and staggered if it isn’t. Get well everyone.

21. I had exactly the same experience as Jeremy, was fast, but then the SE corner slowed me down (I was stupidly slow to get CAROLINE for which I needed all the crossers) and then I came to a dead halt at 5ac and 5dn. It was for sure many minutes of futile alphabet trawling till I mentally forced myself to take a fresh look at 5dn and then I got it. Then finally although I know Gormenghast well I STILL couldn’t get 5ac and was wondering about that well known novelist Mr Peave, till finally at last I got the PEAKE / PIQUE thing.
    So in the end I finished in 31:46, though I did have one red square from a typo, but we’ll gloss over that

22. 26 mins. Like most, the 2 5 clues held me no end. Mervyn just wasn’t coming, so in the end I confess to using my scrabble app to track down PERIOD. Still involved chasing through 142 options.

23. DNF – Peake (never heard of him) and Period got me too

24. 51 minutes. Glad to have finished after being too slow to get PROFESS and PSEUD in the SE and then taking even longer to finish in the NE with PERIOD my LOI. Favourite was ARTICLE, one of those double def clues with the whole clue also providing a non-cryptic def.

    If you’re wondering about the point of ‘barely’ in the wordplay for 27a, this picture might help.

    Thanks to Jeremy and setter

25. 27:56

    Blasted through three-quarters of the clues in around 16 mins. Another five minutes passed before seeing PROFESS, BENEFACTOR and CAROLINE. ESCARGOT followed soon after, leaving a few more minutes before coming up with PERIOD for time. With all checkers in place, and not thinking of the novelist immediately, I alpha-trawled which fortunately didn’t take very long…

    Thanks Jeremy and setter

26. PERIOD is American English, so should this fact not have been signposted? At least I think it is: Collins isn’t clear, since it says ‘(US)’ but then doesn’t say ‘(US)’ in the English definition. Guy has clearly explained why the clue for ARTICLE is a bit faulty, but he’s quite clear that it’s a DD. However, if you read the clue as a semi-&lit. then maybe it’s OK; but I would still have liked a question mark at the end, since so far as I know a semi-&lit is a DD, the whole of which can be seen as an &lit., and the right-hand part of the DD needs one. 51 minutes, after initially going along very comfortably and thinking no it isn’t a Friday stinker, but then getting a bit bogged down. DEEP = lost was my LOI, couldn’t see the connection, but Jeremy explains.

27. Straightforward today, and no nhos. Titus Groan and its sequels are great literature, and unique. Recommend them.
    I’m not fazed by the odd extra word, or by the occasional missing ? .. my only mer was at PERIOD, an unannounced Americanism in this context.

28. PERIOD took a while, and the P allowed me to guess PEAKE, of whom I was ignorant.

    Apart from that, this was good stuff in my goldilocks zone.

    19:14

29. DNF. Should have got AMITY and PERIOD, but didn’t. Mea stultitia. PSEUD I’d not have seen however long I stared at it. INGRES unknown. And DEEP was just a crap clue IMHO. If deep=lost, then anything can mean pretty much anything.

    1. Deep in thought, lost in thought?

30. 13:17, which is around 11 minutes after adjusting for a G&T and a couple of glasses of wine. I’m in Canada for the summer so am able to solve in the evening.
    Far from being redundant, I think ‘loudly’ in 5ac is essential: ‘expressed’ in itself is not a homophone indicator.
    And the insistence on a question mark in 1dn is, for me, taking the application of rules a bit far. ‘Feature in newspaper’ would also be a DBE, would people object to that? Looking elsewhere ‘one watching language’ is a DBE, because a MODERATOR might also be looking for other kinds of unsuitable content. Is ‘sea creature’ a DBE because you also get fish in rivers and lakes? At some point it gets a bit silly.

    1. Okay maybe you have a point, but in fairness (to me), none of your examples are anywhere near as specific as Daily Express.

       I guess the idea of the clue was a head scratcher to me, as the entire clue reads as a non-cryptic definition, though part of it is also a non-cryptic definition, with the remainder being essentially equivalent to the whole clue. Feels a bit under cooked.

       1. Indeed. I thought of ARTICLE right away, but I didn’t see any cryptic element for that definition until I saw that it could be two definitions. So an &lit where the wordplay is DD, but which fails as an &lit because the clue taken as a whole isn’t… cryptic!

          And to be clear, I don’t think all DBEs need to be flagged but was just pointing out why Jack said this one might have used one.

       2. I think the apparent &Litishness of the whole clue is a distraction here, it’s just a double definition. Media output> written publication > periodical > newspaper > Daily Express > news section of the Daily Express > output of Joe Bloggs in the news section of the Daily Express. Each is at some level a more specific example of a wider category. If we apply the rule too strictly we risk an infestation of question marks and/or the word ‘perhaps’ becoming the most common word in crossword clues!

       3. PS meant to wish you a speedy recovery. I had covid a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t very pleasant.

31. 40:10 – a steady but slow effort with all the requisite knowledge in place and only a couple of reservations about the cluing of the DBEs, as discussed at length above.

32. Stuck for ages in the NE corner but gradually teased out EYRIE and EMOTIVE. PEAKE and LOI, PERIOD followed after a while. Sadly it was all in vain as I’d shoved a backwards War Office into 24a. PROWESS. Drat! Must have been thinking of Have some Madeira my Dear! 26.39 WOE. Thanks setter and Jeremy. Commiserations on the Covid. I had it a couple of weeks ago. Still struggling with the amphibians that have taken up residence in my throat!

33. I was doing OK until the NE corner with less than 30 minutes expended. EYRIE and EMOTIVE took me another 5 minutes or so, but like Jeremy was defeated by PEAKE and PERIOD. I’m not familiar with the novelist, but maybe PERIOD may have come to me if I persevered. Enjoyable nonetheless.

34. I also failed on Peake/Period in the NW corner. At least I’m in good company.

35. 41:06
    A slowish solve, finally bogged down in the SW corner, with DUDGEON, YPRES and INGRES being my last three in. I wasted too much time wondering whether there was a painter called ENTRAN.

    1. Ooer! So did I! (And I did the History of Art at Uni)

36. 10:22, like many, everything was in pretty quickly except for the PEAKE/PERIOD crossing and I was alphabet trawling for that first letter trying to think of two that would fit. Finally PEAKE came to mind, though I only made it about 40 pages into Titus Groan before taking it back to the library, which confirmed PERIOD.

37. Not much to add to the above, and I didn’t raise eyebrows over the several discussion points whilst solving so I guess they didn’t bother me. What did bother me was getting about 80% of the grid filled, and then staring at words where I had pretty much every other letter in place and still couldn’t connect the dots. I almost wish I had covid to blame it on. Almost. thx +j

38. It took me a long time to get into the groove with this puzzle, and in the end I was held up in the NE corner, finishing in 46 minutes, some way beyond my average. But I found it enjoyable and a fair challenge. I agree with Amoeba and Zabadak that the ‘loudly’ in 5ac is a homophone indicator and is not otiose, as not all expressions are vocal. A mini-MER at MODERATOR=one watching language and EMOTIVE=controversial, but that is probably just me. Good to see the lavatorial vibe is alive and well in 15ac.
    FOI – INTERCEDE
    LOI – DEEP
    COD – ESCARGOT
    Thanks to jeremy and other contributors – and GWS to jeremy.

    1. Not just you, Ucalegon! Both those definitions seemed very loose to me too, though I managed MODERATOR by careful adherence to the cryptic. For EMOTIVE I had a word ending in EIVE for far too long. Also annoyed that the ‘Mark Time’ clue did not include a US reference. Also NHO PEAKE, but had heard of TITUS GROAN. But, wth, did better than my usual Friday offerings. Especially as I had a quick start with ALI ABA and ARMED straight in.

39. Didn’t anyone else put Baa Lamb for 1 ac? I was convinced it was an anagram (hit) of ABBA and lam. …….ignore me .I can see why that doesn’t work now

40. My worst attempt in years and not sure why.

41. 39.44 done in two sessions. First last night at bedtime which dragged on a bit and a quicker final solve this morning. Didn’t find it particularly easy and I thought I was going to be snookered by Peake until period gave me a way in and an alphabet trawl did the rest.

    Pleased to have an all correct week but I seemed to have taken a lot more time getting there than most.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

42. 18a I don’t like “A second” equals “TICK”.
    “Wait a tick” equals “Wait a second”.
    Can anyone justify the article in this clue?

43. 25’42” on Sunday evening, with the northeast slowing me down like so many others. LOI PERIOD, and entered with me still uncertain why it meant MARK. I see now, but the Americanism should have been signalled, no? I always used to mispronounce Ingres. It’s ANGR. He was a good violinist as well as a painter, and in French a Violin d’Ingres = hobby. Many thanks, and a speedy recovery to all the Covid-sufferers.

44. A better-than-usual effort from me this Friday, but not completed, as I missed PEAKE and PERIOD, of course, but also EMOTIVE, AMITY and YPRES.
    Couldn’t get ALICE out of my mind for 23d ( malice w/out the M?) as I read “on the contrary” to goodwill as malice. Huh.

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