Times 28999 – Foodfest!

83 comments on “Times 28999 – Foodfest!”

1. DNF
   NHO FRANGIPANE (only frangipani), and thought ‘pot’ was part of the anagrist–never would have thought of a pan as a pot–which of course got me nowhere. Liked LOS ANGELES.

2. Under 30 minutes Reasonably straightforward. FOI POI LOI EEK Slowed down on this by spelling MEERKAT with a C.

   How is ER evidence of doubt?

   1. er….I’m not sure what you mean by this question.

      1. I thought of er but to me this could simply indicate nervousness.

   2. Could it also be an abbreviation of Eyebrow Raise in crossword bloggers land? ‘I had a MER at ER’ translates as ‘I had a minor eyebrow raise at the use of a relatively obscure abbreviation, albeit a crossword fan’s abbreviation, being used in a cryptic crossword clue.’ Or is that just overthinking it?

      1. It is.

         1. Thought so. Ta.

            1. It made us laugh though

               1. 😉 😀

3. My target 30 minutes got me within two answers of completion but I found myself stuck with the intersecting answers at 5ac and 7dn outstanding. 8 minutes later I worked out POSTDOC, and DOT followed immediately although I didn’t understand ‘highest thing’ until reading the blog.

   I still don’t get the relevance of ‘climbing machine’ in 6dn.

   FRANGIPANE as a cream used as a filling in cakes etc wasn’t a problem for me. ‘Frangipani’ is the one I have difficulty remembering, which has been clued here in the past as a shrub, a ‘blooming thing’ and a perfume.

   NHO or had forgotten POI.

   1. I think the stair climbing machine is an escalator.

      1. Ah, thanks, should have thought of that!

      2. There is a stair climbing machine being advertised on the internet as an alternative to a chair which goes up and down a rail fixed in the wall alongside stairs. The ad says “requires no fixing”. Sort of walks up the stairs with you on it!

   2. I thought it was a reference to the piece of gym equipment

      1. It could be, but I don’t think they’re a machine, more stepping exercise equipment Happy to hear thoughts.

         1. There is a machine, think it’s called a Stairmaster. Like a treadmill but with steps.

            1. Rings a bell. Will we ever know? Mildly frustrating to never be sure.

               1. Yes, the Stairmaster/gym equipment idea was the intended surface reading here 😀

                  1. Thanks, Jalna. It’s very rarely we find out who set a daily 15×15 puzzle!

                  2. Enjoyable puzzle. I had to leave 16a unsolved for quite a while to give the neuronal connections a chance to recharge before I got it. NHO POI and MODISTE.
                     I will use EXPOSIT more as it sounds a very elegant word.

4. I managed to finish this but it took some time, had a bad case of brain fog. I couldn’t get widescreen for 4d out of my head until some checkers came along, thinking we were looking for the TV size/format. Quite liked Boo-Boo. Never did get 7d ‘dot’ until I saw the blog, never seen the ‘highest thing’ device before. Enjoyable crossword.
   Thanks V and setter.

   1. I didn’t get dot either, and was going to be at a loss when writing the blog. However, as I was typing in the (lack of) explanation, I suddenly saw it.

      1. Enjoyed the “dot”

         I’m still waiting for setters to turn letters upside down though, (d looks like p when inverted, n looks like u, etc.)

         Maybe one day…..

         1. I think we’ve had this a few times before, e.g. 53A here: https://timesforthetimes.co.uk/times-cryptic-jumbo-1474-eezre-good

5. Took forever at the end to get POSTDOC and DOT. I wondered if there were other words I could remove the last letter from than PAINt, or other phrases than STEP ON IT. I am not sure why POSTDOC took so long since it is obvious in retrospect. I never worked out the “highest thing” bit for DOT but there was nothing else it could be so in it went. I managed not to miss seeing “He” and “They maybe”.

6. 11:09. Very enjoyable puzzzle, thanks to setter and blogger.

7. 29:34
   Good puzzle. POSTDOC DOT and CALZONE took almost as long as the rest put together. Particularly liked
   THIRD PERSON and INERT GAS.

   Thanks to vinyl and the setter.

8. 13:49. Like others I also had trouble in the NE corner. I didn’t help myself by throwing in KEEP IT UP for 6D then changing it to STEP IT UP before finally alighting on STEP ON IT. I couldn’t parse DOT but now I see vinyl’s explanation I like it – it seems quite an original clue to me.

9. 9.15, with DOT and LOS ANGELES unparsed. Clues asking me to look literally at a word’s properties often fox me.

   Thanks both.

10. DOT and LOS ANGELES unparsed here as well. Thanks setter and blogger.

11. 40 mins but with a couple of errors. Foolishly put ART ROOM, and was close to getting FRANGIPANE, having heard of Frangipani, but didn’t see pot=pan, and went for pot=tin, for Frantinage.

    Not seen He=Helium before, very clever.

    1. Watch out for As=arsenic.

       1. Think we’ve had I for Iodine before too

          1. And even At for Astatine

12. Thanks Vinyl for the parsing of DOT which is now my COD. NHO POSTDOC or POI. Although I completed to my satisfaction in 9:46, history will show that fat finger resulted in a pink square for “third perssn”.

13. 15.10 (5.00 of which to get POSTDOC and DOT, the latter only as faute de mieux).
    We had FRANGIPANI a few weeks ago, when I commented that I knew it from the Clive James/Pete Atkin song. I now see that they misspelt it as Frangipanni, which doesn’t help.
    COD THIRD PERSON

14. 15:29
    The NE caused the most difficulties, being slow to work out POSTDOC, CALZONE, and my favourite clue today DOT. Like Paul I also slowed myself by adding a perfectly acceptable alternative for STEP ON IT which then slowed the last-in FRANGIPANE.

    The only unknown was POI but that was very generously clued.

    This certainly had more of a Monday feel but there was just enough to make it a challenge.

    Thanks to both.

15. I had EXACTLY the same problem as the blogger today, raced though 90% of this puzzle and ended up for many minutes completely stuck on FRANGIPANE, not only because I didn’t think it was cream but also because I didn’t know it ended in E.
    Finally went for it after 32 minutes.
    Thanks setter and blogger
    PS So THAT’s why it was DOT!!! Yes COD!

16. 34 minutes with LOI DOT. I do like FRANGIPANE tart, but for me cream is what you put on it, not what it’s made of. But then a POI is just a French pea to this food ignoramus. I do like a CALZONE though, one that looks like Desperate Dan’s cow pie. My youngest is a POST DOC, but that still needed all the crossers. COD to the MEERKAT. Simples. A good puzzle. Thank you V and setter.

17. Thanks for dotting the i for me, vinyl. Otherwise, more meh than rah rah here, for reasons I can’t quite put a finger on.

18. 27:21

    FOI: APPAREL
    LOI: DOT

    Fun start to the week (On review, I did not parse INERT GAS).

    Thank you, vinyl1 and the setter.

19. Quick today, but fun.
    Failed to parse DOT, and nho POI, which on loking it up, sounds ghastly. Fortunately both answers were clear enough.

20. About 10 minutes.

    Didn’t know POI or that meaning of LEES but the wordplay made them clear; can’t recall seeing EXPOSIT anywhere before but it had to be; and cleverly avoided the issues a few others had with FRANGIPANE by not knowing enough about it to worry whether it’s a pastry or a cream.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    FOI Beastliness
    LOI Postdoc
    COD Continental

21. Like Jack and others. Went quite quickly through most of this the ground t a halt with 5ac & 7d to do. That took another 10 mins for a 35 min finish.

    I don’t really see that LA is “both sides” of Bel Air?

    Never did parse LOI DOT so thanks to our blogger for that.

    I liked THIRD PERSON &INERT GAS, very clever.

    Thanks V and setter.

    1. Take the L from one half (Bel) and A from the other half (Air).

    2. LA isn’t “both sides” but it “spans both halves”

       1. OK I get it now. Thanks

22. Like last week, I could finish neither this nor today’s QC. Last week it took five puzzles before I broke my duck, so I’m hoping for a better outcome this week. Like everyone else I got most of this quite quickly but at 20 minutes I was staring at 5ac and 7dn and getting nowhere. DOT is now my COD, thanks vinyl.

    From Can’t Wait:
    Skies are grey, life is short
    And I think of her a lot.
    I can’t say
    If I want the PAIN to end or not

23. 9:26

    A straightforward and pleasant start to the week. All parsed and understood except the handful I biffed (e.g. by the time I got to INERT GAS it was obvious what the answer was from enumeration and checkers and a quick glance at “He” at the start of the clue. It was a similar story with THIRD PERSON).

24. Well, that was “Tough for a Monday”, if only because of the cut-price POSTDOC and the fabulous good-grief-ism that was DOT. Never do that to us again!
    PRENUP was also rather distastefully curtailed, slowing me down in the bottom right, but finished with fingers crossed in 19.12.

25. 27:29
    Nice puzzle. Dot was good – didn’t understand it until I came here.
    Thanks, v.

26. Started off with ART FORM and POI, although the latter was from wordplay only. I managed to parse DOT, although having already got POSTDOC and CONTINENTAL I just needed to choose between I and O. A check of the wordplay for CALZONE corrected my biffed I at the end and stopped any confusion for FRANGIPANE. LEFTIST was LOI, but I did go back to parse THIRD PERSON before submitting. 13:42. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

27. NE corner took almost as long as the rest of it. Thanks, V, for the explanations of DOT, LA and CALZONE, which I bifd early on, but couldn’t parse and left until the end. 3rd PERSON held me up for far longer than it should have, as did INERT GAS. NHO POI. Thanks, Jalna, for a taxing but solvable puzzle.

28. Don’t think FRANGIPANE can fairly be described as ‘cream’ in any sense, and I kept trying to make the anagram with ‘pot’, so failed on that. Also NHO POSTDOC, and couldn’t construct it from wordplay. I loved INERT GAS, but the rest of this seemed like it was trying too hard most of the time, without being fun or interesting. DOT was too bloody clever by half.

    1. Chambers describes frangipane as “A cream made with crushed almonds, used in various pastries, desserts, sweets, etc”

       Edit – I see this has already been discussed below.

29. 16:18

    Comfortable start to the week though there were bits and pieces I didn’t know or didn’t parse:

    DNK POSTDOC – bunged in from three checkers (ex D) and wordplay
    DOT – with both checkers in, what else could it be? Didn’t understand the wordplay until coming here
    POI – NHO but the wordplay was clear enough
    FRANGIPANE – glad the E at the end was checked!
    LOS ANGELES – I know Bel Air is in LA, but failed to parse
    EXPOSIT – did not know the word, but parsing was plain enough

    MODISTE is a recent addition to my vocab, only from watching Bridgerton over my daughter’s shoulder (so many balls/dances, everyone is continually popping to the dress shop for a new outfit).

    STEP ON IT – I had a ‘step machine’ from a gym in mind rather than an escalator – Jalna has verified their thinking above.

    Thanks V and Jalna

30. Chambers says that FRANGIPANE is a cream made from crushed almonds … I never knew this, not even the word really, so although most of this was quite easy I gave up here and used aids. DOT entered without understanding. POI entered with understanding, but NHO.
    Most of this was easy enough but this (and also POSTDOC, for some reason) held me up and I took 42 minutes. If Jalna had meant escalator then surely that would have been used.

    1. It’s really a kind of sweet pastry, given that it’s baked (I’ve never heard of a recipe using uncooked frangipane, given that it contains raw eggs). So ‘cream’ feels deeply wrong to me.

31. I got through this pretty smartly, and was somewhat surprised by the indicated difficulty.

    Mind you, DOT was a biff, and LOI FRANGIPANE was somewhat painstakingly put together on pen and paper (after eventually discarding POT as part of the anagram) – I have only ever seen it in cooked form, so was unaware it started life as an almond cream.

    14:08

32. 24 mins but with a lot of help from my friends. Particularly ART FORM (is a bonsai an art form?, I suppose so…) and of course DOT.

33. I’m no foodie and refused for a while to believe in 9a Poi or 8d Calzone nor 16a Frangipane although all seemed to parse OK. Didn’t believe 7d Dot until I suddenly saw that pesky dot in the clue. Surprised by 27a Eek, but it’s a good word now, ditto 18a Los Angeles, which is very clever.

34. 20.39.

35. About 40′ with much the same challenges as others, added to by pencilling in “art work” for some reason and finding it hard to move on. Still not sure I understand DOT… POSTDOC I got from wordplay and I obviously know what it means, but took a while to commit. Never parsed LA though it was a write in, but not keen on the wordplay. Almost entered MODeSTE, but stuck to the wordplay. Enjoyable puzzle, thanks Vinyl1 and Jalna.

    Edit.. yep I understand DOT now, doh!

36. 13:17. Same as others… I failed to parse LOS ANGELES and DOT (so thanks for that), DNK POI, or MODISTE and was stuck at the end on FRANGIPANE trying to get POT in there. Nice puzzle. I liked RED CROSS for the surface. Thanks Jalna and Vinyl.

37. 25:50 – felt very slow in solving and blamed tiredness for multiple stumbles, but I think in the end it was just v good puzzle that would have done duty in the Friday slot.

38. A tough Monday all round for both this and the QC. I managed to finish just a little over target at 46.16, but would have been under apart from my last three in, which in order were CALZONE, DOT and finally POSTDOC. I actually managed to solve DOT from the wordplay, and liked the ingenuity of the clue. I recall similar devices used when Hyphen or Apostrophe have been the answers.

39. I thought clueing ‘threads’ for ‘apparel’ was a little questionable. NHO ‘EXPOSIT’ and it doesn’t appear in my Chambers app either, though the wordplay revealed it readily enough. Otherwise an enjoyable puzzle. Slightly trickier than the usual Monday offering.

    1. ‘Threads’ as slang for ‘clothes’ was very popular at one time. Chambers Slang Dictionary dates it from the US in the 1920s, but it was used widely in the UK in my youth, 1950s and 1960s, when it was commonplace for teens and twenties to wear suits as leisurewear.

       EXPOSIT may not be very familiar but EXPOSITION derived from it is used a lot.

       1. I’m guessing, but might it be the other way around?
          Exposition is derived from expose, it coming from exponere (L).
          I can find no reference to exposit being a verb in Chambers 1983 or 1998, a Times dictionary of the early 2000s, nor in the online versions of Collins or Chambers.
          The online Merriam-Webster merely says it is a verb, offers no explanation and appends a link to expound.
          I’d be interested to see an example of it.
          ‘He expoisited it to be false’ would strike me as an extremely ugly construction.

          1. According to OED it comes from expositus the past participle of exponere. It gives the example ‘that case we have partly put in expositing the principle of aesthetic purity’.

40. 36:08. Like others, my last ones in were POSTDOC and then the unparsed very sneaky DOT. DNK POI and didn’t parse LOS ANGELES. A good crossword. I did like MINISERIES when the right pronunciation clicked – there are lots of chestnuts that get me every time

41. Thought DOT was blindingly obvious!

42. 12:15, held up at the end by ART FORM and DOT, where the answers seemed obvious but I couldn’t figure out the parsing. I gave up in the end and just submitted with fingers crossed, so thanks for the explanations. DOT is rather brilliant.
    NHO POI, and you can add me to the list of people surprised by ‘cream’ for FRANGIPANE.
    Good one.

43. 25 mins and almost half of it on everyone’s NE pair. Hate it when the hard ones cross.
    I am trying to make clues for my U3A crossword. 18 ac “city in and around Bel Air”? Hard to set clues is it not; bound to not work for some reason i cant see.

44. I couldn’t understand DOT, and FRANGIPANE took an age, but all correct. I didn’t get a ‘congratulations, you’ve solved the puzzle’ message, so my settings must have altered.
    A very nice puzzle.
    Thank you Setter

45. 32’45”
    Going well until struck by a cream bun in the closing stages.

    Concocting the cream took at least four minutes. My misgivings about exposit I’ve laid out in a reply to Jack. I share Zabadak’s view of prenup and, as there is apparently an APP for everything else, could not one be devised for dissuading setters from indicating the letters a,p and p in a manner that has already become very monotonous.
    Thank you Vinyl.

46. Overall I liked this. LOI DOT unparsed after POST DOC which I did know.
    NHO POI. Also could not parse LA.
    So, like many others today.
    I had a calzone on my last visit to Pizza Express -very good.
    David

47. I thought my LOI PASSDOC wasn’t right but I’d spent so much time on the NE corner I felt I needed to bring things to a conclusion. Pity.

48. 33:15. I quite enjoyed this – there were enough easy clues to get going, and by then had enough crossers to work out the harder clues. NHO POI, and I (yet again) was fooled by He, and they for THIRD PERSON. I enjoyed having to understand the wordplay for some very ordinary words like CAME. I only understood DOT on reading the blog. fun stuff…. thanks Vinyl and Setter!

49. 20.36

    Couldn’t see THIRD PERSON and ART FORM as well as the tricky ones in the NE so a bit under par but nice puzzle

50. 21.45 but very hesitant over Dot. Delighted to see it was right. Some pretty chewy clues with postdoc holding me up as did enterprise. COD frangipane.

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