Times Cryptic 29066

90 comments on “Times Cryptic 29066”

1. “tent” can’t mean camping, so “rid” must be camping because it’s inside “tent”.

   1. But ‘is in TENT’ as he has written does mean camping.

      1. Thank you, Q.

         1. It is a two-stage process though, seems worth remarking on. Firstly you have to replace ‘camping’ by ‘in tent’, then solve the cryptic that results.

2. DNF
   I could make nothing of 27d; NHO ‘nap’, for one thing, and ‘given tip’ would never have suggested reversal to me. Also couldn’t get SPELL.

3. Gave up on 25d. ‘Sell’ and ‘go’ are not interchangeable for me.

   1. “At that price, it will never sell/go.”

      1. I’ve never heard the expression ‘it will never go’

4. 41 minutes. I didn’t know GIG could be a verb, so did the usual fruitless alphabet trawl for 9a, even though GIGI had occurred to me straight away for the ‘Film’. ARABLE as a noun for ‘crops’ at 6a was also new. Favourite was the “in TENT” for ‘camping?’ trick at 3d.

   I thought SELL for ‘go’ at 25d was OK once I’d thought about it. As well as Jack’s example, what about “Old pieces of brown furniture sell/go for a song these days”.

   1. Or even ‘going, going, GONE!’

5. Couldn’t really see a lot of this so went and did a few things and came back to it. Everything then fell into place. Thought 29a, BRIDLE was very good, along with 30a, POLO NECK, although I wouldn’t have called a polo mint a sweet. Tricked again by SOLDIERS and not remembering they’re what you dip into your BOILED EGG. 8d, LOUPE was known from using one for years to check negatives when I used to do a lot of photo developing, but I always knew it as a LUPE. They’re regularly seen on Antiques Roadshow when the experts want to have a good look at a hallmark, for instance. Lots of long anagrams today, I thought. Very enjoyable though.
   Thanks Jack and setter.

   1. It may be a geographical thing, Q (I think you are in Oz?), but in the UK ‘sweets’ cover every form of what the US call ‘candy’, and we traditionally had ‘sweetshops’ that sold little else. Perhaps you are thinking of ‘sweet’ as a dessert? That’s also been around for a long time here but I’d say only became widespread post-WWII. Prior to that we spoke mainly of ‘pudding’.

      It amused me that POLO and ‘the mint with the hole’ came up in yesterday’s QC discussions.

      1. Yes, in Oz for the last 50 years but spent my first 21 years in England, so pretty well up on ‘sweets’ and, of course, the great corner sweetshop, now a memory, sadly. Just in case it ever comes up in crossword land they’re called ‘lollies’ in Oz and Polo mints are known here as ‘Lifesavers’. Of course ‘Mint Kiss’ wouldn’t have made sense which is probably why the setter chose to use ‘sweet’.
         Yes, I saw the POLO/HALO comment yesterday – Halo mint, anyone?

6. DNF, but enjoyed. I was undone by sticking with EPIC rather than GIGI, as I thought (mistakenly) that EPIC was inside the clue backwards. Kept wondering if there was some regional variant of ‘dippy egg’ that I wasn’t seeing. Knew LOUPE from German ‘Lupe’. Remembered ‘sent’ for ‘thrilled’ but don’t like it. Learned here that ‘abstract’ = ‘steal’ (couldn’t justify it at the time), ‘nap’ = ‘best tip’. Thanks!

   Why is a polo neck for cooler months? I would associate it more with summer.

   1. I know little about fashions in clothes but the first polo neck garments I remember were chunky heavy-knit jumpers made in the Scottish islands that would only be worn in the depths of winter. But with the arrival of man-made fabrics, thin and lighter polo-necked shirts and sweaters became available, suitable for any time of year.

   2. A polo neck is a jumper with a high, fold over collar that covers the neck, helping to keep it warm in colder weather. Here’s a picture.

      1. Ah OK, thanks both. Must have just been thinking of a polo shirt.

   3. That would be a UK ‘summer’. 🙂i.e. not usually hot…. although this seems to be changing….four out of five times I’ve come over and the weather has been anomalous.

7. Chucked in ‘laude’ with about as much chance of it being right as a hundred-to-one pop winning the Melbourne Cup. Pleased to unravel NAP (topical) and SPELL.

   1. Great ride by the young Irishman. Mine was up and about in the straight but finished third.

8. Luckily I have a LOUPE in my desk drawer, bought for examining negatives and contact prints. It was the unknown department and the unknown film that held me up, though I’d at least heard of the book so when I eventually thought of “gig” it seemed likely. Liked BAR B most. Back to my more usual slow slog at 38 minutes.

   1. Gigi the movie is almost unwatchable now and it’s so terrible it’s – terrible. It features the “charmant” old boulevardier Maurice Chevalier observing a group of small girls at play and twinkling his way through “sank heaven for leetle girls”. Best forgotten.

      1. Always did think he was about as creepy as a man can get. If I were a leetle girl I would run a mile.

      2. Another odd one set in Paris with Chevalier is Love in the Afternoon, also starring Audrey Hepburn. There the main creepiness is from an obviously aging Gary Cooper, with whom we are expected to believe that the young and gorgeous AH is besotted. MC is her father, who seems quite happy for her to be gobbled up by the decrepit playboy. That said, Maurice Chevalier is very watchable. It’s Cooper who’s the cringe-y disaster.

9. So pleased to finish correctly this morning. A steady, slow, solve, involving several alphabet trawls and careful parsing. SPELL was LOI; always thought ARABLE was an adjective; nho LOUPE, so submitted off leaderboard. I had a POLO NECK fifty years ago – it was indeed too hot and uncomfortable when indoors or doing physical activity.
   With hindsight, NAP is brilliantly clued.

   29’54”, thanks jack and setter.

10. 18.01 – for some reason I was on song with this one. I spent a lot of time looking for a better alternative to SPELL because of the rather weak SELL/GO link. But I hit the button, prayed and all was well. Going to be up all night tonight to watch the US results come in.

    1. It’s compelling viewing. I like to toggle between CNN and Fox for balance. Is it too much to hope for a miracle and have a result that is accepted by the losing side?

       1. If the Orange one wins, I expect you will have. They did last time he won, even though they had more votes…

11. 12.27. Struggled with a few of these and was fearing a brick wall, but pleased to be all green in the end. NHO ARDECHE, LOUPE, and GIGI, and I didn’t know that meaning of NAP.

    MER at ‘casualty’ for AE. It’s A&E, so there’s an extra step in the cryptic instruction.

    Thanks both.

12. I wonder if Titania be awaked;
    Then, what it was that next came in her eye,
    Which she must dote on in extremity.

    25 mins pre-brekker. I liked it and admired some of the attempts at novelty (camping, given tip) and I am a sucker for a Spoonerism.
    LOI, after Polo Neck, was Spell where my eyebrow twitched a bit at the stretchiness of both synonyms ‘go’ and ‘mean’.
    Ta setter and J

13. DNF after a half-hour struggle. Having eventually negotiated GIGI, LOUPE, ARDECHE, POLO NECK and LOI SPELL, I forgot that I had meant to go back and check my unparsed OBSTINANCE at 26ac.

    Not my finest hour, but no fault of the setter. Thanks for the blog Jack.

14. 9:31. Steady solve. A bit of dated feel with ‘sent’ in 14ac and the film – ‘most people’ do not, in fact, remember the 1958 film musical by Lerner and Lowe 😉 – but at least the singer from the 60s is still alive so we must be thankful for small mercies.

15. Steady solve but with a couple of entertaining spiky bits. For some reason I got held up by 3dn, thinking it might be an anagram of “It deter,” which it very nearly is. Also feeling = sentient took time to arrive.
    Good stuff though, overall.

16. DNF pressed reveal after 23 mins to uncover loupe which I knew early in the process could be my undoing when I had the crossers but still didn’t have a clue. Glad to see I was in good company.

    Wasn’t too impressed with celebrated.

    But an enjoyable puzzle, must try harder.

17. Maybe I’m just grumpy today. Having not enjoyed the QC, I came to this determined to get more pleasure from it, but failed miserably to achieve that aim. I put my metaphorical pen down when I hit the wall halfway through, but resuming an hour later I still couldn’t see it in a better light. I didn’t like ‘sell=go’ in my LOI which was submitted with fingers crossed, though I accept that it just about passes muster.

    FOI ABSTRACT
    LOI SPELL
    COD TRIDENT
    TIME 15:13

18. Straightforward, but didn’t fully understand why 27 was NAP although saw Peter Pan. 18 minutes. Liked POLO NECK. Thanks jackkt.

19. I’ve lurked for a while, now taking the plunge.

    8:49. NHO ARDECHE but sounded French so in it went.

    1. Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome! Always good when an observer finds a voice, especially one with an impressive time.

       1. I was going to say I might become a lurker again. Might improve my times.

    2. Welcome, RATEL!

       1. He’ll be about later…

          1. 😊

          2. 😄

20. 37.27, so back to reality after yesterday’s gentle challenge. Delayed by undertaking two alphabet trawls looking for something better than SPELL.

21. 42 mins for me – I’ll take that based on other’s comments as that’s quicker than average for me.

    Didn’t really understand TRIDENT.
    LOI: LOUPE
    COD: I quite enjoyed EYELID albeit suspect it’s in the chestnut category with soldiers and eggs.

22. 23:38
    Enjoyed this. Going at a steady rate but then held up for a long time in the NW.
    Don’t remember seeing BOILED EGG before so it’s COD. Also Liked TRIDENT, POLO NECK and EXISTENCE.

    Thanks to Jack and the setter.

23. I didn’t know J-PS was gay, but that’s surely a masculine “dear”! It would be a surprise to Simone de Beauvoir, who allegedly kept him well supplied with girls from her student classes. This was not the easiest of puzzles, and I crossed the line in 18.28, like many finishing with SPELL with the firm intention of complaining if I got a pink or two. I could make it work, but almost preferred not to.
    I struggled in the NW too, trying to remember whether TENTAGE was a cost thing: it wouldn’t take much to put me off camping. I also tried to make MIST for a generic film work before remembering GIGI: is it still shown today with Chevalier’s hopelessly “incorrect” signature song?
    With the crossers, I couldn’t see any alternative to ARDECHE -just as well.

    1. Hi Z, I think it’s just the word that Sartre as a French person would use for dear in any context where the noun that cher qualifies is a masculine singular one (e.g., ‘mon cher ami’, ‘ce livre est cher’, etc.).

       1. thanks for explaining what on earth Z was on about.
          Just showing he knows more about French grammar than I do, it transpires ..

          1. Mon plaisir 😊

24. Finished in about 23 minutes but submitted off leaderboard because I wasn’t happy with SPELL. Couldn’t understand how ‘sell’ meant ‘go’, but now that Jack and others have explained it, it makes sense.

    At least I managed to finish this puzzle, unlike today’s QC or concise…

25. 27 mins but a lot of holes that weren’t filled easily. Particularly the NE where all I had for help were vowels. Plenty of MER’s today

26. 51 minutes, having failed on the French department and looked it up (fortunately I didn’t have to peruse the list in my Pears Cyclopedia for very long), and I’d never heard of a LOUPE so used aids for that.

    I thought it was very feeble of the setter to use ‘Arab’ in 6ac, where the word appears as part of the answer. Why is it necessary? There are lots of words ending in b and surely the setter could have found a suitable one. Perhaps topicality had something to do with it.

    1. 6ac Just what I was going to say!

27. 17:02. LOI LOUPE which I eventually remembered, but failed to parse. I’m another who found “sell” for “go” a bit of s stretch. I liked IN TENT for camping and BAR B on the pub crawl. Thanks Jackkt and setter.

28. I’m surprised nobody’s commented about the clumsy 6ac where ‘Arab’ appears in the clue and also constitutes the first 4 letters of the answers. Otherwise a very nice crossword with just ‘spell’ going in with a shrug as, like others, I couldn’t equate sell and go. 17.45 for me today.

    1. Yes they have. Look back three posts.

29. NAP too recondite for me. Also, ‘sell’ and ‘go’ are hardly synonyms, even in extremis. I had to resort to aids to get them. A shame, because the rest of this was tough, but fair IMO.

30. 70:58
    Stared at ‘spell’ forever before putting it in.
    Thanks, jack.

31. DNF, defeated by the unknown GIGI – I started an alphabet trawl, but gave up.

    – No problem with sell=go for SPELL – “The painting sold/went for £100,000 at auction”
    – Dimly remembered AGOUTI, probably from a previous crossword
    -NHO ARDECHE but it was the only plausible, French-sounding option with all the checkers
    – Like LukeB above, got LOUPE from knowing that it’s ‘Lupe’ in German
    – Didn’t understand NAP beyond the Peter Pan reference, not knowing the tip meaning

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    COD Abstinence

    1. Had to chuckle that your COD was “abstinence” and NHO “Ardeche” because it is one of the biggest wine producing areas in France. 😄

       My excuse for reading the back labels of wine bottles is to bone up on geography.😉

32. 40 plus, with breaks. Tough for me and I am not entirely sure some of the clues work properly. Particularly dubious about TRIDENT and SPELL, although I appreciate the explanations above. I think go as a definition of sell is dicey as in that sense the word go cannot be separated from its accompanying preposition (for) and the device by which the word rid ends up in tent seems a bit random.

    1. ‘Everything must go’.

       1. No. That has nothing to do with selling except incidentally as the means by which everything goes. Everything could equally well go in a fire or a burglary but that wouldn’t make go mean either of those things.

          1. Hmm yes perhaps. Obviously in context this isn’t a reference to fire or theft but it’s a very specific context.
             More generally though I’m not sure it’s a requirement that words that need propositions can only be used and defined with those propositions. I wouldn’t mind if ‘rely’ were used to define ‘depend’, for instance.

             1. I’d argue that, in spite of the context, the example doesn’t help because you could equally want everything to go from a shop even if you were giving it away. The going and the means of its departure are separate considerations.

                I agree it is not a general requirement for a definition always to include a necessary preposition but in this case there doesn’t seem any other way that go can define sell. Over-punctilious, perhaps.

                1. Interesting pov, but definitions don’t have to fit every circumstance, only one.

                   1. I don’t think it fits even this one.

                2. I regard this as just a specific meaning of the word ‘sell’, which requires the preposition ‘for’. It is distinct from the more general meaning, which doesn’t require the preposition. ‘Go’ is synonymous with the first meaning but not the second, just as ‘rely’ is synonymous with ‘depend’.

                   1. It is a sub-atomically tiny point and I am quite happy to let both views remain in a state of quantum superposition!

                      1. Indeed!

                   2. Chambers has “go (v), def 24 – to be sold”, and “sell (intransitive verb), def 2 – to be sold”. Although a bit convoluted, it does support the setter here.

33. Perhaps BOILED EGG merits further explanation. I only got it because of a distant memory of an English friend talking about ‘soldiers’ as strips of toast, something I’ve never heard in real life.

    1. It still exists in the phrase ‘egg and soldiers’, although not outside of that specific dish as far as I’m aware. If you google that phrase you’ll find plenty of recipes online (a remarkable number, given the simplicity of the thing!).

       1. No doubt. I merely meant that I’d never heard of it in everyday use. To me it rather has the ring of the Victorian or Edwardian nursery. We frequently had boiled eggs and toast when growing up, but just called it “boiled eggs and toast”.

34. Floundered around with a few stragglers after solving most of the puzzle. GIGI, TRIDENT and SENTIENT had me struggling for a good 10 minutes, then LOI LOUPE defeated me and I had to look it up. Submitted off leaderboard to discover a silly mistake at 15d, where I’d neglected to check the spelling of EXISTENSE. Doh! Saw the tip Peter instruction, but didn’t know the non cloth pile definition of NAP. A rather dispiriting 37,27. Thanks setter and Jack.

35. DNF, beaten by BARB & SPELL.

    Not very satisfying, IMHO.

    No one has seemed to remark that there were TWELVE question marks and two exclamation marks in this crossie. Too many for me. By that token couldn’t you arguably put a question mark after every clue as they are, fact, asking you a question to answer?

    Thanks Jack and questionable setter!

36. 42:50. Solved most of it within 30 mins but struggled over the last 3 or 4. 25d was my LOI without really understanding either of the two definitions but I couldn’t see a viable alternative. Didn’t know the French department but the answer was clear from the anagram/checkers. Didn’t understand why trident was a deterrent until I came here. For the most part pretty straightforward.

37. Struggled today eventually finished in 40 mins but beaten by bar b. I’d put bars (a second on bar) as spikes or blocks. It seemed weak to me but i could see nothing else and the whole second stop on a pub crawl thing went over my head.

    Really enjoyed this today thx j and setter

38. is it possible that the word “without” is performing two roles in 25 down so that sell means go without .

39. A bit of a slog for me, but got there eventually. NAP, POLO NECK and SPELL took most of the time on this one. I liked the BOILED EGG clue, which got me GIGI (memories of Lesley Caron).
    Quite a hard work out.
    Thanks for the blog, Jack, and thank you setter.

40. Managed to finish just inside target at 44.37, but like Jackkt couldn’t get 8dn. I put in LOUSE more in hope than expectancy, and it goes without saying that I’ve never heard of LOUPE. I was correct with SPELL but couldn’t parse it. Enjoyed the puzzle in spite of the DNF.

41. Failed, with SPEND at 25d – which admittedly is a stretch but just about works.

42. Well for no reason I can see this was my worst attempt at a 15×15 in years. Gave up with 7 undone. Why Billy why?

43. Didn’t like SELL = GO. GO can mean too many things if you take it that loosely. Fair bit for us Frenchies there, with CHER, ARDECHE (I wonder if anyone’s ever made a clue from its homophone ARDFHEIS meaning Irish political conference), and LOUPE (French for magnifying glass). Plus GIGI and BOURBON. The dynasty originally came from the area around Moulins in the Allier department. The drink is named after a county somewhere in the southern US, which was in turn named after some Louis or another. I was distracted and lost momentum half way through. So a poor 40’50”.
    PS I also think the EXISTENCE clue was very poor. EX IS TENSE does not sound like EXISTENCE.

44. I know you will all have moved on by now, but I wanted to post that for the first time ever I have finished a Times cryptic crossword, in the spectacular time of 4 hours 47 minutes (across two days). Is it OK to feel smug that I got LOUPE? Probably not, all things considered.

    1. Many congrats, Louella! And you beat me re LOUPE. Long may the improvement continue.

    2. Well done, Louella, it was quite a tough one for your first successful solve.
       I just came back for another look at it to see if my three unknowns were any clearer now after 24 hours (ARABLE, LOUPE and SPELL). They weren’t, so I am here in the blog looking for answers. Feel free to be smug about LOUPE. I feel the opposite because, after reading the blog, I now know that my wife has one for textile related matters. I still enjoyed the crossword

45. re 9ac I had NIMI, which is also a film, backwards reading IM IN. FWW, I think this works better than the given answer.

46. A film called Nimi? If so, a bit of an obscurity! Oddly, this crossie gave me very little bother, except for the NHO ARDECHE, the dodgy go=sell, and that meaning of NAP, where I hesitatingly put it in on the strength of Peter backwards. Liked the PDM of BOILED EGG, which hit immediately after a break ( believe me, the subconscious works hard when we ‘turn off’.) Started strongly with ABSTRACT, as I know my artists, and the rest followed quite well without too much hesitation. I wouldn’t class a POLO mint as a sweet, but suppose it just about levers its way in to that category, and was necessary to make sense of the clue. All done and dusted within the hour( with multiple intrusions): so a happy bunny here.

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