Times 29095 – In my beginning is my end…..

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Music: Tchaikovsky, Nutcracker Suite, Levine/Chicago

Time: 14:54

This did not feel like an easy Monday at first, as I struggled to get started in the grid.   After five minutes, I only had a few answers here and there.    But once I had a sufficient quorum of crossing letters, I started to speed up dramatically.    Yes, I biffed one answer after another, often not even fully reading the clue, but just putting in the only English word that fit.

Across
1 Feature of building computer programs, we hear (4)
APSE – Sounds like APPS.
4 Good humour always at home in the course of game (10)
CHEERINESS – CH(EER IN)ESS, a biff.
9 Looked at team showing anger maybe after trick (10)
CONSIDERED –  CON + SIDE RED. not fully parsed while solving.
10 Capital this person’s invested in American city (4)
LIMA – L.(I’M)A.
11 Left in Calais, unable to communicate successfully? (6)
GAUCHE – Double definition, one a bit dubious.
12 Competes in race that’s most laborious (8)
HEAVIEST – HEA(VIES)T.
14 Pitch made by one favouring war? (4)
HAWK – Double definition.
15 What’s carried by ship is scary — discarded loot (10)
SCHILLINGS – S(CHILLING)S.  Discarded in the sense of no longer used.
17 Small unit that could make mice tremor (10)
MICROMETRE – Anagram of MICE TREMOR, giving .001 of a millimetre, a length seldom required in casual talk.
20 Irishman bringing post around (4)
LIAM – MAIL backwards.    I was tempted to biff Sean, but held off.
21 One drafted in — being cute, I end getting redeployed (8)
INDUCTEE – Anagram of CUTE, I END.   Leaving out the IN would have helped the clue, as that suggests the answer.
23 Figure is round and not totally lifeless (6)
ISOGON – IS O + GON[e].
24 Meeting female, give false account willingly (4)
LIEF – LIE + F.
25 British journeys frenetic, needing introduction of one female attendant (10)
BRIDESMAID – B RIDES MA(I)D.
26 Insignificant person to enforce delay upon being picked up (10)
MAKEWEIGHT – sounds like MAKE WAIT.
27 Numbers given hotel grub (4)
NOSH – NOS + H.
Down
2 Form of impropriety when academic leads a country (11)
PROFANATION – PROF + A NATION.
3 Poet’s village festival entertaining a hundred folk regularly (4,5)
EAST COKER –  EAST(C + [f]O[l]K)ER.
4 King, say, upset, being taken in by bounders and scroungers (7)
CADGERS – CAD(R, E.G upside-down)S.
5 Momentous things are threat somehow (5-10)
EARTH-SHATTERING – Anagram of THINGS ARE THREAT.
6 Flighty type narrated story in auditorium (7)
REDTAIL – Sounds like READ TALE.
7 Old priest with the heartless description of the chosen people (5)
ELITE – ELI + T[h]E.
8 Barely sufficient examination taking minimal time (5)
SCANT – SCAN + T.
13 Unexpected gains with politicians — those endorsing proposal? (11)
SIGNATORIES – Anagram of GAINS + TORIES.
16 A three-legged race location (4,2,3)
ISLE OF MAN – Cryptic definition, alluding to the triskele and the Tourist Trophy races.
18 Greek character leading board not necessarily permanent (7)
MUTABLE – MU + TABLE.
19 Identity needed to enter sporting occasion? That is obvious (7)
EVIDENT – EV(ID)ENT.
21 African country set up to accommodate second religion (5)
ISLAM – MAL(S)I upside-down.
22 Part of ship storing bit of rotten rubbish (5)
DRECK – D(R[ortten]ECK.

87 comments on “Times 29095 – In my beginning is my end…..”

  1. I worked the 15-letter anagram first and proceeded at a steady clip… till the very end, when I was hung up for an unaccountable amount of time on ISOGON. I remembered Eliot’s “Four Quartets” readily enough but NHO of MAKEWEIGHT.

  2. 15:30
    Nothing to scare the proverbials. LOI SCHILLINGS took a while as I tried to think of an SCH__ S word. DNK ISOGON, but didn’t need to.

  3. 7:55 – I needed wordplay for LIEF and PROFANATION. My last in was HAWK, that took a lot of starting and mental dictionary-trawling to think of possibilities for ?A?K.

  4. 40 mins with a reveal needed for end of CHEERINESS, couldn’t think of a game that fitted, and was stuck on CHEERINGLY.

    Also needed help on EAST COKER, as thought I was looking for a poet and a village festival, and Easter isn’t a village festival. I went with ELSA COKER, with an unknown festival of Elser. Ezra Pound was an early biff for the poet.

    NHO SCHILLINGS, RED TAIL, ISOGON, LIEF.

    ISOGON sounds like a word that can be constructed and understood, if never actually used. The Wikipedia page shows that it is not just regular polygons that are isogons, and makes this clarification: The pseudorhombicuboctahedron – is not isogonal.

    COD MAKEWEIGHT

    GAUCHE looks odd, “unable to communicate”?

    1. I think it’s OK as a definition by example, in that if you’re socially awkward a way in which that might be manifested is that you might not be able to communicate successfully with someone you felt drawn to…

      1. I agree but it is a poor clue IMHO in that ignoring all that, if you can translate “left” into French you are there. The rest of the clue is a MAKEWEIGHT, just put in to make the clue very mildly cryptic. If it had been “marine port” in Calais some obfuscation could have been introduced.

        1. I can’t translate left into French – actually I could, but it took like hours to remember. Even so, I thought it was a terrible clue – not a double definition but a single definition twice, so not cryptic at all. Gauche the English word from gauche the French word means exactly the same thing… not smooth and natural (for want of a better definition). In both languages. Apart from that, a fine Times Crossword, with the added bonus of no live obscure people, and no other obscurities.

    2. I’ve never heard of a Red Tail either, but then I’ve never been birdwatching in North America.

  5. Considering there were so many things unknown to me I was pleased to finish in 25 minutes, 5 minutes within my target time, and without resorting to aids. I guess that qualifies it as an example of a good cryptic puzzle, but not the sort I’d want to experience too often.

    My NHOs were:

    ISOGON, which has appeared here in a couple of Jumbos in 2021 and 2022, but otherwise only in Mephistos.

    LIEF, making its first appearance as an answer although it has been needed for understanding wordplay.

    PROFANATION, another first time out although in 2015 it was used in a clue to define ‘sacrilege’.

    EAST COKER, returning on its third outing after a gap of 9 years.

    REDTAIL, making its debut.

    I tend to agree with Merlin about GAUCHE as I can’t find a definition in any of the usual sources that mentions an inability to communicate. Nor in my thesaurus.

    No problem with SCHILLINGS as I have holidayed in Austria many a time.

    2. But a bit loose-and insulting-to call it ‘loot’ considering it was the official currency. Makes it sound like Austria was some kind of rogue state engaged in piracy.

  6. Just under 40 minutes. Solution flowed fairly quickly for me. NHO EAST COKER or SCHILLINGS but first had clear wordplay and second was biffed.
    Thanks Vinyll

  8. 7:42. I felt like I was close to PB territory here but I got stuck at the end on SCHILLINGS which seemed to me a much trickier clue than the rest. Although there were several unknowns – LIEF, PROFANATION, ISOGON and EAST COKER – the wordplay was generous. Like Merlin when I had the initial E of EAST COKER I tried to make Ezra Pound work.

  9. 31m 09s
    For 23ac I considered ISOCOL. ‘Not totally lifeless’ equating to COL(D).
    No problem with SCHILLINGS. My mother was Austrian and I visited the ‘rellos’ plenty of times in the pre-Euro days.
    I had only ever come across LIEF before in the title of a Fairport Convention album: ‘Liege and Lief’

    1. I’ve only seen LIEF in the phrase ‘would as lief …’ as in ODE’s “He would just as lief eat a pincushion.” ODE marks it as (archaic), but it looks to be dialectal (one of ODE’s corpus examples is Irish English from a weblog).

  10. Failed to get ISOGON but should have, I had the ISO part and obviously (to me now) most figures end in GON. Without that it was a pretty quick time, and when I gave up after wasting some minutes getting nowhere it was just over 18. Some nice clues and I liked the Four Quartets ref, thank V.

    From You Changed My Life:
    It all seemed so proper, it all seemed so ELITE
    Eating that absolute garbage while being so discreet

  11. 28 minutes. Some unfamiliar words in LIEF, ISOGON and PROFANATION, the ‘unable to communicate successfully?’ def for GAUCHE and the unknown EAST COKER reference, all of which held me up. ISLE OF MAN was my favourite.

  12. 8.03, with a few pangs of concern given the unknowns but the wordplay was all very accommodating.

    Thanks both.

  13. “In my beginning is my end.” LOI LIEF. It nearly works but Eliot put no reversal indicator I can see for the last two letters. 24 minutes. PROFANATION, SCHILLINGS, ISOGON and DRECK were also less than assured but amazingly all was well. I enjoyed this but if one of those had been wrong, I wouldn’t have. Thank you V and setter.

  14. I kill where I please because it is all mine.
    There is no sophistry in my body:
    My manners are tearing off heads
    (Hawk Roosting, Ted Hughes)

    15 mins pre-brekker. Very gentle, I thought. My last two in were the Lief/Dreck crossers where I was left wondering – why pick those crazy words when there are so many more options. Lilo/Dalek would have been fun.
    Ta setter and V

  15. Once again, we left-handers have these perjorative terms perpetuated: “gauche” to add to “sinister” and “maladroit”, not to mention “corrie fisted”, “cuddy wifter” and “cack handed”. Huh! There ought to be a law against it.
    Having said that, good puzzle by the way.

  16. A former colleague of mine set himself the task of memorising The Four Quartets. All the more remarkable as he was a Hong Kong Chinese.

    I asked him when he’d finished if he could tell me what they meant. Like the rest of Eliot’s verse, they went right over my head.

  17. Quick today, and no unknowns although ISO_O_ took a little thought. Also 25ac was clearly an anagram, wasn’t it? No..

  18. I found this easy to start with, until it wasn’t. Most done I 30 mins then gtound to a halt with a raft of unknowns. EAST COKER, DRECK & MAKEWEIGHT all beat me. ISOGON at least was guessed right. Bah.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

  19. 14.39, a well above average performance by my modest standards. My wife is from Port Erin which helped with ISLE OF MAN; like some others I struggled with ISOGON but in general a friendly start to the week.

  20. Just over 15 minutes.

    – Didn’t realise the definition for SCHILLINGS was referring to money and assumed it was some nautical term
    – Not massively confident about ISOGON
    – Even less confident about the unknown LIEF
    – For 25a, tried to make an anagram of B + *frenetic with an I inserted, before the checkers pointed me towards BRIDESMAID
    – Not familiar with EAST COKER but the wordplay was kind

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    FOI Apse
    LOI Lief
    COD Isle of Man

  21. Best for a long time (under 15 mins) even though held up for a short while by MICROMETER before correcting and trusting to luck with NHO LIEF at the end.

    Thank you, vinyl1 and the setter

  22. 6:23. What Pootle said. In fact about 25% of my solving time was taken up by 15ac. No problems otherwise.

  23. 23a DNF NHO Isogon. Not in Cheating Machine. Added. And although it was solvable I never thought of GONe. (I should have because it isn’t difficult.) I essayed Isopod, but couldn’t parse and it is far from lifeless anyway.
    24a Lief archaic, but in CM. But I didn’t add liefer, liefest nor liever as they are also archaic. At least lief is in Shakespear, but I don’t know about the comparatives.
    6d NHO Redtail, and that’s because it refers to a HHO red-tailed hawk.
    22d NHO Dreck AFAIK, although something about it suggested it might exist. Discovered it is Yiddish.
    25a Bridesmaid, very clear instructions meant I started writing while still reading the clue, and not knowing where it was going.

  24. 12.46. I was surprised to see DRECK. as the only other place I’ve seen it (at least with the right sort of meaning) is in Heinlein as a kind of exclamation. Nothing else made waves, as I sailed past GAUCHE without a second thought and ISOGON fell easily enough. Yes, LIEF from Fairport Convention, but also Heinlein again, I think from Glory Road.
    SCHILLING with that coy definition my last and slowest in.

  25. 10:23. My best time since joining the SNITCH. I was heading towards comfortably breaking the 10 minute barrier but got delayed by SCHILLINGS and ISOGON. Relieved with no pink suare for the latter, LIEF and DRECK.

  26. 19:40

    Would have been quicker but for a clumsy METER. Four or five clues guessed without any certainty from parsing, but got lucky.

    Thanks all.

  27. In thirty years of mathematics education I never used the word ISOGON, possibly because explanations could get complicated (see Merlin above). But if I had to explain it, the Greek roots of the word are ‘same angle’, so, as well as regular polygons, ISOGONs include rectangles. I hope that helps.

    I do like this forum. Where else could we discuss Heinlein, Eliot and mathematics all at once?

    Did this puzzle in 9’28”, thanks vinyl and setter.

  28. Much of this very easy. Finished in 32 mins, 10 of which were spent poring over the NHO – and ultimately, guessed because it fitted the clue – DRECK. One of those crossword-y words, no doubt, that are entirely unknown in any other sphere. I shall of course instantly forget it and be baffled anew the next time it crops up.

  29. About 25′ after a slow start and a couple of early errors. Apps rather than APSE and micrometer (which is the thing I used as an apprentice to measure MICROMETRES). LIEF from Fairport and DRECK only after solving MAKEWEIGHT. Enjoyed SCHILLINGS and constructed the NHO town. Thanks Vinyl and setter

  30. APSE was FOI and I join the throng who were held up by LOI, SCHILLINGS, and knew LIEF from FC. 22:37. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

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