Times Cryptic 29162

89 comments on “Times Cryptic 29162”

1. DNF. Defeated by BRED and FEATHER-BED.

   1. Similar experience for me.
      I, however, got PAINKILLER (I had a wisdom tooth out yesterday afternoon so am needing them badly).
      Not surprisingly I had no trouble with ESPIONAGE. The fourth novel in my series, The Mongoose and the Cobra, is published today by Hobeck Books. Very exciting.

      1. I’m now reading Tip of the Iceberg, with no. 2 on order; looking forward to the mongoose.

         1. Thanks, Kevin. Let me know your thoughts in due course.

            1. Looking for new series – Tip of the Iceberg shortly

               1. Thank you, you can find the four books on Amazon or the Hobeck Books online shop.

      2. Well done. I’ll be getting it soon!

2. Totally defeated! Knew 2d had to be ARGO but never heard of that spelling of Barque for boat. KIWI fooled me. Never seen RIGAMAROLE spelt like that either, it was in the Saturday cryptic about ten days ago spelt without the first ‘A’. NHO the phrase FEATHER-BED and didn’t see the wordplay. On the plus side, I liked HABIT-FORMING, BLOCK CAPITAL, IMPATIENT, though thrown by ‘opposite’, and APPREHENSIVE, one of only two straight anagrams as far as I can see, 11d & 16d.
   Thanks Jack.

3. I struggled but finished. Rigamarole is more often seen in the US, so it was not unknown to me. While apprehensive, semiliterate, disinherit, and spellbound came easily, painkiller and featherbed were tough. I ended up in the NE, where incitement and insulating held out for a long time. I was thinking of the book of John, but only put two and two together at the very end.

   Great puzzle!

   Time:39:45

4. Tough workout. RIGAMAROLE was very surprising and the stoner reference had me looking for something beginning with GRASS at 1ac. Also struggled with ACTS, ROUT and FEATHERBED.

   Managed to get through in under 20 on a day that could have been much worse.

   Thanks Jack and setter.

5. 40 minutes. Hard, not helped by GLASSHOUSE for ‘Military prison’ being an NHO and not having come across the variant RIGAMAROLE spelling either. I couldn’t parse ARGO but at least didn’t get sucked into thinking it had something to do with a dog. ROUT and OSRIC entered via wordplay and the ‘that stays on the ground’ bit for KIWI only occurred to me after submitting.

   No complaints but tougher than the average Tuesday puzzle.

6. 48m 55s
   Spent several minutes without finding anything I could solve but then came across APPREHENSIVE.
   Like Quadrophenia I had not come across that spelling of ‘barque’ before. Collins Online says it’s American.
   Let myself down by entering GYRO for 1d.
   Slightly stumped by 1ac. I used to work for a US cargo airline that, after 9/11, flew missions for the US Navy so I became used to the term ‘brig’….although I was never in one!
   Thanks, Jack.

7. I had everything except KIWI, ACTS, INSULATING, & ROUT in a bit under 30′, then quit to go to the gym. Got the first 3 in a couple of minutes over lunch, finally put in ROUT because I could think of nothing else besides RAUS! and ROUX. KIWI went in because _I_I; forgot completely about the bird; duh. ACTS, another duh; so obvious once I saw it. MER over RIGAMAROLE. Knew GLASSHOUSE from ‘Dance to the Music of Time’; worried at first about L vs R until I realized what kind of stoner was involved. All in all an enjoyable puzzle, which would have been more enjoyable if I’d been a little less dim.

8. I didn’t feel quite on the wavelength today, but I clearly wasn’t far off it at 35 minutes. Some of my answers came from thinking of completely the wrong thing—the potential barking of Odysseus’s dog Argos helped me with 2d, for example—but sometimes that’s just how the brain works, isn’t it?

   I think a lot of these, even the shorter ones like ROUT or BRED, could have held me up for a lot longer on a different day.

9. 15.37

   A slightly offbeat puzzle, and one that I really enjoyed. ACTS and INSULATING particularly threw me, but the penny-drops came with a smile rather than a grimace.

   Thanks both.

10. 47 minutes with LOI FEATHER-BED. COD to HABIT-FORMING. This took some getting into, and even more getting out of, but in between it went OK. Thank you Jack and setter.

11. 25:29

    A good puzzle, I found it very tricky with ACTS, BRED and KIWI entered without being parsed. Never seen RIGAMAROLE spelt like that before. I liked IMPATIENT, PARTHENON and INSULATING.

    Thanks to Jack and the setter

12. In sudden cloud that blotting distance out
    Confused the compass of the traveller’s mind, …
    (The Feather Bed, Robert Graves)

    25 mins pre-brekker. I liked it, especially SpellBound.
    Not keen on the side-splitting thing. And the Absolutely and the slight ‘crowds’ seemed clumsy – but, as I say, I liked it.
    Ta setter and J.

13. GLASSHOUSE went straight in, but I then struggled for a while. After some time I was left with what turned out to be ROUT, BRED, and ACTS (LOI). Missed the Job reference, shrugged at RIGAMAROLE, liked KIWI once I got it.

    14’21”, thanks jack and setter.

14. After a first pass, I was starting to panic as my FOI was apprehensive ( ironically enough). Fortunately, that started to unlock the puzzle and I finished in 25.24.

    Took a guess on Osric, don’t scoff and my final break came in realising orgy should be gore . Funnily enough on starting the puzzle I had glasshouse in mind but just didn’t make the connection. An issue with a few more of the clues. Was confused by Argo as I thought it was referring to a homophone of barque , I now know it’s also a bark pattern.

    Thanks setter for a very good puzzle and setter for explaining.

15. 13:51. COD PARTHENON

16. Cracked 30 minutes for once!
    Tripped up by RIGAMAROLE but corrected by parsing. I think I might have heard it pronounced thus once.
    Top right hand corner gave most trouble, particularly KIWI as I had UGLI, quite absurdly, in mind. Liked INSULATING once I got it!
    Enjoyed the puzzle, thanks to setter.

17. 42 minutes. Very tough!!!

18. Just under 20 minutes.

    – Didn’t know that GLASSHOUSE is a term for military prison
    – Not familiar with that spelling of RIGAMAROLE but the wordplay made it clear
    – FEATHER-BED went in unparsed
    – Didn’t know bark as a boat, so I relied on the rest of the clue for ARGO
    – Don’t know Hamlet well enough to have heard of OSRIC, and ridiculous=rich wasn’t the most obvious equivalence to me

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    FOI Apprehensive
    LOI Osric
    COD Parthenon

19. 18:32. Like Jack I got 1A and 3D straight away, but gradually slowed down after that promising start. My greatest difficulty was with RIGAMAROLE and OSRIC. I’ve only ever seen the former as rigmarole but once I’d pieced it together it had to be RIGAMAROLE. I was less confident with the latter, not making the link from ridiculous to rich. I partly went with OSRIC as it sounded most likely, and partly because I knew of a band called Ozric Tentacles, who at time of solving I thought were Osric Tentacles. I doubt there’s a link to Shakespeare but it was a happy coincidence for me!

20. DNF beaten by FEATHER BED & BRED. Oh well.

    Thanks Jack and setter.

21. A quick start, helped by seeing a number of the longer clues straight away (HABIT-FORMING, SPELLBOUND, IMPATIENT, DISINHERIT), but progress slowed markedly and I was eventually grateful to finish in 27:25. Thanks J and setter.

22. 19.24. I was sufficiently worried about RIGAMAROLE to check it in Chambers before submitting – I’ve seen enough pink recently. Needn’t have bothered: Chambers doesn’t have it, so I just had to trust the cryptic. FEATHER-BED was a late entry: Chambers has it without the hyphen for the verb, and with a space for the noun, but that’s no excuse. Sometimes when the wordplay starts with such as F EAT it’s hard to get the mental pronunciation right.
    It was also hard to convert “side-splitting end of repartee” to convert to E splitting L and R.
    APPREHENSION, as you will have gathered, Word of the Day.

23. V. slow to get started, eventually finding something straightforward in FOI DISINHERIT and ending up in that horrible NW with the same problems as others. 41 mins.
    Thanks both

24. I do hate (highly) unusual spellings of words that are all but universally spelled one way in standard usage. Wish setters wouldn’t do this. RIGAMAROLE, my LOI, left me irritated by what had thitherto been a terrific puzzle.

    1. I have done a little research, and rigamarole is common only in the north-east USA. Since I live in Connecticut, it’s the version used around here, so I had no difficulty with the clue.

25. Quite a struggle, not knowing GLASSHOUSE and trying first ‘guardhouse’ then ‘grasshouse’ before the other alternative occurred to me. Thought of RIG-MAROLE almost immediately, but discarded it until realising it had to be an alternative spelling due to the parsing of Riga. ACTS caused more of a holdup than it should have, as did BLOCK CAPITAL. I was convinced that the definition of 14d was affected, so SPELLBOUND and ROUT were my last two in. But alas, the excitement of finishing led me to forget to revisit 3d, where I had a mombled SIMPLITERATE, having become fixated on ‘simper’ for contrived smile. Well, it seemed feasible despite not parsing properly! I couldn’t, and can’t equate rich with ridiculous, but half-remembered the character. Despite all this, my FOI, ARGO, caused me to check my printout to make sure I was doing the cryptic and not the GK crossword, as it didn’t appear to be cryptic at all. Only a second look convinced me there was another meaning connected with a dog!

    1. For rich Collins gives: ‘very amusing, laughable, or ridiculous’ with the example ‘a rich joke’. I don’t recognise this usage but when solving I thought of the expression ‘that’s a bit rich’, which seemed close enough.

26. 1a Grasshouse. Reminds me of a shaggy dog story about an African chief who comes to a sticky end, and the punchline is “People who live in grass houses shouldn’t stow thrones.”
    2a NHO RigAmarole, surprised me too.
    10a Acts, I’m not very au fait with the NT so this took a while.
    27a DNF, Feather Bed not in Cheating Machine as 2 words. Added. In the days of British motor bikes the Norton featherbed was the frame to have. The Triumph equivalent was known informally as the rattlesnake, but its engine was highly regarded. Hence the Triton, combining the best of both.
    23d Bred, without the D of featherbed I wasn’t going to get this.

    1. Frank Muir (I think) originated the “shouldn’t stow thrones” story on a radio programme he shared with Dennis Norden. “East deceased, but whist is whist” was another gem that I enjoyed back in the day.

       1. Oh yes, I remember them on the Home Service. Excellent!

    2. In the puzzle FEATHER-BED hyphenated, not two words.

       1. Yes. I don’t distinguish in the Cheating Machine for a good reason.
          The performance is a bit of a problem, and more data makes it slower.
          Many multis have a choice of hyphens and spaces. However a hit usually produces few “hits” and I don’t want to exclude any possibilities. On the other hand searching through the few hits isn’t a problem. So I just do not distinguish between hyphens and spaces.
          Cheers, Andyf.

27. Perhaps this is already too late in the day to attract any notice but I’d be interested in feedback. I tend to post infrequently and then only to make a more general comment rather than as to my particular performance that day. As to performance generally, I classify puzzles as easy, moderate, difficult and expect solving times of sub 10, 20 and 30 minutes, so definitely not of the elite – curiously, since starting heavy duty chemotherapy, all those times have increased by an across the board 30%. That said, I wanted to make a point about last Friday’s cryptic. Our blogger took 73 minutes. Many of you found it extemely challenging. Lots of DNFs. I took a look at it, put in perhaps 4/5 answers, stared, and for the first time in nearly 50 years, put it to one side. What an egregious self-indulgent stinker. Now if you people, the creme de la creme, found it challenging, what about all the others out there who like to try and persist, persevere and finish even if perhaps only occasionally. Are they not worthy of consideration and didn’t this puzzle effectively just sneer at them?

    1. They are (and I speak as one of them, being not as good a solver as you), but are they not considered in most other puzzles? It is impossible to cater for all in a single puzzle. Are the people who like a really difficult challenge not worthy of consideration too?

    2. I think, like ABC, that some puzzles are too hard for me but I still have a bash at them, and am not deterred. Undoubtedly some cruciverbalists are showing their erudition but I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt and don’t think they are showing off, just making a hard puzzle. You could always go to the Telegraph if you want an easier and more reliable solve?

    3. Some people like hard puzzles, even if they can’t finish them. I tend to continue working them for hours, determined to finish no matter what.

    4. As someone who has only been doing cryptic crosswords for 5-6 months and with a PB of just under 20 minutes on yesterday’s comparatively tame offering (so probably bottom 10% of posters in terms of skill) I managed it*.

       Was it hard? – yes, did it take me over 3 hours?- yes would I want every Friday to be like that? – no

       It was great to complete it and I had that ‘I achieved something’ feeling. As a relative novice if the setter was sneering at me then the joke is on them but I didn’t get that impression. It was just a tough puzzle which will be balanced out by one I find ‘not challenging enough’ on another Friday.

       *full disclosure: I used the check grid 3 times (all correct each time) so a technical DNF.

    5. It’s a fair point but only if you take the view that every puzzle has to be finished in say 30 minutes by everyone who attempts it. It’s a reasonable POV but not sure where it says it’s essential. Personally I love the hard ones even when they have a clue that is more GK than cryptic (the Latin phrase last week). Clock it and move on. But my view is not universal – plenty who give the toughies a miss.

    6. No, it’s certainly not sneering. I enjoy a hard puzzle if it’s fairly clued, as do many other people of varying average solving speeds and success. For what it’s worth, there’s also nothing that says all daily puzzles should be solvable with relative certainty by someone with a reasonable general knowledge, without recourse to the dictionary/Google. I happen to think they should be (and didn’t think Friday’s cleared that hurdle, using a Latin word as an element of wordplay in a Latin phrase), but others disagree, which is fine.

       I do think one advantage other outlets have over the Times is using setters’ handles. I generally don’t mind, but where the level of difficulty at the top end can vary so much, it helps inform a decision about whether to bother, or at least what sort of wavelength you might need to be on or how much time you might need to put aside.

       1. I disagree with the last point because that would assume that setters are limited to one level of difficulty. I prefer to come to the table with no assumption about what the puzzle has in store other than hoping it will be up to the usual Times high quality.

          Which is more defeatist, giving up as soon as one sees the setter’s handle or having a go and deciding after a limited period with little progress that one doesn’t want to continue?

       2. I agree with this and, on reflection, perhaps sneering was a touch on the hyperbolic side. I certainly feel there is a place for a difficult and challenging crossword but surely not if it defeats so many of the creme de la creme. For my part, I like to finish but not to be defeated by so many words because of the cluing or simply (unusually thankfully) never come across and insoluble because of the cluing. That takes it onto another level altogether and, yes, as Amoeba observes, no rule requires etc but perhaps, maybe not everyone, the majority of solvers ought to be in with a fighting chance, so to speak, even if there are words that are totally unfamiliar but soluble through the cluing – vide all the 5 minute famous slebs who are totally unfamiliar to me

       3. bark for boat also in Shakespeare , who was not an American (at the time at least).: it (love) is the star to every wandering bark (sonnets)

    7. Completely agree, but your comments won’t get much traction on here, where they tend to indulge the setters a little too much.
       The place for that type of crossword is either the Monthly Special or the Mephisto-and even then it might be a bit too difficult.
       I’m a 30-minute guy and managed one answer. And I was none the wiser on some of the clues even after reading the blog. And to top it all off it had an error of taxonomy which everybody on here seemed to accept as par for the course, blinded perhaps by the alleged ‘brilliance’ of the crossword in other respects.
       But for me, that one basic error causes the whole thing to fall apart, because instead of being charitable towards the indulgences of the other clues, you start to view them suspiciously as a result.

       1. What’s the error?

          1. Rodents

             1. Ah, you’re going back to last Friday, I thought you meant this one. Thanks.

28. Interesting, I found this pretty easy finishing in 16:42. “That” spelling of RIGAMAROLE was new to me, like probably everyone. COD HABIT FORMING.
    Thanks setter and blogger

29. A slow-burner for me. I couldn’t see any of the across clues on the first pass, and was beginning to fear the worst. But the down clues were more friendly, and I managed to complete in 31 minutes, after being held up by the four-letter words in the NE and SE. Like others I had not previously seen the 10-letter spelling of 9ac, but it was gettable from the clueing. Overall a very fair and enjoyable puzzle.
    FOI – ARGO
    LOI – BRED
    COD – PARTHENON
    Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.

30. All was going OK until the INCITEMENT/INSULATING/KIWI/ACTS corner, where I was close to giving up. Poor failure to lift and separate gospel singers. Eventually I used aids and they really weren’t all that difficult, and were quite good, so my time of 60 minutes was not a success. Only ever heard of rigmarole.

31. GLASSHOUSE went straight in and I made steady progress until I was left with 24a, and a large part of the NE. I knew 8d was going to end in …LATING, and typed it in. INCITEMENT came next, causing me to speculate on LIME for the fruit, but that led nowhere for 8d. ROUT arrived in the meanwhile. Then ACTS popped up. Then managed to spot lagging = insulation and saw KIWI. Sadly I typed INSULATION instead of INSULATING and overwrote the already correct letters. PARTHENOO!!! Drat and double drat! 33,07 with 2 errors. Thanks setter and Jack.

32. About 45′ but did get to the end. Similar views to others on the barely cryptic ARGO and the spelling of RIG(A)MAROLE, both of which came to me early but I couldn’t persuade myself to enter. Didn’t fully parse PARTHENON, not seeing the “layer”, but vg now it’s explained. Last 2 were ACTS (with a PDM only after a long alphabet trawl) and MONET (50/50 with Manet until “readies” came to mind). Enjoyable mostly and a lot tougher than my DNF yesterday. Thanks Jack and setter.

33. 57:44. Like Jack – thought all going well to start with but the end really held me up. I didn’t know OSRIC, but got there in the end. ROUT was quite confusing and only half-parsed it. Was held up by biffing ‘ROMAN NUMERAL’ into 12a. I also didn’t much like RIGAMAROLE … Chambers doesn’t list it but found it in Websters. On balance a really fun puzzle.

34. I felt a bit 3down doing this. Needed a second sitting, which was gutting after a PB solve yesterday.

    RIGAMAROLE was first in and straight out. That’s not how you spell it I thought. Eventually just went with it when the crossers appeared.

    FEATHERED-BED took an age to see. I think because I was sure it was going to be box or bag at the end. It still took a while to see even with the D revealed. I guess it’s a nice thing to end on.

    I really enjoyed PAINKILLERS. My clue of the day.

    Glad to win the MANET/MONET flip as well . Money=ready escaping me today.

    Thanks for the blog

    1. 12:50 – so on the ball for this one after a bad run. The RIGAMAROLE spelling was new to me and post-solve could only find it in the American Heritage dictionary rather than the usual sources. I thought FEATHER BED was neat.

35. What a beautiful defintion was “Alternating Current”!

36. 23’05”
    Good early pace, then somehow kept going.

    I was fortunate in that that once I shared digs in Cornwall with a rogue who had escaped from the Colchester glasshouse, and then the rest just happened to fall within my ken.
    Havered over the elongated screed, but it had to be.
    Very enjoyable; thank you setter and Jack.

37. A rare sub-7 minutes for me. Lots of biffing. Not even deterred by the weird RIGAMAROLE, which ain’t in Chambers.

    1. Surely you must know by now that Chambers is ‘always’ right?
       That’s except of course, when it’s not.

38. Really nice puzzle with some tricky wordplay that I didn’t always parse – so thank you for the explanations, particularly on ARGO. 7m 48s.

39. I’d never heard of GLASSHOUSE as. a military prison, and I decided to go for GRASSHOUSE (different kind of stoners) so one pink square and a DNF for me. Only other holdup was OSRIC where I wondered if YORIC was spelled that way (it isn’t) and once I had my GRASSHOUSE in (even though wrong, the checkers are all fine) I realized it must be OSRIC vaguely heard of.

40. 22.03

    ARGO in and out; in and out (and in). Problem with cryptics is that if the surface reading passes over you (didn’t even think about dogs!) one can struggle to see the parsing.

    As I crashed and burned on the last time (recently) that RIGMAROLE turned up, it was a teeny bit cruel for it to come up again with a different set of letters. Thought the capital was ROME; eventually the mists cleared – my LOI.

    Rare to disagree with the maestro but I rather liked the side-splitting thing.

    Thanks setter and Jackkt

41. 34:39. Some of the short 4-letter words seemed tricky. Er… and some of the others did too. I liked lots, including PAINKILLER

42. 8:56. That was a lot easier than it felt. It was very biff-resistant to me, which I always like.
    NHO GLASSHOUSE, never seen rigmarole spelled like that. Some bible knowledge does stick, it seems.
    15ac strikes me as a clue without a straight definition. A definition in the negative which refers to a biblical story seems sufficiently oblique to qualify as cryptic. It is hard to overstate the extent to which this does not matter.

43. 15×15 usually far too hard for me, but, with little else to do, I had a go at this and finished it in 61 minutes, albeit with a lot of guessing and reguessing, thinking of a word that would fit without being able to parse it and checking to see if it was right. Not in the right spirit, perhaps, but I enjoyed (?) it!!

44. 22:10

    I thought it was completely fair and enjoyed it very much. Thanks setter.

    SE had me flummoxed for a while, then, “Could be CLUB and BRED…..ah”.

45. First post on here so hello to all! I had to make an account just to flex as this was one of only about ten or so Times crosswords I’ve managed to solve completely in three or four years of trying and I try every day. It felt a bit like winning a golden ticket as each clue went in as I could see how tricky they were and I’m especially happy to see this one had far more experienced solvers than me stumped. A great confidence boost for a solver who still has lots to learn!

    1. Welcome to the late posters! Not sure many see these posts, but well done anyway!

       1. Thank you! Late poster=late solver, only just got round to it while waiting for my daughter to finish her drama rehearsal. Maybe I’ll try a bit earlier tomorrow!

          1. Welcome!

             Even if I post earlier in the day, I usually come back later to read the subsequent posts (and I assume others do too), so it’s always worth posting even if it is in the evening.

    2. 👏🏻

46. 27 mins, found the tough ones easy and the easy ones (like HABIT FORMING) hard

47. I’m somewhat relieved that quite a few of you found this to be difficult, as it’s taken me most of the afternoon, with the answers coming in fits and starts. Strangely enough, Glasshouse and Feather-bed were write-ins for me, whereas loi Rout was a despairing, fingers crossed effort. It’s a good job we are not all built the same, though I did have a little laugh at the thought of finishing every puzzle in 30mins. . . just one would be nice 🙂 Invariant

48. It was that fatal and perfidious bark/ Built in the eclipse and rigg’d with curses dark/that sunk so low that sacred head of thine. (Milton – Lycidas).

49. If a word doesn’t appear at all in one (at least!) of the most widely used UK dictionaries then the compiler of a UK crossword oughtn’t to use it IMHO.
    I suspect the ‘bark’ spelling may be more prevalent in the US. Isn’t there a Poe poem which uses it? Or some other US poet? Something by Melville? What kind of vessel was the Pequod?

    1. RIGAMAROLE? It’s in my Collins, as a variant spelling. Collins also says ‘bark’ is especially US, but that’s not solely, so fair enough IMO.

    2. I thought a pretty enjoyable puzzle with lots of good wordplay in the clueing.

50. I never really recovered from entering ORGY for 1d which made any guesses for the unknown prison unlikely. I have poured over the clue but cannot find any suggestion that OR should be inside the GY.

    I liked ESPIONAGE.

    Thanks Jack.

    1. 1d isn’t a containment clue, just a straight reading. G and Y are the extremes of Germany but the clue has ‘extreme’ (singular) so that means either G OR Y.

       1. Thanks Jack. I had the same trouble as Casey with this clue. I finally understand how it works 😆

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