Times 29169 – my bent.

66 comments on “Times 29169 – my bent.”

1. I found this mostly quite straightforward.

   CHOCTAW and ANTARES delayed me a little along the way but not by much because wordplay got me through. I then came to a grinding halt with two clues outstanding that added another 10 minutes to my solving time. These were BIAS (wordplay rescued me again) and finally SLEPT ON where I spotted something that fitted and saw the definition but had no idea about the wordplay as I didn’t know LEPTON as a particle. 45 minutes.

2. Agree, a straightforward puzzle at just on 20′; fast for me.
   Didn’t get the parsing of BIAS. Now that I see F(FRE)IGHTER I think it’s a bit clumsy (I had assumed F(L)IGHTER without knowing how large a lighter is, though I now see it is defined as a large open barge in Collins…).
   I similarly had an assist from Bobbie Gentry for 14ac!
   Thanks Piquet and setter.

   1. Love the Bobby Gentry song, but anyone who has been to the flat-as-a-tabletop Delta can testify that there ain’t no ridge, Choctaw or otherwise. But who cares, great song…

      1. Love the Bobby Gentry song too, for a different earworm, maybe try “Choctaw Bingo” by James McMurtry. A kind of redneck national anthem.

3. 31:39
   Slow going, can’t remember why. I parse FIGHTER as did Gerry: a freighter would be a ship, and FRE would be an odd ‘heading’. Knew ANTARES, dnk it was in Scorpio. Also DNK that Salisbury Plain was used by the troops for training. I liked BIAS.

4. 36m 04s but got the wrong tense in 2d
   Thanks, Pip, especially for LONGBOW, FOOT ROT and BIAS. I knew I knew CHOCTAW from somewhere!
   I agree with Gerry and Kevin about FIGHTER.

5. 9.56, and I’ve learnt a new type of particle and perhaps a type of grass, although it rang a bell. Good puzzle. I agree with others about F(l)IGHTER.

   Thanks both.

6. Back in the fold, home after a longish sojourn abroad.

   49 mins and, Just like Jack, I was on for a good time then got stuck on SLEPT ON & BIAS. I blame rustiness and a little bit of jet lag!

   I really enjoyed some of the meaty anagrams, especially SALISBURY PLAIN and OCEAN-GOING. I also got CHOCTAW from the song.

   Thanks pip and setter.

7. On song today. BIAS fell after UNIT TRUSTS. I was arrested on SALISBURY PLAIN in 1984 – it was taking a while at the police station so I told them I didn’t have an arresting officer, so they gave me one. Definitely had LIGHTER in mind. Also, not being from the country, I associate FOOT ROT with humans (athletes’ foot).

   10′ 27″, nice puzzle, thanks pip and setter.

8. About 60 minutes. Slow start but quick finish. Knew ANTARES, CHOCTAW, and lepton particle. SALISBURY PLAIN came from the dog rescue in Yes Minister series.
   Thanks Piquet

9. Enjoyable and at 14.56 quite brisk. Like pip I have a family connection with military training on SALISBURY PLAIN. The longer clues seemed relatively straightforward which was helpful. Thanks both.

10. 22:41, took a couple of minutes at the end to get FOOT ROT which I have never heard of but I assume is something like foot and mouth disease.
    Thanks setter and blogger

11. About 20 minutes.

    – Relied on checkers and wordplay to get CHOCTAW, though it rang a bell
    – Didn’t know ANTARES but again the wordplay was kind
    – Parsed FIGHTER the same way as other commenters (‘heading off’ surely wouldn’t mean ‘remove the first three letters’, would it?)
    – Didn’t realise HAITI was only part of an island
    – Not familiar with UNIT TRUSTS as a term, so had to hope it was right
    – Tried to justify ROME for 1d before I thought of RIGA
    – Pompous meaning turgid wasn’t an obvious equivalence to me in LITURGIES
    – Took a long time to untangle FOOT ROT

    Thanks piquet and setter.

    FOI Several
    LOI Unit trusts
    COD Gimme

12. Quick today.
    I’m sure it’s (l)IGHTER.
    Sheep do get some unpleasant ailments, don’t they?

    1. A farmer friend of mine keeps cattle now; he says that sheep spend their entire lives looking for an embarrassing way to die.

13. 9:28. Steady solve, no unknowns.
    I have a curiously unshakeable belief that the other half of Hispaniola is Puerto Rico. A false fact that I have somehow failed to unlearn. I mention it here in the hope that it might help me to unremember it.

14. 12:56. Goldilocks zone puzzle for me with one or two bits of head-scratching and subsequent PDMs. LOI BIAS took a while. COD to INSULATOR. Thanks Pip and setter.

15. 17:31 – and no pink squares!

    COD: DROPPING ANCHOR.

16. It would have helped if I had seen:
    GIMME hidden in the clue
    LIMA wasn’t the capital I was looking for (I know, I know, Long Island is not a state)
    Something other than SWEET FA for 18d
    How on earth FOOT ROT worked
    BI
    My one incomprehensible typo
    What fun!

17. Good puzzle, just me being slow this week. 34 mins. OTOH I would have been overjoyed with that time a few years ago.

    Just registered. Did not know there were notifications of replies if you do which is good because I dont always come back and check later.
    Thanks to all involved.

18. 40 mins.
    Tricky. Slept on took ages.
    Thanks, p.

19. 37 minutes. I managed to parse everything except the ‘hoping to be returned?’ bit of GO TO THE COUNTRY but was generally slow to get a few like LONGBOW (my COD), UNIT TRUSTS and FOOT ROT. I was another FLIGHTER.

    About the right mix of gentle and not so gentle and I was happy to fill the grid correctly.

20. Quick start but a shuddering halt with the last five clues. Completely missed the anagram indicator in OCEAN-GOING. Had SLEPT ON and FOOT ROT in unparsed so was far from confident which delayed UNIT TRUSTS and BIAS just didn’t come for ages but seemed straightforward in hindsight. CHOCTAW and ANTARES were the last two in which I am not familiar with so relied solely on the wordplay. Very relieved to see green squares.

    I thought this was fairly straightforward with a few tougher bits.

    Liked SALISBURY PLAIN. I can highly recommend the open days at Imber Village which occur a few days a year.

21. It’s surely got to be F(l)ighter. The alternative doesn’t make any sense. A lighter is certainly not a ship,
    so must really be a boat, even though it is a barge. And a freighter is most certainly a ship not a boat. And ‘heading off’ can surely only mean a single letter.
    21 very enjoyable minutes. Thanks to Piquet and setter.

22. 12a Salisbury P; my Dad spent a lot of time there in the TA.
    19a Fighter. I thought the large boat was a lighter, but no difference either way.
    20a Go to the country, oh that meaning. Elections never occurred to me.
    3d Winters Tale; never thought of stale so biffed.
    18d SLepton, only thought of the particle as I was writing it in.
    DNF 22d Bias. A lot of words fit _i_s. Cheating Machine has 89.

    1. Started off with a wrong’un- got COIN instead of RIGA making 1 and 10 across impossible! Otherwise did okay although still don’t really get hoping to be returned and enjoyed BIAS! Good fun, thanks, Carolyn

23. 11:37

    Good one. Biffs for FOOT ROT, SLEPT ON, THE W T and DROPPING ANCHOR.

    Last in was BIAS which was very clever.

24. I must be missing something, because so far as I can see there are two faults that haven’t been mentioned by anyone —apologies if someone has: TASTY seems to me to be about the worst clue that has ever been in The Times crossword: I couldn’t believe that my tentative answer was correct. The crust of ‘tasty’ is surely the two outside letters, not just the first one. (Quite apart from the fact that the setter says ‘a different’ without specifying anything, which always seems to me to be a cop-out.) And turgid = pompous in 16dn?? OK the two words are similar in meaning and there is some overlap, but they are different enough that surely they can’t be used as synonyms? 35 minutes.

    [Later, after seeing the comments: yes I shouldn’t have been so precipitous on the turgid/pompous matter without looking at the dictionaries. And although one could argue that ‘crust’ can just apply to the top, it strikes me as misleading setting.]

    1. I briefly wondered about ‘crust’, then thought of a pie crust or the crust of the earth, which satisfied me in the moment. In hindsight I’m a little less sure.

       Definition 5 of ‘turgid’ in Chambers is ‘pompous’.

    2. 21d Tasty. I thought the crust ought to be both ends too, then thought oh, most pies only have crust on the top, i.e. 1st letter. On the other hand a pasty has crust all round, so both first and last letters!
       And good fit or not, turgid was the first synonym that came to mind for pompous.

    3. When I make a pie, or more probably Mrs W does, the pastry goes on the top only. I think mostly any crust is likely to be the top only.

    4. Sorry Wil,
       POD (Premium Oxford Dictionary)
       turgid: (of language or style) tediously pompous or bombastic.

       Collins
       turgid: (of style or language) pompous and high-flown; bombastic

       Chambers
       turgid: said of language: sounding important but meaning very little; pompous.

       Your point about crust seems valid though, as all definitions I have seen of the crust of a pie (for instance) include the whole casing, not just the top.

       1. ODE: ‘a baked dish usually containing meat and vegetables or fruit and having a top and typically a base of pastry’
          Chambers: ‘a quantity of… food baked within or under a crust of prepared pastry’.

    5. In this part of the world ‘pies’ have crusts top and bottom and, of course, on the sides. And are eaten in hands at the football, scalding hot. Sloppy, napalm-like gravy spilling out over hands and clothes and ground.
       At home in a shallow dish you can make ‘pot pies’ which have, as jerryw describes above, a layer of pastry only on top.
       Unfortunately the dictionaries don’t agree: ‘pot pies’ not in my Australian Oxford or the Macquarie.

       To a certain extent this is entirely irrelevant – pie is not in the clue to describe how the crust is, but as a synonym for pasty (pastie!). But I agreed with Will, crust is all over not just the top. Until later thought – when you leave food uncovered too long it can get a nasty crust on top.

       1. Yes the question is whether ‘crust’ can refer to just the first letter of a word, and the fact that the word in the clue happens to be ‘pie’ is irrelevant.
          I often make something that consists of a stew with a sheet of pastry on top. I generally refer to it as a pie while simultaneously acknowledging that it ‘isn’t really a pie’. Make of that what you will!

25. 23:27. I enjoyed this thoroughly – after a blank stare for a couple of minutes at the top, I found the rest relatively straightforward. I don’t think I completely parsed HAITI or BIAS, my last ones in, but the rest seemed pretty clear. SLEPT ON kept me guessing for quite a while otherwise I’d have been in PB territory.

26. Dog-sitting day so a late start on thisa friendly puzzle.The dog will only sit after an hour’s walk and then not for long. About 20 minutes with LOI FOOT ROT. COD to SLEPT ON. Thank you Pip and setter.

    1. What kind of dog? Sounds like a working dog, border collie or kelpie? Need to run all day. Greyhounds are the go, laziest dogs in existence, require only a short walk then sleep 8 hours to recover. And the calmest, the most imperturbable dogs I’ve ever encountered.

       1. Our son’s golden retriever, nine months. We also provide a similar service for our daughter’s King Charles Cavalier, who is somewhat less trouble. Our children caught the dog bug from the family dog, a border collie who was with us 15 years and added to the average intelligence of the household. I grew up after the war with a terrific mongrel who made sixteen.

27. 19:10 – straightforward but enjoyable, as is the general verdict.

28. 25:45

    Enjoyable jog around the grid which was going well until about two-thirds through, when I came to a bit of an impasse. Added coffee to the process brought forward GIMME (from the first two checkers – didn’t spot the hidden) and the play, which in turn gave ANTARES – heard of, but didn’t know it was in Scorpio. Of the four remaining, BIAS fell first, before INSULATOR (one A for American, yet again), which gave all the checkers for both other answers. Still failed to parse FOOT ROT, and for 18d, relied more on the definition than the wordplay, only vaguely remembering LEPTON (though couldn’t have said what it was).

    Thanks P and setter

29. About 37, done in snatches over several hours. Nice puzzle, would never have figured BIAS without Nelson’s help. Was stumped by INSULATOR for ages but there was much to enjoy here.

    From Hurricane:
    Remember that murder that happened in a bar?
    Remember you said you saw the getaway car?
    You think you’d like to play ball with the law?
    Think it might’ve been that FIGHTER that you saw runnin’ that night?
    Don’t forget that you are whiiiiiite!

30. Began with RIGA and RECITALIST and finished by DROPPING ANCHOR. Wondered briefly about the pie crust. Had lighter as the headless boat. Needed the crossers before seeing the wordplay for BIAS. 18:50. Thanks setter and Pip.

31. Enjoyable, and all clues parsed, though a couple of definitions unsure: ANTARES rang a faint bell, but couldn’t really see BIAS as BENT, adjective or noun. Still can’t. Footrot (sic) from the NZ cartoon Footrot Flats which used to be in the daily newspaper – when newspapers existed. Flew through the top half, slower in the bottom, the last 2 bottom right corner. Which is silly, UNIT TRUSTS well known. BIAS though of early but couldn’t reconcile the definition, so LOI.
    Not a fan of RI as ‘state’. So 1980s.

32. As Piquet says, gentle for the most part – it must have been because I’m no speed merchant, but I whizzed through most of it; that is until I got to the S.E. corner. HAITI and SLEPT ON were slow in coming, although both easy to parse once thought of; BIAS same from a (very short) alphabet trawl, as again clearly parsed. FOOT ROT held me up for longest – I had heard of it but did not know that it was a specifically ovine disease, for all I knew it might be something that afflicted people, and I didn’t spot how it parsed until some time after I decided it must be the answer; it was the reversed ‘of’ that eluded me.

    All in all, an enjoyable puzzle; I always enjoy them more if I complete them and they don’t take too long.

    Thanks to Piquet and setter.

33. 30 minutes, despite no gaps in knowledge, so I found this hard. Just not on the right wavelength.
    I can’t see what Isla3 dislikes about RI as a state either, so I am obviously not on anybody’s wavelength today!

    1. I suspect it’s just that it’s quite vague – one of 50 possible two-letter abbreviations. Although quite often RI, in my experience.

34. Nice puzzle, though I also doubted the pie crust business. Liked LAID LOW, and several other good things in there. 35:07.

35. Oh dear – it’s CLARINETTIST – we’re not in America!

    1. Yes, I too had a problem with the missing ‘t’ in CLARINETIST (sic), as well as sharing others’ reservations about the piecrust. 26 mins.

36. I breezed through, ignoring all the questionable clues – pasty, yes, that’s got to be the answer. I was really stumped by foot rot until I worked the cryptic hard, then it was obvious. If you know Antares and Choctaw, you won’t find much difficulty here.

    Time: 21:51

    1. Got both the star and the Native American, but failed on BIAS, SLEPT ON, FOOt ROT and UNIT TRUSTS (I should have got the latter).

37. 18’05”
    Carbon copy of yesterday’s outing, but with a little more turn of foot.

    The numerous nautical references were a great help; the star being one of them, as it’s very useful in navigation.
    My familial connection with Salisbury Plain is that Grandpa George, employed at Druids’ Lodge Stables, received a wallet containing £10 -a lotta lolly for a young’un- when J.V. Rank’s (brother of the gong one) Scottish Union won the 1938 St. Leger. I’d recommend ‘The Druids’Lodge Confederacy’; a thriller as good as any of those by Dick Francis, but all true !
    Two Epsom Dashes in two days; I’m due for a busted blood vessel tommorow.
    Great fun; thank you setter and Pip.

38. 12 mins, liked BIAS and SLEPT ON.

39. Two session solve, so only an estimated solve time of about forty five minutes. I nearly gave up at the end when the Native American wouldn’t come to me, and then sudden inspiration recalling the Bobby Gentry song. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have solved it without remembering that part of the lyric. Other than that, only BIAS gave me cause for concern as I couldn’t parse it, so it went in with fingers crossed.

40. 34:10
    LOI was LITURGIES.
    I join with those who feel that “with a different crust” should involve changing the first and last letters, not just the first.
    I now have Flanders and Swan’s Armadillo song stuck in my head:

    I was somewhat disconcerted by this curious affair,
    For a single Armadillo, you will own,
    On Salisbury Plain, in summer, is comparatively rare,
    And a pair of them is practically unknown.

    Thanks Piquet and setter

41. 27 mins. LOI TASTY, I’m with Wil above, the crust is both ends.

42. I was off to a flying start, with 6ac, 10ac and 11ac all leaping into the grid, but then slowed down to something more like my normal pace, finishing in 25 minutes. No issues and not too worried about the pie crust.
    FOI – FANG
    LOI – BIAS
    COD – GO TO THE COUNTRY
    Thanks to piquet and other contributors.

43. Top half all pretty Wednesdayish, then got completely stuck in the bottom half, with around 7 unanswered. After returning to the fray, I finally worked out LITURGIES – I’m one of those who don’t equate turgid with pompous – I’d describe a river flow as turgid, but not pompous! However, it had to be. Then I was able to biff UNIT TRUSTS (anything to do with finance makes my mind go blank) and on the back of that, BIAS, FIGHTER and FOOT ROT, only on the basis of the F for following. LOI the hideous SLEPT ON, with a definition I hadn’t understood, missing the ‘about’ part of it, and a NHO particle. Relieved to finally make it unscathed…

    1. You weren’t thinking the river was turbid were you?

       1. Ah, no, I see you might think that. I would describe a flow of water as being turgid when heavy and slow-moving, and probably say the same about a person’s speech.

44. I have it on good authority that the unmarried sisters of a former earl of Salisbury were known as the SALISBURY PLAINs, poor things.

45. Almost convinced myself that the SWEET ‘UN was a jokily-named particle hypothesised at CERN. Luckily couldn’t see how STUN could mean PUT OFF DECISION. But the SMALL = WEE mind-bug cost me valuable minutes. 20’15”, so almost exactly my average. Should have done better.

46. 45 minutes, and no real problems though some answers revealed themselves very reluctantly: OCEAN-GOING because the anagrist didn’t seem to lend itself to any anagram, SLEPT ON because the wordplay didn’t parse as I was expecting, and FOOT ROT just because it is not really in my everyday vocabulary. But I was acquainted with it: in 1977 I was cycling through Wales with my girlfriend at the time, following a route planned by the Cyclists’ Touring Club (does it still exist?). And we had to carry our bikes through a field reeking with the smell of dozens of rotting cadavers of sheep which had succumbed to foot rot, I suppose. It was the only really unpleasant part of that trip.

47. 45:29 for the solve. Think I reached last three of UNIT-TRUSTS, BIAS and LITURGIES at around the half hour mark. Was having trouble getting to trusts, wanted to put in prices for no good reason. BIAS quickly followed. And then a 5+min trawl to figure out LITURGIES until I finally realised LIES=stories – bloomin’ obvious and while I wouldn’t know TURGID=pompous I could bif LITURGIES and see that was the shortened word.

48. Rushed a bit at the end, so didn’t get BIAS (not too difficult), and I’d forgotten about LITTURGIES. But otherwise quite gentle, if you knew of the Plains and the star. Enjoyed… especially DROPPING ANCHOR and OCEAN-GOING.

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