Times 29253 – what to eat and where to eat it

69 comments on “Times 29253 – what to eat and where to eat it”

1. 30 minutes on the nose, but with 6 answers not fully parsed which is quite a high proportion for me. After cursorily revisiting them I resolved a couple but then decided not to spend any more time on it. I don’t think I’d ever have understood how the eminently biffable VERITY worked.

   Today’s bear-trap was the painter at 21dn (MANET or MONET?) and I had to work quite hard to understand the wordplay and justify my choice.

2. 17.35 with no major issues, but I wonder whether TOM HARDY deserves his place on the grid. Agree with your parsing of 6dn and 13 dn. Also typo in your parsing of MANET – it’s TEAM reversed with N (not M) inserted.
   Thanks P and setter.

3. Re 13d, is it just a cryptic regarding what causes an escape from a tyre with a misleading reference to Dido, who escaped from Tyre to found Carthage?

   Fairly straightforward sub 20′ again today, no clue how VERITY worked though. Seen a lot of Tom Hardy lately.

   Thanks Piquet and setter

4. 11:31

   Blitzed through this on the train to Glasgow – a few bits missed:

   HYSTERICS – no idea what was going on here, bunged in from all checkers
   WATCHTOWER – feel I’ve come across this before here, but more as a fortification rather than specifically, a WATCHTOWER
   TOM HARDY – heard of him, but couldn’t pick him out in a police line-up
   EYEBRIGHT – didn’t know the ‘simple’ reference
   PUNCTURES – the obvious answer, seemingly dressed up in a classical sense?

   Liked HIJAB. L3Is WATCHTOWER, SALES PITCH, POINSETTIA

   Thanks P and setter
   VERITY – as for our blogger, not entirely clear what was going on here

5. 23:09
   A few DNKs slowed me down: TOM HARDY, ETON MESS, STEAK DIANE; realized that I didn’t know what a barbican is. I parsed VERITY as Pip does, and waited for him to tell me how to parse SCHISM. Took me a while to settle the Manet/Monet question.

6. 9.23 WOE

   So eager was I to submit I looked at my one missing letter, thought of a two letter abbreviation for doctor starting with M and….oh dear. If anyone wants to recognise me on Saturday I’ll be wearing the dunce’s cap in the corner!

   Getting all the long ones straightaway for a change helped enormously. Also knowing the actor. I was going to add “well known” but maybe only if you have kids keen on Peaky Blinders.

   Thanks Setter/Piquet

7. It would have been my third fastest ever but for a misspelt PRINSETTIA. Not the foggiest about VERITY which was the first point I went to in the blog. I will keep an eye on the comments if any alternatives come up but that was tricky.

   NECK for kiss is one of those words that make me cringe.

   COD: LADIES-IN-WAITING although I don’t think Crystal Palace Women thrash many teams.

8. 19:12. Quite a few biffed as I was making good progress otherwise. I didn’t get VERITY until the blog (thank you), the ne plus ultra having escaped me. I know three Veritys so it came quite quickly.

   I also had HANKS for a while and then struggled to make the Hamlet clue work.

   luckily there were no bear traps like yesterday’s…

   thanks both!

9. FOI ADZE followed by the four 15 letter phrases. Only thing obscure was some of the wordplay. Spelling was a guess with MANET NHO not the more usual MONET. 1dn almost tricked me in that initially I had HEJAB based on what=EH(reversed) + J before KLM+BA(reversed) giving a variant spelling of HIJAB.
   Thanks Piquet.

10. 8:24. NHO TOM HARDY so that was got from the wordplay and checkers. I liked HIJAB. Thanks Pip and setter.

    1. Tom Hardy was brilliant as the baddie opposite Leonardo di Caprio in The Revenant for which he receive an Oscar nomination. On TV, he appeared regularly in Peaky Blinders.A British actor who clearly needs a better PR agent, unless of course he prefers a quiet life!

11. 21 minutes with VERITY as per the blog and me wondering why EYEBRIGHT was simple. I knew of Tom Hardy and could have watched him on a plane in a Batman movie if I hadn’t fallen asleep. We managed to keep our POINSETTIA for two Christmases though it was looking a bit straggly by the end. Are we in for a bit of All along the Watchtower this morning? Friendly puzzle. COD to STEAK DIANE. Thank you Pip and setter

12. 21:04
    I felt as if I made some of the simpler clues much harder than they were, but they are all simple in hindsight aren’t they. At least the cluing meant that I spelt POINSETTIA correctly for possibly the first ever time so there is that.

    No complaints but I confess to not thinking too hard about what was going on with VERITY.

    Thanks to both.

13. Done in 40 mins, pink squares and bear traps avoided. Several parsings were beyond me. I know a VERITY, but that was hard parsing with easy buff. Always forget that “simple” definition for a herb used as medicine.

    COD SALES PITCH

14. FOI HIJAB, LOI POINSETTIA once I’d finally seen PUNCTURES. Quite tough in places I thought, 50 mins.

    I got the long ones pretty quickly but then got held up with the unknown EYEBRIGHT , TOM HARDY & BENUMB. I’m another who had no idea what was going on with HYSTERICS.

    Thanks pip and setter.

15. Quick today but one or two not parsed. Still not sure I understand 6dn.
    Nho Mr Hardy, not that it mattered.But he seems a bit ephemeral for a Times crossword.

16. 12:50 so a third straightforward one on the trot. HIJAB a good spot by the setter but I just saw PUNCTURES as a rather weak CD.

17. 8:15. No problems this morning.
    I’m quite tickled by some of the reaction here to the appearance of TOM HARDY. ‘A digital watch? What on earth is a digital watch?’ 😉

    1. He can go into my TfTT hall of fame, alongside Ed Sheeran and Blur.

18. About 20 minutes.

    – AS IT WERE and SCHISM went in unparsed
    – Didn’t know that Barbican means WATCHTOWER and missed flood=water, so that went in with a shrug once I had the checkers
    – Not familiar with that meaning of EYEBRIGHT
    – Is there a need for the question mark in the clue for ETON MESS?

    Thanks piquet and setter.

    FOI Jack-of-all-trades
    LOI Watchtower
    COD Ladies-in-waiting

19. ADSE! Which is both stupid and annoying because I enjoyed that one and came in just under 25 mins. I always like multiword phrase answers and romped away like a QC.
    NHO EYEBRIGHT, needed POINT explaining by piquet and was not helped by reading 17a as BARBARIAN for a while but a corking puzzle.
    Thanks both

    1. My sympathies, I don’t know how many pink squares it took before I finally got it into my head that it’s spelled with a Z.

       1. Seconded. You left me a similar reply last year and I finally got it right today.

          1. With a bit of luck it will now stick!

20. 11:27

    Thanks for parsing VERITY, SCHISM and HYSTERICS which I didn’t have the patience to unravel.

    LOI POINSETTIA where I got fixated on particular being PRIM.

    No problem with Tom Hardy. I was going to say I’d seen him in loads of things lately but looking on IMDB the only one I definitely remember is Peaky Bs.

    1. He was impressive in The Revenant

21. TOM HARDY is very famous, what I immediately think of is ‘Legend’, where he plays the Kray twins, and ‘Bronson’ where he plays the criminal Charles Bronson (not the actor). EYEBRIGHT OTOH… Failed to get the PUNCTURES/POINSETTIA intersection but quick and easy for the most part with JACK OF ALL TRADES the FOI

22. Also a bit baffled by VERITY. Ne plus ultra can be used to denote the worst of something as well as the best, so ‘it’ wasn’t wildly helpful. That said, an easy biff. NHO ‘simple’ in the mediaeval sense, but nothing else fitted and the clue was helpful. A fairly breezy, for me, 32 mins.

23. Thanks to piquet and setter.
    19a NHO Tom Hardy, cheated, did a Wiki search on Tom, guessing an H before the A was enough. Didn’t have to repeat for Tim. Of course I have seen TH, but I never remember actors’ names.
    11a As it were biffed, thanks piquet.
    15d Stock Car. Took a while to parse this, wasn’t looking for a rack.
    COD 1d Hijab.

24. Thank you Piquet.
    33.43 but I couldn’t understand what “Eyebright” would have to do with “simple”. Also didn’t understand the “it” part of “verity”. Thanks for your explanations.

25. FOI was HIJAB, rapidly followed by JACK OF ALL TRADES. The top half then flew in before I screeched to a crawl down under. I assumed ne plus ultra somehow referred to IT and as I already had the V from VALID stuck IT in VERY and moved swiftly on. PUNCTURE took a while to see and TOM HANKS held up STEAK DIANE while I tried to shoehorn a KEBAB in. I eventually saw the hardly bit. I have to admit to not being aware of Mr Hardy’s filmography, but was quite happy to accept his existence. I spent a bit of time ensuring that I had the correct painter at 21d. Had forgotten the required definition of simple, but trusted the wordplay. LOI was POINSETTIA. 21:20. Thanks setter and Pip.

26. 40m 48s
    I like POINSETTIAS. Mine from last Christmas is still going, though repotted and with only green leaves now.
    The reference to ‘Force 8’ reminded me of Michael Green’s alternative Beaufort Scale in The Art of Coarse Sailing: ‘Force 8: Public House sign blows down.
    Thanks, Pip, particularly for HYSTERICS, POINSETTIA, SCHISM, EYEBRIGHT, ETON MESS, VERITY and MANET.
    I did like HIJAB

    1. Red leaves/bracts appear after 6-8 weeks of 14 hour periods of darkness. Perfect for Northern hemisphere Christmas, artificially produced here in the south.

       1. Thanks!

27. I thought this was a great crossword. The ‘hijab’ clue is a masterpiece! 17m of pleasure. Thank you very much setter and Piquet.

28. Many a nice one here, first among which for me is ‘talk of flogging’. An immensely enjoyable solve, just under 40 mins for old slowcoach here.

    VERITY I didn’t need to biff, as I spotted the ‘X Y encloses’ formula fairly swiftly — I’m on the lookout for those! The Tyre one was among my favourites as it happens, with shades of Dido etc, though I was more into breaches of city walls, at least until my imagination gave way to the mundane. Oh the M25 and its vicissitudes.

    Thanks P & setter.

29. 18.53, wondering if this is the an indication of a proposed morph into the Monday GK crossword. TOM HARDY is as good a name for an actor as may be, though I couldn’t detail his roles. TIM HARDY is also an actor, perhaps not quite so exposed to the public gaze, but also male. Why not him?
    VERITY went in with one of those justifications you put aside in case VAR is needed: I can make it work in the same terms as Piquet, and we’re short on alternatives.
    The dreaded “shrub” was my last in, thankfully recognised, though point for particular wasn’t kind. Barbican for WATCHTOWER wasn’t particularly helpful either.
    I got through, if with reservations.

    1. The only reason that I can think of off the top of my head is that no one’s ever heard of him.

    2. Because TOM means Male (as in a Tom cat) and TIM doesn’t.

       1. I don’t know any females called Tim?

       2. Of course, the Times would never, ever clue a random name with “male”!

30. 10:40 – with no particular beefs, except briefly to wonder about hysterics defined as agitation. Surprised to see the Oscar nominated and seemingly ubiquitous Tom Hardy gave so much trouble. His performance in MobLand is well worth catching.

31. Tom Hardy CBE A great actor, only been on our screens 24 years so probably too modern and “ephemeral” for some.

32. I meant to mention that this meaning of ‘simple’ has always stuck with me since first reading Larkin’s Church Going:

    Or, after dark, will dubious women come
    To make their children touch a particular stone;
    Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
    Advised night see walking a dead one?

    1. I’ve always admired the way the metre compels the archaic pronunciation of the syllable ‘-ed’ in ‘advised’ (ie.’-ed’ with a grave accent) – and so indeed does Larkin himself pronounce it in his own reading of this great poem.

       1. Indeed. The use of the archaic ‘simple’ also contributes to the same time-warping effect in a passage about the future!

          1. Just so. Larkin was actually himself a bit of a crossword buff. There’s a passage somewhere in his letters about his spending ‘most’ of some probably godawful holiday with Monica and/or his mother ‘doing the Times crossword’. Which suggests he probably wasn’t quite in your bracket speed-wise, k.

             1. 😃 He was famously quite a slow poet as well…

33. 19.54 so that’s three in a row that all up would squeeze into an hour. But EYEBRIGHT…what the? I worked it out from WP but it cost me a couple of minutes at the end. Props to Nelson for parsing HYSTERICS and SCHISM for me. Very enjoyable puzzle.

    From Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) (sorry BW):
    There’s a wicked wind still blowing on that upper deck
    There’s an iron cross still hanging down from around her NECK
    There’s a marching band still playing in that vacant lot
    Where she held me in her arms one time and said: Forget me not

34. Bah, I had so little clue what was going on with VERITY that I biffed VERITE, thinking that it was a straight borrow from French as in cinéma vérité.

    Everything else went in more or less parsed, except the “simple” definition for EYEBRIGHT. No problems with TOM HARDY here, and even if you didn’t know him, the clue was very helpful along with the checkers.

    DNF

35. Some trouble with HIJAB since at first I put in hajib, before realising that I was getting mixed up with someone I know called Habib. Water = flood at 17ac seemed wrong but no doubt it’s supported. Never understod 9ac but the first four words sealed the deal. I know Tom Hardy but my mind always goes first to The Mayor of Casterbridge.

36. No problems today. Loved HIJAB.

37. 26 minutes, plus an extra minute parsing HYSTERICS. I think of a poinsettia as a plant rather than a shrub, but perhaps that’s because I’ve only ever seen it in pots. (I don’t think “Tim Hardy” would work quite as well, given that “TOM” presumably denotes a male cat.) I agree with Will R. about the Mayor of Casterbridge etc.!

38. I didn’t know the same ones that Kevin didn’t know: Tom Hardy, Eton mess, steak Diane – plus eyebright had to be dredged from the back of my brain, even though I understood from the get-go that I was looking for a herb.

    Time: 34:41

39. Loved HIJAB.

    EYEBRIGHT was, if memory serves, in the concise recently.

    Like Dvynys almost went with BENUMO until the penny dropped. I shall enjoy claiming my bragging rights later when we meet up at the bridge club.

    Time: 25 mins

    Thanks setter / Piquet

40. 34.33 I found this quite chewy. SECOND-IN-COMMAND was an early biff from the enumeration. Simple has come up before but it didn’t help because EYEBRIGHT was NHO. VERITY was a biff, as was LOI HYSTERICS, where I didn’t think of shyster. HIJAB was nice. Thanks piquet.

41. I decided to start with the four 15-letter clues. JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES was my FOI and my fourth was REARGUARD ACTION. After that, it was pretty much a breeze. LOI EYEBRIGHT, possibly NHO, took a minute.

42. No golf today, played yesterday, so had time for this. Steady progress ending in a couple of guesses: EYEBRIGHT (NHO) and LOI MANET just because Crew = Man?- but not in this case, as it turned out.
    Enjoyed the puzzle; never totally stuck and always interested.
    David

43. 19.17 with LOI hysterics which had me on edge for too long. NHO of eyebright but everything else pretty familiar.

    Thx setter and blogger.

44. I managed this in 24:12, which is in my top 5 recorded times, so pretty fast for me.

    I was happy with the parsing of 6d and 13d, having came to the same conclusion of our blogger.

    I have either NHO “simple” as a medicinal plant (or maybe forgotten it as it feels like the sort of word that would have come up in a crossword before) thus for (NHO) EYEBRIGHT I was able to parse it, because I had all the checkers, but not explain the definition. I guess this is a reverse BIFF (I FIBBED it?) or maybe I Wrapped it? (Wrote-in reluctantly after parsing)

    For me COD was 1d, I laughed out loud at that one.

45. As with ‘helpmeet’ yesterday, good to see with 25a and the use of ‘simple’ that the setter is going back several centuries to challenge us- thanks!

46. Only vaguely remembered this usage of SIMPLE so a bit of a guess there but otherwise no problems. VERITY was LOI of course. A tidy puzzle, thanks for the blog.

47. 25:08, looking at other people’s times it seems I was again on the slow side today, though I didn’t have any special problems.
    Thanks setter and bligger

48. My go-to five-letter actor-called-Tom is Baker. Luckily I’d also heard of Tom Hardy, though I could not put a face to the name. It had to be EYEBRIGHT, but I had no idea what it meant. Now I do. HIJAB was brilliant. Surprised we don’t have a LindsayO Dylan quote from ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER. Maybe too obvious. 12’27” all up, and my average has gone below 20′ – yippee!

49. 50 minutes, but I did enjoy this puzzle and I think I knew what was going on most of the time, even if I was a bit slow about working out the details. EYEBRIGHT was the only unknown, but the wordplay fit perfectly, so no problem. I thought WATCHTOWER was quite a good clue (with TO W for “away from east”). As for the Tyre PUNCTURES, I keep wondering about the discussions pointing out that once again, tyre is not the American spelling or usage or whatever. I’m American and it certainly doesn’t bother me — after all, these are British cryptic crosswords and I rather like learning foreign languages.

50. 25:10, with LOI the NHO EYEBRIGHT.

    COD HIJAB

    Thanks piquet and setter

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