Times Cryptic 29250 – Sat, 7 June 2025. Shakes on a plane.

25 comments on “Times Cryptic 29250 – Sat, 7 June 2025. Shakes on a plane.”

1. Not sure whether to post here in current world circumstances.
   While puzzle completed successfully and mostly fully parsed, did not find this super easy. A few MERs – particularly in the across clues.
   Finally saw TRAITRESS as ‘rat’, but 12ac and 21ac were mostly started as guesses from crossers. In the first case, the ‘book’ could be any and ‘up the wall’ is creative. In the second case ‘thriver’ is unusual for prosperous person. Seeing ‘up the river’ as US for jail enabled the answer.
   In 25ac, thought ‘salient’ for ‘striking’ a little elastic.
   In 27ac, thought treating a ‘fly’ as a winged beast quite (positively) creative.
   Would be grateful for any advice re the ‘…’ in 3d and 4d. I resolved to ignore them which appears to be the correct treatment.
   Apologies for length of blog and not posting time. My friend and I do not aspire to the character played by Roger Moore in Force Ten from Navarone. On the other hand, this is a bit like golf – one has to love the game to justify spending the time – especially at our age.
   To all in UK (and elsewhere) our thoughts are with you.
   Thank you blogger and setter.

   1. I thought referring to a fly as a beast was less a creative misdirection than a positive misdirection.
      My education derived from crossword answers continues, I’d vaguely heard of ormers, now I know them as a type of abalone.

      Thank you setter, and congrats blogger for persisting in trying circumstances.

2. I wondered about NOSE, too. ‘Jail’ in 21ac is a verb (since SEND is), which makes ‘Georgian jail’ a bit awkward as the definition. NHO the Dahl book. I surprised myself by recalling LOI GAFF, which I’ve only come across once, here. Appropriately enough, I misspelled WEIMARINER. (misspelled ‘weimaraner’, actually; got ‘weimariner’ right.)

   1. Agree re 21ac. In the surface reading, ‘jail’ is a noun and ‘Georgian’ an adjective. For the definition, ‘jail’ has to become a verb (OK with that) but ‘Georgian’ is … still an adjective? Which means that ‘Georgian jail’ as definition has to be read as something like:

      a verbal phrase, relevant to the state of Georgia, meaning ‘to jail’

      A bit too creative, perhaps? Otherwise, a puzzle with some nice inventive touches. Took me 57 mins.

3. 89m 14s but SWOL as I just couldn’t get OCCASION without recourse to aids.
   NHO SEND UP THE RIVER BEFORE. I’ve heard of selling people down the river which I believe originated in the days of slavery when African chiefs reportedly used to sell their own people down the river and into slavery on the other side of the Atlantic, but not heard this phrase.
   Thanks Bruce for many words, particularly, TRAITRESS, ALIEN, NIGHTGOWN, ARTIFICIAL, GAFF and, of course, SEND UP THE RIVER.
   Like you, I was slightly started by the anagrind “up the wall”.

   1. ‘Down the river’ alludes to Southern slaveowners selling slaves to someone further south, where they could expect even worse treatment. ‘Send up the river’ originally meant being sent to Sing Sing prison, up the Hudson River from New York City.

      1. Thanks, Kevin. I had not heard of that origin of either phrase. I was sure I had heard that ‘down the river’ referred to activities in Africa.

4. Much more difficult than recent Saturdays. In the end it was the bloody dog at 13d which did for me.

5. 44 minutes, with wordplay and crossed fingers getting me through the answers I didn’t actually know, e.g. FANTASTIC MR FOX and SEND UP THE RIVER. I’m not sure if I’d met the dog before but spotting WEIMAR in the anagrist was more than half the battle and -ANER seemed a more likely use of the remainder than -ENAR.

6. I can find the required meaning of GAFF only in Chambers: “A house or other building, orig as the site of a burglary”—which still leaves me wondering about the derivation of that term. (“ORIGIN: Origin obscure.”)

   1. Understood (only from TV) that GAFF was an inner London slang term for one’s home. Perhaps Cockney ?

      1. I found that in Collins and Dictionary.com, but not simply “building.”

   2. Yes, I confess I did also check it in my older print Oxford. But I agree it does seem a bit of a stretch to the generic ‘building’.

7. An enjoyable puzzle for me, not least through finding myself creeping in at 6dn. Thanks very much setter and blogger.

   1. Yes, I noticed that, but as a newcomer was not my place to comment.
      It was how I guessed the answer, but had to look up to further my education.

      1. OK! Your comments are always welcome, particularly as a newcomer. The only rules really are the usual ones of don’t be offensive, avoid negativity and on days like Saturdays when because of the ‘prize’ nature of the puzzle, blogs are not published until the following week, refrain completely from commenting on the latest puzzle even to the extent of saying it was easy or hard or enjoyable or whatever.

         Glad to know that my handle was of some help to you but it will have only been a coincidental entry as I am not that well known here. I used to blog one of the QCs for a few years but in the end the pressure of other activities forced me to hand it on (I believe Kitty took my place on Mondays), and I don’t post nearly as frequently as most of the people here and I have never knowingly met any other member in the flesh. I am looking forward to attending one of the summer socials or similar at some point in the future and putting some faces to handles but I haven’t managed to fit it in yet. Look forward to meeting you too if you can make it some time.

         All the best

         Don

         1. Nice to see you comment – always enjoyed your posts

8. It would appear further comments on GAFF by Kevin Gregg and myself were removed ?

   1. I deleted mine.

      1. That explains it.
         Mine would have been attached to yours.
         Just wanted to make sure I had not offended protocol or etiquette of forum.

9. I didn’t find this a piece of cake – some, like the dog, went straight in from the anagrist, but others held out for ages, particularly 12a and 21a. I had seen the film of Fantastic Mr Fox, but not read the book, and was looking for something a bit more classic, so kudos to the setter. I was also confused about the definition of 21a, let alone the E Georgian misdirection! But a second visit cleared up the stragglers.

10. 99 minutes. Well off the wavelength. The bottom half took a reasonable amount of time but I had to grind out the top half over several visits. Even when I got my LOI I was thinking what does AB-LUSH mean? It was all parsed though so it couldn’t have been that hard. Thanks branch.

11. About 25 minutes

    – Not familiar with the phrase SEND UP THE RIVER, though I parsed it, and it seemed plausible as I’ve heard of selling someone down the river
    – Didn’t know that meaning of NOSE
    – Guessed the right vowels for CAROTIN

    Thanks branch and setter.

    FOI Learn
    LOI Occasion
    COD Fantastic Mr Fox

12. DNF, 1a Blush, 10a Traitress, 2d Learn, 9d Jettison.
    I liked 12a Fantastic Mr Fox; not sure that I have ever read it but I doubt it so don’t know how I knew of him. Daughter 1 is a fan, but she must have done her own reading. I think I remember reading her The Giraffe, The Pelly and Me, but nothing else springs to mind.
    21a Send up the river. Georgian might not be American it might be from the Caucasus. Just a thought.
    13d Weimaraner. Cheated. I have a very faint memory of meeting this animal before (probably in an Xword,) but not a thing I could either spell or pronounce in the normal course of events.
    Thanks branch and setter.

13. This slowed me down. Very few of these clues seemed obvious, the rest needed squinting at. The ‘tailed others’ was easy to miss and that ‘earlier’ was the definition rather than a placement direction in LATERLY (I was working on an unknown gastropod for most of my time) or that ‘for one retiring’ was not e.g. backwards. DNK the Georgian jail thing. ALIEN went in unparsed. It took an age to come up with GAFF which has held me up before. Third time lucky perhaps. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to have the dog’s ‘i’ and ‘e’ the wrong way round to start with. LOI was AB-LUSH. It took me a while to see it really did make a word. Liked the ‘footwear over boards’. Slick stuff.

    Thanks both.

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