Times 29293 – Holy Land

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

I made rather heavy weather of this, completing it in fits and starts in 25:19. A couple of references to places in modern-day Israel and the West Bank gives this puzzle at the same time both an ancient and a contemporary feel.

25:19

Across
1 Film companion in company with backing singers (2-4)
CO-STAR – CO (company) RATS (singers > traitors) reversed
4 Careless US cops stuck in window frame (8)
SLAPDASH – LAPD in SASH; I really don’t know what it says about me that I was trying to squeeze in CHiPs. I’ve never even seen the show. Honest!
10 Forcibly remove cricketer’s mistake (9)
OVERTHROW – an overthrow is the outcome of a wayward throw, or, indeed, an accurate throw which is fumbled by the fielder attempting to gather it at the stumps, or indeed which inadvertently strikes a batsman or his bat. England were famously awarded one overthrow too many in the 2019 World Cup Final, after the ball had been diverted off Ben Stokes’s bat. Mythical stuff!
11 Gemstone heading for Bolivian capital, skipping US city (5)
TOPAZ – TO (heading for) la PAZ (capital of Bolivia); at nearly 12,000 feet, La Paz is the world’s highest capital.
12 Bully Parisians working out where Stonehenge is (9,5)
SALISBURY PLAIN – anagram* of BULLY PARISIANS
14 Dispatch includes empty tube (5)
HASTE – HAS (includes) TubE
16 Defame footballer briefly with glib speech (9)
BESPATTER – [George] BESt PATTER; the extended or figurative sense of the verb meaning to splash (often with dirty liquid) is not, I would say, particularly common
18 Liqueur with crushed ice ran out (9)
COINTREAU – ICE RAN OUT*
20 Storage device contains poem written in secret language (5)
CODED – ODE in CD
21 Judges source local addresses somehow? (4,3,7)
DEAD SEA SCROLLS – LOCAL ADDRESSES*; I drove past this site one Saturday (hardly anything else on the roads; goyim in rentals are okay) in November some years ago on the way to Masada, followed by a wallow in a mud bath in the Dead Sea, followed in turn by a swim out towards the border with Jordan. It rained while I was in the water. Magical.
25 Agency worker ending in no time (5)
TEMPO – TEMP nO
26 Drink loads inside bars at closing time? (5,4)
CREAM SODA – REAMS (lots – of paper, literally) in CODA (a more or less independent passage added to the end of a section or composition to reinforce the sense of conclusion); here’s the one from Beethoven’s 5th symphony: https://youtu.be/077iP2UBoCI?si=XxspffvRsZjYWDKH
27 Redhead left custody at last with caution (8)
GINGERLY – GINGER L ~Y
28 Greatly amused by rock band on the radio (6)
SLAYED – sounds like Slade – Noddy Holder et al; I never use the word in this sense myself, and barely hear it or see it written down, but I imagine the past tense is typically ‘slayed’ rather than ‘slew.’
Down
1 Verify angry statement indicating threat to King (10)
CROSSCHECK – CROSS (angry) CHECK (as in chess)
2 Elves always labouring primarily to support Saint Nick (5)
STEAL – ST (saint) E~ A~ L~
3 Performer playing sitar with T. Rex regularly (7)
ARTISTE – SITAR TrEx*
5 Northern painter unhappy on railway (5)
LOWRY – LOW RY; his art has arguably been overshadowed by the hit song ‘Matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs’, performed by the (appropriately?) prosaically named duo ‘Brian and Michael’: https://youtu.be/S7DCQiiUEb0?si=5sjiv2FI1Z5c_1pl
6 Bone in head completely inverted (7)
PATELLA – PATE ALL reversed
7 Key on piano sharp, it’s decided (9)
APPOINTED – A P POINTED
8 Smog yellowish-brown mostly (4)
HAZE – HAZEl
9 Mythical giant largely competent? That’s up for debate (8)
ARGUABLE – ARGUs ABLE; Argus (a giant with many eyes) was tasked by ever-vigilant wife Hera with keeping an eye (well, most or even all of them) on Io, one of hubby Zeus’s love interests, who had been turned into a heifer by one or other of them. Sources differ. Maybe we need BBC Verify. On the other hand, maybe not…
13 Train follower to offer entertaining trips north of Massachusetts? (10)
BRIDESMAID – RIDES (trips) MA (Massachusetts – where the lights all went out) in BID (to offer)
15 Web user is map nerd unfortunately (6-3)
SPIDER-MAN – IS MAP NERD*
17 Stomped on sea creature biting lady (8)
SQUISHED – SHE in SQUID; absolutely no excuse for writing in ‘squashed’!
19 Pond dweller bit European (7)
TADPOLE – TAD (a tad salty) POLE
20 Sweet area within Middle East mount (7)
CARAMEL – Carmel is actually more of a high wooded ridge than a single mountain. Solomon’s tribute to his beloved includes the phrase, ‘Thine head upon thee is like Carmel.’
22 Do well fitting 90 into climbing shelter (5)
EXCEL – XC in LEE reversed
23 Unknown table-top game from the south is silly (5)
LOOPY – reversal of Y POOL
24 Rutter featured in playlist again? (4)
STAG – hidden

72 comments on “Times 29293 – Holy Land”

  1. I finished in 15 minutes exactly but fell into the bear trap of SQUASHED instead of SQUISHED, I was even vaguely thinking as I wrote it that I never heard of a deep sea SQUAD…
    Thanks setter and blogger

  2. 6:50. Another top ten SNITCH time following one last Monday. I finished up with DEAD SEA SCROLLS, fortunately spotting it from the enumeration and the angagrist as I couldn’t have told you what they were.

    Right, with time spare maybe I’ll get round to finishing Friday’s monster!

  3. Around 60 minutes. FOI SALISBURY PLAIN was a write-in. Really held up in lower RH corner.
    Thanks U.

  4. 36 minutes. I lost some time on STAR / RATS at 1ac; it had to be but I couldn’t equate it with ‘singers’ so eventually I just decided to go with it and move on. I also thought ‘decided / APPOINTED’ a bit tenuous, but I have since found support for it in the usual sources.

    Anyone who experienced a London smog may have difficulty equating it with haze, but I can accept them as synonyms used figuratively.

    Only just saved myself from ‘squashed’ rather than SQUISHED at 17dn.

  6. I remember that OVERTHROW bouncing off Stokes’s bat as he ran between the wickets very well. Brilliant stuff.
    Found today’s crossword very enjoyable and managed to spot most of the parsing without any problem, with the exception of CREAM SODA and ARGUABLE which I just couldn’t see despite having most of the letters in place. BRIDESMAID came to me from the ‘train’ and a ‘d’already in place. Nearly discounted ’star’ in 1a CO-STAR but remembered ‘sing’ means ‘rat on’ pretty quickly. I remember SLADE from the 70s otherwise would never got the answer from the definition. Didn’t know that meaning of BESPATTER. COD to the very clever anagram of DEAD SEA SCROLLS.
    Thanks U and setter.

  7. 16 minutes – but perhaps didn’t deserve it as I parsed the Middle East mount as a CAMEL!

  8. 31 minutes, held up by the BESPATTER/ SQUISHED crosser. Back in the mid sixties, I got off the train at Euston, to be greeted by a crowd of screaming teenage girls. I admit to being a little confused, so I turned round, to see behind me, getting out of the First Class Carriage, one George Best, still buttoning up his shirts sleeves, cool before that meaning of the word had been invented. COD to the DEAD SEA SCROLLS. Decent start to the week. Thank you U and setter.

  9. Most enjoyable — a perfect Monday puzzle and a confidence-booster for any (like me) left shipwrecked and floundering between last Thursday’s Scylla and Friday’s Charybdis. Were I of a younger generation I might question whether George Best and Slade had the canonical status needed to enter Times crossword culture; but in any case a welcome and nicely-judged restraint was evident here throughout; none of clueing was too over-engineered (Friday’s failing), and none of the answers was too esoteric (for which we have Mephisto). Thanks t0 ulaca and to setter.

    1. As a relatively young solver, I think both Best & Slade are quite likely to be known (the latter thanks to Christmas playlists). Argus and Carmel less so!

  10. Just under 20 minutes

    – Only got TOPAZ once I’d remembered that La Paz, rather than Lima, is the capital of Bolivia
    – Needed that Z before I got anywhere near solving HAZE
    – Didn’t know who the giant was for ARGUABLE
    – Had to trust that Carmel is an area of high ground to get CARAMEL

    Thanks ulaca and setter.

    FOI Co-star
    LOI Appointed
    COD Dead Sea Scrolls

  11. 21.13 WOE

    Missed loads on first look so it felt heavy going but there were plenty of gentler ones to keep going.

    Liked the two long anagrams; BRIDESMAID LOI; and of course another SQUASHED.

  13. 24:15 mins for me. Some luck though as whilst I have heard of Slade I have never seen SLAYED in that context before so was a toss up between that and played (on the radio) for LOI.

    Also lucky with CARAMEL as had the mount as a camel and rightly didn’t think ar could be area but it had to be.

    I am off to SALISBURY PLAIN today so I particularly enjoyed seeing that.

    COD SLAPDASH

    Thanks blogger and setter.

  14. 23.11 labouring under a few distractions including an unscheduled tumble while repairing a gutter. Thanks, I’m OK!
    I suppose “Judges source” is OK for the DSS: they rather famously contain every book of the “Old Testament” except Esther and have massively added to our knowledge of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts, being 1000 years older than what we previously had. It still took me a while to decode the clue.

    1. my husband’s orthopaedist described ladders as his best friends, following a less lucky tumble

  15. 23 mins slowing in the SE at the end.
    Thought footballer = Best leading to BESPATTER for Defame was a tad stretchy but otherwise a comfortable Monday.
    Loved the Slade reference but have to admit I thought of Suede first. Thats Gen X for you.
    Thanx everywun.

  16. 13:35, pleased to get near target time (10′, but never yet achieved) again after two weeks of woe.

    Didn’t parse the ‘Judges source’ definition but it’s a neat one. Would prefer Slayer to Slade.

    Always forget window terms. I think sash, bay, oriel, and stained glass are about all I know for types of window.

  17. 42:06, no aids

    Very late to see DEAD SEA SCROLLS (good clue), and DIS=defame meant I kept looking at BESPATTER wrong, so LOI ARGUABLE.

    Liked the idiomatic use of SLAYED. NHO ARGUS, tried Ogre.

    COD BRIDESMAID

  18. Just visiting. This one looked interesting and the blogger has an amusing style.
    A few cryptic definitions helped the interest. Nice to see a mention of George Best who I once saw beat a defender, and not go straight for goal, but come back to beat him again.
    But do agree with rv1.
    I presume that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the source of the book Judges (did not check).
    They are/were somewhat controversial – but not a job for here.

    Apologies for any crossings.

  19. 16:37
    Held up in the end by CROSSCHECK (I had an ISSUE with HASTE) and the unknown meaning of SLAYED which required a letter trawl.

    Otherwise I almost fell into the SQUASHED trap and I took a while to get PATTER.

    Nice to get back on the board after Friday’s disaster

    Thanks to both.

  20. An unwanted record this morning, where I THOUGHT I’d sight checked everything, but had a typo in all three puzzles. In this case it was “Dead see scrolls”. 8:42 with the error. COD STEAL

  21. Lots to think about today. I once had a girlfriend called Carmel; I was arrested on SALISBURY PLAIN forty years ago; SLADE continues to be heard from October onwards in shopping centres (malls); and BRIDESMAID appeared recently in crossword land, and went in unparsed.

    LOI was DEAD SEA SCROLLS, with a MER at the definition.

    11’02”, thanks ulaca and setter.

    1. Was that the time police clashed with protesters at Stonehenge over a pop festival and a local member of the aristocracy offered them refuge in his castle grounds?

      1. Wouldn’t have been the then Marquess who lived elsewhere. A 19thC holder of the title had several notoriously less-than-attractive sisters who were known en famille as the Plains.

      3. No no, it was a CND demonstration. There were squaddies in the trees with rifles – I hope they were not loaded.

  22. 23 minutes. I was unsure about BESPATTER for ‘Defame’ and didn’t have the requisite biblical knowledge to know what DEAD SEA SCROLLS was all about, but otherwise a welcome respite from the labours of last Thursday and Friday. Favourite was the ‘Train follower’ (I don’t remember the recent occurrence of BRIDESMAID mentioned by RobR) at 13d.

    Thanks to ulaca and setter

  24. This was easy until it wasn’t (13d).
    POI 11a Topaz. Interestingly Bolivia has two capitals, La Paz and Sucre.
    26a Cream Soda SLOI.
    8d Haze biffed, never thought of hazel.
    9d Arguable, forgot about Argus, doh!
    13d LOI Bridesmaid.
    Thanks to ulaca and setter.

    1. Beat me to it, i was going to say “this was easy until it wasn’t”. Breezed through, until the SE corner. First thought for LOI: Carmel was an Arab (horse). The Argus used to be a newspaper in Australia, so I’ve always assumed he was a messenger/courier/herald/telegraph/insert name of random newspaper here. Rather than all-seeing. And the patron saint of Melbourne University engineers: Argus Tuft. HANDMAIDEN sprung straight to mind for the train follower, hand for offer and MA and … ?iden? And once you’ve thought of something it’s hard to unthink it.
      A few MERs as mentioned by others, but no real quibbles, nice puzzle. Liked the Dead Sea Scrolls clue for the PDM.

  25. Good fun.

    I saw Slade play when they were still a skinhead band.

    I thought CREAM SODA, DEAD SEA SCROLLS and BRIDESMAID were all excellent though I remember being caught by the “train” trick before. BESPATTER took a long time but, once solved, it allowed me to insouciantly bash in SQUASHED as my LOI. Stupid boy.

    Thaks to ulaca and the setter

  26. I’m just gonna sit here, finish my CREAM COLA and think about when it all started to wrong in my life ….

  27. 18:38

    Slade, T. Rex – definitely my era musically – about Merry Xmas Everybody, Noddy Holder said, “We’d decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the grave-diggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That’s why I came up with the line ‘Look to the future now, it’s only just begun’. Once I got the line, ‘Does your Granny always tell you that the old ones are the best’, I knew I’d got a right cracker on my hands.”

    Thanks U and setter

  28. A game of two halves for me, most of the left side went in so quickly that I thought I was dealing with a very easy Monday but the right side offered considerably more resistance. TOPAZ and HAZE were the last to fall and I didn’t twig that HAZE was short for hazel until I saw it here.

  29. Very enjoyable, with some neat clues, DEAD SEA SCROLLS and BRIDESMAID in particular.

    I didn’t like the clue for “BESPATTER”; I got there in the end but I needed all the checkers; the “PATTER” part was ok, but there are an awful lot of footballers to choose from and George Best probably doesn’t mean a thing to many people under 60. I’m not under 60 so, once BESPATTER had occurred to me as the probable answer, I could see how it parsed; but I think that a good clue should be solvable within a reasonable time frame on a stand-alone basis without any checkers; maybe this one was for more experienced solvers than me, but let’s just say that it was never going to be my FOI.

  30. Nice to have something reasonably accessible after the end of last week. All pretty easy but not totally so, and I had to stop and think for a moment sometimes. The Times doesn’t as a rule have ‘with’ as a link-word and I can’t see how in 18ac it can be anything else. Too tempting a surface for the setter to avoid it. 37 minutes.

    1. It’s quite commonly accepted as a linkword in the direction “def with wordplay” – not sure about the Times specifically, and you might be right that it’s not usually been used here, but as a regular solver of other puzzles it didn’t strike me as unusual.

      1. Yes I’ve seen it in various places but I don’t like it. It only seems to make sense after squinting a bit. I’d always thought The Times was above this.

        1. I read ‘with’ as a contraction of ‘made with / consisting of’ in the context of a recipe that’s made with a number of ingredients – in this case, a liqueur with the letters ICE RAN OUT.

  31. A rare sub-hour solve for me, coming in at 53:50 with LOI SLAYED (I too had considered SWAYED first, though I could name more Slade songs due to an elder brother). Had a MER at TOPAZ as I thought the capital of Bolivia had changed to Sucre about twenty ago, but on looking it up, it seems that Sucre has been the capital since 1839 and La Paz became the administrative capital in 1898, leaving Sucre to be the constitutional capital. Neither is the largest city in Bolivia however, as that title goes to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, which I’d never even heard of. Oh well, I have now. Thanks all.

  32. 22 mins. BRIDESMAID excellent clue, took a while to realise I was barking up the wrong tree.

  33. 9:43. No major hold-ups.
    I knew this meaning of SLAYED but you see it more often these days with a more general meaning of (as ODE has it) ‘being extremely impressive, stylish or successful’ rather than specifically amusing. The phrase ‘slay, queen!’ is an expression of encouragement which I use from time to time to annoy my kids. When someone like me does this it is what is known in such circles as ‘cringe’.

  34. Very enjoyable puzzle which I thought I was going to finish fairly swiftly in about 25 minutes till I got to the se corner. Nearly ten minutes elapsed before CREAM SODA got me going again (it always has that effect on me!), and the rest followed quickly to completion in 36.17.
    Like Ulaca, DEAD SEA SCROLLS took me back to a holiday in Israel and the coach trip down to the Dead Sea from Jerusalem, where the cave where they were found was pointed out to us. The trip we took to see Masada will always be remembered by me as being the hottest temperature I’ve ever experienced, with a reading in the mid to late 40s Centigrade. It was worth it to see the site however.

  35. 34:55. All fairly straightforward until the SE corner which was uncharacteristically the hardest. Good pace for a Monday, lots to like. thanks both!

  36. 9:50 mins- After the Monster That Ate Friday, I was delighted and pleasantly surprised to go sub-10 on this, first such in a very long time.

  38. That was a welcome relief! From STEAL to ARGUABLE in 12:42. Liked SALISBURY PLAIN and DEAD SEA SCROLLS. Thanks setter and U.

  41. 20.51 Fairly quick for me but the SE was slow. As a former resident La Paz sprang immediately to mind. Thanks ulaca for explaining STAR and why I’ve never heard of ARGU the giant.

  42. 31:38. Completed on train journey and held up by being in the close vicinity of two rather stressful confrontations between the ticket inspector and two passengers in my coach whose tickets were not valid.

    One of the passengers has disembarked. I’m sat next to the other one. A young lad who has had to cough up over £70. I couldn’t tell if they had justifiable grievances or not. It’s certainly not easy to tell if your ticket is valid when you buy off peak that has to be used on trains travelling through specific stations and you miss that train or decide to get on another one instead.

  43. 15.25. LOI Dead Sea Scrolls, presumably they have something to do with the biblical Judges?

    Liked bespatter and slapdash.

  44. Same experience as others. My LOI was SLAYED since I wasn’t sure that was the past tense (as opposed to SLEW), nor that SLADE was a “rock” band, or even famous enough to show up in the Times crossword decades after their heyday. But all green once the SE corner was sorted out.

  45. Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody” features a triple play on words, worthy of mention:

    Slade/Slayed/Sleighed

    Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall?
    Do you ride on down the hillside
    In a buggy you have made?
    When you land upon your head then you’ve been sleighed.

  46. No doubt some of those who defended last Friday’s nightmare would have found this ‘boring’ but I enjoyed it and it had just the right level of difficulty. Can’t wait to see if this coming Friday’s will be the setter’s revenge following all the criticism of the last one.

    1. There’s plenty of room for variety in these things, David. I don’t think anyone’s called this boring, and several commenters above are among those who enjoyed last Friday’s puzzle. It’s a little strange to just invent an opinion that other people hold, don’t you think?

      Last Friday’s setter appears every 4-5 weeks judging by the Snitch. You might therefore want to avoid August 17th or August 24th if it’s likely to upset you.

      1. Last Friday’s setter was John Henderson, according to the Cracking the Cryptic video (and apparently they get told most Fridays who the setter is). He is Enigmatist elsewhere.

      2. No, someone definitely used the word boring in their comments last Friday -that’s why I referred to it. Many others felt that this one had crossed a line.

  47. Quick, for me, which was something of a relief because I didn’t do at all well last week. In fact I was still trying to complete Thursday’s crossword this morning, and failing badly. I’m just glad I never got on to Friday.
    FOI SALISBURY PLAIN
    LOI BESPATTER
    COD CROSSCHECK

  48. 16:52
    Lightning fast by my standards- my 6th fastest ever.
    LOI was SQUISHED. I nearly fell in the squashed trap, but spotted before submitting that a squad is not a sea creature but a squid is.

    Thanks Ulaca and setter

  49. Three quarters done before work, then a hiatus as the NE corner failed to resolve itself. This evening, on re-examining it, 11a TOPAZ finally occurred to me, having not been able to think of a gemstone beginning with T, and initially looking for a B anyway. That opened up in turn HAZE, APPOINTED and BESPATTER. Which then confirmed SQUASHED, which I was so glad to see, I failed to check the parsing, having determined SHE was part of it. Oh, well…

  50. Game of two halfs for me too. Rattled along for five minutes then it all went into slow motion. The DEAD SEA SCROLLS can’t be THE source for the book of JUDGES because they were only discovered a few decades ago. Must be A source. I hear ‘SLAY’ meaning good from time to time from various nephews and nieces, but I can’t get used to it. What’s the origin, I wonder. 21’10”. Now to re-attack Friday’s (Whose evident difficulty I do not find problematic. I’ll just give it more time. Varying levels of difficulty is one reason I love the Times crossword). Many thanks.

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