Times 29327

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

29:19

A treat for those who like their Friday puzzles solvable, and their blogs brief.

Definitions underlined.

Across
1

Some forgot Sir Alan turned into Lord (6)
ARISTO – reverse hidden in forgOT SIR Alan.
5

Rifle fire has spread to the front (7)
RANSACK – SACK (fire) with RAN (has spread).
10

Yet to iron out effect of bad press? (9)
NOTORIETY – anagram of (out) YET TO IRON.
11

Common type of piano part (5)
PROLE – P (piano) + ROLE (part).
12

Fellow greeting attack on castle in adventurous spirit (3,3,4,2,2)
FOR THE HELL OF IT – HE (fellow) + HELLO (greeting) + FIT (attack), on FORT (castle). Thanks to Nicola and Guy for fixing my mistake.  
14

Swimming beaches west of Deal covered with sewage from east (5)
LIDOS – first (left) of Deal contained by (covered in) the reversal of (from the east) SOIL (sewage).
16

Dispatch delicate candle (9)
RUSHLIGHT – RUSH (dispatch) + LIGHT (delicate).
18

Adjustment to dole is big inconvenience (9)
DISOBLIGE – anagram of (adjustment to) DOLE IS BIG.
20

Underground hacker is under 18, reportedly (5)
MINER – sounds like (reportedly) “minor” (under 18).
22

How cocaine gets in, sometimes at high rate (7,3,4)
THROUGH THE NOSE – double definition.
25

Line at end of letter triggers turning over (5)
SERIF – FIRES (triggers) reversed (turning over).
26

Clear system of exchanges applied to Tallinn’s university (9)
UNINSTALL – anagram of (exchanges applied to) TALLINN’S U (university).
28

Time left after sport for passing practice? (7)
FUNERAL – ERA (time) and L (left), all after FUN (sport).
29

Hitman gets Tesla for one pound in good condition (6)
KILTER – KILlER (hitman) with T (Tesla) replacing one L (pound).
Down
2

In bed knackered again? (7)
RETIRED – re-tired (knackered again).
3

Bashful painter taking hour to finish wine (5)
SYRAH – SHY (bashful) and RA (painter), with the ‘h’ (hour) going to the end.
4

Spanish go on parts of golf course out of bounds (3)
OLÉ – hOLEs (parts of golf course) without the outer letters (out of bounds).
5

Bill’s OK, sadly driven after Oscar’s taken by railway (5,6)
ROYAL ASSENT – ALAS (sadly) + SENT (driven), all after O (oscar) in (taken by) RY (railway).
6

Simple, impressive housing for millions (2,7)
NO PROBLEM – NOBLE (impressive) containing (housing) PRO (for), then M (millions).
7

Affectionate seal burdened by publicity (7)
ADORING – O-RING (seal) with AD (publicity).
8

Recognised antelope by one of its sounds (4)
KNEW – sounds like “gnu” (antelope).
9

Nicked supporters upped and ran (8)
SNAFFLED – FANS (supporters) reversed (up) + FLED (ran).
13

Scavenger slipping back off bin-bag in city (7,4)
HERRING GULL – ERRING (slipping) + last (back) of bin-baG, all in HULL (city).
15

Booming speaker upset coach and umpire around court (9)
SUBWOOFER – separate reversals of (upset) BUS (coach) and REF (umpire) containing (around) WOO (court).
17

Oddly stranded in that place with river rising, row across regularly? (5-3)
THREE-PLY – THERE (in that place) with the ‘r’ (river) moved up (rising) + PLY (regular across row).
19

African, unused to water, has capsized out of trim yacht (7)
SAHARAN – reversal of (capsized) HAS, then trimARAN (yacht) without the ‘trim’.
21

Bananas eaten on delivery yesterday? (7)
NEONATE – anagram of (bananas) EATEN ON
23

Stand when fish bites (5)
EASEL – AS (when) that EEL (fish) contains (bites).
24

Ace is overturned with loud “You cannot be serious” (2,2)
AS IF – A (ace) + IS reversed (overturned) + F (loud).
27

Kind KC yields initial point (3)
ILK – sILK (KC) without the initial.

64 comments on “Times 29327”

  2. You must’ve actually got the right answer, because you have HERRING GULL crossing it, but it’s FOR THE HELL OF IT.

  3. 42 minutes with one answer missing so that’s a DNF.

    I NHO SYRAH and was unable to construct it although both SHY and RA occurred to me from wordplay. This is its first outing in a mainstream puzzle having appeared only twice before in a Jumbo before I started solving them and a Mephisto which I never tackle.

    I biffed UNINSTALL and missed that it was an anagram, and also missed the yacht reference in SAHARAN.

    I imagine the homophone gnu / KNEW will give rise to comment, at least on this side of the pond. I am very easy about such things which is just as well as I, like many Brits of my generation, pronounce the antelope “gernoo”!

    1. I took “one of its sounds” as a reference to exactly that pronunciation – you don’t pronounce the G, but you do pronounce the NU.

      2. John Finnemore Souvenir Programne. Series 7 episode 1.
        It contains an interview with a disgruntled gnu regarding the correct way to say his name.

    2. I was told the G-NU pronunciation in the UK was instigated by the Flanders & Swann song, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.

    3. I couldn’t even imagine how that could be a homophone until you mentioned the American pronunciation, but in that case it seems to work.

      2. I thought there was only one pronunciation, but Chambers does have “humourous) gnoo,” and some Americans, it seems, unaccountably pronounce it as if there were a tilde on the n, nyoo.

    4. Sorry you haven’t heard of SYRAH Jack, stalwart of the Rhône valley, particularly in the Northern Rhône . Perhaps you’ve heard of Shiraz, it’s the same grape, mainly called that in the New World.

  4. 37 minutes. No complaints that this was more gentle than the last few Friday puzzles. RUSHLIGHT was the only unknown but could be worked out and there wasn’t too much complicated parsing; ROYAL ASSENT was the one that I had most trouble working out, both def and wordplay. Favourite was the ‘delivery yesterday?’ def for NEONATE.

  5. DNF. I continued my dreadful run – 10 DNF out of 15 – by throwing ROSE into two answers. Hence PROSE and ROSELIGHT. For the latter I didn’t equate rush with dispatch and although I considered RUSHLIGHT as it fitted, ROSELIGHT sounded more likely to be a thing. Turns out it isn’t.

  6. RUSHLIGHT got me – couldn’t think of a word for DISPATCH so went with RISELIGHT. HERRING BULL was my other mistake (thinking it might be a kind of beetle!) – I thought B surely had to be ‘back off bin-bag’, but ‘back’ is one of those famously supple indicators, I suppose. All else done in 20′, which I wasn’t too unhappy with.

  7. Shade over one hour, but with one pink square. KILLER rather than KILTER.

    Needed aids for KNEW and UNINSTALL. I pronounce it Ger noo. Many words are written more than spoken, and this will become more common as people scroll on their phones rather than talk to each other. “Forehead” is another.

    COD THROUGH THE NOSE.

  8. 36 mins – found this harder than others, perhaps. Still not sure how ‘PLY’ = ‘regularly row across’

    1. I’d not come across it before in that context, but Chambers says: To row or sail over habitually

  9. DNF with RUSHLIGHT left blank after forty minutes. No problem otherwise. It’s always been a G-NU to me although I also gnu differently. A decent puzzle. Thank you William and setter.

  10. 56 mins. The top half flew in with my COD, SYRAH, the main grape I used to work with, a write-in. The South took a bit more working out, particularly my last few in, UNINSTALL,ILK, KILTER & THREE-PLY. I did check the NHO RUSHLIGHT post solve.

    SNAFFLED is a fun word, and I enjoyed the anagrams.

    Thanks William and setter.

    1. Always seems strange when several (well 3 I think) well-educated people claim never to have heard of a word (SYRAH in this instance) which you have known since birth. Such is life.

  11. Another sloppy error spoiling an otherwise smooth solve. 24 minutes with one mistake, carelessly overlooking the Tesla reference in 29ac.
    LOI KNEW as gnus don’t readily spring to mind as a sort of antelope. FWIW I’ve always assumed the Flanders and Swann pronunciation to be authoritative but I note that Chambers has this as ‘humour’ (which it certainly was) but I think is a bit disappointing.
    COD, for me, shared by UNINSTALL and THREE PLY.
    Thanks to setter and William.

    1. The hint that ‘gernoo’ is a joke is in the couplet in the song:
      “I’m a gernoo, I’m a gernoo
      You really ought to kernow werhoo’s werhoo”
      and later
      “I’m a gernoo, a gernother gernoo”.

  12. 32:22 with UNINSTALL (took far too long to see the anagram) and SYRAH (NHO) holding out.

    THREE-PLY was seen straight away but far too long for the penny to drop with the definition.

    COD SUBWOOFER

    Thanks blogger and setter

  13. Another enjoyable effort, fairly straightforward for a Friday (thank the lord).
    I liked the passing practice and the reminder of Flanders & Swann. they don’t make humour like that any more.

  14. DNF, beaten by the unknown SYRAH (I thought of ‘shy’ and ‘RA’ like Jack above, but I didn’t know how to put them together and bunged in SARAH).

    – Took ages to get RUSHLIGHT as I thought ‘dispatch’ was the definition, with ‘candle’ giving ‘light’
    – Didn’t see how OLE worked, though it was an obvious biff
    – Didn’t fully parse HERRING GULL
    – Forgot about the trimaran, so SAHARAN wasn’t fully parsed either

    Thanks William and setter.

    CODs Subwoofer / Disoblige

  15. 29 mins. After an easy week was expecting a stinker today but no. It did feel like another unfamiliar setter, quite modern and none the worse for it.
    Fixating on Delicate = SLIGHT held me up for a while but RUSHLIGHT known from historical fiction.
    GNU means a form of UNIX to me (cue pedantry) but can believe the animal is pronounced differently.
    COD to UNINSTALL but also nice to see Hull get a mention.
    Thanks to William and setter but not these 500 errors.

  16. About 36, with the Unlucky! message forcing a tedious trawl-through that showed I had neglected to put a T into KILLER. Never did parse FOR THE HELL OF IT or ADORING. Enjoyed the various misdirections, thanks William.

    From Po’ Boy:
    My mother was a daughter of a wealthy farmer
    My father was a traveling salesman, I never met him
    When my mother died my uncle took me in, he ran a FUNERAL parlour
    He did a lot of nice things for me and I won’t forget him

        1. Ogden Nash is my preferred authority on appropriate meanings of the word in question.

          The cow is of the bovine ilk;
          One end is moo, the other milk.

      2. Or take it up with more or less every native speaker of English who uses the words interchangeably.

  18. 19.01 Oddly enough, it was NO PROBLEM that proved to be a late entrant: I had the O-L-M and could only think of HOODLUM to fit, which made no sense.
    I suppose the frequency with which cocaine consumption is demonstrated on TV should mean we all know it’s taken through the nose, but for the record, I haven’t tried it.
    Otherwise, no issues apart from wondering how CATAM meant trim in 19d, and trying to sort out the “regular” letters out of row across to provide the word after THREE in 17d.
    Congrats to William on a model of succinctness and brevity in blogging.

  20. 16:52
    A very fast Friday for me and I couldn’t quite believe my luck when most of them went in on first reading. I was stuck in the end on THREE-PLY, the THREE being obvious enough but I made a hash of figuring out the last bit.

    A relatively gentle solve but no less enjoyable for it.

    Thanks to both.

  21. Was going along nicely until I was breezeblocked by 4 clues. Had the THREE at 17d, but couldn’t come up with the 3 letter word to follow. I also needed 13d, 16a and 26a. I eventually considered HULL as the city and the Fish Snatcher of Old Whitby Town finally hove into view. That allowed me to see UNINSTALL and then PLY, leaving the candle, R-S-LIGHT. I considered and dismissed ROSE and at last a vague memory of RUSH was dredged from the recesses. 32:50. Thanks setter and William.

  22. Almost a sub 20′ Friday for me but not quite. Like the last few days I got off to a quick start and, being Friday, I was waiting for my DRONGO-MORRIS DNF moment. But it didn’t come. NHO RUSHLIGHT but it was the only option that parsed. Others were all generally gettable.

    As a very rhotic Scotsman it’s fun to see some others commenting on homophones (though I know we are trying to get away from the idea of strict homophones…)

    Enjoyed “passing practice”. Thanks William and setter.

    1. I feel like you might have just hit on an excellent new phrase with that ‘drongo-morris moment’.

  23. 20 mins or so, which is super quick for me.

    As resident of Sandwich I can confidently say there are no beaches west of Deal as the coastline is North-South there 🙂

      1. Yes, I did check that as well! Just 300km away.
        Moreover, not far from it is a suspiciously named West Huntspill Waste Water Treatment facility.

  24. 34:35

    Fast start with an arch of answers quickly established, but then a bit of a struggle. THROUGH THE NOSE gave some useful letters, but it was SUBWOOFER that really helped me into the final quarter. Took an age to see ROYAL ASSENT, HERRING GULL and the DISOBLIGE anagram. Still don’t really understand why ‘row across regularly?’ means PLY

    Thanks William and setter

  25. Thanks to william_j_s and setter.
    Good, I like a Friday I can finish, even though a few are very lightly pencilled.
    POI 11a Prole. Did George Orwell coin this word? Apparently not; it is attested from 1677.
    LOI 29a Kilter. At first I pencilled Killer, then read the clue.
    2d Re-tired, ghastly pun. But funny.
    4d Ole, DNK it means “go on”. It seems to be from Arabic. Anyone remember Flanders & Swann “Ole I ‘ave made an ‘ole”…
    … 9d Knew. “A Gnother Gnu!” Yes, others do remember.
    5d Royal Assent. Biffing took deciseconds, parsing many seconds.

  26. 24:26. This 500 problem doesn’t seem to be getting better… Nice puzzle. homophone tricky if you only know the song. Gnor am I in the least like that dreadful hartebeest…

  27. I get the 500 problem (quite a nuisance, can’t someone sort it?) when I try to look at the site to begin with, but haven’t been getting it when posting. Probably will today.

    How extraordinary that this was so easy. I had no problems with it except for inability to parse the trimaran bit of SAHARAN until after submitting. 30 minutes.

    [No, no problem submitting.]

  28. Thought Rush/Dispatch something of an ungenerous clue and as I’d never heard of RUSHLIGHT it was the last one in. Surprised by how many had trouble with SYRAH

  29. 12:09 but with a silly mistake. I misread the clue for 29ac and put in KILLER.
    I found this pretty easy until suddenly it was very hard. HERRING GULL, UNINSTALL, THREE PLY and RUSHLIGHT took me as long as the rest of the puzzle. No complaints though, all perfectly fair. Nice puzzle.

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