Times 27748: #isthetimescrosswordoninstagramnow

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time taken: 10:52.

I thought I was in for a tough time with this one, as a first run through the across clues didn’t yield much, but I did pretty well on a first run through the downs and then it was just filling in the gaps. I thought this was an interesting mix of some old and new terms, I know we have had 25 across in various forms, but I think it is a debut for 6 down in the Times (I blogged it in Mephisto in March 2016).

The first definition in each clue is underlined.

Away we go…

Across
1 Scold one that eats insects (5)
SHREW – double definition
4 Get to grips with hair round growth on head (4,5)
LOCK HORNS – LOCKS(hair) surrounding HORN(growth on head)
9 Killer mixed up a small portion (3,6)
RAT POISON – anagram of A, S(small), PORTION
10 City’s very fine road going west (5)
SOFIA – SO(very), F(fine) and then the A1(road) reversed
11 Low point of river, difficult to cross (6)
TROUGH – R(river) inside TOUGH(diffcult)
12 Wife, sent underground without resistance, avoided the worst weather (8)
WINTERED – W(wife) then INTERRED(sent underground) missing an R(resistance)
14 In turn, had nasty accident (3-3-3)
HIT-AND-RUN – anagram of IN,TURN,HAD
16 Ungrateful princess drops the Italian who is dying (5)
GONER – GONERIL(daughter of King Lear) missing IL(the in Italian)
17 Attacked, retreat in turn across country (5)
NUKED – DEN(retreat) reversed surrounding UK(country)
19 Church only mildly socialist? Answer me! (5,4)
NOTRE DAME – if you are slightly socialist you are NOT RED, then A(answer), ME
21 Hand over one old coin, receiving a pound: great! (8)
SPLENDID – SPEND(hand over) I(one), D(denarius, old coin) containing L(pound)
22 Called about what is to replace picture (6)
REHANG – RANG(called) surroundig EH(what?)
25 Recently rejected adopting one online business (5)
ETAIL – LATE(recently) reversed containing I(one)
26 With more reason, one enters far too confused a state (1,8)
A FORTIORI – I(one) inside an anagram of FAR,TOO then A, RI(Rhode Island, state)
27 Round gardens, sulphur smell is amiss (9)
SKEWWHIFF – KEW gardens inside S(sulphur), WHIFF(smell). I thought this should be hyphenated, and it is in Chambers, but in Collins this is given as a single word
28 Water may flow through this land in the sea (5)
DITCH – double definition
Down
1 Take mild exercise that may make one taller? (7,4,4)
STRETCH ONES LEGS – double definition, the second more cryptic
2 Old-fashioned railway system runs for miles (5)
RETRO – METRO(railway system) with R(runs) replacing M(miles)
3 Rogue obviously used, or raised, weapon (5,2)
WRONG UN – WORN(obviously used) with the OR part reversed, then GUN(weapon)
4 Lean over border (4)
LIST – double definition
5 City hotel gone round by chief officer at lunchtime? (10)
CINCINNATI – INN(hotel) iside C IN C(chief officer) AT, I(one, lunchtime)
6 Link to a theme involves witch’s crossing close to midnight (7)
HASHTAG – HAS(nvolved) HAG(witch) surrounding the last letter of midnighT
7 Arbitrator shortly needs new approval for Russian votes (9)
REFERENDA – REFEREE(arbitrator) missing the last letter, then N(new), DA(yes in Russian)
8 A sort of strangled Danish that many of us speak (8,7)
STANDARD ENGLISH – anagram of A,STRANGLED,DANISH
13 One brief scare after female called for perfume (10)
FRANGIPANI – I(one), PANIC(scare) missing the last letter, after F(female), RANG(called)
15 Assume authority to book holiday (4,5)
TAKE LEAVE – TAKE(assume), LEAVE(authority)
18 A land we abandoned that was occupied by invaders (7)
DANELAW – anagram of A,LAND,WE
20 Chucked out, head off down (7)
EJECTED – remove the first letter from DEJECTED(down)
23 Under way a short distance (5)
AFOOT – A, FOOT(short distance)
24 Bark’s texture (4)
WOOF – double defintion

67 comments on “Times 27748: #isthetimescrosswordoninstagramnow”

  1. Didn’t get a single across on the first pass, FOI 1d. Getting that and STANDARD ENGLISH should have given me some acrosses, but few were forthcoming. Biffed A FORTIORI from the I and putative A. I never did parse SOFIA, as I took ‘going west’ to cover the whole word. Too much time at 19ac assuming ‘church’ to be CH/CE. I thought of SKEWSNIFF–unfortunately hadn’t got DANELAW yet–and looked it up, to find DNK SKEW-WHIFF. It would never have occurred to me to look for a word with a double W.
  2. LOI was LIST, as not known as a border. To enter the lists, as in a tournament, I thought meant to enter the arena, but it’s the enclosure for it, so I’ve learnt something. There are so many words L*S* that it took a considerable portion of my time of 24’51” to be convinced that there wasn’t a reasonable alternative. Liked SKEWWHIFF for the double double U. And the SPLENDID (wren).
  3. Tough to finish – took forever to see shrew/wrong’un and skewwhiff/woof, and LOI splendid where I was expecting a pound to be AL. Liked skewwhiff, the clue and the word, which looks strange with double-W as Kevin says. Didn’t know list as border, or the texture part of woof, only that it was a weaving term. Think of frangipani as a plant, very common around here. Thanks setter and blogger.
  4. Thanks, gh. I liked Wrong Un, mostly for the word, but was mildly sorry that with the Test going on it wasn’t clued in cricketese. The interlaced Skewwhiff, Frangipani, and A Fortiori were too much for me without dictionary help.
  5. Finished in about an hour.

    Blog was helpful as I had question marks next to goner and woof, not knowing the princess or the texture.

    COD notre dame.
    LOI cincinnati.

  6. The theme this week (for me, anyway) seems to be puzzles that aren’t very hard, aside from one or three unknowns that I have to work out from wordplay. NHO SKEWWHIFF (howweird). I’ve gotten no WRONG UNs (ha… “Really, that’s a word?”) so far. Here got the two long ones early, and loved the clue for STANDARD ENGLISH (Danish is definitely in the mix)… and then we get DANELAW too.

    Edited at 2020-08-20 05:54 pm (UTC)

  7. Started well enough top left but became bogged down and struggled to complete which I did eventually after 50 minutes.

    DK or had forgotten LIST as a border. DK FRANGIPANI, only ‘frangipane’ as a confectionery item like marzipan so I was stumped by the definition ‘perfume’.

  8. 11:59. Unsure of LIST for border, but bunged it in. Nice to see Frangipani – we had some in our garden when I was young. COD to SKEWWHIFF.
  9. Nice fun outing today, though not for the setter apparently, what with rat poisin, goner, hit and run, and nukings. My habit of starting with the downs paid off, as the two long ones both went straight in.
    Personally I would spell it skew-whiff. So would the OED and Chambers, though not Collins. Someone should have a word with Collins. I wouldn’t mind if it were 17ac’d
  11. Good time for a harder than average puzzle. LOI LIST, hoped for the best. A couple of foreign cities just clued by ‘city’ – OK I suppose.

    COD: A FORTIORI – nice ‘a state’ on the end.

    No time for crosswords on Tuesday and Wednesday, unfortunately.

    Monday’s answer: the only nationality ending in -que is Monegasque.

    Today’s question: what mammal is named after the largest and smallest land mammals but is neither?

  12. …I fell into the EMAIL bear trap. Biffed it without thinking. Like yesterday I solved all the hard ones but fell down on an easy one.
    Thanks, George for HASHTAG and CINCINNATI. I didn’tv know LIST was also a border so thanks to Corymbia for that.
    I wondered what you were doing blogging a Friday puzzle, George, but then realised it’s Thursday!
  13. 14:49. Like our blogger I struggled with the acrosses but found the downs more amenable. I spent a good couple of minutes at the end trying to justify a couple of biffs: SPLENDID and CINCINNATI. They seemed the obvious answers but I had absolutely no idea about the wordplay, which made me nervous so I took the time to make sure.
    I didn’t know the second meaning of WOOF so was a bit uneasy about that one too but with _O_F and ‘bark’ what else can it be?
    There will be stern letters to the editor about REFERENDA. Pluralising REFERENDUM with an A is illogical in terms of Latin grammar so many people will tell you that REFERENDUMS is ‘correct’. These people are incorrect.
    Some of this felt a little bit loose but I really enjoyed the range of references and particularly the modern/colloquial terms: HASHTAG, WRONG’UN, SKEWWHIFF (although I was surprised to see the last without a hyphen).

    Edited at 2020-08-20 07:46 am (UTC)

    1. Referendums is correct. Any vote(s) to decide a single issue at a single point in time. The Latin Referenda means ‘things to be referred’-plural. A different meaning. Mr Grumpy.
      1. Just as ‘agenda’ means ‘things to be discussed, plural. Try using it like that and you will just look like a wally.
        You are incorrect.
  14. 32 minutes. LOI LIST without knowing about the border. COD to SKEWWHIFF. I quite enjoyed this, even though I’ll have a Scott Walker ear worm all day. Thank you George and setter.
  15. Beset by browser issues, the club site coming up with “unknown error” on starting the crossword, and mysteriously missing passwords which got me temporarily banned from this site. Just as well it wasn’t my turn to blog!
    The crossword (eventually) was on the tricky side, taking 22 minutes (? – my time has disappeared along with my record of solving on the Times site).
    Most problems on the left, though with the exception of the odious ETAIL (I would have thought it should be hyphenated and then trashed) it’s difficult now to see why.
    I now know SHREWs are insectivorous. Probably why I’ve never been successful at keeping them alive on hamster food.
  16. Some splendid stuff here. Enjoyed the rarity of double-W in skew-whiff, but I would have hyphen-ated it. #WW.
  17. 17 and a bit minutes, am a bit fey after a rash of pink squares so put in LIST as couldn’t think of anything else. Liked WRONG UN.

    The third Test starts tomorrow.

    Thanks george and setter.

  18. Reasonably easy puzzle with once again a handful of obscure usages adding difficulty rather than devious setting

    Back in the day I worked with a Texan who after a bourbon or three would start banging on about “nuking the Ruskies”.
    We never did convince him that moments after launching US missiles the Russians would retaliate and as London isn’t far from Russia there was every chance he would be nuked before Moscow!

  19. 22.31 but another stupid mistake, put in aloft rather than afoot. Aargh. Agree with the blogger on skew whiff. I can’t say I’ve ever seen the word as continuous with two ws but the cluing was clear. In my partof the world I think it was pronounced skee whiff rather than skew whiff.

    Enjoyable puzzle, in fact so far this week I think they’ve all been good fun. I await Friday with eager anticipation.

  20. Yes I know we happily use the word ‘agenda’, so you could say that we should similarly use the word ‘referenda’, and to hell with the pedants. But we only use ‘agenda’ because at some point in the past people have made a logical error with their Latin grammar and the use has become so widespread that it is accepted. Is it OK to say let people go on making this error with ‘referendum’ and hope for the eventual safety of numbers?
    1. Well, I suppose you could try to stop people making this error; let me know how it turns out.
    2. And be sure to keep the editors of Chambers, Collins and the OED updated on your progress. 😉
  21. Wavelengthy one for me although I always have to check which letter gets doubled up in CINCINNATI and, as others have noted, that double W looks funny on the page as one word in SKEWWHIFF. And rather a RETRO one at that – the sort of thing Jennings would say to Darbishire. 16.06
  22. Off the wavelength today, taking 13m 40s and struggling to see anything quickly. For the last few (SPLENDID, AFOOT, TAKE LEAVE, CINCINNATI) I only managed to solve them after writing out the letters and blanks. Always seems to help, for some reason, but particularly so when solving online.

    NOTRE DAME was nicely put together.

  23. DNK WOOF as a texture, and SKEWWHIFF as a single word is a nonsense. I had far too many DUH moments, and that was entirely down to me since this was a half-decent puzzle.

    FOI HIT-AND-RUN
    LOI SPLENDID
    COD HASHTAG
    TIME 19:21

  24. Didn’t know LIST as border or WOOF as texture, and was expecting to see pink squares at 24d, but was pleasantly surprised. STRETCH ONES LEGS was my FOI. I also prefer SKEW-WHIFF with its hyphen. My LOI, A FORTIORI was laboriously constructed from crossers and wordplay. CINCINNATI was a late entry, but I did see how it worked. Wasted time at the end on an alphabet trawl to find something other than WOOF, but failed. 41:58, with at least 3 of those wasted on WOOF. Thanks setter and George.
    1. Antonio, perhaps? He was an American serviceman (of Italian heritage) who featured in Catch-22, the second-best book ever written. Yossarian commandeered his bed in the hospital to speak to his friend who was alongside, and thus missed going home.
      1. OK, I’ll bite. What’s the first?
        I liked Catch-22 but it’s not in my top 50.
        1. Trying to remember… was it Little Drummer Girl where the main protagonist never ranked anything as best? I’ve appropriated that ranking system, only ever assign second-best status. Catch-22 is one of my favourites, suits my sense of humour, but I probably prefer The Ginger Man by JP Donleavy. Though there’s 5 or so books that could be ranked first, depending how I feel on the day.
          1. I haven’t read that, I will add it to my ‘to read’ list. I’m with you, except that I wouldn’t even be able to name my top 5 never mind first and second. To me the question ‘is Crime and Punishment better than Hamlet?’ doesn’t even make sense.
  26. A laboured 32’55, without parsing splendid or knowing the list meaning. Standard English includes back-formations (referenda) and all sorts of quirky reasons for usage: the acceptance is all. I rather like skewwhiff without the hyphen though it has one in my dictionary. joekobi
    1. Usage is all. This can then be recognised (as REFERENDA is in all the dictionaries). There is no such thing as ‘acceptance’, linguistically speaking.

      Edited at 2020-08-20 10:47 am (UTC)

      1. Usage can mean being used by only a few or even by one alone. Acceptance is what the dictionaries provide. And maybe in its lesser and unofficial way the Times crossword itself too at times. jk
        1. OK we’re arguing about terms (as so often!)
          Words go into dictionaries when they are sufficiently used. The word ‘acceptance’ to me implies that there is some sort of quality control beyond that, which there isn’t. Dictionaries (and linguists) don’t make value judgements.
          2. Then how do you explain how some words will appear in one dictionary and not another? Or using an example from today, why a word is hyphenated in one but not others?

            I’m old fashioned and believe that there should only be one dictionary. In my opinion, two dictionaries can’t be both different and both right. But given that there is a multiplicity, some of the omissions can only be described as value judgments. Ie the editor either ‘fancies’ the word or they don’t.

  27. 14.13. A quick solve much enjoyed. Wasted a bit too much time parsing some of the more convoluted ones (wrong un, goner, wintered for example). As with others LOI list, entered on the strength of ‘lean over’ and on the assumption that it would be one of those words in the dictionary with a dozen different meanings, one of which would be ‘border’.
  28. I enjoyed working my way through this and only had a couple of unknowns – GONER and LIST – both of which I entered hesitantly before finishing within 40 minutes.
    SKEWWHIFF is a word I don’t think I’ve ever seen written down but I agree that it would be better if hyphenated. The STANDARD ENGLISH anagram was very satisfying as were RETRO and EJECTED but my COD goes to FRANGIPANI for its construction although, like Jackkt, I only know this as the almond paste.
    Thanks to the setter and to George for the informative blog.
  29. I got SHREW immediately (maybe helped by earlier looking at a photo of a weasel on the back of a kingfisher) which gave me S ONES Ls straight afterwards and I was able to build from there.

    As far as I know SQUIFFY is a corruption of SKEWWHIFF. Word of the day regardless.

  30. Enjoyed this, while apparently being miles off the right wavelength, but such is the joy of the cryptic crossword. LIST was one of those which goes in with fingers crossed.
  31. Yes, I do know the meaning of ‘goner’ but I had to enter it unparsed as I didn’t think of King Lear’s ‘Goneril’.
    1. Oh sorry, I misunderstood!
      And by the way it’s really nice to have you here, new voices are so very welcome.

      Edited at 2020-08-20 11:08 pm (UTC)

      1. No need to apologise – on reflection, my post wasn’t very clear.
        Thanks very much for your words of welcome. It’s a great community to belong to and I’m learning something new every day!
  32. LIST left till last and biffed in desperation. Spent too long trying to find the H for hotel in the city, and having got all the letters I still didn’t think of INN for too long.
    I rather liked SKEWWHIFF.
  33. The objection to this word is not so much that it is incorrect (as the Latin gerund does not have a plural so this would have to be the future passive participle, or gerundive, which would mean (matters which) should be referred, rather than the act of reference) but that it is pretentious. It is as though someone proudly exhibits his knowledge that referendum is a Latin word by forming the plural like forum. It is therefore not merely an error. It is a malapropism.
    2. I on the other hand see use of “referendums” as pretentious, denoting a grammar pedant as it does…
      “The plural forms referendums and referenda are both found; in the early 21st cent. usage is fairly evenly divided between the two, as it was also in the late 20th cent. The form referenda is by analogy with memoranda, agenda, etc., and more generally with plurals in -a of Latin-derived words with singular in -um. This form is sometimes deprecated in usage guides, etc., on the grounds that a Latin plural gerundive referenda, meaning ‘things to be referred’, would necessarily connote a plurality of issues, but this view is unlikely to affect actual usage.” (OED)
    3. Rubbish. It’s a natural extension of a commonly-used plural form in modern English. Modern English speakers are very used to pluralising words that end -um by changing it to -a. This of course has its origin in Latin but the original grammar is entirely irrelevant.
      I also disagree with Jerry, by the way: this is a case where native speakers of English have two available, commonly-used options. If it weren’t for pedants we would all get on happily using both.
      Oh, and in fact we do.
      1. So….the plural of bum is ba ? Sorry, it’s late, I’m tired, and I’ve had two cans of an excellent 5% IPA.
        1. Well it would be if that’s what people started to say in sufficient numbers. Seems unlikely to me I must say.
  36. Just right. No real issues, although DNK list for border, but I see I am not alone on this.
    A very interesting debate on the plural off referendum. Oxford and Chambers both allow either version.
  37. 48 mins. Becalmed in the relatively straightforward NW quadrant until trough allowed retro (not outre or dated) wrong un and shrew to appear. List also entered with fingers crossed. I rather enjoyed this puzzle so thank you setter and blogger.
  38. I was surprised to see “called” = RANG used twice (13 and 22) in the same puzzle. Also surprised that the editor and regulars here apparently didn’t spot it – or perhaps they just didn’t mind.

    Edited at 2020-08-21 11:43 am (UTC)

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