Times 27993 – did it bode well, or bore you?

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Well, one thing this puzzle wasn’t, for me, was boring. it took me over half an hour, nearer to forty minutes, because I was led off in the wrong direction a couple of times and side-tracked into Wiki and Collins to learn more about things I was hoping were correct. It’s my kind of puzzle; you come away pleased to have finished it but sad that it’s over.
The astronomer I had heard of, the Cornish river too (from memories of childhood holidays), and the Latin bits I knew. The ‘little darling’ flower I had to construct from its fodder but it then rang a bell. The 2d and 9a crossers were my LOI and I liked the French food to chew on.

Across
1 Servant‘s goodbye coming with retirement finally (5)
VALET – VALE = Latin for goodbye, T = end of retirement.
4 Poet taking time around end of autumn to find wild animal’s domain (4,5)
HOME RANGE – HOMER is our poet, add N (end of autumn) put into AGE (time).
9 Leaving the City area — it’s stifling outside (9)
DECAMPING – I had trouble with this, as for a while I had  a T as third letter from 2d pencilled in wrongly. City area is EC (as in City of London), inserted into DAMPING which can mean stifling, shutting down, nothing to do with warm weather.
10 London giant’s journey featured in periodical (5)
MAGOG – GO (journey) inside MAG = periodical. I wrote it on because I knew Gog and Magog were giants in the Bible, but I didn’t know what they had to do with London. Now I do, read about it here if you didn’t know either.
11 Something attractive about holy person? (6)
LUSTRE – ST (saint) inside LURE (something attractive). I’ve made the whole clue the definition as otherwise ‘something attractive’ has to do double duty.
12 It’s all right to interrupt one funny person or another (8)
JOKESTER – JESTER is one fully person, if you insert OK you get another.
14 Religiously committed school entertaining archdeacon with a set of holy books (10)
COVENANTED – a school could be CO-ED, into that insert VEN for archdeacon and A NT for a, set of holy books.
16 Good wood is cut (4)
GASH – G for good, ASH a kind of wood.
19 Session spanning winter months (4)
TERM – hidden as above.
20 Running late, trains can pose a problem? (10)
TANTALISER – (LATE TRAINS)*.
22 Female performance promises to be divisive (8)
FACTIOUS – F (female) ACT (performance) IOUS (promises to pay). There’s factious, and fractious, which mean almost the same but not quite.
23 What’s crazy in a French female — and maybe divine? (6)
UNMADE – I wanted this to mean crazy, at first, but the definition is ‘maybe divine’, i.e. not made by man, so UNMADE; MAD for crazy goes inside UNE being the French feminine article. I suppose you could stretch feminine UNE to mean a female person. Perhaps you could say “combien des femmes soient ici? Une.” but it wouldn’t be nice French as I learnt it. “Une seule” perhaps.
26 Fare to get across lake or swamp (5)
FLOOD – FOOD is fare, insert L for lake; I think here swamp is a verb, as a swamp isn’t a flood.
27 Barge in season, heading off south east, beyond river (9)
INTERPOSE – (W)INTER, PO (the river) SE.
28 Spooner’s sentimentality, something sweet providing inducement (4,5)
HUSH MONEY – Dr Spooner was saying MUSH HONEY being sentimentality and something sweet.
29 Exhausted author lying in street (5)
SPENT – PEN (author, as a verb) inside ST(reet).

Down
1 Devious devil, one sort of agent briefly turning to wit (9)
VIDELICET –  (DEVIL)*, I (one) TEC (agent) reversed. VIDELICET is short for videre licet which is Latin for ‘permitted to see’ and often shortened to viz; meaning ‘that is to say’ or ‘to wit’.
2 Wants to be sluggish, first to last (5)
LACKS – well, SLACK = sluggish, move the S to the end. I began with SLOTH becoming LOTHS, but then got stuck with 9a, until I tried another route.
3 Tree in delta below river (8)
TAMARIND – The delightful River TAMAR forms much of the border between Devon and Cornwall. Add IN and D for delta.
4 Hotel dealt with trouble, bringing acclaim (4)
HAIL – H for hotel, AIL for trouble.
5 Get men into reorganising plant (10)
MIGNONETTE – (GET MEN INTO)*. The mignonette is a pretty flowering plant, native to the Mediterranean area, it means ‘little darling’ in French.
6 A politician in socialist hue rushed around violently (6)
RAMPED – A M.P. inside RED. Collins has “RAMP; 6. (esp. of animals) to rush around in an excited manner. As our new dog Ted3 seems to do most of the time.
7 Drinks late on? They won’t help you keep a cool head then (9)
NIGHTCAPS – whimsical cryptic definition.
8 Wholehearted bore needing an audience (5)
EAGER – my best effort so far is to presume eager sounds like auger, meaning bore, but I can’t make them sound very alike. EDIT Kevingregg tells us below:an EAGRE is a tidal bore, and so a homophone, I didn’t know that.
13 Said annual travelling around should be in part of Spain (10)
ANDALUSIAN – (SAID ANNUAL)*.
15 Savage — time to oust one, right? (9)
VERACIOUS – savage = VICIOUS, replace I by ERA for time.
17 Food in France perhaps a mother’s cooked, full of energy (9)
HORSEMEAT – (A MOTHER’S)* with E dropped in. Horsemeat is indeed available in most French hypermarkets; I’ve never tried it, mainly because it’s about three times the price of beef and I don’t eat much red meat. I would eat it if I was given it, just as I would with venison, but preferably not in a Tesco beefburger.
18 Plain folk from the south irked, note, with everyone (8)
LLANEROS – from the south = reversed; SORE (irked) N (note) ALL. A herder in S. America, so named after the llanos or plain grasslands in Spanish.
21 Is daughter given order to follow women’s good sense? (6)
WISDOM – W(omen) IS D(aughter) OM (order of merit).
22 Garbage left abandoned staff finally collected in interval (5)
FIFTH – FILTH = garbage, delete L and insert F the end of staff. Interval as in music.
24 Residence of a German man of law (5)
ABODE – you could biff this if you didn’t know that Johannes BODE (1747-1826) had a famous Law dealing with the relative mean distances between the sun and its planets.
25 Maybe lost dog has run away for stick (4)
STAY – lost dog = STRAY, take away R for run.

​

58 comments on “Times 27993 – did it bode well, or bore you?”

  2. Several clues were long in giving up their secrets, like VIDELICET, LLANEROS, and INTERPOSE. UNMADE & ABODE were my POI and LOI; I’d actually come up with them fairly early on, but couldn’t convince myself of the former, and had not a hint of a clue for the latter. Never thought of a law of science, and probably wouldn’t have recognized BODE anyway. A tough puzzle, very satisfying to have solved it (aside from ABODE, anyway).
  3. I biffed VIDELICET, but then on studying the wordplay I thought we needed a reversal of TO and CI{a}, so went for the unlikely VIDELICOT. Of course my analysis doesn’t even work because only the TO would be reversed.

    Perhaps the moral of the story is: when ya got it, biff it.

  4. The LLANEROS at 18dn did for me although I think they rode through Crosswordland recently. So I was a DNF.

    FOI 1ac VALET – I miss valet parking.

    (LOI) 24adn ABODE – BODE was perhaps the first German Dr. Who.

    COD 17dn HORSEMEAT. I have partaken on several occasions – horsemeat was eaten widely during both World Wars – it was available on ration in Huntingdon, when I was a nipper.
    I have had ‘cavallo carpaccio’ at Agnelli’s Golf Club in Turin, and have noted a dedicated butchery in Emilia Romagna which fooled my father-in-law.

    WOD 5dn MIGNONETTE – aussi un bouquet garni

  5. I had eight or nine across answers before doing any downs, and fairly flew through most of this (taking BODE on faith), but then spent some long minutes on the last handful.

    The French may be open to eating viande de cheval, but they like to be told at least before they bite into it, as was seen in the fraud scandal of 2013.

  6. Finished in 41 minutes with a few only half-parsed – what MAGOG had to do with London (thanks for the interesting link), the spelling of the tidal ‘bore’ at 8d and the ‘German man of law’ (? should have been capitalised) at 24d. I was pleased to pick up the ‘to wit’ def. at 1d, though understanding the difference between VIDELICET and “scilicet” (much less using one, rather than the other, correctly) will forever be one of life’s mysteries.

    Thanks to setter and blogger

  7. Very tough, a few unknowns, about 32 minutes. Last 3 gash, horsemeat and unmade took about 10 of that.
    Quite liked it nevertheless. We used to draw Bode plots in control systems to test they were stable – not the same Bode, according to Wiki.
  8. LOI UNMADE, done from wordplay, but I still can’t see how it fits the divine definition. POI LLANEROS; seeing that it would start LLA I was looking for some Welsh plain dwellers until the sore penny dropped.
    The river Tamar is, of course, in Tasmania.
    30’23”
    1. The Divinity is the only thing uncreated. “Is now and ever shall be, world without end…”
  9. Cogitated for a while over UNMADE (still not convinced by the definition, but I see what guy_du_sable is saying), also ABODE having never heard of the lawmaker in question. My first thought on seeing the anagram fodder for 17d was HEARTSOME, a valid word but not edible.
  10. 39 minutes, but I didn’t enjoy this much as there were far too many clues where even having found the answer I had queries over wordplay or definition so I kept having to shrug shoulders and move on, which is not a very satisfying experience.

    One clue I was never going to understand was 15dn because I had the wrong answer – settling for VORACIOUS. With hindsight I was aware that VERACIOUS also exists but I’m not sure their similarity had ever occurred to me before. I note that this would seem to be the first appearance of VERACIOUS in a 15×15 in the TfTT era, although it did occur once in a Jumbo, last year, since I started solving them every week.

    Edited at 2021-06-02 06:22 am (UTC)

  11. 47 minutes with LOI VERACIOUS, where I had too soon biffed FEROCIOUS. Eventually I managed to fit VEN and NT into a word and kicked myself, as I was once a boy covenanter. I can honestly say as a physicist that I have never heard of Bode’s Law, and in the end I had to plump between ABODE and Speedy Gonzales’ ADOBE. I stayed English. Some difficult anagrams didn’t help, to wit, MIGNONETTE. I liked HUSH MONEY, but COD to UNMADE. Tough puzzle again. Thank you Pip and setter.

    Edited at 2021-06-02 07:03 am (UTC)

  12. Ouch.
    Veracious – never heard of it. Went for voracious = savage, natch, but couldn’t parse that. Nonetheless, on I swam, straight into the keepnet. Good misdirection. Tough old bird, this puzzle. Bode was new to me too.
    Thanks, pip.
  13. Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.

    35 mins.
    What Jackkt said.
    Thanks setter and Pip

    Edited at 2021-06-02 07:28 am (UTC)

  14. 14:04 DNK Bode’s law or the connection of Gog and Magog with London, although I do know the Gog Magog hills of Cambridgeshire – you get fine views of Cambridge from Magog Down and, when the weather is clear, can see all the way to Ely. I wasn’t totally convinced by UNMADE and thought the cryptic definition of NIGHTCAP a bit weak. Still plenty of fun to be had. I liked the &lit LUSTRE best. Thanks Pip and setter.
  15. Another one of those infuriating days when you work hard to get some tricky clues (LLANEROS, ABODE, FACTIOUS, DECAMPING) and then sit staring at the last two or three with no idea what’s going on. 1d, 14ac and 15d had me completely baffled, so a DNF again. Not a good week so far. Thanks pip and setter.
  16. Only 7 answered for me today. No incorrect answers entered though, so I am not unhappy.

    I will continue to plod my way though these 15×15.

    Completed the QC though.

  17. Titus-Bode’s Law has always been completely fascinating to me, as have Fibonacci’s Sequences. Veracious v Voracious – – factious v fractious – horsemeat v hamburger gave pause for thought. COD Videlicet. Twenty-one minutes. I do so wish the setter’s had names, as they do in the QC.
  18. Thanks, Pip. I’m glad my Bianca doesn’t rush around that much, not like your Ted3!
    Thank you (and Kevin) for explaining ABODE, UNMADE and EAGER.
    LOI was LLANEROS. I spent too long trying to find a word that began ALL….
  19. Plodded though this, sighing intermittently.

    The Llaneros (good name for a Welsh Doo-Wop group) had me beat, but I had biffed VORACIOUS so was doomed anyway. Tant pis.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter.

  20. Far from unique experience here. Lots of quite interesting clues, followed by some which were, well, “interesting” may or may not be quite the right word. A disproportionate amount of time spent working out that the intersection in the SE had to be UNMADE and ABODE, but had to come here to understand why, which isn’t entirely satisfying. Oh well, the sun is out, Test cricket is back and there’s another puzzle tomorrow.
  21. ‘combien de…’ (‘de’ after expressions of quantity)
    ‘sont’ (not sure why the subjunctive here?)
    Point taken about ‘une’, though.

    Forgive the pedantry

  22. I assumed that ABODE was something like ‘a B.O. Deutsch’, with B.O. some German abbreviation for a man of law, and stuck it in and carried on.

    keriothe isn’t a tantaliser a term people use for some intractable puzzle, where the solution is almost there but not quite?

    Very unsure about UNMADE. All I could think of was an unmade bed, which is hardly divine.

    Edited at 2021-06-02 10:14 am (UTC)

    1. Have you heard of Tracey Emin? Her ‘Unmade Bed’ fetched $3.77 million – divine!
      2. Emin figured in a Sunday Times puzzle early in my blogging tenure. That was a fun one to write.

        Edited at 2021-06-02 04:51 pm (UTC)

    2. Possibly but not sufficiently to merit inclusion of any of the usual dictionaries. The OED has one example of the word being used in this sense in 1889, but under the general definition ‘one who or that which tantalizes’:
      I have received a puzzle of the ‘Pigs in Clover’ kind… ‘Penning the Lambs’ is the name by which the latest variation of the original tantalizer has been christened
      Of course you might describe a puzzle as a tantaliser, but you might equally describe it as a frustrater. I can’t see any evidence of general usage in this sense.

      Edited at 2021-06-02 06:40 pm (UTC)

  23. 18:57. I didn’t like this at all, for similar reasons to jackkt. Too many clues relied for difficulty on some sort of obscurity and UNMADE and ABODE are particularly awful. I suppose you can read the definition of 23ac as ‘non-existent’.
    How is a TANTALISER a problem?
    I read 11ac as an &Lit and a reference to a saint’s halo.

    Edited at 2021-06-02 09:50 am (UTC)

    1. I suppose TANTALISER = teaser = problem.

      I don’t see why a halo is particularly attractive, on a saint or otherwise. But I agree the whole clue is the definition.

      1. In the sense that old car = banger = sausage, so an old car is a sausage.
  24. Enjoyed this puzzle. Last two in were UNMADE (when I saw what divine was doing) and ABODE (never heard of that law, only Copernicus’s regarding periods, assumed BODE was German for a lawyer).

    NHO MIGNONETTE but seemed an obvious anagram, was overthinking HORSEMEAT until the penny dropped. No problem with MAGOG. Also had FEROCIOUS for a while.

    Thanks setter and Pip

  25. Sorry, another unhappy solver. When you know two answers are probably correct (ABODE/UNMADE), know how one is constructed (UNMADE) and still end up having to guess after 10 minutes trying to justify either answer, to my mind the balance is tilted too much against the solver. UNMADE was a difficult clue, and deserved a definition which at least showed up in Google!
  26. Llaneros sounds like a Welsh Language Game of Thrones spin off.

    About 2/3 completed today.

    COD JOKESTER

    Edited at 2021-06-02 11:16 am (UTC)

  27. Yes the UNMADE bed mental picture hung around but I think Guy et al are right about the divine definition. In the beginning was the Word etc. and without Him was not anything made that was made and so on. It’s a bit woolly but it sort of works. The LLANEROS and the HOME RANGE left me with “home home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play” as memorably sung by Cary Grant as Mr. Blandings. Magoo is the MAGOG of crosswordland. I seem to be a bit out of step because I enjoyed this one. 19.44
  28. …but had biffed VORACIOUS so failed. Like others, thought there were too many slightly trappy clues. Even though ABODE seemed more likely, ADOBE could have fitted def; and without being familiar with a foreign stargazer who died nearly 200 years ago, how could one be sure? Ditto UNMADE where Chambers goes nowhere near “divine” as a possible meaning (nor do any of defs of DIVINE come close to UNMADE…) Not overly gruntled by it all…
  29. 33 mins with another unparsed VORACIOUS. Some interesting vocabulary. UNMADE as poeticism for divine has something of G. M. Hopkins about it but I am not sure it really passes muster as a definition.
  30. VORACIOUS instead of VERACIOUS. Doh.

    99% of the population have little or no Latin, so while VALE(T) might be guessable, I doubt that many know of VIDELICET. It’s bad enough battling random plants, random Latin is no better.

    1. I would posit that 99% of the UK population do not attempt the Times Crossword. In my day Latin was compulsory.
      1. But it hasn’t been for decades. I have never had a single Latin lesson in my life and I’m 48! The persistent assumption of Latin knowledge in these puzzles is unquestionably ageist. I have learned to live with this (along with all the biblical stuff) over the years but that doesn’t mean I like it.

        Edited at 2021-06-02 06:44 pm (UTC)

        1. I am sorry your school didn’t offer Latin. You missed out. Apart from being a language you could learn like a science, it gave me a grounding that made learning French, Spanish and perhaps English grammar much easier and Italian more guessable. I don’t think it is ageist, I think it is just a sign of falling standards in education over the longer term. And probably a lack of Latin teachers. O tempora o mores.
          1. I have absolutely nothing against the teaching and learning of of Latin. My daughter is doing it at A-Level, with my encouragement. But the merits of its teaching are really irrelevant here: the fact is that the vast majority of people have not been taught Latin in schools for many decades and so retaining the assumption that it is basic ‘schoolboy knowledge’ is unfair on many of us.
            1. I don’t think it’s unfair, I think it merely reflects the ages and styles of the setters, which presumably is governed by what the paper’s editors wish to project; The Times crossword as a more classically erudite and traditional one than, say, the Guardian.

              I can’t find any statistics on Latin knowledge penetration in UK, but I’d dispute your 1%, given 600,000 kids are in independent schools, a falling number, out of about 8 million, and almost all of those will receive Latin as a subject, optional or mandatory. And perhaps more, 35 years ago when you were in school. You also need a good deal of specialised Latin to do the Law, and there are plenty of lawyers!

              1. I see it was not you who started this thread with the 99% point, so apologies for that; nevertheless I’d like to think it was nearer 2 or 3% who know some Latin.
                1. Crossing replies — no problem. 3% is still a very small number!

                  Edited at 2021-06-02 11:17 pm (UTC)

              2. It’s the job of the editor to control the predilections of older setters, who ought to realise that this sort of stuff is old hat. What you call ‘classically erudite’ is in this case defined by what you learned at school. This changes with time.
                I didn’t say 1%, but your argument that Latin is OK because it’s taught in independent schools rather makes my point for me. The setters and editors are alienating the 93% of the population (including me, but not my daughter) who don’t go to these schools, which I think is unwise, and (I hope) not intentional.
                I’m not arguing for the complete exclusion of Latin, by the way. One of the things I love about these puzzles is the fact that you learn things from them, whether that be Latin terms, the names of obscure plants, books of the bible or whatever. For me it’s a question of balance: remember your (especially younger) audience, keep it in check, and above all make the wordplay clear!
  31. I enjoyed this. All finished in 50 minutes apart from Llaneros which eluded me totally. DNK Bode, eagre, the link of Magog to London, that mignonette was a flower, that ramped could mean rushed around violently. Could see that the ‘era’ in veracious should be replaced by one to get the original ‘savage’ but vonecious and vacecious didn’t work. Needed the blog to see that ‘one’ was ‘i’. Doh.

    The wordplay was helpful throughout so I trusted it to learn new words and meanings. The best enjoyment from crosswords.

  32. ….not created”. I thank Pip for parsing UNMADE, but disagree with his view of the puzzle as a whole. It was trying too hard to be clever, and thus was a chore to complete.

    I’ve never seen JOKESTER anywhere, DNK the usage of RAMPED, and the German scientist was well outside my boundaries of interest. I knew of the llano, so LLANERO was workable. I managed not to screw up the spelling of VIDELICET (it wouldn’t have been the first time).

    FOI VALET
    LOI LUSTRE (with a shrug)
    COD HUSH MONEY
    TIME 11:02

  33. Messed up and put VEDILICET. So I almost remembered it from before. I was another VORACIOUS too, but since I’d failed to fully understand the wordplay for several other clues, I assumed this was one more, and so I didn’t think more about it. I took BODE on trust, and the wordplay for UNMADE was so clear it couldn’t be anything else even though the “divine” thing was being too clever. I only knew MIGNONETTE as the sauce you serve with raw oysters, not that it was a flower, although it is certainly a very plausible flower name.
  34. This grid is a fantastic endeavour
    With a clue that I’ll cherish forever
    For this Astro-nut knowed
    Of the law due to Bode
    Our setter’s most awfully clever
  35. 20:16. Found this a little quirky in parts but still an enjoyable solve overall. Several NHOs, LOI 5 d “Mignonette”, 4 ac Home Range (however clueing generous) and Herr (or more probably Doktor) Bode at 24 d.
    Only heard of Magog from the name of the Cambridge Golf Club “Gog & Magog”
    Fortunately changed 15d to Veracious just before submitting.
    My COD 28 ac “Hush Money” simply because I saw the Spoonerism immediately which is seldom the case normally.
    Thanks to Pip for an entertaining blog and to setter.
  36. But I’m afraid I was a voracious-er. Veracious occurred to me, but the word sounded odd for some reason. I’m sure I’ve put it in loads of times in other crosswords. Anyway natch I couldn’t parse voracious, so more fool me. Llaneros came easily as soon as I saw the backwards ‘all’. Guessed mignonette, partly through being reminded of the pretty boy favourites of one of those French 16th century kings. Henry III? Horsemeat tasted good the only time I had it, which was at a reception laid on by a Montargis boucher chevalin. But I still can’t bring myself to eat it again.
  37. DNF (again) this time in a little under 18 mins. I was expecting a pink square at either unmade or abode. The first I justified on the sort of logic of others here, a non-contingent being, being divine. Ironic that I didn’t feel on particularly solid ground once I’d come up with it. Abode was a hit and hope, having no idea who Herr Bode was. In the end though it was my inability to spell videlicit that got me.
  38. ABODE was a dreadful clue (sorry Setter!) and the obscure plant clued as an anagram had me shuddering well before the end but I liked the rest of it

    Accidentally saw the average time before starting (23 mins apparently) so assumed it was an easy one and was cursing my sluggishness

    No problems with UNMADE — straight in and VIDELICET worked out from w/p

    I did Latin and Greek A level but entirely agree that a lack of knowledge of them makes this crossword less accessible which is a shame. My kids asked to do the Guardian Quiptic rather than the QC this week on the basis it’s a bit more up to date and they raced through it. Might have a problem bringing them back from the dark side 😀

    Thanks all

  39. Glad to see there were lots of other VORACIOUS solvers — this was the clue I never even tried to understand the wordplay for, because I was so tired that I fell into dreaming that I had understood the wordplay. The rest took me an hour, with even TANTALISER taking ages because I was working from the wrong anagrist (too many Rs, too few Ts). No idea how I managed to solve all the other clues for words I had never heard of (like LLANEROS).
  40. Sadly one of those I found impenetrable. FOI 16ac GASH, LOI 25d STAY, and actually only managed one answer between that first and last. Yep, a total of three. In thirty minutes. Abysmal.
  41. I battled through this for 50 minutes before seeking help with the flower and 1d. I had the VIDELI bit but had no idea about the rest of it. I was held up by assuming that 14a ended with ANT. I didn’t know Herr Bode either and fully expected pink squares at there and in UNMADE, so was surprised when there weren’t any! I worked out LLANEROS on the basis that it had something to do with Llano, which is another word I’ve only met in these crosswords. A bit of a slog, all in all. 51:28. Thanks setter and Pip.
  42. There are people in France who object on principle. Cruciverbists might like the notion of the Association Anti-Hippophage

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