Times 28033 – All Greek to me

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
27 minutes for me, so according to my internal Witchometer, a tad tougher than the average Monday. A nice mixture of sciency stuff, marine biology, horticulture, history, linguistics and Classics. Who needs a GK crossword (which, incidentally, I have never done – in its most recent Timesian manifestation, at any rate) when you’ve got all this in one daily cryptic?

ACROSS

1 Parking on the edge? Hash is made of it (4)
HEMP – HEM P
3 How farmer could make money for English plant (10)
SELLAFIELD – if a farmer were strapped for cash (and they all say they are), ze could ‘sell a field’; a site in Cumbria given over to nuclear fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste storage and nuclear decommissioning, and a former nuclear power generating site
9 Ornamental tree, one cut back, is to deteriorate (7)
RELAPSE – reversal of ESPAL[i]ER; ESPALIER can refer to either a tree trained to grow against a wall, the trellis on which it grows or the method of growing it
11 Break during noise where screenings take place in US (5-2)
DRIVE-IN – RIVE (break) in DIN
12 Dancing act is a sly way to provoke a reaction (9)
CATALYSIS – anagram* of ACT IS A SLY
13 Specific speech of king in classical garb from the east (5)
ARGOT – R in TOGA reversed; criminal argot is possibly the best known type
14 English in agreement: blades do some retracting (3,4,5)
EAT ONES WORDS – E (English) AT ONE (in agreement) SWORDS (blades); ‘do some retracting’. Nice stuff – not a reversal in sight
18 Seizing compass, sailor put down drink (6,6)
ORANGE SQUASH – RANGE (compass – as in ‘being paid is not within the compass of the blogger’s job description’) in OS (Ordinary Seaman) QUASH (put down)
21 Make harmless run through football team making comeback (5)
UNARM – R in MANU reversed; a morphologically helpful team that pops up regularly on that account
22 Soldier hiding a stone in royal house (9)
LANCASTER – A ST in LANCER: the House of Lancaster – cadet branch of the House of Plantagenet – provided England with three kings, all called Henry (IV, V and VI), each made legendary by Shakespeare.
24 Hard fruit, not soft vegetable (7)
HARICOT – H A[p]RICOT
25 Heading for tie-break, period of excitement about play area (7)
THEATRE – T[ie-break] HEAT (period of excitement) RE (about)
26 Wild West figure‘s flipping tight underwear that is dropped (10)
GUNSLINGER – SNUG reversed LINGER[ie] (‘that is’ [viz. ‘i.e.’] deleted)
27 Fed old lady good new sandwiches (1-3)
G-MAN – MA in G (good) N (new)

DOWN

1 This guy rushes to hug Liberal or Labour hero (8)
HERACLES – HE (this guy) L (liberal) in RACES (rushes); Hercules in Greek – he of the 12 Labours
2 China admitting current books have influence (8)
MILITATE – I (electrical current) LIT (books) in MATE (‘China’, AKA China plate > mate, in Cockney)
4 Number initially brought down, such as four and six (5)
EVENS – SEVEN with the ‘s’ moved to the end
5 What attracts people to Leeds on tours (9)
LODESTONE – TO LEEDS ON*; literally ‘a rock that consists of pure or nearly pure magnetite and thus is naturally magnetic’, figuratively this can refer to someone or something which attracts strongly
6 Not cheating like a blonde conservative? (4,3,6)
FAIR AND SQUARE – FAIR (blonde) SQUARE (conservative)
7 Appear, say, with repairmen in service turning up (6)
EMERGE – reversal of EG REME (Royal and Electrical Engineers – ‘repairmen’); my Dad did his National Service in this corps
8 Gift is acceptable, wrapped by partner (6)
DONATE – ON (acceptable) in DATE (partner)
10 Land I proclaim free in form of Malayalam? (13)
PALINDROMICAL – LAND I PROCLAIM*; Malayalam is a Dravidian language related to Tamil that is spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and some other places by the Malayali people
15 Individual to furnish information in different ways (9)
SINGLETON – SING (to furnish information, as in inform) and LET ON (to furnish information, as in gossip); rather cute
16 Odd-job man caught poking tubby, round belly (8)
FACTOTUM – C (caught) in FAT (tubby) O (round) TUM (belly)
17 Ill-fated figure suffering therein, with temperature on the high side (8)
THIRTEEN – THEREIN* with T[emperature] placed initially (on the high side)
19 As a greedy person, this shellfish may be eaten (6)
QUAHOG – QUA (as a) HOG (greedy person); a clam – the official shellfish of Rhode Island, no less
20 Heard member of upper house is unproductive (6)
BARREN – sounds like ‘baron’
23 Mineral water: tiny upturned bottles (5)
NITRE – reverse hidden in [wat]ER TIN[y]

52 comments on “Times 28033 – All Greek to me”

  1. DNF – gave up at 79 minutes

    FOI DRIVE-IN
    COD PALINDROMICAL
    LOI was THEATRE (which I obtained from a missing-letters solver page) I was reading T (heading for tie) then REST for break, which could only lead towards an answer of TRESTLE – and that had nothing to do with any sort of play area.

    After entering THEATRE, I discovered that one of my early answers, G-MEN, should have been G-MAN …failed to work that through sufficiently, in my haste to continue

    Didn’t figure out 9a RELAPSE
    Didn’t know that OS can be the decode for “sailor”

    Actually felt I my performance was pretty good on this hard (but not super-hard) puzzle. Mood possibly lifted by obliterating my personal best time on early-morning bike ride.

  2. Nice start to the week, not as straightforward as Monday sometimes is, but everything there to be assembled. QUAHOG is not the most obvious, but I’m sure I won’t be the only person who’s come across it in the context of Family Guy (a popular animated television series, m’lud).
  3. 38 minutes so a shade tougher than expected on Monday. I didn’t parse RELAPSE despite knowing ESPALIER well. LOI was MILITATE which I couldn’t see as INFLUENCE. DNK QUAHOG but thought of it when HOG revealed itself and with UNARM in place. The HEAT in the THEATRE wasn’t obvious either. COD to GUNSLINGER but I did like SELLAFIELD too. Thank you U and setter.

    Edited at 2021-07-19 09:22 am (UTC)

    1. John? Who’s your favourite gunslinger? John Wesley Hardin here in Meldrewville.

      Edited at 2021-07-19 09:35 am (UTC)

      1. I’m going to be a big disappointment, H. I’ll answer Billy the Kid, but only because of Kris Kristofferson and Dylan. My favourite cowboy as a kid was Roy Rogers. I used to like Marty Robbins gunfighter ballads and more recenly Townes Van Zandt’s brilliant Pancho and Lefty. Here’s a great version of it. https://youtu.be/Fd41cVwl9FY
        1. Absolutely! Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Pancho and Lefty’ sung by Linda Rondstadt is one great piece of music from ‘Luxury Liner’?
          I’ll open up your version when I get back to base, I hope it’s LR!
            1. It was – I realised before I got back. I’ll give ‘Hickory Wind’ a spin in memory of GP and his Byrds days.
  4. The Honorable Member for Kowloon Bay, did rather well as I took almost exactly twice his time. Add the time he took to write the blog and we both spent about the same time on 218033. The problem for me was that I went from 14 minutes last Monday to this.

    I found it a tad tough and would not entice anyone from the QC Wanderers Club to venture here this Monday, nor Cubans in boats. If you were tempted, the West side is easier than the East IMHO.

    FOI 3ac SELLAFIELD which will leave Cousin Jonathan sadly unclear!

    LOI 1dn HERACLES – nowt to do with the Blairite faction.

    COD 17dn THIRTEEN – I was looking for a Jonah-type

    WOD 10dn PALINDROMICALLACIMORDNILAP

    19dn QUAHOG was dredged-up from somewhere but not RI, as I have never visited.

    1. QC wanderer here did find it tough, and gave up because I have jobs to do on this fine sunny day in Reading. At least I got 1a and 1d, GUNSLINGER, FACTOTUM, and a few more.
      QUAHOG is a new one for me. I liked the SINGLETON clue.
      BW
      Andrew
    3. Your advice to Cubans in boats that the West side is easier than the East is sound if logistically difficult. Southern quahogs are also found off Florida.
  5. Fell at the last hurdle, totally unable to see what was going on with 17d, so had to use a word finder and slap myself on the back of the head. Doh! Submitted off leaderboard to find all the rest was correct. 46:47 with a look up. Was fixated on trying to fit HURT or HARM into 17d and find some tragic Greek person. Probably wasted upwards of 10 minutes on that before giving up. Thanks setter and U.
  6. Slow start and a slow finish on the THIRTEEN/THEATRE pairing. I could see how the first was supposed to work, but rather densely was looking for a person not a number. If I had written the anagrist out I might have spotted the answer quicker. For the second, my exciuse is that we’ve had REC clued by play area quite a lot recently and I was trying to fit that in.
    QUAHOG is one of those useful words in scrabble games, though what it is in such applications is of very secondary importance. Now I know.
    18.31. And I liked the blog!
  7. Enjoyed this. Fortunately quahog rang a bell. I looked it up subsequently in Wiki and find that it is an invasive species on the South Coast around Southampton and Portsmouth.
  8. Quahog. Though qua comes up often enough for me to *know* it is “as” in Latin, a language I never learned but nevertheless know quite a few bits and pieces of from etymology in crosswords. Otherwise a few tricky bits. Sellafield the pick, not least because I was braced for unknown flora. Gunslinger a close second – visualising Lee van Cleef’s tight underwear in sundry spaghetti westerns; fortunately it never fell. Slight MER at lodestone not knowing its figurative meaning, and WOD to CATALYSIS because it looks so unlikely, had to be convinced by back-forming from catalyser.
  9. 50 minutes but technically a DNF as I got no further than ?U?HOG at 19dn, a word I never heard of, so I resorted to aids. I was ages getting started – a good 5 minutes, maybe more, before I was able to write in my first answer.

    Edited at 2021-07-19 09:12 am (UTC)

  10. 17:36 Nice puzzle. Held up in the end by having to do an alphabet trawl to discover the unlikely looking QUAHOG. I liked the ‘play area’, CATALYSIS and SINGLETON best.
  11. Lovely today, thanks setter and Ulaca. Only gripe is that ‘to gift’ has entered crosswordland. And here’s me thinking it was the last bastion against creeping linguistic awfulness. Gift me a break!
    1. The first citation for ‘gift’ as a verb meaning ‘to bestow as a gift’ in the OED is from 1619.
      1. That may be so, but its current incarnation is that of a rather horrible commercial Americanism.
        1. I don’t know about that as an Americanism, but I must one day look up the etymology to understand how Gift in German came to mean poison. Maybe something about being wary of Greeks? OK: off to dictionary corner …
  12. Having taken so long over this, I submitted without double checking.
    Nothing overly difficult, but maybe my brain is affected by the heat. I confess to checking what language MALAYALAM was before the answer jumped out.
    LOI QUAHOG which I knew but didn’t think of the Q.
  13. 12:16. I liked this a lot. I had to get the old brain cell fired up but it wasn’t too taxing.
    Like Tim I knew QUAHOG from Family Guy but I didn’t know it was an actual thing.
    PALINDROMICAL is a marvellous anagram!
  14. Some unusual vocab today, not least in the form of QUAHOG. Like TopicalTim and keriothe I was pleased to have Family Guy amongst my cultural references for this one. HERACLES gave me some pause for thought, as I initially thought of Hercules, then having rejected that I thought that “rushes” might be reeds, and spent some time trying to work that into the answer.

    I have to give joint COD today. PALINDROMICAL was excellent, but I did also very much enjoy SELLAFIELD, particularly the misdirection that had me looking for a plant in the botanical sense.

  15. Nearly one hour but, like Jackkt gave up with QUAHOG not entered. Just couldn’t see it. Last two in HERACLES and RELAPSE. Didn’t see espalier either til I came here. Definitely tougher than your average Monday. I liked SELLAFIELD and SINGLETON. Thanks U and setter.
  16. Done in 38 minutes. Luckily I remembered QUAHOG from a previous appearance somewhere (spelled as ‘quahaug’). SELLAFIELD was known as Windscale when I first heard of it and looking it up now, I see that Sellafield includes Windscale and Calder Hall, which I didn’t know about.

    Word of the day to PALINDROMICAL (which deserves to be a palindrome itself as suggested by horryd) and clue of the day to the misdirection of ‘Fed’ for G-MAN.

  18. I agree that this was a little more challenging that we’re used to for a Monday.

    In common with the other sophisticates hereabouts I ninja-turtled QUAHOG from Family Guy, putting two and two together on the basis that the local bar is The Drunken Clam.

  20. The unknown SELLAFIELD was balanced by the well-known QUAHOG. On Nantucket and Cape Cod you don’t order clam chowder you order the q stuff and very good it is too. I wasted time looking for a plant in 3a (hellebore, belladonna, what?). I was slow today, probably the Herculean labour of Friday’s puzzle had depleted what was left of the little grey cells. A new recruit from the QC made a valiant effort on that one and I recommended coming back today for something a bit easier – and it was easier but only a bit so if you’re reading this, my apologies. Did anyone else try to stuff Evian in 23d? It was one of those days. 18.45
    2. Yup, I poured out an Evian water early on as NAIVE meaning a small child — a ‘tiny’.
  21. My FOI was HEMP, immediately followed by HERCULES through not paying enough attention to the wordplay. But I fixed that to HERACLES when CATALYSIS was obviously an anagram not containing a U (although the anagram was not obvious without a few more checkers).

    BTW DRIVE-INS are quite rare these days in the US, down to 321 in the entire country from about 4,000 in the 1950s. When my son was a baby we used to go to a drive-in as a good way to watch a movie without needing to pay for a babysitter (but that one closed years ago).

    1. One of the few is in Hyde Park NY about 10 miles from us. Unfortunately they never show anything we want to see – at the moment it’s Space Jam Legacy or Gremlins.

      Edited at 2021-07-19 02:05 pm (UTC)

  22. Not a great start to the week then. About 38 minutes before giving up on the NHO QUAHOG, which satisfies the clue well enough but looks highly improbable as an English word to me. Can’t say I was all that impressed by ON = acceptable at 8D either, but DONATE couldn’t be anything else really. Thanks to our blogger, as always.
    1. I think it’s fine in contexts such as, ‘That’s just not on, you know, John.’
  23. to what I thought might be a gentle start to the week – it wasn’t. The Snitch at just over 100 made it more Tuesday- Wednesday-Thursday. COD QUAHOG of course! I’d not come across SELLAFIELD before – but Windscale was known. Time 22:17mins. Gunslinger Ned Christie.
  24. Found this quite hard going. Three left after 45 minutes – 9ac,10dn and 19dn. After a break the first two fell into place, though I need the blog to understand 9ac RELAPSE. I put in 19dn QUAHOG and crossed my fingers. Liked 3ac SELLAFIELD, mostly because whenever I see ‘plant’ I groan as my knowledge of such things is poor. Also liked 27ac GMAN.

    Thanks to our blogger and setter.

  25. Good grief.
    Expected a gentle return after three very nice Wi-Fi free days in Périgord. But “unseen in the background, Fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing-glove.”

    Thought this was a belter with several excellent clues, SINGLETON, THIRTEEN, and GUNSLINGER being the pick for me. Now off to listen to Pancho and Lefty, who sound like 1960s Wimbledon Doubles partners.

    Thanks to Ulaca and the setter.

  26. About 40 mins with the last 5 on QUAHOG which went in with fingers crossed after an alphabet trawl. Delighted to see the late great TVZ get mentioned in the blog.
  27. Had this done pretty early last night… LOI RELAPSE, and it was unparsed until I saw the blog wasn’t up yet and suddenly saw what was up with ESPAL[-i]ER<=. Got SELLAFIELD strictly from wordplay. PALINDROMICAL came rather late in the solve too. And HEMP took longer than it should have… for me! (And especially with my whole apartment building smelling as it does lately… heavenly.) This puzzle is a real winner.
  28. I was another one very slow getting going — in fact my FOI was G Man in the far SE corner.
    Also slowed down by entering Apricot instead of Haricot until I realised my mistake. Somehow I dredged up Quahog (God knows from where) and finished correct but very slow.
    Tough Monday.
  29. 31.00 or thereabouts. I think I was wrongfooted by expecting this to be a typical Monday conditioner. After 20 minutes I knew better. Bit of a struggle but very much enjoyed the challenge. My slew of candidates for COD included orange squash, quahog, gunslinger and singleton but I eventually awarded the prize to Sellafield . It was a mixture of agony and ecstasy when I saw it.

    Thanks setter for a great offering and blogger for the explanations.

  30. ….Heraclean task (which explains why I had to alter Hercules), nor was the play area in 25A a “rec”. Quite stiff for a Monday, but enjoyable.

    FOI HEMP
    LOI DONATE
    COD SELLAFIELD
    TIME 10:07

  31. 14:42 this afternoon after a slow start.
    I liked several of the clues a lot e.g. 4d “evens”, 16 d “factotum”, 15 d “sing-leton”, 17 d “thirteen” and 3 ac “sellafield” (where incidentally there is a very pleasant golf course. However, if you hit a shot out of bounds, probably not a great idea to go looking for your ball)
    NHO 19 d “quahog” but with all the crossers in place and a feasible analysis of the cryptic elements, I figured I should just go for it.
    COD 10 d “palindromical”.
    Thanks to Ulaca for an interesting blog and to setter for an enjoyable start to the week
  32. 20.46. Tricky, a few more advanced cryptic gymnastics than expected for a Monday. A while before anything was entered. Had to turn rive meaning break in drive-in and catalysis over in my mouth a couple of times before they sounded quite right. Quahog ninja-turtled from Family Guy like others. I wanted palindromical to be Indo-something for a long time until the penny-dropped, very good. Fair and square tickled me.

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