Times 28034

61 comments on “Times 28034”

1. ….as I had so bad a headache I couldn’t concentrate and only got a few in thirty minutes. After resting for a while, I had a cup of tea and all the difficulties fell away, and I finished pretty quickly.

   Repetend is a perfect example of a word no one has heard of that is easily deduced from the cryptic. However, if you have not heard of antimacassar, you might be in trouble – I just biffed that one. It was intermediate I couldn’t really parse, and had to put in as the obvious answer.

   If I wanted to pick a bone, I’d go at Teutonic as a language. It is a language group, more commonly referred to as Germanic, but I don’t think it will pass as a language just by itself.

   1. As an obsolete language, indeed it does.
      From the OED: “The language of any Teutonic race, spec. the German language (obsolete); subsequently by philologists applied only to the common or primitive speech”
2. Thirty minutes for me, with a sigh of relief that REPETEND was actually a word. No problem with ANTIMACASSAR since I remember it from some book I had to read when I was about 12 (since I had no idea what it was at the time). My grandparents had them in their living room although oiled hair hadn’t been a thing for decades. I was a bit unsure of USE as “get through” in EFFUSE but there wasn’t much choice to follow EFF. I was held up a little on NEWSREEL, my LOI, since I couldn’t see how SRE could go into the middle of a real word…until I did.
   1. MER from me too regarding “use” as “get through”. Maybe it’s as “I got through 6 bottles of wine last week” (purely random choice of phrase, you understand)
3. What Vinyl said about TEUTONIC. (BANTU showed up a while back–in a Concise?–with the same problem.) I think my father’s easy chair had an ANTIMACASSAR on the back, although he certainly didn’t use macassar oil. NHO REPETEND, of course, but ODE gives a mathematical definition as well: a repeating decimal, such as one gets dividing 1 by 3. Addend, diminuend, why not repetend? God, according to the church, created the universe EX NIHILO. Lear tells Cordelia, “Nothing will come of nothing,” but then he was a pagan.
   What Ulaca said about LAMBASTE.
4. If the inner self – or indeed the soul – had nothing to do with the mind, then I’m not sure how we could access it, or how it could inform us.

   Nice crossword, with sufficient resistant material to make it challenging, while most of the definitions were, I think, pretty friendly. Thanks (with all my heart/soul/mind) to Jack for the parsing of LAMBASTE. I don’t suppose I’ll be the only one saying that…

   1. Was foxed.
      Andyf
5. Tough for me, and liked it a lot. Took a while to see slate anagrammed, a pleasing PDM. Love it when a clue includes a saying like “push the boat out”. Also cheroot was a great clue. LOI one of the easiest: blacken… because I can’t spell putrefaction.
   Thanks setter and blogger.
6. As a layman in such matters and therefore relying only on dictionary definitions I don’t have a problem with ‘language once’. Lexico has:

   Teutonic: archaic
   The language of the Teutons.

   ‘Once’ accounting for the archaism of course.

   Edited at 2021-07-20 02:01 pm (UTC)

7. What everyone else said. Biffed ANTIMACASSAR, half-biffed LAMBASTE having got the MBA bit but wondered what “laste” was and finished with REPETEND. The latter was very clear from the cryptic but I was convinced I’d been suckered into inventing the word so it was a relief when it proved not to be the case.
8. It is enjoyable when you create a word from the cryptic such as REPRETEND (and QUAHOG yesterday) and nervously refer to the dictionary assuming you made it up then, low and behold it exists.
9. 25 mins pre-brekker. An eyebrow twitch at Anima, but all neat and tidy and very enjoyable.
   Thanks setter and J.
10. 20:30
    Quick solve. NHO repetend.
    Thanks, jack.

    Edited at 2021-07-20 07:08 am (UTC)

11. A 55 minute DNF. Managed to piece together REPETEND but came to grief on EX NIHILO which I might have seen on a good day.

    Favourite was the “grandma’s parlour” ANTIMACASSAR.

12. I arrived there differently:- MBA contained by LASTE(D) = worked – e.g. ‘it worked for over a year!’ Well, it got me there! Time 45 minutes.

    FOI 15ac PENANCE – ‘The Pirates of Penzance’ – what fun!

    LOI 15dn PUNT POLE – a quant pole no-less – one has punted at Cambridge but not ‘Oggsford’.

    COD 3dn ANTIMACASSAR – yikes my Pa was bald – so was anti. It must have been my dear Mama who used the Macassar – an oleaginous district of the Island of Celebes (Sulawesi).

    WOD 23ac PUTREFACTION – onomatopoeia – which I managed to spell correctly first time!

13. FOI INTERMEDIATE
    LOI PENANCE

    49:04 – but definitely have positives to take from this – I’m getting good at solving clues, but need to focus more on the “disciplinary” aspects of my morning mental exertions…

    – 26a I read as “state” instead of “slate” and spent several minutes trying to turn it into LOMBARDY or similar
    – Had everything complete by 38m with just 15a to do, was completely stumped, until I eventually realised …that I’d spelt ANTIMACASSAR with two Cs and one S

    Anyway, solid finish and I’m enjoying my mornings as a regular tackler of this cryptic. A work colleague and I used to attempt the Friday puzzle back in the late noughties, pushing the folded paper between our desks. Wish I could show off the progress I’ve made since those days (I think we finished twice, ever).

    1. You are obviously good material to become the coach or captain of any one of a number of English sporting teams, Denise, if you use phrases like “but definitely have positives to take from this”. That is often what is said after yet another defeat! 😀😀
       Re attempting the cryptic, my late wife was a PhD in a science field. I can’t even pronounce the title of her thesis. She once told me that when she was doing post-doc work in Dublin she and some of her colleagues, all PhDs of course, thought they would attempt the cryptic crossword in the Irish Times during their lunch break. After a full hour they had not solved one clue!
       There is hope for us all!
       1. If ever I tried to solve as part of group I’d inevitably fail. I need silence when solving.
          1. Once, when we lived in France, I thought I would start a weekly Times Cryptic crossword solving session at an English-run cafe in a nearby town. I gave up after only the second session. The only person who turned up was a French lady who wanted to improve her English!
    2. I used to solve with a work friend as well. The Times puzzle was reprinted in the NY Post in those days, so we would borrow one and make two copies of the puzzle. We’d buy lunch, set up in a conference room, and go at it. Two heads are better than one, because while I could seldom finish in those days, and neither could Stan, between the two of us we nearly always had a completed grid at the end of the lunch hour.
    3. I seriously started solving cryptics in a group of 4 doing the Torygraph in the office, then two of us eventually decamped over the road to the Victoria Tavern and did the Guardian aided by a pint of Guinness and a cheese and onion barm cake (45 years later I’ve never found a sandwich to touch it — the cheese came from the market).

       By 1986, I was doing both of the above, plus the Independent, the Times and the FT as an aid to dodging the endless soaps to which my ex was addicted. I was able to source four of the papers from work courtesy of the lovely Amanda on reception. The Guardian I had delivered.

14. Thank you very much for LAMBASTE, Jack. I echo ulaca and Kevin G. Oh, and also thanks for ANIMA in ANTIMACASSAR. Didn’t Gracie Fields sing a song about that? Oh, that was aspidistra, wasn’t it! 😉
    NHO REPETEND of course. Was on course for a sub-30 time until I hit the SW corner
    LOI ANTIMACASSAR
    COD: TIME. So succinct
15. 34 minutes with LOI an unparsed NEWSREEL, but I could see the transmission tower at Alexandra Palace in the background. I knew REPETEND from my Maths days. I reached LAMBASTE as Horryd did, thought that there must be a better explanation, but couldn’t be bothered to find it. COD to ANTIMACASSAR, a must once upon. time for the front room suite. INSTRUMENTALs came into my life with Duane Eddy. Enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
    1. I think my paternal grandparents had ANTIMACASSARs in their front room, but they were certainly not necessary because the room was never used.
       1. Antimacassars were always present on the seats of the first class section on the Western Region of British Rail; I think they had survived from God’s Wonderful Railway.
          Andyf
          1. British Rail too, for many years. But the benefits of first class have been steadily eroded over the years until now there are none left whatsoever.
             1. Airlines? Can’t remember being on a plane that didn’t have them.
16. 7:58. No problems this morning, slight relief not to see pink squares in REPETEND.
17. Perhaps not really, as there were bits of this I didn’t like much, for which read either I didn’t know the word (REPETEND of course) or failed to discern the wordplay (where laste came from around the MBA — didn’t occur to me that slate was effectively doing double duty).
    I could have managed perfectly well without “partly” in 3d: i could squeeze ANIMA out of “mind” without blinking too much, sooner than scratching an L from ANIMAL which was the “partly” I came up with.
    26.18 dithering over REPETEND and LAMBASTE which I would have spelled without the E.
    TIME and PUNT POLE made up for the less likeable bits. Fine, informative blog also warmed the cockles
18. At 32 mins I only had 3 & 8 down outstanding, and there they stayed for a further 10 mins until I gave up. I had no idea about ANIMA and so ANTIMACASSAR (NHO) was never going to come. Of course, now I see how REPETEND works I am kicking myself, as I really should have worked it out from the cryptic. Damn. I liked PENANCE and NAPOLEON (of course) most. Some good stuff here today.

    Thanks Jack and setter.

19. Like z8b8d8k above, I thought LAMBASTE was spelt without the E at the end, but the clue left little option. Worked out the unknown REPETEND from the wordplay, hesitated over NEWSREEL as I had no idea what a newel is, and was unsure about ‘use’ = to get through in EFFUSE.

    FOI Didactic
    LOI Effuse
    COD Punt pole

20. I found this one tough, with words I didn’t know – REPETEND, newel, anima – which perhaps is what conned me into trying to follow the cryptic rather than entering an actual word for, er, INTERMENIAGE. I’ll blame the heat.
21. I also assembled REPETEND and EX NIHILO from the instructions and submitted with crossed fingers. I biffed ANTIMACASSAR from the ass in the car bit of the clue and ignored the ANTIMA part. A biffed ACADEMIC at 1a slowed me down until INCREASE came along. DIDACTIC didn’t turn up until almost the end, and then allowed me to see LOI, TEUTONIC, where I didn’t have enough in depth linguistic knowledge to worry about its definition. PUTREFACTION and NEWSREEL were eureka moments. CHEROOT was FOI. 33:51. Thanks setter and Jack.
22. 24′ 13″, good puzzle.

    We had ANTIMACASSARS when I was a child, but they were known as ‘chairbacks’, they protected against Brylcreem and grubby hands.

    In cricket the crease is the place where the batter is technically ‘in’, but a batter can stand where they like, and nowadays top class cricketers will stand out of their crease to put the bowler off. Note, by the way, that the term used is now ‘batter’, not a creeping Americanism but acknowledgement of the full place of women’s cricket in sport.

    Thanks jack and setter.

    1. They were always batters in the northern counties. I can remember at Oxford being taken to task by a Wykehamist, and rejecting his challenge. Hutton and Washbrook were batters.
    2. In baseball, you are up, not in, and you must stand in the batter’s box, which is drawn in chalk next to home plate.
23. I was rather workmanlike today, putting Tab A in Slot B and finding that following the wordplay yielded the right answer, even if it was one I’d never heard of before, so all good. I am another who is old enough to remember all stylish men using Brylcreem and my grandparents’ antimacassars, so a nice trip down memory lane.
24. REPETEND and the trailing E in LAMBASTE were today’s generously clued unknowns. All done in 21 mins.
25. Briefly thought I might be heading for an under-tenner, but slowed down as per usual. Repetend was the only NHO, and from the Latin plus the clueing it felt like it had to be right. Lambaste was my LOI after I understood how it worked. Glad it gave no opening for misspelling. For classicists, let me observe that the nihilo in ex nihilo is not the ablative of nihil, because nihil has no ablative. It is the ablative of nihilum, which means nothingness, as opposed to nothing.
    1. I agree that “nihil” in indeclinable but I don’t recall there being any semantic difference between it and “nihilum”. I just checked my dusty old Lewis & Short and they seem to agree.
       1. I see what you mean. They both mean nothing. My 1947 Lewis (no Short for some reason) says it’s from Ne hilum, hilum being a shred.
26. 37 minutes but a struggle. LOI repetend which was totally new to me and a desperate guess at the last. Ex nihilo was obvious in the end but wasn’t when I was trying to fit to(r) in as the endless hill. So simple when you see it!

    Despite the struggle, another good mental workout. Thanks setter and blogger.

27. Gave up after an hour, in two sittings, with 20ac and 3dn still do. Should have got NEWSREEL but I didn’t know ANTIMACASSAR and couldn’t sort out the wordplay. Tomorrow is another day.
28. Saw ASS in CAR and went for ANTIMACASSAR. Acquired one from Sri Lanka years ago so had no problem there.

    Like others, built REPETEND from the cryptic and hoped for the best.

    EX NIHILO was the only other I’d never heard of, but it’s not a phrase you hear much in church Latin (never studied it at school). Again, successfully constructed from the cryptic.

29. I thought this was very good. A slightly old-fashioned feel to it with ANTIMACASSAR, CHEROOT and OVERSHOE. Hat-tip to JACK for the parsing of LAMBASTE which is nicely sneaky. I always thought it was lambast.

    There’s a Len, well, Leonard Bast in Howards End who dies after a bookcase lands on him. (Pantomime audience: “Oh,the irony!”)

    Thanks to Jack and the setter.

    1. Yes, another potentially dramatic incident handled with distance and detachment by Forster giving the casual reader little indication of the importance of the moment. That all comes later. Somebody (Auden or Isherwood, perhaps) referred to this as ‘tea-tabling’. The street killing in ‘A Room with a View’ is another example.
       1. A new word to me.

          According to the OED, tea-tabling is “In literature, to treat a dramatic event in a trivial or casual way.” It provides two quotes from Isherwood, one referring to Howards Way and one to A Room with a View.

          The word offers plenty of scope to a setter, but I suspect it is yet to appear in a Times puzzle.

          1. Thanks, Michel. OED seems to have both my examples covered!
30. 43m today with the hold-ups on the ones already mentioned, though I was particularly disappointed GAWAIN took so long to come to mind, having recently read Simon Armitage’s reworking of said roundtabler with the green knight. Enjoyable wrestle, thank you, setter and also Jack for the enlightenment.
31. Well I’m sure the clues were jolly good and all that, but I’ve just counted up and found I biffed 17 out of the 28 clues, so I didn’t get to study much of the wordplay. Must have just been on my wavelength, so fastest time for a year or two. A good one for the classicists, since “ex nihilo” went straight in and “repetend” (though I’d never heard of it) is a straightforward gerund (or gerundive) meaning something to be repeated. In defence of the setter, “Teutonic” is an old descriptor of what would probably now be called “proto-Germanic”, so yes, it was a language a couple of thousand years ago! Anyone of my advanced years (60ish) will remember antimacassars from back in the day. Does anyone actually wear overshoes (are they the same as galoshes?) with trainers?
    1. That last “anonymous” post was by me as I forgot to log in. Does anyone know how to get one’s TftT name added to the SNITCH website? That gap is starting to get annoying…
       1. I have no idea about Snitch, but I’m sure someone will be along later to help you out.
       2. The SNITCH is run by starstruck_au, so I would send him an LJ message.
32. Not on the ball this morning. My father used some sort of Old Spice product on his hair but we didn’t have ANTIMACASSARS. Probably should have because when I experimented with it on my hair Nanny not happy. I was thinking GAWAIN was the pill who was married to Enid but I see that was Geraint. 20.08
33. ….when you realise that you’re not going to enjoy it. And so it was here. In addition to overshoes with trainers, the unknown REPETEND, the random bloke at 19D, and 18D where “O” Level Latin rescued me, I’m grateful to Jack for parsing LAMBASTE. Two more MERs though.

    1. Is a tic really a habitual response ? It’s more of a nervous affliction.

    2. Career infers headlong uncontrolled progress. SCOOT is just quick (OK, I know about e-scooters, but even so….).

    FOI DIDACTIC
    LOI SCOT *
    COD TIME
    TIME 12:58

    * I had SCOT quite early, but only entered it with a shrug once I got my SLOI INCREASE. I was expecting Kevin to be incommoded by that one, but maybe he’s bought a secondhand “Wisden”.

34. As usual with a nap to help it along. REPETEND didn’t sound like a word, so I did look it up to confirm. LOI SAGA brain seizure there methinks.
35. This one took some chewing, but it was tasty enough and I got it all down. LOI POLE PUNT, right after LAMBASTE—which would have gone in much earlier if I could have parsed the outer bit (joining the chorus of thanks to Jackkt). The dash separating “mind” and “partly” had me thinking I didn’t know how to spell ANTIMACASSAR. REPETEND wandered in from Mephisto, causing me to check that it really is a word.

    Edited at 2021-07-20 04:24 pm (UTC)

36. 13:22 this afternoon, outside in a near-tropical Edinburgh garden.
    I had a vague childhood memory of being in a neighbour’s terribly formal (it seemed at the time) drawing room, noticing the antimacassars and plucking up courage to ask what they were used for. After all these years the knowledge has finally come in useful!
    A mixture of clues, some which I preferred more than others. COD 2d “increase” mainly because of the misleading linking of “stands” to “to gain”.
    Biffed 26 ac “lambaste” albeit with a fair degree of confidence but thanks to Jack for the explanation. I’ve seen this type of clue construction in the past but as usual failed to recognise it in the heat of battle.
    Thanks to Jack for the blog and to setter.
37. 41 minutes, nothing particularly hard although it took me ages to get started. REPETEND went in quickly once I realized that “death” would not be a D after RE, but quite literally the “end” of the word. Of course I couldn’t parse LAMBASTE either, so thank you to Jack and that would then be my COD. I liked the delighted vegetable in CHARMED as well (although that’s probably not what the setter actually meant). I found there were a bit too many straightforward and unimaginative clues (like INSTRUMENTAL).
38. Enjoyed this one. Started slowly but beetled on after a break — maybe 1 hour in total.
    Nothing to comment that hasn’t already been commented!
39. 21.01 off to a decent start with didactic and increase straightaway. A bit of a lull in the middle until the long-ish antimacassar and putrefaction went in. Nice puzzle though I wasn’t keen on “not over” to indicate the removal of a single letter O from a word containing two such letters. Felt a bit imprecise but was no hindrance to solving the clue.

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