Times 28047 – what kind of ovum are you?

Another Wednesday, another pleasant enough puzzle which I didn’t find to be a stiff test. My one unknown GK at 24a was clear from the wordplay. It took me 20 minutes, with nothing hard to explain except the singular / plural clash at 20a. I liked the construction of 11d and 12a reminded me of those happy years when we had a half share in a horse and went racing. (Actually, only one year, then Romantic Folly sadly died in foal). If you want to burn through money, buy an airline or a racehorse. Or these days, go into earth orbit, I suppose.

Across
1 Minister full of energy facing a church is most inclined to sermonise (10)
PREACHIEST – PRIEST has E, A, CH inserted. Superlative of preachy.
6 Love of the French works of poetry (4)
ODES – O (love) DES (of the, plural, in French).
9 Fruit to worry about, having to be packed into vehicle (10)
LOGANBERRY – LORRY a vehicle, has NAG (worry) reversed and BE inserted.
10 Test for a learner is more than is needed here (4)
ORAL – hidden as above.
12 Like midnight store keeping quiet, providing a pre-purchase event (7,5)
SELLING PLATE – A midnight store would be SELLING LATE if it were open; insert a P for quiet. A selling plate is a horse race where the winner has to be auctioned afterwards, so I suppose it’s the event before someone purchases the horse, so “pre-purchase”.
15 A new hint regarding what could whet the appetite (9)
ANTIPASTO – A N (new) TIP (hint ) AS TO (regarding).
17 Order change — change initially involved (5)
EDICT – EDIT (change) has C(hange) inserted.
18 Banker gets cab finally entering rank (5)
TIBER – B (end of cab) enters TIER = rank.
19 Rocky lump is boundary by which there is old ceremony (9)
METEORITE – METE (boundary) O, RITE (ceremony). Collins says METE is a rare word for boundary, often found in the phrase “metes and bounds”.
20 What kind people possesses — Nora and Maud certainly do (1,5,2,4)
A HEART OF GOLD – Well, Nora has OR at the heart, and Maud has AU, both meaning gold. I don’t quite see why it is “kind people” – better would be “a kind person”, singular. As it says “kind people (plural) it would have to be “possess” and “hearts of gold” which wouldn’t fit. Just saying.
24 A garment — absence of it exposes old king (4)
AHAB – A HABIT loses its IT. Apparently Ahab was the seventh king of Israel, I only knew him as the chap in Moby Dick.
25 Travel round earth at first — rational in terms of earth science? (10)
GEOLOGICAL – GO around E, then LOGICAL = rational.
26 Pegs in river (4)
TEES – double definition, pegs as in golf tees.
27 One never out to give message in pandemic (4-2-4)
STAY-AT-HOME – double definition, one a covid 19 advisory.

Down
1 Weary? Get a blanket (4)
PALL – double definition; as a verb, meaning to become tiresome, as a noun, meaning a blanket e.g. of smoke.
2 Encourages people to be regarded as good or bad? (4)
EGGS – If you EGG someone on, you encourage them; one can be a “good egg” or a “bad egg” as a person.
3 Today’s fugitive, prisoner earlier (12)
CONTEMPORARY – CON = prisoner, TEMPORARY = fugitive, fleeting.
4 Model from India wanting contract (5)
IDEAL – I for India, DEAL = contract.
5 Like an addict that’s called to get dark beer brought round (6,3)
STRUNG OUT – RUNG (called) inside STOUT (dark beer).
7 Skin problem that could be almost dire at times (10)
DERMATITIS – (DIR(E) AT TIMES)*.
8 Pride of mischief-maker in home counties joining revolutionary encounters (4-6)
SELF-ESTEEM – ELF (mischief-maker) inserted into SE (home counties), STEEM (MEETS reversed).
11 Traveller’s instrument on journey shows highest possible mph (5,2,5)
SPEED OF LIGHT – SPEEDO (traveller’s instrument) FLIGHT (journey). Very nice.
13 Officer reportedly given powerless role in contact sport (7,3)
MARTIAL ART – MARTIAL sounds like Marshal, an officer; PART (role) loses its P for power.
14 Well-balanced wife maybe — or a nag? (10)
STABLEMATE – Maybe a stable mate could be a well-balanced wife. Nag as in horse.
16 Thus maiden has no time for self-examination, being half-asleep? (9)
SOMNOLENT – SO (thus) M (maiden) NO, LENT (time for self-examination).
21 Seabird unknown in Channel? (5)
GULLY – GULL, Y (unknown variable).
22 City house for nymph (4)
ECHO – EC (City of London postcodes) HO (house).
23 Gel’s used regularly as binding material (4)
GLUE – Alternate letters of G e L s U s E d.

66 comments on “Times 28047 – what kind of ovum are you?”

  1. Yes, I found this quite easy, and was happy to not get stuck at the end with anything devious — although I didn’t feel very confident about PALL or LOGANBERRY (to be = BE?).
    1. I read the ‘to’ in 9ac as indication ‘on’ or ‘against’. So ‘having to be’ means effectively ‘having be next to it’.
      1. Yeah I guess that’s how I justified it to myself at the time… er, how I justified it NEAR myself, I mean.
  2. Breezed through this, more or less, but SELLING PLATE (DNK) brought me up short. It seemed to be what was called for, but made no sense to me. I finally checked it before submitting. We seem to have ANTIPASTO a lot. In ‘Moby Dick’, Ishmael is surprised to hear the captain’s name; AHAB was an evil king who came to a bad end, and the odds of anyone naming their son Ahab are pretty much nil. (Wasn’t his wife Jezebel?)
    1. I agree with you. Is anyone called Herod? Ahab’s wife was Jezebel.
      We’ve had Selling Plate recently, so perhaps you forgot it as a completely useless piece of GK unless you do crosswords or raise fast horses.
      Andyf
  3. 48 minutes, of which about 20 were spent on my LOI SELLING PLATE, a term I’d never come across before. Otherwise, not too hard, though I only half knew ECHO as a ‘nymph’. I agree about SPEED OF LIGHT being an excellent clue.

    As for 20a, the ‘possesses’ (rather than “possess”) went past me at the time, but I think it would work if ‘people’ was meant in the singular (ie “race” or “nation”) rather than the plural.

    Thanks to setter and Pip

  4. Pretty easy in 20 mins. I didn’t know SELLING PLATE either, nor AHAB (in that sense) nor PALL (as a blanket). I’m not sure ANTIPASTO really whets the appetite, it’s usually pretty filling.
  5. …but then spent another 12 on just martial art, Ahab, and pall. I usually say martial arts – don’t know if that’s a US thing.

    So if the short answers don’t come to you, then you might be stuck on a alphabet trawl for a while – never happens to the top solvers, of course.

  6. 30 minutes. I thought I had never heard of SELLING PLATE (solved from wordplay alone) but once I had made the connection with horse racing I realised I did know of it after all.

    PALL in the sense of ‘blanket of smoke’ did not occur to me until long after I’d written it in with fingers crossed.

    LOGANBERRY was my FOI as my grandparents had one such bush in their garden growing over their air-raid shelter, so two things with great attraction for a post-war child when the berries were ripe for picking. There’s nothing wrong with ‘be = BE’ as it’s very common in wordplay to have one- or two-letter words being used literally in the answer. It happens with ‘a’ all the time.

    1. Chambers has PALL as an actual blanket too. In fact, it was a blanket draped over a coffin too, which is where pall-bearers apparently comes from.
  7. It’s a thing that goes bump in the night
    And can give folks a terrible fright
    It comes from outer space
    At astonishing pace
    And we call it a METEORITE
  8. 8:58 PALL was Last One In and needed an alphabet trawl to find. Despite the grammatical error, I like A HEART OF GOLD best. Thanks Pip and setter.
  9. His nose were all covered with scars,
    He lay in a Somnolent posture,
    With the side of his face ‘gainst the bars

    20 mins left the king A-A- which I trawled for a bit but gave up.
    Some pretty clunky stuff today: Pall, Loganberry, posses(es).
    Thanks setter and Pip.

    Edited at 2021-08-04 07:09 am (UTC)

    1. That’s my party piece!! I also used to be able to recite “The Runcorn Ferry” but I’m out of practice.
      1. T’internet says “Per Tuppence per person per trip” but I remember it as “three ‘a’pence.”
          1. That must be it. It’s a long time ago. You couldn’t even wear brown boots to a funeral then.
        1. I’ve seen the other comments but just wanted to say that, somewhere, I have a book and a cassette of Stanley Holloway’s monologues and I’m sure it says “per tuppence per person per trip”.
          The bit I love is when they decide to walk across and Albert disappears under the waters of the Mersey but Mother says “I’ve got ‘old of ‘is hand ‘e’s alright!”
    2. Rather late checking in today – didn’t have an opportunity to tackle this until I’d dealt with some urgent matters.

      One of these is a grizzled old rescue cat called Wallace, that I’m looking after for a couple of weeks. He just came back from the vet after having some stitches removed from his nose…

      Apologies for the digression, I just had to comment on the coincidence!

      Anyway, very pleased to report my 3rd or 4th best time ever, 32:42 – last week’s sequence of DNFs now banished to the darkest recesses of my memory

      Best wishes, Denise

  10. I was torn between PALE and PALL and went the wrong way. I couldn’t think of meanings of either which really fitted the clue — the best I could come up with was that to pale as in “pale into insignificance” was a bit like to weary.
  11. I knew the term SELLING PLATE, but not what it meant.
    I agree with you, Pip, about 20ac but that was one of my two CODs, the other being SELLING PLATE.
  12. Fortunately I’ve just contributed to a sermon series on Elijah, so the king came to mind once I had A-A-.

    Who knows what c is in m.p.h. without calculating? I know it as 186 000 miles per second, or 3 x 10^8 metres per second. (Or twelve million miles a minute according to Eric Idle).

    15′ 04″, thanks pip and setter.

    1. In the computer/semiconductor world, c is a foot in a nanosecond (actually 10.8″)
      1. Also in IT for remote copy allow 1 ms per 100 km; this allows for a return trip at about 2/3 of the speed of light because it is in glass. I am uncertain if that means that it bounces about a lot inside the glass fibre or if it has to drive round all the molecules. Would like to know. As far as I know the speed of light is a constant.
        Andyf
        1. As an electronics engineer with knowledge of communications, I didn’t know Paul’s stat: 25 cm in a nanosecond. But easily workable-outable; must actually be just under 30 cm per nanosecond if c = 3 x 10^8 ms^-1, so very close to a foot in the old money.
          The speed of light is c divided by the refractive index of whatever it’s travelling in. So c in a vacuum, almost c in air, for fibre optics it depends on the glass but 2/3 c (RI = 1.5) is about right.
          In multimode fibres – old, slow, fat ones about 50 um (thickness of a human hair) – you can consider the light in classical terms, bouncing off the inside of the fibre. In faster single-mode fibres, about ten times thinner, you have to use quantum physics to model the light transmission. Wavelength of light is close-ish to the thickness of the fibre.
    2. In its lifetime the royal yacht Britannia travelled six light seconds. Not a lot of people know that.
  13. …strung out ones an’ worse. 23 delightful minutes on this enjoyable puzzle. LOI PALL. I loved A HEART OF GOLD, but I got the answer first from crossers and then saw why, so COD to ANTIPASTO. I really liked STABLEMATE and SPEED OF LIGHT too, and there were plenty of other good ones. Thank you Pip and setter.
  14. Another quickie today, with some real chestnuts, eg 22dn.
    And I’m getting bored with antipasto at every meal. Surely time for a different starter?
  15. Very steady progress and not many fireworks here, even if I never knew AHAB was a king. PALL taught me something. In blog, anagram fodder is actually DIR(e) AT TIMES as it is “almost” DIRE … not that it matters much as was a bit of a bung-in… Perhaps feeling tad grumpy today because yet again it is raining here and it shouldn’t be in August … anyhow, many thanks to setter for gentle fare and to blogger for excellent appraisal.
  16. Much the same comments and time as bletchleyreject. LOI AHAB (NHO as king) and liked SPEED OF LIGHT. Thanks pip and setter.
  17. 9:04. Not hard, but some interesting vocab and GK and a few things to trip you up if you happen not to have the knowledge, or think of the right thing. PALL, SELLING PLATE, LOGANBERRY, AHAB. The last of these was my only problem, and I had a brief panic thinking the answer must lie at some intersection of my extensive biblical-historical ignorance, but then I saw how the wordplay worked.
  18. EGGS and then LOGANBERRY got me off to a good start and I carried on filling the NW apart from PALL, which cam much later after much cogitation, and CONTEMPORARY which needed many more crossers. A biffed PLACE at the end of 12a held up LOI, SELLING PLATE, which I eventually worked out by taking the P for quiet out and then twigging the midnight bit. AHAB was unknown as a king, but confidently entered from the wordplay. Liked A HEART OF GOLD. 26a was a write in as I did an 11 mile bike ride along its banks yesterday. 17:40. Thanks setter and Pip.
  19. For AHAB I had confidently entered SARI. SA = it, Rex Imperator or something like that. I assumed, but wasn’t really sure, that this was something to do with Victoria being made Empress of India, and the kings that followed her being Emperors of India and that stopping with Indian independence.
    1. From Wiki (but trimmed a bit)
      The British Crown had officially taken over the governing of British India from the East India Company in 1858, in the aftermath of what the British called ‘the Indian Mutiny’. Henceforth, the new British Raj was ruled directly from Whitehall via the India Office. Following the Delhi Durbar in 1877, Queen Victoria was given Imperial status by the British Government, and she assumed the title Empress of India. She was thus the Queen-Empress, and her successors, until George VI, were known as King-Emperors. This title was the shortened form of the full title, and in widespread popular use.
      The reigning King-Emperors or Queen-Empress used the initials R I (Rex Imperator or Regina Imperatrix) or the abbreviation Ind. Imp. (Indiae Imperator/Imperatrix) after their name (while the one reigning Queen-Empress, Victoria, used the initials R I, the three consorts of the married King-Emperors simply used R).
      Andyf
  20. Not too tricky, but several clues that required a bit of thinking to unpick – e.g. SOMNOLENT took me a while to be confident about; on another day I might just have biffed and left it, but I’d already made that mistake with APPETISER instead of ANTIPASTO. Of course, it’s unlikely that ‘appetite’ would have been in the clue if it had really been APPETISER.

    Like others, AHAB posed the most difficulty and was my LOI in 6m 30s.

  21. 10.29, fortunately not rushing the pre-submission check, or i’s have had a pink.
    SELLING PLATE was my last in, but oddly I remembered the thing before confirming it with the wordplay.
    I was worried about PALL, thinking there might be an alternative; PALE perhaps with an oblique version of tire and a meaning of blanket I would ruefully acknowledge if it existed.
    A singular people is perfectly possible, whether such a thing possesses a heart collectively is something else, but I shrugged and moved on.
    STABLEMATE was fun, with its deceptive (and possibly slanderous) nag.

    Edited at 2021-08-04 10:30 am (UTC)

  22. Oh, and I’m not quite clear why an addict should be STRUNG OUT. Anyone care to lighten my darkness?
    1. Isn’t it a term for being high on drugs, like “wired”? A particular type of nervy high I imagine, but I’m not a connoisseur of these things.
    2. strung out (comparative more strung out, superlative most strung out)
      1) (slang) Experiencing withdrawal symptoms of an addiction.
      While he was strung out, he ranted about conspiracies that he couldn’t remember when he sobered.
      2) Widely spaced.
      After the storm the armada was strung out over the ocean, unable to cover each other in battle.
      3) Prolonged in an unnecessary or time-filling manner.
      Then I had to sit through a long strung-out discussion about nothing in particular.
      Andyf
    3. I knew the expression from Chimes of Freedom, a great song from 1964’s Another side of Bob Dylan, so it isn’t excluded as a term for feeling the effects of drugs. Not ones though that have resulted in a high.
  23. 20 minutes. A lot of this went in unparsed but not my stubborn LOI, the unknown SELLING PLATE, which was laboriously assembled from the cryptic.
  24. Doing this on a beach with an iPad slows me up a bit due to having to try to make out what’s on the screen. So I was quite pleased with the time. LOI PALL hadn’t thought of the smoke. As it was I missed the hidden for ORAL and SPEED OF LIGHT’s cryptic passed me by altogether.
  25. Pretty quick for me, completing most it in about 20 minutes but then got stuck on 1dn and 24ac. After a break, eventually saw PALL and AHAB but they took longer than I care to admit. Also found SOMNOLENT tricky and NHO SELLING PLATE.

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

  26. AHAB and PALL last in. I went with the funeral blanket rather than ‘of smoke’.

    Nothing too ungettable.

  27. Ahab only ever known from the Moby Dick, and couldn’t conjure habit. Pall a guess, though once explained the pall of smoke is well known. Selling plate has been here before, but very slow coming. Best horse race in Australia (others might disagree) is The Cox Plate.
    Unlike others not so keen on speed of light – good spot by the setter, but speed/speedo lacking that certain cryptic separateness. Liked stablemate best.
  28. ….I crashed and burned today. I reached 12A, my putative LOI, in 6 minutes — but couldn’t see it at all and resigned at 10 minutes.

    COD A HEART OF GOLD

  29. …of which about 8 were spent dithering over PALL and AHAB.

    COD A HEART OF GOLD is a nice reminder to give HARVEST a spin.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter.

  30. Judo is one MARTIAL ART, karate and sumo are two others. Also known as sports. I guess Brits may say “sport” as the collective when we say “sports,” but that isn’t an issue here.
    1. Speaking of British/American sport(s)differences, Safe At Home is a valid answer to 27a in the US, but probably not in the UK where home plate doesn’t much exist.
  31. Re 20, MER here too, at first. But really no problem.

    Edited at 2021-08-04 03:08 pm (UTC)

  32. For the life of me, couldn’t see Martial Art and I didn’t know Ahab. I also biffed in PULL at 1d ( a blanket??), but everything else. Slept very badly last night, so I’m putting it down to that!
  33. I would have recognized Ahab if I’d thought either of him or of habit, but I didn’t. Thanks pip
  34. 11:14 late on this afternoon. We’re having three different chunks of work going on at home right now and they are all taking up a fair bit of time — at least the neighbours aren’t up in arms…yet!
    I enjoyed this crossword with plenty of interesting and well crafted clues, apart from the MER at 20 ac which others have already raised
    5 ac “strung out” reminded me of the lyrics “Don’t seem right, I’ve been strung out here all night” from the poignant song “Dr Wu” by my all time favourite band Steely Dan.
    Interesting that I shared a LOI with several others, 24 ac “Ahab”. I assumed that Moby Dick’s nemesis was named after an OT king and the wordplay sealed it.
    COD 14 ac “Stablemate” , a rather fascinating surface I thought.
    Thanks to Pip for the blog and to the setter for an entertaining puzzle.
  35. Exactly the same as Myrtilus and Pootle. Plumped for PALL but a very half hearted alpha trawl left me with A_A_ and a trip here. Knew what was needed but couldn’t conjure the word and in any event didn’t know he was a king. Dunno about others but around 2 minutes is as much as I can normally be bothered alpha trawling. Probably not the way to improve…

    Liked a lot of of this (HEART OF GOLD and SPEED OF LIGHT) but not so keen on my last two

    Thanks Pip and setter

  36. One hour, of which 10 minutes spent on “Pall” and 20 minutes spent on “Selling Plate” but no complaints about this puzzle.
    Thanks Pip.
  37. 30.17. I struggled to get the unknown selling plate – dealing phase, feeling place – I had no idea what I was looking for. Eventually got what I thought must be the wordplay and entered it with crossed fingers. Contemporary was very slow to arrive and pall needed an alpha-trawl and a moment or two to decide I just about preferred it to pale.
  38. 15.44 and a late entry after golf and recuperation. A bit of a stodgy solve with FOI odes and last two a hesitant pall and eggs.

    Enjoyed it so thanks setter and blogger for the commentary. Time for 😴

  39. was a write-in for me, as back in the 90’s I was a keen racegoer as well as being a Sporting Life crossword compiler
  40. An example of horses for courses, to continue the vaguely equestrian theme of the comments. Most seem to have found this easy and gettable, but I’m a DNF. As keriothe put it, if you don’t have the GK or think of the right thing…. EG 1ac minister: I’m learning that usually suggests an MP, then tried to insert E for energy, and so on from there. Only this time it’s not. This time it’s the obvious kind of minister. Seems the more you learn about these darn things, the more they can trip you up!

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