Times 28048 – a hell of one’s own making

Time taken: 10:37.

Greetings all – you know how sometimes you say something that comes back to haunt you?  I solved this at a friend’s place, and the movie we were watching finished while I was in the middle of it.  I was invited to be a part of chosing what is the next form of entertainment, and I naturally said “pick whatever you want, I’ve got to finish the crossword and write it up”.  So naturally I am writing this up while “The Care Bears Movie 2: A New Generation” plays in the background. What remains of my sanity tomorrow will be here to check in.

I’ll be back with a postscript in the morning to check on how you all did. I found this of medium difficulty and never got particulatly held up. Some of the wordplay is tricky, so there could be a fair bit of biffing.

Postscript: It seems most of the difficulty was around I SHOULD COCOA, which I think I remember as a regular phrase on The Goodies. I thought it sounded pretty funny and still use it regularly, especially as it brings strange looks from Americans.

Away we go…

Across
1 Council disheartened by current measure for parking intervention (5)
CLAMP – the outer letters of CounciL containing AMP(current measure).  These are called boots in the USA
4 American guy joining that chap in uninspiring opera (2,6)
LA BOHEME –  BO(American guy) and HE(that chap) inside LAME(uninspiring) for an opera that is anything but uninpsiring
8 Twisted neck is amongst items for discussion, linked to small difficulty in travelling (6,8)
MOTION SICKNESS – this is my tip for clue of the day, anagram of NECK,IS inside MOTIONS(items for discussion) and S(small)
10 Carrying on without a particular pattern? (9)
UNCHECKED – without a particular pattern couuld be UN CHECKED
11 Is written in a document in error (5)
AMISS – IS inside A, MS(manuscript, document)
12 The writer recalled year in care of relative as starting-point (6)
EMBRYO – ME(the writer) reversed, then Y(year) inside BRO(brother, relative)
14 A few men returned bearing British headgear (8)
SOMBRERO – SOME(a few), the OR(soldiers, men) reversed, containing BR(British)
17 Cheers enveloping half of them in passing (2,3,3)
BY THE BYE – BYE BYE(cheers) containing half of THem
18 Large amount brought back by very good shooter (6)
PISTOL – LOTS(large amount) reversed after PI(very good)
20 Free to fail, securing nothing (5)
LOOSE – LOSE(to fail) containing O(nothing)
22 Encouraging discovery, this cure I developed (9)
HEURISTIC – anagram of THIS,CURE,I
24 Hire arrangement involving bill? It is roughly about property (14)
CHARACTERISTIC – CHARTER(hire arrangement) containing AC(bill), then an anagram of IT,IS, then C(roughly)
25 Vessels? Pour water into area, accommodating collection (8)
FLOTILLA – FILL(pour water into), A(area) containing LOT(collection)
26 King and Ace encapsulating power and fate (5)
KARMA – K(king) and A(ace) containing ARM(power)
Down
1 One appearing to race to embrace corporation up in suburbia? (8,4)
COMMUTER BELT – COMER(one appearing), BELT(race) containing TUM(corporation) reversed
2 Getting here requires a few flights — starts on awfully tense trip in chopper (5)
ATTIC – first letters of Awfully Tense Trip In Chopper
3 Writing about cathedral beginning to tempt convert (9)
PROSELYTE – PROSE(writing) containing ELY(cathedral) and the first letter of Tempt
4 Thousand supporting America in the French location in Africa (6)
LUSAKA – K(thousand) after USA(America) inside LA(the in French). Capital of Zambia
5 Support doctor over operation in wider context (8)
BACKDROP –  BACK(support), DR(doctor) and OP(operation)
6 Henry’s first English Queen picked up something of a colourful character (5)
HENNA – first letter of Henry, then ANNE(English queen) reversed. I was wondering if this was meant to be the unit Henry (H) and that ANNE might have been the first queen, but it doesnt appear Anne was the first queen.  Works any way.
7 Steer badly, having awful consequences at the outset in fog (9)
MISDIRECT –  DIRE(awful) and the first letter of Consequences inside MIST(fog)
9 Rather unusual oldish companies around University getting answer (1,6,5)
I SHOULD COCOA – anagram of OLDISH, then CO and CO(companies) surrounding U(university), then A(answer)
13 Appear as left-winger with following of not quite 50 per cent engagement (9)
BETROTHAL – BE(appear as), TROT(left-winger) then most of HALf (50 per cent)
15 Security I provided to Scottish town jurisdiction (9)
BAILIWICK – BAIL(security), I then WICK(Scottish town)
16 Untrue story I tell is curtailed, interrupted by sign of drunkenness (8)
MYTHICAL –  the story I tell is MY TALE.  Remove the last letter, and insert HIC(sign of drunkenness)
19 Potassium in European waste material: I found it (6)
EUREKA – K(chemical formula for potassium) inside E(Eurpoean), UREA(waste material)
21 Seabird’s cry in Aberdeen, repeated character to the fore (5)
EGRET – GREET(cry in Aberdeen) with one of the two E’s moving to the front.  GREET makes regular appearances in Mephisto, less common in the daily puzzle
23 Teacher rejected elevating component of education? About time (5)
TUTOR – OUT(rejected) reversed, then R(one of the three R’s of education) surrounding T(time)

68 comments on “Times 28048 – a hell of one’s own making”

  1. I certainly did a lot of biffing, and never did get around to parsing TUTOR. POI I SHOULD COCOA was a long time coming, even with COCOA; I needed another checker or two before I recalled the phrase (a NHO here some time ago), and even then I couldn’t remember what the hell it meant, so parsing took some more time. LOI 1d; even with COMMUTER I had trouble coming up with BELT.

    Edited at 2021-08-05 02:45 am (UTC)

    1. A quick time for me (21:29), but only because I biffed many, many clues. I feel dirty.
  2. A self-inflicted slow time. MYTHICAL was impossible because I’d biffed BY THE WAY. It hadn’t made sense at the time, but I forgot to go back and check it.

    Also, like Kevin I was saved by many a biff. The biffs giveth, and the biffs taketh away.

    Edited at 2021-08-05 02:41 am (UTC)

    1. I biffed BY THE WAY, too, and forgot about it; getting nowhere on MYTHICAL finally reminded me.
  3. Found that hard. Lots of words in the clues? Sometimes seems to be too many to make sense of, you have to guess an answer and see if you can tease it out of the cryptic. e.g. La Boheme (Bo Jackson!), characteristic, mythical, commuter belt, and LOI I should cocoa, a NHO and still don’t-quite-believe-it-exists. Otherwise spirits drop when “Scottish” is indicated, but I’ve heard of both greet and Wick so not so bad.
    COD to flotilla, should have been easy but needed all crossers.
    1. Isla, this is apparently the origin of the phrase: It comes from cockney rhyming slang. The phrase when used in full is “I should coffee and cocoa”, meaning “I should say so”.

      I’m not sure it works but I haven’t found another explanation. I had always thought it was an expression of disbelief rather than agreement -a variation on ‘Would you Adam and Eve it?’

      Edited at 2021-08-05 06:33 am (UTC)

      1. Wiktionary says it means I do agree but is nearly always used ironically meaning the exact opposite.
        I had heard it but never suspected it was CRS. If it was real CRS it should be “I should coffee” which sounds terrible.
        Andyf
        1. Yes, “I should coffee” would seem to be more logical for CRS which was why I said I’m not sure it works, but I think there are some exceptions to the standard rule – can’t think of one at this moment, of course!

          My previous finding was trawled from the internet so not necessarily trustworthy, but I have now found this entry in Chambers Dictionary of Slang which I am inclined to treat as a very reliable source:

          coffee and cocoa [rhy. sl.] [1930s+] say so, usu. as ‘I should cocoa’ below…

          ‘I should cocoa’ (also ‘I should coco’) [1930s+] you must be joking, don’t make me laugh [esp. popular in BBC Radio’s ‘Billy Cotton Band Show’ in the 1950s].

          The last point accounts for my familiarity with it. I can just hear old Billy saying it.

          Edited at 2021-08-05 10:41 am (UTC)

  4. I found this tricky with a lot of biffing and parsing most of them eventually. NHO I SHOULD COCOA, my LOI, and DNK LUSAKA or GREET as a cry. I submitted without LA BOHEME, TUTOR and MYTHICAL fully parsed.

    Thanks, George, for the helpful blog and I hope you survived Care Bears 2 – I’m thankful to say I’ve not seen it.

    BTW, I think you have a missing C in your parsing of MISDIRECT. I had DIRE = awful, C = consequences at the outset, all in MIST.

  5. I knew everything except I should cocoa, which I agree surpasses credibility. I knew Scots greet, I knew wick. Like everyone else, I biffed by the way, and had to correct.

    I was surprised to see the crossing of heuristic and eureka, since they are basically the same Greek word.

  6. 42 minutes. I was slow to start and also held up by biffing COMMUTER TOWN instead of BELT at 1dn, my answer being every bit as valid as an expression, but of course it doesn’t fully satisfy the wordplay. I had to do a rethink when wanting to write LOOSE at 20ac.
    1. Random male first name in USA. Bo Diddley, 1950s guitarist. Bo Jackson, 1980s baseballer and (American) footballer. Random female name, too – Bo Derek, 1980s trophy wife of old Svengali.
    2. As per Chambers, uncapitalised: “A familiar term of address for a man (US sl)”
      1. Similar in Lexico:
        informal US
        Used as a friendly form of address.
        Origin
        Early 19th century perhaps an abbreviated form of boy.
      2. I stand corrected. Possibly. Didn’t know of “bo” as a friendly informal address. If abbreviated from boy, as keriothe notes, it is probably less than friendly: boy always seems to be aggressively derogatory.
  7. I found it difficult to get going today with little going in on first pass, but once I did get going I found much to be biffable, including thankfully I SHOULD COCOA. I thought it was a common enough expression, though probably not beyond these shores. It had me worried for a while when I had C___A for the last word and I thought I was looking for an unfamiliar Latin phrase.

    I like LUSAKA for its use of USA rather than the more common US or AM, which held me up for a while.

  8. 42 minutes for me too. A bit of initial biffing, eg FLOTILLA, but all eventually parsed apart from not knowing GREET as a Scottish word for ‘cry’. I was also mystified by I SHOULD COCOA which went in solely from wordplay. Thanks to Jack for explaining the origin of the term.

    I know the parsing doesn’t quite work, but I took ‘Henry’s first English queen picked up’ to be a reference to ANNE Boleyn.

  9. 16:31 and I see I was not the only one to need MYTHICAL as LOI to fix BYE THE BYE. CHARACTERISTIC parsed onl post-solve. Thanks George and setter.
  10. 15 mins on the top half — another 30 on the bottom.
    The Heuristic, Characteristic, Sombrero, I should cocoa took the time. Don’t know why.
    Nice one.
    Thanks setter and G.
  11. I have, with enormous regret,
    To report that we have an EGRET
    So try as I might
    I cannot PROSELYTE
    Our setters are bird-lovers yet

    George, do think your friend may be deliberately punishing you for ignoring them and doing the crossword instead?

  12. An enjoyable puzzle which was very much a learning experience for me. Never heard of I SHOULD COCOA, which went in from the wordplay with a degree of disbelief, or LUSAKA. And today is the day I’ve discovered what HEURISTIC means.

    I never parsed TUTOR or MYTHICAL, which I initially thought would be ‘myth’ (story) + ‘I’ + ‘cal’ (tell (call) curtailed)… though of course that left no room for the rest of the clue. Even when I saw the ‘hic’ as a sign of drunkenness I still didn’t figure it out. Doesn’t matter I suppose. Thanks to the blogger and the setter.

    FOI Clamp
    LOI Lusaka
    COD Sombrero

    1. For you Ninja-turtlers out there:

      But if you study the logistics
      And heuristics of the mystics
      You will find that their minds rarely move in a line
      So it’s much more realistic
      To abandon such ballistics
      And resign to be trapped on a leaf in the vine….

      A very catchy song!

  13. Wasn’t I SHOULD COCOA one of the catchphrases of Billy Cotton, he of Bandshow fame?
    Another one here who started with BY THE WAY.
    Thank you for FLOTILLA, TUTOR and EGRET, George, but I regard an Egret as a wading bird rather than a seabird.
    FOI: ATTIC
    LOI: FLOTILLA
    COD to I SHOULD COCOA and MYTHICAL.
    Thank you, George.
      1. Indeed. A great entertainer. He was treated very badly by Billy Jr who took over producing his father’s shows for the BBC. The old man should have stood up for him, but sadly did not.
      2. After discussion of Stanley Holloway’s monologues and, now, Billy Cotton and Alan Breeze, who’s next? Wilfred Pickles and “Have a Go”….”What’s on the table Mabel?”
  14. 32 minutes with LOI EMBRYO. I’m sure MYTHICAL can be defined as untrue but I find it better to think myths contain deeper truths, otherwise life gets too prosaic. COD to PROSELYTE. I think the last time I heard I SHOULD COCOA was on the Billy Cotton Band Show on a Sunday lunchtime many a long year ago. Somebody stole my gal. Good puzzle. Thank you George and setter.
    1. Sorry bw, in response to a subsequent posting I just added more info higher up the discussion about the origins of ‘I should cocoa’ including the Billy Cotton connection. I hadn’t seen your comment at the time so this is just to acknowledge that you got there first! I knew I knew it from somewhere.
  15. Like others, fell into the BY THE WAY biff-trap, but fixed that eventually
    Didn’t know about Scots use of “greet”, but it had to be EGRET
    Didn’t know or solve BAILIWICK
    Didn’t solve KARMA (which the above made easy)
    Realised COCOA was one of the very few words fitting C_C__, didn’t know the phrase or trust my wordplay interpretation enough.

    Anyway, quite close to a finish, even for a SNITCH rating of 97 – so I’m happy to be heading in the right direction. Thanks George, setter, and everyone who posts here.

  16. 18′ and a bit. Loved I SHOULD COCOA, a phrase heard in childhood.

    I agree that an EGRET is a type of heron, not a seabird.

    Thanks george and setter, all together now: “Care Bears care a lot….”

    1. Loads of egrets in the Menai strait yesterday. My wife tells me that they are moving north due to climate change.
  17. Chewy, this one, but still completed in 16.32, with the rather clever (vessels?) FLOTILLA LOI. Like others, it took me a while to change TOWN to BELT in 1dn.

    Some of you may have Supertramp’s I SHOULD COCOa in your vinyl collection: I have persistent memories of Peter Sellers using the phrase in his Willium “Mate” Cobblers voice (think “Any Old Iron”) but I can’t find an example.

    MYTHICAL is not necessarily untrue, of course, but I’ll let the setter off. Took me a while to parse, trying to untangle the myth story from the hic drunken bit.

    I’m with astro nowt on CB2, the movie, George. The only reason I would ever think of putting it on would be as a hint that my guest should leave.

    1. Indeed I thought of Supergrass (which is what I presume you intended rather than Supertramp).
  18. Enjoyable tricky. Held up by I SHOULD COCOA, which was definitely used more as a term of disbelief (akin to COME OFF IT) when I was growing up in London. For several the answer came quickly, but the parsing took a fair longer – FLOTILLA for one.

    COD CHARACTERISTIC

    Thanks to George and the setter

  19. 9:54. Some biffing this morning, but more where I put in the answer based on the definition and at least a partial understanding of wordplay. BY THE WAY wasn’t one of those, but MYTHICAL corrected it without too much trouble.
    I mostly know the word HEURISTIC as a noun from reading Daniel Kahneman’s wonderful Thinking Fast and Slow. A book everyone should read.
    Today was unusual for me in that my regular check at the end of the solve actually uncovered a mistake: I had typed CHARACTERSITIC. More often than not when I do have a mistake I fail to spot it, so I sometimes wonder why I bother.
  20. Thought the end was “it is” ( anag – roughly) and ” about” (= C ) ?
  21. Like others, lots of biffing, which, since I prefer to have everything parsed before entry, perhaps points to the verbose and mechanical nature of a lot of the cluing.

    6d must logically refer to Anne (Stuart). I was going to object on the grounds that she was queen of Great Britain and Ireland, but I see on checking that that title came in with the Act of Union, and that previously she was queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. Anyway, I think it likely that in a few years the present mob will revert to being monarchs of England and Wales.

  22. I’m with Bletchleyreject (apologies Dcrooks) on its being Anne Boleyn, not that it really matters. According to the sacred text by Sellars & Yeatman, there may have been 2 or 3 English queens before Anne Stuart as follows: Horsa (wife or horse of Hengist), Matilda (or Maud wife or aunt of Stephen) and Mary (wife of William of Orange). Thanks George for multiple parsings. When my children wanted to see that movie I managed to dissuade them and wished I hadn’t because they got Dumb & Dumber instead. 16.07
    1. Hmmm? ‘Henry’s first English queen’ would give us ANNE,as in Boleyn, but where then would the H come from? It has to be Henry’s first (=H)+ English queen (=Anne).
      1. A henry (H) is a unit of electrical measurement (as George says) or the clue could be a semi-&lit – it works either way. Myself I don’t mind a relaxed bit of cluing if it’s fair.
        1. I know the unit, but then we’re left with the same problem: ‘first English queen’ does not lead us to ANNE. I think the clue works perfectly well, but the ‘lift and separate’ has to come between ‘Henry’s first’ and ‘English queen’. My only cavil was with ‘English’ in reference to Anne Stuart, but I now see it is legitimate.

          Anyway, we’e splitting hairs.

  23. I started with CLAMP and ATTIC, and then moved to the SW where LOOSE indicated that 1d could be some sort of BELT leading to BYE THE WAY, which I wasn’t happy with as it didn’t provide any cheers. This ate at me in the background for a couple more clues, and I fairly soon saw the light and changed it to BYE THE BYE. Apart from EGRET and BETROTHAL, the SW yielded no more and I moved to the NE where Mimi provided some helpful crossers. Moving to the SW I was yanked back to the NE of Scotland by 15d which included the site of the Pultney distillery, a bottle of whose 12 year old I polished off a couple of nights ago(not in one go, I hasten to add!). I never did parse TUTOR but 22a and 24a with the Ts in the right place made it an easy biff. HEURISTIC is a term I’ve only met in Anti Virus program settings, but it seemed a reasonable candidate for the anagrist. MYTHICAL was my APOI and confirmed CHARACTERISTIC, which allowed me to see LOI, the rather unlikely I SHOULD COCOA, which as others have mentioned I’ve usually come across as an ironic opposite to the setter’s definition. I saw the HIC and the MYTH in 16d but needed the blog to see exactly how it worked. 25:30. Thanks setter and George.
  24. Also NHO I SHOULD COCOA, and I’m in my 50s having lived in and around London most of that time. A strange one, certainly. Everything else pretty straightforward. COD ‘EGRET’ because of the wordplay.
  25. LOI I SHOULD COCOA of course, although the cryptic was very clear. Also, much biffing in the marsh here. Nice to be able to come here and discover who Bo is etc.
  26. A speedy top half and a slower bottom half, finishing on a biffed SOMBRERO in 7m 48s. Fortunately I guessed it was LUSAKA rather than LUSAKE.

    I always picture Del Boy saying I SHOULD COCOA, but it doesn’t come up much in everyday life.

  27. Nho the COCOA phrase but followed the instructions. Decent time for me — probably helps not starting at 11.30pm at night.

    Loi MYTHICAL after filling in the BYE realising that the relevant half of THEM was not the EM. Totally misunderstood what was going on with MYTHICAL thinking “I tell is curtailed” was I CAL(L) and that the definition was to do with drunkenness. Probably shouldn’t be admitting that …😀

    Thanks Setter and George

    Thanks

  28. A 20m canter today with 5 on the top half and the rest underneath, where my one real sticking point was BAILIWICK. Cocoa phrase very familiar as my mother used it a lot, and always as an ironical pretend agreement. Enjoyable puzzle, so thank you, setter and thank you, George, for the blogging support in evidently trying circumstances.
  29. ….Supergrass style, and I’ve only ever heard the expression used ironically. I had to correct one of my 6 biffs to get my LOI (yes, THAT one !), and parsed the other 5 afterwards (CHARACTERISTIC, FLOTILLA, COMMUTER BELT, I SHOULD COCOA, and EGRET).

    FOI CLAMP
    LOI MYTHICAL
    COD MOTION SICKNESS
    TIME 8:36

  30. Plenty biffed here — NHO Bo as an American guy. Had heard of Bo Diddley of course (and Bo Derek) but none of the others — note that Bo doesn’t appear to be the real name of any of Diddley, Jackson, Dallas (nor Derek) — only understood the HE part of LA BOHEME (which IMHO as I recall was pretty uninspiring)

    Parsed after the fact: COMMUTER BELT, I SHOULD COCOA.

    Enjoyable though.

  31. Struggled to parse LA BOHEME – as I had AL down as the US guy. No trouble with BAILIWICK or I SHOULD COCOA but BY THE WAY made MYTHICAL a real struggle. Finished with FLOTILLA but came here for the parsing as I had FLO down as some derivative of floe – pour water and also couldn’t see what collection was. Thanks for the blog.
  32. 12:18 this afternoon. I enjoyed this puzzle, although I found it a little quirky,.
    Liked 7 d “misdirect” but COD “I should cocoa” of which enough has been said already.
    Somehow, expecting a stinker tomorrow!
    Thanks to George for his blog in trying circumstances and to setter. and
  33. All fair although “Tutor” seemed a bit tortuous (tutorous?).
    LOI “Mythical”.
    I am another who would not describe an Egret as a seabird. We would see them regularly on the nearby watermeadows (Itchen Valley) but haven’t seen one this year.
  34. 14.58. Off to a slow start finding the wordiness in some of the clues a bit off-putting. Got into a groove though, mainly by using the tactic of not thinking too hard about it all. Had no idea about the parsing of tutor and just biffed the obvious. Struggled to pick out the American guy from La Boheme and had to parse that one post-solve.
  35. 55 minutes. After I SHOULD COCOA I will believe anything — it went in as my LOI only because it did fit the wordplay perfectly and I was too tired to be bothered about whether it could really make any sense at all.
  36. As I was familiar with greet in that sense, I got the clue, but please, Oh setter, an egret is not a seabird. Wetlands are not sea. You even find some egrets on dry pastureland
  37. Just on the hour — quite fast for me!! No particular problems, just slow-dropping pennies. Loved ‘I should cocoa’! To me it conveys ‘ rather’ as in enthusiastic acceptance. ‘Would you like a glass of wine? Rather! I should cocoa! ‘

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