Times 28,055: An Overly Familiar Way To Refer To Edmund

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I’ve definitely seen harder Fridays than this. I liked some of the namechecks, Pergolesi and Catullus and Waugh rubbing shoulders with Eddy Blackadder, but overall not much to say about this. LEKS was a bold thing to require solvers to know to understand the wordplay, but COD to 1dn because I liked “Bond creator” a lot. Thank you setter!

Definitions underlined, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, {} deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 Economise when importing old wine (5)
SOAVE – SAVE “importing” O
4 Set aside search in spot by river (9)
SEQUESTER – QUEST in SEE by R
9 Some work penned by Chopin, say, is revolutionary for composer (9)
PERGOLESI – ERG [some work, unit-wise] “penned” by POLE, + reversed IS
10 Supply ecstasy and crack (5)
EQUIP – E + QUIP [crack, as in sally, as in gag]
11 What degenerate keeps back to break an agreement (6)
RENEGE – hidden reversed in {d}EGENER{ate}
12 What might delay black grouse breeding, returning wasted (8)
SKELETAL – LATE LEKS reversed. “Leks” here are not Albanian currency, but “the piece of ground on which the blackcocks and cock capercailzies gather to display”, and also by extension the grouse breeding season, as any schoolboy kno.
14 Day at wheel travelling round to act as guide (4,3,3)
LEAD THE WAY – (DAY AT WHEEL*)
16 Yellowish-brown polish (4)
BUFF – double def
19 Bear not starting to move around (4)
EDDY – {t}EDDY
20 TV comedy increasingly awful, some say? Want to cut it (10)
BLACKADDER – BADDER, “cut” by LACK [want]
22 Cooked Cape sole, cole and peas? This dish perhaps repeated (8)
ESCALOPE – (CAPE SOLE*) or (COLE + PEAS*)
23 Column holding aloft a rounded vault (6)
CUPOLA – COL “holding” UP + A
26 Work-shy person —but not very — is one on a downward slope (5)
SKIER – SKI{v}ER
27 Abuse individual in pub before church (9)
INSOLENCE – SOLE in INN before CE. What a snowflake people we have become if “insolence” is now considered “abuse”…
28 Grimace about denial set down in sermon, perhaps (9)
MONOLOGUE – MOUE “about” NO LOG [denial | set down]
29 Drained power during broadcast (5)
SPENT – P during SENT
Down
1 Bond creator elevated by Queen and head of government in turn (9)
SUPERGLUE – UP by E.R. and G{overnment} in SLUE
2 Island administered under Sark that’s out of bounds? (5)
ARRAN – RAN under {s}AR{k}
3 Draw out scandal involving fruit, with millions missing? (8)
ELONGATE – {m}ELON-GATE. Makes a change from the Musk/Tesla cluing of this word that is all the rage recently
4 Colour in small gardens (4)
SKEW – S KEW. The “bias” sense of “colour”
5 Order to advance rapidly with intelligence over border (5,5)
QUICK MARCH – QUICK [with intelligence] over MARCH [border(land)]
6 Waugh, for instance, gets name raised regularly (6)
EVENLY – take EVELYN and raise the N a couple of spots
7 Reserve has time to get out of condition before sport days (5,4)
TRUST FUND – T + RUST + FUN + D
8 Refuse to accept some dancing around piano (5)
REPEL – REEL [some dancing] around P. Prepare to refuse to accept boarders!
13 Cathedral pressure over what bishop wears in rich supply (10)
WELLSPRING – WELLS P over RING
15 Did badly in fighting drug dependency (9)
ADDICTION – (DID*) in ACTION
17 Strong alpha males? Beginning to think this is heavenly (9)
FIRMAMENT – FIRM A MEN + T{hick}
18 Poet cuts all that’s irregular to keep uniform (8)
CATULLUS – (CUTS ALL*) “keeping” U
21 Flowery and fluid in speech (6)
FLORAL – FL ORAL [fluid, as in FL OZ | in speech]
22 Brood raised outside south Surrey town (5)
EPSOM – reversed MOPE “outside” S
24 Creature at one time seen round central part of Hindu Kush? (5)
OUNCE – ONCE “round” {hind}U {kush}, semi-&lit
25 Leis woven in Hawaii, perhaps (4)
ISLE – (LEIS*)

69 comments on “Times 28,055: An Overly Familiar Way To Refer To Edmund”

  1. I was truly surprised to have finished this puzzle, needing to divine a lot of unknowns: CATULLUS, MOUE, WELLS, ESCALOPE, LEKS?!, etc. Glad I didn’t need SLUE, which I hadn’t even parsed, thankfully. V, you’ve enlightened me on a good many of these clues. Felt harder in a way than yesterday’s, even though judging by time it clearly wasn’t.
    1. I like that your list of unknowns doesn’t include PERGOLESI, which I thought was today’s hardest word! You musicological marvel you.
  2. I was sure I wasn’t going to finish, although the only unknown was LEKS, which will remain unknown (fortunately I remembered ‘skiver’). I had some memory problems, trying (pointlessly of course) to recall Ian Fleming, and the name of the composer ending in -SI. With SKELETAL, BLACKADDER, & POI CUPOLA, I gave up on the wordplay and spotted possible ways to fill in the unches, and only then figured out the wordplay (or some of it, in the case of SKELETAL). Something of a MER at INSOLENCE, although insolence can be abusive.
    1. I guess what makes the difference is the degree to which the target deserves it…

      Edited at 2021-08-13 04:55 am (UTC)

  3. A very enjoyable solve and a much-needed confidence-booster after yesterday’s disaster. Not easy by any measure but I was never in doubt I was going to get through this one without using aids. LEKS was the only unknown but I was sure of my answer at 12ac so it didn’t trouble me unduly. I forgot to note my finishing time but I think my solving time was about 45 minutes.

    Edited at 2021-08-13 03:04 am (UTC)

  4. 38 minutes. A welcome confidence builder after yesterday’s toughie. Didn’t know LEKS or the SLUE spelling of “slew” so didn’t parse everything. Yes, it was good there was no mention of a ‘billionaire’ in the clue for ELONGATE. Favourites were PERGOLESI and the clever OUNCE.

    Thanks to Verlaine and setter

  5. I had florid instead of floral for a long time, which made monologue impossible. I finally saw monologue, but my time was stretched out to 54 minutes. I also have trouble thinking of words with a Q in a middle, which made equip and sequester a little tough.
  6. So thanks for that especially… Strictly from Mephisto, right?! Glad to get all the answers, though, wrapping up a solid workweek, and to incidentally learn about the genre and the stars (“Mr. Bean”!) of BLACKADDER, only the name of which had dimly registered in my mind before.

    Edited at 2021-08-13 04:53 am (UTC)

  7. After 30 minutes just left with PERGOLESI. ‘Some dancing around piano’ could have been a clue for EPSOM.
  8. Harder than yesterday, requiring two pure guesses, both of which I guessed wrongly: TACULLUS, along the same lines as Tacitus. And PARROLESI, thinking some of Chopin’s work might be an arr(angement). Erg is known, and an Italian Parolesi would probably only have one R, so no excuses.
    Also never seen SLUE or heard of LEKS, not surprisingly, but they had to be. Quite liked Blackadder – the show and the clue. Wonder if it’s still funny 20 years later?
  9. A second day running where I waited for the pink squares to appear but none came. PERGOLESI and CATULLUS were my two doubts, particularly the latter where I had to decide where to stick the C, T and L. TACULLUS got a look in but CATULLUS seemed the most likely. I was with vinyl in having an incorrect FLORID for some time.
  10. 35 mins pre-brekker.
    Pergolesi was a guess. NHO Leks. Not sure about Slue.
    A good workout. Thanks setter and V.
    1. Yes Catullus was quite an eye-opener when our rather enlightened Latin teacher Mrs MacIntyre recommended him as light reading to decompress from A level prep. He also appeared in a recent TLS puzzle.

      Edited at 2021-08-13 10:44 am (UTC)

        1. You won’t be surprised that that one wasn’t in the collection we had. I knew nothing about it until decades later. I understand it still defies translation….
  11. About 26′ today, with the same unknowns as others — PERGOLESI, LEKS.

    CATULLUS LOI.

    COD to SUPERGLUE.

    I enjoyed BLACKADDER, but fear it may be seen as cynical and perhaps nasty now.

    Thanks verlaine and setter.

  12. 12:35. Not too hard this morning. Once again a silly typo held me up: this time SOSVE, which made a very easy clue (ARRAN) very hard.
    DK SLUE or LEKS, of course, but they weren’t needed to be sure of the answer and in fact I didn’t even notice either while solving.
    Good to see EDDY BLACKADDER, which I assume is deliberate.

    Edited at 2021-08-13 07:08 am (UTC)

  13. 8dn “Some dancing around piano” could also clue the symmetrically opposite 22dn “Epsom”
    1. Alternatively, you could read the previous comments and join in the bit where this is discussed at length
      1. ‘Snap’ and ‘me too’ does not constitute ‘discussed at length’. Perhaps you would like to restrict any inventive comment to the first person that mentions it (at 5 o’clock in the morning), and we could all post ‘snap’ after it in a mutual back-slapping exercise?

        You wouldn’t get much of a thread on that basis. It’s intimidating enough on here as it is. (Mr Grumpy)

        1. I agree entirely with Mr Grumpy — it is fine to comment without having read the entire thread carefully first, in fact I encourage it completely as part of my shameless bid to “hit the ton” on any given blog post. Repetition of things that may have already been said elsewhere are corroborative, not superfluous.
  14. 16:15 DNK LEKS or SLUE, so left with question marks about the parsing of 1D and 12A. Thanks for the enlightenment V. No problem with PERGOLESI… his Stabat Mater is a rather fine piece. LOI WELLSPRING with a bit of a slap on the forehead as I visited that fabulous cathedral only 2 days ago.

    Edited at 2021-08-13 07:36 am (UTC)

  15. (Ronald Lacey) was a Blackadder (Slackbladder!) character was he not! This Nina seems to have fizzled out! COD 13n WELLSPRING. Time 15:25.
  16. 7m 18s with WELLSPRING the LOI. CATULLUS was, by process of elimination, the most plausible name I could conjure with those letters – happily PERGOLESI was more generously clued, so didn’t take so long to put together.

    I also had FLORID for a while, but MONOLOGUE put me right.

    Sorry to see there’s no Twitch today – although it looks like there was one earlier this week.

  18. 47 minutes with LOI SKEW. SKELETAL and SUPERGLUE were biffs. I managed to construct PERGOLESI on first reading so that’s my COD. The CGS unit of work has been immortalised in crosswords. And while all this has happened, the BUFF has transmogrified from football paper to supplement to Podcast. Such is life. A tough puzzle but a good one as I finished it. Thank you V and setter.
  19. Unlike some others who were sure they wouldn’t finish, my certainty proved well-founded. At the one hour mark I hadn’t figured out (NHO) PERGOLESI, CUPOLA, or SKEW – might have got the last two if I’d given it more time. Making a mental note of ERG, I’m sure that’s one I’ll need again sometime.

    Quite happy with that outcome, thanks Verlaine and setter

  20. A lot quicker than yesterday at 19.52, another of those remarkable puzzles which makes you think you’re smarter than you think. I’m watching for anyone who comes up here claiming they knew what a LEK, was, mind.

    WELLSPRING my last in. Like “runner” cluing gnu yesterday, “what a bishop wears” is phenomenally loose for RING, not least because there’s lots of things bishops rather more exclusively wear.

    I’m pleased to see the OUNCE, in its guise as a snow leopard, gives the lie to “at one time seen around central part of Hindu Kush”, thanks no doubt to the solicited contributions of British daytime TV viewers.

    FIRMAMENT from the AV, of course, and the tortured Deutschlish of Haydn’s Creation.

    Thanks V for the usual concise blog and for looking up LEK so we don’t have to (though I expect most of us did).

    1. Nice quote.
      Yes, I did know Lek as I had been looking at wiki about capercaillies for some reason that now eludes me, and Lek for some reason stayed in my mind.
      Andyf
    2. After it obviously wasn’t going to be mitre I had to wait for the first part of the clue to emerge before seeing the ring.
      1. What’s the name of their hat? Not the low biretta, with 3 tabs and one blank in the 4 points, but the tall one pointy at the top with a slash in the sides (thinking chessmen). They also wear purple? Or red? Or is that cardinals?
        1. The mitre is the hat thingy but I’ve no idea what the significance of the accoutrements is, like the ribbons hanging down at the back. I think the colours depend on which time of year it is in the church calendar. No doubt there are people here who do know.
          1. Your comment brought to mind my favorite (well, only) Francis Cardinal Spellman story (probably before your time, Olivia; I remember him officiating, in his horribly accented Latin, at JFK’s funeral): some holiday, Spellman tells his fellow celebrants to keep it simple, but then on the day, in he swans, dressed to the clerical teeth, altar boys with censers and all; and as he passes down the aisle one can hear a stage whisper, “Francis, you bitch!”
      2. I saw the ring very quickly but that just instilled in me the mistaken belief that we were looking for a verbal -ing.
  21. Surprised to finish this as my first one in wasn’t until 26ac SKIER. Worked slowly from the SE corner, finally finishing with 13dn WELLSPRING in about 40 mins. Didn’t understand LEKS before reading the blog. NHO PERGOLESI but fortunately the wordplay was clear once I had the checkers. Enjoyed CUPOLA. A welcome result after yesterday’s DNF.

    Thanks to V and the setter.

  22. 22.40. An accessible but not too easy Friday for me. LOI Catullus straight after cupola. Couple of COD nominations in pergolesi just pipped by superglue.
    Thx setter and blogger.
  23. Enjoyed this challenge after DNF yesterday. Had trouble remembering PERGOLESI and DNK LEK or SLUE. Spent longest on SEQUESTER making QUICK MARCH my LOI.

    As a newcomer to this site, can someone please give me a link to a glossary containing. inter alia, MER and SNITCH?

        1. You’ve gogt to tell him/her what it is, not just throw it out there:
          penultimate one in.
  24. Happy to have crept in under the half hour for this tricky puzzle. PERGOLESI was no problem, having come across the Stabat Mater a few years ago. Narrowly avoided EVELYN and was reluctant to give up on FLORID despite it making no sense, WELLSPRING was COD, just shading it over the elegant CUPOLA.

    Thanks to Verlaine and the setter.

  25. Nice that the Molesworth books haven’t been forgotten — one of the avatars that appears regularly on this site is from them. But surely it’s ‘as any fule kno’ rather than ‘as any schoolboy kno’.
  26. Another who didn’t know LEK or SLUE. I also had to make an educated guess at CATULLUS. SKELETAL finally arrived after I saw REEL for the dance and move EVELYN’s name to its proper location. I was troubled by the SKEL bit, but shrugged and moved on. WELLSPRING was LOI. SEQUESTER was a breakthrough point which arrived after PERGOLESI led to SKEW. TRUST FUND led to BLACKADDER and I finished in a bit of a sprint, after a dragged out middle section. I definitely did not find this easy! 46:48. Thanks setter and V.
  27. Seeing SOAVE to LEAD THE WAY
    I thought “Oh it’s easy today”
    But how wrong can you be?
    SPENT an eternity
    With WELLSPRING causing massive delay
  29. Mr Nowt has inspired me today
    to give vent to my hate in this way
    to those who suppose us
    to know obscure composers
    Well I for one don’t, may I say?
  30. Defeated by PERGOLESI after 40 mins. Subsequently spent at least as long googling the baffling non-existence of the celebrated composer PARTOLESI.
    1. Yes, I also went for “Partolesi” which sounds to me a more probable Italian surname than “Pergolesi”.
      Ah well, what do I know?
      It took me a long time to see that 6d was “Evenly” and not “Evelyn”, which meant that “Skeletal” took even longer.
      Enjoyable puzzle, though.
  31. Assisted by my eldest son completed in two sittings, couple of unknowns in LEKS and the entirely random PERGOLESI.
  32. 30.31. I found this pretty tough but enjoyably so. Not much went in on a first pass through the clues. Slue and Leks were unknown and entering florid instead of floral held me up but it eventually came together. The reference to Chopin in the clue for Pergolesi reminds of a review of Yoga by Emmanuel Carrere in the TLS a few months ago, a piece of French auto-fiction and just one of many books reviewed in the TLS that I’m never going to read. The reviewer drew attention to two episodes featuring Chopin’s Heroic Polonaise. In the latter episode the author is sent a Youtube link to Martha Argerich playing the piece in a concert. He writes “Il dure exactement cinq secondes, de 5’30 à 5’35, mais pendant ces cinq secondes on a entrevu le paradis.” Of course I had to look it up on Youtube after reading that. I don’t know about paradise or epiphany but it is true, if you are drawn in by the intensity of the music and the concentrated power of the performer building up to it, then yes, at 5 mins 30 seconds in when she returns to the main theme, there is something rather wonderful to behold.
    1. But… but… this is the Monty Python song “Oliver Cromwell”! I can’t believe Chopin would just rip off the Pythons like that.
  33. As well as being the place where black grouse display and breed, LEK is also the season when this occurs. That fits the definition better, I think.
  35. Busy, busy, day when I finally got the great librarian Frank Cundall sorted.
    {
    FOI 1ac SOAVE

    LOI 12ac SKELETAL

    COD 6dn EVENLY

    WOD 9ac PERGOLESI 1958 — 1963 full back for Sampdoria 5 goals.To Cagliari 1964.

    Time 47 minutes

  36. Participating in this blog is like having a wonderful conversation with many learned and entertaining friends. I managed to find one version of Martha Argerich performing the Opus 53 Polonaise (perhaps findable in YouTube if you paste this identifier: watch?v=xmnQNARFzU0) – that transcendental moment comes in slightly earlier than 5:30 in this case.

    I too studied Catullus at school, and was rather surprised a year or so later to discover that some ‘racier’ verses existed. Nice to see him pop up in the puzzle.

  37. Got there in the end. Like everyone (mostly) else I didn’t know the composer, or LEKS, or SLUE. Maybe some other stuff. SKELETAL, my LOI, took forever, not because of the LEKS thing, but I couldn’t see any word that fitted the checkers. I started to doubt REPEL since “refuse to accept” seems a bit sketchy as a definition but I couldn’t see anything else that would fit in any case. Then I went away for a few minutes and when I came back my brain saw SKELETAL instantly. I still didn’t understand the wordplay but I put it in and was all green.
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