Times 28059 – am I losing the plot?

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I enjoyed this one, taking around 20 minutes with a few BIFFs, before settling down to explain and blog it. And I’m stumped. The answer to 6d is clear enough, but my failure to explain how we get to it is interfering with my peaceful sleep pattern. The rest is a pleasure to unravel, with some witty definitions.

Across
1 Fail to work, having succeeded in objection (2,4)
GO BUST – GO (to work) then S inside BUT.
4 Run around somewhat, having small puncture (4,4)
FLEA BITE – FLEE (run) around A BIT (somewhat).
10 Well-armed number challenged to depose king (9)
TENTACLED – TEN (a number) TAC(K)LED = challenged with K removed.
11 Get smaller recorder (5)
TAPER – double definition. We have mentioned before the obselete use of TAPE for RECORD, but it goes on.
12 Double act being wordless awkwardly hampers emotion (9,5)
PANTOMIME HORSE – (HAMPERS EMOTION)*.
14 Irritable match ending in acrimony (5)
TESTY – TEST = match as in cricket or rugby, Y the end of acrimony.
16 Hospitality for all in old luxury flat as temperature falls (4,5)
OPEN HOUSE – O (old) PENTHOUSE loses the T (temperature falls).
18 Heedful of a green hollow in which day is advancing (9)
ADVERTENT – A VERT DENT = a green hollow, move the D forward A D VERT ENT.
20 Son in good health? That’s dandy (5)
SWELL – S(on) WELL.
21 Harriet’s relatively small cathouse? (5,4,5)
UNCLE TOMS CABIN – General knowledge needed here, for full marks. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. So it’s a cryptic definition of that. Or biff it if you had forgotten the author.
25 Distinctive phrase fool finally changes (5)
IDIOM – IDIOT = fool, changes the end letter.
26 Missing volume, gap occasionally vital — this is one example (5,4)
INTER ALIA – gap = INTERVAL, remove the V for volume, so INTER AL, add the alternate letters of v I t A l. Latin for “among others”.
27 No jobs after this? Call to retire (4,4)
LAST POST – Double definition, one cryptic.
28 Tool gets right inside cloth (6)
TROWEL – insert R into TOWEL.

Down
1 Elaborate dress: set out before noon to gain impetus (3,2,5)
GET UP STEAM – GET UP = elaborate dress; (SET)*, AM = before noon.
2 At front of Berkeley Square picked up land (5)
BENIN – B(erkeley), NINE reversed, nine being a square. West African country which was called Dahomey in my early days.
3 Curious how day’s dim (7)
SHADOWY – (HOW DAYS)*.
5 Flat surface’s length, on the side? (5)
LEDGE – L(ength), EDGE – side.
6 Ancient city’s once fantastic empty hotel? (7)
ANTIOCH – well, the answer is obvious enough. But I have spent too long trying to parse it. I can see ANTIOC is an anagram of ACTION, and add H for hotel. How does “once fantastic empty” get to this? But I get no further; please enlighten me and our readers!
7 Hard to avoid publican in possibly obscene fraud (9)
IMPOSTURE – IMPURE = possibly obscene, insert (H)OST, being publican without H for hard.
8 Off-white linen carried by recruits (4)
ECRU – hidden as above. Not always linen, but of that wishy washy buff colour. From the French word meaning “unbleached”.
9 Combined a line with another, no breaks (3-2-3)
ALL-IN-ONE – A, L (line), LINE with NO inserted. A, L, LI(NO)NE.
13 Head of bank will learn to manipulate capital restriction (6,4)
BERLIN WALL – B, (WILL LEARN)*.
15 Altogether the last three knockout rounds that spanned several years (9)
SEVENTIES – four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and one final, seven games altogether, in the last three rounds of a knockout competition like Wimbledon; SEVEN TIES.
17 Roughly calculate what’s left: about one metre (8)
ESTIMATE – ESTATE = what’s left, insert I M (one metre).
19 In submarine, maybe, one who’s elected to conserve oxygen is a cold fish (7)
ROLLMOP – a submarine, I have heard, is an oversized sandwich based on a bread ROLL. MP (one elected) has O inserted.
20 Viewer hugs dog tighter (7)
SECURER – SEER hugs CUR.
22 Formal wear? It may be your call (5)
TAILS – double definition, posh dress and head or tails.
23 Half-hearted shout, not on deck (5)
BELOW – BELLOW has only half its “heart”.
24 Tube through Liverpool’s opening (4)
VIAL – VIA (through) L(iverpool).

83 comments on “Times 28059 – am I losing the plot?”

  1. 6d it’s ANTIC (fantastic) containing 0 (therefore empty) then H (hotel). Once indicates antic with that meaning is an archaism.

    Edited at 2021-08-17 11:42 pm (UTC)

  2. 43 minutes, with no idea how to parse ANTIOCH either, so thanks to Jack for the explanation. Apart from that, everything else made sense, although SEVENTIES – good clue – was only entered first, parsed later. I also liked the ‘Well-armed’ def and misleading surface for TENTACLED and ‘Harriet’s relatively small cathouse?’.

    I think ECRU can mean either an ‘off-white’ colour or a type of ‘linen’, so I parsed 8d as a double def + wordplay clue

    Thanks to Pip and setter

  3. Not overly keen on this one, with the cathouse rather weak and the ANTIOCH clue just bizarre! Despite Jack’s efforts, I remain unconvinced by the ‘once fantastic empty’ device.

    49 minutes, so the SNITCHMEISTER creeps ever closer…

    1. Not on this one, U. I found it tricky, not least as I started with a confident “panel” as the solution to 5D and had to revisit it. But I also suffered from most of the unknowns others have mentioned.

      Edited at 2021-08-18 07:02 am (UTC)

  4. Another who failed to parse Antioch, from whence the Holy Hand Grenade came, so thanks for that Jack. Also failed to parse rollmop, not remembering submarine sandwiches. Struggled a bit with the cabin… literature not my thing though when you spell out the full author it’s instantly recognisable, though what she wrote would be unknown. I see the relatively clueing uncle-y, and tom’s cabin being a cathouse. Not quite sure about the small.
    Liked seventies, but Berlin Wall the best. Does it need a once? How much of it is still standing?

    Edited at 2021-08-18 02:00 am (UTC)

    1. Almost none of the wall is still there — I had a piece once, but I gave it to a German woman I was trying to make a good impression on. I liked the clue, too.
  5. I found a lot to like in this.
    On the mysterious 6d I was thinking maybe a typo — [a missing word giving ‘anti’] plus O(nce fantasti)C Hotel. I have to admit that was a stretch.
  6. …but I didn’t understand a lot of it – Antioch, seventies, imposture, inter alia. But if you solve the others, you can just put in the obvious answers.
  7. 42 minutes. Not bad for me for a tricky puzzle.

    I was on a keypad when I wrote my first comment above, hence its briefness. Now that I’m at a keyboard, here’s the relevant entry in Collins relating to ‘fantastic once:

    antic 2. archaic. fantastic; grotesque.
    ‘Empty’ indicating insertion of 0 in another word has been used many a time so I don’t see anything to be doubtful about.

    Whilst it is common practice to add ‘once’ or something else to indicate an archaism when a word is defined as such in a dictionary, it’s not necessary (or in my view even desirable) when clueing something historical, so whether the BERLIN WALL still exists is not really relevant. If we go down that route every time the answer is a person’s name Times puzzles would need to have ‘former person’ or some such in the clue – except for HMQ, of course.

    Having defended those two clues I am still not fully convinced that the wording of 21ac quite fits the answer, UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.

    Edited at 2021-08-18 05:40 am (UTC)

  8. I found it difficult to get started today, with ROLLMOP my FOI. Once I got going I found several to be biffable, like INTER ALIA, INCLE TOMS CABIN and thankfully ANTIOCH as I was nowhere near to parsing that one.
  9. Some clever stuff but I feel that this needed a little editing. COD to BERLIN WALL.
  10. Grrrrr – that’s actually a full set of weekdays (Thu to Wed) that I’ve DNF-ed, I badly need a good ‘un. Not going to do a forensic post-mortem on today’s unsolved clues, but perhaps someone could comment on a technical matter.

    A day or two ago there was some mention of reference dictionaries – pretty sure that Chambers was mentioned as the official tome. I’d been using Merriam-Webster, but changed over, as a matter of good practice.

    Today I biffed ADVERTENT, then checked in the online version https://chambers.co.uk/search/?query=advertent&title=21st Response “Sorry, no entries for advertent were found”

    Is this a website data error, or am I doing something wrong?

    1. Unspammed

      Denise,

      The problem with the free Chambers online is that it’s not the full dictionary and that’s why it won’t find ‘advertent’. I believe there is a paid-for app that gives access to the full Chambers but unless you also do the Mephisto you may not consider it worth the money as the Times 15×15 and Quick puzzles use Collins and Oxford Dictionary of English as their preferred sources and both are available free online. ODE masquerades as Lexico.

      Edited at 2021-08-18 07:19 am (UTC)

    3. I would add to jackkt’s comment above the the full OED is available free online via membership of most local libraries. I joined my local library (Wandsworth) online, it was extremely easy and really worth doing.
      1. Sadly Central Bedfordshire Libraries removed access to OED some years ago in a cost-cutting exercise. I now get the Ancestry archives though, which is useful for another of my hobbies.
      2. If your local library doesn’t have it, you can join a different one — I use Manchester, though am far away.
        2. I tried your suggestion and was able to enrol at Manchester library however it’s only a temporary membership until such time as I can present at the library with id etc and collect a membership card. If I don’t do this within the next 2 months the membership will lapse. I’ve never been to Manchester in my life so that won’t be happening, but at least I have the 2 months. Perhaps after that I shall be able to apply again and get another 2 months, etc etc. It all depends whether the systems they have in place have something built in to prevent that. Thanks for he suggestion and we’ll see what happens!
  11. 32 minutes with LOI a biffed ANTIOCH after I saw FLEA BITE. I would never have seen that parsing, and know the city mainly through the dispute between Peter and Paul, if that’s the same place. I did manage to get UNCLE TOM’S CABIN quickly because of Harriet. COD to BERLIN WALL. I never felt confident with this puzzle but finished in normal time. Thank you Pip and setter.
  12. DNF. After 40 mins (lots puzzling over Antioch, honest) I still hadn’t cracked the Advertent/Seventies combo.
    Or Imposture which I was sure would use ‘rude’.
    Very chewy.
    Thanks setter and great time for this Pip.
    1. same DNF, advertent (NHO)/ seventies. NHO ‘knockout’, so I had no bleeding idea what was going on with that clue; and never thought to think of VERT.
      1. This is a great day! I correctly finished a puzzle which Kevin Gregg didn’t finish. Let me be clear, this is a compliment, Kevin. Reading your comments daily, I am impressed by your speed, erudition and solving ability. Today, with a dose of luck and biffing, I managed to finish. No idea about Antioch, where the seven came from in seventies, what a roll had to do with a submarine nor had I heard of the word ‘vert’. Never mind. I finished all correct (without timing it because I take so long – probably about 40 minutes.)
        Keep up the good work and I will keep trying to get my times closer to yours.
  13. 17:02 Puzzled, like others, by ANTIOCH. Thanks Jackkt for explaining Very mephisto-like! COD to SEVENTIES.
  14. Didn’t parse ANTIOCH or ROLLMOP. Glad to spell PANTOMIME correctly this time (for some reason I think of it as PANTOMINE which is what I put last time it came up).
    I wasn’t sure of VIAL as a tube rather than a container and now I think about it am not sure about UNCLE TOMS CABIN – although I suppose a CABIN could be a small house and so a cat’s small house could be TOM’S CABIN etc. Seems somewhat contrived which is a shame.

    Edited at 2021-08-18 07:49 am (UTC)

  15. ….but overall I wasn’t happy. Never see ADVERTENT unless it’s preceded by IN, and can’t see how it would ever be used. Obviously biffed ANTIOCH, and not impressed now that it’s been explained. My LOI was a “duh” moment — I wasted too much time playing with “flat”.

    FOI GO BUST
    LOI FLEA BITE
    COD PANTOMIME HORSE (lol !)
    TIME 9:23

  16. Not terribly keen on this one, which left me feeling a bit 14ac.
    I think Jackkt is right about 6dn but I still dislike the clue.
    submarine = roll is another unannounced Americanism.
    I have two pieces of Berlin Wall. I suspect that if all such were gathered in you could make two or three walls, but I know mine are real because I saw them chipped off during the Reunification Weekend, a high point of my life
      1. It certainly was, Martin.
        Three million people on the city streets of Berlin, every one of them happy, optimistic and slightly drunk. I don’t expect ever to see the like again
        1. What a wonderful memory!
          I can’t match that sort of earth-changing moment. All I can say is that “I was there” in July 1966 at Wembley when England won the World Cup.
    2. The usual dictionaries (with the exception of Chambers) mark this as an American usage but since Subway has been present on UK high streets for 25 years now I’d say the setter has reasonable grounds for omitting the qualification.
    3. In addition, when the word ‘submarine’ is used it is almost always as a modifier in the compusnd term ‘submarine sandwich’. If you want to drop the ‘sandwich’ part, you usually just say ‘sub’, never ‘submarine’.

      Meantime, the bread alone is a ‘sub roll’, I’ve never heard ‘submarine roll’, and I’ve never heard either ‘submarine’ or ‘sub’ refer to just the bread. So not just an Americanism, but an abstract useage of an Americanism (regardless of what the OED, ODE, and online Collins have to say).

    4. I’ve still got a video of the BBC News the day the wall came down. Such a significant moment in C20th history. I have fond memories of walking through Checkpoint Charlie in a blizzard in 1978. It was like something from John Le Carre… Ann
  17. Once I got them, I had no issue with either the CABIN or ANTIOCH. For the former, I went through my list of Harriets, came up (only) with Beecher Stowe, but didn’t make the leap to her (infamous?) creation.
    Much of the lower half indeed merely treacled in until I twigged (and sort of understood) INTER ALIA, when everything went in a rush, even the last remaining two at top right (FLEA BITE was going to be SLOW LEAK until it wasn’t, and refused to budge from there).
    24.35 total.
  18. Advertent was listed as ‘rare’ in the online dictionary I found so maybe there should have been an indicator there. Overall enjoyed the puzzle though.
  19. 17′ 25″, COD to SEVENTIES, the number of ties in n rounds being 2^n — 1.

    ANTIOCH, same as everyone else.

    Thanks pip and setter.

  20. 11:51. A slight feeling of dissatisfaction with this one. Quite a lot of biffing and I didn’t understand ANTIOCH or SEVENTIES. I don’t think UNCLE TOM’S CABIN quite works.
    The old name for BENIN you mention pip is familiar to Mephisto solvers as the IVR code is still DY.
  21. Times 28059 6 Down One meaning of antic is grotesque or fantastic. Insert O for empty add H for hotel
    1. I posted all this hours ago! It helps to read the comments before posting if offering an explanation for a query raised in the blog.

      Edited at 2021-08-18 10:44 am (UTC)

  22. I had a few queries on this one so thank you Pip for explaining GO BUST, PANTOMIME HORSE, ADVERTENT, IMPOSTURE and SEVENTIES and thanks to Jack for ANTIOCH.
    Regarding 12ac, I saw the word ‘wordless’ in the clue and thought that referred to the MIME in PANTOMIME. No wonder I couldn’t make sense of it all.
    BENIN was a nice one but my cod to INTER ALIA. I always thought ALIA was part of the name of Royal Jordanian Airlines….
  23. B.J.Holmes “Pocket Crossword Dictionary” from 2001 has “empty” as possible indicator of inserted “O”.
  24. I stupidly misread lengths as 4,6 rather than 6,4. So I had to use aids to find the impossible BERL INWALL. And BERL/LEBR are not words, and I would say INWALL should not be a real word, although it is in many dictionaries. Inwall is the only word from the available anagrist.
    But had I ever looked at Berl Inwall the error would have made itself clear. DOH!
    Andyf
  25. Plenty of biffing today, which slowed me down a bit after I went with ALL-IN-ALL for 9d. After a quick start there were a few chewier clues, finishing on TAILS in 8m 26s.

    Some really nice stuff, a few liberties, and one of my pet peeves in 25a (IDIOM): it was unambiguous, but I don’t like clues where it just tells you to replace one letter with any letter of your choosing.

  26. …having accidentally got a heads-up on a few answers in advance.

    But almost certainly under 49 minutes.

      1. Cheers Kevin. Just dipping my toe in for now. Lovely to see so many of the old crew still around.
    2. I’ll have what he’s having … you haven’t changed a bit according to your picture
      Good to see you.
  27. I agree with mauefw: not a good clue in my opinion if you just have to find a random letter to insert.

    The CD at 21ac looked much tighter to me than some you see: there was Tom = cat, relatively = uncle, small = cabin.

    1. Will, I have doubts about cabin = small although cabin can relate to something small (perhaps cabin-sized would be small), but I really can’t see how uncle (a noun) can be a synonym for the adverb ‘relatively’. I know you’re a very experienced solver so I’d be happy to concede the point if I’m missing something.
      1. For a while I thought small might refer to truncating ‘uncle-like’ or ‘uncley’.
      2. I am a CAMRA Brewery Liaison Officer for a local brewery, Cabin Brewery, which I can assure you is very small indeed. There was just about enough room for the brewer and me inside when he showed me round. Yes – it is just a cabin at the bottom of his garden.
      3. We see so many CDs where the allusions are very vague and people don’t seem to fuss much about parts of speech etc. I just felt that there were three allusions (the uncle one is simply that an uncle is a relative) and that’s more than you usually get. Look at SCYTHE yesterday.

        [I was trying to reply to Jack’s post, but livejournal has put this some way away.]

        Edited at 2021-08-18 04:30 pm (UTC)

        1. Thanks, Will. It’s the sort of clue I have become used to since I started solving the Guardian daily a year ago. There I often just bung in an answer when I have thought of it and don’t worry unduly if the parsing seems a bit off. But with The Times, probably because I write blogs, I like to account for every detail, and that’s what gave me pause for thought here.
    2. It’s not a random letter though, is it; unless you can suggest a better one to insert?
    3. Oh, aha… Or maybe… for “avuncular”? Hmm. This still seems a stretch. And the UNCLE is TOM, “the cat.” The word order seems screwy if “Relatively” is supposed to refer to TOM. It says “Relatively small.” Also, referring to the author by her first name makes the allusion too obscure, as well as overly chummy.

      Edited at 2021-08-18 04:02 pm (UTC)

  28. At least I got through this without typos. Most of this spent in the NE, where I really got stuck. I pencilled in ANTIOCH, and then I was suddenly away with FLEA BITE and the rest. I’ve never seen this empty business in all the time I’ve been here, so a bit sneaky combined with an archaism.
    1. You’ve been here a while, so you should know to say “I’ve forgotten it since last time” (27644 6ac 21 Apr 2020) rather than “I’ve never seen that before!” 😉
  29. Just gave up after an age and looked up ANTIOCH (like others, had no idea what was going on) and TENTACLED, which was a very smart clue, I admit. Not helped by a panic call from wife re computer failure, which distracted me for half an hour. I did like FLEA BITE, when I finally saw it. Not having a good week so far…. Thanks Pip and setter.
  30. 29 mins. Saw the parsing of ANTIOCH just as I put my pen down. Thought SEVENTIES was v good. Slight cavil at BERLIN WALL — not so much as to whether it still exists or not (I think there is enough of it left to qualify ) but because when it was a “restriction” on West Berlin, Berlin wasn’t a capital, and when Berlin was a capital the wall was no longer a restriction. I suppose you might argue that the wall was something of a restriction on East Berlin, arguably the de facto capital of East Germany, but I am not sure. Funny what sometimes flashes through your mind as you solve a clue, but in this case it probably shouldn’t have bothered making the effort.

    Edited at 2021-08-18 11:09 am (UTC)

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