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. Nope, didn’t get ANTIOCH or SEVENTIES. Scrolled through the list of Harriets (Vane, Smith, the spy) and then saw it via the enumeration. Calling someone an Uncle Tom around here is a deadly insult. 18.34
  2. Another who had to biff ANTIOCH and SEVENTIES. Otherwise all done in 27:36. ECRU was FOI, and ANTIOCH brought up the rear. Thanks setter and Pip.
  3. My time does not show on the leaderboard because of a fat-fingered PANTONINE HORSE, but a moral all-correct solve. One of those puzzles which had excellent moments, if not entirely consistent. Especially liked the idea of, say an octopus being well-armed, and will swim against the tide by saying the same of the SEVEN TIES.
  4. same biffs as everyone else.

    Now it’s been explained by pip, SEVENTIES is my favourite. TAILS was my LOI.

    I have mainly been thinking of the following since seeing ANTIOCH, having worn out a VCR tape re-watching the film when I was a spotty teenager:

    “Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.”

    31:54

    Edited at 2021-08-18 12:31 pm (UTC)

  5. 24.05. There was a trickiness to this but I attribute that more to convoluted cluing in some places, which interrupted the smoothness of the solve, rather than the cunning deception of the setter’s art. I had no idea how Antioch parsed, well done Jackkt on working that one out. I now remember Hamlet’s antic disposition but combined with literally having nothing in for empty, made that one rather fiendish. I also failed to fully parse seventies. My parsing of LOI imposture was painstaking though because I wasn’t entirely confident of the word.
  6. A tricky puzzle, but eventually not quite as daunting as it first appeared. Both SECURER AND TAPER looked odd, but “had to be”. ANTIOCH was not a problem, having tried and failed to read Aldous Huxley’s Antic Hay many years ago. I found it tedious, but at least I learnt what the title meant -a wild or fantastic dance. COD SEVENTIES

    Social distancing must have been awkward in a PANTOMIME HORSE.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter.

  7. Failed to remember who Harriet was. Answer not very biffable so this was something of a struggle.

    Long time to see both of the top two across which would’ve helped enormously with the downs

  8. Have just looked at the SNITCH. In the detailed results each individual’s personal Nitch and Witch are identical. I confess to never quite understanding exactly how these are worked out Is this a result of the day’s Nitch figure being 100?
    1. Exactly that. The WITCH is a comparison of one’s personal NITCH to the SNITCH. WITCH = NITCH/100 * SNITCH.
      1. Thank you. I thought for one horrible moment that there might be a glitch in the Snitch.
  9. 25.39 . Bit of a tester today and took a long time to get going- shadowy my FOI. THE NE corner was almost my undoing but antioch finally opened up flea bite and saw the hidden ecru. Like the setter, had no idea why it was Antioch but couldn’t see another option.

    I think pantomime horse was my COD but there were a few to choose from.
    Thx setter and blogger.

  10. This took me ages, with the same biffs of ANTIOCH and SEVENTIES as many others. I didn’t fully parse TAILS or BELOW, and eventually dragged up UNCLE TOMS CABIN from I know not where. I was very slow to spot the hidden ECRU, even though there was a clear indicator, I had the R, and my football team have played in an ecru away kit in the past so I was familiar with it.

    One question: if ‘no breaks’ is the definition for ALL-IN-ONE, doesn’t that mean ‘no’ is doing double duty? If so, there’s no indicator for it.

  11. UGH! What a horrible clue for UNCLE TOM’S CABIN (the novel sometimes said to have sparked the Civil War!). I’ll have to peruse the other comments to see if anyone has fathomed how UNCLE is covered by the wordplay. Couldn’t parse ANTIOCH either, so it went in much later than my first seeing it. The sports references went right by me, of course, for SEVENTIES, so I had to wait for all the checkers. LOI the rare ADVERTENT.
    1. Partly because Lincoln is supposed to have said exactly this to her: ‘so here’s the lady who started this whole war’, or somesuch. Apocryphal, like all the best stories.

      Edited at 2021-08-19 12:13 am (UTC)

      1. “Said to have,” I said. Meanng it’s just something people say. I state facts more assertively. My own take on this tale is that the inveterate joker Lincoln may very well have said the line.
  12. 16:46 this afternoon but a struggle with the same two biffs as so many others. Thanks to Jack and Pip for the relative explanations.
    At 21 ac, I worked out who Harriet was but was convinced for some reason that she had written Little Women etc. which wasn’t exactly helpful.
    One of these puzzles where I found I was able to grasp what was going on in the structure of a particular clue but then failed to follow it through on my first pass. For example for 2d “Benin” I thought that the solution was B followed by a homonym (as opposed to the reverse) of a numerical square.
    COD 12 ac “Pantomime Horse”.
    Thanks to Pip for the blog and to the setter for the challenge.
  13. Too late to the game to expect a reply, but just in case …

    Since by definition you can’t have ties in knockout rounds, I fail to understand the parsing of SEVENTIES. Since not a single other poster on this blog seems puzzled by this, perhaps someone can explain?

    1. too late? – pah!

      “tie” can be another word for “match”; as in a “cup tie”
      every meaning doesn’t have to be covered, a single overlap will do

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