Times 28063 – What every woman needs?

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time: 36 minutes
Music: Mahler, Symphony 5, Levine/Philadelphia

I was a little off when doing this puzzle, and while I started quickly enough I had trouble finishing.  I found the intersection of time-lapse and manometer very difficult, and I couldn’t think of gorgon for the longest time, being convinced I needed to rearrange virago.   Asparagus, too, came as a bit of a surprise, so I made rather a mess of the puzzle despite making good progress at the beginning.   It was probably a little harder than usual for a Monday, but not as hard as I made it.

Here in the middle of Connecticut, the hurricane turned out to be a bust.   We got a moderate amount of rain, and very little wind to speak of.   It was evidently a mixed bag, with Jeremy reporting heavy rain in NYC, 60 miles to the west.

Across
1 Dismay with end of aged relative (5)
DAUNT – [age}D + AUNT.
4 TV programme in the main sent round with no changes made (2,2,5)
AS IT COMES – A(SITCOM)ES, with SEA backwards as the enclosing element.
9 What could be spears in a box — a blow not being all there (9)
ASPARAGUS –  A SPAR + A GUS[t].
10 White brandy is in per cent over (5)
PISCO – P(IS)C + O, where it is helpful to know the word.
11 Fierce woman knocking alcohol back — concerning (6)
GORGON – GROG backwards + ON.
12 Look to return in army post where duty is relaxed.(4,4)
FREE PORT – F(PEER backwards)ORT.
14 Spell failure for this shooting style? (4-5)
TIME-LAPSE – TIME + LAPSE, in entirely different senses.
16 Captain dropping very soft sportsman in Winter Olympics (5)
SKIER – SKI[pp]ER.
17 Second fine fabric artist (5)
MONET – MO + NET.
19 Concerning swindle, company is to check again (9)
RECONFIRM – RE CON + FIRM.
21 Try to sound important? Pardon me, that’s wrong (4-4)
NAME-DROP – Anagram of PARDON ME – great clue!
22 Bond’s enemies succeeded — runs into snare (6)
SMERSH – S + ME(R)SH, where it helps to know the basics of James Bond.
25 House has permit rejected for commercial accommodation (5)
HOTEL – HO + LET backwards.
26 Small sum we might invest in American prospector (9)
SOURDOUGH –  S + OUR DOUGH – a bit of American metonymy.
27 Representation changes area to old city used by pirates (4,5)
PORT ROYAL –  PORTR(-a,+O)YAL, a simple letter-substitution clue.   A little knowledge of Caribbean history will help here.
28 Cortege, oddly quiet and slow movement (5)
CREEP –  C[o]R[t]E[g]E + P.
Down
1 Result of a good hand in game — run succeeded with it (15)
DRAUGHTSMANSHIP –  DRAUGHTS + MAN + S + HIP.    Evidently, run is used as a verb, in the sense occupying a post, as in run a carnival ride.
2 University pressure? A stimulant is the answer (5)
UPPER – U + P + PER, where you can either biff or spot the meaning of A.
3 I got mixed up with rum lot in trouble (7)
TURMOIL –  Anagram of I + RUM LOT.
4 More than one star which was once used to navigate (4)
ARGO –  A constellation, named after Jason’s old ship, so a very weak double defintion.
5 Rising in singular haste (10)
INSURGENCY –   IN + S URGENCY.
6 Type of conifer company cleared out on one of the estates (7)
CYPRESS – C[ompnaY + PRESS.
7 I love very big problem coming up for dictator (9)
MUSSOLINI – I + NIL + OS + SUM, all upside-down.
8 New growth starting by fruit just come out with it (5,4,3,3)
SHOOT FROM THE HIP – SHOOT + FROM THE HIP, a fruit that occurs only in Crosswordland.
13 Drive recorded debt with crafty way fake news appears? (10)
SPURIOUSLY –  SPUR + IOU + SLY.
15 Chap who finally encountered Queen in Tube under some pressure? (9)
MANOMETER – MAN + [wh]O + MET E.R.
18 Little fish: young child has swapped ring for one (7)
TIDDLER – T(-o,+I)DDLER, our second letter-substitution clue.
20 Roving about domain? (7)
NOMADIC – Anagram of C + DOMAIN, an &lit.
23 Concerning about impossible flight path (5)
ROUTE – R(OUT)E.
24 Struggle between two parties of right and left (4)
DUEL –  DUE + L, where right and left are used in entirely differeent senses.

82 comments on “Times 28063 – What every woman needs?”

  1. An embarrassing time, or so it felt. Much of this puzzle was downright easy, but finishing it off was brutal. Felt pretty confident about all but ARGO, so was glad to see all green squares.
  2. Like Jeremy and vinyl I found about 2/3 of this straightforward, then had to wrestle with the last third. Just it seems the parts I found easy were what they found hard, and vice versa.
  3. No real problems, although there were a few DNKs: PISCO, SOURDOUGH (I only knew it as the kind of French bread one finds in most SF restaurants), and PORT ROYAL (I only knew it for the Port-Royal Grammar, which I only knew of from Chomsky). Liked DUEL and NAME-DROP.
    1. According to Chambers that SOURDOUGH is Canadian / Alaskan. That could explain the mystery.

      Also, Port Royal is a great (out of print, I think) card game.

  4. This would have been easy but for one unknown word and two unknown meanings. The unknown word was PASCO which didn’t hold me up unduly because the wordplay was clear so having spotted that I wrote the answer in with some confidence. The first unknown meaning was ARGO as a constellation but it seemed the most likely fit, so again, in it went. The final hurdle was SOURDOUGH as an American prospector and I never got near to that as I didn’t spot it as a possible fit and I wasn’t sure what was definition and what was wordplay so I had little to work with. Eventually I cut my losses and looked it up. We’ll see later what other Brits made of it, but I felt that clue was a little unfair.

    Edited at 2021-08-23 03:04 am (UTC)

    1. I don’t know about the other Murcans, but I’d never come across SOURDOUGH in the requisite sense. I had DOUGH from checkers and spent a bit of time figuring out SOUR, doubting it could mean ‘American prospector’.
      1. As a San Franciscan I thought you might have come across this Kevin, what with the Gold Rush.
        1. Well, the Gold Rush was before my time, but in any case I’ve never–along with everyone else here, it would seem–come across the term. It still sounds unlikely to me.
    2. DNF @41m – unlike most days I didn’t struggle on for the full hour – thought this was a pretty easy grid and had it complete well under 30 mins except for SOURDOUGH and DUEL. NHO of the prospector meaning, severely hampering my ability to get to the solution – so I’m agreeing that’s a bit unfair.

      COD = AS IT COMES, I liked the way SITCOM slotted in over two word boundaries.

      I knew PISCO from travels in my younger days – once got completely falling-over drunk on the stuff in Vina Del Mar, Chile – a delightful place if you avoid alcoholic idiocy. I’ve never liked white spirits of any description since that fateful night, though in the interests of diplomacy, I once drank a sequence of toasts with home-made Georgian CHACHA.

  5. I was on the wavelength for this one, helped by twigging to DRAGHTSMANSHIP reasonably early, which provided a lot of starting letters. And helped, no doubt, having watched through all the James Bond films during lockdown to bring SMERSH to mind without much effort. I trusted the cryptic on SOURDOUGH, having no idea about the use for a prospector.

    10a brought back fond memories of drinking PISCO sour in Peru.

    1. Me too. You hardly even notice you’re hammered till you try and stand up. Now available in Covent Garden as well as Lima!
      1. Good to hear. We haven’t been able to get a good version in Sydney until last year, when a Peruvian-style restaurant opened in the inner west. My family took me there for a birthday celebration last October – very nice.

        But you’re absolutely right – you need to be careful; they pack a punch.

  6. After 20:17, I didn’t have a great deal of confidence in PISCO, SMERSH or ARGI.

    Got lucky with 2 out of 3 of them, which ain’t bad according to Meatloaf, but doesn’t cut it in Crosswordland.

    Also didn’t know MANOMETER or SOURDOUGH (in that context), but the clueing and checkers didn’t leave much room for doubt.

    Thank setter and Vinyl.

      1. Argo was easy to biff, but I didn’t know the constellation so looked in Wikipedia, where I found it absent. It was present in Wiktionary, but pointing out that it has been renamed into 3 new constellations, and it is in the South so you wouldn’t know it in the sky if you are from the North. I didn’t notice it during 3 months in Australia.
        So I didn’t think it was a very good clue.
        DNK that sense of Sourdough either.
        So a MER.
        Andyf
  7. Solved the unknown SOURDOUGH and PISCO from wordplay and “hit and hoped” for ARGO my LOI but still managed to come a cropper on FREE PORT. Yet another Monday DNF and a slow 57 minute one at that so not a good way to start the week.

  8. Sourdough rang a very faint bell, has it appeared before? Google says no. Same unknowns Argo and pisco, and don’t think we’ve seen PC for percent before? Took a long time to twig press as the fourth estate instead of looking for cars. As it comes was also slow, thinking the def might have been the name of a UK TV show. So fast, fast, slow like some others, finishing with the top right corner then guessing the two four-letter words – didn’t see my due right before coming here. Is Free Port an &lit? Is it an army post? Doesn’t quite work for me.
    1. The clue reads ‘Look to return in army post WHERE DUTY IS RELAXED’. Vinyl forgot the last part, which is the def.
      1. Embarrassing… reading the blog and taking it as gospel, having already forgotten the clue I’d solved an hour or so earlier 😉
        From habit – always learning things from the blogs that I missed while solving, so this was just another one.

        Edited at 2021-08-23 05:46 am (UTC)

      2. Remember, the parts of the blog in blue are generated by a Javascript written by Mohn. What probably happened is that I highlighted the words to underline them, but instead they got deleted.
        1. Had a discussion with a friend about that recently. He claimed his cat is often up on the desk, walking on the keyboard, maybe it hit the delete key. I have dogs (30 kg greyhounds) and they’re not allowed on the desk – I have to take responsibility for all my random errors. E.g. see the fact that my comment above was edited – I decided to change two words and wiped out an entire line by mistake – ask Kevin how many edits were forwarded to him.
          I’m impressed how few errors there are in the blogs. More power to you!
          1. My blog would not be complete without some sort of error – I keep inventing new ones!
  9. But gentle violets weeping with the dew
    Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.

    25 mins pre-brekker. Didn’t know Sourdough like that, but I have been known to have a Pisco Sour (dough).
    Thanks setter and Vinyl.

  10. 41:16 with fingers crossed, especially for SOURDOUGH where I thought it must end in RUSH (like goldrush) but that didn’t get me anywhere, and my spellchecker now tells me it isn’t even a word. But with all the crossers it went in with a shrug.
    One thing, just to show I’m paying attention, the anagrist in 3dn is not I GOT RUM, it’s I RUM LOT
  11. Didn’t know the US meaning of SOURDOUGH but the rest of the clue wss clear. Liked the SITCOM snd NAME-DROP.
  12. Beat my new target of 30m, just, having struggled as others did with the unknown rhyming trio of PISCO, ARGO and SOURDOUGH, where I spent too long assuming small sum was SOU and trying to parse the rest — as others have said, a rather unkind highly obscure foreign definition that almost no Brits would know.

    The leading bakery up here in Orkney is Argo, so I could pop out and buy Argo sourdough. I doubt there’s any PIsco though.

  13. 14:24 I hesitated over ARGO as I didn’t know the constellation. As for SOURDOUGH… an American prospector? “Historic – North-American” says the on-line dictionary. Hmm. Belongs in a Mephisto, not a Monday 15×15 methinks. But HIP as a fruit is fine and plentiful here in the hedgerows from dog roses. I’ve never been tempted to pick them to make a Vitamin C packed Rosehip syrup, though.
  15. 44 mins but had to Check SOURDOUGH as a NHO. An odd mixture today of QC type clues (HOTEL, MONET, DAUNT eg) and some really difficult ones. AS IT COMES took a while to see, couldn’t see ROUTE either for ages. I liked ASPARAGUS and SMERSH mostly.

    Thanks v and setter.

  16. 42 minutes with LOI SOURDOUGH constructed from first part of the clue. I had no idea that this could refer to a Gold Prospector, so I liked the clue about as much as I like the bread. As a physicist, I did know MANOMETER but I don’t think I’ve used the word since second form. As many have said, this was a strange mix of dead easy and tricky. COD to CYPRESS. Thank you V and setter.
  17. NHO that meaning of sourdough, but the answer seemed obvious; ditto pisco. Distressed at apparent lack of knowledge about the Argo, one of the most well-known Greek myths. Argo also has the unusual distinction of having once been a stellar constellation, but no longer.
    1. Jason and his Argonauts well known, even as a non-classicist. Was a golden fleece involved? I’m picturing Errol Flynn or Kirk Douglas or someone swashing his buckle in a 1950s toga-and-swords-and-sandals epic. The constellation Argo unknown; not least because it no longer actually exists as you and others have pointed out. Stars not my strong point – though did remember Vega, which briefly tempted me with just the G in place.
  18. …. wasn’t one of “those three”, but was PORT ROYAL. The parsing was clear, as it was with SOURDOUGH where the usage was new to me. I knew of PISCO sour, though I haven’t sampled it, and ARGO was obvious, even allowing for astronomy being a black hole in my knowledge spectrum.

    At 11A I tried to justify both “amazon” and “dragon” before hitting on GORGON.

    This certainly wasn’t your typical Monday puzzle.

    FOI DAUNT
    LOI INSURGENCY
    COD SPURIOUSLY
    TIME 11:22

  19. 10:48, with fingers crossed for ARGO and SMERSH. I knew Jason’s ship but ‘which was once used to navigate’ could have applied to any number of ships, navigational tools, waterways or what-have-you and I didn’t know it was a constellation. I’ve never heard of SMERSH and it looked unlikely so I had to rely on blind faith in wordplay.
    On the other clues that have caused problems, I did know PISCO but not this meaning of SOURDOUGH. The wordplay was entirely clear though and at least the answer was an identifiable word (unlike SMERSH) so I didn’t have any doubts.

    Edited at 2021-08-23 08:56 am (UTC)

  20. Firstly, apologies for my recent absence from these pages – for anyone who might have noticed! Been busy with various things. I will aim to post more often. Secondly, has there been any talk re a Championship competition this year?

    I enjoyed today’s puzzle and agree it wasn’t a typical Monday puzzle. Some nice clues.

    COD: Name-drop just beats As It Comes.

    1. Good to see you back. As a Toon supporter not not so keen to have had the pleasure of your team’s company 😫!
  21. A disappointing time with the hold-ups being the same as for others.

    I still can’t see how STARTING BY = FROM THE in the HIP clue.

    1. It’s a bit surreal but a race ‘starting by fruit’ could also be a race ‘from the hip’.
  23. Like others, found most of it easy and finishing it off tricky. Guessed SOURDOUGH not knowing the prospector meaning, and took too long to see GORGON. 22 minutes.
    CoD PORT ROYAL for me.

    Edited at 2021-08-23 09:58 am (UTC)

  24. The same experience as several others. Very easy except for the ones that weren’t – PISCO, SOURDOUGH and ARGO in my case. COD – AS IT COMES.

    Slightly puzzled by the wording of the PORT ROYAL clue which, to me at least, suggests that the letter “a” should be replaced by the name of an old city.

    Thanks to v and the setter.

    1. The definition is ‘city used by pirates’ It is PORTRAYAL with an A (area) changed to O (Old). I happen to know Port Royal having worked on and off in Kingston for the 5 years before Covid.
      1. Of course! Much obliged.

        V’s parsing it makes it perfectly clear, but I still had my blinkers on and was staring at TROY. A few more minutes, and I’d have been jabbering on about Park Royal

  25. Unsurprisingly, a lot of that time was spent working out the unknown meaning of SOURDOUGH, annoyingly only a few minutes after eating some for my breakfast. I kept trying to put QUID in there, but nothing starts with SQUID____ apart from SpongeBob’s friend, and I don’t think he counts in the Times lexicon. Nice enough but felt like a Monday puzzle with some of the original features replaced with rather more difficult elements, so more than a little uneven all round.
  26. Lord Vinyl – Caribean? Caribbean!

    This for me was a Monday morning stroll. 24:45 minutes.

    FOI 1ac DAUNT – the bookshop – hoorah!

    LOI 4dn ARGO

    COD 15dn MANOMETER

    WOD 22ac SMERSH!

    I do enjoy a 21ac or two, as Jack will affirm – what is 17ac Monet’s link to Ian Fleming?

    Edited at 2021-08-23 10:27 am (UTC)

  27. You might have ninja-turtled this from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Bang on wavelength this morning. We’re due west of Vinyl and had a ton of rain from Henri but no wind thank goodness. 10.49
    1. I know about it from Angus Calder’s excellent book, Revolutionary Empire, which covers the development of the British Empire from the 1500s to the 1780s. He devotes 2 out of 817 pages to the goings-on at Port Royal.
  28. UPPER and ARGO went in by biff, PISCO from trust in word play (after being waylaid by START FROM THE TOP). No problems with PORT ROYAL, GORGON or SMERSH but SOURDOUGH was LOI as I couldn’t come close to parsing it but I knew the bread and that was all that fitted. Very rarely do such desperate measures succeed.
  29. 7m 5s with MANOMETER / TIME-LAPSE the last to fall. Thanks for explaining why man = run, I couldn’t figure that out.

    PORT ROYAL was nice, and tripped me up for a while as I thought ‘old city’ was going to be the TROY hidden within it.

    NHO PISCO, and wasn’t at all sure that ARGO fit the bill.

  30. The snitch score led me to believe that this would be a tough one for me, but it really wasn’t, although SOURDOUGH and PORT ROYAL both puzzled me.
    Maybe my crosswording skills have improved after a lot of practice on holiday with my son last week! Here’s hoping.
  31. Top to bottom solve with only ARGO and PISCO out of sequence. COD SOURDOUGH. Also liked SMERSH, but then who doesn’t like Bond – James Bond?
    2. I can’t stand Bond, though it may have been okay in its day about 50 years ago. I was impressed by the first Bond film I ever saw (Goldfinger, on its first release, but then I was of an age) but nothing since – not that I have seen many except under protest.
    3. Connery, yes. Mostly.
      Moore, rubbish. Every single one of them.
      Didn’t mind the last one or two with Craig which were less comedies and more character-driven.
      1. Forget the films, Connery, Moore etc. The original stories are the important element of the Fleming oeuvre. ‘Thunderball’ tells the story of the death of Sir Harry Oakes. (Ivar Bryce).

        It is hardly known that before he left Eton, Ian Fleming became a ‘ghost’ for E. Phillips Oppenheim – one of several, including Leslie Charteris and Agatha Christie.

        ‘The Prodigals of Monte Carlo’ (1925) contains some of the basic elements of ‘Casino Royale’- penned by IF when he was just seventeen (Biddulph). In 1937 Phyllis Forbes-Dennis used Ian to write the last chapter of ‘The Mortal Storm’.
        In late 1938 Geoffrey Household gave up on ‘Rogue Male’; Fleming knocked it into shape in 1939. (Op. Foxley)
        And ‘The Adventures of Hiram Holliday’ with Paul Gallico – and much, much more.

        But please be sure not to tell anyone – as they will never believe you! (Meldrew)

        Edited at 2021-08-23 03:21 pm (UTC)

        1. I’ve only ever read one Ian Fleming book: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, at about age 9.
          Do I vaguely remember that more than a few Ian Fleming/James Bond books were penned by various people after Ian Fleming died. Or was that just the movies?
  32. No real hang-ups here — a few bunged in with the requisite shrug — MANOMETER sounds familiar but couldn’t tell you what it does; PORT ROYAL — educated guess; SOURDOUGH — had all checkers and couldn’t come up with owt else that fit.

    Final two mins on ARGO again bunged in with a shrug never having heard of the constellation.

  33. Oh dear, DNF in around half an hour. I got a pink square for insurgence, must pay attention in future. I struggled with some trickier ones but eventually managed to find time-lapse, free port, Port Royal and sourdough. Manometer was unknown or forgotten but easier to find. Some real ummming and aaahing over LOI Argo, not knowing the constellation. Alit on SMERSH pretty quickly after SPECTRE wouldn’t fit. Found nomadic a bit odd with about not directly part of the anagram fodder. Wasted time looking for a homophone in the clue for Mussolini. As it comes and name-drop probably my favourites in an uneven solve as others have said.
  35. 14.17. Pretty straightforward for the most part but I still don’t get sourdough. I see the small and sum we might invest but I thought sourdough was a type of bread. What’s the prospector all about?

    Answers on a postcard please…or email will do.

    1. It is 19th-century American slang. The gold prospectors carried sourdough starter in their knapsacks, figuring they would have a hard time getting fresh bread in remote mining camps, so came to be called “sourdoughs”.
  36. I found this a mixed bag, like most people. I’d never come across SOURDOUGH in that sense but living in the San Francisco bay area it was an easy leap. My downfall was that I lazily put INSURGENCE, so I got pink square. In my defense, the URGENCE meaning is in Chambers (although marked rare) as a synonym of URGENCY.
  37. Joint effort, long solve, but got there in the end – with a little help from the odd pink square here and there, which we don’t mind if they nudge us in the right direction for a finish. A technical DNF, we know. FOI daunt, easy. Saw upper early but couldn’t parse it so left it till later. Needed the blog to parse or finish parsing many clues. We are just pleased to complete a 15 x 15 even with a bit of help. All the clues were COD for us. Thanks, V, and setter. GW and husband.
  38. With a break in between to mull over Duel/Sourdough and Argo.

    Maybe I’m overthinking it but could it be “Sum we might invest in American” = “our dough” and “prospector” = “sourdough” — i.e. dough being US slang for money? Doesn’t matter either way, I suppose.

  39. Failed to get Sourdough, even though mine is quite good! NHO Port Royal. I thought the clue wanted more than one constellation so put in ARGI. Other clues were relatively easy
    BW
    A
  40. 53 minutes, of which much was spent puzzling over ARGO, DUEL and SOURDOUGH. The latter as an American prospector was not a problem, but having SHOOT FROM THE TOP for 8dn really did hold me up for a while until in desperation, I reviewed it. With the H at the end, SOURDOUGH came quickly, followed by DUEL. PISCO also held me up for a bit until I saw the wordplay. And I never did parse DRAUGHTSMANSHIP. I had the same doubts about ARGO as others did, but as it seemed reasonable that it could be the name of a constellation and as “navigate” might simply mean “sail” it went in with a prayer.

    Edited at 2021-08-23 06:11 pm (UTC)

  41. Well hello there — it is good to hear from you again. Hope you and MC text are well over there in WA?
    1. Hi Steve. I was released from Perth a few years ago, living in Sydney now.

      Had a couple of emails with Alec recently. Will catch up with him for a coffee and solve one day, but currently Sydney-siders (and everyone else) are persona non grata in the west.

      Hope you’re doing well.

  42. There is something more than just mildly satisfying in getting the answer to a clue on the 3rd/4th/5th time of asking. 13d Spuriously finally came and unlocked the last few to allow a finish that had seemed beyond me up until that point. Very pleased to finish this one — just a shame the Snitch is below 100, as it certainly felt harder. Invariant

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