Times 28071 – your Wednesday B and LOG.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Mostly straightforward, I thought, but with one totally unknown word I had to guess and then check, and I find 5a a bit strange or perhaps I’m missing something again. 20 minutes and as long again to sort out the details here.

Across
1 Guard at church coming between wife and husband? (8)
WATCHMAN –  AT CH (at church) between W and MAN.
5 Formula for getting bed assembled (6)
BANDED – well, to get BED assembled we have the ingredients or formula, B AND ED. Is that it?
10 Quality of one smashing seductress I’ve not lovelessly abandoned (15)
DESTRUCTIVENESS – (SEDUCTRESS IVE NT)*, where NT = NOT losing O.
11 Outstanding hospital department with parts separated by tunnel (7)
EMINENT – The ENT (ear, nose, throat) department has MINE (tunnel) inserted.
12 Label certain notes “of uncertain authenticity” (7)
DUBIOUS – DUB (label) IOUS (notes of promises to pay).
13 Pair carrying old item of furniture easy to get to the skip? (8)
PORTABLE – Pair = PR, insert O for old = POR, TABLE (item of furniture).
15 Manage to catch last of criminals in wood (5)
COPSE – COPE (manage) insert S last letter of criminals.
18 A very good person protecting you up to now (2,3)
AS YET – A ST (saint) insert YE = you.
20 Scot had to appear nasty about English and Poles (8)
CATHODES – (SCOT E HAD)*, the E from English. A cathode is a negative pole of e.g. a battery, as opposed to an anode.
23 Go down and see graduate getting certificate (7)
DIPLOMA – DIP (go down) LO (see) MA (graduate).
25 Young magician with the ultimate in spooky craft (7)
POTTERY – Harry POTTER plus Y from spookY.
26 Sigh with a debate rambling: an expression of annoyance (5,3,3,4)
WHATS THE BIG IDEA – (SIGH WITH A DEBATE)*.
27 Bet there will be no turning back — eager not to stop (6)
YANKEE – NAY (there will be no), reversed = YAN, KEE(N) = eager, endless.
28 Partners, kind to get involved in tricks (8)
CONSORTS – SORT (kind) inside CONS (tricks).

Down
1 Device I would obtain to prop up top of window (6)
WIDGET – W(indow), I’D GET (I would obtain).
2 Evidence in court set up — Athenian guilty finally (9)
TESTIMONY – TES = set, up; TIMON Shakespeare’s chap from Athens; Y = guilty finally.
3 Time of festival — Rev’s looking silly in tricorn maybe (7)
HARVEST – (REV’S)* inside HAT = tricorn maybe.
4 Place of many races where you’ll see a northerner (5)
ASCOT – A SCOT = a northerner.
6 Bitter writer sitting beneath tree (7)
ACERBIC – ACER (tree of maple family) BIC (ballpoint pen).
7 On account of two playing together love ensues (3,2)
DUE TO – DUET = two playing together, O = “love ensues”.
8 Daughter is getting behind — almost a total failure? (8)
DISASTER – D (daughter) IS ASTER(N) = behind almost.
9 Being most scatty, gets confused about identity one way and another (8)
GIDDIEST – (GETS)* = GEST, insert ID and DI = identity one way and another.
14 Pain of second celebrity landing outside hospital (8)
BACKACHE – BACK (second, support); AC(H)E = celebrity with H inside.
16 Phony prince initially about to get offer (9)
PRETENDER – P (prince initially), RE (about) TENDER (offer).
17 Pastoral deity — dull-looking or a dish? (8)
PANDOWDY – PAN a pastoral deity, DOWDY = dull-looking; I got it from wordplay then looked it up, it is a New England apple-based pudding, sounds tasty, never heard of it here.
19 Foot in fixed position before toe is manipulated (7)
TOOTSIE – TO (in fixed position as in “the door is to”), (TOE IS)*.
21 Away from home a long time when torches may be necessary? (7)
OUTAGES – OUT (away from home) AGES (a long time).
22 Roundabout way Times gets free access? (6)
BYPASS – BY (times, x), PASS (free access). I came through Milton Keynes yesterday, on a roundabout way back from Oxford as the M1 was closed, and went round about a thousand roundabouts, at least it felt like it.
24 Something to eat when one of the minions entertains king? (5)
PRAWN – PAWN (one of the minions) has R (king) inserted.
25 Some chap, a bloke making a name in Spain (5)
PABLO – hidden as above.

79 comments on “Times 28071 – your Wednesday B and LOG.”

  1. I had a ? here, and it was my LOI, but I think ‘formula for getting bed’ is the wordplay, and ‘assembled’ is the definition for BANDED (e.g. together).
  2. I was getting worried, as BANDED, YANKEE, TOOTSIE, & PANDOWDY continued to elude me. PANDOWDY finally came to me (I thought it was two words; actually, I’ve only come across ‘apple pan dowdy’), giving me an initial Y, which finally got me to recall YANKEE (no idea what kind of bet it is). TOOTSIE was a long time coming, in large part because for me a tootsie is a toe not a foot. BANDED after an alphabet trawl turned up nothing better; then the light dawned.
  3. I couldn’t find it in Collins, because I looked under ‘tootsie’, which yields only ‘toots’.
  4. Third consecutive time of around 36 minutes for me. I thought a tootsie was a toe too, and that is how ‘tootsy’ is defined in Collins. I note that Cambridge has toe or foot, while Oxford/Lexico goes with foot. You pays your money…

    Agree with Kevin on BANDED, but still not a contender for Clue of the Year, in my book.

  5. After the A to I clue recently ( reverse iota) the B and ED today was a gimme. Never heard of PANDOWDY but gettable from wordplay, leading to another nho YANKEE bet assembled from instructions. I’m another in the TOOTSIE toe camp, but as last in it had to be. 21:30
  6. And I’m streaming my failure as we speak: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1135582892.

    It took me 13:30 (!) to reach PANDOWDY / YANKEE / BANDED. BANDED came four minutes later. Still thought I might get a sub-20 but couldn’t figure out the last two.

    Edited at 2021-09-01 03:08 am (UTC)

  7. 37 minutes, with much of that spent in the SW corner and at the end with BANDED in the NE. Never heard of a YANKEE ‘bet’ (and even after looking it up I still have no idea what it is) or PANDOWDY, both of which went in unconfidently from the wordplay. I thought a TOOTSIE just referred to a ‘toe’ and not a ‘foot’, but apparently not. Nothing to do with poetry anyway.

    Favourite was BANDED which I parsed as a clue as definition.

    Thanks to Pip and setter

    1. Very common bet format in the UK (at least when I was in the industry, early 80s). Select four horses, dogs, etc – that makes 6 doubles, 4 trebles, 1 four-way accumulator, 11 bets in total.
      1. If your selections are at sufficiently long odds to justify it, you can instead have a Lucky 15, which adds in the four singles.
        1. …and for completeness (also – you never know – they may turn up sometime):
          CANADIAN – 5 selections, 26 bet permutations. Named because Canadians are even more extravagant, and given to excess, than Americans – right?
          HEINZ – 6 selections, 57 bets (I think that excludes the doubles, you can work it out from Pascal’s triangle). Named because, er, obvious.

          1. The Heinz does include the doubles, and can similarly be extended to a Lucky 63. Alas, my misspent youth has continued in my advancing years….
      2. When I was working in the local betting shop in my youth a yankee included the four singles, so it was like philjordan’s Lucky 15, something I’ve never heard of.
      3. Thanks for your reply. I also saw the subsequent posts. I think I now understand but I’m pretty slow on the uptake for these sort of things and would have been a miserable failure as a gambler. Being thick therefore does have its rewards!
    2. Yankee = 4 selections making 11 bets. 6 doubles, 4 trebles, one fourfold.

      It used to be the most popular bet until someone came up with the idea of a Lucky 15, which is the Yankee plus 4 additional single bets.

      Ironically the Lucky 15 existed before as a bet called the Yap. The ‘Lucky’ part came from the idea that you could induce bettors (setters please note the correct spelling) to stake the 4 extra units if you gave them a bit back with consolations and bonuses. Because the terms Yankee and Yap were less than ideal as a marketing tool, a whole new lexicon involving lucky came into being.

      Strangely enough the Yankee seems to be coming back into fashion.

    3. A Yankee is 11 bets from four selections:
      6 doubles, 4 trebles and 1 accumulator (all four selections). Doubtful if a super yankee would be clued by our esteemed setters (5 selections, 26 bets) but you might get a patent (3 selections,
      7 bets) or a heinz (6 selections, 57 bets), named for obvious reasons. The knowledge acquired in a well spent youth!
  8. Same, dubious about banded but agree with Kevin and Ulaca: banded together/assembled. Pandowdy NHO and didn’t know if Pan was a pastoral god, or another sort of god, or if there was a lift-and-separate between pastoral and god. But finally getting Yankee (heard of) gave dowdy and Pan was best guess. And another tootsies for toes – might be geographical? Though my Australian Macquarie dictionary has TOOTSY = foot, nary a toe in sight.
  9. Gave up sooner than usual because I had zero confidence that I could solve the remaining two:
    BANDED
    PANDOWDY – on reflection that was gettable, obviously I had the DOWDY bit.

    Overall, happy with my performance on this – thanks to Pip, but I’m reluctant to thank the setter for leaving me with those dregs.

  10. 49 minutes. I had all but three answers as my half-hour target passed. 5 minutes later I worked out the unknown PANDOWDY from wordplay but then needed a further 14 minutes for BACKACHE and CATHODES. I can only think I must have been very tired when I got to these, as with checkers B???A?H? in place ‘pain’ = ACHE should have been obvious and BACK would then have fallen into place as the first part of the word. As for CATHODES, I thought it was an anagram and even had SCOT HAD E indicated as anagrist but I still failed to find the answer until the C checker from BACK was in place.

    I’m in the TOOTSIE / foot camp which seems to have been where the word started and then became extended to mean ‘toe’.

    A little research reveals that PANDOWDY has made two appearances in MEPHISTO puzzles (which I never do). It also appeared in a 15×15 discussion where the word ‘pandowdies’ was used in a clue to provide anagrist get to UPSIDE DOWN – you needed to add a U and lose an A. That was back in 2007, around the time I discovered TfTT and it was blogged by the delightful foggyweb who some other old-timers here will remember.

    Edited at 2021-09-01 04:35 am (UTC)

  11. B+E+D is the exact formula for bed. — my third one in.

    Time 28 minutes with a slow down for trouble on the extreme southwest.

    FOI 1ac WATCHMAN

    LOI 17dn PANDOWDY — Cornish? On edit no — German — through Philadelphia 1833.

    COD 20dn TOOTSIE foot for a baby, toe for a girlfriend like Dustin/Dorothy.

    Denise, who is appearing on ‘Countdown’ soon, saved us all a lot of bother with her YANKEE! Brill.

    WOD 1dn WIDGET

    I should have broken 20 minutes.

    Edited at 2021-09-01 06:40 am (UTC)

    1. If Denise is indeed to appear on “Countdown”, can you possibly get her to surreptitiously poison Anne Robinson’s glass of water ? The great show on which I made a total of 16 appearances nearly 30 years ago has been in decline ever since Nick Hewer took over, but at least I could understand what he was saying, and he didn’t bark at the contestants. You wouldn’t allow Danny Dyer near “Mastermind”, and the same principle should have applied here. I watch the show in 20 minutes now, by recording it and liberally using fast forward.

      Getting to the puzzle, I fortunately knew of PANDOWDY (but not of its ingredients) and confidently entered BANDED quite early on.

      I’ve always considered that TOOTSIES were a childish appellation for toes, but I shrugged and put it in eventually.

      Harry bloody Potter should be banned from these puzzles (and probably everywhere else), and can take the Hobbits and their ilk with him.

      FOI WATCHMAN
      LOI TOOTSIE
      COD WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA
      TIME 8:00

      …..and yes, my mood is extremely Meldrewvian today !

      Edited at 2021-09-01 07:55 am (UTC)

      1. At the last crossword championship I noticed Allan Saldanha, who I remembered from Countdown in 1988 due to him only being 10 years old when he appeared. Of course that was back in the Richard Whiteley heyday.
        1. Michael Wareham is a regular attendee at the Times crossword championships – he won a series of Countdown and is a former Times winner too. Google tells me that he was beaten in the Countdown Supreme Championship by none other than Allan Saldanha. I wonder if they’ve recognised each other, as they’ve both been at most of the Times championships since 2014.
      2. I agree with Phil about Anne Robinson. There has never been a really good replacement for Richard Whiteley, who kept making mistakes and being a bit laughable, but managed to bring a sort of charm to proceedings. Although she has obviously been told by the producers to smile a bit and not to give the contestants a hard time, Anne R can’t shake off her Weakest Link style: she still barks at them and you feel she is trying to denigrate them. What was wrong with Colin Murray? I thought he was rather good.

        Edited at 2021-09-01 10:37 am (UTC)

        1. I think the best host of Countdown is someone like Richard who appeared clueless, who is surprised when Susie explains the meaning of ‘aileron’ for the umpteenth time etc. The trouble with Colin was that he was cleverer than the contestants. And Anne pretends she is, which is worse.
          1. Anne Robinson is a journalist, a group aptly described by CS Lewis as having the air of being experts about everything.

            A bit like barristers…

        2. I liked Colin Murray. He was exactly what was needed to bring in a new and younger audience. Whether he’d have wanted to do it permanently is another matter. I must admit Anne does make me laugh occasionally and I don’t fast forward through her bits as I always did with Hewer. The person I want rid of at this moment is Johnny Vaughan in Dictionary Corner – an arrogant loudmouth who thinks he’s funny when he’s not at all.
  12. Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

    A game of two halves. About 5 mins pre-brekker for the top and 20 for the bottom.
    The quick bits I liked. The drawn out bits, less so, especially the NHO Pandowdy, the intriguing Banded and the Tootsie which to me has always meant toe.
    Thanks setter and Pip.

  13. One of those days where I was off the pace but ultimately just pleased to finish. My main problems were in the SW corner. It took me some time to think of “pawn” for “minion” and although I had —-KEE it took me a long time to get from there to YANKEE. I was then left to piece together the unknown PANDOWDY from Pan, who I knew was a deity but not a pastoral one and “dowdy”, which I wasn’t entirely sure meant dull.

    I thought the clue for BANDED was very good, though I had to resist my first instinct which was BADDED.

  15. 26 minutes with LOI BANDED put in after a few minutes looking for a better answer. Otherwise a steady solve, with PANDOWDY constructed. I then convinced myself I’d heard of it. COD to TESTIMONY. My English master Peg-leg Wakefield was a stickler on the use of DUE TO, so much so that I still always write ‘because of’ sixty years later. Decent puzzle. Thank you Pip and setter.
  16. Nho PANDOWDY, and BACKACHE / BANDED LOsI, so like nearly everyone else. Nearly biffed ‘evident’.

    I once drove a minibus through Milton Keynes, my arms ached atrociously the next day.

    18′ 18″, thanks Pip and setter.

  17. 18:36 but two errors. Pandower where I decided dour = dower and Runner = Yankee. I decided that a bet which was still live was a “runner”. I should have got Yankee as I have enjoyed a bet since I was about 10 years old. So 50 years. I have a Lucky 15 bet with three others each Saturday. I can’t remember seeing Yankee as a bet in the Times Xword before.

    Denise seems to know a lot about betting. You are not Denise Coates are you? 😀

  18. 26:49, but with PANDOWNY. Don’t know why! Another pink square to add to the collection. Joining Phil in the mood stakes. Thanks setter and Pip.
  19. 14:14 Mostly straightforward although I needed a PDM for BANDED and was held up in the SW corner by TOOTSIE (which I thought was only a toe and was looking for a metrical foot) and my LOI, PANDOWDY which I’d never heard of so had to trust to the wordplay. Thanks Pip and (I think) setter.
  20. I was at 39 mins and cruising when I crashed into PANDOWDY (I had the dowdy and eventually guessed the pan), CATHODES and BANDED. They took a further 10 mins. A bit like yesterday, I didn’t really enjoy this. Those unches at the beginning of words still being my bugbear. I thought 5 ac a very clunky clue. Got the two long ones early, but in the end that didn’t really help.

    Thanks Pip for the explanation.

    Edited at 2021-09-01 08:44 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks for that Kevin. I had no idea about Freberg – you find something new on TFTT all the time and later today I’m going to sample more of his oeuvre. I particularly want to hear his take on the banana boat song!
  22. 9:03. I started really quickly on this and it turned into a bit of a biff-fest as I chased a really fast time. Unfortunately this kind of solving can lead to careless errors on half-read clues, and BYWAYS is certainly one of those.
    And then I slowed down considerably, scotching the hope of a really fast time anyway. The SW corner caused me the most trouble, with the unknown PANDOWDY constructed from wordplay and difficulty getting TOOTSIE from ‘foot’. I’m very much in the ‘toe’ camp here.
    I’m pretty sure YANKEE as a bet must have come up here before because I knew it.
  23. 24 mins. Mostly straightforward, though I was not sure how BANDED worked or if PANDOWDY was really a thing. Thanks to our blogger, as ever.
  24. All reasonably straightforward apart from PANDOWDY which was new to me. Sounds very nice. Did the occasional YANKEE in my youth with very little success. Betting in France seems excessively complicated, and I’ve never really been tempted.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter.

  25. Very quick, indeed thought it was the quickie, then held up by PANDOWDY & YANKEE. LOI BANDED.
    .
  26. … but sorry, still don’t see it. If it’s ‘B and ED’, why those two components? What do they mean? What kind of ‘formula’ is this supposed to be? How are we supposed to guess this breakdown?

    Prob being dim. Perhaps somebody intelligent can explain.

      1. Sure, but why not ‘BE and ‘D”? Neither ‘formula’ makes any sense, or has any underlying meaning, does it? How does ‘formula’ inspire one to decide that breaking down the letters of a word into two arbitrary segments/groupings and sticking ‘AND’ between them must be the meaning of the clue?

        Or perhaps ‘B’ and ‘ED’ do have some clear meaning that’s eluding me?

        1. BE and D is an equally valid formula. Or it would be, if BEANDD was a word that meant assembled, of course. This sort of clue happens all the time in the crosswords I do (i.e. The Times) – words are broken up at random, unindicated places to have other random words or letters inserted. See: 1ac, 11ac, 15ac, 18ac, etc. etc.
          I find I often have to try a few different permutations till – bingo! – the answer drops out.
  28. I’m not at all sure that ACE equals CELEBRITY. The former indicates great skill not renown. Lord knows there are plenty of talentless celebs.

    Midas

  29. Really off the wavelength today, I found this a real struggle and in the end tried SANDOWDY, when Pan was staring me in the face. 15m 39s with that error, as YANKEE, TOOTSIE (never come across it meaning a foot rather than just a toe before) and PRAWN (very simple, don’t know why that took so long) all stumped me for some time.

    I suppose Harry Potter is indisputably a magician, but that confused me for a while as well.

  30. 27 mins with LOI tootsie. Ashamed to say I had to resort to an alphabet trawl to get it and needed to read the blog to understand why it was right. Alas, put in pandowsy rather than pandowdy so a DNF in the end. Having read the definition won’t be rushing to any restaurant to place an order.
  31. …pink square for PRAQN — stupid phone keyboards mutter mutter etc.

    BANDED was just a nonsense definition. Setter must try harder.

    PANDOWDY — had to look this up — no one in Britain has heard of this. Poor show clueing unknown American dishes in a British newspaper.

        1. Definitions from Oxford Languages
          tootsie
          /ˈtʊtsi/
          Origin

          mid 19th century: humorous diminutive of foot.

  32. Was on a personal best time of 33 minutes with only three left….but that is as far as I got. Sadly, ‘dowdy’ didn’t occur to me as an accompaniment for pan. Once I had used aids to get it, I then saw yankee. But, as with others, couldn’t see ‘banded’ even after trawling through all the suggested possibilities in a word finder app. I suppose, grumpily, that it works as a clue.
    Thanks, Pip, for providing explanation and insight and to the setter for most of the puzzle!
  33. Failed with PANDOWDY but happy with the rest, although TOOTSIE relates to toes, for me.
    Actually liked BANDED, so each to his own.
  34. I would like to say that this was the most interesting set of comments I have ever read here on TfTT! Such contrasts of opinion – great information from the turf accountants and Mr. Jordan letting rip! Pip-pip for Pip! I always notice that Harmonic Row keeps his head beneath the parapet and Mr. Meldrew doesn’t! First rate stuff. COD Pandowdy
  35. This is Eve’s pudding; in Scotland it’s called pandowrie, I think from the French “pain dore”. I used to like to fantasise that it was from Pandora, a kind of Classical Eve.
  37. BANDED was quite easy to see
    And I’d formerly met a YANKEE
    But PANDOWDY was grotty
    So a boot up the botty
    For the setter from my size ten TOOTSIE
  38. Finished another, so – very happy. An hour and a quarter in two sessions. FOI destructiveness, though I am not keen on all these ness words in crosswords, as noted above, each to their own. The Jumbos have them all the time. Seem a bit lazy on the setter’s part to me.

    Only six in up to 8d, then it started to collapse – very slowly. Saw pandowdy and asked husband to look it up as NHO but fitted the clue. Tried blisters at 14d but it didn’t parse and it didn’t open anything up so rubbed it out. Got what’s the big idea and tried tonight for 21d, again it didn’t parse or open anything up, so rubbed it out. (I solve on paper). LOI banded, still don’t get it really but it couldn’t be anything else. Next to LOI due to. Husband supplied cathodes after I sat looking at it with holes in and kept saying we OUGHT to be able to get this one. Did not parse portable, disaster, pretender or backache fully, did not see the lo in diploma, or the Timon in testimony, or the R for king in prawn, DNK a tootsie could be a foot. Was looking for a K in 24 down for ages. Thanks, Pip, and setter. GW.

  39. No real problem for me, even the NHO PANDOWDY. BANDED was my LOI even though I had it much earlier, since I was trying to see how BANDED meant formula, which of course it doesn’t.

    And count me among the people for whom TOOTSIE is a toe and not a foot.

    Edited at 2021-09-01 06:54 pm (UTC)

  40. Tootsie is definitely a toe, not a foot, whatever dictionaries may say. You encourage a toddler to wiggle his tootsies, not expecting to see him wave his foot around.
  41. 20.18. Off to a flyer like a ferret up a trouser leg but PB hopes dashed by having to work out banded up top and then prawn, yankee, tootsie (where I was appropriately trying to shoe-horn in trochee, metrical feet being my cruci-Pavlovian response to foot) and pan-whatnow down South.
  42. Trochee was my first thought for the foot too, I saw Tootsie quite early but left it till the end for the same reason as everyone else – it means a toe! Also I had one of those errant early flashes on 14 down which then stopped me seeing the obvious. The ‘second celebrity’ made me immediately think B-Lister which as ‘blister’ is a word linked to pain. It obviously wasn’t going anywhere as a trail but it still monopolised my thought process. Otherwise straightforward. Guessed Pandowdy and that set me up for Yankee.
  43. Not a fan of puzzles where you (ie me!) whizz through most of it and then spend ages on the last few

    I thought YANKEE was not a great clue at all. Is “there will be no” NAY? Isn’t the “there will be no” just confusing padding? And most others got the KEE idea but for me “not to stop” is quite a clumsy/confusing bit of w/p. Knew what a YANKEE is but that failure plus PANDOWDY and BANDED were not going to be got so the towel was in thrown after 30 mins. I also didn’t get PRAWN not being able to see beyond PAGE

    Lots to like in the rest of it

    Thanks Pip and setter

  44. Held up badly in the difficult SW due to not knowing Yankee, solving 27a as Onward, (a reversal of draw + no) and not thinking of Tootsie as other than a toe. Thankfully I knew Pandowdy, but my square by square rebuild was way pastthe hour. The pip
  45. Late to the party today .. not terribly keen on this crossword. Apart from the (increasingly frequent) unmentioned Americanism, I thought 5ac illogical and clumsy.
    As for tootsie, I have always thought it meant toe(s) but when I asked Mrs W, she said foot .. well she said floozie, to start with. And she has the OED on her side
  46. A late solve, but at least that’s let me see that I’m in distinguished company in having a Pandowny stab at the unknown US dish. Banded was poi, so to finish with one out of two tricky ones isn’t so bad. I certainly enjoyed the journey along the way. Invariant

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