Times 28101 – not a kookaburra or a cockatoo, this time.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Only one unknown word for me, my LOI in this mild level puzzle today, yet another Australian creature with a weird onomatopoeic name apparently derived from Yagara, a native language. The rest flew in within 15 minutes, I’d heard of the giant rhubarb plant and the lapwing and I’d looked up the origin of 24a before.

Across
1 Came across old shot of just the top of a face (7)
METOPIC – MET (came across) O (old) PIC (shot). Relating to the forehead.
5 Funny reason one can’t get into the theatre for audition? (7)
PLAYFUL – sounds like the play is full so you can’t get in.
9 Racer frantic in sailing dinghy for bird repellent (9)
SCARECROW –  (RACER)* inside SCOW a sailing dinghy.
10 Cleaner beginning to move ornament (5)
CHARM – CHAR (cleaner) M(ove).
11 More than enough length in inside of camper (5)
AMPLE – L inside the central letters of c AMPE r.
12 Rank hat as being something that may be made out of this? (9)
ASTRAKHAN – (RANK HAT AS)*. A curly sheepskin fur, originally from the Astrakhan area of Southern Russia, used for hat and collars.
13 Get corn nicely developed in process vital for growth (8,5)
NITROGEN CYCLE – (GET CORN NICELY)*.
17 Bussing company nearly employing one from another branch that’s close (7,6)
KISSING COUSIN – Bussing in olden times meant to kiss with a smack of the lips. Then CO and USIN(G) = company nearly employing.
21 Burning lust in partially vacated part of eastern Europe (9)
PYROMANIA – PY = partially, vacated; ROMANIA in E Europe.
24 Mother’s put in limitless cumin for flavour (5)
UMAMI – MA inside (c)UMI(n) = limitless cumin. One of five distinct tastes, along with salt, sweet, sour and bitter; orinigally from the Japanese word.
25 American article on where Queen Victoria died (5)
IOWAN – A chap from Iowa. Victoria died in the Isle of Wight, at her favourite Osborne House.
26 Remove liquid from one local dairy farm’s Jersey, perhaps (9)
BAILIWICK – BAIL (remove liquid from) I (one) WICK (old English for a village or dairy farm, as in Gatwick, or Keswick which meant ‘cheese farm’.) Guernsey and Jersey are both Bailiwicks administratively.
27 Practice of firing in large plant losing a year (7)
GUNNERY -GUNNERA (a kind of giant rhubarb) loses A and then add Y for year.
28 Plan musical performance with piano for queen (7)
CONCEPT – CONCERT has the R (queen) replaced by P for piano.

Down
1 Fail to include a line in service book (6)
MISSAL – MISS (failure) A L(ine)
2 Adornments for horse carriage has swine pinching some number (9)
TRAPPINGS – TRAP (carriage) PIGS (swine) insert N for number.
3 Excuse pressure concerning words used for speech (7)
PRETEXT – P (pressure) RE (concerning) TEXT (word used for speech).
4 Australian bird dog walked off with in piece of cloth (9)
CURRAWONG – CUR (dog) RAG (piece of cloth) with WON (walked off with) inserted. Once I had C*R*A*O*G I suspected some weird Australian creature was going to be the answer and the wordplay offered up this one, of which I had not heard but it seemed likely. I had to check to be sure, it’s a handsome black or grey bird that eats fruit.
5 Flyer exercises intelligence (5)
PEWIT – PE (exercises) WIT (intelligence). Alternative spelling of PEEWIT a kind of lapwing.
6 Old needing to bend when accepting seat mostly (7)
ARCHAIC – ARC (bend) has CHAI(R) inserted.
7 Female with whip showing off (5)
FLASH – F for female, LASH = whip. As in Flash Harry perhaps.
8 Complained about me interrupting dental working (8)
LAMENTED – ME inside (DENTAL)*.
14 Arab in English golf and athletic club is conceited individual (9)
EGOMANIAC – E (English) G (golf) OMANI (an Arab) AC (athletic club).
15 Like melodious chorus of Cambridge that is welcoming learner (9)
CANTABILE -CANTAB (Latin short for Cantabriensis, from Cambridge) I E (that is) insert L for learner. A songlike piece of music.
16 Leaping to pass over computer query? (8)
SKIPPING – double definition. No, I’m amending this in light of erudite comments below. The definition is leaping, SKIP = pass over and a PING is a kind of query as explained below.
18 Big and obvious statement of identity with Poles — European (7)
IMMENSE – I’M ME an obvious statement, N S poles, E European.
19 Statuary: it ain’t oddly, depicting reptile (7)
SAURIAN – alternatel ellers of S t A t U a R y I t A i N’ t. Like a lizard.
20 Soldiers watching decide on film (6)
PICKET – PICK (decide on) ET (that film again).
22 Argue over a name for member of the rose family (5)
ROWAN – ROW = argue, AN.
23 Boleyn, Henry’s second to go, treated not in this way! (5)
NOBLY – &Lit. Remove E (Henry’s second letter) from Boleyn, then treated = (BOLYN)*.

88 comments on “Times 28101 – not a kookaburra or a cockatoo, this time.”

  1. Too many biffs for me to appreciate fully the elegance of several wordplays .. letter patterns seem to offer few alternatives (I?W?N, or B?I?I?I?K, as just two examples). Certainly the trend seems to be for more and more somewhat obscure vocab in these backpagers, CURRAWONG being today’s prime example. All fine and dandy from the comfort of one’s home but they would make you sweat in the battlerooms of competition. Many thanks to both setter and blogger, as ever.
  2. LOI Currawong. I couldn’t get walked off with = won. So I expected a pink square or two.

    COD: Kissing Cousin.

    1. What made you plump for WONG as the ending without having made the connection to won? Before I got there I had GONG, DONG, etc in the running.
      1. Hi pootle. I just guessed and expected to be wrong.

        I was pretty sure of CUR + RA (—) G and I was also confident it ended _ONG. An alphabet trawl failed to reveal, to me at least, a 3 letter word -ON=walked off with. But Walked off suggested WO and nothing else suggested itself. So I went with the word that looked like it might be right.

        In the past when I have plumped for an unlikely answer from an unlikely reading of wordplay I’ve noticed I would have been better putting in a known word or an answer that least looks like a word rather than going for a doubtful looking word derived from dodgy wordplay interpretation.

  3. Slight confession, I worked out what CURRAWONG had to be and looked it up to make sure it existed, because it’s an unfair word and we should not be kowtowing to Australians in the run-up to an away Ashes series. Is that such a bad thing to do? Is it cheating? Yes. Yes it is, but in modern politician style, I say we should just move on and stop concentrating on the bad thing I’ve just done.
    1. What’s the latest on the tour going ahead Tim? Would England be happy with all five Tests being played in Wagga Wagga?
      1. Latest I read is a plan for the accompanying families to be allowed quarantine as a big group where they can at least mix with each other. Not sure if/how this includes the players or whether it will indeed mean that Wagga Wagga’s time has come…
    2. As I said the other day, if you can convince yourself that it’s the answer you would have put in if you were in the championship, it counts as an all correct solve. How easy you find it to convince yourself is a personal matter and nobody else’s business.
  4. 20:17. I sometimes complain about puzzles that are hard by dint of obscurity, and this was one of those. However I really enjoyed it, because it seemed to me that all the tricky words were very clearly indicated, even if the indications weren’t always easy to unravel. So very much a wordplay puzzle, which is my kind of puzzle.
  5. 29:16. A few of the unknowns required careful assembly but they were generously clued. The NOBLY/BAILIWICK crossing was the major hold-up.
  6. Good fun. Straightforward thought I didn’t know about the nitrogen cycle, gunnera or the family of the Rowan. COD IOWAN

    Life has become a little more hectic recently as I have started doing a stint at the local banque alimentaire. As I used to do the same when I lived in Ely, I feel I can now put “International Food Banks -tinned goods stacking specialist” on my CV.

  7. As yesterday, an easy one with intermingled NHOs, including METOPIC and CURRAWONG, which didn’t appear in my text reminder, so not that well known in Wales.
    COD BAILIWICK because Jersey is rarely Jersey in a clue.
  8. So those of us who live in the Mother Country who constantly snigger at Colonials who know not Archbishops or Hertfordshire villages got our comeuppance today with a bird that everyone with a currajong tree in their back yard knows intimately and with some affection. Fair go.
    Otherwise a comparable puzzle to yesterday’s and a comparable 26 minute time.
    I thought “Fail to include a line” was a bit irritating since it MISS didn’t include AL and for a wile I doubted my extensive knowledge of prayer books. METOPIC I made up from the wordplay and never doubted it.
    I didn’t find NITROGEN easy to unpick from the fodder, which slowed things down. -ING looked too likely.
    I liked the historically plausible Boleyn clue.
  9. DNF. Thought we had, but found the only word in the dictionary to fit B*i*i*i** which wasn’t Bailiwick, and even when I had Bailiwick I didn’t get picket. Once I had got to 14/28 I was happy; 26/28 I’m ecstatic. Had to dig deep for the anagram out of rank hat as. NHO metopic, biffed from clue. didn’t parse archaic. What sort of cousin/ Tried distant – currawong put that straight. Lots to enjoy here. Two mania(c)s, for a start. I had an hour and a quarter’s worth. Thanks, Pip, and setter.
  10. NHO CURRAWONG and METOPIC is new to me as well, with the word play being not quite enough to give me the first letter and thus leaving me flummoxed by the now obvious MISSAL as well. Probably about 25 mins barring these three which refused to budge in a further inordinate length of time. So a DNF for me, setting me up nicely for the refreshing cup of afternoon Earl Grey.
  11. An unhurried trudge around the grid. NW and some of the longer answers took longest to give up.

    Guessed the unknown METOPIC. Spent too long thinking what the last four letters of PRETEXT might be. CURRAWONG of course a bit of stuff and nonsense.

    Pencilled in KISSING COUSIN as couldn’t see what else it might be — NHO bussing = kissing

  12. 30.30 but took two sessions broken by a trip to the golf course. Tricky I thought with my LOI currawong. Got the cur anr rag easily enough but took a time to fit won in. Never heard of the bird in question but was happy enough with the cluing.
    Ditto metopic.

    COD for me was iowan.

  13. I got a bunch of Acrosses right away, starting from the bottom, but then there these few unknowns…

    At the very end, I had to cheat a little; though I figured it must be CURRA_ONG, “walked away with” went right past me. I also didn’t know what was going on with the A in GUNNERY when I put it in. METOPIC was utterly new, so for a minute there I was working a Mephisto.

    I sometimes use the word BAILIWICK, which I picked up from a former coworker. For example, the crossword page in (and @) The Nation, was my BAILIWICK, until it disappeared from the map thanks to our current editor in chief. And don’t get me started.

    Edited at 2021-10-06 05:02 pm (UTC)

  14. I must be getting awfully dim in my old age because (despite Pip calling it a mild level puzzle) it took me more than an hour, and that was with liberal use of aids by the end. The Boleyn clue was extremely good I thought: I overthought it so that Boleyn became Anne and then Ann … Some very obscure words I thought: metopic, nitrogen cycle, currawong, saurian.
  15. Held up by 4dn CURRAWONG and 26ac BAILIWCK. CURRAWONG and 24ac UMAMI were v obscure and had to be checked in the OED. The ‘wick’ bit of BAILIWICK’ turns out to be E.Anglian / Essex dialect for a dairy farm, not very sporting that!
  16. 28.52. A smattering of tricky vocab stretched this solve out a bit. Metopic unknown but it had to be. Needed a few checkers to get the type of cycle required at 13ac. With the bail and the I pencilled in I couldn’t see any alternative to bailiwick even if I didn’t know wick meant dairy farm or quite what the definition alluded to. Struggled to get the won bit of currawong. Pretext LOI after an alpha-trawl, the X being unhelpfully located up the far end of the alphabet.
  17. 27:50 earlier this evening. Simply not at the races today, with more biffs than Tyson Fury, so thanks to Pip for the explanations. Not one of my better days.
    COD 21 ac “pyromania” where I had totally failed to understand what the clue was about until 16 d “skipping” ( which was biffed) came to the rescue
    Thanks to Pip for a neat blog and to the setter for, for me, a rather frustrating puzzle!
  18. With ten minutes on the ozzie bird which i finally had to look up. Annoyingly I saw the world play and was doing a mental trawl through the alphabet — bon, con, don etc — looking for a word meaning ‘walked away with’. But I got bored around about son and ton so stopped.
  19. Just over the border in Southern Chile, the gunnera has such huge thick thorny stems that the natives used it as a weapon.
  20. Late entry; good time for me; enjoyable puzzle

    Last two were the COUSIN’s first word and the leaping. Wanted STEPPING but KISSING came in a moment of revelation and SKIPPING wrote itself in

    Thanks Pip and setter

  21. Thanks setter and pip
    First go at solving a Times puzzle on-line – took 1 hr 7 min. Enjoyed completing a puzzle in a different way, starting very early in the morning and finishing it that evening. Like others have said, many less obvious words scattered throughout but all reasonably clued to make them gettable.
    Started off with CHARM and ended up with the tricky CANTABILE.

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