Times 28177 – Start the way you mean to go on

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
A wrong guess at the Malagasy native did for me, in what was otherwise a very nice way to get the week going. Onwards and upwards…

ACROSS

1 Notice doctor cuddling new arrival (6)
ADVENT – N (new) in AD VET
4 Distort way fighter appears (8)
WARPLANE – WARP LANE; atypically, we have a literal appearing medially, rather than initially or finally
10 Mike and others argue about face of kroner that could be forged (9)
METALWORK – M (Mike – NATO alphabet) ET AL (and others) ROW reversed (argue about) K[rone]; alternatively, bung it in and move on
11 Track dog crossing river (5)
TRAIL – R in TAIL
12 Token beer knocked back in old ship in Orkney, say (11)
ARCHIPELAGO – CHIP (token) ALE reversed (beer knocked back) in ARGO (Jason’s old ship); friends of mine live on Gairsay, the island with the lowest year-round population in the UK (2 people). Because the Royal Mail doesn’t honour its pledge of delivering to every domestic postal address in the UK, it pays the household instead and leaves the mail in a shed on the Mainland (the main island – not to be confused with Doon Sooth – Scotland)
14 Crack band with no name (3)
GAG – GA[n]G
15 Cast stand up for rubbish collector (7)
DUSTPAN – anagram* of STAND UP
17 Doctor works with unknown fluid problem (6)
DROPSY – DR OPS Y
19 Northern swimmer Jack sent round extract from Moby-Dick? (6)
BALEEN – reversal of N EEL AB; some love this book, but I think it’s rather a mess, in line with the first published review (from England, as it happens). That Melville was a very fine writer there can be little doubt, as his shorter works demonstrate.
21 New rock producer‘s refreshing vocal number (7)
VOLCANO – VOCAL* NO (number)
23 Organ needing repairs every so often (3)
EAR – [r]E[p]A[i]R[s]
24 Marshal Ney was ready for the first item in his diary? (3,5,3)
NEW YEARS DAY – NEY WAS READY* (marshal is the cunning anagram indicator)
26 Bloke in pub, backsliding — after this treatment? (5)
REHAB – HE in BAR all reversed
27 German city contracted one mate working for it? (9)
MUNICIPAL – MUNIC[h] I PAL; pretty much an all-in-one, I reckon
29 Is US aviation pioneer able to abandon British watersport? (8)
CANOEING – CAN [b]OEING; a bit contrived, no?
30 Grovel, offering punch and whiskey to wife (6)
KOWTOW – KO (knock-out punch) W (Whiskey in Nato alphabet) TO W; one of the few actions still allowed in Hong Kong without the perpetrator being arrested for subversion, sedition or collusion with foreign powers

DOWN

1 In military, captain’s first — plus handsome escort (3,5)
ARM CANDY – C[aptain] AND (plus) IN ARMY; I have never knowingly been called this
2 Prophetic RC HQ ejects a nun finally (5)
VATIC – VATIC[an]
3 PIN’s missing a zero (3)
NIL – N[a]IL
5 After a week minor perhaps gets bolshie (7)
AWKWARD – WARD (minor perhaps) after A WK; a favourite word of my father
6 Favourite staff all got up in gold, ready for OPEC? (11)
PETRODOLLAR – PET (favourite) ROD (staff) ALL reversed OR (heraldic gold); ready as in money
7 Obsessive is, say, pointing up a source of relief (9)
ANALGESIA – ANAL (obsessive) IS EG reversed A
8 Speech lauding record year under Brussels (6)
EULOGY – LOG Y follows EU (behemothic bureaucracy)
9 Spirit bottle regularly found in enclosure (6)
POTEEN – [b]O[t]T[l]E in PEN
13 Secure cheeky child the Spanish firework upset (11)
IMPREGNABLE – IMP (cheeky child – a frequenter of Crosswordland) followed by reversal of EL BANGER (the in Spanish and type of firework respectively)
16 Finish off looking round classy creature on bed (3,6)
SEA URCHIN – U (classy in the Cruciverbal Nancy Mitfordian sense) in SEARCHIN[g]
18 Overdraft in wobbly organisation’s a setback (4,4)
BODY BLOW – OD in WOBBLY*
20 Converted cardinal hosts society correspondent (7)
NEWSMAN – S in NEWMAN; Henry Newman was an Anglican cleric who became a Roman Catholic
21 The sixth queen raised capital (6)
VIENNA – VI (the sixth, as in Edward VI) ANNE reversed
22 Malagasy native‘s refurbished centre (6)
TENREC – CENTRE*; I guessed NETREC, so ‘nul points’ for me; a kind of Madagascan hedgehog
25 Autocrat has to abandon singular repository (5)
DEPOT – DE[s]POT; no fun to live under these wretches
28 I’m surprised there are no tips on exclusive (3)
COO – [s]COO[p]; much beloved by hacks the world over, since they sell advertising

85 comments on “Times 28177 – Start the way you mean to go on”

  1. Same as others on TENREC. Some nice ones as already noted, like the El Banger which reminded me of a famous divorce case from years ago that was required reading when I had to study that kind of thing (Parojcic v Parojcic in the remote case you were wondering). I read MOBY DICK eons ago on another distant island – Nantucket (aptly) where we were renting a fishing shack from a descendant of the Starbuck family, and haven’t opened it since. 18.32 that included a prolonged fit of sneezing – big mistake vacuuming.
    1. Hoovering whilst doing the crossword! I might try that if it gets one under 20 minutes.
  2. A very pleasing 24:52, so I have now accumulated four solves under 30 minutes. Guessed right for the TENREC, which somehow seemed the marginally less unlikely option. NHO VATIC but it didn’t matter, given the cryptic. Like others LOI was WARPLANE; even with PLANE penciled in, the WARP was slow to come. I liked IMPREGNABLE which, once constructed, still didn’t resolve into a real word straight away
  4. My entry should read “SEE the back of it” but the platform isn’t allowing me to edit my own post. Chacon a son gout Jerry !
  5. I liked Marshal Ney, and petrodollars as ready for OPEC.
    Another with the wrong animal. I see 4 ways to look at it:
    1. I guessed right, so the clue is perfectly fine.
    2. I guessed right, but I disapprove of cluing obscure words in such a way that you must make a random guess and hope for the best.
    3. I guessed wrong, but I’m all in favour of unknown obscure answers being clued as anagrams so that solvers have a 50% or less chance of guessing correctly.
    4. I guessed wrong and despised the clue which requires a random guess.

    I’d have put myself in category 4 until 2 weeks ago… when putting together the Christmas Turkey I argued in favour of the completely untenable “a shah/Asia” homophone just to give solvers something to comment about/decry/praise.

    So I have some sympathy for the Times editor using such an appalling clue for such an obscure word.

    Apart from that one, thoroughly enjoyed.

    1. 2….but with the obvious caveat that it’s hard to determine what exactly constitutes “obscurity”.

      Was revelling in the delightful birdsong of the CURRAWONG this afternoon, but many on here disapproved of its inclusion in the puzzle a few months ago.

      1. I remember the OREAD day, mostly because that day I remembered OREAD from a previous puzzle. It was the upper down clue on the right hand side. And as an Aussie who’s visited the (plague-filled) eastern states and seen and heard them, obviously CURRAWONG is not obscure, unlike TENREC: I’ve never been to Malagasy Republic.
    2. None of the above. I knew the word so no guessing involved but I still think the clue is poor.
  6. TENREC seemed more likely to me than NETREC, which looks more like a Fortran variable name. But it still came down to a guess.

    I got beaten up on here a decade ago for declaring “oread” to be an obscure word. Think the advice was to deal with it, absorb it, and get it right next time. Not so easy to accept when you’ve just ruined a good solve of course, but today I got lucky.

    Thanks setter, and thanks to the HKV for the blog.

  7. Not quite sub-10 double with QC. TENREC appears more frequently in barred puzzles so no problem there. VATIC was almost NHO and certainly little idea as to its meaning but wdp led to right biff. Enjoyed reversal of BANGER in middle of IMPREGNABLE, and good to recall the days of the PETRODOLLAR – I recall there were quite serious discussions about introducing a new international trade currency in the 1970s (Special Petroleum Receipts?) … HNY to one and all; thanks to setter & blogger.
    1. Small point of order. You can’t have biffed it if you didn’t know its meaning.
      1. The word ‘biff’ has come to be used to mean just ‘bunged in’, without the original sense of ‘from definition’. We might decry the loss of a precise usage, and the subsequent impoverishment of the language, but it is in the nature of language to change like this and there’s nothing we can do about it.
        Admittedly this development was arguably a bit quick.
          1. My tongue was in my cheek really but I have noticed the word being used this way more and more. Considering it was only invented about 5 minutes ago this is a remarkably rapid example of semantic shift.
          2. I’m sure it was discussed here — what new words we might need for bunged-in-from-wordplay and bunged-in-from-crossers — that was never resolved. Or perhaps it was. Biffing does it all
  8. A 16-min DNF, thanks to the hedgehog. Distinctly unimpressed, as no doubt the hedgehog would have been.
  9. I fully support your hearty endorsement of Moby Dick Jerry. I also fully support those who think it’s a load of rubbish! But we’re still having the discussion 170 years later, so nobody can doubt its significance.
  10. Easy-ish start to the New Year. Only POTEEN and TENREC held me up at all — the cryptic on the first was fairly sound, however TENREC was a hit and hope — pleased to see it come good.
  11. Nice to hear a Hermit Kingdom resident still refer to themselves as an Aussie isla! Perhaps there is still hope.
  12. I know that one man’s obscurity is another man’s wossname but I gave this the first loud “tsk” of the year. As already pointed out by others, the phrase “obscure word clued by anagram” has been used enough in the past that this sort of clue now seems like deliberate trolling by setter or editor.

    Anyway, I cheated by checking whether NETREC or TENREC was the required answer and I’m not even sorry.

    1. I agree, but just for once I knew TENREC perfectly well, so it wasn’t an unknown for me. It’s just down to what you know…..
  13. Held up at the end because I had RIG instead of GAG, both entirely plausible. In the end it was the EG which had to be in there somewhere which got me over the line.
  14. 16.04. This was a pretty smooth solve for me which I enjoyed very much. Luckily I managed to dredge up tenrec from somewhere. A small delay at the end over canoeing where the three vowels together were unexpected.
  15. Nearly all good, in two spells totalling 40 minutes, but another who guessed NETREC, didn’t much like the sound of either option. Beware of POTEEN it is usually fiery rotgut.
  16. LOI ARCHIPELAGO, because I didn’t recognize Orkney.
    Wonder why the second page behaves like a LJ page should, with Like buttons and expanded threads opening on the same page, but page one is still a letdown?

    Edited at 2022-01-03 03:40 pm (UTC)

  17. Steady solve for me. About 40 mins once relatives, angry wife and pyracantha all dealt with. Not sure which was thorniest.

    A childhood misspent reading natural history books paid off since I knew what a TENREC is.

    Thanks U and setter. Not sure my 100% record for 2022 will survive tomorrow.

  18. I’m another NETREC so two pink squares for me. Otherwise a fun puzzle to start the first week of the year.
  19. Obscure Word Clued Hanagramitically! Stick that in yer Glossary! COD Warplane – WOD Netrec a multi-dimensional shoot-up, computer game for up to 16 players; the aim being wipe out ‘Dinsdale’, a giant Madagascan Hedgehog that has taken over our Galaxy. DNF with 17 minutes gone.
  20. As it was a Monday and possibly my last weekday off for a while, I thought I’d give the biggie a bash. I’d got everything apart from 4a after 49 minutes (being a biologist I am familiar with TENRECs, which, while they look very much like hedgehogs, are not closely related. Some coevolution at work), but that one just wouldn’t come, even though I considered the fighter bit might indicate a plane. I gave up on the hour and then discovered on here that my ARMBANDS was wrong. Nevertheless, as nobody seems to be saying this was a walk in the park, I am quite pleased with my attempt.
  21. 42 minutes and for me, too, TENREC seemed more likely than NETREC, so no problem there. It is strange that one can actually venture intelligent guesses about things which one otherwise knows absolutely nothing about, like exotic Madagascan animals (I thought it would be referring to a person, so maybe not so intelligent after all). Also never heard of VATIC, but that was easier. I would give a COD to CANOEING, which I had to biff to see which American aviation pioneer was meant, but then I found that very impressive.

    Edited at 2022-01-03 06:18 pm (UTC)

  22. A careless COWTOW spoiled my grid- I can see now why I didn’t understand the wordplay. I didn’t know TENREC either.
    I liked ARM CANDY and ARCHIPELAGO
    Regards
    Andrew

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