Times 28,259: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Crossword Forum

Author   VerlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
This didn’t take me particularly long but I had a whale of a time nonetheless, enjoying the high grade GK-ish vocab and coherent surfaces. The two reverse cryptics at 13dn and 20dn stole the show for me, but there were lots of other pyrotechnics, including an excellent exemplar of the rare “in prime locations” device. Well set, setter, well set indeed.

After enjoying seeing TITULAR – a word that comes up nine times a day in quizzing but nowhere else – in the Concise a day or two back, how lovely to see WHEELHOUSES and also SCATTER (BRAINED*) in the Concise today: Scatterbrains is the team myself and Topical Tim co-pilot in OQL UK. A good omen!

Definitions underlined, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, {} deletions and [] other indicators.

Across
1 Ancient lines read back, exit play without hindrance (5)
OGHAM – GO [exit] reversed, + HAM{let} [play, minus LET = hindrance]
4 Observe judge with personality (9)
CELEBRATE – RATE, with CELEB
9 Syrian barrage set to defend area (9)
DAMASCENE – DAM [barrage] + SCENE [set], “defending” A(rea). FOI
10 Minister without portfolio at first gives serious offence (5)
ARSON – {p}ARSON [minister, minus P{ortfolio}]
11 Frankie maybe losing capital in urgent look for business (5,8)
POWER DRESSING – (Frankie) {h}OWERD, in PRESSING [urgent]
14 Slaughtered considerable number (4)
SLEW – double def
15 Rather crude show about torture avoiding extremes (10)
INDELICATE – INDICATE [show] about {h}EL{l}
18 Actress given to sin welcomed to cathedral city (5,5)
ELLEN TERRY – LENT to ERR, “welcomed” by ELY
19 Suicide in Aeneid accomplished nothing (4)
DIDO – DID 0
21 Cue and hit a second cracking long shot (7,6)
OUTSIDE CHANCE – (CUE + HIT A SECOND*)
24 Leader should abandon modest expedition (5)
HASTE – {c}HASTE
25 Italian back among Somalis playing very high (9)
ALTISSIMO – reversed IT in (SOMALIS*)
27 Gap admitting one to underworld knees-up? (9)
DISPARITY – DIS PARTY, “admitting” I
28 Coarse speech succeeded with Metropolis director (5)
SLANG – S(ucceeded) with (Fritz) LANG
Down
1 Tragedy where frenzied exposure consumes princess (7,3)
OEDIPUS REX – (EXPOSURE*) “consuming” DI
2 Edge one may observe in the Mendips (3)
HEM – hidden in {t}HE M{endips}
3 Suffering, as Scrooge might be described, having lost pounds? (6)
MISERY – MISER{l}Y, minus L = pounds (as in LSD, pounds shillings pence)
4 Charlie to become informed about a church blessing (9)
CLEARANCE – C(harlie) to LEARN about A, plus CE.
5 Fine deposit: smaller amount covers nothing (5)
LOESS – LESS “covers” 0
6 Live with a marvellous, sin-free divine? (8)
BEATIFIC – BE with A T{err}IFIC, minus ERR = sin
7 Scandalous date when soldiers upset tribe? (11)
ASSIGNATION – AS reversed GIS + NATION
8 Petunia picked in prime locations for Sicilian eminence (4)
ETNA – {p}ET{u}N{i}A in positions 2, 3, 5, 7… the first four prime numbers
12 Shelters at sea protecting scoundrel, who benefits (11)
WHEELHOUSES – protecting HEEL, WHO USES
13 Where you’d see old boy in shape — and soon? (6,4)
BEFORE LONG – reverse cryptic. If the shape is an OBLONG, you’d see O(ld) B(oy)… before LONG
16 Seriously old walls in home (9)
EARNESTLY – EARLY [old] “walls in” NEST [home]
17 Three different articles on scholar one detested (8)
ANATHEMA – AN + A + THE on M.A.
20 Which letter is used twice in this academic submission? (6)
THESIS – lovely meta clue. Which letter is used twice in THESIS? THE S IS!
22 Irish with a question, one for Arab (5)
IRAQI – IR with A Q, I
23 Old Bob made a meal of fish (4)
SHAD – S [as in LSD again] HAD [ate]
26 Sound made by duck for princess in opera? (3)
IDA – homophone of EIDER

68 comments on “Times 28,259: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Crossword Forum”

  1. What an excellent week of puzzles – many thanks to setters and editors. And thanks to V for the parse on BEFORE LONG which eluded me completely. I usually have a bit of a job figuring out which is OGHAM and which is Occam (or Ockham, and his razor) but managed to do it this time. I’d completely forgotten about Frankie Howerd so that one got past me as well. 23.14
  2. 33 minutes. Very good. Favourites were as already noted by others. POWER DRESSING was my pick for the ‘look for business’ def and Frankie Howard reminder. The ‘prime locations’ for ETNA and the BEFORE LONG trick weren’t far behind. OGHAM and LOESS looked new, but I see I’d met them both before, though undoubtedly not in real life.

    Apologies if I’ve missed this in the comments above, but I thought the ‘at sea’ at 12d being part of the def and not the more usual anagram indicator was also worth a mention.

    Thanks to Verlaine and setter

  3. 51 mins. An off-the-scale slow plod for me — admittedly with my mind elsewhere — but I doubt I’d have been much faster giving it whatever attention I normally muster. Hugely enjoyable nonetheless.
  4. Quite a few early solves, but slowed down, partly to ponder some of the definitions, such as in 4ac, where I was sure the answer was CELEBRATE, but didn’t see the definition or part of wordplay. The cultural references were all familiar. Finished in 38 minutes, at least this time without having to resort to aids, which was not the case yesterday. Some lovely surfaces that misdirect, eg clue to WHEELHOUSES.
  5. Ellen Terry had a famous “paper courtship” with George Bernard Shaw. At one point he wrote along the lines: “whilst you are young and beautiful, any fool can love you. When you are old I will have you to myself.” To which she replied: “Dear Liar”.

    Writesbad
    (I don’t mean to be anonymous – I don’t know how to join!)

  6. 36.50 but a bit of a struggle. Not helped by ellen terry being clued as 10 letters rather than two 5s. SW corner again tricksy until I finally saw earnestly which allowed me to give up on the dance being the knees up and correctly enter disparity.COD to Power dressing. Ooh er missus!
    Thx setter and blogger.
  7. I got that 26 across had eider and Ida as homophones. Likewise I succeeded in seeing pawn and porn too as homophones in a puzzle last week. My question is in those two pairs are they homophones because the”r” in the second word isn’t pronounced ? Or are they homophones because an “r” sound is added to Ida and pawn? Thought I had a handle on rhotic vs non- rhotic but still puzzled( even after trying to wade through Wikipedia article!)
  9. Verlaine, I can second every word of your first paragraph. What a delightful and clever puzzle, solved in 40 minutes (moderately quick for me). Like z……, I too interpreted HAM as a verb, to “play without hindrance”, but otherwise I understood all of the wordplay and knew all of the terms mentioned except for Ellen Terry. THESIS, BEFORE LONG and ETNA were absolutely superb, but there was much more to like as well.

    Edited at 2022-04-08 04:45 pm (UTC)

  10. Very nice, Friday-ish without being ultra-difficult. Our blogger has correctly predicted my reaction to the WHEELHOUSE, which is where every quizzer wants the questions to be. Suitably impressed by the prime letters and the THESIS clue, both very clever.
  12. Loved this – except that I’ve recently gone back to doing the crosswords in the print paper and 18a was clued as a single 10-letter word! I ended up trying to justify a city called something like Ellinderry, hoping Jenny Lind was an actress as well as a singer…

    Ah well!

  15. In my paper edition the Ellen Terry clue was enumerated as (10) not (5,5), so that didn’t help! Some very good clues, though.
  16. Sorry, just saw that it’s already been noted – I looked through the first page of comments but didn’t persevere to the end!

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