NOTE FROM Jackkt: Because of confusion at The Times the puzzle presented as 28679 in the Club and online is different from 28679 in the printed newspaper and the facsimile epaper. William has blogged the Club/ online version so discussions here should be limited to that one. Please don’t give away answers to the alternative puzzle (1ac: After restraint finding outlet for being creative again) as Mick Hodgkin (Times Puzzles Editor) has confirmed it will be appearing online the week after next and we shall blog it for discussion then. Thanks.
Now back to William’s blog:
DNF
A mixed bag of clues, continuing the generally easier-than-average theme of the week. Perhaps buoyed by false confidence, maybe just a silly error, I managed to put in an answer I knew to be wrong (7dn). Chambers wholeheartedly supports the setter, so I’ll just put this down to a lesson learned.
As usual for me, there were several other clues that were either half-known, half-remembered, or guessed (6dn still eludes my tiny brain). But despite the travails, it was 27:32 well spent.
Definitions underlined.
| Across | |
| 1 | Curlers having clothing with name written inside (5) |
| TONGS – TOGS (clothing) containing N (name). | |
| 4 | System of rules suppressing rebellious nonsense leads to uprising (4,5) |
| COUP DETAT – CODE (system of rules) containing UP (rebellious), then TAT (nonsense). | |
| 9 | Card game dropping one of its players in quality Home Counties town (9) |
| TONBRIDGE – BRIDGe (card game) minus an ‘e’ (East, one of its players) contained by TONE (quality). | |
| 10 | Cathedral dignitary, head of chapter, not giving name? (5) |
| CANON – first letter of Chapter + ANON (not giving name). | |
| 11 | Turn into fossil? Most of fossil badly done, ending in ignominy (6) |
| OSSIFY – all-but-the-last of (mostly) FOSSI |
|
| 12 | Little from Escoffier to fill primate’s hunger (8) |
| APPETITE – PETIT (‘little’ from Escofier, i.e. in French) contained by APE (primate). | |
| 14 | Unsympathetic emperor’s replacing one with offspring (10) |
| IMPERSONAL -IMPERiAL (emperor’s) replacing ‘i’ (one) for SON (offspring). | |
| 16 | Remote distance recalled after leaving end of line (4) |
| SLIM – MILeS (distance) reversed, excluding the ‘e’ (last letter of line). | |
| 19 | Upset about river excursion (4) |
| TRIP – TIP (upset) containing R (river). | |
| 20 | Small particular changes ignoring an area of Biblical studies (10) |
| SCRIPTURAL – S (small), then an anagram of PARTICULAR excluding one ‘a’ (area). | |
| 22 | Lake expert spinning in Black Sea, unable to progress? (8) |
| BECALMED – L (lake) + ACE (expert) all reversed, contained by B (black) + MED (sea). | |
| 23 | Drunkard throttling glutton delivering tap (6) |
| SPIGOT – SOT (drunkard) containing PIG (glutton). | |
| 26 | Teacher rejected backing key component of education? About time (5) |
| TUTOR – OUT (rejected) reversed, then R (one of the three, key component of education), containing T (time). | |
| 27 | Part of London — I pass to North (9) |
| ISLINGTON – I + SLING (pass) + N (north). | |
| 28 | One new bird observed in US city is a thing of no importance (9) |
| NONENTITY – ONE + N (new) + TIT (bird), contained by NY (US city). | |
| 29 | Very keen about hard working, engaging leaders of our teams (3,2) |
| HOT ON – H (hard) + ON (working), containing the first letters of Our and Teams. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Drumming is beginning to threaten — you’ll see me turning to hide (9) |
| TATTOOIST – TATTOO (drumming) + IS + first letter of Threatening. | |
| 2 | Number getting endless home service (5) |
| NONES – NO (number) + NESt (home) without its end. | |
| 3 | Father will collar United over match official for certain (8) |
| SUREFIRE – SIRE (father), containing U (united) + REF (match official). | |
| 4 | Mock opera’s ultimate conclusion (4) |
| CODA – COD (mock) + last letter of operA. | |
| 5 | Machine put to work without much impact (10) |
| UNEMPHATIC – anagram of MACHINE PUT. | |
| 6 | Appropriate seeing change to older coinage in receipt (6) |
| DOCKET – *shrug*. Can someone help? Vinyl to the rescue – pOCKET (appropriate) with ‘p’ (new penny) for D (old Penny, older coinage). | |
| 7 | Describing glands, look, inside damaged nostril (9) |
| TONSILLAR – LA (look) contained by an anagram of NOSTRIL. Not ‘lo’ then… | |
| 8 | Weight and volume after inclusion of additional unspecified number (5) |
| TONNE – TONE (volume) containing N (unspecified number). Does ‘tone’ = ‘volume’? | |
| 13 | Italian composer in book: iconic in translation that woman penned (10) |
| BOCCHERINI – B (book) + an anagram of ICONIC containing HER (that woman). | |
| 15 | Continue to publish about church in US university city (9) |
| PRINCETON – PRINT ON (continue to publish) containing CE (church). | |
| 17 | Hormone turning in zucchini, not a lemon (9) |
| MELATONIN – hidden in reverse in zucchiNI NOT A LEMon. | |
| 18 | A simple golf-shot starts to cause hesitation in a crisis (2,1,5) |
| AT A PINCH – A + TAP IN (simple golf shot) + first letters of Cause and Hesitation. | |
| 21 | French person’s conclusion is to accept my old coin (6) |
| FLORIN – FIN (conclusion, in French) containing LOR (my). | |
| 22 | Upset no key office staff? (5) |
| BATON – reversal of NO and TAB (key). | |
| 24 | Mean opening of gallery to have famous gallery upset (3,2) |
| GET AT – first letter of Gallery + reversal of TATE (famous gallery). | |
| 25 | Degree of freedom in Shakespeare’s work? (4) |
| PLAY – double definition. | |
Well I should be popping to point out that to any Heyerite, “La” for look is just a gimme. Unfortunately, it did not stop me putting lo… being totally unable to tell one tonsil from another, I just thought it a more likely answer, after all how many setters are Heyerites?
(answer: probably not enough)
31:47 – with TONSILLOR and a little shrug, but it was BATON/TUTOR that held me up the longest for some reason. I didn’t understand the tone/volume thing and unless I have missed it neither does anyone else.
On tone/volume, I wasn’t keen on it myself but Collins has tone as ‘sound with reference to quality, pitch, or volume’ and most other usual sources have similar, so I have to concede the point.
There was nothing to that effect (at least as far as I could see) in Chambers, American Heritage or the Shorter Oxford. Presumably Collins has documented authority for including volume as part of the definition, but we don’t know what it is and I wonder at what point a particular dictionary’s entry becomes such an outlier that it begs to be corrected.
The Concise Oxford and Oxford Dictionary of English have: tone as ‘a musical or vocal sound with reference to its pitch, quality, or strength’, which covers volume, I think.
However, if you look on an old receiver, one knob was labelled volume, and another one tone.
Oh, yes, exactly, and as mentioned by Paul and in my original comment posted early this morning. The definition in the puzzle certainly jarred with me.
Please don’t get me started on dictionaries again. There seems to be an unholy alliance between the compilers, and setters who indulge them.
They even attempt to make sure they’re front and centre at least once in a while by taking it upon themselves to pompously publish a list of new words every year.
Whereupon the English-speaking world simply shrugs.
As some have observed, some easy ones, leading me to think I was in for a 30-minute solve, then some that needed much thought. I was held up for ages by a carelessly written P of APPETITE that looked like a C, which made 8d rather difficult to see. That, COUP D’ETAT and DOCKET were my LOIs. I was also perplexed by ‘volume’ for TONE, and didn’t enter TONNE until the T was confirmed.
50 minutes.
I was another who came a cropper on 7d, and while it’s of course technically correct, I thought it was unreasonable from the setter than fiendish to include a rare synonym in a rare word, when the common synonym fitted as well. Didn’t feel like the solving experience was considered there. Something a test-solve or editor ought to have picked up.
Enjoyed the puzzle otherwise.
Thanks both.
Sorry, but LA isn’t ‘look’.
Thanks, wjs.
Found this very tough and no really my kind of puzzle. Too much “single letter manipulation ” for want of a better phrase. I did like AT A PINCH, MELATONIN and SCRIPTURAL.
No problem at all with BOCCHERINI. The minuet from his string quartet in E is the party piece of Alec Guinness and his band of rogues in one of my favourite films The Ladykillers .
Thanks to William and the setter.
I don’t la any problems with any of the clues today. All above board.
36:43 but…
…another TONSILLOR.
When nearly 40% of those completing the puzzle in The Times Crossword Club have finished with an error, the setter should be disappointed.
As with many that complete the crossword, I’m not an anatomist by trade and take only a passing interest in such subjects. Consequently, the clueing of a little-known word should be crystal clear when parsed. There should be no room for doubt. It would have been far better to have signalled the LA within TONSILLAR with a more commonly understood pointer rather than use a rarely-seen synonym of a word when a more-commonly-seen synonym (LO) fit the answer equally well. And bleating, “Well, it’s in Chambers…” is no defence…. Rant over.
I sympathise. But I also have to laugh.
I was making a lot of these very same points on this board (albeit more clumsily) at least five years ago. Nothing’s changed in the crossword itself, but I do detect an increasing exasperation with some of the whimsical and cavalier eccentricity on display.
Welcome to my world. . .
One wrong, guess which one?
DNF paper crossword, sad to have to wait 2 weeks to find out what I missed 🙁
Solution in today’s Times!
38’38” one letter fail.
Steady pace throughout.
I will echo Mike Harper’s thoughts above.
Not a good day for The Times in many respects.
10:41 but with two errors. I parsed 9ac correctly but then my finger-autopilot kicked in and I typed TUNBRIDGE. And of course I had TONSILLOR. I considered LA but decided to go with the less esoteric version of the wordplay.
A few MERs along the way. TONE/volume is wrong AFAIC. You might consider volume an element of tone, which I suspect is what the Collins definition is driving at, but it is not sufficient on its own. OSSIFY is also wrong (indeed almost the exact opposite of the intended meaning) and SLING/pass is loose.
All in all not the happiest solving experience.
OSSIFY fits “fossilize” in this sense: “to become hardened or conventional and opposed to change
so easy for the mind to ossify and generous ideals to end in stale platitudes”
A fair point, but I don’t think you can read ‘turn into fossil’ in this figurative sense. I wonder why the setter didn’t just use ‘fossilise’.
I don’t see the elision of the indefinite object as invalidating an equivalency between “turn into fossil” and “fossilise” in a cryptic puzzle.
You might say that certain habits or a person’s mind had fossilised or ossified, but you wouldn’t say they had ‘turned into’ fossil, or bone. So in terms of this particular usage (which is all that matters) there isn’t an equivalency. By the same token you can’t say that a disgraced celebrity (for instance) has been ‘marked with a stigma’ in the press.
I’m thinking of people—not merely their habits or ideas, though that too—who turn into (figurative) fossils, in these senses (Merriam-Webster): “a : a person whose views are outmoded : FOGY | b: something (such as a theory) that has become rigidly fixed.”
“Fossilise” means “turn into [a] fossil,” so where’s the problem?
“Stigmatize” in the sense of “to describe or regard (something, such as a characteristic or group of people) in a way that shows strong disapproval” is a different definition from the one involving stigmata. But one can be marked with a stigma. M-W gives as an example “bore the stigma of cowardice.”
You just don’t say – of people – that they ‘fossilise’ in this sense. You could say that someone old-fashioned is a fossil, and you might say that they turned into a fossil over time, but nobody would ever say that a person ‘fossilised’ in this sense. The word simply doesn’t have that meaning.
I’d plead poetic license for using “fossilize” in the sense of “turn into an old fogy,” but that’s not the issue here. The clue says “turns into fossil,” which can be typically elliptical crosswordese for “turns into a fossil,” which you just allowed.
Well yes but than it’s certainly not synonymous with ‘ossify’!
You wouldn’t say that a person had ‘ossified’. If you said they had turned into a bone you might be misunderstood…
Me, I might say anything! Ha.
OSSIFY doesn’t have to literally mean turn into a bone. That’s what I said in my first reply.
OK, I’m done.
I’m fine with SLING for “pass” – “sling it over here!”
I did the paper version and there’s two clues I completed but didn’t fully understand. I will just have to wait for the explanations.
It’s a good puzzle, IMO.
Despite the promise of the paper version of 28679 being presented again in a couple of weeks, the solution is given in full in today’s Times
As I understand Mick H, on Wednesday week the paper will get the puzzle we had online yesterday, and online will be the one in newspaper yesterday. The solutions in the newspaper obviously need to be published on the day following each puzzle.
7dn can someone please explain LA = LOOK? A new one to me. Many thanks
I fear that my printed 28679 will have made its way into the recycling bin with (as it currently stands) at least 6 clues unexplained long someone can put me out of my misery, but thanks in anticipation for the blog.
29:26 but with TONSILLOR, having considered TONSILLAR, but being unable to justify it from the wordplay. NHO LA for LO. Sneaky IMHO. Thanks William.
14:44. I don’t suppose anyone cares at this point, but I’ve just solved this the day the wrong one in the paper came out. I failed to parse DOCKET, thinking DUCAT for the old coinage, but failing to see how that could work. Thanks for the explanation. Thanks William and setter.
Johninterred – I care! I’m another on-paper solver, so I’ve just done this one.
30 minutes for me, likewise with DOCKET unparsed – or rather, it would have been a completion were it not for TONSILLAR, where I take great comfort from being among many who put ‘tonsillor’ having not heard of la=look. Didn’t understand TATTOOIST either (I know of the Edinburgh tattoo of course, but not that tattoo simply means drumming), and to be honest I still don’t really get the definition despite this blog.
Enjoyable crossword otherwise – COD Princeton
Now to go and comment on the other puzzle, which I solved nearly two weeks ago…
Dunno if anyone still cares about this after the previous confusion, but I quite enjoyed this one, finishing in 29 minutes. At least I thought I had finished until I found I was in the TONSILLOR club, so it is technically a DNF. Never heard of LA being used in this sense, so I shall be more wary in the future.
FOI – TONGS
LOI – DOCKET
COD – BECALMED.
Thanks to william and other contributors.
Have just come to this as I do the newspaper version. I’m sure tonsillor was intended. A quick look online reveals e.g. from the British Dental Journal, ‘I saw the patient, and noticed that the residual tonsillor tissue on the lateral border of the tongue…’. ‘La’ was used to mean, ‘Fancy!’ or ‘Indeed’ rather than ‘Look’, for which ‘Lo’ is an accepted and common Times equivalent. Far more likely that there was a simple oversight here rather than a cluttering of the playing-field that could not help but be noticed by the setter.
Slow but steady throughout. Not too keen on sling for pass. But I suppose the setter can sling it over. Less keen on tone for volume. Quite often a blurring in the margins these days.
I’m another who had forgotten about the mix up so initially didn’t realise I needed to come here to check the solution. Like many others I had TONSILLOR unfortunately but still enjoyed the crossword.
FOI CANON
LOI NONES
COD AT A PINCH
I am another paper solver who has just completed this puzzle today. I found it fairly straightforward over a lunch break. I didn’t see CODE for ‘system of rules’ but that was my only unparsed clue. Sadly I fell into the TONSILLoR trap, which was a shame after decoding the unknown to me BOCCHERINI. I wonder what percentage actually got TONSILLAR correct? It seems to have tripped up many seasoned solvers.
Thanks for the puzzle finally and the ‘premature’ blog.
Way, way off the wavelength here! Too many of the one-word-inside-another-inside-another type clues, which always leave me reeling. Happy to get the few I did, but eventually gave up when I realised that this was “not my day”. Agree with all the arguments re “La!” v “Lo!” as I’d managed to figure this one out – but it was wrong! Not party to the “wrong crossword” argument, as I do this one on paper a month after you guys…
You are all full of it. No one could solve this fair and square you all cheat. Eg that women is she not her. Are you twerps on this sight real people or AI. I reckon AI sets this time wasting crap now. Before google I could solve these with pen and paper twice a week. I hardly ever buy the Australian these days because of the times but when I do I can never solve this rubbish and I have ten times the skill I had years ago. Wake up to yourselves editors. A good cryptic should be solvable by everybody who knows the rules.