Times 28881 – talk of Kings, but no cabbages.

63 comments on “Times 28881 – talk of Kings, but no cabbages.”

1. am i the only person to have put in bully beef at 2 down. took an age to erase it.

2. 13 mins – very polished puzzle. I have only ever encountered LIT UP in Times puzzles; it seems very Nancy Mitford – but then Times puzzles often do.

3. Some 40′ split over an eye test appointment and resulting headache. The second half was also accompanied by whatever annoying music my doctors’ surgery plays on their call waiting system (presumably in the hope people will ring off..). Neither helped!
   As some others I wasted time on the spoonerism trying to change the first “p” in “pup”. NHO deal as pine and the parsing of “ON THE WING” eluded me. TOODLE-PIP and LIT-UP made me wonder if I’d entered a Noel Coward fan-site. OFF-SEASON was nice. Thank you Piquet and setter, I’ll go and look up DOG IN THE MANGER.

4. Like most here, I found this pretty easy. Cornflower turned out to be obvious, after a little thought, and it went on from there. If you can biff answers like tetragram and iambi, and have heard of Edith Sitwell, you will do well in puzzles like this. It was actually finders keepers that held me up the longest.

   But while this puzzle was easy for the experienced solvers, I would think that many Quickie solvers would not get a single answer. It is definitely a step up, with more elaborate clues and a higher level of vocabulary and knowledge.

   Time: 17 minutes

5. CELLO was FOI and I made reasonable progress until left with 1a, 3d, 14d and 21a. PRAIRIE arrived first, then TOODLE PIP. I then made the leap from state to cow at 1a, which next precipitated FINDERS KEEPERS. It still took a while to make sense of the instructions to turn L-T -P into LIT UP. 23:32. Thanks setter and Pip.

6. Couldn’t parse 12a ON THE WING, but could see that the last 5 chars of swallowing were filled in by an anag of the last 4 of umpteenth, so I shrugged and plonked it in anyway. Oh dear. Nth + E was clever.
   BIFFed 23a TETRAGRAM as well, so thanks for that.
   Couldn’t see Own Goal in 4d ogREISH either.
   Good puzzle though, I don’t mind being defeated by a good one.

7. 8:57 but a typo in the shape of “toodle-pup”.

   COD PRAIRIE

8. Slow and steady solve at 29 minutes but then a dreaded pink square. I’d never parsed LET UP but failed to think of the alternative LIT unfortunately. I was a little bit LIT UP watching Jonny Marr at Newcastle last night so maybe that slowed the old grey cells.

   COD to OFF SEASON very neat device – and why did it take me so long to realise that places for sailing are just seas?

   Thanks J and setter

   1. I’m wondering that one too! Very neat puzzle and some clever devices. Especially liked OFF SEASON and FINDERS KEEPERS.

9. I decided to start with DOG IN THE MANGER, which made all the right side fill in quickly, and the rest was no struggle at all, although I was fighting to stay awake after a night on the town.

10. 33:46
    I was held up by ON THE WING, which I resisted entering since I could not parse – I saw the NTH, but could not make sense of OEWING. Thanks for the blog, reminding me of the rule that crossword solvers need to be up to date on drugs terminology.
    I was fine with Edwin of Northumbria. Bede took a very dim view of Cadwallon of Gwynedd who defeated Edwin in battle.

    Thanks piquet and setter

11. I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree
    Says Barnacle Bill the sailor

    A bit of a struggle today, in the newspaper. I’m on my hols. No wi-fi and almost no phone signal. Some tricky stuff but I liked SCOWLED and OFF SEASON

12. 15.29

    Thought this was an excellent puzzle, and the usual high standard of blog from Pip

    FINDERS KEEPERS in early and it proceeded from there. LOI TRAWL as wanted a noun not a verb and TJAPANESEL didn’t fit the checkers

13. Fine solid fare with no particular excitement, and I did like umpteenth=nth. But surely ‘lit up’ is scarcely half way to ‘out of it’?

Comments are closed.