Times 28975 – Yes, it’s my turn!

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Time: 25 minutes

Music: Beethoven, Symphony #3, Bernstein NYP

Yes, I was checking to see who was blogging the Quickie today, and I saw my own name as the daily puzzle blogger.   I probably would have remembered sooner or later, since if I’m not blogging Mephisto, I must be blogging the daily.

This puzzle should not have been that hard, but a number of clues required a little thought.    I only got two across clues on first read, so I started my solve there and gradually spread out.    I should have seen ebb and flow, and planking, much sooner, but on the other hand I recognized showground as a reverse cryptic immediately.   Most experienced solvers should have little difficulty.

Across
1 Lay out papers, receiving pound: great! (8)
SPLENDID – SP(L)END + I.D.
9 In full gear he commonly told a joke (8)
EQUIPPED – ‘E QUIPPED.
10 Climb awkwardly missing large raised curve (6)
CAMBER – C[l]AMBER.
11 Throaty sound on apple heard, a bird (10)
KOOKABURRA – KOOKA, sounds like cooker in some strange dialect, + BURR + A.
12 Thoughtful character (4)
KIND – Double definition, the easy sort I can never get.
13 Do better to speak formally after email fails (10)
AMELIORATE – Anagram of EMAIL + ORATE.
16 Father lacking in delicacy and nimbleness (7)
AGILITY – [fr]AGILITY.
17 Most painful infection just starting in a breast (7)
ACHIEST – A CH(I[nfection])EST.
20 Who’s suggested an outdoor arena? (10)
SHOWGROUND – Reverse cryptic – SHOW GROUND is a clue for WHO’S.
22 One endless hoo-ha about devout Muslim (4)
SUFI – I + FUS[s] backwards.
23 One turning over dough is very rich and secure (7,3)
ROLLING PIN – ROLLING + PIN, in entirely different senses.
25 Finally without appeal, he had paid a percentage (6)
TITHED – [withou]T + IT + HE’D.
26 Supports us with cheers during lapses (8)
SUSTAINS – S(US, TA)INS.
27 Anti-communist union lacks a Republican firmness (8)
SOLIDITY – SOLID[a,r]ITY, the Lech Walesa group.
Down
2 Smoothing round knot, not missing floorboards (8)
PLANKING – PLAN(K[not])ING.
3 Fan wobbled badly in alternating motion (3,3,4)
EBB AND FLOW – Anagram of FAN WOBBLED.
4 Much of the universe not seen to be important after nightfall (4,6)
DARK MATTER – DARK + MATTER, once again in entirely different senses.
5 Loved to hold me up and put down (7)
DEMOTED – D(ME upside-down)OTED.
6 A slander upset assembly (4)
DUMA – A + MUD, all backwards.   The Russian parliament.
7 Ancient kingdom, not all in South Africa (6)
SPARTA – S(PART)A.
8 Next US prosecutor turns judge with a little money (8)
ADJACENT – D.A. backwards + J + A CENT.
14 Subordinate working as detective, talent almost wasted (10)
INCIDENTAL – IN C.I.D. + anagram of TALEN[t].
15 Put back in control over situation, died (10)
REINSTATED – REIN + STATE + D.
16 Swearing about regular instalments of satire not being easy to get (8)
ABSTRUSE – AB(S[a]T[i]R[e])USE.
18 Peter to install something reliable for party (4,4)
SAFE SEAT – SAFE + SEAT, as in seating a valve.
19 Excel, almost certain to involve a teammate (7)
SURPASS –  SUR[e] + PASS, as in football or basketball.
21 Solemn and old, want to keep lucid in the head (6)
OWLISH – O + W(L[ucid])ISH.
24 Type of film that doesn’t use infrared? (4)
NOIR – NO I.R.

89 comments on “Times 28975 – Yes, it’s my turn!”

  1. 23:57
    I outdid Vinyl, getting nothing in my first pass of acrosses. Things picked up after that, although I was quite slow in figuring out how AGILITY worked. Similarly, once I had the K in 11ac I biffed KOOKABURRA, but took a while to figure out the parsing. Same for INCIDENTAL. It’s hard to think in this room, with no air conditioning.

  2. EBB AND FLOW was my FOI (on my first pass, too… not bragging! Ha).
    The clue for AMELIORATE seemed awfully familiar…
    POI SHOWGROUND, slightly unusual word (though probably not as much as CAMBER), and LOI OWLISH, which shouldn’t have been that hard.
    (I’ve never had AC… Grew up without it, down south in West Virginny. I’ve got a couple fans, and I jump under cold water every so often.)

    There’s something funky in the html here going from Across to Down clues, as the columns aren’t aligned. I’ve noticed that on a few other blogs. (And I tweak the script result to fix that…)

    RATAFIA? What? Where?

    1. I grew up without a/c too; but I grew up in San Francisco, where one never needed it.

  3. 8:56 – biffed KOOKABURRA but everything else went in with full understanding.

  4. Around 60 minutes Enjoyable FOI DARK MATTER was a write in. Worked steadily through the clues with no particular problems. Only real parsing problem was KOOKABURRA. The explanation given in the blog doesn’t help since I don’t understand how it relates to the wordplay. How does it relate to “throaty sound on an apple heard, a”. Where is the cooker mentioned. I need an expanded explanation that relates to the words in the clue. The “burra” is pronounce as borough (no burr sound)
    I would appreciate assistance in this regard.

    1. KOOKA is how the word spelled “cooker” sounds in some dialects, and a cooker is an apple probably too sour for eating by itself but OK as, say, a pie ingredient. BURR I take as referring to (take it, Collins) “an articulation of (r) characteristic of certain English dialects, esp the uvular fricative trill of Northumberland or the retroflex r of the West of England.” (I think of the French (r) as particularly “throaty,” though, and am not versed in English dialects.) Then we got “a,” A.

      1. Interesting. Until now I had always thought of ‘burr’ (usually in collocation with ‘West Country’) as synonymous with ‘lilt’. Didn’t realise it was more specific. I imagine the Northumberland trill is moribund compared to the still-flourishing West Country rhoticity, but don’t know for sure.

      2. I think from the comments below, Guy, that it’s clear Cooker and Kooka are perfect homophones in Australia, the home of the bird and the cricket ball, and England, in both northern and southern accents.

  5. 29 minutes, so just within my target time. I looked twice at ‘install / SEAT’ but concluded it was okay although I would never have come up with the valve example. SURPASS also needed extra time to justify. My LOI was OWLISH which I associate more with wisdom over solemnity, but the dictionaries mention both qualities.

  7. 37:39, felt like a slog, I’ll take it.

    DNK ‘cooker’ for ‘apple’, hence needed this explanation. Was too slow to realise that SHOWGROUND was a reverse cryptic, continuing my run of never having recognised one in the wild. Was worried when realising that I knew no synonyms for ‘floorboard’, although it turned out to be quite gentle. KOOKABURRA, SPARTA and DUMA my big holdups, although I was looking for the right kind of answer in every case.

    Thank you vinyl1 and setter!

  8. A fail, with MIND instead of KIND at 12a. Yes, those “easy” double defs are often not quite so easy and with ‘Thought…’ being one of the defs, MIND just wouldn’t shift.

  9. Just coming to the surface after a virulent bout of covid, so quite pleased to get around in a foggy 37.49. A quarter of that was spent on the last three, OWLISH, SUSTAINS and DUMA. Are ‘mud’ and ‘slander’ interchangeable? Maybe in the sense of they both stick. Also never thought of burr as throaty, which is how I sound right now. Ta to V, especially for explaining SPLENDID and SHOWGROUND.

    From Honey Just Allow Me One More Chance:
    Well, I’ve been lookin’ all over for a girl like you
    I can’t find nobody so you’ll have to do
    Just a one KIND favour I ask you
    Allow me just a one more chance

  10. 16.10 (2 of which spent trying to remember the name of the Russian Assembly).
    A Japanese/Californian cousin once visited our family home in Preston, leading to concerns that he might have difficulty understanding the local dialect. Strolling in the garden with my brother he noticed some apples lying in the grass and asked “Are these cookers, Jim?” (pronounced as in KOOKABURRA). The concerns vanished.
    LOI DUMA
    COD NOIR

  11. 34 minutes with LOI TITHED. I liked ROLLING PIN and INCIDENTAL. I suppose COD should be SHOWGROUND but I only saw the reverse retrospectively. Cooker and KOOKA are perfect homophones in Standard Northern English, by the way. I can’t speak (literally) for anyone else. Trickier than it looked and I was a long time getting going. Thank you V and setter.

    1. I think some people must be pronouncing kooka differently from me, because it sounds exactly like cooker when I say it, and I don’t speak in a dialect as far as I know, even though I am also from Bolton.

      3. Quite apart from the rhotacists, wouldn’t some folk from the North of England pronounce COOKER to rhyme with “snooker”? I’m fairly sure my dear departed grannie from Huddersfield would have done so.

  13. Like John Burscough I was held up by struggling to remember the Russian legislature. As Boney M put it “Oh, those Russians!”

    FOI AMELIORATE
    LOI DUMA
    COD SHOWGROUND *
    TIME 8:12

    * Scunthorpe United used to play at The Old Showground. I saw my beloved Altrincham draw there in the FA Cup twice. We won both replays at home. It was a very primitive “stadium” which wouldn’t have passed muster these days

    1. I went to a few FA cup replays at Altrincham in the 70s. Certainly remember Crewe, Orient and of course Spurs.

    2. Primitive?

      The Old Showground boasted the first cantilever stand in the football league.

  14. I’m wondering whether Lech Walesa and Solidarity are well-known enough to anybody who didn’t live through the 1980s. Isn’t this the sort of dated reference that puts young people off doing crosswords?

    1. I lived through six months of the 1980s and just about know of them, but agree many won’t.

    2. I think ‘glasnost’, ‘perestroika’ and ‘solidarnosc’ (not going to attempt accents) are fair game. I encountered the latter a fair few times as a teen in the UK even in the 2000s (TV/newspaper references; school history textbooks), but never the anglicised version AFAIK. (So basically agreeing with @Amoeba).

    3. I wonder if Attlee is well-known enough to anybody who didn’t live through the 1940s.

  15. 12:20. I thought I was back to my common pattern of solving quite quickly then getting stuck on one for an age, but then DUMA yielded without too much time having passed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen mud used on its own in practice – only as part of “my name is mud” or mudslinging.

  16. Mondayish today, no problems though I had to mull over 12ac for a bit before settling on KIND.
    Count me in the perfect homophone camp for kooka/cooker.

    I took the liberty of deleting the word-from-another-crossword from the blog intro, hope vinyl won’t mind.

  17. I found this very straightforward finishing in 15 minutes. LOI was DUMA.
    Thanks setter and blogger

  18. DNF. Very frustrating as my time of 9:50 would have had me further up the leaderboard than usual. Unfortunately I saw “loved” at 5dn and just threw in DEVOTED as the ten-minute mark approached. Oh well.

    Can confirm that in the home of the KOOKABURRA kooka is an exact homophone of cooker.

    Thanks Vinyl and setter.

  19. Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
    There is a moral desert now.
    (Queen Mab, Shelley)

    30 mins mid-brekker, taking a while to get going. I liked it. Neat and tidy and nothing obscure. “One turning over dough” is very good.
    Ta setter and V.

  20. Just under 20 minutes, with an alphabet trawl needed to get the second part of SAFE SEAT (“Oh, it’s that kind of party!”)

    Relied on the wordplay for the unfamiliar SUFI, but otherwise no real problems with this.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    FOI Sparta
    LOI Safe seat
    COD Showground

  21. 27:14. A Monday puzzle, a good one with a bite. Like others, slow to make a start. FOI EBB AND FLOW after giving up on the acrosses and starting on the downs. LOI DUMA, not sure that slander=mud quite worked. I liked OWLISH and (FR)AGILITY

  22. No real issues, but the lower half was slower than the upper. The clever and well-phrased SHOWGROUND opened things up. 16.20.

  23. 13:14. Held up at the end by… yes you’ve guessed it… DUMA. I liked the reverse cryptic SHOWGROUND. Thanks Vinyl and setter.

  24. 49 mins with one pink. Just couldn’t see DEMOTED, was sure I was looking for a palindrome. Eventually went with DETOTED, which could mean “put down”. No more ABSTRUSE than ACHIEST.

    COD ROLLING PIN

  25. LOI 25a Tithed, unfamiliar word, was slow to convert he had to hed.
    Sympathise with the 12a Mind error; I erased that after a moment’s thought.
    Never parsed 16a (fr)Agility, was going too fast; post-event COD for that.

  27. 9:26. I found this a bit of a struggle, and got badly stuck in the SW for a while. Or at least that’s how it felt: I was a bit surprised to finish in under 10 minutes.

  28. 12:30 – The father bit of fragility and the SAFE *E*T both held me up, but the rest flowed with more than the usual number unparsed.

  29. 15:44

    Must be on form today. Smooth solve apart from the last two (OWLISH & SUSTAINS) which took a couple of minutes to spot. No problems with DUMA having studied Russian at school, and KOOKABURRA written in from both end-checkers – didn’t parse the KOOKA bit though! Everything else successfully parsed though which in my book is the mark of a well-pitched (for me) crossword.

    Thanks V and setter

  30. DNF

    Gave up at 25’ certain I would not get 6d. I was right – MUD =SLANDER?

    Otherwise very enjoyable, thanks all.

    1. The Chambers definition is helpful: ‘vilification, abuse, slander, thought of as sticking or clinging like mud’.

  31. 22 mins. I think they’d find the homophone doesn’t work up the road from me in Merseyside….

  32. 13ac ‘ameliorate’ means ‘to make better’ rather than ‘to do better’. Am I missing something? Nice steady solve, 19m.

    1. Agree 100%. It’s a transitive verb, surely. I’ve never come across its usage as intransitive, though Chambers does give it.

  33. We are regular commentators on the QC but finding time on our hands this morning tried our luck at the Big One. We needed a little help using the reveal button for test a few guessed letters but thrilled to finish in 45.06. It’s the first I time we’ve managed to complete it.

    Thanks very much Vinyl, we needed your help to parse agility, tithed, sustains and safe seat but we don’t understand why Peter = safe??

    1. Well done! Chambers gives ‘Peter’ as a slang word for a safe, as in a box for money/valuables.

    2. Well done and welcome to the 15×15.

      Further to Amoeba, it is also worth remembering for future cryptic puzzles that Peterman is another term for a safecracker. Take your pick but possible origins of the word are below, but my preference is the Scottish Prison:

      “Peterman is believed to be a word of Scottish origin and may stem from Peterhead prison in Aberdeenshire. A jail that has housed many different safe-breakers in its time. Another popular belief about the term is linked to gunpowder. The main ingredient in gunpowder is Potassium Nitrate, also known as saltpetre and some lexicographers believe that this is the origin of the word. In French, péter means to crack or explode, another possible link to safecracking.”

    3. In medieval church art, St Peter is always shown holding a key, since he was given the keys of heaven. I always assumed that the criminal slang was based on Peter being the man with a set of keys who could break into safes.

    4. Well done, both of you! That was not one of the easiest Monday puzzles by a long chalk. Hopefully you’ll be encouraged to try your hands again.

  34. Judging from the times mentioned here I was very slow today, 41 minutes. SAFE SEAT a bit of problem and the word ‘install’ suggested to me for a time an inclusion indicator. AGILITY never understood; that sort of father. SOLIDARITY I was confusing with Momentum, and was a bit doubtful about its anti-communist stance.

  35. A steady solve from beginning to end with only OWLISH my LOI holding me up to any great extent. A fast time for me at 28.14 was pleasing, and was a good start to the week.

  37. 13:18
    Late to the party today but no problems with this one. ABSTRACT was biffed at 16D and that slowed me down in the closing stages. Otherwise I found this the first Mondayish Monday puzzle in a little while.

    Thanks to both.

  38. Was making good progress until I hit the SW corner. Replacing XRAY with NOIR eventually got things rolling, literally with 23a. OWLISH opened things up and I went back to the remaining clue in the SE, SAFE -E-T. It gradually dawned on me what sort of party! 26:15. Thanks setter and Vinyl.

    1. I started with the thought of XRAY initially, though not confident enough to put it in. Whereas Peter immediately suggested SAFE, which immediately suggested SEAT on finishing reading the clue.

    2. Since the answer was so clearly BLUE the SW took me quite a while. Sad that Dorset Jimbo isn’t around to appreciate that use of the radiation spectrum.

  39. On holiday with 4 granddaughters so dipping in and out of this. Got there eventually but couldn’t parse SHOWGROUND (nice now I see it). Also Peter = safe isn’t something I knew. Enjoyable. Thanks Vinyl1 and setter

  41. Not too many problems – I had difficulty starting, but crossers and a few re-reads of the clues got me there in a better than expected time. LOI was TITHED.

    14:49

  42. 29:13
    Stuck for a while on DUMA and SHOWGROUND. LOI was ABSTRUSE.

    A very minor MER at ROLLING PIN. In all my years of watching the Great British Bake Off, I’ve only seen rolling pins being used to roll out pastry, never to turn it over, and they rarely make an appearance in bread week, where dough will be kneaded, proved etc., but not turned over with a rolling pin.

    Thanks vinyl and setter

    1. I’m not qualified to comment about using rolling pins for dough, but ‘one turning over dough’ doesn’t refer to turning the dough over but turning over it – i.e. as the rolling pin rolls over the dough it’s turning.

    2. The reference is to a rolling pin turning (= rotating) over (=on top of) dough, which is exactly what my rolling pin does as it is rolling out the dough to make sourdough crackers.

      Ah! jackkt’s comment wasn’t visible when I started composing my reply to simjt.

  43. 6:35 On the right wavelength today. Lots of biffing. I liked SHOWGROUND and ROLLING PIN. I did wonder whether rolling pins are used with dough as opposed to pastry, but then I remembered pizzas! I hadn’t come across AMELIORATE used intransitively before, but I see it can be used that way in the good old US of A. They could certainly use some amelioration just now. COD to ROLLING PIN.

  44. 40 minutes with no idea what was going on with Kookaburra.
    The puzzle felt a little different to a standard Times offering (or maybe it’s just that I’ve been away on holiday).

  45. 21.15. Glad to start the week positively after failing miserably over the weekend. Very slow beginning with the across clues but gradually picked up some momentum. LOI was safe seat which I enjoyed. COD maybe owlish or abstruse.

  46. My first impression after going through the Across clues and only getting ACHIEST, was that there was no way I was going to finish this. But gradually I slipped into the mindset of the setter (agree with Vaccarex that this one seemed different) and one by one they began to fall. DARK MATTER and SPARTA opened up the grid, leading to KOOKABURRA. Before I knew it I was puzzling over LOI DUMA, but luckily once I got to D in the trawl I half-remembered and parsed it, once I’d convinced myself that mud equated with slander. A good workout, thank you, setter.

  47. Not often I dnf on a Monday but nho sufi just did not come to me. Peter the Painter was a safe cracker i think

  48. I found this difficult and it took about 50 minutes over a few visits. I spent ten minutes at the end completing SAFE _E_T. All parsed except for SHOWGROUND and the TIT in TITHED, which shouldn’t have been hard. Thanks vinyl1.

  49. 24.56. One of those puzzles that I find particularly satisfying. My first look at the clues suggested that it was going to be very difficult, but when I looked more carefully they were all pretty easy but cunning in their misdirection. My time may be slow, but I enjoyed every minute.

  50. I’ve missed a week or so of solving, and either this was trickier than advertised or I’ve lost a step. As noted above, the obvious answer at 24d is BLUE.

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