Times 29003

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

33:07

Recent trends in the SNITCH filled with me fear that this would be the big beast we’ve all been waiting for, but it turned out to be more of a teddy bear. I enjoyed unravelling it at the seams.

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Range of mushrooms about right to fill belly (8)
SPECTRUM – CEPS (mushrooms) reversed (about), then R (right) contained by TUM (belly).
6 Warehouse party held by university members (6)
GODOWN – DO (party) contained by GOWN (university members). Not a word a was familiar with, but the wordplay and checkers helped me make a guess. Apparently a common word for a warehouse in India.
9 Heavy sea wave meeting vessel — exciting ride? (13)
ROLLERCOASTER – ROLLER (heavy sea wave) + COASTER (vessel).
10 Time to publish a complex accumulation of lies? (6)
TISSUE – T (time) + ISSUE (publish).
11 Great price including first of beers: make it bitter? (8)
ACERBATE – ACE (great), then RATE (price) containing the first of Beers.
13 Horologer struggling with a rabbit problem? (10)
LOGORRHOEA – anagram of (struggling) HOROLOGER + A. verbal diarrhoea, and a lovely (but see-through) definition.
15 Cover over bathing beach (4)
LIDO – LID (cover) + O (over).
16 Meat cut seen around King’s Lynn for instance (4)
VERA – VEAl (meat) without its last letter, containing R (king).
18 Pair periodically entertained by Darling Dicky? (10)
PRECARIOUS – every other letter from pAiR contained by PRECIOUS (darling).
21 A match official in Wellington, or not in Wellington? (8)
BAREFOOT – A + REF (math official) all contained by BOOT (wellington).
22 Club player in action endlessly before birdie (6)
DEEJAY – DEEd (action) missing the last letter, before JAY (birdie).
23 Foundation had a game plan slammed — there’s nothing in it! (5,3,5)
ALPHA AND OMEGA – anagram of HAD A GAME PLAN, with O (nothing) inside.
25 Boatmen initially shoot two under Darwin’s ship (6)
BEAGLE – first of Boatmen + EAGLE (shoot two under (par)).
26 Prime time with neither for broadcast? (8)
THIRTEEN – anagram of T (Time) + NEITHER.
Down
2 Architectural feature one associated with clubs in city (7)
PORTICO – I (one) + C (clubs), all contained by PORTO (city).
3 Church holding ancient stone, gold and silver in suspended state (4,7)
COLD STORAGE – CE (church), containing all of OLD (ancient) + ST (stone) + OR (gold) + AG (silver).
4 Sometime Kent player, dealing with woman, tempted (5)
REEVE – RE (regarding, dealing with) + EVE (woman, tempted). It took me a while to drop the idea that this was a cricket player I had never heard of. It’s Christopher Reeve, who played Clark Kent when he wasn’t Superman!
5 Locus for enthusiasts regularly using revolutionary toy (7)
MECCANO – MECCA (locus for enthusiasts) + ON (regularly using, e.g. a drug) reversed.
6 Fair to admit university mate manufactured overseas place (9)
GUATEMALA – GALA (fair) containing all of U + an anagram of (manufactured) MATE.
7 Act last from Art Pepper (3)
DOT – DO (act) + last of arT.
8 Closely-woven material taken to the cleaners (7)
WORSTED – double definition.
12 Aggressive teller being awkward (11)
BELLIGERENT – anagram of (awkward) TELLER BEING.
14 Depraved sort soldiers will copy (9)
REPROBATE – RE (soldiers) + PROBATE (copy of a will).
17 Bean and cheese served with meat good to go (7)
EDAMAME – EDAM (cheese) + gAME (meat) missing the ‘g’ (good).
19 Old money with capitalist’s margins gone forever (7)
EXTINCT – EX (old) + TIN (money) + first and last (margins) of CapitalisT.
20 Girl with Don made out in the dark (7)
UNAWARE – UNA (girl) + a homophone of (made out) “wear” (don).
22 Fabric from copper that insulates piping (5)
DHOTI – DI (Detective Inspector, copper) containing HOT (piping).
24 Metal mass Luigi Pirandello holds up (3)
PIG – reverse hidden in luiGI Pirandello. Like an ingot.

59 comments on “Times 29003”

  1. 43 minutes.

    I got off to a good start in the NW and had quite a few answers scattered around the grid, but I found it hard to bring any flow to the proceedings and eventually became totally bogged down. I also became paranoid that the setter had contrived to have so many vowels as checkers for the clues I was stuck on, the most blatant examples being 17dn E?A?A?E and 20dn U?A?A?E. Another was 6dn where I had ??A?E?A?A. At 18ac I had ??E?A?I?U? and at 21ac ?A?E?O??. You get my drift?

    Anyway, I persevered and got there in the end. My only unknown was the unlikely looking EDAMEME (first time out) which I deduced from wordplay and was surprised to find was correct.

    Some enthusiasts might take issue with MECCANO being defined as a toy. It was a model construction system based on real principles of engineering. Incidentally it was invented and originally manufactured by Hornby who also made model trains.

  2. 24:56. For much of this I felt I was progressing well, quickly recalling GODOWN and LOGORRHOEA, both of which are at the edge of my vocabulary. However I ground to a halt in the SE, with my last two, PRECARIOUS and UNAWARE, proving particularly troublesome. With hindsight neither seems especially difficult.

    I paused before solving to enrol to this year’s championship, thinking that with the reduced number of spaces compared to previous years I’d better get in quickly. In reality I doubt I needed to. Anyhow, I’m looking forward to it.

      1. Hi Penfold. It was an assumption based on there only being one heat this year. In practice it was condensed into one last year, I think due to lack of demand, so I don’t think number of spaces will be an issue.

        1. Ah gotcha, cheers. I’m guaranteed a spot but I don’t know what to do because of the LNER strikes.

  3. I got stuck about two thirds of the way into this and struggled to get anything at all for about an eternity, it seemed, until LOGORRHOEA sprang out at me. After that the rest of the troublesome ones fell into place fairly quickly, leaving me with a time of 56 minutes.

    In hindsight I did know all the words (although GODOWN was dredged from quite deep down in my “crossword-only” vocab) and I’m not sure what ran me aground for so long, other than, as Jack observed, the quite vowel-heavy crossers and the vague pointers like “city” or “overseas place”.

  4. About 60 minute. Fairly easy going. FOI ROLLERCOASTER LOI VERA I got held up in that King’s Lynn is a place and I took ages to see the required separation. Also saw meat cut as cut of meat. Took a while to see veal.
    Thanks William for the parsing.

  6. 40:37
    which is just about the slowest time, and the worst personal NITCH, on the SNITCH. I don’t know why I didn’t submit off leaderboard, as the time lowered me a dozen ranks, and I didn’t know how UNAWARE & PRECARIOUS worked (had to come here for UNAWARE; I was wondering who Don Ware was). But at least I had the answers; I spent ages trying to come up with POI/LOI EDAMAME & VERA (and I wondered who Vera Lynn was).

    1. My personal NITCH was similar today, and whilst it occurred to me that it would likely drop me down the leaderboard I prefer the leaderboard to be representative of all my solving as a whole rather than just the best ones. Having said that I think we all have our own rules so the leaderboard is a bit random anyway!

  7. Another DNF. Too tricky for me today with the unknown LOGO WHOTSIT, MECCANO (despite playing for many hours as a kid with one!) and DEEJAY which, in fairness I should have seen. Oh well.

    Despite that, I can see how the big boys will enjoy this one.

    Thanks William and setter.

  8. 41 minutes with LOI DHOTI. I spent an age on the wretched LOGORRHOEA. I also had to construct GODOWN which, if I knew, I’d forgotten. And, having been an executor on two estates this last year, getting PROBATE meant a lot more than taking a copy of the will. Tastes differ but this wouldn’t be in my best three puzzles of the week. Thank you William and setter.

  9. 41:48

    FOI: DOT
    LOI: DEEJAY

    I didn’t know GODOWN but it was inevitable from the word play. Also managed REEVE from word play but convinced myself the ‘sometime Kent player’ must be the character from The Canterbury Tales! A lot of time spent dithering about where to place the non checkers, R and H, in LOGORRHOEA.

    Weekend good wishes to all, and thank you to william_j_s and the setter.

  10. Enjoyed this one, fairly benign for a Friday I thought.
    13ac logorrhoea took some time to assemble, I thought “There will be complaints about this one” .. but only from me so far!
    I got excited when I thought 20dn UNAWARE might be an indirect anagram, don = wear = ware; but sadly it’s only a homophone

  11. 24:18 of which about 6 at the end were spent over EDAMAME and VERA persisting in thinking “head” for bean and failing to separate King’s Lynn. I was puzzled by “foundation” as the definition for ALPHA AND OMEGA, which I didn’t know meant anything other than “the beginning and the end”, but that had to be the answer. Thanks William and setter.

  12. I took forever on this, with the unknown GODOWN, the vaguely-known WORSTED (which I ultimately needed the crossing W to see), and the not-known-as-Dicky PRECARIOUS the main culprits. In hindsight I should’ve tried -IOUS as a suffix much quicker.

    Never quite felt on the wavelength, so wasn’t entirely surprised to hit a wall. I did spell LOGORRHOEA right first time, and unlike yesterday I finished without inventing a word for a simple clue. So that’s something. 36.48. I did rather enjoy it though!

    Thanks both.

  13. Great challenge this puzzle, set my heart racing a bit too much as I neared my 30′ limit. However, I persevered, with LOI the unparsed UNAWARE, chosen over ‘unawake’. Should have got PRECARIOUS earlier, but I was fixated on P-I- as the two letters from pair.

    29’31”, thanks william and setter.

  14. Gave up on the half hour with only half completed, and glad I did. Too many NHOs for me.

  15. 18:36

    Interesting that some found this easy – it was a real struggle for me. There were some neat touches here and there but overall the “loose” definitions in a number of places made it a bit of a slog.

  16. About an hour.
    Tricky – needed patience and determination to finish. Enjoyed it.
    Thanks, W.

  17. SPECTRUM, ROLLERCOASTER and TISSUE were write ins, then the slog started. As others have said, some vague definitions made life difficult. I struggled with the warehouse until WORSTED gave me the W and GOWN materialised. That also helped with GUATEMALA. Seeing MECCA as the locus was a springboard to assembling LOGORRHOEA, which helped with REPROBATE.
    PRECARIOUS, UNAWARE and DEEJAY brought up the rear. 31:31. Thanks setter and William.

  18. 54m 19s
    Successfully negotiated but 4d had me fooled. I thought the REEVE referred to in 4d was Dermot REEVE the cricketer. I was going to lodge a complaint as he never played for Kent. He played for Sussex, my county, and then for Warwickshire. Had to come here to find out it was Clark Kent who was being referred to!
    Re 10ac TISSUE. The first word that came to mind in connection with lies was litany. In 1979 an Air NZ aircraft crashed into Mount Erebus in Antarctica on a sightseeing flight. Justice Peter Mahon’s report after the Royal Commission of Enquiry accused Air NZ of presenting an “orchestrated litany of lies” in their evidence.

    1. Sadly, having worked in Hong Kong in PR for years, the batting order is basically irrelevance, obfuscation, lies, with truth being very much the last resort. But then most industries tend to be the same, since all are peopled by human beings. The legal-judicial industry is a case in point. I read an academic paper once which showed how litigation lawyers massaged the witness statements of a number of defence witnesses. Identical strings of words up to 24 in length occurred across different witness statements in order to hammer home the points they wanted to make!

      1. Thanks, ulaca. That’s somewhat depressing. I don’t know if I’m mistaken but, as I understand it, I prefer the Napoleonic Code. If I have it right, it’s an investigative rather than an adversarial system.

  19. Under 30 mins, over breakfast.

    I enjoyed this. Still a few clunky clues (what is a HOROLOGER doing with rabbits) but lots of good ones.

    My COD was UNAWARE. This was an ideal clue: natural surface reading, a fair but slightly oblique definition and good wordplay. Also SPECTRUM was well put together.

    Cheers

  20. As others have said, the best one for a while. I was stumped on 8d for a while until I asked Mrs piquet for examples of closely woven materials. But my LOI was BAREFOOT after trying to think of an eight letter ****BOOT. What an excellent clue! 25 minutes all done. Like @jerry I wondered whether the WARE in 20d was a homophone or an anagram.

  21. I found this somewhere between easy and hard, taking 35:02. LOI was MECCANO which was a biff.
    Lots of places where I was quite stupid, like 16ac where I kept thinking there must be a word MERA that I didn’t know, until suddenly I realised; 22ac where I had the DEE but it took me an alphabet trawl to get the JAY; 11ac where I wanted to put ACERBITY but couldn’t quite make it work; oh yes and 13 ac where I couldn’t get past mixamatosis until I had all the crossers and was trying different first letters from the anagram, and it was like ooooohhh!
    Thanks setter and blogger, good puzzle I think 🙂
    Steve

  22. 27.40, so by a distance the most challenging of the week. Our setter seemed to be keen on the B-definitions. I knew PROBATE as the process but not the end product, DHOTI as the Gandhi “trousers” but not the cloth, and I really struggle to get from ALPHA AND OMEGA, beginning and end, to foundation. ACERBATE was a new one on me, though the surface was excellent. EDAMAME known (of course) from visits to Wagamama’s, though I tried every combination of the vowels before settling on that one.
    Pleased to complete with nothing pink.

    1. It’s a bit of a stretch, but maybe it’s alluding to the idea that the whole of existence from beginning to end is attributable to the creator.

      1. That’s a very long stretch -13.7 billion years and counting – but I have turned up several organisations calling themselves Alpha and Omega Foundation, at least one of which is a scam. Otherwise we’re getting into serious theology and Ground of Our Being stuff, possibly outside the philosophies dreamt of in the Times Crossword!

  23. DNF after 22:10 with a fail on 13 ac, a word I knew but couldn’t spell (not helped by failing to examine the anagram material properly). Otherwise an ace and inventive puzzle.

  24. DNF though very enjoyable. Never knew CEPS but biffed successfully. However despite various attempts to assemble a horologer I gave up, though the answer did ring a bell. Enjoyed the misdirections in VERA and REEVE. Thanks William and setter.

  25. 28 mins. Quite pleased with my effort on this one despite one desperate cry for help from Ulu, the Scrabble reference. (ACERBATE, NHO). Didn’t help that I misworked out the anagram (as above) and typed LOGORHOEAL.

  26. 42 minutes, with REPROBATE and PRECARIOUS just entered because they seemed to be right, and only parsed afterwards. I also toyed with Dermot Reeve, but my knowledge of him wasn’t as good as MartinP1’s. I knew he didn’t play mainly for Kent, but players do sometimes go somewhere else at the start or end of their careers. But I hadn’t heard that he was dead, so rejected that path and considered Chaucer, but no good. Then the penny dropped. ACERBATE a big trap for biffers.

  27. A lot of this was hard for me, but it’s difficult to say because I was able to do it only now and then between all sorts of other things (watching TV, cooking dinner, eating it, watching football) which makes sustained concentration a problem. Hence my time of 208.16. I thought the ‘Kent player’ for REEVE was a ref to Chaucer. I don’t know what the long word starting with LOGO means but it sounds nasty, I used check to spell it correctly. Today we had EDAMAME, the other day we had UMAMI. Between here and the QC we’ve had three refs to the two-under golfing eagle in a week. Thank you William.

    From High Water Everywhere (For Charley Patton):
    I can write you poems, make a strong man lose his mind
    I’m no PIG without a wig, I hope you treat me kind
    Things are breakin’ up out there
    High water everywhere

  28. I enjoyed this, but a big fat DNF because I got stuck in the SE corner.

    Now that I know the answers/parsing, I should have got “THIRTEEN”, but “broadcast” in the clue had me searching for homophones, a search that turned up nothing but that I plugged away with.

    “DHOTI” – it crossed my mind that “HOT” might be in the answer, but I was trying to think of a fabric rather than something made from a piece of one.

    “DEEJAY”, I’m not sure I would ever have got – maybe with all the checkers. To me, it’s just spelled “D.J.”

    Would have got “UNAWARE” on a better day, but I had thrown in the towel by then.

  29. 38:20

    Very hard I thought so mildly surprised to finish in under 40 mins.

    Thank heavens LOGORRHOEA was an anagram otherwise might have ended up in a pickle. Not heard of GODOWN either so checked for the existence of the word before submitting.

    Thanks William and setter.

  30. Technical DNF – I got help with WORSTED, which unlocked GODOWN (can’t recall seeing gown=university members before) and confirmed that DOT had to be right.

    Wasn’t sure how the ‘ware’ part of UNAWARE worked; trusted that DHOTI is a fabric; don’t think I’ve ever come across ACERBATE before; and wasn’t sure about that meaning of PIG.

    Thanks William and setter.

    COD Barefoot

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