Times 29005 – Of loved and elegant friends

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Well, this certainly wasn’t difficult, but it had its moments, I think. When I came to write up the blog, having biffed my way to a rare sub-10-minute time, I found there was quite a lot to think about.

How did you get on? Any PBs? Any stories of what might have been, if only it weren’t for that typo, the wife butting in, the phone ringing, memories of matricides you have known?

9:25

Across
1 Need brought back the old manservant (6)
LACKEY – LACK reversed YE (‘the old’ – actually, a representation of the latter Middle English and early Early Modern English form of the definite article)
4 They may be given work at last? Nonsense (8)
COBBLERS – shoemakers (cobblers) work at a last (the block shaped like a foot, on which shoes are made or repaired)
10 Left in charge of old colonnade (7)
PORTICO – PORT IC O; Collins has ‘in charge (of)’ as its definition
11 Satan, possibly, ultimately cast in wax? (7)
TEMPTER – casT in TEMPER; WAX can mean a fit of temper or rage
12 Hooligan’s fate blocked by university (4)
LOUT – U in LOT (fate, as in ‘It is my lot always to sit next to loud people on the ferry’)
13 Turks are confused about a high-class pickled cabbage (10)
SAUERKRAUT – A U (U as in posh or high-class – a crossword setter’s friend, a solver’s bête noire) in an anagram* of TURKS ARE
15 Like a minority group’s undertaking blocking river (9)
FACTIONAL – ACTION in FAL (river in Cornwall)
16 Girl from Dublin I am hugging? (5)
NIAMH – another of those impossible-to-pronounce Irish names. This one is ‘Neave’, which I had no clue of.
18 Recipients of award, initially enervated and overweight (5)
OBESE – OBEs (Officers of the Order of the British Empire – an outpost where the ‘Empire’ is still flourishing) Enervated
19 One who cherishes  the person holding the purse strings? (9)
TREASURER – double definition (DD)
21 Wine that French accumulated in Caribbean island (10)
MARTINIQUE – MARTINI (wine, which is here being used in its extended sense, as ‘anything resembling wine in its intoxicating or invigorating effect’) QUE (‘that’ in French)
23 Broadcaster from east or west? (4)
BEEB –front-wise or reversed, we get the affectionate nickname for the BBC. Not my favourite broadcaster, that’s for sure.
26 Extremely rare, brightly coloured, very large screen (7)
REREDOS – RarE RED OS (outsized)
27 Function a new group initiated in shelter (7)
TANGENT – A N Group in TENT
28 It interrupts a term at Oxford, engendering much mirth (8)
HILARITY – IT in  HILARY; the Hilary term (January-March) at Oxford is named after Hilary of Poitiers, whose feast day falls near the beginning of the second term of the academic year.
29 Observe article, and fume! (6)
SEETHE – SEE THE
Down
1 Part of jacket displayed by mimic visiting Lakes (5)
LAPEL – APE in L L
2 Vehicle family member used to carry black gemstone (9)
CARBUNCLE – B (black) in CAR UNCLE
3 Issue primarily engaging American university (4)
EMIT – Engaging MIT; a lot of lobbying has gone on at this website to convince compilers that this Cambridge, MA, educational institution is a university and not a college. We can count clues like this as one of our signal successes.
5 Moving me a lot, a greyish yellow colour (7)
OATMEAL – ME A LOT*
6 Swelling family, his, confused like yokels (10)
BUMPKINISH – BUMP (swelling) KIN (family) HIS*
7 Additional outlet, one no longer used by gunners (5)
EXTRA – EXiT (EXIT without its letter I [one]) RA (Royal Artillery)
8 Litter, perhaps? It’s a lie (9)
STRETCHER – DD; a stretcher is a slang term for a lie, which has passed me by all these 65 years.
9 Region in which to practise matricide? (6)
DOMAIN – if you wanted to distinguish yourself as a latter-day Orestes or Nero, you would have to DO MA IN (do your mum in, i.e. kill her). Oh, please yourselves!
14 Blow from right or left initially endangering rock snake (10)
SIDEWINDER – SIDE WIND (blow from right or left) Endangering Rock; my last in
15 Manhandle prisoner finally in thick mist on border (9)
FROGMARCH – prisoneR in FOG MARCH (march as in Welsh marches)
17 Chaps in hail holding up a contract (9)
AGREEMENT – MEN in GREET (hail) after (holding up) A
19 Costume head of tennis used to secure success? (7)
TWINSET – Tennis (head of Tennis) WIN SET (to secure success – in tennis);  I think the idea here is  that you ‘use’ the first letter of the word tennis to secure success – at tennis! Is this an Ouroboros clue, where the clue is turning in on itself, trying to eat itself? A twinset is a matching cardigan and jumper for women. It’s practically impossible for Brits of a certain age to hear this word without adding ‘and pearls’. If a psychologist were to do a word association test for oldies, they would be pretty dumb if they used ‘twinset’. Unless, of course, they wanted to identify that sub-set who wanted to be different; the matricides, perhaps?
20 Justice threw in sponge in Ely, losing heart (6)
EQUITY – QUIT (threw in sponge) in ElY
22 Country artist breaking law endlessly (5)
RURAL – RA (Royal Academician) in RULe
24 Fellow joining club to exercise in water (5)
BATHE – HE (fellow) with BAT (club)
25 Joint head of kindergarten born in Marseille (4)
KNEE – Kindergarten NEE (French word – as née – for born)

72 comments on “Times 29005 – Of loved and elegant friends”

  1. No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
    And crook the pregnant hinges of the Knee
    Where thrift may follow fawning
    (Hamlet)

    20 mins pre-brekker, with several crosses against clues where I wasn’t 100%, e.g. Wax, Stretcher.
    Ta setter and U

    1. I’m surprised you didn’t mention the initial/final letter clues: 11ac ultimately, 18c initially, 27ac initially, 3d primarily, 14d initially, 15d finally, 19d head of, 25d head of
      11:56

  2. 18 minutes with LOI and COD DOMAIN. Enjoyably Mondayish. Thank you U. and setter

  3. About 35 minutes. Enjoyed it as it was mainly straightforward. FOI SEETHE LOI TWINSET. Slowed only by putting in BOOB initially. When I biffed BEEB everything fell into place. Liked SIDEWINDER, CARBUNCLE, HILARITY, DOMAIN
    Complete got parsing of FACTIONAL wrong. Thought it related to fractional. Thanks Ulaca for putting me straight. I would never have got it on my own. NHO the river

    1. I’ve no doubt I’d have seen how FACTIONAL worked if I’d been writing a blog, but like you, I saw F{r} ACTIONAL as the wordplay and moved on. Actually it was my LOI and having only 18 minutes on the clock at the time I decided not to hang around.

      I knew STRETCHER as a litter but not as a lie, and I looked more than twice at ‘wine / MARTINI’ at 21ac but wasn’t sure. I’ve never really thought about what goes into vermouth, but on reflection it had to be wine-based.

      After an easy Times I was disappointed that The Guardian was the easiest I have ever tackled. Thanks heavens it’s a Bank Holiday so there’s an extra Times cryptic Jumbo today!

        1. Thanks for the tip. I shall give it a go then . I did no more than glance at the special instructions on Saturday and as soon as I saw ‘unnumbered clues’ and ‘jigsaw-fashion’ I decided not to tackle it.

  4. I also took 18 minutes with LOI the COBBLERS which made me smile
    Thanks setter and blogger

  5. Today’s 16.58 was close to a PB for me, so it was obviously on the easier side of things. Great blog from Ulaca, there is now so much more I know about wax and I’ve found out (a) what a twinset is and (b) where that Oxford term gets its name. I hadn’t figured out how MARTINIQUE worked either, it went in with the M and R in place and the QUE at the back of my mind. Curiously it took me a while to get started, and it was only when I abandoned the acrosses and hit the downs that I got going. FOI LAPEL, LOI STRETCHER (NHO the lie part, I guess it’s stretching the truth).

    From I Contain Multitudes:
    Get lost Madam, get up off my KNEE
    Keep your mouth away from me
    I’ll keep the path open, the path in my mind
    I’ll see to it that there’s no love left behind
    I play Beethoven sonatas, Chopin’s preludes
    I contain multitudes

  6. 7:35 but with “eeii” at 3D. At least I know I had it right mentally, which counts for a lot at my age. DOMAIN gave me. a chuckle, but I think I’ve seen it somewhere before, so COD to NIAMH.

  7. 9:09, just sixteen seconds inside my target as it turns out.

    Is NAIMH hard to pronounce or hard to spell? Depends where you’re starting from I guess. Anyway it’s a pretty popular name these days so add it to your list.

    Thank you to the setter for the gentle stroll and to the HKV for his parsing of FACTIONAL.

      2. My niece is called Niamh. I recite N-I-A-M-H to myself every time I write a card to her!

        1. I understand the issue John. I have an adorable granddaughter whose middle names are Xiao Cheng! And I had to check the spelling again before posting this.

  9. 35 mins. On the easier side though held up in the NE for a while until I sorted out BUMPKINISH. Fun word. LOI COBBLERS.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Martini is not « wine » !

    I liked DOMAIN.

    Thanks U and setter.

    1. I wondered if the setter had in mind Martini the vermouth brand rather than the cocktail. However, even then I wouldn’t equate “wine” with “wine based drink”.

      1. Definitely the vermouth brand I’d say. SOED has vermouth as: Wine flavoured with aromatic herbs (orig. wormwood), usu. drunk as an aperitif.

        1. This was my thought, too – vermouth being a type of wine (a fortified, aromatised wine).

          1. Indeed. It’s wine in the same way port or retsina are wine, which is to say it is and isn’t, depending on the circumstances. Technically they’re all types of wine, but if you asked for a glass of red wine and got port you’d be surprised.

  11. 13.43 but should have been faster, partly because of the persistent problem of the puzzle pages being so unstable on my iPad.

  12. About 20 minutes, held up by STRETCHER (where I didn’t know either meaning) and SIDEWINDER (which I didn’t know was a snake).

    Was also unsure about TWINSET, as I didn’t think of ‘win set’ as a whole and thought ‘used’ in the clue was giving ‘set’ (would that work?); didn’t know temper=wax for TEMPTER; didn’t parse EXTRA; took ages to see DOMAIN even though I think we’ve had it before; and tend to think of BATHE as simply having a bath rather than exercising in water.

    Thanks ulaca and setter.

    FOI Lackey
    LOI Stretcher
    COD Sauerkraut

    1. CS Lewis was always bathing (in the Cherwell, in the sea). I think it’s a generational and class thing.

  14. 9:01. Quite Mondayish. LOI COBBLERS held me up the most giving me a groaning PDM. I tried spelling SAUERKRAUT without the E at first but rethought when I spotted I was going to be a ltter short. I was slightly surprised to see Martini described as a wine, but I suppose vermouth is just wine with added flavouring. Thanks Ulaca and setter.

  15. 8:01. I’m sure I was on for one of my fastest times after solving about 3/4, but then I was slowed down in the NE, finishing with COBBLERS. It didn’t help that “jobless” nearly fitted and seemed apt for the definition “They may be given work at last”, which set me on a train of thought in the wrong direction. COD to DOMAIN which I hadn’t parsed, but I find rather droll on seeing ulaca’s explanation.

  17. 17:03

    “The host is riding from Knocknarea
    And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
    Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
    And Niamh calling Away, come away”
    (Yeats, The Hosting of the Sidhe)

    Not a PB, but in my top two.
    I also tried JOBLESS in 4a, but was dissuaded by the need to double the B to make it fit.
    LOI was EMIT.

    Thanks Ulaca and setter

  18. 7.14, one of my quickest solves. A few new bits as mentioned by others, but nothing too alarming.

    Thanks both.

  20. 23:35 (but errors)

    FOI: CARBUNCLE
    LOI: BUMPKINISH

    After 17 minutes I had three left, but fixated on BOIL being the swelling in 6D. Eventually I saw TEMPTER giving me STRETCHER which, in my haste, I managed to enter as STRETCEER landing me with two careless pink squares!

    Thank you, ulaca and the setter.

  21. 26:42. Not far off a PB though for a while I thought I’d get under 20. I was really held up by DOMAIN (COD), and FACTIONAL. I’d never heard of the FAL but I suppose I could have worked it out from Falmouth. BUMPKINISH was quite fun to work out. Thanks U and setter!

  22. 15:32

    Straightforward but enjoyable. Had Salamander briefly for SIDEWINDER which illustrates my knowledge of the animal kingdom. I liked BUMPKINISH and TWINSET. I remember, when I was aged about eleven, reading a sesaide postcard which used the phrase “COBBLERS to the gentry” and thinking it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. I doubt my sense of humour has advanced very much since then.

    Thanks to Ulaca and the setter.

  23. Took me a while but proud of myself nevertheless – this is the first time I’ve actually completed the full cryptic crossword 😊

  24. Thanks to Jackkt on the QC blog for letting me know this was a suitable puzzle to try. It was, but thanks for the blog clarifying some of my partial parsing. I think most of you would do a weeks worth of grids in the time this took me, but I enjoyed the change!

  25. Thrilled that I finished this 15×15 all correct. Amazing. I am normally a slow solver of the QC. Thanks, Jack, for the encouragement.
    COD COBBLERS. Also liked FROGMARCH, TWINSET (though hardly a costume), BEEB, DOMAIN.
    LOsI EQUITY, TANGENT. FOI LACKEY.
    Biffed REREDOS. No problem with NIAMH.
    Thanks vm, Ulaca. I couldn’t parse all, eg FACTIONAL.

  26. I was held up by COBBLERS until I’d assembled BUMPKINISH. The first raised a smile, the second a facepalm, as I’ve seen it before and should’ve remembered! I’d NHO REREDOS until I started doing these puzzles. Today it was a write in! Otherwise from EMIT to AGREEMENT in 13:07. Thanks setter and U. Scorching time BTW!

  27. There is a verb ‘to bath’ which has forms like bathing and bathed (which also come from bathe), and it irritates me when people say “baything” when they mean “barthing”. But perhaps it shouldn’t and in any case no doubt the distinction will in due course disappear. Everything whizzed in here until I hit a brick wall, and in my rush to produce a time like the one that I had originally predicted I used aids, a bit prematurely, and even so didn’t have a very good time, 39 minutes. For BUMPKINISH I was fixated on boilkinish, pathetic really. As with several others, that meaning of STRETCHER had escaped me all my life.

  28. Fairly easy going but there were a few snags.
    LOI 11a Tempter seemed very hard until it didn’t.
    13a Sauerkraut, can’t spell it but the clue pretty much gave it.
    16a Niamh, not the first girl’s name to spring to mind, and I can neither spell it or pronounce it.
    6d Bumpkinish; I got the kinish OK but the bump took extra care.
    7d Extra, could not parse, thanks ulaca.
    8d Stretcher had passed me by too. I looked it up after and it is there as a slang lie.

  29. Pretty straightforward solve which I managed to complete in 20.19. Looking at some of the comparative times posted, I should have expected to break twenty minutes perhaps, although it must be said, this is a statement I don’t make very often! I’m blaming it all on SAUERKRAUT, where it took me too long to rearrange the letters correctly after my first attempt.

  30. 13:16 – wasn’t entirely sure whether a SIDEWINDER was some sort of pugilistic term or a snake, but both seemed credible and more or less worked if you didn’t look too closely, so it went in with a question mark but not much delay. Rest was very Monday

  31. 18:37. Very fast, even with some hesitations with TWINSET, EXTRA, and the spelling of SAUERKRAUT. And COBBLERS – which is flagged in my head as a very rude word. But of course it’s not. Collins reassures me that it “is so mild that hardly anyone these days is likely to be offended by it”.

  32. 19.21 Very quick for me, but I spent a long time on STRETCHER, TEMPTER and COBBLERS at the end so it felt like it could have been faster. I was trying to fit “TOMB….” in for somebody given work at last. Thanks ulaca.

  34. All correct. Two thirds done very quickly, and then slowed down. Didn’t know REREDOS, but wordplay clear. Struggled with TWINSET, COBBLERS and STRETCHER.
    Must do the quick cryptic more often, as the short synonyms you pick up there are so useful in the 15×15.
    I am slowly getting used to paperless solving, but doodling with a pen on paper has its attractions.

  35. 36:22 Just a couple of cheeky Checks to get me through.

    Tried LUMPKINISH.

    Fans of the Elite computer game will know their snakes: Sidewinder, anaconda and the Fer de Lance are enemy ships.

    And PAN A MA for matricide looked good. Always thought of CARBUNCLE as a mole or spot on the face, after the Prince Charles quote about the National Gallery.

  36. “when he explained why he was kissing my wife, I did think it was a bit of a STRETCHER”
    Does that help?
    Thanks for reminding me about the extra Jumbo, nearly got recycled

  37. Under thirteen mins and outside the top 100, so must have been Mondayish, though I did come to it late in the day.

    LOI STRETCHER after COBBLERS.

    Could have done better as I was rattling along, but the last 10 or so held me up a bit.

    12:55

  38. 6:18. No problems.
    No unknowns today, although STRETCHER and this meaning of ‘wax’ were at the edges of my vocabulary, and I’ve only ever encountered them in these things.
    MER at ‘exercise’ for BATHE. Not necessarily.
    I’m OK pronouncing NIAMH, Aoife or Siobhan, but I struggle a bit with Saoirse.

    1. Siobhan’s a lovely name, unlike “See-oh-barn” which was my rendering of it when reading Trinity many years ago.

  39. 15:47

    Fast Monday, but cat still on laptop keyboard so expect it could have been faster still. Liked CARBUNCLE which always make me think of Prince Charles’ (as he then was) description of the proposed extension to London’s National Gallery.

    Thanks U and setter

  40. 18 minutes, which is good for me. Plenty of write-ins, and just a couple of slightly harder clues to make it feel like an achievement.

    I knew STRETCHER from the opening of HUCKLEBERRY FINN:

    “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”

  42. Rarely tackle the 15×15 but encouraged by Jacks QC blog I gave it a very good go. Solving, if not parsing, about 75%. NHO Rederos but got it from word play. Annoyed I didn’t get cobblers despite having the checkers.

    Thanks all

  43. One of my faster ones at 25 mins. It is nice to see someone pleased just to finish. I hope he does not repeat me. I tried about twenty more before completed number 2.

  44. 8.26

    If not a PB then second best or so and bizarrely quicker than the my warm up on the QC. 🤷‍♂️

    A chestnut but a smile was raised by DOing MA IN

    Thanks setter and Ulaca

  45. Came to this late today and the level of difficulty was just right for me.
    FOI PORTICO
    LOI COBBLERS
    COD DOMAIN
    Also enjoyed TREASURER probably because I am one and had been using the word off and on today.

  46. Not a PB(😉) , but might have been if the NE corner had been as friendly as the rest of the puzzle. Cobblers (ah, that sort of last), Tempter and Stretcher took far too long to see. Slightly embarrassed to say that 9d, Domain, was my favourite, but there you are. Invariant

Comments are closed.