Times 29008 – the return of Tricky Thursday

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Time taken: 11:28.

Even though the puzzle has been out for nearly an hour, I’m thus far one of two times on the board, so I suspect this is more difficult than the average puzzle, though my time is not that far outside of my usual range.

The wordplay is tricky, but very good, which might add to the difficulty. There’s some unusual words and phrases here that I had to unravel, along with a higher number of definitions by example than I am used to seeing.

How did you get along?

Across
1 Here’s our phone number — is that corny? (6)
CALLUS – Here’s our number, so CALL US
5 Venture by enchanting company in English city (8)
COVENTRY – TRY(venture) after COVEN(an enchanting company of witches)
9 Help cheat in game (10)
BACKGAMMON – BACK(help), GAMMON(cheat)
10 Attack in African country briefly stopped by leader in uprising (4)
MAUL – MALI(African country) minus the last letter surrounding the first letter in Uprising
11 Cuban for example who has been vilified by me (8)
ISLANDER – if I SLANDER, you have been vilified by me
12 Small and delicate — so? (6)
SLIGHT – S(small) and LIGHT(delicate)
13 Touch zip (4)
DASH – double definition for a small amount and a fast move
15 Something frozen, cheese melting in it (3,5)
ICE SHEET – anagram of CHEESE in IT
18 Capital adversary invested in cereal (8)
SANTIAGO – ANTI(adversary) inside SAGO(cereal)
19 Flooring material in centre of oblong houses (4)
LINO – IN inside the central letters of obLOng
21 Lazy old walk into land of sleep (2-4)
NO-GOOD – O(old), GO(walk) inside the land of NOD
23 Boater has taken more than one craft backwards, eh? (5,3)
STRAW HAT – ARTS(more than one craft) reversed, then WHAT(eh?)
25 Fin, say, scales stripped off (4)
LIMB – CLIMBS(scales) minus the exterior letters
26 Launch one past it into country east of India (10)
INITIATION – I(one) after IT inside NATION(country) after I(India)
27 Show one off that’s attached to heel in blizzards? (8)
SNOWSHOE – anagram of SHOW,ONE after the last letter in blizzardS
28 Reversal of dreary practice critical for country (6)
TURKEY – RUT(dreary practice) reversed, then KEY(critical)
Down
2 Hoover, say, has got stuck in like US president (5)
ADAMS – the Hoover DAM inside AS(like). Much America in this clue.
3 So fired without hesitation? (4,1,4)
LIKE A SHOT – double definition
4 Drink: Warhol should can it! (6)
SHANDY – If you want to tell the pop artist ANDY Warhol to be quiet, you could say SH, ANDY
5 Whatever racehorse I’m on in horsing around! (4,4,2,5)
COME RAIN OR SHINE – anagram of RACEHORSE,I’M,ON,IN
6 Front I dispensed with, gone (8)
VANISHED – VAN(front), I, SHED(dispensed with)
7 I say I don’t want them near me, dark clouds (5)
NIMBI – sounds like NIMBY(not in my back yard, I don’t want them near me)
8 Crude, when by inference? (5-4)
ROUGH-HEWN – since WHEN is an anagram (ROUGH) of HEWN
14 A military alliance secure when set up in part of 28 across, say? (9)
ANATOLIAN – A, NATO(military alliance) then NAIL(secure) reversed. I got this before solving 28 across (which is TURKEY, but if you made it this far you know that)
16 Stand up, as might pitcher? (4,5)
HOLD WATER – double definition
17 Introduce American hero? (8)
SANDWICH – double definition based on SANDWICH meaning to squeeze something into, or introduce, and that a hero in the USA is a type of sandwich. Arguments about whether a hero is a sandwich in the comments in 3, 2, 1…
20 Drive away, passing through Faro in truck (6)
AROINT – hidden inside fARO IN Truck
22 Two bovines, the second with head slightly back in lake (5)
OXBOW – the bovines are OX and COW, move the first letter of COW back from C to B. I thought this was hyphenated, and it is in Chambers, but Collins gives it as a single word.
24 A nozzle evolved (5)
AROSE – A, ROSE(nozzle in a shower)

84 comments on “Times 29008 – the return of Tricky Thursday”

  1. I thought this was really good fun. After an hour I was missing ANATOLIAN and SANTIAGO, geography not being one of my strong points. Thought COVENTRY was very clever and 1a CALLUS had me stumped until I had some crossers. AROINT rang a distant bell, probably from a past 15×15. SANDWICH! Really?
    Thanks glh and setter.

      1. Yes, I saw that when I looked it up. I really like its archaic synonym ’begone’.

    2. Beauty is clearly in the eye of the beholder. Or comparing it to yesterday’s, the sublime to the ridiculous. I don’t think this was anywhere near up to Times’ standard, some of it bordering on risible. Sandwich, the device used to get oxbow, walk = go and a random inclusion of a Cuban.

  2. I got through quickly for me, mostly thinking Maul and Oxbow were a little over-worked and thinking Sago might not technically be a cereal.
    Someone’s obliged to start the “not enthusiastic about cross-reference clues” going, so I’ll step up.
    thanks GH and setter

    1. I hate Xref clues, but this one was less tiresome than some we’ve been subjected to.

  3. About 70 minutes. I found this relatively straightforward. FOI COME RAIN OR SHINE helped to start it off. LOI LINO. Very pleasant interesting puzzle only needing blog for parsing on two or three. Liked a lot including SANDWICH, CALLUS, COVENTRY, SANTIAGO, ADAMS and ANATOLIAN
    Thanks glh .

  4. 22:49
    Started off well enough, with FOI CALLUS followed by COVENTRY, ISLANDER, & SLIGHT, but slowed down after that, to the point where I was wondering if I could finish. DNK GAMMON=cheat. I was surprised to find the archaic AROINT here. I liked ROUGH-HEWN.

  5. We must have had GAMMON as “cheat” before, because I got that one with only the terminal N already there, opening up the west when I had most of the east finished. Seemed harder than yesterday, with the device cluing the B in OXBOW seeming very original. Took a long while for ROSE as “nozzle” to dawn, and it probably never would have if I hadn’t had it here recently.
    FOI STRAW HAT, POI CALLUS, LOI SHANDY

    I feel compelled to point out that most of the anagrist for SNOWSHOE is by no stretch part of the definition. Real &lits are difficult… and rare.

  6. Would somebody please enlighten me as to how SLIGHT = SO? Maybe I’m just being slow.

        1. The penny hasn’t dropped with me. Could you please explain a bit further why ‘so’ is the same as ‘small and delicate’? I would be most grateful!
          About 30m for all but ‘sandwich’, which I thought of but could not justify.

          1. I’ll try. Small is ‘s’ and delicate is ‘light’. Put them together for slight, and slight also means small and delicate. I think you have to read ‘SO?’ as ‘IT IS SO’. It’s unusual because the answer to the cryptic clue also describes the cryptic clue itself – small and delicate. HTH. If anyone can do better, please join in.

  7. 54 minutes for this one where I struggled on several clues.

    LOI was SANDWICH which was more of a guess as the only word I could think of that fitted the checkers (there are two others it turns out). Even then ‘introduce’ didn’t seem quite right as the definition as I couldn’t get it to pass a substitution test. I didn’t know ‘hero sandwich’ although I now see that it came up in a ST puzzle in August last year and I contributed to a discussion about it.

    I was unable to get SNOWSHOE to parse despite spotting that most of it was an anagram.

    Didn’t know AROINT, but took it on trust. Before today this has only appeared in a Monthly and two Mephistos – puzzles I never attempt.

    Didn’t know ‘cheat / GAMMON’ or understand the parsing of SHANDY, but both answers were obvious.

    Nevertheless, this was an enjoyable workout.

  8. Ugh, just couldn’t see SLIGHT so dnf. Having now seen how it works, I do think it’s a pretty weak & lit-ish construction, however…

  9. Coming up England by a different line
    For once, early in the cold new year,
    We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
    Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
    “Why, Coventry!” I exclaimed. “I was born here.”
    (I Remember, I Remember. Larkin)

    25 mins pre-brekker, with 5 spent on last two in: No-Good, Sandwich. Lazy and Introduce are both a slight stretch IMO.
    Ta setter and G.

  10. 12:42, not without some fortune for SANDWICH and AROSE. Neither were exactly guesses but I could easily have put something else in – I was tempted by ANOSE for the latter, but stopped myself.

    I don’t hugely mind the occasional cross-reference, though generally prefer clues to stand alone.

    Good puzzle, thanks both.

  11. Breezeblocked in the SW and gave up after 50 mins as I’m of to golf.

    Just couldn’t see DASH, ANATOLIAN & SANDWICH, but my brain had seized by then.

    NHO AROINT but the wp was fair.

    Thanks G and setter.

  12. This seemed a lot like yesterday’s to me, and my time – 37.20 – was in the same ballpark. Needed glh’s invaluable help to unravel a few of these, and I’m flat-out not buying the sandwich/introduce equivalence. But overall a challenging and fun puzzle, even if I’ve never heard AROINT, aren’t sure sago is really a cereal, don’t get how fin = LIMB, think NIMBI might end in ‘eye’ and fear where the OXBOW device might end up if allowed to proliferate. But that’s just me…

    From Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream:
    Well, I rapped upon a house with the US flag upon display
    I said Could you help me out? I got some friends down the way
    The man says Get out of here, I’ll tear you LIMB from limb
    I said You know they refused Jesus too? He said You’re not him

    1. Sandwich yourself between those 2 people? Just about works…at a stretch…

  13. 10.10
    It’s often been said that learning about OXBOW lakes in Geog is pointless, but this disproves that.
    DNK GAMMON as cheat, but it didn’t matter.
    LOI SANDWICH
    LOL SHANDY

  14. I quite enjoyed this (despite the Xref) but biffed COME RAIN OR SHINE having totally failed to see it as an anagram, and also my LOI which I needed George (thank you!) to parse for me.

    FOI MAUL
    LOI SANDWICH
    COD ADAMS
    TIME 11:15

  15. 37:14 (paper solve)

    FOI: COME RAIN OR SHINE
    LOI: SANDWICH

    I had solved 3/4 of the puzzle after 16 minutes but then ground to halt in the SW quarter. Then spent a lot of time trying to think of different anatomical parts of a turkey! Finally completed with ANATOLIAN (largely trusting to the inclusion of NATO), SANDWICH solely down to ‘introduce’ meaning ‘insert’ – and my fingers tightly crossed.

    Thanks to glh and the setter.

  16. Irritatingly, DNF with SANDWICH missing. One being called a HERO must have passed me by (it’s a far cry from a butty) and the other part of the definition meant nothing either. I’d done the rest in 35 minutes but never felt quite at home. COD to ROUGH-HEWN. Thank you George and setter.

  17. I enjoyed this much more than yesterday’s.
    Sandwich was a bit far fetched.
    Didn’t know that meaning for gammon

  18. Enjoyed this one, though nho AROINT and fingers crossed for SANDWICH. I see hero sandwich has its own entry in Collins, but is surely an unannounced Americanism.
    As for sago, Collins has it as a cereal, even though it doesn’t seem to meet Collins own definition of cereal..

  19. Much harder work for me than yesterday, close to the hour to finish with LOI SANDWICH entered with a shrug (it wasn’t the only shrug, quite a few parsing passed me by). Thanks George and setter

  20. DNF. I return to OWL (One Wrong Letter) club after falling into the trap that Amoeba avoided and putting ‘Anose’ rather than AROSE – I didn’t know rose as a nozzle.

    – Didn’t know gammon as cheat for BACKGAMMON
    – NHO AROINT so had to hope I’d got the wordplay right
    – Didn’t see how the ‘bow’ part of OXBOW worked

    Thanks glh and setter.

    COD Callus

  21. Sago isn’t a cereal and no-good doesn’t mean lazy. I was so stuck on SANDWICH that I seriously wondered if either NO-GOOD or SANTIAGO were wrong. Bah.

    1. No-Good Boyo in Under Milkwood was the archetypal lazy person, who “dreams of nothing”.

      I agree, sago is not a cereal, it’s a starch extract from a palm tree.

  22. 20.54. Oddly enough, I found this easy, partly because on a non-blogging Thursday I could assume COME RAIN… was some sort of anagram. AROINT went in because I know my Scottish Play, and AROSE with a strong feeling of déjà vu – I think we’ve argued about ROSE before. LIMB similarly remembered from debates about the antique slang.
    And then ages staring at ?A?D?I?H made it suddenly – as George says – a Tricky Thursday. I resisted SANDWICH because I couldn’t make it fit the wordplay, and trawled my hazy collection of American heroes with no success. Somehow, along with dagwood, hoagie, sub and grinder the overstuffed bread concoction “introduced” itself, and I gave in expecting ham-pink amongst the lettuce. I see Chambers, in its consideration of sandwich, gives intercalate, which must mean something like introduce.
    So not hard, but made almost impossible by one clue.

    1. It’s not likely to show up in the grid, but don’t forget Po’ Boy for the next US sandwich-trawl

      1. The Dylan fans here would know that one, Paul. It was a track on Love and Theft.

          1. This Dylan fan checked out what other meanings the phrase had when the album came out.

            1. Oh, of course. And the song does start in the kitchen, and finishes, if I remember, feeding pigs.

  23. Mostly done in fifteen minutes, then another ten to get ANATOLIAN and LIMB, leaving the unknown AROINT to guess. As Myrtilus says, some stretchy bits in here.

  24. DNF: 12a mombled STICHT which at the time I thought was Stitch. Oh dear. Also 17d DNK hero=Sandwich AFAIK so punted Dandyish which I vaguely thought might be something to do with Yankee Doodle.
    Otherwise I liked 21a No-Good (Boyo) from Under Milk Wood, now added to cheating machine. Maybe it is only in Llareggub that it means lazy? Myrtilus seemed to think the def weak: I didn’t see any “lazy” in the dictionary I consulted so I suppose I agree with him.

  25. Nearly all done in twelve minutes, then ages on SANDWICH, eventually submitting off board in 22’03”. Nho AROINT either. The cross reference was helpful for once.

    Thanks gl and setter.

  26. 14:06, of which fully 5 minutes were spent puzzling over 17dn. The only words I could think of that would fit were DANDYISH and SANDWICH. The latter could loosely be equated with ‘introduce’ but the rest of the clue made no sense. Eventually I was about to just bung it in when the penny suddenly dropped.

  27. 16:01 but with yet another (ANATOLION ) pink square. A trip to Specsavers is long overdue.

    Enjoyable puzzle but I had the same reservations as others about NO GOOD and SANDWICH.
    COD was BACKGAMMON because the relatively recent ( I believe) definition of Gammon as being a certain sort of person always makes me smile. A sort of visual onomatopoeia.

    Thanks to George and the setter

  28. Got off to a slow start with LINO FOI, but then speeded up until I go breeze blocked in the SW and SE. INITIATION eventually unblocked the latter with AROINT, TURKEY and AROSE following. TURKEY unblocked ANATOLIAN which gave me LIMB, but I was still stuck on 17d. SANDWICH was the only word I could think of that fitted, but I had no idea how it fitted the clue. Still, it apparently was correct! 31:57. Thanks setter and George.

  29. 22:20 with a typo (COME RAIN OE SHINE)

    First typo of the week though so there is that.

    SANDWICH went in as I couldn’t think of anything else, AROINT unknown but went in with confidence when the checkers permitted, GAMMON also unknown, and I didn’t know what was going on with a couple of other clues.

    Overall happy to finish all in tact, aside from fat-finger-itis making a comeback.

    An enjoyable solve so thanks to both.

  30. 34:30. I really liked this one. Began to panic when my foi was ice sheet, but once I tuned into the setter it was a clockwise solve. Loi shandy. Fave was Anatolian, but many made me smile.

  31. About half an hour.
    NHO aroint.
    Sandwich as a verb is often used in the passive voice: ‘to be sandwiched between X and Y’. Introduce is used more commonly in the active voice. Additionally, the prepositions usually following these verbs are different – between and into. I think this is why the substitution test that Jack mentions feels rather unsatisfactory.
    Thanks, g.

  32. AROINT I had to look up to check that it was really a word. I also googled Hero sandwich since it seemed impenetrable, although after the event it seems vaguely familiar. Just because there was a character in Dylan Thomas called ‘no-good something or other’ isn’t justification for saying that lazy = no-good. If someone is no good then there could be all sorts of reasons for this apart from being lazy. Surely it needs a ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’ or some such. 46 minutes.

  33. 24 mins. I seriously considered DANDYISH as Yankee Doodle was the nearest thing to American as I could get. Confess that I resorted to help for DASH and AROSE because my patience with alphabet trawling is limited.

  34. OK puzzle, done in 30 minutes. I would just echo the comments by JerryW above.
    FOI – MAUL
    LOI – SANDWICH
    COD – ADAMS
    Thanks to george and other contributors.

  35. DNF due to SANDWICH. I considered it as an answer, but I’ve not come across a ‘hero’ and I couldn’t see – and tbh I’m still not convinced – how it could really mean ‘introduce’.

    Shame, as I thought this was a nice puzzle with some very imaginative clues.

  36. 28.30

    Almost gave up but bunged in SANDWICH with little hope though do now recall the hero thing. A bit of a struggle not helped by the chaos that is Cross Country trains these days going on around me (other franchises available).

    Thanks George

  37. No real problems, until the last one. DNF failing on sandwich. Know of hero sandwiches, but between the cryptic and crossers and definition just couldn’t see it. Oh, well. Excellent puzzle otherwise, except perhaps for OXBOW where C slightly back to B doesn’t really work for me, even having deduced it after entering the only possible answer.

  38. Put me in the club of people who finished, enjoyed most of it, guessed sandwich, but didn’t like that clue too much.

    Thanks George and setter..

  39. 52 mins, similar to others’ thoughts and experience. NHO SANDWICH with that meaning, but guessed it. Ditto AROINT – long, long time since my schoolboy Macbeth studies. Thought ‘lazy’ for NO-GOOD was a bit of a stretch.

  40. 47:39. Quite tricky but just doable with these grey cells … More of this style / difficulty would be very welcome! Thanks George and Setter!

  41. Revealed CALLUS, AROINT, the HEWN bit of ROUGH HEWN and INITIATION. Happy that I managed the rest without too much trouble, although needed help parsing BACKGAMMON and COVENTRY (many thanks). Very enjoyable half an hour or so and learning all the time 😃

  42. A steady solve until the last 4 clues- AROINT, DASH, TURKEY, SANDWICH. Eventually the penny dropped for the first three, and I guessed correctly for SANDWICH, wondering whether the good Earl had won a battle in the colonies!

  43. 33:07

    83% enjoyable – the remainder was a bit like pulling teeth. I took AROINT on trust from the first two checkers, which gave TURKEY and AROSE, and consequently ANATOLIAN.

    I was extremely underwhelmed by SLIGHT – the ‘so?’ should have, but didn’t, make me think ‘ah, I see!’ And with SANDWICH, I didn’t/don’t really understand how either part of the clue could provide the answer.

    Thanks G

  44. Hero sandwich is not in any of my dictionaries. Clues like this are better confined to crosswords which presuppose that the solver has hours to research. And while on the subject, to relate OUNCE to “as expected” is a psychological quirk rather than a linguistic tease.

  45. No time recorded as it was solved in three goes, with major interruptions taking it from mid morning to late afternoon. I would estimate about 60 minutes after struggling for some time with my last two. SANTIAGO finally came to mind, but I couldn’t make any sense of the American hero. After five abortive minutes of alphabet trawling, I stuck in the only word I originally thought of in SANDWICH with little hope that it was right. A nice surprise to find it right, even though I would never have parsed it.

  47. 17 down is a complete joke and I resent spending 10 minutes trying to fit random letters into the missing spaces- not why I do crosswords.

  48. 34:35
    Stuck for a long time on 18a, having tried to fit ANTI into the list of every cereal I know, which does not include SAGO. Eventually saw SANTIAGO, and decided that SAGO must count as a cereal to at least one dictionary.
    LOI was SANDWICH. The answer finally came to me after I had paused the crossword and gone for a walk, so a few hours of subconscious processing time should probably be added on. I saw it in the sense of “we have sandwiched a year in industry between the second and third year of your degree”, and hoped that either Lord Sandwich was an unlikely hero in America, or that they had a type of sandwich called a “hero”.

    Thanks glh and setter

  49. Unlike many here I have heard of a ‘hero’ sandwich. I was under the impression that it was related to the Greek word for kebab, ‘gyro’, though Wiktionary thinks this is unlikely as they weren’t well-known in NY in 1937, which is when and where the hero sandwich originated. It was one of the 3 I failed to get though (those were 14D, 18A and 17D)

  50. I ate heros in the automat cafe in Bayswater in the late sixties whilst the archies were on the jukebox. Over half a century later I avoided a DNF because of this vital info. Lets hope it 55 more yearsbefore we see its like again

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