Times 29011 – Wearing my Mephisto hat

95 comments on “Times 29011 – Wearing my Mephisto hat”

1. I really found this hard going and lacked the required knowledge to finish but learned a few words along the way. Missed the take CE away from LEICESTER to arrive at the unknown LEISTER. Missed the anagram in RHAPSODY and FRITTER never came to mind but makes perfect sense.
   I’m not going to question the logic of someone who tackles the MEPHISTO but I did think that 14a FINO is simply SHERRY with BEING DRUNK indicating it is swallowed by iF IN Oxford.
   Also thought that 22a ‘You may see this by hack artist’ is saying that you are watching a HORSE (being) DRAWN, with hack being horse.
   Thanks V and setter

   1. I agree on both your points. 14ac is one of those rare examples where the definition isn’t at the end.

2. Around 80 minutes with errors eg instance instead of issuance, threnody for threnode, premise for premiss. Had a terrible time with parsing so some were complete guesses. Liked NOCTURNE, PASTURE, TERMINUS. Took a while to put in GLADSOME since some, to me, is not “a considerable number”
   Thanks Vinyll for the parsing.

   There are three types of textile fabric; woven, knitted and non-woven. Felt is a non-woven and so is lint. They both rely on fibre entanglement and friction to hold together. Lint is used in bandages for example and I have had lots of it used on ulcers on my feet (Type 2 diabetes) It holds together rather loosely but it still holds together and would be classified as a fabric. My initial degree was in Textile Engineering in 1960.

   1. The cricket fielding positions article in the Wikipedia has a diagram showing all the positions. The long stop is at the edge of the pitch, directly behind the wicket.

      1. Dunno about Wiki but in many decades of watching cricket I can’t recall a single mention of a long stop except as a joke when the wicket-keeper (the one directly behind the wicket) misses one and third man/long on sprints round to cut it off…

         1. Any cricket team fielding a LONG STOP probably needs a new wicket keeper…

            1. Common at basic levels of cricket as I recall.

               1. There was a long stop in place at a couple of points during the most recent test match at Lord’s – annoyingly and incorrectly referred to as a ‘back-stop’ by erstwhile England international and present-day BBC commentator Isa Guha. But it is unusual at that level, and I can’t remember having come across it in practice for many a long year.

   2. SOED appears to agree with you about ‘some’ in one entry (an indefinite or unspecified -but not large – number of people or things) but then seems to contradict this (a certain amount, part, degree, or extent of; at least a small amount of, no little amount of, a considerable amount of). Collins has: a considerable number or amount of.

      Long stop is definitely a fielding position in cricket. I have little interest in the game but when forced to participate at school I was often assigned to long stop as a place on the field in which I might cause least harm to the proceedings. It could be a lonely life way out there!

   3. Sorry I noticed I was wrong about long stop and removed my comment that everyone replied to. I noticed the ODE states of longstop “a fielding position (not normally used in the modern game) directly behind the wicketkeeper.”

3. John Milton didn’t write many hymns, but ‘Let us with a GLADSOME mind’ would be his best known.

   Definitely tricky for a Monday. I had to change ‘threnode’ to THRENODY (by dint of reading the clue properly) and ‘ordinals’ to ORDINATE after getting the vaguely remembered LEISTER.

   30:26

   1. I trust you changed threnody to threnode.

      1. I don’t think I had to change that one. What I actually changed was ‘rhapsode’ to RHAPSODY.

4. 44 minutes. After a very encouraging start in the NW sector this turned out to be a lot more difficult than I was expecting.

   NHO MILLIARD which is making its first appearance here. LEISTER has come up before but I didn’t recognise it when deduced eventually via wordplay. I had previously been trying to justify CHESTER but it isn’t in the Midlands and I couldn’t make anything of the spear reference.

   THRENODE is something of a bear-trap because it’s an alternative spelling of ‘threnody’, so close attention to wordplay was required to avoid the error. Interestingly Collins online has it as an Americanism whereas the treeware version doesn’t have that qualification, but I had always thought that Collins online carried all the entries in the printed edition verbatim.

   PREMISS seemed odd. It has appeared here before in a 15×15 blogged by me – actually in the plural, PREMISSES, which seems even odder. Also it was in a QC in 2020 with a clue remarkably similar to today’s: Head of Police negligent? That’s the assumption (7). It gave rise to some discussion on that occasion.

   LIGAMENT changed from ‘liniment’. ISSUANCE changed from ‘instance’; I don’t dispute it’s used in legal matters but I have been unable to find a dictionary entry mentioning that.

   RHAPSODY as so often in the past (along with ‘rhapsodic’) was my LOI.

   1. In Chambers, ISSUANCE: promulgation -> promulgate: to put (eg a law) into effect by proclamation. Close as I can get, but it looks like legalese anyway.

   2. Google says: Issuance refers to12:
      The act of issuing something, especially officially.
      Supplying and distributing something, often for official purposes.

5. The SNITCH currently shows 8 correct reference solvers, and 8 excluded with errors. I dodged the bullets myself but I wondered if the THRENODE clue had a typo (‘Mournful song from trio’ rather than ‘Mournful song form trio’ which makes a bit less sense as English).

   The sometimes way-out vocab was a pleasant surprise for a Monday

   1. I think you are right. To be grammatical, it would have to be ‘Mourning song forms trio..’, which doesn’t work.

6. 12:49, glad to escape unscathed from the biff-traps. I put in both PREMISE and THRENODY, but rather uncharacteristically I checked the wordplay.
   I’ve never in my life heard MILLIARD in English. The debate I remember (although even that had been resolved by the time I heard about it) was between the UK and American billion (the former being a million million).
   NHO LEISTER.

   1. I remember MILLIARD from childhood–i.e. before your time–not in use, but as the object of explanation, in school I suppose. And I’ve seen PREMISS (in logic) in British texts–again, some time ago– and inferred that that was the way Brits spelled it.

      1. Sadly, not the way this Brit spells it!

         1. Nor this one! Somehow the P for ‘head of police’ registered with me sufficiently that I realised REMISE wasn’t a word and had another look. It’s the sort of trap I would normally walk straight into without hesitation.

7. I managed to avoid the bear traps of THRENODY/DE and PREMISE/SS. I got the unknown LEISTER. MILLIARD no problem from French. I remembered that the kitchen is the percussion section in an orchestra, but sometimes a kitchen is just a kitchen. But I had a provisional ORDINALS which became ORDINALE when I filled in LEISTER and I forgot to go back. So one pink square.

   1. Do all Pauls think alike? I frittered time away trying to decide whether Clatter could be a food or Platter a drumming sound.

8. 10:22. As others have said, there seemed to be several potential pitfalls today, so I was pleased to come through unscathed. When I had the N and the D of THRENODE my first thought for song was SERENADE. Consequently my next thought was THRENADE which parses with Dan as the fellow. Fortunately I remembered THRENODY from previous outings. I do wonder if less experienced solvers might face a Dan/Don quandary.

   1. THRENaDE one of my trio of errors. Along with PREMISe, and wINO (the one I’m most annoyed at myself for).

9. 48 minutes with LOI FRITTER. I hope it was banana and not spam. If your wicketkeeper was so bad that he needed a LONG STOP, you would take pity on him and call it deep fine leg. “Let us with a gladsome mind”, the cheerful start to the day we sang at primary school assembly. A toughish puzzle with LEISTER unknown and the THRENODE spelling in doubt, but one that repaid the effort. COD to HORSE-DRAWN. Thank you V and setter.

   1. My second mother-in-law (who I loved to bits, and thought of more like a big sister) always referred to a fried eggy cheese sandwich as a “Poor Knight’s FRITTER”. Terribly unhealthy, but an absolute delight.

10. At last he rose, and twitch’d his mantle blue:
    To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
    (Lycidas, Milton)

    30 enjoyable mins pre-brekker got me to the NHO Leister/Issuance crossers. And these took a bit of guesswork. Shame about those two.
    Mostly I liked Fritter.
    Ta setter and V.

11. 50 mins but….. I have just realised that I have INSTANCE. Blast. I managed to get REMISS & THRENODE right and worked out the unknown LEISTER from the cryptic and MILLIARD got from the French. Bit of a slog really.

    14 IMHO does ont need the extra « being drunk ». It just confuses the issue. I agree with Quadrophenia (sorry Q) that hack=horse, in this case.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    1. Without ‘being drunk’ there is no containment indicator.

       1. ‘You should find’?

          1. My sentiments precisely.

          2. There’s no sense of containment in that phrase, which I think is necessary. ‘Being drunk’ fulfils that function and is otherwise redundant.

             1. OK, if you are right, then « You should » is superfluous, no?

                1. That’s also part of the instruction I think: ‘you should find the answer contained (drunk) here’. It’s certainly not the most elegant piece of wordplay I’ve ever seen!

                   1. I’ll second that.

             2. It’s the question-mark that is completely unnecessary. Without it the surface actually reads like a proper sentence-and a better clue.

                1. Yes it’s awkward. Perhaps ‘if in Oxford, you will find sherry consumed there’ would have been better.

12. 24:39 with 1 silly typo in MEALIEST

    I stymied myself for the longest by biffing SERENADE and then struggled to unpick FRITTER.

    The unknown LEISTER also took a while as I fell straight into the trap, with MILLIARD the only other unknown.

    An enjoyable puzzle so thanks to both.

13. Stopped after 20′ without nho LEISTER, and the nho ISSUANCE.

    Wouldn’t have submitted anyway as could make no sense of PREMISS, and not willing to guess whether ‘premiss’ or ‘remise’ are words.

    Gloomy day today.

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

14. 16.05, but with the misbiffed THRENODY and INSTANCE, so double no cigar.
    I wasn’t happy with LIGAMENT (“tissue” being so vague as to be almost meaningless) or ALGA for seaweed without any indication that seaweed is only one form of alga.
    Word of the day: mombles.

15. After reading the intro, I plugged away steadily enough, thinking, “Pretty interesting but not very esoteric”—until I hit my LOI, LEISTER. Was glad to verify the definition.

16. My LOI accounted for 10% of my total solving time, due to me not considering it as a form of poetry, but rather something musical.

    FOI LONG STOP
    LOI RHAPSODY
    COD LEISTER
    TIME 10:00

17. I definitely didn’t find this so hard taking 24:53.
    When I was at school, a milliard was a thousand million and a billion was a million million. Since then, the american meaning of billion has taken over but in German it’s still Milliarde and Billion like the English of my childhood.
    Probably like many I wrote in THRENODY but then looked at the clue and realised it must be THRENODE.
    NHO a LEISTER and needed all the crossers to be sure of myself.
    LOI was the FINO and I was so obsessed that it had to be IF in the middle, I lost a couple of minutes at the end. Before that I was also slow to get RHAPSODY.
    Thanks setter and blogger

    1. …and the French, still using ‘le milliard’. My old dad used to chunter about Americans not being able to count, and insisted on ‘milliards’ every time it came up, (more often than you’d think, when someone has a bee in their bonnet) or specified ‘American billions’ to distinguish them from proper billions.

18. DNF, with ‘instance’ rather than ISSUANCE. I suspected ‘inste’ couldn’t possibly be a word, but as I was nearing the end I just went with it.

    – Didn’t know LEISTER was a spear (and had the same problem as vinyl after putting ‘ordinals’ for 2d)
    – Much more familiar with ‘premise’ than PREMISS, but trusted the wordplay
    – Went through several meanings of Victoria before eventually remembering it’s a TERMINUS as my LOI

    Thanks vinyl and setter.

    COD Tuba (a chestnut I know, but a good one)

19. A steady solve but definitely on the tricky side of Monday, I thought, with several traps for the unwary..
    I had to correct ORDINALS, only once 15ac became otherwise impossible ..
    Lint is indeed a fabric: “an absorbent cotton or linen fabric with the nap raised on one side, used to dress wounds, etc ” (Collins)

20. The trouble is, when you’ve already got PREM?S? courtesy of a quirky grid, you’re not going to bother with checking to see if the PREMISE you know is actually PREMISS which you don’t. Pity remise (surrender a legal claim – Chambers) can’t be smudged to mean failing in duty. I got the other alternatives right, but hey-ho.
    The other that did give me pause was the similarly generously crossed ?R?TTER, which, when clued with kitchen meant a search for some percussion term, sadly fruitless.
    A rather irritating puzzle with so many traps for the unwary and a spear thrust straight out of Mephisto. And on a day when I knocked almost a minute off my Quickie solving record. Boo!

    1. I wasn’t familiar with premiss, but then I wasn’t familiar with remise either; and premiss does at least parse..

       1. That’s if you get as far as parsing….

          1. This is why you will be going for the championship next month, while I just want to not come last … 🙂

             1. 🤣🤣🤣

21. 14:04 but with an unchecked PREMISE. At least I spelt THRENODE correctly. LEISTER taken on trust from the wordplay. LOI AMALGAMATE. Thanks Vinyl and setter.

22. I’m relieved to see I wasn’t the only victim of assuming Monday would be a shoe in. I started like a train but then hit the buffers big time to record a finish in 40 minutes.

    Top RH and bottom LH seemed to take forever to get on the wavelength. Leister was a particular hold up but I also missed the hidden sherry, thought the dessert must have a ph in it, wasted time looking for a UK political party for the legal act and so it went on( which is what I’m doing right now , so I’ll stop bleating).

23. 6:45, which would have put me somewhere near the top of the leaderboard if I’d bothered to parse THRENODE properly rather than just biff THRENODY. I thought this was a wee bit more interesting than normal Monday fare. LEISTER was new to me, and possible PREMISS, but all the wordplay was clear. The juxtaposition of THRENODY and RHAPSODY was interesting and surely not accidental (basically “sad song” and “happy song”). COD to FINO for managing to get the definition in the middle of the clue, which you don’t see that often. It’s also true that much sherry is consumed in Oxford as far as I recall from my student days. I always preferred amontillado myself…

    1. When I was interviewed at Oxford (it was about 11 in the morning I think) the old don I met offered me a sherry.

       1. Did you accept it?

          1. I did not, which seems to have been the right decision. Or at least not the wrong decision.

24. DNF
    Same as Chris: instance for issuance. My cousin works in a chip shop; he’s frittering his life away.
    Thanks, v.

    1. I hope you’re heading for your coat; – )

25. 55m 34s but I join the PREMISE crew.
    Liked 13d THE THREE Rs and also 18d TERMINUS.
    4d reminds me of Dylan…
    “Where Ma Rainey and Beethoven once unwrapped their bedroll
    Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole”

    1. Worth a Nobel prize in anyone’s money, Martin.. it even makes no sense whatever, a prerequisite these days for a Literature prize ..

       1. 🤣🤣🤣

26. 29:58

    Slow start: had only GOSH first pass across and had to wait for 3R’s on the downs to get a foothold. Lack of GK meant I wasn’t tempted to write THREENODY. Plenty done by wordplay alone, but fairly clued.

    LOI FRITTER
    COD GORMLESS

    Thanks all

27. I enjoyed being at LONG STOP at school – I could watch the bumblebees on the clover at the boundary without being disturbed by the ball coming my way.

    1. You and me both. I suspect there may be a correlation between being chosen as long stop and liking crosswords … somehow I can’t see Beefy being a crossword fan

       1. But Mike Brearley possibly.

          1. Good point .. he was my favourite England captain, before Ben Stokes appeared and seemed able to do absolutely everything… though maybe not a Times crossword, just guessing 🙂

28. POIs 25a Threnod(e)(y), 5d Premis(s)(e) had me a bit foxed for a while.
    I’ve looked up 15a Leister before, so it won’t be its first outing.
    Quirky and fun!

29. I fell into the THRENODY bear trap, which was entirely my own fault. Can’t say I greatly enjoyed the rest, though. Too much wilful obscurity.

    Thanks both.

30. 46:25. Pleased that I managed to parse my way past the elephant traps, but I got well bogged down in the south-west corner, not helped by having the S from ORDINALS at first and wanting to put CONCERTO where NOCTURNE needed to be. Most trouble were MEALIEST, LIGAMENT and of course LEISTER. I liked TERMINUS and FRITTER

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