Times 29015 – sans time

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

No time today, as I accidentally left the clock running with one clue to solve; I had 3/4 done in about 20 minutes and thought I was on for a time I’d be pleased with, but then spent another 20 minutes grinding out all but my LOI (4dn).

Another excellent Friday offering with plenty of starters, several to chew on, a few bits to learn/dredge up from the recesses, and no real duds.

Definitions underlined.

Across
1 Almost overlook model given wrong part (7)
MISCAST – not all of (almost) MISs (overlook) + CAST (model). This led me down the garden path at first, thinking it would be sit+(part)*.
5 Fruit now delivered (7)
CURRANT – sounds like (delivered) “current” (now).
9 Chap with knowledge of the Borders (3)
KEN – cryptic hint, with knowledge = ken (chiefly Scottish).
10 Time to bow out gracefully? (7,4)
CURTAIN CALL – cryptic definition.
11 Writer’s novel reaching all-time low in retrospect (8)
SHERIDAN – SHE (novel), then NADIR (all time low) reversed (in retrospect). It took me an embarrassing amount of time to think of this name, even after understanding how the clue might work. I see he is buried in Poets’ Corner, so now I feel like more of a philistine for not having read him.
12 Curse put on British land (6)
BLIGHT – B (British) + LIGHT (to land, as if from sea).
15 Dismissive remark about instigator of Tory strategy (4)
PATH – PAH (dismissive remark) containing (about) the first letter (instigator) of Tory.
16 One finding winter quarters abhorrent, I suspect (10)
HIBERNATOR – anagram of (suspect) ABHORRENT I. Such a great clue; probably my COD, but we’ll see how the rest of the blog goes.
18 A drink for that damned woman? (6,4)
BLOODY MARY – cryptic hint.
19 Broadcaster’s black Hummer heading west (4)
BEEB – B (black), then BEE (hummer) reversed (heading west).
22 Chapter leaving bishop’s staff more optimistic (6)
ROSIER – cROSIER (bishop’s staff) minus its ‘c’ (chapter leaving)
23 Fool twice by means of offer? (8)
ASSASSIN – ASS (fool) x2, plus IN (by means of). One who kills (offs).
25 Time a careerist wasted in support team (11)
SECRETARIAT – anagram of (wasted) T (time) + A + CAREERIST.
27 Landless state creating resentment (3)
IRE – IREland (state) without its ‘land’.
28 Name of someone famous? (7)
ALISTER – A-LISTER (someone famous). Even after thinking of this solution I was still looking for a word meaning ‘name’ and not a proper one. I suspect ‘Alastair’/’Alistair’ is more common around here.
29 Irreverent icon having change of heart (7)
GODLESS – GODdESS (icon) swapping its central ‘d’ for an L.
Down
1 Devises constitution involving society (5,2)
MAKES UP – MAKE-UP (constitution) containing (involving) S (society).
2 Moralising nun sees to it unhappily (11)
SENTENTIOUS – anagram of (unhappily) NUN SEES TO IT.
3 Bitter about being thrown into truck (6)
ARCTIC – C (circa, about) contained by (being thrown into) ARTIC (articulated lorry, truck).
4 The solid foundations of Cicero’s speech? (5,5)
TERRA FIRMA – cryptic definition; solid foundations in Latin (Cicero’s speech). I had a complete blind spot for this.
5 Press refuse to turn up (4)
CRAM – MARC (refuse) reversed. I knew this wine-making term, but still doubted that a setter would define it simply as refuse. Quite clever, I think.
6 Hierarchy protecting Liberal, getting one’s back up (8)
RANKLING -RANKING (hierarchy) containing (protecting) L (liberal).
7 Henry enthralled by Carmen, I see (3)
AHA – H (Henry) contained (enthralled) by AA (Automobile Association, car-men). Devilish bordering on Graunadian.
8 Satellite phone? Terrific (7)
TELSTAR – TEL (phone) + STAR (terrific).
13 Street kid gets one punter riled (11)
GUTTERSNIPE – anagram of (riled) GETS + I (one) + PUNTER.
14 Keeping back crowd around English journalists (10)
REPRESSING – RING (crowd), containing (around) E (English) and PRESS (journalists).
17 Supporter, strangely heartened, dropping an E (8)
ADHERENT – anagram of (strangely) HEARTeNED missing your choice of ‘e’.
18 Worker in grounds is finally sent to stop horse rearing (7)
BARISTA – IS + the last letter of senT, contained by (to stop) ARAB (horse) reversed (rearing). Coffee grounds, of course.
20 Crazy swinger’s game beginning anew (7)
BONKERS – cONKERS (swinger’s game) with a different first letter (beginning anew).
21 Left old rocker not feeling great, apparently (6)
PARTED – PAR (average, expected) TED (old rocker), therefore not feeling great.
24 Outspoken old man in Paris is to marry (4)
PAIR – sounds like (outspoken) “Père” (old man (father) in French).
26 Life force embodied by Achilles? (3)
CHI – hidden (embodied) in aCHIlles.

93 comments on “Times 29015 – sans time”

  1. 53 minutes with a wrong answer

    I had a MER at half a dozen answers that had to be right but seemed a bit off for one reason or another, for example ‘strategy / PATH’, ALISTER as a name (NHO that spelling although I now see that Wiki lists a number of ‘famous’ Alisters I also NHO), KEN using ‘of the Borders’ to indicate Scottishness (borders have two sides!), etc.

    Because of that I began to lose faith in the preciseness of some of the clues and wordplay so when I became stuck on my last one (21dn) with ?A?TED in place I settled on WASTED defined as ‘not feeling great apparently’, but with little confidence. Now that I see the answer playing on being ‘below PAR’ I think it’s very good – maybe the best of the lot, so I’m sorry I didn’t do it justice.

    Well done, William, you drew the short straw today.

      1. Thanks, I see now that it’s a Scottish council district created in 1975, so no doubt part of the same train-wreck of local government reorganisation brought about by disastrous PREMIER ED Heath (as he was referred to in yesterday’s puzzle). If I sound bitter about this it’s because he abolished the historic county of my birth by the same process.

    2. DNF, also because of “wasted”. My logic said that something left (over) might be wasted, an old rocker “was (a) ted” (which made me think of our old friend Dorset Jimbo), and if one is wasted the feeling may not be great (and it certainly isn’t later!) Too much stretching really, and that logic is therefore tenuous.

      2. What with one error in the Quickie (which is a perfectly acceptable answer in my eyes), and WASTED (again just as acceptable in my biased opinion) I’m somewhat miffed today to say the least.

      3. Another wasted. And another who thought some of the definitions were stretching it. But enjoyed the challenging offer (assassin!) neverthless.

      4. I was a “wasted” too. I actually think it’s a very poor clue. When somebody says that they are “not feeling great”, it’s litotes; they are actually saying that they are feeling sub-par.

        I do understand that, literally, feeling “not great” does not imply anything better than feeling “average”, but even so…

        I hesitated for longer than I should have over ASSASSIN, because I could not fully parse it. Then I remembered that a few months ago there was a clue that involved “off” as a verb meaning “kill” and that therefore an “offer” might be somebody who kills. Apart from the fact that nobody this side of the pond uses the word like that (apart from the occasional crossword setter), I struggle to accept the assumption that an agent noun can be made from any verb by adding ‘er’; surely the word needs actually to have been used at some point, which I very much doubt is the case here. Presumably the question mark at the end of the clue is an apology for tenuousness. It irked me, which I guess makes the setter an irker. Rant over.

          1. I doubt whether it is used anywhere except in crossword clues where the answer is a river.

        2. I think you’ve hit on the correct parsing! “Not feeling great” is sub-par. So “old rocker not feeling great” works as a cryptic definition for PARTED in a down clue. (I put WASTED too, btw.)

  2. I didn’t like AHA for both its construction and the fact that the AA has female staff and drivers.

  3. I had quite a list of post-solve queries which William was kind enough to explain, such as the game of conkers and goddess meaning icon, but I’m still not sure how the in of ASSASSIN equates to ‘by means of’ and I don’t see how STAR = terrific. I sort of get TEL = phone as an abbrevo but this was not my favourite clue. There were plenty of better ones, including SHERIDAN, TERRA FIRMA and several excellent anagrams. All done in 32.11 which I thought was OK because some of these were hard and my LOI PARTED (TED under PAR, brilliant!) seemed to take forever.

    From Workingman’s Blues #2:
    There’s an evening haze settling over the town, starlight by the edge of the creek
    The buying power of the proletariat’s going down, money’s getting shallow and weak
    The place I love best is a sweet memory, it’s a new PATH that we trod
    They say low wages are a reality if we want to compete abroad

    1. I thought of “I travelled there by means of / in the train, and “she was a star / terrific student”.

  4. 13:39. I found an enjoyable number of clues had to be put together from the cryptic today but the cryptics were often straightforward – e.g. “all-time low” had to be nadir and with the B in place the horse jumped out as an Arab.

    I finished predictably with PARTED which on another day I could have stared at for ages – with the TED in place I thought the definition had to be “not feeling great, apparently”. I’d tell myself that I should consider all possibilities in a clue – i.e. Left could be the definition – but if that hasn’t stuck with me by now I doubt it ever will!

  5. 14:57. Some of the easier clues needed crossers (e.g CURRANT), but despite a few pangs of concern, everything went in fairly smoothly.

    I didn’t spot the Car-men, and it feels like an escapee from elsewhere rather than something I’d expect in the Times. An observation rather than a complaint.

    PARTED was very good, but quite tricky. I was fortunate to guess there was some funny wordplay in the last part of the clue, and that TED was the old rocker, which left, er, ‘left’ as the definition.

    Thanks both.

  6. 27 minutes, mostly liked. I’m just that age, key years between Elvis and the Beatles, that when I read ‘satellite’, the Tornados playing TELSTAR flashes through my brain. LOI PARTED, not a great clue. I didn’t care for ALISTER that much either. COD to SHERIDAN, with BONKERS in second place. Thank you William and setter.

      1. Just a little bit earlier. On Radio Luxembourg, your station of the Stars, brought to you by courtesy of Clearasil.

  7. 32:49 but with one wrong – WASTED – I was so impressed when I saw “was ted” that I forgot about the parsing. PARTED is very good. I am ashamed to say I thought 20dn was a triple: Crazy / swingers / game beginning anew

      1. I’m reminded of this marvellous clue attributed to someone called Spurius in the Independent: Mad, passionate lovers? (7)

  8. About 80 minutes FOI CHI then SENTENTIOUS, CRAM, ADHERENT, BEEB and GUTTERSNIPE. LOI GODLESS. I knew a novel called She but for some reason thought it had to relate to Sheridan. Didn’t see the anagram in HIBERNATOR. Couldn’t parse PARTED or PAIR.
    Thanks William.

      1. We had ET in the QC earlier this week, and I commented that She was another setter favourite in the novel/movie short-and-useful-letters category. If I could be that prescient with the GGs or in the shares market I’d be posting from my personal Greek island.

  10. After all that it was simply ‘TERRA FIRMA’! Here I was thinking it was a part of some famous speech. I think if it had been clued as ‘solid ground’ it would have come to me.
    I have seen AA clued as CARMEN before and as I only do Times puzzles it must have been clued as such before, so in it went. I thought of batsmen for 20d, crazy/bats before the checkers put an end to that. Saw parted pretty early but missed the ‘Ted under par’ bit, clever. PAIR took too long to parse until the PDM. Just to top it off, I entered Bloody Mary in 16a instead of 18a, which meant another print-out. DNF but very enjoyable.
    Thanks William and setter.

  11. 21:03 WOE
    WASTED (see Busman above). Never understood CARMEN. I spent an embarrassingly long time wondering how taking the E off EIRE would work.

  12. 38 mins and I enjoyed this one. At least I finished and luckily didn’t fall into the bear trap re PARTED though I missed the clever below par bit.

    I liked GUTTERSNIPE, a great word. My mother used it a lot, basically to ensure I didn’t turn into one, I think!

    I think refuse (my dictionary says: something rejected as worthless) for MARC is a bit rough. I have an oak-aged one from Vieux Telegraph which is delicious. You couldn’t make that from « refuse ».

    Thanks William and setter

    2. I don’t think MARC here is referring to the drink; it is a term in winemaking (like pulp or lees).

      1. I know that as I’m a retired winemaker! I still wouldn’t call it refuse though. Having said that, cf Jerry,s comment above. Sometimes you just can’t win.

    3. I think we’ve had this discussion before but I had a bottle of MARC from the Domaine de la Romanée Conti once. It was a bit better than most but still pretty rough. I’ll have to take for it on the Vieux Telegraph! (One of my favourite CNDPs, so I can believe it).

      1. We have a local Marc de Provence, down here, rough and ready but, boy, does it taste good.

        1. I lately came across a bottle of Tsipouro, farm distilled from must, that I had mislaid for about 20 years. Oh boy, was it worth waiting for!

          1. I’m assuming that’s Greek, sounds great. Here in France, the distillate of must is known as “Fine” and, as the name would suggest it has a more refined, cleaner and softer taste than Marc.

            1. Twenty or thirty years ago, before the remoter areas were taken over by tourists, Greek subsistence farmers pressed as much as they could from grapes by whatever primitive means they had – often feet. The remains may have been marc or must; the distinction was too fine!
              The locally distilled Tsipouro or Souma, untrammelled by aniseed, is pretty rough at first, but after a tot or two, one can overlook that.
              Obviously, it ages well!

      2. I meant to say that I too love VT. Beaucastel is great of course, but at roughly half the price my preferred Domaines are Fortia and Mont Redon.

        1. Clos des Papes is my personal favourite (leaving aside Rayas of course, which is sui generis).

  13. A steady solve but some quite tricky bits towards the bottom .. I am wondering if this was set by David MacLean, it has that mixture of excellent and highly irritating clues that I associate with him. And I observe that this week’s TLS crossword, also by him, has SHE clued as “setter’s fave novel,” cf 11ac.
    And another wasted, here too.. 🙁

  14. 13:20 but another with WASTED. As others have said, a bit stretchy in places. Lots of fun, though. Thank-you William and setter.

  15. Just over half an hour, finishing with an alphabet trawl to get PARTED (going in order stopped me falling into the ‘wasted’ trap, it seems).

    – Didn’t see how AHA worked, and as much as the car-men trick is clever, I agree with sawbill about its exclusion of female AA staff
    – MER over star=terrific in TELSTAR, but William’s ‘star student’ example above makes sense to me
    – Was baffled by the clue for BARISTA for a long time, but eventually thought of the Arab horse and saw what the ‘in grounds’ was getting at
    – Just about remembered crosier as a bishop’s staff for ROSIER
    – CURTAIN CALL felt like a slightly weak cryptic definition

    Thanks William and setter.

    FOI Ken
    LOI Parted
    COD Barista

  16. About 50′ with a DNF on “wasted”, which was a stretch, but so were others. Didn’t parse AHA and I don’t really see much of a cryptic in CURTAIN CALL. Some really nice clues but a bit loose in parts. Thanks William and setter.

  17. 22:09

    No major hold-ups but I had to plod my way around a few of the longer clues. Otherwise I found this a bit of a mixed bag, with PARTED my favourite but I also liked AHA. No pearl clutching from me on behalf of the female staff of the Automobile Association. Aren’t setters allowed a little artistic licence?

    Thanks to both.

  18. 81m 17s
    Well, I’m going to buck the trend and say I don’t like 21d PARTED. I had WASTED as did many others and still think PARTED is poor.
    On the other hand I did like AHA, TERRA FIRMA and ‘OFFER’ for ASSASSIN.
    Thank you, William.

  19. WASTED is, in my opinion, a possible answer on the parsing others have given, and though I agree PAR TED is terribly clever, if you’ve been staring at the unches for ages and thinking Rick ASTLY is not spelled like that and not yet departed, and even not that old a rocker, you give up and throw in the possible faute de mieux. Getting the pinks then makes you cross, possibly for the rest of the day.
    Such things colour your impression of the whole crossword, so you blench at RING for crowd, even if Chambers gives “a flat crowd of very small satellites encircling Saturn”, and it only just works as a verb. GODLESS’s random change of the middle letter and BONKERS’ change of the first seems lazy, the CD for CURTAIN CALL annoys because you waste time looking for the wordplay and the sigh when you see the answer is not of appreciation. I’ll just have to hope the Listener restores my joie de solver.
    30 tarnished minutes.

    1. Not to mention that we’ve had roughly this clue for Bonkers serveral times, so it’s not just cheap, it’s trite, eh?

  21. I think the clue means that “marc” is “press refuse” rather than just refuse? Not that it helped me, NHO it and, after a long alphabet trawl, for some reason I persuaded myself that COAX was more likely than CRAM. Don’t ask me how COAX is supposed to work. The desperate mind plays tricks on you.

    1. ‘Press’ is the definition, so by crossword convention can’t be doing double duty in the wordplay.

      1. But occasionally there is some overlap, isn’t there? Although if that was the intention then maybe it needed the “something funny’s going on” question mark.

        1. I wouldn’t call it ‘overlap’ but yes there is sometimes a reference from one to the other. Most clearly in semi-&Lits where you have a definition (‘this’, or similar) which doesn’t make sense without the rest of the clue. But in a standard clue the parts have to stand alone.

  22. Oh dear. DNF. Plumped for 21d WasTed rather than Parted. If wasted you are NOT feeling great; if you’re feeling great you are merely merry. That said, Ted under par is excellent, and definitely better than wasted. Nice to know I am not alone.
    Also failed to find 28a A-Lister. Biffed Aviator for no good reason. Alister spelling added to Cheating Machine. I would have got A-Lister (1,6) albeit by cheating. Must teach myself to add the Multi-word parm to all searches that fail to find answers. Humph, a bad Friday.
    COD 11a Sheridan for finding Nadir reversed at exactly the end of a famous name and using my fave novel title She (who must be obeyed.) I wrote “fave novel title” before seeing JerryW’s note.

  24. DNF after 22 mins, opting for WASTED after dismissing “parted”- in good company apparently, so feel ever so slightly better

  25. 13:42, but another WASTED. I will grudgingly admit that PARTED is brilliant. This magnanimous act of good grace allows me, I think, to say that ‘Carmen’ is a total disgrace and should never have been allowed to soil the Times crossword. That sort of thing belongs in the Grauniad and should stay there AFAIC.

    1. Not the first time though:
      #28362 August 6, 2022
      7dn : Triumphant cry of Carmen astride horse? (3)
      AHA – The A.A. are the ‘carmen’. Insert H=horse.

  26. 32 mins. The car men clue was too clever for me, just biffed it assuming my knowledge of opera being nil, it was something obscure. LOI just about, PARTED, didn’t like WASTED and had to check through 56 options on my Scrabble checker to find the answer. COD!

  27. Well, today was very educational! I managed only about 3/4, revealed the rest, some of which I should really have solved, but ultimately puzzled over many of the parsings. Thanks to William for explaining ASSASSIN (doh), BONKERS (of course!), PARTED and AHA. Took a while to recognise ‘delivered’ as an homophone indicator in CURRANT and I suspect this is very much a chestnut. Biffed TELSTAR but struggled to parse ‘star’ as ‘terrific’ (but I get it now). Great learning today. Many thanks all.

  28. MAKES UP, KEN, ARCTIC, SHERIDAN and CURTAIN CALL went in fairly quickly, then came the great hiatus where I solved nothing! BEEB eventually emerged from the fog and, with REPRESSION and ASSASSIN, got me moving again. Another fallow spell found me in the NE corner where the BLIGHT was finally dispelled as CURRANT, RANKLING and TELSTAR joined the merry throng leaving the refuse behind. CRAM eventually rose from the debris. 30:46. Thanks setter and William.

  29. Comparatively gentle for a Friday and I was pleased to get it all done in 33 minutes. Then I came here and found that two answers were wrong – WASTED and ICE – though I had no qualms about either when I wrote them in. Heigh-ho. Seems I was not alone.
    FOI – KEN
    LOI – BONKERS
    COD – ASSASSIN
    Thanks to william and other contributors.

Comments are closed.