Times 29159 – no hare, sir

86 comments on “Times 29159 – no hare, sir”

1. I’ve more to say about the puzzle later, but for now I’d just mention that Chambers classifies the hare as a rodent. This came up in QC 2495 in 2023 and I wrote at the time:

   I’ve no idea why Chambers would list ‘rodent’ as its first classification of HARE, putting it out of step with every other standard reference source. The creature was reclassified from rodent to lagomorph as long ago as 1912 based on differences in tooth configuration and replacement patterns, behaviour, habitat and diet.

   Somebody mentioned that the African spring hare is most definitely a rodent but that would seem to be clutching at straws to try to justify the error.

   1. Hold on. . .are you saying that Chambers is wrong?
      Well my flabber is definitely gasted I can tell you.

      1. I think the rule in crosswords is that if it’s good enough for Chambers, it’s good enough for a puzzle. A sort of Biblical faith in the text.

2. 17ac is an &lit isn’t it? Albeit a brutal one that took me about half an hour of rigorous internet research to assemble.

   D (edge of pounD) + ECU (coin) + SET (assigned) + T (This, originally) + UT (Latin “as”) + AMEN (agreed).

   Needed a bit of a lie-down after that. Thanks William and sadistic setter.

   1. I only got as far as D + ECU + SET and gave up! Well done.

   2. You beat me to it!

      1. It was just a matter of who recovered from the ordeal first! Very happy to see your confirmation.

   3. Outstanding work!

   4. Stone me! I just biffed it and moved on.

   5. Thanks for that! In trying and failing to work the clue out, I actually thought the answer might have been written on the coin and tried to cheat by looking at one. There is no such text on a pound coin (maybe an earlier version?)

   6. Bravo! I think at this late in the day I’ll leave the blog and this comment here for readers to find, and to demonstrate my own ignorance! Thanks for elucidating.

3. A struggle, but worth it. I parsed 17ac as D (edge of pound) ECU (coin) SET (assigned) T (this originally) UT (Latin for ‘as’) AMEN (agreed) &lit. As I said. a struggle!

   1. It was on the edge of the old round pound coins (the antecedents of the current faceted pound coins).

      1. Only on some of them. There were variations, I believe, on those which had Scottish or Welsh symbols on the ‘tails’ side, and I’m sure the first pound coins were marked NEMO ME IMPUNE LASSIT, or something like that (I never studied Latin beyond ‘Caesar adsum iam forte’, and that, sadly, never appeared on any pound coin).

         1. Very close! It is NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT, meaning, roughly, if you mess with me, you’ll regret it.

            1. And, I think, the motto of the Scots Guards.

4. Meant to add that I was a big supporter of relaxing the living persons rule until today’s appearance!
   Not to mention that it was a weird reference in any case.

5. This was way above my head. Not saying it wasn’t clever, just outside my solving skills. Bravo William.

6. Thank you for several explanations that I was missing! As it was, struggled through this in 55 minutes, happily biffing DECUS ET TUTAMEN, LEVITICUS and some others along the way. Tough!

7. All but 17a solved from my sun lounger in the Indian Ocean. Having never bothered to look at the edge of a pound coin, or seen the latin phrase before, I eventually decided that seeking out a cold beer was a better use of my time. SNITCH at 181 as I write which says it all really.

8. DNF
   Gave up eventually on 17ac and vaguely remembered the inscription as containing a Latin word for ‘protection’. Biffed AEGIS, which banjaxed the crossers (not that I would have been able to parse ADELAIDE).
   Hey ho.

9. I enjoyed this in a sort of masochistic way. My solving time was off the scale, so I won’t go there, but anyway I think I nodded off a couple of times before finally giving up for the night and deciding to return to the task this morning.

   We had NÉE (originally called) sounding like ‘neigh’ on Wednesday.

   I got the reference at 12ac almost immediately from the definition but couldn’t think of the Latin phrase, so when it still wouldn’t come with most of the checkers in place I admit to referring to the change in my pocket.

   Well done, William! Once again you drew the short straw and have risen to the occasion admirably. On days like this I’m pleased that I swapped out of the Friday slot many years ago.

   1. If you have a decus et tutamen pound in your pocket DON’T spend it, sell on t’internet, about £500.

      1. Actually a purse rather than pocket. It’s an old one full of outdated coins.

         1. And sadly it isn’t valuable, unless the writing is upside down. Google D&T if in doubt.

            1. The upside down D&T is a myth apparently – see

               https://www.coincommunity.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=402729

               1. Gosh! Someone was trying to sell one for £500; glad I wasn’t tempted!

10. An absolute belter, took about 35 minutes in the intervals of preparing and being fortified by a full English breakfast, I needed every mouthful to get to the end. Bravo William and setter.

11. Surprised to end up with just the one error after an inordinate amount of time. To solve 17A, you either need to know the phrase already, or the Latin for ‘as’. Knowing neither, my valiant attempt to build it up from scratch fell just short. A rather rough end then, although I enjoyed lots of the rest of the puzzle.

    Thanks both.

12. Great puzzle. After a LOT of biffing came in at 22.53, in seventh place. Never managed that before. I guess the neutrinos haven’t woken up yet

    1. Well done – great time for a great puzzle. I took almost 10x longer (seriously) and was still a DNF.

13. After ages I couldn’t get 17a which was an NHO; well done to galspray and Nigel F-H (and others I imagine) for working it out. The rest was a real struggle as well with too many difficult ones to mention, but COVERING LETTER and LEVITICUS will do as two examples.

    Just a guess, but this has the whiff of a John Henderson puzzle to it. If so he’s been a busy boy lately as he appears as Elgar in the DT Toughie today, thankfully in (slightly!) more tractable form.

    Thanks to our setter and thanks and well done to William

14. 19:45 A classic in my view, with very few biffing opportunities (just DECUS ET TUTAMEN and LEVITICUS I think). Some very clever clueing here, e.g. shared use of the T in HABITABLE, “EX-MINING for “out of the pits”. COD to COVERING LETTER.

15. Finished after a few visits and a long unspecified time (and a bit of help so really a DNF…). For the first time in a while I had a pound coin to hand and couldn’t resist! With C-V—-E in place I confidently biffed ceviche, and, after getting nowhere in the SW corner, I had to have a peek. Thought of SyRAH, as a wine being “laid”, but eventually parsed the random lady. A lot of biffing first followed by slow parsing, or half parsing. Thanks William and setter.

    1. Decus et tutamen pounds are worth about £500 on t’internet. ON EDIT … but only if the D&T is upside down.

       1. Yeah, once I decided to open my wallet, Elizabeth II REG didn’t fit, so had to look elsewhere. Had already lifted the covers on Caviare anyway…

16. Very 8d ‘ard. Much biffing and use of the Cheating Machine.
    5a No End Of; I didn’t know how to lose the excess “t” in the anagrist.
    DNF, 11a Sarah. Just too abstruse for me, I didn’t even guess it, even tho the choice given by CM was Sarah or surah (different spelling of sura, in the Q’oran.)
    14a Covering Letter biffed. NHO ringlet butterfly AFAIK.
    Vaguely remembered 17a Decus et tutamen, added to Cheating Machine. I thought it was exclusively Scottish, but that was just the recent ones, which I now see are going for about £500 each! … ON EDIT only if the lettering is upside down.
    POI 23a In Off isn’t a foul in billiards, whereas potting ones oppo’s cue ball gains points but is considered bad form. Not that I’m an expert, but I’m ever so slightly less bad at billiards than at snooker.
    5d Nee. Didn’t think nay=rather. We had the homophone the other way round in the quickie yesterday.
    8d Farmyard, NHO ard.
    13d NHO Tag Q. Added to C.M.
    15d Examining. I think our setter might be a fan of F1; Kimi Antonelli is replacing Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes this year, and the first race this year is at Melbourne but the Oz race used to be in 16d Adelaide.
    20d Effete biffed, oh THAT eff!
    25d Pea, I think there is a reference to “peas in a pod” being “like any other”.

    1. Had pretty well all the same problems. Bunged in a few unparsed; cheated on several others. Didn’t enjoy it.

17. I had two stabs at this, but didn’t manage to finish it; only did the top half and EFFETE. I borrowed a £1 coin from Mrs P but couldn’t see anything on the edge, so none the wiser there. Nor did I think a hare was a RODENT so wanted to find a reason for putting in ERODING and failed. LEVITICUS following NUMBERS? In the Bible? Never read it. But the half I did was good. Fair play to anyone who finished this in a decent time without cheating.

    1. Just looked it up: Numbers follows Leviticus. Not that I care, either, but it does (slightly) make the clue easier for those who know their books, and the hint that it is a book of the bible does help anyone with a Christian background. For instance I’m an atheist but primary school was a CofE Church School, and secondary was Worcester Cathedral King’s school. Not my choices.
       The D&T was only on the 1st iteration of £1 coins, and only those minted in Scotland, and not in circulation now.

18. I had ‘unmatched’ instead of ‘matchless’ for 3d for quite a while, and it just went downhill after that.
    A very good puzzle, congratulations setter and blogger.

19. Well I did finish it – but only by some dubious practices and after an unconscionable time.
    Far too clever for me but I also rather resented the rodent reference.

20. My pound coins all have 12 sides (plus front and back!), and the D&T coins are not legal tender. They’re only worth anything if they have the D&T upside down in error. The wordplay works (if you can be bothered) but is insanely complex. Just thought I’d set the grumpy tone for this morning, significantly enhanced by an unforced error on my part, which, since it’s on a crossing, counts as two errors, which always seems unfair.
    In a proper crossword, some sort of qualification would be given to ARD for plough: it’s not in current usage. Chambers qualifies it with “(archaeology)”.
    TAG QUESTION is weird, isn’t it? Not in my collection of “stuff I know”. Rather like the butterfly, though of course it might just as well be one.
    I could do without having to deduce EFF off: it led me to similarly deduce that PEA was connected to micturition (“going”) though today it wasn’t.
    You’ll gather I’m no big fan of this one, giving me better than half an hour of ultimately fruitless struggle. Hopefully the Listener, back from it’s quarterly excursion into numberwang, will be more fun.

    1. Oops, yes Z I have been misleading people. The D&T does have to be upside down. My apologies to anyone who was mislead. Andyf

21. Late to this as it’s dog sitting and walking day of my son’s dog. I was not amused when I slipped and fell crashing down on my back, fortunately still holding the lead. I was even less amused to get home to find this waiting for me. More of a DNS than a DNF, s for start. Nearly all those I did get were semi-biffs, removing any real sense of satisfaction for answers like FARMYARD and LEVITICUS. DECUS ET TUTAMEN could not be construed either by me or the dog. Well done William.

22. Two goes needed, but I got there eventually.

    – Slightly misunderstood SARAH – I thought ‘unfeeling’ was giving ‘hard as’ (you could say just “He’s hard as”, couldn’t you?) from which the D was removed, though I see now that it doesn’t account for the ‘What’s laid back’ bit (what=as is an equivalence I need to remember)
    – Didn’t get anywhere near to solving COVERING LETTER until I had all the checkers
    – Worked out the parsing for DECUS ET TUTAMEN without being sure that ut is Latin for as, or that the phrase is indeed found on coins
    – Didn’t fully grasp how NIGHTIE worked, despite it not being that complicated
    – Biffed NEE as I didn’t see rather=nay
    – NHO ard as a plough, but the rest of the wordplay and the Y checker made FARMYARD inevitable
    – Not familiar with TAG QUESTION as a term, but there was nothing else it could be once I’d worked out the second word
    – PEA went in with a shrug

    A wonderful, challenging puzzle. Thanks William and setter.

    FOI Inane
    LOI Decus et tutamen
    COD Adelaide

23. Three visits today, I don’t even want to repeat the time. Glad to have completed it though. Slowly working my way down from BEER MUG and NO END OF was the only way I could do this. Both of which were the only ones in on the first pass giving me much false hope.

    A couple filled in without fully or even partly parsing but I couldn’t even make a start on some of them.

    Certainly a Friday puzzle

24. Not much enjoyed and cheated with the horrible Latin which I’ve probably seen many times but have failed to compute.

    SARAH I had down as a reversal of HARD AS (short for e.g. HARD AS NAILS) with the D removed.

    NHO RINGLET = butterfly
    NHO DECUS ET TUTAMEN – revealed this to try and help with the SW corner
    NHO TAG QUESTION – took me an age to finally commit to this
    NHO ARD = plough

    FTP EFF as the partner of ‘blind’ – but I did like that one once explained

    Gave up with the SW unsolved and a hare is not a RODENT

    Thanks William for your Trojan efforts

25. After 75 minutes I gave up and looked up 8d, 14a, 17a, 16d, 26a and 18d. I also checked ERODENT as I thought a hare wasn’t in that class. Far too clever-clever for my taste. Thanks William. Submitting offline, I found I had managed to decode the ones I didn’t look up correctly.

26. A clue like this, which requires ridiculously obscure knowledge and/or a knowledge of Latin, should just never get through the editing process in a daily puzzle IMO. I don’t care how clever it is, save it for Mephisto.

    1. I was going to argue with you, but you have pleased me greatly with your clear differentiation between “ridiculously obscure knowledge” and “knowledge of Latin”, so your comment accordingly gets a pass from me.

       1. It’s the combination that really gets my goat.
          There was plenty more in this puzzle that irritated me but this took the biscuit.

          1. D&T was actually a biff for me!
             Once I’d discounted “Nemo me impune lacessit” and “Pleidol wyf im gylad” (found on the Scottish and Welsh ones)
             And the edge printing can be either way up; there is no wrong way
             Numismatics has been useful more than once in the Times crossword – but not anywhere else that I can think of

27. Well, this QC escapee couldn’t resist having a go after word got out that this was rather tricky. Many answers biffed but just couldn’t parse. Blog essential, thank you. Used check button indiscriminately and gradually filled the grid. The only one I would never have got in a million years was 17a (but I will check all my old coins now). Thought PEA was great (just about my level) but loads of fantastic clues. Much learning today, especially shared T in HABITABLE. Many, many thanks for the blog and for all the comments. Very enjoyable.

28. Delighted to finish this. Very very good in parts, especially 17 across. I too was surprised by hare being classed as a rodent, and that delayed me somewhat. It also turns out I didn’t know how to spell privilege! If I was being picky, I would say that ard is a step too far, although the answer is very generously clued. You can put me down as another solver who fails to equate nay with rather.
    Thanks for a great blog William.

29. What hard work. I took ages to even see one answer, then soon decided that aids would be necessary and I quickly moved from mild ones to fully-fledged electronic ones. The problem was that even after using them I had trouble understanding how the clues worked and I had a long list of answers where I had to use the blog to see what was happening. All OK eventually, but goodness knows what’s happening with PEA.

    Amazing that the SNITCH is so low. I expected it to be about 250.

    1. I like the distinction between “mild” and “electronic” aids.

    2. The SNITCH only takes into account successfully-submitted solutions, so a beast like this can be underestimated.

30. Got there in the end – 75 minutes give or take. Didn’t understand Eff or Pea until I came here. Quite a toughie.

31. Well. This one put me in my place. 60% done after well over an hour, and all forward momentum totally gone. Some clever stuff; just too much of it

32. DNF with half a dozen missing in the end even after coming back for a second bash at lunchtime. Mostly enjoyed it but the latin was way beyond me and the Hare = rodent is simply wrong whatever any dictionary says.

    This is a problem with dictionaries, they record the way a word is used so if enough ignorant people use it wrongly it becomes right. A kind of ignorocracy of language.

    1. Sadly we pedants have to accept that “the way a word is used” is exactly what language is, and that’s what dictionaries are meant to reflect.

33. 23:03

    I immediately saw what was going on at 1ac but it took aee while to eliminate BEER JUG and settle on the answer. That gave me the danglers and I filled the NW quickly, but from that point on it was areal struggle leading to a NITCH of 166.

    I didn’t know TAG QUESTION but it had to be once I’d pulled question from the fodder. I knew the coin inscription (probably from pub quiz swotting) but missed the wordplay. I had no idea how SARAH and PEA parsed so thanks for those.

    LOI was FARMYARD once I recalled that living persons were now fair game so I thought of farm things (only go to the Diddly Squat farm shop if you enjoy standing in a queue). Soldiers being ARMY not OR and the funny plough word certainly didn’t help.

    1. Wow!

34. I didn’t like this crossword AT ALL.
    Too convoluted and clever-clever by half.
    And rabbits and hares are lagomorphs not rodents.
    And just because it was once written on the edge of some coin or other does NOT mean it is acceptable general knowledge. Did ANYONE say “Oh yes, I remember that” and write it in? No, you all looked it up, just as I did.

    Hmph.

    1. Yes I remembered that and wrote it in. Didn’t parse.

    2. Straight in from a glance at the clue here too. I prefer NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT of course.

    3. Well, I looked it up.

35. Finally threw the towel in after 90 minutes with Leviticus, adelaide and decusetc still eluding me. I don’t think it would have mattered if I spent another day on it! Wasn’t convinced by caviare so that was a blank as well.

36. Breezeblocked again after 40′, just couldn’t get the Latin phrase.

    Incidentally, I was visiting the Ashmolean this morning and saw some IMARI, whereas yesterday I didn’t know the word.

    Thanks william and setter.

37. Far too difficult for me, and I suspect the mythical Times silver on the 8.10 from Dorking or wherever. A plea to the editor, save these for bank holidays! We expect tougher puzzles on Fridays, but this is ridiculous. I doubt many mainstream solvers finished this one before they arrived at Waterloo or Victoria.

38. Too many sittings and interruptions to get a time on this, but it was well over 40 minutes. A cracking puzzle, I thought.

39. Technical DNF since I had to look up what was on the edge of the pound coin (since I live in the US). Otherwise all correct, but hard. Some clues I was “clueless” about on first reading. I felt good to finish it even with cheating on the latin stuff.

40. Accurately guaging the difficulty here, I printed off a copy for a friend who is a good solver and likes a challenge. I helpfully wrote in each and every answer I had found after 15 minutes’ hard work. Fortunately for me that took zero valuable pencil lead, and fortunately (or not) for him, he will have the pleasure of facing all 30 clues from scratch.
    See you all Monday.

41. I’m surprised how many people (eg. JerryW) never knew or noticed that their quids had inscribed rims. And I’m rather disappointed that the setter included this fact as a puzzle answer so long after it ceased to be true.

    1. I did know the rim was inscribed, but failed to memorise the latin inscription. Of which there were at least five, apparently.
       It isn’t even legal tender any more, technically ..

42. Yes I remembered that and wrote it in. Didn’t parse.

    More biffings than I could shake a stick at, though orl korrect in the end. Didn’t think much of erodent.

    The clue for HABITABLE was an original idea, sharing a cell.

    DOUBLET was good.

43. Gosh that was tough. Resorted to Chambers for decus et tutamen – very cross with myself as I should have got it from the wordplay.

44. 140:36. gosh. lots of NHOs there. Some wonderful clues as well noted above but I’m too frazzled to consider them much more. DECUS ET TUTAMEN was an absolute beaut / beast of a clue – is looking at a quid cheating?

45. Congratulations to the blogger, but this was an absolutely appalling puzzle. And I’m still none the wiser, nor convinced by some of the definitions. I fail to see how it can be ‘superb’ if it includes a basic error of taxonomy. Why does NO = NOT? Embers aren’t remains. That would be ashes. You refresh a fire with embers that are ‘kept in’. VIA= ‘as a result of’ is a bit loose too.
    I’m a 98%er but when I only got one answer, and that being one I’d never heard of, it was kind of demoralising, leading to more musings about what I actually get for my £30 pm?

46. I couldn’t parse PEA and thank you for your explanation (penny each), which does seem convincing. I spent an entertaining 5 minutes trying to get AI to tell me what was going on this clue, which it obviously failed spectacularly to do.

    1. So did I, at 2 in the morning. Realising it could (or with its purportedly malfeasant nature, would) not help, I stared and guessed. I wonder if the *real* point of Ross is to make us concede.

47. Indeed a superb puzzle, which except for the pound coin which I gave up and googled I finished in 41:32. (I had also never heard of a tag question, but this was easy to work out)
    Regarding the pea, I thought the “like any other” was about the two peas in a pod saying.
    Anyway many thanks setter and blogger, I would love many more puzzles like this but they must be incredibly hard to set!!

48. I think nay is actually “or rather” not “rather”, as in “It is my pleasure, nay privilege, to introduce tonight’s guest speaker.”

    “It is my pleasure, or rather privilege, to introduce tonight’s guest speaker.”

49. This was soooo hard! Got a few clues, and then only bits of clues. Had Tag Question but dismissed it, thinking I was reaching. Had Pea with the same result. Had Embargo, Same!
    Humanising! Thanks Best, Carolyn

50. Gordon Bennett.
    Gave up with about half solved. I was never going to get decuwhatsit, definitely couldn’t cheat by looking at a coin, having no old UK ones to hand. We have learned not to keep much change to use on next visit overseas…in UK no bank would change out of date coins for us unless we had an account. So we put them in the Qantas giving envelope on our return flight, hoping they would benefit someone.

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