Times 29171 – you do wrong your hand too much

68 comments on “Times 29171 – you do wrong your hand too much”

1. I found this not too difficult for a Friday and finished in about 35′. Helped a little by seeing the pangram which gave me LOI CARJACKER after failing to see any other “estate-management” options. Failed to parse MOROCCAN after spending time trying to find a camel in a supposed anagram including “my order”. Also my initial spelling of “tyrrany” didn’t help! But no NHOs for a change. Thanks William and setter.

2. 40 minutes for this excellent puzzle. the last 4 of which were spent on 13ac which had been nagging away at me as an unsolved outlier in the NW segment whilst I worked on the rest of the puzzle. I had convinced myself that the answer was going to refer to an eastern dish that I’d never heard of, but I’d been overthinking it and when I eventually got round to considering ‘enclosed’ as an enclosure rather than an enclosure indictor it all fell into place and the eastern dish turned out to be the most obvious one of all!

   My only unknown was SPECULA which may be making only its second appearance here. There were other options for placement of the unchecked anagrist but SPECULA seemed the most likely by far.

3. DNF
   Never got CURRENCIES. Got REPUGNANT, finally, but never parsed. For ARITHMETIC and finally parse it. I think I DNK GEAR, but inferred it meant ‘drugs’. COD to ARITHMETIC all right.

4. I went with caretaker rather than carjacker. Which meant I took out specula and was stumped until my wife, the Oracle, enlightened me.

   I’m not sure if the setter meant for us to be misled this way but I thought it was excellent.

   1. I thought about CARETAKER, but by that point I was confident of SPECULA, so discarded it

5. RAPUNZEL, I knew it was something to do with hair but couldn’t quite see it, very good. Couldn’t get cello out of my head at first for ‘bowman’s instrument’ until DOG-EAR came along. I found the SW pretty easy after seeing PINKY and STUMP but the rest was all over the place. Never got the parsing for REPUGNANT. COD to BECOMING.
   Thanks William.

6. 14.16, with a little time on CURRENCIES – several ways to read the clue instructions, which is always a nice way to misdirect, plus I associate oriental with China rather than India. It was easier once I’d fixed my semi-biffed ‘expedited’, as was ARITHMETIC… Realising the North African didn’t have to start with COR was also useful.

   A nice example of a fairly tricky puzzle with no obscure answers. As I type, William’s prediction of the Snitch is remarkably accurate, although some of the real speedsters seem to have got badly blocked (relatively, of course!).

   Thanks both.

7. A very minor point but I parse 18A as NOT E. This fits the surface a little more neatly. Still, it works as NO TE as well.

   1. Don’t understand your point as surely E is incleded in the series of notes A to G?

      1. I think it’s just whimsical. A note is one of A to G, (yes) but read it as NOT E and you are being more selective (and no)

         1. I am with Tringmardo on this one. How can E not be included in A to G?

            1. Well E is included in A to G, which is why NOT E is the “no” from ‘yes and no’. So it’s saying NOTE is from A to G, and NOT E is not from A to G (with a double negative)

               1. Pretty much what I meant but more lucidly put, thank you😊

               2. Sorry, I just don’t understand what you are saying. And I am a matho too!

                  1. I agree. The clue is a complete nonsense.

8. Tricky but worth the effort! I’m not too happy with the use of (Robert) Frost as an indicator of the poetic ‘ne’er’ for never. While Frost is a great fit for the surface, I’m not sure he ever used ‘ne’er’ in his poetry.Happy to be corrected.

   1. I think you’re right – Always never, never ne’er!

   2. I found this:

      Robert Frost used the word “ne’er” in his poem The Road Not Taken which
      includes the line “There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree”.

      One example may not be enough to base a whole clue on though.

      1. Perhaps his most famous poem too. I think that’s the one he read at Kennedy’s inauguration.

      2. That’s not Frost at all but yer own Robert Louis Stevenson… from a poem heretofore unbeknownst to me (I knew that line wasn’t in “The Road Not Taken”), “Escape at Bedtime.”

           The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
           Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
           And high overhead and all moving about,
           There were thousands of millions of stars.
           There ne’er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
           Nor of people in church or the Park,
           As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,
           And that glittered and winked in the dark.

           The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,
           And the star of the sailor, and Mars,
           These shone in the sky, and the pail by the wall
           Would be half full of water and stars.
           They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,
           And they soon had me packed into bed;
           But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,
           And the stars going round in my head.

         https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/escape-bedtime/

         1. Yes, I think I’ve fallen foul of a Google search that returned an item written by AI. When I use AI myself (Gemini is pretty good) I’m always careful to verify what it tells me from another source but I hadn’t been aware until today that a standard Google search can initiate AI articles itself.

   3. Whenever I see a clue such as, in this case, “Frost’s never” I immediately look at the word following the possessive and ask “Is this one of those words that has a ‘poetic’ form?” If the answer to that is “yes” I just assume that the person named is a poet I’ve never heard of and take it on trust from there.

9. Well I got there in 54.23 with time off for a couple of interruptions, but I think I’ll call it a DNF because I surrendered to the temptations of the check function at critical points. I found this much tougher than other comrades and missed regnant, was mystified by ARITHMETIC and as for MOROCCAN, gimme a break. And the RUC? Jeez! But there were some terrific clues here, a good challenge, thanks William.

   From Tweedle-dee Dee and Tweedle-dee Dum:
   One is a lowdown, sorry old man
   The other will STAB you where you stand
   I’ve had too much of your company,
   Says Tweedle-dee Dum to Tweedle-dee Dee

10. Another DNF, drat. I was so sure that 14d was CARETAKER ( TAKE =lift in CARER=minder= CARETAKER , « whose taken over running the estate ») that I could never get the NHO SPECULA. Unfortunately for me, my wife doesn’t do crossies !

    Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

    Thanks William and very tricky setter (IMHO)

11. Just under 40 minutes, finishing with CURRENCIES once I’d realised the definition was more than just ‘assortment’ (William, you’ve missed the C in the ENC part of the parsing in your blog).

    – Still not sure I fully understand how NOTE works
    – Saw EXPEDIENT but took a long time to parse it
    – Have we had ‘charged’ as an anagram indicator before, as used in SENATOR?

    Thanks William and setter.

    FOI Sit-in
    LOI Currencies
    COD Carjacker

12. I agree with flashy above re NOT E, if we are in A to G terminology, no need to revert to solfa.

    1. Still puzzled why you say E is not included in the notes from A to G but then I never knew much about music theory!

       1. It’s yes, A to G is a note, but no, it is not true that A to G contains no E – it does!

13. DNF. I gave up after 27 mins with three unsolved. CURRENCIES, DOG-EAR and PEEVE.

14. Great puzzle. Hard but fair and well worth 52 mins of my time.
    Held up by my own mispelling of MORROCAN for too long. Its much easier to spot on the horizontal.
    Also took an age to twig REPUGNANT. Nice to be in good company but why it fooled us all is a mystery.

    FOI CORACLE which I remember on the Severn outside Gay Meadow fielding stray footballs
    LOI DOG EAR
    COD ARITHMETIC

15. One of the most enjoyable ones in a while. Tricky, but no obscure peace pipes or exotic cuisine.

    Helped by the expecting a J (for the pangram) in CARJACKER which helped me avoid the trap.

    LOI: CURRENCIES for which I was a bit gutted about fooling for an old trick. I spent far too long anagramming BREAD between the two Cs expecting an obscure cuisine.

    Lot to like in this but DOG EAR (nothing fills me with rage more), STUMP, TYRANNY and BECOMING my favourites today.

    A great end to the week.

    For what it is worth I also parsed it NOT E but can see both work.

    1. I envy your charmed life, dog eared pages are way down my list of inflammatories, well below underlining lines of text. Top of my list? Pages torn from a text or technical library book.

16. Speculum = mirror in Latin. The plural is usually speculums in the gynaecology trade but specula is correct. A speculum has a reflective polished metal surface, which when used with an external source of light, reveals the target, which is the cervix (uteri, “neck of the womb”) Disposable ones, made of plastic, also reflect the light internally but not as well. I know because I have used thousands of them

17. 48:02 – more than four times slower than the Australian Verlaine.

    Heading out for therapy…

    1. To be fair I had one of those good days. Felt like I was bowling from the southern end at the WACA (where I happened to spend this afternoon with my son).

       1. A ground evocative of so many memories – mainly challenging for England fans!

18. Breezeblocked yet again, this time by RAPUNZEL and PEEVE.

    Thanks william and setter.

19. 20.51, delighting in the brilliant cluing. Almost all of them would pass muster as a “normal” piece of prose rather than a strained crossword clue, and pointing (as a good clue should) in a completely different direction to the required answer. I highly recommend going back over the clues with your cryptic-aware faculty switched off to see what I mean, from the drivers’ orange plague of 1 down to the weather forecast of 28 across.

20. About 50 mins.
    Great puzzle.
    Thanks, w.

21. Made a mess of this. CARETAKER made SPECULA impossible, and couldn’t see PEEVE or CURRENCIES – which I now see weren’t that difficult. Irritating.

22. I thought this was easy (at least for Friday) until it wasn’t.
    13a Currencies. It is enc for enclosed in curries.
    DNF, 23a Specula doesn’t fit S_E_U_T, nor do any other words, see 14d.
    4d Expedient. Carelessly put expedited, but fortunately noticed the absence of the second d in the anagrist.
    14d Carjacker. Disaster, Caretaker, take=steal=lift in Carer, so on the right track but doesn’t work with 23a. I never notice pangrams.
    Thanks to William and setter.

23. Started with CONIFER and RAPUNZEL. Then CORACLE arrived. Much cogitation and effort left me with 13a, 14d, 26a and 24d. After a lot more cogitation I finally spotted CARER as the minder, and JACK as the lift. UNSHACKLE came next and, er, unshackled PEEVE, leaving 13a. After what seemed like eons, I spotted CURRIES and the battle was over. 30:52. Thanks setter and William.

24. Fantastic puzzle. Just the right level of difficulty, and no obscurities (past puzzles have taught me obscurities like RUC and Frost ;-). SPECUL(A)UM vaguely known without knowing what it was, but SPECCHIO is Italian for mirror so clearly SPECULUM is based on Latin, and similar.
    Slowish, but never really held up. LOI Peeve took a minute or two – didn’t notice the pangram or the V would’ve gone straight in. COD to arithmetic.

25. 34:10 – very nice puzzle with the neatly misleading caretaker/jacker clue leading me down several blind alleys. ARITHMETIC held out to the end but was worth the effort when the penny dropped.

26. 45 minutes. I agree with what others have said about the quality of the puzzle – best of the week. Not the really tough Friday I thought we were due for, but more than difficult enough and satisfying to complete. Glad I resisted the temptation to put in UNLEASHED at 25a and that I put aside my incorrect belief that a DRAGOON was a mounted infantryman, not a ‘cavalryman’.

    Favourites were CURRENCIES, RAPUNZEL and CARJACKER.

    Thanks to William (at the moment you’re pretty close with your SNITCH prediction) and to setter

    1. Your belief is correct, and the setter is wrong. Dragoons are soldiers who ride to the battle on a horse, and then get off and fight on foot. This originated as a cost saving measure, for kings whose war budget was running low. They could use cheaper horses, and the equipment required is not as expensive.

       1. DRAGOON came up as an answer a few years ago, probably somewhere else. I looked it up then and remember that ‘cavalryman’ was given in at least one source. I’ve looked it up again today and all the usual references have ‘cavalryman’ as a sense. The mounted infantryman sense is also given: Collins has “(originally) a mounted infantryman armed with a carbine”, Chambers has “a mounted infantryman armed with an old fire-spitting musket (obsolete)” and the ODE has “(historical) a mounted infantryman armed with a carbine”.

          I agree the original is the best but I think this lets our esteemed setter off the hook.

27. of course I would put CARPARKER not CARJACKER. D’oh!

    1. Snap. Only entered after getting the carer part and then convincing myself park could be an estate!

28. I never bother with pangrams because some setters deliberately mislead, having almost all the letters but missing one or two. Not that that is any excuse for my time of over an hour, just general dimness. Good crossword and the 1-1 draw the highlight. I was a bit unsure that DOG-EAR was good enough as a definition of turning down a page, but had a different idea of its meaning (dog-eared = messy and falling to pieces). It’s OK, Collins supports it.

29. Loved it. Not only did I climb off the canvas after yesterday’s pummelling but I punched above my weight for an 11:35 (that’s enough boxing references for now, I don’t even like the sport).

    Too many great clues to mention. Thanks William and setter.

30. Pleased to finish with all correct and parsed, even if it did take me 72.15 to get there. I spent the final six or seven minutes on CURRENCIES, and almost on the point of giving up it suddenly came to me. When I saw bread as part of the clue I was immediately thinking of a connection with money, but enclosed misled me into thinking it would be a component part of the clue rather than the whole thing.
    A very good puzzle, well worth the extra endeavour to solve it.

31. What a great way to start Friday off. Thanks setter.

32. 25.30 but with carparker instead of carjacker. Pretty dim really.

33. 50:36. great puzzle, lots of little traps most of which I fell into briefly. I’d have been done much sooner if I hadn’t put in HEAR for 15a (anag of RHEA which I know is flightless …). I found the NE corner all quite tricky. thanks!

34. 27:10

    Vert tricky indeed but extremely enjoyable. I’m another who was held up for a while by going for CARETAKER. ARITHMETIC is my clue of the week.

    Thanks to William and the setter

35. DNF. Gave up after 44m having failed to get DOG EAR. My knowledge of drugs terminology is derived almost entirely from crosswords, so I will try and remember to add GEAR to E and H for future solves.
    I also fell into the CARETAKER trap, which delayed getting SPECULA.

    Thanks William and setter

36. 16:34

    Nice puzzle. I was held up by CARETAKER, where I see I was not alone (when I found the clue to SPECULA impossible to solve with the letters I had I revisited the crossers), and wasted time trying to justify DOG DAY at 5d.

37. Excellent puzzle. I flew through the top half fairly quickly but then became bogged down. Currencies was a superb bit of misdirection – I thought curries as soon as I saw it starting with C but did not persevere with it as no words jumped out at me. Carjacker and re-entry gave me a lot of problems as did the superb (COD, COW, COM,COY???) arithmetic.

    Got thru in 35 minutes in the end – just over 3 and half Verlaines, always a result on a Friday.
    Thx William and bravo setter.

38. Solved, after a fashion and an unconscionable time. Must try harder.
    Great puzzle, thanks to setter and blogger.

39. 30 DNF

    Another CARETAKER but unlike Penfold I could see nothing wrong with it so SPECULA went unsolved after 5 minutes of cogitation. Should have seen the anagram but “upscale complex” was very smooth and kippered me. Again unlike Penfold I bunged in DOG DAY even though I couldn’t fully justify it (= couldn’t justify it at all) so no complaints.

    Thought CURRENCIES was excellent.

    Thanks William/setter

40. Terrific puzzle today, must have taken me nearly an hour. At one stage I had Instamatic instead of Arithmetic! Strad held me up because I kept thinking Barbs had to be there.

    Got there in the end though. Liked Currencies.

41. Enjoyed this, and all correct (although wasn’t sure how to spell the maiden with the hair). Is it a pangram?
    My only correct of the week, but had time to solve quietly.
    Thanks William and Setter.

42. After over one hour I gave up with 5dn Dog Ear missing. I’m almost pleased to say that I didn’t think of Gear for drugs. I also did not realise that the term dog-eared came from folding down the page corners. So, once again, I have learnt something new.
    Good puzzle – I liked Repugnant, Carjacker and Currencies.

43. Difficult, and sometimes very challenging, but somehow enjoyable. I appreciated the cleverness of the clues, though I failed to complete the parsing of a couple, including ARITHMETIC. I think we have seen STRAD and CONIFER recently, but maybe not here. No time recorded as I did this in several stabs between other jobs.
    FOI – OWN UP
    LOI – PEEVE
    COD – DOG-EAR
    Thanks to william and other contributors.

44. 51 mins. Started off thinking it was going to be a ‘piece of cake’, but then ground to a halt for a while. I too flirted with ‘rhea’ despite its obvious flightlessness, and with ‘caretaker’ and the dubious ‘carparker’, but then realised that 23 ac had to be an anagram so it all came out in the wash. Interesting that so many of us go through the same thought processes!

45. Over an hour defeated by RAPUNZEL and DOG EAR.

46. Deliciously chewy. Enjoyed every minute. Thanks William and Setter

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