Times 29265 – downhill all the way

63 comments on “Times 29265 – downhill all the way”

1. ABBE is a hidden word.

   I didn’t find this at all easy and required only 2 minutes under an hour to finish it off.

   I realise now I had an error at 8dn where I put TURN in desperation but without much hope. There was some sort of logic involved in this which completely evades me now.

   NHO NAMASTE. The wordplay got me to it but I checked it existed before writing it in.

   I needed most of the checkers to find NUMBER CRUNCHING and EGG AND SPOON RACE and their combined lengthy absence was the main source of my delay.

   1. ah ABBE, so easy I was over-thinking.

   2. You hadn’t heard of NAMASTE in either June or August 2021 either 😉

      1. Who’d have thought it!

         1. We all do it of course: in fact I did it myself on Sunday with the ‘Brexit’ device.

      2. 🙏🏻 this is the gesture people make when greeting each other with the word namaste

         1. I learned NAMASTE from taking up yoga classes in my dotage. ( Oh, I see Amoeba made this connection already- must read all the comments first before sticking an oar in).

            1. I learned it from a very good Indian restaurant somewhere neat brick lane I believe

   3. I learnt NAMASTE from Better Call Saul as it was the number plate of one of the protagonists.

      Didn’t help though, I had to cheat in order to finish before my bedtime. So DNF after a couple of hours dipping in and out.

2. Just under 19 minutes – I too struggled with MUGGINSES but getting NUMBER CRUNCHING and EGG AND SPOON RACE straight away was a real help. I toyed with PASTORAGE on the grounds that “ranking” can be considered a kind of arranging or storage.
   Some really nice clueing and lucid parsing, so thanks P and setter.

   1. In the course of cheating I discovered that pastorage and pastorate overlap and may be synonyms. No normal person would use either and the distinctions seem overly fussy.

3. I agree that both namaste and mugginses were not easy – I started to doubt the crossing letters. Eventually, I remembered namaste from Mephisto and gained enough confidence to tackle mugginses. I won’t say the rest of it was easy, but it was doable. Of course I saw that abbe was a hidden, and it was a write-in as well.

   Time: 36:48

   1. NAMASTE hasn’t actually appeared in Mephisto since 2012, it’s been in Sunday puzzles and Jumbos much more recently than that.

4. Liked this a lot. Many of the answers required much prising out but the reward was worth it. NUMBER CRUNCHING was a write-in from ‘how many’ and ‘eating celery’. EGG AND SPOON RACE however, took quite a few checkers before the light dawned and thought the definition was clever. Loved CARBON dating. TART came after far too long considering how many times Tarot comes up in these crosswords. KNOCK-KNEED as a cricket clue was good, I thought (and, what about that finish yesterday, I didn’t think it was going to be possible.) UNOPPOSED is a contender but COD to the never-seen-before-in-crosswords MUGGINSES.
   Thanks P and setter.

5. 38:38

   Bit of an impasse halfway through, before figuring out OBJETS D’ART, which seemed to release the tension, giving both ARGENTINA and the vital BOONDOCKS. No problem with NAMASTE – first learned this word from watching the tv series Lost. Last few in were KNOCK-KNEED, KICK, KATYDID, EGG AND SPOON RACE, MUGGINSES (I liked this a lot) and finally DIMMED.

   Thanks P and setter

6. Got there in the end but it wasn’t quick. 49 mins. The top half went in quite speedily with the great NUMBER CRUNCHING helping. However, I was bogged down in the south until I finally saw the school race. Last three in were MUGGINSES, BASIS & ABBÉ, where I completely missed the inclusion.

   Thanks Pip and setter.

7. 43 minutes with LOI PEACE. COD to NUMBER CRUNCHING, WOD to MUGGINSES. This was a puzzle full of penny drop moments, my favourite kind. What Katydid next was in on a wing and a prayer. Thank you Pip and setter.

   1. Katy did next; brill!

8. I submitted off-board after half an hour, and had ‘pastorale’ anyway. Seemed slow going throughout, couldn’t parse ARGENTINA for ages. Really liked MUGGINSES, and EGG AND SPOON RACE brought back memories (along with sack- and three-legged-).

   Thanks pip and setter.

9. No time today (on paper with various distractions to contend with) but I found that a struggle right from the off and I wouldn’t be surprised if my time was well north of 30 minutes.

   Lots to enjoy about this one though with EGG AND SPOON RACE a favourite.

   Thanks to both.

10. 12:28

    No real problems. I mis-parsed ABBE as Pip did without bothering to work out what the *ABBE* word might be and also had MUGGINESS before BASIS confirmed which way round the clue worked.

    Slight panic at 24 where the new world order allowing for living persons and aiming at younger solvers made me think the answer might be a “famous” gymnast whose name rhymes with PEACE.

    Re NAMASTE in TV programs (see Mike Harper above) it came up more recently in Nine Perfect Strangers. I learned it as an Indian greeting many years ago at school.

11. Quick today, but a neat, enjoyable crossword.
    There was a fine Indian restaurant near where I worked called Spice Namaste, so no problem there.
    Boondocks is a strange word. I looked it up in OED and it said “from the Tagalog for mountain, Bundok.” So I had to look up Tagalog, which said “The Austronesian language spoken by this people” .. now have to look up Austronesian 🙂

12. Just under half an hour.

    – Is there a particular reason for ‘First’ in the clue for EGG AND SPOON RACE?
    – Only dimly remembered the Cresta run to get CREST
    – Took ages to get MUGGINSES, even with all the checkers

    Thanks piquet and setter.

    FOI Eager
    LOI Operagoer
    COD Unopposed

    1. I took it to mean that it is the type of race you’d typically only do in your first school, i.e. at Infant/Junior School

    2. I think egg and spoon races tend to be confined to primary schools, so unless you had the privilege of a nursery school education, it would be your first. In my day, of course, we started in Infant School, can’t recall whether they inflicted such devastating tests of our dexterity on us on so-called sports days.

       1. Oh dear, is having been to nursery school another burden I have to carry with shame? Mine was a wonderful place run by an enlightened headmistress. My disappointment when taking part in the EGG AND SPOON RACE for the first time was that the eggs were not real but solid china replicas. But we ran the sack race in real coal sacks and I can still smell the tar just thinking of it.

    3. You would remember the Cresta if like me you had owned a Vauxhall Cresta. And for Cortina….

13. I knew KATYDID but not its spelling so I made rather a mess of the paper scratching out E/I/Y. Plumped for the correct letter in the end but still failed. I panic when I see a cricket clue, something I know nothing about. Convinced it was a phrase from the sport’s mysterious (to me) repertoire, I had KNOCK under. Not, it transpires, a signal from a player that all is lost.

    Thanks both

14. Very similar experience to Mike Harper and in a similar time.
    Liked the precision required in MUGGINSES. I wrote in MUGGINESS but that would be the E moving higher. Trust the wordplay.
    I dislike D’ART as one word but I know, thems the rules.
    Thanks to Piquet and setter.

15. NHO KATYDID, but the clue was generous and it was the only one apart from MUGGINSES to hold me up at all. 44 mins. Liked ARGENTINA.

16. A nippy 6:23. NAMASTE known from the yoga YouTube videos my partner does every morning.

    I didn’t like ‘play’ indicating an anagram (plays, yes!).

    The Gollumish MUGGINSES, EASTERTIDE and BOONDOCKS were my favourites, the latter because it reminded me of a line from Peep Show.

    Thanks both.

    1. 🚀

17. Mainly plain sailing but there were a few tricky ones that meant I didn’t finish. It occurred to me while doing this crossword that the modern slang ‘opp’ (opponent/enemy, especially a rival gang member) is almost opposite in meaning to the old-fashioned ‘oppo’, so if the Aussies where to ‘aussify/ozzify’ the modern word by sticking an ‘o’ on the end, as is their wont, it could lead to much confusion.

18. I enjoyed this and finished in 23:25 EXCEPT I put PASTORAGE instead of PASTORATE at 27ac. It was my LOI and I was eager to finish and couldn’t understand why storage was rank but thought it “had to be”. I don’t even know if pastorage is a word, I will google it now!
    I think I am (relatively) better at puzzles with not so many anagrams and suchlike maybe.
    Thanks setter and blogger

19. 14:22. A bit off the wavelength today, feeling a bit foggy after a couple of bad nights’ sleep.
    I used to go to a restaurant in the Docklands where the staff would shout NAMASTE whenever a customer walked in, which was quite nice when you arrived but got an little bit irritating over the course of a lunch, particularly if you arrived early.

20. Just over 20 minutes, slowed by a determination to parse everything, including ARGENTINA where the missing O troubled me, and KICK, where “short-lived” appeared egregious and I wanted it to be a third definition.
    Having struggled to remember Nadia Comăneci and other “wonderful gymnasts” I settled for P.E. ACE with a sense of knowledge wasted.
    An alternative spelling of NAMASTE, namaskar, was in this weeks miraculous Listener, so was fresh in mind.
    Neat blog, piquet, tough luck on ABBE, misread by everyone except Jack, it seems!

    1. And vinyl1

       1. I too, saw the hidden whilst in flight

21. Crashed and burned with PASTORAGE. Had MUGGINESS until BASIS made me think again. 25,24 WOE. Thanks setter and Pip.

22. 33′ but with a typo EBBE for ABBE. I can’t seem to get on the leaderboard for typos these days, I seem to be cursed (must be the heat misting up my monocle).

    COD to MUGGINSES which had me second-guessing my sanity for a good minute or two before the penny dropped!

    1. Get nanny to clean it with some of the kitchen maid’s washing up liquid.
       My valet tells me that this is what he does with mine.😃

23. I have to be done fairly soon so in order to avoid being unfinished I gave myself an electronic kick at 1ac. Wonderful how much it opened up, and after the usual delays I finished in 43 minutes. It struck me that in 17dn the clue was a bit odd: used = previously (‘usssed’), I think, and used (‘uzed’) = employed, but how does it = ‘previously employed’?

    1. It just means ‘second-hand’, I think.

    2. It’s read it as simply the past tense. Use = employ. Used = previously employed.

24. A rather sluggish 21:40 held up by the fools at 16d.

25. DNF, and gave up after an hour, having struggled for too long in the NW corner, where I failed to find the NHO KATYDID and PADDLE. One of those crosswords where the more you think about something, the more confused you get!
    COD – KNOCK-KNEED.
    Thanks to piquet and other contributors.

26. Slight nuance on DIMMED, I think it is turning round “in the middle of” = MID/DIM, and then MED for “sea”. Apologies if this is what you meant, but “in the middle of sea” is only for surface reading, imho. thanks blogger and setter.

27. On wavelength. 16’57”. Briefly considered NAPOSTE till I remembered the TV series LOST, which was where I first saw the word NAMASTE. MUGGINSES was a bear-trap into which I teetered but did not fall. Had to be MUGGINESS, right? Wrong!!! Many thanks.

28. Missed my target by just over three minutes at 48.13, but a puzzle I greatly enjoyed. A few never heard ofs to contend with in NAMASTE and BOONDOCKS, but the clueing was generous enough for me to be relatively confident.
    The EGG AND SPOON RACE is still alive and kicking at my grandson’s primary school, and I watched him finish second in his race. I swear winner used his index finger to keep the egg on the spoon, at least that’s what my grandson told me! He did at least win the big one, the sprint, where he showboated by running in his lane and turning sideways a la Usain Bolt style, to rub it into the opposition.

29. One of those that seemed impenetrable until the crossers appeared and the clues revealed themselves. My LOI PEACE being a case in point, as I thought I might have to think of a gymnast who is not Simone Biles, but the P from PARAPET made it click into focus.

    Well outside the top 100 yesterday with a time in the mid 20’s – SNITCH 90. Well inside top 100 today with the SNITCH around 100. Wavelength in action.

    17:03

30. 32.40

    Felt very treacle-like but mebbes not too bad an effort. Also bothered by the parsing of ARGENTINA; also had BASIS in and out until LOI MUGGINSES which comfortably gets word of the day.

    Thanks Piquet and setter

31. A good, enjoyable if not especially memorable puzzle of around average difficulty for me.

32. Liked this puzzle. Steady but not fast 43 mins.

    Lots of NAMASTES in the recent BBC Race across the World series

    Thought KNOCK KNEED was very good

    Thanks setter and Piquet.

33. 26 minutes. Assumed “canoe” was used as a verb in 9D. Otherwise, happy with all the parsing – all the clues seemed to work. A nice puzzle!

34. Enjoyed this but with one big complaint ( and not just because it pink squared me). KATYDID is my pet peeve of a clue – an obscure word with nothing in the word play to help you spell it. I thought I looked better then E or Y – oh well, every day is a school day.

    Particularly liked ARGENTINA, MUGGINSES and BOONDOCKS today.

    Thanks p and setter

35. MUGGINSES was my last. It makes sense, but I could find no dictionary listing this plural.
    Seems like the same word could be both singular and plural.

    1. On the other hand Wiktionary says muggins is fine and is countable and uncountable, plural mugginses.

36. I enjoyed this but it wasn’t easy, with some convoluted clueing (eg UNOPPOSED) which I suppose is what we’re here for. 40.56, held up by some of the unfamiliar words like EASTERTIDE, PASTORATE and MUGGINSES. Appreciated the nod to Billy Joe Royal, Down in the BOONDOCKS was quite the hit in 1965.

    From Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine):
    I just can’t do what I done before, I just can’t beg you anymore
    I’m gonna let you pass
    And I’ll go last
    Then time will tell just who FELL and who’s been left behind
    When you go your way and I go mine

37. 35:37, with MUGGINSES my LOI. Add me to the list of those who have never seen this plural before.
    Biffed ARGENTINA, but needed the blog to understand the parsing.

    Thanks piquet and setter

38. Re 25 dn ABBÉ derives from the last two characters of flab and the first two of being, thus flAB BEing . An abbé is a French priest.

    1. Thanks, but did you even read the blog for 25dn and the very first sentence of the very first comment beneath it?

39. Much to enjoy in this: one sitting, as always, but two ‘look-up’s’ : KNOCK KNEED and PASTORATE. Was delighted to get the two longer ones near the start ( really liked the race!) and was dealing with celery last night (as an ingredient in my dinner). My dad was always calling me Muggins ( I thought he’d made the word up!), so now I know it’s perjorative!

40. Et tu, Bruce@oz?

Comments are closed.