Times 29331 – not a canine artist, then.

Author   piquetPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic

A pleasant workout with a nice balance of wordplay types. I solved it quite quickly but then faced creating my first blog from the “new improved” format. The new style may suit on-phone solvers but it certainly doesn’t suit me – an unnecessary and retrograde step in my opinion. Also the format no longer allows bloggers like me to use a javascript to create a ready-to-use blog template. It took me an hour or more of faffing about with old blogs, cut and paste, and re-typing from scratch, to produce this, and I’m still not 100% satisfied with the formatting. Hopefully someone will re-write the java, else I might lose the will to continue after 12 years of Wednesdays.

Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].

Across
1 Stone dry in middle of deep lab drawer (7)
PIPETTE – PIP (stone), TT (dry) inside [d]EE[p]. Is a pipette a smaller version of your blogger?
5 Career police officers returned for drink (7)
SIDECAR – all reversed, RACE (career) DI’S police officers).
9 Register regulars in cohort on river catching cold (9)
CHRONICLE – C[o]H[o]R[t] O[n], NILE with C inserted.
10 Divine food articles with one reflecting on end of veganism (5)
MANNA – AN, AN reversed, on end of veganisM.
11 Navy paper general inscribes (3)
FLEET – FT (the pink paper) with General LEE inserted.
12 100 per cent of lotion’s lost in distribution (9)
ALLOTMENT – ALL (100%), OINTMENT with IN removed.
13 Dire prospects affected group’s solidarity (6,2,5)
ESPRIT DE CORPS – (DIRE PROSPECTS)*.
17 Aristocrat bored by withdrawn assistant medic (13)
PAEDIATRICIAN – PATRICIAN with AIDE reversed inserted.
21 Different females keeping record dated in pen (9)
SHEEPFOLD – SHE, F (different females), insert EP (that record again) add OLD = dated.
24 Enthral experienced scientific institute member? (5)
RIVET – an RI VET could be an old member of the Royal Institution.
25 Vessel on lake is broad and slow (5)
LARGO – L[ake], ARGO Jason’s vessel.
26 Quarter of spruce trees flourished (9)
TRIMESTER – TRIM = spruce, (TREES)*.
27 Outstanding second romance colonist devours (7)
SALIENT – S (second) ANT (colonist), insert LIE for romance. How does lie equal romance? Both fiction?
28 Cook close to breaking sieve (7)
GRIDDLE – [breakin]G. RIDDLE = sieve.
Down
1 Still reward nurses Charlie provided (6)
PACIFY – PAY (reward) has C, IF inserted.
2 Keep going over part of Sister Eve’s repertoire (9)
PERSEVERE – reversed hidden word.
3 Worn item of leather crowning king spinning toy (4,3)
TANK TOP – TAN (leather, beat), K, TOP a spinning toy.
4 Reminder backing musician needs piano for service (9)
EUCHARIST – CUE reversed, HAR[p]IST.
5 Term   read labouriously letter by letter (5)
SPELL – double definition.
6 Show of protest jerk makes popular (7)
DEMOTIC – DEMO (show of protest) TIC (jerk).
7 Craft store’s focus is encapsulated by wicker (5)
CANOE – CANE (wicker) with O the “focus” of store inserted.
8 Assessed spin of wheels manufactured at Dorset (4,4)
ROAD TEST – anagram of AT DORSET.
14 Snake tailing delta fish reducing in number (9)
DWINDLING – D (delta) WIND (snake) LING (fish).
15 Did up tank Feds uncovered south of city (9)
RENOVATED – RENO (a city in USA) VAT (tank) [f]ED[s].
16 New split within diocese about Paulinian missives? (8)
EPISTLES – SEE (diocese) reversed = EES, insert (SPLIT)*. I don’t see why there’s a query mark.
18 Get better unscripted comedy on tablet (7)
IMPROVE- well, IMPROV can mean unscripted comedy, perhaps, and E is our tablet. I messed about with IMPROVISE altered in some way, but it isn’t that.
19 National Rail is struggling to save energy (7)
ISRAELI – (RAIL IS)* with E inserted.
20 Deprive Soviet periodically fed by sailor (6)
STARVE – S[o]V[i]E[t with TAR for sailor inserted..
22 Opposing players finally offer to school recruit (5)
ENROL – E, N (opposing players at bridge) R O L ending letters of offer to school.
23 Composition and the like written up in books (5)
OCTET – ETC (and the like) reversed = CTE, inside OT = books.

59 comments on “Times 29331 – not a canine artist, then.”

  1. I’m unable to report a solving time today as I had several interruptions and lost track, but I’d estimate somewhere between 35 and 55 minutes.

    I didn’t manage to parse RIVET or ALLOTMENT and didn’t know the relevant meaning of DEMOTIC.

    ‘Romance / LIE’ is in Chambers and Collins with both entries as verbs.

  2. Glad you PERSEVEREd PIP(ETTE) and CHRONICLEd your ROAD TEST of the RENOVATED and IMPROVEd (?) site.

  3. 12:57. I slowed towards the end finishing with a biffed EUCHARIST and a semi-biffed CHRONICLE. For the latter I’d parsed “regulars in cohort on” as CHR+ON and so was bemused by the river ILE. Maybe I should have made the leap to NILE but my mind was off thinking about French islands.

  4. I couldn‘t sleep last night, so did the puzzle and it took 44:08.
    Nothing to add really!
    Thanks setter and blogger

  5. 15’41”, like walking through treacle as I kept having to check and recheck that my fat fingers and tiny keyboard hadn’t mangled the letters. Are these changes ever tested?

    Liked SHEEPFOLD – and DEMOTIC, which I knew from finding out about the Rosetta Stone.

    Can someone please explain why a TRIMESTER (a third) can be a quarter?

    Thanks pip and setter.

    1. From Latin trime(n)stris “of three months,” from tri- “three” + mensis “month”

      Three months is a quarter of a year

        1. The battle of Waterloo may have been won on their playing fields but maths is not their strong point.

    2. Test software? I used to do that in the 1970s but the practice has disappeared, because it is so boring.

  6. I too was puzzled by the TRIMESTER def but it didn’t matter as a couple of others were too hard (EUCHARIST and PIPETTE) and I gave up at about 35. Also I thought GRIDDLE was a noun but here it means cook. Never mind, thank you PK. That blog format is kind of hard to read…

    From Mr Tambourine Man:
    Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
    My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip, my toes too numb to step
    Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering
    I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
    Into my own parade, cast your dancing SPELL my way
    I promise to go under it

  7. 31:04

    Medium difficulty, though nothing really held me up for long. A few notes:

    SHEEPFOLD – not sure that I have come across the term before, but the wordplay, aided by checkers, was clear
    RIVET – failed to parse
    DEMOTIC – couldn’t have told you what it meant, just followed the instructions

    LOI PAEDIATRICIAN after a few minutes staring at the checkers

    Thanks P and setter

  8. Mrs Nowt, (who works for the Royal Institution), would wish me to point that the RI is an Institution not an Institute

  9. 22.36. Some tricky clues particularly if you put in sheepshed at 21ac. Fortunately, the realisation that the composition had to be octet saved me from a DNF. Trimester held me up a bit with the need to reconcile tri with four!

    Thought eucharist was very good but pipette gets my COD vote. Before I forget, checked the spelling of the medic but would havegot there without- honest.

  10. 28.10, a steady solve with few real problems.
    FOI DWINDLING
    LOI CANOE
    COD PIPETTE
    Thanks P and setter

  11. Slow but steady 43 minutes without error or assistance. Struggled with PIPETTE until I remembered that TT is not just an island race and with PAEDIATRICIAN until I abandoned the equation of peers with the aristocracy. In the south, SALIENT, SHEEPFOLD and SALIENT fairly flew into place. I find it difficult to think of a CANOE as a vessel, although it is, of course.
    Thanks to setter and piquet.

  12. 9:55, held up briefly by a wordplay-derived SHEEPHERD at 21ac (D for ‘dated’ did seem a bit odd!) until OCTET made that impossible.
    Seeing the clock ticking towards the 10 minute mark I skipped my usual answer check. Totally pointless and really rather silly but I can’t help myself.
    I enjoyed this one: not too difficult but relatively little that was easily biffable.

  13. Just under 25 minutes.

    – Didn’t parse ALLOTMENT
    – Needed all the checkers to get PAEDIATRICIAN
    – Wondered about romance=lie for SALIENT, but I see it’s been answered above

    Thanks piquet and setter.

    FOI Fleet
    LOI Paediatrician
    COD Persevere

  14. 42 minutes with LOI DWINDLING. COD to RENOVATED. A slow, steady solve. Thank you Pip and setter.

  15. 50:22, first solve of the week.

    LOI EUCHARIST where I eventually saw the CUE. Also struggled with SPELL, where I didn’t see the simplicity of the second part of the clue. And “focus” for the middle letter is a new device for me, and not really a very good one. Focus doesn’t mean middle.

    Also failed to see LIE=ROMANCE, might as well have been PIE for SAPIENT. Is all romance a lie? How dark.

    COD RIVET

    1. I think this has come up before, and the justification for ‘focus’ is that it is another term for ‘focal point’, which in turn has a figurative meaning of ‘a central point of attention or interest’. I agree this is a bit tenuous!

  16. Failed again, this time SHEEPFOLD beat me, but I should have worked it out from the wp.
    My only excuse is interruptions from some family staying here, which doesn’t help.

    A number unparsed so thanks pip for you perseverance.

  17. 22 mins. Every first guess turned out to be right. Medic beginning with P? Straight in. Now thats on-wavelength.
    That blog format or lack of formatting is indeed horrible. I assume this is to with fixing the 500 errors. Thank you piquet for persevering.

    1. No, it’s to do with the new format / coding of the crossword on The Times site, which means the java script written to construct a blog template (with the explanations then to be added by the blogger) run from the java console no longer works. Our TfTT admin @vinyl1 tells me a new script is hopefully being devised. It’s not a TfTT site or server problem.

      1. Well done on keeping the ship afloat this morning, Pip. Many bloggers are having to improvise under pressure at the moment. Let’s hope a new script is forthcoming soon.

        BTW, although it’s still functioning intermittently I’ve been getting ‘server connection errors’ at Fifteen Squared this morning.

        1. Probably hackers. If they can take out a great British institution like the Times crossword it is akin to BBC R4 being off the air, the end of civilisation as we know it.

  18. 17:14
    My kind of puzzle. Steady progress untangling some tricky wordplay but nothing obscure at the end of it.

  20. 25:13, felt on the trickier side but satisfying to solve. One of those days where moving from a horizontal position (bed) to a vertical position helped with seeing the last few clues. 1A was not that generous in terms of wordplay or definition, but I’m sure more experienced solvers would have gone straight to the range of dependable lab vocabulary (pipette, burette, beaker, alembic and the like).

    ESPRIT DE CORPS took longer than it should have, but I feel less guilt about being slow to see SIDECAR (because I hadn’t heard of the drink). I have a vague feeling that the fairly frequent clue component ‘distribution’ often equals ALLOTMENT or sowing-related terms – but I usually get sidetracked thinking of things like ‘normal’, ‘Gaussian’ and ‘Poisson’.

    EUCHARIST caught me out for a long time, but it was my fault for not immediately bringing to mind that kind of service.

    Thanks piquet and setter.

  21. Another likeable crossword, all done with no complaints. Though trimester smells like an Americanism to me, Collins has “a period of three months” so I suppose it’s OK. Hmph.
    My Sheffield mother used to say someone was romancing, when they told a lie (usually me)..
    Sheepherd was obviously correct, until it wasn’t.

  22. Enjoyed this a lot. Soved it in three quick spurts separated by periods of complete bafflement. Some clever lexical algebra -CHRONICLE, DWINDLING, SHEEPFOLD.

    COD EUCHARIST. Didn’t know the word Paulinian – more used to Pauline.

    Thanks to the setter and to Pip for sticking with it.

  24. 18.18, not without hold-ups. One was at 1a, where I toyed with the hidden PLABDRA (could be!) until the reverse hidden PERSEVERE (probably) hijacked that idea. Another was GRIDDLE, my last in, which was the only word that fits and matches the definition, but for which the wordplay stayed elusive.
    SHEEPFOLD is easy enough for those of us that occasionally attend EUCHARIST: it has that kind of resonance.

    I see from the overall leaderboard that I have zero errors for the first time I can remember. Mirabile dictu!

  25. DNF. Felt confident about “Sheepshed” (after dallying with “sheepherd), both having double references to females. OCTET wasn’t clear to me which may have corrected the error. Otherwise some nice clueing. Thanks Piquet and setter

  26. No major difficulties and many very nice clues that repaid close attention to their parsing. I didn’t think we would have o’ for on in The Times (maybe in Azed/Gemelo) so was wondering, like others, about the river Ile in the CHRONICLE clue, but since there are so many rivers around the world I reckoned this was one I hadn’t heard of. Indeed I learn from Wikipedia that ‘The River Isle (also known as the River Ile) flows from its source near Combe St Nicholas, through Somerset, England and discharges into the River Parrett’. 44 minutes.

  27. I found this hard going. LOI was SPELL, on the 50 mins mark, but I was flailing about for most of it. Now I look back, nothing was actually all that tough. Just wasn’t on my A-game, apparently.

  28. My thanks to piquet and setter.
    I sympathise with you piquet, and after all your effort the blog looks worse than usual, sorry to say.
    I didn’t find it a doddle, and some of it was quite complex, which slowed me down. I’m not complaining.
    24a R I Vet. I wondered what it was, but it doesn’t really exist does it? I wasn’t too sure that the R I was a thing either. Nothing wrong with the clue, but it took me a while to get happy with it.
    28a Griddle biffed, as Zabadak did above.
    18d Improve, didn’t see where the E came from, nor where the tablet had gone, DOH! Tried to shoehorn ad lib but it didn’t fit.

  29. 18:15 – A bit of trouble in the SW – particularly with SHEEPFOLD, which I needed to get OCTET – but nothing too taxing. I caught a vague whiff of some underlying medieval religious theme going on while solving but it didn’t really stand up to closer scrutiny.

  30. 42 minutes again with only a few slowing me down. Not helped by umming about SIDECAR which fitted the wordplay but was NHO as a drink.

    Also blocked by an incorrect SHEEPSHED (it sounded plausible) for an age with blocked the relatively straightforward. OCTET.

    Couldn’t see how PAEDIATRICIAN worked so cheers for the blog.

    Liked PIPETTE which started the solving off on good note.

    Thanks blogger and setter

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