Times Cryptic 26882

48 comments on “Times Cryptic 26882”

1. ….was partially due to having the answer for 19 in the space for 17, owing to very small clue numbers on the printout. This was corrected after about 40 minutes. All correct and understood except for ‘stockholder’, where the cryptic was a total mystery to me.

   What I find in these sorts of puzzles is that my first instinct is often correct, and that much later on I find that the clue works in pretty much the way I expected – I just couldn’t break through the first time. For example, I saw early on that ‘sweet’ and ‘sour’ could make ‘souwester’, but didn’t remember it was a hat and not a storm.

2. Apart from general slowness, I mistakenly entered BLUEBELL for 1d, and I had huge trouble with 4a, where I knew it had to begin with SHAM, but couldn’t see the last 4 letters for the longest time

   I don’t know if it’s me or the puzzles, but I find Tuesday crosswords take longer than other flavours. Much longer. And very dry clues today, too…parsing STOCKHOLDER was the closest I came to smiling here

3. Over 2 hours, and while there were breaks (more whisky, change the CD, again) they were not what led to the long time. With that said, I quite liked this, tightly clued and a nice grid. I particularly liked the Bluebird.
4. 40 mins (DNF on “D”ottle (DNK)) – with yoghurt, fruit, home-made granola, etc.
   I like a bit of bone-setting and embalming over breakfast. Not to mention a rissole.
   It was one of those where, mostly, concise wordplay was at the expense of smooth surfaces. But there were some glorious exceptions: 11ac, 19ac, 24ac, 7dn, 13dn, 25dn. On reflection, mostly, it had concise wordplay and smooth surfaces. Top notch.
   Mostly I liked: Bucket, Stockholder and Nabob (COD).
   “Doctor, I keep thinking I’m turning into a bar of soap.” Doctor: “That’s life boy.”

   Which reminds me of that old chestnut clue:
   Bar of soap (6,6).

   Thanks top notch setter and Jack.

5. 24:17 … I had this complete just under the 20-minute mark but really wasn’t convinced about a few things and took some thinking time. I’m sure the clues were fine; my brain less so.

   I was especially unsure about ‘fraud’ = SHAMMING, or indeed ‘dishonourable’ = shaming.

   Really nice reversed hidden that had me scouring my memory for famous Romanians.

   Jackkt, the Wiki entry for Lifebuoy has a bit under ‘In popular culture’ which suggests that the company didn’t quite invent BO — they just nicked it and ran with it. Some successful early body-shaming.

   Edited at 2017-11-14 03:07 pm (UTC)

6. I was convinced at the outset that ‘Wingers down time’ was something to do with MOULTING or ECLIPSE (when ducks lose their feathers). COD to STOCKHOLDER.
   1. I had ROOSTING begging to be put in for 1d, and only got the NW corner sorted after finding BEREFT. Bottom half gradually got me going and I finished in Geordieland with SHAMMING, GREENS and GRACE as my last three in. This feels like it was more of a struggle than it should have been as there was nothing unknown. But some neat indirections got me thinking about insurance for 10a and osteopaths for 12a. Sign of a good puzzle. I liked it. COD to BONESETTER, but I liked GRACE too when I eventually saw it. 37:56.
      1. P.S. Sorry to hear you lost all that erudite and witty work Jack. I must look out for that myself, though I’m sure I see autosaving happening. I use Firefox myself.
7. … may the Lord make us truly thankful. 43 minutes on this stinker to rhyme with the thinker, which I think was a good time for me. COD to RODIN. LOI VEHEMENT. I toyed with HOTTIE for 9d as a dish before DOTTLE constructed. Spent a long time on SHAMMING, which needed me to sit in the HOT SEAT first. What’s this stuff about five a day? Hasn’t the setter read the sign on the northbound carriageway at Watford Gap, ‘No salads beyond this point’? We actually often would have a boiled ham salad for Sunday tea in my childhood, but why spoil a good myth? Took a long time to start but then the SW yielded. The rest followed steadily. Thank you Jack and setter
   1. My mother would have boiled the salad too. Oh the delicacies we Northerners had – sugar butties, chip balms, Fenning’s Fever Cure, tripe, black puds, pig’s trotters, sago pudding and, my mum’s favourite, Lancs hot pot. Unfortunately I made a dog’s breakfast of this and had a few missing when I gave up after an hour. Loved 4d.
8. All done in 34 minutes except DOTTLE where I was missing the D and L and threw in the towel with other things pressing. Very much a bottom up solve – after 10 minutes flailing around at the top I had just two three-letter answers to my name. At one point I checked SNITCH to see if it was just me finding it tough. Glad to see it wasn’t.
9. Hmm, must have been on the wavelength for this one, just a tad over 20 mins. Particularly enjoyed dottle, what a wonderful word .. and the excellent reverse hidden at 7dn. Last one in was TOECAP
   Sorry to hear of your blogging problem Jack, was that with the new version of the post page or the old one? The old one not only autosaves but tells you when it last did it.. not tried the new one!
10. Reassuring that others found this hard. I took about 2 hours after the first few went in quickily. Like rinteff and myrtilus000, ended up failing on DOTTLE, despite an alphabet trawl, though my overall time was admittedly just a tad longer. SHAMMING also entered with uncertainty.

    Liked your comment about the supposed dietary habits N. of the Watford Gap, boltonwanderer. Perhaps balanced by plenty of 15a.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

11. Pleasantly hard, this one, finished in 34 minutes with same thoughts about SHAMMING as Sotira. Some fine clues of which the STOCKHOL(M) effort was my fav.
    I had the answer in for a while before I saw how it worked.
    Well persevered, jackkt.
12. 39.27 after a final minifreeze on dottle. By and large an entertaining stitch-up.
13. Looks like my 24.11 might have been pretty good.
    Just to brighten things up: I was under the impression that Jack and Jill made there ascent in order to fetch a pail/bucket of water. Doesn’t that imply the didn’t have it with them as they climbed?

    ALLOCABLE my new but just about plausible word of the day.

    And while I got the right ending (it was checked and brilliantly reverse hidden) 7d has prompted today’s earworm:
    “Like thunder the forest re-echoed the sound,
    Of the song that they sang as they met.
    His inamorata adjusted her garter,
    And lifted her voice in duet:”
    All together now….

    1. Wonderful! I play this for my grandchildren – works well on the guitar. I think perhaps 7d goes over their heads…
    2. I don’t think so. If everyone went up without a bucket, they’d soon run out of buckets at the top. I guess Jack and Jill could take the bucket back up after disposing of its contents, or at least they could have if they hadn’t suffered their mishap on the way down. I think that the health and safety risk of making the two dangerous journeys militates against that as a general policy though, and the supplies of vinegar and brown paper simply cannot be afforded by the NHS in these straitened times.
       1. Vinegar and brown paper abound in these parts. Liked your North of Watford/salad sign.
    3. did indeed fetch the pail of water which is why I stuck in TUMBLE @ 19ac and was a DNFF!

       Thus 13dn STOCKHOLDER eluded me.

       My COD was 16dn SOUWESTER = SWEET and SOUR! Whodafoughtit!

       WOD 27ac ALLOCABLE – really?

       I also had INAMORATA for 7dn as I DNK the masculine INAMORATO.

       9dn DOTTLE must have been used before but I could not put it in my pipe and smoke it.

       After about 90 mins I surrendered and got back to work.

       Meldrovia

       Edited at 2017-11-14 12:52 pm (UTC)

14. Oh, and my sympathies on today’s IT glitches. That moment when it disappears and you know it’s not coming back…horrible.
15. Thanks for the parse on this Jack – I just couldn’t see it because I blanked on balmy breezes and could only think of skin lotion. I was certainly very slow to get going here and got the wrong end of the stick on a good number of clues. No trouble with DOTTLE though thanks to Sherlock, although the aroma of his mixture of leftovers from the day before must have made Watson pretty nauseous.

    Commiserations on losing your work Jack. It happened to me once and my husband came to investigate what had prompted the torrent of bad language and found me staring in disbelief at a blank screen. 24.28

16. 41.30 today less 10 mins for a visitor at the door. Spent a long time on DOTTLE (dnk) and TOECAP at the end, the last entered unparsed. Excellent misdirection here esp GRACE and BONESETTERS where I barked up several wrong trees.
17. After 25 minutes there was just 9d left over. Nearly made an ‘ash of that, as they might say down in the Smoke. However, after as long again, I finally settled on DOTTLE. We must have had it before otherwise it wouldn’t have sounded even vaguely familiar. Have we?
18. This was a real slog for me, but brightened up by the superb reverse hidden at 7d and the very neat 25d. DNF as could not see BONESETTERS even with all the cross-checkers in place, as I was convinced it began BANK…

    Very nice to see Dottle getting an airing. I remember as a small boy watching the old TV show “Call My Bluff” with my grandfather (an inveterate pipe smoker) when this lovely word cropped up. He then adopted the word with relish, and subsequently used it at every possible opportunity. Thanks Jack and setter.

    Edited at 2017-11-14 02:11 pm (UTC)

19. After reading Jack’s comment on the QC, I approached this puzzle with trepidation, which appeared to be justified as my first pass through the clues yielded only OWN and EPISODE. Eventually, however, I established a bridgehead in the SE and the grid began to fill. I got 7d from definition and crossers without spotting the hidden. Liked BLUEBIRD and STOCKHOLDER. After 30 minutes I had a complete grid apart from _OTTLE which took another few minutes of alphabet and remote memory trawling before the vaguely remembered spent plug came along. I have to admit to confirming it with Google before submitting, however. 35:16. Nice puzzle. Thanks setter and Jack, and commiserations on your travails. I had 3 crashes with Chrome whilst trying to do the Independent crossword on Sunday and finished up restarting it from scratch in Firefox.
20. But, looking here, it was the excellence of the puzzle that made my time 53′. Took ages to get started, and like jack was particularly held up not realising for a long time that 10ac was an anagram. I thought ‘shamming’ meant to play dead, is that a fraud? I had thought of saying Tuesday was ‘torrid’ but will change to ‘testing.’ Thanks jack and setter.
21. Probably as a result of catching a glimpse of Sara Cox on the telly last night I plumped for HOTTIE at 9d, as it at least had the merit of satisfying the DISH part of the clue. Now that I know that the real answer was a Call my Bluff word I’m not too disappointed that I didn’t know it.
    1. Hi. Sent you an email.
22. Nothing *too* impossible in this excellent and challenging puzzle, though, like many others it seems, I did grind to a long halt over DOTTLE in the final stretches.
23. My grandfather who was a pipe smoker died when I was 7. I got the word DOTTLE from him so have known it nearly all my life. I was surprised coming here to find that people thought this was a difficult solve. I must have been on the wavelength today. Very enjoyable. 26 minutes. Ann
24. 27m. A fine puzzle slightly spoiled by 9dn, a rather obscure word with ambiguous wordplay. After much thought and alphabet-trawling I was left with a toss-up between MOTTLE and DOTTLE and had to look it up.
25. 44m for me with a good bit of that on DOTTLE and TOECAP, both of which went in with crossed fingers and a ‘what the hell’. Thanks for the blog, Jack; helped me to see why my guesses were correct. Enjoyable puzzle, that gets my thumbs up today.
26. Had to resort to aids at the end to find DOTTLE. (I did consider HOTTIE, penfold, but couldn’t make anything out of ‘hoie’.) Apparently my pipe-residue knowledge needs some brushing up. The rest was OK, in about 30 minutes. Regards.
27. I did not time myself on this puzzle, but my retrospective assessment is that it took about 50% longer than my general solving time. I think that it is a really good puzzle with top class concise clues that don’t need the solutions to be constructed from a multitude of little bits, which tends to aggravate me. Thanks to the setter for an entertaining challenge, and commiserations to Jack on his blogging problem: at least, his witty preamble gave me a smile.
28. Surely the word is ‘bettors’?
    1. Is that an American spelling? Not sure I remember seeing it in British English, and my dictionary has “bettor” as “chiefly US”. Certainly The Times seems to spell it as “betters”…
29. This took my customary morning hour followed up by a further half an hour this evening, but I thought it was worth it. Lots of penny drops, with everything taking ages to see. Can’t quite believe it took me so long to work out 3d FOR, for example, when I had F_R…

    FOI 18a BUCKET (I can tell it’s going to be a long slog when my first one in is in the bottom half) LOI DOTTLE, where I’m very glad it’s come up before. “TT” used to be my first thought for “dry” but I couldn’t get SEC and other things out of my mind until I’d put in BONESETTERS.

    I like it when they’re difficult but I end up without a single question mark in the margins by the end. All very fair, I thought.

    Thanks to setter and blogger. Sorry to hear about the technical issues, Jack. Don’t let it put you off future erudition!

    1. I only saw the backing bit of the clue and had to come here to find out what cardinal had to do with it…
30. I knew DOTTLE from Sherlock Holmes as well, but that scarcely made a dent in my 37 minutes, which indicates how bamboozled I was by this one. I can’t blame any underhand tactics by the setter, though, all the deception was perfectly fair, and everything was there once I saw it (which was generally quite a while later).
31. A site-specific search of LJ suggests not. Though I am perpetually wary of saying “I have never seen this word before”…
    1. I was sure it had come up, too. Maybe it was in t’Guardian.
32. DNF. Bah! Held up for ages at the end by 22dn and 9dn. Eventually alit on the correct solution and parsing of 22dn after discarding erroneous notions of a reversed “prof” for “expert” holding an “e” for “drug” and an unaccounted for “c” giving “forceps” and wondering how that met the definition. Came a cropper on 9dn. I saw “dry” and thought “TT” but after going through all the -ottles nothing seemed likely, certainly not dottle. I then decided to change my “TT” to “out” which I put in a “pie”, yum, to give me the made up “poutie” which of course I’d never heard of but seemed as likely as “dottle”. Nothing so prosaic as an actual word for me. Should’ve thought harder about the “dish” bit when I considered “dottle”, it might just have got me there, possibly.
33. For a very long time my 1d was BIDLING on the basis that ‘down time’ could mean a stage in a young bird’s life when it is covered in down rather than feathers.
    104m 43s so a very long slog.
34. Back in the day, before I was married, I smoked all sorts of things (but not cigars). I had a range of pipes so totally familiar with DOTTLE. Wife somehow became pregnant with No 1 son and she asked that I stop smoking. I did overnight 27 years ago.

    Edited at 2017-11-14 11:14 pm (UTC)

35. I tackled this again this morning, and got everything but DOTTLE. Now, I have a volume of the Complete Sherlock Holmes, of which I’ve read almost exactly half (I am saving the other half for a staycation one week soon), so I guess that word must appear in the latter portion…
    1. and I am now half-way through listening to the same volumes read by Stephen Fry. So that’s what he’s up to now….
36. 29 mins with one wrong. Potter for Dottle

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