Times Cryptic 27818

71 comments on “Times Cryptic 27818”

1. I read this the other way round. I knew LEECH as an old term for doctor, and indeed HORSELEECH can refer to a parasite. Seems both readings are defensible!
   1. Me too! I was thinking the leech and the minister.
   2. That’s exactly what I thought, too!
   3. Me too, and our reading is better, in that we do not have to assume that a vet and a doctor are the same thing ..
      1. This is a good point, particularly as the usual sources (Collins, Lexico) include vets in their definition of ‘doctor’ but specify that it’s a North American usage.
2. I became stuck in the NW after making smooth progress early on and ended up taking 70 minutes. Same two NHO’s as our blogger for which I just went (not all that confidently) with the wordplay. Like brnchn, I parsed 11a the other way round, ie with ‘Parasite’ as the def rather than ‘old doctor’; I think either way works. I agree about those ‘fill in the blank’ clues.

   STUPENDOUS wasn’t quite ‘Brilliant’ but was still a pretty good clue. My last in was the initially impenetrable looking ZABAGLIONE which was satisfying to solve after finally working out the parsing.

   Thanks to setter and blogger

3. On track for one of my fastest times ever, I arrived at two remaining clues with a mere 13 minutes on the clock. After 10 more minutes I finally cottoned onto what was going on with ZABAGLIONE, but my first guess, ZAZAPLIONE, certainly looked wrong. I didn’t keep trying at it because I knew I would simply never get SCARP. I wrote out every word in the English language which fit S _ A _ P, but I knew neither SCARP nor SCAR so I was done for: there were too many plausible options. This puzzle was full of unknowns like CRWTH, ANTRE, etc, but these were all gettable from wordplay.

   It’s always a little disappointing to be on track for a stellar finish, but you can’t win em all.

   Edited at 2020-11-10 02:45 am (UTC)

4. I think pen = author as verbs.
   1. +I think that works too, but pen (noun) for author (noun) is quite common round here. I can never quite work out whether it’s metonym or synecdoche, but it’s one of those.
5. …but they seemed vaguely familiar, somehow. Antre I did know, cwyth I kind of knew, and Doho rang a vague bell. it was actually wetsuit that gave the most trouble, but should not have. Time: 35 minutes.
6. NHO CRWTH, which is fine, but I was amazingly dim in not seeing the wordplay until I had the checkers. I did know ANTRE, God knows how. Didn’t know where the UP came from in SUPREMELY. And I have no idea what prompted me to biff ZABAGLIONE, but I never got around to checking it. I liked WETSUIT & AVOCADO.
7. For a puzzle with a lot of tricky cluing and unusual words, I thought this was very accessible. I don’t think 6d is a fill in the blank; the clue stands without that, it’s there for the surface.
   We can now add to the list:
   Clues in:
   French – frequent;
   Latin – many;
   Scot/Irish/Cockney/Other UK dialect – pretty many;
   American / Antipodean – only as necessary;
   German – very occasional;
   Welsh – one
   1. I seem to remember HWYL cropping up once, which would double the Cambrian tally if I’m right.
      1. Noted, and the appropriate reference works will be revised for the next printing. Off by 100%!

         With that said, I assume the Welsh shows up when the setter gets stuck. I assume the same about the unusual and painful plants, when they appear. But Welsh has the benefit for solvers of the cluing having to be highly transparent.

      2. And CORGI is a Xword regular. I’ve seen CWM as well. So thats Welsh #4.
8. At 4dn I had no idea what was going on, so I implausibly plumped for an enchantress – AMUSE – which made 9ac quite impossible.

   FOI 1dn CRWTH Welsh nonsense,

   LOI 9ac WxTxUxU utter IKEAN (Cape Town branch) nonsense.

   COD 23dn GLORY – England’s Glory – remember them Jack?

   WOD 16ac PARQUETRY might floor some younger folk, whilst marquetry and treachery are from the same stable.

   ItWOD 13dn ZABAGLIONE I haven’t had one in ages as they carry a Government Health Warning, but are soo utterly delish. I’ll be knocking one up on the week-end. But what to do with the whites as BLM say?

   I know Northleach very well – home to my dear friend Miss Quelch. But Horseleech must be in Idaho, which I have flown over.

   Edited at 2020-11-10 04:27 am (UTC)

   1. Welsh nonsense? Why not? Makes a change from American nonsense in a British paper. Baseball and stuff – pah!. Anyway, crwth gets a mention in Under Milk Wood, and used to be anglicised as crowd. They were quite widespread – see article in Wikipedia
9. I had many problems in completing this, including the unknowns (strewth, can that be a word?), 2d where out appearing in the clue appeared to rule out OUTCROP as an answer, and an incorrect pronunciation of PARQUETRY which frustrated my attempt at parsing 16a.
   1. Yes, it’s bit of an odd one, that. ‘Parquet’ SOED assures me is pronounced ‘PARkay’ or ‘PARky’ but then the French origins of the word are abandoned to arrive at ‘PARketry’.
   2. Totally agree with you about repetition of ‘out’ and the dodgy homophone ‘parquetry’. Otherwise no real problems. About 28m.
10. I was on the wavelength today which suited me as I wanted to get this done before my eldest son gets up on his eighteenth birthday. In the words of the comedian John Bishop I now own a man.

    There’s nothing like a homophone to split opinion and PARQUETRY was my COD as it works how I pronounce it. It could be that I’ve always pronounced it wrongly though!

11. A few fun unknowns here, but as our blogger says, all generously clued. FOI 1a CROISSANT (toast and marmalade for me in real life this morning, but if I remember I’ll aim to have a croissant for elevenses), LOI 4d ANTRE after I stopped trying to do something cleverer than the clue demanded. 28 mins.

    Glad I knew “scar”, but perhaps “escarpment” might have got me to 22d in the end if I hadn’t. Just looked at a picture of 6d DOHA. Seems like more of a skyscraper architect’s showroom than a city, at least from a distance…

12. …Our memory comes and goes—
    Drowned in the light of human eyes,
    And a woe in the time of woes.

    30 mins pre-brekker. No ticks, no crosses, no dramas.
    But there is no excuse for Crwth.
    Thanks setter and J.

13. 7:30. Surprisingly easy for a puzzle with so many funny words. I knew most of them, partly (TONNEAU, ANTRE) from past crosswords.
    NHO HORSELEECH, where I think the setter intended ‘parasite’ as the definition, since ‘by’ is most naturally read as a positional indicator.
14. I’m another one who read HORSELEECH the other way round with ‘parasite’ as the definition.
    NHO CRWTH, ANTRE or HORSELEECH
    In 15d I was confused by S as ‘saint’. I was expecting ST.
    Coincidentally, the flag of Qatar was the picture question in The Daily Quiz in The Times today. Been to Doha many times.
    COD to 13d as I like ZABAGLIONE but I’ve not had one for years.
15. 26.34 but for a while I thought I would have to endure the ultimate birthday downer of a DNF. LOI crwth. If crwth be told it was seemples but not when you tie yourself in knots trying to get w and h into a non existent word for rural Wales.

    Antre was another of similar ilk where antic embedded itself in my fevered brain for too long. Talking of which it was nice to see argon make a rapid return after last week’s entry.

    Knew the description of a doctor as a leech but not this longer version. Enjoyed consulting, literally and in the context of this puzzle. Influence without responsibility- wonderful. Other personal faves- avocado, republish, rubicon and parquetry.

    Thanks setter for getting my day off in positive mode.

    1. Happy birthday!
       1. Thanks.👍
16. Well over the hour for this. Same NHOs as others, and just couldn’t believe CRWTH, so had to look it up. The NW corner took an age to fill in plus ZABAGLIONE and SCARP also held me up. Happy birthday brenk. Glad you finished. Thanks Jack as ever.
    1. Thanks. 🥃🍷🍺
       1. Hmmm, nice selection. Now where shall I start….
17. 15:08 with same 3 unknowns as Jack, but DNK HORSELEECH either. Held up in the end by STUPENDOUS and WETSUIT which I thought was a bit of a clunky definition. What with 6A and 8D, I wondered if this was intended for publication at the end of last month. COD to GRIMACE. The golfer’s version might have had “at” instead of “in”.

    Edited at 2020-11-10 09:19 am (UTC)

    1. Clunky!? It was awful! Beyond the clunk.
       1. ‘Worry about getting quite unconfined in this outfit’ Mr Grumpy
18. Badly done. Misspelled leech for leach. And then wrote over my correct entry for stupendous with the wholly ridiculous ‘without’ – as a result 3 mistakes, and 76th out of 76 solvers on the webpage. Time wasn’t bad though: 19’22”! Only excuse is a crying baby in the night.
19. Strewth! CRWTH first in, handy for pangrams (kept expecting this to be one) so no problem. Not floored by PARQUETRY either, but a clumsy clue.
20. 41 minutes with LOIs HORSELEECH followed by a despairing ARTRE. I made HORSELEECH the parasite without any idea if it was me or it who was the sucker. I had a TONNEAU cover, not for the MG MIDGET mentioned yesterday but for the MX5 acquired in retirement in a vain attempt to recover lost youth. In the end, I had to settle for doing the crossword. I have discovered from genealogy that I am one sixteenth Welsh which perhaps explains why I found Harry Secombe funny and why CRWTH didn’t faze me. COD to ZABAGLIONE. Toughish but mainly good fun. Thank you Jack and setter.
    1. John, I have my eye on a 1937 Talbot-Lago T150 SS (Figini & Falaschi) in order to recover my lost childhood. I still hanker after my old Karmann Ghia and the Citroen DS 21 with its Maserati semi-gearbox. These are not the days!

       Edited at 2020-11-10 12:09 pm (UTC)

       1. Grow old disgracefully, H, even if they’re not our days. The worst is yet to come.
21. Under 20′, but lots of crossed fingers, no idea at all of the Welsh word. PARQUETRY ok, but didn’t parse it, just as well really.

    Thanks jack and setter.

22. I was doubtful about my LOI: SCARP so I was pleased not to see any pink squares.

    COD: STUPENDOUS.

23. …such as a crossword sojourner shall pass through. Not too delayed here in 28’43. Was expecting a bit of an outcry against ‘antre’ actually. I like ‘previous’ for ‘premature’, a general enough laddish erratum. One or two nice touches in this one.
24. Same as others in the NW corner but decided that if the welsh could have Cymru it wasn’t impossible. And I hesitated a bit at having “out” in both clue and answer in 2d but it couldn’t be anything else. I wondered if the ____in 6d just got left there by mistake. ANTRE rang a faint bell in connection with sinuses. ETHANOL comes up every presidential election season because the candidates seem to have to spend a lot of time in Iowa propping up the ethanol/corn lobby while ignoring places like NY and California. 19.48 after a very slow start.
    1. I always wonder how California farmers feel about Iowa having two senators so that the ‘voice of rural America’ is heard.
       1. There are farmers in NYS too Keriothe. My husband’s family were dairy farmers in Orange County NY since before 1776 and Rhinebeck is surrounded by farmland. Grrr.
          1. Fair point! This is true of all states, of course, which just goes to show how silly the argument is. I picked California just because it has a particularly large agricultural sector: much larger than Iowa’s!
25. I was pretty sure of the spelling of ZABAGLIONE and the wordplay seemed to confirm it, but I still expected to see a pink E in place of the I. Last had one in Cambridge nearly 50 years ago the day after Mrs Z and I got engaged.
    CRWTH is a write-in for those of us that try to play Words With Friends and such with no vowels.
    There can’t be many words like HORSELEECH where the definition and the wordplay are interchangeable, but I am persuaded they are.
    I can genuinely report (Slumdog style) I had no unknowns, though DOHA looked a but suspicious. Assuming it still happens in 2022, we’ll have to get used to DOHA as a venue for the World Cup matches, all the stadia being within a few kilometres radius. To be fair, it works for current live cricket in Dubai, which has been quite splendid.
    18.42
    1. Dear z8b8d8k, Are you and Mrs.Zed in actual fact ‘Zabagliones’? I Zingari v Zabagliones at Fenners (or even Doha) would have been an interesting fixture.
26. Nothing too difficult here – even the unknowns (CRWTH; ANTRE) were very gettable.

    Held up longest in the bottom right until I saw the trick with AVOCADO.

27. Yes, CWM and CRWTH scrabble words par excellence. LOI ANTRE trying to think of an enchantress that could reduce to ANTRE until,I saw it hidden in there.
    Considering the many DNK’s I thought this a fair crossword, and compliments to the setter
28. I made reasonable progress, apart from in the NW which took up a lot of my solving time. CROISSANT was my FOI, but that was it for the corner. Having solved the rest of the puzzle, RAPID gave the P I needed to get OUTCROP, but the unknown CRWTH and ANTRE held me up until I got STUPENDOUS and then HORSELEECH. WETSUIT was another late entry. Eventually I bunged in ANTRE and CRWTH, hoping I’d interpreted the wordplay correctly, but fully expecting to see pink squares, but was pleasantly surprised. 39:22. Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2020-11-10 11:56 am (UTC)

29. Top left was hard. I got CRWTH and ANTRE (also NHO #1 and #2) but HORSELEECH (#3) was a step too far. I eventually bunged in HORSEFETCH which seemed likely as a word (and it was plausible that FETCH was an old word for doctor) but pink squares. I knew DOHA from the last round of negotiations (failed) on world trade that started there (?…or at least were named after it). ZABAGLIONE from being in Italy in my late teens. Nice crossword though, but putting so many words nobody was likely to know where they all interesected was a little unfair (well, I would say that…having failed the challenge).
30. Well like others I romped through this before slowing down to a crawl in the NW corner. Guessed CRWTH might be a word, although never noticed hearing it in Under Milkwood which I listen to quite often in the car. Thought the HORSELEECH was the parasite and LEECH was the old doctor. Here’s ARGON again. Surprised some haven’t heard of DOHA in Qatar, it’s often in the news and has a F1 race.
    17 minutes of which 5 were the last 3 clues 1d, 9a, 4d which was a guess too.
31. 27:22
    All good; no real problems. Unknowns were generously clued.
    Thanks jack.
32. Defeated by CRWTH and ZABAGLIONE, never having heard of either. Should have got the former, though, with all the checkers in place and generous cluing – the only word I could think of was “cwtch”, which obviously wasn’t right.

    One question: how does “up” = “like a road being repaired”?

    1. In the UK we say ‘the road’s up’, as in ‘dug up for repairs’. Explaining the expression does flag up how odd it sounds!
       Gill D
       1. Thanks! I’m from the UK, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a road under repair being described simply as “up”, though of course I know “dug up”. You live and learn…
          1. I’ve never come across this in the wild either, but I’ve encountered it in crosswords. It’s in Lexico.
          2. It’s probably a regional usage. Very common here in Wales – land of the crwth. When I was a child in the ’40s it was common to see signs saying “Road Up” or the even more ambiguous “Road Up Ahead”. You don’t see it nowadays. Replaced by “Road Works Ahead” – also delightfully ambiguous. Ann
33. Finished but struggled with the unknowns. My LOI was actually HERO, but I should have got it much earlier. I parsed HORSELEECH exactly as Jackkt, never even considering the credible alternative. I was influenced in CRWTH by the existence of CYMRU AM BYTH. Thanks Jackkt and setter. No time as done in several bursts, but easily over an hour.
34. ….CRWTH, and have actually heard one played at a folk club on Anglesey. I’m not sure if it was actually meant to sound like a cat being castrated, or it was just that the young lady was still familiarising herself with its complexities. However, HORSELEECH and ANTRE were DNK’s.

    I thought HERO was weak, but quite liked PARQUETRY.

    FOI DITCH
    LOI ANTRE
    COD ZABAGLIONE *
    TIME 10:53

    *Mad Joni and I spent a long time in Tenerife some years ago trying to source a bottle of Marsala so that she could try making ZABAGLIONE. We never did find one unfortunately. It’s a thing of beauty.

    1. The crwth sounds like a primitive oboe (which it sort-of is.) I think your colourful description of its dulcet tones hits the mark. Reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s definition of an oboe “An ill woodwind that nobody blows good”
       1. The oboe is a woodwind instrument. The cwrth is a bowed lyre (strings). But the cwrth might very well sound like an oboe, for all I know.
          1. Yes indeed. My bad. I was thinking of some other Welsh instrument but can’t remember the name. It may come back to me eventually. I have a cousin who makes lutes and theorbos and suchlike, including crwths. So it’s an embarrassing mistake!
          2. It’s come to me. I was thinking of a pibgorn.
35. I call foul on WETSUIT. How the devil can any rational being, human I mean, not Google, arrive at that?
    1. Speaking only for myself, I bunged it in from W_T_U_T without really thinking too hard about the clue.
36. Enjoyable. Too late posting for meaningful comment. NHO ANTRE but it was guessable. Have friends who play the CRWTH so that was my FOI. 35 minutes. Ann
37. This was quite hard – thar’s the truth
    I hadn’t met antre or crwth
    But hats-off to the setter
    They don’t come much better
    If i was from Oz I’d say strewth

    I’m glad some folks like limericks
    At least they’re quite short, not prolix
    If i were a setter
    My rhymes might be better
    But I cannot equal their tricks

38. POI 1d CRWTH , it parsed and it looked Welsh enough. Struggled with LOI HERO, not seeing ‘lead’ as the definition for far too long.
    29:50
39. Another solve split over two days, with just the one missing. Given the number of potential Tonneau, Horseleech) and genuine DNKs (Crewth, Antre, Lory) floating around, I doubt if anyone (with the possible exception of Rotter) would guess that 12ac Hero was the miscreant in a month of Sundays. Talk about the curse of the loi 😒. Invariant

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