Times Cryptic 27932

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 32 minutes for all but one clue which I was unable to solve without using aids, so technically this was a DNF for me.

As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. I usually omit all reference to positional indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.

Across

1 Painter‘s predicament entertaining bishop at home (7)
HOLBEIN : HOLE (predicament) containing [entertaining] B (bishop), then IN (at home). Perhaps most famous for his portraits of Henry VIII.
5 Coach finally accepted by team member, a fretful type (7)
WHINGER : {coac}H (finally) contained [accepted] by WINGER (team member). If only whinging were an Olympic sport!
9 Barrier built by day, in the morning (3)
DAM : D (day), AM (in the morning)
10 A club dream, surprisingly, securing new lampholder (11)
CANDELABRUM : Anagram [surprisingly] of A CLUB DREAM, containing [securing] N (new). There may have been a distinction to be drawn back in the day but in usage the singular (as here) is now interchangeable with the plural ‘candelabra’. The piano player who cried all the way to the bank (and later bought the bank) had a lavishly be-ringed hand in reviving interest in the word in the 1950s and beyond.
11 Heightened way deliveries come up to scratch (8)
OVERPASS : OVER (deliveries – 6 balls in cricket), PASS (come up to scratch standard). More usually called a flyover, in the UK at least.
12 One moving slowly with large account book (6)
LEDGER : L (large), EDGER (one moving slowly)
15 Public placard‘s function, according to report (4)
SIGN : Sounds like (according to report) “sine” (function – trigonometry)
16 Fellow pupil taking tea on train (10)
SCHOOLMATE : SCHOOL (train), MATE (tea). A on B = BA. ‘Tea’ only loosely, as maté is an infusion of the leaves of a South American shrub.
18 Agree to adopt vessel unknown by European primate (10)
CHIMPANZEE : CHIME (agree) contains [to adopt] PAN (vessel) + Z (unknown), then E (European)
19 Girl detailed to go (4)
WEND : WEND{y} (girl) [de-tailed]. I thought the ploughman in Grey’s Elegy wends his weary way,  but on checking I am reminded that he plods.
22 Mistakes made by brats wasting time (6)
ERRORS : {t}ERRORS (brats) [wasting time – t]
23 Tub-thumping fellow carrying old 15 awkwardly (8)
JINGOISM : JIM (fellow) containing [carrying]  anagram [awkwardly] of O (old) SIGN (15 Across). Bellicose chauvinism. It comes from ‘By Jingo’ which has its origins in the words of a patriotic Music Hall song popularised by G H MacDermottt towards the end of the 19th century.  Gun the gunboats!
25 Rescue electronic organ used in social event? (11)
DELIVERANCE : E (electronic) + LIVER (organ) contained by [used in] DANCE (social event)
27 Trap bringing about mother’s ruin (3)
GIN : Two meanings
28 Part of defence of scorer facing bowler? (7)
RAVELIN : RAVEL (scorer – composer), IN (facing bowler?). More cricket. During play two batsmen are ‘in’  but only one of them at a time is facing the bowler, hence the question mark. Ravelin is an outlying section of fortifications.
29 Support staff kept back in quarters (7)
ENDORSE : ROD (staff) reversed [kept back] in E N S E (a random selection of quarters of the compass)
Down
1 Frightful-looking refuges with no end of want (7)
HIDEOUS : HIDEOU{t}S (refuges) [with no end of want – t]. When it came to parsing it didn’t help that I kept reading ‘refuges’ as ‘refugees’.
2 Awfully grim realm, ultimately quite suitable for a vulture (11)
LAMMERGEIER : Anagram [awfully] of GRIM REALM {quit}E {suitabl}E [ultimately]. SOED defines this as: a long-winged, long-tailed vulture, Gypaetus barbatus, inhabiting lofty mountains in southern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Also called bearded vulture. An utterly unfair invasion of the grid by an obscure foreign word clued as an anagram. It has appeared only once before, in a Club Monthly with an alternative spelling, and that’s exactly where it belongs – if indeed it has to appear at all. An awfuly grim clue that completely spoiled this puzzle for me.
3 Run away from mischievous prank, avoiding publicity (6)
ESCAPE : ESCAP{ad}E (mischievous prank) [avoiding publicity – ad]
4 Granny, initially out and back in practically no time! (10)
NANOSECOND : NAN (granny), O{ut} [initially], SECOND (back – support)
5 Little kid’s first few days (4)
WEEK : WEE (little – northern British), K{id} [‘s first]
6 Allies in a tizzy about sailor’s girl (8)
ISABELLA : Anagram [in a tizzy] of ALLIES containing [about] AB (sailor)
7 Fish swimming around? Only a little (3)
GAR : Hidden in [only a little] {swimmin}G AR{round}
8 Shame about son taken in to a greater extent (7)
REMORSE : RE (about), then S (son) contained by [taken in] MORE (to a greater extent)
13 Unsmiling Australian working in churchyard (11)
GRAVEDIGGER : GRAVE (unsmiling), DIGGER (Australian). &lit or semi.
14 Arrive and eat, squeezing in French entertainer (10)
COMEDIENNE : COME (arrive), then DINE (eat) containing [squeezing] EN (in, French). Presumably another word we’re not supposed to use any more.
17 Acclaim paper regularly imported into a cricket ground (8)
APPROVAL : P{a}P{e}R [regularly] contained by [imported into] A + OVAL (cricket ground)
18 Male theologian trapped in vehicle? Hard cheese! (7)
CHEDDAR : HE (male) +  DD (theologian) contained by [trapped in] CAR (vehicle). ‘Hard cheese’ is UK slang for ‘bad luck’ and the expression derives from cheese that is old, dried up and indigestible. Cheddar in good condition is firm rather than hard (like parmesan) but may be classified as hard to distinguish it from the soft continental cheeses.
20 Catholic dignitary in India meeting English schoolmaster (7)
DOMINIE : DOM (Catholic dignitary), IN, I (India – NATO alphabet), E (English). A nice misdirection here as the use of ‘dominie’ with reference to a schoolteacher is now almost exclusively Scottish.
21 A deadly sin? Absolutely (6)
AGREED : A, GREED (deadly sin)
24 Single man’s club (4)
IRON : I (single), RON (man)
26 Most of tax ready in Sofia (3)
LEV : LEV{y} (tax) [most of…]. The last three clues seem to be somewhat perfuctory as if the setter was running out of time. It’s not an uncommon trait, and worth remembering by solvers who find themselves stuck or making slow progress – take a look at the final Down clues as you may find some easy pickings to get you going again.

75 comments on “Times Cryptic 27932”

  1. not being great at cricket terminology, I thought 28 would be RAVEL + ON, and hence was greeted with the pink square of doom. Well, I figured out the wordplay and was proud of myself, thank you very much.

    I was helped by being able to put HOLBEIN in right away. One of my earliest memories was reading the liner notes to a recording of Liszt’s Totentanz, which was inspired by Holbein’s engravings.

    Jack, a few blog notes: Didn’t know the term ‘flyover’! Thanks! I think you meant SCHOOL (train).

  2. A 54 minute DNF with no luck in the unchecked letter lottery for the NHO (and I agree pretty obscure) LAMMERGEIER. Still, (almost) made up for by some good clues in JINGOISM and GRAVEDIGGER and by learning a couple of new words in RAVELIN (missed the significance of the question mark) and DOMINIE.

    I agree with your comment about the final few Down clues and hence it’s where I usually start.

    Thanks to setter and Jack

  3. It looks like there were a few traps in this puzzle – I successfully managed LAMMERGEIER from a memory that it was “lammer…” something and the crossers and carefully thought about “in” rather than “on” in RAVELIN. But I wasn’t careful enough to check all the letters to select ISABELLA over Isabelle.

    I was particularly glad to get JINGOISM and DOMINIE after some thought.

    1. I noticed the high number of solvers with errors on the SNITCH so far — 26 solvers and 13 excluded with errors. It occurred to me you could use this to apply an error ratio to the SNITCH rating. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea — maybe simplicity is better.

      Edited at 2021-03-23 08:13 am (UTC)

      1. Yes, I’ve thought about it and been asked a couple of times. I haven’t thought of a reliable way of incorporating that info – the club approach of penalising everyone for each error and then ignoring the time seems a bit arbitrary.

        In most cases* the number of solvers who get it right usually provides a good sample of solvers for the SNITCH calculation. I suspect that the presence of some traps will slow them down a bit to reflect the difficulty of the crossword. And, as you say, simpler seems better to me.

        *The exception, of course, is when there’s an error in the solution and there are no correct solvers.

        1. To further complicate your analysis, there are people like me who cheat … but only very slightly (perhaps you need a new word for this category of partial sinners; don’t want to be lumped with those evil neutrionos). If there’s a word like the wretched vulture I don’t know I will Google it (there: I’ve confessed), but only when I know how the clue is constructed and know I’ve never heard of the word.

          As a separate point, should every puzzle blog have a link to your excellent snitch site at the top? Wonder how many people like me took ages to know it existed.

          1. They all DO have a link to the Snitch site, at top right on desktop and laptop screens. On some platforms like ithingies, it may be more difficult to locate but it is there somewhere.
  4. I found this really easy (even the nho RAVELIN) until the end when I was left with the nho vulture (which I got since I couldn’t fit the letters any other way, despite the last few letters not looking very likely), the nho DOMINIE and the difficult to get JINGOISM (without the M in place). So I used aids to find DOMINIE and then I realized that the center of JINGOISM was an anagram of OSIGN not just SIGN with the O somewhere else. So DNF.
  5. I was struck by the number of QC-level clues: DAM, WEEK, IRON, ERRORS. And then there’s LAMMERGEIER; which I knew for some reason, although I had to be careful with the spelling. Also knew RAVELIN, thanks to G&S: Major-General Stanley, the very model of a modern Major-General, says,”In fact, when I know what is meant by ‘mamelon’ and ‘ravelin’,/ When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin/…” I biffed the two 1’s, parsed post-submission.
  6. I was on track for a PB when I crashed into 23ac, 28ac and 20d…and then a friend ‘phone me and I forgot to pause the puzzle.
    Eventually got RAVELIN, JINGOISM and DOMINIE but thanks for the decrypt, Jack. Thanks also for HIDEOUS and GAR. Didn’t spot the containment in GAR.
    Doesn’t LAMMERGEIER pop up in Monty Python somewhere?
    COD to DELIVERANCE. I did like e-liver for ‘electronic organ’

    Edited at 2021-03-23 05:57 am (UTC)

  7. Well another here completely stumped by the LAMMER thing. Couldn’t agree more, Jack. DNK DOMINIE. RAVELIN either but bunged them in. JINGOISM also caught me out. Just couldn’t see it. Thanks Jack as ever for the blog.
  8. An official DNF in 25 minutes, having put in LAMMERGAIER, using slightly the wrong anagram fodder for a bird I didn’t know. LOI was actually WEND, after I’d constructed the unknown DOMINIE. I think I knew RAVELIN and I was confident once I’d parsed it. COD to the GRAVEDIGGER, a clue that brought a smile and a Hamlet recitation. This was easyish until it wasn’t. Thank you Jack and setter.
  9. 15:31, WOE. I completely agree on LAMMERGEIER, which is a preposterous clue, so much so that I couldn’t be bothered trying to juggle the letters into the right places and just looked it up. DOMINIE and RAVELIN are also words that don’t really belong in the daily puzzles and ‘tub-thumping’ and JINGOISM aren’t even close to being synonymous.
    And after all that irritation I couldn’t even count my As and Es properly and ended up with ISABELLE.
    One to forget all round.

    Edited at 2021-03-23 07:59 am (UTC)

  10. I found this a curious mix. Like Kevin I thought some of the clues were QC level (not a bad thing) and then there was LAMMERGEIER and the WEND/DOMINIE crossers. Not knowing much about Catholic dignitaries I concentrated on girls’ names where you could take one letter off to get a word for “go” or vice versa — the clue seemed to work either way. The number of possible names and the possible meanings of “go” made this a thankless task. Eventually it occurred to me that “Dom” could be a religious title and things fell into place.
    1. Absolutely: I didn’t mention it (don’t want to be too much of a 5ac) but the multiplicity of options made 19ac a real chore of a clue.
  11. For Time long past.

    What a pity. I liked the first 15 mins and was thinking how well clued it was, even (NHO) Ravelin.
    But then came the three that needed too much Unravelin’.
    Thanks setter and great blog J.

  12. LAMMERGEIER!!!! It can’t get much worse
    You’ve inspired a most HIDEOUS verse
    When you reach your end
    To your corpse birds will WEND
    And you won’t be needing a hearse

    Excarnation is this setter’s fate
    Forget GRAVEDIGGERs when you are “late”
    Being eaten by (completely and utterly obscure foreign bearded) vultures
    Is not part of most cultures
    Not now….but Hell’s patient…..we’ll wait

    Edited at 2021-03-23 08:15 pm (UTC)

  13. Thanks jack, you’re bang on about lammergeier – what a ridiculous clue. As soon as I had all the checkers in for it and was left with a bunch of possible options for the placement of the other letters, I called it a day, not bothering to solve the few clues I had left.
  14. DNF. Needed to look up the dictionary to find TRAVELIN. LAMMERGEIER is a bit obscure and I needed almost a complete alphabet trawl to find the truncated girl’s name. DOMINIE was another unknown. A bit of a poor showing by me all round. I liked WEEK.
  15. 15.21 with FOI dam and LOI wend. For the latter, had to go through an alphabet trawl till I saw it . Had worked out dominie but for a while thought it was double e at the end- a lucky escape.

    Among a good few contenders for COD I’m plumping for Jingoism. “Oh we don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do, we’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too! “ Hopefully, it won’t come to that over vaccines.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    1. Funnily enough, DOMINEE cropped up in a recent Listener, meaning a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church.
  16. I know I had a bit of a go at the setter in my blog but having read the catalogue of criticism in the comments I feel obliged to stress that apart from THAT clue I thought this was a pretty decent puzzle and my solving time for the rest of it (32 minutes – 2 over my target half-hour) reflects that.
  17. 25m mostly straightforward but the last 10m on the vulture, the master and the defensive bit. In the end, as it would have been a simple guess on the vowel placement, I simply looked up the bird. If it is in Monty Python, as suggested earlier, then I will have heard of it, otherwise not. Just a bit of GK I didn’t know, I suppose. Otherwise I enjoyed the puzzle, thank you, setter. Also thanks, Jack, for the elucidation.
  18. Two random chaps, two random girls (if you count ISABELLA) and four random compass points might be pushing lottery to the limit.
    On the other hand, the LAMMERGEIER was ok by me, I knew the bird and that its spelling was a bit, well, random, but only had to work out in which order to put the two Es at the end.
    15.08 start to finish, subsequently entertained by excellent blogging: thanks, Jack!
      1. I thought of eagle but then got HOLBEIN. Held up at the end by DOMINIE and WEND which took an alphabet trawl to get.
        1. Dr. Gustav Heinz-Paul Rimmer 1814-1873 re-discovered the almost extict bearded vulture in Ethiopia c.1838.

          It then became known as the Rimmeradler, or Rimmereagle ‘Gypaetus barbatus rimmeri’ It is only found among the tallest peaks of the Eastern hemisphere: the Pyrenees, Mount Everest, the European Alps, the Ethiopian Highlands, the Atlas and Drakensberg Mountains and the islands of Corsica and Crete.

          ‘The Roman Pliny gave one of the first descriptions of the lammergeier’s signature behavior: breaking bones and hard shelled turtles by dropping them on rocks from high in the air. According to Pliny, Aeschylus was supposed to have been killed by a missile dropped by a lammergeier that mistook his bald head for a rock.’

          1. Oh yes, and the word OSSIFRAGE (which describes that behaviour etymologically) is defined in Chambers as ‘The lammergeier’. I didn’t have a problem with it myself, just held up on finding JIM to resolve JINGOISM.

            Reminds me also that virtually all French words ending in -AGE are masculine, apart from a small subset that can be recited by students (RAGE, CAGE, IMAGE etc). Then we discovered that SAXIFRAGE is also feminine in French.

  19. Sped somewhat through this leaving only the unlikely three answers none of which I had heard of.

    RAVELIN was guessable given the cryptic, DOMINIE was harder — had a notion that it could be that but no idea really — and LAMMERGEIER was impossible even with all of the checkers. I cheated for both of these last two, so a technical DNF.

  20. Dear Setter,

    Nothing wrong with 2dn LAMMERGEIER as it was my FOI. Being a bit of a culture-vulture I have recently been reading a new-ish title ‘Lammergeier’ – ‘a literary magazine focused on the intersection of the beautiful and grotesque.’ Right up my ginnel!

    LOI 8dn REMORSE

    COD 19ac WEND – Wendy the invention of J. M. Barrie and the most middle-class English gals’s names.

    WOD 2dn apart, 18dn CHEDDAR but only from The Gorge.
    I am supplied with Wyke Extra Mature in Shanghai….(sorry) gorgeous.

    This morning I went to the new downtown IKEA in Pusi – absolute crap!
    I only managed to buy one Swedish Kilner jar (for lime pickle) and six wine glasses (more pickling?); no bookshelves nor much else until April – perhaps! Covid19 to blame apparently.
    Why isn’t the new more lethal variant being updated to Covid21?

    Time 27 minutes and no passes.

    Edited at 2021-03-23 09:42 am (UTC)

      1. Ginnel in widespread use in the north of England, and means an alley, usually narrow. In our family we called one near us a squeezy bally entry, a corruption of squeeze belly entry.
  21. I am sure we had a discussion about the vulture and OSSIFRAGE on this site but I may be wrong. I know the bird so it was easy for me but still a poor clue. Nothing wrong with WEND if the E and D are easily obtainable (the latter was not easy as DOMINIE was also a complexity and obscurity too far). Shame.
  22. Being Scottish, brought up a Catholic, with a cousin called Wendy, and knowing the big bird and the outer defence, this was pretty straightforward for me, pausing only to check the anagrams for the bird and for Isabella. Also, seemed to be on the wavelength.
  23. FOI 1D: HIDEOUS

    Failed to solve:

    19A: WEND
    23A: JINGOISM
    20D: DOMINIE

    Everything went in like a dream and after 18 minutes I had 3 to solve.

    Alas, after an hour, I remained in the same position! I was obsessed with Tub-thumping being some shorter variant on LIONISING (with ‘sing’ for ‘sign’) and DOMINIE was a NHO.

    Thank you, jackkt `and the setter.

    1. II’m not time sure I’d go so far as obsessed but I was held up for ages expecting the answer to 23ac to be a word meaning ‘tub-thumping’. Silly me!
  24. I disagree about LAMMERGEIER, I thought it was a fair clue, a clear anagram of a bird I knew. I don’t see it as a foreign language word.
    The rest was also jolly good except for DOMINIE which I didn’t know and didn’t think looked right even when the word play suggested it. That and WENDy took much of the time.
    30 minutes.
    1. No need to apologise, Pip, as I am happy to read other opinions. I based ‘foreign’ on its being originally a German word, but leaving that aside its obscurity was my main issue. Obviously if you happened to know the word you had an advantage, and that’s fine, but I think the fact the LAMMERGEIER has apparently never come up before in the TfTT era supports my position on that.

      Jerry will know it too, as LAMMERGEYER (sic) appeared on his watch in 2012 and he mentioned he knew it only with the EIE spelling.

      1. I did indeed know it, mainly because I have actually seen some (well, two) in the Pyrenees. They are huuuuge birds.
        Spelling it correctly is rather another matter..
  25. … was going quite well till stopped thinking on 28 and threw in Rivalon. Held up previously by mis-spelling the lampholder but not for long – but the setter wins this one curses curses.
  26. Sounded a bit like an Italian opera – ISABELLA di LAMMERGEIER. The bird was vaguely familiar so my eye must have flitted over it when consulting the handy little Collins Gem crossword dictionary. I ground to a screeching halt at the end with *e*d in 19a – it would have to be a name well down in the alphabet. The Catholic dignitary came quickly thanks to the champagne. 17 on the nose.
  27. I don’t seem to have been alone in finding this a very uneven solve, and attributing that to the puzzle being a touch obscure rather than my knowledge falling short, but obviously I would say that, wouldn’t I. Let us move on.
  28. Please could someone explain how this works. From the fact that it wasn’t criticised, even praised by some, I imagine I’m missing something. I suppose it’s some sort of gerund/ive, something that always throws me. Presumably the (unsatisfactory to me) definition is ‘working in graveyard’, but it seems that a gravedigger is someone who works in a churchyard, so wouldn’t ‘worker in graveyard’ be a simpler and more natural definition? The surface wouldn’t be compromised.
    1. Wil, I think as indicated in my blog the definition has to be taken as the clue as whole, a sort of play on words. Your suggestion of ‘worker’ would be more precise but maybe less amusing? There wasn’t much fun to be had elsewhere in this one!

      Edited at 2021-03-23 11:18 am (UTC)

      1. Well yes I saw what you were saying, but the whole thing seemed to be rather loose and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. And I must be rather humourless, because I can’t see why the published version is any funnier than my suggestion.
        1. Thanks, Wil, and I’m not sure there’s anything in it now that you’ve queried it. Just the way it struck me at that moment. All humour is subjective of course.
  29. I found this easy-going until the last three: dominie, wend and jingoist. At that point I had brain-freeze and had to walk away (putting the machine on pause so actually my time is a fair bit higher). Came back and they fell pretty quickly. I see dcrooks had exactly the same problem. But then I discovered I’d put ravelon for ravelin. So one mistake. I knew of the vulture luckily.
  30. Didn’t know RAVELIN or DOMINIE, but managed to work them out. Once I had DOMINIE, I was finally able to get WEND, but I didn’t know the bird and gave up trying to juggle the remaining letters and looked it up. Life is too short. 37:25. Thanks (I think) setter and Jack.
  31. Vague on my crickety terms so in went ON, instead of IN, on RAVEL. The multiple vowel pile-up in LAMMERGEIER did for me too. Oh well, back to mowing the lawn.
  32. Ground to a halt with WEND and LAMMERGEIER left and had to grab some paper to try to make sense of all the vowels and fiddly bits. Got there by guessing it had to be LAMMERsomethingorother
  33. This started out as an easy “quick crossword”, I was writing in most of the answers as I read the clues, but the last few I found tricky (although quite obvious once the lightbulb moment occurred). I had “lei” for “lev” for quite a time, which made “ravelin” (memories of Tristram Shandy) unnecessarily difficult, but it was the vulture which finally got me — even though I had all the anagram elements in place. Full marks for GK to all who knew what a lammergeier was!

    Edited at 2021-03-23 12:59 pm (UTC)

  34. knew the bird was a lammerthingy, so had to be as careful as Isabella with the anagrist.
    DOMINIE better known to an aeroplane tragic like me as a De Havilland biplane than as a schoolmaster, but gettable after WEND gave the D.
    All green in 26’56”

  35. Massive mer at the German vulture today but it was not this that caused me a technical DNF but the generously clued Dominie which is NHO and did not yield to me as I could not drag up don as our catholic dignitary so had to resort to aids.

    Definitely a mixed bag today with some QC escapees but some elegant clues as well. Enjoyed hideous and Holbein.

    28:00 otherwise

    Thanks J and setter

  36. I biffed the vulture, which is probably a sensible move if one of them comes too close.

    Deliverance, Gravedigger and Chimpanzee were the pick for me. Good fun.

    Thanks to blogger and setter.

  37. Two or three goes at this. Very pleased to get twenty answers on first pass. FOI dam. Some of these were write-ins, which was odd in terms of the mix. I was left with the grid filled in on the diagonal from top left to bottom right, and some brain-racking, which I enjoy. There were lots I only semi-parsed. I had Isabelle, a careless mistake, but not the kind that bother me overmuch, though no doubt the spelling of a person’s name matters to them. In a crossword – not so much. Nho Ravelin, dominie, so DNF as was not able to work them out, and they were LO’sI. COD’s for me were the chimp, the vulture because they are in my subject area, and the gravedigger for the aha moment and the smile. Thanks, Jack and setter. GW.
  38. I agree with the rest that LAMMERGEIER was on the unfair side, and that WEND[y] gave lots of options – particularly given that the D came from DOMINIE, a particularly tricky one. Those were my last 3, in 11m 17s.

    My main complaint, though, was GRAVEDIGGER, for the same reason that wilransome gave above. It just doesn’t work, and I’m not generous enough to regard it as a semi-&lit – it strikes me as the kind of thing the Guardian would be OK with but very surprised to see it make it into the Times.

    Apologies, all very grumpy. On the plus side, WEEK was a nice, tidy clue, and GAR was a well-disguised hidden.

  39. I don’t often spend time on the 15sq but, buoyed by a decent run at today’s fairly chewy QC, I thought I would have a go today. It all went rather well at first — no problem with LAMMERGEIER or most of the other less obvious clues until I hit DOMINIE and RAVELIN and failed on both (which meant that IRON didn’t click for me either). I spent 45 mins until I gave up and looked at the blog.
    I do normally manage to finish the 15sq if I attempt it even though it often takes me an hour or so. Some crumbs of comfort from getting as far as I did today but I’m back to the QC tomorrow. I know my place!

    Edited at 2021-03-23 04:38 pm (UTC)

  40. I am interested in birds and have been lucky enough to see lammergeiers in Crete and Lesotho. However, many UK residents were lucky enough to see one at home last year as one decided to spend a lot of its summer around central England. I think it was even mentioned on the BBC news, such was the level of excitement. I’ll concede that it is generally referred to as the bearded vulture nowadays, but it has been known as the lammergeier for most of my life, and still is by many. Ignoring the possibility of any objectivity from me, I still think this bird’s name is just general knowledge. It was also clued with what I thought was a pretty friendly anagram!
    1. You are undoubtedly right here, using the standard TfTT definition of general knowledge, which is ‘stuff I happen to know’ 😉
  41. I hope pedants are more tolerated here than elsewhere. Grey’s ploughman may well wend; it is certain that Gray’s plods.
  42. 29.45. It’s shaping up to be a tough week. Fortunately for me once checkers were in the other letters in lammergeier seemed to fall into place ok. I don’t recall but perhaps I’ve come across it before. DOM for Catholic dignitary took some dredging and dominie was unknown so a long time on that one and jingoism where I think having ‘O’ indicated by old as part of the anagrist rather than ‘O’ indicated by old followed separately by an anagram of sign threw me. Ravelin stirred a faint memory. Also thrown a little by the definition of whinger as a fretful type when my immediate thought was not so much fretful as moaning, Chambers has to cry fretfully under whinge though; and the definition of candelabrum as lampholder I thought it would be more specifically for candles but Chambers again has branched candlestick or lampstand.
  43. There was much to enjoy in this, especially after a dreary QC earlier today, but I am at a loss as to how a mind that could give us 13d, Gravedigger, would consider an anagram was a good way to clue an obscure bird. For the record, Wend and Domine were also beyond me, as was the parsing of Schoolmate. Invariant
  44. Abandoned ship after 15 minutes due to total inability to get three clues in the SE corner (WEND, DOMINIE, JINGOISM). Either this lockdown is killing off my brain cells at a frightening rate, or I’m losing interest due to attempting too many puzzles.
  45. My second clue in, didn’t even have to work out the anagram. But then it would be. Check Wikipedia
  46. Lammergeier has been used in Times articles at least 14 times in recent years. Completely fair clue, my second one in. Rivelin and Dominie I did not know.
    1. Since you apparently have the means, perhaps you might check and advise how often RAVELIN (please note the correct spelling) and DOMINIE have appeared in the Times in recent years? Both perfectly fair clues as they may be lesser-known words but they came with wordplay as an alternative route for solvers who didn’t happen to know them – the mark of a good cryptic crossword clue, unlike the buzzard.

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