Times Cryptic 27980

62 comments on “Times Cryptic 27980”

1. Oh, yes: so it’s general knowledge, is it, that the Royal Academy is housed there? Not to this country bumpkin, it isn’t. See I told you I was grumpy.
2. ….oh damn ! And thus 1A became my LOI in due course.

   TELLERSHIP (which auto spell put a space into !) was a new one on me. I parsed SASKATOON and ARCHDEACON afterwards.

   FOI (correctly !) TOLLBAR
   LOI GOPHER
   COD GRAVITATE
   TIME 7:33

3. My 28 minutes would have been a lot quicker if I’d known that a badger was not a rodent. I spent ages untangling that NW corner. Ann
4. Thought this was very gentle with only GOPHER and GENOA giving me pause.

   Wasn’t the whole plot of Downton Abbey based on somebody having an entail. Or was it a tail? Or was that the Hapsburgs…

   Thanks to Jack and the setter.

5. Forty minutes without understanding where it all came from. Saw some but couldn’t parse them at first, e.g. entail, edgy, sisal. FOI nonagon. Three acrosses and three downs on first pass. Then it gradually began to click all over the grid. I had an Americanism (specialty) for 15 across, which clearly I did not parse, and it was my LOI, so finished with one red square. A technical DNF for the sake of one letter. I liked all the clues except for adit, which I know is a mine entrance (on the horizontal, I think), but couldn’t see how it fit the other bit of the clue. A badger is a mustelid, not a rodent, if anyone is interested. Thanks, Jack, for explaining many of the clues I biffed, and setter for an entertaining puzzle. GW.
6. 40 minutes, but for a change I had one mistake all to myself: EGGY instead of EDGY because I couldn’t remember (or never knew) whether the BBC had a Director General or a Governor General, and EDGY to me means “nervous” whereas EGGs really are brittle. Oh dear. Otherwise quite easy, despite the unknowns NIMBYISM and GRAMPUS (which I vaguely recall having seen before).
7. 13:19 for today – some straightforward clues but also a few that were more tricky, so for me a well balanced puzzle.
   Back into old habits and failing to spot the hidden answer in 10 ac for a while. Finally unravelled 1 dn when I realised that “elevated” could apply to more than the first word that followed.
   I was another who got Berkshire into his head for 8 dn until I realised that I knew no one called “Reb” and an even more illuminating moment when I remembered that my brother-in-law’s name is Roy!
   Thanks as ever to Jack for the blog and setter.
8. Good stuff apart from ADIT which like others was my LOI. Vaguely knew the word but the w/p baffled. Also didn’t know SASKATOON so quite pleased to eke that one out

   Thanks jackkt and setter

9. 19.43. I felt slow and off the pace as I made my way round the grid. Delayed in particular by the unfamiliar Saskatoon and by the not so unfamiliar spaghetti.
10. Haven’t finished yet but we’re enjoying ourselves: not too tortuous and we do like a setter with a sense of humour. Laugh-out-loud for 26 ac
    1. I’m finding a lot of difficulty logging in. I made the above comment thinking I had done so but it’s come out as Anonymous. Infuriating
       1. Unless you deliberately log out it’s quite rare to need to sign in when you revisit TfTT to activate your user-id, but it does happen. If you are already signed in and you go to write a comment the text box that opens will show your user-id just above the Subject field and all you need to do is check that it’s there, rather than Anonymous.

          Edited at 2021-05-18 09:10 pm (UTC)

11. A mix of doable and tricky, meaning only three-quarters finished. Let down by not knowing Latin, for 23ac, nor anything about Burlington House. FOI, though, was ADIT which stumped some others. Fancy that.

Comments are closed.