Times Cryptic 28010

73 comments on “Times Cryptic 28010”

1. I had to blindly construct alcatras, bags I, and hairgrip from the cryptics, and hope they were right – if this were Mephisto, I would have looked them up in Chambers as I went along. I was very late to one over the eight, which should have been very obvious. My last one in was avouch – I was thinking that five new pence are the equivalent of a shilling, so you might have to remove an S! Well, they might do that in Mephisto, but not in a daily puzzle.
2. I thought I was doing pretty well here, until I submitted and found that HAIRTRAP was incorrect. Oh well, better luck next time.
3. I also considered HAIRPROP?
4. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to finish, with the 1s and 11ac out of reach. But CAT_A somehow suggested Alcatraz, which I (thought I) knew meant ‘pelicans’, and saw ALAS; NHO, of course. NHO TAVENER, either, and thought, Goodness, I’ve been calling him Taverner all these years; I was thinking of John Taverner (1490-1545). Biffed THE POWERS, and biffed POI CHUTNEY, which I didn’t bother to parse since the C gave me LOI AVOUCH. DNK ‘Brahms and Liszt’ (actually, I may have seen it here once, but) but saw what I thought was anagrist and CHERUBINI fit. Didn’t care for ONEROUS.

   Edited at 2021-06-22 03:39 am (UTC)

5. Did quite well, but was faced at the end with a bunch of pesky bits that dragged the puzzle out longer than I cared for. Stuff like HURL = ‘yell’ and WAKE = ‘fire’ (even though the answers seemed obvious) kept me dithering, even after I’d thought of ‘hurl insults’ and ‘fire the imagination’. I suppose I prefer the style of puzzle where once you’ve found the right way of looking at it, you’re sure you’re right.

   Jack, surely you know this piece by Cherubini, no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSE15tLBdso

   I assume the spam blockers will get me for that one.

   1. Indeed I do know it very well, but it’s by Boccherini, not Cherubini! The spam blockers won’t trouble you, Jeremy, because as a blogger yourself you have a higher level of posting rights. The legions thing may be original or something I picked up unconsciously.
      1. Ha! What a blunder. But there is a piece by Cherubini that’s quite well known. Just gotta find it.
         1. Further to my reply above, I’ve since googled ‘legions of wokery’ and my blog is the only hit, but ‘legions of the woke’ gets 6960 so I guess I must have heard that somewhere and adapted it.
6. Jack, did you coin “the legions of wokery”?
7. I went on the guided tour of ‘Pelican Island’ many moons ago and suddenly the name came back to me …. ALCATRAS. I also enjoyed Hurst Castle…..ROSEBUD! And The Madonna Inn at San Luis Obispo….JESUS!

   Slightly quirky feel – but I was home in 33 mins.’Er Indoors and her mama have gone for shots – (so no interruptions hereabouts) – too early for me at ten in the morning! And whilst I’m on the subject…

   FOI 10ac ONE OVER THE EIGHT never again!

   LOI 1dn AVOUCH – vouch!

   COD 1ac ALCATRAS which I prefer with a zed (zee)! But I get it! One’s bird the other ‘doing bird’

   We used to have ‘Bagsies’ at school for marbles and ‘fag’ cards and ‘Croggies’ (faenites) for ‘tag’. Thus 7dn BAGS-I is my WOD.

   1. The Madonna Inn makes Hearst Castle seem understated!
      1. Yikes!
         Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst,
         Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst,Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst, Hearst.
         1. Please amplify.
8. I had to construct several words (and composers) I’d never heard of from wordplay. Unfortunately, I fell at the last fence and put ARCATLAS. I have no excuse. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and even knew that the name of the island of Alcatraz (which I’ve been to many times) was something to do with pelicans. Pleased to find out that CHERUBINI was a composer, and not just a character in the Marriage of Figaro (which he isn’t, since he (or do you say “she” when he is sung by a female soprano) is CHERUBINO), and so was TAVENER. And ERMINE was a moth not just a fur. And WEXFORD was an inspector in books I’ve never read on TV series I’ve never seen. So close but DNF (took me 38 mins to get to the final fence).
   1. “He”, is a cherubino. They – multiple people, at least 2, at least 1 male and at least 0 female – are cherubini. Annoyed at not getting it – “Brahms and Liszt” was obvious – but even then I couldn’t create the unknown from the wordplay and crossers. Managed to create alcatras, but failed on pouch and chutney. Some really nice devices, but I’m with Jack on not liking the “it’s a common letter in two random words that you need to delete” for tea and coffee.
9. 31:55
   Pleased to come through this in one piece; it was a handful. Thanks, j.
10. And woolly breasts and beaded eyes

    After 30 mins pre-brekker I had Foible/Bags I undone and couldn’t be bothered to alpha-trawl. I think it was constructing Alcatras and Cherubini that irked me.
    Thanks setter and Jack.

    Edited at 2021-06-22 06:57 am (UTC)

11. 43 minutes, held up in the NE at the FOIBLE/ BAGS I intersection. We would often say BAGS I bat first or something similar, and sometimes refer to BAGSIES, spelling never determined, but I don’t recall seeing BAGS I written down like that. COD to CHERUBINI for the anagram indicator. I hoped that ALCATRAS was right as I could see no reason to swap the S for a Z. A very enjoyable puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
    1. I think it appeared quite recently here, either the quickie or the 15 x 15.
       Andyf
       1. Bags without the I appeared in Sunday Times 4953 at the start of May – did you see it there?
          Difficult to Google, its search bot seemingly found “bags I” on almost every single TfTT page!
12. I found this decidedly tricky, and had to take a break before coming back and finishing off ALCATRAS, BAGS I, ARRAY and FOIBLE. I was glad to recognise CHERUBINI from a previous puzzle which made it biffable, as I didn’t spot the cryptic. Very nice in hindsight. SWIFT was Ninja Turtled from the Dean Swift pub near London Bridge — a fine establishment. I knew there was some literary connection but the beer was foremost in my mind.
13. 18:58 with 2 1/2 minutes at the end on ALCATRAS and AVOUCH. I knew of the island prison but not that the bird it was named after could be spelt with an S at the end. Fortunately the wordplay was clear. Lots of quirky touches, which I enjoyed, and great blog. “the legions of wokery”…indeed. Thanks Jack and setter.
14. A rather nervous solve in 21 minutes with much thatllhavetodoery: I struggled to get WAKE from fire, hoped ERMINE was also a moth, ALCATRAS was a pelican and not a misspelt prison, and I didn’t have to worry about “noisily” at the end of the CASSETTE clue, suggesting a homophone. AVOUCH, CHUTNEY, and ARRAY only emerged as I wrote the crossing letters out, and I only spelled TAVENER properly when my version was too long.
    I have sung some Tavener: The Lamb with its rising and falling dissonant scales sticks in the memory.
    Great blog Jack, full of educational detail and settlement of this solvers nerves.
15. 14:32. This was a mixture of easy biffs and clues made tricky by things I didn’t know: ALCATRAS (very clear wordplay fortunately), SWIFT’s deanship, yell = HURL (I did know this of course but didn’t make the connection when solving), the moth, the composer, the other composer (like Kevin I was puzzled by the misspelling of TAVERNER), Wexford. I also struggled a bit with 22dn where the answer seemed clear but fire = WAKE seems extremely loose.
    All in all I was relieved to finish without getting completely stuck.
    I assume that in the early days of CRS Barnet Fair was just sufficiently famous to be an obvious reference irrespective of location. After all East London is nowhere near Berkshire either.

    Edited at 2021-06-22 08:06 am (UTC)

    1. My guess is that Barnet was just far enough away from the East End to be a day out. After all it’s probably under 10 miles north. Don’t quite understand how Berkshire comes into it.
       1. I can tell you how Berkshire comes into it, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for this blog! Suffice it to say, the derogatory term berk (he’s a right berk) is an abréviation of the whole.
          1. Ummm…..Rose: The source of this vulgarity is not Berkshire, but the Berkeley Hunt which in is Gloucestershire and down towards Bristol — it’s CRS. I have no idea why Lord Keriothe misled us! Politeness!?
             No wonder Mr. Handsome was so confused and probably far too proper to put us all right.
             Meldrew. Innit?

             Edited at 2021-06-22 12:03 pm (UTC)

             1. This is contested: there is support for both. Mind you both may actually be wrong: the term may originally derive from the Romani ‘berk’, meaning ‘breast’, and the CRS might just be a ‘folk-etymological misconception’ (OED). But where’s the fun in that?!

                Edited at 2021-06-22 02:40 pm (UTC)

          2. Oh yes of course, that hadn’t occurred to me. It’s nice, although I don’t really equate a berk with one of those. A berk carries connotations of foolishness, which the other one doesn’t.
             1. But they derive from the same source! Honi soit qui mal y pense

                Edited at 2021-06-22 12:25 pm (UTC)

                1. You are right of course H. I definitely haven’t got my thinking cap on today.
    2. I read 22d the other way around — with the definition being (to set on) fire; then wake is just stop sleeping.
       1. That doesn’t really help does it? It still leaves you needing ‘wake (up)’ to mean ‘fire’, which I don’t think it does.
          1. It helps me — I can see firing up, or just firing, a (for example) team or even something abstract like a political campaign, where I can’t as much see wake, alone, in that context. Not by any means perfect, but it made a little more sense to me that way
             1. I can see that you might fire up a political campaign, or that you might wake it up, but these are very different things. It doesn’t matter how many ‘in’s you have or where you put them!
16. The top left corner gave me the most problems: I didn’t know ALCATRAS was a pelican so relied on the wordplay and assumed it wouldn’t be spelt with a Z, I had no idea what Brahms and Liszt were doing in 2d and simply hoped that the vaguely remembered CHERUBINI was in fact a composer, and I needed a second attempt to get the equally unfamiliar AVOUCH.

    I also forgot that Ireland can give you Erin, so I really wasn’t sure about ERMINE, and I didn’t fully parse THE POWERS THAT BE – ‘rear’ meaning ‘tower’ went over my head (appropriately!). I didn’t know that SWIFT was a dean either, but with the checkers in place I didn’t have to.

    BAGS I was familiar from my schooldays, but not with that spelling. On the rare occasions I wrote it it down, I spelt it ‘bagsy’. Fortunately the cluing was clear.

    FOI Foible
    LOI Avouch
    COD Array

17. Verging on the too many obscurities again, esp 1ac, but at least wordplay was crystal enough to avoid biffing of final Z. Am pretty convinced THANK YOU is two words (even in a thank you note which conceivably might be hyphen-at-ed) … some odd, almost nonsensical, surface readings took gloss of puzzle which also had much to enjoy and admire. Thanks to blogger and setter.
    1. I haven’t checked them all, but the usual sources seem to have ‘thank you’, ‘thankyou’ and ‘thank-you’ as alternatives. I would vary it by context so I’d always write ‘Thank you for your letter…’ but ‘He said thankyou’. I don’t know why, but that seems correct to me.
    2. I was always taught that you must write ‘thank you’ as two words, but no doubt this is just one of those arbitrary shibboleths like not splitting infinitives. When writing it as a noun as required here (‘I got a nice thankyou’) it seems more natural to me to write it as one word.
18. 53 mins of torture, particularly in the NW corner. avouch, alcatras and array . Pleased to parse the first two but array just seemed too simple to be true. Entered in desperation and then read the blog and it was!

    Spent ages on bags I as well but no resentment over that, wonderful clue I thought.

    Hope to be more on wavelength tomorrow. Thanks Grand Inquisitor and blogger.

19. ONE OVER THE EIGHT went straight in, and I thought I was off to the races. Stupid boy. A long, painful struggle that I can’t say I really enjoyed. Pelicans, moths, fish, ornamental plants? Not in my backyard. Ah well… I liked CHERUBINI, NIOBIUM and FOIBLE, the latter a useful euphemism for excusing the most outrageous behaviour.

    Thanks to Jack and the setter

    1. Ha yes I can imagine FOIBLE appearing in an obituary alongside ‘bon viveur’ (alcoholic) and ‘didn’t suffer fools gladly’ (utter bastard).
20. Wow that was tough! Started off with ONE OVER THE EIGHT, and confidently typed in TAVERNER, not noticing until I was struggling at the end with CHUTNEY, CHERUBINI, AVOUCH and ARRAY, that he didn’t fit. That NW corner must have accounted for around 30 minutes of my 53:43. BAGS I was another hold up, but I spotted it when I left the NW for a breather. CHERUBINI fell first when I spotted what Brahms and Liszt were doing, then ARRAY hove into view. AVOUCH came next, than finally the chute replaced the flume and the preserve arrived. Thanks setter and Jack.
21. Not too much given away easily on this one – I was staring for a while before entering anything (GIN RUMMY, after trying most of the acrosses and downs ahead of that in the grid). Several obscurities, but all gettable, and stopping the clock at 7m 49s, it felt longer.

    ONE OVER THE EIGHT was very nice. I’ve not come across BAGS I like that – I’d be a BAGSY person myself – and also very unusual to see THANKYOU as one word. Maybe that was done because YOU was in the clue?

    Thanks for explaining WAKE = FIRE, I didn’t understand that one and just hoped for the best.

22. Lots of unusual stuff here, but all decipherable. Pretty sure I’ve been asked in a quiz what bird gives its name to Alcatraz, so that helped with perhaps the trickiest one. BAGS I is one of those things which I’ve heard said a lot (albeit most of those occasions were in the mid-1970s) but never seen written down, and probably would have spelled BAGSY. I imagine it’s one of those linguistic variations which indicate where you grew up, rather like the playground game “tig”…or is it “tag”…or is it (cont’d p.94)
    1. Regional variations of ‘faenites’ (truce) is fascinating – I used to have a regional map somewhere crossies, exes, croggies, pax, kings hundreds across planet playground.
    2. When I was a kid it was pronounced bagsEE, so BAGS-I looks weird to me.
23. ….ensured that I biffed my way through this with minimal enjoyment.
24. I found this to be too much of a general knowledge crossword with unknown composers plants and moths, didn’t enjoy it at all but that’s just my taste I suppose. Had to employ aids for Alcatraz, verbena and Cherubini so DNF.

    Thanks j and setter

    1. And sadly with ‘Alcatraz’ you’d have been wrong!
25. Fixated on finding some unknown musical notation for loud, I just couldn’t see CASSETTE. A couple of other unknowns but all fair and gettable.

    Edited at 2021-06-22 11:09 am (UTC)

26. Anyone remember the recent clue beginning “High Barnet…something something American”??
    I can’t seem to find it and it was only a few days ago??
    Grateful for explanation. though I know it’s a hair joke!
    1. I remember the reference within the past couple of weeks but a search on “high barnet” didn’t find it.

       I did however find this clue from 2019 which I think is excellent:

       12. Mop up road spills in High Barnet (POMPADOUR)

    2. Yes we did. It was in this Sunday’s 15×15 by David Maclean so the answer won’t be published here until the weekend.
27. A slow burn, but glad to have stuck with it and finally all done in 48 minutes. FOI was the obvious ONE OVER.. last in were FOIBLE and the rather silly BAGS I. Dithered over 1a ending with Z or S, I have visited the one with a Z but the wordplay didn’t seem to work so went for ALCATRAS as a guess. NIOBIUM was an easy one for me!. #

28. jackkt – pedant’s corner here; you are of course correct about Ulster being the nine counties, but there is no “Republic of Eire” and my Irish friends get annoyed when Brits call their country Eire. It’s the Republic of Ireland. Eire is the Irish language word for the whole island, 32 counties, or a poetic word for it in English. I know it’s on the stamps, or used to be, but that’s Irish and silly, like Helvetia on Swiss stamps.
    1. I learnt most of my geography of nations through stamp collecting.
29. Yup, I was addled by the TAVENER/Taverner thing. Struggled a bit with this with same difficulties as others. My Christmas stocking had some very nice VERBENA soap from L’Occitane de Provence (they call it vervain just to be French). 22.06
    1. Mrs K is a big fan of L’Occitane, and loves hard soap; unfortunately there’s such a wide range of stuff there’s always something more to buy. There is a shop in Bergerac that just sells L’Occitane stuff, like Body Shop in UK. I think soap is overrated.
       1. Agree with you regarding merits of soap!
30. NHO either random composer, the first of which might have been any one of a few letter combinations.

    Never thought of Bagsy/Bagsie as BAGS I before

    Edited at 2021-06-22 12:36 pm (UTC)

31. Gave up after the hour with FOIBLE, AVOUCH and ONEROUS not entered. Disappointing. Thanks Jack.
32. Nothing much said about niobium (Nb):also known as columbium (Cb) atomic number 41. A light grey, crystalline, ductile transition metal. English chemist Charles Hatchett reported a new element similar to tantalum in 1801 and named it columbium. In 1846 German chemist Heinrich Rose isolated Nb from tantalum ores, which he named niobium. In 1864-65, a series of scientific studies proved that niobium and columbium were the same element – as distinguished from tantalum, and for a century both names were used interchangeably. In 1949 Niobium was officially adopted as the name of the element, but the name columbium remains in current use in metallurgy in the USA.Two nations divided by uncommon elements. My COD Niobium. Nb time 19 minutes.

    Edited at 2021-06-22 01:05 pm (UTC)

33. 34.27. A couple of unknowns or un-twiggeds such as alcatras or that use of hurl in churlish where the wordplay or definition felt rock solid so I entered with no qualms. But another couple at the end, the crossing ermine and unicorn, where I pondered eimere for a long time and only corrected when a lengthy alpha-trawl made nothing of u-i-o-r. Once ermine was in the unicorn appeared. Those two held me up considerably.
34. I am tempted to start writing poetry complaining about obscure composers, in fact I will next time. I did though like the B&L anagram indicator, I probably know them better like that. What about a few folk musicians? More my metier.
35. I don’t see anything wrong with the “tea and coffee” device, and it’s nice to have something variety rather than the usual abbreviations or initial letter stuff. I straight away suspected that it might indicate the letter E.

    That said, having done all the hard work, the straightforward ONEROUS held me up for ages because with the other slightly obscure answers I convinced myself it was some chemical compound starting with OX (‘difficult individual’).

36. Of course in “proper” CRS you only syt the first bit and the Fair in Barnet Fair is understood. Same applies to Brahms but I suppose the and Liszt was irresistible
37. 20:39 and at least a PB in terms of NHOs — Five! Alacatras (as in pelican), Ermine (as in moth), Avouch, Tavener (well maybe vaguely) and Cherubini (sounds more like an Italian duo from some distant Eurovision Song Contest).
    Despite these obscurities I sort of staggered my way through and enjoyed the challenge of a slightly quirky puzzle, my mood helped by being in the garden in the sunshine this afternoon.
    LOI 1 ac “alcatras” which seemed to take ages to parse.
    COD 11 ac “Chutney” — like Jack I was trying to work with another word rather than “chute” for a water course, in my case “sluice” which didn’t help.
    Thanks to Jack for a most comprehensive blog and to setter
38. Technical DNF as I needed aids to get 1d “Avouch” — didn’t see it even with a lengthy alphabet trawl (doesn’t help that V is towards the end of the alphabet!). Not a word previously known to me.
    1a “Alcatras” also took me ages even though the “cat” was obvious.
    You know the setter’s prepared something tricky when 1a and 1d are your last two clues.
    Enjoyable puzzle despite being defeated.
    Many thanks for the blog.
39. And like some others glad to emerge unscathed. Had to guess Avouch ad Alcatras, and though Wake up seemed inevitable, I was not happy with the clue. The etymology of Alcatras is interesting. The Arabic word Al-Qadus means water-scoop, of the kind found on a noria water-wheel. In Arab-run Iberia it was applied to the pelican because of its scoop-like bill. Mistakenly it was applied by British sailors to another seabird, the frigate bird. Subsequently the word was modified — possibly because the prefix alba signified white — and was given to the albatross. OED quotes Sir John Hawkins in 1564 describing how he “anchored by a small island called Alcatrarsa wherein we found nothing but seabirds.”
40. Pleased to finish, with aids, in a couple of hours. DNF on my own. Eight clues unparsed, and did not get the final nuance in one other, so many thanks for the blog. FOI adieu, LOI avouch. All good clues for me, very tricky. Thanks also to the setter. GW.
41. Sorry if this has been mentioned already. I skim read the comments and couldn’t see it. AVOUCH is notably in Hamlet, right at the beginning I believe, with the walk of the ghost. I think Horatio says:

    “Before my God, I might not this believe, were it not for the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes.”

    A line suitably pregnant with the very concerns that the play has yet to unfold.

42. Gosh, this one was a challenge and ultimately defeated me with just over half done. Too many – for me – words I didn’t know from clues too cryptic for me to take a punt at them, mostly in that top half. FOI 5Ac FOIBLE. LOI TAVENER. As usual satisfied to at least be correct with those I managed. Thanks to jackkt for his usual patient and informative clarification.

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