Times Cryptic 28112

69 comments on “Times Cryptic 28112”

1. A full three minutes at the end trying to construct the town, probably a write-in for local solvers. In the process I’d forgotten how uncertain I was about my other NHO, FADO.

   Happy to avoid the pink squares after all that.

   Thanks Jack and setter.

2. DNF — I didn’t know St Austell and couldn’t manage to assemble it. The only town I could think of was St Andrews, which got dinged letter by letter, not to mention that it is distinctly Eastern rather than Western. I liked Tigris, and who couldn’t like Luftwaffe. Thanks, jackkt
3. I got LUFTWAFFE fairly early on, but I took the definition to be ‘European force’, which left the FFE unaccounted for. Evidently I knew ST AUSTELL, as it came to me once I’d determined it was ST X. Biffed SCARECROW, parsed after; DNK WORCS.It took me forever to get POI UNCLASSIFIED, including time to reject DE-. Which forced DAMASCUS on me. Having now looked it up, it’s not clear that Damascus was the source of the steel. I’d certainly never heard of it, anyway.
   Thanks for the FADO link, Jack; here’s one by the great Amàlia Rodrigues:
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6ZJXKzLpRM

   Edited at 2021-10-19 01:54 am (UTC)

   1. Thanks for your link.
   2. I read ‘steel’ as ‘sword’ or ‘blade’, rather than as the material
4. Two wrong. I also went for mm (I don’t think of an em as small, an em-dash is as big as they get, for example). So I had DAMMON (a plausible spirit). I didn’t know the Portuguese song either, and went for MADO. No problem with St Austell since my Dad lives in Cornwall and I have regularly partaken of the St Austell beers.

   Edited at 2021-10-19 01:51 am (UTC)

   1. I agree about the EM dash being the larger of the two printing measures that turn up regularly and I was going to say something similar in my blog, but by the time I came to write it I had forgotten about it.
5. 29 minutes. FADO was new but otherwise everything parsed except for UNCLASSIFIED which went in from the def. Lucky to get DAEMON, as I thought a ‘small measure’ was more likely to be an ‘en’ rather than an ’em’. I agree about LUFTWAFFE which was my COD too. Good to see the agricultural / rural mini-theme.

   Thanks to Jack and setter

6. the scales did quickly fall from my eyes, after a slow start. 35 minutes and no passes. 16ac ST. AUSTELL was a gimme as I remembered the slogan postmarks I collected, as a lad. (The word-checker thingy corrected this to ‘a salad’!)

   FOI 15ac PRIOR — remember Jim!?

   LOI 1dn DORY! What ever happened to John? And what of Matt DAEMON at 10ac?

   COD 18ac LUFTWAFFE — they did bomb Boston after all! (That’s Boston Lincs., and not over the pond!)

   WOD 3dn SCARECROW — memories of an unrepeatable Les Dawson mother-in-law joke! Those were the days! These are not!

   I find 8dn, when present, one of the most important clues to get early on in the piece. Today arrived at MINIMALIST with only three letters present, and filled in the spaces, without reading the clue first, which worked for a change! I venture this is a ‘blindman’s biff’, which gets us nicely back to ‘square one’!

   Edited at 2021-10-19 01:49 pm (UTC)

7. 16 minutes or so, but completely failed to read the clue for 10 Across and put MAMMON, thus substituting one indignity for another, as I surely would have gone for DAIMON rather than DAEMON anyway. (1M is hardly a ‘small measure’ so it would have served me right.)
   1. I was another MAMMON. I actually thought I had parsed it — a small measure = AMM in fellow = MAN. Except that doesn’t work. Fiddlesticks.
      1. Me too, but I parsed mon as the Scottish word for man, and when I checked MAMMON, I discovered that mediaeval folks considered it an evil spirit, so I feel a bit cheated, but there was a compensation….

         To ELATE me and bring much delight
         Our setter did something just right
         It’s my birthday today
         And I’m shouting hooray
         As I have just found SATELLITE!! 😀

      2. It would work in Scotland though ..
         1. It would indeed work in Scotland — I shoved it in on that basis, backing it out soon afterwards since there was no Scottish indicator.
      3. I misspoke: I *did* read the clue, and “parsed” it as you did. What I didn’t read closely was my own work!
8. Like Jack, one short, but for me it was GUERNSEY. I even had Wikipedia up looking at types of lilies, but didn’t see this one.

   Thanks for help on parsing APOLOGETIC, that remained in pencil for a long time.

   I’ll never get used to “without” when it means “with” : for DORY I was looking for a 5 letter word with the O struck out. Please don’t quote the names of City churches or Easter hymns to justify a sneaky bit of misdirection.

   LUFTWAFFE clue was a great &lit, when I finally saw it. Also DAMASCUS which I carefully assembled, but it kept the NW blank for a long time. FOI was HEREFORD, right at the bottom.

   NHO FADO

   Also I don’t see Iris=Flag in TIGRIS clue. What’s that about?

   Edited at 2021-10-19 04:32 am (UTC)

   1. I urge one and all to listen to The Master’s chosen FADO, to be found in his blog. It is quite delightfull; sung by a Portuguese Linda Ronstadt, if you will. Now we’ll ever remember the word FADO. Jack thank-you for that lovely moment.

      Edited at 2021-10-19 04:43 am (UTC)

   2. Iris and flag are interchangeable for a type of flower, usually blue on land but yellow in my pond.
9. Just DAEMON left after my 30 minutes. Just too many possibilties for measure and fellow. Thought of MADO first but it didn’t sound right. I first worked on the china clay pits in St Austell in 1982 and was still working for the client almost 40 years later. COD to DORY … very elegant.
10. All done in 30:33 including NHO FADO with fingers crossed. FOI 1dn DORY with 1ac DAMASCUS visible in the wordplay for a while before it went in still without seeing any connection to steel. Held up most in the north east. COD to MINIMALIST
11. … With anguish moist and fever-dew,
    And on thy cheeks a fading rose
    Fast withereth too.

    After 20 mins I only had to alpha-trawl to get to Guernsey. NHO the plant.
    Daemon reminded me of Harry Hill’s story about when he went to the ‘funeral florist’ to buy a big NAN in flowers for his Nan’s hearse. But they had sold out of NANs. So he had to buy a DEAN and a DAMIAN and combine them to get a NAN. Luckily, with what was left over, he could form ‘I AM DEAD’ for the other side of the hearse.

    Thanks setter and J.

12. DNF
    Daemon … nah, sorry.
    Thanks, jack.
13. Thanks for another fine link, Jack. For what it’s worth I had DAMON around E(n) which kind of works.
14. 27minutes with LOI GUERNSEY LILY, a plant I’ve never heard of. She sounds like a wartime member of the resistance. COD to MINIMALIST for its smooth surface. WEBCAM was neat too. I suppose the scales did fall off my eyes on the road to solving Damascus, even though I’ve never heard of the steel. Setter, why persecutest thou me? But there were lots of excellent clues and I really liked this. Thank you Jack and setter.
15. I tried TINES instead of TONGS. It just about works.
16. 12:38, with several minutes at the end scratching my head over _A_M_N. Like others I became fixated on MM, and even when — after rejecting DAMMON and MAMMAN — I told myself not to fixate on it I found it hard to dislodge mentally. I got there eventually.
    Relieved not to see a pink square for FADO: it seemed likely there might be another interpretation of the wordplay.
    I knew about DAMASCUS steel: almost as famous as Valyrian.
    LUFTWAFFE superb.
    Nice to see one of my kids appear.
    And I fully endorse jackkt’s views on beer: I drank lots of Proper Job over the summer, it’s one of my favourites.

    Edited at 2021-10-19 07:11 am (UTC)

    1. I’ve been a little surprised by the general reaction to FADO as I’d have sworn on my life that not only did it appear quite recently but that it was on one of my blogging days and I posted a link to a video clip, just as I did today. However if TfTT Google search is to be believed it has appeared only once before, in 2016 in a puzzle blogged by former showrunner Andy. I could be thinking of a puzzle from elsewhere but then why would I think I had posted a clip? It’s very odd.

       Edited at 2021-10-19 08:38 am (UTC)

       1. I too could have sworn that FADO was recent, otherwise I would not have known it, even though the clueing was spot on.

          Edited at 2021-10-19 06:15 pm (UTC)

17. Defeated by DAEMON – I thought of demon as a spirit, but not with the A, and ’em’ as a small measure never occurred to me – and GUERNSEY LILY. Also didn’t parse LUFTWAFFE, thinking that it was just a slightly tortured cryptic definition. COD was UNCLASSIFIED for its concision.
18. 15:15 finishing with UNCLASSIFIED. I failed to parse DAEMON, but I should know my ems and ens as measures by now. Another fan of Proper Job. My local convenience store had it in a “3 for £5” for a while. COD to the brilliant LUFTWAFFE.

    Edited at 2021-10-19 07:38 am (UTC)

19. Nice crossword, probably no need to say what the LOI was.
    Never been to St Austell, barely been to Cornwall in fact. My grandparents lived in Paignton, loathed the Cornish, and would never let me go there. Fun fact: the Devon & Cornwall police force is the only one in England where you can insist on serving only in the one county, or the other ..

    Edited at 2021-10-19 08:41 am (UTC)

20. …like others I needed aids with DAEMON. And, yes, I thought the ‘small measure’ was A MM.
    Is DAMASCUS, supposedly the source of steel, somewhere in Ohio?
    FOI: NEW AMSTERDAM
    LOI….Need I say.
    COD: ST AUSTELL and UNCLASSIFIED.
21. In under 15 minutes, with the LILY last in once I started thinking of specific rather than generic milk producers.
    FADO is another of those words I’ve used quite often in word games without bothering with what it is: another revelation.
    I nearly convinced myself of GAMMON, worried that I couldn’t find the fellow and going on a wild chase to make it mean spirit. Also concerned because it’s deemed in some quarters a racist term. Sanity prevailed.
    LUFTWAFFE was brilliant. Pity I didn’t fully appreciate it.
22. This is my last day of a week’s holiday on Jersey, but that didn’t prevent “Guernsey Lily” being my last one in!
    Good puzzle with a brilliant clue 18a “Luftwaffe”.
23. Never heard of Damascus steel, but have now. Evidently ancient so not Ohio. Couldn’t parse St Austell or unclassified. In the St A clue there was an anagram of US state + ll, which was a red herring that I never coped with, and I thought that ‘unclassified’ was a fanciful CD. 35.45.
24. DNF as another who had MAMMON. Bah. I liked WEBCAM. As BW says, lots of great clues. Last word in ESCAPE for some odd reason.

    Thanks Jack and setter.

25. Two wrong. Mammon for Daemon and Greenset for Guernsey.

    COD: Unclassified

26. I was surprised at how many people had never heard of fado, punkt.
27. 50 mins but DNF 3 clues. Never heard of fado or guernsey lily and couldn’t work them out. Hereford should have got. Not helped by intermission of 45 mins. Always enjoy the comments. Thanks
28. All present and correct. LOI Daemon. I toyed with Mammon, Dammon, Rammon but stuck to my resolve NOT TO PUT IN WORDS THAT ONLY MIGHT EXIST. Daemon popularised by the Philip Pullman books, no? I’m afraid I didn’t parse Luftwaffe so failed to see its brilliance until I read the blog. Now I do!
29. I can’t help you there but it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that I’ve seen this before and forgotten it!
30. but with a MAMMON. DAEMON appears regularly on Countdown etc, but I just didn’t see it. I do think that a random man’s name isn’t quite cricket.
    Liked it otherwise. LOI GUERNSEY NHO
    1. I don’t think DON is a random man. He’s a bloke with a job at a university. Unless of course, like Major Major, his name is DON…
       1. Thanks, I’d seen eniamretrauq’s comment and was about to make the same point. The problem for me here was that I had considered DON as the obvious ‘fellow’ (at university) but hadn’t got anywhere with that and then I realised there was a possibility that ‘fellow’ might be any man’s name to fit **N and that was when I gave up. I’m sorry to say that random names pop up several times a week, if not daily.

          Edited at 2021-10-19 10:25 am (UTC)

31. 17.50 but put dammon instead of daemon. Annoying because I thought of daemon but was fixated on a mm being the small measure. Never mind, good puzzle . School report- B must do better.
32. I found myself in a similar position to our blogger for DAEMON, where in the end I had a stab at MAMMAN as a possible alcoholic spirit I hadn’t heard of. I was on for a decent time so I took a punt… possibly I’d have got DAEMON if I’d thought long enough, but I suspect it would have at least doubled my time.
33. Got there after a certain amount of thought about the various possibilities for _A_M_N but arrived at the right one, thinking of Philip Pullman as I did so. Never heard of the flower, but it seemed likely that if Lillie Langtry could be the Jersey Lily, there might be a Guernsey one as well.
34. POI GUERNSEY LILY from wordplay
    LOI ST AUSTELL also a guess
    The longest ones came later this time.

    Friday night I saw the great pioneer MINIMALIST composer La Monte Young perform the latest iteration of his ancient “Young’s Blues” in celebration of his 86th birthday… Sunday night I was pleased to see La Monte given credit where it is due in the Todd Haynes movie about The Velvet Underground.

    Socrates’ DAEMON was the first one I met.

    Edited at 2021-10-19 10:39 am (UTC)

35. Both St Austell and daemon – also fixated on a mm – empty when I went for aids. Daemons known more as background programs in computers; Damascus steel known as a phrase but not what it was; fado heard of. NHO Guernsey lily seemed likely from the crossers.
    Luftwaffe clue was good but a bit clunky, &lits always get extra kudos though. Tigris reminded me of a previous appearance as an &lit:
    Flower carrying gallons past origin in Turkey?
    Thanks setter and blogger.
    1. Bingo. I was aware of the ‘dae’ spelling because I once looked it up after seeing it in the IT context and wondering if it were a tongue in cheek IT joke or an acronym for something confusing.
36. ….and also Tribute were two ST AUSTELL beers that ASDA were able to deliver during lockdown, along with Shepherd Neame 1698, and Theakston’s Old Peculier (not a spelling error !) They made things a tad more bearable.

    I mentioned my decision to back out “mammon” earlier, and when I revisited it “don” came quickly to mind, and then it became obvious.

    Didn’t understand the steel reference in DAMACUS, but nothing else made sense.

    FOI RIDDANCE
    LOI DAEMON
    COD LUFTWAFFE (only parsed afterwards — inspired !)
    TIME 10:01 (whichever way you look at it)

    1. or a second glance?
37. Came to grief on DAEMON with a close but no cigar DAMMON. Lots to enjoy en route and a few to look up post-solve
38. Some very good surface stuff here. Raving for the RIDDANCE of a Republican along with ego in a rigged Capitol, and of course the LUFTWAFFE clue. I clocked in with an apt 19.40
39. Bit of a biff-fest here. Didn’t realise until checking the blog how much I’d bunged in without parsing.

    DAMASCUS — no idea what this is but not much else fits.

    WEBCAM — nice pdm

    DAEMON — last in — needed DON to alight upon the answer

    LUFTWAFFE — from checkers, but looked like a nice clue from reading the blog.

    GUERNSEY LILY — never ‘eard of it

    TIGRIS — from checkers, failed to parse

    COMEDIENNE — from definition, didn’t bother parsing

    FADO — guessed

    Cornish trivia — ST AUSTELL is pronounced SNOZZLE by the locals. Similarly MOUSEHOLE, a nearby village, is pronounce MAUZOLE.

40. Nice to see my favourite house beer get a mention.
    Thank you for the link to FADO. I confess to not listening to the full two hours!
41. 14.43. I rattled through this entertaining puzzle fairly quickly with only the odd hiccup. FOI was a good riddance. DNK Guernsey Lily or Fado, needed a moment to see how ward and fend were equivalent and of course had to mull over some of the different possibilities already mentioned before alighting on LOI daemon.
42. The watery “damask’ patterns on the swords of the Crusaders were something behold – the ‘recipe’ was lost when pistols from, Pistoia in Italy, superseded them as fighting weapons.1ac DAMASCUS is my COD.
    Guernsey lilies (Nerine sarniensis) were first discovered in the mountains surrounding Cape Town in South Africa. They have masses of red umbels with pink and white hybrids, developed in the Channel Islands.

    Edited at 2021-10-19 01:21 pm (UTC)

43. The Luftwaffe did give an air-fright around England back in the day. The Luftwaffe airfreight was mainly carried by the Ju 52 ( Tante Ju, or Iron Annie). Nice intersecting clues.
    Pity I had a typo in ESCALE CLAUSE, and a second pink for ST ANSTELL, which I thought was the Cornish town. 23mins with the two pinks
44. I also don’t get flag = plant. Grateful for direction please!
    1. Flag = flag iris = plant. A common trope in xwds
    2. SOED has: flag – Any of various plants, esp. irises, with sword-shaped leaves; esp. (more fully water flag, yellow flag) a yellow-flowered Eurasian iris,
45. …. because too many variables to work through. Pity, because all the rest came pretty quick.

    Biffed MINIMALIST without seeing why, so thank you for the explanation. Very good clue!

46. I fully concur with the blogger about the St Austell brewery. I had an excellent pint of ,
    ‘Tribute’ on Sunday at The Wrestlers, Highgate
47. I am much amused by these comments and the plethora of DNFs. Just for a change, mine is (which took 40 minutes) is different: GUERNSEY no problem, but LULU instead of LILY — it just never occurred to me as a girl’s or plant’s name! DAEMON quite straightforward, and I read DON more as a fellow at a university, and not just any old bloke. For the entire puzzle I was convinced tha COMEDIENNE involved an oversight of the setter, since I read “invitation to stop” as COME IN and then November and the ends in union and marriage left me short a D and an E and with one N too many. I.e., I never saw DIE for “stop”, as how could I with that start. I knew about DAMASCUS steel as a luxury product of the middle ages, so no problems there. COD to LUFTWAFFE. Nice puzzle.

    Edited at 2021-10-19 06:23 pm (UTC)

48. Proved that my regime is wise because I didn’t follow it today, trying to complete this with the tv on in the background led to stupid mistakes. On the plus side, having read the comments, I’m proud to have got daemon. As leskoffer says, reading Philip Pullman helps.
    Couldn’t see the solution to the anagram at 11dn (even though I had the letters written out in front of me) so bunged in escape module. That made lily impossible (which it might have been anyway). I knew that I knew a three letter word for craze but couldn’t bring it to mind.
    Otherwise enjoyed a steady solve.
    Thanks to the setter and to jackkt for explaining the parts I couldn’t parse.
49. Slow and steady gets the prize, with loi Daemon going in as a slightly more likely spirit than Dammon. I’m surprised by some comments about Damascus steel, as I thought it would be reasonably well known from a sword context, which is more than can be said for Guernsey Lily, even with all the crossers. Finally, I have one word to describe those who have never heard (of) Fado — lucky. Invariant
50. Thanks for another fine link, Jack. For what it’s worth I had DAMON around E(n) which kind of works.

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