Times Cryptic 28118

69 comments on “Times Cryptic 28118”

1. DNK BATHCUBE, which made it my LOI, as I couldn’t think of a B uni, until I finally got POI TOAD after an alphabet trawl. I couldn’t think of FAIR until I got the T from BUTTERFLY (DNK; wing nut I knew). Biffed HONEYMOONERS & UNCLE, figured them out post-submission. I liked URBANE, EVEN SO, TWIN SISTER (an impressive hidden), BLUE WHALE.
2. …quite a good puzzle; there were a lot of very original clues – asbestos, butterfly nut, Biarritz, rubberneck. The whole thing was very high quality without being too, too difficult – at least for me. Some solvers apparently found it tough.
3. Some excellent wordplay here. ‘Stopping at nothing’ is new to me (i.e. ignore the rest of the word), the felicitous ‘vehicle by which I’m struck’ and ‘University eight’, about to w(i)n, the top rating (best OS) – very good work.

   I pondered BAHRAINI for a while at 9.

4. at which point I did an internet search for BIARRITZ, it said “no results” thanks to some error, and I spent a further five minutes questioning the wordplay before someone on the Twitch stream put me out of my misery. A tough but immensely satisfying puzzle.

   Little Lord Humblebrag hath spoken

5. That’s exactly how it went, quarter by quarter, with BUTTERFLY NUT providing the first inroad to the NW. I would never have dreamed that could be the answer before I had FAIRBANKS. It seemed odd that HONEYMOONERS was my LOI, as it’s not that hard, and I’d tried figuring out what parts were anagrist at an earlier stage. But I needed CARTOUCHE to get that, and I needed BIARRITZ to get CARTOUCHE, and I needed BABY (which took forever) to get BIARRITZ.

   PLUTO was pretty cool. But that’s just a random example, really. One for the books.

   Edited at 2021-10-26 03:39 pm (UTC)

   1. Yes indeed. This is a pretty good example of we do crosswords, isn’t it?

      Edited at 2021-10-27 02:14 am (UTC)

6. Twitchers: we note the Lesser Spotted Piper of Humble-in Is back in town for the Tuesday Special.

   FOI 1dn BABY

   (LOI) 16ac the riparian FAIRBANKS thespians.

   COD 9ac BIARRITZ — ‘where prodigals fear to tread’

   WOD 12ac Jackie Gleason’s early fifties sitcom, The HONEYMOONERS

   Whatever happened to 1ac BATHCUBES!?

   Time unrecorded as my watch had stopped!

   Edited at 2021-10-26 06:40 am (UTC)

   1. Bathcubes used to be staple gifts for mothers and aunties when one couldn’t think of anything else to buy for Christmas or birthdays. Radox salts (in unglamorous cardboard boxes that went soggy in bathroom steam) took over but didn’t fulfil the gift potential. Now it’s all liquid bath foams and bubble baths – very eco-unfriendly as they are sold in large plastic bottles.

      Edited at 2021-10-26 07:41 am (UTC)

   2. trigger warning, it’s my blog tomorrow.

      –LSPH

7. 51 minutes, finishing with a biffed EDIT. I constructed CARTOUCHE with all crossers in place, unsure of its meaning. I’d actually prefer to have a spare wheel than a SPARE TYRE when confronted with a puncture in a car, but maybe on a bike it would help. I’m giving COD to BLUE WHALE, but the award I’m giving to myself is FAIRBANKS which I got before any crossers were in place. Tough but excellent puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.
8. DNF in my 30 minutes but that’s no surprise. What a brilliant crossword. Some of the difficulty may derive from the lack of anagrams (I think only a couple).
   How to pick a COD? Impossible. Thanks setter … I wish I had had longer to savour it.
9. … Bird thou never wert,

   Just under 30 mins pre-brekker and I’m very pleased with myself, which sometimes happens when a crossword is so utterly brilliant and chewy with umpteen CODs and PDMs.
   The convolutions of the Honeymooners anagrist and the ‘Am bid extra sous’ were more than adequately made up for by a string of great surfaces and ingenious wordplay.
   Top setting.
   Thanks setter and J.

10. Found the SW corner +11d easy – then completely unable to get a foothold elsewhere for ages. Eventually spotted TWIN SISTER and got a few more – but at 40m I’d had enough. Not in the zone today, and this tough challenge defeated me resoundingly.

    BATHCUBE and CARTOUCHE were two words I was never going to dredge up
    After checking IRIS in Lexico (2 definitions listed), I’m still none the wiser why it’s a synonym for “flag” (and I’ve tripped up on that before)
    Thought PLUTO was a dog of the underworld – maybe I’m dyslexic
    And finally, I dunno how many times I’ve failed to make the “down” = BLUE connection, it’s really about time I learned

    1. ODE, sv flag3: a plant of the iris family … see yellow flag sense 2
       yellow flag2: a yellow-flowered European iris which grows by water and in marshy places
11. That’s just a tad over my historical average time but, for a while, I thought it was going to take a lot longer. My FOI (OPTIC) took 6mins to go in.
    I’m still a little puzzled by EDIT but I got it right anyway.
    I really liked PLUTO for “stopping at nothing” in the clue and I also liked TWIN SISTER but my COD was AMBIDEXTROUS.
    LOI was BIARRITZ but much of the NW corner gave me some bovva.
12. Nothing to say about the puzzle since I failed down in the Biarritz corner, but a video to share instead, inspired by yesterday’s discussion: https://youtu.be/9LwGt9d1-lU
13. Hard work. Just scraped in under the hour at 59 minutes. Not a “properly” solved puzzle though as I had no idea what was going on in the wordplay for AMBIDEXTROUS or BUTTERFLY NUT. Whenever it appears, ASBESTOS is almost always my last in as it was today.

    I liked the surface for HOUSE MOUSE. Favourite was BIARRITZ – don’t know why, but I always associate it with the golf course there.

    Thanks to Jack and setter

14. A very fine crossword, and I feel pleased to have completed in just over 20 minutes. If I have a minor quibble it’s that some of the wordplay was so, so fiendish I could only unravel it by flashes of inspiration from the definition(if I could spot it) and then beating it into submission: BIARRITZ (which was Bayreuth first), ASBESTOS (material?!) and AMBIDEXTROUS are prime examples but there are many others. Having said that, unravelling was both necessary and ultimately pleasurable to be sure.
    Well played and blogged, Jack
15. A lot about which to enthuse
    With PLUTO the best of the clues
    So hats off to our setter
    It can’t get much better
    Please join me in several woo-hoos
16. Just been to visit daughter at Bath University so of course last one in was 1A…there must be a word for this, thanks all for continued enlightenment, Regards Tom
    1. I live in Bath and it was my near last one in. Tried to get square in there on the basis that eight is the square of ….ahem…explains my tardy time! 😀
       1. I envy you living there…I’m in Newcastle, long drive ! Tom
          1. I grew up and went to school in Newcastle. I miss being able to support the Toon the friendliness of folks and the Northumberland coast but not perhaps the cool summers. I think in the 18 years we lived there we sat out in the garden once (or that’s what it felt like!)
17. I thought this was excellent. Very pleased to have got over the line safely. As others have said, too many good clues to pick out one above the rest.

    AM PLEASED ALL CORRECT.

18. Yep, another one who found this pretty tough, taking just over the hour. At least I managed to finish with BIARRITZ and CARTOUCHE last in. Certainly some great clues. Loved ASBESTOS when I finally saw it and BLUE WHALE. DNK copper was a butterfly but the nut had to be.

    Thank you Jack and crafty setter.

19. I wonder if these might be given a rating like the Sudokus?? Some days I sail through the whole thing and on other days hardly anything comes. As I read today’s blog I found myself relieved not too have wasted too much time today.
    1. A good idea in practice, but it wouldn’t really work because of the wavelength factor. Compare my time today with yesterday, when it was apparently easy — but not for me !
       1. I was thinking that when I wrote it – it’s a fair comment! If I read the blog and think to myself ‘I could have or maybe even should have got that’ I think it’s a fair cop. Today as I read it I thought I was on a different planet. Thanks for reply!
20. 36:12. Talk about being off the wavelength; I found this incredibly hard and my SNITCH rating is off the charts. Apart from the SW corner, which went in fairly quickly, the rest was like pulling teeth, with clue after clue that baffled me completely until the penny eventually dropped.
    Very very good though, and I enjoyed it immensely even as it tortured me.
    I’m still not sure I understand EDIT. Is the idea that ‘info on part of Morse alphabet’ is indicating E {is} DIT?

    Edited at 2021-10-26 09:13 am (UTC)

    1. I indicated ‘correct info’ as the definition of EDIT and took the wordplay as E (=) DIT. I’ve no idea whether that’s correct but it seemed plausible at the time of blogging, as does your suggestion. I’ve been doing so many Guardian puzzles recently I’m getting into the habit of shrugging shoulders and moving on; I may need to watch that!
       1. In your reading I don’t know what the word ‘on’ is doing. The only way I can make sense of it is to imagine a table setting out Morse code:
          C – DAH DIT DAH DIT
          D – DAH DIT DIT
          E – DIT
          And so on.
          This table is information on the Morse alphabet so E-DIT is ‘info on part of Morse alphabet’.
          It’s a bit convoluted though!

          Edited at 2021-10-26 12:38 pm (UTC)

          1. Well you’ve convinced me it’s better than my version but it still lacks something. Another poster mentioned how finely-tuned the clues are but I’d add this as one that lets the puzzle down along with 10ac which is far worse in my opinion.
             1. Indeed — I haven’t quite convinced myself!
          2. Crikey, it is convoluted. I got as far as correct =edit and left all the rest well alone!
21. Lovely stuff. ASBESTOS and URBANE were the pick of what I thought was a very fine puzzle. Finished by spending some time pondering the French resort, having followed everyone else down a rabbit-hole of working out where the devil the H went…
22. A tricky beast which I was relieved to complete, even though it took just over 50% longer than my average. SPIRIT was my FOI after I drew a blank in the NW. PLUTO followed with a smile. Then the slog really began, although TWIN SISTERS was another early spot. RUBBERNECK and MUMBAI were my last 2 in. Loads of stand out clues. CARTOUCHE and BUTTERFLY NUT were the keys to solving the NW, giving me the CUBE after which BABY, BATH and TOAD arrived. 45:09. Thanks setter and Jack.
23. I had much the same solving experience as jackkt: took me more than an hour, used aids eventually, had a long period in the middle when I made no progress. But no complaints — an excellent crossword and almost all the things I wasn’t quite happy with have been explained and are perfectly OK (although I’m still a bit uncomfortable with ASBESTOS), but I do agree with Jack about the better form of 10ac.

    It seemed to me that the setter was trying to achieve a pangram but gave up on J and Q.

    1. Unusually, I think, there isn’t a G either
24. Great clues that I really enjoyed working through. So very surprised to find I had finished in just 42:46. I’ll go for HOUSE MOUSE as my COD among so much brilliantly tricky stuff
25. ….which kept me on my toes throughout. I biffed a few, but the only one I couldn’t parse at the end was EDIT.

    MER at the A1 going east — it’s not called the Great North Road for nothing.

    I particularly enjoyed the clever device of PLUTO, the copper fan, and the brilliant rowing misdirection of BATHCUBE. The Uxbridge English Dictionary synonym for a kitchen utensil made me chuckle. I had a favourite though — a quite delightful PDM.

    FOI HONEYMOONERS (anagram of the year ?)

    LOI MUMBAI (with only the U in, I tried desperately to work with my birthplace, Hull)

    COD ASBESTOS (I had the S from the clever AMBIDEXTROUS, and convinced myself for quite some time that it was an obscure cloth starting with OS)

    TIME 12:31 (only 27 seconds slower than yesterday, so “Wavelength Theory” strikes again !)

    1. I thought that at first then I thought “the road is going to the east of the B in the answer” so it’s a bluff from the setter to put us off the track I guess.
26. Very tricky and well put together – I fell at the final hurdle, not remembering CARTOUCHE and trying to get CARMOUCHE to work, hoping it had something to do with OUCH in ME. A little under 11 minutes with very few of them going in easily.
    1. Cartouche is a word that I know from watching “Bargain Hunt” — how embarrassing is that?
       I know that if a Vesta case has a cartouche without monogram, it has more value than one with a monogram. Sign of a wasted older age?
27. sorry – don’t get ” and of Western” as explaining “E”. Help please?
    1. There is no 23 across in this puzzle, and 23 down doesn’t seem to match your query ?
       1. I didn’t notice anon’s typo but obviously he/she meant 24ac. I’m more concerned that the second anon replied to the query 16 minutes after I had already posted the explanation. How could they see one posting without noticing the other immediately below it?
          1. This blog page doesn’t auto-update. If you got the page an hour ago, you won’t see any answers posted in the past hour, and it will look like the question has not been answered.
             1. I suppose I knew that but it had slipped my mind.
    2. URBAN is the antithesis (opposite) of ‘country’ and E (Eastern) is the opposite of Western.
    3. E is the antithesis of W{estern} just as Urban is the anti of country.
       Andyf
28. I seemed to rattle through most of this, albeit with some left over holes, but the NW left me flummoxed. With the prospect of a DNF in sight, the unlikely answer for copper finally revealed itself when the NUT became apparent. That still didn’t help much, but it gave me CUBE, which I’d wondered about earlier, and everything else fell into place
    COD because hotel is always H BIARRITZ
29. A brilliant puzzle – must have taken so long to fine-tune some of these clues!
    1. Agreed, apart from 10ac which really needed tidying up.
30. Nothing to say about the puzzle since I failed down in the Biarritz corner, but a video to share instead, inspired by yesterday’s discussion: https://youtu.be/9LwGt9d1-lU

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