Times Cryptic 28728 – Sat, 7 Oct 2023. Eat, drink and BIFF many

24 comments on “Times Cryptic 28728 – Sat, 7 Oct 2023. Eat, drink and BIFF many”

1. There’s nothing wrong with TRAVESTY, and no anagram.
   VESTA’s merely “cycling,” not all reordered.
   This one was hard for me, as VESTA is so very UK.

   My favorite here was 25D.

   1. To my simple mind, “cycling” just seems like a sort of anagram, but I’m sure you’re right!

      1. It might be classified as a very… mild anagram. It’s one way to reorder the letters, after all.
         But “cycling” tells us precisely how to reorder them, and an anagram, for our purposes, has to be worked out without such instruction.

         1. I became aware of the cycling device meaning ‘move the last letter to the front’ only quite recently and was just getting used to it when in a puzzle earlier this week a Guardian setter used ‘cycling’ as an anagram indicator, so now I no longer trust it to mean what I had thought. Interestingly Chambers doesn’t include ‘cycling’ in its extensive list of anagrinds despite it being exceptionally suitable for the purpose, unlike many of the words in the line-up. ‘Recycle’ is there, however.

            On the same clue I suppose ‘to win’ is the containment indicator, but I’m not sure I’m happy with it as such.

            1. Win as in gain/get/secure?

            2. I don’t find “cycling” so apt for an anagram in which all the letters are jumbled and not, precisely, “cycled” by moving what’s in back to the front. (I think it wouldn’t have to be just one letter.) This is the only way “cycling” is used by my friends Joshua and Henri, for their Out of Left Field cryptics (available via Patreon).

   2. It could be Vesta an old name for a match – Vesta matches were named after the Roman goddess of fire.
      Cycling vesta could give you avest Tr avest y

      1. That’s what I took it to be (as suggested in the blog). The only thing in dispute seemed to be “cycling.”

2. I had difficulty working out what “without article” referred to in 14A. I hadn’t thought of APORT meaning left.
   I’d wondered if magazine meant “THE SPECTATOR”, which I think is its name (in contrast say to PRIVATE EYE, which has no “THE”).

   1. Yes, I think it is “The Spectator”. So, yours seems like a valid reading for 14ac, too!

      1. I think Peter W is right. Why would the setter use the rare word ‘aport’ when ‘port’ makes better sense? We’d have had just ‘Popular magazine’s left’ so that it could be parsed as Spectator’s port; as we have it it’s [The] Spectator’s port.

         1. I agree

3. 13:55 (which puts me at 107 on the leaderboard)
   I wondered about ‘without article’, and I prefer Peter W’s reading. Biffed BROADCASTER, INTERPRET, ELIMINATE, & TRAVESTY, parsed post-submission. I’m fine with PET: the inter-pet spread of rabies. I liked the surface of 18d, and the deletion of PER in 5d, but COD to EAT.

4. Yes, quite easy for a Saturday. I had heard of loosestrife and nictate, which made things even easier. Subtraction clues like ham and ridge sometimes give trouble, but the literals were very helpful in this one.

   Time: 28 minutes

   1. We’ve had ‘loosestrife’ a couple of times; it seems to alternate with ‘speedwell’.

5. 37 minutes with an error on LOOSESTRIFE, caught out yet again having been reminded of it in a puzzle only last June.

   DECAL was unknown, just as it was last time I mentioned it in 2019, but at least the wordplay was friendly this time.

   1. If you’d ever made model aeroplanes ‘decal’ would have been very familiar as the transfers with which to apply the markings.

      1. Many decades ago I used to make up Airfix kits but as far as I remember the transfers were just called transfers.

6. 43m 28s
   What goes around…..regarding 3d, ENTRANCED: #26019 11Feb2015, “Where to expect fourth queue for “Spellbound” (9): ENTRANCED. One of the several clever clues I have made a note of in my little black book.

7. Done and dusted in approx 40 minutes though left with a few fluffy bits. One I needed the dictionary for: NHO 19d NICTATE. Then biffed 1ac PROVERB & 25ac ELIMINATE – the words fit but I couldn’t work ‘em out. Oh, and also 23ac DECAL, I realise in hindsight and with the benefit of the blog. Enjoyable puzzle, though, so thanks to all.

8. Pretty easy until the last 3 – NICTATE, DECAL and ELIMINATE. I couldn’t for the life of me work out the parsing of this latter, so it went in with crossed fingers. NICTATE was a barely remembered word worked out from the parsing and cleverly disguised by the setter. It took me some time to discern the meaning of ‘briefly screen observers’ even after checking the existence of the word. Great PDM. DECAL I’ve never heard of – Airfix models didn’t form part of my 60’s girl upbringing. I was more interested in doll’s houses and Magic Garden. However, lovely clue once I’d worked out what was going on.

9. Struggled to parse eliminate and spectator sport. Guessed nictate from the clue which then gave me the pdm on loi (and dnk) decal. Thanks for the explanations.

10. 24’50”
    Smartly into stride, kept on gamely.
    Clearly I was fortunate to be tuned in to the setter’s wavelength; a Nitch of 67 and all parsed and familiar.
    There were some devious constructions here; EAT, DECAL and DELTA were particularly satisfying when the pennies dropped.
    Lots to like; thank you setter and Bruce.

11. I’m finding these crosswords much more difficult now that I’m forced to do them in the afternoon or evening ( due to different delivery methods of the newsagent!) which leads me to think that my ‘brainpower’ diminishes during the day! All of which is to say that I had a hard time with this (unlike most other solvers) and DNF. But I did like DECAL ( always on the lookout for shoe-related answers when I see ‘Oxford’) and EAT.

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