Times Cryptic 28734 – Sat, 14 Oct 2023. Easy timer.

15 comments on “Times Cryptic 28734 – Sat, 14 Oct 2023. Easy timer.”

1. Something under 30′; I don’t remember what took me so long, although 13ac was my LOI and I never figured it out. The setter likes initial letters: ‘initially’ 3 times (11ac, 18ac, 27ac) and ‘at the beginning’ (22d). Are UDDERS ever in full flow?

2. 44 minutes. There were several unknown or forgotten bits and pieces along the way and a couple where I didn’t get the parsing, so thanks for explaining those.

3. 66m 58s
   I thought this was a good puzzle. It was clever of our setter to use just the middle letters of 5d but the first letters of 22d.
   Just about to attack today’s cryptic. I hope to be more successful than I think the England rugby team will be later in the day (tomorrow morning my time).

   1. They will do better than Argentina managed, I suspect..

4. Got but didn’t manage to work out half-hourly. COD to remain – I don’t remember seeing this type of clue before – very clever.

   1. Agreed – REMAIN was excellent.

5. NHO EXOBIOLOGY, but fortunately clued very obviously. I found some of the clues quite tricky to unravel and there were plenty of birds – not that I mind that at all – unlike Astronowt, I’m much more familiar with fauna than with obscure bits of the solar system. 26A and 29A held me up for quite a time and I never understood HALF-HOURLY, so thanks for the elucidation. For what it’s worth, I think it’s a poor clue. I wasn’t too happy about SPHERE either. It’s not a synonym of area, after all, but an example of one, so shouldn’t that have been indicated with ‘for example’ or a question mark? Or am I missing something? Apart from that quibble, I enjoyed it generally, with nothing being too obvious.

   1. For SPHERE, think of “one’s area/sphere of specialisation “.

      1. Ah, yes, of course, I should have thought of that.

   2. The number of birds, (being three)
      Is an unutterable obscenity
      It’s really not funny
      Does our setter get money
      In bribes from the R.S.P.B.?

6. Don’t remember too many issues with this, though I took ages to see HONEYMOON (idle=moon wasn’t really obvious to me) and MEADOWLARK went in more from wordplay and checkers than from knowing what it is. Similarly, PINTO was an ‘I guess that must be a style of art’ thing, I had to trust the helpful wordplay for the unknown OBOLI, and I didn’t really figure out how HALF-HOURLY worked.

   Thanks setter and blogger.

   FOI Repast
   LOI Honeymoon
   COD Aspersion

7. 45’10”
   Asleep in the stalls, never nearer.
   As the field disappeared I resigned myself to plodding round trying to justify everything, which I managed, but half-hourly was retropective to avoid another 30′.
   I enjoyed this tricky test; thank you setter and Bruce.

   Has there been any news of today’s classic, perhaps relayed from The George ?

8. Apologies for the late arrival. UK Storm Babet – red zone – mud everywhere. So, crossword…I struggled with this one, and had a load of queries and NHOs that I needed the blog to explain. The trickiest of them, I think, is 9d REMAIN, which has such a confusing surface. Anyhoo, done, even if with lots of guesswork!

9. Got distracted by HANDSDOWN for HONEYMOON, the only word I could fit, with HANDS being a match (cards) and DOWN for idle time. But that made HALF-HOURLY impossible, of course. Got it all sorted in the end. I couldn’t parse MEADOWLARK, mainly because I thought DOW must be the blackish bit (down without its last letter).

10. I found this tough: too many ‘look-ups’ to get me going again. Never would have got MEADOWLARK ( I had all the crossers) – cryptic too complex for me! Similarly PIMPERNEL, wouldn’t ever have equated with a rescuer, even if I’d followed the cryptic slavishly. That said, I was happy to get those I did, with TINT being FOI, TRILOBITE LOI and RIGHT COD.

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