Times Cryptic 28770 – Sat, 25 Nov 2023.Why, why, why – dilemma!

27 comments on “Times Cryptic 28770 – Sat, 25 Nov 2023.Why, why, why – dilemma!”

1. Thanks for parsing 23a RETICENCE, which baffled me. Now that you’ve explained it I can fully appreciate the setter’s ingenuity. It’s not a device I’ve seen before.
   I almost fell for GROW at 7d. With -R-W checkers, and looking for the definition ‘develop’ surely it had to be, even if it resisted parsing? It was my last in, and I found it difficult to resist the temptation to bung it in for a fast time. Then the Hebrew language appeared to save me from the growth trap.
   19:48

2. 42 minutes. Surprised by ‘me / US’ in TAGUS. I was also baffled by SLIP COVER as a book jacket as I thought it was bed linen, but having looked it up afterwards it rang a faint bell and I think we may have had it before. Possibly an Americanism?

   1. I wondered if it was a UK term; I call them dust jackets.

      1. ‘Dust jacket’ is very common here too. I’ve now checked the TfTT archive for SLIPCOVER and it appears not to have come up before, but I may have met it in a puzzle elsewhere.

         Edit: I tried again as two words and found this from October last year: Fielders that may be brought to book? (4,5). I commented then that I thought it was another term for ‘loose cover’ as sometimes put on sofas etc.

         Also on 8th December 2014 we had: Fielding spots a case for Tom Jones perhaps (4,5) blogged by vinyl1 who commented: SLIP COVER, SLIP + COVER, two different cricket fielding positions making up what we would call a ‘dust jacket’ in the US, suitable for any book, including famous 18th-century novels.

         1. I made a grumpy note that SLIPCOVER is two words in the Chambers app. Interesting to note it was previously clued as (4,5). Other dictionaries are available but I remained slightly miffed.

            1. Yes, Chambers has it as two words but Collins and the Oxfords have it as one, although they both qualify the definition as chiefly N American or Canadian.

               Chambers with its two words, is the only one of the usual sources that doesn’t make that qualification.

         2. I guess we should have read justinwestcork’s comment, since he explained in my blog of nine years ago exactly what a slip cover is – it’s not a a dust jacket, but a hard cardboard container that slips over a book, used mostly for fancy editions of classic works. You know the kind of thing I mean, collector’s edition limited to 1000 numbered copies on hand-made linen paper, price $200.

            1. Yes, I remember the distinction now. It strikes me odd that ‘dustjacket’ should be the term for the type that simply folds around the hardcover, because that offers little protection from dust whereas the slipcover protects the edges of the pages which are more likely to be damaged by long-term accumulation.

         3. The old clues had fielding not fielding’s. I can’t see how “fielding’s positions” could be correct?

            1. I thought the apostrophe would pass must if you read it as “terms of the fielding side”.

3. 37:48
   I can’t remember why this took me so long; POI SLIPCOVER & LOI CARDINAL took over 5 minutes, before they suddenly came to me almost simultaneously. Like Jack, I was surprised by (TAG) US. ALAMO seems to come up fairly often, always clued by ‘mission’. And I’ve finally learned what to do with ‘sex’, so to speak. COD to RETICENCE.

4. I didn’t really get the Tom Jones clue, writing slipcover based on just the cricket fielding positions. Ampersand was a fun clue – I wonder if it’s appeared before?

   Time: 52 minutes

   1. Please see my comment above with an edit added since you posted this.

   2. Yes I agree the wordplay was quite fun, but the definition seems very feeble. We’re not really directed to this kind of sign.

5. SLIPCOVER seemed harder than it should have been, but, no, haven’t heard that term much for a dust jacket.
   We had both DESTROYER and “Kind of knot…”: REEF the Saturday just before!
   RETICENCE is very good.

   1. See my comment in reply to jackkt.

6. DNF, stumped by the top left corner – and that’s an unconscious cricketing pun. Ho ho! Usually the cricket stuff flies over my head. Thus, failed to get 1ac, plus 10, 17ac, and 2, 3d. Oh, and plumped for the incorrect GROW at 7d. Otherwise all done and understood, bar the how of RETICENCE. Found this a challenging grid so pleased to have got this far.

7. There was a vaguely unsatisfactory feeling on completing this puzzle, with far too many ‘Really?’s. I thought some of the definitions were very odd, such as defining an abacus as a frame, which is irrelevant to its purpose; and whereas ‘batter’ implies repeated hitting, ‘ram’ does not – you would qualify it with an adverb such as ‘repeatedly’. Having said that, I thought SLIPCOVER and REEF KNOTS were good – the former very devious! And the best clue is the one that I totally failed to parse – RETICENCE.

8. Thank you for 1a, was totally unaware of the dust jacket alias. slipcover is in wiktionary, but only the furniture thing.
   Never understood 23a RETICENCE. Clever.

9. 25.39

   Slightly delayed by bunging in CARCAS. 1ac was LOI, with SMALL preceding it with crossed fingers

   Thanks setter and for a great blog as always

10. DNF, defeated by SLIPCOVER, CARDINAL, SMALL and GRAM.

    Absolutely no idea what was going on with SLIPCOVER beyond thinking that it might involve cricketing terms; like the blogger, didn’t know that a mall is a shady walk so never considered SMALL; and have never heard of GRAM chickpeas so bunged in ‘grap’. Also had no idea how RETICENCE worked, and took ages to remember sex=six to get the ‘vi’ in VILLA.

    Thanks setter and blogger.

    COD Cowes

11. I found this very easy, except for SLIPCOVER, for which I had SOILCOVER instead. It’s not that I didn’t think of the right answer, but I didn’t know the cricket terms and was put off a bit by “material including Tom Jones?”, and considering the ribald nature of Tom Jones, at least by reputation (I’ve never read it) I thought of SKINCOVER, which made little sense, and SOILCOVER, which I thought might just refer to the topsoil of a field, thus perhaps “fielding”? The rest of the puzzle was fun, if not all that much of a challenge.

12. Thank you for the blog, and interesting commenters too.

    I like it when the Saturday puzzle has some “beginner-level” clues like COWES, ASTIR, and ANGST. Often I find myself in company, and it can be nice to show a couple of examples.

    RETICENCE of course was at the other end of the scale. But the fact that both clue and answer both ended with “ence”, seemed to me rather unusual, and started to point me in the direction of what was going on.

    The slightly strange one for me was the “SOME” in SALOME (1D). I wonder if the “an” in the clue is important. (The surface could almost work without it). So, the example given in Collins:
    “some idiot drove into my car”
    …could be understood as “an unspecified idiot drove into my car”

    1. Yes, I think you’ve nailed the usage of SOME. Thanks.

13. Crawled over the line with a desperate GRAM entered in hope with little expectation of it being right. SMALL caused me difficulty too.
    Thanks to the blogger.

14. Really enjoyed this although done much later than Saturday. Very pleased to say I worked out all the clues. Love ampersand and Tagus.

15. surely batter should be butter

Comments are closed.