Times Cryptic 28788 – Sat, 16 Dec 2023. In another century, and besides the wretch is dead!

31 comments on “Times Cryptic 28788 – Sat, 16 Dec 2023. In another century, and besides the wretch is dead!”

1. 14:43
   I flew through this, too, biffing a couple, like CLAM, which I never got; also don’t understand WEDNESDAY, and didn’t understand Reg. I liked the ‘old ringmaster’.

   1. I didn’t get WEDNESDAY either. That’s ’cause it’s a cricket thing, natch! (Actually, soccer… I should know “F.C.” by now.)
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sheffield_Wednesday_F.C.
      I got CLAM, but it was, if memory serves, my LOI.
      NHO the Krays!

      1. Sorry! Sheffield Wednesday is a football (soccer) club, as explained on Ted Lasso. Named this because, yes, they originally played on Wednesdays.

      2. They’re the originals for Monty Python’s Piranha Brothers, Doug and Dimsdale.

2. Wavelength is real – I started fast and kept going. I didn’t recognize the Kray brothers either, but didn’t need to. I soon had so many crossing letters, I was able to finish just using the literals, which in this puzzle were not particularly tricky.

   Time: 16 minutes.

3. I used the word “ruth” in a poem in my high school’s newspaper: “…untouched by ruth.” (Not meaning the only “Ruth” I knew, Ruth Tracy—though her daughter, in my class, was a bit sweet on me.)

   I’d call only the first word a real definition of NOT FAIR. A friend of mine who works for Wayfair may soon join a chorus with the cry (or maybe “Way Unfair!”) if the CEO keeps up his shenanigans (“Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from”). Workers of the world, unionize!

   1. I’ve never heard (nor cried) ‘Not fair!’, only ‘Unfair!’.

      1. We would cry “no fair”, which I think is the jocular version of “not fair”.

         1. ‘No fair’ is, to me, the American version of the English ‘not fair’. The latter isn’t in any of the usual dictionaries but 1) it’s definitely something English kids say and 2) there can be no doubt that NOT FAIR is not a recognisable lexical term for ‘dark’ (any more than ‘not dark’ is a recognisable lexical term for ‘light’). Ergo, ‘exclamation from protester’ is the definition.

            1. I was thinking of picket lines; but ‘No fair!’ is certainly what an American kid might cry.

               1. Yes I’ve heard and read that. British kids wouldn’t say it, or at least wouldn’t have when I was a kid. My own kids now say ‘gotten’ so who knows.

            2. Collins, for DARK:
                3 a. (of complexion, hair colour, etc) not fair or blond; swarthy; brunette
               I guess both are, the second by example.

               (And Dictionary.com has “not pale or fair in skin tone.”)

               1. NOT FAIR is a perfectly good definition for the lexical unit ‘dark’. It doesn’t work the other way round because NOT FAIR is not a recognisable lexical unit meaning ‘dark’.

                  1. NOT FAIR isn’t in either dictionary as a lexical unit, though it is in the Dictionary.com Thesaurus (meaning “overcast”).

                     1. I know, I even said that! But it is certainly something kids (in England) say. It’s also the name of a song by Lily Allen, FWIW.

                        1. OMG I just looked up the song…!
                           I’ve heard people say, “That’s not fair,” “It’s just not fair to…,” etc., all my life. For the shorter exclamation “No fair!” is more common here. I don’t think it’s limited to kids, but so few Americans really grow up these days.

   2. Perhaps ‘not fair’ is peculiarly a British expression. As a child the cry of ‘That’s not fair!’ was a frequent occurrence in our house. We would never have said unfair, even knowing the word.

      1. In my house it always came accompanied by the response ‘Well, life isn’t fair!’

4. 25 minutes with parsing fully marked up on my copy. I had no problem with the soccer team but it did cross my mind that I’ve never heard it referred to simply as ‘Wednesday’. I assume in the context of talk about the game it may be said, although its fans would call their team ‘The Owls’ as distinct from Sheffield United who are known as ‘The Blades’.

5. Quick today. I don’t expect that Wednesday, or Ronnie/Reggie, would hold up a British solver for long. Nothing I thought not fair ..

6. 27.36 Quick for me. I am British but I struggled with the local knowledge. I never parsed CLAM or ASH WEDNESDAY and despite watching the Tom Hardy Kray film last week (meh) I was still wondering who RON and GREG were. Thanks branch.

7. Quick – 30 minutes – which I’ll take to mean it was pretty easy-peasy, even for me. For once it was all in my GK sphere. Only one I didn’t understand, 22ac, because I haven’t yet learned/figured out when two random words might supply their initial letters as components of the answer. Oh, and I also needed the explanation of PAGER at 23d. Thanks, all.

   1. The setter can’t just use any word to indicate its first letter. It has to be in the dictionary as a definition. So, for example, if you look up ‘P’ in the dictionary, one of the definitions is ‘power’ (as in various scientific formulae, I suppose). There aren’t many like this that the setters use regularly so they start to leap out at you after a while.

8. Just looked back and I took 24 minutes, which is on the fast side for me 🙂

   Todays had 3 interlocking clues which really slowed me down – 1 which was clever (and solving it was the key to cracking the puzzle), 1 which was hard, and the last which was an unknown word to me. Shame we have to wait a week to discuss it!

   Cheers Steve

9. DNF, defeated by AUGEAN STABLES (I’ve always thought it was ‘Aegean’ for some reason, and as I didn’t parse it I just bunged it in) and BY GEORGE, where I inexplicably put ‘my dearie’… I don’t know if it’s possible to get an answer more wrong than that, especially with that many checkers.

   Thanks setter and blogger.

   COD Ash Wednesday (‘fast start’ is a great definition)

10. I liked it. COD to IDEALIST, nice to see Muhammad again and ID EST in full is rare.

11. 17.03

    Not a toughie but no harm in that. Tried to insert OSKEBA for the parasite until the rather good COMMA saved me from that appalling momble.

    Thanks Bruce and setter

12. 6:08. Very straightforward. Some tricky things in here for non-Brits though!

13. Pretty much straightforward, as K says. LEPIDOPTERIST and PHILANTHROPY went in from the initial letters, which opened up the grid nicely. Liked EGREGIOUS. I have no notes for it, but seem to remember that NOT FAIR was one of the last in!

14. Peeked at the blog for NOT FAIR and the NHO AUGEAN STABLES. Otherwise all done in about an hour – happy with that. Couldn’t parse IDEALIST – must remember ID EST… No problems with the Krays or WEDNESDAY. Favourite clue BY GEORGE. One day I hope to be able to finish without peeking 😁

    On edit: many thanks B

15. Didn’t have the nous to look up the blog as you did, sltrach, but cheated anyway on just three – which is not bad for me on a Sunday: AUGEAN STABLES ( which I knew of but had forgotten, given the deviousness of the clue), BY GEORGE ( I always only think of T.S. for some reason, and started off with MY …….) and unable to come up with the term for keeping birds (only that it had to start with AV). But the rest flowed slowly but steadily (helped of course by a fair bit of biffing). Liked ASH WEDNESDAY after I stopped looking for a new part of Yorkshire – having left the UK a good 65 years ago – ON PAPER ( as I do, a month later ), and EGREGIOUS , reminding me of the Kray twins.

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