Times Cryptic 28988

72 comments on “Times Cryptic 28988”

1. 11:02 – needed the wordplay for MIMESIS, and I was surprised that not only has it not been in a recorded puzzle, but the similar MIMETIC has only been in once. I thought COFFEE BAR was clever for the use of C OF E.

2. 20:54
   I imagine Vinyl at least will know of Erich Auerbach’s magisterial Mimesis. Like George, I liked C OF E (instead of the expected CE). NHO MID-OFF. Was FREYA, or the Nordic gods generally, revered?

   1. Of course, I read it in graduate school. And thereby hangs a tale. Reading the long quotation from To the Lighthouse at beginning of the final chapter, I realized there were about twenty lines that were not included in the common paperback edition. My curiosity piqued, I went to the Beinecke and ordered up a Hogarth Press first edition, which of course had the complete text that Auerbach quotes. Apparently, a whole passage was somehow dropped from the modern trade editions.

      Yes, Freya was revered – Gold’ne Äpfel wachsen in ihrem Garten, sie allein weiß die Äpfel zu pflegen….or so Wagner alleges.

      1. I always felt Wagner was being ironic here.

   2. I imagine Norse gods were revered in the earliest times but then viewed more cynically over the ages. Baldur was probably the most universally admired.

   3. Thor, for one, is enjoying a revival of sorts. The comic and movie versions are less than reverential.
      Perhaps “once revered” would have been a fairer clue for Freya?

3. Very slow going. Took 30 minutes for FOI COFFEE BAR then BRASS FARTHING, MACADAM, MID-OFF. took another 30 minutes. Final time over 2 hours. Still recovering from COVID and treatment with anti-virals. Brain doesn’t work. Same yesterday.
   Thanks Jack for the blog

4. A little slow – I hastily tried EAT UP and FORTUNE TELLER (briefly wondering why it didn’t include the I from UNI) before I NEVER DID put me right.

   Could be declining eyesight, or is it the Times typeface? I was convinced that ‘AI’ in the FREYA clue read ‘Al’, which held me up a little as well

   1. I also read Al – really must put the specs on in the morning!

   2. Exactly the problem I had. Al Jolson, Al Reid? It was my LOI and took about a third of my total solving time before realisation dawned.

   3. Me too.

5. Over here, I had only known the phrase as “Well, I never!” until meeting with the longer, British version thru these puzzles.

6. I read the first part of 6 down as “stick up” = mug (as in rob), with no reversal. Is that possible?

   1. I do too.

   2. Thanks. I’d intended to mention it as a possible alternative but forgot. I’ve now added a note in the blog.

7. 8:11 but with MEMESIS: following the wordplay, not really thinking, subconsciously influenced perhaps by the ubiquity of memes… no excuses.
   Jackkt you need to underline “position that’s” in the clue for MID-OFF. I’m particularly impressed that our American correspondents managed to get this, given the very obscure cricket terminology and MIFF, which I think of as a very English usage.

   1. Thanks. Of course. Another case of not looking at my print-out when compiling the blog.

   2. Really had no idea about MID-OFF (“silly”?) but knew it couldn’t be MAD-OFF…

      1. There are several close-to-the-bat positions with the silly prefix: mid-off, mid-on, point, leg…they probably chose silly because it is easier on the ear than ‘stupid’, the point being that in those positions there is a good chance you will be really badly hurt.

   3. I have looked at the cricket fielding positions, and I can usually call them to mind. The diagram in the Wiki article Cricket Fielding is very helpful.

   4. Miff is unusual to my Murcan ears, but not miffed. And given M_D-_F_ there’s not much choice, as Guy says; I don’t think I even thought of cricket, or indeed of anything the clue might mean.

   5. Another MEMEsis, knowing memes, sememes, other-memes as vaguely literary things. Not educated enough to know mimesis. Really enjoyed the puzzle, love all those slightly off-kilter definitions – police still, it might be silly, On The Road etc.

8. I was a little slow on this one, not seeing things I should have seen, such as the hidden I never did. Well, it was a great hidden. Having heard of urticaria did help, as did reading Auerbach’s book. I did actually biff a few, such as defrocked and brass farthing. I struggled at the end with the obvious fortune cookie, thinking that the K was surely followed by an L – not so.

   Time: 37 minutes

9. My LOI was MID-OFF once I got FREYA and that put to rest the idea 1D might be MAD-CAP (upset…about…p for party) but the definition wasn’t quite right. MIMESIS totally from wordplay once I’d got MITOSIS out of my mind (which nearly works until you have the conflicting checker).

10. 13:21 but I must confess to checking whether it was MIMESIS or MEMESIS before submitting. Trying to convince myself that I would have opted for MIMESIS if forced.

    NHO URTICARIA but all the instructions were there.

    Thanks setter and Jack.

    1. I did the same with MIMESIS!

11. 30 minutes. Until I had all the crossers, I was thinking of an unparsed MEIOSIS for the NHO MIMESIS. Yes, I thought of vinyl1 too once 5a was in, but was unaware he was such an authority on the matter😊.

    Favourite and LOI was MUGSHOT for ‘police still’ though I didn’t see the potential two routes to the answer as has been pointed out.

    Thanks to Jack and setter

12. Bang on 30 mins with the last three or four spent on APPEND. I seem to have a problem coming up with app for some reason.

    Most answers went in on first read with a couple of exceptions that needed extra work. MEMESIS, URTICARIA, both unheard of, worked out from wp.

    I liked the two long clues and CHICKADEE.

    Thanks Jack and setter.

13. 15:37. I NEVER DID was so well hidden that even though I immediately thought the clue was of the hidden variety I couldn’t find it. In the end I got the answer when I had several checkers in and had to go back to the clue to find it. Elsewhere I was glad that I only thought of MI for the beginning of the unknown MIMESIS or I could easily have put in a wrong answer as others have mentioned.

14. I must state from the outset that it is no reflection on the setter of this tricky crossword that I nodded off mid-solve; rather, I blame late nights/early mornings watching the Olympics with an eight-hour time difference. So I guess around 40-50, can’t really say. A couple of NHOs (MIMESIS and the rash) (sounds like a band) and a lot of other challenging clues. I also liked C OF E when clever people like Jack pointed out that it existed, I’d just biffed COFFEE BAR and moved on. Enjoyable and crafty puzzle.

    ROMANCE in Durango (That’s it, Romance in Durango, hot chilli peppers in the blistering sun…)

15. I found this rather quirky, but ploughed through it reasonably quickly until becoming stuck with my LOI (see earlier response to Aphis). I biffed “fortune teller” but KNUCKLE showed me the error of my ways. NHO MIMESIS.

    FOI GARDA
    LOI FREYA
    COD STAR SIGN
    TIME 12:54

16. …This song
    is a cry for help: Help me!
    Only you, only you can,
    you are unique
    at last. Alas
    it is a boring song
    but it works every time.
    (Siren Song, Margaret Atwood)

    30 mins pre-brekker. I liked it, including the at times tricky vocab.
    Ta setter and J

17. 25:00 with a typo (AMORALIYY)

    I should check my work of course but as I felt I’d made heavy weather of it I clicked submit just to end the slog.

    Looking back there was nothing too difficult, with the fairly clued MIMESIS the only unknown. I’ll chalk this one up to experience.

    Thanks to both.

18. Some went in easily: FORTUNE COOKIE (after a biffed TELLER); BRASS FARTHING; and URTICARIA (I once suffered severely from this for a year).

    Really liked COFFEE BAR, and of course MID-OFF.

    15’23”, thanks jack and setter.

    1. Reason I got URTICARIA was from having suffered from it throughout my childhood on-and-off as a reaction to some drug – can’t remember which now! Ditto BRASS FARTHING (went straight in), as did COFFEE BAR ( very clever). Also liked HOLD HANDS, which I didn’t get, and the very well hidden I NEVER DID, which I did!

19. 9.06 – like last week, a slow Monday is followed by a speedy Tuesday. LOI was BRASS FARTHING, having taken ‘underwear item’ together to be BRA, but I’d heard of the phrase somewhere so it went in with a shrug.

    Thanks both.

20. No time today as interrupted by a phone call, an unusual occurrence these days. About half an hour I guess. Knew all but URTICARIA, LOI and painfully constructed. I couldn’t have told you what FREYA was goddess of. Good fun apart from that. Thank you Jack and setter.

21. re 10A, the police force is actually the GARDAÍ, only one of them is a GARDA. Thanks blogger and setter.

22. 35m 25s…and I feel pleased with myself that I was able to solve MIMESIS and URTICARIA, two words I’ve never come across before.
    Thanks for decoding BRASS FARTHING, Jack, and for your blog.
    COD 1D MID OFF. Initially I went down the wrong path altogether with MAD CAP (‘sometimes silly’).

23. All done in 25 minutes except the NW corner, where I went badly wrong, convinced MAD-CAP was right so FREYA was impossible, and A*E*A was hard to see. Am cross about 1d because I usually spot cricket clues.

    1. I had ALEXA for a while having spotted that it was AI and not Al eventually. Reason prevailed when I worked out MID OFF.

24. Two DNFs in a row with silly mistakes. Today I had AFLUsTER, which is neither a word (it seems) nor parses, and the solution is actually very straightforward. AL or AI also held me up and since I needed FREYA for MID-OFF, not least as I had pencilled in “mad”.
    NHOs MIMESIS and URTICARIA assembled from instructions
    Two own goals in two days! Thanks Jackkt and setter

25. I looked up MI/EMESIS, since either MI or ME were possible notes, with the actual word unknown. Somehow Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur has slipped by my holiday reading lists. I still managed to enter MEMESIS for the pink stain. The greeks must have a word for that, too.
    I have an indirect niece-in-law called FREYA: I believe her husband still adores her. perhaps that’s too parochial.
    She and MID-OFF were last entries in a 17.15 slove.

    1. I too went for memesis thinking that the note could be written with either an E or an I. However I can’t find ME as a note in any of the usual sources.

       I also thought the note could be either TI or TE.

       1. ME is in Chambers as an “anglicised” spelling. Curiously, you can have TMESIS, without either an E or an I, also as a grammatical term.

26. I dont mind obscure words when so well clued as I found these. Took me an age though. 56 mins. Almost back to the old days.

27. 25:15

    Surprisingly accessible I found, though a few bits unknown/unparsed:

    MIMESIS – the wordplay was plain enough, but MI or ME at the start? MI seemed the more likely, the alternative being too much like Nemesis?
    Doctor = COOK – didn’t see that, answer bunged in once the K was added to three other checkers with a cursory notion that the answer was in some way, an anagram.
    URTICARIA – successfully pieced together once the first three checkers were in, though couldn’t have said what it was.
    CHICKADEE – unaware that this is/was actually a thing, another IKEA job
    USE UP – failed to account for the first U

    Thanks Jack and setter

28. I took ages (55 minutes) compared with so many people who are usually not far from my time, no reason really so far as I can see, just age and slowness. FREYA only vaguely known and I had to Google her to find out about the ‘revered’. MIMESIS came slowly and neither Chambers nor Collins say anything about ‘Aristotelian’, so I still wasn’t all that sure after looking it up to see what it meant. Liked the police still.

29. 21:09 though on my LOI in my eagerness to finish I put AFLUSTER, got the message I had a mistake, then thought and realised UTTER.
    I would say Tiktok and Insta are not apps, any more than The Times is an app, though I access it via “The Times” app
    No real problems today
    Thanks setter and Jack, on his second 000 now!

30. About half an hour.
    I thought Freya was going to be Alexa for a minute. Entertaining puzzle.
    Thanks, jack.

31. Done in less than an hour, but I took half that time realising that DIORAMA was spelled with an O. I liked ‘for all to see’ as a clue for U so USE UP was my COD. I enjoyed the crossword, though there still seemed to be a distinct lack of natural-sounding clues.

32. 13a Brass F not parsed, I never split the underwear & item.
    8d Star Sign, biffed, couldn’t parse as I thought the ratings were TARS and didn’t know where the IGN came from. DOH!
    POI 14d Amorality. I don’t think that Niccolo M was amoral, just practical. However moralists might disagree, thinking maybe that rulers should rule badly but informed by some set of morals?
    16d typo Affulter. DOH!
    CODs Coffee Bar and Mid-Off for the PDMs.

33. 15:45 – with a last minute FREYA rounding proceedings off.

34. (1) I wonder why Ulaca thinks Wagner was being ironic, given that the other gods were certainly getting worried about appeasing the Giants to get her back. (2) We don’t have fortune cookies this side of the pond. I only learned of the term from the Walter Matthau/Jack Lemmon move of that name — inexplicably renamed in the UK as ‘Meet Whiplash Willie’. Not Billy Wilder’s finest hour IMHO.

    1. The fortune cookie is a barely digestible baked thing and the fortune contained therein is usually on a par with the ‘jokes’ in Christmas crackers. The only accurate prediction would be ‘you will regret eating this’.

       1. Yes our local Chinese restaurant insists on handing them out. Total waste of time

    2. Spouse and I experienced MERs at being handed fortune cookies when settling the account at a Japanese restaurant in Lyon.
       The staff were ethnic Chinese btw, and we hadn’t expected authenticity. Just as well, as corn kernels (tinned) in ramen otherwise merit a MaER. (Major ER).
       Thank you setter for an enjoyable puzzle, and blogger for showing me the parsing of 10a, where I’d been searching for an Irish location starting with f.

35. 15.52

    Helped seeing FREYA quickly and my school-day Greek meant no hesitation over the MI of MIMESIS

    Listened to an “In our Time” about the Nicomachean Ethics recently. The slavery bits are – ahem – awkward, but he had interesting ideas about a lot else.

36. I felt cast adrift in the top half and after drawing a blank in the NW and NE, moved my attention to the SE where USE UP broke the log jam. Even CHICKADEE presented little resistance. From there the SW yielded easily and I crawled back up to the upper regions. I’d NHO MIMESIS and having worked out what was going on, used Google to confirm whether ME or MI was the intended note. MAKE HASTE finally unlocked the NW with only 1d and 11a holding out. As others I struggled to decipher whether the clue began with AI or Al, but having decided on the former, inserted ALEXA. This led to puzzlement at 1d as MAD -A- came to naught and I suddenly had a cricket inspiration. FREYA ousted ALEXA soon after that. 19:23. Thanks setter and Jack.

37. 22: 36
    Good puzzle. For a moment I thought, perhaps rashly, that URTICARIA was going to be a revered Guardian crossword setter. MIMESIS was no problem as I have a, largely unread, copy of Auerbach’s book on a nearby shelf. I’ve always liked the word DEFROCK as it conjures up images of senior clergymen being ceremonially stripped of their colourful regalia by a Baldrick-like character.

    Thanks to Jack and the setter

38. 29’18”
    Slowly into stride, but quickened and stayed on well…

    … and all parsed, bar the biscuit, the ingredients of which were deciphered retrospectively.
    One gripe: Sitting down to start this I sighed; ‘it must be all of a week since the ubiquitous app appeared’. This dinosaur comes to the crossword to get away from the technological torture that seems intent on robbing him of a living. Could I make a very quiet suggestion that these three letters could be clued more imaginatively.
    I think it was WC Fields who helped me with the titmouse; “If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then give up; there’s no point being a goddam fool about it” was his advice that I’ve always tried to follow.
    Very enjoyable; thank you setter and Vinyl.

39. Oh, I thought I was doing yesterday’s. I was a bit concerned to be over 20 mins for a 73 SNITCH.

    Snuck into the top 100. I found this quite tricky, and I must agree with Jack that it was not a biffer’s paradise. I needed checkers, but as I went through, it slowly gave up its secrets. I initially had mistyped KNUCKLE, which didn’t help, and had NEMESIS in for a while until MEDAL showed me my error. I’d only vaguely heard of MIMESIS.

    20:52

40. DNF. Two errors in the NW corner. I had MADCAP for 1d, which required my assuming that AP was an unknown abbreviation for party line, then biffed AKELA as the only revered figure that would fit 11a, not helped by misreading AI as Al, so thinking it might work if only the AKE part made any sense…

    Thanks Vinyl and setter

41. Not knowing much about cricket I also had MAD CAP for 1D at first, although I couldn’t make the whole clue fit (why “sometimes”?). That gave ALEXA for 11A which also didn’t seem quite satisfactory. Eventually the penny dropped. Apart from the NHO URTICARIA, which I couldn’t see an alternative for, that was the only hold up.

42. 20.52. A fair amount of biffing. I had the same problem as others with the irritating font – well, you can call me AI.

43. A shade over 40 mins today, with several built from the word-play. Re the BRASS FARTHING, as our blogger says, it wasn’t worth much. The farthing coin, nominally a quarter of an old penny and therefore 1/960th of a pound, was withdrawn from circulation in 1960. At the time, a pint of beer would set back a drinker in a pub about 1/10, so 88 farthings would cover it. This rather puts current objections to the withdrawal of 1p and 2p coins in perspective: even the cheapest local pub around my way would want 400 or so pennies in exchange for a pint (and I was shocked to pay £6.30 for a pint at Hampshire’s Rose Bowl cricket ground last Sunday). There was, of course, a time when the farthing had at least some value – in fact, my grandfather had a Victorian half-farthing in his purse, though where it went I have no idea. And who’d go looking for 1/1920th of a pound?

44. No time to report as I was solving it while watching The Olympics. It felt relatively smooth until only the ne corner remained, but this stopped me in my tracks. GARDA got me going again until I had to solve only 5ac. With all the checkers in place I had to carefully construct the answer, but then a dilemma, was the note MI or ME? Typically I chose the wrong option and MEMESIS went in. This is the third consecutive crossword I have finished with one wrong letter!

45. I like always like it when a puzzle of average SNITCH-iness proves a little tricky due to vocabulary or cleverly hidden clues. So thank you, setter.

46. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages. Funnily enough, Cymbeline was in my mind after watching the Branagh-as-Bard film All is True. The rather lovely lines “Fear no more …”, which are from Cymbeline, are read out by his family after Shakespeare dies. 22’25” all up. Many thanks.

47. I’m another with a wrong note – me, a name I call myself. Never mind. I was very slow anyway coming in only just under the hour. Perhaps tomorrow….

48. Just finished this morning. Struggled to 39 mins last night with eight still to get , woke up refreshed and had a final time of 45 mins.

    Moral of the story ; do the crossword before you play depressingly useless golf in the rain for 5 hours!

49. Very enjoyable crossword, with some deuced deceptively hidden definitions ( police still). But I had a bit of a bif-fest, especially with the longer answers (BRASS F, FORTUNE COOKIE). The short words proved more elusive however, the most trouble being with APPEND and SIREN ( to my shame) and MID OFF (vaguely aware of him/her being “silly”). NHO MIMESIS, but should have tried harder; overall a fair puzzle and with that touch of humour which makes solving such a delight.

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