Times Cryptic 29058 – Saturday, 26 October 2024. Best on ground.

22 comments on “Times Cryptic 29058 – Saturday, 26 October 2024. Best on ground.”

1. Thank you for going through all this so clearly. I couldn’t sort out the wordplay for PLASTICKY, and your comments on the definitions of SEXTANT and TREMA are very helpful for me to try to remember these meanings.

   I do wonder though, whether in 29ac NUTMEGGED, that “urged” (rather than “urged on”) becomes “egged”. Because I think the “on” is needed for the order of the wordplay elements – we have to put EGGED “on” (i.e. after) “team ultimately”.

   1. Thanks. Yes, it’s just “egged”. Actually, I think “on” says that NUT EGGED is “on/around” the M. Well caught.

2. Blog much appreciated. For some reason I hadn’t seen the wordplay for DESULTORY. Seems obvious now. I thought MIX and ADAM were neat.

3. I thought the S in 9 across was derived from the last letter (term) of species. Isn’t species usually abbreviated as sp?

   1. Thanks. I forgot to check!

4. 73m 45s Very hard.
   In 22ac I’ve never come across ‘covering’ meaning to remove.
   In 2d surely the word ‘mile’ is redundant. M is already in the clue.

   1. I read “covering” to mean STICKY sits on top of, or conceals, the N.

      The M for mile is just an unusual way of saying where we start reversing the letters in in the answer.

      1. 👍

      2. Thank you – I couldn’t work out why the clue wasn’t just ‘Join M11 northbound’ – but that could have been an instruction to turn the whole answer up giving IXM.

   2. 66:15. Yes, very hard. “Covering” was new to me too. I didn’t get it until I read the blog and then, as Branch says in his reply to you, I read it as “sits on top of, or conceals, the N”. But it could also be “stands in for” as in covering for an absent colleague.
      I liked SEXTANT – a sixth of a circle – but it was right to think of the nautical navigation instrument too because that’s what it is (a sixty degree arc) and presumably why it is called that

      1. 👍

      2. Yes, although I didn’t see it myself at the time, ‘covering’ is simply a substitution indicator.

         I found this hard, possibly because I was tired when I started overnight and unable to maintain concentration. I abandoned it after 25 minutes having made little progress but things were better when I returned in the morning. 53 minutes in all.

         TREMA and the LIE in CHARLIE were unknown.

         1. Nearly always could ditto your remarks, jackkt – and so it is today. TREMA also unknown to me, but easily gettable from the wordplay; not so much for ‘lie in that sense.

5. I took an hour and 20 minutes on this and found it very hard. LOI was NUTMEGGED and I actually got NUT M EGGED but didn’t believe in it as a word. Eventually after maybe about 10 minutes I googled it in desperation and found it existed after all.

6. In electrical engineering the “bus” is any piece of wire connecting something of interest. So one can get a charge for a rechargeable battery from the appropriate bus. So “charging point” is a bus and “point on route” is a stop. Apparently audio engineers refer to ‘audio buses’ as the places in the circuit where audio engineers can find an audible signal. I liked it.

7. DNF, defeated by FLATMATE. Just couldn’t see it, even though it’s not that tricky.

   – Slowed myself down by putting ‘pit stop’ for 1d (thinking of ‘charging’ as in filling up with fuel), and didn’t realise my mistake until I saw 1a had to be BOMB SQUAD rathe than ‘pimp/pump squad’
   – Didn’t know that meaning of lie for CHARLIE
   – Wasn’t aware that ‘term’ can mean ‘last letter of’ as used in SEXTANT (thanks ulaca for pointing it out!) – that’s worth remembering
   – Hadn’t heard of TREMA
   – Didn’t see how MIX worked

   Thanks branch and setter.

   COD Raintight

8. DNF, defeated by NUTMEGGED, CHARLIE, TREMA and FLATMATE. Had I got the latter, which I should have, the others might have been within reach with the crossers, though I had put TEN instead of LEG for 27d (thinking of bowling), which I didn’t question, and might again have made the final SE corner a possibility. I knew what 24a was getting at, but had never heard of the word, though I did know diaerisis, so even considering a hidden, I didn’t get it! In retrospect, a bit disappointing that I didn’t twig something from that lot to manage a completion. I like a lot of the rest, particularly BOMB SQUAD, MIX, DESULTORY and PLASTICKY.

9. 40:26
   I thought the MIX clue was very clever. The surface also works for those joining the M11 at junction 13, which is southbound only, forcing those on the Madingley road who wish to travel north to go the wrong way for a mile or two before going off and rejoining at junction 12.
   If I was called CHARLIE I would be getting fed up with the number of disparaging references in recent crosswords.

   Thanks branch and setter

10. A superb and truly tricky puzzle, which I finished correctly in just over an hour. But on reading the eminently helpful blog I discovered there were several clues to which I really hadn’t understood the wordplay, even though my answers were right. Examples were PLASTICKY, where I thought P would be the back of map, why there were two Ms mentioned in the definition for MIX, and SEXTANT, which I couldn’t decipher at all. So thank you again, branch and setter!

11. 100 minutes with breaks, DNF. I found this very hard. I had four remaining but I forgot to come back to it until just now. NUTMEGGED, LEG and CHARLIE (a biff) went straight in leaving only ADAM unsolved. Thanks branch.

12. 29.09

    Late entry

    MIX seemed a little over complicated for my taste but lots to like elsewhere, particularly DESULTORY (very good indeed). As for PLASTICKY I was no where near the parsing for it thinking PLASTER had to be the adhesive thing. I’m not a blogger but if I were I’d have been phoning a friend on that one!

    So great blog as always and thx to the setter

13. Of course, 1a threw me to start, and left me unsure of my solving from then on. Quite a few I didn’t get( which I should have): PERSONAGE, CHARLIE, MIX and BOMB SQUAD to name a few. The latter I should have just followed the cryptic, and all would have been revealed! “Police dealing with mine” indeed. Very enjoyable if a bit too tough solve.

Comments are closed.