Times Cryptic 29070 – Saturday, 9 November 2024. Mephistopheles gives you the word.

This was close to standard Saturday level, apart from the escapee from Mephisto at  11ac and the NHO author of the NHO book at 22dn. How did you find it?

Note for newcomers: The Times offers prizes for Saturday Cryptic Crosswords. This blog is for last week’s puzzle, posted after the competition closes. So, please don’t comment here on this week’s Saturday Cryptic.

Definitions are in bold and underlined.

Across
1 Party leads to some sleep deprivation — have kip wherever suits (4,4)
DOSS DOWNDO + SS (leads to Some Sleep) DOWN.
I suppose “down” as a noun can mean “deprivation”.
On edit: as Peter W explains in his comment, D is the “lead” to Deprivation, then OWN is “have”.
5 Historian VIP boastfully backtracks (6)
GIBBONNOB + BIG, all backtracking.
8 Expanded odourless gas that’s odd (3)
COO – a molecule of carbon dioxide has three atoms: C + O + O.
“Expanded” signals not to use the standard chemical formula of CO2.
9 Ignorant, stupid, endless repeat (10)
ILLITERATEsILLy endless + ITERATE (repeat).
10 Writer wants time cut in part (8)
TROLLOPET (time) + LOP in ROLE.
11 Decoration left on piece of armour plate (6)
TASSELTASSE + L.
Luckily for me, on a rare foray into Mephisto land last month, I met this:
TASSE: ASSET with the T moved to the front.
In plate armour, a TASSE is one of a series of overlapping pieces forming a kind of skirt.
Now I shall waste no time forgetting that!
12 Former king leading away from answer (4)
OFFAOFF (leading away) + A (answer).
14 Bearing ordinary pot plant (5,5)
SWORD GRASS – SW (south-west) + ORD GRASS (that sort of pot!).
17 Rose finally seduces number one bachelor in German city (5,5)
SWEET BRIER – S (seduceS, finally) + WEE (number one, in nursery speak) + B in TRIER.
20 Two books, each absorbing day after day (4)
EDDA – EA absorbing D+D.
I didn’t know there were two Eddas – see here.
23 First sign of jungle animal’s pad (6)
JOTTER – (Jungle) + OTTER.
24 Attitude in estate, maybe one overwhelmed by anger (8)
CARRIAGE – CAR (estate, maybe)  + I  overwhelmed by RAGE.
25 English look back into human form of cultivation? (10)
BEEKEEPING – EKEEP (PEEK, backinto BEING.
26 Traitorous secret agents progressively picked out letter (3)
TEE – first letter of the first word, second of the second, third of the third!
27 Receptacle, somewhat useless, eventually returned (6)
VESSEL – backwards (returned) hidden (somewhat).
28 Revise opinion on fools — simpletons, primarily (8)
REASSESS – RE (on) + ASSES (fools) + (Simpletons).
Down
1 Having dreadful ado, counts old silver coins (9)
DUCATOONS – anagram (dreadful) (ADO COUNTS).
A silver coin.
2 Husband cutting pig up in display (4,3)
SHOW OFF – cutting SOWOFF.
It seems a little odd, but “off” meaning “up” is in the dictionary. Perhaps as in “time’s off/up”.
3 Bores medic with misfortunes (6)
DRILLS – DR ILLS.
4 Before permission to act, decree resolution (9)
WILLPOWER – WILL (decree, as when the king says “it is my will …”) + POWER (as in “I have the power to …”).
5 Avarice besetting fringes of The Met (7)
GREETED – GREED besetting TE (fringes of ThE)
6 Café from Egon Ronay initially in club (9)
BRASSERIE – ER (Egon Ronay, initially) in BRASSIE.
Similar in function to today’s “no. 2 wood”, apparently.
7 Such unity could make no sense (7)
ONENESS – anagram (could make) (NO SENSE).
13 Skill needs past struggling (9)
ADEPTNESS – anagram (struggling)  (NEEDS PAST).
15 Again investigate case of rogue despot once found in river (2-7)
RE-EXAMINE – RE (case of RoguE) + AMIN (despot once) found in EXE.
16 Brazen criminal hassles me (9)
SHAMELESS – anagram (criminal): (HASSLES ME).
18 Most of timber on northern island suitable for court? (7)
WOOABLE – WOO (most of WOOd) + ELBA backwards (northern).
I spent a moment wondering if there might be a Scottish island called ABLE!
19 Ring secures inverted support gear used in lift? (7)
BARBELL – BELL secures BRA inverted.
21 One destined to serve picked up drink and MDMA (7)
DRAFTEE – sounds like (picked upDRAUGHT E.
22 Fungus source beginning to rot in huge borders of grass (6)
BRIGGS – R (beginning to Rot) in BIG GS (borders of GrasS).
NHO the book or its author but the wordplay was enough.

33 comments on “Times Cryptic 29070 – Saturday, 9 November 2024. Mephistopheles gives you the word.”

  1. 42 minutes. Not too hard at the time (little did we know then what was in store for us in the following week!) although I had no idea what 22d was all about. I wondered about DOWN for ‘deprivation’ at 1a too but settled on the sense in “the ups and DOWN(s) of life” as being close enough. A similarly unsatisfactory example for OFF for ‘up’ at 2d with “Something’s up” = “Something’s not right” = “Something’s OFF”. DUCATOONS was new to me, but wasn’t a difficult anagram. I liked the ‘progressively picked out’ trick in TEE.

    Interesting that every word contains a double letter pairing, with a couple of EE’s in BEEKEEPING and SS’s in REASSESS; just coincidence?

    Thanks to Bruce and setter

    1. Double letters… I noticed it too. Impressive! Almost certainly by design, I’d say. Nice one. Thank-you setter. From my own modest compiling efforts I know how difficult this sort of thing is.

  2. I think 1ac is the leads to the three words “some sleep deprivation” (SSD), then “have”=OWN (keep, possess) , and the definition is just “kip wherever suits”.

    I’d had trouble with up=off in 2d. I hadn’t found that in the dictionary. I see now that Chambers has under “off”: “to a finish, up”, but not sure I can think of two example sentences demonstrating that meaning.

    1. Answering myself. Having looked at the OED, I think it might be “finish off/finish up” like in the world of hairdressing.

      Looking online, a salon in Banbury says:
      The hairdresser will give your hair a full wash using the very best of our products, then finish up with a luxurious blow dry.

      Whereas in Muswell Hill:
      We´ll make you look fabulous and finish off with a blow dry to leave your hair looking glossy, healthy and full of volume.

  3. I finished all correct but with no idea what the “Fungus source” was, since SPORE was obviously wrong but the only thing I could think of at first. I had no idea about TASSE either but with some crossers TASSEL was obvious, so I just reversed engineered that a TASSE must be a plate of armor. I never noticed the double letter thing, but then I never notice Ninas even when they are obvious when pointed out. I must have got held up somewhere, but I don’t remember where, since my time shows as over 2 hours, which means I went away and came back.

  4. I did much of this over lunch; maybe 40′ or so. NHO DUCATOONS, TASSE, or BRIGGS and his fungus; glad to see I’m not alone. I parsed DOSS DOWN as Peter W did. I liked GREETED and TEE–I don’t think I’ve ever seen that trick before.

  5. 68 minutes, then I gave up on BRIGGS and his fungus.

    I’m still very dubious about ‘deprivation / DOWN’ in 1ac and they are not listed as synonyms in my thesaurus, but perhaps someone can come up with a substitution that works?

    TASSEL seemed an obvious answer so I wrote it in and moved on. TEE was devious but works well as a device we do not see very often.

    DUCATOON making its debut here was was quite easy as I had the D-checker in place and DUCAT jumped out as a familiar old coin.

    1. See Peter W above for DOSS DOWN.
      Once I Googled Briggs, I thought that this would be British GK, though as unknown to me as Tarka the otter.

  6. 90 minutes over many visits. Most done in about 40 minutes but I really struggled with the last few: JOTTER, BARBELL, SWEET BRIER, WOOABLE, BEEKEEPING and BRIGGS. The bogeyman sprang to mind immediately but I vaguely thought Roald Dahl was the author. I think I conflated Fungus and Mr Twit. My little brothers read both but they were published just too late for me. I eventually figured it out from the wordplay. DUCATOONS was new but I knew TASSE from somewhere. Thanks branch.

  7. Got through it after an hour or so. I thought Briggs for “Fungus Source” was great. His books are sublime, including his last, an autobiography, very poignant. Up there with Quentin Blake and E W Shepherd.

    The spelling of SWEET BRIER held me up. And DUCATOONS looked like a made up cross between Ducats and Dubloons.

    COD WOOABLE

  8. Raymond Briggs is very famous in England, so was a write-in for me.
    I obviously found this puzzle a lot harder than usual for a Saturday, as I took an hour.

  9. I found it tricky to get into the mindset of the setter, but once I got the hang of it I enjoyed it a lot. The plants were fairly tricky, though I loved No 1 = wee! Ironically, I worked out BRIGGS, but didn’t put it in, though I couldn’t find an alternative, because it made no sense to me. It was Mr Ego who suddenly came up with the Bogeyman reference, which I certainly knew, although I’m more familiar with his other works. So well and truly fooled by that one, and my COD to it. The Nina is also brilliant, and went unnoticed!

  10. 11a Tassel, abstruse bit of armour, had to look it up so DNF and didn’t care (DNC).
    14a Sword Grass. I wasn’t expecting ordinary=ord.
    17a Wiktionary didn’t have Sweet Brier as 2 words. I bet lots of dictionaries do though. What with brier/briar and 1 word, 2 words, plus singular and plural that meant quite a lot of additions to the Cheating Machine. Ho hum. Also I missed the reference to Number One for wee so failed to parse, which is a pity in retrospect because it was good and clever.
    20a Edda, I DNK there were 2 Eddas either. Only ever heard about any Eddas from Crosswordland.
    26a Tee, COD.
    1d Ducatoons, abstruse, had to look it up; again DNF and DNC. Ducats yes, doubloons, yes, quadroons a bit outre, pieces-of-eight fine, but ducatoon???
    6d Brasserie, I oddly don’t mind the setters using the archaic words for golf clubs, even though I don’t like golf. Bring on the mashie-niblicks!
    22d Briggs, NHO, looked up, DNF, DNC.
    Nina missed as usual. Actually I DO care that I never see these things, so can’t say DNC.

  11. DNF, back in OWL Club with ‘sward grass’ – serves me right for careless biffing.

    – Didn’t parse DOSS DOWN so thanks Peter W for the explanation
    – NHO tasse but I was on safer biffing ground with TASSEL
    – Couldn’t have told you that a SWEET BRIER is a rose, such is my horticultural ignorance
    – Also NHO DUCATOONS but it was the most likely sounding option with all the checkers in place
    – Didn’t see how up=off for SHOW OFF but the explanations given above make sense
    – Hadn’t heard of a brassie club but BRASSERIE was clear enough
    – Have heard of Raymond BRIGGS, but not that he was the creator of a character called Fungus

    Thanks branch and setter.

    COD Doss down

  12. 22.26

    Teased them all out without getting stuck whilst correctly punting the coin and taking TASSE on trust

    Thanks Bruce and setter

  13. No undue problems with this, Raymond Briggs well known although I’ve never read any of his books. Vaguely I have fungus down as a bogeyman, I think ..
    Nho TASSE but it didn’t really matter. Nho ducatoons but that didn’t matter either .. good setting.

  14. Another educational Saturday! Thanks very much for the blog branch. New to me were tasse, SWORD GRASS, and wee = number one (doh). BRIGGS was a write in, GIBBON only VHO. Pleased to remember EDDA from previous crosswords. Thanks for unravelling COO in particular (say what??). An enjoyable hour.

  15. 21:27 for me, so on the tricky side, but very satisfying. Like our blogger, I didn’t know there were two Eddas either. LOI the Fungus the Bogeyman author in an Aha moment. I smiled at TASSEL as I live in Tassel Rd … my username hints at the East Anglian town where that is. . COD to DOSS DOWN for the great surface. Thanks Bruce and setter.

  16. What a strange puzzle, with all sorts of new indicators (like “northern” for northgoing, or progressively picking out answers). Quite hard, with a number of obscure clues, but also very enjoyable once I got going (that took a while — I think EDDA was my FOI). I did finish correctly in 55 minutes. COD perhaps to SWEET BRIER, with the oldest city in Germany making an appearance, among other reasons, of course.

  17. I`m new to the game. Could someone please explain ninas, in particular regarding prize saturday No. 29070. Thankyou.

      1. Thank you. Very useful, and hilarious. I`m sure it`s obvious, but I still can`t see the theme in saturday`s prize. Please help….

          1. Oh thanks. Reading the other comments, I got the impression that there was something in addition to the double letters. Thanks for your help.

  18. Found this tough in parts, but doable, (WOOABLE – a word not found in my Mrs. Bradford!) DNGAHTLU ( did not get and had to look up) COO, BRIGGS, that spelling of BRIER, or SWORD GRASS , of which I had half. But was pleased to have worked out JOTTER, TROLLOPE, and DOSS DOWN in particular. Did not notice the double-letter thing. Thoroughly enjoyable.

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