Times Cryptic 29150

75 comments on “Times Cryptic 29150”

1. I thought it said “pastry” too, but rubbed my eyes… No, actually, I thought it said “party”! Not so familiar with “patty” as “a small pie.” Though that’s the first American definition, it’s “esp a meat pie.” BEEFBURGER seems a redundant phrase—back-formation? Everyone knows most hamburgers are made of… beef.

   I found the clue for ALLA BREVE to be a top-level hidden. FRUMP is funny.

   1. I’d not really though of it, as McD’s obviously markets its “two all-beef patties…” as a hamburger, but Tesco resolutely sticks to beefburgers (and of course chicken, lamb, meat free, cheese, etc). The only “ham”burger is their “Tesco Finest 2 Pork And Bramley Apple Burgers 300G” which actually sound quite yummy!
      And yes, I do know it derives from “Hamburg steak”

      1. Back in the 60s we had “Vienna Steak”. I’m not sure what it contained but they would not have got away with calling it just “steak”.

2. Quick and easy (ie, I guessed right at the half remembered bits and saw the reversal). Thanks, jack
   Given 22d, and because yesterday was the first day of spring training: in baseball all 4 officials on the field (6 for playoff games) are umpires and are called umps unless something more colourful occurs to an aggrieved fan, in which case the more imaginative the better though we might not see the result in a Times puzzle.

3. I knew it had to be SPEEDWELL but I’d never heard of the plant being called Veronica. Clever that the setter included ‘went very fast’ as apparently this plant grows very fast. Failed to see the reversed hidden with ALLA BREVE and found the wordplay a bit confusing, but should have got it. As you say, some write-ins here combined with a few tricky ones, I didn’t know ‘cess’ was a tax so CRESS was a guess. Liked BUFFET CAR, SARACEN, PREDICTION and NAIROBI. All good fun though.
   Thanks Jack.

   1. I looked it up afterwards; it turns out that the speedwell family is in the genus Veronica.

      1. there is also a fictional character called Veronica Speedwell in a series of novels by Deanna Raybourn

4. Maybe I’m tired, but I didn’t find this all that easy and came in at around my usual time, 10:28. I liked FRUMP, ALLA BREVE and RANK.

5. Around 40 minutes slowed by SW corner where I couldn’t read my own printing and saw a P instead of F in BUFFET CAR so delayed getting FANZINE and others.
   Thanks Jack

6. 23:49
   I biffed AESOP, which was crying out to be biffed. ALLA BREVE, as Guy says, a lovely hidden. And ABSOLUTION an anagram in a lovely surface. A MER at SARACEN; they weren’t Moors, although I suppose ‘Saracen’ was used loosely enough to include all Arabs. And ‘pseudoscientist’ is rather unfair to ALCHEMISTs.

   1. I once, long ago, read both of Jung’s tomes on the symbolism of alchemy as it supposedly related to transformative psychological experiences, but I am unaware that anyone ever succeeded in literally turning lead into gold or gaining immortality.

      1. Jung wrote two volumes on alchemy? And you read them both?

         1. That’s what I said. Two volumes of his complete works, which were in the library at Bethany College.

         2. Well, I’ve read Spenser’s Faerie Queene twice, all six books, so anything is possible!

            1. Holy moly. What did you use for doorstops while you were reading it?

      2. I saw a segment on one of those “pop science” shows on the TV a few weeks ago about a physicist who bombarded a poor, unsuspecting piece of lead with a cocktail of sub-atomic particles and was rewarded with a few atoms of gold (but no immortality) for his troubles. Maybe I’m gullible and they were taking the mickey, but I don’t think so. Turns out they knew a thing or two, those alchemists.

         1. The medieval alchemists, of course, had no idea about nuclear transmutation.
            Apparently, the cost involved to produce just a tiny amount of g0ld by this process makes it impractical.

   2. Agreed unfair to Newton and others who made progress in understanding by their endeavours, even if they didn’t succeed in their primary aim.

7. I thought this was going to be a doddle, as I completed the top half in five minutes or so, but the bottom was something else. It didn’t help that I biffed hit and run after glancing at the anagram letters – never a good idea if you’re not familiar with the literal. This made frump difficult, until alchemist finally led to a rethink. A crucial biff of fanzine helped me finish out the last corner, but I was still stuck with labyrinth at the end – oh, that part of the ear.

   Time: 23:06

   1. TAP-AND-RUN was tempting to me, as I think it has done every time this form of cricket has appeared.

8. ALLA BREVE was hidden so well that I totally missed it, having never heard of the thing anyway, so a DNF in about 30. I think I might have got SPEEDWELL and cess from doing crosswords, they are otherwise unknown. As Jack said, a lot of biffing but there were a few that demanded care and concentration to piece together. Like alla breve.

   From Romance in Durango:
   The way is long but the end is near
   Already the fiesta has begun
   The face of God will appear
   With his SERPENT eyes of obsidian

9. 32 minutes. I was zooming (for me) through this until I failed to spot the reverse hidden at 15a – an excellent example of the type as several others have pointed out. It didn’t help that I’d never heard of ALLA BREVE but that’s no excuse. After a couple of crossword land staples yesterday it was good to see the run being continued with CESS for ‘tax’ and SPEEDWELL for ‘Veronica’ today.

10. Regarding CRESS, as far as I was aware, the abbreviations for rupee are Rs or INR, not just R.

    1. Collins to the (setter’s) rescue: it has ‘rupee’ as one thing R can stand for. I’m pretty sure rupee=R here before. (I discovered that I’ve been putting the stress on the wrong syllable all these years.)

       1. So it has! I checked Collins online but was caught out by their new format as discussed with keriothe a day or two back. Along with the new tabs for British and American English I see there is now a “See more” option at the foot of some pages which needs to be clicked to reveal the full entry. Lesson learnt, I hope.

       2. I thought it was R for Rupee and Rs for Rupees….

       3. Thanks, Kevin. Me, too!

    2. Interesting point! I just found ‘r = rand’ and ‘r = rouble’ but not ‘r = rupee’. I admit I took it on trust and didn’t bother to check when writing the blog.
       This was written before I’d seen Kevin’s comment.

11. 9.01

    Misread ‘patty’ as ‘party’, which slowed me down for BEEFBURGER. I only spotted ALLA BREVE when coming back to it at the end, until that point a bit worried, as I lacked any theory as to what what was going on in the clue – well done setter.

    Thanks both.

12. 8:40. As Jack suggested some might I found this quite the biff-fest. That does have its risks, such as confusing cricket with motoring incidents and putting in HIT-AND-RUN. Thankfully a crossing answer put me right quite quickly. I finished with ALLA BREVE, which I thought was correct from definition, but like others it took me a while to spot the reverse hidden.

    1. Well, hit and run is also a baseball play. It should be called run and hit, but the phrase was evidently influenced by motoring accidents.

       Added for UK readers – when there are 0 or 1 outs, and a runner on first, and the count is favorable, the runner on first takes off with the pitch and the batter has to make contact no matter what the pitch. The runner draws the infielders out of position, making it more likely that a weakly hit ball will go through the infield.

13. 18:14

    Agree with Jack about biffing quite a few of these. ALLA BREVE was new to me and “pinching” threw me as well. Good clue. Veronica Speedwell sound like an agony aunt.

    Thanks to Jack and the setter.

14. Fortunately I got ALLA BREVE from vague memory, before spotting the reverse hidden. And thus finished in 9′ 41″, pleasing after yesterday.

    Thanks jack and setter.

15. Consider’d every Creature, which of all
    Most opportune might serve his Wiles, and found
    The Serpent suttlest Beast of all the Field.
    (Paradise Lost, Book 9, Milton)

    20 ish mins pre-brekker. Speedwell a bit tricky if you don’t know Veronica and “pinching” as a participle is a bit awkward.
    Ta setter and J

    1. Quia Multum Amavi:
       Yet, though remorse, youth’s white-faced seneschal,
       Tread on my heels with all his retinue,
       I am most glad I loved thee—think of all
       The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!

16. About 28′. I’m Scottish and, I’m told, obsolete, but I’ve never heard of “cess”. LOI ALLA BREVE also an NHO but thankfully saw the reverse hidden after trying various concoctions of anagram containing “verbal”. Wrote in ARCHIMEDES without going back to parse… and not sure I would have been able to. Knew the Veronica/SPEEDWELL thing from previous. Enjoyed LABYRINTH. Thanks Jack and setter.

17. 9:29. I parsed them all although the answer came from the definition before I worked out the wordplay in many places. LOI ALL BREVE. It took me a while to see it was a reverse hidden. I liked the surface for SPEEDWELL. Thanks Jackkt and setter.

18. 22:24* (TAP AND RUN)

    I didn’t bother to check the cryptic so more fool me. Otherwise I was held up at the end with ALLA BREVE, thinking it was an anagram of VERBAL, but staring into my remaining ALE gave me no answers.

    A decent run out so thanks to both.

19. 18 minutes with LOI FANZINE. COD to TIP AND RUN. Friendly puzzle with a couple of stings in the tail. Thank you Jack and setter

20. Had a brain fart and put GOZA or this would have been my quickest solve by quite a bit. It’s nice when your only nho is a hidden.

    How many times has AESOP made an appearance in the last few months?

21. DNF, with a very silly LITRE rather than LITHE – I saw ‘liquid’ and ignited=lit, and never stopped to think that the ‘re’ made no sense.

    – Didn’t know the cess tax so wasn’t sure about CRESS
    – Took ages to see the hidden ALLA BREVE
    – Got BUFFET CAR despite my mind going blank at what fish might be car_
    – Didn’t know LABYRINTH as the inner ear

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    COD Archimedes

22. 10:26, with a very significant proportion of that becalmed in the NE corner. NHO ALLA BREVE, a very devious hidden.

23. DNF. Classic breeze-block in the NE.
    NHO CESS so missed CRESS and CHOW entirely along with the NHO and never wish to again musical obscurity. Thought it might be an anagram but could see no sensible combination of those letters. I now see I was right.
    Shame because it was all quite enjoyable to start with.
    Thanks for the explanations as ever.

24. Slowing myself down has hopefully started to diminish a ridiculous error rate of 25% over the past month (only one of the errors was a genuine incorrect answer). NHO my LOI, otherwise this was quite straightforward.

    FOI GEORDIE
    LOI ALLA BREVE
    COD FANZINE
    TIME 8:19

25. 25 mins.
    No dramas.
    Thanks, jack.

26. Thanks jackkt. I agree with you that this was something of a biff-fest.

    Complaints corner time: I wish to complain about THAT’S standing for IE, which in my opinion is a solecism normally reserved for the use of ‘compilers’ in the (frequently awful) Grauniad puzzles. ID EST is ‘that is’ as in ‘in other words’ as far as I am able to discover, and therefore different grammatically from the abbreviated form used here.

    That’s right = IER is wrong, right?

    1. I’m curious as to what you think the Latin for THAT’S might be, if not ID EST…

    2. I respectfully agree with Occasional
       “That’s right/correct” translates as “Hoc est verum”
       “Namely “ translates as “Id est”

       1. ‘Lift and separate’ is needed here as indicated in the blog. That’s = that is = ie (id est). Then quite separately, right = r.

27. From ABSTAINED to FANZINE in 21:26. Took ages and needed all the crossers before I saw the unknown ALLA BREVE cunningly hidden away. Liked ABSOLUTION and ENDORSE. Thanks setter and Jack.

28. 13.31, finishing in the NE after bouncing off it at first. SPEEDWELL to the rescue.
    For ALLA BREVE, I spent a while trying to make the clue work, spotting that a bit of VERBAL formed a reversed part of the answer but not seeing where the rest came from. That sort of hold-up indicates a really well hidden -um – hidden.
    CESS for tax is common enough in Crosswordland: in any event all such taxes end up in the government pool.

29. Slowed by the NE corner, and never did see ALLA BREVE, even with all the crossers: it’s not a terribly common musical term. The rest of it pretty easy, I thought.

30. Is there a little tribute to the new Editor here? One of the answers is his pseudonym as a setter.

    1. And what is that name? Not Alla Breve I presume.

       1. Jason Crampton uses Serpent as his pseudonym.

          1. Ah, thank you.

31. Pleasant and fairly straightforward crossword, 33 minutes. I’m with Jack, not favouring the biffing method of solving, although that doesn’t explain my rather pedestrian times. Like many others I thought that ALLA BREVE was excellent and it defeated me for quite a while.

    My goodness me we do often see NONET.

32. The (seemingly hundreds) of musical instructions are a bit of a blind spot for me so ALLA BREVE was a breeze block until I finally spotted the hidden. Plants on the other hand are a strong point so I know Veronica – and her good friend Erica – very well.

33. Enjoyable solve. Over two thirds done in twenty five minutes before the gym. The other third took forty minutes after the gym- I got stuck on LITHE (v nice clue), LABYRINTH and the very clever reversed hidden. Had to use the check function on CRESS, as CESS didn’t ring any bells as a tax.
    Thank you Jack and setter

34. A pleasant pre-prandial exercise, all done in 25 minutes. I was held up for a time in the SW, but emerged safely, with just a MER at LABYRINTH=puzzle. Now, following RobertL’s disclosure, I just have to work out which of the answers is the new Editor’s pseudonym.
    FOI – HYENA
    LOI – CHOW
    COD – NONET
    Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.

35. 16:42

    Up my street, though like others, I didn’t know CESS = tax and I missed the reverse hidden, bunged in from checkers and seeing that several of the letters of ‘verbal’ were already accounted for. FANZINE also a bit of a guess, I know the word but I didn’t think of NZ as pacific islands though it clearly is…

    Thanks Jack and setter

36. 24:33, one of my fastest times.
    LOI NHO ALLA BREVE, which was a good guess as I couldn’t parse it either. I should learn that my LOI is often a hidden, but this was well disguised. I saw “lashing” as an anagram indicator for Verbal.

37. 22d Frump. I’m unsure that ump=ref. But I won’t complain.
    15a Alla Breve was in Cheating Machine so has almost certainly come up before, but I didn’t recognize it and would have claimed NHO. Beautifully hidden.

38. I wouldn’t call myself a speedster, although I will own up to biffing a lot, mainly because as a relative newbie I’m not familiar with a lot of the wordplay “conventions”; that said, I didn’t biff very much on this one and was able to fully parse all but three of my answers. These were:
    NAIROBI – I could parse NAIR, but was only aware of the Japanese sash for ‘OBI’ – but the answer couldn’t have been anything else.
    CRESS – never heard of the tax, but assumed that rupees gave me an R and, given that I had the three checkers, was confident about the answer.
    ALLA BREVE – I’m a recorder player and have seen the instruction on some of the baroque music that I play and, again, I had all the checkers so was sure it was right. I could see ‘VERBAL’ in the clue, but didn’t spot that the whole answer was there reversed – I thought maybe there was some kind of anagram involved, but I didn’t spend any time trying to work it out.

    Overall a fair and enjoyable puzzle.

39. 18 minutes. No parsing problems although initially biffed tip-and-run (which we used to play at school until we were deemed old enough to play rounders) before working out the anagram.

40. 14m – Didn’t recall the speedwell/Veronica connection and assumed VS was some Victorian novelist who had passed me by (evidently she is the heroine of a series of modern romantic novels). Otherwise a bit of a breeze, if slower than yesterday.

41. 24:20, with LOI ALLA BREVE entered from the definition without spotting the reverse hidden.
    COD to OFFAL.

    Thanks Jack and setter

42. Dead easy until I came up against ALLA BREVE, tried things like HOLY BIBLE (guidance for players, such as the Manic Street Preachers). Funny the crazy ideas that come into your head. Btw, the protagonist of Around the World…. is Phileas, not Phineas Fogg.

43. 15.57

    Like Zabadak knew the term and saw the reversed LABREV part but could make nothing of the remaining AL…E bit so that was bunged in as my LOI. Good clue.

44. Didn’t know the term, but spotted the hidden ALLA BREVE after a good deal of head scratching. Bloody hiddens…

    Just outside the top 100 with a time in the 13’s, so much have been easy, even if I came to it late.

    13:21

45. 25 minutes but with a pink square for TAP-AND-RUN. I remember hockey players calling the umpire “ump” fifty years ago. LOI ALLA BREVE. Thanks Jack.

46. I knew VERONICA was SPEEDWELL, but only because I do crosswords. In real life I have no idea what it looks like. Shows what a sad cerebral universe I dwell in. Everything seemed to fly in there, to the point that I thought — like yesterday – I might be heading for a rare under-tenner. Alas I was held up by ALLA BREVE and CRESS. I thought it had to be a musical term, and ALLA BREVE was my guess – but I had to wait a couple of minutes to see the hidden reverse. Very clever. I often get chided by my children as a pompous old f**t when I tell them to say HAMBURGER instead of BURGER. I only do it now to wind them up. 12’28”

47. Enjoyed this. Having sat through endless Sponge Bob Square Pants episodes with my two boys when they were little, I knew what a patty was……Sponge Bob being an excellent Krabby Patty chef. I have course secretly loved the episodes as well!

48. 25:12, but having put NERVE at 4d, never corrected it as the subsequent crossers made it unrecognisable! Shabby behaviour on my part. Liked BUFFET CAR and HYENA

49. Did ok, but never saw ALLA BREVE, and wouldn’t have recognised it if I did! I thought that the second word had to be BREVE, but couldn’t link it to a musical direction. Ho hum. Also lazily bunged in RUDE where RANK should have been, and suffered for not returning to it, so never got FANZINE. Very much liked PREDICTION and LABYRINTH. Fast but inaccurate solving!

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