Times Cryptic 29240

83 comments on “Times Cryptic 29240”

1. 25:21
   I took ‘unsophisticated’ (backward-looking spa town) as the def in 25ac, which of course meant wasting a lot of time on 12d and 24d.

2. jack – Madison Avenue is where all the big ad agencies used to have their offices, hence the TV show Mad Men. Madison Square Garden is a sports arena – moved twice now from it’s original location near Madison Square, and presently over the rail terminal of Pennsylvania Station.
   Took me a while to realise that cclaim was going to be a bad spelling rather than a bad homonym. Otherwise and interesting mix of American (MadAve, Nashville) and UK (Sandpit, Tin Opener) usages.

   1. Thanks. From what I read it sounds a bit like ‘Fleet Street’ in the UK which is still used to refer to the press in general even though all the newspapers relocated decades ago.

      1. There’s Wall Street, Saville Row, probably others.

3. My LOI was PILSNER, correcting my US-centric SANDLOT.
   Didn’t know YAH either, just ignored that.

4. I did OK, but took a little longer than I would have liked. While easy ones like ajar, chapman, moleskin, and Madison Avenue (well, easy for an American) went in right away, I struggled with the anagrams for The Oaks, threescore, and tin opener. I did have naive briefly, but persistent knocked it out early on. Sharp practice just didn’t want to come forth, and I was hung up on engender where begetter should go.

   Time: 26:28

5. 17:02. COD: SPHINX

   1. Agreed!

6. Two short at the one hour mark SANDPIT & PILSNER.

   NHO YAH, in the 90s toffs were lampooned as saying “OK, YAH”, but I never heard them as just YAHs. YAHOOs maybe.

7. 10:52. I got quite stuck in the SW corner, partly because I had NAIVE at 25ac. This is one that really can go either way.
   DNK this meaning of CHAPMAN.
   YAH with this meaning appeared on 11 March this year. You blogged that puzzle, jackkt, and you seemed to know it then!

   1. I don’t think knew it (other than in the example given ‘Okay, yah’ which is not really an equivalent) so I must have looked it up for the blog and then forgot it. I’m not surprised as I can’t remember things that happened yesterday.

      1. Same here. I don’t remember what I did yesterday and I have very little memory of things that happened years ago (I don’t remember much about my childhood, for instance) but somehow my mind throws up a small random word that came up in a puzzle a few months ago 🤷🏻‍♂️

   2. “When chapman billies leave the street, and drouthy neibors, neibors meet ….”

      1. That rings a bell. Tam O’Shanter? (‘O’ Level text in 1973)

         1. Yes. The ignorance of the English about anything to do with Scotland – or Ireland, for that matter – never ceases to amaze me.

   3. NAIVE also fits with DETERMINED at 12d which has a MINE in it though doesn’t parse otherwise.

      1. As an incorrigible biffer I’m glad I didn’t notice that…

8. I couldn’t get the town of Lille out of my mind at 6 down.

   1. Same here to start with; but I couldn’t get anywhere with it and then the NASHVILLE penny dropped.

9. 11:55. I finished with MADISON AVENUE which was either unknown or vaguely known. Thanks to Paul for explaining the Mad Men link – I always assumed the programme was so named because the men were mad! Maybe that is true as well.

   The other US entry confused me until just now. I had thought to myself that surely NASHVILLE could only be a state capital and not a country capital, but the penny just dropped as I was typing.

10. The lower half flew in on this but I had a mighty struggle on the top half. Not helped by an incorrect WEMBLEY AVENUE (it was Wembley Way I was thinking of) influenced by watching the Championship Playoffs this weekend. Thankfully it didn’t take too long to correct once I got two of the downs.

    I worked my way through it only for an incorrect LOI of BESETTER. Realised straight away when the dreaded pink square came up.

    I couldn’t see how CHIN worked or which country NASHVILLE was the capital of but gave myself a slap on the head when reading blog. Suppose they are always obvious when you read them.

    COD: SHARP PRACTICE

11. 28 mins so pretty quick for me. Oddly enough my LOI was EVIAN which should have gone in a lot sooner.

    I knew MADISON AVENUE was the centre of the advertising world, so that went in early.

    I thought TIN OPENER was a great clue and nice for the rival TELEGRAPH to turn up in the Times!

    Thanks Jack and setter.

12. 36 minutes with LOI CHAPMAN with fingers crossed. The NW was the last to fall with the double C in ACCLAIM leaving me dubious. I did put in MADISON AVENUE faintly on my first run-through. I liked SHARP PRACTICE but COD to NASHVILLE. A good puzzle. Thank you Jack and setter.

13. Just under 25 minutes.

    – Had heard of MADISON AVENUE without knowing it’s a term for the advertising industry
    – Was unsure about the harp bit of SHARP PRACTICE, but only because I failed to read ‘instrumental run-through’ together
    – Didn’t know that meaning of CHAPMAN
    – Took ages to work out the anagram for THE OAKS, even though we’ve had it recently

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    FOI Solar
    LOI Skinny
    COD Sphinx

14. 30 mins. Very slow start with FOI AJAR then accelerated to a sprint finish as the wavelength clicked.
    LOI: THE OAKS. I could only see SOAK and KAOS and needed the crossers.
    Seeing the Torygraph reminded me of doing their crossword just before the last election, there were 3 anti-Labour puns in the clues. I didn’t dare read the editorial.
    I really enjoyed this one, thanks setter and jackkt.

    1. Like many right-wing proprietors seemingly untroubled by doubts about the correctness of their philosophy, they can get rather spiteful when they realise that not everybody shares their dedication.

15. 34m 42s
    Thanks, Jack, particularly for PILSNER and SPHINX.
    Like you, I’ve never heard of TOFF as YAH. And although the name CHAPMAN is very familiar, I didn’t know its origin.
    Liked ‘capital of country’. As is well known, when you play a C&W record backwards you get your wife back, your car back and your job back….

    1. …and your dog, Ol’bluey, is resurrected.😃

       1. 👍

16. I didn’t know the YAH for toff meaning, but AJAR, AYATOLLAH and SPHINX went straight in. Didn’t know the required meaning of CHAPMAN, so that went in with crossed fingers. AVENUE went in from crossers, then MADISON seemed to ring a bell from boxing promotions, which was obviously the Square Gardens connection, but it got me to the answer. BEGETTER was LOI. 21:56. Thaks setter and Jack.

    1. I’m pleased to get confirmation of my suspicion that the TV introduction to basketball and hockey games, boxing matches, and circus events, which is a booming “Welcome to Madison Square Garden, the world’s most famous arena…” is factually wrong in addition to being annoying.

       1. Presumably this is the local dialect meaning of the word ‘world’, as seen in the phrase ‘World Series’.

          1. Presumably.

          2. ‘World’ in World Series allegedly refers to the New York World newspaper which sponsored the early play-offs.
             Then again, it may not. . .

             1. Snopes says not, and that the NY World as a sponsor idea first appears about 1990.

                1. That’s as may be, and it’s an interesting take on it.
                   On the other hand I find it hard to believe that the Americans were completely unaware that baseball was already widely played in Japan, Cuba and Canada- countries they had extensive connections with-and where the game was in many aspects, more organised and advanced than in America.
                   Bearing that in mind, calling it the ‘World’ Series and at the same time declaring that only American teams were allowed to play in it, would seem rather bombastic? Unless it was one of the earliest instances of deliberately using sport as a means of international propaganda?

       2. 😁

17. 55 minutes recorded but at least 10 minutes I was otherwise occupied so not bad – for me anyway.
    NHO YAH but biffed AYATOLLAH anyway. Same with CHAPMAN.
    Distracted for too long by the upper case T in 19ac.
    Does anyone say CHIN CHIN nowadays other than in crosswordland?
    Thanks to jackt and setter.

    1. They still say “chin-chin” in Italy and France, where they spell it “tchin-tchin”; yes, nobody here says it any more, but since when did obsolescence stop a word from appearing in the Times crossword?

       Apparently it came into Italian/French, and from there into English, from Cantonese, where it is an informal greeting. (I didn’t know this – I looked it up.)

       1. I occasionally say ‘chin-chin’, although in a bit of a jokey manner, as yes, it’s a bit old-fashioned.

       2. Thanks for that.

18. 12:14
    Mostly straightforward but hung up at the end for a while on the 2/9 intersecting clues. CHAPMAN meaning new to me but couldn’t be much else once the checkers appeared.

19. Failed on SPHINX and BEGETTER (both good clues, my fault) after a half hour, a bit disappointed because I started well in the top half. Thanks Jack.

    From Desolation Row of course:
    EINSTEIN disguised as Robin Hood, with his memories in a trunk
    Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
    He looked so immaculately frightful, as he bummed a cigarette
    Then he went off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet
    Now you would not think to look at him that he was famous long ago
    For playing the electric violin on
    Desolation Row

20. 18.17 with the top right and SKINNY resisting most. I didn’t spot the separation of S and A for SKINNY, and KIN for people is not an easy jump.
    Isn’t GREAT HELP one of the all-time exemplary anagrams, along with FLIT ON CHEERING ANGEL, and more recently I’M AN EVIL TORY BIGOT?

    1. From another era of politics: I LEAD SIR and WILD AGITATOR MEANS WELL. You need to know a middle name for the second one.

21. I’m surprised no one has yet commented on the term ‘moleskin’ being referred to as ‘hide’. It is made from cotton, of course, and has nothing to do with poor old moles except perhaps having a passing resemblance to a mole’s ‘skin’.
    Nevertheless a most enjoyable solve in 21m so thanks setter and Jack for the one bit I didn’t quite see: that the ‘pit’ in sandpit referred to an orchestra.

    1. I think you’re thinking of Moleskine, with an E at the end! The hide of a mole is indeed known as moleskin

       1. Collins spells the ‘hard-wearing cotton fabric of twill weave used for work clothes, etc’ without an E.

          1. Ah, I seem to be thinking of the trademark. Chambers only gives the mole-skin.

             1. My Chambers says ‘a superior kind of fustian, double-twilled, cropped before dyeing’. Apparently velveteen and corduroy are also varieties of fustian.

                1. I must remember that for future puzzles…

    2. ‘Moleskin’ also refers to the fur of the animal: ‘the dark grey dense velvety pelt of a mole, used as a fur’ (Collins).

       1. It was used by plumbers to wipe joints made of solder. The hair of the mole goes both ways, to allow it to reverse in its hole without discomfort. That makes it ideal for the plumbers if they can catch the little blighters.
          Moleskin trousers are a thing, but not sure why.
          Looked it up. Moleskin is the woven fabric. Mole’s pelts are not called moleskin so the clue is a bit dodgey. See wiki entry below:
          “Moleskin is a heavy cotton fabric, woven and then shorn to create a short, soft pile on one side. The feel and appearance of its nap is suede-like, less plush than velour and more like felt or chamois. The word is also used for clothing made from this fabric. Clothing made from moleskin is noted for its softness and durability. Some variants of the cloth are so densely woven as to be windproof.
          Its name is due to the soft brushed hand of the fabric, similar to mole fur. Though mole pelts have been used to make fur clothing, they are not referred to as “moleskin”.
          Moleskin is also a term for soft, dense adhesive pads stuck to the skin to prevent blisters.
          Structure
          Moleskin is woven of carded cotton yarn in a dense weft-faced satin weave. The surface is napped or shorn to “produce a suede-like finish”.

          1. Not sure where that comes from but it’s wrong. Collins, Chambers, ODE and the full OED all confirm that the word is used to refer to the fur. The OED gives nine citations for this sense between 1652 and 1993!

             1. OK, I take it that you are right, after all Wikipedia is noted for allowing people to place alternative facts, but this doesn’t look like one of those, so it’s a mystery.
                A separate Wiki entry, with a pointer from the moleskin article, has this:
                “Pelts
                Moles’ pelts have a velvety texture not found in surface animals. Surface-dwelling animals tend to have longer fur with a natural tendency for the nap to lie in a particular direction, but to facilitate their burrowing lifestyle, mole pelts are short and very dense and have no particular direction to the nap. This makes it easy for moles to move backwards underground, as their fur is not “brushed the wrong way”. The leather is extremely soft and supple. Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII of the United Kingdom, ordered a mole-fur garment to start a fashion that would create a demand for mole fur, thereby turning what had been a serious pest problem in Scotland into a lucrative industry for the country. Hundreds of pelts are cut into rectangles and sewn together to make a coat. The natural color is taupe, (derived from the French noun taupe meaning mole) but it is readily dyed any color.
                The term “moleskin” for a tough cotton fabric is in common use today.”

                1. When it comes to the meanings of words any of the usual dictionaries is more authoritative than Wikipedia. OED in particular provides the citations to prove it!
                   One of the citations, from 1836, refers to ‘imitation moleskin’, which perhaps explains how one meaning led to the other.

                   1. Fair enough! Thanx, Andy

    3. I toyed with Muleskin for that reason

22. I enjoyed this one, all done in about 25 minutes.

    It would have been less than that if I hadn’t entered ‘NAIVE’ straight away as the answer to 25ac on first pass; I didn’t realise it was wrong until much later when I came to solve 12dn; after that, the rest of the SW corner went in quite quickly.

    Took me a long time to see BEGETTER, my LOI.

    I didn’t like the clue to 1ac because I don’t think it really accounts for the first ‘C’ in ACCLAIM, but the answer couldn’t be anything else.

23. 15.35

    Have struggled a bit recently but this was a better effort. Thought MADISON AVENUE was top notch and liked SPHINX as well. Thanks Jackkt and setter.

24. 45 mins, over half of which was spent agonising over AYATOLLAH and SPHINX – both fine clues that should have caused the penny to drop sooner. Also a little surprised by hide=moleskin, but hey – nothing else fitted.

25. There must be something very odd happening, although perhaps it’s just age. I took over an hour on this one, taking quite a while to get started and becoming so bogged down with about 30% of it done that I used aids to get me going again. I did enjoy the country capital, though.

26. Reasonable effort, only to be scuppered by having put in NAIVE – as a few seem to have done, then overwritten the down clues without looking properly at the grid, leaving EAIVN as my spa town. Bah.

    Apart from that glaring error, my LOI was INGLE, and I liked the puzzle and finished in a reasonable time for me in the late 14’s, but definitely an error on my part rather than a typo, so it goes down as…

    DNF

27. I really liked this one. Took me about 45 minutes but got there in the end, went astray with NAIVE instead of EVIAN at first and EMBER instead of INGLE but those were put right. I liked so many – SPHINX, CHIN for example – and of course as an ex Adman I knew Madison Avenue. Nice work Mr Setter.

28. I put SUNSPOT instead of SANDPIT, before seeing sense.

    About 20 mins.

    Nashville was nice.

    1. I also considered SUNSPOT

29. 33:24, with MOLESKIN and SANDPIT my last two in.
    SPHINX was my COD.

    Thanks Jack and setter

30. I initially parsed 13A incorrectly “EIN STEIN”, translates to A (article) STONE (small[ish] weight).

31. 25minutes on the Ipswich to London train. Some nice clues here. Cheers.

32. 27:46, finishing in the north-east with SANDPIT, SPHINX and PILSNER. Like Tringmardo and GideAndre above, I only know MOLESKIN as a cotton cloth and never knew it could actually be the skin of a mole. I’ll cross the moleskin waistcoat off my Christmas present list. I liked CHIN, THEOREM and STEPSON

33. 21:29

    Even-paced solve with just a few notes:

    ACCLAIM – didn’t spot the parsing for this
    AYATOLLAH – not familiar with YAH as a toff, but know of ‘OK YAH’ and YAHOO
    CHAPMAN – NHO as a pedlar – every day’s a schoolday
    MADISON AVENUE – needed all of the checkers for the first word, vague recollection of watching the first episode of Mad Men and never watching again…
    EINSTEIN – took some convincing as was wondering whether OZ or LB would appear in the answer
    SKINNY – as for others, took a while to see that South and American needed separating
    BEGETTER – my LOI, and only entered when I thought of BETTER for Trump
    MOLESKIN – in the process of entering MULESKIN when I remembered MOLESKIN
    NASHVILLE – I too wondered of where, NASHVILLE was the capital

    COD to SHARP PRACTICE

    Thanks Jack and setter

34. 9a Ayatollah, DNK Yah=toff, but didn’t waste much time on that.
    Doh, lift and separate. 17a Skinny. I was still wondering why Sny was a South American city long after I moved on with a shrug. The only SA city of 3 letters I could think of was Rio, and several San and Sao Somethings that might get abbreviated. Thanks jackkt.
    25a Evian (Les Bains). Entering Naïve didn’t help here. I was not alone I see.
    26a POI Telegraph. We don’t usually get competing papers (except FT and i of course.) We do get the Sun but that has the same ownership.
    Thanks jackkt and setter.

35. I fell five short, with a mistake on IMAGINE, and didn’t get the cleverly constructed SKINNY, MADISON AVENUE, SPHINX and AYATOLLAH.
    A very well constructed puzzle.
    Thanks Jack and Setter.
    Didn’t our late friend “The rotter” work on Madison Avenue?

    1. You may be right, but it sounds more like Horryd territory than The Rotter’s. H certainly mentioned a company on Madison a couple of times.

       1. Sorry, you are right. It was Horryd. I got them mixed up

36. 32 mins but all parsed correctly. Spotted the naive/Evian trap so waited till I had some crossers!

37. As a very occasional attempter of the big crossword I was surprised to see a living person referenced in the clues – I thought the monarch was the only one allowed.

    Not a fan of the EVIAN / NAIVE ambiguity and also thought (m)EMBER worked as an alternative to (m)INGLE.

    Enjoyed SHARP PRACTICE and the capital of country.

    1. That rule was relaxed last year.

38. It took me a long time to get started on this one, and I had only written about six answers in the first quarter of an hour. But then I seemed to get into the setter’s head, and completed it in 41 minutes. The resolution of the tricky anagrams at 8dn, 12dn, and 14dn all helped, but I (mis)spent too long trying to shoehorn the Donald into 19ac. An enjoyable struggle.
    FOI – EINSTEIN
    LOI – BEGETTER
    COD – SHARP PRACTICE
    Thanks to jackkt and other contributors.

39. 33.43 I found this easier than yesterday’s though a lazy biff of DETERMINED followed by NAIVE didn’t help. MADISON AVENUE was first in. LOI CHAPMAN was new. AYATOLLAH confused me because I thought yat was a variant of eyot but it’s actually a gate. Thanks Jack.

40. I also made heavy weather of this taking 32:02
    LOI was SKINNY which took me over the half hour mark
    Thanks Jack and setter

41. I’m another who put in EVIAN backwards at first, but I was suspicious it might be the other way around so I was careful with the checkers. I live in the US so the idea the MADISON AVENUE is the center of advertising is well known. I don’t know if it really even is. We have Sand Hill Road round her as the center of tech venture capital, and while there are some VCs there, a lot are not. But “Sand Hill Road” means venture capital like Madison Avenue means advertising. SKINNY was my LOI. I’m always tricked by “south american city” being SNY or SLA (or “cambridge university” being MIT for that matter, especially since I went to the one in East Anglia).

42. Around 35 minutes – I thought this an excellent puzzle.

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