Times Cryptic 29363 – rubies, carbuncles, and sapphires

54 comments on “Times Cryptic 29363 – rubies, carbuncles, and sapphires”

1. 22:52. definitely on the wavelength today so fairly whizzed through. on the face of it, seemed quite hard, with some interesting vocab and an &lit or 2. LOI was MAINLY. NHO TRILITHON but seemed likely…

2. From SMARMY to PSALMIST in 20:20 with TRILOTHON and PSALMIST needing some serious thinking time. Easier than many Friday offerings of late! Thanks setter and William.

3. Good one, late in the day after a fine game of golf. Not too hard for a Friday. I liked PSALMIST once I had thought to lift and separate ST DAVID. Some Like It Hot is one of my 3 fav movies of all time. Have to admit I biffed it and didn’t parse it. TRILITHON I knew about as was brought up not far from said Stonehenge. AUTOTIMER was a bit odd, but stuck it in. Does smarmy mean slick?
   26 minutes. Thanks for the blog W_j_s

   1. No it doesn’t !

      1. agree

4. 28’58”, which is pretty fast for me on a Friday. I’ve never seen the film, but I knew it starred Tony and Jack for some reason, though Keith eluded me until I came here and found him. Put me down in the ‘like’ column for REPUBLICATION and AUTOTIMER.

5. 34 mins with NOISOME last in, needed all the helping letters due to not getting ‘sovereigns gift’. Would never have understood the KEITH bit

6. Did it this morning in 41 minutes and then forgot to post. I had the feeling that NOHOW meant not at all or something like that, but the American and the British English seem to differ, according to Collins: American ‘in no way’, British ‘in any manner’. NHO TRILITHON but pieced it together.

7. There seemed to be a lot of synonyms which were enoungh in the neighbourhood to verify an answer once it was otherwise solved, but were not really close enough to home to help with the solving itself.
   Otherwise, I like the Some Like It Hot answer, but boy oh boy do I get fooled by reverse cryptics.

8. I’ve left this till late in the day, and solved with my attention not completely on the job, so not timed. I found the majority relatively straightforward although the last six clues took some solving, and were time consuming. If I were to hazard a guess I would estimate fifty minutes to complete. Getting on for about ten minutes were spent on my LOI which was, yep you’ve guessed it TRILITHON, which I finally managed to construct from the clueing. An enjoyable puzzle that I was pleased to finish with all correct and parsed.

9. 28:11
   COD PSALMIST.
   LOI MAINLY

   Thanks William and setter

10. Defeated by SE corner so used aids to get NHO TRILITHON (I had TRI…N), then the rest fell out quite quickly. Didn’t understand the KEITH bit of 4 so thanks for explaining.

11. I normally avoid the Friday puzzles, but picked this one up and surprised myself by making reasonable progress early on, before slowing and then grinding to a halt with loi Trilithon needing aids. I still have no idea why Wired means Tense, and Nohow might as well be a foreign language, but at least they were solvable. Now that I understand the misterious reference to Keith, 4d gets my CoD vote. Invariant

12. Done Sunday evening as usual for my Fridays. Not so hard and I got it completed in 28’45. Quite proud to have solved LOI TRILITHON. Like many others, I am sure, I took PRINT INVOLVING STONE at first to mean a word meaning PRINT, with an S or ST inside. That would have been a double-wrapper — with the star-sign bit on the outside of PRINT which was in turn outside STONE. Not unheard-of, but it couldn’t work because the interior letters were -I-H-. No way to get an S in there and have a workable word out of -IH-. Then I saw the LITHO connection. Sorry for going on. Good fun thanks.

13. “Your vibe attracts your tribe — keep it crystal clear.”

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