Times Cryptic Jumbo 1561 – light the blue touch paper

14 comments on “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1561 – light the blue touch paper”

1. I don’t recall having any problem parsing LORELEI.

2. I also had no problem with LORELEI
   Until I came here

3. Finally got everything in around 90 minutes over several sessions. Didn’t know ASSIGNAT, SATINET, CATHERINE WHEEL, or SELL THE PASS but was able to enter because of hints in clues and because they looked plausible. Really needed blog for clarification- thanks.

4. DNK SURGICAL SPIRIT, SELL THE PASS, ASSIGNAT, LUG, BOOK in the ‘shown a card’ sense. MONDRIAN took me a long time because I thought he had two A’s; as in fact he had, originally. I don’t recall anything particularly COD-worthy.

   1. Kevin, the “target” word in a recent ST clue writing contest was YELLOW CARD and several entries, including mine, had BOOK as the definition.

5. I didn’t recall KEY RING or LORELEI probably because they’ve escaped from Jumbo 1546. This one wasn’t too hard and I finished in 39 minutes but… lazily not parsing CATHERINE WHEEL I ended with a pink square in CATHARINE. Grr. I didn’t know SELL THE PASS. SILLIEST was my LOI and I particularly liked HASTIER, LONG WEEKEND and OTHER RANKS. Thanks Penfold and setter.

6. 1:25:29. I’m happy with that, except for one silly error – spelling RESISTANCE with an E. So once again, to claim success, I have to invoke kapietro’s law which says that one pink square is perfectly OK in a Jumbo. I wrote in IRISH and MEDAL without knowing why so thanks for the blog for these and all the rest. I liked SURGICAL SPIRIT but COD to LORELEI

7. Oh you’re all so funny.

   Apologies for that, LORELEI and KEY RING were ghosts from a previous blog.

8. Thanks to the setter for both PLEIADES and SUPERNOVA.

   Noting Penfold’s reference to the fact that the PLEIADES are near Taurus, next time you see that marvellous cave painting from Lascaux showing the bull, note also the little cluster of black dots above it. These are thought to be the PLEIADES, and the composition as a whole is thought to relate to the night sky. This implies that the astrological association of those stars with the shape of a bull goes back a very long way indeed

9. A decent workout at 54.20 with nothing tempting me to look up answers. Mind you, I thought SELL THE PASS was something to do with chasing the leather orb, so was not helped much by the definition here.
   I chuckled at Plato’s gall bladder, which can’t happen that often.

10. As has become my habit, I waited for the blog to solve this, so it’s fresh in my memory. I was therefore a bit baffled at first by the references to LORELEI and KEY RING.
    For me this was one of those that felt much harder than it was. There are a lot of rather obscure words and references, and some of the wordplay is tricky, but somehow I did it in a little under 20 minutes.
    I struggle to see how the definition in 13ac works. ‘Something of enduring value’ has to be an object, which INFLATION-PROOFING isn’t, however hard you squint.
    My last in was – you guessed it – APOCRYPHA. Judith is a very biblical-sounding name so I quickly figured out that I was after some variety of mumbo-jumbo.

    1. I think I just about justified it on the basis that the act of inflation-proofing (something) is a thing to do that has enduring value.

       1. Hmm. It creates enduring value, it imparts enduring value but does it have value itself? You must be a bit better than me at squinting!

11. I liked this one, hard but not too hard. I agree with Keriothe about 13ac, a bit iffy.
    A day late coming here, so appear to have avoided loreleigate..

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