Times Cryptic Jumbo 1641 – viniculture on Yasgur’s Farm

8 comments on “Times Cryptic Jumbo 1641 – viniculture on Yasgur’s Farm”

1. I made no notes on this one as to difficulty, but judging by the lack of workings on my copy I think I must have found it reasonably straightforward. Not solved in one session though, as I would usually make a point of noting that down.

   I had one question mark on the parsing of PARAPET but I imagine that was supposed to be a reminder to go back and look at it again, which I then forgot about.

   My two unknowns were REACTANCE which has come up only once before in a Jumbo puzzle I didn’t do, and MOLE CRICKET which I was disappointed to find was not defined by ‘game’. Neither answer proved difficult to come up with.

2. I clearly enjoyed this one while solving, and thought the cluing was of a particularly high standard. It took me most of an hour, but nothing was particularly obscure or out of reach, though perhaps the Hippo reference was a bit niche. HAWTHORNE was not really known, but it turns out I read his Tanglewood Tales as a kid. The novelty of the HASHTAG clue (if it was such!) was a pleasant deception.

3. A toughie? I’ll take that. I had thought I was making heavy weather of a puzzle that wasn’t that hard. So, no need to be cross with myself for coming in the wrong side of the 2 hours. Unknowns included Hippo as the saint’s location (as predicted by Zabadak above) and (at the time) how “still” clued the “snap” of BRANDY SNAP, which only clicked a lot later.

   I thought I recognised the MOLE CRICKET when it emerged from the wordplay, so happily wrote it in, but I must actually have remembered the mole rat which featured here not that long ago. Quite a few neat clues, I thought, including SWAMPY, GOTCHA and USELESSLY (with “husband” meaning “use less”) my COD.

   Many thanks for the blog

4. Re HASHTAG: I usually call the # the number sign but a friend who worked with computers in the seventies insisted rather it was the octothorpe.

5. This Jumbo was just bang on! Of moderate difficulty, with lots of precisely worded – and therefore satisfying – clues. No horrible obscurities, and the slightly off-centre words (MAHOUT, ANIMADVERTS, MOLE CRICKET) were well clued so the cryptic parts led nicely to the solutions. A tiny quibble – isn’t PLONK a corruption of ‘blanc ‘ and so normally applied to a cheap white? Or is there a white Bordeaux? Best Jumbo for weeks !

   1. There are several white Bordeaux, usually a mix of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc, but I think these days plonk is often used to refer to cheap reds as well.

   2. The OED says: “Cheap wine of inferior quality. Also, more generally: wine or alcohol of any kind”
      .. and says it is originally an Australian slang term. It also says “Various popular etymologies have been suggested for this word, but they do not appear to be supported by the evidence.”

6. This certainly seemed tough. 1:38 after a 3-week run of c40 minute times. Looking back I don’t think there was anything particularly difficult but I had a heavy cold at the time so maybe the brain wasn’t operating at full speed.

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