Times Cryptic Jumbo No 1687 – 10 Aug 2024

14 comments on “Times Cryptic Jumbo No 1687 – 10 Aug 2024”

1. I thought 4ac was an ugly clue–acquire a promenade?–but I don’t see anything wrong with a word in a clue changing its grammatical category; ‘take’ does the same thing. Or are you objecting to this only when the definition is involved? (In 53ac, I’d say the def is ‘being put back’, so no problem in any case.) DNK KISSOGRAM, needed the K to come up with it. I wrote ‘def?’ by 40d.
   I didn’t think about IXION at the time, but without the ellipsis and ‘apparently’, the clue would read ‘One Greek character attached to a burning wheel’; which is hardly cryptic.

   1. Thanks. Yes I meant the definition should match. As for 53A I read “being” as a link word between wordplay and definition – “being put back” doesn’t quite work for me as a definition.

      1. Using different tenses, parts of speech etc for the same word in the surface reading and wordplay is absolutely standard practice and very common. In today’s puzzle (29005 – slight spoiler alert) for instance, look at 3dn.
         In 53ac the definition has to be ‘being put back’, because the answer – REINSTATEMENT – is necessarily a noun and ‘put back’ cannot be, whereas ‘being put back’ is a gerund, and hence a noun.

2. I was going to suggest the same thing re 53 ac. as KG regarding the addition of “being” to the definition.
   I did find rein as a synonym of governor a bit loose; I thought it would be sth to do with horse-riding but couldn’t find such a connection.
   30 ac. – “apparently” because it’s a myth…?
   40 ac. I think “source of elec.” should be E?

   Many thanks to setter and blogger.

   1. Re 40A. My mistake. Thanks. Blog amended.

3. I had only one query re the parsing of SENTENCE having overlooked the Cockney indicator.

   I can’t see a problem with TAKE THE AIR. I took it as a classic example of lift and separate when parsing a clue .

   I also NHO SPAGHETTI STRAP.

   Perhaps the best known work by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is The Birds, the Prelude from which was heard regularly on TV for 12 years from 1965 onwards as the theme tune to the antiques programme Going For A Song. It’s something of a false attribution however as Respighi used pieces by earlier composers in this work and the Prelude was actually by Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710). Despite that, Respighi deserves credit for rescuing this delightful music from obscurity and giving it a new lease of life.

   1. Re TAKE THE AIR. Yes you have to separate “a promenade” to get the definition. My point was that “promenade” in the surface reading is a noun but the answer is a verb. A bit nitpicking perhaps, but it made me twitch.

      1. A is part of the wordplay, so can’t be part of the definition.

4. Re the parsing of SENTENCE, wouldn’t “to that place” be thence rather than HENCE?

   1. Interesting. THENCE = “from that place” and HENCE = “from this place” so I think “to that place” for HENCE is fine.

5. Yes, thanks John, makes sense. Now I’m pondering the connection between the here/there/where, hence/thence/whence, and hither/ thither/whither triads.

6. I thought this was quite hard and I’ve only just finished it this evening. I did not know IXION, and could not choose between him and the other chap IPION, so I had to look him up. Otherwise fine, eventually.
   4dn is a bit odd; I relied on “off your rocker” being equivalent to “off your trolley” and moved on

7. I found this reasonably straightforward, but I thought 30ac was a bit poor, an answer that’s sufficiently obscure to warrant clear wordplay but with other options for the Greek character.

8. 4ac – my Chambers has promenade as a verb, I read it as a separate word from the ‘a’ which is inserted in ‘their’

   29d – I believe the judge says ‘you are to be taken hence to…’

   54ac – in the parsing, I had SCI (science) reversed to give the requisite I in ‘Acoustics’

Comments are closed.