Times Cryptic No 28512 – Saturday, 28 January 2023. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog?

31 comments on “Times Cryptic No 28512 – Saturday, 28 January 2023. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog?”

1. 11ac needs to be ‘bean’ for head.

   1. Thanks.

2. 20:01
   NHO MOREISH (LOI); I don’t know what to do with ‘flooded by’. Biffed IGUANA, parsed post-submission. Knew RESPIGHI, don’t much care for him; he is best known for his ‘Pines of Rome’ and ‘Fountains of Rome’, and his ‘Ancient Airs and Dances’.
   Bruce, your sentence lacks an S; ‘jumped’ should be ‘jumps’.

   1. When younger I always enjoyed those pieces of Respighi Kevin mentions. Also a favourite was The Birds -lively and cheerful. The Pines of Rome includes a short electronic recording of a nightingale’s song which stirred a lot of controversy then, and still. I would imagine Respighi is not one of astro_nowt’s favourite composers!

      1. I have to say I still enjoy Respighi – all the pieces mentioned, which is his best-known output. Wonderfully evocative, and none the worse for that. The movement about the Via Appia makes me think he’d have made a terrific film composer.

      2. RESPIGHI – not someone I knew
         My cultural moments are few
         An old rocker am I
         And assume this Eyetie
         Gives headbangers nothing to do

3. 17m 35s That’s my second or third fastest time! And, as a bonus, I’m astonished to find myself ahead of Kevin G!
   Apart from finding this very easy, my only other comment is on RESPIGHI. I lived just outside Catania for three years. I saw ‘Piazza Ottorino Respighi’ marked on a map and imagined it must be a shaded sylvan oasis in the urban jungle. I was disappointed to find it was just a concrete eyesore with a petrol station in one corner.
   Thank you, as ever, Bruce.
   PS….I was a bit baffled by ‘flooded by’ as well.

   1. If the river enters the home, the home is flooded by the river; R enters (HOME IS)*, maybe?

4. I could hardly believe MOREISH is a word, so that may have been my LOI, don’t recall.
   From my copy, I can see that I wondered about “flooded,” but eventually saw what that is supposed to mean, anyway (as Kevin has it).

5. 24 minutes. I noted this as rather easy for a Saturday puzzle. My only unknown was CARL the Peasant. It was helpful that I had delayed tackling this until the middle of the week after I had researched the names of Noah’s sons for my QC blog last Monday. I’m sure we had a dodgy definition of SIGH in another puzzle I blogged recently but I haven’t been able to find it. Found it now defined as ‘complain’. I think ‘express regret’ is a lot better..

6. I hardly remember solving this, except for moreish at the end. It is clearly indicated by the cryptic, despite my disbelief that such a word could exist, so it must be the answer. Everything else was very straightforward.

   Time: 30 minutes

   1. MOREISH was very common here at one time and I was aware of it from childhood onwards. It may have featured in a TV ad campaign for something. Maltesers, perhaps?

      1. It’s clearly a UK word, from the US comments, and it’s a word I still use.

7. No problem for me with MOREISH. It was a word my mother often used when I was a kid. 37 minutes for me, all green. I don’t remember any particular hold-ups. To be honest, I don’t remember much about this crossword. I’m another who had to piece together the NHO RESPIGHI, although it was not my LOI, which was GEOTHERMAL.

8. Quite quick, this. I knew Respighi, only because it came up somewhere else quite recently .. possibly in a TLS. Carl, I had heard the word but thought it was a bit more upmarket than peasant. But it is a very old word, dating from a time when “peasant” was still a respectable thing to be.
   Another regular moreish user here..
   So far as pangrams are concerned, I never notice them. Some claim to find them useful, but I can’t say I ever have.

9. I have always considered pangrams, like ninas or themes, occur when the setter wants to set himself an extra challenge, which is fine when there are little or no compromises to the surface or definitions, and recall one quadruple pangram where this was indeed moreor less the case. I also recall a puzzle wher the letter E occurred neither in the clues nor the answer. Subject to the caveat above, such tricks add to the general fun for solver and setter alike, and could do more if solvers are warmed before they start.
   I found this puzzle on the eassy side, whip h wS just as well as i had to take a screenshot ahead of a four hour flight. Moreish has been in common use in SE England for about 30 years.

   1. As a native of SE England I remember moreish in general use a lot earlier than 30 years ago – definitely in the 1950s and 1960s which is about as far back as I go. According to SOED it has been around since the mid-eighteenth century.

      1. Second that; my mum used it daily in the 50s and 60s.

         1. I first heard the word when I was well into my adult years, recall liking it and thinking it a clever word which had probably been recently coined over the pond. Wrong on both, it seems, though it probably was coined rather than evolved, perhaps in the 19th century. My COED describes it as “Brit., informal”, which explains why some US contributors NHO it, and also why it took so long to enter my vocabulary. Knew Respighi, but not Carl.

10. As others – I found most of this easy enough but NHO RESPIGHI, my LOI.
    I constructed his name from the clue but it looked so unlikely I tried again and got REPPIGNI (using Pine -homophone). Then I looked them up.
    MALADIES was my favourite.
    David

    1. Same experience and COD here.

11. Both pangrams and lipograms are discussed in the Glossary. That quintuple pangram is an amazing feat.
    https://timesforthetimes.co.uk/glossary

12. I can’t remember much about this crossword. Moreish has always struck me, for no good reason perhaps, as a frightful twee word. I think the music for ‘Going for a Song’, the antiques program of the 60s with Arthur Negus, which I imagine started them all, was by Respighi. His Ancient Airs and Dances (Graces?). He was quite well-known, I thought. But perhaps I’m one of the few who like ‘that’ sort of music and doesn’t appreciate (or, more likely, has never heard of) what Richard Osman calls ‘famous’ songs. Famous indeed.

    1. Moreish is familiar in Australia too. More likely to be used in the dining room or kitchen than at the pub, but “twee” is harsh!

       1. Yes you’re quite right, I think I was being a bit harsh in calling it twee, but I did say ‘for no good reason perhaps’. Just an irrational personal feeling.

13. 20.22

    Same as others. MOREISH straight in – probably use the word more frequently than most of the other words in the puzzle. But RESPIGHI painfully pieced together at the end. Never heard of the chap.

    Thanks all

14. My notes say that I had filled in all the LH side before anything on the right! No NHOs. Some odd vocabulary, such as STABLEST and OUTRAGING. LOI 13A EXTRACTION. Not much else to say.

15. 11:30. I knew of RESPIGHI but not CARL. I didn’t notice it when solving but ‘flooded by’ is a pretty dodgy containment indicator if you ask me.
    Interesting that MOREISH is completely unknown to our American friends. A very commonplace word here.

    1. Clearly, countries divided by a common language!

       Actually, it’s quite a familiar experience to look at an answer in one of these puzzles and think, “do they really say that in England? Oh well, they must do.”

16. Straightforward solve for me, as far as I remember. Didn’t know carl the peasant, but with the checkers SCARLET couldn’t have been anything else.

    COD Theatrics

17. Few unknowns slowed me down (RESPIGHI, CARL, OUTRAGING – really?), but otherwise pretty good, apart from getting really foxed by fox at 1a, to which I was attempting to give a ‘foxed book’ sort of meaning.
    Enjoyed the puzzle.

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