Times Cryptic No 28614 – Saturday, 27 May 2023. Easing toward Summer.

29 comments on “Times Cryptic No 28614 – Saturday, 27 May 2023. Easing toward Summer.”

1. LONG JOHNS: I took ‘pants’ as a verb, =LONG (I long to go).

   1. Exactly.

   2. Thanks. Much better.

2. Yes, this was an easy one. I couldn’t make anything of the cryptic for Provincal, and don’t find the blog explanation very convincing. A little disappointed we didn’t get a visit from the famous 3rd-century martyr, St Airhead.

   Time: 34 minutes

   1. 😄 St Airhead!

      Wikipedia: « Historically, the term Provençal has been used to refer to the whole of the Occitan language, but today it is considered more technically appropriate to refer only to the variety of Occitan spoken in Provence.… Provençal is also the customary name given to the older version of the Occitan language used by the troubadours of medieval literature, when Old French or the langue d’oïl was limited to the northern areas of France » and Provençal, or langue d’oc (lenga d’òc, to its native speakers) to the south. Like you, I wasn’t sure how that makes for “two languages.” Here we actually have three senses for the word: all the versions of Occitan, the language of the troubadours, and the contemporary dialect.

3. 39 minutes. Like others, I didn’t understand the ‘two languages’ element in the PROVENCAL clue. Nor did I understand ‘three men in a rowing boat’ at 23ac. LUCE as a fish was unknown to me or possibly forgotten, but it doesn’t appear to have come up before.

   None of the above affected my solving significantly but I was generally a bit on the slow side.

4. 22:14
   Ditto everyone on Provençal. And ditto Jack on the 3-man crew; I thought there were eight, forgot about the 4. Puzzled by NICHE; H can represent a hotel, but vice versa? I liked STAIRHEAD in that a flightless bird is used. But COD to LONG JOHNS.

   1. Hotel represents H in the NATO alphabet.

      1. [slaps forehead (his own)]

         1. Kevin, if you’re not signed up to receive it you may have missed Mick Hodgkin’s bulletin today which discusses single-letter abbreviations and the NATO alphabet in particular. In the light of recent discussions here I found it very interesting. Here’s the link .

            1. Thanks. I thought I was receiving the bulletin, but evidently not.

5. Above the clue for LONGJOHNS, I wrote ‘Faraway toilet’ you’d be out of breath when you got there, and a smiley face. I did parse as comments above though.
   Like others, I didn’t know the reason for ‘two languages’ and ‘Three men in a rowing boat’ assuming it might have something to do with the novel.
   I BIFD AUTOBIOGRAPHER parsing after and needed the blog to understand the parsing of LOI CIRCA and EXCERPT.

6. 78m 12s of which 30 mins was spent on PROVENÇAL. Far too obscure for a regular crossword in my opinion.
   Did like CREW CUT, though.
   Thanks, Bruce.

7. Agree easier than usual. FOI LODESTAR, LOI CREW CUT COD LONG JOHNS. The second language delayed and still puzzles me. the only criticism of an otherwise excellent puzzle. The Langue d’oc might be a clue to this but I always thought this was spoken in the eponymous area to the west of Provence, not in Provence, which spoke the lamgue d’oui. Thanks, Setter and Brnchn.

8. Breezed through the left hand side of this but came unstuck a bit on the right. Took me too long to see and then work out 6ac BASIS, 7d STAIRHEAD and 15d PROVENÇAL. But got there in the end in the customary hour or so. I’ll never be speedy! Liked 6d BURNT, for some reason. Thanks to all.

9. 90 minutes. All done in an hour except for BRITTANY, which I would never have got if I hadn’t consulted a list of peninsulas.

10. 28.33 but thought there might be such a thing as a WIND CHAIR and a distinguished cross. I can see now that that was a nonsense!

    Rather a good crossie I thought. Some nice surfaces. Take the point on the definition for PROVENCAL but the w/p was gettable.

    Thanks Bruce and setter

    1. He he. I thought of WIND CHAIR too. I eventually decided there was no such thing as a D.C.

11. I mostly enjoyed this, but like others the definition for PROVENÇAL had me scratching my head. I also couldn’t work out what role “another” was playing in HEAVE TO. It seems superfluous to me and the lack of any explanation here hasn’t persuaded me otherwise yet.

    1. It‘s another E(uropean) as the blogger says?

       1. To have “another” of something, there has to have been a previous instance of it, no? So where was that in this clue?

          1. “Have to” has one e in it. You have to add another e (European) in order to arrive at “heave to”.

             1. You’re probably right, but referring back to a letter in a clued synonym seems kind of indirect and unfair to me. Oh well…

                1. At first scan, I suspected the definition was “stop on voyage”. Once I dredged the term up from memory (and the helpers), the wordplay was clear.

12. 33 minutes. Didn‘t think about the Provencal thing at the time, but I think it can only be referring to the difference between medieval Provencal and the modern dialect. My Loi was actually SING(L)E, so everyone finds different things hard I think.
    Thanks setter and blogger
    Steve

13. Pleased to need help with PROVENÇAL, BRITTANY and NICHE only (had pencilled in ‘aitch’ thinking it must have something to do with NATO alphabet – it did, but not in the way I thought!). Liked WING CHAIR and LONG JOHNS. A better performance than usual for me. A very enjoyable hour. Many thanks Bruce.

14. DNF – another ‘wind chair’ here. Enjoyable otherwise.

    COD Secular

15. 57 minutes, but most of the puzzle was quite easy. WING CHAIR, DARWIN and NICHE gave me a little trouble, but STAIRHEAD accounted for the last 10 or 15 minutes of solving time all by itself (I had to think of the word in the first place and then find the calm and the bird in it). CREW CUT is very good, once you have it explained to you.

16. Really enjoyed this: right up my alley, as we used to say. LONG JOHNS went straight in (not on), and thereafter the answers fell steadily. That is, apart from being completely foxed by 11a where I was working on a letter count of 5/2 instead of 2/5 ( bit dyslexic I think), and had determined that the expression had to be “stone me!”; which of course threw 2 and 3 d out. On eventually rereading the clue I performed the slap to the forehead (a lot of it about these days) and got it right. So all present and correct in about 50 minutes – with plenty of interruptions. CODs to LONG JOHNS ( are they still around?) and STAIRHEAD, though CREW CUT was pretty good too.

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