Times Cryptic No 29057 — Wag the dog

This was an excellent puzzle, which I enjoyed bashing my head against at the time, and enjoyed even moreso while writing the blog.

My time was a rather slow 41:36. I had a lot of the big answers taking me into all parts of the grid, but once there I had a very tough time. Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of the synonyms felt very subtle and took effort to find.

PS. I could not access the puzzle through the Crossword Club. Nor yesterday’s. Is this still happening for any of you?

PPS. Update: The link off the Crossword Club site was not working, but upon refreshing several times, I could get it to load.

Across
1 Stretch of land that’s been cleared shows error (8)
AIRSTRIP – AIRS + TRIP
6 Fogeyish / figure (6)
SQUARE – double definition
9 Subterfuge / the concern of wags? (5,8)
FUNNY BUSINESS – double definition
10 Grating, cook last of cheese (6)
GRILLE – GRILL + E
11 No words after failing first of papers, a bloomer (8)
SNOWDROP – anagram of NO WORDS + first letter of PAPERS
13 Tenner originally put in bucket by coercion, unquestionably (3,7)
FOR CERTAIN – first letter of TENNER in RAIN (bucket) next to FORCE

Bucket as a verb.

15 Reversible brim for Royal Ascot, say? (4)
MEET – reversal of TEEM (brim)

Brim as a verb.

16 Sword, the sharp blade broke finally (4)
EPEE – last letters of THE SHARP BLADE BROKE
18 Country’s assorted lotteries taking in millions (5-5)
TIMOR-LESTE – anagram of LOTTERIES around M

A biff from the enumeration for me.

21 Where urban development has evidently gone with a bang? (4,4)
BOOM TOWN – cryptic definition (I think?)
22 Thin, twisted hooks put away (6)
WATERY – WRY (twisted) around (hooks) ATE (put away)

Really liked this one.

23 Score mark when difficult game turns, keeping one in match (4,9)
TIME SIGNATURE – angaram of GAME TURNS around I, all in TIE (match)
25 Puff happening — to be one? (6)
DRAGON – DRAG (puff) ON (happening)

Reference to Puff, the magic dragon.

26 Bird on atoll in tangle? (4,4)
REEF KNOT – KNOT (bird) next to REEF (atoll)
Down
2 Fire on combustion ultimately out of control? (7)
INFERNO – FIRE ON + last letter of COMBUSTION, anagrammed

Nice &-lit.

3 Gas around warmer white liquid (6,5)
SINGLE CREAM – SCREAM (gas) around INGLE (warmer)

Took me quite a long time to find the right gas and the right warmer!

4 Frost recited — his composition? (5)
RHYME – homophone of RIME

Liked this one a lot. Spent a lot of time trying to figure out how VERSE might work.

5 Old kingdom with power over large country (7)
PRUSSIA – P + RUSSIA

I feel like this exact clue was in a puzzle recently, no?

6 Captive in luminary, Aristotle, say? (9)
SHIPOWNER – POW (captive) in SHINER (luminary)

Really liked the penny drop moment on this one. Felt like I knew the correct Aristotle, and I did, but I couldn’t see the right synonyms, in part because I didn’t know luminary could mean ‘something in the sky that shines’. Once I figured out POW, I could see the rest of the answer.

7 Victoria’s vehicle adorable with roof off (3)
UTE – {c}UTE

An Australian name for a small pick-up truck.

8 Reinstate aggregate beneath base (7)
RESTORE – ORE (aggregate) under REST (base)

My last in. This was so hard for me. Did not even remotely know the right definition of aggregate, and even though I knew the answer should start RE-, I couldn’t see REST = base. Ah well.

12 Large vehicle upending dirt onto fresh scrap (6,5)
DUMPER TRUCK – MUD reversed + PERT (fresh) + RUCK (scrap)

Please correct me but I think RUCK = scrap is a sports things. Let’s say rugby.

14 Transported to a prison, killer in trap? (3,6)
RAT POISON – anagram of TO A PRISON
17 Machiavellian line penned by children’s author (7)
PLOTTER – L in POTTER

Beatrix Potter, duh. I was thinking, in what world is Harry Potter a children’s author? Never mind that I read all the Beatrix Potter stories as a child, and have never read any of the Harry Potter books…

My problem here was the definition. Did not know that Machiavellian could be a noun, but of course it seems obvious now.

19 Christmas away fixture consuming a football boss, say? (7)
MANAGER – MANGER around A

curryowen points out that ‘away’ is probably referring to the carol Away in a Manger.

20 Sink to bottom of heap in effect again (7)
TORPEDO – TO + last letter of HEAP in REDO

Really liked the delicate wordplay here.

22 Braid is ’eld by us? (5)
WEAVE – WE ‘AVE
24 Withdraw first of money that’s been raised in kitty (3)
MOG – GO (withdraw) + first letter of MONEY, reversed

I didn’t really see what was going on here, until I finally remembered MOG and just biffed the darn thing.

64 comments on “Times Cryptic No 29057 — Wag the dog”

  1. I thought this was going to be very hard and I wasn’t wrong. But the wordplay helped when I couldn’t see the literal and most of it was really clever I thought. Managed to see rain for bucket after a while which gave me FOR CERTAIN. REEF KNOT came easily as we’ve had knot for bird very recently, and yes, PRUSSIA came up recently too, last Thursday with almost the same clue. Liked DRAGON and WEAVE. COD to SINGLE CREAM which had me thinking for some time before I remembered scream/gas and of course ingle.
    Thanks J and setter.

  2. Gave this one a really good go after committing to up my game recently. Alas, by 22′ I couldn’t for the life of me see AIRSTRIP or RHYME.

    I was convinced 1A had to be some kind of error beginning MIS-, so was really led up the garden path there. Annoying.

    DNK or had forgotten that ‘rime’ is frost, so didn’t feel too bad about that one.

    More importantly, it was a great puzzle, the kind that makes you feel smart for solving it but is really down to the good clueing.

  3. Took an hour to solve five clues then finally got some crossers and spent another hour solving. LOI DRAGON
    Thanks Jeremy

    PRUSSIA was in Thursday last week starting column 9 compared with 8 today. The clue used “kingdom’s” and omitted the “with”

    The UTE is short for utility which used to be a car with the back half behind the front seat changed to a tray back enclosed by about 18 inch sides with the rear hinged so it folded level with the tray. Then it was never a truck. They were purchased instead of a station-wagon.
    Nowadays they are always called UTE’s and have become purpose
    designed small trucks but with the similar sides and rear fold down They generally have an enlarged cabin to provide 2 rows of seating for workmen.

    The RUCK in both Rugby Union and Rugby League is where the ball is. In RU this is often in a rolling maul or scrum-like structure so it really is a scrap between a lot of players. In RL it is the ball carrier with up to 4 tacklers stopping him/her. It is the area of scrapping brutality.
    In American football it is called the line of scrimmage.

    1. Ruck is also slang for a fight, akin to a rumble, barney or bundle, originating in prison according to Chambers.

  4. PRUSSIA made me wonder for a second if this was an earlier puzzle reposted by mistake. Ha. Turned out to be the best one this week—at least—and one that I didn’t attack with the single-mindedness a quicker solve would have demanded. But I didn’t get too frustrated, and finished my last five, starting with SHIPOWNER, after breaking for dinner. They all came quickly then.

  5. I was pleased to have my faith restored today, both in myself as a solver and in the quality of setting. My time (48 minutes) wasn’t brilliant but compared with yesterday’s 90 minute DNF disaster I counted this as a reasonable success that I was able to achieve by applying skills and knowledge acquired over the years.

    My time could have been quicker if I had gone with my first instincts on several clues. For example at 15ac I needed some convincing that ‘brim / TEEM’ could be synonymous and that MEET could be applied to what I would call a race meeting, whereas I think of MEET as a gathering of riders, horses and hounds before a fox-hunt.

    Another delay was over RESTORE where ‘base / REST’ and ‘aggregate / ORE’ needed some thinking through so I waited for more checkers before I was satisfied with it.

    I had similar misgivings as Jeremy over ‘Machiavellian / plotter’ and I hesitated before going for it. This was one where I needed to trust the wordplay and check after completion.

    I spotted the workings at 19ac as did Curryowen with the full wordplay as MANGER ‘Christmas away feature’ consuming A.

    NHO TIMOR LESTE but knew TIMOR so with checkers in place the remaining anagrist presented very few possibilities.

  6. 24.32

    Quick start; pause; then getting the Aristotle reference seemed to open everything up for me. Knew Timor but still fingers crossed for that one at the end. Thanks Jeremy and setter

  7. Having been out for many drinks at a works leaving do last night, this wasn’t the easiest puzzle to face first thing. 48 minutes, finally finishing off with the unknown country and oh-that-Aristotle crossers.

    Hard work, but not as hard as last night’s drunken-but-eventually-successful attempt at yesterday’s crossword, whose broken link on the club site had stymied my normal morning solve!

  8. 48 minutes with LOI RESTORE a biff. Penultimate was SHIPOWNER, which was all I knew Onassis for until he married Jackie K. An enjoyably tough puzzle which finally fell into place. COD to DRAGON. I liked Peter, Paul and Mary even though nobody sang Dylan like Dylan. Thank you Jeremy and setter.

    1. I always like people who DON’T sing Dylan like his Bobship – he is, after all, unique.

      Particular favourites are Joe Cocker’s “Watching the River Flow”, and the second attempt, taken more slowly, at “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” by the Byrds.

  9. 20.55
    Excellent stuff, especially DRAGON and WEAVE.
    Biffed TIME SIGNATURE, SINGLE CREAM.
    ARISTOTLE, ARISTOTLE was a b*gger for the bottle…

    1. And Socrates himself, was… a fantastic footballer, and a great man. IMHO. Disappointed he never won a Mundial, partly his own fault.

  10. A serious house on serious earth it is,
    In whose blent air all our compulsions Meet,
    Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
    (Church Going, Larkin)

    Well, what a toughie, especially the top half for me. I fell for all the excellent misdirection, eventually twigging ‘that Aristotle’ as LOI after 45 mins.
    Very clever stuff.
    Ta setter and PJ

      1. Surely the clue to 4d doesn’t work if there isn’t a poet called Frost? If so Robert is the only one I know of.

        1. Of course. Sorry, it was a weak joke, because probably his best known poem is “The Road Not Taken”.
          Often mistakenly thought of as the road less travelled.

          1. Oops, I should have known. Apart from Shakespeare plays I had to learn/read at school and AA Milne that Dad read to me as a child I know hardly any poetry at all, so your joke went right over the proverbial.
            I enjoy your quotes every day. Andyf

  11. I wasn’t the only one who found this hard then! My loi was MOG which I only got after finally, after many minutes, getting DRAGON where for a long time I had PRISON (pr is on) pencilled in but couldn’t see how prison was the answer or make sense of 24dn. When I finally wiped prison from my mind it still took several minutes to get dragon and then I had a choice of 5 vowels for MOG. I heard of moggie (moggy?) but not mog till now, and also didn’t understand the clue till coming here.
    So anyway to cut a looong story short I finally got there in 41:13.
    I liked the Aristotle clue.
    Thanks setter and blogger

  12. Just under 40 minutes.

    – Didn’t parse TIME SIGNATURE
    – Unfamiliar with rime frost but RHYME had to be right
    – Took a long time to remember Aristotle was a SHIPOWNER
    – Wasn’t sure how WEAVE worked, even though I see now that it’s pretty straightforward

    Thanks Jeremy and setter.

    FOI Ute
    LOI Square
    COD Single cream

  13. 23’28”, pleased to finish this excellent puzzle accurately. Was doubtful until TIMOR-LESTE and SINGLE CREAM fell, along with SHIPOWNER (nicely misleading, I kept trying to get ‘sage’ round the outside).

    COD though, to MANAGER.

    Thanks jeremy and setter.

  14. 15.21

    I found this really hard until all of sudden I didn’t. Thoroughly enjoyable stuff, with lots where I smacked my forehead when the answer appeared.

    That particular ARISTOTLE was new to me, but I was happy enough to believe the philosopher had owned a ship! I’m not quite sure what ‘aggregate’ is, so it meaning ‘ore’ made sufficient sense. I read plenty of Judith Kerr’s MOG books when I was younger.

    Thanks both.

  15. About 45′ of fairly steady solving, very few write-ins that I can remember. Everything seemed to need some thought, so very happy to have finished with LOI SHIPOWNER only after seeing “shiner”. Spent a lot of time trying to think of (or make up…) obscure Greek Schools. A few went unparsed towards the end, such as WATERY and MOG (didn’t see go=withdraw). Thanks Jeremy and setter.

  16. A couple of biffs for TIME SIGNATURE and SINGLE CREAM, so thanks Jeremy for unravelling. LOI was WEAVE, which was a contender for COD, but MANAGER gets my vote today.

    Pretty quick for me – I can easily take this amount of time on a puzzle scoring 80 on the SNITCH.

    20:10

  17. 15:33. Similar experience to Amoeba, both on the puzzle and the Judith Kerr books. We also read the Mog books to our kids when they were little.
    Ruck (from ruckus) and scrap are just words for a fight. Nothing to do with rugby.

  18. Took 20 mins to see the first clue, and after half an hour I had only six more. Gave up: I have a life, unfortunately.

  19. DNF. Too hard. Some very elliptic defs. 8d I can’t find Ore in any def of aggregate for instance. Lots more like that. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

    1. Under ORE, Chambers gives the first definition as: “A solid, naturally-occurring mineral aggregate, of economic interest, from which one of more valuable constituents may be recovered by treatment”

      It presumably wouldn’t appear under AGGREGATE as other aggregates are available.

  20. Classic! 26.03 and everything a Times should be. I particularly liked the two football clues (especially the away fixture) which had nothing to do with football, and the elegant, must-be-deliberate crossing of BOOM TOWN and RAT POISON.
    My last in was the splendidly diabolical SHIPOWNER, after wondering whether prisoner or poisoner could be spelled with two Ns, and whether Aristotle had anything to do with hemlock. That Aristotle diverted me onto my youthful musing on how the fragrant Jackie, fresh from catching her husbands brains, could end up with the short, chubby and no doubt greasy Greek. Dontcha just love racial profiling?

    1. Oh! Didn’t notice, but I felt compelled to add “Boomtown Rats” to my Cheating machine, so I did clock it subliminally I guess.
      Perhaps Jackie K O thought that A O would be playing away from home less? I always felt Maria Callas had something to resent.

  21. Two wrong in 36 mins. I put in WITHER and THERETO instead of WATERY and TORPEDO.

    Very tough but fair. COD: SHIPOWNER.

  22. 32 mins, but the WE ‘AVE explanation passed me by, duh! LOI RESTORE, like our blogger, I was stumped as to why.

  23. 33 – toughest of the week, as is only decent and proper. Struggled to get a toehold at first but it all accelerated smoothly enough once I began to fill them in.

  24. Excellent puzzle and excellent blog from Jeremy that alerted me to some of the subtleties I had missed while solving in less than ideal circumstances (there’s a movie on the TV). 44.20, which I thought was pretty good considering that for much of that time I feared a DNF. Like others my LOI was SHIPOWNER and I didn’t like PLOTTER = Machiavellian, people might say ‘X is so Machiavellian’ but not ‘X is a Machiavellian.’ The great Australian UTE is sadly disappearing, being replaced by giant American pick-ups that destroy smaller vehicles on impact.

    From Standing in the Doorway:
    I’ll eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m dry
    And live my life on the SQUARE
    And even if the flesh falls off of my face
    I know someone will be there to care

  25. 18:28

    This is what they want. This would have made an excellent puzzle for the grand final last weekend. Tough but fun to solve.

    I was slow starting until I homed in on the level of difficulty them found I’d solve a flurry of clues then get stuck for a while. Rinse and repeat.

  26. I echo Penfold’s view. It was a struggle, but a worthwhile one. TIMOR-LESTE went in with fingers crossed, and MOG seemed likelier than ‘mug’ though I had to come here for the parsing of both this and my LOI.

    FOI SQUARE
    LOI AIRSTRIP
    COD FOR CERTAIN
    TIME 20:42

  27. GRILLE was FOI, then I hacked my way around the grid eventually finishing with AIRSTRIP, which took up several minutes all by itself, in 30:23. Fairly tough I thought! SHIPOWNER was a stand out clue. Thanks setter and Jeremy.

  28. I could see that this was going to be very difficult and so I started to use aids from quite early on, with the result that I was often using them when they weren’t really necessary, but even so the difficulty of some of the definitions, both overall and within the clue, made it extremely hard and I took over an hour. Aristotle = shipowner, airs = shows, rain = bucket (certainly not the sort of rain we’ve often been having recently here), teem = brim, go = withdraw, and several others, all just about OK in retrospect but tricky. But on the whole, a good tough crossword.

  29. Got there eventually. I enjoyed some of it, but got a bit fed up trying to unravel the north-east corner, nearly gave up in fact. It speeded up once I realised that 11a might be an anagram. After that, RESTORE was fairly obvious and then, as with Jeremy, the Onassis penny dropped, followed by SQUARE, which should have occurred to me much sooner, which left me with 7d, my LOI; since I only had to find the middle letter and the clue pointed to a synonym of “adorable” with the first letter removed, I decided it must be (c)UTE, although I didn’t know the word existed and feel the world would be a better place if it didn’t.

    Elsewhere, MOG went in rather than mag/meg/mig/mug) purely because of “kitty” in the clue; I couldn’t see how it parsed at the time.

    Thanks for the explanations – in particular TIME SIGNATURE, which was another one that I biffed on the basis of checkers and a reasonable knowledge of musical notation.

  30. 47:54 but with one error (two pink squares). Defeated by SHIPOWNER, where I put in CON for the captive, instead of POW, in a desperate throw at the end. And I would have liked that clue if I’d got it. Lots more to like though. COD to DRAGON for the light relief

  31. 36:36

    A little tricky to get going – just GRILLE and MEET from the first pass of acrosses – thought of CREAM early but which sort? Needed the S to parse correctly. The country took a while, but once the M was in place, I worked out the rest – only knew it as East TIMOR. Eventually settled on the correct Aristotle. There were so many enjoyable Ikea answers – TORPEDO, DUMPER TRUCK, DRAG ON, MANAGER though my COD goes to WATERY which was also my LOI. Also noted the crossing of BOOM TOWN RAT POISON – very amusing.

    Thanks Jeremy for working it all out, and to the setter for the challenge

  32. 30:54
    Lots to like about this tough but fair crossword, with excellent cluing throughout and some real stand-out clues including SHIPOWNER. Only one unknown (TIMOR-LESTE) but the checkers helped put everything in the right order.

    As always after the fact I think I could/should have been quicker but thanks to the setter for an enjoyable solve.

  33. DNF, shooting myself in the foot by carelessly taking the first letter in “combustion” instead of the last in 2 down and arriving at INFORCE which I persuaded myself might be an alternative spelling to “enforce” and might mean “control”. I was pleased that I’d managed to crack such a tricky clue, when I’d actually missed a correct answer that should have been much more straightforward. That meant I had the wrong checking letter for 13 across and no chance of getting FOR CERTAIN. In fact the checking letters had me speculating that NET CURTAIN might fit the clue in ways that I could not see. All in all I made a bit of a dog’s breakfast of a crossword that would have been tricky enough without my mis-step.

  34. I really enjoyed this puzzle, and managed to finish in 37.14 with everything parsed. The only one I hesitated on was TIMOR LESTE where East Timor was more readily brought to mind, but assumed it to be a derivative of a frenchified Timor L’este. My LOI was SHIPOWNER where I fell into the setters trap of spending far too long in Ancient Greece, when a more up to date source was necessary.

  35. 36:05 of steady away solving. Some fabulous clues today, particularly liked watery and inferno. Took me forever to see what kind of strip we needed in 1a and I believe we had shipowner at some time in the recent past and I spent forever trying to make a word out of shiconner. Lesson clearly not learnt as I repeated that process today.

    Thx Jeremy and setter

  36. 27.04. Excellent puzzle which I really enjoyed. Loved funny business and shipowner, even after struggling to find a relationship to the philosopher.

    Guessed mog but there weren’t many options once you got the crossers. Never totally parsed time signature but was confident that was the answer.
    Thx setter and Jeremy.

  37. DNF,

    But I agree it was a cracking puzzle. I hardly ever persevere to the hour mark, but this merited it. Weave and watery were my downfall.

    Thanks all.

  38. I thought this was seriously difficult, really appreciate you passing some of these. SINGLE CREAM in particular was just never going to be possible, and a lot of the short synonyms necessary for wordplay were ones I was never going to think of. I got about halfway through in 45 minutes.
    I loved “Christmas away fixture” to clue MANGER.

  39. I think pretty much everyone liked this. Well, so did I, even though it took me an hour and a quarter. An absolutely delightful puzzle, the clues just as they should be, very hard to unbraid but imminently fair. More of the same, please!

  40. Liked that, the right level of toughness, difficult but no obscurities. L2I SQUARE and SHIPOWNER – in this part of the world fogey is always preceded by ‘old’ and means a doddery old man, whereas a square is usually middle-aged or younger but reactionary. JFK Jr’s stepdad’s penny didn’t drop until I saw shipowner fit the crossers. Both not helped by being unsure of MEET, and the REST part of restore. A welcome finish of a challenging puzzle after a couple of DNFs this week.

  41. DNF. Three short: the DRAGON/MOG corner, and the SHIPOWNER (I thought the luminary had to be ‘Star’, and I was looking for an obscure school of philosophers that Aristotle belonged to).
    I liked the WATERY clue.
    Having been successful on Thursday, and so close here, I feel I am improving.

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