Times Cryptic No 29057 — Wag the dog

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

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Considered MOG, but went with MUG.

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. DNF

    Gave up after 40 minutes, with AIRSTRIP, SQUARE, SNOWDROP, UTE and SHIPOWNER unsolved.

14. I know that I’m in a minority, but I don’t like this style.

    1. You are not alone.

15. 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!

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. Tough and got bogged down with Aristotle! Learning more each time so that’s a plus! Thanks all

19. Fared better than I hoped on this one over all: started off confidently with GRILLE and SNOWDROP, then EPEE and TIMOR LESTE ( which is what we folks down under always call it). In fact got them all apart from TIME SIGNATURE (NHO) and WATERY ( too complex). Enjoyed SHIPOWNER, BOOM TOWN, and DRAGON.

20. I agree this was an excellent puzzle. Needed the thesaurus for BRIM to get TEEM and then MEET, then wondering about it until I concluded that a racecourse could also be the name for a race MEET. AIRSTRIP took me a long time, and I had been well misdirected before arriving at the right Aristotle and SHIPOWNER. GRILLE was slightly befuddling, containing as it does an almost identical synonym for COOK. Can I also say that this excellent post and discussion really added to my enjoyment of this great puzzle.

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