Times Cryptic No 29093 — A marathon, not a sprint?

43:39. Well, that’s how I felt solving this puzzle anyway. Don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of absolutely delightful clues here (meaning surface reading, wordplay, word choice, etc), but I felt that a fair amount of the difficulty for me stemmed from using very uncommon synonyms or abbreviations. But let me parse the clues and I’ll get back to you.

Upon reflection, yeah, I still feel that way. But gosh darn there were some gems in here.

Across
1 Friend from Eastern Europe reported fall of King (9)
CHECKMATE – homophone of CZECH MATE
6 Part of leg somewhat laid back nurses start to ice (5)
TIBIA – A BIT reversed around I
9 Root cut, following usual number of strokes (7)
PARSNIP – SNIP after PAR
10 Looking for enlightenment they quickly run through plot (7)
BEMUSED – EMUS (they quickly run) in BED
11 No place for carriage in mighty caper (5)
ANTIC – GIGANTIC minus GIG (carriage)

Ah, GIG, was it. Fortunately I didn’t need to figure out that part during the solve.

12 I will not run out of highway (9)
INTESTATE – INTERSTATE minus R

Should have gotten this sooner!

14 Priest is missing a beat (3)
LAM – LAMA minus A
15 Nervous feeling, say, associated with Burton’s debut theatre part (11)
BUTTERFLIES – UTTER with B + FLIES (theatre part)

The FLIES are where the scenery are hung from, etc.

17 Waterproof, this is instinctive: spill tea! (5-6)
GUTTA-PERCHA – GUT + TAPER + CHA

Having understood GUT and CHA, and needing to fill in _A_E_ with reasonable letters, I thought I would try to find a synonym of ‘spill’. This wasn’t the right strategy. Eventually I thought of GUTTA-PERCHA, and TAPER at least is a word, so I went with it.

Now, look. Is ‘spill tea’ a nice phrase to work into a clue? Sure. Is ‘spill’ a nice synonym for a thin strip of paper used to light a candle? Undoubtedly. Wish I’d known it.

I don’t know, something about this one rubbed me the wrong way.

19 Introduction to Götterdämmerung that surprises me! (3)
GEE – G
20 Unsteadily take aim at Balmoral boiler (3,6)
TEA KETTLE – anagram of TAKE + ETTLE (Scots word for ‘aim’)

I count myself among those who tried to make TEA KIMITA or somesuch work. Eventually I just went with my gut and assumed ETTLE was a word I didn’t know.

22 Cryptic pictures on public transport (5)
REBUS – RE + BUS
24 Chinese agent engaged in Washington diversion (7)
HANGMAN – HAN (Chinese) + G-MAN (agent engaged in Washington)
26 Why writer stops working? Good you hear this about pen (7)
OINKING – O INK IN (why writer stops working?) + G

I mean, this is just brilliant.

27 Counterintuitively best fare from Bavaria — zilch for you in the end (5)
WORST – WURST (fare from Bavaria) with O replacing U (you in the end)
28 Church reader, fast one, keeps time (9)
GOSPELLER – GOER (fast one) around SPELL

Do not like GOER.

Down
1 Drinking this, the reverse of cappuccino? (5)
CUPPA – hidden reversed in CAPPUCCINO

Partial &lit, with the definition being ‘the reverse of cappuccino’.

2 “Sinner” for “sinker”? I’m not sure — “singer”? Let me think (7)
ERRATUM – ER (I’m not sure) + RAT (singer) + UM (let me think)

RAT as in ‘one who turns informer’. A charming surface.

3 Dangerous animal caught, nothing retarding cycles (4,5)
KING COBRA – C (caught) + O (nothing) + BRAKING (retarding) with the letters cycled

I simply cannot wait for the commentary on this one. It’s almost as if someone wanted to find the most extreme use of this wordplay device just to rag some of the commenters here. 😉

Nevertheless, well found, setter!

4 Post a couple of applications (11)
APPOINTMENT – APP + OINTMENT

Two very different kinds of applications! Once again, a hat tip to you, setter.

5 Periodically, new baby will want a drop of water (3)
EBB – every other letter in NEW BABY

Brilliant again.

6 Numbers clocked / by / my employer (5)
TIMESdouble triple definition

‘Numbers clocked’. Perhaps some will hate it, but I love it.

7 A bit miffed receiving only half as much rice (7)
BASMATI – anagram of A BIT around the first half of AS MUCH
8 Append residence, look, beneath this? (9)
ADDRESSEE – ADD (append) + RES (residence) + SEE (look)

When filling out an envelope, the residence goes after the addressee. A nice clue, provided you don’t look too closely at ‘look’.

13 Child’s character we think encapsulates “untrustworthy” (11)
TREACHEROUS – REACHER (Child’s character) in TO US (we think)

Thankfully I was able to get this one because I needed vinyl to parse this one for me. I did not know the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, aka Jim Grant.

14 The method underpinning entries in Crossword Championship spectacle (5,4)
LIGHT SHOW – HOW (the method) under LIGHTS (entries in Crossword Championship)

LIGHT is the answer to a crossword clue — I assume stemming from something like shining a light on the mystery? I did know this one.

16 Its influence is Sweet Charity in the setting for Les Misérables (9)
FRAGRANCE – RAG (charity) in FRANCE (the setting for Les Misérables)

vinyl parsed this one for me too. I see ‘rag day’ and ‘rag week’, but I don’t actually see RAG as being a synonym for ‘charity’. But FYI, AGR (Amanah Global Fund) is a UK-based charity, so we could very well parse this as AGR in FRANCE as well.

18 One pushing athlete, European, right to the very south of ground (7)
TRAINER – TERRAIN with E+R moved to the bottom
19 Being divine, cheese is tucked away by girl (7)
GABRIEL – BRIE in GAL
21 Eve and Adam finally ran into someone doing the Eden Project? (5)
EMMET – last lettetrs of EVE and ADAM + MET (ran into)

EMMET is a Cornish word for a tourist

23 Ridicule the people here about money (5)
SUGAR – RAG US reversed
25 Pain / riding horse (3)
NAG – double definition

79 comments on “Times Cryptic No 29093 — A marathon, not a sprint?”

  1. 70 mins but a lot of help needed in the SW, and many remained unparsed.

    CHECKMATE was a rapid write-in for FOI, but things really slowed down halfway through.

    Really liked INTESTATE, (“they will not”). Also spent ages with MITKIA etc, gave up and bunged in KETTLE.

    I tried many ways to get NO INK to work, but couldn’t get it, needed a reveal followed by a grin on seeing OINKING (LOI)

    Child’s character = REACHER was brilliant, but wasted on me as I biffed it. I’ve read a lot of them as well. I did actually parse KING COBRA with its cycling device, but at least half a dozen remained unparsed until looking at this blog.

    Does “numbers clocked” relate to a clock face, then why TIMES?

    Spent too long hovering over NAG, as I couldn’t account for the “riding”, still can’t.

    EMMET is Cornish for ants, and is what they call tourists. The Eden Project is in Cornwall.

    Anyway, great puzzle good LIGHTS, but a bit beyond my capability.

    1. Either literally numbers on a clock are TIMES, or (less charmingly but more literally) numbers measured with a clock are TIMES.

  2. For 12A “not” should be underlined since the definition is not “I will” but “I will not”. Several things that went over my head like the cycling in TRAINER and again at KING COBRA. I didn’t know REACHER in TREACHEROUS and I didn’t know ETTLE in TEA KETTLE. But I just took it on trust, and it all came green in the end. I am another who was unsure about NAG until I had the N and the G and so it just had to be, but with no checkers I wondered if something clever was going on. I also held off putting in GEE for ages since I couldn’t see where the EE was coming from, before I realized it was the full version of the letter G. Fun crossword.

  3. Easily the hardest of the week. Thoroughly enjoyed it, and just wish I’d finished parsing TRAINER and BUTTERFLIES. Was happy to remember Reacher and ETTLE…

  4. Very hard work completed in 88 minutes with a couple of lookups along the way e.g. I spotted the reference to Lee Child but didn’t know the name of his running character so I checked in order to help get to the answer.

    I bunged in several answers without understanding the wordplay and/or the definition e.g. 2dn where I still don’t get the definition. NHO ETTLE and failed on ANTIC.

    I’m torn between the high quality of some clues and the downright obscurity of rather too many.

    1. 2d: ERRATUM means an error (the plural is perhaps more familiar, “errata,” a list), often used by editors (like myself) to mean “corrigendum,” an error to be corrected! Which having “sinker” for “sinner” (or vice versa) would surely be. Very clever, the way “singer” was also brought into the surface. Brill!

  5. 16:12. There was some tricky stuff here, much of which I bypassed with biffs or semi-biffs. I particularly liked INTESTATE, though having thought of interstate early on it took me a long time to make the very small leap to the answer. I have never heard of light as the answer to a crossword clue which seems surprising. It is the 22nd definition for light in Chambers.

  6. I went offline after about 27′ to catch a train, with a half-dozen in the SE to do; probably took me 20′ to get them over lunch. DNK ETTLE, of course, assumed it meant ‘aim’. DNK the Eden Project, still don’t, but knew EMMET. DNK that GUTTA-PERCHA is waterproof; I only know it (learned the word in high school) because of Representative Brooks’s nearly fatal attack on Charles Sumner in the Senate with a gutta-percha cane. I have read a Reacher novel, couldn’t have told you who wrote it, so had no idea about TREACHEROUS. An impressive job by the setter.

  7. Got to the end, in 26’42”, satisfied. Didn’t know ETTLE, knew REACHER but wrongly assumed he is a child, only now understanding the TIMES clue (although we are usually rigorous about the title).

    Nice to see EMMET, liked INTESTATE. Jeremy, note that GOER often has sexual connotations, just like ‘fast’.

    Thanks jeremy and setter.

    1. Ah yes, now you mention it “Is your wife a…goer…eh? Know what I mean? Know what I mean? Nudge nudge. Nudge nudge. Know what I mean? Say no more…know what I mean?”

  8. A frustrating (and extremely slow) DNF – having finally created the unknown GUTTA-PERCHA, I discovered I’d invented a different church reader altogether.

    I enjoyed a lot of this, including Child’s character and the OINKING, but like others, found the overall effect rather exhausting.

    Thanks both.

  9. Time’s sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,
    Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand
    (To a Lady seen for a few moments at Vauxhall, Keats)

    I gave up after 30 mins pre-brekker with the Ettle/Emmet/Gman crossers unfilled. Pity, otherwise I liked it, mostly the couple of Applications.
    Ta setter and PJ

  10. Nowhere near finishing in the SW.I’ve never heard of GUTTA-PERCHA or EMMET. I make my tea in the cup, not even a pot, and certainly not in the kettle. Yes, some great clues, but too hard for me. Is Gabriel a God, by the way? I didn’t think Archangels were, and we now know that Archbishops aren’t either. COD to OINKING. Thank you Jeremy and setter. It was an unequal struggle.

    1. Ah, right, theology. I admit I thought the same: Gabriel might have been a divine messenger but angels aspiring to divinity were in for a fall. So I turned to literature, and Bathsheba Everdeen, who (in the end) thought Gabriel was a divine being. Will that do?!

        1. Ooh yes! But it might be as well that we Don’t Look Now in case out temperature rises to a dangerous 451 Fahrenheit!

  11. I found this hard and extremely enjoyable. I was relieved to see the completed message rather than the unlucky message and had to come here for the parsing of several clues. it reminded me of how things were when I started trying to solve The Times crosswords although this blog was not available to me but my wife usually had the answers.

    In my version 25d reads Pain riding horse (3) which I parsed as someone who is a pain and is riding you is a nag and a horse is a nag. So a nag as a small riding horse is something else I learnt today along with light, ettle, and Reacher.

    Many thanks.

      1. But NAG is explicitly defined as a ‘riding horse’ in Collins, and ODE says ‘a horse suitable for riding rather than as a draught animal’, so I think it’s more likely that’s what the setter intended.

  12. Definitely the hardest of the week made harder for me by the numerous Americanisms in 12ac, 19ac, 24ac and 26ac.
    Crawled over the line in about 50 minutes with ANTIC, TREACHEROUS and FRAGRANCE remaining unparsed.

  13. Got em all in just under 40 mins, though couldn’t fully parse half a dozen or so. I loathe the Age of Cycling Clues we seem to have entered and hope the device dies a quick and unmourned death.

  14. 16:05

    Wow, that was fantastic. INTESTATE and OINKING the clues of the year for me.

    I always thought that LIGHT in the required context was the series of white squares rather than the answer. Anyway, I knew the term.

  15. 53 mins for me, not sure how much the stinking cold slowed me down. FOI CHECKMATE, LOI NAG, not being too sure on the “riding” bit. V. glad GUTTA-PERCHA has come up here before. Quite a few question marks (“ettle”?!) but just as many ticks. COD 8d ADDRESSEE

  16. Gave up at 45 mins with much of the SE corner empty. Wouldn’t have seen GOSPELLER or SUGAR, which I’ve NHO as meaning ‘money’. Needed aids to get the also unknown GUTTA-PERCHA, which also irritated me. I was pretty pleased to get as many as I did, since this was not easy.

  17. Indeed a fine challenge, though I lacked the knowledge to make sense of TREACHEROUS and still lack the knowledge to make sense of AGR or GRA in FRAGRANCE (aha, light dawned even as I wrote that: RAG!). GUTTA PERCHA is one of those things that lingers in the mind from my childhood as the sort of thing you know if you’re an insufferable brat. Golf balls, I remember. I think I dismantled one once to try to find the stuff.
    Great clues, most of them pushing the boundaries of reason accounting for my 28.28 and surprise at no pinks.

  18. 16:17. I enjoyed this a lot, but I did think as z8 says that some of it pushed the boundaries. GUTTA-PERCHA for instance is a bit of an obscure term and very hard if you don’t know it, and ETTLE belongs in Mephisto really. But brilliant stuff.

  19. Rag week for students in the seventies carried the sense of organised festivity at the end of exam period to raise funds for charity, often involving publishing and selling rag mags, which were collections of mainly salacious jokes probably copied from other rag mags. Thankfully fallen into desuetude now, due to cultural change and the internet. But a time of relative innocence.
    ‘Spill tea’ was indeed such a brilliant surface it was impossible for me to think of the cryptic sense. A great puzzle as others have said.

  20. Good spot RodB.
    All correct in just over 30 minutes, but I didn’t parse treacherous, Emmett or tea kettle which left me with a slight feeling of dissatisfaction.
    We have had gutta-percha before, so no problems with that. Not altogether happy with the word like ettle in this sort of crossword.

  21. 55 minutes. V. good puzzle and satisfying to finish, though the parsing of ANTIC, BUTTERFLIES, TEA KETTLE and FRAGRANCE was beyond me. I also missed the triple def for TIMES as spotted by RodB.

    Favourite was GUTTA PERCHA. As well as making canes, insulating undersea cables and being a component of golf balls, it’s by used by dentists in root canal treatment; maybe it was the thought of that which rubbed up Jeremy the wrong way.

    Thanks to Jeremy and setter

  22. COB (pain = bread?) for NAG prevented completion of much of the South. Like others had INTERSTATE but couldn’t get the answer. Great clue. Amused to see the cycling device get another airing.. A big DNF but it’s helped pass the time on my much delayed train.

  23. That was really enjoyable. I really liked the unexpected and clever definitions, ‘I will not’, ‘you hear this about pen’, ‘a drop of water’, and ‘Numbers clocked’ had me stumped for a bit even after having the right answer.

    Having somehow finished in under half an hour, I was surprised to see the Snitch so high at 146. Normally I’d be stuck for longer when it’s tricky. Maybe I was just lucky today.

  24. I started with EBB and LAM. CUPPA was next after which CHECKMATE arrived. Things slowed down after that. I knew GUTTA-PERCHA from reading PG Wodehouse who often mentioned the gutta-percha pill being whacked by a brassie. TEA KETTLE held me up until I bowed to the inevitable and stopped trying to shuffle KAIMAT around. OINKING was an early arrival to much amusement. Further extraction of hitherto impervious meanings eventually resulted in an all green grid with HANGMAN LOI. A very tough workout! 38:28. Thanks setter and Jeremy.

  25. After using plenty of aids having been so slow to start that I thought it was going to be simply too hard, I took 70 minutes. I never heard of a riding horse (25dn). Nor evidently has Collins, since it immediately redirects you to horse riding. I imagined it was a triple definition, with riding something I wasn’t sure about. As was the case with much of this crossword (ettle …, TEA KETTLE, rag = charity …) but some of the clues were excellent. I liked ‘I will not’ for INTESTATE.

  26. Lots to enjoy about this puzzle, which defeated me after 20 minutes, but ETTLE & GUTTA-PERCHA seem a little unfair in a 15×15 daily. The latter was too much for me, as I was feeling confident about GOTTA and CHA, and couldn’t get _E_ to mean spill. Never heard of the… dental insulation?

  27. A real Friday special. Tough, but I made it. Another technical DNF as I had to confirm ‘ettle’ for ‘aim’ after writing it in first (which I thought showed admirable commitment).
    FOI CUPPA. LOI APPOINTMENT. COD a close call between INTESTATE, SUGAR and OINKING. There were several other clues of the first rank too.

  28. DNF, defeated by GUTTA-PERCHA, which I’ve never heard of (I also didn’t know taper=spill). ‘Spill the tea’ can also mean to share gossip, which didn’t help.

    – Failed to parse ANTIC
    – Didn’t know flies as part of a theatre for BUTTERFLIES
    – NHO lights=crossword clue answers so LIGHT SHOW went in with a shrug
    – Had no idea what was going on with TRAINER beyond seeing the definition

    Very tough. Thanks Jeremy and setter.

    COD Intestate

    1. Yes: my thoughts, except that I knew ‘spill’ for taper, as had a discussion with one of my students (a 91-year-old) on that very definition earlier this week. I have memories of lighting our geyser with tapers we called spills.

  29. 45:10 – tough and ingenious, but like all the best puzzles no doubt about the answers once you finally teased them out. Lovely.

  30. DNF
    Self-imposed time limit of 60 minutes left me with still over half to do. Chapeau to the sub-30 minute brigade.

    Thanks to Jeremy and the setter

  31. 46:55

    So much to enjoy with this puzzle, though I’m certain I missed a load!

    BEMUSED – saw the BED but didn’t get why a MUSE would quickly run – doh!
    GUTTA PERCHA – from enumeration and checkers, don’t know why this was in my head. Only saw the CHA bit.
    ETTLE – NHO
    HANGMAN – I simply had HANG as the Chinese and MAN as the agent
    TREACHEROUS – missed the parsing altogether
    FRAGRANCE – didn’t understand RAG = charity

    All far outweighed by the penny drop moments though!

    Thanks PJ and setter

  32. Very hard. Cheated throughout.
    11a Antic biffed. Clever. Came here to check; DOH!
    20a Tea Kettle. I was thinking of adding “ettle” “to take aim” into the Cheating Machine, but decided against. Just too damn rare and dialectical for me. So there! Was biffing this but didn’t believe it, so came here to check.
    6d Times.Biffed. Thanks to RodB above for the triple def spot. I had been assuming that multiplication was related to clocking numbers somehow; glad I was wrong.
    7d OWL club, bIsmati because I can’t spell and was lazy.
    13d NHO Jack Reacher, not sure about to us=we think, so biffed. Added Jack R to C.M.
    16d Fragrance. Biffed from NHO AGR in France, then spotted the RAG (week) which I thought was very vague but HHO.
    18d Trainer. I was proud to parse this.
    21d Emmet HHO. It took a while but was fun.
    23d Sugar, DNK sugar=money.

  33. GUTTA PERCHA was a write in from G?T and the enumeration for some reason – I can only think I’ve seen it here before. Many many unparsed – thankfully my biffing hat was firmly on today. HANGMAN was LOI and was a complete guess – NHO G-MAN, and still none the wiser after googling.

    Pretty unsatisfying despite all correct as there were so many my tiny brain didn’t get. Bravo setter & thanks to Jeremy for the blog.

    28:05

  34. 31.22, but no idea about a lot of the parsing, so not very enjoyable, and I continue to much regret the decision to allow living persons to feature in the puzzles.

  35. As a QC person who has had some success with the Cryptic of late, I had a look at this having finished the QC quickly today. Way, way above my head – could only solve 3! Looking at the answers, EMMET, GUTTA-PERCHA, (k)ETTLE, G-MAN all NHO, nor SUGAR = money or NG = pain. Dispiriting.

    1. To be fair many of the hard answers I’ve never heard of either! You learn how to piece them together from the wordplay. However GUTTA-PERCHA might be hard to do that with.

  36. 61’50”
    This ancient plater/nag had no ambitions other than to complete in one piece.

    However, all were parsed and only ‘ettle’ was taken on trust.
    This reminded me of a book on Patience*, perhaps penned by a lady who had run out of sufficient companions for Whist, or even Bezique. She categorised each version using The Three M s.
    Mystery: the extent of the face down cards. Must-ery: the extent to which your hand was forced. Mastery: the element of skill required.
    This had all three; mystery (what’s going on here?), mustery (that must be, ……oh no it isn’t [20a]), mastery (the setter’s skill, not mine).
    Bravissimo to both setter and Jeremy.
    PS * If anyone can recall this book’s title or author, I’d be very grateful, having misplaced mine.

    1. Ruth Botterill’s “The New Book of Patience Games: Mystery, Mustery, Mastery and some Jiggery-Pokery”?

  37. 38 WTE

    Or rather one unfilled and one momble. That one and HANGMAN where I desperately inked in HANUMAN which is a thing but not the right thing

    Absolutely kippered by TREACHEROUS and TRAINER though the punts were correct. The Child thing was very clever even though I’ve never read any of his stuff.

    Agree borderline obscure in places but I like Friday to stretch the boundaries

    Shout out to Jeremy for a tough blogging day

  38. Brilliant crossword – as Fred Trueman was fond of saying to a batsman that had missed a ball “it were too good for thee” and this was far too good for me. South West corner mystified me. NHO gotta percha and could not have got anywhere with it, other than cha. Lights for clues was completely new to me and I’ve been doing these for 8 years now. Also missed the REACHER reference and missed oinking even though I’d thought of noink.
    Bravo setter, I retire chastened until tomorrow.

    Thx for the blog Jeremy

  39. 23:44. A lovely puzzle where I had to eke out the answers one by one, finishing with OINKING and SUGAR. DNK the character Reacher or the word “ettle” so those two went in on trust. I failed to parse ANTIC and TRAINER so thanks for explaining them Jeremy. Too many good clues to pick a favourite. Thank-you Jeremy and setter.

  40. LIGHTS are called that because they’re not the black squares. Can refer to whole answers or the squares that make them up.

        1. Thanks, I just mean that once the clue has been solved some further manipulation may have to take place to produce the letter sequence entered in the diagram. Difficult to be specific because the Listener puzzles are so diverse in theme. I rarely undertake them, other than the occasional maths ones, because the time commitment can be quite substantial and difficult to anticipate, but I do peruse the solution published 3 weeks later.

  41. A shade over an hour (on paper, on a train, with distractions). A hard but satisfying solve. LOI GOSPELLER and several unparsed until coming here.

    Thanks setter and blogger!

  42. 61 mins with trainer and hangman unparsed – I too flirted with ‘Hanuman’, but remembered playing the diverting Hangman game. Hadn’t heard of ettle but assumed it must be a Scottish word for aim, which turned out to be the case. Some great hidden definitions!

  43. 58:31 – Really pleased to finish a puzzle with such a high SNITCH rating without aids in under an hour (just). Several answers did get thrown in without full understanding though, including 26 my LOI. Lots to love here – INTESTATE has to be my COD. No problem with Reacher – I have a complete set of all Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books. There were a couple of words I didn’t know though – ETTLE & FLIES (as part of a theatre). Also, I’m still not sure what the word Championship is doing in 14d.

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