Times Cryptic No 29285 — Blame it on the root canal?

72 comments on “Times Cryptic No 29285 — Blame it on the root canal?”

1. A stinker! Never would have got BUMPTIOUS in a million years. CONTUMELY another where I had all the checkers but couldn’t come up with the answer, not helped by not knowing ‘NT’ for conservationists. Saw BAGATELLE pretty quickly but KNICK-KNACK held out for ages. Didn’t know PTOSIS but guessed correctly where to put the letters. It had to be ATTIC but also didn’t know its other meaning. Knew SKEIN from years ago when I wanted to find what a flock of geese was called other than a gaggle, which is when they are on the ground. GAFFE took a lot longer than it should have. Had a mer at SO TO SPEAK as I thought ‘marinade’ was only a noun, but after looking it up I see it can also be another term for marinate. Didn’t know the monkey in NAGASAKI but biffed it.
   Thanks and well done Jeremy.

2. 27:41
   Very fast for me for a Friday, though the last couple took a while. Several DNKs: SKEIN, ATTIC (not in ODE, in my E-J dictionary), MONTRACHET (ODE doesn’t mention the cheese, E-J does), and of course PTOSIS (I spent some time trying to make STASIS work). I spent time trying to come up with a Protestant sect at 9ac: it wasn’t until I got the O that I finally thought of ORANGEMAN. BUMPTIOUS was a long time coming–I didn’t have the B (BOMB my LOI, of all things)–and parsing it took more time; my COD.

3. Hi Jeremy – definitely the root canal. You have typos in 9ac and 26ac.

   1. Also missing the i for one in infallible.

4. 66 minutes. I found the lower half reasonably straightforward although PTOSIS (making its first appearance here) went in with fingers crossed, and the second meaning of ATTIC was taken on trust.

   Having completed all that I turned my attention to the top half and found myself bogged down with long gaps between words going in. As with Jeremy, the worst of it was in the RH corner of the grid where BUMPTIOUS, MONTRECHAT, PROTESTS, BOMB and STEWS eluded me for ages.

   BOMB came to me immediately once the B-checker had arrived but prior to that I had sweated blood over the clue as I hadn’t been able to think past the answer containing an S or possibly two of them for ‘shillings’. Once it was solved I had to think hard to understand ‘shillings’ (plural) clueing the apparently singular BOB, but in pre-decimal days of course that usage was absolutely correct.

   On the subject of singulars and plurals, all the dictionaries I have checked have ‘stew’ as slang for a brothel so I’m not sure how we get from ‘bawdy-house’ (singular) to STEWS (plural) as a second definition for our clue.

   1. Had the same thought with BOB and then remembered ‘two shillings or two bob’ or a Florin.

   2. Chambers has “usually in plural” meaning “a brothel”, so that looks okay.

      1. Thanks. The only official source I hadn’t checked as I don’t have access to it on-line and the book was in another room.

   3. I knew ‘stews’ from Shakespeare, and the plural seemed right; in any case, see Paul. BOMB was my LOI; it was only when I had B_M_ that it came to me, and only when it came to me that I thought of ‘bob’; like you, I couldn’t get past S for shilling.

   4. Wiktionary is specific; stews=brothel, plural only, archaic.

   5. I hesitated, then thought “ten bob note” and carried on.

5. Lots of unknowns such as PTOSIS, that meaning of ATTIC, CONTUMELY, that meaning of STEWS, and more. BUMPTIOUS held me up for ages (especially since I didn’t have the S). It started of easily and then got harder and harder until I almost ground to a complete halt.

6. 23:01. I found this easier than some recent Fridays, though far from straightforward. I didn’t help myself by putting MEDIUM instead of MODEST for no good reason. Before I managed to parse BASS I was unsure whether the answer was going to be that or SASS, for impudence. I finished up with SKEIN and NAGASAKI, wondering why I’d taken so long to see the former when I’d thought of geese for Flying V and presumed Peel was referring to rind.

7. DNF. Job not jobbed. Missing BUMPTIOUS, STEWS and MONTRACHET in the North-East, and NAGASAKI in the NW, despite having spent much of yesterday booking a Japanese holiday. Who my age can forget the delights of Bob-a-Job week? Folk were hiding behind their curtains as I walked up their driveways. I was delighted that CONTUMELY was right, and that led to COD EGGY. But too good for me. Thank you Jeremy, with sympathy, and setter.

   1. Is it true that the Girl Guide hierarchy wanted an equivalent to bob a job, and came up with the unfortunate willing for a shilling?

8. Did pretty well but came up short in the top right. Having OBSCURATE for OBFUSCATE meant I couldn’t see GAFFE. I thought about an anagram of “merchant to”, but wasn’t happy with the indicator of “supply”. Too tempting to look for a wine and cheese separately to find a merchant.

   Also went down the Demos route for “electors”.

   She-maker=creatrix, crikey that’s tough, but. SHOEMAKER guessable from definition. Please to get CONTUMELY since I have heard the word and had no idea what it means.

   Shoulda got the hidden SALVO which would have given a chance with the unlikely looking PTOSIS. Without knowing the word it was too hard to not keep seeing “opti” in those letters.

   COD BAGATELLE

9. DNF but liked the ‘merchant to supply’ and ‘train spotters’ as deceptive anagrams and the requirement to split ‘hat box’. I had no trouble with shillings, “that’ll cost a few bob’ is common enough around here still.

10. Just under 45 minutes for this.

    A game of two halves, I felt, with a scattering of write-ins around the grid (INFALLIBLE, SO TO SPEAK, ILL-GOTTEN) interspersed with some really difficult NHOs (CONTUMELY, MONTRACHET, PTOSIS) but I never felt that the clueing was unfair, although I was 50/50 between MANTROCHET and the correct spelling.

    I loved EGGY when the penny dropped, also COD SHOEMAKER.

    Creatrix is fantastic.

    When I lived in the USA the lady who sold us our first home was, as I recall, a very charming realtrix.

11. Just not on wavelength with this. To top it all off after valiantly working my way through it I guessed MANTROCHET for the nho cheese or wine.

    BUMPTIOUS Igot from the crossers.

    CONTUMELY a nho but looked like it should be a word.

    Only knew half the definitions for STEWS and ATTIC. Second day in a row for a not heard of primate.

    Had KNICK-KNACK before BAGATELLE.

    This seemed a wide range of straightforward to the very difficult.

    COD: TITLE

    2/5 this week although the other 3 were off by one or two. I haven’t checked the snitch but it has seemed a tough week so maybe I shouldn’t be too disappointed.

12. Since this was a DNF, giving up at 50′ without KNICK-KNACK, MONTRACHET (NHO) or STEWS, I’m hardly qualified to comment. I was absolutely convinced it had to be KLINK-something, after feeling pleased with myself for learning ‘cooler’ earlier in the week – that undid me.

    Got BUMPTIOUS in the end through sheer bloody-mindedness, and trying to force in the similar BOIST(E)ROUS first.

    Anyway, very hard, but some very interesting clues!

13. 28:32

    Mostly pretty fine sailing, though ultimately I was left with three separate answers. Didn’t know what CONTUMELY meant, but plain once got NT for conservationists. MALEVOLENT was comparatively easier, leaving me with STEWS, which I didn’t know as a bawdy house.

    Thanks PJ and setter

14. 14:20. A bit of a mixed bag I thought. I particularly dislike DDs where one of the definitions is so obscure that it might as well be a single, and we have two of those today. But also some excellent stuff.
    I have drunk the wine and even visited the vineyard but never heard of the cheese. Or forgotten it, more likely.
    I’ve long known CONTUMELY from Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy. Not sure I’ve ever come across it anywhere else. Edit: anywhere else other than crosswords, of course.

15. 68m 21s
    Commiserations on your root canal, Jeremy! Ouch!
    NHO STEWS as a brothel or bawdy-house and NHO that definition of ATTIC.

    1. Have you never heard the term ‘Attic wit’?

       1. No.

          1. OK. I suppose it was a stupid question as you had already said you hadn’t heard of it! Sorry.

       2. I have heard the term, but I don’t think that in that context ‘simple and elegant’ quite does as a definition. But I didn’t make the connection so I would say that wouldn’t I?!

       3. No…have you?

16. I really liked this. Challenging but not too hard and it was only once I finished that I realised it was a Friday. I thought MONTRACHET was very neat and liked several others including BUMPTIOUS, KNICK-KNACK, SHOEMAKER, MALEVOLENT, NAGASAKI and CONTUMELY, but they were all good.

    Whenever I see Jeremy’s byline image it always reminds me of my son Robbie who looks very similar (at least at the resolution of a thumbnail image!). He couldn’t have written such an entertaining blog though (sorry about the root canal but your pain is our extra little dash of humour!) so many thanks. And of course thanks to the setter for a very well-pitched challenge!

17. Did not do today’s but came for a look-see.
    Apart from the more arcane offerings, 7d as a ‘relatively conventional’ clue should be deprecated. Because: not only is the meaning incorrect (OBFUSCATE surely means close to misrepresent by delaying -ironic perhaps); but one would have difficulty constructing the ‘correct’ answer from the abstract clue elements.
    Well done plusjeremy!

    1. I don’t see anything wrong with OBFUSCATE. The first definition I found online says:

       “to make unclear or hard to understand, especially deliberately“

       Which seems to be OK?

       1. Not sure that ‘make muddled’ is reasonable for that, but this is a cryptic crossword.
          I agree you make a fair point.

          It’s what I deserve for moonlighting and shooting from the hip.

          1. I don’t see the problem really, but all respect to you if you read it differently!

             1. Too kind.
                I should have checked first on ODE.
                Apology to setter also.

18. 24:35
    Hard yakka with fingers crossed for PTOSIS.

19. Well as Fridays go not too terrible, but no walkover and some cheating required.
    23a Ptosis, cheated, NHO. Blasted anagram of an obscurity.
    1d Shoemaker biffed. NHO (more likely have forgotten) the Grimm story, didn’t parse. Doh!
    3d Nagasaki. Had forgotten the saki monkey, biffed.
    5d Montrachet. The cheese is much, much less distinguished than the wine, in fact I found it quite hard to find. Googled it of course and it showed up instantly.
    8d Stews, Took a while for this archaism to come to me. Doh!
    25d COD EGGY. Had FR(i)ED for a bit, almost parses.
    Many thanks to plusjeremy (hope the mouth is OK) and setter.

    1. I also had FRED in mind and couldn’t dislodge him for ages!

20. 24.44. Another Friday where working through the wordplay was often harder than solving the clue, SO TO SPEAK. The sort of complexity which duped me into looking for an anagram of TO ROVE in some Muslim state for the protestant, and hoping it wasn’t a sect even I hadn’t heard of. Inevitably, I thought the one supported by elves would be Qi’s Sandi Toksvig and had a hard time breaking away from such considerations. Terrific clue.
    Many years ago, McDonalds was skewered for an advert proclaiming their cheapness with the phrase “the pound, also known as a bob”. Their attempts to justify it (rather than simply admitting they were wrong) were magnificent in their absurdity.
    Commiserations to our blogger: it amazes me that dentistry hasn’t come up with better solutions than applied torture for any of its procedures. I’m pretty sure my root canals gave up their determination to cause agony years ago.

    1. I have a friend who was a junior barrister on the McDonalds’ side in the McLibel case many years ago. That was a very good brief for a junior to get and it basically set him up for life. I heard him recently by chance on the radio when the BBC did a piece on it for their “The Reunion” series where they got together all the main players at the time to look back and discuss and reminisce about what went on. He told me it was strange to be in the room with everybody including his former adversaries and to find that they were all really nice people. And he also said that everything he said on the programme was carefully tailored so as not to open up any other potentially litigious issues. In fact when he heard the original broadcast he had to contact the BBC urgently to ask them to remove one particular statement that he didn’t think should be aired but had slipped through the net.

    2. The procedure was completely painless and relieved me of a lot of pain! And money!

21. NHO the missing and LOI MONTRACHET, so just didn’t bother guessing, though I had all the crossers. Wrote in BUMPTIOUS but had literally no clue as to the parsing. I know it’s bad form to decry clueing hereabouts, but BUMP TO US = ‘how we see strike’ is really shit.

    1. I thought BUMP TO US was excellent! I’m very much in favour of people expressing their views, positive or negative, but ‘shit’ strikes me as a little harsh.

       1. I agree with both parts of that. And if I were going to express myself in the same way I would probably use some asterisks. But I don’t know if that makes it any better or not.

          1. I’m with André – ‘shit’ is fair comment.

       2. I don’t understand BUMP TO US at all.

          1. MAGA, to us, is American Fascism.
             How we see MAGA is American Fascism.

             1. Funny, that’s how I see MAGA too.
                That’s really no help, K. I expected something more specific.
                I guess that two sports terms are being compared here. But dictionaries didn’t help.
                Is a “strike” in baseball equivalent to a “bump” in… cricket?
                If so, does that really mean that if you ever watch baseball, you “see” a bump where we would see a strike?

                1. There’s nothing specific about the meanings: just two words meaning ‘hit’.

                   1. I was forgetting that BUMP and TO US are to be explained separately.
                      Strange surface, still.

22. Resorted to aids being in a bit of a hurry, so a technical DNF. Slow start. Some really nice clueing. Relatively easy for a Thursday. Failed to spot ‘to supply’ as an anagrist for MONTRACHET. Doh!!
    FOI ELAND (old warhorse)
    LOI SHOEMAKER
    COD EGGY

    1. It’s a Friday! (But then again even I only realised it was a Friday after I’d finished!).

23. 72 mins but when I hit the hour with 4 missing I enlisted Mrs rv who contributed BUMPTIOUS and Comely and explained STEWS to me, illiterate naif that I am.
    Lots of guesses and unparsed elsewhere so less satisfying than some toughies.
    Like others here I enjoyed the “Merchant to supply” clueing to the NHO cheese/wine.
    Thanks for plusjeremys sterling effort and to setter.

24. Not too hard although quite a lot had to be taken on trust.
    I had heard of Montrachet, one of those Wines I Can’t Afford..

25. Very tough but overall I enjoyed it.
    PTOSIS is new to me MONTRACHET certainly isn’t. I liked CONTUMELY and PROTESTS.
    BUMPTIOUS was last one in, reasoning that it couldn’t be SUMPTUOUS or GUMPTIOUS. Needed Jeremy to parse it properly. More fun to set than solve, that one. Somehow stumbled on SHOEMAKER by a weird mental process involving Old Mother Hubbard.
    The Protestant took ages but, in retrospect, should have been easy- especially to someone who has visited Belfast recently .
    Thaks to the setter. Thanks and commiserations to Jeremy,

26. From SKEIN to STEWS (NHO) in 25,09, BUT, another bl**dy typo. SO TO SPEKK. Grrhhh! NHO the second meaning of attic either. Liked MALEVOLENT, PROTESTS and MONTRACHET (not had the wine or the cheese!). Managed to parse BUMPTIOUS, surprisingly enough. Didn’t know SAKI for monkey, but it didn’t matter. Somehow knew CONTUMELY. Thanks setter and Jeremy. Commiserations on the root canal. Last one I had was a long drawn out process and left me the best part of a monkey poorer.

27. 24:50 – a few unknowns (Montrachet cheese and the eye-droop) but nothing really in doubt. Rather fine puzzle all round, I thought, with some cleverly deceptive surfaces.

28. Was doing well until I hit a brick wall in the NE with what I now know to be BOMB, MONTRACHET and BUMPTIOUS and gave up.

    I should have got BOMB, and probably would have done eventually, but MONTRACHET is a NHO and I was on the wrong track, not looking for an anagram at all. As for BUMPTIOUS, wtf as they say these days. As I started to type this moan, I still didn’t understand Jeremy’s explanation above; the penny has just dropped – but,no, horrible clue.

29. 43:59. I feel pretty good with this time – it was quite hard with NHO CONTUMELY, PTOSIS, as well as the ‘other’ definitions of ATTIC and STEWS. I enjoyed it much more than others this week, and for a Friday it was a treat to have a few write-ins. I particularly liked the clues for SKEIN, SHOEMAKER and EGGY. thanks!

30. At school when I was about 16 we were doing some poem (Chaucer?) and the word stewe cropped up. The teacher was rather embarrassed to explain that it meant brothel. So stews looked a bit odd but possibly OK.

    For a while all went in smoothly enough and I was thinking that for once we didn’t have an impossibly difficult Friday, but then became stuck with much of the top to do and couldn’t make progress. So I used an aid or two, not helped that despite the fact that I’d vaguely heard of MONTRACHET as a wine it wasn’t in the Chambers Crossword Dictionary as either a wine or a cheese, despite all manner of totally unheard-of wines and cheeses being mentioned. Chambers doesn’t have it but Collins does, albeit only as American English. BATEAU seemed surely just a French word but I see it has a meaning in English. I think ‘of’ as a hidden indicator is feeble. 56 minutes.

31. DNF after two attempts, defeated by BUMPTIOUS, PTOSIS, BOMB, MONTRACHET and STEWS.

    – Had no chance with BUMPTIOUS as I’ve never had a firm handle on what it means. ‘How we see’ did make me think ‘to us’ might be involved, but I got no further
    – Constructed the unknown CONTUMELY from wordplay
    – Didn’t know the Saki monkey, but NAGASAKI couldn’t be anything else with the checkers
    – NHO MONTRACHET
    – Don’t see why “mother’s” was needed in the clue for TIGHTS
    – NHO STEWS as a bawdy-house
    – Didn’t know the ‘simple and elegant’ meaning of ATTIC

    Tough stuff – thanks Jeremy and setter.

    COD Bagatelle

32. I generally found this reasonably straightforward for a Friday having the necessary GK and vocabulary for the trickier clues. All the same it was a DNF, as I gave up on STEWS. This was laziness because I did know both meanings of the word, it’s just that the “bawdy house” meaning was buried deep. A conscientious alphabet trawl would surely have got me there.

    I didn’t find this one a stinker, but todays Guardian puzzle definitely was – a candidate for the hardest daily cryptic I’ve attempted.

    1. I decided to have a bash at the Guardian after reading this and can confirm – it’s a brutal Enigmatist effort, but some very enjoyable stuff in there: 18 across might be a new personal fave!

       1. It’s a toughie all right!

33. My father, an ophthalmologist, and his father both had ptosis, so a word I knew. My mother, who taught French, was always insistent about what she considered to be the correct pronunciation of Montrachet: Mon(t)-rachet, silent T, not Mon-trachet. I hope she was right!

    1. That’s certainly how the French pronounce it, but it’s not a natural pronunciation in English so the T is usually pronounced. I wouldn’t say this is any less ‘correct’ than saying ‘Paris’ instead of ‘Paree’.

       1. Not to mention the standard challenge…. Moët

34. About 45 mins, with STEWS and ATTIC entered with hope and little else, BUMPTIOUS taking an age and BAGATELLE unparsed. Some good stuff here, I thought. Thanks to our setter and blogger.

35. Some hard yards covered in solving this. NHO PTOSIS, or (in the given context) my LOI. I was seriously delayed in a Championship puzzle some years ago by CONTUMELY, and, like the elephant, I never forget (well, HARDLY ever!)

    FOI GAFFE
    LOI STEWS
    COD SKEIN*
    TIME 14:52

    * I spent far too long thinking of guitars, a superb misdirection.

36. 63 mins alas. Had heard of (but never consumed) Montrachet the wine, but had NHO the cheese. V. delayed by north-west corner – ORANGEMAN took me far too long. Didn’t parse TOE TO TOE, which was silly of me – kept thinking that the Es were significant, as in electronic. Had root canal about 15 years ago, nearly a grand for one tooth. That was the only painful bit.

37. 29’23” on Nimes to Paris train, put off slightly by strange young couple canoodling in seats opposite. No particular difficulty but I had to take a plunge with LOI STEWS. I occasionally say the word CONTUMELY but when I do people look at me weirdly, like I’m a pedant.

38. What refreshing honesty from Jeremy about his issues with this one- makes a welcome change and encourages those of us who are not sub-10 minute solvers.
    Am finding lately that some of the anagrinds being used are a stretch to put it mildly- supply and train being examples today.

39. DNF thanks to Bumptious and its partner in crime, bomb. Re bomb, I was coming over all disgusted of Tunbridge Wells when I remembered that bob could be plural, as in “bent as a nine-bob note”.

    Thanks to Hamlet for contumely.

    Thanks for parsing, I needed a few of these.

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