Times 27,737: Gegs Benicted

Author   verlainePosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
I wouldn’t describe this as super-hard, but it passed Friday muster at least by the standards of this gentle week, with some interesting and amusing constructions amidst a fair few quite straightforward compatriots. I mostly liked the reverse cryptic in 5dn, the elegant cleverness of 26ac, and definition part of the day definitely goes to 18dn. There was also just enough of a GK component about this puzzle to satisfy me; for all of which, thank you, setter!

ACROSS
1 Forced to accept order under contract (8)
PROMISED – PRISED [forced] to accept OM [order (of merit)]

9 Several deliveries arrived crushed (8)
OVERCAME – OVER CAME [several deliveries | arrived]. FOI

10 Briefly turn down side road (4)
SPUR – SPUR{n}

11 Performing insect begged for food (4,8)
EGGS BENEDICT – (INSECT BEGGED*). Took me awhile to shake the idea of FLEA something…

13 Decrepit little bird found on step (4,2)
PAST IT – TIT found on PAS. SOI

14 Ravel‘s standpoint on hospital discipline? (8)
ENTANGLE – if you have an E.N.T. (Ears, Nose & Throat) ANGLE…

15 Weak, though extremely willing (7)
THREADY – T{houg}H + READY. A thready pulse is a weak one, apparently.

16 A dry agency worker’s parting shot (7)
ATTEMPT – A TT [a | dry], “parted” by TEMP

20 I’ll appear in another novel, perhaps (8)
ANTIHERO – I, “appearing in” (ANOTHER*), semi-&lit. If all novels contained antiheroes this would’ve been an &lit!

22 Adjust to correct position, touching bottom (6)
RESEAT – RE [touching] + SEAT [bottom]. I started with REBASE in here and this ended up my LOI.

23 Riskily meddle in passionate drama? (4,4,4)
PLAY WITH FIRE – which could alternative be a PLAY that has some FIRE in it

25 Italian banker‘s Oscar-nominated part (4)
ARNO – hidden in {osc}AR-NO{minated}. A Tuscan river (you can certainly bank on rivers), that flows beneath the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

26 Old papers in many cases (8)
OFTTIMES – O [old] + FT, TIMES [(two) papers]

27 Wasn’t emu originally a flier? (4,4)
MUTE SWAN – (WASN’T EMU*). Swans are some of the largest birds that can actually fly, I believe, certainly top ten list material.

DOWN
2 Find fault with expert in orbit (8)
REPROACH – PRO in REACH

3 Sir Thomas’s quarry bagged by our opponents, sadly (5,3,4)
MORE’S THE PITY – (Sir Thomas) MORE’S, plus PIT “bagged” by THEY

4 Large plugs seen and disregarded (8)
SLIGHTED – L “plugs” SIGHTED

5 Match that professional’s taken to heart? (7)
DOUBLES – and the centre of {profe}SS{ional} is, as you see, DOUBLE S

6 Edible seed, many of which would yield paltry sum (6)
PEANUT – many of which are PEANUTS, if you pay which, you can have your choice of monkeys or TftT bloggers

7 Under strain, I move slowly on landing (4)
TAXI – under TAX [strain], I

8 Speculation lacking in celebrant’s likely garb (8)
VESTMENT – {in}VESTMENT

12 An age that’s critical during dry season abroad (7,5)
DONKEY’S YEARS – KEY [critical] during (DRY SEASON*)

15 One stirs shortly after meal, papa assumed (8)
TEASPOON – SOON after TEA, “assuming” P

17 Latest spacecraft crossing edge of exosphere on time (8)
TARDIEST – TARDIS crossing E{xosphere} (or perhaps {exospher}E) on T. To describe the TARDIS as a spacecraft is a bit like describing the Titanic as a dinghy, mind you…

18 Where mum joined baby scheme church introduced, with thanks (8)
PLACENTA – PLAN [scheme] has C(hurch of) E(ngland) “introduced”, with TA [thanks]

19 Very quiet man’s initially made a false deduction (7)
SOPHISM – SO P HIS M{ade}

21 Poser trounced in game (6)
ENIGMA – (IN GAME*)

24 Decline of oxygen in kiln is concerning (2,2)
AS TO – take an OAST, and “decline” the O(xygen) to the very bottom.

63 comments on “Times 27,737: Gegs Benicted”

  1. Other than squinting at ‘originally’ as an anagram indication at 27a, I thought the puzzle was neatly and cleverly clued. I liked 17d for the appearance of the Tardis, and I liked Ofttimes. Thanks Verlaine, setter, and ed.
  2. As V says, not super-hard, but Friday-hard. I was a bit worried about THREADY, a DNK, but it became inevitable once I got SLIGHTED. ODE says weak as a pulse or as a barely audible voice. PLACENTA was clever, but somehow I thought of it right off. I most definitely did not think right off of DOUBLES (POI) & VESTMENT (LOI). DOUBLES was forced on me by the checkers, but I could make nothing of the clue until maybe 10 seconds before the end. I’ve never seen “Dr Who”, but I had thought the Tardis was a time machine not a spacecraft. A number of good clues, but COD maybe to OFTTIMES.
    1. I see you’re flying on the concise at the moment. Just noticed you at number three on the leaderboard!
      1. My new strategy–don’t make any errors– seems to be paying off. But with mohn back in the game, no. 1 will always be denied me.
    2. I think the idea of the Tardis as a “spacecraft” comes from the fact that, outwardly it’s the size of a telephone box but, once inside, it is cavernous.
      1. Oh. Well, as I said, I’ve never seen the show. (Actually, I did happen to see 2 or 3 minutes of an early one, in black and white, and it was too silly to watch.)
        1. If only it had been the 1964 two-parter Inside The Spaceship! (More commonly known to fandom as The Edge of Destruction, admittedly.)
    3. Wikipedia describes the TARDIS as a time machine and spacecraft. It certainly doesn’t do all its travelling in the same place (or even galaxy) so space travel is definitely (if not in reality) involved. Moreover the S in the acronym is SPACE.
  3. LOI VESTMENT. I wish I’d seen that EGGS BENEDICT was an anagram before biffing. Kept thinking “Several deliveries” had to be OVERS, so was held up on that easy one. The clue for TAXI seemed way too involved for a four-letter answer—ha! I hesitated putting in MUTE SWAN till I had SOPHISM. Liked the def for PLACENTA, with the dark murmurs of a religious “baby scheme” in the wordplay.
  4. Oh, damn, wasn’t logged in, can’t delete. This was me:

    LOI VESTMENT. I wish I’d seen that EGGS BENEDICT was an anagram before biffing. Kept thinking “Several deliveries” had to be OVERS, so was held up on that easy one. The clue for TAXI seemed way too involved for a four-letter answer—ha! I hesitated putting in MUTE SWAN till I had SOPHISM. Liked the def for PLACENTA, with the dark murmurs of a religious “baby scheme” in the wordplay.

  5. Like vinyl I was slow to get going on this, and thus thought it was going to be a stinker, but once I got into my stride it proved not to be too tough. My COD goes to TAXI for the fact that I thought to myself taxi is the only word that fits in there but then still spent some time trying to think of something else before finally realising taxi was the right answer.
  6. Firm but fun. I managed to rally after a slow start to finish in 38 minutes, with 8d VESTMENT my LOI; I kept thinking that there’d be a BET in there somewhere. Enjoyed 17d TARDIEST but COD to 5d DOUBLES. My years of watching House and Scrubs meant that a 15a THREADY pulse sprang to mind quite quickly.
  7. 38 minutes. LOI the very clever OFTTIMES. I don’t think I knew that meaning of THREADY but I put it in faintly early on from cryptic. It’s Donkey’s Years since I heard DONKEY’S YEARS. I found this quite a stiff challenge but gettable. COD to TEASPOON. Thank you V and setter.
  8. Slow start picking up pace for 24.22. A contrast to yesterday’s this one didn’t make me feel cleverer, just a bit dense, but no reproach intended.
    MY last in was the clever OFTTIMES, not least because it’s not terribly apparent from the crossers, whereas, as Myrtilus says, it looks as if OUT plays a part. I also went through my stack of papers, wondering whether OCTREMES was a thing (lots of semi-quarto?) before deciding it was an improbable boat three banks above a quinquireme and thinking again.
    Several similar hares were set running by this, such as who on earth Sir Thomas, knight of the round table, might be chasing.
    Did anyone else try RESOLE, poor but possible answer for 22?
    1. A quinquireme seems improbable enough when I try to picture one. I’ll just accept that I don’t understand how shipbuilding works and that it’s probably just “oars all the way down”.
  10. 23:03. Somewhat becalmed with only 1/2 done, I eventually found some wind to blow me over the line, with TAXI my LOI after the NW corner. It was finally seeing PLAY WITH FIRE and then MORES THE PITY that got me going again. I liked EGGS BENEDICT for the surface DOUBLES for the wordplay and PLACENTA for “mum joined baby scheme”.
  11. …Or what’s a heaven for?
    30 mins to leave the last one which had to be OUT something. So DNF as ofttimes happens.
    Mostly I liked Antihero.
    Thanks setter and V.
  12. Dnf with a desperate LAYI for LOI 7d. Annoying seeing it now.
    Guessed vestment. I was also thinking flea market or similar for 11a.

    CODs doubles, and also liked mute swan and play with fire.
    Thanks

  13. Briefly thought my prayers for an obscure satellite had been answered at 17D, but my hopes were swiftly dashed, and my misery was compounded by the confounded bird in the bottom corner!
  14. I really enjoy crosswords with a consistent clue level… and today certainly delivered that. Thanks setter!
  15. Not too hard an end to the week, with some challenges. Like others took a while to get the first answer in, but steady progress thereafter. Didn’t consider ‘abroad’ to be an anagram indicator for a while.

    COD: EGGS BENEDICT, lovely anagram and surface

    Yesterday’s answer: ninja, rioja, abuja and ouija are all five-letter words ending in -ja.

    Today’s question: what’s next in the (rather short) series Singapore, Dublin, …?

    1. EEEK! I’d scream after losing a thousand at any of several cities (7)
    2. What’s “abuja” with a small a? The capital of nigeria with a small n?
  16. Not super-hard or I wouldn’t have been able to solve two-thirds of it without a major problem, but the combination of tricky stuff in the NW quarter did for me. All I had there was EGGS from 11ac and I had to resort to aids in desperation before I was able to make any further progress.

    I was determined not to give up on 3dn but I needed the M from the looked-up PROMISED before it gave up its secret.

  17. 18:40. A good level of difficulty for me. I thought some of the definitions were a bit borderline but just on the right side. The one exception being 8dn which is not only inaccurate, but personally and professionally offensive to me. Pah!
    1. An investment may well not be a speculation, but a speculation in this sense is necessarily an investment, isn’t it? Albeit a risky one naturally spurned by all high class financiers?
      1. It’s at best a definition by example. As you know I am generally in your camp when it comes to DBEs, but this one is most certainly not representative of the broader category (he says indignantly) and so should be indicated. ‘Speculation’ and ‘investment’ can even be considered opposites.

        Edited at 2020-08-07 11:04 am (UTC)

        1. Having watched the value of my holdings in the stock market fluctuate over the years… the year…, I find that attempting to calculate their ultimate value whenever I start drawing on them to be quite a speculative affair. My portfolio is not deemed to be particularly risk-laden.
          1. Equities are inherently volatile, particularly in the short term, but that doesn’t mean that investing in them is necessarily speculative. It’s advisable to reduces one’s exposure to the volatility of equities as one gets older by increasing holdings of less volatile asset classes (fixed income and cash).
            This is not investment advice, the value of your holdings may go down as well as up, speak to your doctor before taking this medicine, no animals were harmed in the making of this movie
            1. I see that the dictionary defines “speculative,” when pertaining to investments, as “having a high risk of loss” (emphasis added). So, understood.

              In the long run, though, (we are all dead and) nothing is certain.

              1. Indeed. If you invest in a broad basket of equities in sensible geographies and with a reasonably long-term time horizon the probability of loss is very low.
                So in this case more is certain in the long run than in the short.

                Edited at 2020-08-07 05:50 pm (UTC)

  19. Like pootle73 and vinyl1, I took quite a while to get going and so I’m pleased to finish in the time I took.
    I was puzzled by “spacecraft” until I remembered that the interior of the Tardis is vast, compared to its exterior appearance.
    Many excellent clues such as ATTEMPT, TARDIEST, SLIGHTED and PLACENTA but COD has to go to DOUBLES.
  20. Good Friday workout (not Good Friday, despite the eggs). Satisfying solve, mix of straightforward and gnarly.
  21. Took a while to get going, but the bottom half was much easier than the top half, I thought, and then with checkers it turned out that the top half wasn’t so tough after all. THREADY went in early, despite not really being sure about it, which has led me into danger before but happily not today. 7m 04s for a pretty gentle Friday.
  22. Very laboured for a not too hard crossword today. Obviously too hot for my brain to function.
    A few MERs for the spacecraft, and as above originally as an anagram indicator. Had no idea of the meaning of SOPHISM thought it was something to do with SOPHISTICATED.
  23. Just on the harder side of average and a much more enjoyable solve than yesterday’s. Probably helped by solving in the garden on a much-needed day off.
  24. My late father OFTTIMES ordered this for breakfast when in NY and alwsys made the same joke – the gangster gourmet – while my mother disapproved and called it over-indulgence. Except for DOUBLES (thanks for the parse V) I had the wavelength for this. 18.21
  26. to complete a disappointing and not to say frustrating week just couldn’t see ofttimes despite thinking times must be there somewhere
    so 1 away
    (on the plus side it’s only 4 clues that have beaten me this week but spread over 3 puzzles!!)
    thanks setter and Verlaine
  27. 38 minutes, the setter winning on ‘doubles’ which I couldn’t parse. And of course should have. I’m not sure that a sophism is a false deduction rather than simply a false argument for or against. But I suppose an argument can be made for it. I tend to think of ‘ravel’ (which is not often) as ‘disentangle’ because of the ‘Hamlet’ quotation. It’s either of course. One of these days I’ll have to sample eggs benedict as the crossword keeps serving them/it/ze up. joekobi
  28. 50.54 but really pleased to have cracked it. Took a break part way through and came back re-invigorated and not by looking anything up!

    LOI sophism, took me ages to give up on pp for very quiet. Reseat also caused anguish but there didn’t really seem to be a viable alternative. Tardiest my COD . Lots of great clues, too many to itemise. A proper Friday quiz I thought – or I do till I see everyone else is under 20 minutes.

    1. Everyone’s times have been getting a lot better recently, it feels like – the poor old SNITCH can barely keep up!
  29. ….with an EGGS BENEDICT and a cheeky pint I’d have been a tad faster. Nice puzzle.

    FOI OVERCAME
    LOI SOPHISM
    COD PLACENTA
    TIME 14:23

  30. Even though this was my slowest time of the week at 45 minutes, it was a very satisfying puzzle and I really enjoyed ENTANGLE, OFTTIMES (looks strange when written out) and TEASPOON.
    I struggled to get EGGS BENEDICT as I hadn’t realised that it was an anagram but I think it deserves to be COD for its deception.
    Many thanks to the setter and to Verlaine for the entertainment.
    1. EGGS BENEDICT is rather a beautiful anagram clue now I consider it more. I shall add it to the COD shortlist retroactively!
      1. Good morning V.
        It certainly is – and had me racking my brain for insect names!
        Have a great day.
  31. A good deal of this 45min epic was spent correctly looking for the anagram of I and ANOTHER, and finding the choice between Arthenio and Antherio a difficult one, as either of these fellows might have appeared in an Italian novel I’d never read. When Antihero finally dawned– Doh!
  32. Took a while to get going, sleepy and hot after golf, and also watching cricket, but once we had our eggs B unscrambled and a few more scattered around the grid, it seemed to flow better and I had all done except my LOI 26 in 35 minutes or so. For some reason the easy enough but wrong-looking OFTTIMES didn’t spring to mind and as I was being told to do the BBQ I gave up and came here. Thanks for explaining DOUBLES V. A neat construction, like my Regius Professor with his purple heart the other day.
  33. Enjoyed this puzzle, had to come here to see how Doubles worked, a great clue where it had to be but I still couldn’t parse. Eggs Benedict always reminds of an excellent B&B in Worthing run by two gentlemen where it was served part of breakfast. My other half failed to clear her plate to which the response the following morning was ‘ Shall we go with just the ONE SAUSAGE today?? Thanks setter and Ld V
  35. 25:23. An engaging puzzle not too hard but just hard enough to put up a worthwhile struggle.
  37. I was out all day yesterday at a lovely old church in the hamlet(well there’s a church and a farm) of Stanwick not far from Scotch Corner, meeting up with fellow members of a performance group doing some recording for our latest project. It was the first time we’d met up since lockdown began, so it was a joyous occasion. Anyway I didn’t have time to do this puzzle until now(Saturday morning) but managed to get through it without tripping over any clues. I started with TAXI and finished with DOUBLES, which I only parsed post solve. An enjoyable puzzle. 37:29. Thanks setter and V.

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