Times 28069

Author   ulacaPosted on Categories Livejournal
I am a little dischuffed, alas. It was tough enough not having the crossword code, since I am using my daughter’s boyfriend’s PC and keyboard, which is for good measure set up in Spanish. It was tough enough that I had to toggle between two machines (my iPAd and said PC) to get the job done. To add insult to injury, after an hour and a bit’s work – and having nearly completed the job – I managed to lose everything.

So, rather than my first introduction, which pointed out that this was rather a tricky little number with an especially awkward French customer that took me 35 minutes, I am afraid you are left with this threnody. And, because I just don’t have the energy, this second draft will perforce be shorter than my first, painstaking effort.

Sorry about that, but please ask if you are uncertain of something and someone will help – and that right quickly.

ACROSS

1. SPROUT – R in SPOUT > SHOOT
5. TICK OVER – MOMENT PAST > IDLE
9. HUNTSMAN – final letters of australiaN fruiT flieS in HUMAN (being) > SPIDER
10. REDRAW – reversal of WARDER > CORRECT
11. ABSOLUTELY – SOLUTE (salt in water, say) in ABLY (well) > FINE
13. NOEL – NO(v)EL; a noel can be a Christmas carol, which is a kind of hymn
14. VICE – double definition (DD)
15. WINDOWLESS – WIND (snake) OWLESS (a putative nighttime flier)
18. GET KNOTTED – DD
20. FOOL – DD
21. SCAN – SCAN(t) (barely adequate without final letter)
23. ETHEREALLY – E THE REALLY (if truth be told)
25. EVER SO – kneE V (very) anagram of SORE; literal VERY
26. BADINAGE – BAD (not good) IN (in) AGE (time)
28. GRADIENT – DIE in GRANT; a cant can be a tilt or incline
29. PELOTA – PEL(O)T A; a bizarre game played with ball, wall and basket

DOWN

2. POURBOIRE – POUR (tip) I (initial letter of Items) in BORE (hole); literal ‘A tip!’ from the French ‘for drinking’
3. OUTCOME – OUT COME (as in ‘He issued from the cave’)
4. TUM – initial letters of Terrorising Union Members
5. TINGE – G (good) in TINE
6. CURRY POWDER – CURRY (groom) D (bridesmaiD finally) in POWER (might)
7. ORDINAL – the literal is ‘for example, third’; OR (gold) N (name) in DIAL (ring)
8. ERASE – R (initial letter of Rules) in EASE (facility)
12. UNWHOLESOME – the literal is repulsive; UNWHOLE (imperfect) SOME (a little)
16. NET – a reversal of ‘all fingers and thumbs’, i.e. TEN
17. SPOTLIGHT – SPOT (place) LIGHT (land)
19. KINDRED – KIND (category) RED (rare)
20. FLANNEL – DD; soft soap = flannel = flatter
22. CAVER – a semi all-in-one, methinks; CAVE (Latin for ‘beware’) R (initial letter of Rock)
24. HABIT – H (hospital) A BIT (rather)
27. DIP – hidden in demanD I Predict

62 comments on “Times 28069”

  1. I completed all but five words in the NW corner within my target half-hour but then hit a brick wall. Then as the hour approached I used aids to get the tip, the spider and the screw. I liked WINDOWLESS, and GET KNOTTED. We’re missing PEL(O)T,A at 29ac.

    Edited at 2021-08-30 12:10 am (UTC)

  2. After completing the last 10 puzzles, this one was a near miss. I’m still not sure if I ever would have gotten VICE, but it didn’t matter because while OUTCOME was my first guess in the first minute of my solve, I rejected it nearly 100 times thereafter. Only after looking up the answer VICE did I put it in with a shrug. I mean, sure, vinyl will say, “what else could it be?”, but I couldn’t justify ‘issue’ = COME, so I didn’t trust it.

    I was proud to have figured out POURBOIRE.

      1. Is ‘put’ the same as ‘lower’? (As in ‘put down’?)

        I’m not saying it’s wrong, but it’s not a sort of misleading that I find satisfying.

      2. Yes, but the qualifier there is ‘forth’ which come needs to make it mean issue. Come on it’s own doesn’t mean that. (Mr Grumpy)
  3. Another DNF, forgotten POURBOIRE since it last appeared. After finally giving up and going for the solver it was immediate dejavu – remembered seeing PLUMBLINE as the only possible word that fit the crossers then, too.
    Otherwise it was very tricky, or I was off the wavelength. Lots of definitions just didn’t feel right – e.g. come for issue, mechanical screw for vice, get knotted for on yer bike, ethereally, etc.
    Hard but fair, thanks setter and blogger (in trying circumstances).

    Edited at 2021-08-30 02:41 am (UTC)

    1. Yes, I’m not entirely sure that ‘On your bike’ and GET KNOTTED mean the same although both are rather excellent dismissive expressions. ‘On your bike’ usually means ‘go away’ in the sense of ‘leave’ or sometimes it’s used to express disbelief, but GET KNOTTED is much more direct, insulting and contemptuous.

      Edited at 2021-08-30 07:33 am (UTC)

  4. I found this tough for a Monday; we’ll see if the snitch agrees. Had HUNTSMAN early on but had trouble parsing it, wanting a fruit fly as the definition, so it wasn’t entered until the checkers were in place and then the parsing dawned. We’ve a large huntsman in the pantry right now, so it sprang to mind quickly. They don’t make webs, but hunt their prey by eyesight and speed, so they are difficult to catch and remove without damaging them.
    28:35
  5. A 50-odd minute DNF. Going along steadily till I ran into ‘Mechanical screw failing’ which I just couldn’t see, so also missed the NHO POURBOIRE. A pity as there were some good clues such as WINDOWLESS and PELOTA.
  6. Thanks for helping with 11ac, ulaca. I had no idea about it, but having seen your blog, I would suggest ABLY=well, and FINE is the definition.
    1. Agreed. What I meant, actually, but have tweaked the blog in an attempt to clarify.
  7. …without using any aids – that’s the good news. The bad news is that my time was 70 minutes, as I vacillated over outcome, and found absolutely unparsable. Huntsman and pourboire were also difficult, and vice was my LOI. However, I did think of vice relatively quickly.

    Ulaca, you could carry the JavaScript around on a thumb drive. Or maybe we should just upload it somewhere convenient?

  8. Today we have a prime number – next two primes will be 28,081 and 28,099 – just sayin’.

    Mr. Jordan is my VP.

    Edited at 2021-08-30 11:48 am (UTC)

  9. I loathe the 9ac HUNTSMAN and the clue! IKEA Canberra! DNF

    FOI 4dn TUM QC escapee!

    (LOI) 21ac ABSOLUTELY more from IKEA

    COD 15ac WINDOWLESS – like IKEA

    WOD 2dn le POURBOIRE – learnt from an old Billy Bunter story in my youth – ‘Garçon!’ was there too!

    Edited at 2021-08-30 06:22 am (UTC)

  10. ABSOLUTELY pleased to finish this challenge.

    VICE LOI, POURBOIRE dragged up from French, HUNTSMAN COD.

    Wishing all in the UK a good Bank Holiday.

    27′ 49″, thanks vinyl and setter.

  11. Slowest time for a long while, and this on a Monday. Almost feel ashamed! (Not really – maybe different rules apply when it’s a Bank Holiday). Hesitated for a long time about HUNTSMAN being a spider, or maybe HUNTSMEN being some type of flies…and took too long to work out POURBOIRE, not helped by biffing RESOLUTELY rather than ABSOLUTELY. A good challenge, which rather beat me, so thanks to setter and blogger.
  12. For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.

    30 mins bang on pre-brekker. Quite a challenge.
    I couldn’t justify issue=come either.
    Mostly I quite liked Curry Powder and COD to the ‘measure of cant’.
    Thanks setter and U.

  13. 47:12
    Got through it okay, but it was tricky. 10 was clumsy, with draw in the clue and in the answer. Pourboire straight in, as I’m a French teacher. Vice took ages; I had to do a gruesome double alphabet trawl to get it and had almost abandoned hope by the time I got to V for the first missing letter.
  14. 18 minutes, so the lighting was good. LOI was PELOTA, which I remembered as I tried to construct it. POURBOIRE and HUNTSMAN also followed that process. GET KNOTTED is not something I’ve said since I left school. Is it much used nowadays? COD to GRADIENT, downhill rather than uphill today. A pleasant Monday offering. Thank you U and setter.
  15. 22:05 LOI the clever WINDOWLESS. Female bird out at night… ho ho.DNK the spider and took ages to get ABSOLUTELY. God stuff. Thanks U and setter.
  16. ….where my main delay was caused by not knowing the spider. My schoolboy French stretched to POURBOIRE, and I saw VICE straight away. MER at GET KNOTTED, which doesn’t equate to “on your bike” in my book. I was a little surprised by the definition of ETHEREALLY too, but I guess it passes muster.

    FOI NOEL
    LOI HUNTSMAN
    COD TICK OVER
    TIME 10:15

  17. All but Pourboire done in 28 mins. I stuck in Plumbline and was fairly sure that it was a) wrong b) two words.

    Tough for a Monday. COD: ORDINAL.

  18. Held up towards the end on several clues:

    REDRAW
    WNDOWLESS – was trying to get FOWL into it
    POURBOIRE – took too long to see the BOIRE part
    VICE – LOI after getting POURBOIRE and doing an alphabet trawl

    Thanks setter and Ulaca

  19. A nice start to the week with a few trick little blighters.
    No problem with POURBOIRE here, unsurprisingly. Not to be confused with a Pot de vin which is a bribe – though they sometimes amount to the same thing. I remember one football club chairman boasting in a newspaper that he always tipped lavishly, as it meant that he was sure of excellent service.

    Thanks to the setter. Thanks and commiserations to Ulaca

  20. Found this very difficult. Too many not completed to list. My excuse is that it is a bank holiday and we have visitors but the reality is it was just too hard for me. Bah.
  21. HUNSTMEN (HUNTSMANS?) are big in Perth, so that one was easy. And when I say big, the first one I encountered occupied the entire width of my fridge door. At least that’s how it’s etched in my memory.

    Meandered through this one, and like Jeremy was happy to nut out POURBOIRE.

    Sad to hear of the travails of our blogger. My thanks to him and the setter.

  22. 27:52. Massively off-wavelength today, and I got completely stuck for several minutes on two or three occasions. Very tough for me.
    Some of the synonymy was a bit stretchy in this I thought, but mostly it was just clever misdirection and me being a bit thick. I enjoyed the challenge so thanks setter and u.
    1. Lord K. You may be many things, but I can assure you, you are not thick!
      Meldrew
  23. Having successfully worked my way through this puzzle and understood all the parsing, I was mightily miffed to discover that my proof reading left a lot to be desired, and a pink square adorned my effort. UBWHOLESOME. Drat and double drat! FOI, TUM LOI, VICE. POURBOIRE remembered then parsed after a bit of cogitation. 30:34 WOE and thrice WOE. Thanks setter and U, and commiserations on the blogging woes!

    Edited at 2021-08-30 10:55 am (UTC)

  24. If I ever saw a spider like Galspray’s I’d run shrieking from the house. Many thanks to Ulaca for producing a blog for a difficult puzzle under adverse conditions. For once I had no trouble with the 3 and 4 letter words but the rest took forever to appear. I never did fully parse ABSOLUTELY thinking the AB was the salt and throwing up my hands at the rest. Also spent time trying for an anagram of on your bike – oh dear. As far off the wavelength as it’s possible to be and still finish. 26.52
    1. I hope it was clear that I was exaggerating Olivia! Not quite the size of a fridge door, but big enough to get your attention.

      You develop a soft spot for them, and I became an expert at transferring them to the garden via the ice cream container method.

      1. Always think of the huntsmen as the hundred-mile-an-hour spiders. My sister and niece are terrified of spiders; once we were driving along and next thing you know there was a giant spider on the windscreen. Eek, eek, scream, etc. No problems says I as, we turned onto the freeway and accelerated up to 110 kmh. Spider was soon nowhere to be seen. Got home, parked in the garage, got out, and there was the spider clinging resolutely to the back window of the car. Top effort, I thought.
  25. Very tough. Heading for an hour before I gave up and came back after a break to see HUNTSMAN, VICE and POURBOIRE straight away. No exact time.
  26. 30 minutes but defeated by pourboire. Put in plumbline in desperation. Vice took a long time and turned out to be a good guess. Good puzzle and will need to mentally file away pourboire for its next outing.

    Thx setter and blogger.

  27. Dreadful first pass in which I only managed to get each of the three 3-letter words. However picked up once a few checkers were in place — BADINAGE opening up quite a lot of the bottom half.

    Top half was less straightforward until spotted POWDER (but couldn’t make CHIL(L)I work) and then TICK OVER gave most of the NE.

    NW came from a tentative OUTCOME and ABSOLUTELY (which I failed to parse) leaving just the _I_E which took a few minutes to come up with VICE.

    Quite pleased considering SNITCH was at 120 when I checked.

  28. First crossword after a month of holidaying, and as I feared time not great. However after seeing others’ results, I am heartened. I wasn’t alone in spending the last 15 minutes on an alphabet trawl for ‘vice’. Not helped by the nagging feeling that outcome might be wrong, because like many others I was unhappy with come = issue. Snitch gives it 118 at time of writing, so it was indeed at the harder end. Huntsman we had a few months ago, I seem to recall.
  29. 14:43 – with POURBOIRE the last in and fingers crossed it was a thing, it looked familiar.
    We had huge huntsmen in Tasmania when I was working on my PhD and I had a Canadian friend visiting who was amazed by the size of one we saw in my bedroom. We took a couple of pictures, when she got back to British Columbia she scanned them and started sending them around to friends. They ended up in memes… so if you see the picture of the huntsman about the size of a dinner plate crawling next to some ghastly blue curtains, that was my bedroom in 1993. Here’s an example: https://www.deviantart.com/stormmann1/art/This-Spider-is-so-big-it-has-a-health-bar-324348678
    2. I always tell the wife not to be so silly, after all it’s not going to hurt you, is it … with a thing that size, not so sure!
  30. A good start to the week but may not have time for the rest of the week, due to pressure of work. The top was slower to yield than the base. COD “get knotted” with Curry Powder hot on its heels. I don’t do arachnids.
  31. All went well until the top left refused to yield. I couldn’t justify COME so was very tentative about that. I was convinced VICE was actually one of the mechanicals from MSD whose name I had forgotten. Suddenly I thought of VICE out of nowhere, and realized it must mean a screw as well as the sort of thing you attach to a bench. So all correct with no aids, but I only finished it this morning so no time, but probably over an hour anyway.
  32. I think you’re being kind to the setter/editor – a vice isn’t a mechanical screw. For me, it’s two jaws which clamp together. The common ones in people’s workshops include a mechanical screw, but the clamping jaws are the defining part. Other vices include lever action, hydraulics, or ratchets to clamp the jaws together. And arguably over-centre mechanisms, in hand-held vice-grips.
    1. To be even more kind to the setter, one of the meanings in Chambers for vice is “a screw.”
  33. As the owl custodian here, I would like to make it clear that a female owl is not an “owless”, but a hen owl. I know our setter was having a chuckle, but owls deserve some respect.
    I found this tough, didn’t know the spider and didn’t get the dark = no windows, didn’t think GET KNOTTED meant the same as get lost, and spent 45 minutes on it.
    Having seen that animal on the wall, I’m glad I am a long way from Australia.
  34. Very slow today. LOI was 14a: I had to work through the alphabet before I found VICE.
  35. Fraid the POURBOIRE HUNTSMAN crossers defeated me, in spite of the cryptics being fair. Otherwise a bit slow and a few clues, as well elaborated above, a little dodgy.
  36. 37.23. Tough and chewy. After an unpromising start I slowly began to build from the bottom up finally finishing in the NW. Held up at the end by a few such as huntsman, pourboire and absolutely. I was also significantly delayed by vice which needed an alpha-trawl. I blame whoever it was that put the V all the way up the other end of the alphabet.
  37. Very tough. Thanks for the LY in absolutely – got but not parsed. I didn’t get HUNSTMAN (being=human!), POURBOIRE or NOEL though, which is pretty frustrating having struggled (quite happily) for some time with the rest. You have my sympathies on blog technical issues – having toted an iPad (no blog creator – so all manual) round the world and struggling with wifi connections etc. Can’t believe it took me SO long to move from chilli to curry powder. Hats off to our setter.
  38. …to struggle in the NW corner. After over an hour, I resorted to aids to get the last 5 clues so technical DNF.
    No Monday puzzle this — perhaps Bank Holidays don’t count as Mondays?
    Thanks Setter for the challenge and Ulaca for the blog.
  39. This one left me with a very badly scratched head. I couldn’t remember the Po’boy or Spiderman until the end of a very long pause for thought.

    And now I’ll probably dream of spiders tonight and I’m terrifed of them. Thanks, one and all

  40. Same as others with a blank NW for much time but decided that I would assume that OUTCOME was right; then luckily ABSOLUTELY hove into view despise totally misparsing it. I knew of the French tip and the B gave that up to me. The spider was last and could easily have been pluralised as didn’t have much idea with that one either. VICE had come to mind fairly quickly and I certainly didn’t hesitate too long over what sort of screw it might be

    The rest was more or less done in half an hour

    Chewy

    Thanks Ulaca and setter for an enjoyable BH challenge

  42. Embarrassed myself yet again – didn’t know that and didn’t check the dictionaries. Apologies.

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