Times Cryptic 29306

72 comments on “Times Cryptic 29306”

1. Depending on where you are in the States, and whether your maiden aunt or your mother in law is within earshot, Schmuck is a word to be careful with.
   I like the ~ jack

2. I thought this was at least as easy as yesterday’s, where I filled in most of the longest answers near the center in short order to begin with and was only held up briefly at the end by the one I had to guess (as did everyone else). I didn’t remember HEARTWOOD but it captured my heart. LOI GOALPOST—it would be a sports clue.

   1. Worth also remembering ‘sapwood’ – the outer layer where the woodworm live. I was told by a compagnon du devoir that the mediaeval craftsmen, lacking machinery to saw oak beams straight, used the less wasteful method of removing the sapwood with an adze, leaving a rippled finish now much imitated in plastic. They’re then impervious to death-watch beetle, at least until the roof starts to leak.

3. I’ve never heard the phrase OF THE FIRST WATER before, so it could have been IN. It took too long to get COMBAT (with a suspicious O that might be an I). Held up by my LOI GOALPOST for which, since I used to play the oboe and have to play that A, I have no excuse. The rest was pretty straightforward.

   I saw Paul’s comment above about SCHMUCK and looked it up in Chambers. And, yes, you would not want to use that word to your Yiddish-speaking great aunt.

4. I agree this was somewhat difficult. I have little idea of the correct spelling of tournedos, and Welsh names are always tricky. I only vaguely knew dimity, but timid was the obvious answer once you figure out roman – or Roman. I didn’t parse them all, but I was close enough and all correct.

   Time: 39:31

5. Very hard for me. DNF at submission of 35′, as I had ON THE FIRST WATER, and I can’t believe I missed the obvious SCHMUCK, particularly as someone with a fondness for Yiddishisms. Went with SCHGUNK (!)

   Everything else made sense to me in the ample time I had for parsing, though took me a while to see ‘gate’ as people. NHO ‘dimity’ so something learned. Thanks!

6. Wanted to invent ‘schlump’ (Yiddish has never been my strong suit) and was stymied by the crossing ROMAN and TIMID until I remembered my ‘Roman de la Rose’ (a favourite of CS Lewis’s).

   Last in was GOALPOST. I always thought the oboe played a D at the start of a gig. Apparently, it’s an A because, typically, all stringed instruments have an A string.

   25:37

   1. Also that strings are the largest contingent in a standard concert orchestra. Typically 60 players, and their instruments are the most likely to go out of tune in the shortest time.

7. Can one of you Brits OF THE FIRST WATER please clarify to this Yank how GO = “bash” here? Is it as in to bash someone/something is to have a go at them/it? Or is it as in a bash as a party, which is also a go? Or is it something else entirely? GOALPOST was my LOI, and I biffed it based on the checking letters plus knowing that orchestras tune on A.

   Ta in advance. And thank you to Jack and setter.

   1. To ‘have a bash at’ is to attempt, have a go.

8. Didn’t get GOALPOST even after alphabet trawl – I blame not being interested in football.

   OF THE FIRST WATER seems like a phrase never ever used nowadays.

   Must look up SCHMUCK now.

   Thanks jack and setter.

   1. You see it in Wodehouse (and Heyer :-)) but I doubt anyone would use that phrase today unless for effect.

   2. #Me Too!

9. 47.31 but WOE, a carelessly misspelt TOURNADOS. Annoying, should have checked the anagrist. LOI was GOALPOST where I had no idea at all and just clung to ‘upright’. GATEAU and UNITED also came late but all up this was a very good puzzle which was hard but, as Jack said, you always felt you were going to get there. Or nearly there, in my case.

   From Lonesome Day Blues:
   I see your lover-man coming, coming across the barren field
   I see your lover-man coming, coming across the barren field
   He’s not a gentleman at all, he’s ROTTEN to the core
   He’s a coward and he steals

10. 1 error in about 25 minutes

    I’d entered ON when I first looked at the unknown OF THE FIRST WATER and I didn’t return to it once I’d filled in the rest of the clue so more fool me. Otherwise I didn’t understand the parsing for TIMID and ROMAN (they were entered based on checkers and definitions), the unknown TOURNEDOS seemed like the most likely collection of letters, I took far too long over FAFFED and PARASOL, and last in GOALPOST took an eternity.

    A good challenge so thanks to the setter and to jackkt for filling in the blanks.

11. 22.40

    Got stuck on EDITOR and ROTTEN as the former as a program is not very familiar to me and went through the whole list of possible synonyms for sailors, managing to miss RN. Last in though was the rather good GOALPOST

12. A steady solve, no unknowns.
    Dimity quite familar to us Heyerites.
    Usual crop of unannounced Americanisms. Apart from Ft Worth, Collins says schmuck is “Derogatary US slang.”
    Also a bit of a mer at Roman.. Roman a clef not all that common in English and still a deduction to be made to get it to = novel. Still, the checkers are helpful.

13. I don’t think anyone’s said this yet, so to save you looking it up, from WP:

    “In the gemstone trade, first water means “highest quality”. The clarity of diamonds is assessed by their translucence; the more like water, the higher the quality.” (Idiom by extension.)

    1. Thanks, Dr S. I think this has come up before but I had forgotten all about.

14. DNF. Thought this was going to be another quickie with most complete in around 20 mins but then ground to a halt. Gave up on 45 mins with GOALPOST and TIMID missing, ROMAN not understood and the first water thing not trusted despite working out the parsing.
    Too much unknown GK for me but thanks all round.

    P.S. Also not helped by odd keyboard behaviour on the Times website. Typing this post is fine so not my device but in the club crossword it randomly misses letters, pauses and eventually locked entirely.

    1. Clearing your cache may help, but when I had the problem recently I uninstalled/reinstalled the app, and that did the trick.

    2. I had a similar problem yesterday. It seems that either clearing data & cookies (not just the cache) works, as does opening the website in a private/incognito tab.

       1. Thanks. I use incognito by default with a few exceptions to remember logins, like TftT and Times. Will try it tomorrow.

    3. The book I’m reading has just used the phrase “not quite of the same water” and now I know what it means. Thank you TftT

15. All correct and unaided in 38 minutes! Delayed by GOALPOST not being very sporty, EDITOR as I NHO it as a computer program and, inexplicably, by COMBAT which is surely a bit of a warhorse. COD OF THE FIRST WATER and thanks to Dr Shred for saving me the faff of researching its origin.
    Very fair and an enjoyable outing today. Thanks to jackkt and setter.

    1. I don’t think it’s a specific program, just a basic function of many

16. DNF – for some reason I had SCHNOOK and so couldn’t make anything work for 12A except TRANSPOSE. Of course SCHMUCK works much better!

17. 37 minutes with TIMID biffed. I knew the phrase OF THE FIRST WATER but not its derivation. I didn’t know HEARTWOOD but it could be little else with a couple of crossers. COD to BIOSPHERE. I found this harder than it looked. Thank you Jack and setter.

18. I biffed a few (OF THE FIRST WATER, FORT WORTH, BIOSPHERE) and parsed them all after completion, but had to come here to learn that A is a tuning note before I was happy with how my LOI worked. I thought this was pretty straightforward for a Wednesday – maybe they’re softening us up…..

    FOI COMBAT
    LOI GOALPOST
    COD TIMID
    TIME 6:55

    1. It’s Tuesday 😉

       1. Tempus fugit, especially when you get older!

          1. Indeed! I’ve got a regular social function today which has been moved from its customary Wednesday slot, so I’m blaming my befuddlement on that 🤣

    2. Er, unless I’m going mad it’s Tuesday…

19. Just under half an hour.

    – Eventually saw which meaning of ‘Upright’ was required, but I still had no idea how GOALPOST worked (and I have the same lack-of-excuse as Paul above that I used to play the oboe)
    – Biffed FORT WORTH once I had the W (like Jack, I thought the last word of 6d might be ORDER for a while, and only once I had a rethink and got OF THE FIRST WATER did the Texan city occur to me)
    – Had to hope I’d got the non-checking letters right for TOURNEDOS as I’d forgotten that word
    – NHO dimity, but I had T_M_D so TIMID had to be right
    – Had no idea about ROMAN as a French word for a novel, though I knew that it’s the German word for it

    Thanks Jack and setter.

    FOI Alpha
    LOI Goalpost
    COD Gateau

20. 34 minutes. Harder than yesterday’s. Didn’t know the ‘tuning note’ at 1a which put me off seeing the now clear def and answer and after I’d ‘Fussed vaguely’ for too long, I learnt there’s no such word as MAFFET.

    I only knew OF THE FIRST WATER from previous discussion here when WATER has appeared for “quality” or “class”. I became stuck on ECOSPHERE, which was just about OK for the def but didn’t fit the wordplay for 7d, and was therefore looking in vain for some obscure ‘film’ for 5a, my eventual last in.

    Thanks to Jack and setter

21. Another who thought this was going to be a DODDLE but went astray here and there with DOODLE not TODDLE, the Welsh name and the Yiddish expression which I had vaguely heard but not know its meaning was foolish person. TIMID was also a long time coming as I’d forgotten dimity was a material. Not my best effort today.

22. 26 mins with LOI goalpost. Struggled with that one for what seemed like an age. Bit disappointing considering that on a rare visit north to see my team( and my mum) , I saw a 4-0 win and one shot which clattered into the upright.

23. 13:40 steady progress

24. Another for whom GOALPOST was the last making for a 21.38 solve. It was hard to get away from “upright piano” and there were so many variations in a clue including “bash” and “ruined”. I also need to revise my Welsh and its peculiar variations on which letter is doubled. And yes, I know Welsh pronunciations are much more fixed than English!

25. I enjoyed this, chewy but all ultimately gettable, the only unknown being EARTHWOOD which was generously clued. The reference to the championship at the start made me wonder if this had been a championship puzzle and had me thinking that although it was a good puzzle it wasn’t one I’d have liked much in a race against the clock. Harder than yesterday for me.

26. DNF. Beaten by TIMID (NHO dimity) AND POSTERN, which I should have got. Mildly frustrating mix of very easy and not.

27. My thanks to jackkt and setter.
    I found it mainly fairly easy apart from 9d Gateau and 16a United which defeated me.
    I like the tilde in the blog. DNF.
    1a Goalpost. Biffed. I thought the orchestra used C as the tuning note, so that didn’t help me to parse it.
    26a Timid biffed. DNK dimity, just like I didn’t know it last time.
    3d Press Conference. I like the mention of the Diet or Worms, always good for a schoolboy snigger. Wiki says “Other imperial diets took place at Worms in the years 829, 926, 1076, 1122, 1495, and 1545, but unless plainly qualified, the term “Diet of Worms” usually refers to the assembly of 1521″ (which is the one that condemned Martin Luther). I thought you might want to know that.

28. Some tricky parsing in this one. I was fortunate to see GOALPOST straight away which gave me a good start. SCHMUCK presented no problems either. I FAFFED about for ages in the SE as I didn’t know ROMAN as a novel or dimity, but once the last word of 6d looked like WATER, OF THE FIRST came straight to mind. Then TIMID had to be and so did ROMAN. We had EDITOR as a program quite recently and it spawned many posts on Unix editors such as vi. HEARTWOOD and GATEAU were my last 2 in. 23:47. Thanks setter and Jack.

29. Everything went in quite smoothly (apart from HEARTWOOD, which I looked up to check its meaning) and when I looked at it afterwards everything seemed pretty straightforward, so I was expecting some good times, and thought my 41 minutes would be on the high side, but evidently no.

30. Two short on the hour mark, and one of those days when I was pleased to pull stumps as TIMID and ROMAN would never have come. Roman=novel and Dimity were both unknown, I had shrinking and novel as indicators not definitions, and missed the crucial “of” in the city. Only city that fitted was ROUEN.

    But pleased to get GOALPOST towards the end. Had fight=RUMBLE on the basis that “rule” and “film” each have loads of synonyms and two of them must be equivalent somewhere.

31. In the end DNF by about seven (7) clues – mostly north east. Most made sense on explanation here – with some a bit arcane. There were some good clues but not particularly remarkable.
    Did not like 26ac TIMID and 24d ROMAN even though understood after some research and had completed. Also the synonyms or process in 1ac and 23ac.
    Took way to long on 10ac MAPLE – probably the easiest clue. Felt like a 4d.
    We were not in the right zone for this one, but honestly I do not think it was 6d.
    Interested to know why CONFERENCE = ‘diet’ (probably something obvious).
    Apologies for any crossings with others.
    Thank you jackkt and setter.

    1. Diet: Here’s what my AI assistant thinks:

       The word “diet,” meaning an assembly or conference, has a fascinating and somewhat convoluted origin that is distinct from its more common meaning related to food.

       The political use of the word “diet” comes from the Medieval Latin term dieta, which meant both “parliamentary assembly” and “daily food allowance.” This Latin word itself is a bit of a hybrid. It is believed to have originated from the Greek word diaita, meaning “a way of living” or “regimen” (which is the source of the word’s food-related meaning).

       However, a false etymology linked dieta to the Latin word dies, meaning “day.” This association with “day” led to dieta being used in post-classical Europe to mean “an assembly,” as the word referred to a day appointed for a meeting.

       This association with “day” is clearly reflected in the German language, which has historically used “Tag” (meaning “day”) to also refer to a legislative body. Examples include the German Bundestag (Federal Diet) and the historical Reichstag (Imperial Diet).

       The term “diet” in this political sense is most famously associated with the historical assemblies of the Holy Roman Empire (like the Diet of Worms) and, in modern times, is the name of Japan’s national legislature, the National Diet.

       1. Well thank U for that fulsome information. I will be on the lookout in future.

32. 18:46

    I found this reasonably smooth, though a few bits missed as usual:

    GOALPOST – LOI – only when I lifted and separated did I see the answer, failed miserably with the wordplay though – didn’t know about the tuning note
    UNITED – guessed, was thinking that chapter would = CH rather than just C. I’ve been caught out by this before.
    FAFFED – Mrs H uses this word a great deal
    POSTERN – first came across this word in Agatha Christie’s book Postern Of Fate
    TIMID – vaguely recall dimity, perhaps from To Kill A Mockingbird?
    SCHMUCK – a friend of mine used to say this an awful lot!
    DAFYDD – one F or two – thankfully the wordplay was clear
    OF THE FIRST WATER – know from Wodehouse, but did not know its provenance

    Thanks Jack and setter

33. Definitely tricky for a Tuesday, but satisfying, with some clever surfaces disguising the destination.
    FOI GEMSTONE
    LOI. TIMID
    COD Joint ROMAN & TIMID

34. I was going pretty well on this for the most part, completing over 90% of it in about 25 minutes. I then got well and truly bogged down before I eventually completed in 52.56. I took an unnecessary amount of time to get GOALPOST, which should have been a write in for me as a football supporter, and I had to amend SCHMUK which I initially rather carelessly spelt with an O instead of the U. However most of the additional time was spent on my final two ROMAN and finally TIMID. The cotton material was unknown to me so there was little chance of me constructing the word from the clueing.

    1. Actually with an ‘o’ it means jewellry:
       ‘schmock’

35. 29:30 – same fast-slow progress as others though nothing controversial. I appreciated the elegance of ROMAN, which must have made an appearance before although I don’t remember seeing it.

36. Another one who struggled with Goalpost.
    I’ve noticed recently the use of ‘a hint of ‘ as in 17d to signify the omission of the first letter of the following word. This seems rather loose but is this now standard practice?

    1. Yes, it’s quite standard practice. (You mean selection, not omission)

       Was there anything you liked about the puzzle?

       1. Roman

37. I had no problem with the FIRST WATER, my late father used to use it as an insult as in, “[insert name] is a [insert rude word, usually with four letters or something rhyming with banker] of the first water”, indicating not just a run of the mill [four letter word], but one of the highest (or lowest) possible quality.

    I was, however, defeated by TIMID and ROMAN, after a long time of staring at them (after about 10 minutes thinking of GOALPOST then 10 more parsing it), I finally gave up and hit reveal. Disappointed not to bring ROMAN to mind as I suspected it would be the French word for novel, and ROMAN A CLEF came up quite recently somewhere, but absolutely no chance with TIMID. One of my pet peeves is using obscure fabrics as part of an answer. But then maybe if I was a tailor I would think differently…

    1. Ha – I was about to post that I’d never heard ‘first water’ either, but your comment made me remember a teacher at school who used to describe some of the less-pleasant kids in a similar way. Probably not great educational practice, but it make the rest of us laugh.

38. Tricky, with a major holdup at the end over UNITED/GATEAU and GOALPOST. DAFYDD I had originally spelt with two Fs, and I spent some time trying to account for the second before realising that it had to be two Ds at the end. I thought of UNITED early on, but was unable to parse it. I knew OF THE FIRST WATER and its derivation, but not HEARTWOOD. I knew Dimity also. The two long ones went in quickly, which helped a lot. Never did parse ON THE DOT, so thanks, Jack, for that.

39. All correct and unaided in 38 minutes! Delayed by GOALPOST not being very sporty, EDITOR as I NHO as a computer program and, inexplicably, by COMBAT which is surely a bit of a warhorse. COD OF THE FIRST WATER and thanks to Dr Shred for saving me the faff of researching its origin.

40. 48 mins. All parsed correctly but like others I knew ‘of the first water’ mainly from Wodehouse, who used it pejoratively, and who features so frequently in these posts!

41. 9:16. No problems today, it seems I got lucky with the GK because I happened to know everything. GOALPOST my last in after a pause to understand the wordplay, reluctant to rely on ‘upright’ alone.
    PS I am experiencing a weird thing here where I get logged out every time I visit on certain devices (specifically my iPhone and iPad) but not on my laptop.

42. Had a look after doing theQC, but way beyond my capabilities. Managed just 5 clues. Hats off to you regulars!

43. 30.00 on the dot. A nice challenge. NHO dimity. After a few minutes confused by 1a I finished with a biff of GOALPOST. I remained confused as I tried to make sense of P, GO AT and SOL backwards. Thanks Jack for unravelling it.

44. 40:50
    A slow but steady solve.
    LOI GOALPOST, as my mind was stuck on the wrong type of upright.
    I learnt Welsh at primary school, so no problems with the spelling of DAFYDD. A single F always makes the V sound, whilst FF always makes the F sound.
    I learnt to program in the early 80s, when an EDITOR was very much a computer program.
    Biffed TIMID. NHO the fabric.

    Thanks Jack and setter

45. No time because I left the timer running while I got called away, but I guess around 35-40 minutes, because I was reasonably quick but the last 2, GATEAU (where I spent ages trying to think of words starting AA) and finally GOALPOST (got to O and suddenly the light dawned) took me a while.
    I thought that was a good puzzle
    Thanks setter and Jack

46. Failed on Combat – put in Hobbit! The Hobbit is a film but no excuses.

47. 64:15. I found this very hard – some tricky wordplay and not always enjoyable. LOI was UNITED. Thanks both!

48. Proper struggle today, an eventual DNF after an hour or so, being defeated by the pairings of GATEAU/UNITED and TIMID/ROMAN, where I’d not heard of the French term or ‘dimity’. Couldn’t get the parsings for a few others (COMBAT for one, as MB was new to me as meaning a doctor, and GOALPOST where I didn’t know A was the tuning note).

    The others went in slowly but surely – COD POSTERN, though, never forgetting many happy evenings in the Postern Gate Wetherspoons in York as a student.

49. Gave up at the hour – no idea on goalpost and timid/gateau wrong because I’d guessed the former and gone raceau for the latter. Fairly pleased with that given there was stuff I just didn’t know like the guessed ROMAN, the A=tuning note which I thought might be a piece of missing GK, NHO tournedos or dimity, didn’t know conference=diet. And while I could see OF-THE-FIRST-WATER from the beginning it just doesn’t sound like a phrase which means anything.

50. DNF. GOALPOST only about fifth last and not fully parsed. Failed on ROMAN/TIMID even though tried aids, NHO Roman a clef nor Dimity. Had to check the meaning of OF THE FIRST WATER but it sounded likely.

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