Times 28945 – Blighty Bites Back – Times for The Times (2024)

29 minutes with LOI an uncertain MANDOLINE. Shouldn’t NYLON be plural? Some nice clues here, with DAD DANCING just beating DIDDLY SQUAT to COD. After being showcased by Mick Hodgkin as the hippest 78 year-old in town this weekend, today wasn’t really the day to reveal that my music knowledge stops with leaving University and the release of Sergeant Pepper’s. But I do like Elvis Costello, so got NEW WAVE, and the Middlesbrough fans wouldn’t stop singing the wretched MACARENA when they beat Wanderers in the League Cup Final, so I knew that. Enjoyable. Thank you U and setter.

8:03.
I had a very enjoyable afternoon at The George with fellow TfTTers on Saturday and it inspired me to return here after a bit of a hiatus.
I was more familiar with AMON RA than AMEN RA so that gave me pause for thought. With ulaca having mentioned that there are various spellings I Googled to find what they were which led me to discover there is a US football player called Amon-Ra St Brown. Quite a name to give your child!
Like Jack I wanted 25A to start with an L, but I actually went further, parsing the answer as LANDAU and assuming it was the name of a sweet as well as a carriage. Thankfully the unlikely looking letters this gave me in 19D meant it didn’t take me too long to spot my boo-boo.

Nice Monday fare. I took the E. Morse as an abbreviation for Endeavour Morse, perhaps to throw us off track. NHO Dad Dancing and now I’m going to be very self-conscious next time I hit the floor.
Thanks setter and ulaca

22 minutes – a gentle stroll to start the week; literally in my case as I solved it while walking from Waterloo station to Victoria. I also had LANDAU for a while before IN CHECK went in.
I liked DIDDLY SQUAT and DAD DANCING.

I got there in 21:54, there were 2 words I had never heard of my LOI MANDOLINE and MACARENA.
I was going quite fast until I got to the SE where CUR and REPORT held me up, then I was pretty sure MACARENA had to be right, then after probably a couple of minutes I very hesitatingly put in MANDOLINE and it was right.
Thanks setter and blogger

7:15. Pretty gentle, but enjoyable with some nice modern idioms. As a father of teenagers I’m very familiar with the term DAD DANCING.
As Rick Stein famously demonstrated (google it) you can easily take the ends of your fingers off with a MANDOLINE but it would take some creativity to make it lethal.
I don’t have a problem with ‘stockings’ for NYLON. It’s like defining denim as ‘jeans’: if you have the latter you have a quantity of the former.

About 30 mins with interruptions as I head to Cologne for the next instalment of Scotland’s Euros debacle…. Funny that when I dance, in my head it’s much better than DAD DANCING, until I see the video. Enjoyed this and the colloquialisms. AMEN RA was a final “half-biff” till I twigged the parsing. Thanks Ulaca and setter

Carriage Return
LANDAU, as very recently entered, is the perfect result of the wordplay for what turned out to be GATEAU. Conspiracy theorists might like to consider the heinousness of using one crossword to prompt a wrong answer in the next*. Otherwise more or less skipped through this in 12.22 (I was quicker when the answer was LANDAU). NYLON made an appearance as recently as Friday, perhaps more accurately defined as “material”.
Today’s Quickie has proved a graveyard for those seeking to avoid pinks, including me. Give it a miss, or submit without leaderboard!
*Word deleted to avoid breaking embargo.

30:44. Quite a meaty Monday, I thought. But a real treat. I too considered Landau but also Landor (thinking perhaps of Lindor, who make chocolates). I liked DAD DANCING and the parsing of AMEN-RA. COD to GATEAU

A very slow 46 minutes. Everything solved in less than 20 minutes except the NHO DAD DANCING. I then spent the rest of the time looking for something plausible before finally bunging in what, to my surprise, turned out to be the correct answer. Frustrating, but I felt a bit more gruntled after a chuckle at the Chambers def.

5a EndToEnd – I wasn’t very happy with this, but entered it with a shrug, probably because I dislike everything if it is connected to football in any way. Bad loser has a good moan (I think we need an acronym for this such as BLAGHUM.)
Enjoyed 15a DAD-DANCING but it took an age to find and I couldn’t let it in without looking it up and so DNF. Wiktionary has a pic of:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dad_dancing
“President of the United States George W. Bush dancing with members of the Euphonic Jazz Band in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, in 200”
It looked really embarrassing.
26a MACARENA an easy solve, but had to look it up as already DNF.
1d MANDOLINe didn’t notice it was a kitchen, not a stringed instrument, and vaguely thought “not a drum, but who cares” so defeated there.
3d kNEW WAVE DNK. Well did but forgot.
12d DIDDLY. Took forever, then thought of Clarkson’s farm (sole function to annoy the local council.)

Breezed through this in 17 minutes, probably one of my best times. Most likely to slow down through the rest of the week. No unknown words/terms. More like this, please!

16:48. Held up by having LANDAU for 25A until IN CHECK came along but held up even more by the SE corner, taking ages to find FLYTRAP and then REPORT, my LOI. An inauspicious start to the week. Thanks U and setter.

14:23 – fairly painless, with a passing cloud at the singular nylon and the spelling of AMEN, which, on the rare occasions I have seen it, has been spelt with an O.

37 minutes but perhaps a minute or two less because I got all mixed up with my tablet at the end. As many have said NYLONs are the stockings, nylon is the material. Never heard of the MACARENA but no doubt should have. Now that E. (not just E) is pointed out in 16dn it does look wrong. It always seems to me that in a hidden to talk of shrinking or downsizing (as in 14ac) is inadequate: if something shrinks everything is still there, but just smaller; what is needed is an instruction to remove the outer bits. I suppose you could argue that downsizing is this, but to me it seems more like shrinking.

Miffed by Amen and not Amun or even Amon because it would have been my first sub 20. Bah! I know that is nothing much in this league where I feel a bit Luton Town.

AMON-RA, when will I ever remember to parse the simpler ones properly?
DAD DANCING is only embarrassing if videoed, which should be a capital offence.
FLYTRAP simple and elegant, so I took ages to spot it.
GATEAU, when will I ever be alert to the “gate/scandal” duality?
Thanks everyone

AMEN-RA was my FOI and I just used the prayer endings without considering alternate spellings. After slightly more than 10 minutes, I had 3 clues left to do in the SE but had to hurriedly save the puzzle for later and dash out for my appointment with the hairdresser (a semi annual shearing event these days!) On my return I constructed the NHO MACARENA and assembled the FLYTRAP. A mis-biffed CAD at 27d held up REPORT for a while longer but once I’d seen how it worked, I corrected CAD to CUR and submitted at 14:04 for a nice all green grid. Thanks setter and U.
On edit: I had a MER at NYLON too.

18.51. I felt that this shouldn’t have taken so long.

23 mins, was convinced it was spelt MANDOLIN like the instrument, so hesitated, as I did with NHO DAD DANCING. As commented above, lots of nice idioms here, almost a theme.

Finished in just under an hour. Had no idea how GATEAU worked (thanks for explanation). Not too pleased to be reminded of the MACARENA but did like DAD DANCING.

I saw DAD DANCING very early on, but refused to believe it. Put it in last… after checking! Ha

28 minutes. DOT seemed like a triple definition, one of which was cryptic. Having recently spent an age spotting a triple definition it went straight in. DIDDLY SQUAT and LOCAL DERBY were the last two. A nice puzzle. Thanks ulaca.

29 mins. Nothing to report🙁

Nice puzzle, nearly did it between us. one thing, curing uses salt etc, and is not the same as smoking.

Seemed easier than the SNITCH rating. No complaints, no loud cheers.

19’31”. Most done in ten minutes then slowed way down in the bottom right. The macarena had passed me by until my 4 year-old daughter started doing those aggravating hand moves.

30:24
AMEN RA was my LOI.
I liked DIDDDLY SQUAT and DOT.

Quite quick today – around 20 minutes – much of which deliberating Amen/Amon/Amun. I think the clue would have been better if “Two prayer endings” rather than “Different prayer endings” to avoid people opting for Amon/Amun.
Enjoyed the two football clues during the Euros tournament and enjoyed the neat “In cargo pants” anagram.

Amun-Ra here too 🙁
No problem with Dad Dancing, I have a mug illustrating how to do it (from an earlier Father’s Day); COD for me.

32:17. AMEN-RA and LANDAU basically doubling my time., the rest done in about 17 mins… I am strictly an AMUN guy. Thanks ulaca and setter!