Times 28989 – robot wars

80 comments on “Times 28989 – robot wars”

1. I made very heavy weather of this and needed 50 minutes to complete the grid with one use of aids, so that makes it a technical DNF.

   My only problem in the lower half was ABS which I put in as the most likely answer although I wasn’t entirely sure of the braking system and had no idea how to relate ABS to ‘core’. Even having read Pip’s excellent blog I’m not fully convinced that the clue is sound

   The upper half was a different story as I really struggled with 5 or 6 answers some of which went in without fully understanding the clue. The parsing of WALLET remained a mystery as it required knowledge I simply don’t have. I still don’t understand CANON although the definition left no doubt as to the correct answer. I had no idea about the HAN in HANDEL as I’ve never seen STAR WARS and never heard of the character referred to. I used aids for NINJA LOAN, another unknown. Having put that in I immediately got AXE at 14ac (my LOI) which had previously baffled me because I had been trying to apply ‘uncovered’ to the wrong part of the clue.

   Not a good day for me as the ‘modern culture’ references did for me. I suppose we have more of this sort of stuff to look forward to now.

   1. Modern culture? ‘Star Wars’ is almost 50 years old!

      1. I know. That’s why I used quotations. Bring back Beerbohm Tree!

         1. Lol

2. 23.12

   Never this early to post but I am two hours ahead.

   Liked the modern references. Did know WALL-E but NINJA LOAN from w/p which unlocked AXE. Also struggled with the other three letter clue, ABS.

   Thanks Pip and Setter

3. 14:13. I agree with piquet that there was a (relatively) modern feel to this, particularly with the appearance of Wall-E and Fireman Sam (although Fireman Sam is pushing 40). I had too much knowledge of alcohol though, bunging in SUNRISE for the Tequila drink. It didn’t take me too long to realise I wanted the SLAMMER on this occasion. I can’t say I’ve tried either, but the Sunrise definitely sounds more appealing.

4. 34:59 I suppose I must be of a slightly younger generation than some, so the more modern references didn’t phase me… mostly done by 22 mins but the NE corner took a while as I had SYNCS rather than SYNCH (I think this is a fine synonym for mime by the way). Fun puzzle with some unexpected clueings. Thanks Pip and setter.

5. 38 minutes, taking a long time to finish with a constructed NINJA LOAN. I only issued AAA stock. I eventually managed to construct HANDEL, despite being of the age to think of Napoleon before Han, and then replaced the dodgy LIP SYNCS with LIP SYNCH. I saw interminable Disney films as the kids grew up, so was aware of Wall-E, but I think I escaped that one. Either that or slept through it. But definitely, in memory of those years, I’m going to salute one of their earlier super-heroes, Fireman Sam, by making WIND FARM COD. Thank you Pip and setter.

   1. You need to watch Wall-E. It’s a magnificent film.

6. 36.22, tough but fair. A bit of guesswork helped, like what exactly is a NINJA LOAN? Why is WALLET the answer to anything? What’s going on with CANON? Who is Fireman Sam? All mercifully explained by Nelson’s excellent blog. I really enjoyed the challenge today and feel it was quite miraculous to complete the grid unscathed (though I did resort to the check function a couple of times when my mind refused to accept that a couple of these could possibly be the correct answers – but they were).

   From Red River Shore:
   We’re living in the shadows of a fading past, trapped in the fires of time
   I tried not to hurt anybody, and stay out of a life of crime
   And when it’s all been said and done, I never did know the SCORE
   One more day is another day away
   From the girl from the Red River shore

7. Owls —they whinny down the night;
   Bats go zigzag by.
   Ambushed in Shadow beyond sight
   The outlaws lie.
   (Outlaws, Robert Graves)

   25 mins mid-brekker. I liked it a lot. Some very clever stuff, e.g. “out to improve appearance”. This would probably be ok on its own as a CD.
   I thought Wall-Et was tricky for those who don’t know the film, especially with a tricksy, noteworthy definition.
   Good stuff.
   Ta setter and Pip.

   1. My thoughts, too, on BEAUTY SLEEP. Out to improve appearance? would have made a great clue even better.

8. I found this troublesome, but very enjoyable. NHO SLOI NINJA LOAN but managed to construct it, and it made sense. Wall-E had entered my consciousness from somewhere – possibly the power of advertising – but I biffed WALLET first, and realisation immediately followed. I agree that the puzzle had a comparatively modern feel to it, but maybe I’m more “down with the kids” than I give myself credit for.

   FOI REFRAIN
   LOI CANON
   COD FIRE BRIGADE*
   TIME 12:22

   *The Move song has already become today’s earworm – I loved the Eddy Cochran bass riff.

9. 12:39. I’m happy with Star Wars, The Muppets and Tequila slammers as generation-spanning pop culture references, along with Oliver Twist and James Bond. As for kids’ movies, as per BW above, it all comes down to what was going around when your kids were at a certain age. In my case that included Wall-E.

   Maybe NINJA LOAN rang the vaguest of bells, maybe it didn’t, but in the end the J had to go somewhere.

   An enjoyable solve all round, with SNAP OUT OF IT as my favourite. Thanks setter and Pip.

10. 7:51. WALL-E came out 16 years ago from a major studio and won the Oscar for best animated film, so seems perfectly fair game for a puzzle. Lovely film in any case; thank goodness they didn’t turn it into a franchise.

    I was smack on the wavelength for this one, with only ABS causing me any concern (not least as I don’t drive), before the combination of a mini-alphabet trawl and realising which core I needed got me there.

    Thanks both.

11. 21:25

    FOI: EAT
    LOI: NINJA LOAN

    Only the NINJA LOAN unknown, but the word play and all crossers helped enormously. Introducing some more recent pop culture references might be a way into attracting younger crossword solvers, so clues linked to widely-known information could appeal. International franchises such as Star Wars, James Bond, Disney/Pixar and Henson productions would all seem reasonably fair game. I’m not so sure the Pontypandy Fire Brigade and similar are on an equal footing. Still, I look forward to being tested on Elvis Cridlington, Mrs Goggins and Duggee in coming weeks, if this trend continues.

    Thanks to piquet and the setter

12. 14:02. Held up at the end by WALLET, being unconvinced that it was “noteworthy” even when I remembered the cartoon robot. I was similarly unsure of ABS. LOI AXE took a while. I liked NIGHTWEAR best. Thanks Pip and setter.

13. 29ac You mean ‘F for Key’ I think.

14. Once again, trundling along quite nicely and at 30 mins had only two left. Yes. You know the two.

    Like our blogger I finally bunged in WALLET having no idea why. The NINJA GINGER LOAN MOAN took another eight minutes to unravel. Obviously a NHO. Once I’d worked out that jail on was an anagram I got it. So eventually came home in 40 mins.

    I liked MISS PIGGY. I used to love the Muppets, especially the two old geysers.

    Thanks pip and setter.

15. About 90 minutes with not a clue about film robot, FREE PORT, NINJA LOAN and others.
    Thanks Piquet. I assume key in FREE PORT is F (not free is F)

16. Well I did OK until the last few then came to a complete halt, finally taking 45 minutes. My LOI was ABS which was pretty much a complete guess, before that I hesitated for ages before putting in WALLET, I had started thinking of HAL as the robot before I got WIND FARM, I couldn’t make sense of WALLE as a robot but I decided I had to run with it in the end.
    Before those last ones the NE corner and especially NINJA LOAN had held me up, but I was just being slow there.
    Thanks setter and blogger for explaining everything!

17. 22:43 but submitted off the leader board.

    I usually do the quick crossword as a warm-up, which I then don’t submit as I take my time and I typically make a typo or a silly mistake. I followed this pattern today and I only realised that I’d done the 15×15 when the club page said the main puzzle had been completed. Rank stupidity but in fairness I did at least think it was harder than a usual quickie.

    No major problems, with the only unknown being NINJA LOAN, and not knowing that I knew WALL-E until I had all the checkers.

    Not a good start to the week for me.

    Thanks to both.

18. A canter in 22 mins. Yesterday’s seemed much harder than this, to me. Only MASSIF and SCORE held me up. No problem with LIP SYNCH, apart from the spelling: To ‘mime’ on Top of The Pops – meaning to lip sync – was standard usage. And indeed standard practice.

19. 35 minutes. Happy to spell FAGIN correctly thanks to the wordplay. I didn’t know WALL E as a ‘robot’ at 1a (I tried to make HAL work too) and had no idea about a NINJA LOAN. I thought LIP-SYNCH was fair enough; remember the legendary Milli Vanilli? Favourite was the misleading surface for LIGER.

    As several others have noted I think the parsing for FREE PORT is F (‘Key’) REPORT (‘article’) containing (‘about’) E (‘European’).

20. I see no difference between being expected to know Han Solo, and Fagin. The former is more well known now, like it or not. Fireman Sam and WALL-E more surprising but still perfectly fair.
    I did hear that they were keen to use more recent cultural references in the Times crossword, “recent” apparently meaning “from the last 50 years”, and this puzzle bears it out.

21. 10:55

    I thought I was heading for a comfortable sub-10 but the funny goings on in the NE corner put paid to that, especially the unknown NINJA LOAN with the odd reflexive anagram indicator. Other than that I had all the required GK. I couldn’t parse FREE PORT so thanks for that one.

    Very unusually for us we were drinking tequila at the weekend. Mrs P. “acquired” a bottle of Clase Azul through work (£150+ a pop and coming in a very fetching blue and white bottle that is sought after for making table lamps etc.) so we tried it with friends. Drunk neat rather than slammed, sunrisen or with lemon/salt and very nice too. Lovely notes of vanilla.

    Like others I briefly considered HAL as the robot but of course that was a computer.

22. My reservations about “lip-synch” as a synonym of (for?) “mime” are removed by thinking back to the case of Milli Vanilli. But I do resist normalising “lip-synch”, rather than “lip-sync”. Agreed, the “h” is part of the morpheme in “synchronise”. But when carried over into “synch” the “h” merely sends a confusing message about pronunciation. (And brings to my mind the dated joke about the iPhone user who named their phone “The Titanic”, so that they could “sync The Titanic”.)

23. 26:26
    Found this very tricky and made heavy weather of it.
    I’m another who thinks of Napoleon Solo first. I’ve never seen Star Wars and being under the impression that his name was HANS SOLO didn’t help. My first thought as to the Film Robot was HAL but WIND FARM sorted that out. Lots to like elsewhere: LIP SYNCH, SNAP OUT OF IT, SLAMMER, FIRE BRIGADE.
    The puzzle has left me with a bizarre e-worm: Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall with a mutated chorus of “hey teacher, leave those ninja loans”. I blame the heat.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter

24. 26.46. Not enjoyable for me, though I did think that the clue for ‘Beauty Sleep’ was a corker.

25. 1a NHO Wall-E. My children are too old it would appear.
    11a Canon. Thought it was a ref to anon being in the near future (before), but that doesn’t parse.
    14a tAXEd never thought of that word.
    23a Abs, thought it was vague, and impossible without both crossers, but a write-in with.
    29a Free Port, I don’t remember ever seeing this as one word but I’ve added it (as 1) to the Cheating Machine. It was already there as 2 words so I reckon we’ve had it before.
    2d Liger, unaccountably absent from CM, now added. Tigon already present. I wrote Ligon in without understanding the word, DOH! Must have been asleep or something.
    7d NHO Ninja Loan, but sweated out from the anagrist. Aka NINA loan according to Wiki. Both added to CM.
    20d tequila Slammer; I too pencilled in Sunrise only to erase it in favour of a guess that parses.
    22d Massif. I knew Fireman Sam when my daughters watched him. I gain the impression that our setter was Watching (Sam) with Mother. Which is a good thing; this pastime is not solely for the retired.
    POI 25d Fagin. NHO Brooklyn Dodgers; apparantly a US baseball team, resident quaintly in LA. Same reason as the MK Dons perhaps?

    1. In the 1950’s the owners of the beloved but woeful Brooklyn Dodgers( Dem Bums) and the regal New York Giants upped stakes and abandoned New York for California, becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants respectively. This left New York to the Yankees until a new team, the Mets,was established in the 1960’s.

26. How can 6d be technically correct if everyone knew it?

    1. Reminds me of the Get Smart movie (The Nude Bomb?) where Max introduces himself proudly as “Agent 86, best-known secret agent in the world”.

27. 21’59”. Didn’t mind all the non-canonical culture references. Maybe they’re the next 11 across. My only confusion was thinking Han Solo was Hans Solo. The original Fireman Sam — produced in Wales as I recall — was wonderful. Later updates less so. Glad I got my -wares and my -wears properly in order for 10 across. Many thanks as ever to setter and blogger.

28. Well, I didn’t think it could be R2D2, C3PO or BB8. Marvin didn’t fit though Robby did. Vincent? Bob? Maximilian? I eventually arrived at the uber-cute Wall-E, but it could have been quicker. Then there were Pugh, Pugh, Barney Macgrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb to work through before getting to Sam. Then Big Bird, The Grouch, Kermit (of course) Fozzie, and zillions more who LIP SYNCHed their way through “It’s time…” and Manamana. Culture, eh?
    But the one that got me stuck was S?O?E, totally missing the point and pushing my time to 18.10. Quite fun in a rather more inclusive frame of reference kind of way. Now where can I borrow a Ninja?

29. 21:55

    Those of you who have not yet seen Star Wars (A New Hope) or WALL-E should perhaps be encouraged to take a few hours from your busy schedules and enjoy these pieces of escapism. They are well thought of for very good reasons – they are both entertaining films, the latter more thought-provoking than the first.

    As for the grid, only NINJA LOAN unknown.

    Thanks P and setter

    1. Absolutely. And it’s easy forget that when Star Wars first appeared it was completely unlike anything we’d ever seen before.

       1. Indeed. I was 5, so lots of things were completely unlike anything I’d ever seen before, but I still remember it. Or to be precise I remember the excitement and anticipation around the release of Empire. There’s almost nothing else I remember from my life at that age.
          Roll forward 40+ years and my kids are all completely familiar with the movies and the lore in general, and my youngest in particular went through a phase of being a bit of a nerd about it (I used to enjoy winding him up by pretending that the prequels just never happened).
          There’s not a lot of cultural output that has this kind of impact over this kind of time-span.

30. On route for a PB here – not a WR or even an OR – until I came to the NE corner where I invented a Nonga loan – had to be something like a Wonga loan surely (using gaol for jail) – but at least it gave me canon and Handel neither of which I could figure out at all but they couldn’t be anything else. How frustrating!

31. Slow until it wasn’t. The power of checkers.

    LOI was FREE PARK.

    19:31

32. Inadvertent double post.

33. Some nice lifting and separating (Bond Street, undercover agent, wedding service, …). 43 minutes with some bewilderment about several, which have been mentioned above. I last drove 35 years ago, long before the A.B.S. can have been invented I suspect, and even if it had my 2CV wouldn’t have had it.

34. Well at least I managed to finish this, which is more than can be said for the QC where I fell at the last. Most answers went in swiftly enough, but it took time time to construct the never heard of NINJA LOAN from the clue, and I had no idea about the robot in my LOI WALLET. All in all quite happy to finish in a reasonable 38.16.

35. I made a hash of this, though I liked the ones I got. NHO Wall-E, nor LIGER (though I *have* heard of TIGON!); put SYNCS not SYNCH (think I’d’ve got HANDEL but for that), put ARM for AXE (I parsed this as ‘ALARMED’ for ‘under stress’, ‘uncovered’ meaning ‘minus the first and last pair’). What’s going on with CANON? Don’t understand the blog I’m afraid. Enjoyed nonetheless.

    1. CANON seems clear enough to me, C for Conservative, ANON for ‘not yet unmasked’ i.r. not yet identified, and CANON is a posh word for the works, oeuvre, of a composer etc. “The Shakespearean canon”, for example.

36. 46:55 which includes ages on the NHO NINJA LOAN, not helped by not having the A from AXE for most of that time. Elsewhere some hard-to-get-your-head-round cluing (WALLET, CANON, ABS) but all good stuff. COD SNAP OUT OF IT

37. 6:46 – and continuing a good run (apart from a complete ‘mare yesterday), which makes me worry I’ve peaked a couple of months early…..

    No issues on the definition of LIP-SYNCH but not sure I’d have the H on the end. Previous posters have alluded to ToTP, I’ll add in Cheryl whateverhernameisthesedays Tweedy as a judge on the X Factor (let’s not forget, a singing competition, and she a judge of said singing) lip-syncing to her latest song. Which (opinion warning) was crap anyway.

    Didn’t know Ninja Loan, but wordplay left me confident enough.

    First one in 1A – not sure why but “Film Robot” led straight to WALLE.

    MER at FORESHORE as being homophonic of FOR SURE but no real other option

    SECRET AGENT seems to have appeared a lot recently, or is that just my dodgy memory?

    Would be interested to hear what the definition is of “modern” in terms of car technology – I had a car with ABS in the mid 90s, so to me modern car tech would be the likes of road sign recognition, lane awareness, blind spot monitors, self parking. But maybe that’s just me being a car geek.

    All that aside, happy to say that this is a rare occasion where I was quicker than Jason. By nearly a minute 😀

38. I liked this crossword. Last two were NINJA LOAN and AXE.
    Napoleon Solo came to mind before Han.
    David

39. Didn’t get WALLET until I had the crossers, but Wall-E did ring a bell when the answer emerged. Couldn’t have told you it was a robot though. No problems with Fireman Sam, Miss Piggy or Han Solo. NINJA LOAN was unknown but not too hard to construct. BEAUTY SLEEP was a great clue! LOI was SCORE. EAT and LIGER were first 2 in. 18:43. Thanks setter and Pip.

40. I completed this in half my usual time. NHO ninja loan, but happy with the film and TV references. Makes a welcome change from all the cricket references which I only have to know for crosswords.

41. I’m not at the standard of most of you speedsters but I did manage to battle through this in about an hour and ten minutes. I’m still learning the craft so often use the check function if I’m in two minds on the parsing (is this frowned upon?:)) – but this time, with the exception of an overly-hasty SUNRISE instead of SLAMMER, I was green throughout.

    Still not sure about the ANON part of CANON.

    However, as a bit of a film tragic, WALL-E and Han Solo were gifts! I was also pretty quick with ABS and don’t have the problem with it that some others seem to have

    I think the suggestion of ‘Out to improve appearance?’ as a clue for BEAUTY SLEEP is inspired. It reminds me of one of my favourite clues – Someone who’s out and about – SOMNAMBULIST

    A real pleasure to have discovered this blog.
    Thanks
    Bill

    1. Regarding the check function, I think we all have our own rules about what and what isn’t allowed!

42. I was looking for a PB of about 10 minutes with just one across and one down to go. Didn’t know the robot, and didn’t see the clever cryptic for the wallet.

    Queried wind as gas, till I realised it meant that wind and that gas. My mind is clearly about such matters.
    Beauty sleep was wonderful.

43. 8:44. Right up my street this: I experienced the financial crisis at first hand so even NINJA LOAN was familiar. And as galspray says if your kids were the right kind of age WALL-E is a write-in. I think I’ve seen the movie at least twice.
    In 23ac I think ‘features’ has to go with ‘core’, because there are other muscles involved.

44. Late to this. About 40 mins. Three quarters went in very quickly (WALL-E, SAM, SLAMMER etc all appeared quickly). Long time on the NW corner until Nan came to the rescue for NINJA LOAN which set up the others. LIP SYNCH was a nice homophone but doesn’t mean “mime” to me. Marcel Marceau will be turning in his grave, but not moving his lips… Thanks Piquet and setter

45. 38 mins, mostly completed this morning but had time to finish off WIND FARM and WALLET just now. As it happens I only saw WALL E recently. Unlike some above, I really enjoyed this quirky effort.

46. 41’45”
    Started slowly, then got slower; clearly unsuited to the course.

    Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder, Pat the Postman ….. Fred the Fireman ? Perhaps he’s alliterative in Welsh. I’m all for neologisms, as long as they are logical and witty; ninja loan fits the bill perfectly. A Free Port, on the other hand, sounds like a good idea but is not witty and turns out to be a euphemism barely concealing much unpleasantness.
    I’m not feeling completely antediluvian,however, as Solos of the Napoleon variety ring a bell but don’t immediately spring to mind.
    The setter has earned my condolences for his parental chores and admiration for a very well crafted puzzle. Thank you, and also Zabadak and Pip.

47. Did this quickly for me in 34 mins. Those two old guys in muppets were probably younger than I am now. Waldorf and Statdler I think. Enjoyed this one thank you.

48. I’d never heard of NINJA LOAN before, but found it, and everything else was within my ken. (I’ve actually seen WALL-E, somehow.) My LOI was ABS (on which I concur with keriothe). Hesitated on LIP-SYNCH but I do appreciate the more old-fashioned spelling. On these shores, SHORE sounds like “sure” only in a Southern accent.

49. 11:55 with NINJA LOAN responsible for a failure to finish in under 10 minutes. Most enjoyable crossword. Interesting to read the comments about the puzzle having a “modern” feel to it…Chrysler’s Imperial had ABS brakes in 1971.
    Thanks to setter & blogger.

50. About a dozen of these were almost QC direct write-ins of not much note; of the other score I found myself irked at almost every one until a penny dropped, at which point I’d think “Ah. Genius.”

    Surprise of the day: I expect there are very few organised groups of intelligent people in which a half-dozen or more have never seen Star Wars, but we’ve got one here.

    1. I’ve never seen it either.

       1. You really are missing something. There are some things that are so culturally important that you just have to be au fait. I sat through Citizen Kane for this reason, I don’t see why you should be spared Star Wars 😉

          1. Not to mention that you can’t fully appreciate any of the current poltical-sphere jokes about certain parties, caucuses, and even legislatures resembling the bar scene in Star Wars if you haven’t had the pleasure.

             1. Maybe that scene can be found on YouTube or somewhere. If it’s been widely alluded to in the past few decades, it might be possible to catch the drift from second- or thirdhand sources. But I don’t think I’ve heard any of these jokes.

             2. I do remember Han Solo facing off against Greedo, sitting on a couch…

          2. When I met my dear friend Heather a couple decades, at least, ago, she was sporting Princess Leia curls, and I knew what they were. The characters have so suffused the culture (not just crosswords) that I somehow feel like I’ve already seen it all. Or enough, anyway! Ha. I know that the most famous line is always misquoted. And that in France, Darth Vader is Dark Vader (that damn TH)…

             1. Given the ubiquity of the characters and themes in popular culture, I honestly don’t understand why you wouldn’t just watch the damn movie!

                1. Well, I think I know what those characters represent anyway. I don’t want to say anything that might offend someone who really digs the series, which sonehow (go figure!) just never appealed to me. Each to his own.

                   1. There’s nothing you can say that would offend me: much as I love it – almost entirely because of when it came out – I am under no illusion that this stuff is great art. My point is a more general one: when something is so ubiquitous for so long like this I’m surprised you haven’t found two hours in your life to watch it out of sheer curiosity, if nothing else. There are lots of examples (Citizen Kane is one) of films that I’ve watched for that reason.

             2. Use the force, Guy. (and Pip, jack, & Michelin)

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