Times 28995 – stretching the eyebrows?

79 comments on “Times 28995 – stretching the eyebrows?”

1. ‘Potted’ is just another of many slang words for ‘drunk’. Collins thinks it’s American but it’s in common usage here in the UK and has been for as long as I can remember.

   I needed 47 minutes for this, so I would rate it a little harder than average, for me at least.

   I agree ‘Charlie’ is a fool which is not necessarily a PAIN IN THE NECK as that relates more to the effect had on other people. I’ve known many a ‘pain in the neck’ who was by no means foolish.

   ‘Crybaby / DRIP’ on the other had seems okay to me.

   I’ve travelled quite extensively in Germany but somehow managed to avoid hearing of LEVERKUSEN so I was grateful for the helpful wordplay at 14dn.

   1. Does C (Nato alphabet)+Rick, as in crick (pain) in the neck work?

      1. It most certainly does! Although the definition of ‘rick’ isn’t needed as it’s in the clue. We all missed it. Many thanks.

   2. For the record, as a 63 year old yank, I’ve NEVER heard potted to mean high on marijuana or drunk. There are dozens of other terms, but not potted. Chambers does call it (N Am inf), but I disagree.

      1. I wouldn’t have classed it as specifically American as I’ve been aware of its use in the UK (for drunk, not drugged) for as long as I can remember and I’m some way older than you, but I know of one American example, in the Tom Lehrer song quoted above by Ian Bland.

2. Funny, my last two were POTTED and DRIP too.
   POTTED does not mean high on pot (I would know!) but drunk. It’s in Collins online, but listed as originally from American sources.
   A QUARTER TONE is half a semitone, and so falls between the notes that are usually placed on the lines of a staff and further defined by flats or sharps. It requires special notation.

   1. Actually it now occurs to me that a quarter tone isn’t a note anyway, it’s an interval of pitch.

      1. It is both.

         1. How is that?

            1. I think Charles Ives’s quarter-tone pieces for piano were done by simply tuning two pianos a quarter-tone apart, so no unconventional notation was required (don’t quote me—can’t check now). But composers who’ve broken out of the cage of diatonicism have devised their own notational systems. For example, Ben Johnston:
               https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_tone#Just_intonation_tuning_systems
               If it’s on paper, it’s a note!

3. My LOsI were also DRIP and POTTED. More importantly, we’ve had three QCs and three 15x15s this week and this is the first of any that I’ve been able to finish! Whoopee! Actually it was a close-run thing, but finally those last two fell and I crossed the line in 37.14. The note, the city and the general (did they actually have generals in 495BC?) also took some figuring out. Thanks to Nelson for a lot of hard work, including the revelation that epode is a word and for pointing out that much of DICTATORSHIP was an anagram. I just went off the fact that Tito was in the clue and biffed it.

   From If You See Her Say Hello:
   I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
   And I hear her name HERE AND THERE as I go from town to town
   And I’ve never gotten used to it, I’ve just learned to turn it off
   Either I’m too sensitive, or else I’m getting soft

   1. They certainly did have generals in 5th Century Greece, although they called them strategoi, from which ultimately we get English strategy, strategist etc. Along with episode, pentagon, and lacteal (from gala, meaning milk), this is quite the crossword for students of Greek!

   2. The rank of General seems to have been expressed by Stratigos or Starategos in ancient Greece.

4. DRIP and POTTED were my last two too.

5. The timer clock still doesnt stop on completing the puzzle?

   1. Still doing that for me as well. If you did complete the puzzle successfully, you can go back to the page listing the day’s crosswords to see your time. If you didn’t, it’ll show as ‘in progress’.

      1. I think you may need to clear the browser cache. I was seeing that behaviour but after I updated Chrome (which I think clears the caches) I saw new behaviour whereby an all new resultsy looking pop-up thing appears over the grid.

         1. I don’t suppose there’s an equivalent of clearing the cache in the app?

6. DNF, missing DRIP, EPISODE and POTTED in the SW. Snooker balls are potted, as are aspidistras but they’re not on high. I think ALWAYS is just AY this time. I did know LEVERKUSEN though, from Bayer and the football team. Overall, this puzzle left me perplexed, which is probably why I abandoned it. Thank you Pip and setter.

7. Yup, last two in DRIP & POTTED here two. DNK that meaning for potted. 50 mins so on the tougher side. I too wasn’t sure about “Charlie” being a pain in the neck but Rick certainly is so in it went. BREATHLESS unparsed, quite clever really.

   I liked RUBBER PLANT.

   Thanks pip and setter.

8. Not my favourite crossword this, relying too much on tricksy definitions, as outlined by our esteemed blogger..
   Leverkusen has a football team I think, doubt if I would have heard of it otherwise.. ah yes, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, Bayer being the pharmaceutical company whose headquarters are there. Didn’t know about the 04 bit.

   1. Rather an understatement-‘football team’.
      In May they became the first team to go unbeaten in the German Bundesliga, hammering Bayern Munich in the process. For good measure they also won the German Cup, and their only loss came in the Europa League final.

9. 12:56. Like everyone else I finished on DRIP and POTTED – in that order for me, following an alphabet trawl for the first letter of DRIP. It was quite a relief when I saw it as I had visions of being stuck there for ages.

10. 32 minutes, needed DRIP to get my LOI the NHO (in the drunk sense) POTTED. I see I’m not alone there! Also Quarter Tone I was a bit unsure of.
    Thanks setter and blogger

11. Dnf today, hopelessly lost on QUARTER TONE, not willing to guess the nho LEVERKUSEN, same problems as others with POTTED and DRIP. Just not on the wavelength.

    Thanks pip and setter.

12. Around 75 minutes. LOI POTTED AND DRIP.
    Thanks Piquet for the parsing

13. 14.40, with a few eyebrows raised. My last two in were QUARTER TONE and PLAQUE. I knew POTTED meant drunk, so not a huge stretch for it to mean high, although I’ve never heard it in the wild. Agree about Charlie, though the enumeration meant it didn’t delay me. LEVERKUSEN went in thanks to football – last season they very impressively broke Bayern Munich’s stranglehold on the Bundesliga.

    Thanks both.

    1. Only because Never-Wins-Trophies Harry Kane joined Bayern

14. 17:42 ruined by a typo

    I felt on-song today and my happiness at dipping under 20 minutes was short-lived thanks to the dreaded pink square. A fat fingered HERE AND THETE plus an on-going refusal to check my work are to blame. I will never learn.

    Otherwise no unknowns and only one fingers crossed moment for 25A.

    Roll on tomorrow.

    Thanks to both.

15. DNF. Gave up after 18 minutes. Would never have got DICTATORSHIP even though I had all the crossers. Had I got DRIP, I might have biffed REASON and POTTED, but I’d probably still need to thank Pip for explaining them. COD to PENTAGON for driving me to make something involving Banksy. Ah well, tomorrow is (yet) another day.

16. Charlie reminded me of Charlie horse, slang for muscle strain, and I was going to suggest that having both Charlie and Rick should lead to PAINS IN THE NECK (or BACK as I initially had it). I agree with the general consensus that Charlie as a pain in the neck is a stretch, possibly threatening to break the elastic.
    I tried manfully to think of an alternative to DRIP (another stretch) so that I didn’t have to have POTTED, which I struggled to match with both parts of the clue.
    I just managed to correct QUARTER NOTE, which fits the definition if with the same word included, and is a thing.
    I wasn’t too thrilled with SIDE for quality either, but perhaps have to accept it’s one of those words which can be accommodated to any meaning the setter wants.
    Completed, rather uncertainly, in 20.40. Congrats, PK, in ironing out the setter’s quirks.

17. 46:55
    Quite challenging. LOI quarter tone.
    Thanks, p.

18. Tom Lehrer: In Old Mexico

    Out came the matador
    Who must have been potted or
    Slightly insane, but who looked rather bored
    Then the picadors of course
    Each one on his horse
    I shouted “Ole” ev’ry time one was gored

    1. I was thinking of exactly the same line!

19. 14:01

    Slightly on the tricky side then. I had to reset my way of thinking part way through when I ground to a halt. DICTATORSHIP LOI once I realised where all the letters came from.

    Leverkusen known for the footy team, quarter tone inferred from the fire and burglar alarms at Fawlty Towers being a semitone apart.

    1. Fawlty got me to my LOI too – Polly trying to describe the inebriated chef to Basil says “He’s POTTED the shrimps,” among many other euphemisms.

20. DNF

    40’ with empty cells in DRIP and POTTED. I echo all mers above.

    Thanks

21. DNF: 25a Didn’t recognise Potted=drunk. 7d NHO Quarter-Tone, AFAIK; I’m the least musical person I know of. 5a Plaque never occurred to me, too few crossers for Cheating Machine, and Caries disqualified by the E of 8d (s)Even, plus the “sign” in the clue. Too little data for 21d Drip for cheating, ditto for 19a Prove.
    20a Pain in… pencilled very lightly as not happy with the Charlie def.
    22a biffed Reason, lightly pencilled.
    23a Pericles, inspired guess and a cheating look-up to confirm General. Added to Cheating Machine. I like adding to CM as I must have got there somehow, and now next time I’m stuck CM will bail me out.
    14d Leverkusen NHO but guessed the kusen and then cheated. Added to CM.
    18d Episode NHO Epode AFAIK, but biffed.

22. 32 – a bit tough. I thought LEVERKUSEN was a stretch. Like Jackkt I’ve travelled a lot in Germany and have never heard of it and wasn’t rescued by my threadbare knowledge of European football teams.

23. 34:23

    First pass only produced a pencilled in PAIN IN THE NECK (from Rick only – NHO Charlie meaning the same). LEVERKUSEN (from the football team), HERE AND THERE, THREE-DAY EVENT and RUBBER PLANT all gave me plenty to play with.

    Unknown stuff included COT = shelter, QUARTER TONE (not sure I’ve heard of that term before) and EPODE; failed to parse BREATHLESS. Thought the extreme SW corner was much harder than the rest of the puzzle – REASON (eventually) gave me DRIP and then POTTED but I was extremely underwhelmed by then.

    Thanks P and setter

24. I took 63 minutes over this, caused as much by general slowness and incompetence as by the rather dodgy things like DRIP for crybaby, and Charlie for pain in the neck. As the clock ticked up to 60 minutes I gave up and used aids for BREATHLESS and DICTATORSHIP, both of which now strike me as very good. Wasn’t sure about ‘reforms galore’ to tell you to anagram ‘galore’ and indeed is a quarter tone a note and not an interval?

25. Add me to the list with DRIP and POTTED as my last two- and they took a lot of perseverance to reveal themselves!

26. I was less confused about Charlie and Rick (Crick) than ‘Three-day event’, which went right over my head!

27. Two goes needed – or rather, DRIP and POTTED only occurred to me on my way back from a late-morning swim.

    Took a while to think of LEVERKUSEN (despite knowing all about Bayer 04, and indeed doing translations for them) as it’s not one of the German cities that immediately spring to mind; had no idea that PERICLES was a general; NHO epode but EPISODE had to be; and for some reason couldn’t see how quarter=term for QUARTER TONE so that went in with a bit of a shrug.

    Thanks piquet and setter.

    FOI Even
    LOI Potted
    COD Dictatorship

28. 10:20

    Flew through this relatively unscathed, for once, only giving up two minutes to our esteemed champion, which leaves me quite chuffed.

    Only DRIP / POTTED and PLAQUE (strangely, since no one else seemed troubled by it) offered any real resistance.

    Favourite clue LEVERKUSEN, which I guess could equally have been rendered along the lines of “Pry into knowledge American has of German city”.

29. 24:20

    Another who ended up a POTTED DRIP. Would have got there quicker if I hadn’t had LAYBY for LOBBY. Same MERS as everyone else but I did like STEVENSON, PERICLES and DICTATORSHIP.

    Thanks to Pip and the setter

30. Really cheesed off to find that I had a fat fingered typo, LECTEAL, having parsed the clue correctly. Like others my last 2 in were POTTED and DRIP. QUARTER TONE and then PLAQUE preceded those. NHO LEVERKUSEN, but managed to construct it. 29.05 WOE. Thanks setter and Pip.

31. Defeated by Quarter Tone and Prove – I had pencilled in Pride (which I realise doesn’t make much sense).

    1. Same here although both seem gettable now. Oh well.

32. I see I’m not alone in being defeated by DRIP and POTTED. I would also query DRIP being defined as crybaby. About 45 minutes elapsed before the last two, and a further ten minutes before throwing in the towel. I had to retrieve it first from the towel I threw in on the QC. Not a very good day!

33. Done in about 20 mins with all the same MERS already noted. Surprised that no one has commented on the very short cluing. Probably not so obvious online, but in the paper neither the across nor the down clues fill more than 2/3 of the space available.

34. I found that hard and not just because of the same MERS as most of us.

35. Tricky! Quarter tone took up most of the time for me, as it is an interval and not a note. (It doesn’t exist on the piano because of what I think is called equal temperament.)

    1. I don’t see any reason you couldn’t build an instrument with quarter tones that had equal temperament, so 24 quarter tones per octave versus 12 semitones that we normally use.

    2. I think a quarter tone is half a semitone, so you are right that it doesn’t exist on the piano. but without wishing to be pedantic, that’s because it’s somewhere between two adjacent notes, and not really a result of equal temperament.

       1. Well, it can exist on a piano. Pianos can be, and have been, tuned to other systems besides equal temperament, including “well temperaments,” in which scales do not sound alike in whatever key but some purely tuned scales, not in equal temperament, are available. Ben Johnston composed pieces for microtonal piano. Terry Riley’s The Harp of New Albion is a piece for a piano tuned in just intonation, in the 5-limit system that equal temperament gives an approximation of, and he dedicated that work to the monumental Well-Tuned Piano of my friend La Monte Young, which utilizes a 7-limit scale that skips the fifth harmonic (from which natural and flat thirds and sixths in diatonic scales are usually derived) but is built from only the third harmonic (perfect fifths, in the diatonic scale, and its inversion, fourths—which latter don’t occur in the harmonic series) and the seventh harmonic (which is much flatter than the seventh in equal temperament). Amazing things happen when you tune a piano in just intonation, as the unplayed strings resound in sympathetic vibration… 
          But a QUARTER TONE is simply a further subdivision of equal temperament’s irrational intervals dividing the octave into 12 equal parts (the twelfth root of 2 is an irrational, never-repeating decimal, unlike the whole-number ratios of a scale in just intonation). Dividing the octave into 24 rather than 12 does give some tones that come close to true harmonics, a happy accident! There is even a system that divides the octave by 72—I don’t know what you’d call the individual tones, as 72 is not a multiple of 12!

          1. Er, 6 x 12 = ?

             1. That’s right. I didn’t define the problem correctly.
                When you divide each interval equally, you’re multiplying the number of intervals by 2.
                So, staring with 12 equal intervals, dividing each by 2, you get 24 QUARTER TONEs.
                Dividing each QUARTER TONE by 2, you’d get 48 “eighth tones.”
                Dividing each of the 48 “eighth tones” by 2, you’d get… 96 “sixteenth tones.”
                So what would you call the individual tones in an octave divided by 72?

                1. Logically, if a semitone comes from there being 6 “tones” in an octave, and there are 12 semitones per octave, we get 1/2 = 6 /12, which makes sense.

                   Similarly, if there are 24 quarter-tones per octave, that’s 6 / 24 = 1/4, which again works.

                   So by extension, I would suggest 6 / 72 = 1/12, which gives us a twelfth-tone, no?

                   Sorry, I’m a self-taught bad guitarist, so I’m out of my depth here!

                   1. No, that does make sense! (Even if dividing the octave into equal parts really doesn’t, no matter how you slice it.)

                      1. I wish I had been taught music when I was younger! Mathematics was my degree subject. Newton’s German contemporary Leibnitz described music as the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware it is counting, and there are certainly close ties between the two subjects, as you are aware, going back to the days of Pythagoras.

36. 29:07. just under the half hour so 🙂 I didn’t share the concerns about double definitions, with the exception of Charlie. Chambers has him down as an ineffectual person, or a credulous one. but that doesn’t to me translate to a PITN. QUARTER TONE also is not a note but an interval…
    thanks Setter and Piquet!

37. Like many, I came down to the two clues in the SW corner. But I went for GUTTED which made getting DRIP impossible. I even did an alphabet trawl to see what else than GUTTED might fit the clue but came up dry. So DNF. Never heard of the German city but I think that was the only thing.

38. I don’t know how long this took – I left the clock running between two sessions – but I know it took a long time. Lots that were hard to nail down. The NHO POTTED (in that sense) was one that did not hold me up. I just assumed it meant drunk. It looks the part, and you can’t keep track of all the words that mean drunk. I enjoyed the crossword. I liked RUBBER PLANT and STEVENSON

39. 17:48, much quicker than yesterday for me. LOI QUARTERTONE and agree with other comments on that one. DRIP felt slightly tenuous and wasn’t keen on the clue for DICTATORSHIP. Nice enough overall.

40. 23.05. I took the precaution of looking at the timer as I completed, and was pleased that I did as the clock again failed to stop. Once again, the loose definitions irritated me, and I agree with the reservations expressed by our esteemed blogger. Trademark geographical references, musical terms and rear end mentions methinks.

    1. If you go back to the page on the app listing the day’s crosswords, you should also see your final time there.

41. DNF in 30 odd

    Those two. I can just about buy DRIP I guess but POTTED was imho a weak effort. “High, shortened” is just two pretty random words put next to each other, one of which with a meaning 99% folks have never heard of

    Moan over!

42. Quarter TONE is not a note it is an interval. Half of a semitone (not used in western music.). A semitone is not a note either.
    Quarter NOTE is of course a crotchet (used outside Anglo Saxon world). A crotchet is indeed a note.
    So this clue doesn’t work…and foxed me…

43. I found this hard, and finished in 33’29”. Did it occur to anyone but me that there’s an extra dimension to 7 down – TIME (T) being a quarter of TONE? I don’t suppose now it has anything to do with the cryptic, but at the time it helped convince me I had the answer! LACTEAL was in the Spectator crossword the other day, with a clue linking resin and a bluish colour. I was stuck on 5 across, till that well-known dictum came back to me: when in trouble, try a Q. Similar thoughts to everyone else’s about CHARLIE and POTTED, though I accept I’m wrong on POTTED. Thanks as ever.

44. Another where the aids began to get a workout after about 45 minutes, which is about the only way I ever could get or have gotten Potted. Thanks, pip, I needed that blog

45. 27.17. I found this quite tough particularly in the top right and bottom left. Drip made all the difference to the latter and quarter tone was my LOI having put pain in the back as my answer to Charlie and Rick- oh dear!

    Had a bit of an issue with rubber plant as it is not an Asian native, it was brought in from South America, much like chocolate to west africa.

    1. Ah, but the ornamental rubber plant, ficus elastica, is:
       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_elastica

       1. I stand corrected.

46. DNF
    Threw in the towel after 40m, having failed to get the NHO LEVERKUSEN

47. 27:27 of which over 10 minutes were on my last 3 – PROVE, which needed an alphabet trawl, DRIP and POTTED, neither of which were very convincing, but I couldn’t think of anything better. Thanks Pip and, I think, setter.

48. I went for LIFTED. Much better than POTTED. A shortened dress with a high hem is ‘lifted’. Tough going in the lower half but fair enough. Apart from POTTED that is.

49. Fascinating. This is my first time reading this forum (did not know it existed till a friend pointed me to the link). Very impressed by the solvers’ prowess and times. For what it’s worth, I hate trying to solve it online because of the extra time it takes me to move around and punch in the letters, not to mention having to scroll up and down. Besides, the clock doesn’t stop when you leave the screen or the room. You may call me a tree-killer, but I see more paper wasted in other ways.

    And I much prefer, if I were timing myself, to print it out, look at my watch, start the puzzle, and look at it again when done. And if I were to take a break, note the accumulated time on my sheet, and pause the clock. For what it’s worth, DRIP and POTTED were my last two in, and they were just guesses.

    As far as timing goes, I usually either finish it or reach my steady state between thirty and sixty minutes. Need to work on improving that.

    1. Welcome, Girish!

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