25159 – thanks for nothing, livejournal

54 comments on “25159 – thanks for nothing, livejournal”

1. Where is everyone today? It was tricky in places, especially as I had silly mistakes such as having the wrong tense in the first part of 10d. About 20 minutes for me and my smile of the day has to be 25a.
   1. See my comment above – since it didn’t post as scheduled, there was no post until about 3pm UK time. I was blissfully unaware that nothing had gone up
      1. My method is to run one of my computers on UK time. Then I can just solve, blog, and post.
2. ….put in ‘pears’, but didn’t like it. This is a rather subtle puzzle with some tricky stuff, so I suspected something going on that I didn’t see. I’m not surprised that it’s wrong.

   The other parts were not easy either, particularly the SE. The whole ‘regnant’/’proxy’/’try it on’/’homeopath’/’pager’ section was very tough for me. I was also sure that 26 must contain ‘do’ backwards, and I was very late in trying political parties.

   My total time was very long, with several breaks.

3. 30:31 .. but PEARS was a hit-and-hope. I suspected some meaning of ‘spat out’ that was unknown to me. As it turns out, just a very tricky clue.

   And I had no idea that Baedeker’s first name was Karl, so more finger crossing there.

   A bit of a slog from start to finish for me.

4. One wrong…ALCOCK (I had ‘adcock’). I’d not heard of the aviator, nor the rugby position, so it was never gonna happen…

   As others, PEARS was the last one in. Couldn’t parse it for the life of me. Still don’t really like ‘spat out’ to indicate a homophone.

   7dn also took an age, as I don’t think I’ve come across ‘ch’ for ‘check’, and was sure that it must have referred to a specific work by SOPHOCLES.

   1. used in chess notation

      JB

5. Much the same experience as others. Some clever and tricky stuff. All correct in the end (about 45 mins) but PEARS went in on a wing and a prayer simply because there didn’t seem to be anything else that could possibly fit. The homophone explanation – thanks to those above for pointing it out – must be right, but “spat out” as a homophone indicator seems to me to be stretching things, and I speak as one who’s generally homophone-tolerant. I thought 7 dn (DRACHMA) was ingenious. I can’t imagine that Janie and I will be the only ones who wasted time trying to think of an obscure play by Sophocles that would fit the checking letters.

   I hope the Prince of Wales wasn’t doing the crossword today. He won’t have liked the implications of 25 ac.

6. George, I experimented with scheduled posting for Mephisto but couldn’t get it to work. After your experience as well I shant be trying again any time soon.

   I thought this was difficult, 25 minutes to solve without really understanding PEARS (my last in). Now I’ve heard the explanation I can understand my failure – not the best clue in the puzzle

   Didn’t know about KARL and guessed it from the leading K. Don’t like “quack perhaps” at 25A whilst at 7D it should be “6 perhaps”

   1. Jimbo, I agree about 7 dn, but am not quite sure why you object to “quack perhaps” at 25 ac. Are you saying (1) all homeopaths are quacks by definition and no perhaps about it, or (2) it is an outrageous slur to suggest that any homeopath might possibly be a quack, or (3) neither of the foregoing?
      1. A homeopath may or may not be a quack, just as a doctor may or may not be a quack. The issue is “pretence” and “trickery” and many homeopaths do not indulge in those and indeed some of what they do is now recognised by that greatest of all unyielding trade unions the medical profession. The word quack was used to tie in with “duck” in the clue and panders to old fashioned prejudices – which I dislike.
         1. Actually homeopathy is probably on the way out of the NHS since the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee recommended that its funding be stopped on the grounds that “homeopathy is a placebo treatment and… prescribing pure placebos is bad medicine”.
            You’re quite right about “quack” though: the implication of trickery is unfair.

            Edited at 2012-05-10 03:15 pm (UTC)

         2. is also used as an informal reference to any medico, irrespective of ability (although it may not be appreciated as such!)
            Like “shrink” for psychotherapist but not “hack” for journalist or “cowboy” for builder which would always be seen as pejorative

            JB

7. We missed you! 9a is a groanworthy homophone and several people (including me) missed it. 39 minutes and all correct but I got stuck on regnant trying to be too elaborate and completely missing the point.
8. 27 minutes for all except 26a. I bunged in PEARS thinking it was just a homophone, though I suspected I was missing something. Likewise, I guessed BOREAL from mistakenly spotting REAL as my foreign currency. I thought BO had to be some obscure political party. That clue alone took me an extra 9 minutes and ended up as guesswork. Very enjoyable though. KARLSRUHE brought back happy memories of my time living in Germany in the 70s when I went to a Star Trek “happening” at the US Military base there. ALCOCK reminded me that his navigator on that flight, Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, lived for almost 30 years in a flat about 300yds away from where I am writing this. He was a familiar local figure. Luckier than ALCOCK who died in a crash soon after the transatlantic flight.
9. ADNF, but a valiant one, if I may say so myself. I missed out on Esoteric – required two bits of UK specific info – I can manage one but two in a clue is tough for me to crack and the other was Alcock – treading on two unfamiliar hobbies / games. A tough puzzle I was happy to solve in a couple of hours and thrilled with uncovering some of the more delicate and delectable wordplay. Btw, smiled at def for homeopath.
10. I thought that the late blog posting might be on account of this puzzle’s difficulty, but it looks like it’s only me who really struggled today. I found this too difficult and had five unsolved and got two of the ones I did wrong. The ones that beat me were Boreal, Bushel, Homeopath, Angstrom and Intermit. All my life I’ve been misspelling Ad Nauseam as As Nauseum!! Also got Karlsruhe wrong after guessing Kurtsruhe.

    As so often though I learned some things from today’s puzzle: a little bit about aviator Alcock and navigator Brown (brave men – their transatlantic flight sounds very hairy with Brown having to climb out onto the aircraft’s wings to dislodge ice!), the correct spelling of A N and that a peck is one quarter of a bushel.

    1. The very old measurements must be difficult for you Daniel. In the 1940s at school we were made to stand in front of the class and recite them out loud with various forms of “encourgagement” on hand to assist the slow learners!

       Ones you may not have come across include: link (100 to a chain); rod, pole, perch (25 links); chain (length of a cricket pitch); furlong; league (3 miles); fathom; cable; rood (4 to the acre); virgate (30 acres); hide (4 virgates).

       1. Wow, from your profile pic, cannot imagine that you went to school in the 40’s.. those years wear well on you. The measurement terms are downright diabolical in the hands of the right setter and I have not heard of most of them either. No surprise there. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
          1. Thank you kind blogger. The pic is 5 years old, taken in Spain with she who must when I was celebrating reaching 65 and our silver wedding anniversary
       2. Another memory of Doris Day!

          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNjv1WDGxt8

          Edited at 2012-05-10 02:30 pm (UTC)

          1. They don’t write them like that any more – just as well some might say! But thanks for the old pics of DD – a real trip down memory lane
          2. Thank you. Here’s another, reminiscent of 1d.
             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY8zK4R9oE8
          3. I still remember the first time I saw “Guys and Dolls” on stage. They were singing Doris’s song! Until that time I’d only seen the Brando/Sinatra film which had inexplicably omitted this number. Apart from hiding your light under one, this is the only use of BUSHEL that I can readily think of. Btw, in the musical the song is part of a nightclub act set on a farm – hence the old grain measurements – bushel and peck.
       3. Thanks Jimbo
11. Struggled a bit to complete this one in 70 minutes with a couple of cheats once the hour had passed to finish off with INTERMIT and BOREAL which I didn’t know, nor the Swedish coin within it. Didn’t know RECTI either but that one didn’t delay me – an Across omission, btw, George.

    No complaints yet about the definition at 25ac nor about the partial DBE elsewhere!

    Edited at 2012-05-10 12:45 pm (UTC)

    1. Pleased to have everything bar the two Jack cheated on inside an hour, but was never going to get those as I stupidly put ‘Karlsruhr’. So, bunged in ‘unprompt’ for INTERMIT and left BOREAL blank before stopping the clock and seeing the error of my ways in the post-solve check.
12. George from my cellphone. I hope this is a one-off possibly a dropped connection while loading from the hotel internet but I don’t have any other option. I’m not going to run my only computer on UK time for a once every two weeks committments. It’s worked ok the last few months it was just frustrating to come to and find no post.
13. 32m. Tricky this. There was some stuff I didn’t know – ALCOCK, Karl, RECTI, öre – but I was mostly held up by misdirection. I was absolutely convinced that “source of meat” in 23dn was an M, for example.
    “Morecambe” in 13ac is a kind of DBE (although not one that I mind in the least), but if the question mark is required here why not in 22ac?
    I don’t see the need for the word “perhaps” in 25ac.
    1. Perhaps, 25Ac could have done without, though I think a clue with the definition ” A doctor to some” is a tad more factual than the somewhat judgmental “Quack perhaps”. I am no big believer in that science as it were but I do like the principle of to each his own. But it’s in a crossword and likely meant in fun. Perhaps.
       1. “Doctor to some” wouldn’t have been great for the surface reading!
          I’m just teasing. Of course homeopathy is sanctioned by the NHS these days, but then it is well known that the placebo effect is a powerful healer. There I go again…
14. 31 minutes, so hard enough by my standards. PEARS also my last in, leaving me wondering what else we are going to get as a homophone indicator. That in turn resurrected a long buried schoolboy embarrassment, the Latin master asking us to come up with modern derivations of jaculo. Being an avid reader the older kind of boys own fiction, I immediately came up with ejaculate, to blurt out in those innocent times, and not understood by me in its apparently more common and sniggerworthy sense.
    Apart from being reminded of such humiliation, I thought this a fine piece of work, with “source of meat” for OX a particularly neat deception, making PROXY my CoD.
    A lot of esoterica in this one, requiring polymathic GK, such that Socrates’ work being just DRAMA was a bit of a let-down. Could have been midfielder, I suppose.
    1. Surely you mean Sophocles?
       1. Dam’. Yet more embarrassment. Obviously I do, but then I don’t as well.
    2. Ox a neat deception? Groanworthy pun.

       Sophocles was in fact a centre-half, not a midfielder:
       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vdlEcWxvM

       Cheers,
       Rob

15. DNF for me after many a long hour. Gave up in the end and googled Charlie Rapper (sounds like wrapper = jacket) thinking it must be some sort of willy wagtailesque UK bird and got all these hits for Charlie Parker. Typical! I thought and then thought again, or perhaps for the first time. That gave me KARLSRUHE and then I threw PEARS in because it couldn’t be anything else. A big thankyou to all who provided the correct parsing of that one. COD to RAN INTO amongst some very clever stuff.

    I once made the mistake of mentioning Charlie Parker in a lecture and was met with gales of laughter from the 19 yr olds, who had never heard of him, amused that I had provided them with incontrovertible evidence of my lack of hepness, a word no doubt also outside their ken.

16. 24 across is your ‘down’ omission (hehe)?
17. This took me an hour, but I eventually came through. Not surprisingly, I’d never heard of SUTTON HOO, nor did I know of the aviator ALCOCK, but there the wordplay was clear once I’d remembered that a lock was a rugby position. It also took me a while to figure out the definitions for ESOTERIC, REGNANT and INTERMIT which seem to me, well, esoteric. I put in PEARS becuase it was an anagram of pares=skins(!), not getting ‘spat out’ to signal a homophone. So I had a bit of a tough row to hoe, but I liked most of it. I’d have been more cranky if my first thoughts for Baedecker and Morecambe hadn’t, quite luckily, been Karl and Eric. I can’t explain where they came from, but they did. Regards to all.
    1. Well, we have had Eric Morecambe before, check the archives.
    2. Came up in a quiz recently on this side of the pond, and the answer turned out to be your Lindbergh, the solo bit apparently being implied. History should be a great deal kinder to Alcock and Brown, who made the crossing in this very machine. Astonishing men.
       1. Re the Vickers Vimy: Years ago a friend of mine,the owner of my local music shop, was a leading light at Swansea Flying Club which had long associations with Arthur Brown. Lady Brown had a falling out with the club after Sir Arthur’s death and took back from the club an old propeller which had been displayed in the clubhouse. My friend held it for at least 40 years in the cellar under his shop. I used to go down to admire it. We all hoped it was off THAT plane. It turned out to be the right vintage but not the right plane. It’s a minor and somewhat irrelevant anecdote but it somehow brings that amazing feat of courage and skill close to home.
       2. I’m pleased to report that at school in Yorkshire in the early 1950s, I remember being told about Alcock and Brown, but Lindbergh didn’t get a mention.
          1. and exactly the same happened in a school on the right side of the Pennines in the early 1970s

             JB

             1. sorry Tony (and all other tykes), that was uncalled for; if anyone can remove that, please do so

                JB

18. Finished this, with one wrong, between the coffee-shop, the garden and the sofa. On the basis of A BOK being a rugby player, I invented the entirely ( to me ) plausible species of bird the ABCOCK. Oh well……..

    DavidS

19. 9A is Pears. This is ‘pares’ spat out (ie spoken) so a nice way of not having to say ‘sounds like’
20. Pears is indeed the right answer to 9 ac, but nothing to do with “spears” . Rather I think it relates to “sounds like” (i.e. spat out) “pares”
21. As the first to parse this on the Club site this morning, I thought it was rather nice when the penny dropped with me. I think it’s even more complex than a simple homophone – the indicator “spat” leads to “pares” for “skins”, then “out” leads to the anagram “pears”. The subtlety of the rest of the puzzle suggests this is not totally unlikely.
    1. Wouldn’t this be an indirect anagram, and hence a Times no-no?
22. First puzzle for awhile I wasn’t able to finish! There wasn’t really a hope of me getting the last three clues, as you’ll see below; the rest I found very manageable.

    Unknowns:
    17a. LOCK, ALCOCK
    26a. LAB, ORE, BOREAL (gotta learn my British political parties — and birds)
    16d. TERMITE, INTERMIT

    EDIT: Whoops, looks like I misspelled AD NAUSEAM as well!

    Edited at 2012-05-10 07:09 pm (UTC)

23. Now that is really ingenious! Well ahead of me as usual. And there I was just pleased to have twigged the homophone. I get the feeling that not everyone reads the whole thread…
24. Came to this late after a long day and spent probably an hour on it; relieved to get it right. I don’t like this ‘Marathon letter’ conceit though it’s not uncommon. Can’t see how skins spat is pares (above). A tricky, clever number, unstaisfying somehow in the style of its leaps and bounds.
25. 10:48 for me. I enjoyed this one very much, though as usual I ended up kicking myself for being slow to spot some of the answers – particularly 1dn (my LOI), where I actually thought of PARKER as a possibility for the second word, but dismissed it since surely there wasn’t any feathered creature called a PARKER. (Doh!)
26. Ingenious, Val – but I have to say that I very much doubt it!

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