Times 25069 – Endearing Blunder

30 comments on “Times 25069 – Endearing Blunder”

1. Just pleased to finish after yesterday’s effort, even though it took 80 minutes. I wonder if I will be alone in having RENOUNCEMENT as my last in? I managed to hold myself up in a number of places, by misspelling the Italian spine as ‘Appenines’ and eight bits as, logically enough, I reckon, a ‘bite’.

   BTW, Yap Suk, the anagram fodder at 16, where I also wrote in ‘endearing’ at first, is ERA ENDING.

   Gung Hei Fat Choi to you and all others celebrating the lunar new year.

2. 64 minutes here but I used aids more than once to kick-start things after I became completely stuck LH.

   RH was not without its difficulties too although I managed to work out the unfamiliar CHIMERICAL and PROSTHESES eventually without assistance. Put me down for ENDEARING at 16ac too which didn’t help matters at 8dn.

   Rather amazingly, 1ac, 9ac and 1dn were my last three in.

   I may have been over-tired but I had difficulty getting onto this setter’s wavelength and remaining there.

   1. 9 is one of those where literal-led solvers will just whack the answer in, giving them a kickstart on 1dn, irrespective of when they might get 1ac. I, for one, only got the wordplay for 9 from the blog!
3. 
   I found this one easy, and managed it relatively quickly with full understanding of all clues, which happens only very, very rarely! Was almost ready to give up crosswording altogether after yesterday’s appalling dnf. Maybe it’s that old ‘wavelength’ thing. Was helped by the fact that there was no unknown vocab, although the cryptics did take some working out. In fact, several times I could see the answer quickly from the definition, but took some time to unpick the wordplay.

   ALIBI my LOI.

4. Ah, wish I’d had this one to blog yesterday.. elegant and refined, a swiss watch of a crossword. Even simple clues like 1d and 2d are pretty.. and all done without recourse to any silly vocab. 18mins or so in all and every minute a pleasure.

   And what ulaca said about the New Year to you, Uncle Yap

   1. Gung Hei Fat Choi is Cantonese for Gong Xi Fa Cai, a common greeting among the Chinese wishing each other great prosperity during the Lunar New Year celebration which last until Chap Goh Meh (Fifteenth night on 6th Feb) Another popular greeting is Xin Nian Kuai Le, Happy New Year.

      Yes, we are in the midst of revelry and wassailing in this year of the dragon, contributing generously to the economies of Scotland and France. Yam Seng !

      1. Xin Nian Kuai Le then Uncle Yap, prosperity is very useful but not mandatory, but happiness cannot be overdone 🙂
5. 25 minutes after a final panic on marked down. A certain trickiness with small words made this a tasty starter to the Pakistani spinners, and to Federer’s guile against Nadal. For some reason I can’t identify I do like that word thoroughfare.
   1. Like the Fed, it’s just a classy word. At 1-1, 4-5, it’s nail-biting stuff!
      1. No no – in defence of thoroughfare it’s more than just a classy word. It’s old, it’s simple, it’s long … do you know that poem by Edward Thomas about roads being goddesses? Well then.
         The Nad has that glint in his eye in the 4th set.
6. Back to the land of sanity for this first class crossword. This is what they should be like. Tough but fair without resorting to arcane vocab and all the rest of yesterday’s nonsense.

   30 minutes of pleasure. Thank you setter and best wishes for the year of the dragon Uncle Yap

7. 23 minutes.
   As others have commented, a superb puzzle, tough but fair.
   Several of these clues are constructed to send you (or me, at least) down blind alleys. How many of us thought “posessed” in 27 across was a containment indicator, for instance? Great stuff.
   My only quibble was “plea” for ALIBI. An alibi is a defence, not a plea, isn’t it? I’m probably missing something.
   Thanks to the setter for an enjoyable commute!
   1. alibi (Per Chambers)
      n the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the relevant time; the fact of being elsewhere; an excuse for failure
      1. Thanks. “Plea” still seems like an odd word to use here but I think the required meaning is “an excuse, justification or pretext”. The American Heritage Dictionary gives the example of “necessity, /The tyrant’s plea” from Paradise Lost.
         In any event if it’s in Chambers the setter is absolved and I hereby withdraw my quibble.
   2. According to my legal dictionary, an alibi is “A defence where an accused alleges that at the time when the offence with which he is charged was committed, he was elsewhere”.
      The trouble is that “plea” also has a specific legal meaning, and alibi is not certainly not a plea in a legal sense. I think Chambers’ primary definition is incorrect.
      However both Chambers and COD also have the general usage meaning of “an excuse”. I guess either that meaning or the legal meaning might be loosely termed a “plea” in its non-legal sense
      1. Crossed comments!
         I agree with you that this is all still a bit loose. An “excuse, justification or pretext” applies to something that you did. An alibi proves that you didn’t. So I still don’t see how an alibi is a “plea” in any sense really, so I would question the Chambers definition.
         1. I love the way that if you disagree it must be Chambers that is wrong :-))
            Listen to Olivia, I believe she has previous where legal matters are concerned, as I believe the phrase is..
            1. I didn’t say it must be wrong (in matters of language there is no such thing), just that I’d question it. I don’t consider dictionaries to be sacred texts so I think this is allowed, even if (as in this case) I’m usually missing something.
         2. Again from Chambers
            plea
            n a pleading; a prisoner’s or defendant’s answer to a charge or claim; a claim (); an excuse; a pretext; an urgent entreaty.
            vt and vi to dispute in a lawcourt.

            Surely there should be no doubt that an alibi is indeed a plea but then I speak as a non-native 🙂

            1. We’ve probably done this to death now but I don’t actually see anything in that definition that would necessarily make an alibi a plea.
               There’s no doubt it is though: a quick google shows that, as Olivia says, the “plea of alibi” is common in some jurisdictions, including the US and the ICC.
   3. An alibi is of course ‘a plea that when an act took place one was elsewhere’.

      But I’m afraid you’re all pronouncing it wrong.

8. A plea is a formal statement by a defendant sometimes (and sometimes not)alleging facts in answer to an indictment. In some jurisdictions a defendant is required to give notice to the prosecution if pleading alibi, although this is controversial.
   Really good puzzle – clocked in at 22 minutes.
   1. Interesting, thanks. I thought a plea was just “guilty” or “not guilty” but clearly there’s more to it than meets the eye: according to Wikipedia there is a “peremptory plea” in English law of “special liability to repair a road or bridge”. I confess I didn’t know that.
9. 38 minutes, which by my reckoning makes four in a row of the tough kind. Unlike many, I rather enjoyed yesterday’s somewhat harum-scarum style: this one was more of an intellectually satisfying exercise, elegant and demanding. I didn’t get much of a grip before getting to the SE, and found it worthwhile on many occasions to work back from inspired guess at literal to wordplay, a process which failed with DIRECTOR.
   ALIBI simply means “elsewhere” in Latin; I thought “plea” was an acceptable definition, m’lud.
   Isn’t “cordial” always GRENADINE?
   Again lots of CoD’s if in lesser crosswords (they’ve been spoiling us this week) but my accolade today goes to CHIMERICAL, once I remembered the unlikely erica for heath.
   1. No. Often it’s Rose’s Lime.
10. …so this took me forever. I do much better on the puzzles with esoteric vocabulary and simpler cryptics. This is a difficult grid, too, if you can’t get started.

    I did put in quite a few from the literal: ‘disapproving’, ‘chimerical’, ‘prostheses’, ‘temerity’, ‘identify’ – but I needed quite a few crossing letter first. Those were had to get.

11. Entertaining punctuated by some head-scratching, in particular “alibi” meaning “plea”, and taking the latin appenninus as the root, or should that be base, of “Apennines”. All of which destroyed what I believed was going to be a sub-thirty minute solve.

    Enigma

12. I guess I was on the right wavelength today, getting through in 15 minutes, held up only a bit in the NE, where I was trying to fit something into ‘COL’ at CHIMERICAL, and at my LOI, GRENADINE, thinking that ‘ending in turmoil’ required an “L”. Other than that, most went in rather quickly. Had I been here earlier I would be on keriothe’s team regarding the plea/ALIBI discussion, and would have added that equating ‘good’ with ‘merit’ also seems strange. The needed meaning of ‘good’ is an adjective, and while ‘merit’ can be a noun or verb in this sense, it’s never an adjective. I didn’t have any delay in solving either clue, though. Regards to all.
    1. The needed meaning of good here can be a noun. Imagine a colon after the word.
13. 8:28 for me, helped by making some good guesses from the definitions. I found this less interesting than the other puzzles so far this week, but apart from that have no complaints (particularly as I’m relieved to see that dorsetjimbo has at last found one he likes :-).

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