Times 24847 – A Capital Puzzle

36 comments on “Times 24847 – A Capital Puzzle”

1. Invented LAPIDARIST as a person who etches on stones. Otherwise quickish solve.
2. 13:55 .. some neat stuff, and the ‘capital I’ thing is indeed ingenious.

   14a prompts me to drag another out of the after dinner speech files… The speaker was a Yale alumnus who wove his theme around the letters of his alma mater’s name. He droned on at interminable length about how ‘Y is for Youth’ before setting out on lengthy considerations of ‘A which is for Ardour’ and ‘L for Liberty’, then finally closing with half an hour on ‘E which is for Equality’. As he sat down to the sound of stifled yawns and strained applause, a voice was heard: “Just thank God he didn’t go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

   COD UNDERSCORES – clever and elegant

   1. Compare: who’s the most hated bloke at a Borussia Mönchengladbach match?
      The one who shouts: “Give us a B…”.

      Edited at 2011-05-12 10:13 am (UTC)

      1. Or at Tulloch Caledonian Stadium “give us an I, give us an N, give us a V…”
         1. but you’ve got to love Inverness Caledonian Thistle for that greatest headline after their match against Celtic long ago …
3. Like Barry, I was doing quite nicely, thank you, except for 13; 19 minutes, in fact. But after looking at 13 for a half-hour, I realized that I was not going to spend another half-hour sticking in the various possible consonsants; so a DNF. COD to 11ac.
4. Breezed through today in 20 minutes, one of my best. LOI and COD to the bloated pig.
5. 30 minutes for all but 13dn and another 6 minutes for that. In the end I solved it by remembering the expression “bloated capitalist pig” and didn’t understand the wordplay until coming here.

   On first read through of the clues I thought this was going to be a tough one but once I got going it proved otherwise for the most part. It looks as if we may be in for another tough Friday.

6. 33 mins for all bar 13dn, where I essayed ‘maximalist’. Can’t say I care for the clue – the latter part, at any rate. The first part is capital.
7. Yes, quickish solve for me too (maybe even under the 30mins mark – woo woo!), with 13dn being the LOI.

   Was held up slightly by putting in GOOGLE, but otherwise, no problems.

   COD to 8dn as it took me the longest time to see it was an anagram – doh!

8. I too much prefer to see Buddhism defined as a philosophy; it is perfectly possible to be atheist and Buddhist simultaneously. Not quite so sure about being christian and Buddhist at the same time.. how does reincarnation sit with the C of E, I wonder?
   Nice to see googol, too.
   Uncle Yap, if you ask about s vs z, you will get a range of opinions and nothing definitive. I prefer s and see z as American. But many will say American, yes, but they got that from us, so z is more correct…
   1. If one is trying for a “definitive” version of Christianity, then C of E is perhaps not the best exemplar. The particular and loveable genius of the Church of England is to accommodate just about anything, and there are doubtless many Anglicans who espouse one version or another of reincarnation, no matter what the official creeds might say. There are certainly some who engage in one or more of the various forms of Buddhist meditation.
9. Just under an hour for everything except 13, which I then stared at bemused for a good 20 minutes before – like ulaca – taking a punt on MAXIMALIST. One of the most devious clues I’ve seen in my short time solving.
10. Thought this was going to be tricky but, once a few checkers were in, a gentle solve in about 20 minutes (fast for me). COD to CAPITALIST: ‘bloated’ (and checkers) provided the necessary hints; then I could unravel the wordplay.
11. Enjoyable and speedy solve. Slowed down by 22 down having carelessly put Meercat instead of Meerkat in 27 across.
    Louise
12. 13 minutes, so a standard solve, but what fun! 13 is obviously going to split the constituency between those who saw the joke before getting here and those that are miffed that they didn’t – it’s my CoD, with the delicious (and so true) UN clue a very close second.
    I think I’m right in saying that Countdown, that arbiter of all spellings truly English, allows American style zee words, but not other variations by our cousins such as honor, catalog and medieval.
    1. For myself, I still don’t see the joke really, and remain gloriously unmiffed. The collocation ‘bloated capitalist’ is just too uncommon in my mind to make this a top clue.
       1. “Bloated capitalist” is the only collocation specifically referenced in BRB under bloat, and scores a respectable 2,500 or so hits on Google.
          I may have been just lucky in getting CAPITALIST as first instinct, and as a wrote it in, reading “capital I”. That’s when it hit my humour centre.
13. 17’ and reasonably enjoyable. I had top honours shared by the clues for NAMELESS and CAPITALIST; though the MASONRY clue wasn’t bad either.
14. 29 minutes, and probably as much fun as you can have in half an hour. On your own.

    Am I the only person who hesitated at the end over SCALENE/scalese? Must have spent too much time doing arty farty stuff at school.

15. I don’t think I’ve come across an easier Times puzzle. I filled the whole of the NW quadrant in 2 minutes. The rest took proportionately longer, but completed in 14 minutes without attempting to race, making it a personal best time. Many answers could be got from the definition alone, especially with the odd letter or two in place.

    I’m ashamed to say, as one living in a Buddhist country, that 16 was my last entry.

    I thought the clues were a good set on the whole, despite being easy. The surfaces were very natural. I,too, liked CAPITAL I, though ‘bloated’ was a dead giveaway.

16. I’ve seen this debate here before, but may I respond now to Uncle Yap’s question? The -ize suffix is often wrongly thought to be American, and is indeed the preferred form there. But it is also the house style of Oxford University Press, and of many other UK publishers, because it conforms more closely than -ise to the classical origins of many of our English verbs. The disadvantage of using it is that there are several -ise endings which never take the alternative form, whereas most -ize endings can be rendered as -ise without changing the meaning (though not prize/prise, for example). Thus while recognise can be written thus and as recognize, surprise, advertise etc cannot.
17. OED has both, but I suspect ise is the American influence now predominant.
    In one episode of “Morse”, a professors suicide note used “organise”, which was enough to let Morse know it was a fake since the professor was educated.
    So there!
18. Like barry, I wrongly put in LAPIDARIST for 13dn, but not without checking that it does indeed exist, meaning an expert in gemstones. Largely held up by trying IAM at 10ac, and only on resorting to aids finding that it is a part of the middle ear or a brand of cat food. Neither of these seemed to indicate a problem.
19. 11 minutes. It probably would have been a sub-ten if I’d been confident how to spell MASSACHUSETTS. I wasn’t so spent quite a lot of time on the anagram fodder and even then didn’t feel I could rely on the checking letters. A very enoyable puzzle.
    Like others CAPITALIST was my last in. I’m with ulaca on this one: I didn’t know the phrase and it struck me as a little oblique as a definition, disqualifying it as a truly top clue for me in spite of the very neat wordplay.
20. Easy puzzle.20 minutes after golf. Liked CAPITAL-I.

    Where is everybody?

    1. Blog playing up again. I could only see 4 comments until I posted and then suddenly 20 more appeared. What a strange site this is – it’s started rejecting my password again after a quiet period without trouble.
21. The OED opts for ize, but ise is generally favoured in the UK, generally on the quite mistaken grounds that ize is a rotten modern American usage. An article in yesterday’s Guardian had a bit on it:

    ‘The much-maligned (in Britain) suffix “-ize” is not a modern outrage derived from US business speak, but dates back to Webster, who returned it to words derived from Greek verbs ending in “-izein”… In other words, when the British mock “American” spellings, they are usually defending the French. That’s what you call historical irony.’

    There’s also an Inspector Morse episode where our hero determines that the writer of a letter is clearly not an educated man as he opts for ise spellings.

22. Thanks to Uncle Yap for the blog, but to quote koro from yesterday, I too came to a stockstill at 13, which I just never saw. Like Barry, I tried LAPIDARIST, and am wrong. The CAPITAL I bit is quite clever, and clearly too clever for me. The rest wasn’t too difficult, about 20 minutes. My COD would have gone to 13 had I seen it, but I’ll point out the wonderful Madonna and child surface of MASONRY. Also very good. Well done, setter. Regards to all.
23. Most enjoyable with a few LOL moments and some very smooth surfaces. I particularly liked CAPITALIST and MASONRY. 24 minutes.
24. Are there glitches at livejournal or is this a particularly quiet day? I only see 5 comments.

    I thought this to be a fairly quick run through – lucky to get the quirk at 13d which could have taken ages if on the wrong wavelength. Stuck in DEAD BEAT without realising the BE AT bit, which was especially risky as I did not know the two word meaning for exhausted, only the 8 letter word more suggestive of a loafer or loser.

    A lot of others went in through definition alone, and I suspect the only effort made to complicate a definition was in 13d in order to preserve the greatness of the “quirk”. Definite COD for all those reasons.

    1. I guess the answer is yes! Now there are magically 31
25. 20 minutes to solve all but 9 clues and then a whole hour over those 9. D’Oh! Perhaps I was over-excited at Sussex beating Notts, complete with Broad and Swann, by 9 wickets, or perhaps I became annoyed at the thought of Dadaism including Marcel Duchamp’s urinal. “Call that art?” NO. For the record, MAXIMALIST was also my choice until I had second thoughts. ISE/IZE? Today’s Concise used PRIORITISE.
26. Did nobody else try to enter a new religion/philosophy called ‘Jonahism’? It does exist – http://www.freewebs.com/lord_jonah/moreinformation.htm
27. Came to a dead halt at 24 minutes with only capitalist left and got that in the car going to work. About 35 min. Love both that and masonry. I’m an ise man myself. This was quite a sharp puzzle – the setter one step ahead of me, puffing and panting to keep up. Nicely done.
28. 8:11 for me, which perhaps isn’t too bad considering how tired I was feeling.

    CAPITAL X is almost an old chestnut – cf “Political system, as is covered by Marx, primarily” (with the same answer) in Times Cryptic 24,445 (27 January 2010).

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