Times 24829 – George and Google Chrome vs the Times Crossword Club

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : Not what it says on the club timer, most likely. I’ve gotten into the habit of doing it online if I solve in the evening US time, and it’s typically worked quite well, though my sloppy typing has me averaging about 0.5 mistakes per puzzle. However today, although I’m doing nothing different, I appear to be at a stalemate. I finished the puzzle in around 14 minutes, which is a little slower than I’ve been averaging lately – I thought it was going to be a real struggle like yesterday with very few across answers going in on the first try. However enough down answers appeared that a second run through the acrosses netted me the lot. When I hit submit, I got a little white square, then got bumped to the main page, asking if I would like to play the crossword. So I loaded it up again… the clock was back at 0, so it was only two minutes or so to type in the answers (almost guaranteeing a Peter Beater of a time), but now I’m back to the little white square. Which has stayed long enough for this preamble. And doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. I may have to finish this a third time before blogging any answers… third time around and now it’s showing 28:12… away we go

Across
1 TAPE,ST(o): somethings always niggled me about TAPE being clued as MEASURE
5 STUCCO: TUC(Trades Union Congress),C(cold) in SO
10 RESIDENTIAL CARE: (I,TRIED,AS,CLEANER)* – an anagram that did not fall initially
11 T,ROUBLE: 16 is a tricky clue, I wonder if anyone got this before 16 down?
12 KNOCK(summon, by knocking, I guess)-UP: That’s not the meaning I think of with KNOCK UP needed all the checking letters to get it
13 GARRISON: ARR in G.I.S, then ON
15 DEMOS: reversal of SOME D
18 A,GEN(e)T
20 let’s leave this one off the acrosses
23 FLAT,OUT: second part of the clue is the charade
25 DOG ROSE: DO(ditto), then (GORSE)* – needed wordplay for this
26 IN D E,TERMINATION: D and E are our lower paid scales
27 G(i)ANT,RY: a wine rack played by Burt Reynolds Lancaster Edit: When Jokes Fail… I was referring to Elmer Gantry, which of course starred Burt Lancaster and not Burt Reynoles and that the only structure I’ve ever heard actually referred to as a gantry is a wine rack
28 PYRENEAN: Y,RENE in PAN(geographical hollow)
 
Down
1 TURN TO: URN in (o)TTO. OTTO can wave to RENE from across the grid. Laughed at the surface, as it’s still 4/20 here
2 PAST,ORAL,E: FIRST is there for the surface and I guess to say that PAST(history) goes before ORAL
3 SIDEBAR: (SEABIRD)* – a note in a newspaper or journal
4 RAN,GE: the last part is EG backwards
6 TELFORD: (LEFT) and RD with O in between
7 our down omission
8 (l)OVER,PASS: a lot of word decapitations today
9 PIC,KING’S: my second last entry, was worried it was going to be a film producer I hadn’t heard of, but rather liked it when I figured it out
14 SOLITARY: (ROYALIST)*
16 MUSCOVITE: M then IT in U.S. COVE, enjoyed this clue greatly
17 BAFFLING: B(bachelor), then F in A FLING (or BA, then F in FLING, take your pics)
19 T,ROTTER: &lit
21 LUGGAGE: GAG in LUGE(r)
22 LENNON: L then N,N in EON. Just a second – Lennon Murhpy’s not dead?
24 AIDA,N: Hey AIDAN, you’re under headless OTTO with his and beside RENE in a pan!
25 DAISY: IS in DAY

47 comments on “Times 24829 – George and Google Chrome vs the Times Crossword Club”

  1. Morning George!
    To be sure, 11ac before 16dn as you predicted. And 41’ with one wrong: shoved in DIMES at 15ac, having no idea what was going on. So, for this relief, much thanks. Thought there were some great clues today with the OVER-PASS and PIC-KINGS sticking out among them. Mind you, PAST-ORAL-E wasn’t bad either.
    1. In my third retype I put in AIDEN for AIDAN. Agree there are some really nifty clues, though MUSCOVITE takes it for me (and it was one of the first passes through the downs to fall, so I got it before 11)
  2. Good evening gents. I also got TROUBLE before MUSCOVITE, so there’s another correct prediction, George. A tough one, I think, about 45 minutes here. Last entries were KNOCK-UP and PICKINGS. I didn’t know the literal meaning used here, and used the wordplay, for KNOCK-UP, and then saw the PIC KINGS, which was nice, although profits=pickings wasn’t near the front of my mind. Nice puzzle overall, so thanks to the setter and to George for showing the way. Despite my comment above, COD to PICKNGS for the surface, well put. Regards to everybody. Happy Holy Thursday, non sequitur though it may be.
  3. After a slow start and a slow middle, I managed to add a slow finish, but got there in the end. 70 minutes all up.
    Agree with George about the more familiar meaning of KNOCK UP, which I guess could be considered an unintended consequence of “pre-match practice”!
  4. No idea of time, but I found this tough. Interesting and enjoyable, but tough. I got so used to looking for complications that DAISY was last in.

    I was held up for a while by having WINNINGS at 9dn, although it may have been a touch flattering to David of that ilk to call him a film mogul!

  5. This one didn’t flow for me, taking 79 minutes with one wrong – AGENT – which is rather embarrassing as I once did some repping, although, in mitigation, I never thought of myself as an agent. The two long acrosses took me ages, and I had other sob stories, which I won’t bore you with. Last in PYRENEAN (even there I was toying with ‘Pyreneen’), but COD to TROTTER.

    What price another Good Friday puzzle like last year’s?

    Regarding the pronunciation of ‘Asia’, which came up in yesterday’s puzzle courtesy of the ‘Croatia’ clue, both voiced (as in ‘buzz’) and unvoiced (as in ‘bus’) variants are acceptable (ā-zhə and ā-shə are both given in Merriam-Webster) and indeed widely used.

    1. You beat me by 1 minute today, ulaca.

      This was an absolute horror for me. I took ages to get started, my first one in being MUSCOVITE but I didn’t manage to crack the cross reference at 11ac until 70 minutes later! There’s little hope for me if I miss sitters like ‘ready’ for ‘money’, and even worse, ‘Rene’ for ‘Frenchman’ at 28ac.

      There’s really no excuse for this debacle as the only word I didn’t know was SIDEBAR and that should have been easy to get from the anagrist.

      Anyway, after two consecutive disasters I was naturally feeling a bit nervous about blogging tomorrow’s. Until I came here, that is, and you referred to Good Friday 2010. I just looked it up and found that it took me over two hours with extensive use of aids. My comment on that one started: I am extremely pleased it wasn’t my Friday for writing the blog or you’d probably be waiting until midday for it to appear.

      So I’m no longer a bit nervous but in a state of trepidation at the prospect of the nightmare to come. Hope to see you all before noon tomorrow, but don’t hold your breath, folks!

      1. At least, if it’s a horror, you can console yourself with the knowledge you’ve given us a good laugh first.
      2. I have great admiration for the masochists who volunteer to blog our puzzles. Where would we be without you? Thank you so much and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you don’t have a stinker tomorrow!
    2. I was brought up in the West Midlands, where bus was pronounced buzz. The local company, Harper’s, was well known for its ancient fleet, and children travelling to school would regularly sing:

      O yo’ll never get to ‘eaven
      In an ‘arper’s buzz,
      Coz an ‘arper’s buzz
      It never guzz.       (goes)

  7. Felt a little slow on this, 33 minutes. You know, sometimes the banter of clever children can be tiring. Yes, we get the other meaning of knock up; no, a gantry and Burt Reynolds don’t immediately click together let alone a wine rack…and then there’s the endless references to the slushy stirrings of pop culture in general…oh well. Just having a groan. I appreciate the great work the blogging team do. Really.
    1. See earlier comment – what I put for GANTRY was meant to be a funny joke but it was horribly conceived.

      You only have to put up with me and strange cross-culture references and awful jokes every other week on a Thursday until I get kicked off the team.

  8. 65 minutes, slowly easing my way through COD-infested waters. PICKINGS was my first in, LENNON my last, and I, too, got 11ac before 16d. I spent far too much time not getting that 14d was an anagram, trying to figure how BRE- or STE- might fit in 21 (I actually thought of LUGGAGE early on, and rejected it), and misparsing 24d. And, of course, trying to think of a river with IS in it; as Freud might have said, sometimes a flower IS a flower.
  9. Confidence a bit low of late, so with a blank grid after 20 minutes I felt I was back where I started 2 years ago. But then I got BAFFLING, appropriately, and the rest flowed without a single question mark. Off now to see the bank manager but with a spring in my step. Last in, the wonderful DAISY, only after getting PYRENEAN, so surely clue of the day.
    1. After similar bewilderment over CRACK, I assumed it was as in “a crack marksman”.
  10. Congratulations George on the blog and the speed with which you had it online! Almost caught me out as I came here late last night (or rather early this morning) for a final browse through yesterday’s comments. Gave me the impression that this might be an easy solve …

    … but still staring at a blank grid after two passes! Then suddenly spotted PYRENEAN and from then on a steady, enjoyable challenge, completed, unusually, from the bottom up. Last in: PICKINGS. Lots of good clues, with TROTTER my COD.

    1. Thanks – I’m on the East coast of the US, so the crossword appears around 7pm for me, I shoot for having the blog up about an hour after that.

      The funniest thing about all of that is that I have to reset the LJ timer so it looks like I wrote the blog the next day. There’s a sneaky way around most situations.

  11. This was a real slog after the easy pickings at the beginning of the week, I finally limped to the line in 1h34m. Admittedly slightly hampered by having to do the last 3-4 from memory on the final walk from the train to the office.

    Solved from SE to NW (with 1d inexplicably the last in), so 16 went in a long time before 11.

  12. Having missed a couple of days, I just thought I was out of practice with a tentative UP entered at the end of 12 (“out of bed” – just lucky, I guess) and nothing else after an increasingly desperate first pass. In the end, surprised to finish in 25, with everything except PYRENEAN flowing pretty smoothly.

    Add me to those who got TROUBLE before 16d – it was my first whole clue in. I thought this was a fine set of clues with exemplary surfaces. CoD to SIDEBAR for the clever anagram and the musical red herring gull.

    Whether the DAY of DAISY qualifies as a short time presumably depends on what you compare it with, or whether it turns out to be 6th June.

  13. 29 minutes here, which qualifies as trickyish.
    Thanks for the blog: I didn’t see the wordplay for PICKINGS (duh) and didn’t understand DO for “ditto” or PAN for “hollow”. Or SIDEBAR.
    I initially put in BARRACKS for 13ac, BAGGAGE for 21dn and PYRENEEN for 28ac. And I came very close to putting in the unknown punishment SILATORY for 14dn. Fortunately I thought better of it in every case so disaster was narrowly averted.
    I just replied to a comment in yesterday’s blog and got deemed “suspicious”. I wonder if that will happen to this one…
    1. It must be the clear blue sky LJ objects to. The IP Address says Hong Kong and they know that you never get blue skies there – except for 15 minutes after a storm when all the gunge is washed from the air.
      1. You could be on to something. Or perhaps they have software that knows that fine pinot is not grown in London.
  14. Fell one short today. Thanks for explaining luggage George � I couldn�t think of anything to fit the checkers and was thinking bags > trousers > legwear. One mistake too � spelled Pyrenean Pyreneen.

    For UK solvers the D/E in indetermination will be familiar as the lowest two of the six socio-economic groupings (A, B, C1, C2, D, E) beloved of market researchers, based on job and giving an idea of income:
    D – semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
    E – e.g. casual labourers

  15. I enjoyed this puzzle very much. Didn’t know SIDEBAR or “pan” as “hollow” but they were obvious from the cryptic. Otherwise the answers went in smoothly enough. 1a and 1d were the first in – which helped. Got there in 36 minutes.
  16. 42 minutes; but with hindsight, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly difficult about this puzzle, and there were quite a few concise, cleverly-worded clues of the type I always enjoy.

    My assuming a crossword to be trickier than it really is often brings about mental paralysis; perhaps I ought to return to my old habit of solving in the evening with the aid of a glass or two of claret. I wonder whether my faster evening times were due to tuning myself in to one of Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Fields, produced by the solvers during the day, or that which causes elderly ladies riding side-saddle to jump five-barred gates after a particularly potent stirrup cup. I suspect the latter.

  17. Another nice puzzle, apart from one clue that I didn’t particularly like. Thirty-five minutes to complete, with the anagram at 10 taking me ages to sort out. I didn’t see PIC KINGS (lovely clue)and assumed there was a film magnate called PICKINGS that I hadn’t heard of. Unfortunately I entered MOSCOVITE for MUSCOVITE, a stupid, unforced error.

    The clue that I was unhappy about was 20; I don’t see that something that lists less is not inclined.

  18. As an exile from the TCC website it’s always gratifying to see criticism of it. Finding the paper in the library has it problems. . .what good friday library closed this is just unholy. Managed dream up Norma for 24 down i.e. Norman ‘revealed’ of its N(ame) to give the opera of that name. Sadly this alternative meaning of revealed doesn’t appear to have come into usage (yet).
  19. 11:14, which felt slow, but given the other comments perhaps this was harder than I thought.  Unknown: Genet (18ac AGENT), “pan” as a hollow (28ac PYRENEAN).  Unfamiliar: SIDEBAR as a note (3dn).  Held up a little by starting to write BARRACKS at 13ac (GARRISON) before realizing that it didn’t work.

    Clue of the Day: 9dn (PICKINGS).

  20. Not sure what “one” is doing in 18ac.

    For a reference to the British (as opposed to U.S.) meaning of KNOCK UP, see this link for a T.V. advert featuring Dusty Springfield.

    1. Genet has two E’s, which makes the one a specific instruction to mollify we pedants.
        1. Oh! That’s a typo. I meant “wee”, of course. (Inserts smiley face thingy.)
      3. Thanks, Koro. Obvious now. That is the first time I’ve ever been told that I’m not pedantic enough.
  21. Last in Lennon, and me a 50 something scouser.
    I couldnt access the site yesterday. I gathered the poet was Donne, but didn’t get the other def. Any helpers out there?
    1. Yep, DONNE. The LJ site has been unde what it calls “DDoS attacks”. (From me another 50-something ex-SCouser!)
  22. A straightforward solve in 25 minutes with no hold ups after a very hot four hours on the golf course. Good to sit in the shade and relax over some good if not over taxing clues.
  23. Not a good comment to follow, Jim. Maybe I should take up golf instead. I found this extraordinarily difficult and threw in the towel with about 8 unsolved. Luckily my subconscious brain can do these things better than my conscious one, and the answers came reasonably quickly once I stopped thinking about them. Agreed there were some crack clues here with PICKINGS perhaps the best.
  24. No exact time, but just under 20 minutes on the watch. So I found this fairly tricky, but nowhere near as hard as yesterday’s. I was another who got 11ac before 16dn – it actually put me on the right track as I then knew I was looking for a word for a Russian. Agree with others here – COD to 9dn PICKINGS.
  25. A depressingly slow 12:45, not helped by taking ages to spot that I’d typed in MUSCIVITE. This was another puzzle where I took a long time to find the setter’s wavelength, but then finished reasonably quickly – which seems to happen all to often these days. (Sigh!)

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