Times 24805: Lots of fun and a different sort of chemist

33 comments on “Times 24805: Lots of fun and a different sort of chemist”

1. Good time George! I took exactly 35 minutes, fooled by all sorts of things, not least the WAREHOUSE of which (ditto) I’d never heard. Still: the cryptic wasn’t that hard with a few crossers. It got this bad: didn’t see the anagram in 20dn! And I have to give the COD to the next one, 22dn, MARGE. OK, it’s chestnutty; but with a new twist. Not too fond of “being” => AS in 25ac. But overall: a good puzzle where I enjoyed having to do most of the work.

   Edited at 2011-03-24 01:38 am (UTC)

2. 52 minutes, held up not so much by the unknowns (the theatre, the bombazine and the stollen) as by the NW crossing pair of the US president and DESCRY. Interesting puzzle, its swings in terms of degree of difficulty matched by those from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Liked the ‘paw’ clue particularly.

   It may not be very elegant, but ‘being’ for ‘as’ is fine in contexts such as ‘being the Games are only two years away’.

   1. I don’t think ‘as’ is ‘since’ here (can’t go along with your example: more than inelegant) but ‘in the capacity as’ = ‘being’.
      1. Don’t care for the usage much myself, but one comes across it quite a bit in texts such as minutes, e.g. ‘Being there were no comments …’
         1. Indeed. But that doesn’t (yet) make it a usage to go along with, I submit; and also, you don’t appear to consider the possibility of the other usage being the one intended.
            1. I considered it, but I couldn’t see a context in which ‘in the capacity as’ would mean ‘being’. It seems to mean just ‘as’ in the examples I can think of, but perhaps I’m missing something.
               1. I thought of the standard opening of letters to the editor:

                  As a mother of six …
                  Being a mother of six …

                  Still don’t like it but.

                  Edited at 2011-03-24 09:51 am (UTC)

               2. As someone with a degree or two in carpentry I am confident of being able to hit the nail on the head.
3. I, too, had to get ‘Donmar Warehouse’ from the cryptic. If you remember that h = horse and m = mare, then you’ll be reluctant to use ‘mare’ for ‘horse’, but that’s what it is.

   At least I know what a chemist does in the UK, although I was thinking for a while it would be someone from the history of science, only Lavoisier didn’t fit.

   The clue for ‘marge’ is kind of a hybrid, with ‘butter’ requiring two different senses. Not a classic &lit, but very clever.

   On the other hand, ‘bombazine’ was one of my first in – there, that was obvious!

   1. That was me, don’t know what happened. I did reboot my computer tonight, maybe I lost a cookie or two.
4. 22′ to get everything but 11ac, and then either 5 seconds more, or 40 minutes plus 5 seconds more, to get that, depending on whether you count the time I took resisting going to Google to look up a place I’d never heard of. All in all, I found this a less than satisfactory puzzle: 1ac clever=able ? 22d–we all know about ‘butter’, so MARGE was a no-brainer; 12d: it’s enough to suggest that the R should move up somewhere? 1d: I don’t know what the rules are, but generally the part of the clue that works as the definition is actually a possible definition, no? (basically-essentially spot-descry, chemist-dispenser, etc.) But ‘dishearten’ does not mean ‘core’.
   1. Able is the second definition of clever in Chambers.

      Yes, 1d is a cryptic definition, but at least it’s got a wordplay with it.

      Second definition of descry in Chambers: to discover by looking

      Moving R up in 12 down is given by wallpapeR finally put up

      1. OK, I’ll yield on ‘clever’; I suppose one of these days I’ll have to buy a Chambers. Is ‘clever’ one of the definitions of ‘able’, though?
         Shouldn’t a clue like 1d at least have a question mark?
         I had no problem with ‘descry’; I cited spot-descry as an example of a proper definition, in contrast to disheartened-cored.
         And I got the parsing of 12d; my complaint was the vagueness–‘take the R of wallpaper and move it up somewhere’.
5. Had to google the theatre post-solve as only vaguely heard of it despite, sort of, living in London. Thought of HAMMERER early on but somehow couldn’t bring myself to put it in until everything else was done. Can’t possibly be as simple as that can it? was my thinking. Never saw the cryptic for UNDERCOATED to my shame. Thought ASTIR ungainly but MISHANDLE gainly.
6. I too was held up by the theatre … also by spelling Brittany wrong for a time. 23 minutes; not a bad work-out.
7. 30 minutes for all but 1ac and 5dn which between them must have taken me the best part of another 20 minutes. I know US Presidents and their parties from Woodrow Wilson onwards but prior to that my knowledge is a bit patchy.

   BOMBAZINE was my first one in from which you might gather that the answers in the top half did not exactly leap off the page at me, but having got started it mostly flowed rather nicely.

   My only hold-up other than the ones already mentioned was at 23ac as a result of an error at 24dn where I had thought CAW might fit the bill.I knew it was the sound of a crow but I wrongly guessed it could be a bird in its own right as in ‘macaw’.

   I have been to today’s theatre many times, mostly in Sam Mendes’s day as Artistic Director and I was under the impression it had long ago dropped ‘Warehouse’ from its name. Indeed a quick visit to their website suggests this is so as far as promotional material is concerned where is it referred to either as The Donmar or The Donmar, Covent Garden, when they want to distinguish it from their other venue The Donmar, Trafalgar. But ‘Warehouse’ does still appear in their postal address and it’s in their URL.

   Incidentally, the name Donmar was allegedly constructed from the first three letters of its founder’s name, DON(ald Albery) and his friend’s MAR(got Fonteyn).

8. Failed with DONMAR WAREHOUSE, as I’m in the 99% of Australians who have never heard of it. As others have said, gettable from the wordplay, but only if I was at the top of my game. I wasn’t.
   Flipped a coin between BOMBAZINE and BOMBANIZE, they both sounded plausible, but of course I came up with the wrong one. Which makes this clue very unsatisfactory to me. If the word was unknown, it was impossible to derive it from the wordplay, even with all the checkers in place.
   Of course, it would have been a very satisfying clue if the coin had landed correctly!
   COD to STAND.
   1. Anonymous no more!
9. 15 minutes’ steady solving, with only ASTIR not understood (as seems to be common). I thought HAMMERER was a lousy word, fit only for Scrabble, and the least impressive clue, but there was a lot to enthuse.
   I was at the DONMAR in the 90’s for Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. It gave me one of those really odd deja vu experiences when, as Henry starts talking about cricket bats and trout, I realised I had heard it long before in a radio production – just that one brief snippet while channel hopping. No idea why it stuck in the memory: perhaps it’s just Stoppard’s genius. I still listen at cricket matches for that sound of that perfectly timed shot, “a noise like a trout taking a fly”.
   CoD today to Handel’s daughter, even though he didn’t have one.
   1. I agree about HAMMERER and was going to mention it but it slipped my mind.

      I’m feeling ancient now, having read yout comment about THE REAL THING because I saw it in the opening week of the original production at the Strand theatre. I feels like only a few years ago but I just looked it up and it was 1982! Henry was Roger Rees in that. Who played him at the Donmar?

      1. Stephen Dillane, as I remember, and Jennifer Ehle took the Felicity Kendall role of Annie. I see, however, that my memory for dates is a bit dodgy, as the production was in 2000. I remember the Donmar as a wonderfully intimate theatre, just a few rows of seats around an apron stage. But hardly surprising no-one’s heard of it until now!
         1. Still going strong under
            Michael Grandage. Saw excellent King Lear a few weeks ago with Sir Derek Jacobi. 45 minutes for me today. Can’t see daw – any explanations welcome!
10. Got there in the end; but it took as long to get DONMAR WAREHOUSE, EDWIN, BOMBAZINE (despite the obvious anagram) and STOLLEN as the rest put together and not really happy with wordplay for ASTIR.

    Thanks, George, for the blog: for once, I don’t seem to have missed anything! COD: UNDERCOATED.

11. 22 minutes for me. I spent several minutes at the end on the CLEVELAND/DESCRY pair. I’ve never heard the latter and the former is not the first Democrat to spring to mind. He will do so more readily in the future though, because I learned today that he is the one who messed up the presidential numbering.
    BOMBAZINE was also new and I was relieved to find I’d put the letters in the right place.
12. I had trouble finishing this after a smooth start on the top half. I am one of the people who put CAW for 24d, thinking it a variant of “Macaw”. It took ages for me to see INDULGENT since I was searching for a word beginning “INC”. An enjoyable solve nonetheless. Knew BOMBAZINE from victorian novels where it always seemed to be black. I am wondering if it ever came in any other colour. Have never, to my knowledge, actually seen the stuff. Limped home in 40 minutes.
13. Defeated by the 1ac/5dn pairing. All in all found this quite a toughie, and not in the enjoyable sense!
14. A limping 40 minutes for me too, held up by the theatre, fabric and recalcitrant movement. Apart from those, some very smooth clueing. COD to MOLEST
15. Hard going at 65 minutes, having to resort to an aid (my wife) for DONMAR WAREHOUSE.
    As always, struggled with the geographical ones, being only half-sure that LOS ALAMOS is in the middle of the desert, and not a port like LAS PALMAS, and uncertain whether BORGOGNE & BRETAGNE are places in France.
    Knew BOMBAZINE from Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe –
    “A servile usher then,in crumpled bands and rusty bombazine, led me, still singing, into Chancery Lane.”
    So it seems that bombazine is what court ushers wear.
16. About 30 minutes, ending with the unknown DONMAR WAREHOUSE/SMASHER crossers. My hat’s off to the non-US folks who were able to find CLEVELAND, which took me a couple of checking letters to dredge up myself. President Cleveland was the only Democrat to be elected between the American Civil War and Woodrow Wilson’s election in 1912, and also the only President to serve 2 non-consecutive terms, so he actually ousted the Republican twice. I also think it was his daughter who became the namesake of the Baby Ruth candy bar. COD’s to MOLEST and MARGE. Regards to all.
17. Knickers – DNF but in mitigation I was up at 3 blogging the Telegraph Toughie for Big Dave before playing golf. I forgot the theatre although I have seen it before and missed a couple of sitters (EXTRACT for one)
    I will proudly say that I crunched the anagram at BOMBAZINE as I wouldnt have got it even with all the checking letters regardless of the fact that I understood the wordplay.
    Other than that quite straightforward!
18. 11:09 for me. Not a total disaster, but once again I felt distinctly off form. I liked the clue to UNDERCOATED, which I don’t recall coming across before.
19. Though it took me 55 minutes, I very much enjoyed this one and did manage to finish correctly, despite never having heard of DONMAR WAREHOUSE (solved by wordplay) or BOMBAZINE (the only anagram that seemed to make sense). There were many very elegant and witty clues, some of them a real struggle to understand. My last in was SMASHER, which just had to be right, though it took me some time to reject HER in the role of “for woman” with SMAS? as “elegant clothing” and hit upon the correct wordplay. I especially liked MARGE for the surface reading, MISHANDLE for the horrible pun, DESCRY because it eluded me so long (I was looking for a musical key in the range A to G, and it took a while for the penny to drop while I was staring at ESC), and UNDERCOATED for the moving R.
20. Having read the comments of other contributors I think the inclusion of DONMAR WAREHOUSE was grossly unfair in a weekday puzzle.

    It’s a tiny venue (only 250 seats) and without wishing for one moment to detract from the quality of its productions over the years it cannot be considered a major London theatre.

    For Times crossword purposes I might justify the Palladium, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, the Globe with reference to Shakespeare and possibly Sadler’s Wells and the Coliseum for inclusion but that’s about it.

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