Times 24811 – What a steamy man!

47 comments on “Times 24811 – What a steamy man!”

1. ….for 7, ‘sol’, i.e. LO[t]S. That should have been it, but it looked like 8 down must be an anagram, and so it proved. I got held up, so 52 minutes.

   Golfers are more likely to be familiar with bent grass than anyone else, it’s usually either that or Bermuda for fairways.

   I would be surprised if many UK solvers know what state Salem is the capital of, unless they’ve memorized them for crosswording purposes.

   The one that really held me up was ‘demi-monde’. Even with all the crossing letters, it was far from obvious.

2. The LJ site seems to be doing odd things today. Let’s hope it doesn’t last.

   So Uncle Yap, you didn’t get the killer puzzle you feared. Great!

   Took me 21 minutes. Found the BL in 18dn a bit obscure. Were they ever known as BL? And was there any reason for the question-mark in 16dn? Looks like a straightforward inclusion-clue to me.

   Edited at 2011-03-31 03:04 am (UTC)

   1. When I was articled to the-then Coopers & Lybrand in Birmingham, British Leyland was one of our biggest audits and in our internal reference, we always called it BLUK. Seems a bit unfair that you got the stinker yesterday and I breezed through mine today.
   2. Took me a while to work this out as well, despite living in England at a time when ‘BL’ was rarely out of the headlines, usually for downing tools or producing execrable models like the Austin Allegro. The question mark at 16 had me puzzled too.
   3. Loved your “Brechin City: The Wilderness Years” comment yesterday! I put in a late comment on that crossword that I reckon most of those places don’t exist but were invented by the BBC back in the 1960s as time-fillers on their new-fangled Grandstand programme, and have since become part of folklore thanks to the sonorous tones of James Alexander Gordon. Drove through Dumbarton (or was it Kilmarnock) once…but it appeared closed.
3. This is Ernie WISE + [Xmas] CRACKER – a ‘means for wrapping up a paper joke’.
4. 49 minutes with one wrong, introducing ‘gemyl’ as a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Thanks to Yap Suk for the explanation of TRENT – my lateral thinking was unable to extend to considering the possibility that the T-junction could come at the beginning of the answer as well as at the end. My abbreviation for ‘government’ has alwasy been ‘govt’, so I was slowed up there. My COD goes to ANCHORING for the penny drop moment even if, like almost everything in the DIY related arena, I’d never heard of that particular device.
5. Actually, my initial headline was Watt a steamy man! Then I realised that WATT is an element in one of the answers; for which I’d surely be roasted alive for “spoiling”. Would anybody object?
6. I too had ‘gemyl’ for the Hebrew character. The combination of obscure word and ambiguous clue strikes me as a bit unsatisfactory – but otherwise this was a gentle 37 minute stroll after yesterday’s exertions.

   The surprise packet for me today was the Greek goddess Ate in 15ac. I don’t recall ever meeting her before – although with a name like that, you’d think she’d be the crossword setter’s best friend.

   1. She pops up in barred grid puzzles quite a bit, most recently in Mephisto 2637 (a good one to try if you want to try these things, incidentally), clued by ‘Worried I may have been a mischief-maker’.
7. Hi from Downunder, a month ago (today in Murdoch’s “The Australian” the 1/3/2011 puzzle 24785 was published).

   Read your blog daily, very enjoyable.

   On the blog (http://community.livejournal.com/times_xwd_times/675230.html) for today’s puzzle Sotira and Tony_Sever were discussing Grand Slams. Can they, or anyone else please enlighten me as to what a grand slam is?

   Two guesses: Doing the clues in the order they’re printed 1A, 2A, 3A…30A, 1D, 2D, …26D.

   Or doing the clues in random order, but writing them in immediately on reading the clue, rather than moving on to the next when inspiration doen’s strike.

   Thanks in anticipation,
   Rob

   1. Hi Rob, and welcome. Sorry to be very late in responding – I was out househunting all day (didn’t catch any). ‘Grand Slam’ is very informal, but I take to mean not having to return to a single clue, i.e. solving each before moving onto the next. I don’t think the order in which they’re solved is important.
8. All familiar with the Miller play ‘The Crucible’ will know Salem’s the capital of Massachusetts. I too got gimel wrong here going for gemel without chcking. 23 minutes with that for a refreshing canter.
   1. Wikipedia has gemel as well as gimel for the third letter of the hebrew alphabet. Don’t have access to the more authoritative sources, but it sounds like a case for an alternative solution.
      Doesn’t help me much, I had gemyl. Not bad otherwise, finished in 50 minutes.
      1. I don’t know if gemel is a valid alternative either, but it doesn’t actually fit the clue as it wouldn’t account for the apostrophe S.
         1. Whoops. Just re-read the clue and you’re right, of course.
      2. As observed below the apostrophe s puts gemel out of contention. Apologies for my insouciant and inaccurate remark about Massachusetts’ capital especially to its and Boston’s inhabitants.
         1. For what it’s worth I confess to having made the same assumption as you, based at least partly on the same source. It’s lucky there are two of them really because I’m not sure I’ve even heard of Salem, Oregon.
            1. Very religious those earlier settlers; there are many Salems in the US.
               1. Yes, I suppose there must be. And I don’t think I’ve heard of any of them!
            2. Salem as capital of Oregon is standard fare to all pub-quizzers (as with all other US state capitals, and countries, provinces, etc)!!
   2. Boston is the capital of Massachusetts!
9. 28 minutes marred by yet another GEMYL here (I suspect there will be an awful lot of people whose knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet improves by one letter today). Technically it’s fair enough, of course, but if you don’t already know it, I think the way the clue is phrased, and the checkers G_M_L lead you almost inexorably to the wrong answer rather than the right one.
10. 31 minutes but the NW went in so quickly I thought I was going to race through this puzzle and was rather disappointed when I became bogged down in other quarters and ended with a wrong answer at 21dn.

    For a relatively easy puzzle there was an awful lot of stuff I had to look up later by way of explaining the clues and I fell into every bear-trap going, starting with SOL at 7ac when I tackled the NE.

    I knew ATE as a goddess but wasn’t aware of her as a mischief maker and having just read up on her exploits I think they count as something considerably worse than mere mischief.

    I didn’t know SALEM as the capital of Oregon, didn’t remember BENT grass though I have met it here before, didn’t get the ‘spurs’ reference re cock-fighting and like Ulaca I wondered what sort of fissure a TREN might be. I never heard of O-RING, and isn’t that a tautology anyway?

    I wouldn’t have felt too bad at missing GIMEL if I had written GEMYL instead but I’m afraid I carelessly decided on GEMEL which didn’t account for the apostrophe S.

11. So now we have to know the Hebrew alphabet as well. Damn! My version was GEMEL: for once Jimbo’s advice to ignore all punctuation unhelpful.
    My first action today was to mark 8 as an anagram. That it was my last in qualifies it for my COD (HOMO ERECTIS).
    2 Watteau exhibitions running in London at the moment at The Wallace Collection and The Royal Academy. Was at the latter last week wearing my oddest clothes and trying to look intellectual.

    This puzzle might have been more enthusiastically received were it not sitting in the shadow of yesterday’s gem (for anyone who hasn’t seen it, see setter’s late comment). For me not much quicker than yesterday, but unaided without knowing O-RING or ATE and of course with the obligatory error with GEMEL.

12. 20 minutes today, feeling slightly slow for this quality of puzzle. LAMBENT and SCANT were my last in, which probably just illustrates a (hopefully) temporary thickness on my part.
    The Hebrew alphabet has some useful offerings for awkward fills, and as GIMEL is only the third letter might be expected to be almost as familiar as gamma. On the other hand, I couldn’t work out the wordplay, as neither gel for “set” or I’m for “this writer’s” occurred to me.
    The O-ring became grimly famous for its failure in the Challenger space shuttle.
    CoD to SURFACE.
13. One wrong: GIMEL (on the basis of the wordplay I hovered between two inaccurate options – ‘gemel’ and ‘gemyl’ – ‘my’ seemed a more appropriate term for ‘this writer’s – so plumped for ‘gemyl’). Otherwise reasonably straightforward.

    Couldn’t help thinking of jimbo when completing this: I suspect he’ll be pleased with the recognition of Alan Turing and I only know that ‘bent’ = ‘grass’ because it seems to be an important feature of various golf courses (at least according to the commentators).

14. 33 minutes today.
    I enjoyed the range of references in this one (TURING crossing WATTEAU in particular), but it was spoiled for me by GIMEL/GEMYL. I fell into the trap and for the reasons mentioned by others I think it was a bit unfair.
    Did anyone else contemplate SCRAP for 13 ac? Too naughty for the Times but it fits the clue rather well and I hesitated before discounting it!
    Today’s unknowns: BENT and (of course) GIMEL. ATE was familiar, presumably from my halting attempts at Mephisto. We also had ULTIMO there very recently which helped me with 7dn.
15. 24 minutes. For the first time in over a week I’ve been able to sit down with a cup of tea and enjoy solving the puzzle after breakfast, instead of having to grab five minutes here and there throughout the day. There have been some real crackers recently, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed this one too.

    I wonder if there has been a conscious decision to include more scientific references (Watt, Turing, HOMO ERECTUS); there have also been a couple of clues recently that were arithmetical in their solution (CUBED and HUNDREDTH a few days ago, I recall.)

    Although Chambers refers specifically to women in the definition of DEMI-MONDE (while also listing demi-mondaine as a woman member of the demi-monde), I recall a poem by William Plomer The Playboy of the Demi-World: 1938 which describes Mr. D’Arcy Honeybunn “A rose-red sissy half as old as time”.

    Unfortunately, I cannot provide a link as it must still be copyrighted; but perhaps DEMI-MONDE ought now to include, in William Plomer’s words, aunts of either sex.

    Favourite clue today is WATTEAU.

16. Another member of the gemyl tendency here – otherwise a fairly straightforward affair in 32 mins (or, more correctly I suppose, DNF). We had a letter of the Jewish alphabet not too long ago, but I can’t remember what that was either.
17. 29/32 without aids – outfoxed by ANCHORING and the unknowns LAMBENT and DEMI-MONDE – and I’m another who put in GEMYL.

    The greens at Augusta National are seeded with bentgrass and so Jimbo and I will see screenfuls of it on TV next week during the Masters. Can’t wait!

18. I was rather amused to think for a short while that the answer to 13A was ‘scrap’.
19. A stroll in the park in any event but particularly after yesterday. 15 casual minutes after nearly being blown away on the bent golf course grass.

    Same quibbles as everybody else. I don’t recall BL for British Leyland but I’ve checked and it’s in Chambers! I’m not keen on “steamy man” for James Watt, I don’t understand why there’s a question mark after 16D and GIMEL is a bit obscure (sorry to cause you such troubles Barry). I checked it in the dictionary before entering it in the grid.

20. Feeling smug here as I know of Salem,OR, as the company I work for is based in McMinnville,OR, not that far away. Talking of state capitals, one of my colleagues often plays this little joke on people: “How do you pronounce the state capital of Kentucky: Lewisville or Loo-e-ville?” Once the answer has been given he says “You pronounce it Frankfort”.
    As for Watteau, not my favourite painter and Rococo not my favourite style but I knew those art history lectures would come in handy one day.
    After my spelling disasters yesterday, when I was poised to put in GEMYL based on wordplay, I hesitated and resorted to an aid, thus ending up with the correct answer, thank goodness.
    Yes, the word O-RING reminded me, sadly, of the Challenger disaster, too. Wanted GROMMET to appear there and WALLACE and CHEESE elsewhere but…alas.
    And I was posed to enter DEMI MOORE before reason got the better of me!
    A little bit disappointed in REELS. REES has been used fairly recently. With all those other Welsh names out there the odd DAI or IFAN might be nice.
    Thanks yfyap for ATE, the mischief maker. A wasted day when one doesn’t learn sunnink! This follows on form yesterday’s discussion on EROS and ANTEROS. What a splendid blog this is!
    COD is shared between WATTEAU and DEMI MONDE.
    1. Those Challenger O-rings now figure prominently in many statistics courses, since it was statisticians who copped some of the blame. Somebody had done an analysis of the available data (yes, O-rings had failed non-catastrophically many times before) and managed to conclude there was no correlation between temperature at launch and number of O-ring failures, despite views to the contrary amongst flight engineers. This was achieved by deleting all the launches where there had been no seal failures from the plot, on the assumption that there could be no information in a count of zero. All the zero counts were towards the higher end of the temperature scale, needless to say. It was 42 degrees Fahrenheit on the fateful launch day. A more careful analysis of the available data would have estimated the chance of an O-ring failure as being very close to 100% at that temperature.
       1. Thank you Koro. I actually understood that. I’m not losing my mind.
21. And…mine’s a GEMEL! And…I assumed TREN was the fissure!

    Also had two blanks today: LAMBENT (didn’t know the grass), and SCANT (didn’t get the CANT=humbug def).

    CoD to 8dn for the ‘being upright’ def.

    Good puzzle, well blogged, many thanks!

22. 23 minutes to fall into the well set GEMYL trap. Oh, well. I was going o say it was a doodle, too. Question mark beside Ate, also.
23. I found this one of the easiest Times puzzles ever. 1ac went in without a moment’s thought and everything flowed from there. Many of the answers were instantly recognizable from the definition, and those that weren’t could be got quickly once a letter or two fell into place. Fifteen minutes over dinner. Although I’m not a fast solver, I think I prefer them a bit more challenging.
24. This seemed a rather pedestrian affair but I think that was probably because of the contrast with yesterday’s stunner. I’m another in the GEMYL camp. I’ve learned a new word there to go with BENT. But, unlike the Hebrew letter, the latter was guessable from the definition. I bunged lots of answers in from definition alone, which doesn’t give the same level of satisfaction. 20 minutes but another 5 to work out all the cryptics.
25. Just in passing – I rather like the Latin sentence down the right-hand side.
    1. Well spotted, sir!
26. About 20 minutes, but I was GEMYL’ed as well. Last entries were WATTEAU and LAMBENT, from wordplay. I found it on the easier side, but probably shouldn’t be saying that, what with one incorrect. I liked SCANT, very concise. Regards to all.
27. Damn! First mistake of the year with GEMYL. I tried and failed to justify GIMEL, but it was only after I’d finished and found that GEMYL didn’t exist as an alternative that light finally dawned.
28. Rather a day late and a dollar short but put that down to travel.
    Regarding GIMEL, it occurred to me that the American, Justin GIMELstob used to be a tennis pro and 3 years ago he got into trouble for having a rant about Anna Kournikova, for some reason or other.
29. Great post! I wish you could follow up on this topic!

30. Thanks for an idea, you sparked at thought from a angle I hadn’t given thoguht to yet. Now lets see if I can do something with it.

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