Times 28977 – LOL

86 comments on “Times 28977 – LOL”

1. I found this really quite hard and considering my rate of progress early on I’m surprised my solving time wasn’t a lot more than 45 minutes. Fortunately once I had eventually solved one of the long Down answers (DEMOCRATIC PARTY) the checkers it provided gave me a new lease of life and things started to fall into place.

   I wasn’t sure about ‘watch’ for LO. It’s usually clued by ‘see’ or ‘look’ and even though ‘watch’ can be synonymous with both of those it doesn’t seem quite right for LO.

   Nor was I sure of ‘escape / LAM’ although having racked my brains I had a vague recollection of ‘on the lam’ meaning ‘on the run’.

   NECESSITY came from wordplay eventually but I found it tricky to piece together. DIDICOI was from wordplay too but it was a word I didn’t know or had forgotten. It has appeared once in a Times puzzle 5 years ago.

   YERBA was also unknown today having appeared mostly in Mephistos, Jumbos and Club Monthlies over the years where I wouldn’t have seen it. Its single appearance in a regular puzzle was 4 years ago when I was the duty blogger, but it hadn’t stuck.

   RED CARD as a verb grates on me, like ‘medal’ as a verb which no doubt we shall be hearing a lot over the next few weeks.

   My LOI was the long anagram at 4dn which arrived only after all the checkers were in place. I had been assuming the ‘small girl’ for insertion would be DI and that held me back.

   1. How I agree with you, Jack, about making verbs out of nouns. Yes, unfortunately we will hear about a lot of medalling. It’s the same with climbing, isn’t it. These days they don’t ‘reach the summit’, they ‘summit’, Harrumph!

      1. At one time I would have agreed with reservations about making verbs out of nouns but more recently I’d accept it as the evolution of language.

         1. I agree. I think they’re just disgruntlementing 😀

            1. Indeed, they seem to have solutioned the clues in question without any problems.

               1. 😄

               2. 🤣

               3. Further thought: while we are on the subject of language and abuses thereof, I would like to mention my particular bugbear: cruciverbalist.
                  Although it is the accepted dictionary term for a crossword enthusiast, I think it sounds pretentious. I prefer my own neologism: crosswordiste.

      2. Sir Ernest Gowers on the subject of American usage quoted the line “There ain’t no noun that cain’t be verbed.”

      3. Sorry. But every noun in English can be verbed!

   2. I’m not sure which I hate more: ‘medalling’ or (perhaps more commonly associated with motor ‘sport’ – yes: I’m not convinced by that either) ‘podiuming’. Interestingly, neither of these horrors seems to offend my spell-checker. And now I’m on a roll: ‘to text’ really grates, and especially so its past participle, ‘texted’. But I do rather like the Czech equivalent: ‘esemeskovat’. (The first three syllables give it away to non-Czech speakers.)

2. I got off to a flying start with this, and then when I slowed down, wasn’t sure if the clues were that hard or I was just too distracted by YouTube vids about current events (I’m feeling good about the election now!)—and yet I didn’t see DEMOCRATIC PARTY for the longest time! Admittedly, I didn’t know CRAIC.
   NHO of DIDICOI, and wonder if it’s appeared in the Times before anywhere except a Mephisto… Whoever they are, they’re “not true Romas,” as the dictionaries reiterate (irrelevantly reminding me of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy)—I didn’t realize that this term originated with the Roma!

   1. DIDICOI appeared once in a Saturday puzzle (#24317) but never in a Mephisto in the TfTT era.

      1. I knew it from the Jake Thackery’s song ‘It was only a gypsy’, lyrics something like ‘a raggy shaggy blackguard of a didicoi’ from memory.

      2. I thought it was a pejorative term and one better not used these days

3. Around 75 minutes Got a lot quickly but greatly slowed by the corners particularly the SW. DIDICOI apparently is a less common variation of DIDDICOY which appears in Chambers Thesaurus. I had vaguely heard of this version. Took me ages to put in DEMOCRATIC PARTY since I couldn’t see how it related to the clue. Found puzzle to be quite hard with very few parsings known on completion Managed to parse most clues after I finished whilst waiting for the blog. FOI MATELOT LOI DIDICOI.

4. Enjoyed this despite beginning by replacing the OO (pair of spectacles) in SHOOTS with I (one) – not a film I had heard of.

   1. 😂I even researched it: there isn’t one, though a singular example exists!

      1. It was panned by the critics

         1. Ho ho!

   2. Also my initial answer

5. Hats off to the setter this morning for a brilliant, witty and extremely elegant puzzle all done in 43:25. I thoroughly enjoyed its breadth, both in terms of the knowledge required and the challenges posed. All the surfaces were finely wrought with a minimum of crossword gobbledegook. My COD among many goes to the superb reverse-IKEA clue for MUSSOLINI, improbably yielding a perfectly sensible surface.

   Thanks to Pip for explaining DUBAI and BAMBI, both biffed and now appreciated. And thanks for a top puzzle, clever setter.

6. 52 minutes with LOI the unknown and unknowable DIDICOI. I did cheat though by searching for INTENSIFICATION when I’d ground to a halt. I took the view that our setter, if they knew their HOSEA, would desire mercy and not sacrifice. At my age, 15 letter anagrams are too long even when the letters are obvious, which they weren’t. For me, this was a good puzzle spoilt by these two. COD to INAMORATA. Thank you Pip and setter.

   1. I also loved 14a.
      Lovely puzzle with plenty of smiles along the way.

      1. I also agree with both Shabbo and BW: witty and amusing, apart from 4d, which was a bridge too far for me.

7. Finished this over lunch, so no time, but probably under an hour. DIDICOI was my LOI; I had some vague memory of it and played around with vowels while assuming that NADIR was right (never figured out the parsing), and finally got it. ODE doesn’t say anything about not being echt-Romany. I think we’ve had YERBA before; in any case, it’s familiar to me from Yerba Buena Island in SF Bay, which the Bay Bridge goes through. First Peoria, now Kalamazoo; what next, Waukegan?

   1. I got KALAMAZOO via Glenn Miller, perhaps not a source readily available to the younger solver.

      1. I got it from the KALAMAZOO accountancy stationery company! Ledgers, cheques, that sort of thing. Used to be big in the accountancy world before we all went digital & paperless. Never realised it was an actual place.

         1. I used to work at KALAMAZOO Computer Centre in Northfield, Birmingham between 1971-3. They were the data processing bureau arm of the company, and specialised in accounting and stock control processing for the motor industry.

         2. I worked at KALAMAZOO Computer Services, a branch of the corporation that specialised in accounting and stock control for car dealerships. They were based in Northfield, Birmingham close to the Austin factory at Longbridge.

      2. I knew it from the accounting system and also as the home of Gibson Guitars. See the book Kalamazoo Gals by John Thomas. https://www.wmuk.org/arts-more/2016-03-11/three-years-later-the-mysteries-behind-kalamazoo-gals-keep-getting-stranger

8. All done in a Zager&Evansish 55.55 (your arms hanging limp at your sides…). An excellent puzzle, tough but fair, with the rather alarming unknowns eventually gettable. Piquet’s help much appreciated at several points, including INAMORATA and Kamala’s suddenly happy party. I’m not convinced by lam = escape either, and as an aside share Jack’s distaste for ‘medalled’. Dunno about elsewhere but here in Oz this has spread to such abominations as ‘silvered’ and ‘podiumed’.

   From Visions of Johanna:
   The fiddler, he now steps to the road
   He writes everything’s been returned which was owed
   On the back of a fish TRUCK that loads
   While my conscience explodes
   The harmonicas play the skeleton keys in the rain
   And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain

9. Very slow indeed, with AMISS accounting for nearly 50% of that. I thought of it early, but couldn’t quite see it as synonymous with ‘out’ (‘off’ or ‘up’ would’ve given me more confidence), and the saying simply didn’t come to me until it did. I was largely looking for A + four letters that make 2/3 of a 6-letter distance, when I wasn’t also trying to justify ADIOS, ARIES, ALIAS…

   Hardly a sparkling performance then in around 20+15, but I agree with our blogger about the puzzle’s entertainment factor. Never heard of DIDICOI, but cleanly clued.

   Thanks both.

10. 42:28

    I was less enthralled by the apparent wit of this puzzle as there was stuff I didn’t know/wasn’t sure of.

    ISLAM – obvious from the checkers but wasn’t sure of LAM = escape, though have heard of ‘on the LAM’
    DIDICOI – needed the first three checkers to see it
    YERBA – my breakthrough answer in the SW
    ANTELOPES – failed to see the ANT part
    NADIR – epic fail to parse
    KALAMAZOO – known to me as the home of the Gibson guitar factory
    INTENSIFICATION – needed all but the first N checker to see this – random girl (grrr)
    DEMOCRATIC PARTY – not a clue what was going on here
    AMISS – failed to appreciate the wordplay
    ANDES – was thinking there must be a maestro with an O stuck in the letters of ANDES!

    Too early on Wednesday morning perhaps…

    Thanks P and setter

11. I didn’t enjoy this at all, and biffed most of it.

    FOI ADD UP
    LOI ANDES
    COD BLACKBIRD
    TIME 9:58

    1. Hi Busman, I always enjoy your comments.

       Do you mind me asking why you didn’t like this one?

       1. I dislike puzzles where I find myself “solving” more than a couple of the clues simply from the definition and letter pattern. Here there were 5 or 6 such clues. There was humour hiding in the clues apparently, but if you have to have a joke explained you……

          1. Got you.

12. 54:25 with error

    FOI: NECESSITY
    LOI: DIDICOI
    COD: BLACKBIRD

    Slow but lots to enjoy until the final DIDICOI, which was unknown to me, but seemed possible. (On submission I discovered I had entered AMSSS which also ruined MAILBAG – sloppy).

    Thanks to piquet and the setter.

13. An enjoyable puzzle. 45 mins – about right for me. The end of the road was 4 down where I wasted time including Di in the anagram. I forgot that Di often goes missing during the festival season and may be replaced by her more sober sibling, Fi.

14. DNF, defeated by the relatively straightforward ANDES. Anode as a conductor has never lodged itself in my brain, and I didn’t think of the mountains meaning of range.

    Didn’t see how the dub in DUBAI worked; wanted 1a to be Yesterday for too long; relied on wordplay for the unknown KALAMAZOO and DIDICOI; and trusted that lam=escape for ISLAM.

    Thanks piquet and setter.

    COD Democratic Party

15. 18:00 but held up at the end by the unknown DIDICOI and A MUGS GAME, resorting to an alphabet trawl to come up with MUG. I liked the remorseful pig rustler and the deceptive Anon for IN A MO. Thanks Pip and setter.

16. I thought DIDICOI had become a no-no nowadays? Certainly some regard it as pejorative. Surprised to find it here. Otherwise an excellent puzzle that was the right mix of testing, but gettable with thought/care. Liked INAMORATA (‘in a mo’ – brilliant).

17. 18’25”, but a lot went in unparsed.

    We may well hear ‘podium’ as a verb too.

    Thanks pip and setter.

    1. Podium? Please don’t encourage them, Rob!

18. 25:38
    I enjoyed this one, and somehow finished quicker than yesterday’s rather more straightforward puzzle.

    Quite a few unknowns (KALAMAZOO, YERBA, LONGCHAMP, DIDICOI) but they were fairly clued, and I needed the blog to parse AMISS (unaware of the saying) and I forgot to work out what was going on with BAMBI.

    Otherwise no major hold-ups aside from taking an age to put all the bits together for INTENSIFICATION.

    Thanks to both.

19. 17.30
    Very enjoyable, with the topical DEMOCRATIC PARTY much easier to slot in than the unfathomable INTENSIFICATION.
    Knew DIDICOI from the Jake Thackray song “It Was Only a Gypsy”, like several of his songs a definite no-no nowadays.
    COD MUSSOLINI
    LOI NADIR

20. 1 hour with two left : DIDICOI, went for DIDICHI, with CHIp for change. DIDICOI looks Greek to me, like HOI POLLOI. Just could not see MUGS GAME. A MISS is as good as a mile.

    Late change from NECESSARY to NECESSITY opened up DUBAI. Why is HOSEA a good book? It’s part of the Good Book, but there are 66 of them. Just figured out BLACKBIRD after reading the blog a couple of times.

    Tempted with DI{o}DES for a conductor, perhaps some unknown legal term. And another one who banged in the 9 letter YESTERDAY at 1 Across.

    Pleased to plick MATELOT out from the depths of my memory,

    Started by replacing the OO in SHOOTS, oops, that didn’t work !

    COD AMISS

21. Great enjoyment with this one, though I can’t claim I fully parsed everything, so thanks to PK for sorting out the American Blues and NECESSITY, though I’d like to think both would have succumbed if I bothered.
    This was worth it for PIGGYBACK’s penitential thief and the post holder, but I’m wondering if, perhaps by accident, something more is going on.
    Of course, I put YESTERDAY in at first at 1ac, even if a certain kind of British have no time for anything else, wanting back what was never there in the first place.
    But the wonderful BLACKBIRD, McCartney’s tribute to women in the Civil Rights movement in America, by a distance the most emotional song the Four ever produced, has (let’s say politics aside) extra poignancy today, with a bit of a nudge from 5d. Maybe, just maybe….

    1. And written as I remember after Donovan had taught Sir P how to Wilson pick on the guitar at a Marahashi Yogi retreat or something similar.

       1. It was the ‘clawhammer’ technique. He taught Lennon as well, who then wrote ‘Julia’ and ‘Dear Prudence’ using it.
          There’s a good interview with Donovan on YouTube about it.

          https://youtu.be/Q3tWkyYXcLc?si=KnP8wchqwtuQ9ELh

          1. If you think this guy taught Lennon and/or McCartney anything, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

       2. What is ‘wilson pick’?! BLACKBIRD is a very nice, but completely orthodox piece of guitar composition. This Donovan thing seems to have been completely invented by, er, Donovan.

    2. My favourite McCartney song, John Lennon’s too, was For No One. The words caught the pain of a break-up perfectly, and he was still young when he wrote it.

22. 45m 19s
    I wonder if anyone else saw 1ac and biffed YESTERDAY before attacking any other clues?!
    Re DIDICOI, I’ve never ever come across that spelling. Growing up in the Sussex countryside, my parents and others referred to them as DIDICOYS, with a Y. And that’s how Chambers refers to them.
    Thanks, Pip, for INTENSIFICATION , DEMOCRATIC PARTY and DUBAI.
    My podium finishers were BAMBI, INAMORATA and PIGGYBACK.
    Thanks again, Pip.

23. Phew! Just made it in 29 minutes, inside the half hour. LOI the NHO DIDICOI, gettable from the clue, but it was still a relief when it was correct.
    Very very clever and challenging puzzle!
    Thanks setter and blogger

24. 36.28. Not the type of puzzle that I enjoy. Unlike Pleasuredome8, I found the surfaces characteristically tortured.

25. 36:46

    Great puzzle. No problem with NHO’s if the clueing and checkers leave no doubt (DIDICOI and YERBA)..

    Liked many clues but LONGCHAMP was my favourite PDM.

26. 14:47. I found this tricky, and there were quite a few clues where I biffed the answer with little idea what was going on with the sometimes tortuous wordplay. I did know all the answers though, including the funny words.
    MER at ‘good book’, like Merlin above I would have said it refers necessarily to the whole thing, so this is a bit like defining Martin Chuzzlewit as ‘chapter one’. Not my area of expertise though.
    I never realised that YERBA was Spanish. I’m not sure what I thought it was.

27. 21:30 – Inventive and witty for sure. NHO of DIDICOI, or any of its cruciverbally useful allotropes, but it was clearly signposted, as were all the difficulties once the penny dropped – the sign of a well engineered puzzle.

28. 15d octahedra are solids, not figures, which are 2-dimensional. 18m of enjoyment for this excellent crossword.

    1. Collins has ‘any combination of points, lines, curves, or planes. A plane figure, such as a circle, encloses an area; a solid figure such as a sphere, encloses a volume’ and I expect other dictionaries have something similar.

       1. An octahedron is ‘a solid bound by eight plane faces’. Think the Platonic solids, regular versions of the five possibilities. I’m afraid I will stick to my guns.

29. 8:36 I took the unusual step of staying up till midnight to see if that would help my solving speed. It seems to have worked, in that I’m much higher up the leaderboard than usual. The down side is that there is no blog to comment on. I really liked this puzzle. Yes, I put YESTERDAY in to start with, without understanding why, and I always think of BLACKBIRD as being a Paul McCartney song (as he wrote and sang it solo), forgetting that it was on the double white album. The BAMBOO/BAMBI thing was clever, and I think we’ve seen it done before, the PIGGYBACK clue made me smile, and INAMORATA was brilliantly concise. I was surprised that DIDICOI was included, as it seems to be somewhat offensive these days. I only know the word from the children’s novel “The Diddakoi”, which was televised rather well by the BBC in my youth. Hedgehogs were frequently on the menu as I recall. It seems to be an old Romani word, but there’s no clear view on the etymology. There were 2 unknowns for me: LAM meaning “escape” and YERBA, both of which i consider useful additions to my vocabulary. I know nothing about horse racing but LONGCHAMP sounded vaguely familiar. COD to A MUG’S GAME for the smooth surface.

    1. He also played the guitar on BLACKBIRD so 100% solo!

       1. He did get some backing vocals from a song thrush standing in for the blackbird!

          1. Ha! I did not know that. I’m now listening to blackbird and song thrush calls on YouTube, trying to tell the difference but mostly just not caring. Such extraordinary little dinosaurs.

             1. Just listened again. Most definitely a blackbird (turdus merula). Song thrush is quite different!

30. 12a Necessity biffed. Thanks for the parsing piquet.
    14a Inamorata caused big probs. Mis-parsed as having (name*) and o for anon(ymous), with the E of Enamorata stopping progress on 4d Intensification. Which it itself took a while as how long does it take to guess Fi=small girl?
    26a Yerba HHObf (Had Heard Of, here only) but forgotten. I do remember Mate tea from O-level geog. Still unsure why we spent so much time on South America.
    POI 3d Kalamazoo; anyone else remember the pre-computer era (expensive) stationery for business management?

31. I got off to a bad start by biffing YESTERDAY for 1ac, having seen the reference to Beatles song and time. This was only repaired once KALAMAZOO was solved. It was a slow but steady solve generally where each answer seemed to require more thought than usual. DIDICOI was an unknown word to me, and I just kept my fingers crossed that it was correct. My LOI was ANDES, and by this time 58.35 seconds had elapsed. A slow time, but a very enjoyable puzzle.

32. 50 minutes, no particular problems, but it seemed quite difficult (but perfectly fair, and good in that the strange words were clued clearly). Like some others a MER at lo = watch. I’m a bit uncomfortable with 1dn: it’s hard to see why ‘maybe’ is necessary, and does it not need an ‘in’? Lots of people are saying how good INAMORATA is but it does seem familiar and it has surely been done before. Which doesn’t I suppose take away from its merit, but …

33. 52:28 with two pink squares: one silly typo, but one silly spelling too of OCTAHEDRA with an O. LOI INTENSIFICATION which I had to write down before I could see it. MERs for HOSEA as a good book, like Merlin, and LO for watch, like JACKKT. But a super crossword with lots to like. COD PIGGYBACK

34. Well I was slow, but got there over two sessions following the cunning but clear directions for all the unknowns. Some fabulously smooth surfaces. ‘What to do with laundry….Figures English actors…’

    Thanks both

35. 37 mins. It was back to the grindstone for me today. A couple put in without parsing – andes and nadir( don’t get the connection between an ad and a trailer,but no doubt will see it explained above) .

    A couple of beauts for my COD piggyback and cocoa.

    Thx setter and blogger.

36. I enjoyed this very much, and strolled through it until I got to LOI AMISS. I put this in eventually with a shrug, and then kicked myself many times when I saw the simple parsing!

37. If I’d taken the time to properly parse the ESS part of LOI, NECESSITY, I might have corrected my ALIKE at 1d. (A(m)LIKE was my faulty thought process) instead of mis-spelling it as NECCESITY. Drat. 27:02 but with 2 errors. In any case, I’d checked the unlikely looking DIDICOI, having assembled it from wordplay. Not my best effort! Thanks setter and Pip.

38. 38’25”
    Fortunate to get a clear run, stayed on well…

    … and all parsed – albeit a couple after the clock was stopped – and NO SMUDGES!
    An ancient Peroni beer mat stopped the smudging, and an old girlfriend and a favourite great aunt helped no end. Fi dragged me up numerous peaks in Cumbria and Scotland and Auntie Chris was very fair in naming the blameworthy for Dublin’s woes; Charlie Haughey, Fitzgerald, the clergy, the money grubbers threatening to turn the Phoenix Park racecourse into a car park, the didicois and the Godless eeediots trying to abolish the ‘Holy Hour’ all incurred her wrath in equal measure.

    I’d like to second all the praise above for this very elegant challenge.
    Many thanks to the setter and Pip.

39. Despite being convinced early on that 8 dn related to Tom the Piper’s son’s haul, it was my LOI as I’d unthinkingly bunged in MAILBOX for 10 ac without parsing properly — which left me with the ugly-looking P-X-Y-A-K. Which was when the penny dropped. Great puzzle. FOI 6 ac. COD has to be AMISS. Thanks all.

40. 39:28 – nice smooth solve, with only a bit of biffing. NHO DIDICOI but the wordplay was clear. felt like a fair puzzle throughout. thanks Setter and Pip.

41. 45mins, straightforward til it wasn’t. I got the two long ones
    fairly early on so that helped, but the pairing of HOSEA & ANDES held me up as did the NHO DIDICOI. Really?

    Anyway, I liked PIGGYBANK, I’ll leave it there.

    Thanks pip and setter.

42. I found this hard but great fun, especially my LOI and NHO DIDICOI. I could only think of DIDICLI for ages, but although a money clip is a thing it is not the same as money. My POI was AMISS where like others I was looking for some clever wordplay and suddenly it clicked. I knew “yerba mate” from Starbucks menus, although I’ve never drunk it, but I know it is tea (or tea-ish). KALAMAZOO used to be big in automotive (close to Detroit) but when they all (or most?) closed, it became successful since it is also close to Chicago.

    1. Kalamazoo was in a puzzle a few months ago and a commenter pointed out that it sits almost exactly halfway between Detroit and Chicago.

43. Nice puzzle. I failed to appreciate the wordplay in 6d. On reflection, I think that clue is significantly weaker than all the others.

44. I enjoyed this tough challenge, finishing in 50:14, and getting more pleasure out of it than yesterday’s much faster solve.
    Held up at the end by HOSEA, and my my LOI, A MUGS GAME.
    Originally has INCESSITY for 12a, which delayed my getting 4d.

    Thanks Piquet and setter

45. Always a pleasure to read of others’ difficulties with a puzzle! I thought I was being too slow, until I read of similar times on the blog, and I heartily endorse the praise given by many of the solvers – meaty but gettable, with lots of PDMS. I especially liked BLACKBIRD (and not only for providing me with today’s ear worm). Only look-up was INTENSIFICATION, which I knew would defeat me, and a tad ‘unfair’ with the FI insertion. Otherwise thoroughly enjoyable: more of the same please editor!

46. Should have used my cheat dictionary for piggy, having biffed mailbox because the z in 4d hinted at a pangram. Eventually the penny (g) dropped and I finished with one error. DidAcoi. Bah. Rom are thin on the ground in my neck of the tropics.

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