Times 29200 – Thinky Thursday

97 comments on “Times 29200 – Thinky Thursday”

1. I too struggled with LOCAL CALL which was my LOI (my last landline was about 1999). I’d never heard of a FRIEDCAKE but with the wordplay it was not hard to work out and, obviously, plausible it was another word for a donut. Not sure if the American spelling of donut was significant, since last time this came up everyone said that is how it is always spelled in UK these days. But Chambers has FRIEDCAKE as American and despite having lived here for over 40 years I’ve never heard or seen the word. I knew PHILTRE was a word, but I couldn’t have told you what it meant, but nothing else was going to fit as homophone of a type of coffee. I liked ENDGAME and took far too long to think of what type of checks were involved.

2. 14:46. Felt quite on the wavelength, just got held up with PHILTRE at the end — I feel like I remember this from G&S or maybe an English translation of T&I.

3. 24:42
   Way off the proverbial wavelength, slow to twig to a half-dozen or so clues, like ENDGAME, POI FRIEDCAKE (NHO), LOI PHILTRE.

4. Got thru this pretty quickly, and enjoyed it a lot. NHO FRIEDCAKE but that came easily enough. PHILTRE was LOI.

5. Definitely not on the wavelength. I finished about 3/5 in a decent time, then really struggled. I also had a wrong answer in departed, which works but is wrong. I also had demolish for a while.

   Time: 37:35

6. Around 35 minutes for the easiest Thursday ever. A lot I was simply writing in with only a few harder ones which slowed me down. MIDDLE OF THE ROAD seems to keep coming. FOI REVERB then BYE-BYE and NO WAY. LOI PHILTRE.
   Thanks G

7. Absolutely powering through this. Not even held up by two mistakes with DEPARTED and LOCAL HIVE which were both quickly corrected.

   On for a PB but just couldn’t see NARROWEST and my frantic run through the Starbucks menu wasn’t that helpful for PHILTRE which eventually came from the part of the brain that inefficiently stores words from previous crosswords.

   LOI DEMITASSE which I had to construct from the wordplay.

   With PHILTRE and DEMISTASSE holding me up I really should have put an extra scoop in my coffee this morning.

   COD ENDGAME

   Thanks blogger and setter.

8. 26 minutes. I lost time with DEPARTED at 1ac (like vinyl1) which had to be revisited when COMIC arrived at 2dn.

   I was going to say NHO ‘immediately / STAT’ but having looked it up and found it defined with reference to an instruction written on medical prescriptions I now remember seeing it here before.

   I was the one who queried the need for a US indicator when ‘donut’ appeared here a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t mean that ‘doughnut’ was no longer used in the UK, only that ‘donut’ is now commonplace in UK food outlets and in advertising. FRIEDCAKE on the other hand is barely known on both sides of the pond it seems, although Collins has it as a US alternative to donut.

   NHO DEMITASSE as a drink, only as a small cup, but two of the three source dictionaries are okay with it.

   Nice puzzle.

   EDIT: I forgot to say that I have a landline and use it as my principal source of communication, also it allows my PC internet access without wi-fi.

   1. After the last outing of donut, a quick tour of my local supermarket has left me with the impression that marketers use that spelling if they want to give their product an American feel. Doughnut was by far the commonest spelling.

      As you say, Jakkt, donut is commonplace in the UK but hopefully, here, it will remain as an indicator of an Americanism until I am past caring.

   2. I wouldn’t think we need a dictionary to justify DEMITASSE; it’s just an example of synecdoche, ‘the container for the thing contained’ (See Thurber on Miss Groby.) I found FRIEDCAKE in my E/J dictionary (not in ODE); it says nothing about dialect.

      1. Don’t be silly, next you’ll be telling me people order a ‘cuppa’ or a ‘pint’!

         1. Those are just neat contractions of longer expressions which have fallen by the wayside either through laziness and/or because the contraction can only mean one thing.
            But I’ve yet to hear ‘let’s pop in to this café for a quick demitasse’. So having not even passed into the vernacular in its long form yet, I’m not sure the contracted form ‘fancy a quick demi?’ will ever catch on as a ‘thing’?

            1. Fair enough. But one definition of ‘drink’ is “a quantity drunk”. So ‘drink’ is a fine definition for cup, pint, demitasse, etc, and it serves this purpose via synecdoche.

               1. No problem at all with “drink” for demitasse. In France you can order/drink a “demitasse” and you won’t be served a a half-sized, empty cup; you will be served a small, strong coffee – an espresso basically.

   3. your principal source, I hope.

   4. My Dad (he was 83) died last year after a long illness. He was in hospital for a few months and he told me that his brother (similar age, a year or so younger) phoned him for updates whenever Newcastle were playing on the telly. I asked why my uncle didn’t simply check the score on BBC.com. Dad said that his brother didn’t have Sky Sports (obviously), or any kind of non traditional TV, didn’t have, and never had, a mobile phone and didn’t have the Internet. I was incredulous so when I spoke to my uncle on the phone shortly afterwards I found a reason to ask him for an email address. Sure enough “I don’t use email” I was told, “do you have my address?” I told him I did, but I don’t own a printer so I couldn’t write to him. He asked why I didn’t have paper, pens and envelopes.

9. Started out in PB territory, ended with a DNF at around 30, not having known the word PHILTRE let alone its meaning. FRIEDCAKE (NHO) also caused grief because I was aware of a ‘cried’ anagram being in there somewhere but didn’t know fake/fudge. I also thought NARROWEST should be most strict, not extremely strict, because even if you’re extremely strict there might be someone stricter. But all up a fun puzzle, thanks G.

   From This Wheel’s On Fire:
   If your memory serves you well
   You’ll REMEMBER you’re the one
   That called on me to call on them
   To get you your favours done
   And after every plan had failed
   And there was nothing more to tell
   You knew that we would meet again
   If your memory serves you well

   1. “Extremely” for the superlative form comes up occasionally, so I’m aware (if not quite accepting) of it.

      I guess the argument would be that if you’re at the extremes of strictness then there could be no-one stricter. Strictly speaking.

      1. That means an everyday expression like ‘it’s extremely hot’ no longer has meaning. The language is starting to eat its young (here in Xwordland anyway!)

         1. From a practical point of view, ‘extremely’ also helps setters avoid the unfortunate -est in both definition & solution. ‘Superlatively’ would do the job as well, but would stick out more.

         2. Good point!

   2. Another to add to the long list of songs I didn’t know were originally by Bob Dylan!

      1. I think he wrote it with Rick Danko when he and The Band were doing the Basement Tapes, but because Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll had an early UK hit a lot of people don’t know it was Bob’s. Speaking of The Band, I only realised when Garth died not long ago that he was the last survivor and now they’re all gone. V sad.

         1. The song was also used in the intro to the ‘Ab Fab’ sitcom.

            1. Ah! I knew I remembered it from somewhere!

               1. 👍

   3. This Wheel’s on Fire is also the title of Levon Helm’s memoir. Very enjoyable book. He didn’t half have it in for Robbie R. So sad they’re all gone.

      1. Sounds interesting! I must have a look for that book!

10. DNF. All but one clue knocked off in ten minutes, then stared at LOCAL _A_L for a minute or two. Some irrationally persuasive brain cell decided that MAIL was a feasible option. A more considered (and rarely consulted) cell started screaming LOCAL CALL!!!! a millisecond after I submitted.

    Oh well, just a bit of fun innit?

    Thanks George and setter.

11. Another completion for me before going to bed at 27′ (I’d set a limit of 30′ before retiring so very happy). A couple of biffs with LOI PHILTRE being NHO but a reasonable homophone once all the checkers were in place. Similarly DEMITASSE was a HHO but I didn’t know the strict meaning though did know it was a “foodie” thing. Thanks George and setter.

12. 9:50. I had a similar experience to George – this was a biff fest until it wasn’t. I’ve never heard of FRIEDCAKE and it looks odd as one word. I finished with LOCAL CALL which seems a largely irrelevant term now – I wonder if it will drop out of dictionaries eventually.

13. 12.30 A fast one for me. Made all the usual mistakes (DEPARTED etc) but all quickly rectified. I love crosswords of consistent difficulty. Nice one setter!

14. Another DEPARTED here, thinking there was a typo and faction should have been fraction, MIDDLE OF THE ROAD sorted that out. NHO a Comice pear. I only know DEMITASSE as a small coffee cup so was unsure about ‘drink’. NHO PHILTRE. A donut is a friedcake, really! OK, it works I suppose but all of the references I looked at have it as two words. COD to LOCAL CALL.
    Thanks George.

15. I was relieved to finish this puzzle, I was stuck for ages on the nho, presumably American, FRIEDCAKE, and took time to see NARROWEST even with some checkers. PHILTRE was LOI.
    So basically the same pattern as several others.

    25’04”, thanks george and setter.

16. 28 minutes. Last two in FRIED CAKE and PHILTRE. I was slowed down by entering LOCAL NEWS before I got the CALL. I didn’t know the name of Love Potion Number Nine was PHILTRE and I’ve learnt too what a gyoza is. (Stodge in any cuisine.) An educational experience. Thank you George and setter.

    1. Gyoza are steamed filled dumplings, in very light wonton wrappers, so far from stodgy. Offhand I can’t name any stodge in Japanese cuisine.

17. Man hands on misery to man.
    It Deepens like a coastal shelf.
    Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.
    (This Be The Verse, Larkin)

    Well I took 30 mins to finish, with the last couple taking a while. NHO Friedcake, but sounds like a doughnut. Does this, and Stat, feel a bit American? But, does Extas=Bye-bye feel a bit British, I suppose.
    LOI was the surprisingly hard to see, Narrowest.
    Ta setter and G.

    1. I recently saw this Larkin adaptation referring to the elderly and technology:

       They phone you up, your mum and dad,
       They may not mean to but they do.

       😄

       1. Perfect 😂

          1. Yes!

       2. Nice one.

       3. So many sensible (to me) things are now forbidden by modern mores, including phone calls to make arrangements, brown antique furniture and Toby jugs. At seventy-nine and a half years of age, I’ve had enough. I’m still not brave enough to ring my own kids but I just rang my niece to confirm this weekend’s arrangements. She didn’t answer.

          1. Brown furniture is not so much forbidden as deeply unfashionable. I have an acquaintance who is an interior designer and furniture dealer. He buys old brown furniture, paints it white and sells it for about five times what he paid for it.

             1. Deeply unfashionable as it is, I’m still not selling him my 1770 Grandfather Clock!

                1. We have a fair bit of brown furniture too. I don’t really care if nobody wants to buy it because I don’t want to sell it!

       4. Excellent

18. Everything boltonwanderer said and in the same time. Thanks all round.

19. 11:38*

    I raced through this, albeit not compared to the speedsters, but I made a silly error and fell at the last fence (STASIS instead of STATUS). No excuses except for I knew I was on for a good time and didn’t read the clue properly. Ce la vie.

    Otherwise no issues, with the only unknowns being PHILTRE and FRIEDCAKE.

    Thanks to both.

20. I’ve never seen or heard ‘stat’ being used to mean ‘immediately’ despite being familiar since school-days with the Latin ‘statim’ from which it derives.

    1. Apparently it’s used a lot in emergency rooms, or at least in emergency room TV dramas.

       1. 5 milligrams D5W Stat!
          Good old St Elsewhere.🙂

21. About 20 minutes.

    – DEMITASSE was a semi-biff as I didn’t know demit=relinquish
    – LOCAL CALL is a term which means absolutely nothing to me so it went in with shrug
    – Never heard of gyoza, and for 1d I thought ‘get rid of’ was indicating a whimsical ‘de-[type of fish]’. Eventually I had a rethink and got DUMPLING
    – Didn’t know the Comice pear, but COMIC always looked likely
    – Couldn’t have told you what a PHILTRE is

    Thanks glh and setter.

    FOI Ambled
    LOI Dumpling
    COD Endgame

22. Steady solve. Nho “friedcake” and never spell it “donut.” Nor would ever touch them with a bargepole.

23. I’m glad this wasn’t my Thursday turn, because I fear I would have written a rather grumpy summary. It took me 22.49 after a fast start had me checking it was 15, not 13, but then I had the distinctly possible DEPARTED which slowed things down, and LOCAL NEWS (CDs! Dontcha just love ’em?) before it became ?A?L and MAIL was the most credible entry. I spent too long trying to justify PREDICATE – surely not that donut thing they do in televised Parliament? PATE in this parish is a plausible -um- fudge for fudge. No coffee I could think of began with P, and of course SOFTEN had become impossible. Annoyingly, I’d forgotten director for ARROW though we had it not long ago, and I was looking for a more arcane version of strictness referencing, say Nero. The director hereabouts is often Tati, which is a good filler. You can overthink these things!
    Tescos sells doughnuts, seaside kiosks sell donuts, no-one sells FRIEDCAKES, though Chambers, it turns out, makes a valiant attempt.
    OK, I like DUMPLINGS. A little Japanese cookery gyoza long way.

24. ElSEWHERE and STATUS were neat surfaces. I assume LOCAL CALL refers to the expression phone/give someone a buzz? Also to a time when local and long distance generated different processes or prices? I only remember such a thing in the States. All felt a bit tenuous. Grumpy, of course, because I never convinced myself that could be the answer despite having LOCAL/-A-L
    Thanks G

25. Too difficult for me, though it looked like it was going to be easy at first. Beaten by PHILTRE, NARROWEST and ENDGAME.

26. 6:39. Like George, I thought for a while this was going to be very quick indeed but then I slowed down a bit in the bottom half.
    NHO FRIEDCAKE, would not have been able to tell you what PHILTRE meant but fortunately I at least knew it was a word.
    We still have a landline at home but I don’t use it for outbound calls and I never answer it on principle: it is bound to be someone trying to sell me something, probably a scam. I have a landline for my job but in 6 years I have literally never used it. Last year they disconnected them entirely and if someone used it to call me they would get through to me on Teams, apparently. It’s never happened.

27. 25.01
    Went through phases of praising (DUMPLING,INTERPRET) and cursing (FRIEDCAKE) this. Over all, a very enjoyable puzzle.

    Thanks to George and the setter.

28. Shot through this until I screeched to a halt with 19d, 20d and 23a outstanding. The unlikely looking FRIEDCAKE was assembled first, then PHILTRE and SOFTEN brought up the rear. 12:53. Thanks setter and George.

29. Greatly held up by trying 1a Departed, as did others, rather than Decamped, which sort of works, but makes 2d & 3d difficult.
    18a Status biffed; DNK Stat=immediate.
    NHO 23a Friedcake; cheated.
    1d Dumpling. NHO gyoza, added to Cheating Machine.
    Thanks to glh & setter.

30. Nearly roadblocked by FRIEDCAKE, mainly because to fudge suggests to me equivocation or procrastination rather than actual fakery. Students at St Andrews are keen consumers of Fisher and Donaldson’s Fudge Doughnuts, which can aid weight loss only as part of a calorie-controlled diet. Got home in about half an hour. Thanks G and setter.

    1. +1 on Fudge meaning procrastination / obfuscation over faking.

31. 15:31

    Completed before hitting the sack last night – pretty quick all round but a few bits missed:

    STATUS – NHO STAT = immediately, but the checkers didn’t leave much room for doubt.
    PHILTRE – like others, I would have struggled to say what this meant
    FRIEDCAKE – NHO and I don’t really approve of the dumbed-down ‘donut’ rather than the more cerebral ‘doughnut’, but was the key to completing the last few answers

    Thanks G and setter

32. Also had DEPARTED for a while but DNF due to PHILTRE being completely outside my ken. Still a lovely puzzle.

33. These are the days when you wish the iPad app had a pause button for the timer. I was powering through this when a delivery driver rang the doorbell. Finished in 10.04, including the time it took to deal with him, so about 8.20 real time. I would have been even faster without the hold up wondering if FRIEDCAKE was really a thing. Mostly it was solvable from definitions and enumeration alone which is never very satisfying.

34. All very easy until I slowed down rather and because I thought I was stuck used an aid for 19dn! Quite unnecessary in retrospect. I was uncomfortable with arrow = director in 25ac and used the check button to confirm it, seemed odd and I doubted it but no doubt some dictionary supports it. It seems (18ac, you = U) that The Times has embraced textspeak and doesn’t see the need for qualification. I worked out FRIEDCAKE, never having heard of it, and expected our transatlantic friends to be utterly familiar with it, which it seems they’re not. I think that Bottom in MND had a philtre sprinkled on his eyes when he was asleep. Or so I remember from 65 years ago, when I did it for O Level. 35 minutes.

    1. I haven’t checked the books, but whatever they may have, for crossword purposes if a river can be a flower then it seems reasonable that an arrow can be a director.

       1. I loved arrow/director. I suppose stuff like this is a sense of humo(u)r thing.

          1. Exactly, and that’s also why I enjoy cryptic definitions and dodgy homophones.

    2. I don’t mean this as a defence necessarily but U for ‘you’ has been in use for far longer than texting has existed. IOU is probably the most familiar form (earliest OED citation 1795), but those of my generation will remember the 1985 Prince/Sinéad O’Connor song Nothing Compares 2 U. Googling this I discovered that in 1862 Thomas Hardy wrote in a letter to his sister ‘I wish you wd tell me how u.r. when u. write’!

       1. I tend to be sniffy about U without a texting indicator, but these are interesting examples. I wonder, though, whether ‘and’ for N – which I’d imagine has a similarly long history – would be acceptable. Instinctively I think not, and of course neither are in Chambers.

          (Appreciate you weren’t necessarily defending it, thinking out loud rather than arguing)

          1. ‘n’ for AND is in Chambers

35. 75:16
    I had an unbelievable amount of aggro with philtre, friedcake and soften. I’ve only ever seen philtre in a little book by Kingsley Amis called ‘On Drink’, in which he describes a cocktail called The Lucky Jim as a ‘love philtre’. I don’t drink alcohol, so I can’t comment further on that other than to say that it doesn’t sound very nice. I wouldn’t have said ‘to fudge’ is the same as ‘to fake’, but there it is. I’d never heard of a friedcake.
    Thanks, g.

    1. I thought of this at the time (G&S, ‘Trial by Jury’):
       JUDGE. For now I’m a Judge!
       ALL. And a good Judge, too!
       JUDGE. Though all my law be fudge,
       Yet I’ll never, never budge,
       But I’ll live and die a Judge!
       ALL. And a good Judge, too!

       1. 🙂

36. 19:15 – with most going in on sight until SHINTO and NARROWEST brought proceedings to a halt.

37. Like Z I’d have been in a grump if I’d been blogging this one. DK friedcake and couldn’t see the sense in LOCAL CALL which means nothing much to me. George you did well to finish this in under 9 minutes, it took me half an hour with a hard-to-believe friedcake as one word and CALL guessed.

38. 28:06 with a similar experience to others – very easy for 80%, very tricky for the rest.
    NHO FRIEDCAKE, but it seemed a plausible name for a doughnut.
    LOCAL CALL did not come easily to mind, although I still have a landline.
    Remembered PHILTRE from The Sorcerer, where several lines of dialogue rely on it being a homophone of filter.

    Thanks glh and setter

39. Forgotten STAT for immediately, looked in the dictionary and immediately recognised a word I’d looked up before, so must have been in a previous puzzle. Similarly COMICE was NHO, but it must have appeared before and been forgotten.
    Failed on ENDGAME, just didn’t see it and too tired to alphabet trawl… though many endgames involve pawns and kings manoeuvering for ages with nary a check. Also didn’t get LOCAL CALL, like others essayed LOCAL NEWS which was rendered null and void by AMBLED.
    I don’t think Australia has landlines anywhere any longer. I still have an old analogue phone with my old landline number, though now it’s VOIP over the internet. Never use it. When it rings I don’t answer it, the only people I want to talk to know my mobile number.

    1. . Before the cursed “upgrade” to NBN fibre, landlines mostly remained usable in emergencies. They are still available, indeed 10 March is National Landline Day.
       My very deaf mother understands handset calls better than those to or from mobiles.

40. 16.23 DNF

    Got the wrong end of the stick (not even the right stick) with LOCAL BILL then further mombled ENDLIFE. Doh and double doh. However, in my defence, ENDGAMES at chess (if that is what was intended) do not involve any more checks than any other part of the game. Arguably fewer but I wont bore you all with why. I don’t mind it (not least because I completely missed the “check” reference anyway) but it’s one of those where too much knowledge sometimes isn’t a help.

    Elsewhere was another DEPARTED and a tanker with P_I_T_E but did at least work that one out.

    Wasn’t a fan of the LOCAL clue but liked the rest of it.

    Thanks all

    PS Isla’s just made the same point

41. 15.40.

    Heading for sub-ten, but up comes that dratted FRIEDCAKE, which I’ve never heard of and hope never to hear of again.

    We have a landline (crap broadband), but that didn’t really help with LOCAL CALL, which I stabbed at.

    Iago says “acerb as the coloquintida”.

42. I had a technical DNF right from the off as, despite visiting Japan several times, I had no idea what gyoza was. Also had to check on fried cake and philtre before entering
    as had never heard of either.

    Fairly gentle Thursday so I guess a beast is coming tomorrow.

    Thx G and setter

43. A DNF for me after just short of thirty minutes. The source of my annoyance is PHILTRE, as I gave it about three minutes thought before throwing in the towel. I even gave it an alphabet trawl for the second letter, but clearly somehow bypassed H or gave it little credence. The reason I gave up more swiftly than usual was that I had a nagging doubt one of the crossers must be wrong. An ill founded thought as it turns out, as they were all correct. My only consolation is that quite a few others also had difficulty with it, as they have nominated as their LOI.

44. 17.49 after a swift start. Wasn’t too enamoured of friedcake. A donut is fried but I’ve never heard it described so. In any event shouldn’t that be two words?

    LOI narrowest which I quite liked.

45. I enjoyed this, probably because I knocked it out in 23:53, which is super-quick for me. I’m with Lindsay on NARROWEST/extremely, but hey. COD to ENDGAME, which made me chuckle once I’d worked it out.
    Thanks setter and George

46. A personal best for me at 20 mins but could not get local call, had local news and therefore did not believe endgame was correct and argues badly to myself that 9dn was amused! Total fun tho! Cx

47. 17 mins, but FRIEDCAKE and PHILTRE held me up. PHILTRE reminds me of Poirot, not sure why. LOI as for most, LOCAL CALL. Definitely dated.

48. DNF for me. Heading for a 20 minute solve but stopped by FRIEDCAKE. While I know that doughnuts are fried, I too would dispute their classification as cakes.
    Biffed OCTADS which I had NHO and DUMPLING I simply guessed.
    Otherwise nothing special for me.
    Thanks to setter and glh.

    1. They go hard when stale, which, according to the (in)famous HMRC Jaffa Cakes tax case, definitely makes them cakes. :-).

49. 41:03. Lovely puzzle. some very imaginative vocabulary there among the easier write-ins.

50. Two foreign words for fried food. Really, there are so many Americanisms in our British crossword, that I feel we should impose a tariff every time one appears…

    1. 😂

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