Times 27465 – not beyond the pale

54 comments on “Times 27465 – not beyond the pale”

1. ‘Rather anodyne’ about sums it up. Some very similar clues: no NOT in NOTICING, no SHE in SHERIDAN, city=LA, city=NY. I liked 12ac, and the anagrind in 3d. DNK pale, but HERALDIC suddenly appeared from a couple of checkers, and DEVICE followed. LOI 19ac, POI 19d (shouldn’t the underline include ‘branch’?). I put in ADVISOR, then removed it because the word-final V looked fishy, finally got 2d. I got as far as SUB at 11ac, and that saved me from having to think of plants at 5d, which could have taken hours.
2. Found this much harder than the Monday and Tuesday offerings, needing 58 minutes to cross the finishing line. Held up especially by my last three: 9d HERALDIC DEVICE (I initially thought we might be looking for a personification of death) and the crossers of 19d FIREDOG and LOI 19a FACINGS. Not sure I’d’ve got there if I hadn’t vaguely known the FIREDOG from somewhere.

   Didn’t help myself by putting in LEITMOTIF at 2d without really parsing it. Luckily 17a ADVISOR couldn’t have been much else.

   Enjoyed “book marks” for “obeli” and “design for transfer” for DECAL.

   1. I had leitmotif in too, but soon amended it.
3. I was undone by a hastily biffed ADVISER today. Like Matt I also had LEITMOTIF in at one point, which the spellchecker would seem to suggest is the more usual spelling as I just typed it.

   COD to AL DENTE – took me a long time to spot the definition.

4. 14:47 …. anodyne? Tough crowd round here!

   HERALDIC DEVICE needed a bit of thinking about as I’d forgotten ‘pale’ as a noun. I thought IMPERIAL GALLON was a really nice clue once I’d finally untangled the wordplay post-solve. COD to that one.

   Multi-letter deletions, like EDEN and AGED, I always find tricky but satisfying (assuming I can get them!).

   Cheers setter and Pip

5. Slips of the finger I’m sure, but ‘briefly’ in 2dn applies to MOTIV{e} and is not part of the definition. Also ‘say branch supporter’ is the definition at 19dn.

   I found this quite hard and needed 54 minutes to complete the grid. DK DECAL or ‘pale’ as a HERALDIC DEVICE.

   Edited at 2019-09-25 06:32 am (UTC)

   1. You mean ‘branch supporter’, no? ‘say’ gives us the EG.
      1. Indeed, a slip of the finger on my part this time!
6. 33 minutes today
7. …With eyes as wide as a football pool”
   35 mins.
   Not sure why “what’s needed” = IT in 17ac.
   And didn’t know what a Decal was.
   Mostly I liked the Canine experts.
   Thanks setter and Pip.
   1. IT is what’s needed to turn VISOR into VISITOR (guest) but for the purposes of the clue it works the other way round so start with VISITOR (guest) and forget IT to make VISOR.

      Edited at 2019-09-25 09:20 am (UTC)

      1. Thanks Jack – but are you saying it is ok to use “what’s needed” to indicate anything that turns one word into another? For example:
         Bell-ringer forgets what’s needed for feline (3)
         The answer is CA(mpanologis)T. I would expect the bit we are ‘forgetting’ to be a synonym of the bit we need to delete.
         1. That was me.
            1. “It” is “just the thing”, as in, “By George, I think she’s got it!”. So “what’s needed” is a close enough synonym to it in that sense.

               At least that’s how I saw it.

         2. “It” is the thing that’s needed – as in “that’s it!”.

            Or, to give Chambers’ somewhat Latin-heavy definition: “The ne plus ultra, that which answers exactly what one is looking for (informal)”.

            1. Thanks all. Yes, that’s about the best I could come up with too.
               1. I had the same trawl through possible ‘it’s – and came to the same conclusion as you three. Though I did consider the important requirement for IT in my Martini, and the life necessity for the IT in ‘vive la difference’
8. I didn’t find this anodyne at all, Pip. I struggled home in 41 minutes with DECAL and FIREDOG constructed but unknown, and envisaging the HERALDIC DEVICE as a bucket rampant. Liked IMPERIAL GALLON but COD to GOGGLE-EYED. Cue the Dambusters March for mission accomplished. Thank you Pip and setter.
   1. I love the idea of a bucket rampant! Hyacinth’s coat of arms?

      funnily enough, 26a made me think of the Dambusters as well, enough to Google (not Goggle) that lovely old Carling ad. They don’t have their goggles on their eyes in this, but close enough:

      https://youtu.be/jYDBMjvqMlM

      Edited at 2019-09-25 08:29 am (UTC)

      1. In the interest of balance, the sunbed version. https://youtu.be/LuIJqF8av6I
      2. Thanks for those clips Sotira and BW!
   2. Love it 🙂
9. Nothing to frighten or, indeed, excite the chevalier or his chevaux today. Occasional weak surfaces such as ‘out-of-date sea awards’. Liked the GALLON.
10. Wasn’t helped by working out 4D, then writing in ‘density’. Also, going by my self-imposed rule of “If you can’t parse it, it’s wrong,” quite a few clues went straight in, but it took a few seconds to see the workings, for me at least, so maybe not so anodyne.
11. Oh dear. 19ac. Just couldn’t see it. I wanted to put con in the middle and couldn’t let that thought go. Thanks pip.
12. ….reaching for the Anadin ! I found it a real struggle, especially the SE corner (and 9D) which accounted for about a third of my time. Apart from “cipher = NONENTITY” I actually knew everything. My comparative slowness was mainly due to taking too long to see HERALDIC DEVICE, and, to my shame, FACINGS.

    FOI EDEN
    LOI FIREDOG
    COD IMPERIAL GALLON
    TIME 18:31

13. Maybe being on holiday has made me BOGGLE EYED, because that’s what went in. Must say, I couldn’t work out the reason for it. Maybe I was thinking of Biggles?
    Otherwise, after a slow start, it was rather straightforward.
14. Clearly this was a Marmite puzzle, as I enjoyed it and didn’t find it anodyne at all. Nice long anagrams helped work out the trickier elements, notably LOBELIA, where I thought book was simply B, so toyed with various, possibly invented*, words like LABELLA until the penny dropped.

    *obviously all words are invented if you go back far enough, but you know what I mean.

    1. I agree. It always bemuses me how some crosswords are deemed below par, even though the parsing is spot-on. But other crosswords where the clues can be iffy to say the least, and where even the blogger can’t work out what’s going on, are nevertheless deemed ‘excellent’. It just doesn’t make sense to me-or perhaps I’m missing something? This crossword I felt was pretty good. The parsing was precise, no dodgy definitions, and a lot of the surfaces provided a nice disguise. What’s not to like? Mr Grumpy
15. I didn’t find this easy either. Perhaps it’s being in holiday mode. My niece has loaned me her MacBook today so I’ve done this puzzle on it. I tried a Concise on my iphone and decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation. I drew a blank until I reached AGED and ICING and then clawed my way back northwards. With a bit of assistance from Cousin Pete I eventually put in my LOI, GLOW(slapped forehead), and submitted at 45:51. Lots to like. HERALDIC DEVICE, GOGGLE EYED, SUGAR DADDY to name but a few. Off to the wedding in Nerja in an hour so I’d better go and get ready now.
16. I solved this sitting on an EasyJet flight to Edinburgh. Well, the plane didn’t leave the tarmac for the duration I was solving, thanks to weather-related delays.

    Not anodyne for me, either, although I had a complete blank about (of all things) VISITOR vs. VISITER. Plumped for the right one in the end.

    FIREDOG & GOGGLE-EYED took a long time, and I was very uncertain about FACINGS until I’d confirmed the F, so it took longer than it might have done. I didn’t time it; my phone was dutifully switched off.

    1. Rather strangely, the local newspaper in Southport is the Visiter.
17. Not anodyne here, but I suspect it was mostly a wavelength thing. In retrospect there is nothing obscure, but I was continually mystified and eventually put it down and went away for an hour or two. Nothing wrong with the puzzle, but nevertheless didn’t overly enjoy it.
18. 33’05. Held up as others by the v not f and finally for some little time by the chien de feu. Liked the heraldic device (and the bucket is surely an instant classic). Also liked 13 and the gallon. A few anodyne clues maybe e.g. 10 but overall not at all in my view.
19. I didn’t think it anodyne either. FACINGS and HERALDIC DEVICE my last 2 in. I liked IMPERIAL GALLON, SUGAR DADDY, NADIR and NONENTITY. Thanks Pip and setter. 19:36.
20. I didn’t find this at all easy, in part because I was another motiFated person. I see that DECAL has spread to the UK side of the pond – when I was a kid on that side we called them transfers. The HERALDIC DEVICE was nice (when I finally unraveled it, which took a while). 20.56 At the moment in the Rhinebeck area we’ve got deer and turkeys rampant on a field of maple leaves – we close the place up about the time hunting season starts.
21. Another day, another duh. This time a hitherto unseen nounal derivation of fecund – FECUNDS. I imagine Molesworth would draw one a bit like a gerund but with less hair. Anyway, I’ve invented a new “rule” to complement “if you see a U, try a Q”, being “if you seen an N, try a G”.

    That apart I enjoyed this one, especially (like Sotira) Imperial Gallon. “Official capacity” is a pretty neat definition as it is, but preceding it with “working in” takes the clue to a whole other level.

    1. Brilliant lift-and-separate, but the “official” totally stumped me. Why is it there? Are all measurements “official”, or only some? Is a litre an official capacity? A cubit an official length? An ohm an official bit of resistance?
       Grrrr. It just seems wrong to me.
       1. They’re official insofar as they are enshrined in law in the Weights & Measures Act. For now let’s ignore the fact that gallon is now defined as 4.54609 cubic decimetres.

          Edited at 2019-09-25 01:13 pm (UTC)

          1. OK I withdraw my grrr. I’m from the rest of the world where we don’t feel the need to Enact In Parliament weights and measures, we just use the standards: kilograms, metres, litres, etc. Had no idea the UK had such an act.
22. Not anodyne here either – especially as I didn’t think of the daggers, thereby requiring the invention of a plant name which, while looking botanically plausible, was wrong. I liked the Dentists and the Gallon. Thks Pip and setter.
23. To be fair, anodyne is a darn good word, and I think Pip only used it to see how many people would use Penfold’s Pipe to jab him in the chest.
    1. Penfold”s Pipe would be a great name for a racehorse !
24. Anodyne seems a little uncharitable. There were some standouts, as mentioned above. Perhaps a few too many subtractions and one or two odd surface readings (1ac especially which is always a shame).
    Was pretty much on wavelength and surprised to see that this “held up” some of the top solvers by a couple of minutes more than usual…
25. Not all that easy here either, but got there in the end. LOI was FACINGS thanks to the checking letters, and I’m very glad the heraldic device was an anagram, because I didn’t know of it. And I also thought that 2D should end in an ‘F’, but I realized immediately the wordplay wanted a ‘V’. Regards.
26. Describing Sheridan as an Irish playwright is like describing the Duke of Wellington as an Irish general. “No, he is not an Irishman. He was born in Ireland; but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.” (Daniel O’Connell)
    Sheridan is even less of a centaur: born in Dublin certainly, he later attended the English Grammar School in Grafton Street until the family moved permanently to England in 1758 when he was aged seven and he never returned. Nicky
    1. Well all that’s as maybe but I understand Sheridan continued to identify himself as Irish throughout his life and presumably that means he never applied for English / British citizenship or whatever alternative procedures applied at the time. Many if not most reference books reflect and respect his position by describing him as Irish and that’s perfectly good enough for crossword-setting purposes.

       Edited at 2019-09-25 05:27 pm (UTC)

       1. Perhaps he just wanted to retain his European credentials after October 31st
       2. He spent 32 years as a Whig member of Parliament (Westminster) which surely proves his allegiance to the Crown of England. Nicky
27. 12:40. I didn’t find this anodyne at all: the usual very high standard of Times setting.
    My last in was EDEN, which is ironic considering I’m in the referenced country.
28. An odd solve for me after a short break in Alps Maritimes France, singing for my supper, and solving today in the evening with many local distractions. The supreme clock ruled that I took 40 minutes, and of course I respect the supreme clock but disagree with the decision (with no particular grounds, let alone good ones).
    I had MOTIF and HERALDRY to complicate things until light dawned.
29. 29:39 a satisfying solve for me. I liked 12ac, 15ac, 20ac and 3dn. I was an initial leitmotif. NHO decal but laced up as it were was very convincing. No idea where I dredged up heraldic device from, I didn’t know it from the Def, just threw all the anagrist up in the air and ended up with that.
30. I thought this was pretty good, having had to abandon it unfinished to fall into the arms of Morpheus. Polished if off on the subway this morning, once I got past the logjam at IMPERIAL GALLON, with the dawning of the right sense of “capacity,” somewhat obscured by the presence of “official.” I thought a few of the clues were darned clever, including the backward subtraction for NADIR.
31. Lots of tip-of-my-tongue stuff. No idea of FIREDOG

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