Times 27253 – Won hondred n yeaty!

67 comments on “Times 27253 – Won hondred n yeaty!”

1. Very happy to finish this in under 25 minutes, as there weren’t many write-ins. DNK OCHE, so glad I knew TROCHEE from past crosswords. DNK Joanna from the rhyming slang, but the crossers didn’t allow for much else. Both 4d and 6d stood out among some nice clues.

   Thanks, U, for the early blog, and to the setter.

2. Why is atom shred?
   1. Interchangeable in at least one sense:

      “There isn’t an atom of truth in it!”
      “There isn’t a shred of truth in it!”

      1. I guessed it correctly, but I’m not familiar with the first expression, so I’m obviously a bit “meh” about that one. I thought shogun was pretty weak too TBH, even though it was biffable. Perhaps ‘Understand what’s needed to attract the lady. . .’ reads a little better? But another interesting crossword. The setters certainly seem to have upped their game in 2019. I may have to adjust my moniker. Mr (not-so) Grumpy
   2. See also Collins:
      Atom: a very small amount or quantity; minute fragment
      Shred: a very small piece or amount; scrap
3. …but that included 8 minutes spent looking for a CD I wanted to play after the record was finished. I finally found it in my travelling bag, and resumed the puzzle.

   This crossword was not easy. The big anagrams were tough, and the literals were well-concealed – “Christian, say”, “out”, “dominant Japanese”. I was sure that 20 must begin with ‘limb’, and that in 9 the ‘out’ was at the beginning, rather than wrapped around the twit. I nearly put ‘storey bed’, too….

4. I was ready to log off half-done at 20′ or so, but soldiered on and finished in an orgy of biffery: 21, 23, 24ac, 6, 10, 15, 18d. Major memory problems contributed: I couldn’t remember (if I knew) what a wally is, or Joanna, or what Glastonbury has to do with anything (Arthur? Stonehenge?). Did at least remember OCHE, but ex post facto. I also biffed LITTLE ENGLAND, correcting it when I got PEDOMETER. LOI, of all things, SHOGUN; as Vinyl says, well concealed.
5. I found this all rather easy and rolled home on 25 mins.
   Quite a puzzle for British GK with 10dn DOWNING STREET, 16 ac MIDDLE ENGLAND, Joanna and Glastonbury to the fore.

   FOI 7dn OYSTER BED

   LOI 11ac BESET

   COD 12ac UPRIGHT

   WOD 5ac ABLOOM

   Where is Myrtilus, oh where is he!? We had a marmalady moon last night.

   Edited at 2019-01-21 04:33 am (UTC)

6. A nice workout! I had trouble starting and almost set it aside till tomorrow. But I was irrevocably drawn in, tantalized by the long answers and the big anagrams, and eventually even the most opaque clues became transparent. I did have to look up “Joanna” (after putting in UPRIGHT), though I shoulda known it meant “pianna.”
7. I solved all but the intersecting 18dn and 21ac in a little over half-an-hour and stared at those two for so long I nearly resorted to aids. But rather than giving up on them completely I set the puzzle aside for the night and resumed this morning. Still the answers didn’t leap out at me but I managed to construct them bit-by-bit from wordplay. The reference to ‘sportsmen’ was indeed misleading as darts is a game, not a sport, and all I had been able to think of for a line in a sports context was ‘touch’.

   Edited at 2019-01-21 05:28 am (UTC)

   1. The distinction is pretty fluid but professional darts is generally considered a sport these days.

      Edited at 2019-01-21 08:09 am (UTC)

      1. Like snooker. A game for the likes of you and me, but classed as a sport for the professionals.
         1. Indeed. Whereas on the rare occasions I play football I might call it sport but it certainly isn’t the beautiful game.
      2. How about the following definition: “If you can gain £1m by winning at it, then it must be a sport?”
         This is surely the only way golf got in … and yes, there are no doubt genuine sports that don’t have that much money but at least we have disposed of tiddlywinks and synchronised swimming ..
         1. So Poker is a sport?
            1. I spotted the top of the Sport section today at my local library and it reminded me of this conversation!

               

8. Found this hard to start. Feared the worst after my first one in was the last one I looked at, Heaved a sigh of relief and struggled on. Then found lots of double letters and thought that was a theme and started looking for pairs everywhere. Then assumed the sportsman’s line was TOUCH and didn’t think that clue quite worked until I came here, so many thanks to U.
9. 45 minutes, with the last ten of them spent on 25a where I had real problems being SHREWD. Everything else flowed fairly neatly from FOI 5a ABLOOM, though, even though I was a FESTAL virgin.

   Chalk me up as another who was lucky enough to be able to biff TROCHEE. Even though I’ve known the word “oche” since I was a child it never seems to spring to mind when doing crosswords.

   Enjoyed the “dominant Japanese” and the “Christian, say” among others. In the case of 8d I immediately thought of Mr. Christian and then sent myself up a garden path by assuming that the answer must start MATE…

   Edited at 2019-01-21 08:06 am (UTC)

10. No time, due to interruptions, but got stuck for ages on SHREWD at the end. My COD is SHOGUN. I imagine everyone wondering desperately, like I was, whether they could dredge up the name of an oriental species of wild pig. Some other well-concealed definitions in there too.
    1. Wasted some time on SHOGUN, because boar and the crossing S-O had led me to try to make something out of SHOAT – a word I have only seen in US novels (and the comic Wonder Warthog, but that’s another story), but which I know is something to with piggies.
11. 12:10, with an embarrassingly long time at the end pondering 9ac and thinking it couldn’t be OUTWITTED because WITT doesn’t mean ‘ass’.
    I have never seen Mutiny on the Bounty in any of its incarnations but I have been trained to think of it whenever I see ‘Christian’ in these things.
    1. The 1935 film with Charles Laughton is worth a look, both Laughton and Clark Gable turning in good performances – always provided that you have no regard whatsoever for historical truth, of course. Few people have been more let down by history than William Bligh.

       Edited at 2019-01-21 09:04 am (UTC)

       1. The Bounty, the 1984 film version, has a magnificent performance by Anthony Hopkins as a somewhat more sympathetic Bligh, probably closer to the real story. Very much worth a look.
          1. Yes, Hopkins was first rate and as I recall the movie gave some attention to Bligh’s extraordinary feat of seamanship in bringing the open boat he was cast away onto to safe harbour. What spoiled it for me was Mel Gibson’s unconvincing “Hollywood” acting.
             1. According to Hopkins, Gibson was drunk most of the time, and on one occasion so badly beaten up that he filmed with only one side of his face showing.
                1. To be fair, Hopkins speaks from some experience of such things.

                   1. True, though at that time he was on the wagon. Perhaps that added a certain verisimilitude to their onscreen relationship.

12. 18:53. Forgot to go back and work our parsing for MIDDLE ENGLAND and SHOGUN. SHREWD my LOI having resorted to an alphabet trawl to avoid SCREWY. Even then I was a bit unconvinced by ‘shred’ for ‘atom’. I liked DOWNING STREET, PEDOMETER and EMULATES, but COD, like ulaca, to BEDSAT.
13. Debatable. I’ve read that it officially is though like snooker, which is a game, darts players do little more than bend their arms. Guess if there is enough money in it, a game is promoted to the rank of sport….

    More than an hour to complete but took three read throughs to get going – FOI OYSTER BED followed by DOWNING STREET and then PERIODIC TABLE – 3 anags. I blame having to get up before the crack of dawn on Mondays…

    1. Snooker is also widely considered a sport: like darts the relevant professional associations refer to is as such. You could argue that a sport is something that people pay to watch but that applies to chess! Are events in the Olympic Games sports? How does the sport of hunting game birds fit in?
       In the end the debate is a bit of a waste of time: the distinction is impossible to define. From a linguistic point of view the only relevant question is what words people use, and on that basis darts and snooker both qualify.
       1. Has Magoo taken Crosswords to the level of a sport yet?
          1. When people start paying to spectate at the championships we can have a discussion.
       2. Wittgenstein used ‘game’ (‘spiel’, I suppose) to argue against definitions.
       3. I am sure I remember from somewhere that in original usage ‘sport’ applied specifically to the pursuit of game by various means and that everything else is just games. That would possibly make clay pigeon shooting a grey area though…
    2. One definition is that something isn’t a sport if you can drink & smoke whilst playing. So that would disqualify darts, golf & some others. Mind you, if you watch darts on TV these days the darters are all sipping water & not a cig to be seen.
       1. Based on my experience at university that also disqualifies cricket.
          1. I, too, have played in many a game where the fielder has had to put his pint down to take a catch. It’s the next logical step for the T20 format, I reckon.
             1. Yep. Sometimes runs were awarded for knocking over a fielder’s pint, and the batsman was expected to lodge his own behind the stumps. We may actually have played in the same league…
14. Don’t know if it was me or the puzzle, but after ten minutes I only had one or two answers. Luckily things sped up. Guessed Joanna, thinking perhaps a reference to Little Women or something. I could never remember the names of the girls. Or Dylan maybe. Wrong on both counts – so thanks to blogger and setter. COD Babysat
    1. That’s “Johanna.”
       1. One of Bob’s best. Joanna was also a fine song, written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent, and beautifully sung by Scott Walker.
15. 36 minutes, not expecting to be that quick after the first run through yielded little. LOI SHOGUN, which was a good clue. Liked MUTINEER, Mutiny on the Bounty with Marlon Brando first being seen on a wet afternoon in 1962. It bombed, being adversely compared with Charles Laughton’s / Clark Gable’s definitive 1935 version. BUT my COD goes to UPRIGHT, Joanna being my daughter’s name. I think that MIDDLE ENGLAND being defined as suburbia plus rural misses out where most of it is, in towns, the old county boroughs, which resolutely refuse to consider themselves as suburban. Southport out of Liverpool, Bolton out of Manchester are still everday mantras nearly fifty years after Grocer Heath’s dreadful local government reorganisation. They’re still suffering from it. A decent puzzle. Thank you U and setter.
    1. Since my Greater Manchester concessionary travel pass lets me travel free of charge right through Bolton and into the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, you’ll not find me knocking the structure. Weirdly, though, my postal address remains in Cheshire – and the postcode is Warrington !
       1. The scenic route, eh? Some might have thought Rivington Pike a better end point. But if you think it’s just me, Wigan’s excellent MP Lisa Nandy makes just the same points and is actively involved with Centre for Towns.
       2. I have a vision of a House of Commons clerk saying “Warrington, where’s Warrington, do they speak English there? Oh, never mind, just draw a line down the middle somewhere…”
          1. I grew up in Warrington 100 metres from the ship canal which, in those times, was the boundary twixt Lancashire and Cheshire (in that area, anyway). Can’t quite get used to Warrington being in Cheshire (even over 40 years later!).

             Edited at 2019-01-21 05:41 pm (UTC)

             1. I was brought up in Great Meols, in the Wirral .. and remember going on the Runcorn transporter bridge as a teenager. But we tended not to go too near Lancashire most of the time 🙂
                1. Yes – I remember that bridge. Still two like it remaining in the country at Newport and Middlesbrough.
16. I’d completely forgotten about “oche” and was trying to squeeze the odd letters of “unclothed” into MIDDLE ENGLAND. And I was sure there must be a “tor” somewhere around Glastonbury, having walked up it once upon a time. So I generally laboured over this one though I must admit it was good. Baby it’s cold outside – 9F with a howling wind and I bet it’s even colder where Vinyl is. 21.13
    1. Fahrenheit 4, celsius -15.55.

       It’s only for one day, however, we’ll be back to normal by Wednesday.

17. 20 mins. All good. Great blog, u, cheers.
18. 35 mins, and most enjoyable. FOI the eminently biffable SHOGUN. Like Olivia, I wasted time trying to get Glastonbury=TOR into the solution; and just like Keriothe I initially rejected OUTWITTED because an ass is not a ‘witt’. I biffed ABROAD, and that slowed me up a bit too. Oche known to me not from low-ceilinged, greasy-carpeted, smoke-filled bars, but from Martin Amis’s “London Fields” — a brilliant novel of the condition-of-England genre, imho. I thought the 14a anagram was excellent, so that’s my COD nomination.
    Nice blog: thanks, ulaca.
19. But one typo. Oystee Bed. Like others I got off to a slow start and thought I’d struggle to complete this. I put Hostess in for 3 down, anagram of those + SS, ignoring the definition part, which slowed me down a bit. I biffed quite a few others including Trochee.

    Mutiny on The Bounty has brought to mind two old WW II films that I like, featuring austere ship’s captains. The Caine Mutiny with Humphrey Bogart and the comedy Mr Roberts with Jimmy Cagney and Jack Lemmon. Both are worth whiling away a wet winter’s afternoon if you have the time and haven’t seen them.

    COD: UPRIGHT.

20. COD undoubtedly to SHOGUN, which is a very exciting book. MUTINEER LOI following ABLOOM. Slow start, with RE-ENTRANT FOI. I have the same attitude as others to darts, not a sport, but the adverts for it keep coming when I’m watching cricket.

    Thanks ulaca and setter.

21. ….’OTTER than the average Monday puzzle, and was held up at the end by BESET/BABYSAT.

    Biffed DOWNING STREET, parsed post-solve.

    Most enjoyable puzzle – what I think of as a “proper” Times crossword.

    FOI PERIODIC TABLE (still a mystery to me after all these years !)
    LOI and COD BABYSAT – silver medal to TROCHEE
    TIME 11:11

22. Uninspired here, felt a bit like a lumpish trochee, finishing in 35 min. but with a careless typo. Perfectly good puzzle though.
23. Twenty-eight minutes here, which is around my average. I quite enjoyed it, although I didn’t see the parsing of GET IT TOGETHER and was left thinking it was just a sort of vague squishy clue. Thanks to Ulaca for the blog.
24. My late morning crack at this produced a time of 13.29, about as quick as I get, but I thought this an intelligent and amusing puzzle, inspired perhaps by getting 1d SHOGUN as first entry, with a smile.
    I was close to entering BABYSIT but then recognised the rather clever relieved parents. ME went in unparsed.
    I wonder if darts’ recognition as a sport is legitimised by its inclusion on the channels Uncle Rupert (if it is still he) persuades punters to pay real money for just so they can watch cricket. It must be one of very few sports (I can only otherwise think of tandem cycling) where breaking wind might be regarded as unsportmanlike.
    1. In rugby I expect those in the second row might have an opinion on that.
    2. Accusations of just such unsportsmanlike behaviour erupted (if that’s the right word) at a match between the Scot Gary Anderson and the Dutchman Wesley Harms in last year’s Grand Slam of Darts. Anderson’s comment on the matter: “If the boy thinks I’ve farted he’s one thousand and ten per cent wrong”. As post match interviews go it’s up there with “game of two halves”, “over the moon” and “sick as a parrot”.
25. Pleasant Monday solve, where everything fell into place without any issues, thus leaving me very little to add at this moment.
26. Having initially spotted nothing beyond the starting T for 3d in the NW, I suddenly had an inspiration that 4d might start with GET. SHORTAGE sprang into mind for 1a and I was off. In the SW I had an O and an H in 21a, so OCHE reared its head straight away, and TROCHEE, which was tucked away some where in the recesses, was duly entered. Mr Christian had the advantage of having a M from ABLOOM at his head, so no time was wasted there. Glastonbury’s muddy event preceded the Tor in my cogitations, and in short order I was left with L_M_I_H at 20a. The originally postulated ARM became an MP and the job was done. 18:55, so quick for me. Thanks setter and U. I see Verlaine was on fire today!

    Edited at 2019-01-21 01:28 pm (UTC)

27. Finished except for “Trochee” which was an unknown to me (and doubtless I will instantly forget once more). “Oche” is a barely known and I was convinced that Touch would be in there somewhere.
    Great crossword, though, and tougher than your average Monday.

    Edited at 2019-01-21 05:47 pm (UTC)

28. About three quarters of an hour for me with a break after the first 40 mins to get a bite to eat. The last few in the NE corner were entered fairly swiftly on resumption. This one required more brain power than I was ready for on a Monday. People will have different ideas of what is and what isn’t but for me darts is a sport. The skill involved at the professional level is phenomenal. From the number of times they’ve been televised I would say that hitting a 9-darter is even harder than racking up a 147 in snooker. Plus the physical strength needed to keep raising a throwing hand already weighed down by 4lb in gold sovereign rings and bracelets.
29. Straightforward solve held up in the NW by a wrong PERFECT- maybe there is a JOANNA PERFECT until I remembered the sailing boat and it fell into place. That left the SE where I found that I had missed the hidden ETHEREAL and all was done. Agree Harder than the usual Monday
30. I’m not sure if PERIODIC TABLE was topical, since this year is the year of the periodic table of the elements (per the UN). It is the 150th anniversary of Mendeleev’s paper.

    I got through this in reasonable time but took forever to come up with SHREWD. I kept wondering if SCRAWP could possibly be a word (stranger words have turned out to be correct).

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