Times Cryptic 26402 – y’ere ’tis

50 comments on “Times Cryptic 26402 – y’ere ’tis”

1. Was worried about RASTER and JEAN, but actually came to grief with a careless THUMP and a dopey DENOVIAN. Serves me right for attempting the crossword before coffee.

   COD to the Spoonerism. I think I’ve improved at this type of clue since deciding to embrace them rather than hide behind the couch whenever the goood reverend’s name appeared.

   Thanks setter and thanks Jack, particularly for the parsing of LEGATEES and ARMPIT.

   1. And I didn’t realise I’d biffed SPIN DOCTOR until seeing Kevin’s comment below, so thanks for the parsing on that one as well Jack. Didn’t even come close to seeing the wordplay.
   2. I got the same two wrong!
      1. Well, you know what they say John….
         1. Absolutely!
   3. +1 for the same two mistakes in a 25 minute blunder.

      Thinking of good old Rev. Spooner, has “spooner” been used in a clue that leads to anything other than, well, a spoonerism?

      1. Some overly-clever constructor recently used it to refer to Lysander Spooner, who is a completely different person.
      2. Yes, as a definition for ladler and I think in other crafty ways as well. Can’t remember specifics, but something like Spooner’s beginning for S must have been used.
         1. Yes, there was one very recently, maybe the “ladler” that you’re referring to.
      3. I remember the clue as something like, ” Spooner’s end to classical harmonica player.”????
2. If it had said “Flower by river …” I might have come up with ‘aster’ (or maybe not), but the best I could come up with was ‘osier’. RASTER seems rather Mephistophelian. Biffed SPIN DOCTOR, never parsed it; thanks, Jack, for enlightening me. I liked DITCHWATER, which was a long time coming, partly because I say ‘dull as dishwater’, and ARMPIT, but I think my COD goes to CURÉ.
   1. Yeah, I think it’s one of those ones where I knew the “correct” saying, but have only ever heard or used the alternative.

      When you think about it, dishwater is much duller than ditchwater. You can’t catch tadpoles in dishwater.

      1. You haven’t seen my dishwater! Full of the buggers. That’s the country for you. They come straight out of the cold tap.
3. ODE, for what it’s worth, has (sv dull) ‘dull as dishwater (or ditchwater)’, and marks it as British; but its examples from corpora divide neatly (3-2) by region: ditchwater UK, dishwater US.
4. 33 minutes, but with – like I expect a ton of other people – ‘rosier’ at 28a. Bring back quotations from Spenser is what I say!

   Poor old Couperin is probably best known for Ravel’s work Le Tombeau de Couperin.

5. … the nod to Orton at 2dn. (Though few understood the anagram at the time.) No troubles with RASTER. Photoshop users will know “rasterize” (sic) even if they don’t know the process as such. First puzzle I’ve seen, I think, with two —EES in it.
   1. I had no trouble with RASTER as I used to fix TVs in the days of cathode ray tubes, and one of the first checks if there was no visible picture, was to turn up the brightness to see if the background raster was there, in which case you could ignore the line and frame timebase sections and go straight to the video signal processing stage.
6. Whanged in the above, which delayed SW a lot. A 38′ dnf as, like blogger, no idea re RASTER and missed GENTILE. No complaints. Thanks setter and blogger, and for the parsing of 20ac.
7. I’m going to be picky here, or maybe just wrong. I don’t believe TVs these days use the raster approach to producing images. They were the stuff of cathode ray tubes and electron guns. So perhaps ‘on the old box’ would have been neater? Terribly small point. A steady but tricky solve in 39m. Thanks jackkt for explaining ‘cane’, which I got but didn’t parse correctly, thinking it must me Can(adian)E, and how irritated the inhabitants to the north of USA would feel.
   1. Seems fine as modern devices aren’t boxes – more like flat screens.
   2. There are probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of CRT televisions still in operation around the country, let alone the world so I can’t see a problem with the clue as it stands. And come to think of it, if we’re going to be up-to-date, “box” can’t really be used for modern flat-screen TVs as they’re the wrong shape, so that it’s referencing an older type of machine might be implicit.

      [Edit: ulaca hadn’t posted when I started writing this]

      Edited at 2016-05-03 08:41 am (UTC)

   3. TV displays are still considered raster displays, as the term “raster” has evolved over time to mean any graphical image built from a grid of pixels (normally to distinguish it from a “vector” graphic.)

      This was one of those rare days where getting my degree in computer science was more helpful than spending the the time watching cricket! Still didn’t finish, but I only had COUPERIN left when my allotted hour expired.

8. A RASTER image is a term from computer graphics. For example the “smiley face” is often a RASTER graphic. I’m not surprised many don’t know the term but you all see them every day!

   Decent enough puzzle overall though I share Jack’s reservations over MAPLE – not that it held me up. I don’t recall seeing 15A before and thought it rather a good clue.

9. Like galspray I came up with DENOVIAN, much to my chagrin with hindsight. I was pleased to come up with the two unknowns COUPERIN and RASTER though. I reckon we’ve seen two asters in about the past fortnight prior to today, without which I’m not sure I would have got raster.
10. I’ve been caught out by doing that in the past: I believe that these expressions are always rendered with ONES in these puzzles, which is worth remembering.
11. 40m. I found this very hard, but then it was the same on Friday so perhaps I’ve just become more stupid. I hope it’s temporary.
    I came quite close to bunging in DENOVIAN, but fortunately I registered the reversal indicator and realised that NOV 1 can also be 1 NOV. It still didn’t look particularly likely so it went in with fingers crossed.
    I had fingers and toes crossed for RASTER. I considered ROSIER, but I only associate OSIER with baskets so ASTER seemed a safer bet for the plant. The basket sense derives from the plant so this was narrow escape by dint of ignorance. Not a great clue IMO.
    Funny to see SATRAP again so soon, and in exactly the same place!
    1. Very nearly went for ROSIER myself as I knew of “osier” as a plant, but I’m not sure that chickening out and using aids to get the correct answer is any better than putting in a wrong one.

       Edited at 2016-05-03 08:44 am (UTC)

       1. From the wordplay you could also have put in RASPEN or RUSNEA. Admittedly the latter is unlikely but three alternatives is plenty and to my mind this word is sufficiently obscure to warrant unambiguous wordplay.
12. 26.40 but with a thoughtless thump and rosier in ignorance. 14’s ‘What one of the children…?’ isn’t wonderful grammar but I suppose starting with
    ‘Which’ would have given the game away. A neat enough puzzle without ‘setting the table on a roar’; though I liked the spin doctor.
13. Hmmm … about an hour, but with thump (unparsed, natch) and rosier. I didn’t consider RASTER, but if I had, I’d have probably gone for rosier, as I think of osier more as a plant and aster more as a flower. Ho hum.

    SPIN DOCTOR and LEGATEES went in on def alone, so thanks for unravelling those. Lots of unknowns and half-knowns today: LAUDS, COUPERIN, SATRAP, DEVONIAN. And I foolishly considered Mr Cure to be a priest. Pesky those little (missing) accents, eh?

14. I read Physics but have never heard of RASTER. Back in the sixties, I used to get nothing but lines, parallel or otherwise, on the cathode ray oscilloscopes provided at the Clarendon. Twiddling knobs sometimes got rid of them. COD DITCHWATER, also FOI as my eyes light up at Spooner. 35 minutes with technical help from a qualified knob twiddler.
15. 27 min – knew of RASTER, similarly to others, had a careless THUMP and biffed SPIN DOCTOR.
16. 16 minutes, no problems with any of this although biffed SPIN DOCTOR. Was familiar with raster from design and print usage as well as on a CRT. Took a while of going through the alphabet to get to WREN(CH) LOI 25d.
17. Started this after I got back from the garage where my car is now being serviced and MOTd. The early start must have addled my brain as I didn’t get a single answer until 29ac! However, the SE soon filled up then the long 7d went in setting me back on track to a not unusual 40 minute solve. LOI was GENTLE. I biffed SPIN DOCTOR and missed the cricket reference in 3d, idly wondering how a LEG could be a property. Was fooled by the 1 Nov, Nov 1 device, not knowing the word DEVONIAN, and didn’t think hard enough about a blow, sticking in THUMP. Doh! Quite enjoyed the rest of it, and thanks to Jack for the rest of the parsing.

    Edited at 2016-05-03 11:17 am (UTC)

18. A DNF for most of the reasons above, bit pushed for time today but still don’t think I would have completed. DNK composer, RASTER is a word I have heard of vaguely but not enough to have tied it in. Thanks blogger for explaining ARMPIT and SPIN DOCTOR both of which I biffed. No complaints, a good test although I don’t like spoonerisms, but seeing this was the third on the trot I’ve got. they may grow on me.
19. Ingenious puzzle. I surmised (correctly as it turns out) that the “box” in 28A probably referred to a TV, but had never heard of RASTER and so incorrectly entered ROSIER, thinking that this might be a term for the test pattern that used to appear on old TV screens, and hoping without much confidence that “osier” might just pass muster for “plant”! I biffed several clues without properly parsing them — CANE, SPIN DOCTOR and LEGATEES. Thanks to Jack for the explanations. DITCHWATER is certainly one of the best Spoonerisms in a long while.

    Congratulations also to Jack on the exceptionally clear and neat format of his blog.

20. I remember RASTER from early DTP: raster graphics (as opposed to vector graphics) you couldn’t resize without loss of quality, as they contain a constant number of pixels. This may be twaddle, but it worked for me. Well inside the boundaries of my vocabulary, though as the above may demonstrate, knowing the word is not quite the same as knowing its meaning with any accuracy.
    That said, I only just remembered to go back and revisit ROSIER in time to cancel my submit.
    Otherwise, another patchy solve in 28.47 – my times seem to be steadily rising. I didn’t spot GAU as half of gauche, which was a pity because GAUGE is one of those words I know has a counterintuitive spelling, but can’t remember which it is.
    Can’t imagine Joe Orton approving PRICK UP ONE’S EARS, not least because his original version was not EARS, but a near anagram thereof
    1. The origins re Joe may be lost on me at the moment. All I can recall is that John Lahr wrote a biography of that title and it was used for the film with screenplay by Alan Bennett.

       Edited at 2016-05-03 01:18 pm (UTC)

       1. His biographer took the title from one suggested but unused by Joe. He spelt it Erse.

21. About forty minutes. I was held up by entering the Joe Orton title for 2, toyed with a homophone approach to 28, but eventually guessed RASTER rather than ROSIER since I knew RASTER was a word and was vaguely familiar with the meaning from RASTERIZE (I think it’s an option in Photoshop.However, I forgot to correct THUMP to TRUMP when I thought of the RUMP parliament.
22. 20m but with too much “hit and hope” to make this a satisfying experience. I made a mess of the LHS too by bunging in WISHYWASHY with just the I and W crossers.
23. Knew RASTER but was undone by wavering between TRUMP and THUMP, not knowing the parliament and not wanting to write a certain name in, I went with THUMP.
    There was a lot of not-so-general knowledge today, I thought.
24. A knock-free 17 mins, and because I had most of the required GK I didn’t have as much trouble as some of you. COUPERIN went in from the WP with fingers crossed, as did RASTER, although to a lesser degree because I was fairly sure I’d come across it before. Count me as another who biffed SPIN DOCTOR and I didn’t bother try and parse it. My LOI was WREN after GRANDSON, which is a little surprising considering neither of them are the hardest of clues.
25. Thirty-seven minutes, my best time in ages (if I can finish at all), and I thought it quite easy. No problem with TRUMP (he seems to be taking over the crossword world as well as the Republican party’s presidential nomination, may the Lord have mercy on us all). The Rump Parliament is the only historical parliament that would come to my mind, anyway, which is not to say there might not be many others. And raster is current in German to indicate any regular pattern, so it at least popped up in my mind as a possible English name for the pixel pattern on a TV screen.
26. About 25 minutes, but I had to look up RASTER. I was about to put in ROSIER, but it didn’t seem right. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything that did seem right, so resorted to aids. So DNF today. Regards.
27. Another desperately slow start, but my 10:42 seems to have held up fairly well.

    I’m slightly surprised that quite so many people had a problem with RASTER, but obviously a career working with computers gave me an advantage.

    Nice puzzle – apart from 11ac (MAPLE) since, as you say, it’s the leaf that’s the national symbol.

28. I seem to remember being told that the answer to 2dn was once clued as “Listen hard for a sexual perversion.” Apocryphal of course (unless in Private Eye!)
29. Hi, why does PI mean very good?
    1. It’s short for “pious”
       1. Thanks

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