Times 25495

40 comments on “Times 25495”

1. Must be a wavelength thing, but I didn’t encounter much trouble here. It’s odd how differently we solve: e.g., saw the def at 4ac as the paper was coming off the printer. But, by the same token, couldn’t see “fancy” => RELISH at first sight; and had some trouble parsing BOOBY TRAP (9ac) post-solve. (At least that clue avoided the underwear temptation.)
   1. RELISH is a particularly cunning clue as the first part of the clue (‘hot plate’) is suggestive of, say, a spicy pepper relish.
2. 26 minutes with RELISH last in, as for the second day running I had trouble with my capital H. Wanted to put BOTOX at 29, as I imagined that might be white – and a liquid.

   Despite a distinctly chestnutty content (bra, sly, arch and prig), the puzzle felt anything but. A quick check shows that prig had already come up three times this year, albeit once in wordplay, including last Thursday.

   A favourite word of CS Lewis’s, here it is from Middlemarch, put in the mouth of the young wag Fred Vincy: ‘A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions’.

   Edited at 2013-06-07 06:47 am (UTC)

   1. Precisely!
3. A good challenge. Ground to a halt in SE. The concluding ‘X’ meant that it took me ages to get ‘Tippex’ out of my head as the ‘whitish fluid’, despite too many letters, and really struggled with the unfamiliar slant on REQUITAL. For some reason I knew RECRUDESCE (or, more accurately, ‘recrudescent’). Thanks for the blog, Dave.
4. 40 minutes for all but 18dn which then sent my solving time off the scale. I barely know the word but even when it was eventually in my sights I couldn’t see the wordplay to justify it. I can’t believe that ‘appeal’ in the clue didn’t immediately set me thinking SA or IT. It was the SE corner that did for me today, not helped by having HOBBLE at 23ac for a while.

   Didn’t know RECRUDESCE but HETERODOX and FRANCK were no problem – he was from Liege, BTW, so Belgian or possibly Dutch because of who ruled it at the time.

   Dave, I sent you a message via LJ, but if you haven’t received it, could you please now freeze the comments on your blog dated 2nd June (Dean’s puzzle ST4539) but leave the spam in place pending further investigation by LJ Support. Thanks.

   1. Yes, another one for my growing collection of Famous Belgians..
   2. Thanks Jack, I have now frozen the last ST blog.
      As for M. Planck, according to Wikipedia, he was born in the Netherlands in 1822, then moved to Belgium (or more accurately Belgium moved to him, he didn’t move at all) in 1830, then moved to Paris in 1835, acquiring French citizenship in 1872. So I guess he could be described as Dutch, Belgian or French.
      1. Yes, it’s similar to the old argument about whether Handel counts as an English composer.

         P.S. I’m encouraged that the “suspicious comments” filter appears to be working again. I’ve deleted everything back to the start of the month apart from in your frozen Sunday blog which we’d better leave for the moment.

5. Some very nice short clues here but COD to 13D for its lemur sympathy. Found this one quite bitty, with answers going in all over the grid but not connecting with each other. Didn’t know RECRUDESCE or REQUITAL (I’ve only ever come across requite in “unrequited love”). FRANCK was from the wordplay – I look forward to the day (the 12th of never?) when ’80s music (the 1980s, that is) is a crossword staple.
   1. Probably only waiting for enough of them to be dead!

      Edited at 2013-06-07 08:44 am (UTC)

      1. We rarely see any (of the many) dead musicians from the ’60s either so I’m not holding out much hope that Simon Le Bon will appear at 1A once he pops his clogs. However there was a reference to trance music a few months ago, so perhaps setters will skip straight to the ’90s.
6. 20 minutes, which with the next Championship puzzle coming up, is beginning to look horribly like my current standard.
   Solving is a curious process. For me, BOOBY TRAP was the one that refused to coalesce until I had all the crossers in place, yet I found myself constantly coming back to it throughout solve expecting it to crack. If only I had just left it alone, my time would have been considerably quicker. Not being sure of GROWL didn’t help (grow=get? – I see it now but was not convinced then). I also had HOBBLE for a while at 23, a decent answer but not right.
   CoD to the apology for a lemur.
   I see it’s disputed these days, but César FRANCK’s proximate cause of death, collision with a trolley bus, has to be one of the more interesting ways for a composer to go and is a staple of pub quizzes.

   Edited at 2013-06-07 08:59 am (UTC)

   1. I wonder if you know that Jean-Baptiste Lully died as the result of a conducting accident? No buses, trolley or otherwise, were involved though!
      1. I’m immediately reminded of of Spinal Tap’s first drummer, who of course died in a “bizarre gardening accident”.
         1. Which makes him (and several other Spinal Tap drummers – “choked on vomit, but not his own vomit”, “spontaneous human combustion onstage” X2 and “a mystery better left unsolved.”) eligible for inclusion in the crossword.
      2. Anyone who conducts by thumping a stick on the floor deserves what he gets – in this case a septic foot!
7. 13:10 on the club timer.
   I was on the wavelength again for this one, and I thought for a while it was going to be sub-10, but then a few of them slowed me down, and I didn’t help myself by putting in SUPPLICATE on the basis that 20ac was bound to start CONTRA.
   I think I knew that RECRUDESCE was a word, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what it means.

   Edited at 2013-06-07 10:30 am (UTC)

8. Took ages, but was glad to finish with just one error, I chucked in rebuttal for the unknown REQUITAL. Got the other unknowns through the clear wordplay.

   Thanks for unravelling it all, Dave!

9. Like Mctext, I seem to have been on the right wavelength for this one. Definitely among the easier Friday offerings, I thought. Just short of 30 mins for me. All the slightly off-piste/obscurish solutions – RECRUDESCE, HETERODOX, REQUITAL, FRANCK – were eminently get-able from wordplay. I joined Ulaca in flirting for a while with BOTOX (29ac). And I too liked the remorseful lemurs (13dn). My CoD.
10. Got through SW part pretty fast, then held up by trying RECURRENCE at 18ac which almost satisfies the clue: also few connections between NE and SW, so had to cold-solve some more before I could progress.
    COUNTERACT was LOI – needed checkers before realising it didn’t start CON.
    Unusual deaths of composers reminds me of Webern, literally dying for a smoke.
11. I solved this in 17.06 having had to really work at the HETERODOX and REQUITAL although for some reason, I did know RECRUDESCE. Definitely one where extra care had to be taken to make sure obscurities matched the clear wordplay.
12. I found this a straightforward solve, managing it in 26 minutes. I might have been lucky in one or two places; for instance, once I had the H of 17 I immediately thought of HEROD for the king. The clues were fine, but nothing stood out for me.
13. 14 minutes – no major hold ups though I was expecting to find RECDUSERCH was a word – for once I guessed correctly! I liked the LATEX/HETERODOX corner
14. Solved today’s crossword correctly, but I rarely time myself.
    Could I please make a request for a glossary of some of the terms used by contributors. For example, I realise that Keriothe is the identity of a contributor, but what is a ‘keriothe’? Perhaps a solver should be able to decipher it, but I haven’t fallen in.
    I can see COD (clue of the day) and FOI and LOI as first and last one in, but unexplained jargon terms can be offputting for the uninitiated, and I presume that it is not the intention of the blog to appear exclusive.
    1. Ulaca is referring to Keriothe’s time for this puzzle, and guessing he solved it in two such units. Since Keriothe solved it in 13 minutes, and Ulaca’s time was 26 minutes, Keriothe is able to confirm that Ulaca’s guess is correct.

       The gold standard is a ‘Magoo’. This refers to the internet nic of Mark Goodliffe, who has been the champion solver now for five years, and can solve the puzzles much faster than anyone else.

       1. Today 1k = 2.25M, which is pretty good for me.

          Edited at 2013-06-07 01:15 pm (UTC)

    2. It took me a while to figure that LOI meant last one in, guessing it was something to do with laughing or Lack of Information.
    3. Of all people I hate to be or appear exclusive but I also enjoy the banter on this site, which distinguishes it from some other crossword blogs. Horses for courses and all that. Abbreviations are useful when 95% of people understand them – look out for DBE (definition by example).

       And why not get yourself a handle and join the fun?

15. 15 mins post-lunch, so I was definitely on the setter’s wavelength.

    I managed to solve fairly quickly those clues which gave some of you the most trouble (RECRUDESCE, HETERODOX, FRANCK and REQUITAL), but the much easier (in theory) STROP and NIPPY were my last two in. I also nearly made a stupid mistake at 11ac when I thought the plate in the wordplay was a salver and actually wrote in ‘relash’ before realising it made no sense whatsoever. I gave it a bit more thought, remembered that plate can also mean silver, and corrected my mistake. I’ve certainly had a mixed bag of a week.

16. 19:52 .. another very enjoyable solve.

    I was going to post some thoughts on today’s announcement about the crossword club here but I see Dave P has just posted a new blog entry – http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/978415.html – so perhaps all discussion on the matter should go there. Should that be a ‘sticky’, Dave?

    1. You’re probably right. I’ve stuck it to the top now. I’ll be interested to hear other people’s thoughts.
17. The Austro-Hungarian writer Odon von Horvath was killed by a falling branch during a thunderstorm in the Champs-Elysees. Only a couple of days before he had told a friend of the dangers of just walking down the street.
18. I got through most everything fairly quickly, maybe 10 minutes, until reaching the crossing LUMBER/REQUITAL. I first entered REMITTAL, and LIMBER. But Limber doesn’t mean awkward, and I couldn’t reconcile the wordplay on remittal, so I first saw LUMBER, then REQUITAL, as LOI. That required about 10 minutes more. COD to MORATORIA for the nifty definition. Regards.

    Edited at 2013-06-07 06:56 pm (UTC)

19. Well done Dave- an excellent blog to quite a tough crossword.
    As very ordinary Times crossword performers we have found these blogs
    vital to the pleasure we have from the crosswords. Without the blogs I doubt we could have ever progressed and would probably have returned to the Telegraph.
    It seems very short-sighted of the Times management to potentially lose those people like us who are happy to pay an annual fee for the daily crossword.

    Mike and Fay

20. Thank you to those who responded to my earlier posting. I now understand that a ‘keriothe’ is a unit of time, and I now need only work out the conversion rate of ‘keriothes’ to a ‘Magoo’.
    Thanks also to Ulaca for suggesting that I join the fun. The reason I have not adopted a sobriquet is nothing to do with a coy wish for anonymity but due to apprehension about registering with Live Journal when it appears to attract much criticism from contributors, and also problems with ‘spam’.
    I do make occasional contributions to the Fifteensquared blog where my name, George Clements, is displayed.
    I will be very sorry if the blog is discontinued, but fear that The Times does not have a good track record when it comes to valuing its crossword. The prize for the Saturday crosswords has failed to rise in relation to the cost of posting entries, for those who do not use electronic submission, and, to my mind, the format of the Annual competition is nothing like as attractive as the regional heat format operated by the late lamented Michael Rich.
    Despite my abhorrence of the Murdoch Empire, I buy the weekday and Saturday editions of the newspaper as I do not get the same satisfaction from solving on screen that I get from pen and paper, and I choose to support my local newsagent. Decent newsagents may soon become as rare as Sub Post Offices.
    1. If, like me, you normally only come to the TfTT page, you won’t notice any spam, and won’t receive any by email, or at least not because of membership here. All I get by way of email from this site are copies of replies and to my comments. Seems perfectly safe – and it does increase the fun. Enjoy it while you can!
    2. I don’t think you need have any concerns about spam if you open a free LJ account to take part in our blog using a sobriquet. The bloggers deal with the spam attracted here and under normal circumstances non-bloggers won’t even be aware of it. There have been some problems this past week but things seem to have reverted to normal now. As for my own LJ pages, in all the years since I opened my account I doubt I have had more than half a dozen items of spam attracted to it.
       1. Lucky you! The spammers seem to have it in for me, as I get a horrendous amount – presumably because my blog offers a wider target.
21. 12:25 for me, like others not helped by bunging in HOBBLE at 23ac. After a horribly slow start I seemed to move in and out of the setter’s wavelength, but I thought this was a very fine puzzle with some neatly-worded clues.

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