Jumbo 1305

18 comments on “Jumbo 1305”

1. Hmm .. I have always found that for some reason, I do solve crosswords much quicker when in bed. I had assumed it was something to do with calm and lack of distractions, it never occurred to me that it might just be the horizontality. I wonder if The Times would mind me bringing a camp bed to the Championships?
2. This puzzle evidently left no impression on me, as my only notes are ‘DNK’ at 7d, ‘COD’ at 27d, and ‘yet again’ at 4d; MIT has been called a college here umpteen times. Naturally, Chambers offers an out. The New Scientist research should have won an Ignobel.
   1. Yes. It should have been a candidate at least. I’ve never tried solving lying down apart from in a puzzle book. I’ve no idea if I am any faster doing them horizontal. My favourite ignoble, by the way, was the Japanese fire alarm for sleeping deaf people – releasing Wasabi spray into the air conditioning.
   2. I’m trying (well, not very hard) to think of how the research would have been conducted. A questionnaire? Do you solve upright/seated/lying down? How fast are you? Or a controlled experiment? 300 people solving at a desk, 300 lying down?
      1. Usually when you see this sort of claim it is the result of a poorly-designed experiment conducted on a statistically insignificant number of people by someone trying to sell something.
         1. And the ‘New Scientist’ publishes it? Goodness! Maybe that’s where the ‘New’ comes from.
            1. Yes, one might hope for better from the New Scientist. But mohn said it was just a ‘reference’, and perhaps they caveated it appropriately. These things do have a habit of becoming common knowledge, though. Witness the frequency with which a high anti-oxidant content is routinely touted as a positive attribute in food, for instance.
   3. In Chambers’ defence, Collins and ODO both have definitions for college that also encompass universities. I’m intrigued though as to why MIT is generally called a college in Times crosswords – I’m not particularly fussed about the college/university distinction in general, but I’m pretty sure that Harvard, Yale, etc are always clued as universities so I don’t know what MIT has done to be singled out as a college.

      Unfortunately I don’t have that copy of New Scientist any more but I recall that the anagram “fact” was part of an advert for some book rather than a direct endorsement by the magazine. If you Google the premise, you come up with stuff like this: https://phys.org/news/2005-05-creative-lying.html, which does indicate a small sample size. Also, ~30s to solve a 5-letter anagram seems a bit excessive.

3. I unaccountably transposed the I and Y in SIBYL. More haste less accuracy, perhaps. This took me just over 40 minutes, so nothing too difficult. No problem with 6d as I came across it during my music performing days. 34d raised a smile.
4. I solved the unknown 6d using the wordplay. Apart from that it was just a matter of working my way through the clues, which took 1:07:13, so fairly straightforward by my standards. Can’t remember much more about it from this distance. I usually solve sitting in my armchair with my laptop on my knee and my feet up on a padded ottoman, so I suppose I’m semi recumbent. Thanks setter and Mohn.
5. ….all horizontal, as is my wont. Pretty steady, no real problems, ‘caesura’ is well-known to anyone familiar with technical analysis of poetry.
6. I slogged my way through this in a blistering 1:35:53 – that’s 2 minutes and 4 seconds faster than the week before. At 90 seconds per clue that’s roughly on a par with my usual weekday performance, so I think I’ll struggle to improve on it much.
   1. When I first started out, I used to find the Jumbos an endurance test rather than something to enjoy, so from that experience I would suggest that doing them over several sessions helps to mitigate any feeling of drudgery – perhaps allocate yourself the same amount of time per session as you would to a 15×15, and take a break between sessions. The speed will come over time – don’t worry about that.
      1. Thanks for the advice – after this week’s 2 hour + effort a change of tack is definitely needed!
7. 30:28. I have fallen behind in my jumbo solving, so I just solved this when I saw the blog had come up. It found it quite gentle.
   I had PALMERA for a while. I know how to spell it, I just blindly followed what I took to be the wordplay.
   To me ADZE is a more unusual word that CAESURA, although we’ve had it twice very recently. Just goes to show something or other.
   1. My lack of knowledge of carpentry is pretty much matched by my lack of knowledge of poetry, so I can only assume that ADZE’s familiarity is due to having met it more often in Crosswordland than CAESURA.
      1. That’s how I know ADZE. I have met CAESURA in the wild but I’m sure its current familiarity to me is also more from crosswords.
8. Annoyingly, the website tells me I can’t spell sibyl. Or parse the clue correctly, apparently!

Comments are closed.