Solving time: 17:57
I would probably have done this slightly faster if the letter-counts had not been wrong for most of the clues in the new-style print-out. I skipped yesterday’s puzzle and so was unprepared. 1 and 6A and 24D were right. Each other clue had the count of the immediately following clue. Unfortunately I didn’t work that out until after I had finished, and so I was held up on clues that were more than one word (or that I wrongly suspected were more than one word).
Apart from that distraction this was a fine puzzle with interesting words but nothing too obscure. I didn’t know that “rumba” could be spelled with an added H. And although “Stock Exchange reform” means Big Bang to me, it might be unfamiliar to anyone from outside the UK, or younger than mid-thirties.
Across
| 1 | PAR(AD)IS + AL(l) |
| 10 | OUT + (h)AND-OUT |
| 11 | SINBAD THE SAILOR – (TRAINS ABOLISHED)* |
| 13 | BAR + A, THE, A |
| 14 | R(HUM)BA, RBA being BAR* |
| 16 | O, VIE, DO! |
| 18 | TRI(BUN(g))AL |
| 23 | IN PRIVATE – this was obviously an anagram, but without the word count I found it rather tricky |
| 25 | AL(I)BI |
| 26 | ENOCH – CON(rev) in EH? |
| 27 | PAT + A GO + NI + A, NI being IN(rev) |
Down
| 2 | RIP + SNORTING – a rather antiquated meaning of RIP |
| 3 | DO + R(oo)M + ANT |
| 4 | S(COT)TIES |
| 6 | BONE ASH – (=”Beau Nash”) |
| 8 | WATER + RAIL – is water really a way of getting across the channel |
| 12 | L.A. MEN + TATI + ON |
| 15 | BROW + BEAT (=”beet”) |
| 17 | D(O(ld) N, N)ISH |
| 19 | BI + G(B)ANG |
| 20 | ESCA(R)P(e) – quite complicated wordplay |
| 22 | ELI + Z + A |
| 24 | PRO – hidden |
I did it between various household chores so I have no idea of time, but thought it was quite tricky in places; it has some nice wordplay and unusual answers. The NE corner held me up for a while.
Bouquet for the setter, brickbats for the editor.
I found this quite an easy one again – about 20 minutes to solve. Richard has mentioned the use of “water” at 8D, which I also query. And why “cattle” at 15D – what are beetroot and sugar beet for example? No real ripsnorting clues unfortunately (rip=dissolute fellow will cause some head scratching, me thinks)
All the economists should read Anatole Kaletsky today. At school I was taught that every year the exam papers in economics asked exactly the same questions but unfortunately each year the answers were different.
I didn’t think my geography was too bad but I’ve never heard of OVIEDO or ALBI so maybe I don’t know the full extent of my ignorance of the subject. I also didn’t know RHUMBA with an H.
I have some sympathy with your comment on 8. I looked twice at Top player = PRO at 24. I’m sure there must be many a professional sportsman that could not be described as a top player by any stretch of the imagination.
Mostly a very good puzzle, and certainly an enjoyable solve with 5 as my COD.
I agree the misplaced numbers are baffling. Normally I would print around 5:00 but I went on-line early this morning to check the weather outlook as we have snow worse than Monday’s today.
I wonder how the numbers can be wrong at around 2:00 GMT, correct at around 3:00 and wrong again at 8:00. I just checked on line and it’s fine at the moment (10:30). Is anyone still seeing it wrong now?
On 8D, “travel by water” gets 28,000 Google hits compared to about 70,000 each for “travel by rail” and “travel by sea”. So not quite as solid but good enough I think, especially in the absence of a “sea rail”. Same view for the pro sportsman, and the cattle feed (COED mentions food for livestock as one of three main uses for ‘beet’). BONE ASH and ESCARP were new words for me.
I printed the puzzle at 07:46 and got correct letter-counts (despite dud ones yesterday), so the mystery continues.
I was slow to solve 6d, the second part of 8, 12 and 25, and uncertainties about the unfamiliar answers to 13a and 16 took my solving time to 37 minutes, longer than it should have been, given the mostly straightforward clues. I liked the clues to 1a, 6d, 10 and 17 particularly.
What I suspect is happening is improper multi-threaded programming. Either the database pointer or the iterator is improperly shared across users, so when two users generate a puzzle at once the numbers become corrupt. Thread A takes a number, and then thread B gets the CPU for a whole run of numbers that are all off by one.
In multi-threaded programming, you’re supposed to use a mutex, but I suspect this code was not intended to be multi-threaded at all. Some dummy just put something in the global space instead of creating one for each instance of his object. It seems to work fine in unit and system testing, because the number of concurrent users is low.
The interesting question is, how did it slip back into sync for 24D?
Usually both users get the record with read, no lock. When they try to update, the system gets the record again for update, and then compares the timestamps of the two copies. If someone else has updated the record in the meantime, an error message is presented to the user, otherwise the update goes through.
‘Dig ones own grave’ took me a surprisingly long time, even though I understood the clue.
I didn’t find it that great, but mildly interesting. My COD: ‘ripsnorting’.
Just before I strated the crossword my brother phoned to say he was going to PATAGONIA so that was an easy one.
I enjoyed 11a, 21a, 5d and 12d.
Came back this morning to see the problem had been fixed (I hope this isn’t a regular occurrence and is cleared up by, say, oh, next Thursday). I might have finished the first time if I had made out the anagram at 11 and known the number of words in 21.
I liked 29 down.
2 is a classic example of the unusual compound word, one of the most effective tools in the setter’s armoury – a discovered check or somesuch.
Tom B.
Tom B.
About 40 minutes to solve, but afterwards I consulted google to confirm the existence of Beau Nash and BARATHEA. I had never heard of barathea. Mr. Nash’s wiki page actually terms him a ‘celebrated dandy’, one helluva legacy there. I didn’t know ‘Albi’, ‘bung’ or the Big Bang either, but the wordplay made those straightforward. I thought much of this was very good indeed, esp. BELOW, elegant surface, and LITTER. Best to everyone.
Many Thanks
(kevincollins@bulldoghome.com)