Times 24219: stage or screen?

48 comments on “Times 24219: stage or screen?”

1. ….owing to that very clever Greta Garbo clue, and a few others. I had most of it in 20 minutes, as usual, but got stuck, again as usual. The others I found difficult were ‘bean’, ‘pageant’, and ‘Poitiers’ – although at least I had heard of that city.

   It’s a good thing ‘trotting’ doesn’t fit in 5, or I would have put that, and I nearly put ‘ounist’ for the artist as well.

   I didn’t quite get the ‘in play’ clue, since in the US an umpire rules a ball fair or foul, but never dead. The dead ball era was another thing altogether.

   1. In rugby union the ball is dead when it goes over the sideline or the end of the pitch (the “dead ball line”).
2. 19mins (with breakfast). At the start I though this was going to be tough, but it proved fairly straightforward.

   24ac “slay” in the sense of “overwhelm with delight” has citations dating back to 1340 in the OED and a sound English pedigree! (My only thought was that in that sense the past tense might be “slayed” rather than “slew”, although that is just a personal hunch.)

   1. I mean 24dn of course
3. Gallumphed along for 20 min. Would have been faster, but got stuck. First in 21 dn IN PLAY, then finally and most embarrassingly on 7 dn CUBIST. And yes, I was looking for an “ounist” too!
   1. Well, I guess the ounist is on us!

      Fortunately, I scribbled _ U _ I T on my copy, and then I saw it instantly.

      1. This occurred to me too – luckily I immediately dismissed it.
4. 11:07 .. with the ABORETA, PAGEANT and POITIERS combination taking almost as long as the rest combined.

   Nice, breezy sort of puzzle. I really liked MASSAGED and OVERTURN (which was new to me – I don’t do Jumbos). But the Garbo clue has to get COD for sheer invention.

5. 09:23 here, tackled late last night. Last few were 1, 16, 3, 10, 2, 12, 24 – which includes both 4-letter double defs. For once all wordplays were understood while solving.

   2D is a great piece of opportunity-spotting by the setter, and 10A isn’t bad either, never mind the accidental topicality with Spain having the highest “piggy flu” numbers in Europe. At 21, at least soccer, cricket and rubgy union have a “dead ball”/”in play” contrast. I think 23A is strictly a charade – I,(Paris Rome)* = “confounded Paris and Rome”

   14D: I’ve got a vague notion that one of the central documents of the American Revolution was a Round Robin – possibly to avoid any individual getting more credit as author than anyone else.

   The oldest two crossword-related jokes:

   Q: What’s pink and hard in the morning?
   A: The Financial Times crossword!

   Wag: Ah, you do crosswords do you? I’ve got a clue for you: “A heavy load for the postman”.
   Xwd solver: How many letters?
   Wag: Thousands mate, ****ing thousands!

   1. Following on from your euphemistically-named piggy flu, I believe I heard someone (could have been a politician) say a couple of weeks ago that pigs would fly before Britain suffered from this “pandemic”.
      When some cases were being investigated, my occasionally sick sense of humour came up with this:
      Why did pigs fly?
      Because swine flu.

      Fetching his coat,
      Dafydd.

   2. Xwd solver: I’m stuck on this last clue: “to egg on”
      Wag: How many letters?
      Xwd solver: Five
      Wag: Hmm. To egg on… Toast?
6. Another pre-cricket rush but finished with 3 guessed entries – slew, round robin and, embarrassingly, data, which I didn’t understand until coming here.
   Again stupidly got obsessed with veto for 6 down, and once obsessed hard to change thinking.

   COD Greta Garbo.

7. Off to a flying start with all but 2dn, 5dn, 16ac/dn and 24dn solved within 25 minutes. I took another 20 to crack these.

   At 5dn I wasted time thinking that “running” meant that it ended with ON and “at gentle pace” was the definition, so I was looking for a musical direction in Italian or possibly French or German. Before I worked out all the wordplay I had thought 2dn was ARBOREAL which hampered solving 18ac. And until its first letter was in place I didn’t stand a chance at 18dn. I’ve heard of POITIERS but it would have been way down my list of known French towns.

   A very pleasing puzzle though, and well worth persevering with.

8. beaten by arboreta (where i was fixated by anathema for some reason) and iberia which i still dont get, though it must be obvious as it does seem to need a comment.
   1. Disease reduced by 50% = BERI (BERI), in I (one) A (area).

      “Part of Europe” is the definition.

      1. thx – a blonde moment i fear.
9. Not in my dictionary. Never in a million years. Did the rest in under 10 and then agonised over this rubbishy clue. Not fair, not English. Yar booh sucks…
   1. Sorry but I don’t see the problem.

      As noted above SLAY in the first sense is perfectly standard English (subject in my personal view to a question mark over whether the past tense in that sense is SLAYED or SLEW). In the second sense it is of more recent US origin, but the OED has quotes from the Listener and the Radio Times which suggests that it is current in British English.

      I don’t have Collins or COED to hand but I would expect them to concur.

      That’s my twopennyworth on the subject – I have to go offline now.

      1. COED and Collins agree, except that only Collins identifies the “large quantity” meaning as North American (differences between dictionaries on this seem as common as differences on hyphenation). They both offer SLEW and not “slayed” as the past tense, though dictionary.com showed some support (American Heritage Dict.) for “slayed” as the past of the “greatly amused” sense.
         1. The only quotation in the OED of SLAY in that sense which uses the past is

            “1927 L. MAYER Just between Us Girls i. 2 Well, anyways, my dear, it simply slayed me. “

            (which proves nothing except that it is a possibility!)

         2. It is a strong verb on class V, but underwent contraction and breaking in prehistoric English. Thus a proto-Germanic ‘slahan’ became ‘slean’ in early English. The principle parts would have been:

            slean, sloh, slogan, slagen

            ….which gave rise to modern English slay, slew, slain.

10. A very straightforward puzzle solved in 15 minutes with no hold ups and no quibbles. I loved the Greta Garbo and the IBERIA clues, which I think are both original.

    People of my generation who actually learned some history at school should know of the very interesting Roman city of Poitiers, scene of one of the three great English v French battles Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt.

11. 7:18 here, flew through it on the train this morning and really should have been quicker. It’s nice to beat PB occasionally, although I very much doubt this will stay the quickest reported time today.
12. I got stuck on exactly the same axis as Sotira(!) with ARBORETA being the last in, stopping the clock at just over 20 minutes.

    I relied on the definition, but only understood the wordplay by coming here. It’s about time we had some more recently-deceased film stars: there are (were) plenty of them.

    Neil

13. I did this over breakfast, apart from one. I set my brain on automatic, and three hours later, out popped Poitiers while I was doing the ironing. I had difficulty parsing the clue since, usually, when the clue ends “…in French city” you can guarantee that the city you are looking for is not French.
    I have even been to Poitiers. It’s a convenient overnight stop on the way to Biarritz.
14. 5:57.  Very pleased to have broken the 6-minute barrier.  Nothing difficult here, though I wasn’t sure about ROUND ROBIN (14dn) from the clue alone.

    The use of “falsified” as an anagram indicator (17ac MUSICAL) strikes me as the sort of thing Peter described yesterday as “metaphorical and not a favourite”.  Sure, dictionaries say things like “alter (a document etc.) fraudulently”, “misrepresent, distort (a fact etc.)”, “alter (information or evidence) so as to mislead”, but I think it would be wooden-headed to use those to justify the practice.

    A more esoteric quibble with 16dn (POITIERS): to me, the wordplay cries out for “river and banks”.  The word “between” operates on a plurality of objects, and so is used with lists (“between you and me”), plurals (“between friends”), and groups (“between the lot of them”) – but “river banks” in the required sense is none of these things.  As I say, though, it’s an esoteric quibble, and perhaps it’s just me.

    Clue of the Day: 25ac (BOLDER).

    1. These youngsters are getting far too quick – bring back some nasty “general” knowledge! (Seriously, well done.) I’m happier with “falsified” as anagram indicator than “stopped” as container indicator, but maybe that’s just from years of learning that the remotest suggestion of change or movement might be an AI. Something like “Surrounded by” does seem fairer at 16D.
       1. Thanks!  You’re right, I do get an easier time of it when the level of expected general knowledge goes down.  Now that I’ve started doing the daily puzzle in earnest again, I’m finding that I learn a lot from it – often via this blog, so thanks to all involved.
15. 13 minutes, unimpeded by a hangover…

    As a moderately successful compiler, I have to say that clues like 2d leave me a little awestruck! Clue of the week, at least!

    POITIERS was last in, mainly because I had my crossword brain switched off and therefore took ages to get RIVER = PO, which should have been automatic when the P appeared.

    Oli

    1. Hangover or wine flu?
    2. (G)ARBO(G)RETA was certainly a wonderful find, and “wooden displays” does a fine job of linking the actress to the tree-garden.  My reason for not calling it a Clue of the Day is that the surface reading is strained.  Even a simple rearrangement would have improved matters:

       Wooden displays from movie star switching parts – no good at all (8)

16. My 35 mins isn’t looking too flash then. I put it down to general slowness of brain function rather than anything in particular. I join in the salute to ARBORETA, but also liked PROTRACTOR and some of the others already mentioned.
17. 18:30, arboreta, pageant and Poitiers last in.

    Average difficulty but enjoyable. Notwithstanding mark’s quibble my COD is musical.

18. I was interrupted, so my guess at my time is about 15 minutes, pretty quick for me. The clueing for 2D was clever, but I have to say the surface seems to fall in the ‘can only be a crossword clue’ category. My COD’s: MUSICAL, INITIALLED. The ‘two or three nominal reductions’ phrase is really very good. Applause to the setter there. Last 2 entered were AROBORETA and BEAN. Regards, see you tomorrow.
19. Help me, please! I completed the puzzle (eventually – don’t ask how long) but 1 ac did cause problems: statistically manipulated = massaged (as in massaged figures). No problem. But, “a lot of people” = Mass and “like the old” should, presumably, be “As Aged” i.e. we end up with Massasaged. What have I got wrong?
    1. “Like the old” = “as aged” when “aged” = noun.
       “Like the old” = “aged” when “aged” = adjective.
       1. Thanks – none the wiser.
          1. Let’s try it another way: Adjectives in English can often have “the” stuck in front of them to describe a group, often of people. What quality do the group thus named indisputably have? The one described by the original adjective! So what are the aged like? Answer: aged, or its synonym, “old”. No different from “like a banana” = “yellow”, except that “aged” or a synonym is all we can safely say about “the aged” – we can’t confidently add anything else like “curved” as we can with the banana.
             1. … or we can get the setter off on a technicality by seeing ‘aged’ as referring to something that has been aged, like a dodgy antique (genuine Louis Quatorze, Guv, never been used).
                1. I don’t think this helps. Your dodgy antique is not old, and wouldn’t be called “the aged”.
20. This one must have been easy, because even I almost managed to finish it in time to come on the blog and post a comment that may actually get read. Almost.

    If noone reads this comment, I’m going to blame DOGTROT, ARBORETA, POITIERS and SLEW.

    If on the other hand someone does read this I’d just like to say that I still read the blog daily once I’ve done all I can — usually in the wee small hours — and find it a great source of enlightenment on my continuing quest towards actually being able to solve these wretched things! Thanks to you all.

21. One for all the cogniscenti out there – how do you keep chunnel vision to record times to the nearest second? Having been guestimating between 20 mins, 30 minutes, one hour etc give or take, on two, three or four sittings (phone calls, tube changes, daydreaming in between), I have finally plucked up the courage to start a clock to spur on some improvement, but no matter where I am, I find that I lose a minute or two in every ten just by clocking off and thinking about work or dinner or anything but the crossword in front of me.

    I always wonder when people talk about doing it on the train or at work, how they avoid noticing far off movement, or watching passers by to dilute their actual time.

    Maybe I dont have the right mentality, but as far as I can see, in the absence of an exam room (and even then possibly) I will not be able to spend continual periods of time on the crossword alone!

    1. A few of the regulars will be in an exam room getting timed in October, so that’s the ideal. I have the attention span of a ADHD hummingbird, but I usually do the crossword late and just check the time on the clock when I start and when I finish.
       1. Ditto me and the hummingbird. I can usually stay focussed for one puzzle, but the three in one session that Cheltenham competitors have to deal with would probably see me staring out of the window or at the back of someone’s head by around the middle of puzzle #2.
22. Those little breaks – thinking about work, dinner whatever – are a useful part of your solving time. I find that after such a break, a number of the more puzzling answers will usually pop out of nowhere! So no, don’t buy a chess clock. (But do take your phone off the hook.)
23. Do as I do..use your food timer. Unfortunately by the time I finish I could have roasted an ox!!!
    1. I use a food timer too.  It saves on arithmetic, and gives a nice sense of urgency.
24. This was fun – not so difficult judging by the lack of scribblings around the margins. My LOI was 2d (g) ARBO (g)RETA which was well worth waiting for.

    There are six left out of the blog:

    10a Disease reduced by exactly 50% in one area, part of Europe (6)
    I BERI (BERI) A. The peninsula of Spain & Portugal.

    11a Repackaged into new aid for all of us (10)
    NATIONWIDE. Anagram of words 2,3 & 4.

    17a US claim falsified in Oklahoma, say (7)
    MUSICAL. Anagram of first 2 words.

    25a Less shy as bachelor, having gained maturity (6)
    B OLDER

    4d Adapting, with changes, including an endangered species (5,5)
    GIANT P AN DA. Anagram of first word with AN inside.

    15d Easy task, as opposed to adult’s work (6,4)
    CHILDS PLAY

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