Times 24255: going round in circles twice

50 comments on “Times 24255: going round in circles twice”

1. The “greengrocer’s apostrophe” is one used incorrectly, traditionally by greengrocers on chalkboards saying things like “carrot’s” or “cabbage’s”
2. funny you ‘parsed’ it that way – I suppose it is I’s for “one is”, but I thought it easier to have as definition “Indian perhaps one” and then the word play is simply “is to tap up”

   aside from that was a nice solid grid, done in about 20 mins, delayed in getting 1A by putting ROTATED for 4d (quite how TAT is little, I’ll never know) and then looking for an anagram of (addition)&(trick). When 5d went in it was obvious, but didnt get the word play until later.

   Other guesses were that WHATNOT could be a stand, and that NET could mean TOILS (on the basis of TOILE being material) but neither were massive leaps of faith.

   One question for the experts – what is the commonly accepted threshold for using the same word in the clue that appears in the wordplay – that is to say in 13D the setter uses “did almost” for DI, whereas he could have said “made almost” and left the solver to equate made to did in the same way that in 15D hurt means pained. I am assuming that two letters is small enough to fit in the IS/IN/ON category of straight repetition, but would a setter use a three letter word verbatim, or even a ‘shortened’ four letter one.

   I suppose it is all in the overall package,and if you can get away with hiding a straight repeat of a six letter word so that it is not obvious and the solver kicks themselves when finding it eventually, then it could be deemed a success?

   1. I think you’ve talked yourself into the right answer. No rule: just what works best taking fairness and surface reading into account (the “overall package”). And clues that work more simply than average, like your six-letter word, are a great way to trip up experienced solvers who expect more complexity.
3. I shared George’s apostrophic bewilderment. I stared at the blank spaces for some time before ‘! emerged. I can’t say I was impressed. Toils=net was also a puzzlement. In fact, I struggled the whole way around. COD to CORONATION, despite its “OO=spectacles”.
   1. The “greengrocer’s apostrophe” is not restricted to the UK, but I doubt anywhere else has an “Apostrophe Protection Society.” Here’s a magnificent example from their website.

      1. The misuse of apostrophes is indeed widespread in Australia (we could field a competitive team in the World Apostrophe’s Abuse Cup), but associating that misuse with greengrocers isn’t, as far as I know. In fact, I can’t recall hearing the term greengrocer for many a year. They’ve mostly turned into fancy delicatessens.
      2. http://www.deppenapostroph.de/ (fools apostrophe)
         In german the apostrophe is much less used than in english and the rules are different. But many try to be ‘cool’ by adding an english touch to their slogans. Therefore misplaced apostrophes are widely spread.
         While I don’t know about a dedicated society, there is a wealth of websites that collect examples and have a devoted following.
4. What Paul said, and the greengrocer’s error is using the possessive instead of the plural.
5. 8:28 here – 1D 8 and 26 all went in on first look, and helped so supply checking letters for the rest. Last in were 7 and 12 – I alays seem to forget the Jutes among the old invading tribes, and had pondered a reversal of NAPE but (fairly stupidly) as the beginning rather than the outside. {toils=a net or trap-like situation} was new for me. 1A, 16, 13 entered without full wordplay understanding.

   21A is a nice example of a type of clue which makes the punctuation crucially important rather than something to ignore.

   Never sure whether “spectacles=OO” is supposed to be a “reverse rebus” pictorial definition, or to refer to “pair of spectacles” in cricket – a duck=0 in both innings.

6. What is a LONDON EYE? Not in any dictionary I have. And I have many. Are we to expect that answers will be in reliable dictionaries?
   Took about 25 mins on this except for 23dn which took another 25.

   1. Biggest Ferris Wheel in the Europe, according to Wiki:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Eye

7. 35 minutes today, my worst time this week but still not bad for me, so I now expect a stinker tomorrow on my watch.

   Once again I solved more clues from definitions and took much of the wordplay on trust. Last in were 17, which held me up because the definition was not obvious, but when I concentrated on the wordplay and had all the checking letters the answer became obvious, and 1ac which I really should have got much sooner but the early checking letters led me to think an anagram of “trick” may be involved somewhere and I wasted time on that. I had correctly identified “going back in time” as the definition but I was thinking more of a Tardis scenario rather than the clock literally going back.

   I think I have met “toils” meaning a net used in trapping before, but only in crosswords.

   1. I forgot to mention that in a traditional coconut shy one throws balls at coconuts on upright stands. The object is to knock the coconut to the ground and thus win it.
8. Can you believe I spent the last ten pondering ‘thaw’ – until I saw the obvious answer.

   I had not heard of ‘London Eye’, and did not understand the greengrocer thing either, but got the answers right.

   I had heard of ‘whatnot’, ‘coconut shy’, and ‘Jute’ which certainly makes those a lot easier.

   Never did figure out the wordplay for ‘West End’, just put it in.

   Here in the US we say ‘counterclockwise’, but that would never fit a daily puzzle.

   My COD is ‘bone china’, with such a nicely hidden literal.

9. We get greengrocer’s all the time in the online Telegraph, eg ‘Britain grind’s to shuddering halt in blizzards’, ‘MP’s abscent from House’, ‘thunder and lightening hit flower show’etc etc. And after four months I still can’t log in to CluedUp!
10. 6:35, held up only by NETS (19dn), THAW (20ac), and the FINER/TONIC crossing (9ac/2dn).  I took a surprisingly long time to think of POE as the “poet” in 23dn – even ignoring my obsession, this was a kickself like those mentioned by fathippy2.

    The greengrocer’s APOSTROPHE (21ac) eludes all standard dictionaries except the full OED (draft addition June 2002), where the first allusion is from 1991 and the first citation from 1992.  I liked the reference, but it’s a shame – not to mention ironic – that the clue itself is inaccurate.  To get the answer, we must read GREENGROCER’S as a string that offers an apostrophe.  The cryptic reading is therefore “What {STRING} offering here with unusual accuracy?”, which is gibberish.  For the wordplay to work, the clue would have to be “What greengrocer’s is offering here with unusual accuracy?”, but then the surface reading would be gibberish.  Admittedly, it’s not easy to devise an accurate version, but being a Times setter isn’t meant to be easy, and basic accuracy is surely a sine qua non.

    Clues of the Day: 16ac (PROVERB) and 26ac (DRESSED TO KILL).

    1. Whoops!  The surface reading of my accurate rewording (“What greengrocer’s is offering here with unusual accuracy?”) isn’t gibberish, because “greengrocer’s” can be used elliptically to refer to a greengrocer’s shop.  So it is easy to devise an accurate version after all.
11. Well, you’ve lost me Mark (and not for the first time). And btw, how can anyone finishing this monster in 6:35 claim to have been held up?
    Came home with a flourish after lamentable start.
    I just thought APOSTROPHE was a neat joke (albeit a type of clue new to me). And since glheard isn’t sure and Mark doesn’t explain the obvious, is THAW what you people call a CD (I have been pondering the meaning of CD for a while), as per SAVED BY… which actually I rather liked?
    But, TOILS is plural in the clue (19D) so why NET in the answer, or am I being thick or pedantic.
    1. CD = cryptic definition – clues which are only cryptic defs have no wordplay. 8D today is a good example – it just has allusions (“round” as in boxing, “ringing” to suggest bell). CDs were arguably the original cryptic clue back in the late 20s, and old Times puzzles could contain several (when Jimbo moaned about 5 or so in the same puzzle, I found a 1960s example with 19!). Nowadays you normally only get one or two pure CDs a puzzle, though you may get a CD added to a plain def., or used as the definition in a clue with wordplay – some would call finer=magistrate a “cryptic definition” as you’d never make that equation in real life.

       20A THAW is not a CD – you get THAW by changing the last letter of THAT. NB: Using an insignificant-looking word like ‘that’ as a crucial component is a classic setter’s trick, and when one letter of a word has to be changed, they don’t always indicate which letter you have to change it to.

       TOILS: look at toil² in your new Chambers and note “usu. in plural”. TOILS=NET is weird but apparently true.

       Don’t worry about Mark’s speedy time (I’m trying not to!). When you’re really quick, it’s possible to be “held up” for a minute by a clue or two and still beat 5 minutes, given the right puzzle.

       1. Thanks as always Peter.
          Re your earlier comment, I think some of our friends across the pond also have an aversion to the apostrophe problems. Given your apparent omniscience you will no doubt recall the much quoted graffiti (?) in New York, I think, where under NIGGER’S OUT someone has added BUT HE WILL BE BACK IN A MINUTE.
          1. New to me but very good (the reply). Let’s keep “Foreign language pluralisation and when it should be observed in English” for a rainy day.
       2. Incidentally, my reason for thinking THAW might be a CD was that snow/ice is a weather feature that finally changes to a thaw. If nothing else this shows that I am beginning to think deviously (sorry – laterally) if rather fancifully.
          1. What you saw was perfectly OK. I failed to say that this clue is a “sem-&lit” – you’ve got “feature of weather”=THAW plus the wordplay – which is enough for a cryptic clue, and adding the wordplay makes the whole clue into an “extended definition” with more detail. If you see the answer to the extended def first, it’s easy to miss the wordplay – I did something similar with 11A in yesterday’s puzzle.
    2. Sorry.  By “string” I mean a uninterpreted series of characters (often just letters, but here including an apostrophe).  In an anagram clue, for instance, the anagram fodder is treated not as one or more words that mean something, but as a meaningless string that needs rearranging.  That explains Peter’s complaint a few days ago about the word “appear” in the clue “Various patterns appear in part of church” (TRANSEPT): although in the surface reading “patterns” is a plural noun, in the cryptic reading it must be treated as a meaningless string, and thus as grammatically singular.  As Peter said, “appearing” avoids this problem, because it can be used with both plural and singular subjects.  (You sometimes find setters using modals like WILL, CAN and MAY for the same reason.)

       It’s easy to get these things straight if you write down the clue with anything that needs to be treated as a string clearly identified as such – this prevents you having irrelevant thoughts derived from the meaning of what needs to be treated as a string.  I like to use something like “{STRING}” myself, as “string” has the advantage of being grammatically singular.  Applying this to the clue that Peter was complaining about, you get “Various {STRING} appear in part of church”, and it should be obvious that the verb “appear” doesn’t fit grammatically with its (singular) subject.  (Doing this might also make you wonder about the suitability of “various” as an anagram indicator, but that’s another matter.)

       In today’s clue for APOSTROPHE, the surface reading requires you to read “greengrocer’s” as “greengrocer is”, which is fair enough.  But for the cryptic reading you can’t read “greengrocer’s” in that way, because it isn’t a greengrocer (or the string GREENGROCER) that “is offering” an apostrophe – what’s offering an apostrophe is the string GREENGROCER’S.  So, applying the above method to this clue, we get “What {STRING} offering here with unusual accuracy?”, and it should (now!) be obvious that the cryptic reading lacks a main verb.  (On the cryptic reading, the clue is rather like “What Brian eating?” – gibberish.)

       My suggested remedy for the cryptic reading was to make it “What {STRING} is offering here …”, but I thought this would ruin the surface reading.  Only after my first post did I realize that it does make sense to talk about what (a) greengrocer‘s is offering, because a greengrocer’s is a greengrocer’s shop.  So the remedy does work after all.

12. Sorry Mark, it was vinyl1 who didn’t explain why THAW was obvious. Vinyl1 could have fit a Bruckner symphony in today but he still beat me by miles.
    1. I actually played the Bizet/Chabrier shaded dog with Morel and the RPO, but that is only 35 minutes, and I still had the whole SW. A side of guitar transcriptions of Carolan left only ‘thaw’ – which I then saw. D’oh!
13. I started at a gallop but got held up in the SW where I coined Insited to go with the homophone at 14. This obviously made 15 impossible until eventually I arrived at Curtained and Incited.

    I had no problem with the Apostrophe clue because I have seen versions of it many times. This clue has a nice surface, at least for British solvers, and despite Mark’s misgivings, I thought it was clever.

    Interesting to hear that they don’t say anticlockwise in America. Pity the French, they have to say “dans le sens inverse des aiguilles d’une montre”

    1. How marvellous.
       I just love this site, it makes me laugh and makes my day.
14. 13 minutes here, no real holdups apart from 17A, which George doesn’t even mention. I got stuck on the notion of it being the name of something in space, e.g. NEPTUNE, NEREIDS, some star perhaps? Nothing fit the wordplay so I came back to it at the end and quickly realised “restricted” was part of the definition, so it had to be N(ew) + ARROWS. We may have had this argument before, but can arrows be classed as weapons? It’s like saying a bullet is a weapon. Hmph!
    1. Interesting. Both Collins and COED describe an arrow as a weapon in their first definition, but neither mentions “weapon” at all when defining “bullet”.

       This leads me to think there must be a difference between a bullet and an arrow in this respect but I can’t quite see it at the moment.

       1. It could just be inconsistency – it must be very hard to avoid that across a whole dictionary.  But if there must be a difference, how about this: a bullet is useless without a gun, but you can do serious damage armed with just an arrow.
15. 9.31 Got a good start with 1d and 26 coming immediately and the other two long perimter entries fairly quick.However a lot of clues required some thought – 16,17,18,19 and so on. JUTE is always a familiar word for me from the other meaning , having worked in the jute spinning industry (now long gone from UK) in Dundee for 15 years.
    Liked the clue for LONDON EYE. Without the easyish long entries could have been double the time
16. I took a rather long time, 40 minutes. What held me up for some time was putting ROTATED for 4 down. I did wonder why TAT rather than TAD, say, was clued as ‘little’, but entered it anyway, thus making it impossible 1 and 10 impossible to solve. I must have wasted almost 10 minutes over this. I liked the anagram in 26, and 16 was clever. I liked the basic idea of 21, but it struck me as faulty for the reasons Mark has given. I detest ‘spectacles’ for OO. Too twee and not even apt (where’s the bridge?).
17. 44 mins. Like fathippy2, I also get held up by putting ROTATED for 4d. I was eventually left with only 1a & 10, and it took several minutes to realise my mistake.
    I have long been an opponent of the greengrocer’s apostrophe, so that went straight in on the first pass. NET=TOILS was new to me, but it went in fairly quickly anyway.
    COD was 3 (I’m sure I’ve come across spectacles=OO somewhere previously)
18. Comfortable cruise of 17m with curtained and thaw last in. Enjoyed 3d and of course the London Eye being proper nouns need not be in the dic. Our village had a greengrocery run by a Mrs Jones and when it was redecorated in the 70’s it became Jone’s.
    1. We have a Tapa’s Bar in Birmingham. The owner must have got sick of Lynne Truss fans complaining about it so he eventually put a white sticker over the apostrophe. But it keeps falling off. It’s just down the road from the sandwich bar that sells panninies
       1. “Panini’s” (not yet seen in real life) would be a real gem. But I’m still giggling at “variou’s” in the picture I linked way up above this.
    2. re fmks greengrocery
       In the 70’s or in the 70s?
       1. Infectious disease, innit?
          1. 1970’s used to be the norm, now it would usually be 1970s (likewise for capitalised abbreviations – “LPs and CDs”). An apostrophe can still be useful to avoid confusion – Birchfield in the 1996 version of Fowler gives “The class of ’61” as an example, also “Dot your i’s and cross your t’s” and “there are three i’s in inimical”.
19. Unless I get on to it early and get some of the US/Australian crowd, when I write a blog I don’t get to come back to things until much much later (nearly 12 hours in this case and many many comments).

    I had not heard of the greengrocer’s apostrophe, though I get it now. My usual rule of thumb on what to include in the blog is anything either I want to talk about, or I think won’t be easily seen from the clue or from checking letters, which was why 17 N,ARROWly missed out. Hamlet refers to arrows as weapons.

    “Indian perhaps one” was probably meant as the definition (setter, you may write your intention in a brown paper bag and leave it behind the third stall from the right at Asheville Airport), but late last night it seemed really awkward. IS indicating S appears regularly in barred-grid puzzles.

    It didn’t strike me until reading the comments, but it is COUNTERCLOCKWISE in the US, and it came up last week that I was saying ANTICLOCKWISE (in a discussion on angles between planes) and kept getting corrected.

20. Another 25 minute standard puzzle. Enjoyable but hardly memorable.

    I’ve won a prize at a coconut shy George when I was 17 at Tooting Fair. I gave it to the girl who was with me and she complained that it wasn’t a teddy bear! One learns some lessons early in life. I could gripe in the clue about “given away” because they aren’t – they’re won but sans fair rien.

    I’m intrigued by the people who haven’t heard of the infamous grocer and his apostrophe. The education system of the 1950s dinned such things into us – something that I suspect doesn’t happen now.

    1. Interestingly, the apostrophe in the possessive, as in “Jim’s reply” is itself a greengrocer’s apostrophe from the 15th century. In Indo-European languages, the case-endings are firmly attached to their nouns, and so they were in Old English and Middle English.

       Folk-etymology for “Jim his reply” is the excuse usually given.

21. No time to post due to constant interruption. But I found it on the tougher side of medium. I was held up by the spectacles for a bit, even though I saw the device; I didn’t believe it was actually being used. ‘Net’ was new, and like other non-UK types, I wasn’t familiar with poor apostrophe use being pinned on greengrocers. I got this from the checking letters. I’d never heard of COCONUT SHY either, solved from wordplay alone. As noted, US usage is ‘counterclockwise’. Once, on a visit to Ireland, I was in a shop in Kerry, where as a typical American tourist I was about to drive around the Ring of Kerry to take in the scenery. The shopkeeper heard this and asked: “Anticlock?”. Me: “Why would I need an antique clock?” This exchange repeated itself a few times before the shopkeeper, realizing he was dealing with daft American, amended the question, with heavy emphasis, to “Anticlock…-WISE?”. Actually happened. Regards to all.
22. Thanks for ‘thaw’, Vinyl1. I didn’t get that one. I loved the spectacles in ‘coronation’ and the greengrocer’s apostrophe, although this is terribly unfair to US solvers, and apparently so is ‘anticlockwise’. What do you guys say? Widdershins?

    Clock joke (abbreviated): boy goes into clock shop, asks the owner if they have a clock made out of potatoes. ‘No’, he says. ‘What do you want one of those for, you stupid boy?’ He replies, ‘Because my mum says, if I don’t get up at eight o’clock, I’ll lose my job’.

    Does this work in the USA?

    1. Hi nitromoron. This definitely does not work in the US, and I don’t get it.
       1. It’s a homophone: “if I don’t get a potato clock”.  I’ll put it in my mental joke book next to:

          Q.  Where do you go to weigh a pie?
          A.  Somewhere over the rainbow.

          1. That’s where I put you, dear.
23. 40 mins here.

    I was surprised to see the London Eye given an outing -isn’t it just a bit too new for the Miss Havisham world of the Times Xword?

24. Does work in the north east either

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