Times 24282 – New Age Detox?

30 comments on “Times 24282 – New Age Detox?”

1. The big ones down were a little too obvious, and gave you a lot of letters quickly. You only have to see ‘liver’ to guess ‘silver’, and the cat’s out of the bag. The Diet of Worms is another chestnut.

   I did waste some time under the mistaken impression that 1 across might end in ‘bible’, but found it not so.

   I rather liked ‘Dumbarton’, although the inhabitants may not appreciate the slur on their aesthetic taste. But it was a bit obvious as well.

   I never heard of Trenet, but what else could it be? I suppose Debussy could complain, but titles can’t be copyrighted.

2. I had a different experience since I needed all the crossing letters to get DIET OF WORMS which made that side harder than it might have been. I probably ended up taking an hour but I was also watching the Tour De France (which was a key stage today) so I don’t know how much to discount for that.
3. I might have achieved a PB at 15 minutes today but for 6dn which I needed to look up in a list of poets. For a while I became fixated on the idea that it was an anagram of L (money) + WITH CASE which fitted all the checking letters but obviously wasn’t going to work. I should have given up on this idea sooner.

   Is a muffin a pastry?

   5dn is a bit odd. If I have it correctly it’s (a)ITCH, H being the first letter of “hurt”, but exactly how the wording of the clue is supposed to work I’m still not sure.

   1. (I)rritation (T)hat (C)an (H)urt!
      1. Oh no!

         Thanks, Ross.

   2. See Wiki article on muffins. It mentions specifically English muffins as having “thick, fluffy pastry”, so I let it pass without comment. In Australia these days an unqualified muffin is a cake.

      Sorry for omitting ITCH. It was my first in and I was not compos mentis enough at the time to realise it was an &lit. Sorry to the setter also if I appeared dismissive of it. An &lit is always worthy of a mention.

      1. Thanks for the link to English muffins. I might have tried a bit harder before asking the question. I think a muffin is a cake rather than a pastry to most people in the UK under the age of about 40 for which the coffee chains may be to blame.

         I’m glad there was a simpler solution to explain ITCH. My brain was hurting trying to get my version to work logically.

         I didn’t spot any errors in the ST puzzle itself this week but it has been posted as the puzzle for 18th July.

         1. E. David has them in her Bread book – a special kind of roll, used split & toasted under an exactly correct eggs benedict. Not pastries there. And there is stuff about the muffin man in Drury Lane to be researched. 12m today, luck with the gk again and nothing I didn’t understand.
            1. Having found time to consult them I note that none of the usual dictionaries directly supports Muffin = Pastry
               1. Collins has pastry: 3. an individual cake or pastry pie which may support pastry = muffin, although it seems to be a wider definition than normally accepted these days.
                  1. I’m with E. David on this – muffins are definitely at the bread end of the spectrum. But I think kororareka has identified the setter’s get-out clause: “pastry” once had a wider definition than now, covering everything from bread and rolls to the fluffier crusty stuff we expect to find in pies, cakes, tarts etc.

                     1. SOED says pastry “now” means articles of food made of or with paste, pies & tarts only. Back reference supports paste as flour moistened and kneaded, but “now” only with fats added. This is not a coffee shop muffin either, which has eggs and is a cake. I am solving this puzzle “now” and I did not like pastry=muffin one little bit!
                        1. I didn’t like pastry=muffin much myself! As I said earlier, for me the thing is some kind of bread. Certainly, the objects sold as muffins in supermarkets these days are closer to bread than anything else. I suspect that the definition of “muffin” has become a rather slippery concept, tending to connote whatever the speaker is used to. To me your “coffee shop muffin” would suggest something more like a scone. But there you go.
                  2. Thanks, K, I had seen that one so I specified “directly”. I’m still definitely of the opinion that it was dodgy cluing
4. A personal victory as I believe this has been my first sub 10 minute ever, although not sure why. I think it was a wave-length thing with both of the long ones jumping out at first read. Indeed the entire left hand side came at first read, with a small hesitation in the NE getting 6d and 8d not knowing properly either THEREAT as “for that reason” (i thought it more likely to be positional) or LUCRETIUS (other than it was probably right). Last one in was 18 without getting the wordplay.

   I await with bated breath for the sub 5s….

5. Oh no! Not another “easy” one.

   Saturday continued a string of stinkers so was happy to gallop away this morning until felled at Beecher’s second time round with THE DIET OF WORMS which I have vaguely heard of but couldn’t even guess.

   Discarded LEONID early as couldn’t see LEO as house. In the end just stuck it in. Charles Trenet is one for those old enough to remember Two Way Family Favourites.

   Surprised by ague as a fit and kicked myself over NB as a note (thinking musical as usual).

   Can’t help thinking of Ross Fisher in the dunes at Turnberry and just know in my bones that the cricket is far from over.

6. As further evidence of incipient dementia, despite addictions to coffee and crosswords, having entered THREAT on the dubious basis of removing EN (English) from THREATEN, I have spent the last 10 minutes wondering about THEREAT, a new word to me. I was pronouncing it THEORY AT.

   Can’t wait for the day when THE DIET OF WORMS becomes a “chestnut”.

   1. I can’t say that I use thereat regularly. It sounds vaguely legal in the “for that reason” sense but none of my dictionaries hint at that provenance or continued usage. The plural “thereats” is pronounced “the reets”, I believe, as in “putting on thereats”, a kind of reverse plain English legalese.
7. am in Toronto on a long journey around the North american continent…so late in posting…a delicious canter…i too wondered at Muffin but what else could it have been. lucretius would be my COD and it was my last in…get thinking of Locke for some reason as the poet even though he was a philosopher!
   anyway nothing too hard!
8. Just under 40 minutes, with one missing (LEONID). I hadn’t heard of it, and I’d forgotten that House could mean zodiac sign. I was quite pleased to get LUCRETIUS & THE DIET OF WORMS without aids.

   Well done England!

9. 9:47 – so not that easy here. Didn’t see LONG JOHN SOLVER easily, and struggled with Lucretius, which was last in. After Plotinus the other day, wondering whether I should pay more attention to classical times …
10. I was beginning to think I was quite clever after completing in 25 mins, but judging from the times of others, this puzzle seems to be viewed generally as a bit of doddle. Like Peter B, I didn’t find it that easy, and was pleased to get LEONID (which I’d never heard of) and LUCRETIUS (whom I had heard of but had forgotten) from the wordplay.
11. What do you call a pirate doing a crossword?

    Strangely, this was my first answer simply because I decided to break with tradition and tackle the long answers first – for whatever reason (vague memory of a previous clue somewhere?) I got this immediately and a couple of its checking letters made for rapid solves elsewhere and my one quibble, “into” at 12A which doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. It’s actually quite distracting, making me look for an insertion device that wasn’t in play.

    Had never heard of LUCRETIUS and it held me up until I’d exhausted all possible wordplay bits, but in the end (solving online) I got it finished in just over 7 minutes.

12. Twenty-two minutes here, so that makes it an easy one for me, though the Trenet reference in 3 meant nothing to me and I did not know LEONID except as the first name of a Soviet president. I was ashamed not to see LUCRETIUS earlier than I did, having considered LUCRE for ‘money’ from the initial L. I was also slow to get 2 down.

    Is it now routine to have an answer (and sometimes wordplay) that is in the Jumbo replicated in the daily the following week? It happened last week (actually I think the same long answer appeared in the Jumbo and the Saturday puzzle) and possibly the week before. Today it’s the fishy answer.

    A nice bunch of clues, particularly the pun-based ones.

13. 6.34. Most things fell into place quickly although it was fortunute that I knew of Trenet and LEONID and the Diet of Muffins , sorry , Worms. Scottish towns shouldn’t be a problem for me. I half thought of INTENDER for 4 but dismissed it quickly enough and spent the last 30 seconds on LUCRETIUS. Had in my mind an English name at first. Had heard the name but couldn’t have identified what he was.
    1. Got there in the end, not a difficult puzzle by any means although it didn’t quite suit me. I didn’t know Trenet or Leonid, the diet of worms was in my brain but lodged somewhere not easily accessible, and for some reason I was slow to consider Latin poets and was held up on Lucretius. About 30 mins for a puzzle that should have been quicker. bc
14. 12:02 here. A slow start but a quick finish, as I only had three answers in after 5 minutes (ITCH, LEAGUE and THREAT). One of those mornings when each clue I read meant absolutely nothing to me. I finally managed to see the two long down answers and got on the right wavelength.
15. Sorry for entering here way late, but it couldn’t be helped. Expect very few to see this, but, for the record, about 35 minutes, first entry ITCH, last entry LEONID. Didn’t know M. Trenet or LUCRETIUS, but they were gettable. I don’t have a real COD nomination today, but that’s not a complaint, I thought they were mostly fair clues. Regards to all.
    1. Likewise for the record, 15:07 – very enjoyable puzzle. This is about the right level of difficulty in a daily puzzle for me.
16. Nicely balanced puzzle. 27 min because I stalled a couple of times. Spotted LEONID quickly, but couldn’t justify the house = LEO. Can’t believe that this is a new use of house to me, but cannot recall seeing it used in this context. MUFFIN = pastry I also jibbed at, but then again, muffins are certainly made by pastry cooks, so OK. The DIET OF WORMS is definitely an old chestnut in crosswords in general, but I am not sure is true for The Times. COD 5 dn ITCH. Sneaky!

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