Times 24301 Oban Viaduct

58 comments on “Times 24301 Oban Viaduct”

1. Ouch! A bit harsh Jimbo.
   From a relative beginner’s point of view I liked this puzzle a lot. Only 2 words new to me, GRANADILLA and BACK-FORMATION, both gettable from wordplay, and satisfyingly I was able to solve the whole thing without any resort to aids. It still took quite a while and I have finished others a good deal faster. I particularly liked such as WITHDRAWN, WRENCH and perhaps my COD ABUTTER for their simplicity and their kick-yourself-for-not-getting-quickerness. Trite perhaps to experienced solvers but a good puzzle for persistent and patient newcomers who need a bit of encouragement.
2. made a nice change to be able to romp through it – I didn’t mind it at all with only Back Formation I didn’t understand (though got from wordplay).
3. I also liked this crossword. Dorsetjimbo should be less supercilious. Not every crossword should necessarily be difficult enough to give his mighty intellect a challenge.

   I laughed at 16ac, the latest homophone in what I remain convinced have become a deliberate tease.

   1. It’s not a question of difficulty. As I’ve said many times we must have easy puzzles for less experienced solvers. It’s much more a question of content and effort made by the setter, which I’ve said something about later down the blog.
   2. Agree. Encouraging to find someone else who is not impressed by the experts’ sneers. Just want some help and advice – not a cock comparing contest.
4. I so agree with the first comment. I don’t know why Dorsetjimbo bothers with The Times crossword.
   1. Go to the top of the blog, click on memories and then on good puzzles.
   2. Agree agree agree agree etc.
5. A very cruisy 11 min. Nothing outstanding, but wasn’t aware that the word laze was a back formation. Nevertheless, quite gruntled.
6. Heavens! I seem to have sparked a “have a go at Jimbo” day. In fact I find him to be one of the more apparently mortal bloggers, as well as always being funny, and ever conscious of the travails of new solvers. I think we need to remember that bloggers are volunteers (would you want to do it?) who provide an invaluable service to those of us who aspire to struggle less.
   PS
   Loved “gruntled” Ross.
   1. The setters are also providing an invaluable service and I think we should try to be fair to their efforts. I don’t know what they get paid, but it would not surprise me if they were not so very far off being volunteers too 😉
      1. When I did US puzzles for the NY Times in the early 90s, the going rate was $35 a puzzle. They didn’t lack for contributors, either, I think they could have paid $0 and got plenty.
         1. I believe the fee for a Times 15×15 is something like £200.
            1. Say, that is not a bad price. Maybe I’ll put my setter hat back on.

               I’d bet they don’t send you a 1099, either.

7. 35 minutes which I think has been my time give or take a minute for the last 4 puzzles (including Saturday and Sunday). This is a welcome streak of consistency after the traumas of the previous 5 or 6. Obviously I didn’t find it as easy as Jimbo did and at one point part way through I solved only 4 clues in 13 minutes.

   I don’t really understand BACK-FORMATION and can’t say I’ve ever heard of it despite having been taught English grammar at school. Maybe I was away that day.

8. Couldn’t time this one as it was done during several breaks in a job. But by no means difficult except for a few ponderings in the SW corner. Not getting the long one at 23ac for a while didn’t help. Not sure that “takes up” in 3dn is quite fair (=”takes above”?) — but it provides a good surface reading and some parallel with the clue at 22ac. Wonder how many non-poms (indeed, non-Londoners) will know the pronunciation /ˈhoʊbɚn/. At least, when I lived in the North of England, the tobacco of that name was not so pronounced. But let’s not provoke the Homophone-Hating Brigade!
9. I agree it wasn’t hard, but I didn’t know that “laze” was a back-formation so I have learned something. My favourite example of back-formation was always “to maffick”, from the celebrations of the relief of Mafeking.
10. I agree that this was much easier than average but for the “average” solver (ie those who would never ever qualify for the Championship)it is a good thing that occasionally we can not only finish but break half-an-hour (just). With respect, Jimbo, I think your comment is a little harsh – but your blogs are always good and well worth reading.
    Barry J
11. I was thinking of nanny as to nanny/nurse somebody & then onto to butter them up but i think your way maes more sense.

    Granadilla last in as i had to check it was real (and i didn’t just make it up)

12. Rather straightforward, but I was not so quick, about 30 minutes. I had a little trouble with ‘grenadilla’ because I could not get the Seville orange out of my brain.

    As for Oban, at least he didn’t clue it as ‘Scttish prt?’

13. This one didn’t give me any trouble but I agree with other posters that a range of difficulty is appropriate with the Times – if I want much more difficulty, I have Mephisto, Azed and the Listener, amongst others, to keep me occupied. Seven and a half mins which is fast for me. I agree with Jimbo that OBAN was very weak, but homophones are always risky.

    I think it’s okay to disagree with bloggers but not so much to criticize them personally – they all do a great job!

14. 5:06 for this one – it should have been sub-5 but I slipped up twice – once by lacking the confidence on subaltern=lieutentant to write in 3D on first look, and once by initially writing STATES at 10 until a voice said “Condition and states are not the same”. Also disagree with Jimbo’s harsh assessment – I rather like the geographical flavour of the surface reading for most of the acrosses in the top half, and far from awful, “Oban” is a pretty accurate version of a Cockney “Holborn”.
    1. It rather depends how you pronounce Oban. My pronunciation (which probably wouldn’t differ much from a native of Oban’s) certainly wouldn’t sound like a Cockney “Holborn”. bc
       1. Here’s a non-Cockney “Holborn”: http://forvo.com/word/holborn/

          Drop the H and it sounds to me exactly as I’d say “Oban”. Are there locals who would fail to understand such a pronunciation?

15. I don’t mind the odd easy puzzle, but I agree with Jimbo about the pungent awfulness of the Oban homophone. I’m not convinced by the “it’s so bad it’s good” defence, I’m afraid. bc
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation – interesting, I had never heard of this either. The most grating contemporary example would have to be “text” used as a verb, particularly when the speaker uses it as the past tense (“he text me yesterday”).

    Is 15A (An evangelist’s goal) MARK ?

    1. Yes, Mark
    2. Converting nouns into verbs is not back-formation. Back-formation is reversing the process of adding some prefix or suffix to produce a word which looks as if it previously had the pre/suffix added to it, but is actually a new word – such as (facetiously) gruntled or combobulated from the dis- words, or (though I didn’t know it) laze from “lazy”.
17. 12:58 .. held up by the dragon fruit and the Spanish fly, or was it the other way around?

    I’m rather partial to a grumpy old blogger. Keep up the good work, Jimbo.

    And the Oban clue is a real stinker.

    First in PALL MALL, last in GRANADILLA. COD 26a, where the surface sounds like something Julian Clary would say.

18. I thought that I was going to take the same time as yesterday, but some blind spots, largely in the SW corner, meant that it was 30 before I’d finished. I thought the clues were generally OK, but I didn’t particularly like 3; “Girl takes up instrument” for “girl is preceded by instrument” strikes me as rather clumsy, rather than cleverly deceptive with regard to the orientation of LUTE.
19. Doesn’t this clue lead to LITISGATE rather than LITIGATE?

    Paul S.

    1. The clue leads to “LITIGATE” if you read “one’s entrance” as “one has entrance”. Reading it as “1’s entrance” = ISGATE is a possible interpretation but not the only possibility.
20. 13:55, with one mistake – I put GRENADILLA for 13. Easy mistake to make – GRENADA is also a place (but not in Spain), and GRENADILLA is a type of wood (but not a fruit). Not sure why I was so slow with the rest of it if everybody else found it so easy.
    1. Chambers gives grenadilla as a synonym for granadilla.. so you do need to think geographically for this one
21. 12 minutes, nothing too tricky there, but I wasn’t sure on OBAN. True to heathen form my last in was MARK
22. 6.25 Pretty plain sailing although laze didn’t really help me at all so had to get all the checking letters before solving. OBAN? Well I know how it is pronounced , simply Oh Ban, Holborn in Cockney speak the same? I can’t really comment but it does seem a bit of a stretch to me , wouldn’t a Cockney pronounce the L?
    1. No-one in London pronounces the L – it’s like “Hoeb’n” – the stress is on the first vowel and the second one pretty much disappears – which to my ears matches the stress and second vowel of “Oban” – do the locals really pronounce the second vowel as in “ban”?
       1. Here’s “Holborn” in sound: http://forvo.com/word/holborn/
       2. I have heard Oh Ban but Oh Bin is possibly more common – i.e like your (Hoeb’n) so point taken.

    2. On Holborn, the short answer, I think, is that very few people (I’m sure there are some – there always are) would pronounce the L, whether Cockney or not. I agree with Peter B that OBAN is pretty much how you would expect an aitch-dropping Cockney to pronounce Holborn. Whether you like this sort of clue seems to me to depend on whether or not you dislike puns/homophones on principle, as Jimbo appears to do, because of the room for argument created by inevitable slight variations in pronunciation. The test for me is whether such variations pose a real obstacle to working out the answer. If they don’t, as seems to have been the case for all of us in this instance, then I can see no cause for complaint.

       I don’t agree with all Jimbo’s views, but I always find his blogs entertaining, informative and thought-provoking. More power to his elbow!

    3. Quite apart from the homophone issue – and yes, you either care or you don’t – this clue requires solvers to know the irregular pronunciation of a less than world famous London district, as well as the name of a Scottish port of no great consequence (I went there once and the only thing I can remember is watching two men hauling a dead deer out of dinghy).

       But my biggest gripes with the clue are that it’s very awkwardly cast, and barely cryptic at all. A grade A clunker. But then, I’m a grumpy old so and so myself.

23. I enjoy Jimbo’s blogs, but I’m afraid I found this more difficult than the Saturday prize puzzle.

    I can’t get 25a

    Andrew

24. It’s CR(ANN)Y with a cross reference to BLUBBER at 17dn.
25. Thanks Jackkt.

    I seem to be going backwards with crosswords this week!

    BW

    Andrew

26. I agree this was relatively easy, which for me translates to about 15-20 minutes. Last in for me: LUGSAIL, since I didn’t know ‘lugs’=’ears’, so had to guess. It sounded the most reasonable for a kind of sail. I can’t offer useful comments on Cockney pronunciations, so I don’t have anything to say about how good or bad OBAN sounds. But I can offer my thanks to all those who create the blogs on this site, for their time and effort, and I generally agree with Jimbo’s succinct summary of this puzzle, while realizing that a less demanding puzzle on occasion is something that is helpful to the general audience. Best regards to all.
27. Well, that turned an anodyne puzzle into something to talk about!

    As I’ve said above it’s not a matter of difficulty. We must have easier puzzles but easy should not equate to trite.

    A good puzzle contains a mixture of: clever, well hidden definitions; answers broken into interesting, less obvious pieces for cluing; misleading wordplay; a minimum of crossword clichés; and so on. This puzzle fails all of those tests. It’s both easy and dull and gives me the impression of being put together without a great deal of thought or ingenuity. In other words it’s corny.

    I’m always keen to congratulate a setter on a job well done. The obverse of that coin is that I should feel free to say the opposite when I believe it to be so.

    1. Here’s what I’d count as clichés in this puzzle:

       10 “out East” for removing E
       11 “abandoning” as removal indicator
       16 Cockney = drop an H
       21 unknown = Y (maybe not a cliché when it = the less common X or Z)
       22 “at first” as first letter indicator
       2 nanny=butter
       7 cricket side=ON
       12 Newspaper = Times (FT, Sun or Mail also clichés, not Guardian, Observer or (some hope) Daily Telegraph.
       20 divorcee = EX and court = CT

       There are other possible candidates like girl for Ann and Nancy, prison = can and horse-drawn carriage = fly. But in these cases there are quite a few alternatives so for me they don’t quite count. I also have sympathy for setters trying to find fair but original indicators for things like the first letter of a word. In these cases, I’d prefer a cliché to something dodgy.

       I have no idea how 10 clichés in 9 clues out of 28 compares to the norm – I’ll take a count tomorrow if it’s the more difficult puzzle I’m expecting. Other bloggers should not feel any obligation to start counting cliches.

       1. one person’s cliché is another’s familiar & comforting friend 😉
    2. So is it actually possible to make a relatively easy puzzle without any cliches at all?

       I would be inclined to say that all the simple and straightforward ways of making a cryptic clue have been discovered and are known. The only hope is to use new slang and recently-coined acronyms, and wait for some more famous people to die so they can be used.

28. Good to see it wasn’t just me – I had GRENADILLA as well.

    Tom B.

29. Well, I liked OBAN – it made me laugh. And it’s exactly how a Cockney would say Holborn. And it’s a very central, important and well-known area of London. I should know – I live there.

    If you’re bothered by clichés and conventions, crosswords may not be the ideal hobby.

    1. Seconded – I thought ‘Olborn was hilarious.

       But I had ‘grenadilla’ for GRANADILLA! Requiem!

    2. “If you’re bothered by clichés and conventions, crosswords may not be the ideal hobby.”

       My second laugh out loud on the subject of today’s puzzle. The first was spotting Oban for (H)olborn and realising that it was Jimbo’s day for blogging it.

30. Hear, hear to all that from a Scotland-born London-bred lover of clues that raise a grin however irritating they may be to some!
31. I also found this puzzle very agreeable. Maybe not full of amazing clues but full of the sort of clues that makes the Times puzzle what it is: entertaining, reliable and subtly misleading. That in itself is suely a commendation and a reason to rejoice.
    Maybe I’m just too easy to please 🙂
32. Who will join me and put to the sword the appalling cretins who “operate” the Times online crossword “service”.
33. The system is a bit different to the NYT, which takes puzzles from anyone – you have to get onto a panel of about 15 setters by sending some sample puzzles to the xwd editor. My guess is that something like 95% of sample puzzles sent to the Times are unsuccessful.
34. to linxit – “Grenada” is an island in the Caribbean on which some Spaniards may live, and “grenadilla” is a frequently used spelling for the name of the passion fruit according to my Google search. “Granadilla” undoubtedly is a better answer, but I submit that “grenadilla” is correct as well.

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