Times 24,306 – Having a Guinness in County Down

29 comments on “Times 24,306 – Having a Guinness in County Down”

1. A little over 20 mins; slow this morning probably as a result of a rather nice bottle of Margaret River Red. Held up, inexplicably, by LENS — well ?E?S has quite a number of possibilities. Haven’t seen “Indo-China” with a hyphen before. Did Leyden use one? No COD today … hard to pick one from a set of generally pretty good clues (except for the cryptic def at 4ac).
2. 5dn refers to “personal” at 18: “personal packets” being “one’s boats”.
   Since when is Indochina (Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia) a peninsula?
   1. See this link re the Peninsula.
      1. Thanks – I wasn’t aware of the wider meaning of Indochina which I think is most commonly used to refer to what was French Indochina.
3. 8:56, with half to one minute for LENS at the end. Here’s the kind of lens that came to mind eventually.

   5D also took longer than it should have done.

4. 27 min of fits and starts. Generally enjoyable. Nice to see that old crossword chestnut ANENT reappearing after what, on reflection, has been a rather extended holiday. CANTILENA was new, and needed some dictionary work, otherwise none too taxing in the general knowlege department.
5. 45 minutes with a couple of cheats along the way, that is to say I looked up some guessed answers as I went along instead of waiting until I had completed the whole puzzle as these words were unknown to me: ANENT and CANTILENA, the latter despite having a degree in music. Oh, and I also checked that bull’s-eye could be a type of LENS.

   Once again rather a lot of the answers went in without fully understanding how the clues worked but by the time I came here I had worked them all out except IDLER at 22dn where I feared that the setter was requiring the removal of the first TWO letters from “jailer”. Glad to find out I was wrong but I have not heard of “tiler” in this context so I would never have got it.

6. Re burn one’s boats
   burn = destroying; one’s=18(D); boats= packets
   1. Could someone explain how 18=ones?

      On a different clue 6D, could someone explain how singer=TIT?

      Thanks.

      Ravinder

7. Very hard work with LENS unsolved.
   In-solve checks for PIBROCH and ANENT (must make a list of chestnuts). IDLER and TITBIT entered unexplained (have only just figured why TIT is a singer).

   Sorry to be a bore but could someone explain ellipsis clues as in 25/26ac as they always/usually (?) appear to be solvable discretely, especially as here where the answers seem to have no connection?

8. Barry: it’s just something you find from time to time. Almost always, as here, the two clues are unconnected. But using the ellipses means that the “regulation” that clues should be whole phrases or sentences can be met. Still … watch out for the odd situation where they are connected.
   1. Thanks Alec. There are always exceptions, dammit.
      1. Back in the days of yore Barry (circa 1950s) they used to join four or five clues together in this way. Sometimes one needed info from the following clue or even both the previous and the following clue and sometimes one didn’t. Horrendous stuff!
         1. Back in April when I decided to start doing these things I looked at the Guardian as well as the Times and decided on the latter because I would get lost with all the cross-referenced clues in the former; thus it still lives in the days of yore.
            I often wonder whether there is a difference BW and AW (before and after Wikipedia). In the old days did solvers (and setters for that matter) all have the Encyclopedia Britannica in the living room?
            1. No, not Britannica, but Pears Cyclopaedia, a fascinating volume. Can it still be got? Anyone?
               1. … is still sold.
9. After 60 minutes I had all but ‘lens’. I went back an hour later and saw it at once, as often happens. I had been thinking of the bull’s-eye lantern without being sure how to apply it, and then I made the leap.

   I had the knowledge for ‘pibroch’, ‘violinist’ ‘argosy’, and ‘deciduous’, but I am sure there were some who did not. The only thing I didn’t know was ’tiler’, but the answer is quite obvious from the definition.

   My biggest problem on a puzzle like this is getting started. I had ‘exalt’, ‘rotunda’, and ‘violinist’ early on, but I had trouble getting the big ones which would have helped. Progress in the NE and SW was very slow, and I had a hard time with ‘obstacle’ and ‘Indo-China’. But I find this more enjoyable than a puzzle where I just pop in the answers almost immediately.

10. I found this quite difficult, probably because I did not know Broch, Tiler and Anent. I ended with four interlocking answers in the SE. First was Lens, difficult, despite knowing that my name is often used to clue boy. Then Sheffield, which led to Staff. I was not as keen as Uncle Yap on this one. I read it as a DD with an otiose “used” stuck on the end to make a clumsy &Lit. Finally I got Anent because it could not be anything else.

    As a child, watching westerns I used to think that sidewinder was a cowboys’ term of abuse for an untrustworthy person. It was not until much later that I learnt the literal meaning. The metaphorical meaning seems to be in most American dictionaries but not the standard British references.

11. I found this tricky too, about half an hour or so. I was timing it but got a phone call just as I finished and forgot to stop the stopwatch. Maybe I was tired after working all weekend, but I just couldn’t get on the setter’s wavelength. Only one I didn’t know was tiler = doorkeeper. Last one in was LENS, same as most others by the look of it.
12. I found this a bit trickier than most Monday puzzles since I wasn’t familiar with CANTILENA, BROCH and ANENT (though I knew the last was a word). Bulls-eye for lens was also unusual. However, none of this held me up much, so I completed it in 25 minutes.
    Like the blogger, I liked the clue to 10. I also liked the Stern/bow pun in 13, but I don’t really see the clue as a double definition; Isaac Stern was a violinist (and a very fine one).
13. 12.50 Thought this was of a bit more than standard difficulty with some relatively obscure words , PIBROCH,ANENT, CANTILENA. I failed to get the Stern reference but the answer was obvious enough. 15 was my COD.
    I was 50/50 between CANTILENA and CANTINELA as I didn’t know the word but , eventually decided it was more like a 60/40 option so plumped for the right one.
    Then spent a couple of minutes with the same last one as a few of you. BENS,KENS,TEDS,NEDS,DENS,GEDS… got there evetually in my pedestrian fashion
14. 11:22 .. I wouldn’t have bet the farm on either CANTILENA or LENS, but had the feeling that spending additional time on them wasn’t going to change anything. I knew I knew PIBROCH, but couldn’t see it until that ‘H’ arrived. Nice, breezy puzzle for me.

    First in GABLE, last LENS.

    COD .. The Times puzzle so often raises a smile when it invokes the gentlemen of the cloth, and so it did again with the “Ruddy bishop” in 25a.

15. After a week or so on holiday sans internet I knew I was going to be a bit rusty, and it took me some time to get my first answer at 10D. Even the generous smattering of checkers from that led to a continued struggle and in the end I spluttered over the line at 25 minutes.

    I didn’t know CANTILENA but knew it was a ‘gram and – for reasons unfathomable – CANTILENA sounded right. Oddly, LENS only gave me a problem for a minute or so; a case of you either see it straightaway or you don’t. It also helped that the pattern _E_S wasn’t going to lead to a plural.

    Although the surface isn’t very smooth I appreciated the non-chestnutty treatment of EXACT, but my COD goes to 17D SHEFFIELD for the deceptive use of “shelter”.

    Nice to be back!

    Q-0 E-6 D-8 COD 17D SHEFFIELD

    1. Were you thinking ‘shelter’ = ‘shed’. That held me up for a while, before I realize it was ‘shield’.
16. A puzzle in which it paid dividends to have been doing this for quite a while. Most of the obscure words (such as ANENT and tiler) have cropped up before and one almost welcomes an old friend. Only CANTILENA was new to me. 25 minutes to solve.

    I think OBSTACLE is rather weak and got it from the checking letters. Other than that some nice clues and a good work out at the start of the week.

17. I just couldn’t see this and gave up, putting in LESS and hoping that there might be some connection between less and bulls’-eye — after all, in darts the bull’s-eye scores less than the treble 20. Some hope.

    Didn’t think much of OBSTACLE.

18. Difficult for me, but don’t have a real time, probably around 45 minutes, but with 1 wrong: 7D, where after sorting the fodder I guessed with CANTINELA, which I thought looked most like a word. Wrong. Also didn’t know PIBROCH, tiler, SLATED as ‘torn to pieces’, or the bull’s eye lens, but got them right. Like many others, my last was LENS after mentally going through the alphabet. Favorites today: DECIDUOUS, RESONANT. Regards.
19. I know it’s bad form to reply to ones own post, but I think that 18=ones from the answer of 18D meaning personal.

    Sorry this was probably really obvious to everyone.

20. Again apologies for replying to my own post again. Teach me to ask without thinking more about.

    Singer=TIT from the bird being a songbird.

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