Times 24,349 Take a butchers me old china

52 comments on “Times 24,349 Take a butchers me old china”

1. Bad day at the office. All but NE corner done in good time but hit a wall of my imagining. Rested and then saw STATIN and ANORAK immediately but then for no reason struggled for APSE, SCALENE and, as a cricket fan I am ashamed to say, HEADINGLEY. Somehow one doesn’t think of cricket grounds as stadia (snobbery?).

   Plenty to amuse so toss-up any of 3 for COD, STATIN, BUTCHERS and ALTIMETER, all for the grin factor.

2. 1a and 1d kicked of a good start, then the long down unravelled itself and I was well away. Stumbled a bit over olivine and giggled over minion, final two 5d and 15d. 17 mins Guessed Wegg, don’t read Dickens, and isn’t anorak the only garment ending in k? Otherwise enjoyed it and got all the wordplays right for once.
3. Anorak isn’t the only one, how about CASSOCK
4. Not to mention FROCK, CLOAK, SMOCK etc …..
5. About 23 minutes here after a fairly quick start. I got the Trollope novel stright away from the enumeration, and most of the left-hand side too, apart from MINION and WEANED which I had to go back to later. More problematic was the NE corner – BUTCHERS, HEADINGLEY, STATIN, APSE and ALONGSIDE all fell agonisingly slowly and at one point I hadn’t entered anything for over 5 minutes. Stadium totally threw me for a cricket ground. They’re just not called that.
   1. My last in (even after STATIN), this threw me too, but I seem to recall that the combined cricket ground and rugby league ground are commonly known (and roadsigned) as Headingley Carnegie Stadium…
      1. You are correct as regards the full name of Headingley. When checking that I also found a lot of cricket grounds called “xyz stadium” on the Indian/Pakistan sub continent and a couple in South Africa
6. 
   42 mins. Held up by thinking a decorator might need a TRIMMER and wondered how to get NO TRUMPS out of 25ac. Stupid!
   One for the professors of a literary bent rather than the boffins? Though I can imagine Noddy Boffin saying “We’ve won! I wealthy”. And there he is again at 26ac which might be clued in the TLS as “Boffin’s reading teacher with leg amputated — good! (4)”.
   Apart from that: two crossing horses and two crossing uncles duly noted. Too many cryptic and/or double defs for my liking but. And another chance for Oz-slang missed at 17ac.
   1. Oh yeh, meant to ask. How does one get GLOWER out of “looking angry”? Puzzled by the parsing here. Didn’t think of it at the time and just assumed G + “lowering” (as in sky). More stupidity probably. Pass the pointy hat.
      1. G = Middle of night.
         Lowering = frown/scowl
         Glowering = stare/scowl.

         Perhaps I am missing something?

         1. See Jimbo’s blog entry for his initial parsing.
      2. You have a point. Thank you. Chambers gives lower=lour=to scowl so G-LOWERING is a better parsing for the clue if slightly obscure usage?
         1. Phew! I thought I was having another of my conniptions!
7. Easy one this, only a one cup of coffee puzzle, though I had to punt on wegg and olivine. Headingley and statin the last in, not sure why..
8. Coincidence? I was just reading, in a book by Keith Miller, a story of two members of Lords who went to a Test at Headingley. Going for a stroll between innings, they did as usual and left their hats to mark their seats in the Members. On return, they found two Yorkshiremen using said hats for cushions. When questioned, one replied: “It’s bums as keeps seats ‘ere, not ‘ats”.
9. 28 min, so rather tougher than yesterday, and I did cheat, much to my chagrin, for HEADINGLY. I was so convinced that it would be a soccer ground (a game of which I know absolutely zilch), that I didn’t consider other options. If I had had an inkling of cricket, this would have been a gimme (to mangle my sporting metaphors). Will not nominate a COD, since the overall quality was so excellent. Most enjoyable. Thank you setter.
10. A slight improvement on yesterday, possibly because the radio wasn’t so enthralling, although I did hear Baerwolf (the poem) and rap music mentioned in the same sentence at one point. I was quite chuffed to get off the mark with DAWN CHORUS but brought back to earth when I finally twigged to BUTCHERS and HEADINGLEY some 50 minutes later. (Agree that the latter isn’t a stadium; it just resembles one from the outside and possibly the inside as well.) New to me were Wegg, hieratic as a script and statin (no cholesterol problems here) but these were obviously easier to get than Headingley. I too liked MINION, NO THANKS and ALTIMETER but COD to ALONGSIDE.
    1. I am reliably informed that should be Beowulf. I did Google it but obviously only found other people who couldn’t spell it. The connection had something to do with rhythm patterns, although I wasn’t really listening.
       1. Here’s a rap music joke to share with your trendy friends…

          Q. What’s black and rhymes with Eminem?

          A. Dr. Dre

          1. I have to confess having to google that to understand it. My knowledge of rap extends only as far as my neighbour’s 17 year old son’s collection, which I think consists of 2 CD’s played very loudly very often. So I’m not very down at street level. Anyway, Gil Scott Heron said it all with more flair all those years ago.
11. This, for me, was the most difficult for several weeks but I persevered on account of the intricate and amusing wordplay. I really struggled with Headingley. I imagined cricket fans would be off to a flyer with this one but apparently not so, according to comments above. I was pleased to get Hieratic, a new word to me, from the homophone. Olivine I dimly remembered from previous puzzles. Then I finished with Wegg, which looked odds-on from my first run through. One to add to my database of crossword Dickens characters.

    Too many brilliant clues to mention but my favourite is Altimeter because it looked immediately obvious but it took me ages to justify.

12. Please explain why “decorator may want this”
    is “thinner” which is one of the double definitions.
    Barbara
    1. Thinner as in paint thinner.
    2. “thinner” is a chemical like turps used to make say paint thinner.
13. thought the rest of it was very well constructed – except for the use of ‘uncle’ twice in crossing words.

    Fortunately, ‘The Way We Live Now’ is well-known to me, one of Trollope’s greatest works, and well worth reading. That gave me a start, but the rest I thought very tricky.

    For time servers, we now have SNTP. Perhaps the constructors will catch up with modern life and use that.

    My COD is ‘hieratic’. This is a truly creative use of the ‘sounds like ‘ clue, with a very deceptive surface.

14. Hmmm, 14 minutes, but there was guesswork and semi-understanding aplenty! No clue who WEGG was, but thanks for wordplay. ALTIMETER? Well it measures height but doesn’t get you any more. I had written AUTOPILOT in there one a first scan. STATIN from definition (hello chemistry!). HEADINGLEY came from nowhere, trying to think of cricket grounds first.
    1. I also started with AUTOPILOT lightly pencilled, and had the same thought about ALTIMETER, then decided that “his feet up” is just an elliptical way of saying “his altitude” (how many feet he is up).
15. I made heavy weather of this one, distracted by the train travelling at walking pace whilst the driver (we were told) was checking for a reported broken rail. I was somewhere over the hour as a result.

    Didn’t know WEGG, STATIN, OLIVINE nor LEY meaning field which is why I plumped for HEADINGLEA at 11ac. I’ve heard the name mentioned with reference to cricket but I don’t recall seeing it written down.

    Misspelling SCALENE at 7dn and not knowing LINEN as underwear led to further delays but I got there without aids eventually apart from the error already mentioned.

16. 16:00. Quite a good one but agonised over whether we were looking for Silas or his wife. Eventually hit and hoped that [ha]’S EGG was a bit of a stretch for the daily. Saw “stadium” at 11a and wanted to put in WEMBERLEEE, which is how it’s pronounced by footy fans. Altimeter made me laugh and gets my COD nod.
17. I took a while to get on the setter’s wavelength and took an hour to complete this (thus keeping jackkt company) despite a few easy clues. Took ages to get UNCLOTHE even though it was obvious that UNCLE featured (two bits of wordplay featuring UNCLE seemed careless to me). Some nice clues, though one or two struck me as inelegant. “No good wool” to mean ANGORA with G removed is particularly inelegant. And I’m not sure that “calls for” can be interpreted as ” makes the sound of”
    1. Re the crossing uncles. This sort of thing has happened at least twice this year, in the NW corner. At one time I suspected it might be a setter’s trademark or at least penchant.
18. 18:04 .. Another very enjoyable one. MINION is the sort of clue that keeps me solving cryptics. ALTIMETER is a hoot when the penny drops. Agree with Vinyl that HIERATIC is a cut above the average.

    For 26a, I did wonder if there might be a Silas Segg, and a nod to the famous GEGS clue, but WEGG rang a very distant bell. We’re probably about due for another television adaptation of Our Mutual Friend – it’s at least a decade since the last one. More bonnets.

    1. I read the Our Mutual Friend in an Austin-Dickens seminar in 1977. It’s amazing what you can remember!
19. Another enjoyable puzzle. Much of it reasonably straightforward but with enough difficulty that held me up here and there. Around 40 mins in the end. I confess that I resorted to Bradford’s entry under “triangle” for SCALENE at 7dn on the excuse that life’s too short. I’d spotted the anagram fodder, and realised that the name of a type of triangle was required, but couldn’t summon the rignt one from the mists of memory, even though I’m sure SCALENE has appeared before. (Memo to self: make a list of the most common sorts of triangle). WEGG at 26ac was pretty obscure even for dedicated Dickensians – I wrongly assumed it was a reference to Silas Marner – but very getable from the wordplay once checking letters were available. Thanks to Jimbo for the parsing of NARCISSUS which I entered
    without much hesitation but could not fully explain. I agree with Sotira and Vinyl that ALTIMETER (lovely surface reading and deceptive definition) and HIERATIC (phonetically acceptable, I would have thought, to even the most hardened homophone-haters) were particularly good.
    1. >Memo to self: make a list of the most common sorts of triangle.

       Equilateral
       Scalene
       Isosceles
       Right-angled
       Bermuda
       Dairylea

       1. You forgot eternal
          1. and maybe Pascal’s, which would probably have Jim’s cup running over.
       2. Thanks. You’ve saved me the trouble!
20. Just me who found this really tough then? 40 minutes cf yesterday’s 15.

    No bother with Headingley (which is only about 5 miles from where I’m sitting and is as well known hereabouts for playing host to rugby (both codes) as it is for being a test cricket ground. Most trouble with the SW corner but statin held me up for ages as well as not knowing my Trollope. Last in Wegg.

    Clue of the month altimeter closely followed by minion. Graet puzzle – a challenge with lots of originality, let down slightly by Wegg and glowering.

21. About 15 mins. I had never heard of WEGG before, but the others rang vague bells, although I couldn’t have defined OLIVINE or HIERATIC. I got the same wrong end of the wordplay stick on GLOWERING as dorsetjimbo, and would say that LOWERING is a bit too similar in meaning to be contrasting wordplay.

    Good clues – especially ALTIMETER and NO THANKS. Somehow it feels wrong to have two uncles intersecting each other, as noted above, though. 6d could have been ‘A 7d triangle has one’!

    1. > I had never heard of WEGG before …
       Looks like he wasn’t the only one without a leg to stand on!
22. 9:45, including a quick check for anything else to fit ?E?G, Our Mutual Friend not being a Dickens book I’ve read. Not troubled by the two uncles as they were handled differently.

    1D delayed me a bit longer than it should have as the P from 10 (my first answer) suggested PUNCH (=horse) as well as POKER for the second word. Also made 12 harder by drawing my word-break line for 5,4 rather than 4,5. Mental note to do this job a bit more carefully.

    1. I did exactly the same with 1d. I would make a mental note to myself, but I’d only lose it.
23. A slightly disappointing 16:28 — in retrospect, none of the clues should have given too much trouble, but I was slow in starting, getting PEEL first. Like several other cricket fans, I took ages to spot HEADINGLEY. My COD is the one for ALTIMETER.

    I share others’ slight misgivings about G/LOWERING and the two uncles.

    Chambers gives ‘hieratic’ only as an adjective, and ‘script’ only as a noun or verb; also ‘Script.’ as an abbreviation for Scripture.

    1. The setter’s friend, Collins, has hieratic with a noun meaning too.
    2. Hieratic is an Egyptian script that developed from hieroglyphics, but included both pictorial and alphabetic elements, I believe.

       Too lazy to look it up, so I might be less than completely accurate.

24. 20.50 Managed to get everything except 5 in 13 minutes then spent the rest of the time looking at anything that might fit. I couldn’t work out the wordplay even after considering that STATIN was a drug.
    Took a bit to get HEADINGLEY despite being a bit of a cricketing buff. I tend to think of cricket grounds rather than stadia.WEGG not a problem as fairly familiar with things Dickensian.
    Good puzzle.
25. About 50 minutes, and had to look up Headinglea at the end and found it to be HEADINGLEY. First in SOUND BITES, last entry STATIN. I had most of this in about 25 minutes but had to stare at 3D, 5D and 11A for a long time further to make any sense of them. The rhyming slang doesn’t immediately leap to mind on this side of the pond. Neither do PEEL as a huntsman, WEGG, or cricket ground names. But a lot of good stuff here today: STATIN, MINION, ALTIMETER, HIERATIC, all as mentioned by others. Regards.
26. I have to admit to entering useless duffer mode with this one – only half way through before I had to come here and kick start with a free answer.

    That got me going but I still struggled, taking so long I had to remember where I’d put the clock before stopping it. But I was bamboozled fairly and squarely – this puzzle is full of deceptive gems although, contrary to what others have said, I thought ALTIMETER was just a tad forced in its wording; still very good nonetheless. The only thing that struck me as a bit odd was the two uses of UNCLE in the intersecting 8A and 2D, but that can hardly go down as a quibble.

    Q-0 E-9 D-9 COD SOUND BITES – brilliant of the setter to spot “United boss”.

    Shameless self-promotion time (but only because I’ve been slaving away at the damn thing for so long) – a new puzzle collection is on the UKPuzzle site and it’s got one of those Imperator doodahs in it. Herewith the linkage:

    http://www.ukpuzzle.com/PuzzleCollection008.pdf

    1. I don’t feel so bad now that I read you had some problems with this too, Anax.
       1. To be honest, Jack, in terms of solving I’m completely off form at the moment – even the easy puzzles are giving me long bouts of head-scratching.

          The fact that I’ve been so busy setting has a lot to do with it, and it’s a reminder to me that watching is as important as doing. It’s amazing how quickly you lose touch if setting time isn’t balanced with solving.

          It’s one of Pete’s golden rules for new solvers – keep at it. My experience is that spending just a couple of weeks away from solving can make you very rusty when you return to it.

27. 13 mins today. Started very slowly then accelerated.

    Our Mutual Friend is my favourite Dickens novel, beautifully dramatised in 1976 with Leo McKern as the golden dustman, so Wegg was not a problem

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