Times 24374 – Unexplained Dark Ages

23 comments on “Times 24374 – Unexplained Dark Ages”

1. Dark = de-lighted?
2. Quickly = soon
   Paid = feed (got a fee)
   Insert P for coin.
3. Mouth of Nile almost = DELT(a)
   Insert W, with
4. As in the phrase: “go to town”, a major effort.
5. Hit the brick wall after 25 minutes with most of the SW corner unsolved and gaps at 15ac, 20ac and 16dn which took me another 20 minutes or so to sort out apart from BEAD which I failed to get even on arrival at work with access to on-line assistance. I never heard of the Bede of Jarrow and BEAD for “drop” is not exactly the first synonym that most would come up with, I imagine. Certainly I didn’t think of it.

   I understood “de-lighted” at 16dn but I don’t see where “when the record is blank” comes into it.

   PLATE for “silver” at 6dn seems to be definition by example as one can certainly have other plating such as gold.

   1. > “when the record is blank”
      I’m assuming it’s a cryptic def: the apparent lack of extant historical records from the early Middle Ages means they were proverbially Dark?
6. Some nasty stuff here. Even the anagrams were difficult. Sympathies again to Uncle Yap. Peter chose well.
   My take on ALOFT was that a loft is a frequent candidate for a conversion.
   Off to ‘Nam for some R & R.
7. And btw, ALOFT is my COD but only if I am right in my parsing.
8. Lovely crossword with some interesting answers – quite challenging but nothing very obscure.

   No problem with 6dn – Chambers has both “silver” and “plate” as synonymous with table utensils generally.

   15 ac – pretty easy for fans of “1066 and All That” who will recall The Venomous Bead

9. At 9A I agree with Barry the parsing is A-LOFT where lofts of houses are frequently converted into rooms.

   I ended with a lot of question marks next to clues all of which have been mentioned above. I don’t like the definitions by example and agree with Jack that “plate” and “bead” are poor. I cant really find any funny or really good clues to compensate. 30 minutes but all a bit of a drag.

10. 35 mins and very slow starting till read down clues and 3 & 4 got it under way. Agree with quibbles and had redrawn till remembered FT. SW corner filled fast and ended with 2d.
11. whilst i was on the loft-conversion track on this one, the connection between frequent and oft kept niggling. given that the word frequent is probably not necessary for the “loft conversion” bit, may I suggest that this is a three pronged affair, with “a frequent candidate”, “for conversion”, and “as 1ac was” all providing the answer. My only query here would be that perhaps the word candidate is needed for the middle one, but this is no worse a query than what the superfluous “frequent” is doing in just two defs.
12. Another day, another DNF, with the famous Mede Man of Jarrow proving to be more fiction than fact. I struggled all the way around this, particularly in the SW, finding the wordplay largely impenetrable in many instances. So, well done that setter and well done Uncle Yap for your blogs over the last few weeks.
13. 19:27 .. An offbeat one, for sure, though I didn’t have any major gripes. No champagne moments, either, although DARK AGES came close.

    I don’t think ‘plate’ is so much a definition by example as a synonym, either noun or, I believe, verb (to silver being to plate).

    Last in was BEAD, which took a bit of thinking about with the misleading grammar of ‘drop man’.

14. Much the same experience as everyone else, though my time of 45 minutes is probably slower than most. Question marks in several places, coinciding in general with Yap’s queries, though I did understand the wordplay to DWELT (for which the definition struck me as somewhat loose, possibly inaccurate).
    I think the last 10-15 minutes were spent trying to get 5, 6 (couldn’t get AG out of my head), 7, 15 (toyed with TEAR for no convincing reason) and 16. Getting PLACATE was the key to finishing the puzzle without resort to aids (which I feared I might have to do.
    I felt the clue to AESOP should have had a question or exclamation mark, since presumably the intended definition is “man of fable”, not quite the same thing as “fabulous man”.
15. I did remember Bede, although I never got the Dark Ages.

    Last in was ‘spoonfeed’ and ‘goanna’, which could have been defined as ‘incredible lizard?’ – we love those silly homophones. I had ‘nervous’ for a while before seeing ‘waxwork’.

    I am with the ‘a loft’ crew, but only because I didn’t see the other.

    About 55 minutes, and then going back for the last two, which I then saw almost immediately, as usually happens.

16. 30 minutes and I had much more fun with this than I did with yesterday’s offering.

    1ac rock Blonde Pegasus, alter-ego of Lady Ga-Ga who is blonde, flighty and has the face of a horse.

17. This was a long slog but I seem to have enjoyed it more than most even though I struggled at all four points of the compass. Last in were bead, goanna (which I had never heard of) and aloft (which I did not understand).

    My all-time favourite clue for chassis was by the Guardian setter Taupi, who died a few months ago: “Short description of Princess Anne’s body”.

    1. Charles’s sister!
18. After two messes because of not knowing obscure references, this was a bit of light relief – all done in 12 minutes. Wasn’t sure if there was meant to be wordplay involved in DARK AGES, but wrote it in and moved on. Liked SPOONFEED
19. No real time to post, but it was a long tough one for me, held up mostly in the SW. Didn’t know GOANNA, or PUKKA, so needed aids at the end. The ‘paid’=’feed’ thing in 25 came finally, but I don’t particularly like it. Also, I didn’t know you convert lofts over there, so my parsing for ALOFT was closer to Uncle Yap’s, but I thought the ‘L’ might be for Liberal (as a candidate). I liked REPROBATE and SUPERNOVA, though. Regards.
20. dark = delighted plus Times = ages
21. 13:04 in my post-holiday catch-up. Two ideas had to be forgotten – CENT as a possible containee in 25, and the wordplay-fitter CODEX at 24. Neither written in, fortunately.

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