Times 24435 – Bitter Orang(e) and Home Sweet Home

52 comments on “Times 24435 – Bitter Orang(e) and Home Sweet Home”

1. Snap. 25 min to complete, but never felt completely in control, and had to revisit a few to confirm the gut instinct. IN ESSE was new, and my last in. Fortunately it was borne out. Also struggled with ETHELRED (I could not see a chain as a tether for some reason) and ANCESTRY. COD: GOOD AFTERNOON. Grumpiness concentrated on TRAMPLING. A young tramp? very much out on the edge.
2. 6:48 for this – it may not be terribly difficult but seems well-made and I certainly liked the two long acrosses and the greeting, though REINSTATE and its relatives (4D) are well-worn paths. I suspect we’ll have many people reporting that one of 5 and 8 was their last answer – three of us already, excluding anyone who might have nipped in between ross and me. I balked at the ?N ?S?? pattern and then remembered lennyco’s (I think) rule: if it looks weird it’s probably a stolen phrase from another language, and dimly remembered this phrase – then gave up on Cole and ex- as possible components of 8D and somehow found the right man.

   Edited at 2010-01-15 08:42 am (UTC)

   1. Thanks for the credit but “look for the foreign word” is actually your own corollary of my rule about looking for the compound word.
3. Did this in fits and starts in various medicos’ waiting rooms. But I reckon under the 20 mins all up: and a nice distraction from the glumness of such places. Good to see another relatively “modern” computer reference today at 1ac, where yesterday’s “internet” clue was. Possibly aided and abetted by 25ac. Will confess to looking for a while at ?N ?S?E — though the Un-Reedy was easier to spot and already in place by then. Catching the cricket in the car on the way home, I was struck by the clever surface of 19dn and hereby anoint it with my COD.
4. ..so no time, maybe 45 minutes altogether.

   I object to 2 on the grounds that ‘orang’ alone is the Malay word for ‘man’, and really needs ‘utan’ which = ‘forest’ to work. That is the the bit of verbal wit that Burgess used in the title to ‘The Clockwork Orange’.

   Also, ‘widget’ is not really equivalent to ‘gadget’ or ‘gizmo’, but is what the businesses in economics textbooks sell.

   I was a bit worried about Chepstow, but after a minute I put it in, so no worries for this overseas solver.

   1. 
      Widget’s first definition in COED and Chambers is “gadget” as is “gizmo”.

      I mentioned above that Collins has “Orang” on its own and now I can confirm that Chambers and SOED have it too.

      I don’t really think we can validly criticise setters for using words and definitions that appear in the usual dictionaries though there’s sometimes room for argument over shades of meaning of course.

5. I suspect this is going to get boring. Yet another easy puzzle held up only by NE corner where IN ESSE was new to me. Just under 15 minutes to solve. Not much one can say really.
6. This gentle solve was probably the easiest of a very easy week. It is also, perhaps the best crafted puzzle with no quibbles from me. I enjoyed the Cockney Rainbow clue and also the Why Pout homophone, although I note Jack’s quibble and shall try to spend the rest of the day pronouncing Why as hwi. I also enjoyed the two dafter clowns in Good Afternoon.

   The one unusual phrase, at 5, was well signposted both in definition and wordplay.

7. 35 enjoyable minutes for me. The NW was my nemesis, with TRAMPLING the last in; I equated “living rough” with “on the street”, so was looking for something starting with ST. In retrospect, such a device would probably be deemed unfair by any editor. I had a chuckle at the cheekiness of the real device used. COD to GOOD AFTERNOON and echo Peter’s sentiments the puzzle’s overall merit.
8. Agreed it was a relatively quick solve, top right aside, but there were some real gems here. I loved the Uxbridge dictionary style def for TRAMPLING and the WIPEOUT homophone, and while RA may be standard fair, ‘water-colour production’ was a lovely definition for RAINBOW.
   1. Thank you, voice of reason, and welcome!

      Mick writes crosswords as Morph in the Independent, and Micawber (Telegraph toughie). He’s also done well in Azed’s clue-writing competition, and qualified for the Grand Final in a Championship which I like to remember.

      Edited at 2010-01-15 12:49 pm (UTC)

9. Another steady but enjoyable jog, about 17mins. Last in Ethelred, preceded by in esse, a phrase encountered previously, but (like half my vocabulary) only in crosswords.

   Nice to see a couple more science refs.. Re 25ac: “Wolframium” wasn’t a word known to me, though I see that it does exist.. Wolfram yes, or Wolframite..

10. Infra dig to some of the pros thus far but I found this a challenge (at least compared to the last 2) and a delight. Had to look up IN ESSE and still don’t get the really bit? Stuck in TRAMPLING without understanding and, oddly, struggled with 2 of those left out by Jack ie coming up with PANCAKE and THICK requring some mental gymnastics to justify.
    Some unappreciative comments so far so allow me to rave about GOOD AFTERNOON, WIPEOUT, RAINBOW and my COD, the delectable TWIGGY. Is it an accident that the “easiness” of this week’s puzzles has seen a few new names on this site? To be encouraged by those of us often out of our depth.
    1. in esse = adv. “in actual existence” (ODE – and jackkt’s report) – so “really” as opposed to “virtually”. (It’s easy to guess wrongly like me that it means “in essence”, which roughly equates to really, but that’s a jammy fluke)
11. Needed aids to solve the IN ESSE and ETHELRED pair. Hadn’t heard of the former phrase and for the latter was looking for a word meaning ‘dethroned’ containing O HAL. Other than that this was plain sailing for twenty minutes. Today’s 1A went straight in from the ‘avid reader’ definition in contrast to yesterday’s difficult 1A. WIPEOUT reminded me of the hilarious ‘Total Wipeout’ programme on TV and CHEPSTOW because I walked through it in 1991 on my way from Land’s End to John O’Groats. The Offa’s Dyke footpath starts/ends there. Thanks for explaining ANCESTRY jackkt – I didn’t understand the CESTRY bit.
    1. Yes I put it in straightaway based on “avid reader”. In fact I spotted it whilst printing the puzzle last night and went to bed happy that I had got off to a good start. Sometimes on my blogging days I read a dozen or more clues before solving one.
12. Was grinning as I thought I would get my fourth ever (I think) sub ten minute effort, however ended up spending another five minutes on a couple of silly errors down the right hand side. Wrote in SNAGGY for 19D early on, and didnt revisit, hence making 21A a struggle. It was only when I stumbled on RAINBOW that TWIGGY became obvious. Also wrote in EX for old at the top of 8D, looking for something like EXHELMED for de-crowned, but none of R,GR,COLE and the like felt like they were going anywhere. Again it was an inspired “arrival” in the mind of ETHELRED as a whole def that finally usurped the “EX” idea. In retrospect both self-kickable mistakes.
13. Thought Twiggy was a bit lame and dont think i have ever seen it used in text…anyway mainly a straightforward solve. like many In esse was new to me!

    Good week of puzzles

    think tomorow’s may be a brute

14. 14:34 here, with the last 5 minutes or so trying to make something of the top right corner. I was thinking of something like UNHALOED for de-crowned, but even when I eventually got ETHELRED it still took another minute or two to think of (f)IN ESSE.
15. After filling all of the top half except for 5 and 8 in 5 minutes, I thought I’d be in for a personal best, but the bottom half took longer, so it was 19 minutes before the last answer was entered (5 across).
    It was an easy puzzle, but there was enough to engage me. I liked the clue to TRAMPLING.
16. I had many of the same thoughts which have been articulated above: ETHELRED caused the most trouble – I too struggled at times with Old King Cole and UNHELMED, and I am still not too sure about “tethered” = “chained up”.

    “Low Church” for MOOCH seems so neat I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before – good spot if original!

17. Finished in reasonable time, but with SWAGGY for sticky at 19d on the basis that swag=catch. Then became filled with self doubt, and trawled through the dictionaries and Google trying to justify it, finding out along the way that swaggy is a word to be wary of using in polite society. Finally twigged the right answer at just under the hour. COD to the pretty RAINBOW.
18. Straightforward easy puzzle by my standards so cantered in at about 55 minutes. Struggled for a little while with 8d as MANACLED kept flitting into consciousness (probably because of 17d SHACKLE. Particularly enjoyed BOOKWORM, WIPE OUT, NAMETAG. Thanks for explaining ANCESTRY which was the only mystifying wordplay.
19. 16:46 – by far the best week for a long time with only one taking over 30 minutes.

    Got the bottom half much quicker than the top half. Last in was IN ESSE but it didn’t hold me up too much.

    Over 30 years ago I worked in Sabah and lived near the orang-utan reserve of Sepilok. Spent a lot of time surveying for national mapping around the burgeoning palm-oil and logging areas which have contributed to the plight of the orang-utans. Went back a few years ago to climb Mount Kinabalu and noted continuing exploitation of forests.

    Liked OATMEAL and TETHERED.

20. 27:25 – Nice to be under 30 minutes for a change. The four long ones all went in quickly & easily which is always a good sign. The bottom half then took probably no more than 10 minutes. I struggled with the NW corner a little and finished with IN ESSE which was new to me and got from the wordplay alone.

    COD to 21 for the wonderful definition.

21. 15:30 but with one error.

    Unlike fathippy and richnorth I did’t twig that we were in “What’s brown and sticky? – a stick” territory in 19 so ended up with swaggy and made a note to commment that I’d never seen the word before.

    I liked trampling for the cheek and ancestry for the neat wordplay.

    Does canned beer still come with a widget?

22. 18 minutes, 6 of them on PANCAKE and IN ESSE. My pleasure at getting those two rather undermined by realising now that, like Penfold, I went for the Australian SWAGGY – as in, up a swaggy gum tree.

    Otherwise, some very smart stuff.

    1. That makes me at least the third to have gone for SWAGGY, then. Perhaps if we can find a sufficiently pliable third umpire, it’ll be declared correct. Otherwise, about 20 minutes, a lot of which on IN ESSE at the end.

       Tom B.

23. Would anyone care to tell me what 17dn was? I may be being dumb here but I can’t see it for the life of me!
    1. your mind is shackled by reality
    2. It’s SHACKLE. “Hackles” is defined as “hairs on the back of the neck of an animal which rise up when the animal is angry or afraid”. “Son” = “s” which is promoted to the top of the word to give the answer.
       1. Thanks, I had seen son promoted as moving the s to the start of the word, but I’m not sure I would have got to hackles if I had stared at it all day.
    3. I think it’s SHACKLE – son and hackle

       Nick

24. I’ll add my voice to the chorus of less than expert solvers who spent an enjoyable 25 minutes with this, the last 10 minutes of which on in esse and Ethelred. I somehow convinced myself that 5ac would be (f)ine and then a word meaning art, so wasted time trying to think of a word starting with s that might work. Enjoyable all the same, and these lighter weeks nice in that they provide the illusion of progress! COD: 21ac, and 19dn had an enjoyable penny-drop too.
25. Did this in an hour and a bit which is good for me. In esse and twiggy were last in (with aids). COD for me is oatmeal, but I also enjoyed rainbow as a definition for watercolour production.
26. 9.43. Last in was IN ESSE but fortunately I had got ETHELRED quickly so wasn’t delayed too much. I also briefly considered SWAGGY for 19. Struggled a bit with 2 until I got the G at the end. Also took a bit of time to get GOOD AFTERNOON with clown sticking in my mind as the definition
27. As nearly all have found, another easyish one. Nemesis will surely strike tomorrow! Despite being fairly easy, there was lots of clever and amusing stuff. I didn’t share rosselliott’s grumpiness over TRAMPLING, which might well be my COD. It took me ages to work out the wordplay – which seemed to me a nice example of cruptic crossword logic requiring lateral thinking, perfectly fairly signalled by the ? at the end of the clue. MOOCH and RAINBOW were also very good. BOOKWORM suggested itself immediately because of “avid reader”, but it took me a while to justify the wordplay. I was much interrupted while doing the puzzle, so no accurate timing, but within 30 mins, I should think.
28. 11 minutes for me, which I think is a PB. And it was less than 2 * PB’s time, which also never happens. Finished up in the upper right like everyone else.

    I liked “duplicating software” in 1ac but with the definition “avid reader” I wrote the answer in before I thought too much about the wordplay.

29. “in esse” is another Latin phrase I have heard I believe in mainly a law context.
30. I’d suggest that gadget=WIDGET at 25A is OK. I was in the patents business, and widget was a standard word used to stand for a non-specific invented object. Chambers says it is a gadget. The word slipped into the usage of the device for frothing beer in cans as a result, I think, of its use by the patents business and the Guinness widget being heavily patented.

    W for the element Wolfram, Wolframite is a compound and I can’t pick up any reference to Wolframium; I loved TRAMPLING.

    Harry Shipley

    1. Just to clarify, I was quoting from the entry in the COED: W – symb. the chemical element Tungsten [from mod.L. wolframium.].
       1. No wonder I couldn’t find it in any reference book if it’s Latin; like the other elements (eg natrium and kalium) that they had to invent Latin names for because the Romans didn’t know them.

          Harry Shipley

31. Same as most everyone, done in 15 minutes, finishing in the NE corner with MOOCH and ETHELRED. I liked TRAMPLING and the as yet unmentioned PANCAKE. Hadn’t known IN ESSE before today. Not much else to say. Regards to all.
32. Found this very easy but fun. Loved the wordplay for BOOKWORM, TWIGGY (laughed) and BITTER. Got CHEPSTOW from wordplay and was waiting to find there was a place called CHOPSTEW or CHOPESTW (you never know)!
33. Saturday a.m. in UK but it seems to be impossible to get into the crossword club. I get a 404 page after logging in (and why can’t the crossword club keep you logged in for several days at least, instead of timing out after a few hours all the time).
    1. Paul,

       01:08 GMT and I’m not getting a 404, but a message saying the site is down whilst they upgrade their registration system. This suggests that the work was planned, in which case I don’t understand why they wouldn’t email subscribers and let them know in advance. It really is an appallingly conducted operation.

    2. It’s not the Crossword Club per se but the Times registration system that’s flaky. For example, the links from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/subscriptions/my_profile/ currently lead to a page saying that the registration system is being upgraded. That’ll be why logging into the Crossword Club isn’t working right now. (I’m not defending the way things work, just describing them.)
34. ‘in esse’ (in reality) contrasts with ‘in posse’ (potentially); having the N & the S, and finally thinking to take ‘really’ as the definition, I got it fairly early on.
    Strictly speaking–too strictly, really– ‘why pout’ & ‘wipeout’ are pronounced differently even for those of us who don’t de-voice the W; the P of ‘pout’ is aspirated, the P of ‘wipeout’ isn’t. (Hold a lighted match close to your lips and pronounce the two.)
35. Hello all,

    Here in NY, the Post syndicates the Times puzzle two weeks later, so I’m just getting to this one. But I thought I’d share some thoughts and questions, as I am completely new to all the British terms, even though I’ve been doing cryptic puzzles for years.

    I got hung up on OR = men and RA = painter. I suppose abbreviations like this will be my biggest obstacle. I thought I’d be smart and put CE for church, but in this case it was CH! (Easy enough to get though, and a great clue.)

    I missed RAINBOW because I had put in SNAGGY for 19d, which as far as I can tell is a completely legitimate answer (SNAGGY = having sharp protrusions, ie sticky, with ? indicating a pun; and SNAG = catch), except that it doesn’t fit with RAINBOW.

    I cannot believe that I didn’t see that WOMANKIND was an anagram… I reasoned like this: maid = WOMAN, known to = KIN, change = delta = D. Does this work for anyone else?

    Thanks in advance… I’m very excited that this was the first Times puzzle I did completely on my own, even getting the unknown-to-me CHEPSTOW from wordplay alone. My only two incompletes were ORIFICE and RAINBOW, and both has unfamiliar abbreviations. SNAGGY was incorrect, but as I said, it works!

    I know it was an easier than usual puzzle, but I’m glad I’m starting to get the hang of things!

    Jeremy

    +j

    1. Welcome! Abbreviations will be a pitfall for a while, but you’ll soon pick up the most common ones. Locations like the Bow in RAINBOW may be a longer-term issue, though again there are some stock ones, including Bow as a cockney/London location. Getting D from “change” is a two-step process which you should not need to use to get abbreviations, except for a few well-worn things like “partners” = NS/SN/WE/EW from bridge.

       Snaggy was a snaggy problem! You will occasionally find perfectly valid “red herring” answers like this if checking letters from other answers don’t save you.

       There’s a short guide to some British references here.

       1. Thanks so much! Actually ‘d’ = change is not really two steps, for example df/dx is pronounced “change in f over change in x”. I now question whether known to = KIN is legitimate. It’s a stretch at best.

          Anyway, you all have inspired me to sign up for the Times puzzle. I’ll spend another few weeks “behind the Times” to practice, and because I love doing crosswords on paper. But I’ll join y’all soon.

          +j

          1. Here, df/dx is “d y by d x”, or was when I was at school and university. But the dictionaries just have “denoting a small increment in a variable”, so “change” alone wouldn’t do for D. “small change” would be nicely misleading but pretty difficult. “delta” would be OK by way of the international radio/”phonetic” alphabet.

             As and when you join the crossword club, you can still solve on paper. You get a pretty decent print-out for the daily puzzles, with an option to save toner by having the grid in pale grey. Still my daily routine until the championships have a PC on every desk.

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