Times 24452 – Perfect & Exquisite

43 comments on “Times 24452 – Perfect & Exquisite”

1. Twenty-two: the line where twenty-two metre drop-outs are taken.

   29 minutes on this one — so I guess medium difficulty. Got the Te Deum right away, remembering a certain “university” graduation where the program featured Purcell’s Tedium. Not sure that the EASEL clue quite works. But, as they say, it didn’t hinder getting a solution, so it matters little. The &lit at 11 (IMHO) is a fair bit better.

   Anyone want to explain “more foxed” = SPOTTIER? Is there a meaning I don’t know?

   1. I didn’t understand ‘foxed’ in this context either. But according to the Macquarie dictionary on my desk, paper gets ‘foxed’ when it develops reddish brown spots of mildew.
   2. Foxing is the bane of stamp collectors and water colour fans. A spotty fungal attack on paper which can knock 90% of the value of an item while in nmext to no time.
2. I got held up at the last minute since I’d put TAKE HEART instead of TAKE APART although it didn’t really work. Roasts don’t usually include hearts, and it would have been a really weird clue anyway.

   I’m still not sure about STAGGER. Is a STAGGER a surprise move, it doesn’t show up in Chambers. And under the table?

   Funnily enough I’d never heard of a RAIN TREE until today. I did yesterday’s Guardian crossword this morning which, as you point out, had an almost identical clue.

   1. Under the table = drunk. Drunks stagger … believe me! So the literal is just “surprise”.
3. …at 67 minutes, so I either must be poor at easy puzzles or very good at hard ones!

   I did have to put in ‘twenty-two’ by instinct, but I figured it must be something like that.

   I was not sure I entirely approved of ’emblem’ as a definition of ‘thistle’, although it seems like something you’d stick in your hat – only that part is the cryptic!

   The two toughest were probably ‘inquorate’ and ‘rain tree’, although I eventually managed to remember Aintree. The whole upper right was pretty tricky, especially getting started. I don’t think this was an easy puzzle as the blogger lets on.

   1. The thistle is the emblem of Scotland
      1. That I knew. Do they wear a thistle in their hat on St Andrews day?
         1. Hat!! Good heavens – they wear tammies, balmorals and glengarries. They omit the thistle for fear of what might come to pass after sampling a dram or seven whilst wearing the kilt.
4. Ho-hum. Round about an hour, by which time I had several answers in need of an explanation. I was left grasping at thin air by TWENTY-TWO. Couldn’t be anything else, but the rugby reference eluded me.

   A couple of other points. There seemed to be a lot of question marks at the end of clues today, which always strikes me as a sign of uncertainty on the part of the setter. And I didn’t like ‘wants’ as a linking word in the clue for 7dn. It seems like a deliberate but clumsy attempt to deceive. If ‘wants’ can be used there, then why not any verb?

   1. Wants: = “must have” – and in cryptics, it’s fairly widely accepted that if A has B, they are adjacent to each other. (Hence all those instances of apostrophe-s which turn out to mean “has”.)
      1. Would that not be more appropriate to a clue containing ‘good wants girl’?
         1. Yes. I should have said that “wants”=requires – i.e. the answer requires G and EMMA.
5. About an hour, but got through it finally. Last pair in were STEAK and TAKE APART. I still don’t get the cryptic for TAKE APART, other than it can mean ‘to roast’, and I thought ‘Presumably leave behind’.. was the ‘PART’ part of the solution, leaving ‘other bits’ for the ‘TAKE,A’. That’s over my head. My take on SPOTTIER was the same as offered above, that ‘foxed’ can mean ‘spotted’ or ‘blotched’ as in the case of old books or sheets of old paper. Needless to say, I didn’t understand the TWENTY-TWO rugby reference either, but it had to be, so I didn’t worry about it. Regards everyone.
6. OK, now I get TAKE APART. D’oh.
   1. As several others have queried this its: “take a part” and thus by inference “leave behind other bits” and “roast” means give a dressing down to – in other words “take apart”
7. This has to be ABETTER to fit the wordplay. Better = punter.
8. The 22 metre line was the 25 yard line. i think this clue is bordering on the brilliant and the allusion to catch 22 very good. im still not sure i see why it is take apart. i thought 5 across with stagger and the clever splitting of surprise and move one of the highlights of the puzzle. around 47 minutes. steady progress. 2 q’s in one puzzle….Clue of the day for me was 17 across…
9. 39 minutes for this one which ranks as a good time for me after the past few days. I got off to a slow start and continued slowly and steadily to completion, but at no point did I feel stuck.

   My lack of GK prevented me understanding TWENTY-TWO and GEMMA until I had access to references. I knew about the 25 yard line in Rugby but didn’t make the connection to the metric equivalent.

   A very enjoyable puzzle.

10. After yesterdays fireworks and damp squibs, I thought this was a good medium difficult puzzle. I spent a little time with all done but nothing but TEMPI in the NE corner until I broke through with ATTRACT and STEAK. I liked EASEL and INQUORATE (nice word).

    In 21ac, I am sure that the reference is to the 22 (metre line). However the reference to a “line of rugby players” also reminded me that there are now 15 starting players and 7 reserves on each team, so when they line up (eg for the national anthems at the start of a test) each team is a line of 22 players.

11. At 26 min, with an after the fact check on 7 dn GEMMA, this has to be the least challenging of the week. I am an ABETTOR man myself but am happy to entertain other interpretations. COD? Not sure, but probably SEQUESTER
12. Very unsatisfying completion with question marks by POSITED, THISTLE, STEAK, GEMMA, SPOTTIER & NEEDS MUST. Vocabulary not up to this.
    COD to TWENTY TWO, the Heller connection occuring only after trying to remove “c” from a line in rugby.
    1. 21 (or 22!): wrong tense – c. = caught (or caught by)
13. It was a slightly better performance from me today, Uncle Yap, but after a fairly brisk jog around the bottom half, I got well and truly stuck in the top half, with the STEAK/STAGGER duo causing much consternation to the end. I completely failed to lift and separate “Surprise move” or make any sense at all of STEAK. I didn’t understand THISTLE and thought EASEL was a straight cryptic. Bad day. COD to CHEAT, although EASEL can’t be far behind, and for some reason I have a tick against DAINTIEST.
14. An easier puzzle but with a sprinkling of good clues, for example the nice misleading use of “pale” at 5D. I didn’t understand SPOTTIER for “foxed” so either I’ve forgotten it or the bar crossword setters haven’t latched onto it yet. 25 minutes to solve.
    1. Strictly: spotty = foxed, spottier = more foxed.
15. 9:24: I’d count 11 and 22 as full &lits/all-in-ones. Both clues in full can function as definitions, and both describe the wordplay. Top right corner was the hardest, partly from waiting for the checkers to confirm my early stab at GEMMA.
16. No accurate time but somewhere under 20 minutes so far easier for me than yesterday’s. Nothing to moan about and nothing spectacular either really although 17 was clever and gets my COD nod.
17. This was quite a routine solve apart from the stagger/steak intersection. I enjoyed the clues for twenty-two and needs must.

    I was another who did not lift and separate surprise move so I entered stagger thinking that it was a weak CD. I still do not understand steak, it seems to me to lack a definition.

    I probably only got raintree because the 1957 film Raintree County with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift popped into my head.

    It’s interesting to get Tacit(us) today after Crass(us) yesterday.

    1. The definition is “cut” being a cut of meat=steak.
       1. Thanks Jimbo. I don’t suppose that being vegetarian excuses my incomprehension
18. Only slightly easier than yesterday’s for me – around 40 mins. Another testing puzzle in a strong week. I would have been quicker if I’d not got mired for some time in the NE corner with STAGGER, STEAK and GEMMA the last to go in. On reflection I can’t see why STAGGER caused me such difficulty. RAIN TREE, GEMMA (in its biological sense)and “foxed” (in the “spotted” sense) were all new to me, so I had to make guesses, which happily proved correct, from non-definitional wordplay.
19. 25 mins so I am pleased. Usually I have two (or more) stabs at the crossword so don’t really have a time. I put in 3 without understanding the wordplay. Now that I do I wonder if it isn’t a little indirect.

    I got 9 down clues on a first read-through (though only 2 across ones) – probably my best ever. Mind you that read-through took me 7 minutes which is enough time for some to finish an entire crossword on occasion! Truly mind-blowing.

    Held up longest in NE. COD 11.

    My regards to all the regular posters. I enjoy reading the blog even when I don’t manage to post.

20. if u ever watch rugby on TV, commentators regularly refer to “going back to his own 22” and similar, meaning the 22 metre line. Try it with the 6 nations this weekend 🙂
21. I have always wanted to know how dyslexia affects people and understand its ways and I think I may have stumbled upon the closest thing. This is about the tenth time in the last year or so that I have mis-split a (4,5) or (5,4) combination. I dont do it with any of the other permutations nor is there any reason why I should not be able to count, but again and again I find myself puzzling over a clue (12a in this case) for several minutes before belatedly realising (when the real answer clumps me round the head) that I had put the dividing line in the wrong place.

    Does anyone else suffer from this or have any insight into what can be done about it. The other odd thing is that the pure sight of a 4&5 combination doesnt even ring alarm bells or forewarn me to be extra careful – which you would expect at this stage. It is almost as if the brain says “there is absolutely no way this can cause a problem….” and then it does!

22. Threw in the towel with the NE corner blank. Until today my GK didn’t extend to GEMMA or RAIN TREE. Enjoyed the STEAK with its less common meanings for cut and pale.

    COD to TWENTY TWO. Couldn’t think of any T?O word until I parsed SPOTTIER to get the starting T and then put in TWENTY TWO straight away.

    IBSEN went in before I understood it was a hidden answer. I visited Oslo last December and saw a lot of references to him. The Norwegians refer to Shakespeare as “the Ibsen of England” – or so I’m told!

23. 13:41 .. all went in easily apart from the STAGGER/STEAK pairing. A neat ‘morning commute’ kind of puzzle for me (mind you, I don’t get much time on the walk from the kitchen to the home office), but this seems to have been a real ‘wavelength’ puzzle.

    Some neat clues, like the old fogey and 11a CHEAT.

24. 17.50 , so a bit quicker than last two days but the top left kept me occupied for a while , POSITED/PREACH as well as 2 and 9 where funnily enough the Q in 14 prompted me to venture a Q for that pair.
    Biggest hold up was STAGGER/STEAK which I didn’t get until the K became apparent.
25. I found this pretty straightforward, finishing in 22 minutes in the hospital waiting room. Solving flowed very methodically from top to bottom, the only minor hiccups caused by misreading on my part (learning for leaning in 27), entering SQUARE as SQAREE (making my last clue, 19D, impossible to get until I saw the error, and a pause as I pondered 5D.

    On the whole the clueing style rather suited me and I thought many of the clues were pleasingly succinct and neat.
    I did not understand “foxed” in 16, even after checking Chambers much later. In fact, as it gave “drunk” for “foxed” I wondered if “spotty” also might meean that.

26. An enjoyable 90 minutes half of which spent trying to work out why obvious answers came to pass. So thanks for the explanation of 1a POSITED; 5a STAGGER; 12 across TAKE APART 3d THISTLE (still slightly baffled by this); 5 down STEAK (mesmerised by possibilities of ASHEN and WAN); 16 down SPOTTIER. Thought 20 down TE DEUM a convoluted and uninspiring clue. Enjoyed DAINTIER and PERFECT SQUARE.
27. Did this in breaks during rehearsal, but eventually got there. GEMMA from wordplay, also INQUORATE (expecting to wake this morning to find out that IRQUOTANE is a word) and TWENTY-TWO. 8 down looked familiar, but I can’t place it now.
28. An enjoyable 50 minutes or so. SQUARE went in almost automatically – decent of the setter not to confuse us by using 9, 16, or 25, which could refer to other clues. Last in were STAGGER (surely more forceful than just SURPRISE?) and STEAK.
29. In car – about 25 mins. First in 1a, quickly, then the pairs of q’s and steadily till took ages to sort out 13’s anag. Last in stagger and steak. Glad to know the details of 21a, lovely group of blogs today.

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