Times 24488 – A Real Smoothie

42 comments on “Times 24488 – A Real Smoothie”

1. I didn’t read the easy clues, barked up the wrong tree, and didn’t know a few key bits of useful knowledge….hence my time of an hour and a half.

   I did get off to a quick start, doing more than half in ten minutes, but I was then stuck for a long time.

   I not sure about 20, how does the setter know? Maybe he assumes we must be old if we can solve his clue!

   The things I did not know: ‘grafter’ in the sense used, ‘loons’ = flared trousers, and how ‘art’= ‘address’. Thou art, old solver?

   1. Isn’t this a reference to the convention whereby the setter is “I” and the solver “you”, thus “old you” = THOU?
      1. I also took it to be a reference to that xword convention, but the wordplay also works as blogged by yfyap. One of several lovely multi-layered clues.
2. 31 min. But needed assistance for the last two in UNTHINKING (got a snort and my COD), and LOCUTIONS. Can’t find loons (from pantaloons?) as flares in my references. For 20 ac I read it as “I am the setter. You are the solver. Thou is the old form of you”. Somewhat arch, but in keeping with the rest of a most enjoyable puzzle. I too am mystified by 10 ac, but am sure it will be a head banger.
   1. Isn’t it fascinating to see how different people put the same thing?!
3. 10ac is a simple DD – “address” in the sense of skill or dexterity (or indeed, art).
   1. Sorry, still never heard of it in 67 years.
      1. It may have fallen out of use in English but it is still standard French – “un jeu d’adresse” is a game of skill – which may be why it came to mind.
4. 42 minutes but without really understanding ADDRESS. As the great philosopher Keef used to say: “Art? It’s just short for Arthur”.

   Would have paid out on UNTHINKING except we had this a while ago in the guise of Henry VIII — and also because the Fat Controller (who is called something else in the US on the grounds that it constitutes weight-ist discrimination!) always brings the awful Ringo to mind.

   Now I have to admit to having worn loons, as extra-wide flares were called c1968. And the less said about 17dn from an antipodean POV the better!

5. 1dn “… what a lovely clue” – yes, and I misconstrued the direction “northerly” and extracted another hidden word – EMAIL = “what goes through” – with disatrous consequences.

   Ground to a halt after an hour with only half completed. My rotten day was epitomised by my efforts in attempting to work LIONELS, cockney rhyming slang for flairs via Mr. Blair of “Give Us a Clue ” fame, into 14dn instead of LOONS (which I’d never heard of).

   PS typo in 13dn: T should be “on time”; and 16ac is certainly a dd.

   1. That was me.
6. On the easier side at 35 minutes. I didn’t know ADDRESS could mean skill; thanks to kurihan for pointing that out. Otherwise another enjoyable solve. I liked UNTHINKING and OUT OF SHAPE, but COD to METRO. Another great spot from the setter.
7. 40 minutes with all of the RH going in steadily but the LH giving a little more trouble. The final hurdle at 14dn would have been so much easier to spot if I had realised a lot sooner what was going on at 14ac. I was misdirected by “recall in Chaucer originally” and wasted time looking for a hidden reversal. I thought 20ac was brilliant. I don’t think I have ever come across address meaning skill/ dexterity/art before.
8. 29 minutes – my first ever sub-30. Happy day. Seemed like an amiable sort of cove, nothing too clever or too straightforward – a Goldilocks porridge of puzzle.
   1. Well done – I’m sure you’ll be faster quite soon as this wasn’t a giveaway puzzle.
9. Gentle stuff this morning helped possibly by the Prelude to Act 1 of Lohengrin kicking-off the concert I attended last night (followed incidentally by Anne-Sophie Mutter, gorgeous in every sense, in the Brahms concerto). Some nice clues, THOU just being pipped by PAINTER for my Clue of the Day.
10. 8:02 – enjoyable puzzle with a couple of bits to learn – address=skill was new to me, as were loons, despite that term apparently having orginated in the 1970s, the days of flares and ludicrous platform heels. I’m sure we must have seen some of the ideas before, but 1D was a marvellous clue du jour! (Just managed to recall that the Paris metro has various “Porte something” stations.)
    1. I reverse-engineered LOONS from pantaloons, of which I have heard. It was one of the clues I found hardest to crack – although PAINTER eluded me completely.
11. 1d in first, then solved SE diagonal half first, then top. Loons not part of my gk but solved by definition. Like blogger I really enjoyed working through this one, “cultured” feel to it. 18 m.
12. Really good fun at 17 minutes, despite several stops on the way to work out the delicious wordplay. Loved THOU, chuckled at UNTHINKING, puzzled over ADDRESS like everyone else. Loons were usually loon pants in my history, and I had at least one pair. For 5, I stuck in Mardi Gras in a 21 sort of way, before I realised a) it was 4,5, not 5,4, and b) although it had a g in it, none of the rest of the wordplay could be twisted to fit.
13. Don’t have a time for this one but would like to add my support to those who enjoyed this puzzle. My type of puzzle I think with no obscure words, no proper names and just one title of an opera. Just lovely clues though. Of the acrosses I liked 1, 11 (I’m a sucker for anagrinds in the answer), 16, 20! and 21. Downs I specially liked included 1 and 15. COD to 20 I think.

    Regards to all.

14. Definitely an old solver’s time for me today. I guessed stag party at the first read through but could not justify it so I did not write it in. Then I got stuck on 1A because I rejected sage in favour of mage. Finally managed to finish after reappraising stag party.

15. I can only join in the chorus of praise for this engaging puzzle. Lots of really original and inventive wordplay, coupled with delightful surface readings, and low xword cliché quotient. Among my COD candidates: OUT OF SHAPE, LOHENGRIN, MEGABUCKS, STAG PARTY, CURIOUSLY and LOCUTIONS. Most of the puzzle fell into place fairly quickly but LOCUTIONS held me up and was the last solution to be entered. In the end I was driven to thumbing through the dictionary list of all words beginning with a combination of L plus vowel. Even then it took me sevral double-takes to see how LOCUTIONS worked. Around 40 mins in all.
16. Hear hear, very enjoyable. And there was a sting in the tail for me as well; finishing up at 20ac I saw through the three-quarters of an hour part and triumphantly slammed in THOR, thinking that old Thor must have solved a few problems in his time. Doh.

    No time today after dozing off with a few left to do – it’s been a long day – but round about an hour.

17. A fine entertaining puzzle that achieved difficulty though cleverness and not obscurity (apart perhaps from ADDRESS which I didn’t know meant “art” – my last in from checkers and “lecture”)

    A host of good clues but I particularly liked THOU and THISTLE, both first class.

18. Finished this (save for 14D and 20A) in 40 minutes, which is a good time for me. I really enjoyed it, especially liked BENEFACTOR, OFFBEAT and GREEN.
19. I got through this in 20 minutes or so, although I didn’t understand LOCUTIONS or ADDRESS, and I guess I didn’t stop to think about them for long. Last entry for me was the UNTHINKING. There are many enjoyable surfaces here, so I’ll cast a ballot for one I don’t think is mentioned yet, the rotten vegetable OFFBEAT. Regards.
20. Can anyone supply an English dictionaty reference to validate this please?
21. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary gives “skill, dexterity or readiness” as among the meanings of “address”, describing them as “dated”. It, and other dictionaries, offer among the definitions of “art” the expression or application of creative skill” and “skill in a specified thing” – e.g. the art of needlework or solving crossword puzzles. So the overlap of meaning seems to be there. Admittedly, I can’t imagine that many people ever use “address” in this sense any more, though I have come across it in 18th century prose.
    1. Mmmm… Not impressed. This type of indirect reference would be worthy of comment in a barred crossword but is unacceptable in a 2 word clue in a daily. Would Peter B care to comment on this – you all seem to frightened to offend the setter!
       1. The meaning is there as melrosemike says. It’s a difficult meaning, but it’s not “indirect” for me given the meanings as he reports them. The difficult definition didn’t prevent anyone here from getting the right answer, as the other definition was clear and the clues providing checking letters weren’t particularly difficult. The effect is the same as giving clear wordplay for an obscure answer where the only definition isn’t much help – you get the answer from part of the information in the clue, assisted by checking letters.

          I’m not bothered about offending the setter if I think there’s something to moan about – see 1A in yesterday’s report.

       2. I agree with Mike and Peter. The similarity of meaning is direct. For further ref, OED includes for ART

          1. Skill in doing something, esp. as the result of knowledge or practice.

          5. An acquired ability of any kind; a skill at doing a specified thing, typically acquired through study and practice; a knack.

          and for ADDRESS

          4. General preparedness or readiness for an event: skill, dexterity, adroitness.

          which seem pretty much the same to me.

          Personally I find the discovery or recollection of obsolete or obscure words one of the pleasures of the crossword. Reading leaves words dormant in the memory and it’s nice when they spring to mind when required.

          It is also surprising how often an obscure word will appear in a crossword and a book one is reading at around the same time. We recently had SCAPEGRACE in the crossword when I was reading Vanity Fair only to find young George Osborne described more than once as a “little scapegrace”.

          Perhaps someone will soon come across ADDRESS with that meaning in context. I’m sure we will all remember it now in any case!

22. I actually knew the ‘skill’ meaning, somehow; if the clue had been e.g. ‘lecture skill’ I might have been quicker to get it.
    I assumed at first that ‘dandy’s’ = bucks, hence tried vainly to figure out how MEGA could be ‘mage’ initially repelled. Could not ‘dandy fortune’ have been used in the clue?
    Also, I wasn’t impressed by ‘finishing with two E’s’ as the clue to finish with two E’s.
    1. Now that I’ve read the comments on yesterday’s puzzle, I have the nagging feeling that I should have known that “address” could mean skill, but I put it in without having the faintest idea how the clue worked.

       “Dandy fortune” would have been acceptable, but “dandy’s fortune” is a better surface reading without actually being unwarranted; it merely changes “Wordplay Definition” into “Wordplay is Definition” by virtue of the ‘s.

23. In retrospect, isn’t it strange how address = art (which can be found in the references) has given rise to so much discussion, whereas loons = flared trousers (to which I can find no references) has passed almost uncommented?
    1. It’s a bit strange, but loons (separate plural-only heading) is in the Concise Oxford. Collins doesn’t have it though.
       1. Interesting. My Concise (7th ed, 1982) doesn’t have it, and I imagine the word (along with the offending article) would have been well out of currency by then!
    2. That may suggest a failing with the references rather than anything else! I guess when something falls into the realms of slang it can be far more well known to different people than one imagines. Perhaps the usual reference manuals need to broaden their horizons slightly to the lower levels of vocabulary usage.
24. Regarding 10 Across, art = address, I think it’s actually wrong. The Times crossword reflects the language as it is today. The dictionary provides a check on most of the words in use; not the most recent or slangy ones, nor many of the phrases, any of which (apart from the obscene or otherwise personally offensive) the grid may use. A definition may linger in the dictionary – that doesn’t mean it’s correct now. It’s useful to have some such relics – not too many and not too old – as an aid to reading texts of an earlier time. But the crossword is by no means a reflection of the dictionary – rather, it’s part of the horse that draws the cart. – joekobi
    1. “The Times crossword reflects the language as it is today.”

       “..the crossword is by no means a reflection of the dictionary”

       What is your basis for these statements? COED and Collins are the reference dictionaries, so if it’s in either of them it’s fair game. Both of those dictionaries are necessarily selective in their entries – having the OED as the reference dictionary would be plainly unreasonable.

       Neither COED nor Collins provides citations, but the OED cites ADDRESS in the required sense up to the mid-19C. I could give you instances of its use in “Tom Jones” and “Tristram Shandy”, both of which, though earlier. are probably on the bookshelves of a lot of solvers.

       In my view it is perfectly fair and reasonable. Although it is not to the point, I put it in without second thought or bothering to check it.

25. kurihan2,the basis for the two statements you quote is simply Times crossword usage. It frequently uses state-of-the-art slang or abbreviation that’s current but not in the dictionary. You don’t seem to get my final point – admittedly cryptically put – about cart and horse. – joekobi
    1. Your statements seem to be just your personal view of how the world should be.

       Go to “About this blog” at the top of the page, and scroll down to the last section – “Reference Books”.

       The COED and Collins are the standard dictionaries for the puzzle. If the answer to a clue is in either of those, it’s fair. Case closed.

       You seem to be miffed because you didn’t know an answer. It happens to all of us, but we get over it.

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