Times 24494:

43 comments on “Times 24494:”

1. ….only it took me 50 minutes to get there instead of 13, and I did have ‘lawn’ but not ‘headiest’. After getting ‘headiest’, I did put ‘monad’ but totally misinterpreted the clue.

   I also suspect that 11 is ‘go’ backwards inside ‘shun’, but I admit it is hard to get there from the clue. Any other theories?

   I found this puzzle kind of drag, a tough slog without any wit. There are too many removal clues, which are hard but not interesting.

   I did think the ‘lawn’ clue was good. We have had ‘lawn’ the fabric quite a few times over the past year or two.

2. I agree with vinyl – I found this an unrewarding slog.

   I also can’t parse 11ac satisfactorily – I assume that the “order” is ‘SHUN – as in “Atten..(wait for it you ‘orrible little men!)…SHUN!!” – but am not sure how you get OG in it.

3. Yes indeed, a shocking grind. Took me two whole 50 minute lectures to finish. Most trouble, natch, in the top left — and I only got “lawn” because it was alluded to recently (where?) in a clue to the word LAUNDRY. MONAD was fiendish and strictly for readers of Leibniz; and HEADIEST wasn’t much better. Like George, I’d assumed TT for the race and tried to squeeze in ESS (ess-bend?). And with kurihan, still can’t parse 11ac properly: could it be that OG is “go back” (i.e., retreat)?
4. This was hard work but I enjoyed it. In 21dn, the ‘last’ is the model for a shoe, which also came up recently. COD for me has to be COMIC OPERA, after a recent appearance as Peasant With Rake and Soldier No. 6 in Donizetti’s Fille du Regiment.

   Could the OG in SHUN (11ac) be the abbreviation for ‘outgoing’? A bit convoluted, but outgoing can be used nominally. mctext’s parsing is much more elegant.

   George, in the second para. of your intro, do you mean ‘it is for a word that leaps out from the definition’ rather than ‘work’? And while on typos, 22ac should be ATALANTA (of Bergamo fame, for football fans).

   1. Ta for these, both typos in the blog and now fixed
5. Found this a real grind. Well over an hour. Thought 11ac was GO back in SHUN.
   1. Yeh, that’s what I was getting at; adding to kurihan’s SHUN (which is doubtless correct) and speculating that we get GO as a reverse cryptic. I.e., OG could be clued as “go back”.
      1. So if “order to troops” is SHUN, and “retreat” is (cryptically) OG, then “to stop” must be the containment/ insertion indicator. To my mind it’s the wrong way round (ie OG should stop SHUN, not vice versa) but I think we may have had a discussion on exactly this point before and someone (PB I believe) put up a convincing explanation (which I have forgotten).

         Or I may be barking up the wrong tree entirely….

         1. Is this ‘stop’ not in its block/obstruct sense, which you’re thinking of, but its close sense, as in ‘stop the nostrils’?
            1. As far as I can tell, stopping your nostrils is blocking them, with cotton wool or similar.

               When “A stopping B” means B inside A in the Times xwd, I think “stop” is being used in a “hold” sense, something like stopping/arresting a criminal. This seems a bit weak, but my mind is now trained to “look both ways”. If there’s some other meaning of “stop” behind this usage, I haven’t found it.

         2. I cannot comment on whether or not you are barking, up a tree or otherwise, but you have the correct interpretation of the clue. You are corect again in thinking that we have discussed stop or stopping before. It’s one of those words which is used (rightly or wrongly) to indicate both containing and being contained. As ulaca points out, it has a blocking or encircling meaning as well as a plugging a hole in meaning.

            The “show gun” interpretation surely lacks a homophone indicator, unless it’s encompassed in the “order to”.

         3. stop = hold, yes. I hadn’t even really convinced myself with my explanation, which is always a bad sign.
6. About 45 minutes here, also ending with LAWN/MONAD, a quite fiendish pair, I thought. Generally tough, I’d say. My take on 11A is the simple one: Show Gun! I had some other problems, for instance, due only to poor lighting, I thought the wording in 27 was ‘nude female’, not the actual ‘rude’ one, so I was puzzled about how the anagram substituted R for N. Oh well. Regards to all, and thanks to George for the early blog for what was not a simple puzzle.
7. Mine was a similar experience to most contributors so far. After an hour I had all but eight clues solved, some RH where I just couldn’t crack 12dn and the remainder in the impossible NW corner.

   My downfall RH was that I didn’t not simply write in AIDE and TENT which I thought of on first reading the clues, and get on with it. To my shame I missed the hidden word explanation at 16ac which would have enabled me to put AIDE with confidence, and at 26ac I was fixated on removing the R from TRENT but was unable to justify it so that also didn’t go in. No doubt having those extra checkers in place would have led me much sooner to UNDERSTAND.

   Words not met before: MONAD, ANTRA (my spell- checker also doesn’t recognise them). I would never have got ATALANTA or MANATEE by definition but the wordplay enabled me to drag them up from somewhere at the back of my mind.

   I agree with those that found this a bit tiresome for one reason or another. There was a lot of good stuff but too many removals and too little to amuse.

   1. That’s who I was thinking of, I thought he did occasional daily ones, but there’s always a 9457th time for me to be mistaken.
      1. Sorry for messing things up with a delete and re-post – if TM is an occasional setter, he’s joined the team since the 2006 puzzles in the most recent Times Crossword book, or that book’s list of 16 “regular setters” omits some people.
8. Difficult for me too – 15:33, with 10, 2 and 8 the last three to go in, and no across answer falling on first look until 17 – a good way of getting me worried. Considered ?????EST and then ???DIEST for 10A, but never wrote in an initial T from TT – too much of a risk when “some word ending in T, as container” is another possibility for “race”.

   If TM in George’s comment means Mephisto setter Tim Moorey, the answer is “not unless he’s now on the Times team” – he does Sunday Times puzzles, but that’s a different team of setters.

9. Another who had a similar experience to George, finishing on the MONAD/LAWN/HEADIEST trio. I kicked myself when I finally got LAWN & MONAD, having seen lawn on Tuesday, and for not being able to get IX out of my head. Also fell into the TT trap at 10. As for the rest, I struggled round. COD to COMIC OPERA, although I did enjoy the imagery at 27. If only. You can tell I’m no fan of 19th century operetta.
10. Sorry, a bit of cross posting going on there with Peter.
    1. Of course I am barking (why would I be here otherwise?), and I am also convinced. Sorry to have laboured the point, but I like to be clear about these things!
       1. I’ve little doubt that you’re explanation of SHOGUN is the one intended by the setter, though I personally went for George’s SHO[w]GUN homophone version when doing the puzzle. The homophone indication is oblique, I must admit, but is just about there if you take the combined effect of the question-mark at the end of the clue and assume that in the heat of battle a commander would shout his orders to his men rather than communicate them in written form. As others have mentioned, we’ve discussed at length at least once before the apparently contradictory use of “stop” to indicate both “containing” and agree with Peter B that the “containing” use is a bit weak, but it’s something we ought by now to be on the look-out for. I forgot to be on this occasion, though in the event it didn’t really matter.

          A tricky puzzle. As for most others, 2 dn and 8 and 10 ac were the ones that held me up and the last to go in.

          1. Sorry. Here is corrected version of earlier email, inserting missing words:

             I’ve little doubt that you’re explanation of SHOGUN is the one intended by the setter, though I personally went for George’s SHO[w]GUN homophone version when doing the puzzle. The homophone indication is oblique, I must admit, but is just about there if you take the combined effect of the question-mark at the end of the clue and assume that in the heat of battle a commander would shout his orders to his men rather than communicate them in written form. As others have mentioned, we’ve discussed at length at least once before the apparently contradictory use of “stop” to indicate both “containing” and “contained by”. I get the impression that most of us agree with Peter B that the “containing” use is a bit weak, but it’s something we ought by now to be on the look-out for. I forgot to be on this occasion, though in the event it didn’t really matter.

             A tricky puzzle. As for most others, 2 dn and 8 and 10 ac were the ones that held me up and the last to go in.

11. 15 minutes with just YEN, ABSTAINER & AGEISM solved.
    Gave up with LAWN/MONAD & ANTRA/TENT crossings to do.
    Yawn.
12. 11 minutes here to complete, and a couple more to sort out the wordplay for 11ac and 26ac. Some tricky wordplay, but nothing too extreme. I rather enjoyed it
13. found this difficult and unrewarding, needed aids to finish. cod 8ac lawn, one of that nasty trio top left that were last to go in.
14. 28.21 for me today (I’ve found a stopwatch on my mobile) so qualifies as decidedly tricky. I’m with the “sounds like” for SHOGUN: in fact I thought it was giggleworthy and my CoD. Really annoyed not to spot the hidden AIDE until way too far on. On ABSTAINER, once again choral singing comes to the rescue: I’m doing his period piece “The Crucifixion” next week.
    NW corner easily the toughest bit. All in all, fun if you enjoy a challenge.
15. Do setters ever contribute to this discussion? It would be good to know today which of the contenders for SHOGUN was the one he/she had in mind.
    1. Some of the setters do, but most don’t. Although the sounds-like was my only clue towards wordplay, the container seems pretty clearly better to me and I’d therefore say that was the intended reading.
16. The setter can tell you that his original clue used GO rev. in SHUN. The clue as printed was devised by the crossword editor to give a clearer surface meaning to the same construction and was not challenged by the setter (who did not see the ‘SHOW GUN’ idea).
    1. I am sorry to hear the clue got garbled. A smooth surface is nice, but the integrity of the wordplay is more important.

       I was able to see what wordplay must have been intended, but it is very hard to fit back to the clue as it stands.

    2. I’m happy to stand corrected, though it will demote the clue in my eyes from Clue of the Day! For me, the show gun idea struck straight away (one of those EPR moments from yesterday’s blog, perhaps) and seemed so obvious that I didn’t consider anything else. Ah well.
17. This was so tough that I had to go for a walk, whereupon I solved antra and lawn in my head. I had pencilled in atria but could not justify the wordplay. I only got lawn because we had it on Tuesday.
18. Much the same as everybody else. Quite difficult and requiring a sustained effort. Pity the crossword editor decided to cause confusion. Most of the time I criticise him for what he fails to do – now I can moan about what he has done!!
    1. Jimbo & Vinyl,
       Might it not be better to reserve judgment pending knowledge of the setter’s original construction? It’s always possible that the editor’s alteration was an improvement upon it.
       1. Absolutely correct mctext but I never allow an opportunity to criticise the crossword editor to pass by unrecorded – why let the facts get in the way when one’s having fun?
19. I needed aids to finish this (I usually do) but until I reached that point (six to go) had taken about half an hour, so usual level of difficulty for me. LAWN was my second in (the clue made me think immediately of Wimbledon tennis courts). Got ANTRA from the wordplay, and COMIC OPERA and ABSTAINER from the definitions. Hadn’t heard of MONAD. The container indicator for AIDE eluded me.
20. Practically the first answer I saw was 27A: Musical drama..(3,10), obviously LES MISERABLES. Oh well.
21. Just got back from long tiring day out and did not relax into this at all. Done from bottom up – Fledermaus first in – but first time since I came to this Blog actually gave up two adrift after 30 mins, with sigh of relief to come here & read brill blogging and get monad and lawn from that. Good to read others’ comments too. And so to bed… thank you all!
22. Just a postscript on this much-discussed clue.

    SHOGUN and SHOW GUN are not homophones. According to the OED, while the first syllables are identical the “u” in SHOGUN is pronounced as in “put”, and the “u” in GUN is pronounced as in “putt”.

    1. I’d like to bet that the OED is contradicted by the vast, overwhelming majority of those people whose use of language it is *supposed* to be recording.
       1. I don’t know. It is not a word that one often hears in general conversation so I couldn’t say.

          Personally I pronounce SHOGUN in the OED way, but as a Japanese speaker my pronunciation may be not be typical English.

          That’s why I checked the dictionary – Chambers supports OED and also adds the alternative pronunciation of “sho-goon”, which takes it even further away from GUN.

23. model <-> last in the cobbler sense, but why plates <-> nails?
24. Everyone seems comfortable with DIE = LONG, but for the life of me, I don’t get it. Is it as simple as ‘dying for’ = ‘longing for’? If it is, then it still doesn’t sit well with me.

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