Times 24512 – Potpourri of Delights

44 comments on “Times 24512 – Potpourri of Delights”

1. 16 minutes, with just a few hesitations in the SW. Saw that 22ac must be some sort of cd — which I still think should be banned! — and, with an H at the start, assumed “hellicopter” [duly mis-spelled]! Should have known better because the Brown honeyeaters (which aren’t brown!) are starting to impersonate hummingbirds in my garden right now, trying to get at the flowers and berries on the Duranta repens. They don’t do it very well and tend to fall out of the sky after a second or two. COD to MACHIAVELLI for its superbly relevant surafce.
   1. So far as I can see, virtually all birds were named by colour blind people. (Note that they got blackbird right – I rest my case..)
      1. Jerry: they were named after the first European to describe them in ornithological terms. His name was Brown. So they ought to be “Brown’s” … but life’s not like that!
2. ….as I whipped through most of it in about 20, and then got stuck on a few last words that would not come. One was ‘atonement’, but I had ‘hassle’ instead of ‘basset’, so I was working with a wrong letter. ‘Catchment’ and ‘thriller’ also proved elusive.

   As for the use of ‘Don’ as a river name, there are actually eight such rivers worldwide: four in England, one in Russia, two in Australia, and one in Canada. Most solvers will probably think of the one in Russia, made famous by that Soviet novel.

   I admit that I didn’t get a few of the cryptics, including the ones for ‘in a spot’ and ‘karate’.

   I am still a little startled to see ‘pitta’ spelt with two Ts, a variation that is never seen in the US.

3. 30 mins for me. got hung up at 10ac and 7dn. i had twinned but wasn’t convinced si ce it was such a weak defenition. and i was trying to justify ‘partial’ as unfinished with p being porch left and art being painted and ial…well maybe something desperate
   1. The literal for ‘twinned’ refers obliquely to a special usage, as in ‘twinned’ towns and such.
4. 24 minutes, good fare, nothing scintillating, still don’t quite get hummingbird ‘which can be seen still’-?I thought bergamot was a detective. COD 7 for its neat use of ‘enjoying’.
   1. I imagine it’s a reference to the bird’s ability to hover so it’s “still” at least by comparison with other birds in flight, and might be “seen” to be still if one is not close enough to notice its rapid wing movements.
5. Again 20 minutes for all but six answers but unlike yesterday the break between sessions did some good and I wrote the remainder in more or less straight away on resuming. Say 25 minutes in all. The only reference I wasn’t quite sure about was Dan re KARATE but it rang a faint bell and obviously the answer couldn’t have been anything else.

   In view of the level of difficulty so far this week I think Sabine may be about to draw the short straw again for the Friday blog.

6. About 12mins. Having got 1dn, than 1ac and 5ac instantly, this had to be an easy one and so it proved. Just what I needed, after a somewhat bruising encounter with this month’s Club Monthly.
7. 7:39 – pretty straightforward. With many possibilities for ?I?I?G, 21D worried me until I thought of “West Indies” for Caribbean.

   13D is certainly a double def, though “like a cannonball” is a cryptic def rather than a dictionary one.

   3D seems to qualify as a semi-&lit, judging by the ‘surface reading’ of The Prince by Machiavelli.

8. 23 m, last in 7 and 15 – I am duff at Dickens. Did not know fissure was also a verb. On the whole SW corner slowest. Liked the hummingbird; 5d felt an old friend.
9. 17 minutes today, which seems to be becoming a habit regardless of the grid’s difficulty (apart from the fabulous Good Friday monster, that is). HARD AND FAST was a laugh out loud moment (perhaps I’m just easy to please) that made it my COD. Good surfaces throughout, I thought, especially that Machiavellian one.

   On that frustratingly consistent 17/16 minute time, I’ve only recently started doing the Times again – in my younger days I could get down to around 10 mins and below, and I used to be able to do the thing on my daily drive to work between the Loughton interchange on the M11 and the Stratford turnoff on the A12/M11 extension: more a measure of appalling traffic speed than quick solving. Do others find age to be a decelerating factor, or is it just lack of practice?

   1. I’m afraid I’m the same, z8b8d8k. I was about a third quicker in my younger days, too. I have recently picked up the crossword again after a layoff, but I don’t think it is just lack of practice.
10. Thanks Jack – actually recalled the ‘wings that beat too fast to be seen’ characteristic just after I posted. Peter, I have a question on the championship qualifiers, the first of which I’ve just done in a time too slow to get into the first 50, 24 minutes. It may be unanswerable due to varying quality but what very roughly might be a time sending in that would stand a chance?
    1. I think there was a statement two or three years ago that everyone who sent in a qualifier puzzle with a time under 30 minutes got a place at Cheltenham. If I’m right in guessing that most of the keen people send in Qualifier 1, I’d be a bit wary of assuming that this will always apply for that puzzle – I think I heard from someone last year who did not qulify with a sub-30 time. My guess is that a time of under 30 minutes should be enough for qualifiers 3 or 4. This is all subject to the effect of relative difficulty of course.

       (Remember that the best 50 competitors from last year’s finals are given free entries, so you’re not competing against them in any of the qualifiers).

       1. I find that statement quite interesting as I would never have thought that a 25-30 type entry would have suceeded. I have never tried, given my expectations of there being “enough” 10-15m solvers and a rough analysis of comments to this blog over the last few years does nothing to change that perception.

          From my memory the qualifiers last year seemed to be relatively easy (compared to some of the daily puzzles) but the one today seemed to have enough quirks to be a bit harder. Either that or I was off colour. Nevertheless I would be very surprised if for example 27 or 28 minutes was good enough.

          1. The qualifiers are often pretty easy puzzles. But compared to the days when you would get a total of about 500 people at the two London regional finals, plus another 800 or so at the other four, participation is low. I think this is partly because the distance to travel is further for many people, and partly because doing three puzzles in an hour is rather rushed and anti-social compared to an afternoon session where you did four puzzles in separate half-hour slots, with gaps between, taking about 3 hours in total. If the event was to move to London, I think the time required to qualify would be close to 15 minutes.
             1. Make that 600 – the Birmingham and Glasgow ones often had only two or three qualifiers, which implies 100-150 people.
       2. ….with my time of 33 minutes, that’s not good enough.

          I must be one of the slowest solvers who almost always finishes.

11. 81 minutes for me. Enjoyable puzzle; particularly liked 7, 17 and my last in 21 (WIRING), where I was spent too long working around ‘bikini’. Drink Earl Grey every day and never realised till now that bergamot is derived from oranges.
12. Stuck for an age in SW corner until HUMMINGBIRD occurred to me without understanding and then got the rest. In same corner I thought THRILLER and EARDRUM were tricky because of the definitions but as usual no one else seems to think so. Depressed after struggling over the last 2 puzzles which you lot found so easy but then I struggled to finish yesterday’s Telegraph.
    1. They were – I cetainly didn’t get THRILLER on first look – can’t remember about EARDRUM. When there are enough relatively easy ones to give you checking letters for the harder ones without too much delay, you don’t remember the hard ones as easily as you do when stuck in one knotty corner like yesterday.
    2. I realise my consolation as one of the blog’s slowest solvers will be akin to that of Job’s comforters, but these two challenged me a fair bit too. Actually, when I wrote that 17 (THRILLER) was one of my favourites, what I really meant is that I was just pleased to finally get it.
       1. Not at all, I relish, positively wallow, in any sympathy I can get. As marvellous as this site is it can be humbling. I suppose one has to remind oneself constantly that the usual suspects are the exception rather than the rule, or perhaps I am kidding myself.
    3. You are right about this site being humbling. I struggled madly today, managing only about a third of the words — all the really easy ones. Missed EVERY anagram as I had not realised that parts of words could be used. Still learning…
       1. Depending on exactly what you mean by that, you’re possibly overstating it.

          We did have one plain anagram today – BERGAMOT = (amber got)* at 16D. Identifying this as an anagram should have been relatively easy – “at sea” is a fairly routine anagram indicator as well as an indicator for nautical vocab. Of course you don’t necessarily know that BERGAMOT is the anagram that’s a real word.

          3 and 20 use the Times crossword’s most common way of disguising anagram fodder – using words like old, hard and line which have one-letter abbreviations. Another bit of disguise is to have the anagram indicator apply to “A with B” or similar, when A and B are the words to be anagrammed. This wasn’t used today. Between them, these two little wrinkles mean you can’t just look for groups of words next to each other with the right number of letters and a possible anagram indicator next door.

          At 25 there’s a different way of doing this – giving you words that contain the anagram fodder and a bit more, and then telling what you need to take away. In this case “hesitant word” is a little bit vague, but as ER is there in plain sight it should be the one – and it’s actually there twice, hence “one hesitant word” rather than just “hesitant word” or “a hesitant word”. (Every word in a clue should be there for a reason ….)

13. About 40 minutes; held up in SW mainly by CATCHMENT, HUMMINGBIRD & EARDRUM, the latter taking some time to see, even after I had the word. D’oh!. I’ll give it my COD although I liked INTERCHANGE and MACHIAVELLI as well.
14. This took a few minutes longer than yesterday, despite having no obscure words. I was not impressed by 22. I read “what’s going fast” as the cryptic part leading to “humming bird” and the second half as the definition giving hummingbird.

    I did not know fissure as a verb. I realised Don was the only possible answer at 11 but I spent a long time justifying it, trying to think of French towns such as Doniref.

    I noted, in passing that the abbreviation for rupees is Rs. This seems to be an exception to the general rule that currency symbols such as L do double duty as singular and plural. Confusingly, the dictionary entry for R is rupee(s).

    1. I think this is a specific rupee thing. It is written eg Rs50 on tags and signs whereas other currencies dont go down this route. Whether it is fair to have to know the particular idiosyncracies of all the worlds countries is open to discussion, but I suppose the “larger” ones are fair game.
15. 28 Minutes until I stared at 21d for a further 5. I had the same problem as Ulaca with Bikini – Glad to see it made Peter think as well. Some very good clues here, THRILLER, TWINNED MACHIAVELLI floated my particular boat.
16. Rejoining the tour today after a couple of weeks’ absence (new job), i made the usual fast start but faded badly at the end. Eventually limped home in 59 minutes, the last 15 spent on the Caribbean atoll at 21dn.

    Like ulaca, i was surprised to find that my drink of choice contains orange extracts rather than the crushed leaves of some exotic Indian herb. Ah well, that’s another misconception put to bed.

17. about 50 mins having got very bogged down in sw corner, though last in was ‘wiring’. i thought initially i would be on for a sub 30 min solve, which is quick for me. did not understand ‘hummingbird’ till coming here. though i am very fond of a drop if red, cod to eardrum, where i thought the um was hesitant word for far too long. pendrov
18. 17 minutes, really enjoyed the wit and originality of this puzzle. I can’t decide if the definition for thriller is brilliant or just a little too cryptic. Didn’t particularly like hummingbird but too many good clues to pick a COD.
    1. Top notch, I reckon. Put me in the mood for a rewatch of 1985’s Jagged Edge, starring this year’s Oscar winner, which is spinning even now in the DVD player.
19. Didn’t time myself on this one, but completed it while waiting for the shower to become free, so can’t have been that long (there was still hot water).

    BERGAMOT from wordplay (word sounded familiar, didn’t know what it meant). I liked 14 down, second incidence of HM being an element in an answer recently.

20. I took a while over this one, about 50 minutes, first in BROOD, last WIRING. A lot of this was deceptive, with inventive definitions, but seeing them clearly took me some time. I liked MACHIAVELLI, but I really liked BOOKMAKER for a COD; it made me laugh. Regards.
21. 9:31 for me on a fun puzzle. Held up by AWL, not twigging the required meaning of “bit”. Struggling to post any sub 9 minute times, which doesn’t bode well for any romantic competitive aspirations!
    1. On 4 puzzles so far this week, I make my total 35:44 and yours 39:12. I’m pretty sure that anyone finishing correctly 3 minutes behind me for 3 puzzles has qualified for the final in each of the last 4 championship preliminary rounds – if I’m in good form on the day, someone 10 minutes behind me should have a good chance.

       Accuracy and consistency are more important than a fast time for one puzzle. There’s also the unknown factor – how the presence of other good solvers affects you – will it inspire you or terrify you? Only one way to find out…

       1. Many thanks for the encouragement. I’ve been caffeine-free recently and wishfully put my sluggishness down to that. I imagine the presence of other solvers would terrify me and I would stare blankly at the grids, but heigh ho. As you say, one way to find out . . .
          1. You may well be right. I am always really slow when I have to blog, and I am not surrounded by fifty Peter B clones scribbling away.

             I would imagines Peter’s competition experience gives him a considerable advantage over newcomers.

             1. It must help – I can’t see that I’m inherently any better or faster than I was in the mid-1990s when I was just a possible finalist, having qualified once in my first seven attempts. It helps to know that you can finish quite a long way behind a preliminary round winner and still make the final, and that hardly ever will all the first 12 finishers have all the answers right.
22. It fits the Times standard for “fair game”, as Rs is in the Concise Oxford. KD for Kuwaiti Dinar, just looked up in Chambers for blogging a barred-grid puzzle, is not in COED or Collins, so would not be used in a Times puzzle.
23. One of Aberdeen’s two rivers is the ‘Don’ (the other is the ‘Dee’) so that makes at least 9 ‘River Dons’ worldwide.

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