Times 24515 – All Thumbs Eve!

52 comments on “Times 24515 – All Thumbs Eve!”

1. A new standard of minimalism for the blog! Maybe Glass would have been more appropriate than Shostakovich?
   21 minutes and still not sure what the difficult ones are supposed to be.
   17dn
2. What started as a breeze turned into a howling headwind. Had to get help for EYE RHYME, ACTAEON and MINATORY (all new to me) to fill in the spaces in 30 minutes. Not helped by what I see as weak clu(e?)ing. 3 dn definition by example, but nothing else except a vague allusion to pronunciation (“say”). Well familiar with the verminous mynah bird, but not with its cousin. Still, nothing wrong with a good grump to get the week under way!
   1. Surely the “say” in 3dn is “for example”?
      1. Yes, I agree that “rough lough for example” is a perfectly good NON-cryptic clue, But was looking for a second way in to the answer, and was groping for something like “the nub is in how you SAY it”. Maybe I am being a bit pernickety.
         1. I’d say it was a “perfectly good NON-cryptic clue” for anyone who managed to see it as such in less than a minute. If like me you were fooled into some other interpretation, or just general bafflement, then it has done what a cryptic clue is supposed to do.

            As long as the Times allows cryptic definition clues, there won’t always be a second way in to the answer.

            1. ‘quay day, say’ giving an actual rhyme as well may have helped.
   2. The Lough Pool Inn at Sellack (not to mention Loughbourough) might have something to say about the accuracy of this clue.
      1. They might, but if you bring in proper nouns (let alone parts of words), homophonic chaos isn’t far away – we’re not far away here from former TV man Frank Bough (“boff”). (And speaking of accuracy, there is one O in Loughborough without a U next to it.)
3. I believe, yes, the ‘say’ in 3D is ‘for example’, as ‘rough’ and ‘lough’ constitute an EYE RHYME, which I believe is one of vinyl’s tough ones along with ACTAEON. That one screws up us Yanks who were taught ‘Acteon’ for the unfortunate hunter, even in Latin class in high school. Vinyl’s experience mirrors my own, except he got there more quickly. I confess to 50 minutes, after getting most in 15 or so. The AGINCOURT clue was very succinct and clever. Regards.
4. Got ACTAEON quickly, dredging up fast-ebbing Classical Upper Sixth knowledge. Defeated by EYE RYHME (though I like the clue now I get it). COD to BALDER, which doesn’t even make the cut with vinyl!
   1. I entered ‘balder’ as my first in, practically instantly.
5. 20 minutes, sprints with the odd brick wall. Must say I liked the praying mantis. The disturbed surface of (a) rough lough adds that frisson of diversionary sense as well as the idea of a something not altogether even, here a rhyme. Confused for a time by the executioner Jack Ketch. Just looked him up – hell, whatever you prayed for on the block, it must have included anyone but him.
6. I remember your woes about Firefox. Now, can anyone tell me how to turn the sod off (globally) in Google Chrome? This browser prints the crossword best of all the alternatives — believe me, I’ve tried the lot. But it seems you can only right click and turn the spell checker off in each individual window.
   1. There used to be a settings option to do this, but apparently this is the way to do it now. I started using Chrome because it had a spell check option. Best of lcuk.
      1. Windoze only!
7. Yet again I took 20 minutes for all but six clues, then 10 minutes for the next four and finally another 20 to crack EYE RHYME and ACTAEON. I cheated on the final one having worked out ACT?EON but forgotten the alternative spelling that would have given me the missing letter. I think I have met the name before but was unable to bring it to mind so I was reliant on the wordplay.

   A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the spell checker in my newly installed version of Firefox was not working as I typed despite the relevant box being ticked under Tools/Options. It turned out that no dictionary had been installed and the solution was to right-click with the cursor in the Comments box and select Install Dictionary, select UK English then restart Firefox. The item does not appear on the menu if a dictionary is already installed.

8. Got Actaeon easily enough, but didn’t understand the wordplay because I only thought of the 3-letter spelling EON. Battled with 3D for about 5 minutes – E?E ?H?M? is a great “checking letters poser”, and at first I failed to remember that R is a possible first letter for ?H____ words, along with the more likely C P S T and W.
   1. Finishing time: 13:05
9. 45 mins but chanced my arm at the end with eye thumb because it gave the best fit to my addled brain. titian’s death of actaeon in the national gallery was enough to remind me of his original spelling.
   particularly liked sow = litter-dropper, so cod to 18d.
   1. So I suppose that you, at least, appreciate the title I have given to this blog.
10. Reminds me of a few recent ST puzzles where one hardly has time for breath and then get hopelessly stuck with 2 to go (usually 4 letter clues). Poor education was let-down here. Wild guess got me ACTAEON but had EYE RHIME (a nasty discharge?) and even knowing it was wrong stuck AUSTRIA in (must work harder). About 20 minutes up to the brick wall.
    I don’t often object but surely AMADEUS is a play. You wouldn’t say West Side Story or War and Peace were films would you?
    1. A tricky one. If the adaptation is well-known, I don’t mind it being indicated as such. I’d say the film versions of Amadeus and West Side Story made a big enough impact, but I didn’t remember War and Peace as a movie so would expect a clue to stick to the book. There must be numerous examples where a film or other adaptation is better known than the original book.
       1. I can’t remember if we’ve previously discussed what qualifies a film as “notable”. Amadeus won the Best Picture Oscar, which might be one yardstick; it’s not always a guarantee that a film will still be considered a classic twenty years on, but it does at least mean a solver can’t complain on the grounds of obscurity.

          That doesn’t mean the film is necessarily the best-known version of a story, of course, though I guess mileage will vary in every case, even before you allow the setter the right to deliberately choose the more obscure one (within reason – it would be perverse to describe Hamlet as a film, though there are half a dozen different versions of it).

          I guess it comes down to personal experience – if you’d come across the play first, then the film, you’d think this was deliberately deceptive, but I imagine lots of people see films without realising they are based on a well-known play or book at all.

          Plus, any film which isn’t E.T. makes a nice change!

          1. We have certainly discussed this point before and unless I’m very much mistaken I raised the matter with reference to AMADEUS being clued as a film a year or so back. Which makes it rather odd that the thought of querying the same point didn’t occur to me today until I read the comments here.
    2. And War and Peace won Best Foreign Film gong in 1969.

    3. I suspect the perspective is a bit different for you big city types down there in that London, Barry. For many of us, ‘new theatre’ is the local repertory (if we have one) doing one of the few Ayckbourns they haven’t got around to before.

       Having always lived well outside the Evening Standard’s circulation area, I’m not at all sure I’d even heard of Amadeus until the movie came out.

       Pity us yokels. This week, professional theatre available to me locally includes Peter Pan and a Beatles sing-along show. And, er, that’s it. And then the two theatres close until September.

11. 16mins today, or easier than average, but enjoyable & slick. No problem with Actaeon, but eye rhyme was last in, solved as much by lack of other alternatives that would fit as anything else.
    Sympathy, Barry, but it cannot really be denied that Amadeus (and the other examples mentioned) are indeed films.. the setter has no brief to pick the obvious choice, indeed really the reverse is true
12. 15 minutes today, and would have been 10 except for the BALDER/EYE RHYME crossing: I had it harder than the rest of you because I got the former by means of the latter. I was suitably chastened to find BALDER is regarded here as a blindingly obvious clue. It is if you see it. Maybe I was just overexcited by the prospect of a sub-ten finish, as everything else, including ACTAEON, just slid in (easy stuff, I thought!). My instant response to 7d was that it had to do with Grace Darling and wondered if that was the setter’s intention.
    CoD to PRAYING MANTIS (chuckle)
    1. Don’t feel completely chastened – I have some doubts about whether “less on top” is really OK for “balder”. I’d prefer “With” to be added to the clue to get “With less on top of British tree”.
       1. It was the “of” that threw me, I think, though necessary for the surface I suppose. I think I was trying to get “less” on top of B(r)itish to mean tree – there’s quite a few, but not with an easy meaning of “less”, unless you count bonsai! Sometimes, when an answer seems to be lurking just below the surface of the conscious mind, it’s hard to break away into the intended alternative.
          1. In Times puzzles (and some others I think), “of” is considered an acceptable link-word between definition and wordplay, exploiting the “indicating the material constituting something” meaning of “of”. In the Times, it’s one of the “one way” linkwords – “{def} of {wordplay}” is OK, “{wordplay} of {def}” is not. The classic one-way linkword that goes the other way is “from”.
13. A very fast time apart from 5 minutes at the end to get eye rhyme. I failed on a Jumbo a couple of weeks ago when the answer was rhymester so I should have been on the lookout for a RH beginning and a Y vowel.

    I liked the clues to least, minatory showcase and praying mantis. I turned to this crossword from the back page of the Times where Michael Vaughan was advertising a baldness cure so I got 1A immediately

14. 7:28 for me, which I thought was nothing exceptional. It felt like a puzzle I’d have done in 5 or 6 mins twenty years ago. So I’m surprised to see some of the times here. All down to whether or not the last couple held you up or not, I guess.
15. I just realised that 16ac wasn’t blogged or mentioned so far. What’s the significance of 1566?
    1. … a city on the Jumna River in Uttar Pradesh state, northern India; pop. 899,000. Once the capital of the Mogul empire 1566–1658, it is the site of the Taj Mahal.
       Mac OED.
       1. My old (1971) Penguin Encyclopedia of Places and ODE both say “founded 1566”. Wikipedia and other websites give earlier dates, and it is claimed on some sites that Ptolemy’s second century AD map has Agra on it. So the “foundation date” may be lost in time or a notion imposed by later tradition, like the one for Rome.
          1. I think there may be a problem with a clue that asserts a disputed fact. Fortunately the wordplay provided another way into it so no harm was done.
             1. I’ve informed the Times crossword editor and OUP. I have some sympathy with crossword setters/editors, who must sometimes rely on sources, and can only do their best by using ones that are normally reliable.
16. I put in EKE THUMP(Rough)at first! Memories of the Goodies

    What is the answer to 19a? My 1d BLACKJACK must be wrong.

    Never heard of ACTAEON.

    Monday’s puzzles seem to have more classical and historical allusions than other days (my most successful solving days seem to be Tuesdays and Fridays)

    1. 1D is BLACKJACK 19A is KICK – the “give up” def. being as in “kick the habit”.

       Interesting idea about Monday, but as far as I know there is no intention to have particular setters or types of material on a consistent day of the week.

17. 9 minutes, 3D was last in but it didn’t hold me up much. Seems like a perfectly reasonable clue to me.

    Tom B.

18. Doh!

    I’m still not seeing some obvious clues.

    By the way, now that Roy Dean’s stopped setting Times puzzles, has anyone taken his place?

    1. My understanding is that setters on the team are given a frequency for submission of puzzles, with a range something like four times a year to once a fortnight. So a departure from the team could just result in one or two other setters being used more often. I’m aware of one setter (long-established elsewhere) joining the team sometime in the last year or two, but don’t know whether this was directly linked to Roy stopping.

       I’m being coy about names because the Times only mentions them occasionally – Times Crossword books often include a list, but this applies to the period covered by the book, and so is a few years out of date.

19. The easy run continues. 15 minutes today for a mechanistic solve that never got above the mundane.
20. 16 m of post-prandial doze on swing seat which had me wondering briefly if belder was a word – like some last in; but eye rhyme was known. Toyed with Austria (was there an old kingdom of Utria?) till Assyria came to mind and wondered about other straths before seeing it was an anagram.
21. Didn’t get to even look at this until a late break, and raced through the rest of it with only 3 and 25 left. Figured it had to be ACTSEON or ACTAEON and the latter looked more plausible. Then saw the possibility for EKE THUMP and couldn’t stop laughing so in it went. Eeeeee eke thump!
22. An unhurried 11-minute solve for me on the way home tonight, as my printer was playing up this morning. It lost its IP address somehow, and has also stopped printing red, despite a full toner cartridge (not a problem for crosswords but still annoying). I think it might be time for a new one.

    Any Goodies fan will know the spelling is ECKY THUMP, so that was a non-starter anyway. I got that one quite early actually – my last one in was the obvious hidden answer ALARM, but only because it was the last one I looked at.

23. What’s the point of a Blog that doesn’t explain all the clues ? Some of us are not as clever or as experienced as others.
    1. That is the policy of this blog.

       You are free to ask about any, and we are happy to answer.

24. I don’t think one should have to ask.
    1. Policies can change, but the blog is written by volunteers, who may not always have time to write up every single answer. In the vast majority of our blogs these days you get explanations of all but one or two clues, often accompanied by a hint about the remaining answer. With the help of checking letters from other answers I’d hope that you can get (and explain) the last few answers in such reports.

       There is a benefit in leaving out some answers: the writer of the blog has to think about which are the easiest answers to solve and explain for yourself with the help of checking letters from the ones in the blog. Whether people then ask about any of the missing answers shows whether the right ones were chosen, and helps us to understand what causes problems to solvers. But this does involve a bit of willingness on your part to say which omitted clues you have a problem with.

       There’s also a bit of reluctance on my part to give you everything on a plate: reading explanations is fine, but you can only really learn to solve by struggling with the clues yourself. Finishing off the usual last one or two clues should be a gentle exercise compared to starting off with a blank grid.

25. Andrew Kit above mentioned more classics on Mondays. Don’t know about that, but this one seemed to have more proper nouns than usual:
    Amadeus
    Assyria
    Agra
    Strathmore
    Agincourt
    Wilma
    Actaeon
    Nassau
    Alexander.

    Personally I don’t like these clues much, much prefer improper nouns, as it were.

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