Times 24623 – A nice derangement of epitaphs!

67 comments on “Times 24623 – A nice derangement of epitaphs!”

1. Bit slower here this morning: 26 minutes. Had most trouble in the top left: looking for a proper name for the athlete and (still) not understanding product=power in 1dn. You (vinyl) say it’s “double cryptic”. The “large amount” bit looks pretty literal to me (cf “a power of good”). Is the second bit mathematical maybe?
   Slight correction: POSSES in 1ac.
   1. I interpreted it to go something like product = 2 x 2 = a power of 2. A bit lame, but so are some of the other clues.

      Typo corrected.

      1. Thanks vinyl. My knowledge of maths is akin to that of my knowledge of plumbing and ballet. But I had the idea that “power” = the number of times a certain number is to be multiplied by itself — so as to get a product? Maybe we need to wait for Koro to come on and put us out of our misery.
         1. Sorry, it was my last in and I can’t offer a better explanation.
2. I’m struggling tonight, and crawled home in just over a half an hour, so well done you guys. Didn’t know MALAPROP straight off, but remembered there’s a bookstore named that. VANCOUVER ISLAND from definition, smiliarly SILVER MEDALLIST.
3. Anyone else bothered about the final S in 23ac? It put me off for a while as I’ve never seen it spelled that way.
   1. Agree. I delayed the TEMPLARS bit until I had all the checkers. A little research suggests that it is either KNIGHTS TEMPLAR (in full) or TEMPLARS (for short) and that our doubts are justified.
4. 80 minutes, with two wrong (one marginally – ‘spahes’ for SPAHIS – and one totally – ‘tees’ for LESS) and one obtained through aids (SEXTUPLET, which I might have got on my own, except I was thinking ‘tep’ for old sheep).

   Educated enough to get MALAPROP off the bat, but not to know that Long John was also called sea cook. Tricky start to the week. Hardly a puzzle for beginners, I would have thought.

5. I thought the definition was “religious order’s”
   1. That’s how I parsed it too.
      1. Isn’t it a bit odd to have a possessive as an answer?
6. I struggled too. I’m glad it wasn’t my turn to blog. I gave up trying to justify WILLIAM OF ORANGE to myself, so thanks for the explanation, vinyl. I’m still struggling with the second half of ODDS. What’s with the matter?
   1. Think ‘It makes no odds to me’.
      1. Thanks for that. I can’t say I’m familiar with the expression.
         1. It is indeed listed as ‘British informal’ in Macmillan online. Depends on one’s idiolect, obviously, but it’s a phrase I use quite a bit.
7. Not an easy puzzle in my corner, not by a long shot. About an hour, with a lot of problems all around. Trouble all over the place for me, so well done to you both vinyl and mctext for what to me are quick solves. I’m all correct, but threw a lot in on a wing and a prayer, i.e. POWER, CLEARANCE, BOTTLE TREE, WILLIAM OF ORANGE, SILVER MEDALLIST (two L’s?), TEMPLAR(plus an S?).COD to DIFFICULTY. Nice work on the blog, vinyl. Better luck to me tomorrow. Regards to everyone.
   1. It’s a little more complex than this, but, in British English, if the final consonant is ‘l’ or ‘s’, you double it before adding the suffix. (Excepted from this are words that end in a consonant preceded by two or more vowels representing a single vowel sound or a diphthong, where you add the suffix, e.g. ‘fouling’, but cf. ‘dialling’.)
      1. Thanks ulaca. Over here I only see it as ‘MEDALIST’, so I was thrown by the extra ‘L’.
8. 12:49 for this one

   A bit thrown by the wacky enumerations (there’s something similar in the Times 2 RTC today, so I guess there was someone new working on these puzzles), but it gives me something to talk about when I visit the Times offices today.

   Surprised enough by “KNIGHTS TEMPLARS” to not write the second word until supported by checkers (I wnted the member to be a limb). Also delayed a bit by the near-miss CIVIL at 6A, until L?E?R…. for 8D suggested something was wrong.

   1. Unless I am barking there was a typo in yesterday’s as well.
      10 minutes wondering if there was something cunning about the enumerations. Not a beginner exactly (16 months?) but this made me feel like one. On the other hand I thought some of the clues were rubbish.
9. 50 minutes when I stopped the clock with 22dn unsolved intending to cheat but before I could do so it came to me. Definitely not a puzzle for beginners I would have thought as there are too many slight obscurities. SPAHIS for example and KNIGHTS TEMPLARS where KNIGHTS TEMPLAR is the most common usage (Collins has it, btw). The answer at 16 is obvious with the checkers in place, and possibly without if the mention of starting price gets one thinking along the right lines, but actually I can’t make strict sense of the clue. Maybe I don’t understand enough about betting.
   1. I hadn’t come across it before but KNIGHTS TEMPLARS is also the form found in the on-line OED.

      Templar

      1. A member of a military and religious order, consisting of knights (Knights Templars, Knights or Poor Soldiers of the Temple)….

      and citations include

      1839 KEIGHTLEY Hist. Eng. I. 266 It was in the reign of Edward II that the potent and wealthy order of Knights Templars was suppressed throughout Europe.

10. Didn’t get to comment on all of last week’s as motoring round Aberdeenshire – no rain! – but did them all and enjoyed their deftness. But today’s seems somewhat gawky. (Especially 9 and 23, for different reasons.) 20 minutes but with Septuple – again, forgot to check. I think one or two – like Stasis – might have been explained in the blog that aren’t, perhaps; not that obvious to all.
    1. There are so many possibiities here that fit the def., if you have only ???T?P?E. Apart from the dread Xantippe (who doesn’t), there’s:
       CENTUPLE MULTIPLE SEPTUPLE and SEXTUPLE.
       1. Yeah, well I had the first E as well and thinking “tup”
          threw it in. Not clever.
11. 15:15 for me. The printout looked a bit messy after I’d scribbled out all the wrong enumerations, but was less confusing then. I got 3 of the 4 15-letter answers straight away (WILLIAM OF ORANGE required a few checking letters, and I didn’t bother to work out the wordplay). I spotted SEMICHORUS from the anagram fodder straight away, but didn’t put it in until later as I’d never heard of the term. I also needed all the checkers to get the first half of 17, but I think I’ve probably come across it before somewhere.
12. No time today, as I’m somewhat worn after a short break in Bruges – memo to all: never try to park anywhere in Bruges. Most of the bottom half went in before WILLIAM O opened up the top half. So fuzzy today, I can’t decide whether this is especially clever or a bit dodgy. Didn’t like SPAHIS much (knew the word, it was just SP for spring that threw me) and rather too many entered on definition alone. CoD to DIFFICULTY. I just liked the iffy cult.
    1. Er, ‘spring’ = ‘spa’, like Bath.
       1. Sure, but there’s an A in the clue too. I was reading A HIS (chap’s) after (at end of) SPring.
13. One of the things about solving is that you have to size up the setter early on, and know what to expect.

    In this case, we are strictly in crossword land, where nothing is too far-fetched and the cryptic must be your guide. Look at the cryptic for ‘sextuple’ – what exactly is a former sheep? So when you come to ‘knights templars’, you will see that ‘weeping’ = ‘in tears’ is the key, and that the setter was so eager to use this mildly clever cluing device that he was not overly worried about the accuracy of the answer.

    I am surprised no one felt strong about the literal of ‘cartel’, which is usually an conspiracy of businessmen, and not a political alliance at all. Once again, the crossword cliche of ‘estate’ = ‘car’ is allowed to take first place, while accuracy of idiom falls by the wayside. That’s why I was confident of the spelling of ‘medallist’, since a menu is a meal list, and the cryptic always comes first.

    Well, it makes no odds to me, as they say….

    1. CARTEL did surprise me a bit, but I just assumed this was an alternative meaning I hadn’t come across, and indeed the online Oxford says it was “originally used to refer to the coalition of the Conservatives and National Liberal parties in Germany”.
       I assumed something similar with the KNIGHTS TEMPLARS but I agree that one does look more like an error. Perhaps we should have a system of crossword courts martials for this sort of thing.
14. I found this a bit of a struggle – definitely not a beginner’s puzzle I’d say. It took me about half an hour until getting thoroughly stuck in the NW, and the last three (REEFER, POWER, POSSESSED in that order) took another three or four looks over the course of the morning.
    I still don’t really understand how (if?) the second half of 16ac works (although the answer is fairly obvious), and I’m not entirely convinced by POWER = PRODUCT either. No real complaints otherwise although I agree it’s all a bit clunky.
    WILLIAM OF ORANGE is either very good or very clumsy, I can’t decide which. However for those of us who brushed up on our history by googling the Act of Settlement last week it was a gift.
15. Failed, thanks to an embarrassing guess at 18d. Admittedly APRHIS never looked much like a word but I was too tired to care. I found some of the rest a little awkward, but I did think 4d SEMI was a very neat clue all around.

    I do hope Peter is alright at News Int. today. I fear it might be a trap. I have visions of him being tied to a chair and beaten with the rubber truncheons until he agrees to install a paywall on Times for the Times and give Mr.Murdoch a percentage.

    1. … from a desk at Fortress Wapping that I’m safe and well, and pleased to see both the progress made so far with building the new version of the crossword site and my reception from the people behind it.
       1. I do feel I should set you a particularly arcane cryptic clue, just to check it’s you, but I can’t think of one so I shall just have to accept your assurance that the natives are friendly. In which case, I suppose all the stories aren’t true. How very disappointing!
16. 33 minutes for me so put me down in the “found it tough” list. LESS was last in, just after the crossing 1d/10a where I failed to see both parts of power and didn’t know the alternative use of advert.

    My crossings out of the incorrect enumerations made it look a bit messy and put me off somewhat.

    I thought the in tears device clever but didn’t care much for other elements of the puzzle.

17. 10.50 Got on quickly after I decided to ignore the clue lengths.Last ones in were SEXTUPLE and then BOTTLE TREE which I didn’t know. Fortunate to have encountered SPAHIS before (in crosswords I mean.
    Didn’t even try to get the wordplay for WILLIAM OF ORANGE.
18. Some puzzles are difficult because of clever clues. This is difficult because some of it borders on being rubbish. When I finish a puzzle and many clues have question marks and rude comments next to them it’s a fair sign of a puzzle that’s not quite up to the mark.

    We have several unsigned definitions by example, loose literals, weak wordplays, and obscure spellings. All in all one to forget.

    1. Have I gotten used to the style of the Sunday Times puzzle?

       Egad!

       1. I stopped doing the Sunday Times a long time ago now because I found it a rather poor, error strewn puzzle. Can’t say if doing the ST helped you with this one but I guess it’s possible. I was trying to help some of the contributors who appeared to be beating themselves up a bit because they found this one difficult when I don’t think it was their technique that was necessarily at fault!
19. Like quite a few others, I thought this considerably tougher than a beginner’s puzzle. My enjoyment of it was modified by the one or two dodgy and lame clues others have mentioned – POWER at 1dn, SEXTUPLET at 15dn which on any normal use of language is rather more than “several” (OECD: “more than two but not many”), and the irritating KNIGHTS TEMPLARS at 23ac where many of us seem to have got the solution early on but hesitated to write it in because “Knights Templar” is by far the most accepted (and possibly only correct) usage. I’ve certainly never seen the “templars” version before. I too queried CARTEL in the sense here used, but the OECD gives as a secondary meaning “a political coalition intended to promote a mutual interest” , albeit calling this usage “chiefly historical”. So I think we have to allow the setter that one.

20. 26 min, but one wrong (SPAHES). Guessed a contraction of “chap is” (he’s) instead of the possessive. In my book, KNIGHTS TEMPLARS is clued as a possessive, so is OK, if a bit odd. Did the CIVIL/C shuffle for a while. POWER = product is plain wrong, and combines with some other dodgy clueing to make a forgettable effort. But no odds …
21. Is 22 dn incorrectly clued? I suspect it should have concluded with “Not so much”, otherwise I don’t see how it works.
    1. ‘Less’ would be rendered ‘not so’ in its adverbial rather than adjectival uses, e.g. ‘less interesting’ and ‘less commonly available’.
       1. Yes of course, thanks! Thats the problem with getting fixated
22. I hope it’s late enough in the day to ask, but the two clues that are not blogged are precisely the ones I can’t understand! I know what the answers are, but can’t see the reasoning.

    I happened to know Spahis from nineteenth-century French songs. But I certainly wouldn’t have called this a beginners puzzle – it was far too capricious and vague in places for that.

    1. There are actually 6 unexplained clues in this report – if you identify the 2 that are troubling you, I’m sure you’ll get an answer from someone.
23. sorry for the late post but been sampling the vino in Burgundy. thought cartel was a stretch like others and found it hard to see William of orange…are we really exppected to see messeneger = ange(l)?
    anyway all in all an odd puzzle as dorest jimbo said
    happy to finish in 55 minutes
    1. ANGEL: “divine messenger” is a significant part of the first def in COED and Chambers, and the second def. in Collins. The best-known act of an angel in Christianity is surely Gabriel’s role in the Christmas story, where “messenger” seems fine as a one-word description.
    2. Well, ‘angelos’ is simply the usual Greek word for ‘messenger’. It had no religious connotations, you will see a character labeled simply ‘Angelos’ in every other play of Euripides and Sophocles.
24. I’m sure we’ve debated before what range of numbers might count as “several”, “many” and other descriptions. I don’t know whether any laws are laid down to crossword setters, but have a vague memory that “many” for a Roman numeral is normally L, C, D or M. For me, “more than two but not many” would take you up to about a dozen or so. Saying that 3 or 4 is “several” but 6 is not seems over-precise to me.
25. I am more amused by the former sheep – what is he now? Yeah, I know, lift and separate, but there is a Monty Python in there.
26. Having finally given up with four unfinished and turned to Vynils blog for comfort, it was a little disappointing to hear this was a good puzzle for beginners. Thank goodness for Dorset Jimbo, whose comments saved the day.
    Still unable to grasp why advert=refer in 10a, and why not so = less in 22d. The explanation to 1d also escapes me
    Fortunatly there is still a bottle of Joguets excellent Clos de la Dioterie to finish – one of Chinons best
    Mike and Fay
    1. To advert (to) means to refer to. See COED meaning 2.
    2. 1D: “a power of good” is a lot of good, and (at the Concise Oxford Dictionary level of maths), “powers” and “products” are both results of multiplication.
27. The two clues I couldn’t do were 16 and 21…
    1. The answer of ‘odds’ for 16 is pretty well-discussed in the comments. The clue is a double cryptic definition, where the ‘odds’ are the starting price at a bookmaker’s, and ‘it’s no odds to me’ means ‘I don’t care’.

       The answer to 21 is ‘sissy’, a hidden word. The slang meaning of a ‘wet’ is what is alluded to here, current in 40s and 50s UK idiom.

       1. This slang meaning of “wet” was sufficiently current in the late 70s/early 80s to be used in UK national politics – see this wiki article.
       2. (if vinyl1’s greeting puzzles you, IP addresses of anonymous posters are shown to people with paid-up LJ membership when they’re logged in).
28. Agree with much of what has been said. Not a good crossword. Power=product is just wrong, as has been said. What’s wrong with CIVIL for 6ac? You shouldn’t need checkers to tell you what the answer is. And when is this crossword editor going to get it into his head that a car is only an estate possibly/perhaps/maybe? Especially when he quite correctly has ‘say’ in the clue that follows the estate one.
    1. I don’t understand the power/product complaint, except as mathematical pedantry. The Concise Oxford defines a power as (“the product obtained when a number is multiplied by itself a certain number of times”). Obviously this description is imprecise when you start thinking of non-integral or negative powers, and you have to make sure that people understand that n multiplications makes a power of (n+1), but that’s no worse than 4×3 being “two additions” (4+4+4), and the link between powers and multiplication seems very clear and very strong.

       CIVIL/CIVIC: there’s a possible confusion but presented with the choice, CIVIC is clearly better than CIVIL as a match for “municipal”.

       Def. by example: as stated many times before, there is no compelling logical reason why unindicated definition by class should be “right” and unindicated definition by example should be “wrong”. It’s just a rule that’s derived from the way clues were written in the past. Your best chance of persuading Richard Browne that his ditching of this rule is wrong-headed is probably to find him some “ordinary solvers” (rather than crossword experts) who can honestly say that they can see “estate” from “car” but not the other way round.

29. Also agree with most of what’s been said. I had to look up SPAHIS and l got AVON, SISSY and ODDS even though I don’t hail from these parts. Canadian, eh? Not the greatest puzzle.
30. Sorry, don’t understand cryptic of 13d.
    1. An oxford is a shoe.
       A last is a device used by cobblers.
31. Have just noticed, vinyl1, that the crossword is 24,623, not as you have it.
    1. I always get the number wrong, even if I copy it from the printout. I am no good at dialing phones, either.
32. 16a What’s the starting price here? What does it matter?
    ODDS. I understand the SP reference – what is the second bit about?

    24a Tears into classes (5)
    RATES. Anagram of TEARS – classes as in verbal form rates = classes?

    4d Residence in Home Counties overlooking main road (4)
    SE M1

    13d Oxford producer given work at last (9)
    SHOEMAKER. In crosswordland Oxford is almost always a reference to shoe (Oxford Brogue?) and nowt to do with the dreaming spires.

    21d Wet part of grass is synthetic (5)
    SISSY. Hidden answer in the clue – also featuring some Thatcherspeak as the literal.

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