Times 24,630 Easy Peasy

42 comments on “Times 24,630 Easy Peasy”

1. 7:39 here – not quite as easy as Tim’s one last week for me. But kicked myself a bit for not seeing P+RESERVE immediately at 18D, or “stick” as a verb on first look at 12. Also needed most of the checkers for 5D after doing an unnecessary “left and separate” and looking for a dance.

   Minor point: I think 15D is OUTWIT=”be too clever for”+HIT, rather than a 3-part charade.

2. Pretty quick today, at 17mins. It would have been quicker still but I did have one or two that stuck around.. 9dn, 26ac, 8dn.. for no good reason that I can see. I like 15dn best but though a solid effort, no stand out clue today..
3. Had to look up Etty as well. Though I think we’ve seen him before. But pornographic? If you can get off on that stuff, you have serious problems, mostly but not entirely æsthetic.
   I agree that this is on the easy side but by no means light gauge, having taken 21 minutes. All the anagrams were fine by me, esp. the one involving an actual novelist (and occasional screenwriter to boot) — 13ac.
4. Straightforward enough. 13 minutes. Hadn’t heard of the US dance director or indeed of G. Atherton, though keenly appreciative of her namesake’s commentary in the Times on the silliness interfering with the cricket at the moment.
   1. Clicking the video in the NOTW re the alleged spot-fixing, I smiled when I heard Athers say, after the second of the NBs, “Mmm – that’s two no balls this morning – and both by pretty big margins”. Nice Lancastrian understatement, given the first was a foot over the popping crease.
      1. What really made me think something was amiss was when the bowler threw the ball over the batsman’s head for 4 overthrows and brought up Cook’s ton – I’ve never seen anything like it either playing club cricket or watching the pros.
5. William Etty b1787 in York painted soft-core pornographic nudes
6. William Etty is your York-born painter.
   1. My thanks to you and anon for clearing up this obscurity
      1. As you say, really a very easy puzzle, tho it took me 35 minutes partly because I wasted far too much time trying (and failing) to work out the wordplay to ROSETTE before putting it in. William Etty (1787-1849) was new to me too. He can hardly be said to be a household name today and to be expected to know to boot that he was born in York seemed a bit much. That said, he does get a fair sized entry in The Oxford Dictionary of Art (ODA) where The Times of the day is quoted as primly finding his nudes “entirely too luscious for the public eye”. The article commends him for having “attained a glowing voluptuousness in the painting of flesh that few British artists have approached”. Evidently, he deserves to be better known! And the York Art Gallery apparently has the best collection of his work next time you are up that way. I like Etty’s own defence of his obsession with the female nude: “Finding God’s most glorious work to be Woman, that all human beauty had been concentrated in her, I dedicated myself to painting – not the Draper’s or Milliner’s work – but God’s most glorious work, more finely than ever had been done.”

         A glorious morning for golf down here at Royal Wimbledon. Did you manage to get out?

         1. It’s not practical to play a round on the day one does the blog!
7. Raced away hoping for a PB but expecting a sting in the tail, which the SE and the mammal in the SW provided. 39 minutes to finish, or so I thought, when I noticed 28 was still blank, and it took me a further seven minutes to arrive at the correct answer. Thought ROGUE TRADER was rather weak, as was the film, apparently – indeed, the original miscreant. COD to KAPUT, where the Greek in the crossing STATER had me sidetracked onto ‘kappa’ for a while.

   I can’t imagine drinking a warm Chablis …

8. 25 minutes for me, so it must be an easy one. I didn’t understand 19 either but I have heard the name Etty before without ever knowing where he came from or what he painted.

   For the past couple of years seeing Jimbo’s blog on a Tuesday has served as a reminder that it’s my week to blog the Friday puzzle so I’m going to have to take care not to fall into the old routine over the coming weeks.

   1. We’re back on normal schedule from next week Jack.
      1. Thanks, Jimbo. I should have checked the diary.
9. Easy enough solve but had to check SLATER, FATIMA and ROSETTE post-solve (including Mr Etty). Vocab problems for me over last few puzzles. Bad clue of the day to ROGUE TRADER, the anagrist clear enough and I know a movie was made re Barings, but Film drama??
   1. Drama film, even, but couldn’t agree more – unless Gertrude was a derivatives broker in her spare time. I see she lived into her 90s, so I imagine she had a fair bit of that.
10. 13 minutes, so I concur with Jimbo’s assessment. A bit of a curiosity, this, with some obscure references that didn’t really matter if you didn’t know them. I half hoped that Gertrude Atherton’s first novel would be relevant, but apparently it’s “What Dreams May Come” which is a different film altogether! Etty I can’t remember encountering anywhere.
    For some reason I could only see the definition on DESERTER, failing to make the waste=desert connection. I also wasn’t sure what “this” was doing in 24 – it seemed to me to point the clue towards some object that would be broken, such as the truck’s axle, and not towards the word broken itself. Perhaps I’m just being obtuse or picky.
    CoD to TRAVELLER – I liked the misdirection of “fare”.
11. 11.16 here, so clearly an easy one. A bit like yesterday’s though this was in spite of a slightly higher than average number of unknowns: Etty, edentate, Stater, Fatima. And I didn’t really know Busby Berkeley although it did ring some sort of loudish bell. What you might call a known unknown. As z8b8d8k has noted it didn’t really matter.
    Rogue Trader is a decidedly mediocre film remembered in our household for the moment when one of Leeson’s assistants says, completely out of the blue, “Nick, what’s the difference between initial margin and variation margin?”. Since we saw the film this line has been our shorthand for clumsy and obtrusive dialogue serving no purpose other than to impart necessary factual information.
12. For those who don’t know Busby Berkeley’s work, this gives you a flavour (from about 5min 30s in).
13. Had to do this in a few short breaks but finished it early this morning. BERKELEY SQUARE from the wordplay, DESERTER and SITTING DUCK from the definition.
14. A 45 minutes I was reasonably happy with on a fairly confused first day back at work. The reasoning behind 19ac, 8d, 15d and 23d escaped me before reading the blog.
15. You would think answers like ‘steer’ and ‘preserve’ would go right in, but not so. The relatively difficult ones are not so relatively difficult for me, but the easy ones give me trouble.

    I wanted to put ‘Belgrave Square’ for a long time, too. I thought the dance director referred to square dancing, so the wrong tree entirely. I finally remembered ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’, which has nothing to do with it either.

16. No problems with any of this: about 18 minutes. As Jimbo says, EP!

    Liked FATIMA, knew ETTY: COD to WRANGLERS for the amusing association.

    Off for a glass of Chablis (cold)!

17. must have been an easy one as finished in 28 mins without aids. fatima and stater were new, but simply clued. like others did not like the definition of “rogue trader”, but thought the anagram good. cod 15d.
18. 15:55 but invented the s(ti)tar at 29. No wonder they don’t let me pay cash down at Stavros’s Kebab Emporium.

    Fatima from wordplay, deserter and rosette from def/checkers.

19. Not sure about the precedent or justification for ett as a brief version of Etty. It seems a bit slapdash to me, but it would probably have rankled less if I had ever heard of Etty or “rosette” in the sense of favour. Two more for my relatively empty crossword memory bank, I suppose.
20. William Etty, York’s most famous artist, born there 1787, died there 1849
    1. Thank you anon. It is preferable to read the blog before posting comment. If you do that you will see that this information was provided at 8.22am, over 5 hours ago!
21. A stroll in the park. was hoping for a PB but got stuck on a couple so finished in 23 minutes having done all but two in 13!
    annoying!
22. 8:25 to solve. Never heard of Etty (or Gertrude Atherton) so , to me, they are both obscure but enough of you seem to have heard of Etty so no complaints from me and the checking letters gave the answer easily enough. 5 was a bit of a giveaway and helped a lot. Vaguely heard of STATER but could have been stumped if the wordplay had been more difficult.
23. My brain must be slow today as it took me way too long to solve the anagram for 4 across. I got PRESERVE immediately but for some strange reason decided it had 9 letters and didn’t fit. WRANGLER and CARTRIDGE both seemed very obvious AFTER I had got them!
    1. ‘Obscured’ was one of my first in – anagrams, I can do those. It is usually obvious double definitions that throw me.
24. 10:00 dead here. I’d heard of Etty as an artist well enough to guess that it was him that the ETT referred to in 19A, but had no idea he was from Yorkshire. I’d never heard of Gertrude Atherton though, but then it wasn’t necessary as she was just part of the anagram fodder. Strange clue that, one that’s easy enough to solve but leaves you thinking you’ve missed some subtlety. In this case I don’t think there is any though.
25. I only rarely attempt this puzzle but found it very enjoyable for a change today. A couple (10ac and 8dn) seemed almost too straightforward, but I ended up two answers away from a finished grid at the end of my 30 minutes, with ‘rosette’ and ‘Berkeley Square’ relying on things outside my ken. The second I should have been able to deduce from the checkers, but didn’t. Oh well.

    Handel (minus el today)

26. Hung up ’til I looked it up. Like Penfold had STAT(I)R FOR STATER in 29 across. Always thought it was do-re-mi-fa-so-la-TI-do or am I missing something?
    Otherwise a most enjoyable half-hour.
    Oh, I got 5d right off, but still don’t understand the ‘SQUARE’ part having been familiar with BUSBY BERKELEY.
    1. The warden said, hey, buddy, don’t you be no square;
       If you can’t find a partner use a wooden chair.
       Elvis Presley (1957) Jail House Rock
       Translation. “Don’t follow tradition: dance with a chair.”
27. About 25 minutes, ending with ROSETTE, never having heard of Etty, or Ms. Atherton either. Alas, I also fell into the S(TI)TAR trap, having not taken the time to look it up. I do agree with the comment above, though, that the note is usually rendered as TI, not as TE, but I may have been missing something all this time. Regards to everyone.
    1. TE is definitely the preferred spelling in the UK but Chamber’s agrees with you that TE is only an alternative to TI. I think they are out of step with usage here.
28. “He should not be confused with William Etty (c.1675 – 1734) architect of Holy Trinity Church in Sunderland (1719) and many other churches.” (Wikipedia) I wonder how many people are knowledgeable enough to get them mixed up?
29. Not very fast, but then I never am, but no real problems except for ROSETTE, which went in as my last entry pretty much as a guess (I suspected there might be favours in the form of a rosette, but have never heard of Etty). I was also surprised not to have seen PRESERVE right away (and more surprised to find out I was not alone in that).
30. Having slaved away for the past four years cataloguing, transcribing an annotating the letters of William Etty, I was a bit disheartened to read the comments on the work of this remarkable artist.
    Etty was a superb colourist, and it was his portrayal of flesh which upset some critics. Critics exist to criticise and not to praise. His fellow artists and his patrons were not so prudish.

    Etty’s great characteristics were his honesty and integrity. He stubbornly painted to please himself. He loved times past in an age dedicated to “progress”. He was unfashionable even in his own time.

    His portraits are especially fine, and his still lifes way beyond what any other English artist of his time had dared to attempt.

    York Art Gallery is hosting a major exhibition on his work in 2011. See for yourself. Incidentally,
    on e of his most important works Diana and Endymion has gone missing. Have a look in the loft, would you?

    In the meantime Google “William Etty of York” (yorkwatch). Click on “William Etty” or “Letters” in the menu. As the poet says: “More than kisses, letters mingle souls”.

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