Times 24668 – Believe in The Garden of Eden

39 comments on “Times 24668 – Believe in The Garden of Eden”

1. …not helped by carelessly putting in ‘maypole’ for 7 down. When solving anagrams, you should use all of the letters, not just most of them.

   A couple of corrections:

   In 1 across, British = B and cipher = 0

   In 2 down, ‘maw’ really is a word for mouth, it is only ‘kish’ which gets the drunken pronunciation.

   I saw ‘Spanish onion’ almost instantly, but wracked my brains for ‘duffel coat’ and ‘unhook’. I had never heard of ‘tyke’ in the sense used, but it is evident from the cryptic.

2. I agree with vinyl, this is well on the harder side of average. About 45 minutes here, ending with RATLINE, after believing ‘zero’ had to indicate ‘O’. Not familiar with the UK-isms at ADAM AND EVE, DUFFEL COAT, TYKE, RUN A MOCK, ‘O’ as ‘cipher’, and the YORKER delivery. Had to rely on wordplay for all of these’ and the LUNAR CYCLE. I found many of the clues very clever and deceptive, and wasted time trying to make an anagram from ‘hair fell’, and thinking the ‘hole in one’ had to signal ‘ace’. I knew ONOMAT…., but not how to spell it, so that was another hold up. So I’m pleased to have finished this at all. Nice tough puzzle altogether, COD’s to UNHOOK, FURROWED, and JETSAM. Regards to all, and thanks to the setter and Uncle Yap for the blog.
   1. Kevin, not sure if this helps.

      1. Thanks ulaca. I’m familiiar with RUN AMOK, it was the ‘mock’ bit that was unfamiliar. Over here in law schools we have ‘moot courts’, but not mock courts or mock tests, so it was more the ‘mock’ than the ‘amok’ that slowed me down. Appreciate the help of course. Regards.
      2. Rather perturbed to discover the true meaning of koro as referred to in your citation, ulaca. Still, that would explain a number of things.
         1. I don’t suppose the author realised the delicious aptness of intoning that ‘the sydrome (why are hocus-pocus conditions invariably called syndromes?) is rooted in China’.

            Apologies to Kevin.

3. Also came up with the credible-sounding “rotaime”. Otherwise okay in 28m, though didn’t fully understand all the wordplay until reading Uncle Yap’s very helpful blog.
4. 52 minutes but with two wrong: ‘onomatopoeic’ instead of the noun (clever clue with a built-in trap for those who did know the word, with the temptation to write this in without attending to the wordplay) and ‘rotaime’ for the rope at 20dn. Will I be the only one with this? Probably.

   I thought this an excellent puzzle all round, with 8dn offering ways in for both the literary types (lunar having to do with madness – how I accessed it) and the scientific. QUANDARY was clever but my COD to one of the better cricket clues: NEW YORKERS. It’s hard for the Americans to complain about this one!

5. A lively puzzle which kept me amused for 35 minutes. Difficult to select a COD from the many great clues, possibly ABYSSINIAN or LUNAR CYCLE… no, SPANISH ONION.
6. You must be quietly pleased with the sub-hour ulaca, errors notwithstanding. Spent about 90 minutes on this (including breakfast, ablutions etc) but made a pig’s ear of it, ending with 1 wrong. Had E?N? as the first word for 22 until realising I had misspelled DUFFEL whereupon I gratefully and inexplicably entered LONG IN THE MOUTH. I had left entering the “sound words” answer hoping that checkers and parsing would eventually help with the spelling and in the end was left requiring a 3 letter writer beginning with P. Of course this had to be PEN (thought this must be a derivative I had never heard of). How many times have I seen POE as a 3 letter writer? Only sorted this out once I solved the difficult FURROWED (was tossing-up between FORBODES and FORBODED again revealing my appalling spelling which seems to be getting worse the older I get). Thought that doing crosswords delayed dementia but apparently not.
   Not much to laugh at here but a fine and fair puzzle which I enjoyed throughly, thoroly… a lot.
   1. Barry, I’m trying to bludgeon my inner Calvin into accepting that if you make a mistake it’s not a failure. One day I want to post a time with that magical colon in the middle – even if I just invent the seconds.
7. A slow but steady solve today coming in at just on 40 minutes. I’ve rarely put in so many answers without understanding the clues fully but they were all perfectly clear when I reviewed them after stopping the clock.

   Duffel coat is of Belgian origin rather than UK; it’s a province of Antwerp.

   The puzzle is one Z short of a pangram.

8. Did this on the Overground bit of the journey, having been waylaid in conversation, so must have been inside 20 minutes. Smashing collection, MINX being my last in because I couldn’t break away from half time = me. Needed cryptic and crossers for the spelling of the “bang” word. CoD to the ONION for the startling surface image, with an honourable mention to FURROWED.
9. The same mistakes as ulaca and a similar time. Limped to the finish after starting well; I even struggled with that old chestnut HYMN, my last in. Still, feel as though I’ve learned something today – without the crossing letters I’d have gone for duffle coat and onomatopaeia.
10. Brilliant crossword! 30 highly enjoyable minutes, might have been a teensy bit quicker had I not carelessly written “duffle” to start with, instead of duffel. Also I see I must confess to onomatopeoic not a.. careless again. COD spanish onion, 3dn and 25ac nearly as good.
11. 12min40sec, but sunk by ROTAIME – a silly mistake in retrospect. More haste, less speed!
12. Postman just arrived and I have won again (Sat 24658 2nd Oct – the Lil Abner, Threw a wobbly puzzle). That’s twice in the short time I have been doing these things. Embarrassed to ask but are there people on this site who have been doing them forever but have never won?
    1. I’ve been submitting (originally by post, but now online) for probably 25 years, nearly every week. Won a fountain pen about 20 years ago and a voucher this year.
13. 8:48 for me after false starts on a couple of clues. It always helps when you get 1Ac straight away.
14. 22:01 .. finally grateful to the schoolteacher who seemed to think that learning how to spell ONOMATOPOEIA was pretty much the whole point of English lessons.

    Last in QUANDARY

15. 42:05 – Thought it was going to be quicker. The NW corner went in very quickly, but I got gradually slower as I progressed. I got held up in the SW when I carelessly scribbled down 18 with the break in the wrong place. I ended up with M_K as the second word and assumed I’d gone wrong somewhere else.

    Overall, an enjoyable puzzle, with some entertaining and well-disguised definitions. 1d, 12 & 27 all made me smile.

16. I found this a tough one. Half done in the first half hour and then in bits and pieces, about an hour all told. Bamboozled by the spin all too often but not quite clean bowled. Thought a maw was a stomach not mouth. Not at all keen on ‘pants’ as anagram indicator. But if it’s the language… Otherwise an excellent puzzle.
17. 21 minutes, would probably have been faster if I’d learned to spell ONOMATOPOEIA, keeping me from getting the California corner for a while. ADAM AND EVE from wordplay.
18. I took my time over this (45 minutes) but I thought it was an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable puzzle with some inventive and deceptive clues. My only criticism is the use of ‘pants’ as an anagram indicator (like joekobi above). Unless there is some specialized meaning of which I’m unaware, it strikes me as pretty dubious. I think setters are sometimes a little indiscriminate in their use of any word suggesting physical or emotional excitement, but not all such words suggest the sort of movement or upheaval that an anagrind requires.

    I failed to get quandary without aids and I’m in the company of those who entered ROTAINE for 20, so less than full marks here.

    1. Pants = inferior, bad, dodgy (Br. yoof slang)

       Nick

    2. Chambers says: pants = nonsense, rubbish (as slang). So it’s OK.
       1. Well, the Chambers definition doesn’t justify it for me since it defines that sense of ‘pants’ as a noun, not an adjective and I’m not keen on noun anagrinds. However the previous anonymous reply gives an adjectival definition from somewhere, so I guess it is OK.
          1. Definitely an adjective, not a noun, when used to mean rubbish.

             See example here at the 2-minute entry:
             http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/10/manchester-united-milan-champions-league

             “Ronaldhino has been pants until recently”

19. 19:41 solved interactively but as I’m still trying to get to grips with this online solving mullarkey let’s make an appropriate adjustment and call it 19:40.

    Piecing together all the letters of the bang! word was like constructing an Airfix model of a Sopwith Camel but I got there in the end with the pilot’s head on the right way round and not too much glue on the table. I also dabbled with rotaime but decided it didn’t look wordy enough and a reversal of nil was still fresh in my mind from another recent puzzle

    1. I was going to liken 3d to a matchstick model of St Paul’s cathedral – not my kind of thing but that doesn’t mean I’m not impressed. I like your analogy more.

       I keep flirting with the ‘online solving mullarkey’ but I have to say it’s not going well. I want some bored neurology researcher with a spare afternoon to study the brain activity of people solving both online and on paper to see if it’s the same. I have my doubts and I’m afraid I may be missing one of the bits essential to online solving (which makes me one light short of a grid or something). In a few years time will the Championship resemble a Japanese classroom with everyone sitting at a laptop?

20. Not the most difficult this week (for me that must be Tuesday’s), but by no means the easiest I thought. All but 7 done within my lunchtime, pottered along with the rest over the next hour or so. Last in 10ac and 16d, for reasons unknown, as I was thinking along the right lines for both for a long long time. COD 18d.
21. 9:15 in a noisy JCR.  Last in COWL (6ac), unknowns SPANISH ONION (11dn) and RATLINE (20dn).

    Great puzzle.  Clues of the Day: 9ac (NEW YORKERS), 17ac (FURROWED), 16dn (DEATH-BED).

22. After all the “easy” puzzles at the beginning of the week, finally one I could finish correctly without help. Time about an hour and twenty minutes (of which the last third for the last four words entered), but I’m satisfied with that. All in all a very witty, fair and enjoyable puzzle.

    As a native New Yorker I didn’t always get the wordplay (for example for that entry), but I’m learning. For example ulaca’s reply to one of my postings last week did enable me to understand the leg in SPANISH ONION. My last two in were DUFFEL COAT (after looking for a kind of boot until I realized that “lace to” and not just “lace” was to be anagrammed) and MINX, for which I had to go through the alphabet for all words fitting the M and the N; I too thought that “after half time” was going to be ME. My CODs: MAWKISH (for the drunken kiss), UNHOOK for the pair of spectacles, but that’s probably not a new invention, and ANTE for the wonderful surface reading.

    1. I didn’t come close to finishing it, but this device was taken to extremes in Listener 3829: OO Spectacles! by Waterloo. You can see the full list of them in the solution here. I only got about a third of the way through it, but thought it was a really funny puzzle.
       1. (from the setter)

          Another “cricketism” I’m afraid here: a pair of spectacles being slang in that sport for scoring 0 in each innings.

          Thanks to Uncle Yap for the blog and to all for their kind/or instructive comments!

       2. Indeed very funny (and I couldn’t resist changing my picture). At the moment I am in ecstasy if I can fill in anything in a Listener puzzle (but for professional reasons I can do the mathematical ones and I did manage a recent one involving only printer’s devilry). Thank you for the comment and pointing out the puzzle.
23. Cracking puzzle. Wins for the setter on ‘Material for joint’ in 12ac, the subtle ‘as’ = QUA in 15ac and ‘hair fell out’ at 17ac, but pleased to see through ‘forward miss’ at 1dn even though I couldn’t actually solve it. I was nervous over the MAW of MAWKISH at 2dn but the possible alternatives seemed unlikely. 11dn (SPANISH ONION) was my favourite clue. 5:45.
24. 24m here, which surprised me because it felt much harder than that as I solved it. However I also fell into the ROTAIME trap. It didn’t really look like a word but after shellacking and impolder earlier in the week I was willing to take a flyer. And to be fair it fits the wordplay perfectly.
    1. But does it really seem likely? What language would it be from?

       The trick in these puzzles is often to distinguish a likely unknown word from an unlikely one. Of course, sometimes a real one sounds very unlikely!

Comments are closed.