Times 24698 – ow

60 comments on “Times 24698 – ow”

1. It’s the River Forth, whose estuary is the Firth.
2. Forever. And with cheats. And DNF. Steep ground! Damn, damn, damn … COD 19 dn.
3. 53 minutes for this tricky little fellow, with the haute couture mademoiselle last in, from the definition, the Vendeé department being unfamiliar to me. Before that fell, the last five to go in were FRAGMENT, PESTER, TERRESTRIAL, SETTER (my COD – which I’d thought of but didn’t enter as I hadn’t yet ‘spotted’ it) and INACTION. Re 13dn, ‘packing case’ suggests that ‘trial’ should be the containee rather than the contained. I imagine the instruction is intended to be parsed as ‘the pack[ag]ing is case’?
   1. Can’t commuters be packing a train just as well as gangsters can be packing heat?
      1. Bingo! Thanks for that, koro.
4. I found it hard to get a toehold in this, with VERNE finally providing a way in after an uncomfortably long time staring at a blank grid. Rest fell steadily into place. Congratulations to the setter for the plausibility of the surface readings, all of which had that apparent effortlessness that I’d guess takes a good deal of effort to achieve. 45 minutes.
5. Fairly rapid progress in NE and SW corners, with many done at first sight and then nothing but the odd one or two every 5 minutes or so over the course of an hour. Must have depleted my glycogen levels by completing an old Paul crossword before starting this one. You’ve parsed VENDEUSE correctly as far as I can tell; I thought “in Loire area” was doing double duty until I discovered even arriviste boutiques in Tottington have could have vendeuses. I also dubious about the definition in APOTHECARIES, but am prepared to accept it as a semi &lit with “may supply” as in “consist(s) of” and give it my COD. SETTER was also a cracking clue, and my last in. (Oh, the ignominy!) Congrats to the former.
6. Fiendish in parts. Not fond of the following:
   (1) the possible double duty of “drug” in 14ac — unless “They may supply” is the literal.
   (2) “Being” => TERRESTRIAL offends what little philosophical sense I have. Good job strict Heideggerians regard crosswords as “idle chatter”.
   George, for a nice condensation of Proust check John Crace’s from the Groan. The series is also useful for quick run downs of interminable operas.
   1. 1. I thought 14 was a rather good &lit.
      2. Chambers defines TERRESTRIAL as “an inhabitant of the earth” so I think your philosophical sense may just have to accept it!
      1. Drug’s double duty:
         A sort of &lit, agreed. But second rate after yesterday’s “denouement” and still with a suspicion of double duty.

         Terrestrial:
         Chambers does indeed say so.
         But, an atom of hydrogen a hundred light years from here is just as much a “being” as an earthly inhabitant … philosophically speaking.
         No problems with the ordinary meaning.

7. Found this the easiest for several days though held up a bit at the end by Far East and Fragment. 21 minutes. A touchdown can be a try in rugby I believe. Respect to glh for the blog in extremis.
8. Got off to a flying start but ground to a halt after 30 minutes with eight clues unsolved. I worked steadily away at these getting first TOUCHDOWN then APOTHECARIES, UNDER CANVAS, SETTER(marvellous clue!) and TERRESTRIAL. INACTION went in next having toyed with INACTIVE since first read-through and then I cracked COGNOMEN (never heard of it) gave a sigh of relief, put down my pencil and turned off the timer at 45 minutes. But unfortunately on reviewing the clues and wordplay I found that I was still missing the unchecked letters at 9ac. After a further 10 minutes I resorted to a solver as I just couldn’t think of anything that fitted. Then having found VENDEUSE I couldn’t see how it worked until I came here.

   The clue seems out of step with the level of difficulty of the rest of the puzzle as one is expected to know the answer itself (although it’s in the COED ‘vendeuse’ hasn’t made it to Collins and as I type it here it comes up with a red line underneath it), also to know that ‘Vendee’ is a Department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region of France and, as if that isn’t enough, there is a misdirection leading one to think that ‘in the Loire’ area is a means of indicating the answer is a French word. US for useless doesn’t exactly leap to my mind though I have met it before and might have thought of it in other circumstances.

   1. That was me. I’ve no idea how I came to be logged out.
9. 10:32 – with the last 4 mins or so spent on two pairs – 9/2 and 13/22. Reverse hiddens are usually easy prey because it’s difficult to conceal the two indicator words required, but 22 does the job very well so is my COD.

   Although VENDEUSE is a difficult word, it does’t seem terribly difficult to recognise as “salesgirl”, from “vend” and the -euse ending that equates to our -ess. My main difficulty was linking it to the Loire – it turns out to be part of the “Pays de la Loire” region of France (region = next step up from department).

   1. If you are monitoring email – go and check the Times Crossword club Forums. Individual puzzle scoring is now available!

      Simon

10. For no reason in particular I started at the bottom and for a blissful moment or two thought I’d be spending the morning with Jimbo in the park or McText on the piste. The trouble with moving at speed is that when you hit the wall it tends to be fatal. In the end the only personal best achieved was just how soon I went for help. Couldn’t figure APOTHECARIES and never heard of COGNOMEN but the killer in retrospect was the time I wasted thinking broke was the anagrind in broke loose.
11. Something under half an hour (remarkably quick by my standards), with no major holdups. Distant recollections of the history of the French Revolution have helped twice recently: ‘Septembrists’ a couple of days or so ago; and today, 9ac, ‘Vendee’ (Vendee rising, 1793-96[99]).
12. About 40 minutes with interruptions. All but TERRESTRIAL done in under half-an-hour but, as usual, the old brain ran out of connections and I spent what seemed an age trying to figure out a word I’d convinced myself was unfamiliar.
13. 18 minutes today, with INDIA not understood (d’oh!) and VENDEUSE on definition only, though I think I might have got the wordplay given time. I thought APOTHECARIES was a very fine piece of cluing, but CoD to the simpler and mildly amusing WAG.
14. This felt harder than the 12:49 it took. Some really enjoyable clues. 9ac first in, 22 ac last.
15. ….after an hour I was left with ‘vendeuse’, ‘touchdown’, ‘terrestrial’, and ‘fourth’ unsolved. ‘Fourth’ was particularly elusive because I thought I was looking for a Scottish plant, and not a river, but eventually I saw it – Firth of Forth!

    Fortunately, I had at least heard of everything – cognomen, caries, the Vendee. I was a bit tempted by ‘far port’ for 18, but I couldn’t see how only food could be shortened.

16. Did this in the waiting room at National Tyre while they sorted out my puncture (another one, grrr, grrr) and it didn’t seem all that hard to me, c20mins.

    Anyone who thinks it hard should try actually *reading* some Proust.. I’ve been ploughing through “In search of lost time” on and off, for years.. quite vocabulary-enriching, though!

    1. Is your ploughing done in translation, or do you tackle the French texts?
17. 18:54 but I had to cheat to get cognomen.

    Lovely puzzle though with a lot of very good clues, not least apothecaries, setter, fragment, under canvas, card sharp and pester.

    Thanks to the setter.

18. I found this quite tough, taking 40 minutes to complete it. Under canvas, vendeuse and cognomen were my last entries. A real mix of dead giveaways (5a,5d, 7, 24, 27) and quite tricky ones.
19. 19 minutes for this. I didn’t know COGNOMEN (last in) and like others didn’t see how the wordplay worked for VENDEUSE or INDIA but they were sufficiently clear from the definition that I just bunged them in and moved on.
    I was a little unhappy with being = terrestrial too.
20. 7:29 online. Did not know COGNOMEN and like john_from_lancs made heavy weather of TERRESTRIAL. We have been to the Vendee more than once (recommended) so I knew of its connection to the Loire.

    I liked APOTHECARIES.

21. All but 9ac and 13d in about 20 minutes, with another half hour staring at those two. I jotted in the correct answer for 13d in desperation at not being able to spot anything else that might fit, despite miserably failing to fathom the definition or wordplay. I’d guessed at VENDEURE for 9ac, but confirmed my failings with the Chambers Word Wizard. So very frustrating a potentially super-duper time for me, let down at the end.

    COD 18d, with 23ac and 26ac honourable runners-up.

22. Dreadful performance. Nine left after an hour (1/3/4/8/9/13/14/19/27) at which point I slunk off to seek solace in aids with my metaphorical tail between my legs.

    I would never have got COGNOMEN, I didn’t know the word, or that gnomes were financial experts. Most of the others I was on entirely the wrong lines with, although PROUST I should have got. I had considered FORUST and dismissed it. For 19 I was convinced that ‘Badger runs’ was going to be SETT, and came up with SETTLE for ground but couldn’t make the rest of it work.

    Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

23. glheard:

    Not going to admit to your glaring mistake then?

    1. a) George posed a question rather than asserting an explanation. It’s rarely a mistake, glaring or otherwise, to ask a question.

       b) George is an Aussie living in the USA. He may not spend too much time thinking about Scottish rivers.

       c) He’s probably still in bed.

       d) As he mentions, he’d just had surgery before solving and blogging. Give the guy a break.

       e) Be nicer.

       1. Well said Sotira – no call for that sort of thing.
          1. Thanks for coming to my defense, but it’s really unnecessary. Anonymous (who I detected from the IP address to be Ian McFaginknuckle, deputy-past-chair of the River Forth Preservation society (cryptic crossword wordplay division). I humbly submit that I have caused egregious harm to the good name of your noble waterway and will amend the blog firthwith.
24. 12:40 of which last 2 minutes spent trying to overcomplicate 22 and refusing to see that it was a reversed hidden word. Pleased to get the unknown COGNOMEN pretty quickly from the wordplay.
    As for PROUST, I personally never got past the first volume of Swann’s Way,I’d rather watch an old episode of Steptoe and Son nowadays.
    Liked the wordplay for CARD SHARP (now that it is explained to me!)
25. No time to post today, but it felt on the harder side of things. Ended with the crossing PESTER/SETTER entries. I also thought APOTHECARIES very good, as were many others, including the well hidden SETTER, and, while George omitted it, the succinct clue to PALTRY. Regards to all, and thanks to the setter for a very nice puzzle.
26. Dictionaries or not, I object to ‘vendeuse’. Is this The Times or Le Monde?
    1. It’s the Times, or more important, the English language – we’ve been stealing other people’s words for centuries. If you object to vendeuse, you may as well object to coach, algebra, chocolate, etc. etc. ad infinitum.
27. I didn’t find this as difficult as some – about standard 25 minutes to finish working steadily down the grid.

    It helps of course to know Vendee (beautiful place, worth visiting)and that Swiss bankers are called The Gnomes of Zurich. I didn’t understand the “try” bit of TOUCHDOWN when solving. Some good surface readings in this puzzle I thought.

28. 23:18 .. file under ‘tricky blighter’. Lots of little red herrings, every one of which I fell for.

    PROUST, TERRESTRIAL and APOTHECARIES all proved major hold-ups. My compliments to the 22a.

29. Found this puzzle really enjoyable…finished it all bar 2 in about an hour or so (not always fully understanding wordplay, mind you), so must be somethIng of a record for me. Kept coming back to last two throughout the day, and eventually succumbed and got them from here: PESTER and SETTER. COD to UNDER CANVAS.
30. Two left after 30 minutes: the unknowns VENDEUSE and COGNOMEN. Should really have got the latter – simple wordplay and the media sometimes talk about the gnomes at the Bank of England. Quite pleased though because I only got four of the downs on first read through.

    Thought UNDER CANVAS, INDIA, VERNE, PESTER and PALTRY were particularly good.

    Until today I only knew of reebok as a sportswear brand!!

    1. Ever had a pair of Adidas Gazelles?
31. As so often with these puzzles, I was struck by the complementarity of the gaps in our knowledge. I knew Vendee, but not u/s; I was wondering if the ‘useless’ was a new way of indicating an incomplete ‘use’. And having got the cog-, I thought of ‘cognomen’, but it took me a while to remember ‘gnome’. I also only knew the ‘under sail’ meaning of ‘under canvas’.
32. I learned something new from this one. I’d never heard of a gnome being a financial expert. Does this relate to Lord Gnome of Private Eye, I wonder?
    1. I don’t think so, though it seems to come from the same era. The original phrase was “The gnomes of Zurich” which according to the OED first appeared in the New Statesman in 1964, with a meaning of “secret or sinister influence” rather than just “financial expert”.
       1. Didn’t we have ‘gnome’ recently in its other sense of pithy proverbial saying?
33. Yes Pete I know these; and I wouldn’t even object to ‘glasnost’ or ‘tsunami’; these were in the news, in anglicised forms. My point is that I don’t hear ‘vendeuse’ in the chatter of everyday folk, or see it in the papers.

    regards,

    Joe

    1. OK – but the same must be true of various less obviously foreign words, like “epochal” the other day.
       1. I don’t think you can really compare ‘epochal’ with ‘vendeuse’ in terms of frequency or usage (in English speaking contexts). The former is quite common across a range of registers in such expressions as ‘epochal decision’ or ‘epochal moment’, while ‘vendeuse’,’a saleswoman in a fashionable dress shop’, is restricted largely to a particular sub-industry and social group, and therefore by definition I would say not in common parlance.
          1. Your definition is narrower than any I can find – Chambers just has “saleswoman”, Oxford has “a saleswoman, especially one in a fashionable dress shop”.
             1. Sorry: I incompetently deleted a comment from jackkt saying that the clue mentioned a salesgirl rather than a saleswoman. I did so in the process of replying to say that:

                The ODE defs of salesgirlsaleswoman seem close enough to count as identical to me, though I guess there’ll be someone out there saying the clue should have had “salesgirl, perhaps”. (No direct links to defs because the Oxford site keeps giving me the same URL for both of them.)

             2. Yes, I edited Oxford Online, but my point remains, which is that the word ‘vendeuse’ is not much, and, more particularly, not widely used, and not well known, even by bright, well-read solvers of the Times crossword!

                ‘Epochal’, on the other hand, totally different kettle of fish.

34. 36 min, with a long pause in the middle when I got stuck about halfway. Last in for me was REEBOK because I had the clue backwards. VENDEUSE I thought was perfectly OK, or at least no worse than needing to know the sense in which TOUCHDOWN = try!
35. Actually I hated ‘epochal’ too, as I hate lots of these pretentious neo-classicalisms; but they’ve been too long in use by scholars to object.
    There’s no well-defined boundary between what is and is not English; instinct serves pretty well most of the time. But my instinct draws the line differently from some setters, alas.
36. Would have been my fastest solve ever, had I been able to get Vendeuse for 9 across. Sigh!
    Louise
37. in translation, my French is not good enough.. I am reading In Search of Lost Time, not À la recherche du temps perdu 🙂
    1. Your comment reminded me of a guy who was a year ahead of me in college, John S.

       He was an Honors English major who, in his senior year, became so obsessed with Proust that he read the whole thing twice in French. This caused him to become the only Honors English major anyone could remember who failed his Honors exam, and he graduated with a pass degree.

38. Very nice puzzle, although as usual I seem to be the slowpoke of the lot — after an hour’s solving, a few clues were left unsolved, but they fell in rapid succession when I returned to the puzzle hours later; a fresh vantage point really helps. Last in was SETTER, because although I suspected I was the definition, I didn’t see the wordplay until I started wondering about the ETTE in SETTER and cigarette. COD to 15 dn for “one means to pay” (and all the rest, for that matter). To understand PESTER I started inventing words again, parsing it as P=bottom of steep + ESTER for “ground”, a supposed English version of the German word ESTRICH, which I believe is the ground coating underneath flooring. Of course there really are esters in chemistry, though I have forgotten what kinds of compounds they are, but they certainly don’t mean “ground”
39. ) George posed a question rather than asserting an explanation. It’s rarely a mistake, glaring or otherwise, to ask a question.
    Still think, given the clue, that Fourth should have screamed out at him.

    b) George is an Aussie living in the USA. He may not spend too much time thinking about Scottish rivers.
    A double handicap! Yes, you’re right – more allowance should be made in these circumstances.

    c) He’s probably still in bed.
    Nuff said.

    d) As he mentions, he’d just had surgery before solving and blogging. Give the guy a break.
    Ummmmmm, OK

    e) Be nicer.
    Ummmmm, OK – I apologise unreservedly for being so harsh

    Ian McFaginknuckle
    SIR Ian F……….. if you don’t mind!

    firthwith.
    Clever, clever……I like it.

40. In 2 down I put in Rhebok (Reebok is the Dutch/Africaans spelling and also the name of the sportswear company) – full of energy, H is the symbol for Hydrogen, as in bomb, which, really is full of energy when detonated.
    This is my third Times crossword and has taken me about 4 days on and off. I have just retired – so perhaps I might shorten my solving time before my 100th birthday!

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