Times 24,708 featuring Julie Andrews’ Dress

84 comments on “Times 24,708 featuring Julie Andrews’ Dress”

1. I took that to mean that if you are EW, then your opponents are NS.
   1. Normally, they’re partners? To be able to be both is strange, don’t you think?
      1. I think it’s a matter of perspective; if EW are one team, then NS are their opponents.
         1. But where is that indicated in the clue which doesn’t mention EW or even bridge? It just says “opponents”
2. I made a right 21ac of this, losing my 23ac after a decent start – just like yesterday. Stymied myself by having ‘the knives are out’ for the longest time, and unaccountably couldn’t see beyond first ‘impulse’ at 23ac and then something with ‘ive’. Needed aids for DIRNDL and TAUPE, and never went back to 11ac, where I could only see ‘Wales’. Principality as ‘expanded city’, anyone?
   1. Also held me up for an age, but we got there!
3. METAL and AFFIDAVIT from definitions and finally AFTERSHAVE having been incredulous that the answer includes a significant word in the clue. Good, solid challenge and back to my normal time.
   1. Agreed, disconcerting and incredulity.
4. They may be partners in bridge, but on the compass they clearly oppose each other
   1. Again, where is that indicated in the clue? No mention of compass points and “opponents” is surely a bit of a stretch for North and Soutn?
      1. A war between the North and the South perhaps?
         1. I can think of such a war: 1861-1865.
            1. Alas, the North South conflict in this country is perpetual.
5. 20 minutes today – at least 5 on 14d.
6. Would a clue have to mention compass points? It doesn’t mention bridge, but everyone goes for that.
   1. I think the compass points are irrelevant – according to the usual 3 dictionaries, “opponents” are either people or (much less commonly) muscles. Compass points may be “opponent” (adj.) but they are not opponents.
      1. WE and They are the bridge teams. I’m guessing that WE is W & E, so N & S are the opponents!
7. 11:15 – I’d say a little harder than average. (N,S = opponents) is a poser. I can’t see a sensible reason why, and wonder whether it’s just a mistake – the answer has E,N as an adjacent pair, though “obviously” this clashes with “(a)GREED”.
8. Was galloping along until felled by 9d and 14d, for a DNF. Couldn’t get the wordplay for 9 and, although I had heard the word DIRNDL, I couldn’t quite bring myself to spell it correctly. AFTERSHAVE just stumped me. Whether it is legitimate misdirection or a bit of crumminess to repeat half the answer in the clue probably depends how much trouble it gave you. Seems inelegant in either case.
9. Although it may not be an idea common to cryptic crossword solvers, the concept that the positions of north and south stand in opposition to each other on the compass face is not, I feel, insensible, but rather a case of common sense over deeply ingrained preconceptions based the on codifacation of a particular card game which hardly anyone plays in this day and age.
   1. Bridge may not be as popular as it used to be, but “hardly anyone” is over-egging the pudding. As already stated, the problem with reagarding opposing compass points as “opponents” is that the word “opponent” is not used for things in general such as compass points. As compass points, North and South are opposites, but not opponents. In cryptic clue terms, that’s basic common sense.
      1. Capitalizing them like that does bring to mind The Civil War, which is called the War Between the States by the South. See? After 150 years, we still can’t agree….
         1. Point taken, but unless there’s some use of N and S in this context, reasonably familiar to UK-based solvers, (opponents = NS) is still a step too far for me.
            1. The online version has obviously now been changed from “opponents” to “partners”.
10. Like David, I was stumped by 9d and 14d, my excuse being that I had ‘the knives are out’, so would never have managed them. Ok, so I didn’t understand the wordplay for 15a, but then, neither did I for GREENSWARD or AFFADAVIT (amongst others), so nothing would have encouraged me to reconsider.

    Good blog, thanks for clear explanations.

    1. It’s AFFIDAVIT not AFFADAVIT – maybe that’s the source of the difficulty (or just a typo in your message?)
       1. Just a typo in my post!

11. Thank you for your insight. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
    1. Really Jimbo!
12. 64 minutes, with at least 10 of those at the end spent on DIRNDL. Must remember what ‘service’ is indicating; it fools me every time.

    I was most amused by Tony Sever’s late post yesterday saying he agonised over something for nearly half a minute. Tony, that’s not agonising, that’s a recklessly hasty decision…

13. 27 mins this morning, inexplicably held up by 14D, AFTERSHAVE. I had all the crossing letters and should have been able to spot it, but couldn’t even think of a word that would fit, and didn’t think of parsing the clue as a cryptic definition. Other than that, fairly straightforward. I spent less time on the rest of the puzzle than on 14D.
14. Threw up the sponge: just couldn’t get 14. Hmph!
15. Well, until I came here, I was going to say how good 28ac was — so I admit to not noticing the problem! Also didn’t know the crane, but now see it’s from OF daviot, dim. of david, a carpenter’s tool! Rather liked some of the wordy clues but wonder if all children lisp (19dn)? 42 minutes all up.
    1. The service we bloggers provide! The same thing struck me so I looked up lisp and Chambers says “speak in a childish manner”
    2. All day, a half remembered line about children lisping has been rattling round my head. Now I’ve recalled it; it’s from Gray’s Elegy:
       For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
       Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
       No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
       Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,
16. Thanks for your insight, dorsetjim. 25 mins? Did this and the guardian and made a cup of English breakfast inbetween. And read the bridge puzzle.
    1. Hmm, so very clever but unable to log in properly?
17. I put The Knives Are Out in but was never really convinced it was right. I seemed to spend alot of time muddling the cryptic part of the clues with the straight element and therefore going around in circles and completely barking up the wrong trees! I hadn’t heard of Dirndl and was looking for a holding service that involved the letters from Kilt. Took a long long time to get 14 down.
    Louise
18. I had some problems getting properly going having started by writing in MACHINE GUN before I finished reading the clue. I completed the grid in just under 60 minutes the last 10 of these staring blankly at 14dn before eventually deciding to go with AFTER as the first 5 letters. Previously I had ruled this possibility out because it was in the clue.
    1. 
       Had no problem with this after many summers past spent in Austria and Germany. The other NDL word associated with it is LANDLER, with or without its additional E.
19. 31 minutes here. NS as opponents seemed acceptable: items facing each other with the sense of being in opposite camps. Liked 14.
20. Online clue now has “partners”, so “opponents” must have been viewed as a mistake by someone at the Times.
    1. How interesting!
21. DNF. Just couldn’t see AFTERSHAVE. I can’t remember seeing a clue where one of the words was half of the answer so I had immediately discounted the obvious ‘after’ start. Happy to have got DIRNDL though. As with most I was confused by opponents NS as I amthinking EN or something similar. Some of us actually do still play bridge on occasion , and highly enjoyable too.
22. Well done, joekobi, you managed think for yourself rather than follow well trodden paths like those people at the times who changed the online version. Wouldn’t be an issue at the indie or the guardian.
    1. (For those who don’t see IP addresses, I’m replying to the Anonymous who posted at 10:00, 10:18 and 10:57.)

       Questions: if “opponents” is OK for “NS” …

       1. Why is it not used in Times crosswords as a legitimate way of giving solvers a decision to make, just as “stop” (verb) is used in Times clues as a two-way containment indicator?

       2. Why do you not find “opponents = NS” in other cryptic crosswords? (Implied challenge: find an example in the puzzles that you claim would allow it.)

       It’s possible that this would have been left alone at the Guardian, where setters seem to be allowed to write what they want, but based on over 25 years of my own past Guardian solving, I’m not convinced that any of their setters have ever used “opponents” for N,S. I don’t believe for one second that Mike Hutchinson at the Independent would consciously allow it.

       1. Let me second all of that.

          I don’t recall the Guardian, for all its more free-wheeling approach, ever using NS to mean opponents and I’ve only be doing that puzzle, off and on, for 45 years

       2. In the NS as “opponents” debate no-one seems to have considered the context of NS i.e. the NS war. Seems to me – despite the official retraction – that even if normally partners the fighting can tip them into prior hostility so to speak. But Anonymous, though I find it hard at times and you may consider yourself provoked, I don’t think we bloggers should get too adversarial ourselves.
23. This is getting depressing. I didn’t get round to looking again at Saturday’s puzzle last night so I currently have one correct finish in the last eight puzzles.
    Today I put in THE KNIVES ARE OUT and never questioned it. How could it possibly be wrong with all those checking letters, including a V for crying out loud?
    I’d never have got DIRNDL anyway.
    I’m off to buy a copy of the Telegraph.
24. No problems today except for finding the word aftershave.. never use the stuff. I did think it odd that the after is in both the clue and the solution. I can’t decide if it is inelegant or very clever; or both.
    I also thought NS = opponents was probably wrong, but it didn’t stop me writing the obvious answer in.
25. I made a real meal of this, and slotted in AFTERSHAVE as the last answer in 30 minutes. AFFIDAVIT from wordplay. Looking back there wasn’t all that obscure, I just wasn’t on the wavelength of the setter.
26. 47:48 .. fell into every trap mentioned above and had no clue what a DIRNDL was, finally putting it in with a lot more hope than expectation.
27. …so DNF. I thought it might be wrong, but the checkers were so strong, especially the ‘v’.

    I had no problem with the North and the South being opponents, since my ancestors fought for the North, and are buried next to piles of old cannonballs.

28. About 54 minutes after staring at 9 for about 10 minutes then giving up and turning to aids. I had considered DID about something + L but dismissed the NDL ending as too unlikely. Also made a mistake by misspelling AFFIDAVIT as AFFADAVIT. I’d never come across DAVIT as a crane before so hadn’t been able to parse it properly.

    I also stared at 19 & 14 for quite some time with all the checkers in place before finally clicking.

29. 18:29 online. Around 7 minutes of that was staring at 14D.

    I often give up around 15 minutes, but kept on as I felt sure it could not be that obscure. When the answer dawned, I don’t know why I had not seen the cryptic element sooner – I had already thought of a pat on the cheek, but it was only when I connected scrape with shaving that the penny dropped.

30. 8hrs 23 minutes. I finally got AFTERSHAVE, having thought about it for most of the day; SFREISHAND being the obvious alternative. I’d like a refund on those lost hours, please. Apart from the question mark on NS I also had one on METAL; is aluminium not doing double duty here, or is meant to be a semi-&lit? Oh, and I also had the knives at 15, until I thought better of it, or thought rather than acted on impulse. DIRNDL was the other mystery, but strangely familiar; maybe I was thinking about South Park’s Dreidel. Davits also featured in my Airfix Model Kit days; not a wasted youth after all.
    1. I gave it the benefit of the doubt but there is an argument that says it’s doing double duty
31. Biddlecom et al

    Why do we have to find an example in previous puzzles? Is this puzzle an organic, evolving method of communication (like the English language itself) or are we just a bunch of lawyers sifting through the old cases looking for precedents? Are we like the bridge player who looks down at is hand and decides to do something creative or are we more like the chess player who has memorised the openings up to the nineteenth move?
    The allusions to the Guardian and the Indie perhaps have more to do with the spirit in which the solvers approach the puzzles (an open mind!) than the setters.

    1. In a way, I agree with you. Too much rigour and convention can become tiresome. I was solving a Times puzzle from the 60’s the other night and it was distinctly freewheeling and highly enjoyable.

       But there is no simple opposition between rigour and imagination, logic and an open mind. And to disparage those who are dissatisfied with a clue device that calls for a metaphysical backflip rather than a deduction as closed-minded or hindbound is, to be honest, the kind of thing I used to indulge in during late night sessions with my RCP mates in the bar of the Flying Picket: “anyone who doesn’t agree with us is a reactionary old fart constrained by conventional thought – first up against the wall on the glorious day.”

       There’s poetry in rigour, too.

       Maybe The Times puzzle has become a little too dominated by established practice. It’s a discussion worth having, but better had without too much sneering or superciliousness. The idea that readers of one newspaper have open minds while the readers of another paper don’t is, well, shot through with the very same conventional thinking of which you complain.

       By the way, you’re not Polly Toynbee, are you?

       1. Go on, I’m agog, what’s RCP?

          And who’s Polly Toynbee … ?

          1. As you’re agog… I was the sort of pet non-believer of the local revolutionary communists. They tolerated me (probably until the glorious day). Funnily enough, they were great company. And drank a lot.

             As for Polly Toynbee… oh, I’ve lost the will to explain. Google her.

             1. The only RCP I knew was the Royal College of Physicians, which had my mind boggling.
       2. The much-discussed use of unindicated def. by example is clear evidence for me that the Times crossword editor is perfectly happy to ignore convention if he prefers something else, and in private e-mails he has been critical about “solving by rote”.
    2. You don’t have to find an example in previous puzzles unless you’re claiming that something now clearly not allowed at the Times would be OK at the Indie or the Guardian. There must be 30-plus crossword setters (mostly of independent mind) working for the combination of Guardian, Independent and Times. If any of them really thought that “opponents” was a valid way of indicating NS, I think they’d have used it by now. Some of them will be reading this, so they have the chance to prove me wrong by using it.

       When a setter finds something original that makes sense, they normally get praise from me and other bloggers (and I’m sure, from their crossword editor).

32. I don’t know whether the cold has frozen my brain, but I really struggled with this, having to cheat mercilessly to complete the last 9 in the bottom half. Better luck tomorrow!
33. Sir,
    It seems that you know a lot of these setters by name and I suppose you are in regular contact with them. With this knowledge the whole ‘web site changing its clue to support your side of the arguement’ episode becomes invalid. You may feel that the idea of North and South being opponents (particularly banged next to a war reference) is not sensible, but quite frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.
    1. If you didn’t give a damn … (think about it)

       Yes, I know most of the Times setters, if having met them at least once counts. I’m in regular contact with about a third of them. But the Times crossword editor does not jump because I tell him to jump. If he changes a clue, it’s because he thinks there’s a good reason to change it.

34. I’ve just solved the online version, and the clue for 28ac refers to partners, not opponents. Obviously it was wrong originally and has been amended.
35. ok, you have the best blog on the crossword and I’ve got a lot of time for anything you say on it. You just ain’t right on this one. Soz for the cross’d words.
    1. Good barney, though.

       Please use some sort of monicker under your posts, even if you don’t want to sign in. Just an initial or something.

       Sometimes we get several ‘anons’ and it’s really hard to have any sort of conversation if you dont’ know if it’s one person or several.

       1. Several: So far, 5 different IP addresses today, so almost certainly 5 different people.
36. Well now, that’s quite a debate that’s been going on. I confess that I didn’t even notice the obvious oddity of ‘NS’ as opponents instead of partners in what I took to be a reference to bridge, so my thickness prevented me from needing to form any strong opinions on this. For what it’s worth, I fall on the side of those who see it as an error, now corrected. I finished in about 25 minutes, ending with ARCTIC FOX, since the ‘artic’ is not a common usage over here. The DIRNDL is probably more common over here than in the UK, though, since every October there are Oktoberfest celebrations by those (many) of German extraction in the US replete with beer, sausages, leiderhosen and dirndls. Good fun. Only quibble today is the already noted unusual ‘after’ repetition, otherwise I liked a lot of the definitions today, esp. the ‘shocking scene’ for EPICENTRE. Regards to all.
37. I too was knifed, so struggled to finish in 46 min. I play bridge but had no qualms about N & S as opponents in for example war: American Civil, Korean, England v Scotland … To say nothing of the North and South Islands here, well not quite war yet, but watch this space.
38. Oh and PS. Have we had a change of font, or was there something iffy about that shiraz. Not an easy read.
39. Yes, I went down this route at 15ac and so DNF. Rather sad to see that the phrase was, nonetheless, not an utterly inappropriate description of some of the comments above: a regrettable change from the usual ‘gentlemanly’, perceptive and witty elucidation of my failings.
40. Finished correctly, but after an hour only about a quarter was filled in, the rest untimed afterwards. I had a great deal of difficulty with the long across clues, and after them, the rest was OK. Last in were AFTERSHAVE (also bothered by the repeated AFTER) and TAUPE, and I checked SALT and TAUPE with a dictionary before I dared look at the blog. I also wasn’t convinced that all children lisp, and how do you lisp ‘no’ anyway? COD to WELLS (for ‘south only once’).
41. Thanks to anonymous the NS warrior for questioning the orthodoxy. I do believe that, in spite of the frequent pontificating, there is no such thing as crossword infallibility. In his own words, PB said “OK – I’m hopeless at spotting when people are kidding.” Maybe we should all remember that.
    1. To be fair it is hard to pick up any nuances on the Internet. It is very easy to suffer an attack of “Internet rage,” as the new crossword website’s forum demonstrates.
       I recommend a thick skin and not to take any of it too seriously. It’s just a few folk with time to spare, talking about a trivial pastime, after all.
42. Like other people, I was held up by putting THE KNIVES ARE OUT even though I couldn’t see how it worked, also by putting MELD instead of MERE, thinking there might be a Lake Eld somewhere. Once those were corrected got 14 down immediately without noticing the repetition of AFTER, but thought the clue was excruciating, like much aftershave in fact. Sorry for late post – didn’t see the final answers until this morning. (That often happens.)
43. Did this late due to adverse weather conditions and tube strikes, and finished in 15 minutes, so about normal. Didn’t get in the least bit excited over NS, just assumed it was American Civil War (Gaskell, TV miniseries et al). Sorry everyone!
    DIRNDL, after this year’s visit to Oberammergau and Austria, was a doddle. I even know why the apron is tied in different places.
    CoD for me was TALONED for the story value.
44. Eveyone has long since stopped caring I am sure, but, as a Times setter, I am appalled at the idea that myself or any of my colleagues would ever use “opponents” to refer to the Poles. It’s never been used before because it is wrong, simply.
    On the other hand we are all human and do make mistakes from time to time and plainy this was an example of one …

    I just solved this puzzle btw and embarrassingly had to give up on DIRNDL!!

    1. Sorry, that was me 🙂
       1. Hello and thanks for that. I doubt people have stopped caring. I’m told that the Times published a correction the next day, which helps to remove doubt. However, it is fun to see people generating all types of steam around what was I’m sure a simple mistake.

          I doubt you were alone with DIRNDL but it does help if you do the bar crosswords because you never dismiss a possible answer just because it seems to contain a strange combination of letters such as RNDL. I certainly checked it in Chambers before I took it to be the answer!

       2. Good for you! Thanks for your honesty and openness.

          I flunked with “Wales” (swales being a town?) – didn’t catch the “swells”). Anyhoo, fun on my New Years Eve.

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