Times 24728 – Quite A Breeze

39 comments on “Times 24728 – Quite A Breeze”

1. ….but quite enjoyable. I nearly put in Hempstead, which is in Long Island, instead of Hampstead, which is near London, but caught myself in time.

   The cryptic for STIPEND is S[ervants] T(1 P)END, which I had to figure out after putting it in from the literal.

   It is convenient in doing this puzzle to have heard of a landaulet, a phaeton, and the Capet dynasty, but our less erudite responders will probably get them anyway. It was ‘Limelight’ I had never heard of, but I put that in very confidently with only one crossing letter, the ‘L’.

2. Erudite though I am, I failed to get LANDAULET (I was working around ‘rent’). I also managed to put ‘lamplight’ for LIMELIGHT, in spite of knowing the film!

   The right-hand went in first, barring EPITOMIST (which is one of the two for which I had to resort to aids, the other being the carriage). Thanks to Yap Suk for the parsing of 24ac and to Jonathan for helping the penny to drop at 18dn. Last in the hidden clue at 21ac, after trying to justify ‘Solon’ somehow.

   An hour and three quarters for all this, so back down to earth with a bump. And I thought I did quite well. Eek!

   1. I don’t actually understand the cryptic to 21, although I see what the answer must be.
      1. Oh, darn, it’s a hidden word! I always forget to look for those at the wrong time.
3. Got the aforementioned obscurities – through wordplay rather than erudition – with a prolonged hover in the NW corner for the final four: WINDILY, GEL, LANDAULET and BELLYACHE. 44 minutes.
4. I don’t see Mctext’s comment but I agree with the blog’s parsing of 11ac with the minor clarification that WINDY = “following circuitous route”
5. Found this harder than most on the blog so far. Not sure why, though LANDAULET, CAPETIANS and EPITOMIST didn’t help a great deal. Of the first, a suitable partner for 12ac. Of the second: old Hugh did pretty well given that he only reigned for nine years!
   I did think 11ac should be parsed as IND (for Indiana) inside WILY, but now I’m not so sure and suspect Uncle Yap’s original is probably right.
6. Over an hour for me, struggling mostly with the NW corner, plus EPITOMIST, my second to last, just before WINDILY, which I didn’t know meant ‘nervously’. Hadn’t heard of the LANDAULET specifically, although many cars over here are called ‘Landaus’, which must derive from this somehow. I agree with Uncle Yap’s original parsing of WIND(IL)Y, since the official postal abbreviation here for the state of Illinois is ‘IL’, while that for Indiana is merely ‘IN’, not ‘IND’. I saw the cryptic but didn’t understand the def. for GEL, and WATCHES OVER took a while to parse out as well. COD to BELLYACHE. Regards.
   1. As you’ll see above, I no longer want to defend this parsing. But I will say that Ind., prior to the regularisation of US postal codes, did, and in, for example, some bibliographical conventions (PMLA, for further example, to name a stalwart American institution) still does stand for Indiana. To boot, it’s listed in the US Oxford (along with Independent, India and Indian).
7. 63 minutes, so for the second consecutive day I was just about to reach for aids (which I usually do if an hour has passed) when the final four answers came to me in a blinding flash of light. I had been completely stuck for 10 minutes or so with the 1s, 3dn and 9ac outstanding having overlooked the most obvious of anagram indicators at 1ac.

   Like some others I got the difficult or unknown answers through wordplay rather than erudition.

8. Surprised to find GEL (with hard ‘g’ pronunciation) in OED online; haven’t found it elsewhere. I thought it was merely an exclusive way of saying GAL. Tortuous and inadequate rendering of wordplay (most pin-ups are female?) let me justify GAL in my own mind. Otherwise a straightforward solve with LANDAULET coming from wordplay.
9. 18 minutes on a crossword built for savouring rather than speed, I thought. Lots of clues – 3, 4, 9, 11a, 12, 16, 17, 18, 25 in my case – were entered on definition, in some cases very tentatively, but repaid lingering over to sort out the clever devices. VOGUE in particular gave a fine penny dropping moment, and STIPEND a fine penny drop in moment (boom-boom). I also thought all four three letter clues were exceptionally well and expansively done.
   I was grateful for the wordplay in assisting spelling for LANDAULET – for some reason I want to put the U earlier.
   GEL with a hard G – that’s Miss Brodie, isn’t it?
   CoD to VOGUE
   1. … not given that she spoke with a (mild) Scots accent, inc. the rhotic-R — at least in the film!
      1. I’ve never read the book so don’t know how Muriel Spark spelt Miss Brodie’s ‘girls’. I can definitely hear the rhotic (thanks for new word, mctext) ‘r’ in various YouTube clips from the film. But I’ve now found lots of reviewers (maybe posh female southerners?) who write about Miss Brodie’s ‘gels’.
      2. I’ve listened to (probably) the same clips: I think the rhotic is usually so soft it scarcely exists, hence the frequent written “gels” (and sometimes “gells”) in reviews. It is, in any case, how I remember it! IMDB chickens out and always puts “girls”. Anyone got the book?
10. Not sure if I qualify as erudite or not but managed to solve the obscurities from wordplay. For anybody toying with the idea of trying a Mephisto over the break clues like 9A LANDAULET are good examples of the technique required.

    I found this easily the hardest of the week so far, 25 minutes to solve but pleased to have to use the grey matter rather than just read the clue and write in the answer. Not sure that a JET BOAT (two words?) is a “sailing” vessel. Other than that some good wordplay constructions I thought.

11. The appearance of LANDAULET and PHAETON prompts me to say that I have just re-read Vanity Fair for the second time (yes that makes 3 in all). Not only is it a wonderful read, it’s also chock full of words which make regular appearances in this crossword. Lots of different sorts of carriages and other features and expressions of 19C life. Read it with a notebook handy to jot down all the unusual words and you’ll have a very useful list!

    Chris

    1. Georgette Heyer produces the same result for less effort 🙂
    2. Ever read Henry Esmond? Got it second hand years ago but never got round to it.
12. Found this tough – 44 minutes and like ulaca wrote in Lamplight. I’ve only read ‘Vanity Fair’ once and that about 45 years ago but it’s stayed with me – the reader is beautifully played (as a fish is played by a fisherman) in a couple of places as I remember. Feel pretty well played out by this puzzle.
13. Perhaps failing to get 1 across quickly made this a very difficult puzzle for me. Anyway nice puzzle. DNF and over 1 hour, back to earth with a bump after yesterday’s
    Thought 21 down was jolly cleverly disguised!
14. Total disaster for me today. With B?L in place for 4D I saw “Beef dish” in the clue and stuck in BOLOGNESE and moved on. Looked OK, with 11 plausibly ending in -ING, so I didn’t bother to check the wordplay. Sailed through the rest of the puzzle, but then got into trouble at the end – 15A had to start with E (but couldn’t possibly), and WINDING for 11 just wouldn’t fit the clue. I still didn’t think of looking again at 4D though.

    I eventually cracked it (about half an hour later, having given up on it) by realizing that 15 had to be CAPE + (satin)*, then everything else fell out in 30 seconds.

15. windy = circuitous ; “route” = to route and can be read as an instruction to the solver
    1. I don’t see how. But WINDY = “following circuitous route” containing IL works perfectly well and is simplest anyway
16. I found this hardish..1ac took me a while and I hadn’t heard of the Limelight film. My knowledge of Chaplin films is the one about Hitler, the one about prospecting for gold where he eats his boots, and, er, that’s it…
    1. There aren’t many people that can genuinely be regarded as a genius but I think Chaplin was one such. You refer to The Great Dictator and The Gold Rush but two of the greatest must be Modern Times and of course the unforgettable City Lights. Both were essentially silent made after sound movies were in. Limelight has a haunting theme tune that he composed and his musical talent is often overlooked. He also found time to found United Artists, so he packed a lot in.
17. I really enjoyed this but gave up after an hour and resorted to aids. I thought of BOLOGNESE at 4d but getting CAPETIANS screwed that up. Had WINDING for 12 across. Just didn’t see BELLYACHE – though it’s obvious in retrospect. Also I couldn’t see EPITOMIST in spite of having all the crossing letters. So I made a bit of a pig’s ear of this. With aids the last 3 clues took under a minute! Btw, I heartily endorse jerrywh’s recommendation of Georgette Heyer for all vocabulary concerning carriages, costume etc. Much more readable, and funnier, than Thackeray.
18. I was precisely tuned to the wavelength today – unfortunately it was linxit’s wavelength, not the setter’s. I had very similar bolognese-based misadventures. But the stubborn refusal of WINDING to make any real sense led to a protracted rethink.

    In the end it took a night’s sleep and a fresh look in the light of day to sort it all out.

    Well done to the setter for snaring at least a couple of us in the bear trap.

    1. Well, it’s a relief I wasn’t the only one!
19. Didn’t really get to concentrate on today’s – too much going on at work, but even taking this into consideration, it was the hardest of the week for me so far.

    I started in the NE corner, then worked roughly clockwise, before coming to a complete halt in the NW corner after a couple of much interrupted hours.

20. 51 minutes. Most went in very quickly, but did my usual trick of anticipating the answer without checking the wordplay and put in CABRIOLET instead of LANDAULET, so that took a while to sort out. Anyone of my generation will know Limelight; if not the actual film, at least the theme. Mantovani’s recording was often requested on Two-Way Family Favourites.
    1. Crikey John – Two-Way Family Favourites on a Sunday morning with Jean Metcalf and Cliff Michelmore swapping requests for troops still overseas. The smell of Sunday dinner in the oven, the Billy Cotton Band Show and Life with the Lyons to follow – what are you trying to do to me!
       1. Ah yes! I remember them well, Jim. You will doubtless recall that sometimes Edmundo Ros replaced Billy Cotton. I was astonished to discover that Edmundo Ros is still with us, having celebrated his hundredth birthday earlier this month. (Hope that the young folk on this site will excuse this little bout of nostalgia.)
          1. I do of course remember the excellent Edmundo Ros. I just looked up Mr and Mrs Michelmore. She has been dead for some time but he is still going strong! I try not to think about young people – too depressing!
       2. Ah yes, Acrotiri, Aden, Gibraltar.. bloody Chipmunks songs every week, or Laughing Policeman.. happy days 🙂
21. I did this in tiny installments while watching a football game, but all told I think I squeezed in under 35″. One disadvantage I find in trying to improve my speed is that I don’t take time to appreciate some of the clues. (Or even to try to figure them out post hoc, as in 24ac: thanks again to the blogger for enlightening me.) For instance, I was going to ask about ‘stern’ until just now I twigged that ‘gives up’ was the indicator of a hidden answer; and a lovely indicator it was.
22. 38 min and felt happy to reach the end without aids, even though I then found I had wrongly plumped for GAL. Georgette Heyer was definitely helpful! I also had to invent a non-existent state to get to WINDI(NG)LY … but hey, it worked for me.
    1. That’ll be New Georgia, then. Always thought it needed distinguishing from the Caucasian variety. You may well have performed a fine service for mankind!
23. Sorry, late again – long day yesterday and lots of home errands today. 15:21, finding it pretty tought, esp. on the left.

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