Times 24757: mind your homophones

49 comments on “Times 24757: mind your homophones”

1. I think ‘view’ is another homophone of site, viz. ‘sight’.
   1. you’re right, I kind of buggered up that description as well as having the wrong word in the grid… let’s rewind
2. After the right-hand side went in relatively quickly, I thought I might come a cropper in the left, and I was right. Took an age to get GUINEA PIG (trying to justify ‘copper pig’) and GAMMA, and needed to come here for INVERSION and ARRANGES (d’oh). Even worse in the SW, where I don’t know my ribbing from my rubbing and screwed things up by putting ‘chafe’ at 22dn. 22 ac was too clever for me and I compounded things by sticking in ‘aging’ at 26ac. MOVIE was slick.
3. I got it thus: PICK (breaking and entering tool) by POCKET (diminutive, as in pocket-sized … “pocket toy poodle” comes to mind).
4. Should be PROVER.
5. Exactly a half an hour, with MOVIE, ARRANGES, INVERSION, & EXEUNT all finally dawning on me in the last 30 seconds. Dithered on ‘cite/site’ for a while, too. I wondered what was American about ‘Dan’, the penny not dropping until I read the blog. Couldn’t 15d have been more economically clued as ‘Nasty, aggressive campaign’, say? ‘in another part of speech’ struck me as awkward.
6. Sod’s Law sent me to CITE and I didn’t understand OFFENSIVE.
   George. Another minor typo I think in 27 – “is” tucked into WHER ITS*.

   Probably dumb, but what is GAM in 1ac?

   1. Not dumb at all. I had to look it up in Chambers, and there are indeed 4 entries for this word that looks like another typo. Gam1 (our gam) is defined as ‘a collective noun for whales, a school etc.’. But I far prefer gam4 – ‘(to practise) oral sex’, ‘though whether any of our setters would be up for that is a moot point.
7. Parsed thus because military meaning can also be spelt offencive ? (though rarely)
   1. No, just a switch of PoS from noun (campaign) to adjective (nasty).
8. This followed a similar pattern to yesterday’s disaster but ended a little more happily. The top half flowed nicely and the SE with difficulty but I ground to a halt in the SW with only GIFT and CHAFE in place and as I discovered later CHAFE should have been CHAFF and the error did not help when trying to make sense of 28ac. But I got there in the end at just on 60 minutes.

   I thought 3dn was an excellent clue making use of a slightly unusual device.

9. Thanks ulaca. Must then be an everyday word where George comes from. Just me being lazy as I gave up after a fruitless look at COED.
   1. Sorry, should have pointed out the origin of GAM. It’s pretty common in barred-grid puzzles, I guess not that common in the Times.
10. So, George, it’s the week for new user-pics?

    No idea how long this took. Just finished it at home after stops at no fewer than five crossword-unfriendly locations on my med. transport run today.

    But I suspect this is going to be classed as pretty darn hard. 3dn alone has to be a strong condender for the Convolution Stakes: find the literals (ARNES, RAG) and then operate on them as instructed. Pushes the limits of the UN Convention Against Concealement.

11. Finally manage to log in here after years of following the debate.
    The bloggers’ convention of leaving out a couple clues (presumably because they’re an insult to our intelligence?) is fine most of the time – until it happens to be a clue you’ve got stuck on. Having slogged through this for around 30 minutes I ground to halt in front of 6dn – (I standing for INDENT is it?)and still can’t see the connection with exile.
    1. Leaving ’em out is/was always a courtesy to the Times phone line. Our esteemed founder, PB, is such a genteleman. Not so some bloggers.
    2. Hint: think chemistry.
12. Too tough for me. Went for CITE at 25 dn, and IODINE for 6 dn (I in the periodic table) without having an inkling about the rest of the clue.
    1. Sorry, that was me.
       1. IODINE – if the penny has not dropped by now, it’s a hidden word in the rest of the clue.
13. I should have waited another few years before leaving a comment – have just noticed that iodene is embedded in 6dn. I suppose everyone has days like this …
    1. Oh, no. Feel free and welcome. I just love dropping clangers here. Even after years of doing it!
    2. Welcome and don’t ever worry about dropping clangers or asking what you fear might be a daft question. The whole spirit of this blog is to help so drop your inhibitions and join in the fun.
       1. Hear, hear!
14. About 40 minutes but with limited grasp of some of the wordplay (partly because of ignorance e.g. ‘gam’). Hence 25dn incorrect: VIDE (misled by ‘refer’, ‘view’ and and ‘location’ in clue). Quite challenging but enjoyable. Unlike yesterday, it took me quite a long time to spot the definition in many of these clues. Hence 19ac as my COD: only when both checkers were present did the penny drop.
15. A high quality puzzle that was right up my street. I do enjoy unravelling those wordplays. 20 minutes to solve.

    GAM should be familiar to bar crossword solvers (which is probably why George hasn’t drawn attention to it). In a plethora of good clues I thought PICKPOCKET and the superb ARRANGES worthy of special mention.

16. Many thanks for all the words of encouragement – even if one does still feel that the depicted quadrupeds would have spotted this sooner!
17. Time – more than 20 minutes, mostly in the SW and trying to make sense of CITE/SITE/VIDE – or indeed anything else matching the ?I?E pattern. Not hard, I thought, but frustrating: the easy CHAFE/CHAFE mistake made FREELANCE impossible, and when corrected, the heart sank on seeing that ?I?E on 25. I also lingered long over the MOVIE/INVERSION crossing, no idea why.
    Clues I liked: 14 and 3. The neat shuffle at 3 gets my CoD
18. I fell into every pothole along the way – CITE and CHAFE – the latter making this a DNF. I was never on the setter’s wavelength and found the whole thing a bit of a grind to be frank. But I did like ARRANGES.
19. … to finish the puzzle except for one answer! Today’s exclusion was AGIST. Again, was convinced it was a word I’d never heard of, and had totally misread the clue.

    Other than that, thought it was on the tough side, so a fairly slow but satisfactory solve for me. GAM will be stored away for future ref. Thanks for explanaiton of 15dn.

    CoD to 6dn for its simplicity.

20. ARRANGES was worth the price of admisson alone. Another class act of a puzzle which I struggled around. Last in AGIST, which I thought had something to do with minding other people’s livestock. I didn’t know you could spell the intended meaning without an E. I’ve been waiting for GAM to resurface for some time, swearing, falsely as it turns out, that I’d be ready for it when it did, and here it pops up with IF, also not seen in ages (or ags).
21. ….I wanted to put in ‘Freedonia’ for the country! So it was a very slow solve for me, although the clues were brilliant. As usual, I got the most difficult ones first and then stumbled on those that should not have been that hard.

    I also thought that 25 was an indirect allusion to ‘hear, hear’, which it could well have been – but wasn’t.

22. Just under the hour (then forgot to submit).
    I had all but 9 (broadly west side) in 20 minutes then ground out the rest. I ALWAYS miss IF = Poem and also missed GAM even though it was in a Telegraph Toughie no too long ago. All in all a very challenging and fun puzzle. COD to MOVIE for the simplicity and the fact that it was still my 4th to last in.
23. After a week of half-finished attempts, I’m starting to get the hang of this ‘new style’ of crossword – or that’s how it seems to me. Maybe I’ve just had a thick week, but these seem to involve unhinging the brain to a much greater extent than some of the older ones. Do others agree?

    Got them all this time, apart from ‘site’. I was on the wrong track entirely there. It took about an hour to get that far.

    1. I’ve had the same feeling for a while, nitro, but couldn’t put my finger on it. You’ve expressed it perfectly – the need to ‘unhinge’ the brain. I’m not sure the new sensibility is entirely to my liking.
24. Managed to finish in just under 60 minutes. Thought some of the clues were tough as others have commented particulary the MO for Modus operandi which i have never seen before in any x word. Also didnt know Gam in Gamma but felt it had to be Gamma. thought arranges was some sort of anagram of Grainger so got that but for wrong wordplay and thought Site was clever too. took me an age to see Benchmarks and Inversion too. luckily debriefed went in early as too did Guinea Pig
    Nice puzzle…
    1. I’ve come across characters in crime thrillers who talk about a criminal’s “M O”.
25. Interestingly someone replied above with hear hear although I assume this was coincidence?
    I had HERE in confidently for 25d until I got 27, and I maintain it works well.
    Definition is “this location” and wordplay is repeatedly stating (ie sounds like) a reference to a view/opinion.
    So confident was I that it was inked in without any concern.
26. Seem to be slow these days (these last two days at least). About an hour, the left side seizing up after a smoothish right. An excellent puzzle. Interesting thoughts on the unhinged brain, above; I’d say the hinge is strong but the door swinging a little more open i.e. the lateral thinking element expanding a tad. COD 6 – got it fast enough with checking letters but missed the concealed word till coming here.
27. nothing wrong with the website but isn’t 25 a bit weird in that ‘repeatedly stating this’ should clue ‘citing’ not ‘cite’. Niggly quibble in a well above average crossword imho. COD to 3d but others were excellent. I think 8d and 17d get v honourable mentions for wordplay I’d not seen before.
    1. See my explanation below – unless subsequently demolished, of course!
28. Sorry, can’t share the common enthusiasm for 3d. The intertwining of an obscure composer and one of a large number of words that could be used for “jazz” was, well, obscure. I only solved the clue through “musically adapts” and crossing letters. Did enjoy BENCHMARKS, DEMONSTRATOR and IRISH STEW, though. They’re more my type of clues. Takes all sorts I suppose…
    1. Arne obscure? Well, yes, but not in crossword land, where he shows up all the time, at least in the NY Times. (And didn’t he write the national anthem or some such?) But I would say that ARRANGES was one of those items — there should be a term for them — that I couldn’t possibly have got a purchase on without a crossing letter or two.
       1. Arne wrote the music for Rule, Britannia!, so he should be well-known to any true Brit.
29. 11:54 for me for a most enjoyable puzzle.

    I took the PICK in 20A to be both a tool for breaking (ground, rock, etc) and a tool for entering (with the same meaning as “picklock”), making this a particularly clever clue.

30. Could someone explain why this isn’t CITE?
    From new user: Kakapoa
    1. My 5 cents: ‘repeatedly stating’ (or perhaps ‘repeatedly stating this’) acts as a double homophone indicator, covering both ‘refer’ (cite) and ‘view’ (sight). Those elements of the clue thus being accounted for, according to the crossowrd grammar, the definition must be ‘location’ (SITE).
       1. Put my zac there too!
31. Thank you, I see it now. I was stuck on “To refer to” as the def and hence struggling to make a construct with the remaining words.

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