Times 24764

73 comments on “Times 24764”

1. Hi Dave. This took me 30 minutes, also ending with NOVELESE. I think its ‘first half of autumn poem’= ‘NOVE’, then ‘LESE’, sounds like ‘Lee’s’. VILLETTE was more of a likely looking guess, and I beieve it is a small town in French. Thanks for parsing 17D; I hadn’t known of Bridling(ton). COD to PAER DROP for the ‘ear Dr.’ Regards to all.
2. I meant PEAR DROP. Sorry.
3. Kevin, you have to be educated in Britain to get this one, as I parse it. It’s the way (‘as it were’) a schoolkid would translate a small town, by analogy with novelette, kitchenette, etc.
   1. Thanks ulaca for setting me straight. Sorry I went to bed last night without checking the blog.
4. At home, where there’s a sleepover in the office where the printer is, so I did this on the Club website and recorded 43:05 with one mistake: ‘liberate’ for LACERATE, seen as soon as I went back to search for the error. Odd that GRAVES should be in both the cryptic and the concise on the same day. Have a childhood of Cornflakes eating to thank for getting 22ac.

   Dave, 25ac is NIGH + ST (reversed) = NIGHTS.

   1. Yes it is. Clumsy blogging, sorry.
5. Dave, I think 19ac is TRUS(S) + TIER.
6. All done in half an hour except for 11 and 22, which nagged at me for quite some time thereafter. I obviously didn’t spend as much time reading the Cornflakes packet as ulaca.

   NOVELESE gave me the most trouble, although I guessed we were looking for a word like legalese. As kevin indicates, I think what we’ve got here is the first half of a Thomas Hood poem and a reference to Laurie Lee. Expect rumblings from the Dorset area later.

   1. Geez. I’ve never heard of Laurie Lee. I thought it was a reference to Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird). Lucky that Lee is a common name.
      1. Harper Lee works just as well! Laurie Lee is probably better known in the UK but that may not last. I only really know him because my parents had Cider with Rosie.
         1. Harper Lee is still alive – and this crossword is pre-RR when only dead people were allowed. Was working in Alabama a few years back, my mate visited Harper Lee on spec as a stranger, surprised to be warmly welcomed in and given time.
            Rob (not quite 4 years late)
7. Well you have to admit that if you’re right (and I’m sure you are) that makes it about the most rubbish clue we’ve had for ages.
8. 35 minutes, 5 or so of which were spent just looking at 3d and 11ac and trying to convince myself I had the correct answers. Well, I did, but I’m not particularly pleased with my correctness. I never did figure out the ‘as it were’. A couple of nice clues (7d,say), but I was pretty much just glad to have got this out of the way.
9. Never liked the double-E grid with the two 4-letter checked answers. Surely sentiment can’t prevail forever?

   Bang on the 30 minutes; with the GOSSIP / GLADSOME pair most recalcitrant. Got NOVELESE but needed e-mail help to parse it. Agreed: it’s pants!

   Edited at 2011-02-04 06:02 am (UTC)

10. Like you the crossword fell into place mainly fine except for Gladsome Villette and Novelese. agree with you that the last clue is tricky. 1 hour. No COD..dead heat between 15 down and 17 down
11. Slow to get under way on this one. I think I now suffer blogger’s panic on Fridays even when it’s not my turn, as I read through most of the clues before writing in my first answer. But gradually it came together and after 40 minutes I had all but four clues solved.

    For some reason 5ac put up a lot of resistance but once I had cracked that GLADSOME came quickly to mind. I then spent 15 minutes on 3dn and 11ac before deciding that life’s too short to spend on what I suspected were rubbish clues, and having used a solver to get the answers my suspicions were proved correct as they are both pants made all the worse by crossing each other.

    Shame, because the rest of it was very good indeed.

12. 12 mins, the last four spent staring at 11 (novelese), which seems to have been a general problem, and 24 (edentate) which seems to have been just my problem. But I liked 3 (Villette), possibly because I got it straight away. And another vote for 21 (pear drop) as COD.

    With apologies for pickiness, Dave, os is the Latin for bone, not short for anything, least of all Ossa, which is to be remembered as a Greek mountain that occasionally turns up in clues.

    1. Yes, apologies, ossa is the plural I believe. I knew I should have concentrated more in Latin lessons at school!
       1. Yeah, especially if you put ‘ad initio’!

          Latin instructor: “Now, Mr. Perry, what case does ‘ad’ normally take?”

13. DNF.
    Stuck in BRASSIER ie endless BRASSIERE (support) without reading the whole clue, then forgot about it. More haste less speed. Left me looking for some obscure explorer called B?U?I?T.
    Supply as an anagrind one for the memory bank.
    Hard work over the last 3 days which is depressing as most here found them easy.
14. Found this one dead easy, and finished the whole lot (correctly and without aids!) in super quick time for me (which means before kids have left for school!). Must admit, I didn’t understand full word play for 11ac before coming here, and guessed at the meaning of 3dn, but they just seemed somehow ‘right’. Was clearly my sort of puzzle: wine, gossip, Caribbean island… what’s not to love?!

    Have a good weekend, everyone!

15. 20 minutes here, with most time spent on 15 and 24, inexplicably not thinking of the Fringe and looking for break=vacation/interval, and disconcerted by the fact that, without the crossing E, “creature” fitted perfectly in 24. Last in NOVEMBER, with VILLETTE lightly inked in because I thought I’d heard of it as a risqué French novel and quite liked the schoolboy French. Once got, I thought it was quite a decent clue, even if associating November (“no proper time of day…no leaves”) with Autumn felt a bit of a stretch. CoD between TOURIST (I liked “the island we live on” for its potential to annoy non-UK solvers) and PEAR DROP, which wins by a narrow head.

    1. But ‘our is’ would apply to anyone living on an island, and would be pretty general, wouldn’t it? I had worked this clue on the imputed parochialism theory, believing ‘the island we live on’ would be ‘Eng’ or ‘UK’. Not so.
16. 26 min. Quite a trip down memory lane back to schooldays, recalling Hood’s November, assemblies in which we sang Let us with a GLADSOME mind, and the taste of PEAR DROP.

    Enjoyed the puzzle very much. I’m probably in the minority, but I’m pleased that The Times does include literary, musical and classical references, even though my own specialist subjects were physics and maths. If I want a pure logic puzzle I’ll try Su Doku, and if I want a more analytical style, I’ll have a do at the Mephisto.

    It must be very difficult these days for compilers to decide what is part of the canon of English culture and what is arcane knowledge, particularly since the relativists and Cultural Marxists have done their best to purge the collective memory.

    1. I also enjoy puzzles with a variety of references. 3dn is OK because even if you don’t know the novel it’s gettable from the wordplay.

       Obscurity is subjective, but for me 11ac is an unusual word clued by a vague reference to an obscure poem and a homophone of a minor poet. And I don’t think I’m Robinson Crusoe in that.

    2. Yes, I too got gladsome from the hymn but I got 11a the hard way having obviously not been at the same school. Except for that I liked this one too.
    3. I suspect you are in the majority, John, it is just that the science faction is noisy 😉

       But to clarify, nobody is objecting to literary or musical or classical references, it is just the proportions that are so wrong. Today for example the total science content is a vitamin off a packet of cornflakes…

17. Same initial error for 19ac as barrywldm, assuming that, in these times, a ‘brassier’ bank (i.e. one with more money) would be more reliable. Rather sad that this was wrong but eventually corrected when ‘TOURIST’ was inescapable answer for 19dn. Same problems, same solutions as dave for VILLETTE (albeit I did pencil this in as a solution) and NOVELESE. Used same source as ulaca for NIACIN once most checkers were in place.
18. Eventually gave up on NOVELESE, and a good thing too, having never encountered the word or the poem and thinking the author was probably a Leigh (there are a number to choose from). I guessed VILLETTE from the French town, having also never encountered the work. Acquainting myself thoroughly with the Victorian novelists is still on my to do list. I keep getting Jane Eyre & Jane Austen mixed up. I liked SOMMELIER & IN THE FIRST PLACE but COD to PEAR DROP.
    1. PS. Extensive research has shown that Chateau de Villette (http://www.frenchvacation.com/) (which incidently is for sale) was used in the filming of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s novelesa which, allegedly, borrows heavily from Richard Leigh et al’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Leigh_(author)) The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. I’m beginning to suspect a conspiracy. – Koro
    2. PS. Extensive research has shown that Chateau de Villette (which incidently is for sale) was used in the filming of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s novelesa which, allegedly, borrows heavily from Richard Leigh et al’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. I’m beginning to suspect a conspiracy.
19. Pleasingly straightforward for a Friday and that’s two in a row solved without aids! Half an hour today made slower by solving both all-checked answers cold. GOSSIP/GLADSOME last pair in. Gladsome strikes me as an archaic word that might appear in Villette. “Ear Dr” and the anagrind “supply” raised smiles. My mother- and father-in-law courted in Bridlington… almost blundered there and put in BRIGHTON.
20. A slightly strange experience this one. It’s full of slightly arcane or unfamiliar words (NOVELESE, NIACIN, AB INITIO, EDENTATE*, GLADSOME) and literature (November, Villette) and I had the constant sensation that I was bound to make a mistake. However I finished it in 14 minutes, leaving me feeling like I’d lost control of my bike but somehow managed not to fall off.
    It didn’t occur to me while solving but niacin (like its cousins thiamin and riboflavin) is familiar to me from cereal packets, so thanks to ulaca for that little memory burst.
    COD to “£1 price cut” for effiency.

    * EDENTATE, like TON for fashion, is of course arcane or unfamiliar only to normal people

21. An easy 20 minute puzzle ruined by two intersecting ludicrous clues. I got NOVELESE from definition and N-V checkers and VILLETTE in the same way from V-L and an association with “village”

    I think VILLETTE is very weak whilst as others like Essex Man have correctly said, NOVELESE is far too obscure. A pity because the rest of it is reasonable fare and I too particularly liked PEAR DROP

    1. I’d agree that November is obscure because I’ve never heard of it (which I would propose as a suitable universal definition of the word). However to be fair to the setter, with “first half of Autumn poem” and _O_E in the grid I really think we’re being given a reasonable chance.
       And again to be fair, we get more obscure writers than the author of Cider with Rosie.
       Crossing it with VILLETTE was a bit harsh though.
22. A shade under 22 minutes with electronic help for NOVELESE – I agree with the opinions on this clue!
    COD to the excellent PEAR DROP and all in all very good finish to the working week.
23. Had it not been for the dreaded 11a, I would have recorded a time of 25 minutes or so. Thanks to Gnomethang for his assistance with that one. The rest of the crossword was a very nice entertaining solve.
24. I had never heard this word before, or I might have got it from the definition.

    There are a few peculiar features that no one has pointed out yet. Look at 19, ‘our is’ inside ‘TT’. Now what does TT actually stand for? ‘Tourist Trophy’!

    I was stuck for a long time in various places, because I can never remember the Edinburgh Fringe, even though it has come up several times. I had also never heard of ‘Bridlington’, but concluded it must exist based on the checking letters.

    I did think it peculiar the setter would use the naked Latin ‘os’ without any sort of indication.

    1. I guess in the UK we would always say TT races and so it shouldn’t present us with too many problems

       There will be UK residents who haven’t heard of Bridlington. It’s hardly a holiday mecca and if it weren’t for other issues might have raised a comment or two

       Chambers actually gives os=bone (plural ossa) as a straight definition althouigh it’s difficult to think of an everyday usage. It’s a bit more restrictive about os=mouth (plural ora) saying that the construction is only used in Latin names

       1. Not an everyday usage but my mum did once describe Beaune as a “one os town”. She has been pleased with herself ever since.
    2. My defence of TT (Tourist Trophy) is that it’s a crossword cliche learned at my mother’s knee (or thereabouts) nearly 50 years ago.

       The clue’s reference to ‘the island’ fits neatly into the surface reading giving opportunities for all sorts of lateral thinking, TT / Isle of Man / Human race /Our island and so on.

    3. Me neither. Had a stab at ‘sodemeze’ which would have been ‘ode’ for ‘poem’ with a homophone of ‘me’s’ for ‘author’s’ inside half of ‘sere’ meaning autumn. The whole thing would mean bad handwriting of the kind that makes you think the writer didn’t care whether or not it could be read saying, in effect, ‘sod ’em’ to his readers. Well, load of rubbish of course since no such word exists but still!
25. I thought this would turn out to be one of my best times, having zipped through the left hand side in 15 minutes. Then I hit the buffers, particulary with the NE corner. For some reson I couldn’t think of IN FLIGHT, one of the easiest clues, and this gave me trouble with 6d and 7d. I originally had AD INITIO but remembered enough of my schoolgirl Latin to correct it in time. I’d put in NOVELESE early on as the only word that fitted the crossing letters but needed the blog to decypher the cryptic. Am annoyed at that because I know the “November” poem well and would disagree that it’s obscure. It still appears in a lot of school anthologies (or it did when I was last teaching). Eventually came in at 41 minutes. My progress in this puzzle reflects my views on tonight’s rugby – Wales will probably start well but loose it in the second half. Poor finishers. Alas.
26. 15:48 .. the only less than satisfying solve of the week for me. Several discordant notes, and one clunker…

    Last in NOVELESE – now, I’m all for the QI factor in crosswords, but cluing a little used word partly with half the name of a month which happens to be the one-word title of a trifling poem by a half-remembered (and often best forgotten) poet and partly with a soundalike of an author’s name in possessive form… that’s taking things a little far. Yes, it was guessable and gettable anyway, but that doesn’t make it a good clue any more than a three-legged greyhound’s being able to get round the track makes it a good greyhound (though admittedly, both give you something to talk about).

    1. OK when you put it like that…
       I’ve just googled and read the poem and I think the crossing with VILLETTE must have been an attempt at some kind of thematic grouping. The setter could have pointed the way more clearly by using DRIVEL for 1ac.
       1. Well, at least he didn’t clue ‘edentate’ as ‘Beast found in garden by poet laureate’.
          1. I had to Google that one!
             1. Egads! You have never heard of Nahum Tate?
                1. I’m ashamed to say that I have not, in spite of studying English Literature for three years.
                   Part of me thinks I must have come across him at some point, but on the other hand it’s not a name you’d forget. On the other other hand I forget an awful lot.
    2. I think you’re being a little harsh on Hood. November used to be well known (and well loved) over here, and I still find The Bridge of Sighs moving. He was also responsible for one of my favourite puns (in the 3rd and 4th lines, though the one in the 1st line isn’t bad either):

       
       His death, which happened at his berth,
       At forty-odd befell:
       They went and told the sexton, and
       The sexton tolled the bell.

       1. I wouldn’t presume to cast judgement on Hood’s poems in general: I don’t know them at all. He had already passed thoroughly out of fashion when I started at university twenty years ago.
          As for November in particular, I have lived in England for almost all of my life but had never come across this poem before, presumably a reflection of the same shift in fashion. Whatever the reasons it meant that I came to it completely fresh and I’m afraid I thought it was a truly awful poem. I much prefer the four lines (and in particular the last two) that you quote!
          1. I started at university almost 50 years ago so there’s already a generation separating us, but in some ways I belong to an earlier generation still as my father was born in 1899 and my older brother and sister were born in the late 1920s.

             I’ve never read Villette, but I remember my sister (who had read it) being none too pleased when an aunt gave her a copy as a 21st-birthday present. The aunt, who’d taught French at a girls’ school in Normanton in the West Riding between the wars and was unmarried, presumably empathised with the heroine and assumed my sister would too.

             I first came across Hood as the author of the puns I quoted above (from Faithless Sally Brown) when I was quite young, but I’m pretty sure we did November (and Faithless Nellie Gray and The Bridge of Sighs and The Song of the Shirt) at school.

             I note that Q’s 1939 edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse contained eight of Hood’s poems and that Helen Gardner’s 1972 edition contained four. I haven’t checked Christopher Ricks’s 1999 edition, but I’ve an uneasy feeling that the progression may have been arithmetical rather than geometrical!

             1. Interestingly I did read Villette, and this too is a reflection of changing fashions. Feminist literary criticism was all the rage, and although The Madwoman in the Attic was published over a decade before I got to university it was still absolutely required reading. I think I still have a copy somewhere. Fascinating stuff, but it didn’t stop me thinking Villette was awful.

27. 9:26 online with one typing error (Grrrr..)

    NOVELESE and VILLETTE were the last in, the latter an educated guess!

28. Well I got there, in over an hour, held up grotesquely by novelese, a clue I don’t think much of. And what’s ‘as it were’ doing in the clue for the small town so much in English usage? I know of the novel and of Laurie Lee the author but their use needlessly pushes the boundaries and the small town use busts the envelope. Generally disgruntled but at least got there finally so ahead of sghanson – can’t be all bad.
29. I actually knew VILLETTE when I thought about it, but like others was stumped for ages by 11 ac. Tried for ages to construct a word containing ODE (poem) and ending in EYE (author = I, read aloud). Eventually gave up and resorted to aids, still without understanding the wordplay till I came here – pffft. Otherwise there were lots of nice surface readings in this one.
30. Perhaps the weirdest DNF I have encountered ever. Completely on the right wave length and banging things in left right and centre (even VILLETTE-with a ?) such that I finished the whole lot bar that dratted 11a in about 8 minutes. I then sat looking at it for about another 20, before resorting to aids (crosswordsolver.org) which didnt seem to have the word, so a double DNF when I came on here!

    I had actually put in the “S” as I figured out it ought to end ESE, but scrolling through permunations with three letters, especially around two common vowels, was never going to work.

    Does anyone know which the best “word search” site is, since the one I used clearly had a limited vocab?

    1. My iPhone app (called Crossword Puzzle Help) is not infallible, but it does give NOVELESE if you key in .O.E.E.E

       However, it does not give a definition of the word.

       J

    2. I have a Franklin electronic doodad that has the complete contents of Chambers concise. It seems to come up with most things, as long as they’re single words rather than phrases.
    3. I have a self-imposed ban on using helpers for dailies but if I’m doing the Club Monthly I sometimes turn to a weird but wonderful little crossword tool. If you use the Mega List option it really does seem to have the most obscure stuff in it.

       http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/wow

    4. The best word pattern matching site out there by a country mile in my opinion is OneLook.com – it searches dozens of other dictionaries and collates the results together.

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