Times 24787 – No Hard-Boiled Eggs

65 comments on “Times 24787 – No Hard-Boiled Eggs”

1. I was a little surprised to find a few easy answers like ‘ocean’, ‘hundred’, ‘Occam’ and ‘grim’, but the rest took a while to yield. I was sure that 16 started with mut[e], and that ‘turning’ modified the next element – this made ‘abstracted’ hard, besides which it is an anagram of ‘scatter’ but the rest of the letters don’t do anything.

   I had never heard of the hidden word omitted by the blogger, but what else could it be? I did want to put ‘Roget’ in almost at once, but couldn’t justify it. I never saw the cryptic for ‘Johannes’, either, but again that had to be it.

   I thought this was a well-set puzzle, but the answers were either too commonplace or rather esoteric.

2. 34 minutes: so not so simple here either. I had to look up SHAW which turns out to have interesting origins:
   Old English sceaga, of Germanic origin; related to SHAG. (Mac Oxford)
   Surprisingly held up by the 22dn/27ac intersection.
   COD to SCARAB for the riddling surface.

3. SHAW for thicket was new to me and I wasn’t nimble enough to parse the cryptic before calling it a day after 45m or so. Bring back the Sixties. DNF.
   1. ‘Haw’ = fruit of a hawthorn. That’s how I guessed it, and it turned out to be right!
4. Didn’t get shaw. Was hoping for a good time, so opted for shag. As you do.
5. Quite a number of the Downs went in without full wordplay understanding (7, 8, 23, 24), and I got two wrong, guessing ‘star’ at 18 (for ‘fruit’ – desperate, I know) and being well and truly suckered by the thespian theme at 10 to shove in ‘extra line’.

   Had no idea that GRIM meant ‘ironic’ – I suppose it must be in the sense given in Oxford, but not in Chambers, ‘ (of humour) lacking genuine levity; black’.

   17 will have had the anti-elitists purring by introducing a rowed boat other than an eight!

   1. The cryptic parsing of 15 ac was obvious enough, but I too cannot think of any real-life context (whatever the dictionaries may say) in which “grim” would be a satisfactory synonym for “ironic”. One meaning of “ironic” is using a word, for sarcastic or comic effect, in the opposite sense of its literal meaning. On that basis I took “ironic with good” as the definition of “grim”, as you might say “grim news” when you really meant “good news”. A reading that, on reflection, would only really work, if at all , the other way round – i.e. if you were saying “good” when you meant “grim”!
      1. I think it’s the Alanis Morissette sense of ‘ironic’
6. I’ve now posted the solution to 9617 (yesterday’s retro) on yesterday’s blog. The Club site seems a bit slow to do so, so I went back to the 1961 Times.
   1. So it was RED LEAD after all. I still don’t think the hyphen is correct (unlike RED-HEAD) so I am calling it a draw.

      Thanks for posting the solution. I hope you don’t have 50 years worth of Times newspapers lying round the house.

      1. No, just access to the archive. Still 1961, as [if] I remember it, was a very good year!
7. 39 minutes, maybe 15 of which were devoted to a)fighting off a narcoleptic attack while b) trying to figure out 18. (This looks like becoming a pattern for me; yesterday’s qualifier took me 34′, except for 17d, where the clock is still running.) This was an odd combination, as has been remarked, of the old and tired (Occam, Olivier, Prince Hal) and repeated (abstracted), with the rare (shaw, rorqual), plus a couple of neat ones (muddying, thudded). I actually came as close as ‘narwhal’ for 23 before twigging to the hidden; but, especially as it was a hidden clue, I have no objection whatever to ‘rorqual’ (or, indeed, rorquals; live and let live, says I). But ‘ironic’=’grim’ is simply wrong.
   ‘abstracted’ reminds me: It occurred to me the other day, when the title of a poem appeared for the second time in my enfeebled memory in a jumbo, that maybe the setters are competing with each other–‘I could have come up with a better clue than that’ sort of thing.
   1. March 1st was a very special day – particularly if you are Welsh! It took ages for the penny to drop.
      1. Thanks, Anon! I had actually settled on that, but only because I could think of nothing else, given the checkers; didn’t know about the day, and wasted time looking for towns on the Isle of Man.
         1. Not that I got the date link, but I guessed that answer from checkers and immediately discounted it as SD is the uks smallest city allegedly and so not a town. Hence I also left it unfinished. Is this a setters mistake or mine, or is the quirkiness enough to blur the boundary?
8. No problems with this.. 12m. I think looking at the surface readings today, shows just how good yesterday’s was by comparison.
   Shaw is a regional word, common in some parts, less so in others..
   1. Yes, in the southeast shaw is often used for a long strip of woodland left between assarts (fields cut out of the wildwood for cultivation and a word to look out for in future crosswords).

      Nick M

9. Got interrupted after 35 minutes with two remaining – the tricky pairing of 8 and 18. I’d suspected SHAW for a while, but was only able to put it in when the penny dropped with JOHANNES. It’s strange that Brahms’s first name doesn’t come readily to mind – to my mind, anyway. I wouldn’t have any problem naming the members of The Who, though, including the two who are now eligible to appear in the Times crossword.
10. Quite enjoyable. 18 minutes. Nothing wrong with grim as ironic as in smile, humour … it happens. I too don’t like the hyphenated red lead which is why I went for the red-head yesterday … spring must be coming. Hope we get a genuine belter soon – a soft week so far.
11. This was a puzzle of two halves for me. The top went in very easily and I enjoyed the liveliness and variety of the clues, the only exception being ‘ironic’ = GRIM, which I still don’t accept.

    I slowed down on starting the lower half in the SE where a couple of easy ones gave me a foothold but I struggled with THUDDED, HALF-HOUR and OFF DUTY.

    But it was the SW that did for me as I failed to spot ROGET at 23dn where I first had NIGH+T (fitted the wordplay, sort of, but no definition) and then RIGHT (which fitted neither), the rethink having been forced by getting the hidden RORQUAL at 23ac where I had previously put NARWHAL.

    I’ve never heard of SHAW but guessed it from the wordplay.

12. 25 minutes, with several clues prompting wrong answers in that first glance – 14d suggested MEDALLION at first, something beginning with MUT for 19d, but not MUTTERING. Trying to work out what a double wicket was in 27a. Noted actor suggesting an opera singer at 6d, especially since there seemed to be a strong musical flavour to this one. I suppose that’s good, deceptive cluing.
    21a was a tour de force, slightly given away by the length: it practically screamed one letter per word. Nicely themed, though.
    Has anyone considered that ironic might be a spoof adjective from iron, which does give harsh, stern or inflexible and thus grim? It would still need a question mark somewhere, I think, like the “bellish” in 14d. Perhaps the unedited version of the clue started “Irony…”
    I like CoD WICKLOW (I’m a sucker for dodgy puns), which, together with WRITTEN, lulled me into thinking this was going to be a doddle.
    Last in JOHANNES, working through the alphabet.
13. Just when you think you know all the tricks, along comes THUDDED. Had to look at a list of fruits to get SHAW. Talking of thick, I still don’t always see some of these “all in ones” eg in 5d shouldn’t the whole thing be the definition and if so what is it?
    1. I read the whole thing as a very loose definition: a scarab (beetle) is small and might be caught by an Egyptian. Of course it might be caught by anyone else but the ancient Egyptians had a thing for these beetles. Cheeky and no doubt controversial but personally I like this sort of thing.
14. Under half an hour. Did not know RORQUAL (probably should have done) or SHAW as ‘thicket’: but wordplay/checkers fortunately left no alternatives. 21dn (THUDDED): ingenious approach but tortuous implementation (could it have been otherwise?) provided key to wordplay. My COD: 27ac.
15. Was stumped bt the composer, and also the thicket. Should’ve got the first, and had thought of HAW(thorn), but had never heard of SHAW, so that would never have come to me…

    Also missed ROGER and stuck in RIGHT, for no reason other than it fitted, and hurriedly scribbled in EXTRA BITE at 10ac.

    GRIM was put in with a question mark.

    BTW, I found this one much harder than yesterday’s… (but just as enjoyable, if not more so!).

16. I was really hoping, yfyap, that you would use that Who song as a headline! So appropriate! George Bernard Thicket certainly fooled me and it was my LOI, otherwise a time of under an hour was on the cards. Several others fooled me as to the parsing so I was grateful for your explanation of 13ac, 8d, 21d and 23d. And thanks for the abbreviation decode list. As something of a novice on this site, I didn’t know waht “cha” meant. 5d was also fun. COD for me was 1d. I, too, like a pun. Interesting to hear from the long-time regulars that some clues have been used quite often.
17. You know you’ve had a bad day when you don’t get the deliberately omitted clue till almost the very end. Gave up on JOHANNES/SHAW and fell asleep; one of those fitful sleeps where you dream you’ve solved it but can’t remember what the solution is when you wake up. Anyway, I’m pretty sure my subconscious didn’t do any better than my conscious brain in its absence, but I did plump for the correct answers in the end. EMBELLISH was good, but COD to THUDDED over MUDDYING.
18. Thanks indeed for parsing 21d – I couldn’t do it at all. I slid home in 20 minutes, which is fast for me, probably because I did this entirely online for the first time (printer is having issues) so there was no wandering about with a cup of tea and pausing to glance at the news crawl. I’m going back to printing – even if it costs a few minutes I much prefer it.
19. I noticed this program has automatically provided a link to certain Wikipedia pages and I laughed at the pointer to hard-boiled eggs. Many years ago, while I was still a student-accountant with the then-Coopers & Lybrand in Birmingham (aka articled clerk), we had a lecturer from Financial Training called Jeremy Handley (I heard he became an MP). In one of his lectures in accounting, he told us of this boring Chartered Accountant who was an examiner for the PEII paper telling his wife, “I have just set a question of a UK company having a foreign subsidiary, which, in turn, has an associate company with non-concurrent financial year-end. And, dear, the foreign currency depreciated vis-a-vis Sterling during the year.”

    “Oh, Darling, how frightfully clever. You deserved a hard-boiled egg”

    From then on, any particularly difficult aspect of a question became known as a HBE, which expression I have adopted for a very difficult clue.

    1. Thanks for explaining the Hard-Boiled Eggs; I thought you might have been referring to this scene from “A Night at the Opera”.
       1. Ah John, you beat me to it. Terrific stuff.
20. It may be &lit, but its a rotten definition, don’t you think ?
21. 29 minutes for this, of which fully half was spent going through the alphabet trying to fill the gaps in S_A_. I got there in the end but was far from shaw it was right.
    RORQUAL and HUNDRED (in the county sense) were the only other unknowns, unless you count GRIM. I didn’t know it meant ironic, but that’s because it doesn’t.
    I thought 21 was very clever but a bit clunky. I didn’t even notice the surface until post-solve analysis.
    COD to WICKLOW, which made me chuckle, even if I don’t particularly want to think too much about Ireland after yesterday.
22. 29 minutes. A very enjoyable puzzle with lots of ticked clues. Particularly liked NOW OR NEVER, and WICKLOW produced an appreciative groan.

    There were letters in the Times last week concerning serendipity in crosswords, and I had put down P. G. Wodehouse’s Something Fresh, whose plot centres on the theft of a SCARAB, just before beginning today’s puzzle. This sort of thing happens so often that it is scarcely worth mentioning, though I was shaken when six such words appeared in one puzzle a few years ago.

    BELLISH being like a gong sounded like something out of The Uxbridge English Dictionary.

    1. My Vauxhall is hard to start
    2. I had heard somewhere that there had been references to D-Day beaches such as Omaha in The Times crossword in the days or weeks prior to the landings. When I tried a search in Wikipedia I came upon this reference to the raid on Dieppe in 1942:
       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieppe_Raid
       then scroll down to “Daily Telegraph crossword”.
23. Took a few minutes to get started and then it all flowed fairly quickly with the exception of 8 down, which I didn’t get – duh! Then came here and realised I had Thumped instead of Thudded for 21 down and had missed out 26a altogether!
    Louise
24. 14:11 .. lively puzzle, much enjoyed.

    Last in SHAW

    COD THUDDED – the more I look at this clue, the better it seems. Top drawer invention.

25. Since my sister kindly gave me a Concise Oxford English Dictionary (the bible for this crossword) for my birthday, I have used it for the first time, and found that GRIM means “(of humour) black or ironic”. So the fault (if there is one) lies with the lexicographer, not the setter.
    1. Not that it matters but isn’t Collins the main reference for the Times?
       In any event, Collins also has “harshly ironic or sinister” as one of the meanings of “grim”, but whatever it says in the dictionaries I struggle to see these words as synonymous. Sure, grim laughter is likely to be ironic laughter, but these are distinct characteristics. A Chinese flag is a red flag but that doesn’t mean that “Chinese” is a synonym for “red”.
       1. I seem to remember reading/hearing somewhere that the main reference is actually The Oxford Dictionary of English. Can someone confirm (or deny) this?

          I take the view that if you can look up the answer to a clue in an appropriate dictionary and find the key word or phrase as it appears in the clue among the definitions, then that’s entirely acceptable – in which case GRIM passes muster, even though the “ironic” meaning wasn’t familiar to several of today’s solvers (including me).

          1. I think this sort of thing is OK for Mephisto but a bit much for the daily cryptic. To extend the argument, and looking at the ODE online, you could justify “cloaked” as a synonym for “grim” like this, because it is used in the definition relating to the reaper. To my mind “cloaked” is a synonym for “grim” just as much (and in the same way) as “ironic” is.
             1. Oh dear – I didn’t express that very well! (Memo to self: must avoid writing comments too late at night.)

                What I hoped would come across is that the word or phrase needs to stand on its own as a definition, so that answer and word/phrase are interchangeable in a sentence without significant change of meaning. For me “grim” and “ironic” pass the test (“he was known for his grim humour” = “he was known for his ironic humour”) whereas “grim” and “cloaked” don’t.

                I had a look at various dictionaries in a couple of local bookshops yesterday and found that Collins (“harshly ironic or sinister: grim laughter“) and the Concise Oxford (“(of humour) black or ironic”) directly support “ironic”, whereas Chambers and the Oxford Dictionary of English don’t – even indirectly as far as I could see at a cursory glance. But two out of four is certainly good enough for me.

                Chambers is the odd man out, containing enough oddball words (particularly archaic and Scottish ones) to make it the standard choice for barred cryptics, and I certainly wouldn’t expect every word from that to appear in the daily Times cryptic. Personally I don’t think I’d really object to anything from the other three (provided there weren’t too many rarities in one puzzle). However, I’m pretty sure that the current Times crossword editor takes a very different view, so that (for example) I believe you would find words (and not just rude ones 😉 in the daily Guardian puzzle that you wouldn’t find in a Times puzzle.

                1. We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this, because to my ear “grim” and “ironic” do not pass your test: even in your example I think the meaning is significantly changed by switching the words.
                   My point is that grim laughter or humour is likely to be ironic, but only because of the contrast between grimness and laughter/humour, and not because “grim” means “ironic”.
                   In the same way gallows humour is likely to be ironic (and as it happens it is defined as “grim and ironical humour” in ODE) but I don’t think anyone would accept “gallows” and “ironic” as synonymous.
                   1. Well at least I have a couple of reputable dictionaries on my side. And as far as your “gallows” example is concerned, that merely demonstrates that while interchangeability may be necessary, it is not sufficient.
       2. Oh dear! I will have to put Collins on my birthday list for next year.
26. I liked ‘Wicklow’ best. This one took me about 35 minutes. Yesterday’s was easier, but I’m not paying £15 to qualify when I know I’ve got no chance of winning!

    Does anyone know where I can download user-friendly software for writing crosswords? I’d like to have a go.

    1. I use Crossword Compiler 7, though version 8 is available from http://www.crossword-compiler.com/ as a demo – sadly the cost of the full version with all the add-ons is quite high, but it’s pretty good and allows a wide range of styles.
    2. Anax’s advice is good. It’s here:
       http://www.crosswordunclued.com/2010/12/useful-tools-for-crossword-setters.html
       But it assumes you use a Windoze box. I don’t.
27. Same as everybody else. Funny mixture of ancient, easy and obscure plus one or two questionable definitions. No great excitement just steady progress from start to finish.
28. I’m still pushing for ironic as an adjective derived loosely from iron, when it could mean grim, unyielding etc. Anyone want to play?
    1. Nice idea: I’m reminded of Baldrick’s definition of irony as being like goldy and bronzy only with iron in it.
       However given the appearance of the word “ironic” in both the Oxford and Collins definitions of “grim” in the context of grim humour/laughter I think this must be what the setter had in mind.
29. I had the same doubts as everybody else about the definition of GRIM. It may be in the dictionary but I’ve never heard it used that way. I spent ages pondering 8 down. Even when I had all the checking letters it seemed to be such a peculiar word. Penny finally dropped and I clocked off at 31 minutes. Quite enjoyable though.
30. penfold_61 wrote:

    Mar. 3rd, 2011 01:09 pm (UTC)
    21:29 but I hope that knowing composers’ first names won’t be required that often. After Ludwig Mozart, Amadeus Beethoven and Hubert Schubert I start to struggle.

    No problems with Shaw. I was brought up in an “experimental” village in Kent, New Ash Green , where the “neighbourhoods” were often given names that contained words reflective of the countryside such as Punch Croft, Bowes Wood, Over Minnis and Bazes Shaw.

31. About 20 minutes, no hold ups, except for SHAW at the end, which came from wordplay alone, never heard of it. The THUDDED clue was cleverly put together, but after reading it over, the surface is not entirely smooth enough to deceive us solvers into missing it. Good attempt, though. Thanks to UY, as usual. And I agree with everyone on the ‘weird, but true’ aspect of GRIM. Regards.
32. I’ve been lurking for the past couple of weeks and I just wanted to offer my thanks to all the bloggers and the other regular contributors.

    There are clearly some very high standards and fast times being set but I don’t feel any sense of elitism. I’ve been dabbling with crosswords for years but have never been able to get more than a couple of clues in any given Times cryptic puzzle. I’ve made a concerted effort to look at it regularly in the past 2 weeks and, crucially, I’ve been following the blog.

    I think it has made all the difference – I got around half the clues today and I managed about 20 of them yesterday. While I’ve not quite got the champagne out yet (saved for when I complete one) it has been a serious improvement in a short time. The blog has made all the difference – the bloggers are clear and the comments really flesh out the clues and often help by offering other interpretations to bear in mind. The blog feels like a real find and a proper gem.

    COD for me was 16d MUDDYING. I just wouldn’t have worked it out 2 weeks ago and it’s a real thrill to be unpicking the clues.

    Thanks to all!

    1. Welcome aboard, euanlawson. And well done on the rapid improvement. Satisfying, isn’t it? Do pitch in and join the meandering debate.

       It’s kind of like your old-fashioned rural local in here – warm and friendly but with an occasional and inexplicably heated argument over the best way to grow a mangelwurzel. Once you get sat at the bar, you tend to stick around for years.

    2. Welcome indeed. You will know you have really arrived when you know in advance just who will be complaining about which clue! (Religion, homophones which aren’t, definitions be example – dbes – which don’t make the grade, … all sorts, all of which helps make the blog the high point of the day).
    3. Welcome aboard! The blog is certainly a lot of fun to read and the contributors are very witty indeed (there might be some connection to their being people who can solve cryptic crosswords). It won’t be long before you’ll be able to complete the puzzle regularly. Although I still can’t do that every time, I know the blog and the experience it provides have helped me a lot.
    4. Euan, I don’t know what the next step after Newbie is (I hope there aren’t 12), but I’m there, and I’m glad you’ve outed yourself and joined. I was a skinny, 97-pound weakling back in 2007 I think it was, and was thrilled when I could even finish a puzzle, let alone finish it correctly. Peter Biddlecombe pointed me to this blog, and it’s made all the difference in my solving ability. Plus, as Sotira’s simile suggests, it’s a group of people any one of whom I feel it would be nice to have a drink and schmoose with.
33. I seem to have gotten this one completely right, although my last in, SHAW, was hardly more than an educated (well, actually, a stupid) guess. The online clock says about 35 minutes but that’s not my real time, as I printed the puzzle when I still had two blanks and took it to a dentist’s appointment where I finished it while waiting. It was a long wait. Most of the puzzle was quite easy and there was nothing that really made a lasting impression. JOHANNES was one clue I rather liked (it was one of the two I solved in the dentist’s waiting room).
34. 8:11 for me, with around half a minute at the end spent agonising over GRIM (BRIM would fit the “edge”). If only I’d spotted the Nina – but then no-one else seems to have mentioned it! Surely the appearance of GRIMSHAW has to be significant particularly when taken with WRITTEN SCORE TWICE HUNDRED (all symmetrically placed). Could this be John Grimshaw’s 200th Times Cryptic (assuming he sets these as well as the T2 Concise)?
35. Stumped by SCARAB and SHAW and among those finding GRIM awkward although I had banged it in. Yes, welcome Mr. Lawson.
36. My guess is that this was one by John GRIMSHAW
    1. I concur

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