Times 24823 – Keeping Mum Out Of The Picture?

47 comments on “Times 24823 – Keeping Mum Out Of The Picture?”

1. Time? More than an hour. Really stumbled through this, feeling overtired, exhasted, weary and ready to drop. I had no idea what was going on with ARC LAMP — looking for something to do with amps! Wondered about a composer called Larry Hauder and his spoonerised version being a film subject. Even when I got ADJOURNS, I still couldn’t see why the def was “stays”. Never heard of SPATTERDASH. Fell into the trap of the “does” at 25. And more that I’m too ashamed to mention. Mon Dieu, what a morning!

   Note to Uncle Yap: Is the sound-alike at 14ac CZECH?

2. I was amused by the idea of ‘Parry, hotter’ since the symphonies of Hubert Parry did not exactly set the world on fire, although Boult did record a couple for EMI.

   The idea of ‘psi’ being a modern Greek letter is only relative; it was added to Attic Greek in 402 B.C. Before that they used pi, sigma. If that is what the setter is alluding to, very few solvers will follow it.

   I did have to make a couple of guesses to get ‘red biddy’ and ‘spatterdash’, but they seemed likely enough.

   1. I suspect it’s a bit of padding to get the surafce contrast with “past it”.
3. 24:02. I didn’t understand DOGGO, and am still not quite convinced by the def. But in the end it was the only thing that would fit.

   At 20d, I parsed it as ARgon + CLAMP, which I thought I mighta sorta had a vague idea was a type of electric circuit, and am still not sure is not (does that make any sense? probably not).

   Last in DOGGO

4. Had to laugh when I struggled through this, hit the submit button at 17:41 and went to check if I was all correct to find I was only the second person to submit a grid… and my time was 2.5 Biddlecombes!

   I was not on the setter’s wavelength, but I did enjoy the wordplay in the end – good thing, since I needed it to get EILAT, DURRELL and SPATTERDASH, as well as to make some other answers magically appear, like the rather good clues for HARRY POTTER and AUTUMN. ARC LAMP from definition, and I wonder if we will get a satisfactory wordplay?

   1. an average of 33 seconds to consider, determine, and write in each answer

      how do you do it?

5. 39 minutes, none of them particularly enjoyable minutes. 9ac: to ape is intentional, to mirror isn’t; 25ac: ‘dear’ hardly means ‘costing the earth’; 5d: an exponent, where I come from, is a supporter of X not a practitioner, skillful or otherwise, of X; 8d: ‘weighed down’?; 26d: all right, my dictionary does give ‘neat’ as an alternative plural, but still, show 10,000 English-speakers a picture of a cow, say ‘This is a neat’, and then show them a picture of three kine, and I’ll give you my weight in gold for every person who says ‘3 neat’.
   And one little niggle about an elegant blog: To do penance is to show contrition, not necessarily to be contrite. For some (God, according to some), the distinction counts for much.
   1. Render unto the dictionary that which is Chambers’s, and render unto god … etc.
6. Re 6ac, ‘keeping mum, out of the picture’ captures well the two aspects of lying doggo, i.e. the keeping quiet and the keeping hidden.

   Would, I wonder, removing the superfluous ‘drug’ and making use of ‘to’ improve 7dn, as in ‘Plant to trap Senator with grams’?

   I had all bar ADJOURN in an hour (having struggled with the same ones as everyone else), but never managed to get this despite anagrinding ‘around’. Grrr. COD to WEARY for the smooth and misleading surface. Thanks to both setter and blogger.

7. Very good puzzle, on the toughish side, about 45 minutes. I thought there was a typo in 20D, should have been ‘Elements’ for AR, CL, then AMP? Finished with the RED BIDDY/ADJOURNS crossers. ADJOURNS is a wonderful clue. Never heard of SPATTERDASH, STRAND magazine, DURRELL, and I can’t identify the definition of SLAP-HAPPY, even now. Very well done, to the setter. Very much fun. Thanks to Uncle Yap for the blog. Regards.
   1. That would be ‘casual’, as in Oxford Online’s definition (1), ‘cheerfully casual, often in a careless or irresponsible way’.
   2. As a point of interest, Strand magazine was the original publisher of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
      1. Thank you both.
8. Had RED WITCH, only corrected after using a solver to get ADJOURNS which must surely get COD as a not too difficult clue which caused even the experts problems. An otherwise encouraging performance after a discouraging week. Pleased to work out SPATTERDASH. Never heard of DUN in the nagging sense despite oft being subjected to. With Kevin on the typo in 20.
   1. My experience and my sentiments exactly Barry, word for word. Seems like I was more on your wavelength than the setter’s!
9. I do recall there being such a thing as a ‘clamp circuit’ though it is 38 years since I finished studying Electronic Engineering. I always wondered when it might come in useful! So it would indeed seem to be Ar + clamp.
10. 40 minutes on the commute. I didn’t know some of the meanings required to fully understand every clue but I was pleased to finish without resort to aids.

    The only answer that was new to me was SPATTERDASH, but “legging” and “quarrel” got me to SPAT and I immediately noticed the anagrist for the rest of it.

    Good puzzles this week so far.

11. After some horrendous puzzles this week I’m happy to have regained my mojo, and finished it correct and unaided in ok time, albeit WFU of some clues (had not heard of the nag def of DUN, nor the booze, nor the trews).

    COD to ADJOURNS – great clue!

12. 20 minutes, with most of it spent in the lower half. I’m not sure whether this is a great crossword or a dodgy one. PENANCE is, as near as I can make out, a straight definition. RED BIDDY must be (surely?) a guess for all of us. And while I agree that ARC LAMP must be the ARgon and the electric circuit, I can’t fine clamp so defined anywhere.
    But then there’s a whole lot of confiding knowingness – The Strand magazine (oh yeah, Sherlock Holmes) and Spatterdash, more familiar as spats, PSI (though that’s really arcane as “modern”), “stay” (presumably as in …of execution) for ADJOURN, the verbose DOGGO. Not cluing CARTHORSE with orchestra. A nod in the direction of mathematicians for EXPONENT. Lots to appreciate.
    But then again, three cliches in a row for EILAT.
    Ah – the Spooner clue (and a very amusing one too) as my CoD (can’t resist ’em). Not a great puzzle, then, but a pretty decent one. Regards to all.
    1. ‘Stay’ as a verb meaning to discontinue caught out one of the members of the choir I sing in – rather embarrassing, as he was a lawyer, who you would expect to be familiar with such a lexical item.

       We were rehearsing a Russian folk song called ‘The Silver Birch’ when he suddenly interrupted proceedings to point out that the ‘stay’ in the line ‘Let us stay our hunting, let us join the lady sing and play’ was a misprint and should in fact be ‘start’. Which made you wonder not only about his legal skills but also his comprehension skills.

       1. You’ve got me singing along as I read this. It must be a male voice choir – a great favourite of the Pontardulais Male voice (The best traditional male voice choir in Wales imo) I also have the Red Army version.I expect you do “Over the Plains” as well.
          1. Indeed, the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir. I once played cricket at Pontardulais. Smashing place. It had rained all tour and they risked ruining the magnificent square by playing a 30-over game starting at 3pm so we got at least one game in. We lost off the last ball when our 12th man dropped one on the boundary and it bobbled over the rope for six. I’d written a special version of Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer, with which we entertained our hosts after the match. I remember one verse started ‘When I crossed the Bristol Channel, I saw floods and three landslides’. The chorus was ‘Rain in Swansea, Rain in Swansea, Rain from five to ‘alf past four, Rain from five to ‘alf past four’!
             1. Yes, rain is our speciality. But it does make the sunny spells particularly welcome. I take it you don’t have to be Welsh to sing in the HKMVC? There seems to be a lot of choristers who use this blog. I’m just off to do Kodaly and Vaughan Williams. (Also Hubert Parry (I was glad) as in today’s puzzle) Last night it was the Mozart Requiem for another choir. All go.. But a wonderful hobby. Do you have all the words of the “Bread Of heaven” parody? If so I could use them.
                1. Some people have posited a correlation between choral singing, or music more generally, and crossword solving (+ maths in some versions). We have academics from the University of Buckingham (from memory) using us for research purposes and looking into these things.

                   No, if they drew the line at Cambrians, they’d have only a dozen in teh squad, and we boast around 70 active members, I think. (54 at this year’s St David’s Day Ball was the record for bodies on stage.)

                   I wish I still had my Cwm Rhondda (all two or three verses of it), but sadly that’s all I can recall. It was almost a quarter of a century a year ago now.

    2. Not for me. I’m afraid it came readily to mind!
13. 
    Is this it?
    1. It’s in Oxford Dictionaries Online (‘CLAMP 1:2’) defined as ‘an electric circuit which serves to maintain the voltage limits of a signal at prescribed levels’.

       Well worth bookmarking that site!

14. Not to my taste. Too many references/definitions seemingly off centre. I can’t find usages to explain ATE = ‘worried’ and GO = ‘success’. A PARAPET offers protection but is it a ‘protective one’? CARTHORSEs (superb animals) were/are essentially draught animals, not used for ‘carrying loads’ (beast of burden).
    1. ‘Ate’ is very common in Crosswordland meaning worried, as in ‘it’s eating me up’. ‘He made a really good go of it’ is the ‘go’ you’re after.
       1. Belated thanks. There are some days when I’m really dim …
    2. I took “one” to refer back to “wall” so the definition is effectively “protective wall”
       1. Belated thanks. Another one I should have seen if I had read the clue properly.
15. Nicely blogged Uncle Yap.

    27/32 without aids. Had problems mainly in the SW corner: didn’t get red biddy, Durrell, adjourns or HP. Also, couldn’t think of any words to fit A?T?M?. Turns out that autumn and asthma are the only two common words that fit.

    Doggo is fast becoming a regular visitor to these grids.

16. 50 minutes with the DOGGO/OVERTIRED crossing stumping me for a goodly 10 of those. I couldn’t get doggy out of my head. I liked ROE DEER for its does but OVERTIRED gets my COD.

    Here’s another clamp. I’ve never come across one before.

17. PS I see even transistors are bipolar these days.
18. No precise time for this but about 40 minutes, of which nearly half on my last two in: ADJOURNS and RED BIDDY. Pretty tough, with the same problems and quibbles as others, and like z8b8d8k I can’t work out if it’s great or dodgy. I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt.
    The easiest clue for me today (with the non-cryptic PENANCE) was 27ac NIAGARA, which appeared in the FT on Tuesday with a similarly-structured (and I’m afraid better) clue: “Falls head over heels once more with artist”.
19. 9’10” for me, and much I liked about it. Held up by not believing SLAP-HAPPY when I saw it at once, having to work through SPATTERDASH, as I only knew the shortened form, and having to dredge RED BIDDY from the deepest recesses of the memory. CODs to 3dn for its simplicity and 6ac for its misdirection. Thanks for another excellent blog.
20. A hard and slow slog today. I wasn’t on the setter’s wavelength. Held up for a while by SPATTERDASH which I’d always thought of as a verb. For some reason I had trouble with AUTUMN. Missed the “fall” definition and could only think of ASTHMA to fit the checkers. Also had a couple of interruptions but I felt lucky to finish at all. 50 minutes
21. This puzzle is a bit wierd. In a bad mood one could get very grumpy about quite a lot of it. In a good mood one could sing its praises for originality. I shall quietly adopt the middle path.

    I seem to be one of the few people who has heard of a clamp circuit – must be age related. Didn’t like PENANCE much or the “modern” in 11A. Decided eventually that I liked DOGGO. 20 minutes to solve.

22. Going well until I hit the RED BIDDY/ADJOURNS crossing and ground to a final stop. An enjoyable DNF.
23. For some unfathomable reason it took me ages to see Opportunity as Break…this held me up. 58 minutes. tough but fair…
24. One hour 26 minutes, nothing to be proud of, but correct (surprisingly, as usual) and I was not the only one with excessive times. My last in were RED BIDDY (for which I had also been thinking RED WITCH) and ADJOURN, after I discovered that AROUND was the anagrind, which of course scotched the WITCH. Next to last were DOGGO and OVERTIRED (GO=success perhaps as in “all systems are go”?). I particularly liked HARRY POTTER and ROE DEER and I particularly disliked PENANCE and the “modern” in 11ac. For 14dn I didn’t understand the wordplay and thought it might be a Biblical reference to putting the CART before the HORSE. Ah well…
    1. GO = Success as in “make a go of it” I think.
       1. Thank-you. Out of everyone’s attempts to try and make ‘go’ equal ‘success’ this is the only one that suffices, IMHO.

          Got red biddy from reading the greatest Irish book every written, J.P.Donleavy’s ‘The Ginger Man.’ Which is a bit surprising, literary clues are usually my downfall.

          Rob

25. Red Biddy is also a bitter beer flavoured by Bog Myrtle, brewed by the Biddy Early Brewery in Ireland.
26. I got RED WIDOW as the drink making 16 Down SOJOURNS. Took a while to iron this stupid mistake out, but a nice puzzle with several eureka moments.

    Never heard of Red Biddy. Might try a drop now though after finishing that. Now, where’s the meths?

27. 12:04 for me. I took simply ages to get going, but then suddenly took off and finished the remaining clues (well over half the puzzle) in double-quick time. An interesting puzzle with some ingenious clues.

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