Times 24844 – Where ignorance is bliss

70 comments on “Times 24844 – Where ignorance is bliss”

1. 32’ with a certain quantum of enjoyment but not helped (early morning!) by reading “prisoner” at 5ac. And put me down too, despite my erstwhile strigiphilia, for thinking ORE for OWL. Didn’t think much of the cd for SERENADE having seen this indecent act performed with fiddles, accordions, etc., or, indeed, with no instrument but the vox humana. And … “description” for “summary” … hmmm? The hardest by far, and also my last in, was PASS at 19ac: just couldn’t find ?A? = fool. Guess that leaves me as the cat’s paw eh?
   1. The summary is the “arbitrary” bit; description belongs to the definition. The hyphen is a liberty.
      1. Oh OK, geddit now. Thanks.
2. For some reason I decided that 2 down must be an unknown word beginning with ‘ptera-‘, rather than a known word ending with it. That made the NW very difficult indeed, until the crossing words forced me to correct my error.

   An a Macaroni is NOT a Yankee Doodle Dandy, that is the whole point of the song – ‘Stuck a feather in his hat, and called it Macaroni’, i.e., he thinks he can make himself a dandy with a simple ornament, rather than the elaborate outfits worn by the genuine Macronis in Italy.

   Many of the literals were quite craft, such as ‘Cape’ and ‘tool’. I had to work from the cryptics to get traction.

   1. That would more sense of Yankee Doodle Dandy than I’ve ever made before.
   2. Wouldn’t the typical Macaroni be a Brit who never actually undertook the Grand Tour, but enjoyed aping Italian fashions?
3. Just under 35′. I was wondering about the A in MACARONI, assuming like Ulaca that the ‘for example’ licensed it, but wondering nonetheless; and about the A in RUMBAS, since R=regiment and (I’m pretty ignorant about the military) I figured the Royal Artillery must come in varying sizes besides regimental depending on who they’re shooting. Didn’t care for 18, with the arbitrary connection between a rector and a cremation, but I did like the clues for 9ac, 10ac, and 25ac.
4. ‘estate for example’ is A CAR.
   1. That would make “starts (plural) to manage” = M, leaving me equally unhappy.
      1. Yes, I see that the old dandy would be getting double use as definition and as part of wordplay, and that would be proscribed Ximeneanly.
5. 54 minutes for all bar the bizarrely-named plant, where the handle I had on GUT didn’t quite enable me to piece it together from the worplay. Put TOSS (‘sot’ reversed on ‘s’) for PASS. Not the only one, I’ll bet.

   Rather like the SERENADE, even if it had me looking for non-existent wordplay.

6. Nipped under 20 minutes for this; relieved to find pass right. Willing was second last in: couldn’t think of a game to fit. 23 brought the old song ‘I scream, you scream, everybody likes ice-cream…’ which seemed to help me along somehow. A few fauna lurking today.
   1. Ice-cream, you scream we all scream for ice-cream…

      Great stuff!

      And not forgetting:

      Tuesdays, Mondays, we all scream for sundaes…

      I know it by the Chris Barber band, but many others recorded it.

      1. And there’s a name to conjure with. Let’s hear it for trad. jazz…it’s time the tone of this blog was raised…Elite Syncopations!
7. I went for PANS for 19 across which i parsed as SNAPS without the s being backfired somehting PANS…i quite like my answer although i can see it is erroneous. otherwise 43 minutes or thereabouts.

   does anyone wonder how people do the club leaderboard in 6 or 7 minutes? do they have two accounts?

   1. No, they get a mate to send them a .pdf of the print version. I can’t understand why they are such slow typists!
      1. They don’t need to be that complicated. Either they buy the paper or they do the crossword in the Timesonline website. Idiotic, anyway.
         1. Sorry, but it is possible to regularly solve the crossword online in 6-7 minutes, without solving on paper first. My times are always genuine (6:14 today, with a best around 5 minutes), as I am sure are those of Magoo, PBiddlecombe and several others. If I solve on paper first, for the prize crosswords, then I use the “Submit without Leaderboard option. As I live in the UK, I do go to the finals at Cheltenham and treat the daily puzzles as practice to kep up to speed. I do confess to sometimes missing some of the nuances of the clues, but that is my choice.

            There are a number of fast solvers around so the leaderboard is a bit pointless. Personally, I would not trust anything under 4 minutes, and look suspiciously at anything out of line with the first block of fast solvers. You can get a feel from this blog as to when a puzzle is particularly challenging and slower times are to be expected.

            My only secret is 30+ years of regular practice!

            1. 6-7 minutes is perfectly possible and in my heyday I could regularly achieve that. I do not question your times, but potterman, irkthe purist, elidude and penf126 are among the usual suspects. I had hoped they would have given up by now but they still seem to be playing their silly games.
               1. I wonder if we will see the sub-4 minute wonders at the national finals this year? I’ll be there.
               2. I’m another solver who’d have expected to knock off a puzzle like this one in 6 or 7 minutes in my heyday.

                  So potterman is still hanging in there – and has been joined by some other weirdos. I’d love to know what they get out of it!

8. 30 minutes this morning, of which 10 spent trying to find an alternative to GUTTA PERCHA, which couldn’t possibly be the answer. However the only alternative I could come up with, GUTTA TENCHA, seemed even worse. So I bunged it in. I have never been more surprised to be right.
   Today’s other unknowns: PASS, DITTANY, CAT’S PAW. I didn’t see the self-referential bit in CUE, and I also finished wondering what sort of warning a “fowl” would be. So thanks for the blog.
   1. I’m continually struck by the odds and ends that serendipity tosses into the attic of my memory, and that remain there unused for decades: I’m pretty sure that the one time I’ve seen the word ‘gutta percha’ was in a high school US history textbook account of the attack by Representative Preston Brooks, a Southerner, on the abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner: he beat Sumner in the Senate chamber with a gutta percha cane. And I knew of Mesmeric passes from reading Poe’s short stories as a child, in particular one quite gruesome one whose title I forget.
9. 43 minutes, which was disappointing after a flying start but I got bogged down with several missing RH, ACCREDITED, DITTANY, SUMMERY and SERENADE being my last in.

   One small detail, 14dn is BRAINCHILD – one word not two.

   1. Thanks for spotting that, Jack. Fixed now.
10. I passed on PASS having failed to get GUTTA-PERCHA I worked out all the elements of the wordplay – gut, a, perch, a – but did not think it could possibly be right or worth checking in Google or Wiki; perhaps because I’ve gutted too many fish – which is very different from filleting a fish. So DNF. Otherwise a pleasant challenge for an aging (sic) gelding.
    1. I wondered about gut/fillet too: perhaps we will discover that there is a dictionary in which the word “fillet” is used somewhere in the seventh definition of the word “gut” (or vice versa), thereby proving that the words are synonymous, but to my mind they ain’t.
       In the end I decided they were close enough, but this didn’t exactly contribute to my confidence in the answer. An inaccuracy within an obscurity: it’s the sort of thing that would have irritated me quite a lot… if I hadn’t happened to guess correctly!
11. 13 minutes, so simple enough. I too wondered about wordplay for serenade, (almost) seeing good old Rene and Edna hanging around in a confused state, but in the end put it in on “what else?” principles. I got PASS, but though it could possibly be a lot of other things, so just lucky, I guess.
    Is “wing” properly clued by “forward”? Gareth Bale isn’t a forward for Tottenham (unfortunately, neither is anyone else at the moment!) and in rugby wings are definitely backs. Bit loose, I thought.
    DITTANY is such a lovely word, it’s surprising it hasn’t made it alongside Rosemary, Veronica and the others as a name – cue a contribution from Dittany Beckham/Geldof.

    Why do people bother with posting impossibly quick times on the leaderboard? Doesn’t it just shout “I am a cheat” in the clearest possible way?. I prefer paper anyway because a) I really don’t type that fast and b) if I make a mistake on paper I can always tell myself the right answer is the one I meant to put, a much more aristocratic way of cheating. On-line, one fat finger and it’s eternally marked as wrong.

    Despite it not being a very good one, CoD to the Spoonerism

    1. I’ve been asking myself the same question regarding the leaderboard since I started trying to master online solving. I still don’t know. Maybe they think they’ll get a prize, or an approach from MI5 so they can work for Harry Pearce (who’s real, you know). I’m learning to filter out certain names and only note those whose names I recognise from other forums or whose times show some credible variance.

       I’ve been wondering if one day the Club will be able to run occasional ‘live solves’ – a sort of virtual Cheltenham. No doubt technically challenging but it would be rather fun for those of us with a competitive streak who live in far flung parts, and I don’t think you’d see too many of the ‘2-minute wonders’ taking part.

       I do like the idea of a “more aristocratic way of cheating”. That’s the problem with blasted computers. They don’t take a gentleman’s (or for that matter a lady’s) word for anything. My submission came back with two errors today, one a typo and one which I can’t even locate, but I know I knew all the answers, which should surely count for something!

       1. I think they get some sort of perverse pleasure out of annoying the honest folk who toil away at the coal face. There’s one 2-minute wonder who “rejoices” in the nickname of “IrkthePurist”. One or two also contribute to the Members’ Forum and their comments are almost invariably of a mocking nature and somewhat illiterate, deliberately so, I assume. Incidentally, here in Australia we now know, from Series 9 (?) that Lucas is/was a baddie. Is there to be another series? Last time I looked, there was no mention.
          1. Re Lucas – are we talking “Spooks”? If so I hope for another series.
             1. Indeed we are and I do hope there will be but…. I’ve just made a search on Google and the best I could come up with was this from November last year.

                http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mf4b

                Surely reason enough to withhold one’s licence fee if there isn’t to be another series!

                1. Lucas has popped up again, bearded and cut off at the knees! Thorin in the new Hobbit film. Just started filming. (What a waste of sheer gorgeousnesss!)
                   1. I want Jo back; or failing that, can’t they steal Tara Fitzgerald from “Waking the Dead”?
             2. I gather another series is in the works for later this year. I never took to Lucas – far too soppy and guilt-ridden. I’m hoping he’ll be replaced with a proper bit of posh eye candy with impeccable manners, inexhaustible sang froid and absolutely no feelings, save for mild irritation if an assassination interrupts a good lunch.
                1. Oh, good! It’s a splendid series but home to some real TV truisms: Mobile phone batteries never die and they always have a signal (unless called for otherwise by the plot); parking is never a problem anytime/anywhere; no-one ever goes to the bathroom; computers operate at the speed of light and SuperGeeks are called Malcolm (…or Tariq!)
                2. I hope we’re talking about the character here and not its embodiment in the delightful shape of Richard Armitage! Remember “North and South” (the Gaskell not the Civil War)
                   1. Oh, he looked just fine. It was all the angsty, moist-eyed guilt and the, heaven help us, falling in love. Not what we need at all. Seems MI5 has gone to the dogs since they opened up recruitment. The right public school used to knock all that nonsense out of a chap.
                      1. Agree love angle was a mistake. It usually is in the spy/thriller genres. I’m not even keen on the Harry/Ruth stuff. And look what has happened to James Bond since he got emotionally entangled! When I was a kid I was a fan of Leslie Charteris’s Saint. That was super cool. The original character had emotional baggage which Charteris very sensibly dumped after the first few books.
12. I know this is a rank beginner question, but why is posh a ‘u’?
13. I think it’s from Nancy Mitford’s categorisation of behaviour into U and Non-U in the fifties – it just stands for “Upper class”.
14. I’m intrigued by the jemmy look-alike. I thought a cat’s paw was a dupe used to perform a task the duper didn’t want to do. Is this another point where Aussie English and Estuary English diverge?
    1. No, a cat’s paw really is a carpenter’s tool, which looks like the classic burglar’s break and enter crowbar a.k.a gooseneck, jimmy bar, etc etc. Whether the dupe was named after the tool, or vice versa, I couldn’t say.
       1. As a matter of interest the nail-removing tool or whatever it is, is not supported in any of the standard sources for the Times cryptic. COED and Collins (plus Chambers, SOED and Brewers) give three meanings, but not that one. The figurative meaning (the person used as a tool)is listed at 18th century.
          1. Well, if the carpenter’s tool is a hoax, it certainly is an elaborate one over multiple sites. I’ve never heard it called that, myself, by the way, so it could well be apocryphal. The dupe version, on the other hand, seems well supported by dictionaries.
             1. I see what you mean: the ones I saw on line are misleadingly produced by a Japanese company called Dogyu. You can see (sort of) why they might conceivably be called cats paws, perhaps more than the more common crowbar.
15. Plenty of familiar material (Who possibly, estate for example, Wrath say) in here, but enjoyable all the same. 38 minutes, which might have been quicker had I too not spent time trying to fit a con rather than an asp into 5ac.
16. … as I chucked in GUTTA TENCHA in a bid to finish the puzzle. Quite liked this one, and most went in with FU of clues (thanks for explanation of SPIN DOCTOR, though). First one in OWL.

    COD: WILLING (sport’s not my forte, so I just assumed that all WINGS are forwards, without giving it too much thought…)

17. 27:17 for me. Raced through most of it, but slowed down considerably towards the end. The last 2 or 3 in the SW corner took the best part of 10 minutes.

    I couldn’t have told you what either a GUTTAPERCHA or a DITTANY were, but I knew the words existed and that was enough to get them from the wordplay.

    I didn’t understand 19 until coming here, and I’m still not keen on it.

18. This was a steady and quite enjoyable solve for me. My only serious hold up was an unwillingness to accept WILLING. Like the unpronounceable gentleman above I couldn’t at first see WING as a forward, only as a back. Rugby comes first where I live. I also wasted time on SERENADE. A delightfully misleading clue. A pleasant 25 minutes.
    1. Sooner or later I’ll get myself registered as Zabadak, which it’s supposed to be, but apparently someone who doesn’t seem to exist has the name already, hence the substitute digits which are nearly as convincing as personalised number plate.
       1. Your LJ name always puts me in mind of Mr Spock’s (Star Trek) surname. He refused to disclose it on the ground that it was unpronounceable. Actually, I had your problem when I tried to register my usual name on this site. They said it was already taken. It was. By me! I’d registered on LJ ages ago. But I gave up in the end and used my proper name. I don’t really like it because it’s not obviously feminine and this brilliant site needs more female contributors!
       2. Is it possible to change one’s ID here? I looked into it several years ago and it wasn’t possible then or I couldn’t find how to do it. I’m lumbered with a stupid name-tag that I bunged in in desperation when everything I had tried previously was rejected as ‘not available’.
19. I had this as chap “ed” looking up to girl “serena” – nice to have a different girl’s name in for a change. Dominic
    1. You may be on to something here, but since Ed isn’t particularly plucky per se, the definition must be “Noted performance of plucky”. I suppose the missing “the” could be understood.
20. Splitting headache, 15 minutes 51 seconds and a lot of “why didn’t I see that the first time”, Fun puzzle, didn’t understand SERENADE and had PONG in near the bottom for too long
21. 15.05 for me today. Just getting my crossword head back on after a week’s holiday with extended family (13 of us) in a Maltese villa. Only believed serenade after mental picture of troubadour under a balcony. . .
22. Always liked Mark Knopflers version of serenading a lady:
    “A love-struck Romeo sings the streets a serenade
    Laying everybody low with a love song that he made.
    Finds a streetlight, steps out of the shade
    Says something like, “You and me babe, how about it?”

    Juliet says, “Hey, it’s Romeo, you nearly gave me a heart attack!”
    He’s underneath the window, she’s singing, “Hey la, my boyfriend’s back.
    You shouldn’t come around here singing up to people like that…
    Anyway, what you gonna do about it?”

    1. My favourite serenade (after Almaviva and Don Giovanni) is a wonderfully funny scene in a 70s film about cycle racing. “Breaking Away” Worth checking out. Does anyone else remember that?
       1. Ah, now if you’re talking Mozart…in this age of gender equality and role reversal I would happily settle for the divine Gundula Janowitz (in her prime) serenading me. “Porgi amor?” Up here on the balcony!
          1. I forgot “The Fair Maid of Perth”. Late, great Heddle Nash.
          2. And if you’re talking Mozart (and “Le nozze di Figaro”), how about Janowitz with the equally divine Lucia Popp singing “Sull’ aria”?
    2. I’m not even going to try to find my copy of Making Movies (it’s all on the computer these days) but I’m pretty sure the words in the first line are “sings a street suss serenade”.
       1. The whole area of “misheard” lyrics is such a wonderful source of trivia, n’est-ce-pas?!! “Scuse me while I kiss this guy”! I once had a letter published in the Sydney Morning Herald which contained the Bowie line from “Life on Mars” that goes “Lennon”s on sale again”, only for another reader to object and say it was “Lenin”. He in turn was corrected by a local authority on these matters who said the lyrics printed on the cover of his copy of Hunky Dory supported my version. You may well be right; another website I went to quoted it as a “streetsus serenade”. Incidentally, I wonder what the record is for the number of comments on a single crossword?
          1. But you have to subtract the number of comments not actually ON the crossword! For example …
23. Nice puzzle, which took me about 20 minutes, ending with PASS, the only one I didn’t understand. Once I thought of ‘sap’ for a fool, I put it in, but I’ve not heard of a Mesmeric pass before. My COD to GUTTA PERCHA, probably Jimbo’s first entry. I also liked BRAINCHILD and CAT’S PAW. Regards to everyone.
24. 9:21 for me. I wasted a minute or two on PROVOCATIVE by bunging in PROROGATIVE on the grounds that ROGATIVE might mean “asking” (cf ROGATION). However, I couldn’t convince myself that PROROGATIVE was a “case” (and anyway “taken on” didn’t seem to fit) so I reconsidered. A most enjoyable puzzle.
25. If someone has made this point above my apologies for missing it (I couldn’t be bothered to click on all those posts that had been shrunk): in 25ac it’s surely ill in wing, but the definition is forward (= willing, I think) and the game is wing as in game birds. That at any rate was my interpretation. May be wrong.
    1. I think you are wrong. Forward = wing, game = willing as in “game for anything”, or “I’m game”. I cannot see forward as a definition of willing.
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