Times 24928 – Either the wallpaper goes, or I do

38 comments on “Times 24928 – Either the wallpaper goes, or I do”

1. I had ‘jack-in-the-whatever’, and ‘in one fell swoop’, both of which slowed me down. After 20 minutes, only the NW was completely blank, but it proved a tough section. I never did understand the cryptic for ‘careworn’, but that had to be it.

   I have caught up with all the puzzles I missed since Wednesday, and read the blogs. Thanks to all bloggers and commenters.

2. Easiest Monday for a while (though I missed last week’s): 16 minutes. CA(REWOR)N is my only marginal scribble.

   Implied anterior ellipsis is alive and well it seems. Its deadly side-effect is congenital zeugmatic syllepsis.

3. 13:24 .. only real delay came from confidently putting Jack IN the hedge, soon corrected by the BUFFOON.

   Last in ENTWINE.

   COD .. RHEUMATIC. If you’re going to go homophonous, go big.

4. Shouldn’t the online clue for 1ac read ‘Given material for dress, girl shortly is in business’ rather than ‘…in is business’?

   This held me up for at least half an hour, you see, meaning I finished in a rather shabby 50 minutes rather than my normal Monday time of 48.5 minutes.

   I was determined to put ‘jettison’ at 4ac even though I knew it couldn’t possibly be right. Is there a word for this, as I discovered the other day there was a word for the compulsion to rewrite song lyrics? Even yesterday, I asked my daughter which series of Glee ended with the guys singing ‘One Day over the Rainbow’. ‘Or is it “Some Day”,’ I quickly added. ‘No, dad, it’s “somehere”,’ she replied.

   1. If you weigh a whale at a whale-weigh station, where do you weigh a pie?

      Edited at 2011-08-15 04:21 am (UTC)

      1. Ha! A favourite party piece is to ask people to complete the blank in the opening line from Elton John’s ‘Daniel’: ‘Daniel is ______ tonight on a plane’. Most people get it wrong.

         Try it and then look it up.

         1. After you’ve sorted that out, try to sing it as it’s written.
   2. That’s the advantage of solving early in the morning in low light; I didn’t even notice the misprint.
5. 32 minutes, just missing my 30 minute target by being unable to think of a fourth word for JACK-BY-THE-WHOTSIT and putting IN instead of AT at 9dn.

   I have lived all my life until today under the misapprehension that some Popes were called “Pious”.

   Every time we have a clue like 26ac I wonder if the apoplectic colonel will drop in and take the setter to task.

   1. In Italian their name is Pio.
6. A bit of work to sort out JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE, otherwise nothing much to embarrass us thickos. Some of the blog comments on the other hand…
7. Nice easy ride at 11:20; didn’t even notice the error in 1ac identified by ulaca! Wonder how many years the Marx Bros have left in crosswordland?
8. 9 minutes by the sundial, despite a bout of man-flu. Quick(er) solves sometimes mean a flat crossword, but I though this had plenty of cheek, not least the sounz-a-bit-like clue at 10. Four words, three hyphens, not a flower. But then I did once live in Bourton-on-the-Water.
   CoD to WHITE LIE, an aspiring &lit.
   1. Not here?
      1. No, here!. Bourton’s one of the four “B” villages entirely given over to coach tours, the others being Bourton-on-the-Hill, Bibery and Broadway. While I was there, Bourton’s only (rather good) bakery was converted to a shop selling rocks, a neat reversal of the stones-into-bread temptation.
         Stow, on the other hand, sold “Farmer’s Glory”, a Wadsworth potion back then of such high ABV and density you could stand a spoon in it.
         Meanwhile, before anyone offers “Moreton-in-the-Marsh” as a another three hyphen example, it hasn’t go a “the” in it, though it does have the Fire Service College. Happy days.
         1. And there’s five words with four hyphens:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh
9. A very rare sub-ten at 9:39 here. Easy but enjoyable. It makes a big difference to my times when there are few unknowns, and the garlic mustard was the only one today.
   I also put IN ONE FELL SWOOP and had JACK IN THE ????? for a while. Fortunately I was sufficiently wary not to rely on the checking letters this gave me. For once.
10. So… not Jack-by-the-verge, then. I knew I should have looked the silly thing up.
    otherwise, an enjoyable 10m canter. cod to 10ac for the same reason as sotira
11. I was probably lucky in not opting for any of the wrong answers early on and finished in, for me, a very fast 17 minutes (I made such a quick start that, for once, I timed myself precisely). Trusted the wordplay for WOODMEN (I was initially looking for an ‘s’ to make ‘woodsmen’); nearly went down the ‘in one fell swoop’ route until I spotted the ‘a’ in ‘tapes’; fortunately JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE was very clearly spelt out in clue.

    I now need to go and recover from the shock of finding that I was faster than some of you of whom I stand in awe – perhaps most notably jackkt whose elucidation of ‘amen’ last week must qualify him for the cruciverbalist Hall of Fame.

    1. Martin, you flatter me most undeservedly re AMEN, and I think you are confusing me with other regular contributors as I’m one of the slowest around here. If I break 30 minutes it’s cause for celebration chez jackkt.
       1. I for one would echo martinfred’s sentiments – particularly as I didn’t spot the reasoning behind AMEN myself (though I kicked myself for not doing so). Speed isn’t everything.
12. 20 minutes and yup, I too had a surfeit of ins. Careless solving in 5 and looked up 9. Ah, verge yes. Luckily didn’t know that option.
13. 10 mins for me. 5d I too was a ‘in’ rather than ‘by’ until I got buffoon – daft really given the anagram fodder. Nice gentle start to the week.
14. A rare sub-25 minute 23:40 for me, so it must have been on the straightforward side. I may even have been faster if I hadn’t been trying to eat my lunch at the same time. I didn’t know the mustard, but fortunately thought of hedge before verge, so guessed it right.
15. An easy start to the week largely because of the number of very easy anagrams, which then gave a framework for getting the rest on definitions and letter patterns. I should have finished in under the 20 minutes it actually took, but a few in the NE corner took longer to fathom (1dn, 3 and 10). Never heard of 6 but plumped for HEDGE as the most likely fourth word.
16. Raced through this and finished in 9 minutes, but I had never heard of the plant and was torn between JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE and JACK-BY-THE-LEDGE, fortunately went for the hedgy version.
17. I knew I’d seen JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE in a puzzle before. The only previous use Google can find points to a puzzle which I think would be one of the first that Pete B. blogged on the original site:

    http://petebiddlecombe.livejournal.com/12791.html

    Seems that on that occasion the ‘IN’ trap was harder to avoid, catching even PB himself.

18. Never heard of the mustard. But I have heard of the cheese and surely Camembert isn’t blue.
    1. See Koro’s link for his bon mot.
19. Leisurely 20 minutes.Didn’t know JACK… so checked the dictionary before entering. Puzzled by 1A but once I had CAMEMBERT decided it was a printers pie and went for CALICO. No real talking points.
20. 17 minutes, not slowed down by 1ac as I didn’t notice it. Was slowed down by ‘in’ instead of ‘at’ for the swoop. What about Johnny-on-the-spot? Hail-fellow-well-met? Peg-o’-my-heart?
    1. All flowers, although I couldn’t give their precise botanic names off-the-top-o’-my-head.
21. After July 28’s flood and over two weeks of cleaning up, our basement is now empty and ready to be refurbished and I have time enough again to join the blog.

    I thought today’s was a supremely easy puzzle and would have matched my best time, but for one obscure clue (and unfortunately, I thought VERGE sounded more boundarylike than HEDGE — how is one to know, if one has never heard of the plant and the wordplay is no help at all).

    Except for this dastardly clue, I found the rest somewhat boring and not always in good style (like the 9, 16 pair: woollen tapes a bit fanciful in 9, and 16 is mixing its tenses). So no COD today — I prefer a hard fair puzzle, even if I can only finish them by the skin of my teeth.

22. Surely one of the easiest Monday puzzles for some while. GET-UP was so obvious a double def that it would not have been out of place in the Concise. I didn’t know the folk name for garlic mustard, but it was pretty clear that this what was required, and once the initial J was in place JACK(=raise) suggested itself almost immediately. It was then just a question of checking the dictionary for JACK IN/BY THE ?????. I liked IMPIOUS, BUFFOON and ADIEUX, and RHEUMATIC was as good and complaint-proof a homophone as your likely get.
23. Yes, one of the easier offerings in some time. I got through in less than 15 minutes, say 14, which I haven’t done in a while; I finished with the JACK-IN-THE-whatsis, which I guessed at correctly, then looked up to confirm. I’ll commend the setter for getting two words ending in ‘X’ to cross in the extreme SE corner, which we don’t see all the time. Dare I say it? COD to RHEUMATIC. Regards.
24. 7:13 for me – but I expect the fast brigade would have been quite a lot faster as I seemed to make heavy weather of some very straightforward clues – though I did bung in JACK-BY-THE-HEDGE first time through, perhaps vaguely recalling 8dn in No. 23,208 (Plant ball near boundary).
25. Camembert does not have to be blue.
    1. Indeed. If it was I’d throw it in the bin.

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