Times 24967 – One Above Par

38 comments on “Times 24967 – One Above Par”

1. Note to Uncle Yap:

   LO(un)GE is 6dn. LOGE = theatre box; UN = one, as in “young ’un”.

   Back later.

2. …although I did not understand ‘local’, ‘colonel’, and ‘noise’, for which much thanks, Uncle Y.

   I got most of this in 30 minutes, but was most horribly stuck in the NW for ages. The one that gave me the most difficulty was ‘mistletoe’, even with all the checking letters and the ‘e’ at the end. I suspected a compound word, but drew the line in the wrong place.

   I thought ‘asparagus’ and ‘Mercator’ were really very clever, but COD to ‘Lionheart’.

3. Found this quite hard but very amusing; pennies dropping all over the place. 49 minutes. Only clue I didn’t much like is MISTLETOE. IS is OK, and so is T(let)O. But the indicator “interrupt” (when necessarily dseparated from “to”) seems jerky. And “here” ain’t doing much at all.

   Nicely misled by 1dn where I tried to get COL + ON + EL and left to explain why COL might be “paired points” — could only think of a col as a pass (neck) between twin peaks.

   So your blog is much appreciated UY.

   Will anyone ever clue LOGE (6dn) as “function to base 2.71828…” ?

   1. ‘Interrupt’ is the verb for ‘is’ and ‘allowed in to’ is it not? ‘Here’ an innocent extra locator and ‘in this clue’. I kinda like it.
      1. ‘Is’ is a (copula) verb [and, in this clue, just a clue/answer element]. Please explain.

         ‘Innocent extra locator’ = padding-by-any-other-name. No? Otherwise it could be included in any clue whatsoever.

         A full counter-parsing would help me see what you mean.
         Mine would run:

         Parasite [=Def]: is [=IS]; allowed in to [=T(let)O]; interrupt me [=include what you have (ISTLETO) inside M and E]; here [=absolute zero use whatsoever].

         And so, “interrupt me” is insufficient for its proposed purposes.

         Edited at 2011-09-29 10:29 am (UTC)

         1. I agree with your parsing but don’t see why ‘interrupt’ is insufficient. IS and TLETO interrupt ME. As for ‘here’, it helps the surface along just a touch and indicates the answer as a whole: not really needed in either case but innocuous enough I’d have thought. One could argue it adds a sense of place that mistletoe can agreeably have; that it may misdirect one or two into logging it with ‘me’…but I already feel I’m dancing on a pinhead. Not that it’s not firm ground in it way, just an incredibly small bit of it, like something in CERN.
         2. Like you, I’m not keen on the otiose ‘here’. However, I don’t see a problem with the third-person plural verb form, ‘interrupt’. IS and TLETO (i.e. two letter groups)interrupt ME. If “is allowed in to” is seen as singular, the result is TISLETO.
            1. But the IS had already been used as a part of the answer. So: double duty at least. NB: editor.
               1. Eh? I’m probably being thick but I don’t see how IS is doing double duty.
               2. I’m afraid you’ve lost me. As I see it we have a conventional clue with an opening definition, “Parasite”, followed by wordplay consisting of a double container, i.e. IS and T(LET)O inside ME. There’s no reason to see “is” as doing double duty, unless you insist on an explicit link word (the copula). Clueing convention does not require an explicit link between definition and wordplay (there isn’t one in 18 across, for instance). Unravelling clues often involves deciding whether a word such as ‘is’ or ‘in’ features as part of the wordplay or a linking device.
            2. “Here” performs no function in the wordplay but it helps the surface quite a lot. Padding, yes, but not entirely redundant.
4. Thanks for your analysis yfyap.

   Re 6 Down…I think it maybe “un” inside loge (a box at the opera)…which begs the question was the setter using the French “one”, or the Northern colloquial “one” as in “good’un”

   Either way… some indication would imo have been useful.

   Regards

   OxyMoran

5. Chambers:
   un pronoun and n for ‘one’ also for ‘him’
6. Mostly an excellent puzzle that took me 48 minutes, the last 8 on 21dn (1 of them) and 28ac (the remaining 7). I lost some time earlier after writing CLOSE SHAVE at 7dn.

   The clue I felt that let things down a bit was 1ac which, barring a lucky guess with most of the checkers in place, would have been impossible to solve without knowing the answer to 10ac,but having worked out 10ac there was absolutely nothing to it other than a mundane example of somewhere a student might be expected to go.

7. After roughly 2 1/2 hrs, like ulaca, I plumped for EXEAT as I failed to see the significance of UP. Very clever. Thank you Mr Yap and thank you also for 1d. I eventually “got” the meaning of Bogey but couldn’t parse it. As has been said elsewhere, I didn’t feel on the same wavelength as this setter but it was enjoyable nonetheless. D’oh moments with LIONHEART and LATERAL. I particularly liked MISTLETOE and ASPARAGUS but COD to CLEAN SHAVEN as it made me chuckle.
8. Nearly a DNF but ERECT came to me (so to speak) as I headed for the blog. That gets my COD for its sheer nastiness. Thanks UY for explanations to NOISE, FEATHERED and LOUNGE, and for your unbounded enthusiasm.
   1. I don’t mean to lower the tone of the discussion in any way after the Chomskyan analysis, but I initially misread you as saying that you were heading for the bog when you got erect.
9. ERECT did for me, the best I could manage being ‘exeat’ (‘broke up’). Like Jack, I thought CLASSROOM was barely cryptic, but, unlike McT, I liked MISTLETOE, both definition and wordplay. This was my last in on 72 minutes. I never felt on the setter’s wavelength – ‘though there’s much to like ab out this puzzle – and am indebted to Yap Suk for the explanation of three acrosses (11, 28 and 29) and one down (1).

   Perhaps I cluld return the compliment by noting that medics are allowed on the field for the treatment of non-serious injuries (the ref will stop the game if it’s a head or a neck injury, or otherwise serious) in order to keep the game moving and make it a better spectacle. I’m not sure all the players approve = they need to be so much fitter than in my day.

10. After yesterday’s success, a lamentable DNF (without solvers) today. Even then, I needed blog to work out a great many of the clues, so many thanks to Uncle Yap. Too much unknown GK I guess (mercator, tumbler, cree…).

    CoD to SPEARHEAD.

11. A nervy 34 minutes, just managing to avoid a despairing exeat. Yes, 1 ac. oddly pusillanimous unless we’re all missing something. I doubt it’s a neat division of ten into a room for 100 lasses. But otherwise a good tough leathery texture. Few sparks but liked 1 dn. (where bogey may be a bogie perhaps?). Also like 2 dn., just for the word.
12. I mean 3 dn. for the word…gawd, don’t like it any more.
13. Thank goodness, I thought it was just me – 27 minutes feeling dense most of the time. ERECT was, of course, last in going through my alphabet soup strainer and realising there’s a lot of words that fit the frame. Sometimes you don’t get an answer from the clue – it’s just too sneaky. You get an answer and try to make it fit, hence the believable EXEAT.
    I knew diligence=stagecoach from some murky recess, but learned today that it’s pronounced wiz a French accent and isn’t actually a quintessential Georgette-Heyerism.
    I had LOGGIA as a first stab for 6d , which severely compromised the Northern Territory. Even when I worked out it clearly wasn’t, but not what it was, the G hung around in 10, which blinded me to STUDENT and its dependent. I suppose I’ll either have to get used to solving online or use a pencil.
    CoD to the matrioshka MISTLETOE. ERECT would have had it but was just a shade too sly.
    1. ‘Er indoors tells me Georgette Heyer is positively gridlocked with diligences. I tried reading one once, and got as far as page 2. In the end, she married the unlikely one, apparently
       1. Ye Gods! Which book was that? In my experience, they never marry the unlikely ones. But your lady wife is right about the frequency of diligences. GH does wonders for the vocabulary.. (Besides, when I did French O Level I had to learn a poem called “La (or Le) Diligence” Started with the words “Clique! Claque! Clique!” Quite unforgettable…
       2. You did right to make the attempt though.. try reading “An Infamous Army,” which has not much love interest.. there is a reference to it in my Club Monthly blog today
14. 35 minutes for this. My first in was 8dn so I thought it was going to be a real stinker.
    Unlike a couple last week that were easier than they felt, this was harder than it felt, with a succession of clues that took me ages to crack but then seemed really obvious with hindsight. I didn’t help myself by putting in CLOSE SHAVEN.
    The stagecoach and the pigeon were today’s unknowns.
    I didn’t understand COLONEL or LOUNGE so my thanks to Uncle Yap and to mctext.
    I agree with jackkt on 1ac. On the other hand I liked 2dn a lot: very easy but also very neat.
15. Thanks for a great blog, filling in the bits of the wordplay which I had presumed but did not know (e.g. DILIGENCE). Most of this went in comfortably under 30 minutes but completing NE and SW corners took as long again. COD to ERECT (LOI: the penny finally dropped before entering EXEAT in desperation). Thanks, setter, for a good, and gettable, challenge: I found ‘harbour’ a much easier indicator of ‘haven’ than yesterday’s ‘ashram’.
16. Interestingly I parsed 1down as paired=colo ie colocation points=ne railway =l as in line.
17. A puzzle of mid-range difficulty for me, harder than yesterday’s, mainly because of the time taken to get 10 (and thus 1ac) 1dn, 5 and 28. I’m not sure why the answer to 10 came to me so late since it’s not a hard clue, but that’s just my erratic solving power. 40 minutes altogether.
    I agree with those who didn’t think much of 1ac. 28 has a good surface, but suffers from some very inelegant cryptic grammar (“sound broke”). 1dn, 14,, 26 and 29 were all very neat.
18. 25:52. Lovely puzzle with too many great clues to pick a COD.

    I also strggled with erect but got there in the end. LOI was canal as I’d carelessly put REALTED for 20 and it was only when I figured out Mercator from wordplay that I spotted where the AL had to go and made the necessary correction.

19. Finished just under the gun at 59 minutes 6 seconds, which I discovered to my amusement still gets you more than 600 points on the leaderboard (601 to be exact). Last one in was SPEARHEAD, which was all that would fit the checkers and was OK as a synonym for “lead”, but I didn’t see the bird until coming here. Next to last was ERECT, which I had to let settle a bit in my mind before I decided it was OK. COD to COLONEL, which I also couldn’t quite parse on my own (though Colonel Bogey rang a bell). As for 1ac, it’s a clue written more like a magician’s feet (unwashed); it’s very weak and it was very annoying to have to postpone looking at the first clue in the puzzle until one has solved a later one.
20. About 35 minutes I reckon, ending with COLONEL, because I don’t get the Bogey reference, and I thought for the entire time that the ‘on railway’ clued the ‘-onel’ part of the answer. Finally saw the ‘colon’, very clever. But not as clever as ERECT, my COD nomination. On the Downside, I thought HUE, ART and RELATED were too obvious, CLASSROOM was less than pedestrian after solving 10, and the QPR clue went over my head since I had no idea what QPR meant. ‘Using pin’ as NAILING doesn’t sound right, either. Regards to all.
    1. ART is indeed very obvious, but I liked it for conjuring the image of the great man fighting off the black dog at the easel. They don’t have to be hard to be good.
       1. No, they don’t have to be hard to be good, I agree, but I didn’t get much of a kick out of these.
          1. Fair enough. Just patriotic sentimentality with ART, perhaps, although I’m not generally one for patriotism. I agree on the other two, although RELATED took me an embarrassingly long time to get.
21. A bit of a struggle to finish after a quick start. I still don’t like 1a – it always slows me up when I don’t get 1a immediately. Last one in ERECT. I had to make a list of all the E*E*T words. It’s a good job there weren’t all that many. 49 minutes. I’ve been at a dreadfully boring choir practice and it’s so late now it’s hardly worth posting a comment. But I’m a creature of habit so it goes in nonetheless.
22. 9:44 for me – mostly plain sailing, with the occasional hiccup not enough to carry me over 10 minutes. (Phew!)

    Nice puzzle, though I agree that 1ac seems a bit unsatisfactory in a modern Times puzzle.

23. I seem to be getting to these later and later, in fact I just got finished at the time 24968 became available online. Most of it has been said, 22 minutes, ERECT last in, didn’t understand COLONEL and took a long time to get SPEARHEAD.

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