Times 24998 – West Country Disaster!

29 comments on “Times 24998 – West Country Disaster!”

1. I endorse Jack’s comments. No real complaints except that I had the same thoughts about AUDIOPHILE. Also at 5ac I don’t think a CIVET is actually a cat.

   I assume Jack’s comment about Max Planck is tongue-in-cheek

   1. So what happened with your renewal problem essex man?

      Same area of trouble as Jack. Had pencilled in PANNEL at 27, homophone of PANEL, guessing there must be a scientist with that name. Had the right idea with NETWORK but was working on row letters rather than numbers, so NOT A TO I for example. All resolved on concluding that 18 could only be ABIGAIL.

      1. Renewal worked out exactly as you predicted, thanks Barry. Despite messages urging me to renew, it was impossible to do so before the renewal date. Once that date arrived the renewal page magically appeared from nowhere.
2. I’m with you on this one Jack. It took me over an hour and I never got into any stride. Maybe I should stop doing these in large comfortable reclining chairs. I was going to give up with the SW corner undone when I finally cracked NETWORK; a cracking clue and my COD. Must close now, as a putative attempt at 18’s ABIGAIL, viz. ABIGADO, has inexplicably started agadoo playing in a loop in my brain and I’m off in search of a balcony to throw myself off.
3. …since not knowing any Auden, I ventured for ‘Night Pall’.

   The two you omitted, Jack, were nearly the last two in for me.

   I had a wrong theory where 27 was ‘Watson’, i.e. Holmes’ buddy and the DNA guy.

   And I too struggled with ‘audiophile’, having just written out my 2012 membership cheque to ‘The Audiophile Society’ last weekend.

   1. When I finally sorted out AUDIOPHILE, my next thought was “I bet vinyl1 will have seen that in an instant!”.
4. Over an hour but a thoroughly enjoyable session of penny-dropping moments. On the verge of giving up (or taking a break) several times but, on each occasion, I suddenly had a breakthrough which allowed another three or four clues to be cracked. Thank you setter for such a good, indeed excellent, challenge. COD to DROPPED IN which allowed me to get my LOI (TIN POT).

   Thanks, too, jackkt for such an enjoyable blog!

5. About 40 minutes here, but I find I bunged in SAFELY without really thinking about it. I must try not to lose patience with these more difficult puzzles.
   It was tricky, this, but not nearly as tricky as I made it for myself. I had ALLIEGANCE for a while, and then VIN DE PAYS. I’ve never heard VIN DU PAYS and you could argue it’s a bit much to use an obscure variant of a French expression! The wordplay is entirely clear though.
   Generally a very good puzzle. I liked the original thinking in DROPPED IN and NETWORK, among other things.
   1. You are obviously not an oenophile
   2. You’re pretty much right about VIN DU PAYS, which simply means “wine of the country” (in the sense of French wine in France, Greek wine in Greece, Finnish wine in Finland, if there were such a thing). As a French expression for French wine it does happen to fit, but I am sure this is not the nuance the setter actually meant. VIN DE PAYS (or “country wine”) is an official classification guaranteeing geographical origin from a broader region and with somewhat laxer qualifications than wines with appellation controlée, which are certified to come from a particular narrow wine-producing region of France. VIN DE PAYS (and not VIN DU PAYS) is what you would actually see on the labels of these wines. So I am also upset that VIN DU PAYS is what you would actually see in this puzzle.
      1. Thanks Hydrochoos.
         Contrary to what Anonymous says I am very much an oenophile, and I lived in France for many years, so I’m quite familiar with all this stuff. You are of course entirely right but again, as the wordplay is entirely clear we can’t really complain.
         Incidentally VIN DE PAYS is not necessarily “cheap”. Several leading producers in the Languedoc in particular (Gauby, Mas Jullien, Grange des Pères, for example) make excellent and quite expensive wines under this classification. When Aimé Guibert produced his first vintage of the now famous Mas de Daumas Gassac in 1978 he didn’t even get this far: having committed the cardinal sin of planting Cabernet Sauvignon he had to sell it as Vin de Table!
6. Found this rather hard, 58 minutes. Wrote in audiophile in disbelief. COD to dropped in, a simple curve ball I batted away without seeing at all. I’d say ‘Night Mail’ and Planck nicely balance each other as items of cultural GK, to coin an obstreperous term; but scarcely expect the Dorset swinger to agree.
7. I thought it was just me and my continuing fuzzy brain syndrome. 27 minutes and feeling it should have been quicker.
   I couldn’t decide whether AUDIOPHILE was a brilliant, or at least quite good &lit or somewhat duff. Perhaps it was the analog of those dodgy definition/no wordplay clues we had yesterday.
   I made life very difficult for myself in the NE by putting the EG one letter too late in ALLEGIANCE (even though it looked wrong) and having DE rather than DU in the cheap wine (even though it wasn’t in the wordplay).
   Perhaps the CIVETS clue was influenced by the Bard: “civet is of a baser birth than tar, the very uncleanly flux of a cat.”
   8 “spelt G N U” can’t be allowed to pass without reference to the joy of Flanders and Swann.
   CoD (no contest) to NETWORK – the kind of clue you stare at knowing it must be brilliant but you can’t work it out. Then light dawns. GREAT TIT would have made it on another day.
8. A tricky end to the week…really thought that Copenhagen was a toughie…was almost there with several clues but in the end it was a relief to finish inside the hour…for some reason it took me ages to see Allegiance. REally liked the Jto K clue and Dropped In. SOme innovative clues today…Notable and Planck…and chilean for that matter!
   well dont setter and blogger
9. Another well-spent 24 minutes to follow yesterday’s. Clues which are wilfully obscure are no good to anyone, but ones like NETWORK which make you stare blankly before the wonderful moment where the penny drops are what really makes a puzzle worthwhile.
10. Exactly the same solving pattern as Jack. The top is much easier than the bottom and the SW corner is the hardest of the four.

    I knew “night mail”, having read it at school. I don’t like 18D ABIGAIL – “David” is simply insufficient definition and I’ve never heard the name before in the chosen biblical context. I share Jack’s distaste for 25A

    As for Max Planck I can sympathise with Jack’s ignorance. After all the guy is only the father of the Quantum Theory and a Nobel Prize winner.

    1. Seriously, I might have conjured up his name from the depths of my knowledge a lot sooner if I’d had a checking letter or two but the Down clues made it really difficult.
    2. I’m forced to agree that HOOKE (from Tuesday’s puzzle) and PLANCK are just a teeny bit better known than TZARA and ARAGON; and having to know that the K is the symbol for Potassium (Tuesday again) is hardly likely to stretch even the most arty-farty. However, rather than dumb down the arts, I’d prefer to beef up the science to the same level.
11. 27:20 .. my favourite puzzle for a while. And NETWORK my favourite clue for a while. Very satisfying.

    My compliments to the setter.

    Last in: SHADOWER

12. Yes indeed, one to savour. That’s why we keep coming back for more. Beautifully crafted clues and lots of deft touches. No real time for me – I had kororareka’s comfortable chair at the end of the week syndrome – but I too finished up in the SW corner. ABIGAIL went in straight away, but the easy one that held me up was TINPOT.

    Great stuff setter (and blogger, of course).

13. A bit irritating since David had nine wives
14. 28:13 and i was gratified on submitting to find that the ones I’d taken a punt on (night mail, meat safe, abigail, excursive) were all correct. Some brilliant stuff (network of course, dropped in, season etc) only marginally spoied by the looser ones already mentioned.
15. Time 57 mins. Like your blogger was unable to see 22 down as anything other than a word beginning with C. With the e from audiophile—a rather desperate clue—and y from very well, Ely, the cathedral, chimed. Sage followed almost instantly. Endorse other solvers’ respect for the setter. There were many fine and fiendish clues.
16. I too got stuck in the SW (quelle surprise!) with gaps for NETWORK (too clever by half for me!) and PLANCK (although I had thought of some spelling of ‘plank’). I also had half a gap at 17ac (couldn’t work out the SALOON bit) and another half at 16d, as the only Auden title I know (shamefully) is Funeral Blues.

    Great puzzle, thanks setter, great blog, thanks Jack, just me being rubbish…let’s hope for a little improvement next week…

17. Difficult but enjoyable puzzle, about 40 minutes. I had the same initial thought as vinyl, but NIGHT PALL didn’t look right, so I went with MAIL (only after staring at it for a while), but either way was a dead guess, since I don’t know Auden. I’ll also lower my tone to a whisper and offer that I liked AUDIOPHILE. LOI’s: NETWORK, then GREAT TIT. Very well done, setter, and Jack as well. Regards to all.
18. Same experience as many others, with SW corner giving by far the most trouble. I agree that the definition for 25ac was a tad elusive (not helped in my case by not having met the word AUDIOPHILE before), but I guess it passes muster as a sort of &lit., and the anagram was very fairly signalled. I don’t agree with Jimbo that the King David reference was too vague – there aren’t many better known Davids after all. Trickier was being required to take the punt that he had a wife called Abigail rather than the more familiar Bathsheba. And even I, as a non-scientist, was aware of Max Planck. Loved DROPPED IN and NETWORK, both fiendishly clever. The parsing of COPENHAGEN was ingenious too. All in all, an excellent and challenging Friday puzzle.
19. 10:13 for me, so at least better than yesterday even though I felt I should have been faster.

    I’m on the side of 25ac (AUDIOPHILE) being a better-than-average &lit.

    The one clue I wasn’t too keen on was 4dn (FALSEHOOD), as I don’t recall the convention about ignoring punctuation ever applying to hyphens. (Counter-examples invited!) Because the “up” is attached to “slap” with a hyphen, it seems to me that it can’t also apply to “male”, so the wordplay leads to FHEALSOOD (or some variation with HE in it). For that matter, perhaps “up” can’t really apply to “brief” either!?

20. Too tough for me to complete without cheating. Quite a low signal to noise ratio in my opinion, making it too much for a hung-over brain. NETWORK was certainly clever, but the more I mull it over, the more sure I am that it has been clued this way before. 5-6 years ago I believe.
21. I have had a very frustrating crossword week and I was not able to complete any of the puzzles before Saturday’s came along. This puzzle was missing just one word and after a day I finally screwed up enough courage to guess the LOI, which was TINPOT. I was not familiar with the word as a whole nor with TIN for money, and POT for prize made some sense but I was not entirely convinced. But my guess turned out to be correct. Now I will try to work my way back through the week.

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