Times 25010 – Blogger’s nerves take their toll (again)…

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Off to a flying start with some easy three-letter answers but I became bogged down quite early on. I got started again when I reached the clues for the SE and then the NE flowed on from that, but I made heavy weather of some clues on the LH side. There’s really nothing difficult here although I can never remember worm words so 1dn held me up for ages. My biggest problem was 8dn, solving it and then trying to explain the second part of the clue which I’m still not sure I have understood. I’m ashamed to report I took an hour to complete this grid.

Across
1 N(ew),UMBER – UMBER is a brown earthy mineral that gives its name to the colour.
4 OUT,RIGHT – On edit, I didn’t explain this further before going to bed but since a number of people have queried it I’ll give my take on it now. I thought, with ‘total’ as the definition, ‘wrong’ = OUT (as in ‘I added up the figures but my answer was wrong / out by one’) and  ‘on the contrary’= the opposite of wrong i.e. RIGHT.
10 MUS,HY PE,AS – SUM is reversed up front. Greasy spoons are cafes serving cheap fried food and other delights including such items as mushy peas.
11 B(lack),ASS,O 
12 THIRD DEGREE – Double definition.
14 Deliberately omitted as it’s that flightless bird yet again.
15 D,ECIM,AL – MICE enclosed by LAD all reversed.
17 WAP,1,TI – IT 1 PAW all reversed. A North American red deer.
19 P(A)UNCH – I think a spare tyre is more usually called a muffin top these days.
21 SPAR,ROW
23 ARM – It’s a DBE, folks!
24 T(ER)RESTRIAL – Anagram TRIER SALT encloses Her Majesty.
26 PINTA – One of Columbus’s ships and a reference to a Milk Marketing Board advertising campaign in the 1960s which encouraged us to “Drinka Pinta Milka Day”. Some may remember the slogan as interpreted by Tony Hancock in ‘The Blood Donor’ along with his rendering of another slogan ‘Coughs and sneezes spread diseases’ sung to the tune of Deutschland Uber Alles.
27 ON THE WING – Double definition.
29 SERGEANT – Sounds like (John Singer) Sargent.
30 SLIGHT Double definition.
Down
1 N(EMAT)ODE – The New Oxford Dictionary of English encloses TAME reversed.
2 M(AS)AId
3 Deliberately omitted as we see this too often.
5 U,N,S,CREW
6 RUBBER PLANT
7 GA(SOME)TE,R
8 T(WO-W)AY – My last in and one that has given me some problems explaining. I think the idea may simply be that boats can meet in a two-way traffic system, but if that’s it then I don’t much care for it. I wondered for a while if it was something more elaborate involving CRS boat meaning face and a two-way mirror but I gave up on that idea. Maybe I’m missing something.
9 CEREAL – Sounds like ‘serial’.
13 DEMON,STRAT,triflE – TARTS reversed provide the filling.
16 COAL MINER – Anagram of MAIL ONCE + R(ight).
18 TWILIGHT – Anagram of WITH GILT.
20 HARP O(O)N
21 S(LEE)TY
22 CAM(P)US – (Albert) CAMUS holds Power
25 ICING – Sounds like ‘I sing’.
28 pEEL

49 comments on “Times 25010 – Blogger’s nerves take their toll (again)…”

  1. With all the trouble in the PINTA corner — didn’t know the boat and failed to see CAMPUS for an age. (Not helped by desperately wanting half a POM-POM at 23ac.) So, Jack, it wasn’t just you! I don’t understand TWO-WAY either and suspected something to with radios! Also couldn’t parse OUTRIGHT. I can see the def is “Total” and I can see that “right” is the contrary of “wrong”; but no idea how you get OUT out of the cryptic.

    My COD to ICING for its &lit flavour.

  2. … congrats to Jack on consistency. 2:55am a fortnight ago; 2:54am today. Hope you get some sleep and that other commenters will note your sacrifice. Much appreciated by the antipodeans!
    1. Thanks for this and to Sotira below. It’s one of the joys of retirement that I can usually order my life as I wish. I always do the Times crossword at ‘bedtime’ these days so it seems sensible to write the blog while the details are still fresh in my mind.
  3. Another vote of thanks, jackkt.

    Less than 14 minutes but I messed up yet again. This time with WAPATI, which I was so sure was right. Sometimes wrong, always certain.

  4. An hour and 22 minutes, with all the trouble in the top, predominantly in the NW. Like Jack and McT, I can’t parse TWO-WAY. To my knowledge, mariners don’t use ‘two-way’ as an abbreviaiton for ‘two-way radio’, but I’m very much a dry bob. Like Jack, I’m not big on worms, and wasn’t helped by the fact that 1ac was my last in (must remember ’ember’ for ‘earth’ – seen it often enough now). Also, struggled unreasonably with UNSCREW, which meant that I didn’t have the U at 4ac, where I entered ‘allright’, probably impossible with the spelling, as opposed to ‘alright’ and ‘all right’. Like McT, I don’t see how OUT fits in. COD to MUSHY PEAS, one of the few things in a greasy spoon that I don’t much like. And even here I was toying with ‘bully beef’, even after seeing the possibilities of MUS–. One of those days.

    9dn put me in mind of Barry.

  5. I took TWO-WAY as being WOW (something amazing) in TAY, with “allowing boats to meet” as being a nautical version (for the sake of the surface reading) of a two-way street. Not wholly satisfactory, but the best I could come up with.

    Essex Man

  6. I assume that OUTRIGHT is somehow a reversal (= on the contrary) of RIGHT OUT (= completely out, ie wrong). Again I’m not wholly convinced!

    Essex Man

  7. I started off well in the top left corner, but after that my progress was patchy and I finished in 41:18. I stuggled with the top right corner, not being entirely happy with 4ac or 8dn, but my last one in was 9dn.

    I knew the name of Columbus’s ship, but I’m sure I learned it from another crossword.

    1. For the record, this is where I added my full explanation of 4ac to the blog above. I hadn’t realised the clue would cause so much discussion otherwise I’d have included it in the first place. Maybe I have it wrong so please feel free to disagree but it seemed straightforward to me.
      1. I think bloggers can always act on the principle, “Even relatively experienced solvers here won’t have got this, so I’ll explain it”. I’m sure less experienced solvers would have no complaints. No need to worry about being condescending (if that’s ever a concern. Most of us have already worked (to varying degrees) at parsing the clues, and are grateful to be put out of our misery by dint of a little spoon feeding by Nurse when we come here!
        1. It’s not so much that, ulaca, it’s down to time and I’m afraid one has (or rather, I have) to cut the occasional corner. I take the view that if I’ve missed one that somebody needs explaining further then they can ask and that can sometimes get other people more involved in discussing the clue.

          Where is Barry, by the way? Assuming you were referring to our regular contributor I don’t think we have heard from him here since the last puzzle I blogged on 4th November.

      2. I agree that jack’s elegant parsing of OUTRIGHT is more satisfactory than my more convoluted effort.

        By the way did anyone else have our old friend the (h) IDE at 28dn? I took a while to find out that it didn’t fit.

  8. I understand. We all appreciate the work you guys put in, and vive la difference between the bloggers, as indeed between the commenters.

    I fear Barry may have been on a bender since Surrey won the Clydesdale Bank 40 in mid-September.

  9. Gasometer – A large receptacle for the storage of gas.

    Alas, the bladder doesn’t allow for benders these days. In fact I am going through something of a cruciverbal crisis at the moment possibly to do with having, at about the same time as Jack I reckon, taken to doing the Guardian on a daily basis. Also doesn’t help when you, who started doing these things around the same time as me, are finishing regularly in about 30 minutes. Finishing unaided remains my problem (apart from limited vocab and GK) today sticking in TWO-BAY (a double mooring!) just to complete the grid.

    For all its eschewing Ximenean principles I do recommend the Guardian, Paul in particular who makes me laugh, eg from a recent puzzle:
    First William’s home and not the Prince of Darkness (8).
    Answer: NORMANDY.

    1. I had to look up the ‘Mandy’ reference, but agree it’s very good, ‘though if there were too many like this, we foreign/expat solvers would struggle.
    2. I try and do the Grauniad on most days precisely because it eschews Ximenean principles. For this reason I find it harder than the Times, and occasionally irritating, but a bit of variety is a good thing.
      I was reminded of Mandy by today’s MUSHY PEAS: he famously saw some in a chippy and asked for “some of that guacamole”. It’s a great story which is only slightly spoiled by being untrue.
      1. A good reason in my view for eschewing the Grauniad. Sniggering humour that could make the guy – who’s around – uncomfortable – does that count for nothing?
  10. Are other TFTT bloggers experiencing what I am experiencing at the moment, a spam attack titled “free credit report abcdefgh”. I am receiving in my mailbox at the rate of about one per hour. Killfile does not work as the abcdefgh is randomly selected so each topic is unique.

    Are the administrators of the site aware of this spam attack?
    Can you please do something about it?

    1. Nothing to report here, though my email server for this site is the long defunct lineone.net. Might be a random selection.
    2. As another blogger, I am not receiving that type of email, not even being held in my ISP’s spam mailbox
    3. Nor me. And I tend to have more posts on here than anyone else at the moment. I get the occasional spam post against an old puzzle from time to time which I have to track down and remove, but that only happens once or twice a month.
  11. 25 minutes for this and like others I don’t understand the definition for TWO-WAY. I also struggled with the worm before guessing the right answer! Don’t like the DBE “gun” for ARM

    I remember the PINTA crusade which had no effect on me whatsoever – can’t stand the stuff. Why people use it to destroy the taste of good coffee (and tea) I shall never understand

  12. 22 minutes, thinking towards the end it was easier than I thought it was, and looking for the complicated or arcane answer was what sometimes held up progress. CEREAL being an example, almost my last in.
    TWO-WAY, I imagined, was a kind of gangplank, but post-solve research reveals no such thing. If it had said “pass” instead of “meet”, I’m sure we’d not have scratched heads quite so much.
    I rather like MUSHY PEAS, but only with my haddock and chips, not with my bacon, sausage egg and a slice – that’s baked, beans, surely?
    CoD to TWILIGHT for poetic impression, with a special mention for WAPITI.
  13. 15 minutes for this. Similar problem with TWO-WAY but I read it like Essex Man. No problem with OUTRIGHT, which I parsed in the same way as Jack. Didn’t know Columbus’s ship.
    I hesitated over SERGEANT because I didn’t know John Singer Sargent was American so thought I might be looking for an American spelling of SERGEANT. SARGEANT perhaps? Fortunately I decided that would be silly.
    1. So far as I know there’s no such thing as a one-way river so the concept of a two-way river is something of a nonsense. However, if there was a better explanation I think somebody would have seen it by now.
      1. Yes I agree, if that’s the explanation it’s a bit nonsensical. A bit of a stretch just to achieve the desird surface reading I suspect.
  14. Just a comment on arm=gun. Round here, an armed policemen would be exclusively one carrying a gun, and “gun” itself is a class of weapons. I wonder if this is a DBE that almost gets away with it?
    1. Yes, we’ve certainly seen far worse and it didn’t hold me up but I can’t help noticing them and if I’m in the mood commenting upon them
  15. An excellent challenge (thank you, setter) and a fine blog (thank you, jackkt). Ignorance is often bliss and once I’d parsed and solved TWO WAY, I wasn’t troubled that the reference to ‘boats’ made no sense to me: I expected the better-informed of you out there to offer an explanation. Maybe there isn’t one. ‘Dictionary’ to me is almost always OED so my parsing of NEMATODE was imperfect: thanks, jackkt, for explaining NODE. MUSHY PEAS have, I think, gone considerably upmarket in recent times and deserve better than identification as ‘greasy spoon grub’. LOI: WAPITI (solved on wordplay only).
  16. Fish ‘n’ chips with MUSHY PEAS are one of the joys of life, even if they do give you a 19 ac. About an hour for me in two sessions, with quite a few question marks at the end – and one still remaining against TWO-WAY. What a bewildering definition!
  17. 27 minutes here, I was stumped for a long time, mostly by the MUSHY PEAS corner, where I thought maybe CURRY PUFF for a while was the answer.

    WAPITI and NUMBER from definition alone

  18. 14 minutes for me, the main hold up being with TWO-WAY. I see the WOW in the TAY but would love to know what it has with boats being allowed to meet. Otherwise very enjoyable all round.
  19. 17:11 but undone by the worm which I confidently entered as nemotode. Alarm bells should have rung when I couldn’t parse it but as I didn’t know the NODE I had no idea that I should be trying to match T?ME with harmless.

    So just as my previous error slips into the 1 month plus bucket this one sends me hurtling down the leaderboard again.

  20. I think it could be as simple as OUT=wrong (eg it’s out by 3 cms) and RIGHT is the contrary, meaning TOTAL. I found today much easier than yesterday (about 16 mins except for 8dn and 9dn which took a break and then another 5 mins pondering to finally solve though I don’t understand TWO-WAY either). Being a keen gardener and nematode user (to kill slugs in the ground) I was off to a quick start.
    1. Thanks for that point but I think it’s exactly what I wrote already. Apologies if I missed something new.
  21. 11:09, finishing with SERGEANT (29ac).  Unknowns: La PINTA (26ac), John Singer SARGENT (29ac SERGEANT), NEMATODE (1dn).  Oddly, WAPITI (17ac) was familiar but BASSO (11ac) wasn’t; and UMBER (1ac NUMBER) was fresh in the mind from last Monday.

    I was held up for a bit by putting in the uncontroversial alternative answer (h)IDE at 28dn (EEL).

    Clue of the Day: 19ac (PAUNCH).

  22. Same problems as everybody else with TWO-WAY. I left commenting till this evening in the vain hope that someone would have an explanation. I found this hard going. A 46 minute slog.
    1. I assumed when solving, and still, that it’s a two-way radio, which is sometimes called simply a “two-way”. Okay, ‘meet’ is an unusual way to describe two ships communicating over the airwaves, but I’m pretty sure that’s the idea. You can, after all, ‘meet someone’ online.
      1. I never thought of the radio. Sounds much more likely than my idea of a kind of traffic management system. Still. it’s a good job the cryptic was so helpful!
  23. I only knew nematode from an ‘odd one out’ round of HIGNFY where it was something that had been found in a McDonald’s burger along with half a mouse . I went with face to face = boats meeting for two-way but it’s very dodgy .
    Thanks for the blog Jack .
    Jeremy
  24. I don’t have a time since I was watching football, and then forced into cable TV repair, but it would have been long. My LOI was CEREAL, and my gaps were in the NW, like others. I didn’t know of MUSHY PEAS, so that was from wordplay alone. Over here, we were all taught long ago that Columbus discovered America, and “sailed across the ocean blue, in Fourteen hundred Ninety-two”, and that little ditty also included the Nina, the Pinta, an the Santa Maria, so no problem there. COD to PAUNCH. I figured that a TWO-WAY must be some kind of feature, maybe on a canal, where a wider section exists where one ties up to allow the opposite traffic to proceed(!!??!). That’s the best I could muster. Regards to all.
  25. 28 minutes. Surprised by the hapless 8 down when there’s so many ways of doing this, ‘Road that’s amazing in river?’ e.g. Otherwise a fair test.

  26. 9:52 for me. I made another of my horribly slow starts but then picked up speed a little (helped by several old chestnuts) and had all the answers filled in in around 8 minutes.

    However, I’d bunged in NEMATODE as the obvious worm (hm! do I get the impression that this is another piece of commonplace scientific knowledge that had somehow eluded dorsetjimbo?), but wasn’t at all convinced that NODE was a dictionary, so decided to allow myself a further couple of minutes to make sure I wasn’t missing an alternative answer.

    Thanks for your explanation of OUTRIGHT – much better than my more convoluted one.

  27. My compensation for yesterday (when I inadvertently keyed in a random and incorrect letter into the grid). An easy puzzle, my fastest solve yet (28:46, of course nothing special for most people here) and completely correct. As for COD’s, there’s nothing really spectacular but I rather liked DECIMAL and SPARROW. I’m American, so Columbus’s vessel was more familiar to me than the milk (but I did get the joke).
  28. This blog is now attracting spam which I’m tired of deleting so I have locked the discussion.

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