Times 25034 – No Sweatsville…

40 comments on “Times 25034 – No Sweatsville…”

1. 27 minutes, but with ‘case’ for COSH. Much of this went in from the definition, including AT WORK, whose neatness was vitiated by the same problem once a couple of checkers had appeared.
2. …..and finally ended up with one undone, 13 down, with unhelpful crossing letters. Made a phone call to shake up my brain, and then saw it within 30 seconds.

   You do need to know a few things for this one. I saw ‘chess’ through the cryptic right away, but had never heard of the musical, so I had to wait for the crossers to be sure. And ‘umbo’ was at the very back of my brain, very faint indeed.

   But all in and correct, after a goof 50 minutes or so.

3. 17:11 .. with several minutes at the end on DUMBO (wondered if ‘dimbo’ was possible, not having spent a lot of time around shields) and COSH, which took some figuring out (and I don’t carry one now I’ve quit hanging out in opium dens).

   Loved AT WORK.

4. But rushed through this waiting for a student to turn up. So agreed: not too difficult apart from said UMBO (wha?) I thought 15dn (TREADMILL) was the hardest to find; less to go on than Ronnie Corbett’s toilet. Last in(s): the TORTURED / AT WORK pair. Wanted to write ON HOOK for the latter. Who knows why?
5. Completed most of this in very quick time: but then spent almost as long resolving SCUT (unknown, but gettable from wordplay) and COSH (jackkt’s parsing is obviously right but the initial ‘from this’ was, at best, an unnecessary and misleading diversion/distraction). ‘Alkie’ was a familiar enough word but one I’d never seen in print until today and I probably wouldn’t have spelt it this way. COD to AT WORK.
   1. I think one might argue that it’s the setter’s job to mislead, divert and distract but obviously within certain bounds and whether he/she has gone too far will often be open to debate. I thought the use of ‘from this’ here was okay and certainly preferable to the distracting DBE we faced at the very start of yesterday’s solve.
      1. I agree with you on setter’s job; I am far less unhappy with DBEs which draw so much criticism here. It’s just that, in this particular case, the ‘from this’ was redundant, even when reading the clue as ‘from this blow’. I think my reservations may have been less if the clue had read (as in your blog) ‘with this, blow”.
         1. Thanks for pointing out my slip up which I have noted in the blog.
6. Five minutes at end working out the fine dish of saincourre (forgot it was two words; and didn’t thinking of limiting sour rather than cream). So 31 minutes with one wrong. Not too brilliant, missing the vital effect of a small word here and there. Do is ouchmaking as read but I suppose accepting the fact is what a university’s for…
7. 
   Didn’t take too long… I should’ve taken longer, and then I may have finished correctly! As it was, I failed to parse 5dn, and ended up with ‘flag racing’ (sport never my strong point…), and I also had ‘domio’, convincing myself he was some sort of (Shakespearian?) fool, and O Mio was some sort of boss.

   CoDs: COSH and AT WORK.

   More haste, less speed as they say. At least I can get on with the cards now…

8. 15 minutes, but got TREADMILL from definition, such as it was, only, and MEDINA from cryptic, knowing only its connection with Mohammed.
   COSH was last in, left there because I simply bounced off the surface of the clue and thought I might have to do some alphabet soup work.
   Best of the day INCURSION for a neat construction, and AT WORK for its cute device and flash of humour.
9. 17:21 with a great part of it spent working out COSH, which in turn had to wait until I’d followed the parsing of 9ac to its proper conclusion and changed ANDALUCIA to ANDALUSIA.
10. 16 minutes, but another with FLAG RACING. Even after I’d realised that the “flag” had to contain the rest of the clue I didn’t question the G I had bunged in, and thought there must be a racing circuit called GRACINO.
    I had one other small quibble, which is that “which” and “that” are not interchangeable. Do I win the prize for the smallest quibble of the year?
    I also thought that THINE is “yours” rather than “your”, but it’s not always of course. To thine own self be true and all that.
    Unknowns today were the musical, the boss and the rabbit’s tail.
11. One of those puzzles that leave very little to comment on. All very straightforward. 20 minuites to solve. No hold ups. No queries. Thank goodness they’re not all like that!
12. Considering I have had a long and busy week and this was my first chance to even look at a Times puzzle this week, I was pleased to find it nice and straightforward and all sorted in under 10 minutes.
13. 23:33 but with 3 left to get I accidentally navigated away from the page and lost everything, so let’s round down and call it 3 minutes.

    I was slowed by not spotting Salinger more quickly and by looking for a specific dish rather than something generic at 20 (the Peruvian cat dish INCA MOUSER perhaps).

    If we’re looking for tiny quiblettes I’d venture the definition for torture which I’d associate more with extraction of information or gratuitous sadism than yer actual punishment.

    LOI was organising where I failed to think of hymn as a verb. SCUT was a guess and I couldn’t parse treadmill so thanks to Jack for that one. Overall I found the bottom half trickier than the top.

14. 12:57, ending with ALFIE (10ac).  Unknowns: MEDINA as an old quarter (11ac), FLAT RACING (6dn), and REFLECTOR as a person (7dn).  UMBO (29ac) was only faintly familiar.

    I don’t see how the cryptic grammar of 26ac (“Your feeble energy is minimal” = THIN + E) is supposed to work, though there are other indications in the puzzle that the setter isn’t the kind to give a monkey’s.

    I also don’t see how “comic” can be an anagram indicator (18dn TORTURED).  Pending other suggestions, I suspect that this is another case of sloppy two-step thinking: “comic = funny = strange”.

    1. Ooh, you’re a hard man, Mark! I can’t see anything wrong with ‘Energy is minimal’ cluing energy abbreviated to E. And I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to ‘comic’ = ‘silly’.
    2. I’m with you on both counts, Mark. Neither caused me much of a problem but both struck me as rather loose when solving. I might have mentioned them but you’ve got to pick your quibbles.
    3. I’m with jackkt, Mark. I don’t understand your problem with “energy is minimal” for E. And although it’s possible that “comic” as an anagram indicator might have raised an eyebrow or two when I was young, nowadays setters (and, in my case at any rate, solvers) are generally more relaxed. Here I’d take one step (supported by the OED): “comic” = “ludicrous”.
15. Can someone please explain read = do in 15D? It’s a new one on me.
    1. T(READ,M)ILL

       Do = READ (as one might do/read as subject at college)

       Miles = M

       Work = TILL (think farming)

       Out – indicates position of TILL around READ, M

       Here = TREADMILL also defined by everything that’s gone before.

       1. Thanks jackkt
    2. I think “read” here has to be understood in the sense of “study at university”, in which sense “do” is a possible synonym – e.g. Did you read/do History or English at Oxford?
       1. Thanks also to melrosemike!
16. I also don’t quite understand ‘read’ = ‘do’ (or would both, in US jargon, be ‘take a university course’?) There were some other clues where the right answer was clear but the explanation was not (DUMBO, ALFIE, DUTCH). So I took over an hour but it was all right. COD to AT WORK.
17. Nothing much to add. A straightforward puzzle with some tricky wordplay here and there. Personally, I don’t think the double def works at 7dn. A person who thinks can only be a REFLECTER not a REFLECTOR in my book. Like Sotira, I loved AT WORK.
    1. My Chambers agrees with you, Mike. Collins is less specific and allows -OR as ‘person or thing that reflects’. SOED is more specific with -OR as ‘person who reflects or meditates’. It labels this ‘rare’ but on the other hand lists it ahead of all four other meanings including the one covering the bicycle reference.
18. This was a very straightforward solve but I hesitated for a long time over 29a. I knew it had to be either DUMBO or DIMBO. Either fit the definition and where I live a fool is much more likely to be called a “dimbo” so I went for that. (Later I googled “imbo” and “umbo” and discovered I had chosen wrongly.) 27 minutes
19. Thanks, Jack. The SOED does appear to give the setter cover for REFLECTOR = a person who thinks, if that is what he intended, but I remain mildly disgruntled (from which you will guess that I entered PROTECTER at 7dn). I would be interested to see an example of REFLECTOR ever actually being used in the sense required if the DD is to work. “He was a reflector rather than a doer” – I think not. REFLECTER seems to me an equally good, indeed rather better, solution since it removes any ground for quibble. One of the meanings of “reflect” as a verb is “to give back light” and there can be little argument that the thingy on the bicycle mudguard does just that, even if it is usually called a reflector.

    On the other hand, perhaps I should just get a life! Good blog, by the way.

20. Pretty straightforward, yes, about 20 minutes. I didn’t know the ‘umbo’, SCUT, or COSH. The latter two went in from wordplay, and DUMBO on faith alone. Not familiar with the musical either. No quibbles, though. No real COD either, since AT WORK, while employing a clever device, was a tad too obvious. Regards.
    1. CHESS was big in London, running for three solid years (86-89) but on Broadway it closed after two months and only 68 performances in 1988.
    2. Kevin,

       A cosh is what you guys call a blackjack or sap I think, the sort of thing Philip Marlowe was always on the wrong end of:

       “‘Okay Marlowe,’ I said to myself. ‘You’re a tough guy. You’ve been sapped twice, choked, beaten silly with a gun, shot in the arm until you’re crazy as a couple of waltzing mice. Now let’s see you do something really tough – like putting your pants on.'”

       “I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in. It had no bottom. I felt pretty good – like an amputated leg.”

       Man, I must read those books again.

21. It could perfectly well have been ALBIE at 10ac. I repeat what I said the other day: the clue should be unequivocal, and this one isn’t. To say that waiting for the checkers is fair game, as someone said in reply the other day, is not in my opinion correct. The checkers are only there to give the solver a nudge towards the correct answer; they shouldn’t be necessary.
    1. I’m with those who disagree with you. Using checkers to resolve possible alternatives is all part of the game.
       1. This may be right, but at the back of my mind I remember reading somewhere (Ximenes? Azed? Don Manley?) what I have said: that a clue should be stand-alone. I wonder if I am mistaken.

          The other day in the Independent Arachne said in a post at the end of the comments that followed her crossword “Whoops, she did it again: sorry, K’s D and everyone who was discomfited, for the ambiguity at 20ac.” and she was referring to an answer that could equally well have been ANNAN and NANNA, something that was only resolved by checkers. So at least somebody agrees with me.

22. 10:01 for me. I should really have broken 10 minutes, but I had last-minute doubts about MEDINA (wondering if I was imagining a meaning that I really knew perfectly well) and spent a few seconds checking that there wasn’t a better solution.

    Nice puzzle.

23. May I seek further elucidation re-above. Is there some kind of convention that names of living persons are not allowed as answers in a puzzle?
    1. My understanding is that for the Mon-Sat Times cryptic puzzles, only dead people may be used, with the one exception of Queen Elizabeth. On Sundays, on the other hand, living people may be used – and frequently are.
    2. Just to confirm that my understanding is the same as Ulaca’s. The only thing I would add is that your enquiry relates to dead people in answers and I believe the same convention applies to names mentioned in clues. There have been one or two exceptions none of which comes to mind at the moment other than an oblique reference to the owner of the Sun, but not to Murdoch specifically, in 25030.

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