Times 25039 – Indeed A Majestic Drink

41 comments on “Times 25039 – Indeed A Majestic Drink”

1. 23:25 .. I actually gave up on this and slung in BELVEDERE and MALAYALAM assuming they were both wrong, so I can’t really claim to have finished it except through blind luck.

   I was really enjoying it until I ground to a halt with those, and especially liked IMPETUS

   1. Finishing correctly through blind luck is still finishing correctly. Count it as a win.
2. So not so easy down here. (Or am I looking for too much after so many prelim and finals puzzles?) But a couple of things of note:

   • The clear reference to the David Lean film in 4ac; one of the great movies of all time. Especially if you’ve seen the recent state of Carnforth station and/or have a penchant for Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2 (Op. 18).

   • The amazing coincidence in 2dn. Blogging 25032 last week, I wrote re 27ac (MALAYA): “And so ‘Malayalam’ must be a palindrome — one for Uncle Yap?” And so it is!

3. Note to self: read mctext’s blogs more carefully. he’s psychic!
4. A similar story but with no luck. (Not really a matter of luck, of course; as Gary Player always says, ‘The more I practise, the luckier I get’.)

   25 minutes for all bar six (1, 5, 11, 15, 24 & 27), all bar two in 35 minutes, thought of BELVEDERE (I used to live near Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park where the abdication was enacted), sort of dredged up ‘khediva’ (wrong, but only a small step to the right answer if I’d bunged in BELVEDERE), but all to no avail.

   Thanks to Uncle Yap for unravelling these two, and may I echo him in wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas, ‘though I dare say I will be haunting these columns like the Ghost of Christmas Present, as we shall be spending the festive season at home this year.

5. To my shame I was unable to solve 1ac from R???L? as I became fixated on it starting with RE (about) and spent ages looking for a word for ‘fight’ to fit ??L?. After the hour had passed I cheated to get RUMBLE and at last I was able to crack 2dn from the wordplay and checkers despite not knowing the word itself. I also didn’t know KHEDIVE but the wordplay was clearer there.

   I had completed all but those three and HESITATER in 35 minutes but then hit a wall.

   Three homonyms again today. Maybe this is not so uncommon after all.

   Uncle Y, you have a stray S in your explanation of 9dn.

6. 34 minutes. I found this tough. I was glad it wasn’t MOLAYALOM or on of the many other possibilities. KHEDIVE is a tough clue: an obscure term clued with less than obvious (although perfectly fair) wordplay. I stared at it for about ten minutes before cracking it, which allowed me to get ENAMELS, my last in.
   The farming sense of GLEANING was new to me and I didn’t understand BELVEDERE before coming here.
7. Thanks for parsing of BELVEDERE, Uncle Y. I was nowhere near and only a post-solve check indicated that it could be right (I had vaguely imagined that it had something to do with Belvedere House). Difficulties with NW took overall time to well over the 30 minutes. COD to TORQUE. Minor quibble with definition of ‘farm work’ for GLEANING: it’s others (not the farmer) who glean …
   1. … and, as I’ve now discovered, I was actually thinking of Fort Belvedere (thanks, ulaca), not Belvedere House.
   2. I think ‘farm work’ is fine if taken to mean ‘work done around a farm’ rather than ‘work done by farmers’.
      1. I did say it was a minor quibble and perhaps I should have elaborated a little more fully: my quibble has more to do with the nature of gleaning and whether it constitutes ‘work’. The essence of gleaning is scavenging by the desperate/poor of that very small part of the crop which the farmer has not harvested (ears of corn etc which have fallen on the ground and are not thought economically viable to recover). I don’t usually associate this sort of ‘scavenging’ (no matter how laborious) with ‘work’. Others may well disagree.
   3. I had the same misgivings about GLEANING but decided not to be the first to air the quibble (for once!).

      I find it mildly amusing that the brief encounter in the Lean film was anything but a SKIRMISH.

8. Would have been about 20 without 1ac and 3, which took my time to 35. Like Jackkt, I got bamboozled by that “about” in 1ac, and was looking for a four letter fight (somehow that sounds both rude and appropriate) beginning with M. I also reasoned that both lie and money can be almost anything, and another “about” suggested a reversal, so I was convinced I needed the checker from 1 to get it.
   Otherwise found this both chewy and enjoyable, unlike yesterdays which was just chewy. Loved the Brief Encounter clue, and the post-solve parsing of BELVEDERE and OUTLANDISH.
   GLEANING is another tribute to my Sunday School upbringing. It’s what Ruth did in Boaz’s barley fields.
   CoD in a strong field to the smooth DEAN MARTIN.
9. Struggled with this at times – not an easy puzzle by any measure. Had to derive KHEDIVE from the very good wordplay and then checked answer in Chambers (classic Mephisto style solving). Thought SKIRMISH an excellent clue.
10. For some reason found this twice as hard as yesterday’s; and even then didn’t finish, with khedive left out to dry. And it’s a word I vaguely knew. Oddly unable to think straight, or crooked. A fine puzzle though. Restored to calm by Keats’ lines, ‘And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep / Steady thy laden head across a brook…’ Seem unable to send in my name with picture. Maybe the portrait (by a six-year-old) is too disturbing for my computer’s ageing innards and it’s drawn a line. joekobi
    1. It’s happened to me recently. It might resolve itself if you log in at the top of the page. Then again, …..
11. ..just could not get ‘rumble’. I found the whole ‘Roman’, ‘belvedere’, ‘Malayalam’ section difficult, although I got ‘loll’ with relative alacrity.

    Wasn’t there a famous Khedive in British colonial history? Some battle or something. Anyway, that I knew.

    1. ‘A famous Khedive in British colonial history’: you’re most probably thinking of Isma’il Pasha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isma’il_Pasha) who famously went bankrupt and sold Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal to the British (Disraeli) in 1875.
12. Not that I’m aware. Not my strongest subject but I think Britain replaced local Egyptian rule with a Sultan when occupation was replaced by protectorate status circa start of WW1

    Most famous Viceroy was probably the last one of India Viscount Mountbatten who with Gandhi and Nehru presided over their independance

    1. Hmmm….well, I do seem to know the strangest things.

       By the by, are you familiar with ‘regal’ as a musical instrument? That would be a nice trap for the unwary.

    2. ‘Presided over’ is a very generous way to describe Mountbatten’s handling of the British exit from India, jimbo. Most historians are pretty scathing about his role in partition and the mess he left behind – an estimated half a million deaths and ongoing hostility. And Gandhi played little part in the eventual transfer of power – he was implacably opposed to the creation of a separate Muslim state. The key players were Jinnah and Nehru.
       1. I agree. There is a damning chapter on Mountbatten’s role in partition in Andrew Roberts’s “Eminent Churchillians”. To be fair to the Brits in general, I think they would (in accordance with Gandhi’s wishes) have much preferred to have handed over to the new rulers of an independent India the same undivided territory over which the Raj had held sway; but Jinnah of the Muslim League and Nehru of the Indian National Congress were quite unable to agree on an equitable share-out of power and on constitutional safeguards for the Muslim minority, a failure that has continued to exert a baleful influence over the sub-continent to this day. Mountbatten made matters worse, in typically impulsive fashion, by taking it upon himself (apparently without bothering to consult London) to bring forward the scheduled date for independence by a full year. He presumably thought that this would be a good way of concentrating minds and forcing the key players to the negotiating table. He further decided to demobilise a large part of the British Indian Army in advance of partition, ignoring the advice of seasoned old India hands, among them the Governor of the Punjab, that the army would be needed to provide security along the partition line.
       2. Agree with you.. Mounbatten was as competent as all our overpromoted royals, ie not at all. At least these days we only let them fly helicopters, instead of giving them the entire Royal Navy…
          1. I understand Prince William is a fine helicopter pilot, and really enjoys the work. That is certainly better for a young man than moping around some palace, or being a nightclubber in London.
13. Thanks for unraveling belvedere Uncle Y, I couldn’t. This was a relief after yesterday’s ignominy. I thought gusher was rather nice. Both Jimbo and Vinyl are right – there’s some sort of medal commemorating either Khartoum or Omdurman and it’s got Khedive in its name for some reason – beyond that I am totally fuzzy.
    1. P.S. Thanks for the sherpa story uncle Y – think I’ll wheel that out with the Christmas pud.
    2. Google reveals a Khedive’s Sudan Medal 1896-1908 – well done you!
14. A small organ I believe – open to some interesting clues, though perhaps not in the Times!
15. If it hadn’t taken me so long to, er, rumble RUMBLE! , I would have finished in just under 20 mins. A very enjoyable diversion from the Christmas preparations. Seasons greetings to all.
16. Solved online for a change after my printer ran out of ink, so 14:25 after taking account of the time it took me to mess around with the printer before starting to solve, but one silly error with HESITATOR at 8D, solved from the definition and not taking time to read the wordplay. He who doesn’t hesitate is lost in this case!
17. Glad quite a few others also found this tough. I started off at a fair old canter, RUMBLE, GALILEO, PHEW, EYESORE and MALAYALAM all being filled in within the first 60 seconds or so. Having lived in India for a time, I did not find Malayalam the obscure GK it might otherwise have been. It is one of 22 officially recognised languages in India, a country in which some 800 distinct tongues and around 2000 dialects have been identified. After that fast start, however, I got seriously bogged down. SKIRMISH, EQUIPOTENT, TORQUE and KHEDIVE were my last in – in that order and after much difficulty. I agree with Jimbo that SKIRMISH is particularly good, and REASONABLY at 6dn is an excellent example of a well-disguised definition.
    1. Interesting…I could name about a dozen Indian languages, but Malayalam isn’t one of them. I guess few IT guys come from that area.
18. I found this hard.. no time, since I came back to it a couple of times but must have been over 30mins. Rumble, belvedere and malayalam took time to arrive and having come here, I discover that like Andy I have one wrong – having found the anagram fodder for 8dn but failed to spell it right, despite being given all the letters!
19. I found the NW area pretty hard, but got through in 40 minutes. I didn’t know the UK meaning of RUMBLE, so that and LOLL were my last in. I’m not familiar with the film mentioned in connection with 4A, so BELVEDERE is my COD. I was also misled by the ‘about’ in 1A, by thinking the ship in 10A must be a galley, so I didn’t know where that last “O” came from, and the TORQUE homonym, which in fact never occurred to me, and which to me doesn’t work at all. No problem with the KHEDIVE, for some reason, or MALAYALAM after finally realizing the wordplay was pointing to a palindrome. Thanks to Uncle Yap, esp. for the sherpa story, and regards to all.
20. Er, UK meaning? I don’t think so.

    Let me cite some boys from Ohio:

    “Go out yonder,
    Peace in the valley,
    Come downtown,
    Have to rumble in the alley
    Oh, you don’t know the shape I’m in….

    I’m pretty sure John and Tom Fogarty were immune to all UK-centric vocabulary.

    1. Thanks vinyl, but I was referring to the ‘find out the truth’ part as being the UK meaning. And living where I do, I like to think of those boys, especially Levon, as being from Woodstock, not Ohio.
21. What’s happened to the compact presentation we had earlier today? Trying to view comments I’ve come to a new page which is mostly blank space … and much less easy to work through.
    1. Above comment was made when using Firefox. IE still seems to be using old layout.
       1. I’m now utterly confused! Firefox is now using old layout. Have I inadvertently blundered into testing for moving TFTT to WordPress?
22. 10:23 for me. I started horribly slowly, but then picked up speed nicely and had all except one answer in place by around 8 minutes.

    Like jackkt, I become stuck on 1ac by rashly assuming that it began with RE. (Surely REMILL wasn’t a word!?) Eventually I thought of RUMBLE, but by that time around two-and-a-half minutes had been squandered. (Sigh!)

23. A longish 48′ for me. Like Jimbo, I liked 4ac, partly because it reminded me of the wonderful Nichols & May sketch triggered by the Rachmaninoff. On the other hand, I thought TORQUE was a bit much; but then, as a Murcan, I would, wouldn’t I?

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