Times 25088

32 comments on “Times 25088”

1. ….I raced through a lot without getting the cryptics. I didn’t understand or fully understand these: ‘watch’, ‘obdurate’, ‘butcher’, ‘constructor’, ‘escapee’, ‘Erewhon’, ‘learning curve’. Yikes, that’s a long list, but the literals were mostly obvious.

   I had heard of ‘chines’, and thought of them first thing, so saved some trouble there.

   I was somewhat delayed at one point because I carelessly wrote ‘used ut’ instead of ‘used up’, and couldn’t get ‘Antwerp’.

2. So a good time by this week’s standards. I agree that the Red Rum clue is nicely disguised. But I’m still confused about what “Without the following” is doing in 8dn. (Must be hard to get original versions of the old END ANGER ploy?) Does it mean drop the “f” (following) to get CEASE IRE??

   At 17ac, I think we’re dealing with the metaphorical bird of passage: a person who visits briefly and shoots through.

   22dn, For WAT, NOAD has: “(in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos) a Buddhist monastery or temple”. “Thai, from Sanskrit, vāṭa ‘enclosure’”. So I guess it’s legit. But enough eastern mysticism this week already!

   1. 30 minutes exactly with EREWHON using up the last 5 during which I worked it out from wordplay. I vaguely remember meeting this before and thinking how close it is to being ‘nowhere’ backwards.

      I justified 8dn by thinking ‘Without the following i.e. an END (next) to ANGER, a ceasefire could be put at risk’. It sort of made sense then, at least to me. Maybe there’s a neater explanation but I suspect the question mark was added in recognition that it’s all a bit dodgy. On edit: I’ve just seen your version, mct, and I like it. But at least my version got me to the answer!

      I wasn’t aware that Antwerp was particularly noted as a war-damaged city but this is down to my ignorance because I now gather that it suffered extreme bombardment by V-weapons towards the end of the war in an attempt to close the port, but most of them missed their target and fell on the city itself.

      I didn’t know this meaning of CHINES and according to COED its use is specific to the IOW and Dorset areas so Jimbo should be strolling in the park this morning.

      Edited at 2012-02-17 09:16 am (UTC)

3. 17:42 .. only real problem was EREWHON, which I vaguely knew but still wrestled with for some time.

   COD.. OBDURATE

4. 55 minutes, with COD also to OBDURATE (never saw the anagram), although UNTOWARD deserves an ‘onourable mention.

   Jack, Samuel Butler intended his book title to represent ‘nowhere’ backwards, but he switched the middle consonants, presumably because he didn’t want people thinking he had written his Utopian satire about Wales!

   Edited at 2012-02-17 03:30 am (UTC)

   1. Thanks for this. I’m now reminded of ECALPEMOS that features in Ruth Rendell’s ‘A Fatal Inversion’.
      1. Ruth Rendell too, eh?
         1. Indeed, but Ruth long before RB. I was amongst her earliest devotees.
   2. .. and of course Dylan Thomas’ fabulous Llareggub.
      1. I always wondered why Samuel Butler didn’t go for the proper reverse of “Nowhere” – surely EREHWON would have been better. I live less than a mile from Dylan Thomas’s birthplace so Llareggub came immediately to mind. Local jokers also invent villages called Llados and Llanmad.
5. Phew. 34 minutes, nearly half of them on the last three, obdurate, untoward and rathole. I think we’re pretty cavalier towards East Londoners (despite the soap Eastenders). 8 is surely as mctext suggests with the f taken from ceasefire, and a smart clue. But my favourite of the day, COD and CAD both, is the amusing and impolite 21.
   1. I agree with you. East London today is cosmopolitan with lots of accents and well off city workers. Many original cockney families were rehoused after the war to Essex and beyond so this “dropping h” stuff is as you say more the stuff of soaps and crosswords.
6. 21 minutes for this, great fun along the way.The setter knows his (her) victims – I’m sure most of us played with TEE for “green supporter”, and tut-tutted about ETNA because it’s not Naple’s volcano at all. Cluing the fiery DRAGON with “to be boring” was another neat tickle.
   Using Dodo to clue bird, given its metaphorical associations, was nicely misleading – I favour the fleeting visitor idea as the better interpretation of the definition.
   Mctext’s take on ENDANGER elevates it from a somewhat ho-hum clue to a decent one – I didn’t see “cease(f)ire” while solving.
   CoD TENDRIL, but I also liked ‘UNT’OWARD for the giggle and OBDURATE for the anagram hidden in plain sight.
7. 17m. I enjoyed this a lot. The numerous neat devices already mentioned and some unusual if not completely unknown vocabulary (except for “chine”) made for a puzzle that was nicely chewy without breaking any teeth.
   I didn’t understand 8dn. The best I could do was taking “without the following” to be an instruction to separate END from ANGER. On this interpretation it’s a weak clue. On mctext’s surely correct interpretation it’s a very good one.
8. I’m sure mc is correct; the bird of passage is the metaphorical one, and 8dn is a very neat clue, only slightly marred by being quite solvable without understanding (as I did!)
9. Another good puzzle, 20 minutes to solve.

   Obviously knew “chines”, Bournemouth is full of them. Also “wat” from Mephisto puzzles. Not convinced that 14 quite works and a bit of a train crash as far as surface wording is concerned. Had seen the Butler stuff before. Liked 16, OBDURATE

   I like McText’s explanation of 8 which I didn’t spot whilst solving, using the starting E and definition to get the answer

10. 
    Fairly quick time for this one, ending with the (unlikely) EREWHON, put in from wordplay (lookedmore likely than etewhon or emewhon, but only just). Spent some time with ‘rite’ OF PASSAGE in, and trying to figure out an anagram of ‘cease(f)ire’, but all went in ok in the end.

    Hadn’t heard of CHINES, and was a bit dubious about SHUN=duck, but it had to be.

    Had written OBDURATE in the margin long before I realised the neat anagram. For that it gets my COD.

    Have a good w/e, everyone, and see y’all next week!

11. Thanks to Mc Text for explaining 8 down: I had thought it was a dodgy clue but now see it was really quite clever. Didn’t know wat and the only chine I am familiar with is part of a pig.

    By the way, aren’t coincidences in crosswords unsettling? My scientific head explains them away rationally, but they always leave me slightly spooked. This morning, just before I read the clue for ANTWERP, an air-raid siren went off across the valley. Not heard one for years and don’t know why it sounded; keep expecting to hear the low, pulsating beats of a Heinkel He111 overhead.

    Took me about 25 minutes with a short break looking for enemy aircraft.

    1. I now have the theme tune to The X-Files running through my head.

       Well done for keeping calm and carrying on.

12. One of the easier Friday puzzles for a while. Some nice stuff. I particularly enjoyed TIGHT-LIPPED and OBDURATE. I also thought UNTOWARD at least made inventive use of the hoary old cryptic convention that everyone in East London drops their aitches. My route to ENDANGER (8dn) was the same as Jack’s but I agree that Mctext’s reading is much neater and almost certainly the correct one. I can’t make up my mind whether the clue to LEARNING CURVE (14ac) is extraordinarily ingenious or too clever by half and, as Jimbo says, “a bit of a train crash”. Perhaps a little of both. No problems with WAT=temple, but “that brings a lot to frozen areas” seemed to me to be stretching things a bit as a definition of CHAIRLIFT (15dn), or am I missing something?
    1. ‘A lot’ = ‘a group of people’, as in ‘you lot!’
       1. As it happens, Vinyl, I didn’t have a particular problem with “a lot” being used in the sense of “many people”. It just seemed to me that the definition as a whole was rather far-fetched/vague/imprecise. However, on reflection I’m warming to its quirkiness! Quirky and slightly off-the-wall defs seem to be this setter’s speciality.
          1. I really liked this definition. The purpose of a chairlift is generally, after all, to transport large numbers of skiers up snow-covered mountains. It seems spot on to me.
             1. Hi Dave – As you can see from my earlier reply to Vinyl, I’m coming round to it myself!
                1. The main objection would probably be that the base of the mountain is just as much a ‘frozen area’ as the top.
13. 15 minutes – would have been 12 if not for 27a which took a bit of cogitation. Not too tricky apart frmo that but very enjoyable.
14. Didn’t get to this last night, so raced through it in two quick breaks today. Rather liked this, though got CATCHINESS and WATCH from the definitions alone.
15. 15:18, nice smooth puzzle. Devotees of Sid Meier’s Civilization games (which have wasted more of my time in the last 20 years than even crosswords) will be familiar with the Wat, which replaces the normal temple when you play as the Siamese, and produces extra culture and science.
16. No problems apart from WAT, which I didn’t know was a temple and failed to connect with Ankor Wat. A slowish and steadyish solve with no exciting eureka moments. 30 minutes
17. 9:01 for me. This was one of those days when I was feeling rather tired (and had had couple of glasses of wine), so I was a bit nervous about tackling what might turn out to be a tricky number. However, fortunately I found it all pretty straightforward enjoyable stuff, though I made heavy weather of some easy clues and so took a minute or two longer than I should have done.

    Thank you, setter.

18. 29 minutes, with the NE resisting the longest. EREWHON was easy to get, but took me a while to parse ex post facto. Didn’t know CHINE, of course. I thought a number of the clues were rather clunky: 2d, for instance, or 5, 26, 27ac.
19. It was through SMC that I was familiar with the Angkor Wat, but I’ve clearly never played as the Siamese as I didn’t know that the Wat replaced their temple. But, yes, I have spent a significant amount of life in the company of Mr Meier.

Comments are closed.