Times 25,105 – Protecting A Woman’s Dignity

26 comments on “Times 25,105 – Protecting A Woman’s Dignity”

1. No brisk work-out for me on this one. I found it very heavy going and took even longer than yesterday by 10 minutes, making 1hr 17m in all.

   There were 3 DKs today: SALCHOW, BLIMP as a balloon and MUGGLE as I have no interest whatsoever in Harry Potter and have not read any of the books or seen the films. Perhaps there ought to be an equivalent of the dead persons rule for references to new words in popular ‘culture’!

   I’m not sure that the Ashes trophy thing works as a definition of URN. It seems rather a forced effort to get an obligatory cricket reference in somewhere.

   Edited at 2012-03-08 02:35 am (UTC)

   1. Objection to this withdrawn following ulaca’s posting below.

      Edited at 2012-03-08 05:42 am (UTC)

2. …of ‘test out’, owing to my ignorance of cricket, so I could not get ‘grand seigneur’, and in fact believed that ‘dungarees’ must be the literal.

   I did know what a Muggle is, without reading the books or watching the movies, it must be in the air.

   This was a rather difficult puzzle, but fortunately we have had the leg-end bit before, and seen ‘selchow’ in a fairly recent puzzle.

   Edited at 2012-03-08 02:49 am (UTC)

3. Well, I beat you once more, Jack, limping home in 102 minutes. Just as well I had today off. I thought this was a terrific puzzle, and TURN OUT works perfectly for me, as a bail purporting to be from that Test match England lost back in the 1880s was indeed cremated and placed in an urn, and that is the trophy played for by England and Australia. Although that was good, tempting you to the equally plausible ‘test out’, my COD has to go to the Frankie Howerdesque 13ac, with mentions for 9ac and 12dn.

   Like Vinyl, I sort of locked on to ‘muggle’ without having opened a page of a HP book, but my explanation is more prosaic – I’ve probably come across it in the mass media. For a bit of light relief, here are the boys credited in some quarters with having given the world the expression ‘Life in the fast lane’.

   Edited at 2012-03-08 03:53 am (UTC)

4. So a bit quicker than yesterday’s which I enjoyed much more.
   Sorry Jerry, missed your blog — I was only sleeping.
   High spots: working out the fodder in 4dn with the thing hiding in plain sight.
   “At a stretch, a pet” as the def in 12dn.
   The tempter of AT REST (15ac) — both mean “no more”.
   But none of these a patch on yesterday’s torn pants!
   1. You’re obviously more of a pants than a bra man, which is reassuring.

      I think.

5. 26 minutes here. Tricky but most enjoyable.
   A few unknowns today (SALCHOW, AMORETTO, ARAPAHO, BYRD) but the difficulty was more in the cunning cluing. Like the fact that “female” in 3 and “lower” in 7 are not what they usually are. And the brilliant definition of the dog. And the bra.
   In the interests of fairness, if we’re allowed Gigli I think we have to be allowed muggles.
6. I’m not so keen on this one as others appear to be. A lot of niggling references that on their own would be OK but the cumulative effect is to detract from the overall enjoyment.

   “something fast perhaps”=LANE; “a woman’s dignity etc” – rubbish in my view; “brave” rather than “possibly a brave”; “nicked” as a containment indicator; and so on. All in all not for me. 25 slightly irritated minutes to solve.

7. 45 in total today, including a couple of short breaks, which in fairness allowed for the sort of subconscious thinking time necessary for this sort. Even as I wrote it in, I thought the SMUGGLER clue might draw a few blank looks: has it made it into the dictionaries yet?
   ARAPAHO from the inimitable Ian Dury, moving their bodies to and fro.
   GRAND SEIGNEUR last in because I had already taken the GRAND out of dungarees and couldn’t fathom where the rest came from.
   HINDI, even with all the checkers in place stayed blank for the longest time. Females beginning with H are always hens.
   Excellent puzzle, in which I fell into most of the heffalump traps until proven otherwise. GLORY BE was the CoD that most tickled my fancy, but many others of high quality and/or black belt deviousness.
   1. It’s in my new ODE defined as somebody who doesn’t know anything about a particular subject. Its derivation is given as the HP books. According to dictionary.com it can be used with specific reference to computers and all things IT.
8. 55 minutes of being mostly baffled. I kept thinking I’d come across a few gimmes to make life easier but they were few. The cluing here was devious in the extreme and I liked it very much; thanks to the setter. COD to SQUINTING over SAUSAGE DOG
9. Vey clever, I’m sure, but I can’t say I found this puzzle that enjoyable. I did admire the clue for SQUINTING but wasted much time trying to work putto into 19 across. Did anyone else buy that dummy?

   One of my favourite films is Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Unlike the popular image of a BLIMP, Roger Livesey’s old soldier comes across as sympathetic character who shows honesty and integrity, and combines great humanity with a keen sense of public duty.

   I love this scene from the beginning of the film.

   1. Thank you for the Livesey clip. I only knew him from “I Know Where I’m Going” and the Pallisers – wonderful voice. 32 minutes but it felt longer – just not my cup of tea. Abrasion – oh dear – but perhaps I’m just a feminazi as a notorious US radio yakker on my side of the pond would have it.
10. 32:35 .. though I did get an error with a dyslexic SUBEDOTIR.

    Well, I thought this was inspired in parts, weird in others. I really liked the SWORDPLAY and the SMUGGLER, and smiled at quite a few clues.

    But ABRASION? Really? Good grief.

    I have Ian Dury, gawd rest him, to thank for my knowing ARAPAHO.

    Edited at 2012-03-08 01:12 pm (UTC)

11. 
    23/30. My worst showing for a couple of weeks. Couldn’t do most of the SW, in particular Sausage Dog which would have given me some valuable starting letters. An inelegantly worded clue with a poor definition. Grand Seigneur and Arapaho were unknowns as is HP and Muggles. I was with John From Lancs in trying to work Putto into Amoretto.

    There were a few pluses. Bras On in Abrasion raised a smile, I loved the clue for Related and the “outstanding” indicator for “insert around” in Subeditor.

    One to forget and instead look forward to tomorrow’s.

12. I have just discovered this site; having been at FifteenSquared all this while. I think you are all an ungrateful lot. Nobody thanked the blogger for spending time and effort to bring you the blog.

    Kenny from Liverpool

    1. 
       As you say, you’ve just discovered this site. If you stick around a little longer, you’ll find people regularly thank bloggers. If we did it every day, it would get kind of repetitive.
13. For once I was on the same wavelength and managed it in 25 minutes with several smiles and a groan or two, although LOI amaretto was a bit of a guess. CoD the sausage dog or the smuggler, both jolly. Effusive thanks to the blogger, SYA Kenny, we are always appreciative.
14. 
    Epic fail today with several in the top half left blank. Too much unknown vocab (AMORETTO, GRIMACE=lower, SALCHOW) and too many fiendish clues today.

    However, I did get (and fully understand) SMUGGLER.

    Much appreciation (as always) to Uncle Yap, today’s blogger.

15. A clever puzzle that here and there was decidedly annoying. The ridiculous ho-ho of a definition for abrasion (and this on International Women’s Day); the depressing acceptance of a J.K.Rowling term as general knowledge one may be expected to have. I don’t think it’s being snobbish keriothe to find her never-ending string of cliche less artistically compelling, telling, significant, worth preserving in Times amber than Gigli’s soaring performances. Good popular art’s fine but that blasted boy wizard is no equivalent to the Beano or Dandy. Ah well.
    Done in dribs and drabs so no time but it would have been approaching the hour I think. And incidentally, a sale is hardly a purchase. This 10, this 22 can only utter 27. – joekobi
    1. One person’s sale is another person’s purchase. You can’t have one without the other, as the old saying goes!
       1. If you can’t have one without the other – which I do see – it doesn’t mean they’re the same or synonymous.
          1. True, but in this case I see sale and purchase as the same event viewed from two different perspectives.
             1. Well that’s clear enough: the question is whether the words are reasonably interchangeable. I can imagine a shop assistant saying, “There’s only been one sale/purchase of a packet of Cornflakes today” – but even there the different slants make the synonym wobbly. It’s sloppy.
16. 13:56 for me after another horribly slow start. A wholly delightful puzzle – my compliments to the setter.

    Like others I wasted a little time with PUTTO, but fortunately I remembered AMORETTO before moving on to the next clue.

17. I struggled over several sessions with this one. I don’t even want to try and work out how long it took! I was about to give up with SAUSAGE DOG and SHADOW unsolved, and had just logged into the Blog, when I suddenly needed to go to the loo and the stretch pet part of the clue crystalised into Sausage dog, so I did actually finish. My daughter is a Harry Potter fanatic so I knew Muggle but there were many clues I got from wordplay alone. I hadn’t come across the GRIMACE meaning of lower before, but the wordplay was obvious. Thanks to Uncle Y for the detailed explanations.
    I started fairly well in the SE, gradually conquered the NE and NW but the SW held me up for ages.

Comments are closed.