Times 25,115 – A Daily Telegraph Puzzle

35 comments on “Times 25,115 – A Daily Telegraph Puzzle”

1. 32 minutes with delays at 4dn where the wordplay misdirected me for a while and at 7dn where I had guessed too early that the second word would be ‘terrier’ before I had worked out what the first word had to be.
2. Maybe I should try the Telegraph. It’s been a bad week for me dogs wise. On the other hand, WOOFER took me straight to the classic NTNOCN sketch. I wonder what they would make of the cruciverbalist cogniscenti.
3. Must have been very easy! First time for ages I’ve completed the crossword (under 20 minutes) before the builders arrive, giving me a chance to have an early look here (rather than a late-night visit). Only problem was trying to enter POPULACE for 12ac rather than 13ac. Not fully convinced that RADICALLY = ‘progressively’: might well be the reverse.
4. 15 minutes, so straightforward but an elegant and enjoyable puzzle nonetheless.
   My heart sank when I saw the clue for 2dn but against the odds it turned out to be a word I knew.
5. Indeed, an easy one.. by special request 🙂

   Still better than a Telegraph crossword though. Nice slick surfaces.

   Damn Livejournal seems to be making other changes.. after not having had to log in for months, it is making me do it every day now.

6. Perhaps I was doing a different crossword, but this was stiffer for me at 23 minutes. I don’t know why PECAN held me up – with ENTANGLE it was my last in. I’ve been discussing planets with my 2 and quite a bit year old grandson, with Venus and Jupiter brilliant in the evening sky, and I think I was waylaid by looking for a named star, and left it late. Thus circumstances do make DUMASses of us all.
   PECAN and MEASURED both had a well-structured ambiguity about what went inside which, and I left HEART until I had checkers, because although the device was obvious, “ground” allows a lot of possibilities.
   Struggled with the big dog, not being able to get past STRANGER something (another sort of dog in mind). The excellent structure of the wordplay made it my CoD.
   I’m not going to try the Telegraph, now – it’s obviously a toughie!
7. Not quite so straightforward as yesterday’s for me, but nevertheless much easier than several of late…

   Thanks for parsing ELEVENSES, the dog, and SQUALL (couldn’t think of ‘qualm’).

   LOI: SHELDUCK.

8. 24 minutes and easier than yesterday for me. Horses for courses. Held up by ELEVENSES and ENTANGLE at the end. I was looking for another dog reference at the latter, and elevenses was a britishism too far. COD to the SPANIEL for the wordplay.
   1. I think these strange meal times like elevenses, (afternoon) tea and supper, came originally from the upstairs/downstairs workplace where the bulk of the servants had to eat when their lords and masters were doing other things. I think the Brits exported these habits to places like Oz etc. where they probably have different, local names
      1. My knowledge of British meal times is almost exclusively derived from Enid Blyton’s various find outer novels, where they used to eat a lot, I seem to remember. What precisely supper consisted of was always a mystery, and remains to this day. I do know somebody who still refers to supper, but have never enquired as to what it entails. Your upstairs/downstairs theory might have some merit, such are the oddity of the hours. Maybe also it remaining daylight until well into the middle of the night by Oz standards.
9. Do I detect a hint of condescension in DJ’s title today? A pity if so. The Telegraph may be easier, but any Times puzzle that takes an experienced Times solver as long as 15 minutes is still probably harder than an ordinary Telegraph puzzle — which ought typically to detain the likes of DJ for no more than 10 minutes (and still be a good sound puzzle).
   1. I don’t do condescension. It’s a purely factual statement of opinion.
      1. Can you have a purely factual statement of opinion?
         1. Just my little joke
10. ….so 50 minutes for me. Nearly as slow as Saturday’s, for different reasons.

    I never understood the cryptics for ‘elevenses’ and ‘springer spaniel’, either.

11. Yes, I agree with Jim, very straightforward. I hadn’t spotted the wordplay in 1a, but I didn’t let it hold me up. Easy, but no less enjoyable for it.
12. Speaking as one who has solved the DT puzzles for getting on for 42 years and the Times for about 2, I would have to say that the Times crossword was about the same as today’s DT Toughie and a lot easier and less time consuming than the DT cryptic. The Times took me 14 minutes and probably should have been less but I was held up by 19d and, literally pathetically, 19d! Hope you will all still talk to me now I have admitted my secret ‘other’ life!
13. 30.12 so nearly two sub30s in a row. I was held up by ENTANGLE my loi and also 4d and 5d. Just didn’t see them easily. My COD to RILL for the elegant surface. And I can’t agree with DJ on 25a; I always look forward to that first sharp hit on the taste buds when I return to Greece. One mans fish is another mans poisson comme on dit.
14. 
    No major delays today, but needed five minutes at the end to figure out Stone-Cold. Thanks Jimbo for explaining Shelduck, Springer Spaniel, Heart and Demo. I put all those in from the checked letters and definitions.

    Downloaded “The Count of Monte Cristo” to my Kindle on Sunday – Dumas was therefore easy.

15. 36′, done in bits and pieces while watching TV, I already forget what. Thanks to Jimbo for explaining 1ac and 7d to me; I had no trouble entering either, after a couple of checkers, but couldn’t figure out why they were correct.
    There must be a Law of the Conservation of Nuisance: After a week or so of getting the LJ goat telling me of an error, and then having to click on the ‘recent thingies’ option, today for the first time I was able to log on immediately, without having to sign in.
16. Lacks the Times snap. 17 minutes. Managed to get away from Camus to Dumas. Generally a bit like a Su Doku – they can take time but are two-dimensional. This was about two-and-a-half dimensional.
17. About 20 minutes, and I cannot compare this to the Telegraph since I’ve never seen it. I was held up at the end by ELEVENSES, but not by much else, except maybe MEASURES by not really believing ‘measd’ could be a field, but I put it in anyway when the last checking letter went in. Regards.
18. Didn’t find this easy, only had 16 correct. Considered springer spaniel, measured and heart but couldn’t justify them so didn’t put them in.
    1. If it’s any consolation, I didn’t bother to try and parse the dog, failed to parse HEART and managed to parse MEASURED. Even in these [post-]Ximenean days, hunch is still a large part of doing crosswords (the art part as opposed to the science part) – added to which some clues are so deviously clued that they defy the wit of most solvers, even the top ones. Which is all by way of saying that, since you’re getting them right, “flip your wings and fly up high” and stick ’em in. That elusive finish isn’t so far away!
       1. Thanks for the tip. I think I was being too cautious after getting a long answer wrong on monday.
19. PI = private investigator

    Why the reference to Philip Marlowe? Could have been any one of numerous private eyes.

    1. Quite right. And thank you. I was guessing Prostate Inspector.

       I do wish bloggers would stop assuming we had brains.

20. 11:43 .. easy puzzle but stylishly done, I thought – good surfaces everywhere.

    Last in was PATHETIC, one of several pretty cannily clued words (‘getting under way’ is very nice).

21. Must have been easy; my first sub-30m and my first before Tony (had to resort to the book whilst waiting at the pool)
    Still not convinced RADICALLY = progressively or BAILIFF = steward, but they were obvious from checkers and wordplay

    Wouldn’t compare this to a DT though – not enough anagrams

    JB

    1. Congratulations, JB. Now that you’ve broken the 30-minute barrier, you may find that your times start to come down in earnest. When I was keeping a record of PBs for Race the Clock (the old Times Crossword Club T2 puzzle contest), people used to say, when they first broke the 2-minute barrier, that they expected that that would be their limit, but before you knew it they’d whittled their time down to 1:30.
22. 10:09 for me. Should have been two or three minutes faster but I’d had an exhausting day and was feeling horribly tired.

    Nice puzzle though – the DT must be pretty good these days!

23. I agree, easiest for a while, 26 minutes to complete. But why this obsession with speed? Unless you’re entering the Championships. I like to make it last, like a good book, unless I’m om a plane or something, about to land. If I get stuck I invariably do better after a break, it’s as if the clues were being thought about meanwhile in my subconscious.Am I alone in this?
    1. You’re far from alone. Historically the blog was run by Peter Biddlecombe for people who wanted to compare times in the run up to the Championship – hence the name Times for the Times.

       The site has evolved since those days and we now provide (approximate in my case) times as a guide to how difficult we found the puzzle. The site has become an excellent training aide for new solvers and those seeking to improve their technique.

       1. Thanks dorsetjimbo, believe it or not I hadn’t twigged the ‘Times for the Times’ title as being speed related, another sad lapse of my deductive powers.
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