Times 25,153 – Choppy North-East

30 comments on “Times 25,153 – Choppy North-East”

1. Agree with Uncle Yap, the NE was the hardest and I too ended with the 6s.
   On which: PUNIC = “of Carthage” (from the language, similar to Phoenician) and the clue signals this with the apostrophe.

   Queries
   • L for novice at 2dn; thought this was a Times no-no.
   • Cervantes homophone … doubt it!
   • 15ac: is “more than others” enough to signal the superlative?

   At 18ac: US (you-ess) is a bit of Brit. (services?) slang for “unserviceable”, “useless”.

   Edited at 2012-05-03 01:59 am (UTC)

2. Interesting that experiences are so similar. I thought this was going to be easy when I did the top left In no time at all, but found the rest steadily increasing in difficulty culminating with the top right quarter. Enjoyed the tussle though a few were a bit beyond what my not so Elven eye can see.
   1. Indeed. I suspect we’ll see NW & SE, then (slower) SW, then (even more slowly) NE. The puzzle would seem to be set up for this.

      Note the mutual starters: 1ac/1dn are easy.
      14ac/14dn are OK, but not many will know DOWITCHER.
      15ac/15dn are critical to two corners.
      6ac/6dn: not much to go on. (Some will be tempted by MUNIC, perhaps?).

      Edited at 2012-05-03 03:56 am (UTC)

3. Not so much a sting in the tail for me, as a sting in the thorax and abdomen. It was a struggle all the way after the NW went in Sever-like in about 90 seconds. Having laboriously worked out the wordplay for all the exotica of the natural world that I’d never heard of in the bottom half, I held myself up by positing ‘hocum’ at 18. The possessive conceit at 6dn did for me for ages too, while CERVANTES must be the worst homophone of all time when one can think of no person in Spain or out of Spain who would pronounce it anything like ‘serve aunties’. Last in ‘declamant’, which sums up the last two days for me. Time to take up sudoku?

   Edited at 2012-05-03 02:30 am (UTC)

4. I thought I was in for an easy time on this one as I mostly raced through the top half, but it was not to be as the SE slowed me down to a crawl and I ground to a halt completely for ages in the SW. I didn’t know WEDDELL SEA, LAMARCK, APOLLOS or DOWITCHER and there were a few less than familiar words such as PROVENDER and DECLARANT which also held things up a bit. The homophone at 8dn doesn’t work for RP speakers like me but I think it would just about fit Oop North.
   1. Not just on that vowel — the A of “auntie” — (which I use by habit myself). He was [miˈɣel de θerˈβantes saaˈβeðɾa] … eh?

      Edited at 2012-05-03 09:33 am (UTC)

   2. The third syllable I have an especial probelm with: I can’t imagine anyopne saying ‘antes’ (as in the Spaniard’s name) rather than ‘antiz’.
      1. but antiz are still female relatives, aren’t they? 🙂
5. 23:31, and I already can’t remember if the NE slowed me down more than elsewhere. PUNIC came once I stopped thinking of the name of a city. As for CERVANTES/serve aunties, I thought it was pretty awful, but then I tend to think that of all putative homophones (sepia/seepier still rankles). But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to run into any number of Americans who’d say it like that. Come to think of it, I have an American colleague named Cervantes–doesn’t speak Spanish–I’ll have to check with him. And after all, if one accepts Don JOOen and Don KWIKset, can one reject surVANteez?
6. Similar experiences to to others it seems, as regards order of solving but I had more trouble finding the new-to-me dowitcher than the familiar punic and Cervantes. 22 mins in all.

   As usual, complaints flood in about the homophone, but everyone seems to have solved the clue OK… get away with you, as my gran would say

   1. Like most others I suspect I solved this clue from the checkers, and then groaned. I don’t think it’s enough just to say that the clue is solvable: the homophones ought surely to sound a bit alike?
      Having said that, I figured that a North American might indeed pronounce CERVANTES in the same way as “serve aunties”, and the question “might one be hearing?” allows for a bit of geographical flexibility. I don’t see why RP should have a homophonal monopoly.
7. Quick on NW, 24 minutes overall, so much the same experience.
   CANDOUR was one of those that fools people like me with who know loads of OT cities and run through the list: it was slightly anticlimactic to find it was good old Ur.
   I’m not saying anything about CERVANTES: not saying it is one of the better ways of getting it.
   DOWITCHER and APOLLOS (as butterflies) unknown, and needed the anagrist to work out the spelling of the southern sea.
   Was it slightly naughty to have alternate variants of me/mi and ti/te in 20? And I’m inclined to agree that it was also slightly naughty to have a superlative clued by a comparative at 17, but heigh ho.
   I’m partially indebted to Countdown, where it’s a regular visitor, for getting NEONATE quickly.
   CoD between DIGITAL and CANDOUR for amusement value. Maybe the latter gets it because the former seems vaguely familiar.
8. As for others although I found the southern hemisphere harder than the northern.

   Solved CERVANTES from definition and C?R?A – the clue has to join sandpaper/sandpiper et al amongst the very worst of homophones (unless, I guess, you have zero knowledge of Spanish)

   At 16A the categories A and B are economic groupings whereas “upper class” is usually “toffs” who can be both broke and stupid. The rest of it seems like standard Times fare.

9. 36m here, of which half in the NE after a very rapid start in the NW.
   I don’t mind a dodgy homophone but CERVANTES is, like an aggressive stationery salesman, pushing the envelope. I wonder if they do it on purpose just to see the reaction here.
   I was relieved to find that there isn’t a Dewdell Sea.
10. problem with 10 ac’s def. Candour is a noun, but ‘open’ is adjective, giving candid really?
    1. The definition is “being open”.
11. Anyone else suffer from writing the time down on the piece of paper, millions (well 5 or 6) colleagues turn up and say I know its lunchtime but… My response being yes it is lunchtime and I am timing myself on the Times crossword, at which point they take no notice and carry on with their question. Grrr.
    However, I would guestimate about 16 mins to solve this – never heard of a Dowitcher but the wordplay was clear as it was for Lamarck, who was new to me as well.
12. ….although my time, at 58 minutes, was hardly outstanding. I understood all the cryptics, and needed them for ‘dowitcher’ and ‘Weddell Sea’.

    I agree that the literal for ‘candour’ is not very good. Either ‘being open’ or ‘open’ both seem to call for ‘candid’ and not ‘candour’, although the answer and wordplay are clear enough.

    I had a lot of trouble with ‘declarant’ and ‘pearliest’, but for me the best clue was for ‘provender’, which I had to put in from the definition and then work out.

    1. I can’t see the problem with “being open” as a gerund.
13. Ocho abajo no es el español—and unworthy of a Times crossword. How many other solvers added Punic not because they knew it as a city, but because it fitted? Thank you blogger. CoD was walkabout. Don’t recall upper classes ever being incorporated using socio-demographic AB initials.

    Enigma

14. 
    Found this very tough, was glad to find it all correct. Needed cryptics for all the unknowns (WEDDELL SEA, DOWITCHER, APOLLOS, LAMARCK).

    I finished in the SW corner (LOI the bird), and yes, I did just put PUNIC in because it fitted.

15. Have to admit this one just made me laugh. It reminded me of my younger daughter’s favourite US tv program when small (Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood) which had a puppet character called Donkey Hodie. Yes I know – groan. 21 minutes and much more fun than yesterday’s.
16. Although PUNIC was one of my first in I had all sorts of trouble with 20ac because I immediately thought of FADO (fa+do=a type of Portugese music) and that stopped me doing the SW for a long time.

    I thought it was a brilliant clue until I realised I was wrong and surprised nobody else fell for it.

    Skuds (time taken… all day as usual)

17. This took a while, after like others filling in the NW area immediately. Laboriously chomped through the rest finishing in about 40 minutes. I ended with the PEARLIEST/ALL HALLOWS pair. I don’t know about the potatoes at all, and with 13D I persisted in trying to fit the useless ‘obtain’ into the answer, fruitlessly as it turned out. I knew of the DOWITCHER and the WEDDELL SEA, so that helped. But overall, some devious clues, I thought, such as the reverse engineered HARVARD. No comment on the homophone. Regards to all.
18. I thought I was in for a personal best as I raced through the top half of this. Then I came well unstuck with the unknown DOWITCHER and APOLLOS .DOWITCHER, in particular, was needed for the across clues in the SW. 29 minutes. Had a groan at the homophone “serve aunties” but think it’s probably fair. After all, unless we are native Spanish speakers, there must have been a time in our childhood when we didn’t know any better and pronounced it just so. (Btw, I recently stayed in a parador in the town where Cervantes was born. There’s a nice little bronze statue outside his birthplace showing a lifesize Don and Sancho Panza sitting on a bench. You can sit between them for a photo opportunity. Pleasant town. Worth a visit. Just outside Madrid. Alcala de Henares. The parador was good as well. Who needs Trip Advisor when we’ve got TftT?)
19. Dowitcher news to me. 26 minutes. The supposed homophone is almost a slight to Spaniards. Strange to get such a variation in solvability. I’d guess one setter took over from another.
20. 8:00 for me. Like others, I thought I was heading for a fast time – possibly even another “clean sweep” – but then hit the NE corner about halfway through and had to abandon any such hopes.

    CERVANTES raised a smile, though I dreaded the flak it would almost certainly receive!

21. Tough going today. 30/32 with a wrong Munic for Punic (emcee = man in uniform?) and missing Punt and Neonate. Must remember had = ate. Of the many fine clues I particularly liked Walkabout.
22. I managed all but six clues today, unknown terms and abbreviations abound. I looked to the blog for three of them and got the crossing other three. I was happy to work out what I could in this puzzle.

    I originally had WEDDELL as a guess, and then thought DEWDELL seemed more likely. I was wrong!

    Did anybody put BUST for 12 across?

    I was charmed by the wordplay “having X to eat, Y” for “X in Y” but I confess I only worked it out after guessing the answer, PROVENDER.

    Didn’t know poll = head, though I’ve learned poll = clip from doing puzzles. And just my luck, I remembered ‘pong’ for the foul smell, but not ‘hum’.

    1. poll = head as in poll tax, which I assume is familiar to Americans – that is, if Tom Lehrer is anything to go by.

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