Times 25156 – How much can one bear?

41 comments on “Times 25156 – How much can one bear?”

1. And no idea about how I got most of them. Crossers and defs after the two 15s went in is about it. A courageous blog for a very different Monday!
2. Congrats on your blog, koro! This puzzle was full of bear-traps so I was pleased to get through it all correct in 65 minutes. I probably spent another half an hour working through wordplay as, at a guess, about a third of the answers went in on definition alone. Some of the tricks took ages to work out, for example the apostrophe S (is) serving as a substitution indicator at 14ac.

   On the other hand I needed to understand all the wordplay first time round to get the unknown DITHYRAMB and UPPSALA. I lost a bit of time at 22ac because at 23dn Garbo was the first silent star to come to mind.

   A brilliant and entertaining puzzle that’s extremely inventive and devious yet scrupulously fair.

   Edited at 2012-05-07 05:56 am (UTC)

3. Arise, Sir Kororareka! You deserve a knighthood for that! I don’t think I’ve ever come to TftT seeking enlightenment on so many clues. LEECH,and TOWNSFOLK are seriously devious but also seriously fair. I,too, put in many on definition alone and had to come back to them to work them out. Bloggers may be interested to know that FUNNEL-WEB SPIDERS can, and do, live at the bottom of swimming pools for up to 24hrs. So says my scientist wife. 81mins of effort.
4. A Bank Holiday delight, though at times I felt I’d rather be at work! 50 minutes of gritted teeth: thanks to setter and also to kororareka, not least for the Poor Johnny One Note clip. A modern art “happening”.
5. 33 minutes, so many of them untangling wordplay (not always successfully, as in TOWNSFOLK, KOALA and LEECH) after a more or less inspirational stab at the answer from definition and or crossing letters. KOALA was my last in, and fortunately I didn’t know KaAmA, apparently the hartebeest, otherwise that might have gone in, so blitzed was I by the heavyweight deceptions of this setter.
   The unravelling was necessary, for the most part, otherwise 19, for example, would have stayed as SKINNY DIP, disabling its surrounding solutions.
   Nothing in this (completely) unfair, but very few went in from cryptics. CoD to SHARKSKIN (could have been almost any clue) as the one which most provoked a sotto voce “you b*****d” once I’d worked out what it was.

   Edited at 2012-05-07 08:34 am (UTC)

6. Well, that was hard work and like others many were pencilled in lightly based upon definition and checkers with the cryptic only half understood. Didn’t know DITH….. and struggled to remember the spider (guessed from “spinner”). Made 18A harder than it should have been by having a half memory of Chekov saying something about being married to medcine.

   Brilliant work setter and koro both.

7. 87 minutes and two wrong: ‘sykes’ for SIKES and ‘strap’ for STROP – the reverse hidden strikes again. At least three cricketing clues here. Lots of fun and deviousness. Thanks for explaining TOWNSFOLK and SIKES. Kudos to the setter. Out of a great bunch, COD to KOALA.
8. …not understood – I never did figure out ‘townsfolk’ and ‘Sikes’. But all correct, and a very fine puzzle.

   My only error was having ‘nuttier’ for a while, but when I worked out the spider I saw that couldn’t be.

   I was nice of the setter to give a few easier clues, otherwise we’d still be solving.

9. Well, I got through nearly all of it in 18 minutes then didn’t get through the two remaining clues at all, even after a night’s sleep. LEECH and HARPO remained resolutely unsolved. Setter 2 Me 0.

   I considered LEECH, but couldn’t see it even after koro’s reveal above, so thanks to keriothe for laying out the cue for ‘lech’. Too good. And HARPO as a ‘silent star’ is sneaky, but entirely fair.

   Edited at 2012-05-07 12:05 pm (UTC)

10. 39m. Phew! That was very tough, in spite of only one unknown in DITHYWOTSIT. Just brilliant stuff: “one after skirt”, indeed. “Less sound”, “in County Men’s Society”… I could go on.
    Hats of setter, and thanks. You *!@$.
    1ac reminds me of my all-time favourite joke:
    Q: According to Freud, what comes between fear and sex?
    A: Funf
    1. And not forgetting: “If the answer is 9 W, what is the question? “

       “Tell me Mr Wagner, does your name start with a V?”

       Essex Man

11. Wow! Some work-out for a Bank Holiday Monday! Multi-thanks to setter and to Koro for top-notch blog.

    Managed to finish correctly, though lost track of time, and not without resort to Ms Bradford’s lexicon for the names of different species of spiders. I didn’t know the US “moonlighting” sense of DOUBLE-DIP and for some time had SKINNY-DIP, which seemed the sort of thing you might get up to by moonlight (though why especially in America I couldn’t figure out), with the “large drink” being taken as a reference to a “skinny”, a kind of low-fat milky coffee served at Starbucks! Entertaining but, alas, completely wrong.

    Some of the clues for the shorter answers were particularly good, I thought – HARPO, KOALA, STROP (v clever hidden word), SPAWN and LEECH. The brilliant def of lech[er] as “one after skirt” was on a par with the recent def of locust as “leggy stripper”. Was the same setter responsible for both, I wonder? The German-flavoured MAKE FUN OF and CHEAPJACK, as well as TOWNSFOLK, all involved devilishly devious, but fair, wordplay, and DITHYRAMB was an exceptionally well-disguised anagram with a lovely surface read. All in all, great puzzle.

12. Thank you indeed Koro. I submitted with trepidation after 37 minutes all-in wrestling. Threw in the towel on parsing LEECH and UNPEG. SHARKSKIN is absolutely first-rate.

    In my neck of the US, double-dipping is used to describe someone, for example, drawing a pension and a salary from the same source. Also to describe a second economic recession following hard on the heels of a first. Moonlighting is when e.g. a cop by day works as a security guard at night.

    Edited at 2012-05-07 02:32 pm (UTC)

13. I can’t see what SIDE DRUMS have to do with a kitchen?
    1. ‘the kitchen’ is a playful term for the percussion section of an orchestra.
14. The percussion section of the orchestra is affectionately known as “the kitchen”. This crops up from time to time, so it’s worth while remebering it. It often makes an otherwise incomprehensible clue a comparatively easy get.
    1. Snap!
       1. I nearly wrote ‘affectionate’, as well, koro, but having once played in ‘the kitchen’ I’m not so sure it always was. It rather depended on who was saying it. I always suspected the violins thought us a vulgar lot (they may have had a point).
          1. I did load the “affectionate” with a fare dose of irony. You obviously had a similar experience with the violins as I. Why is it they were the only ones who could play in tune? (They might have had a point there too.)
          2. Actually I wondered about this while solving, and as we seem to have the relevant expertise in-house I will ask. Is a SIDE DRUM called a SIDE DRUM in the kitchen? I’ve always assumed the name was a specific reference to where it is worn, played by someone marching in a red coat and silly hat, occasionally lifting his drumsticks up to elegantly mustachioed nostrils. In the orchestra I’d have thought it was always referred to as a snare drum. I can tell you from personal experience that this is the case in jazz-funk bands, but I’ve never played in an orchestra.
             1. We always called it a snare drum, too, so you probably have a point, though I think the dictionaries will say they’re interchangeable terms.

                By way of nothing in particular, the week before last I went to see our local (ridiculously good for an out-of-the-way spot) symphony orchestra open their French festival with a programme that included Ravel’s Bolero. Now there’s a challenge for a snare drummer – total concentration for 15 minutes of endless repetition. They used two snares and both were pretty much perfect throughout. They must have been on beta-blockers.

                1. Every time I’ve heard that piece, I’ve spent the whole time listening to the snare drum, rooting for the drummer but on the edge of my seat anticipating a mistake. Somehow the other stuff going on has never quite caught my attention, at least not enough to detract from the main drama.
                   On the other point, my limited research suggests that the dictionaries do indeed treat them the same, but that’s because they’re defining the object. A snare drum and a side drum are the same thing in physical terms, but I would submit that a side drum is never part of the kitchen.
                   Tonight, Beethoven’s piano concerto no 5, with hepcat prodigy Daniel Barenboim on keys…
    2. Thanks to both of you for explaining
       1. Its called “the kitchen” from the phrase “everything but the kitchen sink” – a reference to the fact that “percussion” covers everything imaginable from triangles to full blown cannons
15. I am usually in the caboose section of the train but by God, I was completely derailed today. I almost had a DNS ( a Did Not Start honorarium to the uninitiated in such pursuits of excellence) and only avoided that dubious distinction thanks to koro’s perfectly placed deliberate omissions clues and a couple of others. What is the over-under on 10 minutes for Tony Severs’s time on this one ? I am almost tempted to take the over…

    I will now have to print this blog out and parse the thesis from koro. Thank you.

    1. I would keep your money in your pocket: the club leaderboard shows at least two genuine times (in amongst the cheats) under 20 minutes.
       More generally I would take heart: this blog is a great way to improve, and you’ll notice the improvement much more on the really difficult ones.
16. Compliments to the setter for a terrific puzzle that, to me, typifies what The Times cryptic should be all about. Ingenious clues throughout. Superb entertainment for a Bank Holiday Monday.

    27/30 with Spawn, Side Drums and Dithyramb missing, and Sikes misspelled as Sykes. Very well blogged koro.

17. Well, that was a barn-burner. About an hour, and I hadn’t understood TOWNSFOLK, SIKES, BACK ROW, CHEAPJACK or MAKE FUN OF until reading the blog, and I am lucky DITHYRAMB was an anagram or this would have been a DNF. Bravo to koro for clarifying all, which is certainly well beyond the normal call of duty. My LOI’s were the crossing KOALA/SIKES pair. A very good puzzle overall, so thanks and some bewildered applause to the setter. There seem to be COD nominations all over the place, so I won’t try to single any out. Regards to all.
18. A brilliant puzzle, matched, or maybe exceeded, by a brilliant blog. Many thanks both to the setter and koro.
19. 15:48 for me – relieved (but not too surprised) to find I wasn’t the only one who made heavy weather of it. Some wonderfully clever stuff, with several clues only resolved properly after I’d clicked on my stopwatch.
20. I can’t believe I finished this puzzle, especially considering that out of 30 clues, I had question marks by 16 of them.

    Very grateful to koro for the blog! I learned a lot today.

    Some remaining questions:

    • How does meet = apt?
    • How does odds = sp?
    • How does ‘by’ work in ‘leg severed by weapon’?

    Thanks!

    PS. For any snooker fans out there, immediately after watching Ronnie O’Sullivan win the World Championship I stepped out of my New York apartment, only to run into Shaun Murphy, sitting outside Rockefeller Center, eating a cupcake. An odd day.

    Edited at 2012-05-08 08:39 am (UTC)

    1. Meet can mean fitting, correct etc and therefore apt. IIRC “For it is meet and right so to do” is one of the responses in a C of E service – or used to be in the days I used to attend them.

       SP is Starting Price.

       Try thinking “Silent star IS leg severed AT THE SIDE OF weapon”

       Edited at 2012-05-08 10:02 am (UTC)

       1. Okay, I found ‘meet’ now with that usage. It says ‘archaic’.

          In what context is SP = Starting Price? I still don’t see how that gives ‘odds’.

          As for the ‘severed by’ thing, I just don’t see how that’s the right preposition. I would expect ‘severed from’ or something like that. In any case I’m just nitpicking.

          Thanks!

          1. COED defines Starting Price as “the final odds at the start of a horse race”.

             ‘By’ doesn’t relate to ‘severed’ but to the position of ON (leg) in the word HARPOON (at the side or edge of) which is then severed to give HARPO. I admit I had to think a bit to justify this and there could be an alternative take on it but I think mine works.

             There’s no rule against using archaisms although it’s true they are often indicated.

             Edited at 2012-05-08 01:41 pm (UTC)

             1. Thanks on the SP thing. I’ll have to remember that. Also the first time seeing BR for British instead of just B.

                This is splitting hairs, but I’m still not sure I get the ‘by’ thing. Doesn’t ‘by’ mean ‘next to’ or ‘beside’? Surely ON is not ‘by’ HARPOON…

                1. Well I’ve given it my best bet so maybe we need input from another contributor. Unfortunately it’s unlikely anyone else will be reading this blog by now as they’re all on today’s.
                   1. Hehe. Oh well. 🙂
                2. You may not find this entirely convincing (I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced of it myself!) but the way I read this clue is: “Silent star [HARPO] is the result of a weapon [HARPOON] severing its own leg [ON]”.

                   BTW, I assume you’re familiar with the convention by which “‘s” can represent 1) a possessive, or 2) “is”, or 3) “has”. I’m assuming that what we have here is case 2).

                   Edited at 2012-05-09 12:35 am (UTC)

21. 10 NIRVANA = IR for Irish + V for verse in NANA. I think “old lady of pop” just refers to pop and nana …

    Surely “old lady of pop” = “mother of father” = nana. I am perhaps being slow here and everyone else thinks that’s clear from the blog as there are no other comments but it took me a while to click!

    22 LEECH = LECH as in lecher – How does Lech = skirt please?

    Ian
    +++

    1. Lech = one after skirt; the definition is “it drains”

       As for nana & pop, I’m reluctant to buy into an argument about who calls their parents and grandparents what since this is household specific, but a google search (the one reliable indicator of all such matters) for nana & pop yields 133,000,000 hits and all of these (I have checked) relate to a grandma and grandpa combo. I assumed “old lady” meant “wife”, which I think is the more common meaning than “mother”, but I’m just about to google that too. I may be some time.

       1. 1)Lech – thanks for that – I omitted to read “one after”!

          2) “Old lady of pop” – Chamber’s gives for “old lady” “one’s mother or wife” and for “pop” : see poppa (inf esp N Am) papa. “Pop” is also a common enough term for father in Br English. I don’t see how the clue works unless “old lady of pop” is interpreted as “one’s father’s mother” = nana (Chamber’s: nana; see nanny: a pet name for a grandmother). I was surprised there were no comments about this clue on Monday. (I didn’t do Monday’s crossword till Wednesday)

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