Times 25168 – A classical bent

27 comments on “Times 25168 – A classical bent”

1. 26:35, with a good deal of time spent waiting for the penny to drop for 21d and 2d, I think in that order. Fortunately, the setter made 14ac easy enough; I’d hate to think of my time otherwise. 2d was one of those cases where having the checkers was more of a hindrance than a help: I could see ‘apostle’ fitting (the checkers, not the clue), and once that was in my head I couldn’t get anything else in. Didn’t know BARBITONE, but it had to be. I never did parse 23ac, so thanks for the explanation.
2. Don’t usually like cross-refs, except when expertly handled as here and (sometimes) in another place. Salve Digestor!

   COD though to the “diSSertation” — one of which I was examining just this morning.

3. 80 minutes and an enjoyable DNF for me. Defeated by 2dn, where I put ‘apostle’ in desperation and also 15 where I put nothing until cheating, a victim of my inability to look past ‘nut’ (or ‘force’) as the literal. SENNIGHT vaguely familiar from another puzzle and CHADOR from the wordplay.

   Thanks to TT for explaining ENSURED and, um, YODEL, but could someone let me into the secret of 3dn, which I assume to be ON HOLD. ‘Waiting for connection’ I get, but not all of the rest.

   1. Keep = HOLD with working = ON before it
      1. Gratias tibi ago. And apologies (to both)for calling you Topical Tim. Are the piccies similar?

         Edited at 2012-05-21 08:02 am (UTC)

         1. Not in the slightest. You were probably just being prescient. Tim’s a Tuesday person.
            1. It was the ‘classical’ that threw me, now I think of it.
4. 30 minutes by the skin of the teeth, so to speak. It was to the second so I missed out on the sub-30 which had looked possible all along until I came to grief at the 16/20 intersection. Once again a large number of answers went in based on the checkers and definition with little understanding of the wordplay but I was able to work out everything correctly before coming here.

   DKs: CHADOR and COPT, although I knew ‘Coptic’ so I figured it must be correct.

   ECOFREAK is in my (oldish) Chambers and my newest dictionary -the ODE – but not in Collins, COED or SOED. Apparently it dates from the 1970s and is an alternative to ‘econut’, appropriately in view of today’s clue.

   1. Sub-30 or not, that’s a pretty freakish time, Jack!
      1. Thanks. It must have been a wavelength thing, plus not worrying too much about wordplay except when I had little else to go on.

         Thanks are due to the obscure playwright Ashley Dukes for writing ‘The Dumb Wife of Cheapside’, a play I was involved in at school, to my prep school headmaster for his obsession with Roman roads, to Corona for delivering American Cream Soda to my door in the 1950s and to the late Hubert Gregg (composer of Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner and I’m Gonna Get Lit-up When The Lights Go On In London’) who presented a nostalgia programme on Radio Two for decades and always included “I shall return in a sennight” in his closing words.

         Edited at 2012-05-21 06:55 am (UTC)

5. 21’1″ on the timer, that pesky one second accounted for by mistyping every other clue and checking through the answers before submitting. I think I’m pleased that APOSTLE didn’t occur to me, or it might have gone in despite the wordplay, several other clues (COP IT, ECOFREAK) possessing the same level of convolution as this would have to be.
   (British) CREAM SODA I remember as having a truly horrible taste, no discernible cream and unremitting sweetness. Perhaps other national variations were/are better.
   Both CHEAPSIDE and ENOCH were hampered by being in the class of knowledge I should know, and which therefore lurked just beyond reach.
   I’m glad LARGENESS was not clued as “Quality of 14” – that would have been one too many.
   CoD to THESIS, not as tricky as some but more fun.
   1. No, vile in Hong Kong too, ‘though loved by many kids, including my own.
6. 23 minutes. I thought for a minute or two that I’d never get 15 but somehow the penny dropped.
   I had a similar problem to Kevin on 2dn, and almost succumbed to the temptation to bung in APOSTLE. So clearly the only word that would fit.
   Thanks for explaining 23ac: didn’t see it.
7. Many thanks koro (amd setter). In the end I was defeated by the SW: CACHE just would not come to mind and, in consequence, I failed on COP IT, ENSURED (could not get beyond ‘assured’) and ORPHEUS. Despite my failure, my dislike of cross-referenced clues (these seem to be occurring more frequently) and reservations about some of the particular knowledge required (e.g. my O Level latin for SALVE), I enjoyed this challenge.
8. As the Cauchy distribution is symmetrical it seems that it does have an expectation viz. at the axis of symmetry. However it’s variance is infinite.
   1. I suspect it’s more Poisson. Sometimes the Monday puzzle doesn’t turn up at all!
   2. Well, you might think that symmetry would suggest a mean of 0, but you’d be wrong. The integrals on the left and right hand side are both infinite (or don’t exist, if you prefer) and so don’t cancel each other out. Taking random samples from the Cauchy distribution is a very sobering experience; none of the usual rules apply.

      And in case you’re wondering if you’d every see one in real life, it is the ratio of two bog standard Normal distributions (that’s those apocryphal bell shaped curves, to those who aren’t following) which is one reason I shudder when I see people analysing ratios, although to be fair, it’s having 0 mean on the bottom line which causes the problem.

9. As noted elsewhere, I think the cross-referenced cluing worked well here because the target clue (14) was pretty easy and the three referencing it were fun and light, and not convoluted.

   Edited at 2012-05-21 08:00 am (UTC)

10. 42.12 today so a bit of a struggle but an enjoyable one. Unknowns were gettable from cryptic and there was much to admire with my COD to THESIS. Thanks for blog as I could not get see 16d or 27a which went in on trust!
11. A puzzle of 2 halves for me. I zipped through the top half in 9 minutes but the rest added another 27 minutes to the final time. I didn’t believe 15d was an anagram although I had the initial E – the F and K looked impossible. I’ve never heard of ECOFREAK anyway. Very enjoyable.
12. Very enjoyable. Lots to smile at including happy memories of ice cream sodas on seaside holidays in the 1950s. Solved in 10 minutes on a lunchtime bus journey – I wonder if it would have been less or more at my desk.
13. A steady solve in 25 minutes with no real worries. Some good clues overall.

    My thanks to Jack for reminding me of Hubert Gregg and to my father for consuming the quite disgusting mixture of ice cream and cream soda (well, he was Canadian)

14. …all but ECOFREAK in pretty good time. Came back later, and still couldn’t get it.

    COD to THESIS, very elegant!

15. Great puzzle, loved most of it, never heard of ecofreak otherwise 18 minutes of fun. My CoD poodles, obviously.
16. Very nice puzzle that I zipped through until held up somehwat in the SE. That led to some fun as I unraveled THESIS and POODLES, both very good. Finished in about 20 minutes with ECOFREAK. I don’t remember having seen ECOFREAK before. But a fun outing, thanks to the setter and koro as well. Regards.
17. 7:46 for me. I started slowly and finished slowly (with ADOPTEE my LOI), but hit the setter’s wavelength in the middle for a reasonable start to the week.

    Nice puzzle – COD to 28ac (THESIS) – apart from all those references to 14, which made it feel a bit too much like the Guardian for my taste.

18. 60 mins for me. Took longest over the SW, where I failed to parse ENSURED correctly (thanks to Koro for the explanation) but did guess the correct answer, until I remembered about the Copts, after which Morpheus woke me up and the penny dropped for CACHE. LOI was SPAR after POODLES. My COD was THESIS too. A fun puzzle.

    Edited at 2012-05-22 04:41 pm (UTC)

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