Times 25207 – fire, fire and more fire!

31 comments on “Times 25207 – fire, fire and more fire!”

1. So, very heavy weather. Like yesterday, two easy answers near the start: BUSHBABY and BEHEAD. But also like yesterday, the rest proved a teeth-pulling experience. SENECIO I thought particularly difficult: obscure answer with an obscure clue.

   No complaints about the YAWS homophone here; though there will no doubt be some forthcoming.

   The clue (20ac) reminds me of a schoolboy prank. We used to run into the foyer of the Liverpool University School of Tropical Medicine, claiming to have a rare tropical disease. When the men in white coats arrived, we’d yell “frostbite” and leg it.

   Hands up those who, comme moi-même, looked for a anagram of “beast died” at 1dn. No-one heard of the notorious Arthur BEDISTEAD?

   Surprised, George, that you knew ACANTHUS as “Architecture: a conventionalized representation of an acanthus leaf, used esp. as a decoration for Corinthian column capitals” — as you can see, I had to look it up. Anyone else?

2. A little too much obscurity in some clues for my liking, particularly in 28ac where you have an extremely obscure medieval reformer pointing you towards a little-known (by me) architectural ornament. I also thought the wordplay in 2dn and 5dn was a tad obscure. But there were some nice clues along the way. I did like the Hokey Cokey.
   Yes, mctext, I’ll put my hand up for the “beast died” anagram and yes, I had to look up the architectural ornament to make sure I had it right.

   Edited at 2012-07-05 04:54 am (UTC)

3. Daisy as in the girl in the song (‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do’ – who’s being asked by her beloved to sell the Prius and get by on a tandem) + part of a bike (chain).
4. 40 minutes for all bar the weird plant, which I’m very grumpy about not getting, having got the inverted ice but not the specimen. My grumpiness reached pre-Lendl Andy Murray levels when I discovered that I’d gone all Appalachian and stuck ‘yars’ in for the disease.

   Punishment no doubt for my staunch defence of RP against the rhoticians.

   George, you have a typo at 4 dn – should be BAKSHEESH.

   1. Thanks for the proof-reading!
5. I might have been fooled into thinking “miserable beast died” indicated an anagram if my first in had not been 8 across “urn” made famous in a schoolboy joke “What’s a Greek urn” “About ten bob a week!” The wage indicates its vintage.
   1. You mean, the fact he still got one then?!
6. Far too much obscurity here for my taste. This one made yesterday’s seem like one of Jimbo’s strolls in the park and although it took me only 10 minutes longer to solve (71 minutes) I really struggled most of the way and needed aids to crack four in the lower half. Also there was lots more to look up and check once the grid was complete. I won’t parade in public a litany of my ignorance.

   What is ‘May’ doing at 11 ac?

   The name of the song referred to at 17ac is ‘Daisy Bell’.

   Being ultra picky at 6dn, May Day is not a Bank Holiday unless the calender happens to fall that way. It’s called Early May Bank Holiday.

   Congrats on taking this bullet, George. It would have been my worst nightmare to solve when on blogging duty. I have a feeling I recognise this setter from the worst one I ever had to blog, some years ago.

   Edited at 2012-07-05 06:21 am (UTC)

   1. I took the clue to be mimicking a conversation, with one fellow asking if he can butt in and his interlocutor granting permission, peremptorily, a la military.
      1. I think the ‘may’ is a rather clumsy way of getting round the problem that the cryptic requires ‘I interrupts’ rather than ‘I interrupt’. Not that I can think of a neater way of doing it . .
         1. Yes, I see what you mean.
7. About 35 minutes. One of those puzzles where a lifetime of accumulated mental clutter actually helped.

   Although I knew Daisy, Daisy from childhood, (it was a favourite song of my grandmother’s) I shall always associate it with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

8. 25m, which felt like a good time for a very tricky puzzle. I enjoyed it overall but thought there were a couple of borderline clues (PHILIPPIC and ACANTHUS) where the double obscurity was a bit unfair.
   Funny to have the “wrong” meaning of “Busby” so soon after Tim pointed it out on Tuesday. However Chambers at least has it as an “informal” usage and I’d wager the vast majority of people have no idea it’s wrong, which means it’s not.
   Unknowns: YAWS, STYMIE as a noun, ACANTHUS (I knew it was a word, but not what it meant), Hus, SENECIO, RICARDO, the link between Brutus and PHILIPPI, stele.
   1. I was about to post about the busby/bearskin distinction, on the grounds that if one can’t be pedantic here, then where can one?

      (While I acknowledge the point made by those who say that language is an organic thing, whose evolution is both inevitable and desirable, I still find myself becoming a bit of a Grumpy Old Man on the subject. This argument, to me, suggests that if enough people get something wrong, their version should henceforth be regarded as correct…)

      1. Far be it from me to deny you the pleasure of being a Grumpy Old Man! Instinctively I feel the same way in many cases, but intellectually I know that trying to resist changes to language like this is (whether desirable or not) futile. In language the concept of correctness is largely meaningless. I suspect that the vast majority of people mean/understand “bearskin” when they say/hear “busby”, and the fact that this is historically inaccurate is not going to change that.
         1. You’re right, and if people aren’t 100% precise about military headwear, I think I can live with that. However, let me make it clear that “uninterested / disinterested” is a line in the sand. And whatever you do, don’t get me started on people who say “The proof is in the pudding”…
            1. There was a lengthy discussion on dis/uninterested a while back. It turns out that before disinterested meant disinterested, it meant uninterested, and the wrong version was right before it was wrong. Fascinating.
               I’m unambiguously with you on the pudding though. And what on earth is a tooth-comb supposed to be?
9. A couple of typos George:
   > you have BEAST instead of BEAR in 1dn
   > I think BACK in 10ac is just “returned” not “has returned”

   Edited at 2012-07-05 08:42 am (UTC)

10. In common with most others I didn’t enjoy this much and found the same parts as others far too obscure. That is particularly true of ACANTHUS which I knew as a plant not as a decoration and as for Hus – say no more. Had to use the dictionary and Google to sort that out as I suspect most did.

    Agree with Jack about May Day and the extraneous “may” in 11A. Also used the dictionary and Google to sort out PHILIPPIC. All in all a bit much. Full marks George – and I thought your hangover would come from celebrating the Higgs!!

11. Blimey, I found this a terrible struggle. As I was up late last night, I decided to have a quick look at the puzzle then, a decision I was slightly regretting 54 minutes later. I might have had better luck after a hearty breakfast, but that is probably optimistic. As tough a daily puzzle as I can remember in recent years.
12. Not one to tackle in my enfeebled state, time irrelevant, enjoyment practically nullified. The only thing that kept this from being a Club Special was the overall lack of obscure words with J’s Q’s and Z’s in them, which at least has the advantage of making them easier to look up.
    I concur with all “obscurity” comments above. I knew Jan Hus only having studied reformation theology as part of my degree. He is, however, a Czech national hero, with his own bank holiday. I knew the column decoration bit from a not so recent Listener.
    My wife says Ricardo is well known, but she’s an economist.
    In the interests of being picky, would I be right in saying that the Royal Engineers are not a regiment? They are a Corps, which is different. And Re is not short for regiment as an excuse.
    No Cod in a sort of ineffectual protest.
13. I’m sure I would have enjoyed this one more had it not been my second over the hour solve in a row, although at 80 minutes I actually did better than yesterday on this one. Knowing ACANTHUS (but not Hus) and PHILLIPIC (but not Phillipi) may have helped, but not much. I also might have got 1ac sooner had not Tim’s and Wiki’s “the bearskin should not be mistaken for the busby” warning not still been ringing in my ears, and putting HURDLE at 27 was also no help, although no great hindrance either. (Well, hule could be Scottish dialect for zit). SENECIO, YAWS and RICARDO on the other hand were complete guesses based on the cryptic. COD to HOKEY-COKEY over CAVE IN. Another win to the setter and I can’t blame him/her for that. Well played, sir/madam.

14. I’d tend to agree Tim but once it’s got into the dictionary (and this one is in all three of the usual sources) I don’t think we can blame the setter. It’s still worth pointing out though.
15. …since I apparently have heard of a surprising number of things – I put in ‘acanthus’ and ‘philippic’ very early on, only I unfortunately misspelled ‘philippic’. I had heard of Hus, Ricardo, Philippi, the song, the decoration, no trouble there.

    Then I took a walk over to the Hudson to view the fireworks. While waiting, I saw that the beast was a bear, not a boar, and entered ‘Bluebeard’ and ‘cave in’. Upon returning, I cracked the cryptic to ‘senecio’, which I definitely have not heard of. This left only the ship, which I couldn’t get for a long time until I suddenly saw it from the cryptic, and realized that I had an error in 15 down.

    All solved, all correct, no aids, elapsed time including a viewing of the Grucci show, about three hours.

16. I’m afraid I threw in the towel on this one pretty early, sensing that it was going to be a marathon. I find this kind of puzzle just takes up too much time and mental energy for a weekday. My thanks to George for solving it so that I didn’t have to.
17. 46:29, limping home with ROMPED (5a).  The obscurities and occasionally dubious cluing made this a painful solve.  Unknown: the bearskin BUSBY (1a BUSHBABY), Daisy as a girl on a bike (17a DAISY CHAIN), STYMIE as a noun (27a), ACANTHUS as a decoration (28a), SENECIO (2d), David RICARDO (5d), the battle of PHILIPPI (15d).  Unfamiliar: YAWS (20a), BLUEBEARD as a serial killer (1d), RIO as the former capital of Brazil (5d), TASS (16d TASTELESS).

    Clue of the Day: 7d (ELYSIAN).

    Edited at 2012-07-05 12:58 pm (UTC)

18. 12:24 for me. There was nothing at all unfamiliar, so I should really have been faster, but my brain feels like candyfloss at the moment. (Sigh!)

    1. You mean you had heard of senecio? It seems to be a strictly botanical term, not something you would come across in gardening.
       1. I think I probably first came across it in a Times crossword many years ago, but since then it seems to have become quite familiar. Possibly it’s the sort of word that John Grimshaw includes in his T2 puzzle every now and then. Possibly, having once come across it, I noticed it in passing when I was looking through Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers or some such. Anyway once I had the S and N in place, I was able to bung it in straight away (before working out the wordplay properly – though I had spotted ECI from ICE).

          Edited at 2012-07-06 12:00 am (UTC)

19. Yikes! Just looked at Tony’s time. Back to earth… I almost gave up on this after 45 minutes when I had a long way still to go. Went to aids for the plant, which helped because I’d never heard of it. On the other hand, I knew ACANTHUS because all the ceiling roses in my Victorian terraced house feature tasteful acanthus leaves and lilies. At university long ago I shared a room with an economics student who told me about RICARDO et al. The name sounded quite operatic and stuck in my memory. Finished with use of aids in 63 minutes. Whew!
20. Mostly enjoyed this, a few really nice tricky clues.

    But too many obscurities made it ultimately annoying. Senecio? Ricardo , even though guessable? Daisy on a bike? Yaws? Philippi? Phillipic? Hus?

    The only one guessed wrongly was the almost-remembered ACANTHES, guessing HES was a UK acronym or abbreviation.

    Rob

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