Times 25,235 – Alastair, Sandy and Reggy Remembered

25 comments on “Times 25,235 – Alastair, Sandy and Reggy Remembered”

1. Much slower than yesterday’s speed offering. Stuck in the SE despite the DOMINICA giveaway and the repeat answer at 28ac from the weekend.

   Only question: is there a hint of concealed anagram in 13dn: D(EFECT)IVE — where we have to find the C, combine with the FEET and then do the shuffling?

   1. This type of construction is common in Mephisto land where anagram fodder can be cleverly concealed by such devices (this one is rather obvious, I think). As I’m so used to it, it causes me no trouble (didn’t even register this one until you mentioned it!).

      Interesting to see what others think.

      1. I didn’t have any problem with this one but wouldn’t want it to be the thin end of a wedge, so to speak.
      2. I spotted the construction after I’d got the answer from definition and checkers, but it’s not something I’d normally look for
   2. Your giveaway was one of my last in! I think you are right about the anagram.

      Edited at 2012-08-07 08:02 am (UTC)

   3. DOMINICA was my last in too, and it took me about five minutes on its own! No idea why in retrospect.
2. Most difficult. But my example would have to be:
   O mon jardin d’eau fraîche et d’ombre.

   (TLS setters please note!)

   Edited at 2012-08-07 08:43 am (UTC)

   1. Given today’s blogger, I’m amazed you even dare to suggest it ;-).
3. Once again I completed most of this within 30 minutes but was left with some blanks in the middle of the puzzle which took half as long again to resolve.

   Unfortunately I failed on 15dn where the best I could come up with was A GAL(ONES)E. I was so convinced I didn’t know the word anyway I sort of gave up but now regret not persevering and trying a bit harder as thanks to Henry VIII I might have thought of the correct answer.

   Ages spent later trying justify DOMINICA partly because I thought MINI was part of the ‘fare’ instead of the start of the taxi, and DO = “fare” took some seeing.

4. 20 minutes, and rather a good puzzle, I thought.
   MUSCLE was my last in: the usually helpful rule of 2nd letter U, then 1st letter Q was a hindrance, though I did wonder for a while whether to enforce QUICHE as an answer.
   DOMINICA also held me up for the same reason as Jack – I got the slightly reduced cab and struggled to make some sort of fare fit, reasoning that it could not therefore be Dominica. Curiously, and in the light of Félix Sánchez’ and Luguelin Santos’ exploits at the Games yesterday, I was looking up flags and such to discover there were two, for two distinct nations. Should have paid more attention in Geography. May be why the answer dawned long before the explanation.
   Didn’t know the Apple version of GARAGEBAND (all one word, I see, in its trademarked version), for which enlightenment much thanks, Jim – I look forward to trawling the internet for your releases. More of a Sibelius man myself! Thought it a well organised clue.
   CoD to FRACTION – I liked “(a bit) lacking in guts” as a device and a distraction.

   Edited at 2012-08-07 09:20 am (UTC)

   1. Beethoven my classical favourite both for his music and the way he bravely rewrote the rules. Trad jazz my lighter love. I try to avoid pop music these days having some time ago formed the opinion that the moderm composers and performers lack any real talent
5. A very fine puzzle, with MUSCLE the last to fall once I started attending to the ‘sack here and there’ instruction. My COD, though, goes to the cacophonous GARAGE BAND (where I took the literal to refer to a group that performs garage rock), a great example of concise and precise clueing with a good surface introducing a term likely to be unfamiliar to the average Times fuddy-duddy solver. (‘House’ and ‘grunge’ are about as far as my headbanger knowledge extends.)

   Eyebrows raised by WRING = press (rather than squeeze or twist) and PARABLE (short story illustrating moral) = yarn (long implausible story). But, apart from that, as I said, top stuff. 54 minutes.

   1. You must be too young to remember the days before washing machines and dryers when homes made do with boilers and wringing machines, (commonly wringers) a device consisting of two rollers through which the washing was forced, pressing/squeezing out the water.
      1. I came across such a device when I visited my Nana (born 1900) in New Zealand 35 years ago. Most of my own wringing has been done by hand – flannels, etc.
         1. In our house it was called a mangle. My job was to carry buckets of hot water up from the gas-geyser located in the communal bathroom on a lower floor so that my mother could scrub clothes on a glass washing board. Then together we would pass the wet clothes through the mangle, turning a large wheel to wring the clothes between two large rollers to remove the excess water before carting the whole lot off the washing line
            1. I remember mangles too. I think ‘wringer’ may have been used when the rollers were attached to early washing-machines rather than being a stand-alone device.
               1. Just for the record SOED (1993)gives mangle late 17 century origin while the wringer is dated late 18th, both long before the device added to the early washing machines (which I also remember). There is also the derived phrase “to put through the wringer” which I’ve never met with “mangle”.
                  Although the SOED doesn’t say so it is perhaps a regional term.
6. 25m for this: I found it quite knotty but most enjoyable. I do like a puzzle that is tricky without resorting to obscurity.
7. Jimbo – is your blog title a reference to News At Ten readers?

   Got there in the end today after a long long hold up at the end with Aragonese and LOI Dominica. For Dominica I thought the CA ending was the shortened (Taxi) ca(b) and tried, tried and tried again to fit the rest of the wordplay into ???I?I. Odd that Jetliner and Israel have appeared so recently as answers.

   Astaire reminds me of watching The Towering Inferno on 5 November last year at the Plaza theatre in Stockport. 5 November fell on a Saturday so a matinee screening was perfect afternoon entertainment. Astaire played conman Harry Claiborne and did a little dancing.

   1. Yes Daniel. Alastair Burnett, Sandy Gaul and Reginald Bosanquet became household names. Carol Barnes was in on the act and also Trevor McDonald.
      1. Guessed so. I recognise the names except for RB. I get most of my news now from internet/radio/FT newspaper but have tuned in to TV news the last two nights for Mars Curiosity Lander coverage. What an amazing story that is!
8. An unnecessarily long 51′, with far too much time trying to think of an ex-colony ending in -CA, to justify WRITING PAD, which I thought of almost immediately, and to get my LOIs, 2d and 23ac. (‘here and there’ was quite tricky.) ATTEND took a while, too, but 10:00 is a common enough news time that ignorance of the specific program was no handicap.
9. No time as done in bits but straightforward enough till Astaire at the end (astride? Antoine??). Loved the films of him and G Rogers dancing over the tables and up the walls. I too remember helping at the mangle. 13 rather neat.
10. An hour and a half before I put it down and came back later to complete it (which often seems to work). Last one in was DOMINICA, which I have never heard of, and before that JETLINER after I recalled having seen that a few days ago. Nice puzzle, if not too easy.
11. 13:31 for me, with the vocalophobia-inducing -O-I-I-A holding me up at the end.

    I wasn’t entirely convinced by “press” = WRING (I’m another mangle person), but apart from that I thought this was good stuff, with some fine clues.

Comments are closed.