Times 25243 – if Lucy solved 29 across

43 comments on “Times 25243 – if Lucy solved 29 across”

1. With George, I had no idea what was going on at 29ac, so left it blank after the statutory hour. On seeing the answer, I saw how it worked; and also saw that (natch!) Jack had posted the parsing.

   Also fell into the trap of UNCURL at 21ac. (Note to self: pay more attention in class!)

   Much to like here; and also a bit of awkwardness to note. E.g., 13ac (TAI CHI) which goes all around the houses to get to a rather simple answer.

2. Just looking at that now: I think we need U(NFU)RL to make sense of the “packed”.
3. Congrats on the blog, George. This must have been a nasty one to write up.

   I made very slow but steady progress to finish all but 1dn in an hour when I gave up and reached for assistance before realising I had an error at 12ac having written FIG ROLL, thinking “one grand” had to be “1G” although I wasn’t happy with ‘for’ = ‘F’.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_roll I never heard of SOCCER MOMS anyway.

   There’s some excellent stuff here but would it be churlish to point out that it’s perfectly possible to come from Cornwall (in the SW) without travelling TO NE?

   29 is FELL(ow!) – I felt that!

   I note we have a pangram.

   Edited at 2012-08-16 01:58 am (UTC)

   1. Your point about Cornwall is true, of course, but I think the setter is eliciting a ‘coded’ way of rephrasing ‘from SW’ > ‘TO NE’.
   2. Having now looked this up, the definition in Collins is what I expected i.e. a woman who spends a lot of time ferrying her offspring to and from sporting events, but I’m intrigued that the Oxfords (COED and SOED) don’t have this. Instead they have: a middle-class suburban housewife, typically having children who play soccer rather than a traditional American sport. So the parent is being defined by the sport her child plays. This seems decidedly odd to me unless there is some sort of social cachet involved in playing soccer in the US which I would never have imagined. Perhaps one of our US correspondents would care to comment? Or anyone who knows more about it of course.
      1. I am not an American, of course, but I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. As I understand it, ‘soccer’ in America is seen as the sport of the middle class, at least when played by kids. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin rallied “hockey moms” behind her when she was out campaigning, which I always assumed was a similar breed, but indigenous to those states where it’s forty below in winter…

         I am ready to be corrected by someone who knows for sure.

         1. I was surprised to see this term show up in the Times crossword. Thanks to the Setter for throwing a crumb to us poor Yanks struggling with cricket and rugby terms! Here in the US, soccer has become a more and more popular sport beginning, roughly, in the early 1970s. In spite of this increased popularity, soccer is still no where near as common as football, baseball and basketball. Almost every school, no matter how small, has a football field and a baseball/softball field, rarely a soccer field. Soccer is much more common at larger schools, mostly in larger towns and suburban areas. Because of this, a lot of soccer is played as an intramural rather than a school sport (see AYSO for example). If your school does not have a soccer team, you could join an AYSO league. To get to and from soccer games, since you wont be riding the school team bus, you’ll have to be transported by a parent, usually a stay-at-home Mom….a “Soccer Mom”. Hope this helps.

            Edited at 2012-08-16 08:27 pm (UTC)

            1. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
4. …so thanks for the explanation. ‘Fell’ is simply ‘fellow’ – ‘ow’, i.e. ‘I felt that’.

   My time was about 3 hours, on and off, but all correct.

5. Thanks guys – added edits to the blog.
6. Just to say I had all kinds of issues with the site throwing out error messages, so this might explain the “slow” times at the top of the leaderboard – though to a mere mortal like myself anything less than half hour is a solid effort…
7. Boy, did I NF! Not only did I never figure out 27ac–and I don’t mind that, post hoc–but I meant to put in FELL in total ignorance and didn’t, and put in ‘carbonada’ instead of CARBONARA. DK BUMMER–for me it’s equivalent to ‘drag’, as in ‘what a bummer/drag!’. What does ‘once’ do in 18ac? other than make me rethink BEELINE? Agree with mctext re UNFURL.
8. Delete the comma!
9. I thought this was an excellent puzzle, with some great clues (I like both 13 and 18 – even George’s omitted 14dn is very good), a non-chestnutty but well enough known artist, a US state that had me searching not just one but two continents, a non-Mafioso don, and, IMO, a perfectly fair modern US cultural reference. In the end, after my hour, I had ‘no-dish’ at 20 and ‘egg fool’ for the real dish, but that didn’t take the gloss off a great puzzle.

   Many thanks to both setter and George, to whom I am indebted not just for the two I got wrong but for four others (3 – the ‘IO’ – 4, 7 and 28). At least I got my last in, FELL.

   Edited at 2012-08-16 03:11 am (UTC)

10. At GMT0101, I wrote “I couldn’t get into the Times crossword page today (maybe my sub has expired; but then why no reminder to renew?) and when I tried to get
    to the Sub page, I got an Error 404 message (sigh)”

    It is now GMT0601, no change in status

    Thank goodness, today is not my turn to blog

11. 
    Finished all correctly, with FU of almost all clues – got FELL-OW; didn’t appreciate the importance of ‘packed’ for U(FUN*)RL – (yippee!!!), but it did however take me the best part of two hours (boo!!!).

    With this one I always had the feeling I could finish it, so was determined not to give in, although it was one of those where I had to search for the definition, then work back through the wordplay. Putting in ‘let go’ at 22dn meant that the two last to fall were 28ac adn 25dn.

12. 24:47, and thought this was an absolute cracker, with UNFURL being the best among several gems.

    Not sure if the leader board reflects the difficulty of the puzzle or problems with the site – I have had to log in every time I visit lately, so clearly something technical has been playing up. Mind you, the board does look as it often does when it’s missing the strange people who solve offline and turn it into a typing competition, which usually happens when the puzzle’s been especially tricky.

13. All but 29 across in 35 minutes, then had to put the newspaper to one side and return after 20 minutes to finish.

    My reaction to the clues varied from “Oh, I can’t be bothered sorting that out, it’s obvious what it’s meant to be” (e.g. 18), to “That is brilliant” (e.g. 8), with more in the latter category.

    Quite taxing start to the day; I feel quite exhausted.

    1. Agreed the ‘axes’ in 8 were superb.

       Ulaca

       1. My all-time favourite axes, after cutting, were sharpened using a (sharpening) instrument… that was the clue elements, can’t remember the exact wording but it was brilliant. XYLOPHONE

          Times #24621 25a

          http://times-xwd-times.livejournal.com/596464.html

          Isla

14. 41 minutes and a delight after my attempt at yesterday’s, where I gave up at BOT. I must have been rusty after a break from solving. I was constantly surprised and delighted by today’s, however, with the possible exception of HIDALGO where I was just surprised I got it right. UNFURL gets my vote for COD too, amongst a host of contenders. Compliments to the setter.
15. A soufflé falls when it deflates.
16. Quite pleased to have finished correctly under two hours, seeing the problems others had. 29 was LOI, not helped by becoming fixated with the idea that 14 was PEER-TO-PEER, and something to do with House of Lords reform.
17. Exceptionally tricky puzzle, in which ONYX, GET SHOT OF, MARIE ANTOINETTE, MAKE A BEELINE FOR, TAI CHI, NE’ER-DO-WELL, IDLER and KIDNAPPING were particularly clever/ingenious. It took me an uncountably long time and I was able to complete in the end only with resort to aids. Like many others, I entered FELL at 29 ac without having the slightest idea how it worked (thanks to Jack for the explanation). OW = I felt that! was brilliant but the “was deflating” definition was unacceptably loose, I thought. Also I do not see why the clue to 22 ac indicates that the solution is a hyphenated word when it is not – unless I’m missing something.

    1. Interesting. “Let-up” as a noun takes a hyphen so I thought it was wrong too, but “relent” can also be a noun, apparently. I never knew that!
       1. Belated consultation of the dictionaries confirms that you are right, Jack. New to me. One of my dictionaries quotes Edmund Spencer as an example of “relent” being used as a noun, which suggests that this this usage is both poetic and archaic. How typical of this setter to spot and then exploit that confusing possibility!
18. Why does “fell” mean was deflating”?
19. No idea how long this took, as I solved it while watching the cricket. Everyone knows cricket does weird things to time.
    Many, many clues where the literal, if you could spot it, wasn’t so tricky, but the cryptic was intense, and necessary to show you’d picked the right literal. HIDALGO and my last ARRAIGN (at least three overs on its own, but two of them spin, say several minutes)as exemplars. Couldn’t see any answer other than ARRAIGN (bit of a stretch to complain, but OK), couldn’t make the cryptic come even close. Bucket?! Light eventually dawned, but didn’t make me feel as if I should self-administer a kick, rather salute/glower at the perfidy of the compiler.
    Didn’t like KIDNAPPING much: the explanation here seems to be OK but I think makes the clue look as feeble as I think it is.
    CoD to the (slightly ponderous?) “follow the bouncing ball” clue at 18. Do what it says in the right order and you get there.
20. Two missing today, both in the SE corner: Nodose and Hidalgo. Hadn’t heard of either word and feel unlucky that they crossed. If I’d known one I might have got the other with definition and all checkers.

    Made steady progress through the remainder which I’m chuffed about given the difficulty comments above. I’d solved eight clues over breakfast so left the house feeling I’d got going with this one. Lenin at the weekend and today Stalin. Haven’t got round to reading an account of Joe’s early years that I bought last year, but a line describing him as the “ultimate politician” sticks in my mind. Tip of my hat to the setter for the X and Y axes and the surfers’ URL – great stuff!

21. This wasn’t easy, about 45 minutes of head-scratching, ending with FELL after finally seeing and removing the ‘ow’. I hadn’t unnderstood the wordplay for CARAVAGGIO or TOMBSTONE, so thanks for those. Very good puzzle, I thought. MY COD to TAI CHI for the William I hint at ‘ich’.

    For Jack’s query on SOCCER MOMS, I think Collins has it right and the other two sources are a bit wide of the mark. They ferry children to sporting events, and over the last few decades soccer has become the parents’ choice for younger children during warm weather, since more can play and they’re less likely to get hurt than in baseball or American football, and girls are able to participate in full. I’ve never heard the phrase as attaching any social cachet for soccer over other choices. It denotes a certain group, i.e.: suburban, married, womes, in the age bracket where they have children aged, say, from 5 to 15. Regards.

    1. Many thanks for your comments re SOCCER MOMS, Kevin.
    2. I’ve often picked up on the perceived lesser injury threat of accociation football in parents’ minds. Is it not also the case that by and large soccer in the States is a white person’s (including Hispanics’) sport while basketball and football, at least, are heavily patronised by blacks? And does not the perception of the sports’ patronisation follow along these lines?

       Most ‘scooer mom’ cultural references (and here I’m referring more to the occupation than the expression as such) that I have seen in my admittedly skimpy US TV and film viewing occur among affluent white sub-groups where mom drives a van, eg Desperate Housewives. Oxford seems to be hinting at this without of course mentioning the dreaded colour divide.

22. Strange how it goes – finished in 16 minutes in the end, but with over half of it done in 5! It mostly seemed very straightforward today, particularly the top half.

    FELL was last one in for me too – took ages to see “I felt that” = OW.

    1. It’s not much consolation overall, Andy, but 29 was my second in and I saw “I felt that” = “OW” before I read the rest of the clue. I need to take comfort where I can find it!
23. A game of two halves, the top over in far less time than the bottom. 53 minutes in all. Thanks R. Saunders for the explanation of rekindled. Some new departures for me, e.g. 7. I think the indicated hyphen in 22 may be a mistake; if not it’s a step too far into the artificiality of artifice. Great puzzle but a racing change in the gears here and there.
24. 25m. I found this a touch easier than yesterday’s, and much more enjoyable. Less grind, more eureka.
25. “Fired over” = rekindled: R, E, KIND (giving), LED (a light emitting diode is a glower)
    Stuck on 21 across and 19 down after 2 hours so gave up.
    Richard Saunders
26. R, E, KIND,LED = fired over
    Sorry if this is a duplicate comment.
    1. Sorry, I thought that might happen.
       RJS
27. Belated post as didn’t get to it until late in the day and then ran out of time, DNF, didn’t know HIDALGO / NODOSE, had FIG ROLL so stumped on 1 dn, and dismissed fell(ow) as couldn’t see ‘fell’ = deflated. No souffles on offer chez nous. Nevertheless a brilliant puzzle and congrats to those who whizzed through it. Kidnapping! Witty clue of the month.
28. 17:39 for me – finding it about twice as difficult as yesterday’s.

    A first-rate puzzle which sent me down various wrong tracks (including FIG ROLL and COLORADAN) and left me short of some explanations: my thanks to keithdoyle for his deflating/falling “soufflé”, to Richard Saunders for KIND + LED, and to jackkt for “relent” as a noun – though, like joekobi, I suspect the hyphen in the enumeration of 22dn is a mistake.

    My compliments to the setter.

    Edited at 2012-08-16 09:59 pm (UTC)

29. An exceedingly enjoyable and witty puzzle, but unfortunately so tricky that I had a number of mistakes (and took over an hour to get that far): TICK rather than DINK, NODISH rather than NODOSE, and of course I invented the wonderful scientific instrument called the TOMOSCOPE, which somehow indicates departure times to people from COPE in Cornwall (whereever it may be hidden). But I actually did understand and severely enjoy the wordplay to many (but not all) of the other clues, starting with SO-SO, my first one in.
30. Yes, the hyphen is the enumeration was a mistake. When using phrases like LET UP which can also be hyphenated nouns, for some reason I usually enumerate according to the latter option. In this instance I abandoned the idea of cluing it as a noun but forgot to change the enumeration accordingly.

    “Deflated” for “fell” I agree is marginal, but just about acceptable I think. I did think of an example to justify it (not souffle, as it happens) but I can’t remember what it was now.

    Many thanks as usual for all the comments, whether praiseworthy or critical, and for the excellent and painstaking blog.

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