Times 25,261 – Don Quixote De la Mancha

42 comments on “Times 25,261 – Don Quixote De la Mancha”

1. After yesterday’s, I was not best pleased to have to reach 23d before putting in an answer. But after heaps of time– this took me over an hour– I somehow managed it all, and there wasn’t a triple letter in the lot. Uncle Y, 9ac is MORCEAU, (more so, ha ha) a word I’d never thought of as English (as opposed to, say, ‘gateau’). I thought of Bambi and toady for 1d, as well as Hormel (a US ham producer) until finally CAMEL came to me; I suppose the color is the same, or nearly enough. 16d: IMPERVIOUS, without V (very); another one that took me forever.
   1. Sneaks in the back door via the concert programme.
2. …but I started at 7:30 and finished just now, at 10:10. However, I also did back exercises, called my mother, and took a bath in that period. I had to jump out of the tub to put in ‘pan’ and ‘palmyra’ – warm water on the head definitely loosens the brain.

   My last in were, embarrassingly, ‘sunny’ and ‘scowl’. I was thinking ‘growl’ for a long time, but it doesn’t fit the cryptic.

   I thought ‘all over’ was good, but maybe we can have another gangster?

   I am waiting for someone to come along and say ‘Latin’ was his last in.

3. Yes, 1dn is CA(r)MEL. Think ‘colour’ for the definition! And 11ac is LA(s)T IN. 2dn is AERATED (double definition). 9ac MORCEAU (“more so”). 16dn is IMPER(v)IOUS.

   Edited at 2012-09-06 02:05 am (UTC)

4. Over an hour. I struggled in the NW too, but I resisted putting in RONDEAU (or TABLEAU). I wasn’t sure AERATED could really mean to add CO2 as opposed to air, but Chambers says it does, and I’d not heard the irate meaning either. But it had to be right as my loi.

   Edited at 2012-09-06 03:19 am (UTC)

5. Another 1hr+ solve for me but only by 4 minutes today. This was just what I didn’t need after yesterday’s ordeal but perhaps I can be consoled by the probability of something a bit easier tomorrow when it’s my turn to write the blog.

   The writing went early onto the wall when I realised that once again I was unable to solve any of the four 3-letter clues at first glance.

   I really liked LADIES MAN and ALL OVER for it’s rather original take on the old chestnut AL for the gangster.

   Wasted time with (e)WAN written in at 14ac and didn’t know DECOUPAGE, PALMYRA or SIM.

   Edited at 2012-09-06 02:20 am (UTC)

   1. I remembered Palmyra thanks to Richard Halliburton’s “Book of Marvels”–did that ever cross the Atlantic?

      Edited at 2012-09-06 03:00 am (UTC)

6. Oh yes, I had eWAN for a time too. Until I got DECOUPAGE that I’ve never heard of but has very precise wordplay so can’t really be anything else.

   And I think SIM is a reference to The Sims (or Simcity etc) which are role playing games unlike the one referenced.

   Edited at 2012-09-06 03:32 am (UTC)

7. An improvement on yesterday, as I had to come to the blog for three clues only (AERATED, DECOUPAGE and EINSTEINIUM), the first of which I don’t feel too bad about, as aerated as upset was unknown, but I should really have done better with the other two where I was onto the anagram segments. Always tough, though, when you don’t know the words. Another COD for ALL OVER. Or perhaps LADIES MAN, where the Cervantes reference was completely lost on me, despite DQ, and Byron’s epic poem, being two of my favourite works.

   Edited at 2012-09-06 04:53 am (UTC)

8. My take on this is that it’s WITH (‘given’ in its ‘taking into account’ sense, ie ‘with the increase in prices, …’) + STAND (‘accommodation in stadium’).
9. I feel less bad now about my 33 minutes. This was a strange beast, with (almost) symmetrical pairs of clues, the two “paperwork” ones and the two “put up with” ones, WITHSTAND and COUNTENANCE. With DECOUPAGE being a morceau unfamiliar, I struggled expecting the paperwork definition to be misleadingly different.
   I’m with Ulaca on WITHSTAND, though I also suppose that if one is given something, it’s with you.
   Whether SUNNY and Sunni sound alike again depends on where you live. Which reminds me: Sunni and Shiah, didn’t they do I Got You Babe?
   No issues with the rest, just slow to solve ’em. CD to ORIGAMI for PM’s predecessor.
   1. For what it’s worth, there are two pronunciations demonstrated in SOED sound-files. The first is like ‘sunny’ said in RP and the second is like saying it in northern dialect. Dictionary.com only has the ‘northern’ version.
10. Note to compiler.
    Whilst not wishing to see the cryptic ‘dumbed down’ I don’t expect a mephisto every day. A lot of this was far too esoteric and over contrived for me (as was yesterday’s). frankly I found this a waste of time.
    1. Could you elaborate on “esoteric”? My list, for example, would include decoupage, Carmel/camel, Einsteinium, Palmyra, putto and maybe tipsycake as items that wouldn’t be in everyone’s vocabulary: the first was my unknown before today. Carmel caused me personally more trouble because I happen to be able to produce a truly esoteric set of biblical mountains, others would be affronted that I’ve put Es in the list.
       While I’d be a tad dismayed at meeting a puzzle like this in a Championship, I thought, for the most part, the cryptics were reasonably generous in their assistance. There are those who maintain that the Times crossword is always a rather splendid “waste of time”.

       Edited at 2012-09-06 08:07 am (UTC)

       1. Indeed, I’ve always rather thought that was the point of it!
    2. More like a Club Monthly than a Mephisto, based on the fact that I can actually get to grips with a CM, while M occupies a place in Things I Don’t Get along with natural selection.
    3. For you, maybe, but perhaps not too demanding in the ways you mention for everyone.
11. I confidently put SHEER at 6 down on first pass. A deliberate ambiguity?
12. 53m.
    Crikey, we’ve had a run of them, haven’t we? I enjoyed this more than yesterday’s, but it was still a bit of a grind. I’m still a bit too grumpy for these monster puzzles, perhaps because I’ve hit 40 today. Which reminds me, happy birthday Anax.
    I don’t pronounce SUNNY and “Sunni” the same, but lots of people do and that’s good enough for me.
    My last in was AERATED: I didn’t have a clue about the “hot under the collar” meaning. I thought “hot” must be “rated” and wondered how AE could mean “collar”.
13. I agree with your list Z8…. Apart from eisteinium which, oddly, was the first I got from the (fairly) clear anagram, also I think it’s appeared in a recentish puzzle. Having read Uncle Yap’ss excellent breakdown of the puzzle I understand the wordplay for all, but I fear it would have taken me days rather then minutes or even hours to crack.

    From the comments it seems yesterday’s and today’s puzzles were particularly hard, but I made better progress with yesterday’s.

    1. Thanks for picking up the conversation: I’ve been doing these things for 40 odd years and usually expect to do them in 15-20 minutes (add 5 for mistyping on line), occasionally squeezing under 10 if it really clicks. So yesterday’s and today’s were, on my measure, considerably tougher, with yesterday’s the harder one. But practice and persistence are the keys.
14. All but the NW corner finished in 45 minutes, and then at least another 45 off and on to complete that. It might have helped if I had ever heard AERATED used in the second sense; I wasted much time trying to parse it. I’ve also never heard Sunni pronounced sunny, but that at least didn’t hold me up. I didn’t get ALL OVER at all, so thanks Uncle Yap for explaining precisely how dim witted I can be. Palmyra, on the other hand was an easy get, since I was sitting in it when solving. Apart from that, some cracking clues which left me shaking my head in wonderment. Not too many extraneous words here. COD to SPEED over ELECT but only because I didn’t get ALL OVER.
15. A tough but fair challenge. 56 minutes. At school I rather enjoyed Latin’s status as a hard subject after finding it a much easier A level than I expected: mug up the set books and you’re there. Decoupage new to me, an interesting word. Now then, to thoughts of 17 and 12.
16. Thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle, even though I found it quite difficult and wasn’t helped by a succession of interruptions from doorbell and telephone.

    AERATED. This is another word I associate with my parents’ generation (we had BROWNED OFF the other day). An aunt of mine was always admonishing her quick-tempered husband for “getting so airy-ated”.

    Edited at 2012-09-06 11:27 am (UTC)

17. Today’s and yesterday’s puzzles are probably the toughest consecutive ones I can remember in quite a while. Decoupage was my LOI, only made reluctantly due to somehow having confused it in my mind with decollete …
18. 34:03 .. yep, another serious challenge, but I found it much more doable than yesterday’s, and more fun.

    AERATED – I used to watch Coronation Street, before they started turning it into Eastenders oop north, and I’m sure it featured frequently in the dialogue of the older characters (often, as John says, as ‘airy-ated’).

    LATIN – like joekobi, I found it the easiest of my A-Levels.

    Last in: a good 5 minutes on the ROLLS / PALMYRA pair.

    COD .. EINSTEINIUM, for a wonderfully apposite anagrammatical surface.

19. Enjoyed these last two puzzles, took ages but good value moneywise. Let’s have more like them.
20. This took about 45-50 minutes, ending with IMPERIOUS/ROLLS, after struggling through the NW area. I thought this was a very good puzzle. I agree with paul above that SIM refers to a different game. AERATED never meant ‘peeved’ over here, as far as I know, and DNK TIPSY CAKE. But STEINBECK I thought wonderful, ditto ELECT and LADIES MAN. The surface for EINSTEINIUM was great. Thanks to the setter, and happy to hear that UY’s access is restored via the intervention of our in-house advocate. Regards.
21. Had a hard time getting on to LiveJournal today – couldn’t finish this last night but pieced it together in the morning, with the last in being SUNNY – a piece of whirledploy if ever there was one!

    Only knew the carbonation definition of AERATED, PALMYRA from inspired guesswork. Rather liked the clue for IMPERIOUS.

22. As it happens I am a native (6d) and Sunni does not sound like sunny in the slightest; a dreadful clue, perhaps he was desperate.
    1. When some natives say these words, they sound identical.
23. Does to me. Sorry, mr/ms “anon”
24. 22 minutes today, so a bit harder than average but not too bad. I’m a bit surprised to see so many struggling.
25. Recently returned to Times Xword after a gap of about 10 years. Now know why it’s the best. Solved this in about 35 mins. this evening after a half hour spell over breakfast which only yielded 25dn. Something I did today must have reawakened brain cells I didn’t know I had. Found yesterdays very hard though. Today’s tough and enjoyable and I’m still learning just how good the wordplay can be.
26. This is said in 11ac to be a hard subject. But I should have though that many of the people who visit this site are of a certain age and like me did Latin at school as more or less the main subject between the ages of about 7 and 14. Such exposure to Latin stopped it from being all that hard.
27. I’m having an up-and-down week, with today being a definite down. I never really found the setter’s wavelength, and made heavy weather of some straightforward clues, finishing in a miserable 22:03.

    There was some good stuff in there, but there were some niggles as well.

    LATIN demanding? Hm!

    SUNNY sounds like “Sunni”? In Yorkshire maybe, but not in the RP-speaking south.

    SIM a role-playing game? I hadn’t come across the pencil game before (thanks for that, Uncle Yap), but it’s not what I’d call a role-playing game. I thought it might be a reference to SimCity or one of its spin-offs, but they don’t really equate to SIM.

    1. Tony, it comes from ‘simulation’. It’s a video game that simulates an activity such as flying an aircraft or playing a sport, but no, I didn’t know it either!

       On ‘Sunni’ my SOED audio files have it with the RP pronunciation first and the ‘northern’ one as an alternative.

       I wondered about LATIN as ‘demanding’ too.

       1. Thanks, Jack.

          And there it is in Chambers (2011): “sim game n a computer game that attempts to replicate the sort of events encountered in the real world”. Or are you referring to a specific video game?

          In my career in IT, “simulation” was always serious stuff rather than a game – not that I did a lot of it myself, though I remember writing the odd program in Simula back in the 1960s/1970s.

          1. No, nothing specific, Tony. I found it in COED.
28. It would be interesting to know how many of us did Latin and didn’t find it especially demanding. I did a great five day course in Gloucester last week (first Latin in 40 years apart from helping both children with their ALevels), and it struck me (a) how much was still embedded in my brain and (b) how the logic and decoding involved in translation was similarly satisfying to completing a difficult puzzle like this. I gave up last night with six clues un solved, woke up this morning and wrote them all in immediately. People have often commented here on this phenomenon – another strange trick of the human brain.
    SusieP
29. Finished this yesterday in half an hour or so, rather surprised myself as it seemed difficult at first, but it all flowed along. Couldn’t get into the livejournal until today… server down?
    When I was at school, Latin (and/or Greek) O level was essential for Oxbridge entrance,(even if you were reading a science)then I think they changed it to any language, now you probably just need to be literate and underprivileged.
30. I read the comments and was surprised that nobody mentioned the problem that I had – I put in SHEER, which clearly means fine (of tights). When I solved SCOWL, it did not occur to me query SHEER. (According to my dictionary there is a very slight difference in pronunciation between SHIA and SHEER, but I certainly do not pronounce SUNNI and SUNNY the same.)

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