Times 25,271 – V – E + F = 2

Solving time 15 minutes

What one used to call a “Monday Puzzle”. There are some good surfaces and a sprinkling of excellent but hardly difficult clues. Always good to see the Swiss genius and if you haven’t heard of him shame on you!

Across
1 PROCLAIM – PRO(CL-AI)M; CL=150 in Ancient Rome; concert=PROM (Henry Wood); definition is broadcast;
6 REGIME – RE(GI)ME; REME=Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers;
9 ATOMIC – A-(MOT reversed)-IC;
10 ROMANTIC – RO(w)-MAN-TIC; is ROMANTIC the same as passionate?;
11 TRIO – (s)T(a)R-IO; moon (of Jupiter)=IO; (three) wise men from biblical myth;
12 SPECIALIST – (epics)*-A-LIST; reference the so called A LIST of people one would avoid like the plague;
14 FLAT,IRON – FLA(TIRO)N; known in London as a weasel to be popped (pawned) to pay for beer at the Eagle Pub;
16 REEF – not tied=FREE then move F to give REEF;
18 SKYE – sounds like SKY – what a very weak clue!;
19 OMELETTE – ‘OME-LETTE(r); maybe I=letter;
21 CAMPAIGNER – (american + g + p)*; g from g(et), p from p(ersonal);
22 ICED – ICE-D; ICE=diamonds (slang); D=diamonds (cards);
24 THICKSET – THICK-SET; reference “as thick as theives”;
26 PUDDLE – PU(DD)LE; whimper=PULE; bad drains smell, nothing to do with puddles;
27 STARVE – STAR(V)E; nice clue;
28 ECTODERM – ECT-ODER-(bal)M; ECT=form of therapy; ODER=river=flower; lower level of skin;
 
Down
2 ROTOR – TOR reversed-OR (Ordinary Ranks);
3 COMPOST,HEAP – (shop came top)*; “in the back yard” is superfluous;
4 ANCESTRY – (d)ANCES-TRY; ball=dance;
5 MARIE,ANTOINETTE – (one inert at a time)*; wife of Louis XVI beheaded for thinking peasants could eat cake; nice clue;
6 REMAIN – RE(MA)IN;
7 GUN – GUN(ged);
8 MAINSHEET – MA(I)N-SHEET; a rope attached to a sail;
13 LARGE-MINDED – (mild grandee)*;
15 LIKE,A,SHOT – two meanings;
17 DECREPIT – DECRE(e)-PIT;
20 TISSUE – SIT reversed-SUE; upset princess more like; good surface reading;
23 EULER – sounds like “oiler”; Leonhard Euler 1707-1783, brilliant mathematician and father of modern notation such as f(x);
25 CUR – CUR(t);

47 comments on “Times 25,271 – V – E + F = 2”

  1. 13 minutes, so yes, pretty straightforward, but with two rather good &lits at MARIE and STARVE. I also liked the disingenuous “maybe I” for letter.
    Bad drains may indeed smell, which I think is where we’re being sidetracked, but anywhere not adequately furnished with drains, like the roundabout half way up Epping New Road, will undoubtedly produce puddles even after only moderate rain.
    Decent, friendly puzzle, with only EULER and perhaps ECTODERM requiring more than an average knowledge base.
    CoD to THICKSET

    Edited at 2012-09-18 07:37 am (UTC)

    1. ENT,ODERM does exist. (More normally END-). And ENT would be a department of a hospital rather than a shocking therapy I have seen performed in hospitals. Yet the ENToderm is the innermost layer. Wouldn’t that make it the basis?
      1. Having also witnessed ECT and some of its effects, I am staggered to see that it is still in use. We would not consider doing it to a computer as a repair procedure, so why we would imagine that scrambling the infinitely more complex brain in this way might be beneficial is beyond me. Perhaps we can be enlightened?
      2. I considered entoderm but thought ECTODERM better. For me “special therapy” fits ECT treatment (Electro Convulsive THERAPY) better. Not sure what judges would do in a comp.
        1. My complaint is not with the cryptic (obviously ECT-), rather with the def. which requires “basis”. And that suggests otherwise, since the ectodem is “the outermost layer of cells or tissue”; while the entoderm is “the innermost layer …” etc.

          I await scientific correction.

          1. I wondered that too, but put ectoderm in with a shrug. According to Wiki, we are looking at embryonic cells which develop to form skin (among other things). It’s not therefore a layer of mature skin, when ecto- would suggest outermost, but a building block which develops into skin, and “basis” would be a close enough approximation. But you have to know some pretty detailed embryology to have a handle on any of that.
    2. I wonder if drain stands by synecdoche for drain cover? Here in Hong Kong there is frerquent flooding in the New Territories largely caused by the rubbish people chuck on the roads rather than in the bins.
  2. So obviously not in the easy category for me … no, not at all.

    At 7dn, I’d assumed the longer word was GUN/KED. The Mac Oxford has “unpleasantly sticky or messy substance” for GUNK. So I guess it could be a verb??

    Surprised there was no comment in Jim’s wonderfully economical blog on the dastardly DBE at 11ac — c/w (horror!) christism. How many trios are/were there in the world?

    Took me ages to see the &lit (either feeble or wonderful, depending on your view) at 5dn.

    I shall go and eat (nay, enjoy) cake!

    Edited at 2012-09-18 08:55 am (UTC)

  3. Never heard of the mathematician and ‘pule’ was new to me too. Managed to put ‘thickest’ at 24 for a while, but proved even thicker by settling for ‘tryo’ at 11ac and wondering what sort of wise men they might be. An hour for this, much of it spent in the SE, not helped by being slow onto Louis’ wife and wanting 17dn to be ‘derelict’.
  4. 24 minutes for a regular-paced trudge without getting any real speed up. COD 22. Held up on 14 by initially thinking tyro and rejecting the word. Can’t say I like either gunged or (less likely) gunked as the word behind 7. Gungey? Sorry – it’s a bad drain of a discussion.
  5. Came up one letter short today… couldn’t get Ectoderm from E?toderm. Solved the rest steadily but made things difficult for myself in the NE corner by putting in Goo at 7 down. Only corrected that once I’d got Marie Antoinette and then Romantic.
    I’d always thought Euler was prononuned “yule – er” so am pleased to be corrected Jimbo.
    Didn’t quite understand the “lette” part of Omelette so thanks for clarifying that too.
    Thickset raised a smile.
    1. I was lurking to see if I was the only one who didn’t know how to pronounce Euler – glad to see I have company. The nasty personal American campaigner came across as pretty funny this side of the pond. 21 minutes.
      1. Count me in too, despite having studied German to A- level. We don’t say ‘eulogy’ as ‘oilogy’ so it never occurred to me to think about it.
      2. Thanks for that – a reference to Mitt Romney presumably. I should have picked that up but missed it.
  6. Going against the trend, I didn’t get on with this one at all. LH was easier than RH but needed help in the SE. Thought reliance on ‘gunged’ was awful.Never heard of ‘pule’. Probably met the mathematician before but instantly forgotten. 60+ minutes.
    1. No adjudication on GUN(ked) vs GUN(ged)? I was counting on you to do the definitive dictionary look up!
      1. Sorry, wasn’t concentrating. If we rely on the usual sources (COED, Collins and Chambers) it has to be GUN(ged) as COED offers ‘gunge’ as a verb and specifies ‘gunged’ as a derivative. None has ‘gunk’ as a verb.

        Edited at 2012-09-18 10:19 am (UTC)

          1. Apparently ‘Gunk’ has its origins in 1930s USA where it was the brand name of a detergent. Would you wash your dishes in Gunk?
  7. No idea how long this took me as I forgot to look at the clock and became completely absorbed in what I thought was a very good puzzle, so time stood still.

    I thought I knew the word “pule” but had, in fact, misremembered Jacques’s speech:

    At first, the infant,
    Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

    So, if you mewl and puke do you pule?

    1. I’d have put good money on pule being a proper Shakespeare word, and the AYLI quote might (almost) just as well have been puling and mewking. But apparently the Bard didn’t use it.

      Edited at 2012-09-18 11:21 am (UTC)

  8. I finished this in about an hour, so it must have been reasonably easy. I didn’t fully understand the ‘Marie Antoinette’ clue having cracked the anagram though. I too had never heard of ‘pule’ – had to look it up having sussed the answer.

    It’s encouraging to see some of the experts found this just a little tough!

  9. Well, I could barely get started on this. 30-minute guillotine imposed with less than half the grid complete.

    I was thinking that this was an exceptionally tough puzzle, but coming here I see the problem lay elsewhere

  10. Perhaps disgraceful, and certainly wrong, I has parsed this as L for novice in a fat iron for the tart of a different kind. More symptomatic of how my mind works. Thanks to setter and blogger.
  11. 21 minutes for this, so about average for me.
    It took me a long time to see MARIE ANTOINETTE, and I wasn’t much taken with the clue. Like others I find I’ve always pronounced Euler wrong so that one took a while too. And like john_from_lancs I misknew PULE from As You Like It. Strategically placed ignorance can be so helpful sometimes.
      1. No, I’m afraid not. I can see what it’s trying to do but I don’t think it quite pulls it off.
  12. 12 minutes here so definitely on the Monday-ish side of tough. I too misremembered the mewling and puking but hopefully have filed it away for future use.
  13. 15 minutes on the Jimbometer (untimed interruption precludes me from being more precise). I was thrown for a bit by carelessly seeing (and indeed putting a line in accordingly) 3 as 4,7 rather than 7,4 (I even thought of compost!) and by the “involving” in 12 which to me implies insertion rather than abuttage.

    Pule was new but I’m happy that bad drains can cause puddling as much as ponging.

  14. Anyone else experiencing my problem? I log into Tftt and see the current day not underlined, go into the day before and lo and behold find today’s date underscored. Not just today but several times recently.
  15. 45 for a DNF. Shame on me per Jimbo as had forgotten the rather odd pronunciation. I remember sloshing gunk over the many oily bits of my old British singles in the 1960s. I think you can still get it but fortunately modern non British bikes don’t ooze oil like their predecessors.
  16. Same experience as man others here: Have always mispronounced EULER, and never heard of ‘pule’, and had to guess at the kind of layer of skin needed, and the correct therapy. Unfortunately, I am not deeply immersed in various therapies, and what you all call ECT, is what over here is called Electro-Shock Therapy. At least, I think so. So I also faced an ESTODERM choice. As it happened, I chose ENTODERM because, it seemed the most likely skin layer. Oops. So 1 wrong today, despite being through in 15-20 minutes, ending with MAINSHEET. Regards.
  17. I couldn’t get on the wavelength of this one and didn’t finish it before sleep but polished it off in short order this morning. Count me amongst those who don’t get the MARIE ANTIONETTE clue, I came here expecting to find that half the clue was omitted from the online version.
    1. I read it as an an &lit based on a couple of slightly tenuous ideas:
      > M-A “was inert”, perhaps because she said “let them eat cake” (she didn’t of course)? Or is generally well-known for having been inert? Or was dead? Not sure.
      > the French Revolution was a “great reform”. Rather like the bombing of Dresden was a significant architectural adjustment. Of course the clue says “time needing major reform”, so perhaps we should disregard what actually happened.
      Unless I’ve missed something (not unlikely, let’s face it) it’s almost a brilliant clue, but as I said before doesn’t quite work for me.

      Edited at 2012-09-18 08:26 pm (UTC)

      1. I think you may be overanalysing this a bit!

        Paris 1789 – loads of unhappy peasants a la Les Mis (even if it’s a different era) demanding change. Clueless nobs at the top, exemplified by M-A with her silly witterings to the proles. Thus, ‘One not wanting to act or think (inert) when she really needed to be attending to the demand for change.’

        1. Perhaps, but we seem basically to be saying the same thing! It just boils down to whether you think “one inert” evokes M-A and “time needing major reform” evokes the French Revolution. For me they sort of do, but too vaguely to turn an otherwise felicitous anagram into a brilliant one.
  18. Detergent yes, but not that sort Jack. It is an engine degreaser, still on sale last time I looked.
  19. 8:52 for me. This felt like an incredibly slow plod for a nice easy puzzle, so I’m surprised to find that my time seems to have held up reasonably well, judging from the TCC leaderboard. (No sign of Magoo, though – but I can’t see him taking much more than 4 minutes.)

    I don’t know what to make of the fact that so many people either hadn’t heard of EULER or didn’t know how to pronounce him. Utter disbelief just about sums it up.

    1. I think the pronunciation point is a bit harsh. After all we would generally anglicise ‘Paree’ to ‘Paris’ so if I have only encountered said mathematician in books anglicising the name is inevitable. For example in Times crossword land which of the many renderings of Dvorak would be the right one for homophonic purposes when BBC announcers differ? The same might also be said of certain Greek mathematicians as well. I accept my circle of friends is limited but we rarely discuss maths let alone mathematicians. If there is a Times crossword convention that names should be pronounced in the way the named themselves might have said them I wonder who adjudicates on this.
      1. I think it was not the nine o’clock news team who parodied classic fm with the immortal line, ‘And that was Dvorak but I’m not sure who it was by’.
  20. 38 min and 53 secs.

    Surprised and pleased that my last two guesses were right. Puddle and Euler.

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