Times 25303 – not gender-bending

35 comments on “Times 25303 – not gender-bending”

1. Indeed, a bit of a chew here too. I actually loved AUTO,MATE; at least it raised a muffled titter.

   I believe Hirst is supposed to have said to Rhodes, “We’ll get ‘em in singles” at the Oval in 1902. And though it may be apocryphal, I’ve heard it quoted since during cricket matches. Needs a good Yorkshire accent though: both men were of that ilk. I wonder who the Australian bowlers were that couldn’t dismiss either and so win the Test.

   Had only vaguely heard of GENRE-BUSTING; but it had to be an anagram of “green” with an anag(r)ind in the answer. This despite having written and lectured on the irony of Derrida’s wonderful opening sentences: “Genres must not be mixed. I repeat, genres must not be mixed”. He goes on to demonstrate that there are no pure examples of genres. Conclusion: they’re always already “busted”. (That will save you reading the whole paper.)

   5dn: interesting use of “to”? Does it mean “put a word for ‘lines’ next to something military”? Or is it a surf-actant link word?

   Couldn’t parse SLEDGEHAMMER at first because I thought the ‘lip’ was the LEDGE. Stupidity all round the place this morning.

   Catch you, George, in 8-or-so hours if I’m still around, awake and sober!

   Edited at 2012-10-25 04:04 am (UTC)

   1. It should have been:

      “Genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix genres. I repeat: genres are not to be mixed. I will not mix them”.

      “The Law Of Genre”, Glyph, 7 (Spring 1980), pp55-81.

      Yes, I’m pedantic!

   2. I believe that ‘back to’ is the the equivalent of ‘reverse’. If you were ‘front to’, then you’d be in the right order.
2. Extremely chewy puzzle with much inventive clueing. Nice to see the 110-year-old reference to George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes’s probably apocryphal ‘Let’s get them in singles’ when they came together still needing 15 runs to win, even if it was probably easier to get the answer without this piece of cricketing lore.

   GENRE-BUSTING as an example of wordplay in the answer was less effective than it deserved to be since the phrase itself isn’t really that well known. EXIT POLL was very clever, utilising stage direction language (‘Exit Clown – Enter Iago’) to get round any question about grammaticality (although in this case the Latin third person singular provided another way out).

   Ticks against 1, 22, 23 and 27, with SLEDGEHAMMER perhaps edging it. I reckoned 17 could do with a question mark, but apart from that minor quibble this was a very classy puzzle indeed.

   Edited at 2012-10-25 03:47 am (UTC)

   1. SINGLE-MINDED was one run too far for this overseas solver. Bloody-minded setter was all that came to mind…
3. …thanks to 11ac. I have never heard of it and still don’t know what it means. If Mctext is saying that it has something to do with Derrida than the answer is probably that it has no meaning. It’s not in the OED. Bit of a crap clue if you ask me.
   1. … no, I’m not saying that at all. You can find it on the Wik:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre-busting

      And in Collins (std. Times source):

      http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/genre-busting

      A trendy term used by reviewers and on blurbs. That’s why it may have very little in the way of meaning. My LOI also. Hope the sun is shining in Sydney!

      Edited at 2012-10-25 05:08 am (UTC)

4. Did you mean 15ac for the question mark, ulaca? That’s where I’d have expected one anyway.

   I found this heavy-going and finished in 46 minutes having cheated to get the second words at 11ac and 12dn because sometimes these days I’m not as persevering as I might be and I feel I’ve simply enough of a particular puzzle.

   I thought 9ac was a superb clue and also liked 21dn. I hate clues such as 3dn which rely on an absolutely specific piece of arcane knowledge about sport that no-one who doesn’t share that interest can possibly be expected to know. It makes it even worse (for me) that it’s a cricketing clue.

   Didn’t know LIMN or GENRE-BUSTING. Not completely happy with “being in” linking the two definitions at 6dn. I read 5dn as “Back, to military, lines”.

   Edited at 2012-10-25 05:16 am (UTC)

   1. So … my first reading holds? Thanks for sorting it out with a simple bit of re-punctuation! In this light, it’s a darned good clue. Four very economical words.

      Edited at 2012-10-25 06:06 am (UTC)

   2. I have no problem with STRIPES clued by ‘They are given to corporal punishment’ as it seems like a pretty straightforward double definition to me.

      As for 17, during my lunchtime walk, I rather preferred an exclamation mark, ‘No longer employ person as driving companion!’ Since ‘automate’ – or ‘auto-mate’ or ‘auto mate’ – doesn’t exist in the real world, it seems to require some indication thereof.

      Edited at 2012-10-25 06:25 am (UTC)

      1. Right, I see what you mean now. My thought on the military definition of STRIPES is that ‘corporal’ is only an example of a rank that wears them.

         I’ve been deleting a lot of spam raids on this thread. What is it about Thursdays?

         Edited at 2012-10-25 07:34 am (UTC)

5. In under the half-hour (29′). I got 3d from checkers, and assumed that Rhodes and Hirst were cricketers.For some reason at 9ac all I could think of for a long time was ‘deed poll’–influence of Jackkt’s comment of yesterday? I don’t know if I’ve actually come across the term GENRE-BUSTING, but it seemed to fit, and nothing else did. I agree with Ulaca that 17d could use a ?, but it is a lovely clue, as is 8d, and quite a few others. Including, no doubt 21d, once I figure it out.
6. My take on ‘They are given to corporal’ is that since the rank gets two, the clue’s both economical and efficient.
7. It’s [Mrs] BEETON, with E (one of the Europeans – the first, as it happens) replaced by R.
   1. She who wrote THE book of household management and was duly given the clap.
8. 34 minutes. The thing with this one is that the setter loaded the top with almost all its “what the….?!” clues making the far easier ones lower down (exempli gratia: CARCASE, TOUT, SOFT SOAP) harder to get because of raised expectations of difficulty.
   2d on assumptions and crossing letters. I’ll sympathise for non- (and even anti-) cricketers on this one, as it wasn’t even (apparently) known by either player. From Wiki: “It has been claimed that Hirst said to Rhodes, ‘We’ll get ’em in singles’, but neither batsman could remember those words being said and not all the runs came in singles.” Understanding how this clue works requires weapons grade cricketing knowledge and/or Google.
   EXIT POLL is brilliant (my nomination for CoD) but initially daunting; LIMN is an archaism better suited to Another Crossword, though it was my first, relieved, entry; GENRE BUSTING you either know or you don’t, though I think the form of clue is pretty clear and you just have to come up with the right anagram indicator.
   No issue with STRIPES – “they’re given to NCO punishment” would have been silly.
9. Consider I did well to finish this. Didn’t like the cricket clue, never have liked cricket and have never heard of Rhodes or Hirst let alone the supoosed quote – but I deduced it nevertheless. The parrot clue raised a smile – ‘Free all pollys, pollys are innocent’.

   There’s hope yet, but I’m not letting on how long it took me!

10. What a superb puzzle, a nice mix of clever amusing wordplay and answers ideally needing arcane (and cricketing) knowledge but nevertheless guessable. A while to get started, after SOFT SOAP and ELEGANCE, then the RHS went in before the left. It took me nearly an hour. For mctext, the 5th test 1902, I can advise that Hugh Trumble bowled unchanged for Australia throughout the innings and Jack Saunders bowled all but 9 of the other overs.
11. 46 min and 4 secs with one wrong. Beeton instead of Breton.

    Didn’t know the cricket reference, trench lortar or limn. Figure took ages to figure out as I was not confident with Genre-Busting.

12. 40 minutes for me after blanking out on “figure” and then feeling really dumb because it’s an Americanism I use often. I thought of “busting” but didn’t trust it until I had the figure. “Exit poll” made me laugh and is pretty topical in these parts. My mother had a love/hate thing with Mrs. Beeton, rather how I feel about Martha Stewart except that’s more “odi” than “amo”. Good puzzle.

    Edited at 2012-10-25 11:07 am (UTC)

    1. I considered ‘square’ for 6 down, in the sense of ‘how do you square that’? But that left a ‘q’ as the 3rd letter of a 4-letter word, so it was reluctantly erased.
13. Really should have been able to finish this without resorting to aids, but came up four short with Limn, Single-Minded, Genre-Busting and Figure missing. Unknowns to me were Limn and the Rhodes/Hirst batting feat. Thought the unhappy drinkers, escaping parrot and co-driver were all very good.
14. Genre-busting I had heard about somewhere, and it came into my mind in a surprisingly uncluttered way. But the cricket reference, about which I consider I really should know, foxed me utterly. Over an hour!

    I knew it was a good idea not to travel to the Championships, though many congrats to those who achieved success therein.

    Looking fwd to yr blog when it arrives,

    Chris Gregory.

15. …so gave up after two hours and went to bed. Got up at four AM, put in ‘automate’ and ‘sledgehammer’, and went back to sleep, hoping I could dream up the rest of the answers.

    In the morning, I put in ‘genre-busting’ and ‘brunette’, but I couldn’t get ‘crossbar’ without cheating. Once that was in, ‘reinvent’ was obvious.

    I did like the puzzle, and I got ‘single-minded’ fairly early on, although I am one of those ‘overseas solvers’. Actually, I’m here on solid land, it’s you Brits who are over the sea.

    1. Sorry old chap, I’m afraid you’ve been cut off. There’s fog in the Channel, don’t you know, what?
16. 28:30 for a very enjoyable puzzle. I didn’t know the cricketing fable in question but Oval/determined meant it wasn’t too hard to figure out the required answer.

    Last two in were the crossing fordable/Breton.

    Limn was the only unknown but gettable from wordplay, COD to 23 for the slammer device.

17. 32 minutes: a struggle, but a rewarding one. I can apreciate the objections to an obscure and possibly apocryphal cricketing reference, but as I am what a former Australian PM called “a cricket tragic”, I welcomed it with open arms.
18. About 45 minutes again. All perfectly fair, I thought, despite my ignorance of cricket.

    The other day I was pondering the origin of SOFT SOAP to mean flattery while I was using the stuff to clean tack. When soft soap is applied, leather becomes more flexible, less brittle. I wonder if this is another English idiom that has its origin in the horsey world.

19. 26m. I enjoyed this a lot. The cricket clue is daft, of course, but no more so than any clue with some utterly obscure word in it. Like LIMN, for instance. Perfectly gettable from the remaining elements of the clue so absolutely fair enough as far as I’m concerned.
20. George,

    I’m sure Mrs Beeton would approve of your suggestion for llama stew. I imagine she was up on the idea of running the household with an eye on economy and would also have turned her nose up at the idea of poncy French cooking and, as we all know, llamas are larger than frogs.

21. About 30 minutes here, but needed to wander around first to the SW, then SE, then NE, and finally finishing in the NW when I got all the crossers for GENRE-BUSTING. The EXIT POLL and FIGURE both took an inexplicably long time, as did TOPI, where I needed the crossing “O” before seeing it. The cricket clue, of course, was solved from definition only, but I was pretty sure it was correct when I entered it. Same with BRETON, and while she’s been mentioned here a bunch, I don’t think I’d ever have thought of Mrs. Beeton on my own. Regards to all, setter included, for this enjoyable puzzle.
22. First one in 3d. As another “cricket tragic” I was delighted to see the reference to one of the all time great tests. No-one has yet mentioned Jessop’s incredibly fast century (77 minutes). He came in when the match was all but lost and proceeded to knock Saunders and Trumble, who had been unplayable, to all corners of the ground.
23. …. compared to the previous days offerings (None of which I have completed!) Cricket references stump me (pardon the pun) and thought of LIMN but didn’t bother to check the dictionary. Thanks again for a decent blog.
24. 11:02 here for a most enjoyable puzzle.
25. Thought ‘reverse’ a far less satisfactory answer than ‘redress’ which I confidently inserted, thus making ‘genre-busting’ impossible.

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