Times 25304 – A gentle end to the week

Solving time: 38:32

I was all done bar two in 30 minutes, but then PHENOMENA took an extra couple of minutes for me to realise it wasn’t the Latin name for some plant or other that I was looking for. Then the unknown HOOPOE took the rest.

This felt pretty easy to me. In fact, I started it at midnight, and I when I posted my time at about twenty to one, I was already 6th on the leader board. A fact that is usually indicative of a pretty straightforward puzzle. Despite it’s relative simplicity, I found it quite enjoyable.

cd = cryptic def., dd = double def., rev = reversal, homophones are written in quotes, anagrams as (–)*, and removals like this

Across
1 PITCH – dd – Pitch is the residue of distillation of tar.
4 LOST CAUSE = ACTS (turns) rev in LOUSE (rotter)
9 RE(PRO)DUCE
10 NADIR = RID + AN all rev
11 PRE(POSSE)SSING
14 R + APT
15 MAN + A(G)ERIAL
18 SKY(SCRAP)E + R
19 HI + LT
21 ENCYCLOPAEDIC = (DELICACY ONCE + P)*
24 sADDLE
25 PHENOMENA = (ANEMONE + P) all rev about H
27 IN + DE(M + N)ITY
28 T + ODD + Y
Down
1 PARAPHRASE = PAR + APSE about Hermes + RA
2 TAP – dd
3 HOOP + O + lEg – Not a word I know, but I guessed it from the wordplay.
4 LOUISIANA = LIANA (trailer, it’s a type of vine) about (SIOUx)* – ‘having no vote’ is the instruction to remove the X.
5 STEPS – hidden
6 CON + SIDE + R
7 U(N + DIG)NIFIED
8 EARN = NEAR with the N moved from beginning to end
12 EMPTY-HEADED = ED about (A DEEP MYTH)*
13 PLUTOCRACY = (OUT)* in PLC + RACY
16 AWESOMELY = (OWL MAY SEE)*
17 ICE CREAM = I/C + MACE rev about RE
20 RAG + OUT
22 CAP + touRIsts
23 TAX + I
26 bEND

37 comments on “Times 25304 – A gentle end to the week”

  1. But it felt much harder than that (at the) time. I’m still scatching my head over “intent”=RAPT (14ac). Have no doubt missed some meaning or/of “intent”.*

    PHENOMENA almost got to me too. But it was the “facts” that threw me. In everyday speech, we do talk of “natural phenomena” and the usual sources have “phenomenon” as “fact … that is observed to exist or happen” (and the like). Just that I’m more used to its philosophical meaning which can be just the opposite. Here the stress is on the “observed” bit so that the putative “object” is purely a matter of perception. Contrast: noumenon/noumena. No wonder PHIL101 students get confused!

    PLUTOCRACY took a fair bit of parsing. I’d forgotten the UK usage, PLC.

    * On edit, this meaning:
    (esp. of a look) showing earnest and eager attention: a curiously intent look on her face.
    Suppose this is close enough to RAPT to pass muster.

    Edited at 2012-10-26 01:02 am (UTC)

  2. 17:16, although with 5 clues only parsed immediately post hoc, and 13 simply on definition and checkers; thanks, Dave, for the explication. No problem with RAPT, which indeed was my FOI. Bogen & Woodward, 2 philosophers of science, make what I think is a vital distinction between phenomena and data: the data, which are observable, are what we use to explain the phenomena, which aren’t. But the checkers were there, and no doubt the setter hadn’t read B & W. I liked 4d and 9ac, inter alia.

    Edited at 2012-10-26 01:20 am (UTC)

    1. I was unimpressed by the arguments in Saving the Phenomena. In the Kantian tradition (via Hume) “data” are merely phenomenal and therefore possibly unreliable means of access to the “things in themselves” (noumena).
      1. Among the many topics I’m unfit to talk about, Kantian philosophy is pretty high on the list; but I’d imagine that B&W would acknowledge, cheerfully even, that the data are possibly unreliable. But if you want to measure the melting point of lead, say, data are what one’s stuck with, as the noumena aren’t about to come up and bite one on the proverbial.
  3. I found this very heavy-going to start with and even once I got going felt that at any time I could have ground to a complete halt. However I completed in 43 minutes which I suppose was not too bad in the circumstances.

    Didn’t know HOOPOE, and TAXI proved very elusive. Much of it went in on definition and checkers leaving the parsing until after the event.

    Thanks to yet another cock-up, those who subscribe to the online newspaper rather than the Club have been denied this puzzle and instead have been given Grand Final No 3 which had already been put up earlier in the week, and is also still there on a separate button alongside its two companions.

    Edited at 2012-10-26 01:18 am (UTC)

  4. 48 minutes, with the last 12 or so spent trying not so much to save as to identify the phenomena, having gone like Dave down the the flowery (garden?) path. I’m pretty proud just to have read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason – in translation, of course.
  5. I haven’t gone back to look, but didn’t someone on this forum recently issue a challenge to setters to clue RAPT without recourse to “wrapped”? The challenge seems to have been answered.
    1. That was my ‘autumn anti-chestnut challenge’ issued on 16 October. Some people think these puzzles are lined up months in advance, but we know better…
  6. Seem to have a different puzzle in the Times online version today (Fri 26th Oct). Does anyone know if the printed paper also has this (number 201203) puzzle?
    1. I imagine the printed paper is fine but this is just another on-line cock-up as referred to in my posting above.
      1. Sorry I missed that. I’ve looked at the on line puzzles more closely, the printable version gives more detail and tells us this is the third puzzle from the championship. The on line version doesn’t show this info’.
        1. Right, I hadn’t looked at it for on line solving, only the printed version. Whatever’s going on, it’s really bad that they have got this wrong.
  7. DFN today with Phenomena and End missing. Should have got End but didn’t think of the eg “crook your finger” meaning for crook. For Phenomena I was looking for a flower name that included data (hard facts).

    Struggled with the middle and NW corner today. Eventually twigging Hoopoe gave Prepossessing then Undignified and the others missing in the top half soon followed.

  8. 23 minutes, so a kind of halfway house between straightforward and tough.
    I also thought CONSIDER a collection of non-standard references, apart from the R of course, but it worked. Just not in an expected way. Neat surface, probably set up with a handy Thesaurus.
    As for others, a lot of post entry sorting out of the wordplay. In puzzles such as this, expecting philosophical nicety is whistling in the dark. PHENOMENA has at least a tangential connection to facts, and that will have to do. Credit to a terrific use of anemone, which I usually struggle to spell, let alone backwards. Probably my CoD.
    I wonder if anyone else solved PREPOSSESSING with “important” as the definition? I did fathom that it was the other way round when the wordplay didn’t quite work.
    “Delicacy once” in 21 looked such a gimme for CATE that it cost me much time, especially once I had the two adjacent crossing Cs. Sometimes you can know too many archaisms. A well disguised and (in my case) diversionary anagram.
    Hard to see NADIR without zapping back to Hoffnung and Bruno Heinz Jaja, (entry 15), sadly not on youtube.
    1. A slightly sluggish 18:42 delayed by what appear to be the usual suspects; CONSIDER was last in, shortly after I’d emptied my own head of the conviction that P_E_O_E_A must be a plant (which would inevitably mean I’d never heard of it) involving DATA somewhere.
    2. “I wonder if anyone else solved PREPOSSESSING with “important” as the definition?”

      Yes, that was me! At least during the solve.

  9. Yes, you expect better from The Times. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
  10. 14:31 on the club timer. I found most of this very easy, and rather unsatisfying, because most of the answers went in on the basis of definition and checkers without needing to think at all about the wordplay. I also found some of the definitions a bit weak, exactly as described by vinyl1 above.
    I slowed right down towards the end, and took a while to get TAXI (I’m sure I’ve spent far too long on an almost identical clue at some point in the past), PITCH, and the unknown HOOPOE.
  11. No excuse for the mix-up, but for Times subscribers, the correct crossword is on Page 99 of the ‘paper as it was printed’ section and can be printed from there.
  12. Thanks very much for the tip. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that, perhaps I’d better leave the crossword until my thinking returns!
  13. Out of action for ten days in the Shetlands, glorious weather, but heavy weather here, with taxi last in by some minutes and 34 all told. I take phenomena in the most natural and etymological way as things that occur, that happen, for which ‘facts’ is no problem. A sound puzzle but lacking that zing factor. Top moment the backward-leaning anemone.
  14. Interesting, and rather reassuring, that some seasoned bloggers and solvers found this quite hard going. I thought it was the easiest Friday offering in quite a while. That old wavelength thing, I guess. Admittedly, it took me 40 mins, but I was all done in about 30 mins bar two or three clues in the SE corner, where PHENOMENA (same experience as heaton-daniel) and RAGOUT, both excellent clues, held me up. I followed Jack and at least one other. at least initially, in solving PREPOSSESSING with “important” as the def. I would guess that for purists this puzzle had rather too many clues where the defs were too easy to spot independently of the cryptic wordplay. But enjoyable none the less.
  15. About 40 minutes, and I liked PHENOMENA, also looking first for some unknown flower. Last in for me were the fairly obvious PITCH and TAP, fairly obvious, that is, if cricket references are the first things that spring to your mind. Not mine, alas. Regards to all.
  16. I struggled to a miserable 13:11, having completely failed to find the setter’s wavelength.

    I’m with vinyl1 on this one: I too find vanilla puzzles full of long ordinary words very difficult, and do much better at puzzles with complicated cryptics or obscure vocabulary (particularly the latter).

  17. To judge from some of the above comments this was a Marmite of a puzzle – you either love it or you loathe it. I’m one of the latter. I just wasn’t on the wavelength at all and almost abandoned the effort. I struggled on without much enjoyment and clocked off at 37 minutes. I had them all right and, in retrospect, can’t see why I found it such a slog. Ann
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