Times 25314: Love In The Bloodstream

37 comments on “Times 25314: Love In The Bloodstream”

1. 44 minutes with one cheat on the last answer, RACEME, which I didn’t know so would probably never have worked out. I thought of ACE as “tennis player” but then tried to reverse it and got stuck on RECAM?

   Another hugely enjoyable puzzle that I made slow but steady progress throughout until finally running out of steam. I thought 4dn was particularly good.

   I didn’t know QUANTUM as “minimum amount”. It’s figurative use in the expression “quantum leap” suggests it’s something rather large.

   1. I regularly shout at radio broadcasters who say “quantum leap” when what they clearly mean is something like “step change” (I should stress that I’m in my kitchen listening, not in the studio with them). I’ve always understood that a quantum leap is very abrupt, yes, but also very tiny.

      P.S. I know that words and phrases are allowed to change their meaning through usage over time, but that won’t stop me twitching every time a football commentator says “to be fair” when they clearly mean “to be honest”. And don’t get me started on people who use the word “literally” to mean “metaphorically”.

      P.P.S. Can you tell I’m sitting up watching the American elections (current breaking news: nobody knows anything) and have nothing better to do right now?

      1. Yes all very irritating. I heard a young lady on a train recounting a story which ended with the line ‘and I literally laughed my head off!’
         1. When people say things like this it’s often – or at least sometimes – meant ironically. I’ve certainly heard things like “I literally died” from people who know perfectly well what “literally” means. Not always though, and I can’t speak for the young lady on your train!
      2. Yes it pulls my chain every time. It shouts of the mis-user of the term: “I am an ignoramus”. Of course, a quanta of energy is the minimum “grain size” when considering energy state, and a quantum jump (or leap) is the smallest possible change of state that any physical system can undergo.
         This total reversal of meaning has gone much further in what used to bug me when younger. The use of “sophisticated”. Originally it meant shallow and fallacious. All box, no chocolates. No doubt those who were recipients of the intended insult were ignorant and vain enough to assume it to be a compliment. Ah well, it always gave me great satisfaction, that those who donned the adjective were invariably found to fit it well.
      3. Ended up here while testing Tony Sever’s October 29 2013 (=”today” in Australia) claim that RACEME had appeared within the past year: it had.

         Having studied quantum physics for 2 years as part of electronics engineering, can I disagree with you on the usage of quantum leap? In classical physics, energy can increase in infinitesimally small increments. In quantum physics, energy can only increase in RELATIVELY HUGE (though still absolutely microscopic) step changes. Looking at electrons in semiconductors I consider a one-quantum leap to be a gigantic step, so for me the metaphor works.

         Rob

   2. I think you may find its origins lie in the idea that the development of quantum theory marked a major leap in our understanding of matter.
2. 19:37 for another top class puzzle. RACEME was last in, and would have given me palpitations in a competitive setting (I was mostly guessing based on half-remembered Latin vocabulary).
3. First-class puzzle graced by an equally fine blog. 71 minutes for me, with last in RACEME – a have-a-quiet-chuckle-to-self moment if ever there was one. Was onto the pangram early by my standards, but as McT implies, it didn’t really help as it led to me trying to convince myself that 6ac was ‘joker’.

   UNDIES was the pick of the crop for me, while the Russian tyrant was perhaps a little too torturous for his own good. Anyone else notice how INDIE is philandering with the mainstream, like a ’60s hippy working in corporate law.

   McT, I think 20dn works better with a Holy See.

   Edited at 2012-11-07 03:11 am (UTC)

   1. Now duly edited.
4. I think you underestimated 17A (at least in the way you blogged it). The definition is “maybe does”
   1. I’m sure McT will be buck later, but I’d be stag-gered if one of his elk was be-hind the eight ball on this one.
      1. No, blimey, I didn’t see it at all. Now edited with thanks to anon. Hope he or she is safe and well in San Francisco!
5. 35 minutes including about eight at the end looking for an alternative to raceme, not seeing the challenge and not knowing the spike. A peculiarly irritating challenge if it’s ever uttered I should think. And I can’t see what ‘returning’ is doing there, apart from wasting my time with an unfair misdirection. Otherwise a nice piece of work.
   On second or third thoughts I can see ‘returning’ could be said to amplify ‘resistance’ but it seems awfully light.

   Edited at 2012-11-07 09:33 am (UTC)

   1. Presumably the tennis player is the one who is receiving the serve and challenging the other to ace him or her: ergo he/she would be, ideally, returning the serve. “Receiving” may have done better here??
      1. Perhaps. But after all that I’ve now come to rather like the clue! After all the q.mark gives some leeway. And now I’ve got over my bafflement I can see it’s kind of vivacious. I must leave it longer before airing criticisms. Apologies at large for jumping the gun.
   2. As mentioned above, the player returning challenges the server to, “Ace me.”

      What made the clue wrong, and impossible to be solved was the incorrect grammar (at leat in Rupert’s The Oz):

      There was no possessive apostrophe in tennis players, so it had to be plural tennis players going upwards (returning). No alternative. It absolutely could not be a challenge from/for a single player.

      GRRR; or, I didn’t get it – didn’t allow for a typo.
      Rob

   3. As mentioned above, the player ‘returning’ challenges the player serving to, “Ace me.”

      What made the clue wrong, and impossible to be solved was the incorrect grammar (at leat in Rupert’s The Oz):

      There was no possessive apostrophe in tennis players, so it had to be plural tennis players going upwards (returning). No alternative. It absolutely could not be a challenge from/for a single player.

      GRRR; or, I didn’t get it – didn’t allow for a typo.
      Rob

6. Interesting puzzle with BANJAX my LOI on the day, taking a good couple of minutes even with the checkers and the likelihood that it would begin with BAN. I initially suspected it was going to be some word I’d never heard of (maybe Banpac, an old Irish castle?), especially as uncommon words like ARROGATE and RACEME had already appeared, but it bubbled up from somewhere when I was doing a last-ditch alphabet run-through.
7. I thought this the hardest puzzle of the three on the day, and found myself with two unsolved in the last minute:
   > I didn’t know BANJAX: I’m sure I’ve seen the word before but I didn’t have a clue what it meant. I even started going through possible cards (banones, bantwos…) but ran out of time and bunged in my first thought, which was BANPAC.
   > At 5dn I was completely fooled by “returning” and bunged in an equally desperate RECAMI, which doesn’t really work. I don’t think I’d ever have got RACEME.
   Taking an hour and still making three mistakes felt like a pretty poor effort, but it turned out that this was good enough for 32nd place: not so bad after all.

   Edited at 2012-11-07 11:26 am (UTC)

   1. After an hour plus and banjax, raceme, quantum and therefore pique not finished I checked this blog somewhat despondently – only to be immensely cheered to hear that some of the professionals here had struggled as well. Thanks!
8. I don’t recall having any particular problems with this on the day until I got to raceme. I kept coming back to it but inspiration never came and it stayed blank.

   After the hour I had 5 blanks and 2 unknown errors somehwere in the three puzzles but that still saw me coming in at number 37.

   I’d consider opting for heat 2 next year if it didn’t eat into valuable drinking time.

   Edited at 2012-11-07 12:23 pm (UTC)

   1. Now I would have preferred the first prelim as I finished those three puzzles 18 minutes sooner than prelim 2. I won’t talk about my times for the Final puzzles 🙁
   2. Do participants have a choice or are you just joking?
      1. Participants can express a preference, and I believe most of them were in the prelim they wanted to be in.
      2. Just joking. I have been told by many, including Penfold, that I have to enter next year so I am in training already!
9. As predicted another DNF! After 40 minutes I still had 5 blanks including RACEME which I think was clever and hard but fair now I understand it. I don’t think I would ever have got BANJAX though the pangram might have helped if I’d noticed it soon enough. An excellent puzzle and blog so thanks to setter and blogger – and I’m so glad I fail on these in private and not in the finals!
10. Crawled to the finish after about an hour in two sessions before and after visitors at lunchtime. LOI was BANJAX which I knew as a word having lived in ‘An Lar’ for ten years, but had never seen written down before and so to guess the spelling.
    Those of us who had to endure Quantum Mechanics as part of a degree course find it difficult to swallow the use of the word in more general terms, but I see the dictionary allows looser meanings, if not the popular misuse as ‘quantum leap’ implying a large jump.
11. DNF today with Raceme, Concuss and Vein missing. Steady going with the rest but the three omissions mean this has been, for me, the hardest of the Prelim puzzles so far.

    Didn’t quite understand Deer so thanks for explaining that one.

12. Well, this was certainly not easy at all. About an hour, ending with RACEME and BANJAX. It also took me too long to think of VEIN. It’s a good thing I’m in the US and thus not tempted to visit the competition. Regards.
13. Why wrongly assume rather than just assume? Chambers doesn’t say there’s anything wrong with it, but maybe other dictionaries do.

    I wonder why the setter bothered to make this a pangram. Did the contestants notice?

    1. Both Collins and COED have “claim without justification” which I’d say equates with “wrongly assume”.

       Edited at 2012-11-07 06:03 pm (UTC)

    2. The latest edition of Chambers at least has “claim proudly or unduly” and for “arrogation” it has “undue assumption”.
       I certainly didn’t notice the pangram, but then I was trying to solve quickly so I didn’t notice a substantial proportion of the wordplay either!
14. This would have done me in – never heard of BANJAX, so I went for NAP as the card game and put in BANNAP.
15. I did the crossword late today so am just getting round to this blog. 30 minutes and very enjoyable. My only real problem was BANJAX which was my last one in. After 25 minutes I had all the others and, like George above, had settled on BANNAP. Enlightenment struck a couple of minutes later when I recognised the pangram. Some amusing definitions. I particularly liked BIER as “last stand” and SEE SAW as a “cause of schism”. Ann
16. I was in the First Preliminary of the finals so had encountered this puzzle before. I failed to finish it on the day so it was nice to see it again and read the blog. Although I picked up an answer sheet on the day, I still failed to understand some of the answers. However, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience as a first timer and hope to have another crack in the future.Enjoyed the banter about deers,does,stags,bucks etc as I ran over a deer on my way to the Championships. Didn’t see it as an omen at the time but did manage to get DEER on the day. Best wishes to all.
17. I was starting to flag by the time I reached this puzzle on the day, and made heavy weather of what should have been right up my street, taking the best part of 20 minutes – at least it felt like that.

    I didn’t understand SEE-SAW then, and have only just twigged it now thanks to Ulaca, but there didn’t seem to be any other possible solution.

    However, the real killer was 5dn where I spent ages trying to think of a word starting RE. It was only when I sat back and thought about the possible meanings of “spike” that I realised to my horror that the obvious botanical word was staring me in the face. Had I blown it by being too slow on the uptake? Fortunately not. (Phew!)

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