Times 25452 – Life of Brian

42 comments on “Times 25452 – Life of Brian”

1. …but I couldn’t make heads or tails of the cryptics for ‘pickings’ and ‘need’. I must be a little dull tonight.

   I did spot ‘do’ as the definition, but thought it would mean ‘swindle’ instead of ‘suffice’.

   The literal for ‘convergent’ and cryptic for ‘incandescent’ were both very hard to spot, In fact, the whole puzzle was very clever and good fun all round.

2. 16:23 .. after a few easy starts, some much trickier knots to unravel but I think I was on the right frequency.

   I’m going to commit heresy and anoint a homophone my clue of the day. AT ANCHOR is the chosen one! (“No he’s not, he’s a very naughty buoy”)

   1. Hello Sotira. As you pick it as your top clue could you please explain to us how it works? So far as I can see the clue leads to an answer of A TANKER!!
      1. Is it not just a rather far-fetched homophone, Jimbo, with the definition of “at anchor” being “moored in sound”, with “sound” here doing double duty, being used both in the sense of “a narrow stretch of water forming an inlet” and as the homophone indicator – namely that AT ANCHOR sounds like A TANKER (at least if you pronounce it with a short rather than a long A)?

         Edited at 2013-04-18 09:16 am (UTC)

         1. I think double duty like this is a strict no-no in the Times.
      2. Hi jimbo. I thought of it, inasmuch as I thought of it at all, as something like melrosemike [and joekobi] puts it. I can see the objections, for sure (“Moored a sailing vessel ..” would be uncontentious, if a bit of a gimme) but I’m probably just becoming less bothered by setters’ license than I used to be.

         To be fair to me (and who wouldn’t want to be?), I didn’t say it was my top clue. I said it was my Clue of the Day which, like Time magazine’s Man, sorry, Person of the Year is sometimes a very naughty boy.

         Edited at 2013-04-18 11:06 am (UTC)

3. 40 minutes for this – not helped by putting in ‘go OFF on a limb’ at first. A tick against UNSETTLED but it was good fare all round.

   Thanks to Yap Suk for unravelling NEAR THING and AT ANCHOR, where the word order and the use of sailing to mean ‘travelling by sea’, rather than ‘travelling in a boat with sails’ had me flummoxed. Hopefully, I am de-flummoxed now, but we shall see…

   1. Can you de-flummox me? I still can’t see it, given that the def has to be “moored”.
      1. Yes, I’m flummoxed again now. I thought I could see it when I wrote earlier (below) but I’ve lost it again. The “sailing vessel / vessel sailing” thing is not a problem but surely the clue leads one to A TANKER?

         Edited at 2013-04-18 06:28 am (UTC)

         1. My thoughts exactly. Let’s hope someone has a handle on it.
   2. Could it be that the word ‘sound’ is the definition, as in safe and sound?
4. My take on this was IN, ANDES (mountains) inside, (a)CCENT (manner of speaking heading off).

   50 very slow but steady minutes for this one. Like ulaca I was also flummoxed by the word order at 9ac but made sense of it eventually.

   Edited at 2013-04-18 02:02 am (UTC)

5. Enjoyed this despite my neck-and-shoulder pain meaning I could hardly lift the pen. (Typing this with one hand.) Parsed 11dn as per Jack and thought this one of the better clues, along with PASSED MUSTER (great def) and ROMAN (where I didn’t even see the def properly). All clever stuff, though I still await enlightenment re 9ac.
6. Nothing too difficult here except I can’t get 9A to work (see above comments) and dislike DBE at 15A. The addition of “perhaps” would hardly spoil the clue.

   I liked some of the “lift and separate” as in “business meeting” at 8D

   1. It has a question mark, Jim, isn’t that as good?

      Edited at 2013-04-18 08:25 am (UTC)

      1. Not for me Jack. In my setting days DBE was not allowed by my editors, one of whom described it as “a sign of a lazy attitude” or some such. I don’t think the ? excuses what I see as poor practice.
         1. Then you’re are at odds with Ximenes, Jim (see Chapter V of Ximenes on the Art of the Crossword, where he gives examples of similar use of ? to avoid DBE).
7. 29.31 with one or two moments of slight desperation. I too like ‘at anchor’. It’s ‘moored’, and it sounds as if it’s a sailing vessel that’s moored; the convention of the definition being right at the front or end of the clue is elided for the sake of the surface, ‘sound’ also a stretch of water. Anyhow that’s how I see it to date, and I’m not sure the said convention is mosaic law anyway. If one accepts ‘moored’ as behind the clue it all works. I rather liked the whole puzzle, something a little charming about it.
8. …didn’t dwell overly long on the resting boat. I suppose I thought that “A sailing vessel moored, in sound” was a soundalike for A TANKER with the mooredness a superfluous characteristic, and “A sailing vessel moored in sound” a definition, with “in sound” another superfluity – both of which painted a more detailed image. Unusual structure, though.
   1. …double post.
      1. …triple.
9. …didn’t dwell overly long on the resting boat. I suppose I thought that “A sailing vessel moored, in sound” was a soundalike for A TANKER with the mooredness a superfluous characteristic, and “A sailing vessel moored in sound” a definition, with “in sound” another superfluity – both of which painted a more detailed image. Unusual structure, though.
10. 19 minutes with a lot of furrowed brow work, especially (though for no particular reason that I can see) in the lower left quadrant. Struggled to get UNSETTLED even with T?L?D and knowing the rest of the letters. PASSED MUSTER was just a fine clue which will certainly “do”.
    My take on 9 was that it was a concession to smooth surface and otherwise just a misleading, but legitimate, fiddle with the word order. “A sailing vessel gives “moored” if it’s (the sailing vessel’s) sounded. I was more misled by the “sailing”, which on reflection was a generous donation to the solution since it at least rules out urns and suchlike.
    ROMAN gave pause because I keep forgetting that “backing” can sometimes mean “on the back”: I knew not the doubtless ancient state of Namo.
    Gotta love IBERIA: something else the Romans gave us (though they nicked it from the Greeks). Now write out 100 times “Moored a sailing vessel in sound”
11. This is the sort of clue which seems to work at first glance (I wrote in AT ANCHOR straightaway) but doesn’t stand up to analysis. ‘Sailing’ looks wrong – has anyone ever built a sail-propelled tanker? – while a ship can’t be sailing if moored.
12. Flummoxed good and proper now…
13. Two missing today – Passed Muster and Incandescent. Thanks for explaining those two UY. Didn’t know Jonathan was a (classic American) variety of apple. I learn something most days doing the Times cryptic!
14. 25m which would have been 15 without wasting 10m on 12ac. Quite early on I considered the possibility that I might have one of the checking letters wrong, but even after looking carefully (I thought) I failed to notice that I had put in TERRR FIRMA. So for ages I had RESTING/P_R_E and just couldn’t figure it out. Muppet.
    I don’t think 9ac works at all.

    Edited at 2013-04-18 09:51 am (UTC)

15. Found this quite tricky after a quick start, with lots of hold-ups en route, so a slow 45-minute solve.

    My comment against 9 was “surely not!” I’m with those critics of the clue and I haven’t yet seen anything to convince me that the clue is ‘sound’. Maybe someone will.

    I didn’t mind the DBE in 15, given the question mark, though I felt “deal with Jonathan”, while very clever, was a bit loose for ‘core’.

    Otherwise I though there was a good variety of interesting clues.

16. 24:47. Put me in the “9 across doesn’t appear to work and I’m flummoxed by it” club.

    Nice puzzle apart from that, COD to resting place.

17. Count me as another who thinks that the wordplay in 9 across suggests “a tanker”, although the answer was obvious enough. Post-solve I had to check that a Jonathan was an apple variety, although it was a fair assumption that it was. 17 mins.

    If any of you fancy a challenge and have an hour or so to spare I recommend you try today’s Tyrus puzzle in the Independent (it is available online).

    Andy B.

18. A sail-powered tanker. Could be, but probably isn’t, at anchor in a sound.

    Edited at 2013-04-18 02:01 pm (UTC)

19. Started this late last night, tossed it aside, and came back to polish it off this morning. I think AT ANCHOR went in with a “kind of &lit” shrug, and I also guessed at NEED. Giggled at THREESOME with a very restrained definition, since that wordplay could be tacked on to almost any other definition of the word.
20. All this fuss could have been avoided if the clue had said “A sailing vessel in sound, moored”, which would have been a marginally less smooth surface, but perfectly OK.
21. Re-reading the clue I think there’s a use of ‘moored’ that hasn’t been mentioned: almost ‘pegged into’. Into what? the sound of ‘moored’. Yes, there’s an elision, the necessary explicit handle on a clue for once has to be held on trust, so it isn’t entirely satisfactory technically, but in my view that’s made up for by the rather fine surface.
22. Of course! ‘moored in a stretch of water’ is the definition! Hooray!
    1. So what’s the wordplay?
       1. A sailing vessel’s moored = “pegged into” a certain sound – the sound, not unreasonably, of the answer. With a lovely eddying swirl of related or other possibilities that (despite my best efforts) don’t quite work. But this I’d say does.
23. Needed to search words M_S_E_ to get MUSTER penny to drop, otherwise great fun puzzle done ‘brut’ in 24 minutes, all these chaps unhappy with AT ANCHOR are IMO missing the elegance of this clue. A tanker is a sailing vessel – as opposed to a wine glass for example, it sails from port. ‘Moored in sound’ has two meanings, one is the answer, one is what ‘a tanker’ sounds like. Clever. What’s the problem?
24. I was as puzzled by 9A as everyone else, and I didn’t know of Jonathan or Jerome, or that Sunderland is in the NE. But I did laugh when realizing that the gent in IBERIA was the Python’s Brian. That gets my COD. So with the knowledge gaps and a conference call interrupting, I don’t have a real time, but probably in the 40 minute range. Apart from mild bewilderment over AT ANCHOR (which I wrote in almost immediately, like everyone else, so it wasn’t that misleading) I thought it a pretty fun solve. Regards.
25. 9:57 for me. I’ve no real objection to 9ac, simply putting it down to poetic licence.

    And I’ve absolutely no objection to 15ac. This use of a question mark is one of the ways Ximenes recommended to avoid “definition by example”.

    All in all, most enjoyable.

    1. Poetic license would then be to the crossword setter and editor what ‘qualified privilege’ is to the litigation lawyer and judge!

       The fact that the clue works and that everybody gets it is, um, material and relevant, methinks, m’lud.

26. Perhaps the setter is playing with us a little, nothing much to do with a tanker, just a double definition, ‘a sailing vessel moored’ (in)and ‘sound’, from safe and sound?

    Peter J

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