Times 25471

64 comments on “Times 25471”

1. About 21 minutes but with a silly mistake – I read “face-saving device for speaker” as indicating a homophone and therefore went for the IMPROVISER spelling, overlooking the involvement of “for speaker” in the definition.

   Much time spent on GEORGIAN.

2. 15dn is dodgy as the spelling doesnt appear in any of the usual sources. The usual spelling requires ‘for speaker’ to do double duty.
   1. That’s interesting. I’m not sure if I feel better or worse now – I actually typed ‘O’ then changed it to ‘E’ because of the “for speaker”.

      Edited at 2013-05-10 01:48 am (UTC)

      1. My broadband went down in the middle of writing my comment so I abandoned it and posted the point about 15dn via mobile and 3Gg.

         Now that the connection is restored and I’m back on a proper keyboard I can resume. The -OR spelling at 15dn appears in Collins on-line and dictionary.com of the other sources I usually consult. I’m interested that there’s no comment in the club forum about this clue as yet despite there being a number of contributions with one error which I suspect has to be this answer. I wonder if there is a case for alternatives.

         Of the other clues, I also didn’t care much for the random OBOE or SATURDAY defined as “when many are out of work” as that’s something quite different from not being at work. GEORGIAN (my LOI) was TRICKISH – a word I never knew and spent ages trying to fit ‘ticklish’ which is the word I would have said in that context.

         Edited at 2013-05-10 02:37 am (UTC)

         1. I wondered about this but felt it passed muster as ‘out of work’ may be considered reasonable misdirection if a meaning along the lines of ‘away from the workplace’ is possible, which I think it just about is. ‘…when many are not at work’ would also have seriously weakened the clue by making it too easy.

            Thanks for the earlier answer fron ‘Dictionary Corner’!

            1. I think the whole concept is flawed anyway and the setter would have done better to find another completely different approach.
               1. I agree Jack. “out of work” means unemployed not “having a day off”; lots of people in the UK now work shift patterns that include Saturday working; and let’s not start thinking about say the Middle East!
                  1. Well I disagree. I’m not in work at weekends, therefore I could be considered to be out of work, taking the expression literally. And that, surely, is what cryptic crossword misdirection is all about – taking a common phrase and reinterpreting it in a new and more literal way. And also, certainly lots of people work weekends, but the vast majority do not, and the clue just says ‘when many are out of work’ which seems perfectly acceptable to me.
                     On a separate note – I put -OR in 15d from the wordplay, and it never occurred to me that the spelling was wrong. But now that it’s been pointed out, I would probably normally spell it the other way.
                     1. I agree. I can’t see the problem with “out of work” to mean “not in one’s place of work”, in the same way as one can be “out of the house”.
                  2. “Out of work” means “unemployed” but “out of” means “not in” and “work” means “one’s place of employment” (Chambers). Lift and separate!
                     Or in other words, I agree with Dave!

                     Edited at 2013-05-10 10:15 am (UTC)

                     1. Yes, that makes sense of it. That’s what this forum’s for!
   2. Besides The Collins English Dictionary, which of the various Oxford offerings comprises the other usual source? (I understand that Chambers is no longer considered an ‘official’ source for the Times Cryptic.)
      1. I believe of the Oxfords it’s the Concise that’s the official one but when I say ‘the usual sources’ here to save time I mean the following printed tomes: Collins English, COED, SOED, ODE (as opposed to OED) and Chambers.
      2. THE primary dictionary I believe is actually Concise Oxford, with Collins as back-up and Chambers a poor third
   3. Collins has it; not ODO or Chambers
      1. Indeed, the on-line Collins, but not the printed edition. There’s all sorts of stuff in there, some of it quite outrageous!
         1. eg?
            1. Can’t find the links now, but this was all discussed here at great length within the past year with reference to newspaper articles regarding the latest entries. There were dozens of examples, many of them imports from text-speak/spelling.
3. I came to the same conclusion as jackkt on 15dn.

   In 6dn I wonder if BEAR might have come more readily to the minds of N American solvers?

   Could someone please explain where COMP comes from in 17ac?

   1. COMP refers to the comprehensive schools that were introduced into England, Wales etc. as a result of the Education Act 1944, also called the Butler Act.
      1. Thank you. I am familiar with comprehensive schools but had never come across that abbreviation. The only time I use “comp” these days is for a members’ competition at the golf club!
         Derek
4. 53 minutes for me, with ignorance proving bliss at 15dn, as IMPROVISOR prompted no kind of mental check.

   Like AnonymoUS, I first thought of BEAR, but looked elsewhere as I had never heard of such a river. Mind you, I’d never heard of the third longest river in Europe a week or so back. Anyway, as soon as I saw the ‘The boss wouldn’t wear that’ meaning, I was satisfied I was right.

   Which is more than can be said for several of the other clues, for which I am grateful to Dave for the parsing, most notably 13, where I couldn’t get past BOWS as the missile-launchers.

   Not that keen on the random deletion of letters to derive OBOE from trombone, but on the other hand not overly bothered either, on the basis that the answer can’t be anything else. Never heard of TRICKISH, my last in. Is it just my memory playing tricks, or have we had a lot of these ‘strain/tic/rick’ clues recently?

   I don’t want this to become thesis length, but can anyone explain how we are meant to understand from ‘time after time’ that the two Ts are meant to ‘bookend’ the product of the rest of the wordplay?

   Edited at 2013-05-10 02:23 am (UTC)

   1. That had me wondering as well – I think that (as usual) you have to ignore the punctuation. I think it has to be (ROT+SKY+T) all “after T”.
      Derek
      1. Of course – thank you. Just as well it wasn’t my blogging day!
         1. Happy to be able to reciprocate!

            (As soon as I posted I saw that I had forgotten the IS, but couldn’t correct it.)

5. Fairly ripped through this because short of time this morning. But also fell into the IMPROVISER trap without the time to read as carefully as I usually manage. 22ac again reminded me of the awful “tromboon”. In fact, it’s almost a literal description of it.
6. a stupid typo, a P for the 2d O of IMPROVISOR; having spent 3 or 4 minutes agonizing over TRICKISH–like Jack, I wanted it to be ‘ticklish’–I failed to notice my slip in my anxiety to submit. Luckily at 6d, I knew the Wear, even been on it, so ‘bear’ didn’t tempt me for long. Having got the YI of 14d, I mistakenly leaped to the conclusion that the word ended in ING, which didn’t help matters. I’ll gladly join in the chorus of boos–well, I trust it will swell to one– for OBOE.
7. On the whole easyish, but got held up over GEORGIAN, which took a long time to drop, and, like others, spent a long time worrying over TRICKISH, which fitted the cryptic parsing but was an adjective unknown to me. I too wanted the answer to be TICKLISH. However, Chambers confirmed that “trickish” is a real word. I would normally write IMPROVISER rather than IMPROVISOR, but went for the latter on the grounds that it offered the slightly better homophone for the “face-saving device”. That said, I agree with Jack that both the E and O spellings would be acceptable alternatives, a degree of ambiguity that makes this an unsatisfactory clue in my opinion.
8. Some ambiguity here. There is a River BEAR in the US so that will do for 6D just as good as WEAR. Also, I think IMPROVISER is a sound answer for 15D. I thought the word TRICKISH was a bit trickish (never heard of the word!)

   Overall, an easy puzzle – 15 minutes to solve.

   1. I’m still not entirely clear what the answer is supposed to be and I look forward to finding out for sure tomorrow.

      I’d say it it ought to be IMPROVISOR parsed as I’M PRO (I support) + VISOR (face-saving device), leaving ‘for’ as a link word and ‘speaker without a script’ as the definition. The only problem with this being that the spelling is not listed in any of the usual sources, even as an alternative.

      IMPROVISER, the recognised spelling, does not parse satisfactorily as -VISER can only be obtained by taking ‘for speaker’ as a homophone indicator leaving ‘without script’ as the definition. That simply doesn’t work so one then has to have ‘without script’ serving double duty, and that won’t do.

      Edited at 2013-05-10 08:43 am (UTC)

      1. It’s always been my understanding that there is no “official” dictionary under Richard Browne. On that basis, on the basis that the -or spelling is recognised by some dictionares at least, and on the basis that it’s the only answer that really fits the wordplay, it seems to me the answer has to be IMPROVISOR. In any event if it wasn’t my iPad edition would have told me I’d made a mistake.
         Having said all that I agree that it’s not entirely satisfactory, because you have to go to some fairly off-the-beaten track (and largely online) sources to find it, which is still unusual.
         Fortunately for me my spelling is sufficiently poor that none of this caused me any problems.
      2. Ignore my earlier comment. On reflection, I’m sure your parsing is right, Jack, and that it has to be I’M PRO + VISOR, with “speaker without a script” as the def. The only way it might be the homophonic IMPROVISER is if “speaker” is doing double duty as part of the def and the homophone indicator. Is that possible under Times xword rules? If so, then there is ambiguity, I suppose. Quite apart from that, reliance on such an unusual spelling – only validated by the eccentric Collins on-line and not found in any respectable dictionary as far as I can see – is enough by itself to make the clue unsatisfactory.
   2. Back in 1990ish, in my first attempt at entering the Times Crossword Championships, a very similar clue came up at the Bristol Regional Finals, and a number of us complained that BEAR was just as good an answer as WEAR. We were overruled as “the US river is the called the Little Bear”. No Wikipedia in those days so we had to accept the official ruling!
9. Held up a long time at the end by Saturday and Collins for 32 minutes in all. Wasn’t aware of a printer as a peripheral but can see it. The oboe clue seems almost more to congratulate itself than set a challenge. But I suppose it’s no more a gimme than 12. I wonder if anyone still reads Collins?
   In 27 ‘out of work’ can mean you no longer have work to do. I suppose.

   Edited at 2013-05-10 08:30 am (UTC)

10. It is a great pity that the clue discussed above allowed for the possibility of an error. Especially as I too made the bloomin’ error. Honestly, if I were a resident of Tunbridge Wells, I would really be disgusted. AND I generally hate the current infusion of OR-ness where ERs were always just as good, as in advisor. Pah.

    28 minutes, in an otherwise pleasant solve.

    Thanks to all concerned,
    Chris.

11. 17 minutes, not liking GEORGIAN very much (it works, but what a weird sentence it has to be), noting the feasible alternative River BEAR (though this IS a UK based crossword!), and adding TRICKISH to my dictionary of words even I would never use
    I discounted the -ER ending for 15d a) because I felt smug “knowing” that it was -OR for once, and b) if you use “for speaker” to indicate sounzlike you have no definition: “without script” on its own doesn’t give the answer.
    I thought SATURDAY was quite fun in its construction, even if the literal begged a few questions. Would the negative version, “not in work” have carried enough ambiguity to satisfy critics?
    I initially had TROTSKYITE, which I think is more common, but couldn’t make it fit the convolutions of the wordplay.
    CoD to VILLAINOUS, though I think it’s been here before. (After research, 24563 – I liked it then with the same reservation.)
12. DNF today, as I predicted yesterday! Made quite a mess of it in fact. Fell into the Improviser trap, put Bear at 6dn and a wrong Trotskyite at 14dn. Collins, Georgian and Saturday missing. Unknown words for me were Trickish and Casus Belli.
13. 14m, with a two or three at the end for GEORGIAN. The difficulty with this clue is that it isn’t cryptic at all.

    Edited at 2013-05-10 11:07 am (UTC)

14. As Dave said, this is a neat clue. Maybe Jack and Jimbo need to remember that the subject of the discussion is a cryptic, I said cryptic, crossword.
15. 24 mins but with IMPROVISER. Viser is an archaic spelling of visor so I would argue that either answer is acceptable.

    I spent a lot of time at the end on COLLINS/GEORGIAN/SATURDAY, in that order. I don’t have a problem with the clue for Saturday and smiled when the penny finally dropped.

16. 45 minutes here, with GEORGIAN being the last entry; it was the only word that I could think of that fitted but I did not understand the cryptic.
    I entered IMPROVISOR guided by the cryptic, but I think that either the clue or the answer is unsatisfactory for the reasons given above. If VISER is an archaic form of VISOR, as Andy Burrows, suggests, it does not appear in Chambers, which is packed with archaic spellings. I would also argue that an unindicated archaic spelling in the Times crossword is very unlikely. I entered IMPROVISOR into TEA, which cites all the regular sources, including Collins; it is listed as a non-standard form appearing in Webster’s New International Dictionary 2nd Edition.
    I wouldn’t want to use this puzzle to introduce students to the mysteries of cryptic crosswords – it might have an adverse effect on their spelling.
    1. Excuse my ignorance – TEA?
       1. =The Electronic Alveary, a marvellous program for word searches

          http://www.crosswordman.com/tea.html

       2. =the Electronic Alveary. Known tho’ as TEA
          A marvellous program for doing word searches, solving anagrams etc.
          I tried to post a link but got banished as spam (!)

          Easily googled however e,g, “the Electronic Alveary”

          1. Thank you. I had seen the abbreviation here a few times and kept meaning to ask.
             1. It’s a very versatile piece of software for assisting with solving really tough cryptics, such as The Listener. It’s also a godsend to crossword compilers looking for words that match their particular requirements.
17. I am not sure if I may have missed any recent discussion of this but the Times subscriptions team today confirmed to me that separate subscriptions to the crossword club are being phased out. If you want access to the crossword online after your subscription expires (and they stop handing out free access month-by-month) you will have to take one of the full subscription packages, the cheapest of which is £17.33 a month, I am told.
    1. There has been discussion, and speculation along those lines, but I don’t think there has been such a clear message directly from the horse’s mouth.

       I’m very keen on the crossword, and happy to pay for it, but I haven’t bought or read the paper for a long time, and have no interest in subscribing to any sort of package. I guess that means I will be lost to the puzzle and vice versa; I remain surprised that NI is determined to cut off access for the people who willingly part with their money for the crossword alone…

       1. You’re not alone. As it stands, I’ll be solving The Times for another 8 days then I’ll have to do some serious thinking. I can’t really justify that kind of money right now. The Guardian calls, I guess, though I’m not that keen. Any other suggestions? (it’s a long time since I tried many of the other papers’ puzzles)
          1. There’s now a message from somebody at News International in the general discussion forum at the Club. This confirms that subscriptions start at £2 per week (it’s what I am paying currently) rather than the much larger figure quoted above. She also says “We will be coming back to you in the next few weeks with the outcome of our reviews”, which suggests that it’s not all cut and dried as yet. Let’s hope this means that something can still be done to accommodate those who want club subscriptions only.
             1. Thanks, Jack. That’s encouraging. I can just about live with that. I’ll see what happens next week and will try to remember to mention it here.
18. As a maths teacher, now retired, allow me to be pedantic. We draw circles and arcs with a pair of compasses. A compass points north. They are not interchangeable. Like saying we wear a trouser, or an underpant, or a knicker, or a brace, or anything else that comes in pairs!
    1. Alan, you’ve clearly never heard (and been annoyed by) the sort of fashion people who regularly refer to “a longer trouser”. Funnily enough, when I looked for a good example, I find this issue has been addressed as recently as today in the Guardian’s style guide…

       http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2013/may/10/mind-your-language-fashion-trouser

       1. Thanks for this topicaltim. I myself use “data” in the singular, as datum sounds impossibly inappropriate.
          1. Just as, to anyone younger than a certain age, “pair of compasses” sounds impossibly pompous. Not to me, I hasten to add: it was a pair of compasses when I was at school. But language changes: get used to it!
    2. Unfortunately the dictionary disagrees 🙂
       1. Ho hum – another lost cause then, like criterion not criteria, fewer not less etc.
    3. Out of curiosity, why was it (were they?) a pair of compasses. I remember that’s what they were/it was called, but it was a hinged device with a pointy thing on on end and a pencil holder thingy on the other, so where did the pair and plural come in?
       1. Done a little bit of research. Compasses have (a pair of) legs, as do scissors, dividers and tongs, and they are always mentioned in the plural form. Trousers usually too (pace Topical Tim). My Chambers (1990 edition) (sorry “anonymous” above) says in the singular, compass is a direction finder, but if you want the arc drawer, you must use the plural. This could well have changed, to catch up with usage. So, if you want to draw a circle, saying “Pass me the compass” might not work
19. 7:30, which allowed me to come as close as I’m ever likely to come to challenging Magoo. Whoever this setter is, I’ll obviously be delighted if they are involved on Finals Day. At the time, the only thing which held me up was assuring myself that TRICKISH (which I didn’t know, but fitted the wordplay) had to exist, rather than TICKLISH (which I did know, but didn’t work). However, on reflection, I can see where the dissatisfaction with 15dn comes, and if I’d been proceeding less instinctively and more thoughtfully, I might actually have got it wrong for the reasons others have given…
20. About 15 minutes, ending with having to choose between WEAR and BEAR. I thought the River Wear was certainly compelling, but I couldn’t equate ‘wear’ and ‘brook’ at all. I certainly do equate ‘bear’ and ‘brook’. So I went with BEAR. There are several rivers called Bear, I think, in both the US and Canada, but certainly not in Europe, as far as I know. So for the North Americans, especially those of us who don’t know that in UK idiom ‘wear’ can mean something close to ‘brook’, this clue put us in a bit of a spot. Otherwise, I thought the puzzle fine. Regards.
21. 9:22 for me – not as fast as Topical Tim (good going, Tim) but for once I wasn’t too disappointed with it. Like others I wasn’t keen on OBOE, but had no objection to GEORGIAN (which went straight in). I hadn’t heard of TRICKISH before, and I dithered a bit over WEAR and IMPROVISOR.

    The latter is definitely trickish (might as well use the word now I’ve found it :-). Suppose the clue “Player who has no prior arrangements? (10)” (from No. 23,302, 30 May 2006, answer IMPROVISER) came up in the Championship and you’d put in IMPROVISOR. You approach Richard Browne, but he can’t find IMPROVISOR in any of the dictionaries he has to hand and doesn’t remember the precedent created by the current puzzle.

    1. Possibly you beat him (gently) around the head with a rolled up copy of today’s Times (solution included) until he DOES remember. But of course your example equally shows up an issue with cryptic definitions: there is no way of distinguishing between plausible solutions because there’s no wordplay.
22. I certainly feel that a Stewards’ Enquiry is called for, If one needs to be aware of non-standard forms in Webster’s to solve the Times crossword, heaven help me.

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