TIMES 25515 – Gardeners’ Answer Time

34 comments on “TIMES 25515 – Gardeners’ Answer Time”

1. Very surprised by the double use of “bed” = COT. Then wondered why it wasn’t used in 5ac too (with an anagram of PICK inserted).

   Two “withdrawals”, to boot!

   If the L at 13ac really is ‘opening piece in Latin, initially’ — and I can’t see much of an alternative — then it’s surely overkill.

   21dn: NATCH has a good literary history prior to chavs. It’s all through Pynchon for example — once he cured himself of his legendary ‘bad ear’.

   17ac (SECEDE) brought echoes of a radio program from Friday when a full professor of history from UWA referred to Western Australia “succeeding” from the Commonwealth (of Australia). If there were a reason for stripping someone of their chair, that would surely be it.

   Ulaca: glad to see you found the so-called “smart quotes”.

   Edited at 2013-07-01 07:03 am (UTC)

   1. My take on this (though I blinked several times) is that “opening piece of Latin” tells you what it is, “initially” tells you where it goes.
      1. That’s how I read it. Seems perfectly clear to me. Unlike certain other parts of the puzzle…

         Edited at 2013-07-01 08:43 am (UTC)

      2. OK … thanks for the re-parsing. Now it seems less of a problem than I (and [perhaps?] Ulaca) first saw it.

         Edited at 2013-07-01 10:28 am (UTC)

2. A rather Mondayish puzzle, for which I, for one, am grateful. I’d never heard of the clouded leopard until it appeared recently in a Concise I think it was. I was too clever by half in flinging in ‘colt’ at 1d without even looking at 3, and then trying to find a word beginning with L at 9ac; the penny finally dropped. Didn’t know of the gannet’s reputation. This puzzle was unusual in that it has two clues with ‘in bed’ (and one with ‘out of bed’) and two with ‘Withdraw’; and the ‘bed’ is ‘cot’ in both cases.
3. 47 minutes. Rather an untidy solve for me with several unknown words or meanings: CLOUDED leopard (I wrote in SPOTTED far too early in the proceedings), SCRATCH (cash), FLASH CARDS, DING (hit on the head), MUSSY (but fortunately I knew the plant so I was not led astray), COMP. Nothing that couldn’t be worked out or guessed but it all combined to slow me down and stop things flowing.

   Edited at 2013-07-01 07:56 am (UTC)

4. Finished all ok (or so I thought) in about 25mins, but then needed many more to come up with AIREDALE.

   On coming here, though, I found that there is no plant alyssem, and there is a word MUSSY. Ho hum.

   Other unknowns: CLOUDED (leopard); SCRATCH (for cash); comp (for TYPESETTER).

5. AIREDALE is 19a not 18 (it is correct in your introduction but wrong in the blog itself).

   When I got to 1D (at which point I didn’t have DUMMY) I thought CLOT immediately but I realized it must be wrong since they would never use COT twice like that. So I had to wait until I got DUMMY to convince myself that they did.

   Like Janie, got ALYSSUM wrong though, since I’d not heard of it and the wordplay was so clearly ALYSSEM I just wrote it in without thinking too much about it.

6. Yes, I thought that ALYSSUM was more likely than what I put in because I thought MESSY more plausible than MUSSY. Oops.
7. A rather messy 24 minutes, inclusive of an interruption of about 5, which nonetheless allowed me to progress more swiftly down the stalled left on return.
   Fortunate with the plant, which I vaguely remember as ALYSSUM with a U, though I’ve no idea what it looks like.
   The dog was a nasty piece of work, as so many are. Too many possibilities with the crossing letters, too many possible meanings of “dog” and “drink”, not to mention things you could do with “put outside”. LOI and annoyed with it.
   Liked the UFO clue, though the device seems to be getting almost commonplace currently.
   Curiosity piqued by entries here, and rather thinking the word was more dated than current Chavspeak, I looked NATCH up in the Urban dictionary. I rather wish I hadn’t.

   Edited at 2013-07-01 08:46 am (UTC)

8. 9 minutes, including a couple at the end pondering 20dn. ALYSSUM looked a more likely word, but the wordplay pointed much more clearly to ALYSSEM. When in doubt, follow the wordplay, right? Wrong.
   Ah well. Happy Canada Day.
9. Another ALYSSEM is a plant candidate, too lazy or over-confident to go and look it up. Otherwise good clean fun in 15 minutes.
10. 10 minutes, while musing on pretty much all the observations that have already been made. I made the 50/50 choice on the grounds that I could think of loads of -UM plants but no -EM plants; and knew the alternative “untidy” synonym was probably valid because I could remember someone regularly using the expression “no muss no fuss” (no idea who it was, though it probably wasn’t Dr David Starkey).

    (I am back from a week in the deep countryside without easy access to crosswords, physical or internet based. I stopped my brain deteriorating by doing jigsaws instead, but it’s not the same).

11. 8.22 including like everyone else, wondering why COT was used twice.
12. 15 mins post-lunch, but with the incorrect ALYSSEM after I trusted the wordplay rather than my instincts, and I forgot to check it once I’d completed the puzzle. I do vaguely recall having heard or read the expression “to muss up one’s hair” but “mussy” didn’t register at the time. I’m glad I wasn’t alone.

    AIREDALE was my LOI. I spent a minute at the end still thinking that “outside” was a containment indicator before the penny dropped. Post-solve I had to check that there was such an animal as a clouded leopard, and that FLASH CARDS was correct.

13. Too bad MUSSY is not in my vocabulary, so ALYSSEM was my only mistake (to my credit: when I saw by the points in my profile that I had a mistake, I did know where it was, and ALYSSEM didn’t really seem a likely spelling anyway). Otherwise, a few other unknowns that didn’t throw me off (like the CLOUDED leopard) and many clues that required some pondering to get the wordplay. TOOK ISSUE had perhaps at least the most amusing clue today.
14. 23:49 .. I was mentally drained while solving this, which for once was an advantage – I had to work out every bit of wordplay on a scratchpad and ALYSSEM looked so wrong I had to rethink it.

    If I may digress, c’mon, Laura! C’mon, Andy!

    If I may digress further, it is indeed Canada Day (thank you, keriothe, on behalf of my other, actually Canajan half). But I’m working, as is the man ripping our kitchen apart – very LOUDLY.

    Edited at 2013-07-01 01:46 pm (UTC)

    1. My other half is actually Canajan too, which is how I know it’s Canada Day. I’m looking forward to marking the occasion with a Caesar when I get home.
       1. Now that sounds like a plan. Cheers!
15. Initially I didn’t get anything in the top half apart from a tentative CLOT for 1dn, so went to last clues and was able to steadily work my way up the grid. Fortunately I knew the plant so wasn’t trapped by 20, but struggled to get the dog, which was last in after 35 minutes. A few unknowns: the leopard (thought it might be anagram fodder at first) and the second meaning of ‘scratch’.
    Three beds in one puzzle? Obviously a setter with a thing about beds. There could have been another one for the definition of the plant in 20.
16. Looks like I am not alone in not knowing the plant and thinking the wordplay was heading towards ALYSSEM. Better luck tomorrow
    1. Lots of alyssum in my garden so once I had a couple of checking letters, it wrote itself in and then I worked out why.
17. Just to show that easy clues can only be defined by what one does or doesn’t get, my FOI was Airedale and Alyssum was close after despite which I needed my habitual time (which is much longer than most of the solvers) to get the NW corner in particular. This despite knowing nothing about flora and being vehemently anti-canine in every respect…
18. A compositor (comp) was a person who composed the pages. A typesetter was a linotype (or lino) operator. Two quite different jobs back in Fleet Street.
    1. SOED: Printing. A person who sets type by hand, corrects composed matter, makes up pages, and assembles them for printing; loosely a person who sets type by machine.

       COED, Chambers and Collins all mention arranging or setting up type. Chambers has typesetter = compositor.

       Any complaints to the dictionary compilers not to the setter if that’s not how things worked in Fleet Street with its restrictive practices.

       Edited at 2013-07-01 05:30 pm (UTC)

19. About 25 minutes, but with ALYSSEM. Otherwise, I didn’t have many real problems, and I learned what a ‘comp’ is (or is not, as per anonymous above), that the GANNET is greedy, and that a CLOUDED leopard exists. So in balance, a somewhat profitable Canada Day, and by the way, Happy Canada Day to those planning to celebrate. Regards.
20. I was glad I knew ALLYSUM. I used to have it in the garden but didn’t like the garish yellow colour. It’s like those fields of rape you see whenever you’re in the country. Handy in crosswordland though. This puzzle seemed pretty straightforward. 24 minutes which is a reasonable time for me. LOI was AIREDALE which looks easy in retrospect but took me 5 minutes thinking time. Ann
21. A rather nervous 7:15 for me. I made another horribly slow start (tried to find an anagram of “leopard”; could only think of CAUSERS as anagram of “scare us”), but eventually got going, and then finished slowly. Although I was vaguely aware of CLOUDED leopards, “cash” = SCRATCH, and “hit on the head” = DING, I wasn’t entirely confident of any of them.
22. How is ATE construed as “worried” in the solution to 6D ? Because no one else has queried this, there is something obvious to the cognoscenti which I am missing !
    1. It’s one of the meanings of the word – Chambers gives “to upset, irritate or worry (inf)” under eat.
       1. Thanks – now I know what has been eating me!
23. A leisurely 12:15 for this one. I’d heard of the CLOUDED leopard and knew how to spell ALYSSUM so they didn’t hold me up much. 8-letter dogs are nearly always AIREDALEs, aren’t they? – all those useful letters I suppose – so it went straight in after quickly checking it fit the wordplay. Only one I hadn’t heard of was SCRATCH for “cash” but it sounded plausible enough.
    1. Come on, Andy, it’s hardly a level playing field when you’ve got one sitting on the top of your head.
       1. 🙂

          You said yourself it was your “bete noire”. Mine’s clearly a “bete blanche”, and anyway he’s a Westie.

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