Times 25548 – Green Eggs & Ham

58 comments on “Times 25548 – Green Eggs & Ham”

1. 27:01 (BIMBO*) .. this turned into a sort of crosswordy version of ‘chess boxing’ for me with a mid-solve sprint around the house looking for a AA battery. Maybe an idea for future championships?

   Personally, delicate thing that I am, I could have done without the UKE clue. I mean, really, can’t we leave that sort of thing to the Guardian?

   COD .. the beautifully put together BEFIT

   (Battery In Mouse Bailed Out)

2. 22A is SQUIB. Piece of satire of the thing that ignites a firework (or an airbag for that matter)
3. 19D is GLUE around ‘COS (colloquial for ‘because’)
   23D is BEFIT
4. Faster than I should have been, given the number of clues I only got post hoc, e.g. TALK RADIO. Like Sotira, I was surprised, and a bit put off, by UKE, despite the word’s Shakespearean lineage. I was sure of BEFIT long before I dragged E-fit from memory, memory no doubt of a previous cryptic, since I’m sure I’ve never encountered the term elsewhere. It gets my COD, too.
5. One other tweak to the parsing: at 10ac, it’s more likely to be PIC (image in miniature) + AS (in part of) + SO (note).

   On edit: the horse at 17 is STEED (a steer’s a bovine!)

   Edited at 2013-08-08 03:01 am (UTC)

6. I struggled around in 49:20, to put a fine point on it, mostly slow but even slower in the SW, where UNSETTLED, DIEGO and RHINO (my LOI!) had me properly stumped (even by DRS standards). COD to SPOKEN FOR over OFF THE SHELF and TCHAIKOVSKY
7. Not sure about 14dn. The best I can do is that ‘unsettled’ may be used to refer to a composer’s works which were circulated clandestinely – the musical equivalent of samizdat books and poems. More (possibly?) here: http://www.classicfm.com/composers/shostakovich/guides/unsettled-scores-dmitri-shostakovich/
   1. To settle is to compose or calm, hence if unsettled one would be in need of the ministrations of a composer.
      1. Ah, the new ‘flow-er’.
      2. Like Uncle Yap, I was totally baffled by the parsing of 14D, though the def was obvious enough once cross-checkers were in place. Thanks to Koro for what must be the right explanation. Very clever, but tests the concept of the oblique def to breaking point.
8. A similar experience to Kevin, with quite a bit going in on the literals, making this, for me, more fun than yesterday’s but again a little unsatisfactory compared with, say, a Paul puzzle where you have to ‘do the hard miles’. Thus, while 10ac and 4 & 8 dn were clever, the wordplay was rather redundant, especially as two were enumerated multiwords and the other, with Matisse, Crosswordland’s top-of-mind painter.

   Unusual to have a puzzle where 4 solutions ended in the letter ‘o’. E-fit guessed by analogy with photofit, and, sorry, a clear COD for the beautifully constructed and disguised tiddler at 14ac – also my last in.

   1. Actually 6 solutions ended in the letter ‘o’. I wondered if there was some theme but couldn’t spot anything. They are: picasso, slo-mo, diego, rhino, steps-into and talk-radio.
      1. Maths was never my strong suit…
9. Good puzzle I thought but could someone please enlighten me on 6d? I don’t really undersatand its construction. 28:11 today.
   1. Uncle Yap’s RHA stands for reverse hidden answer.
      1. Many thamks. Stupid me. I thought maybe ‘acer’ was trying to be equivalent to ‘more able… doh!
10. A similar tale to yesterday for me, with all but a few answers going in within 30 minutes but then a handful of clues remained outstanding and I needed another 15 to complete the grid. UNSETTLED, ELLIPSE and GLUCOSE were the main culprits. After the main event I took ages to work out why 10ac had to be PICASSO.

    My only query is the use of the past tense in 19dn where I wondered if the clue should be “something we use” or simply “something used” as it currently reads as if no-one uses glue any more.

    I was pleased to remember the required meaning of SQUIB which was new to me when it turned up as “lampoon” in puzzle 25540 on 30 July.

    Edited at 2013-08-08 06:30 am (UTC)

11. 43 minutes with the SW near-impassable. A real challenge with some excellent clues: CoD unsettled. But do people say “rhino” for money or is this merely a kind of endearing Billy Bunterish crossword anachronism?
12. Snuck in just under 30 minutes, FAULT*
    Lots of sneaky stuff here of the lucky-guess-work-out-why-later variety, all right when you have a few checkers in place, SPOKEN FOR and UNSETTLED for example. 18 was a beast, looking like an anagram of ‘the oval’, then perhaps being endless, which nearly works quite well.
    CoD to the neat fish at 19 across, though all the 3 letter words were decidedly tricky. Hats off to the setter
    *First Attempt Using Large Tablet – pity I can only use the acronym once
13. Filled in a lot of these from the definition alone and thought some of the surfaces were gobbledygook (e.g. UKE), though I realise not everyone gives two hoots about surfaces. Having said that, COD to 1D as it raised a laugh precisely because of the surface.
    1. Gobbledygook surfaces are a million miles better than clues than don’t work because they aren’t put together logically
       Having said that I think 14ac does make sense if you read it carefully
       1. All the clues being logically put together is surely the minimum puzzle requirement for any solver? What makes a puzzle “good” is then purely subjective, taking into account the solver’s liking for surfaces, brevity, humour, vocab, allusions, tricky wordplay, etc. I just happen to have a thing for surfaces.

          To me, 14A is not a natural surface even though it may be grammatically correct. This is also a subjective judgement.

14. It’s simply a reverse (over) hidden (fences), as PACER is a type of horse!
15. Looking at the wordplay of 13 and my inability to spell whatsisname’s name, I thought perphaps it was referring to some likely lad in the 60s trying to get one past Lev Yashin!
16. Sorry, that was me. Thanks to you both.
17. 14 mins, and from the comments here it seems like I must have been very much on the setter’s wavelength. Having said that, I spotted a lot of the definitions straight away and put in plenty of the answers without bothering to parse them. ELLIPSE, SPOKEN FOR, TALK RADIO, LAWNMOWER, CONICAL, PICASSO, OFF THE SHELF, STEAM ENGINE, LAY TO REST and UNSETTLED all fell into that category. I prefer a puzzle in which I have to chew on the wordplay a little more.
18. 
    … and that one was at 18dn, where without working it out, I carelessly put in eclipse, thinking that there couldn’t be many other words that would fit the checkers (in fact, my solver only gives those two, so I should have thought a bit harder!)

    Everything finished in about an hour, but there were a couple I didn’t fully understand (PICASSO, UNSETTLED, RHINO). Took far too long to see the fodder for SUNROOF, and to spot the tips for GAR.

    COD: SPOKEN FOR

19. A toughie. Around 50 mins. UKE did cause the gorge to rise a bit – not surprisingly as I was working my way through a “full English” breakfast while solving this! But it was very clever with a deceptive surface – Was I the only one to spend some minutes muttering to myself “but surely a ukulele is always plucked, not just sometimes” before twigging the cryptic role of “plucked” here?

    A quibble: at 12A why is a mine necessarily a “major” source? This looks like padding to me, but perhaps I’m missing something.

    1. I took it in the mine of information sense.
       1. Yes, of course, that works. Thanks Ulaca
    2. Ukuleles are more often strummed than plucked.

       Mark I

       1. Good point! Which makes the surface read even better.
20. Completed without parsing several: LOI was UKE. I did manage to sort nearly all, but was baffled by 8d, which went in from checkers – I had NFO. but was trying to get S+POKER, with ‘temperature’ indicating a fire somehow, as it wasn’t the usual T.
    I agree that RHINO for money should be given a rest. It’s become a crossword setters’ cliché, and is probably unknown to everyone else.
21. ….as I put in all the answers in 30 minutes without noticing many of the subtleties, which is probably just as well. So it didn’t seem difficult to me, but tomorrow I will struggle over some very simple clues.
22. On surfaces, I’m of the opinion that ‘a kind of sense’ is sufficient, and perhaps part of the allure, for me anyway, is that clues can sound like ultra-cut headlines from the National Enquirer. And, of course, the reason I prefer The Times is that the cryptic readings are more likely to be correct than anywhere else in the entire Universe.

    Mohn’s had ‘google translate’ and ‘gobbledy-gook’ surfaces recently, but hasn’t actually said which ones they are. Any chance?

    Thanks Yap and setter for a good morning’s fun.

    1. mohn doesn’t rhyme with moan 😉

       I gave an example in my original comment.

       Like I said, whether people care or not about surfaces is a subjective thing, and even if surfaces matter to you then there’s not necessarily going to be any agreement with someone else about what’s “good” or not. Different strokes etc.

       1. Ceteris paribus, nothing beats a smooth surface. Here, though, the gritty content and the abbreviated noun form are well matched I feel by the choppy surface. So not just horses for courses perhaps, but horses for different going on the same course?

          Ulaca

23. 35 minutes.I didn’t find this as difficult as some, though I did have to think hard about the wordplay of a few after getting the answer, and didn’t understand 14dn until coming here. I thought it was an excellent puzzle of average difficulty, with some unusual clues, though I agree that the surface of 14ac is not great. I also agree with jackkt that the use of the past tense in 19dn is unsatisfactory.
24. Wow I must have been doing a whole other crossword where i was on the wavelength of tgr setter and enjoying the wordplay. 11 minutes with squib the last in from checking letters. I did like the clue for glucose and 14 across is an all-time classic.
25. 18:58.

    Like may others, it seems, I threw a lot in on def and checkers and worried about the wordplay later. With a few more oblique or well-disguised definitions this could have been really tough.

    Even post-solve I still didn’t see how spoken for, unsettled and glucose worked so thanks to all and sundry for enlightenment.

    Unlike Ulaca I actually used the wordplay to get Picasso and well-defined.

    As I’m off on me hollibobs I’ll love you and leave you for the next couple of weeks. I won’t be able to access live puzzles so I’ll be taking some 2007 printouts and a book of Paul crozzers away with me.

26. I presume from Uncle Y’s heading that his grandchildren have arrived on holiday – have a wonderful time.
    I completed in 35m today, but, like others, had not parsed everything, especially ‘ellipse’ which, for some unaccountable reason, eluded me..Also, I took an untimed phone call while solving, but I think that would only have accounted for about 5 minutes.
    George Clements
27. One quibble I forgot to raise before is the “a” in the definition at 8. I’d buy spoken for = not single but the “a” means it doesn’t work, IMHO. As UY heaped praise upon it maybe I’m missing summat.
    1. I guess it works if you take “single” here as a noun rather than an adjective – as in “we were the only married couple in a room of singles”.
28. Hi Mohn2

    Yes, I realise you don’t quite sound like MOAN but I thought I’d go for it anyway. And I lurve your logo!

    Thanks for your response, and yes, horses for courses (especially if you’re very unlucky in a cheap burger restaurant) is the order of the day. Chuck an example my way next time you get the urge, though, as I’d like to see more clearly where you’re coming from. I don’t suppose I’m too fussy in the general scale of things, but certainly some of the other dailies have, on occasion, raised my hackles a bit.

    Cheers
    Chris.

29. All correct today with FOI Rep and LOI Uke. Rather liked the latter clue – it made me chuckle. The preponderance of words ending in O struck me as odd.
    I’d have thought a year or two ago how ugly some of the surface readings were but as I’ve become a more experienced solver I’m now with keriothe in largely ignoring them.
30. 14m, so I seem to have been on the wavelength. Like some others though I achieved this by bunging in most of the answers from definition and worrying about the wordplay after solving. Not my kind of puzzle.
    I pay no attention whatsoever to surfaces, which is a bit unfair on the setter when he/she comes up with a beauty. Fortunately there are people here to point these instances out to me. As mohn2 says, different wotsits for different thingies.
31. About 20 minutes, though not understanding the wordplay for UNSETTLED and BEFIT. Beyond that, everything was OK. My LOI were the crossing BEFIT and SQUIB, and SPOKEN FOR was the best of the lot, I thought. Regards.
32. This puzzle could be a beginner’s guide to insertion indicators: 6a boxes, 17a carrying, 24a retaining, 2d bottles, 3d stretching (a bit iffy, I thought), 4d nursing, 7d smothering, 18d without, 19d around (etc?)
    1. Think shoe-trees, inside pushing out. Perfect, IMHO.
       1. Yes, I see what you mean. Thanks.

          Edited at 2013-08-08 06:30 pm (UTC)

33. An ellipse is one of the three types of conical sections. Hyperbola and parabola are the other two. The circle is a special case of the ellipse.
34. I thought we’d done away with that ‘Deliberately Omitted’ nonsense. It serves no purpose and smacks of smugness.
    1. … he said, deliberately omitting any form of ID…
       1. That’s your best reply – Really? Do you you think if I’d put Mr. Smith or Jones or Z8bb87k or whatever it would have altered the point of the post? I don’t really see why you’re defending it anyway. Surely what may seem obvious answers and FOI to some may be the LOI for others.
35. Re the GLUCOSE clue
    “Something we used to stick” could indeed mean that glue is not used for that purpose any more. But it can also mean “something (my wife and I) used to stick (the broken …)”

    I can’t really comment on the surface readings but it is true I think that a lot of solvers pay no attention to them. A rough surface often provides the grip the solver needs to penetrate the inner workings of a clue, but that wasn’t really something I was looking to do here.

36. I thought we’d stopped all that ‘Deliberately Omitted’ nonsense. It serves no useful purpose and reeks of smugness.
    1. …again!
37. 13:16 for me. Looking back, I probably made unduly heavy weather of this puzzle, but perhaps it’s as well that I checked most of the wordplay since I managed to misread “without difficulty” in 16dn as “with difficulty” and initially bunged in SEEPS INTO before spotting that it didn’t match the anagram.

    I’m not usually worried too much by poor surface readings, but I do appreciate a good one when I manage to spot it.

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