Times 25554 – speak and/or spell

37 comments on “Times 25554 – speak and/or spell”

1. …I had everything except ‘at work’ and ‘knave’, and I just couldn’t see them. So I called my mother and took a shower, and when I returned ‘at work’ jumped out at me, although it took a minute to see how the cryptic worked. Then ‘knave’ became obvious – complete!

   There was a little obscure vocabulary here in ‘byre’ and ‘oblate’, kind of a medieval orientation. At least I spotted ‘conge’, which enabled me to get the very tough 12 down.

   I liked the puzzle, but it was hard to get started anywhere. Of course, I didn’t even look at the clue for 6 until I had half the thing filled in.

2. 25:50 .. I loved this one. Clever, witty … can’t ask much more.

   LOI .. DOT – bit of a hit and hope.

   BYRE, LANDMARKS and KNAVE all made me smile. Actually, the whole puzzle made me smile. Ta, setter.

3. I spent ages on 7 down since I couldn’t see it. In the end I also put in DAT (raised a small amount, TAD) and hoped that it had some obscure meaning I’d not run across (it didn’t). So one wrong.
4. 57 minutes, but ‘dat’ for DOT. Didn’t see how it worked, so ‘followed the cryptic’ (TAD – ‘a small amount’ raised) and paid the price…

   Didn’t know congé, which kind of makes me feel better, as the unaccented version sounds as unlikely a word as ‘dat’.

   Thought the spoonerism was even weaker than usual, but liked BUNK.

5. Just as well, or you might have written ‘timetable’.
6. I parsed it as PUT (set) CA (about) … overturned.
   1. Sorry for the lacking sig (and I can’t find my login credentials).

      – Vince from Syracuse, NY, USA

7. … and nearly a DNF. Left this with DOT and the AT WORK / KNAVE pair unfinished. (Same problems as several colleagues here then.) Came back a fair bit later to realise the TO DO connection and went through bits of churches for the last. Do they all have naves? I suppose they do.

   As for AT WORK, I was convinced that it had to be •T• ONE, given that TWO of the species have a chance of survival, whereas ONE doesn’t unless it multiplies asexually. But couldn’t think of a beast •T•.

   Not at all helped today by a night of neuralgia then suffering the effects of the medication. Do not try to enjoy a crossword on high doses of codeine!

   Edited at 2013-08-15 03:52 am (UTC)

   1. Neuralgia and gout sound like ailments that ought to have gone out with the Great War but wouldn’t play ball. I hope the treatment works and you are soon back to your old avatar!
      1. Many thanks Ulaca. But believe me, neuralgia of the trigeminal sort is well and truly with us. Though the meds usually work. Looking forward to further banter. McT.
8. 50 minutes for all but 7dn and 12dn.

   I then spent ages trying to decide between A, I and O as the missing letter in D?T. In the end I plumped for DAT as I was unable to bring to mind both slightly obscure meanings of words required to arrive at the correct answer. Pleased to find I was not alone in this.

   I knew I was in for a tough time when it took me 8 minutes to find something to enter in the grid (14dn).

9. Another one with a slow and increasingly worried start but a flying solve once 4d went in, completing in just under 14 minutes.
   I agree with Vince on 5d – another fine clue that could be missed by instinctive solvers in a collection of fine clues. AT WORK was my favourite of the lot, but I thought the anagram for the conker tree was extremely well hidden.
   I nearly completed with LOI DOT as an illegible mess (only fooling myself, of course) because of the tempting dat/dot/dit options, all of them sort of justifiable. The last stroke of the pen was to make the splodge look like an O. Honest.
10. Failed to find ‘at work’ – diverted by ‘at post’ – and ‘knave’, though seems easy enough now. Vastly annoying since was enjoying this and trundling along OK. CoD byre.
11. 
    All correct, but only just, as, like others, I ummed and aahed (sp?) over DOT vs dat. This time Lady Luck was with me.

    DNK BROWN COAL; all others entered confidently, but slowly, making for an enjoyable hour or so.

    PS I’m with Vince re parsing for ACT UP.

12. A meaningless 19 mins because I also put “dat” as a reversed “tad” at 7dn. I wasn’t happy with it when I entered it and I should have given it some more thought. Pretty annoying, because as I was walking to my PC I was thinking that I was going to comment that this was another puzzle in which close attention to the wordplay was needed. I see I also wasn’t alone in having the AT WORK/KNAVE crossers as my last two in.
13. Three missing today (At Work, Knave and Congealment). At Work is a clever clue. Liked Putsch. Pleased to plump correctly for Dot over Dat.
    Got Ash from the definition – wasn’t sure if the shortened word was dash, hash or mash!!
14. About 90 minutes for what I found to be a quite difficult and slightly annoying crossword (e.g. dot/dat-like others I went for the latter)

    Glheard You are right about an Oblate devoting himself to monastic life, but an Oblate has a more casual link to monastic life and unlike priests or brothers he is not tied to an Order by monastic vows. [At Belmont Abbey where I was educated we had a Choir Oblate, Michael Oakley who was a renowned classsical scholar who together with Msgr. Ronald Knox translated Thomas a Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ” into English.]

    Really struggled with the cryptic construction 12dn. Whilst I could see …..ALMENT, and that the answer must be CONGEALMENT (from setting) I didn’t know conge (other than as an alternative spelling of congee in HK) and when I looked it up in the OED on my computer, I found the definition given was an unceremonious dismissal or rejection,; hardly permission to leave. I can only assume other dictionaries have a different interpretation

15. Having filled grid, putting CONCEALMENT from checkers without thinking much about clue, ended up with 7d. Spent a while wondering whether DAT could be a relevant word from somewhere I was unaware of, but after rejecting DIT, decided it had to be DOT. So submitted after a quick check for typos, forgetting to have another look at 12d – I must remember to pencil unparsed solutions!
16. Excellent and tricky puzzle. Like many others, I bunged in DOT on a wing and a prayer and never came near to spotting the TO-DO connection. HORSE CHESTNUT went in with the aid of checkers and the “timber” reference, the anagram completing eluding me. “Versatile” as anagrind (or so I presume) was a new one one for me.
17. You mean the things that we’re liable to read in the bible, it ain’t necessarily so? (btw, it’s not ‘historical’ but ‘historic’, which does have a slightly different flavour)
18. Why is ‘The Flood’ Historical,and not mythological?
19. 12:05 – I too put in DOT because it seemed to make sense rather than knowing why.
20. 7 down had me as well, so don’t feel bad anyone. Or at least let’s all feel bad together. Tricky annoying and good, this one took me a very long time, and I am not ashamed.
    1. I think DOT claimed many a scalp today. Scroll through the Club leader board and there’s a pretty impressive list of strong solvers with 1 error.
21. 20m, with a couple at the end pondering 7dn. I almost bunged in DAT, but wasn’t happy with it and fortunately realised that if I could come up with a word fitting TOD? meaning “performance” I’d have a better answer. 15 letters later… voila!
    I started off on the wrong track with 20ac: describing the two animals of a given species in the ark as “endangered” would seem a bit rich if I was one of the others.
    I hesitated over 19dn because I wasn’t happy with SCRATCH meaning “withdrawal”. I see that it means “withdraw” as a verb, but as a noun?

    Edited at 2013-08-15 02:00 pm (UTC)

    1. Collins has ‘a withdrawn competitor in a race, etc.’ A quick Google search seems to indicate it’s mainly an Americn usage, and mainly limited to equine competitors. In the UK and other Commonwealth countries, ‘scratchings’ would be the norm.

       Ark-wise, I guess the other beasts would be called ‘doomed’.

       Edited at 2013-08-15 02:21 pm (UTC)

       1. Fair enough. Mind you “equine scratchings” evokes something quite different for me…
          1. Probably what we were REALLY eating in pubs for all those years before the gastro revolution.
22. About 40m in fits and start but at least all correct for the first time in quite a few days. I liked this a lot but DOT was a guess and the Spoonerism was even more cringeworthy than usual. My COD to BYRE neat and succinct.
23. Ouch. I went with DAT instead of DOT, and for good measure I also went with CONCEALMENT, having misread the clue altogether. Oops. Tricky puzzle, and rather than feel cranky about it, I tip my hat to the setter. And yes, SCRATCH as both a noun and verb is a common reference in horse racing over here, denoting a horse that was scheduled to run, but is withdrawn, usually after the printing of the program. Better luck to me tomorrow, and regards to all.
24. I gave up on this after 20′ online, tried again after breakfast, and managed to finish somehow, albeit with, of course, DAT. I was totally misled by 1ac, and spent a lot of time trying to think of a mythical beast before finally twigging to the anagram. Similar problem with 27ac. But I think my COD would go to CONGEALMENT; I was sure of MEN, but only solved when the checkers suggested ‘concealment’.
25. DOT gave me no trouble……..but I stupidly put BANK instead of BUNK !
26. Puzzles seem to have become harder since arrival in France.
    General wordplay seems to have changed.
    Still don’t understand dot as a small amount -7D, or the meaning of borne back by as an anagram – 1A. Also surprised by versatile and vagrant as anagram indicators – 27A and 4D.
    Clarification appreciated.
    Mike and Fay
    1. “Borne back” refers to GR (King George) which is to be reversed and included in the anagram – as blogger George has said above. The anagram is indicated by “mad”. Collins gives “a dot of paint” as an example of “dot” meaning a small amount.

       SOED has “vagrant” as “Of a thing: not fixed or stationary; moving, esp. unpredictably” and “versatile” as “Characterized by inconstancy or fluctuation; variable, changeable” both conveying the necessary meaning of “change”, surely?

       Edited at 2013-08-15 10:27 pm (UTC)

27. Doh! Even worse than yesterday with a miserable 23:12. I’d made comparatively slow progress anyway as I was feeling tired, and I struggled with DOT versus DAT and DIT. But the real killer was CONGEALMENT which I just couldn’t see. Eventually I spotted CONGE, and kicked myself for missing the familiar “key”, but I must have spent well over half my time on this one reasonably straightforward clue. (Deep sigh!)
28. George, can I ask whether you actually submitted this at 9:42pm on the 14th, or whether this is a livejournal bug? If you did submit it early, then how did you manage to get hold of the puzzle before midnight, because I often wish I could do that!
    1. Dave, I think it’s just that George is in the States.

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