Times 25560 – All Quiet on the Eastern Front

35 comments on “Times 25560 – All Quiet on the Eastern Front”

1. …quite a few of the cryptics, such as the ones for ‘erudition’, ‘nabob’, ‘heartsore’, ‘first rate’, and ‘steal a march on’. I thought the language in 27 was a little obscure, but then realized that ‘avail’ and not ‘a vail’ was meant.

   An OK puzzle, but you shouldn’t be able to solve that many clues without the cryptics.

2. no errors, but having got all but 2 done fairly quickly (for me), wasted ages on 22A, having got myself convinced I was seeking a South African ruminant commencing with the Boer word haart!

   10D – 2nd last in, a new word to me, took ages to click on the parsing.

   1. 10 minutes for me on 22a, but the opposite problem: got ‘heart’ immediately (my Afrikaans being nothing to write home about) and then got stuck on a word shaped .o.e
3. 13:30 .. which for the moment gives me the rare chance to top the leader board – yippee! (not that I’m competitive or anything)

   An awful lot were write-ins from patterns of crossing letters, quickly reverse-engineered after the fact.

   Last in: GOATEE

4. 37 minutes with several going in on definition alone. Didn’t know SIDEBAR or FILLET meanings – the latter is also an architectural term for a band, btw. I’m not entirely convinced that a TREASURER is necessarily a finance expert. It turned out to be quite easy but I took 3-4 minutes finding my first word to write in the grid at 21dn.

   Edited at 2013-08-22 01:54 am (UTC)

   1. in an american company at least, the treasurer is in charge of the right hand side of the P&L (stocks,debt,assets etc so is definitely a financial expert). The left hand side of the P&L is the controller’s job (revenue and expenses).
      1. No doubt some of them are, but I think of treasurer (and the dictionaries confirm this to a degree) as an administrator, somebody of probity and sober judgement rather than necessarily a finance expert. It’s a very fine shade of meaning though so I don’t mean to labour the point, but simply reporting what occurred to me.
         1. I have some sympathy because I think in the UK a Treasurer does tend to be a book keeper. But, having worked with several large US firms, I was aware of the distinction drawn by Paul and went with that.
            1. In my experience the treasurer is always the person who looks after financial aspects of the balance sheet: cash, investments, debt: very specifically a finance expert.
               1. Thank you for preventing me putting on my ever-available pedant hat and pointing out that debt, assets etc are balance sheet items, not P/L.
5. Like Sotira, I got a number of these before actually working out the parsing (Sotira, did you also throw in ‘education’ and ‘journal’ before thinking better of it?); and for 13ac I had to wait for Uncle’s explication–I’d thought that RACE=’run’, and was trying to figure out what to do with the M. I didn’t much care for ‘even though’=IF. DNK ‘maids of honor’, and from the Google pictures I’ve missed something all these years. I also didn’t know that the Lassa of fever fame was in Nigeria; I’ll keep that in mind the next time I never go there. I think I’ll join UY in giving PRETERNATURAL my COD, although these days ‘China’ instantly triggers ‘pal’ in my mind, and with a few checkers, …
   1. I got lucky, Kevin, and avoided those pitfalls, though I did very nearly throw in ‘sortie’ at 15a – that’s what getting a run of clues from definition alone can do to you, I guess.
6. Much the same experience as everyone else reporting in, except I took longer (52′) and got one wrong. So not really the same at all. I didn’t bother to parse 12ac when solving and, seeing UY’s blog, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that ‘maid of honour’ must be another slang term for slag. Google – regrettably – disabused me.

   I was so pleased with myself for dredging up MILL RACE after several previous failures, and for guessing NABOB and SIDEBAR, that I failed at GOATEE, where I was diverted by the ‘that’s’ to spell it ‘goatie’, in the process completing missing the points. In my defence, I will say that I abhor the things and have – obviously – shown no interest in them for more than half a century.

   Edited at 2013-08-22 06:52 am (UTC)

7. 25.37, steady solve, relieved to find ‘maids of honour’ isn’t some ghastly derogatory term, eyebrows lifted by the Heath Robinson approach to preparing ‘lunch’, but all fair and square.
   1. But I bet you were onto ‘lucid’ in a flash! I must say I enjoyed that clue – when I finally got it – on account for all the ‘contraptionery’ you mention.
8. 17 minutes, but unlike sotira, I *did* throw in SORTIE at 15ac, for which I can blame nobody but myself. Occasionally intricate but perfectly fair puzzle.
   1. Yet another one here who plumped for SORTIE and could have kicked myself when I saw how obvious GOATEE was!
      HEARTSORE, I was able to parse but I’d never heard it before and it’s not in my COED11, on the other other hand the meaning is clear.
9. Many thanks, Uncle Yap, for fully parsing clues which I had only partially appreciated. Undone by MILL RACE (which seems to appear here quite often): I stuck with MILK RACE though it always seemed too parochial a reference (in fact, I thought it had disappeared – but I see it was revived in May this year). Also trapped into entering ‘sortie’ for GOATEE.
10. It’s a bit like a maze this puzzle. The way out is clearly what you want but how you get there is the problem. If the definitions were tougher or better disguised this would be a beast. 11A has to be the most convoluted clue for a 5 letter word that I’ve seen for some time.

    I also think of MILLRACE as one word and was confused by the 4,4 and had forgotten the “maids of honour” meaning until I reverse engineered FIRST RATE

    A slightly strange 25 minute solve

    1. Those familiar with the South Circular route to the west of London will undoubtedly know the famous “Original Maids of Honour” bakery and tea-rooms on the Kew Road alongside the Gardens. It has been there for about 120 years.
11. 17 minutes (my watch is back) with the last couple spent on HEARTSORE, which I expected to be some sort of &lit with blue fly unseparated, and GOATEE.
    Thrown by Bismarck’s negative, which of course is nein but doesn’t fit anywhere. RECIPE and PRETERNATURAL (et al) had splendidly convoluted wordplay, so yes, quite a bit of inspiration and reverse engineering, but of the enjoyable and rather compelling kind that you actually want to work out. RECIPE gets my CoD, ahead of one of the better letter-skipping clues of recent days in NIGERIA.
12. Yes, I agree that the convoluted wordplay could have made this a much harder puzzle if some of the defs had been a bit less transparent. As an example, FIRST-RATE went in quickly on def alone, once a checker or two was in place, and I only worked out the cryptic parsing after completing the whole puzzle. I didn’t know the meaning of “maids of honour” used here and assumed they were an ironic reference to ladies of a less honourable kind, which in the event didn’t matter much since “tarts” could be reconciled with both readings.
13. 20 mins, and I thought that this was another in a sequence of puzzles in which it helped to pay close attention to the wordplay.

    The RHS was completed far quicker than the LHS, although the left would have probably been a lot faster had I been able to see STEAL A MARCH ON straight away. I didn’t fall into the “sortie” trap at 15ac, and never even considered it to be honest. The only one I didn’t parse was MILL RACE because I had thought of it as ill=badly plus race=run, and I was wondering where the “m” came from. D’oh! BLIGH was my LOI after I finally saw the wordplay for LUNCH.

14. Found this much easier than yesterday’s. I’m happy if I can solve 90% or more of the clues correctly without aids and today I did that. 27/30 with two missing (Bligh and Heart?o?e) and one error (Sortie at 15ac).
    Sotira – I think your Christmas 2011 (?) questionnaire asked if we have any ‘habits’ when solving. Mine is to always count the number of clues before I start solving to see what I’m aiming at!
    For Bligh, I’d thought of the captain’s name but thought it was spelt Blyth – duh!
    Didn’t know the ‘band’ meaning of Fillet (luckily it was hidden) and thought Get-Up was very neat.
    1. And I’m glad you do (count them and routinely mention the total here). Don’t tell anyone, but for a very long time I genuinely thought that the highest clue number equalled the number of clues in the puzzle. There goes my career as a mathematician.

       If it’s any consolation, I dithered quite a while over the spelling of the captain.

15. 22m, with the NW corner taking much longer to yield than the rest. I had a funny experience with 8ac where I immediately “knew” the answer but the word just wouldn’t come to mind.
    Unlike others I didn’t put many of these in from definition alone: something about the style of the clues made me wary so I spent a bit more time than usual making sure of the wordplay. This helped me not to bung in SORTIE.
    Unknown today: SIDEBAR and FILLET. I think I’ve been caught out by MILL RACE in the past.
    Am I the only person bothered by “I would leave” as an instruction to remove ID in 11ac? Wordplay-wise shouldn’t it be “leaves”?

    Edited at 2013-08-22 09:45 am (UTC)

    1. Maybe it’s the two words taking a plural.
       1. I thought of that, but I’m not quite happy with it. I can’t put my finger on why though so I should just get over it.
          1. Fact is, it’s an ozard clue (I’ve been re-reading ‘Jennings Goes To School’).
16. I’m very familiar with this route but have never noticed the bakery. I’ll look out for it next time.
17. 
    They have a website here: (www.)theoriginalmaidsofhonour.co.uk
18. 17.20 with the NE corner taking the longest to fall.

    Brandy snaps yesterday, Maids of Honour today, I wonder what ‘cake’ we will get tomorrow.

19. About 20 minutes, pretty much top to bottom, ending at BREEZE. Didn’t know the ‘maids of honour’, but everything else went in without too much trouble. I agree with Jimbo about the complication of the five-letter answer at 11, although when I got there I already had L???H so the solution was apparent. I also agree that PRETERNATURAL needed a bit of parsing too. Regards to all.
20. I have a cousin called BLIGH who is a retired naval officer. As you can imagine, he came in for a lot of juvenile humour from his colleagues. In spite of that 3d was one of my last ones in. I found this puzzle quite challenging. 36 minutes. Ann
21. 8:30 for me, so not a disaster despite making heavy weather of some easy clues as usual. Nice puzzle.

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