TIMES 25561 – GOR BLIMEY, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME!

32 comments on “TIMES 25561 – GOR BLIMEY, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME!”

1. A real struggle at the end of a difficult week. And I didn’t get all the parsings, so thanks to Jack for supplying them. In another sense, a game of two ‘ALVES (10ac and 20ac). So many distractions here, especially using “3” to indicate “two”. That made the NE close to impossible. And I agree, “take orders from” is fiendish at 18dn.
2. Also struggled, but looking back can’t really see why. Put tortellini and john of gaunt in quite quickly then stumbled with the simpler ones. LOI oxbridge.
3. I thought this was a really excellent puzzle, marked by innovative clueing devices (such as the shared letter at 22 and the letter substitution phrase at 7ac) and a relative paucity of anagrams. Both 7s and 10 were very good, but my COD also goes to UNFROCK for the literal – even if I put in ‘defrock’ at first and was puzzling over what intl. organisation DE could be. Thanks to setter for the puzzle and blogger for the parsing of 14ac and – done by ‘by’ again – 23. 2 hours…
4. Agree that this is another fine puzzle in an exceptional week.
   The lane I live in is reputed to be the very one that the GODOY marched his troops up & down.
5. Well done Jack, a really difficult puzzle to first solve under pressure and then blog. And thank you setter for a first class offering that had me beavering away for 35 minutes and really appreciating the devious clues.

   I knew J of G from definition (it’s also a golf club near Cambridge where a certain Mr Faldo learned much of his trade) and D of Y was one of the few give-aways. The rest was a real slog and like others I thought “take ordes from” was brilliant.

6. Struggled for over 2 hours with this but got there in the end by dint of some judicious guesswork, e.g. ALCOVE, ONLY & MAGNOLIA.
   I was very surprised that Pubstop should claim there to be only 69 DoY pubs in the UK. I would have thought that Kent, where I now live, has that many alone. One Q&A site I found stated there were 4,329 of them in the UK, but gave no basis for it’s answer. However, that sounds to me a more likely figure. [I used to work in Stalybridge, where ther was a pub called The Thirteenth Cheshire Rifleman Corps Inn, I don’t suppose there are too many others so named]
   1. As a lifelong user of pubs I honestly can’t recall ever visiting one called The Duke Of York. But of course I don’t remember all the pubs I ever drank in!
      1. Michael Green dedicated his seminal tome ‘The Art of Coarse Drinking’ to The Marquis of Granby who has many pubs named after him with hardly anyone knowing who he was.

         30 minutes plus. An enjoyable start to the day.

7. Over 40 minutes (if not by much) with time per clue increasing as the answers went in. LAUGH OFF was particularly fiendish in my book because of the blatantly announced but unlikely looking soundalike, all the more so because the ‘alve in 10 was only Cockney in missing he initial H. Another undone by, um, by=X at 23 and by the reverse hidden MAGNOLIA. M LOI was the simple IVY, because I couldn’t (by that stage) get STV out of my mind.
   The brilliance in this one was the in obdurate concealment of answers, where even the gimmes took a lot of unravelling to be sure – examples JOHN OF GAUNT and (hereinbefore mentioned) UNFROCK, where I was convinced for the duration of the puzzle that the setter had got the definition 180° wrong.
   You got me. setter, right where my confidence as a solver is at its most fragile.
8. 42 minutes, the last ten on laugh off. Witty, clever, elusive…the real deal. Thanks setter and Jack.
9. 15 mins, so I was definitely on the setter’s wavelength based on the comments from the rest of you so far.

   DUKE OF YORK (my FOI) and JOHN OF GAUNT went in as soon as I read the clues, and they gave so many helpful checkers that the rest of the puzzle just seemed to flow. I was probably fortunate to have seen the excellent reverse-hidden MAGNOLIA fairly quickly as well, and that helped me solve INAUGURAL, which in turn opened up a lot of the other clues. I agree that the clue for UNFROCK was particularly good. TWO was my LOI after the PABLO/POETRY crossers, but only because I only realised I hadn’t solved it when I was thinking that my solve was 14 mins and my eyes went back to the top of the puzzle.

10. 22:10 on the club timer. As others have noted this was a very good and very tricky puzzle but I must have been on the right wavelength.
    No time for more comment just now: I have an appointment at the Oval.
11. 28/28 today and my first all-correct-without-aids of the week. Pleased with that given solvers above thought this one to be of above average difficulty.
    FOI Old Latin and LOI Poetry. Thanks Jack for parsing Alcove and Laugh Off – I put both in from defs and checkers.
    I’m with others in applauding ‘take orders from’ as the definition of Unfrock. Also liked John of Gaunt (I read that Gaunt is a corruption of Ghent, the place where he was born), Debunk and the elegant clues for Poetry and Jolt.
    Re pub names: my locals all have standard ones (Plough, Crown and George & Dragon).

    Edited at 2013-08-23 10:10 am (UTC)

12. A superb, enjoyable crossword. Thanks, compiler!
13. 29:53 (mad scramble to duck under 30 minutes and OLD LATIN more hoped for than parsed).

    Not much to add. First class stuff. And thank you, jackkt and all the week’s bloggers for some seriously hard work.

14. Tough puzzle to conclude a challenging week.

    My experience was not dissimilar to Jack’s. I went through every across clue without being able to solve any of them straight off and then started on the downs where TWO at 3D became my FOI. Having made that break-through, it became a steady if somewhat plodding solve, the down clues generally proving easier to crack than the across. LOIs were ALCOVE, LAUGH OFF, MAGNOLIA and OILY, in that order. I’m happy to accept Jack’s offer to put the difficulty posed by MAGNOLIA down to its being a brilliantly disguised hidden solution rather than to our combined stupidity! It’s surely a tribute to this puzzle’s quality that the extraordinarily convoluted homophone at 20A didn’t raise a peep of protest even from the Dorset region.

    Well blogged, Jack.

15. Toughish with Tippex – 16.37 for me. No 2 son, currently home between globetrotting, appears to live on 1a so that one wrote itself in. Agree that MAGNOLIA was the best hidden word for many a long while.
16. Getting on for 2hr. I was pretty well stuck on top part, working 1ac out from cryptic gave FOI, put in OLD NORSE without parsing clue properly (so 2dn was LOI, after identifying the Indian). Also didn’t see MAGNOLIA, like everyone else. So went away for a while for a cuppa to follow England’s progress on Guardian OBO, while musing on the puzzle.
    1. My last in too – I was toying with the hybrid “Old Saxon” at one point.
17. Jackkt’s headline sums it up for me. I think I had only 2 solves after 20 minutes (4 and 21a), then a few more at the bottom, slowly working my way up, with 1a allowing me to get more of the top half.
    Some excellent and very deceptive wordplay throughout made this a very tough solve. I thought I wouldn’t finish but eventually got 12 which helped to get a lot of hitherto unsolved clues. I took two sessions to finish. No exact time, bit around 90 minutes.
18. 26:09 over 2 sessions so a bit of a rude awakening for my first “live” puzzle in 2 weeks.

    A fair few of the longer ones went in on def and checker with wp unravelled post-solve.

    For ages I expected 12 to be a northern saying of sorts but I guess that was deliberate misdirection. I was also panicking at 14 where I though we were in classical music territory.

    Some clever stuff, thanks to setter and blogger.

19. as ulaca said

    Not one to do with a hangover

    Early evening start last night for a birthday bash – in Stalybridge, which along with boasting the longest pub name in England (as per cozzielex above), also has the shortest – ‘Q’.

    I only seemed to have 1 eye and 1/2 a brain working, and my thanks to jack for proving that to me.
    LoL

20. I was doing so poorly online that I didn’t wait the 30′ to go off. Picked it up after breakfast, and suddenly all became clear, or so it seemed. Except for 8d, since I’d never heard of LUVVIE (actually, come to think of it, I do seem to recall it in a cryptic once). Jack, I also tried ‘tanjay’ at first, which triggered SANJAY, which I then had to justify–‘sand’ took a while. ALCOVE, DEBUNK, & UNFROCK all terrific clues in a terrific puzzle.
21. Splendid crossword despite level of difficuly.
    Always pleased to see the most famous Duke of Lancaster, John Of G, to whom we always raised our glasses for the loyal toast when on Duchy land. I seem to remember the form was ” The Duke of Lancaster, The Queen”.
    Just a query on 8D -Luvvie, and 15D -Networked. The order of both seems to be incorrect, or have I missed something?
    Well done to setter and blogger.
    Mike and Fay
    1. 8dn: UV (light) + VIE (struggle) are in the order they appear in the solution so I assume your query is about the placing of the L. My reading is that the clue only indicates that it goes ‘with’ the other two elements with no instruction as to the order, so either before or after would be possible but for the need to make a valid word that fits the definition which places it inevitably at the beginning.

       15dn: Similarly NET (goal) + WORK (be successful) but in this case ED (journalist) is said to be ‘pursuing’ the other two elements, indicating that it goes after them despite being mentioned before them in the clue.

       Hope this makes sense.

       Edited at 2013-08-23 09:37 pm (UTC)

       1. Many thanks Jackkt for kind and most helpful response.
          Mike and Fay
22. A minor classic. Had to resort to an aid to get LAUGH OFF (we Yorkshire men don’t LARF, we LAFF) and that saw it off in around 40 minutes.COD to 22A.
    1. As a fellow Yorkshireman I can sympathise over LAUGH OFF (my LOI), even though I’ve lived so long in the south that I now LARF along with the natives.

       Edited at 2013-08-23 10:34 pm (UTC)

23. 16:02 for me. This was clearly a very fine puzzle, but I’d have enjoyed it more if a) it wasn’t so darned hot, and b) we weren’t currently on a flight path out of Heathrow (with planes still passing directly over our house as I write). I started off quite well for once, but then seemed to lose the plot (and wasted time trying to fit in OLD NORSE and PEDRO).
    1. I believe you live in West London, in which case you are under one of the two flight paths into Heathrow. I’m a fellow sufferer, so I sympathise!
24. It all depends on the predominant wind direction. On easterly departure days, one of the flight paths out of Heathrow comes more or less directly over our house – and we’re on a hill so the planes are often quite low.
    1. Ah, I see. I didn’t know that was an issue, given the much steeper angle of take-off compared to landing. You have it better than me, anyway: westerly days outnumber easterlies by three to one!

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