Times 25567 – He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.

38 comments on “Times 25567 – He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy.”

1. Got caught on that wicked SE corner. But did learn a anew word in comus. Ulaca is correct that it is nice to pick up something new each day.
2. I do not know how to insert a link but googling Charismatic Worship Picture will show that the common factor is one or both hands held high. As for Mediate,I assumed that as the answer was 7 letters long, it was the two letters at each end of Immediately that had to be cut.
   Comus was a new word for me too.
3. 
   Zipped through this one dead quick, thinking I was at last going to have a fully correct puzzle done in less than 30mins, until the last couple…

   Put in MEDIATE without understanding why… do we usually have to change words that AREN’T actually in the clue? I didn’t know COMUS (but should have worked it out!), and put in ‘comms’ (=’supporting business’?), and was left with a blank at CANTABRIAN. Never really liked those MP films, although my OH and three boys love ’em! Is it a ‘girl’ thing?

   1. As someone who watched the very first broadcast back, I think, in 1969, I would say that Monty Python’s Flying Circus epitomes the curate’s egg. As for the films, I find the Holy Grail puerile and unfunny, the Life of Brian very good and the Meaning of Life – well, good in parts.

      Yes, I have been excommunicated from the Church of Python.

   2. Indirect anagrams are no-nos but direct lifts and reversals are fair game. At 1d you have to take the first 3 letters of an indirect word and at 26a you take the third letter out of one.

      Mrs Penfold doesn’t “get” Monty Python so there may be something gender-based in its appreciation.

4. Straightforward puzzle today with no really stand out clues and a couple of queries. 20 minutes solve.

   I didn’t understand HIGH-HANDED at the time but thanks to the blog now assume it’s “happy-clappy”. Got COMUS from wordplay. Thought COPYRIGHT rather weak.

5. 35 minutes here too including time taken to parse as I solved.

   I knew COMUS as the title of a work by Milton but didn’t know the “personification of revelry” reference.

   I also don’t quite “get” 12ac which I assume refers to something else I don’t know.

   Otherwise this was a very enjoyable and lively puzzle that turned out much easier than 5 minutes spent initially staring at an empty grid had suggested. My first one in was 29ac and I’d looked at all the Downs too!

   Edited at 2013-08-30 07:38 am (UTC)

   1. Sark as in the Channel Island, Jack; stark as in harsh.
      1. Thanks, but I typed the wrong clue number! I was actually agreeing with Dave about 13ac but that point has now been cleared up by bigtone53 above.
6. A rare excursion sub-25 for me, the last ten being spent in the SW corner, where I didn’t help myself by bunging in ‘prune’ at 22. COD to PHILTRE for a clever use of ‘rum’.

   I read Comus not long ago, but all I can remember of it is that Milton didn’t give it that title – others did later – originally it was called ‘A Mask, Presented at Ludlow Castle’. Having just read The Wasteland, upon Chris Gregory’s recommendation, I have to surmise that the 20s were no decade of frivolity for one Thomas Stearns.

   Napasai, you and your family are not Charismatics by any chance? 🙂

7. A technical DNF because I needed to use my Chambers to get COMUS as I didn’t know the Roman deity and, like Dave had been until he changed tack, I was trying to think of word spelled “m?s?” that meant cut. Even after I knew what the answer had to be it still took a couple of minutes before I saw that I hadn’t lifted and separated properly and I should have been looking for a shortened word meaning “has to”. Very poor on my count. I got through the rest of the puzzle in about 14 mins, although I was slightly held up by MEDIATE because I couldn’t see from the wordplay the instruction to drop the first two letters of “immediate”. Then the penny dropped. Not my finest piece of solving.
8. Slow to start then sprinted through then ten minutes deciphering GHETTOISE and LEFTIST, 34 minutes in total, with COMUS a guess based on word play. Agree with Ulaca about the MP movies, I can watch LOB over and over (What did the Romans do for us, etc.) but the others are just silly. COD 17d anagram for making me take ages to think of putting a H betwen a G and E.

   Edited at 2013-08-30 09:18 am (UTC)

9. 13m, so straightforward for me today. COMUS and PHILTRE were only very vaguely familiar, but that was enough. I’m not sure I knew this about Charismatic worshippers but rather like Jimbo I just assumed it was what I would call “happy clappy”.
   I’m familiar with Grover Cleveland as the reason for the trivia nugget about the number of Presidents: 43 men have been POTUS and Obama is the 44th.
   Like others I enjoyed the Monty Python clue. And like others I think Life of Brian is the only good Python movie.
10. 8.46 with ‘Brian’ holding me up the longest – d’oh. Quite straightforward for a Friday, well I thought so anyway.
11. 
    2 mistakes – an unnoticed MERTE and a resultant, inexplicable LEFTIER. THE NW took me a long time, too.

    Some days … are better than others.

    *Solved While A Little Knackered

    1. Given the French context that’s about as close as I’ve ever seen you come to swearing.
       1. Heh … We’re currently catching up on boxed sets of Spiral (Engrenages) so my French swearing vocabulary has come along very nicely, thank you.
       2. Thinking about it some more (I’m on full work avoidance this morning), in my early days contributing to this site I did once swear – mildly. I felt so awful about it I emailed Pete B to apologise. He wrote a kindly reply telling me not to worry about it. I got the feeling he was highly amused by the whole thing.
12. Going well, went for a fast time…and two mistakes. Bunged in atom not item and thoughtfully changed Comus, which I was fairly sure of, to Comis, which seemed quite wrong, on a superficial read of ‘has to cut short’, miss as cut. I like the worshippers.
13. Thanks indeed for the tag Ulaca – talking for an hour over coffee in The Waste Land’s Hofgarten isn’t exactly a Bloomian fart, as you say. But I still dabble, reaching from time to time for my battered copy of Frazer to see if I can spot exactly who it is we’re talking about at any point.

    Another fine puzzle to end the week, whereof with COMUS I was aided by my knowledge, born of Fairport and Cropredy, of obscure English folk bands. I knew those days of mud and mushrooms would serve me well one day.

    Many thanks Dave and setter.

    1. I am ashamed to say I’ve never heard of Cropredy – and even thought you were making I up – until I found that it was 30 odd miles of where I lost my glasses punting on the Cherwell 35 years ago. Yes, my pole got stuck in the mud and the rest, as they say…
       1. A pair of mine suffered the same fate punting (or de-punting) 46 years ago. Sadly the Cropredy goings-on began only in 1976, some 2 years after I had left Blighty, yet to return except for pleasant granddad duties. I aim to ‘do’ Cropredy festival one day though.
14. 17:25 with several minutes at the end on Camus. I never did see the full wordplay (like others I was looking for a truncated synonym for cut) and I didn’t know the deity so in the end I just plumped for the most likely-looking vowel.

    I really like MP & the Holy Grail so I must just be silly & shallow.

    Ni!

    Edited at 2013-08-30 12:21 pm (UTC)

    1. Camus was a philosopher espousing absurdism so I assume that was a typo.

       I agree with you about MP. I thought their whole point was that they were silly and puerile (other adjectives are available).

       1. A typo indeed. I actually have a Philosophy Football t-shirt with one of Camus’s quotes on.
          1. And the only professional footballer — he was a goalkeeper — ever to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Not a bad double!
15. Did well for me, but needed a reference to confirm COMUS. Rather liked HIGH-HANDED.
    For non-Americans, Cleveland is a moderately obscure President (obscure for Americans, too), but one of the important stepping stones on the path of President-as-just-head-of-the-Excecutive-branch to President-as-center-of-power; and, although not necessary for the clue, he was technically a Democrat.
    Meantime, this being in the States, where the puzzle is up at 7pm, makes for a pleasant evening. And the blog is ready just about the time I get done or give up.
16. I was expecting some grumbling here about COMUS as being a bit TLS-y for a daily, but with the C, the definition, and ‘business’, I suppose it didn’t pose that much of a problem. I read lots of Milton ages ago, and I was about to say that ‘Comus’ was the source of ‘trip the light fantastic’, but having just now Googled, it turns out to be “l’Allegro”. Didn’t care for MEDIATE, for the reason Dave gives.
    1. The only quote from Comus that I could remember from schooldays was “Sabrina fair, listen where though art sitting etc”. At the time there was a busty blonde starlet called “Sabrina”. Cue schoolgirl giggles… Ann
17. About 25 minutes, ending with PHILTRE, which was a guess the likeliest looking order for the anagram. Happy it was correct. I knew Comus only because of just finishing a book about New Orleans in the 1920’s where the society types had annual costume festivals preceding Mardi Gras, and the most prominent guy was crowned as Comus. The book was about the Mississippi floods, but the author was stretching a point about the influence of the City folks, who actually got the State of Louisiana to agree to dynamite the river levee elsewhere, thus flooding a huge area, to keep the City above water. True story. Thanks to Dave and regards to all.
    1. In a similar vein, I know a German farmer whose land (and home) are in the area deliberately flooded earlier this year to spare Magdeburg. She’s not thrilled about it.
    2. A few years back there were more floods heading down the Mississippi and they showed on the news huge sluice gates being opened, so all the water headed due south through the back blocks of Louisiana (Morgan City) rather than flowing a bit to the east through New Orleans.
       So, it still happens.
       Rob
18. Having recently attended a ‘happy-clappy’ funeral service, I got the point immediately. I’ll never forget the bemused look on my 11-year-old grandson’s face when the arm-waving started.
19. Hi all. I regularly visit the site to check the answers and read the comments and am a bit concerned that ‘John from Lancs’ hasn’t posted in a long while – does anyone know if he’s OK?
    1. I have been wondering this too.
20. 5:55 in a clean sweep for me – so advancing senility not quite as much in evidence as yesterday. That said, I still had a few hang-ups, including MEDIATE (it took me ages to see IMMEDIATELY), LEFTIST (which I wanted to be LEFTISH), CANTABRIAN and RESEMBLANT (both unfamiliar but obvious from the wordplay). A nice, straightforward, Mondayish puzzle.
21. … to comment now. But I do have to remark on the fact that there are four complete anagrams in this puzzle. That helped a great deal. And “Plain Bruce” was a peach.

    What didn’t help is the fact that my printer went down and I had to do this on line for the first time. I’m not giving a time because I found this way of working so confusing. And I didn’t see there was a pause button. I’d guess about 20 minutes all up.

22. Charismatic christians are apt to pray holding their up in the air.Especially when saying The Lord’s prayer.

Comments are closed.