Times 25,618 – Celebrities In Abundance

46 comments on “Times 25,618 – Celebrities In Abundance”

1. Aubade pronounced O Bard. A bard is a minstrel and it’s a plea to him to sing.
2. No stroll for me, unable to ferret either RACEME or AUBADE from my Guinness-addled memory, even though I remember them (now) occurring before (well, the latter anyway). On the plus side, I DID manage to write SKA straight in – after three or four ‘refusals’. So, there’s hope for me yet. Actually, not much of a stroll before I was stopped in my tracks. Liked EYEBROWS and PERMUTATION – nice, economical clueing, in the main.
3. 25m. I found this decidedly tricky, and I would have failed at 22dn if I hadn’t remembered the very similar clue that did for me in last year’s championship. It was a tennis clue (“ace me”) that time. Enjoyable workout.

   Edited at 2013-10-29 08:40 am (UTC)

4. No park-strolling for me either. Don’t know what came over me, but I just couldn’t construe the last three in the SW: 22dn and its offshoots at 23ac and 26ac. Temporary (I hope) word-blindness. If I’d worked out the play on “flower arrangement”, things might have fared better.

   What’s “does” doing in 28dn I wonder?

   Are you going to ska brow fair?

   1. Performs, acts, becomes, is, as when an actor does a certain character?
      1. If so, it doesn’t seem to contribut to the answer in any way at all. Just a surface convenience I suspect.
         1. I see an ironic comment on C. Richard, if that’s allowed.
         2. I think so. Like “gives” or “makes” or “leads to”.
            1. Ironic comment … possibly. Like “gives” or “makes” or “leads to”: a stretch. I’m still calling surf-actant.
               1. Ah, sorry. Yes, fair enough.
5. Not easy for me. Technically DNF as I couldn’t think of the early music at 9dn despite it being my specialist field. Too put off by the ‘minstrel’ reference, thinking it was name I was looking for, like Blondel.

   Didn’t know RACEME or MADDER but remembered SKA learnt only a couple of weeks ago.

   Edited at 2013-10-29 08:55 am (UTC)

6. 27.35 after a hold-up at the end on raceme and aubade. I like the skid row clue, the words aubade and inveigle, and the herbal origin of cut-and-dried, for which thanks dj, cue comments from left field of a Halloween-lantern-jaw DJ. Should be entertaining.
7. 25 minutes for me too – simply couldn’t get going in the top half despite the gimme EXCHEQUER, which I failed to get on first run. I think I got hooked on “thesaurus”. I also unaccountably forgot Kate was the Shrew and thought Beatrice, which was not helpful. So I started in the south, and though I had to leave RACEME to the end for alphabetting, that flowed pretty well.
   Did anyone get PERMUTATION straight from the anagram? Sort is a very terse definition capable of many interpretations, and might have been the anagram indicator anyway.
   O Bard was clever and elusive, RACEME not known to mean anything to do with flowers and in (eventually – added several minutes) from cryptic.
   SPECIFIC also rather clever, despite the “change one letter” device, and is my CoD.
8. I suspect few will find this as easy as jimbo says. Certainly I didn’t. I wrote aubade in happily enough but only now understand the homophone..
   Actually a good crossword with some inventive cluing. Simple, but I liked 29ac
9. Might I add thanks for the “cues” today, Jim – some really eclectic stuff there that improved my GK through google look-ups. I clearly didn’t listen to enough Luxembourg, and gambling was a no-no in my family, even the Pools.
   1. No problem. Looking at the blog I see that in my haste I missed one out! 13D should read “cue Lloyd’s goldfinger, Ian Posgate”
      1. I wonder if he lived in K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M as well as Horace 🙂
10. ref Raison D’Etre (6,5)

    Some crosswords would have had this clued – grammatically correctly – as (6,1’4).

    We expect hyphenated words such as half-brother to be clued as “part relative (4-6)”, and would raise Cain were it clued as “part relative (10)”.

    So can anyone explain why is this grammatical inexactitude tolerated, but only of certain setters, in words with apostrophes?
    thank you, Keef

    1. In bar crosswords “half-brother” would indeed by shown as (10) whilst “knee pads” would be shown as “8,two words”. Putting in (6,5) already reduces the level of difficulty – why make it ridiculously easy by adopting your suggestion?
       1. Hi Dorsetjimbo,

          I made no suggestion, I simply asked a question, to which the answer, putting your’s and Andy’s comments together, is obviously
          “to avoid dumbing it down to tabloid level”
          a perfectly reasonable rationale, so my question is answered, and my thanks to the pair of you.

          On a lighter note, revamping an old joke:-
          The Times ESP Crossword
          Across:-
          AAAABBCCCDDDEEEEEEGGIIIIJKLMMNNOOPQRRSSTTUUWWXXYZ(49)
          Down:-
          AABBCCCDDEEEEEEFGHHIIJKKLLLMMNOOOOPPPRRSSSTUVXY(47)

          The Daily Moron Crossword
          1 across:- the first letter of the alphabet (1)
          1 down:- the indefinite article (1)

11. 15 mins, and I found it as straightforward as Jimbo did.

    AUBADE was my LOI and I didn’t get the minstrel reference either. I had never heard the word spoken and thought it was pronounced or-bayed. You live and learn.

    As far as Keef’s question about the missing apostrophe in the enumeration is concerned, as far as I can tell an apostrophe is almost never noted because it gives the game away more often than not. I’m pretty sure the Guardian and the Independent do the same as the Times in this regard.

12. Totally done in by the 2 exhortations. These clues crop up so rarely I tend to forget the possibility of them.

    Probably should have got RACEME, as I now vaguely recall it. But AUBADE? Never knowingly heard one or of one. Frankly, anyone singing a love song to me at daybreak would get a very industrial response.

    On edit: Anyone singing a love song to me at daybreak would need an eye test or a psychiatric evaluation – dragged through two hedges backwards is, I think, the expression.

    Edited at 2013-10-29 12:18 pm (UTC)

    1. Philip Larkin wrote a good (although not very cheery) one. Admittedly not music, but that’s where I got it from.
       1. I hope the first lines were:

          My darling, I’ve brought you a large
          Cappuccino with an extra shot.

          1. Followed by:

             I’ve drawn your bath
             And there’s a full English waiting for you
             In the kitchen.

             I wish.

          2. I don’t remember exactly but I’m sure it was something along those lines.
       2. More likely
          “Your mum and dad have already f**ked you up
          So my singing at you this time of the day
          Won’t make much difference.
          Probably”
13. No 15 minute stroll for me. Instead a DNF with four missing (karate, recur, aubade and raceme).
    Liked do-or-die and the underwriter.
    Specific and ant from definitions and madder from wordplay.
    I’ve misspelt Ska as Sca before, but not this time.
14. 18 minutes but I was never going to get anywhere near aubade so one missing.

    COD to inveigle for the word itself and the sentiment of the surface.

    Some clever stuff so thanks all round.

15. …in that it foxed me totally. After writing it in from crossers, I rather like it now, I must say. A nice work-out that took me about 20 minutes.

    What is Keef on about?

    1. Hi Chris,

       I wondered why answers with apostrophes – like Raison D’Etre – were clued as (6,5) in some crosswords, and 6,1’4) in others, so, for my own edification, asked the question.

       As Jimbo and Andy both said, specifying the apostrophe would make the clue a lot easier to solve, so is only found in bar/tabloid crosswords. So that answered my question.

       The Times ESP/Daily Moron bit is only a jest, the latter only having two, single-letter answers of ‘A’.

16. 12:18 with the ‘flower arrangement’ holding me up the longest.
17. Two quick peeks in breaks at work took care of this – fortunately I knew the word AUBADE (though I didn’t know how to pronounce it – not that an expat Aussie who has lived in the US south for 15 years should be counted on as a diction expert). MADDER from wordplay, though I knew it as a plant rather than a dye.
18. All except the bard word, which I do believe is pronounced oh bad (at least in French where it is a particularly posh line in ladies undies) so I failed – 19 minutes for the rest.
19. Messed up today. Entered ‘ENVEIGLE’ at 18d, which I could get away with as an alternative form, albeit archaic, but then also failed to spot that I had not solved 22d. I might have got it as I’ve met the term before, but who knows?
    Off topic, but I also lashed up today’s Indie crossword, having missed the brilliant theme – a masterpiece of setting, and I’m annoyed that I did not do it justice, with two wrong.
    George Clements
    1. Thanks for the steer to today’s Indie, George – definitely worth a go. Like you (and as usual), I didn’t see the theme until after solving, but it’s very nicely done.

       Edited at 2013-10-29 09:21 pm (UTC)

20. A reasonably pleasant amble, save for two black spots:
    A minstrel is the same thing as a bard? Indeed? If you say so, Mr Roget … (I got it, but under protest, as it were.)
    And chapeau bas to those who possess RACEME in their general knowledge. Imo, not a fair clue for a daily crossword – which I expect be able to solve without recourse to dictionaries or other aids.
    1. >…
       >Imo, not a fair clue for a daily crossword – which I expect be able to solve
       >without recourse to dictionaries or other aids.

       I’m not sure I’d accept that statement even if it was Mark Goodliffe himself making it. But when it comes from someone who isn’t even familiar with a word as commonplace as RACEME (a word which, incidentally, has come up within the past year), I’m just glad that the Times crossword hasn’t yet been dumbed down to their level.

21. Surely 6d is more about “hairstyle” in the previous clue than herbs.
22. Another 40m DNF thanks to RACEME and GROOVE neither of which I got near. Might actually finish one some day soon!
23. 11:14 for me. I’d have been faster if I hadn’t been so damnably tired after an exhausting day, as this was very much my sort of crossword. Worst (and nearly a disaster) was 7dn, where I somehow managed to type in FIRMANENT, and it was only on my final check-through – after struggling for a ridiculously long time to justify it from the wordplay – that I spotted my mistake.

    Tiredness apart, I found this a delight from start to finish.

24. Tony, take my advice and don’t let work keep you awake during the day. Ask any pilot.

    Stymied by “aubade”, but at least I can now tell you that there are nine words that fit “_U_A_E”, “tunage” being undoubtedly the most doubtful but the only one that came close to music. I note that neither “tunage” nor “aubade” are recognised by this blog’s spell checker. Still, live and learn (or, as they say in East Anglia, live).

    “Ska” was a bit of a guess as I couldn’t parse it, but there was no alternative. In the end I assumed that a “ska” was some Northern word for a cliff – there are very few three letter combinations that aren’t used in one or another regional babble (or “dialect”, as I believe they call them).

    I wasn’t overly impressed by “Secure fixture” as a clue for “Tie”.

    My personal quest to use all today’s answers in conversation with tonight’s patients was too daunting, and I have therefore been endeavouring instead to slip them in to discussions with fellow inmates (or “colleagues”, as they prefer to be known). Worryingly, one of them looked concerned rather than confused when I suggested that one of our more impressively injured patients might have an avulsed inferior tigris. Hope they can find it on the MRI.

    1. I’m not sure that commercial pilots need to (or in certain cases do, of course) stay awake for the vast majority of their duties. As I understand it when you get a less-than-smooth landing it’s usually because they have to turn off the autopilot once in a while, just for practice.
       Please keep up the notes from the medical front line. And read Larkin: you might get on.

       Edited at 2013-10-30 01:04 am (UTC)

    2. Scar is the Yorkshire word for an impressive rock face so it’s a homonym.
       Regards John
       1. homophone even:-)
          It’s been a long day at Wetherby races….
25. Nice to see ‘some say’ as a disclaimer for us picts.

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