Times 25639 – Season’s Greetings

54 comments on “Times 25639 – Season’s Greetings”

1. Somewhat delayed by listening to Australia’s remarkable come-back in the Brisbane Test.

   But a great, though quite difficult, puzzle. Thanks Dave for some of the trickier parsings that I didn’t have time to work out; esp for a bloke in your condition at the time.

   Last in: THURINGIA. I thought it was a plant. And I agree, the clue for SATURDAY is top notch. Almost Anaxian?

2. I put in a number of these on checkers and def, such as 19ac and 21ac. The ‘night of fever’ was perhaps a bit too suggestive; anyway, it came to me rather quickly. I think I’d give my COD to THURINGIA and its 12 hours.
3. 
   A tricky one for me, which left me with a gap at GHENT, which I had considered, but had dismissed as I wasn’t familiar with the Browning ref (were it Elizabeth, I might have stood a chance…), and I was convinced ‘clip on’ was correct at 22ac, despite not being able to parse part of the clue (connect=con), but that’s not that unusual for me.

   Thanks also for parsing GOWER and LORELEI, both of which went in on def alone (and turned out to be correct!), THURINGIA from wp.

4. A very steady 50 minutes for this one with SATURDAY holding out to the bitter end. 12ac is somewhat weakened by the use of ‘crit’ at 4ac.

   Fortunately I knew the title of the poem at 23dn although I had forgotten that it was by Browning, an enjoyable coincidence following on from yesterday’s puzzle.

5. Sellars and Yeatman’s parody is almost better than the original Browning. Unfortunately,if I try and insert a link, my message is deleted as spam but below gives the flavour (There is a third verse). COD by a country mile 21A

   I sprang to the rollocks and Jorrocks and me
   And I galloped, you galloped, we galloped all three…
   Not a word to each other; we kept changing place,
   Neck to neck, back to front, ear to ear, face to face;
   And we yelled once or twice, when we heard a clock chime,
   ‘Would you kindly oblige us, Is that the right time?’
   As I galloped, you galloped, we galloped, ye galloped they too have galloped; let us trot.
   I unsaddled the saddle, unbuckled the bit,
   Unshackled the bridle (the thing didn’t fit)
   And ungalloped, ungalloped, ungalloped,ungalloped a bit.
   Then I cast off my bluff-coat, let my bowler hat fall,
   Took off both my boots and my trousers and all –
   Drank off my stirrup-cup, felt a bit tight,
   And unbridled the saddle, it still wasn’t right.
   Then all I remember is, things reeling round
   As I sat with my head ‘twixt my ears on the ground –
   For imagine my shame when they asked what I meant
   And I had to confess that I’d been, gone and went
   And forgotten the news I was bringing to Ghent,
   Though I’d galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped
   And galloped and galloped and galloped. (Had I not would I have been galloped?)

6. 16 minutes, slowed by trying to fit SATURNALIA (another night of fever?) into 21ac, and TOUCHDOWN (land) into 19 – the perils of getting on a roll and sticking answers in on instinct. I also wasted time working up a grump over “THUR” being clued by 12 hours – most of mine have 24… Is my face red – glad I wasn’t blogging.
   REGNANT made me laugh out loud, and I didn’t care whether MA was technically reigning or not.
   Not much in here was difficult, but it was engaging and enjoyable, and the tricky bits of GK, THURINGIA, KANDINSKY and (perhaps) GHENT (was that Brownian motion, then?) were generously clued.

   Edited at 2013-11-22 09:51 am (UTC)

7. 19 minutes of pleasure, no issues, loved SATURDAY.
8. Fairly routine puzzle with a couple of not so goods (LORELEI in particular) but a couple of excellent clues in SATURDAY and GHENT. No real talking points.
9. 35 minutes. Enjoyed this very much, just a couple of points:

   Didn’t know a TROLL was a dwarf; the one that lurked under the bridge in “The Billy Goats Gruff” wasn’t, was he?

   Put in CLIP ON for 22 at first reading; luckily, Sellar and Yeatman sprang to mind at 23 and GHENT enabled me to correct my mistake.

   Always thought of a trollop as a slattern rather than a prostitute, and smile when recalling JFK’s reported bemusement when Harold Macmillan told him that he “liked to go to bed with a Trollope”.

   1. SOED has: Now (in Scandinavian mythology), a member of a race of grotesque dwarfs (or, formerly, giants) usu. dwelling in caves or under bridges.

      No wonder there’s confusion!

      1. Chambers agrees with SOED on the ‘dwarf (formerly giant)’ point. I wonder whether the change happened overnight or whether trolls gradually shrunk.
10. 35 minutes. Quite tricky in places, with 22 and 23 holding me up at the end. I should have seen 23 sooner, because we’ve had something like it before. Nice clue. I was slow to see 21 as well, but admired that clue as well. Like the blogger, I’m less keen on 9, and I thought 15 was clunky, both on the surface and in the cryptic syntax; ‘needing great protection’ is a pretty awkward container indication, and the surface lacks agreement between a singular collective noun and plural verb, not uncommon these days, I fear; I had to read it twice because it just didn’t seem to make sense.
11. “Chap rides horse here”; Does that not suggest the place to which he rode, i.e. Aix. Anyway I’m in the same boat as Sellar and Yeatman referred to above and generally get the towns the wrong way round. I suppose that is why they called their version of Browning’s poem “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix or vice versa”
    1. So how far outside Ghent do you reckon he dismounted and continued on foot?
12. fav 19a, land being the the German for state, which is what Thuringia is, it became a write-in.

    bete noire, some arty Russian who apparently died 70 years ago, extrapolated from clue.

    TIP OFF
    today’s Times2, 1a sorcerer(4), check letters M_G_.
    I, and many others, plumped for MaGi (I know – that’s a plural, but a magus is a sorcerer, and it was Times2), but it appears the correct answer is a word I’d personally never come across – MAGE, which is in OED as “a magician or learned person” (no mention of sorcerer).

    ergo beware clues such as
    “picture 1 sorcerer (5)” = IMAGE

    1. MAGE is standard Times crossword fare, Keef.
13. I spent an enjoyable 10:42 on this one- knew the 23d poem and I can’t remember exactly why but Mr CS and I were only talking about Thuringia last weekend so that came in handy today.
14. 23:43 … spent a very long time stuck on T.W…I.G. The penny didn’t drop until I wrote the skeleton of it out horizontally, at which point it seemed obvious. Cruciverbally, I’m vertically challenged – like a troll, apparently.
15. Really enjoyed this one, in particular SATURDAY and REGNANT. Experience of Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing games in my youth left me wondering how a 9 foot tall TROLL could be described as a dwarf (but it did help with the Times2).
16. 21 mins but I should have been quicker. For a while I couldn’t see the obvious wordplay for IMPERFECT because I was trying to shoehorn “pure” for “no flaw” into the answer. I was then stuck for a few minutes on the GHOST TOWN/SATURDAY crossers. I eventually saw the “abandoned position”, and when I finally saw what the “night of fever” was referring to in 21ac I could have kicked myself.
17. …kind of educated guy’s puzzle, so I just put quite a few in from the definitions. I was stuck longest on the easiest clues, wanting ‘tart – art’ for 17. I wrote in the long ones nearly on sight, which really opens up a puzzle.

    Tramp has an interesting JFK-themed puzzle over in the Guardian, if anyone cares for that sort of thing.

    1. Yes I saw that too, and did it. It was clever certainly but more than a bit cringe-making even if you never quite bought the Camelot thing.
18. Sorry to be obtuse, but if a crit is a notice, what is the “for speech” doing there?
    1. ‘For speech’ is a homophone indicator. It tells you that you want something that sounds like CRIT rather than CRIT itself. Hence KRIT.
19. 30/30 today with FOI ungrateful and LOI Saturday.
    Ghent, Sanskrit, Thwarted and Saturday were my last four in, in that order.
    Got Thuringia from wordplay. Like others I went wrong with Clip In initially at 22ac.
    Remembered Kandinksy from recently reading Tom Wolfe’s novel Back To Blood.
20. I feel rather sorry for the TROLL at 17ac, who has been unsuccessful in her chosen profession.

    The trolls of Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” novels are definitely not dwarfs. As he writes:

    Dwarfs make a living by smashing up rocks with valuable minerals in them and the silicon-based lifeform known as trolls are, basically, rocks with valuable minerals in them. In the wild they also spend most of the daylight hours dormant, and that’s not a situation a rock containing valuable minerals needs to be in when there are dwarfs around. And dwarfs hate trolls because, after you’ve just found an interesting seam of valuable minerals, you don’t like rocks that suddenly stand up and tear your arm off because you’ve just stuck a pickaxe in their ear.

    1. Pratchett’s golems, being merely made of mud, are much easier to manage. (as Eliza Dolittle might have said)
21. Pleased with 22 minutes today. Perhaps I am one of vinyl1’s educated guys as there were no DNK’s! That said, I didn’t know “mage” so I too entered “magi” in the Concise even though it is clearly plural.
22. About 20 minutes, ending with SANSKRIT though I’ll confess to not knowing of GOWER, or the Browning poem. The wordplay was clear enough, so thanks to the setter. I agree with the applause for the ‘night of fever’, which made me giggle. Thanks again to the setter, and Dave as well. Regards.
23. I must have been on the wavelength today. 19 minutes is a good time for me. GOWER is on my doorstep so was a shoo-in. Besides, I’ve just read a novel set in THURINGIA so the place was fresh in my mind. (Eric Flint’s “1632” in which a modern American town is transported into the middle of the Thirty Years War. A good one for anyone interested in military history. Though I discovered at the end that it was “alternative” history because Gulstavus Adolphus doesn’t die when he was supposed to!)
24. Shattered at end of week and crawled round in half an hour. But all worth it for the Saturday clue. Obliging as easy seems a little off: I suppose an easy girl or something like that? Thanks for the Sellars and Yeatman bigtone – I was about to hunt it down since irresistibly reminded. No amusing writers any more – maybe the last one was Alan Coren. (And maybe the next’s sotira.)
    1. Probably right, although in between there were Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle (as any fule kno) and Keith Waterhouse. Good luck sotira.
25. I’m fascinated by the idea of a genuine Kandinsky in Dave Perry’s canteen! That would be the greatest art find since the Jesuits in Dublin found they had a genuine Caravaggio!
    1. Given that this is a chap who wears a DJ for blogging, it’s probably no ordinary canteen.
26. Hi, I haven’t commented here before but I just wanted to say what a great blog this is.

    I have recently started doing the Times crossword regularly after years of desultory and occasional attempts. I still don’t finish it every time but am finding that making a point of trying every day has resulted in rapid improvement. Visiting this site when truly stuck has really helped.

    Today’s I managed to complete in c. 90 mins (swift for me) but cheated on three. THURINGIA was always going to defeat me, and not knowing the Browning poem GHENT was a challenge I failed, inserting GREET instead without being able to it.

    FOI was KANDINSKY and I enjoyed REGNANT (Marie Antoinette only having ever been a Queen Consort).

    Thanks for your excellent explanations and I look forward to improving with your help!

    Tom

    PS congratulations on having the most civilised comments section on the internet. It’s an oasis of good humour.

    1. Tom,
       Welcome aboard. Feel free to register a name (top left); it does not have to be yours, and you do get a) a bit of blog cred, and b) the ability to edit what you write when you realise that it is rubbish. But oooh, you should see the bitchiness behind the scenes!
27. I was defeated by SATURDAY, but did wonder if there was an adjective SOTIRIAN for someone who could be relied on to deliver a good time.
28. Most enjoyable today, both enhanced by the literary reference, and also marred because the reference was sloppy – I agree with cozzielex and jackkt that the “here” should imply Aix, not Ghent. Also, MA was not a queen REGNANT, as z8d8d8k point out, but a queen consort – however brilliant your surface, if it subverts the definition it’s bad.

    Can’t give a proper timing as this was completed in dribs and drabs. CAPITAL GAINS TAX was a write-in, so the rhs went in easily. Tried for some time to make Lleyn fit 1a – right country, wrong peninsula! TURBAN, GHOST TOWN and SATURDAY very nice, and it took me some time to work out the parsing of our ubiquitous siren …

    1. Surely the definition “as queen MA wasn’t” clearly indicates “REGNANT” and the wordplay is perfectly accurate. Unless the clue is intended to be &lit, then the surface can be as misleading as it likes?
29. This one was right up my street , and I’m very pleased with my unaided completion time. Some compensation after a stupid slip-up on today’s Grauniad. Have a good weekend everyone.
30. As another fairly recent contributor to the blog, and even newer signed-up member of the fraternity, I really appreciate your comments. I hope that you will continue to enjoy the blog, and submit more observations when you feel inclined. Above all I hope you continue to enjoy solving, at whatever pace suits you.
    1. Agreed. In fact I always feel a bit cheated if I solve it too quickly.
31. 11:52 for me, still off the pace for no good reason, and (having parsed 12ac completely wrongly) with SANSKRIT holding me up badly at the end.

    Despite all that, I found this a delight from start to finish, with 3dn the best clue I’ve seen all year (indeed probably for a lot longer). I thought there was some quite subtle stuff going on, including the placing of “Land” at the start of 19ac (rather than at the end where it would perhaps have made the surface reading easier) to get the capital L, and the “off” in 18dn, since “rely” and RELEI aren’t pronounced exactly alike. [I hope I’m right here. Perhaps the setter will let me know if I’m not.]

    On reflexion, I think 3dn has to be a candidate for my favourite clue of all time.

    Edited at 2013-11-22 11:24 pm (UTC)

    1. “since “rely” and RELEI aren’t pronounced exactly alike.”

       Tony, I thought you thought like me on this 🙁

       To my mind, so-called homophone clues are “sounds like”, not “sounds exactly the same as”. In technical jargon, I see homophone clues more akin to ‘=~’ than ‘==’.

       1. >…
          >Tony, I thought you thought like me on this 🙁

          Actually I do think like you. However, I thought the use of “off” here, which makes the surface reading just about acceptable (and I’m prepared to forgive almost anything after the brilliance of 3dn’s surface reading) was an added, though not strictly necessary, subtlety – assuming of course I’ve understood it correctly.

32. 17:53 here, a bit tired after staying up far too late watching the cricket (although not so late as to witness the main debacle, fortunately). LOI was 21ac, where I see I wasn’t alone in trying to fit a variation on SATURNALIA in there before seeing the witty definition!

    @geoclements, I thought today’s JFK-themed Guardian puzzle by Tramp was a beauty, took about 45 mins to crack that.

    @Tom, good to hear from you – as others have said, welcome and thanks for your comments. We’re very lucky in that all we have to delete are occasional adverts for knock-off Louis Vuitton handbags!

    1. It’s the Ugg boots that get me. (Not to mention the 128 adverts for something Japanese that were attached to one of my blog entries – when I was very grateful for the “delete all suspicious comments” that LiveJournal provided.)
       1. Tony, I’ve never come across “delete all suspicious comments”. Where would I find that?

          What I have seen is the option “All: Delete as Spam” on the drop-down list against “Mass action on comments” at the foot of the screen, but I’ve never dared use it in case it applies to non-suspicious comments as well as the ones we want rid of. So I religiously tick the box against each suspicious item and use “Selected items: Delete as Spam” instead. In extreme cases it would be handy to delete all the rubbish without having to tick all the boxes.

          Edited at 2013-11-23 07:04 am (UTC)

33. I know that some people found the JFK puzzle tasteless, and it’s a sentiment I can understand, but I felt that it kept on the right side of a rather imprecise line. I thought Tramp did an excellent job with the clues, and was annoyed with myself for an incorrect and impetuous error in a four-letter solution. I solve (or attempt) the Grauniad on my iPad, and it’s hopeless trying to assess a time, but I suspect that it would have been around the hour mark, even with distraction from my attention-seeking Border Terrier.
    1. I do The Times on my iPad (except Saturdays when I revert to hard copy) and it can be frustrating as it skips letters already in. If you get it right, it gives you a time. If you get it wrong, it doesn’t but it does show the errors.
       1. Hello bigtone,
          Thanks for the message. I don’t know whether I am doing the puzzles the same way as you. I have to select each individual cell, and restore the on screen keypad for every entry. I have not downloaded any special app. At least twice, I have accidentally lost the part completed grid and had to re-enter the solutions.
          Regards
          George
          1. George,
             I probably was not specific enough. I have The Times app which enables me to see the paper etc. It comes with a cost but cheaper than the hard copy. I also have a Zagg keyboard and case so that the iPad is protected and I do not have to do the screen-poking thing when entering things or indeed writing anything (keyboard in use now). The keyboard and the iPad connect by Bluetooth. The annoying feature is that if you have say ‘- – n – ‘ and want to write in TONY, then the T and the O go in but if you then say N, you end up with TONN, ie it skips existing answered cells. Not a problem in principle, but annoying when you are doing things against the clock. As I say though, if you get it all right,it gives you a completion time.
             Glad that you decided to join us.
             Regards, Tony
34. 32m. I didn’t get a chance to comment yesterday, so no doubt no-one will read this.
    I found this really tricky for some reason. GHENT gave me a lot of trouble, in spite of an entire term studying and writing a dissertation on Browning at university. Hopeless.
35. Rest assured keriothe, someone read it.

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