Times 25686

71 comments on “Times 25686”

1. 08:35 and can’t see any comments???

2. PRIMATE instead of PRIVATE was pretty dumb. I knew it was wrong when I wrote it in, just never went back to check.

   The best Spanish port I could invent was CARRATENA. CARTAGENA would have been equally inventive given my knowledge of Spanish ports, but it was a fair clue and I can’t complain.

   Agree with Dave that 1ac was a little too tortured to be classified as brilliant.

   And….Clarke’s out. Ulaca will be pleased.

   1. I’m just going outside. I may be some time.
      1. There’s a number you can call U. People you can talk to. Or maybe just a hug?
         1. A hug? Crow, please, just crow!
            1. Oh I’m crowing inside, don’t worry about that. But it’s reached the stage where Mrs Galspray is worried about Cook’s mental health. He’s a decent guy, and looked utterly broken after the match.

               So is there any part of you that can sit back and admire Faulkner’s innings? Quite extraordinary I thought.

               1. He’s done it before, hasn’t he? If he could learn to bowl, he might become an all-rounder.

                  I haven’t seen a ball, thank goodness – just Cricinfo and the (English) papers.

3. 
   …and that one was the Spanish port, which was an unknown. Couldn’t get ‘carriage’ out of my mind, but knew it couldn’t be that.
4. Well, this wasn’t the hard one we expected and I agree that some of the cluing was a bit over-laboured. I don’t have a COD but always a pleasure to see Homer popping up.
5. 44 minutes with CARRATENA as the Spanish port. On checking my answer Google told me there was a Marquis of Carratena (something to do with Don Juan) so I took it as read and didn’t look any further.

   When the blog didn’t appear overnight I worried I had missed my turn, what with Jimbo changing weeks and confusing me (it doesn’t take much!).

   Edited at 2014-01-17 09:07 am (UTC)

   1. I started it last night, but I’m not working at the moment, so I knew I’d have time in the morning. So when I started to get tired, rather than persevere, I just went to bed and then finished it when I got up.
6. 20 minutes, so indeed tricky but not beastly. I freely confess I didn’t unravel 1ac, its &lit quality passed me by and I read it as a tortured CD with probab;y something else going on.
   PRIVATE was my last in once I’d twigged that it was not about archbishops and monkeys.
   I thought 17 was rather clever – a neat device with a credible surface, and PONYTAILS had a full on Chas ‘n’ Dave feel to it.
   Is the definition for WRONGED, “described misleadingly” a touch whimsical? It does have the Qmark at the end.
   1. I wondered about that too. While one can describe/draw a geometrical figure, I wasn’t aware of a personal application.
      1. If I described François Hollande as an indecisive philanderer, and that description were misleading, then I would be wronging him.
         1. I think the point I’m getting at (maybe Zed too) is that it’s an extension from saying you described someone misleadingly to saying you wronged him. In the same ball-park (well, they’re both negative) but I’m unconvinced it passes a strict substitution test.
            1. I was thinking along the lines of an imaginary version of the verb which would mean “to get wrong”, or indeed “to describe misleadingly”. “In his answer to question 1, Joe totally wronged it”. I’m not sure whether that’s whimsical or just plain horrible.
               1. Chambers gives ‘to treat unjustly’ amongst other definitions. Curiously it also gives ‘to seduce’ although it recognises this as old and I guess that this is not what keriothe had in mind.
            2. I see what you mean. It’s a kind of verbal DBE, I suppose.
               I wonder if François Hollande likes pork scratchings.
               1. I’m sure he’d love them with a wafer-thin mint and a Chateau de Chasselas.
7. 47 minutes with SMOULDERS last in. Cartagena is a big place in a country I’ve visited twice for me never to have heard of it, but the similarity to Carthage (from which its name is in fact derived) was enough to tip the balance in the direction of the correct answer for me.

   Thaks to Dave for sorting out the parsing of TRAGICOMEDY.

   The heading refers to the possibility that England might win an interntional match on this benighted tour for the first time. But while Haddin is at the crease, who knows? I shall then, if only temporarily, be on top of Galspray and McT…

   1. Whoops. Sorry about that, U.
8. 16m. Like some others I found some of this a bit over-elaborate, notably 1ac and 17ac. In both case I just bunged the answer in once I had a few checkers without even trying to unravel the wordplay.
   I didn’t like 7dn. A straightforward reading of the wordplay gives you CARRATENA. The actual answer relies on a rather unusual word (“cartage”) so unless you know the town I can’t see how you’re going to get the right answer.
9. A similar experience to several others. Never really tuned in to this one and found it to be a bit like wading through treacle.

   I can’t see 1A as brilliant. Like many I never bothered to work it all out – with 1D and 2D give aways I just stuck it in assuming a wierd cryptic definition.

   Luckily I’ve been to CARTAGENA because I agree with Keriothe – if you don’t know it it’s ungettable. Roll on next week.

10. 33min. 1ac was LOI because (a) couldn’t get (s)TRAIT out of my mind for 2dn & (b) never did see parsing of clue – so thanks for that.
    Didn’t know 7dn, so had to look in Bradford – before I had 7ac I was trying to make something of BARCELONA.
11. No beast to finish the week then, but another steady solve. To be honest, that was lucky, as I solved this in a daze just after watching the end of the cricket. On the radio coverage, Dean Jones said that with 44 needed off the last 6 overs and the last Aussie pair at the wicket, there was clearly only going to be one winner. Obviously he was right.
    1. Actually they needed 57 at that point Tim. (Trying not to gloat, mainly because Ulaca wants me to).
12. I do not care about the cricket at the moment. AFAIAC, the greedy TV companies wanted more Ashes cricket before it was ready to happen, and that’s why we had a mis- or non-match over there. Very boring, and somehow inconsequential. After what I hope will be the natural length of time, we will have another, proper series agin the awful Aussies.

    Also I am ill. But I am at work, because I am not quite as ill as the others, who contracted Office Snot-Ebola (Marbogey variant 6.3432) after me. So like England, I have returned to the field too soon. Cough.

    Yes. Wading through/ swimming in treacle: somehow this one did not cut the mustard, and even 1ac failed to impress. Never mind, there’s always Monday.

    Edited at 2014-01-17 12:06 pm (UTC)

13. 40 minutes. A bit harder than others this week, but not the stinker I expected. 1ac was one of my last in; I didn’t bother to work out the wordplay.It’s clever, but I agree not brilliant. I’m one of the CARRATENA brigade, which was rather silly of me, because when I first read the clue I thought ‘Conveyance cost’ would be a word ending in AGE.
14. … there’s always the chance that this latest Ashes is a betting scandal, which has just occurred to my addled mind.
    1. As in: ‘I bet you this England team can’t get any worse’?
       1. As the saying goes, “Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence”…
       2. Fah!
15. 23:48 … well, that was a bit tougher, and a lot more convoluted. The NW corner took the longest to crack.

    Last in .. PRIVATE

16. 12:15 to complete a pretty benign week.

    I agree that 1a ain’t all that. Like Dave I would expect to see some misdirection soemwhere and the surface isn’t great – don’t all the white keys represent notes?

    Like Z8 I liked 17a ad that’s my COD.

    Goodness knows how I knew Cartagena and Kirov but the GK was in there somewhere. I dallied a bit at 24 as for some reason my brain had shut down after getting the port and ballet and was trying to convince me that Roman for 6 was IX.

    Edited at 2014-01-17 12:59 pm (UTC)

    1. Same here. If you’d asked me to name all the Spanish towns I could think of CARTAGENA wouldn’t have come up, but somehow I knew it was a town. An unknown known.
17. Definitely not a beast – 8:33 for me – must have been on the wavelength.
18. As others have said, relatively easy for a Friday. I liked TRAGICOMEDY, INNOCENCE and BITTERSWEET; but I agree with the criticisms of 1A, a train-crash of a surface read which doesn’t work as a CD/&lit because, as Penfold says, all the white keys, and not just some of them, represent notes.

19. Can someone explain 11ac titmice for me?
    1. Def is little singers (tiny singing birds). TIE (unite) with T (time) and MIC (microphone) inserted.

       Edited at 2014-01-17 01:34 pm (UTC)

    2. unite =tie around t for time and mic for microphone
20. sorry sue.slow typing
21. …Spain to see if I can buy a small plot of coastal land, throw up a jetty, and call it Carratena. Damn. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s always these bloody foreigners who cause trouble. They can’t even name their ports correctly.

    26min, which I was quite happy with.

    “TITMICE” has always puzzled me as a word. If they’re birds (tits) that resemble mice, why aren’t they mousetits?

    Also pleased that, for once, my very limited classical education was enough to get me through the Homeric reference at 26d.

    Edited at 2014-01-17 02:29 pm (UTC)

    1. According to Chambers, this has nothing to do with mice. The word comes from a combination of “tit”, from the Icelandic tittr, meaning “titmouse” and the Middle English mose, meaning, er “titmouse”. So that clears that up.
       1. Hmf. I have to say that foreign incursions into English are not always beneficial. Do they even have titmice in Icelandia?
          1. Do they have titmice anywhere except in crosswords these days? They have been in two or three in the last couple of weeks – could it be the setters’ word of the month for January??!
             1. The titmouse is an endangered species – the only two surviving populations are along the banks of the Po and in the ruins of Ur.
                1. I think there’s still a thriving colony in Cartagena.
                   1. Not once I get permission for my bypass to Carratena there ain’t.
22. I was slowed down by not knowing the CRS. Had ERUCT – that’s half the jURy turned – which seems almost as good as EVICT. I’m with the clever-but-not-brilliant viz PIANOFORTE.

    I’m never fond of made-up words, and in annoyance I would say FAH to, for example, my smug Australian cricket friends well before I’d say DOH. So: Fah! And more Fah!

    Edited at 2014-01-17 02:58 pm (UTC)

    1. Is there any other kind?
23. Wading through treacle, but very thin treacle. Another fairly easy one, five in a row seems more like design rather than accident. Why?

    Several rather unsatisfactory clues today, starting with PIANOFORTES. OFF-SEASON and WRONGED, had rather tenuous word-substitutions. LOI the relatively straightforward SMOULDERS. Total just under half an hour – Balham to Tottenham Court Rd on the tube and back!

    Time was when a Homeric allusion in The Times was something else entirely. Ah well, tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. D’oh!

    1. Wow! If you can go from Balham to TCR and back in half an hour the Northern Line Tube must have got a lot faster since my days in The Smoke
       1. Not all the time was spent on the Crossword! Some strap-hanging involved …
24. About 45 minutes including an unmeasured dozing-off. Didn’t know Cartagena or cartage but both seemed likely.
    Not too sure if I can stay in this nest of titmice much longer. 27, 28.
    1. Lighten up, some of us enjoy the asides (well I do, anyway).
       1. Me too. The highlight of the evening is reading Thud and blunder’s posts on the day’s memorable events in A&E.
          1. Ditto. It’s almost a blog in itself.
          2. Oh dear! I had not realized that so much depended upon my forays into the bloodbath – but I am flattered.

             Things have been rather dull, and sadly I am not today invited to the recurrent party that is the Friday night shift. The only moments of levity today were provided by (a) a young gentleman with a spectacular perineal laceration occasioned by a skateboarding accident (serves him right for showing off) and (b) a man who had managed to run himself over trying to bump-start his car single-handed. Given the wet weather and the density* of cyclists, I was hoping for better.

             *in both senses.

             1. Plus, I sometimes learn something.
25. Having bunged in wavelet at 22ac, I got held up in the SE but this quickly sorted itself out. It was then the NE – trying to out-cryptic 6dn and then spent 5 minutes staring at S_O_L_E_S before getting this LOI. 53 minutes and happy to have completed another.
26. 15 mins but with a very stupid “exist” at 24ac when I didn’t look at the definition or wordplay properly and reversed “six” inside the checkers I already had. Very poor.

    Of the other clues SMOULDERS was my LOI, and I entered 1ac and 11dn without bothering to parse them. I knew CARTAGENA and don’t consider it obscure or ungettable, although the wordplay could certainly lead to an alternative if one doesn’t know of it. Horses for courses and all that. I’ll always struggle with certain scientific clues that some of you will find extremely straightforward.

27. 40m or so after a few interruptions but one wrong as I plumped for CARFARENA which sounds like a nice sort of place for a holiday in the sun. Not over excited by any of the clues but they did seem a bit long going on the printing off today.
28. About 20 minutes, not too tough. Surprised that CARTAGENA is considered obscure by many. I can’t explain why I know of it, but I do. The more head scratching part of that clue was deciding that ‘cartage’ was required, which to me is more of a semi-obscurity than the town. I agree with those not wowed by PIANOFORTES, which I found it overly complicated. Regards all.
    1. As I put Cartagena in I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was South American rather than Spanish. Looking it up, it is, of course, both. I think Colombia’s Cartagena is much better known than Spain’s. It is the setting for several of Gabriel García Márquez’s novels, and also has some less edifying associations with the drugs trade.

       Edited at 2014-01-17 06:01 pm (UTC)

       1. The Colombian Cartagena is also well-known on the South American backpacker trail.
29. I had EXIST for precisely the same dodgy reason as Andy B, and even returned to it several times because I couldn’t see the parsing. That didn’t stop me submitting – and then turning the air blue.

    I knew CARTAGENA because of a visit about 20 years ago, but I have sympathy for those that didn’t – as has been mentioned by others, the wordplay was ambiguous if one didn’t already know the answer, with the correct parsing making use of another word (CARTAGE) that’s hardly common currency. I don’t think I’ve seen CARTAGENA mentioned on the news or in a book or even in a crossword before, so I’m not unhappy with it being described as obscure.

30. 16:05 (+ 0:32 waiting for my Submit to take – I seem to be having a bad week for hang-ups, but once again I’m relieved it didn’t time out).

    I got completely bogged down with 1ac, imagining that the answer was going to be some strange animals ending in DONTES (the last five letters being an anagram of “notes”). I’d thought of keyboard instruments as soon as I read the clue, but dismissed that as a possibility because I took “a number representing notes” to imply that a number didn’t represent notes, which I couldn’t make any sense of (and still can’t). I class this as an “iffy &lit”. Whereas I reckon 6dn is an “iffy cd” since “logs” would surely produce “boards” rather than a single “board”.

    I thought of POP straight away as well, but failed to spot “population”. (26dn!)

    I’m another who looks forward to thud_n_blunder’s contributions.

31. I forgot to mention that (like others) I’m not convinced by WRONGED = “described misleadingly”.
32. Would have been 35m 05s but I did not know ‘Cartagena’ and opted for the name of a Spanish port I shall establish just along the coast from thud_n_blunder’s. My development will be called ‘Carfarena’, which can be parsed as ‘car’ + ‘fare’ + n/a (not applicable).
    Have a nice weekend all.
33. In what sense is a sawmill a “company”? I got as far “sa” = European company but couldn’t find “wmill” in my dictionary!
    1. This is a cryptic definition so it doesn’t break down the word into bits like a more traditional charade-type clue. A sawmill is a company in the sense that it’s an industrial establishment, a working business, just as any other type of mill would be.

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