Times 25,701 – A Pennyweight Puzzle

60 comments on “Times 25,701 – A Pennyweight Puzzle”

1. … but what’s the wordplay? TANGO & PAWN very iffy unless someone has a clearer explanation. Apart from these three, the rest were very entertaining and challenging.
   1. It’s a sort of double definition, isn’t it? A supposed childish version of left and (not-winter) description of a tree.
   2. For LEAVED the definition is “tree in such a state” – the “wordplay” such as it is, comes from “Childishly left” as explained above

      I can’t see anything iffy about TANGO or PAWN (one used as in “he was a pawn in her game”), they’re just not very inspiring

   3. I put LEAFED in at 4dn and still think it works for a rather ambiguous clue
      I agree with your comments about challenging and entertaining; I particularly liked the Holden Caufield clue.
      The re-appearance of one clue in particular was somewhat surprising (sorry to be oblique).
      I didn’t find the two mild references to Christianity to be particularly untoward even though I think The Bible is a little harsh on the slothful and envious.
2. 16m. Not difficult, but for me there were just a few too many occasions when the setter reached for an obscurity: the old-fashioned AT PLEASURE, pop, ounce etc. I suppose you could argue that Joyce, Salinger and Brecht are required knowledge for a solver of the Times crossword, but all three in one puzzle? And as for the poet…
   I didn’t think “no exploiter of animals” was necessarily axe-grinding: you can exploit resources without exploiting them, as it were.

   Edited at 2014-02-04 09:15 am (UTC)

   1. The phrase crops up often enough in law, does it not: “to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure”, hence the “one” in the second part of the clue. Or am I finding unintended wit in the setter’s work?
      1. In my experience it only ever crops up in that context, which kind of illustrates my point, I think. I can never remember seeing it without “Her Majesty’s” in the middle.
         1. I sort of agree: “at pleasure” is perhaps not as established a phrase as “at leisure” (tour company speak for “we haven’t actually organised anything”), but it doesn’t need to be. It may be just the setter’s imposed interpretation leading to the well-known legal phrase.
            1. Chambers does have it as a phrase independent of Her Maj: “when, if or as one pleases”.
      2. Well spotted, the ‘one’: it’s journalistic code for the royals, but I don’t remember ER using it – Anne, now Princess Royal, famously did.
3. I did feel sometimes I was solving a TLS, though to be frank the clues were much better. The required GK (except Howard) was dragged from the depths, though more often than no the wrong way round. Holden, for example, I remembered once I’d written the answer in, and Brecht’s association with ALIENATION was, shall we say, sketchy, even to the extent that it might have been a different Brecht.
   I certainly didn’t feel as negative about this as Jim apparently did. Not a particularly challenging solve maybe – it took me 14 minutes – but not without charm. I liked BEHOLDEN, for example, both because I thought it a neat device, and because it allowed me to feel good about my (prompted) llterary knowledge.
4. I agree with jimbo that this was a curiously unsatisfying puzzle and like cozzielex I was surprised at one of the solutions. I thought that 4D was particularly weak.
5. I have to admit that the Brecht, Salinger, Howard and Villa Park references were unknown to me.

   I thought PAWN was OK but query TANGO. If a definition is “One from Argentina” it seems to beg the question “One what?” . If “one” doesn’t stand for a person it seems quite meaningless.

   7 and 8 down reminded me why a pound of mushrooms is heavier than a pound of gold!

6. Many thanks, jimbo. Had no idea how BEHOLDEN should be parsed (went in on definition only). Did not know of Howard the poet but did know of Thomas Howard (father and son), remarkable political survivors during the reigns of the late Yorkists/early Tudors (both, in succession, Earl of Surrey, then Duke of Norfolk).
7. No undue problems with this crossword.
   Not keen on 4dn or 23ac or the general overly bookish slant, but on the plus side it does give me a chance to mention the remarkable Amira Willighagen. singing 6dn. Catch her Nessun Dorma too if you can. This little muppet is 9 and as if the singing isn’t enough, is also Dutch cross-country champion for her age group.

   Edited at 2014-02-04 10:00 am (UTC)

8. Jimbo was on fire today, complementing – nay completing – the entertainment. While my COD goes to the wonderful LEAVED (Chomsky’s Universal Grammar is predicated on the idea that children have an innate ability to learn language, which is evidenced by the fact that they do indeed produce just such formulations – according to their own internal grammar – of words they have never heard), my ROD goes to VEGA, closely followed by VILLA PARK and ALIENATION. I can’t see anything wrong with any of them.

   As for my own effort (impoverished by comparison), I took 56 minutes on the ferry to Macau and managed to ‘do a Jaynie’ at 25, putting in ‘yawn’. Well, at least MY ears pop when I have one at 10,000 feet reading the Caucasian Chalk Circle.

   May I leave the last word with CS Lewis, who was obviously anticipating DJ when he wrote of Surrey, ‘By any sane standard, he is merely a man who served his generation well and has left one or two poems of paramount, though moderate value’?

9. 
   Took quite a long time, mostly getting to grips with the SW… put in TANGO on the basis that it had something to do with Argentina, but not getting the uniform bit. And PAWN was my last. But at least I got it today!

   DNK: HOWARD of Surrey, Mr Bloom, nor the TROY OUNCE, and only just opted for LEAVED over leafed.

10. 13 mins so definitely on the setter’s wavelength, but I agree that the puzzle had a strange feel to it.

    I needed all the checkers before I saw the wordplay and answer for HET UP, and LEAVED took a while too, although I didn’t think it was as bad a clue as some of you did. The literary references were dragged from deep in the old memory banks, and while I don’t have a problem with such clues I agree that there were too many for one puzzle. PAWN was my LOI from the “one used” definition, and I was happy to see “pawn” as one definition of “pop” when I checked my Chambers post-solve.

11. Don’t like LEAFED in case it sets a precedent. What more childish gibberish might be inflicted on us if this one goes unchallenged?

    I did reasonably well until I hit a wall with only 21, 22 and 25 remaining and then I sat staring at them for about half an hour.

    I got TANGO eventually having considered (copper) KETTLE at 21 which suggested T???O at 22, and the penny finally dropped. 25 was then a write-in and a quick trip through the alphabet delivered M as a better option as the first letter of 21.

    On reflection I don’t think any of those clues was dodgy but it was just their unfortunate proximity that did for me.

    During the hiatus I did actually consider resorting to aids but didn’t have sufficient letters of distinction to put any of them in a solver and bring up any useful results.

    Edited at 2014-02-04 10:35 am (UTC)

    1. Well, Jack, the setters’ options are limited by the restricted set of English irregular verbs with wordplay possibilities. ‘Goed’ is out, as are ‘comed’ and probably ‘feeled’. But watch out for ‘seed’ and ‘eated’. I will be praying to the shade of Surrey that the latter will come up on Jimbo’s watch clued as a soundalike with the word ‘Cockney’!

       Edited at 2014-02-04 09:08 pm (UTC)

12. 24 min – nearly half that on SW, much trying to find anagram for 27, having the E & N, though eventually guessed from definition. (Catcher in the Rye is one of those books I ought to have read sometime)
    17 also went in without being able to see how wordplay worked, not having heard of relevant Howard.
13. Well, I thought this was perfectly enjoyable and didn’t mind the occasional oddity at all. The use of perhaps obscure poets etc was more than offset by being able to get the solution from the cryptic. 18:50’s worth of happiness by the fire for me.
14. But why party? No-one has yet explained.
    1. Noisy parties in my day and I am sure still the neighbourhood bane. The ? is not necessary
       1. The setter is clueing NOISIEST, not noisy. Yes, a party can be noisy but for NOISIEST one surely thinks in terms of say Concord or an F1 car?
          1. Honestly can’t remember the last time my no. 1 siesta was cut short by a Red Bull RB 10 outside my front door, and sadly Concorde stands silent in a hangar at Duxford (other locations are available). On the other hand, firework parties abound in my neck of the woods, and believe me, they are the noisiest. Why party? Why not? – fits the scenario more than adequately and is probably a more common experience of most noisy doze-destroying nuisance for the majority of us.
             1. To reiterate we are looking for a definition of NOISIEST. Concord was probably the NOISIEST airliner, an F1 car is probably the NOISIEST car.

                Any party may or may not be noisy but that isn’t a definition of NOISIEST

             2. It seems reasonable to use “a party at this extreme” to suggest a party at its “noisiest”. It is of course indisputable that “axe-grinding nonsense” appears in today’s blog.
15. 42 minutes, with PAWN and TANGO the last solves, in that order. One or two niggles – I didn’t understand HOWARD,for instance, which seems rather an obscure reference, but otherwise the setter’s been very harshly treated above. I’m quite happy with Brecht, Joyce and Salinger (though the Brecht clue was a dead give-away to anyone who knows anything at all about 20th century drama). I’m far more comfortable with them than with cricket, Rugby and football references.
16. ….but what would you expect from a literary solver?

    This is far from the level of knowledge required for the TLS puzzle, which some have compared it to. You want obscure literary figures, go there.

    1. But you have to acknowledge that the standard of cluing (and the accuracy) was well above the average TLS.
17. 15 minutes with the last two pondering LEAVED, which I thought rather neat and reminded me of my younger siblings and, more recently, grandchildren. Had no idea that Howard was a poet (which is totally irrelevant to the clue) but knew the family as historical figures.
18. Wonderful, thunderous blog, jimbo. Thank you.

    I wrote my comment last night before the blog appeared and before I knew it would be jimbo in the captain’s chair. I’ll just paste it as was, then add a bit:

    20:56 .. cracking puzzle, with several PDMs involved in getting it finished — PAWN, TANGO, VEGA and LEAVED in that order for me.

    COD to LEAVED for having me thoroughly flummoxed for a while.

    Bit of a different feel to this one. I like it. Not sure jimbo will feel the same.

    This morning: I still like it! And still COD to LEAVED for causing such a division of opinion. Like ulaca, I thought of Chomsky when the penny dropped.

    1. Good to see that your avatar is back into happy mode
       1. Oddly, bigtone, I don’t even do that consciously. But now you come to mention it, I am feeling much better. Of course, now you’ve pointed it out I’ll be acutely conscious of the choice.!
19. At the risk of being non-pc, I thought this was a Chinese meal of a puzzle – no sooner had I finished it than I felt I wanted another one. I have no objection to the various literary references, feeling they should be well within the scope of the average Times solver (e.g. me). I thought “to capital” could have been omitted in 2 down – “up” is a direction in its own right. Apart from that, yesterday I drove from Doncaster to London and I felt I was going DOWN to London, not UP.
    1. Chambers includes “towards a centre (such as a capital, great town, or university)” in its definitions. On the railways of my youth, up trains went to London, down trains away from London.
    2. I bet Magoo and Jason feel the same. I’ve just checked the leader board and ..

       Magoo: 3:43
       Jason: 5:58

       Interestingly, this puzzle did draw mistakes from a number of strong solvers.

20. Although a notch up from yesterday’s in the grey cells department, one wilful obscurity and a smattering of bad clues left me irritated.

    The Howards are Dukes of Norfolk and Earls of Arundel. To be expected to know their third title on the basis that there was a poet of that name, who is is of interest only to academics, smacks of desperation.

    Agree that LEAVED, TANGO and PAWN are unsatisfactory, to put it politely. And ROOS? Whatever next?

    The Brecht (hooray) and Joyce (boo) clues were write-ins. “Holden” in BEHOLDEN I did not know, but ought to have done – good clue, fair’s fair.

    1. I agree that their third title may be (OK,is) a bit obscure, but how does the clue depend on the fact that one of them wrote a bit of poetry? There is no suggestion (other than in the blog) that a specific member of the family is the intended reference.
21. Well, this one didn’t seem to be right at the cutting edge of modern clueing technique as DJ says, and it was very easy. Bit boring I suppose, and even I only took 10-ish mins. Quite liked the Nemo idea, though indeed it is a bit familiar.

    Cheers
    Chris.

22. Pawn Leaved & Tango just leave me with the wish that the crossword editor should be replaced by our Peter B … the sooner the better … yes, I have just come back from a Hash run and do feel a bit frisky but my comments on the three clues are (imo) valid
    1. Yes, it would be interesting to hear quite what the Editor had in mind letting this one through. Nobody objects to the odd literary reference but so many in one puzzle is OTT and as you say so much of it leaving one feeling uninspired
23. I certainly didn’t have as strong a reaction to this as others have, but I suspect this is because the required knowledge mostly tallied with my own, except for Surrey, which seemed very obscure; definitely like the TLS but with better clueing (and in line with the established rule, “things I happen to know” = perfectly fair general knowledge, “things I don’t know” = stupid pointless trivia) so it didn’t occur to me to really get exercised by it. Still, nothing wrong with a puzzle which creates different reactions – everyone’s entitled to their (informed) opinion, after all.

    Anyway, I can’t complain too much given it was a second sub-10 minute solve in a row, despite also being the second day running that the last one to fall was the dreaded four-letter word with common letters as the checkers.

24. I too didn’t like the GK required in this one- makes it difficult for less knowledgeable solvers like me. I didn’t mind the clueing, and in fairness, I could deduce/guess all the answers without knowing the GK – with the exception of 25a- surely unsolvable if you don’t know that pop is a synonym for pawn.
25. PAWN was a dead-set giveaway. Ridiculously easy. So obvious in fact that if it comes up again tomorrow, with the same checking letters, I reckon I’ll be able to solve it in less than the 40 minutes that it took me today!

    Other than that, no real dramas. Loved the Salinger clue.

26. Obscure – you must be joking
27. Thanks Jerry for the Amira link. Made my day.
    I thought 25 was a very good clue. I share Jack’s reservation about letting “childishly” or equiv. in as a permissible direction aid. (And I fail to see why a child shows anything more than logic in forming a past tense as it’s generally formed.) This seems like a new setter. An eyebrow to be raised here and there; but outright dismissiveness isn’t appropriate and I fail to see why so many people line the roads and clap when it’s evinced. About 27 min.
28. About 20 minutes, but had to wrestle at the end with TANGO and PAWN. As for the literary bent, I didn’t even notice it, perhaps because I had no idea that Surrey referred to a poet, nor of Brecht’s effect (yes, I’m a philistine). I got the Bloom reference right away, though I’ve never gotten more than 10 pages into the book, which I own. Too hard a struggle for me. And I liked BEHOLDEN a lot, when I finally saw it. But LEAVED is no good, as said above, an invitation to a flood of similar creations best avoided. Regards.
29. Many clues took some thought, but unusually for me the definition and the wordplay often clicked at the same time today.
    Childish “leaved”: I still don’t like made-up words (keriothe poked me last time I said that, but maybe we’ll agree today); unacceptable in the grid, but I really don’t like them in the cluing either. Did like BEHOLDEN. Couldn’t parse the Earl. Was pleased to pull pop out of the vocabulary sinkhole relatively quickly
    1. Sorry, I was just teasing last time. I rather liked LEAVED: the “made-up” bit is in the wordplay, after all, and wordplay is all made-up, really. And it reminded me both of my son (who recently said he “metted” someone) and Chomsky. I’m a big fan, although I liked him much more as a ground-breaking linguist than as the paranoid parody of himself that I fear he is becoming. Ah well, he’ll grow out of it: he’s only 4.
       Incidentally I moaned a little bit about this puzzle in my first comment, but I do feel that a perfectly fair puzzle has been rather hard done by. It was not entirely to my taste, but then I don’t like Yeats, and I don’t regard that as his problem.
       1. My sorry – I did understand you were teasing, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned it. I think my issue with pretend words stems from growing up on the US puzzle, where even the reputable NYTimes lets in words such as SNO and GLO and (a)MNOT or creative spellings of KERCHOO. Irksome. And, like you, I wasn’t so much moaning as trying to put a finger on exactly why we all found this one slightly different – fair, hard done by, is about right. Other than the made up word, of course.
          PS – nice misdirection in the clue about Chomsky/your son. For the sake of advancing human knowledge I hope the parallel continues.
30. Great to have some literary references, and too little attention has been given to some very good clues. Pity about 4d.
    How interesting to see calls for the crossword editor’s head when he’s hardly got his seat warm yet.
    Is there a bloggers prize for rant of the year?
    1. I think I read in an interview that the first puzzle edited by RR won’t appear until next month, in which case any gripes with this puzzle’s clues/answers can’t really be levelled at him.
       1. That was my belief, too. I doubt he will have edited this puzzle (not that I have any gripes with it).
31. 12:00 for me. I completely disagree with you on this puzzle, Jim: I thought it was a delight from start to finish, full of wit and originality. I wasted time trying to fit NOVA into 13ac, and I made heavy weather of NOISIEST as my LOI – but that’s entirely my fault rather than the setter’s.

    RR won’t have edited this puzzle (the first one of his reign is due to appear on 3 March (according to the Times article of 27 January), though of course it’s possible that he set it.

32. It’s a bit late to comment. Suffice it to say that the GK needed here tallied with my own – except for the Surrey/Howard connection. HOMEWARD was easy to guess from the definition so it was no real problem. An odd puzzle, but fair. 29 minutes. Ann
33. In reply to the poor attack on the new Editor, I would think it likely that this puzzle was the work of the old Editor, given the new one only started duty on Monday.

    A cheap nasty jibe.

34. First of all, sorry I appeared as ‘anonymous’, I must have accidentally signed out.
    My previous posting was a bit mischievous, just winding Jimbo up for his customary ‘bash the Arts’ rant, and trying to support the poor old crossword editor who, as we know, can never win. I had not remembered when RR’s first edited puzzle is due to appear, but I wish him the best of luck with such a varied mob of solvers to attempt to satisfy.
    I sincerely hope that the continuing awful weather in the South-West has not caused further problems for Jimbo or other blog contributors.
35. xanax overdose icd 9 code – alprazolam 0 5 mg bula

Comments are closed.