Times 25708: Pulling a few punches

59 comments on “Times 25708: Pulling a few punches”

1. It’s turning —ZZ rather than ZZ! I think.

   Edited at 2014-02-12 01:48 am (UTC)

   1. Yeh, I wondered about that, but couldn’t account for the I. Now I see it’s the dash that does that. Ta!

      Edited at 2014-02-12 01:52 am (UTC)

2. Goodness me, I struggled to complete this one. It was certainly an inventive puzzle, perhaps just a bit too convoluted in places where I doubt it was possible to understand the workings of some clues other than by reverse engineering. Still it was what was needed after a couple of really easy ones. 1dn was my last in and it’s always a sign of a good puzzle when the hidden answer is the last to fall! I shall only admit to an hour plus.
3. 80 minutes for me, ending with the cunning MITRE, although my COD in a superb bunch goes to TV MOVIE for the spousal separation. (On The family theme, I also enjoyed the abusive aunt, and ‘the works of Proust’ is a touch of genius.) Unusual to have three letter substitution clues. Top stuff, setter! A delight from start to finish.

   At 3d, I had the relevance of the 17th as being that the minimum age for the purchase of alcohol in the UK is 18, but both interpretations seem to work.

   Edited at 2014-02-12 02:11 am (UTC)

   1. I hadn’t thought of that one, nor the possibility of champers at the 18th which I suppose might happen at the end of a tournament. In my reckoning I’d gone with the more usual idea of drinkies at the 19th hole.
      1. I have seen winning golfers feted with champagne at the end of the 18th. Not quite in F1 style. Poor old Cheyenne Woods only got sprayed with water when she won the Oz Ladies Masters (great title) the other day.
   2. I’m pretty sure it has to reference the hole given the “here” in the clue.
      1. ‘Here’ works too as ‘at his or her 17th’.
         1. Stuffs up the semi-&lit but.
4. I thought this was a very good puzzle with some very inventive clues. I hadn’t fully parsed 26dn beyond a vague notion that Z turned through 90deg looks like N – thanks jackkt.

   1dn was LOI – very nice.

   After vinyl’s comment on KNIGHTSBRIDGE on Monday, we have ST JOHN’S WOOD today. Watch out for STEPNEY on Friday?

5. Ta muchly Mctext,
   can see where I went wrong – not knowing neozonic for starters, going for wield (exercise) sounding like weald (woodland), and …. generally being thick!
   But having an early start tomorrow to a long day, having to have an early(ish) night.

   Funnily enough VERTIGO came up in a repeat of Stephen Fry’s QI tonight, and he stressed that it has nothing to do with altitude, despite its common use.
   It is simply a feeling of dizziness brought on by the sense of balance being disrupted – and can happen sat down, stood up, or standing on a stool. And obviously having a fear of heights, if stood somewhere high, can also disrupt your sense of balance.

   1. But you try telling Hitchcock that!
      1. Hi ulaca,
         I’ll leave it to Stephen Fry to dig him up and educate him. Note I didn’t criticize the setter,or anyone else, and had it not been for seeing the program, would probably still associate it with being on a precipice.
         Still there’s always the get out now when my head’s spinning – “I’m not drunk, I’m suffering from vertigo”. LoL Keef
6. 25:15 .. well, we did all say we wanted something tougher! And this was definitely ‘gnarly’. There were several twists, a couple of splits and at least one rotation. The setter went huge and put it down (I’m definitely watching too much of the Olympics, but… did you see that half-pipe competition? Incredible theatre).

   COD .. For all the big tricks, I really enjoyed the lovely NOW AND AGAIN. Images of a sort of hapless Harry Potter.

   Another with MITRE the last in.

   Thanks setter, and McT

7. Struggled with this after 2 really easy ones – it takes time to get the old brain into gear. 35 minutes to finish the most inventive puzzle for quite some time. I’m trying to remember if I’ve seen the “wife chopped in half” device and the INN/-ZZ before.

   A lot of reverse engineering of educated guesses with these clues so a really tough puzzle for newish solvers. Thank you setter and well done McT – great job

   Hatches fastened here as 80mph winds forcast with another 25mm of rain!

8. . ..of pure pleasure, so thank you setter and mctext. COD 26D for its (to me) complete originality.
9. Is LiveJournal directly associated with VKontakte (the “Russian Facebook”)? (I note that people can post to LJ directly from there.) If so, we might want to rethink our hosts:
   http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/11/russia-violent-anti-gay-groups-vkontakte-lgbt-sochi
   1. Definitely off topic. We’re a crossword discussion forum. We’re not here to change the world. Can we at least have a day without this extraneous stuff please?
      1. Sorry to have offended Jack. But if I thought my posting to this site (not to mention paying LJ for the privilege) implied complicity with the situation described in the Guardian report, I would have to cease to do so.

         There are, you will know, plenty of TfT posts discussing LJ matters.

   2. jackkt’s feelings are fair enough. But having been asked, such a question about the site’s home can’t be unasked and should be answered. The answer is ‘no’. McT – I’m sending you a private message to clarify that. No need to respond here.
      1. I hesitate to step into controversy but I’d actually be interested in the answer too.
         I seem to remember from past discussions about changing hosts (during the wave of DDOS attacks) that it would be extremely cumbersome to do in any event.
         1. I’ve written a post on my LJ home page which provides more information. Comments are open and perhaps any further discussion can take place there, if desired.
            Link: http://sotira.livejournal.com/3853.html
10. Be careful what you wish for – at last a chewy one, with two “rebus” clues – splitting the “W” and spinning the “-ZZ”. Liked ARRIVEDERCI and ST JOHNS WOOD. Held up deciding between MARATHA and Marathi, but the slow-coming WEALD/POW crosser (my LOI) finally solved that one!

    Not having teenage children, that pants=bad thing was not immediately obvious … So, an eclectic crossword, with current playground slang rubbing shoulders with not one but two nicely old-fashioned references to the Raj!

    About an hour of often frustrating enjoyment.

11. 30 mins for me, and as has been pointed out above it was the most inventive puzzle for quite some time and a real challenge to solve. There were too many top-quality clues to list, and I needed the wordplay to be happy with most of my answers.

    MITRE was my next-to-last in, although I might have seen it faster if it hadn’t taken me so long to see MILK STOUT (with “Porter” in the clue and ??L? for the first word I was thinking “Cole”). I was also trying to fit “No” into 9ac for a while as the “doctor in Bond film”, which was a very good misdirection. COGENTLY was actually my LOI.

12. Such a relief to find that others found this challenging – 19:22 for me. The turning of the ZZ appeared somewhere else recently so I did know what I was supposed to do with that one.
13. 45min with a lot of guessing from partial parsing – so thanks for blog.
    14ac was LOI, but couldn’t think of anything better than FRAYED, as suggested by ‘conflict’ in the clue: I’m still not clear on the definition.

    Edited at 2014-02-12 10:58 am (UTC)

    1. The def is “set up” (past tense verb).
14. 21:46 and definitely breaking the run of easy ones. I especially liked 27ac on the day of the IPL auction. As Jim says, it can take time to get your head into the right mode for a puzzle this tricky, so my last one in was 1dn, by which time I was just about on the right wavelength to see the really well-hidden definition; this set up by getting 9ac, where you just know the “Bond film” is almost certainly a lift-and-separate, and the surface intended to distract, but it’s impossible not to think of Doctor No. Really good puzzle.
15. Tuesday toughie after a Monday doddle. Did all except 1 dn and 9 and 11 ac in 30 minutes, stared at those for ages then resigned, so DNF. Even though I had MOVIE in I couldn’t see TV. Was hung up on BOSS GEAR = CAM backwards or some such nonsense.
    Loved some of the clues though.
    As they say on the banal Pointless, ‘well done to all of you at home who got all those pointless answers’.

    Edited at 2014-02-12 11:23 am (UTC)

16. Really meaty puzzle, this. 24:20 here, and I also finished with MITRE! Loved the clue to INN and TV MOVIE for the innovative wordplay – although I did have TOP for 26D for a short while.
    1. Sorry, that was me. Not sure how I got logged out.
17. What a stinker, took me almost 2 hours and even then I did not get 1d.

    For 21d I had the first O and the last S and seeing…’for doctor’ at the end of the clue, I immediately thought of Cosmos, but in the sense of Saints Cosmos & Damian the biblical twin martyrs, both doctors and who are the patron Saints of physicians.
    Well, it might not have been in the setter’s mind and it’s nothing to do with the rest of the clue, but it got me there!

    (One edit) Just looked up the two Saints in question and was greatly surprised to find the Saint is Cosmas not Cosmos. Bang goes a 50+ year old belief!

    Edited at 2014-02-12 12:04 pm (UTC)

18. Brilliant puzzle requiring some extraordinarily intricate (but always just this side of fairness) parsing – e.g. SEVENTEENTH. I was left stumped by 1D (MITRE) and 9A (TV MOVIE). I’d never have worked worked out the “wife chopped in half” trick in a million years, and had to come here for enlightenment.

    Great blog, McT. Thanks.

19. Well I did wish for exactly this yesterday, didn’t I, and this was excessively chewy. But with chewy, apart from Han Solo, comes good cryptic, generally speaking, and there were some nice tricks here.

    Thanks to setter and blogger.

    Cheers
    Chris.

20. 18m. Tricksy, tough, very enjoyable crossword. I seem to have been on the right wavelength judging by others’ times.
    The trickiness must have made me more alert because I hesitated to work out the wordplay before putting in the spelling I thought I knew for ARRIVEDERCI.

    Edited at 2014-02-12 12:56 pm (UTC)

21. DNF, but the bits I got were highly enjoyable. Sometimes I find the more difficult puzzles relatively easier, because the wordplay tends to be a little more precise while the clues rely a bit less on nuanced connections that a native ear hears and that I don’t. That is true of today’s puzzle (good), but my GK fell short all over the place (not so good), and mctext’s explanations were very much appreciated. Ditto the setter’s (and perhaps the new editor’s) effort.
22. Somehow got logged out w/o noticing
23. 26:55 and for a while I thought I’d be permanently stuck. Certainly a few years ago this would have left me utterly defeated.

    LTI for me were Maratha (down there in the Rawalpindi slot!) and weald.

    Clever stuff for sure. I still haven’t got round to tackling Monday’s puzzle so I can’t yet judge the difficulty gap.

    Good time K!

    1. Thanks! I’ll take under 2 Magoos any day of the week.
       1. I’m flattered, keriothe. Sadly most people I know can barely tolerate even one.
       2. Have you been rubbing that lamp again, K?
24. Oh well, after 24 minutes and rarely being on the wavelength with the wordplay, I shrugged and put in ST JOHN’S ROAD. I did like the wandless mage though. Better luck tomorrow, right?
    1. You disappoint me George, St. John’s Wood is where Lord’s Cricket Ground is.

       Tut tut.

25. DNF after 45m with the ones already mentioned above still unsolved. Challenging but satisfying. I spotted MITRE early on but had no idea how it was defined in the clue so it was my last one in. Would never have got near 27a nor 9a. I must remember the misleading use of capitals. Very grateful for the blog today. Thanks to MCT and the setter.
26. 
    Too tricky for me today, but I really enjoyed what I did, and thought it a clever and fun puzzle. Lots of gaps all over the place, and even when I turned to the solver to complete the grid, I couldn’t always work out the cyrptics, so was really glad to have such a comprehensive blog, thanks McT.
27. I needed two bashes at this. After fifty minutes I still had 8 clues to solve and was stuck. I went back to it later and it all slowly came together in another 15 minutes or so, though mystified by the wordplay to 9 and 26.
    Have I been mispronouncing DUBAI? I, and my friend who works there, pronounce the first syllable DOO, not DEW. I suppose it works for Americans who pronounce DUE as DOO.

    Anyway, an extremely clever and witty puzzle with a wide range of cryptic devices. Definitely not vanilla.

28. What a wonderful puzzle! Inventive and fun, dnf after two hours of pleasure and some frustration. Great to see Gujarat, the land of my ancestors making an appearance. Maratha got me though, because I have never heard the word, we Indians call them Marathi and it never occured to me to put in the A for ace and not i. Ah well….

    Sorted out the word play for most of them, loved INN, great way to arrive at the answer.

    As a clergyman enjoyed See Boss, a familiar term in my circles and, as far as I know, the See Bosses themselves enjoy it too.

    Great blog, thank you and also to all the contributors, enjoyed the Tasmania-free contributions you all made. And thank you to the setter for such a fine puzzle.

    Nairobi Wallah

29. Hope you got Magritte, Penfold_61.
    1. Of course! This isn’t my usual avatar but I roll it out whenever the great Rene gets a reference in the puzzle.
       1. I don’t really believe in conspiracies (letting one’s inner human being do its thing generally works just as well), but when I saw the android with the scary eyes immediately below your avatar, there was a moment when I was ready to build that cabin in the woods.
30. I finished 3/4 of the puzzle in 15 minutes and then spent more than an hour on the north-west corner. Tough as old leather. It is a marvel that the blogger today managed to give some cogent explanation for all the clues … I would have sat down and cried if it were my turn to blog

31. Almost excellent clue, took me a long time to get. But I justified my failure to see it because contracting isn’t the same thing as containing. If ‘over time’ contracts, it’s still ‘over time’, just smaller. Surely there were ways round this.
    1. Contracts to mean catches perhaps like a fever?
32. Great puzzle, and very tricky. About 45 minutes, ending with the DUO/DUBAI pair, right after MITRE. Thanks to the setter, and brilliantly blogged, I must say, so thanks to mct as well, since I didn’t fully parse everything. Regards to all.
33. I didn’t think this one was too bad, and I enjoyed it over about 40min. Loved some of the clues, my favourite by far being 12ac, followed by 18d. 1d was especially cunning, and I’d have called it unfair if I hadn’t got it. Well done, setter!

    I hadn’t come across the rebi of 26ac and 9ac here before – is this an innovation for the Times? I can’t help feeling that a W chopped in half ought to give you two Us. Can we expect to see d or p as “half a lollipop” soon?

    Got, but failed to parse, MARATHA. I was thinking of a cricket side as an XI (or is that rugby?), but didn’t get anywhere with that. Is “ON” really a cricket side?

    1. No, rugby is definitely XV. It’s V per chukka, I believe. In cricket there are of course three sides: left, right, and the other left. Or vice versa if you’re leg-handed. ON is one of them.
       Hope that’s cleared it up.

       Edited at 2014-02-12 11:58 pm (UTC)

       1. Ah yes. It’s all coming back to me now. So the long-offs stand in dummock while the spin-side’s short bowlers bail the wicket-keeper. How I could have forgotten that I’ll never know.
34. Didn’t understand 26d, but what else could it have been once the checking letters were in and ‘local’ was in the clue? I also got 1d after much deliberation and finally spotting the reversal, but I failed to parse it fully.
35. 17:54 here for a wonderfully inventive puzzle. Like Andy B, I was held up for ages trying to make COLE the first word of 1ac (despite being completely unable to think of any 5-letter second word that would make sense with it).

    There were lots of splendid clues, but I particularly liked 10ac (TV MOVIE), making it both my LOI (it’s not the first time I’ve struggled with this answer!) and my COD.

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