Times 25734

44 comments on “Times 25734”

1. … my hard copy at what I laughingly call “work”. But this was hardish with some real rewards and a shade under the 30 minutes, if I recall.

   I’m pretty sure I had 20ac as A(NTA)GONISE; where our soldier is the second ANT with his A dropped to the end. But, as I said, I don’t have the whole thing here and could be remembering badly.

2. Even longer than yesterday, but at least all correct, finishing with RASH (where I couldn’t get beyongd speed and rain meanings) and the unfamiliar jester.

   I have ANTAGONISE as Dave, with ‘moving rear a little’ as the instruction to move the final ‘s’ in agonies up (along) one. DEEP-DYED was an unknown/forgotten. Rather liked REARMOST.

3. I appreciated this puzzle more than yesterday’s (which I agree was very good). It took me 55 minutes of steady hard work but at no time did I feel stuck or out of ideas as to how to proceed. I just kept chipping away and eventually I completed it without ever considering resorting to aids. Oh, and I never doubted I would finish it, either.

   AMORTISE (or its alternative -IZE) has surely come up here recently as that’s the only reason it came to my mind so readily. CRYSTAL meaning ‘watch glass’ was the only thing new to me, I think, but I may simply have forgotten it.

   I agree with Dave and Ulaca about ANTAGONISE. I’ve been trying to make mct’s alternative work but I can’t quite see it. This was my last to parse as during the solve I had left its penultimate letter blank to allow for another possible -IZE ending.

   Can’t make up my mind about 4dn.

   Edited at 2014-03-14 07:21 am (UTC)

4. I wonder if the comma has any significance. Does that perhaps make the dispreferred, Yodaesque word order more plausible?

   Nice surface, but dodgy cryptic reading, seems it to me.

   Edited at 2014-03-14 07:33 am (UTC)

   1. This seems fine to me, with “hiding” as an intransitive verb. The clue doesn’t tell you where IM is hiding, but where else is there?
5. I’m sure you think I’m a bit dim but please can someone explain how IT=appeal in 2d?

   1. “It” is “sex appeal”. Look out for it as a clue to the letters SA. I don’t think anyone in the real world actually says this any more but it’s in the dictionaries and it appears regularly. One of those things you just have to know.
      1. Ahh, thank you very much. Now I see it buried in 8th alternative definition. I had the solution and got A MORSE but couldn’t justify that bit.

         BTW, Dave thanks for the blog. The puzzle was another beast in my view. So glad to be able to come here and get some of the wordplay explained.

         1. Watch out too for some play on the phrase “gin and it” which is very, very old slang for vermouth but again, it’s in the dictionary and they zimmer it out evey so often
            1. Thanks! I shall.
   2. Clara Bow was known as the “It girl,” which gives you some idea how old-fashioned this meaning is. .
6. 16m. Average sort of puzzle, I thought, which of course means very good. CRYSTAL my only unknown today.
   I had ANTAGONISE like mctext, but I was clearly wrong, because “agonise” doesn’t mean “great pain”.
7. 22 minutes of rather scrappy solving, with 2, 7, 16ac, 18 and 24 all waiting until all their checkers were in.
   ANDY WARHOL was very cleverly clued, I thought, but I don’t think I’d have ever worked it out from the wordplay. I preferred DECLAIM as my CoD because of its whimsy.
8. Tough puzzle this one that took 30 minutes of dedicated concentration. Like others I’m not convinced by the cryptic at 4D and solved straight from definition. I think 13A is a splendid construction.

   AMORTISE will be familiar to the accountants and actuaries. I see after “inbreed” the other day we’re back with Dr Thud again today at 3D. Clearly he’s having an effect upon our setters.

   1. Just taking a moment from gnawing on my swedes to check who Dr Thud is.
9. 19.49 so apparently on the wavelength. I rather dread tomorrow’s. Good blog Dave. By the way, was that you as a runner-up winner on 4578? If so, congrats!
   1. Yes, it certainly looks like it, although I knew nothing about it, so thanks for pointing it out! They probably emailed me to tell me, but unfortunately, they don’t have my correct email address any more. I’ve tried changing it but to no avail.
      I guess there’ll be another pen on its way to me. I shall have a matching pair!

      Edited at 2014-03-14 01:11 pm (UTC)

10. I found this a struggle. 45 minutes initial stint then the last few done in snatches throughout the morning.

    Fortunately ‘amortised’ was the nine letter word in the City AM Wordwheel last week, so I knew it from there!

    LOI TATTOOER which I thought was never going to come until I eventually made the connection to getting under one’s skin. I can’t think that the word’s ever used in practice – surely always a TATTOOIST.

11. A nice crunchy one to end the working week, but without the elan of yesterday’s. About 40 minutes, with REARMOST, well, rearmost.

    Nice to have a Shakespearean clue making a (now) rare-ish appearance, and it was good that all that accountancy training eventually came useful with AMORTISE. A bit unconvinced by absolute = DEEP DYED, but there you go, no doubt some complete, thoroughgoing dictionary has it. Once that hurdle fell, the rest of the SE, which had been delaying me, opened up. CRYSTAL one of those, for me, perfectly obvious solutions – after I’d spent over 5 minutes working it out. Obviously not IN STEP, AS IT WERE, with the setter today!

    Edited at 2014-03-14 11:58 am (UTC)

12. . . . despite being grumpy that the iPad app does not have the Quick Cryptic today and I am away from a printer. As Londiniensis says, it was perhaps worth three years of Articled Clerkship to be able to scribble in 2D without hesitation. Like pootle, every single salon I see refers to TATTOOIST.

    Edited at 2014-03-14 12:17 pm (UTC)

13. 35 mina of struggle here too. Didn’t know AMORTISE but worked it out from the checking letters/wordplay.
14. 25:20 for me so harder than yesterday’s, not quite as enjoyable but still with some nice touches. FWIW:
    – I agree that 4d doesn’t quite work and there should be an “in” or something;
    – As I work in finance amortise was a gimme;
    – I didn’t know crystal as a watch face;
    – I have no idea how I kne the clown but it was one of my first in;
    – I didn’t like stomach to indicate the middle bit as it doesn’t mean that does it?
    – I thought the wordplay for both sell-by date and Andy Warhol was excellent.
15. DNF after two hours of struggle. Found it harder than yesterday’s and not as much fun; this seemed more of a slog. Couldn’t get diamante and tattooer, kept thinking the chap who got under your skin was a bettenoir but that didn’t seem to work either. Had lash for 6d which may just work if precipitate is rain. Loved the clue for Bogota.

    Happy week-end everyone

    Nairobi Wallah

16. 23 mins but would have been about 5 mins quicker if I hadn’t inexplicably been unable to see AMORTISE immediately despite 35 years in finance. Very embarrassing, especially as Inspector Morse didn’t occur to me quickly either. TATTOOER also took some teasing out, and I’m blaming the double unches for my trouble with these two.

    I agree that this puzzle wasn’t quite as good as yesterday’s but it was still a quality offering.

17. A nice puzzle with some really cracking clues I thought. Andy Warhol was one of my favourite clues this year. Hadnt heard of touchstone or deep-dyed, but I enjoyed this more than yesterday, both were very well clued but more unknown GK for me yesterday.
18. Amazing the different wavelengths we work on – I realise this is going to put me in a small minority, but I thought this puzzle was both much easier and more enjoyable than yesterday’s. LOI AMORTISE due to thinking of the wrong kind of writing down. COD to FORTISSIMO.
19. I found it hard, particularly the fine points of not being able to parse tattooist, and never thinking of an ‘er’ ending, so going off in about two dozen wrong directions. Ditto, I had thought the crystal was the glass cover, and the face was the part behind the hands, and so didn’t make the connection. Uff
20. About 35 minutes, ending with the unlikely DEEP-DYED. I got FORTISSIMO early on, remembered thinking it was somewhat strange, but not strange enough to hold me up. I also thought the ‘eyes on stalks’ a bit odd, but I admit that was how I solved the clue. I didn’t know the Shakespearean clown either, but the wordplay was quite clear. Is DEEP-DYED a variant of what we say as ‘dyed in the wool’, or do you use that phrase in the UK also? SELL BY DATE and ANDY WARHOL were excellent, so I’m in apparent agreement with penfold. Regards.
    1. We have dyed-in-the-wool too, Kevin. It doesn’t mean quite the same thing though: fixed and unchangung rather than thorough or complete. I expect the phrases get used interchangeably though.
       1. Thanks keriothe. Yes, dyed in the wool means pretty much the same over here.
21. Difficult puzzle. Three missing (all in SW corner): diamante, declaim and AW. Carelessly thought his first name was three letters not four despite the (4,6) enumeration being there in black and white on the iPad. Duh!
    Guessed Touchstone from checkers and by reckoning ‘st’ was in the middle.
22. 
    Much, much harder for me than yesterday’s, but at least I finished it all correctly, in several sessions, throughout the day. Lots went in unparsed, and it’s only now, with the help of this blog – thanks! – that I can appreciate the cleverness.
23. Didn’t get anywhere with this today so thanks for the blog. I enjoyed going through the ingenious parsings and hopefully some will sink in.
24. 12:44 for me. I had another horribly busy day yesterday, leaving me completely bushed and in no mood to tackle crosswords (other than the T2 quickie), so I left yesterday’s until this evening and did that and today’s in quick succession. And I’m glad I did, as I found both of them most enjoyable. I was rather quicker with today’s, but that could be because I’d played myself in by then – though I still made heavy weather of parsing some of today’s clues.

    Another very fine puzzle.

25. Either I wasn’t on the setter’s wavelength, or this was a stinker. Or both. Or else it’s all those years of solvent abuse catching up with me.

    I was relieved to get out the other side of this one. FOI was KILN (easy enough), but from then on it was a slow grind with every answer yielding only to hand-to-hand combat. Not helped by my being unfamiliar with TOUCHSTONE as a clown (and forgetting that meaning of “touch”), and by having only the vaguest knowledge of AMORTISE. I also agonised over TATTOOER, which I never did get round to parsing.

    Surprised to see my very own EAST ANGLIA in there, as “part of the kingdom”. I always think of myself as living (and I use the term loosely) in the flat bit just to the right of England.

    One clue I’d take issue with: the crystal is not the face of a watch; it is the glass or acrylic cover that protects the dial and hands.

    To be honest, I enjoyed having finished this one more than doing it. I don’t mind difficult clues, but I prefer more of them to be of the “aha!” variety – many of today’s just felt like hard work.

    My optimism last night proved well-founded – a late-night fog is always good for business. Today hasn’t been bad either so far, with Accident of the Day going to a man who almost severed two fingers with a prosthetic leg. In case you’re wondering how this is possible, he’d been trying to un-bend a bent bit when something gave way and the joint folded shut on his hand. He did see the funny side, which made us all feel a little less guilty for laughing.

    1. I checked the usual dictionaries and there’s no get-out for setter there.
       1. face just means front: “the main side of an object, building, etc, or the front ⇒ “the face of a palace”, “a cliff face”” – and a crystal is on the front of the watch. It works, if you think of “face” as the loose bit
26. I am not happy with the clue for 26A. It strongly indicates that TOO is around TATER, not vice versa.
    1. I see where you’re coming from, but I think it does work. Murphy is the subject of the sentence and is described as restraining/holding extremely. Think of a construction such as “Painted red, Murphy looked strange..”
       1. Sorry jerry – posts ‘crossed’.
       2. I don’t dispute your comment about the grammar of the clue, but your example simply reinforces my point. Following your logic, Murphy is “painted red”, just as Murphy in the clue is “extremely restrained”.

          Even if the clue may be said to work, it is ugly and clumsy.

    2. On edit – it seems that these blogs continue running. In my humble opinion the comma after restrained breaks that indication. So the clue is saying ‘Too’ is restrained, (by) Tater. Which ends up being pretty well what jerry said (simultaneously) above.

       Edited at 2014-03-15 09:28 am (UTC)

       1. We obviously are not going to agree on this.

          The comma only reinforces my argument, which follows the logic of English grammar as shown by the previous emails.

          If setters are not prepared to use correct English grammar logic, what hope is there for sensible and solvable crossword clues?

          1. A major reason I come to this site is exactly this sort of intelligent debate – so thanks for sticking to your guns.
             It’s very possible we’re arguing two different things, both of which may be correct.
             From the standpoint of picking apart the surface of a cryptic clue, I’m reading ‘too’ is inside something. I then look for what could be outside = tater and then the definition. That’s what I mean by the comma breaking the clue up – otherwise what is it there for? So I think this worked as a solvable clue.
             Had this debate been on the day I’m pretty sure that the assembled company would have come uo with some elegantly intelligent and probably witty comment to round this up.

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