Times 25,779 – Without a Clue

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic
So, here’s a new one, clock stopped at – well, actually it hasn’t stopped yet as I have been waiting in the hope that 15 across might suddenly appear if I keep saving and reloading (and yes, I realise that shows a level of faith in the IT of the Crossword Club which its record frankly doesn’t deserve), but as things stand, there’s no clue there, and no way to access that part of the grid. If anybody who’s got a paper copy (assuming the clue appears there, of course) would care to enlighten us, I will be able to fill in whatever it is that fits _O_A_P_T_T in that space. I’m guessing BON APPETIT myself.

Anyway, I shan’t labour the point, suffice it to say it’s all a bit amateur hour, and comes at a time when there have been lots of annoying little misprints and typos across a variety of puzzles.

Meanwhile, returning to the actual crossword, some of the bits that did have clues were tricky, and there were several places where it took me a while to work out the right road to go down.

2:50am: Mistigris on the Club forum has revealed that it is possible to force letters into the grid, despite first appearances, so I have been able to submit a full solution, and can now confirm that I had everything else right, and that the clueless BON APPETIT is indeed the answer at 15ac. And while my time wasn’t especially fast, it was definitely less than 2 hours 19 minutes.

9:30am Added after a night’s sleep: nobody at the Crossword Club appears to have acknowledged the error, or corrected 15ac yet, but we do at least know what the clue was. 10:15am The Crossword Editor has posted that he has asked for the missing clue to be reinstated, and is unable to explain its omission. As the printed version was fine, it seems people were correct in attributing the problem to whoever / whatever process converts the day’s puzzle for web publication, rather than any editorial oversight. 11:00am and it’s fixed, so late solvers will have no problems (at least technical ones).

Across
1 NOTED – NOTEPAD minus PA(=old man). Meaning #1 of PC today…
4 SHADOW-BOX – SHADOW(=spy), BOX(=TV).
9 WINNEBAGO – WINNER, BAG Old. I didn’t know the Indian tribe where the name came from, only the American vehicle of the same name, but it wasn’t a massive leap of faith to infer that one had been named after the other. Edit: prompted by comments, I went back to check what the state of play is as regards “(American) Indian” vs “Native American”, and found an interesting summary – short version, most AI/NA people would prefer to be called Winnebago, or Comanche, or Cherokee, as appropriate, rather than being lumped into any broader description, but “Indian” is not an inherently offensive term.
10 LLAMA – (A MALL)rev.
11 COMPASSIONATE – COMPASS(=reach), IONA TeatimE.
14 SESH – hidden in senSES He, as in the abbreviated form of “session”.
15 BON APPETIT – thanks to those who have revealed that the actual clue, which does appear in the paper, is “Nice diner may say this quietly with a pint to be drunk (3, 7)”, so it’s actually quite a straightforward clue, (PianoAPINTTOBE)*, with the disguised capital on Nice initially hiding its Frenchness.
18 EYEWITNESS – Wife in (YETISSEEN)*.
19 VAMP – (AV)rev. + M.P. for the politician. A.V., the Authorised Version of the Bible, appears less frequently than the more general O.T. or N.T.
21 FUNDAMENTALLY – and just as I was saying it made a change for books not to mean “NT”, here it is, appearing inside FUN(=entertaining), DAME(=lady), ALLY(=friend).
24 ISLAM – Saint in (MALI)rev.
25 GUILLEMOT – [Lake in GUILE], then [MO(=second), Time].
27 MAYORALTY – MAY(=girl), Left in (ATORY)*.
28 SCOOP – Small, [0 in COP], and there’s the other sort of PC.
 
Down
1 NEWSCASTER – NEW(=novel), [CASTE(=class) in SoRt]. Nice definition in “reader of the latest”.
2 TUN – (NUT)rev.
3 DEEJAY =”D,J”. Like its close relative “emcee”, I always find it difficult to spot this one.
4 SWANSDOWN – WAN(=pale) inside S,S (i.e. replacing the material inside SleeveS), + DOWN(=blue).
5 AGOGO – A GO, GO. As Jack points out in comments, you can take your pick as to whether it should be (1,4) or (5), as both appear. At the same time as inserting 15ac, someone has clearly decided that (1,4) is the correct alternative.
6 OIL LAMPS – OIL(=grease), [Marks in LAPS].
7 BLAZE A TRAIL – [LAZE in BAT], RAIL.
8 XMAS – X(=ten), Minutes, AS(=when). Like DEEJAY, a hard one to visualise until that X appeared at the start.
12 MASTERFULLY – Lieutenant in (USARMYFELT)*.
13 STEP BY STEP – BY(=times) in (PETS)x2 rev.
16 AUSTERITY – (ISAYUTTER)*.
17 MISNOMER – [NO Money] in MISER.
20 STALLS – TALL(=unlikely), where “on board” is represented by being on a ship, i.e. “in S.S.”.
22 ANGEL – ANGER(“put out”) with a change of sides, so Right becomes Left.
23 FIRM – double def., one of which I didn’t know, so I banged this in on trust, mostly wondering if I was missing something to do with “firm” being at the centre of “infirmary”. It appears that a hopsital consultant is backed up by a team of doctors who are known as a firm, something I thought only applied as a collective noun for armed robbers until looking it up just now.
26 MOO – MOOd.

50 comments on “Times 25,779 – Without a Clue”

  1. Not just because of the missing 15ac — which I saw right off and dispirited me from the start — but also because of the numerous obscurities. No fun at all.

    Bon apetit!

    1. My feelings exactly, mct, and nobody has yet mentioned the double enumeration (1,4)/(5)at 5dn which also smacks of rotten editing (yet again!). And this comes immediately on top of yesterday’s letter missing from the word ‘ordinance’.

      After making very slow progress for about half-an-hour I resorted to liberal use of aids. Why would one waste one’s life poring over clues indefinitely that one can’t trust to be correct? I got there eventually and even guessed the missing answer but with no sense of achievement or enjoyment whatsoever.

      What with this and continuing chaos over access to the Quickie (today’s button links to last Tuesday’s puzzle) it really is time for somebody at Wapping to get a grip and sort things out once and for all.

      1. Amen to all that.

        According to the OED, for 5dn they could have added (as further alternative enumerations) 1-4, 1,2,2, 1,2-2, and 1-2-2. Next time perhaps.

      2. It’s not as if you’re forced to do it. Benjamin (Animal Farm) reads Lamentations. Glorious.

        Edited at 2014-05-06 06:09 pm (UTC)

    2. Here’s the clue from the newspaper:

      Nice diner may say this quietly with a pint to be drunk (3, 7)

      Edited at 2014-05-06 08:53 am (UTC)

  2. Arriving early to see if the very tricky (I assume) clue to 15A had appeared, but apparently not. Thanks for the parsings Tim, I saw them as you did, in around 40 minutes, including BON APPETIT as the LOI , which trust will be everyone’s LOI due to the added degree of difficulty in not actually providing the text of the clue, and making us work it out from crossing letters only. My guess for the clue: 15. __________. Enjoy! The present time clue was pretty good too. Thanks and regards.
  3. As Kevin has started the competition, here’s an entry from the boys of Brand New, borrowing heavily from their song Seventy Times 7 (a song of forgiveness and Barmherzigkeit in the age of compulsory education)

    Re Java code with line missing in part: I hope you choke and die! (3,7)

    I’m surmising the definition is meant to be interpreted ironically.

    Apart from the coding slip (hey, we’re all human – apart from teachers and quondam friends according to Brand New) I enjoyed this one, although some of the answers raised an eyebrow. It took me about 30 minutes with the unlikely SESH my LOI (BON APPETIT remains incomplete)

  4. 31 minutes for the stuff I could actually do, which I enjoyed greatly, getting ‘firm’ as Tim did and wondering about ‘stalls’ for ‘evasive’. Was it Paul who was wondering about ‘ptarmigans’ in crosswords the other day? I reckon ‘guillemot’ is for him. COD to ‘moo’ – because how else can you react to the current shenanigans?

    Edited at 2014-05-06 05:51 am (UTC)

  5. Well, here’s a thing. If you solve on The Times app, when you have put the last one in, it tells you either your time or that you have errors. When I put in my penultimate answer (with 15ac blank), up came ‘you have completed with errors’ . Not sure what this means.

    Anyway, a bad start to the day for the second day running and happening far too often.

  6. 15a was almost the last clue I came to, having about 10 minutes on the clock at that point and only one other clue still to solve (SWANSDOWN). I’m pretty sure I was enjoying it but it’s hard to remember now.

    I very much doubt the puzzle left the editor’s desk in this state. It all smacks of a systemic problem which may well be defeating the best efforts of the editor. And it’s a real shame that we’re seeing this sort of thing. The Times has always been the one puzzle I felt I could rely on — if something didn’t make sense, I knew the problem was with me, not the puzzle. Now, not so much.

    It’s not hard to think of ways to prevent this kind of thing happening. I hope RR gets the cooperation he needs from other departments in Murdoch Towers to put this right. Otherwise I may just have to take out the fountain pen and the bonded paper and write a jolly stern letter to the editor. I know, I know, it’s an extreme measure. But I feel I may have no choice.

    On the plus side, I think kevin_from_ny’s alternative clue is a work of satirical genius! Thank you, kevin, for turning my frown upside down.

  7. Nice diner may say this quietly with a pint to be drunk (3,7)
    In the hard copy, and therefore of course the online facsimile edition.
    How foolish of me! I should have checked and then guessed that you could force feed the entry!
    What do French people say for “bon appetit”?
    It did put rather a blight on the proceedings, and my time of nearly 24 minutes reflects that as much as the difficulty/obscurity level. SESH is “do you want” in Polish (only the Poles spell it chcesz); FIRM on (NHS) Trust; NOTED no idea how it worked other than from definition; WINNEBAGO is surely no longer – erm- PC; I had to learn that SWANSDOWN (5-4?) was not just feathers inside a pillow, or indeed on a swan.
    Moo(d)? not exactly grumpy, more that sort of amused indignant feeling I used to get with the TLS before St Peter took it in hand, since when it’s been immaculate in conception.
    We have yet to negotiate the transition from crossword club to main site (assuming that’s still going to happen). What joys await!
    1. Z – see amendment above. I think I also had it at the back of my mind that these days “Indian” is incorrect, or at least politically incorrect, and “Native American” to be preferred; but the situation seems to be a bit more nuanced than that…

      Agree with you about the migration: call me a glass-half-empty guy, but when I think of all my experiences of such things, I’m struggling to think of one where everyone sat down afterwards and said “Well that went very smoothly”, rather than all wanting to kill each other.

  8. I solve the quickie, the concise and the sudokus on iPad but for the cryptic it’s still pen and paper with the stopwatch running on the iPad. So I avoided all the problems experienced by others and completed what I thought was a rather good puzzle in a shade under twenty minutes. I often get the same “you have completed with errors” message as bigtone halfway through a sudoku. Can’t see a problem with Winnebago per se z8 but my second reaction on reading the clue, a gnat’s crotchet after realising Gujerati didn’t fit, was “surely he/she doesn’t mean . . .”.
  9. 17 mins solved on paper so no problem with 15ac. This felt like a good time for a tricky puzzle. SWANSDOWN was unknown but I managed to get it from the wordplay, and count me as another who only knew WINNEBAGO from the vehicle. FIRM was my LOI with fingers crossed because I didn’t know the “doctors” definition, although it would probably be a write-in for Thud.

  10. All but the missing BON APPETIT in about 40 minutes or so, so not too bad for me. DNK SWANSDOWN, or that meaning of FIRM or WINNEBAGO, but gettable, and CNP (could not parse) STALLS. All others ok. Didn’t think there were that many obscurities, in fact, McT, compared to many other puzzles. Ah well, I guess, as ever, it’s all about the GK that you know…
  11. I must be in a good mood this morning, because when I spotted there was a clue missing I thought ‘oh well, I wonder if I’ll still be able to finish the puzzle’. I couldn’t, because on the iPad app there is no way of entering an answer if the clue isn’t there, but I managed to figure out what it was, so I call that a moral finish in 17m. The unknown SWANSDOWN was a bit tricky with a missing checker.
    The fact that the rogue clue appeared in the paper edition but not in the electronic versions tells you something about where in the process things went wrong. I’ve no idea what it tells you, but whatever it is the editor may have had no bearing on it.
    Tim, in 18ac I think the anagrind is ‘with crooks’.
    1. Thanks, I have withdrawn that tiny quibble. I suspect I thought at first that the W in the anagrist came from “with”, but obviously it doesn’t.
      1. Indeed, and the enumeration at 5dn looks like another editorial error. But credit (or at least the absence of blame) where it’s due.
  12. Over at the Crossword Club, The Editor says

    “I think the problem with 15ac may be related to the fact that it had an accent on it – the system, notoriously, does not like them, and this one may have slipped through.

    I can only apologise once more”

    which sort of raises the question of why answers with accents are used but never mind.

    malcj, the app is indeed strange. As well as unilaterally deciding that incomplete sudokus are incorrect, if you do the cryptic and then the QC, you get a combined time for the latter.

  13. I was alerted to the missing clue and checked in the paper version before solving. Couldn’t time accurately (forgot that mobile was charging in the kitchen and not in my handbag) but about 14 mins.
  14. Thankfully I only came to this puzzle half an hour ago so had no technical issues, just an enjoyable 20 minute solve.

    I wasn’t convinced about notepad for PC at 1A. I know some laptops call themselves notebooks, but even then I think of laptops as being distinct from PCs.

  15. This one went swimmingly, until entirely derailed by DEEJAY and FIRM – the latter I put in, but on the assumed definition only! So a DNF. As for D-E-A-, when I finally gave up and put the letters into a computer thingy, it came up with “daedal”, which was a fat lot of use …

    Otherwise entirely enjoyable, lots of clever misdirection and simple clues tricked up like Chinese boxes. FOI NEWSCASTER, LOI (not counting FIRM) ISLAM. COD SHADOW-BOX, because the clue seemed to inexorably point to “Danger Man” a favourite TV spy series of my childhood, starring Patrick McGoohan in his pre Prisoner days.

    BTW, who actually uses “deejay” instead of “DJ”? Perhaps those nice chaps at the BeeBeeCee or the OhEeeDee?

    1. I certainly don’t know anyone who uses this, and I’ve always wondered why it exists. No-one seems to have felt the need to invent ’em-pee’ or ‘queue-see’.
      The clue’s a bit odd: a kind of dehomophonisation.
        1. Indeed: it’s a practice that appears to be limited to participants at weddings!
  16. Well, whoops. Quite liked the US Army one, clever to have the L relate back, but not too great a puzzle. Hope they can re-oil the machine over there at Wapping ASAP. Must be peeving Ed, I’d say.

    Cheers
    Chris.

  17. 14:46 with the benefit of all clues (printed from the club at 12:30ish).

    Same unknowns as others (swansdown and firm), stalls and guillemot last two in.

    Reasonable puzzle I thought.

  18. Never heard of it. I might’ve winged it but was already in a moo(d) because of inability to make the system type in 15a no matter what I tried so I threw in the towel as a DNF. Never heard of “firm” in that context either but also thought it must have come from “infirmary”. Remembered the great blues song and cheered up.

    Edited at 2014-05-06 07:31 pm (UTC)

  19. Just popping in on a rare visit (all the rarer now as I dislike being asked (in Russian!) to enter the captcha text.)

    Anyway, I do apologise for the errors that have crept in over the past few weeks, most recently today, although I have to say that the issues with the online puzzle today were beyond my reasonable control.

    The software that handles the crossword club puzzles does not like accents in solutions and I reckon that was the reason for the non-appearance of 15ac. They normally get stripped out if they exist. At least it can handle them in the clues, unlike the Quick Cryptic software.

    I didn’t see the double enumeration at 5dn, but I’m guessing it was because there was a space between the 1 and the 4 of the original, as there is no such error in any version of the puzzles that I can see at my end.

  20. SESH? Urban argot for the young, apparently, not a TC word.. anyway I guessed it with a sad sigh.
    SWANSDOWN – never heard of it, apparently a type of flannel cloth?
    DEEJAY – pathetic clue, IMO, D J ‘picked up’?
    Came to this late after failing to break 80 today on the saturated golf course, so at least I could enjoy the nice clue for 15 ac.
    30 minutes of mixed feelings. CoD WINNEBAGO.
  21. Thought I was still logged in, with Facebook, but somehow I wasn’t.
    Re APPETIT – is usual to omit the accent on capital letters unless it affects the sense, so using caps would perhaps solve the software problem?
    1. “is usual to omit the accent on capital letters unless it affects the sense, so using caps would perhaps solve the software problem?”

      You’d think so, but any accents persist even with capitals (which are indeed used)Indeed, arguably they are harder to see.

      RR

      1. Deejay. (Disliked) Emcee. (Disliked more) Xmas (disliked more again). I don’t care if a dictionary which has lost its way includes these; civilised solvers must blanche. Errors in the enumeration. Errors in the full clue set. The end of civilisation, I think.
  22. I enjoyed this, with the exception of sesh, which feels premature for Times use (to put it politely). A slow time (38.16), not helped by my putting shadow-box, my first in, in two different wrong places before getting going. Surprised to find eyewitness unhyphenated but that appears correct.
    1. It’s been in the Concise Oxford Dictionary for at least the last 6 years!
    2. Wiktionary (I know, I know) quotes a 1944 example in desert army use precisely indicating a heavy drinking session. It does sound a bit Woosterish.
      1. Perhaps, Z, but it is still an ugly semi-word that we would be better without, no?
        1. Poshibly, yesh! But hardly “premature”

          Edited at 2014-05-08 02:35 am (UTC)

  23. 55 minutes to get all but Swansdown, which I didn’t know, and no clue at all for 15ac didn’t help:)
    FIRM was easier for me as I have one of my own……
  24. I’m not applying for the job of crossword editor, but it seemed to me that there was no need for the last two words and a bit: it would have been perfectly sound and still have had a good surface if it had just stopped after ‘crook’. Instead of the cumbersome ‘strangling wife’ the abbreviation for ‘with’ would have been part of the anagram material. Pithier. But arguably a slightly worse surface, and there would have been the thing that some people don’t like, of having an abbreviation in the anagram material. Then again, we wouldn’t have had that dodgy-looking ‘with crooks’ as an anagram indicator.
  25. 14:41 for me, held up a bit at the end wondering if there was an alternative to the obvious-seeming but unknown SESH. A most enjoyable puzzle, particularly as the problem with 15ac had been fixed by the time I arrived.

    As a retired software professional I have utter contempt for whoever has over-all responsibility for the appalling, amateurish rubbish that Times Crossword Club members (and the poor bloody crossword editor) have to put up with.

  26. I had a whinge yesterday on the Quick Cryptic blogsite, so I won’t repeat myself.
    Doing the print version of the puzzle meant that I didn’t encounter the missing clue problem, and I thought the setter did a good job, apart from ‘sesh’, which is (in my eyes) an abomination, whether it appears in the Concise Oxford Dictionary or not.

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